^AW:^ 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 PROF. CHARLES A.KOFOID AND 
 
 MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID 
 
s 
 
I 66 
 
 THE WORKS 
 
 CHARLES LAMB. 
 
THE WOEKS 
 
 CHARLES LAMB 
 
 INCLUDING HIS MOST INTERESTING LETTERS. 
 
 COLLECTED AND EDITED, WITH MEMORIALS, 
 
 By sir THOMAS NOON TALFOURD. 
 
 A NEW EDITION. 
 
 LONDON : 
 BELL AND DALDY, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN. 
 
LONDON : 
 BRADBURY, EVANS, AND CO., PRINTERS, WHITEKRIARS. 
 
952 
 Lin 
 
 TO 
 
 THE REV. DERWENT COLERIDGE, M.A., 
 
 HnlNCIPAL OF ST. MARK'S COLLEGE, CHELSRA, 
 
 ■nils KDITIOX OK 
 
 THE WORKS OF HIS FATHER'S FRIEND 
 
 13 RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED 
 
 THE PUBLISHER. 
 
 AuausT, 1852 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 LETTERS. 
 
 Chapter L— [1775 to 1796.] 
 
 Page 
 
 lamb's parentage, school days, and youth, to the commencement 
 
 of his correspondence with coleridge 5 
 
 Chapter IL— [1796.] 
 
 LETTERS TO COLERIDGE 11 
 
 Chapter IIL— [1797.] 
 
 LETTERS TO COLERIDGE .20 
 
 Chapter IV.— [1798.] 
 
 LAMB'S LITERARY EFFORTS AND CORRESPONDENCE WITH SOUTHEY . . 28 
 
 Chapter V.— [1799, 1800.] 
 LETTERS TO SOUTHEY, COLERIDGE, MANNING, AND WORDSWORTH ... 37 
 
 Chapter VI.— [1800.] 
 
 LETTERS TO MANNING AFTER LAMBS REMOVAL TO THE TEMPLE . . . 60 
 
 Chapter VIL— [1801 to 1804.] 
 LETTERS TO MANNING, WORDSaVorTH, AND COLERIDGE; JOHN WOODVIL 
 
 rejected, published, and reviewed 58 
 
 Chapter VIII.— [1304 to 1806.] 
 
 letters to manning, wordsworth, rickman, and hazlitt.— " mr. 11." 
 
 written,— accepted,— damned 72 
 
 WST7''^^^ 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Chapter IX.— [1807 to 1814.] 
 
 LETTERS TO MANNING, MONTAGUE, WORDSWOKTH, AND COLERIDGE 
 
 I'agc 
 83 
 
 Chapter X.— [1815 to 1817.] 
 
 LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH, SOUTHEY, AND MANNING . 92 
 
 Chapter XI.— [1818 to 1820,] 
 
 LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH, SOUTHEY, MANNING, AND COLERIDGE . . .103 
 
 Chapter XII.— [1820 to 1823.] 
 
 LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH, COLERIDGE, FIELD, WILSON, AND BARTON . . 110 
 
 Chapter XIIL— [1823.] 
 
 LAMB'S CONTROVERSY WITH SOUTHEY ... .... 120 
 
 Chapter XIV.— [1823 to 1825.] 
 
 LETTERS TO AINSWORTH, BARTON, AND COLERIDGE -131 
 
 Chapter XV.— [1825.] 
 
 LAMB'S EMANCIPATION FROM THE INDIA HOUSE 
 
 139 
 
 Chapter XVI.— [1826 to 1828.] 
 
 LETTERS TO ROBINSON, CARY, COLERIDGE, PATMORE, PROCTER, ^ ND BARTON 144 
 
 Chapter XVII.— [1829, 1830.] 
 
 LETTERS TO ROBINSON, PROCTER, BARTON, WILSON, OILMAN, WORDS- 
 WORTH, AND DYER 154 
 
 Chapter XVIII.- [1830 to 1834.J 
 
 LAMB'S LAST LETTERS AND DEATH 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 FINAL MEMORIALS. 
 
 — ♦ — 
 
 Chapter I. 
 
 I'aKc 
 
 LETTERS OF LAMB TO COLERIDGE, IN THE SPRING AND SUMMER OF 1796 . . 189 
 
 Chapter II. 
 LETTERS OF LAMB TO COLERIDGE, CHIEFLY RELATING TO THE DEATH OF 
 
 MRS. LAMB. AND MISS LAMB'S SUBSEQUENT CONDITION .... '201 
 
 Chapter III. 
 
 LETTERS TO COLERIDGE AND MANNING IN LAMB'S FIRST YEARS OP LIFE 
 
 WITH HIS SISTER— 1797 to 1800 211 
 
 Chapter IV. 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS TO MANNING, COLERIDGE, AND WORDSWORTH 
 
 — 1800 TO 1805 . . 219 
 
 Chapter V. 
 LETTERS TO HAZLITT, ETC.,— 1805 to 1810 229 
 
 Chapter VI. 
 
 LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH, ETC., CHIEFLY RESPECTING WORDSWORTH'S 
 
 POEMS— 1815 to 1818 237 v'' 
 
 Chapter VII. 
 
 THE LONDON MAGAZINE— CHARACTER AND FATE OF MR. JOHN SCOTT, ITS 
 EDITOR— GLIMPSE OF MR. THOMAS GRIFFITHS WAINWRIGHT, ONE 
 OP ITS CONTRIBUTORS — MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS OF LAMB TO 
 WORDSWORTH. COLERIDGE, AND OTHERS— 1818 TO 1825 248 
 
 Chapter VIII. 
 LETTERS OF LAMB'S LAST YEARS— 1825 to 1834 256 
 
 / 
 Chapter the Last. 
 
 LAMB'S WEDNESDAY NIGHTS COMPARED WITH THE EVENINGS OF HOL- 
 LAND HOUSE— HIS DEAD COMPANIONS, DYER, GODWIN, THELWALL, 
 HAZLITT, BARNES, HAYDON, COLERIDGE, AND OTHERS— LAST GLIMPSES 
 OF CHARLES AND MARY LAMB . . .... 279 
 
CONTENTa 
 
 ESSAYS OF ELIA. 
 — ♦ — 
 
 THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE . . 315 
 
 OXFORD IN THE VACATION 319 
 
 CHRIST'S HOSPITAL FIVE-AND-THIRTY YEARS AGO 322 
 
 -=^ THE TWO RACES OF MEN 328 
 
 NEW-YEARS EVE 331 
 
 , - MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST 334 
 
 A CHAPTER ON EARS 338 
 
 — ALL FOOLS' DAY 340 
 
 A QUAKERS' MEETING 342 
 
 THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER 844 
 
 IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES 349 
 
 WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT FEARS 353 
 
 VALENTINE'S DAY 356 
 
 MY RELATIONS 358 
 
 MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE 361 
 
 MY FIRST PLAY 363 
 
 MODERN GALLANTRY .... 366 
 
 THE OLD BENCIIEUS OF THE INNER TEMPLE 36S 
 
 — ■ GRACE BEFORE MEAT 373 
 
 DREAM-CHILDREN; A REVERIE 377 
 
 DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS 379 
 
 THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS 3S2 
 
 A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS IN THE METROPOLIS . . . 3S5 
 
 — A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG 389 
 
 A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT OF THE BEHAVIOUR OF MARRIED PEOl'LE 392 
 
 JON SO.ME OF THE OLD ACTORS 306 
 ON THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF THE LAST CENTURY .... .402 
 
 ON THE ACTING OF MUNDEN . 406 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 
 
 Pase 
 BLAKESMOOR IN H SHIRE 413 
 
 POOR RELATIONS 415 
 
 DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND READING 419 ^^ 
 
 STAGE ILLUSION 42 \r 
 
 TO THE SHADE OP ELLISTON 424 
 
 ELLISTONIANA 425 
 
 THE OLD MARGATE HOY 423 
 
 THE CONVALESCENT 432 
 
 SANITY OF TRUE GENIUS 434 \^ 
 
 CAPTAIN JACKSON 435 
 
 THE SUPERANNUATED MAN 438 
 
 THE GENTEEL STYLE IN WRITING 441 ^ 
 
 BARBARA S 441 
 
 THE TOMBS IN THE ABBEY 446 
 
 AMICUS REDIYIVUS 448 y 
 
 SOME SONNETS OF SIR PHILIP SYDNEY 450 
 
 NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO 453 
 
 BARRENNESS OF THE IMAGINATIVE FACULTY IN THE PRODUCTIONS OF _ 
 
 MODERN ART 437 i/ 
 
 THE WEDDING 463 
 
 REJOICINGS UPON THE NEW YEAR'S COMING OF AGE 466 
 
 OLD CHINA 468 
 
 THE CHILD ANGEL; A DREAM ....... 471 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD 473 
 
 POPULAR FALLACIES :— 
 
 r. THAT A BULLY IS ALWAYS A COWARD 477 
 
 ^ II. THAT ILL-GOTTEN GAIN NEVER PHOSPEBS 477 
 
 III. THAT A MAN MUST NOT LAU(Sh AT HIS OWN JEST . . . .477 
 
 IV. THAT SUCH A ONE SHOWS HIS BREEDINO. — THAT IT IS EASY TO PER- 
 
 CEIVE HE IS NO GENTLEMAN 47^ 
 
 V. THAT THE POOR COPY THE VICES OF THE RICH 47H 
 
 VI. THAT ENOUGH IS AS GOOD AS A FEAST 479 
 
 VU. OF TWO DISPUTANTS THE WARMEST IS GENERALLY IN THE WRONG . 470 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 POPULAR FALLACIES— continued. 
 
 Pane 
 VIII. THAT VERRAL ALLUSIONS ARE NOT WIT, BEOADSE THET WILL NOT BEAR 
 
 A TRANSLATION 480 
 
 IX. THAT THE WOPST I'UNS ARE THE BEST 480 
 
 X. THAT HANDSOME IS THAT HANDSOME DOES 481 
 
 XI. THAT WE MUST NOT LOOK A GIFT-HORSE IN THE MOUTH . . . 4S2 
 
 XIL THAT HOME IS HOME THOUGH IT IS NEVER SO HOMELY . . . . 433 
 
 Xin. THAT YOU MUST LOVE ME, AND LOVE MY DOG 485 
 
 XIV. THAT WE SHOULD RISE WITH THE LARK 487 
 
 XV. THAT WE SHOULD LIE DOWN WITH THE LAMB 488 
 
 XVL THAT A SULKY TEMPER IS A MISFORTUNE 480 
 
 ROSAMUND GRAY, ESSAYS, Etc. 
 — ♦ — 
 
 ROSAMUND GRAY . . 49J 
 
 ESSAYS :— 
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OF CHRIST'S HOSPITAL . . 5U 
 
 V ON THE TRAGEDIES OF SHAKSPEAKE, CONSIDERED WITH REFERENCE TO 
 
 THEIR FITNESS FOR STAGE-REPRESENTATION 517 
 
 "^ CHARACTERS OP DRAMATIC WRITERS, CONTEMPORARY WITH SHAKSPEAUE . 526 
 . SPECIMENS FROM THE WRITINGS OF FULLER, THE CHURCH HISTORIAN . . 535 
 < ON THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF HOGARTH ; WITH SOME REMARKS ON 
 
 A PASSAGE IN THE WRITINGS OP THE LATE MR. BARRY . . .540 
 
 ON THE POETICAL WORKS OF GEORGE WITHER 660 
 
 LETTERS, UNDER ASSUMED SIGNATURES, PUBLISHED IN "THE REFLECTOR":— 
 
 THE LONDONER 553 
 
 ON BURIAL SOCIETIES; AND THE CHARACTER OF AN UNDERTAKER . . . 554 
 
 ON THE DANGER OF CONFOUNDING MORAL WITH PERSONAL DEFORMITY; 
 WITH A HINT TO THOSE WHO HAVE THE FRAMING OP ADVERTISEMENTS 
 FOR APPREHENDING OFFENDERS 557 
 
 ON THE INCONVENIENCES RESULTING FROM BEING HANGED . . . . 060 
 
 ON THE MELANCHOLY OF TAILORS 565 
 
 HOSPITA ON THE IMMODERATE INDULGENCE OF THE PLEASURES OF THE PALATE 667 
 
 EDAX ON APPETITE ^^ 
 
 CURIOUS FRAGMENTS, EXTRACTED FROM A COMMON-I'LACK BOOK WHICH 
 BELONGED TO ROBERT BURTON, THE FAMOUS AUTHOR OF THE 
 ANATOMY OF MKLANCIIOIiY 673 
 
 MR. H ., A FAUCE, IN TWO ACTS - • . . .... 677 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 POEMS. 
 
 I Thnse marked with an asterisk are by the Author'n Sister.] 
 
 Pajte 
 
 HESTER ... ... . . . . • -593 
 
 TO CHARLES LLOYD, AN UNEXPECTED VISITOR . . . ... 593 
 
 THE THREE FRIENDS 594 
 
 TO A RIVER IN WHICH A CHILD AVAS DROWNED 596 
 
 THE OLD FAMILIAR FACES 596 
 
 •HELEN 596 
 
 A VISION OF REPENTANCE 596 
 
 •DIALOGUE BETWEEN A MOTHER AND CHILD 587 
 
 QUEEN ORIANA'S DREAM 597 
 
 A BALLAD NOTING THE DIFFERENCE OF RICH AND POOR, IN THE WAYS OF 
 
 A RICH NOBLE'S PALACE AND A POOR WORKHOUSE 598 
 
 HYPOCHONDRIACUS .... .... 598 
 
 A FAREWELL TO TOBACCO ... 599 
 
 TO T. L. H., A CHILD 600 
 
 BALLAD, FROM THE GERMAN 601 
 
 •DAVID IN THE CAVE OF ADULLAM 601 
 
 •SALOME 601 
 
 •LINES SUGGESTED BY A PICTURE OF TWO FEMALES, BY LIONARDO DA VINCI 602 
 •LINES ON THE SAME PICTURE BEING REMOVED TO MAKE PLACE FOR A 
 
 PORTRAIT OF A LADY BY TITIAN 602 
 
 •LINES ON THE CELEBRATED PICTURE BY LIONARDO DA VINCI, CALLED 
 
 THE VIRGIN OF THE ROCKS 602 
 
 •ON THE SAME 602 
 
 SONNETS :— 
 
 I TO MISS KELLY ■-...... 603 
 
 I 
 
 II. ON THE SIGHT OF SWANS IN KENSINGTON GARDEN . . • . . 603 
 
 III 603 
 
 IV 603 
 
 V. 60:} 
 
 VI. THE FAMILY NAME .... 603 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 SONNETS— contmuccZ. 
 
 Page 
 VII 604 
 
 VIIT 604 
 
 IX. TO JOHN LAMB, ESQ., OF THE SOUTII-SEA-HOUSE C04 
 
 X 604 
 
 XI 604 
 
 BLANK VERSE :— 
 
 CHILDHOOD 606 
 
 THE GRANDAME COS 
 
 THE SABBATH BELLS . . 605 
 
 FANCY EMPLOYED ON DIVINE SUBJECTS 605 
 
 COMPOSED AT MIDNIGHT 606 
 
 JOHN WOODVIL, A TRAGEDY .607 
 
 THE WITCH, A DRAMATIC SKETCH OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 623 
 
 ALBUM VERSES, WITH A FEW OTHERS. 
 
 IN THE AUTOGRAPH BOOK OF MRS. SERGEANT W 624 
 
 TO DORA W , ON BEING ASKED BY HER FATHER TO WRITE IN HER ALBUM 624 
 
 IN THE ALBUM OF A CLERGYMAN'S LADY 625 
 
 IN THE ALBUM OF EDITH S 625 
 
 IN THE ALBUM OF BOTHA Q 626 
 
 IN THE ALl;UM OP CATHERINE ORKNEY 625 
 
 IN THE ALBUM OF LUCY BARTON 625 
 
 IN THE ALBUM OP MRS. JANE TOWERS 626 
 
 IN THE ALBUM OP MISS 626 
 
 IN MY OWN ALBUM 6i:6 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS :— 
 
 ANGEL HELl' 627 
 
 ON AN INFANT DYING AS SOON AS BORN 627 
 
 THE CHRISTENING 628 
 
 THE YOUNG CATECHIST 628 
 
 TO A YOUNG FRIEND ON HEK TWENTY-FIRST BIRTHDAY . . . . 628 
 
 SHE IS GOING 629 
 
CONTENTS, 
 
 SONNETS :— 
 
 Page 
 HARMONY IN UNMKRNESS 629 
 
 WRITTEN AT CAMBRIDGE 629 
 
 TO A CELEBRATED FEMALE PERFORMER IN THE "BLIND HOY" . . . 629 
 
 WORK 629 
 
 LEISURE 630 
 
 TO SAMUEL ROGERS, ESQ. 630 
 
 THE GIPSY'S MALISON 630 
 
 COMMENDATORY VERSES, &c.— 
 
 TO J. S. KNOVVLES, ESQ., ON HIS TRAGEDY OF VIRGINIUS . . . .630 
 
 TO THE AUTHOR OF POEMS, PUBLISHED UNDER THE NAME OF BARRY 
 
 CORNWALL ... 631 
 
 TO THE EDITOR OP THE "E VERY-DAY BOOK" 631 
 
 TO T. STOTIIAKD, ESQ., ON HIS ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE POEMS OF 
 
 MR. ROGERS 631 
 
 TO A FRIEND ON HIS MARRIAGE 631 
 
 " O LIFT WITH REVERENT HAND " 632 
 
 THE SELF-ENCHANTED 632 
 
 TO LOUISA M , WHOM I USED TO CALL "MONKEY" 632 
 
 TRANSLATIONS FROM THE LATIN OF VINCENT BOURNE :— 
 
 THE BALLAD-SINGERS 633 
 
 TO DAVID COOK, OF THE PARISH OF ST. MARGARET'S, WESTMINSTER, 
 
 WATCHMAN 633 
 
 ON A SEPULCHRAL STATUE OF AN INFANT SLEEPING 634 
 
 EPITAPH ON A DOG 634 
 
 THE RIVAL BELLS 634 
 
 NEWTON'S PRINCIPIA 634 
 
 THE HOUSEKEEPER 635 
 
 ON A DEAF AND DUMB ARTIST 635 
 
 THE FEMALE ORATORS 635 
 
 PINDARIC ODE TO THE TREAD-MILL 635 
 
 GOING OR GONE 636 
 
 FREE THOUGHTS ON SEVERAL EMINENT COMPOSERS 637 
 
 THE WIFE'S TRIAL; or, THE INTRUDING WIDOW. A Dramatic Pok.m . .638 
 
THE LETTERS 
 
 CHARLES LAMB. 
 
 A SKETCH OY HIS LIFE 
 
 SIR THOMAS NOON TALFOUUD, D.C.L. 
 
 ONE OF HIS KXKCUTOES. 
 
MARY ANNE LAMB. 
 
 THESE LETTERS, 
 
 THE MEilOKIALS OF MANY TEARS WHICH SHE SPENT WITH THE WRITER 
 IN UNDIVIDED AFFECTION J 
 
 OF THE SORROWS AND THE JOYS SHE SHARED, OF THE GENIUS WHICH SHE CHERISHED, 
 AND OF THE EXCELLENCES WHICH SHE BEST KNEW; 
 
 BliSPECTFULLY AND AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED, 
 
 BY THE EDITOR. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The share of the Editor in these volumes can scarcely be regarded too slightly. 
 The successive publications of Lamb's works form almost the only events of his life 
 which can be recorded ; and upon these criticism has been nearly exhausted. liittle, 
 therefore, was necessary to accompany the Letters, except such thread of narrative 
 as might connect them together ; and such explanations as might render their 
 allusions generally understood. The reader's gratitude for the pleasure which he 
 will derive fi-om these memoi'ials of one of the most delightful of English writers 
 is wholly due to his correspondents, who have kindly entrusted the precioiis relics 
 to the care of the Editor, and have permitted them to be given to the world ; and 
 to Mr. Moxon, by whose interest and zeal they have been chiefly collected. He may 
 be allowed to express his personal sense of the honour which he has received in such 
 a trust from men, some of whom are among the greaiest of England's living authors, 
 — to Wordsworth, Southey, Manning, Barton, Procter, Oilman, Patmore, Walter 
 Wilson, Field, Eobinson, Dyer, Gary, Ainsworth, to Mr. Green, the executor of 
 Coleridge, and to the surviving relatives of Hazlitt. He is also most grateful to 
 Lamb's esteemed schoolfellow, Mr. Le Grice, for supplying an interesting part of his 
 histoiy. Of the few additional facts of Lamb's history, the chief have been supplied 
 by Mr. Moxon, in whose welfare he took a most affectionate interest to the close of his 
 life ; and who has devoted some beautiful sonnets to his memory. 
 
 The recentness of the period of sqme of the letters has rendered it necessary 
 to omit many portions of them, in which the humour and beauty are interwoven 
 with personal references, which, although wholly free from anything which, rightly 
 understood, could give pain to any human being, touch on subjects too sacred foi 
 public exposure. Some of the personal allusions which have been retained, may 
 seem, perhaps, too free to a stranger ; but they have been retained only in cases 
 
 - 2 
 
Iv PREFACE. 
 
 in -which the Editor is well assured the parties would be rather gratified than 
 displeased at seeiug their names connected in life-like association with one so dear 
 to their memories. 
 
 The italics and the capitals are invariably those indicated by the !MSS. It is to 
 be regretted that in the printed letters the reader must lose the curious varieties of 
 writing with which the originals abound, and which are scrupulously adapted to the 
 subjects. 
 
 Many letters yet remain unpublished, which will further illustrate the chai*aoter 
 of IVIr. Lamb, but which must be reserved for a future time, when the Editor hopes to 
 do more justice to his own sense of the genius and the excellence of his friend, than it 
 has been possible for him to accomplish in these volumes. 
 
 T. N. T. 
 
 KussEi.L Square, 26lh June, 1837, 
 
LETTERS, &c. OF CHARLES LAMB. 
 
 CHAPTEE I. 
 
 [1775 to 1796.] 
 
 lamb's PAKESTAGE, SCHOOL-DATS, AND TOUTH, TO THE 
 COMMENCEMEXT OF HIS COEHESPONDENCE WITH COLE- 
 BTDCE. 
 
 Charles Lamb was bom on lOth February, 
 1775, in Crown Office Eow, in the Inner 
 Temple, where he spent the first seven 
 years of his life. His parents were in a 
 humble station, but they were endued with 
 sentiments and with manners which might 
 well become the gentlest blood ; and fortune, 
 which had denied them wealth, enabled them 
 to bestow on their children some of the 
 happiest intellectual advantages which wealth 
 ever confers. His father, IMr. John Lamb, 
 who came up a little boy from Lincoln, 
 fortunately both for himself and his master, 
 entered into the service of SIi-. Salt, one of 
 the benchers of the Inner Temple, a widower, 
 who, growing old within its precincts, was 
 enabled to appreciate and to reward his 
 devotedness and intelligence ; and to whom 
 he became, in the language of his son, " his 
 elerk, his good servant, his di'esser, his friend, 
 his flapper, his guide, stop-watch, auditor, 
 treasurer."* Although contented with his 
 
 * Lamb has given characters of his father (under tlie 
 name of Lovcl), and of Mr. Salt, in one of the most 
 exquisite of all the Essays of Elia — " The Old Benchers 
 of the Inner Temple." Of Lovel, he says, "Ue was 
 a man of an incorrigible and losing honestj-. A good 
 fellow withal, and ' would strike.' In the cause of the 
 oppressed he never considered inequalities, or calculated 
 the number of his opponents, lie once wrested a sword 
 out of the hand of a man of quality that had drawn 
 upon him ; and pummelled him severely with the hilt of 
 it. The swordsman had offered insult to a female — an 
 occasion upon which no odds against him could have 
 prevented the interference of Lovel. He would stand 
 next day bare-headed to the same person, modestly to 
 
 lot, and discharging its duties with the most 
 patient assiduity, he was not without literary 
 ambition ; and having written some occasional 
 verses to grace the festivities of a benefit 
 society of which he was a member, was 
 encouraged by his brother members to pub- 
 lish, in a thin quarto, " Poetical Pieces on 
 sei'eral occasions." This volume contains a 
 lively picture of the life of a lady's footman 
 of the last century ; the " History of Joseph," 
 told in well-measured heroic couplets ; and a 
 pleasant piece, after the manner of "Gay's 
 Fables," entitled the '• Simrrow's Wedding," 
 which was the author's favourite, and wliich, 
 when he fell into the dotage of age, he 
 delighted to hear Charles read.t His wife 
 
 excuse his interference — for L. never forgot tank, where 
 something better was not concerned. L. was the liveliest 
 little fellow breathing ; had a face as gay as Garrick's, 
 whom he was said greatly to resemble ; (I have a por. 
 trait of him which confirms it ;) possessed a fine turn 
 for humorous poetry — next to Swiit and Prior ; moulded 
 heads in clay or plaster of Paris to adm,iration, by the 
 dint of natural genius merely ; turned cribbage-boards 
 and such small cabinet toys to perfection ; took a hand 
 at quadrille or bowls with equal facility ; made punch 
 better than any man of his dcgi-ee in England ; had the 
 merriest quips and conceits ; and was altogether as 
 brimful of rogueries and inventions as you could desire, 
 lie was a brother of the angle, moreover ; and just sue'a 
 a free, hearty, honest companion as Mr. Izaak Walton 
 would have chosen to go a fishing with." 
 
 t The following little poem, entitled ' A Letter from 
 a Child to its Grandmother," written by Mr. John Lamb 
 for his eldest son, though possessing no merit beyond 
 simplicity of expression, may show the manner in which 
 he endeavoured to discharge his parental duties : — 
 
 " Dear Grandam, 
 
 Pray to God to bless 
 Tour grandson dear, with happiness'; 
 That, as I do advance each year, 
 I may be taught my God to fear ; 
 My little frame from passion free,. 
 To man's estate from infancy ; 
 
6 
 
 PARENTAGE, SCHOOL-DAYS, AND YOUTH. 
 
 ■was a woman of appearance so matronly and 
 commanding, that, according to the recollec- 
 tion of one of Lamb's dearest schoolmates, 
 " she might be taken for a sister of Mrs. Sid- 
 dons." This excellent couple were blessed 
 with three children, John, Mary, and Charles ; 
 John being twelve and Mary ten years older 
 than Charles. John, who is vividly described 
 in the essay of Elia entitled " My Relations," 
 imder the name of Jjimes Elia, rose to fill a 
 lucrative office in the South Sea House, and 
 died a few years ago, having to tlie last 
 fulfilled the affectionate injunction of Charles, 
 to " keep the elder brother up in state." 
 Mary (the Bridget of the same essay) still 
 survives, to mourn the severance of a life- 
 long association, as free from evei'y alloy of 
 selfishness, as remarkable for moral beauty, 
 as this woi'ld ever witnessed in brother and 
 sister. 
 
 On the 9th of October, 1782, when Charles 
 Lamb had attained tlie age of seven, he was 
 jiresented to the school of Christ's HosiDital, 
 by Timothy Yeates, Esq., Governor, as " the 
 son of John Lamb, scrivener, and Elizabeth 
 his wife," and remained a scholar of that 
 noble establishment till he had entered into 
 his fifteenth year. Small of stature, delicate 
 of frame, and constitutionally nervous and 
 timid, he would seem unfitted to encounter 
 the discipline of a school formed to restrain 
 some hundreds of lads in the heart of the 
 metropolis, or to fight his way among them. 
 But the sweetness of his disposition won him 
 favour from all ; and although the antique 
 peculiarities of the scliool tinged his opening 
 imagination, they did not sadden his child- 
 hood. One of his schoolfellows, of whose 
 genial qualities he has made affectionate 
 mention in his " Eecollections of Christ's 
 Hospital," Charles V. Le Grice, now of 
 Treriefe, near Penzance, has supplied mo 
 with some particuhxrs of his school-days, for 
 which friends of a later date will be gi-ateful. 
 " Lamb," says Mr. Le Grice, " was an amiable 
 gentle boy, very sensible and keenly observing, 
 indulged by his schoolfellows and by his 
 
 From vice, that turns a youth aside, 
 And to have wisdom for my (ruidc ; 
 That I may ncitlior lio nor swear, 
 But in tlic path of virtue sleor ; 
 My actions generous, (irm, and jvist. 
 Be always faithful to my trust ; 
 And thee the Lord will ever hlees 
 Your grandson dear, 
 
 John L , the Lcsr." 
 
 master on account of his infirmity of speech. 
 His countenance was mild ; his complexion 
 clear brown, with an expression which might 
 lead you to think that he was of Jewish 
 descent. His eyes were not each of the same 
 colour, one was hazel, the other liad specks 
 of grey in the iris, mingled as we see red 
 spots in the blood-stone. His step was 
 plantigrade, which made his widk slow and 
 peculiar, adding to the staid appearance of 
 his figure. I never heard his name men- 
 tioned without the addition of Charles, 
 although, as there was no other boy of the 
 name of Lamb, the addition was unnecessary ; 
 but there was an implied kindness in it, and 
 it was a proof that his gentle manners excited 
 that kindness." 
 
 " His delicate fi'ame and his difficulty of 
 utterance, which was increased by agitation, 
 unfitted him for joining in any boisterous 
 sport. The description which he gives, in 
 lus ' Eecollections of Christ's Hospital,' of 
 the habits and feelings of the schoolboy, is a 
 true one in general, but is more particularly 
 a delineation of himself — the feelings were 
 all in his own heart — the portrait was his 
 own : ' Wliile others were all fire Jind play, 
 he stole along with all the self-concentration 
 of a young monk.' These habits and feelings 
 were awakened and cherished in him by 
 peculiar circumstances : he had been born 
 and bred in the Inner Temple ; and his 
 parents continued to reside there while he 
 was at school, so that he passed from cloister 
 to cloister, and this was all the change liia 
 young mind ever knew. On every lialf- 
 holiday (and there were two in the week) in 
 ten minutes he was in the g;u-dens, on the 
 terrace, or at the fountain of the Tenqjle : 
 lu-re was his home, here his recreation ; and 
 the influence they had on his infant miuil is 
 vividly shown in his description of the Old 
 Benchei's. He say.s, ' I was born and i)as.sed 
 the first seven years of my life in the Temj)Ie :' 
 he might have added, that here he pjissod a 
 great portion of the second seven yejirs of liis 
 life, a portion which mixed itself with all hia 
 habits and enjoyments, and gave a bias to 
 the whole. Here he found a haj>py liome, 
 ail'octionate parents, and :>. sister wlio watclied 
 over him to the latest hour of his existence 
 (God be with hor !) with the tendurcst solici- 
 tude ; and liero he luul access to the library 
 of JVIi". Salt, one of the Benchers, to whoso 
 
PARENTAGE, SCHOOL-DAYS,. AND YOUTH. 
 
 memory his pen has given, in return for this 
 and greater favours- -I do not tliink it extra- 
 vagant to say — immortality. To use his 
 own language, here he ' was tumbled into a 
 spacious closet of gc od old English reading, 
 where he browsed at will upon that fair and 
 wholesome pastura<;e.' He applied these 
 words to his sister ; but there is no doubt 
 they * browsed ' together ; they had walked 
 hand in hand from a time ' extending beyond 
 the period of their memoiy.' " ' 
 
 "When Lamb quitted school, he was in the 
 lower division of the second class — which in 
 the language of the school is termed " being 
 in Greek Form, but not Deputy Grecian." 
 He had read Virgil, Sallust, Terence, selec- 
 tions from Lucian's Dialogues, and Xenophon; 
 and had e%'inced considerable skill in the 
 niceties of Latin composition, both in prose 
 and vei-se. His docility and aptitude for the 
 attainment of classical knowledge would have 
 insured him an exhibition ; but to this the 
 impediment in his speech proved an insu- 
 perable obstacle. The exhibitions were given 
 under the implied, if not expressed, condition 
 of entering into the Church ; the whole course 
 of education was preparatory to that end ; 
 and therefore Lamb, who was unfitted by 
 nature for the clerical profession, was not 
 adopted into the class which led to it, and 
 quitted school to pursue the uncongenial 
 labour of the " desk's dull wood." To this 
 apparently hard lot he submitted with 
 cheerfulness, and saw his schoolfellows of his 
 own standing depart, one after another, for 
 the University without a murmur. This 
 acquiescence in his different fortune must 
 have been a hai'd trial for the sweetness of 
 his disposition ; as he always, in after life, 
 regarded the ancient seats of learning with 
 the fondness of one who had been hardly 
 divorced from them. He delighted, when 
 other duties did not hinder, to pass his 
 vacations in their neighbourhood, and indulge 
 in that fancied association with them which 
 he has so beautifully mirrored in his "Sonnet 
 written at Cambridge."* What worldly 
 
 I -was not train'd in academic bowers, 
 
 And to those learned streams 1 nothing owe 
 
 AVhich copious from those twin fair founts do flow ; 
 
 Mine have been anytliinp but studious hours. 
 
 Yet can I fancy, wandering 'raid thy towers, 
 
 Myself a nursling, Granta, of thy lap ; 
 
 My brow seems tightening with the doctor's cap, 
 
 And I walk gowned ; feel unusual powers. 
 
 success can, indeed, ever compensate for the 
 want of timely nurture beneath the shade of 
 (me of these venerable institutions — for the 
 sense of antiquity shading, not checking, the 
 joyous impulses of opening manhood — for 
 the I'efinement and the grace there interfused 
 into the long labour of ambitious study — for 
 young fi-iendships consecrated by the asso- 
 ciaiions of long past time ; and for liberal 
 emulation, crowned by successes restrained 
 from ungenerous and selfish pride by palpable 
 symbols of the genius and the learning of 
 ages ? 
 
 On 23rd November, 1789, Lamb finally 
 quitted Christ's Hospital for the abode of his 
 parents, who still resided in the Temple. At 
 first he was employed in the South Sea 
 House, under his brother John ; but on the 
 5th April, 1792, he obtained an appointment 
 in the accountant's oifice of the East India 
 Company. His salary, though then small, 
 was a welcome addition to the scanty means 
 of his parents ; who now were unable, by 
 their own exertions, to increase it, his mother 
 being in ill health, wliich confined her to her 
 bed, and his father sinking into dotage. On 
 their comfort, however, this, and what was 
 more precious to him, his little leisure, were 
 freely bestowed ; and his recreations were 
 confined to a delightful visit to the two- 
 shilling gallery of the theatre, in company 
 with his sister, and an occasional supper with 
 some of his schoolmates, when in town, from 
 Cambridge. On one of these latter occasions 
 he obtained the ajjpellation of Guf/, by which 
 he was always called among them ; but of 
 which few of his late friends heard till after 
 his death. "In the first year of his clerk- 
 ship," says Mr. Le Grice, in the communica- 
 tion with which he favoured me, "Lamb 
 spent the evening of the 5th November 
 with some of his former schoolfellows, who, 
 being amused with the particularly large and 
 flapping brim of his round hat, pinned it up 
 on the sides in the form of a cocked-hat. 
 Lamb made no alteration in it, but walked 
 home in his usual sauntering gait towai'ds 
 the Temple. As he was going down Ludgate- 
 
 Strange forms of logic clothe my admiring speech ; 
 
 Old Ramus' ghost is busy at my brain ; 
 
 And my skull teems with notions infinite. 
 
 Be still, ye reeds of Camus, while I teach 
 
 Truths which transcend the searching schoolmen'* 
 
 vein, 
 And half had stagger'd that stout Stagyrite I 
 
8 
 
 PARENTAGE, SCHOOI^DAYS, AND YOUTH. 
 
 hill, some gay young meu, who seemed not to 
 have passed the London Tavern vrithout 
 resting, exclaimed, ' Tlie veritable Guy ! — 
 no man of straw ! ' and with this exclamation 
 they took him up, making a chair with tiielr 
 arms, carried him, seated him on a post in 
 St. P.iurs-churchyard, and thei-e left him. 
 This story Lamb told so seriously, that the 
 truth of it was never doubted. He won- 
 his three-cornered hat many evenings, and 
 retained the name of Guy ever after. Like 
 Nym, he quietly sympathised in the fun, and 
 seemed to say, 'that was the humour of it.' 
 A clergyman of tlie City lately wrote to mc, 
 ' I have no recollection of Lamb. There was 
 a gentleman culled Guy, to whom you once 
 introduced me, and with whom I have occa- 
 sionally interchanged nods fur more tlian 
 thirty years ; but how is it that 1 never met 
 Mr. Lamb ? If I was ever introduced to 
 liim, I wonder that we never came in contact 
 during my residence for ten years in Edmon- 
 ton.' Imagine this gentleman's surprise 
 when I informed him that his nods to Mr. 
 Guy had been constantly reciprocated by 
 Mr. Lamb ! " 
 
 During these years Lamb's most frequent 
 companion was James White, or rather, 
 Jem Wliite, as he always called him. Lamb 
 always insisted that for hearty joyous humour, 
 tinged with Shaksperian f;mcy, Jem never 
 had an equal. " Jem White ! " said he, to 
 Mr. Le Grice, when they met for the last 
 time, after many years' absence, at the Bell 
 at Edmonton, in June, 1833, "there never 
 was his like ! Wc never sliall see such days 
 as those in which Jem flourished ! " All 
 that now remains of Jem is the celebration 
 of the suppers which he gave the young 
 cliimney-sweepers in the Elia of his friend, 
 and a thin duodecimo volume, which he 
 published in 179G, under the title of the 
 " Letters of Sir John Falstaff, with a dedi- 
 cation (printed in black letter) to Master 
 Samuel Irelaunde," which those who knew 
 Lamb at the time believed to be his, "White's 
 Letters," said Lamb, in a letter to a friend 
 about this time, "are near jniblication. His 
 frontispiece is a good conceit ; Sir John 
 learning to dance, to please Madame Pago, 
 in dress of doublet, &c., from tlin upper half, 
 and modern p.-aitaloons, with shois of the 
 fiighteenth century, fnmi the lower half, and 
 the whole work is full of goodly quips ami 
 
 rare fancies, 'all deftly masked like hoar 
 antiquity' — much superior to Dr. Kenrick's. 
 ' Falstaff 's Wedding.' " The work was 
 neglected, although Lamb exerted all the 
 influence he subsequently acquired with 
 more popular writers to obtain for it favour- 
 able notices, as will be seen from various 
 passages in his letters. He stuck, however, 
 gallantly by his favourite protege ; and even 
 when he could little afford to disburse 
 sixpence, he made a point of buying a copy 
 of the book whenever he discovered one 
 amidst the refuse of a bookseller's stall, and 
 would present it to a friend in the hope of 
 making a convert. He gave me one of these 
 copies soon after I became acquainted with 
 him, stating that he had purchased it in the 
 morning for sixpence, and assuring me I 
 should enjoy a rare treat in the perusal ; 
 but if I must confess the truth, the mask of 
 quaintness was so closely worn, that it 
 neai'ly concealed the humour. To Lamb it 
 was, doubtless, vivified by the eye and voice 
 of his old boon companion, forming to him 
 an undying commentary ; without which it 
 was comparatively sjiiritless. Alas ! liow 
 many even of his own most delicate fancies, 
 rich as they are in feeling and in wisdom, I 
 wHU be lost to those who have not present ' 
 to them the sweet broken accents, and the 
 half playful, half melancholy smile of the 
 writer ! 
 
 Eut if Jem "VMiite was the companion of 
 his lighter moods, the friend of his serious 
 thoughts was a pereon of far nobler powera 
 — Samuel Taylor Coleridge. It was his good 
 fortune to be the schoolfellow of that extra- 
 ordinary man ; and if no particular intimacy 
 had been formed between them at Christ's 
 IIos]ntal, a foundation was there laid for a 
 fiiendship to which the world is probably 
 indebted for all that Lamb has added to its 
 sources of pleasure. Junior to Coleridge by 
 two years, and far inferior to him in all 
 scholastic acquirements. Lamb haii listexied 
 to the rich discourse of " the inspired charity- 
 boy" with a wondering delight, pure fx-om all 
 envy, and, it may be, enhanced by his sense 
 of his own feebleness and dilnculty of 
 expression. While Coleridge remained at 
 tlie University, they met occasionally on his 
 visits to London ; and when he quitted it, 
 and came to town, fidl of mantling hopes 
 and glorious schemes, Lamb b.canie liis 
 
PARENTAGE, SCHOOL-DAYS, AND YOUTH. 
 
 9 
 
 admiring disciple. The scene of these hap]-»y 
 meetings was a little public-house, called tlie 
 Salutation and Cat, in the neighbourhood of 
 Smithfield, where they used to sup, and 
 remain long after they had "heard the chimes 
 at midnight." There they discoursed of 
 Bowles, who was the god of Coleridge's 
 poetical idolatry, and of Burns and Cowper, 
 who, of recent poets, in that season of com- 
 parative barrenness, had made the deepest 
 impression on Lamb. There Coleridge talked 
 of " Fate, free-will, fore-knowledge absolute," 
 to one who desired "to find no end" of the 
 golden maze ; and there he recited his early 
 poems with that deep sweetness of intonation 
 which sunk into the heart of his hearer. To 
 these meetings Lamb was accustomed at -all 
 periods of his life to revert, as the season 
 when his finer intellects were quickened into 
 action. Shortly after they had terminated, 
 with Coleridge's departure from London, he 
 thus recalled them in a letter : * " Wlien I 
 read in your little volume your nineteenth 
 effusion, or what you call ' the Sigh,' I think 
 I hear yoii, again. I imagine to myself the 
 little smoky room at the Salutation and Cat, 
 where we have sat together through the 
 winter nights beguiling the cares of life with 
 Poesy." This was early in 1 796 ! and in 
 1818, when dedicating his works, then first 
 collected, to his earliest friend, he thus spoke 
 of the same meetings : " Some of the sonnets, 
 which shall be carelessly turned over by the 
 general reader, may happily awaken in you 
 remembrances which I should be sorry should 
 be ever totally extinct, — the memory 'of 
 summer days and of delightful years,' even 
 so far back as those old sujjpers at our old 
 Inn, — when life was fresh, and topics 
 L'xhaustless, — and you first kindled in me, 
 if not the power, yet the love of poetry, 
 and beauty, and kindliness." And so he 
 talkea of these unforgotten hours in that 
 short interval dui-ing which death divided 
 them ! 
 
 The warmth of Coleridge's friendship 
 supplied the quickening impulse to Lamb's 
 genius ; but the germ enfolding all its nice 
 peculiarities lay ready for the influence, and 
 
 • This, and other passages I have inter-wovcn witli 
 my own slender thread of narration, are from letters 
 vhich I have thouErht either too personal for entire 
 publication at present, or not of sufficient interest, in 
 comparison uith others, to occupy a portion of the 
 space, to wliich the letters are limited. 
 
 expanded into forms and hues of its own. 
 Lamb's earliest poetry was not a faint 
 reflection of Coleridge's, such as the young 
 lustre of original genius may cast on a 
 polished and sensitive mind, to glow and 
 tremble for a season, but was streaked with 
 delicate yet distinct traits, which proved it 
 an emanation from within. . There was, 
 indeed, little resemblance between the two, 
 except in the affection which they bore 
 towards each other. Coleridge's mind, not 
 laden as yet with the spoils of all systems 
 and of all times, glowed with the ardour of 
 uncontrollable purpose, and thirsted for 
 glorious achievement and universal know- 
 ledge. The imagination, which afterwards 
 struggled gloriously but perhaps vainly to 
 overmaster the stupendous clouds of German 
 philosophies, breaking them into huge masses, 
 and tinting them with heavenly hues, then 
 shone through the simple articles of Unitarian 
 faith, the graceful architecture of Hartley's 
 theory, and the well-compacted chain by 
 which Priestley and Edwards seemed to 
 bind all things in necessary connexion, as 
 through transparencies of thouglit ; and, 
 finding no opposition worthy of its activity 
 in this poor foreground of the mind, opened 
 for itself a bright succession of fairy visions, 
 which it sought to realise on earth. In its 
 light, oppression and force seemed to vanish 
 like the phantoms of a feverish dream ; 
 mankind were disj^osed in the picturesque 
 groups of universal brotherhood ; and, in 
 far distance, the ladder which Jacob saw in 
 solemn vision connected earth with heaven, 
 "and the angels of God were ascending anil 
 descending upon it." Lamb had no sympatliy 
 with these radiant hopes, except as they were 
 ])art of his friend. He clung to the realities 
 of life ; to things nearest to him, which the 
 force of habit had made dear ; and caugiit 
 tremblingly hold of the past. He deliglited, 
 indeed, to hear Coleridge talk of the distant 
 and future ; to see the palm-trees wave, and 
 the pyi-amids tower in the long perspective 
 of his style ; and to catch the prophetic notes 
 of a universal harmony trembling in his 
 voice ; but the pleasure was only that of 
 admiration unalloyed by envy, and of the 
 generous pride of friendship. The tendency 
 of liis mind to detect the beautiful and good 
 in surrounding things, to nestle rather tlian 
 to roam, was cherislied by all the circum- 
 
10 
 
 PARENTAGE, SCHOOL-DATS, AND YOUTH. 
 
 stances ot his boyish days. He had become 
 familiar with the vestiges of antiquity, both 
 in his school and in his home of the Temple ; 
 and these became dear to him in his serious 
 and affectionate childhood. But, perhaps, 
 more even than those external associations, 
 the situation of his parents, as it was elevated 
 and graced by their character, moulded his 
 young thoughts to the holy habit of a liberal 
 obedience, and unaspiring self-respect, which 
 led i-ather to the embellishment of what was 
 near than to the creation of visionary forms. 
 He saw at home the daily beauty of a cheerful 
 submission to a state bordering on the servile ; 
 he looked upward to his father's master, and 
 the old Benchers who walked with him on 
 the stately terrace, with a modest erectness 
 of mind ; and he saw in his own humble 
 home how well the decencies of life could be 
 maintained on slender means, by the exercise 
 of generous principle. Another circumstance, 
 akin to these, tended also to impart a tinge of 
 venerableness to his early musings. His 
 maternal grandmother was for many years 
 housekeeper in the old and wealthy family of 
 the Plumers of Hertfordshire, by whom she 
 was held in true esteem; and his visits to their 
 ancient mansion, where he had the free range 
 of every apartment, gallery and terraced-walk, 
 gave him "a peep at the contrasting accidents 
 of a great fortune," and an alliance with that 
 gentility of soul, which to appreciate, is to 
 share. He has beautifully recorded his own 
 recollections of this place in the essay entitled 
 
 " Blakesmoor in H shire," in which he 
 
 modestly vindicates his claim to partake in 
 the associations of ancestry not his own, and 
 shows the true value of high lineage by 
 detecting the spirit of nobleness whicli 
 breathes around it, for the enkindling of 
 generous affections, not only in those who 
 may boast of its possession, but in all who 
 can feel its influences. 
 
 While the bias of the minds of Coleridge 
 and Lamb thus essentially ditlered, it is 
 singular that their opinions on religion, and 
 on those philosophical queatious which border 
 on religious belief, and receive their colour 
 from it, agi'eed, although probably derived 
 from various sources. Both were Unitarians, 
 ardent admirers of the writings and character 
 of Dr. Priestley, and both believers in neces- 
 sity, according to Priestley's exposition, and 
 in the iutereuce which he drew from that 
 
 doctrine respecting moral responsibility, and 
 the ultimate destiny of the human race. The 
 adoption of this creed arose in Lamb from 
 the accident of education ; he was brought 
 up to receive and love it ; and attended, 
 when circumstances permitted, at the chapel 
 at Hackney, of which Mr. Belsham, after- 
 wards of Essex Street, was then the minister. 
 It is remarkable that another of Lamb's most 
 intimate friends, in whose conversation, next 
 to that of Coleridge, he most delighted, Mr. 
 Hazlitt, with whom he became acquainted 
 at a subsequent time, and who came from a 
 distant part of the country, was educated 
 in the same faith. With Coleridge, whose 
 early impressions were derived from the 
 rites and services of the Church of England, 
 Uuitarianism was the result of a strong 
 conviction ; so strong, that with all the 
 ardour of a convert, he sought to win prose- 
 lytes to his chosen creed, and purposed to 
 spend his days m preachuig it. Neither of 
 these young men, however, long continued to 
 profess it. Lamb, in his maturer life, rarely 
 alluded to matters of religious doctrine ; and 
 when he did so, evinced no sympathy with 
 the professors of his once-loved creed. 
 Hazlitt wrote to his father, who was a 
 Unitarian minister at Wem, with honouring 
 affection ; and ot his dissenting associates 
 with respect, but he had obviously ceased to 
 think or feel with them ; and Coleridge'^8 
 Eemains indicate, what was well known to 
 all who enjoyed the privilege of his conver- 
 sation, that he not only reverted to a belief 
 in the Trinitarian mysteries, but that he waa 
 accustomed to express as much distaste for 
 Unitarianism, and for the spirit of its more 
 active advocates, as the benignity of his 
 nature would allow him to feel for any 
 human opinion honestly cherished. Perhaps 
 this solitary approach to intolerance in the 
 universality of Coleridge's mind arose from 
 the disapproval with which he might justly 
 regard his own pride of understanding, as 
 excited in defence of the doctrines he had 
 adopted. To him there w;is much of devo- 
 tional thought to be violated, many rever- 
 ential a.ssociations, intertwined with the 
 moral being, to be rent away in the struggle 
 of the intellect to grasp the doctrines which 
 were alien to its nurture. But to L:imb 
 these formed the simple ci'eed of his child- 
 hood ; and slender and bai-reu as they seem. 
 
to those who are united in religious sympathy 
 with the great body of their fellow-country- 
 men, they sufficed for affections which had 
 so strong a tendency to find out resting-places 
 for themselves as his. Those who only knew 
 him in his latter days, and who feel that if 
 ever the spirit of Christianity breathed 
 through a human life, it breathed in his, will, 
 nevertheless, trace with surprise the extra- 
 ordinary vividness of impressions directly 
 religious, and the self-jealousy with which 
 he watched the cares and distractions of the 
 world, which might efface them, in his first 
 letters. If in a life of ungenial toil, diversified 
 with frequent sorrow, the train of these 
 solemn meditations was broken ; if he was 
 led, in the distractions and labours of his 
 course, to cleave more closely to surrounding 
 objects than those early aspii'ations promised ; 
 if, in his cravings after immediate sympathy, 
 he rather sought to perpetuate the social 
 circle which he charmed, than to exjjatiate 
 in scenes of untried being ; his pious feelings 
 were only diverted, not destroyed. The 
 stream glided still, the under current of 
 thought sometimes breaking out in sallies 
 which strangers did not understand, but 
 always feeding and nourishing the most 
 exquisite sweetness of disposition, and the 
 most unobtnisive proofs of self-denying 
 love. 
 
 While Lamb was enjoying habits of the 
 closest intimacy with Coleridge in London, 
 he was introduced by him to a young poet 
 whose name has often been associated with 
 his — Charles Lloyd — ^the son of a wealthy 
 banker at Birmingham, who had recently 
 cast off the trammels of the Society of Friends, 
 and, smitten with the love of poetry, had 
 become a student at the University of Cam- 
 bridge. There he had been attracted to 
 Coleridge by the fascination of his discourse ; 
 and having been admitted to his regard, was 
 introduced by him to Lamb. Lloyd was 
 endeared both to Lamb and Coleridge by a 
 very amiable disposition and a pensive cast 
 of thought ; but his intellect bore litt/le 
 resemblance to that of either. He wrote, 
 indeed, ple;ising verses and with gi-eat facility, 
 — a facility fatal to excellence ; but his mind 
 was chiefiy remarkable for the fine power of ■ 
 analysis which distinguishes his " London." j 
 and other of his later compositions. In this j 
 power of discriminating and distinguishing . 
 
 — carried to a pitch almost of painfulness^ 
 Lloyd has scarcely been equalled ; and his 
 poems, though rugged in point of versification, 
 will be found bj' those who will read them 
 with the calm attention they require, replete 
 with critical and moral suggestions of the 
 highest value. He and Coleridge were 
 devoted wholly to literary pursuits ; while 
 Lamb's days were given to accounts, and 
 only at snatches of time was he able to 
 cultivate the faculty of which the society 
 of Coleridge had made him imjierfectly 
 conscious. 
 
 Lamb's first compositions were in verse — • 
 produced slowly, at long intervals, and with 
 self-distrust which the encouragements of 
 Coleridge could not subdue. With the 
 exception of a sonnet to Mrs. Siddons, whose 
 acting, especially in the character of Lady 
 Randolph, had made a deep impression upon 
 him, they were exclusively personal. The 
 longest and most elaborate is that beautiful 
 piece of blank verse entitled " The Gran- 
 dame," in which he so affectionately celebrates 
 the virtues of the " antique world " of the 
 aged housekeeper of Mr. Plumer. A youthful 
 passion, which lasted only a few months, and 
 which he afterwards attempted to regard 
 lightly as a folly past, inspired a few sonnets 
 of very delicate feeling and exquisite music. 
 On the death of his parents, he felt himself 
 called upon by duty to repay to his sister 
 the solicitude with which she had watched 
 over his infancy ; — and well indeed he per- 
 formed it ! To her, from the age of twenty- 
 one, he devoted his existence ; — seeking 
 thenceforth no connexion which could inter- 
 fere with her supremacy in his aflections, or 
 impair his ability to sustain and to comfoii; 
 her. 
 
 CHAPTER 11. 
 
 [1796.] 
 
 LETTERS TO COLERIDGE, 
 
 In the year 1 796, Coleridge, having married, 
 and x-eliuquished his splendid dream of emi- 
 gration, was resident at Bristol ; and Lamb, 
 who had quitted the Temple, and lived with 
 his father, then sinking into dotage, felt his 
 absence from London bitterly, and sought a 
 correspondence with him as, almost, his only 
 
12 
 
 LETTERS TO COLERIDaE. 
 
 comfort. "In your absence," he writes, in 
 one of the earliest of his letters,* " I 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 
 fervours are confmed, 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." And again, 
 a few days after : " You are the only corre- 
 spondent, and, I might add, the only friend, 
 I have in the world. I go no-where, and 
 have no acquaintance. Slow of speech, and 
 reserved of manners, no one seeks or cares 
 for my society, and I am left alone. Cole- 
 ridge, I devoutly wish that Fortune, which 
 has made sport witli you so long, may jjlay 
 one freak more, throw you into Loudon, or 
 some spot near it, and there snugify you for 
 life. Tis a selfish, but natural wish for me, 
 cast as I am ' on life's wide plain friendless.' " 
 These appeals, it may well be believed, were 
 not made in vain to one who delighted in the 
 lavish communication of the riches of his 
 own mind even to strangers ; but none of 
 the letters of Coleridge to Lamb have been 
 preserved. He had just published his 
 " Religious Musings," and the glittering 
 enthusiasm of its language excited Lamb's 
 ])ious feelings, almost to a degree of pain. 
 " I dare not," says he of this poem, " criticise 
 it. I like not to select any part where all 
 is excellent. I can only admire and thank 
 you for it, in the name of a lover of true 
 poetry — 
 
 ' Believe thou, O mj- soul, 
 Life is a vision shadowy of truth ; 
 Ami vice, and anguish, and the -vvorniy grave, 
 Shapes of a dream.' 
 
 I thank you for these lines in the name of a 
 necessarian." To Priestley, Lamb repeatedly 
 alludes as to the object of their common 
 admiration. " In reading your * Religious 
 Musings,' " says he, " I felt a transient supe- 
 riority over you : I have seen Priestley. I 
 love to see his name repeated in your 
 writings ; — I love and honour him almost 
 
 » These and other passajccs are extracted from letters 
 which arc either too personal or not sullicieatly iuterchling 
 for entire publication. 
 
 profanely."* The same fervour glows in 
 the sectarian piety of the following letter 
 addressed to Coleridge, when fascinated with 
 the idea of a cottage life. 
 
 TO MR. COLERIDGE. 
 
 "Oct. 21th, 1706. 
 
