declaring, that a mob of happy faces crowding up at the pit door of Drury-Lane Theatre just at the hour of five, give me ten thousand finer pleasures, than I ever received from all the flocks of _silly sheep_, that have whitened the plains of _Arcadia_ or _Epsom Downs_.
This passion for crowds is no where feasted so full as in London. The man must have a rare _recipe_ for melancholy, who can be dull in Fleet-street. I am naturally inclined to _hypochondria_, but in London it vanishes, like all other ills. Often when I have felt a weariness or distaste at home, have I rushed out into her crowded Strand, and fed my humour, till tears have wetted my cheek for inutterable sympathies with the multitudinous moving picture, which she never fails to present at all hours, like the shifting scenes of a skilful Pantomime.
The very deformities of London, which give distaste to others, from habit do not displease me. The endless succession of shops, where Fancy (miscalled Folly) is supplied with perpetual new gauds and toys, excite in me no puritanical aversion. I gladly behold every appetite supplied with its proper food. The obliging customer, and the obliged tradesmen– things which live by bowing, and things which exist but for homage, do not affect me with disgust; from habit I perceive nothing but urbanity, where other men, more refined, discover meanness. I love the very smoke of London, because it has been the medium most familiar to my vision. I see grand principles of honour at work in the dirty ring which encompasses two combatants with fists, and principles of no less eternal justice in the tumultuous detectors of a pickpocket. The salutary astonishment with which an execution is surveyed, convinces me more forcibly than an hundred volumes of abstract polity, that the universal instinct of man, in all ages, has leaned to order and good government. Thus an art of extracting morality, from the commonest incidents of a town life, is attained by the same well-natured alchemy, with which the _Foresters of Arden_ in a beautiful country
Found tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in every thing–
Where has spleen her food but in London–humour, interest, curiosity, suck at her measureless breasts without a possibility of being satiated. Nursed amid her noise, her crowds, her beloved smoke–what have I been doing all my life, if I have not lent out my heart with usury to such scenes?
Reader, in the course of my peregrinations about the great city, it is hard, if I have not picked up matter, which may serve to amuse thee, as it has done me, a winter evening long. When next we meet, I purpose opening my budget–Till when, farewell.
* * * * *
“What is all this about?” said Mrs. Shandy. “A story of a cock and a bull,” said Yorick: and so it is; but Manning will take good-naturedly what _God will send him_ across the water: only I hope he won’t _shut_ his _eyes_, and _open_ his _mouth_, as the children say, for that is the way to _gape_, and not to _read_. Manning, continue your laudable purpose of making me your register. I will render back all your remarks; and _I, not you_, shall have received usury by having read them. In the mean time, may the great Spirit have you in his keeping, and preserve our Englishmen from the inoculation of frivolity and sin upon French earth.
_Allons_–or what is it you say, instead of _good-bye_?
Mary sends her kind remembrance, and covets the remarks equally with me.
C. LAMB.
[The reference to the “word-banker” and “register” is explained by Manning’s first letter to Lamb from Paris, in which he says: “I … beg you to keep all my letters. I hope to send you many–and I may in the course of time, make some observations that I shall wish to recall to my memory when I return to England.”
“Are you and the First Consul _thick_?”–Napoleon, with whom Manning was destined one day to be on terms. In 1803, on the declaration of war, when he wished to return to England, Manning’s was the only passport that Napoleon signed; again, in 1817, on returning from China, Manning was wrecked near St. Helena, and, waiting on the island for a ship, conversed there with the great exile.
“Rumfordising.” A word coined by Lamb from Sir Benjamin Thompson, Count von Rumford, the founder of the Royal Institution, the deviser of the Rumford stove, and a tireless scientific and philosophical experimentalist.
“Smellfungus.” An allusion to Sterne’s attack on Smollett, in _The Sentimental Journey_: “The lamented Smelfungus travelled from Boulogne to Paris, from Paris to Rome, and so on; but he set out with the spleen and jaundice, and every object he passed by was discoloured or distorted.”
“The _Post_.” Lamb had been writing criticisms of plays; but Stuart, as we have seen, wanted them on the same night as the performance and Lamb found this impossible.
“I have done but one thing”–“The Londoner,” referred to later.
“The Professor’s Rib”–Godwin’s second wife, the widow Clairmont (mother of Jane Clairmont), whom he had married in December, 1801.
“Fell”–R. Fell, author of a _Tour through the Batavian Republic_, 1801. Later he compiled a _Life of Charles James Fox_, 1808. Lamb knew him, as well as Fenwick, through Godwin.
“_Apropos_, I think you wrong about my play.” _John Woodvil_ had just been published and Lamb had sent Manning a copy. Manning, in return, had written from Paris early in February: “I showed your Tragedy to Holcroft, who had taste enough to discover that ’tis full of poetry–but the plot he condemns _in toto_. Tell me how it succeeds. I think you were ill advised to retrench so much. I miss the beautiful Branches you have lopped off and regret them. In some of the pages the sprinkling of words is so thin as to be quite _outre_. There you were wrong again.”
“The Londoner” was published in the _Morning Post_, February 1, 1802. I have quoted the article from that paper, as Lamb’s copy for Manning has disappeared. Concerning it Manning wrote, in his next letter–April 6, 1802–“I like your ‘Londoner’ very much, there is a deal of happy fancy in it, but it is not strong enough to be seen by the generality of readers, yet if you were to write a volume of essays in the same stile you might be sure of its succeeding.”]
LETTER 95
CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN RICKMAN
16, Mitre Court Buildings, Inner Temple, April 10, 1802.
Dear Rickman,–The enclosed letter explains itself. It will save me the danger of a corporal interview with the man-eater who, if very sharp-set, may take a fancy to me, if you will give me a short note, declaratory of probabilities. These from him who hopes to see you once or twice more before he goes hence, to be no more seen: for there is no tipple nor tobacco in the grave, whereunto he hasteneth.
C. LAMB.
How clearly the Goul writes, and like a gentleman!
[A friend of Burnett, named Simonds, is meant. Lamb calls him a “Goul” in another letter, and elsewhere says he eats strange flesh. See note on page 232.]
LETTER 96
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
[No date. ?End of April, 1802.]
My dear Manning,–Although something of the latest, and after two months’ waiting, your letter was highly gratifying. Some parts want a little explication; for example, “the god-like face of the First Consul.” _What god_ does he most resemble? Mars, Bacchus, or Apollo? or the god Serapis who, flying (as Egyptian chronicles deliver) from the fury of the dog Anubis (the hieroglyph of an English mastiff), lighted on Monomotapa (or the land of apes), by some thought to be Old France, and there set up a tyranny, &c. Our London prints of him represent him gloomy and sulky, like an angry Jupiter. I hear that he is very small, even less than me, who am “less than the least of the Apostles,” at least than they are painted in the Vatican. I envy you your access to this great man, much more than your seances and conversaziones, which I have a shrewd suspicion must be something dull. What you assert concerning the actors of Paris, that they exceed our comedians, “bad as ours are,” is _impossible_. In one sense it may be true, that their fine gentlemen, in what is called genteel comedy, may possibly be more brisk and _degage_ than Mr. Caulfield or Mr. Whitfield; but have any of them the power to move _laughter in excess_? or can a Frenchman _laugh_? Can they batter at your judicious ribs till they _shake_, nothing both to be so shaken? This is John Bull’s criterion, and it shall be mine. You are Frenchified. Both your tastes and morals are corrupt and perverted. By-and-by you will come to assert, that Buonaparte is as great a general as the old Duke of Cumberland, and deny that one Englishman can beat three Frenchmen. Read “Henry the Fifth” to restore your orthodoxy. All things continue at a stay-still in London. I cannot repay your new novelties with my stale reminiscences. Like the prodigal, I have spent my patrimony, and feed upon the superannuated chaff and dry husks of repentance; yet sometimes I remember with pleasure the hounds and horses, which I kept in the days of my prodigality. I find nothing new, nor anything that has so much of the gloss and dazzle of novelty, as may rebound in narrative, and cast a reflective glimmer across the channel. Something I will say about people that you and I know. Fenwick is still in debt, and the Professor has not done making love to his new spouse. I think he never looks into an almanack, or he would have found by the calendar that the honeymoon was extinct a moon ago. Lloyd has written to me and names you. I think a letter from Maison Magnan (is that a person or a thing?) would gratify him. G. Dyer is in love with an Ideot who loves a Doctor, who is incapable of loving anything but himself. A puzzling circle of perverse Providences! A maze as un-get-out-again-able as the House which Jack built. Southey is Secretary to the Chancellor of the Irish Exchequer; L400 a year. Stoddart is turned Doctor of Civil Law, and dwells in Doctors’ Commons. I fear _his_ commons are short, as they say. Did I send you an epitaph I scribbled upon a poor girl who died at nineteen, a good girl and a pretty girl, and a clever girl, but strangely neglected by all her friends and kin?
“Under this cold marble stone
Sleep the sad remains of one
Who, when alive, by few or none
Was loved, as loved she might have been, If she prosperous days had seen,
Or had thriving been, I ween.
Only this cold funeral stone
Tells she was beloved by one,
Who on the marble graves his moan.”
Brief, and pretty, and tender, is it not? I send you this, being the only piece of poetry I have _done_, since the muses all went with T. M. to Paris. I have neither stuff in my brain, nor paper in my drawer, to write you a longer letter. Liquor and company and wicked tobacco a’nights, have quite dispericraniated me, as one may say; but you who spiritualise upon Champagne may continue to write long letters, and stuff ’em with amusement to the end. Too long they cannot be, any more than a codicil to a will which leaves me sundry parks and manors not specified in the deed. But don’t be _two months_ before you write again. These from merry old England, on the day of her valiant patron St. George.
C. LAMB.
[This letter is usually dated 1803, but I feel sure it should be 1802. Southey had given up his Irish appointment in that year, and Godwin’s honeymoon began in December, 1801.
“Even less than me.” Mr. W. C. Hazlitt gives in _Mary and Charles Lamb_ a vivid impression of Lamb’s spare figure. A farmer at Widford, Mr. Charles Tween, himself not a big man, told Mr. Hazlitt that when walking out with Lamb he would place his hands under his arm and lift him over the stiles as if it were nothing. Napoleon’s height was 5 feet 6 or 7 inches.
