Dear Moxon, If you can oblige me with the Garrick Papers or Ann of
Gierstien, I shall be thankful. I am almost fearful whether my Sister
will be able to enjoy any reading at present for since her coming home,
after 12 weeks, she has had an unusual relapse into the saddest low
spirits that ever poor creature had, and has been some weeks under
medical care. She is unable to see any yet. When she is better I shall
be very glad to talk over your ramble with you. Have you done any
sonnets, can you send me any to overlook? I am almost in despair, Mary's
case seems so hopeless.

Believe me

Yours

C.L.

I do not want Mr. Jameson or Lady Morgan.

Enfield

Wedn'y

["The Garrick Papers." Lamb refers, I suppose, to the _Private
Correspondence of David Garrick_, in some form previous to its
publication in 1832.

"Anne of Geierstein." Scott's novel was published this year.

"Mr. Jameson." I cannot find any book by a Mr. Jameson likely to have
been offered to Lamb; but Mrs. Jameson's _Loves of the Poets_ was
published this year. Probably he meant to write Mrs. Jameson. Lady
Morgan was the author of _The Wild Irish Girl_ and other novels. Her
1829 book was _The Book of the Boudoir_.]

LETTER 492

CHARLES LAMB TO JAMES GILLMAN

Chase-Side, Enfield, 26th Oct., 1829.

Dear Gillman,--Allsop brought me your kind message yesterday. How can I
account for having not visited Highgate this long time? Change of place
seemed to have changed me. How grieved I was to hear in what indifferent
health Coleridge has been, and I not to know of it! A little school
divinity, well applied, may be healing. I send him honest Tom of Aquin;
that was always an obscure great idea to me: I never thought or dreamed
to see him in the flesh, but t'other day I rescued him from a stall in
Barbican, and brought him off in triumph. He comes to greet Coleridge's
acceptance, for his shoe-latchets I am unworthy to unloose. Yet there
are pretty pro's and con's, and such unsatisfactory learning in him.
Commend me to the question of etiquette-- "_utrum annunciatio debuerit
fieri per angelum_"--_Quaest. 30, Articilus 2_. I protest, till now I
had thought Gabriel a fellow of some mark and livelihood, not a simple
esquire, as I find him. Well, do not break your lay brains, nor I
neither, with these curious nothings. They are nuts to our dear friend,
whom hoping to see at your first friendly hint that it will be
convenient, I end with begging our very kindest loves to Mrs. Gillman.
We have had a sorry house of it here. Our spirits have been reduced till
we were at hope's end what to do-- obliged to quit this house, and
afraid to engage another, till in extremity I took the desperate resolve
of kicking house and all down, like Bunyan's pack; and here we are in a
new life at board and lodging, with an honest couple our neighbours. We
have ridded ourselves of the cares of dirty acres; and the change,
though of less than a week, has had the most beneficial effects on Mary
already. She looks two years and a half younger for it. But we have had
sore trials.

God send us one happy meeting!--Yours faithfully,

C. LAMB.

["The question of etiquette." See the _Summa Theologies_, Pars Tertia,
Quest. XXX., Articulus II. It would be interesting to know whether Lamb
remembered an earlier letter in which he had set Coleridge some similar
"nuts."

"In a new life." The Lambs moved next door, to the Westwoods. The house,
altered externally, still stands (1912) and is known as "Westwood
Cottage."]

LETTER 493

CHARLES LAMB TO VINCENT NOVELLO

[P.M. Probably Nov. 10, 1829.]

Dear FUGUE-IST,

or hear'st thou rather

CONTRAPUNTIST--?

We expect you four (as many as the Table will hold without squeeging) at
Mrs. Westwood's Table D'Hote on Thursday. You will find the White House
shut up, and us moved under the wing of the Phoenix, which gives us
friendly refuge. Beds for guests, marry, we have none, but cleanly
accomodings at the Crown & Horseshoe.

Yours harmonically,

C.L.

[Addressed: Vincentio (what Ho!) Novello, a Squire, 66, Great Queen
Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields.]

["The Phoenix." Mr. Westwood was agent for the Phoenix Insurance
Company, and the badge of that office was probably on the house.]

LETTER 494

CHARLES LAMB TO WALTER WILSON

Enfield, 15th November, 1829.

My dear Wilson,--I have not opened a packet of unknown contents for many
years, that gave me so much pleasure as when I disclosed your three
volumes. I have given them a careful perusal, and they have taken their
degree of classical books upon my shelves. De Foe was always my darling;
but what darkness was I in as to far the larger part of his writings! I
have now an epitome of them all. I think the way in which you have done
the "Life" the most judicious you could have pitched upon. You have made
him tell his own story, and your comments are in keeping with the tale.
Why, I never heard of such a work as "the Review." Strange that in my
stall-hunting days I never so much as lit upon an odd volume of it. This
circumstance looks as if they were never of any great circulation. But I
may have met with 'em, and not knowing the prize, overpast 'em. I was
almost a stranger to the whole history of Dissenters in those reigns,
and picked my way through that strange book the "Consolidator" at
random. How affecting are some of his personal appeals! what a machine
of projects he set on foot! and following writers have picked his pocket
of the patents. I do not understand where-abouts in _Roxana_ he himself
left off. I always thought the complete-tourist-sort of description of
the town she passes through on her last embarkation miserably
unseasonable and out of place. I knew not they were spurious. Enlighten
me as to where the apocryphal matter commences. I, by accident, can
correct one A.D. "Family Instructor," vol. ii. 1718; you say his first
volume had then reached the fourth edition; now I have a fifth, printed
for Eman. Matthews, 1717. So have I plucked one rotten date, or rather
picked it up where it had inadvertently fallen, from your flourishing
date tree, the Palm of Engaddi. I may take it for my pains. I think
yours a book which every public library must have, and every English
scholar should have. I am sure it has enriched my meagre stock of the
author's works. I seem to be twice as opulent. Mary is by my side just
finishing the second volume. It must have interest to divert her away so
long from her modern novels. Colburn will be quite jealous. I was a
little disappointed at my "Ode to the Treadmill" not finding a place;
but it came out of time. The two papers of mine will puzzle the reader,
being so akin. Odd that, never keeping a scrap of my own letters, with
some fifteen years' interval I should nearly have said the same things.
But I shall always feel happy in having my name go down any how with De
Foe's, and that of his historiographer. I promise myself, if not
immortality, yet diuternity of being read in consequence. We have both
had much illness this year; and feeling infirmities and fretfulness grow
upon us, we have cast off the cares of housekeeping, sold off our goods,
and commenced boarding and lodging with a very comfortable old couple
next door to where you found us. We use a sort of common table.
Nevertheless, we have reserved a private one for an old friend; and when
Mrs. Wilson and you revisit Babylon, we shall pray you to make it yours
for a season. Our very kindest remembrances to you both. From your old
friend and _fellow-journalist_, now in _two instances_,

C. LAMB.

Hazlitt is going to make your book a basis for a review of De Foe's
Novels in the "Edinbro'." I wish I had health and spirits to do it. Hone
I have not seen, but I doubt not he will be much pleased with your
performance. I very much hope you will give us an account of Dunton, &c.
But what I should more like to see would be a Life and Times of Bunyan.
Wishing health to you and long life to your healthy book, again I
subscribe me,

Yours in verity,

C.L.

[Wilson's _Memoirs of the Life and Times of Daniel De Foe_ had just been
published in three volumes, with the date 1830.

Defoe's _Review_ was started in February, 1704, under the title, _A
Review of the Affairs of France.... purged from the Errors and
Partiality of News-writers, and Petty-Statesmen, of all sides_. It
continued until May, 1713. _The Consolidator; or, Memoirs of sundry
Transactions from the world in the moon. Translated from the Lunar
Language_, was published in 1765, a political satire, which, it has been
thought, gave hints to Swift for Gulliver.

Lamb had sent Wilson his "Ode to the Treadmill." The substance of his
letter of December 16, 1822, was printed by Wilson in Chapter XXII. of
Vol. III.; the new material which he wrote especially for the book, was
printed in Chapter XVII. of the same volume. The space dividing them was
not fifteen years but seven.

"Diuternity." Spelt "diuturnity." A rare word signifying long duration.

"_Fellow-journalist_." The other instance would be in connection with
the journals of the India House, where Wilson had once been a clerk with
Lamb.

Hazlitt's review of Wilson's book is in the _Edinburgh_ for January,
1830, with this reference to Lamb's criticisms: "_Captain Singleton_ is
a hardened, brutal desperado, without one redeeming trait, or almost
human feeling; and, in spite of what Mr. Lamb says of his lonely musings
and agonies of a conscience-stricken repentance, we find nothing of this
in the text."

"Dunton." This would be John Dunton (1659-1733), the bookseller, and
author of _The Athenian Gazette, Dunton's Whipping-Post_, and scores of
pamphlets and satires.]

LETTER 495

(_? Fragment_)

CHARLES LAMB TO JAMES GILLMAN

[No date. ? November 29, 1829.]

Pray trust me with the "Church History," as well as the "Worthies." A
moon shall restore both. Also give me back Him of Aquinum. In return you
have the _light of my countenance_. Adieu.

P.S.--A sister also of mine comes with it. A son of Nimshi drives her.
Their driving will have been furious, impassioned. Pray God they have
not toppled over the tunnel! I promise you I fear their steed, bred out
of the wind without father, semi-Melchisedecish, hot, phaetontic. From
my country lodgings at Enfield.

C.L.

[The _Church History_ and the _Worthies_ are by Fuller.

"Light of my countenance." Mr. Hazlitt says that this was a copy of
Brook Pulham's etching.

"The tunnel"--the Highgate Archway.]

LETTER 496

CHARLES LAMB TO JAMES GILLMAN

30 Nov., 1829.

Dear G.,--The excursionists reached home, and the good town of Enfield a
little after four, without slip or dislocation. Little has transpired
concerning the events of the back-journey, save that on passing the
house of 'Squire Mellish, situate a stone-bow's cast from the hamlet,
Father Westwood, with a good-natured wonderment, exclaimed, "I cannot
think what is gone of Mr. Mellish's rooks. I fancy they have taken
flight somewhere; but I have missed them two or three years past." All
this while, according to his fellow-traveller's report, the rookery was
darkening the air above with undiminished population, and deafening all
ears but his with their cawings. But nature has been gently withdrawing
such phenomena from the notice of Thomas Westwood's senses, from the
time he began to miss the rooks. T. Westwood has passed a retired life
in this hamlet of thirty or forty years, living upon the minimum which
is consistent with gentility, yet a star among the minor gentry,
receiving the bows of the tradespeople and courtesies of the alms' women
daily. Children venerate him not less for his external show of gentry,
than they wonder at him for a gentle rising endorsation of the person,
not amounting to a hump, or if a hump, innocuous as the hump of the
buffalo, and coronative of as mild qualities. 'Tis a throne on which
patience seems to sit--the proud perch of a self-respecting humility,
stooping with condescension. Thereupon the cares of life have sate, and
rid him easily. For he has thrid the _angustiae domûs_ with dexterity.
Life opened upon him with comparative brilliancy. He set out as a rider
or traveller for a wholesale house, in which capacity he tells of many
hair-breadth escapes that befell him; one especially, how he rode a mad
horse into the town of Devizes; how horse and rider arrived in a foam,
to the utter consternation of the expostulating hostlers, inn-keepers,
&c. It seems it was sultry weather, piping hot; the steed tormented into
frenzy with gad-flies, long past being roadworthy; but safety and the
interest of the house he rode for were incompatible things; a fall in
serge cloth was expected; and a mad entrance they made of it. Whether
the exploit was purely voluntary, or partially; or whether a certain
personal defiguration in the man part of this extraordinary centaur
(non-assistive to partition of natures) might not enforce the
conjunction, I stand not to inquire. I look not with 'skew eyes into the
deeds of heroes. The hosier that was burnt with his shop, in Field-lane,
on Tuesday night, shall have past to heaven for me like a Marian Martyr,
provided always, that he consecrated the fortuitous incremation with a
short ejaculation in the exit, as much as if he had taken his state
degrees of martyrdom _in formâ_ in the market vicinage. There is
adoptive as well as acquisitive sacrifice. Be the animus what it might,
the fact is indisputable, that this composition was seen flying all
abroad, and mine host of Daintry may yet remember its passing through
his town, if his scores are not more faithful than his memory. After
this exploit (enough for one man), Thomas Westwood seems to have
subsided into a less hazardous occupation; and in the twenty-fifth year
of his age we find him a haberdasher in Bow Lane: yet still retentive of
his early riding (though leaving it to rawer stomachs), and Christmasly
at night sithence to this last, and shall to his latest Christmas, hath
he, doth he, and shall he, tell after supper the story of the insane
steed and the desperate rider. Save for Bedlam or Luke's no eye could
have guessed that melting day what house he rid for. But he reposes on
his bridles, and after the ups and downs (metaphoric only) of a life
behind the counter--hard riding sometimes, I fear, for poor T.W.--with
the scrapings together of the shop, and _one anecdote_, he hath finally
settled at Enfield; by hard economising, gardening, building for
himself, hath reared a mansion, married a daughter, qualified a son for
a counting-house, gotten the respect of high and low, served for self or
substitute the greater parish offices: hath a special voice at vestries;
and, domiciliating us, hath reflected a portion of his house-keeping
respectability upon your humble servants. We are greater, being his
lodgers, than when we were substantial renters. His name is a passport
to take off the sneers of the native Enfielders against obnoxious
foreigners. We are endenizened. Thus much of T. Westwood have I thought
fit to acquaint you, that you may see the exemplary reliance upon
Providence with which I entrusted so dear a charge as my own sister to
the guidance of a man that rode the mad horse into Devizes. To come from
his heroic character, all the amiable qualities of domestic life
concentre in this tamed Bellerophon. He is excellent over a glass of
grog; just as pleasant without it; laughs when he hears a joke, and when
(which is much oftener) he hears it not; sings glorious old sea songs on
festival nights; and but upon a slight acquaintance of two years,
Coleridge, is as dear a deaf old man to us, as old Norris, rest his
soul! was after fifty. To him and his scanty literature (what there is
of it, _sound_) have we flown from the metropolis and its cursed
annualists, reviewers, authors, and the whole muddy ink press of that
stagnant pool.

