'^^c,^' ^^^5»i»^« e „ iV ,-^°^ jPV THE MODERN STUDENT'S LIBRARY EDITED BY WILL D. HOWE FEOFE8SOB OF ENGLISH AT INDIANA UNIVEBSITT NINETEENTH CENTURY LETTERS The Modern Student's Library Published by CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS THE ORDEAL OF RICHARD FEVEREL By George Meredith. THE HISTORY OF PENDENNIS. By William Makepeace Thackeray. THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE. By 'Thomas Hardy. BOSWELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON. ADAM BEDE. By George Eliot. ENGLISH POETS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. THE RING AND THE BOOK. By Robert Browning, PAST AND PRESENT. By Thomas Carlyle. PRIDE AND PREJUDICE. By Jane Austen. THE HEART OF MID-LOTHIAN. By Sir Walter Scott. THE SCARLET LETTER. By Nathaniel Hawthorne. BUNYAN'S PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. THE ESSAYS OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVEN- SON. NINETEENTH CENTURY LETTERS. THE ESSAYS OF ADDISON AND STEELE. Each small 12mo. 75 cents net. Other volumes in preparation. THE MODERN STUDENT'S LIBRARY NINETEENTH CENTURY LETTERS SELECTED AND EDITED, WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY BYEON JOHNSON REES PROFESSOB OF ENGLISH AT WILLIAMS COLLEGE CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS NEW YORK CHICAGO BOSTON Copyright 1899, 1907, 1911, 1912, 1919 by CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS Copyright 1885, 1909 by George Edward Woodberry Copyright 1908 by John Lane Company Copyright 1895, 1897 by the Macmillan Company Copyright 1886, 1890 by John G. Nicolay and John Hay Copyright 1914 by Helen G. Nicolay Copyright 1899, 1903 by the Century Company Copyright 1894 by Houghton, Mifflin Company Copyright 1887 by James Elliot Cabot Copyright 1894, 1907 by Samuel T. Pickard Copyright 1896 by John T. Morse, Jr. Copyright 1895 by Stone and Kimball Copyright 1875, 1903 by Harper & Brothers Copyright 1876 by G. Otto Trevelyan Copyright 1889 by G. Lewis Stackpole Copyright 19l7 by Elizabeth C. Harcourt MAR -3 1319 7^ TO GRAHAM RYLE PREFACE The present volume is the result of an attempt to bring together within small compass, from the correspondence of well-known English and American authors of the Nine- teenth Century, letters that possess two, and in most in- stances, three characteristics. Though there are exceptions, the letters here submitted are usually typical of the writers; they furnish information as to literary conditions and rela- tionships; and they possess interest in themselves as examples of epistolary correspondence. Obviously allowance must be made for vagaries of judgment and taste. A letter that interests the editor because of some personal predilection may seem dull to many readers; and doubtless he has often failed through individual limitations, either of responsiveness or of knowledge, to include letters that should have been printed. Often he has somewhat wistfully rejected a good letter because it was already thoroughly familiar to readers. Now and then the law of copyright has hampered his free- dom of choice. Of the various kinds of writing, the letter most of all in- cites to annotation. The temptation to write foot-notes, those "voices that bark from the basement," is particularly strong when a reference to a somewhat obscure event, or an allusion to a matter familiar to but a small group of per- sons, makes its appearance. When tempted the editor has usually remembered that readers and students of literary letters are in most cases quite capable of making their own comments on the text, or that, if they are not, there is on this occasion no good excuse for annoying them. CONTENTS PAGE Introduction '. . xiii Acknowledgments xxiii WRITERS OF LETTERS THE DATES ARE THOSE OF THE BIRTH AND DEATH OF EACH WRITER PAGE 1757-1827. William Blake 1 1763-1855. Samuel Rogers 3 1767-1849. Maria Edgeworth 4 1769-1846. John Hookham Frere 10 1770-1850. William Wordsworth 11 1771-1845. Sydney Smith 23 1771-1832. Sir Walter Scott ....... 35 1772-1834. Samuel Taylor Coleridge .... 40 1773-1850. Francis Jeffrey 60 1774-1843. Robert Southey 67 1775-1864. Walter Savage Landor 73 1775-1834. Charles Lamb 78 1764-1847. Mary Lamb 124 1779-1852. Thomas Moore .128 ix X CONTENTS PAGE 1783-1859. Washington Irving 131 1785-1859. Thomas DeQuincey 138 1786-1846. Benjamin Robert Haydon .... 142 1788-1824. Lord Byron 154 1788-1845.. Richard Harris Barham .... 165 1792-1822. Percy Bysshe Shelley 166 1794-1878. William Cullen Bryant .... 177 1795-1842. Thomas Arnold 181 1795-1821. John Keats 183 1795-1881 Thomas Carlyle ....'... 208 1801-1866. Jane Welsh Carlyle 232 1799-1845. Thomas Hood 247 1799-1859. RuFus Choate 250 1800-1859. Thomas Babington Macaulay ... 251 1801-1890, John Henry Newman 258 1803-1882 Ralph Waldo Emerson 260 1804-1864. Nathaniel Hawthorne 263 1806-1867. Nathaniel Parker Willis .... 269 1806-1844. John Sterling 270 1807-1882. Henry Wadsw^orth Longfellow . . 273 1807-1892. John Greenleaf Whittier .... 280 1809-1849. Edgar Allan Poe 283 1809-1865. Abraham Lincoln 289 CONTENTS xi PAGE 1809-1883. Edward FitzGerald 291 1809-1892. Alfred Tennyson *. . 333 1809-1894. Oliver Wendell Holmes .... 336 1811-1863. William Makepeace Thackeray . . 341 1812-1870. Charles Dickens 366 1812-1889. Robert Browning 390 1806-1861. Elizabeth Barrett Browning . . . 394 1812-1888. Edward Lear 406 1814-1877. John Lothrop Motley 409 1816-1855. Charlotte Bronte 414 1817-1862. Henry David Thoreau 418 1817-1881. James Thomas Fields 422 1819-1900. John Ruskin 423 1819-1891. James Russell Lowell 426 1819-1892. Walt Whitman 457 1819-1875. Charles Kingsley 458 1819-1880. "George Eliot" 459 1822-1888. Matthew Arnold 461 1825-1895. Thomas Henry Huxley 469 1828-1862. Fitz-James O'Brien 471 1828-1882. Dante Gabriel Rossetti .... 471 1828-1909. George Meredith 474 1832-1898. "Lewis Carroll" 490 xii CONTENTS PAGB 1834-1896. William Morris 491 1835-1893. Phillips Brooks 493 1840-1893. John Addington Symonds .... 495 1842-1881. Sidney Lanier 498 1850-1894. Robert Louis Stevenson .... 500 Appendix 535 INTRODUCTION Of the numerous species of written discourse to which the human instinct for communicating thought and feehng has given rise, that most frequently and generally employed is without question the letter. It is the one type of com- position that approximately every one, whatever the degree of his literary attainment, finds it desirable and necessary after some fashion to cultivate. Novels, short stories, es- says, poems, plays, biographies, editorial articles, — these are, after all, the contribution of a relatively small number of writers; but Hhe literature of the letter' is always being unimaginably augmented through the activity of the people as a whole. Under such circumstances, circumstances that involve wholesale participation and infinite variety in pur- pose and adaptation, it is perhaps not surprising that at- tempts clearly to define the principles of excellence in letter- writing should have invariably failed. For the other species of literary activity, indeed, there are more or less familiar and adequate critical standards. Criticism, disseminated in some phase among all classes of readers and writers, has made it possible for almost any person to differentiate the novel, let us say, from the essay, or the play from an argu- ment; everybody, unless it be the more enthusiastic writer of 'new poetry,' recognizes the difference between prose and verse; but criticism has not yet pointed out satisfactorily the characteristics that all good letters possess, and has pro- mulgated no canons that commend themselves inevitably to any considerable body of good judges. We know of course that some letters are 'good' and that others are 'bad,' but what it is that effects the 'goodness,' other than those quali- ties that are common to memorable and felicitous writing in general, we are often at a loss to say. We are convinced that the letters of Cicero and of the younger Pliny are ex- xiv INTRODUCTION cellent, and those of Madame de Sevigne, Horace Walpole, Alexander Pope, and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu; but so are Sir Richard Steele's and Dean Swift's and Marjorie Fleming's. We regard Lord Chesterfield and William Cowper and Edward FitzGerald as notable writers of letters, but we insist that Sydney Smith and Jane Welsh and Ben- jamin Robert Haydon shall have honorable place. Doubt- less it would be possible to find traits common to the letters of all these writers, though it would perhaps be difficult, but the peculiar and individual excellence of the letter-writer, that which gives him distinction, would, in some cases at least, lie outside the critical scheme unless the scheme were so eclectic as to serve no really useful purpose. Though the task of adequately defining and describing the letter as a literary form may well be left to more fully developed criticism, it is permissible in the meantime to consider suggestions offered by experienced practitioners of Uhe gentle art.' James Russell Lowell, in excusing the dul- ness of one of his letters, says to his correspondent: "Worse than all is that lack of interest in one's self that comes from drudgery, — for I hold that a letter which is not mainly about the writer of it lacks the prime flavor. The wine must smack a little of the cask." Again he writes, "A letter ought al- ways to be the genuine and natural flower of one's disposi- tion." "Do you find," he says, in speaking of Richard Henry Dana, Jr., "do you find the real inside of him in his letters? I think not, and this is a pretty sure test." "It has been a hobby of mine," John Henry Newman wrote to his sister in 1863, "though perhaps it is a truism, not a hobby, that the true life of a man is in his letters. . . . Not only for the interest of a biography, but for arriving at the inside of things, the publication of letters is the true method. Biographies varnish, they assign motives, they conjecture feelings, they interpret Lord Burleigh's nods; but contem- porary letters are facts." Such expressions as "interest in one's self," "the natural flower of one's disposition," "the true life of a man," at once remind us that it is, indeed, very frequently the personality of the writer as revealed in his letters that commends ttrerrr INTRODUCTION xv to us. Lowell himself was a demonstration of the correct- ness of his view. He was a poet and his letters contain much that is poetic; he was an indefatigable student and his ad- venturous reading has left its mark on his correspondence; he was a college professor and a Minister to the Court of St. James; but it is not precisely as poet or scholar or public servant that he makes his impression upon us in the letters that have appeared since his death. What really appeals to us in them is the gradual disclosure of a thoroughly like- able man, a refined and winning yet stalwart New England gentleman, rich in the personal qualities that give grace and value to life. That the letters of Charles Lamb owe their fascination to their revelation of personality is obvious. Like the Essays of Elia, they cast and maintain their spell through the per- vasive presence of a fresh and surprising individuality. They are filled with wise and amusing utterances; they are often clever, joyous, hilarious; they are replete w^ith illuminating comment upon his own times and times long past; they are not infrequently superb examples of easy and graceful writ- ing; but their special worth is due to their subjectivity, to the clearness and fulness with which the writer himself ap- pears in them. The reader is assured after a time that he knows Charles Lamb through his letters much as he knows Dr. Johnson through the greatest of biographies. The two men have perhaps little in common, but they are alike in this, that their permanence in the affection of readers is due primarily to the charm of fully-revealed engaging personality. Lamb is "more than an author to those who know him," says Augustus Jessopp. " He is a presence, a presiding genius; he goes in and out with you, haunts you in the kindest, gentlest way." So complete is his mastery over his readers that they espouse his cause as if he were a friend whose name must be shielded from every stain. They deny that he drank to excess, that he smoked too much, even that he stammered more than was meet. They resent Carlyle's unsympathetic paragraph. They are contemptuous of those who speak of "poor Charles Lamb," of "gentle Charles." They re- mind us, as does Mr. Birrell, that he "earned his own living, xvi INTRODUCTION paid his own way, was the helper, not the helped; a man who was beholden to no one, who always came vrith gifts in his hand, a shrewd man capable of advice, strong in coun- cil." It is no slight testimony to the personality of a man, and to the symmetry and completeness of his self -portraiture, that three generations after his death readers should grow warm in discussion of his private character. Though Swinburne asserted that Edward FitzGerald gave *'Omar Khayyam a place forever among the greatest Eng- lish poets," it is not as translator and poet that he is likely to be longest cherished. Gorgeous and imposing though it is, the Rubdiydt, now that the languid pessimism of the last century has given place to a healthier mood, will hardly again make the impression that it made a few years ago. FitzGerald's letters, however, appear to be growing in favor year by year. Indeed, it is a comforting detail of literary history, in itself an indication of the essential soundness of taste, that since the publication of the first selection from his letters in 1889, FitzGerald should have gained the high place he now occupies in the fraternity of letter- writers. This position he is likely to retain, for he has come to it by the w^ay of genuine, spontaneous recognition. So substantial is his fame that probably most readers conversant with nine- teenth century correspondence consider him the choicest letter- writer of the period. His excellence, like that of Lowell and Lamb, is closely entwined with the subtle element of personality; but with FitzGerald there intrudes a special and piquant qualit}^ such as one does not perceive in the other two. About him there is a brooding melancholy; his very portraits express a 'vague trouble,' as if life had promised great things and then had duped him. Not that he ever says much about his feelings, unless they be pleasant ones: he is too much of a gentleman to inflict his troubles need- lessly upon his friends. But always, in his delicate humor, in his keen analyses of men and things, in his dainty and graceful descriptions of garden, field, and sea, in his leisurely and discriminating comments on his favorite authors and painters and composers, one detects a minor chord of pene- trating and ineluctable sadness. It is of course the more INTRODUCTION xvii mo\'ing because not distinctly heard; blent with laughter and gracious talk, it gains poignancy bj^ contrast and lends to the whole personality a sense of mystery that amply justi- fies Mr. Benson in calling him "the Hamlet of literature." Unless we are apprised of some particular contingency, we assume that by 'a letter' is meant a communication between two persons. So soon as the writer appears to ad- dress a group, or permits the supposition that what he writes ^ill serve the interest of others besides his correspondent, his wTiting is no longer a letter as we habitually understand the term. In ^mting to Jane Welsh in 1822 Carlyle indi- cates his view of the matter. "It seems to me that the chief end of letters is to exhibit to each a picture of the other's soul, — of all the hopes and fears that agitate us, the joys and sorrow^s and varied anxieties in which a heart's-friend may be expected to sjmipathise: and if I maj^ trust my own judge- ment, this emploj^ment is even more useful (I say not a word of the delight attending it) than any other to which our im- perfect means of communication can be devoted." Such a 'picture,' obviously, it will not be possible to draw if the draughtsman must consider a variet}^ of judgments, a di- versity of degrees of s^^mpathy. When a student at Oxford in 1860, John Addington Symonds WTote to his sister: "I wish 3'ou would pay more attention to the writing of letters. I am not the proper person to read you a sermon upon this subject, because I do not think that the specimens I send 3'Ou are at all what letters should be. Yet I labour under the disadvantage of wTiting to a mixed audience. You have only me to talk to, and, moreover, being a lady, are per- haps more bound to write good letters. I think 3^ou should consider more to whom you are writing, in each instance, and try to say something suitable to the tastes, &c., of the individual." "To speak of oneself is, they say, a privilege of friendship," wrote Jane Welsh, but to "speak of oneself" as the best letter-wTiters have done, and as she often did, is easy only in the simple relationship of single mind to single mind. It is characteristic of a good letter that it should seem to be overheard. When one learns that Pope adroitly effected the publication of his own letters, or that Lady Mary xviii INTRODUCTION exhorted her correspondents to keep her letters, alleging that they would be ''as good as Madame de Sevigne's forty years hence," or that Stevenson wrote some of his Vaihma letters with a view to their being published — an idea which he ultimately abandoned, — one's appreciation, though it re- mains keen, is radically modified. Judged simply as letters, one may venture to say, Steele's hurried, often illegible notes to the exacting Prue are superior to many of Stevenson's brilliant accounts of life in the South Seas. It is not merely that one's curiosity about Steele and his wife is gratified: rather, one feels that Steele's uncertain excuses are real letters, that they served as genuine communications between two persons, the only persons who were really concerned. Though it is typical of good letters that they should seem to be overheard, there is a certain limitation as to the degree of intrusion consistent with Hterary enjoyment. It is for this reason, most probably, that published love letters are usually unsatisfactory. When the reader is continually re- minded that he is trespassing upon privacy, that he is read- ing what the two persons originally interested would have wished unread by strangers, the legitimate pleasure that he normally takes in letters suffers from a sense of indelicacy. The time may come when the letters of John Keats to Fanny Brawne will not make readers uncomfortable, but it will be a time when Keats is far more remote than he is at present, as remote, let us say, as Dorothy Osborne seems to our gen- eration. In reading the Bro waning letters it is difficult to escape the suspicion that one is a vulgarian. What should be done with the love letters of men and women in whom the public has a certain right of ownership is a complicated question, but there can be no doubt that the early publica- tion of such letters is more or less shameful, or that their very intimacj" tends to obscure such intrinsic artistic merit as the}^ may possess. Just as one turns away when the face of a grown man is distorted with grief, one feels embarrass- ment in contemplating the superexaltation of a celebrated author in the experience of love. "Letters ought to be nothing but extempore conversation on paper," wrote Horace Walpole to Lady Ossory, and the INTRODUCTION xix expression reminds us that many letters owe their vitality to a characteristic quite distinct from those of personality and intimacy in the sense in which we think of those ele- ments in reading such men as Lamb or Lowell or FitzGerald. What "extempore conversation" meant to Walpale we may learn from his frequent characterizations of his own mental habit. " I am certainly the greatest philosopher in the world," he wrote to Conway in 1774, ''without ever having thought of being so; alwaj^s employed and never busy; eager about trifles and indifferent to everything serious. Well, if it is not philosoph}^, at least it is content." To be "eager about trifles" and "indifferent to everything serious" — this is a mood, heightened or softened in particular letter-writers, that often goes far to atone for the lack of an engaging per- sonality. It is not necessary to respect Horace Walpole to find his letters diverting. "Fiddles sing all through them," says Thackeray; "wax-lights, fine dresses, fine jokes, fine plate, fine coaches, glitter and sparkle there. Never was such a brilliant Vanity Fair as that through which he leads us." One may have but a moderate liking for Lord Byron as a man and yet relish his astonishing animation and facility. The "invincible confidence" of Wordsworth, the simple, unreflecting trust that Coleridge reposes in his own genius, the majestic sense of a high calling in Carlyle, the detach- ment of Shelley from ordinary human interests, the burning intensit}'^ of Keats, these are personal and subjective notes with which the readei- would wish to acquaint himself, but there are times when he does not desire to consider too cu- riously, when he is in no frame of mind to be improved, when it is a matter of relative indifference to him whether Pan- tisocracy was a thought purely celestial or merely mad. He is prepared on occasion to read Coleridge's solemn ar- raignment of Sou they, but "not now." He turns to Sj^dney Smith, who will not long be serious, or to Edward Lear, who cannot; or to Thomas Hood, or Holmes, or Thackeray, Or Meredith, who are likely to treat life lightly and pleasantly. A gentleman, according to Newman's classic definition, is "one who never infiicts pain." Of no small number of the best letters in the language it may be said that they illus- XX INTRODUCTION trate the considerateness and the reserve of the well-bred, and the cheerful if somewhat artificial vivacity of society. Their authors ignore the existence of annoyances or treat them as themes for subdued jesting. They indulge us in that delight in disorder of which we are frequently conscious. Nonchalant, or apparently so, as to the sombre and tragic aspects of life, they let the lambent gleams of their wit and humor play upon the surface of things. It is usually assumed that even the best of the letter- writers of the nineteenth century are inferior to those of the eighteenth, that they fall short of the standard set by Lady Mary, Walpole, Gray, Cowper, and their contempo- raries in the 'golden age of letter- writing.' Inasmuch as we are not altogether clear as to the particular desiderata which we should demand in a letter, such a judgment as to the re- spective products of the two centuries is venturesome. It may be conceded that anyone who contends for the superior- ity of nineteenth century correspondence may be unduly influenced by the interest that he naturally takes in persons and events close to his own day; it must be admitted, on the other hand, that often no negligible part of the charm of the eighteenth century letter is due to a certain appear- ance of quaintness in manner resulting merely from the pas- sage of time. Gilbert White's letter to Mrs. Chapone on Timothy the tortoise is no better than Dickens's account of the death of his raven, or than Stevenson's offer to Cosmo Monkhouse to trade bodies. The ad\'«.ntage which White's 'sorrowful reptile' enjoys is due largely to the surprise and pleasure we feel in discovering that the Selborne naturalist's imagination and humor are still thorough!}^ alive, in spite of a formal style, after the lapse of one hundred and thirty- five years. Without question the changes that took place during the nineteenth century in the method of disseminating public information wrought in some degree to an enrichment in the content of letters. In the older time, the correspondent was in duty bound to furnish the kind of news which, at a later day, the newspaper conveyed more satisfactority; he often loaded his pages with matter which no grace of manner INTRODUCTION xxi could invest with charm, and he left little room for discuss- ing, what now interests us most, himself and his little, im- mediate world. Often, indeed, the eighteenth century letter-writer was quite disinclined to say much either about himself or about his immediate world. Until fairly late in the century he was likely to be a man untouched by romanticism, unac- customed to introspection, and inattentive to Nature. What- ever the affectations and excesses to which the Romantic Movement led, it made possible, in the happier instances, an absorbing self-portraj^al ; and, no less important, it opened the eyes of men and women to the beauty of flower and tree, of mountain and torrent, of soughing wind and gleaming star, to all the incredible pageantry of the ph^^sical world which Wordsworth and Coleridge and Shelley and Keats knew and interpreted. As the crest of the romantic wave passed, the egotism that had at times been portentous was relieved by a growth in the power of self-criticism, and b}^ an increase in appreciation of the value of perspective. Men seemed less inspired but more normal. They acquired a taste for looking at things from more than one point of view. Still subjective, still observant, they became more tolerant and more urbane. In no type of literature is the effect of these changes more noteworthy than in the letter; in no form of wTiting is there a clearer or happier reflection of the state of literary taste and feeling that resulted from the rise of romanticism and its subsequent gradual adjust- ment to every-day human life. Without wishing to be dog- matic, or to underestimate the achievement of a remoter past, one is surely warranted in regarding manj^ of the letters of the latter part of the nineteenth century as eminently felicitous examples of epistolary correspondence. To read the letters of Edward FitzGerald, of James Russell Lowell, of George Meredith, and of Robert Louis Stevenson is to feel the subtle and lasting charm that is induced by blending in one genre deftly-depicted personality, a comfortable sense of intimacy, and the alert urbanity of cultivated society. Whatever the future development of the letter may be — a development that the postal card, the telegraph, the tele- xxii INTRODUCTION phone, and the typewriter will probably affect but slightly — ■ it is scarcely conceivable that there should be for generations to come a significant and satisfying letter-literature which will not owe its salient merits to the heritage bequeathed by letter-writers of the nineteenth century. Byron J. Rees. