^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.
 
 Iknicherbocfter IRuogete. 
 
 Nugget. — " A diminutive mass of precious metal. 
 
 '* Little gems of bookmaking." — Cointnercial Gazette, Cin- 
 cinnati. 
 
 " For many a long day nothing has been thought out or 
 worked out so sure to prove entirely pleasing to cultured 
 book-lovers." — The Bookmaker. 
 
 I. — Gesta Romanorum. Tales of the old 
 monks. Edited by C. SwAN . . . $i oo 
 
 " This little gem is a collection of stories composed by the 
 monks of old, who were in the custom of relating them to 
 each other after meals for their mutual amusement and infor- 
 mation." — Williains' Literary Monthly. 
 
 " Nuggets indeed, and charming ones, are these rescued 
 from the mine of old Latin, which would certainly have been 
 lost to many busy readers who can only take what comes to 
 them without delving for hidden treasures." 
 
 II. — Headlong Hall and Nightmare Abbey. 
 
 By Thomas Love Peacock . . . $i oo 
 
 " It must have been the cotirt librarian of King Oberon 
 who originally ordered the series of quaintly artistic little 
 volumes that Messrs. Putnam are publishing under the name 
 of Knickerbocker Nuggets. There is an elfin dignity in the 
 aspect of these books in their bindings of dark and light blue 
 with golden arabesques." — Portland Press. 
 
 III. — Gulliver's Travels. By Jonathan Swift. 
 A reprint of the early complete edition. Very fully 
 illustrated. Two vols $2 50 
 
 '• ^Messrs. Putnam have done a substantial service to all 
 readers of English classics by reprinting in two dainty and 
 artistically bound volumes those biting satires of Jonathan 
 Swift, Gulliver'' s Travels^''
 
 1Rnic??erboc?ier 1Ruc^gct6» 
 
 IV. — Tales from Irving. With illustrations. 
 Two vols. Selected from "The Sketch Book," 
 "Traveller," " Wolfert's Roost," " Bracebridge 
 Hall." $2 oo 
 
 " The tales, pathetic and thrilling as they are in themselves, 
 are rendered winsome and realistic by the lifelike portraitures 
 which profusely illustrate the volumes. . . . We confess our 
 high appreciation of the superb manner in which the publish- 
 ers have got up and sent forth the present volumes — which 
 are real treasures, to be prized for their unique character." — 
 Ch r IS t ia n Un ion. 
 
 " Such books as these will find their popularity confined to 
 no one country, but chey must be received with enthusiasm 
 wherever art and literature are recognized." — Albany Argus. 
 
 v.— Book of British Ballads. Edited by S. 
 C. Hall. A fac-simile of the original edition. 
 With illustrations by Creswick, Gilbert, and 
 others $i 50 
 
 "This is a diminutive fac-simile of the original very valu- 
 able edition. . . . The collection is not only the most com- 
 plete and reliable that has been published, but the volume 
 is beautifully illustrated by skilful ^xtisis.'''— Pittsburg 
 Chronicle. 
 
 ' ' Probably the best general collection of our ballad literature, 
 in moderate compass, that has yet been made." — Chicago Dial. 
 
 VI. — The Travels of Baron Munchausen. 
 
 Reprinted from the early, complete edition. Very 
 fully illustrated |i 25 
 
 "•The venerable Baron Munchausen in his long life has 
 never appeared as well-dressed, so far as we kn«w, as now in 
 this goodly company." 
 
 " The Baron's stories are as fascinating as the Arabian 
 Nights." — Church Union.
 
 Iftntcfterbocfter IRuggets. Hi 
 
 VII. — Letters, Sentences, and Maxims. By 
 
 Lord Chesterfield. With a critical essay by C. 
 A. Sainte-Beuve $1 oo 
 
 " Full of wise things, quaint things, witty and shrewd 
 things, and the maker of this book has put the pick of them 
 all together.— Z,^«^c77« IVorldy 
 
 " Each of the little volumes in this series is a literary gem." 
 — Ckrisiiatt at Work. 
 
 VIII.— The Vicar of Wakefield. By Gold- 
 smith. With 32 illustrations by William Mul- 
 
 READY $1 00 
 
 " Goldsmith's charming tale seems more charming than 
 ever in the dainty dress of the Knickerbocker Nuggets 
 series. These little books are a delight to the eye, and their 
 convenient form and size make them most attractive to all 
 book-lovers." — The Writer^ Boston. 
 