Now, Gillman again, you do not know the treasure of the Fullers. I
calculate on having massy reading till Christmas. All I want here, is
books of the true sort, not those things in boards that moderns mistake
for books--what they club for at book clubs.

I did not mean to cheat you with a blank side; but my eye smarts, for
which I am taking medicine, and abstain, this day at least, from any
aliments but milk-porridge, the innocent taste of which I am anxious to
renew after a half-century's dis-acquaintance. If a blot fall here like
a tear, it is not pathos, but an angry eye.

Farewell, while my _specilla_ are sound.

Yours and yours,

C. LAMB.

[This letter records the safe return of Mary Lamb with the Fullers.

"Squire Mellish." William Mellish, M.P. for Middlesex for some years.

Thomas Westwood's son, for whom Lamb found an appointment, wrote some
excellent articles in _Notes and Queries_ many years later describing
the Lambs' life at his father's.

"Old Norris." See letter to Crabb Robinson, Jan. 20, 1827.

_Specilla_ is probably a slip for _Conspicilla_.]

LETTER 497

CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON

[P.M. December 8, 1829.]

My dear B.B.--You are very good to have been uneasy
about us, and I have the satisfaction to tell you, that we
are both in better health and spirits than we have been for a year
or two past; I may say, than we have been since we have been
at Enfield. The cause may not appear quite adequate, when
I tell you, that a course of ill health and spirits brought us to the
determination of giving up our house here, and we are boarding
and lodging with a worthy old couple, long inhabitants
of Enfield, where everything is done for us without our trouble,
further than a reasonable weekly payment. We should have
done so before, but it is not easy to flesh and blood to give up an
ancient establishment, to discard old Penates, and from house
keepers to turn house-sharers. (N.B. We are not in the Work-house.)
Dioclesian in his garden found more repose than
on the imperial seat of Rome, and the nob of Charles the Fifth
aked seldomer under a monk's cowl than under the diadem.
With such shadows of assimilation we countenance our degradation.
With such a load of dignifyd cares just removed from
our shoulders, we can the more understand and pity the accession
to yours, by the advancement to an Assigneeship. I will
tell you honestly B.B. that it has been long my deliberate judgment,
that all Bankrupts, of what denomination civil or religious
whatever, ought to be hang'd. The pity of mankind has for
ages run in a wrong channel, and has been diverted from poor
Creditors (how many I have known sufferers! Hazlitt has just
been defrauded of £100 by his Bookseller-friend's breaking)
to scoundrel Debtors. I know all the topics, that distress may
come upon an honest man without his fault, that the failure of
one that he trusted was his calamity &c. &c. Then let _both_ be
hang'd. O how careful it would make traders! These are
my deliberate thoughts after many years' experience in matters
of trade. What a world of trouble it would save you, if Friend
* * * * * had been immediately hangd, without benefit of
clergy, which (being a Quaker I presume) he could not
reasonably insist upon. Why, after slaving twelve months
in your assign-business, you will be enabled to declare seven
pence in the Pound in all human probabilty. B.B., he should
be _hanged_. Trade will never re-flourish in this land till such
a Law is establish'd. I write big not to save ink but eyes,
mine having been troubled with reading thro' three folios of
old Fuller in almost as few days, and I went to bed last
night in agony, and am writing with a vial of eye water before
me, alternately dipping in vial and inkstand. This may enflame
my zeal against Bankrupts--but it was my speculation when
I could see better. Half the world's misery (Eden else) is
owing to want of money, and all that want is owing to Bankrupts.
I declare I would, if the State wanted Practitioners,
turn Hangman myself, and should have great pleasure in
hanging the first after my salutary law should be establish'd.
I have seen no annuals and wish to see none. I like your
fun upon them, and was quite pleased with Bowles's sonnet.
Hood is or was at Brighton, but a note, prose or rhime, to him,
Robert Street, Adelphi, I am sure would extract a copy of
_his_, which also I have not seen. Wishing you and yours all
Health, I conclude while these frail glasses are to me--eyes.

C.L.

["Dioclesian." The Emperor Diocletian abdicated the throne after
twenty-one years' reign, and retired to his garden. Charles V. of
Germany imitated the Roman Emperor, and after thirty-six years took the
cowl.

"Hazlitt has just been defrauded." The failure of Hunt & Clarke, the
publishers of the _Life of Napoleon_, cost Hazlitt £500. He had received
only £140 towards this, in a bill which on their insolvency became
worthless.

"Friend * * * * *." Not identifiable.]

LETTER 498

CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

[P.M. January 22, 1830.]

And is it a year since we parted from you at the steps of Edmonton
Stage? There are not now the years that there used to be. The tale of
the dwindled age of men, reported of successional mankind, is true of
the same man only. We do not live a year in a year now. 'Tis a punctum
stans. The seasons pass us with indifference. Spring cheers not, nor
winter heightens our gloom, Autumn hath foregone its moralities, they
are hey-pass re-pass [as] in a show-box. Yet as far as last year occurs
back, for they scarce shew a reflex now, they make no memory as
heretofore--'twas sufficiently gloomy. Let the sullen nothing pass.

Suffice it that after sad spirits prolonged thro' many of its months, as
it called them, we have cast our skins, have taken a farewell of the
pompous troublesome trifle calld housekeeping, and are settled down into
poor boarders and lodgers at next door with an old couple, the Baucis
and Baucida of dull Enfield. Here we have nothing to do with our
victuals but to eat them, with the garden but to see it grow, with the
tax gatherer but to hear him knock, with the maid but to hear her
scolded. Scot and lot, butcher, baker, are things unknown to us save as
spectators of the pageant. We are fed we know not how, quietists,
confiding ravens. We have the otium pro dignitate, a respectable
insignificance. Yet in the self condemned obliviousness, in the
stagnation, some molesting yearnings of life, not quite kill'd, rise,
prompting me that there was a London, and that I was of that old
Jerusalem. In dreams I am in Fleetmarket, but I wake and cry to sleep
again. I die hard, a stubborn Eloisa in this detestable Paraclete. What
have I gained by health? intolerable dulness. What by early hours and
moderate meals?--a total blank. O never let the lying poets be believed,
who 'tice men from the chearful haunts of streets--or think they mean it
not of a country village. In the ruins of Palmyra I could gird myself up
to solitude, or muse to the snorings of the Seven Sleepers, but to have
a little teazing image of a town about one, country folks that do not
look like country folks, shops two yards square, half a dozen apples and
two penn'orth of overlookd gingerbread for the lofty fruiterers of
Oxford Street--and, for the immortal book and print stalls, a
circulating library that stands still, where the shew-picture is a last
year's Valentine, and whither the fame of the last ten Scotch novels has
not yet travel'd (marry, they just begin to be conscious of the Red
Gauntlet), to have a new plasterd flat church, and to be wishing that it
was but a Cathedral. The very blackguards here are degenerate. The
topping gentry, stock brokers. The passengers too many to ensure your
quiet, or let you go about whistling, or gaping--too few to be the fine
indifferent pageants of Fleet Street. Confining, room-keeping thickest
winter is yet more bearable here than the gaudy months. Among one's
books at one's fire by candle one is soothed into an oblivion that one
is not in the country, but with the light the green fields return, till
I gaze, and in a calenture can plunge myself into Saint Giles's. O let
no native Londoner imagine that health, and rest, and innocent
occupation, interchange of converse sweet and recreative study, can make
the country any thing better than altogether odious and detestable. A
garden was the primitive prison till man with promethean felicity and
boldness luckily sinn'd himself out of it. Thence followd Babylon,
Nineveh, Venice, London, haberdashers, goldsmiths, taverns, playhouses,
satires, epigrams, puns--these all came in on the town part, and the
thither side of innocence. Man found out inventions.

From my den I return you condolence for your decaying sight, not for any
thing there is to see in the country, but for the miss of the pleasure
of reading a London newspaper. The poets are as well to listen to, any
thing high may, nay must, be read out--you read it to yourself with an
imaginary auditor--but the light paragraphs must be glid over by the
proper eye, mouthing mumbles their gossamery substance. 'Tis these
trifles I should mourn in fading sight. A newspaper is the single gleam
of comfort I receive here, it comes from rich Cathay with tidings of
mankind. Yet I could not attend to it read out by the most beloved
voice. But your eyes do not get worse, I gather. O for the collyrium of
Tobias inclosed in a whiting's liver to send you with no apocryphal good
wishes! The last long time I heard from you, you had knock'd your head
against something. Do not do so. For your head (I do not flatter) is not
a nob, or the top of a brass nail, or the end of a nine pin--unless a
Vulcanian hammer could fairly batter a Recluse out of it, then would I
bid the smirch'd god knock and knock lustily, the two-handed skinker.
What a nice long letter Dorothy has written! Mary must squeeze out a
line propriâ manu, but indeed her fingers have been incorrigibly nervous
to letter writing for a long interval. 'Twill please you all to hear
that, tho' I fret like a lion in a net, her present health and spirits
are better than they have been for some time past: she is absolutely
three years and a half younger, as I tell her, since we have adopted
this boarding plan. Our providers are an honest pair, dame Westwood and
her husband--he, when the light of prosperity shined on them, a
moderately thriving haberdasher within Bow Bells, retired since with
something under a competence, writes himself parcel gentleman, hath
borne parish offices, sings fine old sea songs at threescore and ten,
sighs only now and then when he thinks that he has a son on his hands
about 15, whom he finds a difficulty in getting out into the world, and
then checks a sigh with muttering, as I once heard him prettily, not
meaning to be heard, "I have married my daughter however,"--takes the
weather as it comes, outsides it to town in severest season, and a'
winter nights tells old stories not tending to literature, how
comfortable to author-rid folks! and has _one anecdote_, upon which and
about forty pounds a year he seems to have retired in green old age. It
was how he was a _rider_ in his youth, travelling for shops, and once
(not to baulk his employer's bargain) on a sweltering day in August,
rode foaming into Dunstable upon a _mad horse_ to the dismay and
expostulary wonderment of innkeepers, ostlers &c. who declared they
would not have bestrid the beast to win the Darby. Understand the
creature gall'd to death and desperation by gad flies, cormorants
winged, worse than beset Inachus' daughter. This he tells, this he
brindles and burnishes on a' winter's eves, 'tis his star of set glory,
his rejuvenescence to descant upon. Far from me be it (dii avertant) to
look a gift story in the mouth, or cruelly to surmise (as those who
doubt the plunge of Curtius) that the inseparate conjuncture of man and
beast, the centaur-phenomenon that staggerd all Dunstable, might have
been the effect of unromantic necessity, that the horse-part carried the
reasoning, willy nilly, that needs must when such a devil drove, that
certain spiral configurations in the frame of Thomas Westwood unfriendly
to alighting, made the alliance more forcible than voluntary. Let him
enjoy his fame for me, nor let me hint a whisper that shall dismount
Bellerophon. Put case he was an involuntary martyr, yet if in the fiery
conflict he buckled the soul of a constant haberdasher to him, and
adopted his flames, let Accident and He share the glory! You would all
like Thomas Westwood.

[Illustration: Hand drawn sketch]

How weak is painting to describe a man! Say that he stands four feet and
a nail high by his own yard measure, which like the Sceptre of Agamemnon
shall never sprout again, still you have no adequate idea, nor when I
tell you that his dear hump, which I have favord in the picture, seems
to me of the buffalo--indicative and repository of mild qualities, a
budget of kindnesses, still you have not the man. Knew you old Norris of
the Temple, 60 years ours and our father's friend, he was not more
natural to us than this old W. the acquaintance of scarce more weeks.
Under his roof now ought I to take my rest, but that back-looking
ambition tells me I might yet be a Londoner. Well, if we ever do move,
we have encumbrances the less to impede us: all our furniture has faded
under the auctioneer's hammer, going for nothing like the tarnishd
frippery of the prodigal, and we have only a spoon or two left to bless
us. Clothed we came into Enfield, and naked we must go out of it. I
would live in London shirtless, bookless. Henry Crabb is at Rome,
advices to that effect have reach'd Bury. But by solemn legacy he
bequeath'd at parting (whether he should live or die) a Turkey of
Suffolk to be sent every succeeding Xmas to us and divers other friends.
What a genuine old Bachelor's action! I fear he will find the air of
Italy too classic. His station is in the Hartz forest, his soul is
_Bego'ethed_. Miss Kelly we never see; Talfourd not this half-year; the
latter flourishes, but the exact number of his children, God forgive me,
I have utterly forgotten, we single people are often out in our count
there. Shall I say two? One darling I know they have lost within a
twelvemonth, but scarce known to me by sight, and that was a second
child lost. We see scarce anybody. We have just now Emma with us for her
holydays; you remember her playing at brag with Mr. Quillinan at poor
Monkhouse's! She is grown an agreeable young woman; she sees what I
write, so you may understand me with limitations. She was our inmate for
a twelvemonth, grew natural to us, and then they told us it was best for
her to go out as a Governess, and so she went out, and we were only two
of us, and our pleasant house-mate is changed to an occasional visitor.
If they want my sister to go out (as they call it) there will be only
one of us. Heaven keep us all from this acceding to Unity!