Thomas Caulfield, a brother of the antiquary and print-seller, James Caulfield, was a comedian and mimic at Drury Lane; Whitfield was an actor at Drury Lane, who later moved to Covent Garden.
“An epitaph.” These lines were written upon a friend of Rickman’s, Mary Druitt of Wimborne. They were printed in the _Morning Post_ for February 7, 1804, signed C. L. See later.]
LETTER 97
(_Fragment_)
CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
Sept. 8th, 1802.
Dear Coleridge,–I thought of not writing till we had performed some of our commissions; but we have been hindered from setting about them, which yet shall be done to a tittle. We got home very pleasantly on Sunday. Mary is a good deal fatigued, and finds the difference of going to a place, and coming _from_ it. I feel that I shall remember your mountains to the last day I live. They haunt me perpetually. I am like a man who has been falling in love unknown to himself, which he finds out when he leaves the lady. I do not remember any very strong impression while they were present; but, being gone, their mementos are shelved in my brain. We passed a very pleasant little time with the Clarksons. The Wordsworths are at Montagu’s rooms, near neighbours to us. They dined with us yesterday, and I was their guide to Bartlemy Fair!
[In the summer of 1802 the Lambs paid a sudden visit to Coleridge at Keswick. Afterwards they went to Grasmere, although the Wordsworths were away from home; but they saw Thomas Clarkson, the philanthropist, then living at Ullswater (see the next letter). They had reached London again on September 5. Procter records that on being asked how he felt when among the lakes and mountains, Lamb replied that in order to bring down his thoughts from their almost painful elevation to the sober regions of life, he was obliged to think of the ham and beef shop near St. Martin’s Lane. Lamb says that after such a holiday he finds his office work very strange. “I feel debased; but I shall soon break in my mountain spirit.” The last two words were a recollection of his own poem “The Grandame”–
hers was else
A mountain spirit….
This letter, the original of which is I know not where, is here, for dismal copyright reasons, very imperfectly given. Mr. Macdonald prints it apparently in full, although Mrs. Gilchrist in her memoir of Mary Lamb supplies another passage, as follows:–“Lloyd has written me a fine letter of friendship all about himself and Sophia and love and cant which I have not answered. I have not given up the idea of writing to him but it will be done very plainly and sincerely, without acrimony.”
Lamb also says that Pi-pos (as Coleridge’s second child Derwent was called) was the only one, except a beggar’s brat, that he had ever wanted to steal from its parents.
He says also: “I was pleased to recognise your blank-verse poem (the Picture) in the _Morn. Post_ of Monday. It reads very well, and I feel some dignity in the notion of being able to understand it better than most Southern readers.”
Coleridge’s poem “The Picture; or, The Lover’s Resolution,” was printed in the _Morning Post_ for September 6. Its scenery was probably pointed out to Lamb by Coleridge at Keswick.
Basil Montagu, the lawyer, an old friend of Wordsworth’s. It is his son Edward who figures in the “Anecdote for Fathers.”
Bartholomew Fair, held at Smithfield, continued until 1855, but its glories had been decreasing for some years.]
LETTER 98
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
24th Sept., 1802, London.
My dear Manning,–Since the date of my last letter, I have been a traveller. A strong desire seized me of visiting remote regions. My first impulse was to go and see Paris. It was a trivial objection to my aspiring mind, that I did not understand a word of the language, since I certainly intend some time in my life to see Paris, and equally certainly never intend to learn the language; therefore that could be no objection. However, I am very glad I did not go, because you had left Paris (I see) before I could have set out. I believe, Stoddart promising to go with me another year prevented that plan. My next scheme, (for to my restless, ambitious mind London was become a bed of thorns) was to visit the far-famed Peak in Derbyshire, where the Devil sits, they say, without breeches. _This_ my purer mind rejected as indelicate. And my final resolve was a tour to the Lakes. I set out with Mary to Keswick, without giving Coleridge any notice; for my time being precious did not admit of it. He received us with all the hospitality in the world, and gave up his time to show us all the wonders of the country. He dwells upon a small hill by the side of Keswick, in a comfortable house, quite enveloped on all sides by a net of mountains: great floundering bears and monsters they seemed, all couchant and asleep. We got in in the evening, travelling in a post-chaise from Penrith, in the midst of a gorgeous sunshine, which transmuted all the mountains into colours, purple, &c. &c. We thought we had got into fairyland. But that went off (as it never came again–while we stayed we had no more fine sunsets); and we entered Coleridge’s comfortable study just in the dusk, when the mountains were all dark with clouds upon their heads. Such an impression I never received from objects of sight before, nor do I suppose 1 can ever again.
Glorious creatures, fine old fellows, Skiddaw, &c. I never shall forget ye, how ye lay about that night, like an intrenchment; gone to bed, as it seemed for the night, but promising that ye were to be seen in the morning. Coleridge had got a blazing fire in his study; which is a large, antique, ill-shaped room, with an old-fashioned organ, never played upon, big enough for a church, shelves of scattered folios, an AEolian harp, and an old sofa, half-bed, &c. And all looking out upon the last fading view of Skiddaw and his broad-breasted brethren: what a night! Here we stayed three full weeks, in which time I visited Wordsworth’s cottage, where we stayed a day or two with the Clarksons (good people and most hospitable, at whose house we tarried one day and night), and saw Lloyd. The Wordsworths were gone to Calais. They have since been in London and past much time with us: he is now gone into Yorkshire to be married to a girl of small fortune, but he is in expectation of augmenting his own in consequence of the death of Lord Lonsdale, who kept him out of his own in conformity with a plan my lord had taken up in early life of making everybody unhappy. So we have seen Keswick, Grasmere, Ambleside, Ulswater (where the Clarksons live), and a place at the other end of Ulswater–I forget the name–to which we travelled on a very sultry day, over the middle of Helvellyn. We have clambered up to the top of Skiddaw, and I have waded up the bed of Lodore. In fine, I have satisfied myself, that there is such a thing as that which tourists call _romantic_, which I very much suspected before: they make such a spluttering about it, and toss their splendid epithets around them, till they give as dim a light as at four o’clock next morning the lamps do after an illumination. Mary was excessively tired, when she got about half-way up Skiddaw, but we came to a cold rill (than which nothing can be imagined more cold, running over cold stones), and with the reinforcement of a draught of cold water she surmounted it most manfully. Oh, its fine black head, and the bleak air atop of it, with a prospect of mountains all about, and about, making you giddy; and then Scotland afar off, and the border countries so famous in song and ballad! It was a day that will stand out, like a mountain, I am sure, in my life. But I am returned (I have now been come home near three weeks–I was a month out), and you cannot conceive the degradation I felt at first, from being accustomed to wander free as air among mountains, and bathe in rivers without being controlled by any one, to come home and _work_. I felt very _little_. I had been dreaming I was a very great man. But that is going off, and I find I shall conform in time to that state of life to which it has pleased God to call me. Besides, after all, Fleet-Street and the Strand are better places to live in for good and all than among Skiddaw. Still, I turn back to those great places where I wandered about, participating in their greatness. After all, I could not _live_ in Skiddaw. I could spend a year–two, three years–among them, but I must have a prospect of seeing Fleet-Street at the end of that time, or I should mope and pine away, I know. Still, Skiddaw is a fine creature. My habits are changing, I think: _i.e._ from drunk to sober. Whether I shall be happier or not remains to be proved. I shall certainly be more happy in a morning; but whether I shall not sacrifice the fat, and the marrow, and the kidneys, _i.e._ the night, the glorious care-drowning night, that heals all our wrongs, pours wine into our mortifications, changes the scene from indifferent and flat to bright and brilliant!–O Manning, if I should have formed a diabolical resolution, by the time you come to England, of not admitting any spirituous liquors into my house, will you be my guest on such shameworthy terms? Is life, with such limitations, worth trying? The truth is, that my liquors bring a nest of friendly harpies about my house, who consume me. This is a pitiful tale to be read at St. Gothard; but it is just now nearest my heart. Fenwick is a ruined man. He is hiding himself from his creditors, and has sent his wife and children into the country. Fell, my other drunken companion (that has been: nam hic caestus artemque repono), is turned editor of a “Naval Chronicle.” Godwin (with a pitiful artificial wife) continues a steady friend, though the same facility does not remain of visiting him often. That Bitch has detached Marshall from his house, Marshall the man who went to sleep when the “Ancient Mariner” was reading: the old, steady, unalterable friend of the Professor. Holcroft is not yet come to town. I expect to see him, and will deliver your message. How I hate _this part_ of a letter. Things come crowding in to say, and no room for ’em. Some things are too little to be told, _i.e._ to have a preference; some are too big and circumstantial. Thanks for yours, which was most delicious. Would I had been with you, benighted &c. I fear my head is turned with wandering. I shall never be the same acquiescent being. Farewell; write again quickly, for I shall not like to hazard a letter, not knowing where the fates have carried you. Farewell, my dear fellow.
C. LAMB.
[Lamb suggests in Letter 54 that he knew some French. Marshall we met in the letters to Godwin of December 14,1800, and to Manning, December 16, 1800.
“Holcroft”–Thomas Holcroft (1745-1809), a miscellaneous writer, who is best known by his play “The Road to Ruin.” Lamb says of him in his “Letter to Southey” (see Vol. I. of this edition) that he was “one of the most candid, most upright, and single-meaning men” that he had ever met.]
LETTER 99
CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
October 9, 1802.
CAROLUS AGNUS COLERIDGIO SUO S.
Carissime–Scribis, ut nummos scilicet epistolarios solvam et postremo in Tartara abeam: immo tu potius Tartaricum (ut aiunt) deprehendisti, qui me vernacula mea lingua pro scriba conductitio per tot annos satis eleganter usum ad Latine impure et canino fere ore latrandum per tuasmet epistolas bene compositas et concinnatas percellere studueris. Conabor tamen: Attamen vereor, ut AEdes istas nostri Christi, inter quas tanta diligentia magistri improba [?improbi] bonis literulis, quasi per clysterem quendam injectis, infra supraque olim penitus imbutus fui, Barnesii et Marklandii doctissimorum virorum nominibus adhuc gaudentes, barbarismis meis peregrinis et aliunde quaesitis valde dehonestavero [_sic_]. Sed pergere quocunque placet. Adeste igitur, quotquot estis, conjugationum declinationumve turmae, terribilia spectra, et tu imprimis ades, Umbra et Imago maxima obsoletas (Diis gratiae) Virgae, qua novissime in mentem recepta, horrescunt subito natales [nates], et parum deest quo minus braccas meas ultro usque ad crura demittam, et ipse puer pueriliter ejulem.
