LIBRARY 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 SANTA BARBARA 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 MR. JOHN A. BERGER 
 
 I
 
 THE 
 
 LIFE, LETTERS AND WRITINGS 
 
 CHARLES LAMB.
 
 THE 
 
 Life, Letters and Writings 
 
 CHARLES LAMB. 
 
 EDITED, 
 
 WITH NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS, 
 
 PERCY FITZGERALD, M.A., F.S.A. 
 
 IN SIX VOLUMES. 
 Vol. 1 1. 
 
 lanUon : 
 E. MOXON AND CO., i, AMEN CORNER, 
 
 PATERNOSTER ROW. 
 1876.
 
 LONDON : 
 SWIFT AND CO., NEWTON STREET, HIGH HOLBORN, W.C.
 
 CONTENTS OF VOL. II. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CoRRESPONDEMCE WITH CoLERiDGE — coritinued 1 
 
 Correspondence with Southey 26 
 
 Correspondence with the Wordsworths 68 
 
 Correspondence wjth Manning IS9 
 
 Correspondence with the Hazutts 252 
 
 Correspondence with Barton 278 
 
 Correspondence with Hone 363 
 
 Correspondence with Procter 375 
 
 Correspondence with Cary 3S6 
 
 Correspondence with Moxon 395 
 
 Correspondence with the Gilmans 412 
 
 Correspondence with Wilson 421 
 
 Correspondence with Miss Hutchinson 43°
 
 Correspondence with S. T. Coleridge. — 
 (^continued.) 
 
 Letter XLVIII.] 
 
 May 27th, 1803. 
 
 My dear Coleridge, — The date of my last was one day 
 prior to the receipt of your letter, full of foul omens. 
 I explain this lest you should have thought mine 
 too light a reply to such a sad matter. I seriously 
 hope by this time you have given up all thoughts of 
 journeying to the green Islands of the Bless'd, — 
 (voyages in time of war are very precarious) — or at 
 least, that you will take them in your way to the 
 Azores. Pray be careful of this letter till it has done 
 its duty, for it is to inform you that I have booked off 
 your watch, (laid in cotton like an untimely fruit,) 
 and with it Condillac,and all other booksof yours which 
 were left here. These will set out on Monday next, 
 the 2gth May, by Kendal waggon, from White Horse, 
 Cripplegate. You will make seasonable inquiries, for 
 a watch mayn't come your way again in a hurry. I 
 have been repeatedly after Tobin, and now hear that 
 he is in the country, not to return till the middle of 
 June. I will take care and see him with the earliest. 
 But cannot you write pathetically to him, enforcing a 
 speeding mission of your books for literary purposes.? 
 
 VOL II. B
 
 2 CORRESPONDENCE WITH COLERIDGE. 
 
 He is too good a retainer to Literature to let her in- 
 terests suffer through his default. And why, in the 
 name of Beelzebub, are your books to travel from 
 Barnard's Inn to the Temple, and thence circuitously 
 to Cripplegate, when their business is to take a short 
 cut down Holborn Hill, up Snow ditto, on to Wood 
 Street, &c. ? The former mode seems a sad super- 
 stitious subdivision of labour. Well ! the *' Man of 
 Ross " is to stand ; Longman begs for it ; the printer 
 stands with a wet sheet in one hand, and a useless 
 Pica in the other, in tears, pleading for it ; I relent. 
 Besides, it was a Salutation poem, and has the mark 
 of the beast "Tobacco " upon it. Thus much I have 
 done ; I have swept off the lines about widows and 
 orphans in thQ second edition, which (if you remem- 
 ber) you most awkwardly and illogically caused to be 
 inserted between two Ifs, to the great breach and 
 disunion of said Ifs, which now meet again, (as in 
 the first edition,) like two clever lawyers arguing a 
 case. Another reason for subtracting the pathos 
 was, that the " Man of Ross " is too familiar to need 
 telling what he did, especially in worse lines than 
 Pope told it, and it now stands simply as " Reflec- 
 tions at an Inn about a known Character," and suck- 
 ing an old story into an accommodation with present 
 feelings. Here is no breaking spears with Pope, but 
 a new, independent, and really a very pretty poem. 
 In fact 'tis as I used to admire it in the first volume, 
 and I have even dared to restore 
 
 " If neath tliis roof thy ivine cheer' d moments pass/' 
 
 for 
 
 " Beneath this roof if thy cheer'd moments pass." 
 
 '' Cheer'd" is a sad general word, " wine-cheer'' d'' I'm 
 sure you'd give me, if I had a speaking trumpet to
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH COLERIDGE. 3 
 
 sound to you 300 miles. But I am your factotum ; 
 and that, (save in this instance, which is a single 
 case, and I can't get at you,) shall be next to a fac- 
 nihil — at most a facsimile. I have ordered " Imita- 
 tion of Spenser" to be restored on Wordsworth's 
 authority; and now, all that you will miss will be 
 " Flicker and Flicker's Wife," " The Thimble," 
 " Breathe dear harmonist,'" and / believe, "The Child 
 that was fed with Manna." Another volume will 
 clear off all your Anthologic Morning-Postian Epis- 
 tolary Miscellanies ; but pray don't put " Christabel " 
 therein ; don't let that sweet maid come forth attended 
 with Lady Holland's mob at her heels. Let there be 
 a separate volume of Tales, Choice Tales, " Ancient 
 Mariners," &c. A word of your health will be richly 
 acceptable. C. Lamb. 
 
 Letter XLIX.] June 7th, 1809. 
 
 Dear Coleridge, — I congratulate you on the appear- 
 ance of the Friend} Your first Number promises 
 well, and I have no doubt the succeeding Numbers 
 will fulfil the promise. I had a kind letter from you 
 some time since, which I have left unanswered. I 
 am also obliged to you, I believe, for a review in the 
 Annual, am I not ? The Monthly Review sneers at 
 me, and asks " if Comus is not good enough for 
 Mr. Lamb ?" because I have said no good serious 
 
 ' The Friend ran to twenty-seven numbers, and was afterwards 
 revised and included in tlie author's works. — H, 
 
 B 2
 
 4 CORRESPONDENCE WITH COLERIDGE. 
 
 dramas have been written since the death of Charles 
 the First, except Samson Agonistes. So because they 
 do not know, or won't remember, that Comus was 
 Avritten long before, I am to be set down as an under- 
 valuer of Milton ! O Coleridge, do kill those reviews, 
 01 they will kill us ; kill all we like. Be a friend to 
 all else, but their foe. I have been turned out of my 
 chambers in the Temple by a landlord who wanted 
 them for himself, but I have got other at No. 4, Inner 
 Temple Lane, far more commodious and roomy. I 
 have two rooms on the third floor and five rooms 
 above, with an inner staircase to myself, and all new 
 painted, &c., and all for £30 a year ! I came into 
 them on Saturday week ; and on Monday following 
 Mary was taken ill with the fatigue of moving ; and 
 affected, I believe, by the novelty of the home she 
 could not sleep, and I am left alone with a maid quite 
 a stranger to me, and she has a month or two's sad 
 distraction to go through. What sad large pieces it 
 cuts out of life ! — out of her life, who is getting rather 
 old ; and we may not have many years to live together. 
 I am weaker, and bear it worse than I ever did. 
 But I hope we shall be comfortable by-and-by. The 
 rooms are delicious, and the best look backwards into 
 Hare Court, where there is a pump always going. 
 Just now it is dry. Hare Court trees come in at the 
 window, so that 'tis like living in a garden. I try to 
 persuade myself it is much pleasanter than Mitre 
 Court ; but, alas ! the household gods are slow to 
 come in a new mansion. They are in their infancy 
 to me ; I do not feel them yet ; no hearth has blazed 
 to them yet. \How I hate and dread new places !J 
 
 I was very glad to see Wordsworth's book adver- 
 tised : I am to have it to-morrow lent me, and if
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH COLERIDGE. 3 
 
 Wordsworth don't send me an order for one upon 
 Longman, I will buy it. It is greatly extolled and 
 liked by all who have seen it. Let me hear from some 
 of you, for I am desolate. I shall have to send you, 
 in a week or two, two volumes of Juvenile Poetry, 
 done by Mary and me within the last six months, and 
 that tale in prose which Wordsworth so much liked, 
 which was published at Christmas, with nine others, 
 by us, and has reached a second edition. There's for 
 you ! We have almost worked ourselves out of child's 
 work, and I don't know what to do. Sometimes I 
 think of a drama, but I have no head for play-making; 
 I can do the dialogue, and that's all. I am quite 
 aground for a plan ; but I must do something for 
 money. Not that I have immediate wants, but I have 
 prospective ones. O money, money, how blindly thou 
 hast been worshipped, and how stupidly abused ! 
 Thou art health and liberty and strength ; and he 
 that has thee may rattle his pockets at the Devil. 
 
 Nevertheless, do not understand by this that I have 
 not quite enough for my occasions for a year or two to 
 come. While I think on it, Coleridge, I fetch'd away 
 my books which you had at the Courier Office, and 
 found all but a third volume of the old plays, con- 
 taining the White Devil, Green's Tu Quoque, and the 
 Honest Whore, perhaps the most valuable volume of 
 them all — that I could not find. Pray, if you can, 
 remember what you did with it, or where you took it 
 out with you a walking perhaps ; send me word, for, 
 to use the old plea, it spoils a set. I found two other 
 volumes (you had three), the Arcadia, and Daniel^ 
 enriched with manuscript notes. I wish every book 
 I have were so noted. They have thoroughly con- 
 verted me to relish Dcviicl, or to say I relish him, for
 
 6 CORRESPONDENCE WITH COLERIDGE. 
 
 after all, I believe I did relish him. You well call him 
 sober-minded. Your notes are excellent. Perhaps 
 you've forgot them. I have read a review in the 
 Quarterly, by Southey, on the Missionaries, which is 
 most masterly. I only grudge its being there. It is 
 quite beautiful. Do remember my Dodsley ; and, 
 pray, do write, or let some of you write. Clarkson 
 tells me you are in a smoky house. Have you cured 
 it ? It is hard to cure any thing of smoking. Our 
 little poems are but humble, but they have no name. 
 You must read them, remembering they were task 
 work ; and perhaps you will admire the number of 
 subjects, all of children, picked out by an old Bachelor 
 and an old Maid. Many parents would not have 
 found so many. Have you read Cadehs ? It has 
 reached eight editions in so many weeks, yet literally 
 it is one of the very poorest sort of common novels, 
 with the draw-back of dull religion in it. Had the 
 religion been high and flavoured, it would have been 
 something. I borrowed this Ccelebs in Search of a 
 Wife, of a very careful, neat lady, and returned it with 
 this stuff written in the beginning: — 
 
 "If ever I marry a wife 
 
 " I'll marry a landlord's daughter, 
 " For then I may sit in the bar, 
 
 " And drink cold brandy and water." 
 
 I don't expect you can find time from your Friend 
 to write to me much ; but write something, for there 
 has been a long silence. You knowHolcroft is dead. 
 Godwin is well. He has written a very pretty, absurd 
 book about sepulchres. He was affronted because I 
 told him it was better than Hervey, but not so good 
 as Sir T. Browne. This letter is all about books :
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH COLERIDGE. 7 
 
 but my head aches, and I hardly know what I write , 
 but I could not let the Friend pass without a con- 
 gratulatory epistle. I won't criticise till it comes to a 
 volume. Tell me how I shall send my packet to you ? 
 — by what conveyance ? — by Longman, Short-man, 
 or how ? Give my kindest remembrances to 
 Wordsworth. Tell him he must give me a book. 
 My kind love to Mrs. W. and to Dorothy separately 
 and conjointly. I wish you could all come and see 
 me in my new rooms. God bless you all. 
 
 C. L. 
 
 Letter L.j Monday, Oct. 30th, 1809. 
 
 Dear Coleridge, — I have but this moment received 
 your letter, dated the gth instant, having just come 
 off a journey from Wiltshire, where I have been with 
 Mary on a visit to Hazlitt. The journey has been of 
 infinite service to her. We have had nothing but 
 sunshiny days, and daily walks from eight to twenty 
 miles a-day ; have seen Wilton, Salisbury, Stone- 
 henge, &c. Her illness lasted but six weeks ; it left 
 her weak, but the country has made us whole. We 
 came back to our Hogarth Room. I have made 
 several acquisitions since you saw them, — and found 
 Nos. 8, g, 10 of the Friend. The account of Luther 
 in the Warteburg is as fine as any thing I ever read.^ 
 
 1 The Warteburg is a Castle, standing on a lofty rock, about two 
 miles from the city of Eisenach, in which Luther was confined, under 
 the friendly arrest of the Elector of Saxony, after Charles V. had pro- 
 nounced against him the Ban in the Imperial Diet ; where he composed 
 some of his greatest works, and translated the New Testament ; and 
 where he is recorded as engaged in the personal conflict with the Prince
 
 8 CORRESPONDENCE WITH COLERIDGE. 
 
 God forbid that a man who has such things to say 
 should be silenced for want of ;;^ioo. This Custom- 
 and-Duty Age would have made the Preacher on the 
 Mount take out a licence, and St. Paul's Epistles 
 would not have been missible without a stamp. O 
 that you may find means to go on ! But alas ! where 
 is Sir G. Beaumont ? — Sotheby ? What is become 
 
 of Darkness, of which the vestiges are still shown in a black stain on 
 the wall, from the inkstand hurled at the Enemy. In the Essay referred 
 to, Coleridge accounts for the story, depicting the state of the great 
 prisoner's mind in most vivid colours, and then presenting the follow- 
 ing picture, vi'hich so nobly justifies Lamb's eulogy, that I venture to 
 gratify myself by inserting it here : — 
 
 " Methinks I see him sitting, the heroic student, in his chamber in 
 the Warteburg, with his midnight lamp before him, seen by the late 
 traveller in the distant plain of Blschofsroda, as a star on the moun- 
 tain ! Below it lies the Hebrew Bible open, on which he gazes ; his 
 brow pressing on his palm, brooding over some obscure text, which he 
 desires to make plain to the simple boor and to the humble artizan, and 
 to transfer its whole force into their own natural and living tongue. 
 And he himself does not understand it! Thick darkness lies on the 
 original text; he counts the letters, he calls up the roots of each sepa- 
 rate word, and questions them as the familiar Spirits of an Oracle. In 
 vain ; thick darkness continues to cover it ; not a ray of meaning 
 dawns through it. With sullen and angry hope he reaches for the 
 Vulgate, his old and sworn enemy, the treacherous confederate of the 
 Roman Antichrist, which he so gladly, when he can, rebukes for idola 
 trous falsehood, that had dared place 
 
 ' Within the sanctuary itself their shrines, 
 ' Abominations — ' 
 Now (O thought of humiliation !) he must entreat its aid. See! there 
 has the sly spirit of apostacy worked in a phrase, wliich favours the 
 doctrine of purgatory, the intercession of saints, or the efficacy of 
 prayers for the dead ; and what is worst of all, the interpretation is 
 plausible. The original Hebrew might be forced into this meaning ; 
 and no other meaning seems to lie in it, none to hover above it in the 
 heights of allegory, none to lurk beneath it even in the depths of 
 Cabala ! This is tlie work of the Tempter ; it is a cloud of darkness 
 conjured up I)etween the truth of the sacred letters and the eyes of his 
 understantiing, by the malice of the Evil One, and for a trial of his 
 faith ! Must he then at length confess, must he subscribe the name of 
 Luther to an exposition which consecrates a weapon for the hand of 
 the idolatrous Hierarchy.' Never! Never!
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH COLERIDGE. g 
 
 of the rich Auditors in Albemarle Street ? Your 
 letter has saddened me. 
 
 I am so tired with my journey, being up all night, 
 that I have neither things nor words in my power. I 
 believe I expressed my admiration of the pamphlet. 
 Its power over me was like that which Milton's 
 pamphlets must have had on his contemporaries. 
 
 " There still remains one auxiliary in reserve, the translation of the 
 Seventy. The Alexandrine Greeks, anterior to the Church itself, could 
 intend no supjiort to its corruptions. The Septuagint will have pro- 
 faned the Author of Truth with no incense for the nostrils of the uni- 
 versal Bishop to snuff up. And here again his hopes are baffled ! 
 Exactly at this perplexed passage had the Greek translator given his 
 understanding a holiday, and made his pen supply its place. O 
 honoured Luther ! as easily mightest thou convert the whole City of 
 Rome, with the Pope and the conclave of Cardinals inclusively, as 
 strike a spark of light from the words, and nothing but ivords, of the 
 Alexandrine version. Disappointed, despondent, enraged, ceasing to 
 think, yet continuing his brain on the stretch in solicitation of a 
 thought; and gradually giving himself up to angry fancies, to recollec- 
 tions of past persecutions, to uneasy fears, and inward defiances, and 
 floating images of the Evil Being, their supposed personal author, he 
 sinks, without perceiving it, into a trance of slumber ; during which his 
 brain retains its waking energies, excepting that what would have 
 been mere thoughts before, now (the action and counterweight of his 
 senses and of tlieir impressions being withdrawn) shape and condense 
 themselves into things, into realities ! Repeatedly half-wakening, and 
 his eye-lids as often reclosing, the objects which really surround him 
 form the place and scenery of his dream. All at once he sees the arch- 
 fiend coming forth on the wall of the room, from the very spot, per- 
 haps, on which his eyes had been fixed vacantly, during the perplexed 
 moments of his former meditation. The inkstand which he had at the 
 same time been using, becomes associated with it ; and in that struggle 
 of rage, which in these distempered dreams almost constantly precedes 
 the helpless terror by the pain of which we are finally awakened, he 
 imagines that he hurls it at the intruder ; or not improbably in the 
 first instant of awakening, while yet both his imagination and his eyes 
 are possessed by the dream, he actually hurls it. Some weeks after 
 perhaps, during which interval he had often mused on the incident, 
 undetermined whether to deem it a visitation of Satan to him in the 
 body or out of the body, he discovers for the first time the dark spot 
 on his wall, and receives it as a sign and pledge vouchsafed to him of 
 the event having actually taken place." — T.
 
 10 CORRESPONDENCE WITH COLERIDGE. 
 
 who were tuned to them. What a piece of prose ! 
 Do you hear if it is read at all ? I am out of the 
 world of readers. I hate all that do read, for they 
 read nothing but reviews and new books. I gather 
 jnyself up unto the old things. 
 
 I have put up shelves. You never saw a book-case 
 in more true harmony with the contents than what 
 I've nailed up in a room, which, though new, has 
 more aptitudes for growing old than you shall often 
 see — as one sometimes gets a friend in the middle of 
 life, who becomes an old friend in a short time. My 
 rooms are luxurious; one is for prints and one for 
 books ; a Summer and a Winter parlour. When 
 shall I ever see you in them ? 
 
 C. L. 
 
 Letter LI.] 13th Aug., 1814. 
 
 Dear Resuscitate, — There comes to you by the 
 vehicle from Lad Lane this day a volume of German ; 
 what it is I cannot justly say, the characters of those 
 northern nations having been always singularly harsh 
 and unpleasant to me. It is a contribution of Dr. 
 Southey's towards your wants, and you would have 
 had it sooner but for an odd accident. I wrote 
 for it three days ago, and the Doctor, as he 
 thought, sent it me. A book of like exterior he 
 did send, but being disclosed, how far unlike ! It 
 was the Well-bred Scholar, — a book with which it 
 seems the Doctor laudably fills up those hours which 
 he can steal from his medical avocations. Chester- 
 field, Blair, Beattie, portions from the Life of Savage, 
 make up a prettyish system of morality and the belles-
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH COLERIDGE. II 
 
 lettres, which Mr. Mylius, a schoolmaster, has pro- 
 perly brought together, and calls the collection by the 
 denomination above mentioned. The Doctor ha^ no 
 sooner discovered his error, than he dispatched man 
 and horse to rectify the mistake, and with a pretty 
 kind of ingenuous modesty in his note, seemeth to 
 deny any knowledge of the Well-bred Scholar ; false 
 modesty surely, and a blush misplaced : for what 
 more pleasing than the consideration of professional 
 austerity thus relaxing, thus improving ! But so, 
 when a child, I remember blushing, being caught on 
 my knees to my Maker, or doing otherwise some 
 pious and praiseworthy action : now I rather love 
 such things to be seen. Henry Crabb Robinson 
 is out upon h-is circuit, and his books are inaccessible 
 without his leave and key. He is attending the 
 Norfolk Circuit, — a short term, but to him, as to 
 many young lawyers, a long vacation, suf&ciently 
 dreary.^ I thought I could do no better than trans- 
 mit to him, not extracts, but your very letter itself, 
 than which I think I never read any thing more 
 moving, more pathetic, or more conducive to the pur- 
 pose of persuasion. The Crab is a sour Crab if it 
 does not sweeten him. I think it would draw another 
 third volume of Dodsley out of me ; but you say you 
 don't want any English books. Perhaps, after all, 
 that's as well ; one's romantic credulity is for ever 
 misleading one into misplaced acts of foolery. Crab 
 might have answered by this time : his juices take a 
 long time supplying, but they'll run at last — I know 
 
 ' A mistake of Lamb's, at which the excellent person referred to 
 may smile, now that he has retired from his profession , and has no 
 business but the offices of kindness. — T.
 
 12 CORRESPONDENCE WITH COLERIDGE. 
 
 they will — pure golden pippin. A fearful rumour has 
 since reached me that the Crab is on the eve of setting 
 out for France. If he is in England your letter will 
 reach him, and I flatter myself a touch of the per- 
 suasive of my own, which accompanies it, will not be 
 thrown away ; if it be, he is a sloe, and no true- 
 hearted Crab, and there's an end. For that life of the 
 German conjuror which you speak of, Colerus de Vita 
 Doctoris vix-Intelligibilis, I perfectly remember the 
 last evening we spent with Mrs. Morgan and Miss 
 Brent, in London Street, — (by that token we had raw 
 rabbits for supper, and Miss B. prevailed upon me to 
 take a glass of brandy and water, which is not my 
 habit,) — I perfectly remember reading portions of that 
 life in their parlour, and I think it must be among 
 their packages. It was the very last evening we 
 were at that house. What is gone of that frank- 
 hearted circle, Morgan, and his cos-lettuces ? He ate 
 walnuts better than any man I ever knew. Friend- 
 ships in these parts stagnate. 
 
 ****** 
 I am going to eat turbot, turtle, venison, marrow 
 pudding, — cold punch, claret, Madeira, — at our 
 annual feast, at half-past four this day. They keep 
 bothering me, (I'm at office,) and my ideas are con- 
 fused. Let me know if I can be of any service as to 
 books. God forbid the Architectonican should be 
 sacrificed to a foolish scruple of some book proprietor, 
 as if books did not belong with the highest propriety 
 to those that understand 'em best. 
 
 C. Lamb.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH COLERIDGE. 13 
 
 Letter LII.] 26th August, 1814, 
 
 Let the hungry soul rejoice, there is corn in Egypt. 
 Whatever thou hast been told to the contrary by 
 designing friends, who perhaps inquired carelessl}'^, 
 or did not inquire at all, in hope of saving their 
 money, there is a stock of " Remorse " on hand, 
 enough, as Pople conjectures, for seven years' con- 
 sumption ; judging from experience of the last two 
 years. Methinks it makes for the benefit of sound 
 literature, that the best books do not always go off 
 best. Inquire in seven years' time for the Rokebys 
 and the Laras, and where shall they be found ? — 
 fluttering fragmentally in some thread-paper ; whereas 
 thy Wallenstein and thy Remorse are safe on Long- 
 man's or Pople's shelves, as in some Bodleian ; there 
 they shall remain ; no need of a chain to hold them 
 fast — perhaps for ages — tall copies — and people shan't 
 run about hunting for them as in old Ezra's 
 shrievalty they did for a Bible, almost without effect 
 till the great-great-grand-niece (by the mother's side) 
 of Jeremiah or Ezekiel (which was it?) remembered 
 something of a book, with odd reading in it, that 
 used to lie in the green closet in her aunt Judith's 
 bedchamber. 
 
 Thy caterer, Price, was at Hamburgh when last 
 Pople heard of him, laying up for thee like some 
 miserly old father for his generous-hearted son to 
 squander. 
 
 Mr. Charles Aders, whose books also pant for that 
 free circulation which thy custody is sure to give 
 them, is to be heard of at his kinsmen, Messrs. 
 Jameson and Aders, No. 7, Laurence Pountney 
 Lane, London, according to the information which
 
 14 CORRESPONDENCE WITH COLERIDGE. 
 
 Crabius with his parting breath left me. Crabius is 
 gone to Paris. I prophesy he and the Parisians will 
 part with mutual contempt. His head has a twist 
 Allemagne, like thine, dear mystic. 
 
 I have been reading Madame Stael on Germany : 
 / an impudent clever woman. But if \Fatis1/ be no 
 better than in her abstract of it, I counsel thee to let 
 it alone. How canst thou translate the language of 
 cat-monkeys ? Fie on such fantasies 1 But I will 
 not forget to look for Proclus. It is a kind of book 
 which, when we meet with it, we shut up faster than 
 we opened it. Yet I have some bastard kind of re- 
 collection that somewhere, sometime ago, upon some 
 stall or other, I saw it. It was either that or Plotinus, 
 or Saint Augustine's City of God. So little do some 
 folks value, what to others, sc. to you, " well used," 
 had been the " Pledge of Immortality." Bishop 
 Bruno I never touched upon. Stuffing too good for 
 the brains of such a " Hare " as thou describest. 
 May it burst his pericranium, as the gobbets of fat 
 and turpentine (a nasty thought of the seer) did that 
 old dragon in the Apocrypha ! May he go mad in 
 trying to understand his author ! May he lend the 
 third volume of him before he has quite translated 
 the second, to a friend who shall lose it, and so spoil 
 the publication, and may his friend find it and send it 
 him just as thou or some such less dilatory spirit 
 shall have announced the whole for the press. So 
 I think I have answered all thy questions except 
 about Morgan's cos-lettuce. The first personal pecu- 
 liarity I ever observed of him (all worthy souls are 
 subject to 'em) was a particular kind of rabbit-like 
 delight in munching salads with oil without vinegar 
 after dinner — a steady contemplative browsing on
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH COLERIDGE. 15 
 
 them — didst never take note of it ? Canst think of 
 any other queries in the solution of which I can give 
 thee satisfaction ? Do you want any books that I 
 can procure for you ? Old Jimmy Boyer is dead at 
 last. Trollope has got his living, worth ;^iooo 
 a-year net. See, thou sluggard, thou heretic- 
 sluggard, what mightest thou not have arrived at ! 
 Lay thy animosity against Jimmy in the grave. Do 
 not entail it on thy posterity. 
 
 Charles Lamb. 
 
 Letter LIIL] Dec. 24th, 1818, 
 
 My dear Coleridge, — I have been in a state of in- 
 cessant hurry ever since the receipt of your ticket. 
 It found me incapable of attending you, it being the 
 night of Kenney's new comedy, which has utterly 
 failed. You know my local aptitudes at such a time ; 
 I have been a thorough rendezvous for all consulta- 
 tions. My head begins to clear up a little, but it has 
 had bells in it. Thank you kindly for your ticket, 
 though the mournful prognostic which accompanies 
 it certainly renders its permanent pretensions less 
 marketable ; but I trust to hear many a course yet. 
 You excepted Christmas week, by which I understood 
 next week ; I thought Christmas week was that which 
 Christmas Sunday ushered in. We are sorry it never 
 lies in your way to come to us ; but, dear Mahomet, 
 we will come to you. Will it be convenient to all the 
 good people at Highgate, if we take a stage up, not 
 next Sunday, but the following, viz., 3rd January, 
 181 9? Shall we be too late to catch a skirt of the 
 old out-goer ? How the years crumble from under
 
 l6 CORRESPONDENCE WITH COLERIDGE. 
 
 US ! We shall hope to see you before then ; but. if 
 not, let us know if tJieri will be convenient. Can we 
 secure a coach home ? 
 
 Believe me ever yours, 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 
 I have but one holiday, which is Christmas Day 
 itself nakedly : no pretty garnish and fringes of St. 
 John's Day, Holy Innocents, &c., that used to bestud 
 it all around in the calendar. Improbe labor ! I 
 write six^hours every day in this candle-light fog-den 
 at Leadenhall. "^ 
 
 Letter LIV.] January 10, 1820. 
 
 Dear Coleridge, — A letter written in the blood of 
 your poor friend would indeed be of a nature to startle 
 you; but this is nought but harmless red ink, or, as 
 the witty mercantile phrase hath it, clerk's blood. 
 Hang 'em ! my brain, skin, flesh, bone, carcase, soul, 
 time is all theirs. The Royal Exchange, Gresham's 
 Folly, hath me body and spirit. I admire some of 
 Lloyd's lines on you, and I admire your postponing 
 reading them. He is a sad tattler; but this is under 
 the rose. Twenty years ago he estranged one friend 
 from me quite, whom I have been regretting, but 
 never could regain since. He almost alienated you 
 also from me, or me from you, I don't know which ; 
 but that breach is closed. The " dreary sea " is filled 
 up. He has lately been at work " telling again," as 
 they call it, a most gratuitous piece of mischief, and
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH COLERIDGE. 17 
 
 has caused a coolness betwixt me and (not a friend 
 exactly, but) an intimate acquaintance. I suspect 
 also he saps Manning's faith in me, who am to 
 Manning more than an acquaintance. Still I like his 
 writing verses about you. Will your kind host and 
 hostess give us a dinner next Sunday ; and, better 
 still, not expect us if the weather is very bad. Why 
 you should refuse twenty guineas per sheet for Black- 
 wood's, or any other magazine, passes my poor com- 
 prehension. But, as Strap says, " you know best." 
 I have no quarrel with you about praeprandial avoca- 
 tions ; so don't imagine one. That Manchester 
 sonnet^ I think very likely is Capel Lofft's. Another 
 sonnet appeared with the same initials in the same 
 paper, which turned out to be Procter's. What do 
 the rascals mean ? Am I to have the fathering of 
 what idle rhymes every beggarly poetaster pours 
 forth 1 Who put your marine sonnet " about 
 Brownie" into Blackwood ! I did not. So no more, 
 till we meet. 
 
 Ever yours, C. L. 
 
 Letter LV.] March 9th, 1822. 
 
 Dear Coleridge, — It gives me great satisfaction to 
 hear that the pig turned out so well : they are interest- 
 ing creatures at a certain age. What a pity such 
 buds should blow out into the maturity of rank bacon ! 
 You had all some of the crackling and brain sauce. 
 Did you remember to rub it with butter, and gently 
 
 ' A sonnet in Black'woocts Magazine, dated " Manchester," and 
 signed C. L.— T. 
 
 VOL II. C
 
 l8 CORRESPONDENCE WITH COLERIDGE, / 
 
 dredge it a little, just before the crisis ? Did the eyes 
 come away kindly with no CEdipean avulsion ? Was 
 the crackling the colour of the ripe pomegranate ? Had 
 you no complement of boiled neck of mutton before it, 
 to blunt the edge of delicate desire ? Did you flesh 
 maiden teeth in it ? Not that / sent the pig, or can 
 form the remotest guess what part Owen could play in 
 the business. I never knew him give any thing away 
 in my life. He would not begin with strangers. I sus- 
 pect the pig, after all, was meant for me ; but at the 
 unlucky juncture of time being absent, the present 
 somehow went round to Highgate. To confess an 
 honest truth, a pig is one of those things which I could 
 never think of sending away. Teal, widgeon, snipes, 
 barn-door fowls, ducks, geese — your tame villatic 
 things — Welsh mutton, collars of brawn, sturgeon, 
 fresh or pickled, your potted char, Swiss cheeses, 
 French pies, early grapes, muscadines, I impart as 
 freely unto my friends as to myself. They are but 
 self-extended ; but pardon me if I stop somewhere. 
 Where the fine feeling of benevolence giveth a higher 
 smack than the sensual rarity, there my friends (or 
 any good man) may command me ; but pigs are pigs, 
 and I myself therein am nearest to myself. Nay, I 
 should think it an affront, an undervaluing done to 
 Nature who bestowed such a boon upon me, if in a 
 churlish mood I parted with the precious gift. One 
 of the bitterest pangs of remorse I ever felt was when 
 a child — when my kind old aunt had strained her 
 pocket-strings to bestow a sixpenny whole plum-cake 
 upon me. In my way home through the Borough I 
 met a venerable old man, not a mendicant, but there- 
 abouts ; a look-beggar, not a verbal petitionist ; and 
 inthe coxcombry of taugh t charity I gave away the
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH COLERIDGE. i9 
 
 cake to him. I walked on a little in all the pride of 
 an Evangelical peacock, when of a sudden my old 
 aunt's kindness crossed me ; the sum it was to her ; 
 the pleasure she had a right to expect that I — not the 
 old imposter — should take in eating her cake ; the 
 ingratitude by which, under the colour of a Christian 
 virtue, I had frustrated her cherished purpose. I 
 sobbed, wept, and took it to heart so grievously, that 
 I think I never suffered the like ; and I was right. 
 It was a piece of unfeeling hypocrisy, and it proved 
 a lesson to me ever after. The cake has long been 
 masticated, consigned to the dunghill with the ashes 
 of that unseasonable pauper. 
 
 But when Providence, who is better to us all than 
 our aunts, gives me a pig, remembering my tempta- 
 tion and my fall, I shall endeavour to act towards it 
 more in the spirit of the donor's purpose. 
 
 Yours (short of pig) to command in every thing. 
 
 C. L. 
 
 Letter LVI.] 1824. 
 
 Dear Coleridge, — Why will you make your visits, 
 which should give pleasure, matter of regret to your 
 friends ? You never com.e but you take away some 
 folio, that is part of my existence. With a great deal 
 of difficulty I was made to comprehend the extent of 
 my loss. My maid, Becky, brought me a dirty bit ot 
 paper, which contained her description of some book 
 which Mr. Coleridge had taken away. It was 
 " Luster's Tables," which, for some time, I could not 
 make out. " What ! has he carried away any of the 
 tables, Becky ?" " No, it wasn't any tables, but it
 
 20 CORRESPONDENCE WITH COLERIDGE. 
 
 was a book that he called Luster's Tables." I was 
 obliged to search personally among my shelves, and 
 a huge fissure suddenly disclosed to me the true 
 nature of the damage I had sustained. That book, 
 Coleridge, you should not have taken away, for it is 
 not mine ; it is the property of a friend, who does not 
 know its value, nor indeed have I been very sedulous 
 in explaining to him the estimate of it ; but was 
 rather contented in giving a sort of corroboration to a 
 hint that he let fall, as to its being suspected to be 
 not genuine, so that in all probability it would have 
 fallen to me as a deodand ; not but I am as sure it is 
 Luther's as I am sure that Jack Bunyan wrote the 
 Pilgrim's Progress ; but it was not for me to pronounce 
 upon the validity of testimony that had been disputed 
 by learneder clerks than I ; so I quietly let it occupy 
 the place it had usurped upon my shelves, and should 
 never have thought of issuing an ejectment against 
 it ; for why should I be so bigoted as to allow rites 
 of hospitality to none but my own books, children, 
 &c. ? — a species of egotism I abhor from my heart. 
 No ; let 'em all snug together, Hebrews and Pros- 
 elytes of the gate ; no selfish partiality of mine shall 
 make distinction between them, I charge no ware- 
 house room for my friends' commodities ; they are 
 welcome to come and stay as long as they like, with- 
 out paying rent. I have several such strangers that 
 I treat with more than Arabian courtesy. There's 
 a copy of More's fine poem, which is none of mine, 
 but I cherish it as my own. I am none of those 
 churlish landlords that advertise the goods to be 
 taken away in ten days' time, or then to be sold to 
 pay expenses. So you see I had no right to lend you 
 that book. I may lend you my own books, because it
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH COLERIDGE. 21 
 
 is at my own hazard ; but it is not honest to hazard a 
 friend's property; I always make that distinction. 
 I hope you will bring it with you, or send it by Hart- 
 ley ; or he can bring that, and you the Polemical 
 Discourses, and come and eat some atoning mutton 
 with us one of these days shortly. We are engaged 
 two or three Sundays deep, but always dine at home 
 on week-days at half-past four. So come all four — 
 men and books I mean. My third shelf (northern 
 compartment) from the top has two devilish gaps, 
 where you have knocked out its two eye-teeth. 
 Your wronged friend, 
 
 C. Lamb 
 
 Letter LVIL] March 22, 1826. 
 
 Dear Coleridge, — We will with great pleasure be 
 with you on Thursday in the next week early. May 
 we venture to bring Emma with us ? Your finding 
 out my style in your nephew's pleasant book is sur- 
 prising to me. I want eyes to descry it. You are a 
 little too hard upon his morality, though I confess he 
 has more of Sterne about him than of Sternhold. 
 But he saddens into excellent sense before the con- 
 clusion. Your query shall be submitted to Miss 
 Kelly, though it is obvious that the pantomime, 
 when done, will be more easy to decide upon than in 
 proposal. I say, do it by all means. I have Decker's 
 play by me, if you can filch anything out of it. Miss 
 Gray, with her kitten eyes, is an actress, though she 
 shows it not at all; and pupil to the former, whose 
 gestures she mimics in comedy to the disparagement
 
 22 CORRESPONDENCE WITH COLERIDGE. 
 
 of her own natural manner, which is agreeable. It is 
 funny to see her bridling up her neck, which is native 
 to F. K. ; but there is no setting the manners of others 
 upon one's shoulders any more than their head. I 
 • am glad you esteem Manning, though you see but his 
 husk or shrine. He discloses not, save to select wor- 
 shippers, and will leave the world without any one 
 hardly but me knowing how stupendous a creature he 
 is. I am perfecting myself in the " Ode to Eton Col- 
 lege " against Thursday, that I may not appear un- 
 classic. I have just discovered that it is much better 
 than the " Elegy." 
 
 In haste, C. L. 
 
 P.S. — I do not know what to say to your latest 
 theory about Nero being the Messiah, though by all 
 accounts he was a 'nointed one. 
 
 Letter LVIII.] June ist, 1826. 
 
 Dear Coleridge, — If I know myself, nobody more 
 detests the display of personal vanity, which is im- 
 plied in the act of sitting for one's picture, than 
 myself. But the fact is, that the likeness which 
 accompanies this letter was stolen from my person at 
 one of my unguarded moments by some too partial 
 artist, and my friends are pleased to think that he 
 has not much flattered me. Whatever its merits may 
 be, you, who have so great an interest in the original . 
 will have a satisfaction in tracing the features of one 
 that has so long esteemed you. There are times 
 when in a friend's absence these graphic representa- 
 tions of him almost seem to bring back the man him-
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH COLERIDGE. 23 
 
 self. The painter, whoever he was, seems to have 
 taken me in one of those disengaged moments, if 
 I may so term them, when the native character is so 
 much more honestly displayed than can be possible 
 in the restraints of an enforced sitting attitude. Per- 
 haps it rather describes me as a thinking man, than 
 a man in the act of thought. Whatever its preten- 
 sions, I know it will be dear to you, towards whom I 
 should wish my thoughts to flow in a sort of an un- 
 dress rather than in the more studied graces of 
 diction. 
 
 I am, dear Coleridge, yours sincerely, 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 
 Letter LIX.] 18*9. 
 
 Dear Coleridge, — Your sonnet is capital. The 
 paper is ingenious,' only that it split into four parts 
 (besides a side splinter) in the carriage. I have 
 transferred it to the common English paper, manu- 
 factured of rags, for better preservation. I never 
 knew before how the Iliad and Odyssey were written. 
 'Tis strikingly corroborated by observations on Cats. 
 These domestic animals, put 'em on a rug before the 
 fire, wink their eyes up, and listen to the kettle, and 
 then purr, which is their poetry. 
 
 On Sunday week we kiss your hands (if they are 
 clean). This next Sunday I have been engaged for 
 some time. 
 
 With remembrances to your good host and hostess. 
 Yours ever, C. Lamb. 
 
 ' Some gauzy tissue-paper on which the sonnet was copied. — T.
 
 24 
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH COLERIDGE. 
 
 Letter LX.] 1829. 
 
 My dear Coleridge, — With pain and grief, I must 
 entreat you to excuse us on Thursday. My head, 
 though externally correct, has had a severe concus- 
 sion in my long illness, and the very idea of an 
 engagement hanging over for a day or two, forbids 
 my rest, and I get up miserable. I am not well 
 enough for company. I do assure you, no other 
 thing prevents my coming. I expect Field and his 
 brothers this or to-morrow evening, and it worries me 
 to death that I am not ostensibly ill enough to put 
 'em off. I will get better, when I shall hope to see 
 your nephew. He will come again. Mary joins in 
 best love to the Gilmans. Do, I earnestly entreat 
 you, excuse me. I assure you, again, that I am not 
 fit to go out yet. 
 
 Yours (though shattered), 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 
 Tuesday. 
 
 Letter LXL] April 14th, 1832. 
 
 My dear Coleridge, — Not an unkind thought has 
 passed in my brain about you ; but I have been 
 wofully neglectful of you ; so that I do not deserve to 
 announce to you, that if I do not hear from you before 
 then, I will set out on Wednesday morning to take 
 you by the hand. I would do it this moment, but an 
 unexpected visit might flurry you. I shall take 
 silence for acquiescence, and come. I am glad you 
 could write so long a letter. Old loves to, and hope 
 of kind looks from, the Gilmans when I come. 
 
 Yours, semper idetn, C. L.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH COLERIDGE. 
 
 25 
 
 If you ever thought an offence, much more wrote 
 it, against me, it must have been in the times of 
 Noah, and the great waters swept it away. Mary's 
 most kind love, and maybe a wrong prophet of your 
 bodings ! — here she is crying for mere love over your 
 letter. I wring out less, but not sincerer showers. 
 
 My direction is simply, Enlield. 
 
 Letter LXI.*] i8*i. 
 
 DearC, — I will not fail you on Friday at six, and 
 Mary, perhaps, earlier. I very much wish to meet 
 " Master Mathew,"' and am much obliged to the G.'s 
 for the opportunity. Our kind respects to them 
 always. 
 
 Elia. 
 
 Extract from a MS. note of S. T. C. in my Beaumont 
 and Fletcher, dated April 17th, 1807. 
 
 " Midnight. 
 
 God bless you, dear Charles Lamb, I am dying : 
 I feel I have not many weeks left. 
 
 Mr. Gilman's, 
 
 Highgate." 
 
 • Referring to Charles Mathews the elder, whom he was invited to 
 meet. — F.
 
 26 CORRESPONDENCE WITH SOUTHEY. 
 
 II. 
 
 Correspondence with Robert Southev. 
 
 Letter LXIL] July 28th, 1798. 
 
 Dear Southey, — I am ashamed that I have not 
 thanked you before this for the Joan of Arc, but I 
 did not know your address, and it did not occur to me 
 to write through Cottle. The poem deHghted me, 
 and the notes amused me ; but methinks she of Neuf- 
 chatel, in the print, holds her sword too '* like a 
 dancer." I sent your notice to Phillips, particularly 
 requesting an immediate insertion, but I suppose it 
 came too late. I am sometimes curious to know 
 what progress you make in that same "Calendar:" 
 whether you insert the nine worthies and Whitting- 
 ton ? what you do or how you can manage when two 
 Saints meet and quarrel for precedency ? Martlemas, 
 and Candlemas, and Christmas, are glorious themes 
 for a writer like you, antiquity-bitten, smit with the 
 love of boars' heads and rosemary ; but how you can 
 ennoble the ist of April I know not. By the way, I 
 had a thing to say, but a certain false modesty has 
 hitherto prevented me : perhaps I can best communi- 
 cate my wish by a hint. My birthday is on the loth 
 of February, New Style ; but if it interferes with any 
 remarkable event, why rather than my country should 
 lose her fame, I care not if I put my nativity back 
 eleven days. Fine family patronage for your " Ca-
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH SOUTHEY. 27 
 
 lendar," if that old lady of prolific memory were 
 living', who lies (or lyes) in some church in London, 
 (saints forgive me, but I have forgot what church,) 
 attesting that enormous legend of as many children as 
 days in the year. I marvel her impudence did not 
 grasp at a leap-year. Three hundred and sixty-five 
 dedications, and all in a family ! You might spit in 
 spirit, on the oneness of Maecenas's patronage ! 
 
 Samuel Taylor Coleridge, to the eternal regret of 
 his native Devonshire, emigrates to Westphalia : 
 " Poor Lamb," (these were his last words,) " if he 
 wants any knowledge, he may apply to me." In ordi- 
 nary cases I thanked him. I have an " Encyclo- 
 paedia " at hand ; but on such an occasion as going 
 over to a German university, I could not refrain from 
 sending him the following propositions, to be by him 
 defended or oppugned (or both) at Leipsic or Got- 
 tingen. 
 
 THESES QUiEDAM THEOLOGICiE. 
 
 "Whether God loves a lying angel better than a 
 true man ?" 
 
 II. 
 
 " Whether the archangel Uriel could knowingly 
 affirm an untruth, and whether, if he could, he 
 would?" 
 
 III. 
 "Whether honesty be an angelic virtue, or not 
 rather belonging to that class of qualities which the 
 schoolmen term ' virtutes minus splendid^ et hominis 
 et terrae nimis participes ?' "
 
 28 CORRESPONDENCE WITH SOUTHEY. 
 
 IV. 
 
 " Whether the seraphim ardentes do not manifest 
 their goodness by the way of vision and theory ? and 
 whether practice be not a sub-celestial, and merely 
 human virtue ?" 
 
 V. 
 
 " Whether the higher order of seraphim illuminati 
 ever sneer ? " 
 
 VI. 
 
 " Whether pure intelligence can love, or whether 
 they can love any thing besides pure intellect ?" 
 
 VII. 
 
 " Whether the beatific vision be any thing more or 
 less than a perpetual representment to each indivi- 
 dual angel of his own present attainments, and future 
 capabilities, something in the manner of mortal look- 
 ing glasses ?" 
 
 VIII. 
 
 " Whether an ' immortal and amenable soul ' may 
 not come to be damned at last, and the man never 
 suspect it beforehand ? " 
 
 Samuel Taylor Coleridge hath not deigned an an- 
 swer. Was it impertinent of me to avail myself of 
 that offered source of knowledge ? 
 
 Wishing Madoc may be born into the world with as 
 splendid promise as the second birth, or purification, 
 of the Maid of Neufchatel, — I remain yours sincerely, 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 
 I hope Edith is better; my kindest remembrances 
 to her. You have a good deal of trifling to forgive 
 in this. letter. 
 
 ** Love and remembrances to Cottle."
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH SOUTHEY. 2g 
 
 Letter LXIIL] Oct. i8th, 1798. 
 
 Dear Southey, — I have at last been so fortunate as 
 to pick up Wither's Emblems for you, that " old book 
 and quaint," as the brief author of Rosamund Gray 
 hath it ; it is in a most detestable state of preserva- 
 tion, and the cuts are of a fainter impression than I 
 have seen. Some child, the curse of antiquaries and 
 bane of bibliopical rarities, hath been dabbling in 
 some of them with its paint and dirty fingers ; and, 
 in particular, hath a little sullied the author's own 
 portraiture, which I think valuable, as the poem that 
 accompanies it is no common one ; this last excepted, 
 the Emblems are far inferior to old Quarles. I once 
 told you otherwise, but I had not then read old 
 Quarles with attention. I have picked up, too, 
 another copy of Quarles for ninepence ! 1 ! O tem- 
 pera ! O lectores ! so that if you have lost or parted 
 with your own copy, say so, and I can furnish you, 
 for you prize these things more than I do. You will 
 be amused, I think, with honest Wither's " Super- 
 sedeas to all them whose custom it is, without any 
 deserving, to importune authors to give unto them 
 their books." I am sorry 'tis imperfect, as the lottery 
 board annexed to it also is. Methinks you might 
 modernise and elegantise this Supersedeas, and place 
 it in front of your Joan of Arc, as a gentle hint to 
 Messrs. Parke, &c. One of the happiest emblems, 
 and comicalest cuts, is the owl and little chirpers, 
 page 63.
 
 30 CORRESPONDENCE WITH SOUTHEY. 
 
 Wishing you all amusement, which your true 
 emblem-fancier can scarce fail to find in even bad 
 emblems, I remain your caterer to command, 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 
 Love and respects to Edith. I hope she is well. 
 How does your Calendar prosper ? 
 
 Letter LXIV.] 
 
 Dear Southey, — I thank you heartily for the 
 Eclogue ; it pleases me mightily, being so full of 
 picture work and circumstances. I find no fault in 
 it, unless perhaps that Joanna's ruin is a catastrophe 
 too trite ; and this is not the first or second time you 
 have clothed your indignation, in verse, in a tale of 
 ruined innocence. The old lady, spinning in the sun, 
 I hope would not disdain to claim some kindred with 
 old Margaret.^ I could almost wish you to vary some 
 circumstances in the conclusion. A gentleman 
 seducer has so often been described in prose and 
 verse. What if you had accomplished Joanna's ruin 
 by the clumsy arts and rustic gifts of some country- 
 fellow ? I am thinking, I believe, of the song — 
 
 " An old woman clothed in gray. 
 
 Whose daughter was charming and young. 
 And she was deluded away 
 
 By Roger's false flattering tongue." 
 
 A Roger- Lothario would be a novel character ; I think 
 you might paint him very well. You may think this 
 
 ' The " old Margaret," in Lamb's story of Rosamund Gray. — H.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH SOUTHEY. 3I 
 
 a very silly suggestion, and so indeed it is ; but, in 
 good truth, nothing else but the first words of that 
 foolish ballad put me upon scribbling my Rosamund. 
 But I thank you heartily for the poem. Not having 
 any thing of my own to send you in return, (though, 
 to tell truth, I am at work upon something, which, if 
 I were to cut away and garble, perhaps I might send 
 you an extract or two that might not displease you ; 
 but I will not do that ; and whether it will come to 
 any thing I know not, for I am as slow as a 
 Fleming painter, when I compose any thing,) I will 
 crave leave to put down a few lines of old Chris- 
 topher Marlow's ; I take them from his tragedy, 
 ^ew of Malta. The Jew is a famous character, 
 quite out of nature ; but, when we consider the 
 terrible idea our simple ancestors had of a Jew, 
 not more to be discommended for a certain discolour- 
 ing (I think Addison calls it) than the witches and 
 fairies of Marlow's mighty successor. The scene is 
 betwixt Barabbas, the Jew, and Ithamore, a Turkish 
 captive, exposed to sale for a slave. 
 
 BARABBAS. 
 f A precious rascal.) 
 
 " As for myself, I walk abroad a-nights. 
 And kill sick people groaning under walls 
 Sometimes I go about, and poison wells : 
 And now and then, to cherish Christian thieves, 
 I am content to lose some of my crowns. 
 That I may, walking in my gallery. 
 Sec 'm go pinion'd along by my door. 
 Being young, I studied physic, and began 
 To practise first upon the Italian : 
 There I enrich'd the priests with burials. 
 And always kept the sexton's arms in use 
 With digging graves, and ringing dead men's knells 1
 
 32 CORRESPONDENCE WITH SOUTHFA'. 
 
 And after that was I an engineer. 
 
 And in the wars 'twixt France and Germany, 
 
 Under pretence of serving Charles the Fifth, 
 
 Slew friends and enemy with my stratagems. 
 
 Then after that was I an usurer. 
 
 And with extorting, cozening, forfeiting. 
 
 And tricks belonging unto brokery, 
 
 I fiU'd the jails with bankrupts in a year. 
 
 And with young orphans planted hospitals. 
 
 And every moon made some or other mad. 
 
 And now and then one hang himself for grief. 
 
 Pinning upon his breast a long great scroll. 
 
 How I with interest had tormented him." 
 
 (Now hear Ithamore, the other gentle nature.) 
 
 ITHAMORE. 
 
 {A comical dog J 
 " Faith, master, and I have spent my time 
 In setting Christian villages on fire. 
 Chaining of eunuchs, binding galley slaves. 
 One time I was an hostler at an inn. 
 And in the night time secretly would I steal 
 To travellers' chambers, and there cut their throats. 
 Once at Jerusalem, where the pilgrims kneei'd, 
 I strew'd powder on the marble stones. 
 And therewithal their knees would rankle so. 
 That I have laugh'd a good to see the cripples 
 Go limping home to Christendom on stilts." 
 
 BARABBAS. 
 Why, this is something. 
 
 There is a mixture of the ludicrous and the terrible 
 in these lines, brimful of genius and antique inven- 
 tion, that at first reminded me of your old description 
 of cruelty in hell, which was in the true Hogarthian 
 style. I need not i^Wyou that Marlow was author of 
 that pretty madrigal, " Come live with me and be my 
 Love,'' and of the tragedy of Edward II., in which 
 are certain lines unequalled in our English tongue.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH SOUTHEY. 33 
 
 Honest Walton mentions the said madrigal under 
 the denomination of " certain smooth verses made 
 long since by Kit Marlow." 
 
 I am glad you have put me on the scent after old 
 Quarles. If I do not put up those eclogues, and that 
 shortly, say I am no true-nosed hound. I have had 
 a letter from Lloyd ; the young metaphysician of 
 Caius is well, and is busy recanting the new heresy, 
 metaphysics, for the old dogma, Greek. My sister, I 
 thank you, is quite well. She had a slight attack the 
 other day, which frightened me a good deal, but it 
 went off unaccountably. Love and respects to Edith. 
 Yours sincerely, C. Lamb. 
 
 Letter LXV.] Nov. 3, 1798. 
 
 I have read your Eclogue repeatedly, and cannot 
 call it bald, or without interest ; the cast of it and the 
 design are completely original, and may set people 
 upon thinking. It is as poetical as the subject requires, 
 which asks no poetry ; but it is defective in pathos. 
 The woman's own story is the tamest part of it ; I 
 should like you to remould that : it too much re- 
 sembles the young maid's history ; both had been in 
 service. Even the omission would not injure the 
 poem : after the words " growing wants," you might, 
 not unconnectedly, introduce " look at that little chub" 
 down to " welcome one." And, decidedly, I would 
 have you end it somehow thus, — 
 
 " Give them at least this evening a good meal. 
 
 [Gives her money. 
 Now, fare thee well ; hereafter you have taught me 
 To give sad meaning to the village bells," &c. 
 
 which would leave a stronger impression (as well as 
 
 VOL. II. D
 
 34 CORRESPONDENCE WITH SOUTHEY. 
 
 more pleasingly recall the beginning of the Eclogue) 
 than the present commonplace reference to a better 
 world, which the woman " must have heard at church." 
 I should like you too a good deal to enlarge the most 
 striking part, as it might have been, of the poem — 
 " Is it idleness ?" &c. : that affords a good field for 
 dwelling on sickness, and inabilities, and old age. 
 And you might also a good deal enrich the piece with 
 a picture of a country wedding. The woman might 
 very well, in a transient fit of oblivion, dwell upon the 
 ceremony and circumstances of her own nuptials six 
 years ago, the snugness of the bridegroom, the feast- 
 ings, the cheap merriment, the welcomings, and the 
 secret envyings of the maidens ; then dropping all 
 this, recur to her present lot. I do not know that I 
 can suggest any thing else, or that I have suggested 
 any thing new or material. I do not much prefer 
 this Eclogue to the last. Both are inferior to the 
 former. 
 
 " And when he came to shake me by the hand. 
 And spake as kindly to me as he used, 
 I hardly knew his voice — '" 
 
 is the only passage that affected me. When servants 
 speak their language ought to be plain, and not much 
 raised above the common else I should find fault with 
 the bathos of this passage, — 
 
 " And when I heard the bell strike out. 
 I thought (what ?) that I had never heard it toll 
 So dismally before." 
 
 I like the destruction of the martens' old nests 
 hugely, having just such a circumstance in my me- 
 mory. I shall be very glad to see your remaining 
 Ecologue, if not too much trouble, as you give me
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH SOUTHEY. 35 
 
 reason to expect it will be the second best. I shall be 
 very glad to see some more poetry ; though, I fear, 
 your trouble in transcribing will be greater than the 
 service my remarks may do them. 
 
 Yours affectionately, C. Lamb. 
 
 I cut my letter short because I am called off to 
 business. 
 
 Letter LXVL] Nov. 8th. 1798. 
 
 I perfectly accord with your opinion of old Wither ; 
 Quarles is a wittier writer, but Wither lays more hold 
 of the heart. Quarles thinks of his audience when 
 he lectures ; Wither soliloquizes in company from a full 
 heart. What wretched stuff are the " Divine Fancies" 
 of Quarles ! Religion appears to him no longer valu- 
 able than it furnishes matter for quibbles and riddles ; 
 he turns God's grace into wantonness. Wither is 
 like an old friend, whose warm-heartedness and esti- 
 mable qualities make us wish he possessed more 
 genius, but at the same time make us willing to dis- 
 pense with that want. I always love Wither, and 
 sometimes admire Quarles. Still that portrait poem 
 is a fine one ; and the extract from " Shepherds' 
 Hunting" places him in a starry height far above 
 Quarles. If you wrote that review in the Critical 
 Review, I am ?,OTvy you are so sparing of praise to the 
 Ancient Marinere. So far from calling it as you do, 
 with some wit, but more severity, a " Dutch Attempt," 
 &c., I call it a right English attempt, and a successful 
 one, to dethrone German sublimity. You have se- 
 lected a passage fertile in unmeaning miracles, but 
 have passed by fifty passages as miraculous as the 
 
 D 2
 
 3^ 
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH SOUTHEY. 
 
 miracles they celebrate. I never so deeply felt the 
 pathetic as in that part, 
 
 " A spring of love gush'd from my heart. 
 And I bless'd them unaware." 
 
 It stung me into high pleasure through sufferings. 
 Lloyd does not like it; his head is too metaphysical, 
 and your taste too correct ; at least I must allege 
 something against you both, to excuse my own 
 dotage — 
 
 " So lonely 'twas, that God himself 
 Scarce seem'd there to be!" — &c., &c. 
 
 But you allow some elaborate beauties : you should 
 have extracted 'em. The Ancient Marinere plays more 
 tricks with the mind than that last poem, which is 
 yet one of the finest written. But I am getting too 
 dogmatical ; and before I degenerate into abuse, I will 
 conclude with assuring you that I am 
 
 Sincerely yours, 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 
 I am going to meet Lloyd at Ware on Saturday, to 
 return on Sunday. Have you any commands or 
 commendations to the metaphysician ? I shall be 
 very happy if you will dine or spend any time with 
 me in your way through the great ugly city ; but I 
 know you have other ties upon you in these parts. 
 
 Love and respects to Edith, and friendly remem- 
 brances to Cottle. 
 
 Letter LXVIL] Nov. 28th. 1798.1 
 
 I can have no objection to your printing " Mystery 
 
 1 In this year Mr. Cottle proposed to publish an annual volume of
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH SOUTHEY. 37 
 
 of God" with my name, and all due acknowledgments 
 for the honour and favour of the communication ; 
 indeed, 'tis a poem that can dishonour no name 
 Now, that is in the true strain of modern modesto- 
 vanitas. . . . But for the sonnet, I heartily wish it, 
 as I thought it was, dead and forgotten. If the exact 
 circumstances under which I wrote could be known 
 or told, it would be an interesting sonnet ; but to an 
 indifferent and stranger reader it must appear a very 
 bald thing, certainly inadmissible in a compilation. 
 I wish you could affix a different name to the volume. 
 There is a contemptible book, a wretched assortment 
 of vapid feelings, entitled Pratt's Gleanings, which 
 hath damned and impropriated the title for ever. 
 Pray think of some other. The gentleman is better 
 known (better had he remained unknown) by an Ode 
 to Benevolence, writter, and spoken for and at the 
 annual dinner of the Humane Society, who walk in 
 procession once a year, with all the objects of their 
 charity before them, to return God thanks for giving 
 them such benevolent hearts. 
 
 I like " Bishop Bruno," but not so abundantly as 
 your " Witch Ballad," which is an exquisite thing of 
 its kind. 
 
 I showed my "Witch" and "Dying Lover" to 
 
 fugitive poetry by various hands, under the title of the Annual 
 Anthology ; to which Coleridge and Southey were principal contri- 
 butors, the first volume of which was published in the following year. 
 To this little work Lamb contributed a short religious effusion in blank 
 verse, entitled "Living without God in the World." The fol- 
 lowing letter refers to this poem by its first words, " Mystery of 
 God," and recurs to the rejected sonnet to his sister ; and alludes to an 
 intention, afterwards changed, of entitling the proposed collection 
 " Gleanings." — T.
 
 38 CORRESPONDENCE WITH SOUTHEY. 
 
 Dyer last night ; but George could not comprehend 
 how that could be poetry which did not go upon ten 
 feet, as George and his predecessor had taught it to 
 do ; so George read me some lectures on the distin- 
 guishing qualities of the Ode, the Epigram, and the 
 Epic, and went home to illustrate his doctrine, by 
 correcting a proof sheet of his own Lyrics. George 
 writes odes where the rhymes, like fashionable man 
 and wife, keep a comfortable distance of six or eight 
 lines apart, and calls that " observing the laws of 
 verse !" George tells you, before he recites, that you 
 must listen with great attention, or you'll miss the 
 rhymes. I did so, and found them pretty exact. 
 George, speaking of the dead Ossian, exclaimeth, 
 " Dark are the poet's eyes ! " I humbly represented 
 to him that his own eyes were dark, and many a living 
 bard's besides, and recommended " Closed are the 
 poet's eyes." But that would not do. I found there 
 was an antithesis between the darkness of his eyes 
 and the splendour of his genius ; and I acquiesced. 
 
 Your recipe for a Turk's poison is invaluable, and 
 truly Marlowish. . . . Lloyd objects to " shutting 
 up the womb of his purse" in my curse ; (which, for a 
 Christian witch in a Christian country, is not too mild, 
 I hope.) Do you object? I think there is a strangeness 
 in the idea, as well as " shaking the poor like snakes 
 from his door," which suits the speaker. Witches 
 illustrate, as fine ladies do, from their own familiar 
 objects, and snakes and the shutting up of wombs 
 are in their way. I don't know that this last charge 
 has been before brought against 'em, nor either the 
 sour milk or the mandrake babe ; but I affirm these 
 be things a witch would do if she could. 
 
 My Tragedy will be a medley (as I intend it to be
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH SOUTHEY. 39 
 
 a medley) of laughter and tears, prose and verse, and 
 in some places rhyme, songs, wit, pathos, humour, 
 and, if possible, sublimity; at least it is not a fault in 
 my intention if it does not comprehend most of these 
 discordant atoms. Heaven send^ they dance not the 
 " Dance of Death !" I hear that the Two Noble 
 Englishmen have parted no sooner than they set foot 
 on German earth ; but I have not heard the reason. 
 Possibly to give moralists an handle to exclaim, 
 " Ah me ! what things are perfect ?" I think I shall 
 adopt your emendation in the " Dying Lover," though 
 I do not myself feel the objection against " Silent 
 Prayer." 
 
 My tailor has brought me home a new coat lapelled, 
 with a velvet collar. He assures me every body wears 
 velvet collars now. Some are born fashionable, some 
 achieve fashion, and others, like your humble servant, 
 have fashion thrust upon them. The rogue has been 
 making inroads hitherto by modest degrees, foisting 
 upon me an additional button, recommending gaiters ; 
 but to come upon me thus, in a full tide of luxury, 
 neither becomes him as a tailor nor the ninth of a man. 
 My meek gentleman was robbed the other day, coming 
 with his wife and family in a one-horse shay from 
 Hampstead. The villains rifled him of four guineas, 
 some shillings and half-pence, and a bundle of cus- 
 tomers' measures, which they swore were bank notes. 
 They did not shoot him, and when they rode off" he 
 addrest them with profound gratitude, making a con- 
 gee : " Gentlemen, I wish you good night, and we 
 are very much obliged to you that you have not used 
 us ill I" And this is the cuckoo that has had the 
 audacity to foist upon me ten buttons on a side, and 
 a black velvet collar 1 A cursed ninth of a scoundrel !
 
 40 CORRESPONDENCE WITH SOUTHEY. 
 
 When you write to Lloyd, he wishes his Jacobin 
 correspondents to address him as Mr. C. L. Love 
 and respects to Edith. I hope she is well. 
 
 Yours sincerely, C. Lamb. 
 
 Letter LXVIIL] Dec 27, 1798. 
 
 Dear Southey, — Your friend John May has formerly 
 made kind offers to Lloyd of serving me in the India 
 House, by the interest of his friend Sir Francis Baring. 
 It is not likely that I shall ever put his goodness to 
 the test on my own account, for my prospects are 
 very comfortable ; but I know a man, a young man, 
 whom he could serve through the same channel, and, 
 I think, would be disposed to serve if he were ac- 
 quainted with his case. This poor fellow (whom I 
 know just enough of to vouch for his strict integrity 
 and worth) has lost two or three employments from 
 illness, which he cannot regain ; he was once insane, 
 and, from the distressful uncertainty of his livelihood, 
 has reason to apprehend a return of that malady. He 
 has been for some tim.e dependent on a woman 
 whose lodger he formerly was, but who can ill afford 
 to maintain him ; and I know that on Christmas 
 night last he actually walked about the streets all 
 night, rather than accept of her bed, which she offered 
 him, and offered herself to sleep in the kitchen ; and 
 that, in consequence of that severe cold, he is labour- 
 ing under a bilious disorder, besides a depression of 
 spirits, which incapacitates him from exertion when 
 he most needs it. For God's sake, Southey, if it does 
 not go against you to ask favours, do it now ; ask it 
 as for me ; but do not do a violence to your feelings,
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH SOUTHEY. 4I 
 
 because he does not know of this application, and 
 will suffer no disappointment. What I meant to say 
 was this, — there are in the India House what are 
 called extra clerks, not on the establishment, like me, 
 but employed in extra business, by-jobs ; these get 
 about ;^50 a year, or rather more, but never rise. A 
 director can put in at any time a young man in this 
 office, and it is by no means considered so great a 
 favour as making an established clerk. He would 
 think himself as rich as an emperor if he could get 
 such a certain situation, and be relieved from those 
 disquietudes which, I do fear, may one day bring back 
 his distemper. 
 
 You know John May better than I do, but I know 
 enough to believe that he is a good man. He did make 
 me that offer I have mentioned, but you will perceive 
 that such an offer cannot authorize me in applying 
 for another person. 
 
 But I cannot help writing to you on the subject, 
 for the young man is perpetually before my eyes, and 
 I shall feel it a crime not to strain all my petty 
 interest to do him service, though I put my own deli- 
 cacy to the question by so doing. I have made one 
 other unsuccessful attempt already. At all events I 
 will thank you to write, for I am tormented with 
 anxiety. C. Lamb. 
 
 Letter LXIX.] Jan. 21st, 1799. 
 
 I am requested by Lloyd to excuse his not replying 
 to a kind letter received from you. He is at present 
 situated in most distressful family perplexities, which 
 I am not at liberty to explain, but they are such as to
 
 42 CORRESPONDENCE WITH SOUTHEY. 
 
 demand all the strength of his mind, and quite exclude 
 any attention to foreign objects. His brother Robert* 
 (the flower of his family) hath eloped from the perse- 
 cutions of his father, and has taken shelter with me. 
 What the issue of his adventure will be, I know not. 
 He hath the sweetness of an angel in his heart, com- 
 bined with admirable firmness of purpose ; an uncul- 
 tivated, but very original, and I think superior, genius. 
 But this step of his is but a small part of their family 
 troubles. 
 
 I am to blame for not writing to you before on my 
 own account ; hut I know you can dispense with the 
 expressions of gratitude, or I should have thanked 
 you before for all May's kindness. He has liberally 
 supplied the person I spoke to you of with money, 
 and had procured him a situation just after himself 
 had lighted upon a similar one, and engaged too far 
 to recede. But May's kindness was the same, and 
 my thanks to you and him are the same. May went 
 about on this business as if it had been his own. But 
 you knew John May before this, so I will be silent. 
 
 I shall be very glad to hear from you when con- 
 venient. I do not know how your Calendar and 
 other affairs thrive ; but above all, I have not heard 
 a great while of your " Madoc " — the opus magnum. I 
 would willingly send you something to give a value 
 to this letter ; but I have only one slight passage to 
 send you, scarce worth the sending, which I want to 
 edge in somewhere into my play, which, by the way, 
 hath not received the addition of ten lines, besides, 
 since I saw you. A father, old Walter Woodvil, (the 
 witch's protege,) relates this of his son John, who 
 " fought in adverse armies," being a royalist, and his 
 father a parliamentary man : —
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH SOUTHEY. 43 
 
 " I saw him in the day of Worcester fight. 
 Whither he came at twice seven years, 
 Under the discipline of the Lord Falkland, 
 (His uncle by the mother's side. 
 Who gave his youthful politics a bent 
 Qyatefrom the principles of his father's house;) 
 There did I see this valiant Lamb of Mars, 
 This sprig of honour, this unbearded John, 
 This veteran in green years, this sprout, this Woodvil, 
 (With dreadless ease guiding a fire-hot steed. 
 Which seem'd to scorn the manage of a boy,) 
 Prick forth with such a mirth into the field. 
 To mingle rivalship and acts of war 
 Even with the sinewy masters of the art. 
 You would have thought the work of blood had been 
 A play-game merely, and the rabid Mars 
 Had put his harmful hostile nature off. 
 To instruct raw^ youth in images of war. 
 And practice of the unedged players' foils. 
 The rough fanatic and blood-practised soldiery 
 Seeing such hope and virtue in the boy, 
 Disclosed their ranks to let him pass unhurt. 
 Checking their swords' uncivil injuries. 
 As loth to mar that curious workmanship 
 Of Valour's beauty portray'd in his face." 
 
 Lloyd objects to " portrayed in his face," do you ? I 
 like the line. 
 
 I shall clap this in somewhere. I think there is a 
 spirit through the lines ; perhaps the 7th, 8th, and 
 gth owe their origin to Shakspeare, though no image 
 is borrowed. 
 
 He says in Henry the Fourth — 
 
 " This infant Hotspur, 
 Mars in swathing clothes." 
 
 But pray did Lord Falkland die before Worcester
 
 44 CORRESPONDENCE WITH SOUTHEY. 
 
 fight ? In that case I must make bold to uncHfy 
 some other nobleman. 
 
 Kind love and respects to Edith. 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 
 Letter LXX.] March 15th, 1799. 
 
 Dear Southey, — I have received your little volume, 
 for which I thank you, though I do not entirely ap^ 
 prove of this sort of intercourse, where the presents 
 are all one side. I have read the last Eclogue again 
 with great pleasure. It hath gained considerably by 
 abridgment, and now I think it wants nothing but 
 enlargement. You will call this one of tyrant Pro- 
 crustes's criticisms, to cut and pull so to his own 
 standard ; but the old lady is so great a favourite with 
 me, I want to hear more of her; and of "Joanna" 
 you have given us still less. But the picture of the 
 rustics leaning over the bridge, and the old lady 
 travelling abroad on summer evening to see her gar- 
 den watered, are images so new and true, that I 
 decidedly prefer this " Ruin'd Cottage" to any poem 
 in the book. Indeed I think it the only one that will 
 bear comparison wath your " Hymn to the Penates," 
 in a former volume. 
 
 I compare dissimilar things, as one would a rose 
 and a star, for the pleasure they give us, or as a child 
 soon learns to choose between a cake and a rattle ; 
 for dissimilars have mostly some points of comparison. 
 
 The next best poem, I think, is the first Eclogue 
 'tis very complete, and abounding in little pictures 
 and realities. The remainder Eclogues, excepting 
 only the " Funeral," I do not greatly admire. I miss
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH SOUTHEY. 45 
 
 one, which had at least as good a title to publication 
 as the " Witch," or the " Sailor's Mother." You 
 call'd it the " Last of the Family." The " Old Woman 
 of Berkeley" comes next; in some humours I would 
 give it the preference above any. But who the devil 
 is Matthew of Westminster ? You are as familiar 
 with these antiquated monastics, as Swedenborg, or, 
 as his followers affect to call him, the Baron, with his 
 invisibles. But you have raised a very comic effect 
 out of the true narrative of Matthew of Westminster. 
 'Tis surprising with how little addition you have been 
 able to convert, with so little alteration, his incidents, 
 meant for terror, into circumstances and food for the 
 spleen. The Parody is not so successful ; it has one 
 famous line, indeed, which conveys the finest death- 
 bed image I ever met with : — 
 
 "The doctor whisper'd the nurse, and the surgeon knew what he 
 said." 
 
 But the offering the bride three times bears not the 
 slightest analogy or proportion to the fiendish noises 
 three times heard! In "Jaspar," the circumstance 
 of the great light is very affecting. But I had heard 
 you mention it before. The " Rose" is the only 
 insipid piece in the volume ; it hath neither thorns 
 nor sweetness ; and, besides, sets all chronology and 
 probability at defiance. 
 
 " Cousin Margaret," you know, I like. The allu- 
 sions to the Pilgrim's Progress are particularly happy, 
 and harmonize tacitly and delicately with old cousins 
 and aunts. To familiar faces we do associate familiar 
 scenes and accustomed objects : but what hath Apol- 
 lidon and his sea-nymphs to do in these affairs ? 
 ApoUyon I could have borne, though he stands for
 
 46 CORRESPONDENCE WITH SOUTHEY. 
 
 the devil ; but who is Apollidon ? I think you are too 
 apt to conclude faintly, with some cold moral, as in 
 the end of the poem called " The Victory" — 
 
 " Be thou her comforter, who art the widow's friend ;" 
 
 a single common-place line of comfort, which bears 
 no proportion in weight or number to the many lines 
 which describe suffering. This is to convert religion 
 into mediocre feelings, which should burn, and glow, 
 and tremble. A moral should be wrought into the 
 body and soul, the matter and tendency of a poem, 
 not tagged to the end, like a " God send the good 
 ship into harbour," at the conclusion of our bills of 
 lading. The finishing of the " Sailor" is also imper- 
 fect. Any dissenting minister may say and do as 
 much. 
 
 These remarks, I know, are crude and unwrought, 
 but I do not lay much claim to accurate thinking. I 
 never judge system-wise of things, but fasten upon 
 particulars. After all, there is a great deal in the 
 book that I must, for time, leave unmentioned, to 
 deserve my thanks for its own sake, as well as for the 
 friendly remembrances implied in the gift. I again 
 return you my thanks. 
 
 Pray present my love to Edith. 
 
 C. L. 
 
 Letter LXXI.] March 20th, 1799. 
 
 lam hugely pleased with your " Spider," "your old 
 freemason," as you call him. The first three stanzas 
 are delicious ; they seem to me a compound of Burns 
 and Old Quarles, the kind of home-strokes, where
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH SOUTHEY. 47 
 
 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 Burns 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 fami- 
 liar, 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 
 despised 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 intimacy to a jackass, therein only fol- 
 lowing, at unresembling 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 companions." It is some- 
 times revolting to be put in a track of feeling by other
 
 ^8 CORRESPONDENCE WITH SOUTHEY. 
 
 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 crea- 
 tures from the antipathy of mankind. Some thoughts 
 came across me : for instance — to a rat, to a toad, 
 to a cockchafer, 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 
 
 I God's earth. I killed a rat the other day by punch- 
 ing him to pieces, and feel a weight of blood upon 
 me to this hour. Toads you know are made to fly, 
 and tumble down and crush all to pieces. Cock- 
 chafers are old sport. Then again to a worm, with an 
 apostrophe to anglers, those patient tyrants, meek in- 
 flictors 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 something 
 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
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH SOUTHEY. 49 
 
 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 sym- 
 pathy 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 suck'd my heart so dry of its sense of all grati- 
 tude. If he does come in your way, Southey, fail not 
 to tell him that I retain a most affectionate remem- 
 brance of his old friendliness, and an earnest wish^o 
 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 familiar 
 friend, and great comfort to me then. I have known 
 him to play at cards with my father, meal-times ex- 
 cepted, 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. 
 
 VOL. II.
 
 50 CORRESPONDENCE WITH SOUTHEY. 
 
 Letter LXXII.J April 20, 1799. 
 
 The following is a second extract from my tragedy 
 — that is to be. 'Tis narrated by an old Steward to 
 Margaret, orphan ward of Sir Walter Woodvil. . . 
 This and the Dying Lord I gave you are the only 
 extracts I can give without mutilation. , . I ex- 
 pect you to like the old woman's curse : — 
 
 Old Steavard. — One summer night, Sir Walter, as it chanced. 
 Was pacing to and fro in the avenue 
 That westward fronts our house. 
 Among those aged oaks, said to have been planted 
 Three hundred years ago 
 By a neighbouring Prior of the Woodvil name, &c.' 
 
 This is the extract I bragged of as superior to that I 
 sent you from Marlow : perhaps you will smile. But 
 I should like your remarks on the above, as you are 
 deeper witch-read than L 
 
 Yours ever, 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 
 Rob. Southey, Esq., 
 
 Mr. Cottle's, Bookseller, 
 
 High Street, Bristol. 
 
 Letter LXXIIL] May 20, 1799. 
 
 Dear Southey, — I thank you heartily for your in- 
 tended presents, but do by no means see the necessity 
 
 ' See Poetical Pieces.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH SOUTHEY. 5I 
 
 you are under of burthening yourself thereby. You 
 have read old Wither's Supersedeas to small purpose. 
 You object to my pauses being at the end of my lines ; 
 I do not know any great dil^culty I should find in 
 diversifying or changing my blank verse ; but I go 
 upon the model of Shakespeare in my Play, and en- 
 deavour after a colloquial ease and spirit, something 
 like him. I could as easily imitate Milton's versifica- 
 tion, but my ear and feeling would reject it, or any 
 approaches to it, in the drama. I do not know whe- 
 ther to be glad or sorry that witches have been de- 
 tected aforetimes in the shutting up of wombs. I cer- 
 tainly invented that conceit, and its coincidence 
 with fact is accidental, for I never heard it. I have 
 not seen those verses on Colonel Despard : I do not 
 read any newspapers. Are they short to copy without 
 much trouble ? I should like to see them. 
 
 I just send you a few rhymes from my play, the 
 only rhymes in it. A forest liver gives an account 
 of his amusements : — 
 
 What sports have you in the forest? 
 
 Not many, — some few, — as tlius. 
 
 To see the sun to bed, to see him rise. 
 
 Like some hot amourist with glowing eyes. 
 
 Bursting the lazy bands of sleep that bound him : 
 
 With all his fires and travelling glories round him ; &c.' 
 
 I love to anticipate charges of unoriginality : the 
 first line is almost Shakespeare's : — 
 
 "To have my love to bed and to arise." 
 
 A Midsummer Night's Dream. 
 
 ' See Collected Pieces. 
 
 E 2
 
 52 Correspondence with southey. 
 
 I think there is a sweetness in the versification not 
 unlike some rhymes in that exquisite play, and the 
 last line but three is yours : 
 
 " An eye 
 " That met the gaze, or turn'd it knew not why." 
 
 Rosamund's Epistle. 
 
 I shall anticipate all my play, and have nothing to 
 show you. An idea for Leviathan: Commentators on 
 Job have been puzzled to find out a meaning for 
 Leviathan. 'Tis a whale, say some; a crocodile, say 
 others. In my simple conjecture, Leviathan is neither 
 more nor less than the Lord Mayor of London for the 
 time being. 
 
 Rosamund sells well in London, malgre the non- 
 reyival of it. I sincerely wish you better health, and 
 better health to Edith. Kind remembrances to her. 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 
 My sister Mary was never in better health or spirits 
 than now. 
 
 Letter LXXIV.] Oct, 31st, 1799. 
 
 Dear Southey, — I have but just got your letter, 
 being returned from Herts, where I have passed a 
 few red-letter days with much pleasure. I would 
 describe the county to you, as you have done by 
 Devonshire ; but alas ! I am a poor pen at that same.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH SOUTHEY. 53 
 
 I could tell you of an old house with a tapestry bed- 
 room, the "Judgment of Solomon" composing one 
 pannel, and *' Actaeon spying Diana naked" the other. 
 I could tell of an old marble hall, with Hogarth's 
 prints, and the Roman Cssars in marble hung round. 
 I could tell of a wilderness, and of a village church, 
 and where the bones of my honoured grandarh lie ; 
 but there are feelings which refuse to be translated, 
 sulky aborigines, which will not be naturalized in 
 another soil. Of this nature are old family faces, and 
 scenes of infancy. 
 
 I have given your address, and the books you want, 
 to the Arches ; they will send them as soon as they 
 can get them, but they do not seem quite familiar to 
 their names. I have seen Gebor ! Gebor aptly so 
 denominated from Geborish, quasi Gibberish. But 
 Gebor hath some lucid intervals. I remember darkly 
 one beautiful simile veiled in uncouth phrases about 
 the youngest daughter of the Ark. I shall have 
 nothing to communicate, I fear, to the Anthology. 
 You shall have some fragments of my play, if you 
 desire them ; but I think I would rather print it whole. 
 Have you seen it, or shall I lend you a copy ? I 
 want your opinion of it. 
 
 I must get to business ; so farewell. My kind remem- 
 brances to Edith. C. Lamb. 
 
 Letter LXXV.] 
 
 Dear Southey, — You were the last person from 
 whom we heard of Dyer, and if you know where to 
 forward to him the news I now send I shall be 
 obliged to you to lose no time. Dyer's sister-in-law,
 
 54 CORRESPONDENCE WITH SOUTHEV. 
 
 who lives in St. Dunstan's Court, wrote to him about 
 three weeks ago to the Hope Inn, Cambridge, to in- 
 form him that Squire Houlbert, or some such name, 
 of Denmark Hill, has died, and left her husband a 
 thousand pounds, and two or three hundred to Dyer. 
 Her letter got no answer, and she does not know 
 where to direct to him ; so she came to me, who am 
 equally in the dark. Her story is, that Dyer's imme- 
 diately coming to town now, and signing some papers, 
 will save him a considerable sum of money ; how, I 
 don't understand ; but it is very right he should hear 
 of this. She has left me barely time for the post ; so 
 I conclude with love to all at Keewick. 
 
