PINAL MEMORIALS
OF
CHARLES
LAMB:
CONSISTING
CHIEFLY OF HIS LETTERS NOT BEFORE PUBLISHED, WITH
SKETCHES OF SOME OF HIS COMPANIONS.
BY
Sir THOMAS NOON TALFOURD, D.C.L.,
ONE OF HIS EXECUTORS.
A NEW EDITION.

LONDON:
EDWARD MOXON, DOVER STREET.
1850.LONDON:
BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHlTFfKIAR/
WILLIAM	TO WORDSWORTH, Esq., D.C.L. POET LAUREATE,
€\)tst jftnal ^emanate
OF ONE WHO CHERISHED HIS FRIENDSHIP AS A COMFORT AMIDST
GRIEFS AND A GLORY AMIDST DEPRESSIONS,
ARE, WITH AFFECTION AND RESPECT,
'	Ihi^crtlictf
BY ONE WHOSE PRIDE IS TO HAVE BEEN IN OLD TIME HIS
EARNEST ADMIRER,
AND ONE OF WHOSE FONDEST WISHES IS
THAT HE MAY BE	LONG SPARED TO ENJOY FAME, RARELY ACCORDED TO THE LIVING,
	%
PREFACE.
--«.--
Nearly twelve years have elapsed since the Letters
of Charles Lamb, accompanied by such slight sketch
of his Life as might link them together, and explain
the circumstances to which they refer, were given
to the world. In the Preface to that work, reference
was made to letters yet remaining unpublished, and
to a period when a more complete estimate might be
formed of the singular and delightful character of
the writer than was there presented. That period
has arrived. Several of his friends, who might pos-
sibly have felt a moment's pain at the publication of
some of those effusions of kindness, in which they
are sportively mentioned, have been removed by death;
and the dismissal of the last, and to him the dearest
of all, his sister, while it has brought to her theV1U
PREFACE.
repose slie sighed for ever since she lost him, has
released liis biographer from a difficulty which has
hitherto prevented a due appreciation of some of his
noblest qualities. Her most lamentable, but most
innocent agency in the event which consigned her for
life to his protection, forbade the introduction of any
letter, or allusion to any incident, which might ever,
in the long and dismal twilight of consciousness
which she endured, shock her by the recurrence of
long past and terrible sorrows; and the same con-
sideration for her induced the suppression of every
passage which referred to the malady with which she
was through life at intervals afflicted. Although her
death had removed the objection to a reference to her
intermittent suffering, it still left a momentous ques-
tion, whether even then, when no relative remained
to be affected by the disclosure, it would be right to
unveil the dreadful calamity wliicli marked one of
its earliest visitations, and which, though known to
most of those who were intimate with the surviving
sufferers, had never been publicly associated with
their history. When, however, I reflected that the
truth, while in no wise affecting the gentle excellencePREFACE.
IX
of one of them, casts new and solemn lights on the
character of the other; that while Ills frailties have
received an ample share of that indulgence which he
extended to all human weaknesses, their chief exciting
cause has been hidden; that his moral strength and
the extent of his self-sacrifice have been hitherto
unknown to the world; I felt that to develope all
which is essential to the just appreciation of his rare
excellence, was due both to him and to the public.
While I still hesitated as to the extent of disclosure
needful for this purpose, my fingering doubts were
removed by the appearance of a full statement of the
melancholy event, with all the details capable of being
•a
collected from the newspapers of the time, in the
“ British Quarterly Review,” and the diffusion of
the passage, extracted thence, through several other
journals. After this publication, no doubt could
remain as to the propriety of publishing the letters
of Lamb on tins event, eminently exalting the charac-
ters of himself and his sister, and enabling the reader
to judge of the sacrifice which followed it.
I have also availed myself of the opportunity ofX
PREFACE.
introducing some letters, the objection to publishing
which has been obviated by the same great healer,
Time; and of adding others which I deemed too
trivial for the public eye, when the whole wealth of
his letters lay before me, collected by Mr. Moxon
from the distinguished correspondents of Lamb, who
kindly responded to his request for permission to
make the public sharers in their choice epistolary
treasures. The appreciation which the letters already
published, both in this country and in America—
perhaps even more remarkable in America than in
England—have attained, and the interest which the
lightest fragments of Lamb's correspondence, which
have accidentally appeared in other quarters, have
excited, convince me that some letters which I with-
held, as doubting their worthiness of the public eye,
will not now be unwelcome. There is, indeed,
scarcely a note—a notelet—(as he used to call Iris
very little letters) Lamb ever wrote, which has not
some tinge of that quaint sweetness, some hint of
that peculiar union of kindness and whim, which
distinguish him from all other poets and humorists.
I do not think the reader will complain that—PREFACE.
XI
with some very slight exceptions, which personal
considerations still render necessary—I have made
him a partaker of all the epistolary treasures which
the generosity of Laml/s correspondents placed at
Mr. Moxon's disposal.
When I first considered the materials of this work,
I purposed to combine them with a new edition of
the former volumes; but the consideration that such
a course would be unjust to the possessors of those
volumes induced me to present them to the public
in a separate form. In accomplishing that object, I
have felt the difficulty of connecting the letters so as
to render their attendant circumstances intelligible,
without falling into repetition of passages in the
previous biography. My attempt has been to make
these volumes subsidiary to the former, and yet com-
plete in themselves; but I fear its imperfection will
require much indulgence from the reader. The italics
and capitals used in printing the letters are always
those of the writer; and the little passages sometimes
prefixed to letters, have been printed as in the
originals.XU
PREFACE.
In venturing to introduce some notices of Lamb’s
deceased companions, I liave been impelled partly by
a desire to explain any allusion in tlie letters which
might be misunderstood by those who are not familiar
with the fine vagaries of Lamb’s affection, and partly
by the hope of giving some faint notion of the entire
circle with which Lamb is associated in the recollec-
tion of a few survivors.
T. X. T.
London, Ju,1848.CONTENTS
♦
CHAPTER 1.
LETTERS OF LAMB TO COLERIDGE, IN THE SPRING AND SUMMER
OF 1796'...................................
CHAPTER II.
LETTERS OF LAMB TO COLERIDGE, CHIEFLY RELATING TO THE
DEATH OF MRS. LAMB, AND MISS LAMB’S SUBSEQUENT
CONDITION .........
CHAPTER III.
LETTERS TO COLERIDGE AND MANNING IN LAMB’S FIRST YEARS
OF LIFE WITH HIS SISTER;—1797 TO 1800
CHAPTER IV.
MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS TO MANNING, COLERIDGE, AND
WORDSWORTH, FROM 1800 TO 1805	.	.	.	.
CHAPTER V.
PAGE
1
38
87
90
LETTERS TO HAZL1TT, ETC., FROM 1805 TO 1810
121XIV
CONTENTS
CHAPTER VI.
LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH, ETC., CHIEFLY RESPECTING WORDS-
WORTH’S poems;—1815 to 1818	.
CHAPTER VII.
THE LONDON MAGAZINE—CHARACTER AND FATE OF MR. JOHN
SCOTT, ITS EDITOR—GLIMPSE OF MR. THOMAS GRIFFITHS
WAIN WRIGHT, ONE OF ITS CONTRIBUTORS-MISCELLANEOUS
LETTERS OF LAMB TO WORDSWORTH, COLERIDGE, AND
others;—1818 to 1825	......
CHAPTER VIII.
letters of lamb’s last years ;—1825 to 1834
CHAPTER THE LAST.
lamb’s WEDNESDAY NIGHTS COMPARED WITH THE EVENINGS
OF HOLLAND HOUSE — HIS DEAD COMPANIONS, DYER,
GODWIN, THELWALL, HAZLITT, BARNES, HAYDON, COLE-
RIDGE, AND OTHERS---LAST GLIMPSES OF CHARLES AND
MARY LAMB	............................
PAGE
145
175
201
270FINAL MEMORIALS
OF
CHAELES LAMB.FINAL MEMORIALS
OF
CHARLES LAMB.
CHAPTER I.
LETTERS OF LAMB TO COLERIDGE, IN THE SPRING AND SUMMER
OF 1796.
In the year 1795, Charles Lamb resided with his
father, mother, and sister, in lodgings at No. 7, Little
Queen Street, Holborn. The father was rapidly sinking
into dotage; the mother suffered under an infirmity
which deprived her of the use of her limbs ; and the
sister not only undertook the office of daily and nightly
attendance on her mother, but sought to add by needle
work to their slender resources. Their income then
consisted of an annuity which Mr. Lamb the elder
derived from the old Bencher, Mr. Salt, whom he had
faithfully served for many years; Charles’s salary, which,
being that of a clerk of three years’ standing in the
India House, could have been but scanty; and a small
payment made for board by an old maiden aunt, who
resided with them. In this year Lamb, being just
B2
lamb’s youth.
twenty years of age, began to write verses,— partly
incited by the example of his only friend, Coleridge,
whom he regarded with as much reverence as affection,
and partly inspired by an attachment to a young lady
residing in the neighbourhood of Islington, who is com-
memorated in his early verses as “ the fair-haired maid.”
How his love prospered we cannot ascertain; but we
know how nobly that love, and all hope of the earthly
blessings attendant on such an affection, were resigned
on the catastrophe which darkened the following year.
In the meantime, his youth was lonely—rendered the
more so by the recollection of the society of Coleridge,
who had just left London—of Coleridge in the first
bloom of life and genius, unshaded by the mysticism
which it afterwards glorified—full of boundless am-
bition, love, and hope! There was a tendency to
insanity in his family, which had been more than once
developed in his sister ; and it was no matter of surprise
that in the dreariness of his solitude it fell upon him;
and that, at the close of the year, he was subjected for a
few weeks to the restraint of the insane. The wonder
is that, amidst all the difficulties, the sorrows, and the
excitements of his succeeding forty years, it never
recurred. Perhaps the true cause of this remarkable
exemption—an exemption the more remarkable when
his afflictions are considered in association with one
single frailty—will be found in the sudden claim made
on his moral and intellectual nature by a terrible exi-
gency, and by his generous answer to that claim; so
that a life of self-sacrifice was rewarded by the preserva-
tion of unclouded reason.LETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
3
The following letter to Coleridge, then residing at
Bristol, which is undated, but which is proved by cir-
cumstances to have been written in the spring of 1796,
and which is probably the earliest of Lamb’s letters
which have been preserved, contains his own account of
this seizure. Allusion to the same event will be per-
ceived in two letters of the same year, after which no
reference to it appears in his correspondence, nor can
any be remembered in his conversations with his dearest
friends.
TO MR. COLERIDGE.
1796.
“ Dear C-------, make yourself perfectly easy about
May. I paid his bill when I sent your clothes. I vras
flush of money, and am so still to all the purposes of a
single life; so give yourself no further concern about it.
The money would be superfluous to me if I had it.
“When Southey becomes as modest as his predecessor
Milton, and publishes his Epics in duodecimo, I will
read ’em; a guinea a book is somewhat exorbitant, nor
have I the opportunity of borrowing the work. The
extracts from it in the Monthly Reviews, and the short
passages in your Watchman, seem to me much superior
to anything in his partnership account with Lovell.
Your poems I shall procure forthwith. There were
noble lines in what you inserted in one of your numbers,
from ‘ Religious Musings ; ’ but I thought them elabo-
rate. I am somewhat glad you have given up that
paper; it must have been dry, unprofitable, and of dis-
sonant mood to your disposition. I wish you success4
LETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
in all your undertakings, and am glad to liear you are
employed about the ‘ Evidences of Religion.’ There
is need of multiplying such books a hundredfold in
this philosophical age, to prevent converts to atheism,
for they seem too tough disputants to meddle with
afterwards.
“ Le Grice is gone to make puns in Cornwall. He
has got a tutorship to a young hoy living with his
mother, a widow-lady. He will, of course, initiate him
quickly in ‘ whatsoever things are lovely, honourable,
and of good report.’ Coleridge ! I know not what suf-
fering scenes you have gone through at Bristol. My
life has been somewhat diversified of late. The six
weeks that finished last year and began this, your very
humble servant spent very agreeably in a madhouse, at
Hoxton. I am got somewhat rational now, and don’t
*
bite any one. But mad I was! And many a vagary
my imagination played with me, enough to make a
volume, if all were told. My sonnets I have extended
to the number of nine since I saw you, and will some
day communicate to you. I am beginning a poem in
blank verse, which, if I finish, I publish. White is on
the eve of publishing (he took the hint from Yortigem)
‘ Original Letters of Falstaff, Shallow,’ &c., a copy you
shall have when it comes out. They are without excep-
tion the best imitations I ever saw. Coleridge ! it may
convince you of my regards for you when I tell you my
head ran on you in my madness, as much almost as on
another person, who I am inclined to think was the
more immediate cause of my temporary frenzy.
“ The sonnet I send you has small merit as poetry ;LETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
5
but you will be curious to read it when I tell you it
was written in my prison-house in one of my lucid
intervals.
TO MY SISTER.
“ If from my lips some angry accents fell,
Peevish complaint, or harsh reproof unkind,
’Twas hut the error of a sickly mind
And troubled thoughts, clouding the purer well,
And waters clear, of Reason ; and for me
Let this my verse the poor atonement be—
My verse, which thou to praise wert e’er inclined
Too highly, and with a partial eye to see
No blemish. Thou to me didst ever show
Kindest affection; and wouldst oft-times lend
An ear to the desponding love-sick lay,
Weeping my sorrows with me, who repay
But ill the mighty debt of love I owe,
Mary, to thee, my sister and my friend.
“ With these lines, and with that sister’s kindest
remembrances to C-----, I conclude. Yours sincerely,
“ Lamb.”
“ Your ‘ Conciones ad Populum ’ are the most eloquent
politics that ever came in my way.
“Write when convenient—not as a task, for here is
nothing in this letter to answer.
“We cannot send our remembrances to Mrs C., not
having seen her, but believe me, our best good wishes
attend you both.
“ My civic and poetic compliments to Southey if at
Bristol;—why, he is a very Leviathan of Bards—the
small minnow, I! ”6
LETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
In the spring of this year, Coleridge proposed the
association of those first efforts of the young clerk in the
India House, which he had prompted and praised, with
his own, in a new edition of his Poems, to which Mr.
Charles Lloyd also proposed to contribute. The follow-
ing letter comprises Sonnets transmitted to Coleridge
for this purpose, accompanied by remarks so character-
istic as to induce the hope that the reader will forgive
the introduction of these small gems of verse which
were published in due course, for the sake of the original
setting.
TO MR. COLERIDGE.
1796.
“ I am in such violent pain with the headache, that I
am fit for nothing but transcribing, scarce for that.
When I get your poems, and the ‘Joan of Arc,’ I will
exercise my presumption in giving you my opinion of
’em. The mail does not come in before to-morrow
(Wednesday) morning. The following Sonnet was com-
posed during a walk down into Hertfordshire early in
last summer:—
“ The Lord of Light shakes off his drowsyhed,*
Fresh from his couch up springs the lusty sun,
And girds himself his mighty race to run;
Meantime, by truant love of rambling led
I turn my back on thy detested walls,
Proud city, and thy sons I leave behind
A selfish, sordid, money-getting kind,
Who shut their ears when holy Freedom calls.
* “ Drowsyhed” I have met with, I think, in Spenser. ’Tis an old
thing, but it rhymes with led, and rhyming covers a multitude of
licences.—C. Lamb’s Manuscripts.LETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
7
I pass not thee so lightly, humble spire,
That mindest me of many a pleasure gone,
Of merriest days of Love and Islington,
Kindling anew the flames of past desire ;
And I shall muse on thee, slow journeying on,
To the green plains of pleasant Hertfordshire.
“ Tlije last line is a copy of Bowles’s, ‘ To the green
hamlet in the peaceful plain.’ Your ears are not so very
fastidious; many people would not like words so prosaic
and familiar in a Sonnet as Islington and Hertfordshire.
The next was written within a day or two of the last, on
revisiting a spot where the scene was laid of my first
Sonnet ‘ that mocked my step with many a lonely glade.’
“ When last I roved these winding wood-walks green,
Green winding walks, and shady pathways sweet;
Oft-times would Anna seek the silent scene,
Shrouding her beauties in the lone retreat.
No more I hear her footsteps in the shade;
Her image only in these pleasant ways
Meets me self-wandering, where in happier days
I held free converse with my fair-haired maid.
I passed the little cottage which she loved,
The cottage which did once my all contain;
It spake of days that ne’er must come again ;
Spake to my heart, and much my heart was moved.
Now 6 Fair hefal thee, gentle maid,’ said I;
And from the cottage turned me with a sigh.
“ The next retains a few lines from a Sonnet of mine
which you once remarked had no ‘ body of thought ’ in
it. I agree with you, but have preserved a part of it,
and it runs thus. I flatter myself you will like it:—
“ A timid grace sits trembling in her eye,
As loth to meet the rudeness of men’s sight;8
LETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
Yet shedding a delicious lunar light,
That steeps in kind oblivious ecstacy
The care-crazed mind, like some still melody:
Speaking most plain the thoughts which do possess
Her gentle sprite, peace and meek quietness,
And innocent loves,* and maiden purity:
A look whereof might heal the cruel smart
Of changed friends; or Fortune’s wrongs unkind ;
Might to sweet deeds of mercy move the heart
Of him, who hates his brethren of mankind :
Turned are those beams from me, who fondly yet
Past joys, vain loves, and buried hopes regret.
“ The next and last I value most of all. ’Twas com-
posed close upon the heels of the last, in that very wood
“ We were two pretty babes, the youngest she,
The youngest, and the loveliest far, I ween,
And Innocence her name. The time has been
We two did love each other’s company;
Time was, we two had wept to have been apart:
But when, with show of seeming good beguil’d,
I left the garb and manners of a child,
And my first love for man’s society,
Defiling with the world my virgin heart—
My loved companion dropt a tear, and fled,
And hid in deepest shades her awful head.
Beloved! who can tell me where thou art—
In what delicious Eden to be found—
That I may seek thee the wide world around?
“ Since writing it, I have found in a poem by Hamil-
ton of Bangor, these two lines to ‘ Happiness.’
* Cowley uses this phrase with a somewhat different meaning. I
meant, loves of relatives, friends, &c.—C. Lamb’s Manuscripts.
I had in mind when I wrote—‘ Methinks
sweet.’LETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
9
Nun, sober and devout, where art thou fled
To hide in shades thy meek contented head?
Lines eminently beautiful; but I do not remember
having read them previously, for the credit of my tenth
and eleventh lines. Parnell has two lines (which pro-
bably suggested the above) to ‘ Contentment.’
Whither, ah ! whither art thou fled
To hide thy meek contented * head?
“ Cowley’s exquisite ‘ Elegy on the death of his friend
Harvey,’ suggested the phrase of ‘we two.’
Was there a tree that did not know
The love betwixt us two ?
“ So much for acknowledged plagiarisms, the confes-
sion of which I know not whether it has more of vanity
or modesty in it. As to my blank verse, I am so dis-
mally slow and sterile of ideas (I speak from my heart)
that I much question if it will ever come to any issue.
I have hitherto only hammered out a few independent,
unconnected snatches, not in a capacity to be sent. I
am very ill, and will rest till I have read your poems, for
which I am very thankful. I have one more favour to
beg of you, that you never mention Mr. May’s affair in
any sort, much less think of repaying. Are we not flocci-
nauci-what-d’ye-call-’em-ists ? We have just learned
that my poor brother has had a sad accident, a large
stone blown down by yesterday’s high wind has bruised
* An odd epithet for Contentment in a poet so poetical as Parnell.
— C. Lamb’s Manuscripts.10
LETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
his leg in a most shocking manner; he is under the care
of Cruikshanks. Coleridge! there are 10,000 objections
against my paying you a visit at Bristol; it cannot be
else; but in this world ’tis better not to think too much
of pleasant possibles, that we may not be out of humour
with present insipids. Should anything bring you to
London, you will recollect No. 7, Little Queen Street,
Holborn.
“ I shall be too ill to call on Wordsworth myself, but
will take care to transmit him his poem, when I have
read it. I saw Le Grice the day before his departure,
and mentioned incidentally his ‘ teaching the young idea
how to shoot.’ Knowing him and the probability there
is of people having a propensity to pun in his company,
you will not wonder that we both stumbled on the same
pun at once, he eagerly anticipating me,—* he would
teach him to shoot! ’ Poor Le Grice ! if wit alone could
entitle a man to respect, &c., he has written a very witty
little pamphlet lately, satirical upon college declamations.
When I send White’s book, I will add that. I am sorry
there should be any difference between you and Southey.
‘ Between you two there should be peace,' tho’ I must
say I have borne him no good will since he spirited you
away from among us. What is become of Moschus ?
You sported some of his sublimities, I see, in your
Watchman. Very decent things. So much for to-night
from your afflicted, headacliey, sore-throatey, humble
servant,	“ C. Lamb.”
“ Tuesday night.—Of your Watchman, the Review of
Burke was the best prose. I augured great things fromLETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
11
the first number. There is some exquisite poetry inter-
spersed. I have re-read the extract from the ‘ Religious
Musings,’ and retract 'whatever invidious there was in
my censure of it as elaborate. There are times when
one is not in a disposition thoroughly to relish good
writing. I have re-read it in a more favourable moment,
and hesitate not to pronounce it sublime. If there be
anything in it approaching to tumidity (which I meant
not to infer; by elaborate I meant simply laboured), it is
the gigantic hyperbole by which you describe the evils
of existing society; ‘ snakes, lions, hyenas, and behe-
moths,’ is carrying your resentment beyond bounds. The
pictures of ‘The Simoom,’ of ‘Frenzy and Ruin,’ of
‘ The Whore of Babylon,’ and ‘ The Cry of Foul Spirits
disherited of Earth,’ and ‘ the strange beatitude ’ which
the good man shall recognise in heaven, as well as the
particularising of the children of wretchedness (I have
unconsciously included every part of it), form a variety
of uniform excellence. I hunger and thirst to read the
poem complete. That is a capital line in your sixth
number—
6 This dark, frieze-coated, hoarse, teeth-chattering month.5
They are exactly such epithets as Burns would have
stumbled on, whose poem on the ploughed-up daisy you
seem to have had in mind. Your complaint that of your
readers some thought there was too much, some too little
original matter in your numbers, reminds me of poor
dead Parsons in the ‘ Critic.’ ‘ Too little incident!
Give me leave to tell you, sir, there is too much incident.’
I had like to have forgot thanking you for that exquisite12
LETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
little morsel, the first Sclavonian Song. The expression
in the second,—‘ more happy to be unhappy in hellis
it not very quaint ? Accept my thanks, in common with
those of all who love good poetry, for ‘ The Braes of
Yarrow.’ I congratulate you on the enemies you must
have made by your splendid invective against the
barterers in human flesh and sinews. Coleridge! you
will rejoice to hear that Cowper is recovered from his
lunacy, and is employed on his translation of the Italian,
&c. poems of Milton for an edition where Fuseli presides
as designer. Coleridge ! to an idler like myself, to write
and receive letters are both very pleasant, but I wish not
to break in upon your valuable time by expecting to hear
very frequently from you. Reserve that obligation for
your moments of lassitude, when you have nothing else
to do ; for your loco-restive and all your idle propensities,
of course, have given way to the duties of providing for
a family. The mail is come in, but no parcel; yet this
is Tuesday. Farewell, then, till to-morrow, for a niche
and a nook I must leave for criticisms. By the way I
hope you do not send your own only copy of Joan of Arc;
I will in that case return it immediately.
“ Your parcel is come; you have been lavish of your
presents.
“ Wordsworth’s poem I have hurried through, not
without delight. Poor Lovell! my heart almost accuses
me for the light manner I spoke of him above, not
dreaming of his death. My heart bleeds for your accu-
mulated troubles; God send you through ’em with
patience. I conjure you dream not that I will ever
think of being repaid; the very word is galling to the ears.LETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
13
I have read all your ‘ Eeligious Musings ’ with uninter-
rupted feelings of profound admiration. You may safely
rest your fame on it. The best remaining things are
what I have before read, and they lose nothing by my
recollection of your manner of reciting ’em, for I too
bear in mind * the voice, the look,’ of absent friends, and
can occasionally mimic their manner for the amusement
of those who have seen ’em. Your impassioned manner
of recitation I can recall at any time to mine own heart
and to the ears of the bystanders. I rather wish you
had left the monody on Chatterton concluding as it did
abruptly. It had more of unity. The conclusion of
your ‘ Eeligious Musings ’ I fear will entitle you to the
reproof of your beloved woman, who wisely will not
suffer your fancy to run riot, but bids you walk humbly
with your God. The very last words, ‘ I exercise my
young noviciate thought in ministeries of heart-stirring
song,’ though not now new to me, cannot be enough
admired. To speak politely, they are a well-turned
compliment to Poetry. I hasten to read ‘ Joan of Arc,’
&c. I have read your lines at the beginning of second
book : they are wTortliy of Milton ; but in my mind yield
to your ‘ Eeligious Musings.’ I shall read the whole
carefully, and in some future letter take the liberty to
particularise my opinions of it. Of what is new to me
among your poems next to the ‘ Musings,’ that begin-
ning ‘ My Pensive Sara ’ gave me most pleasure : the
lines in it I just alluded to are most exquisite; they
made my sister and self smile, as conveying a pleasing
picture of Mrs. C. checking your wild wanderings, which
we were so fond of hearing you indulge when among us.14
LETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
It lias endeared us more than anything to your good
lady, and your own self-reproof that follows delighted us.
Tis a charming poem throughout (you have well re-
marked that charming, admirable, exquisite are the
words expressive of feelings more than conveying of
ideas, else I might plead very well want of room in my
paper as excuse for generalising). I want room to
tell you how we are charmed with your verses in the
manner of Spenser, &c., &c., &c., &c., &c. I am glad
you resume the ‘ Watchman.’ Change the name ; leave
out all articles of news, and whatever things are peculiar
to newspapers, and confine yourself to ethics, verse,
criticism—or rather do not confine yourself. Let your
plan he as diffuse as the ‘ Spectator,’ and I ’ll answer
for it the work prospers. If I am vain enough to think
I can be a contributor, rely on my inclinations. Cole-
ridge ! in reading your ‘ Religious Musings,’ I felt a
transient superiority over you. I seen Priestly.
I love to see his name repeated in your writings. I love
and honour him almost profanely. You would be
charmed with his Sermons, if you never read ’em. You
have doubtless read his books illustrative of the doctrine
of Necessity. Prefixed to a late work of his in answer
to Paine, there is a preface giving an account of the man,
and his services to men, written by Lindsey, his dearest
friend, well worth vour reading.
“ Tuesday eve.—Forgive my prolixity, which is yet
too brief for all I could wish to say. God give you
comfort, and all that are of your household ! Our loves
and best good wishes to Mrs. C.
“ C. Lamb.”LETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
15
The parcel mentioned in the last letter, brought the
“ Joan of Arc,” and a request from Coleridge, that Lamb
would freely criticise his poems with a view to their
selection and correction for the contemplated volume.
The reply is contained in the following letter which,
written on several days, begins at the extreme top of the
first page, without any ceremony of introduction, and is
comprised in three sides and a bit of foolscap.
TO MR. COLERIDGE.
“ With ‘ Joan of Arc’ I have been delighted, amazed;
I had not presumed to expect anything of such excel-
lence from Southey. Why the poem is alone sufficient
to redeem the character of the age we live in from the
imputation of degenerating in Poetry, were there no
such beings extant as Burns, and Bowles, Cowper, and
-----; fill up the blank how you please; I say nothing.
The subject is well chosen. It opens well. To become
more particular, I will notice in their order a few pas-
sages that chiefly struck me on perusal. Page 26,
‘ Fierce and terrible Benevolence ! ’ is a phrase full of
grandeur and originality. The whole context made me
feel possessed, even like Joan herself. Page 28, ‘ It is
most horrible with the keen sword to gore the finely-
fibred human frame,’ and what follows, pleased me
mightily. In the 2nd Book, the first forty lines in
particular are majestic and high-sounding. Indeed the
whole vision of the Palace of Ambition and what follows
are supremely excellent. Your simile of the Laplander,
‘ By Niemi’s lake, or Baida Zhiok, or the mossy stone of16
LETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
Solfar-Rapper,’* will bear comparison with any in
Milton for fulness of circumstance and lofty-pacedness
of versification. Southey’s similes, though many of ’em
are capital, are all inferior. In one of his books, the
simile of the oak in the storm occurs, I think, four
times. To return; the light in which you view the
heathen deities is accurate and beautiful. Southey’s
personifications in this book are so many fine and fault-
less pictures. I was much pleased with your manner of
accounting for the reason why monarchs take delight in
war. At the 447th line you have placed Prophets and
Enthusiasts cheek by jowl, on too intimate a footing for
the dignity of the former. Necessarian-like-speaking, it
is correct. Page 98, ‘ Dead is the Douglas! cold thy
warrior frame, illustrious Buchan,’ &c., are of kindred
excellence with Gray’s ‘ Cold is Cadwallo’s tongue,’ &c.
How famously the maid baffles the Doctors, Seraphic
and Irrefragable, * with all their trumpery ! ’ Page 126,
the procession, the appearances of the Maid, of the
Bastard Son of Orleans and of Tremouille, are full of
fire and fancy, and exquisite melody of versification. The
personifications from fine 303 to 309, in the heat of the
battle, had better been omitted; they are not very
striking, and only encumber. The converse which Joan
and Conrade hold on the banks of the Loire is altogether
beautiful. Page 313, the conjecture that in dreams ‘all
things are that seem,' is one of those conceits which the
Poet delights to admit into his creed—a creed, by the
way, more marvellous and mystic than ever Athanasius
* Lapland mountains. The verses referred to are published in
Mr. Coleridge’s Poem entitled u The Destiny of Nations: a Vision.”LETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
17
dreamed of. Page 315, I need only mention those lines
ending with ‘ She saw a serpent gnawing at her heart! ’
They are good imitative lines, ‘ he toiled and toiled, of
toil to reap no end, but endless toil and never-ending
woe.’ Page 347, Cruelty is such as Hogarth might have
painted her. Page 361, all the passage about Love
(where he seems to confound conjugal love with creating
and preserving love) is very confused, and sickens me
with a load of useless personifications ; else that ninth
Book is the finest in the volume—an exquisite combina-
tion of the ludicrous and the terrible : I have never read
either, even in translation, but such I conceive to be
the manner of Dante or Ariosto. The tenth Book is
the most languid. On the whole, considering the cele-
rity wherewith the poem was finished, I was astonished
at the unfrequency of weak lines. I had expected to
find it verbose. Joan, I think, does too little in battle;
Dunois perhaps the same ; Conrade too much. The
anecdotes interspersed among the battles refresh the
mind very agreeably, and I am delighted with the very
many passages of simple pathos abounding throughout
the poem, passages which the author of ‘ Crazy Kate '
might have written. Has not Master Southey spoke
very slightingly, in his preface, and disparagingly of
Cowper’s Homer? What makes him reluctant to give
Cowper his fame ? And does not Southey use too often
the expletives ‘ did,’ and ‘ does ? ’ They have a good
effect at times, but are too inconsiderable, or rather
become blemishes, when they mark a style. On the
whole, I expect Southey one day to rival Milton: I
already deem him equal to Cowper, and superior to all18
LETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
living poets besides. What says Coleridge? The
‘ Monody on Henderson ’ is immensely , the rest of
that little volume is readable, and above mediocrity. I
proceed to a more pleasant task; pleasant because the
poems are yours; pleasant because you impose the task
on me; and pleasant, let me add, because it will confer
a whimsical importance on me, to sit in judgment upon
your rhymes. First, though, let me thank you again
and again, in my own and my sister’s name, for your
invitations ; nothing could give us more pleasure than
to come, but (were there no other reasons) while my
brother’s leg is so bad it is out of the question. Poor
fellow ! he is very feverish and light-headed, but Cruik-
shanks has pronounced the symptoms favourable, and
gives us every hope that there will be no need of ampu-
tation : God send not! We are necessarily confined
with him all the afternoon and evening till very late, so
that I am stealing a few minutes to write to you.
“ Thank you for your frequent letters; you are the
only correspondent, and, I might add, the only friend I
have in the world, I go nowhere, and have no
acquaintance. Slow of speech, and reserved of manners,
no one seeks or cares for my society; and I am left alone.
Allen calls only occasionally, as though it were a duty
rather, and seldom stays ten minutes. Then judge
how thankful I am for your letters! Ho not, however,
burthen yourself with the correspondence. I trouble
you again so soon, only in obedience to your injunctions.
Complaints apart, proceed we to our task. I am called
awray to tea; thence must wait upon my brother; so
must delay till to-morrow. Farewell. Wednesday.LETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
19
“ Thursday.—I will first notice what is new to me.
Thirteenth page; ‘ The thrilling tones that concentrate
the soul ’ is a nervous line, and the six first lines of page
14 are very pretty; the twenty-first effusion a perfect
thing. That in the manner of Spenser is very sweet,
particularly at the close: the thirty-fifth effusion is most
exquisite; that line in particular, ‘ And, tranquil, muse
upon tranquillity.’ It is the very reflex pleasure that
distinguishes the tranquillity of a thinking being from
that of a shepherd, a modern one I would be understood
to mean, a Damsetas, one that keeps other people’s sheep.
Certainly, Coleridge, your letter from Shurton Bars has
less merit than most things in your volume ; personally
it may chime in best with your own feelings, and
therefore you love it best. It has, however, great merit.
In your fourth epistle that is an exquisite paragraph, and
fancy-full, of ‘ A stream there is which rolls in lazy flow,’
&c. &c. ‘Murmurs sweet undersong mid jasmin bowers ’
is a sweet line, and so are the three next. The
concluding simile is far-fetched—‘ tempest-honoured ’ is
a quaintish phrase.
“ Yours is a poetical family. I was much surprised
and pleased to see the signature of Sara to that elegant
composition, the fifth epistle. I dare not criticise the
‘ Religious Musings; ’ I like not to select any part, where
all is excellent. I can only admire, and thank you for
it in the name of a Christian, as well as a lover of good
poetry ; only let me ask, is not that thought and those
words in Young, ‘ stands in the sun,’—or is it only such
as Young, in one of his better moments, might have
writ?—20
LETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
i Believe thou, O my soul,
Life is a vision shadowy of truth;
And vice, and anguish, and the wormy grave,
Shapes of a dream !’
I thank you for these lines in the name of a necessarian,
and for what follows in next paragraph, in the name of a
child of fancy. After all, you cannot, nor ever will, write
anything with which I shall be so delighted as what I
have heard yourself repeat. You came to town, and
I saw you at a time when your heart was yet bleeding
with recent wounds. Like yourself, I was sore galled
with disappointed hope; you had
---------6 many an holy lay
That, mourning, soothed the mourner on his way; ’
“ I had ears of sympathy to drink them in, and they
yet vibrate pleasant on the sense. When I read in your
little volume, your nineteenth effusion, or the twenty-
eighth or twenty-ninth, or what you call the ‘ Sigh,’ I
think I hear you again. I image to myself the little
smoky room at the Salutation and Cat, where we have
sat together through the winter nights, beguiling the
cares of life with Poesy. When you left London, I felt
a dismal void in my heart. I found myself cut off, at
one and the same time, from two most dear to me.
‘ How blest with ye the path could I have trod of quiet
life! ’ In your conversation you had blended so many
pleasant fancies that they cheated me of my grief. But
in your absence the tide of melancholy rushed in again
and did its worst mischief by overwhelming my reason.
I have recovered, but feel a stupor that makes me indif-LETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
21
ferent to the hopes and fears of this life. I sometimes
wish to introduce a religious turn of mind, but habits are
strong things, and my religious fervours are confined,
alas! to some fleeting moments of occasional solitary
devotion. A correspondence, opening with you, has
roused me a little from my lethargy and made me
conscious of existence. Indulge me in it: I will not be
very troublesome! At some future time I will amuse
you with an account, as full as my memory will permit,
of the strange turn my frenzy took. I look back upon
it at times with a gloomy kind of envy; for, while it
lasted, I had many, many hours of pure happiness.
Dream not, Coleridge, of having tasted all the grandeur
and wildness of fancy till you have gone mad ! All now
seems to me vapid, comparatively so. Excuse this selfish
dig ression. Your ‘ Monody ’ is so superlatively excellent,
that I can only wish it perfect, which I can’t help feeling
it is not quite. Indulge me in a few conjectures; what
I am going to propose would make it more compressed,
and, I think, more energetic, though I am sensible at
the expense of many beautiful lines. Let it begin ‘ Is
this the land of soug-ennobled line ? ’ and proceed to
‘ Otway’s famished form ; ’ then, ‘ Thee Chatterton,’ to
‘ blaze of Seraphim ; ’ then, ‘ clad in Nature’s rich array,’
to ‘ orient day ; ’ then, ‘ but soon the scathing lightning,’
to ‘ blighted land; ’ then, ‘sublime of thought,’ to * his
bosom glows; ’ then
‘ But soon upon his poor unsheltered head
Did Penury her sickly mildew shed;
And soon are fled the charms of early grace.
And joy’s wild gleams that lightened o’er his face.522
LETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
Then ‘youth of tumultuous soul’ to ‘sigh,’ as before.
The rest may all stand down to ‘ gaze upon the waves
below.’ What follows now may come next as detached
verses, suggested by the Monody, rather than a part of
it. They are, indeed, in themselves very sweet.
‘ And we, at sober eve, would round thee throng,
Hanging enraptured on thy stately song! ’
in particular, perhaps. If I am obscure, you may
understand me by counting lines:	I have proposed
omitting twenty-four lines : I feel that thus compressed
it would gain energy, but think it most likely you will
not agree with me; for who shall go about to bring
opinions to the bed of Procrustes, and introduce among
the sons of men a monotony of identical feelings ? I
only propose with diffidence. Pceject you, if you please,
with as little remorse as you would the colour of a coat
or the pattern of a buckle, where our fancies differed.
“ The ‘Pixies ’ is a perfect thing, and so are the ‘Lines
on the Spring,’ page 28. The ‘ Epitaph on an Infant,’
like a Jack-o’-lanthorn, has danced about (or like Dr.
Forster’s scholars) out of the Morning Chronicle into
the Watchman, and thence back into your collection.
It is very pretty, and you seem to think so, but, may be,
o’erlooked its chief merit, that of filling up a whole page.
I had once deemed Sonnets of unrivalled use that
way, but your Epitaphs, I find, are the more diffuse.
‘ Edmund- still holds its place among your best verses.
‘Ah! fair delights’ to ‘roses round,’ in your Poem
called ‘ Absence,’ recall (none more forcibly) to my mind
the tones in which you recited it. I will not notice, inLETTERS TO COLERIDGE.	23
this tedious (to you) manner, verses which have been so
long delightful to me, and which you already know my
opinion of. Of this kind are Bowles, Priestly, and that
most exquisite and most Bowles-like of all, the nineteenth
effusion. It would have better ended with ‘ agony of
care: ’ the two last lines are obvious and unnecessary,
and you need not now make fourteen lines of it; now it
is re-christened from a Sonnet to an Effusion. Schiller
might have written the twentieth effusion : ’tis worthy
of him in any sense. I was glad to meet with those
lines you sent me, when my sister was so ill; I had lost
the copy, and I felt not a little proud at seeing my name
in your verse. The complaint of Ninathoma (first stanza
in particular) is the best, or only good imitation, of Ossian
I ever saw—your ‘ Restless Gale ’ excepted. ‘ To an
Infant’ is most sweet; is not ‘foodful,’ though, very
harsh ? Would not ‘ dulcet ’ fruit be less harsh, or some
other friendly bi-syllable? In ‘Edmund,’ ‘Frenzy!
fierce-eyed child ’ is not so well as ‘ frantic,’ though that
is an epithet adding nothing to the meaning. Slander
couching was better than ‘ squatting.’ In the ‘ Man of
Boss ’ it was a better line thus :
‘ If ’neath this roof thy wine-cheered moments pass,’
than as it stands now. Time nor nothing can reconcile
me to the concluding five lines of ‘ Kosciusko : ’ call it
anything you will but sublime. In my twelfth effusion
I had rather have seen what I wrote myself, though they
bear no comparison with your exquisite lines—
6 On rose-leaf'd-beds amid your faery bowers/ &c.24
LETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
“ I love my sonnets because they are the reflected
images of my own feelings at different times. To
instance, in the thirteenth—
c How reason reeled/ &c.,
are good lines, but must spoil the whole with me, who
know it is only a fiction of yours, and that the ‘ rude
dashings ’ did in fact not ‘ rock me to repose.’ I grant
the same objection applies not to the former sonnet; but
still I love my own feelings ; they are dear to memory,
though they now and then wake a sigh or a tear.
‘ Thinking on divers things foredone,’ I charge you,
Coleridge, spare my ewe-lambs; and though a gentleman
may borrow six lines in an epic poem (I should have no
objection to borrow five hundred, and without acknow-
ledging), still, in a sonnet, a personal poem, I do
not ‘ ask my friend the aiding verse I would not wrong
your feelings, by proposing any improvements (did I
think myself capable of suggesting ’em) in such personal
poems as ‘ Thou bleedest, my poor heart,’—’od so,—I
am caught—I have already done it; but that simile I
propose abridging, would not change the feeling or
introduce any alien ones. Do you understand me ? In
the twenty-eighth, however, and in the ‘ Sigh,’ and that
composed at Clevedon, things that come from the heart
direct, not hy the medium of the fancy, I would not
suggest an alteration. When my blank verse is finished,
or any long fancy poem, ‘ propino tibi alterandum, cut-
up-andum, abridgandum,’ just what you will with it; but
spare my ewe-lambs ! That to ‘ Mrs. Siddons,’ now, you
were welcome to improve, if it had been worth it; but ILETTERS TO COLERIDGE,
25
say unto you again, Coleridge, spare my ewe-lambs ! I
must confess, were they mine, I should omit, in eclitione
secunda, effusions two and three, because satiric, and
below the dignity of the poet of ‘ Religious Musiugs,’
fifth, seventh, half of the eighth, that ‘ Written in early
youth,’ as far as ‘thousand eyes,’—though I part not
unreluctantly with that lively line—
6 Chaste joyance dancing in her bright-blue eyes,’
and one or two just thereabouts. But I would substitute
for it that sweet poem called * Recollection,’ in the fifth
number of the Watchman, better, I think, than the
remainder of this poem, though not differing materially:
as the poem now stands it looks altogether confused;
and do not omit those lines upon the ‘ Early Blossom,’
in your sixth number of the Watchman ; and I would
omit the tenth effusion, or what would do better, alter
and improve the last four lines. In fact, I suppose, if
they were mine, I should not omit ’em ; but your verse
is, for the most part, so exquisite, that I like not to see
aught of meaner matter mixed with it. Forgive my
petulance, and often, I fear, ill-founded criticisms, and
forgive me that I have, by this time, made your eyes
•»
and head ache with my long letter; but I cannot forego
hastily the pleasure and pride of thus conversing with
you. You did not tell me whether I was to include the
‘ Conciones ad Populum ’ in my remarks on your poems.
They are not unfrequently sublime, and I think you
could not do better than to turn ’em into verse—if
you have nothing else to do. A------------, I am sorry to26
LETTERS TO COLERTDGE.
say, is a confirmed Atheist; S----------, a cold-hearted,
well-bred, conceited disciple of Godwin, does him no
good.
“ How I sympathise with you on the dull duty of a
reviewer, and heartily damn with you Ned E------------and
the Prosodist. I shall, however, wait impatiently for
the articles in the Critical Pieview, next month, because
they are yours. Young Evans (W. Evans, a branch of
a family you were once so intimate with) is come into
our office, and sends his love to you! Coleridge ! I
devoutly wish that Fortune, who has made sport with
you so long, may play one freak more, throw you into
London, or some spot near it, and there snug-ify you for
life. ’Tis a selfish, hut natural wish for me, cast as I
am ‘ on life’s wide plain, friendless.’ Are you acquainted
with Bowles ? I see, by his last Elegy, (written at Bath,)
you are near neighbours. Thursday.
“ I do not know that I entirely agree with you in your
stricture upon my sonnet ‘ To Innocence.’ To men
whose hearts are not quite deadened by their commerce
with the world, innocence (no longer familiar) becomes
an awful idea. So I felt when I wrote it. Your other
censures (qualified and sweetened, though, with praises
somewhat extravagant) I perfectly coincide with ; yet I
choose to retain the word * lunar '—indulge a ‘ lunatic ’
in his loyalty to his mistress the moon ! I have just
been reading a most pathetic copy of verses on Sophia
Pringle, who was hanged and burnt for coining. One
of the strokes of pathos (which are very many, all some-
what obscure), is, ‘ She lifted up her guilty forger to
heaven.’ A note explains, by ‘ forger,’ her right hand,LETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
27
with which she forged or coined the base metal. For
pathos read bathos. You have put me out of conceit
with my blank verse by your ‘ Religious Musings.’ I
think it will come to nothing. I do not like ’em enough
to send ’em. I have just been reading a book, which I
may be too partial to, as it was the delight of my child-
hood ; but I will recommend it to you;—it is Izaak
Walton’s ‘ Complete Angler.’ All the scientific part
you may omit in reading. The dialogue is very simple,
full of pastoral beauties, and will charm you. Many
pretty old verses are interspersed. This letter, which
would be a week’s work reading only, I do not wish you
to answer it in less than a month. I shall be richly
content with a letter from you some day early in July ;
though, if you get any how settled before then, pray let
me know it immediately ; ’twould give me much satis-
faction. Concerning the Unitarian chapel, the salary is
the only scruple that the most rigid moralist would
admit as valid. Concerning the tutorage, is not the
salary low, and absence from your family unavoidable ?
London is the only fostering soil for genius. Nothing
more occurs just now ; so I will leave you, in mercy, one
small white spot empty below, to repose your eyes upon,
fatigued as they must be. with the wilderness of words
they have by this time painfully travelled through. God
love you, Coleridge, and prosper you through life;
though mine will be loss if your lot is to be cast at
Bristol, or at Nottingham, or anywhere but London.
Our loves to Mrs. C-------.
“ Friday, 1 Oth June, 1796.”
“C. L.28
LETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
Coleridge, settled in his melancholy cottage, invited
Lamb to visit him. The hope—the expectation—the
disappointment, are depicted in the following letter,
written in the summer of the eventful year 1796.
TO MR. COLERIDGE.
“ July 1796.
“ The first moment I can come, I will; but my hopes
of coming yet a while, yet hang on a ticklish thread.
The coach I come by is immaterial, as I shall so easily,
by your direction, find ye out. My mother is grown so
entirely helpless (not having any use of her limbs) that
Mary is necessarily confined from ever sleeping out, she
being her bed-fellow. She thanks you though, and will
accompany me in spirit. Most exquisite are the lines
from Withers. Your own lines, introductory to your
poem on ‘ Self,’ run smoothly and pleasurably, and I
exhort you to continue ’em. What shall I say to your
* Dactyls ? ’ They are what you would call good per se,
but a parody on some of ’em is just now suggesting
itself, and you shall have it rough and unlicked; I mark
with figures the lines parodied :—
4.	—Sorely your Dactyls do drag along limp-footed.
5.	—Sad is the measure that hangs a clog round ’em so.
6.	—Meagre and languid, proclaiming its wretchedness.
1.	—Weary, unsatisfied, not a little sick of ’em.
11.	—Cold is my tired heart, I have no charity.
2.	— Painfully travelling thus over the rugged road.
7.	—O begone, measure, half Latin, half English, then.
12.	—Dismal your Dactyls are, God help ye, rhyming ones!
“ I possibly may not come this fortnight; therefore,LETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
29
all thou hast to do is not to look for me any particular
day, only to write word immediately, if at any time you
quit Bristol, lest I come and Taffy be not at home. I
hope I can come in a day or two ; but young S-------------, of
my office, is suddenly taken ill in this very nick of time,
and I must officiate for him till he can come to work
again : had the knave gone sick, and died, and been
buried at any other time, philosophy might have afforded
one comfort, but just now I have no patience with him.
Quarles I am as great a stranger to as I was to Withers.
I wish you would try and do something to bring our
elder bards into more general fame. I writhe with
indignation when, in books of criticism, where common-
place quotation is heaped upon quotation, I find no
mention of such men as Massinger, or Beaumont and
Fletcher, men with whom succeeding dramatic writers
(Otway alone excepted)* can bear no manner of com-
parison. Stupid Knox hath noticed none of ’em among
his extracts.