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The editor takes pleasure in recording his obligation to the various publishers who have kindly permitted him to include in this collection letters of which they control the copyright. More particularly would ^e extend his thanks to D. Appleton and Company for leave to print four letters from Parke Godwin's A Biography of William. Cidlen Bryant, and another from Leonard Huxley's Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley; to The Century Company for three letters from Nicolay and Hay's The Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln, and for three letters by Sir Walter Scott first printed in 1903 in the July and August numbers of the Century Magazine; to Dodd, Mead, and Company for a letter from The Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley to Elizabeth Hitchener; to Duffield and Company for a letter from The Letters of Edward Lear, and another from The Later Letters of Edward Lear ; to E. P. Button and Company for a letter b}" Bishop Brooks from Professor Allen's Life and Letters of Phillips Brooks. Harper and Brothers have generouslj^ permitted the re- printing of twent3^-one letters from The Letters of James Rus- sell Lowell, edited bj^ Charles Eliot Norton, together with three letters by Macaulay from Trevelyan's Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay, a letter by Ruskin, and one by Willis from L'Estrange's The Friendships of Mary Russell Mitford, a letter by George Eliot from J. W. Cross's The Life of George Eliot, three letters from The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley, and a letter by Fitz- James O'Brien from The House of Harper. By special arrangement The Houghton Mifflin Company have granted the use of two letters from Frank B. Sanborn's Familiar Letters of Henry David Thoreau; three letters b}^ xxiii 2 WILLIAM BLAKE [^t. 42 owing to the necessary shifting of our luggage from one chaise to another; for we had seven different chaises, and as many different drivers. We set out between six and seven in the morning of Thursday, with sixteen heavy boxes and portfolios full of prints. And now begins a new life, because another covering of earth is shaken off. I am more famed in heaven for my works than I could well conceive. In my brain are studies and chambers filled with books and pictures of old, which I wrote and painted in ages of eternity before my mortal life; and those works are the delight and study of archangels. Why, then, should I be anxious about the riches and fame of mortality? The Lord our Father will do for us and with us according to His divine will for our good. You, O dear Flaxman! are a sublime archangel, — my friend and companion from eternity. In the divine bosom in our dwelling-place, I look back into the regions of reminiscence, and behold our ancient days before this earth appeared in its vegetated mortality* to my mortal vegetated eyes. I see our houses of eternity, which can never be separated, though our mortal vehicles should stand at the remotest corners of heaven from each other. Farewell, my best Friend! Pamember me and my wife in love and friendship to our dear Mrs. Flaxman, whom we ardently desire to entertain beneath our thatched roof of rusted gold. And believe me for ever to remain your grateful and affectionate William Blake. * For Blake's use of the word, cf. Jerusalem, p. 77: "Imagination, the real and eternal World of which this Vegetable Universe is but a faint shadow, and in which we shall live in our Eternal or Imaginative Bodies, when these Vegetable Mortal Bodies are no more." (A. G. B. Russell.) [^t. 53] SAMUEL KOGERS 1763-1855 To Sarah Rogers [tea with the wordsworths] Low-wood Inn: Friday morning, 28 Aug., 1816. My dear Sarah, — I should have written before, but the last post here I missed, and there is one here only every other day. I travelled to Leicester, where I arrived at 11 at night, without an incident, only that in Wells's Row, Islington, we took up an old lady blind and deaf, whose only pleas- ure seemed to be to shake hands with ua all round very often. She spoke, however, of her dinner with great pleasure, and expressed a wish that she might have some fish, an observation to which we could make no reply. Left Leicester next morning at half-past five in an empty coach, and at eleven found myself at Moore's. His cot- tage is all alone in a pretty little valley with fields and woods about it, and is new and neat. They say, however, it is leaky and smoky. She struck me as much taller and much improved in expression, and, still very handsome, tho' a little of her lustre is gone, and she is thinner. But she surprised me agreeably, and would be admired any- where. The two little girls are not pretty nor otherwise, and quiet and merry and caressing beyond anything. I wished for you with them very often, and they had made arrangements for you. I stayed till Sunday — having passed into Dovedale with M. and seen Ham, and then went off alone (for, after all, he left me in the lurch) to Manchester. Napped there, and at one in the morning came on in the mail to Kendal, arriving here on Monday at three. On Tuesday, after a row on the lake, I walked and drank tea with the Wordsworths, who are all as be- fore. They still talk of their day with you on the Thames, and Miss W. counts the years since she saw you. Their present abode is princely — by the side of Rydal Hall. Their windows command Windermere, and their garden (Miss H. and the clerk keep it full of flowers) looks down upon Rydal water. I was asking my way to them at a 4 MAKIA EDGEWOETH [.Et. 27 cottage door in the road, when the child I spoke to ran in, and a little girl came smiling out and took my hand with a curtsey. It was Miss W., as I guessed, who had called to ask after a child in the measles, and she con- ducted me to their house. Yesterday I dined there, and to-day he spends the day with me. He is very cheerful and pleasant, and so are they all. I believe they heard of my arrival a few minutes after I came, for they called early the next day while I was on the water. The weather here has been wretched. Now it is mending a little, but still cold and cheerless — the Moores live by a fire, and so do the Ws., and I live in my great-coat. I am now writing in it. What will become of me, I am at a loss to say — but my heart fails me, and I think I shall go on no* further. Pray write, my dear Sarah, and tell me your plans, to Low-wood — if you write in four or five days, but afterwards to Keswick. The regatta here is next Wednesday, and W. offers to accompany me to Ulleswater, an offer I am glad to accept, so I think I shall not be at K. before the end of next week. Pray remember me very affectionately to all, and believe me to be, Ever yours, S. R. [^t. 27] MARIA EDGEWORTH 1767-1849 To Miss Sophy Ruxton [books and experiments] Edgeworthstown, July 2, 1794, having the honour to be the fair day of Edgeworthstown, as is well proclaimed to the neighbourhood by the noise of pigs squeaking, men bawl- ing, women brawling, and children squealing, etc. I will tell you what is going on, that you may see whether you like your daily bill of fare. There are, an't please you, ma'am, a great many good things here. There is a balloon hanging up, and an- .^t. 27] MAKIA EDGEWOKTH 5 other going to be put on the stocks; there is soap made, and making from a receipt in Nicholson's. "Chemistry"; there is excellent ink made, and to be made by the same book; there is a cake of roses just squeezed in a vise, by my father, according to the advice of Madame De Lagaraye, the woman in the black cloak and ruffles, who weighs with unwearied scales, in the frontispiece of a book, which perhaps my aunt remembers, entitled "Chemie de Gout et de I'Odorat." There are a set of accurate weights, just completed by the ingenious Messrs. Lovell and Henry Edgeworth, partners : for Henry is now a junior partner, and grown an inch and a half upon the strength of it in two months. The use and ingenuity of these weights I do, or did, understand; it is great, but I am afraid of puzzling you and disgracing myself attempt- ing to explain it; especially as, my mother says, I once sent you a receipt for purifying water with charcoal, which she avers to have been above, or below, the com- prehension of any rational being. My father bought a great many books at Mr. Dean's sale. Six volumes of "Machines Approuves," full of prints of paper mills, gunpowder mills, machines pour remonter les hatteaux, machines pour — a great many things which you would like to see, I am sure, over my father's shoulder. And my aunt would like to see the new staircase, and to see a kitcat* view of a robin red- breast sitting on her nest in a sawpit, discovered by Lovell; and you would both like to pick Emmeline's fine strawberries round the crowded oval table after dinner, and to see my mother look so much better in the midst of us. If these delights thy soul can move. Come live with us and be our love. * A name given to the small portraits (thirty-six by twenty-eight inches) painted by Kneller, of the members of the Kit Cat Club. 6 MARIA EDGEWORTH [Mt. 56 [^t. 56] To Mrs. Ruxton [an evening at sir WALTER SCOTT's] Edinburgh, 32 Abercromby Place, June 8th, 1823. You have had our history up to Kinneil House. Mr. and Miss Stewart accompanied us some miles on our road to show us the palace of Linlithgow — very interesting to see, but not to describe. The drive from Linlithgow to Edinburgh is nothing extraordinary, but the road ap- proaching the city is grand, and the first view of the castle and "mine own romantic town" delighted my com- panions; the day was fine and they were sitting outside on the barouche seat — a seat which you, my dear aunt, would not have envied them with all their fine prospects. By this approach to Edinburgh, there are no suburbs; you drive at once through magnificent broad streets and fine squares. All the houses are of stone, darker than the Ardbraccan stone, and of a kind that is little injured by weather or time. Margaret Alison had taken lodgings for us in Abercromby Place — finely built, with hanging shrubbery garden, and the house as delightful as the situ- ation. As soon as we had unpacked and arranged our things the evening of our arrival, we walked, about ten minutes' distance from us, to our dear old friends, the Alisons. We found them shawled and bonneted, just coming to see us. Mr. Alison and Sir Walter Scott had settled that we should dine the first day after our arrival with Mr. Alison, which was just what we wished; but on our return home we found a note from Sir Walter: ''Dear Miss Edgeworth, I have just received your kind note, just when I had persuaded myself it was most likely I should see you in person or hear of your arrival. Mr. Alison writes to me you are engaged to dine with him to-morrow, which puts Roslin out of the question for that day, as it might keep you late. On Sunday I hope- you will join our family- party at five, and on Monday I have asked one or two of the Northern Lights on purpose to meet you. I should be engrossing at any time, but we shall be more disposed Mt 56] MAEIA EDGEWOKTH 7 to be so just now, because on the 12th I am under the necessity of going to a different kingdom (only the king- dom of Fife) for a day or two. To-morrow, if it is quite agreeable, I will wait on you about twelve, and hope you will permit me to show you some of our improvements. I am always, Most respectfully yours, Walter Scott. Edinburgh, Friday. Postscript. — Our old family coach is licensed to carry six; so take no care on that score. I inclose Mr. Alison's note; truly sorry I could not accept the invitation it contains. Postscript. — My wife insists I shall add that the Laird of Staffa promised to look in on us this evening at eight or nine, for the purpose of letting us hear one of his clansmen sing some Highland boat-songs and the like, and that if you will come, as the Irish should to the Scotch, without any ceremony, you will hear what is perhaps more curious than mellifluous. The man returns to the isles to-morrow. There are no strangers with us; no party; none but all our own family and two old friends. Moreover, all our womankind have been calling at Gibbs's hotel, so if you are not really tired and late, you have not even pride, the ladies' last defense, to op- pose to this request. But, above all, do not fatigue your- self and the young ladies. No dressing to be thought of.'' Ten o'clock struck as I read the note; we were tired — we were not fit to be seen; but I thought it right to ac- cept "Walter Scott's" cordial invitation; sent for a hack- ney-coach, and just, as we were, without dressing, went. As the coach stopped, we saw the hall lighted, and the moment the door opened, heard the joyous sounds of loud singing. Three servants — "The Miss Edgeworths" sounded from hall to landing-place, and as I paused for a moment in the anteroom, I heard the first sound of Walter Scott's voice — "The Miss Edgeworths come.'' The room was lighted by only one globe lamp. A circle were singing loud and beating time — all stopped in an instant, and Walter Scott in the most cordial and cour- teous manner stepped forward to welcome us : "Miss Edge- worth, this is so kind of you!" 8 MAKIA EDGEWOKTH [iEt. 56 My first impression was, that he was neither so large nor so heavy in appearance as I had been led to expect by description, prints, bust, and picture. He is more lame than I expected, but not unwieldy; his countenance, even by the uncertain light in which I first saw it, pleased me much; benevolent, and full of genius without the slightest effort at expression; delightfully natural, as if he did not know he was Walter Scott or the Great Un- known of the North, as if he only thought of making others happy. After naming to us "Lady Scott, Staffa, my daughter Lockhart, Sophia, another daughter Anne, my son, my son-in-law Lockhart,'^ just in the broken circle as they then stood, and showing me that only his family and two friends^ Mr. Clark and Mr. Sharpe, were present, he sat down for a minute beside me on a low sofa, and on my saying, "Do not let us interrupt what was going on," he immediately rose and begged Staffa to bid his boatman strike up again. "Will you then join in the circle with us?" He put the end of a silk handker- chief into my hand, and others into my sisters' ; they held by these handkerchiefs all in their circle again, and the boatman began to roar out a Gaelic song, to which they all stamped in time and repeated the chorus, which, as far as I could hear, sounded like "At am Vaun! At am Vaun!" frequently repeated with prodigious enthusiasm. In another I could make out no intelligible sound but "Bar! bar! bar!" But the boatman's dark eyes were ready to start out of his head with rapture as he sung and stamped, and shook the handkerchief on each side, and the circle imitated. Lady Scott is so exactly what I had heard her described, that it seemed as if we had seen her before. She must have been very handsome — French dark large eyes; civil and good natured. Supper at a round table, a family supper, with attention to us, just sufficient and no more. The impression left on my mind this night was, that Walter Scott is one of the best-bred men I ever saw, with all the exquisite politeness which he knows so well how to describe, which is of no particular school or country, but which is of all countries, the politeness which arises from good and quick sense and feeling, which seems to know by instinct the characters of others, to see what will ^Et. 56] MAKIA EDGEWOETH 9 please, and put all his guests at their ease. As I sat be- side him at supper, I could not believe he was a stranger, and forgot he was a great man. Mr. Lockhart is very- handsome, quite unlike his picture in Peters's [sic'] let- ters. When we wakened in the morning, the whole scene of the preceding night seemed like a dream; however, at twelve came the real Lady Scott, and we called for Scott at the Parliament House, who came out of the Courts with joyous face as. if he had nothing on earth to do or to think of, but to show us Edinburgh. Seeming to enjoy it all as much as we could, he carried us to Parliament House — Advocate's Library, Castle, and Holyrood House. His conversation all the time better than anything we could see, full of apropos anecdote, historic, serious or comic, just as occasion called for it, and all with a bon- homie and an ease that made us forget it was any trouble even to his lameness to mount flights of eternal stairs. Chantrey's statues of Lord Melville and President Blair are admirable. There is another by Poubillac, of Duncan Forbes, which is excellent. Scott is enthusiastic about the beauties of Edinburgh, and well he may be, the most magnificent as well as the most romantic of cities. We dined with the dear good Alisons. Mr. Alison met me at the drawing-room door, took me in his arms, and gave me a hearty hug. I do not think he is much altered, only that his locks are silvered over. At this dinner were, besides his two sons and two daughters, and Mrs. Alison, Mr. and Mrs. Skene. In one of Scott's introductions to "Marmion" you will find this Mr. Skene, Mr. Hope, the Scotch Solicitor-General (it is curious the Solicitor- Generals of Scotland and Ireland should be Hope and Joy!), Dr. Brewster, and Lord Meadowbank, and Mrs. Maconachie, his wife. Mr. Alison wanted me to sit be- side everybody, and I wanted to sit by him, and this I accomplished; on the other side was Mr. Hope, whose head and character you will find in Peters's letters: he was very entertaining. Sophy sat beside Dr. Brewster, and had a great deal of conversation with him. Next day, Sunday, went to hear Mr. Alison; his fine voice but little altered. To me he appears the best preacher I have ever heard. Dined at Scott's; only his 10 JOHN HOOKHAM FEERE [^t. 65 own family, his friend Skene, his wife and daughter, and Sir Henry Stewart; I sat beside Scott; I dare not at- tempt at this moment even to think of any of the anec- dotes he told, the- fragments of poetry he repeated, or the observatioiis on national character he made, lest I should be tempted to write some of them for you, and should never end this letter, which must be ended some time or other. His strong affection for his early friends and his country gives a power and a charm to his conversation, which cannot be given by the polish of the London world and by the habit of literary conversation. "Quentin Durward" was lying on the table. Mrs. Skene took it up and said, "This is really too barefaced." Scott, when pointing to the hospital built by Heriot, said, "That was built by one Heriot, you know, the jeweler, in Charles the Second's time." There was an arch simplicity in his look, at which we; could hardly forbear laughing. [^t. 65] JOHN HOOKHAM EEERE 1769-1846 To Edward Erere [building a wall] Malta, April 9th, 1835. My dear Ned, I have to acknowledge the receipt of yours of the 2nd ~ March, written with a "real pen, real ink, and real paper." What is the nonsense which that puts me in mind of? Do you recollect? It was something of poor Bob Olive's at Putney and his writing master at home, Mr. Skelton by name, whose figure he used to draw on the blank pages of his books. . . . It is not the less true that the sight of your real ink was a great refreshment to my eyes. So much for the form and material characters of your letter. For the substance, I am truly glad that your bargain for Turton is approaching to a satisfactory termination, the more so as I trust it will enable you to inspect us here. Do not be afraid of the summer, it is all nonsense. Ask William! he will tell you; and I can tell you that I am never so well here as in the height of summer, and our constitutions, I take it, are not mucli unlike. Take ex- ample by the old Welsh mules which are sent over to the West Indies, where they are found to grow young again. You will see how I am ruining 'myself with building (I dare say you will be told so, if you remain in England). I built my first piece of wall simply by the Lesbian rule, as Aristotle describes it; but I have since made a dis- covery of the true Pelasgic method, and am finishing the other end of it like a perfect Cyclops, such as Neptune employed in building the walls of Troy. I have not time to explain this, so you must come and judge for yourself on the spot, and stop my hand if you think I am likely to do myself any real injury by the expense, for my archi- tect is persuading me to build a small Doric temple, though the cost, even according to his own statement, will not be less than fifteen pounds; and it will cost me, I be- lieve, seven or eight to finish my wall in a way that Sir W. Gell would approve. I have been running on with nonsense (from which you will only collect that I am well, and that I shall be very glad to see you), while you are looking for some ac- count of dear S — . She is the most cheerful creature under suffering that ever was, and the delight of every- body, including even that old uncle of hers. You know "she is living with an old uncle." [^t. 45] WILLIAM WOEDSWOETH 1770-1850 To Bernard Barton [a "perpetual retainer from incapacity"] Eydal Mount^ near Ambleside, Jan. 12, 1816. Dear Sir, Though my sister, during my absence, has returned thanks in my name for the verses which you have done me the honour of addressing to me, and for the obliging letter which accompanies them, I feel it incumbent on me, on my return home, to write a few words to the same purpose, with my own hand. It is always a satisfaction to me to learn that I have 12 ATILLIAM WOEDSWOETH [.Et. 45 g-iven pleasure upon rational grounds ; and I have nothing to object to your poetical panegyric but the occasion which called it forth. An admirer of my works, zealous as you have declared yourself to be, condescends too much when he gives way to an impulse proceeding from the , or indeed from any other Eeview. The writers in these pub- lications, while they prosecute their inglorious employ- ment, cannot be supposed to be in a state of mind very favourable for being affected by the finer influences of a thing so pure as genuine poetry; and as to the instance which has incited you to offer me this tribute of your gratitude, though I have not seen it, I doubt not but that it is a splenetic effusion of the conductor of that Eeview, who has taken a perpetual retainer from his own inca- pacity to plead against my claims to public approbation. I differ from you in thinking that the only poetical lines in your address are "stolen from myself." The best verse, perhaps, is the following: "Awfully mighty in his impotence," which, by way of repayment, I may be tempted to steal from you on some future occasion. It pleases, though it does not surprise me, to learn that, having been affected early in life by my verses, you have returned again to your old loves after some little infideli- ties, which you were shamed into by commerce with the scribbling and chattering part of the world. I have heard of many who upon their first acquaintance with my poetry have had much to get over before they could thoroughly relish it ; but never of one who, having once learned to en- joy it, had ceased to value it, or survived his admiration. This is as good an external assurance as I can desire, that my inspiration is from a pure source, and that my principles of composition are trustworthy. With many thanks for your good wishes, and begging leave to offer mine in return, I remain, Dear Sir, Eespectfully yours, Wm. Wordsworth. Bernard Barton, Esq., Woodbridge, Suffolk. ^t. 50] WILLIAM WOEDSWORTH 13 [^t. 50] To Archdeacon Wrangham [writing letters; old books] [1820?] Dear Wrangham, You are very good in sending one letter after another to inquire after a person so undeserving of attentions of this kind as myself. Dr. Johnson, I think, observes, or rather is made to observe by some of his biographers, that no man delights to give what he is accustomed to sell. 'Tor example, you, Mr. Thrale, would rather part with anything in this way than your porter.'' Now, though I have never been much of a salesman in matters of liter- ature (the whole of my returns — I do not say net profits, but returns — from the writing trade, not amounting to seven score pounds), yet, somehow or other, I manufac- ture a letter, and part with it as reluctantly as if it were really a thing of price. But, to drop the comparison, I have so much to do with writing, in the way of labour and profession, that it is difficult to me to conceive how anybody can take up a pen but from constraint. My writing-desk is to me a place of punishment; and, as my penmanship sufficiently testifies, I always bend over it with some degree of impatience. All this is said that you may know the real cause of my silence, and not ascribe it in any degree to slight or forgetfulness on my part, or an insensibility to your worth and the value of your friendship. . . . As to my occupations, they look little at the present age; but I live in hope of leaving some- thing behind me that by some minds will be valued. I see no new books except by the merest accident. Of course your poem, which I should have been pleased to read, has not found its way to me. You inquire about old books: you might almost as well have asked for my teeth as for any of mine. The only modern books that I read are those of Travels, or such as relate to matters of fact; and the only modern books that I care for; but as to old ones, I am like yourself — scarcely anything comes amiss to me. The little time I have to spare — the very little, I may say^all goes that way. If, however, in the 14 WILLIAM WORDSWOETH [^t. 59 line of your profession you want any bulky old Commen- taries on the Scriptures (such as not twelve strong men of these degenerate days will venture — I do not say to read, but to lift), 1 can, perhaps, as a special favour, ac- commodate you. I and mine will be happy, to see you and yours here or anywhere; but I am sorry the time you talk of is so dis- tant: a year and a half is a long time looking forward, though looking back ten times as much is as brief as a dream. My writing is wholly illegible — at least I fear so ; I had better, therefore, release you. Believe me, my dear Wrangham, Your affectionate friend, W. Wordsworth. [^t. 59] To Charles Lamb [character and plot] Jan. 10, 1830. My dear Lamh, A whole twelvemonth have I been a tetter in your debt, for which fault I have been sufficiently punished by self- reproach. I liked your Play* marvellously, having no objection to it but one, which strikes me as applicable to a large majority of plays, those of Shakspeare himself not en- tirely excepted — I mean a little degradation of character for a more dramatic turn of plot. Your present of Hone's book was very acceptable; and so much so, that your part of the book is the cause why I did not write long ago. I wished to enter a little minutely into notice of the dra- matic extracts, and, on account of the smallness of the print, deferred doing so till longer days would allow me to read without candle-light, which I have long since given up. But, alas! when the days lengthened, my eye- sight departed, and for many months I could not read three minutes at a time. You will be sorry to hear that this infirmity still hangs about me, and almost cuts me off from reading altogether. But how are you, and how is your dear sister? I long much, as we all do, to know. * The Wife's Trial. Mt 60] WILLIAM WOKDSWOKTH 15 For ourselves, this last year, owing to my sister's dan- gerous illness, the effects of which are not yet got over, has been an anxious one and melancholy. But no more of this. My sister has probably told everything about the family; so that I may conclude with less scruple, by as- suring you of my sincere and faithful affection for you and your dear sister. Wm. Wordsworth. [^t. 60] To Alexander Dyce ["feeble and fastidious times"] [No date, but Postmark, 1830.] I am truly obliged, my dear Sir, by your valuable present of Webster's Dramatic Works and the ''Speci- mens." Your publisher was right in insisting upon the whole of Webster, otherwise the book might have been superseded, either by an entire edition separately given to the world, or in some corpus of the dramatic writers. The poetic genius of England, with the exception of Chaucer, Spenser, Milton, Dryden, Pope, and a very few more, is to be sought in her drama. How it grieves one that there is so little probability of those valuable authors being read except by the curious ! I questioned my friend Charles Lamb whether it would answer for some person of real taste to undertake abridging the plays that are not likely to be read as wholes, and telling such parts of the story in brief abstract as were ill managed in the drama. He thought it would not.