^M^'m R.e- R9SE. laSRARV UNJVERSiTY OF CAUPORNIA SAM DIEGO presented to the LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA • SAN DIEGO by FRIENDS OF THE LIBRARY MR. JOHN C, ROSE i fknici^cvbockct "^uqqcXs NUGGBT— " A diminutive mass of precious metal. 37 VOLUMES NOW READY. For full list see end of this volume CHARLES LAMB. /Ct.23. THE WIT AND WISDOM OF Charles Lamb 7vith ANECDOTES BY HIS CONTEMPORARIES Selected and arranged by ERNEST DRESS EL NORTH NEIV YORK AND LONDON G. P. P UTNAM' S SONS Ube Tknicfterbocl^cr press Electrotyped, Printed, and Bound by "Cbe TRnicfterbocftec press, t^ew J^orfe G. P. Putnam's Sons TO E. L. N, The portrait of Ivamb used as a frontispiece, is from the original chalk drawing made by Robert Hancock in 1798, now in the National Portrait Gallery, Bethnal Green Museum, lyondon. It was originally owned by Joseph Cottle and appeared for the first time in his Early Recollections, 2 vols., I^ondon, 1S37, engraved by R. Woodman, three years after I^amb's death. Mr. Cottle considered it " a masterly likeness" and states that " Mr. Coleridge often used to look at this image of his old friend and school-fellow, and express his warmest approbation of its accuracy." Hancock made other drawings about the same time, of Amos Cottle, Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southej'. Mr. Cottle further states that "these likenesses were taken in the years when each of the writers published his first volume of poems," and at the " time the most favorable for expressing the moral and intellectual character of the face " This of I^amb must, therefore, ever remain as the most authentic likeness of him at this early period. The text of lyamb's Works used for this selection is that of the edition of Canon Ainger, published by the Macmillans. PREFATORY NOTE. 'T'HERE are few writers in Englisli literature whose works lend themselves more readily to quotation than do those of Charles Lamb, One has through these occasional glimpses vistas of Lamb's mind, heart, and personality. Indeed in his case the three cannot be separated, for his mind was his heart and his person- ality was the combination of the two. He was but one person to his friends and to his readers. If Mr. Pater's remark is true, and no careful reader of " Elia " wall dissent from it, then one cannot fail to place Lamb high on the ladder of fame as a humorist. He says : '*Lamb was essentially an essayist of the true family of Montaigne, * never judging,' as he says, * system- wise of things, but fastening on particulars,' saying all things as it were on chance occasion only, and by way of pastime, yet succeeding iprefatocB Bote thus, ' glimpsewise, ' in catching and recording more frequently than others 'the gayest, happiest attitude of things,' a casual writer for dreamy readers, yet always giving the reader so much more than he seemed to propose." It is this happy faculty of " catching and re- cording" that has fascinated and delighted his readers. The writers of Lamb's own time were largely occupied with ideas of reform — religious, moral, and political. He stood aside and watched the procession, marked its irregu- larities, and punctured its false ideas, all the time noting when it was out of step. Lamb's humor is something difficult to define. It is like attempting to describe a Swiss atmos- phere, or a rare day in June. It permeates all his writings, and gives us a sense of per- sonal acquaintance with one of the most heroic hearts and sunny natures in the annals of literature. As a critic, he handed down to future readers the charm which some old poet or moralist, such as Burton, Quarles, or Hogarth, exerted over his own mind, as though he merely trans- mitted it, and was not in reality its originator. Sometimes this was done in a stray letter, a passing note, a brief essay, or a pungent remark. To catch these and give them to the reader is prefatory IWote the purpose of this little book. In making the selections, I have been governed by one thought only — to let Lamb in all cases speak for him- self, for no writer needs less editing than he. His letters, we believe, are less known than his essays, although they contain the germ of much of his best criticism and many of his most bril- liant flashes of wit. I have, therefore, given many extracts from them, hoping to interest the reader more deeply in them. The anecdotes and sayings attributed to him would fill several volumes the size of this. I have endeavored to trace those selected to their original sources and only give such as are well attested, and in most instances by con- temporaries. Several anecdotes are told again and again by Lamb's friends, until their charm has been quite dispelled, in these instances I have chosen the version which seemed the earliest and most authentic. E. D. N. Summit, New Jersey, October i, 1892. CHARLES LAMB'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. /^HARLES LAMB, born in the Inner Temple, loth February, 1775 ; educated in Christ's Hospital ; afterwards a clerk in the Account- ants' Office, East India House ; pensioned off from that service, 1825, after thirty-three years' service ; is now a gentleman at large ; can re- member few specialties in his life worth noting, except that he once caught a swallow flying {teste sua manu). Below the middle stature ; cast of face slightly Jewish, with no Judaic tinge in his complexion al religion ; stammers abominably, and is therefore more apt to dis- charge his occasional conversation in a quaint aphorism, or a poor quibble, than in set and edifying speeches ; has consequently been li- belled as a person always aiming at wit ; which, Gbarles ILamb's autobiograpb^ as lie told a dull fellow who charged him with it, is at least as good as aiming at dulness. A -niall eater, but not drinker ; confesses a partiality for the production of the juniper-berrj' ; was a fierce smoker of tobacco, but ma}- be resembled to a volcano burnt out, emitting only now and then an occasional puff. Has been guilty of obtruding upon the public a tale, in prose, called "Rosamund Gray" ; a dramatic sketch, named "John AVoodvil " ; a "Farewell Ode to Tobacco," with sundry other poems, and light prose matter, collected in two slight crown octavos, and pompously christened his works, though in fact they were his recreations ; and his true works may be found on the shelves of Leadenhall Street, filling some hundred folios. He is also the true Elia, whose Essays are extant in a little volume. He died, i8 — , much lamented. Witness his hand, Chari.es Lamb. iSth April, 1827. WIT AND WISDOM OI^ CHARLES LAMB. AN EQUAtiTY Ne:cessary to Associates. — As little as I should wish to be always thus dragged upwards, as little (or rather still less) is it desirable to be stunted downwards by your associates. The trumpet does not more stun you by its loudness, than a whisper teases you by its provoking inaudibility. — yThe Old and the New Schoolmaster.'] Cousin James Ewa. — Whereas mankind in general are observed to w^ap their speculative conclusions to the bent of their individual humors, his theories are sure to be in diamet- rical opposition to his constitution. He is cour- ageous as Charles of Sweden, upon instinct ; chary of his person, upon principle, as a trav- I Cbarlce Xamb*s elling Quaker. He has been preaching up to me, all my life, the doctrine of bowing to the great — the necessity of forms, and manner, to a man's getting on in the world. He himself never aims at either, that I can discover, — and has a spirit that would stand upright in the presence of the Cham of Tartary. It is pleas- ant to hear him discourse of patience — extolling it as the truest wisdom, — and to see him during the last seven minutes that his dinner is getting ready. — [Jl/y Relations.'\ Cousin James Ewa. — He says some of the best things in the world — and declareth that wit is his aversion. It was he who said, upon see- ing the Eton boys at play in their grounds, — What a pity to think^ that these fine ingenuous lads in a few years will all be changed into frivolous Members of Parliament ! His youth was fiery, glowing, tempestuous, — and in age he discovered no symptom of cooling. This is that which I admire in him. I hate people who meet Time half-way. I am for no compromise with that inevitable TDQit auD IKHis^om spoiler. While he lives, J. E. will take his swing. — [My RelationsJX The Tower of Babki..— Gebir, my old free- mason and prince of pliasterers at Babel, bring in your trowel, most Ancient Grand ! You have claim to a seat here at my right hand, as patron of the stammerers. You left your work, if I remember Herodotus correctly, at eight hundred million toises, or thereabout, above the level of the sea. Bless us, what a long bell you must have pulled, to call your top workmen to their luncheon on the low grounds of Sen- naar. Or did you send up your garlic and onions by a rocket? I am a rogue if I am not ashamed to show you our Monument on Fish Street Hill, after your altitudes. Yet we think it somewhat. What, the magnanimous Alexander in tears ? — cry, baby, put its finger in its eye, it shall have another globe, round as an orange, pretty moppet \—[All Fools' Day.] On Fools. — I will confess a truth to thee, reader. I love a Fool— as naturally, as if I Cbarlea Xamb's were of kith and kin to Mm. When a child, with childlike apprehensions, that dived not below the surface of the matter, I read those Parables — not guessing at their involved wis- dom — I had more yearning towards that simple architect that built his house upon the sand, than I entertained for his more cautious neigh- bor ; I grudged at the hard censure pro- nounced upon the quiet soul that kept his talent ; and — prizing their simplicity beyond the more provident, and, to my apprehension, somewhat unfeminine wariness, of their com- petitors — I felt a kindliness, that almost amounted to a teridre, for those five thought- less virgins, — I have never made an acquaint- ance since, that lasted, or a friendship, that answered, with any that had not some tincture of the absurd in their characters. I venerate an honest obliquity of understanding. — \^All Fools' Day.] Chii^drEN. — Boys are capital fellows in their own way, among their mates ; but they are un- wholesome companions for grown people. The mit an& mfsOom restraint is felt no less on the one side, than on the other. Even a child, that ** plaything for an hour," tires always. The noises of children, playing their own fancies — as I now hearken to them by fits, sporting on the green before my window, while I am engaged in these grave speculations at my neat suburban retreat at Shacklewell — by distance made more sweet — inexpressibly take from the labor of my task. It is like writing to music. They seem to modulate my periods. They ought at least to do so — for in the voice of that tender age there is a kind of poetry, far unlike the harsh prose- accents of man's conversation. — I should but spoil their sport, and diminish m}- own sympa- thy for them, by mingling in their pastime. — [ The Old and the Nezv Schoolmaster.'\ Gamks of Chanck. — She could not conceive a^«w^ wanting the sprightly infusion of chance, — the handsome excuses of good fortune. Two people playing at chess in a comer of a room, whilst whist was stirring in the centre, would inspire her with insufferable horror and ennui. Cbarles Xamb^s Those well-cut similitudes of Castles and Knights, the imagery of the board, she would argue (and I think in this case justly), were entirely misplaced and senseless. Those hard head-contests can in no instance ally with the fancy. They reject form and color. A pencil and dry slate (she used to say) were the proper arena for such combatants. — \_Mrs. Battle's Opinions ofi Whist. '\ The Seat of the Affections. — In these lit- tle visual interpretations, no emblem is so com- mon as the heaj-t — that little three-cornered exponent of all our hopes and fears, — the be- stuck and bleeding heart ; it is twisted and tor- tured into more allegories and affectations than an opera-hat. "What authority w^e have in his- tory or mythology for placing the headquarters and metropolis of God Cupid in this anatomical seat rather than in any other, is not very clear ; but we have got it, and it will serve as well as any other. Else we might easily imagine, upon some other system which might have prevailed for anything which our pathology knows to the Mit anb timt6t)om contrary, a lover addressing his mistress, in perfect simplicity of feeling : "Madam, my liver and fortune are entirely at your disposal " ; or putting a delicate question : "Amanda, liave you a midriff to bestow ? ' ' But custom has settled these things, and awarded the seat of sentiment to the aforesaid triangle, while its less fortunate neighbors wait at animal and anatomical distance. — [^Valentine's Day.} " God SavK Thk King."— I even think that sentimentally I am disposed to harmony. But organically I am incapable of a tune. I have been practising " God save the King " all my life ; whistling and humming of it over to myself in solitary corners ; and am not yet arrived, they tell me, within many quavers of it. Yet hath the loyalty of EHa never been impeached. — [A Chapter on Ears.} The Man and the Chii^d. — If I know aught of myself, no one whose mind is intro- spective — and mine is painfully so — can have a less respect for his present identity, than I have Cbarles Xamb's for the man KHa. I know him to be light, and vain, and humorsome ; a notorious . . . ; ad- dicted to ... ; averse from counsel, neither taking it, nor offering it ; — ... besides ; a stammering buffoon ; what you will ; lay it on, and spare not ; I subscribe to it all, and much more, than thou canst be willing to lay at his door but for the child Elia — that "other me," there, in the background — I must take leave to cherish the remembrance of that young master — with as little reference, I protest, to this stupid changeling of five-and-fort}^, as if it had been a child of some other house, and not of my parents. I can cry over its patient small- pox at five, and rougher medicaments. I can lay its poor fevered head upon the sick pillow at Christ's, and wake with it in surprise at the gentle posture of maternal tenderness hanging over it, that unknown had watched its sleep. I know how it shrank from any the least color of falsehood. — God help thee, Elia, how art thou changed ! Thou art sophisticated. — I know how honest, how courageous (for a weak- ling, it was — how religious, how imaginative, liow hopeful ! From what have I not fallen, if the child I remember was indeed myself, — and not some dissembling guardian, presenting a false identity, to give the rule to my unprac- tised steps, and regulate the tone of my moral being ! — \^New Year's Eve.l A Game of Whist, — I never in my life — and I knew Sarah Battle many of the best years of it — saw her take out her snuff-box when it was her turn to play ; or snuff a candle in the mid- dle of a game ; or ring for a servant till it was fairly over. She never introduced, or connived at, miscellaneous conversation during its pro- cess. As she emphatically observed, cards were cards ; and if I ever saw unmingled dis- taste in her .fine last-century countenance, it was at the airs of a young gentleman of a lit- erary turn, who had been with difficulty per- suaded to take a hand ; and who, in his excess of candor, declared, that he thought there was no harm in unbending the mind now and then, after serious studies, in recreations of that kind ! She could not bear to have her noble occupa- Cbarles Xamb's tion, to which she wound up her faculties, con- sidered in that light. It was her business, her duty, the thing she came into the world to do, — and she did it. She unbent her mind after- wards—over a book. — \^M7'S. Battle's Opinions on Whist.l Who is Kwa ? — Because in my last I tried to divert thee with some half-forgotten humors of some old clerks defunct, in an old house of business, long since gone to decay, doubtless you have already set me down in your mind as one of the self-same college — a votary of the desk — a notched and cropt scrivener — one that sucks his sustenance, as certain sick people are said to do, through a quill. Well, I do agnize something of the sort. I confess that it is my humor, my fancy — in the forepart of the day, when the mind of your man of letters requires some relaxation — (and none better than such as at first sight seems most abhorrent from his beloved studies) — to while away some good hours of my time in the contemplation of indigoes, cottons, raw silks, *Mlt auD misDom piece-goods, flowered or otherwise. In the first place . . . and then it sends you home with such increased appetite to your books . . . not to say, that your outside sheets, and waste wrap- pers of foolscap, do receive into them, most kindly and naturally, the impression of sonnets, epigrams, assays — so that the very parings of a counting-house are, in some sort, the settings up of an author. The enfranchised quill, that has plodded all the morning among the cart-rucks of figures and cyphers, frisks and curvets so at its ease over the flowery carpet-ground of a mid- night dissertation. It feels its promotion. ... So that you see, upon the whole, the literary dig- nity of £lia is very little, if at all, compromised in the condescension. — [0:rford in the Vaca- tion. \ CuRiosiTiKS IN Literature. — Still less have I curiosity to disturb the elder repose of MSS. Those varied lediones, so tempting to the more erudite palates, do but disturb and unsettle my faith. I am no Herculean raker. The credit of the three witnesses might have slept unim- Cbarles Xamb's peached for me. I leave these curiosities to Porson, and to G. D. — whom, by the way, I found busy as a moth over some rotten archive, rummaged out of some seldom-explored press in a nook at Oriel. With long poring, he is grown almost into a book. He stood as passive as one by the side of the old shelves. I longed to new-coat him in Russia, and assign him his place. He might have mustered for a tall Scapula. — {Oxford in the Vacation.'] On Kpitaphs. — More than all, I conceive disgust at those impertinent and misbecoming familiarities, inscribed upon your ordinary tombstones. Every dead man must take upon himself to be lecturing me with his odious truism, that " such as he now is, I must shortly be." Not so shortly, friend, perhaps as thou imaginest. In the meantime I am alive. I move about. I am worth twenty of thee. Know thy betters ! — \_Ne7v Year's Eve.] On Gkorgk Dyer. — For with G. D. to be absent from the body, is sometimes (not to speak it profanely) to be present with the Lord. mit aiiD TimiBDom At the very time when, personally encountering thee, he passes on with no recognition — or, being stopped, starts like a thing surprized — at that moment, reader, he is on Mount Tabor — or Parnassus — or co-sphered with Plato — or, with Harrington, framing "immortal common- wealths" — devising some plan of amelioration to thy country, or thy species — peradventure meditating some individual kindness of cour- tesy, to be done to thee thyself, the returning consciousness of which made him to start so guiltily at thy obtruded personal presence. D. commenced life after a course of hard study in the house of "pure Emanuel," as usher to a knavish fanatic schoolmaster at , at a salary of eight pounds per annum, with board and lodging. Of this poor stipend he never received above half in all the laborious years he served this man. He tells a pleasant anecdote, that when poverty, staring out at his ragged knees, has sometimes compelled him, against the modesty of his nature, to hint at arrears, Dr. would take no immediate notice, but after supper, when the school was 14 Cbarles Xamb'6 called together to even-song, lie would never fail to introduce some instructive homily against riches, and the corruption of the heart occasioned through the desire of them — ending with " Ivord, keep thy servants, above all things, from the heinous sin of avarice. Having food and raiment, let us therewithal be content. Give me Hagar's wish " — and the like — which, to the little auditory, sounded like a doctrine full of Christian prudence and simplicity, but to poor D. was a receipt in full for that quarter's demand at least. — {Oxford in the Vacation.^ Borrowers. — Observe who have been the greatest borrowers of all ages — Alcibiades — Falstaff — Sir Richard Steele — our late incom- parable Brinsley — what a family likeness in all four! What a careless, even deportment hath your borrower ! what rosy gills ! what a beautiful reliance on Providence doth he manifest, — taking no more thought than lilies ! What contempt for money, — accounting it (yours and mine especially) no better than dross ! What a mit an& 'MlsDom 15 liberal confounding of those pedantic distinc- tions of meitm and fuum / or rather, what a noble simplification of language (beyond Tooke), resolving these supposed opposites into one clear, intelligible pronoun adjective ! — What near approaches doth he make to the primitive commtmity, — to the extent of one half of the principle at least ! — [ The Two Races of Men. 1 The Composure op Quakers.— The aston- ishing composure of this people is sometimes ludicrously displayed in lighter instances. — I was travelling in a stage-coach with three male Quakers, buttoned up in the straightest non- conformity of their sect. We stopped to bait at Andover, where a meal, partly tea apparatus, partly supper, was set before us. My friends confined themselves to the tea-table. I in my way took supper. When the landlady brought in the bill, the eldest of my companions dis- covered that she had charged for both meals. This was resisted. Mine hostess was very clamorous and positive. Some mild arguments Cbarles Xamb's were used on the part of the Quakers, for which the heated mind of the good lady seemed by no means a fit recipient. The guard came in with his usual peremptory notice. The Quakers pulled out their money, and formally tendered it — so much for tea — I, in humble imitation, tendering mine — for the supper which I had taken. She would not relax in her demand. So they all three quietly put up their silver, as did myself, and marched out of the room, the eldest and gravest going first, with myself closing up the rear, who thought I could not do better than follow the example of such grave and warrantable personages. We got in. The steps went up. The coach drove off. The murmurs of mine hostess, not very indistinctly or ambiguously pronounced, became after a time inaudable — and now my conscience, which the whimsical scene had for a while suspended, beginning to give some twitches, I waited, in the hope that some justification would be offered by these serious people for the seeming injustice of their conduct. To my great surprise, not a syllable was dropped on the subject. They sate "Mit anD WfsOom 17 as mute as at a meeting. At length the eldest of them broke silence, by inquiring of his next neighbor, "Hast thee heard how iudigoes go at the India House?" and the question operated as a soporific on my moral feeling as far as Exeter. — {^Imperfect Sympathies.'] ' On Saying Grace. — I own that I am dis- posed to say grace upon twenty other occasions in the course of the day besides my dinner. I want a form for setting out upon a pleasant walk, for a moonlight ramble, for a friendly meeting, or a solved problem. Why have we none for books, those spiritual repasts — a grace before Milton — a grace before Shakspeare — a devotional exercise proper to be said before reading the Fairy Queen? — \Grace Before Meat.] Thk Sun-diai.. — What an antique air had the now almost effaced sun-dials, with their moral inscriptions, seeming coevals with that Time which they measured, and to take their revelations of its flight immediately from i8 Cbaclc5 Xamb's heaven, holding correspondence with the foun- tain of light ! How would the dark line steal imperceptibly on, watched by the eye of child- hood, eager to detect its movement, never catched, nice as an evanescent cloud, or the first arrests'of sleep ! " Ah ! yet doth beauty like a dial-h-and Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived ! " What a dead thing is a clock, with its pon- derous embowelments of lead and brass, its pert or solemn dulness of communication, com- pared with the simple altar-like structure, and silent heart-language of the old dial ! It stood as the garden god of Christian gardens. Why is it almost everywhere vanished ? If its busi- ness-use be superseded by more elaborate inven- tions, its moral uses, its beauty, might have pleaded for its continuance. It spoke of mod- erate labors, of pleasures not protracted after sunset, of temperance, and good hours. It was the primitive clock, the horologe of the first world. Adam could scarce have missed it in Paradise. — [ The Old Be7ichers of the Inner Temple. ^ mat mb mtsDom 19 Is CHiiyDHOOD Dead? — The artificial foun- tains of the metropolis are, in like manner, fast vanishing. Most of them are dried up, or bricked over. Yet, where one is left, as in that little green nook behind the South-Sea House, what a freshness it gives to the dreary pile ! Four little winged marble boys used to play their virgin fancies, spouting out ever fresh streams from their innocent wanton lips, in the square of Lincoln's Inn, when I was no bigger than they were figured. They are gone, and the spring choked up. The fashion, they tell me, is gone by, and these things are esteemed childish. Why not then gratify children, by letting them stand ? Lawyers, I suppose, were children once. They are awakening images to them at least. Why must everything smack of man, and mannish ? Is the world all grown up ? Is childhood dead ? Or is there not in the bosoms of the wisest and the best some of the child's heart left, to respond to its earliest en- chantments ? The figures were grotesque. Are the stifif-wigged living figures, that still flitter and chatter about that area, less Gothic in 20 Cbarles Xamb'6 appearance? or is the splutter of their hot rhetoric one half so refreshing and innocent as the little cool playful streams those exploded cherubs uttered? — \^The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple. 1 A Character Sketch. — It was incredible what repute for talents S. enjoyed by the mere trick of gravity. He was a shy man ; a child might pose him in a minute — indolent and pro- crastinating to the last degree. Yet men would give him credit for vast application in spite of himself. He was not to be trusted with him- self with impunity. He never dressed for a dinner-party but he forgot his sword — they wore swords then — or some other necessary part of his equipage. Lovel had his eye upon him on all these occasions, and ordinarily gave him his cue. If there was anything which he could speak unseasonably, he was sure to do it. He was to dine at a relative's of the unfortunate Miss Blandy on the day of her execution ; and L., who had a wary foresight of his probable hallucinations, before he set out, schooled him "Mft anO limisDom 21 with great anxiety not in any possible manner to allude to her story that day. S. promised faithfully to observe the injunction. He had not been seated in the parlor, where the com- pany was expecting the dinner summons, four minutes, when, a pause in the conversation ensuing, he got up, looked out of the window, and pulling down his ruffles — an ordinary motion with him — observed, "it was a gloomy day," and added, "Miss Blandy must be hanged by this time, I suppose." Instances of this sort were perpetual. Yet S. was thought by some of the greatest men of his time a fit person to be consulted, not alone in matters pertaining to the law, but in the ordinary -nice- ties and embarrassments of conduct — from force of manner entirely. He never laughed. — \_The Old Benchers of the Irmer Temple. "l The Evil, OF Disturbing a Chii^d's Faith. —In my father's book-closet, the History of the Bible, by Stackhouse, occupied a distinguished station. The pictures with which it abounds — one of the ark, in particular, and another of 22 Gbarles Xamb's Solomon's temple, delineated with all the fidel- ity of ocular admeasurement, as if the artist had been upon the spot — attracted my childish attention. There was a picture, too, of the Witch raising up Samuel, which I wash that I had never seen. We shall come to that hereafter. Stackhouse is in two huge tomes — and there was a pleasure in removing folios of that mag- nitude, which, with infinite s^training, was as much as I could manage from the situation which they occupied upon the upper shelf I have not met with the work from that time to this, but I remember it consisted of Old Testa- ment stories, orderly set down, with the objec- tion appended to each story, and the solution of the objection regularly tacked to that. The objectiofi was a summary of whatever difficul- ties had been opposed to the credibility of the history, by the shrewdness of ancient or mod- ern infidelity, drawn up with an almost com- plimentary excess of candor. The solution was brief, modest, and satisfactory. The bane and antidote were both before you. To doubts so put, and so quashed, there seemed to be an Iimft an& mfsOom 23 end for ever. The dragon lay dead, for the foot of the veriest babe to trample on. But — like as was rather feared than realized from that slain monster in Spenser — from the womb of those crushed errors young dragonets would creep, exceeding the prowess of so tender a Saint George as myself to vanquish. The habit of expecting objections to every passage, set me upon starting more objections, for the glory of finding a solution of my own for them. I became staggered and perplexed, a sceptic in long-coats. The pretty Bible stories which I had read, or heard read in church, lost their purity and sincerity of impression, and were turned into so many historic or chronologic theses to be defended against whatever impugners. — [ Witches and Othe7' Night Fears.'] CRKDUI.ITY. — Next to making a child an infidel, is the letting him know that there are infidels at all. Credulity is the man's weak- ness, but the child's strength. — [ Witches and Other Night Fears.] 24 Cbarles Xamb's On Quakers. — The Quakers who go about their business, of every description, with more calmness than we, have more title to the use of these benedictory prefaces. I have always admired their silent grace, and the more because I have observed their applications to the meat and drink following to be less passionate and sensual than ours. They are neither gluttons nor wine-bibbers as a people. Thej- eat, as a horse bolts his chopped hay, with indifference, calmness, and cleanly circumstances. They neither grease nor slop themselves. When I see a citizen in his bib and tucker, I cannot imagine it a surplice. — [^Grace Before Meat.'] Two Methodist Divines.— I once drank tea in company with two Methodist divines of different persuasions, whom it was my fortune to introduce to each other for the first time that evening. Before the first cup was handed round, one of these reverend gentlemen put it to the other, with all due solemnity, whether lie chose to say anything. It seems it is the custom with some sectaries to put up a short mn anD UIllsDom 25 prayer before this meal also. His reverend brother did not at first quite apprehend him, but upon an explanation, with little less importance he made answer, that it was not a custom known in his church : in which courteous evasion the other acquiescing for good man- ners' sake, or in compliance with a weak brother, the supplementary or tea-grace was waived altogether. With what spirit might not Lucian have painted two priests, of /lis religion, playing into each other's hands the compliment of performing or omitting a sacrifice, —the hungry God meantime, doubtful of his incense, with expectant nostrils hovering over the two flamens, and (as between two stools) going away in the end without his supper. — [Grace Before AfeaL] iTAiyiAN Opera. — I have sat through an Italian Opera, till, for sheer pain and inex- plicable anguish, I have rushed out into the noisiest places of the crowded streets, to solace myself with sounds which I was not obliged to follow, and get rid of the distracting torment of 26 Cbarlee Xamb's endless, fruitless, barren attention ! I take refuge in the unpretending assemblage of hon- est common-life sounds ; — and the purgatory of the Enraged Musician becomes my paradise. — [A Chapter on Ears."] The Oratorio. — I have sat at an Oratorio (that profanation of the purposes of the cheer- ful playhouse) watching the faces of the audi- tory in the pit (what a contrast to Hogarth's Laughing Audience ! ) immovable, or affecting some faint emotion, — till (as some have said, that our occupations in the next w^orld will be but a shadow of what delighted us in this) I have imagined myself in some cold Theatre in Hades, where some o^ the forms of the earthly one should be kept up, with none of the enjoy- tnent ; or like that — " Party in a parlor, All silent, and all damned ! "— \_A Chapter on Bars.