“	Thursday.—Mrs. C--------can scarce guess how she
* An exception he certainly would not have made a few years after-
wards ; for he used to mention two pretty lines in the “ Orphan/’
“ Sweet as the shepherd’s pipe upon the mountains,
With all his fleecy flock at feed beside him/5
as a redeeming passage amidst mere stage trickeries. The great merit
which lies in the construction of “ Venice Preserved,55 was not in his
line of appreciation; and he thought Thomson’s reference to Otway’s
ladies—
--------u poor Monimia moans,
And Belvidera pours her soul in love,”
worth both heroines.30
LETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
has gratified me by her very kind letter and sweet little
poem. I feel that I should thank her in rhyme, but she
must take my acknowledgment, at present, in plain
honest prose. The uncertainty in which I yet stand,
whether I can come or no, damps my spirits, reduces
me a degree below prosaical, and keeps me in a suspense
that fluctuates between hope and fear. Hope is a
charming, lively, blue-eyed wench, and I am always glad
of her company, but could dispense with the visitor she
brings with her—her younger sister, Fear, a white-
livered, lily-cheeked, bashful, palpitating, awkward hussy,
that hangs, like a green girl, at her sister’s apron-strings,
and will go with her whithersoever she goes. For the
life and soul of me, I could not improve those lines in
your poem on the Prince and Princess, so I changed
them to what you bid me, and left ’em at Perry’s.* I
think ’em altogether good, and do not see wrhy you ■were
solicitous about any alteration. I have not yet seen,
but will make it my business to see, to-day's Chronicle,
for your verses on Horne Tooke. Dyer stanza’d him
in one of the papers tother day, but, I think, unsuccess-
fully. Tooke’s friends meeting was, I suppose, a dinner
of condolence.! I am not sorry to find you (for all
Sara) immersed in clouds of smoke and metaphysics.
You know I had a sneaking kindness for this last noble
science, and you taught me some smattering of it. 1
look to become no mean proficient under your tuition.
* Some cc occasional ” verses of Coleridge’s written to order for the
Morning Chronicle.
i* This was just after the Westminster Election, in which Mr. Tooke
was defeated.LETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
0	1
01
Coleridge, what do you mean by saying you wrote to me
about Plutarch and Porphyry? I received no such
letter, nor remember a syllable of the matter, yet am
not apt to forget any part of your epistles, least of all,
an injunction like that. I will cast about for ’em, tho’
I am a sad hand to know what books are worth, and
both these worthy gentlemen are alike out of my line.
To-morrow I shall be less suspensive, and in better cue
to write, so good bye at present.
“	Friday evening. — That execrable aristocrat and
knave R------has given me an absolute refusal of leave.
The poor man cannot guess at my disappointment. Is
it not hard, ‘ this dread dependance on the low-bred
mind ? ’ Continue to write to me tho’, and I must be
content. Our loves and best good wishes attend upon
you both.
J	“Lamb.”
“ S-----did return, but there are two or three more
ill and absent, which was the plea for refusing me. I
shall never have heart to ask for holidays again. The
man next him in office, C--------, furnished him with the
0kjeCti0DS-	“ C. Lamb.”
The little copy of verses in which Lamb commemo-
rated and softened his disappointment, bearing date (a
most unusual circumstance with Lamb), 5tli July, 1796,
was inclosed in a letter of the following day, which refers
to a scheme Coleridge had formed of settling in London
on an invitation to share the Editorship of the Morning
Chronicle. The poem includes a lamentation over a32
LETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
fantastical loss—that of a draught of the Avon “ which
Shakespeare drank; ” somewhat strangely confounding
the Avon of Stratford with that of Bristol. It may be
doubted whether Shakespeare knew the taste of the
waves of one Avon more than of the other, or whether
Lamb would not have found more kindred with the
world’s poet in a glass of sack, than in the water of
either stream. Coleridge must have enjoyed the mis-
placed sentiment of his friend, for he was singularly
destitute of sympathy with local associations, which he
regarded as interfering with the pure and simple im-
pression of great deeds or thoughts ; denied a special
interest to the Pass of Thermopylae; and instead of
subscribing to purchase “ Shakespeare's House,” would
scarcely have admitted the peculiar sanctity of the spot
which enshrines his ashes.
TO SARA AND HER SAMUEL.
“ Was it so hard a thing?—I did hut ask
A fleeting holiday. One little week.
Or haply two, had bounded my request.
What, if the jaded steer, who all day long
Had borne the heat and labour of the plough,
When evening came, and her sweet cooling hour,
Should seek to trespass on a neighbour copse,
Where greener herbage waved, or clearer streams
Invited him to slake his burning thirst ?
That man were crabbed, who should say him nay;
That man were churlish, who should drive him thence!
A blessing light upon your heads, ye good,
Ye hospitable pair! I may not come,
To catch on Clifden’s heights the summer gale;LETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
33
I may not come, a pilgrim, to the banks
Of Avon, lucid stream, to taste the wave
Which Shakespeare drank, our British Helicon:
Or with mine eye intent on Redcliffe towers,
To muse in tears on that mysterious youth,
Cruelly slighted, who to London walls,
In evil hour, shaped his disastrous course.
Complaint begone ; begone, unkind reproof:
Take up, my song, take up a merrier strain,
For yet again, and lo ! from Avon’s vales
Another “ minstrel ” cometh ! Youth endear’d,
God and good angels guide thee on thy way,
And gentler fortunes wait the friends I love.
C. L.”
The letter accompanying these verses begins cheerfully
thus:
“ What can I do till you send word what priced and
placed house you should like ? Islington, possibly, you
would not like; to me ’tis classical ground. Knights-
bridge is a desirable situation for the air of the parks ;
St. George’s Fields is convenient for its contiguity to the
Bench. Choose ! But are you really coming to town ?
The hope of it has entirely disarmed my petty disap-
pointment of its nettles, yet I rejoice so much on my
own account, that I fear I do not feel enough pure satis-
faction on yours. Why, surely, the joint editorship of
the Chronicle must be very comfortable and secure
living for a man. But should not you read French, or
do you ? and can you write with sufficient moderation,
as ’tis called, when one suppresses the one half of what
one feels or could say on a subject, to chime in the better
with popular lukewarmness ? White’s * Letters ’ are
i>34
LETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
uear publication; could you review ’em or get ’em
reviewed? Are you not connected with the Critical
Review? His frontispiece is a good conceit—Sir John
learning to dance to please Madam Page, in dress of
doublet, &c., from the upper half, and modem pantaloons
with shoes, &c., of the eighteenth century, from the
lower half; and the whole work is full of goodly quips
and rare fancies, ‘ all deftly masqued like hoar antiquity ’
—much superior to Hr. Kenrick’s ‘ Falstaff’s Wedding,’
which you have seen. A------------- sometimes laughs at
superstition, and religion, and the like. A living fell
vacant lately in the gift of the Hospital: White informed
him that he stood a fair chance for it. He scrupled and
scrupled about it, and at last, to use his own words,
‘ tampered ’ with Godwin to know whether the thing was
honest or not. Godwin said nay to it, and A----------------
rejected the living ! Could the blindest poor papist have
bowed more servilely to his priest or casuist? Why
sleep the Watchman’s answers to that Godwin ? I beg
you will not delay to alter, if you mean to keep those
last lines I sent you. Ho that, and read these for your
pains :—
TO THE POET COWPER.
a Cowper, I thank my God that thou art heal’d!
Thine was the sorest malady of all;
And I am sad to think that it should light
Upon the worthy head ! But thou art heal’d,
And thou art yet, we trust, the destined man,
Born to reanimate the lyre, whose chords
Have slumber’d, and have idle lain so long;
To the immortal sounding of whose strings
Did Milton frame the stately-paced verse;LETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
35
Among whose wires with light finger playing,
Our elder hard, Spenser, a gentle name,
The lady Muses’ dearest darling child,
Elicited the deftest tunes yet heard
In hall or bower, taking the delicate ear
Of Sidney and his peerless Maiden Queen.
#
Thou, then, take up the mighty epic strain,
Cowper, of England’s Bards, the wisest and the best.
1796.
“ I have read your climax of praises in those three
Reviews. These mighty spouters out of panegyric waters
have, two of ’em, scattered their spray even upon me,
and the waters are cooling and refreshing. Prosaically,
the Monthly reviewers have made indeed a large article
of it, and done you justice. The Critical have, in their
wisdom, selected not the very best specimens, and
notice not, except as one name on the muster-roll, the
‘ Pmligious Musings.’ I suspect Master Dyer to have
been the writer of that article, as the substance of it was
the very remarks and the very language he used to me
one day. I fear you will not accord entirely with my
sentiments of Cowper, as expressed above (perhaps
scarcely just); but the poor gentleman has just recovered
from his lunacies, and that begets pity, and pity love,
and love admiration; and then it goes hard with people
but they lie ! Have you read the Ballad called ‘ Leonora,’
in the second number of the Monthly Magazine ? If
you have! ! ! ! There is another fine song, from the
same author (Burger), in the third number, of scarce
inferior merit; and (vastly below these) there are some
happy specimens of English hexameters, in an imitation36
LETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
of Ossian, in the fifth number. For your Dactyls—I
am sorry you are so sore about ’em—a very Sir Fretful!
In good troth, the Dactyls are good Dactyls, but their
measure is naught. Be not yourself ‘ half anger, half
agony,’ if I pronounce your darling lines not to he the
best you ever wrote in all your life—you have written
much.
“ Have a care, good Master Poet, of the Statute de
Contumelid. What do you mean by calling Madame
Mara,—harlot and naughty things ?* The goodness of the
verse would not save you in a court of justice. But are you
really coming to town ? Coleridge, a gentleman called
in London lately, from Bristol, and inquired whether
there were any of the family of a Mr. Chambers living :
this Mr. Chambers, he said, had been the making of a
friend’s fortune, who wished to make some return for it.
He went away without seeing her. Now, a Mrs. Reynolds,
a very intimate friend of ours, whom you have seen at
our house, is the only daughter, and all that survives, of
Mr. Chambers; and a very little supply would be of
service to her, for she married veiy unfortunately, and
has parted with her husband. Pray find out this Mr.
Pember (for that was the gentleman’s friend’s name);
he is an attorney, and lives at Bristol. Find him out,
and acquaint him with the circumstances of the case, and
offer to be the medium of supply to Mrs. Reynolds, if he
chooses to make her a present. She is in very distressed
* -------cc I detest
These scented rooms, where, to a gaudy throng,
Heaves the proud harlot her distended breast
In intricacies of laborious song.”
Lines composed in a Concert Room by S. T. C.LETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
37
circumstances. Mr. Pember, attorney, Bristol. Mr.
Chambers lived in the Temple; Mrs. Pteynolds, his
daughter, was my schoolmistress, and is in the room at
this present writing. This last circumstance induced me
to write so soon again. I have not further to add. Our
loves to Sara. Thursday.
“ C. Lamb.”CHAPTER II.
LETTERS OF LAMB TO COLERIDGE, CHIEFLY RELATING TO THE DEATH
OF MRS. LAMB, AND MISS LAMB’S SUBSEQUENT CONDITION.
The autumn of 1796 found Lamb engaged all the
morning in task-work at the India House, and all the
evening in attempting to amuse his father by playing
cribbage; sometimes snatching a few minutes for his
only pleasure, writing to Coleridge; while Miss Lamb
was worn down to a state of extreme nervous misery, by
attention to needlework by day, and to her mother by
night, until the insanity, which had been manifested
more than once, broke out into frenzy, which, on
Thursday, 22nd of September, proved fatal to her
mother. The following account of the proceedings on
the inquest, copied from the Times of Monday, 26th
September, 1796, supplies the details of this terrible
calamity, doubtless with accuracy, except that it would
seem, from Lamb’s ensuing letter to Coleridge, that
he, and not the landlord, took the knife from the
unconscious hand.
“ On Friday afternoon, the coroner and a jury sat on
the body of a lady in the neighbourhood of Holbom, who
died in consequence of a wound from her daughter theMRS. LAMIAS DEATH.
39
preceding day. It appeared, by the evidence adduced,
that, while the family were preparing for dinner, the
young lady seized a case-knife lying on the table, and in
a menacing manner pursued a little girl, her apprentice,
round the room. On the calls of her infirm mother to
forbear, she renounced her first object, and, with loud
shrieks, approached her parent. The child, by her cries,
quickly brought up the landlord of the house, but too
late. The dreadful scene presented to him the mother
lifeless, pierced to the heart, on a chair, her daughter
yet wildly standing over her with the fatal knife, and the
old man, her father, weeping by her side, himself
bleeding at the forehead from the effects of a severe blow
he received from one of the forks she had been madly
hurling about the room.
“ For a few days prior to this, the family had observed
some symptoms of insanity in her, which had so much
increased on the Wednesday evening, that her brother,
early the next morning, went to Dr. Pitcairn, but that
gentleman was not at home.
“It seems the young lady had been once before
deranged.
“ The jury, of course, brought in their verdict—
Lunacy.” *
* A statement nearly similar to this will he found in several other
journals of the day, and in the Annual Register for the year. The
“ True Briton ” adds :—“ It appears she had been before, in the earlier
part of her life, deranged, from the harassing fatigues of too much busi-
ness. As her carriage towards her mother had always been affectionate
in the extreme, it is believed her increased attachment to her, as her
infirmities called for it by day and by night, caused her loss of reason
at this time. It has been stated in some of the morning papers that
she has an insane brother in confinement; but this is without founda-40
LETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
The following is Lamb’s account of the event to
Coleridge :—
“ September 27th, 1796.
“ My dearest Friend,
“ White, or some of my friends, or the public
papers, by this time may have informed you of the
terrible calamities that have fallen on our family. I
will only give you the outlines :—My poor dear, dearest
sister, in a fit of insanity, has been the death of her own
mother. I was at hand only time enough to snatch the
knife out of her grasp. She is at present in a madhouse,
from whence I fear she must be moved to an hospital.
God has preserved to me my senses,—I eat, and drink,
and sleep, and have my judgment, I believe, very sound.
My poor father was slightly wounded, and I am left to
take care of him and my aunt. Mr. Norris, of the Blue-
coat School, has been very very kind to us, and we have
no other friend; but, thank God, I am very calm and
composed, and able to do the best that remains to do.
Write as religious a letter as possible, but no mention
of what is gone and done with. With me £ the former
things are passed away,’ and I have something more to
do than to feel.
“ God Almighty have us well in His keeping.
“ C. Lamb.
“ Mention nothing of poetry. I have destroyed every
tion.” None of the accounts give the names of the sufferers ; hut in
the index to the Annual Register, the anonymous account is referred
to with Mrs. Lamb’s name.LETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
41
vestige of past vanities of that kind. Do as you please,
but if you publish, publish mine (I give free leave)
■without name or initial, and never send me a book, I
charge you.
“ Your own judgment will convince you not to take
any notice of this yet to your dear wife. You look after
your family,—I have my reason and strength left to take
care of mine. I charge you, don’t think of coming to
see me. Write. I will not see you if you come. God
Almighty love you and all of us.
“C. Lamb.”
After the inquest, Miss Lamb was placed in an
Asylum, where she was, in a short time, restored to
reason. The following is Lamb’s next letter:—
TO MR. COLERIDGE.
“ October 1796.
“ My dearest Friend,
“ Your letter was an inestimable treasure to me.
It will be a comfort to you, I know, to know that our
prospects are somewhat brighter. My poor dear, dearest
sister, the unhappy and unconscious instrument of the
Almighty’s judgments on our house, is restored to her
senses; to a dreadful sense and recollection of what has
past, awful to her mind and impressive (as it must be to
the end of life), but tempered with religious resignation
and the reasonings of a sound judgment, which, in this
early stage, knows how to distinguish between a deed
committed in a transient fit of frenzy, and the terrible
guilt of a mother’s murder. I have seen her. I found42
LETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
her, this morning, calm and serene; far, very very far
from an indecent forgetful serenity; she has a most
affectionate and tender concern for what has happened.
Indeed, from the beginning, frightful and hopeless as
her disorder seemed, I had confidence enough in her
strength of mind, and religious principle, to look forward
to a time when even she might recover tranquillity.
God be praised, Coleridge, wonderful as it is to tell, I
have never once been otherwise than collected and calm;
even on the dreadful day, and in the midst of the terrible
scene, I preserved a tranquillity which bystanders may
have construed into indifference—a tranquillity not of
despair. Is it folly or sin in me to say that it was a
religious principle that most supported me ? I allow
much to other favourable circumstances. I felt that I
had something else to do than to regret. On that first
evening, my aunt was lying insensible, to all appearance
like one dying,—my father, with his poor forehead
plaistered over, from a wound he had received from a
daughter dearly loved by him, and who loved him no
less dearly,—my mother a dead and murdered corpse in
the next room—yet was I wonderfully supported. I
closed not my eyes in sleep that night, but lay without
terrors and without despair. I have lost no sleep since.
I had been long used not to rest in things of sense,—
had endeavoured after a comprehension of mind, unsatis-
fied with the ‘ ignorant present time,’ and kept me
up. I had the whole weight of the family thrown on
me ; for my brother, little disposed (I speak not without
tenderness for him) at any time to take care of old age
and infirmities, had now, with his bad leg, an exemptionLETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
43
from such duties, and I was now left alone. One little
incident may serve to make you understand my way of
managing my mind. Within a day or two after the fatal
one, we dressed for dinner a tongue which we had had
salted for some weeks in the house. As I sat down, a
feeling like remorse struck me;—this tongue poor Mary
got for me, and can I partake of it now, when she is far
away ? A thought occurred and relieved me,—if I give
into this way of feeling, there is not a chair, a room,
an object in our rooms, that will not awaken the keenest
griefs ; I must rise above such weaknesses. I hope this
was not want of true feeling. I did not let this carry
me, though, too far. On the very second day (I date
from the day of horrors), as is usual in such cases, there
were a matter of twenty people, I do think, supping in
our room; they prevailed on me to eat with them (for to
eat I never refused). They were all making merry in
the room! Some had come from friendship, some from
busy curiosity, and some from interest; I was going to
partake with them; when my recollection came that my
poor dead mother was lying in the next room—the very
next room ;—a mother who, through life, wished nothing
but her children’s welfare. Indignation, the rage of
grief, something like remorse, rushed upon my mind.
In an agony of emotion I found my way mechanically to
the adjoining room, and fell on my knees by the side of
her coffin, asking forgiveness of heaven, and sometimes
of her, for forgetting her so soon. Tranquillity returned,
and it was the only violent emotion that mastered me,
and I think it did me good.
“ I mention these things because I hate concealment,44
LETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
and love to give a faithful journal of what passes within
me. Our friends have been very good. Sam Le Grice,
who was then in town, was with me the three or four
first days, and was as a brother to me, gave up every
hour of his time, to the very hurting of his health and
spirits, in constant attendance and humouring my poor
father ; talked with him, read to him, played at cribbage
with him (for so short is the old man’s recollection, that
he was playing at cards, as though nothing had happened,
while the coroner’s inquest was sitting over the way !)
Samuel wept tenderly when he went away, for his mother
wrote him a very severe letter on his loitering so long in
town, and he was forced to go. Mr. Norris, of Christ’s
Hospital, has been as a father to me—Mrs. Norris as
a mother; though we had few claims on them. A
gentleman, brother to my godmother, from whom we
never had right or reason to expect any such assistance,
sent my father twenty pounds; and to crown all these
God’s blessings to our family at such a time, an old lady,
a cousin of my father and aunt’s, a gentlewoman of
fortune, is to take my aunt and make her comfortable for
the short remainder of her days. My auut is recovered,
and as well as ever, and highly pleased at thoughts of
going—and has generously given up the interest of her
little money (which was formerly paid my father for her
board) wholely and solely to my sister’s use. Reckoning
this, we have, Daddy and I, for our two selves and an
old maid-servant to look after him, when I am out, which
will be necessary, 170Z. or 180Z. rather a-year, out of
which we can spare 50 l.or 60Z. at least for Mary while
she stays at Islington, where she must and shall stayLETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
45
during her father’s life, for his and her comfort. I know
John will make speeches about it, hut she shall not go
into an hospital. The good lady of the madhouse, and
her daughter, an elegant, sweet-behaved young lady, love
her, and are taken with her amazingly; and I know
from her own mouth she loves them, and longs to be with
them as much. Poor thing, they say she was but the
other morning saying, she knew she must go to Bethlem
for life; that one of her brothers would have it so, but
the other would wish it not, but be obliged to go with
the stream; that she had often as she passed Bethlem
thought it likely, ‘ here it may be my fate to end my
days,’ conscious of a certain flightiness in her poor head
oftentimes, and mindful of more than one severe illness
of that nature before. A legacy of 100?., which my
father will have at Christmas, and this 20 ?.I mentioned
before, with what is in the house, will much more than
set us clear. If my father, an old servant-maid, and I,
can’t live, and live comfortably, on 130?. or 120?. a-year,
we ought to burn by slow fires; and I almost would, that
Mary might not go into an hospital. Let me not leave
one unfavourable impression on your mind respecting
my brother. Since this has happened, he has been very
kind and brotherly; but I fear for his mind,—he has
taken his ease in the world, and is not fit himself to
struggle with difficulties, nor has much accustomed
himself to throw himself into their way; and I know his
language is already, ‘ Charles, you must take care of
yourself, you must not abridge yourself of a single
pleasure you have been used to,’ &c. &c., and in that
style of talking. But you, a necessarian, can respect a46
LETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
difference of mind, and love what is amiable in a
character not perfect. He has been very good,—but I
fear for his mind. Thank God, I can unconnect myself
with him, and shall manage all my father’s monies in
future myself, if I take charge of Daddy, which poor
John has not even hinted a wish, at any future time
even, to share with me. The lady at this madhouse
assures me that I may dismiss immediately both doctor
and apothecary, retaining occasionally a composing
draught or so for a while ; and there is a less expensive
establishment in her house, where she will only not have
a room and nurse to herself, for 501. or guineas a-year—
the outside would be 60£.—you know, by economy, how
much more even I shall be able to spare for her comforts.
She will, I fancy, if she stays, make one of the family,
rather than of the patients; and the old and young
ladies I like exceedingly, and she loves dearly; and they,
as the saying is, take to her very extraordinarily, if it is
extraordinary that people who see my sister should love
her. Of all the people I ever saw in the world, my poor
sister was most and thoroughly devoid of the least
tincture of selfishness. I will enlarge upon her qualities,
poor dear, dearest soul, in a future letter, for my own
comfort, for I understand her thoroughly; and, if I
mistake not, in the most trying situation that a human
being can be found in, she will be found (I speak not
with sufficient humility, I fear, but humanly and foolishly
speaking), she will be found, I trust, uniformly great and
amiable. God keep her in her present mind, to whom be
thanks and praise for all His dispensations to mankind!
“C. Lamb.LETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
47
“ These mentioned good fortunes and change of
prospects had almost brought my mind over to the
extreme, the very opposite to despair. I was in danger
of making myself too happy. Your letter brought me
back to a view of things which I had entertained from
the beginning. I hope (for Mary I can answer)—but I
hope that I shall through life never have less recollection,
nor a fainter impression, of what has happened than I
have now. ’Tis not a light thing, nor meant by the
Almighty to be received lightly. I must be serious,
circumspect, and deeply religious through life; and by
such means may both of us escape madness in future, if
it so please the Almighty!
“ Send me word how it fares with Sara. I repeat it,
your letter was, and will be, an inestimable treasure to
me. You have a view of what my situation demands of
me, like my own view, and I trust a just one.
“ Coleridge, continue to write; but do not for ever
offend me by talking of sending me cash. Sincerely, and
on my soul, we do not want it. God love you both.
“ I will write again very soon. Do you write
directly.”
As Lamb recovered from the shock of his own
calamity, he found comfort in gently admonishing his
friend on that imbecility of purpose which attended the
development of his mighty genius. His next letter,
commencing with this office of friendship, soon reverts
to the condition of that sufferer, who was endeared
to him the more because others shrank from and
forsook her.48
LETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
TO MR. COLERIDGE.
“ October 17th, 1796.
“ My dearest Friend,
“ I grieve from my very soul to observe you in
your plans of life, veering about from this hope to the
other, and settling nowhere. Is it an untoward fatality
(speaking humanly) that does this for you—a stubborn,
irresistible concurrence of events —or lies the fault, as I
fear it does, in your own mind ? You seem to be taking
up splendid schemes of fortune only to lay them down
again ; and your fortunes are an ignis fatuus that has
been conducting you, in thought, from Lancaster-court,
Strand, to somewhere near Matlock; then jumping
across to Dr. Somebody’s, whose son’s tutor you were
likely to be; and, would to God, the dancing demon may
conduct you at last, in peace and comfort, to the ‘ life
and labours of a cottager.’ You see, from the above
awkward playfulness of fancy, that my spirits are not
quite depressed. I should ill deserve God’s blessings,
which, since the late terrible event, have come down in
mercy upon us, if I indulged regret or quemlousness.
Mary continues serene and cheerful. I have not by me
a little letter she wrote to me; for, though I see her
almost every day, yet we delight to write to one another,
for we can scarce see each other but in company with
some of the people of the house. I have not the letter
by me, but will quote from memory what she wrote in it:
‘ I have no bad terrifying dreams. At midnight, when
I happen to awake, the nurse sleeping by the side of me,LETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
49
with the noise of the poor mad people around me, I have
no fear. The spirit of my mother seems to descend and
smile upon me, and bid me live to enjoy the life and
reason which the Almighty has given me. I shall see
her again in heaven; she will then understand me
better. My grandmother, too, will understand me
better, and will then say no more, as she used to do,
‘ Polly, what are those poor crazy moythered brains of
yours thinking of always ? ’ ’ Poor Mary ! my mother
indeed never understood her right. She loved her, as
she loved us all, with a mother's love ; but in opinion,
in feeling, and sentiment, and disposition, bore so distant
a resemblance to her daughter, that she never understood
her right; never could believe how much she loved her;
but met her caresses, her protestations of filial affection,
too frequently with coldness and repulse. Still she was
a good mother. God forbid I should think of her but
most respectfully, most affectionately. Yet she would
always love my brother above Mary, who was not worthy
of one-tenth of that affection which Mary had a right to
claim. But it is my sister’s gratifying recollection, that
every act of duty and of love she could pay, every
kindness, (and I speak true, when I say to the hurting of
her health, and most probably in great part to the
derangement of her senses) through a long course of
infirmities and sickness, she could show her, she ever
did. I will, some day, as I promised, enlarge to you
upon my sister’s excellences; ’twill seem like exagger-
ation, but I will do it. At present, short letters suit
my state of mind best. So take my kindest wishes for
your comfort and establishment in life, and.* for Sara's
E50
LETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
welfare and comforts with you. God love you. God
love us all.
“ C. Lamb.”
Miss Lamb’s gradual restoration to comfort, and her
brother’s earnest watchfulness over it, are illustrated in
the following fragment of a letter:—
TO MR. COLERIDGE.
t( October 28 th, 1796.
“ I have satisfaction in being able to bid you rejoice
with me in my sister’s continued reason, and composed-
ness of mind. Let us both be thankful for it. I
continue to visit her very frequently, and the people of
the house are vastly indulgent to her; she is likely to
be as comfortably situated in all respects as those who
pay twice or thrice the sum. They love her, and she
loves them, and makes herself very useful to them.
Benevolence sets out on her journey with a good heart,
and puts a good face cfn it, but is apt to limp and grow
feeble, unless she calls in the aid of self-interest, by way
of crutch. In Mary’s case, as far as respects those she is
with, ’tis well that these principles are so likely to
co-operate. I am rather at a loss sometimes for books
for her,—our reading is somewhat confined, and we have
nearly exhausted our London library. She has her
hands too full of work to read much, but a little she
\
must read, for reading was her daily bread.”
Two months, though passed by Lamb in anxiety andLETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
51
labour, but cheered by Miss Lamb’s continued possession
of reason, so far restored the tone of his mind, that his
interest in the volume which had been contemplated to
introduce his first verses to the world, in association
with those of his friend, was enkindled anew. While
cherishing the hope of reunion with his sister, and
painfully wresting his leisure hours from poetry and
Coleridge to amuse the dotage of his father, he watched
over his own returning sense of enjoyment with a sort of
holy jealousy, apprehensive lest he should forget too
soon the terrible visitation of Heaven. At this time he
thus writes:—
TO MR. COLERIDGE.
“	1796.
“ I have delayed writing thus long, not having by me
my copy of your poems, which I had lent. I am not
satisfied with all your intended omissions. Why omit
40, G3, 84 ? above all, let me protest strongly against
your rejecting the ‘ Complaint of Ninathoma,’ 8G. The
words, I acknowledge, are Ossian’s, but you have added
to them the ‘ music of Caril.’ If a vicarious substitute
be wanting, sacrifice (and ’twill be a piece of self-denial
too), the ‘ Epitaph on an Infant,’ of which its author
seems so proud, so tenacious. Or, if your heart be set
on perpetuating the four-line wonder, I ’ll tell you what
do; sell the copyright of it at once to a country
statuary; commence in this manner Death’s prime
poet-laureate; and let your verses be adopted in every52
LETTEE8 TO COLERIDGE.
village round, instead of those hitherto famous ones:—
4 Afflictions sore long time I bore,
Physicians were in vain/ *
“ I have seen jour last very beautiful poem in the
Monthly Magazine : "write thus, and you most generally
have written thus, and I shall never quarrel with you
about simplicity. With regard to my lines—
4 Laugh all that weep,’ &c.
I would willingly sacrifice them; but my portion of tbe
volume is so ridiculously little, that, in honest truth, I
can’t spare them : as things are, I have very slight
pretensions to participate in the title-page. White’s
book is at length reviewed in the Monthly ; was it your
doing, or Dyer’s, to whom I sent him ?—or, rather, do
you not write in the Critical?—for I observed, in an
article of this month’s, a line quoted out of that sonnet
on Mrs. Siddons,
L •
4 With eager wondering, and perturb'd delight/
And a line from that sonnet would not readily have
* This epitaph, which, notwithstanding Lamb’s gentle banter, occu-
pied an entire page in the book, is curious—44 a miracle instead of wit”
—for it is a common-place of Coleridge, who, investing ordinary things
with a dreamy splendour, or weighing them down with accumulated
thought, has rarely if ever written a stanza so smoothly vapid—so
devoid of merit or offence—(unless it be an offence to make fade do
duty as a verb active) as the following:—'
44 Ere sin could blight or sorrow fade,
Death came with friendly care ;
The opening bud to Heaven convey’d,
And bade it blossom there.”LETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
53
occurred to a stranger. That sonnet, Coleridge, brings
afresh to my mind the time when you wrote those on
Bowles, Priestly, Burke ;—’twas two Christmases ago,
and in that nice little smoky room at the Salutation,
which is ever now continually presenting itself to my
recollection, with all its associated train of pipes, tobacco,
egg-hot, welsh-rabbits, metaphysics, and poetry.—Are we
never to meet again? How differently I am circum-
stanced now ! I have never met with an}^ one—never
shall meet with any one—who could or can compensate
me for the loss of your society. I have no one to talk
all these matters about to; I lack friends, I lack books
to supply their absence : but these complaints ill become
me. Let me compare my present situation, prospects,
and state of mind, with what they were but two months
back—but two months !	0 my friend, I am in danger
of forgetting the awful lessons then presented to me !
Remind me of them ; remind me of my duty! Talk
seriously with me when you do write ! I thank you, from
my heart I thank you, for your solicitude about my
sister. She is quite well, but must not, I fear, come to
live with us yet a good while. In the first place, because,
at present, it would hurt her, and hurt my father, for
them to be together: secondly, from a regard to the
world’s good report, for, I fear, tongues will be busy
■whenever that event takes place. Some have hinted,
one man has pressed it on me, that she should be in
perpetual confinement: what she hath done to deserve,
or the necessity of such an hardship, I see not; do you ?
I am starving at the India House,—near seven o’clock
without my dinner, and so it has been, and will be,54
LETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
almost all the week. I get home at night o’erwearied,
quite faint, and then to cards with my father, who will
not let me enjoy a meal in peace; but I must conform
to my situation, and I hope I am, for the most part, not
unthankful.
“ I am got home at last, and, after repeated games at
cribbage, have got my father’s leave to write awhile;
with difficulty got it, for when I expostulated about
playing any more, he very aptly replied, ‘ If you won’t
play with me, you might as well not come home at all.’
The argument was unanswerable, and I set to afresh. I
told you I do not approve of your omissions, neither do
I quite coincide with you in your arrangements. I have
not time to point out a better, and I suppose some self-
associations of your own have determined their place as
they now stand. Your beginning, indeed, with the
‘Joan of Arc’ lines I coincide entirely with. I love a
splendid outset—a magnificent portico,—and the diapa-
son is grand. When I read the ‘ Religious Musings,’ I
think how poor, how unelevated, unoriginal, my blank
verse is—‘ Laugh all that weep,’ especially, where the
subject demanded a grandeur of conception; and I ask
what business they have among yours ? but friendship
covereth a multitude of defects. I want some loppings
made in the * Chatterton ; ’ it wants but a little to make
it rank among the finest irregular lyrics I ever read.
Have you time and inclination to go to work upon it—or
is it too late—or do you think it needs none ? Don’t
reject those verses in one of your Watchmen, ‘ Dear
native brook,’ &c.; nor I think those last lines you sent
me, in which * all effortless ’ is without doubt to beLETTERS TO COLERIDGE,
55
preferred to ‘ inactive.’ If I am writing more than
ordinarily dully, ’tis that I am stupified with a tooth-ache.
Hang it! do not omit 48, 52, and 53: what you do
retain, though, call sonnets, for heaven’s sake, and not
effusions. Spite of your ingenious anticipation of ridicule
in your preface, the five last lines of 50 are too good to
be lost, the rest is not much worth. My tooth becomes
importunate—I must finish. Pray, pray, write to me :
if you knew with what an anxiety of joy I open such a
long packet as you last sent me, you would not grudge
giving a few minutes now and then to this intercourse
(the only intercourse I fear we two shall ever have)—this
conversation with your friend—such I boast to be called.
God love you and yours ! Write me when you move,
lest I direct wrong. Has Sara no poems to publish?
Those lines, 129, are probably too light for the volume
where the ‘ Religious Musings ’ are, but I remember
some very beautiful lines, addressed by somebody at
Bristol to somebody in London. God bless you once
more.	TJiursday-niglit.
“ C. Lamb.”
In another letter, about this time (December, 1796),
Lamb transmitted to Coleridge two Poems for the
volume—one a copy of verses “ To a Young Lady going
out to India,” which were not inserted, and are not
worthy of preservation; the other, entitled, “ The Tomb
of Douglas,” which was inserted, and which he chiefly
valued as a memorial of his impression of Mrs. Siddons’
acting in Lady Randolph. The following passage
doses the sheet.50
LETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
“ At length I have done with verse-making; not that
I relish other people's poetry less; theirs comes from
’em without effort, mine is the difficult operation of a
brain scanty of ideas, made more difficult by disuse. I
have been reading ‘ The Task ’ with fresh delight. I
am glad you love Cowper: I could forgive a man for not
enjoying Milton, but I would not call that man my friend
who should be offended with the ‘ divine chit-chat of
Cowper.’ Write to me. God love you and yours.
“C. L.”
The following, of 10th December, 1796, illustrates
Lamb’s almost wayward admiration of his only friend,
and a feeling—how temporary with him!—of vexation
with the imperfect sympathies of his elder brother.
TO MR. COLERIDGE.
“ You sent me some very sweet lines relative to Burns,
but it was at a time when in my highly agitated and
perhaps distorted state of mind, I thought it a duty
to read ’em hastily and bum ’em. I burned all my
own verses; all my book of extracts from Beaumont
and Fletcher and a thousand sources: I burned a
little journal of my foolish passion which I had a long
time kept—
6 Noting ere they past away
The little lines of yesterday.’
I almost burned all your letters,—I did as bad, I lent
’em to a friend to keep out of my brother’s sight, shouldLETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
57
he come and make inquisition into our papers, for much
as he dwelt upon your conversation, while you were
among us, and delighted to be with you, it has been his
fashion ever since to depreciate and cry you down,—you
were the cause of my madness—you and your damned
foolish sensibility and melancholy—and he lamented
with a true brotherly feeling that we ever met, even as
the sober citizen, when his son went astray upon the
mountains of Parnassus, is said to have ‘ cursed wit and
Poetry and Pope.’ I quote wrong, but no matter.
These letters I lent to a friend to be out of the way, for
a season, but I have claimed them in vain, and shall not
cease to regret their loss. Your packets, posterior to
the date of my misfortunes, commencing with that
valuable consolatory epistle, are eveiy day accumulating
—they are sacred things with me.”
The following long letter, bearing date on the outside,
5th January, 1797, is addressed to Mr. Coleridge at Stowey,
near Bridgewater, whither he had removed from Bristol,
to enjoy the society and protection of his friend Mr.
Poole. The original is a curious specimen of clear
compressed penmanship; being contained in three sides
of a sheet of foolscap.
TO MR. COLERIDGE.
“ Sunday morning.—You cannot surely mean to
degrade the Joan of Arc into a pot-girl. You are not
going, I hope, to annex to that most splendid ornament of
Southey’s poem all this cock-and-a-bull story of Joan, the58
LETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
publican’s daughter of Neufchatel, with the lamentable
episode of a waggoner, his wife, and six children. The
texture will be most lamentably disproportionate. The
first forty or fifty lines of these addenda are, no doubt,
in their way, admirable, too; but many would prefer the
Joan of Southey.
6 On mightiest deeds to brood
Of shadowy vastness, such as made my heart
Throb fast; anon I paused, and in a state
Of half expectance listened to the wind;9
c They wondered at me, who had known me once
A cheerful careless damsel;?
‘ The eye,
That of the circling throng and of the visible world
Unseeing, saw the shapes of holy phantasy ;9
I see nothing in your description of the maid equal to
these. There is a fine originality certainly in those
lines—
* For she had lived in this bad world
As in a place of tombs,
And touched not the pollutions of the dead ; ’
but your ‘ fierce vivacity ’ is a faint copy of the ‘ fierce
and terrible benevolence ’ of Southey; added to this,
that it will look like rivalship in you, and extort a
comparison with Southey,—I think to your disadvantage.
And the lines, considered in themselves as an addition
to what you had before written, (strains of a far higher
mood,) are but such as Madame Fancy loves in some ofLETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
59
her more familiar moods, at such times as she has met
Noll Goldsmith, and walked and talked with him, calling
him ‘old acquaintance.’ Southey certainly has no
pretensions to vie with you in the sublime of poetry ; but
he tells a plain tale better than you. I will enumerate
some woeful blemishes, some of ’em sad deviations from
that simplicity which was your aim. ‘ Hailed who might
be near ’ (the ‘ canvas-coverture moving,’ by the bye, is
laughable); ‘ a woman and six children ’ (by the way,—
why not nine children ? It would have been just half as
pathetic again): ‘ statues of sleep they seemed ’: ‘ frost-
mangled wretch ’:	‘ green putridity ’:	‘ hailed him
immortal ’ (rather ludicrous again): ‘ voiced a sad and
simple tale ’ (abominable !): ‘ improvendered ’: ‘ such
his tale ’: ‘ Ah! suffering to the height of what was
suffered ’ (a most insufferable line): ‘ amazements of
affright ’: ‘ the hot sore brain attributes its own hues
of ghastliness and torture ’ (what shocking confusion
of ideas)!
“ In these delineations of common and natural feelings,
in the familiar walks of poetry, you seem to resemble
Montauban dancing with Roubigne’s tenants, ‘ much of
his native loftiness remained in the execution.’
“ I was reading your * Religious Musings ’ the other
day, and sincerely I think it the noblest poem in the
language, next after the ‘ Paradise Lost,’ and even that
was not made the vehicle of such grand truths. ‘ There
is one mind,’ &c., down to ‘Almighty’s throne,’ are without
a rival in the whole compass of my poetical reading.
6 Stands in the sun, and with no partial gaze,
Views all creation.560
LETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
I wish I could have written those lines. I rejoice that
I am able to relish them. The loftier walks of Pindus
are your proper region. There you have no compeer
in modern times. Leave the lowlands, unenvied, in
possession of such men as Cowper and Southey. Thus
am I pouring balsam into the wounds I may have been
inflicting on my poor friend’s vanity.
“ In your notice of Southey’s new volume, you omit to
mention the most pleasing of all, the ‘ Miniature ’—
* There were
Who formed high hopes and flattering ones of thee.
Young Robert!’
6 Spirit of Spenser !—was the wanderer wrong ?’
“ Fairfax I have been in guest of a long time.
Johnson, in his ‘ Life of Waller,’ gives a most delicious
specimen of him, and adds, in the true manner of that
delicate critic, as wTell as amiable man, * It may be
presumed that this old version will not be much read
after the elegant translation of my friend, Mr. Hoole.’
I endeavoured—I wished to gain some idea of Tasso
from this Mr. Hoole, the great boast and ornament of
the India House, but soon desisted. I found him more
vapid than smallest small beer ‘ sun-vinegared.’ Your
‘ Dream,’ down to that exquisite line—
6 I can’t tell half his adventures/
is a most happy resemblance of Chaucer. The remainder
is so so. The best line, I think, is, ‘ He belong’d, I
believe, to the witch Melancholy.’ By the way, whenLETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
61
will our volume come out ? Don’t delay it till you have
written a new Joan of Arc. Send what letters you
please by me, and in any way you choose, single or
double. The India Company is better adapted to
answer the cost than the generality of my friend’s
correspondents—such poor and honest dogs as John
Thelwall, particularly. I cannot say I know Colson, at
least intimately ; I once supped with him and Allen; I
think his manners very pleasing. I will not tell you
what I think of Lloyd, for he may by chance come to see
this letter, and that thought puts a restraint on me. I
cannot think what subject would suit your epic genius ;
some philosophical subject, I conjecture, in which shall
be blended the sublime of poetry and of science. Your
proposed ‘ Hymns ’ will be a fit preparatory study
wherewith ‘ to discipline your young noviciate soul.’ I
grow dull; I ’ll go walk myself out of my dulness.
“ Sunday night.—You and Sara are very good to think
so kindly and so favourably of poor Mary : I w'ould to
God all did so too. But I very much fear she must not
think of coming home in my father’s lifetime. It is very
hard upon her; but our circumstances are peculiar, and
we must submit to them. God be praised she is so well
as she is. She bears her situation as one who has no
right to complain. My poor old aunt, whom you have
seen, the kindest, goodest creature to me when I was at
school; who used to toddle there to bring me good things,
when I, school-boy like, only despised her for it, and
used to be ashamed to see her come and sit herself
down on the old coal-hole steps as you went into the old
grammar-school, and open her apron, and bring out her62
LETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
bason, with some nice thing she had caused to he saved
for me; the good old creature is now lying on her death-
bed. I cannot bear to think on her deplorable state.
To the shock she received on that our evil day, from
which she never completely recovered, I impute her
illness. She says, poor thing, she is glad she is come
home to die with me. I was always her favourite :
6 No after friendship e’er can raise
The endearments of our early days;
Nor e’er the heart such fondness prove,
As when it first began to love.1
“Lloyd has kindly left me, for a keep-sake, ‘John
Woolman.’ You have read it, he says, and like it.
Will you excuse one short extract ? I think it could not
have escaped you. ‘ Small treasure to a resigned mind
‘ is sufficient. How happy is it to be content with a
‘ little, to live in humility, and feel that in us, which
‘breathes out this language—Abba! Father! ’-------------- I
am almost ashamed to patch up a letter in this miscel-
laneous sort—but I please myself in the thought, that
anything from me will be acceptable to you. I am
rather impatient, childishly so, to see our names affixed
to the same common volume. Send me twro when it
does come out; two will be enough—or indeed one—
but two better. I have a dim recollection that, when in
town, you were talking of the Origin of Evil as a most
prolific subject for a long poem;—why not adopt it,
Coleridge ?—there would be room for imagination. Or
the description (from a Vision or Dream, suppose) of an
Utopia in one of the planets (the moon for instance).LETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
63
Or a Five Days’ Dream, which shall illustrate, in
sensible imagery, Hartley’s five Motives to Conduct:—
1. Sensation; 2. Imagination; 3. Ambition; 4. Sym-
pathy; 5. Theopathy:—	FirsBanquets, music, &c.,
effeminacy,—and their insufficiency. Second. ‘ Beds of
hyacinth and roses, where young Adonis oft reposes; ’
‘ Fortunate Isles ; ’ ‘ The pagan Elysium,’ &c.; poetical
pictures; antiquity as pleasing to the fancy;—their
emptiness; madness, &c. Third. Warriors, Poets; some
famous yet, more forgotten; their fame or oblivion now
alike indifferent; pride, vanity, &c. Fourth. All
maimer of pitiable stories, in Spenser-like verse; love;
friendship, relationship, &c. Fifth. Hermits; Christ
and his apostles ; martyrs; heaven, &c. An imagination
like yours, from these scanty hints, may expand into a
thousand great ideas, if indeed you at all comprehend
my scheme, which I scarce do myself.
“ Monday morn.—4 A London letter—Nine-pence
half-penny ! ’ Look you, master poet, I have remorse
as well as another man, and my bowels can sound upon
occasion. But I must put you to this charge, for I
cannot keep back my protest, however ineffectual, against
the annexing your latter lines to those former—this
putting of new wine into old bottles. This my duty
done, I will cease from writing till you invent some
more reasonable mode of conveyance. Well may the
‘ ragged followers of the Nine ! ’ set up for flocci-nauci-
what-do-you-call-’em-ists ! and I do not wonder that in
their splendid visions of Utopias in America, they protest
against the admission of those
copper-coloured, white-livered gentlemen, who never64
LETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
prove themselves their friends ! Don't you think your
verses on a ‘ Young Ass ’ too trivial a companion for the
‘ Religious Musings ? ’—‘ scoundrel monarch,'’ alter that;
and the ‘ Man of Ross ’ is scarce admissible, as it now
stands, curtailed of its fairer half: reclaim its property
from the ‘ Chatterton,’ which it does but encumber, and
it will be a rich little poem. I hope you expunge great
part of the old notes in the new edition: that, in
particular, most barefaced, unfounded, impudent asser-
tion, that Mr. Rogers is indebted for his story to Loch
Lomond, a poem by Bruce! I have read the latter. I
scarce think you have. Scarce anything is common to
them both. The author of the ‘ Pleasures of Memory ’
was somewhat hurt, Dyer says, by the accusation of
unoriginality. He never saw the poem. I long to read
your poem on Burns—I retain so indistinct a memory of
it. In what shape and how does it come into public ?
As you leave off writing poetiy till you finish your
Hymns, I suppose you print, now, all you have got by
you. You have scarce enough unprinted to make a
second volume with Lloyd? Tell me all about it. What
is become of Cowper ? Lloyd told me of some, verses on
his mother. If you have them by you, pray send 'em me.
I do so love him ! Never mind their merit. May be I
may like ’em, as your taste and miue do not always
exactly identify. Yours,
“ C. Lamb,”
Soon after the date of this letter, death released
the father from his state of imbecility and the son from
his wearisome duties. With his life, the annuity heLETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
65
had derived from the old bencher he had served so
faithfully, ceased; while the aunt continued to linger
still with Lamb in his cheerless lodging. His sister
still remained in confinement in the asylum to which
she had been consigned on her mother’s death—perfectly
sensible and calm,—and he was passionately desirous
of obtaining her liberty. The surviving members of
the family, especially his brother John, who enjoyed a
fair income in the South Sea House, opposed her
discharge ;—and painful doubts were suggested by the
authorities of the parish, where the terrible occurrence
happened, whether they were not bound to institute
proceedings, which must have placed her for life at the
disposition of the Crown, especially as no medical
assurance could be given against the probable recurrence
of dangerous frenzy. But Charles came to her deliver-
ance ; he satisfied all the parties who had power to
oppose her release, by his solemn engagement that he
would take her under his care for life ; and he kept his
word. Whether any communication with the Home
Secretary occurred before her release, I have been
unable to ascertain; it was the impression of Mr. Lloyd,
from whom my own knowledge of the circumstances,
which the letters do not ascertain, was derived, that a
communication took place, on which a similar pledge was
given; at all events, the result was, that she left the
asylum and took up her abode for life with her brother
Charles. For her sake, at the same time, he abandoned
all thoughts of love and marriage; and with an income
of scarcely more than 100Z. a-year, derived from his
clerkship, aided for a little while by the old aunt’s small66
LETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
annuity, set out on the journey of life at twenty-two
years of age, cheerfully, with his beloved companion,
endeared to him the more by her strange calamity, and
the constant apprehension of a recurrence of the malady
which had caused it!CHAPTER III.
