iii|||iliiii|i!i||>i!i t ' • Digitized by tine Internet Arcliive in 2008 witli funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation littp://www.arcliive.org/details/finalmemorialsofOOIambricli THE -FINAL MEMORIALS • OF . CHAELES LAMB. BY THOMAS NOOX TALFOURD, ONE OF HIS RXECUT0R3 NEW YORK: DERBY & .lACKSOX, 110 NASSAU STREET. 1 859. \y 4 TO WILLIAM WORDSWOPJII, ESQ., D.C.L, POET LAUREATE, THESE FINAL MEMORIALS OP ONE WHO CnERISUED HIS FKIESDSUIP AS A COMFORT AMIDST GRIEFS AND A GLOUy AMIDST DEPRESSIONS, ARE WITH AFFECTION AND RESPKCT INSCRIBED BT ONE WHOSE PRIDE IS TO HAVE BEEN IN OI.D TIME HIS EARNEST ADMIRER, AND ONE OF WDOSB FONDEST WISHES IS THAT HE MAY BE LONG SPARED TO ENJOY FAME, RARELY ACCORDED TO THE LIVING. PREFACE. Nearly twelve years have elapsed since the Letters of Charles Lamb, accompanied by such slight sketch of his Life aa might link them together, and explain the circumstances to which they refer, were given to the world. In the Preface to that work, reference was made to letters yet remaining unpublished, and to a period when a more complete estimate might be formed of the singular and delightful character of the writer than was there presented. That period has arrived. Several of his friends, who mi c know how nobly that love, and all hope of earthly blessings attcndent on such an af- fection, were resigned on the catastrophe which darkened the following year. In the meantime, his youth was lonely —rendered the more so by the recollection of the society of Coleridge, who had just left London— of Coleridcrc in the first bloom of life and genius, unshaded by the mysti- cism which it afterwards glorified— full of boundless ambi- tion, love, and hope ! There was a tendency to insanity in his family, which had been more than once developed m his sister ; and it was no matter of surprise that in the dreariness of his solitude it fell upon him ; and that, at the close of the year, he was subjected for a few weeks to the 1 restraint of the insane. The wonder is that, amidst all the difficulties, the sorrows, and the excitements of his \ succeeding forty years, it never recurred. Perhaps the true cause of this remarkable exemption— an exemption the more remarkable when his afiiictions are considered in association with one single frailty— will be found in the sudden claim made on his moral and intellectual nature by a terrible exigency, and by his generous answer to that chum ; so that a life of self-sacrifice was rewarded by the preservation of unclouded reason. The following letter to Coleridge, then residing at Bris- tol, which is undated, but which is proved by circumstances to have been written in the spring of 1796, and which is probably the earliest of Lamb's letters which have been preserved, contains liis oato account of ihis seizure. Al- lusion to the same event will be perceived in two letters of the same year, after which no reference to it appears iu his correspondence, nor can any be remembered in hia conversations with his dearest friends. LETTEES TO COLEKIDGE. 1^ TO MR. COLERIDGE. "1795. <. T^ear C , make yourself perfectly easy abont May. I paia hu bill «hen I sent your clothes. I ^'as flusl. ot money, and am so still to all the purposes of a single lue r„ .he yourself no further concern abont it. The money would be superfluous to me if I had it. a When Southey becomes as modest as h,s predecessor Milton, and publishes his Epics in duodecimo, I will read •em • a Ruinea a book is somewhat exorbitant, nor have 1 L Opportunity of borrowing the work. The extracts from ,t in the Monthly Kevieivs, and the short passages myour Watchman, seem to me much superior to anything in his partnership account with Lovoll Your poems I shall p o- Lre forthwith. There were noble lines in what you in- serted in one of your numbers, from ' Religious Musings ; but I thought them elaborate. I am somewhat glad you have given up that paper ; it must have been dry, unpi^fit- able and of dissonant mood to your disposition. I wish y!:'success in all your undertakings, and am glad to ear you are employed about the ' Evidences of Eelig.on Ih o sneed of multiplying such ^ooks a hundredfold h.s philosophical age, to prevent converts to atheism, fo they seem too tough disputants to meddle with afterward "Le Grice is gone to make puns in Cornwall. He has got a tut rship ?o a young boy living with his mother, a l°dow-lady. He will, of course, initiate him quickly m wha^solver things are lovely, honorable, and of good retott Coleridge - I know not what suffering scenes you ave 2one throu<.h at Bristol. My life has been somewhat d ™rsTfied of lat°e. The six weeks that finished la.t year a ^i b gan ^^.s, your very humble servant spent very agree- ! abiy in a madiouse, at Hoxton. I am got somewhat ra- tional now, and don't bite any one. But mad I wos ! And 16 LETTEIIS TO COLERIDGE. many a vagary my imagination played with mo, enough to make a volume, if all were told. My sonnets I have ex- tended to the number of nine since I saw you, and will some day communicate to you. I am beginning a poem in blank verse, which, if I finish, I publish. White is on the eve of publishing (he took the hint from Vortigern) ' Original letters of Falstaff, Shallow,' &c., a copy you shall have when it comes out. They are without excep- tion the best imitations I ever saw. Coleridge ! it may convince you of my regards for you when I tell you my head ran on you in my madness, as much almost as on another person, who I am inclined to think was the more immediate cause of my temporary frenzy. " The sonnet I send you has small merit as poetry ; but you will be curious to read it when I tell you it was writ- ten in my prison-house in one of my lucid intervals. TO MY SISTER. "If from my lips some angry accents fell, Peevish complaint, or harsh reproof unkind, 'Twas but the error of a sickly mind And troubled thoughts, clouding the purer well, And waters clear, of Reason ; and for me Let this my verse the poor atonement be — My verse, which thou to praise wert o'er inclined Too highly, and with partial 03-6 to see No blemish. Thou to me didst ever show Kindest affection; and wouldst oft-times lend An ear to the desponding love-sick lay, "Weeping my sorrows with me, who repay But ill the mighty debt of love I owe, Mary, to thee, my sister and ray friend. "With these lines, and with that sister's kindest remem- brances to C , I conclude. " Yours sincerely, Lamb." "Your ' Conciones ad Populum' are the most eloquent politics that ever came in my way. LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 17 " Write when convenient — not as a task, for here is no- thing in this letter to answer. " We cannot send our rememhrances to Mrs. C, not having seen her, but believe me our best good washes at- tend you both. " My civic and poetic compliments to Southey if at Bris- tol ; — why, he is a very Leviathan of Bards — the small minnow, I !" In the spring of this year, Coleridge proposed the associa- tion of those first efforts of the young clerk in the India House, which he had prompted and praised, with his own, in a new edition of his Poems, to which Mr. Charles Lloyd also proposed to contribute. The following letter comprises Sonnets transmitted to Coleridge for this purpose, accom- panied by remarks so characteristic as to induce the hope that the reader will forgive the introduction of these small gems of verse which were published in due course, for the sake of the original setting. TO MR. COLERIDGE. " 1796. " I am in such violent pain with the head-ache, that I am fit for nothing but transcribing, scarce for that. "When I get your poems, and the ' Joan of Arc,' I will ex- ercise my presumption in giving you my opinion of 'em. The mail does not come in before to-morrow (Wednesday) morning. The following Sonnet was composed during a walk down into Hertfordshire early in last summer : — "The Lord of Light shakes off his drowsyhed.* Fresh from his couch up springs the lusty sun, And girds liiiuself his mighty race to run ; Meantimej by tru:int love of rambling led, * " Drowsyhed" I have met with, I tbiuk, in Spenser. 'Tis an old thing, but it ihynies with led, and rhyming covers a multitude of licenses. — 0. Lamb's Manuscripts. 2* 18 LETTERS TO COLEEIDGE. I turn iiij- Lack en thy dotettcil walls. Proud city, and tlij' sons I leave behind, A selfisli, sordid, money gcttin?-kind, Who shut, their ears when holy Freetloni calls. I pass not thee so lightly, huinlde spire, That mindest rao of many a pleasure gone. Of merriest days of Love and Islington, Kindling anew the flames of past desire; And I shall muse on thee, slow journeying on. To the green plains of pleasant Hertfordshire. " The last line is a copy of Bo\\les's, ' To the green hairi' let in the peaceful plain.' Your ears are not so very fasti- dious ; many people would not like words so prosaic and familiar in a Sonnet as Islino;ton and Hertfordshire. The next was written within a day or two of the last, on revis- iting a spot where the scene was laid of my first Sonnet ' that mocked my step with many a lonely glade.' "When last I roved these winding wood-walks green. Green winding walks, and shadj' pathwaj-s sweet j Oft-times would Anna seek the silent scene, Shrouding her beauties in the louo retreat. No more I hear her footsteps in the shade ; Her image only in these pleasant ways Meets me self-wandering, where in happier days I held free converse with my fair-haired maid. I passed the little cottage which she loved, The cottage which did once my all contain ; It spake of days that ne'er must come again ; Spake to my heart, and much my heart was moved. Now ' Fair befal thee, gentle maid,' said Ij And from the cottage turned me with a sigh. " The next retains a few lines from a Sonnet of mine which you once remarked had no ' body of thought' in it I agree with you, but have preserved a part of it, and it runs thus. I ilatter myself you will like it : "A timid grace sits trembling in her eye, As loth to meet the rudeness of men's sight; Yet shedding a delicious lunar light, That steeps in kind oblivious ecstaey LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 19 The care-crazed mind, like some still melody : Speaking most plain tlie thoughts which do possess Ilor gentle sprite, peace and meek quietness, And innocent loves,* and maiden purity: A look who'coT might heal the cruel smart Of changed friends ; or Fortune's wrongs unkind ; Might to sweet deeds of mercy move the heart Of him, who hates his brethren of mankind: Turned are those beams from me, who fondly yet Past joj's, vain loves, and buried hopes regret. " The next and last I value most of all. 'Twas com- posed close upon the licels of tlie last, in that very wood I had in mind Avlien I wrote — ' Mcthinks how dainty sweet.' " We were two pretty babes, the j'oungest she, The youngest, and the loveliest far, I ween. And Innocence her name. The time has been We two did love each other's company; Time wa;', we two had wept to have been apart; But when, with show of seeming good beguil'd, I left the garb and manners of a child, And m}' first love fur man's society. Defiling with the world my virgin heart — My loved companion dropt a tear, and iled, And hid in deepest shades her awful head. Beloved who can tell me where thou art — In what delicious Eden to be found — That I may seek thee the wide world around ? " Since writing it, I have found in a poem by Hamilton of Bangor, these two lines to ' Happiness.' Nun, sober and devout, where art thou fled. To hide in shades thy meek contented head? Lines eminently beautiful ; but I do not remeudjcr havmg read them previously, foe the credit of my tenth and elev- enth lines. Parnell has two lines (which probably sug- gested the above) to ' Contentment.' '■"- Cowley uses this phrase with a somewhat different meaning. I raciint loves of relatives, friends, &c., — C. Lamb's Manuscripts. '"^^ LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. Whither, ah ! whither art thou flod To hide thy meek contented* head ? " Coys-lefs exquisite ' Elegj on the death of his friend ilarvej, suggested the phrase of 'we two.' Was there a tree that did not know The love betwixt us two ? - So much for acknowledged plagiarisms, the confession ot which I know not whether it has more of vanity or modesty m it As to mj blank verse, I am so dismally slow and sterile of ideas (I speak from mj heart) that I much question if it will ever come to any issue. I have hithei;to only hammered out a few independent, uncon- nected snatches, not in a capacity to be sent. I am very ill, and will rest till I have read your poems, for which I am very thankful. I have one more favor to beo- of you that you never mention Mr. May's affair in any sort, much less think of repaying. Are we not flocci-nauci-what-d'ye- call-'em-ists ? We have just learned that my poor brother has had a sad accident, a large stone blown down by yester- day's high wind has bruised his leg in a most shocking manner ; he is under the care of Cruikshanks. Coleridge ' there are 10,000 objections against my paying you a visit at iiristol ; It cannot be else ; but in this world 'tis better not to think too much of pleasant possibles, that we may not be out of humor with present insipids. Should anything brmg you to London, you will recollect No. 7, Little Queen Street, Holborn. "I shall be too ill to call on Wordsworth myself but will take care to transmit him his poem, when I have read Jt. I saw Le Grice the day before his departure, and mentioned incidentally his 'teaching the young idea ho^v * An odd epithet for Conrentn-.nt in a poet s. poetical as Parnell _C Lamb s Manuscripts. LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 21 to shoot.' Knowing him and the probability there is of people having a propensity to pun in his company, you Avill not wonder that we both stumbled on the same pun at once, he eagerly anticipating me, — ' he would teach him to shoot !' Poor Le Grice ! if wit alone could entitle a man to respect, &c., he has written a very witty little pam- phlet lately, satirical upon college declamations. When I send White's book, I will add that. I am sorry there should be any difference between you and Southey. ' Be- tween you two there should be peace,' tho' I must say I have borne him no good will since he spirited you away from among us. "What is become of Moschus ? You sported some of his sublimities, I see, in your Watchman. Very decent things. So much for to-night from your afBicted, headachey, sore-throatey, humble servant, " C. Lamb." " Tuesday night. — Of your Watchman, the Review of Burke was the best prose. I augured great things from the first number. There is some exquisite poetry inter- spersed. I have re-read the extract from the ' Religious Musings,' and retract whatever invidious there was in my censure of it as elaborate. There are times when one is not in a disposition thoroughly to relish good writing. I have re-read it in a more favorable moment, and hesitate not to pronounce it sublime. If there be anything in it approaching to tumidity (which I meant not to infer ; by elaborate I meant simply labored), it is the gigantic hyper- bole by which you describe the evils of existing society ; 'snakes, lions, hyenas, and behemoths,' is carrying your resentment beyond bounds. The pictures of ' The Simoom,' of 'Frenzy and Ruin,' of ' The Whore of Babylon,' and ' The Cry of Foul Spirits disherited of Earth,' and ' the strange beatitude' which the good man shall recognise in on ^^ LETTERS TO COLEKIDiiK. heaven, as well as the particularising of die children of wretchedness (I have unconsciously included every part of it), form a variety of uniform excellence. I hunger and thirst to read the poem complete. That is a capital line in your sixth number. 'This dark, frieze-coated, hoarse, teeth-chattcring month.' They are exactly such epithets as Burns would have stum- bled on, whose poem on the ploughed-up daisy you seem to have had in mind. Your complaint that of your readers some thought there was too much, some too little original matter in your numbers, reminds me of poor dead Parsons in the ' Critic' ' Too little incident ! Give me leave to tell you, sir, there is too much incident.' I had like to have forgot thanking you for that exquisite little morsel, the first Sclavonian Song. The expression in the second,— *' more happy to be unhappy in hell ;' is it not very quaint ? Accept my thanks, in common with those of all who love good poetry, for ' The Braes of Yarrow.' I congratulate you on the enemies you must have made by your splendid invective against the barterers in human flesh and sinews. Coleridge ! you will rejoice to hear that Cowpcr is re- covered from his lunacy, and is employed on his transla- ' tion of the Italian, &c., poems of Milton for an edition where Fuseli presides as designer, Coleridge I to an idler like myself, to write and receive letters are both very plea, sant, but I wish not to break in upon your valuabfc time by expecting to hear very frequently from you. Rcsci-ve that obligation for your moments of lassitude, when you have nothing else to do ; for your loco-restive and all your idle propensities, of course, iiave given way to \\\(i duties of providing for a family. The mail is come in, but no parcel ; yet this is Tuesday. Farewell, then, till to-mor- row, for a niche and a nook I must leave for criticisms. LETTEUS TO COLEIIIDGE. 23 By the way I hope you do not send your only copy of Joan of Arc ; I will in that case return it immediately. " Your parcel is come ; you have been lavish of your presents. " Wordsworth's poem I have hurried through, not witli- oat delight. Poor Lovell ! my heart almost accuses me for the light manner I spoke of him above, not dreaming of liis death. My heart bleeds for your accumulated troubles ; God send you through 'em with patience. 1 conjure you dream not that I will ever think of being re- paid ; the vei^y word is galling to the ears. I have read all your ' Religious Musings' with uninterrupted feelings of profound admiration. You may safely rest your fame on it. The best remainhig things are Avhat I have before read, and they lose nothing by my recollection of your manner of reciting 'em, for I too bear in mind ' the voice, the look,' of absent friends, and can occasionally mimic their manner for the amusement of those Avho have seen 'em. Y'^our impassioned manner of recitation I can recall at any time to mine own heart and to the ears of the by- standers. I rather wish you had left the monody on Chatterton concluding as it did abruptly. It had more of unity. The conclusion of your ' Religious Musings,' I fear will entitle you to the reproof of your beloved woman, who wisely will not suffer your fancy to run riot, but bids you walk humbly with your God. The xerj last wordr, ' I exercise my young noviciate thought in ministeries of heart-stirring song,' though not new to mo, cannot be enough admired. To speak politely, they are a well- turned compliment to Poetry. I hasten to read ' Joan of Arc, &c.' I have read your lines at the beginning of second book : they are v/orthy of Milton ; but in my mind yield to your 'Religious Musings.' I shall read the whole care- 24 LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. fully, and in some future letter take the liberty to par- ticularise my opinions of it. Of what is new to me among your poems next to the ' Musings,' that beginning ' INIy Pensi :'e Sara' gave me most pleasure : the lines in it I just alluded to are most exquisite ; they made my sister and self smile, as conveying a pleasing picture of Mrs. C. cliecking your wild wanderings, which we were so fond of hearing you indulge when among us. It has endeared us more than anything to your good lady, and your own self- reproof that follows delighted us. 'Tis a charming poem throughout (you have well remarked that charming, ad- mirable, exquisite are the words expressive of feelings more than conveying of ideas, else I might plead very well want of room in my paper as excuse for generalising). I Avant room to tell you how we are charmed Avith your verses in the manner of Spenser, &c. &c. &c. &c. &c. 1 am glad you resume the ' Watchman.' Change the name ; leave out all articles of news, and whatever things are pe- culiar to newspapers, and confine yourself to ethics, verse, criticism — or rather do not confine yourself. Let your plan be as diffuse as the ' Spectator,' and I'll answer for it tlie work prospers. If I am vain enough to think I can be a contributor, rely on my inclinations. Coleridge ! in read- ing your ' Religious Musings,' I felt a transient superi- ority over you. I have seen Priestley. I love to see his name repeated in your writings. I love and honor him almost profaneh'. You Avould be charmed Avith Ins Ser- vions, if you never read 'em. You have doubiie^s read his books illustrative of the doctrine of Necessity. Pre- fixed to a late Avork of his in ansAver to Paine, there is a preface giving an account of the man, and his services to men, Avritten by Lindsey, his dearest friend, well worth your reading. LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 25 " Tuesday eve. — Forgive my prolixity, which is yet too brief for all I could wish to say. God give you comfort, and all that are of your household ! Our loves and best good wishes to Mrs. C. C. Lamb." The parcel mentioned in the last letter, brought the "Joan of Arc," and a request from Coleridge, that Lamb would freely criticise his poems with a view to their selection and correction for the contemplated volume. The reply is con- tained in the following letter, which, written on several days, begins at the extreme top of the first page, without any ceremony of introduction, and is comprised in three sides and a bit of foolscap. TO MR. COLERIDGE. •r " With ' Joan of Arc' I have been delighted, amazed ; I had not presumed to expect anything of such excellence from Southey. Why the poem is alone sufficient to re- deem the character of the age we live in from the impu- tation of degenerating in Poetry, were there no such beings extant as Burns, and Bowles, Cowper, and ; fill up the blank how you please ; I say nothing. The sub- ject is well chosen. It opens well. To become more par- ticular, I will notice in their order a few passages that chiefly struck me on perusal. Page 26, ' Fierce and ter- rible Benevolence !' is a phrase full of grandeur and origi- nality. The whole context made me fee\ possessed, even like Joan herself. Page 28, ' It is most horrible with the keen sword to gore the finely-fibred human frame,' and what follows, pleased me mightily. In the 2d Book, the first forty lines in particular are majestic and high-sounding Indeed the whole vision of the Palace of Ambition and what follows are supremely excellent. Your simile of 3 IS 26 LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. the Laplander, a e egan ^position, the fifth epistle. I da,-e not ---;•;«; r ■ „ Miisint-s-' I like not to sekct any pait, wneie an iCdlent I can only admi.e, and thank you for .t m the name of a Cnristian, as ^ell as a lover of good poetry , u y in ask. is not that thought and ^^-J" ^^ Youn., 'stands in the snn.'-or ,s , only s.«;h as loung, i„ one°ot his hdtcr moments, might have writ .- ' Believe thou, my soul, Life is a vision shadowy of truth ; And vice, and anguish, and the wormy grave, Shapes of a dream !' I thank you for these lines in the name of a necessarian and t Ihat follows in next paragraph, m the name o a Tm If f ,„ev After all, you cannot, nor ever ivill, ^vnte InU,.:^ '.vhth I shau\e so delighted as .hat I have hea d yourself repeat. You came to town, and I saw you atatime when your heart was yet Weeding, w.th recent 30 LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. wounds. Like yourself, I was sore galled with disappointed hope ; you had ' many an holy lay That, mourning, soothed the mourner on his way; "I had ears of sympathy to drink them in, and tlicy yet vibrate pleasant on the sense. When I read in your little volume, your nineteenth effusion, or the twenty-eighth or twenty -ninth, or what you call the ' Sigh,' I think I hear «/ow again. I image to myself the little smoky room at the Salutation and Cat, where we have set together through the winter nights, beguiling the cares of life with Poesy. When you left London, I felt a dismal void in my heart. I found myself cut off, at one and the same time, from two most dear to me. ' How blest with ye the path could I have trod ot quiet life!' In your conversa- tion you had blended so many pleasant fancies that they cheated me of my grief. But in your absence the tide of mchmcholy rushed in again and did its worst mischief by overwhelming my reason. I have recovered, but feel a stupor that makes me indifferent to the hopes and fears of this life. I sometimes wish to introduce a religious turn of mind, but habits are strong things, and my religious fervors are confined, alas ! to some fleeting moments of occasional solitary devotion. A correspondence, opening with you, has roused me a little from my lethargy and made me conscious of existence. Indulge me in it ; I will not be very troublesome ! At some future time I will amuse you with an account, as full as my memory will permit, of the strange turn my frenzy took. I look back upon it at times with a gloomy kind of envy ; for, while it lasted, I had many, many hours of pure happiness. Dream not, Coleridge, of having tasted all the grandeur and wildness of fanc^ LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 31 till you have gone mad ! All now seems to me vapid, com- paratlvely so. Excuse this solfish digression. Your ' Mou. ody' is so superlatively excellent, that I can only Avish it perfect, which I can't help feeling it is not quite. Indulge me in a few conjectures ; what I am going to propose would make it more compressed, and, I think, more energetic, though I am sensible at the expense of many beautiful lines. Let Tt begin ' Is this the land of song-ennobled line ?' and proceed to ' Otwav's famished form ;' then, 'Thee, Chat- terton,' to 'blaze of Seraphim;' then, 'clad in Nature's rich array,' to 'orient day ;' then, 'but soon. the scathing lightning,' to ' blighted land ;' then, ' sublime of thought,' to ' his bosom glows ;' then 'But soon upon h!s poor unsheltered head Did Penury her sicklj- mildew shed ; And soon are fled the charms of early grace, And joy's wild gleams that lightened o'er bis face.' Then ' youth of tumnltuous soul' to ' sigh,' as before. The rest may all stand down to ' gaze upon the waves be- low.' What follows now may come next as detached ver- ses, suggested by the Monody, rather than a part of it. They ai^, indeed, in themselves, very sweet : And we, at sober eve, would round thee throng. Hanging enraptured on thy stately song !' in particular, perhaps. If I am obscure, you may under stand me by counting lines: I have proposed omitting twenty-four lines : I feel that thus compressed it would gain enegrv, but think it most likely you will not agree with me ; forVho shall go about to bring opinions to the bed of Procrustes, and introduce among the sons of men a mo- notony of identical feelings ? lonly propose with diffidence. 32 LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. Reject you, if you please, with as little remorse as you would the color of a coat or the pattern of a buckle, where our fancies differed. " ' The Pixies' is a perfect thing, and so are the ' Lines on the Spring,' page 28. The 'Epitaph on an Infant,' like a Jack-o'-lanthorn, has danced about (or like Dr. For- ster's scholars) out of the Morning Chronicle into the Watchman, and thence back into your collection. It is very pretty, and you seem to think so, but, may be, o'erlooked its chief merit, that of filling up a whole page. I had once deemed sonnets of unrivalled use that way, but your Epi- taphs, I find, are the more diffuse. ' Edmund' still holds its place among your best verses. ' Ah ! fair delights' to 'roses round,' in your Poem called 'Absence,' recal (none more forcibly) to my mind the tones in which you recited it. I will not notice, in this tedious (to you) manner, ver- ses Avhich have been so long delightful to me, and which you already know my opinion of. Of this kind are Bowles, Priestly, and that most exquisite and most Bowles-like of all, the nineteenth effusion. It would have better ended with ' agony of care :' the two last lines are obvious and unnecessary, and you need not now make fourteen lines of it ; now it is rechristened from a Sonnet to an Effusion. Schiller might have written the twentieth effusion : 'tis worthy of him in any sense. I was glad to meet with those lines you sent me, when my sister was so ill ; I had lost the copy, and I felt not a little proud at seeing my name in your verse. The complaint of Ninathoma (first stanza in particular) is the best, or only good imitation, of Ossian I ever saw — your ' Restless Gale' excepted. ' To an In- fant' is most sweet ; is not 'foodful,' though very harsh. Would not ' dulcet' fruit be less harsh, or some other friendly bi-syllable ? In ' Edmund,' ' Frenzy ! fierce-eyed LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 33 cliikr is not so well as 'frantic,' though that is an epithet adding nothing to the meaning. Slander couching was better than ' squatting.' In the 'Man of Ross,' it was a better line thus : ' If 'ncath this roof thy ■wine-cbeered moments pass,' than as it stands now. Time nor nothing can reconcile me to the concluding five lines of ' Kosciusko :' call it any- thing you will but sublime. In my twelfth effusion I had rather have seen what I wrote myself, though they bear no comparison with your exquisite lines — ' On rose-leaf'd-beds amid your faery bowers/ egared.' Your ' Dream,' down to that exquisite line- * I can't tell half his adventures,' LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 65 is a most happy resemblance of Chaucer. The remainder is so so. The best line, I think, is, ' He belong'd, I be- lieve, to the "vvitch Melancholy.' By the way, when will our volume come out ? Don't delay it till you have writ- ten a new Joan of Arc. Send what letters you please by me, and in any way you choose, single or double. The India Company is better adapted to answer the cost than the generality of my friend's correspondents — such poor and honest dogs as John Thelwell, particularly. I can- not say I know Colson, at least intimately ; I once supped with him and Allen ; I think his manners very pleasing. I will not tell you what I think of Lloyd, for he may by chance come to see this letter, and that thought puts a re- straint on me. I cannot think what subject would suit your epic genius ; some philosophical subject, I conjecture, in Avhich shall be blended the sublime of poetry and of science. Your proposed ' Hymns' will be a fit preparatory study wherewith ' to discipline your young noviciate soul.' I grow dull ; I'll go walk myself out of my dulness. " Sunday night. — You and Sara are very good to think so kindly and so favorably of poor Mary ; I would to God all did so too. But I very much fear she must not think of coming home in my father's lifetime. It is very hard upon her ; but our circumstances are peculiar, and we must submit to them. God be praised she is so well as she is. She bears her situation as one who has no right to com- plain. My poor old aunt, whom you have seen, the kind- est, goodest creature to me when I Avas at school ; who used to toddle there to bring me good things, when I, school- boy like, only despised her for it, and used to be ashamed to see her come and sit herself down on the old coal-hole steps as you went into the old grammar-school, and open her apron, and bring out her bason, with some nice thing 6* 6Q LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. she had caused to be saved for me ; the good old creature is now lying on her death-bed. I cannot bear to think on her deplorable state. To the shock she received on that our evil day, from which she never completely recovered, I impute her illness. She says, poor thing, she is glad she is come home to die with me. I was always her favo- rite: 'No after friendship e'er can raise The endearments of our early days j Nor e'er the heart such fondness prove, As when it first began to love.' " Lloyd has kindly left me, for a keepsake, ' John Wool- man.' You have read it, he says, and like it. Will you excuse one short extract ? I think it could not have es- caped you. — ' Small treasure to a resigned mind is suffi- cient. How happy is it to be content with a little, to live in humility, and feel that in us, Avhich breathes out this language — x\bba I Father !' 