} Instrument A I, Music. — Above all, those insufferable concertos, and pieces of music, as they are called, do plague and embitter my ap- mit anD misOom 27 prehension. Words are something ; but to be exposed to an endless battery of mere sounds ; to be long a-dying, to lie stretched upon a rack of roses ; to keep up languor by unintermitted effort ; to pile honey upon sugar, and sugar upon honey, to an interminable tedious sweet- ness ; to fill up sound with feeling, and strain ideas to keep pace with it ; to gaze on empty frames, and be forced to make the pictures for yourself; to read a book all stops, and be obliged to supply the verbal matter ; to invent extempore tragedies to answer to the vague gestures of an inexplicable rambling mime — these are faint shadows of what I have under- gone from a series of the ablest-executed pieces of this ^va-^ty instrumental music. — \^A Chapter on Ears? A Wife's Treatment of Her Husband's Friend. — These are some of the mortifications which I have encountered in the absurd attempt to visit at their houses. To enumerate them all would be a vain endeavor : I shall therefore just glance at the very common impropriety of 28 Cbarles Xamb*6 which married ladies are guilty, — of treating us as if we were their husbands, and vice versd. I mean, when they use us with familiarity, and their husbands with ceremony. Testacea, for instance, kept me the other night two or three hours beyond my usual time of supping, while she was fretting because Mr. did not come home till the oysters were all spoiled, rather than she would be guilty of the impolite- ness of touching one in his absence. This was reversing the point of good manners : for cere- mony is an invention to take off the uneasy feel- ing which we derive from knowing ourselves to be less the object of love and esteem with a fellow-creature than some other person is. It endeavors to make up, by superior attentions in little points, for that invidious preference which it is forced to deny in the greater. Had Testacea kept the oysters back for me, and withstood her husband's importunities to go to supper, she would have acted according to the strict rules of propriety. I know no ceremony that ladies are bound to observe to their hus- bands, beyond the point of a modest behavior Idtt anD TlXIl(5&om and decorum : therefore I must protest against the vicarious gluttony of Cerasia, who at her own table sent away a dish of Morellas, which I was applying to with great good-will, to her husband at the other end of the table, and recommended a plate of less extraordinary gooseberries to my unwedded palate in their stead. Neither can I excuse the wanton affront of But I am weary of stringing up all my married acquaintance by Roman denominations, lyct them amend and change their manners, or I promise to record the full-length English of their names to the terror of all such desperate offenders in future. — \_A Bachelor's Complaint of the Behavior of Married People. '\ On Loving Chii^dren. — I know there is a proverb, *' lyove me, love my dog " ; that is not always so very practicable, particularly if the dog be set upon you to tease you or snap at you in sport. But a dog, or a lesser thing — any inanimate substance, as a keepsake, a watch or a ring, a tree, or the place where we last parted 30 Cbarlcs Xamb's when my friend went away upon a long ab- sence, I can make shift to love, because I love him, and anything that reminds me of him, provided it be in its nature indifferent, and apt to receive whatever hue fancy can give it. But children have a real character and essential being of themselves : they are amiable or un- amiahle per se ; I must love or hate them as I see cause for either in their qualities. A child's nature is too serious a thing to admit of its being regarded as a mere appendage to another being, and to be loved or hated accordingly : they stand with me upon their own stock, as much as men and women do. O ! but 3'ou will say, sure it is an attractive age, — there is some- thing in the tender years of infancy that of itself charms us. That is the very reason why I am more nice about them. I know that a sweet child is the sweetest thing in nature, not even excepting the delicate creatures which bear them ; but the prettier the kind of a thing is, the more desirable it is that it should be pretty of its kind. One daisy differs not much from another in glory ; but a violet should look and smell the daintiest. — I was always rather squeamish in my women and children. — ^A Bachelor's Complaint of the Behavior of Mar- ried People.'] Imagining a Distant Country. — I cannot imagine to myself whereabout you are. When I try to fix it, Peter Wilkins's island comes across me. Sometimes you seem to be in the Hades of Thieves. I see Diogenes prying among you with his perpetual fruitless lan- tern. What must you be willing by this time to give for the sight of an honest man ! You must almost have forgotten how zue look. And tell me, what your Sydneyites do ? are they th**v*ng all day long ? Merciful heaven ! what property can stand against such a depredation ! The kangaroos — your Aborigines — do they keep their primitive simplicity un-Europe-tainted, with those little short fore-puds, looking like a lesson framed by nature to the pickpocket ! Marry, for diving into fobs they are rather lamely provided a priori ; but if the hue and cry were once up, they would show as fair a 32 Cbarles Xamb's pair of hind-shifters as the expertest loco-motor in the colony. — {^Distant Cor respondents. 1 The Prominence of the Morai. Point. — We have been spoiled with — not sentimental comedy — but a tyrant far more pernicious to our pleasures which has succeeded to it, the exclusive and all-devouring drama of common life ; where the moral point is everything ; where, instead of the fictitious half-believed personages of the stage (the phantoms of old comedy) we recognize ourselves, our brothers, aunts, kinsfolk, allies, patrons, enemies, — the same as in life, — with an interest in what is going on so hearty and substantial, that we cannot afford our moral judgment, in its deepest and most vital results, to compromise or slum- ber for a moment. — \0n the Artificial Comedy of the Last Ce7itury.'\ The Commonness of ChiIvDren.— When I consider how little of a rarity children are, — that ever>^ street and blind alley swarms with them, — that the poorest people commonly have IKIlft anD iailf5Dom 33 them in most abundance, — that there are few marriages that are not blessed with at least one of these bargains, — how often they turn out ill, and defeat the fond hopes of their parents, taking to vicious courses, which end in pov- erty, disgrace, the gallows, etc. — I cannot for my life tell what cause for pride there can pos- sibly be in having them. If they were young phoenixes, indeed, that were born but one in a year, there might be a pretext. But when they are so common [A Bachelor's Complaint of the Behavior of Married People. "l On Exchanging Presents. — I am one of those who freely and ungrudgingly impart a share of the good things of this life which fall to their lot (few as mine are in this kind) to a friend. I protest I take as great an interest in my friend's pleasures, his relishes, and proper satisfactions, as in mine own. ''Presents," I often say, "endear Absents." Hares, pheas- ants, partridges, snipes, barn-door chickens (those "tame villatic fowl"), capons, plovers, brawn, barrels of oysters, I dispense as freely 34 Cbarles Xamb's as I receive them. I love to taste them, as it were, upon the tongue of my friend. But a stop must be put somewhere. One would not, like Lear, "give everything." I make my stand upon pig. Methinks it is an ingratitude to the Giver of all good favors, to extradom- iciliate, or send out of the house, slightingly (under pretext of friendship, or I know not what), a blessing so particularly adapted, pre- destined, I may say, to my individual palate — It argues an insensibility. — [A Dissertation upon Roast Pig.'] Married Pe;opi:.E. — But what I complain of is, that they carry this preference so undis- guisedly, they perk it up in the faces of us sin- gle people so shamelessly, you cannot be in their company a moment without being made to feel, by some indirect hint or open avowal, that yo7^ are not the object of this preference. Now there are some things which give no offence, while implied or taken for granted merely ; but expressed, there is much offence in them. If a man were to accost the first limit anD mf0Dom 35 hotnely-featured or plain-dressed young woman of his acquaintance, and tell her bluntly, that she was not handsome or rich enough for him, and he could not marry her, he would deserve to be kicked for his ill manners ; yet no less is implied in the fact, that having access and opportunity of putting the question to her, he has never yet thought fit to do it. The young woman understands this as clearly as if it were put into words ; but no reasonable young woman would think of making this the ground of a quarrel. Just as little right have a married couple to tell me by speeches, and looks that are scarce less plain than speeches, that I am not the happy man, — the lady's choice. It is enough that I know that I am not ; I do not want this perpetual reminding. — [A Bachelor's Com- plaint of the Behavior of Married People. '\ Chimney-Sweeps. — I like to meet a sweep — understand me — not a grown sweeper — old chimney-sweepers are by no means attractive — but one of those tender novices, bloominr through their first nigritude, the maternal 36 Cbarles Xamb's washings not quite effaced from the cheek — such as come forth with the dawn, or somewhat earlier, with their little professional notes sounding like the peep peep of a young spar- row ; or liker to the matin lark should I pro- nounce them, in their aerial ascents not seldom anticipating the sunrise ? I have a kindly yearning towards these dim specks — poor blots — innocent blacknesses — I reverence these j'oung Africans of our own growth — these almost clergy imps, who sport their cloth without assumption ; and from their little pulpits (the tops of chimneys), in the nip- ping air of a December morning, preach a lesson of patience to mankind. — \^The Pi'aise of Chim7iey Sweepers. ] A Street Scene. — I am by nature extremely susceptible of street affronts ; the jeers and taunts of the populace ; the low-bred triumph they display over the casual trip, or splashed stocking, of a gentleman. Yet can I endure the jocularity of a young sweep with some- thing more than forgiveness. In the last winter mn anD "MisOom 37 but one, pacing along Cheapside with my ac- customed precipitation when I walk westward, a treacherous slide brought me upon my back in an instant. I scrambled up with pain and shame enough — yet outwardly trying to face it down, as if nothing had happened — when the roguish grin of one of these young wits en- countered me. There he stood, pointing me out with his dusky finger to the mob, and to a poor woman (I suppose his mother) in par- ticular, till the tears for the exquisiteness of the fun (so he thought it) worked themselves out at the corners of his poor red eyes, red from many a previous weeping, and soot-in- flamed, yet twinkling through all with such a joy, snatched out of desolation, that Hogarth — but Hogarth has got him already (how could he miss him ? ) in the March to Finchley, grin- ning at the pie-man — there he stood, as he stands in the picture, irremovable, as if the jest was to last forever — with such a maximum of glee, and minimum of mischief, in his mirth — for the grin of a genuine sweep hath absolutely no malice in it — that I could have been content, 38 Gbarles Xamb's if the honor of a gentleman might endure it, to have remained his butt and his mockery till midnight. — [ The Praise ofChijmiey Sweepets. ] A Character Sketch. — F. was the most gentlemanly of oilmen — grandiloquent, yet courteous. His delivery of the commonest matters of fact was Ciceronian. He had two I/atin words almost constantly iu his mouth (how odd sounds Latin from an oilman's lips ! ) which my better knowledge since has enabled me to correct. In strict pronunciation they should have been sounded vice versa — but in those young years they impressed me with more awe than they would now do, read aright from Seneca or Varro — in his own peculiar pronunciation, monosyllabically elaborated, or Anglicized, into something like verse verse. By an imposing manner, and the help of these distorted syllables, he climbed (but that was little) to the highest parochial honors which St. Andrew's has to bestow. — \_My First Play.] Puns. — A pun hath a hearty kind of present ear-kissing smack with it ; you can no more mit anD misDom 30 transmit it in its pristine flavor, than you can send a kiss. Have you not tried in some in- stances to palm o£f a yesterday's pun upon a gentleman, and has it answered ? Not but it \gas new to his hearing, but it did not seem to come new from you. It did not hitch in. It was like picking up at a village ale-house a two days' old newspaper. You have not seen it before, but you resent the stale thing as an affront. This sort of merchandise above all re- quires a quick return. A pun, and its recognitory laugh, must be co-instantaneous. The one is the brisk lightning, the other the fierce thunder. A moment's interval, and the link is snapped. A pun is reflected from a friend's face as from a mirror. Who would consult his sweet vis- nomy, if the polished surface were two or three minutes (not to speak of twelve months, my dear F.) in giving back its copy ? — \_Distant Cor- respondents.'] A Woman's Character. — What a woman should demand of a man in courtship, or after it, is first — respect for her as she is a woman ; — 40 Cbarles Xamb'6 and next to that7-to be respected by him above all other women. But let her stand upon her female character as upon a foundation ; and let the attentions, incident to individual prefer- ence, be so many pretty additaments aijd ornaments — as many and as fanciful, as you please — to that main structure. Let her first lesson be — with sweet Susan Winstanley — to reverence her sex. — \_Modern Gallantry. "X Consistent Gai^i^antry.— Joseph Paice, of Bread Street Hill, merchant, and one of the Directors of the South-Sea Company — the same to whom Edwards, the Shakespeare commenta- tor, has addressed a fine sonnet — was the only pattern of consistent gallantry I have met with. He took me under his shelter at an early age, and bestowed some pains upon me. I owe to his precepts and example whatever there is of the man of business (and that is not much) in my composition. It was not his fault that I did not profit more. Though bred a Presbyterian, and brought up a merchant, he was the finest gentleman of his time. He had not one system of attention to females in the drawing-room, and another in the shop, or at the stall. I do not mean that he made no distinction. But he never lost sight of sex, or overlooked it in the casualties of a disadvan- tageous situation. I have seen him stand bare- headed — smile if you please — to a poor servant girl, while she has been inquiring of him the way to some street — in such a posture of un- forced civility, as neither to embarrass her in the acceptance, nor himself in the offer, of it. He was no dangler, in the common acceptation of the word, after women ; but he reverenced and upheld, in every form in which it came before him, womanhood. I have seen him — nay, smile not — tenderly escorting a market- woman, whom he had encountered in a shower, exalting his umbrella over her poor basket of fruit, that it might receive no damage, with as much carefulness as if she had been a countess. To the reverend form of Female Bid he would yield the wall (though it were to an ancient beggar-woman) with more ceremony than we could afford to show our grandams. He was the 42 Cbarles Xamb'6 Preux Chevalier of Age ; the Sir Calidore, or Sir Tristan, to those who have no Calidores or Tris- tans to defend them. The roses, that had long faded thence, still bloomed for him in those with- ered and yellow cheeks. — [Modem Galla7itry.'] Respect for Woman. — I wish the whole female world would entertain the same notion of these things that Miss Winstanley showed. Then we should see something of the spirit of consistent gallantry ; and no longer witness the anomaly of the same man — a pattern of true politeness to a wife — of cold contempt, or rude- ness, to a sister — the idolater of his female mistress — the disparager and despiser of his no less female aunt, or unfortunate — still female — maiden cousin. Just so much respect as a woman derogates from her own sex, in what- ever condition placed — her handmaid, or de- pendent—she deserves to have diminished from herself on that score ; and probably will feel the diminution, when youth, and beauty, and advantages, not inseparable from sex, shall lose of their Sii\.r2iQi\or\.— [Modem Galla?it?y.'\ mit an^ MisDom 43 The Scotch Temperament.— Above all, you must beware of indirect expressions be- fore a Caledonian. Clap an extinguisher upon your irony, if 3-ou are unhappily blest with a vein of it. Remember you are upon your oath. I have a print of a graceful female, after I^eonardo da Vinci, which I was showing off to Mr. . After he had examined it minutely, I ventured to ask him how he liked 3:/y Beauty (a foolish name it goes by among my friends), when he very gravely assured me, that "he had considerable respect for my character and talents " (so he was pleased to say), "but had not given himself much thought about the degree of my personal pretensions." The mis- conception staggered me, but did not seem much to disconcert him. — {^Imperfect Sympa- thies. ] Lack of Humor in Scotchmen. — I was present not long since at a party of North Britons, where a son of Burns was expected ; and happened to drop a silly expression (in my South British way), that I wished it were the 44 Cbarles Xamb's father instead of the son — when four of them started up at once to inform me, that "that was impossible, because he was dead." An im- practicable wish, it seems, was more than they could conceive. — \_Imperfect Sympathies.'] Scotch Character. — I have been trying all my life to like Scotchmen, and am obliged to desist from the experiment in despair. They cannot like me — and, in truth, I never knew one of that nation who attempted to do it There is something more plain and ingenuous in their mode of proceeding. We know one another at first sight. There is an order of im- perfect intellects (under which mine must be content to rank) which in its constitution is essentially anti-Caledonian. The owners of the sort of faculties I allude to, have minds rather suggestive than comprehensive. They have no pretences to much clearness or precision in their ideas, or in their manner of expressing them. Their intellectual wardrobe (to confess fairly) has few whole pieces in it. They are content with fragments and scattered pieces of Timft anD MlsDom 45 Truth. She presents no full front to them — a feature or side-face at the most. Hints and glimpses, germs and crude essays at a system, is the utmost they pretend to. They beat up a little game perad venture — and leave it to knot- tier heads, more robust constitutions, to run it down. The light that lights them is not steady and polar, but mutable and shifting ; waxing, and again waning. Their conversation is accordingly. They will throw out a random Vv-ord in or out of season, and be content to let it pass for what it is worth. They cannot speak always, as if they were upon their oath — biit must be understood, speaking or writing, with some abatement. They seldom wait to mature a proposition, but e'en bring it to market in the green ear. They delight to impart their defec- tive discoveries, as they arise, without waiting for their full development. They are no sys- tematizers, and would but err more by attempt- ing it. Their minds, as I said before, are suggestive merely. The brain of a true Cale- donian (if I am not mistaken) is constituted upon quite a different plan. His Minerva is 46 Cbarles Xamb's bom in panoply. You are never admitted to see his ideas in their growth — if, indeed, they do grow, and are not rather put together upon principles of clockwork. You never catch his mind in an undress. He never hints or sug- gests anything, but unlades his stock of ideas in perfect order and completeness. He brings his total wealth into company, and gravely unpacks it. His riches are always about him. He never stoops to catch a glittering something in your presence, to share it with you, before he quite knows whether it be true touch or not. You cannot cry halves to anything that he finds. He does not find, but bring. You never witness his first apprehension of a thing. His under- standing is always at its meridian — you never see the first dawn, the early streaks. He has no falterings of self-suspicion. Surmises, guesses, misgivings, half-intuitions, semi-con- sciousness, partial illuminations, dim instincts, embryo conceptions, have no place in his brain, or vocabular}\ The twilight of dubiety never falls upon him. Is he orthodox — he has no doubts. Is he an infidel — he has none either. mil anO limtsDom 47 Between the affirmative and the negative there is no border-land with him. You cannot hover with him upon the confines of truth, or wander in the maze of a probable argument. He always keeps the path. You cannot make excursions with him — for he sets you right. His taste never fluctuates. His morality never abates. . . . He stops a metaphor like a suspected person in an enemy's country. *' A healthy book!" — said one of his countrymen to me, who had ventured to give that appellation to John Buncle, — " did I catch rightly what you said ? I have heard of a man in health, and of a healthy state of body, but I do not see how that epithet can be properly applied to a book." — \_I7nperfect Sympathies. '\ Bi^UK China. — I had no repugnance then — why should I now have ? — to those little law- less, azure -tinctured grotesques, that under the notion of men and women, float about, uncir- cumscribed by any element, in that world before perspective — a china teacup. I like to see my old friends — whom distance 48 Cbarlee Xamb's cannot diminish — figuring up in the air (so they appear to our optics), yet on terra, fii'rna still — for so we must in courtesy interpret that speck of deep blue, which the decorous artist, to pre- vent absurdity, has made to spring up beneath their sandals. I love the men with women's faces, and the women, if possible, with still more womanish expressions. Here is a young and courtly Mandarin, hand- ing tea to a lady from a salver — two miles off. See how distance seems to set off respect ! And here the same lady, or another — for likeness is identity on teacups — is stepping into a little fairy boat, moored on the other side of this calm garden river, with a dainty mincing foot, which in a right angle of incidence (as angles go in our world) must infallibly land her in the midst of a flowery mead — a furlong off on the other side of the same strange stream ! Farther on — if far or near can be predicated of their world — see horses, trees, pagodas, dan- cing the hays. Here — a cow and rabbit couchant, and co- extensive — so objects show, seen through the lucid atmosphere of fine Cathay. — [^Old China.'\ Vacations. — I am fond of passing my vaca- tions (I believe I have said so before) at one or other of the Universities. Next to these my choice would fix me at some woody spot, such as the neighborhood of Henley affords in abundance, upon the banks of my beloved Thames. But somehow or other my cousin contrives to wheedle me once in three or four seasons to a watering-place. Old attachments cling to her in spite of experience. We have been dull at Worthing one summer, duller at Brighton another, dullest at Eastbourne a third, and are at this moment doing dreary penance at — Hastings ! — and all because we were happy many years ago for a brief week at — Margate. That was our first seaside experi- ment, and many circumstances combined to make it the most agreeable holiday of my life. We had neither of us seen the sea, and we had never been from home so long together in com- pany. — Sjrhe Old Margate Hoy. 1 50 Cbarles Xamb's A SCKNE IN A Crowd. — I was once amused — there is a pleasure in affecting affectation — at the indigijation of a crowd that was jostling in with me at the pit-door of Covent Garden Theatre, to have a sight of Master Betty — then at once in his dawn and his meridian — in Ham- let. I had been invited, quite unexpectedly, to join a party, whom I met near the door of the play-house, and I happened to have in my hand a large octavo of Johnson and Steevens' Shakespeare, which, the time not admitting of my carrying it home, of course went with me to the theatre. Just in the very heat and pres- sure of the doors opening — the rush, as they term it — I deliberately held the volume over my head, open at the scene in which the young Roscius had been most cried up, and quietly read by the lamplight. The clamor became universal. "The affectation of the fellow," cried one. " lyook at that gentleman reading, papa," squeaked a young lady, who, in her admiration of the novelty, almost forgot her fears. I read on. *'He ought to have his book knocked out of his hand," exclaimed a pursy cit, whose arms were too fast pinioned to his side to suffer him to execute his kind inten- tion. Still I read on — and, till the time came to pay my money, kept as unmoved as Saint Anthony at his holy offices, with the satyrs, apes, and hobgoblins mopping and making mouths at him, in the picture, while the good man sits as undisturbed at the sight as if he were the sole tenant of the desert. — The indi- vidual rabble (I recognized more than one of their ugly faces) had damned a slight piece of mine a few nights before, and I was determined the culprits should not a second time put me out of countenance. — \_Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading."] The Poor ReI/ATion.— A poor relation— is the most irrelevant thing in nature, — a piece of impertinent correspondency,- — an odious ap- proximation, — a haunting conscience, — a pre- posterous shadow, lengthening in the noontide of your prosperity, — an unwelcome remem- brancer, — a perpetually recurring mortification, — a drain on your purse, — a more intolerable 52 Cbarles Xamb's dun upon your pride, — a drawback upon suc- cess, — a rebuke to your rising, — a stain in your blood, — a blot on your 'scutcheon, — a rent in your garment, — a death's head at your banquet, — Agathocles' pot, — a Mordecai in your gate, — a Lazarus at your door, — a lion in your path, — a frog in your chamber, — a fly in your oint- ment, — a mote in your eye, — a triumph to your enemy, — an apology to your friends, — the one thing not needful, — the hail in harvest, — the ounce of sour in a pound of sweet. — {Poor de- lations.'] A Spinner of Yarns.— With these addita- ments to boot, we had on board a fellow- passenger, whose discourse in verity might have beguiled a longer voyage than we medi- tated, and have made mirth and wonder abound as far as the Azores. He was a dark, Spanish- complexioned young man, remarkably hand- some, with an officer-like assurance, and an in- suppressible volubility of assertion. He was, in fact, the greatest liar I had met with then, or since. He was none of your hesitating, half Wit auD TimisOom 53 story-tellers (a most painful description of mortals) who go on sounding your belief, and only giving you as much as they see you can swallow at a time — the nibbling pickpockets of your patience — but one who committed down- right, daylight depredations upon his neigh- bor's faith. He did not stand shivering upon the brink, but was a hearty, thorough-paced liar, and plunged at once into the depths of your credulity. — [ The Old Margate Hoy.'] A Damaged Coi^ossus.— His dreaming fancies had transported us beyond the "igno- rant present." But when (still hardying more and more in his triumphs over our simplicity) he went on to affirm that he had actually sailed through the legs of the Colossus at Rhodes, it really became necessary to make a stand. And here I must do justice to the good sense and intrepidity of one of our party, a youth, that had hitherto been one of his most deferential auditors, who, from his recent reading, made bold to assure the gentleman that there must be some mistake, as "the Colossus in question 54 Cbarles Xamb^s had been destroyed long since " ; to whose opinion, delivered with all modesty, our hero was obliging enough to concede thus much, that ''the figure was indeed a little damaged." This was the only opposition he met with, and it did not at all seem to stagger him, for he proceeded with his fables, which the same youth appeared to swallow with still more com- placency than ever, — confirmed, as it were by the extreme candor of that concession. — \The Old Margate Hoy.'] The SmuggIvER. — I like a smuggler. He is the only honest thief. He robs nothing but the revenue, — an abstraction I never greatly cared about— [77/^ Old Margate Hoy.] DiSl/iKE OF THE SEA-Shore. — I cannot stand all day on the naked beach, watching the capricious hues of the seas, shifting like the colors of a dying mullet. I am tired of looking out at the windows of this island-prison. I would fain retire into the interior of my cage. "While I gaze upon the sea, I want to be on it, over it, across it. It binds me in with chains. limit anD mtsDorn 55 as of iron. My thoughts are abroad. — \^The Old Margate Hoy.'] Affectation of Town Visitors.— But it is the visitants from town that come here to say that they have been here, with no more relish of the sea than a pond perch, or a dace might be supposed to have, that are my aversion. I feel like a foolish dace in these regions, and have as little toleration for myself here, as for them. What can they want here ? if they had a true relish of the ocean, why have they brought all this land luggage with them? or why pitch their civilized tents in the desert ? What mean these scanty book-rooms — marine libraries as they entitle them — if the sea were, as they would have us believe, a book " to read strange matter in " ? What are their foolish con- cert-rooms, if the}^ come, as they would fain be thought to do, to listen to the music of the waves. All is false and hollow pretension. They come, because it is the fashion, and to spoil the nature of the place. — {^The Old Mar- gate Hoy. ] 56 Cbarles Xamb*s The Pridk oi^ Ancestry. — To have the feeling of gentility, it is not necessary to have been born gentle. The pride of ancestry may be had on cheaper terms than to be obliged to an importunate race of ancestors ; and the coat- less antiquary in his unemblazoned cell, revolv- ing the long line of a Mowbray's or De Clif- ford's pedigree, at those sounding names may warm himself into as gay a vanity as those who do inherit them. The claims of birth are ideal merely, and what herald shall go about to strip me of an idea ? Is it trenchant to their swords ? can it be hacked off as a spur can ? or torn away like a tarnished garter ? — \_Blakesmoor in H shire.'\ A Character Sketch. — Monoculus — for so, in default of catching his true name, I choose to designate the medical gentleman who now appeared— is a grave middle-aged person, who, without having studied at the college, or truc- kled to the pedantry of a diploma, hath em- ployed a great portion of his valuable time in experimental processes upon the bodies of un- mit anD misDom 57 fortunate fellow-creatures, in whom the vital spark, to mere vulgar thinking, would seem extinct, and lost for ever. He omitteth no oc- casion of obtruding his services, from a case of common-surfeit suffocation to the ignobler ob- structions, sometimes induced by a too wilful application of the plant Cannabis outwardly. But though he declineth not altogether these drier extinctions, his occupation tendeth for the most part to water-practice ; for the conveni- ence of which, he hath judiciously fixed his quarters near the grand repository of the stream mentioned, where, day and night, from his lit- tle watch-tower, at the Middleton's Head, he listeneth to detect the wrecks of drowned mor- tality — partly, as he saith, to be upon the spot — and partly, because the liquids which he useth to prescribe to himself and his patients, on these distressing occasions, are ordinarily more conveniently to be found at these com- mon hostelries, than in the shops and phials of the apothecaries. His ear hath arrived to such finesse by practice, that it is reported he can distinguish a plunge at a half furlong distance ; 58 Cbarles Xamb*s and can tell if it be casual or deliberate. He weareth a medal, suspended over a suit, origin- ally of a sad brown, but which, by time, and frequency of nightly divings has been dinged into a true professional sable. He passeth by the name of Doctor, and is remarkable for wanting his left eye. His remedy — after a sufficient application of warm blankets, friction, etc., is a simple tumbler, or more, of the purest Cognac, with water, made as hot as the con- valescent can bear it. Where he findeth, as in the case of my friend, a squeamish subject, he condescendeth to be the taster, and showeth, by his own example, the innocuous nature of the prescription. Nothing can be more kind or encouraging than this procedure. It addeth confidence to the patient, to see his medical adviser go hand in hand with himself in the remedy. When the doctor swalloweth his own draught, what peevish invalid can refuse to pledge him in the potion ? In fine, Monoculus is a humane, sensible man, who, for a slender pittance, scarce enough to sustain life, is con- tent to wear it out in the endeavor to save the mix anD Mis^om 59 lives of others — his pretensions so moderate, that with difficulty I could press a crown upon him, for the price of restoring the existence of such an invaluable creature to society as G. D. — [Amicus Redivivus.'