* I, however, am in- clined to think it would. . . . You must indeed have been fond of that ponderous quarto, "The Excursion," to lug it about as you did. In the edition of 1827 it was diligently revised, and the sense in several instances got into less room; yet still it is a long poem for these feeble and fastidious times. You would honour me much by accepting a copy of my poeti- cal works; but I think it better to defer offering it to * Lamb had published his' Specimens of English Dramatic Poets in 1808. " 16 WILLIAM WOKDSWOETH [.Et. 72 you till a new edition is called for, which will be ere long, as I understand the present is getting low. A word or two about Collins. You know what impor- tance I attach to following strictly the last copy of the text of an author; and I do not blame you for printing in the "Ode to Evening" "brawling" spring; but surely the epithet is most unsuitable to the time, the very worst, I think, that could have been chosen. [J^t. 72] To Professor Eeed* [death of southey] Eydal Mount, March 27, 1843. My dear Mr. Reed, — . . . You give me pleasure by the interest you take in the various passages in which I speak of the poets, my con- temporaries, who are no more: dear Southey, one of the most eminent, is just added to the list. A few days ago I went over to Keswick to attend his remains to their last earthly abode. For upwards of three years his mental faculties have been in a state of deplorable decay; and his powers of recognition, except very rarely and but for a moment, have been, during more than half that period, all but extinct. His bodily health was grievously im- paired, and his medical attendant says that he must have died long since but for the very great strength of his natural constitution. As to his literary remains, they must be very considerable, but, except his epistolary cor- respondence, more or less unfinished. His letters cannot but be very numerous, and, if carefully collected and ju- diciously selected, will, I doubt not, add greatly to his reputation. He had a fine talent for that species of com- position, and took much delight in throwing off his mind in that way. Mr. Taylor, the dramatic author, is his literary executor. Though I have written at great, and I fear tiresome, length, I will add a few words upon the wish you express that I would pay a tribute to the English poets of past * Henry Reed. Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature, Uni- versity of Pennsylvania. .^t. 72] WILLIAM WOKDSWORTH 17 ages, who never had the fame they are entitled to, and have long been almost entirely neglected. Had this been suggested to me earlier in life, or had it come into my thoughts, the thing in all probability would have been done. At present I cannot hope it will ; but it may afford you some satisfaction to be told, that in the MS. poem upon my poetic education there is a whole book, of about 600 lines, upon my obligations to writers of imagination, and chielly the poets, though I have not expressly named those to whom you allude, and for whom, and many others of their age, I have a high respect. The character of the schoolmaster, about whom you in- quire, had, like the "Wanderer," in "The Excursion," a solid foundation in fact and reality, but, like him, it was also, in some degree, a composition: I will not, and need not, call it an invention — it was no such thing; but were I to enter into details, I fear it would impair the effect of the whole upon your mind ; nor could I do it to my own satisfaction. I send you, according to your wish, the ad- ditions to the "Ecclesiastical Sonnets," and also the last poem from my pen. I threw it off two or three weeks ago, being in a great measure impelled to it by the desire I felt to do justice to the memory of a heroine,* whose conduct presented, some time ago, a striking contrast to the in- humanity with which our countrymen, shipwrecked lately upon the French coast, have been treated. Ever most faithfully yours, Wm. Wordsworth. [^t. 72] To Sir Robert Peel [the laureateship] Rydal Mount^ Ambleside, April' 4, 1843. Dear Sir Bohert, Having since my first acquaintance with Horace borne in mind the charge which he tells us frequently thrilled his ear, "Solve senescentem mature sanus equum. ne Peccet ad extremiini," ♦ Grace Darling. 18 WILLIAM WORDSWOKTH [.Et. 74 I could not but be deterred from incurring responsibilities which I might not prove equal to at so late a period of life; but as my mind has been entirely set at ease by the very kind and most gratifying letter with which you have honoured me, and by a second communication from the Lord Chamberlain to the same effect, and in a like spirit, I have accepted, with unqualified pleasure, a distinction sanctioned by her Majesty, and which expresses, upon authority entitled to the highest respect, a sense of the national importance of poetic literature; and so favour- able an opinion of the success with w^hich it has been cul- tivated by one who, after this additional mark of your esteem, cannot refrain from again assuring you how deeply sensible he is of the many and great obligations he owes to your goodness, and who has the honour to be. Dear Sir Robert, Most faithfully, Your humble servant, William Wordsworth. [^t. 74] To Professor Reed [a birthday fete] 1844. ... In your last letter you speak so feelingly of the manner in which my birthday (April 7) has been noticed, both privately in your country, and somewhat publicly in my own neighbourhood, that I cannot forbear adding a word or two upon the subject. It would have delighted you to see the assemblage in front of our house, some dancing upon the gravel platform, old and young, as de- scribed in Goldsmith's travels; and others, children, I mean, chasing each other upon the little plot of lawn to which you descend by steps from the platform. We had music of our own preparing ; and two sets of casual itiner- ants, Italians and Germans, came in successively, and enlivened the festivity. There were present upwards of 300 children, and about 150 adults of both sexes and all ages, the children in their best attire, and of that happy and, I may say, beautiful race, which is spread over this highly-favoured portion of England. The tables were ^t. 74] WILLIAM WORDSWOETH 19 tastefully arranged in the open air — oranges and ginger- bread in piles decorated with evergreens and Spring flowers; and all partook of tea, the young in the open air, and the old within doors. I must own I wish that little commemorations of this kind were more common among us. It is melancholy to think how little that por- tion of the community which is quite at ease in their circumstances have to do in a social way with the humbler classes. They purchase commodities of them, or they employ them as labourers, or they visit them in charity for the sake of supplying their most urgent wants by almsgiving. But this, alas, is far from enough ; one would wish to see the rich mingle with the poor as much as may be upon a footing of fraternal equality. The old feudal dependencies and relations are almost gone from Eng- land, and nothing has yet come adequately to supply their place. There are tendencies of the right kind here and there, but they are rather accidental than aught that is established in general manners. Why should not great land-owners look for a substitute for what is lost of feudal paternity in the higher principles of christianised hu- manity and humble-minded brotherhood ? And why should this not extend to those vast communities which crowd so many parts of England under one head, in the different sorts of manufacture, which, for the want of it, are too often the pests of the social state? We are, however, im- proving, and I trust that the example set by some mill- owners will not fail to influence others. It gave me pleasure to be told that Mr. Keble's Dedi- cation of his "Praelectiones" had fallen in your way, and that you had been struck by it. It is not for me to say how far I am entitled to the honour which he has done me, but I can sincerely say that it has been the main scope of my writings to do what he says I have accom- plished. And where could I find a more trustworthy judge ? What you advise in respect to a separate publication of my Church Poetry, I have often turned in my own mind; but I have really done so little in that way com- pared with the magnitude of the subject, that I have not courage to venture on such a publication. Besides, it would not, I fear, pay its expenses. The Sonnets were WILLIAM WORDSWOETH [.Et. 75 I so published upon the recommendation of a deceased nephew of mine, one of the first scholars of Europe, and as good as he was learned. The volume did not, I be- lieve, clear itself, and a great part of the impression, though latterly olfered at a reduced price, still remains, I believe, in Mr. Moxon's hands. In this country people who do not grudge laying out their money for new publi- cations on personal or fugitive interests, that every one is talking about, are very unwilling to part with it for literature which is unindebted to temporary excitement. If they buy such at all, it must be in some form for the most part that has little to recommend it but low price. And now, my dear Sir, with many thanks for the trouble you have been at, and affectionate wishes for your welfare, Believe me faithfully yours, Wm. Wordsworth. [^t. T5] To Professor Reed [presentation to the queen] Rydal Mount^ Ambleside, July 1, 1845. My dear Mr. Reed, I have, as usual, been long in your debt, which I am pretty sure you will excuse as heretofore. It gave me much pleasure to have a glimpse of your brother under circumstances which no doubt he will have described to you. He spoke of his health as improved, and I hope it will continue to do so. I understood from him that it was probable that he should call at Rydal before his re- turn to his own country. I need not say to you I shall be glad, truly glad, to see him both for his own sake, and as so nearly connected with you. My absence from home lately was not of more than three weeks. I took the jour- ney to London solely to pay my respects to the Queen upon my appointment to the Laureateship upon the de- cease of my friend Mr. Southey. The weather was very cold, and I caught an inflammation in one of my eyes, which rendered my stay in the south very uncomfortable. I nevertheless did, in respect to the object of my journey, all that was required. The reception given me by the ^t. 75] WILLIAM WOEDSWOKTH 21 Queen at her ball was most gracious. Mrs. Everett, the wife of your minister, among many others, was a witness to it, without knowing who I was. It moved her to the shedding of tears. This effect was in part produced, I suppose, by American habits of feeling, as pertaining to a republican government. To see a grey-haired man of seventy-live years of age, kneeling down in a large as- sembly to kiss the hand of a young woman, is a sight for which institutions essentially democratic do not prepare a spectator of either sex, and must naturally place the opinions upon which a republic is founded, and the sen- timents which support it, in strong contrast with a government based and upheld as ours is. I am not, therefore, surprised that Mrs. Everett was moved, as she herself described to persons of my acquaintance, among others to Mr. Eogers the poet. By the by, of this gentle- man, now I believe in his eighty-third year, I saw more than of any other person except my host, while I was in London. He is singularly fresh and strong for his years, and his mental faculties (with the exception of his mem- ory a little) not at all impaired. It is remarkable that he and the Rev. W. Bowles were both distinguished as poets when I was a school-boy, and they have survived almost all their eminent contemporaries, several of whom came into notice long after them. Since they became known, Burns, Cowper, Mason, the author of "Caractacus" and friend of Gray, have died. Thomas Warton, Laure- ate, then Byron, Shelley, Keats, and a good deal later Scott, Coleridge, Crabbe, Southey, Lamb, the Ettrick Shepherd, Gary the translator of Dante, Growe the author of "Lewesdon Hill," and others of more or less distinc- tion, have disappeared. And now of English poets, ad- vanced in life, I cannot recall any but James Montgomery, Thomas Moore, and myself, who are living, except the octogenarian with whom I began. I saw Tennyson, when I was in London, several times. He is decidedly the first of our living poets, and I hope will live to give the world still better things. You will be pleased to hear that he expressed in the strongest terms his gratitude to my writings. To this I was far from in- different, though persuaded that he is not much in sym- pathy with what I should myself most value in my 22 WILLIAM WOKDSWOKTH [.^.t. 75 attempts, viz., the spirituality with which I have endeav- oured to invest the ^naterial universe, and the moral re- lations under which I have wished to exhibit its most ordinary appearances. I ought not to conclude this first portion of my letter without telling you that I have now under my roof a cousin, who some time ago was intro- duced, improperly, I think, she being then a child, to the notice of the public, as one of the English poetesses, in an article of the Quarterly so entitled. Her name is Emmeline Fisher, and her mother is my first cousin. What advances she may have made in latter years I do not know, but her productions from the age of eight to twelve were not less than astonishing. She only arrived yesterday, and we promise ourselves much pleasure in seeing more of her. Our dear friend Miss Fenwick is also under our roof; so is Katherine Southey, her late father's youngest daughter, so that we reckon ourselves rich; though our only daughter is far from us, being gone to Oporto with her husband on account of her en- feebled frame: and most unfortunately, soon after her arrival, she w^as seized with a violent attack of rheumatic fever caused by exposure to the evening air. We have also been obliged lately to part with four grandsons, very fine boys, who are gone with their father to Italy to visit their mother, kept there by severe illness, which sent her abroad two years ago. Under these circumstances we old people keep our spirits as well as we can, trusting the end to God's goodness. Now, for the enclosed poem, which I wrote the other day, and which I send to you, hoping it may give you some pleasure, as a scanty repayment for all that we owe you. Our dear friend. Miss Fenwick, is especially de- sirous that her warmest thanks should be returned to you for all the trouble you have taken about her bonds. But, to return to the verses : if you approve, pray forward them with my compliments and thanks for his letter to . In his letter he states that with others he is strenu- ously exerting himself in endeavours to abolish slavery, and, as one of the means of disposing the public mind to that measure, he is about to publish selections from various authors in behalf of humanity. He begs an origi- nal composition from me. I have nothing bearing di- ^t. 48] SYDNEY SMITH 23 rectly upon slavery, but if you think this little piece would serve his cause indirectly, pray be so kind as to forward it to him. He speaks of himself as deeply in- debted to my writings. I have not left room to subscribe myself more than Affectionately yours, William Wordsworth. [^t. 48] SYDNEY SMITH 1771-1845 To HIS Sox [history and poetry] FosTON Eectory^ 1819. My dear Douglas, Concerning this Mr. , I would not have you put any trust in him, for he is not trustworthy; but so live with him as if one day or other he were to be your enemy. With such a character as his, this is a necessary pre- caution. In the time you can give to English reading you should consider what it is most needful to have, what it is most shameful to want, — shirts and stockings before frills and collars. Such is the history of your own country, to be studied in Hume, then in Eapin's History of England, with Tindal's Continuation. Hume takes you to the end of James the Second, Rapin and Tindal will carry you to the end of Anne. Then, Coxe's "Life of Sir Robert Walpole," and the "Duke of Marlborough"; and these read with attention to dates and geography. Then, the history of the other three or four enlightened nations in Europe. For the English poets, I will let you off at present with Milton, Dryden, Pope, and Shakspeare; and remember, always in books keep the best company. Don't read a line of Ovid, till you have mastered Virgil; nor a line of Thomson, till you have exhausted Pope; nor of Massinger, till you are familiar with Shakspeare. I am glad you liked your box and its contents. Think of us as we think of you ; and send us the most acceptable of all presents, — the information that you are improving in all particulars. 24 SYDNEY SMITH [.Et. 64 The greatest of all human mysteries are the West- minster holidays. If you can get a peep behind the cur- tain, pray let us know immediately the day of your com- ing home. We have had about three or four ounces of rain here; that is all. I heard of your being wet through in London, and envied you very much. The whole of this parish is pulverised from long and excessive drought. Our whole property depends upon the tranquillity of the winds: if it blow before it rains, we shall all be up in the air in the shape of dust, and we shall be transparished we know not where. God bless you, my dear boy! I hope we shall soon meet at Lydiard. Your affectionate father, Sydney Smith. [.^t. 59] To Lady Holland [excessive anxiety] May, 1831. ... I met John Russell at Exeter. The people along the road were very much disappointed by his smallness. I told them he was much larger before the Bill was thrown out, but was reduced by excessive anxiety about the peo- ple. This brought tears into their eyes! S. S. [^t. 64] To Miss [on tearing frocks] London, July 22nd, 1835. Lucy, Lucy, my dear child, don't tear your frock: tear- ing frocks is not of itself a proof of genius; but write as your mother writeSj act as your mother acts; be frank, loyal, affectionate, simple, honest; and then integrity or laceration of frock is of little import. And Lucy, dear child, mind your arithmetic. You know, in the first sum of yours I ever saw, there was a mistake. You had carried two (as a cab is licensed to do) ^t. 64] SYDNEY SMITH 25 and you ought, dear Lucy, to have carried but one. Is this a trifle? What would life be without arithmetic, but a scene of horrors? You are going to Boulogne, the city of debts, peopled by men who never understood arithmetic; by the time you return, I shall probably have received my first para- lytic stroke, and shall have lost all recollection of you; therefore I now give you my parting advice. Don't marry anybody who has not a tolerable understanding and a thousand a year; and God bless you, dear child! Sydney Smith. [iEt. 64] To Mrs. Holland [a channel-crossing] KouEN, Oct. 6, 1835. My dearest Child, — fell ill in London, and detained us a day or two. At Canterbury, the wheel would not turn round; we slept there, and lost our passage the next day at Dover: this was Wednesday, — a day of mist, fog, and despair. It blew a hurricane all that night, and we were kept awake by thinking of the different fish by which we should be devoured on the following day. I thought I should fall to the lot of some female porpoise, who, mistaking me for a porpoise, but finding me only a parson, would make a dinner of me. We were all up and at the quay by five in the morning. The captain hesitated very much whether he would embark, and you [a mass of nourishment] Combe Florey, Sept. 29, 1843. My dear Murray, Jeffrey has written to me to say he means to dedicate his Essays to me. This I think a very great honour, and it pleases me very much. I am sure he ought to resign. He has very feeble health; a mild climate would suit the state of his throat. Mrs. Jeffrey thinks he could not em- ploy himself. Wives know a great deal about husbands; but, if she is right, I should be surprised. I have thought he had a canine appetite for books, though this sometimes declines in the decline of life. I am beautifying my house in Green Street; a comfortable house is a great source of happiness. It ranks immediately after health and a good conscience. I see your religious war is be- gun in Scotland. I suppose Jeffrey will be at the head of the Free Church troops. Do you think he has any military talents? You are, I hear, attending more to diet than hereto- fore. If you wish for anything like happiness in the fifth act of life, eat and drink about one-half what you could eat and drink. Did I ever tell you my calculation about eating and drinking? Having ascertained the weight of what I could live upon, so as to preserve health and strength, and what I did live upon, I found that, be- tween ten and seventy years of age, I had eaten and drunk forty four-horse waggon-loads of meat and drink more than would have preserved me in life and health! The 34 SYDNEY SMITH [.Et. 72 value of this mass of nourishment I considered to be worth seven thousand pounds sterling. It occurred to me that I must, by my voracity, have starved to death fully a hundred persons. This is a frightful calculation, but ir- resistibly true; and I think, dear Murray, your waggons would require an additional horse each! Lord and Lady Lansdowne, who are ramblin-g about this fine country, are to spend a day here next week. You must really come to see the West of England. Erom Combe Elorey we will go together to Linton and Lyn- mouth, than which there is nothing finer in this island. Two of our acquaintance dead this week, — Stewart Mackenzie and Belli We must close our ranks. God bless you, my dear Murray! Sydney Smith. [^t. 72] To Mrs. Meynell [arcadian old gentlemen] Combe Elorey^ 1843. My dear Mrs. Meynell, Let me, if you please, have a word or two from you, to tell me of your new habitation. Saba seems to have been delighted with her visit. I see has been with you. How did you like her? To me she is agreeable, civil, and elegant, and by no means insipid. She has a kind of ready-money smile, and a three-per-cent. affability, which make her interesting. We have been leading a very solitary life here. Hardly a soul has been here, but I am contented, as I value more every day the pleasures of indolence; and there is this difference between a large inn like Temple ISTewsam and a small public-house like Combe Elorey, that you hold a numerous society, who make themselves to a certain degree independent of you, and do not weigh upon you; whereas, as I hold only two or three, the social weight is upon me. Luttrell is staying here. Nothing can exceed the innocence of our conversation. It is one continued eulogy upon man-and-woman-kind. You would suppose that two Arcadian old gentlemen, after shearing their flocks, had agreed to spend a week together upon curds ^t. 41] SIR WALTER SCOTT 35 and c-ream, and to indulge in gentleness of speach and soft- ness of mind. We have had a superb summer, but I am glad it is over ; I am never happy till the fires are lighted. Where is your house in London? You cannot but buy one: it is abso- lutely impossible for Temple Newsam not to have a Lon- don establishment. God bless you, dear G. I Keep a little love for your old friend, Sydney Smith. To His Grandchild [Undated] [on sending him a letter overweight] Oh, you little wretch! Your letter cost me fourpence. I will pull all the plums out of your puddings; I will undress your dolls and steal their under-petticoats ; you shall have no currant-jelly to your rice; I will kiss you till you cannot see o-ut of your eyes; when nobody else whips you, I will do so; I will fill you so full of sugar- plums that they shall run out of your nose and ears; lastly, your frocks shall be so short that they shall not come below your knees. Your loving grandfather, Sydney Smith. [^t.41] SIR WALTER SCOTT 1771-1832 To Henry Brevoort [the KNICKERBOCKER HISTORt] Abbotsford, 23d April, 1813. My dear Sir, I beg you to accept my best thanks for the uncommon degree of entertainment which I have received from the most excellently jocose history of New York. I am sensi- ble, that as a stranger to American parties and politics, I must lose much of the concealed satire of the piece, but I must own that looking at the simple and obvious mean- ing only, I have never read anything so closely resembling the style of Dean Swift, as the annals of Diedrich Knick- erbocker. I have been employed these few evenings in reading them aloud to Mrs. S. and two ladies who are our 36 SIK WALTEK SCOTT [^t. 49 guests, and our sides have been absolutely sore with laughing. I think, too, there are passages which indicate that the author possesses powers of a different kind, and has some touches which remind me much of Sterne. I beg you will have the kindness to let me know when Mr. Irvine * takes pen in hand again, for assuredly I shall expect a very great treat which I may chance never to hear of but through your kindness. Believe me, Dear Sir, Your obliged humble servant, Walter Scott. [Mi Ad] To Mrs. Hughes [the waverley novels] Waterloo Hotel, Tuesday, March 7, 1821. My dear Mrs. Hughes, — I have been so completely harassed by business and en- gagements since I came to this wilderness of houses, that I must have seemed very ungrateful in leaving your kind remembrances unacknowledged. You mistake when you give me any credit for being concerned with these far- famed novels, but I am not the less amused with the hasty dexterity of the good folks of Cumnor and its vicin- ity getting all their traditionary lore into such order as to meet the taste of the public. I could have wished the author had chosen a more heroical death for his fair victim.f It is some time since I received and acknowledged your young student's very spirited verses. I am truly glad that Oxford breeds such nightingales, and that you have an interest in them. I sent my letter to my friend Long- man, and, as it did not reach you, can only repeat my kindest and best thanks. I would be most happy to know your son, and hope you will contrive to aiford me that pleasure. With best compliments to Dr. Hughes, and sincere re- • Irving. t Amy Robsart, in Kenilworth. ^t. 51] SIK WALTEK SCOTT 37 gret that I have so often found Amen Comer untenanted, I am, with sincerity, Dear Mrs. Hughes, Your much obliged humble servant, Walter Scott. [^t. 51] To Thomas Frognall Dibdin [the unknown author] Edin., Feb. 25, 1823. My dear Sir, I was duly favoured with your letter, which proves one point against the ^^nknown Author of Waverley; namely that he is certainly a Scotsman, since no other nation pretends to the advantage of second sight. Be he who or where he may, he must certainly feel the very high honour which has selected him, nominis umhra, to a situ- ation so worthy of envy. As his personal appearance in the fraternity is not like to be a speedy event, one may presume he may be desirous of offering some token of his gratitude in the shape of a reprint, or such-like kickshaw, and for this purpose you had better send me the statutes of your learned body, which I will engage to send him in safety. It will follow as a characteristic circumstance, that the table of the Koxburghe, like that of King Arthur, will have a vacant chair, like that of Banquo at