1 am almost ashamed to patch up a letter in this miscellaneous sort — but I please myself in the thought, that anything from me will be ac- ceptable to you. I am rather impatient, childishly so, to see our names affixed to the same common volume. Send me two, when it does come out; two will be enough — or indeed one — but two better. I have a dim recollection that, when in tovvn, you were talking of the Origin of Evil as a most prolific subject for a long poem ; — why not adopt it, Coleridge ? — there would be room for imagination. Or the description (from a Vision or Dream, suppose) of an Utopia in one of the planets (the moon for instance.) Or a Five Days' Dream, which shall illustrate, in sensible im- agery, Hartley's five Motives to Conduct : — 1. Sensation : 2. Imagination : 3. Ambition ; 4. Sympathy ; 5. Theopathy ; LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 67 — First. Banquets, music, &c., eifeminacy, — and their insufEciencj, Second. ' Beds of hyacinth and roses, where young Adonis oft reposes;' ' Fortunate Isles ;' ' The pagan Elysium,' &c. ; poetical pictures; antiquity as pleasin^ to the fancy ; — their emptiness ; madness, &c. Third. "War- riors, Poets, some famous yet, more forgotten ; their fame or oblivion now alike indifferent ; pride, vanity, &c. Fourth. All manner of pitiable stories, in Spenser-like verse ; love ; friendship, relationship, &c. Fifth. Hermits ; Christ and his apostles ; martyrs ; heaven, &c. An imagination like yours, from these scanty hints, m;iy expand into a thou- sand great ideas, if indeed you at all comprehend my scheme, which I scarce do myself. " Monday' morn. — ' A London letter — Ninepence half- penny !' Look you, master poet, I have remorse as well as another man, and ray bowels can sound upon occasion. But I must put you to this charge, for I cannot keep back my protest, however ineffectual, against the annexing your latter lines to those former — this putting of new wine into old bottles. This my duty done, I will cease from writ- ing till you invent some more reasonable mode of convey- ance. Well may the 'ragged followers of the Nine !' set up for flocci-nauci-what-do-you-call-'em-ists ! and I do not wonder that in their splendid visions of Utopias in America, they protest against the admission of those yclIoiv-com\)\Qx~ ioned, co/?/jer-colored, white ■\\.\qxq(\. gentlemen, who never prove themselves their friends ! Don't you think your verses on a ' Young Ass' too trivial a companion for the 'Religious Musings?' — 'scoundrel monarch,' alter that ; and the ' Man of Ross' is scarce admissible, as it now stands, curtailed of its fairer half: reclaim its property from the ' Chatterton,' which it does but cncumbei", and it will be a rich little poem. I hope you expunge great 68 LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. part of the old notes in the new edition : that, m particu- lar, most barefaced, unfounded, impudent assertion, that Mr. Rogers is indebted for his story to Loch Lomond, a poem by Bruce ! I have read the latter. I scarce think you have. Scarce anything is common to them both. The author of the ' Pleasures of Memory' was somewhat hurt, Dyer says, by the accusation of unoriginality. He never saw the poem. I long to read your poem on Burns — I retain so indistinct a memory of it. In what shape and how does it come into public ? As you leave off writing poetry till you finish your Hymns, I suppose you print, now, all you have got by you. You have scarce enough unprinted to make a second volume with Lloyd ? Tell me all about it. What is become of Cowper ? Lloyd told me of some verses on his mother. If you have them by you, pray send 'em me. I do so love him ! Never mind their merit. May be / may like 'em, as your taste and mine do not always exactly identify. Yours " C. Lamb." Soon after the date of this letter, death released the father from his state of imbecility and the son from his wearisome duties. With his life, the annuity he had de- rived from the old bencher he had served so faithfully, ceased ; while the aunt continued to linger still with Lamb in his cheerless lodging. His sister still remained in con- finement in the asylum to which she had been consigned on her mother's death — perfectly sensible and calm, — and he was passionately desirous of obtaining her liberty. The surviving members of the family, especially his bro- ther John, who enjoyed a fair income in the South Sea House, opposed her discharge ; — ivnd painful doubts were suggested by the authorities of the parish, where the LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 69 terrible occurrence happened, whether tliey were not bound to institute proceedings, which must have placed her for life at the disposition of the Crown, especially as no medical assurance could be given against the probable re- currence of dangerous frenzy. But Charles came to her i^ deliverance ; he satisfied all the parties who had power to ' oppose her release, by his solemn engagement that he would take her under his care forJ.ife ; and he kept his word. Whether any communication with the Home Sec- retary occurred before her release, I have been unable to ascertain ; it was the impression of Mr. Lloyd, from whom my own knowledge of the circumstances, which the letters do not ascertain, was derived, that a communication took place, on which a similar pledge was given ; at all events, the result was, that she left the asylum and took up her abode for life with her brother Charles. For her sake, at s the same time, he abandoned all thoughts of love and mar- riage ; and with an income of scarcely more than a 100/. ^ a-year, derived from his clerkship, aided for a little while 1 by the old aimt's small annuity, set out on the journey | of life at twenty-tAvo years of age, cheerfully, Avith his be- loved companion, endeared to him the more by her strange calamity, and the constant apprehension of a recurrence of the malady which has caused it ! CHAPTER III. LETTERS TO COLERIDGE AND MANNING IN LAMB's FIRST YEARS OF LIFE WITH HIS SISTER. [1797 to 1800.] The anxieties of Lamb's new position were assuaged during the spring of 1797, bj frequent communications with Coleridge respecting the anticipated volume, and by some additions to his own share in its pages. He was also cheered by the company of Lloyd, who, having resided for a few months with Coleridge, at Stowey, came to Lon- don in some perplexity as to his future course. Of this visit Lamb speaks in the following letter, probably written in January. It contains some verses expressive of his de- light at Lloyd's visit, which although afterwards inserted in the volume, are so well fitted to their frame-work of prose, and so indicative of the feelings of the writer at this crisis of his life, that I may be excused for presenting them with the context. TO MR. COLERIDGE. "1797 "Dear Col. — You have learned by this time, with sur- prise, no doubt, that Lloj-d is with me in town. Tlie emo- tions I felt on his coming so unlooked-for, are not ill ex- pressed in what follows, and what, if you do not object to them as too personal, and to the world obscure, or other^ (70) LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 71 wise wanting in worth, I should wish to make a part of our little volume. I shall be sorry if that volume comes out, as it necessarily must do, unless you print those very school- boy-ish verses T sent you on not getting leave to come down to Bristol last summer. I say I shall be sorry that I have addressed you in nothing which can appear in our joint vol- ume ; so frequently, so habitually, as you dwell in my thoughts, 'tis some wonder those thoughts came never yet in \ contact with a poetical mood. But you dwell in my heart of tearts, and I love you in all the naked honesty of prose. God less you, and all your little domestic circle — my tenderest remembrances to your beloved Sara, and a smile and a kiss from me to your dear dear little David Hartley. The verses I refer to above, slightly amended, I have sent (for- getting to ask your leave, tho' indeed I gave them only your initials), to the Monthly Magazine, where they may possibly appear next month, and where I hope to recog- nise yc'-u- poem on Burns. TO CHARLES LLOYD, AN UNEXPECTED VISITOR. Alone, obscure, without a friend, A cheerless, solitary thing. Why seeks my Lloyd the stranger out ? What offering can the stranger bring Of social scenes, home-bred delights. That him in aught compensate may For Stowey's pleasant winter nights, For loves and friendships far away. In brief oblivion to forego Friends, such as thine, so justly dear, And bo awhile with me content To stay, a kindly loiterer, here ? 72 LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. For this a gleam of random joy Hath flush'd mv unaccustom'd cheek ; And, ■with an o''^r-charged bursting heart, I feel the thanks I cannot speak. ! sweet are all the Muse's lays, And sweet the charm of matin bird — 'Twas long since these estranged ears The sweeter voice of friend had heard. The voice hath spoke : the pleasant sounds In memory's ear, in after time Shall live, to sometimes rouse a tear, And sometimes prompt an honest rhyme. For when the transient charm is fled, And when the little week is o'er. To cheerless, friendless solitude When I return, as heretofore — Long, long, within my aching heart The grateful sense shall cherish'd bej I'll think less meanly of myself. That Lloyd will sometimes think on me. ■v^ " Coleridge, would to God you were in London with MS, or we two at Stowey with you all. Lloyd takes up his abode at the Bull and Mouth Inn ; the Cat and Salutation would haye had a charm more forcible for me. nodes ecenceque Deum ! Anglice — "Welch rabbits, punch, and poesy. Should you be induced to publish those very school- boy-ish verses, print 'em as they will occur, if at all, in the Monthly Magazine ; yet I should feel ashamed that to you I wrote nothing better: but they are too personal, and al- most trifling and obscure withal. Some lines of mine to Cowper were in last Monthly Magazine ; they have not body of thought enough to plead for the retaining of 'em. My sister's kind love to you all. C Lamb." It would seem, from the following fragment of a letter of 7th April, 1797, that Lamb, at first, took a small lodg- LETTERS TO COLERIDGE, 73 ing for his sister apart from his own — but soon to be for life united. TO MR. COLERIDGE. *' By the way, Lloycl may have told you about my sister. I told him. If not, I have taken her out of her confinement, and taken a room for her at Hackney, and spend my San- days, holidays, &c. with her. She boards herself. In one little half year's illness, and in such an illness of such a nature and of such consequences ! to get her out into the world again, with a prospect of her never being so ill again — this is to be ranked not among the common blessings of Providence." The next letter to Coleridge begins with a transcript of Lamb's Poem, entitled " A Vision of Repentance," which was inserted in the Addenda to the volume, and is pre- served among his collected poems, and thus proceeds : TO MR. COLERIDGE. " April 15th, 1797. " The above you will please to print immediately before the blank verse fragments. Tell me if you like it. I fear the latter half is unequal to the former, in parts of which I think you will discover a delicacy of pencilling not quite un-Spenser-like. The latter half aims at the measure, but has failed to attain the poetri/ of Milton in his ' Comus,' and Fletcher in that exquisite thing ycleped the 'Faithful Shepherdess,' where they both use eight- syllable lines. But this latter half was finished in great haste, and as a task, not from that impulse which affects the name of inspiration. 7 74 LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. '^ By the way, I have lit upon Fairfax's ' Godfrey of Bullen,' for half-a-crown. Rejoice with me. "Poor dear Lloyd ! I had a letter from him yesterday ; his state of mind is truly alarming. He has, by his OAvn confession, kept a letter of mine unopened three weeks, afraid, he says, to open it, lest I should speak upbraid- ingly to him ; and yet this very letter of mine Avas in an- swer to one. Avherein he informed me that an alarmino^ ill- nes3 had alone prevented him from writing. You will pray with me, I know, for his recovery, for surely, Cole- ridge, an exquisiteness of feeling like this must border on derangement. But I love him more and more, and will not give up the hope of his speedy recovery, as he tells me he is under Dr. Darwin's regimen.* " God bless us all, and shield us from insanity, which is 'the sorest malady of all.' " My kind love to your wife and child. " C Lamb. "Pray write now." As summer advanced. Lamb discerned a hope of com- pensation for the disappointment of last year, by a visit to Coleridge, and thus expressed his wishes. TO MR. COLERIDGE. " I discern a possibility of my paying you a visit next week. May I, can I, shall I, come as soon ? Have you * Poor Charles Lloyd ! These apprehensions were sadly realised. Delu- sions of the most melancholy kind thickened over his latter days — yet left hia admirable intellect free for the finest processes of severe reasoning. At a time when, like Cowper, he believed himself the especial subject of Divine wrath, he could bear his part in the most subtle disquisition on questions of religion, morals, and poetry, with the nicest accuracy of perception and the raost exemplary candor; and, after an argument of hours, revert, with a faint ■mile, to his own despair! LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 75 7'oom foi' me, leisure for me, and are jou all pretty well? Tell me all this honestly — immediately. And by what £?a?/-coach could I come soonest and nearest to Stowey ? A few months hence may suit you better ; certainly me, as well. If so, say so. I long, I yearn, with all the long- ings of a child do I desire to see you, to come among you — to see the young philosopher, to thank Sara for her last year's invitation in person — to read your tragedy — to read over together our little book — to breathe fresh air — to revive in me vivid images of 'Salutation scenery.' There is a sort of sacrilege, in my letting such ideas slip out of my mind and memory. Still that E, reniaineth — a thorn in the side of Hope, when she would lean towards Stowey. Here I will leave off, for I dislike to fill up this paper, which involves a question so connected with my heart and soul, with meaner matter, or subjects to me less interesting. I can talk, as I can think, nothing else. Tliurs- day. C. Lamb." The visit was enjoyed ; the book was published ; and Lamb was once more left to the daily labors of the India House and the unceasing anxieties of his home. His feel- ings, on the recurrence of the season, which had, last year, been darkened by his terrible calamity, will be understood from the first of two pieces of blank verse, which fill the two first sheets of a letter to Coleridge, written under an apprehension of some neglect on the part of his friend, which had its cause in no estrangement of Coleridge's af- fections, but in the vicissitudes of the imaginative philoso- pher's fortune and the constancy of his day-dreamings. 76 LETTERS TO COLERIiTgE. WRITTEN A TWELVEMONTH AFTER THE EVENTS. [^Frida^ next, Coleridge, is the day on wJiich my mother diedj\ Alas ! how am I chang'd ! where be the tears, The sobs, and fore'd suspensions of the breath, And all the dull desertions of the heart With which I hung o'er my dear mother's corse ? AVhere be the blest subsidings of the storm Within : the sweet resignedness of hope Drawn heavenward, and strength of filial love, In which I bow'd me to my Father's will? My God and my Redeemer, keep not thou My heart in brute and sensual thanklessness Seal'd up, oblivious ever of that dear grace, And health restor'd to my long-loved friend Long lov'd and worthy known I Thou didst not keep Her soul in death. keep not now, my Lord, Thy servants in far worse — in spiritual death And darkness — blacker than those feared shadows 0' the valley all must tread. Lend us thy balms. Thou dear Physician of the sin-sick soul. And heal our cleansed bosoms of the wounds With which the world hath pierc'd us thro' and thro'! Give us new flesh, new birth; Elect of heaven May we become, in thine election sure Contain'd, and to one purpose steadfast drawn — Our souls' salvation. Thou and I, dear friend, With filial recognition sweet, shall know One day the face of our dear mother in heaven. And her remember'd looks of love shall greet With answering looks of love, her placid smile* Meet with a smile as placid, and her hand With drops of fondness wet, nor fear repulse.* Be witness for me, Lord, I do not ask Those days of vanity to return again, (Nor fitting me to ask, nor thee to give;. Vain loves, and "wanderings with a fair-hair'd maid " * 'Note in the margin of MS.] " This ia almost literal from a letter of my sister loss (ban a year ago." LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 77 (Child of the dust as I am) who so long My foolish heart steep'd in idolatry, And creature-loves. Forgive it, my Maker ! If in a mood of grief, I sin almost In sometimes brooding on the days long past, (And from the grave of time wishing them back,) Days of a mother's fondness to her child — Her little one ! Oh, where be now those sports And infant play-games ? AVhere the joyous troops Of children, and the haunts I did so love ? my companions ! yJloved names Of friend, or playmate dear, gone are ye now. Gone divers ways ; to honor and credit some ; And some, I fear, to ignominy and shame! * 1 only am left, with unavailing grief One parent dead to mourn, and see one live Of all life's joys bereft, and desolate: Am left, with a few friends, and one above The rest, found faithful in a length of years, Contented as I may, to bear me on, T' the not unpeaceful evening of a day Made black by morning storms. " The following I wrote when I had returned from C. Lloyd, leaving him behind at Burton, with Southey. To understand some of it, you must remember that at that time he was very much perplexed in mind. A stranger, and alone, I past those scenes We past so late together; and my heart Felt something like desertion, as I look'd Around me, and the pleasant voice of friend Was absent, and the cordial look was there No more, to smile on me. I thought on Lloyd — All he had been to me ! And now I go Again to mingle with a world impure ; W^ith men who make a mock of holy things. Mistaken, and of man's best hope think scorn. The world does much to warp the heart of man ; And I may sometimes join its idiot laugh : Of this I now complain not. Deal with me, • [Note in the margin of MS.] " Alluding to some of my old play-fellows being, litei* ally, ' on the town,' and some otherwise wretched." 7* 78 LETTERS TO COLERIDGE Omniscient Father, as thnii judgest best. And in thy season soften thou my heart. I pray not for myself: I pray for him AVhose soul is sore perplexed. Shine thou on him, Father of lights ! and in the difBcult paths Make plain his way before him : his own thoughts May he not think — his own ends not pursue — So shall he best perform thy will on earth. Greatest and Best, Thy will be ever ours ! " The former of these poems I wrote with unusual ce- hirity t'other morning at office. I expect you to like it better than anything of mine ; Lloyd does, and I do my- self. "You use Lloyd very ill, never writing to him. I tell you again that his is not a mind with which you should play tricks. He deserves more tenderness from you. " For myself, I must spoil a little passage of Beaumont and Fletcher to adapt it to my feelings :- ' I am prouder That I was once your friend, tho' now forgot, Than to have had another true to me.' If you don't write to me now, as I told Lloyd, I shall get angry, and call you hard names — Manchineel and I don't know what else. I wish you would send me my great-coat. The snow and the rain season is at hand, and I have but a wretched old coat, once my father's, to keep 'em off, and that is transitory. 'When time drives flocks from field to fold. When ways grow foul and blood gets cold,' I shall remember wher.e I left my coat. Meet emblem Avilt thou be, old Winter, of a friend's neglect — cold, cold, cold ! C. Lamb." LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 79 The following lines, which Lamb transmitted to his new friend, Southey, bespeak the remarkable serenity with which, when the first shock was over and the duties of life- lofig love arranged, Lamb was able to contemplate the vic- tim of his sister's frenzy :* V Thou should'st have longer lived, and to the grave Have peacefully gone down in full old age ; Thy children would have tended thy gray hairs. We might have sat, as we have often done, By our fire-side, and talk'd whole nights away, Old time, old friends, and old events recalling, With many a circumstance of trivial note. To memory dear, and of importance grown. How shall we tell them in a stranger's ear ! A wayward son ofttimes was I to thee — And yet, in all our little bickerings. Domestic jars, there was I know not what Of tender feeling that were ill exehang'd For this world's chilling friendships, and their smiles Familiar, whom the heart calls stranger still. A heavy lot hath he, most wretched man, Who lives the last of all his family ! He looks around him, and his eye discerns The face of the stranger; and his heart is sick. Man of the world, what can'st thou do for him 7 Wealth is a burthen which he could not bear; Mirth a strange crime, the which he dares not act; And generous wines no cordial to his soul. For wounds like his, Christ is the only cure. Go ! preach thou to him of a world to come. Where friends shall meet and know each other's face! Say less than this, and say it to the winds. * These lines are now first introduced in this Edition; — becoming ktiown to the Editor by their publication in the first volume of " Southey's Life ami Correspondence," p. 325, where they appear in a letter from Southey to Mr. AVynn. The Biographer courteously adds, that they would have been sent to the Editor, but that tbey were not observed till after the publication of the' First Edition of these Memorials. 80 LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. An addition to Lamb's household-cares is thus mentioned m a letter TO MR. COLERIDGE. " December 10th, 1797. "In truth, Coleridge, I am perplexed, and at times al- most cast down. I am beset with perplexities. The old hag of a wealthy relation, who took my aunt off our hands in the beginning of trouble, has found out that she is ' in- dolent and mulish,' I quote her own words, and that her attachment to us is so strong that she can never be happy apart. The lady, with delicate irony, remarks, that if I am not an hypocrite, I shall rejoice to receive her again ; and that it will be a means of making me more fond of home to have so dear a friend to come home to ! The fact is, she is jealous of my aunt's bestowing any kind recollec- tions on us, while she enjoys the patronage of her roof. She says she finds it inconsistent with her own 'ease and tranquillity,' to keep her any longer ; and, in fine, summons me to fetch her home. Now, much as I should rejoice to transplant the poor old creature from the chilling air of such patronage, yet I know how straitened we are already, how unable already to answer any demand which sickness or any extraordinary expense may make. I know this, and all unused as I am to struggle Avith perplexities, I am somewhat nonplussed, to say no worse. This prevents me from a thorough relish of what Lloyd's kindness and your's have furnished me with. I thank you though from my heart, and feel myself not quite alone in the earth." In 1798, Coleridge seemed to attain a settled home by accepting an invitation to become the minister of a Unita- rian congregation at Shrewsbury ; a hope of short dura- tion. The following letter was addressed by Lamb to him LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 81 at this time as " S. T. Coleridge" — as if the Mr. "were dropped and the "Reverend'' not quite adopted — "at the Reverend A. Rowe's, Shrewsbury, Shropshire." The tables are turned here ; — Lamb, instead of accusing Cole- ridge of neglect, takes the charge to himself, in deep humil- ity of spirit, and regards the effect of Miss Lamb's renewed illness on his mind as inducing indifference, with an affecting self-jealousy. TO MR. COLERIDGE. " January 28th, 1798. -^ " You have writ me many kind letters, and I have an- swered none of them. I don't deserve your attentions. An unnatural indifference has been creeping on me since my last misfortunes, or I should have seized the first open- ing of a correspondence with you^ To you I owe much, under God. In my brief acquaintance with you in Lon- don, your conversations won me to the better cause, and rescued me from the polluting spirit of the world. I might have been a worthless character without you ; as it is, I do possess a certain improvable portion of devotional feelings, tho' when I view m^^sclf in the light of divine truth, and not according to the common measures of human judgment, I am altogether corrupt and sinful. This is no cant. I am very sincere. " These last afflictions, Coleridge, have failed to soften and bend my will. They found me unprepared. My former calamities produced in me a spirit of humility and a spirit of prayer. I thought they had sufficiently disci- plined me, but the event ought to humble me ; if God'g judgments now fail to take away from me the heart of stone, what more grievous trials ought I not to ex- pect ? I have been very querulous, impatient under the rod — full of little jealousies and heart burnings 82 LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. I had well nigh quarrelled with Charles Lloyd— and for no other reason, I believe, than that the good creature did all he could to make me happy. The truth is, I thought he tried to force my mind from its natural and proper bent ; he continually wished me to be from home, he was drawing mQ from the consideration of my poor dear Mary's situation, rather than assisting me tc gain a proper view of it with religious consolations. I wanted to be left to the tendency of my own mind, in a solitary state, which, in times past, I knew had led to quietness and a patient bearing of the yoke. He was hurt that I was not more constantly with him, but he was living with White, a man to whom I had never been ac- customed to impart my dearest feelings, tho' from long habits of friendliness, and many a social and good quality, I loved him very much. I met company there sometimes — indiscriminate company. Any society almost, when I am in affliction, is sorely painful to me. I seem to breathe more freely, to think more collectedly, to feel more pro- perly and calmly, when alone. All these things the good creatm-e did with the kindest intentions in the world, but they produced in me nothing but soreness and discontent. I became, as he complained, 'jaundiced' towards him. . . but he has forgiven me — and his smile, I hope, will draw all such humors from me. I am recovering, God be praised for it, a healthiness of mind, something like calmness — but I want more religion — I am jealous of human helps and leaning-places. I rejoice in your good fortunes. May God at the last settle you ! — You have had many and painful trials ; humanly speaking they are going to end ; but we should rather pray that discipline may attend us thro' the whole of our lives A careless and a dis- eoiute spirit has advanced upon me with large strides-— LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 83 pray God that my present afflictions may be sanctified to me ! Mary is recovering ; but I see no opening yet of a situation for her ; your invitation went to my very heart, but you have a power of exciting interest, of leading all hearts captive, too forcible to admit of Mary's being with you. I consider her as perpetually on the brink of mad- ness. I think you would almost make her dance within an ir.ch of the precipice ; she must be with duller fancies, and cooler intellects. I know a young man of this des- cription, who has suited her these twenty years, and may live to do so still, if we are one day restored to each other. In answer to your suggestions of occupation for me, I must say that I do not think my capacity altogether suited for disquisitions of that kind I have read little, I have a very weak memory, and retain little of what I read ; am unused to compositions in which any methodising is required ; but I thank you sincerely for the hint, and shall receive it as far as I am able, that is, en- deavor to engage my mind in some constant and innocent pursuit. I know my capacities better than you do. "Accept my kindest love, and believe me yours, as ever. C. L". At this time, the only literary man whom Lamb knew in London was George Dyer, who had been noted as an accomplished scholar, in Lamb's early childhood, at Christ's Hospital. For him Lamb cherished all the es- teem that his guileless simplicity of character and gentle- ness of nature could inspire ; in these qualities the friends were akin ; but no two men could be more opposite than they were to each other, in intellectual qualifications and tastes — Lamb, in all things original, and rejoicing in the quaint, the strange, the extravagant ; Dyer, the quintes 84 LETTER TO SOUTHEY. sence of learned commonplace ; Lamb -wildlj catching tbd most evanescent spirit of wit and poetry ; Dyer, the woc- dering disciple of their established forms. Dyer officiated as a revering High Priest at the Altar of the Muses — such as they were in the staid, antiquated trim of the closing years of the eighteenth century, before they formed sen- timental attachments in Germany, or flirted with revolu- tionary France, or renewed their youth by drinking the Spirit of the Lakes. Lamb esteemed and loved him so well, that he felt himself entitled to make sport with his peculiarities ; but it was as Fielding might sport with his own idea of Parson Adams ; or Goldsmith with his Dr. Primrose. The following passage occurs in a letter of 28th November, 1798, addressed — TO MR. SOUTHEY. "I showed my 'Witch,' and 'Dying Lover,' to Dyer last night, but George could not comprehend how that could be poetry which did not go upon ten feet, as George and his predecessors had taught it to do ; so George read me some lectures on the distinguishing qualities of the Ode, the Epigram, and the Epic, and went home to illustrate his doctrine, by correcting a proof sheet of his own Lyrics. George writes odes where the rhymes, like fashionable man and wife, keep a comfortable distance of six or eight lines apart, and calls that ' observing the laws of verse.' George tells you, before he recites, that you must listen with great attention, or you'll miss the rhymes. I did so, and found them pretty exact. George, speaking of the dead Ossian, cxclairaeth, ' Dark are the poet's eyes.' I humbly represented to him that his own eyes were dark, and many a living bard's besides, and recommended ' Clos'd are the poet's eyes.' But that would not do. I LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 85 found there was an antithesis between the darkness of his eyes and the splendor of his genius ; and I acquiesced." The following passage on the same subject occurs in a letter about the same time, addressed TO MR. COLERIDGE. " Now I am on the subject of poetry, I must announce to you, who, doubtless, in your remote part of the island, have not heard tidings of so great a blessing, that George Dyer hath prepared two ponderous volumes full of poetry and criticism. They impend over the town, and are threatened to fall in the winter. Tlie first volume contains every sort of poetry, except personal satire, which George, in his truly original prospectus, renounceth for ever, whim- sically foisting the intention in between the price of his book and the proposed number of subscribers. (If I can, I will get you a copy of his handbill.) He has tried his vein in every species besides — the Spenserian, Thomso- nian. Masonic and Akensidish more especially. The second volume is all criticism ; wherein he demonstrates to the en- tire satisfaction of the literary world, in a way that must silence all reply for ever, that the Pastoral was introduced by Theocritus and polished by Virgil and Pope — that Gray and Mason (who always hunt in couples in George's brain) have a good deal of poetical fire and true lyric genius — that Cowley was ruined by excess of wit (a warn- ing to all moderns) — that Charles Lloyd, Charles Lamb,- and William Wordsworth, in later days, have struck the true chords of poesy. George, George ! with a head uniformly Avrong, and a heart uniformly right, that I had power and might equal to my wishes : then would I cal) 86 LETTERS TO COLERIDUE. the gentry of thy native island, and they should come in troops, flocking at the sound of thy prospectus-trumpet, and crowding who shall be first to stand in thy list of sub- scribers ! I can only put twelve sliillings into thy pocket (which, I will answer for them, will not stick there long), out of a pocket almost as bare as thine. Is it not a pity so much fine writing should be erased ? But, to tell the truth, I began to scent that I was getting into that sort of style which Longinus and Dionysius Halicarnassus fitly call ' the affected.' " Lamb's apprehensions of the recurrence of his sister's malady were soon realised. An old maid-servant wdio as- sisted her in the lodging became ill ; Miss Lamb inces- santly watched the death-bed ; and just as the poor crea- ture died, was again seized with madness. Lamb placed her under medical care ; and, left alone, wrote the foUow- ins short and miserable letter : — TO MR. COLERIDGE. "May 12th, 1800. " My dear Coleridge. — I don't know why I write, ex- cept from the propensity misery has to tell her griefs. Hetty died on Friday night, about eleven o'clock, after eight days' illness : Mary, in consequence of fatigue and anxiety, is fallen ill again, and I was obliged to remove her yesterday. I am left alone in a house with nothing but Hetty's dead body to keep me company. To-morrow I bury her, and then I shall be quite alone, with notidng but a cat, to remind me that the house has been full of living beings like myself. My heart is quite sunk, and I don't know where to look for relief. Mary will get better again, but her constantly being liable to such relapses is LETTER TO MANNING. 