LETTERS TO COLERIDGE AND MANNING IN LAMB’S FIRST YEARS OF
LIFE WITH HIS SISTER.-----------1797 TO 1800.
The anxieties of Lamb's new position were assuaged
during the spring of 1797, by frequent communications
with Coleridge respecting the anticipated volume, and
by some additions to his own share in its pages. He
was also cheered by the company of Lloyd, who, having
resided for a few months with Coleridge, at Stowey,
came to London in some perplexity as to his future
course. Of this visit Lamb speaks in the following
letter, probably written in January. It contains some
verses expressive of his delight at Lloyd’s visit, which,
although afterwards inserted in the volume, are so well
fitted to their frame-work of prose, and so indicative of
the feelings of the writer at this crisis of his life,
that I may be excused for presenting them with the
context.
TO MR. COLERIDGE.
“Dear Col,	1797.
“ You have learned by this time, with surprise,
no doubt, that Lloyd is with me in town. The emotions68
LETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
I felt on his coming so unlooked for, are not ill expressed
in what follows, and what, if you do not object to them
as too personal, and to the world obscure, or otherwise
wanting in worth, I should wish to make a part of our
little volume. I shall be sorry if that volume comes out,
as it necessarily must do, unless you print those very
schoolboy-ish verses I sent you on not getting leave to
come down to Bristol last summer. I say I shall be
sorry that I have addressed you in nothing which can
appear in our joint volume; so frequently, so habitually,
as you dwell in my thoughts, ’tis some wonder those
thoughts came never yet in contact with a poetical
mood. But you dwell in my heart of hearts, and I
love you in all the naked honesty of prose. God bless
you, and all your little domestic circle—my tenderest
remembrances to your beloved Sara, and a smile and a
kiss from me to your dear dear little David Hartley.
The verses I refer to above, slightly amended, I have
sent (forgetting to ask your leave, tho’ indeed I gave
them only your initials), to the Monthly Magazine,
where they may possibly appear next month, and where
I hope to recognise your poem on Burns.
TO CHARLES LLOYD, AN UNEXPECTED VISITOR.
Alone, obscure, without a friend
*
A cheerless, solitary thing,
Why seeks my Lloyd the stranger out ?
What offering can the stranger bring
Of social scenes, home-bred delights,
That him in aught compensate may
For Stowey’s pleasant winter nights,
For loves and friendships far away,LETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
69
In brief oblivion to forego
Friends, such as thine, so justly dear,
And be awhile with me content
To stay, a kindly loiterer, here P
For this a gleam of random joy
Hath flush’d my unaccustom’d cheek ;
And, with an o’er-charged bursting heart,
I feel the thanks, I cannot speak.
0	! sweet are all the Muse’s lays,
And sweet the charm of matin bird—
’Twas long, since these estranged ears
The sweeter voice of friend had heard.
The voice hath spoke : the pleasant sounds,
In memory’s ear, in after time
Shall live, to sometimes rouse a tear,
And sometimes prompt an honest rhyme.
For when the transient charm is fled,
And when the little week is o’er,
To cheerless, friendless solitude
When I return, as heretofore—
Long, long, within my aching heart
The grateful sense shall cherish’d be ; *
1	’ll think less meanly of myself,
That Lloyd will sometimes think on me.
“ O Coleridge, would to God you were in London with
us, or we two at Stowey with you all. Lloyd takes up
his abode at the Bull and Mouth Inn; the Cat and
Salutation would have had a charm more forcible for
me. 0 nodes	ccenceque DemAnglice—Welch rab-
bits, punch, and poesy. Should you be induced to
publish those very schoolboy-ish verses, print ’em as
they will occur, if at all, in the Monthly Magazine; yet70
LETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
I should feel ashamed that to you I wrote nothing
better: but they are too personal, and almost trifling
and obscure withal. Some lines of mine to Cowper were
in last Monthly Magazine ; they have not body of thought
enough to plead for the retaining of ’em. My sister’s
kind love to you all.
“C. Lamb.”
It would seem, from the following fragment of a letter
of 7th April, 1797, that Lamb, at first, took a small
lodging for his sister apart from his own—but soon to
be for life united.
TO MR. COLERIDGE.
“ By the way, Lloyd may have told you about my sister.
I told him. If not, I have taken her out of her confine-
ment, and taken a room for her at Hackney, and spend
my Sundays, holidays, &c. with her. She boards her-
self. In one little half year’s illness, and in such an
illness of such a nature and of such consequences! to
get her out into the world again, with a prospect of her
never being so ill again—this is to be ranked not among
the common blessings of Providence.”
The next letter to Coleridge begins with a transcript
of Lamb’s Poem, entitled “ A Vision of Repentance,”
which was inserted in the Addenda to the volume, and
is preserved among his collected poems, and thus
proceeds :LETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
71
TO MR. COLERIDGE.
“ April 15th, 1797.
“ The above you will please to print immediately before
the blank verse fragments. Tell me if you like it. I
fear the latter half is unequal to the former, in parts of
which I think you will discover a delicacy of pencilling
not quite un-Spenser-like.	The latter half aims at the
measure, but has failed to attain the poetry of Milton
in his ‘ Comus,’ and Fletcher in that exquisite thing
ycleped the ‘ Faithful Shepherdess,’ where they both
use eight-syllable lines. But this latter half was finished
in great haste, and as a task, not from that impulse
which affects the name of inspiration.
“ By the way, I have lit upon Fairfax’s ‘ Godfrey of
Bullen,’ for half-a-crown. Rejoice with me.
“ Poor dear Lloyd ! I had a letter from him yesterday;
his state of mind is truly alarming. He has, by his
own confession, kept a letter of mine unopened three
weeks, afraid, he says, to open it, lest I should speak
upbraidingly to him; and yet this very letter of mine
was in answer to one, wherein he informed me that an
alarming illness had alone prevented him from writing.
*
You will pray with me, I know, for his recovery, for surely,
Coleridge, an exquisiteness of feeling like this must
border on derangement. But I love him more and
more, and will not give up the hope of his speedy re-
covery, as he tells me he is under Dr. Darwin’s regimen.*
* Poor Charles Lloyd! These apprehensions were sadly realized.
Delusions of the most melancholy kind thickened over his latter days
—yet left his admirable intellect free for the finest processes of severe72
LETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
“ God bless us all, and shield us from insanity, which
is ‘ the sorest malady of all.’
“ My kind love to your wife and child.
“ C. Lamb.
“ Pray write now.”
As summer advanced, Lamb discerned a hope of
compensation for the disappointment of last year, by a
visit to Coleridge, and thus expressed his wishes.
TO MR. COLERIDGE.
“ I discern a possibility of my paying you a visit next
week. May I, can I, shall I, come as soon ? Have you
room for me, leisure for me, and are you all pretty well ?
Tell me all this honestly—immediately. And by what
day-coach could I come soonest and nearest to Stowey ?
A few months hence may suit you better ; certainly me,
as well. If so, say so. I long, I yearn, with all the
longings of a child do I desire to see you, to come among
you—to see the young philosopher, to thank Sara for
her last year’s invitation in person—to read your tragedy
—to read over together our little book—to breathe
fresh air—to revive in me vivid images of ‘ Salutation
scenery.’ There is a sort of sacrilege in my letting
such ideas slip out of my mind and memory. Still that
reasoning. At a time when, like Cowper, he believed himself the
especial subject of Divine wrath, he could bear his part in the most
subtle disquisition on questions of religion, morals, and poetry, with
the nicest accuracy of perception and the most exemplary candour;
and, after an argument of hours, revert, with a faint smile, to his own
despair!LETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
70
O
R----- remainetk—a thorn in the side of Hope, when
she would lean towards Stowey. Here I will leave off,
for I dislike to fill up this paper, which involves a ques-
tion so connected with my heart and soul, with meaner
matter or subjects to me less interesting. I can talk,
as I can think, nothing else. Thursday.
“ C. Lamb.”
The visit was enjoyed ; the book was published; and
Lamb was once more left to the daily labours of the
India House and the unceasing anxieties of his home.
His feelings, on the recurrence of the season, which had,
last year, been darkened by his terrible calamity, will be
understood from the first of two pieces of blank verse,
which fill the two first sheets of a letter to Coleridge,
written under an apprehension of some neglect on the
part of his friend, which had its cause in no estrange-
ment of Coleridge’s affections, but in the vicissitudes of
the imaginative philosopher’s fortune and the constancy
of his day-dreamings.
WRITTEN A TWELVEMONTH AFTER THE EVENTS.
[Friday next, Coleridge, is the day on which my mother died.]
Alas! liow am I chang’d ! where be the tears,
The sobs, and forc’d suspensions of the breath,
And all the dull desertions of the heart
With which I hung o’er my dear mother’s corse ?
Where be the blest subsidings of the storm
Within ; the sweet resignedness of hope
Drawn heavenward, and strength of filial love,
In which I bow’d me to my Father’s will ?74
LETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
My God and my Redeemer, keep not thou
My heart in brute and sensual thanklessness
Seal’d up, oblivious ever of that dear grace,
And health restor’d to my long-loved friend.
Long lov’d, and worthy known ! Thou didst not keep
Her soul in death. O keep not now, my Lord,
Thy servants in far worse—in spiritual death
And darkness—blacker than those feared shadows
O’ the valley all must tread. Lend us thy halms,
Thou dear Physician of the sin-sick soul,
And heal our cleansed bosoms of the wounds
With which the world hath pierc’d us thro’ and thro’ !
Give us new flesh, new birth ; Elect of heaven
May we become, in thine election sure
Contain’d, and to one purpose stedfast drawn—
Our souls’ salvation.
Thou and I, dear friend,
With filial recognition sweet, shall know
One day the face of our dear mother in heaven,
And her remember’d looks of love shall greet
With answering looks of love, her placid smiles
Meet with a smile as placid, and her hand
With drops of fondness wet, nor fear repulse/"'
Be witness for me, Lord, I do not ask
Those days of vanity to return again,
(Nor fitting me to ask, nor thee to give),
Vain loves, and u wanderings with a fair-hair’d maid
(Child of the dust as I am), who so long
My foolish heart steep’d in idolatry,
And creature-loves. Forgive it, 0 my Maker!
If in a mood of grief, I sin almost
In sometimes brooding on the days long past,
(And from the grave of time washing them back,)
Days of a mother’s fondness to her child—
Her little one ! Oh, where be now those sports
* [Note in the margin of MS.] “ This is almost literal from
a letter of my sister’s—less than a year ago.”LETTERS TO COLERIDGE,
75
And infant play-games? Where the joyous troops
Of children, and the haunts I did so love ?
0	my companions! O ye loved names
Of friend, or playmate dear, gone are ye now.
Gone divers ways ; to honour and credit some ;
And some, I fear, to ignominy and shame ! *
1	only am left, with unavailing grief
One parent dead to mourn, and see one live
Of all life,s joys bereft, and desolate :
Am left, with a few friends, and one above
The rest, found faithful in a length of years,
Contented as I may, to bear me on,
T’ the not unpeaceful evening of a day
Made black by morning storms.
“The following I wrote when I had returned from
C. Lloyd, leaving him behind at Burton, with Southey.
To understand some of it, you must remember that at
that time he was very much perplexed in mind.
A stranger, and alone, I past those scenes
We past so late together; and my heart
Felt something like desertion, as I look’d
Around me, and the pleasant voice of friend
Was absent, and the cordial look was there
No more, to smile on me. I thought on Lloyd—
All he had been to me! And now I go
Again to mingle with a world impure;
With men who make a mock of holy things,
Mistaken, and of man’s best hope think scorn.
The world does much to warp the heart of man ;
And I may sometimes join its idiot laugh :
Of this I now complain not. Deal with me,
Omniscient Father, as thou judgest best,
And in thy season soften thou my heart.
* [Note in the margin of MS.] “ Alluding to some of my old
play-fellows being, literally, 6 on the town,’ and some otherwise
wretched.”76
LETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
I pray not for myself: I pray for him
Whose soul is sore perplexed. Shine thou on him,
Father of lights! and in the difficult paths
Make plain his way before him : his own thoughts
May he not think—his own ends not pursue—
So shall he best perform thy will on earth.
Greatest and Best, Thy will be ever ours!
“ The former of these poems I wrote with unusual
celerity t’other morning at office. I expect you to like
it better than anything of mine; Lloyd does, and I do
myself.
“You use Lloyd very ill, never writing to him.
I tell you again that his is not a mind with which you
should play tricks. He deserves more tenderness
from you.
“ For myself, I must spoil a little passage of Beau-
mont and Fletcher to adapt it to my feelings :—
41 am prouder
That I was once your friend, tho’ now forgot,
Than to have had another true to me/
If you don’t write to me now, as I told Lloyd, I shall
get angry, and call you hard names—Mancluneel and I
don’t know what else. I wish you would send me my
great-coat. The snow and the rain season is at hand,
and I have hut a wretched old coat, once my father's, to
keep ’em off, and that is transitory.
6 When time drives flocks from field to fold,
When ways grow foul and blood gets cold,’
I shall remember where I left my coat. Meet emblem
wilt thou be, old Winter, of a friend’s neglect—cold,
cokl, cold !	“ C. Lamb.”LETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
77
The following lines, which Lamb transmitted to his
new friend Southey, bespeak the remarkable serenity
with which, when the first shock was over and the duties
of life-long love arranged, Lamb was able to contemplate
the victim of his sister’s frenzy: *
Thou should’st have longer lived, and to the grave
Have peacefully gone down in full old age ;
Thy children would have tended thy gray hairs.
We might have sat, as we have often done,
By our fire-side, and talk’d whole nights away,
Old time, old friends, and old events recalling,
With many a circumstance of trivial note,
To memory dear, and of importance growTn.
How shall we tell them in a stranger’s ear!
A wayward son oft-times was I to thee ;
And yet, in all our little bickerings,
Domestic jars, there was I know not what
Of tender feeling that were ill exchang’d
For this world’s chilling friendships, and their smiles
Familiar, whom the heart calls strangers still.
A heavy lot hath he, most wretched man,
Who lives the last of all his family !
He looks around him, and his eye discerns
The face of the stranger ; and his heart is sick.
Man of the world, what can’st thou do for him ?
Wealth is a burthen which he could not bear;
Mirth a strange crime, the which he dares not act;
And generous wines no cordial to his soul.
* These lines are now first introduced in this Edition ;—becoming
known to the Editor by their publication in the first volume of
“ Southey’s Life and Correspondence,” p. 325, where they appear in a
letter from Southey to Mr. Wynn. The Biographer courteously adds,
that they would have been sent to the Editor, but that they were not
observed till after the publication of the First Edition of these
Memorials.
i78
LETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
For wounds like his, Christ is the only cure.
Go ! preach thou to him of a world to come,
Where friends shall meet and know each other’s face !
Say less than this, and say it to the winds.’
An addition to Lamb’s household-cares is thus
mentioned in a letter
TO MR. COLERIDGE.
“December 10	1797.
“ In truth, Coleridge, I am perplexed, and at times
almost cast down. I am beset with perplexities. The
old hag of a wealthy relation, who took my aunt off our
hands in the beginning of trouble, has found out that she
is ‘ indolent and mulish,’ I quote her own words, and
that her attachment to us is so strong that she can never
be happy apart. The lady, with delicate irony, remarks,
that if I am not an hypocrite, I shall rejoice to receive
her again; and that it will be a means of making me
more fond of home to have so dear a friend to come home
to ! The fact is, she is jealous of my aunt's bestowing
any kind recollections on us, while she enjoys the
patronage of her roof. She says she finds it inconsistent
with her own ‘ ease and tranquillity,’ to keep her any
longer; and, in fine, summons me to fetch her home.
Now, much as I should rejoice to transplant the poor old
creature from the chilling air of such patronage, yet I
know how straitened we are already, how unable already
to answer any demand which sickness or any extraor-
dinary expense may make. I know this, and all unused
as I am to struggle with perplexities, I am somewhatLETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
79
nonplussed, to say no worse. This prevents me from a
thorough relish of what Lloyd’s kindness and yours
have furnished me with. I thank you though from my
heart, and feel myself not quite alone in the earth.”
In 1798, Coleridge seemed to attain a settled home
by accepting an invitation to become the minister of a
Unitarian congregation at Shrewsbury; a hope of short
duration. The following letter was addressed by Lamb
to him at this time as “ S. T. Coleridge ”—as if the Mr.
were dropped and the “ Reverend ” not quite adopted—
“ at the Pceverend A. Rowe’s, Shrewsbury, Shropshire.”
The tables are turned here ;—Lamb, instead of accusing
Coleridge of neglect, takes the charge to himself, in deep
humility of spirit, and regards the effect of Miss Lamb’s
renewed illnesses on his mind as inducing indifference,
with an affecting self-jealousy.
TO ME. COLERIDGE.
“ January 28th, 1798.
“ You have writ me many kind letters, and I have
answered none of them. I don’t deserve your attentions.
An unnatural indifference has been creeping on me since
my last misfortunes, or I should have seized the first
opening of a correspondence with you. To you I owe
much, under God. In my brief acquaintance with you
in London, your conversations won me to the better
cause, and rescued me from the polluting spirit of the
world. I might have been a worthless character without
you; as it is, I do possess a certain improvable portion80
LETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
of devotional feelings, tho’ when I view myself in the
light of divine truth, and not according to the common
measures of human judgment, I am altogether corrupt
and sinful. This is no cant. I am very sincere.
“ These last afflictions, Coleridge, have failed to soften
and bend my will. They found me unprepared. My
former calamities produced in me a spirit of humility
and a spirit of prayer. I thought they had sufficiently
disciplined me; but the event ought to humble me; if
God’s judgments now fail to take away from me the
heart of stone, what more grievous trials ought I not to
expect? I have been very querulous, impatient under
the rod—full of little jealousies and heart burnings.—
I had well nigh quarrelled with Charles Lloyd—and for
no other reason, I believe, than that the good creature
did all he could to make me happy. The truth is, I
thought he tried to force my mind from its natural and
proper bent; he continually wished me to he from home,
he was drawing me from the consideration of my poor
dear Mary’s situation, rather than assisting me to gain a
proper view of it with religious consolations. I wanted
to be left to the tendency of my own mind, in a solitary
state, which, in times past, I knew had led to quietness
and a patient bearing of the yoke. He was hurt that I
was not more constantly with him, but he was living
with White, a man to whom I had never been accus-
tomed to impart my dearest feelings, tho’ from long
habits of friendliness, and many a social and good
quality, I loved him very much. I met company
there sometimes—indiscriminate company. Any society
almost, when I am in affliction, is sorely painful to me.LETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
81
I seem to breathe more freely, to think more collectedly,
to feel more properly and calmly, when alone. All
these things the good creature did with the kindest
intentions in the world, hut they produced in me
nothing but soreness and discontent. I became, as he
complained, ‘jaundiced’ towards him . . . but he has
forgiven me—and his smile, I hope, will draw all such
humours from me. I am recovering, God be praised
for it, a healthiness of mind, something like calmness—
but I want more religion—I am jealous of human helps
and leaning-places. I rejoice in your good fortunes.
May God at the last settle you ! —You have had many
and painful trials ; humanly speaking, they are going to
end ; but we should rather pray that discipline may
attend us thro’ the whole of our lives............ A care-
less and a dissolute spirit has advanced upon me with
large strides—pray God that my present afflictions may
be sanctified to me ! Mary is recovering; but I see no
opening yet of a situation for her ; your invitation went
to my very heart, but you have a power of exciting
interest, of leading all hearts captive, too forcible to
admit of Mary’s being with you. I consider her as
perpetually on the brink of madness. I think, you would
almost make her dance within an inch of the precipice ;
she must be with duller fancies, and cooler intellects.
I know a young man of this description, who has suited
her these twenty years, and may live to do so still,
if we are one day restored to each other. In answer
to your suggestions of occupation for me, I must say
that I do not think my capacity altogether suited for
disquisitions of that kind.......... I have read little, I
a82
LETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
have a very weak memory, and retain little of what
I read; am unused to compositions in which any
methodising is required; but I thank you sincerely for
the hint, and shall receive it as far as I am able, that is,
endeavour to engage my mind in some constant and
innocent pursuit. I know my capacities better than
you do.
“Accept my kindest love, and believe me yours,
as ever.	“ c. L.”
At this time, the only literary man whom Lamb knew
in London was George Dyer, who had been noted as an
accomplished scholar, in Lamb’s early childhood, at
Christ’s Hospital. For him Lamb cherished all the
esteem that his guileless simplicity of character and
gentleness of nature could inspire ; in these qualities the
friends were akin ; but no two men could be more opposite
than they were to each other, in intellectual qualifications
and tastes—Lamb, in all things original, and rejoicing
in the quaint, the strange, the extravagant; Dyer, the
quintessence of learned commonplace; Lamb wildly
catching the most evanescent spirit of wit and poetry ;
Dyer, the wondering disciple of their established forms.
Dyer officiated as a revering High Priest at the Altar of
the Muses—such as they were in the staid, antiquated
trim of the closing years of the eighteenth century,
before they formed sentimental attachments in Germany,
or flirted with revolutionary France, or renewed their
youth by drinking the Spirit of the Lakes. Lamb
esteemed and loved him so well, that he felt himself
entitled to make sport with his peculiarities; but it wasLETTER TO SOUTHEY.
83
as Fielding might sport with his own idea of Parson
Adams; or Goldsmith with his Dr. Primrose. The
following passage occurs in a letter of 28th November,
1798, addressed—
TO MR. SOUTHEY.
“ I showed my ‘ Witch,’ and * Dying Lover,’ to Dyer
last night, but George could not comprehend how that
could be poetry which did not go upon ten feet, as
George and his predecessors had taught it to do; so
George read me some lectures on the distinguishing
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
‘Clos’d 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.”
The following passage on the same subject occurs in a
letter about the same time, addressed
6 284
LETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
TO MR. COLERIDGE.
“ Now I am on the subject of poetry, I must
announce to you, who, doubtless, in your remote part of
the island, have not heard tidings of so great a blessing,
that George Dyer hath prepared two ponderous volumes
full of poetry and criticism. They impend over the
town and are threatened to fall in the winter. The first
volume contains every sort of poetry, except personal
satire, which George, in his truly original prospectus,
renounceth for ever, whimsically foisting the intention
in between the price of his book and the proposed
number of subscribers. (If I can, I will get you a copy
of his handbill.) He has tried his vein in every species
besides—the Spenserian, Thomsonian, Masonic and
Akensidish more especially. The second volume is all
criticism; wherein he demonstrates to the entire satis-
faction of the literary world, in a way that must silence
all reply for ever, that the Pastoral was introduced by
Theocritus and polished by Virgil and Pope—that
Gray and Mason (who always hunt in couples in George’s
brain) have a good deal of poetical fire and true lyric
genius—that Cowley was ruined by excess of wit
(a warning to all moderns)—that Charles Lloyd, Charles
Lamb, and William Wordsworth, in later days, have
struck the true chords of poesy. 0 George, George!
with a head uniformly wrong, and a heart uniformly
right, that I had power and might equal to my wishes ;
then would I call the gentry of thy native island, and
they should come in troops, flocking at the sound of thyLETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
85
prospectus-trumpet, and crowding who shall be first to
stand in thy list of subscribers! I can only put twelve
shillings into thy pocket (which, I will answer for them,
will not stick there long), out of a pocket almost as bare
as thine. Is it not a pity so much fine writing should
be erased ? But, to tell the truth, I began to scent
that I was getting into that sort of style which
Longinus and Dionysius Halicarnassus fitly call ‘ the
affected.’
Lamb’s apprehensions of the recurrence of his sister’s
malady were soon realised. An old maid-servant who
assisted her in the lodging became ill; Miss Lamb
incessantly watched the death-bed ; and just as the poor
creature died, was again seized with madness. Lamb
placed her under medical care; and, left alone, wrote
the following short and miserable letter:—
TO MR. COLERIDGE.
“May 12 th, 1800.
“ My dear Coleridge,
“ I don’t know why I write, except from the
propensity misery has to tell her griefs. Hetty died on
Friday night, about eleven o’clock, after eight days’
illness; Mary, in consequence of fatigue and anxiety, is
fallen ill again, and I was obliged to remove her
yesterday. I am left alone in a house with nothing but
Hetty's dead body to keep me company. To-morrow I
bury her, and then I shall be quite alone, with nothing
but a cat, to remind me that the house has been full of86
LETTER TO MANNING.
living beings like myself. My heart is quite sunk, and
I don’t know where to look for relief. Mary will get
better again, but her constantly being liable to such
relapses is dreadful; nor is it the least of our evils that
her case and all our story is so well known around us.
We are in a manner marked. Excuse my troubling
you, but I have nobody by me to speak to me. I slept
out last night, not being able to endure the change and
the stillness. But I did not sleep well, and I must come
back to my own bed. I am going to try and get a
friend to come and be with me to-morrow. I am com-
pletely shipwrecked. My head is quite bad. I almost
wish that Mary were dead.—God bless you. Love to
Sara and Hartley.
“ C Lamb.
“ Monday.”
The prospect of obtaining a residence more suited to
the peculiar exigencies of his situation than that which
he then occupied at Pentonville, gave Lamb comfort,
which he expressed in the following short letter :—
TO MR. MANNING.
“ Dear Manning,	1800'
“ I feel myself unable to thank you sufficiently
for your kind letter. It was doubly acceptable 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.LETTER TO COLERIDGE.
%
87
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 disorder, so fre-
quently 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. 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.”
This hope was accomplished, as appears from the
following letter:—
TO MR. COLERIDGE.
“ Dear Coleridge,	1800‘
“ Soon after I wrote to you last, an offer was
made me by Gutch (you must remember him, at Christ’s,
—you saw him, slightly, one day with Thomson at our
house)—to come and lodge with him, at his house in
Southampton Buildings, Chancery-lane. This was a88
LETTER TO COLERIDGE.
very comfortable offer to me, the rooms being at a rea-
sonable rent, and including the use of an old servant,
besides being infinitely preferable to ordinary lodgings
in our case, as you must perceive. As Gutch knew all
our story and the perpetual liability to a recurrence in
my sister’s disorder, probably to the end of her life, I
certainly think the offer very generous and very friendly.
I have got three rooms (including servant) under 341. a
year. Here I soon found myself at home; and here, in
six weeks after, Mary was well enough to join me. So
we are once more settled. I am afraid we are not placed
out of the reach of future interruptions. But I am de-
termined to take what snatches of pleasure we can
between the acts of our distressful drama..........I have
passed two days at Oxford, on a visit which I have long
put off, to Gutch’s family. The sight of the Bodleian
Library, and, above all, a fine bust of Bishop Taylor, at
All Souls’, were particularly gratifying to me ; unluckily,
it was not a family where I could take Mary with me,
and I am afraid there is something of dishonesty in any
pleasures I take without her. She never goes anywhere.
I do not know what I can add to this letter. I hope
you are better by this time; and I desire to be affec-
tionately remembered to Sara and Hartley.
“ I expected before this to have had tidings of another
little philosopher. Lloyd’s wife is on the point of
favouring the world.
“ Have you seen the new edition of Bums ? his
posthumous works and letters ? I have only been able to
procure the first volume, which contains his life—very
confusedly and badly written, and interspersed with dullLETTER. TO COLERIDGE.
89
pathological and medical discussions. It is written by a
Dr. Currie. Do you know the well-meaning doctor ?
Alas, ne sutor ultra crepidam!
“ I hope to hear again from you very soon. Godwin
is gone to Ireland on a visit to Grattan. Before he
went I passed much time with him, and he has showed
me particular attention : N.B. A thing I much like.
Your books are all safe; only I have not thought it
necessary to fetch away your last batch, which I under-
stand are at Johnson’s, the bookseller, who has got quite
as much room, and will take as much care of them as
myself—and you can send for them immediately from
him.
“ I wish you would advert to a letter I sent you at
Grassmere about Christabel, and comply with my request
contained therein.
“ Love to all friends round Skiddaw.
“ C. Lamb.”CHAPTER IV.
MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS TO MANNING, COLERIDGE, AND
WORDSWORTH, FROM 1800 TO 1805.
It would seem from the letters of 1800, that the
natural determination of Lamb “to take what pleasure
he could between the acts of his distressful drama/’ had
led him into a wider circle of companionship, and had
prompted sallies of wilder and broader mirth, which
afterwards softened into delicacy, retaining all its whim.
The following passage, which concludes a letter to
Manning, else occupied with merely personal details,
proves that his apprehensions for the diminution of his
reverence for sacred things were not wholly unfounded;
while, amidst its grotesque expressions, may be dis-
cerned the repugnance to the philosophical infidelity
of some of his companions he retained through life.
The passage, may, perhaps, be regarded as a sort
of desperate compromise between a wild gaiety and
religious impressions obscured but not effaced; and
intimating his disapprobation of infidelity, with a me-
lancholy sense of his own unworthiness seriously to
express it.91
LETTERS TO MANNING.
TO MR. MANNING.
“ 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, and the goats the left.
Stripped of its allegory, you must know, the sheep are I,
and the Apostles and the Martyrs, and the Popes, and
Bishop Taylor and Bishop Horsley, and Coleridge, &c.
&c.; the goats are the Atheists and the Adulterers, and
dumb dogs, and Godwin and M ..... g, and that
Thyestsean crew—yaw! how my saintsliip sickens at
the idea!
“ You shall have my play and the Falstaff letters in a
day or two. I will write to Lloyd by this day’s post.
“ God bless you, Manning. Take my trifling as
trifling—and believe me seriously and deeply your well-
wisher and friend,
“ C. Lamb.”
In the following letter Lamb’s fantastic spirits find
scope freely, though in all kindness, in the peculiarities
of the learned and good George Dyer:—
TO MR. MANNING.
“ Deae Manking,	22nd’ 1800-
“ You needed not imagine any apology neces-
sary. Your fine hare and fine birds (which just now are92
LETTERS TO MANNING.
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 must know we extract a divine spirit of gravy
from those materials, which, duly compounded with a
consistence 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. A-------, who gives hot legs
of mutton and grape pies at his sylvan lodge at Isle-
worth ; 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 bedroom windows (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 deranged. George does not mind
this circumstance ; 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 oldLETTERS TO MANNING.
93
Scotch writers, Barbour, Douglas’s iEneid, 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 re-
maining 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, without anything to
show for it, or any title beyond George's courtesy, with
out even a name ; and Barbour, 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 bucks, but is im-
patient 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!
“ Avaunt friendship, and all memory of absent
friends!
“ C. Lamb.”94
LETTER TO COLERIDGE.
In the following letter, the exciting subjects of Dr.
A------and Dyer are further played on :—
TO MR. COLERIDGE.
“ August 26tk, 1800.
“ George Dyer is the only literary character I am
happily acquainted with; the oftener I see him, the
more deeply I admire him. He is goodness itself. If
I could hut calculate the precise date of his death, I
would write a novel on purpose to make George the
hero. I could hit him off to a hair.* George brought
a Dr. A------to see me. The Doctor is a very pleasant
old man, a great genius for agriculture, one that ties his
breeches-lmees with packthread, and boasts of having
had disappointments from ministers. The Doctor hap-
pened to mention an epic poem by one Wilkie, called the
‘ Epigoniad,’ in which he assured us there is not one
tolerable line from beginning to end, but all the charac-
ters, incidents, &c., verbally copied from Homer.
George, who had been sitting quite inattentive to the
Doctor’s criticism, no sooner heard the sound of Homer
strike his pericranicks, than up he gets, and declares he
must see that poem immediately: where was it to be
had ? An epic poem of 8000 lines, and he not hear of
it! There must be some things good in it, and it was
necessary he should see it, for he had touched pretty
* This passage, thus far, is printed in the former volumes ; the
remainder was then suppressed (with other passages now for the first
time published) relating to Mr. Dyer, lest they should give pain to
that excellent person then living.LETTER TO COLERIDGE.
95
deeply upon that subject in his criticisms on the Epic.
George has touched pretty deeply upon the Lyric, I find;
he has also prepared a dissertation on the Drama and
the comparison of the English and German theatres.
As 1 rather doubted his competency to do the latter,
knowing that his peculiar turn lies in the lyric species of
composition, I questioned George what English plays he
had read. I found that he had read Shakspeare (whom
he calls an original, but irregular, genius); but it was a
good while ago; and he has dipped into Rowe and
Otway, I suppose having found their names in ‘ John-
son’s Lives ’ at full length; and upon this slender ground
he has undertaken the task. He never seemed even to
have heard of Fletcher, Ford, Marlowe, Massinger, and
the worthies of Dodsley’s Collection; but he is to read
all these, to prepare him for bringing out his ‘ Parallel ’
in the winter. I find he is also determined to vindicate
Poetry from the shackles which Aristotle and some
others have imposed upon it, which is very goodnatured
of him, and very necessary just now! Now I am touch-
ing so deeply upon poetry, can I forget that I have
just received from D-------- a magnificent copy of his
Guinea Epic. Four-and-twenty Books to read in the
dog-days ! I got as far as the Mad Monk the first day,
and fainted. Mr. D--------’s genius strongly points him
to the Pastoral, but his inclinations divert him per-
petually from his calling. He imitates Southey, as
Rowe did Shakspeare, with his ‘ Good morrow to ye;
good master Lieutenant.’ Instead of a man, a woman,
a daughter, he constantly writes one a man, one a
woman, one his daughter. Instead of the king, hero,96
LETTER TO MANNING.
he constantly writes, he the king, he the hero; two
flowers of rhetoric, palpably from the ‘Joan.’ But
Mr. D.------soars a higher pitch: and when he
original, it is in a most original way indeed. His ter-
rific scenes are indefatigable. Serpents, asps, spiders,
ghosts, dead bodies, staircases made of nothing, with
adders’ tongues for bannisters—Good Heaven! what a
brain he must have. He puts as many plums in his
pudding as my grandmother used to do;—and then his
emerging from Hell’s horrors into light, and treading
on pure flats of this earth—for twenty-three Books
together!
“ C. L.”
The following letter, obviously written about the
same time, pursues the same theme. There is some
irritation in it; but even that is curious enough to
prevent the excision of the reproduced passages :—
TO MR. MANNING.
“ Dear Manning,	4 1800,
“ 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,LETTERS TO MANNING.
97
and hasten into the middle 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,
made me a visit yesternight, on purpose to borrow 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 assistance. You
must know he is just now diverted from the pursuit of
the Bell Letters by a paradox, which he has heard his
friend Freud,* (that learned mathematician) maintain,
that the negative quantities of mathematicians were
meres	nugce,things scarcely in rerum	and smack-
ing too much of mystery for gentlemen of Mr. Freud’s
clear Unitarian capacity. However, 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
* 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.
H08
LETTERS TO MANNING.
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.—Dirty books, smeared leaves,
and dog’s 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 pur-
chasing 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 Theocritus 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 servilely
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 pas-
toral 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 Ger-
man 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 qualifiedLETTERS TO MANNING.
99
him for these disquisitions, 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 con-
fessed he had read none of them, but professed his
intention of looking through them all, so as to be able to
touch upon them in his book.) So Shakspeare, Otway,
and I believe 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 bye, 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
accompany your present with a dissertation on negative
quantities.
“C. L.”
The “ Algebra ” arrived; and Lamb wrote the
following invitation, in hope to bring the author and the
presentee together.
TO MR. MANNING.
“ 1800.
“ George Dyer is an Archimedes, and an Archimagus,
and a Tycho Brahe, and a Copernicus; and thou art the100
LETTERS TO MANNING.
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 carcase 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 Heathens—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 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 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 Hr. A----, an old gentle-
man 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. GeorgeLETTERS TO MANNING.
101
had been sitting inattentive, seemingly, to what was
going on—hatching of negative quantities—when, sud-
denly, 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 that there should he such an epic poem and he not
know of it; and he must get a copy of it, as he was going
to touch pretty deeply upon the subject of the Epic—
and he was sure there must be some things good in a
poem of 8000 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 canand 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 nonsense 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.”
Manning could not come; and Dyer’s subsequent
symptoms are described in the following letter:—102
LETTERS TO MANNING.
TO MR. MANNING.
“ December 27th, 1800.
“ At length George Dyer’s phrenesis has come to a
crisis; he is raging and furiously mad. I waited upon
the Heathen, Thursday was a sennight; the first
symptom which struck my eye and gave me incontro-
vertible 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 accumulated 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 Poems,
which were ready for delivery to subscribers, and theLETTEES TO MANNING.
103
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 30Z., 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 unanswerable fence ;—‘ Sir, it’s of great
consequence that the world is not misled ! ’
“I’ve often wished I lived in the Golden Age, before
doubt, and propositions, and corollaries, got into the
world. Noiv, as Joseph D------------, a Bard of Nature,
sings, going up Malvern Hills,
6 How steep ! bow painful the ascent;
It needs the evidence of close deduction
To know that ever I shall gain the top.5
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 Descriptive, 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 enemy has engaged twelve
archers to come over in a boat from an enemy’s104
LETTERS TO MANNING.
country and way-lay him; he thereupon pathetically
exclaims—
6 Twelve, dost thou sav ? Curse on those dozen villains!5
'	m
D------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. There is a
bound where his authority ceases.”
The following letter, written sometime in 1801, shows
that Lamb had succeeded in obtaining occasional employ-
ment as a writer of epigrams for newspapers, by which
he added something to his slender income. The dis-
paraging reference to Sir James Mackintosh must not
be taken as expressive of Lamb’s deliberate opinion of
that distinguished person. Mackintosh, at this time,
was in great disfavour, for his supposed apostasy from
the principles of his youth, with Lamb’s philosophic
friends, whose minds were of temperament less capable
than that of the author of the Vindicice Gallic a, of being
diverted from abstract theories of liberty by the crimes
and sufferings which then attended the great attempt to
reduce them to practice. Lamb, through life, utterly
indifferent to politics, was always ready to take part
with his friends, and probably scouted, with them,
Mackintosh as a deserter.LETTERS TO MANNING.
105
TO MR. MANNING.
44 Dear Manning,	‘ 1801.
“ 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 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. For
me, 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
ever.
44 All the Lloyds wonder that you do not write to
them. They apply to me for the cause. Believe me
from this weight of ignorance, and enable me to give a
truly oracular response.
441 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.
441 will close my letter of simple inquiry with an
epigram on Mackintosh, the Vindicice GaliiccB-msLn—106
LETTER TO WILSON.
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-purchas’d pelf,
He went away, and wisely hang’d himself:
This thou may do at last, yet much I doubt,
If thou hast any Bowels to gush out!1
“ Yours, as ever,
“ C. Lamb.”
Some sportive extravagance which, however incon-
sistent with Lamb’s early sentiments of reverent piety,
was very far from indicating an irreligious purpose,
seems to have given offence to Mr. Walter Wilson, and
to have induced the following letter, illustrative of the
writer’s feelings at this time, on the most momentous of
all subjects:—
TO MR. WALTER WILSON.
“ Deak Wilson,	“ Au'Jmt 1801'
“ I am extremely sorry that any serious
difference should subsist between us, on account of some
foolish behaviour of mine at Richmond; you knew me
well enough before, that a very little liquor will cause a
considerable 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 inLETTER TO WILSON.
107
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 seriousness, and I have
known the importance and reality of a religious belief.
Latterly, I acknowledge, much of my seriousness has
gone off, whether from new company, or some other new
associations ; but I still retain at bottom a conviction of
the truth, and a certainty of the 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."
In 1803 Coleridge visited London, and at his depar-
ture left the superintendence of a new edition of his
poems to Lamb. The following letter, written in reply
to one of Coleridge’s, giving a mournful account of his
journey to the north with an old man and his influenza,
refers to a splendid smoking-cap which Coleridge had
worn at their evening meetings:—108
LETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
i
TO MR. COLERIDGE.
“ My dear Coleridge,	“ April ltth> 1803-
“ Things have gone on better with me since
you left me. I expect to have my old housekeeper
home again in a week or two. She has mended most
rapidly. My health too has been better since you took
away that Montero cap. I have left off cayenned eggs
and such bolsters to discomfort. There was death in
that cap. I mischievously wished that by some in-
auspicious jolt the whole contents might be shaken, and
the coach set on fire; for you said they had that pro-
perty. How the old gentleman, who joined you at
Grantham, would have clapt his hands to his knees, and
not knowing but it was an immediate visitation of Heaven
that burnt him, how pious it would have made him; him,
I mean, that brought the Influenza with him, and only
took places for one:—an old sinner; he must have known
what he had got with him! However, I wish the cap
no harm for the sake of the head it fits, and could be
content to see it disfigure my healthy side-board again.
“ What do you think of smoking? I want your sober,
average, noon opinion of it. I generally am eating my
dinner about the time I should determine it.
“ Morning is a girl, and can’t smoke — she’s no
evidence one way or the other; and Night is so bought
over, that he can’t be a very upright judge. May be
the truth is, that one pipe is wholesome; two pipes
toothsome; three pipes noisome; four pipes fulsome;LETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
109
Jive pipes quarrelsome, and that’s the sum on’t. But
that is deciding rather upon rhyme than reason. . . .
After all, our instincts may be best. Wine I am sure,
good, mellow, generous Port, can hurt nobody, unless
those who take it to excess, which they may easily
avoid if they observe the rules of temperance.
“ Bless you, old sophist, who next to human nature
taught me all the corruption I was capable of knowing!
And bless your Montero cap, and your trail (which shall
come after you whenever you appoint), and your wife
and children—Pipos especially.
“When shall we two smoke again? Last night I
had been in a sad quandary of spirits, in what they call
the evening, but a pipe, and some generous, Port, and
King Lear (being alone), had their effects as solacers. I
went to bed pot-valiant. By the way, may not the
Ogles of Somersetshire be remotely descended from
King Lear ?
“ C. L.”
The next letter is prefaced by happy news.
TO MR. COLERIDGE.
“ Mary sends love from home.
“ Dear C.,
“ 1803.
“I do confess that I have not sent your books
as I ought to have done; but you know how the human
free-will is tethered, and that we perform promises to
ourselves no better than to our friends. A watch isLETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
] 10
come for you. Do you want it soon, or shall I wait till
some one travels your way ? You, like me, I suppose,
reckon the lapse of time from the waste thereof, as boys
let a cock run to waste; too idle to stop it, and rather
amused with seeing it dribble. Your poems have begun
printing; Longman sent to me to arrange them, the old
and the new together. It seems you have left it to
him; so I classed them, as nearly as I could, according
to dates. First, after the Dedication, (which must march
first,) and which I have transplanted from before the
Preface, (which stood like a dead wall of prose between,)
to be the first poem—then comes ‘ The Pixies,’ and the
things most juvenile—then on ‘ To Chatterton,’ &c.—
on, lastly, to the ‘ Ode on the Departing Year,’ and
‘ Musings,'—'which finish. Longman wanted the Ode
first, but the arrangement I have made is precisely that
marked out in the Dedication, following the order of
time. I told Longman I was sure that you would omit
a good portion of the first edition. I instanced several
sonnets, &c.—but that was not his plan, and, as you
have done nothing in it, all I could do wras to arrange
’em on the supposition that all were to be retained. A
few I positively rejected ; such as that of ‘ The Thimble,’
and that of ‘ Flicker and Flicker’s wife,’ and that not in the
manner of Spenser, which you yourself had stigmatised
—and ‘The Man of Foss,’—I doubt whether I should
this last. It is not too late to save it. The first proof
is only just come. I have been forced to call that
Cupid’s Elixir, ‘ Kisses.’ It stands in your first volume,
as an Effusion, so that, instead of prefixing The Kiss to
that of ‘ One Kiss dear Maid,’ &c., I have ventured toLETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
Ill
entitle it ‘To Sara.’ I am aware of the nicety of
changing even so mere a trifle as a title to so short a
piece, and subverting old associations; but two called
‘ Kisses ’ would have been absolutely ludicrous, and
‘ Effusion ’ is no name, and these poems come close
together. I promise you not to alter one word in any
poem whatever, hut to take your last text, where two
are. Can you send any wishes about the book ? Longman,
I think, should have settled with you; but it seems you
have left it to him. Write as soon as you possibly can ;
for, without making myself responsible, I feel myself, in
some sort, accessary to the selection, which I am to
proof-correct; but I decidedly said to Biggs that I was
sure you would omit more. Those I have positively
rubbed off, I can swear to, individually, (except the
‘ Man of Boss,’ which is too familiar in Pope,) but no
others—you have your cue. For my part, I had rather
all the Juvenilia were kept—memories causa.
“ Robert Lloyd has written me a masterly letter,
containing a character of his father ;—see how different
from Charles he views the old man! (Literatim.)	‘ My
father smokes, repeats Homer in Greek, and Virgil, and
is learning, when from business, with all the vigour of a
young man, Italian. He is, really, a wonderful man.
He mixes public and private business, the intricacies of
disordering life with his religion and devotion. No one
more rationally enjoys the romantic scenes of nature,
and the chit-chat and little vagaries of his children; and,
though surrounded with an ocean of affairs, the very
neatness of his most obscure cupboard in the house
passes not unnoticed. I never knew any one view with112
LETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
such clearness, nor so well satisfied with things as they
are, and make such allowance for things which must
appear perfect Syriac to him.’ By the last he means
the Lloydisms of the younger branches. His portrait of
Charles (exact as far as he has had opportunities of noting
him) is most exquisite. ‘ Charles is become steady as a
church, and as straightforward as a Roman road. It
would distract him to mention anything that was not as
plain as sense ; he seems to have run the whole scenery
of life, and now rests as the formal precisian of non-
existence.’ Here is genius I think, and ’tis seldom a
young man, a Lloyd, looks at a father (so differing) with
such good nature while he is alive. Write—
“ I am in post-haste,
“ C. Lamb.
“ Love, &c.,to Sara, P. and H.”
¥
The next letter, containing a further account of Lamb’s
superintendence of the new edition, hears the date of
Saturday, 27th May, 1803.
TO MR. COLERIDGE.
“ My dear Coleridge,
“ The date of my last was one day prior to
the receipt of your letter, full of foul omens. I explain,
lest you should have thought mine too light a reply to
such sad matter. I seriously hope by this time you
have given up all thoughts of journeying to the green
Islands of the Blest—voyages in time of war are veryLETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
] 13
precarious—or at least, that you will take them in your
way to the Azores. Pray he 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 books of yours which
were left here. These will set out on Monday next, the
29th May, by Kendal waggon, from White Horse, Crip-
plegate. 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 middle of June. I will
take care and see him with the earliest. But cannot
you write pathetically to him, enforcing a speedy mis-
sion of your books for literary purposes ? He is too
good a retainer to Literature, to let her interests 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 do., on to Wood-street, &c. ? The former
mode seems a sad superstitious subdivision of labour.
Well! the ‘Man of Boss ’ 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 second edition, which (if you remember)
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 first edition), likeJ14
LETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
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 ‘ Reflections at an Inn about a known Character,’ and
sucking 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 this roof thy wine-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
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 ‘ Imitation 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 clear	and I 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.	T
“ C. Lamb.LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH.
115
The following is the fragment of a letter (part being
lost), on the re-appearance of the Lyrical Ballads, in two
volumes, and addressed
TO MR. WORDSWORTH.
“ Thanks for your letter and present. I had already
borrowed your second volume. What most please me
are, ‘ The Song of Lucy; ’ Simon's sickly daughter, in
‘ The Sexton ’ made me cry. Next to these are the
description of the continuous echoes in the story of
‘ Joanna’s Laugh,’ where the mountains, and all the
scenery absolutely seem alive; and that fine Shak-
spearian character of the ‘ happy man,’ in the ‘ Brothers,’
-------4 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 !1
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, altho’ he
hear them not. Here the mind knowingly passes a
fiction upon herself, first substituting her own feelings
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 ‘ pinpoint,’ in the sixth stanza. All the rest
is eminently good, and your own. I will just add that116
LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH.
it appears to me a fault in the ‘ Beggar,’ that the instruc-
tions conveyed in it are too direct, and like a lecture:
they don’t slide into the mind of the reader while he is
imagining 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 many many novelists and modem 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 Vicar of
Wakefield,’ ‘ Roderick Random,’ and other beautiful,
bare narratives. There is implied an unwritten compact
between author and reader; ‘ I will tell you a story,
and I suppose you will understand it.’ Modem 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 obser-
vation........I am sorry that Coleridge has christened
his ‘ Ancient Marinere ’ ‘ a Poet’s 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!