Macbeth's banquet. But if this author, who "hath fernseed and walketh invisible," should not appear to claim it before I come to London (should I ever be there again), with permission of the Club, I, who have something of adven- ture in me, although a knight like Sir Andrew Ague- cheek, "dubb'd with unhacked rapier, and on carpet con- sideration," would, rather than lose the chance of a dinner with the Eoxburghe Club, take upon me the adventure of the siege perilous, and reap some amends for perils and scandals into which the invisible champion has drawn me, by being his locum tenens on so distinguished an occasion. • It will not be uninteresting to you to know, that a fra- ternity is about to be established here something on the 38 SIR WALTER SCOTT [^t. 54 plan of the Roxburghe Club; but, having Scottish antiq- uities chiefly in view, it is to be called the Bannatyne Club, from the celebrated antiquary, George Bannatyne, who compiled by far the greatest record of old Scottish poetry. The first meeting is to be held on Thursday, when the health of the Roxburghe Club will be drunk. — I am always, my dear sir, your most faithful humble servant, Walter Scott. [^t. 54] To Dr. and Mrs. Hughes [the financial disaster] Edinburgh, 6 Eebniary, 1826. My dear Mrs. Hughes and my worthy Doctor, — I write immediately to give you the information which your kindness thinks of importance. I shall certainly lose a very large sum by the failure of my booksellers, whom all men considered as worth £150,000 & who I fear will not cut up, as they say, for one fourth of the money. But looking at the thing at the worst point of view, I cannot see that I am entitled to claim the commiseration of any one, since I have made an arrangement for settling these affairs to the satisfaction of every party concerned so far as yet appears, which leaves an income with me ample for all the comforts and many of the elegancies of life, and does not in the slightest degree innovate on any of my comforts. So what title have I to complain? I am far richer in point of income than Generals and Ad- mirals who have led fleets and armies to battle. My family are all provided for in present or in prospect, my estate remains in my family, my house and books in my own possession. I shall give up my house in Edinb. and retire to Abbotsford; where my wife and Anne will make their chief residence; during the time our courts sit, when I must attend, I will live at my club. If Anne wishes to see a little of the world in the gay season, they can have lodgings for two or three weeks; this plan we had indeed form'd before it became imperative. At Abbotsford we will cut off all hospitality, which latterly consumed all my time, which was worse than the expense; this I intended to do at any rate; we part with ^t. 58] SIE WALTER SCOTT 39 an extra servant or two, manage our household economi- cally, and in five years, were the public to stand my friend, I should receive much more than I have lost. But if I only pay all demands I shall be satisfied. I shall be anxious to dispose of Mr. Charles so soon as his second year of Oxford is ended. I think of trying to get him into some diplomatic line, for which his habits and manners seem to suit him well. I might certainly have borrowed large sums. But to what good purpose ? I must have owed that money, and a sense of obligation besides. Now, as I stand, the Banks are extremely sensible that I have been the means of great advantages to their establishments, and have afforded me all the facilities I can desire to make my payments; and as they gained by my prosperity, they are handsomely disposed to be indulgent to my adversity, and what can an honest man wish for more* Many people will think that because I see company easily my pleasures depend on society. But this is not the case; I am by nature a very lonely animal, and enjoy myself much at getting rid from a variety of things connected with public business, etc., which I did because they were fixed on me, but I am particularly happy to be rid of. And now let the matter be at rest for ever. It is a bad business, but might have been much worse. I am, my dear friends. Most truly yours, Walter Scott. [^t.58?] To Mrs. Hughes [tom purdie] [1829?] My dear Mrs. Hughes, — Were you ever engaged in a fair bout of setting to rights? but I need not ask; I know how little you would mind what annoys my ponderous person so much, and in my mind's eye I see you riding on the whirlwind and directing the storm like the fairy Whippity Stourie her- self. Dr. Hughes will comprehend the excess of my an- noyance in the task of turning all my books over each other to give a half yearly review of the lost, stolen, and 40 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE [^t. 23 strayed, which disturbs my temper as much as the gallery stairs do my person. . . . I have had a very severe loss in my old & faithful Gillian a Chriah, that is, Man of the belt, Thomas Purdie, and though I am on most occasions like Edward Bruce "who used not to make moan for others, & loved not that others should lament for him," yet on this occasion I have felt very acute sorrow. I was so much accustomed to the poor fellow that I feel as if I had lost feet & hands, so ready was he always to supply the want of either. Do I wish a tree to be cut down, I miss Tom with the Axe. — Do I meet a bad step, and there are such things in my walks as you well know, Tom's powerful arm is no more at my command. Besides all this, there is another grievance. I am naturally rather shy; you laugh when I say this, but it is very true; I am naturally shy, though bronzed over by the practice of the law and a good deal of commerce with the world. But it is inexpressibly dis- agreeable to me to have all the gradations of familiarity to go through, with another familiar, till we are suffi- ciently intimate to be at ease with him. ... [^t.23] SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 1772-1834 To Thomas Poole [COLERIDGE AS TRAVELLER] May 29, 1796. My dear Poole, — This said caravan does not leave Bridgewater till nine. In the market place stands the hustings. I mounted it, and, pacing the boards, mused on bribery, false swearing, and other foibles of election times. I have wandered, too, by the river Parret, which looks as filthy as if all the parrots of the House of Commons had been washing their consciences therein. Dear gutter of Stowey! Were I transported to Italian plains, and lay by the side of the streamlet that murmured through an orange grove, I would think of thee, dear gutter of Stowey, and wish that I were poring on thee I So much by way of rant. I have eaten three eggs, Mt. 24] SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 41 swallowed sundries of tea and bread and butter, purely for the purpose of amusing myself ! I have seen the horse fed. When at Cross, where I shall dine, I shall think of your happy dinner, celebrated under the auspices of hum- ble independence, supported by brotherly love! I am writing, you understand, for no worldly purpose but that of avoiding anxious thoughts. Apropos of honey-pie, Caligula or Elagabalus (I forget which) had a dish of nightingales' tongues served up. What think you of the stings of bees? God bless you! My filial love to your mother, and fraternity to your sister. Tell Ellen Cruik- shank that in my next parcel to you I will send my Haleswood poem to her. Heaven protect her and you and Sara and your mother and, like a bad shilling passed off between a handful of guineas, Your affectionate friend and brother, S. T. Coleridge. P.S. — Don't forget to send by Milton* my old clothes, and linen that once wees clean, et cetera. A pretty peri' phrasis that! [^t. 24] To John Thelwall [COLERIDGE DESCRIBES HIMSELF] Saturday, November 19, [1796]. Oxford Street^ Bristol. . . , Your portrait of yourself interested me. As to me, my face, unless when animated by immediate elo- quence, expresses great sloth, and great, indeed, almost idiotic good-nature. 'Tis a mere carcass of a face; fat, flabby, and expressive chiefly of inexpression. Yet I am told that my eyes, eyebrows, and forehead are physiog- nomically good ; but of this the deponent knoweth not. As to my shape, 'tis a good shape enough if measured, but my gait is awkward, and the walk of the whole man indicates indolence capable of energies. I am, and ever have been, a great reader, and have read almost everything — -a library cormorant. I am deep in all out of the way * The carrier. 42 SAMUEL TAYLOK COLEEIDGE [^t. 24 books, whether of the monkish times, or of the puritanical era. I have read and digested most of the historical writers ; but I do not like history. Metaphysics and poetry and "facts of mind," that is, accounts of all the strange phantasms that ever possessed "your philosophy"; dream- ers, from Thoth the Egyptian to Taylor the English pagan, are my darling studies. In short, I seldom read except to amuse myself, and I am almost always reading. Of useful knowledge, I am a so-so chemist, and I love chemistry. All else is hlank; but I will be (please God) an horticul- turalist and a farmer. I compose very little, and I abso- lutely hate composition, and such is my dislike that even a sense of duty is sometimes too weak to overpower it. I cannot breathe through my nose, so my mouth, with sensual thick lips, is almost always open. In conversation I am impassioned, and oppose what I deem error with an eagerness which is often mistaken for personal asperity; but I am ever so swallowed up in the thing that I per- fectly forget my opponent. Such am I. I am just going to read Dupuis' twelve octavos, which I have got from London. I shall read only one octavo a week, for I can- not speak French at all and I read it slowly. My wife is well and desires to be remembered to you and your Stella and little ones. N.B. — Stella (among the Romans) was a man's name. All the classics are against youj but our Swift, I suppose, is authority for this un- sexing. Write on the receipt of this, and believe me as ever, with affectionate esteem, Your sincere friend, S. T. Coleridge. [^t. 24] To Thomas Poole [removing to nether stowey] Sunday morning, [ ? December 18, 1796.] My dear Poole, — I wrote to you with improper impetuosity; but I had been dwelling so long on the circumstance of living near you, that my mind was thrown by your letter into the feelings of those distressful dreams where we imagine ourselves falling from precipices. I seemed falling from ^t. 24] SAMUEL TAYLOK COLERIDGE 43 the summit of my fondest desires, whirled from the height just as I had reached it. We shall want none of the Woman's furniture ; we have enough for ourselves. What with boxes of books, and chests of drawers, and kitchen furniture, and chairs, and our bed and bed-linen, etc., we shall have enough to fill a small waggon, and to-day I shall make enquiry among my trading acquaintance, whether it would be cheaper to hire a waggon to take them straight to Stowey, than to put them in the Bridgwater waggon. Taking in the double trouble and expense cf putting them in the drays to carry them to the public waggon, and then seeing them packed again, and again to be unpacked and packed at Bridgwater, I much question whether our goods would be good for anything. I am very poorly, not to say ill. My face monstrously swollen — my recondite eye sits dis- tent quaintly, behind the flesh-hill and looks as little as a tomtit's. And I have a sore throat that prevents my eating aught but spoon-meat without great pain. And I have a rheumatic complaint in the back part of my head and shoulders. Now all this demands a small portion of Christian patience, taking in our present circumstances. My apothecary says it will be madness for me to walk to Stowey on Tuesday, as, in the furious zeal of a new convert to economy, I had resolved to do. My wife will stay a week or fortnight after me; I think it not im- probable that the weather may break up by that time. However, if I do not get worse, I will be with you by Wednesday or Thursday at the furthest, so as to be there before the waggon. Is there any grate in the house? I should think we might Rumfordize one of the chimneys. I shall bring down with me a dozen yards of green list. I can endure cold but not a cold room. If we can but contrive to make two rooms warm and ivholesome, we will laugh in the faces of gloom and ill-lookingness. I shall lose the post if I say a word more. You thor- oughly and in every nook and corner of your heart for- give me for my letters? Indeed, indeed, Poole, I know no one whom I esteem more — no one friend whom I love so much. But bear with my infirmities! God bless you, and your grateful and affectionate S. T. Coleridge. 44 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE [^t. 25 [^t. 25] To HIS Wife [the voyage to Germany] Hamburg, September 19, 1798. . . . Over what place does the moon hang to your eye, my dearest Sara? To me it hangs over the left bank of the Elbe, and a long trembling road of moonlight reaches from thence up to the stern of our vessel, and there it ends. We have dropped anchor in the middle of the stream, thirty miles from Cuxhaven, where we arrived this morning at eleven o'clock, after an unusually fine passage of only forty-eight hours. The Captain agreed to take all the passengers up to Hamburg for ten guineas; my share amounted only to half a guinea. We shall be there, if no fogs intervene, to-morrow morning. Chester was ill the whole voyage ; Wordsworth shockingly ill ; his sister worst of all, and I neither sick nor giddy, but gay as a lark. The sea rolled rather high, but the motion was pleasant to me. The stink of a sea cabin in a packet (what with the bilge-water, and what from the crowd of sick passengers) is horrible. I remained chiefly on deck. We left Yarmouth Sunday morning, September 16, at eleven o'clock. Chester and Wordsworth ill immediately. Our passengers were : ^ Wordsworth, * Chester, S. T. Cole- ridge, a Dane, second Dane, third Dane, a Prussian, a Hanoverian and * his servant, a German tailor and his * wife, a French X emigrant and * French servant, * two English gentlemen, and X a Jew. All these with the prefix * were sick, those marked ^ horribly sick. The view of Yarmouth from the sea is interesting; besides, it was English ground that was flying away from me. When we lost sight of land, the moment that we quite lost sight of it and the heavens all around me rested upon the water, my dear babes came upon me like a flash of light- ning; I saw their faces so distinctly! This day enriched me with characters and I passed it merrily. Each of these characters I will delineate to you in my journal, which you and Poole alternately receive regularly as soon as I arrive at any settled place, which will be in a week. Till then I can do little more than give you notice of my safety and my faithful affection to you (but the jour- ^t. 25] SAMUEL TAYLOE COLERIDGE 45 nal will commence from the day of my arrival at London, and give every day's occurrence, etc.). I have it written, but I have neither paper or time to transcribe it. I trust nothing to memory. The Ocean is a noble thing by night; a beautiful white cloud of foam at momentary intervals roars and rushes by the side of the vessel, and stars of flame dance and sparkle and go out in it, and every now and then light detachments of foam dart away from the vessel's side with their galaxies of stars and scour out of sight like a Tartar troop over a wilderness. What these stars are I cannot say ; the sailors say they are fish spawn, which is phosphorescent. The noisy passen- gers swear in all their languages, with drunken hiccups, that I shall write no more, and I must join them. Indeed, they present a rich feast for a dramatist. My kind love to Mrs. Poole (with what wings of swiftness would I fly home if I could find something in Germany to do her good!). Remember me affectionately to Ward, and my love to the Chesters (Bessy, Susan, and Julia) and to Cruickshank, etc., etc., Ellen and Mary when you see them, and to Lavinia Poole and Harriet and Sophy, and be sure to give my kind love to Nanny. I associate so much of Hartley's infancy with her, so many of his figures, looks, words, and antics with her form, that I shall never cease to think of her, poor girl ! without [sic] interest. Tell my best good friend, my dear Poole ! that all his manuscripts, with Wordsworth's Tragedy, are safe in Josiah Wedg- wood's hands; and they will be returned to him together. Good-night, my dear, dear Sara! — "every night when I go to bed, and every morning when I rise," I will think with yearning love of you and of my blessed babies! Once more, my dear Sara ! good-night. Wednesday afternoon, four o'clock. — ^We are safe in Hamburg — an ugly city that stinks in every corner; house, and room worse than cabins, sea-sickness, or bilge- water! The hotels are all crowded. With great difficulty we have procured a very filthy room at a large expense; but we shall move to-morrow. We get very excellent claret for a trifle — a guinea sells at present for more than twenty-three shillings here. But for all particulars I must refer your patience to my journal, and I must get some proper paper — I shall have to pay a shilling or 46 SAMUEL TAYLOE COLEEIDGE [^t. 29 eighteen pence with every letter. N.B.— Johnson the bookseller, without any poems sold to him, but purely out of affection conceived for me, and as part of anything I might do for him, gave me an order on Eemnant at Hamburg for thirty pounds. The ''Epea Pteroenta," an Essay on Population, and a "History of Paraguay," will come down for me directed to Poole, and for Poole's reading. Likewise I have desired Johnson to print in quarto a little poem of mine, one of which quartos must be sent to my brother, Eev. G. C, Ottery St. Mary, car- riage paid. Did you receive my letter directed in a different hand, with the 30 1. banknote? The "Morning Post" and Magazine will come to you as before. If not regularly, Stuart desires that you will write to him. I pray you, my dear love! read Edgeworth's "Essay on Education" — read it heart and soul, and if you approve of the mode, teach Hartley his letters. I am very de- sirous that you should teach him to read; and they point out some easy modes. J. Wedgwood informed me that the Edgeworths were most miserable when children ; and yet the father in his book is ever vapouring about their hap- piness. However, there are very good things in the work — and some nonsense. Kiss my Hartley and Bercoo baby brodder (kiss them for their dear father, whose heart will never be absent from them many hours together). My dear Sara! I think of you with affection and a desire to be home, and in the full and noblest sense of the word, and after the antique principles of Religion, unsophisticated by Philosophy, will be, I trust, your husband faithful unto death, S. T. Coleridge. [^t. 29] To HIS Wife [a visit to London] King Street^ Covent Garden^ [February 24, 1802.] My dear Love, — I am sure it will make you happy to hear that both my health and spirits have greatly improved, and I have small doubts that a residence of two years in a mild and ^t. 29] SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 47 even climate will, with God's blessing, give me a new lease in a better constitution. You may be well assured that I shall do nothing rashly, but our journey thither I shall defray by letters to Poole and the Wedgwoods, or more probably addressed to Mawman, the bookseller, who will honour my drafts in return. Of course I shall not go till I have earned all the money necessary for the journey that I can. The plan will be this, unless you can think of any better. Wordsworth will marry soon after my return, and he, Mary, and Dorothy will be our com- panions and neighbours. Southey means, if it is in his power, to pass into Spain that way. About July we shall all set sail from Liverpool to Bordeaux. Wordsworth has not yet settled whether he shall be married from Gallow Hill or at Grasmere. But they will of course make a point that either Sarah shall be with Mary or Mary with Sarah previous to so long a parting. If it be decided that Sarah is to come to Grasmere, I shall return by York, which will be but a few miles out of the way, and bring her. At all events, I shall stay a few days at Derby, — for whom, think you, should I meet in Davy's lecture-room but Joseph Strutt? He behaved most af- fectionately to me, and pressed me with great earnestness to pass through Darley (which is on the road to Derby) and stay a few days at his house among my old friends. I assure you I was much affected by his kind and affec- tionate invitation (though I felt a little awkward, not knowing irhom I might venture to ask after). I could not bring out the word "Mrs. Evans," and so said, "Your sister, sir? I hope she is well!" On Sunday I dined at Sir William Rush's, and on Monday likewise, and went with them to Mrs. Billing- ton's Benefit. 'Twas the "Beggar's Opera;" it was per- fection! I seem to have acquired a new sense by hearing her. I wished you to have been there. I assure you I am quite a man of fashion; so many titled acquaintances and handsome carriages stopping at my door, and fine cards. And then I am such an exquisite judge of music and painting, and pass criticisms on furniture and chan- deliers, and pay such very handsome compliments to all women of fashion, that I do verily believe that if I were to stay three months in town and have tolerable health 48 SAMUEL TAYLOE COLEEIDGE [^t. 29 and spirits, I should be a Thing in vogue, — the very tonnish poet and Jemmy-Jessamy-fine-talker in town. If you were only to see the tender smiles that I occasionally receive from the Honourable Mrs. Damer! you would scratch her eyes out for jealousy! And then there's the sweet (N.B. — musky) Lady Charlotte ! Nay, but I won't tell you her name, — you might perhaps take it into your head to write an anonymous letter to her, and dis- trust our little innocent amoiir. Oh that I were at Keswick with my darlings ! My Hart- ley and my fat Derwent! God bless you, my dear Sarah! I shall return in love and cheerfulness, and therefore in pleasurable convalescence, if not in health. We shall try to get poor dear little Kobert into Christ's Hospital; that wretch of a Quaker will do nothing. The skulking rogue! just to lay hold of the time when Mrs. Lovell was on a visit to Southey; there was such low cunning in the thought. Eemember me most kindly to Mr. and Mrs. Wilkinson, and tell Mr. Jackson that I have not shaken a hand since I quitted him with more esteem and glad feeling than I shall soon, I trust, shake his with. God bless you, and your affectionate and faithful husband (notwithstand- ing the Honourable Mrs. D. and Lady Charlotte!), S. T. Coleridge. [^t. 29] To W. SOTHEBY [hartley and derwent] Greta Hall, Keswick, Tuesday, September 27, 1802. My dear Sir, — The river is full, and Lodore is full, and silver-fillets come out of clouds and glitter in every ravine of all the mountains; and hail lies like snow upon their tops, and the impetuous gusts from Borrowdale snatch the water up high, and continually at the bottom of the lake it is not distinguishable from snow slanting before the wind — and under this seeming snow-drift the sui:ishine gleams, and over all the nether half of the Lake it is bright and dazzles, a cauldron of melted silver boiling! It is in very ^t. 31] SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 49 truth a sunny, misty, cloudy, dazzling, howling, omniform day, and I have been looking at as pretty a sight as a father's eyes could well see — Hartley, and little Derwent running in the green where the gusts blow most madly, both with their hair floating and tossing, a miniature of the agitated trees, below which they were playing, inebri- ate both with the pleasure — Hartley whirling round for joy, Derwent eddying, half-willingly, half by the force of the gust, — driven backward, struggling forward, and shouting his little hymn of joy. I can write thus to you, my dear sir, with a confident spirit; for when I received your letter on the 22nd, and had read the "family his- tory," I laid down the sheet upon my desk, and sate for half an hour thinking of you, dreaming of you, till the tear grown cold upon my cheek awoke me from my reverie. May you live long, long, thus blessed in your family, and often, often, may you all sit around one fireside. Oh happy should I be now and then to sit among you — your pilot and guide in some of your summer walks! . . . [zEt. 31] To Robert Southey [coleridge "thunders and lightens"] Rickman's Office^ H. of Commons^ Eebruary 20, 1804, Monday noon. Dear Southey, — The affair with Godwin began thus. We were talking of reviews, and bewailing their ill effects. I detailed my plan for a review, to occupy regularly the fourth side of an evening paper, etc., etc., adding that it had been a favorite scheme with me for two years past. Godwin very coolly observed that it was a plan which "no man who had a spark of honest pride" could join with. "No man, not the slave of the grossest egotism could unite in," etc. Cool and civil! I ask whether he and most others did not already do what I proposed in prefaces. "Aye! in prefaces; that is quite a diiferent thing." I then ad- verted to the extreme rudeness of the speech with regard to myself, and added that it was not only a very rough. 