87 dreadful ; nor is it the least of our evils that her case and all our story is so -vvell known around us. We are in a manner marked. Excuse my troubling you, but I have nobody by me to speak to me. I slept out last night, not being able to endure the change and the stillness. But I did not sleep well, and I must come back to my own bed. I am going to try and get a friend to come and be with me to-morrow. I am completely shipwrecked. My head is quite bad. I almost wish that Mary were dead. God bless you. Love to Sara and Hartley. — Mondaij. C. Lamb." The prospect of obtaining a residence more suited to the peculiar exigencies of his situation than that which he then occupied at Pentonville, gave Lamb comfort, which he expressed in the following short letter : TO MR. MANNING. "1800. " Dear Manning. — I feel myself unable to thank you sufiSciently for your kind letter. It was doubly acceptable to me, both for the choice poetry and the kind honest prose which it contained. It was just such a letter as I should have expected from Manning. " I am in much better spirits than when I wrote last. I have had a very eligible offer to lodge with a friend in town. He will have rooms to let at midsummer, by which time I hope my sister will be well enough to join me. It is a great object to mo to live in town, where we shall bo much more private, and to quit a house and a neighbor- hood, where poor Mary's disorder, so frequently recurring, has made us a sort of marked people. We can be no- where private except in the midst of London. We shall 88 LETTER TO COLERIDaE. be in a family where we visit very frequently ; only my landlord and I have not yet come to a conclusion. He has a partner to consult. I am still on the tremble, for I do not know where we could go into lodgings that would not be, in many respects, highly exceptionable. Only God send Mary well again, and I hope all will be well ! The pros- pect, such as it is, has made me quite happy. I have just time to tell you of it, as I know it will give you plea- sure. Farewell. C. Lamb." This hope was accomplished, as appears from the fol- lowing letter : — TO MR. COLERIDGE. "1800. " Dear Coleridge. — Soon after I wrote to you last, an offer was made me by Gutch (you must remember him, at Christ's, — you saw him, slightly, one day with Thomson at our house) — to come and lodge with him, at his house in Southampton Buildings, Chancery-lane. This was a very comfortable offer to mc, the rooms being at a reason- able rent, and including the use of an old servant, besides being infinitely preferable to ordinary lodgings in our case^ as you must perceive. As Gutch know all our story and the perpetual liability to a recurrence in my sister's dis- order, probably to the end of her life, I certainly think the offer very generous and very friendly. I have got three rooms (including servant) under oAl. a year. Here I soon found myself at home ; and here, in six weeks after, Mary Avas well enough to join me. So wc are once more settled. I am afraid we are not placed out of the reach of future interruptions. But I am determined to take what snatches of pleasure we can between the acts of our distressful drama I have passed two days at Ox- LETTER TO COLERIDQE. 89 ford, on a visit whicli I have long put off, to Gutch's family. The sight of the Bodleian Library, and, above all, a fine bust of Bishop Taylor, at All Souls', were par- ticularly gratifying to me ; unluckily, it was not a family where I could take Mary with me, and I am afraid there is something of dishonesty in any pleasures I take with- out her. She never goes anywhere. I do not know what I can add to this letter. I hope you are better by this time; and I- desire to be affectionately remembered to Sara and Hartley. " I expected before this to have had tidings of another httle philosopher. Lloyd's wife is on the point of favor- ing the world. " Have you seen the new edition of Burns ? his posthu- mous works and letters ? I have only been able to pro- cure the first volume, which contains his life — very con- fusedly and badly written, and interspersed with dull pa- thological and medical discussions. It is written, by a Dr. Currie. Do you know the well-meaning doctor ? Alas, ne sutor ultra erepidam ! " I hope to hear again from you very soon. Godwin is gone to L-cland on a visit to Grattan. Before he went I passed much time with him, and ho has showed me par- ticular attention: N.B, A thing I much like. Your books are all safe : only I have not thought it necessary to fetch away your last batch, which I understand are at Johnson's, the bookseller, who has got quite as much room, and will take as much care of them as myself and you can send for them immediately from him. " I wish you would advert to a letter I sent you at Grass- mere about Christabel, and comply with my request con- tained therein. " Love to all friends round Skiddaw. C Lamb." 8* CHAPTER IV. mSCELIANEOUS LETTERS TO MANNING, COLERIDGE, AND WORDSWORTH. [ISOO to 1805.] It would seem from the letters of 1800, that the natural determination of Lamb "to take what pleasure he could between the acts of his distressful drama," had led him into a wider circle of companionship, and had prompted sallies of wilder and broader mirth, which afterwards soft- ened into delicacy, retaining all its whim. The following passage, which concludes a letter to Manning, else occu- pied with merely personal details, proves that his appre- hensions for the diminution of his reverence for sacred things were not wholly unfounded ; while, amidst its gro- tesque expressions, may be discerned the repugnance to the philosophical infidelity of some of his companions he retained through life. The passage, may, perhaps, be regarded as a sort of desperate compromise between a wild gaiety and religious impressions obscured but not ef- faced ; and intimating his disapprobation of infidelity, with a melancholy sense of his own unworthiness seriously to express it. TO MR. MANNING. " Coleridge inquires after you pretty often. I wish to be the pandar to bring you together again once before I (90) LETTER TO MANNING. 91 die. When we die, you and I must part ; tlie sheep, you know, take the right hand, and the goats the left. Strip- ped of its allegory, you must know, the sheep are T, and the Apostles and the j\Iartyrs, and the Popes, and Bishop Taylor, and Bishop Horsley, and Coleridge, &c.,&c. ; the goats are the Atheists, and the Adulterers, and dumh dogs, and Godwin, and M g, and that Thyest?ean crew — yaw ! how my saintship sickens at the idea ! "You shall have my play and the Falstaff letters in a day or two. I will write to Lloyd by this day's post. " God bless you, Manning. Take my trifling as tri' fling — and believe me seriously and deeply your well- Avisher and friend, C. Lamb." In the following letter Lamb's fantastic spirits find scope freely, though in all kindness, in the peculiarities of the learned and good George Dyer : — TO MR. MANNING. "August 22nd, ISOO. "Dear jSIanning. — You needed not imagine any apology necessary. Y'our fine hare and fine birds (which just noAV are dangling by our kitchen blaze), discourse most eloquent music in your justification. You just nicked my palate. For, with all due decorum and leave may it be spoken, my worship hath taken physic to-day, and being low and puling, requireth to be pampered. Fob! how beautiful and strong those buttered onions come to my nose. For you must know we extract a divine spirit of gravy from those materials, which, duly compounded with a consist- ence of bread and cream (y'clept bread-sauce), each to each, giving double grace, do mutually illustrate and set 92 LETTER TO MANNING. off (as skilful gold-foils to rare jewelsj your partridge, pheasant, woodcock, snipe, teal, widgeon, and the other lesser daughters of the ark. My friendship, struggling with my carnal and fleshly prudence (which suggests that a bird a man is the proper allotment in such cases, yearn- oth faometimes to have thee here to pick a wing or so. I q»aestion if your Norfolk sauces match our London culin- aric. " George Dyer has introduced me to the table of an agree- able old gentleman, Dr. A , who gives hot legs of mutton and grape pies at his sylvan lodge at Isleworth ; where, in the middle of a street, he has shot up a wall most preposter- ously before his small dwelling, which, with the circum- stance of his taking several panes of glass out of bedroom 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 bet- ter 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's J^neid, Blind Harry, &;c. We returned home in a returned postchaise (having dined with the Doctor,) and George kept wonder- ing, and wondering, for eight or nine turnpike miles, what was the name, and striving to recollect the name of a poet anterior to Barbour. I be2;a;ed to know what was remaining of his works. ' There is nothing extant of his works, sir, but by all accounts he seems to have been a fine gcniub ! This fine genius, without anything to show for it, or any title beyond George's courtesy, Avithout even a name ; and Barbour, and Douglas, and Blind Harry, now are the predominant sounds in George's pia mater, and their buz- Siiugs exclude politics, criticism, and algebra — the late LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 93 lords of that illustrious lumber-room. Mark, he has never read any of these bucks, 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. " Could I have my will of the heathen, I would lock him up from all access of new ideas ; I would exclude all critics that would not swear me first (upon their Virgil) that they would feed him with nothing but the old, safe, familiar notions and sounds (the rightful aborigines of his brain) — Gray, Akenside, and Mason. In these sounds, re- iterated as often as possible, there could be nothing pain- ful, nothing distracting. " God bless me, here are the birds, smoking hot ! "All that is gross and unspiritual in me rises at tho sight ! " Avaunt friendship, and all memory of absent friends ! " C. Lamb." In the following letter, the exciting subjects of Dr. A and Dyer are further played on :— TO MR. COLE^ICGE. "August 26th, 1800. " George Dyer is the only literary character I am hap- pily acquainted with; the oftener I see him, the more deeply I admire him. He is goodness itself. If I could but calculate the precise date of his death, I would write a novel on purpose to make George the hero. I could hit him off to a hair.* George brouglit a Dr. A to see * This passage, thus far, is printed in the former volumes ; the remainder was then suppressed (with other passages now for the first time published) relating to Mr. Dyer, lest they should give pain to that excellent person then living. •^'i LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. me. The Doctor is a very i^leasant old man, a great ge- nius for agriculture, one that ties his breeches-knees with packthread, and boasts of having had disappointments from ministers. The Doctor happened to mention an epic poem by one Wilkie, called the 'Epigoniad,' in which he assured us there is not one tolerable line from beginning to end, but all the characters, incidents, &c., verbally copied from Homer. George, who had been sitting quite inattentive to the Doctor's criticism, no sooner heard the sound of Home7' strike his pericranicks, than up he gets, and declares he must see that poem immediately : where was it to be had ? An epic poem of 8000 lines, and he not hear of it ! There must be some things good in it, and it was necessary he should see it, for he had touched pretty deeply upon that subject in his criticisms on the Epic. George has touched pretty deeply upon the Lyric, I find ; he has also prepared a dissertation on the Drama and the comparison of the English and German theatres. As I rather doubted his competency to do the latter, know- ing that his peculiar turyi lies in the lyric species of com- position, I questioned George what English plays he had read. I found that he had read Shakspeare (whom he calls an original, but irregular, genius) ; but it ?v^as a good while ago ; and he has dipped into Rowe and Otway, I suppose having found their names in 'Johnson's Lives' at full length ; and upon this slender ground he has undertaken the task. He never seemed even to have heard of Fletcher, Ford, Marlowe, Massinger, and the worthies of Dodsley's Collection ; but he is to read all these, to prepare him for bringing out his ' Parallel' in the winter. I find he is also determined to vindicate Poetry from the shackles which Aristole and some others have imposed upon it, which is very good-natured of him, and very necessary just now ! LETTERS TO MANNING. 95 Now I am toucliing so deeply upon poeiry, can I forget that I have just received from D a magnificent copy of his Guinea Epic. Four-and-tAventy Books to read in the dog-days ! I got as far as the Mad Monk the first day, and fainted. Mr. D 's genius strong!}' points him to the Pastoral, but his inclinations divert him per- petually from liis calling, lie imitates Southey, as Rowe did Shakspeare, with his ' Good morrow to ye ; good mas- ter Lieutenant.' Instead of a man, a woman, a daughter, he constantly writes one a man, one a woman, one his daughter. Instead of tlie king, the hero, he constantly writes, he the king, he the hero ; two flowers of rhetoric, palpably from the ' Joan.' But Mr. D soars a higher pitch : and when he is original, it is in a most original way indeed. His terrific scenes are indefatigable. Serpents, asps, spiders, ghosts, dead bodies, staircases made of no- thing, with adders' tongues for bannisters — Good Heavens what a brain he must have. He puts as many plums in his pudding as my grandmother used to do ; — and then his emerging from Hell's horrors into light, and treading on pure flats of this earth — for twenty-three Books to- gether ! C. L." The following letter, obviously written about the same time, pursues the same theme. There is some irritation in it ; but even that is curious enough to prevent the ex- cision of the reproduced passages : — TO MR. MANNING. "1800, "Dear Manning. — I am going to ask a favor of you, and am at a loss how to do it in the most delicate manner. .For this purpose I have been looking into Pliny's Letters, who is noted to haA'e had the best grace in begging of all tho 98 LETTERS TO MANNING. ancients (I read him in the elegant transLation of Mr. Melmoth), but not finding any case there exactly similar with mine, I am constrained to beg in my own barbarian way. To come to the point then, and hasten into the middle of things, have you a copy of your Algebra to give away ? I do not ask it for myself ; I have too much reverence for the Black Arts, ever to approach thy circle, illustrious Trismegist ! But that worthy man, and excel- lent Poet, George Dyer, made me a visit yesternight, on pur- pose to borrow one, supposing rationally enough, I must say, that you had made me a present of one before this ; the omission of which I take to have proceeded only from negligence ; but it is a fault. I could lend him no assist- ance. You must know he is just now diverted from the pursuit of the Bell Letters by a paradox, which he has heard his friend Frend,* (that learned mathematician) maintain, that the negative quantities of mathematicians were merce nugce, things scarcely in rerum natura^ and smacking too much of mystery for gentlemen of Mr. Frond's clear Unitarian capacity. However, the dispute once set a-going, has seized violently on George's pericra- nick ; and it is necessary for his health that he should speedily come to a resolution of his doubts. He goes about teasing his friends with his new mathematics ; he even frantically talks of purchasing Manning's Algebra, which shows him far gone, for, to my knowledge, he had not been master of seven shillings a good time. George's pockets and 's brains are two things in nature which do not abhor a vacuum. . . . Now, if you could step in, in this trembling suspense of his reason, and he should * Mr. Frond, many years the Actuary of tho Rock Insurance Office, in early life the thampion of Unitarianism at Cambridge; the object of a great Univor eity's displeasure; in short, the "village Hampden" of the day. LETTERS TO MANNING. 97 find on Saturday morning, lying for him at the Porter's Lodge, Clifford's Inn— his safest address— Manning's Algebra, with a neat manuscrlption in the blank leaf, running thus, 'From tue Author!' it might save his wits and restore the unhappy author to those studies of poetry and criticism, which are at present suspended, to the in- finite regret of the whole literary world. N.B.— Dirty books, smeared leaves, and dogs' ears, will be rather a recommendation than otherwise. KB.— He must have the book as soon as possible, or nothing can withhold him from madly purchasing the book on tick. . . . Then shall we see him sweetly restored to the chair of Longinus —to dictate in smooth and modest phrase the law? of verse ; to prove that Theocritus first introduced the Pas- toral, and Virgil and Pope brought it to its perfection ; that Gray and Mason (who always hunt in couples in George's brain) have shown a great deal of poetical fire in their lyric poetry; that Aristotle's rules are not to be servilely followed, which George has shown to have im- posed great shackles upon modern genius. His poems I find, are to consist of two vols.— reasonable octavo ; and a third book will exclusively contain criticisms, in which he asserts he has gone pretty deeply into the laws of blank verse and rhyme— epic poetry, dramatic and pastoral ditto— all which is _to come out before Christmas. But above all he has touched most deeply upon the Drama, comparing the English with the modern German stage,' their merits and defects. Apprehending that his studiJs (not to mention his turn, which I take to be chiefly to- wards the lyrical poetry) har '^? ;', ; > /', 101 that's the reason he wore nankeen tliat day. And then he danced, and capered, and fidgeted, and pulled up his pantaloons, and hugged his intolerable flannel vestment closer about his poetic loins ; anon he gave it loose to the zephyrs, which plentifully insinuate their tiny bodies through every crevice, door, window or wainscot, ex- pressly formed for the exclusion of such impertinents. Then he caught at a proof sheet, and catched up a laun- dress's bill instead — made a dart at Bloomfield's Poems and threw them in agony aside. I could not bring him to one direct reply; he could not maintain his jumping mind in a right line for the tithe of a moment by Clifford's Inn clock. He must go to the printer's immediately — the most unlucky accident — he had struck off five hundred impres- sions of his Poems, which were ready for delivery to sub- scribers, and the Preface must all be expuno-ed ; there were eighty pages of Preface, and not till that morning had he discovered that in the very first page of said Pre- face he had set out with a principle of Criticism funda- mentally wrong, which vitiated all his following reasoning ; the Preface must be expunged, although it cost him 30/,, the lowest calculation, taking in paper and printing ! In vain have his real friends remonstrated against this Mid- summer madness. George is as obstinate as a Primitive Christian— and wards and parries off all our thrusts with one unanswerable fence ;— ' Sir, it's of great consequence that the world is not misled P '^ I've often wished I lived in the Golden A ge, before doubt, and propositions, and corollaries, got into the world. JVow, as Joseph D , a Pard of Nature, sing , going uji Malv^ern Hills. ' IIow steep ! how piiinful the ascent; It needs tlio evidence of close deduction To know that ever I shall gain the top.' 9* 102 LETTE^a, ,T0 MANNING. You must know tliat Joe is lame, so that he had some reason for so singing. These two lines, I assure you, are taken totidem Uteris from a very popular poem. Joe is also an Epic Poet as well as a Descriptive, and has written a tragedy, though both his drama and epopoiea are strictly descriptive, and chiefly of the Beauties of Nature, for Joe thinks man with all his passions and frailties not a proper subject of the Drama. Joe's tragedy hath the following surpassing speech in it. Some king is told that his enemy has engaged twelve archers to come over in a boat from an enemy's country and waylay him ; he thereupon pa- thetically exclaims — 'Twelve, dost thou say? Curso on those dozen villains !' D read two or three acts out to us, A^ery gravely on both sides till he came to this heroic touch — and then he asked what we laughed at ? I had no more muscles that day. A poet that chooses to read out his own verses has but a limited power over you. There is a bound where his authority ceases." The following letter, written some time in 1801, shows that Lamb had succeeded in obtaining occasional employ- ment as a writer of epigrams for newspapers, by which he added something to his slender income. The disparaging reference to Sir James Mackintosh must not be taken as ex- pressive of Lamb's deliberate opinion of that distinguished person. Mackintosh, at this time, was in great disfavor, for his supposed apostacy from the principles of his youth, with Lamb's philosophic friends, Avhose minds were of temperament less capable than that of the author of the Vindieice Crallicce of being diverted from abstract theories of liberty by the crimes and sufferings which then at- tended the great attempt to reduce them to practice. LETTER TO MANNING. 103 Lamb, through life, utterly indifferent to politics, was al- ways ready to take part with his friends, and probably scouted, with them, Mackintosh as a dn-^orter. TO MR. MANNING. "ISOl. " Dear Manning. — ^I have forborne writing so long (and BO have you for the matter of that), until I am almost ashamed either to write or to forbear any longer. But as your silence may proceed from some worse cause than ne- glect — from illness, or some mishap which may have be- fallen you, I begin to be anxious. You may have been burnt out, or you may have married, or you may have broken a limb, or turned country parson ; any of these would be ex- cuse sufficient for not coming to my supper. I am not so unforgiving as the nobleman in Saint Mark. For me, nothing new has happened to me, unless that the poor Albion died last Saturday of the world's neglect, and with it the fountain of my puns is choked up for ever. " All the Lloyds wonder that you do not write to them. They apply to me for the cause. Relieve me from this weight of ignorance, and enable me to give a truly oracu- lar response. " I have been confined some days with swelled cheek and rheumatism — they divide and govern me with a vice- roy-headache in the middle. I can neither Avi'ite nor read without great pain." It must be something like obstinacy that I choose tliis time to write to you in aftei many months interruption. '' I will close my letter of simple inquiry with an epi- gram on Mackintosh, the Vindicioe Gfallicce-ma^n — who has got a place at last — one of the last I did for the Albion: — • 104 LETTER TO MR, WALTER WILSON. ' Though thou'rt like Judas, an apostate black, In the resemblance one thing thou dost lack ; When he had gotten his ill-purchas'd pelf, He went away, and wiselj' hang'd himself; This thou may do at last, yet much I doubt, If thou hast any Bowels to gush out !' " Yours, as ever, C. Lajub." Some sportive extravagance which, however inconsistent with Lamb's early sentiments of reverent piety, was very far from indicating an irreligious purpose, seems to have given offence to Mr. Walter Wilson, and to have induced the following letter, illustrative of the writer's feelings at this time, on the most momentous of all subjects : — TO MR. WALTER WILSON. "August 14th, 1801. " Dear Wilson. — I am extremely sorry that any serious difference should subsist between us, on account of some foolish behaviour of mine at Richmond ; you knew me well enough before, that a very little liquor will cause a con- siderable alteration in me. " I beg you to impute my conduct solely to that, and not to any deliberate intention of offending you, from whom I have received so many friendly attentions. I know that you think a very important difference in opinion with respect to some more serious subjects between us makes me a dangerous companion ; but do not rashly infer, from some slight and light expressions which I may have made use of in a moment of levity, in your presence, with- out sufBcient regard to your feelings — do not conclude that I am an inveterate enemy to all religion. I have had a time of seriousness, and I have known the impor- LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 105 tance and reality of a religious belief. Latterly, I ac- knowledge, much of mj seriousness has gone off, whether from new company, or some other new associations ; but I still retain at bottom a conviction of the truth, and a cer- tainty of the usefulness of religion. I will not pretend to more gravity or feeling than I at present possess ; my in- tention is not to persuade you that any great alteration IS probably in me; sudden converts are superficial and transitory ; I only want you to believe that I have stamina of seriousness within me, and that I desire nothing more than a return of that friendly intercourse which used to subsist between us, but which my folly has suspended. " Believe me, very affectionately, yours, "C.Lamb." In 1803 Coleridge visited London, and at his departure left the superintendence of a new edition of his poems io Lamb. The following letter, written in reply to one of Coleridge's, giving a mournful account of his journey to the north with an old man and his influenza, refers to a splendid smoking-cap which Coleridge had worn at their evening meetin";s : — TO MR. COLERIDGE. "April 13th, 1803. " My dear Coleridge. — Things have gone on better with me since you left me. I expect to have my old house- keeper home again in a week or two. She has mended most rapidly. My health too has been better since you took away that Montero cap. I have left off cayenncd eggs and such bolsters to discomfort. There was death in that cap. I mischievously wished that by some inauspi- cious jolt the whole contents might be shaken, and the coach set on fire ; for you said they had that property. IIo^v 106 LETTER TO COLERIDGE. the old gentleman, who joined you at Grantham, would have clapt his hands to his knees, and not knowing but it was an immediate visitation of heaven that burnt him, how pious it would have made him ; him, I mean, that brought the influenza with him, and only took places for one — an old sinner ; he must have known what he had got with him ! However, I wish the cap no harm for the sake of the head it fits, and could be content to see it disfigure my healthy side-board again. " What do you think of smoking ? I want your sober, average, 7ioon opinion of it. I generally am eating my dinner about the time I should determine it. y" Morning is a girl, and can't smoke — she's no evidence one way or the other ; and Night is so bought over, that he can't be a very upright judge. May be the truth is, that one pipe is wholesome ; tivo pipes toothsome ; tltree pipes noisome ; four pipes fulsome ; five pipes quarrelsome, and that's the sum on't. But that is deciding rather upon rhyme than reason. . . . After all, our instincts may be best. Wine, I am sure, good, mellow, generous Port, can hurt nobody, unless those who take it to excess, which they may easily avoid if they observe the rules of temperance. " Bless you old sophist, who next to human nature taught me all the corruption I was capable of knowing ! And bless your Montero cap, and your trail (which shall come after you whenever you appoint), and your wife and chil- dren — Pipes especially. "When shall we two smoke again ?/ Last night I had been in a sad quandary of spirits, in what they call the evening, but a pipe, and some generous Port, and King Lear (being alone), had their effects as solacers. I went to bed pot-valiant. By the way, may not the Ogles v^i Somersetshire be remotely descended from King Lear ? «C. L." LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 107 The next letter is prefaced by happy news. TO MR. COLERIDGE. " Mary sends love from home. "1803. " Dear C. — I do confess that I have not sent your books as I ought to have done ; but you know how the hu- man free-will is tethered, and that we perform promises to ourselves no better than to our friends. A watch is come for you. Do you want it soon, or shall I wait till some one travels your way ? You, like me, I suppose, reckon the lapse of time from the waste thereof, as boys let a cock run to waste ; too idle to stop it, and rather amused with seeing it dribble. Your poems have begun printing ; Longman sent to me to arrange them, the old and the new together. It seems you have left it to him ; so I classed them, as nearly as I could, according to dates. First, after the Dedication, (which must march first,) and which I have transplanted from before the Preface, (which stood like a dead wall of prose between,) to be the first poem — then comes 'The Pixies,' and the things most ju- venile — then on 'To Chatterton,' &c. — on, lastly, to the ' Ode on the Departing Year,' and ' Musings,' — which fin- ish. Longman wanted the Ode first, but the arrangement I have made is precisely that marked out in the Dedica- tion, following the order of time. I told Longman I was sure that you would omit a good portion of the first edition. I instanced several sonnets, &;c. — but that w^as not his plan, and, as you have done nothing in it, all I could do was to arrange 'em on the supposition that all were to be retained. A few I positively rejected; such as that of ' The Thimble,' and that of ' Flicker and Flicker's wife,' and that not in the manner of Spenser, which you your' 108 LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. self had stigmatised — and ' The Man of Ross,' — I doubt -whether I should this Last. It is not too late to save it. The first proof is only just come. I have been forced to call that Cupid's Elixir, 'Kisses.' It stands in your first volume, as an Effusion, so that, instead of prefixing The Kiss to that of ' One Kiss, dear Maid,' &c., I have ventured to entitle it ' To Sara.' I am aware of the nic3ty of changing even so mere a trifle as a title to so short a piece, and subverting old associations ; but two called " Kisses' would have been absolutely ludicrous, and ' Effusion' is no name, and these poems come close together. I promise you not to alter one word in any poem what- ever, but to take your last text, where two are. Can you send any wishes about the book? Longman, I think, should have settled with you ; but it seems you have left it to him. Write as soon as you possibly can ; for, without making myself responsible, I feel myself, in some sort, ac- cessary to the selection, which I am to proof-correct ; but I decidedly said to Biggs that I was sure you would omit more. Those I have positively rubbed off, I can swear to individually, (except the 'Man of Ross,' which is too fa- miliar in Pope,) but no others — you have your cue. For my part, I had rather all the Juvenilia were kept — mem- orise causa. " Robert Lloyd has written me a masterly letter, con- taining a character of his father ; see how different from Charles he views the old man ! [Literatim.) ' My father smokes, repeats Homer in Greek, and Virgil, and is learn- ing, when from business, with all the vigor of a young man, Italian. He is, really, a wonderful man. He mixes public and private business, the intricacies of disordering life with his religion and devotion. No one more ration- ally enjoys the romantic scenes of nature, and the chit- LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 100 chat and little vagaries of his children ; and, though sur- rounded with an ocean of affairs, the very neatness of his most obscure cupboard in the house passes not unnoticed. I never knew any one view with such clearness, nor so well satisfied with things as they are, and make such allowance, for things which must appear perfect Syriac to him.' By the last he means the Lloydisms of the younger branches. His portrait of Charles (exact as far as he has had the opportunities of noting him) is most exquisite. ' Charles is become steady as a church, and as straight- forward as a Roman Road. It would distract him to men- tion anything that was not as plain as sense ; he seems to have run the whole scenery of life, and now rests as the formal precision of non-existence.' Here is genius I think, and 'tis seldom a young man, a Lloyd, looks at a father (so differing) with such good nature while he is alive. Write — I am in post-haste, C. Lamb." "Love, &c., to Sara, P. and H." The next letter, containing a further account of Lamb's superintendence of the new edition, bears the date of Saturday, 27th May, 1803. TO MR. COLERIDGE. " My dear Coleridge. — The date of my last was one day prior to the receipt of your letter, full of foul omens. I explain, lest you should have thought mine too light a reply to such sad matter. I seriously hope by this time you have given up all thoughts of journeying to the green . Islands of the Blest — voyages in time of war are very pre- carious — or at least, that you will take them in your way to the Azores. Pray be careful of this letter till it has done its duty, for it is to inform you that I have booked 10 110 LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. off your watch (laid in cotton like an untimely fruit), and with it Condillac, and all other books of yours which were left here. These will set out on Monday next, the 29th May, by Kendal wagon, from White Horse, Cripplegate. "iou will make seasonable inquiries, for a watch mayn't come your way again in a hurry. I have been repeatedly after Tobin, and now hear that he is in the country, not to return till middle of June. I will take care and see him with the earliest. But cannot you write pathetically to him, enforcing a speedy mission of your books for lite- rary purposes ? He is too good a retainer to Literature, to let her interests suffer through his default. And why, in the name of Beelzebub, are your books to travel from Barnard's Inn to the Temple, and thence circuitously to Cripplegate, when their business is to take a short cut down Holborn-hill, up Snow do,, on to Wood-street, &c. ? The former mode seems a sad superstitious subdivision of labor. Well ! the ' Man of Ross' is to stand ; Lono-man begs for it ; the printer stands with a wet sheet in one hand, and a useless Pica in the other, in tears, pleading for it ; I relent. Besides, it was a Salutation poem, and has the mark of the beast ' Tobacco' upon it. Thus much I have done ; I have swept off the lines about widows and orphans in second edition, which (if you remember) you most awkwardly and illogically caused to be inserted between two Ifs, to the great breach and disunion of said Ifs, which now meet again (as in first edition), like two clever lawyers arguing a case. Another reason for sub- tracting the pathos was, that the ' Man of Ross' is too familiar, to need telling what he did, especially in worse lines than Pope told it, and it now stands simply as ' Re- flections at an Inn about a known Character,' and sucking an old story into an accommodation with present feelings. LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH. Ill Here is no breaking spears with Pope, but a new, inde- pendent, and really a very pretty poem. In fact 'tis as I used to admire it in the first volume, and I have even dared to restore 'If 'neath this roof thy wine-cheer'd mcments pass,' for 'Beneath this roof if thy cheer'd moments pass/ * Cheer'd' is a sad general word, ' wine-cheer d' I'm sure you'd give me, if I had a speaking-trumpet to sound to you 300 miles. But I am your factotum, and that save in this instance, which is a single case, and I can't get at you, shall be next to afac-nihil — at most 2k facsimile. I have ordered ' Imitation of Spenser' to be restored on Wordsworth's authority ; and now, all that you will miss will be 'Flicker and Flicker's Wife,' 'The Thimble,' 'Breathe, dear harmonist,' and I believe, 'The Child that was fed with Manna.' Another volume will clear off all your Anthologic Morning-Postian Epistolary Miscellanies; but pray don't put ' Christabel' therein ; don't let that sweet maid come forth attended with Lady Holland's mob at her heels. Let there be a separate volume of Tales, Choice Tales, 'Ancient Mariners,' &c. C. Lamb." The following is the fragment of a letter (part being lost), on the re-appearance of the Lyrical Ballads, in two volumes, and addressed TO MR. AVORDSWORTir. " Thanks for your letter and present. I had already borrowed your second volume. What most please me are, ' The Song of Lucy ;' Simon s sickly daughter, in ' The ^12 LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH. Sexton' made me cry. Next to these are the description of the continuous echoes in the story of 'Joanna's Laugh,' where the mountains, and all the scenery absolutely seem alive ; and that fine Shaksjoearian character of the ' happy man,' in the 'Brothers,' 'that creeps about the fields, Following his fancies by the hour, to bring Tears down his cheeks, or solitary smiles Into his face, until the setting sun Write Fool upon his forehead !' I will mention one more— the delicate and curious feeling in the wish for the 'Cumberland Beggar,' that he may have about him the melody of birds, altho' he hear them not. Here the mind knowingly passes a fiction upon her- self, first substituting her own feelings for the Bego-ar's, and in the same breath detecting the fallacy, will not part with the Avish. The ' Poet's Epitaph' is disfigured, to my taste, by the common satire upon parsons and lawyers in the beginning, and the coarse epithet of 'pin-point,' in the sixth stanza. All the rest is eminently good, and your own. 