 " Coleridge, I feel myself much your debtor 
 for that spirit of confidence and friendship 
 which dictated your last letter. ISIay your 
 soul find peace at last in your cottage life ! 
 I only wish you were hut settled. Do con- 
 tinue to write to me. I read your letters 
 with my sister, and they give us both abund- 
 ance of delight. Especially they pleiuse us 
 two, when you talk in a religious strain, — 
 not but we are offended occasionally with a 
 certain freedom of expression, a certain air 
 of mysticism, more consonant to the conceits 
 of pagan philosophy, than consistent with 
 the humility of genuine piety. To instance 
 now in your last letter — you say, ' it is by 
 the press, that God hath given finite spirits 
 both evil and good (I suppose you mean 
 simply bad men and good men), a portion as 
 it were of His Omnipresence ! ' Now, high 
 as the human intellect comparatively will 
 soar, and wide as its influence, malign or 
 salutary, can extend, is there not, Coleridge, 
 a distance between the Divine Mind and it, 
 which makes such language blasphemy ? 
 Again, in your first fine consolatory epistle 
 you say, 'you are a temporary sharer in 
 human misery, that you may be an eternal 
 partaker of the Divine Nature.' What more 
 than this do those men say, who are for 
 exalting the man Christ Jesus into the 
 second person ot an unknown Trinity, — men^ 
 whom you or I scruple not to call idolaters ? 
 ]\Lan, full of imperfections, at best, and sub- 
 ject to wants which momentarily remind 
 him of dependence ; man, a weak and igno- 
 rant being, ' servile ' from his birth ' to all 
 the skiey influences,' with eyes sonietime.1 
 open to discern the riglit path, but a head 
 generally too dizzy to pursue it ; man, in the 
 pride of s}>eculation, foi'getting his nature, 
 
 * He probably refers to the following lines in the 
 Religious Musings: — 
 
 So I'riostley, their patriot, and snint, and sage, 
 llim, full of years, iVom his loved native land, 
 Statesmen blood-stained, and pi'iests idoli*rous. 
 Drove with vain hate. Calm, pitying, he rcturn'd, 
 And mused expectant on those pi-oaiLsed years ! 
 
LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 
 
 13 
 
 and hailing in himself the future God, must 
 make the angels laugh. Be not angry with 
 me, Coleridge ; I wish not to cavil ; I know 
 I cannot instruct you ; I only wish to remind 
 you of that humility which best bccometh 
 the Christian character. God, in the New 
 Testament {our best guide,) is rejjresented to 
 us in the kind, condescending, amiable, 
 familiar light of a parent : and in my poor 
 mind 'tis best for us so to consider of him, 
 as our heavenly father, and our best friend, 
 without indulging too bold conceptions of 
 his nature. Let us learn to think humbly 
 of ourselves, and rejoice in the appellation 
 of ' dear children,' ' brethren,' and ' co-lif irs 
 with Christ of the promises,' seeking to know 
 no further. 
 
 " I am not insensible, indeed I am not, of 
 the value of that first letter of yours, and I 
 shall find reason to thank you for it again 
 and again long after that blemish in it is 
 forgotten. It will be a fine lesson of comfort 
 to lis, whenever we read it ; and read it we 
 often shall, Mary and I. 
 
 " Accept our loves and best kind wishes 
 for the welfare of yourself and wife and little 
 one. Nor let me forget to wish you joy on 
 your birth -day, so lately past ; I thought you 
 had been older. My kind thanks and remem- 
 brances to Lloyd. 
 
 " God love us all, and may He continue to 
 be the father and the friend of the whole 
 human race ! 
 
 " Sunday Evening." 
 
 "C.Lamb." 
 
 The next letter, commencing in a similar 
 strain, diverges to literary topics, and espe- 
 cially alludes to " Walton's Angler," — a book 
 which Lamb always loved as it were a living 
 friend. 
 
 TO MR. COLERIDGE. 
 
 "Oct. 28th, 1796. 
 
 "My dear friend, I am not ignorant that 
 to be a partaker of the Divine Natui-e is a 
 phrase to be met with in Scripture : I am 
 only apprehensive, lest we in these lattelr 
 days, tinctured (some of us perhaps pretty 
 deeply) with mystical notions and the pritle 
 of metaphysics, might be apt to affix to such 
 phrases a meaning, which the jirimitive users 
 of them, the simple fisher of Galilee for 
 instance, never intended to convey. With 
 that other part of your apology I am not 
 
 quite so well satisfied. You seem to me to 
 have been straining your comparing faculties 
 to bring together things infinitely distant and 
 unlike ; the feeble narrow-sphered operations 
 of the human intellect ; and the everywhere 
 difi'used mind of Deity, the peerless wisdom 
 of Jehovah. Even the expression appears to 
 me inaccurate — portion of omnipresence — 
 onniijjresence is an attribute whose very 
 essence is unlimitedness. How can omni- 
 presence be affirmed of anything in part l 
 But enough of this spirit of disputatiousness. 
 Ijet us attend to the proper business of human 
 life, and talk a little together respecting our 
 domestic concerns. Do you conthuie to make 
 me acquainted with what you are doing, and 
 how soon you are likely to be settled once 
 for all. 
 
 " Have you seen Bowles's new poem on 
 ' Hope ] ' What character does it bear ? Has 
 he exhausted his stores of tender plaintive- 
 ness 1 or is he the same in this last as in all 
 his former pieces 1 The duties of the day call 
 nie off" from this pleasant intercourse witli my 
 friend — so for the present adieu. Now for 
 the truant borrowing of a few minutes fi-om 
 business. Have you met with a new poem 
 called the ' Pursuits of Literature ? ' from 
 the extracts in the ' British Review' I judge 
 it to be a very humorous thing, in particidar 
 I remember what I thought a very hapjn' 
 character of Dr. Darwin's poetry. Among all 
 your quaint readings did you ever light upon 
 ' Walton's Complete Angler '< ' I asked you 
 the question once before ; it breathes the 
 very spirit of innocence, purity, and sim])licity 
 of heart; there are many choice old verses inter- 
 spersed in it ; it would sweeten a man's temper 
 at any time to read it ; it would Christianise 
 every discordant angry passion ; pray make 
 yourself acquainted with it. Have you made it 
 up with Southeyyet 1 Surely one of you two 
 must have been a very silly fellow, and the 
 other not much better, to fall out like boarding 
 school misses ; kiss, shake hands, and make 
 it up. 
 
 "When will he be delivered of his new 
 epic 1 Madoc, I think, is to be the name of 
 it, though that is a name not familiar to my 
 ears. What progress do you make hi your 
 hynms ? What * Eeview ' are you connected 
 with 1 if with any, Avhy do you delay to notice 
 V/liite's book ? You are justly offended at 
 its profaneuess, but surely you have under- 
 
14 
 
 LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 
 
 valued ita wit, or you would have been more 
 loud in its praises. Do not you think that 
 in Slender'a death and madness there is most 
 exquisite humour, mingled with tenderness, 
 that is irresistible, truly Shakspearian ? Be 
 more full in your mention of it. Poor fellow, 
 he has (very undeservedly) lost by it, nor do 
 I see that it is likely ever to reimburse him 
 the charge of printing, &c. Give it a lift, if 
 you can. I am just now wondering whether 
 3'ou will ever come to town again, Coleridge ; 
 'tis among the things I dare not hope, but 
 can't help wishing. For myself, I can live 
 in the midst of town luxury and supei"fluity, 
 and not long for them, and I can't see why 
 your children might not hereafter do the 
 same. Remember, you are not in Ai-cadia, 
 when you are in the west of England, and 
 they may catch infection from the world 
 without visiting the metropolis. But you 
 seem to have set your heart upon this same 
 cottage plan, and God prosper you in the 
 experiment ! I am at a loss for more to 
 write about, so 'tis as well that I am arrived 
 at the bottom of my paper. 
 
 " God love you, Coleridge ! — our best loves 
 and tenderest wishes await on you, your 
 Sara, and your little one. « ^ -r „ 
 
 Having been encouraged by Coleridge to 
 entertain the thought of publishing his 
 verses, he submitted the poem called " Tlie 
 Grandame " to his friend, with the following 
 letter : — 
 
 TO MR. COLERIDGE. 
 
 " Monday night. 
 " Unfurnished at present with any sheet- 
 filling subject, I shall continue my letter 
 gradually and journal-wise. My second 
 thoughts entirely coincide with your com- 
 ments on 'Joan of Arc,' and I can only 
 wonder at my childish judgment whicli over- 
 looked the 1st book and could prefer the 9th : 
 not that I was insensible to the soberer 
 beauties of the former, but the latter caught 
 me with its glare of magic, — tlie former, how- 
 ever, left a more pleasing general recollection 
 in my mind. Let mo add, the Ist book w;i3 
 the favourite of my sister — and 1 now, with 
 Joan, often ' think on Doniremi and the fields 
 of Arc' I must not pass over witliout acknow- 
 ledging my o])ligatious to your full and satis- 
 factory account of personifications. I have 
 
 read it again and again, and it will be a guide 
 to ray future taste. Perhaps I had estimated 
 Southey's merits too much by number, weight, 
 and measure. I now agree completely and 
 entirely in your opinion of the genius of 
 Southey. Your o^vn image of melancholy is 
 illustrative of what you teach, and in itself 
 masterly. I conjecture it is * disbranched ' 
 from one of your embryo ' hymns.' TSTien 
 they are mature of birth (were I you) I 
 should print 'em in one separate volume, 
 with 'Religious Musings,' and your part of 
 the ' Joan of Arc' Birds of the same soaring 
 wing should hold on their flight in company. 
 Once for all (and by renewing the subject 
 you will only renew in me the condemnation 
 of Tantalus), I hope to be able to pay you a 
 visit (if you are then at Bristol) some time in 
 the latter end of August or beginning of 
 September, for a week or fortnight — before 
 that time, office business puts an absolute 
 veto on my coming. 
 
 ' And if a sigh that speaks regret of happier times 
 appear, 
 A glimps-e of joy that we have met shall shine and dry 
 the tear.' 
 
 Of the blank verses I spoke of, the following 
 lines are the only tolerably complete ones T 
 have writ out of not more than one hundred 
 and fifty. That I get on so slowly you may 
 fairly impute to want of practice in com|)o- 
 sition, when I declare to you that (the few 
 verses which you have seen excepted) I have 
 not wi'it fifty lines since I left school. It 
 may not be amiss to remark that my grand- 
 mother (on whom the verses are written) 
 lived housekeeper in a family the fifty or 
 sixty last years of her life — that she was a 
 woman of exemplai'y piety and goodness — 
 and for many years before her deatli was 
 terribly aflHicted with a cancer in her breast 
 which she bore with true Christian patience. 
 You may think that I have not kept enough 
 apart the ideas of her lieavenly^aml her 
 eai'thly master, but recollect I have tlesigu- 
 edly given in to her own way of feeling — and 
 if she liad a failing, 'twas that she respected 
 her master's family too mucli, not reverenced 
 her Maker too little. The lines begin imi)er- 
 fectly, 513 I may i)robahly connect 'em if I 
 finish at all, — and if I do. Biggs shall print 
 'em, in a more economical wjiy than you 
 yours, for (sonnets and all) they won't 
 
LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 
 
 15 
 
 make a thousand lines as I propose com- 
 pleting 'em, and the substance must be 
 wire-drawn." 
 
 The following letter, written at intervals, 
 will give an insight into Lamb's spirit at this 
 time, in its lighter and gayer moods. It 
 would seem tliat liis acquaintance with 
 the old English dramatists had just com- 
 menced with Beaumont aud Fletcher, and 
 Massiuger : — 
 
 TO ME, COLERIDGE. 
 
 " Tuesday evening. 
 "To your list of illustrative personifica- 
 tions, into wliich a fine imagination enters, I 
 will take leave to add the following from 
 Beaumont and Fletcher's ' Wife for a Month ;' 
 'tis the conckision of a description of a sea- 
 fight ; — ' The game of death was never played 
 so nobly ; the meagi-e thief grew wanton in 
 his mischiefs, aud his shrunk hollow eyes 
 smiled on his ruins.' There is fancy in these 
 of a lower order, from ' Bonduca ; ' — * Then 
 did I see these valiant men of Britain, like 
 boding owls creep into tods of i^^, aud hoot 
 their fears to one another nightly.' Not that 
 it is a personification ; only it just caught 
 my eye in a little extract book I keep, which 
 is full of quotations from B. and F. in parti- 
 cular, in which authors I can't help thinking 
 there is a greater richness of poetical fancy 
 than in any one, Shakspeare excepted. Ai-e 
 you acquainted with Massinger ? At a 
 hazard I will trouble you with a passage 
 from a play of his called ' A Very Woman.' 
 The lines are spoken by a lover (disguised) to 
 his fiiithless mistress. You will remark the 
 fine effect of the double endings. You will 
 by yom* ear distinguish the lines, for I wi'ite 
 'em as prose. * Not far from where my father 
 lives, a lady, a neighbour by, blest with as 
 great a beauty as nature durst bestow with- 
 out undoing, dwelt, and most happily, as I 
 thought then, and blest the house a thousand 
 times she dwelt in. Tliis beauty, in the 
 blossom of my youth, when my first fire 
 knew no adulterate incense, nor I no way to 
 flatter but my fondness; in all the bravery 
 my friends could show me, in all the faith my 
 innocence could give me, in the best language 
 my true tongue could tell me, and all the 
 broken sighs my sick heart lend me, I sued 
 and served ; long did I serve this lady, long 
 
 was my travail, long my trade to win her ; 
 with all the duty of my soul I skrved her.' 
 ' Then she must love.' ' She did, but never 
 me : she could not love me ; she would not 
 love, she hated, — more, she scorned me ; and 
 in so poor and base a way abused Tne for all 
 my services, for all my bounties, so bold 
 neglects flung on me.' — ' What out of love, 
 and worthy love I gave her, (shame to her 
 most unworthy mind,) to fools, to girls, to 
 fiddlers and her boys she flung, all in disdain 
 of me.' One more passage strikes my eye 
 from B. and F.'s 'Palamon and Arcite." 
 One of 'em complains in prison : ' This is all 
 our world ; we shall know nothing here but 
 one another ; hear nothing but the clock 
 that tells us our woes ; the vine shall gi'ow, 
 but we shall never see it,' &c. — Is not the 
 last circumstance exquisite 1 I mean not to 
 lay myself open by saying they exceed 
 Milton, and perhaps Collins, in sublimity. 
 But don't you conceive all poets after Shaks- 
 peare yield to 'em in variety of genius ? 
 Massinger treads close on their heels ; but 
 you are most probably as well acquainted 
 with his writings as your humble servant. 
 My quotations, in that case, wdl only serve 
 to expose my barrenness of matter. Southey 
 in simplicity and tenderness, is excelled 
 decidedly only, I think, by Beaumont and F. 
 in his ' Maid's Tragedy,' and some parts of 
 ' Philaster ' in particular ; and elsewhere 
 occasionally ; and perhaps by Cowper in his 
 ' Crazy Kate,' and in parts of his translation ; 
 such as the speeches of Hecuba and Andro- 
 mache. I long to know your opinion of that 
 translation. The Odyssey especially is surely 
 very Homeric. What nobler than the appear- 
 ance of Phoebus at the beginning of the Iliad 
 — the lines ending with ' Dread sounding, 
 bounding on the silver bow ! ' 
 
 " I beg you wiU give me your opinion of 
 the translation ; it afforded me high pleasure. 
 As curious a specimen of ti'anslation as ever 
 fell into my hands, is a yovmg man's in our 
 ofllce, of a French novel. What in the 
 original was literally ' amiable delusions of 
 the fancy,' he proposed to render * the fair 
 frauds of the imagination.' I had much 
 trouble in licking the book into any meaning 
 at all. Yet did the knave clear fifty or sixty 
 pounds by subscription and selling the copy- 
 right. The book itself not a week's work ! 
 To-day's poition of my jotunahsing epistle 
 
16 
 
 LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 
 
 has been very dull and poverty-stricken. I 
 will here end." 
 
 " Tuesday night. 
 " I have been drinking egg-hot and smoking 
 Oronooko, (associated circumstances, which 
 ever forcibly recall to my mind our evenings 
 and nights at the Salutation,) my eyes and 
 brain are heavy and asleep, but my heart is 
 awake ; and if words came as ready as ideas, 
 and ideas as feelings, I could say ten hundred 
 kind things. Coleridge, you know not my 
 supreme happiness at having one on earth 
 (though counties separate us) whom I can 
 call a friend. Eemember you tliose tender 
 lines of Logan 1 — • 
 
 * Our broken friendships we deplore, 
 And loves of youth that are no more ; 
 No after friendships e'er can raise 
 Th' endearments of our early days. 
 And ne'er the heart such fondness prove, 
 As when we first began to love.' 
 
 " I am writing at random, and half-tipsy, 
 what you may not equally understand, as you 
 will be sober when you read it ; but imj 
 sober and my half-tipsy hours you are alike 
 a sharer in. Good night. 
 
 * Then up rose our bard, like a prophet in drink, 
 Craigdoroch, thou'lt soar when creation shall sink.' 
 
 Burns." 
 
 " Thursday. 
 
 " I am now in high hopes to be able to 
 visit you, if perfectly convenient on your 
 part, by the end of next month — perhaps the 
 last week or fortnight in July. A change of 
 scene and a change of faces would do me 
 good, even if that scene were not to be 
 Bristol, and those faces Coleridge's and his 
 friends' ! In the words of Terence, a little 
 altered, * Ta;det me hujus quotidiaui mundi' 
 I am heartily sick of the every-day scenes of 
 life. I shall half wish you unmarried (don't 
 show this to Mrs. C.) for one evening only, 
 to have the pleasure of smoking with you, 
 and drhiking egg-hot in some little smoky 
 room in a pot-house, for I know not yet how 
 I shall like you in a decent room, and looking 
 quite happy. My best lovo and respects to 
 Sara notwithstanding. 
 
 " Yours sincerely, 
 
 "Charles Lamb." 
 
 A proposal by Coleridge to print Lamb's 
 poems with a new edition of his own (au 
 jissociation in whicli Lloyd was ultimately 
 included) occa-sioned reciprocal communica- 
 tions of each other's verses, and many ques- 
 tions of small alterations suggested and 
 argued on both sides. I have thought it 
 better to omit much of this verbal criticism, 
 which, not very interesting in itself, is un- 
 intelligible without a contemporary reference 
 to the poems which are its subject. The next 
 letter was written on hearing of Coleridge 
 being afflicted with a painful disease. 
 
 TO MR. COLERIDGE. 
 
 "Nov. 8th, 1796. 
 
 "My brother, my friend, — I am distrest 
 for you, beUeve me I am ; not so much for 
 your painful, troublesome complaint, which, 
 I trust, is only for a time, as for those 
 anxieties which brought it on, and perhaps 
 even now may be nui*sing its malignity. Tell 
 me, dearest of my friends, is your mind at 
 peace, or has anything, yet unknown to me, 
 happened to give you fresh disquiet, and 
 steal from you all the pleasant di-eams of 
 future rest ? Are you still (I fear you are) 
 far from being comfortably settled 1 Would 
 to God it were in my power to contribute 
 towards the bringing of you into the haven 
 whei-e you would be I But you are too well 
 skilled in the philosophy of consolation to 
 need my humble tribute of advice ; in pain, 
 and in sickness, and in all manner of dis- 
 appointments, I trust you have that within 
 you which shall speak peace to your mind. 
 Make it, I entreat you, one of your puny 
 comforts, that I feel for you, and share all 
 your griefs with you. I feel as if I were 
 troubling you about little things ; now I am 
 going to resume the subject of our last two 
 letters, but it may divert us both from 
 impleasanter feelings to make s\ich mattera, 
 in a manner, of importance. Without further 
 apology, then, it was not that I did not relish, 
 that I did not in my heart thank you for 
 those little pictures of your feelings which 
 you lately sent nie, if I neglected to mention 
 them. You may remomlier you had said 
 much the same things before to rao on the 
 same subject in a former letter, and I con- 
 sidered tliose last vei-scs as only the identical 
 thoughts better clothed ; either way (in pi'ose 
 
LETTERS TO COLEltlDGE. 
 
 17 
 
 or veree) such poetry must be welcome to 
 me. I love them as I love the Confessions of 
 Rousseau, and for the same reason ; the same 
 frankness, the same openness of heart, the 
 same disclosure of all the most hidden and 
 delicate affections of the mind : they make 
 me proud to be thus esteemed worthy of the 
 place of friend-confessor, brother-confessor, to 
 a man like Coleridge. This last is, I acknow- 
 ledge, language too high for friend.ship ; but 
 it is also, I declare, too sincere for flattery. 
 Now, to put on stilts, and talk magnificently 
 about trifles. 1 condescend, then, to your 
 counsel, Coleridge, and allow my fii'st sonnet 
 (sick to death am I to make mention of 
 my sonnets, and I blush to be so taken up 
 with them, indeed I do) ; I allow it to 
 run thus, ^ Fairy Land^ &c. &c., as I last 
 wrote it. 
 
 " The fragments I now send you, I want 
 printed to get rid of 'em ; for, while they 
 stick burr-like to my memory, they tempt 
 me to go on with the idle trade of versifying, 
 which I long, most sincerely I speak it, I long 
 to leave off, for it is unprofitable to my soul ; 
 I feel it is ; and these questions about words, 
 and debates about alterations, take me off, 1 
 am conscious, from the pi-operer business of 
 my life. Take my sonnets, once for all, and 
 do not propose any re-amendments, or men- 
 tion them again in any shape to me, I chai'ge 
 you. I blush that my mind can consider 
 them as things of any worth. And, pray, 
 admit or reject these fragments as you like 
 or dislike them, without ceremony. Call 'em 
 sketches, fragments, or what you will, and 
 do not entitle any of my things love sonnets, 
 18 I told you to call 'em ; 'twill only make 
 tne look little in my own eyes ; for it is a 
 passion of which I retain nothing ; 'twas a 
 weakness, concerning which I may say, in 
 the words of Petrarch (whose life is now 
 apen before me), ' if it drew me out of some 
 vices, it also prevented the gi'owth of many 
 virtues, filling me with the love of the 
 creature rather than the Creator, which is 
 the death of the soul.' Thank God, the folly 
 lias left me for ever ; not even a review of 
 my love verses renews one wayward wish in 
 ne ; and if I am at all solicitous to trim 'em 
 )ut in their best apparel, it is because they 
 ire to make their appearance in good com- 
 mny. Now to ray fragments. Lest you 
 lave lost my Grandame, she shall be one, 
 
 'Tis among the few verses I ever wrote, that 
 to Mary is another, which profit me in the 
 recollection. God love her, and may we two 
 never love each other less ! 
 
 " These, Coleridge, are the few sketches I 
 have thought worth preserving ; how will 
 they relish thus detached ? Will you reject 
 all or any of them ? They are thine, do 
 whatsoever thou listest with them. My eyes 
 ache with writing long and late, and I wax 
 wondrous sleepy ; God bless you and yours, 
 me and mine ! Good night. 
 
 " C. Lamb. 
 
 " I will keep my eyes open reluctantly a 
 minute longer to tell you, that I love you for 
 tliose simple, tender, heart-flowing lines with 
 which you conclude your last, and in my eyes 
 best, sonnet (so you call 'em), 
 
 ' So, for the mother's sake, the child was dear, 
 And dearer was the mother for the child.' 
 
 Cultivate simplicity, Coleridge ; or rather, 1 
 should say, banish elaborateness ; for simpli- 
 city springs spontaneous from the heart, and 
 carries into day-light with it its own modest 
 buds, and genuine, sweet, and clear flowers 
 of expression, I allow no hot-beds in the 
 gardens of Parnassus. 1 am unwilling to go 
 to bed, and leave my sheet imfiUed (a good 
 piece of night-work for an idle body like me), 
 so will finish with begging you to send me 
 the earliest account of your complaint, its 
 progress, or (as I hope to God you will be 
 able to send me) the tale of your recovery, or 
 at least amendment. My tenderest remem- 
 brances to your Sara. 
 
 " Once more good night," 
 
 A wish to dedicate his portion of the 
 volume to his sister gave occasion to the 
 following touching letter : 
 
 TO MR. COLERIDGE, 
 
 "Nov, Mth, 179C. 
 
 " Coleridge, I love you for dedicating your 
 poetry to Bowles: Genius of the sacred 
 fountain of tears, it was he who led you 
 gently by the hand through all this valley of 
 weeping, showed you the dark green yew 
 trees, and the willow shades, where, by the 
 foil of waters, you might indulge an uncom- 
 
18 
 
 LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 
 
 plaining melancholy, a delicious regret for 
 the past, or weave fine visions of that awfal 
 future, 
 
 ' "WTien all the vanities of life's brief day 
 Oblivion's hurrying hand hath swept away, 
 And all its sorrows, at the awful blast 
 Of the archangel's trump, are but as shadows past.' 
 
 " I have another sort of dedication in ray 
 head for my few things, which I want to 
 know if you approve of, and can insert. I 
 mean to inscribe them to my sister. It will 
 be unexpected, and it will give her pleasure ; 
 or do you think it will look whimsical at all ? 
 as I have not spoke to her about it, I can 
 easily reject the idea. But there is a mono- 
 tony in the affections, which people living 
 together, or, as we do now, very frequently 
 seeing each other, are apt to give in to ; a 
 sort of indifi"erence in the expression of kind- 
 ness for each other, which demands that we 
 should sometimes caU to our aid the trickery 
 of surprise. Do you publish with Lloyd, or 
 without him 1 in either case my little portion 
 may come last, and after the fashion of orders 
 to a country coiTespondent, I will give direc- 
 tions how I should like to have 'em done. 
 The title-page to stand thus : — 
 
 POEMS, 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES LAMB, OF THE INDLA. HOUSE. 
 
 "Under this title the following motto, 
 which, for want of room, I put over leaf, and 
 desire you to insert, whether you like it or 
 no. May not a gentleman choose what arms, 
 mottoes, or armorial bearings the herald will 
 give him leave, without consulting his repub- 
 lican friend, who might advise none ? May 
 not a publican put up the sign of the 
 Saracen's Head, even though his midiscern- 
 ing neighbour should prefer, as more genteel, 
 the Cat and Gridiron ? 
 
 [Motto.] 
 
 • This beauty, in the blossom of my youth, 
 AVbcn my first fire knew no adulterate incense, 
 Nor I no way to flatter but my fondness, 
 In the best language my true tongue could toll me, 
 And all the broken sighs my sick heart lend me, 
 I Bucd and served. Long did I love this lady.' 
 
 Massinoer. 
 
 THE DEDICATION. 
 
 the pew followino poems, 
 
 cheatvrf.s op the pancy and the feelixo 
 
 IN life's more vacant hours, 
 
 produced, fob the most part, by 
 
 love and idleness, 
 
 ARE, 
 
 WITH ALL A brother's FONDNESS, 
 
 INSCRIBED TO 
 
 MARY ANNE LAMB, 
 
 THE author's BBST FRIEND AXB SISTER. 
 
 "This is the pomp and paraphernalia of 
 parting, with which I take my leave of a 
 passion which has reigned so royally (so long) 
 within me ; thus, with its trappings of 
 laureatship, I fling it oflf, pleased and satisfied 
 with myself that the weakness troubles me 
 no longer. I am wedded, Coleridge, to the 
 fortunes of my sister and my poor old father. 
 Oh ! my friend, I think sometimes, could I 
 recall the days that are past, which among 
 them should I choose 1 not those ' merrier 
 days,' not the 'pleasant days of hope,' not 
 ' those wanderings with a fair hair'd maid,' 
 which I have so often and so feelingly 
 regretted, but the days, Coleridge, of a 
 mother'' s fondness for her school-hoy. What 
 would I give to call her back to earth for one 
 day, on my knees to ask her pardon for all 
 those little asperities of temper which, from 
 time to time, have given her gentle spirit pain ; 
 and the day, my friend, I trust, will come ; 
 there will be ' time enough ' for kind ofiices 
 of love, if ' Heaven's eternal year ' be ours. 
 Hereafter, her meek spirit shall not reproach 
 me. Oh, my friend, cultivate the filial 
 feelings ! and let no man think himself 
 released from the kind ' charities ' of relation- 
 ship : these shall give him peace at the last ; 
 these are the best foundation for every species 
 of benevolence. I rejoice to hear, by certain 
 channels, that you, my friend, are reconciled 
 with all your relations. 'Tis the most kindly 
 and natural species of love, and we have all 
 the associated train of early feelings to secure 
 its strength and perpetuity. Send me an 
 account of your health ; indeed I am solicitous 
 about you. God love you and yours. 
 
 " C. Lamb." 
 
 The following, written about this time, 
 alludes to some desponding expression in a 
 
LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 
 
 19 
 
 letter which is lost, and which Coleridge had 
 combated. 
 
 TO MR. COLERIDGE. 
 
 "Dec. 10th, 1796. 
 " I had put my letter into the post rather 
 hastily, not expecting to have to acknowledge 
 another from yon so soon. This morning's 
 present has made me alive again : my last 
 night's epistle was childishly querulous ; but 
 you have put a little life into me, and I will 
 thank you for your remembrance of me, while 
 tny sense of it is yet warm ; for if I linger a 
 day or two I may use the same phrase of 
 acknowledgment, or similar, but the feeling 
 that dictates it now will be gone. I shall 
 3eud you a caput morticum, not a cor vioeiis. 
 riiy Watchman's, thy bellman's verses, I do 
 retort upon thee, thou libellous varlet, — why 
 you cried the hours yourself, and who made 
 you so proud ! But I submit, to show my 
 humility most implicitly to your dogmas. I 
 reject entirely the copy of verses you reject. 
 With regard to my leaving off versifying you 
 have said so many pretty things, so many 
 fine compliments, ingeniously decked out in 
 the garb of sincerity, and undoubtedly 
 springing from a present feeling somewhat 
 like sincerity, that you might melt the most 
 un-muse-ical soul, — did you not (now for a 
 Rowland compliment for your profusion of 
 Olivers), did you not in your very epistle, by 
 the many pretty fancies and profusion of 
 heai't displayed in it, dissuade and discourage 
 me from attempting anything after you. At 
 present I have not leisure to make verses, 
 nor anything approaching to a fondness for 
 the exercise. In the ignorant present time, 
 who can answer for the future man ? ' At 
 [overs' perjuries Jove laughs' — and poets 
 have sometimes a disingenuous way of for- 
 swearing their occupation. This though is 
 not my case. Publish your Burns when and 
 how you like, it will be new to me, — my 
 memory of it is very confused, and tainted 
 with unpleasant associations. Burns was the 
 god of my idolatry, as Bowles of yours. I 
 am jealous of your fraternising with Bowles, 
 when I think you relish him more than 
 Burns, or my old favourite, Cowper. But 
 you conciliate matters when you talk of the 
 ' divine chit-chat ' of the latter : by the 
 expression, I see you thoroughly relish him. 
 I love Mrs. Coleridge for her excuses an 
 
 hundredfold more dearly, than if she heaped 
 'line upon line,' out Hannah-ing Hannah 
 More ; and had rather hear you sing ' Did 
 a very little baby ' by your family fire-side, 
 than listen to you, when you were repeatinf 
 one of Bowles's sweetest sonnets, in your 
 sweet manner, while we two were indulfinof 
 sympathy, a solitary luxury, by the fire-side 
 at the Salutation. Yet have I no higher 
 ideas of heaven. Your company was one 
 'cordial in this melancholy vale' — the 
 remembrance of it is a blessing partly, and 
 partly a curse. When I can abstract myself 
 from things present, I can enjoy it with a 
 freshness of relish ; but it more constantly 
 operates to an unfavourable comparison witli 
 the uninterestmg converse I always and only 
 can partake in. Not a soul loves Bowles 
 here ; scarce one has heard of Burns ; few 
 but laugh at me for reading my Testament, 
 — they talk a language I understand not, I 
 conceal sentiments that would be a puzzle to 
 them. I can only converse with you by 
 letter, and with the dead in their books. 
 My sister, indeed, is all I can wish in a 
 companion ; but our spirits are alike poorly, 
 our reading and knowledge from the self- 
 same sources ; our communication with the 
 scenes of the world alike narrow ; never 
 having kept separate company, or any ' com- 
 pany ' together — never having read sepai-ate 
 books, and few books together — what know- 
 ledge have we to convey to each other ? In 
 our little range of duties and connexions, 
 how few sentiments can take place, without 
 friends, with few books, with a taste for 
 religion, rather than a strong religious habit ! 
 We need some support, some leading-strings 
 to cheer and direct us ; you talk very wisely, 
 and be not sparing oiyour advice. Continue 
 to remember us, and to show us you do 
 remember us : we will take as lively an 
 interest in what concerns you and yours. 
 All I can add to your happiness, will be 
 sympathy : you can add to mine niore ; you 
 can teach me wisdom. I am indeed an 
 unreasonable correspondent ; but I was un- 
 willing to let my last night's letter go off 
 without this qualifier : you will perceive by 
 this my mind is easier, and jou will rejoice, 
 I do not expect or wish you to write, till you 
 are moved ; and, of com-se, shall not, tdl you 
 announce to me that event, think of writing 
 myself. Love to Mrs. Coleridge and David 
 
 C 2 
 
20 
 
 LETTERS TO COLERIDGK 
 
 Hartley, and my kind remembrance to Lloyd 
 if he is with you. " C. Lamb. 
 
 " 1 will get * Nature and Art,' — have not 
 seen it yet — nor any of Jeremy Taylor's 
 works." 
 
 CHAPTER ni. 
 
 [1797.] 
 
 LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 
 
 The volume which was to combine the 
 early poetry of the three friends was not 
 completed in the year 1796, and proceeded 
 slowly through the press in the following 
 year ; Lamb occasionally submitting an 
 additional sonnet, or correction of one already 
 sent, to the judgment of Coleridge, and filling 
 long letters with minute suggestions on 
 Coleridge's share of the work, and high, but 
 honest expressions of praise of particular 
 images and thoughts. The eulogy is only 
 interesting as indicative of the reverential 
 feeling with which Lamb regarded the genius 
 of Coleridge — but one or two specimens of 
 the gentle rebuke which he ventured on, 
 when the gorgeousness of Coleridge's lan- 
 guage seemed to oppress hi.«i sense, are 
 worthy of preservation. Ihe following 
 relates to a line in the noble Ode on the 
 Departing Year, in which Coleridge had 
 written of 
 
 " Th' ethereal multitude, 
 Whose purple locks with suow-white glories shone." 
 
 "'Purple locks, and snow-white glories ;' 
 — these are things the muse talks about 
 when, to borrow H. Walpole's witty phrase, 
 she is not finely-frenzied, only a little light- 
 headed, that's all—' Purple locks ! ' They 
 may manage things differently in fairyland ; 
 but your ' golden tresses ' are to my fancy." 
 
 On this remonstrance Coleridge changed 
 the " purple " into " golden," defending his 
 original epithet ; and Lamb thus gave up 
 the point : — 
 
 "'Golden locks and snow-white glories' 
 are as incongruous aa your former ; and if 
 the great Italian painters, of whom my friend 
 knows about aa much as the man in the 
 moon — if these gi-eat gentlemen be on your 
 side, I see no harm in your retaining the 
 purple. The glories that / have observed 
 to encircle the heads of saints and madonnas 
 
 in those old paintings, have been mostly of 
 a dirty drab-coloured yellow — a dull gam- 
 bogium. Keep your old line ; it will excite 
 a confused kind of pleasurable idea in the 
 reader's mind, not clear enough to be called 
 a conception, nor just enough, I think, to 
 reduce to painting. It is a rich line, you 
 say ; and riches hide a many faults." And 
 the word " wreathed " was ultimately 
 adopted, in.stead of purple or golden : but 
 the snow-white glories remain. 
 
 Not satisfied with the dedication of his 
 portion of the volume to his sister, and the 
 sonnet which had been sent to the press. 
 Lamb urged on Coleridge the insertion of 
 another, which seems to have been ultimately 
 withheld as too poor in poetical merit for 
 publication. The rejected sonnet, and the 
 i-eferences made to it by the writer, have 
 an interest now beyond what mere fancy can 
 give. After various critical remarks on an 
 ode of Coleridge, he thus introduced the 
 subject : — 
 
 " If the fraternal sentiment conveyed in 
 the following lines will atone for the total 
 want of anything like merit or genius in it, 
 I desire you will print it next after my other 
 sonnet to my sister. 
 
 ' Friend of my earliest years and childish days. 
 My joys, my sorrows, thou with me hast shared. 
 Companion dear ; and we alike have fared. 
 Poor pilgrims we, through life's unequal ways. 
 It were unwisely done, should we refuse 
 To cheer our path, as fcatly as we may, — 
 Our lonely path to cheer, as travellers use, 
 With merry song, quaint tale, or roundelay. 
 And we will sometimes talk past troubles o'er, 
 Of mercies shown, and all our sickness heal'd 
 And in his judgments God remembering love : 
 And we will learn to praise God evermore. 
 For those " glad tidings of great joy," revcal'd 
 By that sooth messenger, sent from above.' — 179T. 
 
 "This has been a sad long letter of 
 business, with no room in it for what honest 
 P>unyan terms heart-work. I have jiust room 
 left to congratulate you on your removal to 
 Stowey ; to wish success to all your projects ; 
 to ' bid fair peace ' be to that house ; to send 
 my love and best wishes, breathed wahnily, 
 after your dear Sara, ami her little David 
 Hartley. If Lloyd be with you, bid hira 
 write to me : I feel to whom I am obliged 
 primarily, for two very friendly lettei-s I 
 have received already from him. A dainty 
 
LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 
 
 21 
 
 weet book that * Nature and Art ' is. — T am 
 d, present re-re-reading Pi'iestley's Examin- 
 ation of the Scotch Doctors : how the rogue 
 trings 'era up ! three together ! You have 
 10 doubt read that clear, strong, humourous, 
 uost entertaining piece of reasoning ? If 
 lot, procure it, and be exquisitely amused. 
 [ wish I could get more of Priestley's works. 
 IJan you recommend me to any more books, 
 iasy of access, such as cii'culating shops 
 ifTord ! God bless you and yours. 
 " Monday morning, at office." 
 
 " Poor Mary is very unwell with a sore 
 .hroat and n slight species of scarlet fever. 
 jod bless her too." 
 
 He recurs to the subject in his next letter, 
 yhich is also interesting, as m-ging Coleridge 
 ,0 attempt some great poem worthy of his 
 jenius. 
 
 TO MR. COLERIDGE. 
 
 "Jan. 10th, 1797. 
 " I need not repeat my wishes to have my 
 ittle sonnets printed verbatim my last way. 
 [n particular, I fear lest you should prefer 
 arinting my first sonnet, as you have done 
 nore than once, ' did the wand of Merlin 
 wave,' it looks so like Mr. Merlin, the inge- | 
 aious successor of the immortal Merlin, now . 
 [iving in good health and spirits, and flourish- ^ 
 ing in magical reputation, in Oxford-street ; 
 md, on my life, one half who read it would ' 
 understand it so. Do put 'em forth finally, ' 
 as I have, in various letters, settled it ; for | 
 first a man's self is to be pleased, and then 
 his friends, — and, of course, the greater 
 number of his friends, if they differ inter se. 
 Thus taste may safely be put to the vote. I 
 do long to see our names together ; not for 
 vanity's sake, and naughty pride of heart 
 altogether, for not a living soul I know, or 
 am intimate with, will scarce read the book, 
 — so I shall gain nothing, quoad f amain ; and 
 yet there is a little vanity mixes in it, I 
 cannot help denj^ing. — I am aware of the 
 unpoetical cast of the six last lines of my last 
 sonnet, and think myself unwarranted in 
 smuggling so tame a thing into the book ; 
 only the sentiments of those six lines are 
 thoroughly congenial to me in my state of 
 mind, and I wish to accumulate perpetuating 
 tokens of my affection to poor J*Iary, — that 
 U: has no originality in its cast, nor anything 
 
 in the feelings, but what is common and 
 natural to thousands, nor ought properly to 
 be called poetry, I see ; still it will tend to 
 keep present to my mind a view of things 
 which I ought to indulge. These six lines, 
 too, have not, to a reader, a connectedness 
 with the foregoing. Omit it, if you like. — 
 What a treasure it is to my poor, indolent, 
 and unemployed mind, thus to lay hold on a 
 subject to talk about, though 'tia but a 
 sonnet, and that of the lowest order ! How 
 mournfully inactive I am ! — 'Tis night : good 
 night. 
 
 " My sister, I thank God, is nigh recovered : 
 she was seriously ill. Do, in your next letter, 
 and that right soon, give me some satisfac- 
 tion respecting your present situation at 
 Stowey. Is it a farm you have got ? and 
 what does your worship know about farming ? 
 
 " Coleridge, I want you to write an epic 
 poem. Nothing short of it can satisfy the 
 vast capacity of true poetic genius. Having 
 one great end to direct all your poetical 
 f!i?ulties to, and on which to lay out your 
 hipes, your ambition will show you to what 
 y>)U are equal. By the sacred energies of 
 Iililton ! by the dainty, sweet, and soothing 
 phantasies of honey-tongued Spenser ! I 
 a'ljure you to attemiDt the epic. Or do some- 
 thing more ample than the wi'iting an ooca- 
 sio'.ial brief ode or sonnet; something 'to 
 make yourself for ever known, — to make the 
 age to come your own.' But I prate ; doubt- 
 less you meditate something. When you are 
 exalted among the lords of epic fame, I shall 
 recall with pleasure, and exultingly, the days 
 of your humility, when you disdained not to 
 put forth, in the same volume with mine, 
 your 'Eeligious Musings,' and that other 
 poem from the ' Joan of Arc,' those promising 
 I first-fruits of high renown to come. You 
 have learning, you have fancy, you have 
 ' enthusiasm, you have strength, and ampli- 
 tude of wing enow for flights like those I 
 recommend. In the vast and unexplored 
 regions of faii-y-land, there is ground enough 
 unfound and uncultivated ; search there, and 
 i realise your favourite Susquehannah scheme. 
 In all our comparisons of taste, I do not know 
 whether I have ever heard your opinion of 
 a poet, very dear to me, — the now-out-of- 
 fashion Cowley. Favour me with your 
 judgment of him, and tell me if his prose 
 essays, in particular, as well as no incon- 
 
22 
 
 LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 
 
 siderable part of his verse, be not delicious. 
 I prefer the gi'aceful rambling of his essays, 
 even to the courtly elegance and ease of 
 Addison ; abstracting from this the latter's 
 
 exquisite humour. 
 
 ♦ • • » * 
 
 "When the little volume is printed, send 
 me three or four, at all events not more than 
 six copies, and tell me if I put you to any 
 additional expense, by printing with you. I 
 have no thought of the kind, and in that 
 case must reimburse you." 
 
 In the commencement of this year, Cole- 
 ridge removed from Bristol to a cottage at 
 Nether Stowey, to embody his favourite 
 dream of a cottage life. This change of place 
 probably delayed the printing of the volume ; 
 and Coleridge, busy with a thousand specu- 
 lations, became irregular in replying to the 
 letters with writing which Lamb solaced his 
 dreaiy hours. The following are the most 
 interesting portions of the only letters which 
 remain of this year. 
 
 TO MR. COLERIDGE. 
 
 "Jan. 10th, 1797. 
 " Priestley, whom I sin in almost adoring, 
 speaks of ' such a choice of company, as tends 
 to keep up that right bent, and firmness, of 
 mind, which a necessary intercourse with the 
 world would otherwise warp and relax.' 
 ' Such fellowship is the true balsam of life ; 
 its cement is infinitely more durable than 
 that of the friendsliips of the world, and it 
 looks for its proper fruit, and complete grati- 
 fication, to the life beyond the grave.' Is 
 there a possible chance for such an one as I 
 to realise in this world such friendships ? 
 Where am I to look for 'em ? What testi- 
 monials shall I bring of my being worthy of 
 such friendship 1 Alas ! the great and good 
 go together in separate herds, and leave svich 
 as I to lag far, fur behind in all intellectual, 
 and, far more grievous to say, in all moral 
 accomplishments. Coleridge, I have not one 
 truly elevated cliaracter among my acquaint- 
 ance : not one Christian : not one, but uuder- 
 vahies ChriaLianity — singly what am I to do ? 
 Wesley (have you read his life 1) was he not 
 an elevated character 1 Wesley has said, 
 ' Religicju is not a solitary thing.' Alas ! it 
 necessarily is so with me, or next to solitary. 
 'Tis true you write to me. But correspond- 
 
 ence by letter, and personal intimacy, are 
 very widely different. Do, do write to me, 
 and do some good to my mind, already how 
 much * warped and relaxed ' by the world ! 
 'Tis the conclusion of another evening. Good 
 night. God have us all in his keeping. 
 
 " If you are sufficiently at leisure, oblige 
 me with an account of your plan of life at 
 Stowey — your literai-y occupations and pros- 
 pects — in short, make me acquainted with 
 every circumstance which, as relating to you, 
 can be interesting to me. Are you yet a 
 Berkleyan 1 Make me one. I rejoice in 
 being, speculatively, a necessarian. Would 
 to God,j I were habitually a practical one ! 
 Confirm me in the faith of that great and 
 gloi'ious doctrine, and keep me steady in the 
 contemplation of it. You some time since 
 expressed an intention you had of finishing 
 some extensive work on the Evidences of 
 Natural and Eevealed Religion. Have you 
 let that intention go ? Or are you doing any- 
 thing towards it 1 Make to yoiirself other 
 ten talents. My letter is full of nothingness. 
 I talk of nothing. But I must talk. I love 
 to write to you. I take a pride in it. It 
 makes me think less meanly of myself. It 
 makes me think myself not totally discon- 
 nected from the better part of mankind. I 
 know I am too dissatisfied with the beings 
 around me ; but I cannot help occasionally 
 exclaiming, ' Woe is me, that I am consti*ained 
 to dwell with Meshech, and to have my 
 habitation among the tents of Kedar.' I 
 know I am noways better in practice than 
 my neighbours, but I have a taste for religion, 
 an occasional earnest aspiration after perfec- 
 tion, which they have not. I gain nothing 
 by being with such as myself — we encourage 
 one another in mediocrity. I am always 
 longing to be with men more excellent than 
 myself. All this must sound odd to you, but 
 these are my predominant feelings, when t 
 sit down to write to you, and I should put 
 force upon my mind woi-e 1 to reject them. 
 Yet I rejoice, and feel my privilege with 
 gratitude, when I liave been reading some 
 wise book, such as I have just been reading, 
 ' Priestley on Philosophical Necessity,' in the 
 thought that 1 enjoy a kind of communion, a 
 kind of friendship even, with the great and 
 good. Books are to me instead of friends. 
 I wish they did not resemble the latter in 
 their scarceness. 
 
LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 
 
 23 
 
 " And how does little David Hai-tley ? 
 ' Ecquid in antiquam virtutem ? ' Does his 
 mighty name work wonders yet upon his 
 little frame and opening mind ? I did not 
 distinctly understand you — you don't mean 
 to make an actual ploughman of him 1 Is 
 Lloyd with you yet ? Are you intimate with 
 Southey? What poems is he about to publish? 
 — he hath a most prolific brain, and is indeed 
 a most sweet poet. Bat how can you answer 
 all the various mass of interrogation I have 
 put to you in the course of the sheet ? Write 
 back just what you like, only write some- 
 thing, however brief. I have now nigh 
 finished my page, and got to the end of 
 another evening (Monday evening), and my 
 eyes are heavy and sleepy, and my brain 
 unsuggestive. I have just heart enough 
 awake to say good night once more, and God 
 love you, my dear friend ; God love us all. 
 Mai'y bears an affectionate remembrance 
 of you, 
 
 " Charles Lamb." 
 
 A poem of Coleridge, emulous of Southey's 
 " Joan of Arc," which he proposed to call the 
 "Maid of Orleans," on which Lamb had 
 made some critical remarks, produced the 
 humourous recantation with which the follow- 
 ing letter opens. 
 
 TO MR. COLERIDGE. 
 
 "Feb. 13th, 1797. 
 
 "Your poem is altogether admirable — 
 parts of it are even exquisite — in particular 
 your personal account of the Maid far sur- 
 passes any thing of the soi-t in Southey. I 
 perceived all its excellences, on a first read- 
 ing, as readily as now you have been 
 removing a supposed film from my eyes. I 
 was only struck with certain faulty dispro- 
 portion, in the matter and the style, which I 
 still think I perceive, between these lines 
 and the fonner ones. I had an end in view, I 
 wished to make you reject the poem, only as 
 being discordant with the other, and, in sub- 
 seivience to that end, it was politically done 
 in me to over-pass, and make no mention of 
 mei-it, which, could you think me capable of 
 overlooking, might reasonably damn for ever 
 in your judgment all pretensions, in me, to 
 be critical. There — I will be judged by 
 Lloyd, whether I have not made a very 
 handsome recantation. I was in the case of 
 
 a man, whose friend has asked him hia 
 opinion of a certain young lady — the deluded 
 wight gives judgment against her in toto — 
 don't like her face, her walk, her manners ; 
 finds fault with her eyebrows ; can see no 
 wit in her ; his friend looks blank, he begins 
 to smell a rat — wind veers about — he 
 acknowledges her good sense, her judgment 
 in dress, a certain simplicity of manners and 
 honesty of heart, something too in her 
 manners which gains upon you after a short 
 acquaintance, — and then her accurate pro- 
 nunciation of the French language, and a 
 pretty uncultivated taste in drawing. The 
 reconciled gentleman smiles applause, 
 squeezes him by the hand, and hopes he 
 will do him the honour of taking a bit of 
 
 diimer with Mrs. and him, — a plain 
 
 family dinner, — some day next week ; ' for, 
 I suppose, you never heai-d we were married. 
 I 'm glad to see you like my wife, however ; 
 you '11 come and see her, ha 1 ' Now am I 
 too proud to retract entirely ? Yet I do 
 perceive I am in some sort straitened ; you 
 are manifestly wedded to this poem, and 
 what fancy has joined let no man separate. 
 I turn me to the Joan of Arc, second book. 
 
 " The solemn openings of it are with sounds, 
 which LI. would say ' are silence to the mind.' 
 The deep preluding strains are fitted to 
 initiate the mind, with a pleasing awe, into 
 the sublimest mysteries of theory concernino- 
 man's nature, and his noblest destination — 
 the philosophy of a first cause — of subordi- 
 nate agents in creation, superior to man — 
 the subserviency of Pagan worship and Pagan 
 faith to the introduction of a purer and more 
 perfect religion, which you so elegantly 
 describe as winning, with gradual steps, her 
 difficult way northward from Betliabra. After 
 all this Cometh Joan, a publican'' s daughter, 
 sitting on an ale-house bench, and marking 
 the swingings of the signboard, finding a poor 
 man, his wife and six children, starved to 
 death with cold, and thence roused into a 
 state of mind proper to receive visions, 
 emblematical of equality ; which, wliat the 
 devil Joan had to do with, I don't know, or, 
 indeed, with the French and American revo- 
 lutions, though that needs no pardon, it is 
 executed so nobly. After all, if you perceive 
 no disproportion, all argument is vain : I do 
 not so much object to parts. Again, when 
 you talk of building your fame on these lines 
 
24 
 
 LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 
 
 in preference to the * Religious Musings,' I 
 cannot help conceiving of you, and of the 
 autlior of that, as two different persons, and 
 I think you a very vain man. 
 
 " I have been ro-readiug your letter ; much 
 of it I could dispute, but with the latter part 
 of it, in which you compare the two Joans 
 with respect to their predispositions for 
 fanaticism, I, toto corde, coincide ; only I 
 thiuk that Southey's strength rather lies in 
 the description of the emotions of the Maid 
 imder the weight of inspiration, — these (I see 
 no mighty diiference between her describing 
 them or you describing them), these if you 
 only equal, the previous admirers of his 
 poem, as is natural, will prefer his, — if you 
 surpass, prejudice will scarcely allow it, and 
 I scarce think you will surpass, though your 
 specimen at the conclusion, I am in earnest, 
 I think very nigh equals them. And in an 
 account of a fanatic or of a prophet, the 
 description of her emotions is expected to be 
 most highly finished. By the way, I spoke 
 fur too disparagingly of your lines, and, I am 
 ashamed to say, purposely. I should like you 
 to specify or particularise ; the story of the 
 ' Tottering Eld,' of ' his eventful years all 
 come and gone,' is too general ; why not 
 make him a soldier, or some character, 
 however, in which he has been witness to 
 frequency of ' cruel wrong and strange 
 distress ! ' I think I should. "When I 
 laughed at the ' miserable man crawling 
 from beneatli the coverture,' I wonder I 
 did not perceive that it was a laugh of 
 horror — such as I have laughed at Dante's 
 picture of the famished Ugolino. "Without 
 falsehood, I perceive an hundred beauties in 
 your narrative. Yet I wonder you do not 
 perceive something out-of-tlie-way, something 
 UBslmple and artificial, in the expression 
 'voiced a sad tale.' I hate made- dishes at 
 the muses' banquet. I believe I was wrong 
 in most of my other objections. But surely 
 ' liailed him immortal,' adds nothing to the 
 terror of tlie man's death, which it was your 
 business to heighten, not diminish by a 
 phrase, which takes away all terror from it. 
 1 like that line, ' Tlicy closed their eyes in 
 sleep, nor knew 'twas death.' Indeed there 
 is scarce a line I do not like. ' Turbid 
 ecstacy' in surely not so good as what you 
 had written, 'troublous.' Turbid rather 
 suits the muddy kind of inspiration which 
 
 London porter confers. The versification is, 
 throughout, to my ears unexceptionable, 
 ■with no disparagement to the measure of the 
 ' Religious Musings,' which is exactly fitted 
 to the thoughts. 
 
 " You were building your house on a rock, 
 •when you rested your fame on that poem. I 
 can scarce bring myself to believe, that I am 
 admitted to a familiar correspondence, and 
 all the licence of friendship, with a man who 
 writes blank verse like Milton. Now, this 
 is delicate flattery, indirect flattery. Go on 
 with your ' Maid of Orleans,' and be content 
 to be second to yourself. I shall become a 
 convert to it, when 'tis finished. 
 
 " This afternoon I attend the funeral of my 
 poor old aunt, who died on Thursday. I own 
 I am thankful that the good creature has 
 ended all her days of suffering and infirmity. 
 She was to me the ' cherisher of infancy,' and 
 one must fall on those occasions into reflec- 
 tions, which it would be common-place to 
 enumerate, concerning death, ' of chance and 
 cliange, and fate in human life.' Good God, 
 who could have foreseen all tliis but four 
 months back ! I had reckoned, in particular, 
 on my aunt's living many years ; she was a 
 very he;irty old woman. But she was a mere 
 skeleton before she died, looked more like a 
 corjjse that had lain weeks in the grave, 
 than one fresh dead. 'Truly the light is 
 sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes 
 to behold the sun ; but let a man live many 
 days and rejoice in them all, yet let hira 
 remember the days of darkness, for they 
 shall be many.' Coleridge, why are we to 
 live on after all the strength and beauty of 
 existence Jire gone, when all the life of life is 
 fled, as i)oor Burns expresses it ? Tell Lloyd 
 I have had thoughts of turning Quaker, and 
 have been reading, or am rather just begin- 
 ning to read, a most capital book, good 
 thoughts in good laugu;ige, William Penn's 
 ' No Cross, no Crown,' I like it immen.sely. 
 Unluckily I went to one of his meetings, 
 tell him, in St. John-street, yesterday, and 
 saw a man inider all the agitations and 
 workings of a fanatic, who believed himself 
 under the influence of some ' inevitjvble 
 presence.' This cured me of Quakerism ; 
 I love it in the books of Penu anil Woolman, 
 but I detest the vanity of a man thinking he 
 speaks by the Spirit, when what he says an 
 ordinary man might say without all that 
 
LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 
 
 25 
 
 quaking and trembling. In the midst of his 
 inspiration, and the effects of it were most 
 noisy, was handed into the midst of the 
 meeting a most terrible blackguard Wapping 
 sailor ; the poor man, I believe, had rather 
 have been in the hottest part of au engage- 
 ment, for the congregation of broad-brims, 
 together with the ravings of the prophet, were 
 too much for his gravity, though I saw even 
 he had delicacy enough, not to laugh out. And 
 the inspired gentleman, though his manner 
 was so supernatui'al, yet neither talked nor 
 professed to talk anything more than good 
 sober sense, common morality, with now and 
 then a declaration of not speaking from 
 himself. Among other things, looking back 
 to his childhood and early youth, he told the 
 meeting what a graceless young dog he had 
 been, that in his youth he had a good share of 
 wit : reader, if thou hadst seen the gentle- 
 man, thou wouldst have sworn that it must 
 indeed have been many years ago, for his 
 rueful physiognomy would have scared away 
 the playful goddess from the meeting, where 
 he presided, for ever. A wit ! a wit ! what 
 could he mean ? Lloyd, it minded me of 
 Falkland in the Rivals, * Am I full of wit 
 and humour ? No, indeed you are not. Am 
 I the life and soul of every company I come 
 into 1 No, it cannot be said you are.' That 
 hard-faced gentleman, a wit ! Why, nature 
 wrote on his fanatic forehead fifty years ago, 
 'Wit never comes, that comes to all.' I 
 should be as scandalised at a bon mot issuing 
 from his oracle-looking mouth, as to see Cato 
 go down a country-dance. God love you all. 
 You are very good to submit to be pleased 
 with reading my nothings. 'Tis the privilege 
 of friendship to talk nonsense, and to have 
 her nonsense respected. — Yours ever, 
 
 " C. Lamb." 
 