 Dyer's brother, who by his wife's account has got 
 £1000 left him, is father of the little dirty girl. Dyer's 
 niece and factotum. — In haste. 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 
 If you send George this, cut off the last paragraph. 
 Nov. 7, 1804. 
 
 D.'s laundress had a letter a few days since ; but 
 George never dates. 
 
 Letter LXXVI.] 
 
 Dear Southey, — I have received from Longman a 
 copy of Roderick, with the Author's Compliments, for 
 which I much thank you. I don't know where I shall 
 put all the noble presents I have lately received in that 
 way : the Excursion, Wordsworth's two last vols., and 
 now Roderick, have come pouring in upon me like
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH SOUTHEY. 55 
 
 some irruption from Helicon. The story of the brave 
 Maccabee was already, you may be sure, familiar to 
 me in all its parts. I have, since the receipt of your 
 present, read it quite through again, and with no 
 diminished pleasure. I don't Icnow whether I ought 
 to say that it has given me more pleasure than any of 
 your long poems. Kehama is doubtless more power- 
 ful, but I don't feel that firm footing in it that I do in 
 Roderick : my imagination goes sinking and flounder- 
 ing in the vast spaces of unopened-before systems and 
 faiths ; I am put out of the pale of my old sym- 
 pathies ; my moral sense is almost outraged ; I can't 
 believe, or with horror am made to believe, such des- 
 perate chances against Omnipotence, such disturb- 
 ances of faith to the centre ; the more potent the more 
 painful the spell. Jove, and his brotherhood of gods, 
 tottering with the giant assailings, I can bear, for the 
 soul's hopes are not struck at in such contests ; but 
 your Oriental almighties are too much types of the 
 intangible prototype to be meddled with without shud- 
 dering. One never connects what are called the 
 attributes with Jupiter. — I mention only what di- 
 minishes my delight at the wonder-workings of Ke- 
 hama, not what impeaches its power, which I confess 
 with trembling ; but Roderick is a comfortable poem. 
 It reminds me of the delight I took in the first reading 
 of the Joan of Arc. It is maturer and better than 
 that, though not better to me now than that was then. 
 It suits me better than Madoc. I am at home in 
 Spain and Christendom. I have a timid imagination, 
 I am afraid. I do not willingly admit of strange 
 beliefs, or out-of-the-way creeds or places. I never 
 read books of travels, at least not farther than Paris 
 or Rome. I can just endure Moors, because of their
 
 56 CORRESPONDENCE WITH SOUTHEY. 
 
 connection as foes with Christians ; but Abyssinians, 
 Ethiops, Esquimaux, Dervises, and all that tribe, I 
 hate. I believe I fear them in some manner. A 
 Mahometan turban on the stage, though enveloping 
 some well-known face (Mr. Cook or Mr. Maddo.x, 
 whom I see another day good Christian and English 
 waiters, innkeepers, &c.), does not give me pleasure 
 unalloyed. I am a Christian, Englishman, Londoner, 
 Templar. God help me when I come to put off these 
 snug relations, and to get abroad into the world to 
 come ! I shall be like the crow on the sand, as Words- 
 worth has it; but I won't think on it: no need, I 
 hope, yet. 
 
 The parts I have been most pleased with, both on 
 first and second readings, perhaps, are Florinda's 
 palliation of Roderick's crime, confessed to him in 
 his disguise — the retreat of the Palayos family first 
 discovered — his being made kmg — " For acclamation 
 one form must serve more solemn for the breach of 
 old observances.'' Roderick's vow is extremely fine, 
 and his blessing on the vow of Alphonso : 
 
 " Towards the troop he spread his arms. 
 As if the expanded soul diffused itself, 
 And carried to all spirits qjuith the act 
 Its affluent inspiration." 
 
 Tt struck me forcibly that the feeling of these last 
 lines might have been suggested to you by the 
 Cartoon of Paul at Athens. Certain it is that a 
 Detter motto or guide to that famous attitude can no- 
 where be found. I shall adopt it as explanatory of 
 that violent but dignified motion. 
 
 I must read again Landor's Julian. I have not 
 read it some time. I think he must have failed in
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH SOUTHEY. 57 
 
 Roderick, for I remember nothing of him, nor of any 
 distinct character as a character — only fine-sounding 
 passages. I remember thinking also he had chosen a 
 point of time after the event, as it were, for Roderick 
 survives to no use ; but my memory is weak, and I 
 will not wrong a fine poem by trusting to it. 
 
 The notes to your poem I have not read again : 
 but it will be a take-downable book on my shelf, and 
 they will serve sometimes at breakfast, or times too 
 light for the text to be duly appreciated. Though 
 some of 'em — one of the serpent penance — is serious 
 enough, now I think on't. Of Coleridge I hear 
 nothing, nor of the Morgans. I hope to have him 
 like a re-appearing star, standing up before me some 
 time when least expected in London, as has been the 
 case whilere. 
 
 I am doing nothing (as the phrase is) but reading 
 presents, and walk away what of the day hours I can 
 get from hard occupation. Pray accept once more 
 my hearty thanks, and expression of pleasure for 
 your remembrance of me. My sister desires her 
 kind respects to Mrs. S. and to all at Keswick. 
 
 Yours truly, C. Lamb. 
 
 London, 6th May, 1815. 
 
 The next present I look for is the White Doe. 
 
 Have you seen Mat. Betham's Lay of Marie ? I 
 think it very delicately pretty as to sentiment, &c. 
 
 R. Soiithey, Esq., 
 
 Kesivick, near Penrith, 
 Cumberland.
 
 58 CORRESPONDENCE WITH SOUTHEY. 
 
 Letter LXXVII.] Aug. 9th, 1815. 
 
 Dear Southey, — Robinson is not on the circuit, as 
 I erroneously stated in a letter to W. W., which 
 travels with this, but is gone to Brussels, Ostend, 
 Ghent, &c. But his friends, the Colliers, whom I 
 consulted respecting your friend's fate, remember to 
 have heard him say, that Father Pardo had effected 
 his escape, (the cunning greasy rogue !) and to the 
 best of their belief is at present in Paris. To my 
 thinking, it is a small matter whether there be one 
 fat friar more or less in the world. I have rather a 
 taste for clerical executions, imbibed from early recol- 
 lections of the fate of the excellent Dodd. I hear 
 Buonaparte has sued his habeas corpus, and the twelve 
 judges are now sitting upon it at the Rolls. 
 
 Your boute-feu (bonfire) must be excellent of its 
 kind. Poet Settle presided at the last great thing of 
 the kind in London, when the pope was burnt in form. 
 Do you provide any verses on this occasion ? Your 
 fear for Hartley's intellectuals is just and rational. 
 Could not the Chancellor be petitioned to remove him ? 
 His lordship took Mr. Betty from under the paternal 
 wing. I think at least he should go through a course 
 of matter-of-fact with some sober man after the mys- 
 teries. Could not he spend a week at Poole's before 
 he goes back to Oxford ? Tobin is dead. But there 
 is a man in my office, a Mr. Hedges, who proses it 
 away from morning to night, and never gets beyond 
 corporal and material verities. He'd get these crack- 
 brain metaphysics out of the young gentleman's head 
 as soon as any one I know. When I can't sleep o'
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH SOUTHEY. 59 
 
 nights, I imagine a dialogue with Mr. Hedges, upon 
 any given subject, and go prosing on in fancy with 
 him, till I either laugh or fall asleep. I have literally 
 found it answer. I am going to stand godfather ; I 
 don't like the business ; I cannot muster up decorum 
 for these occasions ; I shall certainly disgrace the 
 font. I was at Hazlitt's marriage,^ and had like to 
 have been turned out several times during the cere- 
 mony. Any thing awful makes me laugh. I misbe- 
 haved once at a funeral. Yet I can read about these 
 ceremonies with pious and proper feelings. The 
 realities of life only seem the mockeries. I fear I 
 must get cured along with Hartley, if not too invete- 
 rate. Don't you think Louis the Desirable is in a 
 sort of quandary ? 
 
 After all, Buonaparte is a fine fellow, as my barber 
 says, and I should not mind standing bareheaded at 
 his table to do him service in his fall. They should 
 have given him Hampton Court or Kensington, with 
 a tether extending forty miles round London. Qu. 
 Would not the people have ejected the Brunswicks 
 some day in his favour ? Well, we shall see. 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 
 Letter LXXVHL] Monday, Oct. 26th, 1818. 
 
 Dear Southey, — I am pleased with your friendly 
 remembrances of my little things. I do not know 
 whether I have done a silly thing or a wise one, but 
 it is of no great consequence. I run no risk, and care 
 
 1 May I, 1808, at St. Andrew's Church, Holborn. — H.
 
 6o CORRESPONDENCE WITH SOUTHEY. 
 
 for no censures. My bread and cheese is stable as 
 the foundations of Leadenhall Street, and if it hold 
 out as long as the " foundations of our empire in the 
 East," I shall do pretty well. You and W. W. should 
 have had your presentation copies more ceremoniously 
 sent, but I had no copies when I was leaving town 
 for my holidays, and rather than delay, commissioned 
 my bookseller to send them thus nakedly. By not 
 hearing from W. W. or you, I began to be afraid 
 Murray had not sent them. I do not see S. T. C. so 
 often as I could wish. He never comes to me ; and 
 though his host and hostess are very friendly, it puts 
 me out of my way to go see one person at another 
 person's house. It was the same when he resided at 
 Morgan's. Not but they also were more than civil ; 
 but, after all, one feels so welcome at one's own house. 
 Have you seen poor Miss Betham's " Vignettes ?" 
 Some of them, the second particularly, "To Lucy," 
 are sweet and good as herself, while she was herself. 
 She is in some measure abroad again. I am better 
 than I deserve to be. The hot weather has been such 
 a treat ! Mary joins in this little corner in kindest 
 remembrances to you all. C. L.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH SOUTHEY. 6l 
 
 Letter LXXIX.] 
 
 letter of elia to robert southey, esq. 
 
 [This was a letter published in the London Maga- 
 zine for Oct., 1823. It will be found among the 
 Collected Pieces.] 
 
 Letter LXXX.] E. I. H., 21st November, 1823. 
 
 Dear Southey, — The kindness of your note has 
 melted away the mist which was upon me. I have 
 been fighting against a shadow. That accursed Q.R 
 had vexed me by a gratuitous speaking, of its own 
 
 knowledge, that the Confessions of a D d was a 
 
 genuine description of the state of the writer. Little 
 things, that are not ill-meant, may produce much 
 ill. That might have injured me alive and dead. I 
 am in a public office, and my life is insured. I was 
 prepared for anger, and I thought I saw, in a few 
 obnoxious words, a hard case of repetition directed 
 against me. I wished both magazine and review at the 
 bottom of the sea. I shall be ashamed to see you, and 
 my sister (though innocent) will be still more so ; for 
 the folly was done without her knowledge, and has 
 made her uneasy ever since. My guardian angel was 
 absent at that time.
 
 62 CORRESPONDENCE WITH SOUTHEY. 
 
 I will muster up courage to see you, however, any 
 day next week (Wednesday excepted). We shall 
 hope that you will bring Edith with you. That will 
 be a second mortification. She will hate to see us; 
 but come and heap embers. We deserve it ; I for 
 what I've done, and she for being my sister. 
 
 Do come early in the day, by sun-light, that you 
 may see my Milton. 
 
 I am at Colebrook Cottage, Colebrook Row, Isling- 
 ton : a detached whitish house, close to the New 
 River end of Colebrook Terrace, left hand from 
 Sadler's Wells.^ 
 
 Will you let me know the day before ? 
 
 Your penitent, C. Lamb. 
 
 P.S. — I do not think your hand-writing at all like 
 ****'s. I do not think many things I did think. 
 
 Letter LXXXI.] August 19th, 1825. 
 
 Dear Southey, — You'll know who this letter comes 
 from by opening slap-dash upon the text, as in the 
 good old times. I never could come into the custom 
 of envelopes ; 'tis a modern foppery ; the Plinian 
 correspondence gives no hint of such. In single- 
 ness of sheet and meaning, then, I thank you for 
 your little book. I am ashamed to add a codicil of 
 thanks for your " Book of the Church." I scarce feel 
 competent to give an opinion of the latter ; I have 
 not readinsr enous:h of that kind to venture at it. I
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH SOUTHEY. 63 
 
 can only say the fact, that I have read it with atten- 
 tion and interest. Being, as you know, not quite a 
 Churchman, I felt a jealousy at the Church taking 
 to herself the whole deserts of Christianity, Catholic 
 and Protestant, from Druid extirpation downwards. 
 I call all good Christians the Church, Capillarians 
 and all. But I am in too light a humoui to touch 
 these matters. May all our churches flourish ! Two 
 things staggered me in the poem, (and one of them 
 staggered both of us). I cannot away with a beauti- 
 ful series of verses, as I protest they are, commencing 
 "Jenner." 'Tis like a choice banquet opened with a 
 pill or an electuary — physic stutT. T'other is, we 
 cannot make out how Edith should be no more than 
 ten years old. By'r Lady, we had taken her to be 
 some sixteen or upwards. We suppose you have 
 only chosen the round number for the metre. Or 
 poem and dedication may be both older than they 
 pretend to ; but then some hint might have been 
 given ; for, as it stands, it may only serve some day 
 to puzzle the parish reckoning. But without inquir- 
 ing further, (for 'tis ungracious to look into a lady's 
 years,) the dedication is eminently pleasing and tender, 
 and we wish Edith May Southeyjoy of it. Some- 
 thing, too, struck us as if we had heard of the death 
 of John May. A John May's death was a few years 
 since in the papers. We think the tale one of the 
 quietest, prettiest things we have seen. You have 
 been temperate in the use of localities, which generally 
 spoil poems laid in exotic regions. You mostly cannot 
 stir out (in such things) for humming-birds and fire- 
 flies. A tree is a Magnolia, &c. — Can I but like the 
 truly Catholic spirit ? *' Blame as thou mayest the 
 Papist's erring creed" — which, and other passages,
 
 64 CORRESPONDENCE WITH SOUTHEY. 
 
 brought me back to the old Anthology days, and the 
 admonitory lesson to " Dear George" on " The Vesper 
 Bell," a little poem which retains its first hold upon 
 me strangely. 
 
 The compliment to the translatress is daintily con- 
 ceived. Nothing is choicer in that sort of writing 
 than to bring in some remote, impossible parallel, — 
 as between a great empress and the mobtrusive quiet 
 soul who digged her noiseless way so perseveringly 
 through that rugged Paraguay mine. How she 
 Dobrizhoffered it all out, it puzzles my slender 
 Latinity to conjecture. Why do you seem to sanc- 
 tion Lander's unfeeling allegorizing away of honest 
 Quixote ! He may as well say Strap is meant to 
 symbolize the Scottish nation before the Union, and 
 Random since that act of dubious issue ; or that 
 Partridge means the Mystical Man, and Lady 
 Bellaston typifies the Woman upon Many W^aters. 
 Gebir, indeed, may mean the state of the hop 
 markets last month, for any thing I know to the 
 contrary. That all Spain overflowed with romancical 
 books (as Madge Newcastle calls them) was no 
 reason that Cervantes should not smile at the matteir 
 of them ; nor even a reason that, in another mood^ 
 he might not multiply them, deeply as he was tinc- 
 tured with the essence of them. Quixote is the father 
 of gentle ridicule, and at the same time the very 
 depository and treasury of chivalry and highest 
 notions. Marry, when somebody persuaded Cer- 
 vantes that he meant only fun, and put him upon 
 writing that unfortunate Second Part with the con- 
 federacies of that unworthy duke and most con- 
 temptible duchess, Cervantes sacrificed his instinct to 
 his understanding,
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH SOUTHEY. 65 
 
 We got your little book but last night, being at 
 Enfield, to which place we came about a month since, 
 and are having quiet holydays. Mary walks her 
 twelve miles a day some days, and I my twenty on 
 others. 'Tis all hol3'day with me now, you know. 
 The change works admirably. 
 
 For literary news, in my poor way, I have a one- 
 act farce going to be acted at the Haymarket ; but 
 when ? is the question. "Tis an extravaganza, and like 
 enough to follow Mr. H. The London Magazine has 
 shifted its publishers once more, and I shall shift 
 myself out of it. It is fallen. My ambition is not at 
 present higher than to write nonsense for the play- 
 houses, to eke out a somewhat contracted income. 
 Tempus erat. There was a time, my dear Cornwallis, 
 when the Muse, &c. But I am now in Mac Fleckno's 
 predicament, — 
 
 " Promised a play, and dwindled to a farce.'' 
 
 Coleridge is better (was, at least, a few weeks 
 since) than he has been for years. His accomplish- 
 ing his book at last has been a source of vigour to 
 him. We are on a half visit to his friend Allsop, at 
 a Mrs. Leishman's, Enfield, but expect to be at Cole- 
 brook Cottage in a week or so, where, or anywhere, 
 I shall be always most happy to receive tidings from 
 you. G. Dyer is in the height of an uxorious 
 paradise. His honeymoon will not wane till he wax 
 cold. Never was a more happy pair since Acme and 
 Septimius, and longer. Farewell, with many thanks, 
 dear S. Our loves to all round your Wrekin. 
 
 Your old friend, 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 
 VOL. II. F
 
 66 CORRESPONDENCE WITH SOUTHEY. 
 
 Letter LXXXIL] May loth, 1830. 
 
 Dear Southey, — My friend Hone, whom you would 
 like for a friend, I found deeply impressed with your 
 generous notice of him in your beautiful Life of 
 Bunyan, which I am just now full of. He has 
 written to you for leave to publish a certain good- 
 natured letter. I write not this to enforce his request, 
 for we are fully aware that the refusal of such publica- 
 tion would be quite consistent with all that is good 
 in your character. Neither he nor I expect it from 
 you, nor exact it ; but if you would consent to it, 
 you would oblige me by it, as well as him. He is 
 just now in a critical situation : kind friends have 
 opened a coffee-house for him in the City, but their 
 means have not extended to the purchase of coffee- 
 pots, credit for Reviews, newspapers, and other 
 paraphernalia. So I am sitting in the skeleton of a 
 possible divan. What right I have to interfere,*you 
 best know. Look on me as a dog who went once 
 temporarily insane, and bit you, and now begs for a 
 crust. Will you set your wits to a dog ? 
 
 Our object is to open a subscription, which my 
 friends of the Times are most willing to forward for 
 him, but think that a leave from you to publish 
 would aid it. 
 
 But not an atom of respect or kindness will or shall 
 it abate in either of us if you decline it. Have this 
 strongly in your mind. 
 
 Those Every -Day and Table Books will be a treasure 
 a hundred years hence, but they have failed to make 
 Hone's fortune. 
 
 Here his wife and all his children are about me,
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH SOUTHEY. 67 
 
 gaping for coffee customers ; but how should they 
 come in, seeing no pot boihng ! 
 
 Enough of Hone. I saw Coleridge a day or two 
 since. He has had some severe attack, not paralytic ; 
 but if I had not heard of it I should not have found 
 it out. He looks, and especially speaks, strong. 
 How are all the Wordsworths and all the Southeys ? 
 whom I am obliged to you if you have not brought 
 up haters of the name of 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 
 P.S. — I have gone lately into the acrostic line. I 
 find genius (such as I had) declines with me, but I 
 get clever. Do you know any body that wants 
 charades, or such things, for Albums ? I do 'em at 
 so much a sheet. Perhaps an epigram (not a very 
 happy-gram) I did for a school-boy yesterday may 
 amuse. I pray Jove he may not get a flogging for 
 any false quantity ; but 'tis, with one exception, the 
 only Latin verses I have made for forty years ; and I 
 did it "to order." 
 
 (Here follow the Latin verses " Cuique Suum."') 
 
 I write from Hone's ; therefore Mary cannot send 
 her love to Mrs. Southey, but I do. 
 
 Yours ever, C. L. 
 
 ' See the Poetical Pieces. 
 
 F 2
 
 ( 68 ) 
 
 III. 
 
 Correspondence with the Wordsworths. 
 
 Letter LXXXIII.] Oct, 13th, 1800. 
 
 Dear Wordsworth, — I have not forgot your com- 
 y'-' missions. But the truth is, (and why should I not 
 
 / confess it?) I am not plethorically abounding in 
 
 cash at this present. Merit, God knows, is very 
 little rewarded ; but it does not become me to speak 
 of myself. My motto is " contented with little, yet 
 wishing for more." Now, the books you wish for 
 would require some pounds, which, I am sorry to 
 say, I have not by me ; so I will say at once, if you 
 will give me a draft upon your town banker for any 
 sum you propose to lay out, I will dispose of it to the 
 very best of my skill in choice old books, such as my 
 own soul loveth. In fact, I have been waiting for 
 the liquidation of a debt to enable myself to set about 
 your commission handsomely ; for it is a scurvy 
 thing to cry, " Give me the money first," and I am 
 the first of the family of the Lambs that have done it 
 for many centuries ; but the debt remains as it was, 
 and my old friend that I accommodated has gene- 
 jously forgot it ! The books which you want, I 
 calculate at about £8. Ben Jonson is a guinea book. 
 Beaumont and Fletcher, in folio, the right folio not 
 now to be met with ; the octavos are about £2- As 
 to any other dramatists, I do not know where to find 
 them, except what are in Dodsley's Old Plays, which 
 are about ;^3 also. Massinger I never saw but at
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS, 69 
 
 one shop, and it is now gone ; but one of the editions 
 of Dodsley contains about a fourth (the best) of his 
 plays. Congreve, and the rest of King Charles's 
 moralists, are cheap and accessible. The works on 
 Ireland I will inquire after ; but I fear Spenser's is 
 not to be had apart from his poems ; I never saw it. 
 But you may depend upon my sparing no pains to 
 furnish you as complete a library of old poets and 
 dramatists as will be prudent to buy ; for, I suppose 
 you do not include the ;;^20 edition of Hamlet, single 
 play, which Kemble has. Marlowe's plays and 
 poems are totally vanished ; only one edition of 
 Dodsley retains one, and the other two of his plays : 
 but John Ford is the man after Shakspeare. Let me 
 know your will and pleasure soon, for I have observed, 
 next to the pleasure of buying a bargain for one's self, 
 is the pleasure of persuading a friend to buy it. It 
 tickles one with the image of an imprudency, without 
 the penalty usually annexed. 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 
 Letter LXXXIV.J Jan. 30th, 1801. 
 
 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
 
 / 
 
 70 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS. 
 
 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 watchmen, drunken 
 scenes, rattles ; 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 panto- 
 mimes — 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 born, 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 I have sunned myself, 
 my old school, — these are my mistresses. Have I not
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS. 71 
 
 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 
 characters, than as a gilded room with tapestry and 
 tapers, where I might live with handsome visible 
 objects. I consider the clouds above me but as a roof) 
 beautifully painted, but unable to satisfy the mind: J 
 and at last, like the pictures of the apartment of a 
 connoisseur, unable to afford him anylongera pleasure. 
 So fading upon me, from disuse, have been the beau- 
 ties of Nature, as they have been coniinedly called ; 
 so ever fresh, and green, and warm are all the inven- 
 tions 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 
 yourself ; and a kiss from me to little Barbara 
 Lewthwaite.^ Thank you for liking my play. 
 
 C. L. 
 
 Letter LXXXV.] About 1803. 
 
 Thanks for your letter and present. I had already 
 borrowed your second volume. What most pleases 
 me is, " The Song of Lucy." Sitnon's sickly daughter, 
 in " The Sexton," made me cry. Next to these are 
 
 ' Alluding to the Inscription of Wordsworth's, entitled " Joanna,"' 
 containing a magnificent description of the effect of laughter echoing 
 amidst the great mountains of "Westmoreland. — T. 
 
 2 Alluding to Wordsworth's poem. The Pet Lamb. — T.
 
 72 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS. 
 
 the description of these continuous echoes in the 
 story of "Joanna's Laugh," where the mountains, 
 and all the scenery absolutely seem alive ; and that 
 fine Shakspearian character of the " happy man," is 
 the " Brothers," 
 
 " that creeps about the fields. 
 
 Following his fancies by the hour, to bring 
 Tears down his cheek, or solitary smiles 
 Into his face, until the setting sun 
 Write Fool upon his forehead !" 
 
 I will mention one more — the delicate and curious 
 feeling in the wish for the " Cumberland Beggar," 
 that he may have about him the melody of birds, 
 although he hear them not. Here the mind knowingly 
 passes a fiction upon herself, first substituting her own 
 feeling for the Beggar's, and in the same breath 
 detecting the fallacy, will not part with the wish. 
 The " Poet's Epitaph" is disfigured, to my taste, by 
 the common satire upon parsons and lawyers in the 
 beginning, and the coarse epithet of " pin-point," in 
 \ the sixth stanza. All the rest is eminently good, and 
 I your own. I will just add that it appears to me a 
 fault in the " Beggar," that the instructions conveyed 
 in it are too direct, and like a l^elure : they don't 
 1 slide into the mind of the reader while he is imagin- 
 ling no such matter. An intelligent reader finds a 
 sort of insult in being told, " I will teach you how to 
 think upon this subject." This fault, if I am right, is 
 in a ten-thousandth worse degree to be found in Sterne, 
 and in many novelists and modern poets, who con- 
 tinually put a sign-post up to show where you are 
 to feel. They set out with assuming their readers to 
 be stupid ; very different from Robinson Crusoe, the
 
 ylKj lJ^-»0 ^ / 
 
 O-t-VA.*-*/ 
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS. 
 
 7Z 
 
 Vicar of Wakefield, Roderick Random, and other 
 beautiful, bare narratives. There is impHed an un- 
 written compact between author and reader ; " I will 
 tell you a story, and I suppose you will understand 
 it." Modern novels, St. Leons and the like, are full 
 of such flowers as these — "Let not my reader suppose," 
 " Imagine, if you can, modest !" &c. I will here 
 have done with praise and blame. I have written so 
 much, only that you may not think I have passed 
 
 over your book without observation 
 
 I am sorry that Coleridge has christened his Ancient 
 Marinere, a PoeVs Reverie ; it is as bad as Bottom 
 the Weaver's declaration that he is not a lion, but only 
 the scenical representation of a lion. What new 
 idea is gained by this title but one subversive of all 
 credit — which the tale should force upon us — of its 
 truth 1 
 
 For me, I was never so affected with any human 
 tale. After first reading it, I was totally possessed 
 with it for many days. I dislike all the miraculous 
 part of it; but the feelings of the man under the opera- 
 tion of such scenery, dragged me along like Tom 
 Pipe's magic whistle. I totally differ from your idea 
 that the Marinere should have had a character and 
 profession. This is a beauty in Gulliver s Travels, 
 where the mind is kept in a placid state of little 
 wonderments; but the Ancient Marinere undergoes 
 such trials as overwhelm and bury all individuality or 
 memory of what he was — like the state of a man in a 
 bad dream, one terrible peculiarity of which is, that 
 all consciousness of personality is gone. Your other 
 observation is, I think as well, a little unfounded : 
 the " Marinere," from being conversant in super- 
 natural events, has acquired a supernatural and
 
 74 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS. 
 
 Strange cast of phrase, eye, appearance, &c., which 
 frighten the " wedding guest." You will excuse 
 my remarks, because I am hurt and vexed that 
 you should think it necessary, with a prose apology, 
 to open the eyes of dead men that cannot see. 
 
 To sum up a general opinion of the second volume, 
 I do not feel any one poem in it so forcibly as the 
 Ancient Marincre, and the "Mad Mother," and the 
 *' Lines at Tintern Abbey" in the first. 
 
 Letter LXXXVI.] 14th June, 1805. 
 
 My dear Miss Wordsworth, — Your long kind letter 
 has not been thrown away (for it has given me great 
 pleasure to find you are all resuming your old occupa- 
 tions, and are better) ; but poor Mary, to whom it is 
 addressed, cannot yet relish it. She has been attacked 
 by one of her severe illnesses, and is at present from 
 ^ home. Last Monday week was the day she left me, 
 
 ^y and I hope I may calculate upon having her again in 
 
 a month or little more. I am rather afraid late hours 
 have in this case contributed to her indisposition. 
 But when she discovers symptoms of approaching 
 illness, it is not easy to say what is best to do. 
 Being by ourselves is bad, and going out is bad. I 
 get so irritable and wretched with fear, that I con- 
 stantly hasten on the disorder. You cannot conceive 
 the misery of such a foresight. I am sure that, for the 
 week before she left me, I was little better than light- 
 headed. I now am calm, but sadly taken down and flat. 
 I have every reason to suppose that this illness, like all 
 her former ones, will be but temporary ; but I cannot
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS. y ^ 
 
 always feel so. Meantime she is dead to me, and I 
 miss a prop. All my strength is gone, and I am like 
 a fool, bereft of her co-operation. I dare not think, 
 lest I should think wrong ; so used am I to look up 
 to her in the least and the biggest perplexity. To 
 say all that I know of her would be more than I think 
 any body could believe, or even understand ; and when 
 I hope to have her well again with me, it would be 
 sinning against her feelings to go about to praise 
 her; for I can conceal nothing that I do from her. 
 She is older and wiser and better than I, and all 
 my wretched imperfections I cover to myself by 
 resolutely thinking on her goodness. She would 
 share life and death, heaven and hell, with me. She 
 lives but for me ; and I know I have been wasting 
 and teasing her life for five years past incessantly 
 with my^^j^ujsed^ , drinking and ways of ^ going 
 on. But even in this upbraiding of myself, I 
 am offending against her, for I know that she has 
 cleaved to me for better, for worse ; and if the balance 
 has been against her hitherto, it was a noble trade, 
 I am stupid, and lose myself in what I write. I write 
 rather what answers to my feelings (which are some- 
 times sharp enough) than express my present ones, 
 for I am only flat and stupid. I am sure you will 
 excuse my writing any more, I am so very poorly. 
 
 I cannot resist transcribing three or four lines 
 which poor Mary made upon a picture (a Holy 
 Family) which we saw at an auction only one week 
 before she left home. She was then beginning to 
 show signs of ill boding. They are sweet lines and 
 upon a sweet picture ; but I send them only as the 
 last memorial of her.
 
 76 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS. 
 
 " VIRGIN AND CHILD, L. DA VINCI. 
 
 " Maternal Lady, with thy virgin grace, 
 Ht-avcn-born, thy Jesus seemeth sure, 
 And thou a virgin pure. 
 Lady most perfect, when thy angel face 
 Men look upon, they wish to be 
 A Catholic, Madorma fair, to worship dice." 
 
 You had her lines about the " Lady Blanch." You 
 have not had some which she wrote upon a copy of a 
 girl from Titian, which I had hung up where that 
 print of Blanch and the Abbess (as she beautifully 
 interpreted two female figures from L. da Vinci) had 
 hung in our room. 'Tis light and pretty: — 
 
 " Who art thou, fair one, who usurp'st the place 
 Of Blanch, the lady of the matchless grace? 
 Come, fair and pretty, tell to me 
 Who in thy lifetime thou mightst be? 
 Thou pretty art and fair, 
 
 But with the Lady Blanch thou never must compare. 
 No need for Blanch her history to tell. 
 Whoever saw her face, they there did read it well; 
 But when I look on thee, I only know 
 There lived a pretty maid some hundred years ago." 
 
 This is a little unfair, to tell so much about our- 
 selves, and to advert so little to your letter, so full of 
 comfortable tidings of you all. But my own cares 
 press pretty close upon me, and you can make allow- 
 ance. That you may go on gathering strength and 
 peace is my next wish to Mary's recovery. 
 
 I had almost forgot your repeated invitation. Sup- 
 posing that Mary will be well and able, there is another 
 ability which you may guess at, which I cannot pro- 
 mise myself. In prudence we ought not to come. 
 This illness will make it still more prudential to wait.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS. 77 
 
 It is not a balance of this way of spending our money 
 against another way, but an absolute question of 
 whether we shall stop now, or go on wasting away 
 the little we have got beforehand, which my wise 
 conduct has already encroach'd upon one half. My 
 best love, however, to you all ; and to that most 
 friendly creature, Mrs. Clarkson, and better health to 
 her, when you see or write to her. 
 
 Charles Lamb. 
 
 Letter LXXXVIL] June 26th, 1805. 
 
 Mary is just stuck fast in "All's Well that Ends 
 Well."^ She complains of having to set forth so 
 many female characters in boys' clothes. She begins 
 to think Shakspeare must have wanted imagina- 
 tion ! I, to encourage her, (for she often faints in the 
 prosecution of her great work.) flatter her with telling 
 her how well such a play and such a play is done. 
 
 Miss Lamb was now engaged on the "Tales from Shakespeare." 
 which were published in 1807. She contributed the Comedy tales, 
 and Lamb himself adapted the Tragedies. 
 
 It was advertised as by Charles Lamb alone, at the end of a litue 
 volume printed in 1810: — 
 
 " Written by Charles Lamb, 
 "Tales from Shakespear, with 20 Engravings, 2 vols., 8j." 
 In the same place are the following Notices : — 
 
 "Adventures of Ulysses. With a superb Frontispiece, and Title- 
 page, 4J." 
 
 " Mrs. Leicester's School, or the History of Several Young Ladies, 
 Related by Themselves. The Third Edition. With a beau- 
 tiful Frontispiece. Price 3J. 6d. 
 
 " Poetry tor Children, Entirely Original. By the Author of Mrs. 
 Leicester's School. With Frontispieces, 2 vols, price 3J. 
 
 " N.B. — Each volu.me may be had separate." — H.
 
 78 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS, 
 
 But she is stuck fast, and I have been obliged to 
 promise to assist her. To do this, it will be neces- 
 sary to leave off tobacco. But I had some thoughts 
 of doing that before, for I sometimes think it does 
 not agree with me. Wm. Hazlitt is in town. I took 
 him to see a very pretty girl, professedly, where there 
 were two young girls ; (the very head and sum of the 
 girlery was two young girls ;) they neither laughed, 
 nor sneered, nor giggled, nor whispered — but they 
 were young girls — and he sat and frowned blacker 
 and blacker, indignant that there should be such a 
 thing as youth and beauty, till he tore me away 
 before supper, in perfect miser}', and owned he could 
 not bear young girls ; they drove him mad. So I 
 took him home to my old nurse, where he recovered 
 perfect tranquillity. Independent of this, and as I am 
 not a young girl myself, he is a great acquisition to 
 us. He is, rather imprudently I think, printing a 
 political pamphlet on his own account, and will have 
 to pay for the paper, &c. The first duty of an author, 
 I take it, is never to pay any thing. But no7i ciiivis 
 contigit adire Corinthum. The managers, I thank my 
 stars, have settled that question for me. 
 
 Yours truly, C. Lamb, 
 
 Letter LXXXVIII.] 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 be- 
 lieve is the true state of the case, so diffident,) that it
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS. 79 
 
 must revert 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 past. I am very nervous, and she most so at 
 those times when I am ; so that a merry friend, ad- 
 vertin.g 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 history of our rustications this year. Alas ! how 
 poor a round to Skiddaw and Helvellyn, and Borrow- 
 dale, 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. Remember 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 
 possible for any one to do. She is one of the friend- 
 liest, comfortablest women we know, and made our 
 little stay at your cottage one of the pleasantest times 
 
 1 This is mere banter; Miss Lamb wrote a very good hand. — ^T
 
 8o CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS. 
 
 we ever past. We were quite strangers to her. Mr. 
 C. is with you too ; our kindest separate remem- 
 brances to him. As to our special affairs, I am look- 
 ing 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 some- 
 thing, 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 refinements of this old 
 torturer some thousand years after, under pretence of 
 " Commerce allying distant shores, promoting and 
 diffusing knowledge, good," &c. &c. 
 
 I wish you may think this a handsome farewell to 
 my " Friendly Traitress." Tobacco has been my 
 evening comfort and my morning curse for these five 
 years ; and you know how difficult it is from refrain- 
 ing 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
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS, 8l 
 
 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 convey it to him with my kind remem- 
 brances. Then, every body will have seen it that I 
 wish to see it, I having sent it to Malta. ^ 
 I remain, dear W. and D., yours truly, 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 
 Letter LXXXIX.] June, 1806. 
 
 Dear Wordsworth, — We are pleased, you may be 
 
 sure, with the good news of Mrs. W . Hope all 
 
 is well over by this time. " A fine boy. Have you 
 any more ? — one more and a girl — poor copies of 
 me !" vide Mr. H., a farce which the proprietors have 
 
 done me the honour ; but I will set down Mr. 
 
 Wroughton's own words. N. B. The ensuing letter 
 was sent in answer to one which I wrote, begging to 
 know if my piece had any chance, as I might make 
 alterations, &c. I writing on Monday, there comes 
 this letter on the Wednesday. Attend ! 
 
 [Copy of a Letter from Mr. R. Wroughton.] 
 " Sir, — Your piece of Mr. H.f I am desired to say, 
 
 ' The " Farewell to Tobacco " was transcribed on the next page ; 
 but the actual sacrifice was not complett^d until some years after. — T. 
 
 VOL. II. G
 
 82 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS. 
 
 is accepted at Drury Lane Theatre, by the proprietors, 
 and, if agreeable to you, will be brought forwards 
 when the proper opportunity serves. The piece 
 shall be sent to you, for your alterations, in the 
 course of a few days, as the same is not in my hands, 
 but with the proprietors. 
 
 " I am, sir, your obedient servant, 
 
 " Richard Wroughton. 
 
 [Dated] 
 " 66, Gower Street, 
 
 "Wednesday, June ii, 1806." 
 
 On the following Sunday Mr. Tobin comes. The 
 scent of a manager's letter brought him. He would 
 have gone further any day on such a business. I 
 read the letter to him. He deems it authentic and 
 peremptory. Our conversation naturally fell upon 
 pieces, different sorts of pieces ; what is the best way 
 of offering a piece, how far the caprice of managers 
 is an obstacle in the way of a piece, how to judge 
 of the merits of a piece, how long a piece may remain 
 in the hands of the managers before it is acted ; and 
 my piece, and your piece, and my poor brother's 
 piece — my poor brother was all his life endeavour- 
 ing to get a piece accepted. I am not sure that, 
 when my poor brother bequeathed the care of his 
 pieces to Mr. Tobin, he did not therein convey a 
 legacy which in some measure mollified the other- 
 wise first stupefactions of grief. It cannot be ex- 
 pected that the present Earl Nelson passes all his 
 time in watering the laurels of the admiral with 
 Right-Reverend Tears. Certainly he steals a fine 
 day now and then to plot how to lay out the grounds 
 and mansion at Burnham most suitable to the late 
 Earl's taste, if he had lived, and how to spend the
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS 83 
 
 hundred thousand pounds which Parliament has given 
 him in erecting some little neat monument to his 
 memory. 
 
 I wrote Mr. H. in mere wantonness of triumph. 
 Have nothing more to say about it. The managers, 
 I thank my stars, have decided its merits for ever. 
 They are the best judges of pieces, and it would be 
 insensible in me to aftect a false modesty after the 
 very flattering letter which I have received. 
 
 
 
 ADMIT 
 
 
 
 TO 
 
 
 
 BOXES. 
 
 Ninth 
 
 Night 
 
 Mr. H. 
 
 Charles Lamb. 
 
 I think this will be as good a pattern for orders 
 as I can think on. A little thin flowery border, 
 round, neat, not gaudy, and the Drury Lane Apollo, 
 with the harp at the top. Or shall I have no Apollo ? 
 — simply nothing ? Or perhaps the comic muse ? 
 
 The same form, only I think without the Apollo, 
 will serve for the pit and galleries. I think it will be 
 best to write my name at full length ; but then if I 
 give away a great many, that will be tedious. Per- 
 haps Ch. Lamb will do. 
 
 BOXES, now I think on it, I'll have in capitals. 
 The rest, in a neat Italian hand. Or better, perhaps 
 •33aj:efi, in old English characters, like " Madoc" or 
 "Thalaba?" C. L. 
 
 Feb. 1st, 1806. 
 
 A-propos of Spenser, (you will find him mentioned a 
 page or two before, near enough for an a-propos,) J 
 
 G 2
 
 84 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS. 
 
 was discoursing on poetry (as one's apt to deceive 
 one's self, and when a person is willing to talk of what 
 one likes, to believe that he also likes the same, as 
 lovers do) with a young gentleman of my office, who 
 is deep read in Anacreon Moore, Lord Strangford, 
 and the principal modern poets, and I happened to 
 mention Epithalamiums, and that I could show him 
 a very fine one of Spenser's. At the mention of this, 
 my gentleman, who is a very fine gentleman, and is 
 brother to the Miss Evans whom Coleridge so nar- 
 rowly escaped marrying, pricked up his ears and 
 expressed great pleasure, and begged that I would 
 give him leave to copy it : he did not care how long 
 it was (for I objected the length), he should be very 
 happy to see any thing by him. Then pausing, and 
 looking sad, he ejaculated " Poor Spencer ! " I 
 begged to know the reason of his ejaculation, thinking 
 that time had by this time softened down any calami- 
 ties which the bard might have endured. " Why, 
 poor fellow," said he, " he has lost his wife I " 
 " Lost his wife ! " said I, " whom are you talking of ? " 
 "Why, Spencer," said he; "I've read the Monody 
 he wrote on the occasion, and a very pretty thing it 
 is." This led to an explanation (it could be delayed 
 no longer), that the sound Spenser, which, when 
 poetry is talked of, generally excites an image of an 
 old bard in a ruff, and sometimes with it dim notions 
 of Sir P. Sydney, and perhaps Lord Burleigh, had 
 raised in my gentleman a quite contrary image of the 
 Honourable William Spencer, who has translated 
 some things from the German very prettily, which 
 are published with Lady Di. Beauclerk's designs. 
 Nothing like defining of terras when we talk. What
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS. 85 
 
 blunders might I have fallen into of quite inapplicable 
 criticism, but for this timely explanation ! 
 
 N.B. At the beginning of Edm. Spenser (to prevent 
 mistakes), I have copied from my own copy, and pri- 
 marily from a book of Chalmers's on Shakspeare, a 
 sonnet of Spenser's never printed among his poems. 
 It is curious, as being manly, and rather Miltonic, 
 and as a sonnet of Spenser's with nothing in it about 
 love or knighthood. I have no room for remem- 
 brances; but I hope our doing your commission will 
 prove we do not quite forget you. 
 
 C. L. 
 
 Letter XC] December nth, igo6. 
 
 Mary'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 
 substantia] 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 I — a thing I did merely as a task, because it was 
 wanted, and set no great store by ; and Mr. H. ! ! 
 The number of friends we had in the house— my 
 brother and I being in public offices, &c. — was 
 astonishing, but they yielded at length to a few hisses.
 
 86 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS. 
 
 A hundred hisses ! (Damn the word, I write it 
 like kisses — how different !)— a hundred hisses out- 
 weigh 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 ot'er.] 
 
 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. 
 
 Letter XCL] 
 
 Dear Wordsworth — We have book'd off from Swan 
 and Two Necks, Lad Lane, this day (per Coach) the 
 Tales from Shakespear. You will forgive the plates, 
 when I tell you they were left to the direction of 
 Godwin, who left the choice of subjects to the bad 
 baby, who from mischief (I suppose) has chosen one 
 from damn'd beastly vulgarity (vide Merck. Venice) 
 where no atom of authori4:y was in the tale to justify 
 it ; to another has given a name which exists not in 
 the tale, Nic Bottom, and which she thought would 
 be funny, though in this I suspect his hand, for I 
 guess her reading does not reach far enough to know 
 Bottom's christian name ; and one of Hamlet and 
 grave digging, a scene which is not hinted at in the
 
 S' 
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS. 87 
 
 Story, and you might as well have put King Canute 
 
 the Great reproving his courtiers. The rest are giants 
 
 and giantesses. Suffice it, to save our taste and damn 
 
 our folly, that we left it all to a friend, W. G., who 
 
 in the first place cheated me into putting a name to 
 
 them, which I did not mean, but do not repent, and 
 
 then wrote a puff about their simplicity, &c. to go 
 
 with the advertisement as in my name ! Enough of 
 
 this egregious dupery. I will try to abstract the load 
 
 of teazing circumstances from the stories and tell you 
 
 that I am answerable for Lear, Macbeth, Timon, \ \jO^ 
 
 Romeo, Hamlet, Othello, for occasionally a tail-piece 
 
 or correction of grammar, for none of the cuts and all 
 
 of the spelling. The rest is my Sister's. We thinkj 
 
 Pericles of hers the best, and Othello of mine ; but 1\ 
 hope all have some good. As you like It, we likej 
 least. So much, only begging you to tear out thS^ 
 cuts and give them to Johnny, as " Mrs. Godwin's 
 fancy " ! ! — 
 
 C. L. 
 
 Thursday, 29th Jan. 1807. 
 
 Our love to all. 
 
 I had almost forgot. My part of the Preface begins in 
 the middle of a sentence, in last but one page, after 
 a colon, thus — 
 
 -. — luhich if they be happily so done, Ufc. 
 
 the former part hath a more feminine turn and does 
 hold me up something as an instructor to young 
 ladies : but upon my modesty's honour I wrote it 
 not. 
 
 Godwin told my Sister that the Baby chose the 
 subjects : a fact in taste. 
 
 n
 
 88 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS. 
 
 Letter XCII.] Friday, 19th Oct. 1810. E. I. Ho. 
 
 Dear W., — Mary has been very ill, which you have 
 heard, I suppose, from the Montagues. She is very 
 weak and low-spirited now. I was much pleased 
 with your continuation of the Essay on Epitaphs. It 
 IS the only sensible thing which has been written on 
 that subject, and it goes to the bottom. In particular 
 I was pleased with your translation of that turgid 
 epitaph into the plain feeling under it. It is perfectly 
 a test. But what is the reason we have no good 
 epitaphs after all ? 
 
 A very striking instance of your position might be 
 found in the churchyard of Ditton-upon-Thames, if 
 you know such a place. Ditton-upon-Thames has 
 been blessed by the residence of a poet, who for love 
 or money, I do not well know which, has dignified 
 every grave-stone, for the last few years, with bran- 
 new verses, all different, and all ingenious, with the 
 author's name at the bottom of each. This sweet 
 Swan of Thames has so artfully diversified his strains 
 and his rhymes, that the same thought never occurs 
 twice ; more justly, perhaps, as no thought ever 
 occurs at all, there was a physical impossibility that 
 the same thought should recur. It is long since I 
 saw and read these inscriptions, but I remember the 
 impression was of a smug usher at his desk in the 
 intervals of instruction, levelling his pen. Of death, 
 as it consists of dust and worms, and mourners and 
 uncertainty, he had never thought ; but the word 
 " death " he had often seen separate and conjunct with 
 ether words, till he had learned to speak of all its
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS. 89 
 
 attributes as glibly as Unitarian Belsham will discuss 
 you the attributes of the word "God" in a pulpit; 
 and will talk of infinity with a tongue that dangles 
 from a skull that never reached in thought and tho- 
 rough imagination two inches, or further than from 
 his hand to his mouth, or from the vestry to the 
 sounding-board of the pulpit. 
 
 But the epitaphs were trim, and sprag, and patent, 
 and pleased the survivors of Thames-Ditton above 
 the old mumpsimus of " Afflictions Sore." . . . . 
 To do justice though, it must be owned that even the 
 excellent feeling which dictated this dirge when new 
 must have suffered something in passing through so 
 many thousand applications, many of them no doubt 
 quite misplaced, as I have seen in Islington church- 
 yard (I think) an Epitaph to an infant who died 
 " jiEtatis four months," with this seasonable inscrip- 
 tion appended, " Honour thy father and thy mother; 
 that thy days may be long in the land," &c. Sin- 
 cerely wishing your children long life to honour, &c., 
 I remain, C. Lamb. 
 
 Letter XCIH.] Nov. 23, 1810. 
 
 We are in a pickle. Mary, from her affectation of 
 physiognomy, has hired a stupid big country wench, 
 who looked honest, as she thought, and has been 
 doing her work some days, but without eating — eats 
 no butter, nor meat, but prefers cheese with her tea 
 for breakfast ; and now it comes out that she wai
 
 90 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS. 
 
 ill when she came, with lifting her mother about 
 (who is now with God) when she was dying, and with 
 riding up from Norfolk, four days and nights in the 
 waggon. She got advice yesterday, and took some- 
 thing which has made her bring up a quart of blood, 
 and she now lies in her bed, a dead weight upon our 
 humanity, incapable of getting up, refusing to go 
 into an hospital, having nobody in town but a poor 
 asthmatic uncle whose son lately married a drab who 
 fills his house, and there is nowhere she can go, 
 and she seems to have made up her mind to take her 
 flight to heaven from our bed. Oh for the little wheel- 
 barrow which trundled the hunchback from door 
 to door to try the various charities of different profes- 
 sions of mankind ! Here's her uncle just crawled up. 
 He is far liker Death than she. Oh the Parish, the 
 Parish, the hospital, the infirmary, the charnel-house ! 
 — these are places meet for such guests, not our quiet 
 mansion, where nothing but affluent plenty and lite- 
 rary ease should abound. — Howard's House, Howard's 
 House, or where the Paralytic descended through the 
 sky-light (what a God's gift !) to get at our Saviour. 
 In this perplexity such topics as Spanish papers and 
 Monkhouses sink into comparative insignificance. 
 What shall we do ? If she died, it were something : 
 gladly would I pay the coffin-maker, and the bell-man 
 and searchers. C. L. 
 
 To Miss Wordsworth, 
 Crasmere, 
 
 near Kendal, 
 
 Westmordand.
 
 correspondence with the wordsworths. gi 
 
 Letter XCIV.] 1814. 
 
 My dearW. — I have scarce time or quiet to explain 
 my present situation, how unquiet and distracted it 
 is, owing to the absence of some of my compeers, 
 and to the deficient state of payments at E. I. H., 
 owing to bad peace speculations in the calico market. 
 (I write this to W, W., Esq.,. Collector of Stamp 
 Duties for the conjoint Northern Counties, not to 
 W. W., Poet.) I go back, and have for many days 
 past, to evening work, generally at the rate of nine 
 hours a day. The nature of my work, too, puzzling 
 and hurrying, has so shaken my spirits, that my 
 sleep is nothing but a succession of dreams of 
 business I cannot do, of assistants that give 
 me no assistance, of terrible responsibilities. I 
 reclaimed your book,^ which Hazlitt has uncivilly 
 kept, only two days ago, and have made shift to read 
 it again with shattered brain. It does not lose — 
 rather some parts have come out with a prominence I 
 did not perceive before — but such was my aching 
 head yesterday (Sunday), that the book was like a 
 mountain landscape to one that should walk on the edge 
 of a precipice ; I perceive beauty dizzily. Now, what 
 I would say is, that I see no prospect of a quiet half- 
 day, or hour even, till this week and the next are past. 
 I then hope to get four weeks' absence, and if then is 
 time enough to begin, I will most gladly do what is 
 required, though I feel my inability, for my brain is 
 always desultory, and snatches off hints from things, 
 but can seldom follow a "work" methodically. But 
 that shall be no excuse. What I beg you to do is, to 
 let me know from Southey, if that will be time enough 
 
 1 The Excursion. — F.
 
 4 
 
 92 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS. 
 
 for the Quarterly, i. e. suppose it done in three weeks 
 from this date (19th Sept.) : if not, it is my bounden 
 duty to express my regret, and decline it. Mary 
 thanks you, and feels highly grateful for your " Patent 
 of Nobility," and acknowledges the author of the 
 Excursion as the legitimate Fountain of Honour. We 
 both agree that, to our feeling, Ellen is best as she 
 is. To us there would have been something repug- 
 nant in her challenging her Penance as a Dowry : 
 the fact is explicable ; but how few are those to 
 whom it would have been rendered explicit ! The 
 unlucky reason of the detention of the Excursion 
 was Hazlitt and we having a misunderstanding. 
 He blowed us up about six months ago, since 
 which the union hath snapt ; but M. Burney bor- 
 rowed it for him, and after reiterated messages I only 
 got it on Friday. His remarks had some vigour in 
 them ; ^ particularly something about an old ruin being 
 too modern for your Primeval Nature, and about a 
 lichen. I forget the passage, but the whole wore a 
 slovenly air of despatch. That objection which M. 
 Burney had imbibed from him about Voltaire I ex- 
 plained to M. B. (or tried) exactly on your principle 
 of its being a characteristic speech.^ That it was no 
 settled comparative estimate of Voltaire with any of 
 
 ' This refers to an article of Hazlitt's on the Excursion in the Ex- 
 aminer, very fine in passages, but more characteristic of the critic than 
 descriptive of the poem. — T. 
 
 2 The passage in which the copy of Candide, found in the apart- 
 ment of thi Recluse, is described as " the dull production of a scotfer's 
 brain," which had excited Hazlitt to energetic vindication of Voltaire 
 from thj charge of dulness. Whether the work, written to mockery 
 of human hopes, be dull. I will not venture to determine ; but I do not 
 hesitate, at any risk, to avow a conviction that no book in the world is 
 moie adapted to make a good man wretched. — T. 
 
 ^
 
 CORRRSPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS. 93 
 
 his own tribe of buffoons — no injustice, even if you 
 spoke it, for I dared say. you never could relish Can- 
 dide. I know I tried to get through it about a twelve- 
 month since, and c ould n't for the dulness. Now I 
 think I have a wider range I^n buffoonery than you. 
 Too much toleration perhaps. 
 
 I finish this after a raw ill-baked dinner fast gobbled 
 up to set me off to office again, after working there 
 till near four. Oh how I wish I were a rich man ! 
 even though I were squeezed camel-fashion at getting 
 through that needle's eye that is spoken of in the 
 Written Word. Apropos ; are you a Christian ? or is 
 it the Pedler and the Priest that are ? 
 
 I find I miscalled that celestial splendour of the 
 mist going off", a sunset. That only shows my inac- 
 curacy of head. 
 
 Do, pray, indulge me by writing an answer to the 
 point of time mentioned above, or /^^ Southey. I am 
 ashamed to go bargaining in this way, but indeed I 
 have no time I can reckon on till the first week in 
 October. God send I may not be disappointed in 
 that ! Coleridge swore in a letter to me he would 
 review the Excursion in the Quarterly. Therefore, 
 though that shall not stop me, yet if I can do any 
 thing when done, I must know of him if he has 
 any thing ready, or I shall fill the world with loud 
 exclaims. 
 
 I keep writing on, knowing the postage is no more 
 for much writing, else so fagged and dispirited I 
 am with cursed India House work, I scarce know 
 what I do. My left arm reposes on the Excursion. 
 I feel what it would be in quiet. It is now a sealed 
 book 
 
 C. Lamb.
 
 94 correspondence with the wordsworths. 
 
 Letter XCV.] 1814. 
 
 Dear W. — Your experience about tailors seems to 
 be in point blank opposition to Burton, as much as 
 the author of the Excursion does, toto ccelo, differ in 
 his notion of a country life from the picture which 
 W. H. has exhibited of the same. But, with a little 
 explanation, you and B. may be reconciled. It is 
 evident that he confined his observations to the 
 genuine native London tailor. What freaks tailor- 
 nature may take in the country is not for him to give 
 account of. And certainly some of the freaks recorded 
 do give an idea of the persons in question being beside 
 themselves, rather than in harmony with the common, 
 moderate, self-enjoyment of the rest of mankind. A 
 flying tailor, I venture to say, is no more in rerum 
 naturd than a flying horse or a gryphon. His wheel- 
 ing his airy flight from the precipice you mention 
 had a parallel in the melancholy Jew who toppled 
 from the monument. Were his limbs ever found i 
 Then, the man who cures diseases by words is evi- 
 dently an inspired tailor. Burton never affirmed that 
 the art of sewing disqualified the practiser of it from 
 being a fit organ for supernatural revelation. He 
 never enters into such subjects. 'Tis the common, 
 uninspired tailor which he speaks of. Again, the 
 person who makes his smiles to be heard is evidently 
 a man under possession ; a demoniac tailor. A 
 greater hell than his own must have a hand in this. 
 I am not certain that the cause which you advocate 
 has much reason for triumph. You seem to me to 
 substitute light-headedness for light-heartedness by 
 a trick, or not to know the difference. I confess, a 
 grinning tailor would shock me. Enoue:h of tailors 1
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS. 
 
 95 
 
 The " 'scapes" of the great god Pan, who appeared 
 among your mountains some dozen years since, and 
 his narrow chance of being submerged by the swains, 
 afforded me much pleasure. I can conceive the 
 water-nymphs pulHng for him. He would have been 
 another Hylas — W. Hylas. In a mad letter which 
 Capel Lofft wrote to M\onthly'\ M[agazine] Philips, 
 (now Sir Richard,) I remember his noticing a meta- 
 physical article of Pan, signed H., and adding, " I 
 take your correspondent to be the same with Hylas." 
 Hylas had put forth a pastoral just before. How near 
 the unfounded conjecture of the certainly inspired 
 Lofft (unfounded as we thought it) was to being 
 realised ! I can conceive him being " good to all 
 that wander in that perilous flood." One J. Scott,^ (I 
 know no more) is editor of the Champion.^ Where is 
 Coleridge ? 
 
 That Review you speak of, I am only sorry it did 
 not appear last month. The circumstances of haste 
 and peculiar bad spirits under which it was written 
 would have excused its slightness and inadequacy, 
 the full load of which I shall suffer from its lying by so 
 long, as it will seem to have done, from its postpone- 
 ment. I write with great difficulty, and can scarce 
 command my own resolution to sit at writing an hour 
 together. I am a poor creature, but I am leaving off 
 gin. I hope you will see good-will in the thing. I 
 had a difficulty to perform not to make it all panegyric ; 
 
 ' Afterwards the distinguished and unfortunate Editor of the 
 Monthly Magazine. — T. 
 
 2 To this journal Lamb contributed a few pieces. The Editor 
 later fell in a duel, arising out of one of the fierce literary quarrels of 
 the day. — F.
 
 £6 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS. 
 
 I have attempted to personate a mere stranger to you ; 
 perhaps with too much strangeness. But you must 
 bear that in mind when you read it, and not think 
 that I am, in mind, distant from you or your poem, 
 but that both are close to me, among the nearest of 
 persons and things. I do but act the stranger in the 
 Review. Then, I was puzzled about extracts, and 
 determined upon not giving one that had been in the 
 Examiner ; for extracts repeated give an idea that 
 there is a meagre allowance of good things. By this 
 way, I deprived myself of 5eV Alfred Irthing, and the 
 reflections that conclude his story, which are the 
 flower of the poem. Hazlitt had given the reflections 
 before me. Then it is the first review I ever did, and 
 I did not know how long I might make it. But it 
 must speak for itself, if Gifford and his crew do not 
 put words in its mouth, which I expect.^ Farewell. 
 Love to all. Mary keeps very bad. 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 
 Letter XCVL] 1814. 
 
 Dear Wordsworth — I told you my Review was a 
 very imperfect one.^ But what you will see in the 
 Quarterly is a spurious one, which Mr. Baviad Gifford 
 has palmed upon it for mine. I never felt more 
 
 • It is curious to see how this foreboding- was to be justified. As 
 the article, in spite of the alterations, is substantially Lamb's, it has 
 been retained among his collected pieces. — F.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS. 97 
 
 vexed in my life than when I read it. I cannot give 
 you an idea of what he has done to it, out of spite at 
 me, because he once suffered me to be called a lunatic 
 in his Review.^ The /a«^z<ao-« he has altered through- 
 out. Whatever inadequateness it had to its subject, 
 it was, in point of composition, the prettiest piece of 
 prose I ever writ : and so my sister (to whom alone I 
 read the MS.) said. That charm, if it had any, is all 
 gone : more than a third of the substance is cut away, 
 and that not all from one place, but passim, so as to 
 make utter nonsense. Every warm expression is 
 changed for a nasty cold one. 
 
 I have not the cursed alteration by me ; I shall 
 never look at it again ; but for a specimen, I remem- 
 ber I had said the poet of the Excursion " walks 
 through common forests as through some Dodona or 
 enchanted wood, and every casual bird that flits upon 
 the boughs, like that miraculous one in Tasso, but in 
 language more piercing than any articulate sounds, 
 reveals to him far higher love-lays." It is now 
 (besides half-a-dozen alterations in the same half- 
 dozen lines) " but in \a.r\gu3.g&mor& intelligent reveals 
 to him ;" — that is one I remember. 
 
 But that would have been little, putting his damn'd 
 shoemaker phraseology (for he was a shoemaker) 
 instead of mine, which has been tinctured with better 
 authors than his ignorance can comprehend ; — for I 
 reckon myself a dab at prose ; — verse I leave to my 
 
 1 In alluding to Lamb's note on the great scene of the Broken 
 Heart, where Calantba dances on, after hearing at every pause of 
 some terrible calamity, a writer in the Quarterly Re'vieiu had affected 
 to excuse the writer as a "maniac;" a suggestion which circumstances 
 rendered most cruel. — T. 
 VOL. II. H
 
 gS CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS. 
 
 betters : God help them, if they are to be so reviewed 
 by friend and foe as you have been this quarter ! I 
 have read " It won't do."^ But worse than altering 
 words ; he has kept a few members only of the part 
 I had done best, which was to explain all I could of 
 your " Scheme of Harmonies," as I had ventured to 
 call it, between the external universe and what within 
 us answers to it. To do this I had accumulated a 
 good many short passages, rising in length to the 
 end, weaving in the extracts as if they came in as a 
 part of the text naturally, not obtruding them as 
 specimens. Of this part a little is left, but so as, 
 without conjuration, no man could tell what I was 
 driving at. A proof of it you may see (though not 
 judge of the whole of the injustice) by these words. 
 I had spoken something about " natural methodism ;" 
 and after follows, " and therefore the tale of Margaret 
 should have been postponed" (I forget my words, or 
 his words) ; now the reasons for postponing it are as 
 deducible from what goes before as they are from 
 the 104th Psalm. The passage whence I deduced it 
 has vanished, but clapping a colon before a therefore 
 is always reason enough for Mr. Baviad Gifford to 
 allow to a reviewer that is not himself. I assure you 
 my complaints are well founded. I know how sore a 
 word altered makes one ; but, indeed, of this review the 
 whole complexion is gone. I regret only that I did 
 not keep a copy. I am sure you would have been 
 pleased with it, because I have been feeding my fancy 
 
 1 Though the article on the Excursion, in the Edinburgh Re^neV), 
 commenced "This will never do!" it contained ample illustrations of 
 the author's genius, and helped the world to disprove its oracular begin- 
 ning. — T.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS. QQ 
 
 for some months with the notion of pleasing you. 
 Its imperfection or inadequateness in size and method 
 I knew ; but for the writing part of it I was fully 
 satisfied ; I hoped it would make more than atone- 
 ment. Ten or twelve distinct passages come to my 
 mind, which are gone; and what is left is, of course, 
 the worse for their having been there ; the eyes are 
 pulled out, and the bleeding sockets are left. 
 
 I read it at Arch's shop with my face burning with 
 vexation secretly, with just such a feeling as if it had 
 been a review written against myself, making false 
 quotations from me. But I am ashamed to say so 
 much about a short piece. How are you served ! 
 and the labours of years turned into contempt by 
 scoundrels ! 
 
 But I could not but protest against your taking 
 that thing as mine. Every pretty expression, (I 
 know there were many,) every warm expression, 
 (there was nothing else,) is vulgarised and frozen. 
 But if they catch me in their camps again, let them 
 spitchcock me ! They had a right to do it, as no 
 name appears to it ; and Mr, Shoemaker Gifford, I 
 suppose, never waived a right he had since he com- 
 menced author. God confound him and all caitiffs ! 
 
 C. L. 
 
 Letter XCVII.] Aug. 14, 1814. 
 
 Dear Wordsworth, — I cannot tell you how pleased 
 I was at the receipt of the great armful of poetry 
 which you have sent me ; and to get it before the rest 
 of the world too ! I have gone quite through with it, 
 and was thinking to have accomplished that pleasure 
 a second time before I wrote to thank you, but M. 
 
 H 2
 
 lOO CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS. 
 
 Burney came in the night (while we were out) and 
 made holy theft of it, but we expect restitution in a 
 day or two. It is the noblest conversational poem I 
 ever read — a day in Heaven. The part (or rather 
 main body) which has left the sweetest odour on my 
 memory (a bad term for the remains of an impression 
 so recent) is the Tales of the Churchyard ; — the only 
 girl among seven brethren, born out of due time, and 
 not duly taken away again,' — the deaf man and the 
 blind man ; — the Jacobite and the Hanoverian, whom 
 antipathies reconcile ; the Scarron-entry of the rusti- 
 cating parson upon his solitude ; — these were all new 
 to me too. My having known the story of Margaret 
 (at the beginning), a very old acquaintance, even as 
 long back as when I saw you first at Stowey, did not 
 make her reappearance less fresh. I don't know what 
 to pick out of this best of books upon the best subjects 
 for partial naming. That gorgeous sunset is famous ;* 
 I think it must have been the identical one we saw 
 on Salisbury Plain five years ago, that drew Phillips 
 from the card-table, where he had sat from rise of that 
 luminary to its unequalled set ; but neither he nor I 
 had gifted eyes to see those symbols of common 
 things glorified, such as the prophets saw them in 
 that sunset — the %vheel, the potter's clay, the wash- 
 pot, the wine-press, the almond-tree rod, the baskets 
 of figs, the fourfold visaged head, the throne, and 
 Him that sat thereon.' 
 
 ' The poem, " We are Seven." — F. 
 
 8 The passage to which the allusion applies does not picture a sunset, 
 but the etfect of sunlight on a receding mist among the mountains, in 
 the second book of the Excursion. — T. 
 
 3 '• Fix'd resemblances were seen 
 To implements of ordinary use.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE W»«DSWORTHS. lOI 
 
 One feeling I was particularly struck with, as what 
 I recognised so very lately at Harrow Church on enter- 
 ing in it after a hot and secular day's pleasure, the 
 instantaneous coolness and calming, almost trans- 
 forming properties of a country church just entered; 
 a certain fragrance which it has, either from its holi- 
 ness, or being kept shut all the week, or the air that 
 is let in being pure country, exactly what you have 
 reduced into words ; but I am feeling that which 
 I cannot express. Reading your lines about it fixed 
 me for a time, a monument in Harrow Church. Do 
 you know it ? with its fine long spire, white as washed 
 marble, to be seen, by vantage of its high site, as far 
 as Salisbury spire itself almost. 
 
 I shall select a day or two, very shortly, when I 
 am coolest in brain, to have a steady second reading, 
 which I feel will lead to many more, for it will be a 
 stock book with me while eyes or spectacles shall be 
 lent me. There is a great deal of noble matter about 
 mountain scenery, yet not so much as to overpower 
 and discountenance a poor Londoner or south-coun- 
 tryman entirely, though Mary seems to have felt it 
 occasionally a little too powerfully, for it was her re- 
 mark during reading it, that by your system it was 
 doubtful whether a liver in towns had a soul to be 
 saved. She almost trembled for that invisible part of 
 us in her. 
 
 Save for a late excursion to Harrow, and a day or 
 two on the banks of the Thames this Summer, rural 
 
 But vast in size, in substance glorified ; 
 Such as by Hebrew Prophets were beheld 
 In vision — forms uncouth of mightiest powers. 
 For admiration and mysterious awe." — T.
 
 102 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS. 
 
 images were fast fading from my mind, and by the 
 wise provision of the Regent, all that was country-fy'd 
 in the Parks is all but obliterated. The very colour 
 of green is vanished ; the whole surface of Hyde 
 Park is dry crumbling sand (Arabia Arenosa), not a 
 vestige or hint of grass ever having grown there. 
 Booths and drinking-places go all round it for a mile 
 and half, I am confident — I might say two miles in 
 circuit. The stench of liquors, bad tobacco, dirty 
 people and provisions, conquers the air, and we are 
 stifled and suffocated in Hyde Park. 
 
 Order after order has been issued by Lord Sid- 
 mouth in the name of the Regent (acting in behalf of 
 his Royal father) for the dispersion of the varlets, but 
 in vain. The vis unita of all the publicans in London, 
 Westminster, Marylebone, and miles round, is too 
 powerful a force to put down. The Regent has raised 
 a phantom which he cannot lay. There they'll stay 
 probably for ever. The whole beauty of the place is 
 gone — that lake-look of the Serpentine — it has got 
 foolish ships upon it ; but something whispers to have 
 confidence in Nature and its revival — 
 
 At the coming of the milder day. 
 These monuments shall all be overgrown. 
 
 Meantime I confess to have smoked one delicious pipe 
 in one of the cleanliest and goodliest of the booths ; 
 a tent rather — 
 
 " Oh call it not a booth !" 
 erected by the public spirit of Watson, who keeps the 
 Adam and Eve at Pancras, (the ale-houses have all 
 emigrated, with their train of bottles, mugs, cork- 
 screws, waiters, into Hyde Park — whole ale-houses, 
 with all their ale !) in company with some of the
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS. 103 
 
 Guards that had been in France, and a fine French 
 girl, habited Hke a princess of banditti, which one of 
 the dogs had transported from the Garonne to the 
 Serpentine. The unusual scene in Hyde Park, by 
 candle-light, in open air, — good tobacco, bottled stout, 
 — made it look like an interval in a campaign, a re- 
 pose after battle. I almost fancied scars smarting, 
 and was ready to club a story with my comrades of 
 some of my lying deeds. After all, the fireworks 
 were splendid ; the rockets in clusters, in trees and 
 all shapes, spreading about like young stars in the 
 making, floundering about in space (like unbroke 
 horses,) till some of Newton's calculations should fix 
 them ; but then they went out. Any one who could 
 see 'em, and the still finer showers of gloomy rain-fire 
 that fell sulkily and angrily from 'em, and could go to 
 bed without dreaming of the last day, must be as har- 
 dened an atheist as ... . 
 
 The conclusion of this epistle getting gloomy, I 
 have chosen this part to desire our kindest loves to 
 Mrs. Wordsworth and to Dorothea. Will none of 
 you ever be in London again ? 
 
 Again let me thank you for your present, and assure 
 you that fireworks and triumphs have not distracted 
 me from receiving a calm and noble enjoyment from 
 it, (which I trust I shall often,) and I sincerely congra- 
 tulate you on its appearance. 
 
 With kindest remembrances to you and your house- 
 hold, we remain, yours sincerely, 
 
 C. Lamb and Sister.
 
 104 correspondence with the wordsworths. 
 
 Letter XCVIII.] [1815.] 
 
 Dear Wordsworth, — You have made me very proud 
 with your successive book presents. I have been care- 
 fully through the two volumes, to see that nothing was 
 omitted which used to be there. I think I miss nothing 
 but a character in the antithetic manner, which I do 
 not know why you left out, — the moral to the boys 
 building the giant, the omission whereof leaves it, in 
 my mind, less complete, — and one admirable line 
 gone (or something come instead of it), "the stone- 
 chat, and the glancing sand-piper," which was a line 
 quite alive. I demand these at your hand. I am 
 glad that you have not sacrificed a verse to those 
 scoundrels. I would not have had you offer up the 
 poorest rag that lingered upon the stript shoulders of 
 little Alice Fell, to have atoned all their malice ; I 
 would not have given 'em a red cloak to save their 
 souls. I am afraid lest that substitution of a shell 
 (a flat falsification of the historj^) for the household 
 implement, as it stood at first, was a kind of tub 
 thrown out to the beast, or rather thrown out for him. 
 The tub was a good honest tub in its place, and 
 nothing could fairly be said against it. You say you 
 made the alteration for the "friendly reader," but the 
 •• malicious " will take it to himself. Damn 'em, if 
 you give 'em an inch, &c. The Preface is noble, and 
 such as you should write. I wish I could set my 
 name to it. Imprimatur, — but you have set it there 
 yourself, and I thank you. I would rather be a door- 
 keeper in your margin, than have their proudest text 
 swelling with my eulogies. The poems in the volumes 
 which are new to me are so much in the old tone 
 that I hardly received them as novelties. Of those 
 of which I had no previous knowledge, the " Four
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS. IO5 
 
 Yew Trees, "^ and the mysterious company which you 
 have assembled there, most struck me — '* Death the 
 Skeleton and Time the Shadow." It is a sight not 
 for every youthful poet to dream of; it is one of the 
 last results he must have gone thinking on for years^ 
 for. " Laodamia " is a very original poem ; I mean 
 original with reference to your own manner. You 
 have nothing like it. I should have seen it in a- 
 strange place, and greatly admired it, but not sus- 
 pected its derivation. 
 
 Let me in this place, for I have writ you several 
 letters naming it, mention that my brother, who is a 
 picture-collector, has picked up an undoubtable picture 
 of Milton. He gave a few shillings for it, and could 
 get no history with it, but that some old lady had had 
 it for a great many years. Its age is ascertainable 
 from the state of the canvas, and you need only see 
 it to be sure that it is the original of the heads in the 
 Tonson editions, with which we are all so well fami- 
 liar. Since I saw you I have had a treat in the 
 reading way, which comes not every day, the Latin 
 Poems of V. Bourne, which were quite new to me. 
 What a heart that man had ! all laid out upon town 
 schemes, a proper counterpoise to some people's rural 
 extravaganzas. Why I mention him is, that your 
 " Power of Music " reminded me of his poem of " The 
 Ballad Singer in the Seven Dials." Do you remember 
 
 ' The poem on the four great yew trees of Borrowdale, which the 
 poet has, by the most potent magic of the imagination, converted into 
 a temple for the ghastly forms of Death and Time " to meet at noon- 
 tide," — a passage surely not surpassed in any English poetry written 
 since the days of Milton. — T.
 
 I06 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS, 
 
 his epigram on the old woman who taught Newton the 
 ABC? which, after all, he says, he hesitates not to call 
 Newton's " Principia." I was lately fatiguing my- 
 self with going through a volume of fine words by 
 Lord Thurlow ; excellent words ; and if the heart 
 could live by words alone, it could desire no better 
 regales ; but what an aching vacuum of matter I I 
 don't stick at the madness of it, for that is only a 
 consequence of shutting his eyes and thinking he is 
 in the age of the old Elizabeth poets. From thence I 
 turned to Bourne. What a sweet, unpretending, 
 pretty-mannered, matter-ful creature ! sucking from 
 every flower, making a flower of every thing, his dic- 
 tion all Latin, and his thoughts all English. Bless 
 him 1 Latin wasn't good enough for him. Why 
 wasn't he content with the language which Gay and 
 Prior wrote in ? 
 
 I am almost sorry that you printed extracts from 
 those first poems,^ or that you did not print them 
 at length. They do not read to me as they do alto- 
 gether. Besides, they have diminished the value of 
 the original, which I possess as a curiosity. I have 
 hitherto kept them distinct in my mind as referring to 
 a particular period of your life. All the rest of your 
 poems are so much of a piece, they might have been 
 written in the same week; these decidedly speak of 
 an earlier period. They tell more of what you had 
 been reading. We were glad to see the poems " by 
 a female friend."^ The one of the Wind is masterly, but 
 
 1 The "Evening Walk," and "Descriptive Sketches among the 
 Alps " — Wordsworth's earliest poems — now happily restored in their 
 entirety to their proper places in the poet's collected works. — T. 
 
 2 By Miss Dorothea Wordsworth — T.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS.IO7 
 
 not new to us. Being only three, perhaps you might 
 have clapt a D. at the corner, and let it have past as 
 a printer's mark to the uninitiated, as a delightful 
 hint to the better instructed. As it is, expect a formal 
 criticism on the poems of your female friend, and she 
 must expect it. I should have written before, but I 
 am cruelly engaged, and like to be. On Friday I was 
 at office from ten in the morning (two hours dinner 
 except) to eleven at night; last night till nine. My 
 business and office business in general have increased 
 so ; I don't mean I am there every night, but I must 
 expect a great deal of it. I never leave till four, and 
 do not keep a holiday now once in ten times, where I 
 used to keep all red-letter days, and some five days 
 besides, which I used to dub Nature's holidays. I 
 have had my day, I had formerly little to do. So 
 of the little that is left of life, I may reckon two-thirds 
 as dead, for time that a man may call his own is his 
 life ; and hard work and thinking about it taints even 
 the leisure hours, — stains Sunday with work-day con- 
 templations. This is Sunday : and the head-ache I 
 have is part late hours at work the two preceding, 
 nights, and part later hours over a consoling pipe 
 afterwards. But I find stupid acquiescence coming 
 over me. I bend to the yoke, and it is almost with 
 me and my household as with the man and his 
 consort — 
 
 " To them each evening had its glittering star. 
 And every Sabbath Day its golden sun " — 
 
 to such straits am I driven for the life of life, Time ! O 
 that from that superfluity of holiday leisure my youth 
 wasted, "Age might but take some hours youth 
 wanted not 1" N.B. — I have left off spirituous liquors
 
 I08 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS. 
 
 for four or more months, with a moral certainty ot its 
 lasting.^ Farewell, dear Wordsworth ! 
 
 O happy Paris, seat of idleness and pleasure ! from 
 some returned English I hear that not such a thing 
 as a counting-house is to be seen in her streets, — 
 scarce a desk. Earthquakes swallow up this mercan- 
 tile city and its " gripple merchants," as Drayton 
 hath it — " born to be the curse of this brave isle ! " 
 I invoke this, not on account of any parsimonious 
 habits the mercantile interest may have, but, to con- 
 fess truth, because I am not fit for an office. 
 
 Farewell, in haste, from a head that is too ill to 
 methodize, a stomach too weak to digest, and all out 
 of tune. Better harmonies await you ! 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 
 Letter XCIX. 
 
 Excuse this maddish letter : I am too tired to write 
 in forma. 
 
 1815 
 Dear Wordsworth, — The more I read of your last 
 two volumes, the more I feel it necessary to make my 
 acknowledgments for them in more than one short 
 letter. The " Night Piece," to which you refer me, I 
 meant fully to have noticed ; but, the fact is, I come 
 so fluttering and languid from business, tired with 
 thoughts of it, frightened with the fears of it, that 
 
 1 Alas for moral certainty in this moral but mortal world ! Lamb's 
 resolution to leave off spirituous liquors was a brave one , but he 
 strengthened and rewarded it by such copious libations of porter, that 
 his sister, for whose sake mainly he attempted the sacrifice, entreated 
 him to "live like himself," and in a few weeks after this assurance nc 
 obeyed her. — T.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS. ICg 
 
 when I get a few minutes to sit down to scribble (an 
 action of the hand now seldom natural to me — I mean 
 voluntary pen-work) I lose all presential memory of 
 what I had intended to say, and say what I can, talk 
 about Vincent Bourne, or any casual image, instead 
 of that which I had meditated, (by the way, I must 
 look out V. B. for you). So 1 meant to mention 
 " Yarrow Visited," with that stanza, " But thou that 
 didst appear so fair ; " ^ than which I think no lovelier 
 stanza can be found in the wide world of poetry ; — 
 yet the poem, on the whole, seems condemned to 
 leave behind it a melancholy of imperfect satisfaction, 
 as if you had wronged the feeling with which, in what 
 preceded it, you had resolved never to visit it, and as 
 if the Muse had determined, in the most delicate 
 manner, to make you, and scarce make you, feel it. 
 Else, it is far superior to the other, which has but one 
 exquisite verse in it, the last but one, or the last 
 two : this is all fine, except perhaps that that of 
 " studious ease and generous cares " has a little tinge 
 of the less rojnantic about it. " The Farmer of Tils- 
 bury Vale " is a charming counterpart to " Poor 
 Susan," with the addition of that delicacy towards 
 aberrations from the strict path, which is so fine in 
 the "Old Thief and the Boy by his side," which 
 always brings water into my eyes. Perhaps it 
 is the worse for being a repetition ; " Susan " stood 
 for the representative of poor Rus in Urbe. There 
 was quite enough to stamp the moral of the thing 
 never to be forgotten ; " bright volumes of vapour," 
 
 ' But thou, that didst appear so fair 
 To fond imagination, 
 Dost rival in the light of day 
 Her delicate creation." — T.
 
 I 10 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE VVORDSVVORTHS. 
 
 &c. The last verse of Susan was to be got rid of, at 
 all events. It threw a kind of dubiety upon Susan's 
 moral conduct. Susan is a servant maid. I see her 
 trundling her mop, and contemplating the whirling 
 phenomenon through blurred optics ; but to term her 
 " a poor outcast " seems as much as to say that poor 
 Susan was no better than she should be, which I trust 
 was not what you meant to express. Robin Good- 
 fellow supports himself without that stick of a moral 
 which you have thrown away ; but how I can be 
 brought in felo de omittendo for that ending to the 
 Boy-builders is a mystery. I can't say positively 
 now, — I only know that no line oftener or readier occurs 
 than that " Light-hearted boys, I will build up a Giant 
 with you." It comes naturally, with a warm holiday, 
 and the freshness of the blood. It is a perfect sum- 
 mer amulet, that I tie round my legs to quicken their 
 motion when I go out a maying. (N.B.) I don't often 
 go out a viay'xng ; — vmst is the tense with me now. 
 Do you take the pun ? Young Romilly is divine ;^ 
 
 1 The admirable little poem, entitled "The Force of Prayer," de- 
 veloping the depths of a widowed mother's grief, whose only son has 
 been drowned in attempting to leap over the precipice of the " Wharf" 
 at Bolton Abbey. The first line, printed in old English characters, 
 from some old English ballad, 
 
 " What is good for a bootless bene V 
 
 suggests Miss Lamb's single pun. The following are the profoundest 
 stanzas among those which excite her brother's most just admira- 
 tion : — 
 
 " If for a lover the lady wept, 
 A solace she might borrow 
 From death and from the passion of death — 
 Old Wharf might heal her sorrow. 
 
 She weeps not for the wedding day. 
 
 Which was to be to-morrow : 
 Her hope was a further-looking hope. 
 