Can I cram loves enough to you all in this little O? Excuse
particularizing.

C.L.

LETTER 499

MARY LAMB TO DOROTHY WORDSWORTH

(_Same letter_)

My dear Miss Wordsworth, Charles has left me space to fill up with my
own poor scribble; which I must do as well as I can, being quite out of
practise, and after he has been reading his queer letter out to us I can
hardly put down in a plain style all I had to tell you, how pleasant
your handwriting was to me. He has lumped you all together in one rude
remembrance at the end, but I beg to send my love individually and by
name to Mr. and Mrs. Wordsworth, to Miss Hutchinson, whom we often talk
of, and think of as being with you always, to the dutiful good daughter
and patient amanuensis Dora, and even to Johanna, whom we have not seen,
if she will accept it. Charles has told you of my long illness and our
present settlement, which I assure you is very quiet and comfortable to
me, and to him too, if he would own it. I am very sorry we shall not see
John, but I never go to town, nor my brother but at his quarterly visits
at the India House, and when he does, he finds it melancholy, so many of
our old friends being dead or dispersed, and the very streets, he says
altering every day. Many thanks for your Letter and the nice news in it,
which I should have replied to more at large than I see he has done. I
am sure it deserved it. He has not said a word about your intentions for
Rome, which I sincerely wish you health one day to accomplish. In that
case we may meet by the way. We are so glad to hear dear _little_
William is doing well. If you knew how happy your letters made us you
would write I know more frequently. Pray think of this. How chearfully
should we pay the postage _every week_.

Your affectionate

MARY LAMB.

["Baucis and Baucida." A slip, I suppose, for Philemon and Baucis (Ovid,
_Metamorphoses_).

_Redgauntlet_ dated from 1824.

"In a calenture." A calenture is a form of fever at sea in which the
sufferer believes himself to be surrounded by green fields, and often
leaps overboard. Wordsworth describes one in "The Brothers."

"A Recluse"--Wordsworth's promised poem, that was never completed. First
printed in 1888.

Inachus' daughter was Io, persecuted by a malignant insect sent by Juno.

"Henry Crabb." Crabb Robinson was a personal friend of Goethe's. He had
spent some days with him at Weimar in the summer of 1829. Goethe told
Robinson that he admired Lamb's sonnet "The Family Name."

"Mr. Quillinan"--Edward Quillinan, afterwards Wordsworth's son-in-law.

"Johanna." Joanna Hutchinson, Mrs. Wordsworth's sister. Joanna of the
laugh.

"John." John Wordsworth, Wordsworth's eldest son, was now twenty-six;
William, Wordsworth's second son, no longer little, was nineteen.]

LETTER 500

CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON

[P.M. 25 February, 1830.]

Dear B.B.--To reply to you by return of post, I must gobble up my
dinner, and dispatch this in propriâ Personâ to the office, to be in
time. So take it from me hastily, that you are perfectly welcome to
furnish A.C. with the scrap, which I had almost forgotten writing. The
more my character comes to be known, the less my veracity will come to
be suspected. Time every day clears up some suspected narrative of
Herodotus, Bruce, and others of us great Travellers. Why, that Joseph
Paice was as real a person as Joseph Hume, and a great deal pleasanter.
A careful observer of life, Bernard, has no need to invent. Nature
romances it for him. Dinner plates rattle, and I positively shall incur
indigestion by carrying it half concocted to the Post House. Let me
congratulate you on the Spring coming in, and do you in return condole
with me for the Winter going out. When the old one goes, seldome comes a
better. I dread the prospect of Summer, with his all day long days. No
need of his assistance to make country places dull. With fire and candle
light, I can dream myself in Holborn. With lightsome skies shining in to
bed time, I can not. This Meseck, and these tents of Kedar--I would
dwell in the skirts of Jericho rather, and think every blast of the
coming in Mail a Ram's Horn. Give me old London at Fire and Plague
times, rather than these tepid gales, healthy country air, and
purposeless exercise. Leg of mutton absolutely on the table.

Take our hasty loves and short farewell.

C.L.

[A.C. was Allan Cunningham, who wanted Lamb's letter on Blake (see
above) for his _Lives of the Painters_. It was not, however, used there
until included in Mrs. Charles Heaton's edition in Bohn's Library.

"Bruce"--the Abyssinian explorer, whom the Christ's Hospital boys used
to emulate, as Lamb tells us in the _Elia_ essay on Newspapers.

"Joseph Paice"--a Director of the South-Sea Company and Lamb's first
employer, of whom he writes in the _Elia_ essay on "Modern Gallantry"
(see notes to Vol. II.).

Here should come a letter to Moxon, February 21, 1830, saying that a
letter has just arrived from Mrs. Williams indicating that Miss Isola
was not well and must have a long holiday. The illness increased very
rapidly, becoming a serious attack of brain fever.]

LETTER 501

CHARLCHARLES TO MRS. WILLIAMS

[February 26, 1830.]

Dear Madam,--May God bless you for your attention to our poor Emma! I am
so shaken with your sad news I can scarce write. She is too ill to be
removed at present; but we can only say that if she is spared, when that
can be practicable, we have always a home for her. Speak to her of it,
when she is capable of understanding, and let me conjure you to let us
know from day to day, the state she is in. But one line is all we crave.
Nothing we can do for her, that shall not be done. We shall be in the
terriblest suspense. We had no notion she was going to be ill. A line
from anybody in your house will much oblige us. I feel for the situation
this trouble places you in.

Can I go to her aunt, or do anything? I do not know what to offer. We
are in great distress. Pray relieve us, if you can, by somehow letting
us know. I will fetch her here, or anything. Your kindness can never be
forgot. Pray excuse my abruptness. I hardly know what I write. And take
our warmest thanks. Hoping to hear something, I remain, dear Madam,

Yours most faithfully,

C. LAMB.

Our grateful respects to Mr. Williams.

LETTER 502

CHARLES LAMB TO MRS. WILLIAMS

Enfield, 1 March, 1830.

Dear Madam,--We cannot thank you enough. Your two words "much better"
were so considerate and good. The good news affected my sister to an
agony of tears; but they have relieved us from such a weight. We were
ready to expect the worst, and were hardly able to bear the good
hearing. You speak so kindly of her, too, and think she may be able to
resume her duties. We were prepared, as far as our humble means would
have enabled us, to have taken her from all duties. But, far better for
the dear girl it is that she should have a prospect of being useful.

I am sure you will pardon my writing again; for my heart is so full,
that it was impossible to refrain. Many thanks for your offer to write
again, should any change take place. I dare not yet be quite out of
fear, the alteration has been so sudden. But I will hope you will have a
respite from the trouble of writing again. I know no expression to
convey a sense of your kindness. We were in such a state expecting the
post. I had almost resolved to come as near you as Bury; but my sister's
health does not permit my absence on melancholy occasions. But, O, how
happy will she be to part with me, when I shall hear the agreeable news
that I may come and fetch her. She shall be as quiet as possible. No
restorative means shall be wanting to restore her back to you well and
comfortable.

She will make up for this sad interruption of her young friend's
studies. I am sure she will--she must--after you have spared her for a
little time. Change of scene may do very much for her. I think this last
proof of your kindness to her in her desolate state can hardly make her
love and respect you more than she has ever done. O, how glad shall we
be to return her fit for her occupation. Madam, I trouble you with my
nonsense; but you would forgive me, if you knew how light-hearted you
have made two poor souls at Enfield, that were gasping for news of their
poor friend. I will pray for you and Mr. Williams. Give our very best
respects to him, and accept our thanks. We are happier than we hardly
know how to bear. God bless you! My very kindest congratulations to Miss
Humphreys.

Believe me, dear Madam,

Your ever obliged servant,

C. LAMB.

LETTER 503

CHARLES LAMB TO SARAH HAZLITT

March 4th, 1830.

Dear Sarah,--I was meditating to come and see you, but I am unable for
the walk. We are both very unwell, and under affliction for poor Emma,
who has had a very dangerous brain fever, and is lying very ill at Bury,
from whence I expect a summons to fetch her. We are very sorry for your
confinement. Any books I have are at your service. I am almost, I may
say _quite_, sure that letters to India pay no postage, and may go by
the regular Post Office, now in St. Martin's le Grand. I think any
receiving house would take them--

I wish I could confirm your hopes about Dick Norris. But it is quite a
dream. Some old Bencher of his surname is made _Treasurer_ for the year,
I suppose, which is an annual office. Norris was Sub-Treasurer, quite a
different thing. They were pretty well in the Summer, since when we have
heard nothing of them. Mrs. Reynolds is better than she has been for
years; she is with a disagreeable woman that she has taken a mighty
fancy to out of spite to a rival woman she used to live and quarrel
with; she grows quite _fat_, they tell me, and may live as long as I do,
to be a tormenting rent-charge to my diminish'd income. We go on pretty
comfortably in our new plan. I will come and have a talk with you when
poor Emma's affair is settled, and will bring books. At present I am
weak, and could hardly bring my legs home yesterday after a much shorter
stroll than to Northaw. Mary has got her bonnet on for a short
expedition. May you get better, as the Spring comes on. She sends her
best love with mine.

C.L.

[Addressed to "Mrs. Hazlitt, Mrs. Tomlinson's, Northaw, near Potter's
Bar, Herts."

Mrs. Hazlitt was in later years a sufferer from rheumatism. Dick Norris
was the son of Randal Norris. He had retired to Widford. Mrs. Reynolds,
Lamb's old schoolmistress and dependant, we have met.]

LETTER 504

CHARLES LAMB TO MRS. WILLIAMS

Enfield, 5 Mar., 1830.

Dear Madam,--I feel greatly obliged by your letter of Tuesday, and
should not have troubled you again so soon, but that you express a wish
to hear that our anxiety was relieved by the assurances in it. You have
indeed given us much comfort respecting our young friend, but
considerable uneasiness respecting your own health and spirits, which
must have suffered under such attention. Pray believe me that we shall
wait in quiet hope for the time when I shall receive the welcome summons
to come and relieve you from a charge, which you have executed with such
tenderness. We desire nothing so much as to exchange it with you.
Nothing shall be wanting on my part to remove her with the best judgment
I can, without (I hope) any necessity for depriving you of the services
of your valuable housekeeper. Until the day comes, we entreat that you
will spare yourself the trouble of writing, which we should be ashamed
to impose upon you in your present weak state. Not hearing from you, we
shall be satisfied in believing that there has been no relapse.
Therefore we beg that you will not add to your troubles by unnecessary,
though _most kind_, correspondence. Till I have the pleasure of thanking
you personally, I beg you to accept these written acknowledgments of all
your kindness. With respects to Mr. Williams and sincere prayers for
both your healths, I remain,

Your ever obliged servant,

C. LAMB.

My sister joins me in respects and thanks.

LETTER 505

CHARLES LAMB TO JAMES GILLMAN

March 8th, 1830.

My dear G.,--Your friend Battin (for I knew him immediately by the
smooth satinity of his style) must excuse me for advocating the cause of
his friends in Spitalfields. The fact is, I am retained by the Norwich
people, and have already appeared in their paper under the signatures of
"Lucius Sergius," "Bluff," "Broad-Cloth,"
"No-Trade-to-the-Woollen-Trade," "Anti-plush," &c., in defence of
druggets and long camblets. And without this pre-engagement, I feel I
should naturally have chosen a side opposite to ----, for in the silken
seemingness of his nature there is that which offends me. My flesh
tingles at such caterpillars. He shall not crawl me over. Let him and
his workmen sing the old burthen,

            "Heigh ho, ye weavers!"

for any aid I shall offer them in this emergency. I was over Saint
Luke's the other day with my friend Tuthill, and mightily pleased with
one of his contrivances for the comfort and amelioration of the
students. They have double cells, in which a pair may lie feet to feet
horizontally, and chat the time away as rationally as they can. It must
certainly be more sociable for them these warm raving nights. The
right-hand truckle in one of these friendly recesses, at present vacant,
was preparing, I understood, for Mr. Irving. Poor fellow! it is time he
removed from Pentonville. I followed him as far as to Highbury the other
day, with a mob at his heels, calling out upon Ermigiddon, who I suppose
is some Scotch moderator. He squinted out his favourite eye last Friday,
in the fury of possession, upon a poor woman's shoulders that was crying
matches, and has not missed it. The companion truck, as far as I could
measure it with my eye, would conveniently fit a person about the length
of Coleridge, allowing for a reasonable drawing up of the feet, not at
all painful. Does he talk of moving this quarter? You and I have too
much sense to trouble ourselves with revelations; marry, to the same in
Greek you may have something professionally to say. Tell C. that he was
to come and see us some fine day. Let it be before he moves, for in his
new quarters he will necessarily be confined in his conversation to his
brother prophet. Conceive the two Rabbis foot to foot, for there are no
Gamaliels there to affect a humbler posture! All are masters in that
Patmos, where the law is perfect equality--Latmos, I should rather say,
for they will be Luna's twin darlings; her affection will be ever at the
full. Well; keep _your_ brains moist with gooseberry this mad March, for
the devil of exposition seeketh dry places.