 "A gem of an edition, well made, printed in clear, read- 
 able type, illustrated with spirit, rmd just such a booklet as, 
 when one has it in his pocket, makes all the difference be- 
 tween solitude and loneliness." — Independent. 
 
 IX. — Lays of Ancient Rome. By Thomas 
 Babington Macaulay. Illustrated by George 
 ScHARF $1 00 
 
 " The poems included in this collection are too well known 
 to require that attention should be drawn to them, but the 
 beautiful setting which they receive in the dainty cover and 
 fine workmanship of this series makes it a pleasure even to 
 handle the volume." — Yale Literary Magazine. 
 
 X.— The Rose and the Ring. By William M. 
 
 Thackeray. With the author's illustrations. $r 25 
 
 " The Rose and the Ring., by Thackeray, is reproduced 
 with quaint illustrations, evidently taken from the author's 
 own \iz.ndi\v<ox\i,'''' — Rochester Post-Express.
 
 1fcntc??erboct;cr TRucic^ets* 
 
 XI. — Irish Melodies and Songs. By Thomas 
 Moore. Illustrated by Maclise . . $i 50 
 
 " The latest issue is a collection of Thomas Moore's Irish 
 Melodies and Songs, fully and excellently illustrated, v/ith 
 each page of the text printed within an outline border of 
 appropriate green tint, embellished with emblems and figures 
 fitting the text." — Boston Times. 
 
 XII. — Undine and Sintram. By De La Motte 
 FouQUE. Illustrated . . . . $1 00 
 
 " Undine and Sintram are the latest issue, bound in one 
 volume. They are of the size classics should be — pocket 
 volumes — and nothing more desirable is to be found among 
 the new editions of old treasures." — San Josd Mercury. 
 
 XIII. — The Essays of Elia. By Charles 
 Lamb. Two vols, . . . . $2 00 
 
 "The genial essayist himself could have dreamed of no 
 more beautiful setting than the Putnams have given the 
 Essays 0/ Elia by printing them among their Knickerbocker 
 Nuggets." — Chicago Advance. 
 
 XIV.— Tales from the Italian Poets. By 
 Leigh Hunt. Two vols. . . . $2 00 
 
 " The perfection of artistic booknia' i-.r:;." — San Francisco 
 Chronicle. 
 
 " This work is most delightful literature, which finds a 
 fitting place in this collection, bound in volumes of striking 
 beauty." — Troy Times. 
 
 ''Hunt had just that delightful knowledge of the Italian 
 poets that one would most desire for one's self, together with 
 an exquisite style of his own wherein to make his presentation 
 of them to English readers perfect." — New York Critic. 
 
 The first series, comprising the foregoing 
 eighteen volumes, in handsome case, 019.00
 
 IRnickerbocher IRuooeta. 
 
 XV.— Thoughts of the Emperor Marcus 
 Aurelius Antoninus. Translated by George 
 Long $i oo 
 
 " The thoughts of the famous Roman are worthy of a new 
 introduction to the army of readers through a volume so 
 dainty and pleasing." — Intelligencer, 
 
 *' As a book for hard study, as a book to inspire reverie, as 
 a book for five minutes or an hour, it is both delightful and 
 profitable." — Joji?-nal of Education. 
 
 " It is an interesting little book, and we feel indebted to the 
 translator for this presentation of his work." — Presbyterian. 
 
 XVI. — iEsop's Fables. Rendered chiefly from 
 original sources. By Rev. Thomas James, M.A. 
 With I GO illustrations by John Tenniell. $r 25 
 
 " It is wonderful the hold these parables have had upon 
 the human attention ; told to children, and yet of no less 
 interest to men and women." — Chautauqua Herald. 
 
 " For many a long day nothing has been thought out or 
 worked out so sure to prove entirely pleasing to cultured 
 book-lovers." — The Bookmaker. 
 
 " These classic studies adorned with morals were never 
 more neatly prepared for the public eye." — The Milwaukee 
 Wisconsin. 
 
 XVII. — Ancient Spanish Ballads. Historic 
 and Romantic. Translated, with notes, by J. G. 
 Lockhart. Reprinted from the revised edition 
 of 1 841, with 60 illustrations by Allan, Roberts, 
 SiMsoN, Warren, Aubrey, and Harvey. $i 50 
 
 " a mass of popular poetry which has never yet received 
 the attention to which it is entitled." — Boston Journal of 
 Education. 
 