Ista tua Carmina Chamouniana satis grandia esse mihi constat; sed hoc mihi nonnihil displicet, quod in iis illae montium Grisosonum inter se responsiones totidem reboant anglice, _God, God_, haud aliter atque temet audivi tuas monies Cumbrianas resonare docentes, _Tod, Tod_, nempe Doctorem infelicem: vocem certe haud Deum Sonantem. Pro caeteris plaudo.
Itidem comparationes istas tuas satis callidas et lepidas certe novi: sed quid hoc ad verum? cum illi Consulari viro et _mentem irritabilem_ istam Julianam: et etiam _astutias frigidulas_ quasdam Augusto propriores, nequaquam congruenter uno afflatu comparationis causa insedisse affirmaveris: necnon nescio quid similitudinis etiam cum Tiberio tertio in loco solicite produxetis. Quid tibi equidem cum uno vel altero Caesare, cum universi Duodecim ad comparationes tuas se ultro tulerint? Praeterea, vetustati adnutans, comparationes iniquas odi.
Istas Wordsworthianas nuptias (vel potius cujusdam _Edmundii_ tui) te retulisse mirificum gaudeo. Valeas, Maria, fortunata nimium, et antiquae illae Mariae Virgini (comparatione plusquam Caesareana) forsitan comparanda, quoniam “beata inter mulieres:” et etiam fortasse Wordsworthium ipsum tuum maritum Angelo Salutatori aequare fas erit, quoniam e Coelo (ut ille) descendunt et Musae et ipsi Musicolae: at Wordsworthium Musarum observantissimum semper novi. Necnon te quoque affinitate hac nova, Dorothea, gratulor: et tu certe alterum _donum Dei_.
Istum Ludum, quem tu, Coleridgi, Americanum garris, a Ludo (ut Ludi sunt) maxime abhorrentem praetereo: nempe quid ad Ludum attinet, totius illae gentis Columbianae, a nostra gente, eadem stirpe orta, ludi singuli causa voluntatem perperam alienare? Quasso ego materiam ludi: tu Bella ingeris.
Denique valeas, et quid de Latinitate mea putes, dicas; facias ut opossum illum nostrum volantem vel (ut tu malis) quendam Piscem errabundum, a me salvum et pulcherrimum esse jubeas. Valeant uxor tua cum Hartleiio nostro. Soror mea salva est et ego: vos et ipsa salvere jubet. Ulterius progrediri [? progredi] non liquet: homo sum aeratus.
P.S.–Pene mihi exciderat, apud me esse Librorum a Johanno Miltono Latine scriptorum volumina duo, quae (Deo volente) cum caeteris tuis libris ocyus citius per Maria [?] ad te missura [_sic_] curabo; sed me in hoc tali genere rerum nullo modo _festinantem_ novisti: habes confitentem reum. Hoc solum dici [_sic_] restat, praedicta volumina pulchra esse et omnia opera Latina J. M. in se continere. Circa defensionem istam Pro Pop deg.. Ang deg.. acerrimam in praesens ipse praeclaro gaudio moror.
Jussa tua Stuartina faciam ut diligenter colam. Iterum iterumque valeas: Et facias memor sis nostri.
[I append a translation from the pen of Mr. Stephen Gwynn:–
CHARLES LAMB TO HIS FRIEND COLERIDGE, GREETING.
DEAR FRIEND–You write that I am to pay my debt, to wit in coin of correspondence, and finally that I am to go to Tartarus: no but it is you have caught a Tartar (as the saying is), since after all these years employing my own vernacular tongue, and prettily enough for a hired penman, you have set about to drive me by means of your well composed and neatly turned epistles to gross and almost doggish barking in the Latin. Still, I will try: And yet I fear that the Hostel of our Christ,–wherein by the exceeding diligence of a relentless master I was in days gone by deeply imbued from top to bottom with polite learning, instilled as it were by a clyster–which still glories in the names of the erudite Barnes and Markland, will be vilely dishonoured by my outlandish and adscititious barbarisms. But I am determined to proceed, no matter whither. Be with me therefore all ye troops of conjugations and declensions, dread spectres, and approach thou chiefest, Shade and Phantom of the disused (thank Heaven) Birch, at whose entry to my imagination a sudden shiver takes my rump, and a trifle then more would make me begin to let down my breeches to my calves, and turning boy, howl boyishly.
That your Ode at Chamounix is a fine thing I am clear; but here is a thing offends me somewhat, that in the ode your answers of the Grison mountains to each other should so often echo in English God, God–in the very tone that I have heard your own lips teaching your Cumbrian mountains to resound Tod, Tod, meaning the unlucky doctor–a syllable assuredly of no Godlike sound. For the rest, I approve.
Moreover, I certainly recognise that your comparisons are acute and witty; but what has this to do with truth? since you have given to the great Consul at once that irritable mind of Julius, and also a kind of cold cunning, more proper to Augustus–attributing incongruous characteristics in one breath for the sake of your comparison: nay, you have even in the third instance laboriously drawn out some likeness to Tiberius. What had you to do with one Caesar, or a second, when the whole Twelve offered themselves to your comparison? Moreover, I agree with antiquity, and think comparisons odious.
Your Wordsworth nuptials (or rather the nuptials of a certain Edmund of yours) fill me with joy in your report. May you prosper, Mary, fortunate beyond compare, and perchance comparable to that ancient Virgin Mary (a comparison more than Caesarean) since “blessed art thou among women:” perhaps also it will be no impiety to compare Wordsworth himself your husband to the Angel of Salutation, since (like the angel) from heaven descend both Muses and the servants of the Muses: whose devoutest votary I always know Wordsworth to be. Congratulations to thee, Dorothea, in this new alliance: you also assuredly are another “gift of God.”
As for your Ludus [Lloyd], whom you talk of as an “American,” I pass him by as no sportsman (as sport goes): what kind of sport is it, to alienate utterly the good will of the whole Columbian people, our own kin, sprung of the same stock, for the sake of one Ludd [Lloyd]? I seek the material for diversion: you heap on War.
Finally, fare you well, and pray tell me what you think of my Latinity. Kindly wish health and beauty from me to our flying possum or (as you prefer to call it) roving Fish. Good health to your wife and my friend Hartley. My sister and I are well. She also sends you greeting. I do not see how to get on farther: I am a man in debt [or possibly in “fetters”].
P.S.–I had almost forgot, I have by me two volumes of the Latin writings of John Milton, which (D.V.) I will have sent you sooner or later by Mary: but you know me no way precipitate in this kind: the accused pleads guilty. This only remains to be said, that the aforesaid volumes are handsome and contain all the Latin works of J. M. At present I dwell with much delight on his vigorous defence of the English people.
I will be sure to observe diligently your Stuartial tidings.
Again and again farewell: and pray be mindful of me.
Coleridge’s “Hymn before Sun-rise, in the Vale of Chamouni,” was printed in the _Morning Post_ for September 11, 1802. The poem contains this passage:–
God! let the torrents, like a shout of nations, Answer! and let the ice-plains echo, God! God! sing ye meadow-streams with gladsome voice! Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds! And they too have a voice, yon piles of snow, And in their perilous fall shall thunder, God!
Canon Ainger suggests that by Tod, the unlucky doctor, Lamb meant Dr. William Dodd (1729-1777), the compiler of the _Beauties of Shakespeare_ and the forger, who was hanged at Tyburn.
“Your comparisons.” Coleridge’s “Comparison of the Present State of France with that of Rome under Julius and Augustus Caesar” was printed in the _Morning Post_, September 21, September 25, and October 2, 1802. See _Essays on His Own Times_, 1850, Vol. III., page 478.
Wordsworth’s marriage to Mary Hutchinson, on October 4, 1802, had called forth from Coleridge his ode on “Dejection,” printed in the _Morning Post_ for the same day, in which Wordsworth was addressed as Edmund. In later editions Coleridge suppressed its personal character.
Ludus is Lloyd. Lamb means by “American” what we should mean by pro-American.
“Stuartial.” Referring to Daniel Stuart of the _Morning Post_.]
LETTER 100
CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
Oct. 11th, 1802.
Dear Coleridge,–Your offer about the German poems is exceedingly kind; but I do not think it a wise speculation, because the time it would take you to put them into prose would be nearly as great as if you versified them. Indeed, I am sure you could do the one nearly as soon as the other; so that, instead of a division of labour, it would be only a multiplication. But I will think of your offer in another light. I dare say I could find many things of a light nature to suit that paper, which you would not object to pass upon Stuart as your own, and I should come in for some light profits, and Stuart think the more highly of your assiduity. “Bishop Hall’s Characters” I know nothing about, having never seen them. But I will reconsider your offer, which is very plausible; for as to the drudgery of going every day to an editor with my scraps, like a pedlar, for him to pick out, and tumble about my ribbons and posies, and to wait in his lobby, &c., no money could make up for the degradation. You are in too high request with him to have anything unpleasant of that sort to submit to.
It was quite a slip of my pen, in my Latin letter, when I told you I had Milton’s Latin Works. I ought to have said his Prose Works, in two volumes, Birch’s edition, containing all, both Latin and English, a fuller and better edition than Lloyd’s of Toland. It is completely at your service, and you must accept it from me; at the same time, I shall be much obliged to you for your Latin Milton, which you think you have at Howitt’s; it will leave me nothing to wish for but the “History of England,” which I shall soon pick up for a trifle. But you must write me word whether the Miltons are worth paying carriage for. You have a Milton; but it is pleasanter to eat one’s own peas out of one’s own garden, than to buy them by the peck at Covent Garden; and a book reads the better, which is our own, and has been so long known to us, that we know the topography of its blots and dog’s-ears, and can trace the dirt in it to having read it at tea with buttered muffins, or over a pipe, which I think is the maximum. But, Coleridge, you must accept these little things, and not think of returning money for them, for I do not set up for a factor or general agent. As for the fantastic debt of 15L., I’ll think you were dreaming, and not trouble myself seriously to attend to you. My bad Latin you properly correct; but _natales_ for _nates_ was an inadvertency: I knew better. _Progrediri_ or _progredi_ I thought indifferent, my authority being Ainsworth. However, as I have got a fit of Latin, you will now and then indulge me with an _epistola_. I pay the postage of this, and propose doing it by turns. In that case I can now and then write to you without remorse; not that you would mind the money, but you have not always ready cash to answer small demands–the _epistolarii nummi_.