C.L.

[The letter is assigned to the Rev. James Gillman by some editors; but I
think that a mistake. See the reference below to a medical matter.
Battin was interested in the Spitalfields weavers to the detriment of
the Norwich.

Major Butterworth in a letter to _Notes and Queries_, March 24, 1906,
thus explains the reference to Battin:--

    "In lately going over the pages of _The New Monthly Magazine_ for
    1826 I came across a paragraph in the June number, extracted from a
    daily newspaper, in which the following occurs: 'Great merit is due
    to Mr. Lamb junior for his exertions to relieve the weavers of
    Norwich.'...

    "As his 'Reminiscences of Juke Judkins, Esq.,' was printed in the
    same number of the _Magazine_, Lamb's attention would no doubt be
    arrested by the remarks about his namesake, which would probably be
    retained in his memory, to be used subsequently, as occasion served,
    in mystifying his friend."

Tuthill, whom we have met, was one of the physicians at St. Luke's
Hospital for the insane.

"He squinted out...." Irving had sight only in one eye, an obliquity
caused, it is suggested, by lying when a baby in a wooden cradle, the
sides of which prevented the other from gathering light.

"To the same in Greek." An atrocious pun, which I leave to the reader to
discover. Gillman was a doctor.]

LETTER 506

CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM AYRTON

Mr. Westwood's, Chase Side, Enfield,

14th March, 1830.

My dear Ayrton,--Your letter, which was only not so pleasant as your
appearance would have been, has revived some old images; Phillips (not
the Colonel), with his few 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. Burney's determined questioning of
the score, after the game was absolutely gone to the devil, 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 _kind_ 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'hôte_ is kept for us,
without trouble on our parts, and we adjourn after dinner, when one of
the 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 be 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 acknowledgments 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.

["Phillips." This would be Edward Phillips, who, I think, succeeded
Rickman as secretary to Abbot (afterwards Lord Colchester), the Speaker.
Colonel Erasmus Phillips we have also met. The Captain was Captain
Burney.

Mr. Murray's propositions. I presume that Murray had, through Ayrton,
suggested either the republication of the _Dramatic Specimens_, 1808, in
one volume, or in two volumes, with the Garrick Extracts added. The plan
came to nothing. Moxon published them in the two volume style in 1835.
Murray had refused Lamb's "Works" some twelve years before. For the
_Dramatic Specimens_ see Vol. IV. of my large edition.]

LETTER 507

CHARLES LAMB TO MRS. WILLIAMS

[Dated at end: March 22 (1830).]

Dear Madam,--Once more I have to return you thanks for a very kind
letter. It has gladdened us very much to hear that we may have hope to
see our young friend so soon, and through your kind nursing so well
recovered. I sincerely hope that your own health and spirits will not
have been shaken: you have had a sore trial indeed, and greatly do we
feel indebted to you for all which you have undergone. If I hear nothing
from you in the mean time, I shall secure myself a place in the
Cornwallis Coach for Monday. It will not be at all necessary that I
shall be met at Bury, as I can well find my way to the Rectory, and I
beg that you will not inconvenience yourselves by such attention.
Accordingly as I find Miss Isola able to bear the journey, I intend to
take the care of her by the same stage or by chaises perhaps, dividing
the journey; but exactly as you shall judge fit. It is our misfortune
that long journeys do not agree with my sister, who would else have
taken this care upon herself, perhaps more properly. It is quite out of
the question to rob you of the services of any of your domestics. I
cannot think of it. But if in your opinion a female attendant would be
requisite on the journey, and if you or Mr. Williams would feel _more
comfortable_ by her being in charge of two, I will most gladly engage
one of her nurses or any young person near you, that you can recommend;
for my object is to remove her in the way that shall be most
satisfactory to yourselves.

On the subject of the young people that you are interesting yourselves
about, I will have the pleasure to talk to you, when I shall see you. I
live almost out of the world and out of the sphere of being useful; but
no pains of mine shall be spared, if but a prospect opens of doing a
service. Could I do all I wish, and I indeed have grown helpless to
myself and others, it must not satisfy the arrears of obligation I owe
to Mr. Williams and yourself for all your kindness.

I beg you will turn in your mind and consider in what most comfortable
way Miss Isola can leave your house, and I will implicitly follow your
suggestions. What you have done for her can never be effaced from our
memories, and I would have you part with her in the way that would best
satisfy yourselves.

I am afraid of impertinently extending my letter, else I feel I have not
said half what I would say. So, dear madam, till I have the pleasure of
seeing you both, of whose kindness I have heard so much before, I
respectfully take my leave with our kindest love to your poor patient
and most sincere regards for the health and happiness of Mr. Williams
and yourself.

May God bless you.                                          CH. LAMB.

Enfield, Monday, 22 March.

LETTER 508

CHARLES LAMB TO MRS. WILLIAMS

Enfield, 2 Apr., 1830.

Dear Madam

I have great pleasure in letting you know that 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. She has had two tolerable nights' sleeps since, and is
decidedly not worse than when we left you. I remembered the Magnesia
according to your directions, and promise that she shall be kept very
quiet, never forgetting that she is still an invalid. 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. The incidents of our journey were
trifling, but you bade me tell them. We had then in the coach a rather
talkative Gentleman, but very civil, all the way, and took up a servant
maid at Stamford, going to a sick mistress. To the _latter_, a
participation in the hospitalities of your nice rusks and sandwiches
proved agreeable, as it did to my companion, who took merely a sip of
the weakest wine and water with them. The _former_ engaged me in a
discourse for full twenty miles on the probable advantages of Steam
Carriages, which being merely problematical, I bore my part in with some
credit, in spite of my totally un-engineer-like faculties. But when
somewhere about Stanstead he put an unfortunate question to me as to the
"probability of its turning out a good turnip season;" and when I, who
am still less of an agriculturist than a steam-philosopher, not knowing
a turnip from a potato ground, innocently made answer that I believed it
depended very much upon boiled legs of mutton, my unlucky reply set Miss
Isola a laughing to a degree that disturbed her tranquility for the only
moment in our journey. I am afraid my credit sank very low with my other
fellow-traveller, who had thought he had met with a _well-informed
passenger_, which is an accident so desirable in a Stage Coach. We were
rather less communicative, but still friendly, the rest of the way. 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 _name_. Your candour must acknowledge that
they are written _strait_. And now dear Madam, I have left myself hardly
space to express my sense of the friendly reception I found at Fornham.
Mr. Williams will tell you that we had the pleasure of a slight meeting
with him 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 Fornham, 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 Fornham, that gratitude may be over-exacted
on the part of the obliging, and over-expressed on the part of the
obliged, person. My Sister and Miss Isola join in respects to Mr.
Williams and yourself, and I beg to be remembered kindly to the Miss
Hammonds and the two gentlemen whom I had the good fortune to meet at
your house. I have not forgotten the Election in which you are
interesting yourself, and the little that I can, I will do immediately.
Miss Isola will have the pleasure of writing to you next week, and we
shall hope, at your leisure, to hear of your own health, etc. I am, Dear
Madam, with great respect,

your obliged

CHARLES LAMB.

[_Added in Miss Isola's hand:_] I must just add a line to beg you will
let us hear from you, my dear Mrs. Williams. I have just received the
forwarded letter. Fornham we have talked about constantly, and I felt
quite strange at this home the first day. I will attend to all you said,
my dear Madam.

[I do not know which of Lamb's acrostics was the one in question.
Possibly this, on Mrs. Williams' youngest daughter, Louisa Clare
Williams:--

        Least Daughter, but not least beloved, of _Grace_!
        O frown not on a stranger, who from place
        Unknown and distant these few lines hath penn'd.
        I but report what thy Instructress Friend
        So oft hath told us of thy gentle heart.
        A pupil most affectionate thou art,

        Careful to learn what elder years impart.
        _Louisa_--_Clare_--by which name shall I call thee?
        A prettier pair of names sure ne'er was found,
        Resembling thy own sweetness in sweet sound.
        Ever calm peace and innocence befal thee!

See Vol. IV. of this edition.]

LETTER 509

CHARLES LAMB TO MRS. WILLIAMS

Enfield, Good Friday [April 9, 1830].

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.

Dear Madam,--I do assure you that your verses gratified me very much,
and my sister is quite _proud_ of them. For the first time in my life I
congratulated myself upon the shortness and meanness of my name. Had it
been Schwartzenberg or Esterhazy, it would have put you to some puzzle.
I am afraid I shall sicken you of acrostics; but this last was written
_to order_. I beg you to have inserted in your county paper something
like this advertisement. "To the nobility, gentry, and others, about
Bury.--C. Lamb respectfully informs his friends and the public in
general, that he is leaving off business in the acrostic line, as he is
going into an entirely new line. Rebuses and charades done as usual, and
upon the old terms. Also, Epitaphs to suit the memory of any person
deceased." I thought I had adroitly escaped the rather unpliable name of
"Williams," curtailing your poor daughters to their proper surnames; but
it seems you would not let me off so easily. If these trifles amuse you,
I am paid. Tho really 'tis an operation too much like--"A, apple-pye; B,
bit it." To make amends, I request leave to lend you the "Excursion,"
and to recommend, in particular, the "Churchyard Stories," in the
seventh book, I think. They will strengthen the tone of your mind after
its weak diet on acrostics. 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 our best respects, and pardon
your obsequious if not troublesome Correspondent, C.L.

[Mr. Cecil Turner, a grandson of Mrs. Williams, tells me that her
acrostic on Lamb ran thus:--

TO CHARLES LAMB

      _Answer to Acrostics on the Names of Two Friends_

      Charmed with the lines thy hand has sent,
      Honour I feel the compliment,
      Amongst thy products that have won the ear,
      Ranged in thy verse two friends most dear.
      Lay not thy winning pen away,
      Each line thou writest we bid thee stay,
      Still ask to charm us with another lay.

      Long liked, long lived by public Fame
      A friend to misery, whate'er its claim.
      Marvel I must if e'er we find
      Bestowed by heaven a kindlier mind.

The two friends were probably Edward Hogg and Cecilia Catherine Lawton,
on whose names Lamb wrote acrostics (see Vol. IV.).

This was Lamb's effort:--

            Go little Poem, and present
            Respectful terms of compliment;
            A gentle lady bids thee speak!
            Courteous is she, tho' thou be weak--
            Evoke from Heaven as thick as manna

            Joy after joy on Grace Joanna:
            On Fornham's Glebe and Pasture land
            A blessing pray. Long, long may stand,
            Not touched by Time, the Rectory blithe;
            No grudging churl dispute his Tithe;
            At Easter be the offerings due

            With cheerful spirit paid; each pew
            In decent order filled; no noise
            Loud intervene to drown the voice,
            Learning, or wisdom of the Teacher;
            Impressive be the Sacred Preacher,
            And strict his notes on holy page;
            May young and old from age to age
            Salute, and still point out, "The good man's Parsonage!"]

LETTER 510

CHARLES LAMB TO JAMES GILLMAN

[? Early Spring, 1830.]

Dear Gillman,--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. Gillman, &c.

Yours, mopish, but in health,

C. LAMB.

I shall be uneasy till I hear of Fuller's safe arrival.

[See letter to Gillman above. The "dear, fine, silly old angel" was
Thomas Fuller.]

LETTER 511

CHARLES LAMB TO JACOB VALE ASBURY

[? April, 1830.]

Dear Sir--Some draughts and boluses have been brought here which we
conjecture were meant for the young lady whom you saw this morning,
though they are labelled for

MISS ISOLA LAMB.

No such person is known on the Chase Side, and she is fearful of taking
medicines which may have been made up for another patient. She begs me
to say that she was born an _Isola_ and christened _Emma_. Moreover that
she is Italian by birth, and that her ancestors were from Isola Bella
(Fair Island) in the kingdom of Naples. She has never changed her name
and rather mournfully adds that she has no prospect at present of doing
so. She is literally I. SOLA, or single, at present. Therefore she begs
that the obnoxious monosyllable may be omitted on future Phials,--an
innocent syllable enough, you'll say, but she has no claim to it. It is
the bitterest pill of the seven you have sent her. When a lady loses her
good _name_, what is to become of her? Well she must swallow it as well
as she can, but begs the dose may not be repeated.

Yours faithfully,

CHARLES LAMB (not Isola).

[Asbury was a doctor at Enfield. I append another letter to him, without
date:--]

LETTER 512

CHARLES LAMB TO JACOB VALE ASBURY

Dear Sir, It is an observation of a wise man that "moderation is best in
all things." I cannot agree with him "in liquor." There is a smoothness
and oiliness in wine that makes it go down by a natural channel, which I
am positive was made for that descending. Else, why does not wine choke
us? could Nature have made that sloping lane, not to facilitate the
down-going? She does nothing in vain. You know that better than I. You
know how often she has helped you at a dead lift, and how much better
entitled she is to a fee than yourself sometimes, when you carry off the
credit. Still there is something due to manners and customs, and I
should apologise to you and Mrs. Asbury for being absolutely carried
home upon a man's shoulders thro' Silver Street, up Parson's Lane, by
the Chapels (which might have taught me better), and then to be
deposited like a dead log at Gaffar Westwood's, who it seems does not
"insure" against intoxication. Not that the mode of conveyance is
objectionable. On the contrary, it is more easy than a one-horse chaise.
Ariel in the "Tempest" says

               "On a Bat's back do I fly,
               After sunset merrily."