50 SAMUEL TAYLOK COLERIDGE [iEt. 31 but likewise a very mistaken opinion, for I was nearly if not quite sure that it had received the approbation both of you and of Wordsworth. "Yes, sir! just so! of Mr. Southey — just what I said," and so on more Godwinidno in language so ridiculously and exclusively appropriate to himself, that it would have made you merry. It was even as if he was looking into a sort of moral looking- glass, without knowing what it was, and, seeing his own very, very Godwinship, had by a merry conceit christened it in your name, not without some annexment of me and Wordsworth. I replied by laughing in the first place at the capricious nature" of his nicety, that what was gross in folio should become double-refined in octavo foolscap or pickpocket quartos, blind slavish egotism in small pica, manly discriminating self-respect in double primer, mod- est as maiden's blushes between boards, or in calf-skin, and only not obscene in naked sheets. And then in a deep and somewhat sarcastic tone, tried to teach him to speak more reverentially of his betters, by stating what and who they were, by whom honoured, by whom depre- ciated. Well! this gust died away. I was going home to look over his Duncity; he begged me to stay till his return in half an hour. I, meaning to take nothing more the whole evening, took a crust of bread, and Mary Lamb made me a glass of punch of most deceitful strength. Instead of half an hour, Godwin stayed an hour and a half. In came his wife, Mrs. Fenwick, and four young ladies, and just as Godwin returned, supper came in, and it was now useless to go (at supper I was rather a mirth-maker than merry). I was disgusted at heart with the grossness and vulgar insanocecity of this dim-headed prig of a philosophocide, when, after supper, his ill stars impelled him to renew the contest. I begged him not to goad me, for that I feared my feelings would not long remain in my power. He (to my wonder and indignation) persisted (I had not deciphered the cause), and then, as he well said, I did "thunder and lighten at him" with a vengeance for more than a hour and a half. Every eifort of self-defence only made him more ridicu- lous. If I had been Truth in person, I could not have spoken more accurately ; but it was truth in a war-chariot, drawn by the three Furies, and the reins had slipped out ^t. 31] SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 51 of the goddess's hands! . . . Yet he did not absolutely give way till that stinging contrast which I drew between him as a man, as a writer, and a benefactor of society, and those of whom he had spoken so irreverently. In short, I suspect that I seldom, at any time and for so great a length of time, so continuously displayed so much power, and do hope and trust that never did I display one half the scorn and ferocity. The next morning, the mo- ment when I awoke, O mercy! I did feel like a very wretch. I got up and immediately wrote and sent off by a porter, a letter, I dare affirm an affecting and elo- quent letter to him, and since then have been working for him, for I was heart-smitten with the recollection that I had said all, all in the presence of his wife. But if I had known all I now know, I will not say that I should not have apologised, but most certainly I should not have made such an apology, for he confessed to Lamb that he should not have persisted in irritating me, but that Mrs. Godwin had twitted him for his prostration before me, as if he was afraid to say his life was his own in my presence. He admitted, too, that although he never to the very last suspected that I was tipsy, yet he saw clearly that something unusual ailed me, and that I had not been my natural self the whole evening. What a poor creature ! To attack a man who had been so kind to him at the instigation of such a woman! And what a woman to instigate him to quarrel with me, who with as much power as any, and more than most of his acquaint- ances, had been perhaps the only one who had never made a butt of him — who had uniformly spoken respectfully to him. But it is past I And I trust will teach me wis- dom in future. I have undoubtedly suffered a great deal from a cow- ardice in not daring to repel unassimilating acquaintances who press forward upon my friendship; but I dare aver, that if the circumstances of each particular case were examined, they would prove on the whole honourable to me rather than otherwise. But I have had enough and done enough. Hereafter I shall show a different face, and calmly inform those who press upon me that my health, spirits, and occupation alike make it necessary for me to confine myself to the society of those with whom I have 52 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE [.Et. 34 the nearest and highest connection. So help me God! I will hereafter be quite sure that I do really and in the whole of my heart esteem and like a man before I permit him to call me friend. I am very anxious that you should go on with your "Madoc." If the thought had happened to suggest itself to you originally and with all these modifications and polypus tendrils with which it would have caught hold of your subject, I am afraid that you would not have made the first voyage as interesting at least as it ought to be, so as to preserve entire the fit proportion of in- terest. But go on! I shall call on Longman as soon as I receive an answer from him to a note which I sent. . . . God bless you and S. T. Coleridge. [^t. 34] To HIS Wife [a visit to sir GEORGE BEAUMONT's] [Farmhouse near Coleorton,] December 25, 1806. My dear Sara, — By my letter from Derby you will have been satisfied of our safety so far. We had, however, been grossly de- ceived as to the equi-distance of Derby and Loughborough. The expense was nearly double. Still, however, I was in such torture and my boils bled, throbbed, and stahhed so con furia, that perhaps I have no reason for regret. At Coleorton we found them dining, Sunday, ^/^ past one o'clock. To-day is Xmas day. Of course we were wel- comed with an uproar of sincere joy: and Hartley hung suspended between the ladies for a long minute. The children, too, jubilated at Hartley's arrival.* He has behaved very well indeed — only that when he could get out of the coach at dinner, I was obliged to be in incessant watch to prevent him from rambling off into the fields. He twice ran into a field, and to the further end of it, and once after the dinner was on table, I was out five * Hartley was at this time ten years old. .Et. 34] SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 53 minutes seeking- him in great alarm, and found him at the further end of a wet meadow, on the marge of a river. After dinner, fearful of losing our places by the window (of the long coach), I ordered him to go into the coach and sit in the place where he was before, and I would follow. In about five minutes I followed. No Hartley ! Halloing — in. vain ! At length, where should I discover him! In the same meadow, only at a greater distance, and close down on the very edge of the water. I was angry from downright fright ! And what, think you, was Cataphract's excuse! "It was a misunderstand- ing. Father! I thought, you see, that you bid me go to the very same place, in the meadow where I was." I told him that he had interpreted the text by the suggestions of the flesh, not the inspiration of the spirit; and his Wish the naughty father of the baseborn Thought. However, saving and excepting his passion for field truantry, and his hatred of confinement (in which his fancy at least — Doth sing a doleful song about green fields; How sweet it were in woods and wild savannas ; To hunt for food and be a naked man And wander up and down at liberty ! ) , he is a very good and sweet child, of strict honour and truth, from which he never deviates except in the form of sophism when he sports his logical false dice in the game of excuses. This, however, is the mere effect of his activity of thought, and his aiming at being clever and ingenious. He is exceedingly amiable toward children. All here love him most dearly: and your namesake takes upon her all the duties of his mother and darling friend, with all the mother's love and fondness. He is very fond of her; but it is very pretty to hear how, without any one set declaration of' his attachment to Mrs. Wilson and Mr. Jackson, his love for them continually breaks out — so many things remind him of them, and in the coach he talked to the strangers of them just as if everybody must know Mr. J. and Mrs. W. His letter is only half written; so cannot go to-day. We all wish you a merry Christmas and many following ones. Concerning the London Lec- tures, we are to discuss it, William and I, this evening. 54 SAMUEL TAYLOK COLEKIDGE [^t. 41 and I shall write you at full the day after to-morrow. To-morrow there is no post, but this letter I mean merely as bearer of the tidings of our safe arrival. I am better than usual. Hartley has coughed a little every morning since he left Greta Hall; but only such a little cough as you heard from him at the door. He is in high health. All the children have the hooping-cough; but in an ex- ceedingly mild degree. Neither Sarah Hutchinson nor I ever remember to have had it. Hartley is made to keep at a distance from them, and only to play with Johnny in the open air. I found my spice-megs; but many papers I miss. The post boy waits. My love to Mrs. Lovell, to Southey and Edith, and be- lieve me anxiously and forever, Your sincere friend, S. T. Coleridge. t^t. 41] To Joseph Cottle [laudanum] April 26, 1814. You have poured oil in the raw and festering wound of an old friend's conscience, Cottle! but it is oil of vitriol! I but barely glanced at the middle of the first page of your letter, and have seen no more of it — not from resentment (God forbid!), but from the state of my bodily and mental sufferings, that scarcely permitted hu- man fortitude to let in a new visitor of affliction. The object of my present reply is to state the case just as it is. Eirst, that for ten years the anguish of my spirit has been indescribable, the sense of my danger staring, but the consciousness of my GUILT worse, far worse than all. I have prayed, with drops of agony on my brow, trembling not only before the justice of my Maker, but even before the mercy of my Redeemer. "I gave thee so many talents, what hast thou done with them ?" Sec- ondly, overwhelmed as I am with a sense of my direful infirmity, I have never attempted to disguise or conceal the cause. On the contrary, not only to friends have I stated the whole case with tears and the very bitterness of shame, but in two instances I have warned young men. ^t. 41] SAMUEL TAYLOE COLEKIDGE 55 mere acquaintances, who had spoken of having taken laudanum, of the direful consequences, by an awful ex- position of the tremendous effects on myself. Thirdly, though before God I cannot lift up my eyelids, and only do not despair of his mercy, because to despair would be adding crime to crime, yet to my fellowmen I may say that I was seduced into the ACCURSED habit ignorantly. I had been almost bed-ridden for many months with swellings in my knees. In a medical jour- nal, I unhappily met with an account of a cure performed in a similar case (or what appeared to me so), by rubbing of laudanum, at the same time taking a given dose in- ternally. It acted like a charm, like a miracle! I re- covered the use of my limbs, of my appetite, of my spirits, and this continued for a fortnight. At length the un- usual stimulus subsided, the complaint returned, the sup- posed remedy was recurred to — but I cannot go through the dreary history. Suffice it to say, that effects were produced which acted on me by terror and cowardice, of pain and sudden death, not (so help me God!) by any temptation of pleasure, or expectation, or desire of exciting pleasurable sensations. On the very contrary, Mrs. Morgan and her sister will bear witness, so far as to say, that the longer I abstained the higher my spirits were, the keener my enjoyment — till the moment, the direful moment, arrived when my pulse began to fluctuate, my heart to palpitate, and such a dreadful falling abroad, as it were, of my whole frame, such intolerable restlessness, and incipient bewilderment, that in the last of my several attempts to abandon the dire poison, I exclaimed in agony, which I now repeat in seriousness and solemnity, "I am too poor to hazard this." Had I but a few hundred pounds, but £200 — half to send to Mrs. Coleridge, and half to place myself in a private madhouse, where I could procure nothing but what a physician thought proper, and where a medical attendant could be constantly with me for two or three months (in less than that time life or death would be determined), then there might be hope. Now there is none ! ! God ! how willingly would I place myself under Dr. Fox, in his establishment; for my case is a species of madness, only that it is a derangement, an utter im- 66 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE [^t. 43 potence of the volition, and not of the intellectual facul- ties. You bid me rouse myself: go bid a man paralytic in both arms, to rub them briskly together, and that will cure him. "Alas!" he would reply, "that I cannot move my arms is my complaint and my misery." May God bless you, and your affectionate, but most afflicted, S. T. Coleridge. [Mt. 43] To James Gillman [lamb's ''archangel, a little damaged""] 42, Norfolk Street, Strand^ Saturday noon [April 13, 1816.] My dear Sir, — The very first half hour I was with you- convinced me that I should owe my reception into your family ex- clusively to motives not less flattering to me than honour- able to yourself. I trust we shall ever in matters of in- tellect be reciprocally serviceable to each other. Men of sense generally come to the same conclusion; but they are likely to contribute to each other's exchangement of view, in proportion to the distance or even opposition of the points from which they set out. Travel and the strange variety of situations and employments on which chance has thrown me, in the course of my life, might have made me a mere man of observation, if pain and sorrow and self-miscomplacence had not forced my mind in on itself, and so formed habits of meditation. It is now as much my nature to evolve the fact from the law, as that of a practical man to deduce the law from the fact. With respect to pecuniary remuneration, allow me to say, I must not at least be suffered to make any addition to your family expenses — though I cannot offer anything that would be in any way adequate to my sense of the service; for that, indeed, there could not be a compen- sation, as it must be returned in kind, by esteem and grateful affection. And now of myself. My ever wakeful reason, and the keenness of my moral feelings, will secure you from all ^t. 46] SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 57 unpleasant circumstances connected with me, save only one, viz., the evasion of a specific madness. You will never hear anything but truth from me: — prior habits render it out of my power to tell an untruth, but unless carefully observed, I dare not promise that I should not, with regard to this detested poison, be capable of acting one. No sixty hours have yet passed without my having taken laudanum, though for the last week [in] compara- tively trifling doses. 1 have full belief that your anxiety need not be extended beyond the first week, and for the first week I shall not, I must not, be permitted to leave your house, unless with you. Delicately or indelicately, this must be done, and both the servants and the assist- ant must receive absoltite commands from you. The stimulus of conversation suspends the terror that haunts my mind; but when I am alone, the horrors I have suf- fered from laudanum, the degradation, the blighted util- ity, almost overwhelm me. If (as I feel for the jirst time a soothing confidence it will prove) I should leave you restored to my moral and bodily health, it is not myself only that will love and honour you; every friend I have (and thank God! in spite of this wretched vice, I have many and warm ones, who were friends of my youth and have never deserted me) will thank you with reverence. I have taken no notice of your kind apologies. If I could not be comfortable in your house, and with your family, I should deserve to be miserable. If you could make it convenient I should wish to be with you by Monday even- ing, as it would prevent the necessity of taking fresh lodgings in town. With respectful compliments to Mrs. Gillman and her sister, I remain, dear sir, your much obliged S. T. Coleridge. [^t. 46] To James Gillman [sea-bathing] [Ramsgate, Postmark, August 20, 1819.] My dear Friend, — Whether from the mere intensity of the heat, and the restless, almost sleepless, nights in consequence, or from 58 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE [.Et. 61 incautious exposure to draughts; or whether simply the change of air and the sea bath was repairing the in- testinal canal (and bad indeed must the road be which is not better than a road a-mending, a hint which our revolutionary reformers would do well to attend to) or from whatever cause, I have been miserably unwell for the last three days — but last night passed a tolerably good night, and, finding myself convalescent this morning, I bathed, and now am still better, having had a glorious tumble in the waves, though the water is still not cold enough for my liking. The weather, however, is evi- dently on the change, and we have now a succession of flying April showers, and needle rains. My bath is about a mile and a quarter from the Lime Grove, a wearisome travail by the deep crumbly sands, but a very pleasant breezy walk along the top of the cliff, from which you descend through a deep steep lane cut through the chalk rocks. The tide comes up to the end of the lane, and washes the cliif, but a little before or a little after high tide there are nice clean seats of rock with foot-baths, and then an expanse of sand, greater than I need; and exactly a hundred of my strides from the end of the lane there is a good, roomy, arched cavern, with an oven or cupboard in it, where one's clothes may be put free from the sand. ... I find that I can write no more if I am to send this by to-day's post. Pray, if you can with any sort of propriety, do come down to me — to us, I suppose I ought to say. We are all as should be But (xovCTxpouaXu 96py.aX. . . . God bless you and S. T. 0. [^t. 61] To Adam Steinmetz Kennard [within two weeks of the end] Grove, Highgate, July 13, 1834. My dear Godchild, — I offer up the same fervent prayer for you now as I did kneeling before the altar when you were baptized into Christ, and solemnly received as a living member of His spiritual body, the church. Years must pass before you will be able to read with an understanding heart what ^t. 61] SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 59 I now write. But I trust that the all-gracious God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, who by His only-begotten Son (all mercies in one sov- ereign mercy!) has redeemed you from evil ground, and willed you to be born out of darkness, but into light; out of death, but into life; out of sin, but into righteousness; even into "the Lord our righteousness," — I trust that He will graciously hear the prayers of your dear parents, and be with you as the spirit of health and growth, in body and in mind. My dear godchild, you received from Christ's minister at the baptismal font, as your Christian name, the name of a most dear friend of your father's, and who was to me even as a son, — the late Adam Stein- metz, whose fervent aspirations and paramount aim, even from early youth, was to be a Christian in thought, word, and deed; in will, mind, and affections. I, too, your god- father, have known what the enjoyments and advantages of this life are, and what the more refined pleasures which learning and intellectual power can give; I now, on the eve of my departure, declare to you, and earnestly pray that you may hereafter live and act on the conviction, that health is a great blessing; competence, obtained by honourable industry, a great blessing; and a great bless- ing it is, to have kind, faithful, and loving friends and relatives; but that the greatest of all blessings, as it is the most ennobling of all privileges, is to be indeed a Christian. But I have been likewise, through a large por- tion of my later life, a sufferer, sorely affected with bodily pains, languor, and manifold infirmities; and for the last three or four years have, with few and brief intervals, been confined to a sick-room, and at this moment, in great weakness and heaviness, write from a sick-bed, hope- less of recovery, yet without prospect of a speedy removal. And I thus, on the brink of the grave, solemnly bear wit- ness to you, that the Almighty Redeemer, most gracious in His promises to them that truly seek Him, is faithful to perform what he has promised ; and has reserved, under all pains and infirmities, the peace that passeth all under- standing, with the supporting assurance of a reconciled God, who will not withdraw His spirit from me in the conflict, and in His own time will deliver me from the evil one. Oh, my dear godchild ! eminently blessed are 60 FKANCIS LOKD JEFFREY [^t. 29 they who begin early to seek, fear, and love their God, trusting wholly in the righteousness and mediation of their Lord, Redeemer, Saviour, and everlasting High Priest, Jesus Christ. Oh, preserve this as a legacy and bequest from your unseen godfather and friend, S. T. Coleridge. [^t. 29] FRANCIS LORD JEFFREY 1773-1850 To John Jeffrey [the "EDINBURGH REVIEW^"] Edinburgh, 2d July, 1803. My dear John, — It will be a sad thing if your reformation be the cause of my falling off; yet it is certain that since you have begun to write oftener, my letters have begun to be more irregular, &c. I am glad you have got our Review, and that you like it. Your partiality to my articles is a singular proof of your judgment. In No. 3, I do Gentz, Hayley's Cowper, Sir J. Sinclair, and Thelwall. In No. 4, which is now printing, I have Miss Baillie's Plays, Comparative View of Geology, Lady Mary Wortley, and some little ones. I do not think you know any of my associates. There is the sage Horner, however, whom you have seen, and who has gone to the English bar with the resolution of being Lord Chancellor; Brougham, a great mathematician, who has just published a book upon the Colonial Policy of Europe, which all you Americans should read; Rev. Sid- ney Smith, and P. Elmsley, two learned Oxonian priests, full of jokes and erudition; my excellent little Sanscrit Hamilton, who is also in the hands of Bonaparte at Fontainebleau ; Thomas Thomson and John Murray, two ingenious advocates; and some dozen of occasional con- tributors, among whom, the most illustrious, I think, are young Watt of Birmingham, and Davy of the Royal In- stitution. We sell 2,500 copies already, and hope to do double that in six months, if we are puifed enough. I wish you could try if you can repandre us upon your continent, and use what interest you can with the liter- ^t. 43] FRANCIS LORD JEFFREY 61 ati, or rather with the booksellers of New York and Phila- delphia. I believe I have not told you that the concern has now become to be of some emolument. After the fourth number the publishers are to pay the writers no less than ten guineas a sheet, which is three times what was ever paid before for such a work, and to allow £50 a number to an editor. I shall have the offer of that first, I believe, and I think I shall take it, with the full power of laying it down whenever I think proper. The publi- cation is in the highest degree respectable as yet, as there are none but gentlemen connected with it. If It ever sink into the state of an ordinary bookseller's journal, I have done with it. [^t. 43] To Mrs. Golden [THOMAS MOORE ; MISS EDGEWORTH ; OLD ENGLAND] Mardocks, 6th May, 1822. My dear Fanny, — I am on my way back to Scotland, after a three weeks' exile in London, and take the leisure of this fine summer morning to write you a long letter. I hope you are sensi- ble of the compliment I pay you in taking this vast sheet of paper, which, to make it the more gracious, I have stolen from the quire on which my host. Sir James Mack- intosh, is now writing his history. I have been very much amused in London, though rather too feverishly, so that it is deliciously refreshing to get out of its stir and tumult, and sit down to recollect all I have seen and heard, amidst the flowers' freshness and nightingales of this beautiful country. I was a good deal among wits and politicians, of whom you would not care much to hear. But I also saw a good deal of Miss Edgeworth and Tommy Moore, and something of your countryman, Washington Irving, with whom I was very happy to renew my acquaintance. Moore is still more delightful in society than he is in his writings ; the sweet- est-blooded, warmest-hearted, happiest, hopefulest crea- ture that ever set fortune at defiance. He was quite ruined about three years ago by the treachery of a deputy 62 FEANCIS LORD JEFFEEY [JKt. 43 in a small office he held, and forced to reside in France. He came over since I came to England, to settle his debts by the sacrifice of every farthing he had in the world, and had scarcely got to London when he found that the whole scheme of settlement had blown up, and that he must return in ten days to his exile. And yet I saw no- body so sociable, kind, and happy; so resigned, or rather so triumphant over fortune, by the buoyancy of his spirits, and the inward light of his mind. He told me a great deal about Lord Byron, with whom he had lived very much abroad, and of whose heart and temper, with all his partiality to him, he cannot say anything very favour- able. There is nothing gloomy or bitter, however, in his ordinary talk, but rather a wild, rough, boyish pleasantry, much more like nature than his poetry. Miss Edgeworth I had not seen for twenty years, and found her very unlike my recollection. Have you any idea what sort of a thing a truly elegant English woman of fashion is? I suspect not; for it is not to be seen almost out of England, and I do not know very well how to describe it. Great quietness, simplicity, and delicacy of manners, with a certain dignity and self- possession that puts vulgarity out of countenance, and keeps presumption in awe; a singularly sweet, soft, and rather low voice, with remarkable elegance and ease of diction; a perfect taste in wit and manners and conver- sation, but no loquacity, and rather languid spirits; a sort of indolent disdain of display and accomplishments; an air of great good-nature and kindness, with but too often some heartlessness, duplicity, and ambition. These are some of the traits, and such, I think, as would most strike an American. You would think her rather cold and spiritless; but she would predominate over you in the long run; and indeed is a very bewitching and dan- gerous creature, more seductive and graceful than any other in the world ; but not better nor happier ; and I am speaking even of the very best and most perfect. We have plenty of loud, foolish things, good humoured, even in the highest society. Washington Irving is rather low-spirited and silent in mixed company, but is agreeable, I think, tete a tete, and is very gentle and amiable. He is a good deal in fashion. ^t. 43] FRANCIS LORD JEFFREY 63 and has done something to deserve it. I hope you do not look on him in America as having flattered our old coun- try improperly. I had the honour of dining twice with a royal duke, very jovial, loud, familiar, and facetious, by no means foolish or uninstructed, but certainly coarse and indelicate to a degree quite remarkable in the upper classes of society. The most extraordinary man in Eng- land is the man in whose house I now am. I came down here yesterday by way of Haileybury, where I took up Malthus, who is always delightful, and brought him here with me. The two professors have gone over to the College to their lectures, and return to dinner. I proceed on my journey homeward in the even- ing. Would you like to know what old England is like? and in what it most differs from America? Mostly, I think, in the visible memorials of antiquity with which it is overspread; the superior beauty of its verdure, and the more tasteful and happy state and distribution of its woods. Every thing around you here is historical, and leads to romantic or interesting recollections. Gray- grown church towers, cathedrals, ruined abbeys, castles of all sizes and descriptions, in all stages of decay, from those that are inhabited to those in whose moats ancient trees are growing, and ivy mantling over their mouldered fragments. Within sight of this house, for instance, there are the remains of the palace of Hunsden, where Queene Elizabeth passed her childhood, and Theobalds, where King James had his hunting-seat, and the Rye-house, where Rumbold's plot was laid, and which is still occu- pied by a maltster — such is the permanency of habits and professions in this ancient country. Then there are two gigantic oak stumps, with a few fresh branches still, which are said to have been planted by Edward the III., and massive stone bridges over lazy waters; and churches that look as old as Christianity; and beautiful groups of branchy trees ; and a verdure like nothing else in the uni- verse; and all the cottages and lawns fragrant with sweet- brier and violets, and glowing with purple lilacs and white elders; and antique villages scattering round wide bright greens; with old trees and ponds, aud a massive pair of oaken stocks preserved from the days of Alfred. With you everything