 And hers is a mother's sorrow.'' — T.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS. Ill 
 
 the reasons of his mother's grief being remediless. I 
 never saw parental love carried up so high, towering 
 above the other loves. Shakspeare had done some- 
 thing for the filial, in Cordelia, and, by implication, 
 for the fatherly too, in Lear's resentment ; he left it 
 for you to explore the depths of the maternal heart. I 
 get stupid, and flat, and flattering. What's the use of 
 telling you what good things you have written, or — I 
 hope I may add — that I know them to be good? 
 Apropos — when I first opened upon the just men- 
 tioned poem, in a careless tone, I said to Mary, as if 
 putting a riddle, " What is good for a bootless bene ?" 
 To which, with infinite presence of mind, (as the jest- 
 book has it,) she answered, " a shoeless pea." It 
 was the first joke she ever made. Joke the second I 
 make. You distinguish well, in your old preface, be- 
 tween the verses of Dr. Johnson, of the " Man in the 
 Strand," and those from " The Babes in the Wood." 
 I was thinking, whether taking your own glorious 
 lines — 
 
 " And from the love which was in her soul 
 For her youthful Romilly," 
 
 which, by the love I bear my own soul, I think 
 have no parallel in any of the best old ballads, and 
 just altering them to — 
 
 '* And from the great respect she felt 
 For Sir Samuel Romilly," 
 
 would not have explained the boundaries of prose 
 expression, and poetic feeling, nearly as well. Excuse 
 my levity on such an occasion. I never felt deeply in 
 my life if that poem did not make me feel, both lately 
 and when I read it in MS. No alderman ever longed 
 after a haunch of buck venison more than I for a
 
 112 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS. 
 
 spiritual taste of that " White Doe " you promise. 
 I am sure it is superlative, or will be when drest, i.e. 
 printed. All things read raw to me in MS. ; to com- 
 pare magna parvis, I cannot endure my own writings 
 in that state. The only one which I think would 
 not very much win upon me in print is " Peter Bell." 
 But I am not certain. You ask me about your pre- 
 face. I like both that and the supplement, without an 
 exception. The account of what you mean by imagi- 
 nation is very valuable to me. It will help me to like 
 some things in poetry better, which is a little humilia- 
 ting in me to confess. I thought I could not be 
 instructed in that science (I mean the critical), as I 
 once heard old obscene, beastly Peter Pindar, in a 
 dispute on Milton, say he thought that if he had 
 reason to value himself upon one thing more than 
 another, it was in knowing what good verse was. 
 Who looked over your proof sheets and left ordebo in 
 that line of Virgil ? 
 
 My brother's picture of Milton ^ is very finely 
 painted ; that is, it might have been done by a hand 
 next to Vandyke's. It is the genuine Milton, and an 
 object of quiet gaze for the half-hour at a time. 
 Yet though I am confident there is no better one of 
 him, the face does not quite answer to Milton. There 
 is a tinge of petit (or petite, how do you spell it ?) 
 querulousness about it ; yet, hang it ! now I remem- 
 ber better, there is not ; it is calm, melancholy, and 
 poetical. One of the copies of the poems you sent 
 has precisely the same pleasant blending of a sheet of 
 second volume with a sheet of first. I think it was 
 page 245 ; but I sent it and had it rectified. It gave 
 
 1 Now in the possession of Mrs. Moxon.-^H.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS. II3 
 
 me in the first impetus of cutting the leaves, just such 
 a cold squelch as going down a plausible turning and 
 suddenly reading " No thoroughfare !" Robinson's is 
 entire : I wish you would write more criticism about 
 Spenser, &c. I think I could say something about 
 him myself; but, Lord bless me! these "merchants 
 and their spicy drugs," which are so harmonious to 
 sing of, they lime-twig up my poor soul and body, till 
 I shall forget I ever thought myself a bit of a genius ! 
 I can't even put a few thoughts on paper for a news- 
 paper. I "engross" when I should "pen" a para- 
 graph. Confusion blast all mercantile transactions, 
 all traffic, exchange of commodities, intercourse be- 
 tween nations, all the consequent civilization, and 
 wealth, and amity, and link of society, and getting rid 
 of prejudices, and getting a knowledge of the face of the 
 globe ; and rotting the very firs of the forest, that look 
 so romantic alive, and die into desks ! Vale. 
 Yours, dear W., and all yours, 
 
 C. Lame. 
 
 Letter C. August 9th, 1815. 
 
 Dear Wordsworth, — We acknowledge with pride 
 the receipt of both your handwritings, and desire to 
 be ever had in kindly remembrance by you both and 
 by Dorothy. Alsager, whom you call Alsinger, (and 
 indeed he is rather singer than sager, no reflection 
 upon his naturals neither,) is well, and in harmony 
 with himself and the world. I don't know how he, 
 and those of his constitution, keep their nerves so 
 nicely balanced as they do. Or, have they any ? Or, 
 are they made of packthread ? He is proof against 
 
 VOL. II. I '
 
 1 14 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS. 
 
 weather, ingratitude, meat underdone, every weapon 
 of fate. I have just now a jagged end of a tooth 
 pricking against my tongue, which meets it half way, 
 in a wantonness of provocation ; and there they go 
 at it, the tongue pricking itself, like the viper against 
 the file, and the tooth galling all the gum inside and out 
 to torture ; tongue and tooth, tooth and tongue, hard 
 at it ; and I to pay the reckoning, till all my mouth 
 is as hot as brimstone ; and I'd venture the roof of 
 my mouth, that at this moment, at which I conjecture 
 my full-happiness'd friend is picking his crackers, 
 that not one of the double rows of ivory in his privileged 
 mouth has as much as a flaw in it, but all perform 
 their functions, and, having performed them, expect 
 to be picked, (luxurious steeds !) and rubbed down. 
 I don't think he could be robbed, or have the house 
 set on fire, or ever want money. I have heard him 
 express a similar opinion of his own impassibility. I 
 keep acting here Heautontimorumenos. 
 
 Mr. Burney has been to Calais, and has come a 
 travelled Monsieur. He speaks nothing but the 
 Gallic Idiom. Field is on circuit. So now I believe 
 I have given account of most that you saw at our 
 Cabin. 
 
 Have you seen a curious letter in the Morning 
 Chronicle, by C. L. [Capell Lofft,] the genius of 
 absurdity, respecting Bonaparte's suing out his Habeas 
 Corpus ? That man is his own moon. He has no 
 need of ascending into that gentle planet for mild 
 influences. 
 
 Mary and I felt quite queer after your taking leave 
 (you W. W.) of us in St. Giles's. We wish we had 
 seen more of you, but felt we had scarce been suffi- 
 ciently acknowledging for the share we had enjoyed
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS. 1 15 
 
 of your company. We felt as if we had been not 
 enough expressive of our pleasure. But our manners 
 both are a little too much on this side of too-much- 
 cordiality. We want presence of mind and presence 
 of heart. What we feel comes too late, like an after- 
 thought impromptu. But perhaps you observed 
 nothing of that which we have been painfully con- 
 scious of, and are every day in our intercourse with 
 those we stand affected to through all the degrees of 
 love. Robinson is on the circuit. Our panegyrist I 
 thought had forgotten one of the objects of his youth- 
 ful admiration, but I was agreeably removed from 
 that scruple by the laundress knocking at my door 
 this morning, almost before I was up, with a present 
 of fruit from my young friend, &c. There is 
 something inexpressibly pleasant to me in these 
 presents, be it fruit, or fowl, or brawn, or what not. 
 Books are a legitimate cause of acceptance. If 
 presents be not the soul of friendship, undoubtedly 
 they are the most spiritual part of the body of that 
 intercourse. There is too much narrowness of think- 
 ing in this point. The punctilio of acceptance, 
 methinks, is too confined and strait-laced. I could 
 be content to receive money, or clothes, or a joint of 
 meat from a friend. Why should he not send me a 
 dinner as well as a dessert ? I would taste him in 
 the beasts of the field, and through all creation. 
 Therefore did the basket of fruit of the juvenile Tal- 
 fourd not displease me; not that I have any thoughts 
 of bartering or reciprocating these things. To send 
 him any thing in return, would be to reflect suspicion 
 of mercenariness upon what I know he meant a free- 
 will offering. Let him overcome me in bounty. In 
 this strife a generous nature loves to be overcome. 
 
 I 2
 
 IIGCORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS. 
 
 You wish me some of your leisure. I have a glim- 
 mering aspect, a chink-light of liberty before me, 
 which I pray God may prove not fallacious. My re- 
 monstrances have stirred up others to remonstrate, and 
 altogether, there is a plan for separating certain parts 
 of business from our department ; which, if it take 
 place, will produce me more time, i. e. my evenings 
 free. It may be a means of placing me in a more 
 conspicuous situation, which will knock at my nerves 
 another way, but I wait the issue in submission. If 
 I can but begin my own day at four o'clock in the 
 afternoon, I shall think myself to have Eden days of 
 peace and liberty to what I have had. As you say, 
 how a man can fill three volumes up with an essay 
 on the drama is wonderful ; I am sure a very few 
 sheets would hold all I had to say on the subject. 
 
 Did you ever read " Charron on Wisdom ?" or 
 " Patrick's Pilgrim ?" If neither, you have two great 
 pleasures to come. I mean some day to attack Caryl 
 on Job, six folios. What any man can write, surely 
 I may read. If I do but get rid of auditing ware- 
 housekeepers' accounts and get no worse-harassing 
 task in the place of it, what a lord of liberty I shall 
 be ! I shall dance and skip, and make mouths at the 
 invisible event, and pick the thorns out of my pillow, 
 and throw 'em at rich men's night-caps, and talk 
 olank verse, hoity-toity, and sing — " A clerk I was in 
 London gay," "Ban, ban, Ca-Caliban," like the eman- 
 cipated monster, and go where I like, up this street 
 or down that alley. Adieu, and pray that it may be 
 my luck. 
 
 Good bye to you all. 
 
 C. Lamb.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS, 1 17 
 
 Letter CI. April 9th, 1816. 
 
 Dear Wordsworth, — Thanks for the books you 
 have given me and for all the books you mean 
 to give me. I will bind up the Political Sonnets 
 and Ode according to your suggestion. I have not 
 bound the poems yet. I wait till people have done 
 borrowing them. I think I shall get a chain and j n 
 chain them to my shelves, more Bodleiano, and people J )l^i'^ 
 may come and read them at chain's length. For of I 
 those who borrow, some read slow ; some mean to / 
 read but don't read ; and some neither read nor meant ) 
 to read, but borrow to leave you an opinion of their) 
 sagacity. I must do my money-borrowing friends 
 the justice to say that there is nothing of this caprice 
 or wantonness of alienation in them. When theyl 
 borrow my money they never fail to make use of it. J 
 Coleridge has been here about a fortnight. His 
 health is tolerable at present, though beset with 
 temptations. In the first place, the Covent Garden 
 Manager has declined accepting his Tragedy, though 
 (having read it) I see no reason upon earth why it 
 might not have run a very fair chance, though it 
 certainly wants a prominent part for a Miss O'Neil or 
 a Mr. Kean. However, he is going to-day to write to 
 Lord Byron to get it to Drury. Should you see Mrs. C, 
 who has just written to C. a letter, which I have 
 given him, it will be as well to say nothing about its 
 fate, till some answer is shaped from Drury. He has 
 two volumes printing together at Bristol, both finished 
 as far as the composition goes ; the latter containing his 
 fugitive poems, the former his Literary Life. Nature, 
 who conducts every creature, by instinct, to its best 
 end, has skilfully directed C. to take up his abode at 
 a Chemist's Laboratory in Norfolk Street. She might
 
 1 18 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS. 
 
 as well have sent a Helluo Librorum for cure to the 
 Vatican. God keep him inviolate among the traps 
 and pitfalls ! He has done pretty well as yet. 
 
 Tell Miss H[utchinsonJ my sister is every day 
 wishing to be quietly sitting down to answer her very 
 kind letter, but while C. stays she can hardly find a 
 quiet time ; God bless him ! 
 
 Tell Mrs. W. her postscripts are always agreeable. 
 They are so legible too. Your manual-graphy is 
 terrible, dark as Lycophron. " Likelihood," for 
 instance, is thus typified . . . . ' I should not 
 wonder if the constant making out of such paragraphs 
 is the cause of that weakness in Mrs. W.'s eyes, as 
 she is tenderly pleased to express it. Dorothy, I 
 hear, has mounted spectacles ; so you have deocu- 
 lated two of your dearest relations in life. Well, God 
 bless you, and continue to give you power to write 
 with a finger of power upon our hearts what you fail 
 to impress, in corresponding lucidness, upon our 
 outward eye-sight ! 
 
 Mary's love to all ; she is quite well. 
 
 I am called off to do the deposits on Cotton Wool ; 
 but why do I relate this to you, who want faculties 
 to comprehend the great mystery of deposits, of 
 interests, of warehouse rent, and contingent fund? 
 Adieu ! 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 
 A longer letter when C. is gone back into the 
 country, relating his success, &c. — my judgment of 
 your new books, &c., &c. — I am scarce quiet enough 
 while he stays. Yours again, C. L. 
 
 ' Here is a most inimitable scrawl. — T.
 
 correspondence with the wordsworths. i iq 
 
 Letter CIL] 1817. 
 
 My dear Miss Wordsworth, — Your kind letter has 
 given us very great pleasure ; the sight of your hand- 
 writing was a most welcome surprise to us. We 
 have heard good tidings of you by all our friends 
 who were so fortunate as to visit you this Sum- 
 mer, and rejoice to see it confirmed by yourself. 
 You have quite the advantage, in volunteering a 
 letter ; there is no merit in replying to so welcome a 
 stranger. 
 
 We have left the Temple. I think you will be 
 sorry to hear this. I know I have never been so well 
 satisfied with thinking of you at Rydal Mount, as 
 when I could connect the idea of you with your own 
 Grasmere Cottage. Our rooms were dirty and out of 
 repair, and the inconveniences of living in chambers 
 became every year more irksome, and so, at last, we 
 mustered up resolution enough to leave the good old 
 place, that so long had sheltered us, and here we are, 
 living at a brazier's shop. No. 20, in Russell Street, 
 Covent Garden, a place all alive with noise and bustle ; 
 Drury Lane Theatre in sight from our front, and Covent 
 Garden from our back windows. The hubbub of the 
 carriages returning from the play does not annoy me 
 in the least ; strange that it does not, for it is quite 
 tremendous. I quite enjoy looking out of the window, 
 and listening to the calling up of the carriages, and 
 the squabbles of the coachmen and linkboys. It is 
 the oddest scene to look down upon ; I am sure you 
 would be amused with it. It is well I am in a cheer- 
 ful place, or I should have many misgivings about 
 leaving the Temple. I look forward with great 
 pleasure to the prospect of seeing my good friend,
 
 1 20 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS. 
 
 Miss Hutchinson. I wish Rydal Mount, with all its 
 inhabitants enclosed, were to be transplanted with 
 her, and to remain stationary in the midst of Covent 
 Garden. 
 
 I passed through the street lately where Mr. and 
 Mrs. Wordsworth lodged ; several fine new houses, 
 which were then just rising out of the ground, are 
 quite finished, and a noble entrance made that way 
 into Portland Place. I am very sorry for Mr. De 
 Quincey. What a blunder the poor man made when 
 he took up his dwelling among the mountains ! I 
 long to see my friend Pypos.^ Coleridge is still at 
 Little Hampton with Mrs. Oilman ; he has been so 
 ill as to be confined to his room almost the whole 
 time he has been there. 
 
 Charles has had all his Hogarths bound in a book ; 
 they were sent home yesterday, and now that I have 
 them altogether, and perceive the advantage of peep- 
 ing close at them through my spectacles, I am recon- 
 ciled to the loss of them hanging round the room, 
 which has been a great mortification to me — in vain 
 I tried to console myself with looking at our new 
 chairs and carpets, for we have got new chairs, and 
 carpets covering all over our two sitting-rooms ; I 
 missed my old friends and could not be comforted^ — then 
 I would resolve to learn to look out of the window, a 
 habit I never could attain in my life, and I have given 
 it up as a thing quite impracticable — yet when I was 
 at Brighton, last Summer, the first week I never took 
 my eyes off from the sea, not even to look in a book: 
 I had not seen the sea for sixteen years. Mrs. Mor- 
 gan, who was with us, kept her liking, and continued 
 
 1 Hartley Coleridge. — F.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS. 121 
 
 her seat in the window till the very last, while Charles 
 and I played truants, and wandered among the hills, 
 which we magnified into little mountains, and almost 
 as good as Westmoreland scenery : certainly we made 
 discoveries of many pleasant walks, which few of the 
 Brighton visitors have ever dreamed of — for, like as is 
 the case in the neighbourhood of London, after the 
 first two or three miles we were sure to find ourselves 
 in a perfect solitude. I hope we shall meet before the 
 walking faculties of either of us fail ; you say you can 
 walk fifteen miles with ease ; that is exactly my stint, 
 and more fatigues me ; four or five miles every third 
 or fourth day, keeping very quiet between, was all 
 Mrs. Morgan could accomplish. 
 
 God bless you and yours. Love to all and each 
 one. 
 
 I am ever yours most affectionately, 
 
 M. Lamb. 
 
 Letter CIIL] Nov. 21st, 1817. 
 
 Dear Miss Wordsworth, — Here we are, trans- 
 planted from our native soil. I thought we never 
 could have been torn up from the Temple. Indeed it 
 was an ugly wrench, but like a tooth, now 'tis out, 
 and I am easy. We never can strike root so deep in 
 any other ground. This, where we are, is a light bit 
 of gardener's mould, and if they take us up from it, it 
 will cost no blood and groans, like man-drakes pulled 
 up. We are in the individual spot I like best, in all 
 this great city. The theatres, with all their noises. 
 Covent Garden, dearer to me than any gardens of 
 Alcinoiis, where we are morally sure of the earliest
 
 122 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS. 
 
 peas and 'sparagus. Bow Street, where the thieves 
 are examined, within a few yards of us. Mary had 
 not been here four-and-twenty hours before she saw a 
 thief. She sits at the window working; and casually 
 throwing out her eyes, she sees a concourse of people 
 coming this way, with a constable to conduct the 
 solemnity. These little incidents agreeably diversify 
 a female life. 
 
 Mary has brought her part of this letter to an or- 
 thodox and loving conclusion, which is very well, for 
 I have no room for pansies and remembrances. 
 What a nice holyday I got on Wednesday by favour 
 of a princess dying ! C. L. 
 
 Letter CIV.] East-India House, 18 th Feb., i8i 8. 
 
 My dear Mrs. Wordsworth, — I have repeatedly 
 taken pen in hand to answer your kind letter. My 
 sister should more properly have done it, but she 
 having failed, I consider myself answerable for her 
 debts. I am now trying to do it in the midst of com- 
 mercial noises, and with a quill which seems more 
 ready to glide into arithmetical figures and names of 
 gourds, cassia, cardamoms, aloes, ginger, or tea, than 
 into kindly responses and friendly recollections. The 
 reason why I cannot write letters at home, is, that I 
 am never alone. Plato's — (I write to W. W. now) — 
 Plato's double-animal parted never longed more to be 
 reciprocally re-united in the system of its first creation 
 than I sometimes do to be but for a moment single 
 and separate. Except my morning's walk to the 
 office, which is like treading on sands of gold for that
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS.I23 
 
 reason, I am never so, I cannot walk home from 
 office but some officious friend offers his unwelcome 
 courtesies to accompany me. All the morning I am 
 pestered. I could sit and gravely cast up sums in 
 great books, or compare sum with sum, and write 
 " paid" against this, and "unpaid" against t'other, 
 and yet reserve in some corner of my mind " some 
 darling thoughts all my own," — faint memory of some 
 passage in a book, or the tone of an absent friend's 
 voice — a snatch of Miss Burrell's singing, or a gleara 
 of Fanny Kelly's divine plain face. The two opera- 
 tions might be going on at the same time without 
 thwarting, as the sun's two motions, (earth's I mean,) 
 or as I sometimes turn round till I am giddy, in my 
 back parlour, while my sister is walking longitudinally 
 in the front ; or as the shoulder of veal twists round 
 with the spit, while the smoke wreathes up the 
 chimney. But there are a set of amateurs of the 
 Belles Lettres — the gay science — who come to me as 
 a sort of rendezvous, putting questions of criticism, 
 of British Institutions, Lalla Rookhs, &c. — what 
 Coleridge said at the lecture last night — who have 
 the form of reading men, but, for any possible use 
 reading can be to them, but to talk of, might as well 
 have been Ante-Cadmeans born, or have lain sucking 
 out the sense of an Egyptian hieroglyph as long as 
 the pyramids will last, before they should find it. 
 These pests worrit me at business, and in all its 
 intervals, perplexing my accounts, poisoning my little 
 salutary warming-time at the fire, puzzling my para- 
 graphs if I take a newspaper, cramming in between 
 my own free thoughts and a column of figures, which 
 had come to an amicable compromise but for them. 
 Their noise ended, one of them, as I said, accom-
 
 124 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS. 
 
 panics me home, lest I should be solitary for a 
 moment ; he at length takes his welcome leave at 
 the door; up I go, mutton on table, hungry as hunter, 
 hope to forget my cares, and bury them in the agree- 
 able abstraction of mastication ; knock at the door, in 
 comes Mr. Hazlitt, or Mr. Martin Burney, or Morgan 
 Demi-gorgon, or my brother, or somebody, to prevent 
 my eating alone — a process absolutely necessary to 
 my poor wretched digestion. O the pleasure of 
 eating alone I — eating my dinner alone ! let me think 
 of it. But in they come, and make it absolutely 
 necessary that I should open a bottle of orange ; for 
 my meat turns into stone when any one dines with 
 me, if I have not wine. Wine can mollify stones ; 
 then that wine turns into acidity, acerbity, misan- 
 thropy, a hatred of my interrupters — (God bless 'em ! 
 I love some of 'em dearly), and with the hatred, a still 
 greater aversion to their going away. Bad is the 
 dead sea they bring upon me, choking and deadening, 
 but worse is the deader dry sand they leave me on, if 
 r~they go before bed-time. Come never, I would say 
 \ to these spoilers of my dinner ; but if you come, never 
 \ go ! The fact is, this interruption does not happen 
 very often ; but ever}' time it comes by surprise, that 
 present bane of my life, orange wine, with all its dreary 
 stifling consequences, follows. Evening company I 
 should always like had I any mornings, but I am 
 saturated with human faces {divine forsooth !) and 
 voices all the golden morning ; and five evenings in 
 a week would be as much as I should covet to be in 
 company ; but I assure you that is a wonderful week 
 in which I can get two, or one to myself. I am never 
 C. L., but always C. L. & Co. He who thought it 
 not good for man to be alone, preserve me from the
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS. I25 
 
 more prodigious monstrosity of being never by my- 
 self ! I forget bed-time, but even there these sociable 
 frogs clamber up to annoy me. Once a week, gene- 
 rally some singular evening that, being alone, I go to 
 bed at the hour I ought always to be a-bed; just close 
 to my bed-room window is the club-room of a public- 
 house, where a set of singers, I take them to be chorus 
 singers of the two theatres, (it must be hotli of them,) 
 begin their orgies. They are a set of fellows (as I 
 conceive) who, being limited by their talents to the 
 burthen of the song at the play-houses, in revenge 
 have got the common popular airs by Bishop, or some 
 cheap composer, arranged for choruses ; that is, to be 
 sung all in chorus. At least I never can catch any of 
 the text of the plain song, nothing but the Babylonish 
 choral howl at the tail on't. " That fury being 
 quenched " — the howl I mean — a burden succeeds of 
 shouts and clapping, and knocking of the table. At 
 length overtasked nature drops under it, and escapes 
 for a few hours into the society of the sweet silent 
 creatures of dreams, which go away with mocks and 
 mows at cockcrow. And then I think of the words 
 Christabel's father used (bless me, I have dipt in the 
 wrong ink !) to say every morning by way of variety 
 when he awoke : 
 
 "Every knell, the Baron saith. 
 Wakes us up to a world of death" — 
 
 or something like it. All I mean by this senseless 
 interrupted tale, is, that by my central situation I am 
 a little over-companied. Not that I have any 
 animosity against the good creatures that are so 
 anxious to drive away the harpy solitude from me. I 
 like 'em, and cards, and a cheerful glass ; but I mean
 
 126 CORRESPONDENCE W(TH THE WORDSWORTHS. 
 
 merely to give you an idea, between office confinement 
 and after-office society, how little time I can call my 
 own. I mean only to draw a picture, not to make an 
 inference. I would not that I know of have it other- 
 wise. I only wish sometimes I could exchange some 
 of my faces and voices for the faces and voices which 
 a late visitation brought most welcome, and carried 
 away, leaving regret, but more pleasure, even a kind 
 of gratitude, at being so often favoured with that kind 
 northern visitation. My London faces and noises 
 don't hear me — I mean no disrespect, or I should 
 explain myself, that instead of their return 220 times 
 a year, and the return of W. W., &c., seven times in 
 104 weeks, some more equal distribution might be 
 found. I have scarce room to put in Mary's kind 
 love, and my poor name, C. Lamb. 
 
 W. H. goes on lecturing against W. W. and 
 making copious use of quotations from said W. W. 
 to give a zest to said lectures. S. T. C. is lecturing 
 with success. I have not heard either him or H., 
 but I dined with S. T. C. at Oilman's a Sunday or 
 two since, and he was well and in good spirits. I 
 mean to hear some of the course ; but lectures are not 
 much to my taste, whatever the lecturer may be. If 
 read, they are dismal flat, and you can't think why 
 you are brought together to hear a man read his 
 works, which you could read so much better at 
 leisure yourself. If delivered extempore, I am always 
 in pain, lest the gift of utterance should suddenly 
 fail the orator in the middle, as it did me at the dinner 
 given in honour of me at the London Tavern. 
 " Gentlemen," said I, and there I stopped ; the rest 
 my leelings were under the necessity of supplying.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS.127 
 
 Mrs. Wordsworth will go on, kindly haunting us with 
 visions of seeing the lakes once more, which never 
 can be realised. Between us there is a great gulf, 
 not of inexplicable moral antipathies and distances, 
 I hope, as there seemed to be between me and that 
 gentleman concerned in the Stamp Office, that I so 
 strangely recoiled from at Haydon's.^ I think I had 
 an instinct that he was the head of an office. I hate 
 all such people — accountants' deputy accountants. 
 The dear abstract notion of the East India Company, 
 as long as she is unseen, is pretty, rather poetical ; 
 but as she makes herself manifest by the persons of 
 such beasts, I loathe and detest her as the scarlet 
 what-do-you-call-her of Babylon. I thought, after 
 abridging us of all our red-letter days, they had done 
 their worst ; but I was deceived in the length to which 
 heads of offices, those true liberty-haters, can go. 
 They are the tyrants ; not Ferdinand, nor Nero. By "^ 
 a decree passed this week, they have abridged us of 
 the immemorially-observed custom of going at one 
 o'clock of a Saturday, the little shadow of a holiday 
 left us. Dear W. W., be thankful for liberty. ^ 
 
 1 Referring to an amusing scene described by Haydon, and already 
 quoted at length in tlie notes to Sir T. Talfourd's Memoir. It will be 
 recollected that Lamb wished to examine " the gentleman's phreno- 
 logical development." — F.
 
 128 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS. 
 
 Letter CV.^ Accountant's Office, 26th April, i8i8. 
 
 Dear W., — I have just finished the pleasing task 
 of correcting the revise of the poems and letter. I 
 hope they will come out faultless. One blunder I 
 saw and shuddered at. The hallucinating rascal had 
 printed battered for battened, this last not conveying 
 any distinct sense to his gaping soul. The Reader 
 (as they call 'em) had discovered it, and given it the 
 marginal brand, but the substitutory n had not yet 
 appeared. I accompanied his notice with a most 
 pathetic address to the printer not to neglect the cor- 
 rection. I know how such a blunder would " batter 
 at your peace." With regard to the works, the Letter 
 I read with unabated satisfaction. Such a thing was 
 wanted ; called for. The parallel of Cotton with 
 Burns I heartily approve. Izaak Walton hallows any 
 page in which his reverend name appears. " Duty 
 archly bending to purposes of general benevolence " 
 is exquisite. The poems I endeavoured not to under- 
 stand, but to read them with my eye alone, and I 
 think I succeeded. (Some people will do that when 
 they come out, you'll say.) As if I were to luxuriate 
 to-morrow at some picture gallery I was never at be- 
 fore, and going by to-day by chance, found the door 
 open, and had but five minutes to look about me, 
 peeped in ; just such a chastised peep I took with my 
 
 1 This letter is fantastically written beneath a regular official order, 
 the words in italics being printed. 
 
 " Sir, — Please to state the iveights and amounts of the foUovDuig 
 Lots of sold Sale, i8i for 
 
 " Tour obedient Sern.'ant, 
 
 Ch,\s. Lamb." — T.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS. 129 
 
 mind at the lines my luxuriating eye was coursing 
 over unrestrained, not to anticipate another day's 
 fuller satisfaction. Coleridge is printing " Christabel," 
 by Lord Byron's recommendation to Murray, with f 
 what he calls a vision, " Kubla Khan," which said 
 vision he repeats so enchantingly that it irradiates 
 and brings heaven and elysian bowers into my parlour 
 while he sings or says it ; but there is an observation, 
 " Never tell thy dreams," and I am almost afraid that 
 " Kubla Khan" is an owl that won't bear day-light. I 
 fear lest it should be discovered by the lantern of 
 typography and clear reducting to letters no better 
 than nonsense or no sense. When I was young I 
 used to chant with ecstasy " Mild Arcadians ever 
 BLOOMING," till somebody told me it was meant to be 
 nonsense. Even yet I have a lingering attachment 
 to it, and I think it better than " Windsor Forest," 
 " Dying Christian's Address," &c. Coleridge has 
 sent his tragedy to D[rury] L[ane] T[heatre], It 
 cannot be acted this season ; and by their manner of 
 receiving, I hope he will be able to alter it to make 
 them accept it for next. He is, at present, under the 
 medical care of a Mr. Oilman, (Killman ?) a Highgate / 
 apothecary, whgrejhejjlays ^t leaving off laud — m. I 
 think his essentials not touched : he is very""bad ; but 
 then he wonderfully picks up another day, and his 
 face, when he repeats his verses, hath its ancient 
 glory ; an archangel a little damaged. Will Miss H. 
 pardon our not replying at length to her kind letter ? 
 We are not quiet enough ; Morgan is with us every 
 day, going betwixt Highgate and the Temple. Cole- 
 ridge is absent but four miles, and the neighbourhood 
 of such a man is as exciting as the presence of fifty 
 ordinary persons. 'Tis enough to be within the whiff 
 
 VOL. II. K
 
 130 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS. 
 
 and wind of his genius for us not to possess our souls 
 in quiet. If I lived with him or the Author of the 
 Excursion, I should, in a very little time, lose my 
 own identity, and be dragged along in the current of 
 other people's thoughts, hampered in a net. How 
 cool I sit in this office, with no possible interruption 
 further than what I may term material ! There is 
 not as much metaphysics in thirty-six of the people 
 here as there is in the first page of Locke's " Treatise 
 on the Human Understanding," or as much poetry 
 as in any ten lines of the " Pleasures of Hope," or 
 more natural " Beggar's Petition." I never entangle 
 myself in any of their speculations. Interruptions, if 
 I try to write a letter even, I have dreadful. Just 
 now, within four lines, I was called off for ten minutes 
 .to consult dusty old books for the settlement of obso- 
 lete errors. I hold you a guinea you don't find the 
 , chasm where I left off, so excellently the wounded 
 (sense closed again and was healed. 
 
 N.B. — Nothing said above to the contrary, but that 
 I hold the personal presence of the two mentioned 
 potent spirits at a rate as high as any ; but I pay 
 dearer. What amuses others robs me of myself: my 
 mind is positively discharged into their greater cur- 
 rents, but flows with a willing violence. As to your 
 question about work ; it is far less oppressive to me 
 than it was, from circumstances. It takes all the 
 golden part of the day away, a solid lump, from ten to 
 four ; but it does not kill my peace as before. Some 
 day or other I shall be in a taking again. My head 
 aches, and you have had enough. God bless you ! 
 
 C. Lamb.
 
 correspondence with the wordsworths. i31 
 
 Letter CVI.] 1819. 
 
 Dear Wordsworth, — I received a copy of " Peter 
 Bell " a week ago, and I hope the author will not be 
 offended if I say I do not much relish it. The 
 humour, if it is meant for humour, is forced ; and 
 then the price ! — sixpence would have been dear for 
 it. Mind, I do not mean yoicr " Peter Bell," but a 
 " Peter Bell " which preceded it about a week, and is 
 in every bookseller's shop window in London, the 
 type and paper nothing differing from the true one, 
 the preface signed W. W., and the supplementary 
 preface quoting as the author's words an extract from 
 the supplementary preface to the " Lyrical Ballads." 
 Is there no law against these rascals ? I would have 
 this Lambert Simnel whipt at the cart's tail. Then 
 there is Rogers ! He has been re-writing your Poem of 
 the Strid, and publishing it at the end of his " Human 
 Life." Tie him up to the cart, hangman, while you are 
 about it. Who started the spurious " P. B." I have 
 not heard. I should guess, one of the sneering 
 brothers, the vile Smiths ;^ but I have heard no name 
 mentioned. "Peter Bell" (not the mock one) is 
 excellent ; for its matter I mean. I cannot say that 
 the style of it quite satisfies me. It is too lyrical. 
 The auditors to whom it is feigned to be told, do not 
 arride me. I would rather it had been told me, the 
 reader, at once. " Hartleap Well " is the tale for me ; 
 in matter as good as this ; in manner infinitely before 
 it, in my poor judgment. Why did you not add 
 " The Waggoner ?" — Have I thanked you, though, 
 yet, for " Peter Bell ?" I would not not have it for a 
 
 1 Audiors cf the Rejected Addresses. — F. 
 
 K 2
 
 132 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS. 
 
 good deal of money. C is very foolish to scribble 
 
 about books. Neither his tongue nor fingers are very 
 retentive. But I shall not say any thing to him about 
 it. He would only begin a very long story, with a 
 very long face ; and I see him far too seldom to teaze 
 him with affairs of business or conscience when I do 
 see him. He never comes near our house ; and when 
 we go to see him he is generally writing, or think- 
 ing. He is writing in his study till the dinner comes, 
 and that is scarce over before the stage summons us 
 away. The mock " P. B." had only this effect on 
 me, that after twice reading it over in hopes to find 
 something diverting in it, I reached your two books 
 off the shelf, and set into a steady reading of them, 
 till I had nearly finished both before I went to bed : 
 the two of your last edition, of course, I mean : and 
 in the morning I awoke determining to take down the 
 Excursion. I wish the scoundrel imitator could 
 know this. But why waste a wish on him ? I do 
 not believe that paddling about with a stick in a 
 pond, and fishing up a dead author, whom his in- 
 tolerable wrongs had driven to that deed of despera- 
 tion, would turn the heart of one of these obtuse 
 literary Bells. There is no Cock for such Peters ; — 
 — damn 'em ! I am glad this aspiration came upon 
 the red ink line. It is more of a bloody curse. I 
 have delivered over your other presents to Alsager 
 and G. D. A., I am sure, will value it, and be proud 
 of the hand from which it came. To G. D. a poem is 
 a poem. His own as good as anybody's, and (God 
 bless him !) any body's as good as his own ; for I do 
 not think he has the most distant guess of the possi- 
 bility of one poem being better than another. The 
 gods, by denying him the very faculty itself of dis-
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS. 1 33 
 
 crimination, have effectually cut off every seed of 
 envy in his bosom. But with envy, they excited 
 curiosity also; and if you wish the copy again, which 
 you destined for him, I think I shall be able to find it 
 again for you, on his third shelf, where he stuffs his 
 presentation copies, uncut, in shape and matter re- 
 sembling a lump of dry dust ; but on carefully re- 
 moving that stratum, a thing like a pamphlet will 
 emerge. I have tried this with fifty different poetical 
 works that have been given G. D. in return for as 
 many of his own performances ; and I confess I never 
 had any scruple in taking my own again, wherever I 
 found it, shaking the adherences off; and by this 
 means one copy of " my works " served for G. D., 
 and, with a little dusting, was made over to my good 
 
 friend Dr. G , who little thought whose leavings 
 
 he was taking when he made that graceful bow. By 
 the way, the Doctor is the only one of my acquaint- 
 ance who bows gracefully ; my town acquaintance, I 
 mean. How do you like my way of writing with 
 two inks ? I think it is pretty and motley. Suppose 
 Mrs. W. adopts it, the next time she holds the pen 
 for you. My dinner waits. I have no time to indulge 
 any longer in these laborious curiosities. God bless 
 you, and cause to thrive and burgeon whatsoever you 
 write, and fear no inks of miserable poetasters. 
 
 Yours truly, Charles Lamb. 
 
 Mary's love. 
 
 Letter CVIL] June 7th, 1819. 
 
 My Dear Wordsworth, — You cannot imagine how 
 proud we are here of the dedication. We read it 
 twice for once that we do the poem. I mean all
 
 134 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS. 
 
 through ; yet " Benjamin" is no common favourite ; 
 there is a spirit of beautiful tolerance in it. It is as 
 good as it was in 1806 ; and it will be as good in 
 1829, if our dim eyes shall be awake to peruse it. 
 Methinks there is a kind of shadowing affinity between 
 the subject of the narrative and the subject of the 
 dedication ; but I will not enter into personal themes ; 
 else, substituting * * ^= * * * for Ben, and 
 the Honourable United Company of Merchants 
 trading to the East Indies, for the master of the mis- 
 used team, it might seem, by no far-fetched analogy, 
 to point its dim warnings hitherward ; but I reject 
 the omen, especially as its import seems to have been 
 diverted to another victim. 
 
 I will never write another letter with alternate inks. 
 You cannot imagine how it cramps the flow of the 
 style. I can conceive Pindar, (I do not mean to com- 
 pare myself to Jiini,) by the command of Hiero, the 
 Sicilian tyrant, (was not he the tyrant of some place ? 
 lie on my neglect of history !) I can conceive him by 
 command of Hiero or Perillus set down to pen an 
 Isthmian or Nemean panegyric in lines, alternate red 
 and black. I maintain he couldn't have done it ; it 
 would have been a strait-laced torture to his muse ; he 
 would have call'd for the bull for a relief. Neither 
 could Lycidas, nor the Chorics (how do you like the 
 word ?) of Samson Agonistes, have been written with 
 two inks. Your couplets, with points, epilogues to 
 Mr. H.'s, &c., might be even benefited by the tw^- 
 fount, where one line (the second) is for point, and 
 the first for rhyme. I think the alteration would 
 assist, like a mould. I maintain it, you could not 
 have written your stanzas on pre-existence with two 
 inks. Try another; and Rogers, with his silver
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS. I35 
 
 standish, having one ink only, I will bet my ** Ode on 
 Tobacco," against the " Pleasures of Memory," — 
 and " Hope," too, shall put more fervour of enthusiasm 
 into the same subject than you can with your two ; 
 he shall do it stans pede in uno, as it were. 
 
 The " Waggoner" is very ill put up in boards ; at 
 least it seems to me always to open at the dedica- 
 tion ; but that is a mechanical fault. I re-read the 
 " White Doe of Rylstone ;" the title should be always 
 written at length, as Mary Sabilla Novello, a very 
 nice woman of our acquaintance, always signs hers 
 at the bottom of the shortest note. Mary told her, if 
 her name had been Mary Ann, she would have signed 
 M. A. Novello, or M. only, dropping the A. ; which 
 makes me think, with some other trifles, that she 
 understands something of human nature. My pen 
 goes galloping on most rhapsodically, glad to have 
 escaped the bondage of two inks. 
 
 Manning had just sent it home, and it came as fresh 
 to me as the immortal creature it speaks of. M. sent it 
 home with a note, having this passage in it: "I 
 cannot help writing to you while I am reading Words- 
 worth's poem. I am got into the third canto, and 
 say that it raises my opinion of him very much 
 indeed.^ 'Tis broad, noble, poetical, with a masterly 
 scanning of human actions, absolutely above common 
 readers. What a manly (implied) interpretation of 
 (bad) party-actions, as trampling the Bible, &c. !" and 
 so he goes on. 
 
 I do not know which I like best, — the prologue (the 
 latter part especially) to " P. Bell," or the epilogue to 
 
 1 " N.B. — M., from his peregrinations, is twelve or fourteen years 
 behind in his knowledge of who has or has not written good verse of 
 late."
 
 136 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS. 
 
 "Benjamin." Yes, 1 tell stories ; I do know I like the 
 last best ; and the " Waggoner" altogether is a plea- 
 santer remembrance to me than the " Itinerant." If 
 it were not, the page before the first page would and 
 ought to make it so. The sonnets are not all new to 
 me; of those which are new, the ninth I like best. 
 Thank you for that to Walton. I take it as a favour 
 done to me, that, being so old a darling of mine, you 
 should bear testimony to his worth in a book contain- 
 ing a dedic : I cannot write the vain word at full 
 
 length any longer. 
 
 If, as you say, the "Waggoner," in some sort, 
 came at my call, oh for a potent voice to call forth 
 the " Recluse" from his profound dormitory, where he 
 sleeps forgetful of his foolish charge — the world ! 
 
 Had I three inks, I would invoke him ! Talfourd 
 has written a most kind review of J. W^oodvil, &c., in 
 the Champion. He is your most zealous admirer, in 
 solitude and in crowds. H. Crabb Robinson gives 
 me any dear prints that I happen to admire ; and I 
 love him for it and for other things. Alsager shall 
 have his copy; but at present I have lent \tfor a day 
 only, not choosing to part with my own. Mary's love. 
 How do you all do, amanuenses both — marital and 
 sororal P 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 
 Letter CVIII. [Nov. 25th, 1819.] 
 
 Dear Miss Wordsworth, — You will think me negli- 
 gent : but I wanted to see more of Willy before I ventured
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS. I37 
 
 to express a prediction. Till yesterday I had barely 
 seen him — Virgilhtm tantum vidi — but yesterday he 
 gave us his small company to a bullock's heart, and I 
 can pronounce him a lad of promise. He is no 
 pedant, nor bookworm : so far I can answer. Perhaps 
 he has hitherto paid too little attention to other men's 
 inventions, preferring, like Lord Foppington, the 
 " natural sprouts of his own." But he has observa- 
 tion, and seems thoroughly awake, I am ill at re- 
 membering other people's bon mots, but the following 
 are a few : — Being taken over Waterloo Bridge, he 
 remarked, that if we had no mountains, we had a fine 
 river at least ; which was a touch of the comparative : 
 but then he added, in a strain which augured less for 
 his future abilities as a political economist, that he 
 supposed they must take at least a pound a week 
 toll. Like a curious naturalist, he inquired if the tide 
 did not come up a little salty. This being satisfac- 
 torily answered, he put another question, as to the 
 flux and reflux ; which being rather cunningly evaded 
 than artfully solved by that she-Aristotle, Mary, — who 
 muttered something about its getting up an hour 
 sooner and sooner every day, — he sagely replied, 
 " Then it must come to the same thing at last ; " 
 which was a speech worthy of an infant Halley ! The 
 lion in the 'Change by no means came up to his ideal 
 standard; so impossible is it for Nature, in any of her 
 works, to come up to the standard of a child's imagi- 
 nation ! The whelps (lionets) he was sorry to find 
 were dead ; and on particular inquiry, his old friend 
 the ourang-outang had gone the way of all flesh also. 
 The grand tiger was also sick, and expected in no 
 short time to exchange this transitory world for 
 another, or none. But again, there was a golden
 
 138 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS. 
 
 eagle (I do not mean that of Charing) which did 
 much arride and console him. William's genius, I 
 take it, leans a little to the figurative ; for, being at 
 play at tricktrack (a kind of minor billiard-table which 
 we keep for smaller wights, and sometimes refresh our 
 own mature fatigues with taking a hand at), not being 
 able to hit a ball he had iterate aimed at, he cried out, 
 " I cannot hit that beast !" Now the balls are usually 
 called men, but he felicitously hit upon a middle term ; 
 a term of approximation and imaginative reconcilia- 
 tion ; a something where the two ends of the brute 
 matter (ivory), and their human and rather violent 
 personification into men, might meet, as I take it : 
 illustrative of that excellent remark, in a certain pre- 
 face about imagination, explaining " Like a sea-beast 
 that had crawled forth to sun himself ! " Not that I 
 accuse William Minor of hereditary plagiary, or con- 
 ceive the image to have come ex traduce. Rather he 
 seemeth to keep aloof from any source of imitation, 
 and purposely to remain ignorant of what mighty 
 poets have done in this kind before him ; for, being 
 asked if his father had ever been on Westminster 
 Bridge, he answered that he did not know ! 
 
 It is hard to discern the oak in the acorn, or a 
 temple like St. Paul's in the first stone which is laid ; 
 nor can I quite prefigure what destination the genius 
 of William Minor hath to take. Some few hints I 
 have set down, to guide my future observations. He 
 hath the power of calculation, in no ordinary degree 
 for a chit. He combineth figures, after the first 
 boggle, rapidly ; as in the tricktrack board, where the 
 hits are figured. At first he did not perceive that 15 
 and 7 made 22 ; but by a little use he could combine 8 
 with 25, and 33 again with 16, which approacheth
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS. 139 
 
 something in kind (far let me be from flattering him by 
 saying in degree) to that of the famous American 
 boy, I am sometimes inclined to think I perceive 
 the future satirist in him, for he hath a subsardonic 
 smile which bursteth out upon occasion ; as when 
 he was asked if London were as big as Ambleside ; 
 and indeed no other answer was given, or proper to 
 be given, to so ensnaring and provoking a question. 
 In the contour of the skull, certainly I discern some- 
 thing paternal. But whether in all respects the future 
 man shall transcend his father's fame, Time, the 
 trier of Geniuses, must decide. Be it pronounced 
 peremptorily at present, that Willy^ is a well- 
 mannered child, and though no great student, hath yet 
 a lively eye for things that lie before him. 
 Given in haste from my desk at Leadenhall. 
 Yours, and yours most sincerely, 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 
 Letter CIX.] 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 every thing, which I think I may 
 date from poor John's loss, and another 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 
 
 1 Mr. Wordsworth's necond son, then a scholar at the Charter- 
 House. — T.
 
 140 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS. 
 
 of me have been numbed. One sees a picture, reads 
 an anecdote, starts a casual fancy, and thinks to tell 
 of it to this person 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 f 
 What fun has whist now? What matters it what you 
 lead, if you can no longer fancy him looking over you ? 
 One never hears any thing, but the image of the par- 
 ticular person occurs with whom alone almost you 
 would care to share the intelligence. Thus one distri- 
 butes 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, won't 
 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, capita 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 weari- 
 some 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. 
 Tcedet me harum quotidianarum formarum, these pes- 
 tilential clerk-faces always in one's dish. Oh for a 
 few years between the grave and the desk ! — they are 
 the same, save that at the latter you are the outside
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS. I4I 
 
 machine. The foul enchanter , (" letters four do 
 
 form his name" — Busirare 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 green thought!) to 
 have retired to Ponder'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 Hoddesdon or 
 Amwell, careless as a beggar ; but walking, walking 
 ever till I fairly walked myself off my legs, dying 
 walking ! 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 pul- 
 monary affliction may relieve me. Vide Lord Pal- 
 merston's report of the clerks in the War Office, (De- 
 bates 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 
 3'ou 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, want- 
 ing the eloquent 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 
 
 ^ See the account of the meeting between Dodtl and Jem White, in 
 Elia's Essay " On some of the Old Actors." — T.
 
 142 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS. 
 
 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. 
 
 I had almost forgot to say, I think you thoroughly 
 right about presentation copies. I should like to 
 see you print a book I should grudge to purchase for 
 its size. Hang me, but I would have it though ! 
 
 Mary perfectly approves of the appropriation of the 
 feathers, and wishes them peacock's for your fair 
 niece's sake.
 
 correspondence with the wordsworths. i43 
 
 Letter CX.] 1822. 
 
 Dear Miss Wordsworth, — I had just written the 
 above endearing words when Monkhouse^ tapped me 
 on the shoulder with an invitation to cold goose pie, 
 which I was not bird of that sort enough to decHne. 
 
 Mrs. M , I am most happy to say, is better, 
 
 Mary has been tormented with rheumatism, which 
 is leaving her. I am suffering from the festivities of 
 the season. I wonder how my misused carcass holds 
 it out. I have played the experimental philosopher 
 on it, that's certain. Willy shall be welcome to a 
 mince-pie, and a bout at commerce whenever he 
 comes. He was in our eye. I am glad you liked 
 my new year's speculations : every body likes them, 
 except the author of the Pleasures of Hope. Dis- 
 appointment attend him ! How I like to be liked, 
 and what I do to be liked ! They flatter me in maga- 
 zines, newspapers, and all the minor reviews ; the 
 Quarterlies hold aloof. But they must come into it 
 in time, or their leaves be waste paper. Salute 
 Trinity Library in my name. Two special things 
 are worth seeing at Cambridge, a portrait of Crom- 
 well, at Sydney, and a better of Dr. Harvey (who 
 found out that blood was red), at Dr. Davy's ; you 
 should see them. Coleridge is pretty well. I have 
 not seen him, but hear often of him from AUsop, who 
 sends me hares and pheasants twice a week ; I can 
 hardly take so fast as he gives. I have almost for- 
 gotten butcher's meat, as plebeian. Are you not glad 
 the cold is gone ? I find Winters not so agreeable as 
 they used to be " when Winter bleak had charms for 
 
 ' M rs. Wordsworth's brother-in-law. — H.
 
 144 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS. 
 
 me." I cannot conjure up a kind similitude for those 
 snowy flakes. Let them keep to twelfth cakes ! 
 
 Mrs. Paris, our Cambridge friend, has been in 
 town. You do not know the Watfords in Trump- 
 ington Street. They are capital people. Ask any 
 body you meet who is the biggest woman in Cam- 
 bridge, and I'll hold you a wager they'll say Mrs. 
 Smith. She broke down two benches in Trinity 
 gardens, one on the confines of St. John's, which 
 occasioned a litigation between the Societies as to 
 repairing it. In warm weather she retires into an 
 ice-cellar, (literally!) and dates the returns of the 
 years from a hot Thursday some twenty years back. 
 She sits in a room with opposite doors and windows, 
 to let in a thorough draught, which gives her 
 slenderer friends tooth-aches. She is to be seen in 
 the market every morning, at ten, cheapening fowls, 
 which I observe the Cambridge poulterers are not 
 sufficiently careful to stump. 
 
 Having now answered most of the points con- 
 tained in your letter, let me end with assuring you of 
 our very best kindness, and excuse Mary from not 
 handling the pen on this occasion, especially as it 
 has fallen into so much better hands ! Will Dr. W. 
 accept of my respects at the end of a foolish letter? 
 
 C. L. 
 
 Letter CXI.] Colebrook Cottage, 6th April, 1825. 
 
 Dear Wordsworth, — I have been several times 
 meditating a letter to you concerning the good thing 
 which has befallen me, but the thought of poor 
 Monkhouse came across me. He was one that I had 
 exulted in the prospect of congratulating me. He
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS. I45 
 
 and you were to have been the first participators, for 
 indeed it has been ten weeks since the first motion of 
 it. Here am I then, after thirty-three years' slavery, 
 sitting in my own room at eleven o'clock this finest 
 of all April mornings, a freed man, with £4^1 a year 
 for the remainder of my life, live I as long as John 
 Dennis, who outlived his annuity and starved at 
 ninety : ;^44i, i.e. £"450, with a deduction of ;^g for 
 a provision secured to my sister, she being survivor, 
 the pension guaranteed by Act Georgii Tertii, &c. 
 
 I came home for ever on Tuesday in last week. 
 The incomprehensibleness of my condition over- 
 whelmed me. It was like passing from life into 
 eternity. Every year to be as long as three, i. e. to 
 have three times as much real time (time that is my 
 own) in it ! I wandered about thinking I was happy, 
 but feeling I was not. But that tumultuousness is 
 passing off, and I begin to understand the nature of 
 the gift. Holydays, even the annual month, were 
 always uneasy joys ; their conscious fugitiveness ; 
 the craving after making the most of them. Now, 
 when all is holyday, there are no holydays. I can 
 sit at home, in rain or shine, without a restless 
 impulse for walkings. I am daily steadying, and 
 shall soon find it as natural to me to be my own 
 master, as it has been irksome to have had a master. 
 Mary wakes every morning with an obscure feeling 
 that some good has happened to us. 
 
 Leigh Hunt and Montgomery,^ after their release- 
 ments, describe the shock of their emancipation much 
 
 1 James Montgomery, the poet, who was imprisoned for a consider- 
 able time on account of having printed the Duke of Richmond's Letter 
 
 on the People's Rights to Utii'versal Suffrage, 1817 H. 
 
 VOL. II, L
 
 146 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS. 
 
 as I feel mine. But it hurt their frames. I eat, 
 drink, and sleep as sound as ever. I lay no anxious 
 schemes for going hither and thither, but take things 
 as they occur. Yesterday I excursioned twenty 
 miles ; to-day I write a few letters. Pleasuring was 
 for fugitive play-days ; mine are fugitive only in the 
 sense that life is fugitive. Freedom and life co- 
 existent ! 
 
 At the foot of such a call upon you for gratulation, 
 I am ashamed to advert to that melancholy event. 
 Monkhouse was a character I learned to love slowly, 
 but it grew upon me, yearly, monthly, daily. What 
 a chasm has it made in our pleasant parties 1 His 
 noble friendly face was always coming before me, 
 till this hurrying event in my life came, and for the 
 time has absorbed all interest ; in fact it has shaken 
 me a little. My old desk companions, with whom I 
 have had such merry hours, seem to reproach me for 
 removing my lot from among them. They were 
 pleasant creatures ; but to the anxieties of business, 
 and a weight of possible worse ever impending, I was 
 not equal. Tuthill and Oilman give me my certi- 
 cates.^ I laughed at the friendly lie implied in them ; 
 but my sister shook her head, and said it was all 
 true. Indeed, this last Winter I was jaded out : 
 Winters were always worse than otb^r "jarts of the 
 year, because the spirits are worse, ana I had no day- 
 light. In Summer I had day-light evenings. The 
 relief was hinted to me from a superior Power, when 
 I, poor slave, had not a hope but that I must wait 
 another seven years with Jacob : and lo ! the Rachel 
 which I coveted is brought to me ! 
 
 ' As to his unfitness for further duty at the East India House. — F.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS. 147 
 
 Have you read the noble dedication of Irving's 
 *' Missionary Orations" to S. T, C. ? Who shall call 
 this man a quack hereafter ? What the Kirk will 
 think of it neither I nor Irving care. When some- 
 body suggested to him that it would not be likely to 
 do him good, videlicet, among his own people," That 
 is a reason for doing it," was his noble answer. 
 That Irving thinks he has profited mainly by S. T. C, 
 I have no doubt. The very style of the Dedication 
 shows it. 
 
 Communicate my news to Southey, and beg his 
 pardon for my being so long acknowledging his kind 
 present of the " Church, " which circumstances, 
 having no reference to himself, prevented at the 
 time. Assure him of my deep respect and friendliest 
 feelings. 
 
 Divide the same, or rather each take the whole to 
 you — I mean you and all yours. To Miss Hutchin- 
 son I must write separate. 
 
 Farewell ! and end at last, long selfish letter. 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 
 Letter CXIL] [1825.] 
 
 Dear W., — I write post-haste to ensure a frank. 
 Thanks for your hearty congratulations. I may now 
 date from the sixth week of my " Hegira, or Flight 
 from Leadenhall." I have lived so much in it, that 
 a Summer seems already past ; and 'tis but early May 
 yet with you and other people. How I look down on 
 the slaves and drudges of the world ! Its inhabitants 
 are a vast cotton-web of spin-spin-spinners ! O the 
 
 L 2
 
 148 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS. 
 
 carking cares ! O the money-grubbers ! Sempiternal 
 muckworms ! 
 
 Your Virgil I have lost sight of, but suspect it is in 
 the hands of Sir G. Beaumont ; I think that circum- 
 stances made me shy of procuring it before. Will 
 you write to him about it ? — and your commands 
 shall bi.. obeyed to a tittle. 
 
 Coleridge has just finished his prize Essay, [by] 
 which, if it get the prize, he'll touch an additional 
 ;^ioo I fancy. His book, too, (" Commentary on 
 Bishop Leighton,") is quite finished, a.ndpenes Taylor 
 and Hessey. 
 
 In the London Magazine, which, is just out, (ist 
 of May,) are two papers entitled the " Superannuated 
 Man," which I wish you to see ; and also, ist of 
 
 April, a little thing called " Barbara S ," a story 
 
 gleaned from Miss Kelly.-"- The London Magazine, if 
 you can get it, will save my enlargement upon the 
 topic of my manumission. 
 
 I must scribble to make up my hiatus crumence ; 
 for there are so many ways, pious and profligate, of 
 getting rid of money in this vast city and suburbs, 
 that I shall miss my thirds. But coiiragio ! I 
 despair not. Your kind hint of the cottage was well 
 thrown out ; an anchorage for age and school of 
 economy, when necessity comes ; but without this 
 latter, I have an unconquerable terror of changing 
 place. It does not agree with us. I say it from 
 conviction ; else I do sometimes ruralize in fancy. 
 
 Some d — d people are come in, and I must finish 
 abruptly. By d — d, I only mean deuced. 'Tis these 
 suitors of Penelope that makes it necessary to 
 authorize a little for gin and mutton, and such 
 trifles.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS. 149 
 
 Excuse my abortive scribble. 
 Yours, not in more haste than heart, 
 
 C. L. 
 
 Love and recollects to all the Wms., Doras, Marys 
 round your Wrekin. 
 
 Mary is capitally well. Do write to Sir G. B., for 
 I am shyish of applying to him. 
 
 Letter CXIIL Jan. 22nd, 1830. 
 
 And is it a year since we parted from you at the 
 steps of Edmonton stage ? There are not now the 
 years that there used to be. The tale of the dwindled 
 age of men, reported of successional mankind, is true 
 of the same man only. We do not live a year in a 
 year now. 'Tis a punctum stans. The seasons pass 
 us with indifference. Spring cheers not, nor Winter 
 heightens our gloom ; Autumn hath foregone its 
 moralities, — they are " hey-pass repass," as in a 
 show-box. Yet, as far as last year occurs back, — for 
 they scarce show a rel. jx now, they make no memory 
 as heretofore, — 'twas sufficiently gloomy. Let the 
 sullen nothing pass. Suffice it, that after sad spirits, 
 prolonged through many of its months, as it called 
 them, we have cast our skins ; have taken a farewell 
 of the pompous, troublesome trifle, called house- 
 keeping, and are settled down into poor boarders and 
 lodgers at next door with an old couple, the Baucis 
 and Baucida of dull Enfield. Here we have nothing 
 to do with our victuals but to eat them ; with the 
 garden but to see it grow ; with the tax-gatherer but
 
 
 E WORDSWORTHS. 
 
 \f/^y\ 150 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THI 
 
 to hear him knock ; with the maid but to hear her 
 scolded. Scot and lot, butcher, baker, are things 
 unknown to us, save as spectators of the pageant. 
 We are fed we know not how ; quietists — confiding 
 ravens. We have otium pro dignitate, a respectable 
 insignificance. Yet in the self-condemned oblivious- 
 ness, in the stagnation, some molesting yearnings of 
 life, not quite killed, rise, prompting me that there 
 was a London, and that I was of that old Jerusalem. 
 In dreams I am in Fleet Market, but I wake and cry 
 to sleep again. I die hard, a stubborn Eloisa in this 
 detestable Paraclete. What have I gained by health ? 
 Intolerable dulness. What by early hours and mode- 
 rate meals ? A total blank. O never let the lying 
 poets be believed, who 'tice men from the cheerful 
 haunts of streets, or think they mean it not of a 
 country village. In the ruins of Palmyra I could gird 
 myself up to solitude, or muse to the snorings of the 
 Seven Sleepers ; but to have a little teazing image of 
 a town about one ; country folks that do not look like 
 country folks ; shops two yards square, half-a-dozen 
 apples, and two penn'orth of overlooked ginger-bread 
 for the lofty fruiterers of Oxford Street ; and, for the 
 immortal book and print stalls, a circulating library 
 that stands still, where the show-picture is a last 
 year's V; 'entine, and whither the fame of the last ten 
 Scotch novels has not yet travelled, — (marry, they 
 just begin to be conscious of the Red gauntlet :) — to 
 have a new plastered flat church, and to be wishing 
 that it was but a cathedral ! The very blackguards 
 here are degenerate ; the topping gentry stock-brokers; 
 the passengers too many to insure your quiet, or let 
 you go about whistling or gaping, too few to be the 
 fine indifferent pageants of Fleet Street. Confining,
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS. I5I 
 
 room-keeping, thickest Winter, is yet more bearable 
 here than the gaudy months. Among one's books atf 
 one's fire by candle, one is soothed into an oblivion \ 
 that one is not in the country ; but with the light the I 
 green fields return, till I gaze, and in a calenture canj 
 plunge myself into St. Giles's. O let no native 
 Londoner imagine that health, and rest, and innocent 
 occupation, interchange of converse sweet, and recrea- 
 tive study, can make the country anything better than 
 altogether odious and detestable! A garden was the^ 
 primitive prison, till man, with Promethean felicity I 
 and boldness, luckily sinned himself out of it. Thence 
 followed Babylon, Nineveh, Venice, London, haber- 
 dashers, goldsmiths, taverns, playhouses, satires, ; 
 epigrams, puns, — these all came in on the town part, j 
 and the thither side of innocence. Man found out in--^ 
 ventions. From my den I return you condolence for 
 your decaying sight ; not for any thing there is to see 
 in the country, but for the miss of the pleasure of 
 reading a London newspaper. The poets are as well 
 to listen to ; any thing high may, nay must, be read 
 out ; you read it to yourself with an imaginary 
 auditor ; but the light paragraphs must be glid over by 
 the proper eye ; mouthing mumbles their gossamery 
 substance. 'Tis these trifles I should mourn in 
 fading sight. A newspaper is the single gleam of 
 comfort I receive here ; it comes from rich Cathay 
 with tidings of mankind. Yet I could not attend to 
 it, read out by the most beloved voice. But your 
 eyes do not get worse, I gather. O for the collyrium 
 of Tobias inclosed in a whiting's liver, to send you 
 with no apocryphal good wishes ! The last long 
 time I heard from you, you had knocked your head 
 against something. Do not do so; for your head (I
 
 I52CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS. 
 
 do not flatter) is not a knob, or the top of a brass nail, 
 or the end of a nine pin, — unless a Vulcanian hammer 
 could fairly batter a " Recluse " out of it ; then would 
 I bid the smirched god knock and knock lustily, the 
 two-handed skinker. Mary must squeeze out a line 
 propria mami, but indeed her fingers have been incor- 
 rigibly nervous to letter writing for a long interval. 
 'Twill please you all to hear, that though I fret like a 
 lion in a net, her present health and spirits are better 
 than they have been for some time past. She is abso- 
 lutely three years and a half younger, as I tell her, 
 since we have adopted this boarding plan. 
 
 Our providers are an honest pair. Dame W[est- 
 wood] and her husband. He, when the light of pros- 
 perity shined on them, a moderately thriving haber- 
 dasher within Bow bells, retired since with something 
 under a competence ; writes himself parcel gentle- 
 man ; hath borne parish offices ; sings fine old sea 
 songs at threescore and ten ; sighs only now and 
 then when he thinks that he has a son on his hands, 
 about fifteen, whom he finds a difficulty in getting out 
 into the world, and then checks a sigh with muttering, 
 as I once heard him prettily, not meaning to be heard, 
 " I have married my daughter, however; " takes the 
 weather as it comes ; outsides it to town in severest 
 season ; and o' winter nights tells old stories not 
 tending to literature, (how comfortable to author-rid 
 folks !) and has one anecdote, upon which and about 
 forty pounds a year he seems to have retired in green 
 old age. It was how he was a rider in his youth, 
 travelling for shops, and once (not to balk his 
 employer's bargain) on a sweltering day in August, 
 rode foaming into Dunstable upon a mad horse, to 
 the dismay and expostulatory wonderment of inn--
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS. I53 
 
 keepers, ostlers, &c., who declared they would not 
 have bestrid the beast to win the Derby. Understand, 
 the creature galled to death and desperation by gad- 
 flies, cormorant-winged, worse than beset Inachus's 
 daughter. This he tells, this he brindles and bur- 
 nishes on a Winter's eve; 'tis his star of set glory, his 
 rejuvenescence, to descant upon. Far from me be it 
 {dii avertant) to look a gift story in the mouth, or 
 cruelly to surmise (as those who doubt the plunge of 
 Curtius) that the inseparate conjuncture of man and 
 beast, the centaur-phenomenon that staggered all 
 Dunstable, might have been the effect of unromantic 
 necessity ; that the horse-part carried the reasoning, 
 willy nilly ; that needs must when such a devil drove; 
 that certain spiral configurations in the frame of 
 T[homas] W[estwood] unfriendly to alighting, 
 made the alliance more forcible than voluntary. Let 
 him enjoy his fame for me, nor let me hint a whisper 
 that shall dismount Bellerophon. But in case he 
 was an involuntary martyr, yet if in the fiery conflict 
 he buckled the soul of a constant haberdasher to him, 
 and adopted his flames, let accident and him share 
 the glory. You would all like Thomas Westwood. 
 How weak is painting to describe a man ! Say that 
 he stands four feet and a nail high by his own yard 
 measure, which, like the sceptre of Agamemnon, 
 shall never sprout again, still you have no adequate 
 idea ; nor when I tell you that his dear hump, which 
 I have favoured in the picture, seems to me of the 
 buffalo — indicative and repository of mild qualities, a 
 budget of kindnesses — still you have not the man. 
 
 ' Here w'as a rude sketch of a gentleman, answering the descrip- 
 tion. — T.
 
 154 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS. 
 
 Knew you old Norris of the Temple ? sixty years ours 
 and our fathers' friend ? He was not more natural 
 to us than this old W., the acquaintance of scarce 
 more weeks. Under his roof now ought I to take my 
 rest, but that back-looking ambition tells me I might 
 yet be a Londoner ! Well, if we ever do move, we 
 have incumbrances the less to impede us ; all our 
 furniture has faded under the auctioneer's hammer, 
 going for nothing, like the tarnished frippery of the 
 prodigal, and we have only a spoon or two left to 
 bless us. Clothed we came into Enfield, and naked 
 we must go out of it. I would live in London shirt- 
 less, bookless. Henry Crabb^ is at Rome ; advices 
 to that effect have reached Bury. But by solemn 
 legacy he bequeathed at parting (whether he should 
 live or die) a turkey of Suffolk to be sent every suc- 
 ceeding Christmas to us and divers other friends. 
 What a genuine old bachelor's action 1 I fear he will 
 find the air of Italy too classic. His station is in the 
 Harz forest ; his soul is be-Goethed. Miss Kelly we 
 nevfer see ; Talfourd not this half-year : the latter 
 flourishes, but the exact number of his children (God 
 forgive me !) I have utterly forgotten. We single people 
 are often out in our count there. Shall I say two ? 
 We see scarce any body. Can I cram loves enough 
 to you all in this little ? Excuse particularizing. 
 
 C. L. 
 
 Letter CXIV.] End of May nearly [1833.] 
 
 Dear Wordsworth, — Your letter, save in what 
 respects your dear sister's health, cheered me in my 
 
 1 Mr. H. C. Robinson.— F.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS. I55 
 
 new solitude. Mary is ill again. Her illnesses 
 
 encroach yearly. The last was three months, followed YVo^ 
 
 by two of depression mos' dreadful. I look back ^ 
 
 upon her earlier attacks with longing : nice little 
 
 durations of six weeks or so, followed by complete 
 
 restoration, — shocking as they were to me then. In 
 
 short, half her life she is dead to me, and the other 
 
 half is made anxious with fears and lookings forward 
 
 to the next shock. With such prospects, it seemed 
 
 to me necessary that she should no longer live with 
 
 me, and be fluttered with continual removals ; so I 
 
 am come to live with her, at a Mr. Walden's, and his 
 
 wife, who take in patients, and have arranged to 
 
 lodge and board us only. They have had the care 
 
 of her before. I see little of her : alas ! I too often 
 
 hear her. Sunt lachrymce renim ! and you and I 
 
 must bear it. 
 
 To lay a little more load on it, a circumstance has 
 happened, cujus pars magna fiii, and which, at 
 another crisis, I should have more rejoiced in. I am' 
 about to lose my old and only walk-companion, whose 
 mirthful spirits were the " youth of our house," 
 Emma Isola. I have her here now for a little while, 
 but she is too nervous, properly to be under such a 
 roof, so she will make short visits, — be no more an 
 inmate. With my perfect approval, and more than 
 concurrence, she is to be v^eddj2dr~JtQ_JM[oxon, at the 
 end of August — so "perish the roses and tKelTowers" 
 — how is it ? 
 
 Now to the brighter side. I am emancipated from 
 the Westwoods, and I am with attentive people, and 
 younger. I am three or four miles nearer the great 
 city ; coaches half-price less, and going always, of 
 which I will avail myself. I have few friends left
 
 156 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS. 
 
 there, one or two though, most beloved. But London 
 streets and faces cheer me inexpressibly, though not 
 one known of the latter were remaining. 
 
 Thank you for your cordial reception of " Elia." 
 Inter nos, the "Ariadne" is not a darling with me ; 
 several incongruous things are in it, but in the com- 
 position it served me as illustrative. 
 
 I want you in the " Popular Fallacies"^ to like the 
 " Home that is no home," and " Rising with the 
 lark." 
 
 I am feeble, but cheerful in this my genial hot 
 weather. Walked sixteen miles yesterday. I can't 
 read much in summer time. 
 
 With my kindest love to all, and prayers for dear 
 Dorothy, 
 
 I remain most affectionately yours, 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 
 At Mr. Walden's, Church Street, Edmonton, Mid- 
 dlesex. 
 
 Moxon has introduced Emma to Rogers, and he 
 smiles upon the project. I have given E. my Milton, 
 (will you pardon me ?^) in part of a portion. It hangs 
 famously in his Murray-like shop. 
 
 Church Street, Edmonton, 
 Letter CXV.] February 22, 1834. 
 
 Dear Wordsworth, — I write from a house of 
 mourning. The oldest and best friends I have left 
 
 1 A series of articles contributed, under this title, by Lamb, to the 
 New Monthly Magazine T. 
 
 2 It had been proposed by Lamb that Mr. W. should be the possessor 
 of the portrait if he outlived his friend, and tliat afterwards it was to be 
 bequeathed to Christ's College, Cajir bridge. — T.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHS. I57 
 
 are in trouble. A branch of them (and they of the 
 best stock of God's creatures, I believe, )is establishing 
 a school at Carlisle; Her name is Louisa Martin; her 
 address, 75, Castle Street, Carlisle ; her qualities 
 (and her motives for this exertion) are the most 
 amiable, most upright. For thirty years she has 
 been tried by me, and on her behaviour I would stake 
 my soul. O, if you can recommend her, how would 
 I love you — if I could love you better ! Pray, pray, 
 recommend her. She is as good a human creature, — 
 next to my sister, perhaps, the most exemplary female 
 I ever knew. Moxon tells me you would like a letter 
 from me ; you shall have one. This I cannot mingle 
 up with any nonsense which you usually tolerate from 
 C. Lamb. Need he add loves to wife, sister, and all? 
 Poor Mary is ill again, after a short lucid interval of 
 four or five months. In short, I may call her half 
 dead to me. Good you are to me. Yours with fer- 
 vour of friendship, for ever. C. L. 
 
 If you want references, the Bishop of Carlisle may 
 be one. Louisa's sister (as good as she, she cannot 
 be better, though she tries,) educated the daughters of 
 the late Earl of Carnarvon, and he settled a handsome 
 annuity on her for life. In short, all the family are a 
 sound rock.
 
 158 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE WORDSWORTHH. 
 
 Letter CXVIL] 
 
 [Postscript by Charles Lamb to a letter from Mary 
 Lamb to Miss Wordsworth. About 1822.] 
 
 Mary has left a little space for me to fill up with 
 nonsense, as the geographers used to cram monsters 
 in the voids of the maps, and call it Terra Incognita. 
 She has fold you how she has taken to water like a 
 hungry otter. I too limp after her in lame imitation,^ 
 but it goes against me a little at first. I have been 
 acquaintance with it now for full four days, and it 
 seems a moon. I am full of cramps, and rheuma- 
 tisms, and cold internally, so that fire won't warm me ; 
 yet I bear all for virtue's sake. Must I then leave 
 you, gin, rum. brandy, aqua-vitas, pleasant jolly 
 fellows ? Hang temperance, and he that first in- 
 vented it ! — some Anti-Noahite. C has pow- 
 dered his head, and looks like Bacchus, Bacchus ever 
 sleek and young. He is going to turn sober, but his 
 clock has not struck yet; meantime he pours down 
 goblet after goblet, the second to see where the first 
 is gone, the third to see no harm happens to the 
 second, a fourth to say there is another coming, and 
 a fifth to say he is not sure he is the last.
 
 ( 159 ) 
 
 IV. 
 
 Correspondence with Thomas Manning. 
 
 Letter CXVIII.] Dec. 28th, 1799. 
 
 Dear Manning, — Having" suspended my correspon- 
 dence a decent interval, as knowing that even good 
 things may be taken to satiety, a wish cannot but 
 recur to learn whether you be still well and happy. 
 Do all things continue in the state I left them in 
 Cambridge ? 
 
 Do your night parties still flourish ? and do you 
 continue to bewilder your company with your thou- 
 sand faces, running down through all the keys of 
 idiotism (like Lloyd over his perpetual harpsichord), 
 from the smile and the glimmer of half-sense and 
 quarter-sense, to the grin and hanging lip of Betty 
 Foy's own Johnny ? And does the face-dissolving 
 curfew sound at twelve ? How unlike the great 
 originals were your petty terrors in the postscript ! not 
 fearful enough to make a fairy shudder, or a Lillipu- 
 tian fine lady, eight months full of child, miscarry. 
 Yet one of them, which had more beast than the 
 rest, I thought faintly resembled one of your brutifica- 
 tions. But, seriously, I long to see your own honest 
 Manning-face again. I did not mean a pun, — your 
 man's face, you will be apt to say, I know your wicked
 
 l6o CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 
 
 will to pun. I cannot now write to Lloyd and you 
 too ; so you must convey as much interesting intelli- 
 gence as this may contain or be thought to contain, 
 to him and Sophia, with my dearest love and remem- 
 brances. 
 
 By the by, I think you and Sophia both incorrect 
 with regard to the title of the play} Allowing your ob- 
 jection, (which is not necessary, as pride may be, and 
 is in real life often, cured by misfortunes not directly 
 originating from its own acts, as Jeremy Taylor will 
 tell you a naughty desire is sometimes sent to cure it ; 
 I know you read these practical divines ;) — but allow- 
 ing your objection, does not the betraying of his 
 father's secret directly spring from pride ? — from the 
 pride of wine, and a full heart, and a proud over-step- 
 ping of the ordinary rules of morality, and contempt of 
 the prejudices of mankind, which are not to bind 
 superior souls — " as trust in the ^natter of secrets all 
 ties of blood, &c., &c., keeping of promises, the feeble 
 mind's religion, binding our morning knowledge to 
 the performance of what last night's ignorance spake" 
 — does he not prate, that " Great Spirits" must do 
 more than die for their friend ? Does not the pride of 
 wine incite him to display some evidence of friend- 
 ship, which its own irregularity shall make great ? 
 This I know, that I meant his punishment not alone 
 to be a cure for his daily and habitual pride, but the 
 direct consequence and appropriate punishment of a 
 particular act of pride. 
 
 If you do not understand it so, it is my fault in not 
 explaining my meaning. 
 
 I have not seen Coleridge since, and scarcely 
 
 1 Pride's Cure, the original title of Jo/m IVoodviL — H.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. l6l 
 
 expect to see him, — perhaps he has been at Cam- 
 bridge. 
 
 Need I turn over to blot a fresh clean half-sheet, 
 merely to say, what I hope you are sure of without 
 my repeating it, that I would have you consider me, 
 dear Manning, 
 
 Your sincere friend, 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 
 Letter CXIX.] Dec, 1799. 
 
 Dear Manning, — The particular kindness, even up 
 to a degree of attachment, which I have experienced 
 from you, seems to claim some distinct acknowledg- 
 ment on my part. I could not content myself with a 
 bare remembrance to you, conveyed in some letter to 
 Lloyd. 
 
 Will it be agreeable to you, if I occasionally recruit 
 your memory of me, which must else soon fade, if 
 you consider the brief intercourse we have had. I am 
 not likely to prove a troublesome correspondent. My 
 scribbling days are past. I shall have no sentiments 
 to communicate, but as they spring up from some 
 living and worthy occasion. 
 
 I look forward with great pleasure to the perform- 
 ance of your promise, that we should meet in London 
 early in the ensuing year. The century must needs 
 commence auspiciously for me, that brings with it 
 Manning's friendship, as an earnest of its after 
 gifts. 
 
 I should have written before, but for a troublesome 
 inflammation in one of my eyes, brought on by 
 night travelling with the coach windows sometimes 
 up. 
 
 VOL. II. M
 
 l62 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 
 
 What more I have to say shall be reserved for a 
 letter to Lloyd. I must not prove tedious to you 
 in my first outset, lest I should affright you by my 
 ill-judged loquacity. 
 
 I am, yours most sincerely, 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 
 
 v(y 
 
 Letter CXX.] 1800. 
 
 George Dyer is an Archimedes, and an Archi- 
 magus, and a Tycho Brahe, and a Corpernicus ; and 
 thou art the darling of the Nine, and midwife to 
 their wandering babe also ! We take tea with that 
 learned poet and critic on Tuesday night, at half- 
 past five, in his neat library. The repast will be light 
 and Attic, with criticism. If thou couldst contrive 
 to wheel up thy dear carcass on the Monday, and 
 after dining with us on tripe, calves' kidneys, or 
 whatever else the Cornucopia of St. Clare may be 
 willing to pour out on the occasion, might we not 
 adjourn together to the Heathen's — thou with thy 
 Black Backs, and I with some innocent volume of 
 the Bell Letters, Shenstone, or the like : it would 
 make him wash his old flannel gown (that has not 
 been washed to my knowledge since it has been his 
 — Oh the long time !) with tears of joy. Thou 
 shouldst settle his scruples and unravel his cobwebs, 
 and sponge off the sad stuff that weighs upon his 
 dear wounded pia mater. Thou shouldst restore light
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 163 
 
 to his eyes, and him to his friends and the public. 
 Parnassus should shower her civic crowns upon thee 
 for saving the wits of a citizen I I thought I saw a 
 lucid interval in George the other night ; he broke 
 in upon my studies just at tea-time, and brought 
 with him Dr. Anderson, an old gentleman who ties 
 his breeches' knees with packthread, and boasts 
 that he has been disappointed by ministers. The 
 Doctor wanted to see me ; for I being a Poet, he 
 thought I might furnish him with a copy of verses 
 to suit his Agricultural Magazine. The Doctor, in 
 the course of the conversation, mentioned a poem 
 called the " Epigoniad," by one Wilkie, an epic poem, 
 in which there is not one tolerable good line all 
 through, but every incident and speech borrowed from 
 Homer. George had been sitting inattentive, 
 seemingly, to what was going on — hatching of 
 negative quantities — when, suddenly, the name of 
 his old friend Homer stung his pericranicks, and, 
 jumping up, he begged to know where he could 
 meet with Wilkie s works. It was a curious fact, 
 he said, that there should be such an epic poem 
 and he not know of it; and he must get a copy of 
 it, as he was gomg to touch pretty deeply upon the 
 subject of the Epic — and he wa3 sure there must be 
 some things good in a poem of 8,000 lines ! I was 
 pleased with this transient return of his reason and 
 recurrence to his old ways of thinking : it gave me 
 great hopes of a recovery, which nothing but your 
 book can completely insure. Pray come on Monday, 
 if you can, and stay your own time. I have a good 
 large room, with two beds in it, in the handsomest 
 of which thou shalt repose a-nights, and dream of 
 Spheroides. I hope you will understand by the non- 
 
 M 2
 
 164 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 
 
 sense of this letter that I am not melancholy at the 
 thoughts of thy coming : I thought it necessary to 
 add this, because you love precision. Take notice 
 that our stay at Dyer's will not exceed eight o'clock ; 
 after which our pursuits will be our own. But 
 indeed I think a little recreation among the Bell 
 Letters and poetry will do you some service in the 
 interval of severer studies. I hope we shall fully 
 discuss with George Dyer what I have never yet 
 heard done to my satisfaction, the reason of Dr. 
 Johnson's malevolent strictures on the higher species 
 of the Ode. 
 
 Letter CXXL] 1800. 
 