\ O1.D ENG1.1SH Sonnets. — The Sonnets which we oftenest call to mind of Milton were the compositions of his maturest years. Those of Sydney, which I am about to pro- duce, were written in the very heyday of his blood. They were struck full of amorous fancies — far-fetched conceits, befitting his occu- pation ; for True Love thinks no labor to send out Thoughts upon the vast, and more than Indian voyages, to bring home rich pearls, outlandish wealth, gums, jewels, spicery, to sacrifice in self-depreciating similitudes, as shadows of true amiabilities in the Beloved. We must be lovers — or at least the cooling touch of time, the circum prcBcordia frigus, must not have so damped our faculties, as to take away our recollection that we were once so — before we can duly appreciate the glorious 6o Cbarles Xamb's vanities, and graceful hyperboles, of the pas- sion. The images which lie before our feet (though by some accounted the only natural) are least natural for the high Sydnean love to express its fancies by. — [Some Sonnets of SW Philip Sydney. '\ An AMIABI.E JUGGi^ER. — He was a juggler, who threw mist before your eyes — you had no time to detect his fallacies. He would say ' ' hand me the silver sugar tongs" ; and before you could discover it was a single spoon, and that plated, he would disturb and captivate your imagination by a misnomer of **the urn " for a tea-kettle, or by calling a homely bench a sofa. Rich men direct you to their furniture, poor ones divert you from it ; he neither did one nor the other, but by simply assuming that everything was handsome about him, you were positively at a demur what you did, or did not see, at the cottage. With nothing to live on, he seemed to live on everything. He had a stock of wealth in his mind ; not that which is prop- erly termed Content, for in truth he was not to mit anD mieDom 6i be contained at all, but overflowed all bounds by the force of a magnificent self-delusion. — [Captain Jackson.'] Captain Jackson. — There is some merit in putting a handsome face upon indigent circum- stances. To bully and swagger away the sense of them before strangers, may not be always discommendable. Tibbs, and Bobadil, even when detected, have more of our admiration than contempt. But for a man to put the cheat upon himself — to play the Bobadil at home, and, steeped in poverty up to the lips, to fancy himself all the while chin-deep in riches, is a strain of constitutional philosophy, and a mas- tery over fortune, which was reserved for my old friend Captain Jackson. — {Captain Jackson.] PivAYS AND PI.AYERS.— I was always fond of the society of players, and am not sure that an impediment in my speech (which certainly kept me out of the pulpit) even more than certain personal disqualifications, which are often got over in that profession, did not prevent me at one time of life from adopting it. I have had 62 Cbarlcs Xamb's the honor (I must ever call it) once to have been admitted to the tea-table of Miss Kelly. I have played at serious whist with Mr. Liston. I have chatted with ever good-humored Mrs. Charles Kemble. I have conversed as friend to friend with her accomplished husband. I have been indulged with a classical conference with Macready ; and with a sight of the Player- picture gallery, at Mr. Matthews', when the kind owner, to remunerate me for my love of the old actors (whom he loves so much), went over it with me, supplying to his capital collec- tion, what alone the artist could not give them — voice ; and their living motion. Old tones, half-faded, of Dodd and Parsons and Baddeley, have lived again for me at his bidding. Only Edwin he could not restore to me. I have supped with ; but I am growing a cox- comb. — {^Barbara S .] TiMB AND Eternity.— It was like passing out of Time into Eternity— for it is a sort of Eternity for a man to have his Time all to himself. — \_The Superannuated Man.'\ Wilt anD TimisDom 63 Age Not Reckoned by Years.— I have in- deed lived nominally fifty years, but deduct out of them the hours which I have lived to other people, and not to myself, and you will find me still a young fellow. For i/ia^ is the only true Time, which a man can properly call his own, that which he has all to himself; the rest, though in some sense he may be said to live it, is other people's time, not his. The remnant of my poor days, long or short, is at least mul- tiplied to me, threefold. My ten next years, if I stretch so far, will be as long as any preceding thirty. 'T is a fair rule-of-three sum. — [The Superannuated Man."] RETIRED Leisure.— I am no longer . . . . . . , clerk to the Firm of etc. I am Retired Leisure. I am to be met with in trim gardens. I am already come to be known by my vacant face and careless gesture, perambu- lating at no fixed pace, nor with any settled purpose. I walk about — not to and from. They tell me, a certain cum dignitate air, that has been buried so long with my other good parts, 64 Cbarles %nmb*6 has begun to shoot forth in my person. I grow into gentility perceptibly. When I take up a newspaper, it is to read the state of the opera. Opus operatum est. I have done all that I came into this world to do. I have worked task -work, and have the rest of the day to my- self — {^The Superannuated Man.'\ The Beauty oe Hoi^iness. — But would'st thou know the beauty of holiness? — go alone on some week-day, borrowing the keys of good Master Sexton, traverse the cool aisles of some country church ; think of the piet}- that has kneeled there — the congregations, old and young, that have found consolation there — the meek pastor — the docile parishioner. With no disturbing emotions, no cross conflicting com- parisons, drink in the tranquillity of the place, till thou thyself become as fixed and motionless as the marble effigies that kneel and weep around thee. — \_Blakesmoor in H shire. '\ Chii^dhood. — The solitude of childhood is not so much the mother of thought, as it is the Wft an& mtsDom 65 feeder of love, and silence, and admiration. — \_Blakesmoor in H shire. '\ MoRAi, Phii<osophy. — Poor men's smoky cabins are not always porticoes of moral phi- losophy. — \_Barbara S .] The Sick-Bkd.— If there be a regal solitude, it is a sick-bed. How the patient lords it there ! what caprices he acts without control ! how king-like he sways his pillow — tumbling, and tossing, and shifting, and lowering, and thumping, and flatting, and moulding it, to the ever-varying requisitions of his throbbing temples. He changes sides oftener than a politician. Now he lies full length, then half-length, obliquely, transversely, head and feet quite across the bed ; and none accuses him of ter- giversation. Within the four curtains he is absolute. They are his Mare Claustmi. — \The Convalescent.^ Sei^fishness oe Invalids. — How sickness enlarges the dimensions of a man's self to 66 GbarlC6 !ILamb'0 himself ! he is his own exclusive object. Supreme selfishness is inculcated upon him as his only duty. 'T is the Two Tables of the Law to him. He has nothing to think of but how to get well. What passes out of doors, or within them, so he hear not the jarring of them, afifects him not. — [The Convalescent.'\ The Armor of Sickness. — He has put on the strong armor of sickness, he is wrapped in the callous hide of suffering ; he keeps his sympathy, like some curious vintage, under trusty lock and key, for his own use only. — \The Convalescent.'\ The Sick Man, — To be sick is to enjoy monarchical prerogatives. Compare the silent tread, and quiet ministry, almost by the eye, with which he is served — with the careless de- meanor, the unceremonious goings in and out (slapping of doors, or leaving them open) of the very same attendants, when he is getting a little better — and you will confess, that from the bed of sickness (throne let me rather call it) to the elbow-chair of convalescence, is a fall from mit aiiD mi0Dom 67 dignity, amounting to a despotism. — [ The Con- valescent. 1 Sanity of True Genius. — So far from the position holding true, that great wit (or genius', in our modern way of speaking) has a necessary alliance with insanity, the greatest wits, on the contrary, will ever be found to be the sanest writers. It is impossible for the mind to con- ceive of a mad Shakespeare. The greatness of wit, by which the poetic talent is here chiefly to be understood, manifests itself in the admira- ble balance of all the faculties. Madness is the disproportionate straining or excess of any one of them. — {^Sanity of True Genius.l Writing Jokes for the Newspapers. — Somebody has said, that to swallow six cross- buns daily consecutively for a fortnight would surfeit the stoutest digestion. But to have to furnish as many jokes daily, and that not for a fortnight, but for a long twelvemonth, as we were constrained to do, was a little harder exe- cution. *' Man goeth forth to his work until 68 Cbarles Xamb'5 the evening" — from a reasonable hour in the morning, we presume it was meant. Now as our main occupation took us up from eight till five every day in the city ; and as our evening hours, at that time of life, had generally to do with anything rather than business, it follows that the only time we could spare for this manufactory of jokes — our supplementary live- lihood, that supplied us in every want beyond mere bread and cheese — was exactly that part of the day which (as we have heard of No Man's Land) may be fitly denominated No Man's Time ; that is, no time in which a man ought to be up and awake in. To speak more plainly, it is that time of an hour, or an hour and a half's duration, in which a man whose occasions call him up so preposterously has to wait for his breakfast. — \_Newspapeys Thirty- Five Years Ago.'\ The Actor Bi<IvISTon.— Oh, it was a rich scene, — but Sir A C , the best of story. tellers and surgeons, who mends a lame narra- tive almost as well as he sets a fracture, alone limit anO misDom 69 could do justice to it — ^that I was witness to, iu the tarnished room (that had once been green) of that same little Olympic. There, after his deposition from Imperial Drury, he substituted a throne. That Olympic Hill was his "highest heaven " ; himself "Jove in his chair." There he sat in state, while before him, on complaint of prompter, was brought for judgment — how shall I describe her ? — one of those little tawdry things that flirt at the tails of choruses— a pro- bationer for the town, in either of its senses — the prettiest little drab — a dirty fringe and ap- pendage of the lamps' smoke — who, it seems, on some disapprobation expressed by a " highly respectable" audience, had precipitately quitted her station on the boards, and withdrawn her small talents in disgust. "And how dare you," said her Manager — assuming a sensorial severity which would have crushed the confidence of a Vestris, and dis- armed that beautiful rebel herself of her pro- fessional caprices— I verily believe, he thought her standing before him — "how dare you, madam, withdraw yourself, without a notice, 70 CbarlC6 Xamb'6 from your theatrical duties ? " "I was hissed, sir." "And you have the presumption to de- cide upon the taste of the town ? " ''I don't know that, sir, but I will never stand to be hissed," was the subjoinder of 3'oung Confid- ence — when gathering up his features into one insignificant mass of wonder, pity, and expos- tulatory indignation — in a lesson never to have been lost upon a creature less forward than she who stood before him — his words were these : "They have hissed nie.'' — \^Ellistoniana.'\ A Newspaper Man. — F., without a guinea in his pocket, and having left not many iu the pockets of his friends, whom he might com- mand, had purchased (on tick doubtless) the whole and sole editorship, proprietorship, with all the rights and titles (such as they were worth) of The Albion, from one Lovell ; of whom we know nothing, save that he had stood in the pillor}- for a libel on the Prince of Wales. With this hopeless concern — for it had been sinking ever since its commencement, and could now reckon upon not more than a mit anD TimisDom 71 hundred subscribers — F. resolutely determined upon pulling down the government in the first instance, and making both our fortunes by way of corollary. For seven weeks and more did this infatuated Democrat go about borrowing seven-shilling pieces, and lesser coin, to meet the daily demands of the Stamp-Office, which allowed no credit to publications of that side in politics. An outcast from politer bread, we attached our small talents to the forlorn for- tunes of our friend. Our occupation now was to write treason. — [Newspapers Thirty-Five Years Ago.'] REMINISCENCES OF SCHOOI..— Oh, how I remember our legs wedged into those uncom- fortable sloping desks, where we sat elbowing each other ; and the injunctions to attain a free hand, unattainable in that position ; the first copy I wrote after, with its moral lesson, '* Art improves Nature " ; the still earlier pot-hooks and the hangers, some traces of which I fear may yet be apparent in this manuscript ; the truant looks side-long to the garden, which 72 Cbacles Xamb^s seemed a mockery of our imprisonment ; the prize for best spelling which had almost tm-ned my head, and which, to this day, I cannot re- flect upon without a vanity, which I ought to be ashamed of ; our little leaden inkstands, not separately subsisting, but sunk into the desks ; the bright, punctually-washed morning fingers, darkening gradually with another and another ink-spot ! What a world of little associated circumstances, pains, and pleasures, mingling their quotas of pleasure, arise at the reading of those few simple words, — **Mr. William Bird, an eminent writer, and teacher of languages and mathematics in Fetter Lane, Holborn ! " — \_Captai7i Starkey.'\ An Artist. — My acquaintance with D. was in the outset of his art, w^hen the graving tools, rather than the pencil, administered to his humble wants. Those implements, as is well known, are not the most favorable to the cul- tivation of that virtue, which is esteemed next to Godliness. He might "wash his hands in innocency," and so metaphorically "approach Wiit anO miBDom 73 an altar " ; but bis material puds were any- thing but fit to be carried to church. By an ingrained economy in soap — if it was not for pictorial effect rather — he would wash (on Sun- days) the inner oval, or portrait, as it may be termed, of his countenance, leaving the un- washed temples to form a natural black frame round the picture, in which a dead white was the predominant color. This, with the addi- tion of green spectacles made necessary by the impairment, which his graving labors by day and night (for he was ordinarily at them for six- teen hours out of the twenty-four) had brought upon his visual faculties, gave him a singular appearance, when he took the air abroad ; in- somuch, that I have seen a crowd of young men and boys following him along Oxford Street with admiration not without shouts ; even as the youth of Rome, we read in Vasari, followed the steps of Raphael with acclamations for his genius, and for his beauty, when he pro- ceeded from his workshop to chat with car- dinals and popes at the Vatican. — ^^Recollections of a Royal Academician^^ 74 Cbarles Xamb's A Precious Volume. — Rummaging over the contents of an old stall at a half book, half old- iron shop, in an alley leading from Wardour Street to Soho Square, yesterday, I lit upon a ragged duodecimo which had been the strange delight of my infancy, and which I had lost sight of for more than forty years, — the Qiieen- like Closet, or Rich Cabinet, written by Hannah Woolly, and printed for R. C. and T. S., 1681 ; being an abstract of receipts in cookery, con- fectionery, cosmetics, needlework, morality, and all such branches of what were then consid- ered as female accomplishments. The price de- manded was sixpence, which the owner (a little squab duodecimo character himself) enforced with the assurance that his " own mother should not have it for a farthing less. ' ' On my demurring at this extraordinary assertion, the dirty little vendor reinforced his assertion with a sort of oath, which seemed more than the occasion demanded: ''And now," said he, "I have put my soul to it." Pressed by so solemn an assev- eration, I could no longer resist a demand which seemed to set me, however unworthy, upon a mtt anD MlsDom 75 level with its dearest relations ; and depositing a tester, I bore away the tattered prize in tri- umph.— [7y^^ Months. '\ The Schooi^master. — I well remember Bird. He was a squat, corpulent, middle-sized man, with something of the gentleman about him, and that peculiar mild tone — especially while he was inflicting punishment — which is so much more terrible to children than the angriest looks and gestures. Whippings were not frequent ; but, when they took place, the correction was performed in a private room adjoining, where we could only hear the plaints, but saw noth- ing. This heightened the decorum and the solemnity. But the ordinary chastisement was the bastinado, a stroke or two on the palm with that almost obsolete weapon now — the ferule. A ferule was a sort of flat ruler, widened, at the inflicting end, into a shape resembling a pear, — but nothing like so sweet, with a delectable hole in the middle to raise blisters, like a cup- ping-glass. I have an intense recollection of that disused instrument of torture, and the 76 Cbarle0 Xamb'6 malignancy, in proportion to the apparent mildness, with which its strokes were applied. The idea of a rod is accompanied with some- thing ludicrous, but by no process can I look back upon this blister-raiser with anjrthing but unmingled horror. To make him look more formidable — if a pedagogue had need of these heightenings, — Bird wore one of those flowered Indian gowns formerly in use with school- masters, the strange figures upon which we used to interpret into hieroglyphics of pain and suffering. But, boyish fears apart, Bird, I believe, was, in the main, a humane and judi- cious master. — {^Captain Starkey.'] Protestants and Christians. — All Prot- estants are Christians ; but I am a Protestant ; ei'go, etc. : as if a marmoset, contending to be a man, overleaping that term as too generic and vulgar, should at once roundly proclaim himself to be a gentleman. The argument would be, as we say, exabundanti. From whichever course this excessus in terniinis pro- ceeded, we can do no less than congratulate the Wiit an& imts^om 77 general state of Christendom upon the acces- sion of so extraordinary a convert. Who was the happy instrument of the conversion we are yet to learn : it comes nearest to the attempt of the late pious Dr. Watts to Christianize the Psalms of the Old Testament. Something of the old Hebrew raciness is lost in the transfu- sion ; but much of its asperity is softened and pared down in the adaptation. — ^Tke Religion of A dors, "l Varied Rewgions. — Mr. Sinclair has joined the Shakers. Mr. Grimaldi, Sr,, after being long a Jumper, has lately fallen into some whimsical theories respecting the fall of man ; which he understands, not of an allegori- cal, but a real tumble^ by which the whole body of humanity became, as it were, lame to the performance of good works. Pride he will have to be nothing but a stiff neck ; irresolu- tion, the nerves shaken ; an inclination to sinister paths, crookedness of the joints ; spirit- ual deadness, a paralysis ; want of charity, a contraction in the fingers ; despising of govern- 78 Cbarle6 Xamb's ment, a broken head ; the plaster, a sermon ; the lint to bind it up, the text ; the probers, the preachers ; a pair of crutches, the old and new law ; a bandage, religious obligation : a fanciful mode of illustration, derived from the accidents and habits of his past calling spiritualized^ rather than from any accurate acquaintance with the Hebrew text, in which report speaks him but a raw scholar. Mr. Elliston, from all we can learn, has his religion yet to choose ; though some thinkhim aMuggletonian, — \The Religion of A dors. 1 A PI.AY EntireivY for Women Charac- ters. — The effect was enchanting. We mean for once. We do not w^ant to encourage these Amazonian vanities. Once or twice we longed to have Wrench bustling among them. A lady who sat near us was observed to gape for want of variet3^ To us it was delicate quintessence, an apple-pie made all of quinces. We remem- ber poor Holcroft's last comedy, which posi- tively died from the opposite excess ; it was choked up with men, and perished from a re- ma an& 'QCliaDom 79 dundancy of male population. It had nine prin- cipal men characters in it, and but one woman, and she of no very ambiguous character. Mrs. Harlow, to do the part justice, chose to play it in scarlet. — [JVew Pieces at the Lyceum.'] The Lottery. — The true mental epicure al- ways purchased his ticket early, and postponed inquiry into its fate to the last possible moment, during the whole of which intervening period he had an imaginary twenty thousand locked up in his desk : and was not this well worth all the money? Who would scruple to give twenty pounds' interest for even the ideal enjoyment of as many thousands during two or three months ? Crede quod habes, et habes ; and the usufruct of such a capital is surely not dear at such a price. Some years ago, a gentleman in passing along Cheapside saw the figures 1069, of which number he was the sole proprietor, flaming on the window of a lottery-office as a capital prize. Somewhat flurried by this dis- covery, not less welcome than unexpected, he resolved to walk round St. Paul's that he might 8o Cbarlcs Xamb's consider in what way to communicate the happy tidings to his wife and family ; but, upon re-passing the shop he observed that the num- ber was altered to 10,069, and, upon inquiry, had the mortification to learn that his ticket was a blank, and had only been stuck up in the window by a mistake of the clerk. This effec- tually calmed his agitation ; but he always speaks of himself as having once possessed twenty thousand pounds, and maintains that his ten-minutes' walk round St. Paul's was worth ten times the purchase-money of the ticket. A prize thus obtained has, moreover, this special advantage, — it is beyond the reach of fate ; it cannot be squandered ; bankruptcy cannot lay siege to it ; friends cannot pull it down, nor enemies blow it up ; it bears a charmed life, and none of women born can break its integrity, even by the dissipation of a single fraction. Show me the property in these perilous times that is equally compact and impregnable. We can no longer become en- riched for a quarter of an hour ; we can no longer succeed in such splendid failures ; all TKait anO MfsDom 8i our chances of making such a miss have van- ished with the last of the lotteries. — \_The Il- lustrious Defunct.'^ On Hissing.— Seriously, Messieurs the Pub- lic, this outrageous way which you have got of expressing your displeasures is too much for the occasion. When I was deafening under the effects of it, I could not help asking what crime of great moral turpitude I had committed : for every man about me seemed to feel the offence as personal to himself : as something which public interest and private feelings alike called upon him in the strongest possible manner, to stigmatize with infamy. The Romans, it is well known to you, Mr. Reflector, took a gentler method of marking their disapprobation of an author's work. They were a humane and equitable nation. They left the furca and the patibtdum, the axe and the rods, to great offenders : for these minor and (if I may so term them) extra-moral offences, the bent thumb was considered as a sufiScient sign of disapprobation, — vertere pollicem ; as 6 82 Cbarlea Xamb's the pressed thumb, premere pollicem, was a mark of approving. I proceed with more pleasure to give you an account of a club to which I have the honor to belong. There are fourteen of us, who are all authors that have been once in our lives what is called datnned. We meet on the anniversary of our respective nights, and nlake ourselves merry at the expense of the public. The chief tenets which distinguish our society, and which every man among us is bound to hold for gospel, are — That the public, or mob, in all ages have been a set of blind, deaf, obstinate, senseless, illiterate savages. That no man of genius, in his senses, would be ambitious of pleasing such a capricious, ungrateful rabble. That the only legitimate end of writing for them is to pick their pockets ; and, that failing, we are at full liberty to vilify and abuse them as much as ever we think fit. — \_0n the Custom of Hissing at the TheatresJ\ The; ModeI/ Ci.ERK. — He avoideth profane oaths and jesting, as so much time lost from his mit mt> MfsDom S3 employ ; what spare time he hath for conversa- tion, which, in a counting-house such as we have been supposing, can be but small, he spendeth in putting seasonable questions to such of his fellows (and sometimes respectfully to the master himself) who can give him infor- mation respecting the price and quality of goods, the state of exchange, or the latest im- provements in book-keeping ; thus making the motion of his lips, as well as of his fingers, subservient to his master's interest. Not that he refuseth a brisk saying, or a cheerful sally of wit, when it comes unforced, is free of of- fence, and hath a convenient brevity. For this reason, he hath commonly some such phrase as this in his mouth : It 's a slovenly look To blot your book. —{^The Good Clerk. '\ Criticisms on Art.— Leonardo, from the one or two specimens we have of him in England, must have been a stupendous genius. I can scarce think he has had his full fame — he who 84 Cbarles Xamb*6 could paint that wonderful personification of the Logos, or second person of the Trinity, grasping a globe, late in the possession of Mr. Troward of Pall Mall, where the hand was, by the boldest licence, twice as big as the truth of drawing warranted ; yet the effect, to every one that saw it, by some magic of genius was con- fessed to be not monstrous, but miraculous and silencing. It could not be gainsaid. — YThe Reynolds Gallery.l An Amusing Mistake. — How oddly it hap- pens that the same sound shall suggest to the minds of two persons hearing it ideas the most opposite ! I was conversing, a few years since, with a young friend upon the subject of poetry, and particularly that species of it which is known by the name of the Epithalamium. I ventured to assert that the most perfect speci- men of it in our language was the Epithalamium of Spenser upon his own marriage. My young gentleman, who has a smattering of taste, and would not willingly be thought ignorant of anything remotely connected with mix anD MfsOom ' 85 the belles-lettres, expressed a degree of surprise, mixed with mortification, that he should never have heard of this poem ; Spenser being an author with whose writings he thought himself peculiarly conversant. I offered to show him the poem in the fine folio copy of the poet's works which I have at home. He seemed pleased with the offer, though the mention of the folio seemed again to puzzle him. But, presently after, assuming a grave look, he compassionately muttered to himself, " Poor Spencer ! " There was something in the tone with which he spoke these words that struck me not a little. It was more like the accent with which a man bemoans some recent calamity that has happened to a friend than that tone of sober grief with which we lament the sorrows of a person, however excellent and however griev- ous his afflictions may have been, who has been dead more than two centuries. I had the curi- osity to inquire into the reasons of so uncom- mon an ejaculation. My young gentleman, with a more solemn tone of pathos than before, 86 Cbarles Xamb'a repeated, "Poor Spencer!" and added, "He has lost his wife ! " My astonishment at this assertion rose to such a height, that I began to think the brain of my young friend must be cracked, or some unaccountable reverie had gotten possession of it. But, upon further explanation, it appeared that the word "Spenser " — which to you or me, reader, in a conversation upon poetry too, would naturally have called up the idea of an old poet in a ruff, one Edmund Spenser, that flourished in the days of Queen Elizabeth, and wrote a poem called The Faery Queene, with The Shepherd's Calendar, and many more verses besides — did, in the mind of my young friend, excite a very different and quite modern idea — namely, that of the Honorable William Spencer, one of the living ornaments, if I am not misinformed, of this present poetical era, A.D. 1811. — \pn the Ambiguities Arising from Proper Names."] Wordsworth's Poetry.— The causes which have prevented the poetry of Mr. Wordsworth mat anO misDom 87 from attaining its full share of popularity are to be found in the boldness and originality of his genius. The times are past when a poet could securely follow the direction of his own mind into whatever tracts it might lead. A writer, who would be popular, must timidly coast the shore of prescribed sentiment and sympathy. He must have just as much more of the imaginative faculty than his readers as will serve to keep their apprehensions from stag- nating, but not so much as to alarm their jealousy. He must not think or feel too deeply. If he has had the fortune to be bred in the midst of the most magnificent objects of crea- tion, he must not have given away his heart to them ; or if he have, he must conceal his love, or not carry his expressions of it beyond that point of rapture which the occasional tourist thinks it not overstepping decorum to betray, or the limit which that gentlemanly spy upon Nature, the picturesque traveller, has vouch- safed to countenance. He must do this, or be content to be thought an enthusiast. Cbarles Xamb's If from living among simple mountaineers, from a daily intercourse with them, not upon the footing of a patron, but in the character of an equal, he has detected, or imagines that he has detected, through the cloudy medium of their unlettered discourse, thoughts and appre- hensions not vulgar ; traits of patience and constancy, love unwearied, and heroic endur- ance, not unfit (as he may judge) to be made the subject of verse, he will be deemed a man of perverted genius by the philanthropist who, conceiving of the peasantry of his country only as objects of a pecuniary sympathy, starts at finding them elevated to a level of humanity with himself, having their own loves, enmities, cravings, aspirations, etc., as much beyond his faculty to believe, as his beneficence to supply. If from a familiar observation of the ways of children, and much more from a retrospect of his own mind when a child, he has gathered more reverential notions of that state than fall to the lot of ordinary observers, and, escaping from the dissonant wranglings of men, has tuned his lyre, though but for occasional Mlt anD MisDom 89 harmonies, to the milder utterance of that soft age, — his verses shall be censured as infantile by critics who confound poetry "having chil- dren for its subject " with poetry that is " child- ish," and who, having themselves perhaps never been children, never ha\ang possessed the tenderness and docility of that age, know not what the soul of a child is — how appre- hensive ! how imaginative ! how religious ! — [ Wordsworth's ExcursionJl If Guy Faux had been Successfui,.— To assist our imagination, let us take leave to sup- pose (and we do it in the harmless wantonness of fancy) that the tremendous explosion had taken place in our days. We better know what a House of Commons is in our days, and can better estimate our loss. Let us imagine, then, to ourselves, the united members sitting in full conclave above ; Faux just ready with his train and matches below, — in his hand a "reed tipt with fire." He applies the fatal engine . To assist our notions still further, let us sup- pose some lucky dog of a reporter, who had go Cbarles Xamb'0 escaped by miracle upon some plank of St. Stephen's benches, and came plump upon the roof of the adjacent Abbey, from whence de- scending, at some neighboring coffee-house, first wiping his clothes and calling for a glass of lemonade, he sits down and reports what he had heard and seen {quorum pars ntag7iafuit)y for the Morning Post or the Courier. We can scarcely imagine him describing the event in any other words but some such as these : — "A Motion was put and carried, that this House do adjourn ; that the Speaker do quit the chair. The House rose; amid clamors for Order." In some such way the event might most technically have been conveyed to the public. But a poetical mind, not content with this dry method of narration, cannot help pursuing the effects of this tremendous blowing up, this adjournment in the air sitie die. It sees the benches mount, — the Chair first, and then the benches ; and first the Treasury Bench, hurried up in this nitrous explosion, — the INIembers, as it were, pairing off; Whigs and Tories taking mit anO limisDom 91 their friendly apotheosis together (as they did their sandwiches below in Bellamy's room). Fancy, in her flight, keeps pace with the aspir- ing legislators : she sees the awful seat of order mounting, till it becomes finally fixed, a con- stellation, next to Cassiopeia's chair, — the wig of him that sat in it taking its place near Berenice's curls. St. Peter, at heaven's wicket, — No, not St. Peter, — St. Stephen, with open arms, receives his own. — [Guy Faux."] Th^ First Pun in Otaheite;.— We know a merry captain, and co-navigator with Cook, who prides himself upon having planted the first pun in Otaheite. It was in their own language, and the islanders first looked at him, then stared at one another, and all at once burst out into a genial laugh. It was a stranger, and as a stranger they gave it welcome. Many a quib- ble of their own growth, we doubt not, has since sprung from that well-timed exotic. Where puns flourish, there must be no inconsiderable advance in civilization. — [First Fruits of Aus- tralian Poetry. '\ 92 Cbarles Xamb's A Woman's Voice. — Her voice is wonderfully fine ; but till I got used to it, I confess it stag- gered me. It is, for all the world, like that of a piping bullfinch ; while, from her size and stat- ure, you would expect notes to drown the deep organ. The shake, which most fine sing- ers reserve for the close or cadence, by some unaccountable flexibility, or tremulousness of pipe, she carrieth quite through the composi- tion ; so that her time, to a common air or ballad, keeps double motion, like the earth, — running the primary circuit of the tune, and still revolving upon its own axis. The effect, as I said before, when you are used to it, is as agreeable as it is altogether new and surpris- ing. The spacious apartment of her outward frame lodgeth a soul in all respects dispropor- tionate. Of more than mortal make, she evinceth w'ithal a trembling sensibility, a yield- ing infirmity of purpose, a quick susceptibility to reproach, and all the train of diffident and blush- ing virtues, which for their habitation usually seek out a feeble frame, an attenuated and meagre constitution. — [ The Gentle Giantess.'\ Wiit anD XlClis^om 93 The GentIvE Giantess.