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 many 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 beau- tiful, bare narratives. There is implied an unwritten LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH. 113 compact between author and reader ; ' I will tell you a ?tory, and I suppose you will understand it.' Modern novels, ' St. Leons' and the like, are full of such flowers as these — 'Let not my reader suppose/ 'Imagine, if you can, modest !' &c. I will here have done Avith praise and blame. I have written so much, only that you may not think I have passed over your book without observa tion 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 u>— 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 Pipes's magic whistle. I to- tally differ from your idea that ' Marinere' should have had a character and profession. This is a beauty in ' Gul- liver's Travels,' where the mind is kept in a placid state of little wonderments ; but the ' Ancient Marinere' under- goes such trials as overwhelm and bury all individuality or memory of what he was — like the state of a man in a bad dream, one terrible peculiarity of which is, that all consciousness of personality is gone. Your other obser- vation is, I think as well, a little unfounded : the ' Marinere,' from being conversant in supernatural events, has acquired a supernatural and strange cast of j^hrase, eye, appear- ance, &;c., which frighten the 'wedding-guest.' You will excuse my remarks, because I am hurt and vexed that you should think it necessary, Avith a prose apology, to open the eyes of dead men that cannot see. 10* ^14 LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH. " To sum up a general opinion of the second volume, I do not feel any one poem in it so forcibly as the ' Ancient Marinere,' the 'Mad Mother/ and the 'Lines at Tintern Abbey' in the first." The following letter was addressed, on 28th September, 1805, when Lamb was bidding his generous farewell to Tcbacco, to Wordsworth, then living in noble poverty with his sister in a cottage by Grasmere, which is as sacred to some of his old admirers as even Shakspeare's House. TO MR. WORDSWORTH. " My dear Wordsworth (or Dorothy rather, for to you appertains the biggest part of this answer by right), I will not again deserve reproach by so long a silence. I have kept deluding myself with the idea that Mary would write to you, but she is so lazy (or I believe the true state of the case, so diffident), that it must revert to me as usual : though she writes a pretty good style, and has some notion of the force of words, she is not always so certain of the true orthography of them ; and that, and a poor hand- writing (in this age of female calligraphy), often deters her, where no other reason does.* " We have neither of us been very well for some weeks past. I am very nervous, and she most so at those times when I am ; so that a merry friend, adverting to the noble consolation we were able to aiford each other, denominated us, not unaptly, Gum-Boil and Tooth-Ache, for they used to say that a gum-boil is a great relief to a tooth-ache. " We have been two tiny excursions this summer for * This is mere banter; Miss Lamb wrote a very good hand. LETTERS TO AVORDSWORTH. 115 three or four days each, to a place near Harrow and to Egham, where Cooper's Iliil is : and that is the total his- tory of our rustications this year. Alas ! how poor a round to Skiddaw and Helvellyn, and Borrowdale, and the magnificent sesquipedalia of the year 1802. Poor old Molly ! to have lost her pride, that ' last infirmity of noble minds,' and her cow. Fate need not have set her wits to such an old Molly. I am heartily sorry for her. Re- member us lovingly to her ; and in particular remember us to Mrs. Clarkson in the most kind manner. "I hope, by 'southwards,' you mean that she will be at or near London, for she is a great favorite of both of us, and w^e feel for her health as much as possible for any one to do. She is one of the friendliest, comfortablest women we know^, and made our little stay at your cottage one of the pleasantest times we ever past. We were quite strangers to her. Mr. C. is with you too; our kindest separate remembrances to him. As to our special affairs, I am looking about me. I have done nothing since the beginning of last year, when I lost my newspaper job, and having had a long idleness, I must do something, or we shall get very poor. Sometimes I think of a farce, but hitherto all schemes have gone off; an idle brag or two of an evening, vaporing out of a pipe, and going oflF in the morning ; but now I have bid farewell to my ' sweet enemy,' Tobacco, as you will see in my next page,* I shall perhaps set nobly to work. Hang work ! "I wish that all the year were holiday ; I am sure that in- dolence — indefeasible indolence — is the true state of man, and business the invention of the old Teazer, whose inter- * The " Farewell to Tobacco" was transcribed on the next page ; but the ac. tual sacrifice was not completed till some years after. 116 LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH. ference doomed Adam to an apron, and set him a hoeing. Pen and ink, and clerks and desks, were the refinements of this old torturer some thousand years after, under pre- tence of ' Commerce allying distant shores, promoting and diffusing knowledge, good,' &c. &c. Yours truly, "C. Lamb." CHAPTER V. LETTERS TO HAZLITT, ETC. [1805 to ISIO.] About the year 1805 Lamb was introduced to odo whose society through life was one of his chief pleasures— the great critic and thinker, William Hazlitt— who, at that time, scarcely conscious of his own literary powers, was striving hard to become a painter. At the period of the following letter (which is dated 15th March, 1806) Hazlitt was residing with his father, an Unitarian minister at Wem. TO MR. HAZLITT. " Dear H. — I am a little surprised at no letter from you. This day week, to wit, Saturday the 8th of March, 180G, I book'd off by the Wem coach, Bull and Mouth Inn, directed to you, at the Rev. Mr. Ilazlitt's, Wem, Shropshire, a parcel containing, besides a book, &c., a rare print, which I take to be a Titian ; begging the said W. II. to acknowledge the receipt thereof; Avhich he not having done, I conclude the said parcel to be lying at the inn, and may be lost ; for which reason, lest you may be a Wales-hunting at this instant, I have authorised any of your family, whosoever first gets this, to open it, that so (117) 118 LETTER TO IIAZLITT. precious a parcel may not moulder away for want of look- ing after. What do you in Shropshire when so many fine pictures are a-going a-going every day in London ? Mon- day I visit the Marquis of Lansdowne's, in Berkley Square. Catalogue 2s. 6d. Leonardos in plenty. Some other day this week, I go to see Sir Wm. Young's, in Stratford Place. Hulse's, of Blackheath, are also to be sohl this month, and in May, the first private collection in Europe, Welbore Ellis Agar's. And there are you per- verting Nature in lying landscapes, filched from old rusty Titians, such as I can scrape up here to send you, with an additament from Shropshire nature thrown in to make the ■whole look unnatural. I am afraid of your mouth water- ing vfhen I tell you that Manning and I got into Anger- stein's on Wednesday. J\Ion Dieu ! Such Claudes ' Four Claudes bought for more than 10,000Z. (those who talk of W^ilson being equal to Claude are either mainly ignorant or stupid) ; one of these was perfectly miraculous. What colors short of bona fide sunbeams it could be painted in, I am not earthly colorman enough to say; but I did not think it had been in the possibility of things. Then, a music-piece by Titian — a thousand-pound picture — five figures standing behind a piano, the sixth playing ; none of the heads, as M. observed, indicating great men, or af- fecting it, but so sweetly disposed ; all leaning separate ways, but so easy, like a flock of some divine shepherd ; the coloring, like the economy of the picture, so sw^eet and harmonious — as good as Shakspeare's ' Twelfth Night,' — almost, that is. It will give you a love of order, and cure you of restless, fidgety passions for a week after — more musical than the music which it would, but cannot, yet in a manner does, show. I have no room for the rest. Let me say, Angerstein sits in a room — his study (only that LETTER TO MRS. HAZLITT. 119 and the library are shown), when he writes a common letter, as I am doing, surrounded with twenty pictures worth 60,0001. What a luxury ! Apicius and Helioga- balus, hide your diminished heads ! " Yours, my dear painter, " C. Lamb." Hazlitt married Miss Sarah Stoddart, sister of the pre- sent Sir John Stoddart, who became very intimate with Lamb and his sister. To her Lamb, on the 11th Decem- ber, 1806, thus communicated the failure of "Mr. H." TO MRS. HAZLITT. " Don't mind this being a queer letter. I am in haste, and taken up by visitors, condolers, &c. God bless you. " Dear Sarah. — ^Mary is a little cut at the ill success of ' Mr. H.' which came out last night, and failed. I know you'll be sorry, but never mind. We are deter- mined not to be cast down. I am going to leave off to- bacco, and then we must thrive. A smoking man must ■write smoky farces. " Mary is pretty well, but I persuaded her to let me write. We did not apprise you of the coming out of ' Mr. H.' for fear of ill-luck. You were much better out of the house. If it had taken, your partaking of our good luck would liave been one of our greatest joys. As it is, we shall expect you at the time you mentioned. But when- ever you come you shall be most welcome. " God bless you, dear Sarah, " Yours, most truly, C. L. 120 LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH. " Mary is by no means unwell, but I made her let me write." The following is Lamb's account of the same calamity, addressed TO MR. WORDSWORTH. " Mary's love to all of you — I wouldn't let her write. "Dear Wordsworth. — 'Mr. H.' came out last night, and failed. I had many fears ; the subject was not sub- stantial enough. John Bull must have solider fare than a letter. We are pretty stout about it ; have had plenty of condoling friends ; but, after all, we had rather it should have succeeded. You will see the prologue in most of the morning papers. It was received with such shouts as I never witnessed to a prologue. It was attempted to be encored. How hard !— a thing I did merely as a task, because it was wanted, and set no great store by ; and ' Mr. H.' ! ! The quantity of friends we had in the house— my brother and I being in public offices, &c. — was aston- ishing, but they yielded at last to a few hisses. " A hundred hisses ! (Hang the word, I write it like kisses— how different!) — a hundred hisses outweigh a thousand claps. The former come more directly from the heari. Well, 'tis withdrawn, and there is an end. '■Better luck to us, C Lamb. "P.S. Pray, when any of you write to the Clarksons give our kind l.ves, and say Tve shall not be able to come Dnd see th?m a-:, Christmas, as I shall have but a day or two, and tell them we bear our mortification pretty well.' LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH. 121 About this time Miss Lamb sought to contribute to her brother's scanty income bj presenting the plots of some of Shakspeare's plays in prose, with the spirit of the poet's genius interfused, and many of his happiest expressions preserved, in which good work Lamb assisted her; though he always insisted, as he did in reference to " Mrs. Lei- cester's School," that her portions were the best. The following letter refers to some of those aids, and gives a pleasant instance of that shyness in Hazlitt, which he never quite overcame, and which afforded a striking con- trast to the boldness of his published thoughts. TO MR. WORDSWORTH. "1S06. "Mary is just stuck fast in 'All's Well that Ends Well.' She complains of having to set forth so many female characters in boys' clothes. She begins to think Shaks- peare must have wanted — Imagination. I, to encourage her, for she often faints in the prosecution of her great work> flatter her with telling her how well such a play and such a play is done. But she is stuck fast, and I have been obliged to promise to assist her. To do this, it will be necessary to leave off tobacco. But I had some thoughts of doing that before, for I sometimes think it docs not agree with me. W. Hazlitt is in town. I took him to see a very pretty girl, professedly, where there were two young girls— the very head and sum of the girlery was two young girls— they neither laughed, nor sneered, nor giggled, nor whispered— 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 11 122 LETTER TO IIAZLITT. he could not bear young girls ; they drove him mad. So I took him home to my old nurse, where he recovered per- fect tranquillity. 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, printing a political pamphlet on his own account, and will have to pay for the paper, &c. The first duty of an author, I take it, is never to pay anything. But non cuivis contigit adire Corinthum. The managers, I thank my stars, have settled that question for i^e. Yours truly, C. Lamb." Hazlitt, coming to reside in town, became a frequent guest of Lamb's, and a brilliant ornament of the parties which Lamb now began to collect on Wednesday evenings. He seems, in the beginning of 1808, to have sought soli- tude in a little inn on Salisbury Plain, to which he became deeply attached, and which he has associated Avith some of his profoundest meditations ; and some fantastic letter, in the nature of a hoax, having puzzled his father, who expected him at Wem, caused some inquiries of Lamb re- specting the painter's retreat, to which he thus replied in a letter to THE REV. MR. HAZLITT. "Temple, 18th February, 1S08. " Sir. — I am truly concerned that any mistake of mine should have caused you uneasiness, but I hope we have got a clue to William's absence, which may clear up all apprehensions. The people where he lodges in town have received direction from him to forward some liner to a place called Winterslow, in the county of Wilts (not far from Salisbury), where the lady lives whose cottage, pic- tured upon a card, if you opened my letter you have LETTER TO MRS. HAZLITT. 123 doubtless seen, and though we have had no explanation of the mystery since, we shrewdly suspect that at the time of writing that letter, which has given you all this trouble, a certain son of yours (who is both painter and author) was at her elbow, and did assist in framing that very car- toon which was sent to amuse and mislead us in town, as to the real place of his destination. "And some words at the back of the said cartoon, which we had not marked so narrowly before, by the similarity of the handwriting to William's, do very much confirm the suspicion. If our theory be right, they have had the pleasure of their jest, and I am afraid you have paid for it in anxiety. " But I hope your uneasiness will now be removed, and you will pardon a suspense occasioned by Love, who does so many worse mischiefs every day. " The letter to the people where William lodges says, moreover, that he shall be in town in a fortnight. " My sister joins in respects to you and Mrs. Ilazlitt, and in our kindest remembrances and wishes for the re- storation of Peggy's health. "I am, Sir, your humble servant, C. Lamb." " Mr. and Mrs. Hazlitt afterwards took up their tem- porary abode at WintersloAv, to which place Miss Lamb addressed the folloAving letter, containing interesting details of her own and her brother's life, and illustrating her own gentle character — TO MRS. HAZLITT. "Decemftpr 10th, 1S08. " My dear Sarali. — I hear of you from your brother, but you do not write yourself, nor does ILizlitt. I l)Og 124 LETTER TO MRS. HAZLITT. that one or both of you -will amend this fault as speedily as possible, for I am very anxious to hear of your health. I hope, as you say nothing about your fall to your brother, you are perfectly recovered from the effects of it. "You cannot think how very much we miss you and H. of a Wednesday evening — all the glory of the night, 1 may say, is at an end. Phillips makes his jokes, and there is no one to applaud him ; Rickman argues, and there is no one to oppose him. " The worst miss of all to me is, that when we are in the dismals there is now no hope of relief from any quar- ter whatsoever. Hazlitt was most brilliant, and most ornamental, as a Wednesday-man, but he was a more use- ful one on common days, when he dropt in after a quarrel or a fit of the glooms. The Sheffington is quite out now, my brother having got merry with claret and Tom Sheridan. This visit, and the occasion of it, is a profound secret, and therefore I tell it to nobody but you and Mrs. Reynolds. Through the medium of Wroughton, there came an invita- tion and proposal from T. S. that C. L. should write some scenes m a speaKing pantomime, the other parts of which Tom now, and his father formerly, have manufactured between them. So in the Christmas holidays my brother, and his two great associates, we expect will be all three damned together ; this is, I mean if Charles's share, which is done and sent in, is accepted. "I left this unfinished yesterday, in the hope that my brother would have done it for me. His reason for re- fusing me was 'no exquisite reason,' for it was because he must write a letter to Manning in three or four weeks, and therefore 'he could not be always wTiting letters,' he said. I wanted him to tell your husband about a great work Avhich Godwin is going to publish to enlighten the LETTER TO MRS. HAZLITT. 125 world once more, and I sliall not be able to make out what it is. He (Godwin) took his usual walk one evening, a fortnight since, to the end of Hatten Garden and back again. During; that walk a thouirht came into his mind, which he instantly sate down and improved upon till he brought it, in seven or eight days, into the compass of a reasonable sized pamphlet. " To propose a subscription to all well-disposed people to raise a certain sum of money, to be expended in the care of a cheap monument for the former and the future great dead men ; the monument to be a white cross, with a wooden slab at the end, telling their names and qualifica- tions. This wooden slab and white cross to be perpetuated to the end of time ; to survive the fall of empires, and the destruction of cities, by means of a map, which, in case of an insurrection among the people, or any other cause by which a city or country may be destroyed, was to bo carefully preserved ; and then, when things got again into their usual order, the white-cross-wooden-slab-makers were to go to Avork again and set the Avooden slabs in their former places. This, as nearly as I can tell you, is the sum and substance of it ; but it is written remarkably well — in his very best manner — for the proposal (which seems to me very like throwing salt on a sparrow's tail to catch him) occupies but half a page, Avhich is followed by very fine Avriting on the benefits he conjectures Avould folloAV if it Avere done ; very excellent thoughts on death, and our feelings concerning dead friends, and the advantages an old country has over a noAv one, even in the slender me- morials Ave have of great men who once flourished. " Charles is come home and wants his dinner, and so the dead men must be no more thought of. Tell us hoAV you go on, and hoAV you like WintcrsloAV and winter even 11* 126 LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. ings. Kiiowlcs lias not yet got back again, but he is In better spirits. John Hazlitt was here on Wednesday. Our love to Hazlitt, "Yours, affectionately, M. Lamb." " Saturday." To this letter Charles added the following postscript : — " There came this morning a printed prospectus from '■ S. T. Coleridge, Grasraerc,' of a Aveeldy paper, to be called *Thc Friend ;' aflaming prospectus. I have no time to give the heads of it. To commence first Saturday in January. There came also notice of a turkey from Mr. Clarkson, -which I am more sanguine in expecting the accomplishment of than I am of Coleridge's prophecy. "CLamc." During the next year Lamb and his sister produced their charming little book of " Poetry for Children," and removed from Mitre Court to those rooms in Inner Tem- ple Lane — most dear of all their abodes to the memory of their ancient friends — Avhcrc first I knew them. The change produced its natural and sad effect on Miss Lamb, during Avhose absence Lamb addressed the following vari- ous letter. TO MR. COLERIDGE. "June Tth, 1S09. " Dear Coleridge. — I congratulate you c:a the appear- ance of ' The Friend.' Your first number promises wel), and I have no doubt the succeeding numbers Avill fulfil the promise. I had a kind letter from you some time since, which I have left unanswered. I am also obliged to you. LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 127 I believe, for a Revie^v in the Annual, am I not? The Monthly Review sneers at me, and asks ' if Comus is not good enoiigli for ]Mr. Lamb V because I have said no good serious dramas have been written since the death of Charles the First, except ' Sampson Agonistes ;' so because they do not know, or won't remember, that Comus was written long before, I am to be set down as an undervaluer of Milton. 0, Coleridge ! do kill those reviews, or they Avill kill us ; kill all we like ! Be a friend to all else, but their foe. I have been turned out of my chambers in the Temple by a landlord who wanted them for himself, but I have got other at No. 4, Inner Temple Lane, far more commodious and roomy. I have two rooms on third floor and five rooms above, with an inner staircase to myself, and all new painted, &c., and all for 30/. a year ! I came into them on Saturday week ; and on Monday following, Mary was taken ill with fatigue of moving, and affected, I believe, by the novelty of the home she could not sleep, and I am left alone with a maid quite a stranger to me, and she has a month or two's sad distraction to go through. "What sad large pieces it cuts out of life ; out of her life, who is getting rather old ; and we may not have many years to live together ! I am weaker, and bear it worse than I ever did. But I hope we shall be comfortable by and bye. The rooms arc delicious, and the best look backwards into Hare Court, where there is a pump always going. Just now it is dry. Ilare Court trees come in at the window, so that it's like living in a garden. I try to persuade myself it is much pleasanter than Mitre Court ; but, alas ! the household gods are slow to come in a new mauoion. They are in their infancy to me ; I do not feel them yet ; no hearth has blazed to tliem yet. How I hate and dread new places ! 128 LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. " I was very glad to see Wordsworth's book advertised ; I am to have it to-morrow lent me, and if Wordsworth don't send me an order for one upon Longman, I will buy it. It is greatly extolled and liked by all who have seen it. Let me hear from some of you, for I am desolate. I shall have to send you in a Aveek or two, two volumes of Juvenik Poetry, done by Mary and me within the last six months, and that tale in prose which Words- worth so much liked, which was published at Christmas, with nine others, by us, and has reached a second edition. There's for you ! We have almost worked ourselves out of child's work, and I don't know what to do. Sometimes I think of a drama, but I have no head for play-making ; I can do the dialogue, and that's all. I am quite aground for a plan, and I must do something for money. Not that I have immediate wants, but I have prospective ones. money, money, hoAv blindly thou hast been Avorshipped, and hoAV stupidly abused ! Thou art health and liberty, and strength, and he that has thee may rattle his pockets at the fould fiend ! " Nevertheless, do not understand by this that I haA'e not quite enough for my occasions for a year or tAvo to come. While I think on it, Coleridge, I fetch'd away my books which you had at the Courier Office, and found all but a third volume of the old plays, containing ' The White DeAdl,' Green's ' Tu Quoque,' and the ' Honest Whore,' perhaps the most A'aluable volume of them all — tliat I could not find. Pray, if you can, remember Avhat you did with it, or where you took it out Avith you a walking per- haps; send me word, for to use the old plea, it spoils a set. I found tAvo other volumes (you had three), the ' Arcadia,' and Daniel, enriched with manuscript notes. I Avish every book I have Avere so noted. They have LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 129 tlioroiiglily converted mc to rclisli Daniel, or to say I relish him, for after all, I believe I did relish him. You will call him sober-minded. Your notes are excellent. Perhaps you've forgot them. I have read a review in the Quarterly, by Southey, on the Mission- aries, which is most masterly. I only grudge it being there. It is quite beautiful. Do remember my Dodsley ; and, pray, do Avrite, or let some of you write. Clarkson tells me you are in a smoky house. Have you cured it ? It is hard to cure anything of smoking. Our little poems are but humble, but they have no name. You must read them, remembering they vrere task-work ; and perhaps you will admire the number of subjects, all of children, picked out by an old Bachelor and an old Maid. Many parents would not have found so many. Have you read ' Coelebs ?' It has reached eight editions in so many Aveeks, yet literally it is one of the very poorest sort of common novels, with the draAV-back of dull religion in it. Had the religion been high and flavored, it would have been something. I borrowed this ' Coelebs in Search of a "Wife,' of a very careful, neat lady, and returned it with this stuff written in the beginning : — 'If ever I marry a wife I'd marry a landlord's daughter, For then I may sit in the bar, And drink cold brnndy-and water.' " I don't expect you can find time from your ' Friend' to Avrite to me much, but write something, for there has been a long silence. You knoAV Ilolcroft is dead. God- win is well. He has Avritten a very pretty, absurd book about sepulchres. He was affronted because I told him it was better than Hervey, but not so good as Sir '1\ Browne. This letter is. all about books ; but my head 130 LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. aclies, and I liardly know what I write : but I could not let ' The Friend' pass without a congratulatory epistle. I won't criticise till it comes to a volume. Tell me how I shall send my packet to 3'ou ? — by Avhat conveyance ? — by Longman, Short-man, or how ? Give my kindest remem- brances to the Wordsworths. Tell him he must give me a book. My kind love to Mrs. W. and to Dorothy sepa- rately and conjointly. I wish you could all tome and see me in my new rooms. God bless you all. C. L." A journey into Wiltshire, to visit Hazlitt, followed Miss Lamb's recovery, and produced the following letters : — TO MR. COLERIDGE. "Monday, Oct. 30th, 1S09. " Dear Coleridge. — I have but this moment received your letter, dated the 9th instant, having just come off a journey from Wiltshire, where I have been with Mary on a visit to Hazlitt. The journey has been of infinite ser- vice to her. We have had nothing but sunshiny days, and daily walks from eight to twenty miles a day ; have seen Wilton, Salisbury, Stonehenge, &c. Her illness lasted but six weeks ; it left her weak, but the country has made us whole. We came back to our Hoo;arth Room. I have made several acquisitions since you saw them — and found Nos. 8, 9, 10, of The Friend. The account of Luther in the Warteburg is as fine as anything I ever read.* God forbid that a man who has such things * The Warteburg is a Castle, standing on a lofty rock, about two miles from the city of Eisenach, in which Luther vras confined, under the friendly arrest of the Elector of Saxony, after Charles V. had pronounced against him the Ran in the Imperial Diet; where he composed some of his greatest works, and translated the New Testament ; and where he is recorded as engaged in the personal conflict with the Prince of Darkness, of which the vestiges are still shown in a black stain on the wall, from the inkstand hurled at the LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 131 to say sliould be silenced for want of 100/. This Custom- and-Duty-Age would have made the Preacher on the Mount take out a license, and St. Paul's Epistles not missible -without a stamp. that you may find means to go on ! But alas ! where is Sir G. Beaumont ? — Sotheby ? What is become of the rich Auditors in Albemarle Street? Your letter has saddened me. Euemy. In the Essaj' referred to, Coleridge accounts for the story — depict- ing the state of the great prisoner's mind in most vivid colors — and then pre- senting the following picture, which so nobly justifies Lamb's eulogy, that I venture to gratify myself by inserting it here. " Methinks I see him sitting, the heroic student, in his chamber in tho Warteburg, with his midnight lamp before him, seen by the late traveller in the distant plain of Bischofsroda, as a star on the mountain ! Below it lies the Hebrew Bible open, on which he gazes j his brow pressing on his palm, brood- ing over some obscure text, which he desires to make plain to the simple boor and to the humble artizan, and to transfer its whole force into their own natu- ral and living tongue. And he himself does not understand it! Thick dark- ness lies on the original text; he counts the letters, he calls up the roots of each separate word, and questions them as the familiar Spirits of an Oracle. In vain; thick darkness continues to cover it; not a ray of meaning dawns through it. With sullen and angry hope he reaches for the Vulgate, his old and sworn enemy, the treacherous confederate of the Roman Antichrist, which he so gladly, when ho can, rebukes for idolatrous falsehood, that had dared place ' Within the sanctuary itself their shrines, Abominations — ' Now — thought of humiliation — he must entreat its aid. See ! there has tho sly spirit of apostacy worked in a phrase, which favors the doctrine of purga- tory, the intercession of saints, or the efficacy of prayers for the dead ; and, what is worst of all, the interpretation is plausible. The original Hebrew might be forced into this meaning : and no other meaning seems to lie in it, none to hover above it in the heights of allegory, none to lurk beneath it even in the depths of Cabala! This is the work of the Tempter; it is a cloud of darkness conjured up between the truth of the sacred letters and the eyes of his understanding, by the malice of the evil-one, and for a trial of his faith ! Must ho then at length confess, must he subscribe the name of Lutheh to an exposition which consecrates a weapon for the hand of tno idolatrouy Hier ^Tchj ? Never I Never ! 