 Dear Manning, — I am going to ask a favour of 
 you, and am at a loss how to do it in the most 
 delicate manner. For this purpose I have been 
 looking into Pliny's Letters, who is noted to have 
 had the best grace in begging of all the ancients, (I 
 read him in the elegant translation of Mr. Melmoth,) 
 but not finding any case there exactly similar with 
 mine, I am constrained to beg in my own barbarian 
 way. To come to the point then, and hasten into 
 the m.iddle of things : have you a copy of your 
 Algebra to give away ? I do not ask it for myself ; 
 I have too much reverence for the Black Arts ever 
 to approach thy circle, illustrious Trismegist ! But 
 that worthy man, and excellent Poet, George Dyer, 
 ra?.de me a visit yesternight, on purpose to borrow
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 165 
 
 one ; supposing, rationally enough, I must say, that 
 you had made me a present of one before this ; the 
 omission of which I take to have proceeded only from 
 negligence ; but it is a fault. I could lend him no assist- 
 ance. You must know he is just now diverted from 
 the pursuit of the Bell Letters by a paradox, which 
 he has heard his friend Frend,^ (that learned mathema- 
 tician) maintain, that the negative quantities of mathe- 
 maticians were mercz nugcB, things scarcely in rerum 
 natures, and smacking too much of mystery for gentle- 
 men of Mr. Frend's clear Unitarian capacity. How- 
 ever, the dispute once set a-going, has seized violently 
 on George's pericranick ; and it is necessary for his 
 health that he should speedily come to a resolution 
 of his doubts. He goes about teasing his friends 
 with his new mathematics ; he even frantically talks 
 of purchasing Manning's Algebra, which shows him 
 far gone ; for, to my knowledge, he has not been 
 master of seven shillings a good time. George's 
 
 pockets and 's brains are two things in nature 
 
 which do not abhor a vacuum .... Now, if 
 you could step in, in this trembling suspense of his 
 reason, and he should find on Saturday morning, 
 lying for him at the Porter's Lodge, Clifford's Inn, 
 (his safest address,) Manning's Algebra, with a neat 
 manuscription in the blank leaf, running thus " From 
 THE Author," it might save his wits, and restore the 
 unhappy author to those studies of poetry and 
 criticism which are at present suspended, to the 
 infinite regret of the whole literary world. N.B. — 
 
 1 Mr. Frend, many years the Actuary of the Rock Insurance Office, 
 in early life the champion of Unitarianism at Cambridge : the object 
 of a great University's displeasure ; in short, the " village Hampden " 
 of the day T.
 
 l66 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 
 
 Dirty backs, smeared leaves, and dogs' ears, will be 
 rather a recommendation than otherwise. N.B. — He 
 must have the book as soon as possible, or nothing 
 can withhold him from madly purchasing the book on 
 tick. . . . Then shall we see him sweetly restored 
 to the chair of Longinus — to dictate in smooth and 
 modest phrase the laws of verse ; to prove that Theo- 
 critus first introduced the Pastoral, and Virgil and 
 Pope brought it to its perfection ; that Gray and 
 Mason (who always hunt in couples in George's 
 brain) have shown a great deal of poetical fire in their 
 lyric poetry ; that Aristotle's rules are not to be ser- 
 vilely followed, which George has shown to have 
 imposed great shackles upon modern genius. His 
 poems, I find, are to consist of two vols. — reasonable 
 octavo ; and a third book will exclusively contain 
 criticisms, in which he asserts he has gone pretty 
 deeply into the laws of blank verse and rhyme — epic 
 poetry, dramatic and pastoral ditto — all which is to 
 come out before Christmas. But above all, he has 
 touched most deeply upon the Drama, comparing the 
 English with the modern German stage, their merits 
 and defects. Apprehending that his studies (not to 
 mention his turn, which I take to be chiefly towards 
 the lyrical poetry) hardly qualified him for these dis- 
 quisitions, I modestly inquired what plays he had 
 read ? I found by George's reply that he had read 
 Shakspeare, but that was a good while since: he calls 
 him a great but irregular genius, which I think to 
 be an original and just remark. Beaumont and 
 Fletcher, Massinger, Ben Jonson, Shirley, Marlowe, 
 Ford, and the worthies of Dodsley's Collection — he 
 confessed he had read none of them, but professed 
 his intention of looking through them all, so as to be
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 167 
 
 able to toiich upon them in his book. So Shakspeare, 
 Otway, and I beHeve Rowe, to whom he was naturally 
 directed by Johnson's Lives, and these not read lately, 
 are to stand him in stead of a general knowledge of 
 the subject. God bless his dear absurd head ! 
 
 By the by, did I not write you a letter with some- 
 thing about an invitation in it ? But let that pass ; I 
 suppose it is not agreeable. 
 
 N.B. — It would not be amiss if you were to accom- 
 pany your present with a dissertation on negative 
 quantities. C. L. 
 
 Letter CXXIL] 1800. 
 
 Dear Manning, — Olivia is a good girl, and if you 
 turn to my letter you will find that this very plea you 
 set up to vindicate Lloyd, I had made use of as a 
 reason why he should never have employed Olivia to 
 make a copy of such a letter ! — a letter I could not 
 
 have sent to my Enemy's B , if she had thought 
 
 proper to seek me in the way of marriage. But you 
 see it in one view, I in another. Rest you merry in 
 your opinion! Opinion is a species of property ^j 
 and though I am always desirous to share with my ■ 
 friend to a certain extent, I shall ever like to keep [ 
 some tenets, and some property, properly my own.J 
 Some day. Manning, when we meet, substituting 
 Corydon and fair Amaryllis, for Charles Lloyd and 
 Mary Hayes, we will discuss together this question 
 of moral feeling, " In what cases, and how far, sin- 
 cerity is a virtue?" I do not mean Truth, a good 
 Olivia-like creature, God bless her, who, meaning no 
 offence, is always ready to give an answer when she
 
 l68 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 
 
 is asked why she did so and so ; but a certain forward- 
 talking half-brother of hers, Sincerity, that amphibious 
 gentleman, who is so ready to perk up his obnoxious 
 sentiments unasked into your notice, as Midas would 
 his ears into your face, uncalled for. But I despair of 
 doing any thing by a letter in the way of explaining 
 or coming to explanations. A good wish, or a pun, 
 or a piece of secret history, may be well enough 
 that way conveyed ; nay, it has been known, that 
 intelligence of a turkey hath been conveyed by that 
 medium, without much ambiguity. Godwin I am a 
 good deal pleased with. He is a very well-behaved, 
 decent man ; nothing very brilliant about him or im- 
 posing, as you may suppose ; quite another guess 
 sort of gentleman from what your Anti-jacobin Chris- 
 tians imagine him. I was well pleased to find he has 
 neither horns nor claws ; quite a tame creature, I 
 assure you : a middle-sized man, both in stature 
 and in understanding ; whereas, from his noisy fame, 
 you would expect to find a Briareus Centimanus, or 
 a Tityus tall enough to pull Jupiter from his heavens. 
 I begin to think you atheists not quite so tall a spe- 
 cies ! Coleridge inquires after you pretty often. I 
 wish to be the Pandar to bring you together again 
 once before I die. When we die, you and I must 
 part ; the sheep, you know, take the right-hand sign- 
 post, and the goats the left. Stript of its allegory, 
 you must know the sheep are — I, the Apostles, and 
 the martyrs, and the Popes, and Bishop Taylor, and 
 Bishop Horsley, and Coleridge, &c. &c. The goats 
 are the atheists, and adulterers, and fornicators, and 
 
 dumb dogs, and Godwin, and M g, and that 
 
 Thyestaean crew ! Egad, how my saintship sickens 
 at the idea ! You shall have my play and the Fal-
 
 COREESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 169 
 
 staft's Letters in a day or two. I will write to 
 Ll[oyd] by this day's Post. 
 
 Pray, is it a part of your sincerity to show my 
 letters to Lloyd ? for, really, gentlemen ought to 
 explain their virtues upon a first acquaintance, to 
 prevent mistakes. 
 
 God bless you, Manning. Take my trifling as 
 trijling ; and believe me, seriously and deeply, 
 
 Your well-wisher and friend, 
 
 C. L. 
 
 Letter CXXIIL] 1800. 
 
 Dear Manning, — I feel myself unable to thank you 
 sufficiently for your kind letter. It was doubly accept- 
 able to me, both for the choice poetry and the kind 
 honest prose which it contained. It was just such a 
 letter as I should have expected from Manning. 
 
 I am in much better spirits than when I wrote last. 
 I have had a very eligible offer to lodge with a friend 
 in town. He will have rooms to let at Midsummer; 
 by which time I hope my sister will be well enough 
 to join me. It is a great object to me to live in town, 
 where we shall be much more private, and to quit a 
 house and a neighbourhood where poor Mary's dis- 
 order, so frequently recurring, has made us a sort of 
 marked people. We can be nowhere private except 
 in the midst of London. We shall be in a family 
 where we visit very frequently ; only my landlord and 
 I have not yet come to a conclusion. He has a 
 partner to consult. I am still on the tremble, for I 
 do not know where we could go into lodgings that 
 would not be, in many respects, highly exceptionable.
 
 170 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 
 
 Only God send Mary well again, and I hope all will 
 be well ! The prospect, such as it is, has made me 
 quite happy. I have just time to tell you of it, as I 
 know it will give you pleasure. — Farewell. 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 
 Letter CXXIV.] [1800.] 
 
 You masters of logic ought to know (logic is 
 nothing more than a knowledge of words, as the 
 Greek etymon implies,) that all words are no more 
 to be taken in a literal sense at all times than a 
 promise given to a tailor. When I exprest an appre- 
 hension that you were mortally offended, I meant no 
 more than by the application of a certain formula of 
 efficacious sounds, which had done in similar cases 
 before, to rouse a sense of decency in you, and a 
 remembrance of what was due to me 1 You masters 
 of logic should advert to this phenomenon in human 
 speech, before you arraign the usage of us dramatic 
 geniuses. Imagination is a good blood mare, and 
 goes well : but the misfortune is, she has too many 
 paths before her. 'Tis true I might have imagined 
 to myself, that you had trundled your frail carcass 
 to Norfolk. I might also, and did imagine, that you 
 had not, but that you were lazy, or inventing new 
 properties in a triangle, and for that purpose moulding 
 and squeezing Landlord Crisp's three-cornered beaver 
 into fantastic experimental forms ; or, that Archimedes 
 was meditating to repulse the French, in case of a 
 Cambridge invasion, by a geometric hurling of folios 
 on their red caps ; or, peradventure, that you were in 
 extremities, in great wants, and just set out for
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. I7I 
 
 Trinity Bogs when my letters came. In short, my 
 genius (which is a short word, now-a-days, for what- 
 a-great-man-am-I !) was absolutely stifled and over- 
 laid with its own riches. Truth is one and poor, like 
 the cruse of Elijah's widow. Imagination is the bold 
 face that multiplies its oil ; and thou, the old cracked 
 pipkin, that could not believe it could be put to such 
 purposes. Dull pipkin, to have Elijah for thy cook ! 
 Imbecile recipient of so fat a miracle ! I send you 
 George Dyer's Poems, the richest production of the 
 lyrical muse this century can justly boast : for Words- 
 worth's L. B. were published, or at least written, 
 before Christmas. 
 
 Please to advert to pages 2gi to 296 for the most 
 astonishing account of where Shakspeare's muse has 
 been all this while. I thought she had been dead, 
 and buried in Stratford Church, with the young man 
 that kept her company, — 
 
 " But it seems, like the Devil, 
 Buried in Cole Harbour, 
 Some say she's risen again, 
 'Gone prentice to a barber." 
 
 N.B. — I don't charge any thing for the additional 
 manuscript notes, which are the joint productions of 
 myself and a learned translator of Schiller, [John] 
 Stoddart, Esq.^ 
 
 ' Mr., afterwards Dr., and eventually Sir John Stoddart was at first 
 a Radical ; afterwards, like Coleridge and Southey, went over to the 
 Tories, became editor of the Times, and subsequently started the AV-zy 
 Times in opposition, — H.
 
 172 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING 
 
 N.B. the 2nd. — I should not have blotted your 
 book, but I had sent my own out to be bound, as I 
 was in duty bound. A liberal criticism upon the 
 several pieces, lyrical, heroical, amatory, and satirical, 
 would be acceptable. So, you don't think there's a 
 Word's — worth of good poetry in the great L. B. ! I 
 daren't put the dreaded syllables at their just length, 
 for my back tingles from the northern castigation. I 
 send you the three letters, which I beg you to return 
 along with those former letters (which I hope you are 
 not going to print, by your detention). But don't be 
 in a hurry to send them. When you come to town 
 will do. Apropos of coming to town : Last Sunday 
 was a fortnight, as I was coming to town from the 
 Professor's, inspired with new rum, I tumbled down 
 and broke my nose. I drink nothing stronger than 
 malt liquors. 
 
 I am going to change my lodgings, having received 
 a hint that it would be agreeable, at our Lady's next 
 feast. I have partly fixed upon most delectable 
 rooms, which look out (when you stand a. tip-toe) over 
 the Thames and Surrey Hills ; at the upper end of 
 King's Bench Walks, in the Temple. There I shall 
 have all the privacy of a house without the en- 
 cumbrance, and shall be able to lock my friends out 
 as often as I desire to hold free converse with my 
 immortal mind ; for my present lodgings resemble a 
 minister's levee, I have so increased my acquaintance 
 (as they call 'em) since I have resided in town. Like 
 the country mouse, that had tasted a little of urbane 
 manners, I long to be nibbling my own cheese by my 
 dear self, without mouse-traps and time-traps. By 
 my new plan, I shall be as airy, up four pair of stairs, 
 as in the country ; and in a garden, in the midst of
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 
 
 173 
 
 enchanting (more than Mahometan paradise) London, 
 whose dirtiest drab-frequented alley, and her lowest 
 bowing tradesman, I would not exchange for Skid- 
 daw, Helvellyn, James, Walter, and the parson into 
 the bargain. O her lamps of a night ! her rich gold- 
 smiths, print-shops, toy-shops, mercers, hardware- 
 men, pastry-cooks, St. Paul's Churchyard, the Strand, 
 Exeter Change, Charing Cross, with the man upon 
 a black horse! These are thy gods, O London! A'nt 
 you mightily moped on the banks of the Cam ? Had 
 you not better come and set up here ? You can't 
 think what a difference. All the streets and pavements 
 are pure gold, I warrant you. At least, I know an 
 alchemy that turns her mud into that metal, — a mind 
 that loves to be at home in crowds. 
 
 'Tis half-past twelve o'clock, and all sober people 
 ought to be a-bed. Between you and me the L.| 
 Ballads are but drowsy performances. <^ 
 
 C. Lamb (as you may guess). 
 
 Letter CXXV.] [March i, 1800.] 
 
 I hope by this time you are prepared to say, the 
 " Falstaff's letters" are a bundle of the sharpest, 
 queerest, profoundest humours, of any these juice- 
 drained latter times have spawned. I should have 
 advertised you, that the meaning is frequently hard 
 to be got at ; and so are the future guineas, that now 
 lie ripening and aurifying in the womb of some un- 
 discovered Potosi ; but dig, dig, dig, dig. Manning ! 
 I set to, with an unconquerable propulsion to write, 
 with a lamentable want of what to write. My private 
 goings on are orderly as the movements of the
 
 174 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING 
 
 spheres, and stale as their music to angels' ears. 
 \ Public affairs — except as they touch upon me, and so 
 turn into private, — I cannot whip up my mind to feel 
 [any interest in. I grieve, indeed, that War, and 
 Nature, and Mr. Pitt, that hangs up in Lloyd's best 
 parlour, should have conspired to call up three neces- 
 saries, simple commoners as our fathers knew them, 
 into the upper house of luxuries ; bread, and beer, 
 and coals, Manning. But as to France and French- 
 men, and the Abbe Sieyes and his constitutions, I 
 cannot make these present times present to me. I 
 read histories of the past, and I live in them ; 
 although, to abstract senses, they are far less 
 momentous than the noises which keep Europe 
 awake. I am reading BurneVs History of his own 
 Times. Did you ever read that garrulous, pleasant 
 history ? He tells his story like an old man past 
 political service, bragging to his sons on winter 
 evenings of the part he took in public transactions, 
 when his " old cap was new." Full of scandal, which 
 all true history is. No palliatives ; but all the stark 
 wickedness, that actually gives the momentum to 
 national actors. Quite the prattle of age, and out- 
 lived importance. Truth and sincerity staring out 
 upon you perpetually in alto relievo. Himself a party 
 man — he makes you a party man. None of the 
 cursed philosophical Humeian indifference, so cold, 
 and unnatural, and inhuman ! None of the cursed 
 Gibbonian fine writing, so fine and composite ! None 
 of Dr. Robertson's periods with three members. 
 None of Mr. Roscoe's sage remarks, all so apposite, 
 and coming in so clever, lest the reader should have 
 had the trouble of drawing an inference. Burnet's 
 good old prattle I can bring present to my mind ; I
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 175 
 
 can make the revolution present to me : the French 
 revolution, by a converse perversity in my nature, 
 I fling as fsLvfrom me. To quit this tiresome subject, 
 and to relieve you from two or three dismal yawns, 
 which I hear in spirit, I here conclude my more than 
 commonly obtuse letter ; dull, up to the dulness of a 
 Dutch commentator on Shakspeare. 
 My love to Lloyd and to Sophia.^ 
 
 C. L. 
 
 Letter CXXVL] March 17th, 180©. 
 
 Dear Manning, — I am living in a continuous feast, C 
 Coleridge has been with me now for nigh three / 
 weeks, and the more I see of him in the quotidian > 
 undress and relaxation of his mind, the more cause > 
 I see to love him, and believe him a very good man, \ 
 and all those foolish impressions to the contrary fly / 
 off like morning slumbers. He is engaged in trans- 
 lations, which I hope will keep him this month to 
 come. He is uncommonly kind and friendly to me. 
 He ferrets me day and night to do something. He 
 tends me, amidst all his own worrying and heart- 
 oppressing occupations, as a gardener tends his 
 young tulip. Marry come up ; what a pretty simili- 
 tude, and how like your humble servant ! He has 
 lugged me to the brink of engaging to a newspaper, 
 and has suggested to me, for a first plan, the forgery 
 of a supposed manuscript of Burton, the anatomist of 
 melancholy. I have even written the introductory 
 letter; and, if I can pick up a few guineas this way, 
 I feel they will be most refreshing, bread being so 
 
 1 Mrs. Lloyd H.
 
 176 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 
 
 dear. If I go on with it, I will apprise you of it, as 
 you may like to see my things ! and the tulip, of all 
 flowers, loves to be admired most. 
 
 Pray pardon me, if my letters do not come very 
 thick. I am so taken up with one thing or other, 
 that I cannot pick out (I will not say time, but) 
 fitting times to write to you. My dear love to Lloyd 
 and Sophia, and pray split this thin letter into three 
 parts, and present them with the two biggest in my 
 name. 
 
 They are my oldest friends ; but, ever the new 
 friend driveth out the old, as the ballad sings ! God 
 bless you all three ! I would hear from Ll[oyd] if I 
 could. C. L. 
 
 Flour has just fallen nine shillings a sack : we shall 
 be all too rich. 
 
 Tell Charles^ I have seen his mamma, and have 
 almost fallen in love with her, since I mayn't with 
 Olivia. She is so fine and graceful, a complete 
 matron-lady-quaker. She has given me two little 
 books. Olivia grows a charming girl — full of feeling, 
 and thinner than she was ; but I have not time to fall 
 in love. 
 
 Mary presents her general compliments. She keeps 
 in fine health. 
 
 Huzza, boys ! and down with the Atheists ! 
 
 Letter CXX VI I.] [August 9, 1800.] 
 
 Dear Manning, — I suppose you have heard of 
 Sophia Lloyd's good fortune, and paid the customary 
 compliments to the parents. Heaven keep the new- 
 
 1 Charles Lloyd H.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 177 
 
 born infant from star blasting and moon blasting, 
 from epilepsy, marasmus, and the devil! May he 
 live to see many days, and they good ones ; some 
 friends, and they pretty regular correspondents ! with 
 as much wit and wisdom as will eat their bread and 
 cheese together under a poor roof without quarrel- 
 ling ! as much goodness as will earn heaven. Here I 
 must leave off, my benedictory powers failing me. 
 
 And now, when shall I catch a glimpse of your 
 honest face-to-face countenance again ? — your fine 
 dogmatical sceptical face by punch-light ? Oh ! one 
 glimpse of the human face, and shake of the human 
 hand, is better than whole reams of this cold, thin 
 correspondence ; yea, of more worth than all the 
 letters that have sweated the fingers of sensibility, 
 from Madame Sevigne and Balzac to Sterne and 
 Shenstone. 
 
 Coleridge is settled with his wife and the young 
 philosopher at Keswick, with the Wordsworths. 
 They have contrived to spawn a new volume of 
 lyrical ballads, which is to see the light in about a 
 month, and causes no little excitement in the literary 
 world. George Dyer too, that good-natured heathen, 
 is more than nine months gone with his twin 
 volumes of ode, pastoral, sonnet, elegy, Spenserian, 
 Horatian, Akensidish, and Masonic verse. Clio 
 prosper the birth ! it will be twelve shillings out of 
 somebody's pocket. I find he means to exclude 
 " personal satire," so it appears by his truly original 
 advertisement. Well, God put it into the hearts of 
 the English gentry to come in shoals and subscribe 
 to his poems, for He never put a kinder heart into 
 flesh of man than George Dyer's ! 
 
 Now farewell, for dinner is at hand. C. L. 
 
 VOL. II. N
 
 lyS CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 
 
 Letter CXXVIII.] August nth, 1800. 
 
 My dear fellow, (N.B. mighty familiar of late !) for 
 me to come to Cambridge now is one of heaven's 
 impossibilities. Metaphysicians tell us, even it can 
 work nothing which implies a contradiction. I can 
 explain this by telling you that I am engaged to do 
 double duty (this hot weather !) for a man who has 
 taken advantage of this very weather to go and 
 cool himself in " green retreats" all the month of 
 August. 
 
 But for you to come to London instead ! — muse 
 upon it, revolve it, cast it about in your mind. I 
 have a bed at your command. You shall drink rum, 
 brandy, gin, aqua-vitae, usquebaugh, or whiskey 
 a' nights ; and for the after-dinner trick, I have eight 
 bottles of genuine port, which, mathematically 
 divided, gives i| for every day you stay, provided 
 you stay a week. Hear John Milton sing, 
 
 " Let Euclid rest and Archimedes pause." 
 
 T'lventy-Jirst Sonnet. 
 
 And elsewhere, — 
 
 " What neat repast shall feast us, light' and choice. 
 Of Attic taste, with wine,^ whence we may rise 
 To hear the lute well touch'd, or artful voice 
 Warble immortal notes and Tuscan air?" 
 
 Indeed the poets are full of this pleasing morality, — 
 
 " Veni cito, Domine Manning !" 
 
 Think upon it. Excuse the paper; it is all I have. 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 
 ' " We poets ! generally give light dinners." 
 
 2 " No doubt the poet here alludes to Port wine at thirty-eight 
 shillings the dozen."
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. lyg 
 
 Letter CXXIX.] August 22nd, 1800. 
 
 Dear Manning, — You needed not imagine any 
 apology necessary. Your fine hare and fine birds 
 (which are just now dangling by our kitchen blaze) 
 discourse most eloquent music in your justification. 
 You just nicked my palate. For with all due 
 decorum and leave may it be spoken, my worship 
 hath taken physic to-day, and being low and puling, 
 requireth to be pampered. Foh ! how beautiful and 
 strong those buttered onions come to my nose ! For 
 you know we extract a divine spirit of gravy from 
 those materials, which, duly compounded with a con- 
 sistence of bread and cream (y'clept bread-sauce), 
 each to each giving double grace, do mutually 
 illustrate and set off (as skilful gold foils to rare 
 jewels) your partridge, pheasant, woodcock, snipe, 
 teal, widgeon, and the other lesser daughters of the 
 ark. My friendship, struggling with my carnal and 
 fleshly prudence, (which suggests that a bird a man 
 is the proper allotment in such cases,) yearneth 
 sometimes to have thee here to pick a wing or so. 
 I question if your Norfolk sauces match our London 
 culinaric. 
 
 George Dyer has introduced me to the table of an 
 agreeable old gentleman. Dr. Anderson, who gives 
 hot legs of mutton and grape pies at his sylvan lodge 
 at Isleworth ; where, in the middle of a street, he 
 has shot up a wall most preposterously before his 
 small dwelling, which, with the circumstance of his 
 taking several panes of glass out of bed-room win- 
 dows (for air), causeth his neighbours to speculate 
 strangely on the state of the good man's pericranicks. 
 Plainly, he lives under the reputation of being de- 
 ranged. George does not mind this circumstance ; 
 
 N 2
 
 l8o CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 
 
 he rather likes him the better for it. The Doctor, in 
 his pursuits, joins agricultural to poetical science, and 
 has set George's brains mad about the old Scotch 
 writers, Barbour, Douglas's ^neid, Blind Harry, &c. 
 We returned home in a return postchaise, (having 
 dined with the Doctor,) and George kept wondering 
 and wondering, for eight or nine turnpike miles, what 
 was the name, and striving to recollect the name, of 
 a poet anterior to Barbour. I begged to know what 
 was remaining of his works. " There is nothing 
 extant of his works. Sir ; but by all accounts he seems 
 to have been a fine genius !" This fine genius, with- 
 out any thing to show for it, or any title beyond 
 George's courtesy, without even a name ; and Bar- 
 bour, and Douglas, and Blind Harry, now are the 
 predominant sounds in George's pia mater, and their 
 buzzings exclude politics, criticism, and algebra — 
 the late lords of that illustrious lumber-room. Mark, 
 he has never read any of these books, but is impatient 
 till he reads them all at the Doctor's suggestion. 
 Poor Dyer ! his friends should be careful what 
 sparks they let fall into such inflammable matter. 
 
 Could I have my will of the heathen, I would 
 lock him up from all access of new ideas; I would 
 exclude all critics that would not swear me first (upon 
 their Virgil) that they would feed him with nothing 
 but the old, safe, familiar notions and sounds, (the 
 rightful aborigines of his brain) — Gray, Akenside, and 
 Mason. In these sounds, reiterated as often as 
 possible, there could be nothing painful, nothing 
 distracting. 
 
 God bless me, here are the birds, smoking hot ! 
 All that is gross and unspiritual in me rises at the 
 sight !
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. l8l 
 
 Avaunt friendship, and all memory of absent 
 friends ! C. Lamb. 
 
 Letter CXXX.] Oct. 5, 1800. 
 
 C. L.'s moral sense presents her compliments to 
 Doctor Manning, is very thankful for his medical 
 advice, but is happy to add that her disorder has died 
 of itself. 
 
 Dr. Manning, Coleridge has left us, to go into the 
 North, on a visit to Wordsworth. With him have 
 flown all my splendid prospects of engagement with 
 the Morning Post, all my visionary guineas, the 
 deceitful wages of unborn scandal. In truth, I 
 wonder you took it up so seriously. All my inten- 
 tion was but to make a little sport with such public 
 and fair game as Mr. Pitt, Mr. Wilberforte, Mrs. 
 Fitzherbert, the Devil, &c. — gentry dipped in Styx all 
 over, whom no paper javelin-lings can touch. To 
 have made free with these cattle, where was the 
 harm ? 'twould have been but giving a polish to 
 lamp-black, not nigrifying a negro primarily. After 
 all, I cannot but regret my involuntary virtue. Damn 
 virtue that's thrust upon us ; it behaves itself with 
 such constraint, till conscience opens the window and 
 lets out the goose. I had struck off two imitations 
 of Burton, quite abstracted from any modern allusions, 
 which it was my intent only to lug in from time to 
 time to make 'em popular. 
 
 Stuart has got these, with an introductory letter; 
 but, not hearing from him, I have ceased from my 
 labours, but I write to him to-day to get a final 
 answer. I am afraid they won't do for a paper.
 
 l82 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 
 
 Burton is a scarce gentleman, not much known, else 
 I had done 'em pretty well. 
 
 I have also hit off a few lines in the name of 
 Burton, being a "Conceit of Diabolic Possession."^ 
 Burton was a man often assailed by deepest melan- 
 choly, and at other times much given to laughing 
 and jesting, as is the way with melancholy men. I 
 will send them to you : they were almost extempore, 
 and no great things ; but you will indulge them. 
 Robert Lloyd is come to town. Priscilla meditates 
 going to see Pizarro at Drury Lane to-night,^ (from 
 her uncle's,) under cover of coming to dine with me 
 ...heu temporal heu mores! — I have barely time to 
 finish, as I expect her and Robin every minute. — 
 Yours as usual 
 
 C. L. 
 
 Letter CXXXL] Oct. i6th, 1800. 
 
 Dear Manning, — Had you written one week before 
 you did, I certainly should have obeyed your injunc- 
 tion ; 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 
 necessary. I have already asked and obtained two 
 young hands to supply the lossof the/i?v^W^^5. And, 
 with the other prospect before me, you may believe 
 
 ' Referring to the verses -entitled " Hypochondriacus," beginning — 
 " By myself walking." — F.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 183 
 
 1 cannot decently ask leave of absence for myself. 
 All I can promise (and I do promise, with the s- 
 cerity 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 Cambridge very pleasantly 
 in the mornings. Are there not libraries, halls, col- 
 leges, books, pictures, statues ? I wish you had 
 made London in your way. There is an exhibition 
 quite uncommon in Europe, which could not have 
 escaped yoicr genius, — a live rattlesnake, ten feet in 
 length, and the thickness of a big leg. I went to see 
 it last night by candlelight. 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 mansions of snakes — 
 whip-snakes, thunder-snakes, pig-nose-snakes, Ameri- 
 can 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
 
 184 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 
 
 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 con- 
 fined 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 with- 
 out infringing on another box ; and just behind, a 
 little devil not an inch from my back had got his 
 nose out, with some difficulty and pain, quite through 
 the bars ! He v/as soon taught better manners. 
 All the snakes were curious, and objects of terror : 
 but this monster, 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 generally getting hold of some 
 bad models, in a scarcity of books, and forming 
 their taste on them,) but no selection. All is de- 
 scribed. 
 
 Mind, I have only heard read one book. 
 Yours sincerely, 
 
 Philo-Snake, 
 
 C. L. 
 
 Letter CXXXH.] 1800. 
 
 I was not aware that you owed me any thing beside 
 that guinea ; but I dare say you are right. I live
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 185 
 
 at No. 16, Mitre Court Buildings, a pistol-shot off 
 Baron Maseres'. You must introduce me to the 
 Baron. I think we should suit one another mainly. 
 He lives on the ground floor, for convenience of the 
 gout ; I prefer the attic story, for the air. He keeps 
 three footmen and two maids ; I have neither maid 
 nor laundress, not caring to be troubled with them. 
 His forte, I understand, is the higher mathematics ; 
 my turn, I confess, is more to poetry and the belles 
 lettres. The very antithesis of our characters would 
 make up a harmony. You must bring the Baron 
 and me together. — N.B. when you come to see me, 
 mount up to the top of the stairs— I hope you are not 
 asthmatical — and come in flannel, for 'tis pure airy 
 up there. And bring your glass, and I will show you 
 the Surrey Hills. My bed faces the river, so as by 
 perking up upon my haunches, and supporting my 
 carcass with my elbows, without much wrying my 
 neck, I can see the white sails glide by the bottom of 
 the King's Bench Walks as I lie in my bed. An 
 excellent tiptoe prospect in the best room : — case- 
 ment windows, with small panes, to look more like a 
 cottage. Mind, I have got no bed for you, that's flat ; 
 sold it to pay expenses of moving, — the very bed on 
 which Manning lay ; the friendly, the mathematical 
 Manning 1 How forcibly does it remind me of the 
 interesting Otway 1 " The very bed which on thy 
 marriage night gave thee into the arms of Belvidera, 
 by the coarse hands of ruffians — " (upholsterers' 
 men,) &c. My tears will not give me leave to go on. 
 But a bed I will get you. Manning, on condition you 
 will be my day-guest. 
 
 I have been ill more than month, with a bad cold, 
 which comes upon me (like a murderer's conscience)
 
 l86 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 
 
 about midnight, and vexes me for many hours. I 
 have successively been drugged with Spanish licorice, 
 opium, ipecacuanha, paregoric, and tincture of fox- 
 glove (tinctura purpurae digitalis of the ancients). I 
 ami afraid I must leave off drinking. 
 
 Letter CXXXIII.] November 3rd, 1800. 
 
 Ecquid meditatur Archimedes ? What is Euclid 
 doing ? What hath happened to learned Trisme- 
 gist ? Doth he take it in ill part, that his humble 
 friend did not comply with his courteous invitation ? 
 Let it suffice, I could not come. Are impossibilities 
 nothing? — be they abstractions of the intellect? — or 
 not (rather) most sharp and mortifying realities ? 
 nuts in the Will's mouth too hard for her to crack ? 
 brick and stone walls in her way, which she can by 
 no means eat through ? sore lets, impedimenta viarum 
 no thoroughfares ? racemi nimium alte pendentes ? 
 Is the phrase classic ? I allude to the grapes in 
 ^sop, which cost the fox a strain, and gained the 
 world an aphorism. Observe the superscription of 
 this letter. In adapting the size of the letters, which 
 constitute your name and Mr. Crisp's name respec- 
 tively, I had an eye to your different stations in life. 
 'Tis truly curious, and must be soothing to an aristo- 
 crat. I wonder it has never been hit on before my time. 
 I have made an acquisition latterly of a pleasant hand, 
 one Rickman, to whom I was introduced by George 
 Dyer, not the most flattering auspices under which 
 one man can be introduced to another. George brings 
 all sorts of people together, setting up a sort of 
 agrarian law, or common property, in matter of
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 187 
 
 society ; but for once he has done me a great plea- 
 sure, while he was only pursuing a principle, as ignes 
 fatiii may light you home. This Rickman lives in 
 our Buildings, immediately opposite our house ; 
 the finest fellow to drop in a' nights, about nine or 
 ten o'clock — cold bread-and-cheese time — just in the 
 wishing time of the night, when you wish for some 
 body to come in, without a distinct idea of a probable 
 any body. Just in the nick, neither too early to be 
 tedious, nor too late to sit a reasonable time. He is a 
 most pleasant hand ; a fine rattling fellow, has gone 
 through life laughing at solemn apes ; — himself 
 hugely literate, oppressively full of information in all 
 stuff of conversation, from matter of fact to Xenophon 
 and Plato — can talk Greek with Porson, politics with | 
 Thelwall,^ conjecture with George Dyer, nonsense 
 with me, and any thing with any body ; a great farmer, 
 somewhat concerned in an agricultural magazine ; 
 reads no poetry but Shakspeare ; very intimate with 
 Southey, but never reads his poetry ; relishes George 
 Dyer ; thoroughly penetrates into the ridiculous wher- 
 ever found ; understands the first time, (a great desi- 
 deratum in common minds) — you need never twice 
 speak to him ; does not want explanations, transla- 
 tions, limitations, as Professor Godwin does when 
 you make an assertion ; up to any thing ; down to / 
 every thing ; whatever sapit hominem. A perfect man. ^ 
 All this farrago, which must perplex you to read, and 
 has put me to a little trouble to select, only proves 
 how impossible it is to describe a pleasant hand. You 
 
 ' John Thelwall " Citizen Thelwall," the early friend of Coleridge 
 and Soutliey. — H.
 
 l88 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 
 
 must see Rickman to know him, for he is a species 
 in one ; a new class ; an exotic ; any slip of which I 
 am proud to put in my garden-pot ; the clearest 
 headed fellow ; fullest of matter, with least ver- 
 bosity. If there be any alloy in my fortune to have 
 met with such a man, it is that he commonly divides 
 his time between town and country, having some 
 foolish family ties at Christchurch, by which means 
 he can only gladden our London hemisphere with 
 returns of light. He is now going for six weeks. 
 
 At last I have written to Kemble, to know the 
 event of my play,'' which was presented last Christ- 
 mas. As I suspected, came an answer back that the 
 copy was lost, and could not be found — no hint that 
 any body had to this day ever looked into it — with a 
 courteous (reasonable !) request of another copy (if I 
 had one by me), and a promise of a definitive answer 
 in a week. I could not resist so facile and moderate 
 a demand ; so scribbled out another, omitting sundry 
 things, such as the witch story, about half of the 
 forest scene, (which is too leisurely for story,) and 
 transposing that soliloquy about England getting 
 drunk, which, like its reciter, stupidly stood alone, 
 nothing prevenient or antevenient ; and cleared away 
 a good deal besides ; and sent this copy, written all 
 out (with alterations, &c. requiring judgment) in one 
 day and a half I I sent it last night, and am in weekly 
 expectation of the tolling bell and death-warrant. 
 
 This is all my London news. Send me some from 
 the banks of Cam, as the poets delight to speak, 
 especially George Dyer, who has no other name nor 
 
 ' Relening to the " Intruding Widow.'' — F.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. i8g 
 
 idea nor definition of Cambridge. Its being a market 
 town, sending members to Parliament, never entered 
 into his definition. It was and is simply the banks 
 of the Cam, or the fair Cam, as Oxford is the banks 
 of the Isis, or the fair Isis. Yours in all humility, 
 most illustrious Trismegist, C. Lamb, 
 
 (Read on ; there's more at the bottom.) 
 
 You ask me about the Farmer's Boy. Don't you 
 think the fellow who wrote it (who is a shoemaker) 
 has a poor mind ? Don't you find he is always silly 
 about poor Giles, and those abject kind of phrases, 
 which mark a man that looks up to wealth ? None 
 of Burns's poet dignity. What do you think ? I 
 have just opened him ; but he makes me sick. 
 
 Dyer knows the shoemaker, a damn'd stupid hound 
 in company ; but George promises to introduce him 
 indiscriminately to all friends. 
 
 Letter CXXXIV.] [Nov. 28th, 1800.] 
 
 Dear Manning, — I have received a very kind invi- 
 tation from Lloyd and Sophia, to go and spend a 
 month with them at the Lakes. Now it fortunately 
 happens (which is so seldom the case) that I have 
 spare cash by me, enough to answer the expenses of 
 so long a journey; and I am determined to get away 
 from the office by some means. The purpose of this 
 letter is to request of you (my dear friend), that you 
 will not take it unkind if I decline my proposed visit 
 to Cambridge for the present. Perhaps I shall be 
 able to take Cambridge in my way, going or coming. 
 I need not describe to you the expectations which 
 such an one as myself, pent up all my life in a dirty
 
 igO CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 
 
 city, have formed of a tour to the Lakes. Consider 
 Grasmere ! Ambleside ! Wordsworth ! Coleridge 1 
 I hope you will. Hills, woods, lakes, and mountains, 
 to the devil. I will eat snipes with thee, Thomas 
 Manning. Only confess, confess, a bite. 
 
 P.S. I think you named the i6th ; but was it not 
 modest of Lloyd to send such an invitation ! It 
 shows his knowledge of money and time. I should be 
 loth to think he meant 
 
 " Ironic satire sidelong sklented 
 
 On my poor pursie." — Burns, 
 
 For my part, with reference to my friends northward, 
 I must confess that I am not romance-bit about 
 Nature. The earth, and sea, and sky, (when all is 
 said,) is but as a house to dwell in. If the inmates 
 be courteous, and good liquors flow like the conduits 
 at an old coronation, if they can talk sensibly, and 
 feel properly, I have no need to stand staring upon 
 the gilded looking-glass (that strained my friend's 
 purse-strings in the purchase) nor his five-shilling 
 print, over the mantel-piece, of old Nabbs the carrier, 
 (which only betrays his false taste). Just as im- 
 portant to me (in a sense) is all the furniture of my 
 world ; eye-pampering, but satisfies no heart. Streets, 
 streets, streets, markets, theatres, churches, Covent 
 Gardens, shops sparkling with pretty faces of in- 
 dustrious milliners, neat sempstresses, ladies cheap- 
 ening, gentlemen behind counters lying, authors in 
 the street with spectacles, George Dyers, (you may 
 know them by their gait,) lamps lit at night, pastry- 
 cooks' and silversmiths' shops, beautiful Quakers 
 of Pentonville, noise of coaches, drowsy cry of 
 mechanic watchmen at night, with bucks reeling
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. igi 
 
 home drunk; if you happen to wake at midnight, 
 cries of " Fire !" and " Stop thief !" inns of court, with 
 their learned air, and halls, and butteries, just like 
 Cambridge colleges; old book-stalls, "Jeremy Tay- 
 lors," " Burtons on Melancholy," and " Religio 
 Medicis," on every stall. These are thy pleasures, 
 O London ! with thy many sins. O City, abounding 
 
 in w , for these may Keswick and her giant 
 
 brood go hang ! C. L. 
 
 Letter CXXXV.] Dec. 13th. 1800. 
 
 I have received your letter this moment, not having 
 been at the office. I have just time to scribble down 
 the epilogue. To your epistle I will just reply, that 
 I will certainly come to Cambridge before January 
 is out ; I'll come when I can. You shall have an 
 amended copy of my play early next week. Mary 
 thanks you ; but her handwriting is too feminine to 
 be exposed to a Cambridge gentleman, though I 
 endeavour to persuade her that you understand 
 algebra, and must understand her hand. The play 
 IS the man's you wot of; but for Heaven's sake do 
 not mention it : it is to come out in a feigned name, 
 as one Tobin's. I will omit the introductory lines 
 which connect it with the play, and give you the con- 
 cluding tale, which is the mass and bulk of the 
 epilogue. The name is Jack Incident. It is all 
 about promise-breaking : you will see it all, if you 
 read the papers. 
 
 Jack, of dramatic genius justly vain. 
 Purchased a renter's share at Drurj' Lane. 
 
 (Here follows the Epilogue to Godwin's "Antonio.")
 
 192 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 
 
 About a harmless play why all this fright ? 
 
 I'll go and see it, if 'tis but for spite — 
 
 Zounds, woman ! Nelson's to be there to-night."' 
 
 N.B. — This was intended for Jack Bannister to 
 speak ; but the sage managers have chosen Miss 
 Heard, except Miss Tidswell, the worst actress ever 
 seen or heard. Now I remember I have promised 
 the loan of my play. I will lend it instantly, and 
 you shall get it ('pon honour !) by this day week. 
 
 I must go and dress for the boxes ! First night ! 
 Finding I have time, I transcribe the rest. Observe, 
 you must read the last first ; it begins thus : — (The 
 names I took from a little outline G. gave me. I 
 have not read the p'aj^) 
 
 " Ladies, ye've hearo now Guzman's consort died. 
 Poor victim of a Spaniard brother's pride. 
 When Spanish honour through the world was blown. 
 And Spanish beauty for the best w^as known.^ 
 In that romantic, unenlighten'd time, 
 A breach of promise^ was a sort of crime : 
 A whimsical old Saragossa* fashion, 
 That a dead father's dying inclination 
 Should live to thwart a living daughter's passion.^ 
 Unjustly on the sex ive^ men exclaim, 
 Rail d.tyourl* * vices, — and commit the same. 
 What need we instance here the lover's vow. 
 The sick man's purpose, or the great man's bow .'" 
 
 ' "A good clap-trap. Nelson has exhibited two or three times at 
 both theatres — and advertised himself." 
 
 2 " Four easy lines." 3 " For which the heroine died." 
 
 * •' In Spain ! I " ^ " Two ?2eat lines." ^ «< Or you." 
 
 ' " Or our, as they have altered it." 8 Antithesis! !
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 193 
 
 Now you have it all — how do you like it ? I am 
 going to hear it recited ! 1 1 
 
 C. L. 
 
 Letter CXXXVI.] Dec. i6th, 1800. 
 
 We are damn'd ! — Not the facetious epilogue 
 itself could save us ; for, as the editor of the 
 Morning Post (quick-sighted gentleman !) hath this 
 morning truly observed, (I beg pardon if I falsify his 
 words ; their profound sense I am sure I retain ;) both 
 prologue and epilogue were worthy of accompanying 
 such a piece ; and indeed (mark the profundity, Mr. 
 Manning 1) were received with proper indignation by 
 such of the audience only as thought either worth 
 attending to. Professor, thy glories wax diml' 
 Again, the incomparable author of the True Briton 
 declareth in his paper (bearing same date) that the 
 epilogue was an indifferent attempt at humour and 
 character, and failed in both. I forbear to mention 
 the other papers, because I have not read them. 
 Professor, how different thy feelings now {quantum 
 mutatus ab illo professore, qui in agris philosophies 
 tantas victorias acquisivisti), — how different thy 
 proud feelings but one little week ago — thy anticipa- 
 tions of thy nine nights — those visionary claps, 
 which have soothed thy soul by day and thy dreams 
 by night ! Calling in accidentally on the Professor 
 
 ^ Alluding to the failure of Godwin's Play " Antonio." — F. 
 VOL. II. O
 
 194 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 
 
 while he was out, I was ushered into the study ; and 
 -my nose quickly (most sagacious always) pointed 
 me to four tokens lying loose upon thy table, Pro- 
 fessor, which indicated thy violent and satanical 
 pride of heart. Imprimis, there caught mine eye a 
 list of six persons, thy friends, whom thou didst 
 meditate inviting to a sumptuous dinner on the 
 Thursday, anticipating the profits of thy Saturday's 
 play to answer charges : I was in the honoured file ! 
 Next (a stronger evidence of thy violent and almost 
 satanical pride) lay a list of all the morning papers, 
 (from the Morning Chronicle downwards io the. Porcu- 
 pine,) with the places of their respective offices, where 
 thou wast meditating to insert, and didst insert, an 
 elaborate sketch of the story of thy play ; stones in thy 
 enemy's hand to bruise thee with, and severely wast 
 thou bruised, O Professor 1 nor do I know what oil 
 to pour into thy wounds. Next (which convinced me 
 to a dead conviction of thy pride, violent and almost 
 satanical pride !) lay a list of books which thy un- 
 tragedy-favoured pocket could never answer : Dods- 
 ley's Old Plays, IMalone's Shakspeare, (still harping 
 upon thy play, thy philosophy abandoned meanwhile 
 to Christians and superstitious minds) ; nay, I be- 
 lieve (if I can believe my memory) that the 
 ambitious Encyclopedia itself was part of thy medi- 
 tated acquisitions ; but many a playbook was there. 
 All these visions are damned; and thou, Professor, 
 must read Shakspeare in future out of a common 
 edition ; and, hark ye 1 pray read him to a little better 
 purpose. Last and strongest against thee (in 
 colours manifest as the hand upon Belshazzar's 
 wall) lay a volume of poems by C. Lloyd and 
 C. Lamb. Thy heart misgave thee, that thy
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. I95 
 
 assistant might possibly not have talent enough to 
 furnish thee an epilogue ! Manning, all these things 
 came over my mind ; all the gratulations that w^ould 
 have thickened upon him, and even some have glanced 
 aside upon his humble friend ; the vanity, and the fame, 
 and the profits, (the Professor is ;;^500 ideal money 
 out of pocket by this failure, besides ;^200 he would 
 have got for the copyright, and the Professor is never 
 much beforehand with the world ; what he gets is all 
 by the sweat of his brow and dint of brain, for the 
 Professor, though a sure man, is also a slow); and 
 now to muse upon thy altered physiognomy, thy pale 
 and squalid appearance, (a kind oi bhie sickness about 
 the eyelids,) and thy crest fallen, and thy proud 
 demand of ;^200 from thy bookseller changed to an 
 uncertainty of his taking it at all, or giving thee full 
 ;^50. The Professor has won my heart by this his 
 mournful catastrophe. You remember Marshall, who 
 dined with him at my house ; I met him in the 
 lobby immediately after the damnation of the Pro- 
 fessor's play, and he looked to me like an angel ; 
 his face was lengthened, and all over perspiration. 
 I never saw such a care-fraught visage ; I could have 
 hugged him, I loved him so intensely. " From 
 every pore of him a perfume fell." I have seen 
 that man in many situations, and, from my soul, 
 I think that a more god-like honest soul exists not 
 in this world. The Professor's poor nerves trem- 
 bling with the recent shock, he hurried him away to 
 my house to supper, and there we comforted him 
 as well as we could. He came to consult me about 
 a change of catastrophe ; but alas ! the piece was 
 condemned long before that crisis. I at first 
 humoured him with a specious proposition, but have 
 
 o 2
 
 igS CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 
 
 since joined his true friends in advising him to give 
 it up. He did it with a pang, and is to print it as 
 his. L. 
 
 Letter CXXXVII.] December 27th, 1800. 
 
 At length George Dyer's phrenitis has come to a 
 crisis ; he is raging and furiously mad. I waited 
 upon the Heathen, Thursday was a se'nnight. The 
 first symptom which struck my eye, and gave me in- 
 controvertible proof of the fatal truth, was a pair of 
 nankeen pantaloons four times too big for him, 
 which the said Heathen did pertinaciously affirm to 
 be new. 
 
 They were absolutely ingrained with the accumu- 
 lated dirt of ages ; but he affirmed them to be clean. 
 He was going to visit a lady that was nice about 
 those things, and that's the reason he wore nankeen 
 that day. And then he danced, and capered, and 
 fidgeted, and pulled up his pantaloons, and hugged 
 his intolerable flannel vestment closer about his 
 poetic loins. Anon he gave it loose to the zephyrs 
 which plentifully insinuate their tiny bodies through 
 every crevice, door, window, or wainscot, expressly 
 formed for the exclusion of such impertinents. Then 
 he caught at a proof sheet, and catched up a 
 laundress's bill instead — made a dart at Bloomfield's 
 Poems, and threw them in agony aside. I could not 
 bring him to one direct reply ; he could not maintain 
 his jumping mind in a right line for the tithe of a 
 moment by Clifford's Inn clock. He must go to the 
 printer's immediately : (the most unlucky accident !) 
 he had struck off five hundred impressions of his
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. ig7 
 
 Poems, which were ready for delivery to subscribers, 
 and the Preface must all be expunged. There were 
 eighty pages of Preface, and not till that morning 
 had he discovered that in the very first page of said 
 Preface he had set out with a principle of Criticism 
 fundamentally wrong, which vitiated all his following 
 reasoning. The Preface must be expunged, although 
 it cost him £lo, the lowest calculation, taking in 
 paper and printing ! In vain have his real friends 
 remonstrated against this Midsummer madness. 
 George is as obstinate as a Primitive Christian, 
 and wards and parries off all our thrusts with one un- 
 answerable fence : — " Sir, 'tis of great consequence 
 that the world is not misled I'' 
 
 As for the other Professor, he has actually begun 
 to dive into Tavernier and Chardin's Persian Travels 
 for a story, to form a new drama for the sweet tooth 
 of this fastidious age. Hath not Bethlehem College 
 a fair action for non-residence against such pro- 
 fessors ? Are poets so few in this age, that He must 
 write poetry ? Is morals a. subject so exhausted, that 
 he must quit that line ? Is the metaphysic well 
 (without a bottom) drained dry? 
 
 If I can guess at the wicked pride of the Professor's 
 heart, I would take a shrewd wager that he disdains 
 ever again to dip his pen in Prose. Adieu, ye 
 splendid theories ! Farewell, dreams of political 
 justice ! Lawsuits, where I was council for Arch- 
 bishop Fenelon versus my own mother, in the famous 
 fire cause ! 
 
 Vanish from my mind, professors, one and all ! I 
 have metal more attractive on foot. 
 
 Man of many snipes, — I will sup with thee (Deo 
 volente, et diabolo nolente,) on Monday night, the
 
 ig8 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 
 
 5th of January, in the new year, and crush a cup to 
 the infant century. 
 
 A word or two of my progress : Embark at six 
 o'clock in the morning, with a fresh gale, on a 
 Cambridge one-decker; very cold till eight at night ; 
 land at St. Mary's light-house, muffins and coffee 
 upon table, (or any other curious production of 
 Turkey, or both Indies,) snipes exactly at nine, punch 
 to commence at ten, with argument ; difference of 
 opinion is expected to take place about eleven ; per- 
 fect unanimity, with some haziness and dimness, 
 before twelve. — N.B. My single affection is not so 
 singly wedded to snipes ; but the curious and epi- 
 curean eye would also take a pleasure in beholding a 
 delicate and well-chosen assortment of teals, ortolans, 
 the unctuous and palate-soothing flesh of geese, wild 
 and tame, nightingales' brains, the sensorium of a 
 young sucking pig, or any other Christmas dish, 
 which I leave to the judgment of you and the cook of 
 Gonville.^ 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 
 Letter CXXXVIIL] No date. [About 1800.] 
 
 Dear Manning, — I sent to Brown's immediately. 
 Mr. Brown (or Pijou, as he is called by the moderns) 
 denied having received a letter from you. The one 
 for you he remembered receiving, and remitting to 
 Leadenhall Street; whither I immediately posted (it 
 being the middle of dinner), my teeth unpicked. 
 There I learned that if you want a letter set right, 
 you must apply at the first door on the left hand
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 199 
 
 before one o'clock. I returned and picked my teeth. 
 And this morning I made my appHcation in form, and 
 have seen the vagabond letter, which most likely 
 accompanies this. If it does not, I will get Rickman 
 to name it to the Speaker,^ who will not fail to lay the 
 matter before Parliament the next sessions, when you 
 may be sure to have all abuses in the Post Depart- 
 ment rectified. 
 
 N.B. — There seems to be some informality epi- 
 demical. You direct your letters to me in Mitre Court : 
 my true address is Mitre Court Buildings. By the 
 pleasantries of Fortune, who likes a joke or a double 
 entendre as well as the best of us her children, there 
 happens to be another Mr. Lamb (that there should 
 be two II) in Mitre Court. His duns and girls 
 frequently stumble up to me, and I am obliged to 
 satisfy both in the best way I am able. 
 
 Farewell, and think upon it. C. L. 
 
 Letter CXXXIX.] i8oi. 
 
 Dear Manning, — I have forborne writing so long, 
 (and so have you for the matter of that,) until I am 
 almost ashamed either to write or to forbear any 
 longer. But as your silence may proceed from some 
 worse cause than neglect — from illness, or some 
 mishap which may have befallen you, I begin to be 
 anxious. You may have been burnt out, or you may 
 
 1 Rickman was clerk of the House of Commons. Lamb had lately 
 made his acquaintance. He at one time endeavoured, but without 
 success, to procure through Rickman a situation in the House for 
 Martin Burney. — H.
 
 200 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 
 
 have married, or you may have broken a limb, or 
 turned country parson : any of these would be excuse 
 sufficient for not coming to my supper. I am not so 
 unforgiving as the nobleman in Saint Mark. Forme, 
 nothing new has happened to me, unless that the 
 poor Albion died last Saturday of the world's neglect, 
 and with it the fountain of my puns is choked up for 
 "^ver. 
 
 All the Lloyds wonder that you do not write to 
 them. They apply to me for the cause. Relieve me 
 from this weight of ignorance, and enable me to give 
 a truly oracular response. 
 
 I have been confined some days with swelled cheek 
 and rheumatism : they divide and govern me with a 
 viceroy-headache in the middle. I can neither write 
 nor read without great pain. It must be something 
 like obstinacy that I choose this time to write to you 
 in after many months' interruption. 
 
 I will close my letter of simple inquiry with an 
 epigram on Mackintosh, the Vindicice Galliccs-ina.n — 
 who has got a place at last — one of the last I did for 
 the Albion : — 
 
 "Though thou'rt like Judas, an apostate black. 
 In the resemblance one thing thou dost lack: 
 When he had gotten his ill-purchased pelf. 
 He went away, and wisely hang'd himself: 
 This thou mayst do at last ; yet much I doubt. 
 If thou hast any bo^iveh to gush out !" 
 
 Yours, as ever, C. Lamb. 
 
 Letter CXL.] [i8oi.] 
 
 My dear Manning, — I must positively write, or I 
 shall miss you at Toulouse. I sit here like a decayed
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 20I 
 
 minute-hand; (I lie: that does nets?;!;) and being 
 myself the exponent of no time, take no heed how 
 the clocks about me are going. You possibly by this 
 time may have explored all Italy, and toppled, 
 unawares, into Etna, while you went too near those 
 rotten-jawed, gap-toothed, old worn-out chaps of hell, 
 — while I am meditating a quiescent letter to the 
 honest post-master of Toulouse. But in case you 
 should not have been felo de se, this is to tell you, 
 that your letter was quite to my palate : in particular 
 your just remarks upon Industry, cursed Industry, 
 (though indeed you left me to explore the reason,) 
 were highly relishing. I have often wished I had lived 
 in the golden age, when shepherds lay stretched upon 
 flowers, and roused themselves at their leisure, — 
 the genius there is in a man's natural idle face, that 
 has not learned his multiplication table ! before 
 doubt, and propositions, and corollaries, got into the 
 world ! -^ 
 
 Now, as Joseph Cottle, a Bard of Nature, sings, 
 going up Malvern Hills, 
 
 " How steep ! how painful the ascent ! 
 It needs the evidence of close deduction 
 To know that ever I shall gain the top." 
 
 You must know that Joe is lame, so that he had some 
 reason for so singing. These two lines, I assure 
 you, are taken totidem Uteris from a very popular 
 poem. Joe is also an Epic Poet as well as a Descrip- 
 tive, and has written a tragedy, though both his 
 drama and epopoiea are strictly descriptive, and 
 chiefly of the Beauties of Nature, for Joe thinks man 
 with all his passions and frailties not a proper subject 
 of the Drama. Joe's tragedy hath the following 
 surpassing speech in it. Some king is told that his
 
 202 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 
 
 enemy has engaged twelve archers to come over in a 
 boat from an enemy's country and way-lay him ; ha 
 thereupon pathetically exclaims — 
 
 " T^ivel've, dost thou say ? Curse on those dozen villains !" 
 
 Cottle read two or three acts out to us, very gravely 
 on both sides till he came to this heroic touch, — and 
 then he asked what we laughed at ? I had no more 
 muscles that day. A poet that chooses to read out 
 his own verses has but a limited power over you. 
 JThere is a bound where his authority ceases. 
 
 Letter CXLL] Aug. 31, 1801. 
 
 I heard that you were going to China,^ with a com- 
 mission from the Wedgwoods to collect hints for 
 their pottery, and to teach the Chinese perspective ; 
 but I did not know that London lay in your way to 
 Pekin. I am seriously glad of it, for I shall trouble 
 you with a small present for the Emperor of Usbeck 
 Tartary, as you go by his territories : it is a fragment 
 of a " Dissertation on the state of political parties in 
 England at the end of the eighteenth century," which 
 will no doubt be very interesting to his Imperial 
 Majesty. It was written originally in English for the 
 use of the two and twenty readers of the Albion; (this 
 calculation includes a printer, four pressmen, and a 
 devil;) but becoming of no use, when the Albion 
 stopped, I got it translated into Usbeck Tartar by 
 my good friend Tibet Kulm, who is to come to 
 
 ' Mr. Manning had begun to be haunted with the idea of China» 
 and to talk of goint,' thither, which he accomplished some years after- 
 wards, without any motive but a desire to see that great nation.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH iMANNING. 2O3 
 
 London with a civil invitation from the Cham to the 
 English nation to go over to the worship of the 
 Lama. 
 
 The Albion is dead — dead as nail in door — and my 
 revenues have died with it ; but I am not as a man 
 without hope. I have got a sort of opening to the 
 Morning Chronicle, by means of that common dis- 
 penser of benevolence, Mister Dyer. I have not 
 seen Perry, the editor, yet : but I am preparing a 
 specimen. I shall have a difficult job to manage, for 
 you must know that Mr. Perry, in common with the 
 great body of the Whigs, thinks the Albion very low. 
 I find I must rise a peg or so, be a little more decent, 
 and less abusive ; for, to confess the truth, I had 
 arrived to an abominable pitch ; I spared neither age 
 nor sex when my cue was given me. N'iniporte, (as 
 they say in French,) any climate will suit me. So 
 you are about to bring your old face-making face to 
 London. You could not come in a better time for 
 my purposes ; for I have just lost Rickman, a faint 
 idea of whose character I sent you. He is gone to f 
 Ireland for a year or two, to make his fortune ; and ) 
 I have lost by his going what seems to me I can \ 
 never recover — a finished maiu His memory will be ^ 
 to me as the brazen serpent to the Israelites, — I shall 
 look up to it, to keep me upright and honest. But 
 he may yet bring back his honest face to England 
 one day. I wish your affairs with the Emperor of 
 China had not been so urgent, that you might have 
 stayed in Great Britain a year or two longer, to have 
 seen him ; for, judging from my own experience, I 
 almost dare pronounce you never saw his equal. I 
 never saw a man that could be at all a second or 
 substitute for him in any sort.
 
 204 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 
 
 Imagine that what is here erased was an apology 
 and explanation, perfectly satisfactory you may be 
 sure for rating this man so highly at the expense of 
 
 , and , and , and M , and , 
 
 and , and . But Mr. Burke has explained 
 
 this phenomenon of our nature very prettily in his 
 letter to a Member of the National Assembly, or else 
 in Appeal to the old Whigs, I forget which. Do you 
 remember an instance from Homer, (who understood 
 these matters tolerably well,) of Priam driving away 
 his other sons with expressions of wrath and bitter 
 reproach, when Hector was just dead ? 
 
 I live where I did, in a private manner, because I 
 don't like state. Nothing is so disagreeable to me as 
 the clamours and applauses of the mob. For this 
 reason I live in an obscure situation in one of the 
 courts of the Temple. 
 
 C. L. 
 
 I send you all of Coleridge's letters^ to me, which 
 I have preserved : some of them are upon the subject 
 of my play. I also send you Kemble's two letters, 
 and the prompter's courteous epistle, with a curious 
 critique on " Pride's Cure," by a young physician from 
 Edinbro', who modestly suggests quite another kind 
 of a plot. These are monuments of my disappoint- 
 ment which I like to preserve. 
 
 In Coleridge's letters you will find a good deal of 
 amusement, to see genuine talent struggling against 
 a pompous display of it. I also send you the Pro- 
 fessor's letter to me (careful Professor 1 to conceal his 
 
 ' Lamb afterwards, in some melancholy mood, destroyed all Cole- 
 ridge's Letters, and was so vexed with what he had done, that he never 
 preserved any letters which he received afterwards. — ^T.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 205 
 
 name even from his correspondent), ere yet the Pro- 
 fessor's pride was cured. Oh monstrous and almost 
 satanical pride ! 
 
 You will carefully keep all (except the Scotch 
 Doctor's, which burn) in statu quo, till I come to 
 claim mine own. 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 
 Letter CXLIL] Feb. 15th, 1802. 
 
 Apropos, I think you wrong about my play. All 
 the omissions are right. And the supplementary 
 scene, in which Sandford narrates the manner in 
 which his master is affected, is the best in the book. 
 It stands where a hodge-podge of German puerilities 
 used to stand. I insist upon it that you like that 
 scene. Love me, love that scene. I will now tran- 
 scribe the "Londoner" (No. i), and wind up all 
 with affection and humble servant at the end. 
 
 [Here was transcribed the essay called "The 
 Londoner," which was published some years after- 
 wards in the Reflector, and which forms part of 
 Lamb's collected works. He then proceeds] : — 
 
 " What is all this about ? " said Mrs. Shandy. 
 " A story of a cock and a bull," said Yorick : and so 
 it is ; but Manning will take good-naturedly what 
 God will send him across the water : only I hope he 
 won't shut his eyes, and open his mouth, as the 
 children say, for that is the way to gape, and not to 
 read. Manning, continue your laudible purpose of 
 making me your register. I will render you back all 
 your remarks ; and /, 7iot you, shall have received 
 usury by having read them. In the mean time, may
 
 20b CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 
 
 the great Spirit have you in his keeping, and pre- 
 serve our Englishmen from the inoculation of frivolity 
 and sin upon French earth. 
 
 Allans — or what is it you say, instead of good- 
 bye ? 
 
 Mary sends her kind remembrance, and covets the 
 remarks equally with me. 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 
 Letter CXLIIL] 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 im- 
 pulse was to go and see Paris. It was a trivial 
 objection to my aspiring mind, that I did not under- 
 stand a word of the language, since I certainly intend 
 some time in my life to see Paris, and equally cer- 
 tainly, 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 with Mary to Keswick, 
 without giving Coleridge any notice, for my time, 
 being precious, did not admit of it. Pie received us 
 with all the hospitality in the world, and gave up his 
 time to show us all the wonders of the country. He
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 207 
 
 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 mon- 
 sters 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 off, (as it never came again ; while we 
 stayed we had no more fine sunsets ;) 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 M , . J^^ 
 fire in his study ; which is a large antique, ill-shaped ^ ^ ^ 
 room, with an old-fashioned organ, never played -w^ ' 
 upon, big enough for a church, shelves of scattered 
 folios, an_^Eolian_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 I 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, Ambleside, Ulswater, (where the
 
 2o8 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 
 
 ir> ' 
 
 « \ Clarksons live,) and a place at the other end of Uls- 
 
 "^^ ' water; I forget the name :^ to which we travelled on a 
 
 very sultry day, over the middle of Helvellyn. We 
 y have clambered up to the top of Skiddaw, and I have 
 
 / waded up the bed of Lodore. In fine, I have satis- 
 
 fied myself that there is such a thing as that which 
 tourists call romanjic, which I very much suspected 
 before : 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 exces- 
 sively 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 manfully. Oh, its fine 
 black head, and the bleak air atop of it, with a pros- 
 pect of mountains all about and about, making you 
 giddy ; and then Scotland afar off, 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 being accustomed to wander free as air 
 among mountains, and bathe in rivers without being 
 controlled by any one, to come home and work. I 
 felt very little. I had been dreaming I was a very 
 great man. But that is going off, 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 
 
 
 
 1 Patterdale H.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 209 
 
 good and all than amidst SkiddawJ Still, I turn 
 back to those great places where I wandered about, 
 participating 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 happier 
 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 kidneys, 
 i. e. the night, glorious care-drowning night, that 
 heals all our wrongs, pours wine into our morti- 
 fications, changes the scene from indifferent and flat 
 to bright and brilliant ! O Manning, if I should 
 have formed a diabolical resolution, by the time you 
 come to England, of not admitting any spirituous 
 liquors into my house, will you be my guest on such 
 shameworthy terms ? Is life, with such limitations, 
 worth trying ? The truth is, that my liquors bring 
 a nest of friendly harpies about my house, who con- 
 sume 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 ccestus artemque repono,) is 
 turned editor of a Naval Chronicle. Godwin con- 
 tinues 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, unalterable friend of the 
 
 VOL. II. p
 
 210 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 
 
 Professor. Holcroft is not yet come to town. I 
 expect to see him, and will deliver your message. 
 Things ccme 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 circumstan- 
 tial. 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. Fare- 
 well, my dear fellow. 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 
 Letter CXLIV.] Feb. 19th, 1803. 
 
 My dear Manning, — The general scope of your 
 letter afforded no indications of insanity, but some 
 )articular points raised a scruple. For God's sake 
 don't think any more of " Independent Tartary." 
 What are you to do among such Ethiopians ? Is 
 there no lineal descendant of Prester John ? Is the 
 chair empty ? Is the sword unswayed ? Depend 
 upon it they'll never make you their king, as long as 
 any branch of that great stock is remaining. I 
 tremble for your Christianity. They will certainly 
 circumcise you. Read Sir John Mandeville's travels 
 to cure you, or come over to England. There is a 
 Tartar-man now exhibiting at Exeter Change. Come 
 and talk with him, and hear what he says first. 
 Indeed he is no very favourable specimen of his 
 countrymen ! But perhaps the best thing you can 
 do is to try to get the idea out of your head. For
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 211 
 
 this purpose repeat to yourself every night, after you 
 have said your prayers, the words Independent Tar- 
 tary, Independent Tartary, two or three times, and 
 associate with them the idea oi oblivion, ('tis Hartley's 
 method with obstinate memories,) or say, Inde- 
 pendent, Independent, have I not already got an 
 independence ? That was a clever way of the old 
 puritans, pun-divinity. My dear friend, think what a 
 sad pity it would be to bury such parts in heathen 
 countries, among nasty, unconversable, horse-belch- 
 ing, Tartar-people 1 Some say, they are Cannibals ; 
 and then, conceive a Tartar-fellow eating my friend, 
 and adding the cool malignity of mustard and vinegar! 
 I am afraid 'tis the reading of Chaucer has misled 
 you ; his foolish stories about Cambuscan, and the 
 ring, and the horse of brass. Believe me, there are 
 no such things, 'tis all the poet's invention ; but if 
 there were such darling things as old Chaucer sings, 
 I would up behind you on the horse of brass, and 
 frisk off for Prester John's country. But these are 
 all tales ; a horse of brass never flew, and a king's 
 daughter never talked with birds ! The Tartars, 
 really, are a cold, insipid, smouchy set. You'll be 
 sadly moped (if you are not eaten) among them. 
 Pray try and cure yourself. Take hellebore (the 
 counsel is Horace's, 'twas none of my thought origin- 
 ally.) Shave yourself oftener. Eat no saffron, for 
 saffron-eaters contract a terrible Tartar-like yellow. 
 Pray, to avoid the fiend. Eat nothing that gives the 
 heart-burn. Shave the upper lip. Go about like an 
 European. Read no books of voyages (they are 
 nothing but lies), only now and then a romance, to 
 keep the fancy under. Above all, don't go to any 
 sights of wild beasts. That has been your ruin. 
 
 p 2
 
 212 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 
 
 Accustom yourself to write familiar letters, on com- 
 mon subjects, to your friends in England, such as are 
 of a moderate understanding. And think about 
 common things more. There's your friend Holcroft, 
 now, has written a Play.^ You used to be fond of 
 the drama. Nobody went to see it. Notwithstanding 
 this, with an audacity perfectly original, he faces the 
 town down in a preface that they did like it very 
 much. I have heard a waspish punster say, " Sir, 
 why did you not laugh at my jest ?" But for a man 
 boldly to face one out with " Sir, I maintain it, you 
 did laugh at my jest," is a little too much. I have 
 seen H. but once. He spoke of you to me in honour- 
 able terms. H. seems to me to be drearily dull. 
 
 G is dull, then he has a dash of affectation, 
 
 which smacks of the coxcomb, and your coxcombs 
 are always agreeable. I supped last night with 
 Rickman, and met a merry natural captain,^ who 
 pleases himself vastly with once having made a pun 
 at Otaheite in the O. language. 'Tis the same man 
 who said Shakspeare he liked, because he was so 
 much of the gentle7nan. Rickman is a man "absolute 
 in all numbers." I think I may one day bring you 
 acquainted, if you do not go to Tartary first ; for 
 you'll never come back. Have a care, my dear 
 friend, of Anthropophagi ! their stomachs are always 
 craving- 'Tis terrible to be weighed out at fivepence 
 a-pound ; to sit at table (the reverse of fishes in 
 Holland) not as a guest, but as a meat. 
 
 God bless you : do come to England. Air and 
 
 • Mr. Manning had beg^n to be haunted with the idea of China, 
 and to talk of going thither, which he accompHshed some years after- 
 wards, without any motive but a desire to see that great nation. — T.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 213 
 
 exercise may do great things. Talk with some 
 minister. Why not your father ? 
 
 God dispose all for the best. I have discharged 
 my duty. 
 
 Your sincere friend, 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 
 Letter CXLV.] [1803.] 
 
 Not a sentence, not a syllable of Trismegistus 
 shall be lost through my neglect. I am his word- 
 banker, his storekeeper of puns and syllogisms. 
 You cannot conceive (and if Trismegistus cannot, no 
 man can) the strange joy which I felt at the receipt 
 of a letter from Paris. It seemed to give me a 
 learned importance, which placed me above all who 
 had not Parisian correspondents. Believe that I 
 shall carefully husband every scrap, which will save 
 you the trouble of memory, when you come back. 
 You cannot write things so triiling, let them only be 
 about Paris, which I shall not treasure. In parti- 
 cular, I must have parallels of actors and actresses. 
 I must be told if any building in Paris is at all com- 
 parable to St. Paul's, which, contrary to the usual 
 mode of that part of our nature called admiration, I 
 have looked up to with unfading wonder, every 
 morning at ten o'clock, ever since it has lain in my 
 way to business. At noon I casually glance upon it, 
 being hungry; and hunger has not much taste for 
 the fine arts. Is any night-walk comparable to a 
 walk from St. Paul's to Charing Cross, for lighting 
 and paving, crowds going and coming without 
 respite, the rattle of coaches, and the cheerfulness of
 
 214 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 
 
 shops ? Have you seen a man guillotined yet ? Is it 
 as good as hanging ? Are the women all painted, and 
 the men all monkeys ? or are there not a few that 
 look like rational of both sexes ? Are you and the 
 first consul thick ? All this expense of ink I may 
 fairly put you to, as your letters will not be solely for 
 my proper pleasure ; but are to serve as memoranda 
 and notices, helps for short memory, a kind of Rum- 
 fordising recollection, for yourself on your return. 
 Yourletter was just what a letter should be, crammed, 
 and very funny. Every part of it pleased me till 
 you came to Paris; then your philosophical indolence, 
 or indifference, stung me. You cannot stir from your 
 rooms till you know the language 1 What the devil 
 are men nothing but word-trumpets? Are men all 
 tongue and ear ? Have these creatures, that you and 
 I profess to know something about, no faces, gestures, 
 gabble, no folly, no absurdity, no induction of French 
 education upon the abstract idea of men and women, 
 no similitude nor dissimilitude to English 1 Why, 
 thou cursed Smellfungus ! your account of your 
 landing and reception, and BuUen, (I forget how you 
 spell it, it was spelt my way in Harry the Eighth's 
 time,) was exactly in that minute style which strong 
 impressions inspire, (writing to a Frenchman, I 
 write as a Frenchman would.) It appears to me as 
 if I should die with joy at the first landing in a 
 foreign country. It is the nearest pleasure which a 
 grown man can substitute for that unknown one, 
 which he can never know, the pleasure of the first 
 entrance into life from the womb. I dare say, in a 
 short time, my habits would come back like a 
 " stronger man" armed, and drive out that new 
 pleasure ; and I should soon sicken for known ob-
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 215 
 
 jects. Nothing has transpired here that seems to 
 me of sufficient importance to send dry-shod over 
 the water : but I suppose you will want to be told 
 some news. The best and the worst to me is, that I 
 have given up two guineas a-week at the Post, and 
 regained my health and spirits, which were upon the 
 wane. I grew sick, and Stuart unsatisfied. Ludisti 
 satis, tempiis ahire est ; I must cut closer, that's all. 
 Mister Fell, or as you, with your usual facetiousness 
 and drollery, call him, Mr. F + 11, has stopped short 
 in the middle of his play. Some friend has told him 
 that it has not the least merit in it. Oh that I had 
 the rectifying of the Litany ! I would put in a libera 
 nos {Scriptores videlicet) ah amicis ! That's all the 
 news. Apropos : is it pedantry, writing to a French- 
 man, to express myself sometimes by a French word, 
 when an English one would not do as well ? Me- 
 thinks my thoughts fall naturally into it. 
 
 In all this time I have done but one thing, which 
 I reckon tolerable, and that I will transcribe, because 
 it may give you pleasure, being a picture of my 
 humours. You will find it in my last page. It 
 absurdly is a first Number of a series, thus strangled 
 in embryo. 
 
 More news ! The Professor's Rib has come out to 
 be a disagreeable woman, so much so as to drive me 
 and some more old cronies from his house. He 
 must not wonder if people are shy of coming to see 
 him because of the " snakes." C. L. 
 
 Letter CXLVL] [March, 1803.] 
 
 Dear Manning, — I send you some verses I have 
 made on the death of a young Quaker you may have
 
 2l6 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 
 
 heard me speak of as being in love with for some 
 years while I lived at Pentonville, though I had 
 never spoken to her in my life. She died about a 
 month since. If you have interest with the Abbe de 
 Lisle, you may get 'em translated ; he has done as 
 much for the Georgics.^ 
 
 Letter CXLVIL] [1B03.] 
 
 My dear Manning, — Although something of the 
 latest, and after two months' waiting, your letter 
 was highly gratifying. Some parts want a little ex- 
 plication ; for example, ' the god-like face of the first 
 consul.' What god does he most resemble, Mars, 
 Bacchus, or Apollo ? or the god Serapis, who, flying 
 (as Egpytian chronicles deliver) from the fury of the 
 dog Anubis (the hieroglyph of an English mastiff), 
 lighted upon Monomotapa (or the land of apes), by 
 some thought to be Old France, and there set up a 
 tyranny, &c. Our London prints of him represent 
 him gloomy and sulky, like an angry Jupiter. I hear 
 that he is very small, even less than L I envy you 
 your access to this great man, much more than )'our 
 seances and conversaziones, which I have a shrewd 
 suspicion must be something dull. What you assert 
 concerning the actors of Paris, that they exceed our 
 comedians, bad as ours are, is impossible. In one 
 sense it may be true, that their fine gentlemen, in 
 what is called genteel comedy, may possibly be more 
 brisk and degage than Mr. Caulfield, or Mr. Whit- 
 
 1 Lamb refers to his pretty little poem called Hester, upon the death 
 of Hester Savory, the young Quaker lady. — See Poems.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 2I7 
 
 field ; but have any of them the power to move 
 laughter in excess ? or can a Frenchman laugh ? 
 Can they batter at your judicious ribs till they shake, 
 nothing loth to be so shaken ? This is John Bull's 
 criterion, and it shall be mine. You are Frenchified. 
 Both your taste and morals are corrupt and perverted. 
 By and by you will come to assert that Buonaparte 
 is as great a general as the old Duke of Cumber- 
 land, and deny that one Englishman can beat three 
 Frenchmen. Read Henry the Fifth to restore your 
 orthodoxy. 
 
 All things continue at a stay- still in London. 
 I cannot repay your new novelties with my stale 
 reminiscences. Like the prodigal, I have spent 
 my patrimony, and feed upon the superannuated 
 chaff and dry husks of repentance ; yet sometimes I 
 remember with pleasure the hounds and horses, 
 which I kept in the days of my prodigality. I find 
 nothing new, nor any thing that has so much of the 
 gloss and dazzle of novelty as may rebound in narra- 
 tive, and cast a reflective glimmer across the channel. 
 Something I will say about people that you and I 
 know. Fenwick is still in debt, and the Professor 
 has not done making love to his new spouse. I 
 think he never looks into an almanack, or he would 
 have found by the calendar that the honeymoon was 
 extinct a moon ago. Southey is Secretary to the 
 Chancellor of the Irish Exchequer ; £"400 a year. 
 Stoddart is turned Doctor of Civil Law, and dwells in 
 Doctors' Commons. I fear his commons are short, as 
 they say. Did I send you an epitaph I scribbled 
 upon a poor girl who died at nineteen ? — a good girl, 
 and a pretty girl, and a clever girl, but strangely neg- 
 lected by all her friends and kin.
 
 2l8 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 
 
 " Under this cold marble stone 
 Sleep the sad remains of one 
 Who, when alive, by few or none 
 Was loved, as loved she might have been. 
 If she prosperous days had seen. 
 Or had thriving been, I ween. 
 Only this cold funeral stone 
 Tells she was beloved by one. 
 Who on the marble graves his moan." 
 
 Brief, and pretty, and tender, is it not ? I send 
 you this, being the only piece of poetry I have done 
 since the Muses all went with T. M. to Paris. I 
 have neither stuff in my brain, nor paper in my 
 drawer, to write you a longer letter. Liquor and com- 
 pany and wicked tobacco, a'nights, have quite dis- 
 pericraniated me, as one may say ; but you, who 
 spiritualise upon Champagne, may continue to write 
 long letters, and stuff 'em with amusement to the 
 end. Too long they cannot be, any more than a 
 codicil to a will, which leaves me sundry parks and 
 manors not specified in the deed. But don't be two 
 moyiths before you write again. These from merry 
 old England, on the day of her valiant patron St. 
 George. 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 
 ^^^ ^-T^. T 16, Mitre Court Buildings, 
 
 Letter CXLVIIL] Saturday, 24111 Feb. 1805. 
 
 Dear Manning, — I have been very unwell since I 
 saw you : a sad depression of spirits, a most un- 
 accountable nervousness ; from which I have been 
 partially relieved by an odd accident. You knew 
 Dick Hopkins, the swearing scullion of Caius? This 
 fellow, by industry and agility, has thrust himself
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 2I9 
 
 into the important situations (no sinecures, believe 
 me) of cook to Trinity Hall and Caius College : and 
 the generous creature has contrived, with the greatest 
 delicacy imaginable, to send me a present of Cam- 
 bridge brawn. What makes it the more extraordinary 
 is, that the man never saw me in his life that I know 
 of. I suppose he has heard of me. I did not imme- 
 diately recognise the donor ; but one of Richard's 
 cards, which had accidentally fallen into the straw, 
 detected him in a moment. Dick, you know, was 
 always remarkable for flourishing. His card imports, 
 that " orders (to wit, for brawn) from any part of 
 England, Scotland, or Ireland, will be duly executed," 
 &c. At first, I thought of declining the present ; but 
 Richard knew my blind side when he pitched upon 
 brawn. 'Tis of all my hobbies the supreme in the 
 eating way. He might have sent sops from the pan, 
 skimmings, crumpets, chips, hog's lard, the tender 
 brown judiciously scalped from a fillet of veal (dexter- 
 ously replaced by a salamander), the tops of aspa- 
 ragus, fugitive livers, runaway gizzards of fowls, the 
 eyes of martyred pigs, tender effusions of laxative 
 woodcocks, the red spawn of lobsters, leverets' ears, 
 and such pretty filchings common to cooks ; but 
 these had been ordinary presents, the every-day 
 courtesies of dish-washers to their sweethearts. 
 Brawn was a noble thought. It is not every 
 common gullet -fancier that can properly esteem 
 it. It is like a picture of one of the choice old 
 Italian masters. Its gusto is of that hidden sort. 
 As Wordsworth sings of a modest poet, — " you must 
 love him, ere to you he will seem worthy of your 
 love ;" so brawn, you must taste it ere to you it will 
 seem to have any taste at all. But 'tis nuts to the
 
 220 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 
 
 adept : those that will send out their tongue and 
 feelers to find it out. It will be wooed, and not un- 
 sought be won. Now, ham-essence, lobsters, turtle, 
 such popular minions, absolutely court you, lay them- 
 selves out to strike you at first smack, like one of 
 David's pictures (they call him Darveed) compared 
 with the plain russet-coated wealth of a Titian 
 or a Correggio, as I illustrated above. Such are the 
 obvious glaring heathen virtues of a corporation 
 dinner, compared with the reserved collegiate worth 
 of brawn. Do me the favour to leave off the busi- 
 ness which you may be at present upon, and go 
 immediately to the kitchens of Trinity and Caius, 
 and make my most respectful compliments to Mr. 
 Richard Hopkins, and assure him that his brawn is 
 most excellent ; and that I am moreover obliged to 
 him for his innuendo about salt water and bran, 
 which I shall not fail to improve. I leave it to you 
 whether you shall choose to pay him the civility of 
 asking him to dinner while you stay in Cambridge, or 
 in whatever other way you may best like to show 
 your gratitude to iny friend. Richard Hopkins, con- 
 sidered in many points of view, is a very extraordinary 
 character. Adieu. I hope to see you to supper in 
 London soon, where we will taste Richard's brawn, 
 and drink his health in a cheerful but moderate cup. 
 We have not many such men in any rank of life as 
 Mr. R. Hopkins. Crisp, the barber, of St. Mary's, 
 was just such another. I wonder he never sent me 
 any little token, some chestnuts, or a puff, or two 
 pound of hair : just to remember him by. Gifts are 
 like nails. Prcssens ut absens ; that is, your^r£££n£ 
 / makes amends for your absence. 
 