 TO MR. COLERIDGE. 
 
 "April 7th, 1797. 
 
 " Your last letter was dated the 10th 
 February ; in it you promised to write agciin 
 the next day. At least, I did not expect so 
 long, so unfriend-like a silence. There was 
 a time, Col., when a remissness of this sort in 
 a dear friend would have lain very heavy on 
 my mind, but latterly I have been too familiar 
 with neglect to feel much from the semblance 
 of it. Yet, to suspect one's self overlooked, 
 
 and in the way to oblivion, is a feeling rather 
 humbling ; perhaps, as tending to self-mor- 
 tification, not unfavourable to the sjnritual 
 state. Still, as you meant to confer no benefit 
 on the soul of your friend, you do not stand 
 quite clear from the imputation of unkindli- 
 ness (a word, by which I mean the diminutive 
 of unkindness). And then David Hartley 
 was unwell ; and how is the small philosoj^lier, 
 the minute philosopher? and David's mother? 
 Coleridge, I am not trifling, nor are these 
 matter-of-fact questions only. You are all 
 very dear and precious to me ; do what you 
 will, Col., you may hurt me and vex me by 
 your silence, but you cannot estrange my 
 heart from you all. I cannot scatter friend- 
 ships like chuck-farthings, nor let them drop 
 from mine hand like hour-glass sand. I have 
 but two or three people in the world to whom 
 I am more than indifferent, and I can't afford 
 to whistle them off to the winds. 
 
 "My sister has recovered from her illness. 
 May that merciful God make tender my 
 heart, and make me as thankful, as in my 
 distress I was earnest, in my prayers. Con- 
 gratulate me on an ever-present and never- 
 alienable friend like her. And do, do insert, 
 if you have not lost, my dedication. It will 
 have lost half its value by coming so late. If 
 you really are going on with that volume, I 
 shall be enabled in a day or two to send you 
 a short poem to insert. Now, do answer 
 this. Friendship, and acts of fi-iendship, 
 should be reciprocal, and free as the air ; a 
 friend should never be reduced to beg an 
 alms of his fellow. Yet I will beg an alms ; 
 I entreat you to write, and tell me all about 
 poor Lloyd, and all of you. God love and 
 preserve you all. " C. Lamb." 
 
 TO MR. COLERIDGE. 
 
 "June 13th, 1797. 
 
 "I stared with wild wonderment to see 
 thy well-known hand again. It revived 
 many a pleasing recollection of an epistolary 
 intercourse, of late strangely suspended, once 
 the pride of my life. Before I even opened 
 thy letter, I figured to myself a sort of 
 complacency which my little hoard at home 
 would feel at receiving the new-comer into 
 the little drawer whei-e I keep my treasures of 
 this kind. You have done well in writing to 
 me. The little room (was it not a little one?) 
 
26 
 
 LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 
 
 at the Salutation was already in the way of 
 becoming a fading idea ! it had begun to be 
 classed in my memory with those ' wanderings 
 with a fiiir hair'd maid,' in the recollection 
 of which I feel I have no property. You 
 press me, very kindly do you press me, to 
 come to Stowey ; obstacles, strong as death, 
 prevent me at present ; maybe I maybe able 
 to come before the year is out ; believe me, 
 I will come as soon as I can, but I dread 
 naming a probable time. It depends on fifty 
 things, besides the expense, which is not 
 nothing. As to Richardson, caprice may 
 grant what caprice only refused, and it is no 
 more hardship, rightly considered, to be 
 dependent on him for pleasure, than to lie 
 at the mercy of the rain and sunshine for 
 the enjoyment of a holiday : in either case 
 we are not to look for a suspension of the 
 laws of nature. ' Grill will be grill.' Vide 
 Spenser. 
 
 " I could not but smile at the compromise 
 you make with me for printing Lloyd's 
 poems first ; but there is in nature, I fear, 
 too many tendencies to envy and jealousy 
 not to justify you in your apology. Yet, 
 if any one is welcome to pre-eminence 
 from me, it is Lloyd, for he would be the 
 last to desire it. So pray, let his name 
 uniformly precede mine, for it would be 
 treating me like a child to suppose it could 
 give me pain. Yet, alas ! I am not insus- 
 ceptible of the bad passions. Thank God, 
 I have the ingenuousness to be ashamed of 
 them. I am dearly fond of Charles Lloyd ; 
 he is all goodness, and I have too much of 
 the world in my composition to feel myself 
 thoroughly desei-vingof his friendship. 
 
 " Lloyd tells me that Sheridan put you 
 upon writing your tragedy. I hope you are 
 only Coleridgeizing when you talk of finishing 
 it in a few days. Shakspeare was a more 
 modest man, but you best know your own 
 power. 
 
 " Of my last poem you speak slightingly ; 
 surely the longer stanzas were pretty toler- 
 able ; at least there was one good line in it, 
 
 ' Thick-shaded trees, -with dark preen leaf rich clad.' 
 
 "To adopt your own expression, I call 
 this a •'rich' line, a fine full line. And some 
 others I thought even beautiful. Believe me, 
 my little gentleman will feel some repugnance 
 
 at riding behind in the basket, though, I 
 confess, in pretty good company. Your 
 picture of idiocy, with the sugar-loaf head, 
 is exquisite ; but are you not too severe upon 
 our more favoured brethren in fatuity % I 
 send you a trifling letter ; but you have 
 only to think that I have been skimming the 
 superficies of my mind, and found it only 
 froth. Now, do write again ; you cannot 
 believe how I long and love always to hear 
 about you. Yours, most afi"ectionately, 
 
 " Charles Lamb." 
 
 TO MR. COLKRIDGE. 
 
 "June 24th, 1797. 
 
 " Did you seize the grand opportunity of 
 seeing Kosciusko while he was at Bristol ? 
 I never saw a hero ; I wonder how they 
 look. I have been reading a most curious 
 romance-like work, called the Life of John 
 Buncle, Esq. 'Tis very interesting, and an 
 extraordinary compound of all manner ol 
 subjects, from the depth of the ludicrous to 
 the heights of sublime religious truth. There 
 is much abstruse science in it above my cut, 
 and an infinite fund of pleasantry. John 
 Buncle is a famous fine man, formed in 
 nature's most eccentric hour. I am ashamed 
 of what I write. But I have no topic to 
 talk of. I see nobody ; and sit, and read, or 
 walk alone, and hear nothing. I am quite 
 lost to conversation from disuse ; and out of 
 the sphere of my little family, who, I am 
 thankful, are dearer and dearer to me every 
 day, I see no face that brightens up at my 
 approach. My friends are at a distance 
 (meaning Birmingham and Stowey) ; worldly 
 hopes are at a low ebb with me, and un- 
 worldly thoughts are not yet familiarised to 
 me, though I occasionally indulge in them. 
 Still I feel a calm not unlike content. I 
 fear it is sometimes more akin to physical 
 stupidity than to a heaven-flowing serenity 
 and peace. What right have I to obtrude 
 all this upon you I and what is such a letter 
 to you ? and if I come to Stowey, what 
 conversation can I furnish to compensate my 
 friend for those stores of knowledge and of 
 fancy ; those delightful treasures of wisdom, 
 which, I know, he will open to me ? But it 
 is better to give than to receive ; and I was 
 a very patient hearer, and docile scholar, in 
 our winter evening meetings at Mr. May's ; 
 
LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 
 
 27 
 
 ■was I not, Col.? Wliat I have owed to 
 thee, my heart can ne'er forget. 
 
 " God love you and yours. " C. L." 
 
 At length the small volume containing the 
 poems of Coleridge, Lloyd, and Lamb, was 
 published by Mr. Cottle at Bristol. It excited 
 little attention ; but Lamb had the pleasure 
 of seeing his dedication to his sister printed 
 in good set form, after his own fashion, and 
 of witnessing the delight and pride with 
 which she received it. This little book, 
 now very scarce, had the following motto 
 expressive of Coleridge's feeling towards his 
 associates : — Duplex nobis vinculum, et ami- 
 citice et similium junctarumque Camcenarum ; 
 quod utinam neque mors solvat, neque temporis 
 longinquitas. Lamb's share of the work 
 consists of eight sonnets ; four short frag- 
 ments of blank verse, of which the Grandame 
 is the principal ; a poem, called the Tomb of 
 Douglas ; some verses to Charles Lloyd ; and 
 a vision of Repentance ; which are all pub- 
 lished in the last edition of his poetical 
 works, except one of the sonnets, which was 
 addressed to Mrs. Siddons. and the Tomb 
 of Douglas, which was justly omitted as 
 common-place and vapid. They only occupy 
 twenty-eight duodecimo pages, within which 
 sjDace was comprised all that Lamb at this 
 time had written which he deemed woi-th 
 preserving. 
 
 The following letter from Lamb to Cole- 
 ridge seems to have been written on receiving 
 the first copy of the work. 
 
 TO MR. COLERIDGE. 
 
 "Dec. 10th, 1797. 
 
 " I am sorry I cannot now relish your 
 poetical present so thoroughly as I feel it 
 deserves ; biit I do not the less thank Lloyd 
 and you for it. 
 
 " Before I offer, what alone I have to offer, 
 a few obvious remarks, on the poems you 
 sent me, I can but notice the odd coincidence 
 of two young men, in one age, carolling their 
 grandmothei-s. Love, what L. calls tiie 
 ' feverish and romantic tie,' hath too long 
 domineered over all the charities of home : 
 the dear domestic ties of father, brother, 
 husband. The amiable and benevolent 
 Cowper has a beautiful passage in his ' Task,' 
 — some natural and painful reflections on his 
 
 deceased parents : and Hayley's sweet lines 
 to his mother are notoriously the best things 
 he ever wrote. Cowper's lines, some of them 
 are — ■ 
 
 ' How gladly -would the man recall to life 
 The boy's neglected sire ; a mother, too ! 
 That softer name, perhaps more ghidly still, 
 Might he demand them at the gates of death.' 
 
 " I cannot but smile to see my granny so 
 gaily decked forth : though, I think, whoever 
 altered ' thy ' praises to ' her ' praises — ' thy' 
 honoured memory to ' her ' honoured memory, 
 did wrong — they best exprest my feelings. 
 There is a pensive state of recollection, in 
 which the mind is disposed to apostrophise 
 the departed objects of its attachment ; and, 
 breaking loose from grammatical precision, 
 changes from the first to the third, and from 
 the third to the first person, just as the random 
 fancy or the feeling directs. Among Lloyd's 
 sonnets, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, and 11th, are 
 eminently beautiful. I think him too lavish 
 of his expletives ; the do's and did's, when 
 they occur too often, bring a quaintness with 
 them along with their simplicity, or rather 
 air of antiquity, which the patrons of them 
 seem desirous of conveying. 
 
 " Another time, I may notice more particu- 
 larly Lloyd's, Southey's, Dermody's Sonnets. 
 I shrink from them now : my teasing lot 
 makes me too confused for a clear judgment 
 of things, too selfish for sympathy ; and these 
 ill-digested, meaningless remarks, I have 
 imposed on myself as a task, to lull reflection, 
 as well as to show you I did not neglect 
 reading your valuable present. Eeturn my 
 ackowledgments to Lloyd ; you two seem to 
 be about realising an Elysium upon earth, 
 and, no doubt, I shall be happier. Take my 
 best wishes. Remember me most affection- 
 ately to IVL's. C , and give little David 
 
 Hartley — God bless its little heart ! — a kiss 
 for me. Bring him up to know the meaning 
 of his Christian name, and what that name 
 (imposed upon him) will demand of him. 
 
 " God love you ! " C. Lamb. 
 
 " I write, for one thing to say, that I shall 
 write no more till you send me word, where 
 you are, for you are so soon to move. 
 
 " My sister is pretty well, thank God. "We 
 think of you very often. God bless you : 
 continue to be my correspondent, and I will 
 
28 
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH SOUTHEY. 
 
 strive to fancy that thi3 world is not ' all 
 barrenness.' " 
 
 After several disappointments, occasioned 
 by the state of business in the India House, 
 Lamb achieved his long-checked wish of 
 visiting Coleridge at Stowey, in company 
 with his sister, without whom he felt it 
 almost a sin to enjoy anything. Coleridge, 
 shortly after, abandoned his scheme of a 
 cottage-life ; and, in the following year, left 
 England for Germany. Lamb, however, was 
 not now so lonely as when he wrote to Cole- 
 ridge imploring his correspondence as the 
 only comfort of his sorrows and labours ; for, 
 through the instrumentality of Coleridge, he 
 was now rich in friends. Among them he 
 marked George Dyer, the guileless andsimple- 
 heai-ted, whose love of learning was a passion, 
 and who found, even in the forms of verse, 
 objects of worship ; Southey, in the young 
 vigour of his genius ; and Wordsworth, the 
 great regenerator of English poetry, preparing 
 for his long contest with the glittering fonns 
 of inane phraseology which had usurped the 
 dominion of the public mind, and with the 
 cold mockeries of scorn with which their 
 supremacy was defended. By those the 
 beauty of his character was felt ; the original 
 east of his powers was appreciated ; and his 
 peculiar humour was detected and kindled 
 into fitful life. 
 
 CHAPTER LV. 
 
 [1798.] 
 lamb's litekary efforts and correspondence with 
 
 80LTHEV. 
 
 In the year 1798, the blank verse of Lloyd 
 and Jjamb, which had been contained in the 
 volume published in conjunction with Cole- 
 ridge, was, with some additions by Lloyd, 
 published in a thin duodecimo, price 2s. iid., 
 under the title of " Blank Verse, by Charles 
 Lloyd and Charles Lamb." This unpre- 
 tending book was honoured by a brief and 
 scornful notice in the catalogue of " The 
 Monthly Review," in the small print of 
 which the works of the poets wlio are now 
 recognised as the greatest ornaments of their 
 age, and who have impressed it most deeply 
 
 by their genius, were usually named to be 
 dismissed with a sneer. After a contemp- 
 tuous notice of " The Mournful Muse " of 
 Lloyd, Lamb receives his quietus in a line : — 
 "Mr. Lamb, the joint author of this little 
 volume, seems to be very properly associated 
 with his plaintive companion." * 
 
 In this year Lamb composed his prose 
 tale, " Rosamund Gray," and published it in 
 a volume of the same size and price with the 
 last, under the title of " A Tale of Rosamund 
 Gray and Old Blind Margaret," which, 
 having a semblance of story, sold much 
 better than his poems, and added a few 
 pounds to his slender income. This miniature 
 romance is unique in English literature. It 
 bears the impress of a recent peinisal of " The 
 Man of Feeling," and " Julia de Roubigne ; " 
 and while on the one hand it wants the 
 graphic force and delicate touches of Mac- 
 kenzie, it is informed with deeper feeling and 
 breathes a diviner morality than the most 
 charming of his tales. Lamb never possessed 
 the faculty of constructing a plot either for 
 drama or novel ; and while he luxuriated in 
 the humour of Smollett, the wit of Fielding, 
 or the solemn pathos of Richardson, he Wixa 
 not amused, but perplexed, by the attempt 
 to thread the Avindings of story which con- 
 duct to their most exquisite passages through 
 the maze of adventure. In this tale, nothing 
 is made out with distinctness, except the 
 rustic piety and grace of the lovely girl 
 and her venerable grandmother, which are 
 pictured with such earnestness and simplicity 
 as might beseem a fragment of the book of 
 Ruth. The villain who lays waste their 
 humble joys is a murky phantom without 
 individuality ; the events are obscured by 
 the haze of sentiment which hovere over them; 
 and the narrative gives way to the reflections 
 of the author, who is mingled with the 
 persons of the tale in visionary confusion, 
 and gives to it the character of a sweet but 
 disturbed dream. It has an interest now 
 beyond that of tiction ; for in it we may trace, 
 " as in a glass darkly," the characteristics of 
 the mind and he;u't of the author, at a time 
 when a change was coming upon them. 
 Tliere are the dainty sense of beauty just 
 weaned from its palpable object, and quiver- 
 ing over its lost images ; feeling grown 
 
 • Monthly Review, Sept. 1798. 
 
INTRODUCTION TO SOUTHEr. 
 
 29 
 
 retrospective before its time, and tinging all 
 things with a strange solemnity ; hints of 
 that craving after immediate appliances 
 which might give impulse to a harassed 
 frame, and confidence to struggling fancy, 
 and of that escape from the pressure of 
 agony into fantastic mirth, which in after 
 life made Lamb a problem to a stranger, 
 while they endeared him a thousand-fold to 
 those who really knew him. While the 
 fulness of the religious sentiments, and the 
 scriptural cast of the language, still partake 
 of liis early manhood, the visit of the narrator 
 of the tale to the churchyard where his 
 parents lie buried, after his nerves had been 
 strung for the endeavour by wine at the 
 village inn, and the half-frantic jollity of his 
 old heart-broken friend (the lover of the 
 tale), whom he met there, with the exquisite 
 benignity of thought breathing through the 
 whole, prophesy the deliglitful peculiarities 
 and genial frailties of an after day. The 
 reflections he makes on the eiilogistic cha- 
 racter of all the inscriptions, are drawn from 
 his own childhood ; for when a very little 
 boy, walking with his sister in a churchyard, 
 he suddenly asked her, " Mary, where do the 
 naughty people lie ? " 
 
 " Rosamund Gray " remained unreviewed 
 till August, 1800, when it received the 
 following notice in "The Monthly Review's " 
 catalogue, the manufacturer of which was 
 probably more tolerant of heterodox com- 
 position in pz'ose than verse: — "In the 
 perusal of this pathetic and interesting story, 
 the reader who has a mind capable of enjoy- 
 ing rational and moral sentiment will feel 
 much gratification. Mr. Lamb has here 
 proved himself skilful in touching the nicest 
 feelings of the heart, and in ailbrding great 
 pleasure to the imagination, by exhibiting 
 events and situations which, in the hands of 
 a writer less conversant with the springs and 
 energies of the moral sense, would make a 
 very ' sorry figured " While we acknowledge 
 this scanty praise as a redeeming trait in the 
 long series of critical absurdities, we cannot 
 help observing how curiously misplaced all 
 the laudatory epithets are ; the sentiment 
 being profound and true, but not " rational,'^ 
 and the " springs and energies of the moral 
 sense " being substituted for a weakness 
 which had a power of its own ! 
 
 Lamb was introduced by Coleridge to 
 
 Sou they as early as the year 179o ; but no 
 intimacy ensued until he accompanied Lloj'd 
 in the summer of 1797 to the little village of 
 Burton, near Cliristchurch, in Hampshire, 
 where Southey was then residing, and where 
 they spent a fortnight as the poet's guests. 
 After Coleridge's departure for Germany, in 
 1798, a correspondence began between Lamb 
 and Southey, which continued through that 
 and part of the following year ; — Southey 
 communicates to Lamb his Eclogues, which 
 he was then preparing for the press, and 
 Lamb repaying the confidence by subnutting 
 the products of his own leisure hours to his 
 genial critic. If Southey did not, in all 
 respects, compensate Lamb for the absence 
 of his earlier friend, he excited in him a 
 more entire and active intellectual sympathy ; 
 as the character of Southey's mind bore 
 more resemblance to his own than that of 
 Coleridge. In purity of thought ; in the 
 love of the minutest vestige of antiquity ; in 
 a certain primness of style bounding in the 
 rich humour which threatened to overflow 
 it ; they were nearly akin : both alike 
 reverenced childhood, and both had pre- 
 served its best attributes unspotted from the 
 world. If Lamb bowed to the genius of 
 Coleridge with a fonder reverence, he felt 
 more at home with Southey ; and although 
 he did not pour out the inmost secrets of his 
 soul in his letters to him as to Coleridge, he 
 gave more scope to the " first sprightly 
 runnings" of his humorous fancy. Here is 
 the fii-st of his freaks : — 
 
 TO MR. SOUTHEY. 
 
 " My tailor has brought me home a new 
 coat lapeUed, with a velvet collar. He 
 assures me everybody wears velvet collai'S 
 now. Some are born fashionable, some 
 achieve fashion, and others, like your humble 
 servant, have fashion thrust upon them. 
 The rogue has been making inroads hitherto 
 by modest degrees, foisting upon me an 
 additional button, recommending gaiters, but 
 to come upon me thus in a fuU tide of luxury, 
 neither becomes him as a tailor or the ninth 
 of a man. My meek gentleman was robbed 
 the other day, coming with his wife and 
 family in a one-horse shay from Hampstead ; 
 the villains rifled him of four guineas, some 
 shillings and half-pence, and a bundle of 
 
30 
 
 LETTERS TO SOUTHEY, 
 
 customers' measures, which they swore were 
 bank-notes. They did not shoot him, and 
 when they rode off he addrest them with 
 profound gratitude, making a congee : 
 ' Gentlemen, I wish you good night, and we 
 are very much obliged to you that you have 
 not used us ill ! ' And this is the cuckoo 
 that has had the audacity to foist upon me 
 ten buttons on a side, and a black velvet 
 collar. — A cursed ninth of a scoundrel ! 
 
 " "When you write to Lloyd, he wishes his 
 Jacobin correspondents to address him as 
 Mr. C. L." 
 
 The following letter — yet richer in fun — 
 bears date Saturday, July 28th, 1798. In 
 order to make its allusions intelligible, it is 
 only necessary to mention that Southey was 
 then contemplating a calendar illustrative of 
 the remarkable days of the year. 
 
 TO MR. SOUTHEY. 
 
 "July 28th, 1798. 
 " I am ashamed that I have not thanked 
 you before this for the ' Joan of Ai'c,' but I 
 did not know your address, and it did not 
 occur to me to write through Cottle. The 
 poem delighted me, and the notes amused 
 me, but methinks she of Neufchatel, in the 
 print, holds her sword too ' like a dancer.' I 
 sent your notice to Phillips, particularly 
 requesting an immediate insertion, but I 
 .suppose it came too late. I am sometimes 
 curious to know what progress you make in 
 that same ' Calendar :' whether you insert the 
 nine worthies and Whittingtou ? what you 
 do or how you can manage when two Saints 
 meet and quarrel for precedency? Martlemas, 
 and Candlemas, and Christmas, are glorious 
 themes for a writer like you, antiquity-bitten, 
 smit with the love of boars' heads and 
 ro.semary ; but how you can ennoble the 
 Ibt of April I know not. By the way I had 
 a thing to say, but a certain false modesty 
 has hitherto prevented me : perhaps I can 
 best comnuuiicate my wish by a hint, — my 
 birth-day is on the 10th of February, New 
 Stylo, but if it interferes with any remarkable 
 event, why rather than my country should 
 lose her fame, I care not if I put my nativity 
 back eleven days. Fine family patronage for 
 your ' Calendar,' if that old lady of prolific 
 memory were living, who lies (or lyes) in 
 Bome church in Loudon (saints forgive me, 
 
 but I have forgot what church), attesting 
 that enormous legend of as many children aa 
 days in the year. I marvel her impudence 
 did not grasp at a leap-year. Three-hundred 
 and sixty-five dedications, and all in a family 
 — you might spit in spirit, on the oneness of 
 Macsenas' patronage ! 
 
 " Samuel Taylor Coleridge, to the eternal 
 regret of his native Devonshire, emigrates to 
 Westphalia — ' Poor Lamb (these were his 
 last words) if he wants any knowledge, he 
 
 may apply to me,' in ordinary cases I 
 
 tbanked him, I have an 'Encyclopedia' at 
 hand, but on such an occasion as going over 
 to a German university, I could not refrain 
 from sending him the following propositions, 
 to be by him defended or oppugned (or both) 
 at Leipsic or Gottingen. 
 
 THESES QU^DAM THEOLOGICJE. 
 
 " ' Whether God loves a lying angel better 
 than a true man ? ' 
 
 II. 
 " ' Whether the archangel Uriel covld 
 knowingly affirm an untruth, and whether, 
 if he coidd, he would V 
 
 III. 
 " ' Whether honesty be an angelic virtue, 
 or not rather belonging to that class of 
 qualities which the schoolmen term " virtutes 
 minus splendidoe, et hominia et terrse uimis 
 participes % " ' 
 
 IV. 
 
 "'Whether the seraphim ardentes do not 
 manifest their goodness by the way of vision 
 and theory ? and whether practice be not a 
 sub-celestial, and merely human virtue ? ' 
 
 " ' Whether the higher order of seraphim 
 illuminati ever sineer f ' 
 
 " ' Wliether pure intelligences can love, or 
 whothcr they can love anything besides pure 
 iutiillect ? ' 
 
 Til. 
 
 " ' Whether the beatific vision be anything 
 more or less than a perpetual ri'prescntment 
 to each individual angel of his own present 
 attainments, and future capabilities, some- 
 
LETTERS TO SOUTHEY. 
 
 31 
 
 thing in the manner of mortal looking- 
 glasses 1 ' 
 
 ■VIII. 
 
 "'Whether an "immortal and amenable 
 soul" may not come to he damned at last, and 
 the man never suspect it beforehand ? ' 
 
 "Samuel Taylor hath not deigned an 
 answer ; was it impertinent of me to avail 
 myself of that offered source of knowledge 1 
 
 " Wishing Madoc may be born into the 
 world with as splendid promise as the second 
 birth, or purification, of the Maid of 
 Neufchatel, — I remain yours sincerely, 
 
 « C. Lamb. 
 
 " I hope Edith is better ; my kindest 
 remembrances to her. You have a good 
 deal of trifling to forgive in this letter," 
 
 The two next letters to Southey illustrate 
 strikingly the restless kindness and exquisite 
 spirit of allowance in Lamb's nature ; the 
 first an earnest pleading for a poor fellow 
 whose distress actually haunted him ; the 
 second an affecting allusion to the real good- 
 ness of a wild untoward school-mate, and 
 fine self-reproval — in this instance how 
 unmerited ! 
 
 TO MR. SOUTHEY. 
 
 " Dear Southey, — Your friend John May 
 has formerly made kind offers to Lloyd of 
 serving me in the India House, by the interest 
 of his friend Sir Francis Baring. It is not 
 likely that I shall ever put his goodness to 
 the test on my own account, for my prospects 
 are very comfortable. But I know a man, a 
 young man, whom he coidd serve through 
 the same channel, and, I think, would be 
 disposed to serve if he were acquainted with 
 his case. This poor fellow (whom I know 
 just enough of to vouch for his strict integrity 
 and worth) has lost two or three employments 
 from illness, which he cannot regain ; he 
 vas once insane, and, from the distressful 
 Vicertainty of his livelihood, has reason to 
 apprehend a return of that malady. He has 
 ■ been for some time dependent on a woman 
 whose lodger he formerly was, but who can 
 iU afford to maintain him ; and I know that 
 on Christmas night last he actually walked 
 about the street,s all night, rather than 
 
 accept of her bed, which she ofitn-ed him, and 
 offered herself to sleep in the kitchen ; and 
 that, in consequence of that severe cold, he 
 is labouring under a bilious disorder, besides 
 a depression of spirits, which incapacitates 
 him from exertion when he most needs it. 
 For God's sake, Southey, if it does not go 
 against you to ask fiivours, do it now ; ask it 
 as for me ; but do not do a violence to your 
 feelings, because he does not know of this 
 application, and will suffer no disappoint- 
 ment. What I meant to say was this, — 
 there are in the India House what are called 
 extra clerks, not on the establishment, like me, 
 but employed in extra business, by-jobs ; 
 these get about 50^. a year, or rather more, 
 but never rise ; a director can put in at any 
 time a young man in this office, and it is by 
 no means considered so great a favour as 
 making an established clerk. He would 
 think himself as rich as an emperor if he 
 could get such a certain situation, and be 
 relieved from those disquietudes which, I do 
 fear, may one day bring back his distemper. 
 
 " You know John May better than I do, 
 but I know enough to believe that he is a 
 good man ; he did make me that off'er I have 
 mentioned, but you will perceive that such 
 an ofier cannot authorise me in applying for 
 another person. 
 
 " But I cannot help writing to you on the 
 subject, for the young man is perpetually 
 before my eyes, and I shall feel it a crime not 
 to strain all my petty interest to do him 
 service, though I put my own delicacy to the 
 question by so doing. I have made one other 
 unsuccessful attempt already ; at all events 
 I will thank you to write, for I am tormented 
 with anxiety. " C. Lamb." 
 
 "Dear Southet, 
 " Poor Sam. Le Grice ! I am afraid the 
 world, and the camp, and the university, have 
 spoilt him among them. 'Tis certain he had 
 at one time a strong capacity of turning out 
 something better. I knew him, and that not 
 long since, when he had a most warm heart. 
 I am ashamed of the indifi'erence I have 
 sometimes felt towards him. I think the 
 devil is in one's heai't. I am under obligations 
 to that man for the warmest friendship, and 
 heartiest sympathy, even for an agony of 
 sympathy exprest both by word, and deed, 
 
32 
 
 LETTERS TO SOUTHEY. 
 
 and tears for me, when I was in my greatest 
 distress. But I have forgot that ! as, I fear, 
 he has nigh forgot the awful scenes which 
 were before his eyes when he served tiie 
 office of a comforter to me. No service was 
 too mean or troublesome for him to perform. 
 I can't think what but the devil, ' that ohi 
 spider,' could have suck'd my heart so dry 
 of its sense of all gratitude. If he does come 
 in your way, Southey, fail not to tell liim that 
 I retain a most affectionate remembrance 
 of his old friendliness, and an earnest wish to 
 resume our intercourse. In this I am serious. 
 I cannot reconmiend him to your society, 
 because I am afraid whether he be quite 
 worthy of it. But I have no right to dismiss 
 him from my regard. He was at one time, 
 and in the worst of times, my own familiar 
 friend, and great comfort to me then, I have 
 known him to play at cards with my father, 
 meal-times excepted, literally all day long, in 
 long days too, to save me from being teased 
 by the old man, when 1 was not able to 
 bear it. 
 
 " God bless him for it, and God bless you, 
 Southey. " C. L." 
 
 Lamb now began to write the tragedy of 
 John Woodvil. His admiration of the 
 dramatists of Elizabeth's age was yet young, 
 and had some of the indiscretion of an early 
 love ; but there was nothing affected in the 
 antique cast of his language, or the fi-equent 
 roughness of his verse. His delicate sense 
 of beauty had found a congenial organ in the 
 style which he tasted with rapture ; and 
 criticism gave him little encouragement to 
 adapt it to the fi-igid insipidities of the time. 
 " My tragedy," says he in the first letter to 
 Southey, which alludes to the play, " will be 
 a medley (or I intend it to be a medley) of 
 laughter and tears, prose and verse ; and, in 
 some places, rhyme ; songs, wit, pathos, 
 humour ; and, if possible, sublimity ; — at 
 least, 'tis not a fault in my intention if it 
 does not comprehend most of these discordant 
 atoms — Heaven send tliey dance not the 
 dance of death ! " In another letter he there 
 introduces the delicious rhymed passage in 
 the " Forest Scene," which Godwin, having 
 accidentally seen quoted, took for a choice 
 fragment of an old dramatist, arid went to 
 Lamb to assist him in finding the author. 
 
 TO MR. SOUTnEY. 
 
 " I just send you a few rhymes from my 
 play, the only rhymes in it. A forest-liver 
 giving an account of his amusements. 
 
 ' What sports have you in the forest ? 
 Not many, — some few, — as thus, 
 To see the sun to bed, and sec him rise, 
 Like some hot amourist with plowing eyes, 
 Bursting the lazy bands of sleep that bound him : 
 With all his fires and travelling glories round him : 
 Sometimes the moon on soft night-clouds to rest. 
 Like beauty nestling in a young man's breast, 
 And all the winking stars, her handmaids, keep 
 Admiring silence, while those lovers sleep : 
 Sometimes outstretched in very idleness, 
 Nought doing, saying little, tliinking less. 
 To view tlie leaves, thin dancers upon air, 
 Go eddying round ; and small birds how they fare, 
 When mother Autumn fills their beaks with corn, 
 Filch'd from the careless Amalthea's horn ; 
 And how the woods berries and worms provide, 
 Without their pains, -when earth hath nought beside 
 To answer their small wants ; 
 To view the graceful deer come trooping hy, 
 Then pause, and gaze, then turn they know not why, 
 Like bashful younkers in society ; 
 To nuirk the structure of a plant or tree ; 
 And all fair things of earth, how fair they be I ' &c. &c. 
 
 " I love to anticipate charges of unorigin- 
 ality : the first line is almost Shakspeare's : — 
 
 ' To have my love to bed and to arise.' 
 
 Midsummer Night's Dream. 
 
 " I think there is a sweetness in the versi- 
 fication not unlike some rhymes in that 
 exquisite play, and the last line but three is 
 yours : 
 
 ' Au eye 
 That met the gaze, or turn'd it knew not why.* 
 
 Jiosamuiid's £pis(le. 
 
 " I shall anticipate all my play, and have 
 nothing to show you. An idea for Le\'iathan 
 — Commentators on Job have been puzzled 
 to find out a meaning for Leviathan, — 'tis a 
 whale, say some ; a crocodile, say others. 
 In my simple conjecture, Leviatlnui is neither 
 more nor less tlian the Lord Mayor of London 
 for the time being." 
 
 He seems also to have sent about this 
 time the solemnly fantastic poem of the 
 " Witch," as the following passage relates to 
 one of its conceits : 
 
 TO MR. SOUTHET. 
 
 " Your recipe for a Turk's poison ia 
 invaluable, and truly Marlowish. . . . 
 Lloyd objects to ' shutting up the womb of 
 
LETTERS TO SOUTHEY. 
 
 his purse ' in ray curse, (which, for a Chris- 
 tiau witch in a Christian country, is not too 
 mild, I hope,) do you object ? I think there 
 is a strangeness in the idea, as well as 
 * shaking the poor like snakes from his door,' 
 which suits the speaker. Witches illustrate, 
 as fine ladies do, from their own familiar 
 objects, and snakes and shutting up of 
 wombs are in their way. I don't know that 
 this last charge has been before brought 
 against 'em, nor either the sour milk or the 
 mandrake babe ; but I affirm these be things 
 a witch would do if she could." 
 
 Here is a siiecimen of Lamb's criticism on 
 Southey's poetical communications : — 
 
 TO MR. SOUTHEY. 
 
 " I have read your Eclogue repeatedly, and 
 cannot call it bald, or without interest ; the 
 cast of it, and the design, are completely 
 original, and may set people upon thinking : 
 it is as poetical as the subject requires, which 
 asks no poetry ; but it is defective in pathos. 
 The woman's own story is the tamest part of 
 it — I should like you to remould that — it too 
 much resembles the young maid's history, 
 both had been in service. Even the omission 
 would not inj are the poem ; after the words 
 'growing wants,' you might, not uncon- 
 nectedly, introduce ' look at that little chub ' 
 down to 'welcome one.' And, decidedly, I 
 would have you end it somehow thus, 
 
 ' Give them at least this evening a good meal. 
 
 [Gives her money. 
 Now, fare thee well ; hereafter you have taught me 
 To give sad meaning to the village-bells,' &c. 
 
 which would leave a stronger impression, (as 
 well as more pleasingly recall the beginning 
 of the Eclogue,) than the present common- 
 place reference to a better world, which the 
 woman ' must have heard at church.' 1 j 
 should like you too a good deal to enlarge 
 the most striking part, as it might have been, 
 of the poem — ' Is it idleness ? ' &c., that 
 affords a good field for dwelling on sickness, 
 and inabilities, and old age. And you might 
 also a good deal enrich the piece with a 
 picture of a country wedding : the woman 
 might very well, in a transient fit of oblivion, 
 dwell upon the ceremony and circumstances 
 of her own nuptials six years ago, the 
 snugucss of the bridegroom, the feastings, 
 
 the cheap merriment, the welcomings, and 
 the secret cnvyings of the maidens — then 
 dropping all this, recur to her present lot. 
 I do not know that I can suggest anything 
 else, or that I have suggested an}i,hing rfew 
 or materiaL I shall be very glad to see some 
 more poetry, though, I fear, your trouble in 
 transcribing will be greater than the service 
 my remarks may do them. 
 
 " Yours affectionately, " C. Lamb. 
 
 " I cut my letter short because I am called 
 off to business." 
 
 The following, of the same character, is 
 further interesting, as tracing the origin of 
 his "Rosamund," and exhibiting his young 
 enthusiasm for the old English di-ama, so 
 nobly developed in his " f?pecimens : " — 
 
 TO MR. SOUTHET. 
 
 " Dear Southey,— I thank you heartily for 
 the Eclogue ; it pleases me mightily, being 
 so full of picture-work and circumstances. 
 I find no fault in it, unless perhaps that 
 Joanna's ruin is a catastrophe too trite : and 
 this is not the first or second time you have 
 clothed your indignation, in verse, in a tale 
 of ruined innocence. The old lady, spinning 
 in the sun, I hope would not disdain to claim 
 some kindred with old Margaret. I could 
 almost wish you to vary some circumstances 
 in the conclusion. A gentleman seducer has 
 so often been described in prose and verse ; 
 what if you had accomplished Joanna's ruin 
 by the clumsy arts and rustic gifts of some 
 country-fellow ? I am thinking, I believe, of 
 the song, 
 
 ' An old woman clothed in grey, 
 
 Whose daughter was charming and young, 
 And she was deluded away 
 
 By Roger's false flattering tongue.' 
 
 A Roger-Lothario would be a novel character, 
 I think you might paint him very well. You 
 may think this a very silly suggestion, and 
 so, indeed, it is ; but, in good truth, nothing 
 else but the first words of that foolish ballad 
 put me upon scribbling my ' Rosamund.' 
 But I thank you heartily for the poem. Not 
 having anything of my own to send you in 
 return — tliough, to tell truth, I am at w^/ik 
 upon sometliing, wh'ch, if I were to cut away 
 and garble, perhaps I might send yoj au 
 
extract or two that might not displease 3'ou ; 
 but I will not do that ; and whether it will 
 come to anything, 1 know not, for I am as 
 slow as a Fleiniiig painter when I compose 
 anything — I will crave leave to put down a 
 few lines of old Christopher Marlow's ; I 
 take them from his tragedy, 'The Jew of 
 Malta.' Tlie Jew is a famous character, 
 quite out of nature ; but, when we consider 
 the terrible idea our simjile ancestors had of 
 a Jew, not more to be discommended for a 
 certain discolouring (I think Addison calls 
 it) than the witches and fairies of Marlow's 
 mighty successor. The scene is betwixt 
 Barabas, the Jew, and Ithamore, a Turkish 
 captive, exposed to sale for a slave. 
 
 BA&ABA8. 
 
 {A precious rascal.) 
 As for myself, I walk abroad a-nights, 
 And kill sick people gioaniiig under walls : 
 Sometimes I go about, and poi.son wells ; 
 And now and then, to cherish Christian thieves, 
 I am content to lose some of my crowns, 
 That I may, walking in my gallery. 
 See 'm go pinioned along by my door. 
 Being young, I studied physic, and began 
 To practise first upon the Italian : 
 There I enriched the priests with burials, 
 And always kept the sexton's arms in use 
 With digging graves, and ringing dead men's kneUs ; 
 And, after that, was I an engineer. 
 And in the wars 'twixt France and Germany 
 Under pretence of serving Charles the Fifth, 
 Slew friend and enemy with my stratagems. 
 Then after that was I an usurer. 
 And with extorting, cozening, forfeiting, 
 And tricks belonging unto brokcry, 
 I fiU'd the jails with bankrupts in a year, 
 And with young orphans planted hospitals. 
 And every moon made some or other mad ; 
 And now and then one hang himself for grief, 
 Pinning upon his breast a long great scroll, 
 How I with interest had tormented him. 
 
 (Now hear Ithamore, the other gentle 
 nature.) 
 
 ITHAMORE. 
 
 {A comical dog.) 
 Faith, master, and I have spent my time 
 In setting Christian villages on fire, 
 Chaining of eunuchs, binding galley-slave*. 
 One time I was an hostler in an inn. 
 And in the night-time secretly would I steal 
 To travellers' chambers, and there cut their throats. 
 Once at Jerusalem, where the pilgrims knecl'd, 
 I strewed powder on the marble stones, 
 And therewithal their knees would rankle so. 
 That I have laiigh'd a good to see the cripples 
 Go limping home to Christendom on stilts. 
 
 BARABAS. 
 
 Wty, this Is something — 
 
 "There is a mixture of the ludicrous and 
 the terrible in these lines, brimful of genius 
 
 and antique invention, that at first reminded 
 me of your old description of cruelty in hell, 
 wliich was in the true Hogarthian style. I 
 need not tell 7/021 that Marlow was author of 
 that pretty madrigal, ' Come live with me 
 and be my Love,' and of the tragedy of 
 Edward II., in which are certain lines 
 unequalled in our Engli.sh tongue. Honest 
 Walton mentions the said madrigal under 
 the denomination of * certain smooth verses 
 made long since by Kit Marlow.' 
 
 "I am glad you have put me on the scent 
 after old Quarles. If I do not put up those 
 eclogues, and that shortly, say I am no true- 
 nosed hound. I have had a letter from 
 Lloyd J the yoiuig metaphysician of Caius is 
 well, and is busy recanting the new heresy, 
 metaphysics, for the old dogma, Greek. My 
 sister, I thank you, is quite well. 
 
 " Yours sincerely, " C. Lamb." 
 
 The following lettei-s, which must have 
 been written after a short interval, show a 
 rapid change of opinion, very unusual with 
 Lamb (who stuck to his favourite books as 
 he did to his friends), as to the relative 
 merits of the "Emblems" of Wither and of 
 Quarles : 
 
 TO MR. SOUTHEY. 
 
 "Oct. 18th, 1798. 
 
 " Dear Southey,— I have at last been so 
 fortunate as to pick up Wither's Emblems 
 for you, that ' old book and quaint,' as the 
 brief author of Hosamund Gray hath it ; it 
 is in a most detestable state of preservation, 
 and the cuts are of a fainter impression than 
 I have seen. Some child, the curse of anti- 
 quaries and bane of bibliopical rarities, hath 
 been dabbling in some of them with its paint 
 and dirty fingers ; and, in particular, hath a 
 little sullied the author's own portraiture, 
 which I think valuable, as the poem that 
 accompanies it is no common one ; this last 
 excepted, the Emblems are far inferior tc 
 old Quarles. I once told you otherwise, but 
 I had nut then read old Q. with attention. 
 I have picked up, too, another copy of 
 Quarles for iiinepeuce ! ! ! O tempora ! O 
 lectores ! so that if you have lost or parted 
 with your own copy, say so, and I can furnish 
 you, for you prize these things more than I 
 do. You will be amused, I think, with 
 honest Wither s ' h^upereedeiis to all them 
 
LETTERS TO SOUTHEY. 
 
 ■whose custom it is, without any deserving, 
 to importune authors to give unto them 
 their books.' I am sorry 'tis imperfect, as 
 the lotteiy board annexed to it also is. 
 Methinksyou might modernise and elegantise 
 this Supersedeas, and place it in front of 
 your Joan of Arc, as a gentle hint to Messi's. 
 Parke, &c. One of the happiest emblems, 
 and comicalest cuts, is the owl and little 
 chir]')ers, page 63. 
 
 " Wishing you all amusement, which your 
 true emblem-fancier can scarce fail to find in 
 even bad emblems, I remain your caterer to 
 command, " C. Lamb. 
 
 " Love and respects to Edith. I hope she 
 is well. How does your Calendar prosper ?" 
 
 TO MR. SOUTHEY. . 
 
 "Nov. 8th, 1798. 
 
 " I perfectly accord with your opinion of 
 old "Wither ; Quarles is a wittier writer, but 
 Wither lays more hold of the heart. Quarles 
 thinks of his audience when he lectures ; 
 Wither soliloquises in company with a full 
 heart. What wretched stuff are the ' Divine 
 Fancies ' of Quarles ! Religion appears to 
 him no longer valuable than it fiu-nishes 
 matter for quibbles and riddles ; he turns 
 God's grace into wantonness. Wither is like 
 an old friend, whose warm-heartedness and 
 estimable qualities make us wish he possessed 
 more genius, but at the same time make us 
 wilUng to dispense with that want. I always 
 love W., and sometimes admire Q. Still that 
 portrait poem is a fine one ; and the extract 
 from ' Shepherds' Hunting ' places him in a 
 starry height far above Quarles. If you 
 wrote that review in ' Ciit. Rev.,' I am sorry 
 you are so sparing of praise to the ' Ancient 
 Marinere ; ' — so far from calling it as you 
 do, with some wit, but more severity, ' A 
 Dutch Attempt,' &c., I call it a right English 
 attempt, and a successful one, to dethrone 
 German sublimity. You have selected a 
 passage fertile in unmeaiiing miracles, but 
 have passed by fifty passages as miraculous 
 as the mii'acles they celebrate. I never so 
 deeply felt the pathetic as in that part, 
 
 ' A spring of love gush'd from my heart, 
 And I bless'd them unaware — ' 
 
 It stimg me into high pleasure through 
 sufferings. Lloyd does not like it ; his head 
 
 is too metaphj^sical, and your taste too 
 con'ect ; at least I must allege somethincr 
 against you both, to excuse my own dotage — 
 
 ' So lonely 'twas, that God himself 
 Scarce seemed there to be ! ' — &c., &c. 
 
 But you allow some elaborate beauties — you 
 should have extracted 'em. ' The Ancient 
 Marinere ' plays more tricks with the mind 
 than that last poem, which is yet one of the 
 finest written. But I am getting too dog- 
 matical ; and before I degenerate into abuse, 
 I will conclude with assuring you that I am 
 " Sincerely yours, 
 
 " C. Lamb. 
 
 " I am going to meet Lloyd at Ware on 
 Saturday, to return on Sunday. Have you 
 any commands or commendations to the 
 metaphysician ? I shall be very happy if 
 you will dine or spend any time with me in 
 your way through the great ugly city ; but 
 I know you have other ties upon you in 
 these parts. 
 
 " Love and respects to Edith, and friendly 
 remembrances to Cottle." 
 
 In this year, ]\Ir. Cottle proposed to publish 
 an annual volume of fugitive poetry by 
 various hands, under the title of the " Annual 
 Anthology ;" to which Coleridge and Southey 
 were principal contributors, the first volume 
 of which was published in the following year. 
 To this little work Lamb contributed a short 
 religious effusion in blank verse, entitled 
 " Living without God in the World." The 
 following letter to Southey refers to this 
 poem by its first words, " Mystery of God," 
 and recurs to the rejected sonnet to his 
 sister ; and alludes to an intention, after- 
 wards changed, of entitling the proposed 
 collection " Gleanings." 
 
 TO MR. SOUTHEY 
 
 "Nov. 28th, 1798. 
 
 " I can have no objection to your printing 
 ' Mystciy of God ' with my name, and all 
 due acknowledgments for the honour and 
 favour of the communication ; indeed, 'tis a 
 poem that can dishonom- no name. Now, 
 that is in the true strain of modern modesto- 
 
 vanitas But for the sonnet, I heartily 
 
 wish it, as I thougbt it was, dead and 
 
 D 2 
 
36 
 
 ATTACKS OF THE ANTI-JACOBIN. 
 
 foi gotten. If the exact circumstances under 
 which I -wrote could be kuo\\Ti or told, it 
 would be an interesting sonnet ; but, to an 
 inilifFerent and stranger reader, it must 
 appear a very bald thing, certainly inadmis- 
 sible in a comj^ilation. I Avish you could 
 affix a different name to the volume ; there 
 is a contemptible book, a wretched assort- 
 ment of vapid feelings, entitled Pratt's Glean- 
 ings, which hath damned and impropriated 
 the title for ever. Pray think of some other. 
 The gentleman is better known (better had 
 he remained unknown) by an Ode to Bene- 
 volence, written and spoken for and at the 
 annual dinner of the Humane Soc-iety, who 
 walk in procession once a-j^ear, a\ ith all the 
 objects of their charity befure them, to return 
 God thanks for giving them such benevolent 
 hearts." 
 
 by a caricat\ire of Gilray's, in which Cole- 
 ridge and Southey were introduced with 
 asses' heads, and Lloyd and Lamb as toad 
 and frog. In the number for July appeared 
 the well-known poem of the " New Morality," 
 in which all tlie prominent objects of the 
 hatred of these champions of religion and 
 order were introduced as offering homage to 
 Lepaux, a French charlatan, — of whose 
 existence Lamb had never even heard. 
 
 " Couriers and Stars, sedition's evening host, 
 Thou Morning Chronicle, and Morning Post, 
 Whether yc make the ' Rights of Man' your theme. 
 Your country libel, and your God hlasiihcme, 
 Or dirt on private wnrth arid virtue thrnir. 
 Still blasphemous or blackguard, praise Lepaux. 
 
 And ye five other wandering bards, that move 
 In sweet accord of harmony and love, 
 
 C dge and S — th— y, L^d, and I.— b and Co., 
 
 Tune all your mystic harps to praise Lepaux ! " 
 
 At this time Lamb's most intimate asso- 
 ciates were Lloyd and Jem White, the author 
 of the Falstaff Letters. "When Lloyd was in 
 town, he and White lodged in the same 
 house, and were fast friends, though no two 
 men could be more unlike, Lloyd having no 
 drollery in his nature, and White nothing 
 else, " You will easily understand," observes 
 Mr. Southey, in a letter with which he 
 favoured the publisher, " liow Lamb could 
 sympathise with both." 
 
 The literary association of Lamb with 
 Coleridge and Southey drew down upon him 
 the hostility of the young scorners of the 
 " Anti-Jacobin," who luxuriating in boyish 
 pride and aristocratic patronage, tossed the 
 arrows of their wit against all charged with 
 innovation, whether in politics or poetry, 
 and cared little whom they wounded. No 
 one could be more innocent than Lamb of 
 political heresy ; no one more sti-ongly 
 opposed to new theories in morality, which 
 he always regarded with disgust ; and yet 
 he not only shared in the injustice which 
 accused his friends of the last, but was con- 
 founded in the charge of the first, — his only 
 crime being that he had published a few 
 poems deeply coloured with religious enthu- 
 siasm, in conjunction with two other men of 
 genius, who were dazzled by the glowing 
 phantoms which the French llevolution had 
 raised. The very first number of the " Anti- 
 Jacobin Magazine and Review " was adorned 
 
 Not content with thus confounding persons 
 of the most opposite opinions and the most 
 various characters in one common libel, the 
 party returned to the charge in the number 
 for September, and thus denounced the 
 young poets, in a parody on the "Ode 
 to the Passions," under the title of "The 
 Anarchists." 
 
 " Next H — Ic — ft vow'd in doleful tone^ 
 No more to Are a thankless age : 
 Oblivion mark'd his labours for her own, 
 
 Neglected from the press, and damu'd upon 
 the stage. 
 
 See ! faithful to their mighty dam, 
 C— — dge, S— th — y, L — d, and L — b 
 In splay-foot madrigals of love. 
 Soft moaning like the widow'd dove. 
 Pour, side-by-side, their sympathetic notes ; 
 Of equal rights, and civic feasts. 
 And tyrant kings, and knavish priests. 
 Swift through the land the tuneful mischief floats. 
 
 And now to softer strains they struck the IjTe, 
 
 They sung the beetle or the mole, 
 
 The dying kid, or uss's foal. 
 By cruel man permitted to expire." 
 
 These effusions have the palliation which 
 the excess of sportive wit, impelled by youth- 
 ful spirits and fostered by the applause of 
 the great, brings with it ; but it will be 
 difficult to palliate the coar.se malignity of a 
 passage in the prose department of the same 
 work, in which the writer added to a state- 
 ment that Mr. Coleridge was dishonoured at 
 ("ambridge for preaching Deism : " Since then 
 he has left his native country, commenced 
 citizen of the world, left his poor children 
 
LETTERS TO SOUTHEY. 
 
 87 
 
 fatherless, and his wife destitute. Ex his 
 disce, his friends Lamb and Southey." It 
 was surely rather too much even for partisans, 
 wlien denouncing their political opponents 
 as men who " dirt on private worth and 
 virtue threw," thus to slander two young 
 men of the most exemplary character — one, 
 of an almost puritanical exactness of demea- 
 nour and conduct — and the other, persevering 
 in a life of noble self-sacrifice, chequered 
 only by the frailties of a sweet nature, which 
 endeared him even to those who were not 
 admitted to the intimacy necessary to appre- 
 ciate the touching example of his severer 
 virtues ! 
 
 If Lamb's acquaintance with Coleridge and 
 Southey procured for him the scom of the 
 more -vnrulent of the Anti-Jacobin party, he 
 showed by his intimacy with another dis- 
 tinguished object of their animosity, that he 
 was not solicitous to avert it. He was 
 introduced by ]\Ir. Coleridge to one of the 
 most remarkable persons of that stirring 
 time — the author of " Caleb Williams," and 
 of the " Political Justice." The first meeting 
 between Lamb and Godwin did not wear a 
 promising aspect. Lamb grew wai'm as the 
 conviAdality of the CA^ening advanced, and 
 indulged in some freaks of humour which 
 had not been dreamed of in Godwin's philo- 
 sophy ; and the philosopher, forgetting the 
 equanimity with which he usually looked on 
 the vicissitudes of the world or the whist- 
 table, broke into an allusion to Gilray's 
 caricature, and asked, " Pray, Mr. Lamb, are 
 you toad or frog ? " Coleridge was appre- 
 hensive of a rupture ; but calling the next 
 morning on Lamb, he found Godwin seated 
 at breakfast with him ; and an interchange 
 of civilities and card-parties was established, 
 which lasted through the life of Lamb, whom 
 Godwin only survived a few months. Indif- 
 ferent altogether to the politics of the age. 
 Lamb could not nelp being struck with pro- 
 ductions of its new-bom energies, so remark- 
 able as the works and the char.-xjter of 
 Godwin. He seemed to realise in himself 
 what Wordsworth long afterwards described, 
 " the central calm at the heart of all agita- 
 tion." Through the medium of his mind the 
 stormy convulsions of society were seen 
 "silent as in a picture." Paradoxes tlie 
 most daring wore the air of delibei-ato 
 wisdom as he i)ronoanced them. He foretold 
 
 the future happiness of mankind, not with 
 the inspiration of the poet, but with the 
 grave and passionless voice of the oracle. 
 There was nothing better calculated at once 
 to feed and to make steady the enthusiasm 
 of youthful patriots than the high specula- 
 tions, in which he taught them to engage on 
 the nature of social evils and the great 
 destiny of his species. No one would have 
 suspected the author of those wild theories, 
 which startled the wise and shocked the 
 prudent, in the calm, gentlemanly person 
 wlio rarely said anything above the most 
 gentle comm<m-p]ace, and took interest in 
 little beyond the whist-table. His peculiar 
 opinions were entirely subservient to his love 
 of letters. He thought any man who had 
 written a book had attained a superiority 
 over his fellows which placed him in another 
 class, and could scarcely understand other 
 distinctions. Of all his works Lamb liked 
 his " Essay on Sepulchres " the best — a short 
 development of a scheme for preserving in 
 one place the memory of all great writers 
 deceased, and assigning to each his proper 
 station, — quite chimerical in itself, but 
 accompanied with solemn and touching 
 musings on life and death and fame, embodietl 
 in a style of singular refinement and beautv. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 [1799, 1800.] 
 
 LETTEnS TO SOUTHEY, COLERIDGE, MANNING, AND 
 •WOKDSWOKTU. 
 
 The year 1799 found Lamb engaged during 
 his leisui'e hours in completing his tragedy of 
 John Woodvil, which seems to have been 
 finished about Christmas, and transmitted to 
 Mr. Kemble. Like all young authors, who 
 are fascinated by the splendour of theatrical 
 representation, he longed to see his concep- 
 tions embodied on the stage, and to receive 
 his immediate reward in the sympathy of a 
 crowd of excited spectators. The hope was 
 vain ; — but it cheered him in many a lonely 
 hour, and inspired him to write when 
 exhausted with the business of the day, and 
 when the less powerful stimulus of the press 
 would have been insufficient to rouse him. 
 In the mean time he continued to correspond 
 
38 
 
 LETTERS TO SOUTHEY. 
 
 with Mr. Southey, to send him portions of 
 Ills play, and to reciprocate criticisms with 
 him. The following three letters, addressed 
 to Mr. Southey in the spring of this year, 
 require no commentary. 
 
 TO MR. SOUTHET. 
 
 "Jan. 21st, 1799. 
 
 " I am to blame for not writing to you 
 before on my oxen account ; but I know you 
 can dispense with the expressions of grati- 
 tude or I should have thanked you before for 
 all May's kindness.* He has liberally supplied 
 the pei-son I spoke to you of with money, 
 and had procured him a situation just after 
 himself had lighted upon a similar one, and 
 engaged too far to recede. But May's kind- 
 ness was the same, and my thanks to you and 
 him are the same. May went about on this 
 business as if it had been his own. But you 
 knew John May before this, so I will be 
 silent. 
 