132 LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. " I am so tired with my journey, being up all night, I have neither things nor words in my power. I believe I expressed my admiration of the pamphlet. Its poAver over me was like that which Milton's pamphlets must have had on his contemporaries, who were tuned to them. What a piece of prose ! Do you hear if it is read at all ? I am out of the world of readers. I hate all that do read, for they read " There still remains one auxiliary in reserve, the translation of the Seventy. The Alexandrine Greeks, anterior to the Church itself, could intend no sup- port to its corruptions — The Septuagint will have profimed the Altar of Truth with no incense for the nostrils of the universal Bishop to snuff up. And here again his hopes are baffled ! Exactly at this perplexed passage had the Greek translator given his understanding a holiday, and made his pen supply its place. honored Luther ! as easily mightest thou convert the whole City of Rome, with the Pope and the conclave of Cardinals, inclusively, as strike a spark of light from the words, and nothing hut words, of the Alexan- drine version. Disappointed, despondent, enraged, ceasing to lliinlc, yet con- tinuing his brain on the stretch in solicitation of a thought; and gradually giving himself up to angry fancies, to recollections of past persecutions, to uneasy fears, and inward defiances, and floating images of the Evil Being, their supposed personal author; he sinks, without perceiving it, into a trance of slumber; during which his brain retains its waking energies, excepting that what would have been mere thoughts before, now (the action and coun- terweight of his senses and of their impressions being withdrawn) shape and condense themselves into things, into realities ! Repeatedly half-wakening, and his eye-lids as often reclosing, the objects which really surround him form the place and scenery of his dream. All at once he sees tho arch-fiend coming forth on the wall of the room, from the very spot, perhaps, on which his eyes had been fixed, vacantlj', during the perplexed moments of his for- mer meditation : the inkstand which he had at the same time been using, becomes associated with it; and in that struggle of rage, which in those dis- tempered dreams almost constantly precedes the helpless terror by the pain of which we are finally awakened, he imagines that he hurls it at the intruder, or not improbably in the first instant of awakening, while yet both his imagi= nation and his eyes are possessed by the dream, he actually hurls it. Some weeks after, perhaps, during which interval he had often mused on the inci- dent, undetermined whether to deem it a visitation of Satan to him in the body or out of the body, he discovers for the first time the dark spot on hia wall, and receives it as a sign and pledge vouchsafed tc him of the event hav- ing actually taken place." MISS LAMB TO MRS. HAZLITT. 13S notliing but reviews and new books. I gather mjse'if up unto the old things. " I have put up shelves. You never saw a book-case in more true harmony with the contents, than what I've nailed up in a room, which, though ncAV, has more ayiti- tudes for growing old than you shall often see — as one sometimes gets a friend in the middle of life, who becomes an old friend in a short time. My rooms are luxurious; one is for prints and one for books ; a summer and a •winter parlor. "When shall I ever see you in them ? "C. L." MISS LAMB TO MRS. HAZLITT. "November 7tli, 1809. " My dear Sarali. — The dear, quiet, lazy, delicious month we spent with you is remembered by me with such regret that I feel quite discontented and Winterslow-sick. I assure you I never passed such a pleasant time in the country in my life, both in the house and out of it — the card-playing quarrels, and a few gaspings for breath, after your swift footsteps up the high hills, excepted ; and those draw-backs are not unpleasant in the recollection. We have got some salt butter, to make our toast seem like yours, and we have tried to eat meat suppers, but that would not do, for we left our appetites behind us, and the dry loaf, which offended you, now comes in at night un- accompanied; but, sorry am I to add, it is soon followed by the pipe. We smoked the very first night of our ar- rival. '• Great news I I have just been interrupted by Mr. Daw, who came to tell me he was elected a Royal Acade- mician. He said none of his own friends voted for him, 12 134 MISS LAMB TO MRS. HAZLITT. he got it by strangers, who were pleased Avith his picture of Mrs. White. " Charles says he does not believe Northcote ever voted for the admission of any one. Though a very cold day, Daw was in a prodigious perspiration, for joy at his good fortune. " More great news ! My beautiful green curtains were put up yesterday, and all the doors listed with green baize, and four new boards put to the coal-hole, and fastening hasps put to the windows, and my dyed Manning-silk cut out. " We had a good cheerful meeting on Wednesday, much talk of Winterslow, its woods and its sun-flowers. I did not so much like P at Winterslow as I noAV like him for having been with us at Winterslow. We roasted the last of his ' Beech of oily nut prolific' on Friday at the Captain's. Nurse is now established in Paradise, alias the incurable ward of Westminster Hospital. I have seen her sitting in most superb state, surrounded by her seven incurable companions. They call each other ladies; nurse looks as if she would be considered as the first lady in the ward ; only one seemed at all likely to rival her in dignity. " A man in the India House has resigned, by which Charles will get twenty pounds a year, and White has prevailed on him to write some more lottery puffs ; if that ends in smoke the twenty pounds is a sure card, and has made us very joyful. "I continue very Avell, and return you very sincere thanks for my good health and improved looks, which have almost made Mrs. die with envy. She longs to come to Winterslow as much as the spiteful elder sister did to go to the well for a gift to spit diamonds. " Jane and I have agreed to boil a round of beef for LETTER TO HAZLITT. 135 your supi^ors when j-ou come to town again. She (Jane) broke two of the Hogarth ghasses, while we were away, whereat I made a great noise. Farewclh Love to AVil- liam, and Charles's love and good wishes for the speedy arrival of the 'Life of Holcroft,' and the bearer thereof. "Yours, most afiectionately, M. Lamb. " Tuesday. " Cliarles told Mrs. , Hazlitt Lad found a well in bis garden, •which, water being scarce in your county, would bring him in two hundred a year; and she came in great haste, the next morning, to ask me if it were true. " Your brother and sister are quite well." The country excursions, with which Lamb sometimes occupied his "weeks of vacation, were taken with fear and trembling — often foregone — and finally given up, in con- sequence of the sad effects which the excitement of travel and change produced in his beloved companion. The fol- lowing refers to one of these disasters : — TO MR. HAZLITT. "August 9th, 1810. " Dear H. — Epistemon is not well. Our pleasant ex- cursion has ended sadly for one of us. You will guess I mean my sister. She got home very well (I Avas very ill on the journey), and continued so till Monday night, when her complaint came on, and she is now absent from home. '• I am glad to hear you are all well. I think I shall be mad if I take any more journeys with two experiences against it. I find all well here. Kind remembrances to Sarah — have you just got her letter. "H. Robinson has been to Blenheim, he says you will be ■sorry to hear that we should not have asked for the Titian 136 LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH Gallery there. One of his friends knew of it, and asked to see it. It is never shown but to those who inquire for it. "The pictures are all Titians, Jupiter and Lcdas, Mars and Venuses, &c., all naked pictures, which may be a reason they don't show it to females. But he says they are very fine ; and perhaps it is shown separately to put another fee into the shower's pocket. AVell, I shall never see it. " I have lost all wish for sights. God blesa you. I shall be glad to see you in London. " Yours truly, C. Lamb. " Tliursdcnj." Mr. Wordsworth's Essay on Epitaphs, afterwards ap pended to " The Excursion," produced the following letter : — TO MR. WORDSAVORTH. "Friday, 19tli Get. ISIO. " Dear W. — Mary has been very ill, which you have heard, I suppose, from the Montagues. She is very weak and low spirited now. I was much pleased with your con- tinuation of the Essay on Epitaphs. It is the only sensi- ble thing which has been written on that subject, and it goes to the bottom. In particular I was pleased with your translation of that turgid epitaph into the plain feel- ing under it. It is perfectly a test. But what is the reason we have no good epitaphs after all? "Avery striking instance of your position might be found in the churchyard of Ditton-upon-Thames, if you know such a place. Ditton-upon-Thames has been blessed by the residence of a poet, who, for love or money, I do LETTER TO WORDSWORTH. 137 not well know which, has dignified every grave-stone, for the last few years, with bran-new verses, all different, and all ingenious, Avith the author's name at the bottom of each. Tliis sweet Swan of Thames has artfully diver- s fied Lis 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 impossibility that the same thouiiht should recur. It is long since I s;iw and read these inscriptions, but I remember the impres- sion was of a smug usher at his desk in the intervals of instruction, levelling his pen. Of death, as it consists of dust and worms, and mourners and uncertainty, he had never thought ; but the word ' death' he had often seen separate and conjunct with other words, till he had learned to speak of all its attributes as glibly as Unitarian Belsham will discuss you the attributes of the word ' God' in a pulpit ; and will talk of infinity Avith a tonirue that dangles from a skull that never reached in thought and thorough imagina- tion two inches, or further than from his hand to his mouth, or from the vestry to the sounding-board of the pulpit. " But the epitaphs were trim, and sprag, and patent, and pleased the survivors of Thames Ditton above the old mumpsimusof Afflictions Sore.' .... To do justice though, it must be owned that even the excellent feeling Avhich dic- tated this dirge when new, must have suffered something in passing through so many thousand applications, many of them no doubt quite misplaced, as I have seen in Isling- t )n churchyard (I think) an Epitaph to an infant, who died *■ x^tatis four months,' with this seasonable inscription ap- pended, ' Honor thy father and thy mother ; that thy days may be long in the land,' &c. Sincerely wishing your children long life to honor, &c. I remain, C. Lamb. " 12* CHAPTER Vr. LETTEHS TO WORDSWORTH, ETC., CHIEFLY RESPECTINK WORDSWORTH's POEMS [1S15 to 1S18.] The admirers of "Wordsworth — few, but energetic and hopeful — were delighted, and his opponents excited to the expression of their utmost spleen, bj the appearance, in 1814, of •' The Excursion," (in the quarto form marked by the bitter flippancy of Lord Byron) ; and by the publi- cation, in 1815, of two volumes of Poems, some of which only were new. The following letters are chiefly expressive of Lamb's feelings respecting these remarkable works, and the treatment which his own Review of the latter received from Mr. Gifi"ord, then the Editor of the Quarterly Review, for which it was written. The following letter is in ac- knowledgment of an early copy of " The Excursion." TO MR. WORDSWORTH. "ISH. "Dear Wordsworth. — I cannot tell you how pleased I was at the receipt of the great armful of poetry which you have sent me ; and to get it before the rest of the world too ! I have gone quite through with it, and was thinking to have accomplished that pleasure a second time before I wrote to thank you, but 1\L B. came in the night (while we were out) and made holy theft of it, but we expect restitution in a day or two. It is the noblest conversational poem I ever read — a day in Heaven. The part (or rather main body) which has left the sweetest odour (i;i8) LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH. 139 on my memory (a bad term for the remains of an in.pression so recent) is the Tales of the Church-yard ; — the only girl among seven brethren, born out of due time, and not duly taken away again ; — the deaf man and the blind man ; — the Jacobite and the Hanoverian, whom antipa- thies reconcile the Scarron-entry of the rusticating parson upon his solitude ; — these were all new to me too. My having known the story of Margaret (at the beginning), a very old acquaintance, even as long back as when I saw you first at Stowey, did not make her reappearance less fresh. I don't know what to pick out of this best of books upon the best subjects for partial naming. That gorgeous sunset is famous;* I think it must have been the identical one Ave saw on Salisbury Plain five years ago, that drew P from the card-table, where he had sat from rise of that luminary to its unequalled setting ; but neither ho nor I had gifted eyes to see those symbols of common things glorified, such as the prophets saAV them in that sunset — the wheel, the potter's clay, the Avashpot, the Avine-press, the almond-tree rod, the baskets of figs, the four-fold visaged head, the throne, and Him that sat thereon. f I " One feeling I Avas particularly struck Avith, as Avhat I recognised so very lately at HarroAv Church on entering in it after a hot and secular day's pleasure, the instantaneous coolness and calming, almost transforming properties of a * Tlio pnssnge to wbic-h tlio allusion applies does not picture a sunset, but the cfl'oet of sunliglit on a receding mist among tlie mountains, in Ibe seconj V)o/)k of "The Excursion." -j- " Fix'd resemblances were seen To iuiplements of ordinary use, But vast in size, in substance glorified ; Such as by Hebrew Prophets were beheld In vision — forms inicouth of niighliest powers, For admiration and mysterious awe." 140 LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH. country cliurcli just entered ; a certain fragrance which it has, either from its holiness, or being kept shut all the week, or the air that is let in being pure country, exactly what you have reduced into words — but I am feeling that which I cannot express. The reading your lines about it fixed me for a time, a monument in Harrow Church ; do you know it? with its fine long spire, white as washed marble, to be seen, by vantage of its high site, as far as Salisbury spire itself almost. " I shall select a day or two, very shortly, when I am coolest in brain, to have a steady second reading, which I feel will lead to many more, for it will be a stock book with me while eyes or spectacles shall be lent me. There is a great deal of noble m.atter about mountain scenery, yet not so much as to overpower and discountenance a poor Londoner or south-countryman entirely, though Mary seems to have felt it occasionally a little too powerfully, for it was her rema'rk during reading it, that by your system it was doubtful whether a liver in towns had a soul to be saved. She almost trembled for that invisible part of us in her. " Save for a late excursion to Harrow, and a day or two on the banks of the Thames this summer, rural images were fast fading from my mind, and by the wise provision of the Regent, all that was country-fy'd in the Parks is all but obliterated. The very color of green is vanished ; the whole surface of Hyde Park is dry crumbling sand (Arabia Arenosa), not a vestige or hint of grass ever hav- ing grown there; booths and drinking-places go a-i round it for a mile and half, I am confident — I might say two miles in circuit — the stench of liquors, had tobacco, dirty people and provisions, conquers the air, and we are stifled and suffocated in Hyde Park." Earn!) was delighted with the proposition, made through LETTERS TO WORDSWOETII. 141 Soiithey, that he should review " The Excursion" in the '■'• Quarterly" — though he had never before attempted con- temporaneous criticism, and cherished a dislike to it, Avhich the event did not diminish. The ensuing letter was ad- dressed Avhile meditating on his office, and uneasy least he shouhl lose it for Avant of leisure. TO MR. AVORDSWORTH. "1814. " My dear W. — I have scarce time or quiet to explain my present situation, hoAV unquiet and distracted it is, OAving to the absence of some of my compeers, and to the deficient state of payments at E. I. II., OAving to bad peace speculations in the calico market. (I write this to W. W"., Esq., Collector of Stamp Duties for the conjoint Northern Counties, not to W. W., Poet.) I go back, and have for these many days past, to evening work, generally at the rate of nine hours a day. The nature of my work, too, puzzling and hurrying, has so shaken my spirits that my sleep is nothing but a succession of dreams of business I cannot do, of. assistants that give me no assistance, of terrible responsibilities. I reclaimed your book, which Hazlitt has unciA'illy kept, only tAvo days ago, and have made shift to read it again Avith shattered brain. It does not lose — rather some parts have come out Avitli a promi- nence I did not perceive before — but such Avas my aching liead yesterday (Sunday), that the book Avas like a moun- tain landscape to one that should Avalk on the edge of a precipice ; I perceived beauty dizzily. Noav, Avhat I Avould say is, that I see no prospect of a quiet half-day, or hour even, till this Avcek and the next are past. I tlicii hope to get four Aveeks' absence, and if the7i is time enough to begin, I will most gladly do Avhat is required, 142 LETTERS TO AVORDSAYORTH. tliougli I feel my inability, for my brain is always desul- tory, and snatches off hints from things, but can seldom follow a ' work' methodically. But that shall be no ex- cuse. What I beg you to do, is, to let me tnow from Southey, if that will be time enough for the ' Quarterly,' i. c, suppose it done in three weeks from this date (19th Sept.) : if not, it is my bounden duty to express my re- gret, and decline it. Mary thanks you, and feels highly grateful for your 'Patent of Nobility,' and acknowledges the author of 'The Excursion' as the legitimate Fountain of Honor. We both agree, that to our feeling, Ellen is best as she is. To us there would have been something repugnant in her challenging her Penance as a Dowry; the fact is explicable, but how few are those to whom it would have been rendered explicit. The unlucky reason of the detention of ' The Excursion' was Hazlitt, for whom M. Burney borrowed it, and after reiterated messages, I only got it on Friday. His remarks had some vigor in them;* particularly something about an old ruin being too modern for your Pj'imeval Nature, and about a lichen. I forget the passage, but the whole Avore an air of des- patch. That objection which M. Burney had imbibed from him about Voltaire, I explained to M. B. (or tried} exactly on your principle of its being a characteristic speech. f That it was no settled comparative estimate of * This refers to an article of Ilazlitt on " The Excursion" in the "Exaroi- ner," very fine in passages, but more characteristic of the critic than descrip- tive of the poem. f The passage in which the copy of " Candido," found in the apartaxnt of the Recluse, is described as "the dull production of a scoffer's brain," which had excited Hazlitt to energetic vindication of Voltaire from the charge of dulnCss. "Whether the work written in mockery of human hopes, be dull, I will not venture to determine,- but I do not hesitate at any risk, to avow a conviction that no book in the world is more adapted to make a good maa wretched. LETTERS TO V/ORDSAVORTH. 143 Voltaire witli any of his own tribe of buffoons — no injus- tice, even \^ you spoke it, for I dared say you never could relish ' Candide.' I know I tried to get through it about a twelvemonth since, and could'nt for the dulness. Now I think I have a wider range in buffoonery than you. Too much toleration perhaps. " I finish this after a raw ill-baked dinner fast gobbled up to set me off to ofnce again, after working there till near four. how I wish I were a rich man, even though I were squeezed camel-fashion at getting through that needle's eye that is spoken of in the Writteyi Word. Apropos ; is the Poet of ' The Excursion' a Christian ? or is it the Pedlar and the Priest that are ? " I find I miscalled that celestial splendor of the mist going off, a sunset. That only shows my inaccuracy of head. " Do, pray, indulge me by writing an answer to the point of time mentioned above, or let Soulliey. I am ashamed to go bargaining in this way, but indeed I have no time I can reckon on till the first week in October. God send I may not be disappointed in that ! Coleridge swore in a letter to me he would review ' The Excursion' in the ' Quarterly.' Therefore, though that shall not stop me, yet if I can do anything, when done, I must know of him if he has anything ready, or I shall fill the world with loud exclaims. " I keep writing on, knowing the postage is no more for much writing, else so fagged and dispirited I am with cursed India House work, I scarce know what I do. My left arm reposes on ' The Excursion.' I feel what it would be in quiet. It is now a sealed book.'' The next letter Avas written after the fatal critique v.'as despatched to the Editor, and before its appearance. 14-i LETTERS TO WOPDSWORTH. TO ME. WORDSWORTH. "1814. " Dear W. — Your experience about tailors seems to be in point blank opposition to Burton, as much as the au- thor of ' The Excursion' does, toto ccelo, differ in his notion of a country life, from the picture which W. H. has exhi- bited of the same. But, with a little explanation, you and B. may be reconciled. It is evident that he confined his observations to the genuine native London Tailor. What freaks tailor-nature may take in the country is not for him to give account of. And certainly some of the freaks recorded do give an idea of the persons in question being beside themselves, rather than in harmony with the common, moderate, self-enjoyment of the rest of mankind. A flying-tailor, I venture to say, is no more in rcrum natiira than a flying-horse or a Gryphon. Ilis wheeling his airy flight from the precipice you mention, had a parallel in the melancholy Jew who toppled from the monu- ment. Were his limbs ever found ? Then, the man ^vho cures diseases by words, is evidently an inspired tailor. Burton never aflSnned that the art of sewing disqualified the practiser of it from being a fit organ for superna- tural revelation. He never enters into such subjects. 'Tis the common, uninspired tailor which he speaks of. Acrain, the person who makes his smiles to be heard, is evidently a man under possession ; a demoniac tailor. A greater hell than his own must have a hand in this. I am not certain that the cause -which you advocate has much reason for triumph. You seem to me to substitute light-headed- ness for ligh-heartedness by a trick, or not to know the difterence. I confess a grinning tailor would shock me. Enough of tailors ! " The ' 'scapes' of the Great God Pan, who apDeared LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH. 145 among your mountains some dozen years since, and his narrow chance of being submerged by the swains, afforded me much pleasure. I can conceive the water-nymphs pull- ing for him. He would have been another Hylas — W. Hylas. In a mad letter which Capel Lofft wrote to M. M.* Phillips (now Sir Richard) I remember his noticing a metaphysical article of Pan, signed H., and adding, ' I take your correspondent to be the same with Hylas.' Hylas had put forth a pastoral just before. How near the unfounded conjecture of the certainly inspired Lofft (unfounded as we thought it) was to being realised ! I can conceive him being ' good to all that wander in that perilous flood.' One J. Scottf (I know no more) is editor of ' The Champion.' Where is Coleridge ? " That Review you speak of, I am only sorry it did not appear last month. The circumstances of haste and pe- culiar bad spirits under which it was written, would have excused its slightness and inadequacy, the full load of which I shall suffer from its lying by so long, as it will seem to have done, from its postponement. I write with great difficulty, and can scarce command my own resolu- tion to sit at writing an hour together. I am a poor crea- ture, but I am leaving off gin. I hope you will see good- will in the thing. I had a difficulty to perform not to make it all panegyric ; I have attempted to personate a mere stranger to you ; perhaps with too much strangeness. But you must bear that in mind when you read it, and not think that I am, in mind, distant from you or your poem, but that both are close to me, among the nearest of per- * Monthly Magnzinc. t Afterwards the distinguished and unfortunate editor of the London Mag- azine. 13 146 LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH. sons and things. I do but act the stranger in the RevieTV. Then I was puzzled about extracts, and determined upon not giving one that had been in the ' Examiner ;' for ex- tracts repeated give an idea that there is a meagre al- lowance of good things. By this way, I deprived myself of ' Sir Alfred Irthing,' and the reflections that conclude his story, which are the flower of the poem. Hazlitt had given the reflections before me. Then it is the first re- view I ever did, and I did not know how long I might make it. But it must speak for itself, if Gifford and his crew do not put words in its mouth, which I expect. Fare- well. Love to all. Mary keeps very bad. " C. Lamb." The apprehension expressed at the close of the last let- ter was dismally verified. The following contains Lamb's first burst of an indignation which lasted amidst all his gentleness and tolerance unquenched through life : — TO MR. WORDSWORTH. "1S14. " Dear Wordsworth. — I told you my Review was a very imperfect one. But what you will see in the ' Quarterly' is a spurious one, which Mr. Baviad Giff'ord has palmed upon it for mine. I never felt more vexed in my life than when I read it. I cannot give you an idea of what he has done to it, out of spite at me, because he once suff'ercd me to be called a lunatic in his Review.* The laiujuage he has altered throughout. Whatever inadequateness it had to its subject, it was, in point of composition, the prettiest * In iillnding to Liimb's note on tbo great scene of "The Broken Heart," •whore Calantha dances on, after hearing at every pause of some terrible calamity, a writer in tho " Quarterly" had affected to excuse the writer as a " maniac ;" a suggestion which circumstances rendered most cruel. LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH. 147 piece of pvose I ever writ ; and so my sister (to Avhom alone I read the MS.) said. That charm, if it had any, is all gone : more than a third of the substance is cut away, and that not all from one place, but passim, so as to make ut- ter nonsense. Every warm expression is changed for a nasty cold one. " I have not the cursed alteration by me ; I shall never look at it again ; but for a specimen, I remember I had said the poet of ' The Excursion' ' walks through common forests as through some Dodona or enchanted wood, and every casual bird that flits upon the boughs, like that mi- raculous one in Tasso, but in language more piercing than any articulate sounds, reveals to him far higher love-lays.' It is now (besides half-a-dozen alterations in the same half- dozen lines) ' but in language more intelligent reveals to him ;' — that is one I remember. " But that would have been little, putting his shoemaker phraseology (for he was a shoemaker) instead of mine, which has been tinctured with better authors than his ignorance can comprehend ; — for I reckon myself a dab at prose ; — -verse I leave to my betters : God help them, if they are to be so reviewed by friend and foe as you have been this quarter ! I have read ' It won't do.' * But worse than altering words ; he has kept a few members only of the part I had done best, which was to explain all I could of your 'Scheme of Harmonies,' as I had ventured to call it, between the external universe and what within us answers to it. To do this I had accumulated a good many short passages, rising in length to the end, weaving in the extracts as if they came in as a part of the text nat- * Though the article on "The Excursion," in the "Edinburgh Review," commenced " This will never do!" it contained ample illustrations of thii author's genius, and helped the world to disprove its oracular beginning. 148 LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH. urall}?-, not obtruding tliem as specimens. Of this part a little is left, but so as, without conjuration, no man could tell what I was driving at. A proof of it you may see (though not judge of the whole of the injustice) by these words. I had spoken something about ' natural method- ism ;' and after follows, 'and therefore the tale of Marga- ret should have been postponed' (I foi'get my words, or his words) ; now the reasons for postponing it are as de- ducible from Avhat goes before, as they are from the 104tn Psalm. The passage whence I deduced it, has vanished, but clapping a colon before a therefore is always reason enough for Mr. Baviad Gilford to allow to a reviewer that is not himself. I assure you my complaints are founded. I know how sore a word altered makes one ; but, indeed, of this review the whole complexion is gone. I regret only that I did not keep a copy. I am sure you would have been pleased Avith it, because I have been feeding my fancy for some months with the notion of pleasing you. Its imper- fection or inadequateness in size and method I knew ; but for the writing-part of it I was fally satisfied ; I hoped it would make more than atonement. Ten or twelve dis- tinct passages come to my mind, which are gone, and what is left is, of course, the worse for their having been there ; the eyes are pulled out, and the bleeding sockets are left. " I read it at Arch's shop with my face burning with vexation secretly, with just such a feeling as if it had been a review written against myself, making false quotations from me. But I am ashamed to say so much about a short piece. How are you served ! and the labors of years turned into contempt by scoundrels ! " But I could not but protest against your taking that clung as mine. Every pretty expression (I knriAv there Avere LETTER TO MISS IIUTCHINSOX. 