— With more than man's bulk, her humors and occupations are eminently feminine. She sighs, — being six feet high. She languisheth, — being two feet wide. She worketh slender sprigs upon the delicate muslin, — her fingers being capable of moulding a colossus. She sippeth her wine out of her glass daintily — her capacity being that of a tun of Heidelberg. She goeth mincingly with those feet of hers, whose solidity need not fear the black ox's pressure. Softest and largest of thy sex, adieu ! By what parting attribute may I salute thee, last and best of the Titanesses, — Ogress, fed with milk instead of blood ; not least, or least handsome, among Oxford's state- ly structures, — Oxford, who, in its deadest time of vacation, can never properly be said to be empty, having thee to fill it. — [ T/ie Gentle Giantess.'] A Story of Chii^dhood.— When a child, I was once let loose, by favor of a nobleman's gardener, into his lordship's magnificent fruit- garden, with full leave to pull the currants and 94 Cbarlcs Uamb's the gooseberries ; only I was interdicted from touching the wall-fruit. Indeed, at that season (it was the end of autumn), there was little left. Only on the south wall (can I forget the hot feel of the brickwork ?) lingered the one last peach. Now, peaches are a fruit which I always had, and still have, an almost utter aversion to. There is something to my palate singularly harsh and repulsive in the flavor of them. I know not by what demon of contradiction inspired, but I was haunted by an irresistible desire to pluck it. Tear myself as often as I would from the spot, I found myself still recurring to it ; till maddening with desire (desire I cannot call it) with wilfulness rather, — without appetite, — against appetite, I may call it, — in an evil hour, I reached out my hand and plucked it. Some few raindrops just then fell ; the sky (from a bright day) became overcast ; and I was a type of our first parents, after the eating of that fatal fruit. I felt myself naked and ashamed, stripped of my virtue, spiritless. The downy fruit, whose sight rather than savor had tempted me, dropped from my hand never to be tasted. All the ma anO limisDom 95 commentators in the world cannot persuade me but that the Hebrew word, in the second chap- ter of Genesis, translated "apple," should be rendered "peach." Only this way can I recon- cile that mysterious story. — [The Last Peach.'\ A Me:diocre Artist.— The Hopners, and the Lawrences, were his Vandykes, and his Velas- quezes ; and if he could make anything like them, he insured himself immortality. With such guides he struggled on through laborious nights and days, till he reached the eminence he aimed at — of mediocrity. Having gained that summit, he sate down contented. If the features were but cognoscible, no matter whether the flesh resembled flesh, or oil-skin. For the thousand tints — the grains — which in life diversify the nose, the chiu, the cheek — which a Reynolds can but coarsely counterfeit — he cared nothing at all about them. He left such scrupulosities to opticians and anatomists. If the features were but there, the character of course could not be far off. A lucky hit which he made in painting the very dress of a dressy 96 Cbarles Xamb*6 lady — Mrs. W — e — , whose handsome counte- nance also, and tall elegance of shape, were too palpable entirely to escape under any masque of oil, with which even D. could overlay them brought to him at once an influx of sitters, which almost rivalled the importunate calls upon Sir Thomas. A portrait he did soon after, of the Princess Charlotte, clenched his fame. He proceeded Academician. At that memo- rable conjuncture of time it pleased the Allied Sovereigns to visit England. — {^Recollections of a Late Royal AcademiciaJi.'] C1.EAN1.1NESS AND Godliness.— Cleanliness, saith some sage man, is next to Godliness. It may be ; but how it came to sit so very near, is the marvel. Methinks some of the more human virtues might have put in for a place before it. Justice — Humanity — Temperance — are positive qualities ; the courtesies and little civil offices of life, had I been Master of the Ceremonies to that Court, should have sate above the salt in preference to a mere negation. I confess there is something wonderfully re- mft mt> miie^om 97 freshing, in warm countries, in the act of ablu- tion. Those Mahometan washings — how cool to the imagination ! but in all these supersti- tions, the action itself, if not the duty, is volun- tary. But to be washed perforce ; to have a detestable flannel rag soaked in hot water, and redolent of the very coarsest coarse soap, in- grained with hard beads for torment, thrust into your mouth, eyes, nostrils — positively Burking you, under pretence of cleansing — substituting soap for dirt, the worst dirt of the two — making your poor red eyes smart all night, that they might look out brighter on the Sabbath morn (for their clearness was the effect of pain more than cleanliness), could this be true religion ?— [Saturday Night. "l LETTERS. On Martin Burney.— Martin Burney is as good and as odd as ever. We had a dispute about the word " heir," which I contended was pronounced like "air." He said that might be in common parlance ; or that we might so 7 gs Cbarles 3Lamb*5 use it, speaking of the " Heir at Law," a com- edy ; 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 coun- sel 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 verj' ill-favoredly, because " we did not know how indispensable it was for a barrister to do all those things well — those little things were of more consequence than we supposed." So he goes on, harassing about the way to prosperity, and losing it ; with a long head, but somewhat a wrong one — harum- scarum. Why does not his guardian angel look to him ? He deserves one : may be, he has tired him out.— [ To Mrs. Hazlitt, May 2^, /^jo.] TRait anO TlClfsDom 99 Wii,i.iAM THE IVTH.— Long live William the IVth ! 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 the Second was profligate, but a gentleman.— [ 7b Barton, June 28, 1830.'] On Bankrupts.— Half the world's misery (Bden 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 pleas- ure in hanging the first bankrupt after my salutary law should be established. — [ To Bar- ton y Dec. By 182^.1 On Debtors.— I will tell you honestly, B. B., that it has been long my deliberate judgment that all bankrupts, of whatsoever denomination, civil or religious, ought to be hanged. The pity of mankind has for ages run in a wrong channel, and has been diverted from poor creditors— Cbarlee ILamb'e (how many I have known suflferers ! Hazlitt has just been defrauded of ;^ioo by his book- seller-friends breaking) — to scoundrel debtors. I know all the topics — that distress may come upon an honest man without his fault ; that the failure of one that he trusted was his calamity, etc. Then let both be hanged. O how careful it would make traders ! These are my deliber- ate thoughts, after many years' experience in matters of trade. What a world of trouble it would have saved you, if Friend had been immediately hanged, without 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 yd. in the pound in all human probability. B. B. , he should be hanged. Trade will never re-flourish in this land till such a law is established. — [7b Barton, Dec. 8, 1829.'] Arr^TKd Be;nevoi,ence. — When Miss Ouldcroft (who is now Mrs. Beddome, and Bed — dom'd to her) was at Enfield, which she was in summer time, and owed her health to its XlClit atiD TKIl(0Dom suns and genial influences, she visited (with young ladylike impertinence) a poor man's cot- tage that had a pretty baby (O the yearnling !) gave it fine caps and sweetmeats. On a day, broke into the parlor our two maids uproarious. " O ma'am, who do you think Miss Ouldcroft (they pronounce it Holcroft) has been working a cap for?" "A child," answered Mary, in true Shan dean female simplicity. " ' T is the man's child as was taken up for sheep-steal- ing." Miss Ouldcroft was staggered, and would have cut the connection, but by main force I made her go and take her leave of her protigie, I thought, if she went no more, the Abactor or the Abactor's wife {vide Ainsworth) would sup- pose she had heard something, and I have deli- cacy for a sheep-stealer. The overseers actually overhauled a mutton pie at the baker's (his first, last, and only hope of mutton pie,) which he never came to eat, and thence inferred his guilt.— [7b Procter, Jan. 2g, 1829.1 His Character for Veracity.— The more my character comes to be known, the less my 102 Cbarlcs Xamb's veracity will come to be suspected. Time every day clears up some suspected narrative of Hero- dotus, Bruce, aud 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. — [7b Bar to ft, Feb. 25, /<?jc».] F01.DING Letters.— I am the worst folder- up of a letter in the world, except certain Hot- tentots, in the land of Caffre, who never fold up their letters at all, writing very badly upon skins, etc. — [7b Mrs. Williams, April 2, /(5ja] Country Vii.i,ages. — O never let the lying poets be believed, who 'tice men from the cheer- ful 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 teasing image of a town about one ; country folks that do not look like country folks ; shops two yards square, half-a-dozen apples, and two penn'orth of overlooked gin- Wit anD Misbom 103 ger-bread for tlie lofty fruiterers of Oxford Street ; and, for the immortal book and print stalls, a circulating library that stands still, where the show-picture is a last year's Valen- tine, and whither the fame of the last ten Scotch novels has not yet travelled, — (marry, they just begin to be conscious of the J^ed- gatmtlet :) — to have a new plastered flat church, and to be wishing that it was but a cathedral ! The very blackguards here are degenerate ; the topping gentry stock-brokers ; the passengers too many to insure your quiet, or let you go about whistling or gaping, too few to be the fine in- different pageants of Fleet Street. — \To Words- worth, Jan. 22, 1830.1 A Conversation in a Coach. — The inci- dents of our journey were trifling, but you bade us 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 Stam- ford going to a sick mistress. To the latter a participation in the hospitalities of your nice rusks and sandwiches proved agreeable, as it 104 Cbarles Xamb's 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 problem- atical, 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 proba- bility 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, "I believe it depends very much upon boiled legs of mutton," my unlucky reply set Miss Isola a laughing to a degree that disturbed her tranquillity for the only moment in our jour- ney. 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.— [7^? Mrs. Wil- liams, April 2, i830.'\ mn anO Mls^om 105 SouThey'S D1AI.0GUES. — To get out of home themes, have you seen Southey's Dialogues? His lake descriptions, and the account of his library at Keswick, are very fine. But he need not have called up the ghost of More to hold the conversations with ; which might as well have passed between A and B, or Caius and Lucius. It is making too free with a defunct Chancellor and Martyr. — [ To Barton, July j, i829.-\ On His New Domestic— And to make me more alone, our ill-tempered maid is gone, who, with all her airs, was yet a home-piece of furni- ture, a record of better days. The young thing that has succeeded her is good and attentive, but she is nothing. And I have no one here to talk over old matters with. Scolding and quar- relling have something of familiarity, and a community of interest ; they imply acquaint- ance ; they are of resentment, which is of the family of dearness. I can neither scold nor quarrel at this insig- nificant implement of household services : she 106 Cbarles Xamb's is less than a cat, and just better than a deal dresser.— [Zb Barton, July Sy 182^.] On Ai^bums. — We are in the last ages of the world, when St. Paul prophesied that women should be "headstrong, lovers of their own wills, having albums," I fled hither to escape the albumean persecution, and had not been in my new house twenty-four hours when the daughter of the next house came in with a friend's album to beg a contribution, and the following day intimated that she had one of her own. Two more have sprung up since. *' If I take the wings of the morning " and fly unto the uttermost parts of the earth, there will al- bums be. New Holland has albums. But the age is to be complied with. — \To Procter y Jan. jg, i82g.'\ Cats and Homer.— I never knew before how the Iliad and Odyssey were written. 'T is strikingly corroborated by observations on Cats. These domestic animals, put 'em on a rug before the fire, wink their eyes up, and listen to mit anD mfsDom lo-/ the kettle, and then purr, which is their poetry. — [To Coleridge, i82g.'\ On Monuments. — Monuments to goodness, even after death, are equivocal. I turn away from Howard's, I scarce know why. Goodness blows no trumpet, nor desires to have it blown. We should be modest for a modest yuan — as he is for himself. The vanities of life — art, poetry, skill military — are subjects for trophies ; not the silent thoughts arising in a good man's mind in lonely places. Was I Clarkson, I should never be able to walk or ride near the spot again. Instead of bread, we are giving him a stone. Instead of the locality recalling the no- blest moment of his existence, it is a place at which his friends (that is, himself) blow to the world, '^' What a good man is he ! " — \To Mrs. Mo7itagu, 1828.'] A Fine KdiTion of Bunyan.— A splendid edition of '* Bunyan's Pilgrim " ! Why, the thought is enough to turn one's moral stomach. His cockle-hat and staff transformed to a smart cock'd beaver and a jemmy cane ; his amice io8 Cbarles ILamb's gray, to the last Regent Street cut ; and his painful palmer's pace to the modern swagger. Stop thy friend's sacrilegious hand. Nothing can be done for B. but to reprint the old cuts in as homely but good a style as possible. The Vanity Fair, and the Pilgrims there — the silly- soothness in his setting-out countenance — the Christian Idiocy (in a good sense) of his admi- ration of the shepherds on the Delectable Mountains ; the lions, so truly allegorical, and remote from any similitude to Pidcock's ; the great head (the author's) capacious of dreams and similitudes, dreaming in the dungeon. Per- haps you don't know my edition, what I had w^hen a child. If you do, can you bear new designs from Martin, enamelled into copper or silver plate by Heath, accompanied with verses from Mrs. Hemans' pen, O how unlike his own. — \_To Barto7i, Oct. ii, 1828.^ Autobiographies.— Dear Cowden — Your books are as the gushing of streams in a desert. By the way, you have sent no autobiographies. Your letter seems to imply you had. Nor do I IKDlft an& TimisOom 109 want any. Cowden, they are of the books which I give away. What damn'd Unitarian skewer-soul'd things the general biographies turn out ! — [To Cowden Clarke^ Feb. 2, i82<).'\ A Criticism on a Painting.— Dear Raffaele Haydon — Did the maid tell you I came to see your picture, not on Sunday but the day before ? I think the face and bearing of the Bucephalus tamer very noble, his flesh too effeminate or painty. The skin of the female's back kneel- ing is much more carnous. I had small time to pick out praise or blame, for two lord-like Bucks came in, upon whose strictures my pres- ence seemed to impose restraint ; I plebeian'd oflf therefore.— [71? B, R. Haydon, March, i827.-\ " Wet or Wai<ky."— My heart sometimes is good, sometimes bad about it, as the day turns out wet or walky. Emma has just died, choked with a Gerund- in-dum. On opening her, we found a Particle- in-rus in the pericardium. The King never dies, no Charles Xamb's which may be the reason that it always reigns here.— [r^ Dibdin, Sept. 13, 182/.'] Dewcacy of Feewng.— As my poor cousin, the bookbinder, now with God, told me most sentimentally, that having purchased a pic- ture of fish at a dead man's sale, his heart ached to see how the widow grieved to part with it, being her dear husband's favorite ; and he al- most apologized for his generosity by saying he could not help telling the widow she was "Welcome to come and look at it" — e. g., at his house — "as often as she pleased." There was the germ of generosity in an uneducated mind. He had just reading enough from the backs of books for the ** nee sinit esse feros " ; had he read inside, the same impulse would have led him to give back the two-guinea thing — with a request to see it, now and then, at her house. We are parroted into delicacy. — Thus you have a tale for a Sonnet. — [7b Barron Field, October 4, 1827. '\ Rewgion and Good Words.— There may be too much, not religion, but too many good Mit aiiD misoom words in a book, till it becomes, as Sh says of religion, a rhapsody of words. — To Barton, Dec. 5, 1828.'] A Good Man. — And yet I am accounted by some people a good man ! How cheap that character is acquired ! Pay your debts, don't borrow money, nor twist your kitten's neck off, nor disturb a congregation, etc., your busi- ness is done. I know things (thoughts or things, thoughts are things) of myself, which would make every friend I have fly me as a plague patient. I once . . ., and set a dog upon a crab's leg that was shoved out under a mass of sea-weeds,— a pretty little feeler. Oh pah ! how sick I am of that ! and a lie, a mean one, I once told ! — I stink in the midst of respect. I am much hypt. — \To Barton, Feb. 25, 1824.^ FiNANCiAi. Experiments.— Taylor and Hes- sey finding their magazine goes off very heavily at 2s. 6d. are prudently going to raise their price another shilling ; and having already more authors than they want, intend to increase the Cbarles Xamb's number of them. If they set up against the New Monthly they must change their present hands. It is not tying the dead carcass of a Review to a half-dead Magazine will do their business. It is like George Dyer multiplying his volumes to make 'em sell better. When he finds one will not go off, he publishes two ; two stick, he tries three ; three hang fire, he is confident that four will have a better chance. — [Zb Barton^ Dec. /, i824.-\ On the Death oe Byron.— So we have lost another poet. I never much relished his Lordship's mind, and shall be sorry if the Greeks have cause to miss him. He was to me offensive, and I never can make out his great power which his admirers talk of Why, a line of Wordsworth's is a lever to lift the immortal spirit ! Byron can only move the spleen. He was at best a Satyrist, — in any other way he was mean enough. I dare say I do him injus- tice ; but I cannot love him, nor squeeze a tear to his memory. He did not like the world, and he has left it, as Alderman Curtis advised the •QClit aiiD 'CClisDom Radicals, "If they don't like their Country, damn 'em, let 'em leave it," they possessing no rood of ground in England, and he 10,000 acres. Byron was better than many Curtises. — [To Barton, April, 1824.'] Ringing in the Ears. — I have had my head and ears stuffed up with the East winds : a con- tinual ringing in my brain of bells jangled, or the spheres touched by somerav/ angel. Is it not George the Third tr^-ing the Hundredth Psalm ? I get my music for nothing. But the weather seems to be softening, and will thaw my stun- nings. Coleridge, writing to me a week or two since, begins his note — " vSummer has set in with its usual severity." — \_To Barton, May 16, 1826.1 Puns. — I never knew an enemy to puns who was not an ill-natured man. Your fair critic in the coach reminds me of a Scotchman who as- sured me he did not see much in vShakespeare, I replied, I dare say not. He felt the equivoke, looked awkward and reddis'h, but soon returned to the attack by saying that he thought Burns 114 Cbarlcs Xamb's was as good as Shakespeare. I said that I had no doubt he was — to a Scotchman. We ex- changed no more words that day. — \To J. B. Dibdin, June, 1826.'^ A Tiny Church. — And go to the little church which is a very Protestant Loretto, and seems dropt by some angel for the use of a hermit who was at once parishioner and a whole parish. It is not too big. Go in the night ; bring it away in your portmanteau, and I will plant it in my garden. It must have been erected in the wQvy infancy of British Christianity, for the tw^o or three first converts ; yet with it all the appert- enances of a church of the first magnitude — its pulpit, its pews, its baptismal font ; a cathedral in a nutshell. Seven people would crowd it like a Caledonian Chapel. The minister that divides the Word there must give lumping pennyworths. It is built to the text of ' ' two or three assembled in my name." It reminds me of the grain of mustard-seed. If the glebe- land is proportionate it may yield two potatoes. Tithes out of it could be no more split than a Wiit aiiD mis&om 115 hair. Its First fruits must be its Last, for 'twould never produce a couple. It is truly ttie strait and narrow way, and few there be (of London visitants) that find it. The still small voice is surely to be found there, if anywhere. A sounding-board is merel}' there for ceremony. It is secure from earthquakes, not more from sanctity than size, for 'twould feel a mountain thrown upon it no more than a taper-worm would. Go and see, but not without your spectacles. — {_To J. B. Dibdin, June 14, 1826.1 Poets as Critics. — I wished for you yester- day. I dined in Parnassus, with Wordsworth, Coleridge, Rogers, and Tom Moore, — half the poetry of England constellated and clustered in Gloucester Place ! It was a delightful evening. Coleridge was in his finest vein of talk — had all the talk ; and let 'em talk as evilly as they do of the envy of poets, I am sure not one there but was content to be nothing but a lis- tener. The Muses were dumb while Apollo lectured on his and their fine art. It is a lie that poets are envious. I have know^n the besl ii6 (Ibarlc6 Xamb's of them, and can speak to it, that they give each other their merits, and are the kindest critics as well as best authors. — [To Barton, March 5, 1823. \ On Edward Irving. — I have got acquainted with Mr. Irving, the Scotch preacher, whose fame must have reached you. He is an humble disciple at the foot of Gamaliel, S. T. C. Judge how his own sectarists must stare, when I tell you he has dedicated abook to S. T. C, acknowl- edging to have learnt more of the nature of faith, Christianity, and Christian Church from him than from all the men he ever con- versed with ! He is a most amiable, sincere, modest man in a room, this Boanerges in the temple. Mrs. Montagu told him the dedica- tion would do him no good. "That shall be a reason for doing it," was his answer. Judge, now, whether this man be a quack. — \To Leigh Hunt, 1S24.'] Don Quixote. — Quixote is the father of gentle ridicule, and at the same time the very mn anD limteOom depository aud treasury of chivalry and highest notions. Marry, when somebody persuaded Cervantes that he meant only fun, aud put him upon writing that unfortunate Second Part with the confederacies of that unworthy duke and most contemptible duchess, Cervantes sacrificed his instinct to his understanding. — [ To Soitthey, Aug. 10,182s.'] Bi^AKE'S Drawings. — Blake is a real name, I assure you, aud a most extraordinary man, if he be still living. He is the Robert Blake, whose wild designs accompany a splendid folio edition of the Night Thoughts, v/hich you may have seen, in one of which he pictures the part- ing of soul and body by a solid mass of human form floating off, God knows hov/, from a lump- ish mass (fac-simile to itself) left behind on the dying bed. He paints in water colors marvel- lous strange pictures, visions of his brain, which he asserts that he has seen. They have great merit. He has seen the old Welsh bards on Snowdon — he has seen the Beautifullest, the strongest, and the Ugliest Man, left alone from ii8 Cbarles Xamb's the Massacre of the Britons by the Romans, and has painted them from memory (I have seen his paintings), and asserts them to be as good as the figures of Raphael and Angelo, but not better, as they had precisely the same retro- visions and prophetic visions with themself [himself]. — \^To Barton, April, 1824..'] Making Cai.i.s. — But indeed I am ill at these ceremonious inductions. I fancy I was not born with a call on my head, though I have brought one down upon it with a vengeance. I love not to pluck that sort of fruit crude, but to stay its ripening into visits. — \^To Procter, Nov. II, 1824.1 SheIvI^Ey. — I can no more understand Shelley than you can. His poetry is "thin sown with profit or delight." Yet I must point to your notice a sonnet conceived and expressed with a witty delicacy. It is that addressed to one who hated him, but w^ho could not persuade him to hate /inn again. His coyness to the other's passion — (for hate demands a return as •omit anO misDoni ng much as love, and starves without it) — is most arch and pleasant. Pray, like it very much. For his theories and nostrums, they are oracular enough ; but I either comprehend 'em not, or there is " miching malice " and mischief in 'em, but, for the most part, ringing with their own emptiness. Hazlitt said well of 'em — "Many are the wiser and better for reading Shakespeare, but nobody was ever wiser or better for reading Shelley."— [7b Barto7i, Aug., 182^.1 Sii.e:nt Scripture. — No book can have too much of silent Scripture in it ; but the natural power of a story is diminished when the upper- most purpose in the writer seems to be to recom- mend something else, viz. : Religion. You know what Horace says of the Detis intersit. — [Zb Barton, Jan. 23, 182^.1 On Sunday. — I am sure I cannot fill a letter, though I should disfurnish my skull to fill it ; but you expect something, and shall have a notelet. Is Sunday, not divinely speaking, but humanly and holidaysically, a blessing ? With- out its institution, would our rugged task-mas- Cbarles Xamb's ters have giveu us a leisure day, so often, think you, as once in a month ? or, if it had not been instituted, might they not have given us every sixth day ? Solve me this problem. If we are to go three times a day to church, why has Sun- day slipped into the notion of a /zc'/Z/day ? A HoivYday I grant it. The Puritans, I have read in Southey's book, knew the distinction. They made people observe Sunday rigorously, would not let a nursery-maid walk out in the fields with children for recreation on that day. But then — they gave the people a holiday from all sorts of work every second Tuesday. This was giving to the two Coesars that which was his re- spective. Wise, beautiful, thoughtful, generous legislators ! Would Wilberforce give us our Tuesdays ? No : (d — n him !) — he would turn the six days into sevenths. — [7b Bartofi, Aprily 1824.1 A "Day-Mare." — Do you know what it is to succumb under an unsurmountable day-mare — "a whoreson lethargy," Falstaff calls it, — an indisposition to do anything, or to be anything, limit anD MisDom 121 — a total deadness and distaste, a suspension of vitality, — an indiflference to locality,— a numb, soporifical, good-for-nothingness, — an ossifica- tion all over, — an oyster-like insensibility to the passing events, — a mild stupor, — a brawny defi- ance to the needles of a thrusting-in conscience ? Did you ever have a very bad cold, with a total irresolution to submit to w^ater-gruel processes. This has been for many weeks my lot and my excuse. My fingers drag heavily over this pa- per, and to my thinking it is three-and-twenty furlongs from here to the end of this demi- sheet. I have not a thing to say ; nothing is of more importance than another ; I am flatter than a denial or a pancake ; emptier than Judge Park's wig when the head is in it ; duller than a country stage when the actors are off it ; a cipher, an O ! I acknowledge life at all, only by an occasional convulsional cough, and a per- manent phlegmatic pain in the chest. I am weary of the world ; life is weary of me. My day is gone into twilight, and I don't think it worth the expense of candles. My wick hath a thief in it, but I can't muster courage to snuff it. I in- Cbarles Xamb^s hale suffocation ; I can't distinguish veal from mutton ; nothing interests me. 'Tis twelve o'clock, and Thurtell is just now coming out upon the New Drop, Jack Ketch alertly tucking up his greasy sleeves to do the last oflBice of mortality ; yet cannot I elicit a groan or a moral reflection. If you told me the world will be at an end to-morrow, I should just say, " Will it ? " I have not volition enough to dot my z's, much less to comb my eyebrows ; my eyes are set in my head ; my brains are gone out to see a poor relation in Moorfields, and they did not say when they 'd come back again ; my skull is a Grub Street attic, to let — not so much as a joint- stool or a crack'd Jordan left in it ; my hand writes, not I, from habit, as chickens run about a little when their heads are off. O for a vigor- ous fit of gout, cholic, toothache, — an earwig in my auditor}', a fly in my ^^sual organs ! Pain is life — the sharper, the more evidence of life ; but this apathy, this death ! Did you ever have an obstinate cold, — a six or seven weeks' unin- termitting chill and suspension of hope, fear, conscience, and everything? Yet do I try all I mit auD misOom 123 can to cure it ; I trj- wine, and spirits, and smoking, and snuff in unsparing quantities; but they all only seem to make me worse, instead of better. I sleep in a damp room, but it does me no good ; I come home late o' nights, but do not find any visible amend- ment ! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death ? It is just fifteen minutes after twelve. Thur- tell is by this time a good way on his journey, baiting at Scorpion perhaps ; Ketch is bargain- ing for his cast coat and waist-coat. The Jew demurs at first at three half-crowns ; but in con- sideration that he may get somewhat by show- ing 'em in the town, finally closes. — [ To Barton, Jan. p, 1824.1 ** The Longest Liver." — You are too much apprehensive of your complaint : I know many that are always ailing of it, and live on to a good old age. I know a merry fellow (you partly know him) who, when his medical advi- ser told him he had drunk away all that part, congratulated himself (now that his liver was 124 Cbaclcs Xamb'6 gone) that he should be the longest liver of the two.— [To Barton, Nov. 22, 182^.1 On H. F. Gary. — I hope you transmitted the Fox-Journal to its owner, with suitable thanks. Mr. Gary, the Dante-man, dines with me to-day. He is a model of a country parson, lean (as a curate ought to be), modest, sensible, no ob- truder of church dogmas, quite a different man from Southey. You would like him. Pray accept this for a letter, and believe me, with sin- cere regards.— [7^7 Barton, Sept. 2, i82j.'\ A Church at Hastings.— The best thing I lit upon by accident was a small country church (by whom or when built unknown), standing bare and single in the midst of a grove, with no house or appearance of habitation within a quarter of a mile, only passages diverging from it through beautiful woods to so many farmhouses. There it stands like the first idea of a church, before parishioners were thought of, nothing but birds for its congregation ; or like a hermit's oratory (the hermit dead), or a limit aiiD TlUlisDom 125 mausoleum ; its effect singularly impressive, like a cliurcli found in a desert isle to startle Crusoe with a home image. You must make out a vicar and a congregation from fancy, for surely none came there ; yet it wants not its pul- pit, and its font, and all the seemly additaments of <7«r worship. — [71? Barton, July 10, 182^.'] On SouThey's Criticism. — Southey has at- tacked Elia on the score of infidelity, in the Quarterly article, Progress of Infidelity. I had not, nor have seen the Monthly. He might have spared an old friend such a construction of a few careless flights, that meant no harm to religion. If all his unguarded expressions on the subject were to be collected ! But I love and respect Southey, and will not retort. I hate his review, and his being a reviewer. The hint he has dropped will knock the sale of the book on the head, which was almost at a stop before. Let it stop, — there is- corn in Egypt, while there is cash at Leadenhall. You and I are something besides being writers, thank God ! — [Tb Barton, July 10, 1S2J']. 126 Cbarles Xamb'6 Benefit oe Ignorance. — The best thing in these cases is to keep yourself as ignorant as you can, as ignorant as the world was before Galen, of the entire inner construction of the animal man ; not to be conscious of a midriff; to hold kidneys (save of sheep and swine) to be an agreeable fiction ; not to know whereabout the gall grows ; to account the circulation of the blood an idle whimsey of Harvey's ; to ac- knowledge no mechanism not visible. For, once fix the seat of your disorder, and your fancies flux into it like bad humors. Those medical gentries choose each his favorite part ; one takes the lungs, another the aforesaid liver, and refer to that whatever in the animal econ- omy is amiss. Above all, use exercise, take a little more spirituous liquors, learn to smoke, continue to keep a good conscience, and avoid tampering with hard terms of art — viscosity, scirrhosity, and those bugbears by which simple patients are scared into their graves. Believe the general sense of the mercantile world, which holds that desks are not deadly. It is the mind, good B. B., and not the limbs, that taints by mft anD WlsDom 127 long sitting. Think of the patience of tailors ! Think how long the Ivord Chancellor sits ! Think of the brooding hen ! — \To Barton, Nov. 22, 182s.'] His Tender Conscience.— Dear B. B.— I am ashamed at not acknowledging your kind little poem, which I must needs like much ; but I protest I thought I had done it at the moment. Is it possible a letter has miscarried ? Did you get one in which I sent you an extract from the poems of I/ord Stirling ? I should wonder if you did, for I sent you none such. There was an incipient lie strangled in the birth. Some people's conscience is so tender ! But, in plain truth, I thank you very much for the verses. I have a very kind letter from the Laureate, with a self-invitation to come and shake hands with me. This is truly handsome and noble. ' Tis worthy of my old idea of Southey. Shall not I, think you, be covered with a red suffusion. — [To Barton, Nov. 22, 1S2J.] Giving up Smoking.