 " I shall be very glad to hear fi-om you 
 when convenient. I do not know how your 
 Calendar and other ali'airs thrive ; but above 
 all, I have not heard a great while of your 
 Madoc — the ojnis magmmi. I would willingly 
 send you something to give a value to this 
 letter ; but I have only one slight passage 
 to send you, scarce worth the sending, which 
 I want to edge in somewhere into my play, 
 which, by the way, hath not received the 
 addition of ten lines, besides, since I saw you. 
 A father, old Walter Wood^il, (the witch's 
 PROT^GiS) relates this of his son John, who 
 ' fought in adverse armies,' being a royalist, 
 and his father a pai-liamentary man. 
 
 ' I Raw him in the day of ■Worcester fight, 
 Whither he came at twice seven years, 
 Under the discipline of the Lord Falkland, 
 (His uncle by the mother's side, 
 Svho gave his youthful politics a bent 
 Quite from the principles of his father's house ;) 
 There did I see tliis valiant Lamb of Mars, 
 This sprig of honour, this unbearded John, 
 This veteran in green years, this sprout, tliis Woodvil, 
 (With drcadless case guiiUng a fire-hot steed, 
 Whicli seem'd to scorn the manage of a boy,) 
 Prick forth with such n mirth into the field, 
 To mingle rivalship and acts of war 
 Even with the sinewy mastfrs of the art, — 
 You would have Ihouglit the work of blood had been 
 A play.game merely, and the rabid Mars 
 Had put his harmful hostile nature oU', 
 To instruct raw youth in images of war. 
 And practice of the unedged players' foils. 
 TlkC ruug^i fanatic and blood-practised soldiery 
 
 S<c tinte, p. .'U. 
 
 Seeing such hope and Tirtue in the boy. 
 Disclosed their ranks to let him pass unhurt, 
 Checking their swords' uncivil injuries. 
 As loth to mar that curious workmanship 
 Of Valour's beauty pourtray'd in his face.* 
 
 " Lloyd object=» to ' pourtrayed in his face,' 
 do you 1 I like the line. 
 
 " I shall clap this in somewhere. I think 
 there is a spirit through the lines ; perhaps 
 the 7th, 8th, and 9th owe their origin to 
 Shakspeare, though no image is borrowed. 
 
 He says in Henry the Fourth — 
 
 ' This infant Ilotspur, 
 Mars in swathing clothes.' 
 
 But pi-ay did Lord Falkland die before 
 "Worcester fight ? In that case T must make 
 bold to unclify some other nobleman. 
 " Kind love and respects to Edith. 
 
 " C. Lamb." 
 
 TO MR. SOUTHEY. 
 
 "March 15th, 1799. 
 
 "Dear Southey, — I have received your 
 little volume, for which I thank you, though 
 I do not entirely approve of this sort of inter- 
 course, where the presents are all on one side. 
 I have read the last Eclogue again with 
 great pleasure. It hath gained considerably 
 by abridgment, and now I think it wants 
 nothing but enlargement. You will call this 
 one of tyrant Procrustes' criticisms, to cut 
 and ptxll so to his own standard ; but the 
 old lady is so great a favourite with me, I 
 want to hear more of her ; and of ' Joanna ' 
 you have given us still less. But the picture 
 of the rustics leaning over the bridge, Jind 
 the old lady travelling abroad on summer 
 evining to see her garden watered, are 
 images so new and true, that I decidedly 
 prefer this ' Ruin'd Cottage ' to any poem in 
 the book. Indeed I think it the only one 
 that will bear comparison with your ' Hymn 
 to the Penates,' in a former volume. 
 
 " I compare dissimilar things, as one would 
 a rose and a star, for the ple:isure they give 
 us, or ivs a child soon learns to choose between 
 a cidce and a rattle ; for dissimilars have 
 mostly some points of comparison . The next 
 best poem, I think, is the lirst Eclogue ; 'tis 
 very complete, laid abounding in little pic- 
 tures ami reullties. The remainder Eclogues, 
 excepting only tlie ' Funeral," 1 do not greatly 
 ailmire. I miss one, wliich had at least aa 
 
LETTERS TO SOUTHEY. 
 
 good a title to publication as the ' Witch,' 
 or tlie ' Sailor's Mother.' You callVl it the 
 ' Last of the Family.' The ' Old Woman of 
 Berkeley ' comes next ; in some humours I 
 would give it the preference above any. But 
 who the devil is Matthew of Westminster ? 
 You are as familiar with these antiquated 
 monastics, as Swedenborg, or, as his followers 
 affect to call him, the Baron, with his in- 
 visibles. But you have raised a very comic 
 effect out of the true narrative of Matthew of 
 Westminster. 'Tis surprising with how little 
 addition you have been able to convert, with 
 so little alteration, his incidents, meant for 
 terror, into circumstances and food for the 
 spleen. The Parody is not so successful ; it 
 has one famous line, indeed, which conveys 
 the finest death-bed image I ever met with: 
 
 ' The doctor whispcr'd the nurse, and the surgeon knew 
 ■what he said.' 
 
 But the offering the bride three times bears 
 not the slightest analogy or proportion to the 
 fiendish noises three times heard ! In ' Jas- 
 par,' the circumstance of the great light is 
 very affecting. But I had heard you mention 
 it before. The 'Rose' is the only insipid 
 piece in the volume ; it hath neither thorns 
 nor sweetness ; and, besides, sets all chrono- 
 logy and probability at defiance. 
 
 " ' Cousin Margaret,' you know, I like. 
 The allusions to the Pilgrim's Progress are 
 particularly happy, and harmonise tacitly 
 and delicately with old cousins and aunts. To 
 familiar faces we do associate familiar scenes, 
 and accustomed objects ; but what hath 
 Apollidon and his sea-n3-mphs to do in these 
 affairs ? Ajjollyon I could have borne, though 
 he stands for the devil, but who is Apollidon? 
 I think you are too apt to conclude faintly, 
 with some cold moral, as in the end of the 
 poem called ' The Victory ' — 
 
 ' Be thou her comforter, ■who art the widow's friend ; ' 
 
 a single common-place line of comfort, which 
 beai-s no proportion in weight or number to 
 the many lines which describe suffering. 
 This is to convert religion into mediocre 
 feelings, which should burn, and glow, and 
 tremble. A moral should be wrought into 
 the body and soul, the matter and tendency 
 of a poem, not tagged to the end, like a ' God 
 send the good ship into harbour,' at the con- 
 
 clusion of our bills of lading. The finishing 
 of the 'Sailor' is also imperfect. Any dis- 
 senting minister may say and do as nnich. 
 
 " These remarks, I know, are crude and 
 unwrought, but I do not lay claim to much 
 accurate thinking. I never judge system- 
 wise of things, but fasten upon pai-ticulara. 
 After all, there is a great deal in the book 
 that I must, for time, leave unmentioned, to 
 desei-ve my thanks for its o-mi sake, as well 
 as for the friendly remembrances implied in 
 the gift. I again return you my thanks. 
 
 " Pray present my love to Edith. 
 
 " C. L." 
 
 TO MR. SOUTHEY. 
 
 "March 20th, 1799. 
 " I am hugely pleased with your ' Spider,' 
 'your old freemason,' as you call him. The 
 three first stanzas ai'e delicious ; they seem 
 to me a compound of Burns and Old Quarles, 
 those kind of home-strokes, where more is 
 felt than strikes the ear; a terseness, a jocular 
 pathos, which makes one feel in laughter. 
 The measure, too, is novel and pleasing. I 
 could almost wonder, Rob. Burns, in his life- 
 time never stumbled upon it. The fourth 
 stanza is less striking, as being less original. 
 The fifth falls off. It has no felicity of 
 phrase, no old-fashioned phrase or feeling. 
 
 ' Young hopes, and love's delightful dreams,' 
 
 savour neither of Bui-ns nor Quarles ; they 
 seem more like shreds of many a modern 
 sentimental sonnet. The last stanza hath 
 nothing striking in it, if I except the two 
 concluding lines, which are Burns all over. 
 I wish, if you concur with me, these things 
 could be looked to. I am sure this is a kind 
 of ■writing, which comes ten-fold better 
 recommended to the heart, comes there more 
 like a neighbour or familiar, than thousands 
 of Hamuels and Zillahs and Madelons. I 
 beg you will send me the ' Holly-tree,' if it 
 at all resemble this, for it must please me. 
 I have never seen it. I love this sort of 
 poems, that open a new intercourse with the 
 most despised of the animal and insect race. 
 I think this vein ma}' be further opened 
 Peter Pindar hath very prettily apostro- 
 phised a fly ; Burns hath his mouse and his 
 louse ; Coleridge less successfully hath made 
 overtures of intimacy to a jackass, therein 
 
40 
 
 LETTERS TO MANNING. 
 
 only following at unrescmbling distance, 
 Sterne and gieater Cervantes. Besides these, 
 I know of no other examples of breaking 
 down the partition between us and our ' poor 
 earth-born companions.' It is sometimes 
 revolting to be put in a track of feeling by 
 other people, not one's own immediate 
 thoughts, else I would persuade you, if I 
 could (I am in earnest), to commence a series 
 of these animal poems, which might have a 
 tendency to rescue some poor creatures from 
 the antipathy of mankind. Some thoughts 
 come across me ; — for instance — to a rat, to 
 a toad, to a cockchafer, to a mole — people 
 bake moles alive by a slow oven-fire to cure 
 consumption — rats are, indeed, the most 
 despised and contemptible parts of God's 
 earth. I killed a rat the other day by 
 punching him to pieces, and feel a weight of 
 blood upon me to this hour. Toads you 
 know are made to fly, and tumble down and 
 crush all to pieces. Cockchafers are old 
 sport ; then again to a worm, with an apos- 
 trophe to anglers, those patient tyi-ants, meek 
 inflictors of pangs intolerable, cool devils ; to 
 an owl ; to all snakes, with an apology for 
 their poison ; to a cat in boots or bladders. 
 Your own fancy, if it takes a fancy to these 
 hints, will suggest many more. A series of 
 such poeras, suppose them accompanied with 
 plates descriptive of animal torments, cooks 
 roasting lobsters, fishmongers crimping 
 skates, &c., &c. would take excessively. I 
 will willingly enter into a partnership in the 
 plan with you : I think my heart and soul 
 would go with it too — at least, give it a 
 thought. My plan is but this minute come 
 into my head ; but it strikes me instan- 
 taneously as something new, good, and useful, 
 full of pleasure, and full of moral. If old 
 Quarles and Wither could live again, we 
 would invite them into our firm, Eurns hath 
 done his part." 
 
 In the summer Lamb revisited the scenes 
 in Hertfordshire, where, in his grandmother's 
 time, he had 9j)ent so many liappy liolidays. 
 lu the following letter, he just hints at 
 feelings which, many years after, he so beau- 
 tifully develoi)ed in those essays of ' Elia,' — 
 * Blakesmoor,' and 'Mackery End.' 
 
 TO MK. SOUTHEY. 
 
 "Oct. 31st, 1799. 
 
 " Dear Sou they, — I have but just got your 
 letter, being returned from Herts, where I 
 have passed a few red-letter days with much 
 pleasure. I would describe the county to, 
 you, as you have done by I>evonshire, but 
 alas ! I am a poor pen at that same. I could 
 tell you of an old house with a tapestry bed- 
 room, the ' Judgment of Solomon ' composing 
 one pannel, and 'Actaeon spying Diana naked' 
 the other. I could tell of an old marble hall, 
 with Hogarth's prints, and the Roman 
 Caesars in marble hung round. I could tell 
 of a wilderness, and of a village chui-ch, and 
 where the bones of my honoured grandam 
 lie ; but there ai-e feelings which refuse to be 
 translated, sulky aborigines, which will not 
 be naturalised in another soil. Of this nature 
 are old family faces, and scenes of infancy. 
 
 " I have given your address, and the books 
 you want, to the Arch's ; they will send 
 them as soon as they can get them, but they 
 do not seem quite familiar to their names. 
 I shall have nothing to communicate, I fear 
 to the Anthology. You shall have some 
 fragments of my play, if you desire them, but 
 I think I had rather print it whole. Have 
 you seen it, or shall I lend you a copy ? I 
 want your opinion of it. 
 
 " I must get to business, so farewell ; my 
 kind remembrances to Edith. " C. L." 
 
 In the autumn of this year Lamb's choice 
 list of friends received a most important 
 addition in Mr. Thomas Manning, then a 
 matliematical tutor at Cambridge ; of whom 
 he became a frequent correspondent, and to 
 whom he remained strongly attached through 
 life. Lloyd had become a graduate of the 
 university, and to his introduction Lamb \\a8 
 indebted for Miuming's friendship. The 
 following letters will show how earnestly, 
 yet how modestly, Lamb sought it. 
 
 TO MR. MANNING. 
 
 "Dec. 1799. 
 
 " Dear Manning, — The particular kiiidncss, 
 even up to a degree of attachment, which I 
 have experienced from you, seems to claim 
 some distinct acknowledgment on my ]>art, 
 I could not content myself with a bare 
 
LETTERS TO MANNING. 
 
 41 
 
 remembrance to you, conveyed in some letter 
 to Lloyd. 
 
 " Will it be agreeable to you, if I occasion- 
 ally recruit your memory of me, which must 
 else soon fade, if you consider the brief inter- 
 course we have had. I am not likely to 
 prove a troublesome correspondent. My 
 scribbling days are past. I shall have no 
 sentiments to communicate, but as they 
 spring up from some living and worthy 
 occasion. 
 
 " I look forward with gi-eat pleasure to the 
 performance of your promise, that we should 
 meet in London early in the ensuing year. 
 The century must needs commence auspi- 
 ciously for me, that brings with it Manning's 
 friendship, as an earnest of its after gifts. 
 
 " I should have written before, but for a 
 troublesome inflammation in one of my eyes, 
 brought on by night travelling with the 
 coach windows sometimes up. 
 
 "What more I have to saj' shall be reserved 
 for a letter to Lloyd. I must not prove 
 tedious to you in my first outset, lest I should 
 aflfright you by my ill-judged loquacity. 
 " I am, youi's most sincerely, 
 
 "C. Lamb." 
 
 TO MR. MANNING. 
 
 "Dec. 2Sth, 1799. 
 
 "Dear Manning, — Having suspended my 
 correspondence a decent intei-val, as knowing 
 that even good things may be taken to satiety, 
 a wish cannot but recur to learn whether 
 you be still well and happy. Do all things 
 continue in the state I left them in Cam- 
 bridge ? 
 
 " Do your night parties still flourish ? and 
 do you continue to bewilder your company, 
 with your thousand faces, running down 
 through all the keys of idiotism (like Lloyd 
 over his perpetual harpsichord), from the 
 smile and the glimmer of half-sense and 
 quarter-sense, to the grin and hanging lip of 
 Betty Foy's own Johnny ? And does the 
 face -dissolving curfew .«iound at twelve? 
 How unlike the great originals were your 
 petty terrors in the postscript, not fearful 
 enough to make a fairy shudder, or a Lilli- 
 putian fine lady, eight months full of child, 
 miscarry. Yet one of them, which had more 
 beast than the rest, I thought faintly resem- 
 bled otie of your biutifications. But, seriously, 
 I long to see your own honest Manning-face 
 
 again. I did not mean a pun, — your marCa 
 face, you will be apt to say, I know your 
 wicked will to pun. I cannot now write to 
 Lloyd and you too, so you must convey as 
 much interesting intelligence as this may 
 contain or be thought to contain, to him and 
 Sophia, with my dearest love and remem- 
 brances. 
 
 " By the by, I think you and Sophia both 
 incorrect with regard to the title of the play* 
 Allowing your objection (which is not neces- 
 sary, as pride may be, and is in real life often, 
 cured by misfortunes not directly originating 
 from its own acts, as Jeremy Taylor will tell 
 you a naughty desire is sometimes sent to 
 cure it. I know you read these practical 
 divines) — but allowing your objection, does 
 not the betraying of his fother's secret 
 directly spring from pride ? — from the pride 
 of wine and a full heart, and a proud over- 
 stepping of the ordinary rules of morality, 
 and contempt of the prejudices of mankind, 
 which are not to bind superior souls — 'as 
 ti'ust in the matter of secrets all ties of blood, &c. 
 &c., keeping of promises, the feeble mind's 
 religion, binding our o)iornin<j knoidedge to 
 the perfonnance of what last night's ignorance 
 spake ' — does he not prate, that ^ Great Spirits* 
 must do more than die for their friend — does 
 not the pride of wine incite him to display 
 some evidence of friendship, which its own 
 irregularity shall make great ? This I know, 
 that I meant his punishment not alone to be 
 a cure for his daily and habitual pride, but 
 the direct consequence and appropriate 
 punishment of a particular act of pride. 
 
 " If you do not understand it so, it is my 
 fault in not explaining my meaning. 
 
 " I have not seen Coleridge since, and 
 scarcely expect to see him, — ^perhaps he has 
 been at Cambridge. 
 
 " Need I turn over to blot a fresh clean 
 
 half-sheet ? merely to say, what I hope you 
 
 are sure of without my repeating it, that I 
 
 would have you consider me, dear Manning, 
 
 " Your sincere friend, " C. Lamb." 
 
 Early in the following year (1800), Lamb, 
 with his sister, removed to Chapel-street, 
 Pentonville. In the summer he visited 
 I Coleridge, at Stowey, and spent a few 
 
 * It had ficcn proposed to entitle John WoodTil 
 " Pride's Cure." 
 
42 
 
 LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 
 
 delightful holidays in his society and that 
 of "Wordsworth, who then resided in the 
 neighbourhood. This was the first oppor- 
 tunity Lamb had enjoyed of seeing much of 
 the poet, wlio was destined to exercise a 
 beneficial and lasting influence on the litera- 
 ture and moral sense of the opening century. 
 At this time Lamb was scarcely prepared to 
 sympathise witli the naked simplicity of the 
 "Lyrical Ballads," which Wordsworth was 
 preparing for the press. The " rich conceits " 
 of the writers of Elizabeth's reign had been 
 blended with his first love of poetry, and he i 
 could not at once acknowledge the serene 
 beauty of a style, in which language was 
 only the stainless mirror of thought, and 
 which sought no aid either from the grandeur 
 
 O O j 
 
 of artificial life or the pomp of words. Li ! 
 after days he was among the most earnest of 
 this great poet's admirers, and rejoiced as he 
 found the scoffers who sneered at his bold | 
 experiment gradually owning his power. How '. 
 he felt when the little golden opportunity of 
 conversation with Wordsworth and Cole- 
 ridge had passed will appear from the 
 following letter, which seems to have been 
 addressed to Coleridge shortly alter his 
 return to London. 
 
 TO MR. COLERIDGE. 
 
 " I am scarcely yet so reconciled to the 
 loss of you, or so subsided into my wonted 
 uniformity of feeling, as to sit calmly down 
 to think of you and Avrite to you. But I 
 reason myself into the belief that those few 
 and pleasant holidays shall not have been 
 spent in vain. I feel improvement in the 
 recollection of many a casual conversation. 
 The names of Tom Poole, of Wordswortli 
 and his good sister, with thine and Sarali's, 
 are become ' familiar in my mouth as house- 
 hold words.' You would make me very 
 happy, if you think W. has no objection, by 
 transcribing for me that in-scriptiou of his. 
 I have some scattered sentences ever floating 
 on ray memory, teasing me that I cannot 
 remember more of it. You may believe I 
 will make no improper use of it. Believe 
 me I can think now of many subjects on 
 which I had planned gaining information 
 from you ; but I forgot my ' treasure's 
 worth' while I possessed it. Your leg is 
 now become to me a matter of much more 
 importance — and many a little thing, which 
 
 when I was present with you seemed scarce 
 
 to indent my notice, now presses painfully 
 on my remembrance. Is the Patriot come 
 yet ? Are Wordsworth and his sister gone 
 yet ? I was looking out for John Tlielwall 
 all the way from Bridgewater, and had I met 
 him, I think it would have moved almost me 
 to tears. You will oblige me too by sending 
 me my great-coat, which I left behind in 
 the oblivious state the mind is thrown into 
 at parting — is it not ridiculous that I 
 sometimes envy that great-coat lingering 
 so cunningly behind ! — at present I have 
 none — so send it me by a Stowey waggon, if 
 there be such a thing, directing for C. L., 
 No. 4.5, Chapel -street, Pentonville, near 
 liOndon. But above all, that Inscription ! 
 — it will recall to me the tones of all your 
 voices — and with them many a remembered 
 kindness to one who could and can repay 
 you all only by the silence of a grateful 
 heai-t. I could not talk much, while I was 
 witli you, but my silence was not suUenness, 
 nor I hope from any bad motive ; but, in 
 truth, disuse has made me awkward at it. 
 I know I beliaved myself, paiiicvdarly at 
 Tom Poole's, and at Cruikshauk's, most like 
 a sulky child ; but company and convei-se 
 are strange to me. It was kind in you all to 
 endure me as you did. 
 
 " Are you and your dear Sarah — to me 
 also very dear, because very kind — agreed 
 yet about the management of little Hartley ? 
 and how go on the little rogue's teeth ? I 
 will see White to-morrow, and he shall send 
 you information on that matter ; but as 
 ])erhaps I can do it as well after talking with 
 him, I will keep this letter open. 
 
 " My love and thanks to you and all of vou. 
 
 " C. L." 
 
 " Wednesday Kvening." 
 
 Coleridge shortly after came to town, to 
 
 make arrangements for liis contributions to 
 
 the daily press. The following note is 
 addressed to him when in London. 
 
 TO MR. COLEKIDGE. , 
 
 "Jan. 2nd, 1800. 
 "Dear Coleridge, — Now I write, I cannot 
 miss this opportunity of acknowledging the 
 nbligatio!is myself, and the readers in geiuu-al 
 of tliat luminous jiaper, the 'Morning Post,' 
 are under to you for tlie very novel and 
 
LETTERS TO MANNING. 
 
 43 
 
 exquisite manner in -which you combined 
 political with grammatical science, in your 
 yesterday's dissertation on Mr. Wyndhani's 
 unhappy composition. It must have been 
 the death-blow to that ministry. I expect 
 Pitt and Grenville to resign. More especially 
 the delicate and Cottrellian grace with which 
 you officiated, wdth a ferula for a white wand, 
 as gentleman usher to the word ' also,' which 
 it seems did not know its place. 
 
 " I expect Manning of Cambridge in town 
 to-night — will you fulfil your promise of 
 meeting him at my house ? He is a man of 
 a thousand. Give me a line to say what 
 day, whether Saturday, Sunday, Monday, 
 &c., and if Sarah and the Philosopher can 
 come. I am afraid if I did not at intervals 
 call upon you, I shovild ne.ver see you. But I 
 forget, the affairs of the nation engross your 
 time and your mind. 
 
 " Fai-ewell, " C. L." 
 
 Coleridge afterwards spent some weeks 
 with Lamb, as appears from the following 
 letter : — 
 
 TO MR. MANNING. 
 
 "March 17th, 1800. 
 "Dear Mamiing, — I am living in a con- 
 tinuous feast. Coleridge has been with me 
 now fur nigh three weeks, and the more I see 
 of him in the quotidian undress and relax- 
 ation of his mind, the more cause I see to 
 love him, and believe him a very good man, 
 and all those foolish impressions to the 
 contraiy fly off like morning slumbers. He 
 is engaged in translations, whicli 1 hope will 
 keep him this month to come. He is uncom- 
 monly kind and friendly to me. He ferrets 
 me day and night to do someth ing. He tends 
 me, amidst all his owm worrying and heart- 
 oppressing occupations, as a gardener tends 
 his young tulip. Marry come up ; what a 
 pretty similitude, and how like your humble 
 servant ! He has lugged me to the brink of 
 engaging to a newspaper, and has suggested 
 to me for a first plan, the forgery of a 
 supposed manuscript of Burton the anatomist 
 of melancholy. I have even written tlie 
 introductory letter ; and, if I can pick up a 
 few guineas this way, I feel they will be most 
 ref resiling, bread being so dear. If I go on 
 with it, I will apprise you of it, as you may 
 like to see my things ! and the tulip of all 
 flowers, loves to be admired most. 
 
 "Pray pardon me, if my lettei-s do not 
 
 come very thick. I am so taken up with one 
 
 ; thing or other, that I c;uinot pick out (I will 
 
 ; not say time, but) fitting times to write to 
 
 j you. My dear love to Lloyd and Sophia, and 
 
 I pray split this thin letter into three parts, and 
 
 present them with the two biggest in my name. 
 
 " They are my oldest friends ; but, ever 
 
 the new friend driveth out the old, as the 
 
 ballad sings ! God bless you all three ! I 
 
 would hear from LI. if I could. 
 
 "C. L." 
 
 " Flour has just fallen nine shillings a 
 sack ! we shall be all too rich. 
 
 " Tell Charles I have seen his mamma, 
 and have almost fallen in love with her, 
 since I mayn't with Olivia, She is so fine 
 and graceful, a complete matron-lady-quaker. 
 She has given me two little books. Olivia 
 gi'ows a channing girl — full of feeling, and 
 thinner than she was ; but I have not time 
 to fall in love. 
 
 "Mary presents her geiural compliments. 
 She keeps in fine health ! " 
 
 Coleridge, during this visit, recommended 
 Lamb to Mr. Daniel Stuart, then editor of 
 the "Morning Post," as a writer of light 
 articles, by which he might add something 
 to an income, then barely sufficient for the 
 decent support of himself and his sister. It 
 would seem from his next letter to Manning, 
 that he had made an offer to try his hand at 
 some personal squibs, which, ultimately, was 
 not accepted. Manning need not have 
 feared that there would have been a particle 
 of malice in them ! Lamb afterwards became 
 a correspondent to the paper, and has re- 
 corded his experience of the misery of toiling 
 after pleasantries in one of the " Essays of 
 Elia," entitled " Newspapers thirty-five years 
 ago." 
 
 TO MR. MANNING. 
 
 " C. L.'s moral sense presents her compli- 
 ments to Doctor ^lamiing, is very thankful 
 for his medical advice, but is hajipy to add 
 that her disorder has died of itself. 
 
 " Dr. Manning, Coleridge has left us, to go 
 into the nortii, on a visit to his God, Words- 
 worth. AVith him have flown all my splendid 
 prospects of engagement with the ' Morning 
 Post,' all my visionary guineas, the deceitful 
 
44 
 
 LETTERS TO MANNING. 
 
 wages of Tinbom scandal. In tinith, I wonder 
 you took it up so sei-iously. All my inten- 
 tion was but to make a little sport with such 
 public and fair game as Mr. Pitt, Mr. AVilber- 
 force, Mrs. Fitzherbert, the Devil, &c. — 
 gentry dipped in Styx all over, wliom no 
 paper javelin-lings can touch. To have made 
 free with these cattle, where was the harm ? 
 'twould have been but giving a polish to 
 lamp-black, not nigrifying a negro primarily. 
 After all, I caimot but regi-et my involuntary 
 virtue. Hang virtue that's thrust upon us ; 
 it behaves itself with such constraint, till 
 conscience opens the window and lets out 
 the goose. I had struck off two imitations 
 of Burton, quite abstracted from any modern 
 allusions, which was my intent only to lug 
 in from time to time to make 'em popular. 
 
 " Stuart has got these, with an introduc- 
 tory letter ; but, not hearing from him, I 
 have ceased from my labours, but I write to 
 him to-day to get a final answer. I am 
 afraid they won't do for a paper. Burton is 
 a scarce gentleman, not much known, else I 
 had done 'em pretty well. 
 
 " I have also hit off a few lines in the name 
 of Burton, being a * Conceit of Diabolic 
 Possession.' Burton was a man often assailed 
 by deepest melancholy, and at other times 
 much given to laughing, and jesting, as is 
 the way with melancholy men. I will send 
 them you : they were almost extempore, and 
 no great things ; but you will indulge them. 
 Robert Lloyd is come to town. Priscilla 
 meditates going to see Pizarro at Drury 
 Lane to-night, (from her uncle's) undercover 
 of coming to dine with me . . heu ! tempora ! 
 heu ! mores ! — I have barely time to finish, 
 as I expect her and Robin every minute.— 
 Yours as usual, " C. L." 
 
 The following is an extract from a letter 
 addressed about this time to Manning, who 
 had taken a view of a personal matter 
 relating to a common friend of both, dii-ectly 
 contrary to that of Lamb. 
 
 TO MR. MANNING. 
 
 " Dear Manning, — Rest you merry in your 
 opinion ! Opinion is a species of property ; 
 and though I am always desirous to share 
 
 propei-ty, properly my own. Some day, 
 Manning, when we meet, substituting Cory- 
 don and fair Amaryllis, for and , 
 
 we will discuss together this question of 
 moral feeling, ' Li what cases, and how far 
 sincerity is a virtue ? ' I do not mean Truth, 
 a good Olivia-like creature, God bless her, 
 who, meaning no offence, is always ready to 
 give an answer when she is askod why she 
 did so and so ; but a certain foi-ward-talking 
 half-brother of hers. Sincerity, that amphi- 
 bious geutleman, who is so ready to perk up 
 his obnoxious sentiments unasked into your 
 notice, as Midas would his ears into your 
 face uncalled for. But I despair of doing 
 anj-tliing by a letter in the way of explain- 
 ing or coming to explanations. A good wish, 
 or a pun, or a piece of secret history, may be 
 well enough that way conveyed ; nay, it has 
 been known, that intelligence of a turkey 
 hath been conveyed by that medium, without 
 much ambiguity. Godwin I am a good deal 
 pleased with. He is a very well-behaved, 
 decent man, nothing very brilliant about 
 him, or imposing, as you may suppose ; quite 
 another guess sort of gentleman from wliat 
 your Anti-jacobin Christians imagine him. 
 I was well pleased to find he has neither 
 horns nor claws ; quite a tame creature, I 
 assure you. A middle-sized man, both in 
 stature and in understanding ; whereas, 
 from his noisy fame, you would expect to 
 find a Briareus Centimanus, or a Tityus tall 
 enougli Xo pull Jupiter from his heavens. 
 
 " Pray, is it a part of your sincerity to 
 show my letters to Lloyd ? for, really, gentle- 
 men ought to explain their virtues upon a 
 fii-st acquaintance, to prevent mistakes. 
 
 " God bless you. Manning. Take my 
 trifling as trifiing ; and believe me, seriously 
 and deeply, — Your well-wisher and friend, 
 
 " C. L." 
 
 The following letter was addressed to 
 Coleridge shortly after he had left London 
 on a visit to Wordsworth, who in the 
 meantime had settled on the bordera of 
 Grasmere. 
 
 TO MR. COLERIDGE. 
 
 "Aug. Cfh, 1800. 
 
 " Dear Coleridge, — I have taken to-day, 
 
 with my friend to a certain extent, I shall and delivered to L. & Co., Imprimis: your 
 ever like to keep some tenets, and some books, ^^z., thi-ee ponderous German diction- 
 
LETTERS TO COLERIDaE, 
 
 45 
 
 aries, one volume (I can find no more) of 
 German and French ditto, sundry other 
 German books unbound, as you left them, 
 ' Percy's Ancient Poetry,' and one volume of 
 ' Anderson's Poets.' I specify them, that 
 ^•ou may not lose any. Secundo : a dressing- 
 gown (value, fivepence) in which you used to 
 sit and look like a conjuror, when you were 
 translating Wallenstein. A case of two 
 razors, and a shaving-box and strap. This 
 it has cost me a severe struggle to part with. 
 Thsy are in a brown-paper parcel, which 
 also contains sundry papers and poems, 
 sermons, some few Epic Poems, — one about 
 Cain and Abel, which came from Poole, 
 &c., &c., and also your tragedy ; with one or 
 two small German books, and that drama in 
 which Got-fader performs. Tertio : a small 
 oblong box containing all your letters, collected 
 from all your waste papers, and which fill 
 the said little box. All other waste papers, 
 which I judged worth sending, are in the 
 paper parcel aforesaid. But you will find all 
 your letters in the box by themselves. Thus 
 have I discharged my conscience and my 
 lumber-room of all your property, save and 
 except a folio entitled ' Tyrrell's Bibliotheca 
 Politica,' which you used to learn your 
 politics out of when you wrote for the ' Post,' 
 mutatis mutandis, i. e., appl}dng past in- 
 ferences to modem data. I retain that, 
 because I am sensible I am very deficient in 
 the politics myself; and I have torn up — 
 don't be angi-y, waste paper has risen forty 
 per cent., and I can't afford to buy it — all 
 ' Buonaparrte's Letters,' * Arthur Young's 
 Treatise on Corn,' and one or two more light- 
 armed infantry, which I thought better 
 suited the flippancy of London discussion, 
 than the dignity of Keswick thinking. Mary 
 says you will be in a passion about them, 
 when you come to miss them ; but you must 
 study philosophy. Read ' Albertus Magnus 
 de Chartis Amissis' five times over after 
 phlebotomising, — 'tis Burton's recipe — and 
 then be angry with an absent friend if you 
 can. Sara is obscure. Am I to \mderstapid 
 by her letter, that she sends a kiss to Eliza 
 
 B 1 Pray tell your wife that a note of 
 
 interrogation on the superscription of a 
 letter is highly ungi-ammatical — she proposes 
 writing my name Lamb ? Lambe is quite 
 enough. I have had the Anthology, and 
 like only one thing in it, Leioti ; but of that 
 
 the last stanza is detestable, the rest mo.st 
 exquisite ! — the epithet enviable would dash 
 the finest poem. For God's sake (I never 
 was more serious), don't make me ridiculous 
 any more by terming me gentle-hearted in 
 print, or do it in better verses. It did well 
 enough five years ago when I came to see 
 you, and was moral coxcomb enough at the 
 time you wrote the lines, to feed upon such 
 epithets ; but, besides that, the meaning of 
 gentle is equivocal at best, and almost always 
 means poor-spirited ; the very quality of 
 gentleness is abhorrent to such vile trumpet- 
 ings. My sentiment is long since vanished. 
 I hope my virtues have done sricking. I can 
 scarce think but you meant it in joke. I hope 
 you did, for I should be ashamed to think 
 you could think to gratify me by such praise, 
 fit only to be a cordial to some green-sick 
 sonneteer.* 
 
 " I have hit ofi" the following in imitation 
 of old English poetry, wliich, I imagine, I am 
 a dab at. The measure is unmeasureable ; 
 but it most resembles that beautiful ballad 
 the Old and Young Courtier ; and in its 
 featm-e of taking the extremes of two 
 situations for just parallel, it resembles the 
 old poetry certainly. If I could but stretch 
 out the cu-cumstances to twelve more verses, 
 i. e. if I had as much genius as the writer of 
 that old song, I think it would be excellent. 
 It was to follow an imitation of Biu-ton in 
 prose, which you have not seen. But fate 
 ' and wisest Stewart ' say No.t 
 
 " I can send you 200 pens and six quires 
 of paper immediately, if they will answer the 
 carriage by coach. It would be foolish to 
 pack 'em up cum m,idtis libris et cceteris, — 
 they would all spoil. I only wait your 
 commands to coach them. I would pay five- 
 and-forty thousand carriages to read W.'s 
 
 • This refers to a poem of Coleridge's, composed in 
 1797, and published in the Anthologj' of the year 1800, 
 under the title of " This Lime-tree Bower my Prison," 
 addressed to " Charles Lamb, of the India House, 
 London," in which Lamb is thus apostrophised, as 
 taking more pleasure in the country than Coleridge's 
 other visitors — a compliment wliich eyen then he 
 Bcaicely merited : — 
 
 " But thou, methinks most glad, 
 
 My gentle-hearted Charles I For thou hast pined 
 And linger'd after nature many a year. 
 In the great city pent." — &c. 
 
 t The quaint and pathetic poem, entitled " A Ballad, 
 noticing the difference of rich and poor, in the ways of 
 a rich noble's palace and a poor workhouse." 
 
i6 
 
 LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 
 
 tragedy, of which I have heard so much and 
 seen so little— only what I saw at Stowoy. 
 Pray give me an order in writing on Long- 
 man for ' Lyrical Ballads.' I have the first 
 volume, and, truth to tell, six shillings is a 
 broad sliot. I cram all I can in, to save a 
 multiplying of letters, — those pretty comets 
 with swinging tails. 
 
 " I '11 just crowd in God bless you ! 
 
 " C. Lamb." 
 
 "John Woodvil" was now printed, 
 although not published till a year after- 
 wards ; probably withheld in the hope of its 
 representation on the stage. A copy was 
 sent to Coleridge for "Wordsworth, with the 
 following letter or cluster of letters, written 
 at several times. The ladies referred to, in 
 the exquisite description of Coleridge's blue- 
 stocking friends, are beyond the reach of 
 feeling its application ; nor will it be detected 
 by the most api^rehensive of their surviving 
 friends. 
 
 TO MR. COLERIDGE. 
 
 " 1 send you, in this parcel, my play, which 
 I beg you to jirescnt in my name, with my 
 respect and love, to Wordsworth and his 
 sister. You blame us for giving your direc- 
 tion to Miss W ; the woman has been 
 
 ten times after us about it, and we gave it 
 her at last, under the idea that no further 
 harm would ensue, but she would once write 
 to you, and you would bite your lips and 
 forget to answer it, and so it would end. 
 You read us a dismal homily upon ' Reali- 
 ties.' We know, quite as weU as you do, 
 what are shadows and what are realities. 
 You, for instance, when you are over your 
 fourth or fifth jorum, chirping about old 
 school occurrences, are the best of realities. 
 Shadows are cold, thin things, that liave no 
 
 warmth or grasp in them. Miss W , and 
 
 her friend, and a tribe of authoresses that 
 come after you here daily, and, in defect of 
 you, liive and cluster upon us, are the shadows. 
 
 You encouraged that moi)8ey. Miss W , 
 
 to dance alter you, in the hope of having her 
 nonsense put into a nonsensical Anthology. 
 We have pretty well shaken her off, by that 
 simple expedient of referring her to you ; 
 but there are more burrs in the wind. I 
 came home t'other day from business, hungry 
 as a hunter, to dinner, witli nothing, I am 
 
 sure, of the avihor but hunqer about me, and 
 whom found I closeted with IVfary but a 
 
 friend of this !Miss W , one Miss B c , 
 
 or B y ; I don't know how she sptlls her 
 
 name. I just came in time enough, I believe, 
 luckily to prevent them from exchanging 
 vows of eternal friendship. It seems she is 
 one of your authoresses, that you first foster, 
 and then upbraid us with. But I forgive 
 you. 'Tlie rogue has given me potions to 
 make me love him.' Well ; go she would 
 not, nor step a step over our threshold, till 
 we had promised to come and drink tea with 
 her next night. I had never seen her before, 
 and could not tell who the devil it was that 
 was so familiar. We went, however, not to 
 be impolite. Her lodgings are up two pair 
 
 of staira in Street. Tea and coffee, and 
 
 macaroons — a kind of cake I much love. 
 
 We sat down. Presently Miss B broke 
 
 the silence, by declaring herself quite of a 
 different opinion from D'Tsraeli, who sup- 
 poses the differences of human intellect to be 
 the mere effect of organisation. She beu'-^ed 
 to know my opinion. I attempted to c^.rry 
 it off with a pun upon organ, but that went 
 off very flat. She immediately conceived a 
 very low opinion of my metaphysics ; and, 
 turning round to Mary, put some question to 
 her in French, — possibly having heard that 
 neither Mary nor I iinderetood French. The 
 explanation that took place occasioned some 
 embarrassment and much wondering. She 
 then fell into an insulting convei-sation about 
 the comparative genius and merits of all 
 modern languages, and concluded with 
 asserting that the Saxon was esteemed the 
 purest dialect in Germany. From thence 
 she passed into the subject of poetry ; where 
 I, who had hitlierto sat mute, and a hearer 
 only, humbly hoped I might now put in a 
 word to some advantage, seeing that it wjis 
 my own trade in a manner. But I was 
 stopped by a round assertion, that no good 
 poetry had appeared since Dr. Johnson's 
 time. It .seems the Doctor has suppressed 
 many hoj)eful geniuses that way, by the 
 severity of his critical strictures in his 
 ' Lives of the Poets.' I here ventured to 
 question the fact, and was beginning to 
 appeal to names, but I w<is assured ' it was 
 certainly tlie case.' Then we discussed Miss 
 Moro's book on education, which 1 liad never 
 read. It seems Dr. Gregory, another of Misa 
 
LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 
 
 47 
 
 B 's friends, has found foult with one of 
 
 Miss Move's metaphors. Miss More has been 
 at some pains to vindicate herself, — in the 
 
 opinion of Miss B , not without success. 
 
 It seems the Doctor is invariably against the 
 use of broken or mixed metaphor, which he 
 reprobates, against the authority of Shaks- 
 peare himself. We next discussed the 
 question, whether Pope was a poet ? I find 
 Dr. Gregory is of opinion he was not, though 
 Miss Seward does not at all concur with him 
 in this. We then sat upon the comparative 
 merits of the ten translations of ' Pizarro,' 
 
 and Miss B y or B e advised Mary 
 
 to take two of them home ; she thought it 
 might afford her some pleasure to compare 
 them verbatim ; which we declined. It 
 being now nine o'clock, wine and macaroons 
 were again served round, and we parted, 
 with a promise to go again next week, and 
 meet the Miss Porters, who, it seems, have 
 heard much of Mr. Coleridge, and wish to 
 meet us, because we are his friends. I have 
 been preparing for the occasion. I crowd 
 cotton in my ears. I read all the reviews 
 and magazines of the past month, agai)ist the 
 dreadful meeting, and I hope by these means 
 to cut a tolerable second-rate figure. 
 
 " Pray let us have no more complaints 
 about shadows. We are in a fair way, through 
 yov, to surfeit sick upon them. 
 
 " Our loves and respects to your hcst and 
 hostess. 
 
 " Take no thought about yoiir proof-sheets ; 
 they shall be done as if Woodfall himself did 
 them. Pray send us word of Mrs. Coleridge 
 and little David Hartley, your little reality. 
 
 " Farewell, dear Substance. Take no um- 
 brage at any thing I have written. 
 
 " C. Lamb, Umbra!!'' 
 
 and the lines, — 
 
 " Land of Shadows, 
 Shadow-month the IGth or 17th, 1800." 
 
 " Coleridge, I find loose among your papers 
 a copy of Christabel. It wants about thirty 
 lines ; you will very much oblige me by 
 sending me the beginning as far as thj^t 
 line, — 
 
 ' And the spring comes slowly up this way ; ' 
 
 and the intermediate lines between — 
 
 ' The lady leaps up suddenly, 
 The lovely Lady Christahel ; ' 
 
 ' She folded her arms beneath her cloak, 
 And stole to the other side of the oak.' 
 
 The trouble to you will he. small, and the 
 benefit to us very great ! A pretty antithesis ! 
 A figure in speech I much applaud. 
 
 "Godwin has called upon us. He spent 
 one evening here. Was very friendly. Kept 
 us up till midnight. Drank punch, and talked 
 about you. He seems, above all men, mor- 
 tified at your going away. Suppose you 
 were to write to that good-natured heathen : 
 
 ' Or is he a shadoiv ! ' 
 
 " If I do not write, impute it to the long 
 postage, of which you have so much cause to 
 complain. I have scribbled over a queer letter, 
 as I find by perusal, but it means no mis- 
 chief. 
 
 " I am, and will be, yours ever, in sober 
 sadness, " C. L. 
 
 " Write your German as plain as sunshine, 
 for that must correct itself You know I am 
 homo unius linguse ; in English, illiterate, a 
 dunce, a ninny." 
 
 TO MR. COLERIDGE. 
 
 "Aug. 2Gth, 1800. 
 
 " How do you like this little epigram ? It 
 is not my writing nor had I any finger in it. 
 If you concur with me in thinking it very 
 elegant and very original, I shall be tempted 
 to name the author to you. I will just hint 
 that it is almost or quite a first attempt. 
 
 [Here Miss Lamb's little poem of Helen 
 was introduced.] 
 
 " By-the-by, I have a sort of recollection 
 that somebody, I think you, promised me a 
 sight of Wordsworth's Tx-agedy. I should 
 be very glad of it just now ; for I have got 
 Manning with me, and should like to read it 
 with him. But this, I confess, is a refine- 
 ment. Under any circumstances, alone, in 
 Cold-Bath prison, or in the desert island, just 
 when Prosper© and his crew had set off, with 
 Caliban in a cage, to Milan, it would be a 
 treat to me to read that play. Manning haa 
 read it, so has Lloyd, and all Lloyd's family ; 
 but I could not get him to beti-ay his trust 
 
by giving ine a siglit of it; Lloyd is sadly | And elsewhere, — 
 deficient in some of those virtuous vices. 
 
 "George Dyer is the only literary character 
 I am happily acquainted with. The oftcner 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." 
 
 ' What neat r'^pa.st shall feast us, light • and choice. 
 Of Attic taste, with wine,f whence we may ri«e 
 To hear the lute well touch'd, or artful voice 
 Warble immortal notes and Tu-scan air t ' 
 
 " Indeed the poets are full of this pleasing 
 morality, — 
 
 ' Veni cito, Dominc Manning ! ' 
 
 The tragedy which Lamb was thus anxious 
 to read, has l)een perseveiingly withheld from 
 the world. A fine passage, quoted in one of 
 Hazlitt's prose essays, makes us share in his 
 earnest curiosity : — 
 
 " Action is momentary — a woi'd, a blow — 
 The motion of a muscle — tills way or that ; 
 uffcring is long, drear, and infinite." 
 
 Wordsworth's genius is perhaps more fitly 
 employed in thus tracing out the springs of 
 heroic passion, and developing the profound 
 elements of human character, than in fol- 
 lowing them out through tlieir exhibition 
 in violent contest or majestic repose. Surely 
 he may now afford to gi-atify the world ! 
 
 The next is a short but characteristic letter 
 to Manning. 
 
 TO MR. MANNING. 
 
 "Aug. nth, 1800. 
 
 " My dear fellow, (N.B. mighty fiimiliar of 
 late !) fur me to come to Cambridge now is 
 one of Heaven's impossibilities. Metaphy- 
 sicians tell us, even it can work nothing 
 which implies a contradiction. I can explain 
 this by telling you that I am engaged to do 
 double duty (this hot weather !) for a man 
 who has taken advantage of this very weather 
 to go and cool himself in 'green retreats ' all 
 the month of August. 
 
 " But for you to come to London instead ! 
 — muse upon it, revolve it, cast it about in 
 your mind. I have a bed at your command. 
 You shall drink rum, brandy, gin, aqua-vitie, 
 usquebaugh, or whiskey a' nights ; and for 
 the after-dinner trick, I have eight bottles of 
 genuine port, which, mathematically divided, 
 gives 1| for every day yovi stay, provided you 
 stay a week. Hear John Milton sing, 
 
 * Let Euclid rest and Archimedes pause.' 
 
 Tueiity-first Soinwt. 
 
 " Think upon it. Excuse the paper, it is 
 all I have. " C. Lamb." 
 
 Lamb now meditated a removal to the 
 home-place of his best and most solemn 
 thoughts — the Temple ; and thus announced 
 it in a letter to Manning. 
 
 TO MR. MANNING. 
 
 "You masters of logic ought to know 
 (logic is nothing more than a knowledge of 
 words, as the Greek etymon implies), that all 
 words ai'e no more to be taken in a literal 
 sense at all times than a promise given to a 
 tailor. When I exprest an apprehension that 
 you were mortally offended, I meant no more 
 than by the application of a certain formula 
 of efficacious sounds, which had done in 
 similar cases before, to rouse a sense of 
 decency in you, and a remembrance of what 
 was due to me ! You masters of logic should 
 advert to this phenomenon in human speech, 
 before you arraign the usage of us dramatic 
 geniuses. Imagination is a good blood mare, 
 and goes well ; but the misfortune is, she has 
 too many paths before her. 'Tis true T might 
 have imaged to myself, that you had ti'undled 
 your frail carcass to Norfolk. I might also, 
 and did imagine, that you had not, but that 
 you were lazy, or inventing new properties 
 in a triangle, and for that pui-pose moulding 
 and squeezing Landlord Crisp's three-cornered 
 beaver into fantastic experimental forms; or, 
 tliat Archimedes was meditating to repulse 
 the Fi'cnch, in ca.se of a Cambriilge invasion, 
 by a geometric hurling of folios on their red 
 caps ; or, peradvcnture, that you were in 
 extremities, in great wants, and just set out 
 for Trinity-bogs when my lettei*s came. In 
 short, my genius ! (which is a short word 
 now-a-day.s, for what-a-great-man-ani-I !) 
 
 • " We, poets ! generally give light dlnnerit." 
 f No doubt the poet hero uliudes to porl-wino iit 38*. 
 the dozen. 
 
was absolutely stifled and overlaid with its 
 own riches. Truth is one and poor, like the 
 cruse of Elijah's widow. Imagination is the 
 bold face that multiplies its oil ; and thou, 
 the old cracked pipkin, that could not believe 
 it could be put to such pui-poses. Dull pip- 
 kin, to have Elijah for thy cook. Imbecile 
 recipient of so fat a miracle. I send you 
 George Dyer's Poems, the richest production 
 of the lyrical muse this century can justly 
 boast : for Wordsworth's L. B. were pub- 
 lished, or at least written, before Christ- 
 mas. 
 
 " Please to advert to pages 291 to 296 for 
 the most astonishing account of where Shak- 
 speare's muse has been all this while. I 
 thought she had been dead, and buried in 
 Stratford Church, with the young man that 
 kept her company, — 
 
 ' But it seems, like the Devil, 
 Buried in Cole Harbour, 
 Some say she's risen again, 
 Gone 'prentice to a Barber.' 
 
 "N.B. — I don't charge anything for the 
 additional manuscript notes, which are the 
 joint productions of myself and a learned 
 translator of Schiller, • Stoddart, Esq. 
 
 " N.B. the 2d.— I should not have blotted 
 your book, but I had sent my own out to be 
 bound, as I was in duty bound. A liberal 
 criticism ujjon the several pieces, lyrical, 
 heroical, amatory, and satirical, would be 
 acceptable. So, you don't think there's a 
 Word's — worth of good poetry in the great 
 L. B. ! I daren't put the dreaded syllables at 
 their just length, for my back tingles from the 
 northern castigation. 
 
 " I am going to change my lodgings, having 
 received a hint that it would be agi-eeable, at 
 our Lady's next feast. I have paitly fixed 
 upon most delectable rooms, which look out 
 (when you stand a tip- toe) over the Thame.s, 
 and Surrey Hills ; at the upper end of 
 King's Bench walks, in the Temple. There 
 I shall have all the privacy of a house with- 
 out the encumbrance, and shall be able to 
 lock my friends out as often as I desire to 
 hold free converse with my immoi-tal mind, 
 for my present lodgings resemble a minister's 
 levee, I have so increased my acquaintance 
 (as they call 'em) since I have resided in 
 town. Like the coimtry mouse, that had 
 tasted a little of urbane manners, I long to 
 
 be nibbling my own cheese by my dear self, 
 without mouse-traps and time-traps. By my 
 new plan, I shall be as airy, up four pair of 
 stairs, as in the country ; and in a gartlen, in 
 the midst of enchanting, more than Maho- 
 metan paradise, London, whose dirtiest drab- 
 frequented alley, and her lowest bowing 
 tradesman, I would not exchange for Skid- 
 daw, Helvellyn, James, Walter, and the 
 parson into tlie bargain. O ! her lamps of a 
 night ! her rich goldsmiths, print-shops, toy- 
 shops, mercers, hardwaremen, pastry-cooks ! 
 St. Paul's churchyard ! the Strand ! Exeter 
 Change ! Charing Cross, with the man upon 
 a black horse ! These are thy gods, O Lon- 
 don ! An't you mightily moped on the banks 
 of the Cam ? Had not you better come and 
 set up here 1 You can't think what a differ- 
 ence. All the streets and pavements are 
 pure gold, I warrant you. At least, I know 
 an alchemy that turns her mud into that 
 metal, — a mind that loves to be at home in 
 crowds. 
 
 " 'Tis half-past twelve o'clock, and all sober 
 people ought to be a-bed. 
 
 " C. Lamb (as you may guess)." 
 
 The following two letters appear to have 
 been written during Coleridge's visit to 
 Wordsworth. 
 
 TO MR. COLERIDGE. 
 
 " By some fatality, unusual with me, I have 
 mislaid the list of books which you want. 
 Can you from memory, easily supply me 
 with another ? 
 
 " I confess to Statins, and I detained him 
 wilfully, out of a reverent regard to your 
 style. Statins, tliey tell me, is turgid. As 
 to that other Latin book, since you know 
 neither its name nor subject, your wants (I 
 crave leave to apprehend) cannot be very 
 urgent. Meanwhile, dream that it is one of 
 the lost Decades of Livy. 
 
 " Your pai-tiality to me has led you to form 
 an erroneous opinion as to the measure of 
 delight you suppose me to take in obliging. 
 Pray, be careful that it spread no further. 
 'Tis one of those heresies that is very preg- 
 nant. Pray, rest more satisfied with the 
 portion of learning which you have got, and 
 disturb my peaceful ignorance as little as 
 possible with such sort of commissions. 
 
60 
 
 LETTER TO WORDSWORTH. 
 
 " Did you never observe an appearance 
 ■well known by the name of the man in the 
 moon ? Some scandalous old maids have set 
 on foot a report, that it is En^l}Tnion. 
 
 " Your theory about the first awkward , 
 step a man makes being the consequence 
 of learning to dance, is not universal. We 
 have known many youths bred up at Christ's, 
 who never learned to dance, yet the world , 
 imputes to them no very gi-aceful motions. 
 I remember there was little Hudson, the 
 immortal precentor of St. Paul's, to teach 
 us our quavers ; but, to the best of my recol- 
 lection, there was no master of motions when 
 we were at Christ's. 
 
 " Farewell, in haste. 
 
 « C. L." 
 
 TO MR. WORDSWORTn. 
 
 "Oct. 13tli, 1800. 
 
 "Dear Wordsworth, — T have not forgot 
 your commissions. But the truth is, — and 
 why should I not confess it ? — I am not 
 plethorically abounding in cash at this 
 present. Merit, God knows, is very little 
 rewarded ; but it does not become me to 
 speak of myself. My motto is, 'contented 
 with little, yet wishing for more.' Now, the 
 books you wish for would require some 
 pounds, which, I am sorry to say, I have 
 not by me ; so, I will say at once, if you 
 will give me a draft upon your town banker 
 for any sum you propose to lay out, I will 
 dispose of it to the very best of my skill in 
 choice old books, such as my own soul loveth. 
 In fact, I have been waiting for the liquida- 
 tion of a debt to enable myself to set about 
 your commission handsomely ; for it is a 
 scurvy thing to cry, 'Give me the money 
 first,' and I am the first of the family of the 
 Lambs that have done it for many centuries ; 
 but the debt remains as it was, and my old j 
 friend that I accommodated has generously 
 forgot it ! The books which you want, I 
 calculate at about 8^. Ben Jonson is a ' 
 guinea book. Beaumont and Fletcher, in 1 
 folio, the right folio not now to be met with ; ! 
 the octavos are about 3^. As to any other | 
 dramatists, I do not know where to find 
 them, except what are in Dodsli^y's Old 
 Plays, which are about 3^. also. Massinger 
 I never saw but at one shoi), but it is now 
 gone ; but one of the editions of Dodsley 
 contains about a fourth (tlio best) of his 
 
 plays. Congreve, and the rest of King 
 Charles's moralists, are cheap and accessible. 
 Tlie works on Ireland I will inquire after, 
 but, I fear, Spenser's is not to be had apart 
 from his poems ; I never saw it. But you 
 may depend upon my sparing no pains to 
 furnish you as complete a librarj' of old 
 poets and dramatists as will be prudent to 
 buy ; for, I suppose you do not include the 
 201. edition of Hamlet, single play, which 
 Kemble has. Marlowe's plays and poems 
 are totally vanished ; only one edition of 
 Dodsley retains one, and the other two of 
 his plays : but John Ford is the man after 
 Shakspeare. Let me know your will and 
 pleasure soon, for I have observed, next to 
 the pleasure of buying a bargain for one's 
 self, is the pleasure of persuading a friend to 
 buy it. It tickles one with the image of an 
 imprudency, without the penalty usually 
 annexed. " C. Lamb." 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 [1800.] 
 
 LETTERS TO MANNING, AFTER LAMB's BEMOVAL TO THE 
 TEMPLE. 
 