 Yours, C. Lamd.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 221 
 
 Letter CXLIX.] [July 27th, 1805.] 
 
 Dear Archimedes, — Things have gone on badly 
 with thy ungeometrical friend ; but they are on the 
 turn. My old housekeeper has shown signs of con- 
 valescence, and will shortly resume the power of the 
 keys, so I sha'n't be cheated of my tea and liquors. 
 Wind in the West, which promotes tranquillity. Have 
 leisure now to anticipate seeing thee again. Have 
 been taking leave of tobacco in a rhyming address. 
 Had thought that vein had long since closed up. 
 Find I can rhyme and reason too. Think of study- 
 ing mathematics, to restrain the fire of my genius, 
 which G. D. recommends. Have frequent bleedings 
 at the nose, which shows plethoric. Maybe shall 
 try the sea myself, that great scene of wonders. Got 
 incredibly sober and regular ; shave oftener, and 
 hum a tune, to signify cheerfulness and gallantry. 
 
 Suddenly disposed to sleep, having taken a quart 
 of pease with bacon and stout. Will not refuse 
 Nature, who has done such things for me ! 
 
 Nurse ! don't call me unless Mr. Manning comes. 
 — What ! the gentleman in spectacles ? — Yes. 
 
 Dormit. C. L. 
 
 Saturday, 
 
 Hot Noon. 
 
 Letter CL.] [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 Monday 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 extra-
 
 222 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 
 
 ordinary 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 cer- 
 tainly, both, on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wed- 
 nesday. Take your choice, mind I don't say of one : 
 but choose which evening you will not come, and come 
 the other four. Doors open at five o'clock. Shells 
 forced about nine. Every gentleman smokes or not 
 as he pleases. 
 
 C. L. 
 
 Letter CLL] May loth, 1806. 
 
 My dear Manning, — I didn't know what your going 
 was till I shook a last fist with you, and then 'twas 
 just like having shaken hands with a wretch on the 
 fatal scaffold, for when you are down the ladder you 
 can never stretch out to him again. Mary says you 
 are dead, and there's nothing to do but to leave 
 it to time to do for us in the end what it always 
 does for those who mourn for people in such a case. 
 But she'll see by your letter you are not quite dead. 
 
 A little kicking and agony, and then . Martin 
 
 Burney took me out a walking that evening, and we 
 talked of Manning ; and then I came home and 
 smoked for you ; and at twelve o'clock came home 
 Mary and Monkey Louisa from the play, and there 
 was more talk and more smoking, and they all seemed 
 first-rate characters, because they knew a certain 
 person. But what's the use of talking about 'em ? 
 By the time you'll have made your escape from the 
 Kalmuks, you'll have stayed so long I shall never be
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 223 
 
 able to bring to your mind who Mary was, who will 
 have died about a year before, nor who the Holcrofts 
 were ! Me perhaps you will mistake for Phillips, or 
 confound me with Mr. Dawe, because you saw us 
 together. Mary (whom you seem to remember yet) 
 is not quite easy that she had not a formal parting 
 from you. I wish it had so happened. But you 
 must bring her a token, a shawl or something, and 
 remember a sprightly little mandarin for our mantel- 
 piece, as a companion to the child I am going to pur- 
 chase at the museum. She says you saw her writings 
 about the other day, and she wishes you should know 
 what they are. She is doing for Godwin's bookseller 
 twenty of Shakspeare's plays, to be made into chil- 
 dren's tales. Six are already done by her ; to wit, 
 the Tempest, the Winter's Tale, Midsummer Night's 
 Dream, Much Ado about Nothing, the Two Gentlemen 
 of Verona, and Cymheline. The Merchant of Venice 
 is in forwardness. I have done Othello and Macbeth, 
 and mean to do all the tragedies. I think it will be 
 popular among the little people, besides money. It 
 is to bring in sixty guineas. Mary has done them 
 capitally, I think you'd think. These are the humble 
 amusements we propose, while you are gone to plant 
 the cross of Christ among barbarous pagan anthropo- 
 phagi. Quam homo homini praestat ! but then, per- 
 haps, you'll get murdered, and we shall die in our 
 beds with a fair literary reputation. Be sure, if you 
 see any of those people whose heads do grow beneath 
 their shoulders, that you make a draught of them. It 
 will be very curious. Oh Manning, I am serious to 
 sinking almost, when I think that all those evenings 
 which you have made so pleasant, are gone perhaps 
 for ever. Four years, you talk of, may be ten, and
 
 224 
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 
 
 you may come back and find such alterations ! Some 
 circumstances may grow up to you or to me, that 
 may be a bar to the return of any such intimacy. I 
 dare say all this is hum ! and that all will come back ; 
 but indeed we die many deaths before we die, and I 
 am almost sick when I think that such a hold as I 
 had of you is gone. I have friends, but some of 'em 
 are changed. Marriage, or some circumstance, rises 
 up to make them not the same. But I felt sure of 
 you. And that last token you gave me of expressing 
 a wish to have my name joined with yours, you know 
 not how it affected me : like a legacy. 
 
 God bless you in every way you can form a wish. 
 May He give you health, and safety, and the accom- 
 plishment of all your objects, and return you again to 
 us, to gladden some fireside or other (I suppose we 
 shall be moved from the Temple). I will nurse the 
 remembrance of your steadiness and quiet, which 
 used to infuse something like itself into our nervous 
 minds. Mary called you our ventilator. Farewell, 
 and take her best wishes and mine. 
 
 Good bye, C. L. 
 
 Letter CLII.] December 5th, 1806. 
 
 Manning, your letter dated Hottentots,^ August (the 
 what-was-it ?) came to hand. I can scarce hope that 
 mine will have the same luck. China ! Canton ! Bless 
 us- -how it strains the imagination and makes it ache ! 
 I write under another uncertainty, whether it can go 
 
 i Manning had at last gone to China.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 225 
 
 to-morrow by a ship which I have just learned is 
 going off direct to your part of the world, or whether 
 the despatches may not be sealed up and this have 
 to wait, for if it is detained here, it will grow staler 
 in a fortnight than in a five months' voyage coming 
 to you. It will be a point of conscience to send you 
 none but bran-new news (the latest edition), which, 
 like oranges, will but grow the better for a sea voyage. 
 Oh that you should be so many hemispheres off! 
 — if I speak incorrectly you can correct me — why 
 the simplest death or marriage that takes place here 
 must be important to you as news in the old Bastile. 
 There's your friend Tuthill has got away from France ; 
 you remember France ? and Tuthill ? — ten to one 
 but he writes by this post, if he don't get my note in 
 time, apprising him of the vessel's sailing. Know 
 then that he has found means to obtain leave from 
 Buonaparte (without making use of any incredible ro- 
 mantic pretences as some have done, who never meant 
 to fulfil them,) to come home, and I have seen him 
 here and at Holcroft's. Ar'n't you glad about Tuthill? 
 Now then be sorry for Holcroft, whose new play, 
 called the Vindictive Man, was damned about a fort- 
 night since. It died in part of its own weakness, and 
 in part for being choked up with bad actors. The 
 two principal parts were destined to Mrs. Jordan and 
 Mr. Bannister, but Mrs. J. has not come to terms with 
 the managers ; they have had some squabble ; and 
 Bannister shot some of his fingers off by the going off 
 of a gun. So Miss Duncan had her part, and Mr. De 
 Camp took his. His part, the principal comic hope 
 of the play, was most unluckily Goldfinch, taken out 
 of the Road to Ruin, not only the same character, but 
 the identical Goldfinch — the same as Falstaff is in 
 
 VOL. II. Q
 
 226 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 
 
 two plays of Shakspeare's. As the devil of ill-luck 
 would have it, half the audience did not know that 
 Holcroft had written it, but were displeased at his 
 stealing from the Road to Ruin ; and those who might 
 have borne a gentlemanly coxcomb with his " That's 
 your sort," " Go it " — such as Lewis is — did not relish 
 the intolerable vulgarity and inanity of the idea stript 
 of his manner. De Camp was hooted, more than 
 hist, hooted and bellowed off the stage before the 
 second act was finished ; so that the remainder of 
 his part was forced to be, with some violence to the 
 play, omitted. In addition to this, aw.... was 
 another principal character — a most unfortunate 
 choice in this moral day. The audience were as 
 scandalised as if you were to introduce such a per- 
 sonage to their private tea-tables. Besides, her action 
 in the play was gross — wheedling an old man into 
 marriage. But the mortal blunder of the play was 
 that which, oddly enough, Holcroft took pride in, and 
 exultingly told me of the night before it came out, 
 that there were no less than eleven principal charac- 
 ters in it, and I believe he meant of the men only, for 
 the play-bill expressed as much, not reckoning one 
 woman, and one w . . . . ; and true it was, for ^Ir. 
 Powell, Mr. Raymond, Mr. Bartlett, Mr. H. Siddons, 
 Mr. Barrymore, &c,, &c., to the number of eleven, 
 had all parts equally prominent, and there was as 
 much of them in quantity and rank as of the hero 
 and heroine — and most of them gentlemen who 
 seldom appear but as the hero's friend in a farce, for 
 a minute or two ; and here they all had their ten- 
 minute speeches, and one of them gave the audience 
 a serious account of how he was now a lawyer but 
 had been a poet, and then a long enumeration of the
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 2-7 
 
 inconveniences of authorship, rascally booksellers, 
 reviewers, &c. ; which first set the audience a gaping; 
 but I have said enough. You will be so sorry, that 
 you will not think the best of me for my detail ; but 
 news is news at Canton. Poor Holcroft I fear will 
 feel the disappointment very seriously in a pecuniary 
 light. From what I can learn he has saved nothing. 
 You and I were hoping one day that he had, but I 
 fear he has nothing but his pictures and books, and 
 a no very flourishing business, and to be obliged to 
 part with his long-necked Guido that hangs opposite 
 as you enter, and the game-piece that hangs in the 
 back drawing-room, and all those Vandykes, &c. 
 God should temper the wind to the shorn connoisseur. 
 I hope I need not say to you, that I feel for the 
 weather-beaten author, and for all his household. I 
 assure you his fate has soured a good deal the 
 pleasure I should have otherwise taken in my own 
 little farce being accepted, and I hope about to be 
 acted : it is in rehearsal actually, and I expect it to 
 come out next week. It is kept a sort of secret, and the 
 rehearsals have gone on privately, lest by many folks 
 knowing it, the story should come out, which would 
 infallibly damn it. You remember I had sent it be- 
 fore you went. Wroughton read it, and was much 
 pleased with it. I speedily got an answer. I took it 
 to make alterations, and lazily kept it some months, 
 then took courage and furbished it up in a day or two 
 and took it. In less than a fortnight I heard the 
 principal part was given to Elliston, who liked it and 
 only wanted a prologue, which I have since done 
 and sent, and I had a note the day before yesterday 
 from the manager, Wroughton, (bless his fat face ! 
 he is not a bad actor in some things,) to say that I
 
 228 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 
 
 should be summoned to the rehearsal after the next, 
 which next was to be yesterday. I had no idea it 
 was so forward. I have had no trouble, attended no 
 reading or rehearsal, made no interest. What a con- 
 trast to the usual parade of authors ! But it is 
 peculiar to modesty to do all things without noise or 
 pomp. I have some suspicion it will appear in public 
 on Wednesday next, for Wroughton says in his note, 
 it is so forward that if wanted it may come out next 
 week, and a new melodrame is announced for every 
 day till then ; and "a new farce is in rehearsal," is 
 put up in the bills. Now you'd like to know the sub- 
 ject. The title is Mr. H., no more. How simple, 
 how taking 1 A great H. sprawling over the play-bill 
 and attracting eyes at every corner. The story is a 
 coxcomb appearing at Bath, vastly rich — all the 
 ladies dying for him — all bursting to know who he 
 is ; but he goes by no other name than Mr. H. — a 
 curiosity like that of the dames of Strasburg about 
 the man with the great nose. But I won't tell you 
 any more about it. Yes, I will ; but I can't give you 
 an idea how I have done it. I'll just tell you that 
 after much vehement admiration, when his true name 
 comes out, " Hogsflesh," all the women shun him, 
 avoid him, and not one can be found to change their 
 name for him. That's the idea. How flat it is here — 
 but how whimsical in the farce ! And only think how 
 hard upon me it is that the ship is despatched to-mor- 
 row, and my triumph cannot be ascertained till the 
 Wednesday after ; but all China will ring of it by and 
 by. N.B. (But this is a secret.) The Professor has got 
 a tragedy coming out, with the young Roscius in it, in 
 January next, as we say — ^January last it will be with 
 you — and though it is a profound secret now, as all
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 229 
 
 his affairs are, it cannot be much of one by the timt 
 you read this. However, don't let it go any further. 
 I understand there are dramatic exhibitions in China. 
 One would not like to be forestalled. Do you find in 
 all this stuff I have written any thing like those feelings 
 which one should send my old adventuring friend, that 
 is gone to wander among Tartars and may never come 
 again ? I don't ; but your going away, and all about 
 you, is a threadbare topic. I have worn it out with 
 thinking: it has come to me when I have been dull 
 with any thing, till my sadness has seemed more to 
 have come from it than to have introduced it. I 
 want you, you don't know how much ; but if I had 
 you here in my European garret, we should but talk 
 over such stuff as I have written — so. Those Tales 
 from Shakspeare are near coming out, and Mary has 
 begun a new work. Mr. Dawe is turned author; he 
 has been in such a way lately — Dawe, the painter, I 
 mean — he sits and stands about at Holcroft's and 
 says nothing; then sighs and leans his head on his 
 hand. I took him to be in love ; but it seems he was 
 only meditating a work, — "The Life of Moreland." 
 The young man is not used to composition. Rickman 
 and Captain Burney are well ; they assemble at my 
 house pretty regularly of a Wednesday — a new 
 institution. Like other great men I have a public 
 day, cribbage and pipes, with Phillips^ and noisy 
 Martin. 
 
 Good God ! what a bit only I've got left ! How 
 shall I squeeze all I know into this morsel ! Coleridge 
 is come home, and is going to turn lecturer on taste 
 at the Royal Institution. I shall get £"200 from the 
 theatre if Mr. H. has a good run, and I hope £"100 
 for the copyright. Nothing if it fails ; and there
 
 230 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 
 
 never was a more ticklish thing. The whole depends 
 on the manner in which the name is brought out, 
 which I value myself on, as a chef-d'ceuvre. How 
 the paper grows less and less ! In less than two 
 minutes I shall cease to talk to you, and you may 
 rave to the great wall of China. N.B. Is there such 
 a wall ? Is it as big as Old London Wall, by 
 Bedlam ? Have you met with a friend of mine, 
 named Ball, at Canton ? If you are acquainted, 
 remember me kindly to him. May be you'll think 
 I have not said enough of Tuthill and the Holcrofts. 
 Tuthill is a noble fellow, as far as I can judge. The 
 H.'s bear their disappointment pretty well, but indeed 
 they are sadly mortified. Mrs. H. is cast down. It 
 was well, if it were but on this account, that T. is come 
 home. N.B. If my little thing don't succeed I shall 
 easily survive, having, as it were, compared to H.'s 
 venture, but a sixteenth in the lottery. Mary and 
 I are to sit next the orchestra in the pit, next the 
 tweedledees. She remembers you. You are more 
 to us than five hundred farces, clappings, &c. 
 
 Come back one day. C. Lamb. 
 
 Letter CLIII.] 26th Feb. i8c8. 
 
 Dear Missionary, — Your letters from the farthest 
 ends of the world have arrived safe. Mary is very 
 thankful for your remembrance of her ; and with the 
 less suspicion of mercenariness, as the silk, the 
 symbolum materiale of your friendship, has not yet
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 23 1 
 
 appeared. I think Horace says somewhere, nox 
 longa. I would not impute negligence or unhand- 
 some delays to a person whom you have honoured 
 with your confidence, but I have not heard of the 
 silk, or of Mr. Knox, save by your letter. Maybe he 
 expects the first advances ! or it maybe that he has 
 not succeeded in getting the article on shore, for it is 
 among the res prohibitce et non nisi smuggle -ationis 
 via fruejidcB . But so it is, in the friendships between 
 wicked men the very expressions of their good-will 
 cannot but be sinful. I suppose you know my farce 
 was damned. The noise still rings in my ears. Were 
 you ever in the pillory ? — being damned is something 
 like that. A treaty of marriage is on foot between 
 William Hazlitt and Miss Stoddart. Something 
 about settlements only retards it. She has somewhere 
 about £80 a-year, to be £"120 when her mother dies. 
 He has no settlement except what he can claim from 
 the Parish. Pauper est tamen, sed amat. The thing 
 is therefore in abeyance. But there is love a-both 
 sides. Little Fenwick (you don't see the connection 
 of ideas here ; how the devil should you ?) is in the 
 rules of the Fleet. Cruel creditors ! operation of 
 iniquitous laws. Is Magna Charta then a mockery ? 
 Why, in general (here I suppose you to ask a 
 question) my spirits are' pretty good ; but I have my 
 depressions, black as a smith's beard, Vulcanic, 
 Stygian. At such times I have recourse to a pipe, 
 which is like not being at home to a dun : he comes 
 again with tenfold bitterness the next day. — (Mind, I 
 am not in debt ; I only borrow a similitude from 
 others; it shows imagination.) I have done two 
 books since the failure of my farce ; they will both be 
 out this Summer. The one is a juvenile book — the
 
 232 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 
 
 Adventures of Ulysses, intended to be an introduction 
 to the reading of Telemachus ! It is done out of the 
 Odyssey, not from the Greek, (I would not mislead 
 you,) nor yet from Pope's Odyssey, but from an older 
 translation of one Chapman. The Shakspeare Tales 
 suggested the doing of it. Godwin is in both those 
 cases my bookseller.' The other is done for Long- 
 man, and is Specimens of English Dramatic Poets 
 contemporary with Shakspeare. Specimens are be- 
 coming fashionable. We have " Specimens of 
 Ancient English Poets," " Specimens of Modern 
 English Poets," " Specimens of Ancient English 
 Prose Writers," without end. They used to be called 
 *' Beauties." You have seen " Beauties of Shak- 
 speare :" so have many people that never saw any 
 beauties in Shakspeare. Longman is to print it, 
 and be at all the expense and risk, and I am to share 
 the profits after all deductions ; i. e. a year or two 
 hence I must pocket what they please to tell me is 
 due to me. But the book is such as I am glad there 
 should be. It is done out of old plays at the 
 Museum, and out of Dodsley's collection, &c. It is 
 to have notes. So I go creeping on since I was 
 lamed with that cursed fall from off the top of Drury 
 Lane Theatre into the pit, something more than a 
 year ago. However, I have been free of the house 
 ever since, and the house was pretty free with me 
 upon that occasion. Damn 'em, how they hissed ! 
 It was not a hiss neither, but a sort of a frantic yell, 
 like a congregation of mad geese, with roaring some- 
 times, like bears, mows and mops like apes, sometimes 
 
 ' It was published for "The Juvenile Library, 14, Skinner Street, 
 Snow Hill," where Godwin carried on business as "E. Baldwin, 
 Esq."— F.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 233 
 
 snakes, that hiss'd me into madness. 'Twas like 
 St. Anthony's temptations. Mercy on us, that God 
 should give his favourite children, men, mouths to 
 speak vi^ith, to discourse rationally, to promise 
 smoothly, to flatter agreeably, to encourage w^armly, 
 to counsel wisely, to sing with, to drink with, and to 
 kiss with, and that they should turn them into mouths 
 of adders, bears, wolves, hyenas, and whistle like 
 tempests, and emit breath through them like distilla- 
 tions of aspic poison, to asperse and villify the inno- 
 cent labours of their fellow-creatures who are desirous 
 to please them ! Heaven be pleased to make the 
 breath stink and teeth rot out of them all therefore : 
 make them a reproach, and all that pass by them to 
 loll out their tongue at them ! Blind mouths I as 
 Milton somewhere calls them. Do you like Braham's 
 singijjg ? The little Jew has bewitched me. I follow 
 him like as the boys followed Tom the Piper. He 
 cures me of melancholy as David cured Saul : but I 
 don't throw stones at him as Saul did at David in 
 payment. I was insensible to music till he gave me 
 a new sense. Oh that you could go to the new opera 
 of Kais to-night ! 'Tis all about Eastern manners ; 
 it would just suit you. It describes the wild Arabs, 
 wandering Egyptians, lying dervises, and all that sort 
 of people, to a hair. You needn't ha' gone so far to 
 see what you see, if you saw it as I do every night at 
 Drury Lane Theatre. Braham's singing, when it is 
 impassioned, is finer than Mrs. Siddons's or Mr. 
 Kemble's acting! and when it is not impassioned, it 
 is as good as hearing a person of fine sense talking. 
 The brave little Jew ! Old Serjeant Hill is dead. 
 Mrs. Rickman is in the family way. It is thought 
 that Hazlitt will have children if he marries Miss
 
 234 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 
 
 Stoddart. I made a pun the other day, and palmed 
 it upon Holcroft, who grinned like a Cheshire cat. 
 (Why do cats grin in Cheshire ? — Because it was 
 once a county palatine, and the cats cannot help 
 laughing whenever they think of it, though I see no 
 great joke in it.) I said that Holcroft, on being asked 
 who were the best dramatic writers of the day, 
 replied, " Hook and I." Mr. Hook is author of 
 several pieces, Tekeli, &c. You know what hooks 
 and eyes are, don't you ? They are what little boys 
 do up their breeches with. Your letter had many 
 things in it hard to be understood : the puns were 
 ready and Swift-like ; but don't you begin to be 
 melancholy in the midst of Eastern customs ! " The 
 mind does not easily conform to foreign usages, even 
 in trifles : it requires something that it has been 
 familiar with." That begins one of Dr. Hawkes- 
 worth's papers in the Adventurer, and is, I think, as 
 sensible a remark as ever fell from the Doctor's 
 mouth. White is at Christ's Hospital, a wit of the 
 first magnitude, but would rather be thought a 
 gentleman, like Congreve. You know Congreve's 
 repulse which he gave to Voltaire, when he came to 
 visit him as a literary man, that he wished to be 
 considered only in the light of a private gentleman. 
 I think the impertinent Frenchman was properly 
 answered. I should just serve any member of the 
 French Institute in the same manner, that wished to 
 be introduced to me. Buonaparte has voted 5000 
 livres to Davy, the great young English Chemist ! 
 but it has not arrived. Coleridge has delivered two 
 lectures at the Royal Institution ; two more intended, 
 but he did not come. It is thoug:ht he has gone sick
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 235 
 
 upon them. He isn't well, that's certain.^ Words- 
 worth is coming to see him. He sits up in a two 
 pair of stairs room at the Courier office, and receives 
 visitors .... 
 
 Does any one read at Canton ? Lord Moira is 
 President of the Westminster Library. I suppose 
 you might have interest with Sir Joseph Banks to 
 get to be president of any similar institution that 
 should be set up at Canton. I think public reading- 
 rooms the best mode of educating young men. 
 Solitary reading is apt to give the headache. Be- 
 sides, who knows that you do read ? There are ten 
 thousand institutions similar to the Royal Institution 
 which have sprung up from it. There is the London 
 Institution, the Southwark Institution, the Russell 
 Square Rooms Institution, &c. — College quasi Con- 
 lege, a place where people read together. Words- 
 worth, the great poet, is coming to town ; he is to 
 have apartments in the Mansion House. He says 
 he does not see much difficulty in writing like 
 Shakspeare, if he had a mind to try it. It is clear 
 that nothing is wanting but the mind. Even Cole- 
 ridge was a little checked at this hardihood of assertion. 
 Dyer came to me the other evening at ii o'clock, 
 when there was a large room full of company, which 
 I usually get together on a Wednesday evening, (all 
 great men have public days,) to propose to me to have 
 my face done by a Miss Beetham, (or Betham,) a 
 miniature painter, some relation to Mrs. Beetham 
 the Profilist or Pattern Mangle woman opposite 
 
 ' Coleridge was, in fact, very ill ; in a letter to Lamb, dated Feb. 
 10, 1808, he says "O Charles! I am very, very ill. Vixi." — H.
 
 236 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 
 
 St. Dunstan's, to put before my book of Extracts. 
 I declined it. 
 
 Well, my dear Manning, talking cannot be infinite. 
 I have said all I have to say ; the rest is but remem- 
 brances of you, which we shall bear in our heads 
 while we have heads. Here is a packet of trifles 
 nothing worth ; but it is a trifling part of the world 
 where I live : emptiness abounds. But in fulness oi 
 affection, we remain yours, C. L. 
 
 Southampton Buildings, 
 
 Letter CLIV.] 28th March, 1809. 
 
 Dear Manning, — I sent you a long letter by the 
 ships which sailed the beginning of last month, ac- 
 companied with books, &c. Since I last wrote Hol- 
 croft is dead. He died on Thursday last. So there 
 is one of your friends whom you will never see again ! 
 Perhaps the next fleet may bring you a letter from 
 Martin Burney, to say that he writes by desire of 
 Miss Lamb, who is not well enough to write herself, 
 to inform you that her brother died on Thursday last, 
 14th June, &c. But I hope not. I should be sorry 
 to give occasion to open a correspondence between 
 Martin and you. This letter must be short, for I 
 have driven it off to the very moment of doing up the 
 packets ; and besides, that which I refer to above is 
 a very long one ; and if you have received my books, 
 you will have enough to do to read them. While I 
 think on it, let me tell you, we are moved. Don't 
 come any more to Mitre-Court Buildings. We are 
 at 34, Southampton Buildings, Chancery Lane, and
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 237 
 
 shall be here till about the end of May ; then we re- 
 move to No. 4, Inner Temple Lane, where I mean to 
 live and die ; for I have such horror of moving, that 
 I would not take a benefice from the King if I was 
 not indulged with non-residence. What a disloca- 
 tion of comfort is comprised in that word " moving !" 
 Such a heap of little nasty things, after you think 
 all is got into the cart : old dredging-boxes, worn- 
 out brushes, gallipots, vials, things that it is impos- 
 sible the most necessitous person can ever want, 
 but which the women, who preside on these occa- 
 sions, will not leave behind if it was to save your 
 soul. They'd keep the cart ten minutes to stow in 
 dirty pipes and broken matches, to show their 
 economy. Then you can find nothing you want for 
 many days after you get into your new lodgings. 
 You must comb your hair with your fingers, wash 
 your hands without soap, go about in dirty gaiters. 
 Were I Diogenes, I would not move out of a kilderkin 
 into a hogshead, though the first had had nothing but 
 small beer in it, and the second reeked claret. Our 
 place of final destination, — I don't mean the grave, 
 but No. 4, Inner Temple Lane, — looks out upon a 
 gloomy churchyard-like court, called Hare Court, 
 with three trees and a pump in it. Do you know it? 
 I was born near it, and used to drink at that pump 
 when I was a Rechabite of six years old. If you see 
 newspapers you will read about Mrs. Clarke. The 
 sensation in London about this nonsensical business 
 is marvellous. I remember nothing in my life like 
 it : thousands of ballads, caricatures, lives of Mrs. 
 Clarke, in every blind alley. Yet in the midst of this 
 stir, a sublime abstracted dancing-master, who attends 
 a family we know at Kensington, being asked a ques-
 
 238 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 
 
 tion about the progress of the examinations in the 
 House, inquired who Mrs. Clarke was ? He had heard 
 nothing of it. He had evaded this omnipresence by 
 utter insignificancy ! The Duke should make that 
 man his confidential valet. I proposed locking him 
 up, barring him the use of his fiddle and red pumps, 
 until he had minutely perused and committed to 
 memory the whole body of the examinations, which 
 employed the House of Commons a fortnight, to 
 teach him to be more attentive to what concerns the 
 public. I think I told you of Godwin's little book, 
 and of Coleridge's prospectus, in my last ; if I did 
 not, remind me of it, and I will send you them, or an 
 account of them, next fleet. I have no conveniency 
 
 of doing it by this. Mrs. grows every day in 
 
 disfavour with me. I will be buried with this in- 
 scription over me : — " Here lies C. L., the woman- 
 hater:" I mean that hated one woman : for the rest, 
 God bless them ! How do you like the Mandarin- 
 esses ? Are you on some little footing with any of 
 them ? This is Wednesday. On Wednesdays is 
 my levee. The Captain, Martin, Phillips, (not the 
 Sheriff,) Rickman, and some more, are constant at- 
 tendants, besides stray visitors. We play at whist, 
 eat cold meat and hot potatoes, and any gentleman 
 that chooses smokes. Why do you never drop in ? 
 You'll come some day, won't you ? 
 
 C. Lamb, &c. 
 
 Letter CLV.] Jan. 2nd, 1810. 
 
 Dear Manning, — When I last wrote to you I was in 
 lodgings. I am now in chambers, No. 4, InnerTemple 
 ^ ane, where I should be happy to see you any even-
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 239 
 
 ing. Bring any of your friends, the Mandarins, with 
 you. I have two sitting-rooms : I call them so par ex- 
 cellence, for you may stand, or loll, or lean, or try any 
 posture in them, but they are best for sitting ; not squat- 
 ting down Japanese fashion, but the more decorous use 
 
 of the which European usage has consecrated. I 
 
 have two of these rooms on the third floor, and five 
 sleeping, cooking, &c. rooms, on the fourth floor. In 
 my best room is a choice collection of the works of 
 Hogarth, an English painter of some humour. In 
 my next best are shelves containing a small but well- 
 chosen library. My best room commands a court, in 
 which there are trees and a pump, the water of which 
 is excellent cold, with brandy, and not very insipid 
 without. Here I hope to set up my rest, and not 
 quit till Mr. Powell, the undertaker, gives me notice 
 that I may have possession of my last lodging. He 
 lets lodgings for single gentlemen. I sent you a 
 parcel of books by my last, to give you some idea of 
 the state of European literature. There comes with 
 this two volumes, done up as letters, of minor poetry, 
 a sequel to ." Mrs. Leicester;"^ the best you may sup- 
 pose mine ; the next best are my coadjutor's. You 
 may amuse yourself in guessing them out; but I 
 must tell you mine are but one-third in quantity of 
 the whole. So much for a very delicate subject. It 
 is hard to speak of one's self, &c. Holcroft had 
 finished his life when I wrote to you, and Hazlitt has 
 since finished his life ; I do not mean his own life, 
 but he has finished a life of Holcroft, which is going 
 
 ' This refers to the " Poetry for Children," a copy of which it now 
 seenvs impossible to discover. Mr. Pickering of Piccadilly disposed of 
 a single copy some years ago: but this is the only instance I can find 
 of any one having seen the book. — F.
 
 240 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 
 
 to press. Tuthill is Dr. Tuthill. I continue Mr. 
 Lamb. I have published a little book for children on 
 titles of honour ; and to give them some idea of the 
 difference of rank and gradual rising, I have made a 
 little scale, supposing myself to receive the following 
 various accessions of dignity from the king, who is 
 the fountain of honour — As at first, i, Mr. C. Lamb ; 
 2, C. Lamb, Esq. ; 3, Sir C. Lamb, Bart. ; 4, Baron 
 Lamb, of Stamford ;^ 5, Viscount Lamb ; 6, Earl 
 Lamb ; 7, Marquis Lamb ; 8, Duke Lamb. It would 
 look like quibbling to carry it on further, and espe- 
 cially as it is not necessary for children to go beyond 
 the ordinary titles of sub-regal dignity in our own 
 country ; otherwise I have sometimes in my dreams 
 imagined myself still advancing, as 9th, King Lamb ; 
 loth, Emperor Lamb; nth, Pope Innocent; higher 
 than which is nothing upon earth. Puns I have 
 not made many, (nor punch much,) since the date 
 of my last ; one I cannot help relating. A con- 
 stable in Salisbury Cathedral was telling me that 
 eight people dined at the top of the spire of the cathe- 
 dral ; upon which I remarked, that they must be very 
 sharp set. But in general I cultivate the reasoning 
 part of my mind more than the imaginative. I am 
 stuffed out so with eating turkey for dinner, and 
 another turkey for supper yesterday, (Turkey in 
 Europe and Turkey in Asia,) that I can't jog on. It 
 is New Year here ; that is, it was New Year half a- 
 year back, when I was writing this. Nothing puzzles 
 me more than time and space ; and yet nothing 
 puzzles me less, for I never think about them. The 
 
 ' " Where my family came Irom. 1 should choose that, if ever I 
 should have my choice."
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 24I 
 
 Persian ambassador is the principal thing talked of 
 now. I sent some people to see him worship the 
 sun on Primrose Hill, at half-past six in the morning, 
 28th November ; but he did not come, which makes 
 me think the old fire-worshippers are a sect almost 
 extinct in Persia. The Persian ambassador's name 
 is Shaw Ali Mirza. The common people call him 
 Shaw Nonsense. While I think of it, I have put 
 three letters, besides my own three, into the India 
 post for you, from your brother, sister, and some gen- 
 tleman whose name I forget. Will they, have they, 
 did they come safe ? The distance you are at, cuts 
 up tenses by the root. I think you said you did not 
 know Kate *********. I express her by 
 nine stars, though she is but one. You must have 
 seen her at her father's. Try and remember her. 
 Coleridge is bringing out a paper in weekly Numbers, 
 called the Friend, which I would send if I could ; 
 but the difficulty I had in getting the packets of books 
 out to you before, deters me ; and you'll want some 
 thing new to read when you come home. It is chiefly 
 intended to puff off Wordsworth's poetry ; but there 
 are some noble things in it by the by. Except Kate, 
 I have had no vision of excellence this year, and she 
 passed by like the Queen on her coronation day ; you 
 don't know whether you saw her or not. Kate is 
 fifteen : I go about moping, and sing the old pathetic 
 ballad I used to like in my youth — 
 
 " She's sweet fifteen, 
 I'm one year more." 
 
 Mrs. Bland sang it in boy's clothes the first time I 
 heard it. I sometimes think the lower notes in my 
 voice are like Mrs. Bland's. That glorious singer, 
 
 VOL. II. R
 
 242 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 
 
 Braham, one of my lights, is fled. He was for a 
 season. He was a rare composition of the Jew, the 
 gentleman, and the angel ; yet all these elements 
 mixed up so kindly in him, that you could not tell 
 which preponderated ; but he is gone, and one Phillips 
 
 is engaged instead. Kate is vanished, but Miss B 
 
 is always to be met with ! 
 
 " Queens drop away, while blue-legg'd Maukin thrives; 
 And courtly Mildred dies while country Madge survives." 
 
 That is not my poetry, but Quarles's ; but haven't 
 you observed that the rarest things are the least 
 obvious ? Don't show any body the names in this 
 letter. I write confidentially, and wish this letter to 
 be considered as private. Hazlitt has written a 
 grammar for Godwin. Godwin sells it bound up with 
 a treatise of his own on language ; but the grey mare 
 is the better horse} I don't allude to Mrs. [Godwin], 
 but to the word grammar, which comes near to grey 
 mare, if you observe, in sound. That figure is called 
 paronomasia in Greek. I am sometimes happy in it. 
 An old woman begged of me for charity. " Ah ! sir," 
 said she, " I have seen better days." " So have I, 
 good woman," I replied ; but I meant, literally, days 
 not so rainy and overcast as that on which she 
 begged : she meant more prosperous days. Mr. 
 Dawe^ is made associate of the Royal Academy. By 
 
 1 Godwin published under the nom de plume of "Edward Baldwin, 
 Esq.'' His portion is called " A New Guide to the English Tongue, 
 in A Letter to Mr. W. F. Mylius, Author of the School Dictionary.'" 
 In the same year, Godwin, under the same pseudonym, published 
 " Outlines of English Grammar, chiefly abridged from Mr. Hazlitt's 
 New and Improved Grammar of the English Language." — H. 
 
 2 He afterwards accepted an offer to go to Russia, where he was very 
 successful. — H.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 243 
 
 what law of association I can't guess, Mrs. Holcroft, 
 Miss Holcroft, Mr. and Mrs. Godwin, Mr. and Mrs. 
 Hazlitt, Mrs. Martin and Louisa, Mrs. Lum, Capt. 
 Burney, Mrs. Burney, Martin Burney, Mr. Rickman, 
 Mrs. Rickman, Dr. Stoddart, William Dollin, Mr. 
 Thompson, Mr. and Mrs. Norris, Mr. Fenwick, Mrs. 
 Fenwick, Miss Fenwick, a man that saw you at our 
 house one day, and a lady that heard me speak of 
 you ; Mrs. Buffam^ that heard Hazlitt mention you, 
 Dr. Tuthill, Mrs. Tuthill, Colonel Harwood, Mrs. 
 Harwood, Mr. Collier, Mrs. Collier, Mr. Sutton, 
 Nurse, Mr, Fell, Mrs. Fell, Mr. Marshall, are very 
 well, and occasionally inquire after you. 
 I remain yours ever, 
 
 Ch. Lamb. 
 
 Letter CLVL ] Dec. 25th, 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 perhaps ; and if it 
 should be the consecrated season with you, I don't 
 see how )'0u can keep it. You have no turkeys ; you 
 would not desecrate the festival by offering up a 
 withered Chinese bantam, instead of the savoury 
 grand Norfolcian holocaust, that smokes all around 
 my nostrils at this moment from a thousand fire- 
 sides. Then what puddings have you ? Where will 
 you get holly to stick in your churches, or churches 
 to stick your dried tea-leaves (that must be the sub- 
 
 ' The landlady at No. 9, Southampton Buildings. — H. 
 
 R 2
 
 244 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. / 
 
 stitute) in ? What memorials you can have of the 
 holy time, I see not. A chopped missionary or 
 two may keep up the thin idea of Lent and the wil- 
 derness ; but what standing evidence have you of 
 the Nativity ? 'Tis our rosy-cheeked, homestalled 
 divines, whose faces shine to the tune of " Unto us a 
 child was born," faces fragrant with the mince-pies of 
 half a century, that alone can authenticate the cheer- 
 ful mystery. I feel my bowels refreshed with the 
 holy tide ; my zeal is great against the unedified 
 heathen. Down with the Pagodas — 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 her gates, shall kindle and smoke together ! 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; myself, (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 and a stick. 
 Martin Burney is a very old man. The other day an 
 aged woman knocked at my door, and pretended 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. 
 Topham, formerly Mrs. Morton, who had been Mrs.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 245 
 
 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 
 were 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 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 clamours, but with the 
 complacent gratulations of a philosopher an.xious to 
 promote knowledge as leading to happiness ; but his 
 systems and his theories are ten feet deep in Cripple- 
 gate 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 " Wander-
 
 246 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 
 
 ings of Cain," in twenty-four books. It is said he 
 has left behind him more than forty thousand 
 treatises in criticism, 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 of Time has produced, 
 while you have consumed in foolish 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 
 withered hands together, and talk of old things — of 
 St. Mary's Church and the barber's opposite, where 
 the young students in mathematics used to assemble. 
 Poor Crips, that kept it afterwards, set up a fruiterer's 
 shop in Trumpington Street, and for aught I know 
 resides there still, for I saw the name up in the last 
 journey I took there with my sister just before she 
 died. I suppose you heard that I had left the India 
 House, and gone into the Fishmongers' 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. 
 
 Letter CLVII.] Dec 26th, 1815. 
 
 Dear Manning, — Following your brother's example, 
 I have just ventured one letter to Canton, and am
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 247 
 
 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 confine myself nearer 
 to truth as you come nearer home. A correspondence 
 with the uttermost parts of the earth necessarily in- 
 volves in it some heat of fancy, it sets the brain 
 agoing, but I can think on the half-way house tran- 
 quilly. Your friends then are not all dead or grown 
 forgetful of you through old age, as that lying letter 
 asserted, anticipating rather what must happen if you 
 kept tarrying on for ever on the skirts of creation, as 
 there seemed a danger of your doing; but they are 
 all tolerably well and in full and perfect comprehen- 
 sion of what is meant by Manning's coming home 
 again. Mrs. Kenney^ never lets her tongue run 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 off tobacco ! Surely 
 there must be some other world in which this un- 
 conquerable 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 
 
 1 Wife of Mr. James Kenney, the dramatist. She had been pre- 
 viously the fourth wife of Holcroft. — H. 
 
 2 Wife of C. Wordsworth.— H.
 
 248 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 
 
 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 picture, 
 "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 before me 
 at our fire-side just as if you had never been away. 
 In such an instant does the return of a person dis- 
 sipate all the weight of imaginary perplexity from 
 distance of time and space ! I'll promise you good 
 oysters. Cory is dead that kept the shop opposite 
 St. Dunstan's ; but the tougher materials of the shop 
 survive the perishing 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 breath- 
 less stone-staring astonishment into which you must 
 have been thrown upon learning at landing that 
 an Emperor of France was living in St. Helena ? 
 What an event in the solitude of the seas ! like find- 
 ing a fish's bone at the top of Plinlimmon ; but these 
 things are nothing in our western world. Novelties
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 249 
 
 cease to affect. Come and try what your presence 
 can. 
 
 God bless you. — Your old friend, 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 
 Letter CLVIH.] [May 28th, 1819.] 
 
 My dear M., — I want to know how your brother is, 
 if you have heard lately. I want to know about you. 
 I wish you were nearer. How are my cousins, the 
 Gladmans of Wheathamstead, and farmer Bruton ? 
 Mrs. Bruton is a glorious woman. 
 
 " Hail, Mackery End " — 
 
 This is a fragment of a blank verse poem which I 
 once meditated, but got no further.^ The E. L H. 
 has been thrown into a quandary by the strange 
 phenomenon of poor Tommy Bye, whom I have 
 known man and mad-man twenty-seven years, he 
 being elder here than myself by nine years and more. 
 He was always a pleasant, gossiping, half-headed, 
 muzzy, dozing, dreaming, walk-about, inoffensive 
 chap; a little too fond of the creature — (who isn't at 
 times ?) ; but Tommy had not brains to work off an 
 over-night's surfeit by ten o'clock next morning ; and 
 unfortunately, in he wandered the other morning 
 drunk with last night, and with a superfoetation of 
 drink taken in since he set out from bed. He came 
 staggering under his double burthen, like trees in 
 Java, bearing at once blossom, fruit, and falling fruit, 
 as I have heard you or some other traveller tell, with 
 
 1 See " Mackery End, in Hertfordshire," — Essays of Elia, p. loo — 
 for a charming account of a visit to their cousin in the country with 
 Mr. Barron Field.— T.
 
 250 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 
 
 his face literally as blue as the bluest firmament ; 
 some wretched calico, that he had mopped his poor 
 oozy front with, had rendered up its native dye ; and 
 the devil a bit would he consent to wash it, but swore 
 it was characteristic, for he was going to the sale of 
 indigo, and set up a laugh which I did not think the 
 lungs of mortal man were competent to. It was like 
 a thousand people laughing, or the Goblin Page. He 
 imagined afterwards that the whole office had been 
 laughing at him, so strange did his own sounds strike 
 upon his no?zsensorium! But Tommy has laughed 
 his last laugh, and awoke the next day to find himself 
 reduced from an abused income of ;f 600 per annum 
 to one-sixth of the sum, after thirty-six years' tolerably 
 good service. The quality of mercy was not strained 
 in his behalf: the gentle dews dropt not on him from 
 heaven. It just came across me that I was writing 
 to Canton. Will you drop in to-morrow night ? 
 Fanny Kelly is coming, if she does not cheat us. 
 Mrs. Gold is well, but proves " uncoined," as the 
 lovers about Wheathamstead would say. 
 
 I have not had such a quiet half hour to sit down 
 to a quiet letter for many years. I have not been 
 interrupted above four times. I wrote a letter the 
 other day, in alternate lines, black ink and red, and 
 you cannot think how it chilled the flow of ideas. 
 Next Monday is Whit Monday. What a reflection ! 
 Twelve years ago, and I should have kept that and 
 the following holidays in the fields a Maying. All of 
 those pretty pastoral delights are over. This dead, 
 everlasting dead desk, — how it weighs the spirit of a 
 gentleman down ! This dead wood of the desk, in- 
 stead of your living trees, ! But then again, I hate 
 the Joskins, a name for Hertfordshire bumpkins.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MANNING. 
 
 25l 
 
 Each state of life has its inconvenience ; but then 
 again, mine has more than one. Not that I repine, 
 or grudge, or murmur at my destiny. I have meat 
 and drink, and decent apparel ; I shall, at least, w^hen 
 I get a new hat. 
 
 A red-haired man has just interrupted me. He has 
 broke the current of my thoughts. I haven't a word 
 to add. I don't know why I send this letter, but I 
 have had a hankering to hear about you some days. 
 Perhaps it will go off before your reply comes. If it 
 don't, I assure you no letter was ever welcomer from 
 you, from Paris or Macao. C. Lamb. 
 
 Letter CLIX.] No date. About 1825. 
 
 My dear M. — You might have come inopportunely 
 a week since, when we had an inmate. At present 
 and for as long as ever you like, our castle is at your 
 service. I saw T[uthill] yesternight, who has done 
 for me what may 
 
 "To all my nights and days to come. 
 Give solely sovran sway and masterdom." 
 
 But I dare not hope, for fear of disappointment. I 
 cannot be more explicit at present. But I have it 
 under his own hand, that I am won-capacitated, (I 
 cannot write it in-) for business. O joyous imbecility ! 
 Not a susurration of this to any body ! 
 
 Mary's love. C. Lamb.
 
 
 
 V. 
 
 Correspondence with the Hazlitts. 
 
 Letter CLX. [Nov. io, 1805.] 
 
 Dear Hazlitt, — I was very glad to hear from you, 
 and that your journey was so picturesque. We miss 
 you, as we foretold we should. One or two things 
 have happened, which are beneath the dignity of 
 epistolary communication, but which, seated about 
 our fireside at night, (the winter hands of pork have 
 begun,) gesture and emphasis might have talked 
 into some importance. Something about Rickman's 
 wife ; for instance, how tall she is, and that she visits 
 pranked up like a Queen of the May, with green 
 streamers : a good-natured woman though, which is 
 as much as you can expect from a friend's wife, 
 whom you got acquainted with a bachelor. Some 
 things too about Monkey,' which can't so well be 
 written: how it set up for a fine lady, and thought it 
 had got lovers, and was obliged to be convinced of its 
 age from the parish register, where it was proved to 
 be only twelve ; and an edict issued, that it should 
 not give itself airs yet these four years ; and how it 
 got leave to be called Miss, by grace : these, and such 
 like hows, were in my head to tell you ; but who can 
 write ? Also how Manning is come to town in 
 spectacles, and studies physic ; is melancholy, and 
 seems to have something in his head, which he don't 
 impart. Then, how I am going to leave off" smoking. 
 
 ' The daughter of a friend, and whom Lamb exceedingly liked from 
 a child, and always called by this epithet. — T.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE HAZLITTS. 253 
 
 la ! your Leonardos of Oxford made my mouth 
 water. I was hurried through the gallery, and they 
 escaped me. What do I say ? I was a Goth then, 
 and should not have noticed them. I had not settled 
 my notions of beauty : I have now for ever ! — the 
 small head, the long eye, — that sort of peering curve, 
 — the wicked Italian mischief; the stick-at-nothing, 
 Herodias's daughter kind of grace. You understand 
 me ? But you disappoint me in passing over in 
 absolute silence the Blenheim Leonardo. Didn't you 
 see it ? Excuse a lover's curiosity. I have seen no 
 pictures of note since, except Mr. Dawe's gallery. It 
 is curious to see how differently two great men treat 
 the same subject, yet both excellent in their way. 
 For instance, Milton and Mr. Dawe. Mr. D. has 
 chosen to illustrate the story of Samson exactly in 
 the point of view in which Milton has been most 
 happy : the interview between the Jewish hero, blind 
 and captive, and Dalilah. Milton has imagined his 
 locks grown again, strong as horse-hair or porcupine's 
 bristles ; doubtless shaggy and black, as being hairs 
 " which, of a nation armed, contained the strength." 
 
 1 don't remember he says black ; but could Milton 
 imagine them to be yellow ? Do you ? Mr. Dawe, 
 with striking originality of conception, has crowned 
 him with a thin yellow w;g, in colour precisely like 
 Dyson's ; in curl and quantity, resembling Mrs. Pro- 
 fessor's ; his limbs rather stout, — about such a man 
 as my brother or Rickman, — but no Atlas nor Her- 
 cules, nor yet so long as Dubois, the clown of Sadler's 
 Wells. This was judicious, taking the spirit of the 
 story rather than the fact; for doubtless God could 
 communicate national salvation to the trust of flax 
 and tow as well as hemp and cordage, and could
 
 254 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE HAZLITTS. 
 
 draw down a temple with a golden tress as soon as 
 with all the cables of the British navy. 
 
 Wasn't you sorry for Lord Nelson ? I have fol- 
 lowed him in fancy ever since I saw him walking in 
 Pall Mall, (I was prejudiced against him before,) 
 looking just as a hero should look ; and I have been 
 very much cut about it indeed. He was the only 
 pretence of a great man we had. Nobody is left of 
 any name at all. His secretary died by his side. I 
 imagined him a Mr. Scott, to be the man you 
 met at Hume's ;^ but I learnt from Mrs. Hume that 
 it is not the same. I met Mis. H. one day, and 
 agreed to go on the Sunday to tea, but the rain pre- 
 vented us, and the distance. I have been to 
 apologize, and we are to dine there the first fine 
 Sunday. Strange perverseness ! I never went while 
 you stayed here ; and now I go to find you ! What 
 other news is there, Mary ? What puns have I 
 made in the last fortnight ? You never remember 
 them. You have no relish for the comic. " Oh ! tell 
 Hazlitt not to forget to send the American Farmer. I 
 dare say it is not so good as he fancies ; but a book's 
 a book." I have not heard from Wordsworth or 
 from Malta since. Charles Kemble, it seems, enters 
 into possession to-morrow.^ We sup at 109, Russell 
 Street, this evening.'* I wish your brother would not 
 drink. 'Tis a blemish in the greatest characters. 
 You send me a modern quotation poetical. How do 
 you like this in an old play ? Vittoria Corombona, 
 a spunky Italian lady, a Leonardo one, nick-named 
 
 • Mr. Hume, of Bayswater. He was a friend of Hazlitt's and 
 Lamb's, and a clerk in one of the Government offices. — H, 
 
 2 Of Covent Garden H. 
 
 8 Mr. John Hazlitt's house.— H.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE HAZLITTS. 255 
 
 the White Devil, being on her trial for murder, &c, 
 — and questioned about seducing a duke from his 
 wife and the state, makes answer : — 
 
 " Condemn you me for that the Duke did love me ? 
 So may you blame some fair and crystal river. 
 For that some melancholic distracted man 
 Hath drown'd himself in it." 
 
 N.B. I shall expect a line from you, if but a bare 
 line, whenever you write to Russell Street, and a 
 letter often when you do not. I pay no postage ; 
 but I will have consideration for you until Parlia- 
 ment time and franks. Luck to Ned Search, and 
 the new art of colouring. Monkey sends her love ; 
 and Mary especially. 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 
 Letter CLXL] jan. 15th, 1806. 
 
 Dear Hazlitt, — Godwin went to Johnson's yester- 
 day about your business. Johnson would not come 
 down, or give any answer, but has promised to open 
 the manuscript, and to give you an answer in one 
 month. Godwin will punctually go again (Wednes- 
 day is Johnson's open day) yesterday four weeks 
 next : i. e. in one lunar month from this time ; till 
 when, Johnson positively declines giving any answer. 
 I wish you joy on ending your Search. Mrs. H. was
 
 256 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE HAZLITTS. 
 
 naming something about a " Life of Fawcett,"^ to be 
 by you undertaken : the great Fawcett, as she ex- 
 plained to Manning, when he asked, " What FaW' 
 cett ?" He innocently thought Fawcett the Player. 
 But Fawcett the divine is known to many people, 
 albeit unknown to the Chinese inquirer. I should 
 think, if you liked it, and Johnson declined it, that 
 Phillips^ is the man. He is perpetually bringing out 
 biographies, — Richardson, Wilks, Foot, Lee Lewis, — • 
 without number : little trim things in two easy 
 volumes, price 125. the two, made up of letters to 
 and from, scraps, posthumous trifles, anecdotes, and 
 about forty pages of hard biography. You might dish 
 up a Fawcettiad in three months, and ask ;^6o or 
 ;^8o for it. I should dare say that Phillips would 
 catch at it. I wrote to you the other day in a great 
 hurry. Did you get it ? This is merely a letter of 
 business at Godwin's request. Lord Nelson is quiet 
 at last. His ghost only keeps a slight fluttering in 
 odes and elegies in newspapers, and impromptus, 
 which could not be got ready before the funeral. 
 
 As for news, Fenwick is coming to town on Mon- 
 day (if no kind angel intervene) to surrender himself 
 to prison. He hopes to get the rules of the Fleet. 
 On the same, or nearly the same day, Fell, my other 
 quondam co-friend and drinker, will go to Newgate, 
 and his wife and four children, I suppose, to the 
 parish. Plenty of reflection and motives of gratitude 
 to the wise Disposer of all things in us, whose 
 prudent conduct has hitherto ensured us a warm fire 
 and snue: roof over our heads. Nidhim nunien abest 
 
 ' Joseph Fawcett, Esq., one of Hazlitt's earliest friends. — H. 
 2 Richard Phillips, publisher, 71, St. Paul's Churchyard. — H.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE HAZLITTS. 257 
 
 si sit Prudentia. Alas ! Prudentia is in the last 
 quarter of her tutelary shining over me. A little 
 
 time and I ; but maybe I may, at last, hit upon 
 
 some mode of collecting some of the vast superfluities 
 of this money-voiding town. Much is to be got, and 
 I do not want much. All I ask is time and leisure ; 
 and I am cruelly off for them. When you have the 
 inclination, I shall be very glad to have a letter from 
 you. Your brother and Mrs. H., I am afraid, think 
 hardly of us for not coming oftener to see them; but 
 we are distracted beyond what they can conceive with 
 visitors and visitings. I never have an hour for my 
 head to work quietly its own workings ; which you 
 know is as necessary to the human system as sleep. 
 Sleep, too, I can't get for these winds of a night : 
 and without sleep and rest what should ensue ? 
 Lunacy. But I trust it won't. 
 
 Yours, deal H., C. Lamb. 
 
 Letter CLXIL] Feb. 19th, 1806. 
 
 Dear H., — Godwin has just been here in his way 
 from Johnson's. Johnson has had a fire in his 
 house; this happened about five weeks ago; it was 
 in the day time, so it did not burn the house down, 
 but it did so much damage that the house must come 
 down, to be repaired. His nephew that we met on 
 Hampstead Hill put it out. Well, this fire has put 
 him so back, that he craves one more month before 
 he gives you an answer. I will certainly goad God- 
 win (if necessary) to go again this very day four weeks ; 
 but I am confident he will want no goading. Three 
 or four most capital auctions of pictures are adver- 
 
 VOL. II. s
 
 258 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE HAZLITTS. 
 
 tised : in May, Wellbore Ellis Agar's, the first private 
 collection in England, so Holcroft says ; in March, 
 Sir George Young's in Stratford Place, (where Cosway 
 lives,) and a Mr. Hulse's at Blackheath, both very 
 capital collections, and have been announced for 
 some months. Also the Marquis of Lansdowne's 
 pictures in March; and though inferior to mention, 
 lastly, the Tructhsessian Gallery. Don't your mouth 
 water to be here? T'other night Loftus^ called, 
 whom we have not seen since you went before. We 
 meditate a stroll next Wednesday, fast-day. He 
 happened to light upon Mr. Holcroft, wife, and 
 daughter, their first visit at our house. Your brother 
 called last night. We keep up our intimacy. He is 
 going to begin a large Madonna and child from Mrs. 
 H. and baby. I fear he goes astray after ignes fatui. 
 He is a clever man. By the by, I saw a miniature 
 of his as far excelling any in his show cupboard (that 
 of your sister not excepted) as that show cupboard 
 excels the show things you see in windows — an old 
 woman, (d . . n her name !) but most superlative; he 
 has it to clean — I'll ask him the name — but the best 
 miniature I ever saw. But for oil pictures ! — what 
 has he to do with Madonnas ? If the Virgin Mary 
 were alive and visitable, he would not hazard himself 
 in a Covent Garden pit-door crowd to see her. It 
 isn't his style of beauty, is it ? But he will go on 
 painting things he ought not to paint, and not 
 painting things he ought to paint. Manning is not 
 gone to China, but talks of going this Spring. God 
 forbid ! Coleridge not heard of. I am going to leave 
 
 1 Mr. Hazlitt's cousin. The Rev. W. Hazlitt married Miss Loftus, 
 of Wisbeach, ar.d tliis gentleman was her brother's child. — H.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE HAZLITTS. 259 
 
 off smoke. In the meantime I am so smoky with 
 last night's ten pipes, that I must leave off. Mary 
 begs her kind remembrances. Pray write to us. 
 This is no letter ; but I supposed you grew anxious 
 about Johnson. 
 
 N.B. — Have taken a room at three shillings a-week, 
 to be in between five and eight at night, to avoid my 
 nocturnal, alias knock -eternal, visitors. The first- 
 fruits of my retirement has been a farce, which goes 
 to manager to-morrow. Wish my ticket luck. God 
 bless you ; and do write. — Yours, fwnosissimus, 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 
 Letter CLXIII.] March 15th, 1806. 
 
 Dear H., — I am a little surprised at no letter from 
 you. This day week, to wit, Saturday, the 8th of 
 March, 1806, I booked off by the Wem coach, Bull 
 and Mouth Inn, directed to yotc, at the Rev. Mr. 
 Hazlitt's, Wem, Shropshire, a parcel containing, be- 
 sides a book, &c., a rare print, which I take to be a 
 Titian ; begging the said W. H. to acknowledge the 
 receipt thereof; which he not having done, I con- 
 clude the said parcel to be lying at the inn, and may 
 be lost ; for which reason, lest you may be a Wales- 
 hunting at this instant, I have authorized any of your 
 family, whosoever first gets this, to open it, that so 
 precious a parcel may not moulder away for want of 
 looking after. 
 
 What do you in Shropshire when so many fine 
 
 s 2
 
 26o CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE HAZLITTS. 
 
 pictures are a-going a-going every day in London ? 
 Monday I visit the Marquis of Lansdowne's, in 
 Berkeley Square. Catalogue 25. 6d. Leonardos in 
 plenty. Some other day this week I go to see Sir 
 Wm. Young's, in Stratford Place. Hulse's, of Black- 
 heath, are also to be sold this month ; and in May, 
 the first private collection in Europe, Welbore Ellis 
 Agar's, And there are you, perverting Nature "in 
 lying landscapes, filched from old rusty Titians, such 
 as I can scrape up here to send you, with an addita- 
 ment from Shropshire Nature thrown in to make the 
 whole look unnatural. I am afraid of your mouth 
 watering when I tell you that Manning and I got 
 into Angerstein's on Wednesday. MonDieu! Such 
 Claudes ! Four Claudes bought for more than 
 ;;f 10,000 ; (those who talk of Wilson being equal to 
 Claude are either mainly ignorant or stupid;) one 
 of these was perfectly miraculous. What colours 
 short oi bond fide sunbeams it could be painted in, I 
 am not earthly colourman enough to say ; but I did 
 not think it had been in the possibility of things. 
 Then, a music piece by Titian, a thousand-pound 
 picture, five figures standing behind a piano, the 
 sixth playing — none of the heads, as M. observed, in- 
 dicating great men, or affecting it, but so sweetly dis- 
 posed — all leaning separate ways, but so easy — like 
 a flock of some divine shepherd ; the colouring, like 
 the economy of the picture, so sweet and harmonious 
 — as good as Shakspeare's Twelfth Night, almost, 
 that is. It will give you a love of order, and cure 
 you of restless, fidgety passions for a week after — 
 more musical than the music which it would, but 
 cannot, yet in a manner does, show. I have no room 
 for the rest. Let me say, Angerstein sits in a room
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE HAZLITTS. 261 
 
 — his Study (only that and the library are shown), 
 when he writes a common letter, as I am doing, 
 surrounded with twenty pictures worth £"60,000. 
 What a luxury ! Apicius and Heliogabalus, hide 
 your dimished heads ! 
 
 Yours, my dear painter, 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 
 . Mr. Wm. Hazlitt, 
 
 Wem, Shropshire. 
 In his absence, to be opened immediately. 
 
 Letter CLXIV.] nth Dec, [1806.J 
 
 TO MRS. HAZLITT. 
 
 Don't mind this being a queer letter. I am in 
 haste, and taken up by visitors, condolers, &c. 
 
 God bless you. 
 
 Dear Sarah, — Mary is a little cut at the ill success 
 of iV/r. f/., which came out last night and failed. I 
 know you'll be sorry, but never mind. We are deter- 
 mined not to be cast down. I am going to leave off 
 tobacco, and then we must thrive. A smoking man 
 must write smoky farces. 
 
 Mary is pretty well, but I persuaded her to let me 
 write. We did not apprise you of the coming out of 
 Mr. H. for fear of ill luck. You were much better out 
 of the house. If it had taken, your partaking of our 
 good luck would have been one of our greatest joys. As 
 it is, we shall expect you at the time you mentioned. 
 But whenever you come you shall be most welcome. 
 God bless you, dear Sarah, 
 
 Yours most truly, C. L. 
 
 Mary is by no means unwell, but I made her let 
 me write.
 
 262 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE HAZLITTS. 
 
 Letter CLXV.] [No date ; about 1 801.] 
 
 My dear Miss Stoddart,^— Mary has written so fully 
 to you that I have nothing to add but that in all 
 the kindness she has exprest, and loving desire to 
 see you again, I bear my full part. You will per- 
 haps like to tear this half from the sheet, and give 
 your brother only his strict due, the remainder. So 
 I will just repay your late kind letter with this short 
 postscript^ to hers. Come over here, and let us all 
 be merry again. 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 
 Letter CLXVL] Temple, i 8th February, 1808. 
 
 Sir, — I am truly concerned that any mistake of 
 mine should have caused you uneasiness, but I hope 
 we have got a clue to William's absence, which may 
 clear up all apprehensions. The people where he 
 lodges in town have received direction from him to 
 forward some linen to a place called Winterslow, in 
 the county of Wilts, (not far from Salisbury,) where 
 the lady** lives, whose cottage, pictured upon a card, 
 if you opened my letter you have doubtless seen ; and 
 though we have had no explanation of the mystery 
 since, we shrewdly suspect that at the time of writing 
 that letter which has given you all this trouble, a 
 certain son of yours (who is both painter and author) 
 was at her elbow, and did assist in framing that very 
 cartoon which was sent to amuse and mislead us in 
 
 1 Miss Stodclart was now staying with her brother at Malta. — H. 
 
 2 This is a postscript to a long letter from Miss Lamb to Miss 
 Stoddart. — H. 
 
 8 Miss Stoddart, afterwards Mrs. Hazlitt. — H.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE HAZLITTS. 263 
 
 town, as to the real place of his destination. And 
 some words at the back of the said cartoon, which 
 we had not marked so narrowly before, by the simi- 
 larity of the handwriting to William's, do very much 
 confirm the suspicion. If our theory be right, they 
 have had the pleasure of their jest, and I am afraid 
 you have paid for it in anxiety. But I hope your un- 
 easiness will now be removed, and you will pardon a 
 suspense occasioned by Love, who does so many 
 worse mischiefs every day. 
 
 The letter to the people where William lodges says, 
 moreover, that he shall be in town in a fortnight. 
 
 My sister joins in respects to you and Airs. Hazlitt, 
 
 and in our kindest remembrances and wishes for the 
 
 restoration of Peggy's health, 
 
 I am, Sir, your humble servant, 
 
 Cn. Lamb. 
 Rev. W. Hazlitt, fVem, Shropshire. 
 
 Letter CLXVIL] Saturday, Dec. loth, 1808. 
 
 There came this morning a printed Prospectus 
 from " S. T. Coleridge, Grasmere," of a Weekly 
 Paper, to be called The Friend; a flaming Pro- 
 spectus. I have no time to give the heads of it. To 
 commence the first Saturday in January, There 
 came also notice of a turkey from Mr. Clarkson, 
 which I am more sanguine in expecting the accom- 
 plishment of than I am of Coleridge's prophecy. 
 
 C. Lamb.^ 
 
 Mrs. Hazlitt, Wintersloiu, 
 near Sarum, Wilts. 
 
 ' This is a postscript to a letter of Mary Lamb's. — F.
 
 264 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE HAZLITTS. 
 
 Letter CLXIX.] [August 9th, 1810]. 
 
 Dear H., — Epistemon is not well. Our pleasant 
 excursion has ended sadly for one of us. You will 
 guess I mean my sister. She got home very well, (I 
 was very ill on the journey,) and continued so till 
 Monday night, when her complaint came on, and she 
 is now absent from home. 
 
 I am glad to hear you are all well. I think I 
 shall be mad if I take any more journeys, with two 
 experiences against it. I found all well here. Kind 
 remembrances to Sarah, — have just got her letter. 
 
 H. Robinson has been to Blenheim. He says you 
 will be sorry to hear that we should not have asked 
 for the Titian Gallery there. One of his friends 
 knew of it, and asked to see it. It is never shown 
 but to those who inquire for it. 
 
 The pictures are all Titians, Jupiter and Ledas, 
 Mars and Venuses, &c., all naked pictures, which 
 may be a reason they don't show them to females. 
 But he says they are very fine ; and perhaps they are 
 shown separately to put another fee into the shower's 
 pocket. Well, I shall never see it. 
 
 I have lost all wish for sights. God bless you. I 
 shall be glad to see you in London. 
 
 Yours truly, C. Lamb. 
 
 Thursday. 
 
 Mr. Hazlitt, fVinters/oav, near Salisbury, 
 
 Letter CLXX.] 
 
 Dear Hazlitt, — I sent you on Saturday a Cobbett, 
 containing your reply to the Edinburgh Review ^
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE HAZLITTS. 265 
 
 which I thought you would be glad to receive as an 
 example of attention on the part of Mr. Cobbett to 
 insert it so speedily. Did you get it ? We have 
 received your pig, and return you thanks ; it will be 
 dressed in due form, with appropriate sauce, this day. 
 Mary has been very ill indeed since you saw her ; 
 that is, as ill as she can be to remain at home. But 
 she is a good deal better now, owing to a very careful 
 regimen. She drinks nothing but water, and never 
 goes out; she does not even go to the Captain's.^ 
 Her indisposition has been ever since that night you 
 left town; the night Miss W[ordsworth] came. 
 
 Her coming, and that d d Mrs. Godwin coming 
 
 and staying so late that night, so overset her that 
 she lay broad awake all that night, and it was by a 
 miracle that she escaped a very bad illness, which 
 I thoroughly expected. I have made up niy mind that 
 she shall never have any one in the house again with 
 her, and that no one shall sleep with her, not even 
 for a night; for it is a very serious thing to be always 
 living with a kind of fever upon her ; and therefore I 
 am sure you will take it in good part if I say that if 
 Mrs. Hazlitt comes to town at any time, however 
 glad we shall be to see her in the day-time, I cannot 
 ask her to spend a night under our roof. Some 
 decision we must come to, for the harassing fever 
 that we have both been in, owing to Miss Words- 
 worth's coming, is not to be borne ; and I would rather 
 be dead than so alive. However, at present, owing to 
 a regimen and medicines which Tuthill has given 
 her, who very kindly volunteer'd the care of her, she 
 is a great deal quieter, though too much harassed by 
 company, who cannot or will not see how late hours 
 and society teaze her.
 
 266 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE HAZLITTS. 
 
 Poor Phillips had the cup dash'd out of his lips 
 as it were. He had every prospect of the situation, 
 when about ten days since one of the council of the 
 
 R Society started for the place himself, being a 
 
 rich merchant who lately failed, and he will certainly 
 be elected on Friday next. P. is very sore and 
 miserable about it. 
 
 Coleridge is in town, or at least at Hammersmith. 
 He is writing or going to write in the Courier against 
 Cobbett, and in favour of paper money. 
 
 No news. Remember me kindly to Sarah. I write 
 from the office. 
 
 Yours ever, 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 
 Wednesday, i%th Nov. 1810. 
 
 I just open'd it to say the pig, upon proof, hath 
 turned out as good as I predicted. My fauces yet 
 retain the sweet porcine odour. I find you have 
 received the Cobbett. I think your paper complete. 
 
 Mrs. Reynolds, who is a sage woman, approves of 
 he pig. 
 
 Mr. Hazlitt, 
 
 Wlnterslonv, near Salisbury, Wilts. 
 
 Letter CLXXI.] 2nd Oct. 1811.1 
 
 Dear Hazlitt,— I cannot help accompanying my 
 
 sister's congratulations to Sarah with some of my 
 
 own to you on this happy occasion of a man child 
 
 being born.^ 
 
 Delighted fancy already sees him some future
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE HAZLITTS. 267 
 
 rich alderman or opulent merchant, painting perhaps 
 a little in his leisure hours, for amusement, like the 
 late H. Bunbury, Esq. 
 
 Pray, are the Winterslow estates entailed? I am 
 afraid lest the young dog when he grows up should 
 cut down the woods, and leave no groves for widows 
 to take their lonesome solace in. The Wem estate of 
 course can only devolve on him in case of your 
 brother's^ leaving no male issue. 
 
 Well, my blessing and heaven's be upon him, and 
 make him like his father, with something a better 
 temper, and a smoother head of hair ; and then all 
 the men and women must love him. 
 
 Martin and the card-boys join in congratulations. 
 Love to Sarah. Sorry we are not within candle- 
 shot. 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 If the widow be assistant on this notable occasion, 
 give our due respects and kind remembrances to 
 her. 
 
 Mr. Haz/itt, Winterslow, 
 near Sarum, Wilts. 
 
 Letter CLXXIL] 27th August. 
 
 Dear Knight, Old Acquaintance, — 'Tis with a 
 violence to the pure imagination {vide the " Excur- 
 sion" passim) that I can bring myself to believe I am 
 writing to Dr. Stoddart once again at Malta ; but the 
 deductions of severe reason warrant the proceeding. 
 I wrote from Enfield, where we are seriously weighing 
 the advantages of dulness over the over-excitement 
 
 ' Sir John Stoddart. — H.
 
 268 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE HA2LITTS. 
 
 of too much company, but have not yet come to a 
 conclusion. What is the news ? for we see no paper 
 here ; perhaps you can send us an old one from 
 Malta. Only I heard a butcher in the market-place 
 whisper something about a change of ministry. I 
 don't know who's in or out, nor do I care, only as it 
 might affect joM. For domestic tidings, I have only 
 to tell you with extreme regret that poor Eliza Fen- 
 wick (that was), Mrs. Rutherford, is dead, and that 
 we have received a most heart-broken letter from her 
 mother, left with four grandchildren, orphans of a 
 living scoundrel, lurking about the pot-houses of 
 Little Russell Street, London : they and she (God 
 help 'em !) at New York. I have just received God- 
 win's 3rd volume of the Republic, which only reaches 
 to the commencement of the Protectorate. I think 
 he means to spin it out to his life's thread. 
 
 Have you seen Fearn's Anti-Tooke ? I am no 
 judge of such things ; you are ; but I think it very 
 clever indeed. If I knew your bookseller, I'd order 
 it for you at a venture ; 2 octavos, Longman & Co. 
 Or do you read now ? Tell it not in the Admiralty 
 Court, but my head aches hcsterno vino. I can scarce 
 pump up words, much less ideas, congruous to be 
 sent so far, but your son must have this by to-night's 
 post. I am sorry to say that he does not conduct 
 himself so well as we could wish. He absented him- 
 self four days this week (this is Thursday) from the 
 Charter House, and was found tippling at an obscure 
 public-house at Barnet with a chorus singer of the 
 Coburg Theatre. Mr. Hine and I with difficulty got 
 him away : but Dr. Raine, the head master, hushed 
 it up with a slight imposition, viz. the translation of 
 Gray's Elegy into Greek Elegiacs, which I partly 
 
 <
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE HAZLITTS. 26g 
 
 did for him. I write this with reluctance to offend 
 the feelings of a father ; I might a' been one, if * * 
 * * * had let me. Manning is gone to Rome, 
 Naples, &c., probably to touch at Sicily, Malta, 
 Guernsey, &c. ; but I don't know the map. Hazlitt 
 is resident at Paris, whence he issues his lampoons 
 in safety at his friends in England. He has his boy 
 with him. I am teaching Emma Latin. By the 
 time you can answer this, she will be qualified to 
 instruct young ladies. She is a capital English 
 reader, and S. T. C. acknowledges that part of a 
 passage in Milton she read better than he, and part 
 he read best : her part being the shortest. But 
 seriously, if Lady St[oddart] (oblivious pen, that 
 was about to write Mrs.) could hear of such a young 
 person wanted, (she smatters French, some Italian, 
 music, of course,) we'd send our loves by her. My 
 congratulations and assurance of old esteem. 
 
 C. L. 
 
 Sir J Stoddart. Knight, 
 H. M. Chief Justice, 
 Malta. 
 
 Letter CLXXIIL] [November, 1823.] 
 
 Dear Mrs. H., — Sitting down to write a letter is 
 such a painful operation to Mary, that you must 
 accept me as her proxy. You have seen our house. 
 What I now tell you is literally true. Yesterday 
 week George Dyer called upon us, at one o'clock,
 
 9- 
 
 270 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE HAZLITTS. 
 
 [bright noonday,) on his way to dine with Mrs. Bar- 
 bauld at Newington. He sat with Mary about half 
 an hour, and took leave. The maid saw him go out, 
 from her kitchen window, but suddenly losing sight 
 of him, ran up in a fright to Msivy. G. D., instead 
 of keeping the slip that leads to the gate, had 
 deliberately, staff in hand, in broad open day, 
 marched into the New River. He had not his spec- 
 tacles on, and you know his absence. Who helped 
 him out they can hardly tell, but between 'em they 
 got him out, drenched thro' and thro'. A mob 
 collected by that time, and accompanied him in. 
 " Send for the Doctor," they said : and a one-eyed 
 fellow, dirty and drunk, was fetched from the public 
 house at the end, where it seems he lurks, for the 
 sake of picking up water practice ; having formerly 
 had a medal from the Humane Society for some 
 rescue. By his advice the patient was put between 
 blankets; and when I came home at 4 to dinner, I 
 found G. D. a-bed, and raving, light-headed, with the 
 brandy and water which the doctor had administered. 
 He sang, laughed, whimpered, screamed, babbled 
 of guardian angels, would get up and go home ; but 
 we kept him there by force ; and by next morning he 
 departed sober, and seems to have received no injury. 
 All my friends are open-mouth'd about having paling 
 before the river; but I cannot see, that because a 
 lunatic chooses to walk into a river with his eyes 
 open at mid day, I am any the more likely to be 
 drowned in it, coming home at midnight. 
 
 I had the honour of dining at the Mansion 
 House on Thursday last by special card from the 
 Lord Mayor, who never saw my face, nor I his ; and 
 all from being a writer in a magazine. The dinner
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE HAZLITTS. 27 1 
 
 costly, served on massy plate ; champagne, pines, 
 &c. ; 47 present, among whom the Chairman and 
 two other directors of the India Company. 
 
 There's for you ! and_got_away:g£gyy_sober. Quite 
 saved my credit. " 
 
 We continue to like our house prodigiously. 
 
 Does Mary Hazlitt^ go on with her novel ? or has 
 she begun another ? I would not discourage her, 
 though we continue to think it (so far) in its present 
 state not saleable. Our kind remembrances to her 
 and hers, and you and yours. 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 
 I am pleased that H. liked my letter to the 
 Laureat. 
 
 Mrs. Hazlitt, 
 
 Alphington, near Exeter. 
 
 Letter CLXXI v.] [March 4, 1830.] 
 
 Dear Sarah, — I was meditating to come and see 
 you, but I am unable for the walk. We are both very 
 unwell, and under affliction for poor Emma, who has 
 had a very dangerous brain fever, and is lying very 
 ill at Bury, from whence I expect a summons to 
 fetch her. We are very sorry for your confinement. 
 Any books I have are at your service. I am almost, 
 I may say quite sure, that letters to India pay no 
 postage, and may go by the regular Post Office, now 
 in St. Martin' les Grand. I think any receiving 
 house would take them. I wish I could confirm your 
 hopes about Dick Norris. But it is quite a dream, 
 
 • The second daughter of Mr. John Hazlitt. — H,
 
 272 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE HAZLITTS. 
 
 Some old Bencher of his surname is made Treasurer 
 for the year, I suppose, which is an annual office. 
 Norris was Sub-Treasurer, quite a different thing. 
 They were pretty well in the Summer ; since when 
 we have heard nothing of them. 
 
 Mrs. Reynolds is better than she has been for 
 years. She is with a disagreeable woman that she 
 has taken a mighty fancy to, out of spite to a rival 
 woman she used to live and quarrel with. She grows 
 quite /a^, they tell me, and may live as long as I do, 
 to be a tormenting rent-charge to my diminished in- 
 come.^ We go on pretty comfortably in our new 
 place. I will come and have a talk with you when 
 poor Emma's affair is settled, and will bring books. 
 At present I am weak, and could hardly bring my 
 legs home yesterday after a much shorter stroll than 
 to Northaw. Mary has got her bonnet on for a short 
 expedition. May you get better, as the Spring comes 
 on. She sends her best love 
 
 With mine, C. L. 
 
 Mrs. Hazlitt. 
 Mrs. Tomlinson's, 
 
 Northaw, near Patterns Bar, Herts. 
 
 Letter CLXXV.] May 24th, 1830. 
 
 Mary's love ? Yes. Mary Lamb is quite well. 
 
 Enfield, Saturday. 
 
 Dear Sarah, — I found my way to Northaw on 
 Thursday, and saw a very good woman behind a 
 counter, who says also that you are a very good lady. 
 
 ' Lamb allowed Mrs. Reynolds a pension of small amount. — H.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE HA2LITTS. 273 
 
 I did not accept her offered glass of wine, (home- 
 made, I take it,) but craved a cup of ale, with which I 
 seasoned a slice of cold lamb, from a sandwich box, 
 which I ate in her back parlour, and proceeded for 
 Berkhampstead, &c. ; lost myself over a heath, and 
 had a day's pleasure. I wish you could walk as I do, 
 and as you used to do. I am sorry to find you are so 
 poorly ; and, now I have found my way, I wish you 
 back at Goody Tomlinson's. What a pretty village 
 'tis 1 I should have come sooner, but was waiting a 
 summons to Bury. Well, it came ; and I found the 
 good parson's lady (he was from home) exceedingly 
 hospitable. 
 
 Poor Emma, the first moment we were alone, took 
 me into a corner, and said, " Now, pray, don't drink ; 
 do check yourself after dinner, for my sake, and when 
 we get home to Enfield you shall drink as much as 
 ever you please, and I won't say a word about it." 
 How I behaved, you may guess, when I tell you that 
 Mrs. Williams and I have written acrostics on each 
 other, and she hoped that she should have " no reason 
 to regret Miss Isola's recovery, by its depriving her 
 of our begun correspondence." Emma stayed a 
 month with us, and has gone back (in tolerable 
 health) to her long home, for she comes not again 
 for a twelvemonth. I amused Mrs. Williams with 
 an occurrence on our road to Enfield.^ We travelled 
 with one of those troublesome fellow-passengers in a 
 stage coach, that is called a well-inform'd man. For 
 twenty miles we discoursed about the properties of 
 steam, probabilities of carriage by ditto, till all my 
 
 ' This little anecdote is told by Lamb in another letter, but not quite 
 so richly as here. — T, 
 
 VOL. II. T
 
 274 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE HAZLITTS. 
 
 science, and more than all, was exhausted, and I was 
 thinking of escaping my torment by getting up on 
 the outside, when, getting into Bishops Stortford, my 
 gentleman, spying some farming land, put an unlucky 
 question to me: "What sort of a crop of turnips do 
 you think we shall have this year ?" Emma's eyes 
 turned to me, to know what in the world I could have 
 to say ; and she burst into a violent fit of laughter, 
 maugre her pale, serious cheeks, when, with the 
 greatest gravity, I replied, that " it depends, I 
 believe, upon boiled legs of mutton." This clenched 
 our conversation ; and my gentleman, with a face 
 half wise, half in scorn, troubled us with no more 
 conversation, scientific or philosophical, for the re- 
 mainder of our journey. Ayrton was here yesterday, 
 and as learned to the full as my fellow-traveller. 
 What a pity that he will spoil a wit and a devilish 
 pleasant fellow (as he is) by wisdom. He talked on 
 music, and by having read Hawkins and Burney 
 recently, I was enabled to talk of names, and show 
 more knowledge than he had suspected I possessed; 
 and in the end he begged me to shape my thoughts 
 upon paper, which I did after he was gone, and sent 
 him 
 FREE THOUGHTS ON SOME EMINENT COMPOSERS. 
 