14'"' many) ; every warm expression (there was nothing else) 13 vulgarised and frozen. But if they catch me in their camps again, let them spitclicock me ! They had a right to do it, as no name appears to it, and jMr. Shoemaker Gif- ford, I suppose, never waived a right he had since ho com- menced author. Heaven confound him and all caitiffs ! "C. L." The following letter to Mrs. Wordsworth's sister, who resided with the poet at Rydal, relates to matters of yet nearer interest. TO MISS HUTCHINSON. "Thursday, 19th Oct., 1815. "Dear Miss II. — I am forced to be the replier to your letter, for Mary has been ill, and gone from home these five weeks yesterday. She has left me very lonely, and very miserable. I stroll about, but there is no rest but at one's own fireside, and there is no rest for me there now. I look forward to the worse half being past, and keep up as well as I can. She has begun to show some favorable symptoms. The return of her disorder has been fright- fully soon this time, with scarce a six months' interval. I am almost afraid my worry of spirits about the E. I. House was partly the cause of her illness, but one always imputes it to the cause next at hand ; more probably it comes from some cause we have no control over or conjecture of. It cuts sad great slices out of the time, the little time, wo shall have to live together. I don't know but the recur- rence of these illnesses might help me to sustain her death better than if we had had no partial separations. But I won't talk of death. I will imagine us immortal, or forget that we are otherwise. By God's blessing, in a few weeks 13* 150 LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH. we may be making our meal together, or sitting in tnt front row of the Pit at Drury Lane, or taking our evening walk past the theatres, to look at the outside of them, at least, if not to be tempted in. Then we forget we are as- sailable ; we are strong for the time as rocks ; — ' the wind is tempered to the shorn Lambs.' Poor C. Lloyd, and poor Priscilla ! I feel I hardly feel enough for him ; my own calamities press about me, and involve me in a thick integument not to be reached at by other folks' misfor- tunes. But I feel all I can — all the kindness I can, to- wards you all— God bless you ! I hear nothing from Cole- rido-e. Yours truly, C. Lamb." The following three letters best speak for themselves : — TO MR. WORDSWORTH. " The conclusion of this epistle getting gloomy, I h^ve chosen this part to desire our kindest loves to Mrs. Words- worth and to Dorothea. Will none of you ever be in Lon- don again ? "ISlo. " Dear Wordsworth. — You have made me very proud with your successive book presents. I have been carefully throuo-h the two volumes, to see that nothing was omitted Avhich used to be there. I think I miss nothing but a character in antithetic manner, which I do not know why you left out — the moral to the boys building the giant, the omission whereof leaves it, in my mind, less complete, — and one admirable line gone (or something come instead of it), ' the stone-chat, and the glancing sand-piper,' which was a line quite alive. I demand these at your hand. I am glad that you have not sacrificed a verse to those sconn- LETTERS TO AVORDSWORTII. 151 drels. I would not have had you offer up tlie ])Oorest rag that lingered upon the strlpt shouhiers of little Alice Fell, to have atoned all their malice ; I would not hnve given 'em a red cloak to save their souls. I am afraid lest that sub- stitution of a shell (a flat falsification of the history) for the household implement, as it stood at first, was a kind of tub thrown out to the beast, or rather thrown out for him. The tub was a good honest tub in its place, and no- thing could fairly be said against it. You say you made the alteration for the ' friendly reader,' but the ' malicious' will take it to himself. If you give 'em an inch, &c. The Preface is noble, and such as jou should write. I wish I could set my name to it, Imprimatur, — but you have set it there yourself, and I thank you. I had rather be a y door-keeper in your margin, than have their proudest text swelling with my eulogies. The poems in the volumes, which are new to me, are so much in the old tone, that I hardly received them as novelties. Of those, of Avhich I had no previous knowledge, the ' Four Yew Trees,'* and the mysterious company which you have assembled there, most struck me — ' Death the Skeleton and Time the Shadow.' It is a sight not for every ^^outhful poet to dream of; it is one of the last results he must have gone thinking on for years for. ' Laodamia' is a very original poem ; I mean original with reference to your own manner. Y'ou have nothing like it. I should luive seen it in a strange place, and greatly admired it, but not suspected its derivation. "Let me in this place, for I have writ you several letters naming it, mention that my brother, who is a picture col * The poem on the four great yew trees of BorrowJale, wbicli the poet hiis, by the most potent magic of the imagination, converted into a temple for the ghastly forms of Death and Time " to moot at noon-tide," — a passage sur^lj not surpassed in any English poetry written since the days of Milton T^9 * ^^ LETTERS TO "WORDSWORTH. lector, has picked up an undoubtable picture of Milton. He gave a few shillings for it, and could get no history with it, but that some old lady had had it for a great manv years. Its age is ascertainable from the state of the can- vas, and you need only see it to be sure that it is the original of the heads in the Tonson editions, with which we are all so well familiar. Since I saw you I have had a treat in the reading Avay, Avhich comes not every day,* the Latin Poems of V. Bourne, Avhich were quite new to me. What a heart that man had, all laid out upon town scenes, a proper counterpoise to so7ne peoples rural ex- travaganzas. Why I mention him is, that your ' Power of Music' reminded me of his poem of ' The Ballad-singer in the Seven Dials.' Do you remember his epigram on the old woman who taught Newton the ABC, which, after all, he says, he hesitates not to call NcAvton's ' Prin- cipia !' I w\as lately fatiguing myself with going through a volume of fine words by Lord Thurlow ; excellent words ; and if the heart could live by w^ords alone, it could desire no better regales ; but what an aching vacuum of matter ! I don't stick at the madness of it, for that is only a con- sequence of shutting his eyes and thinking he is in the age of the old Elizabeth poets. From thence I turned to Bourne. What a sweet, unpretending, pretty-mannered, matter-ful creature sucking from every flower, making a flower of everything, his diction all Latin, and his thoughts all English. Bless him ! Latin wasn't good enough for him. Why wasn't ho content witli the langunge which Gay and Prior wrote in ? " I am almost sorry that you printed extracts from * Tht) following little p.Tssago about Vincent Bourne has been previously printed. tETTERS TO AVORDS.WORTH. 153 those first poems,* or that you did not print them at length. They do not read to me as they do aUogether. Besides, they have diminished the value of the original (which I possess) as a curiosity. I have hitherto kept them distinct in my mind as referring to a particular period of your life. All the rest of your poems are so much of a piece, they might have been written in the same "week ; these decidedly speak of an earlier period. They tell more of what you had been reading. We were glad to see the poems 'by a female friend. 'f The one on the wind is masterly, but not new to us. Being only three, perhaps you might have clapt a D. at the corner, and let it have past as a printer's mark to the uninitiated, as a de- lightful hint to the better instructed. As it is, expect a formal criticism on the poems of your female friend, and she must expect it. I should have written before, but I am cruelly engaged, and like to be. On Friday I was at office from ten in the morning (two hours dinner except) to eleven at night ; last night till nine. My business and office-business in general have increased so ; I don't mean I am there every night, but I must expect a great deal of it. I never leave till four, and do not keep a holiday now once in ten times, where I used to keep all red-letter days, and some five days besides, which I used to dub Nature's holidays. I have had my day. I had formerly little to do. So of the little that is left of life, I may reckon tw^o-thirds as dead, for time that a man may call his own is his life ; and hard work and thinking about it taint even the leisure hours — stain Sunday with work-day * The "Evening Walk," and "Descriptive Sketches among the Alps"— Wordsworth's earliest poems— now happily restored in their sr.tirety to theif proper places in the poet's collected works. f By Miss Dorothea Wordsworth. 15'1 LETTERS TO WOTIDSWOKTH. contemplations. This is SuncLiy : and the head-ache I have is pnrt hite hours at work the two preceding nights, and part later hours over a consoling pipe afterwards. But I find stupid acquiescence coming over me. I bend to the yoke, and it is almost with me and my household as with the man and his consort, ' To them each evening bad its glittering star, And every Sabbath-day its golden sun,' to such straits am I driven for the life of life. Time ! that from that superfluity of holiday-leisure my youth wasted, ' Age might but take some hours youth wanted not.' N.B. — I have left off spirituous liquors for four or more months, with a moral certainty of its lasting.* Farewell, dear Wordsworth ! " happy Paris, seat of idleness and pleasure ! from some returned English I hear, that not such a thing as a counting-house is to be seen in her streets, scarce a desk. Earthquakes swallow up this mercantile city and its 'gripple merchants,' as Drayton hath it — 'born to be the curse of this brave isle !' I invoke this, not on account of any parsimonious habits the mercantile interest may have, but, to confess truth, because I am not fit for an ofiice. "Farewell, in haste, from a head that is too ill to methodise, a stomach to digest, and all out of tune. Bet- ter harmonies await you ! C. Lamb." TO MR. WORDSWORTH. " Excuse this maddish letter ; I am too tired to write in forma. * Alas ! for moral certainty in this moral but mortal wor/d ! Lamb's reso- lution to leave off spirituous liquors was a brave one ; but he strengthened and rewarded it by such copious libations of porter, that his sister, for whose sake maicly h"? attempted the sacrifice, entreated him to "live like himself," anil in a few weeka after this assurance he obeyed her. LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH. 155 "1815. " Dear Wordsworth. — The more I read of your two last volumes, the more I feel it necessary to make my acknow- ledgments for them in more than one short letter. The ' Night Piece, to which you refer me, I meant fully to have noticed ; but, the fact is, I come so fluttering and languid from business, tired with thoughts of it, frightened with fears of it, that when I get a few minutes to sit down to scribble (an action of the hand now seldom natural to me — I mean voluntary pen-work) I lose all presential memory of what I had intended to say, and say what I can, talk about Vincent Bourne, or any casual image, instead of that Avhich I had meditated, (by the way, I must look out V. B. for you). So I had meant to have mentioned 'Yarrow Visited,' with that stanza, ' But thou, that didst appear so fair ;'* than which I think no lovelier stanza can be found in the wide world of poetry; yet the poem, on the whole, seems condemned to leave behind it a melancholy of imperfect satisfaction, as if you had wronged the feeling with which, in what preceded it, you had re- solved never to visit it, and as if the Muse had determined, in the most delicate manner, to make you, and scarce make you, feel it. Else, it is far superior to the other, which has but one exquisite verse in it, the last but one, or the two last — this has all fine, except, perhaps, that that of 'studious ease and generous cares,' has a little tinge of the lci7i;n« banter appears. 23G LETTER TO MR. AND MRS. MOXOX. " I am calm, sober, happy. Turn over for tlie reason i got home from Dover Street, by Evans, half as sober as a judge. I am turning over a new leaf, as I hope you will now." The turn of the leaf presented the following from Miss Lamb : — " My dear Emma and Edv/ard Moxon. — Accept my sincere congratulations, and imagine more good wishes than my weak nerves will let me put into good set words. The dreary blank of unanswered questions which I ven- tured to ask in vain, was cleared up on the wedding-day by Mrs. W.* taking a glass of wine, and with a total change of countenance, begging leave to drink Mr. and Mrs. Moxon's health. It restored me from that moment, as if by an electrical stroke, to the entire possession of my senses. I never felt so calm and quiet after a similar illness as I do now. I feel as if all tears were wiped from my eyes, and all care from my heart. " Mary Lamb." At the foot of this letter is the following by Charles : — " Wednesday. " Dears again. — Your letter interrupted a seventh game at picquet which we were having, after walking to Vv^t: tght's and purchasing shoes. We pass our time in cardo, walks, and reading. We attack Tasso soon. C. L. " Xcvcr was such a calm, or such a recovery. 'Tis her own words, undictatcd." • The wif'o of the landlord of the house at EJiuonton. LETTER TO CART. 237 Lamb's latter days were brightened by the frequent — latterly periodical — hospitality of the admirable translator of Dante, at the British Museum. The following was ad- dressed to this new friend lately acquired, but who became an old friend at once, while Mr. and Mrs. Moxon were on their wedding tour : — TO REV. 11. F. CART. "Sept. 9th, 1833. " Dear Sir. — Your packet I have only just received, owing, I suppose, to the absence of Moxon, who is flaunt- ing it about a la Parisienne, with his new bride, our Emma, much to his satisfaction, and not a little to our dulness. We shall be quite well by the time you return from Worcestershire, and most, most (observe the repe- tition) glad to see you here, or anywhere. "I will take my time Avith Darley's act. I wish poets would write a little plainer ; he begins some of his words with a letter which is unknown to the English tj^pography. " Yours, most truly, C. Lamb. " p.g, — Pray let me know when you return. We are at Mr. Walden's, Church-street, Edmonton ; no longer at Enfield. You will be amused to hear that my sister and I have, with the aid of Emma, scrambled through the ' Inferno,' by the blessed furtherance of your polar-star translation. I think we scarce left anything unmadeout. But our partner has left us, and we have not yet resumed. Mary's chief pride in it was that she should some day brag of it to you. Your 'Dante' and Sandys' ' Ovid' are the only helpmates of translations. Neither of you shirk a word. " Fairfax's ' Tasso' is no translation at all. It's better 23b LETTER TO MOXON. in some places, but it merely observes the number of stanzas ; as for images, similes, &c., be finds 'em himself, and never ' troubles Peter for the matter.' " In haste, dear Gary, yours ever, " C. Lamb. "Has M. sent you 'Elia,' second volume ? if not he shall." Miss Lamb did not escape all the cares of housekeep- ing by the new arrangement : the following little note shows the grotesque uses to which Lamb turned the smal- ler household anxieties : — TO MR. MOXON. "1833. " I>ear M. — Mary and I are very poorly. We have had a sick child, who, sleeping or not sleeping, next me, with a pasteboard partition between, killed my sleep. The little bastard is gone. My bedfellows are cough and cramp ; we sleep three in a bed. Domestic arrangements (baker, butcher, and all) devolve on Mary. Don't come yet to this house of pest and age ! We propose, when you and E. agree on the time, to come up and meet you at the B 's, say a week hence, but do you make the appointment. " Mind, our spirits are good, and we are happy in your happinesses. C. L. " Our old and ever loves to dear Emma." The following is Lamb's reply to a welcome communi- cation of Sonnets, addressed by the bridegroom to the LETTERS TO MOXON. 239 fair object of Lamb's regard — beautiful in themselves — • and endeared to Lamb by honored memories and generous liopes : — TO MR. MOXON. "Nov. 29th, 1833. " Mary is of opinion with me, that two of these Sonnets are of a higher grade than any poetry you have done yet. The one to Emma is so pretty ! I have only allowed my- self to transpose a word in the third line. Sacred shall it be from any intermeddling of mine. But we jointly beg that you will make four lines in the room of the four last. Read ' Darby and Joan,' in Mrs. Moxon's first album. There you'll see hoAV beautiful in age the looking back to youthful years in an old couple is. But it is a violence to the feelings to anticipate that time in youth. I hope you and Emma will have many a quarrel and many a make-up (and she is beautiful in reconciliation !) before the dark days shall come, in which ye shall say 'there is small comfort in them.' You have begun a sort of charac- ter of Emma in them, very sweetly ; carry it on, if. you can, through the last lines. " I love the sonnet to my heart, and you sliall finish it, and I'll be hanged if I furnish a line towards it. So much for tliat. The next best is to the Ocean. ' Yc giilliints winds, if e'er your lusty cheeks Blew longing loVer to his mistress' sido, 0, puffj'our loudest, spread the canvas wide,' is spirited. The last line I altered, and have re-altered it as it stood. It is closer. These two are your best. But take a good deal of time in finishing the first. How proud should Emma be of her poets ! 240 LETTERS TO MOXON. " Perhaps ' Ocean' (thougli I like it) is too much of the open vowels, which Pope objects to. ' Great Ocean !' is obvious. To save sad thoughts I think is better (though not good) than for the mind to save herself. But 'tis a noble Sonnet. ' St. Cloud' I have no fault to find with. "If I return the Sonnets, think it no disrespect, for I look for a printed copy. You have done better than ever. And now for a reason I did not notice 'em earlier. On Wednesday they came, and on Wednesday I was a gad- ding. Mary gave me a holiday, and I set off to Snow Hill. From Snow Hill I deliberately was marching down, with noble Holborn before me, framing in mental cogi- tation a map of the dear London in prospect, thinking to traverse Wardour-street, &c., when, diabolically, I wad interrupted by Heigh-ho ! Little Barrow ! — Emma knows him — and prevailed on to spend the day at his sister's, where was an album, and (0, march of intel- lect !) plenty of literary conversation, and more acquain- tance with the state of modern poetry than I could keep up with. I was positively distanced. Knowles' play, which, epilogued by me, lay on the Piano, alone made me hold up my head. When I came home, I read your let- ter, and glimpsed at your beautiful sonnet, ' Fair art thou as the morning, my young bride/ .•\nd dwelt upon it in a confused brain, but determined not to open them all next day, being in a state not to be told of at Chatteris. Tell it not in Gath, Emma, lest the daughters triumph ! I am at the end of my tether. I wish you could come on Tuesday with your fair bride. LETTER TO ROGERS. 241 Whv can't you ! Do. We are thankful to your sister For being of the party. ComOj. and bring a sonnet on Mary's birthday. Love to the whole Moxonry, and tell E. I every day love her more and miss her less. Tell her so, from her loving uncle, as she has let me call myself. I bought a fine embossed card yesterday, and ^yrotc for the pawnbrokeress's album. She is a Miss Brown, enga- ged to a Mr. White. One of the lines was (I forgot the rest — but she had them at twenty-four hours' notice ; she is going out to India with her husband) : — ' Ma}' your fame, And fortune, Fniiices, Whiten with j-our name !' Not bad as a pun. I ^vill expect you before two on Tues- day. I am Avell and happy, tell E." The following is Lamb's letter of acknowledgment to the author of the "Pleasures of Memory," for an early copy of his "Illustrated Poems," of a share in the publication of which, Mr. Moxon Avas "justly vain." The artistical allusions are to Stothard ; the allusions to the poet's own kindnesses need no explanation to those who have been enabled by circumstances, which now and then transpire, to guess at the generous course of his life. "^ TO MR. ROGERS. 'Dec. 1S33. " My dear Sir. — Your book, by the unremitting punc- tuality of your publisher, has reached me thus early. I have not opened it, nor Avill till to-morrow, Avhen I promise myself a thorough reading of it. The ' Pleasures of Memory' was the first school-present I made to Mrs. 21 242 LETTER TO ROGERS. Moxon ; it has those nice woodcuts, and I believe she keeps it still. Believe me, that all the kindness you have shown to the husband of that excellent person seems done unto myself. I have tried my hand at a sonnet in the ' Times.' But the turn I gave it, though I hoped it would not displease you, I thought might not be equally agree- able to your artist. I met that dear old man at poor Henry's with you, and again at Gary's, and it was sub- lime to see him sit, deaf, and enjoy all that was going on in mirth with the company. He reposed upon the many graceful, many fantastic images he had created ; with them he dined, and took wine. I have ventured at an antagonist copy of verses, in the 'Athenaeum,' to him, in which he is everything, and you as nothing. He is no lawyer who cannot take two sides. But I am jealous of the combination of the sister arts. Let them sparkle apart. What injury (short of the theatres) did not Boydell's Shaks- peare Gallery do me with Shakspeare ? to have Opie's Shaks- peare, Northcote's Shakspeare, light-headed Fuseli's Shaks- peare, heavy-headed Bomney's Shakspeare, wooden-headed West's Shakspeare (though he did the best in Lear), deaf- headed Beynold's Shakspeare, instead of my, and every- body's Shakspeare ; to be tied down to an authentic face of Juliet ! to have Imogen's portrait ! to confine the illimi- table ! I like you and Stothard (you best), but ' out upon this half-faced fellowship !' Sir, when I have read the book, I may trouble you, through Moxon, with some faint criticisms. It is not the flatteringest compliment in a let- ter to an author to say, you have not read his book yet. But the devil of a reader he must be, who prances through it in five minutes ; and no longer have I received the par- cel. It was a little tantalising to me to receive a letter from Landor, Gehir Landor, from Florence, to say he was LETTER TO MISS FRYER. 243 just sitting down to read my 'Elia,' just received; but the letter was to go out before the reading. There are calamities in authorship which only authors know. I am going to call on Moxon on Monday, if the throng of car- •iages in Dover-street, on the morn of publication, do not barricade me out. " With manj^ thanks, and most respectful remembrancea to your sister, Yours, C. Lamb. " Have you seen Coleridge's happy exemplification in English of the Ovidian Elegiac metre ? In the Hexameter rises the fountain's silvery current, In the Pentameter aye falling in melody down. " My sister is papering up the book — careful soul !" Lamb and his sister were now, for the last year of their united lives, alwa^-s together. What his feelings were in this companionship, when his beloved associate was de- prived of reason, will be seen in the following most affect- ing letter, to an old schoolfellow and very dear friend of Mrs. Moxon 's — since dead — Avho took an earnest interest in their welfare. TO MISS FRYER. "Feb. 14,1834. " Dear ^Miss Fryer. — Your letter found me just returned from keeping my birthday (pretty innocent !) at Dover- street. I see them pretty often. I have since had letters of business to write, or should have replied earlier. In one word, be less uneasy about me ! I bear my privations very well ; I am not in the depths of desolation, as here- tofore. Y^our admonitions are not lost upon me. Y'our 244 LETTER TO MISS FRYER. kindness has sunk into mj heart. Have faith in me ! It is no ncAY thing for me to be left to my sister. When she is not violent, her rambling chat is better to me than the sense and sanity of this world. Her heart is obscured, not buried ; it breaks out occasionally ; and one can dis- cern a strong mind struggling with the billows that have gone over it. I could be nowhere happier than under the same roof with her. Her memory is unnaturally strong ; and from ages past, if we may so call the earliest records of our poor life, she fetches thousands of names and things that never would have dawned upon me again, and thou- sands from the ten years she lived before me. What took place from earliest girlhood to her coming of age prin- cipally, lives again (every important thing, and every trifle) in her brain, with the vividness of real presence. For twelve hours incessantly she will pour out without intermission, all her past life, forgetting nothing, pouring out name after name to the Waldens, as a dream ; sense and nonsense ; truths and errors huddled together ; a medley between inspiration and possession. "What things we are ! I know you will bear with me, talking of these things. It seems to ease me, for I have nobody to tell these things to now. Emma, I see, has got a harp ! and is learning to play. She has framed her three Walto>n pictures, and pretty they look. That is a book you should read ; such sweet religion in it, next to Woolman's ! though the subject be baits, and hooks, and worms, and fishes. She has my copy at present, to do two more from. "Very, very tired! I began this epistle, having been epistolising all the morning, and very kindly would I end it, could I find adequate expressions to your kindness. We did set our minds on seeing you in spring. One of us will indubitably. But I am not skilled in almanac learn- LETTER TO WORDSWORTH. 245 ing, to know "when spring precisely begins and ends. Pardon my blots ; I am glad you like your book. I wish it had been half as worthy of your acceptance as John Woolman. But 'tis a good-natured book." A few days afterwards Lamb's passionate desire to serve a most deserving friend broke out in the following earnest little letter : — TO MR. WORDSWORTn. '• Church-street, Edmonton, "February 22, 1834. " Dear Wordsworth. — I write from a house of mourn- ing. The oldest and best friends I have left are in trouble. A branch of them (and they of the best stock of God's creatures, I believe) is establishing a school at Carlisle ; her name is L M ; her address, 75, Castle-street, Carlisle ; her qualities (and her motives for this exertion) are the most amiable, most upright. For thirty years she has been tried by me, and on her behavior I would stake my soul. 0, if you can recommend her, how would I love you — if I could love you better ! Pray, pray, recommend her.' She is as good a human creature — next to my sister, perhaps, the most exemplary female I ever knew. Moxon tells me yoii would like a letter from me ; you shall have one. This I cannot mingle up with any nonsense which you usually tolerate from C. Lamb. Need he add loves to wife, sister, and all ? Poor jNIary is ill again, after a short lucid interval of four or five months. In short, I may call her half dead to me. IIow good you are to mc. Yours with fervor of friendship, for ever, C. L. " If you want references, the P)ishop of Carlisle may be 21* 24G LETTER TO GARY. one. L 's sister (as frood as she, she cannot be better tliough she tries) educated the daughters of the late Earl of Carnarvon, and he settled a handsome annuity on her for life. In short all the family are a sound rock." A quiet dinner at the British Museum with Mr. Gary once a month, to Avhich Lamb looked forward with almost boyish eagerness, was now almost his only festival. In a little note to his host about this time, he hints at one of his few physical tastes. " We are thinking," he says, "of roast shoulder of mutton with onion sauce, but I scorn to prescribe to the hospitalities of mine host.'' The follow- ing, after these festivities had been interrupted by Mr. Gary's visit to the Continent, is their last memorial : TO MR. GARY. " September 12th, 1834, " By Cot's plessing we will not be absence at the grace." *' Dear C. — We long to see you, and hear account of your peregrinations, of the Tun at Heidelburg, the Clock at Strasburg, the statue at Rotterdam, the dainty Rhenish, and poignant Moselle wines, Westphalian hams, and Bo- targoes of Altona. But perhaps you have seen, not tasted any of these things. " Yours, very glad to chain you back again to your proper centre, books and Bibliothecse, " C. and M. Lamb. "I have only got your note just \\o\f per Tiegligentiam periniqui Moxoni." The following little note has a mournful interest, as Lamb's last scrap of writing. It is dated on the very day LETTER TO MRS. DYER. 247 on Avliicli erysipelas followed the accident, apparently tri- ding, which five days after terminated in his death. It is addressed to the wife of his oldest survivino; friend : TO MRS. DYER. " December 22(1, 1834 " Dear Mrs. Dyer. — I am very uneasy about a Booh which I either have lost or left at your house on Thursday. It was the book I went out to fetch from Miss Buffam's, while the tripe was frying. It is called ' Phillip's Thea- trum Poetarum,' but it is an English book. I think I left it in the parlor. It is Mr. Gary's book, and I would not lose it for the world. Pray, if you find it, book it at the Swan, Snow llill, by an Edmonton stage immediately, di- rected to Mr. Lamb, Church-street, Edmonton, or write to say you cannot find it. I am quite anxious about it. If it is lost, I shall never like tripe again. '- With kindest love to Mr. Dyer and all, ."Yours truly, C. Lamb." CHAPTER THE LAST. Iamb's tvednesday nights compared with the evenings of Holland housb HIS dead companions, DVER, GODWIN, THELWALL, HAZLITT, BARNES, BAY- UON, COLERIDGE, AND OTHERS — LAST GLIMPSES OP CHARLES AND MARY LAMB. " Gone; all are gone, the old familiar faces !" Two circles of rare social enjoyment — differing as widely as possible in all external circumstances — but each supe- rior in its kind to all others, during the same period frankly opened to men of letters — now existing only in the memo- ries of those who are fast departing from us — may, with- out offence, be placed side by side in grateful recollection ; they are the dinners at Holland House and the suppers of "the Lambs'' at the Temple, Great Russell-street and Is- lington. Strange, at first, as this juxta-position may seem, a, little reflection will convince the few survivors who have enjoyed both, that it involves no injustice to either ; while with those who arc too young to have been admitted to these rare fe.stivitics, we may exercise the privilege of age by boastiiig.^hat good' fellowship Avas once enjoyed, and what "good talk" there was once in the world ! But let; us call to mind the aspects of each scene, before we attempt to tell of the conversation, which will be harder to recall and impossible to characterise. And first, let us invite the reader to assist at a dinner at Holland" House in the height of the London and Parliamentary sea^'oii, say a Saturday in June. It is scarcely seven — for the luxitries of the house are enhanced by a punctuality in the main object of the day, which yields to no dihitory guest of whatever pretension — and you are seated in an oblong room, (248) HOLLAND HOUSE. 249 rich 111 ok! gliding, opposite a deep rcccs.«, pierced by large old Avindows, through which the rich branches of trees, bathed in golden light, just admit the Taint outline of the Surrey Hills. Among the guests are some perhaps of the liighest rank, always some of high political importance, about whom the interest of busy life gathers, intermixed with others eminent already in literature or art, or of that dawning promise which the hostess delights to discover and the host to smile on. All are assembled for the pur- pose of enjoyment ; the anxieties of the minister, the fever- ish struggles of the partisan, fhe silent toils of the artist or critic, are finished for the week ; professional and liter- ary jealousies are hushed ; sickness, decrepitude, and death are silently voted shadows ; and the brilliant assemblage is prepared to exercise to the highest degree the extraor- dinary privilege of mortals to live in the knowledge of mor- tality without its consciousness, and to people the present hour with delights, as if a man lived and laughed and en- joyed in this world for ever. Every appliance of pliysical luxury which the most delicate art can supply, attends on each; every faint wish Avhich luxury creates is anticipated; the noblest and most gracious countenance in the world smiles over the happiness it is diffusing, and redoubles it by cordial invitations and encouraging words, which set the humblest stranger guest at perfect ease. As the din- ner merges into the desert, and the sunset casts a richer glow on the branches, still, or lightly waving in the even- ing light, and on the scene within, the harmony of all sen- sations becomes more perfect ; a delighted and delighting chuckle invites attention to some joyous sally of the richest intellectual wit reflected in the faces of all, even to the fa- vorite page in green, who attgnds his mistress with duty like that of the antique world ; the choicest Avines are en- 250 HOLLAND HOUSE. hanccil in their liberal but temperate use by the vista opened in Lord Holland's tales of bacchanalian evenings at Brookes's, with Fox and Sheridan, when potations deeper and move serious rewarded the Statesman's toils and shortened his days ; until at length the serener plea- sure of conversation, of the now carelessly scattered groups, is enjoyed in that old, long, unrivalled library in which Addison mused, and wrote, and drank ; where every living grace attends ; " and more' than echoes talk along the walls." One happy peculiarity of these assemblies was, the number of persons in different stations and of various celebrity, Avho were gratified by seeing, still more in hear- ing and knowing each other ; the statesman was relieved from care by association with the poet of whom he had heard and partially read ; and the poet was elevated by the courtesy which " bared the great heart" which "beats beneath a star ;" and each felt, not rarely, the true dig- nity of the other, modestly expanding under the most ge- nial auspices. Now turn to No. 4, Inner Temple Lane, at ten o'clock, when the sedater part of the company are assembled, and the happier stragglers are dropping in from the play. Let it be any autumn or winter month, when the fire is blazing steadily, and the clean-swept hearth and whist-tablcs speak of the spirit of Mrs. Battle, and serious looks require " the rigor of the gamx?." The furniture is old-fiishioned and worn ; the ceiling low, and not wholly unstained by traces of " the great plant," though now virtuously forborne: but the Ilogarths, in narrow black frames, abounding in infinite thought, humor and pathos, enrich the walls ; and all things wear an air of comfort and hearty Englisli welcome. Lamb himself, yet unrelaxed by the glass, is sitting with a sort of Quaker primness at the whist-table, LAMB'S SUPPERS. 