Your “Epigram on the Sun and Moon in Germany” is admirable. Take ’em all together, they are as good as Harrington’s. I will muster up all the conceits I can, and you shall have a packet some day. You and I together can answer all demands surely: you, mounted on a terrible charger (like Homer in the Battle of the Books) at the head of the cavalry: I will lead the light horse. I have just heard from Stoddart. Allen and he intend taking Keswick in their way home. Allen wished particularly to have it a secret that he is in Scotland, and wrote to me accordingly very urgently. As luck was, I had told not above three or four; but Mary had told Mrs. Green of Christ’s Hospital! For the present, farewell: never forgetting love to Pi-pos and his friends.
C. LAMB.
[Coleridge, who seems to have been asked by Stuart of the _Morning Post_ for translations of German verse, had suggested, I presume, that he should supply Lamb (who knew no German) with literal prose translations, and that Lamb should versify them, as he had in the case of “Thekla’s Song” in Coleridge’s translation of the first part of _Wallenstein_ nearly three years before. Lamb’s suggestion is that he should send to Stuart epigrams and paragraphs in Coleridge’s name. Whether or not he did so, I cannot say.
Bishop Hall’s _Characters of Vices and Virtues_ was published in 1608. Coleridge may have suggested that Lamb should imitate them for the _Morning Post_. Lamb later came to know Hall’s satires, for he quotes from them in his review of Barron Field’s poems in 1820.
Milton’s prose works were edited by Thomas Birch, and by John Toland in folio.
“My bad Latin”–in the letter of October 9, 1802. Ainsworth was Robert Ainsworth, compiler of the _Thesaurus Linguae Latinae_, 1736, for many years the best Latin dictionary.
“Your Epigram”–Coleridge’s Epigram “On the Curious Circumstance that in the German Language the Sun is feminine and the Moon masculine.” It appeared in the _Morning Post_ on October 11, 1802. Coleridge had been sending epigrams and other verse to the _Post_ for some time. Harrington was Sir John Harington (1561-1612), the author of many epigrams.
Stoddart and Allen we have met. I do not know anything of Mrs. Green.]
LETTER 101
CHARLES LAMB TO S.T. COLERIDGE
Oct. 23rd, 1802.
Your kind offer I will not a second time refuse. You shall send me a packet and I will do them into English with great care. Is not there one about W’m. Tell, and would not that in the present state of discussions be likely to _tell_? The Epigrams I meant are to be found at the end of Harrington’s Translation of Orlando Furioso: if you could get the book, they would some of them answer your purpose to modernize. If you can’t, I fancy I can. Baxter’s Holy Commonwealth I have luckily met with, and when I have sent it, you shall if you please consider yourself indebted to me 3s. 6d. the cost of it: especially as I purchased it after your solemn injunctions. The plain case with regard to my presents (which you seem so to shrink from) is that I have not at all affected the character of a DONOR, or thought of violating your sacred Law of Give and Take: but I have been _taking_ and partaking the good things of your House (when I know you were not over-abounding) and I now _give_ unto you of mine; and by the grace of God I happen to be myself a little super-abundant at present. I expect I shall be able to send you my final parcel in about a week: by that time I shall have gone thro’ all Milton’s Latin Works. There will come with it the Holy Commonwealth, and the identical North American Bible which you helped to dogs ear at Xt’s.–I call’d at Howell’s for your little Milton, and also to fetch away the White Cross Street Library Books, which I have not forgot: but your books were not in a state to be got at then, and Mrs. H. is to let me know when she packs up. They will be sent by sea; and my little praecursor will come to you by the Whitehaven waggon accompanied with pens, penknife &c.–Mrs. Howell was as usual very civil; and asked with great earnestness, if it were likely you would come to Town in the winter. She has a friendly eye upon you.
I read daily your political essays. I was particularly pleased with “Once a Jacobin:” though the argument is obvious enough, the style was less swelling than your things sometimes are, and it was plausible _ad populum_. A vessel has just arrived from Jamaica with the news of poor Sam Le Grice’s death. He died at Jamaica of the yellow fever. His course was rapid and he had been very foolish; but I believe there was more of kindness and warmth in him than in almost any other of our schoolfellows. The annual meeting of the Blues is to-morrow, at the London Tavern, where poor Sammy dined with them two years ago, and attracted the notice of all by the singular foppishness of his dress. When men go off the stage so early, it scarce seems a noticeable thing in their epitaphs, whether they had been wise or silly in their lifetime.
I am glad the snuff and Pi-pos’s Books please. “Goody Two Shoes” is almost out of print. Mrs. Barbauld’s stuff has banished all the old classics of the nursery; and the shopman at Newbery’s hardly deigned to reach them off an old exploded corner of a shelf, when Mary asked for them. Mrs. B.’s and Mrs. Trimmer’s nonsense lay in piles about. Knowledge insignificant and vapid as Mrs. B.’s books convey, it seems, must come to a child in the _shape_ of _knowledge_, and his empty noddle must be turned with conceit of his own powers when he has learnt that a Horse is an animal, and Billy is better than a Horse, and such like; instead of that beautiful Interest in wild tales which made the child a man, while all the time he suspected himself to be no bigger than a child. Science has succeeded to Poetry no less in the little walks of children than with men. Is there no possibility of averting this sore evil? Think what you would have been now, if instead of being fed with Tales and old wives’ fables in childhood, you had been crammed with geography and natural history?
Damn them!–I mean the cursed Barbauld Crew, those Blights and Blasts of all that is Human in man and child.
As to the Translations, let me do two or three hundred lines, and then do you try the Nostrums upon Stuart in any way you please. If they go down I will bray more. In fact, if I got or could but get 50 l. a year only, in addition to what I have, I should live in affluence.
Have you anticipated it, or could not you give a Parallel of Bonaparte with Cromwell, particularly as to the contrast in their deeds affecting _foreign_ states? Cromwell’s interference for the Albigenses, B[uonaparte]’s against the Swiss. Then Religion would come in; and Milton and you could rant about our countrymen of that period. This is a hasty suggestion, the more hasty because I want my Supper. I have just finished Chapman’s Homer. Did you ever read it?–it has most the continuous power of interesting you all along, like a rapid original, of any, and in the uncommon excellence of the more finished parts goes beyond Fairfax or any of ’em. The metre is fourteen syllables, and capable of all sweetness and grandeur. Cowper’s damn’d blank verse detains you every step with some heavy Miltonism; Chapman gallops off with you his own free pace. Take a simile for an example. The council breaks up–
“Being abroad, the earth was overlaid With flockers to them, that came forth; as when of frequent bees Swarms rise out of a hollow rock, repairing the degrees _Of their egression endlessly, with ever rising new_ From forth their sweet nest; as their store, still as it faded, grew, _And never would cease sending forth her clusters to the spring_, They still crowd out so: this flock here, that there, belabouring The loaded flowers. So,” &c. &c.
[_Iliad_, Book II., 70-77.]
What _endless egression of phrases_ the dog commands!
Take another: Agamemnon wounded, bearing his wound heroically for the sake of the army (look below) to a woman in labour.
“He, with his lance, sword, mighty stones, poured his heroic wreak On other squadrons of the foe, whiles yet warm blood did break Thro’ his cleft veins: but when the wound was quite exhaust and crude, The eager anguish did approve his princely fortitude. As when most sharp and bitter pangs distract a labouring dame, Which the divine Ilithiae, that rule the painful frame Of human childbirth, pour on her; the Ilithiae that are The daughters of Saturnia; with whose extreme repair The woman in her travail strives to take the worst it gives; With thought, it _must be, ’tis love’s fruit, the end for which she lives; The mean to make herself new born, what comforts_ will redound: So,” &c.
[_Iliad_, Book XI., 228-239.]
I will tell you more about Chapman and his peculiarities in my next. I am much interested in him.
Yours ever affectionately, and Pi-Pos’s.
C.L.
[Coleridge was just now contributing political essays as well as verse to the _Morning Post_. “Once a Jacobin always a Jacobin” appeared on October 21, 1802. These were afterwards reprinted in _Essays on His Own Times_. _Ad populum_ is a reminder of Coleridge’s first political essays, the _Conciones ad Populum_ of 1795.
“Goody Two Shoes”–One of Newbery’s most famous books for children, sometimes attributed to Goldsmith, though, I think, wrongly.
Mrs. Barbauld (1743-1825) was the author of _Hymns in Prose for Children_, and she contributed to her brother John Aikin’s _Evenings at Home_, both very popular books. Lamb, who afterwards came to know Mrs. Barbauld, described her and Mrs. Inchbald as the two bald women. Mrs. Sarah Trimmer (1741-1810) was the author of many books for children; she lives by the _Story of the Robins_.
The translation for Stuart either was not made or not accepted; nor did Coleridge carry out the project of the parallel of Buonaparte with Cromwell. Hallam, however, did so in his _Constitutional History of England_, unfavourably to Cromwell.
George Chapman’s _Odyssey_ was paraphrased by Lamb in his _Adventures of Ulysses_, 1808. Lamb either did not return to the subject with Coleridge, or his “next letter” has been lost.]
LETTER 102
CHARLES LAMB TO S.T. COLERIDGE
Nov. 4th, 1802.