— I design to give up smoking; but I have not yet fixed upon the 128 Gbarles %nmb*6 equivalent vice. I must have quid pro quo or quo pro quid, as Tom Woodgate would correct me. — {To Hood, 182^.2 On De Foe's Writings.— I have nothing of De Foe's but two or three novels and the Plague History. I can give you no informa- tion about him. As a slight general character of what I remember of them (for I have not looked into them latterly), I would say that in the ap- pearance oi truth, in all the incidents and con- versations that occur in them, they exceed any works of fiction I am acquainted with. It is perfect illusion. The author never appears in these self-narratives (for so they ought to be called, or rather autobiographies), but the nar- rator chains us down to an implicit belief in everything he says. There is all the minute details of a log-book in it. Dates are painfully pressed upon the memory. Facts are repeated over and over in varying phases, till you can- not choose but believe them. It is like read- ing evidence given in a court of justice. So anxious the story-teller seems that the truth mft anD WlsOom 129 should be clearly comprehended, then when he has told us a matter of fact or a motive, in a line or two farther down he repeats it, with his favorite figure of speech, " I say," so and so, though he had made it abundantly plain before. This is in imitation of the common people's way of speaking, or rather of the way in which they are addressed by a master or a mistress, who wishes to impress something upon their memories, and has a wonderful effect upon matter-of-fact readers. Indeed it is to such principally that he writes. His style is every- where beautiful, but plain and homely. Rob- inson Crusoe is delightful to all ranks and classes, but it is easy to see that it is written in the phraseology peculiarly adapted to the lower condition of readers ; hence it is an especial favorite with seafaring men, poor boys, servant maids, etc. His novels are capital kitchen- reading, while they are worthy, from their deep interest, to find a shelf in the libraries of the wealthiest and the most learned. His passion for matter-of-fact narrative sometimes betrayed him into a long relation of common incidents. I30 Cbarlcs Xamb*6 which might happen to any man, and have no interest but the intense appearance of truth in them, to recommend them. — [To Walter Wil- son, Dec. i6, 1822.'] Faust. — I thoroughly agree with you as to the German Faiist as far as I can do justice to it from an English translation. 'Tis a dis- agreeable canting tale of seduction, which has nothing to do with the spirit of Faustus — Curi- osity. Was the dark secret to be explored to end in the seducing of a weak girl, which might have been accomplished by earthly agency? When Marlow gives his Faustus a mistress, he flies him at Helen, flower of Greece, to be sure, and not at Miss Betsy, or Miss Sally Thoughtless. " Cut is the branch that bore the goodly fruit, And wither'd is Apollo's laurel tree, Faustus is dead." — \_To AtTisworik, Dec. 9, 182^.'] Home. — Home is become strange, and will remain so yet awhile ; home is the most unfor- giving of friends, and always resents absence ; llClit anD "MisDom 131 I know its old cordial looks will return, but they are slow in clearing up. — [ To Bartoft, July, 10, 1823. "[ On Pope's Portrait. — I have hungup Pope, and a gem it is, in my town room ; I hope for your approval. Though it accompanies the Essay on Man, I think that was not the poem he is here meditating. He would have looked up, somehow affectedly, if he were just conceiv- ing " Awake, my St. John." Neither is he in the Rape of the Lock mood exactly. I think he has just made out the last lines of the " Epistle to Jervis," between gay and tender, " And other beauties envy Worsley's eyes." I '11 be d 'd if that is n't the line. He is brooding over it, with a dreamy phantom of Lady Mary floating before him. He is think- ing which is the earliest possible day and hour that she will first see it. What a miniature piece of gentility it is ! Why did you give it me? I do not like you enough to give you any thing so good. — \_To Procter, April jj, 1823. '\ 132 Cbarles Xamb^s His Garden. — I heard of you from Mr. Pul- ham this morning, and that gave a fillip to my laziness, which has been intolerable ; but I am so taken up with pruning and gardening, quite a new sort of occupation to me. I have gath- ered my jargonels, but my Windsor pears are backward. The former were of exquisite raci- ness. I do now sit under my own vine, and contemplate the growth of vegetable nature. I can now understand in what sense they speak of father Adam. I recognize the paternity while I watch my tulips. I almost fell with him, for the first day I turned a drunken gar- dener (as he let in the serpent) into my Eden, and he laid about him, lopping off some choice boughs, etc., which hung over from a neighbor's garden, and in his blind zeal laid waste a shade, which had sheltered their window from the gaze of passers-by. The old gentlewoman (fury made her not handsome) could scarcely be reconciled by all my fine words. There was no buttering her parsnips. She talked of the law. What a lapse to commit on the first day of my happy "garden-state! "—[7b Barton^ Sept. 2, 182J.] ma anD MlsOom 133 On Ai^msgiving. — One of the bitterest pangs of remorse I ever felt was when a child — when my kind old aunt had strained her pocket- strings to bestow a sixpenny whole plum-cake upon me. In my way home through the Bor- ough I met a venerable old man, not a mendi- cant, but thereabouts : a look-beggar, not a verbal petitionist ; and in the coxcombry of taught charity I gave away the cake to him. I walked on a little in all the pride of an Evan- gelical peacock, when of a sudden my old aunt's kindness crossed me ; the sum it was to her ; the pleasure she had a right to expect that I — not the old impostor — should take in eating her cake ; the ingratitude by which, under the color of a Christian virtue, I had frustrated her cherished purpose. I sobbed, wept, and took it to heart so grievously, that I think I never suffered the like ; and I was right. It was a piece of unfeeling hypocrisy, and it proved a lesson to me ever after. The cake has long been masticated, consigned to the dunghill with the ashes of that unseasonable pauper. 134 Gbarles Xamb's But when Providence, who is better to us all than our aunts, gives me a pig, remembering my temptation and my fall, I shall endeavor to act towards it more in the spirit of the donor's purpose. Yours (short of pig) to command in every- thing.— [7b Coleridge, March p, i822.'\ I^ACK OF Neatness. — I am ashamed of the shabb}' letters I send, but I am by nature any- thing but neat. Therein my mother bore me no Quaker. I never could seal a letter without dropping the wax on one side, besides scalding my fingers. I never had a seal, too, of my own. Writing to a great man lately, who is moreover very heraldic, I borrowed a seal of a friend, who by the female side quarters the Protec- torial arms of Cromwell. How they must have puzzled my correspondent ! My letters are generally charged as double at the Post Office, from their inveterate clumsiness of foldure ; so you must not take it disrespectful to yourself if I send you such ungainly scraps. I think I lose ^loo a year at the India House, owing mat anO mis^om 135 solely to my want of neatness in making up accounts. How I puzzle 'em out at last is the wonder. I have to do with millions ! ! — [ To Barton, March iiy 182J.] On Diai^ect in Poetry. — In some of your story-telling ballads the provincial phrases sometimes startle me. I think you are too pro- fuse with them. In poetry slajig of every kind is to be avoided. There is a rustick Cockney- ism, as little pleasing as ours of London. Trans- plant Arcadia to Helpstone. The true rustic style I think is to be found in Shenstone. Would his *' Schoolmistress," the prettiest of poems, have been better if he had used quite the Goody's own language? Now and then a home rusticism is fresh and startling ; but when nothing is gained in expression, it is out of tenor. It may make folks smile and stare ; but the ungenial coalition of barbarous with refined phrases will prevent you in the end from being so generally tasted, as you desire to be. Ex- cuse my freedom, and take the same liberty with my pu7ts. — \^John Clare, Aug. j/, i822.'\ 136 Cbarles Xamb*0 A "Lying Memory." — Is it a fatality in me, that everything I touch turns into a "lie " ? I once quoted two lines from a translation of Dante, which Hazlitt very greatly admired, and quoted it in a book as proof of the stupendous power of that poet ; but no such lines are to be found in the translation, which has been searched for the purpose. I must have dreamed them, for I am quite certain I did not forge them knowingly. What a misfortune to have a lying memory ! — \_To Barton, Feb. //, i823.-\ The Gentile Giantess.— Ask anybody you meet who is the biggest woman in Cambridge, and I '11 hold you a wager they '11 say Mrs. Smith. She broke down two benches in Trinity gardens, one on the confines of St. John's, which occasioned a litigation between the Societies as to repairing it. In warm weather she retires into an ice-cellar (literally !) and dates the returns of the j^ears from a hot Thursday some twenty years back. She sits in a room with opposite doors and windows, to let mit anD MisDom 137 in a thorough draught, which gives her slen- derer friends toothaches. She is to be seen in the market every morning, at ten, cheapening fowls, which I observe the Cambridge poulter- ers are not sufficiently careful to stump. — [ To Miss Woj'dsworth, 3fay 2^, 1820. ] On Using Different Inks.— I will never write another letter with alternate inks. You cannot imagine how it cramps the flow of the style. I can conceive Pindar (I do not mean to compare myself to //zw), by the command of Hiero, the Sicilian tyrant (was not he the tyrant of some place? fie on m}- neglect of his- tory !) — I can conceive him by command of Hiero or Perillus set down to pen an Isthmian or Nemean panegyric in lines, alternate red and black. I maintain he couldn't have done it ; it would have been a straight-laced torture to his muse ; he would have call'd for the bull for a re- lief. Neither could Lycidas, nor the Chorics (how do you like the word ?) of Samson Agonistes, have been written with two inks. Your couplets, with points, epilogues to Mr. H.'s, etc., might 38 Cbarlc9 Xamb's be even benefited by the twy fount, where one line (the second) is for point, and the first for rhyme. I think the alteration would assist, like a mould. I maintain it, you could not have written your stanzas on pre-existence with two inks. Try another ; and Rogers, with his silver standish, having one ink only, I will bet my Ode on Tobacco, against the Pleasici'cs of Memory, — and Hope, too, shall put more fervor of enthusiasm into the same subject than you can with your two ; he shall do it stanspede 171 uno, as it were. — [7b Wordsworth, Jime /, 1819.-] RiCHKS. — Of time, health, and riches, the first in order is not last in excellence. Riches are chiefly good because they give us time. — \To Barton, Oct. p, 1822. '^ Pi,AY. — All work and no play dulls me. Company is not play, but many times hard work. To play, is for a man to do what he pleases, or to do nothing — to go about soothing his particular fancies. — To Barton, Dec. 23, 1822.] mit anD misDom 139 The Bast India Company's Ruizes.— The Committee have formally abolished all holydays whatsoever — for which may the Devil, who keeps no holydays, have them in his eternal burning workshop. When I say holydays, I mean Calendar holydays, for at Medley's insti- gation they have agreed to a sort of scale by which the Chief has power to give leave of absence, viz : Those who have been 50 years and upwards to be absent 4 days in the year, but not without leave of the Chief. 35 years and upward, 3 days, 25 years and upward, 2 days, 18 years and upward, i day, which I think very Liberal. We are also to sign our name when we go as well as when we come, and every quarter of an hour we sign, to show that we are here. Mins and Gardner take it in turn to bring round the book — O here is Mins with the Book — no it's Gardner — "What's that, G.? " " The appearance book. Sir " (with a gentle inclination of his head, and smiling). ** What the devil, is the quarter come again ? " I40 Cbarles Xamb*5 It annoys Dodwell amazingly ; he sometimes has to sign six or seven times while he is read- ing the Newspaper. — \_ToJohn Chambers jSiSJX Acute Criticism of Byron. — It was quite a mistake that I could dislike anything you should write against Lord Byron ; for I have a thorough aversion to his character, and a very moderate admiration of his genius: he is great in so little a way. To be a Poet is to be the Man, not a petty portion of occasional low passion worked up in a permanent form of hu- manity. Shakespeare has thrust such rubbish- ly feelings into a corner, — the dark dusky heart of Don John, in the Much Ado About Noth- ing. — \_To Joseph Cottle, i8ig.'\ On SHEI.I.EY. — Shelley I saw once. His voice was the most obnoxious squeak I ever was tor- mented with, ten thousand times worse than the Laureate's, whose voice is the worst part about him, except his Laureateship. Lord Ey- ron opens upon him on Monday in a parody (I suppose) of the Vision of Judgment, in which latter the Poet I think did not much show his. Mit ant) Mi9C)om 141 To award his Heaven and his Hell in the pre- sumptuous manner he has done, was a piece of immodesty as bad as Shelleyism. — [To Barton, Oct. g, 1822.1 On Never being Ai^one. — Evening com- pany I should always like had I any mornings, but I am saturated with human faces {divine forsooth !) and voices all the golden morning ; and five evenings in a week would be as much as I should covet to be in company ; but I as- sure you that is a wonderful week in which I can get two, or one to myself. I am never C. L., but always C. ly. and Co. He who thought it not good for man to be alone, preserve me from the more prodigious monstrosity of being never by myself ! I forget bed-time, but even there these sociable frogs clamber up to annoy me. Once a week, generally some singular evening that, being alone, I go to bed at the hour I ought always to be a-bed ; just close to my bedroom window is the club-room of a pub- lic-house, where a set of singers, I take them to be chorus-singers of the two theatres (it must 142 Cbarles Xamb's be both of them), begin their orgies. They are a set of fellows (as I conceive) who, being lim- ited by their talents to the bnrthen of the song at the play-houses, in revenge have got the common popular airs by Bishop, or some cheap composer, arranged for choruses ; that is to be sung all in chorus. At least I never can catch any of the text of the plain song, nothing but the Babylonish choral howl at the tail on 't. "That fury being quenched" — the howl, I mean — a burden succeeds of shouts and clap- ping, and knocking of the table. At length overtasked nature drops under it, and escapes for a few hours into the society of the sweet silent creatures of dreams, which go away with mocks and mows at cockcrow. And then I think of the words Christabel's father used (bless me, I have dipt in the wrong ink !) to say every morning by way of variety when he awoke : " Every knell, the Baron saith, Wakes us up to a world of death." or something like it. All I mean by this sense- less interrupted tale is, that by central situa- Wiit anO MtsOom 143 tion I am a little over-companied. — [To Mrs. Wordsworth, February i8, i8i8.'\ "Iif Petrarch had been Born a Fooi,." — Bye is about publishing a volume of poems which he means to dedicate to Matthie. Me- thinks he might have found a better Mecaenas. They are chiefly amatory, others of them stupid, the greater part very far below mediocrity ; but they discover much tender feeling ; they are most like Petrarch of any foreign Poet, or what we might have supposed Petrarch would have writ- ten if Petrarch had been born a fool ! — [ To John Chambers, 1818.'] Bad Behavior on Soi^emn Occasions.— But there is a man in m}' office, a Mr. Hedges, who proses it away from morning to night, and never gets beyond corporal and material verities. He'd get these crack-brain metaphysics out of the young gentleman's head as soon as any one I know. When I can't sleep o' nights, I imagine a dialogue with Mr. Hedges, upon any given subject, and go prosing on in fancy with him, 144 Cbarles Xamb's till I either laugh or fall asleep. I have literally found it answer. I am going to stand godfather; I don't like the business; I cannot muster up decorum for these occa- sions ; I shall certainly disgrace the font. I was at Hazlitt's marriage, and had like to have been turned out several times during the ceremony. Anything awful makes me laugh. I misbehaved once at a funeral. Yet I can read about these ceremonies with pious and proper feelings. The realities of life only seem the mockeries. — \_To Sout/iey, Aicgust 9, 1813.-] On Rewef from Routine Work.— If I do but get rid of auditing warehousekeepers' ac- counts and get no worse-harassing task in the place of it, what a lord of liberty I shall be ! I shall dance and skip, and make mouths at the invisible event, and pick the thorns out of my pillow, and throw 'em at rich men's night-caps, and talk blank verse, hoity-toity, and sing — "A clerk I was in Ivondon gay," "Ban, ban, Ca- Caliban," like the emancipated monster, and Timit anD TimiaJ)om 145 go where I like, up this street or down that alley. — [To Wordsworth, August g, 18 r^.'] The Charms of City IvIFE. — We are in the individual spot I like best, in all this great city. The theatres with all their noises. Co- vent Garden, dearer to me than any gardens of Alcinous, where we are morally certain of the earliest peas and 'sparagus. Bow street, where the thieves are examined, within a few yards of us. Mary had not been here four-and-twenty hours before she saw a thief. She sits in the window working ; and casually throwing out her eyes, she sees a concourse of people coming this way, with a constable to conduct the so- lemnity. These little incidents agreeably diver- sify a female life. — [To Miss Wordsworth, No- vember 21, iSiy.'] A Whimsicaiv Letter to a Friend in China. — Dear old Friend and absentee — This is Christmas Day 1S15 with us ; what it may be with you I don't know, the 12th of June next year perhaps ; and if it should be the conse- 146 Cbarles Xamb'e crated season with you, I don't see how you can keep it. You have no turkeys ; you would not desecrate the festival by offering up a withered Chinese bantam, instead of the savory grand Norfolcian holocaust, that smokes all around my nostrils at this moment from a thousand firesides. Then what puddings have you ? Where will you get holly to stick in your churches, or churches to stick your dried tea- leaves (that must be the substitute) in ? What memorials you can have of the holy time, I see not. A chopped missionary or two may keep up the thin idea of lycnt and the wilderness ; but what standing evidence have you of the Nativity ? 'T is our rosy-cheeked, homestalled divines, whose faces shine to the tune of " Unto us a child is born," faces fragrant with the mince-pies of half a century, that alone can authenticate the cheerful mystery. I feel my bowels refreshed with the holy tide ; my zeal is great against the unedifled heathen. Down with the Pagodas — down with the idols — Ching- chong-fo — and his foolish priesthood ! Come out of Babylon, O my friend ! for her time is limit anO misDom 147 come ; and the child that is native, and the Proselyte of her gates, shall kindle and smoke together ! And in sober sense what makes you so long from among us, Manning ? You must not expect to see the same England again which you left. Empires have been overturned, crowns trod- den into dust, the face of the western world quite changed. Your friends have all got old — those you left blooming ; myself (who am one of the few that remember you), those golden hairs which you recollect my taking a pride in, turned to silvery and gray. INIary has been dead and buried many years : she desired to be buried in the silk gown you sent her. Rick- man that you remember active and strong, now walks out supported by a servant maid and a stick. Martin Burney is a very old man. The other day an aged woman knocked at my door, and pretended to my acquaintance. It was long before I had the most distant cognition of her ; but at last, together, we made her out to be Louisa, the daughter of Mrs. Topham, formerly Mrs. Morton, who had been Mrs. Reynolds, 148 Cbarles Hamb's formerly Mrs. Kenney, whose first husband was Holcroft, the dramatic writer of the last century. St. Paul's Church is a heap of ruins ; the Monu- ment is n't half so high as you knew it, divers parts being successively taken down which the ravages of time had rendered dangerous ; the horse at Charing Cross is gone, no one knows whither ; and all this has taken place while you have been settling whether Ho-hing-tong should be spelt with a , or a . For aught I see you might almost as well remain where you are, and not come like a Struldbrug into a world where few were bom when you went away. Scarce here and there one will be able to make out your face. All your opinions will be out of date, your jokes obsolete, your puns rejected with fastidiousness as wit of the last age. Your way of mathematics has already given way to a new method, which after all is I believe the old doctrine of Maclaurin, new- vampcd up with what he borrowed of the nega- tive quantity of fluxions from Euler. Poor Godwin ! I was passing his tomb the other day in Cripplegate churchyard. There mtt mt> UlisDom 149 are some verses upon it written by Miss , which if I thought good enough I would send you. He was one of them who would have hailed your return, not with boisterous shouts and clamors, but with the complacent gratu- lations of a philosopher anxious to promote knowledge as leading to happiness ; but his systems and his theories are ten feet deep in Cripplegate mould. Coleridge is just dead, having lived just long enough to close the eyes of Wordsworth, who paid the debt to nature but a week or two before. Poor Col., but two days before he died he wrote to a bookseller, propos- ing an epic poem on the Wanderings of Cain, in twenty-four books. It is said he has left be- hind him more than forty thousand treatises in criticism, metaphysics, and divinity, but few of them in a state of completion. They are now destined, perhaps, to wrap up spices. You see what mutations the busy hand of Time has pro- duced, while you have consumed in foolish voluntary exile that time which might have gladdened your friends — benefited your coun- try ; but reproaches are useless. Gather up the I50 Cbarles Xamb's ■wretched reliques, my friend, as fast as you can, and come to your old home. I will rub my eyes and try to recognize you. We will shake with- ered hands together, and talk of old things — . . . I suppose you heard that I had left the India House and gone into the Fishmongers' Almshouses over the bridge : I have a little cabin there, small and homely, but you shall be welcome to it. — [To Maiming; December 25, 1815.1 An Obituary Pokt.— Ditton-upon-Thames has been blessed by the residence of a poet, who for love or money — I do not well know which — has dignified every gravestone, for the last few years, with bran-new verses, all different, and all ingenious, with the author's name at the bottom of each. This sweet Swan of Thames has so artfully diversified his strains and his rhymes, that the same thought never occurs twice ; more justly, perhaps, as no thought ever occurs at all, there was a physical impossi- bility that the same thought should recur. — \To Wordsworth, October jg, /8/0.] mix anD 1KIlf6C»om 151 Mary's First Joke.— What 's the use of tell- ing you what good things you have written, or — I hope I may add — that I know them to be good ? Apropos — when I first opened upon the just mentioned poem, in a careless tone, I said to Mary, as if putting a riddle, " What is good for a bootless be7ie f " To which, with infinite presence of mind (as the jest-book has it), she answered, " a shoeless pea." It was the first joke she ever made. — \^To Wordsworth, iSij.'] Borrowers of Books. — I have not bound the poems yet. I wait till people have done borrowing them. I think I shall get a chain and chain them to my shelves, more Bodleiano, and people may come and read them at chain's length. For of those who borrow, some read slow ; some mean to read but don't read ; and some neither read nor meant to read, but bor- row to leave you an opinion of their sagacity. I must do my money -borrowing friends the justice to say that there is nothing of this caprice or wantonness of alienation in them. When they borrow my money they never fail 152 Cbarles Xamb's to make use of it. — [ To Wordsworth, April p, 1816.I On His Own Library. — When I last wrote to you I was in lodgings. I am now in Cham- bers, No. 4, Inner Temple Lane, where I should be happy to see you any evening. Bring any of your friends, the mandarins, with you. I have two sitting-rooms ; I call them so par excelleiice for you may stand, or loll, or lean, or try any posture in them, but they are best for sitting ; not squatting down Japanese fash- ion, but the more decorous use of the which European usage has consecrated. I have two of these rooms on the third floor, and five sleeping, cooking, etc., rooms, on the fourth floor. In my best room is a choice collection of the works of Hogarth, an English painter of some humor. In my next best are shelves containing a small but well-chosen library. My best room commands a court, in which there are trees and a pump, the water of which is excellent cold, with brandy, and not very insipid without. Here I hope to set up my mat anD 'UmisDom 153 rest, and not quit, till Mr. Powell, the under- taker, gives me notice that I may have posses- sion of my last lodging. He lets lodgings for single gentlemen. — [ To Manni7ig, January 2, 1810.1 Puns and Punch. — Puns I have not made many (nor punch much) since the date of my last ; one I cannot help relating. A constable in Salisbury Cathedral was telling me that eight people dined at the top of the spire of the cathedral ; upon which I remarked, that they must be very sharp set. But in general I cultivate the reasoning part of my mind more than the imaginative. — \To Manning , January 2, 1810.1 On the; Discomforts of Moving.— What a dislocation of comfort is comprised in that word "moving ! " Such a heap of little nasty things, after you think all is got into the cart : old dredging-boxes, worn-out brushes, gallipots, vials, things that it is impossible the most ne- cessitous person can ever want, but which the 154 CbarlcB Xamb'a women, who preside on these occasions, will not leave behind if it was to save your soul. They 'd keep the cart ten minutes to stow in dirty pipes and broken matches, to show their economy. Then you can find nothing you want for many days after you get into your new lodgings. You must comb your hair with your fingers, wash your hands without soap, go about in dirty gaiters. Were I Diogenes I would not move out of a kilderkin into a hogs- head, though the first had had nothing but small beer in it, and the second reeked claret. Our place of final destination — I don't mean the grave, but No. 4, Inner Temple Lane — looks out upon a gloomy churchyard-like court, called Hare Court, with three trees and a pump in it. Do you know it ? I was born near it, and used to drink at that pump when I was a Rechabite of six years old. — [To Manning; March 28, /5op.] CcEivEBS IN Search of a Wife. — Have you read Coelebs ? It has reached eight editions in so many weeks, yet literally it is one of the mit an& MisDom 155 very poorest sort of common novels, -witli the drawback of dull religion in it. Had the reli- gion been high and flavored, it would have been something. I borrowed this Ccelebs in Search of a Wife^ of a very careful, neat lad}^, and returned it with this stuff written in the beginning : — " If ever I marry a wife I '11 marry a landlord's daughter, For then I may sit in the bar, And drink cold brandy and water. —\_To Coleridge, June y, iSop.'] Thf< End of a Letter. — Mary has left a little space for me to fill up with nonsense, as the geographers used to cram monsters in the voids of the maps, and call it Terra Incog- nita. — \To Miss Wordsworth, August, 1810.'] An Unaccustomed Author. — Mr. Dawe is turned author ; he has been in such a way lately — Dawe, the painter, I mean — he sits and stands about at Holcroft's and says nothing ; 156 Cbarlcs Xamb's then sighs and leans his head on his hand. I took him to be in love ; but it seems he was only meditating a work, — The Life of Morland. The young man is not used to composition. — \^To Manning, Dec. 5, iSoST^ Hook and I grinned like a Cheshire cat. (Why do cats grin in Cheshire ? — Because it was once a country palatine, and the cats cannot help laughing whenever they think of it, though I see no great joke in it.) I said that Holcroft, on being asked who were the best dramatic writers of the day, replied, "Hook and I." Mr. Hook is author of several pieces, Tekeli, etc. You know what hooks and eyes are, don't you? They are what little boys do up their breeches with. — \To Mantling, February 26, 1808.'] On Pubwc Reading-Rooms. — I think public reading-rooms the best mode of educating young men. Solitary reading is apt to give the head- ache. Besides, who knows that you do read ? There are ten thousand institutions similar to the Royal Institution which have sprung up mit and misDont 157 from it. There is the London Institution, the South wark Institution, the Russell vSquare Rooms Institution, etc. — College quasi Con- lege, a place where people read together. — \_To Manning, February 26, 1808. '] Wordsworth and Shakespeare:. — Words- worth, the great poet, is coming to town ; he is to have apartments in the IMansion House. He says he does not see much difficulty in writ- ing like Shakespeare, if he had a mind to try it. It is clear that nothing is wanting but the mind. Even Coleridge was a little checked at this hardihood of assertion. — [ To Manning^ Feb- ruary 2(5, iSoS^l A Woman-HaTER. — Mrs. grows every day in disfavor with me. I wall be buried with this inscription over me : — " Here lies C. L., the woman hater": I mean that hated one woman: for the rest, God bless them! — [7<7 Manning, March 28, i8og.] On WiIvIvIam Hazi^iTT. — Wm. Hazlitt is in town. I took him to see a very pretty girl, profes- 158 Cbarles Xante's sedly, where there were two young girls (the very head and sum of the girlery was two young girls); they neither laughed, nor sneered, nor giggled, nor whispered — but they were young girls — and he sat and frowned blacker and blacker, indignant that there should be such a thing as youth and beauty, till he tore me away before supper, in perfect misery, and owned he could not bear young girls ; they drove him mad. vSo I took him home to my old nurse, where he recovered perfect tran- quillity. Independent of this, and as I am not a young girl myself, he is a great acquisition to us. He is, rather imprudently I think, print- ing a political pamphlet on his own account, and will have to pay for the paper, etc. The first duty of an author, I take it, is never to pay anything. But non cuivis cofitigit adire Cor- intJium. The managers, I thank my stars, have settled that question for me. — \_To Words- zvorthyjime 26, iSo^.l NocTURNAi. Visitors.— iV^. ^.— Have taken a room at three shillings a week, to be in TlClft mt> limisOom 159 between five and eight at night, to avoid my nodurjial 2X\2i^ knock-eternal ^ visitors. The first- fruits of my retirement has been a farce, which goes to manager to-morrow. Wish my ticket luck. God bless you ; and do write. — Yours, fumosissimus, C. Lamb. — [7(7 William Hazlitt, February ig, 1806.] To A Friend in Paris. — Is any night-walk comparable to a walk from St. Paul's to Char- ing Cross, for lighting and paving, crowds go- ing and coming without respite, the rattle of coaches, and the cheerfulness of shops ? Have you seen a man guillotined yet ? It is as good as hanging ? Are the women all painted, and the men all monkeys? or are there not a /ew that look like rational of both sexes ? — [7b Manning, February, i8o3.'\ An Addition to the Litany.— Oh, that I had the rectifying of the lyitany ! I would put in a libera nos (Scriptores videlicet) ab amicis ! That's all the news. — yPo Blajining, February, iSoj.'] i6o Cbarles Xamb's Language Not the: Oni.y Means of Hu- man Intercourse.— Your letter was just what a letter should be, crammed, and very funny. Every part of it* pleased me till you came to Paris ; then your philosophical indolence, or indifference, stung me. You cannot stir from 3'our rooms till you know the language ! What the devil ! — are men nothing but w-ord-trum- pets? Are men all tongue and ear? Have these creatures, that 5-ou and I profess to know something about, no faces, gestures, gabble, no folly, no absurdity, no induction of French edu- cation upon the abstract idea of men and woman, no similitude nor dissimilitude to Eng- lish ! Wh}-, thou cursed Smellfungus ! 3-our ac- count ofyourlanding and reception, and Bullen, (I forget how 3'ou spell it, it was spelt my way in Harry the Eighth's time), was exactly in that minute style which strong impressions IN- SPIRE (writing to a Frenchman, I write as a Frenchman would). It appears to me as if I should die with joy at the first landing in a foreign coimtry. — \_To Matming, February, 180J.] Wiit m\^ 'OmisDom i6i A Visit to Coi<eridge.