is new, and glaring, and angular, and 64 FKANCI& LOED JEFFKEY [^t. 70 withal rather frail, slight, and perishable; nothing soft, and mellow, and venerable, or that looks as if it would ever become so. I will not tell you about Scotland after this. It has not these characters of ancient wealth and population, but beauties of another kind, which you must come and see. [^t. 70] To Charles Dickens [a "mischievous onslaught"] Edinburgh, 26th December, 1843. Blessings on your kind heart, my dear Dickens! and may it always be as light and full as it is kind, and a fountain of kindness to all within reach of its beatings! We are all charmed with your Carol; chiefly, I think, for the genuine goodness which breathes all through it, and is the true inspiring angel by which its genius has been awakened. The whole scene of the Cratchetts is like the dream of a beneficent angel in spite of its broad reality; and little Tiny Tim, in life and death almost as sweet and as touching as Nelly. And then the school-day scene, with that large-hearted, delicate sister, and her true in- heritor, with his gall-lacking liver, and milk of human kindness for blood, and yet all so natural and so humbly and serenely happy! Well, you should be happy your- self, for you may be sure you have done more good, and not only fastened more kindly feelings, but prompted more positive acts of beneficence, by this little publica- tion, than can be traced to all the pulpits and confession- als in Christendom, since Christmas 1842. And is not this better than caricaturing American knaveries, or lavishing your great gifts of fancy and ob- servation on Pecksnifl's, Dodgers, Bailleys, and Moulds. Nor is this a mere crotchet of mine, for nine-tenths of your readers, I am convinced, are of the same opinion; and, accordingly, I prophesy that you will sell three times as many of this moral and pathetic Carol as of your grotesque and fantastical Chuzzlewits. I hope you have not fancied that I think less frequently of you, or love you less, because I have not lately written ^t. 73] FRANCIS LORD JEFFREY 65 to you. Indeed, it is not so; but I have been poorly in health for the last five months, and advancing age makes me lazy and, perhaps, forgetful. But I do not forget my benefactors, and I owe too much to you not to have you constantly in my thoughts. I scarcely know a single in- dividual to whom I am indebted for so much pleasure, and the means, at least, of being made better. I wish you had not made such an onslaught on the Americans. Even if it were all merited, it does mischief, and no good. Besides, you know that there are many exceptions; and, if ten righteous might have saved a city once, there are surely innocent and amiable men and women, and be- sides boys and girls, enough in that vast region to arrest the proscription of a nation. I cannot but hope, there- fore, that you will relent, before you have done with them, and contrast your deep shadings with some redeeming touches. God bless you. I must not say more to-day. With most kind love to Mrs. Dickens, always very affec- tionately yours, &c. Since writing this in the morning, and just as I was going to seal it^ in comes another copy of the Carol, with a flattering autograph on the blank page, and an address in your own "fine Roman hand." I thank you with all my heart for this proof of your remembrance, and am pleased to think that, while I was so occupied about you, you had not been forgetful of me. Heaven bless you, and all that are dear to you. — Ever yours, &c. [^t. 73] To Mrs. Empson ["a world to be loved"] Craigcrook, Sunday, 23d May, 1847. Bless you ever! and this is my first right earnest, tran- quil, Sunday blessing, since my return; for, the day after my arrival, I was in a worry with heaps of unanswered letters and neglected arrangements. But to-day I have got back to my old Sabbath feeling of peace, love, and seclusion. Granny has gone to church, and the babes and doggies are out walking; and I have paced leisurely round my garden, to the songs of hundreds of hymning 66 FKANCIS LOKD JEFFREY [^t. 73 blackbirds and thrushes, and stepped stately along my terrace, among' the bleaters in the lawn below, and pos- sessed my heart in quietness, and felt that there was sweetness in solitude, and that the world, whether to be left, or to be yet awhile lived in, is a world to be loved, and only to be enjoyed by those who find objects of love in it. And this is the sum of the matter; and the first and last and only enduring condition of all good people, when their fits of vanity and ambition are off them, or finally sinking to repose. Well, but here has been Tarley, come, of her own sweet will, to tell me, with a blush and a smile, and ever so little of a stammer, that she would like if I would walk with her; and we have been walk- ing, hand in hand, down to the bottom of the quarry, where the water is growing, though slowly, and up to the Keith's sweetbriar alley, very sweet and resonant with music of birds, and rich with cowslips and orchis; and over the style back to our domains; and been sitting in the warm corner by the gardener's house, and taking cognizance of the promise of gooseberries and currants, of which we are to have pies, I think, next week; and gazing at the glorious brightness of the gentians, and the rival brightness of the peacock's neck; and discours- ing of lambs and children, and goodness, and happiness, and their elements and connections. Less discussion, though, than usual, in our Sunday Tusculans, and more simple chat, as from one friend to another. And now she has gone to sharpen her teeth for dinner, and tell as much as she likes of our disceptations; and I come back to my letter. We met the boy and Ali early in our ramble, and he took my other hand for a while; but Ali would not trust him in the quarry, and so we parted — on the brink of perdition — and he roared lustily at sight of our peril. You beat us terribly as to weather still; for last night was positively cold with us, ther. at midnight down to 44, and a keen, clear, sharp-looking sky. To-day it has not yet been above 50, and there are but scanty sun- gleams. All which forbodes, if it does not ensure, a late harvest, which will this year be as great a calamity as a scanty one, which it is likely enough to be also. I fear the most of the mortality from famine; and pestilence is still to come even for this year; and it is too painful ^t. 33] KOBEET SOUTHEY 67 to think of. I persist in my early rising, and am down at breakfast every morning at 9^2 ; so that you had better be putting yourselves in training, if you mean, as I hope you do, to join with me in the rites of that na- tional meal. I rather think, too, that I am better than my average at Shanklin; though I do not ascribe this either to those virtuous exertions, or the sanitary influ- ence of my court work, and should be at a loss, indeed, to point out any specific amendment. .... [^t.33] KOBEET SOUTHEY 1774-1843 To Joseph Cottle [a "dear old friend and benefactor"] Greta Hall, April 20, 1808". My dear Cottle, On opening a box to-day, the contents of which I had not seen since the winter of 1799, your picture made its appearance. Of all Eobert Hancock's performances it is infinitely the best. I cannot conceive a happier likeness. I have been thinking of you and of old times ever since it came to light. I have been reading your Eall of Cam- bria, and in the little interval that remains before supper must talk to you in reply to your letter. What you say of my copyrights afi"ected me very much. Dear Cottle, set your heart at rest pn that subject. It ought to be at rest. These were yours, fairly bought, and fairly sold. You bought them on the chance of their success, which no London book-seller would have done; and had they not been bought, they could not have been published at all. Nay, if you had not purchased Joan of Arc, the poem never would have existed, nor should I, in all probability, ever have obtained that reputation which is the capital on which I subsist, nor that power which enables me to support it. But this is not all. Do you suppose, Cottle, that I have forgotten those true and most essential acts of friendship which you showed me when I stood most in need of them ? Your house was my house when I had no other. The very money with which I bought my wedding-ring and paid 68 ROBEKT SOUTHEY [^t. 45 my marriage fees, was supplied by you. It was with your sisters I left Edith during my six months' absence, and for the six months after my return it was from you that I received, week by week, the little on which we lived, till I was enabled to live by other means. It is not the settling of a cash account that can cancel obligations like these. You are in the habit of preserving your let- ters, and if you were not, I would entreat you to preserve this, that it might be seen hereafter. Sure I am, there never was a more generous or a kinder heart than yours; and you will believe me when I add, that there does not live that man upon earth whom I remember with more gratitude and more affection. My head throbs and my eyes burn with these recollections. Good night! my dear old friend and benefactor. E. S. [^t. 45] To Bertha^ Kate, and Isabel Southey [on being "ell-ell-deed"] June 26, 1820. Bertha, Kate, and Isabel, you have been very good girls, and have written me very nice letters, with which I was much pleased. This is the last letter which I can write in return; and as I happen to have a quiet hour to myself, here at Streatham, on Monday noon, I will em- ploy that hour in relating to you the whole history and manner of my being ell-ell-deed at Oxford by the Vice- Chancellor. You must know, then, that because I had written a great many good books, and more especially the Life of Wesley, it was made known to me by the Vice-Chancellor, through Mr. Heber, that the University of Oxford were desirous of showing me the only mark of honour in their power to bestow, which was that of making me an LL.D., that is to say, a doctor of laws. Now, you are to know that some persons are ell-ell-deed every year at Oxford, at the great annual meeting which is called the Commemoration. There are two reasons for this; first, that the university may do itself honour, by bringing persons of distinction to receive the degree pub- ^t. 45] ROBERT SOUTHEY 69 licly as a mark of honour; and, secondly, that certain persons in inferior offices may share in the fees paid by those upon whom the ceremony of ell-ell-deeing is per- formed. For the first of these reasons the Emperor Alex- ander was made a Doctor of Laws at Oxford, the King of Prussia, and old Blucher, and Platoff. And for the sec- ond, the same degree is conferred upon noblemen, and persons of fortune and consideration who are any ways connected with the university, or city, or county of Oxford. The ceremony of ell-ell-deeing is performed in a large circular building called the theatre, of which I will show you a print when I return, and this theatre is filled with people. The undergraduates (that is, the young men who are called Cathedrals at Keswick) entirely fill the gallery. Under the gallery there are seats, which are filled with ladies in full dress, separated from the gentlemen. Be- tween these two divisions of the ladies are seats for the heads of houses, and the doctors of law, physic, and divinity. In the middle of these seats is the Yice-Chan- cellor, opposite the entrance which is under the orchestra. On the right and left are two kind of pulpits, from which the prize essays and poems are recited. The area, or middle of the theatre, is filled with bachelors and masters of arts, and with as many strangers as can obtain ad- mission. Before the steps which lead up to the seats of the doctors, and directly in front of the Vice-Chancellor, a wooden bar is let down, covered with red cloth, .and on each side of this the beadles stand in their robes. When the theatre is full, the Vice-Chancellor, and the heads of houses, and the doctors enter: those persons who are to be ell-ell-deed remain without in the divinity schools, in their robes, till the convocation have signified their assent to the ell-ell-deeing, and then they are led into the theatre, one after another in a line, into the middle of the area, the people just making a lane for them. The professor of civil law, Dr. Phillimore, went before, and made a long speech in Latin, telling the Vice- Chancellor and the dignissimi doctores what excellent persons we were who were now to be ell-ell-deed. Then he took us one by one by the hand, and presented each in his turn, pronouncing his name aloud, saying who and 70 EOBEET SOUTHEY [^t. 61 what he was, and calling him many laudatory names ending in issimus. The audience then cheered loudly to show their approbation of the person ; the Vice-Chancellor stood up, and repeating the first words in issime, ell-ell- deed him; the beadles lifted up the bar of separation, and the new-made doctor went up the steps and took his seat among the dignissimi doctores. Oh Bertha, Kate, and Isabel, if you had seen me that day! I was like other issimis, dressed in a great robe of the finest scarlet cloth, with sleeves of rose-coloured silk, and I had in my hand a black velvet cap like a beef- eater, for the use of which dress I paid one guinea for that day. Dr. Phillimore, who was an old school-fellow of mine, and a very good man, took me by the hand in my turn, and presented mie ; upon which there was a great clapping of hands and huzzaing at my name. When that was over, the Vice-Chancellor stood up, and said these words whereby I was ell-ell-deed: — "Doctissime et orna- tissime vir, ego, pro auctoritate mea et totius universitatis hujus, admitto te ad gradum doctoris in jure civili, honoris causa." These were the words which ell-ell-deed me; and then the bar was lifted up, and I seated myself among the doctors. Little girls, you know it might be proper for me, now, to wear a large wig, and to be called Doctor Southey, and to become very severe, and leave oif being a comical papa. And if you should find that ell-ell-deeing has made this difference in me you will not be surprised. However, I shall not come down in a wig, neither shall I wear my robes at home. God bless you all! Your affectionate Father, K. Southey. [^t. 61] To Edward Moxon [recollections of CHARLES LAMb] Keswick, Feb. 2, 1836. My dear Sir, — I have been too closely engaged in clearing off the second volume of Cowper to reply to your inquiries con- cerning poor Lamb sooner. His acquaintance with Cole- ^t. 61] EOBEET SOUTHEY 71 ridge began at Christ's Hospital; Lamb was some two years, I think, his junior. Whether he was ever one of the Grecians there, might be ascertained, I suppose, by inquiring. My own impression is, that he was not. Cole- ridge introduced me to him in the winter of 1794-5, and to George Dyer also, from whom, if his memory has not failed, you might probably learn more of Lamb's early history than from any other person. Lloyd, Wordsworth, and Hazlitt became known to him through their connec- tion with Coleridge. When I saw the family (one evening only, and at that time), they were lodging somewhere near Lincoln's Inn, on the western side (I forget the street), and were evi- dently in uncomfortable circumstances. The father and mother were both living; and I have some dim recollection of the latter's invalid appearance. The father's senses had failed him before that time. He published some poems in quarto. Lamb showed me once an imperfect copy: the Sparrow's Wedding was the title of the longest piece, and this was the author's favourite; he liked, in his dotage, to hear Charles read it. His most familiar friend, when I first saw him, was White, who held some office at Christ's Hospital, and con- tinued intimate with him as long as he lived. You know what Elia says of him. He and Lamb were joint authors of the Original Letters of Falstaff. Lamb, I believe, first appeared as an author in the second edition of Coleridge's Poems (Bristol, 1797), and, secondly, in the little volume of blank verse with Lloyd (1798). Lamb, Lloyd, and White were inseparable in 1798; the two latter at one time lodged together, though no two men could be im- agined more unlike each other. Lloyd had no drollery in his nature; White seemed to have nothing else. You will easily understand how Lamb could sympathise with both. Lloyd, who used to form sudden friendships, was all but a stranger to me, when unexpectedly he brought Lamb down to visit me at a little village (Burton) near Christ Church, in Hampshire, where I was lodging in a very humble cottage. This was in the summer of 1797, and then, or in the following year, my correspondence with Lamb began. I saw more of him in 1802 than at any 72 EGBERT SOUTHEY [^t. 61 other time, for I was then six months resident in London. His visit to this country was before I came to it; it must have been either in that or the following year: it was to Lloyd and to Coleridge. I had forgotten one of his school-fellows, who is still living — C. V. Le Grice, a clergyman at or near Penzance. From him you might learn something of his boyhood. Cottle has a good likeness of Lamb, in chalk, taken by an artist named Robert Hancock, about the year 1798. It looks older than Lamb was at that time; but he was old-looking. Coleridge introduced him to Godwin, shortly after the first number of the Anti-Jacobin Magazine and Review was published, with a caricature of Gillray's, in which Coleridge and I were introduced with asses's heads, and Lloyd and Lamb as toad and frog. Lamb got warmed with whatever was on the table, became disputatious, and said things to Godwin which made him quietly say, "Pray, Mr. Lamb, are you toad or frog?" Mrs. Coleridge will remember the scene, which was to her sufficiently uncom- fortable. But the next morning S.T.C. called on Lamb, and found Godwin breakfasting with him, from which time their intimacy began. His angry letter to me in the Magazine arose out of a notion that an expression of mine in the Quarterly Review would hurt the sale of Elia; some one, no doubt, had said that it would. I meant to serve the book, and very well remember how the offence happened. I had written that it wanted nothing to render it altogether delightful but a saner religious feeling. This would have been the proper word if any other person had written the book. Feeling its extreme unfitness as soon as it was written_, I altered it immediately for the first word which ^ came into my head, intending to re-model the sentence when it should come to me in the proof; and that proof never came. There can be no objection to your printing all that passed upon the occasion, beginning with the passage in the Quarterly Review, and giving his letter. I have heard Coleridge say that, in a fit of derange- ment. Lamb fancied himself to be young Nerval. He told me this in relation to one of his poems. If you print my lines to him upon his Album Verses, ^t. 64] WALTEK SAVAGE LANDOK 73 I will send you a corrected copy. You received his letters, I trust, which Cuthbert took with him to town in Octo- ber. I wish they had been more, and wish, also, that I had more to tell you concerning him, and what I have told were of more value. But it is from such fragments of recollection, and such imperfect notices, that the mate- rials for biography must, for the most part, be collected. Yours very truly, Robert Southey. [Mi. 64.] WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 1775-1864 To Miss Rose Paynter [a dog with pluck] [Bath, September 23, 1839.] Dear Rose, — It is true enough that you have not heard from me for a long time; and the reason is not that I am idle, which I am, but because I hoped, from the long absence of all letters from Passy, that you surely were on your way to Bath. Otherwise not only should I have written, but have been, long ere this time, in Devonshire. Tell Mama that I might safely have been entrusted with the tapis, or, even with everything sur le tapis. There is no commis- sion of hers which I would not have executed, at least carefully. I am indeed quite as idle as usual. 1 never sprain, Dear Rose! my brain; And if I did, The Lord forbid That you should set it strait again: For I have seen, O haughty Queen! The tears and sighs That fall and rise Where your ungentle hand hath been. No wonder you ask me whether you are not most barbarous: I will answer for it you are. I scarcely know any man but myself who is out of your martyrology. I 74 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR [^t. 64 am like one of the Saints (no doubt of that — ^you will say) I mean I am like one of those who look quietly on and take delight in seeing the most beautiful of the Creation execute the Creator's will. But I do not approve of your making more people mad and desperate. By the by, I met Sir Dudley Hill in town. He told me the wonderful news that a relation of his (the name too great to be communicated to me) was an admirer of yours. Never say, after this, that we acquire but little information in the great world. Speaking of Bath, you say — "for the short time we shall remain there." This disquiets me. Is it not too much to lose oiie of your family? But there is good cause shown; and when the same good cause is shown again, we must submit — more than submit — give up one half of the heart to gladness, while the other half is devoured by grief. If your family is really to continue but a little while in Bath pray let me know it. I have not been very importunate in my entreaties to hear often from you; for the pleasures of those I love have always been and always will be the highest of my gratifications; and I do not ask you now to shorten a ride or a walk or a conversation, but, at any moment, when you really have nothing else to do or to think about, tell me if my delight- ful evenings in Gt. Bedford Street are soon to close. I sadly fear your wishes in regard to the picture are ex- pressed too late. But I will write by this very post and signify them. The "Book of Beauty" is always sent to America by the first of October. To-morrow I will set out for Torquay, and return by the middle of the next month. If Mrs. Paynter thinks I can do anything in the deco- ration of her house, better than the servant, I will return sooner and try my hand at it. Your account of Sophy has removed from me a heavy load of anxiety. That horrible pleurisy frightened me. I can bear pain passa- bly well myself: it is only when it rebounds from my friends that I have not the courage to face it. You would have laught at me the other day when a lady was my protectress. I was over at Marston to see the Boyles when (tell the Admiral if he is with you) I deliv- ered his message to Sir Courtney. In the courtyard was a magnificent black Newfoundland dog. No sooner I had ^t. 68] WALTEK SAVAGE LANDOK 75 entered the gate than, before I could deliver my creden- tials, or make the sign of dog-freemasonry, he seized my leg. A swinging box on the ear was opposed to this manoeuvre. My Newfoundlander had what the boxers (not very elegantly) call pluck. He renewed the attack, de- spite some severe appellations and admirable parasol- thrusts of Miss Boyle. However she conquered him — for neither my box on the ear nor a kick at the second round, which sent him upon his back, made him give in. We were pretty good friends at last, although I told him I should trouble him, at his leisure, just to look over a certain article in my tailor's bill, which might as well be transferred to his account. Fred will think this rare fun — for several minutes it was rather serious. I would have declined the combat and have left my enemy alone with his glory had there been any escape. Believe me, dear Rose, Yours very affectionately, W. S. Landor. [^t. 68] To THE Editor of the "Examiner" [a "polygonal character"] August 17, 1843. Sir, — The prosecution with which you are threatened by Lord Brougham might well be expected from every facette of his polygonal character. He began his literary and political life with a scanty store of many small commodi- ties. Long after he set out, the witty and wise Lord Stowell said of him, that he wanted only a little law to fill up the vacancy. His shoulders were not over-burdened by the well-padded pack he bore on them; and he found a ready sale, where such articles find the readiest, in the to^Ti of Edinburgh. "Here he entered into a confed- eracy (the word conspiracy may be libellous) to defend the worst atrocities of the French, and to cry down every author to whom England was dear and venerable. A better spirit now prevails in the Ediiiburgh Review, from the generosity and genius of Macaulay. But in the days when Brougham and his confederates were writers in it, more falsehood and more malignity marked its pages than 76 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR [^t. 68 any other Journal in the language. And here is the man who cries out he is wounded! the recreant who, screaming for help, aims a poisoned dagger at the vigor- ous breast that crushes him to the ground. Had he no respect for the tenets by which he made his fortune? Has he none for a superiority of intellectual power which leaves to him superiority of station? This eminently bad writer and reasoner brings an action for slander on many counts, at the summit of which is "be- cause it is despicable." Now did ever man or cat fly at the eyes for a thing beneath his notice: and such is the meaning of despicable among us who have learnt Latin and who write English. What other man within the walls of Parliament, however hasty, rude, and petulant, hath exhibited such manifold instances of bad manners, bad feelings, bad reasonings, bad language, and bad law? They who cannot be what they want to be, resolve on notoriety in any shape whatever. Each House exhibits a specimen of this genus, pinned to the last pages of its Journals. Such notoriety can in no manner be more readily attained than by suddenly turning round on one leg, showing how agile is old age in this step, and then appealing to you whether the Terpsichoris has ever changed countenance or colour, from youth upwards. Meanwhile the toothless jaws are dropping, on both sides, the slaver of wrath and dotage. How many things are published with impunity which are more injurious to a man's character, more detrimental to his fortune and interest, than a great proportion of those which the law calls libellous! Suppose an author, who has devoted his whole life to some particular study, writes a book upon it; suppose it is in any manner dis- pleasing to Lord Brougham, whether on its own account or the author's; would he hesitate, has he ever hesitated, to inflict an irremediable wound? Dexterity in mis- chief is applauded; the sufferer is derided. Easily may a weaker, who watches the opportunity, trip up a stronger. Similar feats are the peculiar gratification of coarse and vulgar minds. Has no virtuous man of genius bled to death under the scourge of such a critic as Brougham? Years of application, if years were yet allowed him, would be insufficient to place him in the festive seat. ^t. 68] WALTEE SAVAGE LANDOK 77 which a crueller hand than a murderer's made vacant. On the contrary, the accusations brought against Lord Brougham, by the Examiner, could be shown by his Lordship to be true or false within a single hour, and the fact be rendered apparent to the whole nation before nightfall. But here no yindictiv© spirit can exert its agency: no lightning of phosphorous runs along the benches of the Lords; no thunder as awful shakes the woolsack. Wavering as he is by habit, malicious as he is by na- ture, it is evident that Lord Brougham says and does the greater part of his sayings and doings for no other pur- pose than to display his ability in defending them. He dazzles us by no lights of eloquence, he attracts us by not even a fictitious flue-warmth; but he perplexes and makes us stare and stumble by his angular intricacies and sudden glares. Not a sentence of his speeches or writings will be deposited in the memory as rich or rare; and even what is strange will be cast out of it for what is stranger, until this goes too. Is there a housewife who keeps a cupboardful of cups without handle or bottom; a selection of brokages and flaws? I am. Sir, &c., W. S. Landor. [^t. 68] To Miss Kose Paynter ["'even the old ones do not dream of death"] Bath, September 21st, [1843]. Dear Rose, — ... It delights me to know that you have been so well amused in Lancashire. You did right in not killing the grouse. Let men do these things if they will. Perhaps there is no harm in it — perhaps it makes them no crueller than they would be otherwise. But it is hard to take away what we cannot give — and life is a pleasant thing — at least to birds. 