Observe, there comes to you, by the Kendal waggon to-morrow, the illustrious 5th of November, a box, containing the Miltons, the strange American Bible, with White’s brief note, to which you will attend; Baxter’s “Holy Commonwealth,” for which you stand indebted to me 3s. 6d.; an odd volume of Montaigne, being of no use to me, I having the whole; certain books belonging to Wordsworth, as do also the strange thick-hoofed shoes, which are very much admired at in London. All these sundries I commend to your most strenuous looking after. If you find the Miltons in certain parts dirtied and soiled with a crumb of right Gloucester blacked in the candle (my usual supper), or peradventure a stray ash of tobacco wafted into the crevices, look to that passage more especially: depend upon it, it contains good matter. I have got your little Milton which, as it contains Salmasius–and I make a rule of never hearing but one side of the question (why should I distract myself?)–I shall return to you when I pick up the _Latina opera_. The first Defence is the greatest work among them, because it is uniformly great, and such as is befitting the very mouth of a great nation speaking for itself. But the second Defence, which is but a succession of splendid episodes slightly tied together, has one passage which if you have not read, I conjure you to lose no time, but read it; it is his consolations in his blindness, which had been made a reproach to him. It begins whimsically, with poetical flourishes about Tiresias and other blind worthies (which still are mainly interesting as displaying his singular mind, and in what degree poetry entered into his daily soul, not by fits and impulses, but engrained and innate); but the concluding page, i.e. of _this passage_ (not of the _Defensio_) which you will easily find, divested of all brags and flourishes, gives so rational, so true an enumeration of his comforts, so human, that it cannot be read without the deepest interest. Take one touch of the religious part:–“Et sane haud ultima Dei cura caeci–(_we blind folks_, I understand it not _nos_ for _ego_;)–sumus; qui nos, quominus quicquam aliud praeter ipsum cernere valemus, eo clementius atque benignius respicere dignatur. Vae qui illudit nos, vae qui laedit, execratione publica devovendo; nos ab injuriis hominum non modo incolumes, sed pene sacros divina lex reddidit, divinus favor: nee tam _oculorum hebetudine_ quam _coelestium alarum umbra_ has nobis fecisse tenebras videtur, factas illustrare rursus interiore ac longe praestabiliore lumine haud raro solet. Huc refero, quod et amici officiosius nunc etiam quam solebant, colunt, observant, adsunt; quod et nonnulli sunt, quibuscum Pyladeas atque Theseas alternare voces verorum amicorum liceat.
“Vade gubernaculum mei pedis.
Da manum ministro amico.
Da collo manum tuam, ductor autem viae ero tibi ego.”
All this, and much more, is highly pleasing to know. But you may easily find it;–and I don’t know why I put down so many words about it, but for the pleasure of writing to you and the want of another topic.
Yours ever, C. LAMB.
To-morrow I expect with anxiety S.T.C.’s letter to Mr. Fox.
[Lamb refers to Milton’s _Defensio Secunda pro Populo Anglicano contra Alexandrum Morum Ecclesiasten_. The following is a translation of the Latin passage by Robert Fellowes:–
And indeed, in my blindness, I enjoy in no inconsiderable degree the favour of the Deity; who regards me with more tenderness and compassion in proportion as I am able to behold nothing but himself. Alas! for him who insults me, who maligns and merits public execration! For the divine law not only shields me from injury, but almost renders me too sacred to attack; not indeed so much from the privation of my sight, as from the overshadowing of those heavenly wings, which seem to have occasioned this obscurity; and which, when occasioned, he is wont to illuminate with an interior light, more precious and more pure. To this I ascribe the more tender assiduities of my friends, their soothing attentions, their kind visits, their reverential observances; among whom there are some with whom I may interchange the Pyladean and Thesean dialogue of inseparable friends.
_Orest_. Proceed, and be rudder of my feet, by showing me the most endearing love. [Eurip. in _Orest_.]
And in another place–
“Lend your hand to your devoted friend, Throw your arm round my neck, and
I will conduct you on the way.”
Coleridge’s first letter to Charles James Fox was printed in the _Morning Post_ for November 4, 1802, his second on November 9.]
LETTER 103
Charles Lamb to Thomas Manning
[November, 1802.]
My dear Manning,–I must positively write, or I shall miss you at Toulouse. I sit here like a decayed minute hand (I lie; _that_ does not _sit_), and being myself the exponent of no time, take no heed how the clocks about me are going. You possibly by this time may have explored all Italy, and toppled, unawares, into Etna, while you went too near those rotten-jawed, gap-toothed, old worn-out chaps of hell,–while I am meditating a quiescent letter to the honest postmaster at Toulouse. But in case you should not have been _felo de se_, this is to tell you, that your letter was quite to my palate–in particular your just remarks upon Industry, damned Industry (though indeed you left me to explore the reason), were highly relishing.
I’ve often wished I lived in the Golden Age, when shepherds lay stretched upon flowers, and roused themselves at their leisure,–the genius there is in a man’s natural idle face, that has not learned his multiplication table! before doubt, and propositions, and corollaries, got into the world! _Now_, as Joseph Cottle, a Bard of Nature, sings, going up Malvern Hills,
“How steep! how painful the ascent!
It needs the evidence of _close deduction_ To know that ever I shall gain the top.”
You must know that Joe is lame, so that he had some reason for so singing. These two lines, I assure you, are taken _totidem literis_ from a very _popular_ poem. Joe is also an Epic Poet as well as a Descriptive, and has written a tragedy, though both his drama and epopoiea are strictly _descriptive_, and chiefly of the _Beauties of Nature_, for Joe thinks _man_ with all his passions and frailties not a proper subject of the _Drama_. Joe’s tragedy hath the following surpassing speech in it. Some king is told that his enemy has engaged twelve archers to come over in a boat from an enemy’s country and way-lay him; he thereupon pathetically exclaims–
“_Twelve_, dost thou say? Where be those dozen villains!”
Cottle read two or three acts out to us, very gravely on both sides, till he came to this heroic touch,–and then he asked what we laughed at? I had no more muscles that day. A poet that chooses to read out his own verses has but a limited power over you. There is a bound where his authority ceases.
Apropos: if you should go to Florence or to Rome, inquire what works are extant in gold, silver, bronze, or marble, of Benvenuto Cellini, a Florentine artist, whose Life doubtless, you have read; or, if not, without controversy you must read: so hark ye, send for it immediately from Lane’s circulating library. It is always put among the romances, very properly; but you have read it, I suppose. In particular, inquire at Florence for his colossal bronze statue (in the grand square or somewhere) of Perseus. You may read the story in Tooke’s “Pantheon.” Nothing material has _transpired_ in these parts. Coleridge has indited a violent philippic against Mr. Fox in the “Morning Post,” which is a compound of expressions of humility, gentlemen-ushering-in most arrogant charges. It will do Mr. Fox no real injury among those that know him.
[Manning’s letter of September 10 had told Lamb he was on his way to Toulouse.
Cottle’s epic was _Alfred_. The quoted lines were added in the twelfth edition. He had also written _John the Baptist_.
“Cellini’s Life.” Lamb would probably have read the translation by Nugent, 1771. Cellini’s Perseus in bronze is in the Loggia de’ Lanzi at Florence.]
LETTER 104
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
[Dated at end: Feb. 19th, 1803.]
My dear Manning,–The general scope of your letter afforded no indications of insanity, but some particular points raised a scruple. For God’s sake don’t think any more of “Independent Tartary.” What have you to do among such Ethiopians? Is there no _lineal descendant_ of Prester John?
Is the chair empty? Is the sword unswayed?–depend upon’t they’ll never make you their king, as long as any branch of that great stock is remaining. I tremble for your Christianity. They’ll certainly circumcise you. Read Sir John Maundevil’s travels to cure you, or come over to England.
There is a Tartar-man now exhibiting at Exeter Change. Come and talk with him, and hear what he says first. Indeed, he is no very favorable specimen of his Countrymen! But perhaps the best thing you can do, is to _try_ to get the idea out of your head. For this purpose repeat to yourself every night, after you have said your prayers, the words Independent Tartary, Independent Tartary, two or three times, and associate with them the _idea of oblivion_ (’tis Hartley’s method with obstinate memories), or say, Independent, Independent, have I not already got an _Independence_? That was a clever way of the old puritans–pun-divinity. My dear friend, think what a sad pity it would be to bury such _parts_ in heathen countries, among nasty, unconversable, horse-belching, Tartar people! Some say, they are Cannibals; and then conceive a Tartar-fellow _eating_ my friend, and adding the _cool malignity_ of mustard and vinegar! I am afraid ’tis the reading of Chaucer has misled you; his foolish stories about Cambuscan and the ring, and the horse of brass. Believe me, there’s no such things, ’tis all the poet’s _invention_; but if there were such _darling_ things as old Chaucer sings, I would _up_ behind you on the Horse of Brass, and frisk off for Prester John’s Country. But these are all tales; a Horse of Brass never flew, and a King’s daughter never talked with Birds! The Tartars, really, are a cold, insipid, smouchey set. You’ll be sadly moped (if you are not eaten) among them. Pray _try_ and cure yourself. Take Hellebore (the counsel is Horace’s, ’twas none of my thought _originally_). Shave yourself oftener. Eat no saffron, for saffron-eaters contract a terrible Tartar-like yellow. Pray, to avoid the fiend. Eat nothing that gives the heart-burn. _Shave the upper lip_. Go about like an European. Read no books of voyages (they’re nothing but lies): only now and then a Romance, to keep the fancy _under_. Above all, don’t go to any sights of _wild beasts_. _That has been your ruin_. Accustom yourself to write familiar letters on common subjects to your friends in England, such as are of a moderate understanding. And think about common things more. There’s your friend Holcroft now, has written a play. You used to be fond of the drama. Nobody went to see it. Notwithstanding this, with an audacity perfectly original, he faces the town down in a preface, that they _did like_ it very much. I have heard a waspish punster say, “Sir, why did you not laugh at my jest?” But for a man boldly to face me out with, “Sir, I maintain it, you did laugh at my jest,” is a little too much. I have seen H. but once. He spoke of you to me in honorable terms. H. seems to me to be drearily dull. Godwin is dull, but then he has a dash of affectation, which smacks of the coxcomb, and your coxcombs are always agreeable. I supped last night with Rickman, and met a merry _natural_ captain, who pleases himself vastly with once having made a Pun at Otaheite in the O. language. ‘Tis the same man who said Shakspeare he liked, because he was so _much of the Gentleman_. Rickman is a man “absolute in all numbers.” I think I may one day bring you acquainted, if you do not go to Tartary first; for you’ll never come back. Have a care, my dear friend, of Anthropophagi! their stomachs are always craving. But if you do go among [them] pray contrive to _stink_ as soon as you can that you may [? not] hang a [? on] hand at the Butcher’s. ‘Tis terrible to be weighed out for 5d. a-pound. To sit at table (the reverse of fishes in Holland), not as a guest, but as a meat.
God bless you: do come to England. Air and exercise may do great things. Talk with some Minister. Why not your father?
God dispose all for the best. I have discharged my duty.
Your sincere fr’d,
C. LAMB.
19th Feb., 1803, London.