Now I take it that Ariel must sometimes have stayed out late of nights.
Indeed, he pretends that "where the bee sucks, there lurks he," as much
as to say that his suction is as innocent as that little innocent (but
damnably stinging when he is provok'd) winged creature. But I take it,
that Ariel was fond of metheglin, of which the Bees are notorious
Brewers. But then you will say: What a shocking sight to see a
middle-aged gentleman-and-a-half riding upon a Gentleman's back up
Parson's Lane at midnight. Exactly the time for that sort of conveyance,
when nobody can see him, nobody but Heaven and his own conscience; now
Heaven makes fools, and don't expect much from her own creation; and as
for conscience, She and I have long since come to a compromise. I have
given up false modesty, and she allows me to abate a little of the true.
I like to be liked, but I don't care about being respected. I don't
respect myself. But, as I was saying, I thought he would have let me
down just as we got to Lieutenant Barker's Coal-shed (or emporium) but
by a cunning jerk I eased myself, and righted my posture. I protest, I
thought myself in a palanquin, and never felt myself so grandly carried.
It was a slave under me. There was I, all but my reason. And what is
reason? and what is the loss of it? and how often in a day do we do
without it, just as well? Reason is only counting, two and two makes
four. And if on my passage home, I thought it made five, what matter?
Two and two will just make four, as it always did, before I took the
finishing glass that did my business. My sister has begged me to write
an apology to Mrs. A. and you for disgracing your party; now it does
seem to me, that I rather honoured your party, for every one that was
not drunk (and one or two of the ladies, I am sure, were not) must have
been set off greatly in the contrast to me. I was the scapegoat. The
soberer they seemed. By the way is magnesia good on these occasions?
_iii_ pol: med: sum: ante noct: in rub: can:. I am no licentiate, but
know enough of simples to beg you to send me a draught after this model.
But still you'll say (or the men and maids at your house will say) that
it is not a seemly sight for an old gentleman to go home pick-a-back.
Well, may be it is not. But I have never studied grace. I take it to be
a mere superficial accomplishment. I regard more the internal
acquisitions. The great object after supper is to get home, and whether
that is obtained in a horizontal posture or perpendicular (as foolish
men and apes affect for dignity) I think is little to the purpose. The
end is always greater than the means. Here I am, able to compose a
sensible rational apology, and what signifies how I got here? I have
just sense enough to remember I was very happy last night, and to thank
our kind host and hostess, and that's sense enough, I hope.

CHARLES LAMB.

N.B.--What is good for a desperate head-ache? Why, Patience, and a
determination not to mind being miserable all day long. And that I have
made my mind up to.

So, here goes. It is better than not being alive at all, which I might
have been, had your man toppled me down at Lieut. Barker's Coal-shed. My
sister sends her sober compliments to Mrs. A. She is not much the worse.

Yours truly,

C. LAMB.

["Ariel." In two other of his letters, Lamb confesses similarly to a
similar escapade. And in his _Elia_ essay "Rejoicings on the New Year's
Coming of Age," he sends Ash Wednesday home in the same manner.

Lieut. John Barker, R.N., was a local character, a coal merchant and a
man with a grievance. He had thirteen children, some of whose names
probably greatly amused Lamb--John Thomas, William Charles, Frederick
Alexander, Marius Collins, Caius Marcius, Marcus Aurelius Antonius,
Coriolanus Aurelius, Horatius Tertius Decimus, Elizabeth Mary,
Concordia, Lousia Clarissa, Caroline Maria Quiroja and Volumnia
Hortensia.]

LETTER 513

CHARLES LAMB TO MRS. WILLIAMS

Enfield, Tuesday [April 21, 1830].

Dear Madam,--I have ventured upon some lines, which combine my old
acrostic talent (which you first found out) with my new profession of
epitaph-monger. As you did not please to say, when you would die, I have
left a blank space for the date. May kind heaven be a long time in
filling it up. At least you cannot say that these lines are not about
you, though not much to the purpose. We were very sorry to hear that you
have not been very well, and hope that a little excursion may revive
you. Miss Isola is thankful for her added day; but I verily think she
longs to see her young friends once more, and will regret less than ever
the end of her holydays. She cannot be going on more quietly than she is
doing here, and you will perceive amendment.

I hope all her little commissions will all be brought home to your
satisfaction. When she returns, we purpose seeing her to Epping on her
journey. We have had our proportion of fine weather and some pleasant
walks, and she is stronger, her appetite good, but less wolfish than at
first, which we hold a good sign. I hope Mr. Wing will approve of its
abatement. She desires her very kindest respects to Mr. Williams and
yourself, and wishes to rejoin you. My sister and myself join in
respect, and pray tell Mr. Donne, with our compliments, that we shall be
disappointed, if we do not see him. This letter being very neatly
written, I am very unwilling that Emma should club any of her
disproportionate scrawl to deface it.

Your obliged servant,

C. LAMB.

[Addressed to "Mrs. Williams, W.B. Donne, Esq., Matteshall, East
Dereham, Norfolk."

Mr. Wing was probably Miss Isola's doctor. Mr. Donne was William Bodham
Donne (1807-1882), the friend of Edward FitzGerald, and Examiner of
Plays.

This was Lamb's acrostic-epitaph on Mrs. Williams:--

               Grace Joanna here doth lie:
               Reader, wonder not that I
               Ante-date her hour of rest.
               Can I thwart her wish exprest,
               Ev'n unseemly though the laugh

               Jesting with an Epitaph?
               On her bones the turf lie lightly,
               And her rise again be brightly!
               No dark stain be found upon her--
               No, there will not, on mine honour--
               Answer that at least I can.

               Would that I, thrice happy man,
               In as spotless garb might rise,
               Light as she will climb the skies,
               Leaving the dull earth behind,
               In a car more swift than wind.
               All her errors, all her failings,
               (Many they were not) and ailings,
               Sleep secure from Envy's railings.

Here should come an undated note from Lamb to Basil Montagu, in which
Lamb asks for help for Hone in his Coffee-House. "If you can help a
worthy man you will have _two worthy men_ obliged to you." Hone, having
fallen upon bad times, Lamb helped in the scheme to establish him in the
Grasshopper Coffee-House, at 13 Gracechurch Street (see next letter).]

LETTER 514

CHARLES LAMB TO ROBERT SOUTHEY

May 10, 1830.

Dear Southey,--My friend Hone, whom you would like _for a friend_, I
found deeply impressed with your generous notice of him in your
beautiful "Life of Bunyan," which I am just now full of. He has written
to you for leave to publish a certain good-natured letter. I write not
this to enforce his request, for we are fully aware that the refusal of
such publication would be quite consistent with all that is good in your
character. Neither he nor I expect it from you, nor exact it; but if you
would consent to it, you would have me obliged by it, as well as him. He
is just now in a critical situation: kind friends have opened a
coffee-house for him in the City, but their means have not extended to
the purchase of coffee-pots, credit for Reviews, newspapers, and other
paraphernalia. So I am sitting in the skeleton of a possible divan. What
right I have to interfere, you best know. Look on me as a dog who went
once temporarily insane, and bit you, and now begs for a crust. Will you
set your wits to a dog?

Our object is to open a subscription, which my friends of the "Times"
are most willing to forward for him, but think that a leave from you to
publish would aid it.

But not an atom of respect or kindness will or shall it abate in either
of us if you decline it. Have this strongly in your mind.

Those "Every-Day" and "Table" Books will be a treasure a hundred years
hence; but they have failed to make Hone's fortune.

Here his wife and all his children are about me, gaping for coffee
customers; but how should they come in, seeing no pot boiling!

Enough of Hone. I saw Coleridge a day or two since. He has had some
severe attack, not paralytic; but, if I had not heard of it, I should
not have found it out. He looks, and especially speaks, strong. How are
all the Wordsworths and all the Southeys? whom I am obliged to you if
you have not brought up haters of the name of

C. LAMB.

P.S.--I have gone lately into the acrostic line. I find genius (such as
I had) declines with me, but I get clever. Do you know anybody that
wants charades, or such things, for Albums? I do 'em at so much a sheet.
Perhaps an epigram (not a very happy-gram) I did for a school-boy
yesterday may amuse. I pray Jove he may not get a flogging for any false
quantity; but 'tis, with one exception, the only Latin verses I have
made for forty years, and I did it "to order."

SUUM CUIQUE

      Adsciscit sibi divitias et opes alienas
        Fur, rapiens, spolians, quod mihi, quod-que tibi,
      Proprium erat, temnens haec verba, Meum-que, Suum-que;
        Omne suum est: tandem Cui-que Suum tribuit.
      Dat laqueo collum; vestes, vah! carnifici dat;
        Sese Diabolo: sic bene: Cuique Suum.

I write from Hone's, therefore Mary cannot send her love to Mrs.
Southey, but I do.

                                         Yours ever,         C.L.

[Major's edition of _The Pilgrim's Progress_, mentioned in a letter to
Barton above, was issued in 1830 with a memoir of Bunyan by Southey. It
was reviewed in _The Times_ for May 7, 1830, I think probably by Lamb,
in the following terms:--

    The public is aware that the unexhausted diligence and unwearied pen
    of Mr. Southey have produced a new and excellent edition of the
    celebrated _Pilgrim's Progress_, with the Life of the Author
    prefixed. This Life is, no doubt, an interesting work, though we
    wish the author, both in that and in the account, which is
    attributed to him, of the founder of the Jesuits, contained in a
    recent periodical work, had taken more time. The narrative in both
    is hasty and tumultuary, if we may use the latter expression: there
    is no time or room for reflection; and when a reflection comes, it
    is so mixed and jambed in with the story, or with quotations from
    the works or words of the respective heroes of the history, that it
    escapes unobserved. Could we, without grievous offence, recommend,
    both to Mr. Southey and Sir Walter Scott, to recollect the man
    spoken of by Horace?--

quem fama est esse librisque Ambustum propriis."--_Sat_, i., 61.

    Yet still, as we said above, the Life of Bunyan is an interesting
    work. How different the origin of all the sects and their founders,
    from that of our sober, staid, and, we trust, permanent
    establishment, and the learned and pious reformers from whom it
    sprang!

    But that for which we chiefly notice this work of Mr. Southey, is
    the very last sentence in it, wherein is contained his frank and
    honourable recommendation (though not more than they deserve) of the
    works of one whom the iron hand of oppression would have levelled
    with the dust:--

    "In one of the volumes collected from various quarters, which were
    sent to me for this purpose, I observe the name of W. Hone, and
    notice it that I may take the opportunity of recommending his
    _Every-Day Book_ and _Table Book_ to those who are interested in the
    preservation of our national and local customs. By these very
    curious publications their compiler has rendered good service in an
    important department of literature; and he may render yet more, if
    he obtain the encouragement which he well deserves."

    Not only we, and the person mentioned in this paragraph, but all the
    friends of pure English literature,--all the curious in old English
    customs,--in short, all intelligent men, with the hearts of
    Englishmen in them,--owe Mr. Southey their gratitude for this
    recommendation: it springs from a just taste and right feeling
    united.

Hone wrote to _The Times_ at once to thank both the paper and Southey
for the compliment. A few days later, on May 21, appeared an article in
_The Times_ containing correspondence between Hone and Southey. I quote
the introduction, again probably the work of Lamb, and Southey's letter
(see Lamb's letter to Hone below):--

    We alluded some days ago to the handsome notice of Mr. Hone in Mr.
    Southey's _Life of Bunyan_. The following correspondence has since
    been sent to us: it displays in an advantageous light the modesty of
    Mr. Hone and the amiable and candid disposition of Mr. Southey. The
    business, wholly foreign to Mr. Hone's former pursuits, which is
    alluded to in the letter, is explained in an advertisement in this
    day's paper.

    "To Mr. Hone, 13, Gracechurch-Street,

    "Keswick, April 26.

    "Sir,--Your letter has given me both pain and pleasure. I am sorry
    to learn that you are still, in the worldly sense of the word, an
    unfortunate man,--that you are withdrawn from pursuits which were
    consonant to your habits and inclinations, and that a public
    expression of respect and good-will, made in the hope that it might
    have been serviceable to you, can have no such effect.

    "When I observed your autograph in the little book, I wrote to
    inquire of Mr. Major whether it had come to his hands from you,
    directly or indirectly, for my use, that, in that case, I might
    thank you for it. It proved otherwise, but I would not lose an
    opportunity which I had wished for.

    "Judging of you (as I would myself be judged) by your works, I saw
    in the editor of the _Every-Day_ and _Table Books_ a man who had
    applied himself with great diligence to useful and meritorious
    pursuits. I thought that time, and reflection, and affliction, (of
    which it was there seen that he had had his share,) had contributed
    to lead him into this direction, which was also that of his better
    mind. What alteration had been produced in his opinions it concerned
    not me to inquire; here there were none but what were
    unexceptionable,--no feelings but what were to be approved. From all
    that appeared, I supposed he had become 'a sadder and a wiser man:'
    I therefore wished him success in his literary undertakings.

    "The little parcel which you mention I shall receive with pleasure.