 Some ciy up Haydn, some Mozart, 
 Just as the whim bites. For my part, 
 I do not care a farthing candle 
 For either of them, or for Handel, &c.' 
 
 Martin Burney^ is as good and as odd as ever. 
 
 ' See the Poetical pieces. 
 
 * A very old and dear friend of Lamb's, who had just been called to 
 the Bar.— T.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE HAZLITTS. 275 
 
 We had a dispute about the word " heir," which I 
 contended was pronounced like " air." He said that 
 might be in common parlance; or that we might so 
 use it, speaking of the " Heir at Law," a comedy; 
 but that in the law courts it was necessary to give it a 
 full aspiration, and to say Hay er ; he thought it might 
 even vitiate a cause, if a counsel pronounced it other- 
 wise. In conclusion, he "would consult Serjeant 
 Wilde ; " who gave it against him. Sometimes he 
 falleth into the water; sometimes into the fire. He 
 came down here, and insisted on reading Virgil's 
 " Eneid " all through with me, (which he did,) 
 because a Counsel must know Latin. Another time 
 he read out all the Gospel of St. John, because 
 Biblical quotations are very emphatic in a Court of 
 Justice. A third time he would carve a fowl, which 
 he did very ill-favouredly, because " we did not know 
 how indispensable it was for a barrister to do all 
 those things well ? Those little things were of more 
 consequence than we supposed." So he goes on, 
 harassing about the way to prosperity, and losing it ; 
 with a long head, but somewhat a wrong one- 
 harum-scarum. Why does not his guardian angel 
 look to him ? He deserves one : may be he has tired 
 him out. 
 
 I am tired with this long scrawl, but I thought in 
 your exile you might like a letter. Commend me to 
 all the wonders in Derbyshire ; and tell the devil I 
 humbly kiss my — hand to him. 
 
 Yours ever, C. Lamb. 
 
 London, May z^tb, 1830. 
 Mrs. Hazlitt, 
 
 Mr. Broomhead's, 
 
 St. Anne's Square, Buxton. 
 
 T 2
 
 276 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE HAZLITTS. 
 
 Letter CLXXVL] Junes, 1830. 
 
 Dear Sarah, — I named your thought about William' 
 to his father, who expressed such horror and aver- 
 sion to the idea of his singing in public, that I 
 cannot meddle in it directly or indirectly. Ayrton is a 
 kind fellow ; and if you chuse to consult him by letter, 
 or otherwise, he will give you the best advice, I am 
 sure, very readily. / have no doubt that M. Burney's 
 objection to interfering was the same with mine. With 
 thanks for your pleasant long letter, which is not that 
 of an invalid, and sympathy for your sad sufferings, 
 I remain, in haste, 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 Mary's kindest love. [No Signature.] 
 
 Mrs. HazUtt, at Mr. Broomheais, 
 St. Anne's Square, Buxton. 
 
 Letter CLXXVII.] May 31st, 1833. 
 
 Dear Mrs. Hazlitt, — I will assuredly come and find 
 you out when I am better. I am driven from house 
 to house by Mary's illness. I took a sudden resolu- 
 tion to take my sister to Edmonton, where she was 
 under medical treatment last time, and have arranged 
 to board and lodge with the people. Thank God, I 
 have repudiated Enfield. I have got out of hell, 
 despair of heaven, and must sit down contented in a 
 half-way purgatory. Thus ends this strange eventful 
 history. But I am nearer town, and will get up to 
 you somehow before long. 
 
 • A suggestion of Mrs. Hazlitt's that her son should be placed with 
 Braham, the singer. — H.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE HAZLITTS. 277 
 
 I repent not of my resolution. 'Tis late, and my 
 hand is unsteady ; so good bye till we meet, 
 
 Your old C. L. 
 
 Mr. Walden's, 
 
 Church Street, Edmonton. 
 
 Mrs. Hazlitt, No. 4, Palace Street, Pimlico. 
 
 Letter CLXXVIIL] [1833.] 
 
 My dear William, — I am very uncomfortable, and 
 when Emma leaves me I shall wish to be quite 
 alone ; therefore pray tell your mother I regret that 
 I cannot see her here this time, but hope to see her 
 when times are better with me. The young ladies 
 are very pleasant, but my spirits have much ado to 
 keep pace with theirs. I decidedly wish to be alone, 
 or I know of none I should rather see than your 
 mother. Make my best excuse. Emma will explain 
 to you the state of my wretched spirits. 
 
 Yours, C. Lamb, -j 
 
 / When I am wretched, company makes me tenfold / 
 
 /_more so. — ' 
 
 Mr. Wm. Hazlitt, jun,, 
 
 36, Southampton Buildings, Holborn ; 
 
 Or at the Southampton Arms,
 
 ( 278 ) 
 
 VI. 
 
 Correspondence with Bernard Barton. 
 
 Letter CLXXIX.] India House, nth Sept. 1822. 
 
 Dear Sir, — You have misapprehended me sadly, if 
 you suppose that I meant to impute any incon- 
 sistency in your writing poetry with your religious 
 profession. I do not remember what I said, but it 
 was spoken sportively, I am sure — one of my levities, 
 which you are not so used to as my older friends. I 
 probably was thinking of the light in which your so 
 indulging yourself would appear to Quakers, and put 
 their objection in my own foolish mouth. I would 
 eat my words (provided they should be written on not 
 very coarse paper) rather than I would throw cold 
 water upon your, and my once, harmless occupation. 
 
 I have read "Napoleon" and the rest with delight. 
 I like them for what they are, and for what they are 
 not. I hafve sickened on the modern rhodomontade 
 and Byronism, and your plain Quakerish beauty has 
 captivated me. It is all wholesome cates ; ay, and 
 toothsome too ; and withal Quakerish. If I were 
 George Fox, and George Fox licenser of the press, 
 they should have my absolute imprimatur. I hope I 
 have removed the impression. 
 
 I am, like you, a prisoner to the desk. I have been 
 chained to that galley thirty years, — a long shot. I 
 have almost grown to the wood. If no imasfinative
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 279 
 
 poet, I am sure I am a figurative one. Do " Friends" 
 allow puns ? verbal equivocations ? They are unjustly 
 accused of it ; and I did my little best in the " Im- 
 perfect Sympathies" to vindicate them. I am very 
 tired of clerking it, but have no remedy. Did you 
 see a Sonnet to this purpose in the Examiner ? — 
 
 " Who first invented work, and bound the free 
 And holy-day rejoicing spirit down 
 To the ever-haunting importunity 
 Of business, in the green fields and the town. 
 To plough, loom, anvil, spade ; and oh, most sad. 
 To that dry drudgery at the desk's dead wood? 
 Who but the being unblest, alien from good, 
 Sabbathless Satan! he who his unglad 
 Task ever plies, 'mid rotatory burnings. 
 That round and round incalculably reel ; 
 For wrath Divine hath made him like a wheel 
 In that red realm from which are no returnings; 
 Where, toiling and turmoiling, ever and aye. 
 He and his thoughts keep pensive working-day." 
 
 I fancy the sentiment exprest above v/ill be nearly 
 your own. The expression of it probably would not 
 so well suit with a follower of John Woolman. But 
 I do not know whether diabolism is a part of your 
 creed, or where indeed to find an exposition of your 
 creed at all. In feelings and matters not dogmatical, 
 I hope I am half a Quaker. Believe me, with great 
 respect, yours, C. Lamb. 
 
 I shall always be happy to see or hear from you. 
 
 Letter CLXXX.] East India House, 9th Oct., 1822. 
 
 Dear Sir, — I am ashamed not sooner to have ac- 
 knowledged your letter and poem. I think the latter 
 very temperate, very serious, and very seasonable. I
 
 28o CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 
 
 do not think it will convert the club at Pisa, neither 
 do I think it will satisfy the bigots on our side the 
 water. Something like a parody on the song of Ariel 
 would please them better :• — 
 
 " Full fathom five the Atheist lies, 
 Of his bones are hell-dice made." 
 
 I want time, or fancy, to fill up the rest. I sincerely 
 sympathize with you on your doleful confinement. Of 
 time, health, and riches, the first in order is not last 
 in excellence. Riches are chiefly good because they 
 give us Time. What a weight of wearisome prison 
 hours have I to look back and forward to, as quite cut 
 out of life ! and the sting of the thing is, that for six 
 hours every day I have no business which I could 
 not contract into two, if they would let me work task- 
 work. I shall be glad to hear that your grievance is 
 mitigated. Shelley I saw once. His voice was the 
 most obnoxious squeak I ever was tormented with, 
 ten thousand times worse than the Laureat's, whose 
 voice is the worst part about him, except his Laureat- 
 ship. Lord Byron opens upon him on Monday in a 
 parody (I suppose) of the Vision of judgment, in 
 which latter the Poet I think did not much show his. 
 To award his Heaven and his Hell in the presump 
 tuous manner he has done, was a piece of immodest}- 
 as bad as Shelleyism. 
 
 I am returning a poor letter. I was formerly a great 
 scribbler in that way, but my ^iiand is out of order. 
 If I said my head too, I should not be very much 
 out, but I will tell no tales of myself; I will therefor* 
 end, (after my best thanks, with a hope to see yoi 
 again some time in London,) begging you to accep 
 this letteret for a letter — a leveret makes a bette
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 28 1 
 
 present than a grown hare, and short troubles (as the 
 old excuse goes) are best. 
 
 I hear that Lloyd^ is well, and has returned to 
 his family. I think this will give you pleasure to 
 
 hear. 
 
 I remain, dear sir, yours truly, 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 
 Letter CLXXXL] Dec. 23rd, 1822. 
 
 Dear Sir, — I have been so distracted with business 
 and one thing or other, I have not had a quiet quarter 
 of an hour for epistolary purposes. Christmas, too, 
 is come, which always puts a rattle into my morning 
 skull. It is a visiting, unquiet, unquakerish season. 
 
 CI get more and more in love with solitude, and pro- 
 portionately hampered with company./ I hope you 
 have some holidays at this period. I have one day — 
 Christmas Day ; alas ! too few to commemorate the 
 season. All work and no play dulls me. Company 
 is not play, but many times hard work. To^lay, is 
 for a man to do what he pleases, or to do nothing — to | \/^ 
 go about soothing his particular fancies. I have 
 lived to a time of life to have outlived the good hours, 
 the nine o'clock suppers, with a bright hour or two to 
 clear up in afterwards. Now you cannot get tea 
 before that hour, and then sit gaping, music-bothered 
 perhaps, till half-past twelve brings up the tray ; and 
 
 ' Charles Lloyd, who married one of the Misses Fricker, Mrs. Sou- 
 they's sister. There were three Misses Fricker, milliners at Bristol, 
 one of whom married Lovell, the " Pantisocratist," the second Lloyd^ 
 and a third, Southey. — F.
 
 282 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 
 
 what you steal of convivial enjoyment after, is heavily 
 paid for in the disquiet of to-morrow's head. 
 
 I am pleased with your liking John Woodvil, and 
 
 amused with your knowledge of our drama being 
 
 confined to Shakspeare and Miss Baillie, What a 
 
 < world of fine territory between Land's End and 
 
 \ Johnny Groat's have you missed traversing! I could 
 
 / almost envy you to have so much to read. I feel as 
 
 if I had read all the books I want to read. O to 
 
 forget Fielding, Steele, &c., and read 'em new ! 
 
 Can you tell me a likely place where I could pick 
 up, cheap, Fox's Journal ? There are no Quaker 
 circulating libraries ? Elwood, too, I must have. I 
 rather grudge that S[outhe]y has taken up the history 
 of your people : I am afraid he will put in some 
 levity. I am afraid I ahri not quite exempt from that 
 fault in certain magazine articles, where I have intro- 
 duced mention of them. Were they to do again, I 
 would reform them. Why should not you write a 
 poetical account of your old worthies, deducing them 
 from Fox to Woolman ? But I remember you did talk 
 of something of that kind, as a counterpart to the 
 " Ecclesiastical Sketches." But would not a poem 
 be more consecutive than a string of sonnets ? You 
 have no martyrs quite to the fire, L think, among you ; 
 but plenty of heroic confessors, spirit-martyrs, lamb- 
 lions. Think of it ; it would be better than a series 
 of sonnets on " Eminent Bankers." I like a hit at 
 our way of life, though it does well for me, better 
 than any thing short of all one's time to one's self ; for 
 which alone I rankle with envy at the rich. Books 
 are good, and pictures are good, and money to buy 
 them therefore good ; but to buy time ! in other words, 
 life!
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 
 
 283 
 
 The "compliments of the time" to you should end 
 my letter ; to a Friend, I suppose, I must say the 
 " sincerity of the season ;" I hope they both mean 
 the same. With excuses for this hastily-penned note, 
 believe me, with great respect, 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 
 Letter CLXXXIL] January 9th, 1823. 
 
 "Throw yourself on the world without any rational 
 plan of support, beyond what the chance employ of 
 booksellers would afford you ! ! ! " 
 
 Throw yourself rather, my dear sir, from the steep 
 Tarpeian rock, slap-dash headlong upon iron spikes. 
 If you had but five consolatory minutes between the 
 desk and the bed, make much of them, and live a 
 century in them, rather than turn slave to the book- 
 sellers. They are Turks and Tartars when they 
 have poor authors at their beck. Hitherto you have 
 been at arm's length from them. Come not within 
 their grasp. I have known many authors want for 
 bread, some repining, others envying the blessed 
 security of a counting house, all agreeing they would 
 rather have been tailors, weavers, — what not, rather 
 than the things they were. I have known some 
 starved, some to go mad, one dear friend literally 
 dying in a workhouse. You know not what a 
 rapacious, dishonest set these booksellers are. Ask 
 even Southey, who (a single case almost) has made 
 a fortune by book drudgery, what he has found them. 
 Oh, you know not (may you never know !) the 
 miseries of subsisting by authorship. 'Tis a pretty 
 appendage to a situation like yours or mine ; but a
 
 284 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 
 
 slavery, worse than all slavery, to be a bookseller's 
 dependant, to drudge your brains for pots of ale and 
 breasts of mutton, to change your free thoughts and 
 voluntary numbers for ungracious task-work. Those 
 fellows hate us. The reason I take to be, that con- 
 trary to other trades, in which the master gets all the 
 credit, (a jeweller or silversmith for instance,) and 
 the journeyman, who really does the fine work, is in 
 the back-ground, — in our work the world gives all the 
 credit to us, whom they consider as f//^?V journeymen, 
 and therefore do they hate us, and cheat us, and op- 
 press us, and would wring the blood of us out, to put 
 another sixpence in their mechanic pouches ! I con- 
 tend that a bookseller has a relative honesty towards 
 authors, not like his honesty to the rest of the world. 
 
 B[ Y who first engaged me as " Elia," has 
 
 not paid me up yet, (nor any of us without repeated 
 mortifying appeals,) yet how the knave fawned 
 when I was of service to him ! Yet I dare say the 
 fellow is punctual in settling his milk-score, &c. 
 
 Keep to your bank, and the bank will keep you. 
 Trust not to the public ; you may hang, starve, 
 drown yourself, for any thing that worthy personage 
 cares. I bless every star that Providence, not seeing 
 good to make me independent, has seen it next 
 good to settle me upon the stable foundation of 
 Leadenhall. Sit down, good B. B., in the banking- 
 office. What I is there not from six to eleven p.m. 
 six days in the week, and is there not all Sunday ? 
 Fie, what a superfluity of man's time, if you could 
 think so ! — enough for relaxation, mirth, converse, 
 
 ' Mr. Robert Baldwin, the publisher, afterwards in partnership with 
 Mr. Cradock and Mr. Joy. — H.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 285 
 
 poetry, good thoughts, quiet thoughts. Oh the cor- 
 roding, torturing, tormenting thoughts, that disturb 
 the brain of the unlucky wight who must draw upon 
 it for daily sustenance 1 Henceforth I retract all my 
 fond complaints of mercantile employment ; look 
 upon them as lovers' quarrels. I was but half in 
 earnest. Welcome dead timber of a desk, that makes 
 me live. A little grumbling is a wholesome medicine 
 for the spleen ; but in my inner heart do I approve 
 and embrace this our close but unharassing way of 
 life. I am quite serious. If you can send me Fox, 
 I will not keep it six weeks, and will return it, with 
 warm thanks to yourself and friend, without blot or 
 dog's ear. You will much oblige me by this kindness. 
 Yours truly, C. Lamb. 
 
 Letter CLXXXIIL] February 17th, 1823. 
 
 My dear Sir, — I have read quite through the pon- 
 derous folio of George Fox. I think Sewell has been 
 judicious in omitting certain parts, as for instance 
 where G. F. has revealed to him the natures of all 
 the creatures in their names, as Adam had. He 
 luckily turns aside from that compendious study of 
 natural history, which might have superseded Buffon, 
 to his proper spiritual pursuits, only just hinting 
 what a philosopher he might have been. The 
 ominous passage is near the beginning of the book. 
 It is clear he means a physical knowledge, without 
 trope or figure. Also, pretences to miraculous 
 healing, and the like, are more frequent than I should 
 have suspected from the epitome in Sewell. He is 
 nevertheless a great spiritual man, and I feel very 
 much obliged by your procuring me the loan of it.
 
 286 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 
 
 How I like the Quaker phrases ! — though I think they 
 were hardly completed till Woolman, A pretty little 
 manual of Quaker language (with an endeavour to 
 explain them) might be gathered out of his book. 
 Could not you do it ? I have read through G. F. 
 without finding any explanation of the term first 
 volume in the title-page. It takes in all, both his life 
 and his death. Are there more last words of him ? 
 Pray how may I return it to Mr. Sewell at Ipswich ? 
 I fear to send such a treasure by a stage coach ; not 
 that I am afraid of the coachman or the guard's read- 
 ing it; but it might be lost. Can you put me in a 
 way of sending it in safety ? The kind-hearted owner 
 trusted it to me for six months ; I think I was about 
 as many days in getting through it, and I do not 
 think that I skipped a word of it. I have quoted 
 G. F. in my " Quakers' Meeting," as having said he 
 was " lifted up in spirit," (which I felt at the time 
 to be not a Quaker phrase,) " and the judge and jury 
 were as dead men under his feet." I find no such 
 words in his journal, and I did not get them from 
 Sewell, and the latter sentence I am sure I did not 
 mean to invent : I must have put some other Quaker's 
 words into his mouth. Is it a fatality in me, that 
 every thing I touch turns into " a lie ? " I once 
 quoted two lines from a translation of Dante, which 
 Hazlitt very greatly admired, and quoted in a book 
 as proof of the stupendous power of that poet ; but 
 no such lines are to be found in the translation, 
 which has been searched for the purpose. I must 
 have dreamed them, for I am quite certain I did not 
 forge them knowingly. What a misfortune to have 
 a lying memory ! Yes, I have seen Miss Coleridge, 
 and wish I had just such a daughter. God love her I
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 287 
 
 To think she should have had to toil through five 
 octavos of that cussed (I forget I write to a Quaker) 
 Abbeypony History, and then to abridge them to 
 three, and all for £113!^ — at her years to be doing 
 stupid Jesuits' Latin into English, when she should 
 be reading or writing romances I Heaven send her 
 uncle do not breed her up a Quarterly Reviewer ! 
 which reminds me that he has spoken very respect- 
 fully of you in the last Number, which is the next 
 thing to having a Review all to one's self. Your 
 description of Mr. Mitford's place makes me long for 
 a pippin and some caraways, and a cup of sack in his 
 orchard, when the sweets of the night come in. 
 
 Farewell, C. Lamb. 
 
 Letter CLXXXIV.] March 5th, 1823. 
 
 Dear Sir, — You must think me ill-mannered not to 
 have replied to your first letter sooner, but I have an 
 ugly habit of aversion from letter writing, which 
 makes me an unworthy correspondent. I have had 
 no spring, or cordial call to the occupation of late. I 
 have been not well lately, which must be my lame 
 excuse. Your Poem, which I consider very affecting, 
 found me engaged about a humorous Paper for the 
 London, which I had called " A Letter to an Old 
 Gentleman whose education had been neglected" — 
 
 ' Sara Colerido;e's work, to which Lamb refers, was entitled " An 
 Account of the Abipones, from the Latin of Martin Dobrizhoffer," 
 1821, 3 vols. 8vo. It was edited by Southey. The Abipones are a 
 warlike tribe of Indians, inhabiting the country along the banks of 
 La Plata.— H.
 
 288 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 
 
 and when it was done Taylor and Hessey would not 
 print it, and it discouraged me from doing any thing 
 else ; so I took up Scott, ^ where I had scribbled some 
 petulant remarks, and for a make-shift father'd them 
 on Ritson. It is obvious I could not make your 
 Poem a part of them ; and as I did not know whether 
 I should ever be able to do to my mind what you 
 suggested, I thought it not fair to keep back the 
 verses for the chance. Mr. Mitford's Sonnet I like 
 very well ; but as I also have my reasons against 
 interfering at all with the Editorial arrangement of 
 the London, I transmitted it (not in my own hand- 
 writing) to them, who I doubt not will be glad to 
 insert it. What eventual benefit it can be to you 
 (otherwise than that a kind man's wish is a benefit) 
 I cannot conjecture. Your Society are eminently 
 men of business, and will probably regard you as an 
 idle fellow, possibly disown you ; that is to say, if you 
 had put your own name to a Sonnet of that sort ; but 
 they cannot excommunicate Mr. Mitford ; therefore I 
 thoroughly approve of printing the said verses. 
 When I see any Quaker names to the Concert of 
 Ancient Music, or as Directors of the British Institu- 
 tion, or bequeathing medals to Oxford for the best 
 classical themes, &c., then I shall begin to hope they 
 will emancipate you. But what as a Society can 
 they do for you ? You would not accept a commis- 
 sion in the army, nor they be likely to procure it. 
 Posts in Church or State have they none in their 
 giving; and then, if they disown you, — think — you 
 must live " a man forbid." 
 
 ' Scott's Critical Essays on some of the Poems of several English 
 Poets.— H.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 289 
 
 I wished for you yesterday. I dined in Parnassus/ 
 with Wordsworth, Coleridge, Rogers, and Tom 
 Moore, — half the poetry of England constellated and 
 clustered in Gloucester Place ! It was a delightful 
 evening. Coleridge was in his finest vein of talk — 
 had all the talk ; and let 'em talk as evilly as they do 
 of the envy of poets, I am sure not one there but was 
 content to be nothing but a listener. The Muses 
 were dumb while Apollo lectured on his and their 
 fine art. It is a lie that poets are envious. I have 
 known the best of them, and can speak to it, that 
 they give each other their merits, and are the kindest 
 critics as well as best authors. I am scribbling a 
 muddy epistle with an aching head, for we did not 
 quaff Hippocrene last night ; marry, it was hippocrass 
 rather. Pray accept this as a letter in the meantime, 
 and do me the favour to mention my respects to Mr. 
 Mitford, who is so good as to entertain good thoughts 
 of Elia, but don't show this almost impertinent 
 scrawl. I will write more respectfully next time, for 
 believe me, if not in words, in feelings yours most 
 so. C. L. 
 
 Letter CLXXXV.] March nth, 1823. 
 
 Dear Sir, — The approbation of my little book by 
 your sister is very pleasing to me. The Quaker 
 incident did not happen to me, but to Carlisle the 
 surgeon, from whose mouth I have twice heard it, at 
 an interval of ten or twelve years, with little or no 
 variation, and have given it as exactly as I could 
 remember it. The gloss which youi sister or vou 
 
 VOL. II. u
 
 290 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 
 
 have put upon it does not strike me as correct. 
 Carlisle drew no inference from it against the honesty 
 of the Quakers, but only in favour of their surpassing 
 coolness ; that they should be capable of committing 
 a good joke, with an utter insensibility to its being 
 any jest at all. I have reason to believe in the truth 
 of it, because, as I have said, I heard him repeat it 
 without variation at such an interval. The story 
 loses sadly in print, for Carlisle is the best story- 
 teller I ever heard. The idea of the discovery of 
 roasting pigs I also borrowed, from my friend Man- 
 ning, and am willing to confess both my plagiarisms. 
 Should fate ever so order it that you shall be in town 
 with your sister, mine bids me say, that she shall 
 have great pleasure in being introduced to her. I 
 think I must give up the cause of the Bank ; from 
 9 to 9 is galley slavery, but I hope it is but temporary. 
 Your endeavour at explaining Fox's insight into the 
 natures of animals must fail, as I shall transcribe the 
 passage. It appears to me that he stopt short in 
 time, and was on the brink of falling with his friend 
 Naylor, my favourite. The book shall be forthcoming 
 whenever your friend can make convenient to call 
 for it. 
 
 They have dragged me again into the Magazine, 
 but I feel the spirit of the thing in my own mind 
 quite gone.^ "Some brains" (I think Ben Jonson 
 says it) " will endure but one skimming." We are 
 about to have an inundation of poetry from the Lakes : 
 Wordsworth and Southey are coming up strong 
 from the North. The She Coleridges have taken 
 
 ' For two years' contributions to the London Magazine, Lamb 
 received only £^10. — F.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 2gi 
 
 flight, to my regret. With Sara's own-made acquisi- 
 tions, her unaffectedness and no-pretensions are 
 beautiful. You might pass an age with her without 
 suspecting that she knew any thing but her mother's 
 tongue. I don't mean any reflections on Mrs. Cole- 
 ridge here. I had better have said her vernacular 
 idiom. Poor C, I wish he had a home to receive his 
 daughter in ; but he is but as a stranger or a visitor 
 in this world. 
 
 How did you like Hartley's sonnets ? The first, at 
 least, is vastly fine. I am ashamed of the shabby 
 letters I send, but I am by nature any thing but neat. 
 Therein my mother bore me no Quaker. I never 
 could seal a letter without dropping the wax on one 
 side, besides scalding my fingers. I never had a 
 seal, too, of my own. Writing to a great man lately, 
 who is moreover very heraldic, I borrowed a seal of a 
 friend, who by the female side quarters the Protectoral 
 arms of Cromwell. How they must have puzzled 
 my correspondent ! My letters are generally charged 
 as double at the Post Office, from their inveterate 
 clumsiness of foldure ; so you must not take it disre- 
 spectful to yourself if I send you such ungainly 
 scraps. I think I lose ;^ioo a year at the India 
 House, owing solely to my want of neatness in making 
 up accounts. How I puzzle 'em out at last is the 
 wonder. I have to do with millions ! ! 
 
 It is time to have done my incoherences. 
 Believe me, yours truly, 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 
 u 2
 
 292 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 
 
 Letter CLXXXVL] May 3rd, 1823. 
 
 Dear Sir, — I am vexed to be two letters in your 
 debt, but I have been quite out of the vein lately. A 
 philosophical treatise is wanting, of the causes of the 
 backwardness with which persons after a certain time 
 of life set about writing a letter. Fl always feel as 
 if I had nothing to say, and the performance gene- 
 rally justifies the presentiment.j Taylor and Hessey 
 did foolishly in not admitting the sonnet. Surely it 
 might have followed the B. B. I agree with you in 
 thinking Bowring's paper better than the former. I 
 will inquire about my letter to the old gentleman, 
 but I expect it to go in, after those to the young 
 gentleman are completed. 
 
 I do not exactly see why the goose and little 
 goslings should emblematize a Quaker poet that has 
 no children. But, after all, perhaps it is a pelican. 
 The " Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin " around it I 
 cannot decipher. The songster of the night pouring 
 out her effusions amid a silent meeting of madge- 
 owlets, would be at least intelligible. A full pause 
 here comes upon me, as if I had not a word more 
 left. I will shake my brain, Once ! Twice ! — nothing 
 comes up. George Fox recommends waiting on 
 these occasions. I wait. Nothing comes. G. Fox 
 — that sets me off again. I have finished the "Jour- 
 nal," and 400 more pages of the " Doctrinals," which 
 I picked up for 75. 6d. If I get on at this rate, the 
 society will be in danger of having two Quaker poets 
 to patronise. I am at Dalston now ; but if when I 
 go back to Covent Garden I find thy friend has not
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 293 
 
 called for the "Journal," thee must put me in the way 
 of sending it ; and if it should happen the lender of 
 it, knowing that volume has not the other, I shall be 
 most happy in his accepting the " Doctrlnals," which 
 I shall read but once certainly. It is not a splendid 
 copy, but perfect, save a leaf of Index. 
 
 I cannot but think that the London drags heavily. 
 I miss Janus. And oh how it misses Hazlitt ! 
 Procter too is affronted. 
 
 Believe me cordially yours, 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 
 Letter CLXXXVIL] July loth, 1823. 
 
 Dear Sir, — I shall be happy to read the MS. and 
 to forward it; but T[aylor] and H[essey] must 
 judge for themselves of publication. If it prove 
 interesting (as I doubt not) I shall not spare to say 
 so, you may depend upon it. Suppose you direct 
 it to Accountant's Office, India House. I am glad 
 you have met with some sweetening circumstances 
 to your unpalatable draught. I have just returned 
 from Hastings, where are exquisite views and walks, 
 and where I have given up my soul to walking, and 
 I am now suffering sedentary contrasts. I am a 
 long time reconciling to town after one of these 
 excursions. Home is become strange, and will 
 remain so yet a while ; home is the most unforgiving 
 of friends, and always resents absence ; I know its 
 old cordial looks will return, but they are slow in
 
 294 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 
 
 clearing up. That is one of the features of this our 
 galley slavery; that peregrination ended makes things 
 worse. I felt out of water (with all the sea about 
 me) at Hastings ; and just as I had learned to domi- 
 ciliate there, I must come back to find a home which 
 is no home. I abused Hastings, but learned its 
 value. There are spots, inland bays, &c., which 
 realise the notions of Juan Fernandez. The best 
 thing I lit upon by accident was a small country 
 church, (by whom or when built unknown,) standing 
 bare and single in the midst of a grove, with no 
 house or appearance of habitation within a quarter 
 of a mile, only passages diverging from it through 
 beautiful woods to so many farm-houses. There it 
 stands like the first idea of a church, before parish- 
 ioners were thought of, nothing but birds for its 
 congregation ; or like a hermit's oratory (the hermit 
 dead), or a mausoleum ; its effect singularly impres- 
 sive, like a church found in a desert isle to startle 
 Crusoe with a home image. You must make out a 
 vicar and a congregation from fancy, for surely none 
 come there ; yet it wants not its pulpit, and its font, 
 and all the seemly additaments of our worship. 
 
 Southey has attacked " Elia " on the score of 
 infidelity, in the Quarterly article, " Progress of Infi- 
 delity." I had not, nor have seen the Monthly. He 
 might have spared an old friend such a construction of 
 a few careless flights, that meant no harm to religion, 
 if all his unguarded expressions on the subject were 
 
 to be collected ! But I love and respect Southey, 
 
 and will not retort. I hate his review, and his being 
 a reviewer. The hint he has dropped will knock the 
 sale of the book on the head, which was almost at a 
 stop before. Let it stop, — there is corn in Egypt,
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 295 
 
 while there is cash at Leadenhall. You and I are 
 something besides being writers, thank God ! 
 
 Yours truly, C. L. 
 
 Letter CLXXXVIII.] September md, 1823. 
 
 Dear B. B., — What will you say to my not writing ? 
 You cannot say I do not write now. Hessey has not 
 used your kind sonnet, nor have I seen it. Pray send 
 me a copy. Neither have I heard any more of your 
 friend's MS., which I will reclaim whenever you 
 please. When you come London-ward you will find 
 me no longer in Covent Garden. I have a cottage in 
 Colebrook Row, Islington ; a cottage, for it is de- 
 tached ; a white house, with six good rooms ; the 
 New River (rather elderly by this time) runs (if a 
 moderate walking pace may be so term.ed) close to 
 the foot of the house ; and behind is a spacious garden 
 with vines, (I assure you,) pears, strawberries, par- 
 snips, leeks, carrots, cabbages, to delight the heart of 
 old Alcinous. You enter without passage into a 
 cheerful dining-room, all studded over and rough 
 with old books : and above is a lightsome drawing- 
 room, three windows, full of choice prints. I feel 
 like a great lord, never having had a house before. 
 
 The London, I fear, falls off. I linger among its 
 creaking rafters, like the last rat ; it will topple down 
 if they don't get some buttresses. They have pulled 
 down three : Hazlitt, Procter, and their best stay, 
 kind, light-hearted Wainwright, their Janus. The 
 best is, neither of our fortunes is concerned in it. 
 
 I heard of you from Mr. Pulham this morning, and
 
 2g6 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 
 
 that gave a fillip to my laziness, which has been in- 
 tolerable ; but I am so taken up with pruning and 
 gardening, quite a new sort of occupation to me. I 
 have gathered my jargonels, but my Windsor pears 
 are backward. The former were of exquisite raci- 
 ness. I do now sit under my own vine, and contem- 
 plate the growth of vegetable nature. I can now 
 understand in what sense they speak of father Adam. 
 I recognise the paternity while I watch my tulips. 
 I almost fell with him, for the first day I turned a 
 drunken gardener (as he let in the serpent) into my 
 Eden, and he laid about him, lopping off some choice 
 boughs, &c., which hung over from a neighbour's 
 garden, and in his blind zeal laid waste a shade, which 
 had sheltered their window from the gaze of passers- 
 by. The old gentlewoman (fury made her not hand- 
 some) could scarcely be reconciled by all my fine 
 words. There was no buttering her parsnips. She 
 talked of the law. What a lapse to commit on the 
 first day of my happy " garden-state !" 
 
 I hope you transmitted the Fox-Journal to its 
 owner, with suitable thanks. Mr. Cary, the Dante- 
 man, dines with me to-day. He is a model of a 
 country parson, lean, (as a curate ought to be,) 
 modest, sensible, no obtruder of church dogmas, 
 quite a different man from Southey. You would like 
 him. Pray accept this for a letter, and believe me, 
 with sincere regards, Yours, C. L.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 237 
 
 Letter CLXXXIX.] September 17th, 1823 
 
 Dear Sir, — I have again been reading your " Stanzas 
 on Bloomfield," which are the most appropriate that 
 can be imagined,-^-sweet with Doric dehcacy. I Hke 
 that,— 
 
 "Our own more chaste Theocritus" — 
 
 just hinting at the fault of the Grecian. I love that 
 stanza ending with, 
 
 " Words, phrases, fashions, pass away ; 
 But truth and nature live through all." 
 
 But I shall omit in my own copy the one stanza 
 which alludes to Lord B. I suppose. It spoils the 
 sweetness and oneness of the feeling. Cannot we 
 think of Burns, or Thomson, without sullying the 
 thought with a reflection out of place upon Lord 
 Rochester? These verses might have been inscribed 
 upon a tomb ; are in fact an epitaph ; satire does not 
 look pretty upon a tombstone. Besides, there is a 
 quotation in it, always bad in verse, seldom advisable 
 in prose. I doubt if their having been in a paper will 
 not prevent T. and H. from insertion ; but I shall 
 have a thing to send in a day or two, and shall 
 try them. Omitting that stanza, a very little altera- 
 tion is wanting in the beginning of the next. You 
 see, I use freedom. How happily (I flatter not) you 
 have brought in his subjects; and (I suppose) his 
 favourite measure, though I am not acquainted 
 with any of his writings but the Farmer's Boy. He 
 dined with me once, and his manners took me ex- 
 ceedingly. 
 
 I rejoice that you forgive my long silence. I con- 
 tinue to estimate my own-roof comforts highly. How 
 could I remain all my life a lodger! My garden
 
 298 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 
 
 thrives, (I am told,) thouj^h I have yet reaped nothing 
 but some tiny salad and withered carrots. But a 
 garden's a garden anywhere, and twice a garden in 
 London. 
 
 Somehow I cannot relish that word " Hockey." 
 Cannot you supply it by circumlocution, and direct 
 the reader by a note to explain that it means the 
 Hockey. But Hockey choaks me in the text. It 
 raises crowds of mean associations, hawking and 
 
 sp g, gawk}', stalky, mawkish ! The sound is every 
 
 thing, in such dulcet modulations 'specially. I like 
 
 " Gilbert Meldrum's sterner tones," 
 
 without knowing who Gilbert Meldrum is. You have 
 slipt in your rhymes as if they grew there, so natu- 
 ral-artificially, or artificial-naturally. There's a vile 
 phrase ! 
 
 Do you go on with your" Quaker Sonnets ?" Have 
 'em ready with " Southey's Book of the Church." I 
 meditate a letter to S. in the Loiidon, which perhaps 
 will meet the fate of the Sonnet. 
 
 Excuse my brevity, for I write painfull}' at office, 
 liable to a hundred callings off; and I can never sit 
 down to an epistle elsewhere. I read or walk. If 
 you return this letter to the Post Office, I think they 
 will return fourpence, seeing it is but half a one. 
 Believe me, though, 
 
 Entirely yours, C. L. 
 
 Letter CXC] [Nov. 22, 1823.] 
 
 Dear B. B., — I am ashamed at not acknowledging 
 your kind little poem, which I must needs like much ;
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 299 
 
 but I protest I thought I had done it at the moment. 
 Is it possible a letter has miscarried ? Did you get 
 one in which I sent you an extract from the poems of 
 Lord Stirling ? I should wonder if you did, for I 
 sent you none such. There was an incipient lie 
 strangled in the birth. Some people's conscience is 
 so tender ! But, in plain truth, I thank you very 
 much for the verses. I have a very kind letter from 
 the Laureat, with a self-invitation to come and shake 
 hands with me. This is truly handsome and noble. 
 'Tis worthy of my old idea of Southey. Shall not I, 
 think you, be covered with a red suffusion ? 
 
 You are too much apprehensive of your complaint : 
 I know many that are always ailing of it, and live on 
 to a good old age. I know a merry fellow (you partly 
 know him) who, when his medical adviser told him 
 he had drunk away all that part, congratulated him- 
 self (now his liver was gone) that he should be the 
 longest liver of the two. 
 
 The best way in these cases is to keep yourself as i 
 ignorant as you can, as ignorant as the world was 
 before Galen, of the entire inner construction of the 
 animal man ; not to be conscious of a midriff; to 
 hold kidneys (save of sheep and swine) to be an agree- 
 able fiction ; not to know whereabout the gall grows ; 
 to account the circulation of the blood an idle whimsey 
 of Harvey's ; to acknowledge no mechanism not 
 visible. For, once fix the seat of your disorder, and 
 your fancies flux into it like bad humours. Those 
 medical gentries choose each his favourite part ; one 
 takes the lungs, another the aforesaid liver, and refer 
 to that whatever in the animal economy is amiss. 
 Above all, use exercise, take a little more spirituous 
 liquors, learn to smoke, continue to keep a good con-
 
 300 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 
 
 science, and avoid tampering with hard terms of art 
 — viscosity, scirrhosity, and those bugbears by which 
 simple patients are scared into their graves. Believe 
 the general sense of the mercantile world, which holds 
 that desks are not deadly. It is the mind, good B. B., 
 and not the limbs, that taints by long sitting. Think 
 of the patience of tailors ! Think how long the Lord 
 Chancellor sits ! Think of the brooding hen ! I protest 
 I cannot answer thy sister's kind inquiry ; but I judge, 
 I shall put forth no second volume. More praise than 
 buy ; and T. and H. are not particularly disposed for 
 martyrs. Thou wilt see a funny passage, and yet a 
 true history, of George Dyer's aquatic incursion in 
 the next London. Beware his fate, when thou comest 
 to see me at my Colebrook Cottage. I have filled my 
 little space with my little thoughts. I wish thee ease 
 on thy sofa ; but not too much indulgence on it. 
 From my poor desk, thy fellow-sufferer, this bright 
 November, C. L. 
 
 Letter CXCL] Jan. 9th, 1824. 
 
 Dear B. B., — Do you know what it is to succumb 
 under an insurmountable day-mare, — " a whoreson 
 lethargy," Falstaff calls it, — an indisposition to do 
 any thing, or to be any thing, — a total deadness and 
 distaste, a suspension of vitality, — an indifference to 
 locality, — a numb, soporifical, good-for-nothingness, 
 — an ossification all over, — an oyster-like insensi- 
 bility i;o the passing events, — a mind-stupor, — a 
 brawny defiance to the needles of a thrusting-in con-
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 3OI 
 
 science ? Did you ever have a very bad cold, with a 
 total irresolution to submit to water-gruel processes ? 
 This has been for many weeks my lot and my excuse. 
 My fingers drag heavily over this paper, and to my 
 thinking it is three-and-twenty furlongs from here to 
 the end of this demi-sheet. I have not a thing to~l 
 say ; no thing is of a more importance than another ; 
 I am flatter than a denial or a pancake ; emptier than 
 Judge Park's wig when the head is in it ; duller than . 
 a country stage when the actors are off it ; a cipher,^ 
 an ! I acknowledge life at all, only by an occa- 
 sional convulsional cough, and a permanent phleg- 
 matic pain in the chest. I am weary of the world ; 
 life is weary of me. My day is gone into twilight, 
 and I don't think it worth the expense of candles. 
 My wick hath a thief in it, but I can't muster courage 
 to snuff it. I inhale suffocation ; I can't distin- 
 guish veal from mutton ; nothing interests me. 'Tis / 
 twelve o'clock, and Thurtell is just now coming out \ 
 upon the New Drop, Jack Ketch alertly tucking up 
 his greasy sleeves to do the last office of mortality ; 
 yet cannot I elicit a groan or a moral reflection. If 
 you told me the world will be at an end to-morrow, I 
 should just say, " Will it ?" I have not volition 
 enough left to dot my i's, much less to comb my eye- , 
 brows ; my eyes are set in my head ; my brains are ) 
 gone out to see a poor relation in Moorfields, and they 
 did not say when they'd come back again ; my skull is 
 a Grub Street attic, to let — not so much as a joint- ' 
 stool or a crack'd Jordan left in it ; my hand writes, 
 not I, from habit, as chickens run about a little 
 when their heads are off. for a vigorous fit of gout, 
 cholic, toothache, — an earwig in my auditory, a fly 
 in my visual organs ! Pain is life — the sharper, the
 
 302 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 
 
 more evidence of life ; but this apathy, this death ! 
 Did you ever have an obstinate cold, — a six or seven 
 weeks' unintermitting chill and suspension of hope, 
 fear, conscience, and every thing? Yet do I try all I 
 can to cure it ; I try wine, and spirits, and smoking, 
 and snuff in unsparing quantities ; but they all only 
 seem to make me worse, instead of better. I sleep 
 in a damp room, but it does me no good ; I come 
 home late o' nights, but do not find any visible 
 amendment ! Who shall deliver me from the body 
 of this death ? 
 
 It is just fifteen minutes after twelve. Thurtell is 
 by this time a good way on his journey, baiting at 
 Scorpion perhaps ; Ketch is bargaining for his cast 
 coat and waistcoat. The Jew demurs at first at three 
 half-crowns ; but, on consideration that he may get 
 somewhat by showing 'em in the town, finally closes. 
 
 C. L. 
 
 Letter CXCII.] Jan. Z3rd, 1824. 
 
 My dear sir, — That peevish letter of mine, which 
 was meant to convey an apology for my incapacity 
 to write, seems to have been taken by you in too 
 serious a light ; it was only my way of telling you I 
 had a severe cold. The fact is, I have been insuper- 
 ably dull and lethargic for many weeks, and cannot 
 rise to the vigour of a letter, much less an essay. 
 The London must do without me for a time, for I 
 have lost all interest about it; and whether I shall 
 recover it again I know not. I will bridle my pen 
 another time, and not teaze and puzzle you with my
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 303 
 
 aridities. I shall begin to feel a little more alive with 
 the Spring. Winter is to me (mild or harsh) always 
 a great trial of the spirits. I am ashamed not to have 
 noticed your tribute to Woolman, whom we love so 
 much. It is done in your good manner. Your friend 
 Taylor called upon me some time since, and seems a 
 very amiable man. His last story is painfully fine. 
 His book I " like ;" it is only too stuffed with Scrip- 
 ture, too parsonish. The best thing in it is the boy's 
 own story. When I say it is too full of Scripture, I 
 mean it is too full of direct quotations. No book can 
 have too much of silent Scripture in it ; but the na- 
 tural power of a story is diminished when the upper- 
 most purpose in the writer seems to be to recommend 
 something else, viz.. Religion. You know what 
 Horace says of the Deus intersit. I am not able to 
 explain myself, — you must do it for me. My sister's 
 part in the "Leicester School" (about two-thirds) 
 was purely her own ; as it was (to the same quantity) 
 in the " Shakspeare Tales " which bear my name. I 
 wrote only the "Witch Aunt;" the "First Going to 
 Church ;" and the final story, about " A little Indian 
 girl," in a ship. Your account of my black-balling 
 amused me. / think, as Quakers, they did right. 
 There are some things hard to be understood. The 
 more I think, the more I am vexed at having puzzled 
 you with that letter ; but I have been so out of letter- 
 writing of late years, that it is a sore effort to sit down 
 to it ; and I felt in your debt, and sat down way- 
 wardly to pay you in bad money. Never mind my 
 .dulness; I am used to long intervals of it. The 
 heavens seem brass to me ; then again comes the 
 refreshing shower — 
 
 " 1 have been merry once or twice ere now. "
 
 304 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 
 
 You said something about Mr. Mitford in a late 
 letter, which I believe I did not advert to. I shall be 
 happy to show him my Milton (it is all the show 
 things I have) at any time he will take the trouble of 
 a jaunt to Islington. I do also hope to see Mr. 
 Taylor there some day. Pray say so to both. Cole- 
 ridge's book is in good part printed, but sticks a little 
 for more copy. It bears an unsaleable title, " Extracts 
 from Bishop Leighton ;" but I am confident there will 
 be plenty of good notes in it, more of Bishop Cole- 
 ridge than Leighton, I hope ; for what is Leighton ? 
 Do you trouble yourself about libel cases ? The 
 decision against Hunt for the " Vision of Judgment " 
 made me sick. What is to become of the good old 
 talk about our good old King ? — his personal virtues 
 saving us from a revolution, &c. &c. ! Why, none 
 that think can utter it now. It must stink. And the 
 " vision " is really, as to him-ward, such a tolerant, 
 good-humoured thing. What a wretched thing a 
 Lord Chief Justice is, always was, and will be ! 
 
 Keep your good spirits up, dear B. B. ; mine will 
 return ; they are at present in abeyance ; but I am 
 rather lethargic than miserable. I don't know but a 
 good horsewhip would be more beneficial to me than 
 physic. My head, without aching, will teach yours 
 to ache. It is well I am getting to the conclusion, 
 I will send a better letter when I am a better man. 
 Let me thank you for your kind concern for me, 
 (which I trust will have reason soon to be dissipated,) 
 and assure you that it gives me pleasure to hear from 
 you. Yours truly, C. L.
 
 1 
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 305 
 
 Letter CXCIII.] February 25th, 1824. 
 
 My dear sir, — Your title of " Poetic Vigils " 
 arrides me much more than a volume of verse, which 
 has no meaning. The motto says nothing, but I 
 cannot suggest a better. I do not like mottoes but 
 where they are singularly felicitous ; there is foppery 
 in them ; they are un-plain, un-Quakerish; they are 
 good only where they flow from the title, and are a 
 kind of justification of it. There is nothing about 
 watchings or lucubrations in the one you suggest ; no 
 commentary on vigils. By the way, a wag would 
 recommend you to the line of Pope, 
 
 ♦• Sleepless himself — to give his readers sleep." 
 
 Iby no means wish it; but it may explain what I 
 mean, — that a neat motto is child of the title. I 
 think " Poetic Vigils " as short and sweet as can 
 be desired ; only have an eye on the proof, that the 
 printer do not substitute Virgils, which would ill 
 accord with your modesty or meaning. Your sug- 
 gested motto is antique enough in spelling, and 
 modern enough in phrases, — a good modern antique ; 
 but the matter of it is germain to the purpose, only 
 supposing the title proposed a vindication of yourself 
 from the presumption of authorship. The first title 
 was liable to this objection — that if you were dis- 
 posed to enlarge it, and the bookseller insisted on its 
 appearance in two tomes, how oddly it would sound, 
 " A Volume of Verse in two Volumes, Second 
 Edition," &c. You see through my wicked inten- 
 tion of curtailing this epistolet by the above device of 
 large margin. But in truth the idea of letterizing 
 has been oppressive to me of late above your candour 
 to give me credit for. There is Southey, whom I 
 VOL. II. X
 
 306 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 
 
 *ught to have thanked a fortnight ago for a present 
 of the "Church Book:" I have never had courage 
 to buckle myself in earned even to acknowledge it by 
 six words ; and yet I am accounted by some people^ 
 a good man ! How cheap that character is acquired ! j 
 Pay your debts, don't borrow money, nor twist your 
 kitten's neck off, nor disturb a congregation, &c.,3^our J 
 business is done. I know things (thoughts or things, 
 thoughts are things) of myself, which would make 
 every friend I have fly me as a plague patient. I 
 once * * *, and set a dog upon a crab's leg that was 
 shoved out under a mass of sea-weeds, — a pretty 
 little feeler. Oh pah ! how sick I am of that ! and 
 a lie, a mean one, I once told 1 I stink in the midst 
 of respect. I am much hypt. The fact is, my head 
 is heavy, but there is hope ; or if not, I am better 
 than a poor shell-fish ; not morally, when I set the 
 whelp upon it, but have more blood and spirits. 
 Things may turn up, and I may creep again into a 
 decent opinion of myself. Vanity will return with 
 sunshine. Till when, pardon my neglects, and im- 
 pute it to the wintry solstice. 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 
 Letter CXCIV.] March 24th, 1824. 
 
 Dear B. B., — I hasten to say that if my opinion 
 can strengthen you in your choice, it is decisive for 
 your acceptance of what has been so handsomely 
 offered. I can see nothing injurious to 3'our most 
 honourable sense. Think that you are called to a 
 poetical Ministry — nothing worse : the Minister is 
 worthy of the hire. The only objection I feel is 
 founded on a fear that the acceptance may be a temp-
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 3O7 
 
 tation to you to let fall the bone (hard as it is) which 
 IS in your mouth, and must afford tolerable pickings, 
 for the shadow of independence. You cannot pro- 
 pose to become independent on what the low state of 
 interest could afford you from such a principal as you 
 mention ; and the most graceful excuse for the 
 acceptance would be, that it left you free to your 
 voluntary functions. That is the less light part of 
 the scruple. It has no darker shade. I put in darker 
 because of the ambiguity of the word "light," which 
 Donne, in his admirable poem on the Metempsy- 
 chosis, has so ingeniously illustrated in his invo- 
 cation — 
 
 12 1 2 
 
 " Make my dark heavy poem, light and light" 
 
 where the two senses of light are opposed to different 
 opposites. A trifling criticism. I can see no reason 
 for any scruple then but what arises from your own 
 interest ; which is in your own power of course to 
 solve. If you still have doubts, read over Sander- 
 son's Cases of Conscience, and Jeremy Taylor's 
 Ductor Duhitantium ; the first a moderate octavo, the 
 latter a folio of 900 close pages ; and when you have 
 thoroughly digested the admirable reasons pro and 
 con which they give for every possible case, you will 
 
 be just as wise as when you began. Every man 
 
 is his own best casuist ; and after all, as Ephraim 
 Smooth, in the pleasant comedy of Wild Oats, has it, 
 *' there is no harm in a Guinea." A fortiori there is 
 less in 2000. 
 
 I therefore most sincerely congratulate with 3'ou, 
 excepting so far as excepted above. If you have fair 
 prospects of adding to the principal, cut the Bank; 
 but in either case do not refuse an honest service. 
 
 X 2
 
 308 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 
 
 Your heart tells you it is not oflFered to bribe yon from 
 any duty, but to a duty which you feel to be your 
 vocation. Farewell heartily. 
 
 C. L. 
 
 Letter CXC v.] July 7th, 1824. 
 
 Dear B. B., — I have been suflFering under a severe 
 inflammation of the eyes, notwithstanding which I 
 resolutely went through your very pretty volume at 
 once, which I dare pronounce in no ways inferior to 
 former lucubrations. ^^ Abroad" and "/or^" are vile 
 rhymes notwithstanding, and if you count you will 
 wonder how many times you have repeated the word 
 unearthly; thrice in one poem. It is become a slang 
 word with the bards ; avoid it in future lustily. 
 "Time" is fine; but there are better a good deal, 
 I think. The volume does not lie by me ; and after 
 a long day's smarting fatigue, which has almost put 
 out my eyes, (not blind however to your merits,) I 
 dare not trust myself with long writing. The verses 
 to Bloomfield are the sweetest in the collection. 
 Religion is sometimes lugged in, as if it did not 
 come naturally. I will go over carefully when I get 
 my seeing, and exemplify. You have also too much 
 of singing metre, such as requires no deep ear to 
 make ; lilting measure, in which you have done 
 Woolman injustice. Strike at less superficial melo- 
 dies. The piece on Nayler is more to my fancy. 
 
 My eye runs waters. But I will give you a fuller 
 account some day. The book is a very pretty one
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 309 
 
 in more than one sense. The decorative harp, per- 
 haps, too ostentatious ; a simple pipe preferable. 
 Farewell, and many thanks. 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 
 Letter CXCVL] August, 1824. 
 
 Dear B. B., — I congratulate you on getting a 
 house over your head. I find the comfort of it I am 
 sure. At my town lodgings the mistress was always 
 quarrelling with our maid, and at my place of rustica- 
 tion the whole family were always beating one 
 another, brothers beating sisters, (one, a most beau- 
 tiful girl, lamed for life,) father beating sons and 
 daughters, and son again beating his father, knocking 
 him fairly down, a scene I never before witnessed, 
 but was called out of bed by the unnatural blows, the 
 parricidal colour of which, though my morals could 
 not but condemn, yet my reason did heartily approve, 
 and in the issue the house was quieter for a day or 
 so than I had ever known. I am now all harmony 
 and quiet, even to the sometimes wishing back again 
 some of the old rufflings. There is something stirring 
 in these civil broils. 
 
 The album shall be attended to. If I can light 
 upon a few appropriate rhymes (but rhymes come 
 with difficulty from me now) I shall beg a place in 
 the neat margin of your young housekeeper. 
 
 The " Prometheus," unbound, is a capital story. 
 The literal rogue ! What if you had ordered 
 " Elfrida " in sheets ! she'd have been sent up I 
 warrant you. Or bid him clasp his Bible, {i.e. to 
 his bosom), he'd have clapt on a brass clasp, no 
 doubt.
 
 \>'' ./■'< 
 
 W' 
 
 ^ ... 
 
 310 CORRESPONDENXE WITH BARTON. 
 
 I can no more understand Shelley than you can. 
 His poetry is " thin sown with profit or delight." 
 Yet I must point to your notice a sonnet conceived 
 and expressed with a witty delicacy. It is that 
 addressed to one who hated him, but who could not 
 persuade him to hate him again. His coyness to the 
 other's passion — (for hate demands a return as much 
 as love, and starves without it) — is most arch and 
 pleasant. Pray, like it very much. For his theories 
 and nostrums, they are oracular enough ; but I either 
 comprehend 'em not, or there is " miching malice " 
 and mischief in 'em, but, for the most part, ringing 
 with their own emptiness. Hazlitt said well of 'em 
 — " Many are the wiser and better for reading Shaks- 
 peare, but nobody was ever wiser or better for 
 Reading Shelley." I wonder you will sow your cor^ 
 respondence on so barren a ground as I am, thatj 
 make such poor returns. But my head aches at 
 the bare thought of letter-writing. I wish all the ink 
 in the ocean dried up, and would listen to the quills 
 shivering up in the candle flame, like parching 
 martyrs. The same indisposition to write has 
 stopped m.y " Elias ;" but you will see a futile effort 
 in the next Number, " wrung from me with slow 
 pain." The fact is, my head is seldom cool enough. 
 I am dreadfully indolent. To have to do any 
 thing — to order me a new coat, for instance, though 
 my old buttons are shelled like beans — is an efTort. 
 My pen stammers like my tongue. What cool 
 craniums those old inditers of folios must have had ! — 
 what a mortified pulse ! Well ; once more I throw 
 myself on your mercy. Wishing peace in thy new 
 dwelling, 
 
 C. Lamb.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 3II 
 
 [with "album verses" for LUCY BARTON.] 
 
 Letter CXCVIL] 
 
 Dear B. B., — " I am ill at these numbers ;" but if 
 the above be not too mean to have a place in thy 
 daughter's sanctum, take them vi^ith pleasure. I 
 assume that her name is Hannah, because it is a 
 pretty scriptural cognomen. 
 
 I began on another sheet of paper, and just as I 
 had penned the second line of stanza two, an ugly 
 blot fell, to illustrate my counsel. I am sadly given 
 to blot, and modern blotting-paper gives no redress ; 
 it only smears, and makes it M^orse. The only 
 remedy is scratching out, which gives it a clerkish 
 look. The most innocent blots are made with red 
 ink, and are rather ornamental. Marry, they are not 
 always to be distinguished from the effusions of a cut 
 finger. Well, I hope and trust thy tick-doleru, or 
 however you spell it, is vanished, for I have frightful 
 impressions of that tick, and do altogether hate it, as 
 an unpaid score, or the tick of a death-watch. I take 
 it to be a species of Vitus's dance. (I omit the 
 sanctity, writing to " one of the men called friends.") 
 I knew a young lady who could dance no other ; she 
 danced it through life, and very queer and fantastic 
 were her steps. 
 
 Heaven bless thee from such measures, and keep 
 thee from the foul fiend, who delights to lead after
 
 3 12 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 
 
 false fires in the night, Flibbertigibbet, that gives the 
 web, and I forget what else. 
 
 From my den, as Bunyan has it, 30th Sep. 1824. 
 
 C. L. 
 
 Letter CXCVIIL] December 1st, 1824. 
 
 Dear B. B., — If Mr. Mitford will send me a full 
 and circumstantial description of his desired vases, I 
 will transmit the same to a gentleman resident at 
 Canton, whom I think I have interest enough in to 
 take the proper care for their execution. But Mr. M. 
 must have patience. China is a great way off, further 
 perhaps than he thinks ; and his next year's roses 
 must be content to wither in a Wedgwood pot. He 
 will please to say whether he should like his Arms 
 upon them, &c. I send herewith some patterns 
 which suggest themselves to me at the first blush of 
 the subject, but he will probably consult his own 
 taste after all. 
 
 The last pattern is obviously fitted for ranunculuses 
 only. The two former may indifferently hold daisies, 
 marjoram, sweet-williams, and that sort. My friend 
 in Canton is Inspector of Teas ; his name is Ball • 
 and I can think of no better tunnel. I shall expect 
 Mr. M.'s decision.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 313 
 
 Taylor and Hessey finding their magazine goes off 
 very heavily at 25. 6d. are prudently going to raise 
 their price another shilling; and having already more 
 authors than they want, intend to increase the number 
 of them. If they set up against the New Monthly, 
 they must change their present hands. It is not 
 tying the dead carcase of a Review to a half-dead 
 Magazine will do their business. It is like George 
 Dyer multiplying his volumes to make 'em sell better. 
 When he finds one will not go off, he publishes two ; 
 two stick, he tries three ; three hang fire, he is con- 
 fident that four will have a better chance. 
 
 And now, my dear sir, trifling apart, the gloomy 
 catastrophe of yesterday morning prompts a sadder 
 vein. The fate of the unfortunate Fauntleroy makes 
 me, whether I will or no, to cast reflecting eyes 
 around on such of my friends as, by a parity of situa- 
 tion, are exposed to a similarity of temptation. My 
 very style seems to myself to become more impres- 
 sive than usual, with the change of theme. Who 
 that standeth, knoweth but he may yet fall ? Your 
 hands as yet, I am most willing to believe, have 
 never deviated into other's property. You think it 
 impossible that you could ever commit so heinous an 
 offence ; but so thought Fauntleroy once ; so have 
 thought many besides him, who at last have expiated 
 as he hath done. You are as yet upright ; but you 
 are a banker, at least the next thing to it. I feel the 
 delicacy of the subject ; but cash must pass through 
 your hands, sometimes to a great amount. If in an 
 unguarded hour but I will hope better. Con- 
 sider the scandal it will bring upon those of your 
 persuasion. Thousands would go to see a Quaker 
 hanged, that would be indifierent to the fate of a
 
 3^4 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 
 
 Presbyterian or an Anabaptist. Think of the effect it 
 would have on the sale of your poems alone, not to 
 mention higher considerations ! I tremble, 1 am 
 sure, at myself, when I think that so many poor 
 victims of the law, at one time of their life, made as 
 sure of never being hanged, as I in my presumption 
 am too ready to do myself. What are we better than 
 they ? Do we come into the world with different 
 necks ? Is there any distinctive mark under our left 
 ears ? Are we unstrangleable, I ask you ? Think of 
 these things. I am shocked sometimes at the shape 
 of my own fingers, not for their resemblance to the 
 ape tribe (which is something), but for the exquisite 
 adaptation of them to the purposes of picking, finger- 
 ing, &c. No one that is so framed, I maintain it, but 
 should tremble. 
 
 C. L. 
 
 Letter CXCIX.] February loth, 1825. 
 
 Dear B. B., — I am vexed that ugly paper should 
 have offended. I kept it as clear from objectionable 
 phrases as possible, and it was Hessey's fault, and 
 my weakness, that it did not appear anonymous. No 
 more of it, for God's sake. The " Spirit of the Age " 
 is by Hazlitt. The characters of Coleridge, &c. he 
 had done better in former publications, the praise and 
 the abuse much stronger, &c.; but the new ones are 
 capitally done. Home Tooke is a matchless portrait. 
 My advice is, to borrow it rather than buy it. I have 
 it. He has laid too many colours on my likeness ; 
 but I have had so much injustice done me in my own
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 315 
 
 name, that I make a rule of accepting as much over- 
 measure to Elia as gentlemen think proper to bestow. 
 Lay it on and spare not. Your gentleman brother 
 sets my mouth a-watering after Hberty. Oh that I 
 were kicked out of Leadenhall with every mark of 
 indignity, and a competence in my fob ! The birds 
 of the air would not be so free as I should. How 
 I would prance and curvet it, and pick up cowslips, 
 and ramble about purposeless, as an idiot ! The 
 author-mometer is a good fancy. I have caused 
 great speculation in the dramatic (not thy) world by 
 a lying " Life of Liston," all pure invention. The 
 town has swallowed it, and it is copied into news- 
 papers, play-bills, &c., as authentic. You do not 
 know the Droll, and possibly missed reading the 
 article (in our first Number, new series). A life more 
 improbable for him to have lived would not be easily 
 invented. But your rebuke, coupled with " Dream 
 on J. Bunyan," checks me. I'd rather do more in 
 my favourite way, but feel dry. I must laugh some- 
 times. I am poor Hypochondriacus, and not Liston. 
 The second Number is all trash. What are T. and 
 H. about ? Why did poor Scott die ? There was 
 comfort in writing with such associates as were his 
 little band of scribblers ; some gone away, some 
 affronted away, and I am left as the solitary widow 
 looking for water-cresses. The only clever hand they 
 have is Darley, who has written on the Dramatists 
 under the name of John Lacy. But his function 
 seems suspended. 
 
 I have been harassed more than usually at office, 
 which has stopt my correspondence lately. I write 
 with a confused aching head, and you must accept 
 this apology for a letter.
 
 3l6 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 
 
 I will do something soon, if I can, as a peace- 
 offering to the queen of the East Angles — something 
 she shan't scold about. For the present farewell. 
 Thine, C. L. 
 
 I am fifty years old this day. Drink my health. 
 
 Letter CC] March zyd, 1825. 
 
 Dear B. B., — I have had no impulse to write, or 
 attend to any single object but myself for weeks past 
 — my single self, I by myself — I. I am_§i£k_^_f hope 
 Referred. The grand wheel is in agitation, that is to 
 turn up my fortune ; but round it rolls, and will turn 
 up nothing. I have a glimpse of freedom, of be- 
 coming a gentleman at large ; but I am put off from 
 day to day. I have offered my resignation, and it is 
 neither accepted nor rejected. Eight weeks am I 
 kept in this fearful suspense. Guess what an absorb- 
 ing stake I feel it. I am not conscious of the exist- 
 ence of friends present or absent. The East India 
 Directors alone can be that thing to me or not. I 
 have just learned that nothing will be decided this 
 week. Why the next ? Why any week ? It has 
 fretted me into an itch of the fingers ; I rub 'em 
 against paper, and write to you, rather than not allay 
 this scorbuta. 
 
 While I can write, let me abjure you to have no 
 doubts of Irving. Let Mr. Mitford drop his dis- 
 respect. Irving has prefixed a dedication (of a 
 missionary subject, first part) to Coleridge, the most 
 beautiful, cordial, and sincere. He there acknow- 
 ledges his obligation to S. T. C. for his knowledge of 
 Gospel truths, the nature of a Christian Church, &c., 
 to the talk of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (at whose 
 Gamaliel feet he sits weekly), rather than to that of
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 317 
 
 all the men living. This from him, the great dandled 
 and petted sectarian — to a religious character so 
 equivocal in the world's eye as that of S. T. C, so 
 foreign to the Kirk's estimate — can this man be a 
 quack ? The language is as affecting as the spirit of 
 the dedication. Some friend told him, " This dedica- 
 tion will do you no good," i.e. not in the world's 
 repute, or with your own people. " That is a reason 
 for doing it," quoth Irving. 
 
 I am thoroughly pleased with him. He is firm, 
 out-speaking, intrepid, and docile as a pupil of Pytha- 
 goras. You must like him. 
 
 Yours, in tremors of painful hope, 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 
 ^ 
 
 Letter CCL] April, 1825. 
 
 Dear B. B., — My'splrits are so tumultuary with the 
 novelty of my recent emancipation, that I have scarce 
 steadiness of hand, much more mind, to compose a 
 letter. J. am free, B. B. — free as air ! 
 
 "The little bird that wings the sky 
 Knows no such liberty." 
 
 I was set free on Tuesday in last week at four o'clock, 
 I came home for ever ! 
 
 have been describing my feelings as well as I can 
 
 rv ^^o Wordsworth in a long letter, and don't care to 
 
 repeat. Take it briefly, that for a few days I was 
 painfully oppressed by so mighty a change, but it is 
 becoming daily more natural to me. I went and sat 
 among 'em all at my old thirty-threejAears" desk, 
 yester morning ; and, deuce tTke~ime] if I had not 
 yearnings at leaving all my old pen-and-ink fellows, 
 merry, sociable lads, at leaving them in the lurch,
 
 qlH CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 
 
 fag, fag, fag ! — The comparison of my own superioi 
 felicity gave me any thing but pleasure. 
 
 B. B., I would not serve another seven years for 
 seven hundred thousand pounds ! I have got £^^i 
 net for life, sanctioned by Act of Parliament, with a 
 provision for Mary if she survives me. I will live 
 another fifty years ; or, if I live but ten, they will be 
 thirty, reckoning the quantity of real time in them, 
 i. e. the time that is a man's own. Tell me how you 
 like " Barbara S."^ Will it be received in atonement 
 for the foolish " Vision ? " — I mean by the lady. 
 A-propos, I never saw Mrs. Crawford in my life; 
 nevertheless 'tis all true of somebody. 
 
 Address me, in future, Colebrook Cottage, Islington. 
 I am really nervous, (but that will wear off,) so take 
 this brief announcement. 
 
 Yours truly, C. L. 
 
 Letter CCIL] July ind, 1825. 
 
 My dear B. B., — My nervous attack has so unfitted 
 me that I have not courage to sit down to a letter. 
 My poor pittance in the London you will see is drawn 
 from my sickness. Your book is very acceptable to 
 me, because most of it is new to me ; but your book 
 itself we cannot thank you for more sincerely than 
 for the introduction you favoured us with to Anne 
 Knight. Now cannot I write Mrs. Anne Knight for 
 
 the life of me. She is a very pleas , but I won't 
 
 write all we have said of her so often to ourselves, 
 
 ' The trae heroine of this beautiful story is still living, though she 
 has left die stage. It is enough to make a severer Quaker than B. B 
 feel that «• there is some soul of goodness " in players. — T.
 
 CORRiJSPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 3 19 
 
 because I suspect you would read it to her. Only 
 give my sister's and my kindest remembrances to her, 
 and how glad we are we can say that word. If ever 
 she come to Southwark again, I count upon another 
 pleasant Bridge walk with her. Tell her, I got home, 
 time for a rubber ; but poor Trj^phena will not under- 
 stand that phrase of the worldlings. 
 
 I am hardly able to appreciate your volume now : 
 but I liked the dedication much, and the apology for 
 your bald burying grounds. To Shelley ; but that is 
 not new. To the young vesper-singer. Great Deal- 
 ings, Playford, and what not. 
 
 If there be a cavil, it is that the topics of religious 
 consolation, however beautiful, are repeated till a sort 
 of triteness attends them. It seems as if you were 
 for ever losing friends' children by death, and re- 
 minding their parents of the Resurrection. Do 
 children die so often, and so good, in your parts ? 
 The topic taken from the consideration that they are 
 snatched away from possible vanities, seems hardly 
 sound ; for to an Omniscient eye their conditional 
 failings must be one with their actual ; but I am too 
 unwell for theology. 
 
 Such as I am, 
 I am yours and A[nne] K[night's] truly, 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 
 Letter CCIII.] August loth, 1825. 
 
 We shall be soon again at Colebrook. 
 
 Dear B. B., — You must excuse my not writing be- 
 fore, when I tell you we are on a visit at Enfield, 
 where I do not feel it natural to sit down to a letter. 
 It is at all times an exertion. I would rather talk with
 
 320 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 
 
 you and Anne Knight quietly at Colebrook Lodge, 
 over the matter of your last. You mistake me when 
 you express misgivings about my relishing a series 
 of scriptural poems. I wrote confusedly. What I 
 meant to say was, that one or two consolatory poems 
 on deaths would have had a more condensed effect 
 than many. Scriptural, devotional topics admit of 
 infinite variety. So far from poetry tiring me because 
 religious, I can read, and I say it seriously, the homely 
 old version of the Psalms in our Prayer Books for an 
 hour or two together sometimes without sense of 
 weariness. 
 
 I did not express myself clearly about what I think 
 a false topic insisted on so frequently in consolatory 
 addresses on the death of infants. I know something 
 like it is in Scripture, but I think humanly spoken. 
 It is a natural thought, a sweet fallacy to the survi- 
 vors, but still a fallacy. If it stands on the doctrine 
 of this being a probationary state, it is liable to this 
 dilemma. Omniscience, to whom possibility must 
 be clear as act, must know of the child, what it would 
 hereafter turn out : if good, then the topic is false to 
 say it is secured from falling into future wilfulness, 
 vice, &c.' If bad, I do not see how its exemption 
 from certain future overt acts, by being snatched 
 away, at all tells in its favour. You stop the arm of 
 a murderer, or arrest the finger of a pickpurse ; but is 
 not the guilt incurred as much by the intent as if 
 never so much acted ? Why children are hurried off, 
 and old reprobates of a hundred left, whose trial 
 humanly we may think was complete at fifty, is 
 among the obscurities of Providence. The very 
 notion of a state of probation has darkness in it. 
 The AU-knower has no need of satisfying His eyes by
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 321 
 
 seeing what we will do, when He knows before what 
 we will do. Methinks we might be condemned be- 
 fore commission. In these things we grope and 
 flounder, and if we can pick up a little human com- 
 fort that the child taken is snatched from vice, (no 
 great compliment to it, by the by,) let us take it. And 
 as to where an untried child goes, whether to join the 
 assembly of its elders who have borne the heat of the 
 day — fire-purified martyrs, and torment-sifted confes- 
 sors — what know we ? We promise heaven, me- 
 thinks, too cheaply, and assign large revenues to 
 minors, incompetent to manage them. Epitaphs 
 run upon this topic of consolation, till the very fre- 
 quency induces a cheapness. Tickets for admission 
 into Paradise are sculptured out at a penny a letter, 
 twopence a syllable, &c. It is all a mystery ; and the 
 more I try to express my meaning (having none that 
 is clear), the more I founder. Finally, write what 
 your own conscience, which to you is the unerring 
 judge, seems best, and be careless about the whimsies 
 of such a half-baked notionist as I am. We are here 
 in a most pleasant country, full of walks, and idle to 
 our hearts' desire. Taylor has dropt the London. It 
 was indeed a dead weight. It has got in the Slough 
 of Despond. I shuffle off my part of the pack, and 
 stand like Christian with light and merry shoulders. 
 It had got silly, indecorous, pert, and everything that 
 is bad. Both our kind remembrances to Mrs. K. and 
 yourself, and strangers'-greeting to Lucy (is it Lucy 
 or Ruth ?) that gathers wise sayings in a Book. 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 
 Letter CCIV.] Feb. 7th, 1826. 
 
 Dear B. B., — I got your book not more than five 
 
 VOL» II. Y
 
 322 
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 
 
 days ago, so am not so negligent as I must have ap- 
 peared to you with a fortnight's sin upon my shoul- 
 ders. I tell you with sincerity, that I think you have 
 completely succeeded in what you intended to do. 
 What is poetry may be disputed. These are poetry, 
 to me at least. They are concise, pithy, and moving. 
 Uniform as they are, and untristorify'd, I read them 
 through at two sittings, without one sensation ap- 
 proaching to tedium. I do not know that among 
 your many kind presents of this nature, this is not 
 my favourite volume. The language is never lax, 
 and there is a unity of design and feeling. You wrote 
 them with love — to avoid the coxcombical phrase, con 
 amore. I am particularly pleased with the " Spiritual 
 Law," pages 34 and 35. It reminded me of Quarles, 
 and " holy Mr. Herbert," as Izaak Walton calls him ; 
 the two best, if not only, of our devotional poets, 
 though some prefer Watts, and some Tom Moore. I 
 am far from well, or in my right spirits, and shudder 
 at pen-and-ink work. I poke out a monthly crudity 
 for Colburn in his magazine, which I call " Popular 
 Fallacies," and periodically crush a proverb or two, 
 setting up my folly against the wisdom of nations. 
 Do you see the New Monthly ? 
 
 One word I must object to in your little book, and 
 it recurs more than once — fadeless is no genuine com- 
 pound ; loveless is, because love is a noun as well as 
 verb ; but what is a fade ? And I do not quite like 
 whippingthe Greek drama upon the back of " Genesis,"" 
 page 8. I do not like praise handed in by disparage- 
 ment ; as I objected to a side censure on Byron, &c. 
 in the " Lines on Bloomfield." With these poor 
 cavils excepted, your verses are without a fiav.'. 
 
 C. Lamb.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 
 
 323 
 
 Letter CCV.] March 20th, 1826. 
 
 Dear B. B., — You may know my letters by the 
 paper and the folding. For the former, I live on 
 scraps obtained in charity from an old friend, whose 
 stationery is a permanent perquisite ; for folding, 
 I shall do it neatly when I learn to tie my neck- 
 cloths. I surprise most of my friends by writing 
 to them on ruled paper, as if I had not got past 
 pot-hooks and hangers. Sealing-wax, I have none 
 on my establishment ; wafers of the coarsest bran 
 supply its place. When my epistles come to be 
 weighed with Pliny's, however superior to the Roman 
 in delicate irony, judicious reflections, &c., his gilt 
 post will bribe over the judges to him. All the time 
 I was at the E. I. H. I never mended a pen; I now 
 cut 'em to the stumps, marring rather than mending 
 the primitive goose-quill. I cannot bear to pay for 
 articles I used to get for nothing. When Adam laid 
 out his first penny upon nonpareils at some stall in 
 Mesopotamos, I think it went hard with him, reflect- 
 ing upon his old goodly orchard, where he had so 
 many for nothing. When I write to a great man at 
 the Court end, he opens with surprise upon a naked 
 note, such as Whitechapel people interchange, with 
 no sweet degrees of envelope. I never enclosed one 
 bit of paper in another, nor understood the rationale 
 of it. Once only I sealed with borrowed wax, to set 
 Walter Scott a wondering, signed with the imperial 
 quartered arms of England, which my friend Field 
 gives in compliment to his descent, in the female 
 line, from Oliver Cromwell. It must have set his 
 antiquarian curiosity upon watering. To your ques- 
 tions upon the currency, I refer you to Mr. Robin- 
 son's last speech, where, if you can find a solution, I 
 
 V 2
 
 324 
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 
 
 can not. I think this, though, the best ministry we 
 ever stumbled upon ; — gin reduced four shiUings in 
 the gallon, wine two shillings in the quart ! This 
 comes home to men's minds and bosoms. My tirade 
 against visitors was not meant particularly at you or 
 
 A. K . I scarce know what I meant, for I do not 
 
 just now feel the grievance. I wanted to make an 
 article. So in another thing I talked of somebody s 
 insipid wife, without a correspondent object in my 
 head : and a good lady, a friend's wife, whom I really 
 love, (don't startle, I mean in a licit way,) has looked 
 shyly on me ever since. The blunders of personal 
 application are ludicrous. I send out a character 
 every now and then, on purpose to exercise the inge- 
 nuity of my friends. " Popular Fallacies" will go on; 
 that word " concluded" is an erratum, I suppose for 
 " continued." I do not know how it got stuffed in there. 
 A little thing without name will also be printed on 
 the Religion of the Actors, but it is out of your way, 
 so I recommend you, with true author's hypocrisy, 
 to skip it. We are about to sit down to roast beef, 
 at which we could wish A. K., B. B., and B. B.'? 
 pleasant daughter to be humble partakers. So much 
 for my hint at visitors, which was scarcely calculated 
 for droppers-in from Woodbridge ; the sky does not 
 drop such larks every day. My very kindest wishes 
 to you all three, with my sister's best love. 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 
 Letter CCVL] May i6th, 1826. 
 
 Dear B. B., — I have had no spirits lately to begin 
 a letter to you, though I am under obligations to you 
 (how many !) for your neat little poem. 'Tis just
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 325 
 
 what it professes to be, a simple tribute, in chaste 
 verse, serious and sincere. 
 
 I do not know how friends will relish it, but we 
 outlyers, honorary friends, like it very well. I have 
 had my head and ears stuffed up with the East winds : 
 a continual ringing in my brain of bells jangled, or 
 the spheres touched by some raw angel. Is it not 
 George the Third trying the Hundredth Psalm ? I 
 get my music for nothing. But the weather seems 
 to be softening, and will thaw my stunnings. Cole- 
 ridge, writing to me a week or two since, begins his 
 note — " Summer has set in with its usual severity." 
 A cold Summer is all I know of disagreeable in cold. 
 I do not mind the utmost rigour of real Winter, but 
 these smiling hypocrites of Mays wither me to 
 death. My head has been a ringing chaos, like the 
 day the winds were made, before they submitted to 
 the discipline of a weathercock, before the quarters 
 were made. In the street, with the blended noises 
 of life about me, I hear, and my head is lightened ; 
 but in a room the hubbub comes back, and I am deaf 
 as a sinner. Did I tell you of a pleasant sketch 
 Hood has done, which he calls — " Very deaf indeed "? 
 It is of a good-natured stupid-looking old gentleman, 
 whom a footpad has stopped, but for his extreme 
 deafness cannot make him understand what he 
 wants. The unconscious old gentleman is extending 
 his ear-trumpet very complacently, and the fellow is 
 firing a pistol into it to make him hear, but the ball 
 will pierce his skull sooner than the report will reach 
 his sensorium. I choose a very little bit of paper, for 
 my ear hisses when I bend down to write. I can 
 hardly read a book, for I miss that small soft voice 
 which the idea of articulated words raises (almost
 
 326 CORRESPONDEN'CE WITH BARTON. 
 
 imperceptibly to you) in a silent reader. I seem too 
 deaf to see what I read. But with a touch or two of 
 returning zephyr my head will melt. What lies you 
 poets tell about the May ! It is the most ungenial 
 part of the year. Cold crocuses, cold primroses, you 
 take your blossoms in ice — a painted sun. 
 
 " Unmeaning joy around appears. 
 And Nature smiles as if she sneers." 
 
 It is ill with me when I begin to look which way 
 the wind sets. Ten years ago, I literally did not 
 know the point from the broad end of the vane, 
 which it was that indicated the quarter. I hope 
 these ill winds have blown over you as they do 
 through me. 
 
 Kindest remembrances to you and yours. C. L. 
 
 So A. K. keeps a school ; she teaches nothing 
 wrong, I'll answer for 't. I have a Dutch print of a 
 school-mistress ; little old-fashioned Fleminglings, 
 with only one face among them. She a princess of 
 a school-mistress, wielding a rod for form more than 
 use ; the scene, an old monastic chapel, with a 
 Madonna over her head, looking just as serious, as 
 thoughtful, as pure, as gentle as herself. 'Tis a type 
 of thy friend. 
 
 Yours, with kindest wishes to your daughter and 
 friend, in which Mary joins, C. Lamb. 
 
 Letter CCVIL] 1826. 
 
 Dear B. B., — I don't know why I have delayed so 
 long writing. 'Twas a fault. The under-current of 
 excuse to my mind was that I had heard of the vessel 
 in which Mitford's jars were to come ; that it had
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 327 
 
 been obliged to put into Batavia to refit (which 
 accounts for its delay), but was daily expected. Days 
 are past, and it comes not, and the mermaids may be 
 drinking their tea out of his china for aught I know ; 
 but let's hope not. In the meantime I have paid 
 £28, &c. for the freight and prime cost, which I a 
 little expected he would have settled in London. But 
 do not mention it. I was enabled to do it by a receipt 
 of £^0 from Colburn, with whom, however, I have 
 done, I should else have run short; for I only just 
 make ends meet. We will wait the arrival of the 
 trinkets, and to ascertain their full expense, and then 
 bring in the bill. Don't mention it, for I dare say 
 'twas mere thoughtlessness, I am sorry you and 
 yours have any plagues about dress matters, I have 
 been sadly puzzled at the defalcation of more than 
 one third of my income, out of which when entire 
 I saved nothing,^ But cropping of wine, old books, 
 &c, &e,, in short, all that can be called pocket-money, 
 I hope to be able to go on at the cottage. Remember, 
 I beg of you not to say any thing to Mitford, for if he 
 be honest it will vex him : if not, which I as little 
 expect as that you should be, I have a hank still 
 upon the jars. 
 