[Manning’s letter producing this reply is endorsed by Lamb, “Received February 19, 1803,” so that he lost no time. Manning wrote: “I am actually thinking of Independent Tartary as I write this, but you go out and skate–you go out and walk some times? Very true, that’s a distraction–but the moment I set myself down quietly to any-thing, in comes Independent Tartary–for example I attend chemical lectures but every drug that Mr. Vauquelin presents to me tastes of Cream of Tartar–in short I am become good for nothing for a time, and as I said before, I should not have written now, but to assure you of my friendly and affectionate remembrance, but as you are not in the same unhappy circumstances, I expect you’ll write to me and not measure page for page. This is the first letter I have begun for England for three months except one I sent to my Father yesterday.” Manning returned to London before leaving for China. He did not sail until 1806.
Prester John, the name given by old writers to the King of Ethiopia in Abyssinia. A corruption of Belul Gian, precious stone; in Latin first Johanus preciosus, then Presbyter Johannes, and then Prester John. In Sir John Mandeville’s _Voiage and Travails_, 1356, Prester John is said to be a lineal descendant of Ogier the Dane.–Hartley would be David Hartley, the metaphysician, after whom Coleridge’s son was named.–The reader must go to Chaucer’s “Squire’s Tale” for Cambuscan, King of Sarra, in Tartary; his horse of brass which conveyed him in a day wherever he would go; and the ring which enabled his daughter Canace to understand the language of birds.
Holcroft’s play was “A Tale of Mystery.”
Rickman had returned from Ireland some months previously. The merry natural captain was James Burney (1750-1821), with whom the Lambs soon became very friendly. He was the centre of their whist-playing circle. Burney, who was brother of Madame D’Arblay, had sailed with Captain Cook.
“The reverse of fishes in Holland.” An allusion to Andrew Marvell’s whimsical satire against the Dutch:–
The fish ofttimes the burgher dispossessed And sat not as a meat but as a guest.
“Why not your father?” Manning’s father was the Rev. William Manning, rector of Diss, in Norfolk, who died in 1810.]
LETTER 105
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
March, 1803.
Dear Manning, I send you some verses I have made on the death of a young Quaker you may have heard me speak of as being in love with for some years while I lived at Pentonville, though I had never spoken to her in my life. She died about a month since. If you have interest with the Abbe de Lisle, you may get ’em translated: he has done as much for the Georgics.
HESTER
When maidens such as Hester die,
Their place ye may not well supply, Though ye among a thousand try,
With vain endeavour.
A month or more hath she been dead,
Yet cannot I by force be led
To think upon the wormy bed,
And her together.
A springy motion in her gait,
A rising step, did indicate
Of pride and joy no common rate,
That flush’d her spirit.
I know not by what name beside
I shall it call:–if ’twas not pride, It was a joy to that allied,
She did inherit.
Her parents held the Quaker rule,
Which doth the human feeling cool,
But she was train’d in Nature’s school, Nature had blest her.
A waking eye, a prying mind,
A heart that stirs, is hard to bind, A hawk’s keen sight ye cannot blind,
Ye could not Hester.
My sprightly neighbour, gone before
To that unknown and silent shore,
Shall we not meet, as heretofore,
Some summer morning,
When from thy cheerful eyes a ray
Hath struck a bliss upon the day,
A bliss that would not go away,
A sweet forewarning?
[This letter is possibly only a fragment. I have supplied “Hester” from the 1818 text.
The young Quaker was Hester Savory, the daughter of Joseph Savory, a goldsmith of the Strand. She was married July 1, 1802, and died a few months after.
“The Abbe de Lisle.” L’Abbe Jacques Delille (1738-1813), known by his _Georgiques_, 1770, a translation into French of Virgil’s _Georgics_.]
LETTER 106
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
[Dated at end: March 5, 1803.]
Dear Wordsworth, having a Guinea of your sister’s left in hand, after all your commissions, and as it does not seem likely that you will trouble us, as the phrase is, for some time to come, I send you a pound note, and with it the best things in the verse way I have lit upon for many a day. I believe they will be new to you. You know Cotton, who wrote a 2d part to Walton’s Angler. A volume of his miscellaneous poems is scarce. Take what follows from a poem call’d Winter. I omit 20 verses, in which a storm is described, to hasten to the best:–
21
Louder, and louder, still they[1] come, Nile’s Cataracts to these are dumb,
The Cyclops to these Blades are still, Whose anvils shake the burning hill.
22
Were all the stars-enlighten’d skies As full of ears, as sparkling eyes,
This rattle in the crystal hall
Would be enough to deaf them all.
23
What monstrous Race is hither tost, Thus to alarm our British Coast,
With outcries such as never yet
War, or confusion, could beget?
24
Oh! now I know them, let us home,
Our mortal Enemy is come,
Winter, and all his blustring train Have made a voyage o’er the main.
27
With bleak, and with congealing winds, The earth in shining chain he binds;
And still as he doth further pass,
Quarries his way with liquid glass.
28
Hark! how the Blusterers of the Bear Their gibbous Cheeks in triumph bear,
And with continued shouts do ring
The entry of their palsied king!
29
The squadron, nearest to your eye,
Is his forlorn of Infantry,
Bowmen of unrelenting minds,
Whose shafts are feather’d with the winds.
30
Now you may see his vanguard rise
Above the earthy precipice,
Bold Horse, on bleakest mountains bred, With hail, instead of provend, fed.
31
Their lances are the pointed locks, Torn from the brows of frozen rocks,
Their shields are chrystal as their swords, The steel the rusted rock affords.
32
See, the Main Body now appears!
And hark! th’ Aeolian Trumpeters.
By their hoarse levels do declare,
That the bold General rides there.
33
And look where mantled up in white
He sleds it, like the Muscovite.
I know him by the port he bears,
And his lifeguard of mountaineers.
34
Their caps are furr’d with hoary frosts, The bravery their cold kingdom boasts;
Their spungy plads are milk-white frieze, Spun from the snowy mountain’s fleece.
35
Their partizans are fine carv’d glass, Fring’d with the morning’s spangled grass; And pendant by their brawny thighs
Hang cimetars of burnish’d ice.
38
Fly, fly, the foe advances fast,
Into our fortress let us haste,
Where all the roarers of the north
Can neither storm, nor starve, us forth.
39
There under ground a magazine
Of sovran juice is cellar’d in,
Liquor that will the siege maintain, Should Phoebus ne’er return again.
40
‘Tis that, that gives the poet rage, And thaws the gelly’d blood of age,
Matures the young, restores the old, And makes the fainting coward bold.
41
It lays the careful head to rest,
Calms palpitations in the breast,
Renders our live’s misfortunes sweet, And Venus frolic in the sheet.
42
Then let the chill Scirocco blow,
And gird us round with hills of snow, Or else go whistle to the shore,
And make the hollow mountains roar.
43
Whilst we together jovial sit,
Careless, and crown’d with mirth and wit, Where tho’ bleak winds confine us home,
Our fancies thro’ the world shall roam.
44
We’ll think of all the friends we know, And drink to all, worth drinking to;
When, having drunk all thine and mine, We rather shall want health than wine!
45
But, where friends fail us, we’ll supply Our friendships with our Charity.
Men that remote in sorrows live,
Shall by our lusty bumpers thrive.
46
We’ll drink the wanting into wealth, And those that languish into health,
Th’ afflicted into joy, th’ opprest Into security & rest.
47
The worthy in disgrace shall find
Favour return again more kind,
And in restraint who stifled lye,
Shall taste the air of liberty.
48
The brave shall triumph in success, The lovers shall have mistresses,
Poor unregarded virtue praise,
And the neglected Poet bays.
49
Thus shall our healths do others good, While we ourselves do all we wou’d,
For freed from envy, and from care, What would we be, but what we are?
50
‘Tis the plump Grape’s immortal juice, That does this happiness produce,
And will preserve us free together, Maugre mischance, or wind, & weather.
51
Then let old winter take his course, And roar abroad till he be hoarse,
And his lungs crack with ruthless ire, It shall but serve to blow our fire.
52
Let him our little castle ply
With all his loud artillery,
Whilst sack and claret man the fort, His fury shall become our sport.
53
Or let him Scotland take, and there Confine the plotting Presbyter;
His zeal may freeze, whilst we kept warm With love and wine can know no harm.
[Footnote 1: The winds.]
How could Burns miss the series of lines from 42 to 49?
There is also a long poem from the Latin on the inconveniences of old age. I can’t set down the whole, tho’ right worthy, having dedicated the remainder of my sheet to something else. I just excerp here and there, to convince you, if after this you need it, that Cotton was a first rate. Tis old Callus speaks of himself, once the delight of the Ladies and Gallants of Rome:–
The beauty of my shape & face are fled, And my revolted form bespeaks me dead,
For fair, and shining age, has now put on A bloodless, funeral complexion.
My skin’s dry’d up, my nerves unpliant are, And my poor limbs my nails plow up and tear. My chearful eyes now with a constant spring Of tears bewail their own sad suffering; And those soft lids, that once secured my eye Now rude, and bristled grown, do drooping lie, Bolting mine eyes, as in a gloomy cave,
Which there on furies, and grim objects, rave. ‘Twould fright the full-blown Gallant to behold The dying object of a man so old.
And can you think, that once a man he was, Of human reason who no portion has.
The letters split, when I consult my book, And every leaf I turn does broader look. In darkness do I dream I see the light,
When light is darkness to my perishd sight.
* * * * *
Is it not hard we may not from men’s eyes Cloak and conceal Age’s indecencies.
Unseeming spruceness th’ old man discommends, And in old men, only to live, offends.
* * * * *
How can I him a living man believe,
Whom light, and air, by whom he panteth, grieve; The gentle sleeps, which other mortals ease, Scarce in a winter’s night my eyelids seize.
* * * * *
The boys, and girls, deride me now forlorn, And but to call me, Sir, now think it scorn, They jeer my countnance, and my feeble pace, And scoff that nodding head, that awful was.
* * * * *
A song written by Cowper, which in stile is much above his usual, and emulates in noble plainness any old balad I have seen. Hayley has just published it &c. with a Life. I did not think Cowper _up_ to it:–
SONG
ON THE LOSS OF THE ROYAL GEORGE
1
Toll for the Brave!
The Brave, that are no more!