'No doubt the young ones say tender things to one another, and even the old ones do not dream of death. Talking of old ones, I come naturally to say a little of myself. I am an absolute cripple with the rheumatism. Perhaps a gallop round Doncaster race- course would do me good, but I doubt my elasticity in 78 CHAELES LAMB [^t. 24 springing to the saddle. I thought old age a fable until now: I now find it a serious and sad calamity. It is no wonder to me that you were enchanted with York Cathedral. Whatever is excellent raises your ad- miration and enthusiasm. In how deplorable a state was architecture throughout the whole of Europe, until these last thirty years, ever since the death of Wren. And he undervalued and misunderstood the marvels of the Gothic. I can hardly imagine that even the Athenians heard such music in their chaste and beautiful temples as you heard in the Cathedral at York. . . . Mrs. tells me she and her family went over to Weston Super Mare. Of all the places on the earth or the waters, this is surely the most muddy and miser- able. She found it so, although her voyage was not made in search of the picturesque. I have no other Bath news to offer you. I have exhausted my genius in the long letter I wrote to Mrs. Paynter this morning. Luckily she asked me for two Examiners. The best of me was in them. If you happen to receive them do not think me spiteful because I am severe. It devolved on me to punish two * evil-doers. I was called to it by many loud voices, and some of them from afar. I do confess to an intolerance of baseness, but I am very tolerant of the most adverse opinions on all subjects whatsoever. Believe me, dear Rose, Ever affectionately yours, W. S. Landor. [^t.24] CHARLES LAMB 1775-1834 To Robert Southey ["poor earth-born companions"] March 20th, 1799. [Dear Southey, — ] I am hugely pleased with your "Spider," f ''your old freemason," as you call him. The first three stanzas are delicious; they seem to me a compound of Burns and * One of them was Brougham. See preceding letter. 1[The Spider. Written at Westbury in 1798. ^t. 24] CHARLES LAMB 79 Old Quarles, the kind of home-strokes, where more is felt than strikes the ear; a terseness, a jocular pathos, which makes one feel in laughter. The measure, too, is novel and pleasing. I could almost wonder Robert Burns in his lifetime never stumbled upon it. The fourth stanza is less striking, as being less original. The fifth falls off. It has no felicity of phrase, no old-fashioned phrase or feeling. "Young hopes, and love's delightful dreams," savour neither of Bums nor Quarles; they seem more like shreds of many a modern sentimental sonnet. The last stanza hath nothing striking in it, if I except the two concluding lines, which are Burns all over. I wish, if you concur with me, these things could be looked to. I am sure this is a kind of writing, which comes ten-fold better recommended to the heart, comes there more like a neighbour or familiar, than thousands of Hamnels, and Zillahs, and Madelons. I beg you will send me the "Holly Tree," if it at all resemble this, for it must please me. I have never seen it. I love this sort of poems, that open a new intercourse with the most de- spised of the animal and insect race. I think this vein may be further opened. Peter Pindar hath very prettily apostrophized a fly; Burns hath his mouse and his louse; Coleridge less successfully hath made overtures of inti- macy to a jackass, therein only following, at unresem- bling distance, Sterne, and greater Cervantes.^ Besides these, I know of no other examples of breaking down the partition between us and our "poor earth-born compan- ions." It is sometimes revolting to be put in a track of feeling by other people, not one's own immediate thoughts, else I would persuade you, if I could, (I am in earnest,) to commence a series of these animals' poems, which might have a tendency to rescue some poor creatures from the antipathy of mankind. Some thoughts came across me: for instance — to a rat, to a toad, to a cock- chafer, to a mole. People bake moles alive by a slow oven fire to cure consumption. Rats are, indeed, the most despised and contemptible parts of God's earth. I killed a rat the other day by punching him to pieces, and feel 80 CHARLES LAMB [.^t. 24 a weight of blood upon me to this hour. Toads you know are made to fly, and tumble down and crush all to pieces. Cockchafers are old sport. Then again to a worm, with an apostrophe to anglers, those patient tyrants, meek inflictors of pangs intolerable, cool devils ; to an owl ; to all snakes, with an apology for their poison ; to a cat in boots or bladders. Your own fancy, if it takes a fancy to these hints, will suggest many more. A series of such poems, suppose them accompanied with plates descriptive of animal torments, cooks roasting lobsters, fishmongers crimping skates, &c., &c,, would take excessively. I will willingly enter into a partnership in the plan with you. I think my heart and soul would go with it too — at least, give it a thought. My plan is but this minute come into my head; but it strikes me instantaneously as some- thing new, good, and useful, full of pleasure, and full of moral. If old Quarles and Wither could live again, we would invite them into our firm. Burns hath done his part. Poor Sam. Le Grice! I am afraid the world, and the camp, and the university, have spoilt him among them. 'Tis certain he had at one time a strong capacity of turning out something better. I knew him, and that not long since, when he had a most warm heart. I am ashamed of the indifference I have sometimes felt towards him. I think the devil is in one's heart. I am under obligations to that man for the warmest friendship, and heartiest sympathy exprest both by word and deed and tears for me, when I was in my greatest distress. But I have forgot that! as, I fear, he has nigh forgot the awful scenes which were before his eyes when he served the office of a comforter to me. No service was too mean or troublesome for him to perform. I can't think what but the devil, "that old spider," could have sucked my heart so dry of its sense of all gratitude. If he does come in your way, Southey, fail not to tell him that I retain a most affectionate remembrance of his old friendliness, and an earnest wish to resume our intercourse. In this I am serious. I cannot recommend him to your society, because I am afraid whether he be quite worthy of it; but I have no right to dismiss him from my regard. He was at one time, and in the worst of times, my own Mt. 25] CHAELES LAMB 81 familiar friend, and great comfort to me then. I have known him to play at cards with my father, meal-times excepted, literally all day long, in long days too, to save me from being teased by the old man, when I was not able to bear it. God bless him for it, and God bless you, Southey. C. L. [^t. 25] To Thomas Manning [an exhibition of snakes] Oct. 16th, 1800. Dear Manning, — Had you written one week before you did, I certainly should have obeyed your injunction; you should have seen me before my letter. I will explain to you my situation. There are six of us in one department. Two of us (within these four days) are confined with severe fevers; and two more, who belong to the Tower Militia, expect to have marching orders on Friday. Now six are absolutely nec- essary. I have already asked and obtained two young hands to supply the loss of the feverites, and, with the other prospect before me, you njay believe I cannot de- cently ask leave of absence for myself. All I can promise (and 1 do promise, with the sincerity of St. Peter, and the contrition of Sinner Peter if I fail) that I will come the very first spare week, and go nowhere till I have been at Cambridge. No matter if you are in a state of pupilage when I come; for I can employ myself in Cam- bridge very pleasantly in the mornings. Are there not libraries, halls, colleges, books, pictures, statues? I wish you had made London in your way. There is an exhibi- tion quite uncommon in Europe, which could not have escaped your genius, — a live rattlesnake, ten feet in length, and the thickness of a big leg. I went to see it last night by candle light. We were ushered into a room very little bigger than ours at Pentonville. A man and woman and four boys live in this room, joint tenants with nine snakes, most of them such as no remedy has been discovered for their bite. We walked into the middle, which is formed by a half-moon of wired boxes, all man- 82 CHAKLES LAMB [^t. 25 sions of snakes — whip-snakes, thunder-snakes, pig-nose- snakes, American vipers, and this monster. He lies curled up in folds. Immediately a stranger entered (for he is used to the family, and sees them play at cards,) he set up a rattle like a watchman's in London, or near as loud, and reared up a head, from the midst of these folds, like a toad, and shook his head, and showed every sign a snake can show of irritation. I had the foolish curiosity to strike the wires with my finger, and the devil flew at me with his toad-mouth wide open; the inside of his mouth is quite white. I had got my finger away, nor could he well have bit me with his big mouth, which would have been certain death in five minutes. But it frightened me so much, that I did not recover my voice for a minute's space. I forgot, in my fear, that he was secured. You would have forgot too, for 'tis incredible how such a monster can be confined in small gauzy-looking wires. I dreamed of snakes in the night. I wish to heaven you could see it. He absolutely swelled with passion to the bigness of a large thigh. I could not retreat without infringing on another box; and just be- hind, a little devil not an inch from my back had got his nose out, with some difficulty and pain, quite through the bars! He was soon taught better manners. All the snakes were curious, and objects of terror: but this mon- ster, like Aaron's serpent, swallowed up the impression of the rest. He opened his cursed mouth, when he made at me, as wide as his head was broad. I hallooed out quite loud, and felt pains all over my body with the fright. I have had the felicity of hearing George Dyer read out one book of the Farmer s Boy. I thought it rather childish. No doubt, there is originality in it, (which, in your self-taught geniuses, is a most rare quality, they gen- erally getting hold of some bad models, in a scarcity of books, and forming their taste on them,) but no selection. All is described. Mind, I have only heard read one book. Yours sincerely, Philo-Snake, C. L. ^t. 25] CHARLES LAMB 83 [^t. 25] To William Wordsworth [LONDON AND THE LAKE COUNTRY] Jan. 30th, 1801. [Dear Wordsivorth, — ] I ought before this to have replied to your very kind invitation into Cumberland. With you and your sister I could gang anywhere; but I am afraid whether I shall ever be able to afford so desperate a journey. Separate from the pleasure of your company, I don't much care if I never see a mountain in my life. I have passed all my days in London, until I have formed as many and intense local attachments as any of you mountaineers can have done with dead Nature. The lighted shops of the Strand and Fleet Street; the innumerable trades, tradesmen, and customers, coaches, waggons, playhouses; all the bustle and wickedness round about Covent Garden; the very women of the Town; the watchman, drunken scenes, rat- tles; life awake, if you awake, at all hours of the night; the impossibility of being dull in Fleet Street ; the crowds, the very dirt and mud, the sun shining upon houses and pavements, the print-shops, the old book-stalls, parsons cheapening books, coffee-houses, steams of soups from kitchens, the pantomimes — London itself a pantomime and a masquerade — all these things work themselves into my mind, and feed me, without a power of satiating me. The wonder of these sights impels me into night-walks about her crowded streets, and I often shed tears in the motley Strand from fulness of joy at so much life. All these emotions must be strange to you; so are your rural emotions to me. But consider, what must I have been doing all my life, not to have lent great portions of my heart with usury to such scenes ? My attachments are all local, purely local. I have no passion (or have had none since I was in love, and then it was the spurious engendering of poetry and books,) for groves and valleys. The rooms where I was bom, the furniture which has been before my eyes all my life, a book-case which has followed me about like a faithful dog, (only exceeding him in knowledge,) wherever I have moved, old chairs, old tables, streets, squares, where 84 CHARLES LAMB [JEt. 26 I have sunned myself, my old school, — ^these are my mis- tresses. Have I not enough, without your mountains? I do not envy you. I should pity you, did I not know- that the mind will make friends of any thing. Your sun, and moon, and skies, and hills, and lakes, affect me no more, or scarcely come to me in more venerable char- acters, than as a gilded room with tapestry and tapers, where I might live with handsome visible objects. I con- sider the clouds above me but as a roof beautifully painted, but unable to satisfy the mind: and at last, like the pictures of the apartment of a connoisseur, unable to afford him any longer a pleasure. So fading upon me, from disuse, have been the beauties of Nature, as they have been confinedly called; so ever fresh, and green, and warm are all the inventions of men, and assemblies of men in this great city. I should certainly have laughed with dear Joanna. Give my kindest love, and my sister's, to D. and your- self; and a kiss from me to little Barbara Lewthwaite. Thank you for liking my play.* C. L. [^t. 26] To Walter Wilson [an apology] August 14th, 1801. Dear Wilson, — I am extremely sorry that any serious differences should subsist between us, on account of some foolish behaviour of mine at Richmond; you knew me well enough before, that a very little liquor will cause a considerable altera- tion in me. I beg you to impute my conduct solely to that, and not to any deliberate intention of offending you, from whom I have received so many friendly attentions. I know that you think a very important difference in opinion with respect to some more serious subjects between us makes me a dangerous companion; but do not rashly infer, from some slight and light expressions which I * Perhaps the tone of the letter is somewhat affected by Wordsworth's indifference to the merits of John Woodvil. ^t. 27] CHARLES LAMB 85 may have made use of in a moment of levity, in your presence, without sufficient regard to your feelings — do not conclude that I am an inveterate enemy to all re- ligion. I have had a time of seriousness, and I have known the importance and reality of a religious belief. Latterly, I acknowledge, much of my seriousness has gone off, whether from new company, or some other new associations; but I still retain at bottom a conviction of the truth, and a certainty of the usefulaess of re- ligion. I will not pretend to more gravity of feeling than I at present possess; my intention is not to persuade you that any great alteration is prolBable in me; sudden converts are superficial and transitory; I only want you to believe that I have stamina of seriousness within me, and that I desire nothing more than a return of that friendly intercourse which used to subsist between us, but which my folly has suspended. Believe me, Very affectionately yours, C. Lamb. [^t. 27] To Thomas Manning [the lake country; coleridge] 24th Sept., 1802, London. My dear Manning, — Since the date of my last letter I have been a traveller. A strong desire seized me of visiting remote regions. My first impulse was to go and see Paris. It was a trivial objection to my aspiring mind, that I did not understand a word of the language, since I certainly intend sometime in my life to see Paris, and equally certainly intend never to learn the language; therefore that could be no objection. However, I am very glad I did not go, because you had left Paris (I see) before I could have set out. I believe Stoddart promising to go with me another year, prevented that plan. My next scheme (for to my restless, ambitious mind London was become a bed of thorns) was to visit the far-famed peak in Derbyshire, where the Devil sits, they say, without breeches. This my purer mind rejected as indelicate. And my final resolve was, a tour to the Lakes. I set out 86 CHAKLES LAMB [^t. 27 with Mary to Keswick, without giving Coleridge any notice, for my time, being precious, did not admit of it. He received us with all the hospitality in the world, and gave up his time to show us all the wonders of the coun- try. He dwells upon a small hill by the side of Keswick, in a comfortable house, quite enveloped on all sides by a net of mountains: great floundering bears and monsters they seemed, all couchant and asleep. We got in in the evening, travelling in a post-chaise from Penrith, in the midst of a gorgeous sunshine, which transmuted all the mountains into colours, purple, &c., &c. We thought we had got into fairy-land. But that went oif (as it never came again; while we stayed we had no more fine sun- sets;) and we entered Coleridge's comfortable study just in the dusk, when the mountains were all dark with clouds upon their heads. Such an impression I never received from objects of sight before, nor do I suppose I can ever again. Glorious creatures, fine old fellows, Skid- daw, &c., I never shall forget ye, how ye lay about that night, like an intrenchment ; gone to bed, as it seemed, for the night, but promising that ye were to be seen in the morning. Coleridge had got a blazing fire in his study; which is a large, antique, ill-shaped room, with an old-fashioned organ, never played upon, big enough for a church, shelves of scattered folios, an ^olian harp, and an old sofa, half bed, &c. And all looking out upon the last fading view of Skiddaw, and his broad-breasted brethren : what a night ! Here we stayed three full weeks, in which time I visited Wordsworth's cottage, where we stayed a day or two with the Clarksons, (good people, and most hospitable, at whose house we tarried one day and night,) and saw Lloyd. The Wordsworths were gone to Calais. They have since been in London, and past much time with us: he is now gone into Yorkshire to be married. So we have seen Keswick, Grasmere, Amble- side, Ills water, (where the Clarksons live,) and a place at the other end of Ulswater; I forget the name: to which we travelled on a very sultry day, over the middle of Helvellyn. We have clambered up to the top of Skiddaw, and I have waded up the bed of Lodore. In fine, I have satisfied myself that there is such a thing as that which tourists call romantic, which I very much suspected be- ^t. 27] CHARLES LAMB 87 fore: they make such a spluttering about it, and toss their splendid epithets around them, till they give as dim a light as at four o'clock next morning the lamps do after an illumination. Mary was excessively tired when she got about half-way up Skiddaw, but we came to a cold rill (than which nothing can be imagined more cold, running over cold stones,) and with the reinforcement of a draught of cold water she surmounted it most man- fully. Oh, its fine black head, and the bleak air atop of it, with a prospect of mountains all about and about, making you giddy; and then Scotland afar oif, and the border countries so famous in song and ballad! It was a day that will stand out, like a mountain, I am sure, in my life. But I am returned, (I have now been come home near three weeks; I was a month out,) and you cannot conceive the degradation I felt at first, from be- ing accustomed to wander free as air among mountains, and bathe in rivers without being controlled by anyone, to come home and work. I felt very little. I had been dreaming I was a very great man. But that is going oif, and I find I shall conform in time to that state of life to which it has pleased God to call me. Besides, after all, Fleet Street and the Strand are better places to live in for good and all than amidst Skiddaw. Still, I turn back to those great places where I wandered about, par- ticipating in their greatness. After all, I could not live in Skiddaw. I could spend a year, two, three years among them, but I must have a prospect of seeing Fleet Street at the end of that time, or I should mope and pine away, I know. Still, Skiddaw is a fine creature. My habits are changing, I think, i.e., from drunk to sober. Whether I shall be happy or not remains to be proved. I shall certainly be more happy in a morning; but whether I shall not sacrifice the fat, and the marrow, and the kid- neys, i.e., the night, glorious care-drowning night, that heals all our wrongs, pours wine into our mortifications, changes the scene from indifferent and flat to bright and brilliant! O Manning, if I should have formed a dia- bolical resolution, by the time you come to England, of not admitting any spiritous liquors into my house, will you be my guest on such shameworthy terms? Is life, with such limitations, worth trying? The truth is, that 88 CHAELES LAMB [^t. 30 my liquors bring a nest of friendly harpies about my house, who consume me. This is a pitiful tale to be read at St. Gothard, but it is just now nearest my heart. Fen- wick is a ruined man. He is hiding himself from his creditors, and has sent his wife and children into the country. Fell, my other drunken companion, (that has been: nam hie coestus artemque repono,) is turned editor of a Naval Chronicle. Godwin continues a steady friend, though the same facility does not remain of visiting him often. That has detached Marshall from his house; Marshall, the man who went to sleep when the ^'Ancient Mariner" was reading; the old, steady, unalter- able friend of the Professor. Holcroft is not yet come to town. I expect to see him, and will deliver your mes- sage. Things come crowding in to say, and no room for 'em. Some things are too little to be told, i.e., to have a preference; some are too big and circumstantial. Thanks for yours, which was most delicious. Would I had been with you, benighted, &c. ! I fear my head is turned with wandering. I shall never be the same acquiescent being. Farewell. Write again quickly, for I shall not like to hazard a letter, not knowing where the fates have carried you. Farewell, my dear fellow. C. Lamb. [^t. 30] To William and Dorothy Wordsworth [the ''farewell to tobacco"] Sept. 28th, 1805. My dear Wordsworth, (or Dorothy rather, for to you appertains the biggest part of this answer by right,) I will not again deserve reproach by so long a silence. I have kept deluding myself with the idea that Mary would write to you, but she is so lazy, (or, which I believe is the true state of the case, so diffident,) that it must re- vert to me as usual. Though she writes a pretty good style, and has some notion of the force of words, she is not always so certain of the true orthography of them: and that, and a poor handwriting (in this age of female calligraphy), often deters her, where no other reason does. We have neither of us been very well for some weeks ^t. 30] CHAELES LAMB 89 past. I am very nervous, and she most so at those times when I am; so that a merry friend, adverting to the noble consolation we were able to afford each other, denominated US, not unaptly, Gum-Boil and Tooth-Ache, for they used to say that a gum-boil is a great relief to a tooth-ache. We have been two tiny excursions this Summer, for three or four days each, to a place near Harrow, and to Egham, where Cooper's Hill is: and that is the total his- tory of our rustications this year. Alas! how poor a round to Skiddaw and Helvellyn, and Borrowdale, and the magnificent sesquipedalia of the year 1802 ! Poor old Molly ! to have lost her pride, that "last infirmity of noble minds," and her cow. Fate need not have set her wits to such an old Molly. I am heartily sorry for her. Kemem- ber us lovingly to her; and in particular remember us to Mrs. Clarkson in the most kind manner. I hope, by "southwards," you mean that she will be at or near London, for she is a great favourite of both of us, and we feel for her health as much as [is] possible for any one to do. She is one of the friendliest, comfortablest women we know, and made our little stay at your cottage one of the pleasantest times we ever past. We were quite strangers to her. Mr. C. is with you too; our kindest separate remembrances to him. As to our special affairs, I am looking about me. I have done nothing since the beginning of last year, when I lost my newspaper job; and having had a long idleness, I must do something or we shall get very poor. Sometimes I think of a farce, but hitherto all schemes have gone off; an idle brag or two of an evening, vapouring out of a pipe, and going off in the morning; but now I have bid farewell to my "sweet enemy," Tobacco, I shall perhaps set nobly to work. Hang work! I wish that all the year were holiday; I am sure that indolence — indefeasible indolence — is the true state of man, and business the invention of the old Teazer, whose interference doomed Adam to an apron and set him a hoeing. Pen and ink, and clerks and desks, were the re- finements of this old torturer some thousand years after, under pretence of "Commerce allying distant shores, pro- moting and diffusing knowledge, good," &c., &c. I wish you may think this a handsome farewell to my 90 CHARLES LAMB [vEt. 30 "Friendly Traitress." Tobacco has been my evening com- fort and my morning curse for these five years; and you know how difficult it is from refraining to pick one's lips even, when it has become a habit. This poem is the only one which I have finished since so long as when I wrote "Hester Savory." I have had it in my head to do it these two years, but tobacco stood in its own light when it gave me headaches that prevented my singing its praises. Now you have got it, you have got all my store, for I have absolutely not another line. No more has Mary. We have nobody about us that cares for poetry; and who will rear grapes when he shall be the sole eater? Perhaps if you encourage us to show you what we may write, we may do something now and then before we absolutely forget the quantity of an English line for want of practice. The "Tobacco," being a little in the way of Withers (whom Southey so much likes), perhaps you will somehow con- vey it to him with my kind