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 operation of suchLETTERS TO WORDSWORTH.
117
scenery, dragged me along like Tom Pipes’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 per-
sonality is gone. Your other observation is, I think as
well, a little unfounded: the ‘ Marinere,’ from being
conversant in supernatural events, has acquired a super-
natural and 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 Marinere,’ the ‘ Mad Mother,’ and the ‘ Lines
at Tintern Abbey ’ in the first.
The following letter was addressed, on 28th Septem-
ber, 1805, when Lamb was bidding his generous farewell
to Tobacco, to Wordsworth, then living in noble poverty
with his sister in a cottage by Grassmere, which is as
sacred to some of his old admirers as even Shakspeare’s
House.118
LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH.
TO MR. WORDSWORTH.
“ 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 I believe the
true state of the case, so diffident), that it 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, advert-
ing 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 Borrowdale, and
the magnificent sesquipedalia of the year 1802. Poor
old Molly! to have lost her pride, that ‘ last infirmity
* This is mere banter; Miss Lamb wrote a very good band.LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH.
119
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 friendliest, comfort-
ablest women we know, and made our little stay at your
cottage one of the pleasantest times we ever past. We
were quite strangers to her. Mr. C. is with you too;
our kindest separate remembrances to him. As to our
special affairs, I am looking about me. I have done
nothing since the beginning of last year, when I lost my
newspaper job, and having had a long idleness, I must
do something, or we shall get very poor. Sometimes I
think of a farce, but hitherto all schemes have gone off;
an idle brag or two of an evening, vapouring out of a
pipe, and going off in the morning; but now I have bid
farewell to my £ sweet enemy,’ Tobacco, as you will see
in my next page,* 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,
* The “ Farewell to Tobacco 99 was transcribed on the next page;
but the actual sacrifice was not completed till some years after.120
LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH.
were the refinements of this old torturer some thousand
years after, under pretence of ‘ Commerce allying dis-
tant shores, Promoting and diffusing knowledge, good,’
&c. &c.
“ Yours truly,
“ C. Lamb.”CHAPTER V.
LETTERS TO HAZLITT, ETC., FROM 1805 TO 1810.
About the year 1805 Lamb was introduced to one,
whose society through life was one of his chief pleasures
—the great critic and thinker, William Hazlitt—who,
at that time, scarcely conscious of his own literary
powers, was striving hard to become a painter. At the
period of the following letter (which is dated 15th March,
1806) Hazlitt was residing with his father, an Unitarian
minister, at Wem.
TO MR. HAZLITT.
“ Dear H.
“ I am a little surprised at no letter from you.
This day week, to wit, Saturday, the 8th of March,
1806, I book’d off by the Wem coach, Bull and Mouth
Inn, directed to you, at the Rev. Mr. Hazlitt’s, Wem,
Shropshire, a parcel containing, besides 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 conclude the said parcel to be
lying at the inn, and may be lost; for which reason, lest122
LETTER TO HAZLITT.
you may be a Wales-hunting at this instant, I have
authorised 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 Shrop-
shire when so many fine pictures are a-going a-going
every day in London ? Monday I visit the Marquis of
Lansdowne’s, in Berkeley Square. Catalogue 2s. 6cl.
Leonardos in plenty. Some other day this week, I go
to see Sir Wm. Young’s, in Stratford Place. Hulse’s, of
Blackheath, are also to he 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 additament 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 10,000Z. (those who talk of Wilson
being equal to Claude are either mainly ignorant or
stupid); one of these was perfectly miraculous. What
colours short of 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 pic-
ture—five figures standing behind a piano, the sixth
playing; none of the heads, as M. observed, indicating
great men, or affecting it, but so sweetly disposed; 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 asLETTER TO MRS. HAZLITT.
123
Shakspeare’s ‘ Twelfth Night,’—almost, that is. It will
give you a love of order, and cure you , of restless,
fidgetty 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—his study (only that and the
library are shown), when he writes a common letter, as
I am doing, surrounded with twenty pictures worth
60,000Z. What a luxury ! Apicius and Heliogabalus,
hide your diminished heads !
“ Yours, my dear painter,
“ C. Lamb.”
Hazlitt married Miss Sarah Stoddart, sister of the
present Sir John Stoddart, who became very intimate
with Lamb and his sister. To her Lamb, on the 11th
December, 1806, thus communicated the failure of
“Mr. H.”
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
‘ Mr. H.’ 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.124
LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH.
“ 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.”
The following is Lamb’s account of the same calamity,
addressed
TO MR. WORDSWORTH.
“ 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 substantial enough.
John Bull must have solider fare than a letter. We are
pretty stout about it; have had plenty of condoling
friends; but, after all, we had rather it should have
succeeded. You will see the prologue in most of the
morning papers. It was received with such shouts as I
never witnessed to a prologue. It was attempted to beLETTERS TO WORDSWORTH.
125
encored. How hard!—a thing I did merely as a task,
because it was wanted, and set no great store by ; and
‘Mr. H.’!! The quantity of friends we had in the
house—my brother and I being in public offices, &c.—
was astonishing, but they yielded at last to a few
hisses.
“ A hundred hisses ! (Hang the word, I write it like
kisses—how different!)—a hundred hisses outweigh a
thousand claps. The former come more directly from
the heart. Well, ’tis withdrawn, and there is an end.
“ Better luck to us,
[Turn over.]	“ C. Lamb.
“ 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."
About this time Miss Lamb sought to contribute to her
brother's scanty income by presenting the plots of some of
Shakspeare’s plays in prose, with the spirit of the poet’s
genius interfused, and many of his happiest expressions
preserved, in which good work, Lamb assisted her;
though he always insisted, as he did in reference to
“ Mrs. Leicester’s School,” that her portions were the
best. The following letter refers to some of those aids,
and gives a pleasant instance of that shyness in Hazlitt,
which he never quite overcame, and which afforded
a striking contrast to the boldness of his published
thoughts.126
LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH.
TO MR. WORDSWORTH.
“ 1806.
“ 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—Imagination.	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. But she is stuck
fast, and I have been obliged to promise to assist her.
To do this, it will be necessary to leave off tobacco. But
I had some thoughts of doing that before, for I sometimes
think it does not agree with me. W. 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—hut they were
young girls—and he sat and frowned blacker and blacker,
indiguant that there should be such a thing as youth
and beauty, till he tore me away before supper, in per-
fect misery, and owned he could not bear young girls;
they drove him mad. So I took him home to my old
nurse, where lie recovered perfect tranquillity. Indepen-
dent 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 non cuiviscontigit active Theletter' to hazlitt’s father.	127
managers, I thank my stars, have settled that question
for me.
“ Yours truly,
“ C. Lamb.”
Hazlitt, coming to reside in town, became a frequent
guest of Lamb’s, and a brilliant ornament of the parties
which Lamb noiv began to collect on Wednesday
evenings. He seems, in the beginning of 1808, to have
sought solitude in a little inn on Salisbury Plain, to
which he became deeply attached, and which he has
associated with some of his profoundest meditations;
and some fantastic letter, in the nature of a hoax, having
puzzled his father, who expected him at Wem, caused
some inquiries of Lamb respecting the painter’s retreat,
to which he thus replied in a letter to
THE REV. MR. HAZLITT.
u	“ Temple, 18 February, 1808.
“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 shrewdly128
LETTER TO HAZLITT S FATHER.
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 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
similarity 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 uneasiness 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 Mrs. Hazlitt,
and in our kindest remembrances and wishes for the
restoration of Peggy’s health.
“ I am, Sir, your humble servant,
“ C. Lamb.”
Mr. and Mrs. Hazlitt afterwards took up their tem-
porary abode at Winterslow, to which place Miss Lamb
addressed the following letter, containing interesting
details of her own and her brother’s life, and illustrating
her own gentle character:—MISS LAMB TO MRS. HAZLITT.
129
TO MRS. HAZLITT.
“ My dear Sarah,
“December 10 th, 1808.
“ I hear of you from your brother, but you do
not write yourself, nor does Hazlitt. I beg that one or
both of you will amend this fault as speedily as possible,
for I am very anxious to hear of your health. I hope,
as you say nothing about your fall to your brother, you
are perfectly recovered from the effects of it.
“ You cannot think how very much we miss you and
H. of a Wednesday evening—all the glory of the night,
I may say, is at an end. Phillips makes his jokes, and
there is no one to applaud him ; Packman argues, and
there is no one to oppose him.
“ The worst miss of all to me is, that when we are in
the dismals there is now no hope of relief from any
quarter whatsoever. Hazlitt was most brilliant, most
ornamental, as a Wednesday-roan, but he was a more
useful one on common days, when he dropt in after a
quarrel or a fit of the glooms. The Sheffington is quite
out now, my brother having got merry with claret and
Tom Sheridan. This visit, and the occasion of it, is a
profound secret, and therefore I tell it to nobody but
you and Mrs. Reynolds. Through the medium of
Wrougliton, there came an invitation and proposal from
T. S., that C. L. should write some scenes in a speaking
pantomime, the other parts of which Tom now, and his
father formerly, have manufactured between them. So
in the Christmas holidays my brother, and his two great
K130
MISS LAMB TO MRS. HAZLITT.
associates, we expect will be all three damned together;
this is, I mean if Charles’s share, which is done and sent
in, is accepted.
“ I left this unfinished yesterday, in the hope that
my brother would have done it for me. His reason for
refusing me was ‘ no exquisite reason,’ for it was
because he must write a letter to Manning in three or
four weeks, and therefore ‘ he could not be always
writing letters,’ he said. I wanted him to tell your
husband about a great work which Godwin is going to
publish to enlighten the world once more, and I shall
not be able to make out what it is. He (Godwin) took
his usual walk one evening, a fortnight since, to the end
of Hatton Garden and back again. During that walk
a thought came into his mind, which he instantly sate
down and improved upon till he brought it, in seven or
eight days, into the compass of a reasonable sized
pamphlet.
“To propose a subscription to all well-disposed people
to raise a certain sum of money, to be expended in the
care of a cheap monument for the former and the future
great dead men; the monument to be a white cross,
with a wooden slab at the end, telling their names and
qualifications. This woodeu slab and white cross to be
perpetuated to the end of time; to survive the fall of
empires, and the destruction of cities, by means of a
map, which, in case of an insurrection among the people,
or any other cause by which a city or country may be
destroyed, was to be carefully preserved; and then,
when things got again into their usual order, the white-
cross-wooden-slab-makers were to go to work again andMISS LAMB TO MRS. HAZLITT.
131
set the wooden slabs in their former places. This, as
nearly as I can tell you, is the sum and substance of it;
but it is written remarkably well—in his very best man-
ner—for the proposal (which seems to me very like
throwing salt on a sparrow’s tail to catch him) occupies
but half a page, which is followed by very fine writing
on the benefits he conjectures would follow if it were
done; very excellent thoughts on death, and our feel-
ings concerning dead friends, and the advantages an
old country has over a new one, even in the slender
memorials we have of great men who once flourished.
“ Charles is come home and wants his dinner, and so
the dead men must be no more thought of. Tell us
how you go on, and how you like Winterslow and winter
evenings. Knowles has not yet got back again, hut he
is in better spirits. John Hazlitt was here on Wednes-
day. Our love to Hazlitt.
To this letter Charles added the following post-
“ There came this morning a printed prospectus from
‘ S. T. Coleridge, Grasmere,’ of a weekly paper, to be
called ‘ The Friend;’ a flaming prospectus. I have no
time to give the heads of it. To commence first Satur-
day in January. There came also notice of a turkey
from Mr. Clarkson, which I am more sanguine in ex-
pecting the accomplishment of than I am of Coleridge’s
“ Yours, affectionately,
Saturday.
“ M. Lamb.’'
script:—
prophecy.132
LETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
During the next year, Lamb and his sister produced
their charming little hook of “ Poetry for Children,” and
removed from Mitre Court to those rooms in Inner
Temple Lane,—most dear of all their abodes to the
memoiy of their ancient friends-—where first I knew
them. The change produced its natural and sad effect
on Miss Lamb, during whose absence Lamb addressed
the following various letter
TO MR. COLERIDGE.
“ Dear Coleeibge,	“ JwM m’ 1809'
“ I congratulate you on the appearance 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 Preview sneers at me, and asks ‘ if Comus
is not	good enough for Mr. Lamb?’ because I have said
no good serious 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 written long before, I am to be set down as
an undervaluer of Milton. 0, Coleridge! do kill those
reviews, or 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 haveLETTERS TO COLERIDGE.	133
two rooms on third floor and five rooms above, with an
inner staircase to myself, and all new painted, &c., and
all for 30 l.a year ! I came into them on Saturday week;
and on Monday following, Mary was taken ill with
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 five
together ! I am weaker, and bear it worse than I ever
did. But I hope we shall be comfortable by and bye.
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 it’s 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 !
“ I was very glad to see Wordsworth’s book advertised;
I am to have it to-morrow lent me, and if 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 lias reached a134
LETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
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, hut I have
no head for play-making; I can do the dialogue, and
that’s all. I am quite aground for a plan, and I must
do something for money. Not that I have immediate
wants, hut I have prospective ones. 0 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 foul
fiend!
“ 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, containing
‘ 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 converted
me to relish Daniel, or to say I relish him, for, 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 it being there. It is quite beautiful. DoLETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
135
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 anything
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 ‘ Ccelebs?’ 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:—
6 If ever I marry a wife
I ?d marry a landlord’s daughter,
For then I may sit in the bar,
And drink cold hrandy-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 know Holcroft 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 ; but my
head aches, and I hardly know what I write ; but I
could not let The Friend pass without a congratulatory
epistle. I won’t criticise till it comes to a volume.
Tell me how I shall send my packet to you ?—by what136
LETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
conveyance?—by Longman, Short-man, or how? Give
my kindest remembrances to the Wordsworths. 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.”
A journey into Wiltshire, to visit Hazlitt, followed
Miss Lamb’s recovery, and produced the following
letters :—
TO MR. COLERIDGE.
“ Dear Coleridge,	“	30ft 0c‘->1809-
“ I have but this moment received your letter,
dated the 9th 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, Stonehenge, &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, 9, 10 of The Friend. The account
of Luther in the Warteburg is as fine as anything I ever
read.* God forbid that a man who has such things to
* 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. hadLETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
137
say should be silenced for want of 100£. This Custom-
and-Duty-Age would have made the Preacher on the
Mount take out a licence, and St. Paul’s Epistles not
pronounced against him the Ban in the Imperial Diet; where he
composed some of his greatest works, and translated the New Testa-
ment ; and where he is recorded as engaged in the personal conflict
with the Prince 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 following picture, which 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 Bischofsrodci, as a star on the mountain!
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 separate 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 idolatrous falsehood, that had dared place
6 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, which 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 he 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 the work of the Tempter; it is a cloud of darkness
conjured up between the truth of the sacred letters and the eyes of his138
LETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
missible without a stamp. 0 that you may find means
to go on ! But alas ! where is Sir G. Beaumont ?—
Sotlieby? What is become of the rich Auditors in
Albemarle Street ? Your letter has saddened me.
understanding, 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 !
“ There still remains one auxiliary in reserve, the translation of the
Seventy. The Alexandrine Greeks, anterior to the Church itself,
could intend no support to its corruptions—the Septuagint will have
profaned the Altar of Truth with no incense for the nostrils of the
universal 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 w^ords, and nothing hut words, 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 their impressions being withdrawn) shape and condense
themselves into things, into realities ! Repeatedly half-wakening, and
his eye-lids as often re-closing, 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,
perhaps, on wiiich his eyes had been fixed, vacantly, during the per-
plexed 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, wiiich 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 hurlsLETTERS TO COLERIDGE.
139
“ I am so tired with my journey, being up all night,
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, 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 myself 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 apti-
tudes 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 sum-
mer and a winter-parlour. When shall I ever see you in
them?	t »
MISS LAMB TO MRS. HAZL1TT.
“ My dear Sarah,
“ November 7th, 1809.
46 The dear, quiet, lazy, delicious month we
spent with you is remembered by me with such regret
that I feel quite discontented, and Winterslow-sick. I
assure you I never passed such a pleasant time in the
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.”140
MISS LAMB TO MRS. HAZLITT.
country in my life, both in the house and out of it—the
card-playing quarrels, and a few gaspings for breath, after
your swift footsteps up the high hills, excepted; and those
draw-backs are not unpleasant in the recollection. We
have got some salt butter, to make our toast seem like
yours, and we have tried to eat meat suppers, but that
would not do, for we left our appetites behind us, and
the dry loaf, which offended you, now comes in at night
unaccompanied; but, sorry am I to add, it is soon fol-
lowed by the pipe. We smoked the very first night of
our arrival.
“ Great news ! I have just been interrupted by Mr.
Daw, who came to tell me he was yesterday elected a
Royal Academician. He said none of his own friends
voted for him, he got it by strangers, who were pleased
with his picture of Mrs. White.
“ Charles says he does not believe Northcote ever
voted for the admission of any one. Though a very
cold day, Daw was in a prodigious perspiration, for joy
at his good fortune.
“ More great news! My beautiful green curtains
were put up yesterday, and all the doors listed with
green baize, and four new boards put to the coal-hole,
and fastening hasps put to the windows, and my dyed
Manning-silk cut out.
“We had a good cheerful meeting on Wednesday,
much talk of Winterslow, its woods and its sun-flowers.
I did not so much like P.-----at Winterslow as I now
like him for having been with us at Winterslow. We
roasted the last of his ‘ Beech of oily nut prolific ’ on
Friday at the Captain’s. Nurse is now established inMISS LAMB TO MRS. HAZLITT.
141
Paradise, alias the Incurable ward of Westminster Hos-
pital. I have seen her sitting in most superb state, sur-
rounded by her seven incurable companions. They call
each other ladies; nurse looks as if she would be con-
sidered as the first lady in the ward; only one seemed
at all likely to rival her in dignity.
“ A man in the India House has resigned, by which
Charles will get twenty-pounds a year, and White has
prevailed on him to write some more lottery puffs ; if
that ends in smoke the twenty pounds is a sure card,
and has made us very joyful.
“ 1 continue very well, and return you very sincere
thanks for my good health and improved looks, which
have almost made Mrs.-------die with envy. She longs
to come to Winterslow as much as the spiteful elder
sister did to go to the well for a gift to spit diamonds.
“ Jane and I have agreed to boil a round of beef for
your suppers when you come to town again. She
(Jane) broke two of the Hogarth glasses, while we were
away, whereat I made a great noise. Farewell. Love
to William, and Charles’s love and good wishes for the
speedy arrival of the ‘ Life of Holcroft,’ and the bearer
thereof.
“ Yours, most affectionately,
“ Tuesday.'"	“ M. Lamb.
“ Charles told Mrs.------, Hazlitt had found a well in
his garden, which, water being scarce in your county,
would bring him in two-liundred a year; and she came,
in great haste, the next morning, to ask me if it were true.
“ Your brother and sister are quite well.”142
LETTER TO HAZLITT.
The country excursions, with which Lamb sometimes
occupied his weeks of vacation, were taken with fear and
trembling—often foregone—and finally given up, in
consequence of the sad effects which the excitements of
travel and change produced in his beloved companion.
The following refers to one of these disasters :—
TO MR. HAZLITT.
“ Dear H ,	“1810.
“ Epistemon is not well. Our pleasant excur-
sion 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 find 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 it to females. But he says
they are very fine; and perhaps it is shown separately
to put another fee into the shower’s pocket. Well, I
shall never see it.LETTER TO WORDSWORTH.
143
“ I have lost all wish for sights. God bless you.
1 shall be glad to see you in London.
“ Yours truly,
“ Thursday.	“ C. Lamb.”
Mr. Wordsworth’s Essay on Epitaphs, afterwards
appended to “ The Excursion,” produced the following
letter:—
TO MR. WORDSWORTH.
<< Dear W	i( Friday, 19th Oct. 1810. E.I.Ho.
“ 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 con-
tinuation 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
artfully diversified his strains and his rhymes, that the144
LETTER TO WORDSWORTH.
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
other words, till he had learned to speak of all its attri-
butes 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 thorough 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 thou-
sand applications, many of them no doubt quite misplaced,
as I have seen in Islington churchyard (I think) an
Epitaph to an infant, who died ‘	four months,’
with this seasonable inscription appended, ‘ Honour thy
father and thy mother; that thy days may be long in
the land,’ &c. Sincerely wishing your children long life
to honour, &c.
“I remain,
“C. Lamb.”CHAPTER AH.
LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH, ETC., CHIEFLY RESPECTING
Wordsworth’s poems; 1815 to 1818.
The admirers of Wordsworth.—few, but energetic and
hopeful—were delighted, and his opponents excited to
the expression of their utmost spleen, by the appearance,
in 1814, of “ The Excursion,” (in the quarto form,
marked by the bitter flippancy of Lord Byron); and by
the publication, in 1815, of two volumes of Poems, some
of which only were new. The following letters are chiefly
expressive of Lamb’s feelings respecting these remark-
able works, and the treatment which his own Review of
the latter received from Mr. Gifford, then the Editor of
the Quarterly Review, for which it was written. The
following letter is in acknowledgment of an early copy
of “ The Excursion.”
TO MR. WORDSWORTH.
«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 !
L146
LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH.
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. B. 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 conversa-
tional 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 im-
pression so recent) is the Tales of the Church-yard;—
the only girl among seven brethren, bora 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
rusticating 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 P---from the
card-table, where he had sat from rise of that luminary
to its unequalled setting; but neither he nor I had
gifted eyes to see those symbols of common things glori-
fied, such as the prophets saw them in that sunset—the
wheel, the potter’s clay, the washpot, the wine-press,
the almond-tree rod, the baskets of figs, the four-
* The passage to which the allusion applies does not picture a sunset,
but the effect of sunlight on a receding mist among the mountains, in
the second book of “ The Excursion.”LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH.
147
fold visaged head, the throne, and Him that sat
thereon.*
“ 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 transforming
properties of a country church just entered; a certain
fragrance which it has, either from its holiness, 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. The
reading your lines about it fixed me for a time, a monu-
ment 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 discounte-
nance a poor Londoner or south-countryman entirely,
though Mary seems to have felt it occasionally a little
too powerfully, for it was her remark during reading it,
that by your system it was doubtful whether a liver in
* “ Fix’d resemblances were seen
To implements of ordinary use,
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.”148
LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH.
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
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, con-
quers the air, and we are stifled and suffocated in Hyde
Park.”
Lamb was delighted with the proposition, made
through Southey, that he should review “ The Excur-
sion ” in the “ Quarterly ”—though he had never before
attempted contemporaneous criticism, and cherished a
dislike to it, which the event did not diminish. The
ensuing letter was addressed while meditating on his
office, and uneasy lest he should lose it for want of
leisure.
TO MR. WORDSWORTH.
“ 1814.
“ My dear W.
“ 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 badLETTERS TO WORDSWORTH.
149
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 these 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 perceived
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 1 work ’ methodi-
cally. 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 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.150
LETTEES TO WORDSWOETH.
We both agree, that, to our feeling, Ellen is best as she
is. To us there would have been something repugnant
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, for whom
M. Burney borrowed it, 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 modem for your Primeval Nature, and about a
lichen. I forget the passage, but the whole wore an
air of despatch. That objection which M. Burney had
imbibed from him about Yoltaire, I explained to M. B.
(or tried) exactly on your principle of its being a charac-
teristic speech.)- That it was no settled comparative
estimate of Voltaire with any of his own tribe of buffoons
—no injustice, even if you spoke it, for I dared say you
never could relish ‘ Candide.’ I know I tried to get
through it about a twelvemonth since, and couldn't for
the dulness. Now I think I have a wider range in
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
* This refers to an article of Hazlitt on a The Excursion ” in the
“ Examiner/’ very fine in passages, but more characteristic of the critic
than descriptive of the poem.
+ The passage in which the copy of “ Candide/’ found in the apart-
ment of the Recluse, is described as “ the dull production of a scoffer’s
brain,” — which had excited Hazlitt to energetic vindication of Voltaire
from the charge of dulness. Whether the work, written in 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 more adapted to make a good man wretched.LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH.
151
near four. O 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 ; is the Poet of ‘ The Excursion ’ a Christian ?
or is it the Pedlar and the Priest that are?
“ I find I miscalled that celestial splendour of the mist
going off, a sunset. That only shows my inaccuracy of head.
“ Do, pray, indulge me by writing an answer to the
point of time mentioned above, or let 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 Excur-
sion ’ in the ‘ Quarterly.’ Therefore, though that shall
not stop me, yet if I can do anything, when done, I must
know of him if he has anything 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.”
The next letter was written after the fatal critique
wras despatched to the Editor, and before its appearance.
TO MR. WORDSWORTH.
“ Dear W.	“ 1814-
“ Your experience about tailors seems to be in
point blank opposition to Burton, as much as the author152
LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH.
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 con-
fined 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 per-
sons 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 natura than a flying-horse or
a Gryphon. His wheeling his airy-flight from the pre-
cipice you mention, had a parallel in the melancholy
Jew who toppled from the monument. Were his limbs
ever found? Then, the man who cures diseases by
words, is evidently 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-headed-
ness for light-heartedness by a trick, or not to know the
difference. I confess, a grinning tailor would shock me.
Enough of tailors!
“ The ‘ ’scapes ’ of the Great God Pan, who ap-
peared among your mountains some dozen years since,LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH.
153
and his narrow chance of being submerged by the swains,
afforded me much pleasure. I can conceive the water-
nymphs pulling for him. He would have been another
Hylas—W. Hylas. In a mad letter which Capel Lofft
wrote to M. M.* Phillips (now Sir Richard) I remember
his noticing a metaphysical 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 f (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 postponement.
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 ; 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,
* Monthly Magazine.
f Afterwards the distinguished and unfortunate editor of the London
Magazine.154
LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH.
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 ‘ Sir 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.
“ 0. Lamb.”
The apprehension expressed at the close of the last
letter was dismally verified. The following contains
Lamb’s first burst of an indignation which lasted amidst
all his gentleness and tolerance unquenched through
life :—
TO MR. WORDSWORTH.
“ 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 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 onceLETTERS TO WORDSWORTH.
155
suffered me to be called a lunatic in his Review.* The
language he has altered throughout. Whatever inade-
quateness it had to its subject, it was, in point of compo-
sition, 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 remember
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-lavs.’ It is now (besides half-a-dozen
alterations in the same half-dozen lines) ‘ but in lan-
guage more intelligent reveals to him; ’—that is one I
remember.
“ But that would have been little, putting his shoe-
maker 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 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
* In alluding to Lamb’s note on the great scene of u The Broken
Heart,” where Calantha dances on, after hearing at every pause of
some terrible calamity, a writer in the “ Quarterly 99 had affected to
excuse the writer as a “ maniac; ” a suggestion which circumstances
rendered most cruel.156
LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH.
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 uni-
verse 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, hut 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 founded.
I know how sore a word altered makes one ; hut, 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 for some months with the notion of pleasing
you. Its imperfection or inadequateness in size and
method I knew; hut for the writing-part of it I was
* Though the article on “ The Excursion/’ in the “ Edinburgh
Review ” commenced “ This will never do ! ” it contained ample
illustrations of the authors genius, and helped the world to disprove
its oracular beginningLETTER TO MISS HUTCHINSON.
157
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. Shoe-
maker Gifford, I suppose, never waived a right he had
since he commenced author. Heaven confound him and
all caitiffs !	“ C. L.”
The following letter to Mrs. Wordsworths sister,
who resided with the poet at Bydal, relates to matters
of yet nearer interest.
TO MISS HUTCHINSON.
“ Thursday, 19th Oct. 1815.
“ Dear Miss H.,
“ I am forced to be the replier to your letter,
for Mary has been ill, and gone from home these five
weeks yesterday. She has left me very lonely, and very158
LETTER TO MISS HUTCHINSON.
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 other-
wise. By God’s blessing, in a few weeks we may be
making our meal together, or sitting in the front
row of the Pit at Drury Lane, or taking our even-
ing 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 folk’s misfortunes. But I feel all I can—all
the kindness I can, towards you all—God bless you ! I
hear nothing from Coleridge.
“ Yours truly,
“ C. Lamb.”LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH.
159
The following three letters best speak for them-
selves :—
TO MR. WORDSWORTH.
“ 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 ?
«1815.
“ Dear Wordsworth,
“ You have made me very proud with your
successive book presents. I have been carefully through
the two volumes, to see that nothing was omitted which
used to be there. I think I miss nothing but a charac-
ter in 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 history) 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 nothing160
LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH.
could fairly be said against it. You say you made the
alteration for the ‘ friendly reader,’ but the ‘ malicious ’
will take it to himself. 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 had
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 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 suspected 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 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.LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH.
161
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 familiar. 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 scenes, 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 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 myself 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 don’t stick at the madness of it, for that is only a con-
sequence 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-fulcreature sucking from every
flower, making a flower of everything, his diction all
Latin, and his thoughts all English. Bless him!
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,f or that you did not print them at
* The following little passage about Vincent Bourne has been
previously printed.
+ The “ Evening Walk,” and a Descriptive Sketches among the
Mll>2	LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH.
length. They do not read to me as they do all together.
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 on the wind is masterly, hut 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 in-
structed. 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
Alps”—Wordsworth’s earliest poems—now happily restored in their
entirety to their proper places in the poet’s collected works-
* By Miss Dorothea Wordsworth.LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH.
163
it taint even the leisure hours,—stain Sunday with
work-day contemplations. 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.
6 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 !
0 that from that superfluity of holiday-leisure my youth
wasted, ‘ Age might but take some hours youth wanted
not.’ N.B.—I have left off spirituous liquors for four
or more months, with a moral certainty of 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 mercantile 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 confess truth, because I am not fit for
an office.
* 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 sacri-
fice, entreated him to 66 live like himself,” and in a few weeks after
this assurance he obeyed her.164
LETTEES TO WORDSWORTH.
“ Farewell, in haste, from a head that is too ill to
methodise, a stomach to digest, and all out of tune.
Better harmonies await you !
“ C. Lamb.”
TO MR. WORDSWORTH.
“ Excuse this maddish letter; I am too tired to write
in forma.
“1815.
“ Dear Wordsworth,
“ The more I read of your two last volumes,
the more I feel it necessary to make my acknowledg-
ments 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 fears of it, that when I get a few minutes to sit
down to scribble (an action of the hand nowr 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 I had
meant to have mentioned ‘ Yarrow Visited,’ with that
stanza, ‘But thou, that didst appear so fair;’* than
which I think no lovelier stanza can be found in the
* u But thou, that didst appear so fair
To fond imagination,
Dost rival in the light of day
Her delicate creation.”LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH.
165
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 ,
feel it. Else, it is far superior to the other, which has
but one exquisite verse in it, the last but one, or the
two last—this has all fine, except, perhaps, that that of
‘ studious ease and generous cares,’ has a little tinge of
the less romantic about it. ‘ The Farmer of Tilsbury
Yale ’ 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 Plus
Urbe. There was quite enough to stamp the moral of
the thing never to be forgotten; * bright volumes of
vapour,’ &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 G-oodfellow
supports himself without that stick of a moral which you
have thrown away; but how I can be brought in de
omittendo for that ending to the Boy-builders is a mys-
tery. I can’t say positively now,—I only know that no166
LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH.
line oftener or readier occurs than that ‘ Light-hearted
boys, I will build up a Giant with you.’ It comes natu-
rally, with a warm holiday, and the freshness of the
blood. It is a perfect summer 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 maying;—Must is the
tense with me now. Do you take the pun ? Young
Romilly is divine 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 something 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 ?
* The admirable little poem, entitled The Force of Prayer,”
developing 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,
u What is good for a bootless bene ? ”
suggests Miss Lamb’s single pun. The following are the profoundest
stanzas among those which excite her brother’s most just admiration:—
(€ 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.”LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH.
167
Apropos—when I first opened upon the just-mentioned
poem, in a careless tone, I said to Mary, as if putting a
riddle, ‘	Wliat	is good for a bootless bene?' To which,
with iufinite 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 distin-
guish well, in your old preface, between the verses of
Dr. Johnson, of the * Man in the Strand,’ and that 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 it to—
6 And from the great respect she felt
For Sir Samuel Romilly,’
would not have explained the boundaries of prose expres-
sion, 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, both lately and when
I read it in MS. No alderman ever longed after a
haunch of buck venison more than I for a 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 compare
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. You168
LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH.
ask me about your preface. I like both that and the
supplement without an exception. The account of what
you mean by imagination is very valuable to me. It
will help me to like some things in poetry better, which
is a little humiliating 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 dis-
pute 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
(or petite, how do you spell it ?) querulousness about it;
yet, hang it! now I remember 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 me, in the first impetus of cutting
the leaves, just such a cold squelch as going down a
plausible turning and suddenly reading ‘ No thorough-
fare.’ 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 harmo-
nious to sing of, they lime-twig up my poor soul andLETTERS TO WORDSWORTH.
169
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 newspaper. I ‘ engross ’ when I should ‘ pen ’ a
paragraph. Confusion blast all mercantile transactions,
all traffic, exchange of commodities, intercourse between
nations, all the consequent civilisation, and wealth, and
amity, and link of society, and getting rid of prejudices,
and knowledge of the face of the globe; and rot the very
firs of the forest, that look so romantic alive, and die
into desks! Vale.
“ Yours, dear W., and all yours,
“ C. Lamb.”
TO MR. WORDSWORTH.
u 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 sugges-
tion. I have not bound the poems yet. I wait till
people have done borrowing them. I think I shall get
a chain and chain them to my shelves, more Bodleiano,
and people may come and read them at chain’s length.
For of 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 they borrow
my money they never fail to make use of it. Coleridge170
LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH.
lias 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 accept-
ing 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 con-
taining 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 Chymist’s Laboratory in Norfolk-street. She might
as well have sent a Helluo	for cure to the
Vatican. God keep him inviolate among the traps and
pitfalls ! He has done pretty well as yet.
“ Tell Miss H., 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
* Here is a most inimitable scrawl.LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH.
171
to express it. Dorothy, I hear, has mounted spectacles;
so you have deoculated 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 interest,
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 stavs.
“ Yours again, C. L.”
The next letter is fantastically written beneath a
regular official order, the words in italics being printed.
“ Sir,
“ Please to state the weights and amounts of the
following Lots of
sold	Sale, 181 for
“ Your obedient Servant,
“ Chas. Lamb.172
LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH.
t( Accountant’s Office,
“26th April, 1816.*
“ 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 correction. 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. Iz. Walton
hallows any page in which his reverend name appears.
‘ Duty archly bending to purposes of general bene-
volence ’ is exquisite. The poems I endeavoured not to
understand, hut 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 before,
and going by to-day by chance, found the door open,
and having but five minutes to look about me, peeped
in; just such a chastised peep I took with my mind at
the lines my luxuriating eye was coursing over unre-
strained, not to anticipate another day’s fuller satisfaction.
* This is shown by the postmark to be an error ; it should be 1818.LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH.
173
Coleridge is printing ‘ Christabel,’ by Lord Byron’s
recommendation to Murray, with what he calls a vision,
‘ Kubla Khan,’ which said vision he repeats so enchant-
ingly 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 ecstacy ‘ Mild Arca-
dians 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. L. T.; 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. Gilman
(Killman ?) at Highgate, where he plays at 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. Coleridge is
absent but four miles, and the neighbourhood of such a
man is as exciting as the presence of fifty ordinary per-
sons. ’Tis enough to be within the whiff and wind of
his genius for us not to possess our souls in quiet. If174
LETTEES TO WOEDSWOETH.
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. Interrup-
tions, 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
obsolete 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 currents, 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.”CHAPTER VII.
THE LONDON MAGAZINE—CHARACTER AND FATE OF MR. JOHN SCOTT,
ITS EDITOR—GLIMPSE OF MR. THOMAS GRIFFITHS WAIN WRIGHT,
ONE OF ITS CONTRIBUTORS-MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS OF LAMB
TO WORDSWORTH, COLERIDGE, AND OTHERS;—1818 TO 1825.
Lamb’s association with Hazlitt in the year 1820
introduced him to that of the “ London Magazine,”
which supplied the finest stimulus his intellect had ever
received, and induced the composition of the Essays
fondly and familiarly known under the fantastic title of
Elia. Never was a periodical work commenced with
happier auspices, numbering a list of contributors more
original in thought, more fresh in spirit, more sportive
in fancy, or directed by an editor better qualified by
nature and study to preside, than this “ London.” There
was Lamb, with humanity ripened among town-bred
experiences, and pathos matured by sorrow, at his
wisest, sagest, airiest, widiscreetest, best; Barry Corn-
wall, in the first bloom of his modest and enduring
fame, streaking the darkest passion with beauty; John
Hamilton Reynolds, lighting up the wildest eccentricities
and most striking features of many-coloured life with
vivid fancy; and, with others of less note, Hazlitt,
whose pen, unloosed from the chain which earnest176
LONDON MAGAZINE.
thought and metaphysical dreamings had woven, gave
radiant expression to the results of the solitary musings
of many years. Over these contributors John Scott
presided, himself a critic of remarkable candour, elo-
quence, and discrimination, unfettered by the dogmas of
contending schools of poetry and art; apt to discern the
good and beautiful in all; and having, as editor, that
which Kent recognised in Lear, which subjects revere in
kings, and boys admire in schoolmasters, and contributors
should welcome in editors—	—not manifested
in a worrying, teasing, intolerable interference in small
matters, but in a judicious and steady superintendence
of the whole; with a wise allowance of the occasional
excesses of wit and genius. In this respect, Mr. Scott
differed entirely from a celebrated poet, who was induced,
just a year after, to undertake the Editorship of the
“New Monthly Magazine,” an office for which, it may
be said, with all veneration for his poetic genius, he was
the most unfit person who could be found in the wide
world of letters—who regarded a magazine as if it were
a long affidavit, or a short answer in Chancery, in which
the absolute truth of every sentiment and the propriety
of every jest were verified by the editor’s oath or solemn
affirmation ; who stopped the press for a week at a
comma; balanced contending epithets for a fortnight;
and, at last, grew rash in despair, and tossed the nearest,
and often the worst article, “ unwhipped of justice,” to
the impatient printer. Mr. Scott, indeed, was more fit
to preside over a little commonwealth of authors than to
hold a despotic rule over subject contributors; he had
not the airy grace of Jeffrey by which he might give aJOHN SCOTT.
177
certain familiar liveliness to the most laborious disquisi-
tions, and shed the glancing light of fancy among party
manifestoes; — nor the boisterous vigour of Wilson,
riotous in power, reckless in wisdom, fusing the produc-
tion of various intellects into one brilliant reflexion of
his own master-mind ;—and it was well that he wanted
these weapons of a tyranny which his chief contributors
were too original and too sturdy to endure. He heartily
enjoyed his position; duly appreciated his contributors
and himself; and when he gave audience to some young
aspirant for periodical honours at a late breakfast,
amidst the luxurious confusion of newspapers, reviews,
and uncut novels, lying about in fascinating litter, and
carelessly enunciated schemes for bright successions of
essays, he seemed destined for many years of that happy
excitement in which thought perpetually glows into
unruffled but energetic language, and is assured by the
echoes of the world.
Alas ! a few days after he thus appeared the object of
admiration and envy to a young visitor, in his rooms in
York-street, he was stretched on a bed of mental agony
—the foolish victim of the guilty custom of a world
which would have laughed at him for regarding himself
as within the sphere of its opinion, if he had not died to
shame it! In a luckless hour, instead of seeking to
oppose the bitter personalities of “ Blackwood ” by the
exhibition of a serener power, he rushed with spurious
chivalry into a personal contest; caught up the weapons
which he had himself denounced, and sought to unmask
his opponents and draw them beyond the pale of literary
courtesy; placed himself thus in a doubtful position in
N178
JOHN SCOTT.
which he could neither consistently reject an appeal to
the conventional arbitrament of violence nor embrace it;
lost his most legitimate opportunity of daring the unhal-
lowed strife, and found another with an antagonist con-
nected with the quarrel only by too zealous a friendship;
and, at last, met his death almost by lamentable accident,
in the uncertain glimmer of moonlight, from the hand of
one who went out resolved not to harm him ! Such
was the melancholy result—first of a controversy too
envenomed—and afterwards of enthralment in usages,
absurd in all, but most absurd when applied by a literary
man to a literary quarrel. Apart from higher considera-
tions, it may befit a life destined for the listless excesses
of gaiety to be cast on an idle brawl;—“ a youth of folly,
an old age of cards ” may be no great sacrifice to pre-
serve the hollow truce of fashionable society; but for
men of thought—whose minds are their possession, and
who seek to live in the minds of others by sympathy
with their thoughts—for them to hazard a thoughtful
being because they dare not own that they prefer life to
death—contemplation to the grave—the preparation for
eternity to the unbidden entrance on its terrors, would
be ridiculous if it did not become tragical. “ Sir, I am
a metaphysician ! ” said Hazlitt once, when in a fierce
dispute respecting the colours of Holbein and Vandyke,
words almost became things; “ and nothing makes an
impression upon me but abstract ideas; ” and woeful,
indeed, is the mockery when thinkers condescend to be
duellists !
The Magazine did not perish with its Editor; though
its unity of purpose was lost, it was still rich in essaysTHOMAS GRIFFITHS WAIN WRIGHT.
179
of surpassing individual merit; among whicli the mas-
terly vindication of the true dramatic style by Darley;
the articles of Cary, the admirable translator of Dante;
and the “Confessions of an English Opium Eater; ”
held a distinguished place. Mr. De Quincy, whose
youth had been inspired by enthusiastic admiration of
Coleridge, shown in contributions to “The Friend,” not
unworthy of his master, and substantial contributions of
the blessings of fortune, came up to London, and found
an admiring welcome from Messrs. Taylor and Hessey,
the publishers into whose hands the “London Magazine”
had passed. After the good old fashion of the great
trade, these genial booksellers used to assemble their
contributors round their hospitable table in Fleet Street,
where Mr. De Quincy was introduced to his new allies.
Among the contributors who partook of their professional
festivities, was a gentleman whose subsequent career has
invested the recollection of his appearances in the
familiarity of social life with fearful interest—Mr.
Thomas Griffiths Wainwright. He was then a young
man; on the bright side of thirty; with a sort of un-
dress military air, and the conversation of a smart,
lively, clever, heartless, voluptuous coxcomb. It was
whispered that he had been an officer in the Dragoons;
had spent more than one fortune; and he now con-
descended to take a part in periodical literature, with
the careless grace of an amateur who felt himself above
it. He was an artist also; sketched boldly and graphi-
cally ; exhibited a portfolio of his own drawings of
female beauty, in which the voluptuous trembled on the
borders of the indelicate; and seized on the critical180
THOMAS GRIFFITHS WAINWRIGHT.
department of the Fine Arts, both in and out of the
Magazine, undisturbed by the presence or pretensions
of the finest critic on Art who ever wrote—William
Hazlitt. On this subject, he composed, for the Maga-
zine, under the signature of “ Janus Weathercock,”
articles of flashy assumption—in which disdainful notices
of living artists were set off by fascinating references to
the personal appearance, accomplishments, and luxu-
rious appliances of the writer, ever the first hero of his
essay. He created a new sensation in the sedate circle,
not only by his braided surtouts, jewelled fingers, and
various neck-handkerchiefs, but by ostentatious contempt
for everything in the world but elegant enjoyment.
Lamb, who delighted to find sympathy in dissimilitude,
fancied that he really liked him; took, as he ever did,
the genial side of character; and, instead of disliking
the rake in the critic, thought it pleasant to detect so
much taste and good-nature in a fashionable roue ; and
regarded all his vapid gaiety, which to severer observers
looked like impertinence, as the playful effusion of a
remarkably guileless nature. We lost sight of him
when the career of the “ London Magazine ” ended;
and Lamb did not live to learn the sequel of his
history.
In 1819, Mr. Wordsworth, encouraged by the extend-
ing circle of his earnest admirers, announced for publica-
tion his “ Peter Bell ”—a poem written in the first
enthusiasm of his system, and exemplifying, amidst
beauty and pathos of the finest essence, some of its
most startling peculiarities. Some wicked jester, giftedLETTER TO WORDSWORTH.
181
with more ingenuity and boldness than wit, anticip'ated
the real “ Simon Pure,” by a false one, burlesquing some
of the characteristics of the poet’s homeliest style. This
grave hoax produced the following letter from Lamb,
appropriately written in alternate lines of red and black
ink, till the last sentence, in which the colours are
alternated, word by word—even to the signature—and
“ Mary’s love,” at the close ; so that “ Mary ” is black,
and her “ love ” red.
TO MR. WORDSWORTH.
« 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 your ‘ 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 supple-
mentary 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.
Who started the spurious ‘ P. B.’ I have not heard.
I should guess, one of the sneering----; but I have
heard no name mentioned. ‘ Peter Bell ’ (not the mock
one) is excellent. For its matter I mean. I cannot182
LETTER TO WORDSWORTH.
say 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 had 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 good deal
of money. C---------- is very foolish to scribble about
books. Neither his tongue nor fingers are very reten-
tive. But I shall not say anything 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 thinking: 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 deter-
mining 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 intolerable wrongs had driven to that deed of
desperation, would turn the heart of one of these obtuse
literary Bells. There is no Cock for such Peters ;—LETTER TO WORDSWORTH.
183
hang ’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!
anybody’s as good as his own; for I do not think he
has the most distant guess of the possibility of one poem
being better than another. The gods, by denying him
the very faculty itself of discrimination, have effectually
cut off every seed of envy in his bosom. But with envy,
they excided 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 resembling a lump of dry dust; but on carefully
removing 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. B.—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 me that graceful bow. By the way, the Doctor
is the only one of my acquaintance 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 no184
LETTER TO COLERIDGE.
time to indulge any longer in these laborious curiosities.
God bless you, and cause to thrive and burgeon whatso-
ever you write, and fear no inks of miserable poetasters.
“ Yours truly,
“ Charles Lamb.
“ Mary’s love.”
The following letter, probably written about this time,
is entirely in red ink.
TO MR. COLERIDGE.
“ 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--------’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 has caused a coolness betwixt me and a
(not friend exactly, but) intimate acquaintance. I sus-LETTER TO MISS WORDSWORTH.
185
pect, 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 ns if the weather is very bad. Why you
should refuse twenty guineas per sheet for Blackwood’s
or any other magazine passes my poor comprehension.
But, as Strap says, ‘ you know best.’ I have no quarrel
with you about prseprandial avocations, 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
P-----’s. What do the rascals mean? Am I to have
the fathering of what idle rhymes every beggarly poetaster
pours forth! Who put your marine sonnet ‘ about
Browne ’ into ‘ Blackwood ? ’ I did not. So no more,
till we meet.
“ Ever yours,
“ C. L.”
The following letter (of post-mark 1822) is addressed
to Trinity College, Cambridge, when Miss Wordsworth
was visiting her brother, Dr. Wordsworth.
“TO MISS WORDSWORTH.
“ Mary perfectly approves of the appropriation of the
feathers, and wishes them peacock’s for your fair niece’s
sake.
* A sonnet in “ Blackwood,” dated Manchester, and signed C. L.186
LETTER TO MISS WORDSWORTH.
“ 1822.
“Dear Miss Wordsworth,
“ I had just written the above endearing words
when M------tapped me on the shoulder with an invita-
tion to cold goose pie, which I was not bird of that sort
enough to decline. Mrs. M-------, I am most happy to
say, is better. Mary has been tormented with a rheu-
*
matism, which is leaving her. I am suffering from the
festivities of the season. I wonder how my misused
carcase holds it out. I have played the experimental
philosopher on it, that’s certain. Willy* shall be wel-
come 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, everybody likes them, ex-
cept the author of the ‘ Pleasures of Hope.’ Disappoint-
ment attend him ! How I like to be liked, and what I
do to be liked ! They flatter me in magazines, news-
papers, 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 Cam-
bridge, a portrait of Cromwell, 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
Allsop, who sends me hares and pheasants twice a week;
I can hardly take so fast as he gives. I have almost
forgotten butcher’s meat, as plebeian. Are you not
* Mr. Wordsworth’s second son, then at the Charter-house.LETTER TO MISS WORDSWORTH.