All sunk beneath the wave,
Fast by their native shore.–
2
Eight hundred of the Brave,
Whose courage well was tried,
Had made the vessel heel,
And laid her on her side.
3
A Land breeze shook the shrouds,
And she was over set;
Down went the Royal George,
With all her sails complete.
4
Toll for the Brave!
Brave Kempenfelt is gone:
His last sea-fight is fought;
His work of glory done.
5
It was not in the battle,
No tempest gave the shock;
She sprang no fatal leak;
She ran upon no rock.
6
His sword was in its sheath;
His fingers held the pen,
When Kempenfelt went down,
With twice four hundred men.
7
Weigh the vessel up!
Once dreaded by our foes!
And mingle with the cup
The tear that England owes.
8
Her timbers yet are sound,
And she may float again,
Full charg’d with England’s thunder, And plow the distant main.
9
But Kempenfelt is gone,
His victories are o’er;
And he, and his eight hundred,
Shall plow the wave no more.
In your obscure part of the world, which I take to be Ultima Thule, I thought these verses out of Books which cannot be accessible would not be unwelcome. Having room, I will put in an Epitaph I writ for a _real occasion_, a year or two back.
ON MARY DRUIT WHO DIED AGED 19
Under this cold marble stone
Sleep the sad remains of One,
Who, when alive, by few or none
2
Was lov’d, as lov’d she might have been, If she prosp’rous days had seen,
Or had thriving been, I ween.
3
Only this cold funeral stone
Tells, she was belov’d by One,
Who on the marble graves his moan.
I conclude with Love to your Sister and Mrs. W.
Yours affect’y,
C. LAMB.
Mary sends Love, &c.
5th March, 1803.
On consulting Mary, I find it will be foolish inserting the Note as I intended, being so small, and as it is possible you _may_ have to _trouble_ us again e’er long; so it shall remain to be settled hereafter. However, the verses shan’t be lost.
N.B.–All orders executed with fidelity and punctuality by C. & M. Lamb.
[_On the outside is written:_] I beg to open this for a minute to add my remembrances to you all, and to assure you I shall ever be happy to hear from or see, much more to be useful to any of my old friends at Grasmere.
J. STODDART.
A _lean_ paragraph of the Doctor’s.
C. LAMB.
[Charles Cotton (1630-1687). Wordsworth praises the poem on Winter in his preface to the 1815 edition of his works, and elsewhere sets up a comparison between the character of Cotton and that of Burns.
Hayley’s _Life of Cowper_ appeared first in 1803.
Lamb’s epitaph was written at the request of Rickman. See also the letter to Manning of April, 1802. Rickman seems to have supplied Lamb with a prose epitaph and asked for a poetical version. Canon Ainger prints an earlier version in a letter to Rickman, dated February 1, 1802. Lamb printed the epitaph in the _Morning Post_ for February 7, 1804, over his initials (see Vol. IV. of this edition). Mary Druit, or Druitt, lived at Wimborne, and according to John Payne Collier, in _An Old Man’s Diary_, died of small-pox at the age of nineteen. He says that Lamb’s lines were cut on her tomb, but correspondence in _Notes and Queries_ has proved this to be incorrect.
“The Doctor.” Stoddart, having taken his D.C.L. in 1801, was now called Dr. Stoddart.
Soon after this letter Mary Lamb was taken ill again.]
LETTER 107
CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
April 13th, 1803.
My dear Coleridge,–Things have gone on better with me since you left me. I expect to have my old housekeeper home again in a week or two. She has mended most rapidly. My health too has been better since you took away that Montero cap. I have left off cayenned eggs and such bolsters to discomfort. There was death in that cap. I mischievously wished that by some inauspicious jolt the whole contents might be shaken, and the coach set on fire. For you said they had that property. How the old Gentleman, who joined you at Grantham, would have clappt his hands to his knees, and not knowing but it was an immediate visitation of God that burnt him, how pious it would have made him; him, I mean, that brought the Influenza with him, and only took places for one–a damn’d old sinner, he must have known what he had got with him! However, I wish the cap no harm for the sake of the _head it fits_, and could be content to see it disfigure my healthy sideboard again. [_Here is a paragraph erased._]
What do you think of smoking? I want your sober, _average noon opinion_ of it. I generally am eating my dinner about the time I should determine it. [_Another small erasure._]
Morning is a Girl, and can’t smoke–she’s no evidence one way or other; and Night is so evidently _bought over_, that _he_ can’t be a very upright Judge. May be the truth is, that _one_ pipe is wholesome, _two_ pipes toothsome, _three_ pipes noisome, _four_ pipes fulsome, _five_ pipes quarrelsome; and that’s the _sum_ on’t. But that is deciding rather upon rhyme than reason…. After all, our instincts _may_ be best. Wine, I am sure, good, mellow, generous Port, can hurt nobody, unless they take it to excess, which they may easily avoid if they observe the rules of temperance.
Bless you, old Sophist, who next to Human Nature taught me all the corruption I was capable of knowing–And bless your Montero Cap, and your trail (which shall come after you whenever you appoint), and your wife and children–Pi-pos especially.
When shall we two smoke again? Last night I had been in a sad quandary of spirits, in what they call the evening; but a pipe and some generous Port, and King Lear (being alone), had its effects as a remonstrance. I went to bed pot-valiant. By the way, may not the Ogles of Somersetshire be remotely descended from King Lear?
Love to Sara, and ask her what gown she means that Mary has got of hers. I know of none but what went with Miss Wordsworth’s things to Wordsworth, and was paid for out of their money. I allude to a part which I may have read imperfectly in a letter of hers to you.
C. L.
[Coleridge had been in London early in April and had stayed with Lamb in the Temple. From the following letter to his wife, dated April 4, we get light on Lamb’s allusion to his “old housekeeper,” _i.e._, Mary Lamb, and her rapid mending:–
“I had purposed not to speak of Mary Lamb, but I had better write it than tell it. The Thursday before last she met at Rickman’s a Mr. Babb, an old friend and admirer of her mother. The next day she _smiled_ in an ominous way; on Sunday she told her brother that she was getting bad, with great agony. On Tuesday morning she laid hold of me with violent agitation and talked wildly about George Dyer. I told Charles there was not a moment to lose; and I did not lose a moment, but went for a hackney-coach and took her to the private mad-house at Hugsden. She was quite calm, and said it was the best to do so. But she wept bitterly two or three times, yet all in a calm way. Charles is cut to the heart.”
Lamb’s first articulate doubts as to smoking are expressed in this letter. One may perhaps take in this connection the passage on tobacco and alcohol in the “Confessions of a Drunkard” (see Vol. I.).
“Montero cap”–a recollection of _Tristram Shandy_.
The Ogles and King Lear (_i.e._, leer)–merely a pun.]
LETTER 108
CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
[No date. May, 1803.]
Mary sends love from home.
DR. C.,–I do confess that I have not sent your books as I ought to be [have] done; but you know how the human freewill is tethered, and that we perform promises to ourselves no better than to our friends. A watch is come for you. Do you want it soon, or shall I wait till some one travels your way? You, like me, I suppose, reckon the lapse of time from the waste thereof, as boys let a cock run to waste: too idle to stop it, and rather amused with seeing it dribble. Your poems have begun printing; Longman sent to me to arrange them, the old and the new together. It seems you have left it to him. So I classed them, as nearly as I could, according to dates. First, after the Dedication, (which must march first) and which I have transplanted from before the Preface (which stood like a dead wall of prose between) to be the first poem–then comes “The Pixies,” and the things most juvenile–then on “To Chatterton,” &c.–on, lastly, to the “Ode on the Departing Year,” and “Musings,”–which finish. Longman wanted the Ode first; but the arrangement I have made is precisely that marked out in the dedication, following the order of time. I told Longman I was sure that you would omit a good portion of the first edition. I instanced in several sonnets, &c.–but that was not his plan, and, as you have done nothing in it, all I could do was to arrange ’em on the supposition that all were to be retained. A few I positively rejected; such as that of “The Thimble,” and that of “Flicker and Flicker’s wife,” and that _not_ in the manner of Spenser, which you yourself had stigmatised–and the “Man of Ross,”–I doubt whether I should this last. It is not too late to save it. The first proof is only just come. I have been forced to call that Cupid’s Elixir “Kisses.” It stands in your first volume as an Effusion, so that, instead of prefixing The Kiss to that of “One Kiss, dear Maid,” &c., _I_ have ventured to entitle it “To Sara.” I am aware of the nicety of changing even so mere a trifle as a title to so short a piece, and subverting old associations; but two called “Kisses” would have been absolutely ludicrous, and “Effusion” is no name; and these poems come close together. I promise you not to alter one word in any poem whatever, but to take your last text, where two are. Can you send any wishes about the book? Longman, I think, should have settled with you. But it seems you have left it to him. Write as soon as you possibly can; for, without making myself responsible, I feel myself in some sort accessory to the selection which I am to proof-correct. But I decidedly said to Biggs that I was sure you would omit more. Those I have positively rubbed off I can swear to _individually_, (except the “Man of Ross,” which is too familiar in Pope,) but no others–you have your cue. For my part, I had rather all the _Juvenilia_ were kept–_memories causa_.
Rob Lloyd has written me a masterly letter, containing a character of his father;–see, how different from Charles he views the old man! _Literatim_ “My father smokes, repeats Homer in Greek, and Virgil, and is learning, when from business, with all the vigour of a young man Italian. He is really a wonderful man. He mixes public and private business, the intricacies of discording life with his religion and devotion. No one more rationally enjoys the romantic scenes of nature, and the chit-chat and little vagaries of his children; and, though surrounded with an ocean of affairs, the very neatness of his most obscure cupboard in the house passes not unnoticed. I never knew any one view with such clearness, nor so well satisfied with things as they are, and make such allowance for things which must appear perfect Syriac to him.” By the last he means the Lloydisms of the younger branches. His portrait of Charles (exact as far as he has had opportunities of noting him) is most exquisite. “Charles is become steady as a church, and as straightforward as a Roman road. It would distract him to mention anything that was not as plain as sense; he seems to have run the whole scenery of life, AND NOW RESTS AS THE FORMAL PRECISIAN OF NON-EXISTENCE.” Here is genius I think, and ’tis seldom a young man, a Lloyd, looks at a father (so differing) with such good nature while he is alive. Write–
I am in post-haste, C. LAMB.