 Colburn had something of mine in last month, 
 which he has had in hand these seven months, and 
 had lost, or couldn't find room for : I was used to 
 different treatment in the London, and have forsworn 
 periodicals. I am going thro' a course of reading at 
 the Museum : the Garrick plays, out of part of which 
 I formed my specimens. I have two thousand to go 
 
 ' Lamb's income, when he retired, amounted to about j^6oo. His 
 pension was fixed at £^S0. — H.
 
 328 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 
 
 thro' ; and in a few weeks have despatched the tythe 
 of 'em. It is a sort of office to me ; hours, ten to 
 four, the same. It does me good. Man must have 
 regular occupation, that has been used to it. 
 
 Will you pardon my neglect? Mind, again I say, 
 don't show this to M. ; let me wait a little longer to 
 know the event of his luxuries. I am sure he is a 
 good fellow, tho' I made a serious Yorkshire lad 
 stare when I said he was a clergyman. He is a 
 pleasant layman spoiled. Heaven send him his jars 
 uncrack'd, and me my 
 
 Yours, with kindest wishes to your daughter and 
 friend, in which Mary joins, 
 
 C. L. 
 
 Letter CCVIII. 1826. 
 
 Dear B. B., (the Busy Bee, as Hood after Dr. 
 Watts apostrophizes thee, and well dost thou deserve 
 it for thy labours in the Muses' gardens, wandering 
 over parterres of Think-on-mes and Forget-me-nots, 
 to a total impossibility of forgetting thee,) thy letter 
 was acceptable, thy scruples may be dismissed, thou 
 art rectus in curia, not a word more to be said, verhuni 
 sapienti, and so forth, the matter is decided with a 
 white stone, classically, mark me, and the apparitions 
 vanish'd which haunted me, only the cramp, Caliban's 
 distemper, clawing me in the calvish part of my 
 nature, makes me ever and anon roar bullishly, 
 squeak cowardishly, and limp cripple-ishly. Do I 
 write quakerly and simply, 'tis my most Master 
 Mathews's like intention to do it. See Ben Jonson. 
 — I think you told me your acquaintance with the 
 Drama was confin'd to Shakspeare and Miss Baillie :
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 329 
 
 some read only Milton and Croly. The gap is as 
 from an ananas to a turnip. I have fighting in my 
 head the plots, characters, situations, and sentiments 
 of 400 old plays (bran new to me) which I have been 
 digesting at the Museum, and my appetite sharpens 
 to twice as many more, which I mean to course over 
 this Winter. I can scarce avoid dialogue fashion in 
 this letter. I soliloquize my meditations, and habi- 
 tually speak dramatic blank verse without meaning it. 
 Do you see Mitford ? He will tell you something of 
 my labours. Tell him I am sorry to have missed 
 seeing him, to have talked over those old Treasures. 
 I am still more sorry for his missing Pots. But I 
 shall be sure of the earliest intelligence of the Lost 
 Tribes. His Sacred Specimens^ are a thankful addi- 
 tion to my shelves. Marry, I could wish he had been 
 more careful of corrigenda. I have discover'd certain 
 which have slipt his errata. I put 'em in the next 
 page, as perhaps thou canst transmit them to him ; 
 for what purpose but to grieve him, (which yet I 
 should be sorry to do,) but then it shows my learning, 
 and the excuse is complimentary, as it implies their 
 correction in a future edition. His own things in the 
 book are magnificent, and as an old Christ's Hospi- 
 taller I was particularly refresh'd with his eulogy on 
 our Edward. Many of the choice excerpta were new 
 to me. Old Christmas is a coming, to the confusion 
 of Puritans, Muggletonians, Anabaptists, Quakers, 
 and that unwassailing crew. He cometh not with 
 his wonted gait; he is shrunk nine inches in his 
 girth, but is yet a lusty fellow. Hood's book^ is 
 
 1 Sacred Specimens selected from the early English Poets, 1827. — H, 
 a The Comic Annual.— U.
 
 330 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 
 
 mighty clever, and went off 600 copies the first day. 
 Sion's Songs do not disperse so quickly. The next 
 leaf is for Rev. J. M. In this adieu, thine briefly, in 
 a tall friendship, 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 
 Letter CCIX.] June nth, 1827. 
 
 Dear B. B., — Martin's "Belshazzar" (the picture) 
 I have seen. Its architectural effect is stupendous ; 
 but the human figures, the squalling contorted little 
 antics that are playing at being frightened, like 
 children at a sham ghost, who half know it to be 
 a mask, are detestable. Then the letters are nothing 
 more than a transparency lighted up, such as a Lord 
 might order to be lit up on a sudden at a Christmas 
 gambol, to scare the ladies.' The type is as plain as 
 Baskerville's : they should have been dim, full of 
 mystery, letters to the mind rather than the eye. 
 
 Rembrandt has painted only Belshazzar and a 
 courtier or two, (taking a part of the banquet for the 
 whole,) not fribbled out a mob of fine folks. Then 
 every thing is so distinct, to the very necklaces, and 
 that foolish little prophet. What one point is there 
 of interest? The ideal of such a subject is, that you 
 the spectator should see nothing but what at the 
 time you would have seen, — the hand, and the King, 
 — not to be at leisure to make tailor-remarks on the 
 dresses, or, Dr. Kitchener-like, to examine the good 
 things at table. 
 
 1 The reader will find in the Essay on "The Deficiency of Imagina- 
 tion," &c., what a new and quaint shape was found for this idea. — F.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 33 I 
 
 Just such a confused piece is his "Joshua," frit- 
 tered into a thousand fragments, httle armies here, 
 little armies there — you should see only the Sun and 
 jfoshua. If I remember, he has not left out that 
 luminary entirely ; but for Joshua, I was ten minutes 
 a finding him out. Still he is showy in all that is 
 not the human figure or the preternatural interest : 
 but the first are below a drawing-school girl's attain- 
 ment, and the last is a phantasmagoric trick, — " Now 
 you shall see what you shall see, dare is Balshazaj 
 and dare is Daniel." 
 
 You have my thoughts of M., and so adieu ! 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 
 Letter CCX.] August lo, 1827. 
 
 Dear B. B., — I have not been able to answer 3'ou, 
 for we have had and are having (I just snatch a 
 moment) our poor quiet retreat, to which we fled 
 from society, full of company — some staying with us ; 
 and this moment, as I write, almost, a heavy impor- 
 tation of two old ladies has come in. Whither can I 
 take wing from the oppression of human faces ? 
 Would I were in a wilderness of apes, tossing cocoa- 
 nuts about, grinning and grinned at ! 
 
 Mitford was hoaxing you, surely, about my en- 
 graving ; 'tis a little sixpenny thing,^ too like by half, 
 
 1 «' There was a caricature of him (Lamb) sold in the shops, which 
 pretended to be a likeness. Procter went into the shop in a passion, 
 and asked the man what he meant by putting forth such a libel. The 
 man apologised, and said that the artist meant no offence." — Leigh 
 Hunt's jiutohiography, ed. i860, p. 274. — H,
 
 332 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 
 
 in which the draughtsman has done his best to avoid 
 flattery. There have been two editions of it, which 
 I think are all gone, as they have vanished from the 
 window where they hung — a print-shop, corner of 
 Great and Little Queen Streets, Lincoln's Inn Fields, 
 where any London friend of yours may inquire for 
 it ; for I am (though you won't understand it) at 
 Enfield Chase, (Mrs. Leishman's). We have been 
 here near three months, and shall stay two more, if 
 people will let us alone ; but they persecute us from 
 village to village. So, don't direct to Islington again, 
 till further notice. I am trying my hand at a drama, 
 in two acts, founded on Crabbe's " Confidant," 
 mutatis mutandis. You like the Odyssey. Did you 
 ever read my " Adventures of Ulysses," founded on 
 Chapman's old translation of it ? For children or men 
 Chapman is divine, and my abridgment has not 
 quite emptied him of his divinity. When you come 
 to town I'll show it to you. You have well described 
 your old-fashioned grand paternal hall. Is it not odd 
 that every one's earliest recollections are of some 
 such place ! I had my Blakesware (Blakesmoor in 
 the London). Nothing fills a child's mind like a 
 large old mansion ; better if un — or partially — occu- 
 pied ; peopled with the spirits of deceased members 
 of the county and justices of the quorum. Would I 
 were buried in the peopled solitudes of one, with my 
 feelings at seven years old 1 Those marble busts of 
 the emperors, they seemed as if they were to stand for 
 ever, as they had stood from the living days of Rome, 
 in that old marble hall, and I to partake of their per- 
 manency. Eternity was, while I thought not of 
 Time. But he thought of me, and they are toppled 
 down, and corn covers the spot of the noble old
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 333 
 
 dwelling and its princely gardens. I feel like a 
 grasshopper that, chirping about the grounds, escaped 
 his scythe only by my littleness. Even now he is 
 whetting one of his smallest razors to clean wipe me 
 out, perhaps. Well ! 
 
 Letter CCXI.] August 24th, 1827. 
 
 Dear B. B., — I am thankful to you for your ready 
 compliance with my wishes. Emma is delighted 
 with your verses, to which I have appended this 
 notice, ''The sixth line refers to the child of a dear 
 friend of the author's, named Emma," without which 
 it must be obscure, and have sent it with four album 
 poems of my own (your daughter's with your heading, 
 requesting it a place next mine,) to a Mr. Eraser, who 
 is to be editor of a more superb pocket-book than has 
 yet appeared, by far ! the property of some wealthy 
 booksellers; but whom, or what its name, I forgot to 
 ask. It is actually to have in it schoolboy exercises 
 by his present Majesty and the late Duke of York. 
 So Lucy will come to Court ; how she will be stared 
 at ! Wordsworth is named as a contributor. Eraser, 
 whom I have slightly seen, is editor of a forthcome 
 or coming review of foreign books, and is intimately 
 connected with Lockhart, &c. So I take it that this 
 is a concern of Murray's. Walter Scott also con- 
 tributes mainly. I have stood off a long time from 
 these annuals, which are ostentatious trumpery, but 
 could not withstand the request of Jameson, a par- 
 ticular friend of mine and Coleridge.
 
 334 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 
 
 I shall hate myself in frippery, strutting along, and 
 vying finery with beaux and belles, with " future 
 Lord Byrons and sweet L. E. Ls." Your taste, I see, 
 is less simple than mine, which the difference in our 
 persuasions has doubtless effected. In fact, of late 
 you have so Frenchified your style, larding it with 
 hors de combat, and an desopoirs, that o' my conscience 
 the Foxian blood is quite dried out of you, and the 
 skipping Monsieur spirit has been infused. Doth 
 Lucy go to balls ? I must remodel my lines, which 
 I wrote for her. I hope A. K. keeps to her 
 primitives. 
 
 If you have any thing you'd like to send further, 
 I dare say an honourable place would be given to it ; 
 but I have not heard from Fraser since I sent mine, 
 nor shall probably again, and therefore I do not 
 solicit it as from him. Yesterday I sent off my 
 tragi-comedy to Mr. Kemble. Wish it luck. I made 
 it all ('tis blank verse, and I think of the true old 
 dramatic cut) or most of it in the green lanes about 
 Enfield, where I am, and mean to remain, in spite of 
 your peremptory doubts on that head. Your refusal 
 to lend your poetical sanction to my " Icon," and 
 your reasons to Evans, are most sensible. Maybe I 
 may hit on a line or two of my own jocular ; maybe 
 not. Do you never Londonize again ? I should like 
 to talk over old poetry with you, of which I have 
 much, and you, I think, little. Do your Drummonds 
 allow no holidays ? I would willingly come and 
 work for you a three weeks or so, to let you loose. 
 _, Would I could sell or give you some of my leisure ! 
 J Positively, the best thing a man can have to do is 
 (nothing, and next to that perhaps — good works. I 
 am but poorlyish, and feel myself writing a dull
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 
 
 335 
 
 letter ; poorlyish from company ; not generally, for 
 I never was better, nor took more walks, fourteen 
 miles a day on an average, with a sporting dog, 
 Dash. You would not know the plain poet, any 
 more than he doth recognise James Nayler trick'd 
 out au deserpoy (how do you spell it ?) En passant, 
 ^'ai me entendre de mon hon homme sur surveillance 
 de croix, ma pas Vhomnie figuratif. Do you under- 
 stand me ? 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 
 Letter CCXIL] Dec. 4th, 1827. 
 
 My dear B. B., — I have scarce spirits to write, yet 
 am harassed with not writing. Nine weeks are com- 
 pleted, and Mary does not get any better. It is per- 
 fectly exhausting. Enfield, and everything, is very 
 gloomy. But for long experience I should fear her 
 ever getting well. I feel most thankful for the spin- 
 sterly attentions of your sister. Thank the kind 
 "knitter in the sun 1" What nonsense seems verse, 
 when one is seriously out of hope and spirits ! I 
 mean, that at this time I have some nonsense to 
 write, under pain of incivility. Would to the fifth 
 heaven no coxcombess had invented Albums ! 
 
 I have not had a Bijoux, nor the slightest notice 
 from Pickering about omitting four out of five of my 
 things. The best thing is never to hear of such a 
 thing as a bookseller again, or to think there are 
 publishers. Second-hand stationers and old book-stalls 
 for me. Authorship should be an idea of the past. 
 Old kings, old bishops, are venerable ; all present is
 
 33^ 
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 
 
 hollow. I cannot make a letter. I have no straw, 
 not a pennyworth of chaff, only this may stop your 
 kind importunity to know about us. Here is a com- 
 fortable house, but no tenants. One does not make a 
 household. Do not think I am quite in despair ; but, in 
 addition to hope protracted, I have a stupifying cold 
 and obstructing headache, and the sun is dead. 
 
 I will not fail to apprise you of the revival of a 
 beam. Meantime accept this, rather than think I 
 have forgotten you all. Best remembrances. 
 
 Yours and theirs truly, C. Lamb. 
 
 Letter CCXIIL] 1827. 
 
 My dear B. B., — You will understand my silence 
 when I tell you that rny sister, on the very eve of 
 entering into a new house we have taken at Enfield, 
 was surprised with an attack of one of her sad long 
 illnesses, which deprive me of her society, though 
 not of her domestication, for eight or nine weeks 
 together. I see her, but it does her no good. But 
 for this, we have the snuggest, most comfortable 
 house, with every thing most compact and desirable. 
 Colebrook is a wilderness. The books, prints, &c., 
 are come here, and the New River came down with 
 us. The familiar prints, the bust, the Milton, seem 
 scarce to have changed their rooms. One of her last 
 observations was " How frightfully like this room is 
 to our room in Islington 1" — our up-stairs room, she 
 meant. How I hope you will come some better day, 
 and judge of it ! We have tried quiet here for four 
 months, and I will answer for the comfort of it 
 enduring.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 337 
 
 On emptying my bookshelves I found an Ulysses, 
 which I will send to A. K. when I go to town, for her 
 acceptance — unless the book be out of print. One 
 likes to have one copy of every thing one does. I 
 neglected to keep one of " Poetry for Children," the 
 joint production of Mary and me, and it is not to be 
 had for love or money. It had in the title-page " by 
 the Author of Mrs. Lester's School." Know you any 
 one that has it, and would exchange it ? 
 
 Strolling to Waltham Cross the other day, I hit oft' 
 these lines. It is one of the crosses which Edward 
 I. caused to be built for his wife at every town 
 where her corpse rested between Northamptonshire 
 and London : — 
 
 A stately cross each sad spot doth attest. 
 
 Whereat the corpse of Eleanor did rest. 
 
 From Herdby fetch'd — her spouse so honour'd her — 
 
 To sleep with royal dust at Westminster. 
 
 And, if less pompous obsequies were thine, 
 
 Duke Brunswick's daughter, princely Caroline, 
 
 Grudge not, great ghost, nor count thy funeral losses : 
 
 Thou in thy life-time had'st thy share of crosses. 
 
 My dear B., — My head aches with this little ex- 
 cursion. Pray accept two sides for three for once, 
 and believe me yours sadly, C. L. 
 
 Chase Side, Enfield. 
 
 Letter CCXIV.] X827. 
 
 My dear B., — We are all pretty well again and 
 comfortable, and I take a first opportunity of sending 
 the "Adventures of Ulysses," hoping that among us— 
 Homer, Chapman, and Co. — we shall afford you some 
 pleasure. I fear it is out of print ; if not, A. K. will 
 
 VOL. II. 2
 
 338 
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 
 
 accept it, with wishes it were bigger ; if another copy 
 is not to be had, it reverts to me and my heirs for 
 ever. With it I send a trumpery book; to which, 
 without my knowledge the editor of the Bijoux has 
 contributed Lucy's verses : I am ashamed to ask her 
 acceptance of the trash accompanying it. Adieu to 
 Albums — for a great while — I said when I came here, 
 and had not been fixed for two days ; but my land- 
 lord's daughter (not at the Pot house) requested me 
 to write in her female friends' and in her own. If I go 
 
 to thou art there also, O all pervading Album ! 
 
 All over the Leeward Islands, in Newfoundland, and 
 the Back Settlements, I understand there is no other 
 reading. They haunt me, I die of Albophobia ! 
 
 C. L. 
 
 Letter CCXV.] 1827. 
 
 My dear B. B., — A gentleman I never saw before 
 brought me your welcome present. Imagine a 
 scraping, fiddling, fidgeting, petit-maitre of a dancing 
 school advancing into my plain parlour with a coupee 
 and a sideling bow, and presenting the book as if he 
 had been handing a glass of lemonade to a young 
 miss : imagine this, and contrast it with the serious 
 nature of the book presented ! Then task your 
 imagination, reversing this picture, to conceive of 
 quite an opposite messenger, a lean, strait-locked, 
 whey-faced Methodist, for such was he in reality 
 who brought it, the Genius (it seems) of the 
 Wesleyan Magazine. Certes, friend B., thy Widow's 
 Tale is too horrible, spite of the lenitives of Religion, 
 to embody in verse; I hold prose to be the appropriate 
 expositor of such atrocities ! No offence, but it is e
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 
 
 339 
 
 cordial that makes the heart sick. Still thy skill in 
 compounding it I do not deny. I turn to what gave 
 me less mingled pleasure. I find mark'd with pencil 
 these pages in thy pretty book, and fear I have been 
 penurious : — 
 
 Page 52, 53— Capital. 
 
 59 — 6th stanza, exquisite simile. 
 
 61 — nth stanza, equally good. 
 108 — 3rd stanza, I long to see Van Balen. 
 Ill — A downright good sonnet. Dixi. 
 153 — Lines at the bottom. 
 
 So you see, I read, hear, and mark, if I don't learn. 
 In short, this little volume is no discredit to any of 
 your former, and betrays none of the senility you 
 fear about. Apropos of Van Balen, an artist who 
 painted me lately, had painted a blackamoor praying, 
 and not filling his canvas, stuffed in his little girl 
 aside of blackey, gaping at him unmeaningly; and 
 then didn't know what to call it. Now for a picture 
 to be promoted to the Exhibition (Suffolk Street) as 
 Historical, a subject is requisite. What does me ? 
 I but christened it the " Young Catechist " and fur- 
 bish'd it with dialogue following, which dubb'd it an 
 Historical Painting. Nothing to a friend at need. 
 
 "While this tawny Ethiop prayeth. 
 Painter, who is she that stayeth 
 By, with skin of whitest lustre; 
 Sunny locks, a shining cluster ; 
 Saint-like seeming to direct him 
 To the Power that must protect him ? 
 Is she of the heav'n-born Three, 
 Meek Hope, strong Faith, sweet Charity? 
 Or some Cherub ? 
 
 Z 2
 
 340 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON, 
 
 They you mention 
 Far transcend my weak invention. 
 'Tis a simple Christian child. 
 Missionary young and mild, 
 From her store of Script'ral knowledge, 
 (Bible-taught, without a college,) 
 Which by reading she could gather. 
 Teaches him to say Our Father 
 To the common Parent, who 
 Colour not respects, nor hue. 
 White and black in Him have part, 
 Who looks not to the skin, but heart." 
 
 When I'd done it, the artist (who had clapt in Miss 
 merely as a fill-space) swore I exprest his full mean- 
 ing, and the damosel bridled up into a missionary's 
 vanity. I like verses to explain pictures ; seldom 
 pictures to illustrate poems. Your woodcut is a 
 rueful lignum mortis. By the by, is the widow 
 likely to marry again ? 
 
 I am giving the fruit of my old play reading at the 
 Museum to Hone,^ who sets forth a portion weekly 
 in the Table Book. Do you see it ? How is Mitford ? 
 — I'll just hint that the pitcher, the chord, and the 
 bowl are a little too often repeated (passim) in your 
 book, and that in page 17, last line but 4, him is put 
 for he ; but the poor widow I take it had small leisure 
 for grammatical niceties. Don't you see there's he, 
 myself, and him ; why not both him ? likewise imper- 
 viously is cruelly spelt imperiously . These are trifles, 
 and I honestly like your book, and you for giving it, 
 though I really am ashamed of so many presents. I 
 can think of no news ; therefore I will end with 
 mine and Mary's kindest remembrances to you and 
 yours. C. L. 
 
 1 The Extracts from the Garrick plays, published in the Table 
 Book H.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 3^.1 
 
 Letter CCXVI.] [April 21st, iSzS.] 
 
 Dear B. B., — You must excuse my silence. I have 
 been in very poor health and spirits, and cannot write 
 letters. I only write to assure you, as you wish'd, of 
 my existence. All that which Mitford tells you of 
 His book is rhodomontade, only H. has written un- 
 guardedly about me, and nothing makes a man more 
 foolish than his own foolish panegyric. But I am 
 pretty well used to flattery, and its contrary. Neither 
 affects me a turnip's worth. Do you see the author 
 of " May you like it ?" Do you write to him ? Will 
 you give my present plea to him of ill health for not 
 acknowledging a pretty book with a pretty frontispiece 
 he sent me. He is most esteemed by me. As for 
 subscribing to books, in plain truth I am a man of 
 reduced income, and don't allow myself 12 shillings 
 a-year to buy old books with ; which must be my 
 excuse. I am truly sorry for Murray's demur ; but I 
 wash my hands of all booksellers, and hope to know 
 them no more. I am sick and poorly, and must leave 
 off with our joint kind remembrances to your daughter 
 and friend A. K. 
 
 Letter CCXVn.] Oct. nth, 1828. 
 
 A splendid edition of " Bunyan's Pilgrim !" Why, 
 the thought is enough to turn one's moral stomach. 
 His cockle-hat and staff transformed to a smart cock'd 
 beaver and a jemmy cane ; his amice grey, to the 
 last Regent Street cut ; and his painful palmer's pace
 
 342 
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 
 
 to the modern swagger. Stop thy friend's sacrilegious 
 hand. Nothing can be done for B. but to reprint the 
 old cuts in as homely but good a style as possible. 
 The Vanity Fair, and the Pilgrims there — the Silly- 
 soothness in his setting-out countenance — the Chris- 
 tian Idiocy (in a good sense) of his admiration of the 
 shepherds on the Delectable Mountains ; the lions, 
 so truly allegorical, and remote from any similitude 
 to Pidcock's ; the great head (the author's), capacious 
 of dreams and similitudes, dreaming in the dungeon. 
 Perhaps you don't know my edition, what I had when 
 a child. If you do, can you bear new designs from 
 Martin, enamelled into copper or silver plate by 
 Heath, accompanied with verses from Mrs. Hemans's 
 pen, O how unlike his own ! 
 
 " Wouldst thou divert thyself from melancholy ? 
 Wouldst thou be pleasant, yet be far from folly? 
 Wouldst thou read riddles, and their explanation ? 
 Or else be drown'd in thy contemplation? 
 Dost thou love picking meat ? or wouldst thou see 
 A man in the clouds, and hear him speak to thee? 
 Wouldst thou be in a dream, and yet not sleep ? 
 Or wouldst thou in a moment laugh and weep ? 
 Or wouldst thou lose thyself, and catch no harm. 
 And find thyself again without a charm? 
 Wouldst read thyself, and read thou knowest not what, 
 And yet know whether thou art blest or not 
 By reading the same lines? O then come hither. 
 And lay my book, thy head, and heart together. 
 
 "John Bdnyan." 
 
 Show me such poetry in any one of the fifteen forth- 
 coming combinations of show and emptiness, yclept 
 " Annuals." So there's verses for thy verses ; and 
 now let me tell you, that the sight of your hand glad- 
 dened me. I have been daily trying to write to you,
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 343 
 
 but paralysed. You have spurred me on this tiny 
 effort, and at intervals I hope to hear from and talk 
 to you. But my spirits have been in an opprest w^ay 
 for a long long time, and they are things which must 
 be to you of faith, for who can explain depression ? 
 Yes, I am hooked into the " Gem," but only for some 
 lines written on a dead infant of the Editor's, which 
 being, as it were, his property, I could not refuse 
 their appearing ; but I hate the paper, the type, the 
 gloss, the dandy plates, the names of contributors 
 poked up into your eyes in first page, and whistled 
 through all the covers of magazines, the barefaced 
 sort of emulation, the immodest candidateship. 
 Brought into so little space — in those old " Lon- 
 dons," a signature was lost in the wood of matter, 
 the paper coarse (till latterly, which spoiled them) ; 
 in short, I detest to appear in an Annual. What a 
 fertile genius (and a quiet good soul withal) is Hood I 
 He has fifty things in hand : farces to supply the 
 Adelphi for the season ; a comedy for one of the 
 great theatres, just ready ; a whole entertainment, 
 by himself, for Mathews and Yates to figure in ; a 
 meditated Comic Annual for next year, to oe nearly 
 done by himself. You'd like him very much. 
 
 Wordsworth, I see, has a good many pieces an 
 nounced in one of 'em, not our Gem. W. Scott has 
 distributed himself like a bribe haunch among 'em. 
 Of all the poets, Gary has had the good sense to keep 
 quite clear of 'em, with clergy-gentlemanly right 
 notions. Don't think I set up for being proud on this 
 point ; I like a bit of flattery, ticklmg my vanity, as 
 well as any one. But these pompous masquerades 
 without masks (naked names or faces) I hate. So 
 there's a bit of my mind. Besides, they infallibly cheat
 
 344 
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 
 
 you ; I mean the booksellers. If I get but a copy, I 
 only expect it from Hood's being my friend. Coleridge 
 has lately been here. He too is deep among the pro- 
 phets, the year-servers, — the mob of gentlemen an- 
 nuals. But they'll cheat him, I know. And now, 
 dear B. B., the sun shining out merrily, and the 
 dirty clouds we had yesterday having washed their 
 own faces clean with their own rain, tempts me to 
 wander up Winchmore Hill, or into some of the de- 
 lightful vicinages of Enfield, which I hope to show 
 you at some time when you can get a few days up to 
 the great town. Believe me, it would give both of us 
 great pleasure to show you all three (we can lodge 
 you) our pleasant farms and villages. 
 
 We both join in kindest loves to you and yours. 
 
 C. Lamb, redivivus. 
 
 Letter CCXVin.] Dec. 5th, 1828. 
 
 Dear B. B., — I am ashamed to receive so many 
 nice books from you, and to have none to send you 
 in return. You are always sending me some fruits 
 or wholesome potherbs, and mine is the garden of 
 the Sluggard, nothing but weeds, or scarce they. 
 Nevertheless, if I knew how to transmit it, I would 
 send you Blackwood's of this month, which contains 
 a little drama, to have your opinion of it, and how 
 far I have improved, or otherwise, upon its proto- 
 type. Thank you for your kind sonnet. It does me 
 good to see the Dedication to a Christian Bishop. I 
 am for a comprehension, as divines call it ; but so as 
 that the Church shall go a good deal more than half 
 way over to the silent Meeting-house. I have ever
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 345 
 
 said that the Quakers are the only professors of 
 Christianity as I read it in the Evangiles. I say pro- 
 fessors : marry, as to practice, with their gaudy hot 
 types and poetical vanities, they are much as one 
 with the sinful. Martin's Frontispiece is a very fine 
 thing, let C. L. say what he pleases to the contrary. 
 Of the Poems, I like them as a volume, better than 
 any one of the preceding ; particularly, " Power and 
 Gentleness " — " The Present " — " Lady Russell ; " 
 with the exception that I do not like the noble act of 
 Curtius, true or false — one of the grand foundations 
 of the old Roman patriotism — to be sacrificed to 
 Lady R.'s taking notes on her husband's trial. If a 
 thing is good, why invidiously bring it into light 
 with something better? There are too few heroic 
 things in this world, to admit of our marshalling 
 them in anxious etiquettes of precedence. Would 
 you make a poem on the story of Ruth, (pretty 
 story !) and then say — Ay, but how much better is 
 the story of Joseph and his brethren ! To go on, the 
 stanzas to " Chalon " want the name of Clarkson in 
 the body of them ; it is left to inference. The 
 " Battle of Gibeon" is spirited, again ; but you sacrifice 
 it in the last stanza to the song at Bethlehem. Is it 
 quite orthodox to do so ? The first was good, you sup- 
 pose, for that dispensation. Why set the word against 
 the word ? It puzzles a weak Christian. So Watts's 
 Psalms are an implied censure on David's. But as 
 long as the Old Testament is supposed to be an equally 
 divine emanation with the New Testament, so long it 
 will stagger weaklings to have them set in opposition. 
 " Godiva " is delicately touched. I have always 
 thought it a beautiful story, characteristic of the old 
 English times. But I could not help amusing myself
 
 346 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 
 
 with the thought — if Martin had chosen this subject 
 for a frontispiece — there would have been in some 
 dark corner a white lady, white as the walker on the 
 waves, riding upon some mystical quadruped ; and 
 high above would have risen " tower above tower a 
 massy structure high " — the Tenterden steeples of 
 Coventry, till the poor cross would scarce have 
 known itself among the clouds ; and far above them 
 all the distant Clint hills peering over chimney-pots, 
 piled up, Ossa-on-Olympus fashion, till the admiring 
 spectator (admirer of a noble deed) might have gone 
 look for the lady, as you must hunt for the other in 
 the lobster. But M[artin] should be made royal 
 architect. What palaces he would pile 1 But then, 
 what parliamentary grants to make them good ! 
 Nevertheless, I like the frontispiece. " The Ele- 
 phant " is pleasant ; and I am glad you are getting 
 into a wider scope of subjects. There may be too 
 much, not religion, but too many good words in a 
 book, till it becomes, as Sh[elley] says of Religion, 
 a rhapsody of words. I will just name, that you 
 have brought in the " Song to the Shepherds " in 
 four or five, if not six places. Now this is not good 
 economy. The "Enoch" is fine; and here I can 
 sacrifice " Elijah " to it, because 'tis illustrative only, 
 and not disparaging of the latter prophet's departure. 
 I like this best in the book. Lastly, I much like the 
 " Heron ;" 'tis exquisite. Know you Lord Thurlow's 
 Sonnet to a bird of that sort on Lacken water ? If 
 not, 'tis indispensable I send it you, with my Black- 
 wood, if you tell me how best to send them. 
 " Fludyer " is pleasant, — you are getting gay and 
 Hoodish. What is the enigma ? Money ? If not, 
 I fairly confess I am foiled, and sphynx must . . . . •
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 347 
 
 eat me. Four times I've tried to write eat me, and 
 the blotting pen turns it into cat me. And now I 
 will take my leave with saying, I esteem thy verses, 
 like thy present, honour thy frontispicer, and right 
 reverence thy patron and dedicatee, and am, 
 dear B. B., 
 
 Yours heartily, 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 Our joint kindest loves to A. K. and your daughter. 
 
 Letter CCXIX.] March 25th, 1829. 
 
 Dear B. B., — I send you by desire Barley's very 
 poetical poem. You will like, I think, the novel head- 
 ings of each scene. Scenical directions in verse are 
 novelties. With it I send a few duplicates, which 
 are therefore of no value to me ; and may amuse an 
 idle hour. Read " Christmas :" 'tis the production of 
 a young author, who reads all your writings. A good 
 word from you about his little book would be as balm 
 to him. It has no pretensions, and makes none. But 
 parts are pretty. In Field's Appendix turn to a poem 
 called the Kangaroo. It is in the best way of our 
 old poets, if I mistake not. I have just come from 
 town, where I have been to get my bit of quarterly 
 pension ; and have brought home, from stalls in 
 Barbican, the old " Pilgrim's Progress " with the 
 prints — Vanity Fair, &c. — now scarce. Four shil- 
 lings. Cheap. And also one of whom I have oft 
 heard and had dreams, but never saw in the flesh —
 
 348 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 
 
 that is in sheepskin — " The whole theologic works of 
 Thomas Aquinas." 
 
 My arms ached with lugging it a mile to the stage; 
 but the burden was a pleasure, such as old Anchises 
 was to the shoulders of /Eneas, or the Lady to the 
 Lover in old romance, who having to carry her to the 
 top of a high mountain, (the price of obtaining her,) 
 clambered with her to the top, and fell dead with 
 fatigue. 
 
 "Oh the glorious old Schoolmen !" 
 
 There must be something in him. Such great names 
 imply greatness. Who hath seen Michael Angelo's 
 things — of us that never pilgrimaged to Rome — and 
 yet which of us disbelieves his greatness ? How I 
 will revel in his cobwebs and subtleties, till my brain 
 spins ! 
 
 N.B. I have writ in the old Hamlet : offer it to 
 Mitford in my name, if he have not seen it. 'Tis 
 woefully below our editions of it. But keep it, if you 
 like. (What is M. to me ?) 
 
 I do not mean this to go for a letter, only to apprise 
 you that the parcel is booked for you this 25th March, 
 1829, from the Four Swans, Bishopsgate. With both 
 our loves to Lucy and A. K. Yours ever, C. L. 
 
 Letter CCXX.] june 3rd, 1829. 
 
 Dear B. B., — To get out of home themes, have 3-ou 
 seen Southey's Dialogues ? His lake descriptions, 
 and the account of his library at Keswick, are very
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 349 
 
 line. But he needed not to have called up the ghost 
 of More to hold the conversations with ; which might 
 as well have passed between A. and B, or Caius and 
 Lucius. It is making too free with a defunct Chan- 
 cellor and Martyr. 
 
 I feel as if I had nothing farther to write about. O 
 I forget the prettiest letter I ever read, that I have 
 received from " Pleasures of Memory" Rogers, in 
 acknowledgment of a sonnet I sent him on the loss 
 of his brother. 
 
 It is too long to transcribe, but I hope to show it 
 you some day, as I hope some time again to see you, 
 when all of us are well. Only it ends thus: "We 
 were nearly of an age ; he was the elder. He was 
 the only person in the world in whose eyes I always 
 appeared young." I will now take my leave with as- 
 suring you that I am most interested in hoping to 
 hear favourable accounts from you. With kindest 
 regards to A. K. and you, Yours truly, C. L. 
 
 Letter CCXXI.] July 3rd, 1829. 
 
 Dear B. B., — I am very much grieved indeed for 
 the indisposition of poor Lucy. Your letter found 
 me in domestic troubles. My sister is again taken 
 ill, and I am obliged to remove her out of the house 
 for many weeks, I fear, before I can hope to have 
 her again. I have been very desolate indeed. My 
 loneliness is a little abated by our young friend 
 Emma having just come here for her holidays, and 
 a schoolfellow of hers that was, with her. Still the 
 house is not the same, though she is the same. 
 Mary had been pleasing herself with the prospect of
 
 350 
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 
 
 seeing her at this time ; and with all their company, 
 the house feels at times a frightful solitude. May 
 you and I in no very long time have a more cheerful 
 theme to write about, and congratulate upon a 
 daughter's and a sister's perfect recovery. Do not 
 be long without telling me how Lucy goes on. I 
 have a right to call her by her quaker-name, you 
 know. Emma knows that I am writing to you, and 
 begs to be remembered to you with thankfulness 
 for your ready contribution. Her album is filling 
 apace. But of her contributors, one, almost the 
 flower of it, a most amiable young man and late 
 acquaintance of mine, has been carried off by con- 
 sumption, on return from one of the Azores islands, 
 to which he went with hopes of mastering the 
 disease, came back improved, went back to a most 
 close and confined counting-house, and relapsed. 
 His name was Dibdin, grandson of the songster. 
 
 C. L. 
 
 . Enfield Chase Side, Saturday 25th July, 
 
 Letter CCXXH.] a.d. 1829, u a.m. 
 
 There ! — a fuller, plumper, juicier date never dropt 
 from Idumean palm. Am I in the date-ive case now? 
 If not, a fig for dates, which is more than a date is 
 worth. I never stood much affected to these limitary 
 specialities ; least of all, since the date of my super- 
 annuation. 
 
 "What have I with time to do? 
 Slaves of desks, 'twas meant for you."
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 35I 
 
 Dear B. B., — Your handwriting has conveyed much 
 pleasure to me in respects of Lucy's restoration. 
 Would I could send you as good news of my poor 
 Lucy. But some wearisome weeks I must remain 
 lonely yet. I have had the loneliest time, near ten 
 weeks, broken by a short apparition of Emma for her 
 holidays, whose departure only deepened the return- 
 ing solitude, and by ten days I have past in town. 
 But town, with all my native hankering after it, is 
 not what it was. The streets, the shops are left; but 
 all old friends are gone ! And in London I was 
 frightfully convinced of this as I passed houses and 
 places, empty caskets now. I have ceased to care 
 almost about any body. The bodies I cared for are 
 in graves, or dispersed. My old clubs, that lived so 
 long and flourished so steadily, are crumbled away. 
 When I took leave of our adopted young friend at 
 Charing Cross, 'twas heavy unfeeling rain, and I had 
 no where to go. Home have I none, and not a sym- 
 pathizing house to turn to in the great city. Never 
 did the waters of heaven pour down on a forlorner 
 head. Yet I tried ten days at a sort of friend's house, 
 but it was large and straggling, — one of the individuals 
 of my old long knot of friends, card-players, pleasant 
 companions, that have tumbled to pieces, into dust and 
 other things ; and I got home on Thursday, convinced 
 that I was better to get home to my hole at Enfield, 
 and hide like a sick cat in my corner. Less than a 
 month I hope will bring home Mary. She is at Fulham, 
 looking better in her health than ever, but sadly ram- 
 bling, and scarce showing any pleasure in seeing me, 
 or curiosity when I should come again. But the 
 old feelings will come back again, and we shall 
 drown old sorrows over a game of picquet again.
 
 352 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 
 
 But 'tis a tedious cut out of a life of 54, to lose 12 or 
 13 weeks every year or two. And to make me 
 more alone, our ill-tempered maid is gone, who, 
 with all her airs, was yet a home-piece of furniture, 
 a record of better days. The young thing that has 
 succeeded her is good and attentive, but she is no- 
 thing. And I have no one here to talk over old 
 matters with. Scolding and quarrelling have some 
 thing of familiarity, and a community of interest ; 
 they imply acquaintance ; they are of resentment, 
 which is of the family of dearness. 
 
 I can neither scold nor quarrel at this insignifi- 
 cant implement of household services ; she is less 
 than a cat, and just better than a deal dresser. 
 What I can do, and do over-do, is to walk ; but 
 deadly long are the days, these Summer all-day 
 days, with but a half hour's candle-light, and no fire- 
 light. I do not write, tell your kind inquisitive Eliza, 
 and can hardly read. In the ensuing Blackwood will 
 be an old rejected farce of mine, which may be new 
 to you, if you see that same medley. What things 
 are all the magazines now! I contrive studiously not 
 to see them. The popular New Monthly is perfect 
 trash. Poor Hessey, I suppose you see, has failed ; 
 Hunt and Clarke too. Your "Vulgar Truths" will be 
 a good name ; and I think your prose must please — 
 me at least. But 'tis useless to write poetry with no 
 purchasers. 'Tis cold work authorship, without some 
 thing to puff one into fashion. Could you not write 
 something on Quakerism, for Quakers to read, but 
 nominally addressed to Non-Quakers, explaining your 
 dogmas— waiting on the Spirit — by the analogy of 
 human calmness and patient waiting on the judg- 
 ment ? I scarcely know what I mean, but to make
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 
 
 353 
 
 Non-Quakers reconciled to your doctrines, by show- 
 ing something like them in mere human operations ; 
 but I hardly understand myself; so let it pass for no- 
 thing. I pity you for over- work; but I assure you, no 
 work is worse. The mind preys on itself, the most 
 unwholesome food. I bragged formerly that I could 
 not have too much time. I have now a surfeit. With 
 few years to come, the days are wearisome. But 
 weariness is not eternal. Something will shine out 
 to take the load off that flags me, which is at present 
 intolerable. 1 have killed an hour or two in this poor 
 scrawl. I am a sanguinary murderer of time, and 
 would kill him inch-meal just now. But the snake is 
 vital. Well : I shall write merrier anon. 'Tis the pre- 
 sent copy of my countenance I send, and to complain 
 is a little to alleviate. May you enjoy yourself as far 
 as the wicked world will let you, and think that you 
 are not quite alone as I am ! Health to Lucia, and 
 to Anna, and kind remembrances. 
 
 Your forlorn, C. L. 
 
 Letter CCXXIIL] December 8th, 1829. 
 
 My dear B. B., — You are very good to have been 
 uneasy about us, and I have the satisfaction to tell 
 you that we are both in better health and spirits than 
 we have been for a year or two past ; I may say than 
 we have been since we have been at Enfield. The 
 cause may not appear quite adequate, when I tell 
 you that a course of ill-health and spirits brought us 
 to the determination of giving up our house here, 
 and we are boarding and lodging with a worthy old 
 
 VOL. II. 2 A
 
 354 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 
 
 couple, long inhabitants of Enfield, where every thing 
 is done for us without trouble, further than a reason- 
 able weekly payment. We should have done so 
 before, but it is not easy to flesh and blood to give 
 up an ancient establishment, to discard old Penates, 
 and from house keepers to turn house sharers. 
 (N.B. We are not in the workhouse.) Diocletian, in 
 his garden, found more repose than on the imperial 
 seat of Rome ; and the nob of Charles the Fifth ached 
 seldomer under a monk's cowl than under the diadem. 
 With such shadows of assimilation we countenance 
 our degradation. With such a load of dignified cares 
 just removed from our shoulders, we can the more 
 understand and pity the accession to yours, by the 
 advancement to an assigneeship. I will tell you 
 honestly, B. B., that it has been long my deliberate 
 judgment that all bankrupts, of whatsoever de- 
 nomination, civil or religious, ought to be hanged. 
 The pity of mankind has for ages run in a wrong 
 channel, and has been diverted from poor creditors — 
 (how many I have known sufferers ! Hazlitt has 
 just been defrauded of ;^ioo by his bookseller-friends 
 breaking^) — to scoundrel debtors. I know all the 
 topics — that distress may come upon an honest man 
 without his fault ; that the failure of one that he 
 trusted was his calamity, &c. Then let both be 
 hanged. O how careful this would make traders ! 
 These are my deliberate thoughts, after many 
 years' experience in matters of trade. What a world 
 of trouble it would have saved you, if Friend 
 * * * * had been immediately hanged, without 
 
 1 Messrs. Hunt and Clarke. The sum was ^500, which Mr. Hazlitt 
 was to have received for his Life of Napoleon. He received bills, 
 which were dishonoured. — H,
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 
 
 355 
 
 benefit of clergy, which (being a Quaker I presume) 
 he could not reasonably insist upon. Why, after 
 slaving twelve months in your assign-business, you 
 will be enabled to declare 'jd. in the pound in all 
 human probability. B. B., he should be hanged. 
 Trade will never re-flourish in this land till such 
 a law is established. I write big, not to save ink 
 but eyes, mine having been troubled with reading 
 through three folios of old Fuller in almost as few 
 days, and I went to bed last night in agony, and 
 am writing with a vial of eye-water before me, alter- 
 nately dipping in vial and inkstand. This may in- 
 flame my zeal against bankrupts, but it was my 
 speculation when I could see better. Half the world's 
 misery (Eden else) is owing to want of money, and 
 all that want is owing to bankrupts. I declare I 
 would, if the state wanted practitioners, turn hangman 
 myself, and should have great pleasure in hanging 
 the first bankrupt after my salutary law had been 
 established. I have seen no Annuals, and wish to see 
 none. I like your fun upon them, and was quite 
 pleased with Bowles's sonnet. Hood is, or was, at 
 Brighton; but a note (prose or rhyme) to him, Robert 
 Street, Adelphi, I am sure, would extract a copy of 
 his, which also I have not seen. Wishing you and 
 yours all health, I conclude while these frail glasses 
 are to me — eyes. 
 
 C. L. 
 
 Letter CCXXIV.] June 28, 1830. 
 
 Dear B. B., — Could you dream of my publishing 
 without sending a copy to you ? You will find some- 
 thing new to you in the volume, particularly the trans- 
 
 2 A 2
 
 356 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 
 
 lations, Moxon will send to you the moment it is 
 out. He is the young poet of Christmas, whom the 
 Author of the " Pleasures of Memory" has set up in 
 the book-vending business with a volunteer'd loan of 
 ;f500. Such munificence is rare to an almost 
 stranger; but Rogers, I am told, has done many good- 
 natured things of this kind. 
 
 I need not say how glad to see A. K. and Lucy we 
 should have been, — and still shall be, if it be practi- 
 cable. Our direction is Mr, Westwood's, Chase Side 
 Enfield ; but alas I know not theirs. We can give 
 them a bed. Coaches come daily from the Bell, Hol- 
 born. 
 
 You will see that I am worn to the poetical dregs, 
 condescending to acrostics, which are nine fathom 
 beneath album verses ; but they were written at the 
 request of the lady where our Emma is, to whom I 
 paid a visit in April to bring home Emma for a 
 change of air after a severe illness, in which she had 
 been treated like a daughter by the good Parson and 
 his whole family. She has since returned to her 
 occupation. I thought on you in Suffolk, but was 
 forty miles from Woodbridge. I heard of you the 
 other day from Mr. Pulham of the India House. 
 
 Long live King William the IVth ! 
 
 S. T. C. says we have had wicked kings, foolish 
 kings, wise kings, (but few,) but never till now have 
 we had a blackguard king. 
 
 Charles the Second was profligate, but a gentleman. 
 
 I have nineteen letters to dispatch this leisure Sab- 
 bath for Moxon to send with copies ; so you will for- 
 give me short measure, and believe me, 
 
 Yours ever, C. L. 
 
 Pray do let us see your Quakeresses if possible.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. ^^y 
 
 Letter CCXXV.] Feb. 25, 1830. 
 
 Dear B. B., — To reply to you by return of post, I 
 must gobble up my dinner and despatch this in pro- 
 pria persond to the office, to be in time. So take it 
 from me hastily, that you are perfectly welcome to 
 furnish A. C. with the scrap, which I had almost for- 
 gotten writing. The more my character comes to be 
 known, the less my veracity will come to be sus- 
 pected. Time every day clears up some suspected 
 narrative of Herodotus, Bruce, and others of us great 
 travellers. Why, that Joseph Paice^ was as real a 
 person as Joseph Hume, and a great deal pleasanter. 
 A careful observer of life, Bernard, has no need to 
 invent. Nature romances it for him. Dinner plates 
 rattle, and I positively shall incur indigestion by 
 carrying it half concocted to the post-house. Let me 
 congratulate you on the Spring coming in, and do you 
 in return condole with me on the Winter going out. 
 When the old one goes, seldom comes a better. I 
 dread the prospect of Summer, with his all-day-long 
 days. No need of his assistance to make country 
 places dull. With fire and candle-light I can dream 
 myself in Holborn. With lightsome skies shining in 
 to bed-time I can not. This Mesech, and these tents 
 of Kedar — I would dwell in the skirts of Jericho rather, 
 and think every blast of the coming in mail a ram's 
 horn. Give me old London at fire and plague times, 
 rather than these tepid gales, healthy country air, and 
 purposeless exercise. 
 
 ' Mr. Paice was a merchant on Bread Street Hill, and a Director of 
 the South Sea Company. He was an acquaintance and Correspondent 
 ofJohn Wilkes.— H.
 
 358 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 
 
 Leg of mutton absolutely on the table. 
 Take our hasty loves and short farewell. 
 
 C. L. 
 
 Letter CCXXVL] August 30th, 1830. 
 
 Dear B. B., — My address is 34, Southampton 
 Buildings, Holborn. For God's sake do not let me 
 be pester'd with Annuals. They are all rogues who 
 edit them, and something else who write in them. I 
 am still alone, and very much out of sorts, and cannot 
 spur up my mind to writing. The sight of one of 
 those year books makes me sick. I get nothing by 
 any of 'em, not even a copy. 
 
 Thank you for your warm interest about my little 
 volume, for the critics on which I care the five hun- 
 dred thousandth part of the tythe of a half-farthing. 
 I am too old a Militant for that. How noble, tho', in 
 Robert Southey to come forward for an old friend, 
 who had treated him so unworthily ! 
 
 Moxon has a shop without customers, I a book 
 without readers. But what a clamour against a poor 
 collection of Album verses, as if we had put forth an 
 Epic 1 I cannot scribble a long letter : I am, when 
 not at foot, very desolate, and take no interest in any 
 thing, scarce hate any thing but Annuals. I am. in 
 an interregnum of thought and feeling. What a 
 beautiful Autumn morning this is, if it was but with 
 me as in times past when the candle of the Lord 
 shined round me ! I cannot even muster enthusiasm 
 to admire the French heroism. In better times I 
 hope we may some day meet, and discuss an old
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 359 
 
 poem or two. But if you'd have me not sick, no 
 more of Annuals. 
 
 C. L., Ex-EIia. 
 Love to Lucy and A. K. always. 
 
 Letter CCXXVIL] April, 1831. 
 
 Vir Bone ! — Recepi literas tuas amicissimas, et in 
 mentem venit responsuro mihi, vel raro, vel nun- 
 quam, inter nos intercedisse Latinam linguam, 
 organum rescribendi, loquendive. Epistolas tuae, 
 Plinianis elegantiis (supra quod Tremulo deceat) 
 refertae, tam a verbis Plinianis adeo abhorrent, ut ne 
 vocem quamquam (Romanam scilicet) habere vide- 
 aris, quam "ad canem," ut aiunt, " rejectare possis." 
 Forsan desuetudo Latinissandi ad vernaculam lin- 
 guam usitandam, plusquam opus sit, coegit. Per 
 adagia quaedam nota, et in ore omnium pervulgata, 
 ad Latinitatis perditas recuperationem revocare te 
 institui. 
 
 Felis in abaco est, et aegre videt. 
 
 Omne quod splendet nequaquam aurum putes. 
 
 Imponas equo mendicum, equitabit idem ad dia- 
 bolum. 
 
 Fur commode a fure prenditur. 
 
 O Maria, Maria, valde contraria, quomodo crescit 
 hortulus tuus ? 
 
 Nunc majora canamus. 
 
 Thomas, Thomas, de Islington, uxorem duxit die 
 nupera Dominica. Reduxit domum postera. Suc- 
 cedenti baculum emit. Postridie ferit illam. TEgre- 
 scit ilia subsequenti. Proxima (nempe Veneris) est
 
 360 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 
 
 mortua. Plurimum gestiit Thomas, quod appropin- 
 quanti Sabbato efferenda sit. 
 
 Horner quidam Johannulus in angulo sedebat, 
 artocreas quasdam deglutiens. Inseruit poUices, 
 pruna nana evellens, et magna voce exclamavit " Dii 
 boni, quam bonus puer fio ! 
 
 Diddle-diddle-dumkins ! meus unicus filius Johannes 
 cubitum ivit, integris braccis, caliga una tantum, 
 indutus. Diddle-diddle, &c. Da Capo. 
 
 Hie adsum saltans Joannula. Cum nemo adsit 
 mihi, semper resto sola. 
 
 Enigma mihi hoc solvas, et CEdipus fies. 
 
 Qua ratione assimulandus sit equus Tremulo ? 
 
 Quippe cui tota communicatio sit per Hay et 
 Neigh, juxta consilium illud Dominicum. " Fiat 
 omnis communicatio vestra Yea et Nay." 
 
 In his nugis caram diem consumo, dum invigilo 
 valetudini carioris nostrae Emmae, quae apud nos 
 jamdudum aegrotat. Salvere vos jubet mecum Maria 
 mea, ipsa integra valetudine. Elia. 
 
 Ab agro Enfeldiense datum, Aprilis nescio quibus 
 Calendis — Davus sum, non Calendarius. 
 P.S. — Perdita in toto est Billa Reformatura. 
 
 Letter CCXXVHI.] No date.] 
 
 Dear B. B., — I am sure I cannot fill a letter, 
 though I should disfurnish my skull to fill it ; but 
 you expect something, and shall have a notelet. la
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 361 
 
 Sunday, not divinely speaking, but humanly and 
 holidaysically, a blessing ? Without its institution, 
 would our rugged taskmasters have given us a leisure 
 day, so often, think you, as once in a month ? or^ if 
 it had not been instituted, might they not have given 
 us every sixth day ? Solve me this problem. If we 
 are to go three times a-day to church, why has 
 Sunday slipt into the notion of a holliday ? A Holy- 
 day I grant it. The Puritans, I have read in 
 Southey's book, knew the distinction. They made 
 people observe Sunday rigorously, would not let a 
 nursery-maid walk out in the fields with children for 
 recreation on that day. But theti — they gave the 
 people a holiday from all sorts of work every second 
 Tuesday. This was giving to the two Caesars that 
 which was his respective. Wise, beautiful, thought- 
 ful, generous legislators ! Would Wilberforce give 
 us our Tuesdays ? No : (d — n him !) — he would turn 
 the six days into sevenths, 
 
 *' And those three smiling seasons of the year 
 Into a Russian Winter." — Oid Play. 
 
 I am sitting opposite a person who is making 
 strange distortions with the gout, which is not un- 
 pleasant — to me at least. What is the reason we do 
 not sympathize with pain, short of some terrible sur- 
 gical operation ? Hazlitt, who boldly says all he 
 feels, avows that not only he does not pity sick 
 people, but he hates them. I obscurely recognise 
 his meaning. Pain is probably too selfish a con- 
 sideration, too simply a consideration of self-atten- 
 tion. We pity poverty, loss of friends, &c. — more 
 complex things, in which the sufferer's feelings are 
 associated with others. This is a rough thought ■
 
 362 CORRESPONDENCE WITH BARTON. 
 
 suggested by the presence of gout ; I want head to 
 extricate it and plane it. What is all this to your 
 letter? I felt it to be a good one, but my turn, when 
 I write at all, is perversely to travel out of the record, 
 so that my letters are any thing but answers. So you 
 still want a motto ! You must not take my ironical 
 one, because your book, I take it, is too serious 
 for it. Bickerstaff might have used it for his lucu- 
 brations. What do you think of (for a title) Religio 
 Tremuli ? or Tremehundi ? There is Religio -Me did 
 and Laid. But perhaps the volume is not quite 
 Quakerish enough, or exclusively so, for it. Your 
 own "Vigils" is perhaps the best. While I have 
 space, let me congratulate with you the return of 
 Spring : what a summery Spring too 1 all those 
 qualms about the dog and cray-fish melt before it. 
 I am going to be happy and vain again. 
 
 A hasty farewell. 
 
 C. Lamb.
 
 ( 363 ) 
 
 VII. 
 
 Correspondence with William Hone. 
 
 Letter CCXXIX.] 9 Nov., '21. 
 
 Dear Sir, — I was not very well nor in spirits 
 when your pleasant note reached me, or should have 
 noticed it sooner. Our Hebrew brethren seem to 
 appreciate the good things of this life in more liberal 
 latitude than we, to judge from their frequent graces. 
 One, I think, you must have omitted : " After con- 
 cluding a bargain." Their distinction of " Fruits 
 growing upon trees," and " upon the ground," I can 
 understand. A sow makes quite a different grunt 
 {her grace) over chesnuts and pignuts. The last is a 
 little above Elia. With thanks, and wishing grace 
 be with you. 
 
 Yours, C. Lamb. 
 
 Mr. Hone, 
 
 45, Ludgate Hill: 
 
 Letter CCXXX.] e. i. h. 19 May, '23. 
 
 Dear Sir, — I have been very agreeably entertained 
 with your present, which I found very curious and 
 amusing. What wiseacres our forefathers appear to
 
 364 CORRESPONDENCE WITH HONE. 
 
 have been ! It should make us thankful, who are 
 grown so rational and polite. I should call to thank 
 you for the book, but go home to Dalston at present. 
 I shall beg your acceptance (when I see you) of my 
 little book. I have Ray's Collections of English Words 
 not generally Used, 1691 ; and in page 60 {" North 
 Country words ") occurs " Ryntye " — " by your leave," 
 " stand handsomely." As, " Rynt you, witch," quoth 
 Besse Locket to her mother; Proverb, Cheshire. — • 
 Doubtless this is the " Aroint " of Shakspeare. 
 
 In the same collection I find several Shaksperisms. 
 " Rooky" wood: a Northern word for "reeky," 
 " misty," &c. " Shandy," a north country word for 
 " wild." Sterne was York, 
 
 Yours obliged, 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 
 I am at 14, Kingsland Row, Dalston. Will you 
 take a walk over on Sunday ? We dine exactly at 4, 
 and shall be most glad to see you. If I don't hear 
 from you (by note to E. I. Ho.) I will expect you. 
 Mr. Hone, 
 
 45, Ludgate Hill. 
 
 Letter CCXXXL] [loth August, 1825,] 
 
 Dear H., — Will you direct these from Miss 
 Hazlitt to Mr. Thelwall, whose address I know 
 not? 
 
 I have returned the Shakspeare errata, finding 
 much nonsense ; good principles of correction, but 
 sad wildness in the application of them. No 
 magazine, as magazines go, would pay for the
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH HONE. 365 
 
 inclosed. Thelwall may take them for friendship's 
 sake. 
 
 Yours, as before, 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 Mr. Hone, 
 
 45, Ludgate Hill. 
 
 Letter CCXXXIL] [August 12, 1825.] 
 
 Dear Hone, — Your books are right acceptable. I 
 did not write farther about Dogget, because on 
 second thoughts the book I mean does not refer to 
 him. A coach from the " Bell," or " Bell and 
 Crown," sets off to Enfield at half-past four. Put 
 yourself in it to-morrow afternoon, and come to us ; 
 take a bed at an inn, and waste all Sunday with us. 
 We desire to show you the country here. If we are 
 out when you come, the maid is instructed to keep 
 you upon tea and proper bread and butter till we come 
 home. Pray secure me the last number of the Every 
 Day Book, that which has S. R[ay] in it, which by 
 mistake has never come. Did our newsman not bring 
 it on Monday ? Don't send home for it, for if I get it 
 hereafter, (so I have it at last.) it is all I want. Mind, 
 we shall expect you Saturday night or Sunday morn- 
 ing. There are Edmonton coaches from Bishopsgate 
 every half hour. The walk thence to Enfield is easy, 
 across the fields ; a mile and half. 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 C. Lamb.
 
 365 CORRESPONDENCE WITH HONE. 
 
 This invitation is " inj^enuous." I assure you we 
 want to see you here. Or will Sunday night and all 
 day Monday suit you better ? The coach sets you 
 down at Mr. Leishman's. 
 Friday. 
 
 Mr. Hone, 
 
 Colebrook Cottage, Islington. 
 
 Letter CCXXXIIL] [1825.] 
 
 Dear H. — The first bit of writing I have done these 
 many weeks. The quotations from both the Colliers 
 are correct, I assure you. 
 
 C. Lamb, getting well, but weak. 
 Mr. Hone, 
 
 45, Ludgate Hilt. 
 
 Letter CCXXXIV.] [August, 1825.] 
 
 Dear Hone, — I sent you a note by post to-day, but 
 this comes sooner by a friend. Put yourself in the 
 coach ("Bell," Holborn) to-morrow (Saturday) after- 
 noon, half-past four. Come and take a bed at an inn, 
 and waste Sunday with us gloriously. We have 
 dainty spots to show you. If you can't come, come 
 Sunday and stay Monday. Coaches to Edmonton go 
 hourly from Bishopgate, but we shall hope for you on 
 Saturday (to-morrow) evening. 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 
 Friday, 
 Mrs. Leishman's, 
 Chase, 
 
 Enfield. 
 
 Pray send the inclosed, and burn what comes in- 
 closed in the post letter. Put last week's Every
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH HONE. 367 
 
 Day in your pocket, which we have missed ; that 
 which has S. R[ay]. 
 Mr. Hone, 
 
 Colebrook Cottage, 
 
 Islington. 
 
 Letter CCXXXV.] 30 Sept., [1825.] 
 
 Dear H., — I came home in a week from Enfield, 
 worse than I went. My sufferings have been intense, 
 but are abating. I begin to know what a little sleep 
 is. My sister has sunk under her anxieties about me. 
 She is laid up, deprived of reason for many weeks to 
 come, I fear. She is in the same house, but we do 
 not meet. It makes both worse. I can just hobble 
 down as far as the "Angel " once a day; further kills 
 me. When I can stretch to Copenh[agen] Street I 
 will. If you come this way any morning, I can only 
 just shake you by the hand. This gloomy house does 
 not admit of making my friends welcome. You have 
 come off triumphant with Bartholomew Fair. Yours, 
 (writ with difficulty,) 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 Mr. Hone, 
 
 Ludgate Hill. 
 
 Letter CCXXXVI.] [Enfield, 25 July. 1826.] 
 
 Dear H., — The Quotidian came in as pleasantly as 
 it was looked for at breakfast time yesterday. You 
 have repaid my poor stanzas with interest.' This 
 last interlineation is one of those instances of affecta- 
 
 ' Referring to Hone's " Quatrains " to Isa-mb. — F,
 
 368 CORRESPONDENCE WITH HONE. 
 
 tion rightly applied. Read the sentence without it, 
 how bald it is ! Your idea of " worsted in the dog- 
 days " was capital. 
 
 We are here so comfortable that I am confident we 
 shall stay one month, from this date, most probably 
 longer ; so if you please, you can cut your out-of- 
 town room for that time. I have sent up my petit 
 farce altered ; and Harley is at the theatre now. It 
 cannot come out for some weeks. When it does, we 
 think not of leaving her, but to borrow a bed of you 
 for the night. 
 
 I write principally to say that the 4th of August is 
 coming, — Dogget's Coat and Badge Day on the 
 water. You will find a good deal about him in 
 Gibber's Apology, octavo, facing the window ; and 
 something haply in a thin blackish quarto among 
 the plays, facing the fireside. 
 
 You have done with mad dogs ; else there is a 
 print of Rowlandson's, or somebody's, of people in 
 pursuit of [one] in a village, which might have come 
 in : also Goldsmith's verses. 
 
 Mary's kind remembrance. 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 
 Mr. Hone, 
 
 Colebrook Cottage. 
 
 Islington.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH HONE. 3*^9 
 
 Letter CCXXXVIIL] [Feb. 5, 1827.] 
 
 For God's sake be more sparing of your poetry: 
 your this week's Number has an excess of it. 
 
 In haste, C. L. 
 
 Mr. Hone, 
 22, Bel'videre Place, 
 near Suffolk Street, 
 Borough. 
 
 Letter CCXXXIX.] [March 20, 1827.] 
 
 Damnable erratum (can't you notice it ?) in the 
 last line but two of the last Extract in No. 9, Garrick 
 Plays — 
 
 " Blushing forth golden Hair and glorious red :" 
 
 A sun-bright line spoil'd. 
 67. Blush for Blushing. 
 
 N.B. — The general Number was excellent. Also 
 a few lines higher — 
 
 " Restrain'd Liberty attain'd is sweet" 
 
 should have a full stop. 'Tis the end of the old 
 man's speech. These little blemishes kill such 
 delicate things ; prose feeds on grosser punctualities. 
 You have now 3 Numbers in hand ; one I sent you 
 yesterday. Of course I send no more till Sunday 
 week. 
 
 P.S. — Omitted above, Dear Hone. C. L. 
 
 Mr. Hone, 
 
 No. 22, Bel'vtdrrt Placet 
 Souttnuark, 
 
 VOL. II. • 2 B
 
 370 CORRESPONDENCE WITH HONE. 
 
 Letter CCXL.] [Aug. lo, 1827,] 
 
 My dear Hone, — We are both excessively grieved 
 at dear Matilda's illness, vi^hom we have ever regarded 
 with the greatest respect. Pray God, your next 
 news, which we shall expect most anxiously, shall 
 give hopes of her recovery. 
 
 Mary keeps her health very well, and joins in kind 
 remembrances and best wishes. 
 
 A few more Numbers (about 7) will empty my 
 Extract Book ; then we will consult about the " Speci- 
 mens." By then, I hope you will be able to talk 
 about business. How you continue your book at all, 
 and so well, in trying circumstances, I know not. 
 But don't let it stop. Would to God I could help 
 you ! — but we have the house full of company, which 
 we came to avoid. — God bless you. C. L. 
 
 Mr. Hone, 
 
 22, Belvidere Place. 
 Southivark. 
 
 Letter CCXLL] [Oct. 1827.] 
 
 Dear Hone, — I was most sensibly gratified by re- 
 ceiving the T B on Friday evening at 
 
 Enfield ! ! 
 
 Thank you. In haste, C. L. 
 
 Don't spare the Extracts. They'll eke out till 
 Christmas. 
 
 How is your daghter? [s^'c] 
 
 Mr. Hone, 
 
 22, Bel-videre Place, 
 &outbwark.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH HONE. 371 
 
 Letter CCXLIL] May *, 1828. 
 
 Dear H., — Valter Vilson dines with us to-morrow. 
 Veil ! How I should like to see Hone ! 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 
 Enfield, Wednesday. 
 Mr. Hone, 
 
 22, Be hide re Place, 
 near the Obelisk, Southivark. 
 
 Letter CCXLHL] [juiy i, 1830.] 
 
 Pray let Matilda keep my newspapers till you hear 
 from me, as we are meditating a town residence. 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 Let her keep them as the apple of her eye. 
 Mr. Hone, 
 
 13, Gracechurch Street. 
 
 Letter CCXLIV.] Enfield, 17 June, 1830. 
 
 I hereby impower Matilda Hone to superintend 
 daily the putting into the twopenny post the Times 
 newspaper of the day before, directed '* Mr. Lamb, 
 Enfield," which shall be held a full and sufficient 
 directiofi ; the said insertion to commence on Mon- 
 day morning next. And I do engage to pay to 
 William Hone, Coffee and Hotel Man, the quarterly 
 sum of ;^i, to be paid at the ordinary Quarter days, 
 or thereabout, for the reversion of the said paper, 
 commencing with the 24th inst., or Feast of John 
 the Baptist ; the intervening days to be held and con- 
 sidered as nothing. C. Lamb. 
 Vivant Coffee, Coffee — pot — que ! 
 Mr. Hone, 
 
 Coffee-bouse and Hotel, 
 
 13, Gracechurch Street, London. 
 
 2 B 2
 
 372 CORRESPONDENCE WITH HONE. 
 
 Letter CCXLV.] [March 6, 1833.] 
 
 Dear Friend, — Thee hast sent a Christian epistle 
 to me, and I should not feel dear if I neglected to 
 reply to it, which would have been sooner if that 
 vain young man, to whom thou didst intrust it, 
 had not kept it back. We should rejoice to see 
 thy outward man here, especially on a day which 
 should not be a first day, being liable to worldly 
 callers in on that day. Our little book is delayed by a 
 heathenish injunction, threatened by the man Taylor. 
 Canst thou copy and send, or bring with thee, a 
 vanity in verse which in my younger days I wrote on 
 friend Ader's pictures? Thou wilt find it in the book 
 called the Table Book. 
 
 Tryphena and Tryphosa, whom the world calleth 
 Mary and Emma, greet you with me. 
 
 Ch. Lamb. 
 
 6th of 3rd month, 4th day. 
 
 fV. Hone, Esq., 
 
 Grasshopper Hotel, 
 
 Gracecburch Street, 
 
 Letter CCXLVL] [No date.] 
 
 Dear H., — I don't know by your letter whether you 
 are resident at Newington Green, nor at what mimher. 
 So I discharge this, as a surer shot, at Russell Court. 
 Your almanack is funny ; it only disappointed me as 
 being not an almanack. What a one you might make 1 
 embracing a real calendar, with astrological ridicule, 
 predictions like Tom Brown's " for every day in the
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH HONE. 
 
 Z7Z 
 
 week." The only information I receive from this is 
 that New Year's Day happened this year on the ist 
 of January. I do not see the days even set down on 
 which I ought to go to church, the Dominical Letter : 
 fie ! I will only add that Enfield is still here, with 
 its accustomed shoulders of mutton, fine Geneva 
 tipple, &c. 
 
 So hoping sometime for a fine day's walk with you, 
 I rest, C. L. 
 
 Mary's love to both of you. 
 
 Mr. Hone, 
 
 29, Russell Court, 
 Brydges Street, Ccvent Garden, 
 
 Letter CCXLVIL] [No date.] 
 
 Dear Sir, — Miss Hazlitt is anxious about her MS. 
 novel.^ Would you be so kind as to transmit it some 
 way or other to Mr. Hardy, 30, Queen's Row, or 
 Queen's Square, Pimlico, if he has not already got it? 
 I am afraid I have not duly acknowledged the present 
 of your excellent pamphlet, for which much thanks 
 and approbation, tho' late. 
 
 I remain, yours truly, 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 
 Mr. Hone, 
 45, Ludgate Hill. 
 
 Letter CCXLVIIL] [No date.] 
 
 Dear H., — May I trouble your kindness (a pretty 
 phrase and new) to transmit for me the accompanying 
 
 1 Referred to in a former letter. It does not appear to have been 
 published. Lamb revised some of Lady Stoddart's novels for the press, 
 and made many alterations in them. — H.
 
 374 CORRESPONDENCE WITH HONE. 
 
 farce (which I leave open for your amusement) to 
 Terry, with the inclosed, at the Adelphi ; or his own 
 house, if it can be there learned, and is not far dis- 
 tant, still better. I have no messenger, and am 
 crippled for going so far. The letter must go with it. 
 I return, with the farce, three books. Pick out the 
 Cobbler. 
 
 Yours, " every day," C. L. 
 
 Mr. Hone, 
 
 With four Books. 
 
 ' For other letters to Hone, see the " Miscellaneous Corre- 
 spondence."
 
 375 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Correspondence with Mr. B. W. Procter. 
 
 Letter CCLL] April 13, 1823. 
 
 Dear Lad, — You must think me a brute beast, a 
 rhinoceros, never to have acknowledged the receipt of 
 your precious present. But indeed I am none of 
 those shocking things, but have arrived at that indis- 
 position to letter-writing which would make it a hard 
 exertion to write three lines to a king to spare a 
 friend's life : whether it is that the Magazine pay- 
 ing me so much a page I am loath to throw away 
 composition. How much a sheet do you give your 
 correspondents ? I have hung up Pope, and a gem 
 it is, in my town room ; I hope for your approval. 
 Though it accompanies the Essay on Man, I think 
 that was not the poem he is here meditating. He 
 would have looked up, somehow affectedly, if he were 
 just conceiving "Awake, my St. John." Neither is 
 he in the Rape of the Lock mood exactly. I think he 
 has just made out the last lines of the *' Epistle to 
 Jervis," between gay and tender, 
 
 •' And other beauties envy Worsley's eyes." 
 
 I'll be d . . .'d if that isn't the line. He is brooding 
 over it, with a dreamy phantom of Lady Mary float- 
 ing before him. He is thinking which is the earliest 
 possible day and hour that she will first see it. 
 What a miniature piece of gentility it is ! Why did 
 you give it me ? I do not like you enough to give 
 you any thing so good.
 
 376 CORRESPONDENCE WITH PROCTER. 
 
 I have dined with T. Moore and breakfasted with 
 Rogers, since I saw you ; have much to say about 
 them when we meet, which I trust will be in a week 
 or two. I have been over-watched and over-poeted 
 since Wordsworth has been in town. I was obliged 
 for health's sake to wish him gone, but now he is gone 
 I feel a great loss. I am going to Dalston to recruit, 
 and have serious thoughts of altering my condition, 
 that is, of taking to sobriety. What do you advise me ? 
 
 Rogers spake very kindly of you, as every body 
 does, and none with so much reason as your 
 
 C. L. 
 
 Letter CCLIL] 
 
 My dear Procter, — I do agnise a shame in not 
 having been to pay my congratulations to Mrs. 
 Procter and your happy self, but on Sunday (my 
 only morning) I was engaged to a country walk ; 
 and in virtue of the hypostatical union between us, 
 when Mary calls, it is understood that I call too, we 
 being univocal. 
 
 But indeed I am ill at these ceremonious induc- 
 tions. I fancy I was not born with a call on my head, 
 though I have brought one down upon it with a 
 vengeance. I love not to pluck that sort of frail 
 crude, but to stay its ripening into visits. In pro- 
 bability Mary will be at Southampton Row this morn- 
 ing, and something of that kind be matured between 
 you, but in any case not many hours shall elapse 
 before I shake you by the hand. 
 
 Meantime give my kindest felicitations to Mrs. 
 Procter, and assure her I look forward with the 
 greatest delight to our acquaintance. By the way,
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH PROCTER. 377 
 
 the deuce a bit of cake has come to hand, which hath 
 an inauspicious look at first, but I comfort myself 
 that that mysterious service hath the property of 
 Sacramental Bread, which mice cannot nibble, nor 
 time moulder. 
 
 I am married myself to a severe step-wife, who 
 keeps me, not at bed and board, but at desk and 
 board, and is jealous of my morning aberrations. I 
 cannot slip out to congratulate kinder unions. It is 
 well she leaves me alone o'nights, — the d— — d Day- 
 hag Business. She is even now peeping over me to 
 see I am writing no love letters. I come, my dear — 
 Where is the Indigo Sale Book ? 
 
 Twenty adieus, my dear friends, till we meet. 
 Yours most truly, 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 
 Leadenhalh Nov. nth, '24. 
 
 Letter CCLIII.] Jan. 19th, 1829. 
 
 My dear Procter, — I am ashamed not to have taken 
 the drift of your pleasant letter, which I find to have 
 been pure invention ; but jokes are not suspected in 
 Boeotian Enfield. We are plain people, and our talk 
 is of corn and cattle and Waltham markets. Besides, 
 I was a little out of sorts when I received it. The 
 fact is, I am involved in a case which has fretted me 
 to death, and I have no reliance except on you to 
 extricate me. I am sure you will give me your best 
 legal advice, having no professional friend besides 
 but Robinson and Talfourd, with neither of whom, at 
 present, I am on the best of terms. My brother's 
 widow left a will, made during the lifetime of my
 
 378 CORRESPONDENCE WITH PROCTER. 
 
 brother, in which I am named sole executor, by which 
 she bequeathes forty acres of arable property, which 
 it seems she held under covert baron, unknown to my 
 brother, to the heirs of the body of Elizabeth Dowden, 
 her married daughter by a first husband, in fee simple, 
 recoverable by fine ; invested property, mind, for 
 there is the difficulty; subject to leet and quit-rent ; 
 in short, worded in the most guarded terms, to shut 
 out the property from Isaac Dowden, the husband. 
 Intelligence has just come of the death of this person 
 in India, where he made a will, entailing this property 
 (which seemed entangled enough already) to the 
 heirs of his body that should not be born of his 
 wife ; for it seems by the law in India, natural 
 children can recover. They have put the cause 
 into Exchequer process here, removed by certio- 
 rari from the native courts ; and the question is, 
 whether I should, as executor, try the cause here, or 
 again re-remove it to the Supreme Sessions at Ban- 
 galore, which I understand I can, or plead a hearing 
 before the Privy Council here. As it involves all the 
 little property of Elizabeth Dowden, I am anxious to 
 take the fittest steps, and what may be least expen- 
 sive. For God's sake assist me, for the case is so 
 embarrassed that it deprives me of sleep and appetite. 
 M. Burney thinks there is a case like it in chap. 170, 
 sec. 5, in " Fearn's Contingent Remainders." Pray 
 read it over with him dispassionately, and let me have 
 the result. The complexity lies in the questionable 
 power of the husband to alienate in zisum enfeoff- 
 ments whereof he was only collaterally seized, &c. 
 
 I had another favour to beg, which is the beg- 
 garliest of beggings : a few lines of verse for a young 
 friend's album (six will be enough). M. Bumey will
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH PROCTER. 379 
 
 tell you who she is I want 'em for. A girl of gold. 
 
 Six lines — make 'em eight — signed Barry C . 
 
 They need not be very good, as I chiefly want 'em 
 as a foil to mine. But I shall be seriously obliged by 
 any refuse scrap. We are in the last ages of the 
 world, when St. Paul prophesied that women should 
 be " headstrong, lovers of their own wills, having 
 albums." I fled hither to escape the albumean per- 
 secution, and had not been in my new house twenty- 
 four hours when the daughter of the next house 
 came in with a friend's album to beg a contribution, 
 and the following day intimated she had one of her 
 own. Two more have sprung up since. " If I take 
 the wings of the morning" and fly unto the uttermost 
 parts of the earth, there will albums be. New Hol- 
 land has albums. But the age is to be complied with. 
 M. B. will tell you the sort of girl I request the ten 
 lines for. Somewhat of a pensive cast, what you 
 admire. The lines may come before the law question, 
 as that cannot be determined before Hilary Term, and 
 I wish your deliberate judgment on that. The other 
 may be flimsy and superficial. And if you have not 
 burnt your returned letter, pray resend it me, as a 
 monumental token of my stupidity. 'Twas a little 
 unthinking of you to touch upon a sore subject. Why, 
 by dabbling in those accursed Annuals I have become 
 a by-word of infamy all over the kingdom. I have 
 sicken'd decent women for asking me to write in 
 albums. There be dark "jests " abroad. Master Corn- 
 wall, and some riddles may live to be cleared up. 
 And 'tisn't every saddle is put on the right steed. 
 And forgeries and false Gospels are not peculiar 
 to the age following the Apostles. And some tubs 
 don't stand on their right bottom, which is all I
 
 3^0 CORRESPONDENCE WITH PROCTER. 
 
 wish to say in these ticklish times ; and so your 
 servant, 
 
 Cn. Lamb. 
 
 Letter CCLIV.] Jan. 22nd, 1829. 
 
 Don't trouble yourself about the verses. Take 'em 
 
 coolly as they come. Any day between this and 
 Midsummer will do. Ten lines the extreme. There 
 is no mystery in my incognita. She has often seen 
 you, though you may not have observed a silent 
 brown girl, who for the last twelve years has rambled 
 about our house in her Christmas holidays. She is 
 Italian by name and extraction. Ten lines about the 
 blue sky of her country will do, as 'tis her foible to be 
 proud of it. — Item : I have made her a tolerable 
 Latinist. She is called Emma Isola. I shall, I think, 
 be in town in a few weeks, when I will assuredly see 
 you. I will put in here loves to Mrs. Procter and 
 the anti-Capulets, because Mar}' tells me I omitted 
 them in my last. I like to see my friends here. I 
 have put my law-suit into the hands of an Enfield 
 practioner, a plain man, who seems perfectly to un- 
 derstand it, and gives me hopes of a favourable 
 result. 
 
 Rumour tells us that ^liss Holcroft is married. 
 Who is Badman, or Bed'em ?' Have I seen him at 
 Montague's ? I hear he is a great chemist. I am 
 sometimes chemical myself. A thought strikes me 
 with horror. Pray heaven he may not have done it 
 for the sake of trying chemical experiments upon 
 
 ' Baddams. Miss Holcroft married Dr. Baddams, and survived him, 
 and married a second time. — H.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH PROCTER. 38 1 
 
 her, — ^young female subjects are so scarce. Louisa 
 would make a capital shot. Arn't you glad about 
 Burke's case ? We may set off the Scotch murders 
 against the Scotch novels : Hare, the Great Un- 
 changed ! 
 
 M. B. is richly worth your knowing. He is on the 
 top scale of my friendship ladder, on which an angel 
 or two is still climbing, and some, alas ! descending. 
 Did you see a sonnet of mine in Blackwood's last ? 
 Curious construction ! Elaborata facilitas ! And 
 now I'll tell. 'Twas written for the Gem, but the 
 editors declined it, on the plea that it would shock all 
 mothers; so they published "The Widow," instead. 
 I am born out of time. I have no conjecture about 
 what the present world calls delicacy. I thought 
 "Rosamund Gray" was a pretty modest thing, 
 Hessey assures me that the world would not bear it. 
 I have lived to grow into an indecent character. 
 When my sonnet was rejected, I exclaimed, " Damn 
 the age ! I will write for antiquity." 
 
 Erratum in Sonnet: — Last line but something, 
 for "tender," read tend. The Scotch do not know 
 our law terms ; but I find some remains of honest, 
 plain, old writing lurking there still. They were not 
 so mealy-mouthed as to refuse my verses. Maybe 
 'tis their oatmeal. 
 
 Blackwood sent me £20 for the drama. Somebody 
 cheated me out of it next day ; and my new pair of 
 breeches, just sent home, cracking at first putting on, 
 I exclaimed, in my wrath, " All tailors &re cheats, and 
 all men are tailors." Then I was better. C. L.
 
 382 CORRESPONDENCE WITH PROCTER. 
 
 Letter CCLV.] Jan. 29th, 1829. 
 