187
glad the cold is gone ? I find winters not so agreeable
as they used to be ‘ when ■winter bleak had charms for
me.’ I cannot conjure up a kind similitude for those
snowy flakes. Let them keep to twelfth cakes !
“ Mrs. P------, our Cambridge friend, has been in
town. You do not know the W----------’s in Trumpington
Street. They are capital people. Ask anybody you
meet who is the biggest woman in Cambridge, and I ’ll
hold you a wager they ’ll say Mrs.-----; she broke down
two benches in Trinity gardens, one on the confines of St.
John’s, which occasioned a litigation between the Socie-
ties 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 contained
in your letter, let me end with assuring you of our very
best kindness, and excuse Mary for 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.”
The following letter to Mr. Walter Wilson, who was
composing a “ Life of De Foe,” in reply to inquiries on
various points of the great novelist’s history, is dated
24th Feb., 1823.	•	■188
LETTER TO MR. WILSON.
TO MR. WALTER WILSON.
“ Dear W.,
“ I write that you may not think me neglect-
ful, not that I have anything 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 all 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 the way of 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 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. John-
son. 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
my ‘ 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 charac-LETTER TO MR. WILSON.
189
ter 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 Peterborough’s cam-
paign 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 out, for I shall like to see anything about
De Foe or from you.
“ Your old friend,
“ C. Lamb.
“ From my and your old compound.”
The following is a fragment of a letter addressed in
the beginning of 1823 to Miss Hutchinson at Ramsgate,
whither she had gone with an invalid relative.
* Those who wish to read an admirable character of De Foe, asso-
ciated with the most valuable information respecting his personal
history, should revert to an article in the “ Edinburgh Review”
on De Foe, attributed to the author of the u Lives of the Statesmen of
the Commonwealth,11 and of the delightful 66 Biography of Oliver
Goldsmith,” almost as charming as its subject.190
LETTER TO MISS HUTCHINSON.
TO MISS HUTCHINSON.
u 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. M------’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
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 Astrsea, 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 amain ’—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 cowslips. God bless you all, and pray, remember
me euphoniously to Mr. G------■. That Lee Priory must
be a dainty bower. Is it built of flints?—and does it
stand at Kingsgate ? ”
In this year, Lamb made his greatest essay in house-LETTER TO MRS. HAZLITT.
191
keeping, by occupying Colnebrook Cottage at Islington,
on the banks of bis beloved New Paver. There occurred
the immersion of George Dyer at noontide, which sup-
plies the subject of one of “ The Last Essays of Elia; ”
and which is veritably related in the following letter of
Lamb, which is curious, as containing the germ of that
delightful article, and the first sketches of the Brandy-
and-Water Doctor therein celebrated as miraculous.
TO MRS. HAZLITT.
“	, 1823.
“ Dear Mrs. H.,
“ Sitting down to write a letter is such a pain-
ful 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,.	(bright) on his way to
dine with Mrs. Barbauld, 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 Mary. 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 Paver. He had not his spectacles 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, for192
LETTER TO MRS. HAZLITT.
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 four, to dinner, I found G. D.
a-bed, and raving, light-headed, with the brandy-and-
water which the doctor had administered. He sung,
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
sobered, and seems to have received no injury. All my
friends are open-mouthed about having paling before the
river, but I cannot see, because an absent man chooses
to walk into a river, with his eyes open, at midday, I am
any the more likely to be drowned in it, coming home at
midnight.
“ I have 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 costly,
served on massy plate, champagne, pines, &c.; forty-
seven present, among whom, the Chairman, and two
other Directors of the India Company. There’s for you!
and got away pretty sober ! Quite saved my credit!
“ We continue to like our house prodigiously. Our
kind remembrances to you and yours.
“ Yours truly,
“ C. Lamb.
“ I am pleased that H. liked my letter to the
Laureate.”LETTERS TO BERNARD BARTON.
193
Requested by the Quaker Poet, to advise him on a
proposal for appropriating a large sum of money raised
by a few admiring friends to his comfort in advancing
years, Lamb gave his wise and genial judgment in the
following letter
TO BERNARD BARTON.
“Dear B. B.,
“ March 2ith, 1824.
“ 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 offer’d. I
can see nothing injurious to your 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 temptation 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
propose 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 accept-
ance, 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 admir-
able poem on the Metempsychosis, has so ingeniously
illustrated in his invocation
12 12
6 Make my dark heavy poem, light and light?
where the two senses of light are opposed to different
o194
LETTERS TO BERNARD BARTON.
opposites. A trifling criticism.—I can see no reason
for any scruple then but what arises from your own
interest; wdiich is in your own power of course to solve.
If you still have doubts, read over Sanderson’s Cases of
Conscience, and Jeremy Taylor’s Ductor Dubitantium,
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 you,
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. Your
heart tells you it is not offer’d to bribe you from any
duty, but to a duty which you feel to be your vocation.
Farewell heartily.
“ C. L.”
The following, with its grotesque sketches, is addressed
also
TO BERNARD BARTON.
“December 1 st, 1824.
“ Dear B. B.,
“ If Mr. Mitford will send me a full and cir-
cumstantial description of his desired vases, I will trans-
mit the same to a Gentleman resident at Canton, whomLETTERS TO BERNARD BARTON.
] 95
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 he 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,
maijoram, 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.
“ Taylor and Hessey finding their magazine goes off
very heavily at 2s. Gd. 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 Preview to a half-dead Magazine will do
their business. It is like G. D. multiplying his volumes
to make ’em sell better. When he finds one will not
go off, he publishes two; two stick, he tries three;196
LETTER TO MISS HUTCHINSON,
three hang fire, he is confident that four will have a
better chance.
“C. L.”
The following letter to Miss Hutchinson, at Tor-
quay, refers to some of Lamb’s later articles, published
in the “ London Magazine,” which, in extending its
size and pretensions to a three-and-sixpenny miscellany,
had lost much of its spirit. He exults, however, in his
veracious “ Memoir of Liston ! ”
TO MISS HUTCHINSON.
“ 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.
ce 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 Gloster Place. When
shall we eat another goose pie together ? The pheasant,
too, must not be forgotten; twice as big, and half as
good as a partridge. You ask about the editor of the
‘ LondonI know of none. This first specimen is
flat and pert enough to justify subscribers who grudge
at t’other shilling. De Quincy’s * Parody’ was sub-
mitted to him before printed, and had his Probatum.*
* Mr. de Quincy had commenced a series of letters in the “ London
Magazine/’ “ To a Young Man whose education has been neglected,”LETTER TO MISS HUTCHINSON.
197
The * Horns’ is in a poor taste, resembling 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,
1 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—
66 * Two noble earls, whom if I quote,
Some folks might call me sinner,
The one invented half a coat,
The other half a dinner*
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.”198
LETTER TO MANNING.
“ c The plan was good, as some will say*
And fitted to console one;
Because, in this poor starving day,
FewT can afford a whole one.5
“ 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.”
The first dawning hope of Lamb’s emancipation
from the India House is suggested in the following note
to Manning, proposing a visit, in which he refers to a
certificate of non-capacity for hard desk-work, given by a
medical friend.
TO MR. MANNING.
“ 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
saw7 T----- yesternight, who lias done for me what may
c 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 wow-capacitated, (I cannot writeLETTER TO WORDSWORTH.
199
it	in-)for business. 0 joyous imbecility! Not a susur-
ration of this to anybody !
“ Mary’s love.
“ C. Lamb.”
The dream was realised—in April 1825, the
“ world-wearied clerk” went home for ever—with what
delight has been told in the elaborate raptures of his
“ Superannuated Man,” and in the letters already
published. The following may be now added to these,
illucidative of his too brief raptures.
TO MR. WORDSWORTH.
“ 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 Leaden-
hall.' 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 !	0 the carking cares !	0
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-
stance made me shy of procuring it before. Will you
write to him about it ?—and your commands shall be
obeyed to a tittle.
“ Coleridge has just finished his prize Essay, by
which, if it get the prize, he’ll touch an additional 100Z.200
LETTER TO WORDSWORTH.
I fancy. His book, too, (‘ Commentary on Bishop
Leighton,’) is quite finished, and penes Taylor and
Hessey.
“ In the ‘ London’ which is just out (1st May,) are
two papers entitled the ‘ Superannuated Man,’ which I
wish you to see; and also, 1st April, a little thing
called ; Barbara S------,’ a story gleaned from Miss
Kelly. The L. M., if you can get it, will save my
enlargement upon the topic of my manumission.
“ I must scribble to make up my hiatus	; 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 couragio! I despair not. Your
kind hint of the cottage was well thrown out; an
anchorage for age and school of economy, when necessity
comes; but without this latter, I have an unconquerable
terror of changing place. It does not agree with us.
I say it from conviction; else I do sometimes ruralise
in fancy.
“ Some d—d people are come in, and I must finish
abruptly. By d—d, I only mean deuced. ’Tis these
suitors of Penelope that make it necessary to authorise
a little for gin and mutton, and such trifles.
“ Excuse my abortive scribble.
“ Yours, not in more haste than heart,
“C. L.
\
“ Love and recollects to all the Wms., Doras, Maries
round your Wrekin.
“ Mary is capitally well. Do write to Sir G. B., for
I am shyish of applying to him.”CHAPTER VIII.
LETTERS OP LAMB’S LAST YEARS, 1825—1834.
How imperfectly the emancipation, so rapturously
hailed, fulfilled its promises; how Lamb left Islington
for Enfield, and there, after a while, subsided into a
lodger; and how, at last, he settled at Edmonton to die,
sufficiently appear in the former series of his letters.
Those which occupy this chapter, scattered through nine
years, have either been subsequently communicated by
the kindness of the possessors, or were omitted for some
personal reason which has lost its force in time. The
following, addressed in 1829 to the Editor, on occasion
of his giving to a child the name of “ Charles Lamb,”
though withheld from an indisposition to intrude matters
so personal to himself on the reader, may now, on his
taking farewell of the subject, find its place.
TO ME. TALFOUED.
“ Deae Talfoued,
“ You could not have told me of a more
friendly thing than you have been doing. I am proud202
LETTER TO TALFOURD.
of my namesake. I shall take care never to do any
dirty action, pick pockets, or anyhow get myself hanged,
for fear of reflecting ignominy upon your young Chrisom.
I have now a motive to he good. I shall not
moriar ;—my name borne down the black gulf of
oblivion.
“ I shall survive in eleven letters, five more than
Caesar. Possibly I shall come to be knighted, or more !
Sir C. L. Talfourd, Bart.!
“Yet hath it an authorish twang with it, which will
wear out with my name for poetry. Give him a smile
from me till I see him. If you do not drop down before,
some day in the week after next I will come and take
one night’s lodging with you, if convenient, before you
go hence. You shall name it. We are in town to-mor-
row speciali gratia, but by no arrangement can get up
near you.
“ Believe us both, with greatest regards, yours and
Mrs. Talfourd’s.
“ Charles Lahb-Philo-Talfourd.”
“ I come as near it as I can.*
* The child who bore the name so honoured by his parents, survived
his god-father only a year—dying at Brighton, whither he had been
taken in 'the vain hope of restoration, on the 3rd December, 1835.
Will the reader forgive the weakness which prompts the desire, in this
place, to link their memories together, by inserting a few verses which,
having been only published at the end of the last small edition of the
Editor’s dramas, may have missed some of the friendly eyes for which
they were written ?
Our gentle Charles has passed away
From earth’s short bondage free,LETTERS TO BERNARD BARTON.
203
The following eight Letters, evoked by Lamb’s excel-
lent and indefatigable correspondent, Barton, speak for
themselves:—
And left to us its leaden day,
And mist-enshrouded sea.
Here, by the restless ocean’s side,
Sweet hours of hope have flown,
When first the triumph of its tide
Seem’d omen of our own.
That eager joy the sea-breeze gave,
When first it raised his hair,
Sunk with each day’s retiring wave,
Beyond the reach of prayer.
The sun-blink that through drizzling mist,
To flickering hope akin,
Lone waves with feeble fondness kiss’d,
No smile as faint can win ;
Yet not in vain, with radiance weak,
The heavenly stranger gleams—
Not of the world it lights to speak,
But that from whence it streams.
That world our patient sufferer sought,
Serene with pitying eyes,
As if his mounting Spirit caught
The wisdom of the skies.
TO BERNARD BARTON.204
LETTERS TO BERNARD BARTON.
pittance in the ‘ London ’ you will see is drawn from my
sickness. Your book is very acceptable to me, because
With boundless love it look’d abroad
For one bright moment given ;
Shone with a loveliness that aw’d,
And quiver’d into Heaven.
A year, made slow by care and toil,
Has paced its weary round,
Since Death enrich’d with kindred spoil
The snow-clad, frost-ribb’d ground.
Then Lamb, with whose endearing name
Our boy we proudly graced,
Shrank from the warmth of sweeter fame
Than mightier Bards embraced.
Still ’twas a mournful joy to think
Our darling might supply
For years on earth, a living link,
To name that cannot die.
And though such fancy gleam no more
On earthly sorrow’s night,	£
Truth’s nobler torch unveils the shore
Which lends to both its light.
The nursling there that hand may take,
None ever grasp’d in vain;
And smiles of well-known sweetness wake,
Without their tinge of pain.
Though ’twixt the Child and child-like Bard,
Late seemed distinction wide,
Each now may trace in Heaven’s regard,
How near they were allied.
Within the infant’s ample brow
Blythe fancies lay unfurl’d,
Which, all uncrush’d, may open now,
To charm a sinless world.LETTERS TO BERNARD BARTON.
205
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
her so often to ourselves, 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 Tryphena
will not understand that phrase of the worldlings.
“ I am hardly able to appreciate your volume now; but
Though the soft spirit of those eyes
Might ne’er with Lamb's compete—
Ne’er sparkle with a wit as wise,
Or melt in tears, as sweet;
That cal^ and unforgotten look
A kindred love reveals,
With his who never friend forsook,
Or hurt a thing that feels.
In thought profound, in wildest glee,
In sorrows dark and strange,
The soul of Lamb’s bright infancy
Endured no spot or change.
From traits of each our love receives
For comfort, nobler scope;
While light, which child-like genius leaves,
Confirms the infant’s hope;
And in that hope with sweetness fraught
Be aching hearts beguiled,
To blend in one delightful thought,
The Poet and the Child !
, but I won’t write all we have said of200
LETTERS TO BERNARD BARTON.
I liked the dedication much, and the apology for your
bald burying grounds. To Shelley, but is not new.
To the young vesper-singer, Great Bealings, Playford,
and what not ?
“ If there be a cavil, it is that the topics of religious
consolation, however beautiful, are repeated till a sort
of triteness attends them. It seems as if you were for
ever losing friends’ children by death, and reminding
their parents of the Resurrection. Do children die so
often, and so good, in your parts? The topic taken
from the 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. Iv.'s truly,
“C. Lamb.-’
TO BERNARD BARTON.
tcAugust 10tA, 1825.
“ We shall be soon again at Colebrook.
“ Dear B. B.,
“ You must excuse my not writing before,
when I tell you we are on a visit at Enfield, where I do
not feel it natural to sit down to a letter. It is at all
times an exertion. I had rather talk with you, and Anne
Knight, quietly at Colebrook Lodge, over the matter of
your last. You mistake me when you express rnisgiv-LETTERS TO BERNARD BARTON.
207
ings 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—devo-
tional topics—admit of infinite variety. So far from poetry
tiring me because religious, I can read, and I say it
seriously, the homely old version of the Psalms in our
Prayer-books for an hour or two together sometimes
without sense of weariness.
“ I did not express myself clearly about what I think
a false topic insisted on so frequently in consolatory
addresses on the death of infants. I know something
like it is in Scripture, but I think humanly spoken. It
is a natural thought, a sweet fallacy to the survivors—
but still a fallacy. If it stands on the doctrine of this
being a probationary state, it is liable to this dilemma.
Omniscience, to whom possibility must be clear as act,
must know of the child, what it would hereafter turn out:
if good, then the topic is false to say it is secured from
falling into future wilfulness, vice, &c. If bad, I do not
see how its exemption from certain future overt acts, by
being snatched away at all tells in its favour. You stop
the arm of a murderer, or arrest the finger of a pick-
purse, but is not the guilt incurred as much by the
intent as if never so much acted. Why children are
hurried off, and old reprobates of a hundred left, whose
trial humanly we may think was complete at fifty, is
among the obscurities of providence. The very notion
of a state of probation has darkness in it. The All-
knower has no need of satisfying his eyes by seeing
what we will do, when he knows before what we208
LETTERS TO BERNARD BARTON.
will do. Methinks we might be condemn’d before
commission. In these things we grope and floun-
der, and if we can pick up a little human comfort
that the child taken is snatch’d from vice (no great com-
pliment to it, by the bye) let us take it. And as to where
an untried child goes, whether to join the assembly of
its elders who have borne the heat of the day—fire-
purified martyrs, and torment-sifted confessors—what
know we? We promise heaven, methinks, too cheaply,
and assign large revenues to minors, incompetent to
manage them. Epitaphs run upon this topic of con-
solation, till the very frequency induces a cheapness.
Tickets for admission into Paradise are sculptured out
at a penny a letter, twopence a syllable, &c. It is all a
mystery, and the more I try to express my meaning
(having none that is clear), the more I flounder. Finally,
write what your own conscience, which to you is the
unerring judge, deems best, and he 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."LETTERS TO BERNARD BARTON.
209
TO BERNARD BARTON.
“1826.
“ Dear B. B.,
“ I don’t know why I have delay’d so long
writing. ’Twas a fault. The under current of excuse
to my mind was that I had heard of the vessel in which
Mitford’s jars were to come ; that it had been obliged to
put into Batavia to refit (which accounts for its delay),
but was daily 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 28Z., &c. for the freight and prime
cost. But do not mention it. I was enabled to do it by
a receipt of 301. from Colburn, with whom, however, I
have done. I should else have run short. For I just
make ends meet. We will wait the arrival of the trin-
kets, and to ascertain their full expense, and then bring
in the bill.
“ 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 have formed my
specimens. I have two thousand to go 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,210
LETTERS TO BERNARD BARTON.
don’t show this to M.; let me wait a little longer to know
the event of his luxuries. 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.”
TO BERNARD BARTON.
“ 1826.
“ Dear B. B.,
“ The Busy Bee, as Hood after Dr. Watts
apostrophises 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 impos-
sibility of forgetting thee,—thy letter was acceptable, thy
scruples may be dismissed, thou art rectus	,
not a word more to be said, verbum sapienti, and so forth,
the matter is decided with a white stone, classically,
mark me, and the apparitions 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’ 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 : some read only
Milton aud 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, whichLETTERS TO BERNARD BARTON.
211
I mean to course over this winter. I can scarce avoid
dialogue fashion in this letter. I soliloquize my medi-
tations, and habitually speak dramatic blank verse with-
out 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 talk’d over those old Treasures.
I am still more sorry for his missing Pots. But I shall
be sure of the earliest intelligence of the Lost Tribes.
His Sacred Specimens are a thankful addition to my
shelves. Marry, I could wish he had been more careful
of corrigenda. I have discover’d certain which have
slipt his errata. I put ’em in the next page, as perhaps
thou canst transmit them to him. For what purpose, but
to grieve him (which yet I should be sorry to do), but
then it shows my learning, and the excuse is complimen-
tary, as it implies their correction in a future edition.
His own things in the book are magnificent, and as an
old Christ’s Hospitaller I was particularly refresh’d with
his eulogy on our Edward. Many of the choice excerpta
were new to me. Old Christmas is a coming, to the con-
fusion 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 mighty clever, and went
off 600 copies the first day. Sion’s Songs do not disperse
so quickly. The next leaf is for Piev. J. M. In this
adieu, thine briefly, in a tall friendship,
“ C. Lamb.”212
LETTERS TO BERNARD BARTON.
TO BERNARD BARTON.
“ Dear B. B.,
“ June 11, 1827.
“ 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
wdiole) 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.
“ Just such a confused piece is his ‘ Joshua,’ frittered
into a thousand fragments, little armies here, little armies
there—you should see only the Sun and Joshua. If I
remember, he has not left out that luminary entirely, but
for Joshua, I was ten minutes a finding him out. Still
he is showy in all that is not the human figure or theLETTERS TO BERNARD BARTON.
213
preternatural interest: but the first are below a drawing
school girl’s attainment, and the last is a phantasmagoric
trick,—‘ Now you shall see what you shall see, dare is
Balshazar and dare is Daniel.’
“ You have my thoughts of M., and so adieu !
“ C. Lamb.”
TO BERNARD BARTON.
“ ] 827.
“ My dear B. B.,
“ You will understand my silence when I tell
you that my sister, on the very eve of entering into a
new house we have taken at Enfield, was surprised with
an attack of one of her sad long illnesses, which deprive
me of her society, 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 Biver came down with
us. The familiar prints, the bust, the Milton, seem
scarce to have changed their rooms. One of her last
observations was ‘ how frightfully like this room is to
our room in Islington ’—our up-stairs room, she meant.
How I hope you will come some better day, and judge
of it! We have tried quiet here for four months, and
I will answer for the comfort of it enduring.
“ On emptying my bookshelves I found an Ulysses,
which I will send to A. K. when I go to town, for her
acceptance—unless the book be out of print. One likes314
LETTERS TO BERNARD BARTON.
to have one copy of every thing one does. I neglected
to keep one of ‘ Poetry for Children,’ the joint produc-
tion of Mary and me, and it is not to be had for love or
money. It had in the title page ‘ by the Author of
Mrs. Lester’s School.’ Know you any one that has it,
and would exchange it ?
“ Strolling to Waltham Cross the other day, I hit off
these lines. It is one of the Crosses which Edward I.
caused to be built for his wife at every town where her
corpse rested between Northamptonshire and London.
t( 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. B.
“ My head aches with this little excursion.
“ Pray accept two sides for three for once,
“ And believe me
“ Yours sadly,
“ Chase Side, Enfield.”

C. L.
TO BERNARD BARTON.
“ 1 827.
“ My dear B.,
“ We are all pretty well again and comfortable,
and I take a first opportunity of sending the AdventuresLETTERS TO BERNARD BARTON.
215
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 accept it, with wishes
it were bigger; if another copy is not to be had, it
reverts to me and my heirs for ever. With it I send a
trumpery book; to which, without my knowledge, the
Editor of the Bijoux has contributed Lucy’s verses ; I
am asham’d to ask her acceptance of the trash accom-
panying it. Adieu to Albums—for a great while—I
said when I came here, and had not been fixed for two
days, but my landlord’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, 0 all pervad-
ing Album ! All over the Leeward Islands, in New-
foundland, and the Back Settlements, I understand
there is no other reading. They haunt me. I die of
Albo-phobia!
“ C.L.”
TO BERNARD BARTON.
“ 1827.
“ My dear B. B.,
“ A gentleman I never saw before brought
me your welcome present—imagine a scraping, fiddling,
fidgetting, petit-maitre of a dancing school advancing
into my plain parlour with a coupee and a sideling bow,
and presenting the book as if he had been handing a
glass of lemonade to a young miss—imagine this, and
contrast it with the serious nature of the book presented !
Then task your imagination, reserving this picture, to
conceive of quite an opposite messenger, a lean, strait-216
LETTERS TO BERNARD BARTON.
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 Beligion, to embody
in verse; I hold prose to be the appropriate expositor of
such atrocities! No offence, but it is a cordial that
makes the heart sick. Still thy skill in compounding it
I 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—11th stanza, equally good.
,,	108—3rd stanza, I long to see Van Balen.
,,	111—A downright good sonnet. Dixi.
,,	153—Lines at the bottom.
So you see, I read, hear, and mark, if I don't leam.
In short tins little volume is no discredit to any of your
former, and betrays none of the senility you fear about.
—Apropos of Van Balen, an artist who painted me
lately, had painted a blackamoor praying, and not filling
his canvas, stuff’d in his little girl aside of blacky,
gaping at him unmeaningly; and then didn't know what
to call it. Now' for a picture to be promoted to the
Exhibition (Suffolk Street) as Historical, a subject is
requisite. What does me ? I but christen it the ‘ Young
Catechist ’ and furbish'd it with dialogue following,
which dubb’d it an Historical Painting. Nothing to a
friend at need.LETTERS TO BERNARD BARTON.
217
“ 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 ?
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.
merely as a fill-space) swore I exprest his full meaning,
and the damosel bridled up into a missionary’s vanity.
I like verses to explain pictures; seldom pictures to
illustrate poems. Your 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 cord 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 gram-
matical niceties. Don’t you see there’s he, myself, and
They you mention
When I’d done it, the artist (who218
LETTERS TO MOXON.
him; why not both him ? likewise imperviously is
cruelly spelt imperiously. These are trifles, and I
honestly like your book and you for giving it, 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.”
While Lamb wras residing at Enfield, the friendship
which, in 1824, he had formed with Mr. Moxon, led to
very frequent intercourse, destined, in after years, to be
rendered habitual, by the marriage of his friend with
the young lady whom he regarded almost as a daughter.
In 1828 Mr. Moxon, at the request of Mr. Hurst, of the
firm of Hurst, Chance, and Co., applied to Lamb to
supply an article for the “ Keepsake,” which he, always
disliking the flimsy elegancies of the Annuals—sadly
opposed to his own exclusive taste for old, standard,
moth-eaten books—thus declined:—
TO MR. MOXON.
“	19	1828.
“ My dear M.
“ It is my firm determination to have nothing
to do with * Forget-me-Nots ’—pray excuse me as civilly
as you can to Mr. Hurst. I will take care to refuse any
other applications. The things which Pickering has, if
to be had again, I have promised absolutely, you know,
to poor Hood, from whom I had a melancholy epistle
yesterday; besides that Emma has decided objectionsLETTERS TO MOXON.
219
to her own and her friends’ Album verses being pub-
lished; but if she gets over that, they are decidedly
Hood’s,
“ Till we meet, farewell. Loves to Dash.*
“ C. L.”
The following introduced Mr. Patmore to Mr.
Moxon:—
TO MR. MOXON.
“	3	1828.
“ Dear M.
“ My friend Patmore, author of the ‘ Months,’
a very pretty publication—of sundry Essays in the * Lon-
don,’ ‘ New Monthly,’ &c., wants to dispose of a volume
or two of ‘ Tales.’ Perhaps they might chance to suit
Hurst; but be that as it may, he will call upon you,
under favour of my recommendation; and as he is
returning to 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
good fellow—and was poor John Scott’s second, as I
will be yours when you want one. May you never be
mine!
u Enfield.”
“ Yours truly,
“ C. L.
* The great dog, which was, at one time, the constant companion of
his long walks.220
LETTER TO BERNARD BARTON.
The following letter exemplifies some of the most
remarkable peculiarities of thought and intellectual sen-
timent which streaked, without darkening, Lamb’s
evening of life.
TO BERNARD BARTON.
“ March 25th, 1829.
“ Dear B. B.
“ 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 shillings. Cheap. And also one of whom I have
oft heard and had dreams, but never saw in the flesh—
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 iEneas—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.
“ 0, 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 ? Bow I will revel
in his cobwebs and subtleties, till my brain spins !
“ N.B I have writ in the old Hamlet—offer it toLETTERS TO COLERIDGE,
221
Mitford in my name, if he have not seen it. ’Tis woefully
below our editions of it. But keep it, if you like.
“ I do not mean this to go for a letter, only to apprize
you, that the parcel is hooked for you this 25th March,
1829, from the Four Swans, Bishopsgate. With both our
loves to Lucy and A. K.,
“ Yours ever,
“C. L.”
The following notes, undated, but of about 1829,
were addressed to Coleridge, under the genial care of
Mr. Gilman at Highgate :—
TO MR. COLERIDGE.
“ Dear C.
“ Your sonnet is capital. The paper ingenious,*
only that it split into four parts (besides a side splinter)
in the carriage. I have transferred it to the common
English paper, manufactured of rags, for better preser-
vation. 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.000
LETTERS TO GILMAN.
TO MR. COLERIDGE.
“ My Dear Coleridge,
“ With pain and grief, I must entreat you to
excuse us on Thursday. My head, though externally
correct, has had a severe concussion in my long illness,
and the very idea of an engagement hanging over for a
day or two, forbids my rest, and I get up miserable. I
am not well enough for company, I do assure you, no
other thing prevents me coming. I expect -----------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),
“Tuesday."	“ C. Lamb.
The next two noteletsare addressed to Coleridges
excellent host, on the occasion of borrowing and returning
the works of Fuller :—
TO MR. GILMAN.
“ 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.
* A sketch of Lamb, by an amateur artist.LETTERS TO GILMAN.
223
“ 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-Melcliisedec-
ish, hot, phaetontic. From my country lodgings at
Enfield.
<(
C. L.

TO MR. GILMAN.
“ Dear Gilman,
“ Pray do you, or S. T. C., immediately 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.”
The following two letters, addressed to Mr. H. C.
Ptobinson, when afflicted with rheumatism, are in Lamb’s
wildest strain of mirth. In the first, he pretends to
endure all the pain he believes his friend to be suffering224
LETTERS TO ROBINSON.
and attributes it to his own incautious habits; in the
second he attributes the suffering to his friend in a strain
of exaggeration, probably intended to make the reality
more tolerable by comparison:—
TO MR. H. C. ROBINSON.
“April 10th, 1829.
“ Dear Robinson,
“We are afraid you will slip from us from
England without again seeing us. It would be charity
to come and see me. I have these three days been laid
up with strong rheumatic pains, in loins, back, shoulders.
I shriek sometimes from the violence of them. I get
scarce any sleep, and the consequence is, I am restless,
and want to change sides as I lie, and I cannot turn
without resting on my hands, and so turning all my
body all at once, like a log with a lever. While this
rainy weather lasts, I have no hope of alleviation. I
have tried flannels and embrocation in vain. Just at
the hip joint the pangs sometimes are so excruciating,
that I cry out. It is as violent as the cramp, and far
more continuous. I am ashamed to whine about these
complaints to you, who can ill enter into them; but
indeed they are sharp. You go about, in rain or fine, at
all hours, without discommodity. I envy you your
immunity at a time of life not much removed from my
own. But you owe your exemption to temperance,
which it is too late for me to pursue. I, in my lifetime,
have had my good things. Hence my frame is brittle
—your’s strong as brass. I never knew any ailmentLETTERS TO ROBINSON.
225
you had. You can go out at night in all weathers, sit
up all hours. Well, I don’t want to moralise, I only
wish to say that if you are inclined to a game at double-
dumby, I would try and bolster up myself in a chair for
a rubber or so. My days are tedious, but less so, and
less painful, than my nights. May you never know the
pain and difficulty I have in writing so much ! Mary,
who is most kind, joins in the wish !
“ C. Lamb.”
THE COMPANION LETTER TO THE SAME.
(a week afterwards.)
“I do confess to mischief. It was the subtlest diaboli-
cal piece of malice heart of man has contrived. I have
no more rheumatism than that poker. Never was freer
from all pains and aches. Every joint sound, to the tip
of the ear from the extremity of the lesser toe. The
report of thy torments was blown circuitously here from
Bury. I could not resist the jeer. I conceived you
writhing, when you should just receive my congratula-
tions. How mad you’d be. Well, it is not in my
method to inflict pangs. I leave that to Heaven. But
in the existing pangs of a friend, I have a share. His
disquietude crowns my exemption. I imagine you
howling, and pace across the room, shooting out my free
arms, legs, &c., ~//\ /, this way and that way, with
an assurance of not kindling a spark of pain from them.
I deny that Nature meant us to sympathise with agonies.
Those face-contortions, retortions, distortions have the
merriness of antics. Nature meant them for farce—not226
LETTERS TO ROBINSON.
so pleasant to the actor, indeed; but Grimaldi cries
when we laugh, and ’tis but one that suffers to make
thousands rejoice.
“ You say that shampooing is ineffectual. But,
se, it is good, to show the intro volutions, extravolutions,
of which the animal frame is capable—to show what the
creature is receptible of, short of dissolution.
“ You are worst of nights, an’t you? You never was
rack’d, was you? I should like an authentic map of
those feelings.
“ You seem to have the flying gout. You can scarcely
screw a smile out of your face, can you? I sit at immu-
nity and sneer acl libitum. ’Tis now the time for you
to make good resolutions. I may go on breaking ’em
for anything the worse I find myself. YTour doctor
seems to keep you on the long cure. Precipitate heal-
ings are never good. Don’t come while you are so bad;
I shan’t he able to attend to your throes and the dumby
at once. I should like to know how slowly the pain
goes off. But don’t write, unless the motion will be
likely to make your sensibility more exquisite.
“ Your affectionate and truly healthy friend,
“ G. Lamb.
“ Mary thought a letter from me might amuse you in
your torment.”
The illness of Mr. Barton’s daughter drew from
Lamb the following expression of kindred loneliness
and sorrow:—LETTER TO BERNARD BARTON.
227
TO BERNARD BARTON.
“ Dear B. B.,
“ July 3 I'd1829.
“ 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 holydays, and a schoolfellow of hers
that was, with her. Still the house is not the same,
tho’ she is the same. Mary had been pleasing
herself with the prospect of 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 con-
gratulate 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 consumption, 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.”228
LETTER TO WORDSWORTH.
The following graphic sketch of the happy temperament
of one of Lamb’s intimate friends, now no more, is
contained in a letter to—
MR. WORDSWORTH.
“ A-- is well, and in harmony with himself and
the world. I don’t know how he, and those of his con-
stitution, keep their nerves so nicely balanced as they
do. Or, have they any? Or, are they made of pack-
thread? He is proof against 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 con-
jecture 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 his house set on fire,
or even want money. I have heard him express a
similar opinion of his own infallibility. I keep acting
here Heautontimorumenos.
*******
“ Have you seen a curious letter in the MorningLETTER TO AYRTON.
229
Chronicle, by C. L.,* 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.”
In the Spring of the year, Mr. Murray, the eminent
publisher, through one of Lamb’s oldest and most
cherished friends, Mr. Ayrton, proposed that he should
undertake a continuation of his Specimens of the Old
English Dramatists. The proposal was communicated
by Mr. Ayrton to Lamb, then at Enfield, and then too
painfully anxious for the recovery of Miss Isola, who was
dangerously ill in Suffolk, to make the arrangement
desired. The following is the reply:—
TO MR. AYRTON.
“ Mr. Westwood’s, Chase Side, Enfield.
14	, 1830.
“ My dear Ayrton,
“ Your letter, which was only not so pleasant
as your appearance would have been, has revived some
old images; Phillips,f (not the Colonel), with his few
* Capel Lofft, a barrister residing in Suffolk, a well-known whig
and friend of Major Wyvil and Major Cartwright, who sometimes half
vexed Lamb by signing, as he had a right, their common initials to a
sonnet. He wrote a very vehement letter, contending that the deten-
tion of Napoleon on board a vessel off the coast, preparatory to his
being sent to St. Helena, was illegal, and that the captain of the vessel
would be compelled to surrender him in obedience to a writ of Habeas
Corpus.
+ Edward Phillips, Esq., Secretary to the Right Hon. Charles230
LETTER TO AYRTON.
hairs bristling up at the charge of a revoke, which he
declares impossible; the old Captain’s significant nod
over the right shoulder* (was it not ?); Mrs. B^----------’s
determined questioning of the score, after the game was
absolutely gone to the d—1; the plain, but hospitable
cold boiled-beef suppers at sideboard; all which
fancies, redolent of middle age and strengthful spirits,
come across us ever and anon in this vale of deliberate
senectitude, ycleped Enfield.
“ You imagine a deep gulf between you and us; and
there is a pitiable hiatus in between St. James’s
Park and this extremity of Middlesex. But the mere
distance in turnpike roads is a trifle. The roof of a
coach swings you down in an hour or two. We have a
sure hot joint on a Sunday, and when had we better ?
I suppose you know that ill health has obliged us to
give up housekeeping, but we have an asylum at the
very next door—only twenty-four inches further from
town, which is not material in a country expedition—
where a table d'hote is kept for us, without trouble on
our parts, and we adjourn after dinner, when one of the
Abbott, Speaker of the House of Commons. The “ Colonel ” alluded
to was the Lieutenant of Marines who accompanied Capt. Cook in his
last voyage, and on shore with that great man when he fell a victim to
Ins humanity. On the death of his commander, Lieutenant Phillips,
himself wounded, swam off to the boats; but seeing one of his
marines struggling in the water to escape the natives who were pursuing
him, gallantly swam back, protected his man at the peril of his own
life, and both reached their boat in safety. He afterwards married
v that accomplished and amiable daughter of Dr. Burney, whose name
so frequently occurs in the Diary and Correspondence of her sister,
Madame D’Arblay.
* Captain (afterwards Admiral), James Burney.LETTER TO AYRTON.
23 L
old world (old friends) drops casually down among us.
Come and find us out; and seal our judicious change
with your approbation, whenever the whim bites, or the
sun prompts. No need of announcement, for we are
sure to he at home.
“ I keep putting off the subject of my answer. In
truth I am not in spirits at present to see Mr. Murray
on such a business; but pray offer him my acknowledg-
ments, and an assurance that I should like at least one
of his propositions, as I have so much additional matter
for the Specimens, as might make two volumes in all;
or one (new edition) omitting such better known authors
as Beaumont and Fletcher, Jonson, &c.
“ But we are both in trouble at present. A very dear
young friend of ours, who passed her Christmas holidays
here, has been taken dangerously ill with a fever, from
which she is very precariously recovering, and I expect
a summons to fetch her when she is well enough to bear
the journey from Bury. It is Emma Isola, with whom
we got acquainted at our first visit to your sister, at
Cambridge, and she has been an occasional inmate with
us—and of late years much more frequently—ever since.
While she is in this danger, and till she is out of it,
and here in a probable way to recovery, I feel that I have
no spirits for an engagement of any kind. It has been
a terrible shock to us; therefore I beg that you will
make my handsomest excuses to Mr. Murray.
“ Our very kindest loves to Mrs. A. and the younger
A.’s.
“ Your unforgotten,
“ C. Lamb.1’232
LETTER TO MRS. WILLIAMS.
Good tidings soon reached Lamb of Miss Isola’s
health, and he went to Fornham to bring her, for a
month’s visit, to Enfield. The following are portions
of letters addressed to the lady from whose care he had
removed her, after their arrival at home, other parts of
which have been already published.
TO MRS. WILLIAMS.
“ Enfield, 2nd, 1830.
“Dear Madam,
“ I have great pleasure in letting you know
Miss Isola has suffered very little from fatigue on her
long journey; I am ashamed to say that I came home
rather the more tired of the two. But I am a very
unpractised traveller. We found my sister very well in
health, only a little impatient to see her; and, after a
few hysterical tears for gladness, all was comfortable
again. We arrived here from Epping between five
and six.
“ How I employed myself between Epping and Enfield,
the poor verses in the front of my paper may inform
you, which you may please to christen an ‘ Acrostic in
a cross-road,’ and which I wish were worthier of the
lady they refer to, but I trust you will plead my pardon
to her on a subject so delicate as a lady's good
Your candour must acknowledge that they are written
straight. And now, dear madam, I have left myself
hardly space to express my sense of the friendly recep-
tion I found at Fornham. Mr. Williams will tell you
that we had the pleasure of a slight meeting with himLETTER TO MRS. WILLIAMS.
233
on the road, where I could almost have told him, but
that it seemed ungracious, that such had been your
hospitality, that I scarcely missed the good master of
the family at Fomham, though heartily I should have
rejoiced to have made a little longer acquaintance with
him. I will say nothing of our deeper obligations to
both of you, because I think we agreed at Fomham
that gratitude may be over-exacted on the part of the
obliging, and over-expressed on the part of the obliged
person.
^	VU	*1/	%T0
^ ^
“ Miss Isola is writing, and will tell you that we
are going on very comfortably. Her sister is just come.
She blames my last verses, as being more written on
Mr. Williams than on yourself; but how should I have
parted whom a Superior Power has brought together?
I beg you will jointly accept of all our best respects,
and pardon your obsequious, if not troublesome corre-
spondent,	{{ T
“ P.S.—I am the worst folder-up of a letter in the
world, except certain Hottentots, in the land of Caffre,
who never fold up their letters at all, writing very badly
upon skins, &c.”
The following contains Lamb’s account of the same
journey, addressed to Buxton :—234
LETTER TO MRS. HAZLITT.
TO MRS. HAZLITT.
“ May 2ith, 1830. .
“Mary’s love? Yes. Mary Lamb is quite well.
“ 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. 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
sony 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. I should have come sooner, but
was waiting a summons to Buiy. 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 withLETTER TO MRS. HAZLITT.
235
us, ancl 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 trouble-
some fellow-passengers in a stage-coach, that is called a
well-informed man. For twenty miles, we discoursed
about the properties of steam, probabilities of carriages
by ditto, till all my 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 I thought we should 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 depended, I
believed, 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, scien-
tific or philosophical, for the remainder of the journey.
S------was here yesterday, and as learned to the full as
my fellow-traveller. What a pity that he will spoil a
wit, and a most pleasant fellow (as he is) by wisdom.
N. Y-------f is as good, and as odd as ever. We had a
dispute about the word ‘ heir,’ which I contended was
pronounced like ‘air;’ he said that it might be in
* This little anecdote was told by Lamb in a letter previously
published, but not quite so richly as here.
f A very old and dear friend of Lamb who had just been called to
the bar.236
LETTER TO MRS. HAZLITT.
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 hayer; he thought it might even vitiate a cause,
if a counsel pronounced it otherwise. 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 sort
of things well ? Those little things were of more con-
sequence 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 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.”
“ Enfield, Saturday.”
The esteem which Lamb had always cherished for
Mr. Rogers, was quickened into a livelier feeling by
the generous interest which the poet took in the successLETTER TO BERNARD BARTON.
237
of Mr. Moxon, who was starting as a publisher. The
following little note shows the state of his feelings at
this time towards two distinguished persons.
TO MR. MOXON.
“ Dear M.,	“ Enfield, Tuesday.”
“ I dined with your and my Rogers, at Mr.
Cary’s, yesterday. Cary consulted me on the 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.”
The petty criticisms on the small volume of “ Album
Verses,” by which a genial trifle, intended to mark the
commencement of the career of a dear friend, was sub-
jected to absurd severity, and which called forth a little
indignant poem from the Laureate, provoked the follow-
ing notice from Lamb, in a letter addressed
TO BERNARD BARTON.
“DearB. B„	“ August mh, mo.
“ My address is 34, Southampton Buildings,
Holbom. For God’s sake do not let me be pester’d238
LETTER TO BERNARD BARTON.
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 hundred
thousandth part of the tythe of a half farthing. I am
too old a Militant for that. How noble, tlio’, in B. S.,*
to come forward for an old friend, who had treated him
so unworthily.—
“ Moxon has a shop without customers, I a book with-
out readers. But what a clamour against a poor colle-c-
tion of Album verses, as if we had put forth an Epic.
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 rouud 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 poem or two. But if you’d have me not
sick, no more of Annuals.
“ C. L., Ex-Elia.
“ Love to Lucy and A. K. always.”
* Robert Southey.LETTER TO MOXON.
239
In 3 830, Lamb tried the experiment of lodging a little
while in London; but Miss Lamb’s malady compelled
him to return to the solitude of Enfield. He thus
communicates the sad state of his sister:—
TO MR. MOXON.
“ Dear Moxon,
“ I have brought my sister to Enfield, 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 anything 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 Mr. Packman’s, and excuse my not
writing to him. I dare not write, or receive a letter in
her presence; every little task so agitates her. Westwood
will receive any letter for me, and give it me privately.
“ Pray assure Southey of my kindliest feelings towards
him, and, if you do not see him, send this to him.
“ Kindest remembrances to your sister, and believe
me ever
“ Yours,
“ C. Lamb.
“ Ptemember me kindly to the Allsops.”
The following curious piece of modern Latin was
addressed240
LETTER TO BERNARD BARTON.
TO BERNARD BARTON.
“April, 1831.
“ Vir Bone !
“ Recepi literas tuas amicissimas, et in mentem
venit responsuro milii, vel raro, vel nunquam, inter nos
intercedisse Latinam linguam, organum rescribendi,
loquendive. Epistolse tuae, Plinianis elegantiis (supra
quod Tremulo deceat) refertae, tam a verbis Plinianis
adeo abhorrent, ut ne vocem quamquam (Romanam sci-
licet) habere videaris, quam ‘ ad canem,’ ut aiunt, ‘ rejectare
possis.’ Forsan desuetudo Latinissandi ad vemaculam
linguam usitandam, plusquam opus sit, coegit. Per
adagia quaedam nota, et in ore omnium pervulgata, ad
Latinitatis perditae recuperationem revocare te institui.
“ Felis in abaco est, et aegre videt.
“ Omne quod splendet nequaquam aurum putes.
“ Imponas equomendicum,equitabitidem ad diabolum.
“ Fur commode a fure prenditur.
“ 0 Maria, Maria, valde contraria. quomodo crescit
hortulus tuus ?
“ Nunc majora canamus.
“ Thomas, Thomas, de Islington, uxorem duxit die
nupera Dominica. Reduxit domum postera. Succedenti
baculum emit. Postridie ferit illam. iEgrescit ilia
subsequenti. Proxima (nempe Veneris) est mortua.
Plurimum gestiit Thomas, quod appropinquanti Sabbato
efferenda sit.
Horner quidam Johann ulus in angulo sedebat, arto-
creas quasdam deglutiens. Inseruit pollices, pruna nanaLETTERS TO MOXON.
241
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 (Edipus fies.
“ Qua ratione assimulandus sit equus Tremulo ?
“ Quippe cui tota communicatio sit per Hay et Neigh,
juxta consilium illud Dominicum, ‘Fiat omnis communi-
catio vestra Yea et Nay.’
“ In his nugis caram diem consumo, dum invigilo vale-
tudini 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.”
Mr. Moxon, having become the publisher of “ The
Englishmans Magazine,” obtained Lamb’s aid, as a
contributor of miscellaneous articles, which were arranged
to appear under the comprehensive title of “ Peter’s
Net.” The following accompanied his first contribution
in which some reminiscences of the Royal Academy
were enshrined.
R242
LETTERS TO MOXON.
TO MR. MOXON.
“DearM.,	“August, 1831.
“ The R.A. here memorised 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 Proctor ?—his chambers
are in Lincoln’s Inn, at Montague’s ; or of Janus Wea-
thercock ?—both of their prose is capital. Don’t encou-
rage 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 signature forces it
to be all characteristic of the one man, Elia, or the one
man, Peter, which cramped me formerly. 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 Athenseum 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 not it 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 aLETTERS TO MOXON.
243
poem I envy—that and Montgomery’s ‘ Last Man: ’ I
envy the writers, because I feel I could have done some-
thing like them.	4< T „
The following contains Lamb’s characteristic acknow-
ledgment of a payment on account of these contributions.
TO MR. MOXON. •
“Sept. 5th, 1831.
“ Dear M.,
“ Your letter’s contents pleased me. I am
only afraid of taxing you. Yet I wTant a stimulus, or I
think I should drag sadly. I shall keep the monies in
trust, till I see you fairly over the next 1st January.
Then I shall look upon ’em as earned. No part of your
letter gave me more pleasure (no, not the 10Z., 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.”
The magazine, although enriched with Lamb’s articles,
and some others of great merit, did not meet with a suc-
cess so rapid as to requite the proprietor for the labour
and anxiety of its production. The following is Lamb's
letter, in reply to one announcing a determination to dis-
continue its publication :—
TO MR. MOXON.
« Oct. 24th, 1831.
“ To address an abdicated monarch is a nice
point of breeding. To give him his lost titles is to mock
r 2244
LETTERS TO MOXON.
him; to withhold ’em is to wound him. But his minis-
ter, who falls with him, may be gracefully sympathetic.