— And my final re- solve 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 hospi- tality 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 Kes- wick, in a comfortable house, quite enveloped on all sides by a net of mountains : great flound- ering bears and monsters they seemed, all couch- ant and asleep. We got in in the evening, trav- elling in a post-chaise from Penrith, in the midst of a gorgeous sunset, which transmuted all the mountains into colors, purple, etc., etc. We thought we had got into fairyland. But that went off (and it never came again ; while we stayed v/e 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 im- pression I never received from objects of sight before, nor do I suppose I can ever again. Glorious creatures, fine old fellows, Skiddaw, II i62 Cbarlee Xamb's etc. 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 J^olian harp, and an old sofa, half bed, etc. And all looking out upon the last fading view of Skiddaw, and his broad-breasted brethren : what a night ! Here we staj^ed three full weeks, in which time I visited Wordsworth's cottage, where we stayed a day or two with the Clark- sons (good people, and most hospitable, at whose house we tarried one day and night), and saw Llo3'd. The Wordsworths were gone to Calais. — [7b Mannhig, September 2^^ 1802.'] Frenchmen and Engi^ishmen.— What you assert concerning the actors of Paris, that they exceed our comedians, bad as ours are, is un- possible. In one sense it may be true, that their fine gentlemen, in what is called genteel mit anD limisOom 163 comedy, may possibly be more brisk and dkgagb than Mr. Caulfield, or Mr. Whitfield ; but have any of them the power to move laughter in ex- cess? or can a Frenchman laugh? Can they batter at your judicious ribs till they shake, nothing loth to be so shaken ? This is John Bull's criterion, and it shall be mine. You are Frenchified. Both your tastes and morals are corrupt and preverted. 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 Bnglishman can beat three Frenchmen. Read Henry the Fifth to restore your orthodoxy. — \To Manning^ April ^j, iS03.-\ Skiddaw and the Tourists.— 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 i64 Cbarles Xamb's 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 wnth 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 zuork. I felt very little. I had been dreaming I was a very great man. But that is going oflf, 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 mit ant) misDom 165 are better places to live in for good and all than amidst Skiddaw. Still, I turn back to those great places where I wandered about, partici- pating 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. — [7b Manning, September 24, 1802.'] On Smoking. — What do you think of smok- ing? I want your sober, average, noon opinion of it. I generally am eating my dinner about the time I should determine it. Morning is a girl, and can't smoke — she 's no evidence one way or the other ; and Night is so 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 snm on 't. But that is deciding rather upon rhyme than reason. . . . After i66 Cbarlea Xamb's all, our instincts way be best. — [7b Coleridge^ April 2j, iSoj.l lyOVE OF London.— ... I don't mucb care if I never see a mountain in my life. I have passed all my days in London, until I have formed as many and intense local attachments as any of you mountaineers can have done with dead Nature. The lighted shops of the Strand and Fleet Street ; the innumerable trades, trades- men, and customers, coaches, wagons, play- houses ; all the bustle and wickedness round about Coven t Garden ; the very women of the Town ; the watchmen, drunken scenes, rattles ; life awake, if 5'ou awake, at all hours of the night ; the very impossibility of being dull in Fleet Street ; the crowds, the very dirt and mud, the sun shining upon houses and pavements, the print-shops, the old book-stalls, parsons, cheapening books, coffee-houses, steams of soups from kitchens, the pantomimes — London itself a pantomime and a masquerade— all these things work themselves into my mind and feed me, without a power of satiating me. The limit mt> Misboin 167 wonder of these sights impels me into night- walks about her crowded streets, and I often shed tears in the motley Strand from fulness of joy at so much life. All these emotions must be strange to you ; so are your rural emotions to me. But consider, what must I have been doing all my life, not to have lent great portions of my heart with usury to such scenes ? My attachments are all local, purely local. I have no passion (or have had none since I was in love, and then it was the spurious engender- ing of poetry and books) for groves and valleys. The rooms where I was born, the furniture which has been before my eyes all my life, a book-case which has followed me about like a faithful dog (only exceeding him in knov.dedge), wherever I have moved, old chairs, old tables, streets, squares, where I have sunned myself, my old school, — these are my mistresses. Have I not enough without your mountains ? I do not envy you. — [ To Wordsworth^ Jan. jo, 1801.'] lyAMB's Idea of Constancy. — Poor Sam. I^e Grice ! I am afraid the world, and the i68 Cbarlee Xamb's camp, and the university, have spoilt him among them. 'T is certain he had at one time a strong capacity for turning out something better. I knew him, and that not long since, when he had a most warm heart. I am ashamed of the indifference I have sometimes felt towards him. I think the devil is in one's heart. I am under obligations to that man for the warmest friendship, and heartiest sympa- thy exprest both by word and deed and tears for me, when I was in my greatest distress. But I have forgot that ! as, I fear, he has nigh forgot the awful scenes which were before his eyes when he served the office of a comforter to me. No servdce was too mean or trouble- some for him to perform. I can't think what but the devil, "that old spider," could have suck'd my heart so dry of its sense of all grati- tude. If he does come in your way, Southey, fail not to tell him that I retain a most affec- tionate remembrance of his old friendliness, and an earnest wish to resume our intercourse. In this I am serious. I cannot recommend him to your society, because I am afraid whether he Wit auD Mis&om 169 be quite worthy of it ; but I liave no right to dismiss him from my regard. He was at one time, and in the worst of times, my own famil- iar friend, and great comfort to me then. I have known him to play at cards with my father, meal-times excepted, literally all day long, in long days too, to save me from being teased by the old man, when I was not able to bear it. God bless him for it, and God bless you, Southey. — {To Southey, March 20, /7pp.'\ Reviewing Books. — As to reviewing, in par- ticular, my head is so whimsical a head, that I cannot, after reading another man's book, let it have been never so pleasing, give an account of it in any methodical way. I cannot follow his train. Something like this you must have perceived of me in conversation. Ten thou- sand times I have confessed to you, talking of my talents, my utter inability to remember in any comprehensive v^'ay what I read. I can vehemently applaud, or perversely stickle, at parts ; but I cannot grasp at a whole. This infirmity (which is nothing to brag of) may be 170 Cbarles Xamb*6 vseen :n my two little compositions, the tale and my play, in both which no reader, however par- tial, can find any story. — \_To Godwin, Novem- ber JO, i8oj.'\ A PoETiCAi, Project. — I love this sort of poems that open a new intercourse with the most despised of the animal and insect race. I think this vein may be farther opened. Peter Pindar hath very prettily apostrophized a fly ; Burns hath his mouse and his louse ; Coleridge less successfully hath made overtures of intimacy to a jackass, therein only following at unresemb- ling distance, Sterne, and greater Cervantes. Besides these, I know of no other examples of breaking down the partition between us and our "poor earth-born companions." It is sometimes revolting to be put in a track of feeling by other people, not one's own imme- diate thoughts, else I would persuade you, if I could (I am in earnest), to commence a series of animals' poems, which might have a ten- dency to rescue some poor creatures from the antipathy of mankind. Some thoughts come mit mt> *Mi6t)om 171 across me : for instance — to a rat, to a toad, to a cockchafer, to a mole. People bake moles alive by a slow oven fire to cure consumption. Rats are, indeed, the most despised and con- temptible parts of God's earth. I killed a rat the other day by punching him to pieces, and feel a weight of blood upon me to this hour. Toads you know are made to fly, and tumble down and crush all to pieces. Cockchafers are old sport. Then again, to a worm, with an apostrophe to anglers, those patient tyrants, meek inflictors of pangs intolerable, cool devils ; to an owl ; to all snakes, with an apol- ogy for their poison ; to a cat in boots or bladders. Your own fancy, if it takes a fancy to these hints, will suggest many more. A series of such poems, supposed to be accompa- nied with plates descriptive of animal torments, cooks roasting lobsters, fishmongers crimping skates, etc., etc., would take excessively. I willingly enter into a partnership in the plan with you ; I think my heart and soul would go with it too — at least, give it a thought. My plan is but this minute come into my head ; but it 172 Cbatlea Xamb^s strikes me instantaneously as something new, good, and useful, full of pleasure, and full of moral. If old Quarles and Wither could live again, we would invite them into our firm. Burns hath done his part. — [ To Southey, March 20, lypp.] A Visit to an Authoress.— You blame us for giving your direction to Miss Wesley. The woman has been ten times after us about it, and we gave it her at last, under the idea that no further harm would ensue ; but she would once M^ite to you, and you would bite your lips and forget to answer it, and so it would end. You read us a dismal homily upon " Realities," We know, quite as well as you do, what are shadows and what are realities. You, for instance, when you are over your fourth or fifth jorum, chirping about old school occurrences, are the best of realities. Shadows are cold, thin things, that have no warmth or grasp in them. Miss Wesley and her friend, and a tribe of author- esses that come after you here daily, and, in defect of you, hive and cluster upon us, are the Wiit aiiD mis^om 173 shadows. You encouraged that mopsey, Miss "Wesley, to dance after you, in the hope of hav- ing her nonsense put into a nonsensical Anthol- ogy. We have pretty well shaken her off by that simple expedient of referring her to you ; but there are more burs in the wind. I came t' other day from business, hungry as a hunter, to dinner, with nothing, I am sure, of the author but hunger about me ; and whom found I closeted with Mary but a friend of this Miss Wesley, one Miss Benjay or Benje ; I don't know how she spells her name. I just came in time enough, I believe, luckily to prevent them from exchanging vows of eternal friend- ship. It seems she is one of your authoresses, that you first foster, and then upbraid us with. But I forgive you. "The rogue has given me potions to make me love him." Well ; go she would not, nor step a step over our threshold, till we had promised to come and drink tea with her next night. I had never seen her before, and could not tell who the devil it was that was so familiar. We went, however, not to be im- polite. Her lodgings are up two pair of stairs 174 Cbarles Xamb's in Bast Street. Tea and coffee, and macaroons — a kind of cake — much love. We sat down. Presently Miss Benjay broke the silence, by declaring herself quite of a different opinion from D^Isi^aeli, who supposes the differences of human intellect to be the mere effect of organization. She begged to know my opinion. I attempted to carry it off with a pun upon organ, but that went off very flat. She imme- diately conceived a very low opinion of my metaphysics ; and, turning round to Mary, put some question to her in French, — possibly hav- ing heard that neither Mary nor I understood French. The explanation that took place occasioned some embarrassment and much wondering. She then fell into an insulting conversation about the comparative genius and merits of all modern languages, and concluded w4th asserting that the Saxon was esteemed the purest dialect in Germany. From thence she passed into the subject of poetry ; where I, who had hitherto sat mute, and a hearer only, humbly hoped I might now put in a word to some ad- vantage, seeing that it was my own trade in Wiit auD WisDont 175 a manner. But I was vStopped by a round asser- tion, that no good poetry had appeared since Dr. Johnson's time. It seems the Doctor has suppressed many hopeful geniuses that way, by the severity of his critical strictures in his Lives of the Poets. I here ventured to ques- tion the fact, and was beginning to appeal to names, but I was assured " it was certainly the case." Then we discussed Miss More's book on education, which I had never read. It seems Dr. Gregory, another of Miss Benjay's friends, has found fault with one of Miss More's metaphors. Miss More has been at some pains to vindicate herself, — in the opinion of Miss Benjay not without success. It seems the Doc- tor is invariably against the use of broken or mixed metaphor, which he reprobates, against the authority of Shakespeare himself. We next discussed the question, whether Pope was a poet ? I find Dr. Gregory is of opinion he was not, though Miss Seward does not at all concur with him in this. We then sat upon the com- parative merits of the ten translations of Pi- zarro, and Miss Benjay or Benje advised Mary 176 Gbarlcs Xamb's to take two of them home (she thought it might afford her some pleasure to compare them vcj'batmi) ; which we declined. It being now nine o'clock, wine and macaroons were again served round, and we parted, with a promise to go again next week, and meet the Miss Porters, who, it seems, have heard much of Mr. Coleridge, and wish to meet 7is, because we are his friends. I have been preparing for the occasion. I crowd cotton in my ears. I read all the reviews and magazines of the past month, against the dreadful meeting, and I hope by these means to cut a tolerable second- rate figure. Pray let us have no more complaints about shadows. We are in a fair way, through yoti, to surfeit sick upon them. — [To Coleridge, 1800.] C. ly.'S "MORAi, S^NSE." — C. ly.'s moral sense presents her compliments to Dr. Man- ning, is very thankful for his medical advice, but is happy to add that her disorder has died of itself. mit anD limisDom 177 Dr. Mantling, Coleridge has left us, to go into the North, on a visit to Wordsworth. With him have flown all my splendid prospects of engagement with the Morning Post, all my visionary guineas, the deceitful wages of un- born scandal. In truth, I wonder you took it up so seriously. All my intention was but to make a little sport with such public and fair game as Mr. Pitt, Mr. Wilberforce, Mrs. Fitz- herbet, the Devil, etc. — gentry dipped in Styx all over, whom no paper-javelinlings can touch. To have made free with these cattle where was the harm ? 't would have been but giving a polish to lamp-black, not nigrifying a negro primarily. After all, I cannot but regret my in- voluntary virtue. Damn virtue that 's thrust upon us ; it behaves itself with such constraint, till conscience opens the window and lets out the goose. I had struck off two imita- tions of Burton, quite abstracted from any modern allusions, which it was my intent only to lug in from time to time to make 'em popular. — \To Manning^ October^, 1800.1 178 Cbarlc0 3Lamb*6 A Pen Portrait of* Rickman.— I have made an acquisition latterly of a pleasant hand, one Rickman, to whom I was introduced by George Dyer, not the most flattering auspices under which one man can be introduced to another. George brings all sorts of people together, setting up a sort of agrarian law, or common property, in matter of society ; but for once he has done me a great pleasure, while he was only pursuing a principle, as ignes fatui may light you home. This Rickman lives in our Buildings, immediately opposite our house ; the finest fellow to drop in a' nights, about nine or ten o'clock — cold bread and cheese time — just in the wishi?ig time of the night, when you wish for somebody to come in, without a dis- tinct idea of a probable anybody. Just in the nick, neither too early to be tedious, nor too late to sit a reasonable time. He is a most pleasant hand ; a fine rattling fellow, has gone through life laughing at solemn apes ; — him- self hugely literate, oppressively full of infor- mation in all stuff of conversation, from matter of fact to Xenophon and Plato— can talk Greek IRIlit anD Tiaifs&om 179 with Porson, politics with Thelwall, conjecture with George Dyer, nonsense with me, and any- thing with anybody ; a great farmer, somewhat concerned in an agricultural magazine ; reads no poetry but Shakespeare ; very intimate with Southey, but never reads his poetry ; relishes George 'Dyer ; thoroughly penetrates into the ridiculous wherever found; understands ih.Qjirst time (a great desideratum in common minds) — you need never twice speak to him ; does not want explanations, translations, limitations, as Professor Godwin does when you make an as- sertion ; up to anything ; down to every thing ; whatever sapit hominem, A perfect man. All this farrago, which must perplex you to read, and has put me to a little trouble to select, only proves how impossible it is to describe Ti pleasant hand. You must see Rickman to know him, for he is a species in one ; a new class ; an exotic ; any slip of which I am proud to put in my gar- denpot ; the clearest-headed fellow ; fullest of matter, with least verbosity. If there be any alloy in my fortune to have met with such a man, it is that he commonly divides his time between i8o Cbarlcs Xamb's town and country, having some foolish family ties at Christchurch, by which means he can only gladden our I^ondon hemisphere with re- turns of light. He is now going for six weeks. — \_To Manning, November 3, iSoo.J Ox Dr. Anderson. — George Dyer has intro- duced me to the table of an agreeable old gen- tleman, Dr. Anderson, who gives hot legs of mutton and grape pies at his sylvan lodge at Isleworth ; w^here, in the middle of a street, he has shot up a wall most preposterously before his small dwelling, which, with the circum- stance of his taking several panes of glass out of bed-room windows (for air), causeth his neighbors to speculate strangely on the state of the good man's pericranicks. Plainly, he lives under the reputation of being deranged. George does not mind this circumstance ; he rather likes him the better for it. The Doctor, in his pursuits, joins agricultural to poetical science, and has set George's brains mad about the old Scotch writers, Barbour, Douglas' .^neid, Blind Harry, etc. We returned home •QCllt anD MisDom iSi in a return postchaise (having dined with the Doctor), and George kept wondering and won- dering, for eight or nine turnpike miles, what was the name, and striving to recollect the name of a poet anterior to Barbour. I begged to know what was remaining of his works. "There is nothing extant of his works. Sir; but by all account he seems to have been a fine genius"! This fine genius, without anything to show for it, or any title beyond George's courtesy, without even a name ; and Barbour, and Douglas, and Blind Harry, now are the predominant sounds in George's /m mater ^ and their buzzings exclude politics, criticism, and algebra — the late lords of that illustrious lum- ber-room. Mark, he has never read any of these books, but is impatient till he reads them all at the Doctor's suggestion. Poor Dyer ! his friends should be careful what sparks they let fall into such inflammable matter. — ^^To Man- ning ^ August 22^ 1800.1 Ringing in TH^ He;ad.— My head is play- ing all the tunes in the world, ringing such i82 Cbarles Xamb*6 peals ! It lias just finished the Merry Christ Church Bells, and absolutely is beginning Turn again, Whittington, Buz, buz, buz, bum, bum, bum, wheeze, wheeze, wheeze, fen, fen, fen, tinky, tinky, tinky, cr'annch. I shall certainly come to be condemned at last. I have been drinking too much for two days running. I find my moral sense in the last stage of a consump- tion, and my religion getting faint. This is dis- heartening ; but I trust the devil will not over- power me. In the midst of this infernal larum. Conscience is barking and yelping as loud as any of them. I have sat down to read over again your satire upon me in the Anthology, and I think I do begin to spy out something like beauty and design in it. I perfectly accede to all your alterations, and only desire that you had cut deeper, when your hand was in. — \_To Coleridge, August 14, i8oo.'\ On IvONDON. — For my part, with reference to my friends northward, I must confess that I am not romance-bit about Nature. The earth, and sea, and sky (when all is said), is but as a house Wit atiD tKHis^om 183 to dwell in. If the inmates be courteous, and good liquors flow like the conduits at an old coronation, if they can talk sensibly, and feel properly, I have no need to stand staring upon the gilded jlooking-glass (that strained my friend's purse-strings in the purchase), nor his five-shilling print, over the mantelpiece, of old Nabbs the carrier (which only betrays his false taste). Just as important to me (in a sense) is all the furniture of my world ; eye-pampering, but satisfies no heart. Streets, streets, streets, markets, theatres, churches, Covent Gardens, shops sparkling with pretty faces of industrious milliners, neat sempstresses, ladies cheapening, gentlemen behind counters lying, authors in the streets with spectacles, George Dyers (you may know them by their gait), lamps lit at night, pastrycooks' and silversmiths' shops, beautiful Quakers of Pentonville, noise of coaches, drowsy cry of mechanic watchmen at night, with bucks reeling home drunk ; if you happen to wake at midnight, cries of " Fire ! " and "Stop thief!" ; inns of court, with their learned air, and halls, and butteries, just like i84 Cbarles Xamb's Cambridge colleges ; old book-stalls, "Jeremy Taylors," "Burtonson Melancholy," and " Re- ligio Medicis," on every stall. These are thy pleasures, O London ! with thy many sins. O City, abounding in w . . ., for these may Kes- wick and her giant brood go hang. — [To Man- ning^ Nov. 28, i8oo.'\ On the German Language.— Write your German as plain as sunshine, for that must correct itself You know I am homo unius Ungues : in English — illiterate, a dunce, a ninny. — [7b Coleridge, i8oo.'\ On George Dyer. — George Dyer is an Archimedes, and an Archimagus, and a Tycho Brahe, and a Copernicus ; and thou art the darling of the Nine, and midwife to their wan- dering babe also ! We take tea with that learned poet and critic on Tuesday night, at half-past five, in his neat library. The repast will be light and Attic, with criticism. If thou couldst contrive to wheel up thy dear carcass on the Monday, and after dining with us on imit anO MiaDom 185 tripe, calves' kidneys, or whatever else the Cornucopia of St. Clare may be willing to pour out on the occasion, might we not adjourn to- gether to the Heathen's — thou with thy Black Back, and I with some innocent volume of the Bell I^etters, Shenstone, or the like ; it would make him wash his old flannel gown (that has not been washed to my knowledge since it has been his — Oh the long time !) with tears of joy. Thou shouldst settle his scruples and unravel his cobwebs, and sponge off the sad stuff that weighs upon his dear wounded /z'a matci^. Thou shouldst restore light to his eyes, and him to his friends, and the public. Parnassus should shower her civic crowns upon thee for saving the wits of a citizen \—[To Manning; 1800.'] Truth and Sincerity. — Dear Manning — Olivia is a good girl, and if 3^011 turn to my letter you will find that this very plea you set up to vindicate Lloyd, I had made use of as a reason why he should never have employed Olivia to make a copy of such a letter ! — a letter I could not have sent to my Enemy's B , if t86 Cbarles %amb'3 she had thought proper to seek me in the way of marriage. But 3-0U see it in one view, I in another. Rest you merry in your opinion ! Opinion is a species of property ; and though I am always desirous to share with my friend to a certain extent, I shall ever like to keep some tenets, and some property, properly my own. Some day. Manning, when we meet, substitut- ing Corydon and fair Amaryllis, for Charles I/loyd and Mary Hayes, w^e will discuss together this question of moral feeling, "In what cases, and how far, sincerity is a virtue? " I do not mean Truth, a good Olivia-like creature, God bless her, who, meaning no offence, is always ready to give an answer when she is asked why she did so and so ; but a certain forward-talking half-brother of hers. Sincerity, that amphibious gentleman, who is so ready to perk up his ob- noxious sentiments unasked into your notice, as Midas would his ears into your face, uncalled for. But I despair of doing anything by a letter in the way of explaining or coming to explana- tions. A good wish, or a pun, or a piece of secret history, may be well enough that way limit m\t> mis^om 1S7 conveyed ; nay, it has been known, that intelli- gence of a turkey hath been conveyed by that medium, without much ambiguit}'. — [To Man- ning, 1800.] A New Coat. — My tailor has brought me home a new coat lapelled with a velvet collar. He assures me everybody wears velvet collars now. Some are born fashionable, some achieve fashion, and others, like your humble servant, have fashion thrust upon them. The rogue has been making inroads hitherto by modest degrees, foisting upon me an additional button, recommending gaiters ; but to come upon me thus, in a full tide of luxury, neither becomes him as a tailor nor the ninth of a man. My meek gentleman was robbed the other day, coming with his wife and family in a one-horse shay from Hempstead. The villains rifled him of four guineas, some shillings and half-pence, and a bundle of customers' measures, which they swore were bank-notes. They did not shoot him, and when they rode off he addressed them with profound gratitude, making a con- 1 88 Gbarlcs Xamb'3 gee : *' Gentlemen, I wish you good-night, and we are very much obliged to you that you have not used us ill ! " And this is the cuckoo that has had the audacity to foist upon me ten but- tons on a side, and a black velvet collar ! A cursed ninth of a scoundrel. — [To Sout/iey, November i8^ 1798.] . GENTI.K EWA. — For God's sake (I never was more serious) don't make me ridiculous any more by terming me gentle-hearted in a print, or do it in better verses. It did well enough five years ago when I came to see you, and was moral coxcomb enough at the time you wrote the lines, to feed upon such epithets ; but, besides that, the meaning of " gentle " is equiv- ocal at best, and almost always means poor- spirited ; the very quality of gentleness is abhorrent to such vile trumpetings. My seJiti- mcnt is long since vanished. 1 hope my virtues have done suckhig. I can scarce think but you meant it in joke. I hope you did, for I should be ashamed to believe that you could think to gratify me by such praise, fit only to be a cordial limit anD MieDom iSg to some green-sick sonneteer. — [ To Coleridge, August (5, i8oo.'\ C01.ERIDGE AS A Companion. — Dear Man- ning — I am living in a continuous feast. Coleridge has been with me now for nigh three weeks, and the more I see of him in the quotidian undress and relaxation of his mind, the more cause I see to love him, and believe him a very good man, and all those foolish im- pressions to the contrary fly off like morning slumbers. He is engaged in translations, which I hope will keep him this mouth to come. He is uncommonly kind and friendly to me. He ferrets me day and night to do something. He tends me, amidst all his own worrying and heart-oppressing occupations, as a gardener tends his young tulip. Marry come up ; what a pretty similitude, and how like your humble servant ! He has lugged me to the brink of engaging to a newspaper, and has suggested to me, for a first plan, the forgery of a supposed manuscript of Burton, the anatomist of melan- choly. I have even written the introductory iQo Cbarles Xamb's letter ; and if I can pick up a few guineas this way, I feel they will be most refreshings bread being so dear. — [7b Mannings March ly, 1800.] On Wii^i^iAM Godwin. — Godwin I am a good deal pleased with. He is a very well-behaved, decent man ; nothing very brilliant about him or imposing, as you may suppose ; quite another guess sort of gentleman from what your anti- jacobin Christians imagine him. I was well pleased to find he has neither horn nor claws ; quite a tame creature, I assure you : a middle- sized man, both in stature and in understand- ing ; whereas, from his noisy fame, you would expect to find a Briareus Centimanus, or a Tityus tall enough to pull Jupiter from his heavens. — [To Maunbig, iSoo.'] The Lord Mayor of London. — I shall an- ticipate all my play, and have nothing to show you. An idea for Leviathan : Commentators on Job have been puzzled to find out a meaning for Leviathan. 'T is a whale, say some ; a croc- odile, say others. In my simple conjecture. Wiit and limiaOom 191 Leviathan is neither more nor less than the lyord Mayor of London for the time being. — [Zb Southey^ April 20^ ^799-^ On Bishop Burnet's History. — My pri- vate goings on are orderly as the movements of the spheres, and stale as their music to angels' ears. Public affairs — except as they touch upon me, and so turn into private, — I cannot whip up my mind to feel any interest in. I grieve, indeed, that War, and Nature, and Mr. Pitt, that hangs up in Lloyd's best parlor, should have conspired to call up three neces- saries, simple commoners as our fathers knew them, into the upper house of luxuries ; bread, and beer, and coals, Manning. But as to France and Frenchmen, and the Abh6 Sieyes and his constitutions, I cannot make these present times present to me. I read histories of the past, and I live in them ; although, to abstract senses, they are far less momentous than the noises which keep Europe awake. I am reading Burnet's History of His Own Times. Did you ever read that garrulous. 192 Cbarles Xamb's pleasant history ? He tells his story like an old man past political service, bragging to his sons on winter evenings of the part he took in public transactions, when his "old cap was new. ' ' Full of scandal, which all true history is. No palliatives ; but all the stark wickedness, that actually gives the vionientum to national actors. Quite the prattle of age, and out-lived importance. Truth and sincerity staring out upon you perpetually in alto relievo. Himself a party man — he makes you a party man. None of the cursed philosophical Humeian indifference, so cold, and unnatural, and inhu- man ! None of the cursed Gibbonian fine writing, so fine and composite ! None of Dr. Robertson's periods with three members. None of Mr. Roscoe's sage remarks, all so apposite, and coming in so clever, lest the reader should have had the trouble of drawing an inference. Burnet's good old prattle I can bring present to my mind : I can make the revolution present to me : the French revolution, by a converse perversity in my nature, I fling as idx from me. To quit this tiresome subject, and to relieve mft anD Mls^om 193 you from two or three dismal yawns, which I hear in spirit, I here conclude my more than commonly obtuse letter ; dull, up to the dulness of a Dutch commentator on Shakespeare. — [ To Mannings March i, iSoo.l Acute Criticism. — " Cousin Margaret," you know, I like. The allusions to the Pilgrim'' s Progress are particularly happy, and harmonize tacitly and delicately with old cousins and aunts. To familiar faces we do associate famil- iar scenes and accustomed objects : but what hath Apollidon and his sea-nymphs to do in these affairs ? Apollyon I could have borne, though he stands for the Devil. But who is Apollidon ? I think you are too apt to conclude faintly, with some cold moral, as in the end of the poem called The Victory : " Be thou our comforter, who art the widow's friend " ; a single commonplace line of comfort, which bears no proportion in weight or number to the many lines which describe sufifering. This is to convert religion into mediocre feelings, which 13 194 Cbarlcs Xamb*6 should bum, and glow, and tremble. A moral should be wrought into the body and soul, the matter and tendency of a poem, not tagged to the end, like a " God send the good ship into harbor " at the conclusion of our bills of lading. The finishing of the Sailor is also imperfect. Any dissenting minister m?ly say and do as much. These remarks, I know, are crude and un- wrought, but I do not lay much claim to accu- rate thinking. I never judge system-wise of things, but fasten upon particulars. After all, there is a great deal in the book that I must, for time, leave uninentioned, to deserve my thanks for its own sake, as well as for the friendly remembrances implied in the gift. — [7b Southey, March 75-, 1799.1 Theses Ou^dam Theoi^ogic^. "Whether God loves a lying angel better than a true man? " Win an& limisDom 195 II. " Whether the archangel Uriel could know- ingly afl&rm an untruth, and whether, if he couldy he would? " III. "Whether honesty be an angelic virtue, or not rather belonging to that class of qualities which the schoolmen term * virtutes minus splendidae et hominis et terrse nimis par- ticipes?'" IV. "Whether the seraphim ardentes do not manifest their goodness by the way of vision and theory ? and whether practice be not a sub- celestial, and merely human virtue ? V. "Whether the higher order of seraphim il- luminati ever sneer ? " VI. " Whether pure intelligences can love, or whether they can love anything besides pure intellect ? " 196 Gbarles Xamb'a VII. "Whether the beatific vision be anything more or less than a perpetual representment to each individual angel of his own present attainments, and future capabilities, something in the manner of mortal looking-glasses ? '* VIII, " "Whether an ' immortal and amenable soul ' may not come to be damned at last, and the man never suspect it beforehand ? " Samuel Taylor Coleridge hath not deigned an answer. Was it impertinent of me to avail myself of that offered source of knowledge ? Wishing Madoc may be born into the world with as splendid promise as the second birth, or purification, of the Maid of Neufchatel, — I remain yours sincerely, C. Lamb. [ To Southey, July 28, 1/98.] Priksti<ey's Sermons. — Coleridge ! in read- ing your Religious Musings I felt a transient superiority over you. I have seen Priestley. I love to see his name repeated in your writings. luait anD misDom 197 I love and honor him, almost profanely. You would be charmed with his Sermons, if you ever read 'em. — [Zb Coleridge, 1796.1 Thb Crutch of Benevoi^knck.