remembrances. Then every- body will have seen it that I wish to see it. I have sent it to Malta. I remain, dear W. and D., yours truly, C. Lamb. [^t. 30] To Thomas Manning ["pearls of extraordinary magnitude"] [Nov. 15, 1805.] Dear Manning, — Certainly you could not have called at all hours from two till ten, for we have been only out of an evening Mon- day and Tuesday in this week. But if you think you have, your thought shall go for the deed. We did pray for you on Wednesday night. Oysters unusually luscious ; pearls of extraordinary magnitude found in them. I have made bracelets of them ; given them in clusters to ladies. Last night we went out in despite, because you were not come at your hour. This night we shall be at home; so shall we certainly, both, on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Take your choice, mind I don't say of one: but choose which evening you will not come, and come the other ^t. 31] CHAKLES LAMB 91 four. Doors open at five o'clock. Shells forced about nine. Every gentleman smokes or not as he pleases. C. L. [^t. 31] To William Wordsworth [Mr. H. ] December 11th, 1806. Maiy's love to all of you — I wouldn't let her write. Dear Wordsworth, — Mr. H. came out last night, and failed. I had many fears; the subject was not substantial enough. John Bull must have solider fare than a letter. We are pretty stout about it; have had plenty of condoling friends; but, after all, we had rather it should have succeeded. You will see the prologue in most of the morning papers. It was re- ceived with such shouts as I never witnessed to a prologue. It was attempted to be encored. How hard ! — a thing I did merely as a task, because it was wanted, and set no great store by; and Mr. H.U The number of friends we had in the house — my brother and I being in public of- fices, &c. — was astonishing, but they yielded at length to a few hisses. A hundred hisses! (Damn the word, I write it like kisses — how different!) — a hundred hisses outweigh a thousand claps. The former come more directly from the heart. Well, 'tis withdrawn, and there is an end. Better luck to us. C. Lamb. (Turn over.) P. S. Pray, when any of you write to the Clarksons, give our kind loves, and say we shall not be able to come and see them at Christmas, as I shall have but a day or two, and tell them we bear our mortification pretty well. 92 CHARLES LAMB [^t. 40 [^t. 40] To Miss Hutchinson [illness of his sister] Thursday, 19th Oct., 1815. Dear Miss H., — I am forced to be the replier to your letter, for Mary * has been ill, and gone from home these five weeks yester- day. She has left me very lonely and very miserable. I stroll about, but there is no rest but at one's own fireside, and there is no rest for me there now. I look forward to the worse half being past, and keep up as well as I can. She has begun to show some favourable symptoms. The return of her disorder has been frightfully soon this time, with scarce a six months' interval. I am almost afraid my worry of spirits about the E. I. House was partly the cause of her illness, but one always imputes it to the cause next at hand; more probably it comes from some cause we have no control over or conjecture of. It cuts sad great slices out of the time, the little time, we shall have to live together. I don't know but the recurrence of these illnesses might help me to sustain her death bet- ter than if we had had no partial separations. But I won't talk of death. I will imagine us immortal, or for- get that we are otherwise. By God's blessing, in a few weeks we may be making our meal together, or sitting in the front row of the Pit at Drury Lane, or taking our evening walk past the theatres, to look at the outside of them, at least, if not to be tempted in. Then we forget we are assailable; we are strong for the time as rocks; — "the wind is tempered to the shorn Lambs." Poor C. Lloyd, and poor Priscilla! I feel I hardly feel enough for him; my own calamities press about me, and involve me in a thick integument not to be reached at by other folks' misfortunes. But I feel all I can — all the kindness I can, towards you all — God bless you! I hear nothing from Coleridge. Yours truly, C. Lamb. * For letters by Mary Lamb, see pp. 124-128. .^t. 40] CHARLES LAMB 93 [^t. 40] To Thomas Manning [an imaginary flight of time] Dec. 25tli, 1815. Dear old friend and absentee, — This is Christmas Day 1815 with us; what it may be with you I don't know, the 12th of June next year per- haps; and if it should be the consecrated season with you, I don't see how you can keep it. You have no turkeys; you would not desecrate the festival by offering up a with- ered Chinese Bantam, instead of the savoury grand Nor- folcian holocaust, that smokes all around my nostrils at this moment from a thousand firesides. Then what pud- dings have you? Where will you get holly to stick in your churches, or churches to stick your dried tea-leaves (that must be the substitute) in? What memorials you can have of the holy time, I see not. A chopped mission- ary or two may keep up the thin idea of Lent and the wilderness; but what standing evidence have you of the Nativity? 'Tis our rosy-cheeked, home-stalled divines, whose faces shine to the tune of "Unto us a child is born," faces fragrant with the mince-pies of half a cen- tury, that alone can authenticate the cheerful mystery. I feel my bowels refreshed with the holy tide; my zeal is great against the unedified heathen. Down with the Pa- godas — down with the idols — Ching-chong-fo — and his foolish priesthood ! Come out of Babylon, O my friend ! for her time is come; and the child that is native, and the Proselyte of Eer gates, shall kindle and smoke to- gether ! And in sober sense what makes you so long from among us. Manning? You must not expect to see the same England again which you left. Empires have been overturned, crowns trodden into dust, the face of the western world quite changed. Your friends have all got old — those you left blooming; my- self, (who am one of the few that remember you,) those golden hairs which you recollect my taking a pride in, turned to silvery and grey. Mary has been dead and buried many years: she desired to be buried in the silk gown you sent her. Rickman, that you remember active and strong, now walks out supported by a servant maid 94 CHAELES LAMB [^Et. 40 and a stick. Martin Bumey is a very old man. The other day an aged woman knocked at my door, and pre- tended to my acquaintance. It was long before I had the most distant cognition of her; but at last, together, we made her out to be Louisa, the daughter of Mrs. Top- ham, formerly Mrs. Morton, who had been Mrs. Reynolds, formerly Mrs. Kenney, whose first husband was Holcroft, the dramatic writer of the last century. St. Paul's church is a heap of ruins; the Monument isn't half so high as you knew it, divers parts being successively taken down which the ravages of time had rendered dangerous; the horse at Charing Cross is gone, no one knows whither; and all this has taken place while you have been settling whether Ho-hing-tong should be spelt with a — , or a — . For aught I see you might almost as well remain where you are, and not come like a Struldbrug into a world where few were born when you went away. Scarce here and there one will be able to make out your face. All your opinions will be out of date, your jokes obsolete, your puns rejected with fastidiousness as wit of the last age. Your way of mathematics has already given way to a new method, which after all is I believe the old doctrine of Maclaurin, new-vamped up with what he borrowed of the negative quantity of fluxions from Euler. Poor Godwin! I was passing his tomb the other day in Cripplegate churchyard. There are some verses upon it written by Miss , which if I thought good enough I would send you. He was one of those who would have hailed your return, not with boisterous shouts and clam- ours, but with the complacent gratulations of a philoso- pher anxious to promote knowledge as leading to happi- ness; but his systems and his theories are ten feet deep in Cripplegate mould. Coleridge is just dead, having lived just long enough to close the eyes of Wordsworth, who paid the debt to Nature but a week or two before. Poor Col., but two days before he died he wrote to a bookseller, proposing an epic poem on the "Wanderings of Cain," in twenty-four books. It is said he has left behind him more than forty thousand treatises in criti- cism, metaphysics, and divinity, but few of them in a state of completion. They are now destined, perhaps, to wrap up spices. You see what mutations the busy hand ^t. 40] CHAKLES LAMB 95 of Time has produced, while you have consumed in fool- ish voluntary exile that time which might have gladdened your friends — benefited your country; but reproaches are useless. Gather up the wretched reliques, my friend, as fast as you can, and come to your old home. I will rub my eyes and try to recognise you. We will shake with- ered hands together, and talk of old things — of St. Mary's Church and the barber's opposite, where the young stu- dents in mathematics used to assemble. Poor Crips, that kept it afterwards, set up a fruiterer's shop in Trumping- ton Street, and for aught I know resides there still, for I saw the name up in the last journey I took there wit*h my sister just before she died. I suppose you heard that I had left the India House, and gone into the Fish- mongers' Almshouses over the bridge. I have a little cabin there, small and homely, but you shall be welcome to it. You like oysters, and to open them yourself; I'll get you some if you come in oyster time. Marshall, God- win's old friend, is still alive, and talks of the faces you used to make. Come as soon as you can. C. Lamb. To THE Same [correcting the "false nuncio"] Dec. 26th, 1815. Dear Manning, — Following your brother's example, I have just ventured one letter to Canton, and am now hazarding another (not exactly a duplicate) to St. Helena. The first was full of unprobable romantic fictions, fitting the remoteness of the mission it goes upon; in the present I mean to con- fine myself nearer to truth as you come nearer home. A correspondence with the uttermost parts of the earth necessarily involves in it some heat of fancy, it sets the brain agoing, but I can think on the half-way house tranquilly. Your friends then are not all dead or grown forgetful of you through old age, as that lying letter as- serted, anticipating rather what must happen if you kept tarrying on forever on the skirts of creation, as there seemed a danger of your doing; but they are all tolerably well and in full and perfect comprehension of what is 96 CHAKLES LAMB [JEt. 40 meant by Manning's coming- home again. Mrs. Kenny never lets her tongue rim riot more than in remembrances of you. Fanny expends herself in phrases that can only be justified by her romantic nature. Mary reserves a portion of your silk, not to be buried in, (as the false nuncio asserts) but to make up spick and span into a bran-new gown to wear when you come. I am the same as when you knew me, almost to a surfeiting identity. This very night I am going to leave ojf tobacco! Surely there must be some other world in which this unconquer- able purpose shall be realised. The soul hath not her generous aspirings implanted in her in vain. One that you knew, and I think the only one of those friends we knew much of in common, has died in earnest. Poor Priscilla! Her brother Robert is also dead, and several of the grown-up brothers and sisters, in the compass of a very few years. Death has not otherwise meddled much in families that I know. Not but he has his eye upon us, and is whetting his feathered dart every instant, as you see him truly pictured in that impressive moral pic- ture, "The good man at the hour of death." I have in trust to put in the post four letters from Diss, and one from Lynn, to St. Helena, which I hope will accompany this safe, and one from Lynn, and the one before spoken of from me, to Canton. But we all hope that these letters may be waste paper. I don't know why I have forborne writing so long; but it is such a forlorn hope to send a scrap of paper straggling over wide oceans! And yet I know, when you come home, I shall have you sitting be- fore me at our fireside just as if you had never been away. In such an instant does the return of a person dissipate all the weight of imaginary perplexity from dis- tance of time and space! I'll promise you good oysters. Cory is dead that kept the shop opposite St. Dunston's; but the tougher materials of the shop survive the perish- ing frame of its keeper. Oysters continue to flourish there under as good auspices. Poor Cory! But if you will absent yourself twenty years together, you must not expect numerically the same population to congratulate your return which wetted the sea-beach with their tears when you went away. Have you recovered the breathless stone-staring astonishment into which you must have ^t. 42] CHAKLES LAMB 97 been thrown upon learning at landing that an Emperor of France was living at St. Helena? What an event in the solitude of the seas! like finding a fish's bone at the top of Plinlimmon ; but these things are nothing in our western world. Novelties cease to aifect. Come and try what your presence can. God bless you. — Your old friend, C. Lamb. [^t. 42] To William Ayrton [a request for opera tickets] Accountant's Office, East India House^ Friday, Ap. 18, 1817. Dear A., — I am in your debt for a very delightful evening — I should say two — but Don Giovanni in particular was ex- quisite, and I am almost inclined to allow Music to be one of the Liberal Arts; which before I doubted. Could you let me have 3 Gallery Tickets — don't be startled — they shall positively be the last — or 2 or 1 — for the same, for to-morrow or Tuesday. They will be of no use for to-morrow if not put in the post this day addrest to me, Mr. Lamb, India House; if for any other evening, your usual blundering direction. No. 3 Middle Temple instead of 4 Inner Temple Lane will do. Yours, Ch. Lamb. To THE Same [another request] Temple, 12 May [1817]. My dear friend — Before I end — Have you any More orders for Don Giovanni To give Him that doth live your faithful Zany? Without raillery I mean Gallery ones. 98 CHAELES LAMB [^t. 42 For I am a person that shuns All ostentation And being at the top of the fashion. And seldom go to operas But in forma Pauperis. I go to the Play In a very economical sort of way. Rather to see Than be seen. Though I'm no ill sight Neither By candle light And in some kinds of weather. You might pit me For weight Against Kean. But in a grand tragic scene Pm nothing. It would create a kind of loathing To see me act Hamlet. There'd be many a damn let fly At my presumption If I should try Being a fellow of no gumption. By the way tell me candidly how you relish This which they call the lapidary Style? Opinions vary. The late Mr. Mellish Could never abide it. He thought it vile, And coxcombical. My friend the Poet Laureat Who is a great lawyer at Anything comical Was the first who tried it But Mellish could never abide it. But it signifies very little what Mellish said. Because he is dead. ^t. 42] CHAKLES LAMB 9^ For who can confute A body that's mute? Or who would fight With a senseless sprite? Or think of troubling An impenetrable old goblin That's dead and gone And stiff as a stone — To convince him with arguments pro and con As if he were some live logician Bred up at Merton or Mr. Hazlitt the Metaphysician — Ha! Mr. Ayrton — With all your rare tone — For tell me how should an apparition List to your call. Though you talk'd forever Ever so clever When his ear itself By which he must hear or not hear at all Is laid on the shelf ? Or put the case (for more grace) It were a female spectre — How could you expect her To take much gust In long speeches With her tongue as dry as dust In a sandy place Where no peaches Nor lemons nor limes nor oranges hang To drop on the drouth of an arid harangue, or quench With their sweet drench The fiery pangs which the worms inflict With their endless nibblings Like quibblings Which the corpse may dislike, but can ne'er contradicts Hal Mr. Ayrton I With all your rare tone — I am C. Lamb. 100 CHARLES LAMB [^t. 42 [^t. 42] To Charles Chambers [favourite dishes] 1 Sept., 1817. With regard to a John Dory, which you desire to be particularly informed about, — I honour the fish, but it is rather on account of Quin, who patronised it, and whose taste (of a dead man) I had as lieve go by as any body's, Apicius and Heliogabalus excepted — this latter started nightingales' brains and peacocks' tongues as a garnish. Else, in itself, and trusting to my own poor single judg- ment, it hath not the moist, mellow, oleaginous, gliding, smooth descent from the tongue to the palate, thence to the stomach, etc., as your Brighton turbot hath, which I take to be the most friendly and familiar flavour of any that swims — most genial and at home to the palate. Nor has it, on the other hand, that fine falling-off flakiness, that obsequious peeling off (as it were like a sea onion) which endears your cod's-head and shoulders to some appetites, that manly firmness, combined with a sort of womanish coming-in-pieces which the same cod's-head and shoulders hath — where the whole is easily separable, pliant to a knife or spoon, but each individual flahe pre- sents a pleasing resistance to the opposed tooth — you un- derstand me; these delicate subjects are necessarily ob- scure. But it has a third flavour of its own, totally distinct from cod or turbot, which it must be owned may to some not injudicious palates render it acceptable; but to my unpractised tooth it presented rather a crude river-fish- flavour, like your pike or carp, and perhaps, like them, should have been tamed and corrected by some laborious and well-chosen sauce. Still I always suspect a fish which requires so much of artificial settings-off. Your choicest relishes (like native loveliness) need not the foreign aid of ornament, but are, when unadorned (that is, with nothing but a little plain anchovy and a squeeze of lemon) are then adorned the most. However, I shall go to Bright- on again, next summer, and shall have an opportunity of correcting my judgment, if it is not sufficiently in- ^t. 42] CHAELES LAMB 101 formed. I can only say that when Nature was pleased to make the John Dory so notoriously deficient in out- ward graces (as, to be sure, he is the very rhinoceros of fishes, the ugliest dog that swims, except perhaps the sea satyr, which I never saw, but which they say is terri- ble) — when she formed him with so few external advan- tages, she might have bestowed a more elaborate finish on his parts internal, and have given him a relish, a sapor, to recommend him, as she made Pope a poet to make up for making him crooked. I am sorry to find that you have got a knack of saying things which are not sure to show your wit. If I had no wit, but what I must show at the expense of my virtue or my modesty, I had as lieve be as stupid as at the tea warehouse. Depend upon it, my dear Cham- bers, that an ounce of integrity at our death-bed will stand us in more avail than all the wit of Congreve or . For instance, you tell me a fine story about Truss, and his playing at Leamington, which I know to be false, because I have advice from Derby that he was whipt through the town on that very day you say he appeared in some character or other for robbing an old woman at church of a seal ring. And Dr. Parr has been two months dead. So it won't do to scatter these random stories about among people that know anything. Besides, your forte is not invention. It is judgment, particularly shown in your choice of dishes. We seem in that instance born under one star. I like you for liking hare. I esteem you for disrelishing minced veal. Liking is too cold a word: I love you for your noble attachment to the fat, unctuous juices of deer's flesh and the green unspeakable of turtle. I honour you for your endeavours to esteem and approve of my favourite, which I venture to recom- mend to you as substitute for hare, bullock's heart, and I am not offended that you cannot taste it with my palate. A true son of Epicurus should reserve one taste peculiar to himself. For a long time I kept the secret about the exceeding deliciousness of the marrow of boiled knuckle of veal, till my tongue weakly ran out in its praises, and now it is prostitute and common. But I have made one discovery which I will not impart till my dying scene is over — perhaps it will be my last mouthful 102 CHAELES LAMB [^t. 47 in this world: delicious thought, enough to sweeten (or rather make savoury) the hour of death. It is a little square bit about ^ this size, in or bone of a fried Fat I can't call neither altogeth- beautiful c o m - _^_^__^_^_ Nature must have made in i— — ^-^— Paradise, Park near the knuckle- joint of . it, nor lean er; it is that p ound which Venison, before she separated the two substances, the dry and the oleaginous, to punish sinful mankind: Adam ate them entire and inseparable, and this little taste of Eden in the knuckle-bone of a fried seems the only relique of a Paradisaical state. When I die, an exact description of its topography shall be left in a cupboard with a key, inscribed on which these words, "C. Lamb, dying, im- parts this to C. Chambers, as the only worthy depository of such a secret." You'll drop a tear. . . . [^t. 47] To "William Wordsworth [the loss of friends] March 20th, 1822. My dear Wordsworth, — A letter from you is very grateful; I have not seen a Kendal postmark so long! We are pretty well, save colds and rheumatics, and a certain deadness to everything, which I think I may date from poor John's loss, and an- other accident or two at the same time, that have made me almost bury myself at Dalston, where yet I see more faces than I could wish. Deaths overset one, and put one out long after the recent grief. Two or three have died within the last two twelvemonths, and so many parts of me have been numbed. One sees a picture, reads an anecdote, starts a casual fancy, and thinks to tell of it to this per- son in preference to every other : the person is gone whom it would have peculiarly suited. It won't do for another. Every departure destroys a class of sympathies. There's Captain Burney gone! What fun has whist now? What matters it what you kod, if you can no longer fancy him Mi. 47] CHAELES LAMB 103 looking over you ? One never hears anything, but the im- age of the particular person occurs with whom alone al- most you would care to share the intelligence. Thus one distributes oneself about; and now for so many parts of me I have lost the market. Common natures do not suffice me. Good people^ as they are called, will not serve. I want individuals. I am made up of queer points, and I want so many answering needles. The going away of friends does not make the remainder more precious. It takes so much from them as there was a common link. A. B. and C. make a party. A. dies. B. not only loses A. ; but all A.'s part in C. C. loses A.'s part in B., and so the alphabet sickens by subtraction of interchangeables. I express myself muddily, capite dolente. I have a dulling cold. My theory is to enjoy life, but my practice is against it. I grow ominously tired of official confinement. Thirty years have I served the Philistines, and my neck is not subdued to the yoke. You don't know how wearisome it is to breathe the air of four pent walls without relief, day after day, all the golden hours of the day between ten and four, without ease or interposition. Toedet me harum quotidianarum formarum, these pestilential clerk-faces al- ways in one's dish. Oh for a few years between the grave and the desk! — they are the same, save at the latter you are the outside machine. The foul enchanter* , ("letters four do form his name" — Busirane is his name in hell,) that has curtailed you of some domestic comforts, hath laid a heavier hand on me, not in present infliction, but in taking away the hope of enfranchisement. I dare not whisper to myself a pension on this side of absolute incapacitation and infirmity, till years have sucked me dry; — Otium cum indignitate. I had thought in a green old age (Oh t green thought !) to have retired to Bonder's End, (emblematic name, how beautiful!) in the Ware Road, there to have made up my accounts with heaven and the company, toddling about between it and Cheshunt; anon stretching, on some fine Izaak Walton morning, to Hoddes- ^n or Amwell, careless as a beggar ; but walking, walking ever till I fairly walked myself off my legs, dying walking! * Joseph Hume, M.P., who had attacked abuses in the East India Company (Lucas). t Andrew Marvell's The Garden. 104 CHARLES LAMB [^t. 47 The hope is gone. I sit like Philomel all day (but not singing), with my breast against this thorn of a desk, with the only hope that some pulmonary affliction may relieve me. Vide Lord Palmerston's report of the clerks in the War Office, (Debates in this morning's Times,) by which it appears, in twenty years as many clerks have been coughed and catarrhed out of it into their freer graves. Thank you for asking about the pictures. Milton hangs over my fire-side in Covent Garden, (when I am there,) the rest have been sold for an old song, wanting the elo- quent tongue that should have set them off! You have gratified me with liking my meeting with Dodd. For the Malvolio story — the thing is become in verity a sad task, and I eke it out with anything. If I could slip out of it I should be happy, but our chief-reputed assistants have forsaken us. The Opium-Eater crossed us once with a dazzling path, and hath as suddenly left us darkling; and, in short, I shall go on from dull to worse, because I cannot resist the booksellers' importunity — the old plea you know of authors, but I believe on my part sincere. Hartley I do not so often see: but I never see him in unwelcome hour. I thoroughly love and honour him. I send you a frozen epistle, but it is Winter and dead time of the year with me. May heaven keep something like Spring and Summer up with you, strengthen your eyes, and make mine a little lighter to encounter with them, as I hope they shall yet and again, before all are closed. Yours, with every kind remembrance, C.L. [^t. 47] To Mr. and Mrs. Bruton [thanks for a pig] Twelfth Day, '23. The pig was above my feeble praise. It was a dear pigmy. There was some contention as to who should have the ears; but, in spite of his obstinacy, (deaf as these little creatures are to advice,) I contrived to get at one of them. It came in boots too, which I took as a favour. Gener- ally these pretty toes, pretty toes I are missing; but I sup- pose he wore them to look taller. ^t. 47] CHARLES LAMB 105 He must have been the least of his race. His little- foots would have gone into the silver slipper. I take him to have been a Chinese and a female. If Evelyn could have seen him, he would never have farrowed two such prodigious volumes; seeing how much good can be contained in — how small a compass ! He crackled delicately. I left a blank at the top of my letter, not being de- termined which to address it to: so farmer and farmer's wife will please to divide our thanks. May your granaries be full, and your rats empty, and your chickens plump, and your envious neighbours lean, and your labourers busy,. and you as idle and as happy as the day is long ! Vive I'Agriculture! How do you make your pigs so little? They are vastly engaging at the age: I was so myself. Now I am a disagreeable old ho