251 the gentleness of his melancholy smile half lost in his in- tentness on the game ; his partner, the author of " Political Justice," (the majestic expression of his large head not disturbed by disproportion of his comparatively diminutive stature,) is regarding his hand with a philosophic but not a careless eye ; Captain Burney, only not venerable because so young in spirit, sits between them ; and H. C. H., who alone now and then breaks the proper silence, to welcome some incoming guest, is his happy partner — true winner in the game of life, whose leisure achieved early, is devoted to his friends ! At another table, just beyond the circle which extends from the fire, sit another four. The broad, burly, jovial bulk of John Lamb, the Ajax Telamon of the slender clerks of the old South Sea House, whom he sometimes introduces to the rooms of his younger brother, surprised to learn from them that he is growing famous, confronts the stately but courteous Alsager ; while P., " his fcAV hairs bristling" at gentle objurgation, Avatches his partner M. B., dealing, with "soul more Avhite"* than the hands of which Lamb once said, " M., if dirt was trumps, what hands you would hold !" In one corner of the room, you may see the pale earnest counte- nance of Charles Lloyd, who is discoursing " of fate, free- will, fore-knowledge absolute," with Leigh Hunt; and, if you choose to listen, you will scarcely know which most to admire — the severe logic of the melancholy reasoner, or its graceful evasion by the tricksome fantasy of the joy- ous poet. Basil Montague, gentle enthusiast in the cause of humanity, which he has lived to sec triumphant, is pour- ing into the outstretched car of George Dyer some talc of * Lamb's Sonnet, dedicatory of his first volume of proso to this cherished friend, thus concludes : — " Free from self-seekinjr, envy, low design, I have not found a whiter eouI than thio^." 252 lamb's suppers. legalized injustice, wliicli the recipient is vainly endeavor- ing to comprehend. Soon the room fills ; in slouches Ilazlitt from the theatre, where his stubborn anger for Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo has been softened bj Miss Stephens's angelic notes, which might " chase anger, and grief, and fear, and sorrow, and pain from mortal or immortal minds;" Kenney, with a tremulous pleasure, announces that there is a crowded house to the ninth re- presentation of his new comedy, of which Lamb lays down his cards to inquire : or Ayrton, mildly radiant, whispers the continual triumph of " Don Giovanni," for which Lamb, incapable of opera, is happy to take his word. Now and then an actor glances on us from " the rich Cathay" of the world behind the scenes, Avitli news of its brighter human-kind, and with looks reflecting the public favor — Listen, grave beneath the weight of the town's re- gards — or Miss Kelly, unexhausted in spirit by alterna- ting the drolleries of high farce with the terrible pathos of melodrama — or Charles Kcmble mirrors the chivalry of thought, and ennobles the party by bending on them looks beaming with the aristocracy of nature. Meanwhile Becky lays the cloth on the side-table, under the direc- tion of the most quiet, sensible, and kind of women — who soon compels the younger and more hungry of the guests to partake largely of the cold roast lamb or boiled beef, the heaps of smoking roasted potatoes, and the vast jug of porter, often replenished from the foaming pots, which the best tap of Fleet-street supplies. Perfect freedom i prevails, save when the hospitable pressure of the mistress excuses excess ; and perhaps, the physical enjoyment of the play-goer, exhausted with pleasure, or of the author jaded with the labor of the brain, is not less than that of the guests at the most charming of aristocratic banquets. LAMB S SUPPERS. 253 As the hot water and its accompaniments appear, and the severities of whist relax, the light of conversation thickens : Ilazlitt, catching the influence of the spirit from which he has lately begun to abstain, utters some fine criticism with struggling emphasis ; Lamb stammers out puns suggestive of wisdom, for happy Barron Field to admire and echa ; the various driblets of talk combine into a stream, while Miss Lamb moves gently about to see that each modest stranger is duly served ; turning, now and then, an anxious loving eye on Charles, Avhich is softened into a half humorous expression of resignation to inevitable fate, as he mixes his second tumbler ! This is on ordinary nights, when the accustomed Wednesday-men assemble ; but there is a difference on great extra nights, gladdened by "the bright visitations" of Wordsworth or Coleridge : — the cor- diality of the welcome is the same, but a sedater wisdom prevails. Happy hours were they for the young disciple of the tTien desperate, now triumphant cause of Words- worth's genius, to be admitted to the presence of the poet who had opened a new world for him in the undiscovered riches of his own nature, and its affinities with the outer universe ; whom he worshipped the more devoutly for the world's scorn ; for whom he felt the future in the instant, and anticipated the "All hail hereafter !" which the great poet has lived to enjoy ! To win him to speak of his own poetry — to hear him recite its noblest passages — and to join in his brave defiance of the fashion of the ao-e — was the solemn pleasure of such a season ; and, of course, superseded all minor disquisitions. So, when Coleridge came, argument, wit, humor, criticism Avere huslied ; the pertest, smartest, and the cleverest felt that all were assembled to listen ; and if a canl-table had bfeu filled, or 22 254 SOCIAL COMPARISON. a dispute begun before he ■\vas excited to continuous speech, his gentle voice, unduhiting in music, soon "Suspended wJu'-st, and took with ravishment The thronging audience." The conversation "which animated each of these memo- rable circles, approximated, in essence, much more nearly than might be surmised from the difference in station of the principal talkers, and the contrast in physical appli- ances; that of the bowered saloon of Holland House hav- ing more of earnestness and depth, and that of the Temple- attic more of airy grace than "would be predicated by a su- perficial observer. The former possessed the peculiar inte- rest of directly bordering on the scene of political conflict, gathering together the most eloquent leaders of the Whig party, whose repose from energetic action spoke of the ■week's conflict, and in Avhom the moment's enjoyment de- rived a peculiar charm from the perilous glories of the struggle "which the morrow was to renew — when power was just within reach, or held with a convulsive grasp — like the eager and solemn pleasure of the soldiers' banquet in the pause of victory. The pervading spirit of Lamb's parties was also that of social progress ; but it was the spirit of the dreamers and thinkers, not of the combatants of the world — men who, it may be, drew their theories from a deeper range of meditation, and embraced the future with more comprehensive hope — but about \vhom the immediate interest of party did not gather; whose victories were nil within ; whose rewards were visions of blessings for their spe- cies in the furthest horizon of benevolent prophecy. If a profoundcr thought was sometimes dragged to liiilit in the dim circle of Lamb's companions than was native to the brighter sphere, it was still a rare felicity to watch theif SOCIAL COMPARISON. 255 the union of elegance with purpose in some leader of party — the delicate, almost fragile grace of illustration in some one, perhaps destined to lead advancing multitudes, or to withstand their rashness ; to observe the growth of strength in the midst of beauty expanding from the sense of the heroic past, as the famed Basil tree of Boccaccio grew from the immolated relic beneath it. If the alter- nations in the former oscillated between wider extremes, touching on the wildest farce and most earnest tragedy of life ; the rich space of brilliant comedy which lived ever between them in the latter, was diversified by serious inte- rests and heroic allusions. Sydney Smith's wit — not so wild, so grotesque, so deep-searching as Lamb's — had even more quickness of intellectual demonstration ; wedded moral and political wisdom to happiest language, with a more rapid perception of secret affinities ; Avas capable of producing epigrammatic splendor reflected more perma- nently in the mind, than the fantastic brilliancy of those rich conceits which Lamb stammered out with his painful smile. Mackintosh might vie with Coleridge in vast and various knoAvledge ; but there the competition between these great talkers ends, and the contrast begins ; the contrast between facility and inspiration ; between the ready access to each ticketed and labelled compartment of history, science, art, criticism, and the genius that fused and renovated all. But then a younger spirit appeared at Lord Holland's table to redress the balance — not so poetical as Coleridge, but more lucid — in whose vast and joyous memory all the mighty past lived and glowed anew; whose declamations presented, not groups tinged •with distant light, like those of Coleridge, but a series of historical figures in relief, exhibited in bright succession, as if by dioramic art there glided before us embossed sur- 256 SOCIAL COJIPARISON. faces of heroic life.* Rogers too was there — connectino the literature of the last age with this, partaking of some of the best characteristics of both — whose first poem sparkled in the closing darkness of the last century " like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear,'' and who was advancing from a youth which had anticipated memory, to an age of kindness and hope ; and jMoore, who paused in the flutter- ing expression of graceful trifles, to whisper some deep- toned thouo'ht of Ireland's wrongs and sorrows. Literature and Art supplied the favorite topics to each of these assemblies — both discussed with earnest admira- tion, but surveyed in different aspects. The conversation at Lord HolUxnd's was wont to mirror the happiest aspects of the livinji: mind : to celebrate the latest discoveries in * I take loiivo to copy the glowing picture of the evenings of Holland House and of its admirable master, drawn bj' this favorite guest himself, from an article which adorned the "Edinburgh Review," just after Lord Holland's death. " The time is coming when, perhaps, a few old men, the last survivors of our generation, will in vain seek, amidst new streets and squares, and railway stations, for the site of that dwelling which was in their youth the favorite resort of wits and beauties — of painters, and poets — of scholars, philosophers, and statesmen. 'I'hey will then remember, with strange tenderness, many ob- jects once fomiliar to them — the avenue and the terrace, the busts and tha paintings ; the carving, the grotesque gilding, and the enigmatical mottoes. With peculiar fondness, they will reeal that venerable chamber, in which all the antique gravity of a college library was so singularly blended with all that female grace and wit could devise to embellish a drawing-room. They will re- collect, not unmoved, those shelves loaded with the varied learning of many Sands and many ages ; those portraits in which were preserved the features of the best and wisest Englishmen of two generations. They will recollect how snany men who have guided the politics of Europe — who have moved great assemblies by reason and eloquence — who have put life into bronze and canvas, or wlio have left to posterity things so written as it shall not willingly let them die — were there mi.\ed with all that was loveliest and gayest in the society of the mast splendid of capitals. They will remember the singular character which 'belonged to that circle, in which every talent and accomplishment, every art and science had its place. They will remember how the last debate tvas discussed in one corner, and the last comedy of Scribe in another; while SOCIAL COMPARISON. 257 science ; to echo the quarterly decisions of imperial criti- cism ; to reflect the modest glow of young reputations ; — • all Avas gay, graceful, decisive, as if the pen of Jeffrey could have spoken ; or, if it reverted to old times, it re- joiced in those classical associations Avhich are always young. At Lamb's, on the other hand, the topics were chiefly sought among the obscure and remote ; the odd, the quaint, the fantastic were drawn out from their duh,ty recesses ; nothino; could be more foreiirn to its embrt-co than the modern circulating library, even when it teemed with the Scotch novels. Whatever the subject was, luw- evcr, in the more aristocratic, or the humbler sphere , it was always discussed by tnose best entitled to talk on it ; no others had a chance of bcins: heard. This rcmarkwble Wilkie gazed with modest admiration on Reynold's Baretti ; while Mackintosh turned over Thomas Aquinas to verify a quotation ; while Talleyrand related his conversations with Barras at the Luxemburg, or his ride with Lannes over the field of Austerlitz. They will remember above all, the grace — and the kindness, far more admirable than grace — with which the princely hospitality of that ancient mansion was dispensed. They will remember the venerable ■md benignant countenance, and the cordial voice of him who bade them wel- !ome. They will remember that temper which years of pain, of sickness, of lameness, of confinement, seemed only to make sweeter and sweeter ; and that frank politeness, which at once relieved all the embarrassment of the youngest and most timid writer or artist, who found himself for the first time among Ambassadors and Earls. They will remember that constant flow of Conversa- tion, so natural, so animated, so various, so rich with observation and anec- dote ; that wit which never gave a wound ; that exquisite mimicry which ennobled, instead of degrading; that goodness of heart which appeared in every look and accent, and gave additional value to every talent ami acquiro- mcnt. They will remember, too, that ho whose name they hold in rcvorenco was not less distinguished by the inflexible uprightness of his political conduct, Ihali by his loving disposition and his winning manners. Tliey will reinem- ber that, in the last lines which ho traced, he expressed his joy that he h.id done nothing unworthy of the friend of Fox and Grey : and they will have reason to feel similar joy, if, in looking back on manj' troubled years, tliey cannot accuse themselves of having done anything unwortliy of men who were distinguished by the friendship of Lord Holland." 22* 258 SOCIAL COMPARISON. freedom from bores was produced in Lamb's circle by tLe authoritative texture of its commanding minds ; in Lord Holland's, by the more direct, and more genial influence of the hostess, "which checked that tenacity of subject and opinion which sometimes broke the charm of Lamb's par- ties by " a duel in the form of a debate." Perhaps beyond any other hostess — certainly far beyond any host, Lady Holland possessed the tact of perceiving, and the power of evoking the various capacities which lurked in every part of the brilliant circles over Avhich she presided, and re- strained each to its appropriate sphere, and portion of the evening. To enkindle the enthusiasm of an artist on the theme over which he had achieved the most facile mastery : to set loose the heart of the rustic poet, and imbue his speech with the freedom of his native hills ; to draw from the adventurous traveller a breathing picture of his most imminent danger ; or to embolden the bashful soldier to disclose his own share in the perils and glories of some fa- mous battle-field ; to encourage the generous praise of friendship when the speaker and the subject reflected in- terest on each other ; or win from an awkward man of sci- ence the secret history of a discovery which had astonished the world ; to conduct these brilliant developments to the height of satisfaction, and then to shift the scene by the magic of a word, were among her nightly successes. And if this extraordinary power over the elements of social en- joyment was sometimes wielded without the entire con- cealment of its despotism ; if a decisive check sometimes rebuked a speaker who might intercept the variegated beauty of Jeffrey's indulgent criticism, or the jest aji- nounced and self-rewarded in Sydney Smith's cordial and triumphant laugh, the authority was too clearly exerted for the evening's prosperity, and too manifestly imptdled SOCIAL COMPARISON. 259 by an urgent consciousness of the value of these gohlcn hours which were fleeting witliin its confines, to sadden the enforced silence with more thaii a momentary regret. If ever her prohibition — clear, abrupt, and decisive — indi- cated more than a preferable regard for livelier discourse, it Avas when a depreciatory tone was adopted towards ge- nius, or goodness, or honest endeavor, or when some friend, personal or intellectual, was mentioned in slighting phrase. Habituated to a generous partisanship, by strong sympa- thy with a great political cause, she carried the fidelity of her devotion to that cause into her social relations, and was ever the truest and the fastest of friends. The ten- dency, often more idle than malicious, to soften down the intellectual claims of the absent, which so insidiously be- sets literary conversation, and teaches a superficial insin- cerity, even to substantial esteem and regard, and which was sometimes insinuated into the conversation of Lamb's friend's, though never into his own, found no favor in her presence; and hence the conversations over which she pre- sided, perhaps beyond all that ever flashed with a kindred splendor, were marked by that integrity of good nature which might admit of their exact repetition to every living individual whose merits wore discussed, without the dan- ger of inflicting pain. Under her auspices, not only all critical, but all personal talk was tinged with kindness ; the strong interest which she took in the happiness of her friends, shed a peculiar sunniness over the aspects of life presented by the common topics of alliances, and marri- ages, and promotions ; and there was not a hopeful engage- ment, or a happy wedding, or a promotion of a friend's son, or a new intellectual triumph of any youth with whose name and history she was familiar, but became an event on which she expected and required congratulation us on a 260 SOCIAL COMPARISOIT. part of her own fortune. Although there was necessarily a preponderance in her society of the sentiment of popu- lar progress, which once was cherished almost exclusively by the party to whom Lord Holland was united by sacred ties, no expression of triumph in success, no virulence ir, sudden disappointment, was evbr permitted to wound the most sensitive ears of her conservative guests. It might be that some placid comparison of recent with former times, spoke a sense of freedom's peaceful victory ; or that, on the giddy edge of some great party struggle, the festivities of the evcnins; mio;ht take a more serious cast, as news arrived from the scene of contest, and the plea- sure might be deepened by the peril ; but the feeling was always restrained by the supremacy given to those perma- nent solaces for the mind, in the beautiful and the great, which no political changes disturb. Although the death of the noble master of the venerated mansion closed its portals for ever on the exquisite enjoyments to which they had been so generously expanded, the art of conversation lived a little longer in the smaller circle which Lady Hol- land still drew almost daily around her ; honoring his mem- ory by following his example, and struggling against the perpetual sense of unutterable bereavement, by rendering to literature that honor and those reliefs, which English aristocracy has too often denied it ; and seeking consola- tion in making others proud and happy. That lingering happiness is extinct now ; Lamb's kindred circle — kindred, though so different — dispersed almost before he il. A ; the "thoughts that wandered thiough eternity," arc no longer expressed in time ; the fancies and conceits, " gay crea- tures of the element" of social delight, " that in the colors of the rainbow lived, and played in the plighted clouds," flicker only in the backward perspective of waning years ; QEORQE DYER. 261 and for the survivors, I may venture to affirm, no such conversation as they have shared in either circle will ever be theirs again in this Avorld ! Before closing these last Memorials of Charles and Mary Lamb, it may be permitted me to glance separately at some of the friends who are grouped around them in mem- ory, and who, like them, live only in recollection, and in the works they have left behind them. George Dyer was one of the first objects of Lamb'g youthful reverence, for he had attained the stately rank of Grecian in the venerable school of Christ's Hospital, when Charles entered it, a little, timid, affectionate child ; but this boyish respect, once amounting to awe, gave place to a familiar habit of loving banter, which, springing from the depth of old regard, approximated to school-boy roguery, and, now and then, though very rarely, gleamed on the consciousness of the ripe scholar. No contrast could be more vivid than that presented by the relations of each to the literature they both loved ; one divining its inmost essences, plucking out the heart of its mysteries, shedding light on its dimmest recesses ; the other devoted, with equal assiduity, to its externals. Books, to Dyer, " were a real Avorld, both pure and good ; among tlicni lie passed, unconscious of time, from youth to extreme age, vegetating on their dates and forms, and " trivial fond records," in the learned air of great librai-ics, or the dusty confusion of his own, with the least j)ossil)ie ap- prehension of any human interest vital in their pages, or of any spiiit (jf wit or fancy glancing across them. J lis life was an Academic pastoral. Methinks I see his gaunt, awkward form, set off by trousers too short, like thosr outgrown by a gawKy lad, ami a rusty coat as much fno 2b2 GEORGE DYER. lai'ge for the wearer, hanging about him like those gar- ments which the aristocratic Milesian peasantry prefer to the most comfortable rustic dress ; his long head silvered over with short yet straggling hair, and his dark grey eyes glistening with faith and wonder, as Lamb satisfies the cu- riosity which has gently disturbed his studies as to the au- thorship of the Waverley Novels, by telling him, in the strictest confidence, that they are the works of Lord Cas- tlereagh, just returned from the Congress of Sovereigns at Vienna ! Olf he runs, with animated stride and shamb- ling enthusiasm, nor stops till he reaches Maida Hill, and breathes his news into the startled ear of Leigh Hunt, who " as a public writer," ought to be possessed of the great fact with which George is laden ! Or shall I endeavor to revive the bewildered look with which, just after he had been announced as one of Lord Stanhope's executors and residuary legatees, he received Lamb's grave inquiry, " Whether it was true, as commonly reported, that he was to be made a Lord ?" " dear no ! Mr. Lamb," respond- ed he with earnest seriousness, but not Avithout a moment's quivering vanity, " I could not think of such a thing ; it is not true I assure you." "I thought not," said Lamb, " and I contradict it wherever I go ; but the government will not ask your consent ; they may raise you to the peerage without your even knowing it." " I hope not, Mr. Lamb ; indeed, indeed, I hope not ; it would not suit me at all," responded Dyer, and went his way, musing on the possi- bility of a strange honor descending on his reluctant brow. Or shall I recall the visible presentment on his bland un- consciousness of evil when his sportive friend taxed it to the utmost, by suddenly asking what he thought of the murderer Williams, who, after destroying two families in Ratcliffe Highway, had broken prison by suicide, and WILLIAM GODWIN. 263 whose body had just before been convoyed, in shocking procession, to its cross-road grave ! The desperate at- tempt to compel the gentle optimist to speak ill of a mor- tal creature produced no happier success than the answer, *' AVhy, I should think, Mr. Lamb, he must have been lather an eccentric character." This simplicity of a na- ture not only unspotted by the world, but almost abstracted from it, will seem the more remarkable, when it is known that it was subjected at the entrance of life, to a hard bat- tle with fortune. Dyer was the son of very poor parents, residing in an eastern suburb of London, Stepney or Bcth- nal-greenward, where he attracted the attention of two el- derly ladies as a serious child "with an extraordinary love for books. They obtained for him a presentation to Christ's Hospital, which he entered at seven years of age ; fought his way through its sturdy ranks to its head ; and, at nineteen, quitted it for Cambridge, with only an exhi- bition and his schi)hvrly accomplishments to help liini. On he went, liowevcr, pkicid, if not rejoicing, through the dif- ficulties of a life ilhistrated only by scholarship ; cncount- crin-T tremendous labors ; unresting yet serene; until at eirfhty-five he breathed out the most blanudess of lives, which began in a struggle to end in a learned drcara ! Mr. GODWIX, who during the h:ii)])iost perioil of Lamb's weekly parties, was a constant assistant at his whist-iahle, rcscmljlcd Dyer in siniplicity of manner and devotion to letters ; but the simplicity was morn supcrlicial, and llio devotion more profound than the kindred qualities in the guileless scholar ; Jind instead of forming the entire being, onlv marked the surface of a nature beneath which extra- ordinary power l.iy hidden. As the absence of wordly wisdom subjcctey action instead of language. Hg 292 THOMAS BARNES. The manners of Mr. Barnes, though extremely cour- teous, were so reserved as to seem cold to strangers ; but they Yi'ere changed, as by magic, by the contemplation of moral or intellectual beauty, awakened in a small circle. I well remember him, late one evening, in the year 1816, when only two or three friends remained with Lamb and his sister, long after " we had heard the chimes at mid- night," holding inveterate but delighted controversy with Lamb, respecting the tragic power of Dante as compared with that of Shakspeare. Dante w^as scarcely known to Lamb, for he was unable to read the original, and Gary's noble translation was not then known to him ; and Barnes aspired to the glory of affording him a glimpse of a kin- dred greatness in the mighty Italian with that which he had conceived incapable of human rivalry. The face of the advocate of Dante, heavy when in repose, grew bright with earnest admiration as he quoted images, sentiments, dialogues, against Lamb, who had taken his own immortal Btand on Lear, and urged the supremacy of the child- changed father against all the possible Ugolinos of the world. Some reference having been made by Lamb to his fights desperately : ho is disarmed and exhausted of all bodilj' strength : he disdains to full, and his strong volition keeps him standing; he fixes that bead, fall of intellectual and heroic power, directly on the enemy : he bears up his chest with an expression which seems swelling with more than human spirit : he holds his uplifted arm in calm but dreadful defiance of his con- queror. But he is but man, and he falls after this sublime effort senseless to the ground. We have felt our eyes gush on reading a passage of exquisite poetry. AVe have been ready to leap at sight of a noble picture, but we never felt stronger emotion, more over-powering sensations, than were kindled by the novel sublimity of this catastrophe. In matters of mere taste, there will bo a difference of opinion; but hero there was no room to doubt, no rea- son could be imprudent enough to hesitate. Every heart beat an echo res- ponsive to this call of elevated nature, and yearned with fondness towards the man who, while he excited admiration for himself, made also his admirers glow with a warmth of conscious superiority, because they were able toappre» elate such an exalted degree of excellence." THOMAS BARNES. 293 own exposition of Lear, which had been recently pub- lished in a magazine, edited by Leigh Hunt, under the «:itle of " The Reflector," touched another and a tenderer string of feeling, turned a little the course of his enthusi- asm the more to inflame it, and brought out a burst of afiectionate admiration for his friend, then scarcely known to the world, which was the more striking for its contrast with his usually sedate demeanour. I think I see him now, leaning forward upon the little table on which the candles were just expiring in their sockets, his fists clenched, his eyes flashing, and his face bathed in perspir- ation, exclaiming to Lamb, " And do I not know, my boy, that you have written about Shakspeare, and Shakspeare'a own Lear, finer than any one ever did in the world, and won't I let the world know it ?" lie Avas right; there is no criticism in the world more worthy of the genius it es- timates than that little passage referred to on Lear ; few felt it then like Barnes ; thousands have read it since, here, and tens of thousands in America ; and have felt as he did, and will answer for the truth of that cxrked hour. Mr. Barnes combined singular acuteness of unaerstand- ing with remarkable simplicity of character. If he was skilful in finding out those who duped others, he made some amends to the world of sharpers by being abund- antly duped himself. He might caution the public to be on their guard against impostors of every kind, but hli heart was open to every species of delusion which came in the shape of misery. Poles — real and theatrical — refu- gees, pretenders of all kinds, found tlicir way to the " Times' " inner oflice, and thougli the inexorable editor excluded their lucubrations from the precious space of its columns, he rarely omitted to make them amends by large contributions from his purse. The intimate acquaintance 26* 294 BENJAMIN ROBERT HAYDON. with all the varieties of life forced on him by his position in the midst of a moving epitome of the world, which vividly reflected them all, failed to teach him distrust or discretion. He was a child in the centre of the iiir^st feverish agitations ; a dupe in the midst of the quickest apprehensions ; and while, with unbending pride, he re- pelled the slightest interference with his high functions from the greatest quarters, he was open to every tale from the lowest which could win from him personal aid. Rarely as he Avas seen in his later years in Lamb's circle, he is indestructibly associated with it in the recollection of the few survivors of its elder days ; and they will lament with me that the influences for good which he shed largely on all the departments of busy life, should have necessarily left behind them such slender memorials of one of the kindest, the wisest, and the best of men who have ever enjoyed signal opportunities of moulding public opinion, and who have turned them to the noblest and the purest uses. Among Lamb's early acquaintances and constant ad- mirers was an artist, whose chequered career and melan- choly death gave an interest to the recollections with which he is linked, independent of that which belongs to nis pictures — Benjamin Robert Haydon. The ruling misfortune of his life was somewhat akin to that dispro- portion in Hazlitt's mind to which I have adverted, but productive in his case of more disastrous results — the pos- session of two difi'erent faculties not harmonised into one, and struggling for mastery — in that disarrangement of the faculties in which the unproductive talent becomes not a mere negative, but neutralises the other, and even turns its good into evil. Haydon, the son of a respectable tradesman at Plymouth, was endowed with two capacities, BENJAMIN ROBERT HATDON. 