 When Miss Ouldcroft (who is now Mrs. Beddam, 
 and Bed — damn'd to her) was at Enfield, which she 
 was in Summer time, and owed her health to its sun 
 and genial influences, she visited (with young lady- 
 like impertinence) a poor man's cottage that had a 
 pretty baby, (O the yearning 1) gave it fine caps and 
 sweetmeats. On a day, broke into the parlour our 
 two maids uproarious. " O ma'am, who do you think 
 Miss Ouldcroft (they pronounce it Holcroft) has been 
 working a cap for?" "A child," answered Mary, in 
 true Shandean female simplicity. " 'Tis the man's 
 child as was taken up for sheep-stealing." Miss 
 Ouldcroft was staggered, and would have cut the con- 
 nection, but by main force I made her go and take 
 her leave of her protegee. I thought, if she went no 
 more, the Abactor or Abactor's wife (vide Ainsworth) 
 would suppose she had heard something ; and I have 
 delicacy for a sheep-stealer. The overseers actually 
 overhauled a mutton pie at the baker's, (his first, last, 
 and only hope of mutton pie,) which he never came 
 to eat, and thence inferred his guilt. Per occasionem 
 cujus, I framed the sonnet ; observe its elaborate con- 
 struction. I was four days about it. 
 
 THE GIPSY'S MALISON. 
 
 " Suck, baby, suck ! mother's love grows by giving. 
 
 Drain the sweet founts that only thrive by wasting ; 
 Black manhood comes, when riotous guilty living 
 
 Hands thee the cup that shall be death in tasting. 
 Kiss, baby, kiss ! mother's lips shine by kisses. 
 
 Choke the warm breath that else would fall in blessings; 
 Black manhood comes, when turbulent guilty blisses 
 
 Tend thee the kiss that poisons 'mid caressings.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH PROCTER. og-^ 
 
 Hang, baby, hang ! mother's love loves such forces. 
 
 Strain the fond neck that bends still to thy clinging ; 
 Black manhood comes, when violent lawless courses 
 Leave thee a spectacle in rude air swinging." 
 So sang a wither'd beldam energetical. 
 And bann'd the ungiving door with lips prophetical. 
 
 Barry, study that sonnet. It is curiously and per- 
 versely elaborate. 'Tis a choking subject, and there- 
 fore the reader is directed to the structure of it. See 
 you ! and was this a fourteener to be rejected by a trum- 
 pery annual? Forsooth, 'twould shock all mothers; 
 and may all mothers, who would so be shocked, be 
 damn'd ! as if mothers were such sort of logicians as 
 to infer the future hanging of their child from the 
 theoretical hangibility (or capacity of being hanged, 
 if the judge pleases) of every infant born with a neck 
 on. Oh B. C. my whole heart is faint, and my whole 
 head is sick (how is it ?) at this damn'd canting 
 unmasculine age ! 
 
 Letter CCLVI.] Feb. 2nd, 1829. 
 
 Facundissime Poeta ! quanquamistiusmodi epitheta 
 oratoribus potius quam poetis attinere facile scio — - 
 tamen, facundissime ! 
 
 Commoratur nobiscum jamdiu, in agro Enfeldiense, 
 scilicet, leguleius futurus, illustrissimus Martinus 
 Burneius, otium agens, negotia nominalia, et offici- 
 nam clientum vacuam, paululum fugiens. Orat, im- 
 plorat te— nempe, Martinus — ut si (quod Dii faciant) 
 forte fortuna, absente ipso, advenerit tardus cliens, 
 eum certiorem feceris per literas hiic missas. Intel- 
 ligisne ? an me Anglice et barbarice ad te hominem 
 perdoctum scribere oportet ? C. Agnus.
 
 384 CORRESPONDENCE WITH PROCTER, 
 
 Si Status tie franco tenemento datur avo, et in 
 eodcm facto si mediate vel immediate datur hcercdibus 
 vcl Ituncllbiis corporis dicti avi, postrema heec verba 
 sunt Limitationis non Perquisitionis. 
 
 Dixi. Carlagnulus. 
 
 Letter CCLVIL] [1829.] 
 
 The comings in of an incipient conveyancer are not 
 adequate to the receipt of three twopenny post non- 
 paids in a week. Therefore, after this, I condemn my 
 stub to long and deep silence, or shall awaken it to 
 write to lords. Lest those raptures in this honey- 
 moon of my correspondence, which you avow for the 
 gentle person of my Nuncio, after passing through 
 certain natural grades, as Love, Love and Water, 
 Love with the chill off, then subsiding to that point 
 which the heroic suitor of his wedded dame, the 
 noble-spirited Lord Randolph in the play, declares to 
 be the ambition of his passion, a reciprocation of 
 "complacent kindness," — should suddenly plump 
 down (scarce staying to bait at the mid point of in- 
 difference, so hungry it is for distaste) to a loathing 
 and blank aversion, to the rendering probable such 
 counter expressions as this, — " Damn that infernal 
 two-penny postman," (words which make the not yet 
 glutted inamorato •' lift up his hands and wonder who 
 can use them.") While, then, you are not ruined, 
 let me assure thee, O thou above the painter, and 
 next only under Giraldus Cambrensis, the most im- 
 mortal and worthy to be immortal Barry, thy most
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH PROCTER. 385 
 
 ingenious and golden cadences do take my fancy 
 mightily. They are at this identical moment under 
 the hands and the paste of the fairest hands (bating 
 chilblains) in Cambridge, soon to be transplanted to 
 Suffolk, to the envy of half of the young ladies in 
 Bury. But tell me, and tell me truly, gentle swain, 
 is that Isola Bella a true spot in geographical denomi- 
 nation, or a floating Delos in thy brain ? Lurks that 
 fair island in verity in the bosom of Lake Maggiore, 
 or some other with less poetic name, which thou hast 
 Cornwallized for the occasion. And what if Maggiore 
 itself be but a coinage of adaptation ? Of this, pray 
 resolve me immediately, for my albumess will be 
 catechised on this subject ; and how can I prompt 
 her? Lake Leman I know, and Lemon Lake (in a 
 punch bowl) I have swum in, though those lymphs 
 be long since dry. But Maggiore may be in the 
 moon. Unsphinx this riddle for me, for my shelves 
 have no gazetteer. And mayest thou never murder 
 thy father-in-law in the Trivia of Lincoln's Inn New 
 Square Passage, nor afterwards make absurd pro- 
 posals to the Widow M[ontague]. But I know you 
 abhor any such notions. Nevertheless so did 0-Edipus 
 (as Admiral Burney used to call him, splitting the 
 dipthong in spite or ignorance) for that matter. 
 
 C. L. 
 
 VOL. II. 2 C
 
 ( 386 ) 
 
 IX. 
 
 Correspondence with the Rev. H. F. Gary. 
 
 Letter CCLVIIL] India Office, 14th Ocl 1823. 
 
 Dear Sir, — If convenient, will you give us house 
 room on Saturday next ? I can sleep anywhere. If 
 another Sunday suit you belter, pray let me know. 
 We were talking of Roast Shoulder of Mutton with 
 onion sauce ; but I scorn to prescribe to the hospi- 
 talities of mine host. 
 
 With respects to Mrs. C, yours truly, 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 
 Letter CCLIX.] April 3, 1826. 
 
 Dear Sir, — It is whispered me that you will not be 
 unwilling to look into our doleful hermitage. With- 
 out more preface, you will gladden our cell by ac- 
 companying our old chums of the London, Darley 
 and A[llan] C[unningham], to Enfield on Wednes- 
 day. You shall have hermit's fare, with talk as 
 seraphical as the novelty of the divine life will permit, 
 with an innocent retrospect to the world which we 
 have left, when I will thank you for your hospitable 
 offer at Chiswick, and with plain hermit reasons 
 evince the necessity of abiding here. 
 
 Without hearing from you, then, 3'ou shall give us 
 leave to expect you. I have long had it on my con- 
 science to invite you, but spirits have been low ; and
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH GARY. 387 
 
 I am indebted to chance for this awkward but most 
 sincere invitation. 
 
 Yours, with best loves to Mrs. Gary, 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 
 D. knows all about the coaches. Oh for a Museum 
 in the wilderness ! 
 
 Letter CCLX.] June loth, 1828. 
 
 Dear Sir, — I long to see Wordsworth once more 
 before he goes hence, but it would be at the expence 
 of health and comfort my infirmities cannot afford. 
 Once only I have been at a dinner party, to meet him, 
 for a whole year past, and I do not know that I am 
 not the worse for it now. There is a necessity for 
 my drinking too much (don't show this to the Bishop 
 of , your friend) at and after dinner ; then I re- 
 quire spirits at night to allay the crudity of the weaker 
 Bacchus ; and in the morning I cool my parched 
 stomach with a fiery libation. Then I am aground 
 in town, and call upon my London friends, and get 
 new wets of ale, porter, &c. ; then ride home, drink- 
 ing where the coach stops, as duly as Edward set up 
 his Waltham Crosses. This, or near it, was the 
 process of my experiment of dining at Talfourd's to 
 meet Wordsworth, and I am not well now. Now let 
 me beg that we may meet here with assured safety 
 to both sides. Darley and Procter come here on 
 Sunday morning ; pray arrange to come along with 
 them. Here I can be tolerably moderate. In town, 
 the very air of town turns my head and is intoxication 
 enough, if intoxication knew a limit. I am a poor 
 couDtry mouse, and your cates disturb me. Tell 
 
 2 c 2
 
 388 CORRESPONDENCE WITH CARY. 
 
 me you will come. We have a bed, and a half or 
 three quarters bed, at all your services ; and the ad- 
 joinmg inn has many. If engaged on Sunday, tell 
 me when you will come ; a Saturday will suit as well. 
 I would that Wordsworth would come too. Pray 
 believe that 'tis my health only, which brought me 
 here, that frightens me from the wicked town. Mary 
 joins in kind remembrances to Mrs. Gary and your- 
 self. 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 
 Letter CCLXI.] 13 April, 1831. 
 
 Dear C. — I am daily for this week expecting 
 Wordsworth, who will not name a day. I have been 
 e.xpecting him by months and by weeks ; but he has 
 reduced the hope within the seven fractions heb- 
 domidal of this hebdoma. Therefore I am sorry I 
 cannot see you on Thursday. I think within a week 
 or two I shall be able to invite myself some day for a 
 day, but we hermits with difficulty poke out of our 
 shells. Within that ostraceus retirement I meditate 
 not unfrequently on you. My sister's kindest re- 
 membrances to your both. 
 
 C. L. 
 
 Letter CCLXIL] [183*] 
 
 Assidens est mihi bona soror, Euripiden evolvens, 
 donum vestrum, carissime Car}% pro quo gratias agi- 
 mus, lecturi atque iterum lecturi idem. Pergratus est 
 liber ambobus, nempe " Sacerdotis Commiserationis," 
 sacrum opus a te ipso Humanissimae Religionis
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH CARY. 389 
 
 Sacerdote done datum. Lachrymantes gavisuri sumus; 
 est ubi dolor fiat voluptas ; nee semper duke mihi est 
 ridere ; aliquando commutandum est he ! he ! he ! 
 cum heu ! heu ! heu ! 
 
 A Musis Tragicis me non penitus abhorruisse testis 
 sit Carmen Calamitosum, nescio quo autore lingua 
 prius vernacula scriptum, et nuperrime a me ipso 
 Latine versum scilicet, " Tom Tom of Islington." 
 Tenuistine ? 
 
 "Thomas Thomas de Islington, 
 Uxorem duxit Die quadam Solis, 
 Abduxit domum sequenti die, 
 Emit baculum subsequenti, 
 Vapulat ilia postera, 
 ^grotat succedenti, Mortua fit crastind." 
 
 Et miro gaudio afficitur Thomas luce postera quod 
 subsequenti (nempe, Dominica) uxor sit efferenda. 
 
 " En Iliades Domesticas ! 
 En circulum calamitatum ! 
 Plane hebdomadalem tragoediam." 
 
 I nunc et confer Euripiden vestrum his luctibus, hac 
 morte uxoria ; confer Alcesten ! Hecuben ! quas non 
 antiquas Heroinas Dolorosas. 
 
 Suffundor genas lachrymis tantas strages revolvens. 
 Quid restat nisi quod Tecum Tuam Caram salutamus 
 ambosque valere jubeamus, nosmet ipsi bene valentes. 
 
 Elia. 
 
 Datum ab agro Enfeldiensi, Maii die sexta, 1831. 
 
 Letter CCLXIII.] Sept. 9th, 1833. 
 
 Dear Sir, — Your packet I have only just received, 
 owing, I suppose, to the absence of Moxon, who is
 
 390 
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH CARY. 
 
 flaunting it about d la Parisienne, with his new bride, 
 our Emma, much to his satisfaction, and not a little 
 to our dulness. We shall be quite well by the time 
 you return from Worcestershire, and most, most 
 (observe the repetition) glad to see you here, or any- 
 where. 
 
 I will take my time with Barley's act. I wish poets 
 would write a little plainer ; he begins some of his 
 words with a letter which is unknown to the English 
 typography. 
 
 Yours, most truly, 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 
 P,S. — Pray let me know when you return. We 
 are at Mr. Walden's, Church Street, Edmonton ; no 
 longer at Enfield. You will be amused to hear that 
 my sister and I have, with the aid of Emma, scrambled 
 through the " Inferno," by the blessed furtherance of 
 your polar-star translation. I think we scarce left 
 any thing unmadeout. But our partner has left us, 
 and we have not yet resumed. Mary's chief pride in it 
 was that she should some day brag of it to you. 
 Your "Dante" and Sandys' "Ovid" are the only 
 helpmates of translations. Neither of you shirk 
 a word. 
 
 Fairfax's " Tasso " is no translation at all. 'Tis 
 better in some places, but it merely observes the 
 number of stanzas ; as for images, similes, &c., he 
 finds 'em himself, and never troubles Peter for the 
 matter." 
 
 In haste, dear Gary, yours ever, 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 
 Has M. sent you ** Elia," second volume ? If not he 
 shall. Taylor and we are at law about it.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH CARY, 39 1 
 
 Letter CCLXIV.] Sept. 12, 1834. 
 
 *' By Cot's plessing we will not be absence at the 
 grace." 
 
 Dear C. — We long to see you, and hear account of 
 your peregrinations, of the Tun at Heidelburg, the 
 Clock at Strasburg, the statue at Rotterdam, the dainty 
 Rhenish, and poignant Mosselle wines, Westphalian 
 hams, and Botargoes of Altona. But perhaps you 
 have seen, not tasted any of these things. 
 
 Yours, very glad to chain you back again to your 
 proper centre, books and Bibliothecse, 
 
 C. and M. Lamb. 
 
 I have only got your note just now per neglentiam 
 periniqui Moxoni. 
 
 Letter CCLXV.] [Oct. 1834.] 
 
 I protest I know not in what words to invest my 
 sense of the shameful violation of hospitality which I 
 was guilty of on that fatal Wednesday. Let it be 
 blotted from the calendar. Had it been committed 
 at a layman's house, say a merchant's or manufac- 
 turer's, a cheesemonger's or greengrocer's, or, to go 
 higher, a barrister's, a member of Parliament's, a rich 
 banker's, I should have felt alleviation, a drop of self- 
 pity. But to be seen deliberately to go out of the 
 house of a clergyman drunk ! a clergyman of the 
 Church of England too ! not that alone, but of an 
 expounder of that dark Italian Hierophant, an expo- 
 sition little short of his who dared unfold the Apoca- 
 lypse : divine riddles both ; and, without supernal 
 grace vouchsafed, Arks not to be fingered without 
 present blasting to the touchers. And then, from what
 
 39^ CORRESPONDENCE WITH CARY. 
 
 house ! Not a common glebe or vicarage, (which yet 
 had been shameful,) but from a kingly repository of 
 sciences, human and divine, with the primate of Eng- 
 land for its guardian, arrayed in public majesty, from 
 which the profane vulgar are bid fly. Could all those 
 volumes have taught me nothing better ! With feverish 
 eyes on the succeeding dawn I opened upon the faint 
 light, enough to distinguish, in a strange chamber, 
 not immediately to be recognised, garters, hose, waist- 
 coat, neckerchief, arranged in dreadful order and pro- 
 portion, which I knew was not mine own. 'Tis the 
 common symptom on awaking, I judge my last night's 
 condition from. A tolerable scattering on the floor I 
 hail as being too probably my own, and if the candle- 
 stick be not removed I assoil myself. But this finical 
 arrangement, this finding every thing in the morning 
 in exact diametrical rectitude, torments me. By whom 
 was I divested ? Burning blushes 1 not by the fair 
 hands of nymphs, the Buffam Graces ? Remote 
 whispers suggested that I coached it home in triumph. 
 Far be that from working pride in me, for I was un- 
 conscious of the locomotion ; that a young Mentor 
 accompanied a reprobate old Telemachus ; that, the 
 Trojan like, he bore his charge upon his shoulders, 
 while the wretched incubus, in glimmering sense- 
 hiccuped drunken snatches of flying on the bats' 
 wings after sunset. An aged servitor was also hinted 
 at, to make disgrace more complete, one, to whom 
 my ignominy may offer further occasions of revolt (to 
 which he was before too fondly inclining) from the 
 true faith ; for, at a sight of my helplessness, what 
 more was needed to drive him to the advocacy of 
 independency ? Occasion led me through Great Rus- 
 sell Street yesterday. I gazed at the great knocker.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH CARY. 393 
 
 My feeble hands in vain essayed to lift it. I dreaded 
 that Argus Portitor, who doubtless lanterned me out 
 on that prodigious night. I called the Elginian 
 marbles. They were cold to my suit. I shall never 
 again, I said, on the wide gates unfolding, say, with- 
 out fear of thrusting back, in a light but peremptory 
 air, " I am going to Mr. Gary's." I passed by the 
 walls of Balclutha. I had imaged to myself a zodiac 
 of third Wednesdays irradiating by glimpses the Ed- 
 monton dulness. I dreamed of Highmore ! I am 
 de-vited to come on Wednesdays. Villanous old age, 
 that, with second childhood, brings linked hand in 
 hand her inseparable twin, new inexperience, which 
 knows not effects of liquor. Where I was to have 
 sate for a sober, middle-aged-and-a-half gentleman, 
 literary too, the neat fingered artist can educe no 
 notions but of a dissolute Silenus, lecturing natural 
 philosophy to a jeering Chromius, or a Mnasilus. 
 Pudet. From the context gather the lost name of 
 
 Letter CCLXVI.] [Oct. 18, 1834.] 
 
 Dear Sir, — The unbounded range of munificence 
 presented to my choice, staggers me. What can 
 twenty votes do for one hundred and two widows ! I 
 cast my eyes hopeless among the viduage. N.B. 
 Southey^ might be ashamed of himself to let his aged 
 mother stand at the top of the list, with his ;^ioo 
 
 ' This refers to a list of candidates for admission to a Widows 
 Fund, for which Lamb was entitled to vote. A Mrs. Southey was at 
 the head of it. — T.
 
 394 CORRESPONDENCE WITH CARY. 
 
 a year and butt of sack. Sometimes I sigh over No. 
 12, Mrs. Carve-ill, some poor relation of mine, no 
 doubt. No. 15 has my wishes, but then she is a 
 Welsh one. I have Ruth upon No. 21. I'd tug hard 
 for No. 24. No. 25 is an anomaly ; there can be no 
 Mrs. Hogg. No. 34 ensnares me. No. 73 should 
 not have met so foolish a person. No. 92 may bob 
 it as she likes, but she catches no cherry of me. So 
 I have even fixed at hap-hazard, as you'll see. 
 Yours, every third Wednesday,! 
 
 C. L. 
 
 * See aiao " MiikCeLiaeous CorreiporuViw.it."
 
 ( 395 ) 
 
 X. 
 
 Correspondence with Mr. Moxon. 
 
 Letter CCLXVII.] March 19th, i8z8. 
 
 My dear M., — It is my firm determination to have 
 nothing to do with " Forget-me-Nots ; " pray excuse 
 me as civilly as you can to Mr. Hurst. I will take care 
 to refuse any other applications. The things which 
 Pickering has, if to be had again, I have promised 
 absolutely, you know, to poor Hood, from whom I had 
 a melancholy epistle yesterday ; besides that Emma 
 has decided objections to her own and her friend's 
 album verses being published ; but if she gets over 
 that, they are decidedly Hood's. 
 
 Till we meet, farewell. Loves to Dash.^ 
 
 C. L. 
 
 Letter CCLXVHL] May 3rd, 1828. 
 
 Dear M., — My friend Patmore, author of the 
 Months, a very pretty publication, — of sundry 
 Essays in the London, New Monthly, &c., wants 
 to dispose of a volume or two of " Tales." Per- 
 haps they might chance to suit Hurst ; but be 
 that as it may, he will call upon you under favour 
 of my recommendation ; and as he is returning to 
 
 ' The great dog, which was at one time Mr. Moxon's constant 
 companion in his long walks. — T.
 
 396 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MOXON. 
 
 France, where he lives, if you can do any thing 
 for him in the Treaty line, to save him dancing 
 over the Channel every week, I am sure you will. 
 I said I'd never trouble you again ; but how vain 
 are the resolves of mortal man ! P. is a very 
 hearty, friendly fellow, and was poor John Scott's 
 second, as I will be yours when you want one. May 
 you never be mine ! 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 C. L. 
 
 Enfield. 
 
 Mr. Moxon, 
 
 Messrs. Hurst \^ Co., 
 Booksellers, 
 
 St. PauTs Churchyard. 
 
 Letter CCLXIX.] No date. [About 1828.] 
 
 Dear Moxon, — Much thanks for the books. Hood 
 is excellent. Mr. Westwood, who wishes to con- 
 sult you about his son, will acquaint you with our 
 change of life. Mary's very bad spirits drove me 
 upon it, and it seems to answer admirably. We 
 shall be happy to see you at our table and hole ; 
 say, the Sunday after next. 
 
 Yours very truly, 
 
 C. L. 
 
 Edivard Moxon, Esq., 
 Messrs. Hurst l:f Co., 
 
 65, St. Paul's Churchyard. 
 
 Letter CCLXX.] [May n, 1830.] 
 
 Dear M., — I dined with your and my Rogers, at 
 Mr. Gary's, yesterday. Gary consulted me on the
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MOXON. 397 
 
 proper bookseller to offer a lady's MS. novel 
 to. I said I would write to you. But I wish you 
 would call on the translator of Dante, at the British 
 Museum, and talk with him. He is the pleasantest 
 of clergymen. I told him of all Rogers's handsome 
 behaviour to you, and you are already no stranger. 
 Go ! I made Rogers laugh about your Nightingale 
 Sonnet, not having heard one. 'Tis a good sonnet, 
 notwithstanding. You shall have the books shortly. 
 
 C. L. 
 
 Letter CCLXXI.] May 12, [1830.] 
 
 Dear Moxon, — I have brought my sister to En- 
 field, being sure that she had no hope of recovery 
 in London. Her state of mind is deplorable beyond 
 any example. I almost fear whether she has strength 
 at her time of life ever to get out of it. Here she 
 must be nursed, and neither see nor hear of any thing 
 in the world out of her sick chamber. The mere 
 hearing that Southey had called at our lodgings 
 totally upset her. Pray see him, or hear of him at 
 ]\Ir. Rickman's, and excuse my not writing to him. 
 I dare not write or receive a letter in her presence ; 
 every little talk so agitates her. Westwood will 
 receive any letter for me, and give it me privately. 
 
 Pray assure Southey of my kindliest feelings to- 
 wards him ; and if you do not see him, send this to 
 him. 
 
 Kindest remembrances to your sister, and believe 
 me ever yours, 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 
 Remember me kindly to the Allsops.
 
 398 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MOXON. 
 
 Letter CCLXXIL] August, 1831. 
 
 Dear M., — The R.A. here memorized was George 
 Dawe, whom I knew well, and heard many anecdotes 
 of, from Daniels and Westall, at H. Rogers's ; to 
 each of them it will be well to send a magazine in my 
 name. It will fly like wildfire among the Royal 
 Academicians and artists. Could you get hold of 
 Procter? — his chambers are in Lincoln's Inn, at 
 Montague's; or of Janus Weathercock?^ — both of 
 their prose is capital. Don't encourage poetry. 
 The " Peter's Net "^ does not intend funny things 
 only. All is fish. And leave out the sickening 
 "Elia" at the end. Then it may comprise letters 
 and characters addressed to Peter; but a signa- 
 ture forces it to be all characteristic of the one man 
 Elia, or the one man, Peter, which cramped me for- 
 merly. I have agreed not for my sister to know the 
 subjects I choose till the magazine comes out ; so 
 beware of speaking of 'em, or writing about 'em, save 
 generally. Be particular about this warning. Can't 
 you drop in some afternoon, and take a bed ? The 
 Athcnceum has been hoaxed with some exquisite poetry, 
 that was, two or three months ago, in " Hone's Book." 
 I like your first Number capitally. But is it not small ? 
 Come and see us, week-day if possible. 
 
 Send or bring me Hone's Number for August. The 
 anecdotes of E. and of G. D. are substantially true ; 
 what does Elia (or Peter) care for dates ? 
 
 The poem I mean is in " Hone's Book," as far back 
 as April. I do not know who wrote it; but 'tis a 
 
 ' Mr. Wainwright. — T. 
 
 2 Some essays which Lamb was commencing for a new speculation 
 of Mr. Moxon's, The Englishman's Magazine. — 1".
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MOXON. 399 
 
 poem I envy, — that and Montgomery's " Last Man :" 
 I envy the writers, because I feel I could have done 
 something like them. 
 
 C. L. 
 
 Letter CCLXXIIL] Sept. 5th, 1831. 
 
 Dear M., — Your letter's contents pleased me. I 
 am only afraid of taxing you. Yet I want a stimulus, 
 or I think I should drag sadly. I shall keep the 
 moneys in trust, till I see you fairly over the next 
 1st January : then I shall look upon them as earned. 
 No part of your letter gave me more pleasure (no, 
 not the ;^io, tho' you may grin)^ than that you will 
 revisit old Enfield, which I hope will be always a 
 pleasant idea to you. 
 
 Yours, very faithfully, 
 
 C. L. 
 
 Letter CCLXXIV.] Oct. 24th, 1831. 
 
 To address an abdicated monarch is a nice point 
 of breeding. To give him his lost titles is to mock 
 him ; to withhold 'em is to wound him. But his 
 minister, who falls with him, may be gracefully sym- 
 pathetic. I do honestly feel for your diminution of 
 honours, and regret even the pleasing cares which 
 are part and parcel of greatness. Your magnanimous 
 submission, and the cheerful tone of your renuncia- 
 tion, in a letter which, without flattery, would have 
 
 ' Mr. Moxon had given Lamb reason to expect he might have such 
 a sum to pay him on account of his poem, Satan in Search of a Wife, 
 published (with humorous plates) in 1831, izmo. — H.
 
 400 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MOXON. 
 
 made an "Article," and which, rarely as I keep 
 letters, shall be preserved, comfort me a little. Will 
 it please, or plague you, to say that when your parcel 
 came I damn'd it ? for my pen was warming in my 
 hand at a ludicrous description of a Landscape of an 
 R.A., which I calculated upon sending you to-morrow, 
 the last day you gave me. Now any one calling in, 
 or a letter coming, puts an end to my writing for the 
 day. Little did I think that the mandate had gone 
 out, so destructive to my occupation, so relieving to 
 the apprehensions of the whole body of R.A.'s ; so 
 you see I had not quitted the ship while a plank was 
 remaining. 
 
 To drop metaphors, I am sure you have done 
 wisely. The very spirit of your epistle speaks that 
 you have a weight off your mind. I have one on 
 
 mine ; the cash in hand, which, as less truly 
 
 says, burns in my pocket. I feel queer at returning 
 it, (who does not ?) you feel awkward at retaking it, 
 (who ought not.) Is there no middle way of adjust- 
 ing this fine embarrassment ? I think I have hit 
 upon a medium to skin the sore place over, if not 
 quite to heal it. You hinted that there might be 
 something under ;£"io, by and by, accruing to me — 
 Devil's Money ^ (yo^ ^re sanguine, say £']. 105.); 
 that I entirely renounce, and abjure all future interest 
 in: I insist upon it; and "by him I will not name," 
 I won't touch a penny of it. That will split your loss, 
 one half, and leave me conscientious possessor of 
 what I hold. Less than your assent to this, no pro- 
 posal will I accept of. 
 
 ' Alluding to the little extravaganza of Lamb's mentioned in the pre- 
 ceding page, in emulation of the Devil's IValk of Soutliey and Co. — T.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MOXON. 401 
 
 The Rev. Mr. , whose name you have left ille- 
 gible (is it Seagull?) never sent me any book on 
 Christ's Hospital, by which I could dream that I was 
 indebted to him for a dedication. Did G. D. send 
 his penny tract to me to convert me to Unitarianism ? 
 Dear, blundering soul ! why I am as old a one Goddite 
 as himself. Or did he think his cheap publication 
 would bring over the Methodists over the way here ?^ 
 However, I'll give it to the pew-opener, in whom I 
 have a little interest, to hand over to the clerk, whose 
 wife she sometimes drinks tea with, for him to lay 
 before the deacon, who exchanges the civility of the 
 hat with him, for to transmit to the minister, who 
 shakes hands with him out of chapel, and he, in all 
 odds, will with it. 
 
 I wish very much to see you. I leave it to you to 
 come how you will ; we shall be very glad (we need 
 not repeat) to see your sister, or sisters, with you ; 
 but for you, individually, I will just hint that a drop- 
 ping in to tea, unlocked for, about five, stopping 
 bread-and-cheese and gin-and-water, is worth a thou- 
 sand Sundays. I am naturally miserable on a Sun- 
 day ; but a week-day evening and supper is like old 
 times. Set out now, and give no time to delibera- 
 tion. 
 
 P.S. — The second volume of " Elia " is delightful 
 (ly bound, I mean), and quite cheap. Why, man, 
 'tis a unique 1 
 
 If I write much more I shall expand into an article, 
 which I cannot afford to let you have so cheap. By 
 the by, to show the perverseness of human will, 
 while I thought I must furnish one of those accursed 
 
 ' Referring to a chapel opposite his lodging at Enfield. — T. 
 VOL. II. 2 D
 
 402 
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MOXON. 
 
 things monthly, it seemed a labour above Hercules's 
 " Twelve " in a year, which were evidently monthly 
 contributions. Now I am emancipated, I feel as if 
 I had a thousand Essays swelling within me. False 
 feelings both ! 
 
 Your ex-Lampoonist, or Lamb-punnist, from En- 
 field, October 24, or " last day but one for receiving 
 articles that can be inserted." 
 
 Letter CCLXXV.] Feb. 1832. 
 
 Dear Moxon, — The snows are ancle-deep, slush, 
 and mire, that 'tis hard to get to the post-office, and 
 cruel to send the maid out. 'Tis a slough of despair, 
 or I should sooner have thanked you for your offer of 
 the "Life," which we shall very much like to have, 
 and will return duly. I do not know when I shall be 
 in town, but in a week or two, at farthest, when I 
 will come as far as you, if I can. We are moped to 
 death with confinement within doors. I send you a 
 curiosity of G. Dyer's tender conscience. Between 
 thirty and forty years since, G. published the " Poet's 
 Fate," in which were two very harmless lines about 
 Mr. Rogers ; but Mr. R. not quite approving of them, 
 they were left out in a subsequent edition, 1801. But 
 G. has been worrying about them ever since ; if I 
 have heard him once, I have heard him a hundred 
 times, express a remorse proportioned to a conscious- 
 ness of having been guilty of an atrocious libel. As 
 the devil would have it, a fool they call Barker, in his 
 " Parriana," has quoted the identical two lines, as 
 they stood in some obscure edition anterior to 1801, 
 and the withers of poor G. are again wrung. His
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MOXON. 403 
 
 letter is a gem ; with his poor blind eyes it has been 
 laboured out at six sittings. The history of the couplet 
 is in page 3 of this irregular production, in which 
 every variety of shape and size that letters can be 
 twisted into is to be found. Do show his part of it 
 to Mr. R. some day. If he has bowels, they must melt 
 at the contrition so queerly charactered of a contrite 
 sinner. G. was born, I verily think, without original 
 sin, but chooses tohave a conscience, as every Christian 
 gentleman should have ; his dear old face is insus- 
 ceptible of the twist they call a sneer, yet he is appre- 
 hensive of being suspected of that ugly appearance. 
 When he makes a compliment, he thinks he has given 
 an affront, — a name is personality. But show (no 
 hurry) this unique recantation to Mr. R. : 'tis like a 
 dirty pocket-handkerchief, mucked with tears of some 
 indigent Magdalen. There is the impress of sincerity 
 in every pot-hook and hanger ; and then the gilt frame 
 to such a pauper picture ! It should go into the Mu- 
 seum. I am heartily sorry my Devil^ does not answer. 
 We must try it a little longer ; and, after all, I think I 
 must insist on taking a portion of its loss upon my- 
 self. It is too much you should lose by two adven- 
 tures. You do not say how your general business 
 goes on, and I should very much like to talk over it 
 with you here. 
 
 Come when the weather will possibly let you ; I 
 want to see the Wordsworths, but I do not much like 
 to be all night away. It is dull enough to be here 
 together, but it is duller to leave Mary ; in short, it is 
 painful, and in a flying visit I should hardly catch 
 them. I have no beds for them if they came down, 
 
 ^ Satan in Search of a Wife. — F. 
 2 U
 
 404 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MOXON. 
 
 and but a sort of a house to receive them in ; yet I 
 shall regret their departure unseen ; I feel cramped 
 and straitened every way. Where are they ? 
 
 We have heard from Emma but once, and that a 
 month ago, and are very anxious for another letter. 
 
 You say we have forgot your powers of being ser- 
 viceable to us. That we never shall : I do not know 
 what I should do without you when I want a little 
 commission. Now then : there are left at Miss 
 Buffam's, the "Tales of the Castle," and certain 
 volumes of the " Retrospective Review." The first 
 should be conveyed to Novello's, and the Reviews 
 should be taken to Talfourd's office, ground-floor, 
 east side. Elm Court, Middle Temple, to whom I 
 should have written, but my spirits are wretched ; it 
 is quite an effort to write this. So, with the " Life,'" 
 I have cut you out three pieces of service. What 
 can I do for you here, but hope to see you very soon, 
 and think of you with most kindness ? I fear to- 
 morrow, between rains and snows, it would be impos- 
 sible to expect you, but do not let a practicable Sun- 
 day pass. We are always at home. 
 
 Mary joins in remembrances to your sister, whom 
 we hope to see in any fine-ish weather, when she'll 
 venture. 
 
 Remember us to Allsop, and all the dead people ; 
 to whom, and to London, we seem dead. 
 
 Letter CCLXXVL] [April 27, 1833.] 
 
 Dear M., — Mary and I are very poorly. We have 
 had a sick child, who, sleeping or not sleeping, nex't 
 me, with a pasteboard partition between, killed my
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MOXON. 405 
 
 sleep. The little bastard is gone. My bedfellows 
 are cough and cramp ; we sleep three in a bed. Do- 
 mestic arrangements (baker, butcher, and all) devolve 
 on Mary. Don't come yet to this house of pest and 
 age ! We propose, when you and E. agree on the 
 
 time, to come up and meet you at the B 's, say 
 
 a week hence, but do you make the appointment. 
 
 Mind, our spirits are good, and we are happy in 
 your happinesses. C. L. 
 
 Our old and ever loves to dear Emma. 
 
 Letter CCLXXVIL] 1833. 
 
 Dear M., — Many thanks for the books ; but most 
 thanks for one immortal sentence : " If I do not cheat 
 him, never trust me again." I do not know whether 
 to admire most, the wit or justness of the sentiment. 
 It has my cordial approbation. My sense of nietim 
 and tuiim applauds it. I maintain it, the eighth com- 
 mandment hath a secret special reservation, by which 
 the reptile is exempt from any protection from it. 
 As a dog, or a nigger, he is not a holder of property. 
 Not a ninth of what he detains from the world is his 
 own. " Keep you hands from picking and stealing," is 
 no ways referable to his acquists. I doubt whether bear- 
 ing false witness against thy neighbour at all contem- 
 plated this possible scrub. Could Moses have seen 
 the speck in vision ? An ex post facto law alone 
 could relieve him ; and we are taught to expect no 
 eleventh commandment. The outlaw to the Mosaic 
 dispensation ! — unworthy to have seen Moses behind ! 
 — to lay his desecrating hands upon Elia 1 Has the 
 irreverent ark-toucher been struck blind, I wonder?
 
 406 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MOXON. 
 
 The more I think of him, the less I think of him. 
 His meanness is invisible with aid of solar micro- 
 scope. My moral eye smarts at him. The less flea 
 that bites little fleas ! The great Beast ! The beg- 
 garly Nit ! 
 
 More when we meet; mind, you'll come, two of 
 you ; and couldn't you go off in the morning, that we 
 may have a day-long curse at him, if curses are not 
 dis-hallowed by descending so low! Amen. Male- 
 dicatur in extremis ! 
 
 C. L. 
 
 Letter CCLXXVIII.] July 24th, 1833. 
 
 For God's sake give Emma no more watches ; one 
 has turned her head. She is arrogant and insulting. 
 She said something very unpleasant to our old clock 
 in the passage, as if he did not keep time, and yet he 
 had made her no appointment. She takes it out 
 every instant to look at the moment-hand. She lugs 
 us out into the fields, because there the bird-boys ask 
 you, " Pray, sir, can 3'ou tell us what's o'clock?" and 
 she answers them punctually. She loses all her time 
 looking to see "what the time is." I overheard her 
 whispering, "Just so many hours, minutes, &c., 
 to Tuesday ; I think St. George's goes too slow." 
 This little present of Time ! — why, — 'tis Eternity to 
 her 1 
 
 What can make her so fond of a gingerbread 
 watch ? 
 
 She has spoiled some of the movements. Between 
 ourselves, she has kissed away " half-past twelve," 
 which I suppose to be the canonical hour in Hanover 
 Square.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MOXON. 407 
 
 Well, if " love me love my watch" answers, she 
 will keep time to you. 
 
 It goes right by the Horse Guards. 
 
 Dearest M., — Never mind opposite^ nonsense. She 
 does not love you for the watch, but the watch for 
 you. I will be at the wedding, and keep the 30th 
 July, as long as my poor months last me, as a festival, 
 gloriously. 
 
 Yours ever, 
 
 Elia. 
 
 We have not heard from Cambridge. I will write 
 the moment we do. 
 
 Edmonton, 24th July, twenty minutes past three by 
 Emma's watch. 
 
 Letter CCLXXIX.] August, 1833. 
 
 Dear Mr. and Mrs. Moxon, — Time very short. I 
 wrote to Miss Fryer, and had the sweetest letter about 
 you, Emma, that ever friendship dictated. *' I am 
 full of good wishes, I am crying with good wishes," 
 she says ; but you shall see it. 
 
 Dear Moxon, — I take your writing most kindly, 
 and shall most kindly your writing from Paris. 
 
 I want to crowd another letter to Miss Fryer into 
 the little time after dinner, before post time. So with 
 twenty thousand congratulations. 
 
 Yours, 
 
 C. L. 
 
 I am calm, sober, happy. Turn over for the 
 reason. I got home from Dover Street, by Evans, 
 
 ' Written on the opposite page to that in which the previous af{ec- 
 tionate banter appears. — T,
 
 408 CORRESPONDEN'CE WITH MOXON. 
 
 half as sober as a judge. I am turning over a new 
 leaf, as I hope you will now. 
 
 [The turn of the leaf presented the following from 
 Miss Lamb: — ] 
 
 My dear Emma and Edward Moxon, — Accept my 
 sincere congratulations, and imagine more good 
 wishes than my weak nerves will let me put into good 
 set words. The dreary blank of unanswered questions 
 which I ventured to ask in vain was cleared up on 
 the wedding day by Mrs. W.^ taking a glass of wine, 
 and, with a total change of countenance, begging 
 leave to drink Mr. and Mrs. Moxon's health. It restored 
 me from that moment, as if by an electrical stroke, to 
 the entire possession of my senses. I never felt so 
 calm and quiet after a similar illness as I do now. I 
 feel as if all tears were wiped from my eyes, and all 
 care from my heart. 
 
 Mary Lamb. 
 
 [At the foot of this letter is the following by 
 Charles.] 
 
 Wednesday. 
 
 Dears again, — Your letter interrupted a seventh 
 game at picquet which we were having, after walking 
 to Wright's and purchasing shoes. We pass our 
 time in cards, walks, and reading. We attack Tasso 
 soon. 
 
 C. L. 
 
 Never was such a calm, or such a recovery. 'Tis 
 her own words undictated. 
 
 Nov. 29th, 1833. 
 
 Mary is of opinion with me, that two of these 
 sonnets are of a higher grade than any poetry you 
 
 ' The wife of the Landlord of the House at Edmonton. — ^T.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MOXON. 409 
 
 have done yet. The one to Emma is so pretty ! I 
 have only allowed myself to transpose a word in 
 the third line. Sacred shall it be for any inter- 
 meddling of mine. But we jointly beg that you 
 will make four lines in the room of the four last. 
 Read " Darby and Joan," in Mrs, Moxon's first 
 album. There you'll see how beautiful in age the 
 looking back to youthful years in an old couple is. 
 But it is a violence to the feelings to anticipate 
 that time in youth. I hope you and Emma will 
 have many a quarrel and many a make-up (and she 
 is beautiful in reconciliation!) before the dark days 
 shall come, in which ye shall say " there is small 
 comfort in them." You have begun a sort of 
 character of Emma in them, very sweetly: carry it 
 on, if you can, through the last lines. 
 
 I love the sonnet to my heart, and you shall finish 
 it, and I'll be damn'd if I furnish a line towards it. 
 So much for that. The next best is to the Ocean. 
 
 " Ye gallant winds, if e'er your lusty cheeks 
 Blew longing lover to his mistress' side, 
 O, puff your loudest, spread the canvas wide," 
 
 Is spirited. The last line I altered, and have re- 
 altered it as it stood. It is closer. These two are 
 your best. But take a good deal of time in finishing 
 the first. How proud should Emma be of her 
 poets ! 
 
 Perhaps " O Ocean " (though I like it) is too much 
 of the open vowels which Pope objects to. " Great 
 Ocean !" is obvious. To save sad thoughts I think 
 is better (though not good) than for the mind to 
 save herself. But 'tis a noble sonnet. " St. Cloud" 
 I have no fault to find with.
 
 4IO CORRESPONDENCE WITH MOXON. 
 
 If I return the sonnets, think it no disrespect, for I 
 look for a printed copy. You have done better than 
 ever. And now for a reason I did not notice 'em eariier. 
 On Wednesday they came, and on Wednesday I was 
 a-gadding. Mary gave me a holiday, and I set off to 
 Snow Hill. From Snow Hill I deliberately was 
 marching down, with noble Holborn before me, 
 framing in mental cogitation a map of the dear 
 London in prospect, thinking to traverse Wardour 
 Street, &c., when diabolically, I was interrupted by 
 
 Heigh-ho ! 
 Little Barrow! — 
 
 Emma knows him, and prevailed on him to spend 
 the day (infinite loss !) at his sister's, a pawnbroker's in 
 Gray's Inn Lane, where was an album, and (O march 
 of intellect!) plenty of literary conversation, and 
 more acquaintance with the state of modern poetry 
 than I could keep up with. I was positively dis- 
 tanced. Knowles's play,^ which, epilogued by me, 
 lay on the piano, alone made me hold up my head. 
 When I came home I read your letter, and glimpsed 
 at your beautiful sonnet, 
 
 " Fair art thou as the morning, my young bride," 
 
 and dwelt upon it in a confused brain, but determined 
 not to open them all next day, being in a state not to 
 be told of at Chatteris. Tell it not in Gath, Emma, 
 lest the daughters triumph ! I am at the end of my 
 tether. I wish you would come on Tuesday with 
 your fair bride. Why can't you ! Do. We are 
 thankful to your sister for being of the party. Come, 
 and bring a sonnet on Mary's birthday. Love to the 
 
 1 7&e Wife.—T.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MOXON. 4II 
 
 whole Moxonry, and tell E. I every day love her 
 more, and miss her less. Tell her so, from her loving 
 uncle, as she has let me call myself. I bought a fine 
 embossed card yesterday, and wrote for the Pawn- 
 brokeress's album. She is a Miss Brown, engaged 
 to a Mr. White. One of the lines was (I forget the 
 rest ; but she had them at twenty-four hours' notice ; 
 she is going out to India with her husband) — 
 
 " May your faine. 
 And fortune, Frances, Whiten with your name I " 
 
 Not bad as a pun. I will expect you before two on 
 Tuesday. I am well and happy, tell E.' 
 
 ' Other letters to Moxon will be found in the "Miscellaneous 
 Correspondence."
 
 ( 412 ) 
 
 XI. 
 
 Correspondence with the Gilmans. 
 
 Letter CCLXXX.] Chase Side. Enfield, 26th Oct. 1829. 
 
 Dear Gilman, — Allsop brought me your kind mes- 
 sage yesterday. How can I account for having not 
 visited Highgate this long time ? Change of place 
 seemed to have changed me. How grieved I was 
 to hear in what indifferent health Coleridge has been, 
 and I not to know of it ! A little school divinity, well 
 applied, may be healing. I send him honest Tom of 
 Aquin ; that was always an obscure great idea to me : 
 I never thought or dreamed to see him in the flesh, 
 but t'other day I rescued him from a stall in Barbican 
 and brought him off in triumph. He comes to greet 
 Coleridge's acceptance, for his shoe-latchets I am un- 
 worthy to unloose. Yet there are pretty pro's and 
 con's, and such unsatisfactory learning in him. 
 Commend me to the question of etiquette — " utrum 
 annunciatio dehiierit fieri per angelum " — QucBst. 30, 
 Articulus 2. I protest, till now I had thought Gabriel 
 a fellow of some mark and livelihood, not a simple 
 esquire, as I find him. Well, do not break your lay 
 brains, nor I neither, with these curious nothings. 
 They are nuts to our dear friend, whom hoping to see 
 at your first friendly hint that it will be convenient, I 
 end with begging our very kindest loves to Mrs. Gil- 
 man. We have had a sorry house of it here. Our
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE GILMANS. 413 
 
 spirits have been reduced till we were at hope's end 
 what to do. Obliged to quit this house, and afraid to 
 engage another, till in extremity, I took the desperate 
 resolve of kicking house and all down, like Bunyan's 
 pack ; and here we are in a new life at board and 
 lodging, with an honest couple our neighbours. We 
 have ridded ourselves of the cares of dirty acres ; and 
 the change, though of less than a week, has had the 
 most beneficial effects on Mary already. She looks 
 two years and a half younger for it. But we have 
 had sore trials. 
 
 God send us one happy meeting! — Yours faith- 
 lully, C. Lamb. 
 
 Letter CCLXXXL] Nov. 30, 1829. 
 
 Dear G.,— The excursionists reached home, and 
 the good town of Enfield, a little after four, without 
 slip or dislocation. Little has transpired concerning 
 the events of the back-journey, save that on passing 
 the house of 'Squire Mellish, situate a stone bow's 
 cast from the hamlet. Father Westwood, with a 
 good-natured wonderment, exclaimed, " I cannot 
 think what is gone of Mr. Mellish's rooks. I fancy 
 they have taken flight somewhere, but I have missed 
 them two or three years past." All this while, ac- 
 cording to his fellow-traveller's report, the rookery was 
 darkening the air above with undiminished population, 
 and deafening all ears but his with their cawings. But 
 Nature has been gently withdrawing such phenomena 
 from the notice of two of Thomas Westwood's 
 senses, from the time he began to miss the rooks. 
 T. Westwood has passed a retired life in this hamlet, 
 of thirty or forty years, living upon the minimum
 
 414 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE GILMANS. 
 
 which is consistent with gentility, yet a star among 
 the minor gentry, receiving the bows of the trades- 
 people, and courtesies of the alms-women, daily. 
 Children venerate him not less for his external show 
 of gentry, than they wonder at him for a gentle rising 
 endorsation of the person, not amounting to a hump, 
 or if a hump, innocuous as the hump of the buffalo, 
 and coronative of as mild qualities. 'Tis a throne on 
 which patience seems to sit, — the proud perch of a 
 self-respecting humility, stooping with condescension. 
 Thereupon the cares of life have sate, and rid him 
 easily. For he has thrid the angustice domus with 
 dexterity. Life opened upon him with comparative 
 brilliancy. He set out as a rider or traveller for a 
 wholesale house, in which capacity he tells of many 
 hair-breadth escapes that befell him; one especially, 
 how he rode a mad horse into the town of Devizes ; 
 how horse and rider arrived in a foam, to the utter 
 consternation of the expostulating hostlers, inn- 
 keepers, &c. It seems it was sultry weather, piping 
 hot ; the steed tormented into frenzy with gad-flies, 
 long past being roadworthy ; but safety and the in- 
 terest of the house he rode for were incompatible 
 things ; a fall in serge cloth was expected, and a mad 
 entrance they made of it. Whether the exploit was 
 purely voluntary, or partially; or whether a certain 
 personal defiguration in the man part of this extra- 
 ordinary centaur (non-assistive to partition of na- 
 tures) might not enforce the conjunction, I stand not 
 to inquire. I look not with 'skew eyes into the deeds 
 of heroes. The hosier that was burnt with his shop 
 in Field Lane, on Tuesday night, shall have past to 
 heaven for me like a Marian Martyr, provided always, 
 that he consecrated the fortuitous incremation with a
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE GILMANS. 415 
 
 short ejaculation in the exit, as much as if he had 
 taken his state degrees of martyrdom m forma in the 
 market vicinage. There is adoptive as well as acqui- 
 sitive sacrifice. Be the animus what it might, the 
 fact is indisputable, that this composition was seen 
 flying all abroad, and mine host of Daintry may yet 
 remember its passing through his town, if his scores 
 are not more faithful than his memory. After this 
 exploit (enough for one man), Thomas Westwood 
 seems to have subsided into a less hazardous occu- 
 pation : and in the twenty-fifth year of his age we 
 find him a haberdasher in Bow Lane : yet still reten- 
 tive of his early riding (though leaving it to rawer 
 stomachs), and Christmasly at night sithence to this 
 last, and shall to his latest Christmas, hath he, doth 
 he, and shall he, tell after supper the story of the in- 
 sane steed and the desperate rider. Save for Bedlam 
 or Luke's no eye could have guessed that melting day 
 what house he rid for. But he reposes on his bridles, 
 and after the ups and downs (metaphoric only) of a 
 life behind the counter — hard riding sometimes, I 
 fear, for poor T. W. — with the scrapings together of 
 the shop, and one anecdote, he hath finally settled at 
 Enfield ; by hard economising, gardening, building 
 for himself, hath reared a mansion ; married a 
 daughter ; qualified a son for a counting-house ; 
 gotten the respect of high and low ; served for self 
 or substitute the greater parish offices ; hath a special 
 voice at vestries ; and, domiciliating us, hath reflected 
 a portion of his house-keeping respectability upon 
 your humble servants. We are greater, being his 
 lodgers, than when we were substantial renters. His 
 name is a passport to take off the sneers of the native 
 Enfielders against obnoxious foreigners. We are
 
 4l6 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE GILMANS. 
 
 endenizened. Thus much of T. Westwood have I 
 thought fit to acquaint you, that you may see the 
 exemplary reliance upon Providence with which I 
 entrusted so dear a charge as my own sister to the 
 guidance of a man that rode the mad horse into 
 Devizes. To come from his heroic character, all the 
 amiable qualities of domestic life concentre in this 
 tamed Bellerophon. He is excellent over a glass of 
 grog ; just as pleasant without it ; laughs when he 
 hears a joke, and when (which is much oftener) he 
 hears it not ; sings glorious old sea-songs on festival 
 nights ; and but upon a slight acquaintance of two 
 years, Coleridge, is as dear a deaf old man to us as old 
 Norris (rest his soul !) was after fifty. To him and 
 his scanty literature (what there is of it, sound) have 
 we flown from the metropolis and its damn'd 
 annualists, reviewers, authors, and the whole muddy 
 ink press of that stagnant pool. 
 
 Now, Oilman again, you do not know the treasure 
 of the Fullers. I calculate on having massy reading 
 till Christmas. All I want here is books of the true 
 sort, not those things in boards that moderns mistake 
 for books, what they club for at book-clubs. 
 
 I did not mean to cheat you with a blank side, but 
 my eye smarts, for which I am taking medicine, and 
 abstain, this day at least, from any aliments but milk- 
 porridge, the innocent taste of which I am anxious to 
 renew after a half-century's disacquaintance. If a blot 
 fall here like a tear, it is not pathos, but an angry eye. 
 
 Farewell, while my specilla are sound. 
 
 Yours and yours, C. Lamb.
 
 correspondence with the gilmans. 417 
 
 Letter CCLXXXIL] 1830. 
 
 Pray trust me with the " Church History," as well 
 as the " Worthies." A moon shall restore both. 
 Also give me back " Him of Aquinum." In return 
 you have the light of my countenance.'^ Adieu. 
 
 P.S. — A sister also of mine comes with it. A son of 
 Nimshi drives her. Their driving will have been 
 furious, impassioned. Pray God they have not 
 toppled over the tunnel ! I promise you I fear their 
 steed, bred out of the wind without father, semi- 
 Melchisedecish, hot, phaetontic. From my country 
 lodgings at Enfield. C. L. 
 
 LetterCCLXXXIIL] 1830. 
 
 Dear Oilman, — Pray do you, or S. T. C, immedi- 
 ately write to say you have received back the golden 
 works of the dear, fine, silly old angel, which I part 
 from, bleeding, and to say how the Winter has used 
 you all. 
 
 It is our intention soon, weather permitting, to 
 come over for a day at Highgate ; for beds we will 
 trust to the Gate-House, should you be full: tell me 
 if we may come casually, for in this change of 
 climate there is no naming a day for walking. With 
 best loves to Mrs. Gilman, &c., 
 
 Yours, mopish, but in health, 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 
 I shall be uneasy till I hear of Fuller's safe 
 arrival. 
 
 ' A sketch of Lamb, by an amateur artist. — T. 
 VOL. II. 2 E
 
 4l8 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE GILMANS. 
 
 Letter CCLXXXIV.] March 8th, 1830. 
 
 My dear G., — Your friend Battin (for I knew him 
 immediately by the smooth satinity of his style) must 
 excuse me for advocating the cause of his friends in 
 Spitalfields. The fact is, I am retained by the Nor- 
 wich people, and have already appeared in their paper 
 under the signatures of " Lucius Sergius," " Bluff," 
 " Broad-Cloth," «' No-Trade-to-the-Woollen-Trade," 
 " Anti-plush," &c., in defence of druggets and long 
 camblets. And without this pre-engagement, I feel I 
 
 should naturally have chosen a side opposite to , 
 
 for in the silken seemingness of his nature there is 
 that which offends me. My flesh tingles at such 
 caterpillars. He shall not crawl me over. Let him 
 and his workmen sing the old burthen, 
 
 " Heigh ho, ye weavers !" 
 
 for any aid I shall offer them in this emergency. I 
 was over St. Luke's the other day with my friend 
 Tuthill, and mightily pleased with one of his con- 
 trivances for the comfort and amelioration of the 
 students. They have double cells, in which a pair 
 may lie feet to feet horizontally, and chat the time 
 away as rationally as they can. It must certainly be 
 more sociable for them these warm raving nights. 
 The right-hand truckle in one of these friendly re- 
 cesses, at present vacant, was preparing, I understood 
 for Mr. Irving. Poor fellow ! it is time he removed 
 from Pentonville. I followed him as far as to High- 
 bury the other day, with a mob at his heels, calling 
 out upon Ermigiddon, who I suppose is some Scotch 
 moderator. He squinted out his favourite eye last 
 Friday, in the fury of possession, upon a poor woman's 
 shoulders that was crying matches, and has not missed
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE GILMANS. 419 
 
 it. The companion truck, as far as I could measure 
 it with my eye, would conveniently fit a person about 
 the length of Coleridge, allowing for a reasonable 
 drawing up of the feet, not at all painful. Does he 
 talk of moving this quarter ? You and I have too 
 much sense to trouble ourselves with revelations ; 
 marry, to the same in Greek, you may have some- 
 thing professionally to say. Tell C. that he was to 
 come and see us some fine day. Let it be before he 
 moves, for in his new quarters he will necessarily be 
 confined in his conversation to his brother prophet. 
 Conceive the two Rabbis foot to foot, for there are no 
 Gamaliels there to affect an humbler posture ! All are 
 masters in that Patmos, where the law is perfect 
 equality ; Latmos I should rather say, for they will 
 be Luna's twin darlings ; her affection will be ever at 
 the full. Well ; keep your brains moist with goose- 
 berry this mad March, for the devil of exposition 
 seeketh dry places 
 
 C. L. 
 
 Letter CCLXXXV.] August 5, 1834. 
 
 TO THE REV. JAMES OILMAN. 
 
 My dear Sir, — The sad week being over,^ I must 
 write to you to say that I was glad of being spared 
 from attending ; I have no words to express my feel- 
 ing with you all. I can only say that when you think 
 a short visit from me would be acceptable, when your 
 
 1 Coleridge died on the 25th July, 1834, at Mr. Oilman's house at 
 Highgate, and was buried in Highgate Cemetery. Lamb never re- 
 covered from this blow. To the woman who had nursed his " dearest 
 friend" he gave five guineas when he went to Highgate for the first 
 time after Coleridge's funeral. — H. 
 
 2 E 2
 
 420 CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE GILMANS. 
 
 father and mother shall be able to see me with com- 
 fort, I will come to the bereaved house. Express to 
 them my tenderest rej^ards and hopes that they will 
 continue our friends still. We both love and respect 
 them as much as a human being can, and finally 
 thank them with our hearts for what they have been 
 to the poor departed. 
 
 God bless you all, 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 Mr. Walden's, 
 Church Street, Edmonton.^ 
 
 ' Sec- " MiscfUaneous Correspondence."
 
 ( 421 ) 
 
 XII. 
 
 Correspondence with Mr. Walter Wilson. 
 [1801 — 1829]. 
 
 Letter CCLXXXVI.] August 14th, 1801. 
 
 Dear Wilson, — I am extremely sorry that any 
 serious differences should subsist between us, on ac- 
 count of some foolish behaviour of mine at Richmond ; 
 you knew me well enough before, that a very little 
 liquor will cause a considerable alteration 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 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 religion. I have had a time of serious- 
 ness, 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 com- 
 pany, or some other new associations ; but I still 
 retain at bottom a conviction of the truth, and a cer-
 
 422 CORRESPONDENCE WITH WILSON. 
 
 tainty of the usefulness of religion. I will not pretend 
 to more gravity or feeling than I at present possess ; 
 my intention is not to persuade you that any great 
 alteration is probable 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. 
 
 Letter CCLXXXVIL] e. I. H. i6th Dec. 1822. 
 
 Dear Wilson, — Lightning I was going to call you. 
 You must have thought me negligent in not answer- 
 ing your letter sooner. But I have a habit of never 
 writing letters but at the office ; 'tis so much time 
 cribbed out of the Company ; and I am just got out of 
 the thick of a tea-sale, in which most of the entry of 
 notes, deposits, &c., usually falls to my share. 
 
 I have nothing of De Foe's^ but two or three novels 
 and the " Plague History." I can give you no in- 
 formation about him. As a slight general character 
 of what I remember of them, (for I have not looked into 
 them latterly,) I would say that in the appearance of 
 truth, in all the incidents and conversations that occur 
 in them, they exceed any works of fiction I am ac- 
 quainted with. It is perfect illusion. The author 
 never appears in these self-narratives, (for so they 
 
 ' These remarks upon Defoe are substantially repeated in Lamb's 
 Essay " On the Secondary Novels of Defoe," prefixed to Mr. Wilson's 
 Life, 1828.— H.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH WILSON. 423 
 
 ought to be called, or rather autobiographies,) but the 
 narrator chains us down to an implicit belief in every 
 thing he says. There is all the minute detail of a 
 logbook in it. Dates are painfully pressed upon the 
 memory. Facts are repeated over and over in vary- 
 ing phases, till you cannot choose but believe them. 
 It is like reading evidence given in a court of jus- 
 tice. So anxious the story-teller seems that the 
 truth should be clearly comprehended, that when he 
 has told us a matter of fact or a motive, in a line 
 or two farther down he repeats it, with his favourite 
 figure of speech, " I say," so and so, though he 
 had made it abundantly plain before. This is in 
 imitation of the common people's way of speaking, 
 or rather of the way in which they are addressed 
 by a master or mistress, who wishes to impress 
 something upon their memories, and has a wonder- 
 ful effect upon matter-of-fact readers. Indeed it is 
 to such principally that he writes. His style is 
 everywhere beautiful, but plain and homely Robinson 
 Crusoe is delightful to all ranks and classes, but it 
 is easy to see that it is written in phraseology 
 peculiarly adapted to the lower conditions of readers ; 
 hence it is an especial favourite with seafaring men, 
 poor boys, servant-maids, &c. His novels are capital 
 kitchen-reading, while they are worthy, from their 
 deep interest, to find a shelf in the libraries of the 
 wealthiest and the most learned. His passion for 
 matter-of-fact narrative sometimes betrayed him into 
 a long relation of common incidents, which might 
 happen to any man, and have no interest but the in- 
 tense appearance of truth in them, to recommend 
 them. The whole latter half or two-thirds of " Colonel 
 Jack" is of this description. The beginning of
 
 424 CORRESPONDENCE WITH WILSON. 
 
 " Colonel Jack" is the most affecting natural picture 
 of a young thief that was ever drawn. His losing 
 the stolen money in the hollow of a tree, and finding 
 it again when he was in despair, and then being in 
 equal distress at not knowing how to dispose of it, 
 and several similar touches in the early history of the 
 Colonel, evince a deep knowledge of human nature ; 
 and putting out of question the superior romantic 
 interest of the latter, in my mind very much exceed 
 Crusoe. " Roxana " (first edition) is the next in 
 interest, though he left out the best part of it in 
 subsequent editions from a foolish hypercriticism of 
 his friend Southerne. But " Moll Flanders," the 
 " Account of the Plague," &c., are all of one family, 
 and have the same stamp of character. Believe me, 
 with friendly recollections, Brother, (as I used to call 
 you,) Yours, 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 
 Letter CCLXXXVIH. Feb. 24, 1823. 
 
 Dear W., — I write that you may not think me 
 neglectful, not that I have any thing to say. In 
 answer to your questions, it was at your house I saw 
 an edition of " Roxana," the preface to which stated 
 that the author had left out that part of it which 
 related to Roxana's daughter persisting in imagining 
 herself to be so, in spite of the mother's denial, from 
 certain hints she had picked up, and throwing herself 
 continually in her mother's way, (as Savage is said to 
 have done in his, prying in at windows to get a 
 glimpse of her), and that it was by advice of Southern, 
 who objected to the circumstances as being untrue, 
 when the rest of the story was founded on fact ; which
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH WILSON. 425 
 
 shows S. to have been a stupid-ish fellow. The 
 incidents so resemble Savage's story, that I taxed 
 Godwin with taking Falkner from his life by Dr. 
 Johnson. You should have the edition, (if you have 
 not parted with it,) for I saw it never but at your 
 place at the Mews' Gate, nor did I then read it to 
 compare it with my own ; only I know the daughter's 
 curiosity is the best part of 7>iy " Roxana." The 
 prologue you speak of was mine, and so named, 
 but not worth much. You ask me for two or three 
 pages of verse. I have not written so much since 
 you knew me. I am altogether prosaic. May be 
 I may touch off a sonnet in time. I do not prefer 
 "Colonel Jack" to either "Robinson Crusoe" or 
 " Roxana." I only spoke of the beginning of it, his 
 childish history. The rest is poor. I do not know 
 anywhere any good character of De Foe besides what 
 you mention. I do not know that Swift mentions 
 him ; Pope does. I forget if D'Israeli has. Dunlop 
 I think has nothing of him. He is quite new ground, 
 and scarce known beyond " Crusoe." I do not know 
 who wrote " Quarl." I never thought of " Quarl " as 
 having an author. It is a poor imitation ; the 
 monkey is the best in it, and his pretty dishes made 
 of shells. Do you know the paper in the Englishman 
 by Sir Richard Steele, giving an account of Selkirk ? 
 It is admirable, and has all the germs of " Crusoe.' 
 You must quote it entire. Captain G. Carleton 
 wrote his own Memoirs ; they are about Lord Peter- 
 borough's campaign in Spain, and a good book. 
 " Puzzelli " puzzles me, and I am in a cloud about 
 " Donald M'Leod." I never heard of them ; so you 
 see, my dear Wilson, what poor assistances I can 
 give in the way of information. I wish your book
 
 426 CORRESPONDENCE WITH WILSON. 
 
 out, for I shall like to see any thing about De Foe or 
 from you J Your old friend, 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 From my and your old compound. 
 
 Letter CCLXXXIX.]^ May 28, 1829. 
 
 Dear W., — Introduce this, or omit it, as you like. 
 I think I wrote better about it in a letter to you from 
 India H. If you have that, perhaps out of the two 
 I could patch up a better thing, if you'd return both. 
 But I am very poorly, and have been harassed with 
 an illness of my sister's. 
 
 The Ode was printed in the New Times'^ nearly the 
 end of 1825, and I have only omitted some silly lines, 
 call it a corrected copy. 
 
 Yours ever, 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 
 Put my name to either, or both, as you like. 
 
 fVaher IVilson, Esq., 
 Burnett Houje, 
 
 Near Bath, Somersetshire. 
 
 Letter CCXC] Enfield, 15th November, 1829. 
 
 My dear Wilson, — I have not opened a packet of 
 unknown contents for many years that gave me so 
 much pleasure as when I disclosed your three 
 volumes. I have given them a careful perusal, and 
 
 ' Those who wish to read an admirable character of De Foe, 
 associated with the most valuable information respecting his personal 
 historj', should revert to an article in the Edinburgh Revie^w on De 
 Foe, attributed to the author of the "Lives of the Statesmen of the 
 Commonwealth," and of the delightful " Biography of Oliver Gold- 
 smith," almost as charming as its subject. — T.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH WILSON. 427 
 
 they have taken their degree of classical books upon 
 my shelves. De Foe was always my darling ; but 
 what darkness was I in as to far the larger part of 
 his writings 1 I have now an epitome of them all. 
 I think the way in which you have done the " Life" 
 the most judicious you could have pitched upon. 
 You have made him tell his own story, and your 
 comments are in keeping with the tale. Why, I 
 never heard of such a work as the Review. 
 Strange that in my stall-hunting days I never so 
 much as lit upon an odd volume of it. This circum- 
 stance looks as if they were never of any great 
 circulation. But I may have met with 'em, and not 
 knowing the prize, overpast 'em. I was almost a 
 stranger to the whole history of Dissenters in those 
 reigns, and picked my way through that strange 
 book the " Consolidator" at random. How affecting 
 are some of his personal appeals ! What a machine of 
 projects he set on foot 1 and following writers have 
 picked his pocket of the patents. I do not under- 
 stand whereabouts in " Roxana " he himself left off. 
 I always thought the complete-tourist-sort of descrip- 
 tion of the town she passes through on her last 
 embarkation miserably unseasonable and out of 
 place. I knew not they were spurious. Enlighten 
 me as to where the apocryphal matter commences. 
 I, by accident, can correct one A. D., " Family In- 
 structor," vol. ii. 1718 ; you say his first volume 
 had then reached the fourth edition ; now I have a 
 fifth, printed for Eman Matthews, 17 17. So have I 
 plucked one rotten date, or rather picked it up where 
 it had inadvertently fallen, from your flourishing date 
 tree, the Palm of Engaddi. I may take it for my 
 pains. I think yours a book which every public
 
 428 CORRESPONDENCE WITH WILSON. 
 
 library must have, and every English scholar should 
 have. I am sure it has enriched my meagre stock 
 of the author's works. I seem to be twice as opulent. 
 Mary is by my side, just finishing the second volume. 
 It must have interest to divert her away so long 
 from her modern novels. Colburn will be quite 
 jealous. I was a little disappointed at my " Ode to 
 the Treadmill " not finding a place, but it came out 
 of time. The two papers of mine will puzzle the 
 reader, being so akin. Odd, that never keeping a 
 scrap of my own letters, with some fifteen years' 
 interval I should nearly have said the same things. 
 But I shall always feel happy in having my name go 
 down anyhow with De Foe's, and that of his 
 historiographer. I promise myself, if not immor- 
 tality, yet diuternity of being read in consequence. 
 We have both had much illness this year ; and 
 feeling infirmities and fretfulness grow upon us, we 
 have cast off the cares of housekeeping, sold off our 
 goods, and commenced boarding and lodging with a 
 very comfortable old couple next door to where you 
 found us. We use a sort of common table. Never- 
 theless, we have reserved a private one for an old 
 friend ; and when Mrs. Wilson and you revisit 
 Babylon, we shall pray you to make it yours for a 
 season. Our very kindest remembrances to you 
 both. 
 
 From your old friend and fellow -j ournalist , now in 
 two instances, 
 
 C. Lamb. 
 
 Hazlitt is going to make your book a basis for a 
 review of De Foe's Novels in " the Edinbro'." I 
 wish I had health and spirits to do it. Hone I have 
 not seen, but I doubt not he will be much pleased
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH WILSON. 4'Zg 
 
 with your performance. 1 very much hope you will 
 give us an account of Dunton, &c. But what I 
 should more like to see would be a Life and Times 
 of Bunyan. Wishing health to you, and long life to 
 your healthy book, again I subscribe me, 
 
 Yours in verity, C. L.
 
 ( 430 ) 
 
 XIII. 
 
 Correspondence with Miss Hutchinson. 
 
 Letter CCXCI.] Thursday, 19th Oct., i8i 5 
 
 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 yesterday. 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 better than if we 
 had had no partial separations. But I won't talk of 
 death. I will imagine us immortal, or forget that we 
 are otherwise. By God's blessing, in a few weeks we
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MISS HUTCHINSON. 43 1 
 
 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 1 I hear nothing from Coleridge. 
 Yours truly, C. Lamb. 
 
 Letter CCXCIL] [1823.] 
 
 Dear Miss H., — Mary has such an invincible reluct- 
 ance to any epistolary exertion, that I am sparing her 
 a mortification by taking the pen from her. The plain 
 truth is, she writes such a pimping, mean, detestable 
 hand, that she is ashamed of the formation of her 
 letters.^ There is an essential poverty and abjectness 
 in the frame of them. They look like begging letters. 
 And then she is sure to omit a most substantial word 
 in the second draught, (for she never ventures an 
 epistle without a foul copy first,) which is obliged to 
 be interlined ; which spoils the neatest epistle, you 
 know. Her figures, i, 2, 3, 4, &c., where she has 
 occasion to express numerals, as in the date, (25th 
 
 ' Miss Lamb wrote a particularly good hand. — T.
 
 432 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MISS HUTCHINSON. 
 
 April 1823,) are not figures, but figurantes; and the 
 combined posse go staggering up and down shameless, 
 as drunkards in the day-time. It is no better when 
 she rules her paper. Her lines "are not less erring' 
 than her words. A sort of unnatural parallel lines, 
 that are perpetually threatening to meet ; which, you 
 know, is quite contrary to Euclid. Her very blots are 
 not bold like this, [here a large blot is inserted,] but 
 poor smears, half left in and half scratched out, with 
 another smear left in their place. I like a clear letter ; 
 a bold free hand, and a fearless flourish. Then she 
 has always to go through them (a second operation) 
 to dot her i's, and cross her fs. I don't think she 
 can make a corkscrew if she tried, which has such a 
 fine effect at the end or middle of an epistle, and 
 fills up. 
 
 There is a corkscrew ! — one of the best I ever drew. 
 By the way, what incomparable whisky that was ot 
 Monkhouse's ! But if I am to write a letter, let me 
 begin, and not stand flourishing, like a fencer at a 
 fair. 
 
 April 25th, 1823. 
 
 Dear Miss H., — It gives me great pleasure (the letter 
 now begins) to hear that you got down so smoothly, 
 and that Mrs. Monkhouse's spirits are so good and 
 enterprising. It shows whatever her posture may be, 
 that her mind at least is not supine. I hope the 
 excursion will enable the former to keep pace with 
 its outstripping neighbour. Pray present our kindest 
 wishes to her and all ; (that sentence should properly 
 have come into the Postscript, but we airy mercurial 
 spirits, there is no keeping us in.) "Time " (as was 
 said of one of us) "toils after us in vain." I am 
 afraid our co-visit with Coleridge was a dream. I
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH :\nSS HUTCHINSON. 433 
 
 shall not get away before the end (or middle) of June, 
 and then you will be frog-hopping at Boulogne ; and 
 besides, I think the Gilmans would scarce trust him 
 with us; I have a malicious knack at cutting of apron- 
 strings. The Saints' days you speak of have long 
 since fled to heaven, with Astraea, and the cold piety 
 of the age lacks fervour to recall them ; only Peter 
 left his key — the iron one of the two that "shuts 
 amairt" — and that is the reason I am locked up. 
 Meanwhile of afternoons we pick up primroses at 
 Dalston, and Mary corrects me when I call 'em cow- 
 slips. God bless you all ; and pray remember me 
 euphoniously to Mr. Gruvellegan. That Lee Priory 
 must be a dainty bower. Is it built of flints ? — and 
 does it stand at Kingsgate ? 
 
 Letter CCXCIIL] 
 
 The brevity of this is owing to scratching it off at 
 my desk amid expected interruptions. By habit, I can 
 write letters only at office. 
 
 January 20th, 1825. 
 
 Dear Miss H., — Thank you for a noble goose, 
 which wanted only the massive incrustation that we 
 used to pick-axe open, about this season, in old 
 Gloucester Place. When shall we eat another goose 
 pie together ? The pheasant, too, must not be for- 
 gotten ; twice as big, and half as good as a Partridge. 
 You ask about the editor of the London ; I know of 
 none. This first specimen is flat and pert enough 
 to justify subscribers who grudge t'other shilling. 
 
 VOL. n. 2 F
 
 434 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MISS HUTCHINSON. 
 
 De Quincy's ' Parody' was submitted to him before 
 printed, and had his Probaturn} The "Horns" is 
 in a poor taste, resembUng the most laboured papers 
 in the Spectator. I had signed it "Jack Horner ; " 
 but Taylor and Hessey said it would be thought an 
 offensive article unless I put my known signature to 
 it, and wrung from me my slow consent. But did 
 you read the "Memoir of Liston?" — and did you 
 guess whose it was ? Of all the lies I ever put off, I 
 value this most. It is from top to toe, every para- 
 graph, Pure Invention, and has passed for gospel; 
 has been republished in newspapers, and in the penny 
 play-bills of the night, as an authentic account. I 
 shall certainly go to the naughty man some day for 
 my fibbings. In the next Number I figure as a 
 theologian ! and have attacked my late brethren, the 
 Unitarians. What Jack-Pudding tricks I shall play 
 next, I know not; I am almost at the end of my 
 tether. Coleridge is quite blooming, but his book has 
 not budded yet. I hope I have spelt Torquay right 
 now, and that this will find you all mending, and 
 looking forward to a London flight with the Spring. 
 Winter, we have had none, but plenty of foul weather. 
 I have lately picked up an epigram which pleased 
 me — 
 
 "Two noble earls, whom if I quote. 
 Some folks might call me sinner. 
 The one invented half a coat. 
 The other half a dinner. 
 
 1 Mr. de Ouincy had commenced a series of Letters in the London 
 Magazine, " To a Young Man whose Education has been neglected," 
 as a vehicle for conveying miscellaneous information in his admirable 
 style. Upon this hint Lamb, with the assent which Mr. de Quincy 
 could well afford to give, contributed a parody on the scheme, in " A 
 Letter to an Old Gentleman whose Education has been neglected." — T
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MISS HUTCHINSON. 435 
 
 " The plan was good, as some will say ; 
 And fitted to console one ; 
 Because, in this poor starving day. 
 Few can afford a whole one." 
 
 I have made the lame one still lamer by imperfect 
 memory ; but spite of bald diction, a little done to it 
 might improve it into a good one. You have 
 nothing else to do at Torquay. Suppose you try it. 
 Well, God bless you all, as wishes Mary most 
 sincerely, with many thanks for letter, &c. 
 
 Elia 
 
 Letter CCXCIV.] April i8, 1825, 
 
 Dear Miss Hutchinson, — You want to know all 
 about my gaol delivery. Take it then. About twelve 
 weeks since I had a sort of intimation that a resigna- 
 tion might be well accepted from me. This was a 
 kind bird's whisper. On that hint I spake. Oilman 
 and Tuthill furnished me with certificates of wasted 
 health and sore spirits — not much more than the 
 truth, I promise you — and for nine weeks I was kept 
 in a fright. I had gone too far to recede, and they 
 might take advantage, and dismiss me with a much 
 less sum than I had reckoned on. However, liberty 
 came at last, with a liberal provision. I have given 
 up what I could have lived on in the country ; but 
 have enough to live here, by management and scrib- 
 bling occasionally. I would not go back to my prison 
 for seven years longer for ;£"io,ooo a year; seven 
 years after one is fifty, is no trifle to give up. Still 
 I am a young pensioner, and have served but thirty- 
 three years ; very few, I assure you, retire before 
 forty, forty-five, or fifty years' service. 
 
 2 F 2
 
 436 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MISS HUTCHINSON. 
 
 You will ask how I bear my freedom ? Faith, for 
 some days I was staggered ; could not comprehend 
 the magnitude of my deliverance ; was confused, 
 giddy; knew not whether I was on my head or my 
 heel, as they say. But those giddy feelings have 
 gone away, and my weather-glass stands at a degree 
 or two above 
 
 CONTENT. 
 
 I go about quiet, and have none of that restless 
 hunting after recreation which made holydays 
 formerly uneasy joys. All being holydays, I feel as 
 if I had none, as they do in heaven, where 'tis all 
 red-letter days. I have a kind letter from the Words- 
 worths, congraUdatory not a little. It is a damp, I 
 do assure you, amid all my prospects, that I can 
 receive none from a quarter upon which I had calcu- 
 lated, almost more than from any, upon receiving 
 congratulations. I had grown to like poor Monk- 
 house more and more. I do not esteem a soul living 
 or not living more warmly than I had grown to esteem 
 and value him. But words are vain. We have none 
 of us to count upon many years. That is the only 
 cure for sad thoughts. If only some died, and the 
 rest were permanent on earth, what a thing a friend's 
 death would be then ! 
 
 I must take leave, having put off answering a 
 load of letters to this morning; and this, alas! is 
 the first. Our kindest remembrances to Mrs. Monk- 
 house, 
 
 And believe us yours most truly, 
 
 C. Lamb.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MISS HUTCHINSON. 437 
 
 Letter CCXCV.] Desk, n Nov., 1825. 
 
 My Dear Miss Hutchinson, — Mary bids me thank 
 you for your kind letter. We are a little puzzled 
 about your whereabouts. Miss Wordsworth writes 
 Torkay, and you have queerly made it Torquay. Now 
 Tokay we have heard of, and Torbay, which we take to 
 be the true male spelling of the place ; but somewhere 
 we fancy it to be on " Devon's leafy shores," where' 
 we heartily wish the kindly breezes may restore all 
 that is invalid among you. Robinson is returned, and 
 speaks much of you all. We shall be most glad to hear 
 good news from you from time to time. The best is, 
 Procter is at last married. We have made sundry 
 attempts- tQ see the bride, but have accidently failed, 
 she being gone out a gadding. We had promised 
 our dear friends the Monkhouses — promised ourselves 
 rather — a visit to them at Ramsgate ; but I thought 
 it best, and Mary seemed to have it at heart too, not 
 to go far from home these last holydays. It is con- 
 nected with a sense of unsettlement, and secretly I 
 know she hoped that such abstinence would be 
 friendly to her health. She certainly has escaped her 
 sad yearly visitation, whether in consequence of it, 
 or of faith in it, and we have to be thankful for a 
 good 1824. To get such a notion into our heads may 
 go a great way another year. Not that we quite con- 
 fined ourselves ; but assuming Islington to be head 
 quarters, we made timid flights to Ware, Watford, 
 &c., to try how the trouts tasted, for a night out or 
 so, not long enough to make the sense of change 
 oppressive, but sufficient to scour the rust of home. 
 Coleridge is not returned from the sea. As a little 
 scandal may divert you recluses, we were in the 
 Summer dining at a clergyman of Southey's " Church
 
 43^ CORRESPONDENCE WITH MISS HUTCHINSON. 
 
 of England," at Hertford, the same who officiated to 
 Thurtell's last moments, and indeed an old contem- 
 porary Blue of C.'s and mine at school. After dinner 
 we talked of C. ; and F., who is a mighty good fellow 
 in the main, but hath his cassock prejudices, in- 
 veighed against the moral character of C. I endea- 
 voured to enlighten him on the subject, till having 
 driven him out of some of his holds, he stopped my 
 mouth at once by appealing to me whether it was 
 not very well known that C. " at that very moment 
 was living in a state of open adultery with Mrs, 
 I ****** at Highgate ? " Nothing I could say, 
 serious or bantering, after that, could remove the deep 
 inrooted conviction of the whole company assembled 
 that such was the case ! Of course you will keep 
 this quite close, for I would not involve my poor 
 blundering friend, who I dare say believed it all tho- 
 roughly. My interference of course was imputed 
 to the goodness of my heart, that could imagine 
 nothing wrong, &c. Such it is if ladies will go gad- 
 ding about with other people's husbands at watering 
 places. How careful we should be to avoid the 
 appearance of evil ! 
 
 I thought this anecdote might amuse you. It is 
 not worth resenting seriously ; only I give it as a 
 specimen of orthodox candour. O Southey, Southey, 
 how long would it be before you would find one of us 
 Unitarians propagating such unwarrantable scandal ! 
 Providence keep you all from the foul fiend, scandal, 
 and send you back well and happy to dear Gloster 
 Place I C. L. 
 
 Miss Htitchinson, 
 
 T. Monkhouse, Esq., 
 
 Strand, Torkay, Torbay, Dei'on. 
 
 Swift & Co., i to 5, Newton Street, High Holborn, W.C. 
 
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