    "I wish you success in your present undertaking, whatever it be, and
    that you may one day, under happier circumstances, resume a pen
    which has, of late years, been so meritoriously employed. If your
    new attempt prosper, you will yet find leisure for intellectual
    gratification, and for that self-improvement which may be carried on
    even in the busiest concerns of life.

    "I remain, Sir, yours with sincere good will,

    "ROBERT SOUTHEY."

In the advertisement columns of the same issue of _The Times_ (May 21)
was the following notice, drawn up, I assume, by Lamb:--

    THE FAMILY OF WILLIAM HONE, in the course of last winter, were
    kindly assisted by private friends to take and alter the premises
    they now reside in, No. 13, Gracechurch-street, for the purpose of a
    coffeehouse, to be managed by Mrs. Hone and her elder daughters; but
    they are in a painful exigency which increases hourly, and renders a
    public appeal indispensable. The wellwishers to Mr. Hone throughout
    the kingdom, especially the gratified readers of his literary
    productions (in all of which he has long ceased to have an interest,
    and from none of which can he derive advantage), are earnestly
    solicited to afford the means of completing the fittings and opening
    the house in a manner suited to its proposed respectability. If this
    aid be yielded without loss of time, it will be of indescribable
    benefit, inasmuch as it will put an end to many grievous anxieties
    and expenses, inseparable from the lengthened delay which has
    hitherto been inevitable, and will enable the family to immediately
    commence the business, which alone they look forward to for support.
    Subscriptions will be received by the following bankers:--Messrs.
    Ransom and Co., Pall-mall east; Messrs. Dixon, Sons, and Brookes,
    Chancery-lane; Messrs. Ladbroke and Co., Bank-buildings, Cornhill;
    and by Mr. Clowes, printer, 14, Charing-cross; Mr. Thomas Rodd,
    bookseller, 2, Great Newport-street; Mr. Griffiths, bookseller, 13,
    Wellington-street, Strand; Mr. Effingham Wilson, bookseller, Royal
    Exchange; and Messrs. Fisher and Moxhay, biscuit-bakers, 55,
    Threadneedle-street.

The first list of subscriptions, headed by "Charles Lamb, Esq., Enfield,
£10," came to £103. This was Monday, May 31. The next list was published
on June 10, accompanied by the following note in the body of the
paper:--

    The subscriptions for Mr. Hone, it will be perceived, are going on
    favourably. In the list now published is the name of the Duke of
    Bedford, who has sent 20_l_. His cause has been warmly espoused by
    the provincial journals, more than 20 of which have inserted his
    appeal gratuitously, with offers to receive and remit subscriptions.
    The aphorism, "he gives twice who gives quickly," could not receive
    a more cogent application than in the present instance, for the
    funds are required to enable Mr. Hone to commence business in his
    new undertaking, where he is already placed with his family, liable
    to rent and taxes, and other claims, but gaining nothing until his
    outfit is completed.

    Hone, however, did not prosper, in spite of his friends, who were
    not sufficiently numerous to find the requisite capital.

    "Suum Cuique." The boy for whom this epigram was composed was a son
    of Hessey, the publisher, afterwards Archdeacon Hessey. He was at
    the Merchant Taylors' School, where it was a custom to compose Latin
    and English epigrams for speech day, the boys being permitted to get
    help. Archdeacon Hessey wrote as follows in the Taylorian a few
    years ago:--

    The subjects for 1830 were _Suum Cuique_ and _Brevis esse laboro_.
    After some three or four exercise nights I confess that I was
    literally "at my wits' end." But a brilliant idea struck me. I had
    frequently, boy as I was, seen Charles Lamb at my father's house,
    and once, in 1825 or 1826, I had been taken to have tea with him and
    his sister, Mary Lamb, at their little house, Colebrook Cottage, a
    whitish-brown tenement, standing by itself, close to the New River,
    at Islington. He was very kind, as he always was to young people,
    and very quaint. I told him that I had devoured his "Roast Pig"; he
    congratulated me on possessing a thorough schoolboy's appetite. And
    he was pleased when I mentioned my having seen the boys at Christ's
    Hospital at their public suppers, which then took place on the
    Sunday evenings in Lent. "Could this good-natured and humorous old
    gentleman be prevailed upon to give me an Epigram?" "I don't know,"
    said my father, to whom I put the question, "but I will ask him at
    any rate, and send him the mottoes." In a day or two there arrived
    from Enfield, to which Lamb had removed some time in 1827, not one,
    but two epigrams, one on each subject. That on _Suum Cuique_ was in
    Latin, and was suggested by the grim satisfaction which had recently
    been expressed by the public at the capture and execution of some
    notorious highwayman.

See also Vol. IV. of this edition for a slightly differing version. Lamb
had many years before, he says in a letter to Godwin, written similar
epigrams.

"With one exception." Perhaps the Latin verses on Haydon's picture. See
Vol. IV.]

LETTER 515

CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON

Enfield, Tuesday. [P.M. May 12, 1830.]

Dear M. I dined with your and my Rogers at Mr. Gary's yesterday. Gary
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.

[Samuel Rogers had just lent Moxon £500 on which to commence publisher.

Moxon had dedicated his first book to Rogers. This is Moxon's "Sonnet to
the Nightingale," but I cannot explain why Rogers laughed:--

        Lone midnight-soothing melancholy bird,
          That send'st such music to my sleepless soul,
          Chaining her faculties in fast controul,
        Few listen to thy song; yet I have heard,
        When Man and Nature slept, nor aspen stirred,
          Thy mournful voice, sweet vigil of the sleeping
        And liken'd thee to some angelic mind,
          That sits and mourns for erring mortals weeping.
        The genius, not of groves, but of mankind,
          Watch at this solemn hour o'er millions keeping.
          In Eden's bowers, as mighty poets tell,
        Did'st thou repeat, as now that wailing call--
          Those sorrowing notes might seem, sad Philomel,
        Prophetic to have mourned of _man_ the _fall_.]

LETTER 516

CHARLES LAMB TO VINCENT NOVELLO

Friday. [P.M. May 14, 1830.]

Dear Novello, Mary hopes you have not forgot you are to spend a day with
us on Wednesday. That it may be a long one, cannot you secure places now
for Mrs. Novello yourself and the Clarkes? We have just table room for
four. Five make my good Landlady fidgetty; six, to begin to fret; seven,
to approximate to fever point. But seriously we shall prefer four to two
or three; we shall have from 1/2 past 10 to six, when the coach goes
off, to scent the country. And pray write _now_, to say you do so come,
for dear Mrs. Westwood else will be on the tenters of incertitude.

C. LAMB.

LETTER 517

CHARLES LAMB TO VINCENT NOVELLO

[May 20, 1830.]

Dear N.--pray write immediately to say "The book has come safe." I am
anxious, not so much for the autographs, as for that bit of the hair
brush. I enclose a cinder, which belonged to _Shield_, when he was poor,
and lit his own fires. Any memorial of a great Musical Genius, I know,
is acceptable; and Shield has his merits, though Clementi, in my
opinion, is far above him in the Sostenuto. Mr. Westwood desires his
compliments, and begs to present you with a nail that came out of
Jomelli's coffin, who is buried at Naples.

[Vincent Novello writes on this: "A very characteristic note from Dear
Charles Lamb, who always pretended to Rate all kinds of memorials and
_Relics_, and assumed a look of fright and horror whenever he reproached
me with being a _Papist_, instead of a _Quaker_, which sect he pretended
to doat upon." The book would be Novello's album, with Lamb's "Free
Thoughts on Eminent Composers" in it (see next letter but one).

Shield was William Shield (1748-1829), the composer. He was buried in
Westminster Abbey in the same grave as Clementi. Nicolo Jomelli
(1714-1774) was a Neapolitan composer.]

LETTER 518

CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM HONE

May 21, 1830.

Dear Hone--I thought you would be pleased to see this letter. Pray if
you have time to, call on Novello, No. 66, Great Queen St. I am anxious
to learn whether he received his album I sent on Friday by our nine
o'clock morning stage. If not, beg inquire at the _Old Bell_, Holborn.

CHARLES LAMB.

Southey will see in the _Times_ all we proposed omitting is omitted.

[See notes to the letter to Southey above.]

LETTER 519

CHARLES LAMB TO SARAH HAZLITT

[Enfield, Saturday, May 24th, 1830.]

Mary's love? Yes. Mary Lamb quite well.

Dear Sarah,--I found my way to Northaw on Thursday and a very good woman
behind a counter, who says also that you are a very good lady but that
the woman who was with you was naught. These things may be so or not. I
did not accept her offered glass of wine (home-made, I take it) but
craved a cup of ale, with which I seasoned a slice of cold Lamb from a
sandwich box, which I ate in her back parlour, and proceeded for
Berkhampstead, &c.; lost myself over a heath, and had a day's pleasure.
I wish you could walk as I do, and as you used to do. I am sorry to find
you are so poorly; and, now I have found my way, I wish you back at
Goody Tomlinson's. What a pretty village 'tis! I should have come
sooner, but was waiting a summons to Bury. Well, it came, and I found
the good parson's lady (he was from home) exceedingly hospitable.

Poor Emma, the first moment we were alone, took me into a corner, and
said, "Now, pray, don't _drink_; do check yourself after dinner, for my
sake, and when we get home to Enfield, you shall drink as much as ever
you please, and I won't say a word about it." How I behaved, you may
guess, when I tell you that Mrs. Williams and I have written acrostics
on each other, and she hoped that she should have "no reason to regret
Miss Isola's recovery, by its depriving _her_ of our begun
correspondence." Emma stayed a month with us, and has gone back (in
tolerable health) to her long home, for _she_ comes not again for a
twelvemonth. I amused Mrs. Williams with an occurrence on our road to
Enfield. We travelled with one of those troublesome fellow-passengers in
a stage-coach, that is called a well-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 clench'd our conversation; and my Gentleman, with a face half wise,
half in scorn, troubled us with no more conversation, scientific or
philosophical, for the remainder of the journey. Ayrton was here
yesterday, and as _learned_ to the full as my fellow-traveller. What a
pity that he will spoil a wit and a devilish pleasant fellow (as he is)
by wisdom! He talk'd on Music; and by having read Hawkins and Burney
recently I was enabled to talk of Names, and show more knowledge than he
had suspected I possessed; and in the end he begg'd me to shape my
thoughts upon paper, which I did after he was gone, and sent him.

      FREE THOUGHTS ON SOME EMINENT COMPOSERS

        Some cry up Haydn, some Mozart,
        Just as the whim bites. For my part,
        I do not care a farthing candle
        For either of them, or for Handel.
        Cannot a man live free and easy,
        Without admiring Pergolesi!
        Or thro' the world with comfort go
        That never heard of Doctor Blow!
        So help me God, I hardly have;
        And yet I eat, and drink, and shave,
        Like other people, (if you watch it,)
        And know no more of stave and crotchet
        Than did the un-Spaniardised Peruvians;
        Or those old ante-queer-Diluvians
        That lived in the unwash'd world with Jubal,
        Before that dirty Blacksmith Tubal,
        By stroke on anvil, or by summ'at,
        Found out, to his great surprise, the gamut.
        I care no more for Cimerosa
        Than he did for Salvator Rosa,
        Being no Painter; and bad luck
        Be mine, if I can bear that Gluck!
        Old Tycho Brahe and modern Herschel
        Had something in them; but who's Purcel?
        The devil, with his foot so cloven,
        For aught I care, may take Beethoven;
        And, if the bargain does not suit,
        I'll throw him Weber in to boot!
        There's not the splitting of a splinter
        To chuse 'twixt _him last named_, and Winter.
        Of Doctor Pepusch old queen Dido
        Knew just as much, God knows, as I do.
        I would not go four miles to visit
        Sebastian Bach-or Batch-which is it?
        No more I would for Bononcini.
        As for Novello and Rossini,
        I shall not say a word about [to grieve] 'em,
        Because they're living. So I leave 'em.

Martin Burney is as odd as ever. We had a dispute about the word "heir,"
which I contended was pronounced like "air;" he said that might be in
common parlance; or that we might so use it, speaking of the
"Heir-at-Law," a comedy; but that in the Law Courts it was necessary to
give it a full aspiration, and to say _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-favoredly, 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 consequence than we supposed." So he goes on, harassing about
the way to prosperity, and losing it. With a long head, but somewhat a
wrong one--harum-scarum. Why does not his guardian angel look to him? He
deserves one--: may be, he has tired him out.

I am----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.

["Free Thoughts." The version in Ayrton's album differs a little from
this, the principal difference being in line 13, "primitive" for
"un-Spaniardised." Lamb's story of the origin of the verses is not
necessarily correct. I fancy that he had written them for Novello before
he produced them in reply to Ayrton's challenge. When sending the poem
to Ayrton in a letter at this time, not available for this edition
(written apparently just after Novello had paid the visit, referred to
above), Lamb wrote that it was written to gratify Novello.

Mary Lamb (or Charles Lamb, personating her) appended the following
postscript to the verses in Novello's album:--

      The reason why my brother's so severe,
      Vincentio is--my brother has no ear:
      And Caradori her mellifluous throat
      Might stretch in vain to make him learn a note.
      Of common tunes he knows not anything,
      Nor "Rule, Britannia" from "God save the King."
      He rail at Handel! He the gamut quiz!
      I'd lay my life he knows not what it is.
      His spite at music is a pretty whim--
      He loves not it, because it loves not him.