Love, &c., to Sara, P., and H.
[The date is usually given as March 20, but is May 20; certainly after Coleridge’s visit to town (see preceding letter).
_Poems_, by S. T. Coleridge, third edition, was now in preparation by Longman & Rees. Lamb saw the volume through the press. The 1797 second edition was followed, except that Lloyd’s and Lamb’s contributions were omitted, together with the following poems by Coleridge: “To the Rev. W. J. H.,” “Sonnet to Koskiusko,” “Written after a Walk” (which Lamb inaccurately called “Flicker and Flicker’s Wife”), “From a Young Lady” (“The Silver Thimble”), “On the Christening of a Friend’s Child,” “Introductory Sonnet to Lloyd’s ‘Poems on the Death of Priscilla Farmer.'” “The Man of Ross” (whom Pope also celebrates in the _Moral Essays_, III., lines 250-290) was retained, and also the “Lines in the Manner of Spenser.” The piece rechristened “Kisses” had been called “The Composition of a Kiss.” Biggs was the printer. See also the next letter.
Of Robert Lloyd’s father we hear more later.]
LETTER 109
CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
27th May, 1803.
My dear Coleridge,–The date of my last was one day prior to the receipt of your letter, full of foul omens. I explain, lest you should have thought mine too light a reply to such sad matter. I seriously hope by this time you have given up all thoughts of journeying to the green islands of the Blest–voyages in time of war are very precarious–or at least, that you will take them in your way to the Azores. Pray be careful of this letter till it has done its duty, for it is to inform you that I have booked off your watch (laid in cotton like an untimely fruit), and with it Condillac and all other books of yours which were left here. These will set out on Monday next, the 29th May, by Kendal waggon, from White Horse, Cripplegate. You will make seasonable inquiries, for a watch mayn’t come your way again in a hurry. I have been repeatedly after Tobin, and now hear that he is in the country, not to return till middle of June. I will take care and see him with the earliest. But cannot you write pathetically to him, enforcing a speedy mission of your books for literary purposes? He is too good a retainer to Literature, to let her interests suffer through his default. And why, in the name of Beelzebub, are your books to travel from Barnard’s Inn to the Temple, and then circuitously to Cripplegate, when their business is to take a short cut down Holborn-hill, up Snow do., on to Woodstreet, &c.? The former mode seems a sad superstitious subdivision of labour. Well! the “Man of Ross” is to stand; Longman begs for it; the printer stands with a wet sheet in one hand and a useless Pica in the other, in tears, pleading for it; I relent. Besides, it was a Salutation poem, and has the mark of the beast “Tobacco” upon it. Thus much I have done; I have swept off the lines about _widows_ and _orphans_ in second edition, which (if you remember) you most awkwardly and illogically caused to be inserted between two _Ifs_, to the great breach and disunion of said _Ifs_, which now meet again (as in first edition), like two clever lawyers arguing a case. Another reason for subtracting the pathos was, that the “Man of Ross” is too familiar to need telling what he did, especially in worse lines than Pope told it; and it now stands simply as “Reflections at an Inn about a known Character,” and sucking an old story into an accommodation with present feelings. Here is no breaking spears with Pope, but a new, independent, and really a very pretty poem. In fact, ’tis as I used to admire it in the first volume, and I have even dared to restore
“If ‘neath this roof thy _wine-cheer’d_ moments pass,”
for
“Beneath this roof if thy cheer’d moments pass.”
“Cheer’d” is a sad general word; “_wine-cheer’d_” I’m sure you’d give me, if I had a speaking-trumpet to sound to you 300 miles. But I am your _factotum_, and that (save in this instance, which is a single case, and I can’t get at you) shall be next to a _fac-nihil_–at most, a _fac-simile_. I have ordered “Imitation of Spenser” to be restored on Wordsworth’s authority; and now, all that you will miss will be “Flicker and Flicker’s Wife,” “The Thimble,” “Breathe, _dear harmonist_” and, _I believe_, “The Child that was fed with Manna.” Another volume will clear off all your Anthologic Morning-Postian Epistolary Miscellanies; but pray don’t put “Christabel” therein; don’t let that sweet maid come forth attended with Lady Holland’s mob at her heels. Let there be a separate volume of Tales, Choice Tales, “Ancient Mariners,” &c.
C. LAMB.
[Coleridge, who was getting more and more nervous about his health, had long been on the point of starting on some southern travels with Thomas Wedgwood, but Wedgwood had gone alone; his friend James Webbe Tobin, mentioned later in the letter, lived at Nevis, in the West Indies: possibly Coleridge had thoughts of returning with him. The Malta experiment, of which we are to hear later, had not, I think, yet been mooted.
“The Man of Ross.” In the 1797 edition the poem had run thus, partly by Lamb’s advice (see the letters of June 10, 1796, and February 5, 1797):–
LINES WRITTEN AT THE KING’S-ARMS, ROSS, FORMERLY THE HOUSE OF THE “MAN OF ROSS”
Richer than MISER o’er his countless hoards, Nobler than KINGS, or king-polluted LORDS, Here dwelt the MAN OF ROSS! O Trav’ller, hear! Departed Merit claims a reverent tear.
Friend to the friendless, to the sick man health, With generous joy he view’d his modest wealth; He hears the widow’s heaven-breath’d prayer of praise, He marks the shelter’d orphan’s tearful gaze, Or where the sorrow-shrivel’d captive lay, Pours the bright blaze of Freedom’s noon-tide ray. Beneath this roof if thy cheer’d moments pass, Fill to the good man’s name one grateful glass; To higher zest shall MEM’RY wake thy soul, And VIRTUE mingle in th’ ennobled bowl.
But if, like me, thro’ life’s distressful scene Lonely and sad thy pilgrimage hath been; And if, thy breast with heart-sick anguish fraught, Thou journeyest onward tempest-tost in thought; Here cheat thy cares! in generous visions melt, And dream of Goodness, thou hast never felt!
Lamb changed it by omitting lines 9 to 14, Coleridge agreeing. The poet would not, however, restore “wine-cheer’d” as in his earliest version, 1794. In the edition of 1828 the six lines were put back. “Breathe, dear Harmonist” was the poem “To the Rev. W. J. H.,” and “The Child that was fed with Manna” was “On the Christening of a Friend’s Child.”
“Lady Holland’s mob.” Elizabeth Vassall Fox, third Lady Holland (1770-1845), was beginning her reign as a Muse. Lamb by his phrase means occasional and political verse generally. The reference to “Christabel” helps to controvert Fanny Godwin’s remark in a letter to Mrs. Shelley, on July 20, 1816, that Lamb “says _Christabel_ ought never to have been published; that no one understood it.”
Canon Ainger’s transcript adds: “A word of your health will be richly acceptable.”]
LETTER 110
MARY LAMB TO DOROTHY WORDSWORTH
[Dated at end: July 9. P.M. July 11, 1803.]
My dear Miss Wordsworth–We rejoice with exceeding great joy to hear the delightful tidings you were so _very_ kind to remember to send us–I hope your dear sister is perfectly well, and makes an excellent nurse. Are you not now the happiest family in the world?
I have been in better health and spirits this week past than since my last illness–I continued so long so very weak & dejected I began to fear I should never be at all comfortable again. I strive against low spirits all I can, but it is a very hard thing to get the better of.
I am very uneasy about poor Coleridge, his last letters are very melancholy ones. Remember me affectionately to him and Sara. I hope you often see him.
Southey is in town. He seems as proud of his little girl as I suppose your brother is of his boy; he says his home is now quite a different place to what it used to be. I was glad to hear him say this–it used to look rather chearless.
We went last week with Southey and Rickman and his sister to Sadlers Wells, the lowest and most London-like of all our London amusements–the entertainments were Goody Two Shoes, Jack the Giant Killer, and _Mary of Buttermere_! Poor Mary was very happily married at the end of the piece, to a sailor her former sweetheart. We had a prodigious fine view of her father’s house in the vale of Buttermere–mountains very like large haycocks, and a lake like nothing at all. If you had been with us, would you have laughed the whole time like Charles and Miss Rickman or gone to sleep as Southey and Rickman did?
Stoddart is in expectation of going soon to Malta as Judge Advocate; it is likely to be a profitable situation, fifteen hundred a year or more. If he goes he takes with him his sister, and, as I hear from her as a very great secret, a _wife_; you must not mention this because if he stays in England he may not be rich enough to marry for some years. I do not know why I should trouble you with a secret which it seems I am unable to keep myself and which is of no importance to you to hear; if he succeeds in this appointment he will be in a great bustle, for he must set out to Malta in a month. In the mean time he must go to Scotland to marry and fetch his wife, and it is a match against her parents’ consent, and they as yet know nothing of the Malta expedition; so that he expects many difficulties, but the young lady and he are determined to conquer them. He then must go to Salisbury to take leave of his father and mother, who I pity very much, for they are old people and therefore are not very likely ever to see their children again.
Charles is very well and very _good_–I mean very sober, but he is very good in every sense of the word, for he has been very kind and patient with me and I have been a sad trouble to him lately. He has shut out all his friends because he thought company hurt me, and done every thing in his power to comfort and amuse me. We are to go out of town soon for a few weeks, when I hope I shall get quite stout and lively.
You saw Fenwick when you was with us–perhaps you remember his wife and children were with his brother, a tradesman at Penzance. He (the brother), who was supposed to be in a great way of business, has become a bankrupt; they are now at Penzance without a home and without money; and poor Fenwick, who has been Editor of a country newspaper lately, is likely soon to be quite out of employ; I am distressed for them, for I have a great affection for Mrs. Fenwick.
How pleasant your little house and orchard must be now. I almost wish I had never seen it. I am always wishing to be with you. I could sit upon that little bench in idleness day long. When you have a leisure hour, a letter from [you], kind friend, will give me the greatest pleasure.
We have money of yours and I want you to send me some commission to lay it out. Are you not in want of anything? I believe when we go out of town it will be to Margate–I love the seaside and expect much benefit from it, but your mountain scenery has spoiled us. We shall find the flat country of the Isle of Thanet very dull.
Charles joins me in love to your brother and sister and the little John. I hope you are building more rooms. Charles said I was so long answering your letter Mrs. Wordsworth would have another little one before you received it. Our love and compliments to our kind Molly, I hope she grows younger and happier every day. When, and where, shall I ever see