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 renunciation, in a letter, which,
without flattery, would have made an ‘ Article,’ and
which, rarely as I keep letters, shall be preserved, com-
fort me a little. Will it please, or plague you, to say
that when your parcel came I cursed 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 adjusting 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 1OZ., by and by, accruing to me—
Devil's	money ;*(you are sanguine, say ll. 10s.); that I
* Alluding to a little extravagance of Lamb’s—scarcely worth
recollecting—in emulation of the (6 Devil’s Walk” of Southey and Co.LETTERS TO MOXON.
245
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 proposal will I
accept of.
“ The Rev. Mr.--------, whose name you have left illegi-
ble (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 ? * How-
ever, 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 light his pipe
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 dropping in to
tea, unlooked for, about five, stopping bread-and-cheese
and gin-and-water, is worth a thousand Sundays. I am
naturally miserable on a Sunday; but a week-day even-
ing and supper is like old times. Set out now, and give
no time to deliberation.
«
* Referring to a chapel opposite his lodging at Enfield.246
LETTERS TO MOXON.
“ P.S.—The second volume of ‘ Elia ’ is delightful
(ly bound, I mean), and quite cheap. Why, man, ’tis a
unique!
“ 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 things
monthly, it seemed a labour above Hercules’ ‘ 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 Enfield,
October 24, or ‘ last day but one for receiving articles
that can be inserted.’ ”
The following was addressed, soon after,
TO MR. MOXON.
« 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,LETTERS TO MOXON.
247
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
consciousness of having been guilty of an atrocious
libel. As the devil would have it, a man 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
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
t
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 to
have a conscience, as every Christian gentleman should
have; his dear old face is insusceptible of the twist they
call a sneer, yet he is apprehensive 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 Museum.
“Come when the weather will possibly let you; I248
LETTERS TO MOXON.
want to see the Wordsworths, but I do not much like to
be all night away. It is dull enough to he here toge-
ther, but it is duller to leave Mary; in short, it is pain-
ful, and in a flying visit I should hardly catch them. I
have no beds for them if they came down, 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 com-
mission. Now then: there are left at Miss Buffon's,
the * Tales of the Castle,’ and certain volumes of the
‘ Retrospective Review.’ The first should be conveyed
to Novello’s, and the Previews should he taken to Tal-
fourd’s office, ground-floor, east side, Elm Court, Middle
Temple, to whom I should have written, hut my spirits
are wretched; it is quite an effort to write this. So,
with the ‘ Life,' I have cut you out three pieces of ser-
vice. 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 he impos-
sible to expect you, but do not let a practicable Sunday
pass. We are always at home.
“ Mary joins in remembrances to your sister, whom
we hope to see in any fine-ish weather, w’hen she ’ll
venture.
“ Remember us to Allsop, and all the dead people;
to whom, and to London, we seem dead.”LETTER TO TALFOURD.
249
In February, 1833, the following letter was addressed
by Lamb to the editor, on his being made Seijeant:—
TO MR. SERJEANT TALFOURD.
“ My dear T.,
“Now cannot I call him Serjeant; what is
there in a coif? Those canvas-sleeves protective from
ink,* when he was a law-chit—a	(let the
leathern apron be apocryphal) do more ’specially plead
to the Jury Court, of old memory. The costume (will
he agnize it ?) was as of a desk-fellow, or Socius Plutei.
Methought I spied a brother!
“ That familiarity is extinct for ever. Curse me if I
can call him Mr. Serjeant—except, mark me, in company.
Honour where honour is due; but should he ever visit
us, (do you think he ever will, Mary ?) what a distinction
should I keep up between him and our less fortunate
friend, H. C. R.! Decent respect shall always be the
Crabb’s—but, somehow, short of reverence.
“ Well, of my old friends, I have lived to see two
knighted, one made a judge, another in a fair way to it.
Why am I restive ? why stands my sun upon Gibeah ?
“ Variously, my dear Mrs. Talfourd, [I can be more
familiar with her !] Mrs. Serjeant Talfourd,—my sister
prompts me—(these ladies stand upon ceremonies)—has
the congratulable news affected the members of our small
* Mr. Lamb always insisted that the costume referred to was worn
when he first gladdened his young friend hy a call at Mr. Chitty’s
chambers. I am afraid it is all apocryphal.250
LETTER TO MOXON,
community. Mary comprehended it at once, and entered
into it heartily. Mrs. W-----was, as usual, perverse ;
wouldn’t, or couldn’t, understand it. A Seijeant ? She
thought Mr. T. was in the law. Didn’t know that he
ever ’listed.
“ Emma alone truly sympathised.	had a silk
gown come home that very day, and has precedence
before her learned sisters accordingly.
“ We are going to drink the health of Mr. and
Mrs. Serjeant, with all the young seijeantry—and that
is all that I can see that I shall get by the promotion.
“ Yalete, et mementote amici quondam vestri humillimi,
“C. L.”
The following note to Mr. Moxon, on some long
forgotten occasion of momentary displeasure, the nature
and object of which is uncertain,—contains a fantastical
exaggeration of anger, which, judged by those who knew
the writer, will only illustrate the entire absence of all
the bad passions of hatred and contempt it feigns.
TO MR. MOXON.
« 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
4
most, the wit or justness of the sentiment. It has my
cordial approbation. My sense of meum and tuum
applauds it. I maintain it, the eighth commandmentLETTER TO MOXON.
251
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 your
hands from picking and stealing, is no ways referable to
his acquists. I doubt whether bearing false witness
I
against thy neighbour at all contemplated 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! Has the irreverent ark-toucher been struck blind,
I wonder ? The more I think of him, the less I think
of him. His meanness is invisible with aid of solar
microscope. My moral eye smarts at him. The less
Ilea that bites little fleas! The great Beast ! The
beggarly 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. Maledicatur
in extremis!
“C. L.”
In the Spring of 1833, Lamb made his last removal
from Enfield to Edmonton. He was about to lose the
society of Miss Isola, on the eve of marriage, and deter-
mined to live altogether with his sister, whether in her
sanity or her madness. This change was announced in
the following letter252
LETTER TO WORDSWORTH.
TO MR. WORDSWORTH.
“ of nearly.
“ Dear Wordsworth,
“ Your letter, save in what respects ’ your dear
sister’s health, cheered me in my new solitude. Mary
is ill again. Her illnesses encroach yearly. The last
was three months, followed by two of depression most
dreadful. I look back upon her earlier attacks with
longing. Nice little durations of six weeks or so, fol-
lowed 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 lachrymse rerum ! and you and I must bear it.
“ To lay a little more load on it, a circumstance has
happened, cujus pars magnafui, 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 toLETTER TO WORDSWORTH.
253
be wedded to Moxon, at the end of August—so ‘ perish
the roses and the flowers ’—how is it ?
“Now to the brighter side. I am emancipated from
Enfield. 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 avail myself.
I have few friends left there, one or two though, most
beloved. But London streets and faces cheer me inex-
pressibly, though of the latter, there should be not one
known one 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 composition
it served me as illustrative.
“ I want you in the 4 Popular Fallacies ’ * to like the
4 Home that is no home,’ and 4 Bising with the lark.’
441 am feeble, but cheerful in this my genial hot
weather. Walked sixteen miles yesterday. I can’t read
much in summer time.
44 With my kindest love to all, and prayers for dear
Dorothy,
441 remain, most affectionately, yours,
44 C. Lamb.
44 At Mr. Walden’s, Church Street, Edmonton,
Middlesex.
44 Moxon has introduced Emma to Bogers, and he
smiles upon the project. I have given E. my Milton,
* A series of articles contributed, under this title, by Lamb, to the
“ New Monthly Magazine.,,254
LETTER TO MOXON.
(will you pardon me ? *) in part of a portion. It hangs
famously in his Murray-like shop.”
On the approach of the wedding-day, fixed for 30th
July, Lamb turned to the account of a half-tearful mer-
riment, the gift of a watch to the young lady whom he
was about to lose.
TO MR. MOXON.
“ 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 you tell us what’s o’clock ? ’ and she
answers them punctually. She loses all her time look-
ing 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!
“ 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.
* It had been proposed by Lamb that Mr. W. should be the pos-
sessor of the portrait if he outlived his friend, and that afterwards it
was to be bequeathed to Christ’s College, Cambridge.LETTER TO MR. AND MRS. MOXON.
255
“ 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.
“ Your 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.”
Miss Lamb was in the sad state of mental estrange-
ment up to the day of the wedding ; but then in the
constant companionship of her brother at Edmonton.
The following cluster of little letters to the new married
pair—the first from Charles, introducing one from Mary
—shows the happy effect of the news on her mental
health.
TO MR. AND MRS. MOXON.
“ 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
* Written on the opposite page to that in which the previous affec
tionate banter appears.256
LETTER TO EMMA AND EDWARD MOXON.
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 gpt home from Dover Street, by Evans, half 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 unan-
swered 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
* The wife of the landlord of the house at Edmonton.LETTER TO REV. H. F. CARY.
257
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:—
u Wednesday. '
“ Dears, again,
“ Your letter interrupted a seventh game at
piquet which we were having, after walking to Weight’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.”
Lamb’s latter days were brightened by the frequent—
latterly periodical—hospitality of the admirable trans-
lator of Dante, at the British Museum. The following
was addressed to this new friend lately acquired, but
who became an old friend at once, while Mr. and Mrs.
Moxon were on their wedding tour:—
TO REV. H. F. CARY.
“ Dear Sir,	“Sept’ 1833'
“ Your packet I have only just received, owing,
I suppose, to the absence of Moxon, who is flaunting it258
LETTER TO REV. H. F. CARY.
about a 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 anywhere.
“ I will take my time with Darley’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 anything
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 vou shirk a word.
‘ Fairfax’s ‘ Tasso ’ is no translation at all. It’s 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 Cary,
“ Yours ever,
“ C. Lamb.
“ Has M. sent you ‘ Elia,’ second volume? if not, he
shall.”LETTERS TO MOXON.
259
Miss Lamb did not escape all the cares of housekeeping
by the new arrangement; the following little note shows
the grotesque uses to which Lamb turned the smaller
household anxieties:—
TO MR. MOXON.
“ 1333.
“ Dear M.,
“ Mary and I are very poorly. We have had
a sick child, who, sleeping or not sleeping, next me,
with a pasteboard partition between, killed my sleep.
The little bastard is gone. My bedfellows are cough
and cramp ; we sleep three in a bed. Domestic arrange-
ments (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.”
The following is Lamb’s reply to a welcome communi-
cation of Sonnets, addressed by the bridegroom to the fair
object of Lamb’s regard—beautiful in themselves—and
endeared to Lamb by honoured memories and generous
hopes:—260
LETTERS TO MOXON.
TO MR. MOXON.
“ Nov. 29th, 1833.
“ Mary is of opinion with me, that two of these
Sonnets are of a higher grade than any poetry you have
done yet. The one to Emma is so pretty ! I have only
allowed myself to transpose a wrord in the third line.
Sacred shall it be from any intermeddling of mine. But
we jointly beg that you will make four lines in the room
of the four last. Bead ‘ 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 hanged if I furnish a line towards it. So
much for that. The next best is to the Ocean.
c 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 !LETTERS TO MOXON.
261
“ Perhaps 1 0 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.
“ 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 earlier. 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 tra-
verse Wardour Street, &c., when, diabolically, I was
interrupted by
Heigh-ho!
Little Barrow!
Emma knows him—and prevailed on to spend the day
at his sister’s, where was an album, and (0, 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 distanced. Knowles’
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,
6 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,362
LETTER TO ROGERS.
lest the daughters triumph! I am at the end of my
tether. I wish you could 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 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 Pawnbrokeress’s album. She is a Miss
Brown, engaged to a Mr. White. One of the lines was
(I forgot the rest—but she had them at twenty-four
hours’ notice; she is going out to India with her hus-
band) :—
c May your fame,
And fortune, Frances, Whiten with your name ! ’
Not bad as a pun. I will expect you before two on
Tuesday. I am well and happy, tell E.”
The following is Lamb’s letter of acknowledgment
to the author of the ‘ Pleasures of Memory,’ for an early
copy of his ‘ Illustrated Poems,’ of a share in the publi-
cation of which, Mr. Moxon was ‘justly vain.’ The
artistical allusions are to Stothard; the allusions to the
poet’s own kindnesses need no explanation to those who
have been enabled by circumstances, which now and
then transpire, to guess at the generous course of
his life.LETTER TO ROGERS.
263
TO MR. ROGERS.
“Dec. 1833.
“ My dear Sir,
“ Your book, by the unremitting punctuality of
your publisher, has reached me thus early. I have not
opened it, nor will till to-morrow, when I promise myself
a thorough reading of it. The ‘ Pleasures of Memory ’
was the first school-present I made to Mrs. Moxon; it
has those nice woodcuts, and I believe she keeps it still.
Believe me, that all the kindness you have shown to the
husband of that excellent person seems done unto my-
self. I have tried my hand at a sonnet, in the Times.
But the turn I gave it, though I hoped it would not
displease you, I thought might not be equally agreeable
to your artist. 1 met that dear old man at poor Henry’s,
with you, and again at Cary’s, and it was sublime to see
him sit, deaf, and enjoy all that was going on in mirth
with the company. He reposed upon the many graceful,
many fantastic images he had created; with them he
dined, and took wine. I have ventured at an antagonist
copy of verses, in the Athenaeum, to him, in which he is
as everything, and you as nothing. He is no lawyer
who cannot take two sides. But I am jealous of the
combination of the sister arts. Let them sparkle apart.
What injury (short of the theatres) did not Boydell’s
Shakspeare Gallery do me with Shakspeare ? to have
Opie’s Shakspeare, Northcote’s Shakspeare, light-headed
Fuseli’s Shakspeare, heavy-headed Romney’s Shakspeare,
wooden-headed West’s Shakspeare, (though he did the
best in Lear), deaf-headed Reynolds’s Shakspeare, instead264
LETTER TO ROGERS.
of my, and everybody’s Shakspeare; to be tied down to
an authentic face of Juliet! to have Imogen’s portrait!
to confine the illimitable! I like you and Stothard,
(you best) but ‘ out upon this half-faced fellowship! ’ Sir,
when I have read the book, I may trouble you, through
Moxon, with some faint criticisms. It is not the flatter-
ingest compliment in a letter to an author to say, you
have not read his book yet. But the devil of a reader
he must be, who prances through it in five minutes;
and no longer have I received the parcel. It was a
little tantalising to me to receive a letter from Landor,
Gebir Landor, from Florence, to say he was just sitting
down to read my ‘ Elia,’ just received; but the letter
was to go out before the reading. There are calamities
in authorship, which only authors know. I am going to
call on Moxon on Monday, if the throng of carriages in
Dover Street, on the morn of publication, do not barricade
me out.
“ With many thanks, and most respectful remem-
brances to your sister,
“ Yours,
“ C. Lamb.
“ Have you seen Coleridge’s happy exemplification in
English of the Ovidian Elegiac metre ?
In the Hexameter rises the fountain’s silvery current,
In the Pentameter aye falling in melody down.
“ My sister is papering up the book—careful soul! ”
Lamb and his sister were now, for the last year of265
LETTER TO MISS FRYER.
their united lives, always together. What his feelings
were in this companionship, when his beloved associate
was deprived of reason, will be seen in the following
most affecting letter, to an old schoolfellow and very dear
friend of Mrs. Moxon’s—since dead—who took an earnest
interest in their welfare.
TO MISS FRYER.
“ Feb. 14, 1834.
“ Dear Miss Fryer,
“ Your letter found me just returned from
keeping my birthday (pretty innocent!) at Dover Street.
I see them pretty often. I have since had letters of
business to write, or should have replied earlier. In one
word, be less uneasy about me ; I bear my privations
very well; I am not in the depths of desolation, as
heretofore. Your admonitions are not lost upon me.
Your kindness has sunk into my heart. Have faith in
me ! It is no new thing for me to be left to my sister.
When she is not violent, her rambling chat is better to
me than the sense and sanity of this world. Her heart
is obscured, not buried; it breaks out occasionally; and
one can discern a strong mind struggling with the
billows that have gone over it. I could be nowhere
happier than under the same roof with her. Her memory
is unnaturally strong; and from ages past, if we may so
call the earliest records of our poor life, she fetches
thousands of names and things that never would have
dawned upon me again, and thousands from the ten
years she lived before me. What took place from early266
LETTER TO WORDSWORTH.
girlhood to her coming of age principally, lives again
(every important thing, and every trifle) in her brain,
with the vividness of real presence. For twelve hours
incessantly she will pour out without intermission, all
her past life, forgetting nothing, pouring out name after
name to the Waldens, as a dream; sense and nonsense;
truths and errors huddled together; a medley between
inspiration and possession. What things we are! I
know you will bear with me, talking of these things.
It seems to ease me, for I have nobody to tell these
things to now. Emma, I see, has got a harp ! and is
learning to play. She has framed her three Walton
pictures, and pretty they look. That is a book you
should read ; such sweet religion in it, next to Wool-
man’s ! though the subject be baits, and hooks, and
worms, and fishes. She has my copy at present, to do
two more from.
“ Very, very tired! I began this epistle, having been
epistolising all the morning, and very kindly would I end
it, could I find adequate expressions to your kindness.
We did set our minds on seeing you in spring. One of
us will indubitably. But I am not skilled in almanac
learning, to know when spring precisely begins and ends.
Pardon my blots; I am glad you like your book. I wish
it had been half as worthy of your acceptance as John
Woolman. But ’tis a good-natured book.”
A few days afterwards Lamb’s passionate desire to
serve a most deserving friend broke out in the following
earnest little letter:—LETTER TO WORDSWORTH.
267
TO MR. WORDSWORTH.
“ Church Street, Edmonton,
“February 22, 1834.
“ Dear Wordsworth,
“ I write from a house of mourning. The
oldest and best friends I have left 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 L------ M-------; 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. 0, if you can recom-
mend 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. How good you are to me. Yours
with fervour of friendship, for ever,
“C. L.
“ If you want references, the Bishop of Carlisle may
be one. L-------’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 handsome268
LETTER TO CARY.
annuity on her for life. In short, all the family are a
sound rock.”
A quiet dinner at the British Museum with Mr. Cary
once a-month, to which Lamb looked forward with almost
boyish eagerness, was now almost his only festival. In
a little note to his host about this time, he hints at one
of his few physical tastes.—* We are thinking,’ he says,
‘ of roast shoulder of mutton with onion sauce, but I
scorn to prescribe to the hospitalities of mine host.’
The following, after these festivities had been inter-
rupted by Mr. Cary’s visit to the Continent, is their
last memorial:—
TO MR. CARY.
« 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 Moselle 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 Bibliothecae.
“ C. and M. Lamb.
“ I have only got your note just now
periniqui Moxoni. ”LETTER TO MRS. DYER.
209
The following little note has a mournful interest, as
Lamb’s last scrap of writing. It is dated on the very
day on which erysipelas followed the accident, apparently
trifling, wThich, five days after, terminated in his death.
It is addressed to the wife of his oldest surviving
friend :—
TO MRS. DYER.
Dec. 22ncl, 1834.
“ Dear Mrs. Dyer,
“ I am very uneasy about a Book which I
either have lost, or left at your house on Thursday. It
was the hook I went out to fetch from Miss JBuffam’s,
while the tripe was frying. It is called ‘ Phillip’s
Tlieatrum Poetarum,’ hut it is an English hook. I think
I left it in the parlour. It is Mr. Cary’s hook, and I
would not lose it for the world. Pray, if you find it,
book it at the Swan, Snow Hill, by an Edmonton stage
immediately, directed to Mr. Lamb, Church Street,
Edmonton, or write to say you cannot find it. I am
quite anxious about it. If it is lost, I shall never like
tripe again.
“ With kindest love to Mr. Dver and all,
“ Yours truly,
“ C. Lamb.”CHAPTER THE LAST.
LAMB’S WEDNESDAY NIGHTS COMPARED WITH THE EVENINGS OP
HOLLAND HOUSE — HIS DEAD COMPANIONS, DYER, GODWIN,
THELWALL, HAZLITT, BARNES, HAYDON, COLERIDGE, AND
OTHERS—LAST GLIMPSES OF CHARLES AND MARY LAMB.
“ Gone; all are gone, the old familiar faces! ”
Two circles of rare social enjoyment — differing as
widely as possible in all external circumstances—but
each superior in its kind to all others, during the same
period frankly opened to men of letters—now existing
only in the memories of those who are fast departing
from us—may, without offence, be placed side by side
in grateful recollection ; they are the dinners at Holland
House and the suppers of “ the Lambs ” at the Temple,
Great Russell Street, and Islington. Strange, at first,
as this juxta-position may seem, a little reflection will
convince the few survivors who have enjoyed both, that
it involves no injustice to either; while with those who
are too young to have been admitted to these rare festi-
vities, we may exercise the privilege of age by boasting
what good fellowship was once enjoyed, and what “ good
talk ” there was once in the world!HOLLAND HOUSE.
271
But let us call to mind the aspects of each scene, before
we attempt to tell of the conversation, which will be harder
to recall and impossible to characterise. And first, let
us invite the reader to assist at a dinner at Holland House
in the height of the London and Parliamentary season,
say a Saturday in June. It is scarcely seven—for the
luxuries of the house are enhanced by a punctuality in the
main object of the day, which yields to no dilatory guest
of whatever pretension—and you are seated in an oblong
room, rich in old gilding, opposite a deep recess, pierced
by large old windows through which the rich branches of
trees bathed in golden light, just admit the faint outline
of the Surrey Hills. Among the guests are some per-
haps of the highest rank, always some of high political
importance, about whom the interest of busy life gathers,
intermixed with others eminent already in literature or
art, or of that dawning promise which the hostess delights
to discover and the host to smile on. All are assembled
for the purpose of enjoyment; the anxieties of the minis-
ter, the feverish struggles of the partisan, the silent toils
of the artist or critic, are finished for the week; pro-
fessional and literary jealousies are hushed; sickness,
decrepitude and death, are silently voted shadows ; and
the brilliant assemblage is prepared to exercise to the
highest degree the extraordinary privilege of mortals to
live in the knowledge of mortality without its conscious-
ness, and to people the present hour with delights, as if
a man lived and laughed and enjoyed in this world for
ever. Every appliance of physical luxury which the most
delicate art can supply, attends on each ; every faint wish
which luxury creates is anticipated; the noblest and most272
HOLLAND HOUSE.
gracious countenance in the world smiles over the happi-
ness it is diffusing, and redoubles it by cordial invitations
and encouraging words, which set the humblest stranger
guest at perfect ease. As the dinner merges into the
dessert, and the sunset casts a richer glow on the branches,
still, or lightly waving in the evening light, and on the
scene within, the harmony of all sensations becomes more
perfect; a delighted and delighting chuckle invites atten-
tion to some joyous sally of the richest intellectual wit
reflected in the faces of all, even to the favourite page in
green, who attends his mistress with duty like that of the
antique world; the choicest wines are enhanced in their
liberal but temperate use by the vista opened in Lord
Holland’s tales of bacchanalian evenings at Brookes’s,
with Fox and Sheridan, when potations deeper and more
serious rewarded the Statesman’s toils and shortened his
days; until at length the serener pleasure of conversa-
tion, of the now carelessly scattered groups, is enjoyed in
that old, long, unrivalled library in which Addison mused,
and wrote, and drank; where every living grace attends;
“ and more than echoes talk along the walls.” One
happy peculiarity of these assemblies was, the number of
persons in different stations and of various celebrity, who
were gratified by seeing, still more, in hearing and know-
ing each other; the statesman was relieved from care by
association with the poet of whom he had heard and par-
tially read; and the poet was elevated by the courtesy
which “ bared the great heart ” which “ beats beneath
a star; ” and each felt, not rarely, the true dignity of
the other, modestly expanding under the most genial
auspices.lamb’s suppers.
273
Now turn to No. 4, Inner Temple Lane, at ten o’clock,
when the sedater part of the company are assembled, and
the happier stragglers are dropping in from the play.
Let it be any autumn or winter month, when the fire is
blazing steadily, and the clean-swept hearth and whist-
tables speak of the spirit of Mrs. Battle, and serious looks
require “ the rigor of the game.” The furniture is old-
fashioned and worn; the ceiling low, and not wholly
unstained by traces of “ the great plant,” though now
virtuously forborne : but the Hogarths, in narrow black
frames, abounding in infinite thought, humour and pathos,
enrich the walls ; and all things wear an air of comfort
and hearty English welcome. Lamb himself, yet unre-
laxed by the glass, is sitting with a sort of Quaker prim-
ness at the whist-table, the gentleness of his melancholy
smile half lost in his intentness on the game; his partner,
the author of “ Political Justice,” (the majestic expression
of his large head not disturbed by disproportion of his
comparatively diminutive stature,) is regarding his hand
with a philosophic but not a careless eye; Captain
Burney, only not venerable because so young in spirit,
sits between them; and H. C. Pi., who alone now and
then breaks the proper silence, to welcome some incoming
guest, is his happy partner—true winner in the game of
life, whose leisure achieved early, is devoted to his friends!
At another table, just beyond the circle which extends
from the fire, sit another four. The broad, burly, jovial
bulk of John Lamb, the Ajax Telamon of the slender
clerks of the old South Sea House, whom he sometimes
introduces to the rooms of his younger brother, surprised
to learn from them that he is growing famous, confronts274
lamb’s suppers.
the stately but courteous Alsager; while P., “ his few
hairs bristling” at gentle objurgation, watches his partner
M. B., dealing, writh “ soul more white”* than the hands
of which Lamb once said, “ M., if dirt was trumps, what
hands you would hold! ” In one corner of the room, you
may see the pale earnest countenance of Charles Lloyd,
who is discoursing “ of fate, free-will, fore-knowledge
absolute,” with Leigh Hunt; and, if you choose to listen,
you will scarcely know which most to admire—the severe
logic of the melancholy reasoner, or its graceful evasion
by the tricksome fantasy of the joyous poet. Basil
Montague, gentle enthusiast in the cause of humanity,
which he has lived to see triumphant, is pouring into the
outstretched ear of George Dyer some tale of legalised
injustice, which the recipient is vainly endeavouring to
comprehend. Soon the room fills; in slouches Hazlitt
from the theatre, where his stubborn anger for Napoleon’s
defeat at Waterloo has been softened by Miss Stephens’s
angelic notes, which might “ chase anger, and grief, and
fear, and sorrow, and pain from mortal or immortal
minds Kenney, with a tremulous pleasure, announces
that there is a crowded house to the ninth representation
of his new comedy, of which Lamb lays down his cards
to inquire ; or Ayrton, mildly radiant, whispers the con-
tinual triumph of “ Don Giovanni,” for which Lamb,
incapable of opera, is happy to take his word. Now and
* Lamb’s Sonnet, dedicatory of his first volume of prose to this
cherished friend, thus concludes :—
“ Free from self-seeking, envy, low design,
I have not found a whiter soul than thine.”lamb’s suppeks.
275
then an actor glances on us from “ the rich Cathay” of
the world behind the scenes, with news of its brighter
human-kind, and with looks reflecting the public favour
—Liston, grave beneath the weight of the town’s regards
—or Miss Kelly, unexhausted in spirit by alternating the
drolleries of high farce with the terrible pathos of melo-
drama,—or Charles Kemble mirrors the chivalry of
thought, and ennobles the party by bending on them
looks beaming with the aristocracy of nature. Meanwhile
Becky lays the cloth on the side-table, under the direction
of the most quiet, sensible, and kind of women—who
soon compels the younger and more hungry of the guests
to partake largely of the cold roast lamb or boiled beef,
the heaps of smoking roasted potatoes, and the vast jug
of porter, often replenished from the foaming pots, which
the best tap of Fleet Street supplies. Perfect freedom
prevails, save when the hospitable pressure of the mistress
excuses excess; and perhaps, the physical enjoyment of
the play-goer exhausted with pleasure, or of the author
jaded with the labour of the brain, is not less than
that of the guests at the most charming of aristocratic
banquets. As the hot water and its accompaniments
appear, and the severities of whist relax, the light of con-
versation thickens : Hazlitt, catching the influence of the
spirit from which he has lately begun to abstain, utters
some fine criticism with struggling emphasis; Lamb
stammers out puns suggestive of wisdom, for happy
Barron Field to admire and echo; the various driblets of
talk combine into a stream, while Miss Lamb moves
gently about to see that each modest stranger is duly
served; turning, now and then, an anxious loving eye on
T 2276
lamb’s suppers.
Charles, which is softened into a half-humorous expres-
sion of resignation to inevitable fate, as he mixes his
second tumbler ! This is on ordinary nights, when the
accustomed Wednesday-men assemble; but there is a
difference on great extra nights, gladdened by “ the
bright visitations ” of Wordsworth or Coleridge:—the
cordiality of the welcome is the same, but a sedater
wisdom prevails. Happy hours were they for the young
disciple of the then desperate, now triumphant cause of
Wordsworth’s genius, to be admitted to the presence of
the poet who had opened a new world for him in the
undiscovered riches of his own nature, and its affinities
with the outer universe ; whom he worshipped the more
devoutly for the world’s scorn; for whom he felt the
future in the instant, and anticipated the “ All hail
hereafter! ” which the great poet has lived to enjoy !
To win him to speak of his own poetry—to hear him
recite its noblest passages—and to join in his brave
defiance of the fashion of the age—was the solemn plea-
sure of such a season; and, of course, superseded all
minor disquisitions. So, when Coleridge came, argu-
ment, wit, humour, criticism were hushed; the pertest,
smartest, and the cleverest felt that all were assembled
to listen ; and if a card-table had been filled, or a dispute
begun before he was excited to continuous speech, his
gentle voice, undulating in music, soon
“ Suspended whist, and took with ravishment
The thronging audience.”
The conversation which animated each of these me-
morable circles, approximated, in essence, much moreSOCIAL COMPARISON.
277
nearly than might he surmised from the difference in
station of the principal talkers, and the contrast in phy-
sical appliances; that of the bowered saloon of Holland
House having more of earnestness and depth, and that
of the Temple-attic more of airy grace than ■would be
predicated by a superficial observer. The former pos-
sessed the peculiar interest of directly bordering on the
scene of political conflict—gathering together the most
eloquent leaders of the Whig party, whose repose from
energetic action spoke of the week’s conflict, and in
whom the moment’s enjoyment derived a peculiar charm
from the perilous glories of the struggle which the mor-
row was to renew—when power was just within reach,
or held with a convulsive grasp—like the eager and
solemn pleasure of the soldiers’ banquet in the pause of
victory. The pervading spirit of Lamb’s parties was
also that of social progress; but it was the spirit of the
dreamers and thinkers, not of the combatants of the
world—men who, it may be, drew their theories from a
deeper range of meditation, and embraced the future
with more comprehensive hope—but about whom the
immediate interest of party did not gather; whose vic-
tories were all within; whose rewards were visions of
blessings for their species in the farthest horizon of
benevolent prophecy. If a profounder thought was
sometimes dragged to light in the dim circle of Lamb’s
companions than was native to the brighter sphere, it
was still a rare felicity to watch there the union of
elegance with purpose in some leader of party—the
delicate, almost fragile grace of illustration in some one,
perhaps destined to lead advancing multitudes or to378
SOCIAL COMPARISON.
withstand their rashness;—to observe the growth of
strength in the midst of beauty expanding from the
sense of the heroic past, as the famed Basil tree of Boc-
caccio grew from the immolated relic beneath it. If the
alternations in the former oscillated between wider
extremes, touching on the wildest farce and most earnest
tragedy of life ; the rich space of brilliant comedy which
lived ever between them in the latter, was diversified by
serious interests and heroic allusions. Sydney Smith’s
wit—not so wild, so grotesque, so deep-searching as
Lamb’s—had even more quickness of intellectual de-
monstration ; wedded moral and political wisdom to
happiest language, with a more rapid perception of secret
affinities; was capable of producing epigrammatic splen-
dour reflected more permanently in the mind, than the
fantastic brilliancy of those rich conceits which Lamb
stammered out with his painful smile. Mackintosh
might vie with Coleridge in vast and various knowledge;
but there the competition between these great talkers
ends, and the contrast begins; the contrast between
facility and inspiration; between the ready access to
each ticketed and labelled compartment of history, sci-
ence, art, criticism, and the genius that fused and
renovated all. But then a younger spirit appeared at
3 Lord Holland’s table to redress the balance—not so
poetical as Coleridge, but more lucid—in whose vast and
joyous memory all the mighty past lived and glowed
anew; whose declamations presented, not groups tinged
with distant light, like those of Coleridge, but a series of
historical figures in relief, exhibited in bright succession,
as if by dioramic art there glided before us embossedSOCIAL COMPAEISON.
279
surfaces of heroic life.* Rogers too, was there—con-
necting the literature of the last age with this, partaking
* I take leave to copy the glowing picture of the evenings of
Holland House and of its admirable master, drawn by this favourite
guest himself, from an article which adorned the “ Edinburgh Review,n
just after Lord Holland’s death.
“ The time is coming when, perhaps, a few old men, the last sur-
vivors of our generation, will in vain seek, amidst new streets, and
squares, and railway stations, for the site of that dwelling which was
in their youth the favourite resort of wits and beauties—of painters
and poets—of scholars, philosophers, and statesmen. They will then
remember, with strange tenderness, many objects once familiar to them
—the avenue and the terrace, the busts and the paintings ; the carving,
the grotesque gilding, and the enigmatical mottoes. With peculiar
fondness, they will recall that venerable chamber, in which all the
antique gravity of a college library was so singularly blended with all
that female grace and wit could devise to embellish a drawing-room.
They will recollect, not unmoved, those shelves loaded with the varied
learning of many lands and many ages ; those portraits in which were
preserved the features of the best and wisest Englishmen of two
generations. They will recollect how many men who have guided the
politics of Europe—who have moved great assemblies by reason and
eloquence—who have put life into bronse and canvas, or who have left
to posterity things so written as it shall not willingly let them die—
were there mixed with all that was loveliest and gayest in the society
of the most splendid of capitals. They will remember the singular
character which belonged to that circle, in which every talent and
accomplishment, every art and science, had its place. They will
remember how the last debate was discussed in one corner, and the
last comedy of Scribe in another ; while Wilkie gazed with modest
admiration on Reynolds1 Baretti; wdiile Mackintosh turned over
Thomas Aquinas to verify a quotation; while Talleyrand related his
conversations with Barras at the Luxemburg, or his ride with Lannes
over the field of Austerlitz. They will remember, above all, the
grace—and the kindness, far more admirable than grace—with which
the princely hospitality of that ancient mansion was dispensed. They
will remember the venerable and benignant countenance, and the
cordial voice of him who bade them welcome. They will remember
that temper which years of pain, of sickness, of lameness, of confinement,280
SOCIAL COMPARISON.
of some of the best characteristics of both—whose first
poem sparkled in the closing darkness of the last century
‘‘like a rich jewel in an Ethiop’s ear,” and who was
advancing from a youth which had anticipated memory,
to an age of kindness and hope ; and Moore, who paused
in the fluttering expression of graceful trifles, to whisper
some deep-toned thought of Ireland’s wrongs and
sorrows.
Literature and Art supplied the favourite topics to
each of these assemblies,—both discussed with earnest
admiration, but surveyed in different aspects. The
conversation at Lord Holland’s was wont to mirror the
happiest aspects of the living mind; to celebrate the
latest discoveries in science; to echo the quarterly deci-
sions of imperial criticism ; to reflect the modest glow of
young reputations;—all was gay, graceful, decisive, as if
the pen of Jeffrey could have spoken; or, if it reverted
to old times, it rejoiced in those classical associations
seemed only to make sweeter and sweeter; and that frank polite-
ness, which at once relieved all the embarrassment of the youngest
and most timid writer or artist, who found himself for the first time
among Ambassadors and Earls. They will remember that constant
flow of conversation, so natural, so animated, so various, so rich with
observation and anecdote ; that wit which never gave a wound ; that
exquisite mimicry which ennobled,instead of degrading; that goodness
of heart which appeared in every look and accent, and gave additional
value to every talent and acquirement. They will remember, too,
that he whose name they hold in reverence was not less distinguished
by the inflexible uprightness of his political conduct, than by his loving
disposition and his winning manners. They will remember that, in the
last lines which he traced, he expressed his joy that he had done
nothing unworthy of the friend of Fox and Grey; and they will have
reason to feel similar joy, if, in looking back on many troubled years,
they cannot accuse themselves of having done anything unworthy of
men who were distinguished by the friendship of Lord Holland.5’SOCIAL COMPARISON.
281
which are always young. At Lamb’s, on the other
hand, the topics were chiefly sought among the obscure
and remote; the odd, the quaint, the fantastic were
drawn out from their dusty recesses; nothing could be
more foreign to its embrace than the modern circulating
library, even when it teemed with the Scotch novels.
Whatever the subject was, however, in the more aristo-
cratic, or the humbler sphere, it was always discussed by
those best entitled to talk on it; no others had a chance
of being heard. This remarkable freedom from bores
was produced in Lamb’s circle by the authoritative tex-
ture of its commanding minds; in Lord Holland’s, by
the more direct, and more genial influence of the hostess,
which checked that tenacity of subject and opinion which
sometimes broke the charm of Lamb’s parties by “ a
duel in the form of a debate.” Perhaps beyond any
other hostess,—certainly far beyond any host, Lady
Holland possessed the tact of perceiving, and the power
of evoking the various capacities which lurked in every
part of the brilliant circles over which she presided, and
restrained each to its appropriate sphere, and portion of
the evening. To enkindle the enthusiasm of an artist
on the theme over which he had achieved the most
facile mastery; to set loose the heart of the rustic poet,
and imbue his speech with the freedom of his native
hills; to draw from the adventurous traveller a breath-
ing picture of his most imminent danger; or to embolden
the bashful soldier to disclose his own share in the perils
and glories of some famous battle-field; to encourage
the generous praise of friendship when the speaker and
the subject reflected interest on each other; or win from an282
SOCIAL COMPARISON.
awkward man of science the secret history of a discovery
which had astonished the world; to conduct these bril-
liant developments to the height of satisfaction, and then
to shift the scene by the magic of a word, were among
her nightly successes. And if this extraordinary power
over the elements of social enjoyment was sometimes
wielded without the entire concealment of its despotism;
if a decisive check sometimes rebuked a speaker who
might intercept the variegated beauty of Jeffrey’s indul-
gent criticism, or the jest announced and self-rewarded
in Sydney Smith’s cordial and triumphant laugh, the
authority was too clearly exerted for the evening’s pros-
perity, and too manifestly impelled by an urgent consci-
ousness of the value of these golden hours which were
fleeting within its confines, to sadden the enforced silence
with more than a momentary regret. If ever her pro-
hibition,—clear, abrupt, and decisive,—indicated more
than a preferable regard for livelier discourse, it was
when a depreciatory tone was adopted towards genius, or
goodness, or honest endeavour, or when some friend, per-
sonal or intellectual, was mentioned in slighting phrase.
Habituated to a generous partisanship, by strong sympa-
thy with a great political cause, she carried the fidelity of
her devotion to that cause into her social relations, and was
ever the truest and the fastest of friends. The tendency,
often more idle than malicious, to soften down the intel-
lectual claims of the absent, which so insidiously besets
literary conversation, and teaches a superficial insincerity,
even to substantial esteem and regard, and which was
sometimes insinuated into the conversation of Lamb’s
friends, though never into his own, found no favour inSOCIAL COMPARISON.
283
her presence; and hence the conversations over which
she presided, perhaps beyond all that ever flashed with a
kindred splendour, w7ere marked by that integrity of good
nature which might admit of their exact repetition to
every living individual whose merits were discussed,
without the danger of inflicting pain. Under her aus-
pices, not only all critical, hut all personal talk was
tinged with kindness ; the strong interest which she took
in the happiness of her friends, shed a peculiar sunniness
over the aspects of life presented by the common topics
of alliances, and marriages, and promotions; and there
was not a hopeful engagement, or a happy wedding, or a
promotion of a friend’s son, or a new intellectual triumph
of any youth with whose name and history she was
familiar, but became an event on which she expected and
required congratulation as on a part of her own fortune.
Although there was necessarily a preponderance in her
society of the sentiment of popular progress, which once
was cherished almost exclusively by the party to whom
Lord Holland was united by sacred ties, no expression
of triumph in success, no virulence in sudden disappoint-
ment, was ever permitted to wound the most sensitive
ears of her conservative guests. It might be that some
placid comparison of recent with former times, spoke a
sense of freedom’s peaceful victory ; or that, on the giddy
edge of some great party struggle, the festivities of the
evening might take a more serious cast, as news arrived
from the scene of contest, and the pleasure might be
deepened by the peril; but the feeling was always
restrained by the supremacy given to those permanent
solaces for the mind, in the beautiful and the great,284
GEORGE DYER.
which no political changes disturb. Although the death
of the noble master of the venerated mansion closed its
portals for ever on the exquisite enjoyments to which
they had been so generously expanded, the art of con-
versation lived a little longer in the smaller circle which
Lady Holland still drew almost daily around her;
honouring his memory by following his example, and
struggling against the perpetual sense of unutterable
bereavement, by rendering to literature that honour,
and those reliefs, which English aristocracy has too often
denied it; and seeking consolation in making others
proud and happy. That lingering happiness is extinct
now; Lamb’s kindred circle—kindred, though so dif-
ferent—dispersed almost before he died ; the “ thoughts
that wandered through eternity,” are no longer expressed
in time; the fancies and conceits, “ gay creatures of the
element ” of social delight, “ that in the colours of the
rainbow lived, and played in the plighted clouds,” flicker
only in the backward perspective of waning years ; and
for the survivors, I may venture to affirm, no such con-
versation as they have shared in either circle will ever be
theirs again in this world!
Before closing these last memorials of Charles and
Mary Lamb, it may be permitted me to glance separately
at some of the friends who are grouped around them in
memory, and who, like them, live only in recollection,
and in the works they have left behind them.
George Dyer was one of the first objects of Lamb’s
youthful reverence, for he had attained the stately rank
of Grecian in the venerable school of Christ’s Hospital,
when Charles entered it, a little, timid, affectionateGEORGE DYER.
285
child; but this boyish respect, once amounting to awe,
gave place to a familiar habit of loving banter, which,
springing from the depths of old regard, approximated to
school-boy roguery, and, now and then, though very
rarely, gleamed on the consciousness of the ripe scholar.
No contrast could be more vivid than that presented by
the relations of each to the literature they both loved ;
one divining its inmost essences, plucking out the heart
of its mysteries, shedding light on its dimmest recesses;
the other devoted, with equal assiduity, to its externals.
Books, to Dyer, “ were a real world, both pure and
good ; ” among them he passed, unconscious of time,
from youth to extreme age, vegetating on their dates and
forms, and “ trivial fond records,” in the learned air of
great libraries, or the dusty confusion of his own, with
the least possible apprehension of any human interest
vital in their pages, or of any spirit of wit or fancy
glancing across them. His life was an Academic Pas-
toral. Methinks I see his gaunt, awkward form, set off
by trousers too short, like those outgrown by a gawky
lad, and a rusty coat as much too large for the wearer,
hanging about him like those garments which the aristo-
cratic Milesian peasantry prefer to the most comfortable
rustic dress ; his long head silvered over with short yet
straggling hair, and his dark grey eyes glistening with
faith and wonder, as Lamb satisfies the curiosity which
has gently disturbed his studies as to the authorship of
the Waverley Novels, by telling him, in the strictest confi-
dence, that they are the works of Lord Castlereagh, just
returned from the Congress of Sovereigns at Vienna! Off
he runs, with animated stride and shambling enthusiasm,286
GEORGE DYER.
nor stops till he reaches Maida Hill, and breathes his
news into the startled ear of Leigh Hunt, who, “ as
a public writer,” ought to be possessed of the great fact
with which George is laden ! Or shall I endeavour to
revive the bewildered look w’ith which, just after he had
been announced as one of Lord Stanhope’s executors and
residuary legatees, he received Lamb’s grave inquiry,
“ Whether it was true, as commonly reported, that he
was to be made a Lord ? ”	“0 dear no ! Mr. Lamb,”
responded he with earnest seriousness, but not without a
moment’s quivering vanity, “ I could not think of such a
thing ; it is not true, I assure you.” “ I thought not,”
said Lamb, “ and I contradict it wherever I go; but
the Government will not ask your consent; they may
raise you to the peerage without your even knowing it.”
“I hope not, Mr. Lamb; indeed, indeed, I hope not;
it would not suit me at all,” responded Dyer, and went
his way, musing on the possibility of a strange honour
descending on his reluctant brow. Or shall I recall the
visible presentment of his bland unconsciousness of evil
when his sportive friend taxed it to the utmost, by sud-
denly asking what he thought of the murderer Williams,
who, after destroying two families in Ratcliffe Highway,
had broken prison by suicide, and whose body had just
before been conveyed, in shocking procession, to its
cross-road grave! The desperate attempt to compel the
gentle optimist to speak ill of a mortal creature produced
no happier success than the answer, “ Why, I should
think, Mr. Lamb, he must have been rather an eccentric
character.” This simplicity of a nature not only un-
spotted by the world, but almost abstracted from it, willWILLIAM GODWIN.
287
seem the more remarkable, when it is known that it was
subjected, at the entrance of life, to a hard battle with
fortune. Dyer was the son of very poor parents, residing
in an eastern suburb of London, Stepney or Bethnal-
greenward, where he attracted the attention of two
elderly ladies as a serious child, with an extraordinary
love for books. They obtained for him a presentation to
Christ's Hospital, which he entered at seven years of
age ; fought his way through its sturdy ranks to its
head; and, at nineteen, quitted it for Cambridge, with
only an exhibition and his scholarly accomplishments to
help him. On he went, however, placid if not rejoicing,
through the difficulties of a life illustrated only by
scholarship; encountering tremendous labours; unresting
yet serene ; until at eighty-five he breathed out the most
blameless of lives, which began in a struggle to end in a
learned dream !
Mr. Godwin, who during the happiest period of
Lamb’s weekly parties, was a constant assistant at his
whist-table, resembled Dyer in simplicity of manner
and devotion to letters ; but the simplicity was more
superficial, and the devotion more profound than the
kindred qualities in the guileless scholar; and, instead
of forming the entire being, only marked the surface of
a nature beneath which extraordinary power lay hidden.
As the absence of worldly wisdom subjected Dyer to
the sportive sallies of Lamb, so a like deficiency in
Godwin exposed him to the coarser mirth of Mr. Horne
Tooke, who was sometimes inclined to seek relaxation
for the iron muscles of his imperturbable mind in trying
to make a philosopher look foolish. To a stranger’s288
WILLIAM GODWIN.
gaze the author of the “ Political Justice ” and “ Caleb
Williams,” as he appeared in the Temple, always an
object of curiosity except to his familiars, presented none
of those characteristics with which fancy had invested
the daring speculator and relentless novelist; nor, when
he broke silence, did his language tend to reconcile the
reality with the expectation. The disproportion of a
frame which, low of stature, was surmounted by a
massive head which might befit a presentable giant, was
rendered almost imperceptible, not by any vivacity of
expression, (for his countenance was rarely lighted up
by the deep-seated genius within,) but by a gracious
suavity of manner which many “ a fine old English
gentleman ” might envy. His voice was small; the
topics of his ordinary conversation trivial, and discussed
with a delicacy and precision which might almost be
mistaken for finical; and the presence of the most
interesting persons in literary society, of which he had
enjoyed the best, would not prevent him from falling
after dinner into the most profound sleep. This gentle,
drowsy, spiritless demeanour, presents a striking con-
trast to a reputation which once filled Europe with its
echoes ; but it was, in truth, when rightly understood, per-
fectly consistent with those intellectual elements which
in some raised the most enthusiastic admiration, and
from others elicited the wildest denunciations of visionary
terror.
In Mr. Godwin’s mind, the faculty of abstract reason
so predominated over all others, as practically to extin-
guish them; and his taste, akin to this faculty, sought
only for its development through the medium of com-WILLIAM GODWIN.
289
position for the press. He had no imagination, no
fancy, no wit, no humour; or, if he possessed any of
those faculties, they were obscured by that of pure
reason ; and being wholly devoid of the quick sensibility
which irritates speech into eloquence, and of the passion
for immediate excitement and applause, which tends to
its presentment before admiring assemblies, he desired
no other audience than that which he could silently
address, and learned to regard all things through a
contemplative medium. In this sense, far more than
in the extravagant application of his wildest theories, he
levelled all around him; admitted no greatness but
that of literature; and neither desired nor revered any
triumphs but those of thought. If such a reasoning
faculty, guided by such a disposition, had been applied
to abstract sciences, no effect remarkable beyond that
of rare excellence, would have been produced; but the
apparent anomalies of Mr. Godwin’s intellectual history
arose from the application of his power to the passions,
the interests, and the hopes of mankind, at a time when
they enkindled into frightful action, and when he calmly
worked out his problems among their burning elements
with the “ ice-brook’s temper,” and the severest logic.