— Benevo- lence sets out on her journey with a good heart, and puts a good face on it, but is apt to limp and grow feeble, unless she calls in the aid of self-interest by way of crutch.— [7b Coleridge, Oct. 28, 1796.1 The Expression of Affection. — But there is a monotony in the affections, which people living together, or, as we do now, very fre- quently seeing each other, are apt to give in to ; a sort of indifference in the expression of kind- ness for each other, which demands that we should sometimes call to our aid the trickery of surprise. — [7b Coleridge, Nov. 14, 1796.1 Friendship. — 'T is the privilege of friend- ship to talk nonsense, and to have her non- sense respected. — [7(9 Coleridge, Feb. /j, 1797.I Gratitude to Coi^eridge. — You have writ me many kind letters, and I have answered none igS Cbarles Xamb's of them. I don't deserve your attentions. An unnatural indifference has been creeping on me since my last misfortunes, or I should have seized the first opening of a correspondence with you. To you I owe much, under God. In my brief acquaintance with you in London, your conversations won me to the better cause, and rescued me from the polluting spirit of the world. I might have been a worthless character without you ; as it is, I do possess a certain im- provable portion of devotional feelings, though when I view myself in the light of divine truth, and not according to the common measures of human judgment, I am altogether corrupt and sinful. This is no cant. I am very sincere. — [7b Coleridge, Jan. 28, i/pS.] SpirituaIv Desires. — Priestley, whom I sin in almost adoring, speaks of "such a choice of company as tends to keep up that right bent and firmness of mind which a necessary inter- course with the world would otherwise warp and relax. " " Such fellowship is the true bal- sam of life ; its cement is infinitely more dura- mit auD mtsDom 199 ble than that of the friendships of the world ; and it looks for its proper fruit and complete grati- fication to the life beyond the grave. " Is there a possible chance for such an one as I to rea- lize in this world such friendships ? Where am I to look for 'em ? What testimonials shall I bring of my being worthy of such friendship ? Alas ! the great and good go together in sepa- rate herds, and leave such as I to lag far, far behind in all intellectual, and, far more grievous to say, in all moral accomplishments. Cole- ridge, I have not one truly elevated character among my acquaintance : not one Christian : not one but undervalues Christianity. Singly, what am I to do ? Wesley (have you read his life?) was /^<? not an elevated character? Wes- ley has said, " Religion is not a solitary thing." Alas ! it necessarily is so with me, or next to solitary. 'Tis true 3^ou write to me; but cor- respondence by letter, and personal intimacy, are very widely different. Do, do write to me, and do some good to my mind, already how much "warped and relaxed" by the world! 'T is the conclusion of another evening. Good- 200 Gbarles Xamb*s night. God have us all in his keeping! — [To Coleridge, Ja7i. lo, 1 797-1 The Dog Dash. — Excuse my anxiety, but how is Dash? . . . Goes he muzzled, or ff/!»^r/6> oref Are his intellects sound, or does he wan- der a little in /izs conversation ? You cannot be too careful to watch the first symptoms of inco- herence. The first illogical snarl he makes, to St. Luke's with him ! All the dogs here are going mad, if you believe the overseers ; but I protest they seem to me very rational and col- lected. But nothing is so deceitful as mad peo- ple, to those w^ho are not used to them. Try him with hot water : if he won't lick it up it is a sign he does not like it. Does his tail wag horizontally, or perpendicularly ? That has de- cided the fate of many dogs in Knfield. Is his general deportment cheerful ? I mean when he is pleased — for otherwise there is no judging. You can't be too careful. Has he bit any of the children yet? If he has, have them shot, and keep /iwi for curiosity, to see if it was the hydrophobia. They say all our army in India ) Win anD misDom 201 had it at one time ; but that was in HyderAUy^s time. Do you get paunch for him ? Take care the sheep was sane. You might pull out his teeth (if he would let you), and then you need not mind if he were as mad as a Bedlamite. It would be rather fun to see his odd ways. It might amuse Mrs. P and the children. They 'd have more sense then he. He 'd be like a fool kept in a family, to keep the household in good humor with their own understanding. You might teach him the mad dance, set to the mad howl. Madge Owlet would be nothing to him. " My ! how he capers ! " \_In the margin is written, "■One of the children speaks this.'''] * • • What I scratch out is a German quotation from Lessing, on the bite of rabid animals ; but I remember you don't read German. But Mrs. P may, so I wish I had let it stand ; The meaning in English is — "Avoid to approach an animal suspected of madness, as j'ou would avoid lire or a precipice, " which I think is a sensible observation. The Germans are cer- tainly profounder than we. If the slightest suspicion arises in your breast that all is not 202 Cbarlea Xamb's right with him, muzzle him and lead him in a string (common pack-thread will do — he don't care for twist) to Mr. Hood's, his quondam master, and he '11 take him in at any time. You may mention your suspicion, or not, as you like, or as you think it may wound or not Mr. H 's feelings. Hood, I know, will wink at a few follies in Dash, in consideration of his former sense. Besides, Hood is deaf, and if you hinted anything, ten to one he would not hear you. Besides, you will have dis- charged your conscience, and laid the child at the right door, as they say. — [To P. G. Patmore, Sept., 1S22.'] BooKSEi<ivERS AND AUTHORS.— I have known many authors for bread, some repining, others envying the blessed security of a counting-house, all agreeing they would rather have been tailors, weavers, — what not, rather than the things they were. I have known some starved, some to go mad, one dear friend literally d>4ng in a workhouse. You know not what a rapacious, dishonest set these booksellers are. Ask even mit mt> mis^om 203 Southey, who (a single case almost) has made a fortune by book drudgery, what he has found them. Oh, you know not (may you never know !) the miseries of subsisting by author- ship. 'T is a pretty appendage to a situation like yours or mine ; but a slavery, worse than all slavery, to be a bookseller's dependant, to drudge your brains for pots of ale and breasts of mutton, to change your free thoughts and voluntary numbers for ungracious task-work. Those fellows hate us. The reason I take to be that, contrary to other trades, in which the master gets all the credit (a jeweller or silver- smith, for instance), and the journeyman, who really does the fine work, is in the background, — in our v/ork the world gives all the credit to us, whom they consider as f/ieir journeymen, and therefore do they hate us, and cheat us, and oppress us, and would wring the blood of us out, to put another sixpence in their mechanic pouches ! I contend that a bookseller has a relative honesty towards authors, not like his honesty to the rest of the world. B , who first engaged me as " Elia," has not paid me up 204 Gbarlee Xamb's yet (nor any of us without repeated mortifying appeals), yet how the knave fawned when I was of service to him ! Yet I dare say the fellow is punctual in settling his milk -score, etc. — \_To Barton, Jan. p, j82j.'\ A IviTERARY Criticism.— I will just add that it appears to me a fault in the " Beggar," that the instructions conveyed in it are too direct, and like a lecture : they don't slide into the mind of the reader while he is imagining no such matter. An intelligent reader finds a sort of insult in being told, "I will teach you how to think upon this subject." This fault, if I am right, is in a ten-thousandth worse degree to be found in Sterne, and in many novelists and modern poets, who continually put a sign-post up to show where you are to feel. They set out with assuming their readers to be stupid ; very different from Robinson Crusoe, the Vicar of Wakefield, Roderick Random, and other beautiful, bare narratives. There is implied an unwritten compact between author and reader ; " I will tell you a story, and I suppose you will ma anD MlsDom 205 understand it." Modern novels, SL Leans and the like, are full of such flowers as these — "Let not my reader suppose," ''Imagine, if you can, modest!" etc. I will here have done with praise and blame. I have written so much, only that you may not think I have passed over your book without observation. ... I am sorry that Coleridge has christened his Ancient Marinere, a Poet's Reverie ; it is as bad as Bottom the Weaver's declaration that he is not a lion, but only the scenical representation of a lion. What new idea is gained by this title but one subversive of all credit — which the tale should force upon us — of its truth ! For me, I was never so affected with any human tale. After first reading it, I was totally possessed with it for many days. I dislike all the miraculous part of it ; but the feelings of the man under the operation of such scenery, dragged me along like Tom Pipe's magic whistle. — \_To Wordsworth^ Jan. ^ i8oi.'\ On Wai^TOn's " CoMPi^ETK ANGI.KR."— That is a book you should read ; such sweet religion 2o6 Cbarlcs Uamb's in it, next to Woolman's, though the subject be baits, and hooks, and worms, and fishes. — [7b Miss Fryer, Feb. 14, 1834.'] Wet Sundays.— I have observ^ed that a letter is never more acceptable then when received upon a rainy day, especially a rainy Sunday ; which moves me to send you somewhat, how- ever short. This will find you sitting after breakfast, which you will have prolonged as far as you can with consistency to the poor hand- maid that has the reversion of the tea leaves ; making two nibbles of your last morsel oi stale roll (you cannot have hot new ones on the Sabbath), and reluctantly coming to an end, because when that is done, what can you do till dinner? You cannot go to the Beach, for the rain is drowning the sea, turning rank Thetis fresh, taking the brine out of Neptune's pickles, while mermaids sit upon rocks with umbrellas, their ivory combs sheathed for spoiling in the wet of w^aters foreign to them. You cannot go to the Library, for it 's shut. You are not religious enough to go to Church. O it is worth while mit anO Mis^om 207 to cultivate piety to the gods, to have some- thing to fill the heart up on a wet Sunday. You cannot cast accounts, for your I^edger is being eaten up with moths in the Ancient Jewry. You cannot play at draughts, for there is none to play with you, and besides there is not a draught-board in the house. You can- not go to market, for it closed last night. You cannot look into the shops, their backs are shut upon you. You cannot while away an hour with a friend, for you have no friend round that Wrekin. You cannot divert yourself with a stray acquaintance, for you have picked none up. You cannot bear the chiming of Bells, for they invite you to a banquet where you are no \nsitant. You cannot cheer yourself with the prospect of to-morrow's letter, for none come on Mondays. You cannot count those endless vials on the mantlepiece with any hope of making a variation in their numbers. You have counted your spiders : your Bastile is exhausted. You sit and deliberately curse your hard exile from all familiar sights and sounds. Old Rank- ing poking in his head unexpectedly would 2o8 Cbarles Uamb's just now be as good to you as Grimaldi. Any- thing to deliver you from this intolerable weight oi ennui. You are too ill to shake it off: not ill enough to submit to it, and to lie down as a Lamb under it. The tyranny of sickness is nothing to the cruelty of convalescence : 't is to have thirty tyrants for one. That pattering rain drops on your brain. You '11 be w^orse after dinner, for you must dine at one to-day that Betty may go to afternoon service. She insists upon having her chopped hay. And then when she goes out, who was something to you, some- thing to speak to — what an interminable after- noon you '11 have to go through. You can't break yourself from your locality : you cannot say, "to-morrow morning I set off for Banstead," for you are booked for Wednesday. Foreseeing this, I thought a cheerful letter would come in opportunely. If any of the little topics for mirth I have thought upon should serve you in this utter extinguishment of sunshine, to make you a little merry, I shall have had my ends. I love to make things comfortable. . . . That which is scratched out was the most ma- IDClft anD TICli6&om 209 terial thing I had to say, but on maturer thoughts I defer it.— [7b/. B. Dibdin, Sept. p, 1826.'] The Fiery Age. — Dear Dj-er— I should 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. Poor Bnfield, 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 bams 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 dis- covered ? 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 Gux Fauxes. We are past the iron age, and are got into the fiery age, undreamed of by Ovid. You are lucky in Clifibrd'c Inn, where I think you have few ricks or stacks worth the burning. Pray, 2IO Cbarlee Xamb's keep as little corn by you as you can for fear of the worst. It was never good times in Eng- land since the poor began to speculate upon their condition. Formerly they jogged on with as little reflection as horses. The whistling plough-man went cheek by jowl with his. — [7b George Dyer, Dec. 20, 18 jo. ] A Character Sketch. — Our providers are an honest pair, Dame W[estwood] and her hus- band. 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 gen- tleman ; hath borne parish offices ; sings fine sea-songs at threescore and ten ; sighs only now and then when he thinks that he has a son on his hands, about fifteen, whom he finds a diffi- culty 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 ; cutsides it to town in severest season : and o' winter nights tells old limit anD misDom stories not tending to literature (how comfort- able to author-rid folks !), and has one anecdote, upon which and about forty pounds a year he seems to have retired in green old age. It was how he was a rider in his youth, travelling for shops, and once (not to balk his employer's bargains) on a sweltering day in August, rode foaming into Dunstable upon a mad horse, to the dismay and expostulatory wonderment of innkeepers, ostlers, etc., who declared they would not have bestrid the beast to win the Derby. Understand, the creature galled to death and desperation by gad-flies, cormorant- winged, worse than beset Inachus' daughter. This he tells, this he brindles and burnishes on a Winter's eve ; 't is 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 insepa- rate conjuncture of man and beast, the cen- taur-phenomenon that staggered all Dunstable, might have been the effect of unromantic ne- cessity ; that the horse-part carried the reason- Cbarles Xamb's ing, willy nilly ; that needs must when such a devil drove ; that certain spiral configurations in the frame of T[homas] W[estwood] un- friendly to alighting, made the alliance more forcible than voluntary. Let him enjoy his fame for me, nor let me hint a whisper that shall dismount Bellerophon. But in case he was an involuntary martyr, yet if in the fiery conflict he buckled the soul of a constant haber- dasher to him, and adopted his flames, let acci- dent and him share the glory. You would all like Thomas Westwood. — [To Woj^dsworth, Jan. 22, 1830.1 A Gift from Her Betrothed.— For God's sake give Emma no more watches ; one has turned her head. She is arrogant and insult- ing. She said something very unpleasant to our old clock in the passage, as if he did not keep time, and yet he had made her no appoint- ment. She takes it out every instant to look at the moment-hand. She lugs us out into the field because there the bird-boys ask you, " Pray, sir, can you tell us what's o'clock ?" and she an mit anD limiaDom 213 swers them punctually. She loses all her time looking to see ** what the time is. " I over- heard her whispering, "Just so many hours,, minutes, etc., to Tuesday ; I think St. George's goes too slow. " This little present of time ! — why, — 'tis Eternity to her ! What can make her so fond of a gingerbread watch ? She has spoiled some of the movements. Between ourselves, she has kissed away *' half- past twelve," which I suppose to be the canoni- cal hour in Hanover Square. Well, if "love me love my watch " answers, she will keep time to you. — [ To 3Ioxon, July 24. 1^33 ''\ A Painting— BEiySHAZZAR.— Martin's "Bel- shazzar" (the picture) I have seen. Its archi- tectural eflfect is stupendous ; but the human figures, the squalling contorted little antics that are playing at being frightened, like children at a sham ghost, who half know it to be a mask, are detestable. Then the letters are nothing more than a transparency lighted up, such as a 214 Cbarles Xamb's lord might order to be lit up ou a sudden at a Christmas gambol, to scare the ladies. The type is as plain as Baskerville's : they should have been dim, full of mystery, letters to the mind rather than the eye. Rembrandt has painted only Belshazzar and a courtier or two (taking a part of the banquet for the whole), not fribbled out a mob of fine folks. Then everything is so distinct, to the very necklaces, and that foolish little prophet. What one point is there of interest ? The idea of such a subject is, that you the spectator should see nothing but what at the time you would have seen, — the handy and the King, — not to be at leisure to make tailor-remarks on the dresses, or. Dr. Kitchener-like, to examine the good things at table. Just such a confused piece is his ** Joshua, " frittered into a thousand fragments, little armies here, little armies there — you should see only the Sun and Joshua. If I remember, he has not left out that luminary entirely ; but for Joshua, I was ten minutes a-finding him out. Still he is showy in all that is not the human Mit anD "QClisDom 215 figure or the preternatural interest : but the first are below a drawing-school girl's attainment, and the last is a phantasmagoric trick, — " Now you shall see what you shall see, dare is Bal- shazar and dare is Daniel. " — [To Barton, June II, 182 7. '\ Georgk Dykr's Tender Conscience.— G. was born, I verily think, without original sin, but chooses to have a conscience, as every Christian gentleman should have ; his dear old face is in- susceptible 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. — [To Moxon, Feb., ^Sji."} The EviLvS of Ii^lustratixg Shakespeare. — But I am jealous of the combination of the sister arts. Let them sparkle apart. What in- jury (short of the theatres) did not Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery do me with Shakespeare ? to have Opie's Shakespeare, Northcote's Shake- speare, light-headed Fuseli's Shakespeare, heavy-headed Romney's Shakespeare, wooden- 2i6 Cbarles Xamb's headed West's (though he did the best in Lear), deaf-headed Reynolds' Shakespeare, instead of my and everybody's Shaksepeare ; to be tied down to an authentic face of Juliet ! to have Imogen's portrait ; to confine the illimitable ! — [To Rogers, Dec, iS33.'\ Hood the Prince of Wits. — Perhaps Rogers would smile at this. A pert, half chemist, half apothecary in our town who smatters of literature, and is immeasurably unlettered, said tome, "Pray, sir, may not Hood be reckoned 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 manu- factured in John Bull for our friend, in sad and Stupid earnest. — [7b Moxon, May, iSjj.'] A MeasureIvESS Famii^y. — Next, I forgot to tell you I knew all your Welsh annoyances, the Wiit atiD 'OmiBDom 217 measureless B 's. I knew a quarter of a mile of them. Seventeen brothers and sixteen sisters, as they appear to me in memory. There was one of them that used to fix his long legs on my fender, and tell a tale of a shark every night, endless, immortal. How have I grudged the salt-sea ravener not having had his gorge of him ! The shortest of the daughters measured five foot eleven without her shoes. Well, some day we may confer about them. But they were tall. Truly, I have discover'd the longitude. — ITo Landor, April g, /8j2.'] On Chirography. —You always wrote hiero- glyphically, 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 Mrs. Clark ; 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 ; 2i8 Cbarles Xamb's 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 httle better, and more of a worldly hand, than a Grecian's, but still remote from the mercantile. — ITo Dyer, Feb. 22, i83i.'\ Edward Irving's Madness. — I was over St. Luke's the other day with my friend Tuthill, and mightily pleased with one of his contri- vances for the comfort and amelioration of the students. They have double cells, in which a pair may lie feet to feet horizontally, and chat ma anD MisDom 219 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 Brmigiddon, who I sup- pose is some Scotch moderator. He squinted out his favorite 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 ? — iTo Gil/man, March 8, iSjo.} Odd Be^dfeIvI^ows. — My bedfellows are cough and cramp ; we sleep three in a bed. — [ Tb Moxon, April 27, 1833.1 220 Cbarle6 Xamb's ANECDOTES. When a boy Ivamb was walking one day with Mary in a church-yard, and he noticed that all the tombstones were inscribed with words of praise for the departed. "Mary," said he, "where do all the naughty people lie?" Lamb's CrkED. — " I am a Christian, English- man, Templar. God help me when I come to put off these snug relations and to get abroad into the world to come, I shall be like the *crow on the sand,' as Wordsworth has it." He especially attached himself to any violent symptoms of human nature. Being in a picture- gallery, he observed a stout sailor in towering disgust at one of the old masters, spit his tobacco-juice at it, and swear, with an exple- tive, that he could do better himself. The honest opinion honestly expressed, the truth and vigor of the man, delighted Lamb, and he rushed up to him to shake hands. Whenever limit anD TimisDom the sailor, after that, wrote to his friends in London, he wished to be particularly remem- bered to Mr. Charles Lamb, who would n't be humbugged about an old painting. On another occasion he declared that he hated Mr. , "but you don't know him." '*That 's the reason I hate him, I never could hate anybody I knew." Irony. — He told Mr. Gary, "he was a good parson — not, indeed, as good as Parson Adams, but perhaps about as good as Doctor Primrose." One day he expressed his deep satisfaction at the death of an old woman, "She has left me thirty pounds a year ! " He did not say that it was he himself who had paid her this annuity for many years out of his hard-earned and modest income. Lamb once explained the term " compound," (in India House language, the name applied to the room he and his fellow-clerks worked in) to mean "a collection of simples," Cbarles Xamb*3 Humorous Epitaphs. — The following epi- taphs were found in Lamb's desk after his leaving the India house, by a young man, one of the clerks, named Fraschini. The first refers to a clerk who was in the India office with Lamb, the second to an old invalid officer of the British Infantry who eked out miserable half-pay as a copyist in the military department. The third on a certain Captain Sturms, and the last on Mrs. Dix. " Here lies the body of Timothy Wagstaff, Who was once as tall and straight as a flagstaff; But now that he 's gone to another world, His staff is broken and his flag is furled." The epitaph on Captain Matthew Day, of the 20th Foot, ran as follows : " Beneath this slab lies Matthew Day, If his body had not been snatched away To be by science dissected : Should it have gone, one thing is clear ; His soul the last trump is sure to hear. And thus be resurrected." •Qmtt an& misCJom 223 Captain Sturms was hardly served any better, " Here lies the body of Captain Sturms, Once ' food for powder ' now for worms. At the battle of Meida he lost his legs, And stumped about on wooden pegs. Naught cares he now for such worthless things — He was borne to heaven on Angels' wings." The next was endorsed "On Tom Dix's Mother. " a git the remains of Margaret Dix, Who was young in old age I ween, Though Envy with malice cried ' seventy-six,' The Graces declared her nineteen." It should be explained that Mrs. Dix was born on Feb. 29, (leap year) and thus had only one birthday every four years. Consequently by the time she had completed her seventy- sixth j^ear her nativity had been celebrated only nineteen times. The medical officer of the India House was not held professionally, in much respect. Here is Qijeu de mot on him. 224 Cbarles Xamb's "To the memory of Dr. Onesimus Drake Who forced good, people his drugs to take- No wonder his patients were oft on the rack, For this ' duck of a man ' was a terrible quack." Lamb's Propensity to Mystify— in Criti- cising ' ' The Ancient Mariner. ' '—At length, •when he had given utterance to some ferocious canon of judgment, which seemed to question the entire value of the poem, I said, perspiring, (I dare say), in this detestable crisis — " But Mr, lyamb, good heavens ! how is it possible you can allow yourself in such opinions ? What instance could you bring from the poem that would bear you out in these insinuations ? " ** Instances ! " said Lamb ; " Oh, I '11 instance you, if you come to that. Instance, indeed ! Pray, what do you say to this " ' The many men so beautiful, And they all dead did lie ' ? So beautiful, indeed ! Beautiful ! Just think of such a gang of Wapping vagabonds, all covered with pitch and chewing tobacco ; and the old gentleman himself — what do you call him? — the bright-eyed fellow?" What more might "Mit auD misDom 225 follow, I never heard ; for, at this point, in a perfect rapture of horror, I raised my hands — both hands — to both ears ; and without stop- ping to think or to apologize, I endeavored to restore equanimity to my disturbed sensibili- ties, by shutting out all further knowledge of Lamb's impieties. — [De Ouinay's Recollections of Lamb. '\ CharIvKS Lamb and the Beggar. — "Pray your honor relieve me, ' ' said a poor beadswoman to my friend, one day. " I have seen better days." " So have I, my good woman," retorted he, looking up at the welkin, which was just then threatening a storm ; and the jist (he will have it) was as good to the beggar as a testor. — \^From the Decay of Beg gars. '\ "There is M who goes about dropping his good things as an ostrich laj-s her eggs, without caring what becomes of them." Lamb once alluded to a book called A Day hi Stowe Gardens^ that it was " a day ill- bestowed." 226 Cbarles Xamb's IvAMB AND THE PuDDiNG. — It was a dinner at Gillman's at which Leslie was present ; and the stage-coach was coming home filled with guests, when an outside passenger put the question, "All full inside ? " "We can conceive the merriment within when Lamb replied, "Well that last bit of Gillman's pud- ding did the business for me." Spent the evening at Lamb's, when I went in, they, (Charles and his sister) were alone, playing at cards together. I took up a book on the table — Almacfs — and Lamb said, " Ay, that must be all max to the lovers of scandal." — \_P. G. Patmore's My Friends and Acquaint- ances. ] We spoke of L. E. L., and Lamb said, "If she belonged to me, I would lock her up and feed her on bread and water till she left off writing poetry. A female poet, or female author of any kind, ranks below an actress, I think.— [/(^zoT.] H. C. R. came in about half-past eight and •QCllt ant) lKai6C)om 227 put a stop to all further conversation^keeping all the talk to himsQK— [/did.] Speaking of some German story, in which a man is made to meet himself — he himself hav- ing changed forms with someone else — the talk turned on what we should think of ourselves, if we could see ourselves without knowing that it was ourselves. Robinson said that he had all his life felt a sort of horror come over him every time he caught sight of his own face in the glass ; and that he was almost afraid to shave himself for the same reason. He said that he often wondered how anybody could sustain an intimacy with, much less a friend- ship for, a man with such a face. Lamb said, " I hope you have mercy on the barbers and always shave yourself." — [Ibid.] was mentioned, and Lamb said he seemed to him a sort of L. B. L. in pantaloons. —[Idid.-\ "Believe me, the best acid," he said to a friend, *'is assiduity." — lldzd.} 228 Cbarlee Xamb's He was to meet the gentleman (a poet) at dinner, and the poems were shown to Lamb a little before the author's arrival. When he came he proved to be empty and conceited. During dinner Lamb fell into the delightful drollery of saying now and again, *'That reminds me of some verses I wrote when I was very young," and then quoted a line or two, which he recollected from the gentleman's book, to the latter's amazement and indignation. Lamb, immensely diverted, capped it all by introducing the first lines of Paradise Lost, " Of man's first disobedience," as also written by him- self, which actually brought the gentleman on his feet bursting with rage. He said he had sat by and allowed his own "little verses" to be taken without protest, but he could not endure to see Milton pillaged. — \_Ibid.'\ That was a good-natured action — his sitting to a friend *' for a whole series of British Admirals ! " They were wanted as illustrations for some periodical, and he was willing to be useful as a lay figure. — \_Ibid.'\ mit anb miebom 229 He cared more, he said " for Men Sects, than for Insects." — [Idid.l Hazlitt took his son to Ivamb's one day, and expected to be asked to dinner. lyamb said he was sorry, but he had nothing in the house but cold kid to offer them. "Cold kid!" Hazlitt cried ; and Lamb stuck to it that that was all. Hazlitt went away at last in a rage, leaving his son behind, and adjourned to the Reynells, where he dined off cold lamb. His son joined him when the meal was about over, and ob- served that he thought Lamb's roast beef better than this. *' Roast dee// He told me he had only cold kid ! " "Oh, that was his fun ! " But Hazlitt thought it was past a ]o\ie.—{^HazliW s Charles and Mary Lamb.'] I have been straying away from the im- mediate subject, but I must add something more. Towards the last. Lamb appears to have enjoyed, in consideration of the length of his service, certain privileges, of which, according to tradition I am about to notice, he did not neglect to avail himself A story, for the truth 230 Cbarles Xamb*6 of whicli I must decline to be responsible, runs to the effect that on one occasion the head of the office complained to Lamb of the rather ex- cessive irregularity of his attendance. "Really, Mr. Lamb, you come very late ! " observed the official. ** Yes — yes," replied Mr. Lamb, with his habitual stammer, " b — but consi — sider how ear — early I go." — [/did.'] A Dinner at Hood's. — The evening was concluded by a supper, one of those elegant little social repasts which Flemish artists delight to paint ; so fresh the fruit, so tempting the viands, and all so exquisitely arranged by the very hand of taste. . . . Mr. Lamb oddly walked all round the table, looking closely at any dish that struck his fancy before he would decide where to sit, telling Mrs. Hood that he would by that means know how to select some dish that was difficult to carve, and take the trouble off her hands ; accordingly, having jested in this manner, he placed him- self with great deliberation before a lobster- salad, observing i/iaf was the thing. On her llClit an& limieOom 231 asking him to take some roast fowl, he assented. " What part shall I help you to, Mr. Lamb? " "Back," said he, quickly; "I always prefer back." My husband laid down his knife and fork, and looking upward, exclaimed: "By heavens ! I could not have believed it, if any- body else had sworn it." "Believed what?" said kind Mrs. Hood, anxiously, coloring to the temples, and fancying there was something amiss in the piece he had been helped to. "Believed what? why, madam, that Charles Lamb was a back-biter!" Hood gave one of his short quick laughs, gone almost ere it had come, whilst Lamb went off into a loud fit of mirth, exclaiming : " Now that 's devilish good ! I '11 sup with you to-morrow night." This eccentric flight made everybody very merry, and amidst a most amusing mixture of wit and humor, sense and nonsense, we feasted mer- rily, amidst jocose health-drinking, sentiments, speeches and songs. . . . Mr. Lamb on being pressed to sing, excused himself in his own peculiar manner, but offered to pronounce a Latin eulogium instead. This was accepted, 232 Cbarles Xamb'6 and he accordingly stammered forth a long string of Latin words ; among which, as the name of Mrs. Hood frequently occurred, we ladies thought it was in praise of her. The delivery of this speech occupied about five min- utes. On enquiring of a gentleman who sat next to me whether Mr. Lamb was praising Mrs. Hood, he informed me that was b}' no means the case, the eulogium being on the lobster- salad ! — [Mrs. BaUnanno's Pen and Pe7icil.\ A Visit to Mrs. Bai.manxo.