 In the year 1800, Lamb carried into effect 
 his purpose of removing to Mitre-court 
 Buildings, Temple. During this time he 
 wrote only a few small poems, which he 
 transmitted to Manning. In his letters to 
 Manning a vein of wild humour breaks out, 
 of which there are but slight indications in 
 the correspondence Avith his more sentimen- 
 tal friends ; as if the very opposition of 
 Manning's more scientific power to his own 
 force of sjTnpathy provoked the sallies which 
 the genial kindness of the mathematici;m 
 fostered. The prodigal and reckless humour 
 of some of these letters forms a striking 
 contrast to the deep feeling of the earlier 
 letters to Coleridge. His ' t^says of Elia ' 
 show the harmonious union of both. The 
 fallowing letter contains Lamb's description 
 of his new abode. 
 
 TO MR. MANNING. 
 
 " I was not aware that you owed me any- 
 thing beside that guinea ; but 1 dare say you 
 are right. I live at No. IG, Mitre-com-t 
 
LETTERS TO MANNING. 
 
 61 
 
 Buildings, a pistol-shot off Baron Maseres'. 
 You must iuti'oduce me to the Baron. I 
 think we should suit one another mainly. 
 He lives on the ground floor, for convenience 
 of the gout ; I prefer the attic story, for the 
 air ! He keeps three footmen and two 
 maids ; I have neither maid nor lanndress, 
 not caring to be troubled with them ! His 
 forte, T understand, is tlie higher mathe- 
 matics ; my turn, I confess, is more to poetry 
 and the belles lettres. The very antithesis 
 of our characters would make up a harmony. 
 You must bring the baron and me together. 
 — N.B. when you come to see me, mount up 
 to the top of the stairs — I hope you are not 
 asthmatical — and come in flannel, for it's pure 
 airy up there. And bring your glass, and I 
 will show you the Surrey Hills. My bed 
 faces the river, so as by perking up upon my 
 haunches, and supporting my carcase with 
 my elbows, without much wrying my neck, I 
 can see the white sails glide by the bottom 
 of the King's Bench walks as I lie in my 
 bed. An excellent tiptoe prospect in the 
 best room : — casement windows, with small 
 panes, to look more like a cottage. Mind, I 
 have got no bed for you, that 's flat ; sold it 
 to pay expenses of moving. The veiy bed 
 on which Manning lay ; the friendly, the 
 mathematical Manning ! How forcibly does 
 it remind me of the interesting Otway ! ' The 
 veiy bed which on thy marriage night gave 
 thee into tlie arms of Belvidera, by the coarse 
 hands of rufiians — ' (upholsterers' men,) &c. 
 My tears will not give me leave to go on. 
 But a bed I will get you, Manning, on con- 
 dition you will be my day-guest. 
 
 " I have been ill more than a month, with 
 a bad cold, which comes upon me (like a 
 murderer's conscience) about midnight, and 
 vexes me for many hours. I have succes- 
 sively been drugged with Spanish licorice, 
 opium, ipecacuanha, paregoric, and tincture 
 of foxglove (tuictura purpuras digitalis of the 
 ancients). I am afraid I must leave off 
 drinking." 
 
 Lamb then gives an account of his visit 'to 
 . an exhibition of snakes — of a frightful vivid- 
 ness and interesting — as all details of these 
 fascinating reptiles are, whom we at once 
 loathe and long to look upon, as the old 
 enemies and tempters of our race. 
 
 TO MR. MANNING, 
 
 "Oct. IGth, 1800, 
 " Dear Manning, — Had you written one 
 week before you did, I certainly should have 
 obeyed your injunction ; you should have 
 seen me before my letter. I will explain to 
 you my situation. There are six of us in one 
 department. Two of us (within these four 
 days) are confined with severe fevers ; and 
 two more, who belong to the Tower Militia, 
 expect to have marching ordei's on Friday. 
 Now six are absolutely necessary. I have 
 already asked and obtained two young hands 
 to supply the loss of the feverites. And, with 
 the other prospect before me, you may believe 
 I cannot decently ask leave of absence for 
 myself. All I can promise (and I do jiromise, 
 with the sincerity of Saint Peter, and the 
 contrition of simier Peter if I fail) that I will 
 come the very first spare iceeh, and go nowhere 
 till I have been at Cambridge. No matter 
 if you are in a state of pupilage when I come ; 
 for I can employ myself in Cambridge very 
 pleasantly in the mornings. Are there not 
 libraries, halls, colleges, books, pictures, 
 statues ? I wish you had made London in 
 your way. There is an exhibition quite 
 uncommon in Europe, which could not have 
 escaped your genius, — a live rattlesnake, ten 
 feet in length, and the thickness of a big leg. 
 I went to see it last night by candlelight. 
 "We were ushered into a room very little 
 bigger than ours at Pentouville. A man ami 
 woman and four boys live in this room, joint 
 tenants with nine snakes, most of them such 
 as no remedy has been discovered for their 
 bite. "We walked into the middle, which is 
 formed by a half-moon of wired boxes, all 
 mansions of snakes, — whip-snakes, thunder- 
 snakes, pig-nose-snakes, American viper.s, and 
 this 7noiister. He lies curled uj) in folds ; and 
 immediately a stranger enters (for he is used 
 to the family, and sees them play at cards,) 
 he set up a rattle like a watchm.an'3 in 
 London, or near as loud, and reared up a 
 head, from the midst of these folds, like a 
 toad, and shook his he.ad, and showed every 
 sign a snake can show of irritation. I had 
 the foolish curiosity to strike the wires with 
 my finger, and the devil flew at me with his 
 toad-mouth wide open : the inside of his 
 mouth is quite white. I had got my finger 
 away, nor could he well have bit me with his 
 
 E 2 
 
62 
 
 LETTERS TO MANNING. 
 
 big mouth, winch would have been certain 
 death in five minutes. But it frightened me 
 so much, that I did not recover my voice for 
 a minute's space. I forgot, in my fear, that 
 he was secured. You would have forgot too, 
 for 'tis incredible how such a monster can be 
 confined in small gauzy-looking wires. I 
 dreamed of snakes in the night. I wish to 
 heaven you could see it. He absolutely 
 swelled with passion to the bigness of a large 
 thigh. I could not retreat without infringing 
 on another box, and just behind, a little devil 
 not an inch from my back, had got his nose 
 out, with some difficulty and pain, quite 
 through the bars ! He was soon taught 
 better manners. All the snakes were curious, 
 and objects of teiTor ; but this monster, like 
 Aaron's serpent, swallowed up the impres- 
 sion of the rest. He opened his cursed 
 mouth, when he made at me, as wide as his 
 head was broad. I hallooed out quite loud, 
 and felt pains all over my body with the 
 fright. 
 
 " I have had the felicity of hearing George 
 Dyer read out one book of 'The Farmer's 
 Boy.' I thought it rather childish. No 
 doubt, there is originality in it, (which, in 
 your self-taught geniuses, is a most rare 
 quality, they generally getting hold of some 
 bad models, in a scarcity of books, and foi-m- 
 ing their ta.ste on them,) but no selection. 
 All is described. 
 
 " Mind, I have only heard read one book. 
 " Yours sincerely, 
 
 " Philo-Sn<ake, 
 
 " C. L." 
 
 The following are fragments from a letter 
 chiefly on personal matters, the interest of 
 which is gone by : — 
 
 TO MR. MANNING. 
 
 " And now, when shall I catch a glimpse of 
 your honest face-to-face countenance again ? 
 Your fine dofpnatical sceptical face by punch- 
 light ? O! one glimpse of the human face, 
 and shake of the human hand, is better than 
 whole reams of this cold, thin correspondence; 
 yea, of more worth than all the letters that 
 have sweated the fingers of sensibility, from 
 Madame S6vign6 and Balzac to Sterne and 
 Shenstone. 
 
 " Coleridge is settled with his wife and the 
 
 young philosopher at Keswick, with the 
 Wordsworths. They have contrived to spawn 
 a new volume of lyrical ballads, which is to 
 see the light in al)out a month, and causes no 
 little excitement in the literary world. George 
 Dyer too, that good-natured heathen, is more 
 than nine months gone with his twin volumes 
 of ode, pastoral, sonnet, elegy, Spenserian, 
 Horatian, Akensidish, and Masonic verse — 
 Clio prosper the birth ! it will be twelve 
 shillings out of somebody's pocket. I find 
 he means to exclude 'pci-sonal satire,' so it 
 appears by his truly original advertisement. 
 Well, God put it into the hearts of the 
 English gentry to come in shoids and sub- 
 scribe to his poems, for He never put a 
 kinder heart into flesh of man than George 
 Dyer's ! 
 
 " Now farewell, for dinner is at hand. 
 
 " C. L." 
 
 Lamb had engaged to spend a few days | 
 when he could obtain leave, with Manning | 
 at Cambridge, and, just as he hoped to j 
 accomplish his wish, received an invitation 
 fi'om Lloyd to give his holiday to the poets 
 assembled at the Lakes. In the joyous 
 excitement of spirits which the anticipated 
 visit to Manning produced, he thus plays ofl 
 Manning's proposal on his friend, abuses 
 mountains and luxuriates in his love of 
 London : — 
 
 TO MR. MANNING. 
 
 " Dear Manning, — I have received a very 
 kind invitation from Lloyd and Sophia, to go 
 and spend a month with them at the Lakes. 
 Now it fortunately happens, (which is so 
 seldom the case !) that I have spare cash by 
 me, enough to answer the expenses of so long 
 a journey ; and I am determined to getaway 
 from the ofiice by some means. The purpose 
 of this letter is to request of j'ou (my dear 
 friend), that you will not take it unkind, if I 
 decline my proposed visit to Candnidge for 
 the present. Perhaps I shall be able to take 
 Cambridge in mi/ uay, going or coming. I 
 need not describe to you the expectations 
 which such an one as myself, pent up all my 
 life in a dirty city, have formed of a tour to 
 the Lakes. Consider Grasmei*e ! Amble- 
 side ! Wordsworth ! Coleridge ! Hills, woods, 
 lakes, and mountains, to tlie eternal devil. 
 
LETTERS TO MANNING. 
 
 53 
 
 I will eat snipes with thee, Thomas Manning. 
 Only confess, confess, a bite. ' 
 
 "P. S. I think you named the 16th ; but 
 was it not modest of Lloyd to send such an 
 invitation ! It shows his knowledge of money 
 and time. I would be loth to think, he 
 meant 
 
 ' Ironic satire sidelong sklented 
 On my poor pursie.' Burns. 
 
 For my part, with reference to my friends 
 northward, I must confess that I am not 
 romance-bit about Nature. The earth, and 
 sea, and sky (when all is said,) is but as a 
 house to dwell in. If the inmates be courteous, 
 and good liquors flow like the conduits at an 
 old coronation, if they can talk sensibly, and 
 feel properly, I have no need to stand staring 
 upon the gilded looking-glass (that strained 
 my fi-iend's purse-strings in the purchase) 
 nor his five-shilling print over the mantel- 
 piece of old Nabbs the carrier (which only 
 betrays his false taste). Just as important 
 to me (in a sense) is all the furniture of my 
 world ; eye-pampering, but satisfies no heart. 
 Streets, streets, streets, markets, theatres, 
 churches, Covent Gardens, shops sparkling 
 with pretty faces of industrious milliners, 
 neat sempstresses, ladies cheapening, gentle- 
 men behind counters lying, authors in the 
 street with spectacles, George Dyers, (you 
 may know them by their gait,) lamps lit at 
 night, pastry-cooks' and silver-smiths' shops, 
 beautiful Quakers of Pentonville, noise of 
 coaches, drowsy cry of mechanic watchmen 
 at night, with bucks reeling home drunk ; if 
 you happen to wake at midnight, cries of 
 Fire and Stop thief ; inns of court, with their 
 learned air, and halls, and butteries, just like 
 Cambridge colleges ; old book-stalls, ' Jeremy 
 Taylors,' ' Burtons on Melancholy, ' and 
 ' Keligio Medicis,' on every stall. These are 
 thy pleasures, O London ! with-the-many- 
 
 sins. O, city, abounding in , for these 
 
 may Keswick and her giant brood go hang ! 
 
 " C. L." 
 
 On this occasion Lamb was disappointed ; 
 but he was consoled V>y the acquisition of a 
 new friend, in Mr. Hickman of the House of 
 Commons, and e.xults iu a strain which he 
 never had reason to regret. This piece of 
 rare felicity enabled him even to bear the loss 
 
 of his manuscripts, and the delay of his hopes; 
 which, according to the old theatrical usage, 
 he was destined to endure. 
 
 TO MR. MANNING, 
 
 "Nov. 3rd, 1800. 
 " Ecquid meditatur Archiynedes ? What is 
 Euclid doing? "What hath happened to 
 learned Trismegist ?— doth he take it in ill 
 part, that his humble friend did not comply 
 witli his courteous invitation ? Let it siilfice, 
 I could not come — are impossibilities nothmg? 
 — be they abstractions of the intellect ? — or 
 not (i-ather) most sharp and mortifying 
 realities ? nuts in the Will's mouth too hard 
 for her to crack ? brick and stone walls in 
 her way, which she can by no means eat 
 through 1 sore lets, impedimenta viarum,, no 
 thoroughfares ? racemi nimium alte pendentes? 
 Is the phrase classic ? I allude to the grapes 
 in ^^sop, whicli cost the fox a strain, and 
 gained the world an aphorism. Observe the 
 superscription of this letter. In adapting the 
 size of the letters, which constitute your name 
 and Mr. Crisp's name respectively, I had an 
 eye to your different stations in life. 'Tis 
 truly curious, and must be soothing to an 
 aristocrat. I wonder it has never been hit 
 on before my time. I have made an acquisi- 
 tion latterly of a pleasant hand, one Rickman, 
 to whom I was introduced by George Dyer, 
 not the most flattering auspices under which 
 one man can be introduced to another — 
 George brings all sorts of people together, 
 setting up a sort of agrarian law, or common 
 property, in matter of society ; but for once 
 he has done me a great pleasure, while he 
 was only pursuing a principle, as ignes fatui 
 may light you home. This Rickman lives in 
 our Buildings, immediately opposite our 
 house ; the finest fellow to drop in a' nights, 
 about nine or ten o'clock — cold brcad-and- 
 cheese time — just in the wishing time of the 
 night, when you tcish for somebody to come 
 iu, without a distinct idea of a probable any- 
 body. Just in the nick, neither too early to 
 be tedious, nor too late to sit a reasonable 
 time. He is a most pleasant hand ; a fine 
 rattling fellow, has gone tlirough life laughing 
 at solemn apes ; — himself hugely literate, 
 oppressively full of information in all stuli" of 
 conversation, from matter of fact to Xenophon 
 and Plato — can talk Greek with Porson, 
 politics with Thelwall, conjecture with George 
 
54 
 
 LETTERS TO MANNING. 
 
 Dyer, nonsense with me, and anything with 
 anybody ; a great farmer, somewhat con- 
 cerned in an agi-icultural magazine — reads no 
 poetry but Shakspeare, very intimate with 
 Southey, but never reads his poetry, relishes 
 George Dyer, thoroughly penetrates into the 
 ridiculous wherever found, understands the 
 first time (a gi-eat desideratum in common 
 minds) — you need never twice speak to him ; 
 does not want explanations, translations, 
 limitations, as Professor Godwin does when 
 you make an assertion ; up to anything ; down 
 to everything ; whatever sapit hominem. A 
 perfect man. All this farrago, which must 
 perplex you to read, and has put me to a little 
 trouble to select! only proves how impossible it 
 is to describe a ^j?ea5a?i^ hand. You must see 
 Eickman to know him, for he is a sj^ecies in 
 one. A new class. An exotic, any slip of 
 which I am proud to put in my garden-pot. 
 The clearest headed fellow. Fullest of matter, 
 with least verbosity. If there be any alloy 
 in my fortune to have met with such a man, 
 it is that he commonly divides his time 
 between town and country, having some 
 foolish family ties at Christchurch, by which 
 means he can only gladden our London hemi- 
 sphere with retui'ns of light. He is now 
 going for six weeks." 
 
 "At last 1 have written to Kemble, to 
 know the event of my play, which was pre- 
 sented last Christmas. As I suspected, came 
 an answer back that the copy was lost, and 
 could not be found — no hint that anybody 
 had to this day ever looked into it — with a 
 courteous (reasonable !) request of another 
 copy (if I had one by me,) and a promise of 
 a definitive answer in a week. I could not 
 resist so facile and moderate demand, so 
 scribbled out another, omitting sundry things, 
 such as the witch story, about half of the 
 forest scene (which is too leisurely for story), 
 and transposing that soliloquy about England 
 getting drunk, which, like its reciter, stupidly 
 stood alone, nothing prevenient oranteveuieiit 
 — and cleared away a good deal besides, and 
 sent this copy, written all out (with altera- 
 tions, &c. req^Uring judgment) in one day and 
 a half! I sent it last night, and am in 
 weekly expectation of the tolling-bell, and 
 death-warrant. 
 
 "This is all my London news. Send me 
 Bome from the banks of Cam, as the poets 
 
 delight to speak, especially George Dyer, who 
 has no other name, nor idea, nor definition ot 
 Cambridge, — namely, its being a market- 
 to^vn, sending members to Parliament, never 
 entered into his definition — it was and is, 
 simply, the banks of the Cam, or the fair 
 Cam ; as Oxford is the banks of the Isis, or 
 the fair Isis. Yours in all humility, most 
 illustrious Trismegist, " C. Lamb. 
 
 " (Read on, there 's more at the bottom.) 
 
 " You ask me about the ' Farmer's Boy,' — 
 don't you think the fellow who wrote it (who 
 is a shoemaker) has a poor mind 1 Don't you 
 find he is always silly about poor Giles, and 
 those abject kind of phrases, which mark a 
 man that looks up to wealth ? None of 
 Bums's poet dignity. What do you think ? 
 I have just opened him ; but he makes me 
 sick." 
 
 Constant to the fame of Jem White, Lamb 
 did not fail to enlist Manning among the 
 admirers of the " Falstaflf's Lettei-s." The 
 next letter, referring to them is, however, 
 more interesting for the light which it casts 
 on Lamb's indiiference to the politics of the 
 time, and fond devotion to the past. 
 
 TO MR. MANNING. 
 
 " I hope by this time you are prepared to 
 say, the ' Falstaff 's letters ' are a bundle of 
 the shari)est, queerest, profoundest liumours, 
 of any these juice-drained latter times have 
 spawned. I should have advertised you, that 
 the meaning is frequently hard to be got at ; 
 and so are the future guineas, that now lie 
 ripening and aurifying in the womb of some 
 undiscovered Potosi ; but dig, dig, dig, dig. 
 Manning ! I set to, with an iincouquoKible 
 propulsion to write, with a lamentable want 
 of what to write. My private goings on are 
 orderly as the movements of the sj)heros, and 
 stale as their music to angels' ears. Public 
 affairs — except as they touch upon me, ami 
 so turn into private, — I cannot whip uj) my 
 mind to feel any interest in. I grieve, imleed, 
 that AVar, and Nature, and Mr. Pitt, that 
 hangs up in Lloyd's best parlour, should havo 
 conspired to call up three necessaries, simple 
 commoners as our fathers knew tliem, into 
 the upper house of luxuries ; bread, and beer, 
 and coals, Maiming. But as to Fnuice and 
 
LETTERS TO MANNING. 
 
 55 
 
 Frenchmen, and the Abb6 Sidyes and his 
 constitutions, I cannot make tliese present 
 times pi'esent to me. I read histories of the 
 past, and I live in them ; although, to 
 abstract senses, they are far less momentous, 
 than the noises which keep Europe awake. 
 I am reading ' Burnet's own Times.' Did 
 you ever read that garralous, pleasant 
 history ? He tells his story like an old man 
 past political service, bragging to his sons on 
 winter evenings of the part he took in public 
 transactions, when 'his old cap was new.' 
 Full of scandal, which all true history is. 
 No palliatives ; but all the stark wickedness, 
 that actually gives the inomentum to national 
 actors. Quite the prattle of age, and outlived 
 importance. Truth and sincerity staring out 
 upon you perpetually in alto relievo. Himself 
 a party man — he makes you a party man. 
 None of the cursed philosophical Humeian 
 indifference, so cold, and unnatural, and 
 inhuman ! None of the cursed Gibbonian 
 fine writing, so fine and composite. None 
 of Dr. Robertson's periods with three mem- 
 bers. None of Mr. Eoscoe's sage remarks, 
 all so apposite, and coming in so clever, lest 
 the reader should have had tlie trouble of 
 drawing an inference. Burnet's good old 
 prattle I can bring present to my mind ; I 
 can make the revolution present to me — the 
 Fi'ench revolution, by a converse perversity 
 in my nature, I fling as far from me. To 
 quit this tiresome subject, and to relieve you 
 frum two or three dismal yawns, which I 
 hear in spirit, I here conclude my more than 
 commonly obtuse letter ; dull, up to the 
 dulness of a Dutch commentator on Shaks- 
 j)eare. 
 
 " My love to Lloyd and to Sophia. 
 
 " C. L." 
 
 While Lamb's dramatic destinies were in 
 suspense, he was called on " to assist " at the 
 production of a tragedy," by a fiiend, whose 
 more mature reputation gave him readier 
 acces^s to the manager, but who had no better 
 claim to success than himself. Mr. Godwin, 
 whose powerful romance of Caleb Williams 
 had supplied the materials for " The Iron 
 Chest " of Colraan, naturally aspired, on his 
 own account, to the glory of the scene, and 
 completed a tragedy under the title of " An- 
 tonio, or the Soldier's Return," which was 
 
 accepted at Drury-Lane Theatre, and an- 
 nounced for representation on Saturday the 
 13th December in this year. Lamb supplied 
 the epilogue, which he copied in the following 
 letter addressed to Manning on the eventful 
 day: — 
 
 TO MR. MANNING. 
 
 "Dec. 13th, 1800. 
 " I have received your letter tJiis moment, 
 not having been at the office. I have just 
 time to scribble down the epilogue. To your 
 epistle I will just reply, that I will certainly 
 come to Cambridge before January is out : 
 I'll come tvhen I can. You shall have an 
 emended copy of my play early next week. 
 Mary thanks you ; but her handwriting is 
 too feminine to be exposed to a Cambridge 
 gentleman, though I endeavour to persuade 
 her that you understand algebra, and must 
 understand her hand. The play is the man's 
 you wot of; but for Heaven's sake do not 
 mention it — it is to come out in a feigned 
 name, as one Tobin's. I will omit the intro- 
 ductory lines which connect it with the play, 
 and give you the concluding tale, which is 
 the mass and bulk of the epilogue. The 
 name is Jack Incident. It is about promise- 
 breaking — ^you will see it all, if you read the 
 papers. 
 
 Jack, of dramatic genius justly vain, 
 
 Purchased a renter's share at Drury-lane ; 
 
 A prudent man in every other matter, 
 
 Known at his club-room for an honest hatter ; 
 
 Humane and courteous, led a civil life. 
 
 And has been seldom known to beat his wife ; 
 
 But Jack is now grown quite another man. 
 
 Frequents the green-room, knows the plot and plan 
 
 Of each new piece. 
 And has been seen to talk with Sheridan 1 
 In at the play-house just at six he pops, 
 And never quits it till the curtain drops, 
 Is never absent on the author's night. 
 
 Knows actresses and actors too by sight ; 
 
 So humble, that with Suett he'll confer, 
 
 Or take a pipe with plain Jack Bannister ; 
 
 Nay, with an author has been known so free, 
 
 He once suggested a catastrophe — 
 
 In short, John dabbled till his head was turn'd : 
 
 His wife remonstrated, his neighbours mourn'd. 
 
 His customers were dropping oft' apace, 
 
 And Jack's affairs began to wear a piteous face. 
 
 One night his wife began a curtain lecture ; 
 ' My dearest Johnny, husband, spouse, protector, 
 Take pity on your helpless babes and me. 
 Save us from ruin, you from bankruptcy — 
 Look to your business, leave these cursed plays, 
 And try again your old industrious ways.' 
 
 Jack, who was always scared at the Gazette, 
 And had some bits of scull uninjured yet, 
 Promised amendment, vow'd his wife spake reason, 
 ' He would not see another play that season — ' 
 
56 
 
 GODWIN. 
 
 Three stubboin fortnights Jack his promise kept, 
 AVas late and early in his shop, eat, slept, 
 And walk'd and talk'd, like ordinary men ; 
 No wit, but John the hatter once ajfain — 
 Visits his club : when lo! one fatal night 
 His wife with horror view'd the well-known sifrht — 
 John's hat, wig, snuff-box — well she knew his tricks — 
 And Jack decamping at the hour of six. 
 Just at the counter's edu'C a plaj-bill lay, 
 Announcing that ' Pizarro ' was the play — 
 ' O Johnny, Johnny, this is your old doing.' 
 Quoth Jack, ' Why what the dovil storm's a-brcwing ? 
 About a harmless play why all this fright \ 
 I'U go and see it, if it's but for spite — 
 Zounds, woman ! Nelson's* to be there to-night.' 
 
 " N.B. — This was intended for Jack Ban- 
 nister to speak ; but the sage managers have 
 chosen Miss Heard, except Miss Tidswell, 
 the woi-st actress ever seen or heard. Now, 
 X remember I have promised the loan of my 
 play. I will lend it instantly, and you shall 
 get it ('pon honour !) by this day week. 
 
 " I must go and dress for the boxes ! First 
 night ! Finding I have time, I transcribe 
 the rest. Observe, you have read the last 
 first ; it begins thus : — The names I took 
 from a little outline G. gave me. I have not 
 read the play ! 
 
 ' Ladies, ye've seen how Guzman's consort died, 
 
 Poor victim of a Spaniard brother's pride. 
 
 When Spanish honour through the world was blown. 
 
 And Spanish beauty for the best was known.-t 
 
 In that romantic, uncnlighten'd time, 
 
 A breach o( promise* was a sort of crime— 
 
 WTiich of you handsome English ladies here. 
 
 But deems the penance bloody and severe 1 
 
 A whimsical old Saragossa g fashion. 
 
 That a dead father's dying inclination, 
 
 Should live to thwart a living daughter's passion, 
 
 Unjustly on the sex we^ men exclaim, 
 
 Hail at your'"' vices, — and commit the same ; — 
 
 Man is a promise-breaker from the womb. 
 
 And goes a promise-breaker to the tomb — • 
 
 What need we instance here the lover's vow. 
 
 The sick man's purpose, or the great man's bow!tt 
 
 The truth by few examples best is shown— 
 
 Instead of many which are better known. 
 
 Take poor Jack Incident, that's dead and gone. 
 
 Jack, &c. &c. &c.' 
 
 " Now you have it all — ^liow do you like 
 it ? I am going to hear it recited ! ! ! 
 
 " C. L." 
 
 Alas for human hopes ! The play was de- 
 cisively damned, and the epilogue shared its 
 
 • " A good clap-trap. Nelson has exhibited two or 
 three times at both theatres — and advertised himself." 
 t " Four easy lines." 
 J " For wliich the heroine died." 
 ^ " In Hpnin / / " \\ " Two neaninrs." 
 
 % " Or you." •• " Or our, as they have altered it." 
 tf " Antithesis ! I " 
 
 fate. The tragedy turned out a miracle of 
 dulness for the world to wonder at, although 
 Lamb always insisted it had one fine line, 
 which he was fond of repeating — sole relic 
 of the else forgotten play. Kemble and 
 Mrs. Siddons, the brother and sister of the 
 drama, toiled tlirough four acts and a lialf 
 without a])plause or disapprobation ; one 
 speech was not more vapid than another ; 
 and so dead was the level of the dialogue, 
 that, although its destiny was seen from afar, 
 it presented no opportunity for hissing. But 
 as the play drew towards a close, when, after 
 a scene of frigid chiding not vivified by any 
 fire of Kemble's own, Antonio drew his 
 sword and plunged it into the heroine's 
 bosom, the " sad civility " of the audience 
 vanished, they started as at a real murder, 
 and hooted the actors from the stage. 
 " Philosophy," which could not " make a 
 Juliet," sustained the author through the 
 trial. He sat on one of the front benches of 
 the pit, unmoved amidst the storm. When 
 the first act passed oflF without a hand, he 
 expressed his satisfaction at the good sense 
 of the house ; " the proper season of applause 
 had not arrived ; " all was exactly as it 
 should be. The second act proceeded to its 
 close in the same uninterrupted calm ; his 
 fi'iends became uneasy, but still his optimism 
 prevailed ; he could aflFord to wait. And 
 though he did at hist admit the great move- 
 ment was somewhat tardy, and that the 
 audience seemed rather patient thiui inter- 
 ested, he did not lose his confidence till the 
 tumult arose, and then he submitted with 
 quiet dignity to the fate of genius, too lofty 
 to be understood by a world as yet in its 
 cliildhood ! Notwithstanding this rude re- 
 pulse, Mr. Godwin retained his taste for the 
 theatre to the List. On every first night of 
 a new piece, whether tragedy, comedy, or 
 farce, whether of friend or foe, he sat with 
 gentle interest iu a sidc-bo.x, and bore its 
 fate, whatever it might be, with resignation, 
 as he had done his own. The following is 
 Lamb's account of the catastrophe rendered 
 to Manning, iu wliich the facetious charge 
 against the unlucky author of " Violent and 
 Satauical Pride of Heart," has reference to 
 some banter which Lamb had encountered 
 among his friends by the purposed title of 
 his own play, " Pride's Cure," and his dia- 
 quisition in its defence. 
 
TO MR. MANNING. 
 
 "Dec. ICth, 1800. 
 " We are damned ! — Not the facetious 
 epilogue itself could save us. For, as the 
 editor of the Moruing Post, quick-sighted 
 gentleman ! hath this morning truly ob- 
 sei*ved, (I beg pardon if I falsify his ivords, 
 their profound se)ise I am sure I retain,) both 
 prologue and epilogue were worthy of accom- 
 panying such a piece ; and indeed (mark the 
 profundity, Mr. Manning) were received with 
 proper indignation by such of the audience 
 only as thought either worth attending to. 
 Professor, thy glories wax dim ! Again, the 
 incomparable author of the ' True Briton ' 
 declareth in his paper (bearing same date) 
 that the epilogue was an indifferent attempt 
 at humour and character, and failed in both. 
 I forbear to mention the other papers, 
 because I have not read them. O Professor, 
 how different thy feelings no^r (quantum 
 mutatus ab illo professore, qui ia agi'is 
 philosophise tantas victorias acquisivisti), — 
 how different thy proud feelings but one 
 little week ago, — thy anticipation of thy nine 
 nights, — those visionary claps, "which have 
 soothed thy soul by day, and thy dreams by 
 night ! Calling in accidentally on the Pro- 
 fessor while he was out, I was ushered into 
 the study ; and my nose quickly (most 
 sagacious always) pointed me to four tokens 
 lying loose upon thy table, Professor, which 
 indicated thy violent and satanical pride of 
 heart. Imprimis, tliere caught mine eye a 
 list of six pereons, thy friends, whom thou 
 didst meditate inviting to a sumptuous dinner 
 on the Thursday, anticipating the profits of 
 thy Saturday's play to answer charges ; I 
 was in the honoured file 1 Next, a stronger 
 evidence of thy violent and almost satanical 
 pride, lay a list of all the morning papers 
 (from the ' Morning Chronicle ' downwards to 
 the ' Porcupine '), with the places of their 
 respective offices, where thou wast meditating 
 to insert, and didst insert, an elaborate 
 sketch of the story of thy play ; stones in 
 thy enemy's hand to bruise thee with, and 
 severely wast thou bruised, O Professor ! 
 nor do I know what oil to pour into thy 
 wounds. Next, which convinced me to a 
 dead conviction, of thy pride, violent and 
 almost satanical pride — lay a list of books, 
 which thy un-tragedy-favoured pocket could 
 
 never answer ; Dodsley's Old Plays, Malone'a 
 Shakspeare (still harping upon thy play, thy 
 philosophy abandoned meanwhile to chris- 
 tians and superstitious minds) ; nay, I be- 
 lieve (if I can believe my memory), that the 
 ambitious Encyclopedia itself was part of 
 thy meditated acquisitions ; but many a 
 playbook was there. All these visions are 
 danmed; and thou, Px'ofessor, must read 
 Shakspeare in future out of a common 
 edition ; and, hark ye, pray read him to a 
 little better purpose ! Last and strongest 
 against thee (in colours manifest as the hand 
 upon Belshazzar's wall), lay a volume of 
 poems by C. Lloyd and C. Lamb. Thy heart 
 misgave thee, that thy assistant might pos- 
 sibly not have talent enough to furnish thee 
 an epilogue ! Manning, all these things came 
 over my mind ; all the gratulations that 
 would have thickened upon him, and even 
 some have glanced aside upon his humble 
 friend ; the vanity, and the fame, and the 
 profits (the Professor is 5001. ideal money out 
 of pocket by this failure, besides 200^. he 
 would have got for the copyright, and the 
 Professor is never much beforehand with the 
 world ; what he gets is all by the sweat of his 
 brow and dint of brain, for the Professor, 
 though a sure man, is also a slow) ; and now 
 to muse upon thy altered physiognomy, thy 
 pale and squalid appearance (a kind of bhie 
 sickness about the eyelids), and thy crest 
 fallen, and thy proud demand of 200^. from 
 thy bookseller changed to an uncertainty of 
 his taking it at all, or giving thee full 50^. 
 The Professor has won my heart by this his 
 mournful catastrophe. You remember Mar- 
 shall, who dined with him at my house ; I 
 met him in the lobby immediately after the 
 damnation of the Professor's play, and he 
 looked to me like an angel : his face wa,s 
 lengthened, and all over perspiration ; I never 
 saw such a care-fraught visage ; I could have 
 hugged him, I loved him so intensely. ' From 
 every pore of him a perft-me fell.' I have 
 seen that man in many situations, and, from 
 my soul, I think tha*. a more god-like honest 
 soul exists not hi this world. The Professor's 
 poor nerves trembling with the recent shock, 
 he hurried liim away to my house to supper, 
 and there we comforted him as well as we 
 couUi. He came to consult me about a 
 clu -ge of catastrophe ; but ahvs ! the piece 
 was condemned long before that crisis. I at 
 
58 
 
 LETTERS TO MANNING. 
 
 lii-st humourefl liiiii with a specious proposi- 
 tion, but have since joined his true friends 
 in advising him to give it up. He did it 
 with a paug, and is to print it as his. 
 
 "L." 
 
 In another letter, a few days after, Lamb 
 thus recurs to the subject, and closes the 
 centuiy in anticipation of a visit to his friend 
 at Cambridge. 
 
 TO MR. MANNING. 
 
 "Dec. 27th, 1800. 
 
 " As for the other Professor, he has actually 
 begun to dive into Tavernier and Chardin's 
 Persian Travels for a story, to form a new 
 drama for the sweet tooth of this fastidious 
 age. Hath not Bethlehem College a fair 
 action for non-residence against such profes- 
 sors ? Are poets so feio in this a/je, that He 
 must write poetry 1 Is morals a subject so 
 exhausted, that he must quit that line ? Is 
 the metaphysic well (without a bottom) 
 drained dry ? 
 
 " If I can guess at the wicked pride of the 
 Professor's heart, I would take a shrewd 
 wager, that he disdains ever again to dip his 
 pen in Prose. Adieu, ye splendid theories! 
 Farewell, dreams of political justice ! Law- 
 suits, where I was counsel for Archbishop 
 Fenelon versus my own mother, in the famous 
 fire cause ! 
 
 "Vanish from my mind, professors, one 
 and all. I have metal more attractive on 
 foot. 
 
 "Man of many snipes, — I will sup with 
 thee, Deo volente, et diabolo nolente, on 
 Monday night, the 6th of January, in the 
 new year, and crush a cup to the infant 
 century. 
 
 " A word or two of my progress. Embark 
 at AiK o'clock in the morning, with a fresh gale, 
 on a Cambridge one-decker ; very cold till 
 eight at night ; land at St. Mary's light-house, 
 muffins and coffee ujion table (or any other 
 curious production of Turkey, or both Indies), 
 snipes exactly at nine, punch to commence at 
 ten, with ari/ument ; difference of opinion is 
 expected to take place about eleven ; perfect 
 unanimity, with some haziness and dimness, 
 befoi'e twelve. — N. B. My single affection is 
 not 80 singly wedded to snipes ; but the 
 curious and epicurean eye would also tiUco 
 
 a pleasure in beholding a delicate and well- 
 chosen a.sso)-tuient of teals, ortolans, the 
 unctuous and palate-soothing flesh of geese, 
 wild and tame, nightingales' brains, the 
 sensorium of a yoimg sucking pig, or any 
 other Christmas disli, which I leave to the 
 judgment of you and the cook of Gonville. 
 
 "C.Lamb." 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 [1801 to 1804.] 
 
 LETTERS TO MANNING, WOUDSWOKTH, AND COLEIIIDGE ; 
 I JOHN WOODVIL REJECTED, PUULISIIKD, AND KEVIEWKD. 
 
 Tn E ominous postponement of Lamb's theat- 
 I rical hopes was followed by their disappoint- 
 ment at the commencement of the century. 
 i He was favoured with at least one inter- 
 view by the stately manager of Drury-lane, 
 j Mr. Kemble, who extended his high-bred 
 courtesy even to authors, whom he inva- 
 riably attended to the door of his house in 
 Great Russell-street, and bade them " beware 
 of the step." Godwin's catastrophe had 
 probably rendered him less solicitous to 
 encounter a similar peril ; which the fondest 
 admirers of " John Woodvil " will not regret 
 that it escaped. While the occasional rough- 
 ness of its verse would liave been felt as 
 strange to ears as yet xmused to tiie old 
 dramatists whom Lamb's Specimens had not 
 then made familiar to the town, the delicate 
 beauties enshrined within it would scarcely 
 have been perceived in the glare of the 
 theatre. Exhibiting " the depth, and not the 
 tumults of the soul," — presenting a female 
 character of modest and retiring loveliness 
 and noble purpose, but undistracted with any 
 violent emotion, — and developing a train of 
 circumstances which work out their gentle 
 triumphs on the heart only of the hero, 
 without stirring accident or vivid grou]iing 
 of persons, — it would scarcely have supplied 
 sufficient of coarse interest to disarm the 
 critical spirit which it would certainly have 
 encountered in all its bitterness. Lamb 
 cheerfully consoled himself by publishing it ; 
 and at the close of the year 1801 it appeared 
 in a small volume, of humble ai)pearance, 
 with the " Fragments of Burton," (to wliieh 
 Lamb alluded in one of his previous letters,) 
 
EDINBURGH REVIEW. 
 
 C9 
 
 two of his quarto ballads, and the " Helen " 
 of his sister. 
 
 The daring peculiarities attracted the notice 
 of the Edinburgh reviewers, then in the 
 infancy of their slashing career, and the 
 volume was immolated, in due form, by the 
 self-constituted judges, who, taking for their 
 motto ^^ Judex danuuttur cum nocens absol- 
 vitur" treated our author as a criminal con- 
 victed of publishing, and awaiting his doom 
 from their sentence. With the gay reckless- 
 ness of power, at once usui-ped and irrespon- 
 sible, they introduced Lord Mansfield's wild 
 construction of the law of libel into litera- 
 ture ; like him, holding every man primd 
 facie guilty, who should be caught in the act 
 of publishing a hook, and referring to the 
 court to decide whether sentence should be 
 passed on him. The article on "John 
 "Woodvil," which adorned their third num- 
 ber, is a curious example of the old style of 
 criticism vi\dfied by the impulses of youth. 
 We wonder now — and probably the writer of 
 the article, if he is living, will wonder with 
 us — that a young critic should seize on a 
 little eighteen-penny book, simply printed, 
 without any preface ; make elaborate merri- 
 ment of its outline, and, giving no hint of its 
 containing one profound thought or happy 
 expression, leave the reader of the review at 
 a loss to suggest a motive for noticing such 
 vapid absurdities. This article is written in 
 a strain of grave banter, the theme of which 
 is to congratulate the world on having a 
 specimen of the rudest condition of the 
 drama, " a man of the age of Thespis." " At 
 length," says the reviewer, " even in compo- 
 sition a mighty veteran has been born. 
 Older than yEschylus, and with all the spii-it 
 of originality, in an age of poets who had 
 before them the imitations of some thousand 
 years, he comes forward to establish his claim 
 to the ancient hircus, and to satiate the most 
 remote desires of the philosophic antiquary." 
 On this text the writer proceeds, selecting 
 for his purpose whatever, torn from its 
 context, appeared extravagant and crude, 
 and ending without the slightest hint that 
 there is merit, or promise of merit, in the 
 volume. There certainly was no malice, or 
 desire to give pain, in all this ; it was merely 
 the result of the thoughtless adoption, by 
 lads of gaiety and talent, of the old critical 
 canons of the Monthly Eeviews, which had 
 
 been accustomed to damn all works of un 
 patronised genius in a more summary way, 
 and after a duller fashion. These very critics 
 wrought themselves into good-nature as they 
 broke into deeper veins of thought ; grew 
 gentler as they grew wiser : and sometimes, 
 even when, like Balaam, they came to curse, 
 like him, they ended with "blessing alto- 
 gether," as in the review of the " Excursion," 
 which, beginning in the old strain, "This 
 will never do," proceeded to give examples of 
 its noblest passages, and to grace them with 
 worthiest eulogy. And now, the spirit of 
 the wi'iters thus ridiculed, especially of 
 Wordsworth, breathes through the pages of 
 this very Review, and they not seldom wear 
 the " rich embroidery " of the language of 
 the poet once scoffed at by their literary 
 corporation as too jjuerile for the nursery. 
 
 Lamb's occasional connexion with news- 
 papers inti-oduced him to some of the editors 
 and contributors of that day, who sought to 
 repair the spirit wasted by perpetual exer- 
 tion, in the protracted conviviality of the 
 evening, and these associates sometimes left 
 poor Lamb with an aching head, and a purse 
 exhausted by the claims of their necessities 
 upon it. Among those was Fen wick, immor- 
 talised as the Bigod of " Elia," who edited 
 several ill-fated newspapers in succession, 
 and was the author of many libels, which did 
 his employers no good and his Majesty's 
 government no harm. These connexions 
 will explain some of the allusions in the 
 following letters. 
 
 TO MR. MANNING. 
 
 " I heard that you were going to China,* 
 with a commission from the Wedgwoods to 
 collect hints for their pottery, and to teach 
 the Chinese perspective. But I did not know 
 that London lay in your way to Pekin. I am 
 seriously glad of it, for I shall trouble you 
 with a small present for the Emperor of 
 Usbeck Tax-taiy, as you go by his teiTitories ; 
 it is a fragment of a ' Dissertation on the 
 state of political parties in England at the 
 end of the eighteenth century,' which will 
 no doubt be very interesting to his Imperial 
 Majesty. It wjis written originally in English 
 
 • Mr. Manning had begun to be haunted with the 
 idea of China, and to talk of going thither, which he 
 accomplished some years afterwards, without any motive 
 but a desii-e to see that great nation. 
 
60 
 
 LETTERS TO MANNING. 
 
 for the use of the tioo ami iivenfi/ readers of 
 ' The Albion,' (this calculation includes a 
 printer, four pressmen, and a devil) ; but 
 becoming of no use, when ' The Albion ' 
 stopped, I got it translated into Usbeck 
 Tartar by my good friend Tibet Kulm, who 
 is come to London with a civil invitation 
 from the Cham to the English nation to go 
 over to the worship of the I^ama. 
 
 " ' The Albion ' is dead — dead as nail in 
 door — and my revenues have died with it ; 
 but I am not as a man without hope. I have 
 got a sort of an opening to the ' Morning 
 Chronicle ! ! ! ' Mr. Manning, by means of 
 that common dispenser of benevolence. 
 Mister Dyer. I have not seen Perry, the 
 editor, yet : but I am preparing a specimen. 
 I shall have a difficult job to manage, for you 
 must know that Mr. Perry, in common with 
 the great body of the Whigs, thinks 'The 
 Albion ' very low. I find I must rise a peg or 
 so, be a little more decent, and less abusive ; 
 for, to confess the truth, I had arrived to an 
 abominable pitch ; I spared neither age nor 
 sex when my cue was given me. NHmporte, 
 (as they say in French,) any climate will suit 
 me. So you are about to bring your old 
 fjice-makiug face to London. You could not 
 come in a better time for my purposes ; for 
 I have just lost Rickman, a faint idea of 
 whose chai'acter I sent you. He is gone to 
 Ireland for a year or two, to make his 
 fortune ; and I have lost by his going, what 
 seems to me I can never recover — ajimshed 
 man. His memory will be to me as the 
 bi'azen serpent to the Israelites, — I shall look 
 up to it, to keep me upright and honest. 
 But he may yet bring back his honest face 
 to England one day. I wish your affairs witli 
 the Emperor of China had not been so urgent, 
 that you might have stayed in Great Britain 
 a year or two longer, to have seen him ; for, 
 judging from my own experience, I almost 
 dare pronounce you never saw his equal. 
 I never saw a man, that could be at all a 
 second or substitute for him in any sort. 
 
 " Imagine that what is here erased, was an 
 apology and explanation, perfectly satisfac- 
 tory you may be sure ! for rating this man 
 
 80 highly at the expense of , and , 
 
 and , and M , and , and , 
 
 and . But Mr. Burke has explained 
 
 this phenomenon of our nature very prettily 
 in his letter to a Member of the National 
 
 Assembly, or else in Appeal to the olil 
 Whigs, 1 forget which — do you remember 
 an instance from Homer, (who understood 
 these matters tolerably well,) of Priam 
 driving away his other suns with expressions 
 of wrath and bitter reproach, when Hector 
 w;is just dead. 
 
 "I live where I did in a jyrivate manner, 
 because I don't like state. Nothing is so 
 disagreeable to me as the clamours and 
 applauses of the mob. For this reason I live 
 in an obscure situation in one of the courts of 
 the Temple. " C. L. 
 
 " I send you all of Coleridge's letters* to 
 me, which I have preserved : some of them 
 are upon the subject of my play. I also 
 send you Kemble's two letters, and the 
 prompter's courteous epistle, with a curious 
 critique on ' Pride's Cure,' by a young physi- 
 cian from Edinbro', who modestly suggests 
 quite another kind of a plot. Tliese are 
 monuments of my disappointment which 
 I like to preserve. 
 
 " In Coleridge's letters you will find a good 
 deal of amusement, to see genuine talent 
 struggling against a pompous display of it. 
 I also send you the Professor's letter to me, 
 (careful professor ! to conceal his 7iam€ even 
 from his coi-respondent,) ere yet the Profes- 
 sor's pride was cured. Oh ! monstrous and 
 almost satanical priile ! 
 
 "You will carefully keep all (except the 
 Scotch Doctoi-'s, which burn) in statu quo, 
 till I come to claim mine own. 
 
 " C. Lamb." 
 
 Tlie following is in reply to a pressing 
 invitation from Mr. Wordsworth, to visit 
 him at the Lakes. 
 
 TO MR. WORDSWORTn. 
 
 "Jan. 30th, laoi. 
 
 "I ought before this to have replied to 
 your very kind invitation into Cumberland. 
 With you and your sister I could gang any- 
 where ; but I am afraid whether I shall 
 ever be able to afford so desperate a 
 journey. Separate from the j)loasuro of your 
 company, I don't much caro if I never see a 
 
 • I.amb afterwards, in some melancholy mood, de- 
 slroyi'd all Coleridge's hetters, and whs so vexed with 
 what ho had done, that Uc never preserved any letters 
 which ho received afterwards. 
 
LETTERS TO MANNING. 
 
 61 
 
 mountain in my life. I have passed aU my 
 days in London, until I have formed as many 
 and intense local attachments, as any of you j 
 mountaineers can have done with dead ', 
 nature. The lighted shops of the Strand 
 and Fleet-street ; the innumerable trades, 
 tradesmen, and customers, coaches, waggons, 
 playliouses ; all the bustle and wickedness 
 round about Covent Garden ; the very 
 women of the Town ; the watchmen, drunken 
 scenes, rattles — life awake, if you awake, at 
 all hours of the night; the impossibility of 
 being dull in Fleet-street ; the crowds, the 
 very dirt and mud, the sun shining upon 
 houses and pavements, the print-shops, the 
 old-book stalls, parsons cheapening books, 
 coffee-houses, steams of soups from kitchens, 
 the pantomimes — London itself a pantomime 
 and a masquerade — all tliese things work 
 themselves into my mind, and feed me with- 
 out a power of satiating me. The wonder 
 of these sights impels me into night-walks 
 about her crowded streets, and I ofteii shed 
 tears in the motley Strand from fulness of 
 joy at so much life. All these emotions must 
 be strange to you ; so are your rural emo- 
 tions to me. But considei*, what must I have 
 been doing all my life, not to have lent great 
 portions of my heart with usury to such 
 scenes ? 
 
 " My attachments are all local, purely local 
 • — I have no passion (or have had none since 
 I was in love, and then it was the spurious 
 engendering of poetry and books,) to groves 
 and valleys. The rooms where I was born, 
 the furniture which has been before my eyes 
 all my life, a book-case which has followed 
 me about like a faithful dog, (only exceeding 
 him in knowledge,) wherever I have moved, 
 old chairs, old tables, streets, squares, where 
 I have sunned myself, my old school, — these 
 are my mistresses — have I not enough, 
 without your mountains ? I do not envy 
 you. I should pity you, did I not know that 
 the mind will make friends with anything. 
 Your sun, and moon, and skies, and hills, and 
 lakes, affect me no more, or scarcely come to 
 me in more venerable cliaractei-s, than as a 
 gilded room with tapestry and tapers, where 
 I might live with handsome visible objects. 
 I consider the clouds above me but as a roof 
 beautifully painted, but unable to satisfy the 
 mind : and at last, like the pictures of the 
 apartment of a connoisseur, unable to afford 
 
 him any longer a pleasure. So fading upon 
 me, from disuse, have been the beauties of 
 Nature, as they have been confidently called ; 
 so ever fresh, and green, and warm are all 
 the inventions of men, and assemblies of 
 men in this great city. I shoidd certainly 
 have laughed with dear Joanna.* 
 
 " Give my kindest love, and my sister's to 
 D. and yourself. And a kiss from me to 
 little Barbara Lewthwaite.f Thank you for 
 liking my play ! " C. L." 
 
 The next two letters were written to 
 Manning when on a tour upon the Conti- 
 nent, 
 
 TO MR. MANNIKO. 
 
 "Feb. 15th, 1802. 
 
 " Apropos, I think you wrong about my 
 play. All the omissions are right. And the 
 supplementary scene, in which Sandford 
 narrates the manner in which his master is 
 affected, is the best in the book. It stands 
 where a hodge-podge of German puerilities 
 used to stand. I insist upon it that you like 
 that scene. Love me, love that scene. I will 
 now transcribe the ' Londoner ' (No. 1), and 
 wind up all with affection and humble 
 servant at the end." 
 
 [Here was transciibed the essay called 
 " The Londoner," which was published some 
 years afterwards in " The Eeflector," and 
 which forms part of LamVj's collected works.] 
 He then proceeds : — 
 
 " * What is all this about ! ' said Mrs. 
 Shandy. ' A story of a cock and a bull,' 
 said Yorick : and so it is ; but Manning will 
 take good-naturedly what God will send him 
 across the water : only I hope he won't shut 
 his eyes, and open his mouth, as the childi'en 
 say, for that is the way to gape, and not to 
 read- Manning, continue your laudible pur- 
 pose of making me your register. I will 
 render back all your remarks ; and /, not you, 
 shall have received usury by havuig read 
 them. In the mean time, may the great 
 Spii'it have you in liLs keeping, and preserve 
 
 • Alluding to the Inscription of Wordsworth's, en- 
 titled " Joanna," containing a magnificent description of 
 the effect of laughter echoing auiidst the great moun- 
 tains of Westmoreland. 
 
 t Alluding to Wordsworth's poem, " The Pet Lamb." 
 
62 
 
 LETTER TO COLERmGE. 
 
 our Englishman from the inoculation of 
 frivolity and sin upon French earth. 
 
 " AUotis — or what is it you say, instead of 
 good-hye ? 
 
 " Mary sends hor kind remembrance, and 
 covets the remarks equally with me. 
 
 " C. Lamb." 
 
 TO MR. MANNING. 
 
 "My dear Manning, — I must positively 
 ■write, or I shall miss you at Touloiise. I sit 
 here like a decayed minute-hand (T lie ; that 
 does not sit,) and being myself the exponent 
 of no time, take no heed how the clocks 
 about me are going. You possibly by this 
 time may have explored all Italy, and toppled, 
 unawares, into Etna, while you went too 
 near those rotten-jawed, gap-toothed, old 
 worn-out chaps of hell, — while I am medi- 
 tating a quiescent letter to the honest post- 
 master of Toulouse. But in case you should 
 not have been/e^o de se, this is to tell you, 
 that your letter was quite to my palate — in 
 particular your just remarks upon Industry, 
 cursed Industry, (though indeed you left me 
 to explore the reason,) were higldy relishing. 
 I have often wished I lived in the golden 
 age, when shepherds lay stretched upon 
 flowers, — the genius there is in a man's 
 natural idle face, that has not learned his 
 multiplication table ! before doubt, and pro- 
 positions, and corollaries, got into the world ! 
 « * * « * 
 
 " Apropos : if you should go to Florence 
 or to Rome, inquire what works are extant 
 in gold, silver, bronze, or marble, of Benvenuto 
 Cellini, a Floiciitine artist, whose Life, doubt- 
 less, you have reatl ; or, if not, without con- 
 troversy, you must read, so hark ye, send for 
 it immediately from Lane's circulating library. 
 It is always i)ut among the romances, very 
 properly ; but you have read it, I suj)- 
 pose. In particular, inquire at Florence 
 for his colossal bronze statue (in the grand 
 square, or somewhere) of Perseus. You 
 may read the story in * Tooke's Pantheon.' 
 Nothing material has transpired in these parts. 
 Coleridge has indited a violent philippic 
 against Mr. Fox in the ' Morning Post,' wliich 
 is a compound of ex])ressions of humility, 
 gentlemen-ushering-in most arrog.aut charges. 
 It will do Mr. Fox no real injury among 
 those that know him." 
 
 In the summer of 1802, Lamb, in company 
 with his sister, visited the Lakes, and spent 
 three weeks with Coleridge at Keswick. 
 There he also met the true annihilator of 
 the slave-trade, Thomas Ciarkson, who was 
 then enjoying a necessary respite from his 
 stupendous laboui's, in a cottage on the 
 borders of Ulswater. Lamb liad no taste 
 for oratorical philanthropy ; but lie felt 
 the grandeur and simplicity of Clarkson's 
 character, and appreciated the unexampled 
 self-denial with which he steeled his heart, 
 trembling with nervous sensibility, to endure 
 intimate acquaintance with the foulest details 
 of guilt and wickedness which he lived, and 
 could have died, to abolish. Wordsworth 
 was not in the Lake-coimtry during Lamb's 
 visit ; but he made amends by spending some 
 time in town after Lamb's return, and then 
 quitted it for Yorkshire to be married. 
 Lamb's following letters show that he made 
 some advances towards fellowship with the 
 hills which at a distance he had treated so 
 cavalierly ; but his feelings never heartily 
 associated with " the bare earth, and moim- 
 tains bare," which sufliced AVordsworth ; he 
 rather loved to cleave to the little hints and 
 suggestions of nature in the midst of crowded 
 cities. In his latter years I have heard 
 him, when longing after London among the 
 pleasant fields of Enfield, declare that his 
 love of natural scenery would be abundantly 
 satisfied by the patches of long waving gi-ass, 
 and the stunted trees, that blacken in the 
 old-church-yard nooks which you may yet 
 find bordering on Thames-street. 
 
 TO MU. COLERIDGE. 
 
 "Sept. 8th, 1802. 
 " Dear Coleridge, — I thought of not writing 
 till we had performed some of our commis- 
 sions ; but we have been hindered from 
 setting about them, which yet shall be iloue 
 to a tittle. We got home very pleasantly on 
 Sunday. Mary is a good deal fatigued, and 
 finds the dillerence of going to a place, and 
 coraiug/ro/H it. I feel that I shall remember 
 your mountains to the l;ist day I live. They 
 haunt me ])erpotually. I am like a man who 
 ha.s been falling in love mikuown to himself, 
 which ho finds out when he leaves the lady. 
 I do not remember any very strong impression 
 while they were present ; but, being gone, 
 their mementos are shelvfld in my braiu. 
 
LETTER TO MANNING. 
 
 63 
 
 "We pjissed a very pleasant little time with 
 the Clarksons. The "Wordsworths are at 
 Montague's rooms, near neiglibours to us.* 
 They dined with us yestei'day, and I was 
 their guide to Bartlemy Fair ! " 
 
 TO MR. MANNING. 
 
 "24tti Sept. 1S02, London. 
 