M. LAMB.

"Serjeant Wilde"-Thomas Wilde (1782-1855), afterwards Lord Truro, a
friend of Lamb's, who is said to have helped him with squibs in the
Newark election in 1829, when Martin Burney was among his supporters
(see Vol. V. of my large edition, page 341).

Here had I permission, I would print Lamb's letter to Ayrton, given in
the Boston Bibliophile edition, incorporating the same poem.]

LETTER 520

CHARLES LAMB TO SARAH HAZLITT

June 3, 1830.

Dear Sarah,--I named your thought about William to his father, who
expressed such horror and aversion to the idea of his singing in public,
that I cannot meddle in it directly or indirectly. Ayrton is a kind
fellow, and if you chuse to consult him by Letter, or otherwise, he will
give you the best advice, I am sure, very readily. _I have no doubt that
M. Burney's objection to interfering was the same--with mine._ With
thanks for your pleasant long letter, which is not that of an Invalid,
and sympathy for your sad sufferings, I remain, in haste,

Yours Truly,

Mary's kindest Love.

[There was some talk of William Hazlitt Junr. becoming a pupil of Braham
and taking up music seriously. He did not do so.

Here should come a note from Lamb to Hone, dated Enfield, June 17, 1830,
in which Lamb offers Hone £1 per quarter for yesterday's Times, after
the Coffee-House customers have done with it. He ends with the wish,
"Vivant Coffee, Coffee-potque!"]

LETTER 521

CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON

[P.M. June 28, 1830.]

DEAR B.B.--Could you dream of my publishing without sending a copy to
you? You will find something new to you in the vol. particularly the
Translations. Moxon will send to you the moment it is out. He is the
young poet of Xmas, whom the Author of the Pleasures of Memory has set
up in the bookvending business with a volunteer'd loan of £500--such
munificence is rare to an almost stranger. But Rogers, I am told, has
done many goodnatured things of this nature. I need not say how glad to
see A.K. and Lucy we should have been,--and still shall be, if it be
practicable. Our direction is Mr. Westwood's, Chase Side Enfield, but
alas I know not theirs. We can give them a bed. Coaches come daily from
the Bell, Holborn.

You will see that I am worn to the poetical dregs, condescending to
Acrostics, which are nine fathom beneath Album verses--but they were
written at the request of the Lady where our Emma is, to whom I paid a
visit in April to bring home Emma for a change of air after a severe
illness, in which she had been treated like a daughter by the good
Parson and his whole family. She has since return'd to her occupation. I
thought on you in Suffolk, but was 40 miles from Woodbridge. I heard of
you the other day from Mr. Pulham of the India House.

Long live King William the 4th.

S.T.C. says, we have had wicked kings, foolish kings, wise kings, good
kings (but few) but never till now have we had a Blackguard King--

Charles 2d was profligate, but a Gentleman.

I have nineteen Letters to dispatch this leisure Sabbath for Moxon to
send about with Copies-so you will forgive me short measure--and believe
me

Yours ever

C.L.

Pray do let us see your Quakeresses if possible.

[Lamb's _Album Verses_ was almost ready. The translations were those
from Vincent Bourne.

William IV. came to the throne on June 26, 1830.

"I have nineteen Letters." The fact that none of these is forthcoming
helps to illustrate the imperfect state of Lamb's correspondence as
(even among so many differing editions) we now have it. But of course
the number may have been an exaggeration.

Here should come a note from Lamb to Hone, dated July 1, 1830, in which
Lamb asks that the newspaper be kept as he is meditating a town
residence (see next letter).

Here probably should come an undated letter to Mrs. John Rickman,
accompanying a gift of _Album Verses_. Lamb says: "Will you re-give, or
_lend_ me, by the bearer, the one Volume of juvenile Poetry? I have
tidings of a second at Brighton." He proposes that he and Mrs. Rickman
shall some day play old whist for the two.]

LETTER 522

CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON

[P.M. 30 August, 1830.]

Dear B.B.--my address is 34 Southampton Buildings, Holborn. For God's
sake do not let me [be] pester'd with Annuals. They are all rogues who
edit them, and something else who write in them. I am still alone, and
very much out of sorts, and cannot spur up my mind to writing. The sight
of one of those Year Books makes me sick. I get nothing by any of 'em,
not even a Copy--

Thank you for your warm interest about my little volume, for the critics
on which I care [? not] the 5 hundred thousandth part of the tythe of a
half-farthing. I am too old a Militant for that. How noble, tho', in
R.S. to come forward for an old friend, who had treated him so
unworthily. Moxon has a shop without customers, I a Book without
readers. But what a clamour against a poor collection of album verses,
as if we had put forth an Epic. I cannot scribble a long Letter--I am,
when not at foot, very desolate, and take no interest in any thing,
scarce hate any thing, but annuals. I am in an interregnum of thought
and feeling--

What a beautiful Autumn morning this is, if it was but with me as in
times past when the candle of the Lord shined round me--

I cannot even muster enthusiasm to admire the French heroism.

In better times I hope we may some day meet, and discuss an old 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.

[_The Literary Gazette_, Jerdan's paper, had written offensively of
_Album Verses_ and its author's vanity in the number for July 10, 1830.
Southey published in _The Times_ of August 6 some lines in praise of
Lamb and against Jerdan. It was Southey's first public utterance on Lamb
since the famous letter by Elia to himself, and is the more noble in
consequence. The lines ran thus:--

                     TO CHARLES LAMB

   On the Reviewal of his _Album Verses_ in the _Literary Gazette_

        Charles Lamb, to those who know thee justly dear
        For rarest genius, and for sterling worth,
        Unchanging friendship, warmth of heart sincere,
        And wit that never gave an ill thought birth,
        Nor ever in its sport infix'd a sting;
        To us who have admired and loved thee long,
        It is a proud as well as pleasant thing
        To hear thy good report, now borne along
        Upon the honest breath of public praise:
        We know that with the elder sons of song
        In honouring whom thou hast delighted still,
        Thy name shall keep its course to after days.
        The empty pertness, and the vulgar wrong,
        The flippant folly, the malicious will,
        Which have assailed thee, now, or heretofore,
        Find, soon or late, their proper meed of shame;
        The more thy triumph, and our pride the more,
        When witling critics to the world proclaim,
        In lead, their own dolt incapacity.
        Matter it is of mirthful memory
        To think, when thou wert early in the field,
        How doughtily small Jeffrey ran at thee
        A-tilt, and broke a bulrush on thy shield.
        And now, a veteran in the lists of fame,
        I ween, old Friend! thou art not worse bested
        When with a maudlin eye and drunken aim,
        Dulness hath thrown a _jerdan_ at thy head.

        SOUTHEY.

Leigh Hunt attacked Jerdan in the _Examiner_ in a number of "Rejected
Epigrams" signed T.A. See later. He also took up the matter in the
Tatler, in the first number of which the following "Inquest
Extraordinary" was printed:--

        Last week a porter died beneath his burden;
        Verdict: Found carrying a _Gazette_ from Jerdan.

Moxon's shop without customers was at 64 New Bond Street. "The candle of
the Lord." In my large edition I gave this reference very thoughtlessly
to Proverbs xx. 27. It is really to Job. xxix. 3.

"The French heroism." The July Revolution, in which the Bourbons were
routed and Louis Philippe placed on the throne.]

LETTER 523

CHARLES LAMB TO SAMUEL ROGERS

[Dated at end: Oct. 5, 1830.]

Dear Sir,--I know not what hath bewitch'd me that I have delayed
acknowledging your beautiful present. But I have been very unwell and
nervous of late. The poem was not new to me, tho' I have renewed
acquaintance with it. Its metre is none of the least of its
excellencies. 'Tis so far from the stiffness of blank verse--it gallops
like a traveller, as it should do--no crude Miltonisms in [it]. Dare I
pick out what most pleases me? It is the middle paragraph in page
thirty-four. It is most tasty. Though I look on every impression as a
_proof_ of your kindness, I am jealous of the ornaments, and should have
prized the verses naked on whitybrown paper.

I am, Sir, yours truly,

C. LAMB.

Oct. 5th.

[Rogers had sent Lamb a copy of his Italy, with illustrations by Turner
and Stothard, which was published by Moxon with other firms in 183O.
This is the middle paragraph on page 34:--

        Here I received from thee, Basilico,
        One of those _courtesies so sweet, so rare!_
        When, as I rambled thro' thy vineyard-ground
        On the hill-side, thou sent'st thy little son,
        Charged with a bunch almost as big as he,
        To press it on the stranger. May thy vats
        O'erflow, and he, thy willing gift-bearer,
        Live to become a giver; and, at length,
        When thou art full of honour and wouldst rest,
        The staff of thine old age!]

LETTER 524

CHARLES LAMB TO VINCENT NOVELLO

[P.M. November 8, 1830.]

        Tears are for lighter griefs. Man weeps the doom
        That seals a single victim to the tomb.
        But when Death riots, when with whelming sway
        Destruction sweeps a family away;
        When Infancy and Youth, a huddled mass,
        All in an instant to oblivion pass,
        And Parent's hopes are crush'd; what lamentation
        Can reach the depth of such a desolation?
        Look upward, Feeble Ones! look up, and trust
        That He, who lays this mortal frame in dust,
        Still hath the immortal Spirit in His keeping.
        In Jesus' sight they are not dead, but sleeping.

Dear N., will these lines do? I despair of better. Poor Mary is in a
deplorable state here at Enfield.

Love to all,

C. LAMB.

[The four sons and two daughters of John and Ann Rigg, of York, had been
drowned in the Ouse. A number of poets were asked for verses, the best
to be inscribed on a monument in York Minster. Those of James Montgomery
were chosen.

It was possibly the death of Hazlitt, on September 18, while the Lambs
were in their London lodgings, that brought on Mary Lamb's attack.]

LETTER 525

CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON

November 12, 1830.

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. Rickman'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.

Remember me kindly to the Allsops.

[Southey was visiting Rickman, then Clerk Assistant to the House of
Commons, where he lived.]

LETTER 526

CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON

[No date. ? Dec., 1830.]

Dear M. Something like this was what I meant. But on reading it over, I
see no great fun or use in it. It will only stuff up and encroach upon
the sheet you propose. Do as, and _what_, you please. Send Proof, or
not, as you like. If you send, send me a copy or 2 of the Album Verses,
and the Juvenile Poetry if _bound_.

I am happy to say Mary is mending, but not enough to give me hopes of
being able to leave her. I sadly regret that I shall possibly not see
Southey or Wordsworth, but I dare not invite either of them here, for
fear of exciting my sister, whose only chance is quiet. You don't know
in what a sad state we have been.

I think the Devil may come out without prefaces, but use your
discretion.

Make my kindest remembces to Southey, with my heart's thanks for his
kind intent. I am a little easier about my Will, and as Ryle is
Executor, and will do all a friend can do at the Office, and what little
I leave will buy an annuity to piece out tolerably, I am much easier.

Yours ever

C.L.

To 64 New Bond St.

[I cannot say to what the opening sentences refer: probably an
advertisement for _Satan in Search of a Wife_ ("the Devil"), which Lamb
had just written and Moxon was publishing.

The reference to the Juvenile Poetry suggests that Moxon had procured
some of the sheets of the _Poetry for Children_ which Godwin brought out
in 1809, and was binding up a few. This theory is borne out by the
statement in the letter to Mrs. Norris, later, that the book was not to
be had for love or money, and the circumstance that in 1833 Lamb seems
to send her a copy. Ryle was Charles Ryle. an India House clerk, and
Lamb's executor with Talfourd.]

LETTER 527

CHARLES LAMB TO GEORGE DYER

Dec. 20, 1830.

Dear Dyer,--I would have written before to thank you for your kind
letter, written with your own hand. It glads us to see your writing. It
will give you pleasure to hear that, after so much illness, we are in
tolerable health and spirits once more. Miss Isola intended to call upon
you after her night's lodging at Miss Buffam's, but found she was too
late for the stage. If she comes to town before she goes home, she will
not miss paying her respects to Mrs. Dyer and you, to whom she desires
best love. Poor Enfield, that has been so peaceable hitherto, has caught
the inflammatory fever, the tokens are upon her! and a great fire was
blazing last night in the barns and haystacks of a farmer, about half a
mile from us. Where will these things end? There is no doubt of its
being the work of some ill-disposed rustic; but how is he to be
discovered? They go to work in the dark with strange chemical
preparations unknown to our forefathers. There is not even a dark
lantern to have a chance of detecting these Guy Fauxes. We are past the
iron age, and are got into the fiery age, undream'd of by Ovid. You are
lucky in Clifford's Inn where, I think, you have few ricks or stacks
worth the burning. Pray keep as little corn by you as you can, for fear
of the worst.

It was never good times in England since the poor began to speculate
upon their condition. Formerly, they jogged on with as little reflection
as horses: the whistling ploughman went cheek by jowl with his brother
that neighed. Now the biped carries a box of phosphorus in his
leather-breeches; and in the dead of night the half-illuminated beast
steals his magic potion into a cleft in a barn, and half a country is
grinning with new fires. Farmer Graystock said something to the touchy
rustic that he did not relish, and he writes his distaste in flames.
What a power to intoxicate his crude brains, just muddlingly awake, to
perceive that something is wrong in the social system!-what a hellish
faculty above gunpowder!