295 either of which exclusively cultivated with the energy of his disposition, might have led to fortune — the genius of a painter, and the passionate logic of a controversialist ; talents scarcely capable of being blended in harmonious action except under the auspices of prosperity, such as should satisfy the artist by fame, and appease the literary combatant by triumph. The combination of a turbulent vivacity of mind, with a fine aptitude for the most serene of arts, was rendered more infelicitous by the circumstances of the young painter's early career. lie was destined painfully to work his way at once through the lower elements of his art and the difficulties of adverse fortune; and though by indomitable courage and unwearied industry he became master of anatomic science, of colouring, and of perspective, and achieved a position in which his efforts might be fairly presented to the notice of the world, his impetuous tem- perament was yet further ruffled by the arduous and com- plicated struggle. With boundless intellectual ambition, he sought to excel in the loftiest department of his art ; and undertook the double responsibility of painting great pictures, and of creating the taste which should appre- ciate, and enforcing the patronage which should reward them. The patronage of high art, not thcu adopted by the gov- ernment, and far beyond the means of individuals of the middle class, necessarily appertained to a few members of tlie aristocracy, who alone could encourage and remune- rate the painters of history. Althouf!;li the beginning of Mr. Haydon's career was not uncheered by aristocratic favour, the contrast between the greatness of his own con- ceptions and the humility of the covsc which prudence suggested as necessary to obtain for Inmself the means of 296 BENJAMIN ROBERT HATDON. developing them on canvass, fevered his nature, which, ardent in gratitude for the appreciation and assistance of the wealthy, to a degree which might even be mistaken for eervility, was also impatient of the general indifference to the cause of which he sought to be, not only the orna- ment, but unhappily for him, also the champion. Alas ! he there "perceived a divided duty." Had he been con- tented silently to paint — to endure obscurity and privation for a while, gradually to mature his powers of execution and soften the rigour of his style and of his virtue, he might have achieved works, not only as vast in outline and as beautiful in portions as those which he exhibited, but so harmonious in their excellences as to charm away opposi- tion, and ensure speedy reputation, moderate fortune, and lasting fame. But resolved to battle for that which he believed to be "the right,'' he rushed into a life-long con- test with the Royal Academy ; frequently suspended the gentle labours of the pencil for the vehement use of the pen ; and thus gave to his course an air of defiance which prevented the calm appreciation of his nobler works, and increased the mischief by reaction. Indignant of the scorns "that patient merit of the unworthy takes," he sometimes fancied scorns which impatient merit in return imputes to the worthy ; and thus instead of enjoying the most tranquil of lives (which a painter's should be), led one of the most animated, restless, and broken. The necessary consequence of this disproportion was a series of pecuniary embarrassments, the direct result of his struggle with fortune ; a succession of feverish triumphs and disappointments, the fruits of his contest with power ; and worse perhaps than either, the frequent diversion of his own genius from its natural course, and the hurried and imperfect development of its most majestic concep- BENJAMIN ROBERT HAYDON. 297 tions. To paint as finely as he sometimes did in the ruffled pauses of his passionate controversy, and amidst the ter- rors of impending want, was to display large innate re- sources of skill and high energy of mind ; but how much more unquestionable fame might he have attained if his disposition had permitted him to be content with charming the world of art, instead of attempting also to instruct or reform it ! Mr. Haydon's course, though thus troubled, was one of constant animation, and illustrated by hours of triumph, the more radiant because they were snatched from adverse fortune and a reluctant people. The exhibition of a sin- gle picture by an artist at war with the Academy which exhibited a thousand pictures at the same price — creating a sensation not only among artists and patrons of art, but amonfj the most secluded literary circles — and enaragino- the highest powers of criticism — was, itself, a splendid occurrence in life ; and, twice at least, in the instance of the Entry into Jerusalem, and the Lazarus, was crowned with signal success. It was a proud moment for the daring painter, when, at the opening of the first of these Exhibitions, while the crowd of visitors, distinguished in rank or talent, stood doubting whether in the countenance of the chief figure the daring attempt to present an aspect differing from that which had enkindled the devotion of ages — to mingle the human with the Divine, resolution with sweetness, dignified composure with the anticipation of mighty suffering — had not failed, jMrs. Siddons walked slowly up to the centre of the room, surveyed it in siknicc for a minute or two, and then ejaculated, in her deep, low, thrilling voice, " It is perfect !" (fuelled all opposition, and removed the doubt, from his own mind at least, for ever. '208 BENJAMIN ROBERT HAYDON. Although the great body of artists to whose corporate power Mr. Hay don was so passion;) tely opposed, naturally stood aside from his path, it was cheered by the attention and often hy tlie applause of the chief literary spirits of the age, who were attracted by a fierce intellectual strug- gle. Sir Walter Scott, Wordsworth, Hazlitt, Godwin, Shelley, Hunt, Coleridge, Lamb, Keats — and many young writers for periodical works, in the freshness of unhack- nied authorship — took an interest in a course so gallant though so troublous, which excited their sympathy yet did not force them to the irksome duty of unqualified praise. Almost in the outset of his career, Wordsworth addressed to him a sonnet, in heroic strain, associating the artist's calling with his own ; making common cause with him, " while the Avhole Avorld seems adverse to desert ;" admon- ishing him " still to be strenuous for the bright reward, and in the soul admit of no decay ;" and, long after, when the poet had by a wiser perseverance, gradually created the taste which appreciated his works, he celebrated, in another sonnet, the fine autumnal conception in the pic- ture of Napoleon on the rock of St. Helena, with his back to the spectator, contemplating the blank sea, left deso- late by the sunken sun. The Conqueror of Napoleon also recognized the artist's claims, and supplied him with ano- ther great subject, in the contemplation of the solitude of Waterloo by its hero, ten years after the victory. Mr. Haydon's vividness of mind burst out in his con- versation, which, though somewhat broken and rugged, like his career, had also like that a vein of beauty streaking it. Having associated with most of the remarkable per- sons of his time, and seen strange varieties of " many- colored life" — gifted with a rapid perception of character and a painter's eye for effect — he was able to hit off, with BENJAMIN ROBERT HAYDON. 299 Startling facility, sketches in words which lived b'efore the hearer. His anxieties and sorrows did not destroy the buoyancy of his spirits or rob the convivial moment of its prosperity ; so that he struggled, and toiled, and laughed, and triumphed, and failed, and hoped on, till the waning of life approached and found him still in opposition to the world, and far from the threshold of fortune. The object of his literary exertions was partially attained ; the na- tional attention had been directed to high art ; but he did not pf rsonally share in the benefits he had greatly con- tributed to win. ^ven his cartoon of the Curse in Para- dise failed to obtain a prize when he entered the arena with unfledged youths for competitors ; and the desertion of the exhibition of his two pictures of Aristides and Nero, at the Egyptian Hall, by the public, for the neighboring exposure of the clever manikin, General Tom Thumb, quite vanquished him. It was indeed a melancholy con- trast ; the unending succession of bright crowds thronging the levees of the small abortion, and the dim and dusty room in which the two latest historical pictures of the veteran hung for hours without a visitor. Opposition, abuse, even neglect he could have borne, but the sense of ridicule involved in such a juxtaposition drove him to despair. No one who knew him ever apprehended from his disasters such a catastrophe as that which closed them. He had always cherished a belief in the religion of our Church, and avowed it among scofiing unbelievers ; and that belief he asserted even in the wild fragments he pen- ned in his last terrible hour. His friends thought that even the sense of the injustice of the world would have contributed with his undimmcd consciousness of his own powers to enable him to endure. In his domestic rela- tions also he was happy, blessed in the affection of a wife 300 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. of great beauty and equal discretion, who, by gentler temper and serener wisdom than his own, had assisted and soothed him in all his anxieties and griefs, and whose image was so identified in his mind with the beautiful as to impress its character on all the forms of female loveli- ness he had created. Those who knew him best feel the strongest assurance, that notwithstanding the appearances of preparation which attended his extraordinary suicide, his mind was shattered to pieces — all distorted and broken — with only one feeling left entire, the perversion of which led to the deed, a hope to awaken sympathy in death for those whom living he could not shelter. The last hurried lines he wrote, entitled " Haydon's last Thoughts," con- sisted of a fevered comparison between the Duke of Wel- lington and Napoleon, in which he seemed to wish to re- pair some supposed injustice which in speech or writing he had done to the Conqueror. It was enclosed in a let- ter addressed to three fi-iends, written in the hour of his death, and containing sad fragmental memorials of those passionate hopes, fierce struggles, and bitter disappoint- ments which brought him through distraction to the grave ! A visit of Coleridge was always regarded by Lamb, as an opportunity to afford a rare gratification to a few friends, who, he knew, would prize it ; and I well remem- ber the flush of prideful pleasure which came over his face as he would hurry, on his way to the India House, into the office in which I was a pupil, and stammer out the welcome invitation for the evening. This was true self-sacrifice ; for Lamb would have infinitely preferred having his inspired friend to himself and his sister, for a brief renewal of the old Salutation delights ; but, I believe, he never permitted himself to enjoy this exclusive treat. The pleasure he conferred was great ; for of all celebrated SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, 301 persons I ever saw, Coleridge alone surpassed the expec- tation created by his writings ; for he not only was, but appeared to be, greater than the noblest things he had written. Lamb used to speak, sometimes with a moistened eye and quivering lip, of Coleridge when young, and Avish that we could have seen him in the spring-time of his ge- nius, at a supper in the little sanded parlor of the old Salutation hostel. The promise of those days was never realized, by the execution of any of the mighty works he planned ; but the very failure gave a sort of mournful in- terest to the " large discourse, looking before and after," to which we were enchanted listeners ; to the wisdom which lives only in our memories, and must perish with them. From Coleridge's early works, some notion may be gleaned of what he was; when the steep ascent of fame rose directly before him, while he might loiter to dally with the expectation of its summit, without ignobly shrink- ino- from its labors. His endowments at that time — the close of the last century — when literature had faded into a fashion of poor language, must have seemed, to a mind and heart like Lamb's, no less than miraculous. A rich store of classical knowledge — a sense of the beautiful, almost verging on the effeminate — a facile power of melody, varying from the solemn stops of the organ to a bird-like flutter of airy sound — the glorious faculty of poetic hope, exerted on human prospects, and present- ing its results with the vividness of prophecy ; a power of imaginative reasoning which peopled the nearer ground of contemplation with thoughts " All plumed like ostriuhes, like eaj^les bathed, As full of spirit as the month of May, And gorgeoua as the sun at Midsummer," 26 302 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. endowed the author of " The Ancient Mariner," and " Christabel." Thus gifted, he glided from youth into manhood, as a fairy voyager on a summer sea, to eddy round and round in dazzling circles, and to make little progress, at last, towards any of those thousand mountain summits which, glorified by aerial tints, rose before him at the extreme verge of the vast horizon of his genius. "The Ancient Mariner," printed with the "Lyrical Bal- lads," one of his earliest works, is still his finest poem — at once the most vigorous in design and the most chaste in execution — developing the intensest human affection, amidst the wildest scenery of a poet's dream. Nothing was too bright to hope from such a dawn. The mind of Coleridge seemed the harbinger of the golden years his enthusiasm predicted and painted ; — of those days of peace on earth and good will among men, which the best and greatest minds have rejoiced to anticipate — and the ear- nest belief in which is better than all frivolous enjoyments, all worldly wisdom, all worldly success. And if the noon- tide of his genius did not fulfil his youth's promise of manly vigor, nor the setting of his earthly life honor it by an answering serenity of greatness — they still have left us abundant reason to be grateful that the glorious frag- ments of his mighty and imperfect being were ours. Cloud after cloud of German metaphysics rolled before his ima- gination — Avhich it had ^^ower to irradiate with fantastic beauty, and to break into a thousand shifting forms of grandeur, though not to conquer ; mist after mist ascended from those streams where earth and sky should have blended in one imagery, and were turned by its obscured glory to radiant haze ; indulgence in the fearful luxury of that talismanic drug, which opens glittering scenes of fantastic beauty on the waking soul to leave it in arid SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 303 desolation, too often veiled it in partial eclipse, and blended fitful light "\\"itli melancholy blackness over its vast domain ; but the great central light remained unquenched, and cast its gleams through every department of human knowledge. A boundlesr capacity to receive and retain intellectual treasure made him the possessor of vaster stores of lore, classical, antiquarian, historical, biblical, and miscellane- ous, than were ever vouchsafed, at least in our time, to a mortal being ; goodly structures of divine philosophy rose before him like exhalations on the table-land of that his prodigious knowledge ; but alas ! there was a deficiency of the power of voluntary action which would have left him unable to embody the shapes of a shepherd's dreams, and made him feeble as an infant before the overpowering majesty of his own ! Hence his literary life became one splendid and sad prospectus — resembling only the portal of a mighty temple which it was forbidden us to enter — but whence strains of rich music issuing " took the pri- soned soul and lapped it in Elysium," and fragments of oracular wisdom startled the thought tliey could not satisfy. Hence the riches of his mind were developed, not in writing, but in his speech — conversation I can scarcely call it — which no one who once heard can ever forget. Unable to work in solitude, ho sought the gentle stimulus of social admiration, and under its influence poured forth, without stint, the marvellous resoui-ccs of a mind rich in the spoils of time — richer — richer far in its own glorioun imagination and delicate fancy ! There was a noble j)ro- digality in these outpourings; a generous disdain of self; an earnest desire to scatter abroad the seeds of wisdom and beauty, to take root Avhcrcvcr they might fall, and spring up without bearing his name or impress, which 304 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. miglit remind the listener of the first days of poetry be« fore it became individualized by the press, "when the Hom- eric rhapsodist "wandered through ne^y-born cities and scattered hovels, flashing upon the minds of the "wonder- ing audience the bright train of heroic shapes, the series of godlike exploits, and sought no record more enduring than the fleshly tablets of his hearers' hearts ; no memory but that of genial tradition ; "when copyright did not as- certain the reciter's property, nor marble at once perpetu- ate and shed chillness on his fame — " His bounty was as boundless as the sea, His love as deep." Like the ocean, in all its variety of gentle moods, his discourse perpetually ebbed and flowed — nothing in it angular, nothing of set purpose, but no"w trembling as the "voice of divine philosophy, "not harsh nor crabbed, as dull fools suppose, but musical as is Apollo's lute," "was "wafted over the summer wave ; now glistening in long line of light over some obscure subject, like the path of moon- light on the black w^ater ; and, if ever receding from the shore, driven by some sudden gust of inspiration, disclos- ing the treasures of the deep, like the rich strond in Spenser, "far sunken in their sunless treasuries," to be covered anon by the foam of the same immortal tide. The benignity of his manner befitted the beauty of his disquisitions ; his voice rose from the gentlest pitch of conversation to the height of impassioned eloquence with- out cfibrt, as his language expanded from some common topic of the day to the loftiest abstractions ; ascending by a winding track of spiral glory to the highest truths which the naked eye could discern, and suggesting starry region^s, beyond which his own telescopic gaze might pos- SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 305 sibly decipher. Tf his entranced hearers often were un- able to perceive the bearings of his argument — too mighty for any grasp but his own — and sometimes reaching be- yond his own — they understood " a beauly in the words, if not the words ;" and a wisdom and piety in the illustra- tions, even when unable to connect them with the idea which he desired to illustrate. If an entire scheme of moral philosophy was never developed by him, either in speaking or writing, all the parts were great ; vast bibli- cal knowledge, though sometimes eddying in splendid con- jecture, was always employed with pious reverence ; the morality suggested was at once elevated and genial ; the charity hoped all things ; and the mighty imaginative reasoner seemed almost to realize the condition suggested by the great Apostle, " that he understood all mysteries and all knowdcdge, and spake with the tongues both of men and angels !" After Coleridge had found his last earthly refuge, un- der the wise and generous care of Mr. Gilman, at High- gate, he rarely visited Lamb, and my opportunities of ob- serving him ceaseil. From those who were more favored, as well as from the fragments I have seen of his last effu- sions, I know that, amidst suffering and weakness, his mighty mind concentrated its energies on the highest sub- jects which had ever kindled them ; that the speculations, which sometimes seemed like paradox, because their ex- tent was too vast to be comprehended in a single grasp of intellectual vision, were informed by a sercner wisdom; that his perceptions of the central truth became more un- divided, and his piety more profound and humble. Ilia love for Charles and Mary Lamb continued, to the last, one of the strongest of his human affections — of which, 26* 306 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. by the kindness of a friend,* I possess an affecting memo- rial under his hand, written in the margin of a volume of his " Sybilline Leaves," which — after his life-long habit — he has enriched by manuscript annotations. The poem, beside wdiich it is inscribed, is entitled " The Lime-Tree Bower my Prison," composed by the poet in June, 1796, when Charles and Mary Lamb, who were visiting at his cottage near Bristol, had left him for a walk, which an accidental lameness prevented him from sharing. The visitors are not indicated by the poem, except that Charles is designated by the epithet, against which he jestingly remonstrated, as "gentle-hearted Charles ;" and is repre- sented as "winning his way, with sad and patient soul, through evil and pain, and strange calamity." Against the title is written as follows : — CH. & MARY LAMB, dear to my heart, yea, as it were, my heart, S. T, C. iEt. 63. 1834. 1797 1834. 37 years ! This memorandum, which is penned with remarkable neati:ess, must have been made in Coleridge's last illness, as he suffered acutely for several months before he died, in July of this same year, 1834. What a space did that thirty-seven years of fond regard for the brother and sister occupy in a mind like Coleridge's, peopled with immortal thoughts which might mviltiply in the true time, dialled in heaven, its minutes into years ! • Mr. Richard "Welsh, of Reading, editor of the Berkshire Chronicle — one of the ablest productions of the Conservative Periodical Press. xamb's dead cOxMpanions. 307 These friends of Lamb's whom I have ventured to sketch in companionship with him, and Southey also, whom 1 only once saw, are all gone ; — and others of less note in the world's eye have followed them. Among those of the old set who are gone, is Manning, perhaps next to Coleridge, the dearest of them, whom Lamb used to speak of as marvellous in a tete-a-tete, but who, in company, seemed only a courteous gentleman, more disposed to listen than to talk. In good ©W age depart'^d Admiral Burney, frank-hearted voyager with Captain Cook round the world, who seemed to unite our society with the circle over which Dr. Johnson reigned ; who used to tell of school-days under the tutelage of Eugene Aram ; how he remembered the gentle usher pacing the play-ground arm-in-arm with some one of the elder boys, and seeking relief from the unsuspected burthen of his conscience by talking of strange murders, and how he, a child, had shuddered at the hand- cuifs on his teacher's hands when taken away in the post- chase to prison ; — the Admiral being himself the centre of a little circle which his sister, the famous authoress of " Evelina," " Cecelia," and " Camilla," sometimes graced. John Lamb, tlie jovial and burly, who dared to argue with Hazlitt on questions of art; Barron Field, who with vene- ration enough to feel all tlie despised greatness of Words- worth, had a sparkling vivacity, and, connected willi Lamb by the link of Christ's Hospital associations, shared largely in his re""ard ; Rickman, the sturdiest of jovial compan- ions, severe in tlie discipline of whist as a.t the table of the House of Commons, of which he was the principal clerk; and Alsager, so calm, so bland, so considerate — all are gone. These were all Temple guests — friomls of Lamb's early days ; but the companions of a later time, who first met in Great Russell-street, or Dalston. or Is- 308 LAMB FULLY KNOWN. lington, or Enfield, have been wofully thinned; Allan Cunningham, stalwai't of form and stout of heart and verse, a ruder Burns; Gary, Lamb's "pleasantest of cler- gymen," whose SAveetness of disposition and manner would have prevented a stranger from guessing that he was the poet who had rendered the adamantine poetry of Dante into English with kindred power ; Hood, so grave and sad and silent, that you were astonished to recognise in him the outpourer of a thousand wild fancies, the detector of the inmost springs of pathos, and the powerful vindicator of poverty and toil before the hearts of the prosperous ; the Reverend Edward Irving, who, after fulfilling an old prophecy he made in Scotland to Hazlitt, thac he would astonish and shake the world by his preaching, sat humbly at the feet of Coleridge to listen to wisdom — all are gone ; the forms of others associated with Lamb's circle by more accidental links (also dead) come thronging on the memory from the mist of years — Alas ; it is easier to count those that are left of the old familiar faces ! The story of the lives of Charles and Mary Lamb is now told ; nothing more remains to be learned respecting it. The known collateral branches of their stock are ex- tinct, and their upward pedigree lost in those humble tracks on which the steps of Time leave so light an im- press, that the dust of a few years obliterates all traces, and affords no clue to search collaterally for surviving rel- atives. The world has, -therefore, all the matci'i:ils for judging of thcra which can be possessed by tLu. v, who, not remembering the delightful peculiarities of their daily manners, can only form imperfect ideas, of what they were. Before bidding them a last adieu, we may be allowed to linger a little longer, and survey their charac- ters by the new and solemn lights which are now, for the first time, fully cast upon them. LAMB FULLY KNOWN. 309 Except to the few who were acquainted with the tragical occurrences of Lamb's earlj life, some of his peculiarities seemed strange — to be forgiven, indeed, to the excellences of his nature, and the delicacy of his genius — but still, in themselves, as much to be wondered at as deplored. The sweetness of his character, breathed through his writings, was felt even by strangers ; but its heroic aspect was unguessed, even by many of his friends. Let them now consider it, and ask if the annals of self-sacrifice can show anj^thing in human action and endurance more lovely than its self-devotion exhibits ! It was not merely that he saw (which his elder brother cannot be blamed for not immediately perceiving) through the unsanguined cloud of misfortune which had fallen upon his family, the un- stained excellence of his sister, whose madness had caused it ; that he was ready to take her to his own home with reverential affection, and cherish her through life ; that he gave up, for her sake, all meaner and more selfish love, and all the hopes "which youth blends with the passion which disturbs and ennobles it : not even that he did all this cheerfully, and without pluming himself upon his brotherly nobleness as a virtue, or seeking to repay him- self (as some uneasy martyrs do) by small instalments of long repining — but that lie carried the spirit of the hour in which he first knew and took his course, to his last. So far from thinking that his sacrifice of youth and love to his sister gave him a license to follow his own caprice at the expense of her feelings, even in the lightest matters, he always wrote and spoke of her as his wiser self; his generous benefactress, of whose protecting care he was scarcely worthy. How his pen almost grew wanton in her praise, even when she was a prisoner in the Asylum after the fatal attack of lunacy, his letters of the time to Cole- 310 LAMB FULLY KNOWN. ridge show ; but that might have been a mere temporary exaltation — the attendant fervor of a great exigency and a great resolution. It was not so ; nine years afterwards (1805), in a letter to Miss Wordsworth, he thus dilates on his sister's excellences, and exaggerates his own frailties : — " To say all that I know of her would be more than I think anybody could believe or even understand ; and when I hope to have her well again with me, it would be sinning against her feelings to go about to praise her ; for I can conceal nothing that I do from her. She is older, and wiser, and better than I, and all my wretched imper- fections I cover to myself by resolutely thinking on her goodness. She would share life and death, heaven and hell, with me. She lives but for n^e ; and I know I have been wasting and teasing her life for five years past inces- santly with my cursed ways of going on. But even in this upbraiding of myself I am offending against her, for I know that she has cleaved to me for better, for worse; and if the balance has been against her hitherto, it ' was a noble trade.' " Let it also be remembered that this devotion of the entire nature was not exercised merely in the conscious* ness of a past tragedy; but during the frequent recur- rences of the calamity which caused it, and the constant apprehension of its terrors ; and this for a large portion of life, in poor lodgings, where the brother and sister were, or fancied themselves, "marked people;" where from an income incapable of meeting the expense of the sorrow without sedulous privations, he contrived to hoard, not for holiday enjoyment, or future solace, but to provide for expected distress. Of the misery attendant on this anti* LAMB FULLY KNOWN. 311 cipation, aggravated by jealous fears lest some imprudence or error of his own sliould have hastened the inevitable evil, Ave have a glimpse in the letter to Miss Wordsworth above quoted, and which seems to have been written in reply to one which that excellent lady had addressed to Miss Lamb, and which had fallen into the brother's care during one of her sad absences. " Your long kind letter has not been thrown away, but poor Mary, to whom it is addressed, cannot yet relish it. She has been attacked by one of her severe illnesses, and is at present /rom home. Last Monday week was the day she left me ; and I hope I may calculate upon having her again in a month or little more. I am rather afraid late hours have, in this case, contributed to her indisposition. But when she begins to discover symptoms of approaching illness, it is not easv to sav what is best to do. Beins: bv ourselves is bad, and going out is bad. I get so irritable and wretched with fear, that I constantly hasten on the disor- der. You cannot conceive the misery of such a foresight. I am sure that, for the week before she left me, I was lit- tle better than lightheaded. I now am calm, but sadly taken down and ilat. I have every reason to suppose that this illness, like all her former ones, will l)e but temporary. But I cannot always feel so. Meantime she is dead to me !" The constant impendency of this giant sorrow saddened to "the Lambs" even their holidays; as the journey which they both regarded as the relief and charm of the year was frequently f'dlowed Ijy a seizure ; and, when they ventured to take it, a sti'ait-waistcoat, carefully packed by Miss Lamb herself, was their constant companion. Sad 312 LAMB FULLY KNOWN. experience, ut last, induced the abandonment of tiie annuai excursion, and Lamb was contented with walks in and near London, during the interval of labor. Miss Lamb experi- enced, and full well understood premonitory symptoms of the attack, in restlessness, low fever, and the inability to sleep ; and, as gently as possible, prepared her brother for the duty he must soon perform ; and thus, unless he could stave off the terrible separation till Sunday, obliged him to ask leave of absence from the office as if for a day's plea- sure — a bitter mockery! On one occasion Mr. Charles Lloyd met them, slowly pacing together a little footpath in Hoxton fields, both weeping bitterly, and found, on join- ing them, that they were taking their solemn way to the accustomed Asylum ! Will any one, acquainted with these secret passages of Lamb's history, wonder that, with a strong physical in- clination for the stimulus and support of strong drinks — • which man is framed moderately to rejoice in — he should snatch some wild pleasure " between the acts" (as he called them) "of his distressful drama," and that, still more, during the loneliness of the solitude created by his sister's absences, he should obtain the solace of an hour's feverish dream ? That, notwithstanding that frailty, he performed the duties of his hard lot with exemplary steadiness and discretion is indeed wonderful — especially when it is recol- lected that he had himself been visited, when in the dawn of manhood, with his sister's malady, the seeds of Avhich were lurking in his frame. While that natural predispo- sition may explain an occasional flightiness of expression on serious matters, fruit of some wayward fancy, which flitted through his brain, without disturbing his constant reason or reaching his heart, and some little extravagances of fitful mirth, how does it heighten the moral courage by LAMB FULLY KNOWN. 313 whicli the disease was controlled and the severest duties performed ! Never surely was there a more striking ex- ample of tlic power of a virtuous, rather say, of a pious, wish to conquer the fiery suggestions of latent insanity than that presentf^d by Lamb's history. Nervous, tremu- lous, as he seemed — so slight of frame that he looked only fit for the most placid fortune — when the dismal emergen- cies which chequered his life arose, he acted with as much promptitude and vigor as if he had never penned a stanza nor taken a glass too much, or was strung with herculean sinews. None of those temptations, in which misery is the most potent, to hazard a lavish expenditure for an enjoy- ment to be secured against fate and fortune, ever tempted him to exceed his income, when scantiest, by a shilling. He had always a reserve for poor Mary's periods of seclu- sion, and something in hand besides for a friend in need ; — and on his retirement from the India House, he had amassed, by annual savings, a sufficient sum (invested af- ter the prudent and classical taste of Lord Stowell, in " the elegant simplicity of the Three per Cents.") to secure com- fort to Miss Lamb, when his pension should cease with him, even if the India Company, his great employei'S, had not acted nobly by the memory of their inspired clerk — as they did — and gave her the annuity to Avhich a wife would have been entitled — but of which he could not feel assured. Living among literary men, some less distinguished and less discreet than those whom we have mentioned, he was constantly importuned to relieve distresses whicli ;in im- provident speculation in literature produces, and whicli the recklessness attendant on the empty vanity of self exagge- i-ated talent renih-rs