And if some extreme conclusions were inconsistent with
the faith and the duty which alone can sustain and
regulate our nature, there was no small compensation
in the severity of the process to which the student was
impelled, for the slender peril which might remain lest
the results should be practically adopted. A system
founded on pure reason, which rejected the impulses of
natural affection, the delights of gratitude, the influences
u290
WILLTAM GODWIN.
of prejudice, the bondage of custom, the animation of
personal hope; which appealed to no passion—which
suggested no luxury—which excited no animosities—
and which offered no prize for the observance of its
laws, except a participation in the expanding glories of
progressive humanity, was little calculated to allure
from the accustomed paths of ancient ordinance any
man disposed to walk in them by the lights from heaven.
On the other hand, it was a healthful diversion from
those seductions in which the heart secretly enervates
and infects the understanding, to invite the revolutionary
speculator to the contemplation of the distant and the
refined; by the pursuit of impracticable error to brace
the mind for the achievement of everlasting truth; and
on the “ heat and flame of the distemper ” of an
impassioned democracy to “ sprinkle cool patience.”
The idol, Political Justice, of which he was the slow
and laborious architect, if it for a while enchanted, did
not long enthral or ever debase its worshippers; “its
bones were marrowless, its blood was cold,”—but there
was surely “ speculation in its eyes ” which “ glared
withall ” into the future. Such high casuistry as it
evoked has always an ennobling tendency, even when it
dallies with error; the direction of thought in youth is
of less consequence than the mode of its exercise; and
it is only when the base interests and sensual passions
of mortality pander to the understanding that truth
may fear for the issue.
The author of this cold and passionless intellectual
phantasy looked out upon the world he hoped to inform
from recesses of contemplation which the outward inci-WILLIAM GODWIN.
291
dents of life did not disturb, and which, when closed,
left him a common man, appearing to superficial observers
rather below than above the level of ordinary talkers.
To his inward gaze the stupendous changes which agitated
Europe, at the time he wrote, were silent as a picture.
The pleasure of his life was to think; its business was
to write ; all else in it was vanity. Eegarding his own
being through the same spiritualising medium, he saw
no reason why the springs of its existence should wear
out, and, in the spring-time of his speculation, held that
man might become immortal on earth by the effort of
the will. His style partook of the quality of his intel-
lect and the character of its purposes—it was pure,
simple, colourless. His most imaginative passages are
inspired only by a logic quickened into enthusiasm by
the anticipation of the approaching discovery of truth—
the dawning Eureka of the reasoner; they are usually
composed of “ line upon line, and precept upon precept,”
without an involution of style or an eddy in the thought.
He sometimes complained, though with the benignity
that always marked his estimate of his opponents, that
Mr. Malthus’s style was too richly ornamented for
argument; and certainly, with all its vivacity of illus-
tration, it lacks the transparent simplicity of his own.
The most palpable result which he ever produced by his
writings was the dark theory in the first edition of the
work on Population, which was presented as an answer
to his reasoning on behalf of the perfectibility of man;
and he used to smile at his ultimate triumph, when the
writer, who had only intended a striking paradox, tamed
it down to the wisdom of economy, and adapted it to
u 2292
WILLIAM GODWIN.
Poor-law uses; neutralised his giant spectres of Vice
and Misery by the practical intervention of Moral
Restraint; and left the optimist, Godwin, still in un-
clouded possession of the hope of universal peace and
happiness, postponed only to that time when passion
shall be subjected to reason, and population, no more
rising like a resistless tide, between adamantine barriers
to submerge the renovated earth, shall obey the com-
mands of wisdom ; rise and fall as the means of sub-
sistence expand or contract; and only contribute an
impulse to the universal harmony.
The persons of Mr. Godwin’s romances—stranger
still—are the naked creations of the same intellectual
power, marvellously endowed with galvanic life. Though
with happier symmetry, they are as much made out of
chains and links of reasoning, us the monster was
fashioned by the chemistry of the student, in the cele-
brated novel of his gifted daughter. Falkland, and Caleb
Williams, are the mere impersonations of the unbounded
love of reputation, and irresistible curiosity; these ideas
are developed in each with masterly iteration—to the
two ideas all causes give way; and materials are sub-
jected, often of remarkable coarseness, to the refinement
of the conception. Hazlitt used to observe of these two.
characters, that the manner they are played into each
other, was equal to anything of the kind in the Drama;
and there is no doubt that the opposition, though at the
cost of probability, is most powerfully maintained: but
the effect is partly owing to the absence of all extrinsic
interest which could interfere with the main purpose ;
the beatings of the heart become audible, not only fromWILLIAM GODWIN.
293
their own intensity, but from the desolation which the
author has expanded around them. The consistency in
each is that of an idea, not of a character; and if the
effect of form and colour is produced, it is, as in line
engraving, by the infinite minuteness and delicacy of the
single strokes. In like manner, the incidents by which
the author seeks to exemplify the wrongs inflicted by
power on goodness in civilised society, are utterly fantas-
tical ; nothing can be more minute, nothing more unreal;
the youth being involved by a web of circumstances
woven to immesh him, which the condition of society
$
that the author intends to repudiate, renders impossible ;
and which, if true, would prove not that the framework
of law is tyrannous, but that the will of a single oppres-
sor may elude it. The subject of “St. Leon” is more
congenial to the author’s power; but it is, in like man-
ner, a logical development of the consequences of a being
prolonged on earth through ages; and, as the dismal
vista expands, the skeleton speculators crowd in to mock
and sadden us!
Mr. Godwin was thus a man of two beings, which held
little discourse with each other—the daring inventor of
theories constructed of air-drawn diagrams—and the
simple gentleman, who suffered nothing to disturb or
excite him, beyond his study. He loved to walk in the
crowded streets of London, not like Lamb, enjoying the
infinite varieties of many-coloured life around him, but
because he felt, amidst the noise, and crowd, and glare,
more intensely the imperturbable stillness of his own con-
templations. His means of comfortable support were
mainly supplied by a shop in Skinner Street, where,294
WILLIAM GODWIN.
under the auspices of “M. J. Godwin & Co.,” the
prettiest and wisest books for children issued, which
old-fashioned parents presented to their children, without
suspecting that the graceful lessons of piety and good-
ness which charmed away the selfishness of infancy,
were published, and sometimes revised, and now and
then written, by a philosopher whom they would scarcely
venture to name ! He met the exigencies which the
vicissitudes of business sometimes caused, with the
trusting simplicity which marked his course—he asked
his friends for aid without scruple, considering that
their means were justly the due of one who toiled in
thought for their inward life, and had little time to
provide for his own outward existence; and took their
excuses, when offered, without doubt or offence. The
very next day after I had been honoured and delighted
by an introduction to him at Lamb's chambers, I was
made still more proud and happy by his appearance at
my own on such an errand—which my poverty, not my
will, rendered abortive. After some pleasant chat on
indifferent matters, he carelessly observed, that he had
a little bill for 150Z. falling due on the morrow, which
he had forgotten till that morning, and desired the loan of
the necessary amount for a few weeks. At first, in eager
hope of being able thus to oblige one whom I regarded
with admiration akin to awe, I began to consider whether
it was possible for me to raise such a sum; but, alas ! a
moment’s reflection sufficed to convince me that the hope
was vain, and I was obliged, with much confusion, to
assure my distinguished visitor how glad I should have
been to serve him, but that I was only just starting as aJOHN THELWALL.
295
special pleader, was obliged to write for magazines to
help me on, and had not such a sum in the world.
“ Oh dear,” said the philosopher, “ I thought you were a
young gentleman of fortune—don’t mention it—don’t
mention it; I shall do very well elsewhere: ”—and
then, in the most gracious manner, reverted to our
former topics; and sat in my small room for half an
hour, as if to convince me that my want of fortune made
no difference in his esteem. A slender tribute to the
literature he had loved and served so well, was accorded
to him in the old age to which he attained, by the gift of
a sinecure in the Exchequer, of about 200 a-year, con-
nected with the custody of the Records; and the last
time I saw him, he was heaving an immense key to
unlock the musty treasures of which he was guardian—
how unlike those he had unlocked, with finer talisman,
for the astonishment and alarm of one generation, and
the delight of all others !
John Thelwall, who had once exulted in the appel-
lation of Citizen Thelwall, having been associated with
Coleridge and Southey in their days of enthusiastical
dreaming, though a more precise and practical reformer
than either, was introduced by them to Lamb, and was
welcomed to his circle, in the true Catholicism of its
spirit, although its master cared nothing for the Roman
virtue which Thelwall devotedly cherished, and which
Horne Tooke kept in uncertain vibration between a
rebellion and a hoax. Lamb justly esteemed Thelwall
as a thoroughly honest man;—not honest merely in
reference to the moral relations of life, but to the pro-
cesses of thought; one whose mind, acute, vigorous,296
JOHN THELWALL.
and direct, perceived only the object immediately before
it, and, undisturbed by collateral circumstances, reflected,
with literal fidelity, the impression it received, and
maintained it as sturdily against the beauty that might
soften it, or the wisdom that might mould it, as against
the tyranny that would stifle its expression. “If to be
honest as the world goes, is to be one man picked out of
ten thousand,” to be honest as the mind works is to be
one man of a million; and such a man was Thelwall.
Starting with imperfect education from the thraldom of
domestic oppression, with slender knowledge, but with
fiery zeal, into the dangers of political enterprise, and
treading fearlessly on the verge of sedition, he saw
nothing before him hut powers which he assumed to be
despotism and vice, and rushed headlong to crush them.
The point of time—just that when the accumulated force
of public opinion had obtained a virtual mastery over the
accumulated corruptions of ages, but when power, still
unconvinced of its danger, presented its boldest front to
opposing intellect, or strove to crush it in the cruelty of
awaking fear—gave scope for the ardent temperament
of an orator almost as poor in scholastic cultivation as in
external fortune; but strong in integrity, and rich in
burning words.
Thus passionate, Thelwall spoke boldly and vehe-
mently—at a time when indignation was thought to
be virtue; but there is no reason to believe he ever
meditated any treason except that accumulated in the
architectural sophistry of Lord Eldon, by which he
proved a person who desired to awe the Government
into a change of policy to be guilty of compassing theJOHN THELWALL.
297
king’s death—as thus :—that the king must resist the
proposed alteration in his measures—that resisting he
must be deposed—and that being deposed, he must
necessarily die;—though his boldness of speech placed
him in jeopardy even after the acquittals of his simple-
minded associate Hardy, and his enigmatical instructor
Tooke, who forsook him, and left him, when acquitted, to
the mercy of the world. His life, which before this event
had been one of self-denial and purity remarkable in a
young man who had imbibed the impulses of revolu-
tionary France, partook of considerable vicissitude. At
one time, he was raised by his skill in correcting impe-
diments of speech, and teaching elocution as a science,
into elegant competence—at other times saddened by
the difficulties of poorly requited literary toil and wholly
unrequited patriotism; but he preserved his integrity
and his cheerfulness—“ a man of hope and forward-
looking mind even to the last.” Unlike Godwin, whose
profound thoughts slowly struggled into form, and seldom
found utterance in conversation,—speech was, in him,
all in all, his delight, his profession, his triumph, with
little else than passion to inspire or colour it. The
flaming orations of his “ Tribune,” rendered more piquant
by the transparent masquerade of ancient history, which,
in his youth, “ touched monied worldlings with dis-
may,” and infected the poor with dangerous anger,
seemed vapid, spiritless, and shallow when addressed
through the press to the leisure of the thoughtful.
The light which glowed with so formidable a lustre
before the evening audience, vanished on closer
examination, and proved to be only a harmless phantom-298
JOHN THELWALL.
vapour which left no traces of destructive energy
behind it.
Thelwall, in person small, compact, muscular—with a
head denoting indomitable resolution, and features deeply
furrowed by the ardent workings of the mind,—was as
energetic in all his pursuits and enjoyments as in political
action. He was earnestly devoted to the Drama, and en-
joyed its greatest representations with the freshness of a
boy who sees a play for the first time. He hailed the
kindred energy of Kean with enthusiastic praise; but
abjuring the narrowness of his political vision in matters of
taste, did justice to the nobler qualities of Mrs. Siddons
and her brothers. In literature and art also, he relaxed the
bigotry of his liberal intolerance, and expatiated in their
wider fields with a taste more catholic. Here Lamb was
ready with his sympathy, which indeed even the political
zeal, that he did not share, was too hearted to repel.
Although generally detesting lectures on literature as
superficial and vapid substitutes for quiet reading, and
recitations as unreal mockeries of the true Drama, he
sometimes attended the entertainments, composed of
both, which Thelwall, in the palmy days of his pros-
perity, gave at his house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, not on
politics, which he had then forsaken for elocutionary
science, though maintaining the principles of his youth,
but partly on elocution, and partly on poetry and acting,
into which he infused the fiery enthusiasm of his nature.
Sometimes, indeed, his fervour animated his disquisi-
tions on the philosophy of speech with greater warmth
than he reserved for more attractive themes; the melted
vowels were blended into a rainbow, or dispersed likeWILLIAM HAZLITT.
299
fleecy clouds; and the theory of language was made
interesting by the honesty and vigour of the speaker.
Like all men who have been chiefly self-taught, he
sometimes presented common-places as original disco-
veries, with an air which strangers mistook for quackery;
but they were unjust; to the speaker these were the
product of his own meditation, though familiar to
many, and not rarely possessed the charm of originality
in their freshness. Lamb at least, felt that it was
good, among other companions of richer and more com-
prehensive intelligence, to have one friend who was
undisturbed by misgiving either for himself or his
cause; who enunciated wild paradox and worn-out com-
mon place with equal confidence; and who was ready to
sacrifice ease, fortune, fame—everything but speech,
and, if it had been possible, even that —to the cause of
truth or friendship.
William Hazlitt was, for many years, one of the
brightest and most constant ornaments of Lamb’s par-
ties ;—linked to him in the firm bond of intellectual
friendship—which remained unshaken in spite of some
superficial differences, “ short and far between,” arising
from Lamb’s insensibility to Hazlitt’s political animosi-
ties and his adherence to Southey, Wordsworth, and
Coleridge, who shared them. Hazlitt in his boyhood
had derived from his father that attachment to abstract
truth for its own sake, and that inflexible determina-
tion to cherish it, which naturally predominated in the
being of the minister of a small rural congregation, who
cherished religious opinions adverse to those of the great
body of his countrymen, and waged a spiritual warfare300
WILLIAM HAZLITT.
throughout his peaceful course. Thus disciplined, he
was introduced to the friendship of youthful poets, in
whom the dawn of the French Revolution had enkindled
hope, and passion, and opinions tinctured with hope
and passion, which he eagerly embraced; and when
changes passed over the prospects of mankind, which
induced them, in maturer years, to modify the doc-
trines they had taught, he resented these defections
almost as personal w’rongs, and, when his pen found
scope, and his tongue utterance, wrote and spoke of
them with such bitterness as can only spring from the
depths of old affection. No writer, however, except
Wilson, did such noble justice to the poetry of Words-
worth, when most despised, and to the genius of Coleridge,
when most obscured; he cherished a true admiration for
each in “ the last recesses of the mind,” and defended
them with dogged resolution against the scorns and
slights of the world. Still the superficial difference was,
or seemed, too wide to admit of personal intercourse;
and I do not think that during the many years which
elapsed between my introduction to Lamb and Hazlitt’s
death, he ever met either of the poets at the rooms of
the man they united in loving.
Although Mr. Hazlitt w'as thus staunch in his attach-
ment to principles which he reverenced as true, he was
by no means rigid in his mode of maintaining and illus-
trating them ; but, on the contrary, frequently diminished
the immediate effect of his reasonings by the prodigality
and richness of the allusions with which he embossed
them. He had as unquenchable a desire for truth as
others have for wealth, or power, or fame; he pursuedWILLIAM HAZLITT.
301
it with sturdy singleness of purpose; and enunciated it
without favour or fear. But, besides that love of truth,
that sincerity in pursuing it, and that boldness in telling
it, he had also a fervent aspiration after the beautiful;
a vivid sense of pleasure, and an intense consciousness of
his own individual being, which sometimes produced
obstacles to the current of speculation, by which it was
broken into dazzling eddies or urged into devious wind-
ings. Acute, fervid, vigorous, as his mind was, it
wanted the one great central power of Imagination,
which brings all the other faculties into harmonious
action; multiplies them into each other; makes truth
visible in the forms of beauty, and substitutes intellectual
vision for proof. Thus, in him, truth and beauty held
divided empire. In him, the spirit was willing, but the
flesh was strong; and, when these contend, it is not
difficult to anticipate the result; “ for the power of
beauty shall sooner transform honesty from what it is
into' a bawd, than the person of honesty shall transform
beauty into its likeness.” This “sometime paradox”
was vividly exemplified in Hazlitt’s personal history,
his conversation, and his writings. To the solitudes of
the country in which he mused on “ fate, free-will,
foreknowledge absolute,” a temperament of unusual
ardour had given an intense interest, akin to that with
which Rousseau has animated and oppressed the details
of his early years.
He had not then, nor did he find till long afterwards,
power to embody his meditations and feelings in words.
The consciousness of thoughts which he could not hope
adequately to express, increased his natural reserve, and302
WILLIAM HAZLITT.
he turned for relief to the art of painting, in which he
might silently realise his dreams of beauty, and repay
the loveliness of nature by fixing some of its fleeting
aspects in immortal tints. A few old prints from the
old masters awakened the spirit of emulation within
him; the sense of beauty became identified in his mind
with that of glory and duration; while the peaceful
labour he enjoyed calmed the tumult in his veins, and
gave steadiness to his pure and distant aim. He pursued
the art with an earnestness and patience which he
vividly describes in his essay, “ On the Pleasure of
Painting; ” and to which he frequently reverted in the
happiest moods of his conversation; and, although in
this, his chosen pursuit, he failed, the passionate desire
for success, and the long struggle to attain it, left deep
traces in his mind, heightening his keen perception of
external things, and mingling with all his speculations
airy shapes and hues which he had vainly striven to
transfer to canvas. A painter may acquire a fine insight
into the nice distinctions of character,—he may copy
manners in words as he does in colours,—but it may be
apprehended that his course as a severe reasoner will be
somewhat “ troubled with thick coming fancies.” And
if the successful pursuit of art may thus disturb the
process of abstract contemplation, how much more may
an unsatisfied ambition ruffle it; bid the dark threads of
thought glitter with radiant fancies unrealised, and clothe
the diagrams of speculation with the fragments of picture
which the mind cherishes the more fondly, because the
hand refused to realise? What wonder, if, in the
mind of an ardent youth, thus struggling in vain to giveWILLIAM HAZLITT.
303
palpable existence to the shapes of loveliness which
haunted him, “ the homely beauty of the good old cause ”
should assume the fascinations not properly its own ?
This association of beauty with reason diminished the
immediate effect of Mr. Hazlitt’s political essays, while
it enhanced their permanent value. It was the fashion,
in his life-time, to denounce him as a sour Jacobin; but
no description could be more unjust. Under the influence
of some bitter feeling, or some wayward fancy, he occa-
sionally poured out a furious invective against those
whom he regarded as the enemies of liberty, or as
apostates from her cause ; but, in general, the force of
his expostulation, or his reasoning, was diverted (uncon-
sciously to himself) by figures and phantasies, by fine
and quaint allusions, by quotations from his favourite
authors, introduced with singular felicity, as respects the
direct link of association, but tending, by their very
beauty, to unnerve the mind of the reader, and substitute
the sense of luxury for clear conviction, or noble anger.
In some of his essays, where the reasoning is most
cogent, every other sentence contains some exquisite
passage from Shakspeare, or Fletcher, or Wordsworth,
trailing after it a line of golden associations; or some
reference to a novel, over which we have a thousand
times forgotten the wrongs of mankind; till, in the
recurring shocks of pleasurable surprise, the main argu-
ment is forgotten. When, for example, he compares the
position of certain political waverers to that of Clarissa
Harlowe confronting the ravisher who would repeat his
outrage, with the penknife pointed to her breast, and her
eyes uplifted to Heaven, and describes them as having304
WILLIAM HAZLTTT.
been, like her, trepanned into a house of ill-fame, near
Pall Mall, and there defending their soiled virtue with
their penknives; what reader, at the suggestion of the
stupendous scene which the allusion directly revives, can
think or care about the renegade of yesterday ? Here,
again, is felt the want of that Imagination which brings
all things into one, tinges all our thoughts and sympathies
with one hue, and rejects every ornament which does
not heighten or prolong the feeling which it seeks to
embody.
Even when he retaliates on Southey for attacking his
old co-patriots, the poetical associations which bitter
remembrance suggests, almost neutralise the vitupera-
tion; he brings every “flower which sad embroidery
wears to strew the laureate hearse,” where ancient
regards are interred; and merges all the censure of the
changed politician in praise of the simple dignity, and
the generous labours of a singularly noble and unsullied
life. So little does he regard the unity of sentiment in
his compositions, that in his “ Letter to Gifford,” after a
series of just and bitter retorts on his maligner as “ the
fine link which connects literature with the police,” he
takes a fancy to teach that “ ultra-crepidarian critic ” his
own theory of the natural disinterestedness of the human
mind, and develops it, not in the dry, hard, mathematical
style in which it was first enunciated, but “ o’er informed ”
with the glow of sentiment, and terminating in an
eloquent rhapsody. This latter portion of the letter is
one of the noblest of his effusions, but it entirely destroys
the first in the mind of the reader; for who, when thus
contemplating the living wheels on which human bene-WILLIAM HAZLITT.
305
volence is borne onwards in its triumphant career, and
the spirit with which they are instinct, can think of the
literary wasp which had settled for a moment upon them,
and who had just before been mercilessly transfixed with
minikin arrows?
But the most signal example of the influences which
“ the show of things ” exercised over Mr. Hazlitt’s mind
was the setting up the Emperor Napoleon as his idol.
He strove to justify this predilection to himself by
referring it to the revolutionary origin of his hero, and
the contempt with which he trampled upon the claims of
legitimacy, and humbled the pride of kings. But if his
“ only love ” thus sprung “ from his only hate,” it was
not cherished in its blossom by antipathies. If there
had been nothing in his mind which tended to aggran-
disement and glory, and which would fain reconcile the
principles of freedom with the lavish accumulation of
power, he might have desired the triumph of young
tyranny over legitimate thrones ; but he would scarcely
have watched its progress and its fall “ like a lover and
a child.” His feeling for Bonaparte in exile was not a
sentiment of respect for fallen greatness; not a desire to
trace “ the soul of goodness in things evil; ” not a
loathing of the treatment the Emperor received from
“ his cousin kings ” in the day of adversity; but entire
affection mingling with the current of the blood, and
pervading the moral and intellectual being. Nothing
less than this strong attachment, at once personal and
refined, would have enabled him to encounter the toil
of collecting and arranging facts and dates for four
volumes of narrative, which constitute his “ Life of
x306
WILLIAM HAZLITT.
Napoleon; ”—a drudgery too abhorrent to his habits of
mind as a thinker, to be sustained by any stimulus
which the prospect of remuneration or the hope of
applause could supply. It is not so much in the
ingenious excuses which he discovers for the worst acts
of his hero—offered even for the midnight execution of
the Duke d’Enghien and the invasion of Spain—that the
stamp of personal devotion is obvious, as in the graphic
force with which he has delineated the short-lived splen-
dours of the Imperial Court, and “ the trivial fond
records ” he has gathered of every vestige of human
feeling by which he could reconcile the Imperial Cynic
to the species he scorned. The first two volumes of his
work, although redeemed by scattered thoughts of true
originality and depth, are often confused and spiritless;
the characters of the principal revolutionists are drawn
too much in the style of awkward, sprawling caricatures;
but when the hero casts all his rivals into the dis-
tance, erects himself the individual enemy of England,
consecrates his power by religious ceremonies, and
defines it by the circle of a crown, the author's strength
becomes concentrated ; his narrative assumes an epic
dignity and fervour; dallies with the flowers of usurped
prerogative, and glows with “ the long-resounding march
and energy divine.” How happy and proud is he to
picture the meeting of the Emperor with the Pope, and
the grandeurs of the coronation ! How he grows wanton
in celebrating the fetes of the Tuileries, as “ presenting
all the elegance of enchanted pageants,” and laments
them as “gone like a fairy revel! ” How he “lives
along the line ” of Austerlitz, and rejoices in its thunder,WILLIAM HAZLITT.
307
and hails its setting sun, and exults in the minutest
details of the subsequent meeting of the conquered
sovereigns at the feet of the conqueror! How he
expatiates on the fatal marriage with “ the deadly
Austrian,” (as Mr. Cobbett justly called Maria Louisa),
as though it were a chapter in romance, and sheds the
grace of beauty on the imperial picture! How he
kindles with martial ardour as he describes the prepara-
tions against Russia; musters the myriads of barbarians
with a show of dramatic justice; and fondly lingers
among the brief triumphs of Moskwa on the verge of the
terrible catastrophe! The narrative of that disastrous
expedition is, indeed, written with a master’s hand; we
see the “ grand army ” marching to its destruction
through the immense perspective; the wild hordes
flying before the terror of its “ coming; ” the barbaric
magnificence of Moscow towering in the remote distance ;
and when we gaze upon the sacrificial conflagration of
the Kremlin, we feel that it is worthy to become the
funeral pile of the conqueror’s glories. It is well for the
readers of this splendid work, that there is more in it of
the painter than of the metaphysician; that its style
glows with the fervour of battle, or stiffens with the
spoils of victory; yet we wonder that this monument to
imperial grandeur should be raised from the dead level
of jacobinism by an honest and profound thinker. The
solution is, that although he was this, he was also more—
that, in opinion, he was devoted to the cause of the
people; but that, in feeling, he required some individual
object of worship; that he selected Napoleon as one in
whose origin and career he might at once impersonate308
WILLIAM HAZLITT.
his principles and gratify his affections; and that he
adhered to his own idea with heroic obstinacy, when the
“ child and champion of the Republic ” openly sought
to repress all feeling and thought, but such as he could
cast in his own iron moulds, and scoffed at popular
enthusiasm even while it bore him to the accomplishment
of his loftiest desires.
Mr. Hazlitt had little inclination to talk or write about
contemporary authors, and still less to read them. He
was with difficulty persuaded to look into the Scotch
novels, but when he did so, he found them old in sub-
stance though new in form, read them with as much
avidity as the rest of the world, and expressed better
than any one else what all the world felt about them.
His hearty love of them, however, did not diminish, but
aggravate his dislike of the political opinions so zealously
and consistently maintained, of their great author; and
yet the strength of his hatred towards that which was
accidental and transitory only set off the unabated power
of his regard for the great and the lasting. Coleridge
and Wordsworth were not moderns to him, for they were
the inspirers of his youth, which was his own antiquity,
and the feelings which were the germ of their poetry had
sunk deep into his heart. With the exception of the
works of these, and of his friends Barry Cornwall and
Sheridan Knowles, in whose successes he rejoiced, he
held modern literature in slight esteem, and regarded
the discoveries of science and the visions of optimism
with an undazzled eye. His “ large discourse of reason ”
looked not before, but after. He felt it a sacred duty,
as a lover of genius and art, to defend the fame of theWILLIAM HAZLITT.
309
mighty dead. When the old painters were assailed in
“ The Catalogue Raisonnee of the British Institution,”
he was “ touched with noble anger.” All his own vain
longings after the immortality of the works which were
libelled,—all the tranquillity and beauty they had shed
into his soul,—all his comprehension of the sympathy
and delight of thousands, which, accumulating through
long time, had attested their worth—were fused together
to dazzle and subdue the daring critic who would disturb
the judgment of ages. So, when a popular poet assailed
the fame of Rousseau, seeking to reverse the decision of
posterity on what that great though unhappy writer had
achieved by suggesting the opinion of people of condition
in his neighbourhood on the figure he made to their
apprehensions while in the service of Madame de War-
rens, he vindicated the prerogatives of genius with the
true logic of passion. Few things irritated him more
than the claims set up for the present generation to be
wiser and better than those which have gone before
it. He had no power of imagination to embrace the
golden clouds which hung over the Future, but he
rested and expatiated in the Past. To his apprehen-
sion human good did not appear a slender shoot of
yesterday, like the bean-stalk in the fairy tale, aspiring
to the skies, and leading to an enchanted castle, but
a huge growth of intertwisted fibres, grasping the earth
by numberless roots of custom, habit, and affection, and
bearing vestiges of “ a thousand storms, a thousand
thunders.”
When I first met Hazlitt, in the year 1815, he was
staggering under the blow of Waterloo. The re-appear-310
WILLIAM HAZLITT.
ance of his imperial idol on the coast of France, and his
triumphant march to Paris, like a fairy vision, had
excited his admiration and sympathy to the utmost
pitch; and though in many respects sturdily English in
feeling, he could scarcely forgive the valour of the con-
querors ; and bitterly resented the captivity of the
Emperor in St. Helena, which followed it, as if he had
sustained a personal wrong. On this subject only, he
was “eaten up with passion;” on all others, he was the
fairest, the most candid of reasoners. His countenance
was then handsome, but marked by a painful expression;
his black hair, which had curled stiffly over his temples,
had scarcely received its first tints of grey; his gait was
awkward ; his dress was neglected; and, in the company
of strangers, his bashfulness was almost painful—but,
when, in the society of Lamb and one or two others, he
talked on his favourite themes of old English books, or
old Italian pictures, no one’s conversation could be more
delightful. The poets, from intercourse with whom he
had drawn so much of his taste, and who had contributed
to shed the noble infection of beauty through his reason-
ing faculties, had scarcely the opportunity of appreciating
their progress. It was, in after years, by the fire-side of
“ the Lambs,” that his tongue was gradually loosened,
and his passionate thoughts found appropriate words.
There, his struggles to express the fine conceptions with
which his mind was filled, were encouraged by entire
sympathy; there he began to stammer out his just and
original conceptions of Chaucer and Spenser, and other
English poets and prose writers, more talked of, though
not better known, by their countrymen; there he wasWILLIAM HAZLITT.	31 i
thoroughly understood, and dexterously cheered by Miss
Lamb, whose nice discernment of his first efforts in
conversation, were dwelt upon by him with affectionate
gratitude, even when most out of humour with the world.
When he mastered his diffidence, he did not talk for
effect, to dazzle, or surprise, or annoy, but, with the
most simple and honest desire to make his view of the
subject in hand entirely apprehended by his hearer.
There was sometimes an obvious struggle to do this to
his own satisfaction; he seemed labouring to drag his
thought to light from its deep lurking-place; and, with
timid distrust of that power of expression which he had
found so late in life, he often betrayed a fear lest he had
failed to make himself understood, and recurred to the
subject again and again, that he might be assured he
had succeeded. With a certain doggedness of manner,
fie showed nothing pragmatical or exclusive; he never
drove a principle to its utmost possible consequences,
but, like Locksley, “allowed for the wind.” For some
years previous to his death, he observed an entire absti-
nence from fermented liquors, which he had once quaffed
with the proper relish he had for all the good things of
this life, but which he courageously resigned when he
found the indulgence perilous to his health and faculties.
The cheerfulness with which he made this sacrifice, was
one of the most amiable traits in his character. He
had no censure for others, who, in the same dangers,
were less wise or less resolute ; nor did he think he had
earned, by his own constancy, any right to intrude advice
which he knew, if wanted, must be unavailing. Nor did
he profess to be a convert to the general system of:
312	WILLIAM HAZLITT.
abstinence, which was advanced by one of his kindest
and staunchest friends ; he avowed that he yielded to
necessity; and, instead of avoiding the sight of that
which he could no longer taste, he was seldom so happy
as when he sat with friends at their wine, participating
the sociality of the time; and renewing his own past
enjoyment in that of his companions, without regret and
without envy. Like Dr. Johnson, he made himself poor
amends for the loss of wine by drinking tea, not so
largely, indeed, as the hero of Boswell, but at least of
equal potency; for he might have challenged Mrs.
Thrale, and all her sex, to make stronger tea than his
own. In society, as in politics, he was no flincher. He
loved “ to hear the chimes at midnight,” without con-
sidering them as a summons to rise. At these seasons,
when in his happiest mood, he used to dwell on the con-
versational powers of his friends, and live over again the
delightful hours he had passed with them; repeat the
pregnant puns that one had made; tell over again a
story with which another had convulsed the room; or
expatiate on the eloquence of a third; alwTays best
pleased when he could detect some talent which w?as
unregarded by the world, and giving alike, to the cele-
brated and the unknown, due honour.
Mr. Hazlitt delivered three courses of lectures at the
Surrey Institution, on The English Poets; on The
English Comic Writers; and on The Age of Elizabeth
which Lamb (under protest against lectures in general)
regularly attended, an earnest admirer, amidst crowds
with whom the lecturer had “ an imperfect sympathy.’’
They consisted chiefly of Dissenters, who agreed withWILLIAM HAZLITT.
313
him in his hatred of Lord Castlereagh, and his love of
religious freedom, but who “ loved no plays; ” of Quakers,
who approved him as the earnest opponent of slavery and
capital punishment, but who “heard no music;” of
citizens, devoted to the main chance, who had a hankering
after “ the improvement of the mind ; ” but to w'hom his
favourite doctrine of its natural disinterestedness was a
riddle; of a few enemies who came to sneer ; and a few
friends, who were eager to learn, and to admire. The
comparative insensibility of the bulk of his audience to
his finest passages, sometimes provoked him to awaken
their attention by points which broke the train of his
discourse; after which, he could make himself amends
by some abrupt paradox which might set their prejudices
on edge, and make them fancy they were shocked. He
startled many of them at the onset, by observing, that,
since Jacob’s dream, “ the heavens have gone farther off,
and become astronomical; ” a fine extravagance, which
the ladies and gentlemen, who had grown astronomical
themselves under the preceding lecturer, felt called on
to resent as an attack on their severer studies. When
he read a well-known extract from Cowper, compariug a
poor cottager with Voltaire, and had pronounced the
line: “A truth the brilliant Frenchman never knew,”
they broke into a joyous shout of self-gratulation, that
they were so much wiser than the scornful Frenchman.
When he passed by Mrs. Hannah More with observing
that “ she had written a great deal which he had never
read,” a voice gave expression to the general commisera-
tion and surprise, by calling out “ More pity for you ! ”
They were confounded at his reading with more emphasis,314
WILLIAM HAZLITT.
perhaps, than discretion, Gay’s epigrammatic lines on
Sir Richard Blackstone, in which scriptural persons are
too freely hitched into rhyme; but he went doggedly on
to the end, and, by his perseverance, baffled those who,
if he had acknowledged himself wrong, by stopping,
would have visited him with an outburst of displeasure
which he felt to be gathering. He once had a more
edifying advantage over them. He was enumerating the
humanities which endeared Hr. Johnson to his mind,
and at the close of an agreeable catalogue, mentioned,
as last and noblest, “ his carrying the poor victim of
disease and dissipation on his back, through Fleet Street,”
at which a titter arose from some, who were struck by
the picture, as ludicrous, and a murmur from others,
who deemed the allusion unfit for ears polite : he paused
for an instant, and then added, in his sturdiest and most
impressive manner,—“ an act which realises the parable
of the Good Samaritan; ” at which his moral and his
delicate hearers shrunk, rebuked, into deep silence. He
was not eloquent, in the true sense of the term; for his
thoughts were too weighty to be moved along by the
shallow stream of feeling which an evening’s excitement
can rouse. He wrote all his lectures, and read them as
they were written ; but his deep voice and earnest man-
ner suited his matter well. He seemed to dig into his
subject, and not in vain. In delivering his longer quo-
tations, he had scarcely continuity enough for the versi-
fication of Shakspeare and Milton, “ with linked sweetness
long drawn out; ” but he gave Pope’s brilliant satire
and delightful compliments, which are usually complete
within the couplet, with an elegance and point which theWILLIAM HAZLITT.
315
poet himself, could he have heard, would have felt as
indicating their highest praise.
Mr. Hazlitt, having suffered, for many years, from
derangement of the digestive organs, for which perhaps
a moderate use of fermented liquors would have been
preferable to abstinence, solaced only by the intense
tincture of tea, in which he found refuge, worn out at
last, died on 18th Sept. 1830, at the age of fifty-two.
Lamb frequently visited him during his sufferings, which
were not, as has been erroneously suggested, aggravated
by the want of needful comforts ; for although his care-
less habits had left no provision for sickness, his friends
gladly acknowledged, by their united aid, the deep
intellectual obligations due to the great thinker. In a
moment of acute pain, when the needless apprehension
for the future rushed upon him, he dictated a brief and
peremptory letter to the Editor of the “ Edinburgh
Review,” requiring a considerable remittance, to which
he had no claim but that of former remunerated ser-
vices, which the friend, who obeyed his bidding, feared
might excite displeasure; but he mistook Francis
Jeffrey; the sum demanded was received by return of
post, with the most anxious wishes for Hazlitt’s reco-
very—-just too late for him to understand his error.
Lamb joined a few friends in attending his funeral in
the church-yard of St. Anne’s Soho, where he was
interred, and felt his loss—not so violently at the time,
as mournfully in the frequent recurrence of the sense
that a chief source of intellectual pleasure was stopped.
His personal frailties are nothing to us now; his
thoughts survive; in them we have his better part316
THOMAS BARNES.
entire, and in them must be traced his true history.
The real events of his life are not to be traced in its
external changes; as his engagement by the Morning
Chronicle, or his transfer of his services to the Times,
or his introduction to the “Edinburgh Previewbut
in the progress and development of his fine under-
standing as nurtured and checked and swayed by his
affections. His warfare was within ; its spoils are ours !
One of the soundest and most elegant scholars whom
the school of Christ’s Hospital ever produced, Mr.
Thomas Barnes, was a frequent guest at Lamb’s cham-
bers in the Temple; and though the responsibilities
he undertook, before Lamb quitted that, his happiest
abode, prevented him from visiting often at Great
Bussell Street, at Islington, or Enfield, he was always
ready to assist by the kind word of the powerful journal
in which he became most potent, the expanding reputa-
tion of his school-mate and friend. After establishing a
high social and intellectual character at Cambridge, he
had entered the legal profession as a special pleader,
but was prevented from applying the needful devotion
to that laborious pursuit by violent rheumatic affections,
which he solaced by writing critiques and essays of rare
merit. So shattered did he appear in health, that when
his friends learned that he had accepted the editorship
of the Times newspaper, they almost shuddered at the
attempt as suicidal, and anticipated a speedy ruin to
his constitution from the pressure of constant labour
and anxiety, on the least healthful hours of toil. But
he had judged better than they of his own physical
and intellectual resources, and the mode in which theTHOMAS BARNES.
317
grave responsibility and constant exertion of bis office
would affect both; for the regular effort consolidated
his feverish strength, gave evenness and tranquillity to
a life of serious exertion, and supplied, for many years,
power equal to the perpetual demand; affording a
striking example how, when finely attuned, the mind
can influence the body to its uses. The facile adapta-
tion of his intellect to his new duties, was scarcely less
remarkable than the mastery it achieved over his
desultory habits and physical infirmities; for, until then,
it had seemed more refined than vigorous—more elegant
than weighty—too fastidious to endure the supervision
and arrangement of innumerable reports, paragraphs,
and essays; but, while a scholarly grace was shed by
him through all he wrote or moulded, the needful vigour
was never wanting to the high office of superintending
the great daily miracle ; to the discipline of its various
contributors; or to the composition of articles which
he was always ready, on the instant of emergency, to
supply.
Mr. Barnes, linked by school associations with Leigh
Hunt, filled the theatrical department of criticism in
the Examiner during the period when the Editor’s
imprisonment for alleged libel on the Prince Regent
precluded his attendance on the theatres. It was no
easy office of friendship to supply the place of Hunt in
the department of criticism, he may be almost said to
have invented; but Mr. Barnes, though in a different
style, well sustained the attractions of the “ Theatrical
Examiner.” Fortunately the appearance of Mr. Kean
during this interval enabled him to gratify the profound318
THOMAS BARNES.
enthusiasm of his nature, without doing violence to the
fastidious taste to which it was usually subjected. He
perceived at once the vivid energy of the new actor;
understood his faults to be better than the excellencies
of ordinary aspirants; and hailed him with the most
generous praise—the more valuable as it proceeded
from one rarely induced to render applause, and never
yielding it except on the conviction of true excellence.
Hazlitt, who contributed theatrical criticism, at the
same time, to the Morning Chronicle, and who astounded
the tame mediocrity of Mr. Perry’s subordinates by his
earnest eulogy, and Barnes, had the satisfaction of first
appreciating this unfriended performer, and, while many
were offended by the daring novelty of his style, and
more stood aloof with fashionable indifference from a
deserted theatre, of awakening that spirit which retrieved
the fortunes of Old Drury—which revived, for a brilliant
interval, the interest of the English stage, and which
bore the actor on a tide of intoxicating success that
“knew no retiring ebb” till it was unhappily checked
by his own lamentable frailties.*
* As the essays of Mr. Barnes have never been collected, I take
leave to present to the reader the conclusion of his article in the
Examiner of February 27, 1814, on the first appearance of Mr. Kean
in Richard:—
“ In the heroic parts, he animated every spectator with his own
feelings; when he exclaimed ‘ that a thousand hearts were swelling in
his bosom,’ the house shouted to express their accordance to a truth
so nobly exemplified by the energy of his voice, by the grandeur of
his mien. His death-scene was the grandest conception, and executed
in the most impressive manner; it was a piece of noble poetry,
expressed by action instead of language. He fights desperately: he is
disarmed and exhausted of all bodily strength : he disdains to fall, and
his strong volition keeps him standing: he fixes that head, full ofTHOMAS BARNES.
319
The manners of Mr. Barnes, though extremely cour-
teous, were so reserved as to seem cold to strangers; but
they were changed, as by magic, by the contemplation of
moral or intellectual beauty, awakened in a small circle,
I well remember him, late one evening, in the year
1816, when only two or three friends remained with
Lamb and his sister, long after “ we had heard the
chimes at midnight,” holding inveterate but delighted
controversy with Lamb, respecting the tragic power of
Dante as compared with that of Shakspeare. Dante
was scarcely known to Lamb; for he was unable to read
the original, and Cary’s noble translation was not then
known to him; and Barnes aspired to the glory of
affording him a glimpse of a kindred greatness in the
mighty Italian with that which he had conceived inca-
pable of human rivalry. The face of the advocate of
Dante, heavy when in repose, grew bright with earnest
admiration as he quoted images, sentiments, dialogues,
against Lamb, who had taken his own immortal stand
intellectual and heroic power, directly an the enemy : he hears up his
chest with an expression which seems swelling with more than human
spirit : he holds hi3 uplifted arm in calm but dreadful defiance of his
conqueror. But he is but man, and he falls after this sublime effort
senseless to the ground. We have felt our eyes gush on reading a
passage of exquisite poetry. We have been ready to leap at sight of
a noble picture, but we never felt stronger emotion, more overpowering
sensations, than were kindled by the novel sublimity of this catastrophe*
In matters of mere taste, there will be a difference of opinion; but
here there was no room to doubt, no reason could be imprudent
enough to hesitate. Every heart beat an echo responsive to this call
of elevated nature, and yearned with fondness towards the man who,
while he excited admiration for himself, made also his admirers glow
with a warmth of conscious superiority, because they were able to
appreciate such an exalted degree of excellence.15320
THOMAS BARNES.
on Lear, and urged the supremacy of the child-changed
father against all the possible Ugolinos of the world. Some
reference having been made by Lamb to his own expo-
sition of Lear, which had been recently published in a
magazine, edited by Leigh Hunt, under the title of
“ The Reflector,” touched another and a tenderer string
of feeling, turned a little the course of his enthusiasm
the more to inflame it, and brought out a burst of affec-
tionate admiration for his friend, then scarcely known to
the world, which was the more striking for its contrast
with his usually sedate demeanour. I think I see him
now, leaning forward upon the little table on which the
candles were just expiring in their sockets, his fists
clenched, his eyes flashing, and his face bathed in
perspiration, exclaiming to Lamb, “ And do I not know,
my boy, that you have written about Shakspeare, and
Skakspeare’s own Lear, finer than any one ever did in
the world, and won't I let the world know it?” He
was right; there is no criticism in the world more
worthy of the genius it estimates than that little passage
referred to on Lear; few felt it then like Barnes;
thousands have read it since, here, and tens of thousands
in America; and have felt as he did; and will answer
for the truth of that excited hour.
Mr. Barnes combined singular acuteness of under-
standing with remarkable simplicity of character. If he
was skilful in finding out those who duped others, he
made some amends to the world of sharpers by being
abundantly duped himself. He might caution the public
to be on their guard against impostors of every kind, but
his heart was open to every species of delusion whichBENJAMIN BOBEET HAYDON.
321
came in the shape of misery. Poles—real and thea-
trical—refugees, pretenders of all kinds, found their
way to the Times’ inner office, and though the inex-
orable editor excluded their lucubrations from the
precious space of its columns, he rarely omitted to make
them amends by large contributions from his purse. The
intimate acquaintance with all the varieties of life forced
on him by his position in the midst of a moving epitome
of the world, which vividly reflected them all, failed to
teach him distrust or discretion. He was a child in the
centre of the most feverish agitations; a dupe in the
midst of the quickest apprehensions; and while, with
unbending pride, he repelled the slightest interference
with his high functions from the greatest quarters, he
was open to every tale from the lowest which could win
from him personal aid. Rarely as he was seen in his
later years in Lamb’s circle, he is indestructibly asso-
ciated with it in the recollection of the few survivors of
its elder days; and they will lament with me that the
influences for good which he shed largely on all the
departments of busy life, should have necessarily left
behind them such slender memorials of one of the
kindest, the wisest, and the best of men who have ever
enjoyed signal opportunities of moulding public opinion,
and who have turned them to the noblest and the
purest uses.
Among Lamb’s early acquaintances and constant
admirers was an artist whose chequered career and
melancholy death gave an interest to the recollections
with which he is linked independent of that which be-
longs to his pictures—Benjamin Robekt Haydon. The322
BENJAMIN ROBERT HAYDON.
ruling misfortune of his life was somewhat akin to that
disproportion in Hazlitt’s mind to which I have adverted,
hut productive in his case of more disastrous results—
the possession of two different faculties not harmonised
into one, and struggling for mastery—in that disarrange-
ment of the faculties in which the unproductive talent
becomes not a mere negative, but neutralises the other,
and even turns its good into evil. Haydon, the son of a
respectable tradesman at Plymouth, was endowed with
two capacities, either of which, exclusively cultivated
with the energy of his disposition, might have led to
fortune—the genius of a painter, and the passionate
logic of a controversialist; talents scarcely capable of
being blended in harmonious action except under the
auspices of prosperity such as should satisfy the artist by
fame, and appease the literary combatant by triumph.
The combination of a turbulent vivacity of mind with
a fine aptitude for the most serene of arts was rendered
more infelicitous by the circumstances of the young
painter’s early career. He was destined painfully to
work his way at once through the lower elements of his
art and the difficulties of adverse fortune; and though
by indomitable courage and unwearied industry he be-
came master of anatomic science, of colouring, and
of perspective, and achieved a position in which his
efforts might be fairly presented to the notice of the
w7orld, his impetuous temperament was yet further
ruffled by the arduous and complicated struggle. With
boundless intellectual ambition, he sought to excel in the
loftiest department of his art; and undertook the double
responsibility of painting great pictures and of creatingBENJAMIN ROBERT HATDON.
323
the taste which should appreciate, and enforcing the
patronage which should reward them.