Now the rich and poor are fairly pitted; we shall see who can hang or
burn fastest. It is not always revenge that stimulates these kindlings.
There is a love of exerting mischief. Think of a disrespected clod that
was trod into earth, that was nothing, on a sudden by damned arts
refined into an exterminating angel, devouring the fruits of the earth
and their growers in a mass of fire! What a new existence!--what a
temptation above Lucifer's! Would clod be any thing but a clod, if he
could resist it? Why, here was a spectacle last night for a whole
country!--a Bonfire visible to London, alarming her guilty towers, and
shaking the Monument with an ague fit--all done by a little vial of
phosphor in a Clown's fob! How he must grin, and shake his empty noddle
in clouds, the Vulcanian Epicure! Can we ring the bells backward? Can we
unlearn the arts that pretend to civilize, and then burn the world?
There is a march of Science; but who shall beat the drums for its
retreat? Who shall persuade the boor that phosphor will not ignite?

Seven goodly stacks of hay, with corn-barns proportionable, lie smoking
ashes and chaff, which man and beast would sputter out and reject like
those apples of Asphaltes and bitumen. The food for the inhabitants of
earth will quickly disappear. Hot rolls may say: "Fuimus panes, fuit
quartern-loaf, et ingens gloria Apple-pasty-orum." That the good old
munching system may last thy time and mine, good un-incendiary George,
is the devout prayer of thine,

To the last crust,

CH. LAMB.

[Incendiarism, the result of agricultural distress and in opposition to
the competition of the new machinery, was rife in the country at this
time.]

LETTER 528

CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON

[No date. ? Christmas, 1830.]

Dear M. A thousand thanks for your punctualities. What a cheap Book is
the last Hogarth you sent me! I am pleased now that Hunt _diddled_ me
out of the old one. Speaking of this, only think of the new farmer with
his 30 acres. There is a portion of land in Lambeth parish called Knaves
Acre. I wonder he overlook'd it. Don't show this to the firm of Dilk &
C'o. I next want one copy of Leicester School, and wish you to pay
Leishman, Taylor, 2 Blandford Place, Pall Mall, opposite the British
Institution, £6. 10. for coat waistcoat &c. And I vehemently thirst for
the 4th No. of Nichols's Hogarth, to bind 'em up (the 2 books) as
"Hogarth, and Supplement." But as you know the price, don't stay for its
appearance; but come as soon as ever you can with your bill of all
demands in full, and, as I have none but £5 notes, bring with you
sufficient change. Weather is beautiful. I grieve sadly for Miss
Wordsworth. We are all well again. Emma is with us, and we all shall be
glad of a sight of you. COME ON Sunday, if you _can_; better, if you
come before. Perhaps Rogers would smile at this.--A pert half chemist
half apothecary, in our town, who smatters of literature and is
immeasurable unletterd, said to me "Pray, Sir, may not Hood (he of the
acres) be reckon'd the Prince of wits in the present day?" to which I
assenting, he adds "I had always thought that Rogers had been reckon'd
the Prince of Wits, but I suppose that now Mr. Hood has the better title
to that appellation." To which I replied that Mr. R. had wit with much
better qualities, but did not aspire to the principality. He had taken
all the puns manufactured in John Bull for our friend, in sad and stupid
earnest. One more Album verses, please.

Adieu.

C.L.

["Hunt." This would, I think, be not Leigh Hunt but his nephew, Hunt of
Hunt & Clarke. The diddling I cannot explain. Leishman was the husband
of Mrs. Leishman, the Lambs' old landlady at Enfield.

"Miss Wordsworth"--Dorothy Wordsworth, who was ill.

"Perhaps Rogers would smile at this." I take the following passage from
the _Maclise Portrait Gallery:_--

    In the early days of the _John Bull_ it was the fashion to lay every
    foundling witticism at the door of Sam Rogers; and thus the refined
    poet and man of letters became known as a sorry jester.

_John Bull_ was Theodore Hook's paper. Maginn wrote in _Fraser's
Magazine:_--

    Joe Miller vails his bonnet to Sam Rogers; in all the newspapers,
    not only of the kingdom but its dependencies,--Hindostan, Canada,
    the West Indies, the Cape, from the tropics,--nay, from the
    Antipodes to the Orkneys, Sam is godfather-- general to all the bad
    jokes in existence. The Yankees have caught the fancy, and from New
    Orleans to New York it is the same,--Rogers is synonymous with a
    pun. All British-born or descended people,--yea the very negro and
    the Hindoo--father their calembourgs on Rogers. Quashee, or
    Ramee-Samee, who knows nothing of Sir Isaac Newton, John Milton, or
    _Fraser's Magazine_, grins from ear to ear at the name of the
    illustrious banker, and with gratified voice exclaims, "Him dam
    funny, dat Sam!"]

LETTER 529

CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON

[P.M. February 3, 1831.]

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 thankd 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 30 and 40 years since, G. published the
Poet's Fate, in which were two very harmless lines about Mr. Rogers, but
Mr. R. not quite approving of them, they were left out in a subsequent
edition 1801. But G. has been worryting about them ever since; if I have
heard him once, I have heard him a hundred times express a remorse
proportiond to a consciousness of having been guilty of an atrocious
libel. As the devil would have it, a fool they call _Barker_, in his
Parriana has quoted the identical two lines as they stood in some
obscure edition anterior to 1801, and the withers of poor G. are again
wrung. His letter is a gem--with his poor blind eyes it has been
laboured out at six sittings. The history of the couplet is in page 3 of
this irregular production, in which every variety of shape and size that
Letters can be twisted into, is to be found. Do _shew_ his part of it to
Mr. R. some day. If he has bowels, they must melt at the contrition so
queerly character'd of a contrite sinner. G. was born I verily think
without original sin, but chuses 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 shew (no hurry) this unique
recantation to Mr. R. 'Tis like a dirty pocket handkerchief muck'd 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. I am heartily sorry my Devil does
not answer. We must try it a little longer, and after all I think I must
insist on taking a portion of the loss upon myself. It is too much you
should lose by two adventures. You do not say how your general business
goes on, and I should very much like to talk over it with you here. Come
when the weather will possibly let you. I want to see the Wordsworths,
but I do not much like to be all night away. It is dull enough to be
here together, but it is duller to leave Mary; in short it is painful,
and in a flying visit I should hardly catch them. I have no beds for
them, if they came down, and but a sort of a house to receive them in,
yet I shall regret their departure unseen. I feel cramped and straiten'd
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 serviceable to us. _That_ we
never shall. I do not know what I should do without you when I want a
little commission. Now then. There are left at Miss Buffam's, the Tales
of the Castle, and certain vols. Retrospective Review. The first should
be conveyd to Novello's, and the Reviews should be taken to Talfourd's
office, ground floor, East side, Elm Court, Middle Temple, to whom I
should have written, but my spirits are wretched. It is quite an effort
to write this. So, with the _Life_, I have cut you out 3 Pieces of
service. What can I do for you here, but hope to see you very soon, and
think of you with most kindness. I fear tomorrow, between rains and
snows, it would be impossible 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, when she'll venture.

Remember us to Allsop, and all the dead people--to whom, and to London,
we seem dead.

["The _Life_." The Life which every one was then reading was Moore's
_Life of Byron_.

"George Dyer's." The explanation is that years before, in his _Poems_,
1801, Dyer had written in a piece called "The Poet's Fate"--

        And Rogers, if he shares the town's regard,
        Was first a banker ere he rose a bard.

In the second edition Dyer altered this to--

        And Darwin, if he share the town's regard,
        Was first a doctor ere he rose a bard.

Lamb notes the alteration in his copy of the second edition, now in the
British Museum. In 1828-1829 appeared _Parriana_, by Edmund Henry
Barker, which quoted the couplet in its original form, to Dyer's
distress.

_Tales of the Castle_. By the Countess de Genlis. Translated by Thomas
Holcroft]

LETTER 530

CHARLES LAMB TO GEORGE DYER

Feb. 22nd, 1831.

Dear Dyer,--Mr. Rogers, and Mr. Rogers's friends, are perfectly assured,
that you never intended any harm by an innocent couplet, and that in the
revivification of it by blundering Barker you had no hand whatever. To
imagine that, at this time of day, Rogers broods over a fantastic
expression of more than thirty years' standing, would be to suppose him
indulging his "Pleasures of Memory" with a vengeance. You never penned a
line which for its own sake you need (dying) wish to blot. You mistake
your heart if you think you _can_ write a lampoon. Your whips are rods
of roses. Your spleen has ever had for its objects vices, not the
vicious-abstract offences, not the concrete sinner. But you are
sensitive, and wince as much at the consciousness of having committed a
compliment, as another man would at the perpetration of an affront. But
do not lug me into the same soreness of conscience with yourself. I
maintain, and will to the last hour, that I never writ of you but _con
amore_. That if any allusion was made to your near-sightedness, it was
not for the purpose of mocking an infirmity, but of connecting it with
scholar-like habits: for is it not erudite and scholarly to be somewhat
near of sight, before age naturally brings on the malady? You could not
then plead the _obrepens senectus_. Did I not moreover make it an
apology for a certain _absence_, which some of your friends may have
experienced, when you have not on a sudden made recognition of them in a
casual street-meeting, and did I not strengthen your excuse for this
slowness of recognition, by further accounting morally for the present
engagement of your mind in worthy objects? Did I not, in your person,
make the handsomest apology for absent-of-mind people that was ever
made? If these things be not so, I never knew what I wrote or meant by
my writing, and have been penning libels all my life without being aware
of it. Does it follow that I should have exprest myself exactly in the
same way of those dear old eyes of yours _now_--now that Father Time has
conspired with a hard task-master to put a last extinguisher upon them?
I should as soon have insulted the Answerer of Salmasius, when he awoke
up from his ended task, and saw no more with mortal vision. But you are
many films removed yet from Milton's calamity. You write perfectly
intelligibly. Marry, the letters are not all of the same size or
tallness; but that only shows your proficiency in the _hands_--text,
german-hand, court-hand, sometimes law-hand, and affords variety. You
pen better than you did a twelvemonth ago; and if you continue to
improve, you bid fair to win the golden pen which is the prize at your
young gentlemen's academy. But you must beware of Valpy, and his
printing-house, that hazy cave of Trophonius, out of which it was a
mercy that you escaped with a glimmer. Beware of MSS. and Variae
Lectiones. Settle the text for once in your mind, and stick to it. You
have some years' good sight in you yet, if you do not tamper with it. It
is not for you (for _us_ I should say) to go poring into Greek
contractions, and star-gazing upon slim Hebrew points. We have yet the
sight

        Of sun, and moon, and star, throughout the year,
        And man and woman.

You have vision enough to discern Mrs. Dyer from the other comely
gentlewoman who lives up at staircase No. 5; or, if you should make a
blunder in the twilight, Mrs. Dyer has too much good sense to be jealous
for a mere effect of imperfect optics. But don't try to write the Lord's
Prayer, Creed, and Ten Commandments, in the compass of a halfpenny; nor
run after a midge or a mote to catch it; and leave off hunting for
needles in bushels of hay, for all these things strain the eyes. The
snow is six feet deep in some parts here. I must put on jack-boots to
get at the post-office with this. It is not good for weak eyes to pore
upon snow too much. It lies in drifts. I wonder what its drift is; only
that it makes good pancakes, remind Mrs. Dyer. It turns a pretty green
world into a white one. It glares too much for an innocent colour,
methinks. I wonder why you think I dislike gilt edges. They set off a
letter marvellously. Yours, for instance, looks for all the world like a
tablet of curious _hieroglyphics_ in a gold frame. But don't go and lay
this to your eyes. You always wrote hieroglyphically, yet not to come up
to the mystical notations and conjuring characters of Dr. Parr. You
never wrote what I call a schoolmaster's hand, like Clarke; nor a
woman's hand, like Southey; nor a missal hand, like Porson; nor an
all-of-the-wrong-side-sloping hand, like Miss Hayes; nor a dogmatic,
Mede-and-Persian, peremptory hand, like Rickman; but you ever wrote what
I call a Grecian's hand; what the Grecians write (or used) at Christ's
Hospital; such as Whalley would have admired, and Boyer have applauded,
but Smith or Atwood (writing-masters) would have horsed you for. Your
boy-of-genius hand and your mercantile hand are various. By your
flourishes, I should think you never learned to make eagles or
corkscrews, or flourish the governors' names in the writing-school; and
by the tenor and cut of your letters I suspect you were never in it at
all. By the length of this scrawl you will think I have a design upon
your optics; but I have writ as large as I could out of respect to
them--too large, indeed, for beauty. Mine is a sort of deputy Grecian's
hand; a little better, and more of a worldly hand, than a Grecian's, but
still remote from the mercantile. I don't know how it is, but I keep my
rank in fancy still since school-days. I can never forget I was a deputy
Grecian! And writing to you, or to Coleridge, besides affection, I feel
a reverential deference as to Grecians still. I keep my soaring way
above the Great Erasmians, yet far beneath the other. Alas! what am I
now? what is a Leadenhall clerk or India pensioner to a deputy Grecian?
How art thou fallen, O Lucifer! Just room for our loves to Mrs. D., &c.

C. LAMB.

["I never writ of you but _con amore_." Lamb refers particularly to the
_Elia_ essay "Oxford in the Vacation" in the _London Magazine_, where
G.D.'s absence of mind and simplicity of character were dwelt upon more
intimately than Dyer liked (see Vol. II.).

Dyer was gradually going blind.