 "My dear Manning, — Since the date of 
 my last letter, I have been a traveller. A 
 strong desire seized me of visiting remote 
 regions. My first impulse was to go and see 
 Paris. It was a trivial objection to my 
 aspiring mind, that I did not understand a 
 word of the language, since I certainly intend 
 some time in my life to see Paris, and equally 
 certainly intend never to learn the language ; 
 therefore that could be no objection. How- 
 ever, I am very glad I did not go, because 
 you had left Paris (I see) before I could have 
 set out. I believe, Stoddart promising to go 
 with me another year, prevented that plan, 
 ^ly next scheme, (for to my restless, ambitious 
 mind London was become a bed of thorns) 
 was to visit the far-famed peak in Derby- 
 shire, where the Devil sits, they say, without 
 breeches. This my purer mind rejected as 
 indelicate. And my final resolve was, a tour 
 to the Lakes. I set out with Mary to 
 Keswick, without giving Coleridge any notice, 
 for, my time being precious, did not admit of 
 it. He received us with all the hospitality 
 in the world, and gave up his time to show 
 us all the wonders of the country. He 
 dwells upon a small hill by the side of 
 Keswick, in a comfortable house, quite en- 
 veloped on all sides by a net of mountains : 
 great floundering bears and monsters they 
 seemed, all couchant and asleep. We got in 
 in the evening, travelling in a post-chaise 
 from Penrith, in the midst of a gorgeous 
 sunshine, which transmuted all the mountains 
 into colours, purple, &c. &c. We thought we 
 had got into fairy-land. But that went off i 
 (as it never came again, while we stayed we ' 
 had no more fine sunsets) ; and we entered 
 Coleridge's comfortable study just in tKe 
 dusk, when the mountains were all dark with 
 clouds upon their heads. Such an impression 
 I never received from objects of sight before, 
 
 » Mr. Basil Montajfue and his lady, who -were, during 
 Lamb's life, among his most cordial and most honoured 
 friends. 
 
 nor do I suppose that I can ever again. 
 Glorious creatures, fine old fellows, Skiddaw, 
 &c. I never shall forget ye, how ye lay about 
 that night, like an intrenchmcnt ; gone to 
 bed, as it seemed for the night, but promising 
 that ye were to be seen in the morning. 
 Coleridge had got a blazing fire in his study; 
 which is a large, antique, ill-shaped room, 
 with an old-fashioned organ, never played 
 upon, big enough for a church, shelves of 
 scattered folios, an ^olian hai-p, and an old 
 sofa, half bed, &c. And all looking out upon 
 the last fading view of Skiddaw, and his 
 broad-breasted brethren : what a night ! 
 Here we stayed three full weeks, in which 
 time I visited Wordsworth's cottage, where 
 we stayed a day or two with the Clarksons 
 (good people, and most hospitable, at whose 
 house we tarried one day and night,) and saw 
 Lloyd. The Wordsworths were gone to 
 Calais. They have since been in London, 
 and past much time with us : he is now gone 
 into Yorkshire to be married. So we have 
 seen Keswick, Grasmere, Ambleside. Uls- 
 water (where the Clarksons live), and a place 
 at the other end of Ulswater : I forget the 
 name ;* to which we travelled on a very 
 sultry day, over the middle of Helvellyn. 
 We have clambered up to the top of Skiddaw, 
 and I have waded up the bed of Lodore. In 
 fine, I have satisfied myself, that there is 
 such a thing as that which tourists call 
 romantic, \'{\\.ich. I very much suspected before : 
 they make such a spluttering about it, and 
 toss their splendid epithets around them, till 
 they give as dim a light as at four o'clock 
 next morning the lamps do after an illumina- 
 tion. Mary was excessively tired, when she 
 got about half-way up Skiddaw, but we came 
 to a cold rill (than which nothing can be 
 imagined more cold,running over cold stones), 
 and with the reinforcement of a draught of cold 
 water she surmounted it most manfully. Oh, 
 its fine black head, and the bleak air atop of 
 it, with a prospect of mountains all about 
 and about, making you giddy ; and then 
 Scotland afar ofij and the border countries so 
 famous in song and ballad ! It was a day 
 that will stand out, like a mountain, I am 
 sure, in my life. But I am returned (I have 
 now been come home near three weeks — I 
 was a month out), and you cannot conceive 
 the degradation I felt at first, from being 
 * Patterdale. 
 
64 
 
 LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 
 
 accustomed to wander free as air among 
 mountains, and bathe in rivers without being 
 controlled by any one, to come home and 
 work. I felt very little. I had been dream- 
 ing I was a very great man. But that is 
 going off, and I find I shall conform in time 
 to that state of life to which it has pleased 
 God to call me. Besides, after all. Fleet- 
 street and the Strand are better places to 
 live in for good and all than amidst Skiddaw. 
 Still, I turn back to those great places where 
 1 wandered about, participating in their 
 greatness. After all, I could not live in 
 Skiddaw. I could spend a year, two, three 
 years among them, but I must have a 
 prospect of seeing Fleet-street at the end of j 
 that time, or I should mope and pine away, ' 
 I know. Still, Skiddaw is a fine creature. 
 My habits are changing, I think, i. e. from 
 drunk to sober. Whether I shall be happier 
 or not, remains to be proved. I shall cer- 
 tainly be more happy in a morning ; but ; 
 whether I shall not sacrifice the fat, and the i 
 marrow, and the kidneys, i. e. the night, | 
 glorious care-drowning night, that heals all I 
 our wrongs, pours wine into our moi'tifica- 
 tions, changes the scene from indifferent and 
 flat to bright and brilliant 1 — O Manning, if '. 
 I should have fonned a diabolical resolution, I 
 by the time you come to England, of not . 
 admitting any spirituous liquors into my ' 
 house, will you be my guest on such shame- 
 worthy terms ? Is life, with such limitations, 
 worth trying ? The truth is, that my liquors 
 bring a nest of friendly harpies about my 
 house, who consume me. This is a pitiful 
 tale to be read at St. Gothard, but it is just 
 
 now nearest my heart. F is a ruined 
 
 man. He is hiding himself from his credi- 
 tors, and has sent his wife and children into 
 the counti-y. , my other drunken com- 
 panion (that has been : nam hie csestus 
 artemque repono), is turned editor of a 
 Naval Chronicle. Godwin continues a steady 
 friend, though the same facility does not 
 remain of visiting him often. Holcroft is 
 not yet come to town. I expect to see him, 
 and will deliver your message. Things come 
 crowding in to say, and no room for 'em. 
 Some things are too little to be told, i. e. to 
 have a preference ; some are too big and 
 circumstantial. Thanks for yours, which 
 was most delicious. Would I had been with 
 you, benighted, &c. I feai- my head is turned 
 
 with wandering. I shall never be the same 
 acquiescent being. Farewell ; write again 
 quickly, for I shall not like to hazard a 
 letter, not knowing where the fates have 
 carried you. Farewell, my dear fellow. 
 
 " C. Lamb." 
 
 Lamb was fond of Latin composition when 
 at school, and was then praised for it. He 
 was always fond of reading Latin verse, and 
 late in life taught his sister to read it. About 
 this time, he hazarded the following Latin 
 letter to Coleridge, of whose classical acquire- 
 ments he stood in awe. 
 
 CAROLTJS AGNUS COLERIDGIO STJO S. 
 
 "Carissirae, — Scribis, ut nummos scilicet 
 epistolarios solvam et postremo in Tartara 
 abeam : immo tu potius Tart;iricum (ut 
 aiunt) deprehendisti, qui me vernaculd meS 
 linguS, pro scribS, conductitio per tot annos 
 satis eleganter usum ad Latind impure et 
 canino fere ore latrandum per tuasmet epis- 
 tolas bene compositas et concinnatas percellire 
 studueris. Conabor tamen : Attamen vereor, 
 ut ^^des istas nostri Christi, inter quas tantd 
 diligentiS, magistri improbd bonis literulis, 
 quasi per clysterem quendam injectis, infr^ 
 supraque olim penitiis imbutus fui, Barnesii 
 et Marklandii doctissimorum virorum nomin- 
 ibus adhuc gaudentes, barbarismis meis 
 peregrinis et aliunde quaesitis valde dehoues- 
 tavero. Sed pergere quocunque placet. 
 Adeste igitur, quotquot estis, conjugationum 
 declinationumve turmce, tenibilia spectra, et 
 tu imprimis ades. Umbra et Imago maxima 
 obsoletse (Diis gratise) Virgae, quS, novissime 
 in mentem recepta, horrescunt subito na tales, 
 et parum deest quo minils braccas meas ultro 
 usque ad crura demittam, et ipse puer pueril- 
 iter ejulem. 
 
 "Ista tua Carmiua Chamouniana satis 
 grandia esse mihi constat ; sed hoc mihi non- 
 nihil displicet, qudd in iis illie montiura 
 Gi'isosonum inter se resjionsiones totidem 
 reboant anglicti, God, God, hand alitor atquo 
 temet audivi tuaa montes Cumbrianaa 
 resonare docentes, Tod, Tod, nempe Dootorem 
 infelicem : vocem certe hand Deum Sonau- 
 tem. Pro caeteris j)laudo. 
 
 " Itidem comparatioues istas tuas satis 
 callidas et lepidaa certd novi : sed quid hoo 
 
LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 
 
 65 
 
 ad vei'UTu ? cum illi Consulari viro et mentem 
 irritabilem istuni Julianum ; et etiam astutias 
 trigidulas quasdem Augusto propriores, 
 nequaqiiara coiigi'uenter uno afflatu compara- 
 tionis caus.1 insedisse affirmaveris : necnon 
 ii'jscio quid siuiilitudiuis etiam cum Tibcrio 
 tertio iu loco solicite produxeris. Quid tibi 
 equidem cum uno vel altero Ceesare, cilm 
 uuiversi Diiodecim ad comparationes tuas se 
 ultro tuloriut ? Praeterea, vetustati adnutans, 
 comparationes iniquas odi. 
 
 " Istas Words wortliianas nuptias (velpotius 
 cujusdam Edmundii tui) te retulisse mirifi- 
 cum gaudeo. Valeas, Maria, fortunata 
 nimium, et antiquse illse Marise Virgin! 
 (comparatione plusquam Csesareaut^) forsitau 
 comparanda, quoniam 'beata inter mulieres:' 
 et etiam fortasse Wordsworthiuni ipsum 
 tuum maritum Angelo Salutatori sequare fas 
 erit, quoniam e Coelo (ut ille) descendant et 
 ISIusae et ipste Musicolas : at Wordsworthium 
 Musarum observantissimum semper novi. 
 Necnon te quoque affinitate liac novA, Doro- 
 thea, gratulor : et tu carte alterum domom Dei. 
 
 "Istum Ludum, qnem tu, Coleridgi, Ameri- 
 canum garris, a Ludo (ut Ludi sunt) maximd 
 abhorrentem prsetereo : nempe quid ad 
 Ludum attinet, totius illse gentis Columbianae, 
 a uostr^ gente, eadem stirpe ort3,, ludi siiiguli 
 causa voluntatem perperam alienare ? Quaeso 
 ego materiam ludi : te Bella ingeris. 
 
 " Denique valeas, et quid de Latinitate me4 
 putes, dicas : fticias ut opossum ilium nostrum 
 volantem vel (ut tu mails) quendam Piscem 
 en'abundum, a me salvum et pulcherrimum 
 esse jubeas. Valeant uxor tua cum Hartleiio 
 nostro. Soror mea salva est et ego : vos et 
 ipsa salvere j ubet. Ulterius progrediri non 
 liquet : homo sum seratus. 
 
 " P.S. Pene mihi exciderat, apud me esse 
 Librorum a Johanno Miltono Latine scripto- 
 rum volumina duo, qu^ (Deo volente) cum 
 cseteris tuis libris ocyiis citiils per Maria ad 
 te missura curabo ; sed me in hoc tali gencre 
 rerum nuUo moAo festinantem novisti : halics 
 confitentem reum. Hoc solum dici restat, 
 pra^dicta volumina pulchra esse et omn^a 
 opera Latina J. M. in se continore. Circa 
 defeusionem istam Pro Pop". Ang". acerrimam 
 in prsesens ipse proeclaro gaudio moror. 
 
 " Jussa tua Stuartina faciam ut diligejiter 
 colam. / 
 
 *' Itenim iteramque valeas . 
 
 " Et facias memor sis uostri." 
 
 The publication of the second volume of 
 the " Anthology " gave occasion to the fol- 
 lowing letter : — 
 
 TO MR. COLERIDGE. 
 
 "In the next edition of the 'Anthology' 
 (which Phoebus avert, and those nine other 
 wandering maids also !) please to blot out 
 gentle-hearted, and substitute drunken dog, 
 ragged-head, seld-shaven, odd-eyed, stut- 
 tering, or any other ejjithet which truly and 
 properly belongs to the gentleman in question. 
 And for Charles read Tom, or B(jb, or 
 Richard for mere delicacy. Hang you, I was 
 beginning to forgive you, and believe in 
 earnest that the lugging in of my proper 
 name was purely unintentional on your part, 
 when looking back for further conviction, 
 stares me in the face Charles Lamb of the 
 India House. Now I am convinced it was all 
 done in malice, heaped sack-upon-sack, con- 
 gregated, studied malice. You dog ! your 
 141st page shall not save you. I own I was 
 just ready to acknowledge that there is a 
 something not unlike good poetry in that 
 page, if you had not run into the unintelli- 
 gible abstraction-fit about the manner of the 
 Deity's making spirits perceive his presence. 
 God, nor created thing alive, can receive any 
 honour from such thin show-box attributes. 
 By-the-by, where did you pick up that scan- 
 dalous 'piece of private history about the 
 angel and the Duchess of Devonshire ? If it 
 is a fiction of your own, why truly it is a very 
 modest one for you. Now I do affirm, that 
 Lewti is a very beautiful poem. I was iu 
 earnest when I praised it. It describes a 
 silly species of one not the wisest of jiassions. 
 Therefore it cannot deeply aftect a disen- 
 thralled mind. But such imagery, such 
 novelty, such delicacy, and such versification 
 nover got into an 'Anthology ' before. I am 
 only sorry that the cause of all the passionate 
 complaint is not greater than the trifling 
 circumstance of Lewti being out of temper 
 one da)'. Gaulberto certainly has considerable 
 originality, but sadly wants finishing. It is, 
 as it is, one of the very best in tlie book. 
 Next to Lewti I like the Eaveu, which has 
 a good deal of humour. I was pleased to see 
 it again, for you once sent it me, and I have 
 lost the letter which contained it. Now I 
 am on the subject of Anthologies, I must say 
 I am sony the old ijastoral way is fallen into 
 
69 
 
 LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 
 
 disrepute. The gentry which now indite 
 sonnets are certainly the legitimate descen- 
 dants of the ancient sliepherds. The same 
 simpering face of description, tlie old family 
 face, is visibly continued in the line. Some 
 of their ancestors' labours are yet to be found 
 in Allan Ramsay's and Jacob Tonson's Mis- 
 cellanies. But miscellanies decaying, and the 
 old pastoral way dying of mere want, their 
 successors (cWven from their paternal acres) 
 now-a-days settle and live upon ^Magazines 
 and Anthologies. This race of men are 
 uncommonly addicted to superstition. Some 
 of them are idolators and worship the moon. 
 Others deify qualities, as love, friendshi]), 
 sensibility ; or bare accidents, as Solitude. 
 Grief and Melancholy have their respective 
 altars and temples among them, as the 
 heathens builded theirs to Mors, Febris, 
 Pallor, &c. They all agi-ee in ascribing a 
 peculiar sanctity to the number fourteen. 
 One of their own legislators affirmeth, that 
 whatever exceeds that number ' encroacheth 
 upon the province of the elegy ' — vice versa, 
 whatever 'cometh short of that number 
 abutteth upon the premises of the epigram.' 
 I have been able to discover but few iinacjes 
 in their temples, which, like the caves of 
 Delphos of old, are famous for giving echoes. 
 They impute a religious importance to the 
 letter O, whether because by its roundness it 
 is thought to typify the moon, their principal 
 goddess, or for its analogies to their own 
 labours, all ending where they began, or for 
 whatever other high and mystical reference, 
 I have never been able to discover, but I 
 observe they never begin their invocations to 
 their gods without it, except indeed one 
 insignificant sect among them, who use the 
 Doric A, pronounced like Ah ! broad, instead. 
 These boast to have restored the old Dorian 
 mood. C. L." 
 
 The following fragment of a letter about 
 this time to Coleridge refers to an offer of 
 Coleridge to supply Lamb with literal trans- 
 lations from the German, which he might 
 versify for the "Morning Post," for the 
 increase of Lamb's slender income. 
 
 TO MR. COLERinOE. 
 
 "Oct. 11th, 1802. 
 
 "Dear Coleridge, — Your offer about the 
 German poems is exceedingly kind ; but 1 
 
 do not think it a wise speculation, because 
 the time it would take you to put them into 
 prose would be nearly as great as if you 
 versified them. Indeed I am sure you could 
 do the one nearly as soon as the other ; so 
 that instead of a division of labour, it would 
 be only a multiplication. But I will think 
 of your offer in another light. I dare saj' I 
 could find many things, of a light nature, to 
 suit that paper, which you would not object 
 to pass upon Stuart as your own, and I 
 shoidd come in for some light profits, and 
 Stuart think the more highly of your 
 assiduity. ' Bishop Hall's Characters ' I 
 know nothing about, having never seen them. 
 But I will reconsider your offer, which is 
 very plausible ; for as to the drudgery of 
 going eveiy day to an editor with my scraps, 
 like a pedlar, for him to pick out and tumble 
 about my ribbons and posies, and to wait in 
 his lobby, &c., no money could make up for 
 the degradation. You are in too high request 
 with him to have anj'thing unpleasant of that 
 sort to submit to. 
 
 [The letter refers to several articles and 
 books which Lamb promised to send to 
 Coleridge, and proceeds : — ] 
 
 " You must write me word whether the 
 !Miltons are worth paying carriage for. You 
 have a JNIilton ; but it is jileasanter to eat 
 one's own peas out of one's own garden, than 
 to buy them by the peck at Covent Garden ; 
 and a book reads the better, which is our 
 own, and has been so long known to us, that 
 we know the topography of its blots, and 
 dog's-ears, and can trace the dirt in it to 
 having read it at tea with buttered muffins, 
 or over a pipe, which I think is the maximum. 
 But, Coleridge, you must accept these little 
 things, and not think of returning money 
 for them, for 1 do not set up for a factor or 
 general agiiit. As for fantastic debts of 15/., 
 I'll think you were dreaming, and not trouble 
 myself seriously to attend to you. My bad 
 Latin you properly correct ; but natales for 
 niitcs was an inadvertency : I knew better. 
 Progreiliri, or progredi, I thought indifferent, 
 my authority being Ainsworth. However, 
 as I have got a fit of Latin, you will now and 
 then indulge me with an epistola. I p.iy tiio 
 l)ostage of this, and propose doing it by turns, 
 lu that ciise I can now and then write to you 
 
LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 
 
 67 
 
 without remorse ; not that you would mind 
 the money, but you have not always ready 
 cash to answer small demands, the epistolarii 
 nummi. 
 
 " Your ' Ejjigram on the Sun and Moon 
 in Germany ' is admirable. Take 'em all 
 together, they are as good as Harrington's. 
 I will muster up all the conceits I can, and 
 you shall have a packet some day. You and 
 I together can answer all demands surely : 
 3'ou, mounted on a terrible charger, (like 
 Homer, in the Battle of the Books,) at the 
 head of the cavalry : I will lead the light 
 horse. I have just heard from Stoddart. 
 Allen and he intend taking Keswick in their 
 way home. Allen wished particularly to 
 have it a seci'et that he is in Scotland, and 
 wrote to me accordingly very urgently. As 
 luck was, I had told not above three or four ; 
 but Mary had told Mrs. Green of Christ's 
 Hospital ! For the present, farewell : never 
 forgetting love to Pipos and his friends. 
 
 " C. Lamb." 
 
 The following letter embodies in strong 
 language Lamb's disgust at the rational 
 mode of educating children. While he gave 
 utterance to a deep and hearted feeling of 
 jealousy for the old delightful books of 
 fancy, whicl\ were banished by the sense of 
 JMrs. Barbauld, he cherished great respect 
 for that lady's power as a true English prose 
 writer ; and spoke often of her " Essay on 
 Inconsistent Expectations," as alike bold and 
 original in thought and elegant in style. 
 
 TO MR. COLERIDGE. 
 
 "Oct. 23id, 1802. 
 
 " T read daily your political essays. I was 
 pai-ticularly pleased with ' Once a Jacobin : ' 
 though the argument is obvious enough, the 
 style was less swelling than your things 
 sometimes are, and it was plausible ad popu- 
 lum. A vessel has just arrived from Jamaica 
 with the news of poor Sam Le Grice's death. 
 He died at Jamaica of the yellow fevei*. His 
 course was raj^id and he had been veliy 
 foolish, but I believe there was more of 
 kindness and warmth in him than in almost 
 any other of our schoolfellows. The annual 
 meeting of the Blues is to-morrow, at the 
 London Tavern, where poor Sammy dined 
 with them two years ago, and attracted the 
 notice of all by the singular foppishness of 
 
 his dress. When men go off the 8<age so 
 early, it scarce seems a noticeable thing iu 
 their epitaphs, whether they had been wise 
 or silly in their lifetime. 
 
 " I am glad the snuff and Pi-pos's * books 
 please. ' Goody Two Shoes ' is almost out of 
 print. Mrs. Barbauld's stuff has banished all 
 the old classics of the nursery ; and the shop- 
 man at Newberry's hardly deigned to reach 
 them off an old exploded corner of a shelf, 
 when Mary asked for them. Mrs. B.'s and 
 Mrs. Trimmer's nonsense hiy in piles about. 
 Knowledge insignificant and vapid as Mi-s. 
 B.'s books convey, it seems, must come to a 
 child in the shape of knowledge, and his emi)ty . 
 noddle must be turned with conceit of hia 
 own powers when he has learnt, that a horse 
 is an animal, and Billy is better than a horse, 
 and such like ; instead of that beautiful 
 interest in wild tales, which made the child 
 a man, while all the time he suspected him- 
 self to be no bigger than a child. Science 
 has succeeded to poetry no less in the little 
 walks of childi'en than with men. Is there 
 no jjossibility of averting this sore evil ? 
 Think what you would have been now, if 
 instead of being fed with tales and old wives' 
 fables in childhood, you had been crammed 
 with geography and natural history ! 
 
 "Hang them ! — I mean the cursed Barbauld 
 crew, those blights and blasts of all that is 
 human in man and child. 
 
 " As to the translations, let me do two or 
 three hundred lines, and then do you try the 
 nostrums upon Stuart in any way you please. 
 If they go down, I will bray more. In fact, 
 if I got or could but get 50^. a year only, in 
 addition to what I have, I should live in 
 affluence. 
 
 " Have you anticipated it, or could not you 
 give a parallel of Bonaparte with Cromwell, 
 particularly as to the conti-ast iu their deeds- 
 affecting foreign states ? Cromwell's inter- 
 ference for the Albigenses, B.'s against the 
 Swiss. Then religion would come in ; and 
 Milton and you could rant about our coun- 
 trymen of that period. This is a hasty 
 suggestion, the more hasty because I want 
 my supper. I have just finished Chapman's 
 Homer. Did you ever read it ? — it has iiost 
 the continuous power of interesting you all 
 along, like a rapid original, of any ; and in 
 
 • A nitkuamc of endeaiinect for little Hartley 
 Coleridge. 
 
 F 2 
 
C8 
 
 LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 
 
 the uncommon excellence of the more finished 
 parts goes beyond Fairfax or any of 'em. 
 The metre is fourteen syllables, and capable 
 of all sweetness and grandeur. Cowper's 
 ponderous blank verse detains you every 
 step with some heavy Miltonism ; Chapman 
 gallops ofif with you his own free pace. Take 
 a simile for example. The council breaks 
 up — 
 
 ' Bcins abroad, the earth was overlaid 
 With flockers to them, that came forth ; as -when of 
 
 frequent bees 
 Swarms rise out of a hollow rock, repairing the degrees 
 Of their egression endlessly, with ever rising new 
 From forth their sweet nest ; as their store, still as it 
 
 faded, grew. 
 And never would cease sending forth her clusters to the 
 
 tpring. 
 They still crowd out so ; this flock here, that there, 
 
 belabouring 
 The loaded flowers. So,' &c. &c. 
 
 " Wliat endless egression of phrases the dog 
 commands ! 
 
 " Take another, Agamemnon wounded, 
 bearing his wound heroically for the sake 
 of the army (look below) to a woman in 
 labour. 
 
 ' He, with his lance, sword, mighty stones, pour'd his 
 
 heroic wreak 
 On other squadrons of the foe, whiles yet warm blood 
 
 did break 
 Thro' his cleft veins : but when the wound was quite 
 
 exhaust and crude, 
 The eager anguish did approve his princely fortitude. 
 As when most sharp and bitter pangs distract a labouring 
 
 dame, 
 Wliich the divine Ilithioc, that rule the painful frame 
 Of human childbirth, pour on her ; the IlithiiB that are 
 The daiightcrs of Saturnia ; with whose extreme repair 
 The woman in her travail strives to take the worst it 
 
 gives ; 
 With thought, it must be, 'tis love's fruit, the end for 
 
 which she lices ; 
 The mean to make herself neic born, what comforts will 
 
 redound : 
 So,' &c. 
 
 " I will teU you more about Cliapman and 
 his peculiarities in my next. I am much 
 interested in him. 
 
 " Yours ever affectionately, and Pi-Pos's, 
 
 " C. L." 
 
 TO MR. COLERIDGE. 
 
 "Nov. 4th, 1802. 
 
 "Observe, there comes to you, by the 
 Kendal waggon to-morrow, the illustrious 
 6th of November, a box, containing the 
 Miltons, the strange American Bible, with 
 White's brief note, to which you will attend ; 
 'Baxter's Holy Commonwealtli,' for wliich 
 
 you stand indebted to me 3s. 6d.; an odd 
 volume of Montaigne, being of no use to me, 
 I having the whole ; cei-tain books belonging 
 to "Wordsworth, as do also the strange thick- 
 hoofed shoes, which are very much admh-ed 
 at in London. All these sundries I commend 
 to your most strenuous looking after. If you 
 find the Miltons in certain parts dirtied and 
 soiled with a crumb of right Gloucester 
 blacked in the candle, (my usual supper,) or 
 peradventure a stray ash of tobacco wafted 
 into the crevices, look to that passage more 
 especially : depend upon it, it contains good 
 matter. I have got your little Milton, which, 
 as it contains 'Salmasius' — and I make a 
 rule of never hearing but one side of the 
 question (why should I distract myself?) I 
 shall return to you when I pick up the 
 Latina opera. The first Defence is the 
 greatest work among them, because it is 
 uniformly great, and such as is befitting the 
 very mouth of a gi-eat nation, speaking for 
 itself. But the second Defence, which is 
 but a succession of splendid episodes, slightly 
 tied together, has one passage, which, if you 
 have not read, I conjure you to lose no time, 
 but read it ; it is his consolations in his 
 blindness, which had been made a reproach 
 to him. It begins whimsically, with poetical 
 flourishes about Tiresias and other blind 
 worthies, (which still are mainly interesting 
 as displaying his singular mind, and in what 
 degree poetry entered into his daily soul, 
 not by fits and impulses, but engrained and 
 innate,) but the concluding page, i.e. ostitis 
 passage, (not of the Defensio,) which you will 
 easily find, divested of all brags and flourishes, 
 gives so rational, so true an enumeration of 
 his comfoi-ts, so human, that it cannot be 
 read without the deepest interest. Take one 
 touch of the religious part : — ' Et sane hand 
 ultima Dei cura cocci — {ice blind folks, I 
 undei*stand it ; not iios for ego) — sumus ; qui 
 nos, quominus quicquam aliud prteter ipsum 
 cerncre valomus, eo clementius atque benig- 
 nius respicere dignatur. Voe qui illudit nos, 
 vae qui la)dit, execratione publica devovendo ; 
 nos ab injuriis hominum non modo incolumcs, 
 sed pene sacros divina lex reddidit, divinus 
 favor : nee tarn oculorum hebetudine quam 
 calestium alarum umhrd has nobis focisse 
 tenebras videtur, factas illustrare rursua 
 interiore ac longe prjestabiliore lumine baud 
 niro solet. Hue refero, (piod et aniici officio- 
 
LETTERS TO MANNING. 
 
 69 
 
 sius nunc etiam quam solebant, colunt, 
 observant, adsunt ; quod et nonuulU sunt, 
 quibusoum Pyladeas atque Theseas alteruare 
 voces verorum amicorum liceat, 
 
 " Vade frubcrnaculum mei pedis. 
 Da man urn ministro amico. 
 Da coUo manum tuam, ductor autem vias ero tibi ego." ' 
 
 All tills, and much more, is bighly pleasing 
 to know. But you may easily find it ; — and 
 I don't know why I put down so many words 
 about it, but for the pleasure of writing to 
 you, and the want of another tojjic. 
 
 " Yours ever, C. Lamb." 
 
 "To-morrow I expect with anxiety S.T. C.'s 
 letter to IMi'. Fox." 
 
 The year 1803 passed without any event 
 to disturb the dull current of Lamb's toilsome 
 life. He wrote nothing this year, except some 
 newspaper squibs, and the delightful little 
 poem on the death of Hester Savory. This 
 he sent to Manning at Paris, with the 
 following account of its subject : — 
 
 " Dear Manning, I send you some verses 
 I have made on the death of a young Quaker 
 you may have heard me speak of as being in 
 love with for some years while I lived at 
 PentonvUle, though I had never spoken to 
 her in my life. She died about a month since. 
 If you have interest with the Abbe de Lisle, 
 you may get 'em translated : he has done as 
 much for the Georgics." 
 
 The verses must have been written in the 
 very happiest of Lamb's serious mood. I 
 canuot refrain fi'om the luxury of quoting 
 the conclusion, though many readers have it 
 by heart. 
 
 " My sprightly neighbour, gone before 
 To that unknown and silent shore ! 
 Shall we not meet as heretofore, 
 
 Some summer morning. 
 
 When from thy cheerful eyes a ray I 
 
 llath struck a bliss upon the day, 
 A bliss that would not go away, 
 
 A sweet forewarning 1 " 
 
 The following letters were written to 
 Manning, at Paris, while still haunted with 
 the idea of oriental adventure. 
 
 TO MR. MANNING. 
 
 "Feb. 19th, 1803. 
 
 " My dear Manning, — The general scope of 
 your letter afforded no indications of insanity, 
 but some particular points raised a scruple. 
 For God's sake don't think any more of 
 'Independent Tartary.' What are you to 
 do among such Ethiopians ? Is there no 
 lineal descendant of Prester John 1 Is the 
 chair empty ? Is the sword unswayed 1 — 
 depend upon it they'll never make you their 
 king, as long as any branch of that great 
 stock is remaining. I tremble for your 
 Chiistianity. Tliey will certainly circumcise 
 you. Read Sir John Mandeville's travels to 
 cure you, or come over to England. There is 
 a Tavtar-man now exhibitmg at Exeter 
 Change. Come and talk with him, and hear 
 what he says first. Indeed, he is no very 
 favoi;rable specimen of his countrymen ! 
 But perhaps the best thing you can do, is to 
 tr^ to get the idea out of your head. For 
 this purpose repeat to yourself every night, 
 after you have said your prayers, the words 
 Independent Tartary, Independent Tai-tary, 
 two or three times, and associate with 
 them the idea of oblivion, ('tis Hartley's 
 method with obstinate memories,) or 
 say, Independent, Independent, have I not 
 already got an independence^ That was 
 a clever way of the old puritans, pun- 
 divinity. My dear friend, think what a 
 sad pity it would be to bury such parts in 
 heathen countries, among nasty, unconver- 
 sable, horse-belching, Tartar-people ! Some 
 say, they are Cannibals ; and then, conceive 
 a Tartar-fellow eating my friend, and addmg 
 the cool malignity of mustard and vinegar ! 
 I am afraid 'tis the reading of Chaucer has 
 misled you ; his foolish stories about Cam- 
 buscan, and the ring, and the horse of brass. 
 Believe me, there are no such things, 'tis all 
 the poet's invention ; but if there were such 
 darling things as old Chaucer sings, I would 
 up behind you on the horse of brass, and fi-isk 
 off for Prester John's country. But these 
 are all tales ; a horse of brass never ftew, and 
 a king's daughter never talked with birds ! 
 The Tartai-s, really, are a cold, insipid, 
 smouchy set. You'll be sadly moped (if 
 yoxi are not eaten) among them. Pray ti'if 
 and cure yourself. Take hellebore (the coun- 
 sel is Horace's, 'twas none, of my thought 
 
70 
 
 LETTERS TO MANNING. 
 
 originalb/). Shave yotirself oftencr. Eat no 
 saffron, for saffron-eatei-s contract a terrible 
 Tartar-like yellow. Pray, to avoid the fiend. 
 Eat nothing that gives the heart-lnirn. Shave 
 the upper lip. Go about like an European. 
 Read no books of voyages (they are nothing 
 hut lies), only now and then a romance, to 
 keep the fancy under. Above all, don't go 
 to any sights of icild beasts. Tliat has been 
 your ruin. Accustom yourself to write ^ 
 familiar lettei-s, on common subjects, to 
 your friends in England, such as are of 
 a moderate understanding. And think 
 about common things more. T supped last 
 night with Eicknian, and met a meny 
 natural captain, who pleases himself vastly 
 with once having made a pun at Otaheite ; 
 in the O. language.* 'Tis the same man \ 
 who said Shakspeare he liked, because he 
 was so much of the gerUlowtn. Hickman 
 is a man ' absolute in all numbers.' I think 
 I may one day biing you acquainted, if you 
 do not go to Tartary jfirst ; for you'll never 
 come back. Have a care, my dear friend, of 
 Anthropophagi ! their stomachs are always 
 craving. 'Tis terrible to be weighed out at 
 fivepence a-pound. To sit at table (the i 
 reverse of fishes in Holland), not as a giiest, 
 but as a meat. 
 
 "God bless you: do come to England. 
 Air and exercise may do great things. Talk 
 with some minister. Why not your father ? 
 
 " God dispose all for the best. I have 
 discharged my duty. 
 
 " Your sincere friend, 
 
 " C Lamb." 
 
 TO MR. MANNING. 
 
 " Not a sentence, not a syllable of Trisme- 
 gistus, shall be lost through my neglect. I 
 am his word-banker, his store-keeper of puns 
 and sylh)gisins. You cannot conceive (and 
 if Trismegistus cannot, no man can) the 
 strange joy which I felt at the receipt of a 
 letter from Paris. It seemed to give me a 
 learned importance, which placed me above 
 all who had not Parisi.nn correspondents. 
 Believe that I shall carefully husband every 
 scrap, which will save you the trouble of 
 
 * Cnptnin, aftcrwarils Admiral Burncy, who became 
 one of the most constant uttcndant.s on Lamb's parlies, 
 and whose son, Martin, grew up in his stronKcst regard, 
 ftnd received the honour of the dedication of the second 
 ▼olumc of his works. 
 
 memory', when you come back. You cannot 
 write things so trifling, let them only be 
 about Paris, which I shall not treasure. In 
 particular, I must have parallels of actors 
 and actresses. I must be told if any building 
 in Paris is at all comparable to St. Paul's, 
 which, contrary to the usual mode of that 
 part of our nature called admiration, I have 
 looked up to with unfading wonder, every 
 morning at ten o'clock, ever since it has lain 
 in my way to business. At noon I casually 
 glance upon it, being hungry ; and hunger 
 h;\s not much taste for the fine aiis. Is any 
 night-walk comparable to a walk from St. 
 Paul's to Charing Cross, for lighting, and 
 paving, crowds going and coming without 
 respite, the rattle of coaches, and the cheer- 
 fulness of shops ? Have you seen a man 
 guillotined yet ? is it as good as hanging ? 
 are the women all painted, and the men all 
 monkeys ? or are there not a feic that look 
 like rational of loth sexes ? Are you and the 
 first consul thick ? All this expense of ink I 
 may fairly put yon to, as your letters will not 
 be solely for my proper pleasure ; but are to 
 serve as memoranda and notices, helps for 
 short memory, a kind of Eumfordising recol- 
 lection, for yourself on your return. Your 
 letter was just what a letter should be, 
 crammed, and very funny. Ever)' part of it 
 pleased me, till you came to Paris, and yonr 
 philosopliical indolence, or indifference, stung 
 me. You cannot stir from your rooms till 
 you know tho language ! What the devil ! 
 are men nothing but woixl-tnimpets ? are 
 men all tongue and ear ? have these creatures, 
 that you and I profess to know something 
 about, no faces, gestures, gabble, no folly, no 
 absurdity, no induction of French education 
 upon the abstract idea of men and women, no 
 siiuilitude nor dissimilitude to English ! 
 Why ! thou cursed Smellfungns ! yonr 
 account of your landing and reception, and 
 Bullen, (I forget how you sjiell it, it was 
 spelt my way in Harry the Eighth's time,) 
 was exactly in that minute style which 
 strong impressions inspire (writing to a 
 Frenchman, I write as a Frenchman would). 
 It appears to me, as if I should die with joy 
 at the first lauding in a foreign country. It 
 is the nearest pleasure, which a grown man 
 can substitute for that unknown one, which 
 he can never know, the pleasure of tiie first 
 entrance into life from the womb. 1 dare 
 
LETTERS TO MANNING. 
 
 71 
 
 say, in a short time, my habits would come 
 back like a ' stronger man ' armed, and drive 
 out that new pleasure ; and I should soon 
 sicken fur known objects. Notliing has 
 traiispii'ed here that seems to me of sufficient 
 importance to send diy-shod over the water : 
 but I suppose you will want to be told some 
 news. Tlie best and the worst to me is, that 
 I have given up two guineas a week at the 
 ' Post,' and regained my health and spirits, 
 which were upon the wane. I grew sick, 
 and Stuart unsatisfied. Ludisti satis, tempus 
 ahire est; I must cut closer, that 's all. Mister 
 Fell, or as you, with your usual facetiousness 
 and drollery, call him Mr. F + 11 has stopped 
 short in the middle of his play, ^orae friend 
 has told him that it has not the least merit 
 in it. O ! that I had tlie rectifying of the 
 Litany ! I would put in a libera nos (Scrip- 
 tores videlicet) ah amicis ! That 's all the 
 news. A propos (is it pedantry, writing to a 
 Frenchman, to express myself sometimes by 
 a Fi-ench word, when an English one would 
 not do as well ? methinks, my thoughts fall 
 naturally into it) — ■ C. L." 
 
 TO MR. MANNING. 
 
 " My dear Manning, — Although something 
 of the latest, and after two months' waiting, 
 your letter was highly gratifying. Some 
 parts want a little explication ; for exam^jle, 
 ' the god-like face of the first consul.' ^yhat 
 god does he most resemble. Mars, Bacchus, or 
 AjioUo 1 or the god Serapis, who, flying (as 
 Egyptian chronicles deliver) from the fury of 
 the dog Anubis (the hierogl}'ph of an English 
 mastiti"), lighted upon Monomotapa (or the 
 land of apes), by some thought to be Old 
 France, and there set up a tyranny, &c. Our 
 London prints of him repi'esent him gloomy 
 and sulky, like an angry Jupiter. I hear 
 that he is very small, even less than me. I 
 envy you your access to this great man, 
 much moi'e than your soances and conver- 
 saziones, which I have a shrewd .suspicion 
 must be something dull. What you assprt 
 concerning the actors of Paris, that they 
 exceed our comedians, bad as oui's are, is 
 impossible. La one sense it may be true, that 
 their fine gentlemen, in what is called genteel 
 comedy, may possibly be more brisk and 
 degage than Mr. Caulfield, or Mr. Whitfield ; 
 but have iuiy of them the power to move 
 
 laughter in excess? or can a Frenchman 
 laugh ? Can they batter at your judicious 
 ribs till they shake, nothing loth to bo so 
 shaken ? This is John Bull's criterion, and 
 it .shall be mine. You are Frenchified. Both 
 your taste and morals are corrupt and per- 
 verted. By-and-by you will come to assert, 
 that Buonaparte is as great a general as the 
 old Duke of Cumberland, and deny that one 
 Englishman can beat three Frenchmen. 
 Read Henry the Fifth to restore your ortho- 
 doxy. All things continue at a stay- still in 
 London. I cannot repay yoiu* new novelties 
 with my stale reminiscences. Like the 
 prodigal, I have spent my patrimony, and 
 feed upon the superaimuated chaff and dry 
 husks of repentance ; yet sometimes I re- 
 member with pleasure the hounds and horses, 
 which I kept in the days of my pi'odigality. 
 I find nothing new, nor anything that h;is so 
 much of the gloss and dazzle of novelty, as 
 may rebound in narrative, and cast a reflec- 
 tive glimmer across the channel. Pitl I send 
 you an epit;iph I scribbled upon a poor girl 
 who died at nineteen, a good girl, and a 
 pretty girl, and a clever girl, but strangely 
 neglected by all her friends and kin ] 
 
 • Under this cold marble stone 
 Sleep the sad remains of one 
 Who, when alive, by few or none 
 Was loved, as loved she might have been. 
 If she pros|)erous days had seen, 
 Or had thriving been, I ween. 
 Only this cold funeral stone 
 Tells she was beloved by one, 
 AVho on the marble graves his moan.' 
 
 " Brief, and pretty, and tender, is it not ? 
 I send you this, being the only piece of 
 poetry I have dune, since the muses all went 
 with T. M. to Paris. I have neither stuff" in 
 my brain, nor paper in my drawer, to write 
 you a longer letter. Liquor, and company, 
 and wicked tobacco, a'nights, have quite 
 dispericraniated me, as one may say ; but 
 you, who spiritualise upon Champagne, may 
 continue to write long long letters, and stuff 
 'em with amusement to the end. Too long 
 they cannot be, any more than a codicil to a 
 will, which leaves me sundry parks and 
 manors not .specified in the deed. But don't 
 be two months before you write agaui. — These 
 from merry old England, on the day of her 
 valiant patron St. George. 
 
 " C. Lamr. 
 
72 
 
 LETTERS TO MANNING. 
 
 CHAPTER Vm. 
 
 [1804 to 180G.] 
 
 fKTTF.RS TO MAKNIXO, •WOItUSWOUTn, HICKMAN, AND 
 nAZLITT. " Mil. U." WUITTKN-, ACCKI'TKU, DAMSED. 
 
 There is no vestige of liarab's correspond- 
 ence in the year 1804, nor does he seem to 
 have written for the press. This year, how- 
 ever, added to his list of friends — one in 
 wliose conversation hs took great deliglit, 
 until death severed them — William Hazlitt. 
 Tliis remai-kable metaphysician and critic 
 had then just completed his first work, 
 the "Essay on the Principles of Human 
 Action," but had not entirely given up his 
 hope of excelling as a painter. After a pro- 
 fessional tour through part of England, 
 during which he satisfied his sitters better 
 than himself, he remained some time at the 
 house of his brother, then practising as a 
 portrait painter Avith considerable success ; 
 and while endeavouring to procure a pub- 
 lisher for his work, pamted a portrait of 
 Lamb, of which an engraving is prefixed to 
 the present volume.* It is one of the last of 
 ITazlitt's efforts in an art which he after- 
 wards illustrated with the most exquisite 
 criticism which the knowledge and love of 
 it could inspire. 
 
 Among the vestiges of the early part of 
 1805, are the four following letters to 
 ]\Ianning. If the hero of the next letter, 
 Mr. Piichard Hopkins, is living, I trust he 
 Avill not repine at being ranked with those 
 who 
 
 " Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame." 
 
 TO MR. MANNING. 
 
 " 16, Mitre-court Buildin;??, 
 
 "Saturday, 2-Jth l^b. 180S. 
 
 " Dear Manmng, — I have been very unwell 
 since I saw you. A sad depression of sjjirits, 
 a most imaccountable nervousness ; from 
 which I have been partially relieved by an 
 odd accident. You knew Dick Hopkins, the 
 swearing scullion of Caius ? This fellow, by 
 industry and agility, has thrust himself into 
 the imjjortant sitiialiuns (no sinecures, believe 
 me) of cook to Trinity Hall and Caius 
 College : and the generous creature lias con- 
 trived, with the greatest delicacy imaginable, 
 to send me a present of Cambridge brawn. 
 
 EdiUoii, 18".7. 
 
 Wliat makes it the more extraordinary Ls, 
 that the man never saw me in his life that I 
 know of. I su]ipose he ha-s heard of me. I 
 did not immediately recognise tlie donor ; 
 but one of Richard's cards, which had acci- 
 dentally fallen into the straw, detected hua 
 in a moment. Dick, you know, was always 
 remarkable for flourishing. His card im- 
 ports, that 'orders (to wit, for brawn) from 
 any part of England, Scotland, or Ireland, 
 will be didy executed,' &c. At first, Ithouglit 
 of declining the present ; br>t liicliard knew 
 my blind side when he pitched upon brawn. 
 'Tis of all my hobbies the supreme in the 
 eating way. He might have sent sops from 
 the pan, skimmings, crumpets, chips, hog's 
 lard, the tender brown judiciously scalped 
 from a fillet of ve?J (dexterously rejilaced by 
 a salamander), the tops of asparagus, fugitive 
 livers, runaAvay gizzards of fowls, tlie eyes 
 of martyi'cd pigs, tender effusions of laxative 
 woodcocks, the red sjmwn of lobsters, 
 leveret's ears, and such pretty filchiugs 
 common to cooks ; but these had been 
 ordinary presents, the eveiyday courtesies 
 of dish washers to their sweethearts. Brawn 
 was a noble thought. It is not every common 
 gullet-fancier that can properly esteem of it. 
 It is like a picture of one of the choice old 
 Italian masters. Its gusto is of that hidden 
 sort. As Wordsworth sings of a modest poet, 
 — ' you must love him, ei-e to you he will 
 seem worthy of your love ; ' so bi-awn, you 
 must taste it ere to you it will seem to have 
 any taste at all. But 'tis nuts to the adept : 
 those that will send out their tongue and 
 feelers to find it out. It will be wooed, and 
 not unsought be won. Now, ham-essence, 
 lobsters, turtle, such popubu* minions, abso- 
 lutely cotirt you, lay themselves out to strike 
 you at first smack, like one of David's 
 pictures (tliey call liim Darceed), compared 
 Avith the plain russet-coated Avcalth of a 
 Titian or a Correggio, as I illustrated aboA'e. 
 Such are the obvious glaring heathen virtues 
 of a coi'poration dinner, compared Avith the 
 reserved collegiate Avorth of brawn. Do mo 
 the faA'our to leave off the business which 
 you may be at present upon, and go imme- 
 diately to the kitchens of Trinity and Civius, 
 and make my most respectful compliments 
 to Mr. liichard Hopkins, and assure him 
 that his brawn is most excellent ; and that I 
 am moreover obli'cd to him for his innuendo 
 
LETTERS TO MANNING. 
 
 73 
 
 about salt water aud bran, wliich I shall not 
 fail to improve. I leave it to you whether 
 you shall choose to pay him the civility of 
 asking liim to dinner while you stay in 
 Cambridge, or in whatever other way you 
 may best like to show your gratitude to 
 mj friend. Eicliard Hopkins, considered in 
 many points of view, is a very extraordinary 
 oliaracter. Adieu : I hope to see you to 
 supper in London soon, where we will taste 
 Richard's brawn, and drink his health in a 
 cheerful but moderate cup. We have not 
 many such men in any rank of life as Mr. K. 
 Hopkins. Crisp, the barber, of St. Maiy's, 
 wasjustsiich another. I wonder he never 
 sent me any little token, some chesnuts, or 
 a puif, or two pound of hair : just to remember 
 him by. Gifts are like nails. Prresens ut 
 absens ; that is, your present makes amends 
 for yoiu" absence. 
 
 "Yours, C.Lamb." 
 
 TO MR. MANNING. 
 
 " Dear Archimedes, — Things have gone on 
 badly with thy ungeometrical friend ; but 
 tliey are on the turn. My old housekeeper 
 has shown signs of convalescence, and will 
 shortly resume the power of the keys, so I 
 sha'u't be cheated of my tea and liquors. 
 Wind in the west, which promotes tx-au- 
 quillity. Have leisure now to anticipate 
 seeing thee again. Have been taking leave 
 of tobacco in a rhyming address. Had 
 thought that vein had long since closed up. 
 Find I can rhyme and reason too. Think of 
 studying mathematics, to restrain the fire of 
 my genius, which G. D. recommends. Have 
 frequent bleedings at the nose, which shows 
 plethoric. Maybe shall try the sea myself, 
 that great scene of wonders. Got incredibly 
 sober and regular ; shave oftener, and hum a 
 tune, to signify cheerfulness and gallantry. 
 
 " Suddenly disposed to sleep, having taken 
 a quart of peas with bacon, and stout. Will 
 not refuse Nature, who has done such tLin^i-s 
 lor me ! / 
 
 " Nurse ! don't call me unless Mr. Manning 
 comes. — What ! the gentleman in spectacles / 
 —Yes. 
 
 "Dormit. C.L. 
 
 " Saturday, 
 
 " Uot Noon." 
 
 TO MR. MANNING. 
 
 "Dear Manning, — I sent to Brown's im- 
 mediately. Mr. Brown (or Pijou, as he is 
 called by the moderns) denied the having 
 received a letter from you. The one for you 
 he remembered receiving, and remitting to 
 Leadenhall Street ; whither I immediately 
 posted (it being the middle of dinner), my 
 teeth unpicked. There I learned that if you 
 want a letter set right, you must ai)ply at tlie 
 first door on the left hand before one o'clock. 
 I returned and picked my teeth. And this 
 morning I made my application in form, and 
 have seen the vagabond letter, which most 
 likely accompanies this. If it does not, I 
 will get Hickman to name it to the Speaker, 
 who will not fail to lay the matter before 
 Parliament the next sessions, when you may 
 be sure to have all abuses in tlie Post 
 Department rectified. 
 
 " N.B. There seems to be some informality 
 epidemical. You direct yours to me in Mitre 
 Court; my true address is Mitre Court 
 Buildings. By the pleasantries of Fortune, 
 who likes a joke or a doi(ble entendre as well 
 as the best of us her children, tliere happens 
 to be another Mr. Lamb (that there should 
 be two ! !) in Miti-e Court. 
 
 " Farewell, and think upon it. C. L." 
 
 TO MR. MANNING. 
 
 " Dear Manning, — Certainly you could not 
 have called at all hours from two till ten, for 
 we have been only out of an evening Monday 
 and Tuesday in this week. But if you think 
 you have, your thought shall go for the deed. 
 We did pray for you on Wednesday nigl.t. 
 Oysters unusually luscious — pearls of extra- 
 ordinary magnitude found in them. I have 
 made bracelets of them — given them in 
 clusters to ladies. Last night we went out 
 in despite, because you were not come at your 
 hour. 
 
 " This night we shall be at home, so shall 
 we certainly both Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, 
 and Wednesday. Take your choice, mind I 
 don't say of one : but choose which evening 
 you will not, and come the other four. Doora 
 open at five o'clock. Shells forced about 
 nine. Every gentleman smokes or not as he 
 pleases. C. L." 
 
LETTER TO MISS WORDSWORTH. 
 
 During the last five years, tobacco had 
 been at once Lamb's solace and his bane. In 
 the hope of resisting the temptation of late 
 conviviality to which it ministered, he formed 
 a resolution, the virtue of which can be but 
 dimly guessed, to abandon its use, and em- 
 bodied the floating fancies which had attended 
 on his long wavering in one of the richest of 
 his poems — " The Farewell to Tobacco." 
 After many struggles he divorced himself 
 from his genial enemy ; and though he after- 
 wards renewed acquaintance with milder 
 dalliance, he ultimately abandoned it, and 
 was guiltless of a pipe in his later years. 
 The following letter, addressed while his 
 sister was laid up with severe and protracted 
 illness, will show his feelings at this time. 
 Its affecting self-upbraidiugs refer to no 
 greater failings than the social indulgences 
 against which he was manfully straggling. 
 
 TO MISS WORDSWORTH. 
 
 "14th June, 1805. 
 "My dear Miss Wordsworth, — I have every 
 reason to suppose that this illness, like all 
 Mary's former ones, will be but temporary. 
 But I cannot always feel so. Meantime she 
 is dead to me, and I miss a prop. All mj' 
 strength is gone, and I am like a fool, bereft 
 of her co-operation. I dare not think, lest I 
 shoidd think wrong; so used am I to look 
 up to her in the least and the biggest per- ' 
 plexity. To say all that I know of her ! 
 would be more than I think anybody could 
 believe or ever 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. Slie is older, and wiser, and 
 better than me, and all my wretched impei-- | 
 fections I cover to myself by resolutely 
 thinking on her goodness. She would share 
 life and death, heaven and hell, with me. j 
 She lives but for me ; and I know I havo 
 been wasting and teasing her life for live 
 years past incessantly with my cursed ways ; 
 of going on. Eut 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 nolde trade. 
 1 am slu[)id, and lose myself in wliat I write. 
 I wiile rather what answers to my feelings 
 (which are someLimes shai-p eatnigli) than 
 
 express my present ones, for I am only flat 
 and stupid. 
 
 " I cannot resist transcribing three or four 
 lines which poor Mary made upon a picture 
 (a Holy Family) which we saw at an auction 
 only one week before she left home. They 
 ai'e sweet lines and upon a sweet picture. 
 But I send them only us the last memorial of 
 her. 
 
 ' TinOIN AND CHILD, L. DA TINXI. 
 
 ' JIatcrnal Lady mth thy virpin-prace, 
 Ileaven-boin, tliy Jesus seemcth sure. 
 And thou a virgin pure. 
 I.ady most perfect, when thy anpcl face 
 Men look upon, they wish to he 
 A Catholic, Madonna fair, to worship thee.' 
 
 " You had her lines about the ' Lady 
 Blanch.' You have not had some which she 
 wrote upon a copy of a girl from Titian, 
 which I had hung up where that print of 
 Blanch and the Abbess (as she beautifully 
 interpreted two female figures from L. da 
 VLuci) had hung in our room. 'Tis light and 
 pretty. 
 
 ' Who art thou, fnir ono, who usurp'st the place 
 Of Blanch, the lady of the matchles-s grace ? 
 Come, fair and pretty, tell to me 
 AVho in thy lifetime thou mightst be 1 
 Thou pretty art and fair, 
 
 But with the Lady Blanch thou never must compare. 
 No need for Blanch her history to tell, 
 Whoever saw her face, they there did read it well ; 
 But when I look on thee, I only know. 
 There lived a pretty maid some hundred years ago.' 
 
 "This is a little unfair, to tell so much 
 about ourselves, and to advert so little to 
 your letter, so full of comfortable tidings of 
 you all. But my own cares j)ress pretty 
 close upon me, and you can make allowance. 
 That you may go on gathering strengtli and 
 peace is the next wish to Mary's recovery. 
 
 " I had jJmost forgot your repeated invita- 
 tion. Supposing that Mary will be well and 
 able, there is another abiliti/ which you may 
 guess at, which I cannot j^romise myself. In 
 prudence we ought not to come. This illness 
 will make it stiU more ]>rudential to wait. 
 It is not a balance of this way of sjjending 
 our money against another way, but an 
 absolute question of wlicther we shall stop 
 now, or go on w:isting away the little we 
 have got befurcliand. My best love, liowever, 
 to you all ; and to tiiat most friendly creature, 
 Mrs. Clarksou, and better health to her, wheu 
 you soe or write to her. 
 
 " CriAKLEs LAJia" 
 
LETTER TO MR. AND MISS WORDSWORTH. 
 
 76 
 
 The " Farewell to Tobacco " was shortly 
 after transmitted to Mr. and Miss Words- 
 worth with the following ; — 
 
 TO Mil. AND MISS WORDSWORTH. 
 
 "Sept. 28th, 1805. 
 
 " I wish you may think this a handsome 
 farewell to my ' Friendly Traitress.' Tobacco 
 has been my evening comfort and my morning 
 curse for these five years ; and you know 
 how difficult it is from refraining to pick 
 one's lips even, when it has become a habit. 
 This poem is the only one which I have 
 finished since so long as when I wrote 
 ' Hester Savory.' I have had it in my head 
 to do it these two years, but tobacco stood in 
 its own light when it gave me headaches that 
 prevented my singing its praises. Now you 
 have got it, you have got all my store, for I 
 have absolutely not another line. No more 
 has Mary. We have nobody about us that 
 cares for poetry, and who will rear grapes 
 when he shall be the sole eater ? Perhaps if 
 you encourage us to show you what we may 
 write, we may do something now and then 
 before we absolutely forget the quantity of 
 an English line for want of practice. The 
 'Tobacco,' being a little in the way of 
 Withers (whom Southey so much likes), 
 perhaps you will somehow convey it to him 
 with my kind remembrances. Then, every- 
 body will have seen it that I wish to see it, 
 I having sent it to Malta. 
 