 " The historical and artistic settings of these mediaeval 
 poetic gems enhance the value and attractiveness of the 
 book." — Buffalo Chronicle Advocate.
 
 Iknickcxbochcv Tftugoete, 
 
 XVIIL— The Wit and Wisdom of Sydney 
 Smith. A selection of the most memorable pas- 
 sages in his Writings and Conversations . $i oo 
 
 XIX.— The Ideals of the Republic; or, 
 Great Words from Great Americans. Com- 
 prising : " The Declaration of Independence, 1776"; 
 "The Constitution of the United States, 1779"; 
 "Washington's Circular Letter, T7S3," etc. §1 co 
 
 XX. — Selections from Thomas De Quincey. 
 Comprising: "On Murder Considered as One of 
 the Fine Arts"; Three Memorable Murders"; 
 "The Spanish Nun." . . . . $1 00 
 
 XXI. — Tales by Heinrich Zschokke. Com- 
 prising : "A New Year's Eve"; "The Broken 
 Pitcher"; "Jonathan Frock"; "A Walpurgis 
 Night." Translated by Parke Godwin and 
 William P. Prentice . . . . §1 00 
 
 XXII. — American War Ballads. A selection 
 of the more noteworthy of the Ballads and Lyrics 
 which were produced during the Revolution, the 
 War of 1 81 2, the I^Iexican War, and the Civil War. 
 Edited, with notes, by Geo. Cary Eggleston. 
 With original illustrations. Two vols. . f 2 50 
 
 XXIII. — The Autobiography of Benjamin 
 Franklin. Edited, wiih notes, by John Bige- 
 Low $1 00 
 
 XXIV. — Sof ^s of Fairy Land. Compiled b? 
 Edward T. Mason, with illustrations from designs 
 by Maud Hlmphrfy . . . . $r 25;
 
 1knicl?erboct?er IRuciacts. vii 
 
 XXV, — Sesame and Lilies. By John Rus- 
 
 KIN $1 OO 
 
 XXVI. — The Garden, as considered in literature 
 by certain polite v.-riters. Edited by Walter Howe, 
 with portrait o{ William Kent . . |lr oo 
 
 XXVII.— The Boyhood and Youth of Goethe. 
 Comprising the first thirteen books of his Autobiog- 
 raphy ("Truth and Poetry from my own Life"). 
 Two vols. ...... $2 CO 
 
 XXVIII.— The Sayings of Poor Richard. 
 Being the Prefaces, Proverbs, and Poems of Benja- 
 min Franklin, originally printed in Poor Richard's 
 Almanacs for 1 733-1 758. Collected and Edited by 
 Paul L, Ford. Vv'ith portrait of Franklin, ^r 00 
 
 XXIX. — Love Poems of Three Centuries. 
 Compiled by Jessie F.O'DONNELL. Twovols. $2 00 
 
 XXX. — Chesterfield's Letters. Second 
 Series. Letters of Philip Dormer, Fourth Earl of 
 Chesterfield, to his Godson and Successor. Now 
 first edited from the originals, with a Memoir of 
 Lord Chesterfield by the Earl of Carnarvon. With 
 portraits and illustrations. Two vols. . $2 00 
 
 XXXI.— Representative Irish Stories. Com- 
 piled, with Introduction and Notes, by W, B, Yeats. 
 Two vols, . ..... $2 00 
 
 XXXII.— French Ballads. Printed in the 
 original text. Edited by Prof. T. F. Crane. 
 Illustrated • ^i 50 
 
 XXXIII.— Eothen. Pictures of Eastern 
 Travel. By V^^ A. Kinglake. . . $1 oo
 
 •^nlcfterboc??er IRucjcjets. 
 
 XXXIV.— stories from the Arabian Nights. 
 
 Selected and edited by Stanley Lane-Poole, with 
 additions newly translated from the Arabic. Three 
 volumes. Each volume contains a frontispiece in 
 photogravure and other designs . . . $3 oo 
 
 XXXV.— A Selection from the Discourses of 
 Epictetus; with the Encheiridion. Translated 
 by George Long $i oo 
 
 XXXVL— Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia. By 
 Samuel Johnson $i oo 
 
 XXXVII. —Cranford. By Mrs. Gaskei.l. Oi oo 
 " XXXVIIL— German Ballads. Printed in the 
 original text. Edited by Prof. II. S. White. 
 Illustrated |r 50 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, Plblishers 
 New York and London
 
 i^iOU
 
 41010
 
 B 000 008 289
 
 M 111 Bm iBlfflff i(