The patronage of high art, not then adopted by the
government, and far beyond the means of individuals of
the middle class, necessarily appertained to a few mem-
bers of the aristocracy, who alone could encourage and
remunerate the painters of history. Although the
beginning of Mr. Haydon’s career was not unclieered by
aristocratic favor, the contrast between the greatness of
his own conceptions and the humility of the course which
prudence suggested as necessary to obtain for himself
the means of developing them on canvas, fevered his
nature, which, ardent in gratitude for the appreciation
and assistance of the wealthy to a degree which might
even be mistaken for servility, was also impatient of the
general indifference to the cause of which he sought to
be, not only the ornament, but unhappily for him, also
the champion. Alas! he there “ perceived a divided
duty.” Had he been contented silently to paint—to
endure obscurity and privation for a while, gradually to
mature his powers of execution and soften the rigour of
his style and of his virtue, he might have achieved works,
not only as vast in outline and as beautiful in portions
as those which he exhibited, but so harmonious in their
excellencies as to charm away opposition, and ensure
speedy reputation, moderate fortune, and lasting fame.
But resolved to battle for that which he believed to be
“ the right,” he rushed into a life-long contest with the
Royal Academy; frequently suspended the gentle labours
of the pencil for the vehement use of the pen; and thus
gave to his course an air of defiance which prevented the324
BENJAMIN ROBERT HAYDON.
calm appreciation of his nobler works, and increased the
mischief by reaction. Indignant of the scorns “that
patient merit of the unworthy takes,” he sometimes
fancied scorns which impatient merit in return imputes
to the worthy; and thus instead of enjoying the most
tranquil of lives (which a painter’s should be), led one
of the most animated, restless, and broken. The neces-
sary consequence of this disproportion was a series of
pecuniary embarrassments, the direct result of his
struggle with fortune; a succession of feverish triumphs
and disappointments, the fruits of his contest with
power; and worse perhaps than either, the frequent
diversion of his own genius from its natural course, and
the hurried and imperfect development of its most
majestic conceptions. To paint as finely as he some-
times did in the ruffled pauses of his passionate contro-
versy, and amidst the terrors of impending want, was to
display large innate resources of skill and high energy
of mind; but how much more unquestionable fame might
he have attained if his disposition had permitted him to
be content with charming the world of art, instead of
attempting also to instruct or reform it!
Mr. Haydon’s course, though thus troubled, was one
of constant animation, and illustrated by hours of triumph,
the more radiant because they were snatched from adverse
fortune and a reluctant people. The exhibition of a
single picture by an artist at war with the Academy
which exhibited a thousand pictures at the same price—
creating a sensation not only among artists and patrons
of art, but among the most secluded literary circles—
and engaging the highest powers of criticism—was,BENJAMIN ROBERT HAYDON.
825
itself, a splendid occurrence in life ;—and, twice at least,
in the instance of the Entry into Jerusalem, and the
Lazarus, was crowned with signal success. It was a
proud moment for the daring painter, when, at the
opening of the first of these Exhibitions, while the crowd
of visitors, distinguished in rank or talent, stood doubting
whether in the countenance of the chief figure the daring
attempt to present an aspect differing from that which
had enkindled the devotion of ages—to mingle the human
with the Divine, resolution with sweetness, dignified
composure with the anticipation of mighty suffering—
had not failed, Mrs. Siddons walked slowly up to the
centre of the room, surveyed it in silence for a minute or
two, and then ejaculated, in her deep, low, thrilling
voice, “ It is perfect! ” quelled all opposition, and
removed the doubt, from his own mind at least, for ever.
Although the great body of artists to whose corporate
power Mr. Haydon was so passionately opposed, natu-
rally stood aside from his path, it was cheered by the
attention and often by the applause of the chief literary
spirits of the age, who were attracted by a fierce intellec-
tual struggle. Sir Walter Scott, Wordsworth, Hazlitt,
Godwin, Shelley, Hunt, Coleridge, Lamb, Keats—and
many young writers for periodical works, in the fresh-
4
ness of unhacknied authorship—took an interest in a
course so gallant though so troublous, which excited their
sympathy yet did not force them to the irksome duty of
unqualified praise. Almost in the outset of his career,
Wordsworth addressed to him a sonnet, in heroic strain,
associating the artist’s calling with his own; making
common cause with him, ‘I while the whole world seems326
BENJAMIN ROBERT HAYDON.
adverse to desert;” admonishing him “still to be
strenuous for the bright reward, and in the soul admit
of no decay; ” and, long after, when the poet had, by a
wiser perseverance, gradually created the taste which
appreciated his works, he celebrated, in another sonnet,
the fine autumnal conception in the picture of Napoleon
on the rock of St. Helena, with his back to the
spectator, contemplating the blank sea, left desolate by
the sunken sun. The Conqueror of Napoleon also
recognised the artist’s claims, and supplied him with
another great subject, in the contemplation of the
solitude of Waterloo by its hero, ten years after the
victory.
Mr. Haydon’s vividness of mind burst out in his con-
versation, which, though somewhat broken and rugged,
like his career, had also, like that, a vein of beauty
streaking it. Having associated with most of the remark-
able persons of his time, and seen strange varieties of
“ many-coloured life ”•—gifted with a rapid perception of
character and a painter’s eye for effect,—he was able to
hit off, with startling facility, sketches in words which
lived before the hearer. His anxieties and sorrows did
not destroy the buoyancy of his spirits or rob the con-
vivial moment of its prosperity; so that he struggled,
and toiled, and laughed, and triumphed, and failed, and
*
hoped on, till the waning of life approached and found
him still in opposition to the world, and far from the
threshold of fortune. The object of his literary exer-
tions was partially attained; the national attention had
been directed to high art; but he did not personally
share in the benefits he had greatly contributed to win.BENJAMIN ROBERT HAYDON.
327
Even his cartoon of the Curse in Paradise failed to
obtain a prize when he entered the arena with unfledged
youths for competitors; and the desertion of the exhibi-
tion of his two pictures of Aristides and Nero, at the
Egyptian Hall, by the public, for the neighbouring
exposure of the clever manikin, General Tom Thumb,
quite vanquished him. It was indeed a melancholy
contrast;—the unending succession of bright crowds
thronging the levees of the small abortion, and the dim
and dusty room in which the two latest historical pic-
tures of the veteran hung for hours without a visitor.
Opposition, abuse, even neglect he could have borne,
but the sense of ridicule involved in such a juxtaposition
drove him to despair. No one who knew him ever
apprehended from his disasters such a catastrophe as
that which closed them. He had alwavs cherished a
belief in the religion of our Church, and avowed it among
scoffing unbelievers; and that belief he asserted even in
the wild fragments he penned in his last terrible hour.
His friends thought that even the sense of the injustice
of the world would have contributed with his undimmed
consciousness of his own powers to enable him to endure.
In his domestic relations also he was happy, blessed in
the affection of a wife of great beauty and equal discre-
tion, who, by gentler temper and serener wisdom than
his own, had assisted and soothed him in all his anxieties
and griefs, and whose image was so identified in his
mind with the beautiful as to impress its character on
all the forms of female loveliness he had created. Those
who knew him best feel the strongest assurance, that
notwithstanding the appearances of preparation which328
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.
attended his extraordinary suicide, his mind was shat-
tered to pieces—all distorted and broken—with only one
feeling left entire, the perversion of which led to the
deed, a hope to awaken sympathy in death for those
whom living he could not shelter. The last hurried
lines he wrote, entitled “ Haydon’s last Thoughts,”
consisted of a fevered comparison between the Duke of
Wellington and Napoleon, in which he seemed to wish
to repair some supposed injustice which in speech or
writing he had done to the Conqueror. It was enclosed
in a letter addressed to three friends, written in the
hour of his death, and containing sad fragmental memo-
rials of those passionate hopes, fierce struggles, and
bitter disappointments which brought him through
distraction to the grave!
A visit of Coleridge was always regarded by Lamb,
as an opportunity to afford a rare gratification to a few
friends, who, he knew, would prize it; and I well
remember the flush of prideful pleasure which came
over his face as he would hurry, on his way to the India
House, into the office in which I was a pupil, and stam-
mer out the welcome invitation for the evening. This
was true self-sacrifice; for Lamb would have infinitely
preferred having his inspired friend to himself and liis
sister, for a brief renewal of the old Salutation delights ;
but, I believe, he never permitted himself to enjoy this
exclusive treat. The pleasure he conferred was great;
for of all celebrated persons I ever saw, Coleridge alone
surpassed the expectation created by his writings; for
he not only was, but appeared to be, greater than the
noblest things he had written.SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.
329
Lamb used to speak, sometimes with a moistened eye
and quivering lip, of Coleridge when young, and wish
that we could have seen him in the spring-time of his
genius, at a supper in the little sanded parlour of the
old Salutation hostel. The promise of those days was
never realised, by the execution of any of the mighty
works he planned ; but the very failure gave a sort of
mournful interest to the “ large discourse, looking before
and after,” to which we were enchanted listeners ; to the
wisdom which lives only in our memories, and must
perish with them.
From Coleridge’s early works, some notion may be
gleaned of what he ivas; when the steep ascent of fame
rose directly before him, while he might loiter to dally
with the expectation of its summit, without ignobly
shrinking from its labours. His endowments at that
time—the close of the last century—when literature
had faded into a fashion of poor language, must have
seemed, to a mind and heart like Lamb’s, no less than
miraculous.
A rich store of classical knowledge—a sense of the
beautiful, almost verging on the effeminate—a facile
power of melody, varying from the solemn stops of the
organ to a bird-like flutter of airy sound—the glorious
faculty of poetic hope, exerted on human prospects,
and presenting its results with the vividness of pro-
phecy ; a power of imaginative reasoning which peopled
the nearer ground of contemplation with thoughts
cc All plumed like estriches, like eagles bathed,
As full of spirit as the month of May,
And gorgeous as the sun at Midsummer,”330
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.
endowed the author of “The Ancient Mariner,” and
“ Christabel.” Thus gifted, he glided from youth into
manhood, as a fairy voyager on a summer sea, to eddy
round and round in dazzling circles, and to make little
progress, at last, towards any of those thousand moun-
tain summits which, glorified by aerial tints, rose before
him at the extreme verge of the vast horizon of his
genius. “ The Ancient Mariner,” printed with the
“ Lyrical Ballads,” one of his earliest works, is still his
finest poem—at once the most vigorous in design and
the most chaste in execution — developing the intensest
human affection, amidst the wildest scenery of a poet’s
dream. Nothing was too bright to hope from such a
dawn. The mind of Coleridge seemed the harbinger
of the golden years his enthusiasm predicted and
painted;—of those days of peace on earth and good
will among men, which the best and greatest minds
have rejoiced to anticipate—and the earnest belief in
which is better than all frivolous enjoyments, all worldly
wisdom, all worldly success. And if the noontide of his
genius did not fulfil his youth's promise of manly vigour,
nor the setting of his earthly life honour it by an answer-
ing serenity of greatness—they still have left us abundant
reason to be grateful that the glorious fragments of his
mighty and imperfect being were ours. Cloud after
cloud of German metaphysics rolled before his imagina-
tion—which it had power to irradiate with fantastic
beauty, and to break into a thousand shifting forms of
grandeur, though not to conquer; mist after mist
ascended from those streams where earth and sky should
have blended in one imagery, and were turned by itsSAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.	881
obscured glory to radiant haze; indulgence in the fear-
ful luxury of that talismanic drug, which opens glittering
scenes of fantastic beauty on the waking soul to leave it
in arid desolation, too often veiled it in partial eclipse,
and blended fitful light with melancholy blackness over
its vast domain; but the great central light remained
unquenched, and cast its gleams through every depart-
ment of human knowledge. A boundless capacity to
receive and retain intellectual treasure made him the
possessor of vaster stores of lore, classical, antiquarian,
historical, biblical, and miscellaneous, than were ever
vouchsafed, at least in our time, to a mortal being;
goodly structures of divine philosophy rose before him
like exhalations on the table-land of that his prodigious
knowledge ; but, alas! there was a deficiency of the
power of voluntary action which would have left him
unable to embody the shapes of a shepherd’s dreams,
and made him feeble as an infant before the overpower-
ing majesty of his own ! Hence his literary life became
one splendid and sad prospectus—resembling only the
portal of a mighty temple which it was forbidden us to
enter—but whence strains of rich music issuing “took the
prisoned soul and lapped it in Elysium,” and fragments of
oracular wisdom startled the thought they could not satisfy.
Hence the riches of his mind were developed, not in
writing, but in his speech—conversation I can scarcely
call it—which no one who once heard can ever forget.
Unable to work in solitude, he sought the gentle stimulus
of social admiration, and under its influence poured forth,
without stint, the marvellous resources of a mind rich in
the spoils of time—richer—richer far in its own glorious332
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.
imagination and delicate fancy! There was a noble
prodigality in these outpourings; a generous disdain of
self; an earnest desire to scatter abroad the seeds of
wisdom and beauty, to take root wherever they might
fall, and spring up without bearing his name or impress,
which might remind the listener of the first days of
poetry before it became individualised by the press, when
the Homeric rhapsodist wandered through new-born cities
and scattered hovels, flashing upon the minds of the
wondering audience the bright train of heroic shapes, the
series of godlike exploits, and sought no record more
enduring than the fleshly tablets of his hearers’ hearts;
no memory but that of genial tradition; when copyright
did not ascertain the reciter’s property, nor marble at once
perpetuate and shed chillness on his fame—
“ His bounty was as boundless as the sea,
His love as deep.”
Like the ocean, in all its variety of gentle moods, his
discourse perpetually ebbed and flowed,—nothing in it
angular, nothing of set purpose, but now trembling as
the voice of divine philosophy, “ not harsh nor crabbed,
as dull fools suppose, but musical as is Apollo's lute,”
was wafted over the summer wave; now glistening in
long line of light over some obscure subject, like the path
of moonlight on the black water; and, if ever receding
from the shore, driven by some sudden gust of inspira-
tion, disclosing the treasures of the deep, like the rich
strond in Spenser, “ far sunken in their sunless trea-
suries,” to be covered anon by the foam of the same
immortal tide. The benignity of his manner befittedSAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.
333
the beauty of his disquisitions ; his voice rose from the
gentlest pitch of conversation to the height of impas-
sioned eloquence without effort, as his language expanded
from some common topic of the day to the loftiest abstrac-
tions ; ascending by a winding track of spiral glory to the
highest truths which the naked eye could discern, and
suggesting starry regions, beyond, which his own tele-
scopic gaze might possibly decipher. If his entranced
hearers often were unable to perceive the bearings of his
argument—too mighty for any grasp but his own—and
sometimes reaching beyond his own—they understood “ a
beauty in the words, if not the words; ” and a wisdom
and piety in the illustrations, even when unable to con-
nect them with the idea which he desired to illustrate.
If an entire scheme of moral philosophy wTas never
developed by him either in speaking or writing, all the
parts were great: vast biblical knowledge, though some-
times eddying in splendid conjecture, was always em-
ployed with pious reverence; the morality suggested was
at once elevated and genial; the charity hoped all things;
and the mighty imaginative reasoner seemed almost to
realise the condition suggested by the great Apostle,
“ that he understood all mysteries and all knowledge,
and spake with the tongues both of men and angels! ”
After Coleridge had found his last earthly refuge,
under the wise and generous care of Mr. Gilman, at
Highgate, he rarely visited Lamb, and my opportunities
of observing him ceased. From those who were more
favoured, as well as from the fragments I have seen of
his last effusions, I know7 that, amidst suffering and weak-
ness, his mighty mind concentrated its energies on the334
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.
highest subjects which had ever kindled them ; that the
speculations, which sometimes seemed like paradox,
because their extent was too vast to be comprehended in
a single grasp of intellectual vision, were informed by a
serener wisdom; that his perceptions of the central
truth became more undivided, and his piety more pro-
found and humble. His love for Charles and Mary
Lamb continued, to the last, one of the strongest of his
human affections—of which, by the kindness of a friend,*
I possess an affecting memorial under his hand, written
in the margin of a volume of his “ Sybilline Leaves,”
which—after his life-long habit—he has enriched by
manuscript annotations. The poem, beside which it is
inscribed, is entitled “The Lime-Tree Bower my Prison,”
composed by the poet in June, 1796, when Charles and
Mary Lamb, who were visiting at his cottage near Bristol,
had left him for a walk, which an accidental lameness
prevented him from sharing. The visitors are not indi-
cated by the poem, except that Charles is designated by
the epithet, against which he jestingly remonstrated, as
“ gentle-hearted Charles ; ” and is represented as “ win-
ning his way, with sad and patient soul, through evil and
pain, and strange calamity.” Against the title is written
as follows :—
CH. & MARY LAMB,
dear to my heart, yea,
as it were, my heart,
S. T. C.-ffit. 63.	1834.
1797
1834.
37 years !
Mr. Richard Welch, of Reading, editor of the Berkshire Chronicle
—one of the ablest productions of the Conservative Periodical Press.lamb’s dead companions.
335
This memorandum, which is penned with remarkable
neatness, must have been made in Coleridge’s last illness,
as he suffered acutely for several months before he died,
in July of this same year, 1834. What a space did that
thirty-seven years of fond regard for the brother and
sister occupy in a mind like Coleridge’s, peopled with
immortal thoughts which might multiply in the true
time, dialled in heaven, its minutes into years !
These friends of Lamb’s whom I have ventured to
sketch in companionship with him, and Southey also,
whom I only once saw, are all gone ;—and others of less
note in the world’s eye have followed them. Among
those of the old set wdio are gone, is Manning, perhaps,
next to Coleridge, the dearest of them, whom Lamb
used to speak of as marvellous in a	but who,
in company, seemed only a courteous gentleman, more
disposed to listen than to talk. In good old age, de-
parted Admiral Burney, frank-hearted voyager with
Captain Cook round the world, who seemed to unite
our society with the circle over which Dr. Johnson
reigned; who used to tell of school-days under the
tutelage of Eugene Aram; how he remembered the
gentle usher pacing the play-ground, arm-in-arm with
some one of the elder boys, and seeking relief from the
unsuspected burthen of his conscience by talking of
strange murders, and how he, a child, had shuddered
at the handcuffs on his teacher’s hands when taken
away in the post-chaise to prison;—the Admiral being
himself the centre of a little circle which his sister,336
lamb's dead companions.
the famous authoress of “ Evelina,” “ Cecilia,” and
“ Camilla,” sometimes graced. John Lamb, the jovial
and burly, who dared to argue with Hazlitt on questions
of art; Barron Field, who with veneration enough to
feel all the despised greatness of Wordsworth, had a
sparkling vivacity, and, connected with Lamb by the
link of Christ’s Hospital associations, shared largely in
his regard ; Rickman, the sturdiest of jovial companions,
severe in the discipline of whist as at the table of the
House of Commons, of which he was the principal
clerk; and Alsager, so calm, so bland, so considerate—
all are gone. These were all Temple-guests—friends of
Lamb’s early days ; but the companions of a later time,
who first met in Great Russell Street, or Dalston, or
Islington, or Enfield, have been wofully thinned : Allan
Cunningham, stalwart of form and stout of heart and
verse, a ruder Burns ; Cary, Lamb’s “ pleasantest of
clergymen,” whose sweetness of disposition and manner
would have prevented a stranger from guessing that he
was the poet who had rendered the adamantine poetry
of Dante into English with kindred power; Hood, so
grave and sad and silent, that you were astonished to
recognise in him the outpourer of a thousand wild
fancies, the detecter of the inmost springs of pathos,
and the powerful vindicator of poverty and toil before
the hearts of the prosperous; the Reverend Edward
Irving, who, after fulfilling an old prophecy he made in
Scotland to Hazlitt that he would astonish and shake
the world by his preaching, sat humbly at the feet of
Coleridge to listen to wisdom,—all are gone; the forms
of others associated with Lamb's circle by more acci-LAMB FULLY KNOWN.
337
dental links (also dead) come thronging on the memory
from the mist of years—Alas ; it is easier to count
those that are left of the old familiar faces !
The story of the lives of Charles and Mary Lamb is
now told; nothing more remains to be learned respect-
ing it. The known collateral branches of their stock
are extinct, and their upward pedigree lost in those
humble tracks on which the steps of Time leave so light
an impress, that the dust of a few years obliterates all
trace, and affords no clue to search collaterally for sur-
viving relatives. The world has, therefore, all the
materials for judging of them which can be possessed
by those, who, not remembering the delightful peculiari-
ties of their daily manners, can only form imperfect
ideas of what they were. Before bidding them a last
adieu, we may be allowed to linger a little longer and
survey their characters by the new and solemn lights
which are now, for the first time, fully cast upon them.
Except to the few who were acquainted with the
tragical occurrences of Lamb’s early life, some of his
peculiarities seemed strange—to be forgiven, indeed, to
the excellencies of his nature, and the delicacy of his
genius,—but still, in themselves, as much to be won-
dered at as deplored. The sweetness of his character,
breathed through his writings, was felt even by strangers ;
but its heroic aspect was unguessed, even by many of
his friends. Let them now consider it, and ask if the
annals of self-sacrifice can show anything in human
action and endurance, more lovely than its self-devotion
exhibits ! It was not merely that he saw (which his
elder brother cannot be blamed for not immediately338
LAMB FULLY KNOWN.
perceiving) through the ensanguined cloud of misfortune
which had fallen upon his family, the unstained excel-
lence of his sister, whose madness had caused it; that
he was ready to take her to his own home with reveren-
tial affection, and cherish her through life; that he
gave up, for her sake, all meaner and more selfish love,
and all the hopes which youth blends with the passion
which disturbs and ennobles it; not even that he did all
this cheerfully, and without pluming himself upon his
brotherly nobleness as a virtue, or seeking to repay
himself (as some uneasy martyrs do) by small instalments
of long repining,—but that he carried the spirit of the
hour in which he first knew and took his course, to his
last. So far from thinking that his sacrifice of youth
and love to his sister, gave him a licence to follow his
own caprice at the expense of her feelings, even in the
lightest matters, he always wrote and spoke of her as
his wiser self; his generous benefactress, of whose pro-
tecting care he was scarcely worthy. How his pen
almost grew wanton in her praise, even when she was a
prisoner in the Asylum after the fatal attack of lunacy,
his letters of the time to Coleridge show; but that
might have been a mere temporary exaltation—the
attendant fervour of a great exigency and a great reso-
lution. It was not so ; nine years afterwards (1805), in
a letter to Miss Wordsworth, he thus dilates on his
sister’s excellencies, and exaggerates his own frailties :—
“ To say all that I know of her would be more than I
think anybody could believe or even understand; and
when I hope to have her well again with me, it wouldLAMB FULLY KNOWN.
339
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 cursed 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.’ ”
Let it also be remembered that this devotion of the
entire nature was not exercised merely in the conscious-
ness of a past tragedy; but during the frequent recur-
rences of the calamity which caused it, and the constant
apprehension of its terrors ; and this for a large portion
of life, in poor lodgings, where the brother and sister
were, or fancied themselves, “ marked peoplewhere
from an income incapable of meeting the expense of
the sorrow without sedulous privations, he contrived to
hoard, not for holiday enjoyment, or future solace, but
to provide for expected distress. Of the misery attendant
on this anticipation, aggravated by jealous fears lest
some imprudence or error of his own should have
hastened the inevitable evil, we have a glimpse in the
letter to Miss Wordsworth above quoted, and which seems
to have been written in reply to one which that excellent
lady had addressed to Miss Lamb, and which had fallen
into the brother’s care during one of her sad absences.340
LAMB FULLY KNOWN.
“ Your long kind letter has not been thrown away,
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 home. Last Monday
week was the day she left me; and I hope I may calcu-
late 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 begins to discover
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 constantly 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 always feel so. Meantime
she is dead to me ! ”
The constant impendency of this giant sorrow saddened
to “ the Lambs ” even their holidays; as the journey
which they both regarded as the relief and charm of the
year was frequently followed by a seizure; and, when
they ventured to take it, a strait-waistcoat, carefully
packed by Miss Lamb herself, was their constant com-
panion. Sad experience, at last, induced the abandonment
of the annual excursion, and Lamb was contented with
walks in and near London, during the interval of labour.
Miss Lamb experienced, and full well understood pre-
monitory symptoms of the attack, in restlessness, low'IAMB FULLY KNOWN.
341
fever, and the inability to sleep; and, as gently as
possible, prepared her brother for the duty he must soon
perform ; and thus, unless he could stave off the terrible
separation till Sunday, obliged him to ask leave of
absence from the office as if for a day’s pleasure—a
bitter mockery! On one occasion Mr. Charles Lloyd
met them, slowly pacing together a little footpath in
Hoxton fields, both weeping bitterly, and found on
joining them, that they were taking their solemn way to
the accustomed Asylum!
Will any one, acquainted with these secret passages
of Lamb's history, wonder that, with a strong physical
inclination for the stimulus and support of strong drinks
—which man is framed moderately to rejoice in—he
should snatch some wild pleasure “ between the acts ”
(as he called them) “ of his distressful drama,” and that,
still more, during the loneliness of the solitude created
by his sister’s absences, he should obtain the solace of
an hour’s feverish dream ? That, notwithstanding that
frailty, he performed the duties of his hard lot with
exemplary steadiness and discretion is indeed wonderful—
especially when it is recollected that he had himself been
visited, when in the dawn of manhood, with his sister’s
malady, the seeds of which were lurking in his frame.
While that natural predisposition may explain an occa-
sional flightiness of expression on serious matters, fruit
of some wayward fancy, which flitted through his brain,
without disturbing his constant reason or reaching his
heart, and some little extravagances of fitful mirth, how
does it heighten the moral courage by which the disease
was controlled and the severest duties performed!342
LAMB FULLY KNOWN.
Never surely was there a more striking example of the
power of a virtuous, rather say, of a pious, wish to con-
quer the fiery suggestions of latent insanity than that
presented by Lamb’s history. Nervous, tremulous, as
he seemed—so slight of frame that he looked only fit
for the most placid fortune—when the dismal emergen-
cies which chequered his life arose, he acted with as
much promptitude and vigour as if he had never penned
a stanza nor taken a glass too much, or was strung
with herculean sinews. None of those temptations, in
which misery is the most potent, to hazard a lavish
expenditure for an enjoyment to be secured against fate
and fortune, ever tempted him to exceed his income,
when scantiest, by a shilling. He had always a reserve
for poor Mary’s periods of seclusion, and something in
hand besides for a friend in need;—and on his retire-
ment from the India House, he had amassed, by annual
savings, a sufficient sum (invested, after the prudent and
classical taste of Lord Stowell, in “ the elegant simplicity
of the Three per Cents.”) to secure comfort to Miss
Lamb, when his pension should cease with him, even if
the India Company, his great employers, had not acted
nobly by the memory of their inspired clerk—as they
did—and gave her the annuity to which a wife would
have been entitled—but of which he could not feel
assured. Living among literary men, some less distin-
guished and less discreet than those whom we have
mentioned, he was constantly importuned to relieve dis-
tresses which an improvident speculation in literature
produces, and which the recklessness attendant on the
empty vanity of self-exaggerated talent renders desperateLAMB FULLY KNOWN.
343
and merciless;—and to the importunities of such hope-
less petitioners he gave too largely—though he used
sometimes to express a painful sense that he was diminish-
ing his own store without conferring any real benefit.
“ Heaven,” he used to say, “ does not owe me sixpence
for all I have given, or lent (as they call it) to such
importunity; I only gave it because I could not hear to
refuse it; and I have done good by my weakness.” On
the other hand, he used to seek out occasions of devoting
a part of his surplus to those of his friends whom he
believed it would really serve, and almost forced loans,
or gifts in the disguise of loans, upon them. If he
thought one, in such a position, would be the happier for
501. or 100Z, he would carefully procure a note for the
sum, aud, perhaps, for days before he might meet the
object of his friendly purpose, keep the note in his waist-
coat pocket, burning in it to be produced, and, when the
occasion arrived—“ in the sweet of the night ”—he would
crumple it up in his hand and stammer out his difficulty
of disposing of a little money; “I don’t know what to
do with it—pray take it—pray use it—you will do me a
kindness if you will ”—he would say; and it was hard
to disoblige him ! Let any one who has been induced
to regard Lamb as a poor, slight, excitable, and excited
being, consider that such acts as these were not infre-
quent—that he exercised hospitality of a substantial
kind, without stint, all his life—that he spared no
expense for the comfort of his sister, there only lavish—
and that he died leaving sufficient to accomplish all his
wishes for survivors—and think what the sturdy quality
of his goodness must have been amidst all the heart-344
LAMB FULLY KNOWN.
aches and head-aches of his life—and ask the virtue
which has been supported by strong nerves, whether it
has often produced any good to match it ?
The influence of the events now disclosed may be
traced in the development and direction of Lamb’s facul-
ties and tastes, and in the wild contrasts of expression
which sometimes startled strangers. The literary pre-
ferences disclosed in his early letters, are often inclined
to the superficial in poetry and thought—the theology of
Priestly, though embraced with pious earnestness—the
“ divine chit-chat ” of Cowper—the melodious sadness of
Bowles; and his own style, breathing a graceful and
modest sweetness, is without any decided character. But
by the terrible realities of his experience, he was turned
to seek a kindred interest in the “ sterner stuff” of old
tragedy—to catastrophes more fearful even than his own
—to the aspects of “ pale passion ”—to shapes of heroic
daring and more heroic suffering—to the agonising con-
tests of opposing affections, and the victories of the soul
over calamity and death, which the old English drama
discloses, and in the contemplation of which he saw his
own suffering nature at once mirrored and exalted.
Thus, instead of admiring, as he once admired, Rowe
and Otway, even Massinger seemed too declamatory to
satisfy him; in Ford, Decker, Marlowe and Webster, he
found the most awful struggles of affection, and the
“ sad embroidery ” of fancy-streaked grief, and expressed
his kindred feelings in those little quintessences of criti-
cism which are appended to the noblest scenes in his
“Specimens;” and, seeking amidst the sunnier and
more varied world of Shakspeare for the profoundestLAMB FULLY KNOWN.
345
and most earnest passion developed there, obtained that
marvellous insight into the soul of Lear which gives to
his presentment of its riches almost the character of
creation. On the other hand, it was congenial pastime
with him to revel in the opposite excellencies of Beau-
mont and Fletcher, who changed the domain of tragedy
into fairy-land; turned all its terror and its sorrow “ to
favour and to prettiness ; ” shed the rainbow hues of
sportive fancy with equal hand among tyrants and victims,
the devoted and the faithless, suffering and joy; repre-
sented the beauty of goodness as a happy accident, vice
as a wayward aberration, and invoked the remorse of a
moment to change them as with a harlequin’s wand;
unrealised the terrible, and left “ nothing serious in
mortality,” but reduced the struggle of life to a glittering
and heroic game to be played splendidly out, and quitted
without a sigh. But neither Lamb’s own secret griefs,
nor the tastes which they nurtured, ever shook his faith
in the requisitions of duty, or induced him to dally with
that moral paradox to which near acquaintance with the
great errors of mighty natures is sometimes a tempta-
tion. Never, either in writing or in speech did he pur-
posely confound good with evil. For the new theories of
morals which gleamed out in the conversation of some of
his friends, he had no sympathy; and, though in his
boundless indulgence to the perversities and faults of
those whom long familiarity had endeared to him, he did
not suffer their frailties to impair his attachment to the
individuals, he never palliated the frailties themselves;
still less did he emblazon them as virtues.
No one, acquainted with Lamb’s story, will wonder at346
LAMB FULLY KNOWN.
the eccentric wildness of his mirth—his violent changes
from the serious to the farcical—the sudden reliefs of
the “ heat-oppressed brain,” and heart weighed down by
the sense of ever-impending sorrow. His whim, how-
ever, almost always bordered on wisdom. It was justly
said of him by Hazlitt, “ his serious conversation, like
his serious writing, is his best. No one ever stammered
out such fine, piquant, deep, eloquent things in half-a-
dozen half sentences; his jests scald like tears, and
he probes a question with a play on words.”
Although Lamb’s conversation vibrated between the
intense and the grotesque, his writings are replete with
quiet pictures of the humbler scenery of middle life,
touched with a graceful and loving hand. We may
trace in them the experience of a nature bred up in
slender circumstances, but imbued with a certain innate
spirit of gentility suggesting a respect for all its moderate
appliances and unambitious pleasures. The same spirit
pervaded all his own domestic arrangements, so that the
intensity of his affliction was ameliorated by as much
comfort as satisfaction in the outward furniture of life
can give to slender fortune.
The most important light, however, shed on Lamb’s
intellectual life by a knowledge of his true history, is
that which elucidates the change from vivid religious
impressions, manifested in his earlier letters, to an
apparent indifference towards immortal interests and
celestial relations, which he confesses in a letter to
Mr. Walter Wilson.* The truth is, not that he became
an unbeliever, or even a sceptic, but that the peculiarLAMB FULLY KNOWN.
347
disasters in which he was plunged, and the tendency of
his nature to seek immediate solaces, induced an
habitual reluctance to look boldly into futurity. That
conjugal love, which anticipates with far-looking eye
prolonged existence in posterity, was denied to his self-
sacrifice; irksome labour wearied out the heart of his
days; and over his small household, Madness, like
Death in the vision of Milton, continually “ shook its
dart,” and only, at the best, “ delayed to strike.” Not
daring to look onward, even for a little month, he
acquired the habitual sense of living entirely in the
present; enjoying with tremulous zest the security of
the moment, and making some genial, but sad, amends
for the want of all the perspective of life, by cleaving, with
fondness, to its nearest objects, and becoming attached
to them, even when least interesting in themselves.
This perpetual grasping at transient relief from the
minute and vivid present, associated Lamb’s affections
intimately and closely with the small details of daily
existence; these became to him the “jutting frieze”
and “ coigne of vantage ” in which his home-bred fancy
“ made its bed and procreant cradle; ” these became
imbued with his thoughts, and echoed back to him old
feelings and old loves, till his inmost soul shivered at
the prospect of being finally wrenched from them.
Enthralled thus in the prison of an earthly home, he
became perplexed and bewildered at the idea of an
existence, which, though holier and happier, would
doubtless be entirely different from that to which he
was bound by so many delicate films of custom. “ Ah! ”
he would say, “ we shall have none of these little348
LAMB FULLY KNOWN.
passages of this life hereafter — none of our little
quarrels and makings-up — no questionings about six-
pence at whist;” and, thus repelled, he clung more
closely to “the bright minutes” which he strung “on
the thread of keen domestic anguish! ” It is this
intense feeling of the “ nice regards of flesh and blood; ”
this dwelling in petty felicities ; which makes us, apart
from religious fears, unwilling to die. Small associa-
tions make death terrible, because we know, that parting
with this life, we part from their company; whereas
great thoughts make death less fearful, because we feel
that they will be our companions in all worlds, and link
our future to our present being in all ages. Such
thoughts assuredly were not dead in a heart like
Lamb’s ; they were only veiled by the nearer presences
of familiar objects, and sometimes, perhaps, bursting in
upon him in all their majesty, produced those startling
references to sacred things, in which, though not to be
quoted with approval, there was no conscious profane-
ness, but rather a wayward, fitful, disturbed piety. If,
indeed, when borne beyond the present, he sought to
linger in the past; to detect among the dust and cob-
webs of antiquity, beauty, which had lurked there from
old time, rather than to “ rest and expatiate in a life
to come, ” no anti-christian sentiment spread its chillness
over his spirit. The shrinking into mortal life was but
the weakness of a nature which shed the sweetness of
the religion of its youth through the sorrows and the
snatches of enjoyment which crowded his after years,
and only feebly perceived its final glories, which, we
may humbly hope, its immortal part is now enjoying.MARY LAMB.
349
Shortly before his death, Lamb had borrowed of
Mr. Cary, Phillips’s “ Theatmm Poetarum Anglica-
norum,” which, when returned by Mr. Moxon, after the
event, was found with the leaf folded down at the
account of Sir Philip Sydney. Its receipt was acknow-
ledged by the following lines :—
“ So should it be, my gentle friend ;
Thy leaf last closed at Sydney’s end.
Thou too, like Sydney, wouldst have given
The water, thirsting and near heaven ;
Nay, were it wine, fill’d to the brim,
Thou hadst looked hard, but given, like him.
And art thou mingled then among
Those famous sons of ancient song ?
And do they gather round, and praise
Thy relish of their nobler lays ?
Waxing in mirth to hear thee tell
With what strange mortals thou didst dwell ;
At thy quaint sallies more delighted,
Than any’s long among them lighted !
’Tis done : and thou hast joined a crew,
To whom thy soul was justly due ;
And yet I think, where’er thou be,
They’ll scarcely love thee more than we.” *
Little could any one, observing Miss Lamb in the
habitual serenity of her demeanour, guess the calamity
in which she had partaken, or the malady which fright-
fully chequered her life. From Mr. Lloyd, who, although
saddened by impending delusion, was always found
* These lines, characteristic both of the writer and the subject, are
copied from the Memoir of the translator of Dante, by his son, the
Rev. Henry Cary, which, enriched by many interesting memorials of
contemporaries, presents as valuable a picture of rare ability and
excellence as ever was traced by the fine observation of filial love.350
MART LAMB.
accurate in his recollection of long past events and
conversations, I learned that she had described herself,
on her recovery from the fatal attack, as having expe-
rienced, while it was subsiding, such a conviction, that
she was absolved in heaven from all taint of the deed in
which she had been the agent—such an assurance, that
it was a dispensation of Providence for good, though so
terrible—such a sense, that her mother knew her entire
innocence, and shed down blessings upon her, as though
she had seen the reconcilement in solemn vision—that
she was not sorely afflicted by the recollection. It was
as if the old Greek notion, of the necessity for the
unconscious shedder of blood, else polluted though
guiltless, to pass through a religious purification, had, in
her case, been happily accomplished; so that, not only
was she without remorse, but without other sorrow than
attends on the death of an infirm parent in a good old
age. She never shrank from alluding to her mother,
when any topic connected with her own youth made such
a reference, in ordinary respects, natural; but spoke of
her as though no fearful remembrance was associated
with the image; so that some of her most intimate
friends, who knew of the disaster, believed that she had
never become aware of her own share in its horrors. It
is still more singular that, in the wanderings of her
insanity, amidst all the vast throngs of imagery she pre-
sented of her early days, this picture never recurred, or,
if ever, not associated with shapes of terror.
Miss Lamb would have been remarkable for the
sweetness of her disposition, the clearness of her under-
standing, and the gentle wisdom of all her acts andMARY LAMB.
351
words, even if these qualities had not been presented in
marvellous contrast with the distraction under which she
suffered for weeks, latterly for months, in every year.
There was no tinge of insanity discernible in her manner
to the most observant eye ; not even in those distressful
periods when the premonitory symptoms had apprised
her of its approach, and she was making preparations
for seclusion. In all its essential sweetness, her charac-
ter was like her brother’s; while, by a temper more
placid, a spirit of enjoyment more serene, she was
enabled to guide, to counsel, to cheer him; and to pro-
tect him on the verge of the mysterious calamity, from
the depths of which she rose so often unruffled to his
side. To a friend in any difficulty she was the most
comfortable of advisers, the wisest of consolers. Hazlitt
used to say, that he never met with a woman who could
reason, and had met with only one thoroughly reasonable
—the sole exception being Mary Lamb. She did not
wish, however, to be made an exception, to a general
disparagement of her sex; for in all her thoughts and
feelings she was most womanly—keeping, under even
undue subordination, to her notion of a woman’s province,
intellect of rare excellence, which flashed out when the
restraints of gentle habit and humble manner were
withdrawn by the terrible force of disease. Though her
conversation in sanity was never marked by smartness or
repartee; seldom rising beyond that of a sensible quiet
gentlewoman appreciating and enjoying the talents of
her friends, it was otherwise in her madness. Lamb, in
his letter to a female friend, announcing his determina-
tion to be entirely with her, speaks of her pouring out352
MARY LAMB.
memories of all the events and persons of her younger
days ;—hut he does not mention, what I am able from
repeated experiences to add, that her ramblings often
sparkled with brilliant description and shattered beauty.
She would fancy herself in the days of Queen Anne or
George the First; and describe the brocaded dames and
courtly manners, as though she had been bred among
them, in the best style of the old comedy. It was all
broken and disjointed, so that the hearer could remember
little of her discourse ; but the fragments were like the
jewelled speeches of Congreve, only shaken from their
setting. There was sometimes even a vein of crazy logic
running through them, associating things essentially
most dissimilar, but connecting them by a verbal asso-
ciation in strange order. As a mere physical instance
of deranged intellect, her condition was, I believe, extra-
ordinary; it was as if the finest elements of mind
had been shaken into fantastic combinations like those
of a kaleidoscope;—but not for the purpose of exhibiting
a curious phenomenon of mental aberration are the
aspects of her insanity unveiled, but to illustrate the
moral force of gentleness by which the faculties that thus
sparkled when restraining wisdom was withdrawn, were
subjected to its sway, in her periods of reason.
The following letter from Miss Lamb to Miss Words-
worth, on one of the chief external events of Lamb's
history, the removal from the Temple to Covent Garden,
will illustrate the cordial and womanly strain of her
observation on the occurrences of daily life, and afford
a good idea of her habitual conversation among her
friends.MARY LAMB.
353
“My dear Miss Wordsworth,
“ Your kind letter has given us very great
pleasure, the sight of your handwriting was a most wel-
come surprise to us. We have heard good tidings of
you by all our friends who were so fortunate as to visit
you this summer, 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 cheerful place, or I should have354
MARY LAMB.
many misgivings about leaving the Temple. I look
forward with great pleasure to the prospect of seeing my
good friend, 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.
*******
“ Charles has had all his Hogarths hound in a book,
they were sent home yesterday, and now that I have
them altogether, and perceive the advantage of peeping
close at them through my spectacles, I am reconciled 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 looldng 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. M-, who was with us, kept her
liking, and continued 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 moun-
tains, 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 ofMARY LAMB.
355
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. M--------could accomplish.
“ God bless you and yours. Love to all and each one.
“I am ever yours most affectionately,
“ M. Lamb.”
Of that deeper vein of sentiment in Mary Lamb,
seldom revealed, the following passages, from a letter
to the same lady, referring to the death of a brother
of her beloved correspondent, may be offered as a
companion specimen.
“ My dear Miss Wordsworth,
“ I thank you, my kind friend, for your most
comfortable letter; till I saw your own handwriting, I
could not persuade myself that I should do well to write
to you, though I have often attempted it; but I always
left off, dissatisfied with what I had written, and feeling
that I was doing an improper thing to intrude upon your
sorrow. I wished to tell you that you would one day
feel the kind of peaceful state of mind and sweet
memory of the dead, which you so happily describe, as
now almost begun ; but I felt that it was improper, and
most grating to the feelings of the afflicted, to say to.356
MARY LAMB.
them that the memory of their affection would in time
become a constant part, not only of their dream, but of
their most wakeful sense of happiness. That you would
see every object with, and through your lost brother,
and that that would at last become a real and everlasting
source of comfort to you, I felt, and well knew, from my
own experience in sorrow; but till you yourself began
to feel this, I did not dare tell you so; but I send you
some poor lines, which I wrote under this conviction of
mind, and before I heard Coleridge was returning home.
I will transcribe them now, before I finish my letter, lest
a false shame prevent me theu, for I know they are much
worse than they ought to be, written, as they were, with
strong feeling, and on such a subject, every line seems
to me to be borrowed, but I had no better way of
expressing my thoughts, and I never have the power of
altering or amending anything I have once laid aside
with dissatisfaction.
“ Why is he wandering on the sea ?—
Coleridge should now with Wordsworth be.
By slow degrees he ’d steal away
Their woe, and gently bring a ray
(So happily he ’d time relief,)
Of comfort from their very grief.
He ’d tell them that their brother dead,
When years have passed o’er their head,
Will be remembered with such holy,
True, and perfect melancholy,
That ever this lost brother John
AVill be their heart’s companion.
His voice they ’ll always hear,
His face they ’ll always see;
There’s nought in life so sweet
As such a memory.”MARY LAMB.
357
The excellence of Mary Lamb’s nature was happily
developed in her 'portion of those books for children—
“ wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best,” — which she
wrote in conjunction with her brother, the “ Poetry for
Children,” the “ Tales from Shakspeare,” and “ Mrs.
Leicester’s School.” How different from the stony
nutriment provided for those delicate, apprehensive,
affectionate creatures, in the utilitarian books, which
starve their little hearts, and stuff their little heads
with shallow science, and impertinent facts, and selfish
morals! One verse, which she did not print—the con-
clusion of a little poem supposed to be expressed in a
letter by the son of a family who, when expecting the
return of its father from sea, received news of his death,
—recited by her to Mr. Martin Burney, and retained in
his fond recollection, may afford a concluding example
of the healthful wisdom of her lessons :—
“ I can no longer feign to be
A thoughtless child in infancy ;
I tried to write like young Marie,
But I am James, her brother;
And I can feel—but she 9s too young—
Yet blessings on her prattling tongue,
She sweetly soothes my mother.'”
Contrary to Lamb’s expectation, who feared (as also
his friends feared with him) the desolation of his own
survivorship, which the difference of age rendered pro-
bable, Miss Lamb survived him for nearly eleven years.
When he died, she was mercifully in a state of partial
estrangement, which, while it did not wholly obscure
her mind, deadened her feelings, so that as she gradually358
MARY LAMB.
regained her perfect senses, she felt as gradually the full
force of the blow, and was the better able calmly to bear
it. For awhile she declined the importunities of her
friends that she would leave Edmonton for a residence •
nearer London, where they might more frequently visit
her. He was there, asleep in the old churchyard,
beneath the turf near which they had stood together,
and had selected for a resting-place; to this spot she
used, when well, to stroll out mournfully in the evening,
and to this spot she would contrive to lead any friend
who came in the summer evenings to drink tea and went
out with her afterwards for a walk.* At length, as her
illness became more frequent, and her frame much
weaker, she was induced to take up her abode under
* The following Sonnet, by Mr. Moxon, written at this period of
tranquil sadness in Miss Lamb’s life, so beautifully embodies the
reverential love with which the sleeping and the mourning were
regarded by one of their nearest friends, that I gratify myself by
extracting it from the charming little volume of his Sonnets, which it
adorns :—
Here sleeps, beneath this bank, where daisies grow,
The kindliest sprite earth holds within her breast;
In such a spot I would this frame should rest,
When I to join my friend far hence shall go.
His only mate is now the minstrel lark,
Who chaunts her morning music o'er his bed,
Save she who comes each evening, ere the bark
Of watch-dog gathers drowsy folds, to shed
A sister’s tears. Kind Heaven, upon her head,
Do thou in dove-like guise thy spirit pour,
And in her aged path some flowerets spread
Of earthly joy, should Time for her in store
Have weary days and nights, ere she shall greet
Him whom she longs in Paradise to meet.MARY LAMB.
359
genial care, at a pleasant house in St. John’s Wood,
where she was surrounded by the old books and prints,
and was frequently visited by her reduced number of
surviving friends. Repeated attacks of her malady
weakened her mind, but she retained to the last her
sweetness of disposition unimpaired, and gently sunk
into death on the 20th May, 1847.
A few survivors of the old circle, now sadly thinned,
attended her remains to the spot in Edmonton church-
yard, where they were laid above those of her brother.
With them was one friend of later days—but who had
become to Lamb as one of his oldest companions, and
for whom Miss Lamb cherished a strong regard —
Mr. John Forster, the author of “ The Life of Gold-
smith,” in which Lamb would have rejoiced, as written
in a spirit congenial with his own. In accordance with
Lamb’s own feeling, so far as it could be gathered from
his expressions on a subject to which he did not often,
or willingly, refer, he had been interred in a deep grave,
simply dug, and wattled round, but without any affecta-
tion of stone or brickwork to keep the human dust from
its kindred earth. So dry, however, is the soil of the
quiet churchyard that the excavated earth left perfect
walls of stiff clay, and permitted us just to catch a
glimpse of the still untarnished edges of the coffin in
which all the mortal part of one of the most delightful
persons who ever lived was contained, and on which the
remains of her he had loved with love, “ passing the
love of woman,” were henceforth to rest;—the last
glances we shall ever have even of that covering;—con-
cealed from us as we parted, by the coffin of the sister.360	LAST EARTHLY FAREWELL.
We felt, I believe after a moment’s strange shuddering,
that the re-union was well accomplished; and although
the true-hearted son of Admiral Burney, who had known
and loved the pair we quitted, from a child, and who
had been among the dearest objects of existence to him,
refused to be comforted,—even he will now join the
scanty remnant of their friends in the softened remem-
brance that “ they were lovely in their lives,” and own
with them the consolation of adding, at last, “ that in
death thev are not divided! ”
THE END.
*
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