 " I remain, dear W. and D., yours truly, 
 " C. Lamb." 
 
 The following le'tter to Hazlitt bears date 
 18th Nov. 1805 :— 
 
 TO MR. HAZLITT. 
 
 " Dear Hazlitt, — I was very glad to hear 
 from you, and that your journey was so 
 picturesque. We miss you, as we foretold we 
 should. One or two things have happened, 
 which are beneath the dignity of epistolary 
 communication, but which, seated about pur 
 fireside at night, (tiie winter hands of pork 
 have begun,) gesture and emphasis might 
 have talked into some importance. Some- 
 thing about 's wife ; for instance, how 
 
 tall she is, and that she visits pranked up 
 like a Queen of the May, with green 
 streamers : a good-natured woman though, 
 
 which is as much as you can expect from a 
 friend's wife, whom you got acquainted with 
 a bachelor. Some things too about Monkey,* 
 which can't so well be written : how it set 
 up for a fine lady, and thought it had got 
 lovers, and was obliged to be convinced of its 
 age from the parisli register, where it was 
 proved to be only twelve ; and an edict 
 issued, that it should not give itself airs yet 
 these four years ; and how it got leave to be 
 called Miss, by grace : these, and such like 
 hows, were in my head to tell you, but who 
 can write ? Also how Manning is come to 
 town in spectacles, and studies physic ; ia 
 melancholy, and ceems to have something in 
 his head, which he don't impart. Then, how 
 I am going to leave oft' smoking. O la ! your 
 Leonardos of Oxford made my mouth water. 
 I was hurried through the gallery, and they 
 escaped me. What do I say 1 I was a Goth 
 then, and should not have noticed them. I 
 had not settled my notions of beauty ; — I 
 have now for ever !• — the small head, the 
 long eye, — that sort of peering cuiwe, — the 
 wicked Italian mischief ; the stick-at-nothing, 
 Herodia,s' daugliter-kind of grace. You un- 
 derstand me ? But you disappoint me, in 
 passing over in absolute silence the Blenheim 
 Leonardo. Didn't you see it ? Excuse a 
 lover's curiosity. I have seen no pictures of 
 note since, except IVIi-. Dawe's galler}'. It is 
 curious to see how differently two great men 
 treat the same subject, yet both excellent in 
 their way. For instance, Milton and Mr. 
 Dawe. Mr. D. has chosen to illustrate the 
 story of Samson exactly in the point of 
 view in which Milton has been most happy : 
 the interview between the Jewish hero, 
 blind and captive, and Dalilah. Milton has 
 imagined his locks grown again, strong as 
 horse-hair or porcupine's bristles ; doubtless 
 shaggy and black, as being hairs ' which, of a 
 nation armed, contained the strength.' I 
 don't remember he says black ; but could 
 Milton imagine them to be yellow ? Do 
 you ? J\Ir. Dawe, with striking origimJity of 
 conception, has crowned him with a thin 
 yellow wig, in colour precisely like Dyson's ; 
 
 in curl and quantity, resembling Mrs.P 'sj 
 
 his limbs rather stout, — about such a man 
 as my brother or Rickmau, — but no Athia 
 nor Hercules, nor yet so long as Dubois, the 
 
 ' The daughter of a friend, whom Lamb exceedingly 
 liked from a child, and always called by this epithet. 
 
76 
 
 LETTERS TO HAZLITT. 
 
 clown of Sadler's Wells. Tliis was judicious, 
 taking the spirit of the story rather than 
 the fact ; for doubtless God could communi- 
 cate national salvation to the trust of flax 
 and tow as well as hemp and cordage, and 
 could draw down a temple with a golden tress 
 as soon as with all the cables of the British 
 navy. 
 
 "Wasn't you soiTy for Lord Nelson? I 
 have followed him in fancy ever since I saw 
 him walking in Pall Mall, (I was prejudiced 
 agauist hiui before,) looking just as a hero 
 ehould look ; and I have been veiy much 
 cut about it indeed. He was the only pre- 
 tence of a great man we had. Nobody is 
 left of any name at all. His secretary died 
 by his side. I imagined him, a Mr. Scott, to 
 be the man you met at Hume's ; but I learnt 
 from Mrs. Hume that it is not the same. I 
 met Mi-s. H. one day and agreed to go on 
 the Sunday to tea, but the rain prevented us, 
 and the distance. I have been to apologise, 
 and we are to dine there the first fine 
 Sunday ! Strange perverseness. I never 
 went while you stayed here, and now I go to 
 find you. What other news is there, Mary 1 
 What puns have I made in the last fort- 
 night ? You never remember them. You 
 have no relish of the comic. ' Oh ! tell 
 Hazlitt not to forget to send the American 
 Farmer. I dare say it is not so good as he 
 fancies ; but a book's a book.' I have not 
 heard from Wordsworth or from Malta since. 
 Charles Kemble, it seems, enters into pos- 
 session to-morrow. We sup at 109, Russell- 
 street, this evening. I wish your friend 
 would not drink. It's a blemish in the 
 greatest characters. You send me a modern 
 quotation poetical. How do you like this in 
 an old play ? Vittoria Corombona, a spunky 
 Italian lady, a Leonardo one, nick-named 
 tlie White Devil, being on her trial lor 
 murder, &c. — and questioned about seducing 
 a duke from his wife and the state, makes 
 answer : — 
 
 ' Condemn you mc for tliat the Duke did love mo ? 
 So may you blame sonic fair and crystal river, 
 For that Bome melancholic distracted man 
 Hath drown'd himoclf in it." 
 
 " N. B. I shall expect a line from you, if 
 but a bare line, whenever you write to 
 llussell-street, and a letter often when you 
 do not. I pay no postage. But I will have 
 consideration lor you until rarhameut time 
 
 and franks. Luck to Ned Search and the 
 new art of colouring. Monkey sends her 
 love ; and Mary especially. 
 
 " Yours truly, C. Lamb." 
 
 Lamb introduced Hazlitt to Godwin ; and 
 we find him early in the following year thus 
 writing respecting the offer of ILizlitt's work | 
 to Johnson, and his literary pursuits. I 
 
 TO MR. HAZLITT. 
 
 "Jan. 15th, 1806. 
 
 " Dear Hazlitt, — Godwin went to Johnson's 
 yesterday about your business. Johnson 
 would not come down, or give any answer, 
 but has promised to open the manuscript, 
 and to give you an answer in one month. 
 Godwin will punctually go again (Wednesday 
 is Johnson's open day) yesterday four weeks 
 next : i. e. in one lunar month from this 
 time. Till when, Johnson positively declines 
 giving any answer. I wish you joy on ending 
 your Search. Mrs. H. was naming some- 
 thing about a * Life of Fawcett,' to be by 
 you undertaken : the great Fawcett, as she 
 explained to Manning, when he asked, ' What 
 Fawcett V He innocently thought Fawcett 
 the Player. But Fawcett the divine is known 
 to many people, albeit unknown to the 
 Chinese inquirer. I should think, if you 
 liked it, and Johnson declined it, that Phillips 
 is the man. He is perpetually bringing out 
 biographies, Kichai'dson, Wilks, Foot, Lee 
 Lewis, without niunber : little trim things 
 in two easy volumes, price 12s. the two, made 
 up of letters to and from, scrajjs, posthumous 
 trifles, anecdotes, and about forty pages of 
 hard biography ; you might dish up a Faw- 
 cettiad in three months and ask 60^. or 80/. 
 for it. I dare say that Phillips would catch 
 at it. I wrote you the other day in a great • 
 hurry. Did you get it ? This is merely a 
 letter of business at Godwin's retjuost. Lord 
 Nelson is quiet at last. . S[is ghost only keeps 
 a slight fluttering in ode»*i^nd elcgits in news- 
 papers, and impromptus, which could not be 
 got ready befoi'e the funeral. 
 
 "As for news, is coming to town on 
 
 Monday (if no kind angel intervene) to 
 surrender himself to prison. He lioj)es to 
 get the rules of the Fleet. On the siuue, or 
 nearly the same day, F — , my other quondam 
 co-friend and drinker, will go to Newgate, 
 
LETTERS TO HAZLITT. 
 
 77 
 
 and his wife and four children, I suppose, to 
 the parish. Plenty of reflection and motives 
 of gratitude to the wise Disposer of all 
 things in ns, whose prudent conduct has 
 hitherto ensured us a warm fire and snug 
 roof over our heads. Nulhim numen abest si 
 sit Prudentia. Alas ! Prudentia is in the 
 last quarter of her tutelary shining over me. 
 
 A little time and I ; but maybe I may, 
 
 at last, hit upon some mode of collecting 
 some of the vast superfluities of this money- 
 voiding town. Much is to be got, and I do 
 not want much. All I ask is time and leisure ; 
 and I am cruelly ofl" for them. Wlien you 
 have the inclination, I shall be very glad to 
 have a letter from you. Your brother and 
 Mrs. H., I am afraid, think hardly of us for 
 not coming oftener to see them, but we are 
 distracted beyond what they can conceive 
 with visitors and visitings. I never have an 
 hour for my head to work quietly its own 
 workings ; which you know is as necessary 
 to the human system as sleep. Sleep, too, 
 I can't get for these winds of a night ; and 
 without sleep and rest what should ensue ? 
 Lunacy. But I trust it won't. 
 
 " Yours, dear H., C. Lamb." 
 
 TO MR. HAZLITT. 
 
 "Feb. 19th, 1806. 
 " Dear II. — Godwin has just been here in 
 his way from Johnson's. Johnson has had a 
 fire in his house ; this happened about five 
 weeks ago ; it was in the day-time, so it did 
 not burn the house down, but it did so much 
 damage that the house must come down, to 
 be repaired. His nephew that we met on 
 Hampstead Hill put it out. Well, this fire 
 has put him so back, that he craves one 
 more month before he gives y^ou an answer. 
 I will certainly goad Godwin (if necessary) to 
 go again this very day four weeks ; but I am 
 confident he will want no goading. Three or 
 four most capital auctions of pictures adver- 
 tised in May, Wellbore Ellis Agar's, the first 
 private collection in England, so Holci/oft 
 says. In March, Sir George Young's in 
 Stratford-place (where Cosway lives), and a 
 Mr. Hulse's at Blackheath, both very capital 
 collections, and have been announced for 
 some months. Also the Marquis of Lans- 
 downe's pictures in March ; and though infe- 
 rior to mention, lastly, the Tructhsessian 
 
 Gallery. Don't your mouth water to be 
 here ? T' other night Loftus called, whom 
 we have not seen since you went before. 
 We meditate a stroll next Wednesday, fasb- 
 day. He happened to light upon Mr. Holcroft, 
 wife, and daughter, their first visit at our 
 house. Your brother called last night. We 
 keep up our intimacy. He is going to begin 
 a large Madonna and child from Mrs. H. and 
 baby. I fear he goes astray after ignesfatui. 
 He is a clever man. By-the-by I saw a 
 miniature of his as far excelling any in his 
 show cupboard (tliat of your sister not 
 excepted) as that show cupboard excels the 
 show things you see in windows — an old 
 woman — hang her name — but most superla- 
 tive ; he has it to clean — I'll ask him the 
 name — but the best miniature I ever saw. 
 But for oil pictures ! — what has he to do 
 with Madonnas ? — if the Virgin Mary were 
 alive and visitable, he would not hazard 
 himself in a Covent-Gai'den-pit-door-crowd 
 to see her. It an't his style of beauty, is it ? 
 But he will go on painting things he ought 
 not to paint, and not painting things he 
 ought to paint. Manning not gone to China, 
 but talks of going this spring. God forbid. 
 Coleridge not heard of. I am going to leave 
 off" smoke. In the meantime I am so smoky 
 with last night's ten pipes, that I must leave 
 off". Mary begs her kind remembrances. 
 Pray write to us. This is no letter, but I 
 supposed you grew anxious about Johnson. 
 
 " N. B. Have taken a room at three shil- 
 lings a-week, to be in between five and eight 
 at night, to avoid my nocturnal alias knock- 
 eternal visitors. The first-fruits of my retire- 
 ment has been a farce which goes to manager 
 to-morrow. Wish my ticket luck. God bless 
 you and do write. — Yours, furnosissimus, 
 
 "C.Lamb." 
 
 The farce referred to in the foregoing 
 letter is the do\ig\\t{\i\ jeu-d'esprit, "Mr. H.," 
 destined to only one night's stage existence, 
 but to become " good jest for ever." It must 
 be confessed that it has not substance enough 
 for a dramatic piece in two acts — a piece 
 which must present a show of real interest — 
 involve its pair of young lovers in actual 
 perplexities — and terminate in the serious- 
 ness of marriage ! It would be rare sport 
 in Milton's " Limbo of Vanity," but is too 
 
78 
 
 LETTER TO "WORDSWORTH. 
 
 air}"^ for the ponderous sentimentalism of 
 the moderu school of farce. As Swift, in 
 " Gulliver," brings everything to the standard 
 of size, so iu tliis farce everything is reduced 
 to an alphabetical standard. Humour is 
 sent to school to learn its letters ; or, rather, 
 letters are made instinct with the most 
 delicate humour. It is the apotheosis of the 
 alphabet, and teaches the value of a good 
 name without the least hint of moral purpose. 
 This mere jDleasautry — this refining on sounds 
 and letters — tliis verbal banter, and watery 
 collision of the pale reflexions of words, 
 could not succeed on a stage which had 
 begun to requii'e interest, moral or immoral, 
 to be interwoven with the Aveb of all its 
 actions ; which no longer rejoiced in the riot 
 of animal spirits and careless gaiety ; which 
 no longer joermitted wit to take the sting 
 from evil, as well as the loail from care ; but 
 infected even its prince of rakes, Charles 
 Surface, with a cant of sentiment which 
 makes us turn for relief to the more honest 
 hypocrite his brother. 'Mx. H. " could never 
 do ;" but its composition was pleasant, and 
 its acceptance gave Lamb some of the hap- 
 piest moments he ever spent. Thus he 
 announces it to Wordsworth, in reply to a 
 letter communicatmg to him that the poet 
 was a father. 
 
 TO MR. WORDSWORTn. 
 
 " Dear "Wordsworth, — "We are pleased, you 
 may be sure, with the good news of Mrs. 
 
 "W -. Hope all is well over by tliis time. 
 
 *A fine boy! — have you any more, — one 
 more and a girl — poor copies of me ! ' vide 
 Mr. H., a farce which the proprietors have 
 done roe the honour ; but I will set down 
 Mr. "Wroughton's own words. N. B. The 
 ensuing letter was sent in answer to one 
 which I wrote, begging to know if my piece 
 had any cliance, as I might make alterations, 
 &c. I, writing on Monday, there comes this 
 letter on the Wednesday. Attend ! 
 
 [Copy of a Letter from Mr. R. Wroughton.] 
 
 * Sir, — Your piece of Mr. II., I am desired 
 to say, is accepted at Drury-Lane Theatre, 
 by the |)roprietors, and, if agreeable to you, 
 will be brought forwards when the proper 
 opportunity serves. Tlie piece shall be sent 
 to you, for your alterations, in the course of 
 
 a few days, as the same is not in my hands, 
 hut with the proprietors. 
 
 ' I am, sir, your obedient servant. 
 
 'lllCUARD WrOUGUTOX.' 
 
 [D;\tcd] 
 ' 6G, Gowcr Street, 
 
 'Wednesday, June 11, 1806.' 
 
 " On the following Sunday Mr. Tobin 
 comes. The scent of a manager's letter 
 brought him. He would have gone further 
 any day on such a business. I read the 
 letter to him. He deems it authentic and 
 peremptory. Our conversation naturally 
 fell upon pieces, different sorts of pieces ; 
 what is the best way of offering a piece, how 
 far the caprice of managers is an obstacle in 
 the way of a piece, how to judge of the 
 merits of a piece, how long a piece may 
 remain in the hands of the managers before 
 it is acted ; and my piece, and your piece, 
 and my poor brother's piece — my poor 
 brother was all his life endeavouring to 
 get a piece accepted. 
 
 " I wrote that, in mere wantonness of 
 triumph. Have nothing more to say about 
 it. The managers, I thank my stars, have 
 decided its merits for ever. They are the 
 best judges of pieces, and it would be insen- 
 sible iu me to aH'ect a false modesty after 
 the very flattering letter which I have 
 received. 
 
 ADMIT 
 
 TO 
 
 BOXES. 
 
 Me. H. 
 
 Kiiith Kiglit, 
 
 CiiAnr.Es Lamb. 
 
 " I think this will be as good a jiattcrn for 
 orders as I can think on. A little thin flowery 
 border, round, neat, not gaudy, and the 
 Drury-lane Apollo, with the liarp at the 
 top. Or sliall I have no Apollo ? — simply 
 nothing ? Or perhaps the comic muse ? 
 
 "The same form, only I think without 
 the Apollo, will serve for the pit and galleries. 
 I think it will be best to write my name at 
 full length ; but then if I give away a great 
 many, that will be tedious. Perhaps Ch.Lamb 
 will do. 
 
 "BOXES, now I thmk on it. Ill have in 
 
LETTERS TO RICKMAN. 
 
 79 
 
 capitals. The rest, in a neat Italian hand. 
 Or better, perhaps 33oifS, in old English 
 characters, like Madoc or Thalaba 1 
 
 " A-propos of Spenser (you will find him 
 mentioned a page or two before, near enough 
 for an a-2->ropos), I was discoursing on poetry 
 (as one's apt to deceive one's self, and when a 
 person is willing to talk of what one likes, to 
 believe that he also likes the same, as lovers 
 do) with a young gentleman of my office, 
 who is deep read in Anacreon Moore, Lord 
 Strangford, and the principal modern poets, 
 and I happened to mention Epithalamiums, 
 and that I could show him a very fine one of 
 Spenser's. At the mention of this, my gentle- 
 man, who is a very fine gentleman, pricked 
 up his ears and expressed great pleasure, and 
 begged that I would give him leave to copy 
 it : he did not care how long it was (for I 
 objected the length), he should be very hapjjy 
 to see anything hy him. Then pausing, and 
 looking sad, be ejaculated ' Poor SrENCER ! ' 
 I begged to know the reason of his ejacula- 
 tion, thinking that time had by this time 
 softened down any calamities which the bard 
 might have endured. ' Why, poor fellow ! ' 
 said he, 'he has lost his wife ! ' 'Lost his 
 wife ! ' said I, ' who are you talking of '] ' 
 'Why, Spencer!' said he; 'I've read the 
 " Monody " he wrote on the occasion, and a 
 very fretty thing it is.'' This led to an ex- 
 planation (it could be delayed no longer), 
 that the sound Spenser, which, when poetry 
 is talked of, generally excites an image of an 
 old bard in a ruff, and sometimes with it dim 
 notions of Sir P. Sydney, and perhaps Lord 
 Burleigh, had raised in my gentleman a quite 
 contrary image of the Honourable William 
 Spencer, who has translated some things 
 from the German very prettily, which are 
 published with Lady Di. Beauclerk's designs. 
 Nothing like defining of terms when we talk. 
 What blunders might I have fallen into of 
 quite inapplicable criticism, but for this 
 timely explanation. 
 
 " N.B. At the beginning of Edm. Spenser, 
 (to prevent mistakes,) I have copied from toy 
 own copy, and primarily from a book of 
 Chalmei-a' on Shakspeare, a sonnet of Spen- 
 ser's never printed among his poems. It is 
 curious, as being manly, and rather Miltonic, 
 and as a sonnet of Spenser's with nothing 
 in it about love or knighthood. I have no 
 room for remembrances ; but I hope our 
 
 doing your commission will prove we do not 
 quite forgot you. C. L." 
 
 The interval between the completion of 
 the farce, " and its first acting," though full 
 of bright ho])es of dramatic success, was not 
 all a phantom. The following two letters to 
 Mr. Eickraan, now one of the Clerks of the 
 House of Commons, show Lamb's unwearied 
 kindness. 
 
 TO MR. RICKMAN. 
 
 " Dear Eickman, — You do not happen to 
 have any place at your disposal which would 
 suit a decayed Literatus ? I do not much 
 expect that you have, or that you will go 
 much out of the way to serve the object, 
 when )^ou hear it is F. But the case is, by a 
 mistaking of his turn, as they call it, he is 
 reduced, I am afraid, to extremities, and 
 would be extremely glad of a place in an 
 office. Now it does sometimes happen, that 
 just as a man wants a place, a place wants 
 him ; and though this is a lottery to which 
 none but G. B. would choose to trust his all, 
 there is no harm just to call in at Despair's 
 oflace for a friend, and see if his number is 
 come up (B.'s further case I enclose by way 
 of episode). Now, if you should happen, or 
 anybody you know, to want a liand, here is 
 a young man of solid but not brilliant genius, 
 who would turn his hand to the making out 
 dockets, penning a manifesto, or scoring a 
 tally, not the worse (I hope) for knowing 
 Latin and Greek, and having in youth con- 
 versed with the philosophers. But from 
 these follies I believe he is thoroughly 
 awakened, and would bind himself by a ter- 
 rible oath never to imagine himself an 
 extraordinary genius again. 
 
 "Yours, &c. C.Lamb." 
 
 TO MR. RICKMAK. 
 
 "March, 1806. 
 
 " Dear Eickman, — I send you some papers 
 about a salt-water soap, for which the 
 inventor is desirous of getting a parlia- 
 mentary reward, like Dr. Jenner. Whether 
 such a project be feasible, I mainly doubt, 
 taking for granted the equal utility. I should 
 suppose the usual way of paying such pro- 
 jectors is by patents and contracts. The 
 patent, you see, he has got. A contract he 
 
is about with the navy board. Meantime, 
 the projector is hungry. Will you answer 
 me two questions, and return them with the ] 
 papers as soon as you can ? Imprimis, is ' 
 there any chance of success in application to 
 Parliament for a reward ? Did you ever 
 hear of the invention ? You see its benefits j 
 and saving to the nation (always the first ' 
 motive with a true projector) ai-e feelingly 
 set forth : the last paragi-aph but one of the 
 estimate, in enumerating the shifts poor 
 seamen are put to, even approaches to the 
 pathetic. But, agreeing to all he says, is 
 there the remotest chance of Parliament 
 giving the projector anything ; and v:h€7i 1 
 should application be made, now or after a 
 report (if he can get it) from the navy | 
 board ? Secondly, let the infeasibility be as , 
 great as you will, you will oblige me by i 
 telling me the way of introducing such an 
 application to Parliament, without buying 
 over a majority of membei"s, which is 
 totally out of projector's power. I vouch 
 nothing for the soap myself; for I always 
 wash in fresh water, and find it answer tole- 
 rably well for all purposes of cleanliness ; 
 nor do I know the projector ; but a relation 
 of mine has put me on writing to you, for 
 whose parliamentary knowledge he has great 
 veneration. 
 
 "P.S. The Capt. and Mrs. Barney and 
 Phillips take their chance at cribbage here 
 on Wednesday. Will you and Mrs. R. join 
 the party ? Mary desires her compliments 
 to !^Il•s. E., and joins in the invitation. 
 
 " Yours truly, C. Lamb." 
 
 Before the production of " Mr. H.," Lamb 
 was obliged, in sad earnest, to part from 
 Manning, who, after talking and tl»inking 
 about China for yeai-s, took the heroic reso- 
 lution of going thitlier, not to acquire wealth 
 or fame, but to realise the phantom of his 
 restless thought. Happy was he to have a 
 friend, like Mr. Burney, to indulge and to 
 soften his gi'ief, which he thus e.\presses in 
 his first letter to his friend. 
 
 rO MU. MANNING. 
 
 "May- 10th, iSOfi. 
 "My dear Manning, — I didn't know what 
 your going was till I shook a last fist with 
 you, and then 'twas just like having sh:ikcn 
 
 hands with a wretch on the fatal scaffold, 
 and, when you are down the ladder, you can 
 never stretch out to him again. Mary says 
 you are dead, and there's nothing to do but 
 to leave it to time to do for us in the end 
 what it always does for those who mourn for 
 people in such a case. But she'll see by your 
 letter you are not quite dead. A little 
 
 kicking and agony, and then . Martin 
 
 Buniey took me out a walking that evening, 
 and Ave talked of Manning ; and then I came 
 home and smoked for you, and at twelve 
 o'clock came home Mary and Monkey Louisa 
 from the play, and there was more talk and 
 more smoking, and they all seemed first-rate 
 characters, because they knew a cei-tain 
 person. But what's the use of talking about 
 'em ? By the time you'll have made your 
 escape from the Kalmuks, you'll have stayed 
 so long I shall never be able to bring to your 
 mind who Mary was, who will have died 
 about a year before, nor who the Holcrofts 
 were ! me perhaps you will mistake for 
 Phillips, or confound me with Mi*. Dawe, 
 because you saw us together. Mary (whom 
 you seem to remember yet) is not quite easy 
 that she had not a formal parting from you. 
 I wish it had so happened. But you must 
 bring her a token, a shawl or something, 
 and remember a sprightly little mandarin for 
 our mantel-piece, as a companion to the child 
 I am going to purchase at tlie museum. She 
 says you saw her writings abimt the other 
 day, and she wislies you should know what 
 they are. She is doing for Godwin's book- 
 seller twenty of Shakspeare's Jilays, to be 
 made into children's tales. Six are already 
 done by her, to wit, 'The Tempest,' ' Winter's 
 Tale,' ' Midsummer Night,' ' Much Ado,' 
 'Two Gentlemen of Verona,' and 'Cymbe- 
 line ; ' and ' The Merchant of Venice ' is in 
 forwardness. I have done ' Othello ' and 
 ' Macbeth,' and mean to do all the tragedies. 
 I think it will be popular among the little 
 people, besides money. It's to bring in sixty 
 guineas. Mary h:is done them cajjitally, I 
 think, you'd think. These are the humble 
 amusements we propose, while you are gone 
 to plant the cross of Christ among barbai'ous 
 pagan anthropophagi. Quam homo homini 
 pricstat ! but theu, perhaps, you'll get mur- 
 dered, and we shall die in our beds with a 
 fair literary reputation. Bo sure, if you see 
 any of those people, whose heads do grow 
 
LETTERS TO MANNING. 
 
 81 
 
 beneath their shoulders, that you make a 
 draught of them. It will be veiy curious. 
 Oh ! Manning, I am serious to sinking almost, 
 •when I think that all those evenings, which 
 you have made so pleasant, are gone perhaps 
 for ever. Four yeai-s, you talk of, may be 
 ten, and you may come back and find such 
 alterations ! Some circumstances may gi'ow 
 up to you or to me, that may be a bar to the 
 return of any such intimacy. I dare say all 
 this is hum ! and that all will come back ; 
 but, indeed, we die many deaths before we 
 die, and I am abnost sick when I think that 
 such a hold as I had of you is gone. I have 
 friends, but some of 'em are changed. Mar- 
 riage, or some circumstance, rises Mp to make 
 them not the same. But I felt sure of you. 
 And that last token you gave me of express- 
 ing a vnsh to have my name joined with 
 yours, you know not how it affected me : 
 like a legacy, 
 
 '•' God bless you in every way you can form 
 a wish. May He give you health, and safety, 
 and the accomplishment of all your objects, 
 and return you again to us, to gladden some 
 fireside or other (I suppose we shall be moved 
 from the Temple). I will nurse the remem- 
 brance of your steadiness and quiet, which 
 used to infuse something like itself into our 
 nervous minds. Mary called you our venti- 
 lator. Fai-ewell, and take her best wishes 
 and mine. 
 
 " Good bye, C. L." 
 
 Christmas approached, and Lamb then 
 conveyed to Manning, now at the antipodes, 
 news of poor Holcroft's failure in his play of 
 "The Vindictive Mjm," and his own approach- 
 ing trial. 
 
 TO MR. MANNING. 
 
 "December 5th, ISOO. 
 
 " Manning, your letter dated Hottentots, 
 August the what-was-it ? came to hand. I 
 can scarce hope that mine will have the same 
 luck. China — Canton — bless us — how it 
 strains the imagination and makes it ache ! 
 I write under another uncertainty, whether 
 it can go to-moi'row by a ship which I have 
 just learned is going oif direct to your part 
 of the world, or whether the despatches may 
 not be sealed up and this have to wait, for if 
 it is detained here, it will grow staler in a 
 fortnight than in a five months' voyage 
 
 coming to you. It will be a point of con- 
 science to send you none but bran-new news 
 (the latest edition), which will but grow the 
 better, like oranges, for a sea voyage. Oh 
 that you should be so many hemispheres off 
 — if I speak incorrectly you can correct me 
 — why the simplest death or marriage that 
 takes place here must be important to you 
 as news in the old Bastile. There's your 
 friend Tuthill has got away from France — 
 you remember France 1 and Tuthill ? — ten- 
 to-one but he writes by this post, if he don't 
 get my note in time, apprising him of the 
 vessel sailing. Know then that he has found 
 means to obtain leave from Bonapai-te, 
 without making use of any incredible romantic 
 pretences as some have done, who never meant 
 to fulfil them, to come home, and I have seen 
 him here and at Holcroft's, An't you glad 
 about Tuthill ? Now then be sorry for 
 Holcroft, whose new play, called ' The 
 Vindictive Man,' was damned about a fort- 
 night since. It died in part of its own weak- 
 ness, and in part for being choked up with 
 bad actors. The two principal parts were 
 destined to ^Irs. Jordan and jSIi\ Bannister, 
 but !Mrs. J. has not come to terms with the 
 managei-s, they have had some squabble, and 
 Bamiister shot some of his fingers off by the 
 going off of a gun. So Miss Duncan had her 
 part, and Mr. De Camp took his. His part, 
 the principal comic hope of the play, was 
 most unluckily Goldfinch, taken out of the 
 ' Eoad to Euiu,' not only the same character, 
 but the identical Goldfinch — the same as 
 Falstaff is in two plays of Shakspeare. As 
 the devil of ill-luck would have it, half the 
 audience did not know that H. had written 
 it, but were displeased at his stealing from 
 the ' Koad to Euin ; ' and those who might 
 have borne a gentlemanly coxcomb with his 
 ' That's your sort,' ' Go it ' — such as Lewis is 
 — did not relish the intolerable -N-ulgarity and 
 inanity of the idea stript of his manner. De 
 Camp was hooted, more than hist, hooted and 
 bellowed off the stage before the second act 
 was finished, so that the remainder of his pjirt 
 was forced to be, with some violence to the 
 play, omitted. In addition to this, a woman 
 of the town was another principal character 
 — a most unfortuuate choice in this moral 
 day. The audience were as scandalised as if 
 you were to introduce such a pei*sonage to 
 theii- piivate tea-tables. Besides, her action 
 
82 
 
 LETTERS TO MAXNINQ. 
 
 in the play was gross — wheedling an old man 
 into marriage. But the nioi-tal blunder of 
 the play was that which, oddly enough, H. 
 took pride in, and exultingly told me of the j 
 night before it came out, that there were no 
 less than eleven principal characters in it, 
 and I believe he meant of the men only, for 
 the playbill c-xprcst as much, not reckonmg 
 one woman — and true it was, for Mr. Powell, 
 Mr. Kaymond, Mr. Bartlett, Mr. H. Siddons, 
 Mr. Barrymore, &c. &c., — to the number of 
 eleven, had all parts equally prominent, and , 
 tliere was as much of them in quantity and | 
 rank as of the hero and heroine — and most 
 of them gentlemen who seldom appear but ' 
 as the hero's friend in a farce — for a minute i 
 or two — and here they all had their ten- | 
 minute speeches, and one of them gave the 
 audience a serious account how he was now 
 a lawyer but had been a poet, and then a 
 long enumeration of the inconveniences of 
 authorslii]), rascally booksellers, reviewers, 
 &c. ; which first set the audience a gajnng ; 
 but I haVe said enough. You will be so 
 sorry, that you will not think the best of me 
 for my detail ; but news is news at Canton. 
 Poor H. I fear will feel the disappointment 
 very seriously in a pecuniary light. From 
 what I can learn he has saved nothing. You 
 and I were hoping one day that he had, but 
 I fear he has nothing but his pictures and 
 books, and a no very flourishing business, and 
 to be obliged to part with his long-necked 
 Guido that hangs opposite as you enter, and 
 the game-piece that hangs in the back di'aw- 
 ing-roora, and all those Vandykes, &c. God 
 should temper the wind to the .shorn connois- 
 seur. I hope I need not say to you, that I 
 feel for the weather-beaten author, and for 
 all his household. I assure you his fate has 
 soured a good deal the pleasure I sliould 
 have otherwise taken in my own little farce 
 being accepted, and I hope about to be acted j 
 — it is in rehearsal actually, and I cxi)cct it i 
 to come out next week. It is kept a sort of 
 secret, and the rehearsals have gone on 
 privately, lest by many folks knowing it, the 
 story should come out, which would infallll)ly 
 danni it. You romeniber 1 had scut it bcfoi-e 
 you went. Wroughton read it, and was much j 
 pleased with it. I speedily got an answer, j 
 I took it to make alterations, and lazily kept 
 it some months, then took courage and ' 
 furbished it up in a day or two and took it. ' 
 
 In less than a fortnight I heard the principal 
 part was given to Elliston, who liked it and 
 only wanted a prologue, which I have since 
 done and sent, and I had a note the day before 
 yesterday from the manager, Wroughton 
 (bless his fat face — he is not a bad actor in 
 some things), to say that I should be 
 summoned to the rehearsal after the next, 
 which next was to be yesterday. I had no 
 idea it was so forward. I have had no 
 trouble, attended no reading or reheai-sal, 
 made no interest ; what a contrast to the 
 usual pai-ade of authors ! But it is peculiar 
 to modesty to do all things without noise or 
 pomp ! I have some suspicion it will appear 
 in public on "Wednesday next, for W. says in 
 his note, it is so forward that if wanted it 
 may come out next week, and a new melo- 
 drame is announced for eveiy day till then ; 
 and ' a new farce is in rehearsal,' is put up 
 in the bills. Now you'd like to know the 
 subject. The title is ' Mr. H.,' no moi-e ; how 
 simi^le, 11 ow taking ! A great H. sprawling 
 over the play-bill and attracting eyes at every 
 corner. The story is a coxcomb appearing 
 at Bath, vastly rich — all the ladies dying for 
 him — all bui-sting to know who he is — but 
 he goes by no other name than Mr. 11. — a 
 curiosity like that of the dames of Strasburg 
 aboiit the man with the great nose. But I 
 won't tell you any more about it. Yes, I 
 will : but I can't give you an idea how I 
 have done it. I'll just tell you that after 
 much vehement admiration, when his true 
 name comes out, ' Ilogsflesh,' all the women 
 shun him, avoid him, and not one can be 
 found to change their name for him — that's 
 the idea — how flat it is here — but how 
 whimsical in the farce ! and only think how 
 hard upon me it is that the shij^ is despatched 
 to-morrow, and my triumph cannot be :uscer- 
 tained till the Wednesday after — but all 
 Ciiina will ring of it by and by. N.B. (liut 
 this is a secret.) The Professor has got a 
 tragedy coming out with the young Koscius 
 in it in January next, as we say — January 
 last it will be with you — ami though it is a 
 profound secret now, as all his aflairs are, it 
 cannot be much of one by the time yuu read 
 this. However, don't let it go any furtlier. 
 I understand there are dramatic exhibitions 
 in China. One would not like to be fore- 
 stalled. Do you find in all this stufl' I have 
 written anything like those feelings which 
 
LETTERS TO MAN^TINQ 
 
 83 
 
 one sliould send my old adventuring friend, 
 that is gone to wander among Tartars and 
 may never come again ? I don't — but your 
 going away, and all about you, is a tliread- 
 bare topic. I have worn it out witli thinking 
 — it has come to me wlien I have been dull 
 with anything, till my sadness has seemed 
 more to have come from it than to have 
 introduced it. I want you, you don't know 
 how much — but if I had you here in my 
 European garret, we shoukl but talk over 
 such stuff as I have written — so — Those 
 ' Tales from Shakspeare ' are near coming 
 out, and Mary has begun a new work. Mr. 
 Dawe is turned author, he has been in such 
 a way lately — Dawe, the painter, I mean — he 
 sits and stands about at Holcroft's and says 
 nothing — then sighs and leans his head on his 
 hand. I took him to be in love — but it 
 seems he was only meditating a work, — 
 ' The Life of Morland,' — the young man is 
 not used to composition. Eicknian and 
 Captain Burney are well ; they assemble at 
 my house pretty regulai-ly of a Wednesday 
 • — a new institution. Like other great men 
 I have a public day, cribbage and pipes, with 
 
 Phillips and noisy . 
 
 " Good Heaven ! what a bit only I 've got 
 left ! How shall I squeeze all 1 know into 
 this morsel ! Coleridge is come home, and is 
 going to turn lecturer on taste at the Eoyal 
 Institution. I shall get 200^. from the theatre 
 if ' Mr. H.' has a good run, and I hope 100^. 
 for the cojiyright. Nothing if it fails ; and 
 there never was a more ticklish thing. The 
 whole depends on the manner in which the 
 name is brought out, which I value myself 
 on, as a chcf-d'ceuvre. How the paper grows 
 less and less ! In less than two minutes I 
 shall cease to talk to you, and you may rave 
 to tlie great Wall of China. N.B. Is there 
 such a wall ! Is it as big as Old London 
 Wall, by Bedlam 1 Have you met with a 
 friend of mine, named Ball, at Canton ? — if 
 you are acquainted, remember me kindly to 
 him. N.B. If my little thing don't succeed. 
 I shall easily survive, having, as it were/, 
 compared to H.'s venture, but a sixteenth 
 in tlie lottery. ^Mary and I are to sit next 
 the orchestra in the pit, next the tweedle- 
 dees. She remembei-s you. You are more 
 to us than five hundred farces, clappings, 
 &c. 
 
 " Come back one day. C. Lamb." 
 
 Wednesday, 10th December, 180(5, was the 
 wished-for evening which decided the fate of 
 "Mr. H." on the boards of Drury. Gi-eat 
 curiosity was excited by the announcement ; 
 the liouse was crowded to the ceiling ; and 
 the audience impatiently awaited the con- 
 clusion of the long, dull, intolerable opera of 
 " The Travellers," by which it was preceded. 
 At length, Mr. Elliston, the hero of the farce, 
 entered, gaily dressed, and in happiest spirits, 
 — enough, but not too much, elated, — and 
 delivered the prologue with great vivacity 
 and success. The farce began ; at first it was 
 much applauded ; but the wit seemed wire- 
 drawn ; and when the curtain fell on the 
 first act, the friends of the author began to 
 fear. The second act dragged heavily on, as 
 second acts of farces will do ; a rout at Bath, 
 peopled with ill-dressed and over-dressed 
 actors and actresses, increased the disposition 
 to yawn ; and when the moment of disclosure 
 came, and nothing worse than the name 
 Hogsjlcsh was heard, the audience resented 
 the long play on their curiosity, and would 
 hear no more. Lamb, with his sister, sat, as 
 he anticipated, in the front of the pit, and 
 having joined in encoring the epilogue, the 
 brilliancy of which injured the farce, he 
 gave way with equal pliancy to the common 
 feeling, and hissed and hooted as loudly as 
 any of his neighbours. The next morning's 
 play-bill contained a veracious announcement, 
 that " the neiv farce of Mr. H., performed for 
 the first time last night, was received hy an 
 overfloioing audience with tmiversal applause, 
 and ivill be repeated for the second time to- 
 morrow ; " but the stage lamps never that 
 morrow saw ! Elliston would have tried it 
 again ; but Lamb saw at once that the case 
 was hopeless, and consoled his friends with 
 a century of puns for the wreck of his 
 dramatic hopes. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 [1807 to 1814.] 
 
 LETTERS TO MANSINO, MONT.VOIE, 'WOnDS'VrOnTU, AND 
 COLERIDGE. 
 
 From this period, the letters of Lamb wliich 
 have been preserved are comparatively few, 
 with reference to the years through wliieh 
 they are scattered. He began to write in 
 
 G 2 
 
84 
 
 LETTERS TO MANNING. 
 
 earnest for the press, and the time thus 
 occupied was withdrawn from his coiTespon- 
 dents, while his thoughts and feelings were 
 developed by a different excitement, and 
 expressed in other forms. In the year 1807 
 the series of stories founded on the plays of 
 Shakspeare, referred to in his last letter to 
 Manning, was published ; in which the 
 outlines of his plots are happily brought 
 within the apprehension of children, and his 
 language preserved wherever it was possible 
 to retain it ; a fit counterpoise to those works 
 addressed to the young understanding, to 
 which Lamb still cherished the strong distaste 
 which broke out in one of his previous 
 lettei-s. Of tliese tales. King Lear, Macbeth, 
 Timon of Athens, Eomeo and Juliet, Hamlet, 
 and Othello, arc by Charles, and the others | 
 by Mary Lamb ; hers being, as Lamb always 
 insisted, the most felicitous, but all well 
 adapted to infuse some sense of the nobleness 
 of the poet's thoughts into the hearts of their 
 little readers. Of tAvo other works preparing 
 for the press, he thus speaks in a letter 
 which bears date 26th February, 1808, 
 addressed to Manning at Canton, in reply to 
 a letter received thence, in which Manning 
 informed Lamb, that he had consigned a 
 parcel of silk to a Mr. Knox for him. 
 
 TO ME. MANNING. 
 
 " De.ar Missionary, — Your letters from the 
 farthest ends of the world have arrived safe. 
 Mary is very thankful for your remembrance 
 of her ; and with the less suspicion of mer- 
 cenariness, as the silk, the symlolum matericde 
 of your friendship, has not yet appeared. I 
 think Horace says somewhere, nox longa. 
 I would not impute negligence or unhand- 
 some delays to a person whom you have 
 honoured with your confidence, but I have 
 not heard of the silk, or of Mr. Knox, save 
 by your letter. Maybe he expects the first 
 advances ! or it may be that he has not 
 succeeded in getting the article on shore, for 
 it is among the res prohibitce et non nisi 
 smuggle-ationin vid fruendce. But so it is, in 
 the friendships between wicked men, the veiy 
 expressions of their good-will cannot but be 
 sinful. I suppose you know my farce was 
 damned. The noise still rings in my cars. 
 Was you ever in the pillory ? — being damned 
 is something like that. A treaty of m.arringe 
 is on foot between William Hazlitt and Miss 
 
 Stoddart. Something about settlements only 
 retards it. Little Fenwick (you don't see the 
 connexion of ideas here, how the (\ev\\ should 
 you ?) is in the rules of the Fleet. Cruel 
 creditors ! operation of iniquitous laws ; is 
 Magna Charta then a mockei-y ? Why, in 
 general (here I suppose you to ask a question) 
 my spirits are pretty good, but I have 
 my depressions, black as a smith's beaitl, 
 Vulcanic, Stygian, At such times I have 
 recourse to a pipe, which is like not being at 
 home to a dun ; he comes again with tenfold 
 bitterness the next day. — (Mind, I am not in 
 debt, I only borrow a similitude from others ; 
 it shows imagination.) I have done two 
 books since the ftxilure of my foi'ce ; they will 
 both be out this summer. The one is a 
 juvenile book — 'The Adventures of Ulysses,' 
 intended to be an introduction to the reading 
 of Telemachus ! it is done out of the 
 Odyssey, not from the Greek. I would not 
 mislead you : nor yet from Pope's Odyssey, 
 but from an older translation of one Chapman. 
 The ' Shakspeare Tales ' suggested the doing 
 it. Godwin is in both those cases my book- 
 seller. The other is done for Longman, and 
 is ' Specimens of English Dramatic Poets 
 contemporary with Shakspeare.' Specimens 
 are becoming fashionable. We have — 
 ' Specimens of Ancient English Poets ' — 
 ' Specimens of Modern English Poets ' — 
 'Specimens of Ancient English Prose 
 Writei'S,' without end. They used to be 
 called ' Beauties.' You have seen ' Beauties 
 of Shakspeare ? ' so have many people 
 that never saw any beauties in Shakspeare. 
 Longman is to print it, and be at all the 
 expense and risk, and I am to share the 
 profits after all deductions, i. e. a year or two 
 hence T must pocket Avhat they please to tell 
 me is due to me. But the book is such as I 
 am glad there should be. It is done out of 
 old plays at the Museum, and out of Podsley's 
 collection, &c. It is to have notes. So I go 
 creeping on since I was lamed with that 
 cursed fall from off the top of Drury-lanc 
 Theatre into the pit, .something more th:ui a 
 year ago. However, I have been free of the 
 house ever since, and the house was pretty 
 free with me ujwn that occasion. Hang 'em 
 how they hissed ! it was not a hiss neither, 
 but a sort of a frantic yell, like a congregation 
 of mad geese, with roaring something like 
 bears, mows and mops like apes, sometimes 
 
LETTERS TO MANNING. 
 
 85 
 
 snakes, that liiss'd me into madness. 'Twas 
 like St. Anthony's temptations. Mercy on 
 us, that God should give his favourite 
 childi-eu, men, mouths to speak with, to 
 discourse rationally, to jnomise smoothly, to 
 flatter agreeably, to encourage Avarmly, to 
 counsel wisely, to sing with, to drink with, 
 and to kiss with, and that they should turn 
 them into mouths of adders, bears, wolves, 
 hyenas, and whistle like tempests, and emit 
 breath through them like distillations of 
 aspic poison, to asperse and vilify the innocent 
 labours of their fellow-creatures who are 
 desirous to please them ! Heaven be pleased 
 to make the teeth rot out of them all, there- 
 fore ! Make them a reproach, and all that 
 pass by them to loll out their tongue at them ! 
 Blind mouths ! as Milton somewhere calls 
 them. Do you like Braham's singing 1 The 
 little Jew has bewitched me. I follow him 
 like as the boj's follow Tom the Piper. I 
 was insensible to music till he gave me a new 
 sense. Oh that you coidd go to the new opera 
 of Kais to-night ! 'Tis all about Eastern 
 manners ; it would just suit you. It describes 
 the wild Arabs, wandeiing Egyptians, lying 
 dervises, and all that sort of people, to a hair. 
 You needn't ha' gone so far to see what you 
 see, if you saw it as I do every night at Drury- 
 lane Theatre. Braham's singing, when it is 
 impassioned, is finer than Mi-s. Siddons', or 
 JSIr. Kerable's acting ; and when it is not 
 impassioned, it is as good as hearing a person 
 of tine sense talking. The brave little Jew ! 
 I made a pun the other day, and palmed it 
 upon Holcrott, who grinned like a Cheshire 
 cat. (Why do cats grin in Cheshire ? — 
 Because it was once a county palatine, and 
 the cats cannot help laughing whenever 1 hey 
 think of it, though I see no great joke in it.) 
 I said that Holcroft said, being asked who 
 were the best dramatic writei's of the day, 
 'Hook and I.' Iklr. Hook is author of 
 several pieces, Tekeli, &c. You know what 
 hools and eyes are, don't you ? Your letter 
 had many things in it hard to be understood : 
 the puns were ready and Swift-like ; but 
 don't you begin to be melancholy in the 
 midst of Eiii^tern customs ! ' The mind docs 
 not easily conform to foreign usages, even in 
 trifles : it requires something that it has 
 been familiar with.' That begins one of 
 Dr. Hawkesworth's papers in the Adventurer, 
 and is, I tliiuk, as sensible a rem.ark as over 
 
 fell from the Doctor's mouth. White is at 
 Christ's Hospital, a wit of the first magni- 
 tude, but had rather be thought a gentleman, 
 like Congi-eve. You know Congreve's repulse 
 which he gave to Voltaire, when he came to. 
 visit him as a literary man, that he wished 
 to be considered only in the light of a private 
 gentleman. I think the impertinent French- 
 man was properly answered. I should just 
 serve any member of the French institute in 
 the same manner, that wished to be intro- 
 duced to me. 
 
 "Does any one read at Canton? Lord 
 Moira is President of the Westminster 
 Library. I suppose you might have interest 
 with Sir Josepli Banks to get to be president 
 of any similar institution that should be set 
 up at Canton. I think public reading-rooms 
 the best mode of educating young men. 
 Solitary reading is apt to give the headache. 
 Besides, who knows that you do read ? There 
 are ten thousand institutions similar to the 
 Eoyal Institution which have sprung up 
 from it. There is the London Institution, 
 the Southwark Institution, the Eussell- 
 square Eooms Institution, &c. — Collecje quasi 
 Con-lege, a place where people read together. 
 Wordsworth, the great poet, is coming to 
 town ; he is to have apartments in the 
 Mansion-House. Well, my dear Manning, 
 talking caimot be infinite ; I have said all I 
 have to say ; the rest is but remembrances, 
 wdiich Ave shall bear in our heads of yoii 
 while we have heads. Here is a packet of 
 trifles nothing Avorth ; but it is a trifling 
 part of the Avorld where I live ; emptiness 
 abounds. But in fulness of aflection, w© 
 remain yours, " C. L." 
 
 The two books referred to in this letter 
 Avere shortly after published. " The Adven- 
 tures of Ulysses" had some tinge of the 
 quaintness of Chapman ; it gives the plot of 
 the earliest and one of the most charming of 
 romances, without spoiling its interest. The 
 " Specimens of English Dramatic Poets who 
 lived about the time of Shakspeare," were 
 received with more fiivour than Lamb's 
 pi-evious Avorks, though it was only by slow 
 and imperceptible degrees that they avou 
 their way to the apprehensions of the most 
 influenti;U minds, and Avrought out the genial 
 purpose of the editor in renewing a taste lor 
 the great contompuriuies of Shakspeur«^ 
 
SG 
 
 LETTERS TO MANNING. 
 
 "The Monthly Eeview" vouchsafed a notice* 
 in its large print, upon the whole favourable, 
 according to the existing fosliion of criticism, 
 but still " craftily qualilied." It will scarcely 
 be credited, without reference to the article 
 itself, that on the notes the critic pronounces 
 this judgment : " The notes before us indeed 
 have nothing very remarkable, except the 
 style, which is formally abrupt and elabo- 
 rately quaint. Some of tlie most studied 
 attempts to display excessive feeling we had 
 noted for animadvei-sion, but the task is 
 unnecessary," &c. 
 
 It is easy to conceive of readers strongly 
 dissenting from some of the passionate eulo- 
 gies of these notes, and even taking offence 
 at the boldness of the allusions ; but that any 
 one should read these essences of criticism, 
 suggesting the profouudest thoughts, and 
 replete throughout with fine imagery, and 
 find in tliem "nothing remarkable," is a 
 mystery which puzzles us. But when the 
 same critic speaks of the heroine of the 
 "Broken Heart" as "the light-heeled Ca- 
 lantha," it is easy to appreciate his fitness 
 for sitting in judgment on the old English 
 drama and the congenial expositor of its 
 grandeurs ! 
 
 In this year Miss Lamb published her 
 charming work, entitled "INlrs. Leicester's 
 School," to which Lamb contributed three of 
 the tales. The best, however, are his sister's, 
 as he delighted to insist ; and no tales more 
 hapijily adapted to nurture all sweet and 
 childlike feelings in children were ever 
 wi'itten. Another joint-publication, "Poetry 
 for Children," followed, which also is worthy 
 of its title. 
 
 Early in 1809, Lamb removed from Mitre- 
 court Buildings to Southampton Buildings, 
 but only for a few months, and preparatory 
 to a settlement (which he meant to be final) 
 in the Temple. The next letter to Manning, 
 (still in China,) of 28th March, 1609, is fiom 
 youthaniptou Buildings. 
 
 TO MR. MANNING. 
 
 " Dear Manning, — I sent you a long letter 
 by the ships which sailed tlie beginning of 
 last month, acconii)anied with books, &c. 
 
 Since I last wrote is dead. So tlierc is 
 
 one of your friends whom you will never see 
 
 * Aiiril, 1809. 
 
 again ! Perhaps the next fleet may bring 
 you a letter from Martin Burney,to say that 
 he writes by de.sire of Miss Lamb, who is 
 not well enough to wnte herself, to inform 
 you that her brother died on Thursday hist, 
 14th June, &c. But I hope not. I should 
 be sorry to give occasion to open a corres- 
 pondence betwcn Martin and you. This 
 letter must be short, for I have driven it off 
 to the very moment of doing up the packets ; 
 and besides, that which I refer to above is a 
 very long one ; and if you have received my 
 books, you will have enough to do to read 
 them. While I think on it, let me tell you, 
 we are moved. Don't come any more to 
 Mitre-court Buildings. We are at 34, 
 Southampton Buildings, Chancery-lane, and 
 shall be here till about the end of May, then 
 we remove to No. 4, Inner Temple-hme, 
 where I mean to live and die ; for I have 
 such horror of moving, that I would not 
 take a benefice from the King, if I was not 
 indulged with non-i-esidence. What a dis- 
 location of comfort is comprised in that word 
 moving ! Sucli a heap of little nasty things, 
 after you think all is got into the cart : old 
 dredging-boxes, worn-out brushes, gallipots, 
 vials, things that it is impossible the most 
 necessitous person can ever want, but which 
 the women, who preside on these occasions, 
 will not leave behind if it was to save your 
 soul ; they'd keep the cart ten minutes to 
 stow in dii'ty jjipes and broken matches, to 
 show their economy. Then you can find 
 nothing you want for many days after you 
 get into your new lodguigs. You must comb 
 your hair with your fingers, wash your hands 
 without soap, go about in dirty gaiters. Was 
 I Diogenes, I would not move out of a 
 kilderkin into a hogshead, though the fii*st 
 had had nothing but smjill beer in it, and 
 the second reeked claret. Our place of final 
 destination, — I don't mean the grave, but 
 No. 4, Inner Tem]>le-lane, — looks out upon a 
 gloomy churehyard-like court, called Hare- 
 court, with three trees and a pump in it. Do 
 you know it l I was born near it, and 
 used to drink at that ])unjp when I was a 
 Rechabite of six years old. If you see ncws- 
 pajters you will reail about !Mrs. Clarke. The 
 sensation in London about this nonsensical 
 business is marvellous. I remember nothing 
 in my life like it. Thousands of ballads, 
 caricatures, lives of Mrs. Clarke, in every 
 
LETTERS TO MANNING. 
 
 87 
 
 blinil alley. Yet in the midst of this stir, 
 a sublime aVstracted dancing-master, who 
 attends a family we know at Kensington, 
 being asked a question about the progress of 
 the examinations in the House, inquired who 
 Mrs. Clarke was ? He had heard nothing 
 of it. He had evaded this omnipresence by 
 utter insignificancy ! The Duke should 
 make that man his confidential valet. I 
 proposed locking him up, barrmg him the 
 use of his fiddle and red pumps, until he had 
 mim;tely perused and committed to memory, 
 the whole body of the examinations, which 
 employed the House of Commons a fortnight, 
 to teach him to be more attentive to what 
 concerns the public. I think I told you of 
 Godwin's little book, and of Coleridge's pro- 
 spectus, in my last ; if I did not, remind me 
 of it, and I will send you them, or an account 
 of them, next fleet. I have no conveniency 
 
 of doing it by this. ISIi's. grows every 
 
 day in disfavour with me. I will be buried 
 with this inscription over me : — ' Here lies 
 C. L., the woman-hater :' I mean that hated 
 one woman : for the rest, God bless them ! 
 How do you like the jMandariuesses ? Are 
 you on some little footing with any of them ? 
 This is Wednesday. On Wednesdays is my 
 levee. The Captain, Mai-tin, Phillips, (not 
 the Sheriff,) Rickman, and some more, are 
 constant attendants, besides stray visitors. 
 We play at whist, eat cold meat and hot 
 potatoes, and any gentleman that chooses 
 smokes. Why do you never drop in ? You'll 
 come some day, won't you ? 
 
 " C. LAilE, &c." 
 
 His next is after his removal to the 
 Temple : — 
 
 TO MR. MAXXIXG. 
 
 "Jan. 2nd, 1810. 
 