— On the fol- lowing night, according to his promise, Mr. Lamb honored us with a visit, accompanied by his sister, Mr. and Mrs. Wood, and a few others hastily gathered together for the occasion. On entering the room, Mr. Lamb seemed to have forgotten that any previous introduction had taken place. "Allow me, madam," said he, " to introduce to you, viy sister, Mary ; she 's a very good woman, but she drinks ! " " Charles, Charles," said Miss Lamb, imploringly (her face at the same time covered with blushes) "how can you say such a thing? " " Why," rejoined mit auD Mi6^om 233 he, "you know it 's a fact ; look at the redness of your face. Did I not see yon in your cups at nine o'clock this morning?" " For shame, Charles," returned his sister; "what will our friends think?" "Don't mind him, my dear Miss Lamb," said Mrs. Hood, soothingly; "I will answer that the cups were only breakfast- cups full of coffee." Seeming much delighted with the mischief he had made, he turned away, and began talking quite comfortably on indifferent topics to some one else. For my own part I could not help telling Mrs. Hood Ilonged to shake " Charles." ** Oh," replied she, smiling, " Miss Lamb is so used to his unaccountable ways that she would be miserable without them." Once, indeed, as Mr. Lamb told Hood, " having really gone a lit- tle too far," and seeing her, as bethought, quite hurt and offended, he determined to amend his manners, " behave politel}^ and leave off joking altogether." For a few days he acted up to his resolution, behaving, as he assured Hood, "admirably; and what do you think I got for my pains?" "I have no doubt," said Hood, 234 Cbarles Xamb*5 " you got sincere thanks." " Bless you, no ! " rejoined Lamb. "Why, Mary did nothing but keep bursting into tears every time she looked at me, and when I asked her what she was cry- ing for, when I was doing all I could to please her, she blubbered out : ' You 're changed, Charles, you 're changed ; what have I done, that you should treat me in this cruel manner? ' ' Treat you ! I thought you did not like my jokes, and therefore I tried to please you by strangling them down.' * Oh, oh,' cried she, sobbing as if her heart would break ; 'joke again, Charles — I don't know you in this man- ner. I am sure I should die, if you behaved as you have done for the last few days.' So you see I joke for her good " ; adding, with a most self- ish expression, "it saved her life then, anyhow." This little explanation was happily illustrated the next moment, when Miss Lamb, still in extreme trepidation, and the blush yet lingering on her cheeks, happened to drop her handker- chief. She did not observe it, but her brother, although volubly describing some pranks of his boyhood to a little knot of listeners, stepped Mit mt> Mfa^om 235 aside and handed it to her, with a look that said as plainly as words could say, "Forgive me, I love you well." That she so interpreted it, her pleased and happy look at once declared, as with glistening eyes she sat eagerly listening to the tale he was then telling ; a tale which doubtless she had heard before, ninety and nine times at least. — [Ibid.'] Haydon's Memories of IvAmb. — In the words of our dear departed friend, Charles Lamb, " You good-for-nothing old Lake Poet," what has become of you ? Do you remember his saying that at my table in i8i9,with "Jerusalem" towering behind us in the painting-room, and Keats and your friend Monkhouse of the party ? Do you remember Lamb voting me absent, and then making a speech descanting on my excel- lent port, and proposing a vote of thanks ? Do you remember his then voting me present ? — I had never left my chair — and informing me of what had been done during my retirement, and hoping I was duly sensible of the honor ? Do you remember the Commissioner (of Stamps and 236 Cbarles Xamb*6 Taxes) who asked you if you did not think Mil- ton a great genius, and Lamb getting up and asking leave with a candle to examine his phrenological development ? Do you remember poor dear Lamb, whenever the Commissioner was equally profound, saying : " My son John went to bed with his breeches on," to the dis- may of the learned man ? Do you remember you and I and Monkhouse getting Lamb out of the room by force, and putting on his great coat, he reiterating his earnest desire to ex- amine the Commissioner's skull? And don't you remember Keats proposing "Confusion to the memory of Newton," and upon your insist- ing on an explanation before you drank it, his saying: " Because he destroyed the poetry of the rainbow by reducing it to a prism." Ah ! my dear old friend, you and I shall never see such days again ! The peaches are not so big as they were in our days. Many were the im- mortal dinners which took place in that paint- ing-room, where the food was simple, the wine good, and the poetry first-rate. Wordsworth, Milton, Scott, Charles Lamb, Hazlitt, David mat anD MisDom 237 Wilke, Leigh Hunt, Talfourd, Keats, etc., etc., attended my summons and honored my table. — [Haydou to Wordsworth, Oct. i6, 1842.1 COI^ERIDGE'S MONOlvOGUE. —The story of lyamb, on his way to the India House, leaving Coleridge at 10 a.m. in a doorway talking with his eyes shut, and coming back at 4 p.m. to find Coleridge still there wdth his eyes shut, talking away, as he thought, to Lamb, I have heard my father declare, though only on Lamb's authority, to be strictly true ; but then Lamb delighted in such fictions about his friends. — \^Ibid. ] Mahomet and His Defender.— Caroline Fox mentions a visit to the Sterlings, Dec. 3d, 1841. Sterling talked of Philip van Artevelde (Taylor, Irving, Coleridge, and Charles Lamb being together) and the conversation turning on Mahomet, Irving reprobated him in his strongest manner as a prince of impostors, without ear- nestness and without faith. Taylor thinking him not fairly used, defended him with much spirit. On going away, Taylor could not find his hat, 238 Cbarles Xamb's and was looking about for it, when Charles Lamb volunteered his assistance with the query " Taylor, did you come in a h-h-h-h-hat or a t-t-t-t-turban ? " — [^Memories of Old Friends.'\ Lamb's Sympathy for Animai^s. — As an instance of Charles Lamb's sympathy with dumb beasts, two friends once saw him get up from table, while they were dining with him and his sister at Enfield, open the street-door, and give admittance to a stray donkey into the front strip of garden, where there was a grass- plot, which seemed to possess more attraction for the creature than the short turf of the com- mon on Chase-side opposite to the house where the Lambs then dwelt. This mixture of the humorous in manner and the sympathic in feeling always more or less tinged the sayings and doings of beloved Charles Lamb ; there was a constant blending of the overtly whimsical expression or act with betrayed inner kindliness and even pathos of sentiment. Beneath this sudden opening of his gate to a stray donkey that it might feast on his garden grass while Wiit mb mietfom 239 he himself ate his dinner, possibly lurked some strong sense of wanderers unable to get a meal they hungered for when others revelled in plenty, — a kind of pained fancy finding vent in playful deed or speech, that frequently might be traced by those who enjoyed his society. — \_Clarke's Recollections of Writers.'] CowDEN WITH THK Tuft.— Cowden Clarke was very bald. Lamb called him playfully " Cowden with the Tuft." One evening, after gazing at it for some time Lamb suddenly broke forth *' Gad, Clarke, what whiskers you have behind your head." — [/did.] Lamb's Whimsicai. Candor. — He was fond of trying the dispositions of those with whom he associated by an odd speech such as this ; and if they stood the test pleasantly and took it in good part, he liked them the bet- ter ever after. One time the Novellos and Cowden Clarkes went down to see the Lambs at Enfield, and he was standing by his book- shelves, talking with them in his usual delight- ful, cordial way, showing them some precious 240 Cbarles Xamb's volume lately added to his store, a neighbor chancing to come in to remind Charles I^amb of an appointed ramble, he excused himself by saying, "You see I have some troublesome people just come down from town, and I must stay and entertain them ; so we '11 take our walk together to-morrow." — \_Ibid.'\ Another time when the Cowden Clarkes were staying a few days at Enfield with Charles Lamb and his sister, they, having accepted an invitation to spend the evening and have a game of whist at a lady-schoolmistress' house there, took their guest with them. Charles Lamb, giving his arm to "Victoria," left her husband to escort Mary Lamb, who walked rather more slowly than her brother. On arriv- ing first at the house of the somewhat prim and formal hostess, Charles Lamb, bringing his young visitor into the room, introduced her by saying, " Mrs. , I 've brought you the wife of the man who mortally hates your husband " ; and when the lady replied by a polite inquiry after Miss Lamb, hoping she was quite well, i6 vmit anD misOom 241 Charles Lamb said, "She has a terrible fit o' toothache, and was obliged to stay at home this evening, so Mr. Cowden Clarke remained there to keep her company." Then the lingerers entering he went on to say, "Mrs Cowden Clarke has been telling me, as we came along, that she hopes 3'ou have sprats for supper this evening." The bewildered glance of the lady of the house at Mary Lamb and her walking- companion, her politely stifled dismay at the mention of so vulgar a dish, contrasted with Victoria's smile of enjoyment at his whimsical words, were precisely the kind of things that Charles Lamb liked and chuckled over. — l/ozd.l Lamb's Love for Children.— When Wm. Etty returned as a young artist student from Rome, and called at the Novellos' house, it chanced that the parents were from home ; but the children, who were busily employed in fabricating a treat of home-made hard-bake (or toffy), made the visitor welcome by offering him a piece of their just-finished sweetmeat, as an appropriate refection after his long walk ; 242 Cbarles Xamb'5 and he declared that it was the most veritable piece of spontaneous hospitality he had met with, since the children gave him what they thought most delicious and best worthy of acceptance. Charles Lamb so heartily shared this opinion of the subsequently renowned painter, that he bought a choice condiment in the shape of a jar of preserved ginger, for the little Novellos' delectation ; and when some oflScious elder suggested that it was lost upon children, and therefore had better be reserved for the grown people, Lamb would not hear of the transfer, but insisted that children were excellent judges of good things, and that they must and should have the cate in question. He was right, for long did the remembrance remain in the family of that delicious rarity, and of the mode in which "Mr. Lamb" stalked up and down the passage with a mysterious harberingering look and stride, muttering something that sounded like conjuration, holding the precious jar under his arm, and feigning to have found it stowed away in a dark chimney somewhere near. ma atiD Timi0Dom 243 Another characteristic point is recalled by a concluding sentence of this letter. On one occasion — when Charles Lamb and his admir- able sister, Mary Lamb, had been accompanied "half back after supper" by Mr. and Mrs. Novello, Edward Holmes, and Charles Cowden Clarke, between Schackelwell Green and Cole- brooke Cottage, beside the New River at Is- lington, where the Lambs then lived, the whole party interchanging lively, bright talk as they passed along the road that they had all to themselves at that late hour — he as usual, was the noblest of the talkers. Arrived at the usual parting place, Lamb and his sister walked on a few steps ; and then suddenly turning, he shouted out after his late companions, in a tone that startled the midnight silence, "You are very nice people ! " sending them on their way home in happy laughter at his friendly oddity.— [/did.] The City Acquaintance. — Lamb, at the solicitation of a city acquaintance, was induced to go to a public dinner, but stipulated that the latter was to see him safely home. 244 Cbarles Xamb's When the banquet was over, Lamb reminded his friend of their agreement. ''But where do you live ? " asked the latter. "That 's your affair," said Lamb; "you undertook to see me home, and I hold you to your bargain." His friend, not liking to leave Lamb to find his way alone, had no choice but to take a hackney coach, drive to Islington, where he had a vague notion that Lamb resided, and trust to inquiry to discover his house. This he accomplished, but only after some hours had been thus spent, during which Lamb dryly and persistently refused to give the slightest clue or information in aid of his companion. Lamb's Watch. — Lamb was one of the most punctual of men, although he never carried a watch. A friend observing the absence of this usual adjunct of a business man's attire, pre- sented him with a new gold watch, which he accepted and carried for one day only. A colleague asked Lamb what had become of it. ** Pawned," was the reply. He had actually pawned the watch, finding it a useless en- cumbrance. mit an& misDom 245 Ato'ENdanc^ at Business.— On oue occa- sion Lamb arrived at the office at the usual hour, but omitted to sign the attendance-book. About mid-day he suddenly paused in his work, and slapping his forehead as though illuminated by returning recollection, exclaimed loudly : " Lamb ! Lamb ! I have it " ; and rushing to the attendance-book interpolated his name. Excuse for a HowDAY.-T-On another oc- casion Lamb was observed to enter the office hastily and in an excited manner, assumed no doubt for the occasion, and to leave by an opposite door. He appeared no more that day. He stated the next morning, in explanation, that as he was passing through Leadenhall Market on his way to the office he accidently trod on a butcher's heel. "I apologized," said Lamb, " to the butcher, but the latter retorted : *Yes, but your excuse won't cure my broken heel, me,' said he, seizing his knife, * I '11 have it out of you.' " Lamb fled from the butcher, and in dread of his pursuit dared not remain for the rest of the day at the India 246 Cbaiies Xamb's House. This story was accepted as a humorous excuse for taking a holiday without leave. A Sharp Answer. — An unpopular head of a department came to Lamb one day and inquired, "Pray, Mr. Lamb, what are you about?" " Forty, next birthday," said Lamb. " I don't like your answer," said his chief. "Nor I your question," was Lamb's reply. Hunt's Characterization of Lamb. — His humor and his knowledge both, are those of Hamlet, of Moliere, of Carlin, who shook a city with laughter, and, in order to divert his melancholy, was recommended to go and hear himself. Yet he extracts a real pleasure out of his jokes, because good-hearted- ness retains that privilege, when it fails in everything else. I should say he condescended to be a punster, if condescension were a word befitting wisdom like his. Being told that somebody had lampooned him, he said, "Very well ; I '11 Lamb-pun him." — [Lord Byron and His Contemporaries. "[ mit an& MleDom 247 C:^T Voltaire. — To a person abusing Vol- taire, and indiscreetly opposing his character to that of Jesus Christ, he said admirably well (though he by no means overrates Voltaire, nor wants reverence in the other quarter,) that " Voltaire was a very good Jesus Christ ybr //le French. " — \_Ibid. ] D1SI.IKE oi' Solitude. — He would rather, however, be with a crowd that he dislikes than feel himself alone. He said to me one day, with a face of solemnity, "What must have been that man's feelings who thought himself the first deist?"— [/(5z^.] A MaTTER-of-Lie Man. — He knows how many false conclusions and pretentions are made by men who profess to be guided by facts only, as if facts could not be misconceived, or figments taken for them ; and therefore one day, when somebody was speaking of a person who valued himself on being a matter-of-fact man, "Now," says he, "I value myself on being a matter-of-lie man." This does not hinder his 248 Cbarles 5Lamb*s being a man of the greatest veracity, in the ordinary sense of the word; but "truth," he says, " is pernicious, and ought not to be wasted on everybody." — \^Ibid.'] To A Whist-Pi,ayer. — He said once to a brother whist-player, who was a hand more clever than clean, and who had enough in him to afford the joke, "M., if dirt were trumps, what hands 3-ou would hold ! " — \^Ibid.'\ A person sending an unnecessarily large sum •with a lawyer's brief, Lamb said it was "a fee simple." — \_Procier's Charles Lavib.'\ Mr. H. C. Robinson, just called to the bar, tells him, exultiugly, that he is retained in a cause in the King's Bench. " Oh " (said Lamb), "the first great cause, least understood." — llbid.l Of a pun Lamb says it is "a noble thing per se. It is entire. It fills the mind ; it is as perfect as a sonnet ; better. It limps ashamed, in the train and retinue of humor." — \_Ibid.\ Once when enjoying a pipe with Dr. Parr, ma anO Mis^ont 249 that Divine enquired how lie came to acquire the love of smoking so much, he replied : "I toiled after it as some people do virtue." — Lamb one day encountered a small urchin loaded with a too heavy package of grocery. It caused him to tremble and stop. Charles enquired where he was going, took (although weak) the load upon his own shoulder, and managed to carry it to Islington, the place of destination. Finding that the purchaser of the grocery was a female, he went with the urchin before her, and expressed a hope that she would intercede with the poor boy's master, in order to prevent his being ovenveighted in the future. **Sir," said the dame, after the manner of Tisiphone, frowning upon him, " I buy my sugar and have nothing to do with the man's manner of sending it." Lamb at once per- ceived the character of the purchaser, and taking off his hat, said, humbly, " Then I hope, ma'am, 3'ou '11 give me a drink of small beer." This was of course refused. He afterwards 250 Cbarles Xamb^s called upon the grocer, on the boy's behalf. With what eflfect I do not know. — \_Ibid.'\ He (Lamb) was always afraid of her (Mary's) sensibilities being too deeply engaged, and if in her presence any painful accident or history was discussed, he would turn the conversation with some desperate joke. Miss Beetham, the author of the Lay of Ma^'ie, which Lamb es- teemed one of the most graceful and truly feminine works in a literature rich in female genius, who has reminded me of the trait in some recollections of Lamb, with which she has furnished me, relates that once when she was speaking to Miss Lamb of Charles, and in her earnestness Miss Lamb had laid her hand kindly on the eulogist's shoulder, he came up hastily and interrupted them, saying, "Come, come, we must not talk sentimentally," and took up the conversation in his gayest strain, — [Miss Beetham to Talfourd, Talfoiird's Let- ters of Charles Lamb.l A Miss Pate (when he heard of her, he asked if she was any relation to Mr. John Head of mit an& MlsDom 251 Ipswich), was at a party, and he said on hearing her name, "Miss Pate I hate." ''You are the first person who ever told me so, however," said she. "O ! I mean nothing by it. If it had been Miss Dove, I should have said, ' Miss Dove I love,' or 'Miss Pike I like.'" About this time also I saw Mr. Hazlitt for the first time at their house, and was talking on meta- physical subjects with him. Mr. Lamb came up ; but my companion was very eloquent, and I begged him not to interrupt us. He stood silent, and Mr. Dyer came to me. "I know," said he, "that Mr. Cristall is a very fine artist, but I should like to know in what his merit principally consists. Is it coloring, character, design, etc. My eyes are so bad ! " On which Mr. Lamb began rhyming — " Says Mr. Dyer to Mr. Dawe Pray how does Mr. Cristall draw ? Says Mr. Dawe to Mr. Dyer, He draws as well as you 'd desire." —[Ibid.] A lady he was intimate with had dark eyes, and one evening people rather persecuted him ^52 Cbarles Xamb's to praise them. "You should now write a couplet in praise of her eyes." "Aye, do, Mr. Ivamb," said she ; " make an epigram about my eyes." He looked at her — " Your eyes ! your eyes ! Are both of a size ! ' ' which was praise, but the least that could be accorded. Mrs. S recommended ho7iey to him as a good thing for the eyes, and said her daughter had received much benefit from it. "I knew," said he, "she had sweet eyes, but had no idea before how they became so." — \_Ibid.-\ At my house once a person said something about his grandmother. " Was she a tall woman?" said Mr. Lamb. "I don't know; No — Why do you ask ? " " Oh, mine was ; she was a granny dear." — \^Ibid.'\ He asked an absent lady's name, who had rather sharp features. On hearing it was Elizabeth, or something of the kind, he said : "I should have thought, if it had been Mary, she might have been St. Mary Axe." Another, •QXait anD TimisOont 253 who was very much marked with the small- pox, he said, looked as if the devil had ridden rough-shod over her face. I saw him talking to her afterwards with great apparent interest, and noticed it, saying, " I thought he had not liked her." His reply was, "I like her inter- nals very well. ' ' — \_Ibid. ] Mrs. H was sitting on a sofa one day between Mr. Montague and Mr. Lamb. The latter spoke to her, but all her attention was given to the other party. At last they ceased talking, and turning round to Mr. Lamb, she asked what it was he had been saying ? He replied, " Ask Mr. Montague, for it went in at one ear and out at another." — \_Ibid.'\ When I knew him first I happened to sit next him at dinner, and he was running on about some lady who had died of love for him, saying, "he was very sorry," but he could not com- mand such inclinations ; making all the commonplace stuff said on such occasions appear very ridiculous, his sister laughingly interrupting him now and then by saying, 254 Cbarles Xamb's "Why, she's alive now!" "Why, she's married, and has a large family," etc. He would not, however, allow it, and went on. With a very serious face, therefore, when he looked my way, I said, "And did she really die ? " With a look of indignant astonishment at my simplicity, he said, "And do you think I should — " Not being able to suppress a smile, he saw what I had been about ; and without finishing his speech, turned away his head. — [Ibid.] A lady, who had been visiting in the neigh- borhood of Ipswich, on her return could talk of nothing but the beauty of the country and the merits of the people. Mr. Lamb remarked that "She was Suffolk-ated."— [/(^/aT.] The way he would imitate a person who had been detected in some petty theft was inimit- able. He began once, saying, he had never been in suspicious circumstances but once, and then he had laid his hand over a guinea that lay on a counter, but that he really did not know it was there, etc. My youngest sister, "Ma anD MisDom 255 then a little girl, in her talk afterwards, seemed to think he must have known it. — [^Ibid.l One day, at the Exhibition of the Royal Academy, I w^as sitting on a form looking at the catalogue, and answering some 3'oung people about me who had none, or spared themselves the trouble of consulting it. There was a large picture of " Prospero and Miranda"; and I had just said, "It is by Shee ;'' when a voice near me said, " Would it not be more gram- matical to say by herf'' I looked, and it was Mr. Lamb.— [/<5zV.] He went with a party to my brother Charles' ship, in which the officers gave a ball to their friends. My brother hired a vessel to take us down to it, and some of the company asked its name. On hearing it was the Antelope, Mr. Lamb cried out, " Don't name it ; I have such a respect for my aunt, I cannot bear to think of her doing such a foolish action." — {^Ibid.'\ I once sat with Mr. Lamb in the pit of the theatre, when Mrs. Siddons gave one of her 256 Cbarles Xamb's last performances. We had two vulgar and conceited women behind us, who went on explaining and commenting, to show their knowledge, in a most absurd manner. Mr. Lamb occasionally gave them a lift. When Malcolm came on, in particular, he said, " He a king ! Why he is in petticoats!" One of them said to the other, "It 's the dress of the country. Ignorant wretches ! " — \_Ibid.'\ I had, I believe, once led the discourse in company by telling the story of a bad Arabian poet, who fell sick because he could get nobody to hear him recite ; the physician grasped the cane, and caned him. On this, Mr. Lamb de- claimed a great deal on the absurdity of reading one's own works aloud ; — that people w-ere always tired, instead of being pleased with it ; and that he made a poem the other day, befit- ting the time (one of those of overwhelming darkness such as ours in London sometimes are) ; and though he had not yet had time to transcribe it, and recollected it perfectly, he should never think of repeating it to other peo- 17 Mit ant) 'WHisDom 257 pie. Everybody of course were entreating him to favor them by repeating it, assuring him they would like it verj- much ; and at length he complied — " O my Gog ! what a fog ! " "A fine thing to make a fuss about?" said Miss M ; " Why, I can make a second part, ex- tempore — ' I cannot see to kill a flea ! ' " — lIhid.-\ On a book of Coleridge's nephew he writes, *' I confess he has more of the Sterne about him than the Sternhold. But he saddens into excellent sense before the conclusion." — [/(5zV.] Hood tempting Lamb to dine with him, said, *'We have a hare," ''And many friends?" inquired Lamb. — \_Ibid.'\ It being suggested that he would not sit down to a meal with the Italian witnesses at the Queen's trial, Lamb rejected the imputation, asserting that he would sit v/ith anything except a hen or a tailor. — \_Ibid.'\ 258 Cbarles 3Lamb*6 An old lady, fond of her dissenting minister, wearied Lamb by the length of her praises. " I speak, because I know him well," said she, ** Well, I don't," replied Lamb ; " I don't, but d n him, at a venture." — [/did.'] The Scotch, whom he did not like, ought, he said, to have double punishment ; and to have lire without brimstone. — [Idzd.'] Southey, in 1799, showed him a dull poem on a rose; Lamb's criticism was, "Your rose is insipid ; it has neither thorns nor sweetness." —[/did.] The second son of George the Second, it was said, had a very cold and uncongenial manner. Lamb stammered out in his defence that " This was very natural in the Duke of Cu — cum — ber- — land.''— [/did. 2 To Bernard Barton, of a person of repute, ** There must be something in him. Such great names imply greatness. Which of us has seen mil anD Mig^om 259 Michael Angelo's things? Yet which of lis disbelieves his greatness." — [/dtd.'\ " Charles," said Coleridge to Lamb, " I think you have heard me preach ? " "I n-n-n-never heard you do anything else," replied Lamb. — [/did.} One evening Coleridge had consumed the whole time in talking of some "regenerated" orthodoxy ; Leigh Hunt, who was one of the listeners, on leaving the house, expressed his surprise at the prodigality and intensity of Coleridge's religious expressions. Lamb tran- quillized him by " Ne-ne-never mind what Coleridge says, he 's full of fun ! " — llbid.'] The Bank, the India House, and other rich traders look insultingly on the old deserted South Sea, as on their poor neighbor out of business. — [Idid. ] In his exultation, on being released from his thirty-four years of labor at the India House, 26o Cbarles Xamt)*9 he says, " Had I a little son, I would christen him * Nothing to do.' "— [//^zV.] vSpeaking of Don Quixote, he calls him " The Errant Star of Knighthood, made more tender by eclipse." — \^Ibid.'] On being asked by a schoolmistress for some sign indicative of her calling, he recommended " the Murder of the Innocents." — \^Ibid.'\ I once said something in his presence, which I thought possessed smartness. He commended me with a stammer ; " Very well, my dear boy, very well. Ben, (taking a pinch of snuff), Ben Jonson has said worse things than that — and— and— b-b-better. ' '—\_Ibid. ] To Coleridge, "Bless you, old Sophist, who next to human nature taught me all the corrup- tion I was capable of knowing." — [Ibid.] To Mr. Gillman, a surgeon, ("query Kill- man ? ") he whites, " Coleridge is very bad, but he w^onderfully picks up, and his face, when he repeats his verses, hath its ancient glory : an archangel a little damaged." — [Ibid.'] Mlt an^ limisDom 261 To Wordsworth (who was superfluously solemn) he writes, " Some d — d people have come in, and I must finish abruptly. By d — d, I only mean deuced." — [^Ibid.'\ INDEX. Affection, on the expres- sion of, 197 Affections, on the seat of the, 6 Albums, on, 106 Almsgiving, on, 133 Alone, on never being, 141 Ancestry, pride of, 56 Anderson, on Dr., 180 Answer, a sharp, 246 Art, criticism on, 83 Artist, an, 72 a mediocre, 95 Associates, equality neces- sary to, I Author, an unaccustomed, 155 Authoress, a visit to an, 172 Authors, booksellers and, 202 Autobiographies, 108 Babel, Tower of, 3 Balmanno, a visit to Mrs., 213 Bankrupts, on, 99 Bedfellows, odd, 219 Behavior, bad, 143 Belshazzar, a painting, 213 Benevolence, arrested, 100 the crutch of, 197 Betrothed, a gift from her, 212 Blake's drawings, 117 Books, borrowers of, 151 reviewing, 169 Borrowers, 14 Bunyan, on a fine edition of, 107 Burnett, on History of Bishop, 191 Burney, on M., 97 Byron, acuta criticism on, 140 the death of, 112 Calls, making, 118 Gary, on H. F., 124 Cats and Homer, 106 Chance, games of, 5 264 irnt)ej Character, sketches of, 20, 38, 56, 210 a woman's, 39 Child, the man and the, 7 Childhood, 64 a story of, 93 is childhood dead ? 19 Children, 4 on loving, 29 the commonness of, 32 Chimney-sweeps, 35 China, blue, 47 letter to a friend in, 145 Chirography, on, 217 Church, at Hastings, 124 a tiny, 114 City life, charms of, 145 Clarke, on Cowden, 239 Clerk, the model, 82 C. I,.'s " Moral Sense," 176 Coat, a new, 187 Coelebs in Search of a Wife, 154 Coleridge, a visit to, 161 as a companion, 189 gratitude to, 197 monologue of, 237 Colossus, a damaged, 53 Conscience, I^amb's ten- der, 127 Constancy, Lamb's idea of, 167 Conversation in a coach, 103 Country villages, 102 imagining a distant, 31 Credulity, 23 Criticism, acute, 193 a literary, 204 Crowd, a scene in a, 50 Dash, the dog, 200 " Day-Mare," a, 120 Debtors, on, 99 De Foe's writings, 128 Desires, spiritual, 198 Dialect in poetry', 135 Divines, two Methodist, 24 Domestic, on his new, 105 Dyer, George, 12, 184 conscience of, 215 EJars, a ringing in the, 113 East India Company's rules, 139 Elia, Gentle, 188 who is, 10 Cousin James, i, 2 Elliston, the actor, 68 Epitaphs, on, 12 humorous, 222 Eternity, time and, 62 Experiments, financial. Faith, a child's, 21 Familj', a measureless, 216 Faust, 130 Feeling, delicacy of, no Fierj' age, the, 209 Frenchmen and English- men, 162 ITnDej 265 Friendship, 197 Folding letters, 102 Fools, on, 3 f Gallantry, consistent, 40 Garden, his, 132 Genius, sanity of true, 67 German language, on the, 184 Giantess, the gentle, 93, 136 " God Save the King," 7 Godliness, cleanliness and, 96 Godwin, on William, 190 Grace, on saying, 17 Guy Faux, if he had been successful, 89 Haydon's memories of I,amb, 235 Hazlitt, Wm., 157 Head, a ringing in the, 181 Hissing, on, St Holiday, excuse for a, 245 Holiness, the beauty of, 64 Home, 130 Hood, the prince of wits, 216 Hood's, a dinner at, 230 ' ' Hook and I, ' ' 156. Hunt's characterization of I^amb, 246 Ignorance, the benefit of, 126 Ink, on using different kinds of, 137 Invalids, selfishness of, 65 Irony, 221 Irving, Edward, 116 madness of, 218 Jackson, Captain, 6r Joke, Mary's first, 151 Jokes, on writing news- paper, 67 Juggler, an amiable, 60 I^amb, and the beggar 225 and the pudding, 226 and the city acquaint- ance, 243 I,amb's, creed, 220 love for children, 240 propensity to mystify, 224 sympathy for animals, 238 watch, 244 whimsical candor, 239 lyanguage not the only means of human in- tercourse, 160 lycisure, retired, 63 Letter, the end of a, 155 I,ibraiy, I^amb on his own, 152 I^itany, an addition to the, 159 266 ■ffnC^ej Iviterature, curiosities in, II X,iver, the longest, 123 London, on, 182 love of, 166 the I,ord Mayor of, 190 Lottery, the, 79 Mahomet, Taylor's defence of, 237 Man, the sick, 66 a good. III ISIatter-of-lie man, a, 247 Memory, a lying, 136 Mistake, an amusing, 84 Monuments, on, 107 Moral point, the promi- nence of the, 32 Moving, discomforts of, 153 Music, instrumental, 26 Neatness, lack of, 134 Newspaper man, a, 70 Opera, Italian, 25 Oratorio, the, 26 Otaheite, the first pun in, 91 Play, 38 Players, Plays and, 61 Poet, an obituary, 150 Poetical project, a, 170 Poets as critics, ,115 Pope's portrait, 131 Presents, on exchanging, 33 Priestley's sermons, 196 Protestants and Chris- tians, 76 Puns, 38, 113 Puns and punch, 153 Quakers, on, 24 composure of, 15 Quixote, Don, 116 Reading-rooms, on public, 156 Relation, the poor, 51 Religion and good words, no Religions, varied, 77 Riches, 138 Rickman, a pen portrait of, 178 Robinson, anecdote of, 248 Painting, criticism on a, 109 Paris, to a friend in, 159 People, married, 34 Petrarch, if he had been born a fool, 143 Philosophy, moral, 65 Scene, a street, 36 Schoolmaster, the, 75 School, reminiscences of, V Scotch character, 44 Scotchmen, lack of humor in, 43 •»in2)cj 267 Scripture, silent, iig Sea-shore, dislike of the, 54 Shakespeare, the evils of illustrating, 215 Shelley, on, 118, 140 Sick-bed, the, C5 Sickness, the armor of, 66 Skiddawand the tourists, 163 Smoking, on, 165 on giving up , 127 Smuggler, the, 54 Solitude, dislike of, 247 Sonnets, old English, 59 Southey, criticisms on, 125 South ey's dialogues, 105 Sunday, on, 119 Sundays, wet, 206 Sun-dial, the, 17 Temperament, a Scotch, 43 Theses Qusedam Theo- logies, 194 Truth and sincerity, 185 Vacations, 49 Veracity, his character for, lOI Visitors, nocturnal, 15S afiectation of town, 55 Voice, a woman's, 92 Voltaire, on, 247 Volume, a precious, 74 Walton's " Complete Ang- ler," 205 ' ' Wet or walky , ' ' 109 Whist player, to a, 248 game of, 9 Wife's treatment, a, 27 William the IVth., 99 Woman, respect for, 42 hater, a, 157 characters in a play, 78 Wordsworth and Shake- speare, 157 Wordsworth's poetry, 86 Work, relief from routine, 144 Yams, a spinner of, 52 the: end. 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