 " Dear Manning, — When I last wrote you 
 I was in lodgings. I am now in chambers, 
 No. 4, Inner Temple Lane, where I should 
 be happy to see you any evening. Bring 
 any of your friends, the JNIandarins, with 
 you. I have two sitting-rooms : I call them 
 so par excellence, for you ma\' stand, or loll, 
 or lean, or try ai^y posture in them, but they 
 are best for sitting ; not squatting down 
 Japanese fashion, but the more decorous 
 mode which European usage has consecrated. 
 I have two of these rooms on the third lloor, 
 and five sleeping, cooking, &c. rooms, on the 
 
 fourth floor. In my best room is a choice 
 collection of the works of Hogarth, an English 
 painter, of some humour. In my next best 
 are shelves containing a small, but well- 
 chosen library. My best room commands a 
 court, in which thei-e are trees and a pump, 
 the water of which is excellent cold, with 
 brandy, and not very insipid without. Here 
 I hope to set up my re.^t, and not quit till 
 Mr. Powell, the undertaker, gives me notice 
 that I may have possession of my last lodging. 
 He lets lodgings for single gentlemen. I 
 sent you a parcel of books by my last, to 
 give you some idea of the state of European 
 literature. There comes with this two 
 volumes, done up as letters, of minor poetry, 
 a sequel to ' Mrs. Leicester ;' the best you 
 may suppose mine ; the next best are my 
 coadjutor's ; you may amuse yourself in 
 guessing them ovit ; but I must tell you mine 
 are but one-third in quantity of the whole. 
 So much for a very delicate subject. It is 
 hard to speak of one's self, &c. Holcroft had 
 finished his life when I wi'ote to you, and 
 Hazlitt has since finished his life ; I do not 
 mean his own life, but he has finished a life 
 of Holcroft, which is going to press. Tuthill 
 is Dr. Tuthill. I continue Mr. Lamb. I 
 have published a little book for children on 
 titles of honour : and to give them some idea 
 of the difierence of rank and gradual rising, 
 I have made a little scale, supposing myself 
 to receive the following various accessions 
 of dignity from the king, who is the fountain 
 of honour — As at first, 1, IVfr. C. Lamb ; 2, 
 C. Lamb, Esq. ; 3, Sir C. Lamb, Bart. ; 4, 
 Baron Lamb of Stamford ; * 5, Viscount 
 Lamb ; 6, Earl Lamb ; 7, Marquis Lamb ; 8, 
 Duke Lamb. It would look like quibbling 
 to carry it on further, and especially as it is 
 not necessary for children to go beyond the 
 ordinary titles of sub-regal dignity in our 
 own country, otherwise I have sometimes in 
 my dreams imagined myself still advancing, 
 as 9th, King Lamb ; 10th, Emperor Lamb ; 
 11th, Pope Innocent, hi^ier than which is 
 nothing. Puns I have not made many, (nor 
 punch much), since the date of my last ; one 
 I cannot htlp relating. A constable in 
 Salisbury Cathedral was telling me that 
 eight people dined at the top of the si)ire 
 of the cathedral, upon which I remarked, 
 
 • " Where my family caino from. I have chosen that, 
 if ever 1 should have my choice." 
 
S8 
 
 LETTER TO MONTAGUE. 
 
 tliat they must be very shai^) set. But in 
 general I cultivate the reasoning part of my 
 mind more than the imaginative. I am 
 stuffed out so witli eating turkey for dinner, 
 and another turkey for supper yesterday 
 (Turkey in Europe and Turkey in Asia), 
 that I can't jog on. It is New-year here. 
 That is, it was New-year half a-year back, 
 when I was "writing this. Nothing puzzles 
 me more than time and space, and yet nothing 
 ])uzzles me less, for I never think about them. 
 Tlie Persian ambassador is the principal 
 thing talked of now. I sent some people to 
 see him woi'ship the sun on Primrose Hill, 
 at half past six in the morning, 28th No- 
 vember ; but he did not come, which makes 
 me think the old fire-worshippers are a 
 sect almost extinct in Persia. The Persian 
 ambassador's name is Shaw Ali Mirza. The 
 common people call him Shaw nonsense. 
 AVliile I think of it, I have put three letters 
 besides my own three into the India post for 
 you, from your brother, sister, and some gen- 
 t leman whose name I forget. Will they, have 
 they, did they come safe ? The distance you 
 are at, cuts up tenses by the root. I think you 
 said you did not know Kate •♦*******, 
 I express her by nine stars, though she is 
 but one. You must have seen her at her 
 father's. Try and remember her. Coleridge 
 is bringing out a paper in weekly numbers, 
 called the ' Friend,' which I would send, if 
 I could ; but the difticidty I had in getting 
 the packets of books out to yo\i before deters 
 me ; and you'll want something new to read 
 when you come homo. Except Kate, I have 
 had no vision of excellence this year, and she 
 passed by like the queen on her coronation 
 day ; you don't know whether you saw her 
 or not. Kate is fifteen : I go about moping, 
 and sing the old pathetic ballad I used to 
 like in my youth — 
 
 ' She's sweet fifteen, 
 I'm one year more' 
 
 " Mrs. Bland sung it in boy's clothes the 
 first time I heard it. I sometimes think tlie 
 lower notes in my voice are like Mrs. Bland's. 
 That glorious singer, Braham, one of my 
 lights, is fled. He was for a season. He 
 was a rare composition of the Jew, the gentle- 
 man, and the angel, yet all these elements 
 mixed up so kindly in him, tliat you could 
 net tell which preponderated ; but he is gone, 
 
 and one Phillips is engaged instead. Elate 
 
 is vanished, but Miss B is always to be 
 
 met with ! 
 
 ' Queens drop away, -while bhie-leirped ^laukin thrives ; 
 And courtly Mildred dies while countrj- Madge survives.' 
 
 Tliat is not my poetry, but Quarles's ; but 
 haven't you observed that the rarest things 
 are the least obvious ? Don't show anybody 
 the names in this letter. I write confidentially, 
 and wish this letter to be considered as private. 
 Hazlitt has written a grammar for Godwin ; 
 Godwin sella it bound up with a treatise of 
 his own on language, but the^rrey mare is the 
 
 better horse. I don't allude to Mrs. , 
 
 but to the word grammar, which comes near 
 to grey mare, if you observe, in soimd. That 
 figure is called paranomasia in Greek. I 
 am sometimes happy in it. An old woman 
 begged of me for charity. * Ah ! sir,' said 
 she, ' I have seen better days ;' ' So have I, 
 good woman,' I replied ; but I meant lite- 
 rally, days not so rainy and overcast as that 
 on which she begged : she meant more 
 prosperous days. Mr. Dawe is made asso- 
 ciate of the Eoyal Academy. By what law 
 of association I can't guess. Mrs. Holcroft, 
 Miss Holcroft, Mr. and Mrs. Godwin, Mr. 
 and ]\Irs. Hazlitt, Mrs. Martin and Louisa, 
 Mrs. Lum, Capt. Burney, Mi-s. Burney, 
 Martin Burney, IMr. Rickman, Mrs. Rickman, 
 Dr. Stoddart, William DoUiu, ISIr. Thompson, 
 Mr. and INIrs. Norris, IMr. Fenwick, Mrs. 
 Fenwick, Miss Fenwick, a man that saw you 
 at our house one day, and a lady that heard 
 me speak of you ; Mrs. Buffam that heard 
 Hazlitt mention 3'ou,Dr.Tuthill,Mrs. Tuthill, 
 Colonel Harwood, ISfrs. Harwood, Air. Collier, 
 Mi-s. Collier, Mr. Sutton, Nurse, Mr. Fell, 
 Mrs. Fell, Mr. Marshall, are very well, and 
 occasionally inquire after you. 
 
 " I remain youra ever, 
 
 "Ch. Lamb." 
 
 In the summer of 1810, Lamb and his sister 
 spent their holidays with Hazlitt, who, having 
 married Miss Stoddart, w;is living in a house 
 belonging to his wife's family at Winterslow, 
 on the border of Salishury Plain. The 
 following letter of 12th July, in this year, 
 w.'is addressed to Mr. Montague, who had 
 urged him to employ a part of his leisure in 
 a compilation. 
 
ESTABLISHMENT OF THE "REFLECTOR." 
 
 89 
 
 TO MR. MONTAGUE. 
 
 "Sarum, July 12th, 1810. 
 
 "Dear Montague, — I Lave turned and 
 twisted the MSS. in my head, and can make 
 nothing of them. I knew when I took them 
 that I could not, but I do not like to do an 
 act of ungracious necessity at once ; so I am 
 ever committing myself by half engagements, 
 and total failures. I cannot make anybody 
 understand why I can't do such things ; it is 
 a defect in my occiput. I cannot put other 
 people's thoughts together ; I forget every 
 paragraph as fast as I read it ; and my 
 head has received such a shock by an all- 
 night journey on the top of the coach, that 
 I shall have enough to do to nurse it into 
 its natural pace before I go home. I must 
 devote myself to imbecility ; I must be 
 gloriously useless while I stay here. How 
 is Mrs. M. ? will she pardon my inefficiency ? 
 The city of Salisbury is full of weeping and 
 wailing. The bank has stopped pajTueut ; 
 and everybody in the town kept money at it, 
 or has got some of its notes. Some have 
 lost all they had in the world. It is the next 
 thing to seeing a city with a plague within 
 its walls. The Wilton people are all undone ; 
 all the manufacturers there kept ca.sh at the 
 Salisbury bank ; and I do suppose it to be 
 the unhappiest county in England this, where 
 I am making holiday. "VVe propose setting 
 out for Oxford Tuesday fortnight, and coming 
 thereby home. But no more night travelling. 
 My head is sore (understand it of the inside) 
 with that deduction from my natural rest 
 which I sufl'ered coming down. Neither 
 Mary nor I can spare a morsel of our rest : 
 it is incumbent on us to be misers of it. 
 Travelling is not good for us, we travel so 
 seldom. If the sun be hell, it is not for the 
 fire, biit for the sempiternal motion of that 
 miserable body of light. How much more 
 dignified leisure hath a mussel glued to his 
 unpassable rocky limit, two inch square ! He 
 hears the tide roll over him, backwards and 
 forwards twice a-day (as the Salisbury long 
 coach goes and returns in eight-and-forty 
 hours), but knows better than to take an 
 outside night -place a top on't. He is the 
 owl of the sea — Minerva's fish — the fish of 
 wisdom. 
 
 " Our kindest remembrances to Mrs. M. 
 " Yours truly, C. Lamb." 
 
 The following is Lamb's postscript to a 
 letter of Miss Lamb to Miss Wordsworth, 
 after their return to liOndon : 
 
 "Mary has left a little space for me to 
 fill up with nonsense, as the geographers 
 used to cram monstei's in the voids of the 
 maps, and call it Terra Incognita. She has 
 told you how she has taken to water like a 
 hungry otter. I too limp after her in lame 
 imitation, but it goes against me a little at 
 first. I have been acquaintance with it now 
 for full four days, and it seems a moon. I am 
 full of cramps, and rheumatisms, and cold 
 internally, so that fire won't warm me ; yet 
 I bear all for virtue's sake. Must I then 
 leave you, gin, rum, brandy, aqua-vitae, 
 pleasant jolly fellows ? Hang temperance 
 and he that first invented it ! — some Anti- 
 
 Noahite. C has powdered his head, 
 
 and looks like Bacchus, Bacchus ever sleek 
 and young. He is going to turn sober, but 
 his clock has not struck yet ; meantime he 
 pours down goblet after goblet, the second 
 to see wliere the first is gone, the third to 
 see no harm happens to the second, a fourth 
 to say there is another coming, and a fifth to 
 say he is not sure he is the last," 
 
 In the autumn of this year, the establish- 
 ment of a Quarterly Magazine, entitled the 
 " Eeflector," opened a new sphere for Lamb's 
 powers as a humourist and critic. Its 
 editor, Mr. Leigh Hunt, having been educated 
 in the same school, enjoyed many associations 
 and friendships in common with him, and 
 was thus able to excite in Lamb the greatest 
 motive for exertion in tlie zeal of kindness. 
 In this Magazine appeared some of Lamb's 
 noblest efiusions ; his essay " On Garriek and 
 Acting," which contains the character of 
 Lear, perhaps the noblest criticism ever 
 written, and on the noblest human subject ; 
 his delightful "Essays on Hogarth;" his 
 " Farewell to Tobacco," and several of the 
 choicest of his gayer pieces. 
 
 The number of the Quarterly Eeview, for 
 December, 1811, contained an attack upon 
 Lamb, which it would be dilHcult, as well as 
 painful, to characterise as it deserves. Mr. 
 Weber, in his edition of "Ford," had 
 extracted Lamb's note on the catastrophe 
 of "The Broken Heart," in which Lamb, 
 
90 
 
 TRIUMPH OF THE WHALE. 
 
 speaking of that which he regarded as the 
 highest exhibition of tragic suffering which 
 human genius had depicted, dared an allusion 
 which was perhaps too boM for those who 
 did not understand the peculiar feeling by 
 which it was suggested, but which no unpre- 
 judiced mind could mistake for the breathing 
 of other tlian a pious spirit. In reviewing 
 Mr. Weber, the critic, who was also the 
 editor of the Review, thus complains of the 
 quotation. — " We have a more serious charge 
 to bring against the editor than the omission 
 of pouats, or the misapprehension of words. 
 He has polluted his pages with the blas- 
 phemies of a poor maniac, who, it seems, 
 once published some detached scenes of tlie 
 ' Broken Heart.' For this unfortunate 
 creature, every feeling mind will find an 
 apology in liis calamitous situation ; but for 
 Mr. Weber, we know not where the warmest 
 of his friends will find palliation or excuse." 
 It would be unjust to attribute this paragraph 
 to the accidental association of Lamb in 
 literary imdertakings with jjei'sons like 
 Ml'. Hunt, strongly opposed to the political 
 opinions of IMi*. Gifford. It seems rather 
 the peculiar expression of the distaste of a 
 small though acute mind for an original 
 power which it could not appreciate, and 
 which disturbed the conventional associations 
 of v/hicli it was master, aggravated by bodily 
 weakness and disease. Kotwithstanding this 
 attack. Lamb was ijrompted by his admiration 
 for Wordsworth's " Excursion " to contribute 
 a review of that work, on its appearance, to 
 the Quai'terly, and he anticipated great 
 pleasure in the poet's approval of his criti- 
 cism ; but when the review api^eared, the 
 article was so mei'cilessly mangled by the 
 editor, that Lamb entreated Wordswoitli 
 not to read it. For these gi'ieviuices Lamb 
 at length took a very gentle revenge in the 
 following 
 
 SONNET. 
 
 BAINT CRISPIN TO MR. OIFFORD. 
 
 All unadvised and in an evil hour, 
 
 Lured by asitiring tliouglits, my son, you daft 
 
 The lowly lahours of the " Gentle Craft " 
 
 l'"or learnc'd toils, which blood and spirits sour. 
 
 All things, dear pledge, are not in all men's power ; 
 
 The wiser sort of shrub affects the ground ; 
 
 And sweet content of mind is oftencr found 
 
 In cobbler's parlour than in critic's bower. 
 
 The sorest work is what doth cross the grain ; 
 
 And better to this hour you had been plying 
 
 The obsequious awl, with wcU-waxcd Ungcr flying, 
 
 Than ceaseless thus to till a thankless vein : 
 Still teasing muses, which are still denj-ing ; 
 Making a stretching-leather of your brain. 
 
 St. Crispin's Ere. 
 
 Lamb, as we have seen, cared nothing for 
 politics ; yet his desire to serve his friends 
 sometimes induced him to adopt for a short 
 time their view of public alt'airs, and assist 
 them with a harmless pleasantry. The 
 following epigram, on the disappointment of 
 the Whig associates of the llegent appeai'ed 
 in the " Examiner." 
 
 Ye politicians, tell me, pray. 
 Why thus with woe and care rent I 
 This is the worst that you can say. 
 Some wind has blown the ^yig away 
 And left the llair Apparent. 
 
 The following, also published in the same 
 paper would probably have only caused a 
 smile if read by the Eegcnt himself, and may 
 now be i-epublished without offence to any 
 one. At the time when he wrote it. Lamb 
 used to stop any pasfeiouate attacks upon the 
 jjrince, with the smiling remark, " J love my 
 Eegcnt." 
 
 THE TRIUMPH OF THE WlIALi:. 
 
 lo ! Piran ! lo ! sing. 
 To the finny people's king. 
 Not a mightier whale than this 
 In the vast Atlantic is. 
 Not a fatter fish than he 
 Flounders round the Polar sea. 
 Sec his blubber — at his gills 
 What a world of drink he swills ! 
 From his trunk, as from a s|)out, 
 Which next moment he pours out. 
 
 Such his person. — Next declare. 
 Muse, who his companions are : — 
 Every iish of generous kind 
 [Scuds aside, or slinks behind ; 
 But about his presence keep 
 All the monsters of the deep; 
 Mcrmai is, with their tails and singing 
 His delighted fancy stinging ; 
 Crooked dolphins, they surround him ; 
 Dog-like seals, they fawn around him ; 
 Following hard, the progress mark 
 Of the intolerant salt sea shark 
 For his solace and relief. 
 Flat-fish are his courtiers chief; 
 Last, and lowest in liis tiain. 
 Ink-fish (libellers of the main) 
 Their black liipior shed in spite : 
 (Such on earth the tliiiii/s that tcrite.) 
 In his stomach, some do say, 
 No gnod tiling can ever stay ; 
 Had it been the fortune of it 
 To have swallow'd that old prophet. 
 Three days there he'd not have dwell'd. 
 But in one have been expcU'd. 
 Haplesu marincis are they, 
 ^\ bo beguiled (as seamen say) 
 Deeming him .-onu' rock or island, 
 Footing sure, safe spot, and dry liwd. 
 
 I 
 
LETTER TO WORDSWORTH, 
 
 91 
 
 Anchor in his scaly rind — 
 Soon the difference they find ; 
 Sudden, plumb ! he sinks beneath them, 
 Does to ruthless seas bequeath them. 
 
 Name or title what has he ? 
 Is he Kesjent of the Sea 1 
 From this difficulty free us, 
 TiufTon, Banks, or sape Linnajus. 
 ■With his wondrous attributes 
 Say what appellation suits ? 
 By his bulk, and by his size, 
 By his oily qualities. 
 This (or else my eyesiirht fails), 
 This should be the Prince of W/ialcs. 
 
 The devastation of the Parks in the summer 
 of 1814, by reason of the rejoicings on the 
 visit of the Allied Sovereigns, produced the 
 following letter from Lamb to Wordsworth. 
 
 TO MR. WORDSWORTH. 
 
 " Auff. 9th, 1814. 
 
 " Save for a late excnrsion 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 conntryfied in the 
 parks is all but obliterated. The very colour 
 of green is vanished, the whole surface of 
 Hyde Pai-k is diy crumbling sand (iVrabia 
 Arenosa), not a vestige or hint of grass ever 
 having grown there ; booths and drinking- 
 places go all round it, for a mile and a half I 
 am confident — I might say two miles, in 
 circuit — the stench of liquors, bad tobacco, 
 dirty people and provisions, conquers the air, 
 and we are all stifled and suffocated in Hj^de 
 Park. Order after order has been issued by 
 Lord Sidmouth in the name of the Eegent 
 (acting in behalf of his Eoyal father) for the 
 dispersion of the varlets, but in vain. The 
 vis unita of all the publicans in London, 
 "Westminster, ]\Iarylebone, and miles round, 
 is too powerful a force to put down. The 
 Eegent has raised a phantom which he 
 cannot lay. There they'll stay probably for 
 ever. The whole beauty of the place is gone 
 — that lake-look of the Serpentine — it has 
 got foolish ships upon it — but something 
 whispers to have confidence in nature and 
 its revival — i 
 
 At the coming of the milder day. 
 
 These monuments shall all be overgrown. 
 
 Meantime I confess to have smoked one 
 delicious pipe in one of the cleanliest and 
 goodliest of the booths ; a tent rather — 
 
 ' Oh call it not a booth ! ' 
 
 erected by the public spirit of Watson, who 
 keeps the Adam and Eve at Pancras, (the 
 ale-houses have all emigrated, with their 
 train of bottles, mugs, cork-screws, waiters, 
 into Hyde Park — whole ale-houses, with all 
 their ale !) in company with some of the 
 Guards that had been in France, and a fine 
 French girl, habited like a princess of ban- 
 ditti, which one of the dogs had transported 
 from the Garonne to the Serpentine. The 
 unusual scene in Hyde Park, by candle- 
 light, in open air, — good tobacco, bottled 
 stout, — made it look like an interval in a 
 campaig-n, a repose after battle. I almost 
 fancied scars smarting, and was ready to 
 club a story with my comrades, of some of 
 my lying deeds. After all, the fireworks 
 were splendid ; the rockets in clusters, in 
 trees and all shapes, spreading about like 
 young stai's in the making, floundering about 
 in space (like unbroke horses,) till some of 
 Newton's calculations should fix them ; but 
 then they went out. Any one who could 
 see 'em, and the still finer showers of gloomy 
 rain-fire that fell sulkily and angrily from 
 'ejQ, and could go to bed without dreaming 
 of the last day, must be as hardened an 
 atheist as . 
 
 " Again let me thank you for your present, 
 and assure you that fireworks and triumphs 
 have not distracted me from receiving a calm 
 and noble enjoyment from it, (which I trust 
 I shall often,) and I sincerely congratulate 
 you on its appearance. 
 
 " With kindest remembrances to you and 
 household, we remain, yours sincerely, 
 
 " C. Lamb and Sister." 
 
 The following are fragments of letters to 
 Coleridge in the same month. The first is 
 in answer to a solicitation of Coleridge for a 
 supply of German books. 
 
 TO MR. COLERIDGE. 
 
 " 13th Augr. 1814. 
 
 " Dear Eesuscitate, — There comes to you 
 by the vehicle from Lad-lane this day a 
 volume of German ; what it is I cannot 
 justly say, the characters of those northern 
 nations having been always singularly harsh 
 and unpleasant to me. It is a contribution 
 
 of Dr. towards your wants, and you 
 
 would have had it sooner but for an odd 
 accident. I wrote for it three days ago, and 
 
92 
 
 LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 
 
 the Doctor, as he thought, sent it me. A , 
 book of like exterior he did send, but being 
 disclosed, how far unlike ! It was the ' Well- 
 bred Scholar,' — a book with which it seems | 
 the Doctor laudably fills up those houi-s j 
 which he can steal from his medical avoca- 
 tiou.«. Chesterfield, Blair, Beattie, portions 
 from ' The Life of Savage,' make up a 
 prettvish system of morality and the belles- ! 
 lettrcs, which IMr. Mylne, a schoolmaster, 1 
 has properly brought together, and calls the j 
 collection by the denomination above men- ' 
 tioned. The Doctor had no sooner discovered ; 
 his en-or, than he dispatched man and horse , 
 to rectify the mistake, and with a pretty 
 kind of ingenuous modesty in his note, 
 seemeth to deny any knowledge of the 
 ' Well-bred Scholar ; ' false modesty surely, 
 and a blush misplaced ; for, what more 
 pleasing than the consideration of profes- 
 sional austerity thus relaxing, thus im- 
 proving ! But so, when a child I remember 
 blushing, being caught on my knees to my 
 Maker, or doing otherwise some pious and 
 praiseworthy action ; noiv I rather love such 
 things to be seen. Henry Crabb Robinson 
 is out upon his circuit, and his books are 
 inaccessible without his leave and key. He 
 is attending the Norfolk Circuit, — a short 
 term, but to him, as to many young laAvyers, 
 a long vacation, sufficiently dreary.* I 
 thought I could do no better than transmit 
 to him, not extracts, but your very letter 
 itself, than which I think I never read any 
 thing more moving, more pathetic, or more 
 conducive to the jjurpose of persuasion. The 
 Crab is a sour Crab if it does not sweeten 
 him. I think it would draw another third 
 volume of Dodsley out of me ; but you say 
 you don't want any English books 1 Per- 
 liaps after all, that's as well ; one's romantic 
 credulity is for ever misleading one into 
 misplaced acts of foolery. Crab might have 
 answered by this time : his juices take a 
 long time supplying, but theyU run at last, 
 —I know tiioy will, — pure golden pippin. 
 A fearful rumour has since reached me that 
 the Crab is on tiie eve of setting out for 
 France. If he is in England your letter will 
 reach him, and I flatter myself a touch of 
 
 • A mistake of Lamb's at which the excellent person 
 referred to may »mile, now that he has retired fronj 
 his prufchbiun, anil has nu bubinc><s but the oUlces of 
 kindness. 
 
 the persuasive of my own, which accompanies 
 it, will not be thrown away ; if it be, he is a 
 sloe, and no true-hearted crab, and there's 
 an end. For that life of the Gei-man con- 
 juror which you speak of, ' Colerus de Vit4 
 Doctoris vix-Intelligibilis,' I perfectly re- 
 member the last evening we spent with 
 Mrs. Morgan and Miss Brent, in London- 
 street, — (by that token we had raw rabbits 
 for supper, and Miss B. prevailed upon me 
 to take a glass of bnmdy and water after 
 supper, which is not my habit,) — I perfectly 
 remember reading portions of that life in 
 their parlour, and I think it must be among 
 their packages. It was the very last evening 
 we were at that house. What is gone of 
 that frank-liearted circle, Morgan, and his 
 cos-lettuces ? He ate walnuts better than 
 any man I ever knew. Friendships in these 
 parts stagnate. 
 
 " I am going to eat turbot, turtle, venison, 
 marrow pudding, — cold punch, claret, Ma- 
 deira, — at our annual feast, at half-past four 
 this day. They keej) bothering me, (I'm at 
 ofiice,) and my ideas are confused. Let me 
 know if I can be of any service as to books. 
 God forbid the Architectonican should be 
 sacrificed to a foolish scruple of some book- 
 proprietor, as if books did not belong with 
 the highest propriety to those that under- 
 stand 'em best. " C. Lamb." 
 
 TO MR. COLERIDGE. 
 
 "26th August, ISH. 
 
 " Let the hungry soul rejoice, there is corn 
 in Egypt. AVhattver thou hitst been told to 
 the Contrary by designing friends, who per- 
 haps inquired carelessly, or did not inquire 
 at all, in hope of saving their money, there 
 is a stock of ' llemorse ' on hand, enough, as 
 Pople conjectures, for seven years' consump- 
 tion ; judging from experience of the last 
 two years. Methinks it makes for the benefit 
 of sound literature, that the best books do 
 not always go off best. Inquire in seven 
 years' time for the ' Rokebys ' and the 
 ' Laras,' and where shall they be found ? — 
 fluttering fragmentally in some thread-paper 
 — whereas thy ' Wallenstein,' and thy ' Re- 
 morse,' are safe on Longman's or l\)i>le's 
 shelves, as in some Bodkian ; there they 
 shall remain ; no need of a chain to hold 
 them fast — perhaps for ages — tall copies— 
 ;uid people shan't run about hunting for 
 
LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 
 
 93 
 
 them as in oltl Ezra's slirievalty they did for 
 n, Bible, almost without effect till the great- 
 great-f,Tan(l-niece (by the mother's side) of 
 Jeremiah or Ezekiel (which was it ?) re- 
 membered something of a book, with odd 
 reading in it, that used to lie in the green 
 closet in her aunt Judith's bedchamber. 
 
 "Thy caterer, Price, was at Hamburgh 
 when last Poplo heard of him, laying up for 
 thee like some miserly old father for his 
 generous hearted son to squander. 
 
 "Mr. Charles Aders, whose books also 
 pant for that free circulation which thy cus- 
 tody is sure to give them, is to be heard of 
 at his kinsmen, Messrs. Jameson and Aders, 
 No. 7, Laurence Pountney-lane, London, 
 according to the information which Crabius 
 with his parting breath left me. Crabius is 
 gone to Paris. I prophesy he and the 
 Parisians will part with mutual contempt. 
 His head has a twist Allemagne, like thine, 
 dear mystic. 
 
 " I have been reading Madame Stael on 
 Germany. An impudent clever woman. 
 But if ' Faust ' be no better than in her 
 abstract of it, I counsel thee to let it alone. 
 How canst thou translate the language of 
 cat-monkeys ? Fie on such fantasies ! But 
 I will not forget to look for Proclus. It is a 
 kind of book Avhen one meets with it one ' 
 shuts the lid fivster than one opened it. Yet 
 I have some bastard kind of recollection that 
 some where, some time ago, upon some stall 
 or other, I saw it. It was either that or 
 Plotinus, or Saint Augustine's ' City of God.' 
 So little do some folks value, what to others, 
 sc. to you, ' well used,' had been the ' Pledge 
 of Immortality.' Bishop Bruno I never 
 touched upon. Stuffing too good for the 
 brains of such ' a H<ii'e ' as thou describoi^t. 
 May it burst his pericranium, as the gobbets 
 of fat and turpentine (a nasty thought of the 
 seer) did that old dragon in the Apocrjqoha ! 
 May he go mad in trying to understand his 
 author ! May he lend the thii-d volume of 
 him before he has quite translated the second, 
 to a friend who shall lose it, and so spoil the 
 publication, and may his friend find it and 
 send it him just as thou or some such less 
 dilatory spirit shall have announced the 
 whole for the press ; lastly, may he be himted 
 by Eeviewers, and the devil jug him. Canst 
 think of any other queries in the solution of 
 which I can give thee satisftiction ? Do you 
 
 want any books that I can procure for you ? 
 Old Jimmy Boyer is dead at last. TroUope 
 has got his living, worth 1000^. a-year net. 
 See, thou sluggard, thou heretic-sluggard, 
 what mightest thou not have arrived at. 
 Lay thy animosity against Jimmy in the 
 grave. Do not entail it on thy posterity. 
 
 "Charles Lamb." 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 [1815 to 1817.] 
 
 LETTERS TO ■WOItDSWOUTH, SOUTHEY, AND MANNING. 
 
 It was at the beginning of the year 1815 
 that I had first the happiness of a personal 
 acquaintance with ]\Ir, Lamb. "With his 
 scattered essays and poems I had become 
 familiar a few weeks before, through the 
 instrumentality of Mr. Baron Field, now 
 Chief Justice of Gibraltar, who had been 
 brought into close intimacy with Lamb by 
 the association of his own family with 
 Christ's Hospital, of which his father was 
 the surgeon, and by his own participation in 
 the " Pieflector." Living, then in chambers in 
 Inner Temple-lane, and attending those of 
 IMi-. Chitty, the special pleader, which were 
 on the next staircase to Mr. Lamb's, I had 
 been possessed some time by a desii^e to 
 become acquainted with the writings of my 
 gifted neighbour, which my friend was able 
 only partially to gratify. " John Woodvil," 
 and the number of the "Eeflector " enriched 
 with Lamb's article, he indeed lent me, but 
 he had no copy of " Rosamund Gray," which 
 I was most anxious to read, and which, after 
 earnest search through all the bookstalls 
 within the scojie of my walks, I found, ex- 
 hibiting proper marks of due appreciation, 
 in the store of a little circulating library 
 near Holborn. There was something in this 
 little romance so entirely new, yet breathing 
 the air of old acquaintance ; a sense of 
 beauty so delicate and so intense ; and a 
 morality so benignant and so profound, that, 
 as I read it, my curiosity to see its author 
 rose almost to the height of pain. The 
 commencement of the new year brought 
 me that gratification ; I was invited to meet 
 Lamb at dinner, at the hou°e of Mr. William 
 
94 
 
 INTRODUCTION TO LAMB. 
 
 Evans, a gentleman holding an oflSce in 
 the India House, who then lived in Wey- 
 mouth-street, and who was a proprietor of 
 the " Pamphleteer," to which I had con- ; 
 tributed some idle scribblings. My duties 
 at the office did not allow mc to avail myself 
 of this invitation to dinner, but I Avent up at 
 ten o'clock, through a deep snow, palpably ^ 
 congealing into ice, and was amply repaid 
 when I reached the hospitable abode of my 
 friend. There was Lamb, ]jroparing to de- 
 part, but he staid half an hour in kindness I 
 to me, and then accompanied me to our 
 common home — the Temple. 
 
 Methiuks I see him before me now, as he ] 
 appeared then, and as he continued, with 
 scarcely any perceptible alteration to me, 
 during the twenty years of intimacy which 
 followed, and were closed by his death. A 
 light frame, so fragile that it seemed as if a 
 breath would overthrow it, clad in clerk-like 
 black, was surmounted by a head of form 
 and expression the most noble and sweet. 
 His black hair curled crisply about an ex- 
 panded forehead ; his eyes, softly brown, 
 twinkled wnth varying expression, though 
 the prevalent feeling was sad ; and the nose 
 slightly curved, and delicately carved at the 
 nostril, with the lawer outline of the face 
 regularly oval, completed a head which was 
 finely placed on the shoulders, and gave 
 importance, and even dignity, to a diminutive 
 and shadowy stem. Who shall describe his 
 countenance — catch its quivering sweetness 
 — and fix it for ever in words 1 There are 
 none, alas ! to answer the vain desire of 
 friendship. Deep thought, striving with 
 humour ; the lines of sulToring wreathed into 
 cordial mirth ; and a smile of painful sweet- 
 ness, present an image to the mind it can as 
 little describe as lose. His personal appear- 
 ance and manner are not unfitly characterised 
 by what he himself says in one of his letters 
 to Manning of Braham — "a compound of the 
 Jew, the gentleman, and the angel." He 
 took my arm, and we walked to tlie Temple, 
 Lamt) stammering out fine remarks as we 
 walked ; and wlien we reached his staircase, 
 he detained }ue with an urgency which 
 would not be denied, and we mounted to the 
 top story, where an old petted servant, called 
 Becky, wa.s ready to receive us. We were 
 soon seated beside a cheerful fire ; hot water 
 and its better adjuncts were before us ; and 
 
 Lamb insisted on my sitting with him while 
 he smoked " one pipe " — for, alas ! for poor 
 human nature — he had resumed his acquaint- 
 ance with his "fair traitress." How often 
 the pipe and the glasses were replenished, I 
 will not undertake to disclose; but I can 
 never forget the conversation : though the 
 first, it was more solemn, and in higher 
 mood, than any I ever after had with Lamb 
 through the whole of our friendship. How 
 it took such a turn between two strangers, 
 one of them a lad of not quite twenty, I 
 cannot tell ; but so it happened. We dis- 
 coursed then of life and death, and our anti- 
 cipation of a world beyond the grave. Lamb 
 spoke of these awful themes with the simplest 
 piety, but expressed his own fond cleavings 
 to life — ^to all well-known accustomed things 
 — and a shivering (not shuddering) sense of 
 that which is to come, which he so finely 
 indicated in his "New Year's Eve," yeai-s 
 afterwards. It was two o'clock before we 
 parted, when Lamb gave me a hearty invita. 
 tion to renew my visit at pleasure ; but two 
 or three months elapsed before I saw him 
 again. In the meantime, a number of the 
 " Pamphleteer " contained an " Essay on the 
 Chief Living Poets," among whom on the 
 title appeared the name of Lamb, and some 
 page or two were expressly devoted to his 
 praises. It was a poor tissue of tawdry 
 eulogies — a shallow outpouring of young 
 enthusiasm in fine words, which it mistakes 
 for thoughts ; yet it gave Lamb, who had 
 hitherto received scarcely civil notice from 
 reviewei-s, great pleasure to find that any one 
 recognised him as having a ])lace among 
 poets. The next time I saw him, he came 
 almost breatliless into the office, and pro- 
 posed to give me what I should have chosen 
 a& the greatest of all possible honours and 
 delights — an introduction to Wordsworth, 
 who I learned, with a palpitating heart, was 
 actually at the next door. I hurried out 
 with my kind conductor, and a minute after 
 was presented by Lamb to the person whom 
 in all the world I venerated most, with this 
 preface: — "Wordsworth, give mo leave to 
 introduce to you my only admirer." 
 
 The following letter was addressed to 
 Wortlswurth, after his i-oturn to Westmoi'e- 
 land from this visit : — 
 
LETTER TO WORDSWORTH. 
 
 95 
 
 TO MU. WORDSWORTH, 
 
 "Aucr. 9th, 1815. 
 "Dear Worclswortli, — Mary and I felt 
 quite queer after your taking leave (you 
 W. W.) of us in St. Giles's. We wished we 
 had seen more of you, but felt we had scarce 
 been sufficiently acknowledging for the share 
 we liad enjoyed of your company. We felt 
 as if we had been not enough exjyressive of 
 our pleasure. But our manners both are a 
 little too much on this side of too-much- 
 cordiality. We want presence of mind and 
 presence of heart. What we feel comes too 
 late, like an after-thought impromptu. But 
 perhaps you observed nothing of that which 
 we have been painfully conscious of, and are 
 every day in our intercourse with those we 
 stand affected to through all the degrees of 
 love. Eobinson is on the circuit. Our pane- 
 gp-ist I thought liad forgotten one of the 
 objects of his youthful admiration, but I was 
 agreeably removed from that scruple by the 
 laundress Icnocking at my door this morning, 
 almost before I was up, with a present of fruit 
 from my young friend, &c. There is some- 
 thing inexpressibly pleasant to me in these 
 jyreseiits, be it fruit, or fowl, or brawn, or 
 tvhat not. Books are a legitimate cause of 
 acceptance. If presents be not the soul of 
 friendship, undoubtedly they are the most 
 spiritual part of the body of that intercourse. 
 There is too much narrowness of thinking in 
 this point. The punctilio of acceptance, 
 methinks, is too confined and strait-laced. I 
 could be content to receive money, or clothes, 
 or a joint of meat from a friend. Why should 
 he not send me a dinner as well as a dessert ? 
 I would taste him in tlie beasts of the field, 
 and through all creation. Therefore did the 
 basket of fruit of the juvenile Talfourd not 
 displease me ; not that I have any thouglits 
 of bartering or reciprocating these things. 
 To send him anything in return, would be to 
 reflect suspicion of mercenariness upon what 
 I know he meant a free-will offering. Let 
 him overcome me in bounty. In this strife 
 a generous nature loves to be overcome. / You 
 wish me some of your leisure. I have a 
 glimmering aspect, a chink-light of liberty 
 before me, which I pray God prove not 
 fallacious. My remonstrances have stirred 
 up others to remonstrate, and, altogether, 
 there is a plan for sep:irating certain parts of 
 
 business from our department ; which, if it 
 take place, will pi-oduce me more time, i.e. 
 my evenings free. It may be a means of 
 placing me in a more conspicuous situation, 
 which will knock at my nerves another way, 
 but I wait the issue in submission. If I can 
 but begin my own day at four o'clock in tlie 
 afternoon, I shall think myself to have Eden 
 days of peace and liberty to wliat I have had. 
 As you say, how a man can fill three volumes 
 up with an essay on the drama, is wonderful ; 
 I am sure a very few sheets would hold all I 
 had to say on the subject. 
 
 " Did you ever read ' Charon on Wisdom?' 
 or ' Patrick's Pilgrim 1 ' If neither, you have 
 two great pleasures to come. I mean some 
 day to attack Cai-yl on Job, six folios. What 
 any man can wTite, surely I may I'ead. If I 
 do but get rid of auditing warehousekeepers' 
 accounts and get no worse-harassing task in 
 the place of it, what a lord of libertyl shall be ! 
 I shall dance, and skip, and make mouths at 
 the invisible event, and pick the tlioms out 
 of my pillow, and throw 'em at rich men's 
 night-caps, and talk blank verse, hoity, toity, 
 and sing — ' A clerk I was in London gay,' 
 ' Ban, ban, Ca-Caliban,' like the emancipated 
 monster, and go where I like, up this street 
 or do\vu that alley. Adieu, and pray that it 
 may be my luck. 
 
 " Good bye to you all. C. Lamb." 
 
 The following letter was inclosed in tlie 
 same parcel with the last. 
 
 TO MR. SOUTHEY. 
 
 " Aufr. 9th, 1815. 
 
 " Dear Southey, — Eobinson is not on the 
 circuit, as I erroneously stated in a letter to 
 W. W., which travels with this, but is gone 
 to Brussels, Ostend, Ghent, &c. But his 
 friends, the Colliers, whom I consulted 
 respecting your friend's fate, remember to 
 have heard him say, that Father Pardo had 
 effected his escape (the cunning greasy rogue), 
 and to the best of their belief is at present in 
 Paris. To my thinking, it is a small matter 
 whether there be one fat friar more or less 
 in the world. I have rather a taste for 
 clerical executions, imbibed from early recol- 
 lections of the fate of the excellent Dodd. I 
 hear Bonaparte has sued his habeas coi-jjus, 
 
96 
 
 LETTERS TO SOUTHEY. 
 
 and the twelve judges are now sitting upon 
 it at the KoUs. 
 
 " Your boute-feu (bonfire) must be excellent 
 of its kind. Poet Settle presided at the last 
 great thing of the kind in London, when the 
 pope was burnt in form. Do you proAdde 
 any verses on this occasion ? Your fear for 
 Hartley's intellectuals is just and rational. 
 Could not the Chancellor be petitioned to 
 remove him ? His lordship took Mr. Betty 
 from under the paternal wing. I think at 
 least he should go through a course of 
 matter-of-fact with some sober man after 
 the mysteries. Could not he spend a week 
 at Poole's before he goes back to Oxford ? 
 Tobin is dead. But there is a man in my 
 office, a Mr. H., who proses it away from 
 morning to night, and never gets beyond 
 corporal and material verities. He'd get 
 these crack -brain metaphysics out of the 
 young gentleman's head as soon as any one 
 I know. When I can't sleep o' nights, I 
 imagine a dialogue with Mr. H., upon any 
 given subject, and go prosing on in fancy 
 with him, till I either laugh or fall asleep. 
 I have literally foimd it answer. I am going 
 to stand godfather ; I don't like the business ; 
 I cannot muster up decorum for these occa- 
 sions ; I shall certainly disgrace the font. I 
 was at Hazlitt's marriage, and had like to 
 have been turned out several times during 
 the ceremony. Any thing awful makes me 
 laugh. I misbehaved once at a funeral. Yet 
 I can read about these ceremonies with pious 
 and proper feelings. The realities of life 
 only seem the mockeries. I fear T must get 
 cured along with Hartley, if not too invete- 
 rate. Don't you think Louis the Desirable 
 is in a sort of quandary 1 
 
 " After all, Bonaparte is a fine fellow, as 
 my barber says, and I should not mind 
 standing bareheaded at his table to do him 
 service in his fall. They should have given 
 him Hampton Court or Kensington, with a 
 tether extending forty miles round London. 
 Qu. Would not the people have ejected the 
 Brunswicks some day in his favour 1 Well, 
 we shall see, C. Lamb." 
 
 The following was addressed to Southey in 
 acknowleilgnieut of his "lioderlck," the most 
 sustained and noble of his poems. 
 
 TO MR. SOUTHET. 
 
 "May r.th, 1815. 
 
 "Dear South ej', — I have received from 
 Longman a copy of ' Roderick,' with the 
 author's compliments, for which I much 
 thank you. I don't know where I shall put 
 all the noble presents I have lately received 
 in that way ; the ' Excursion,' Wordsworth's 
 two last vols., and now ' Eoderick,' have come 
 pouring in upon me like some irruption from 
 Helicon. The story of the brave Maccabee 
 was already, you may be sure, familiar to me 
 in all its parts. I have, since the receipt of 
 your present, read it quite through again, 
 and with no diminished pleasure. I don't 
 know whether I ought to say that it has 
 given me more pleasure than any of your 
 long poems. 'Kehama' is doubtless more 
 powerful, but I don't feel that firm footing 
 in it that I do in ' Roderick ;' my imagination 
 goes sinking and floundering in the vast 
 spaces of unopened-before systems and faiths ; 
 I am put out of the pale of my old sympathies ; 
 my moral sense is almost outraged ; I can't 
 believe, or, with horror am made to believe, 
 such desperate chances against onmipotences, 
 such disturbances of faith to the centre ; the 
 more potent the more painful the spell. 
 Jove, and his brotherhood of gods, tottering 
 with the giant assailings, I can bear, for the 
 soul's hopes are not struck at in such con- 
 tests ; but your Oriental almighties are too 
 much types of the intangible prototype to be 
 meddled with without shuddering. One never 
 connects what are called the attributes with 
 Jupiter. I mention only what diminishes my 
 deliglit at the wonder-workings of ' Keharaa,' 
 not what impeaolies its ])ower, which I con- 
 fess with trembling; but 'Roderick' is a 
 comfortable poem. It reminds me of the 
 delight I took in the fir.st reading of the 
 'Joan of Arc' It is maturer and better 
 than that, though not better to me now thiin 
 that was then. It suits me better than Madoc. 
 I am at home in Spain and Christendom. I 
 have a timid imagination, I am afraid. I do 
 not willingly admit of strange beliefs, or out- 
 of-the-way creeds or places. I never read 
 books of travels, at least not farther than 
 Paris, or Rome. I can just endure Moors, 
 because of their comiection sis foes with 
 Clu'istians ; but Abyssiuians, Ethiops, Esqui- 
 maux, Dcrvises, ;uid all that tribe, I hate. 
 
LETTER TO WORDSWORTH. 
 
 97 
 
 I believe I fear them in some manner. A 
 Mahometan turban on the stage, though 
 enveloping some well known face (Mr. Cook 
 or Mr. Maddox, whom I see another day 
 good Christian and English waiters, inn- 
 keepers, &c.), does not give me pleasure 
 unalloyed. I am a Christian, Englisliman, 
 Londoner, Templar. God help me when I 
 come to put off these snug relations, and to 
 get abroad into the world to come ! I 
 sliall be like the croio on the sand, as Words- 
 worth has it ; but I won't think on it ; no 
 need I hope yet. 
 
 " The parts I have been most pleased with, 
 both on first and second readings, perhaps, 
 are Florinda's palliation of Roderick's crime, 
 confessed to him in his disguise — the retreat 
 of the Palayos family first discovered, — his 
 being made king — ' For acclamation one form 
 must serve, more solemn for the breach of old 
 observances.'' Roderick's vow is extremely 
 fine, and his blessing on the vow of Alphonso : 
 
 ' Towards the troop he spread his arms, 
 As if the expanded soul diffused itself, 
 And carried to all spirits with the act 
 Its affluent inspiration.' 
 
 " It struck me forcibly that the feeling of 
 these last lines might have been suggested to 
 you by the Cartoon of Paul at Athens. 
 Certain it is tliat a better motto or guide to 
 that famous attitude can no where be found. 
 I shall adopt it as explanatory of that violent, 
 but dignified motion. I must read again 
 Landor's ' Julian.' I have not read it some 
 time. I think he must have failed in Roderick, 
 for I remember nothing of him, nor of any 
 distinct character as a character — only fine 
 oounding passages. I remember thinking 
 also he had chosen a point of time after the 
 event, as it were, for Roderick survives to 
 no use ; but my memory is weak, and I will 
 not wrong a fine poem by ti-ustiug to it. The 
 notes to your poem I have not read again ; 
 but it will be a take-downable book on my 
 shelf, and they will serve sometimes at break- 
 fast, or times too light for the text to be duly 
 appreciated. Though some of 'em, one of/ the 
 serpent penance, is serious enough, now T 
 think on't. Of Coleridge I hear nothing, 
 nor of the Morgans. I hope to have him like 
 a re-appearing star, standing up before me 
 some time wlien least expected in London, as 
 has been the case wliylcar. 
 
 " I am doinc] nothing (as the phrase is) 
 but reading pi-esents, and walk away what 
 of the day-hours I can get from liard occu- 
 pation. Pray accept once more my hearty 
 thanks, and expression of pleasure for your 
 remembrance of me. My sister desires her 
 kind respects to Mrs. S. and to all at Keswick. 
 "Yours truly, C.Lamb." 
 
 " The next present I look for is the ' White 
 Doe,' Have you seen Mat. Betham's ' Lay 
 of Marie V I think it very delicately pretty 
 as to sentiment, &c." 
 
 The following is an extract of a letter, 
 addressed shortly afterwards, 
 
 TO MR. WORDSWORTH. 
 
 " Since I saw you I have had a treat in 
 the reading way, wliich comes not every day ; 
 the Latin poems of Vincent Bourne, which 
 were quite new to me. What a heart that 
 man had, all laid out upon town scenes, a 
 proper counterpart to some people's extrava- 
 gances. — 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 A, B, C, which, after 
 all, he says, he hesitates not to call Newton's 
 Principia ? 
 
 " I was lately fatiguing myself with going 
 over a volume of fine words by , excel- 
 lent words ; and if the heart could live by 
 words alone, it could desire no better regale ; 
 but what an aching vacuum of matter ! I 
 don't stick at the madness of it, for that is 
 only a consequence of shutting his eyes, 
 and thinking he is in the age of the old 
 Elizabeth poets. From thence I turned to 
 v. Bourne; what a sweet, unpretending, 
 pretty-mauuer'd, matterfid ci-eature ! sucking 
 from every flower, making a flower of every- 
 thing. His diction all Latin, and his thoughts 
 all English. Bless him ! Latin wasn't good 
 enough for him. Why wasn't he content 
 with the language which Gay and Prior 
 wrote in 1 " 
 
 The associations of Christmas increased 
 the fervour of Lamb's wishes for Manning's 
 return, which he now really hoped for. On 
 Cliristm;is-day he addressed a letter to him 
 at Canton, and the next day another to meet 
 
98 
 
 LETTERS TO MANNING. 
 
 him half-way home, at St. Helena, &c. 
 There seems the distance of half a globe 
 between these letters. Tlie first, in which 
 Lamb pictures their dearest common friends 
 as in a melancholy future, and makes it 
 present — lying-like dismal truths — yet with 
 a relieving consciousness of a power to dispel 
 the sad enchantments he has woven, ha.s 
 perhaps more of what was peculiar in Lamb's 
 cast of thought, than anji^hiug of the same 
 length which he has left us. 
 
 TO MR. MANNING. 
 
 "Dec. 25th, 1815. 
 
 " Dear old friend and absentee, — This is 
 Christmas- day 1-815 with us ; what it may 
 be with you I don't know, the 12th of June 
 next year perhaps ; and if it should be tlie 
 consecrated season with you, I don't see how 
 you can keep it. You have no turkeys ; you 
 would not desecrate the festival by offering 
 up a withei-ed Chinese bantam, instead of 
 the savoury grand Norfolcian holocaust, that 
 smokes all around my nostrils at this moment, 
 from a thousand fire-sides. Then what 
 puddings have you ? Where will you get 
 holly to stick in your churches, or churches 
 to stick your dried tea-leaves (that must be 
 the substitute) in ? What memorials you 
 can have of the holy time, I see not. A 
 chopped missionary or two may keep up the 
 thin idea of Lent and the wilderness ; but 
 what standing evidence have you of the 
 Nativity l — 'tis our rosy-cheeked, homestalled 
 divines, whose faces shine to tlie tune of 
 unto us a child was born ; faces fragrant 
 with the mince-pies of half a century, that 
 alone can authenticate the cheerful mystery 
 — I feel, I feel my bowels refreshed with 
 the holy tide — my zeal is great against the 
 unedified heathen. Down with the Pagodas 
 — down with the idols — Ching-chong-fo — 
 and his foolish priesthood ! Come out of 
 Babylon, O my friend ! for her time is come, 
 and the child that is native, and the Proselyte 
 of her gates, shall kindle and smoke together! 
 And in sober sense wliat makes you so long 
 from among us, Manning ? You must not 
 expect to see the same laiglaml again which 
 you loft. 
 
 " Eiiii)irc3 have been overturned, crowns 
 trodden into dust, the face of the western 
 world quite changed : your friends have all 
 got old — those you left blooming — myself 
 
 (who am one of the few that remember you) 
 those golden hairs which you recollect my 
 taking a pride in, turned to silvery and grey. 
 Mary has been dead and buried many yeai-s 
 — she desired to be buried in the silk gown 
 you sent her. Rickman, that you remember 
 active and strong, now walks out supported 
 by a servant-maid and a stick. Martin 
 Bumey is a very old man. The other day 
 an aged woman knocked at my door, and 
 pretended to my acquaintance ; it was long 
 before I had the most distant cognition of 
 her ; but at last together we made her out 
 to be Louisa, the daughter of !Mrs. Topham, 
 formerly Mrs. Morton, Avho had been Mi's. 
 Reynolds, formerly Mrs. Kenney, whose first 
 husband was Holcroft, the dramatic writer 
 of the last century. St. Paul's church is a 
 heap of ruins ; the Monument isn't half so 
 high as you knew it, divers parts being 
 successively taken down which the ravages 
 of time had rendered dangerous ; the horse 
 at Charing Cross is gone, no one knows 
 whither, — and all this has taken place while 
 you have been settling whether Ho-hing-tong 
 
 should be spelt with a , or a . For 
 
 aught I see you had almost as well remain 
 where you are, and not come like a Struld- 
 brug into a world where few were bom 
 when you went away. Scarce here and 
 thei'e one will be able to make out your 
 face ; all your opinions will be out of date, 
 your jokes obsolete, your puns rejected with 
 fastidiousness as wit of the last age. Your 
 way of mathematics has already given way 
 to a new method, which afttr all is I believe 
 the old doctrine of Maclaurin, new-vamped 
 up with what he borrowed of the negative 
 quantity of fluxions from Euler. 
 
 " Poor Godwin ! I was passing his tomb 
 the other day in Cripplegate churchyard. 
 There are eome verses upon it written by 
 
 Miss , which if I thought good enough I 
 
 would send you. He was one of those who 
 would have hailed your retuni, not with 
 boisterous shouts and clamoui-s, but with the 
 complacent gratulations of a philoso])her 
 anxious to j)romoto knowledge as leailiug to 
 hajjpiness — but his systems and his theories 
 are ten foot deep in Cripplegate mould. 
 Coleridge is just dead, having lived just long 
 enough to close the eyes of Wordsworth, 
 who paid the debt to nature but a week or 
 two before — poor Col., but two days before 
 
he died, lie wrote to a bookseller proposing 
 an epic poem on the 'Wanderings of Cain,' 
 in twenty-four books. It is said he has 
 left behind him more than forty thousand 
 treatises in criticism, metaphysics, and divi- 
 nity, but few of them in a state of comple- 
 tion. They are now destined, perhaps, to 
 wrap up spices. You see what mutations the 
 busy hand of Time has produced, while you 
 have consumed in foolish voluntary exile that 
 time which might have gladdened your 
 friends — benefited your country ; but re- 
 proaches are useless. Gather up the wretched 
 reliques, my friend, as fast as you can, and 
 come to your old home. I will rub my eyes 
 and try to recognise you. We will shake 
 withered hands together, and talk of old 
 things — of St. Mary's church and the barber's 
 opposite, where the young students in 
 mathematics used to assemble. Poor Crips, 
 that kept it afterwards, set up a fruiterer's 
 shop in Trumpington -street, and for aught I 
 know resides there still, for I saw the name 
 up in the last journey I took there with my 
 sister just before she died. I suppose you 
 heard that I had left the India House, and 
 gone into the Fishmongers' Almsliouses over ! 
 the bridge. I have a little cabin thei'e, 
 small and homely, but you shall be welcome 
 to it. You like oysters, and to open them 
 yourself ; I'll get you some if you come in 
 oyster time. Mai-sh;ill, Godwin's old friend, 
 is still alive, and talks of the faces you used 
 to make. 
 
 " Come as soon as you can. C. Lamb." 
 
 Here is the next day's reverse of the 
 picture. 
 
 TO MR. MAIfNING. 
 
 "Dec. 26th, 1S15. 
 
 "Dear Manning, — Following your brother's 
 example, I have just ventured one letter to 
 Canton, and am now hazarding another (not 
 exactly a duplicate) to St. Helena. The first 
 was full of unprobable romantic fictions, 
 fitting the remoteness of the mission it goes 
 upon ; in the present I mean to confine 
 myself nearer to truth as you come neater 
 home. A correspondence with the utter- 
 most parts of the earth necessarily involves 
 in it some heat of fancy, it sets tlie brain 
 agoing, but I can think on the half-way 
 house tranquilly. Your fi-ieiids then are not 
 all dead or grown forgetful of you through 
 
 old age, as that lying letter asserted, antici- 
 pating rather what must happen if you kept 
 tarrying on for ever on the skirts of creation, 
 as there seemed a danger of your doing — but 
 they are all tolerably well and in full and 
 perfect comprehension of what is meant by 
 
 Manning's coming home again. Mrs. 
 
 never lets her tongue nm riot more than in 
 remembrances of you. Fanny expends her- 
 self in phrases that can only be justified by 
 her romantic nature. Mary resei-ves a por- 
 tion of your silk, not to be buried in (as the 
 false nuncio asserts), but to make up spick 
 and span into a bran-new gown to wear when 
 you come. I am the same as when you 
 knew me, almost to a surfeiting identity. 
 This very night I am going to leave off 
 tobacco! Surely there must be some other 
 world in which this unconquerable purpose 
 shall be realised. The soul hath not her 
 generous aspirings implanted in her in vain. 
 One that you knew, and I think the only one 
 of those friends we knew much of in common, 
 has died in earnest. Poor Priscilla ! Her 
 brother Eobert is also dead, and several of 
 the grown up brothers and sisters, in the 
 compass of a very few years. Death has not 
 otherwise meddled much in families that I 
 know. Not but he has his horrid eye upon 
 us, and is whetting his infernjj feathered 
 dart every instant, as you see him truly 
 pictured in that impressive moral picture, 
 'The good man at the hour of death.' I 
 have in trust to put in the post four letters 
 from Diss, and one from Lynn, to St. Helena, 
 which I hope wUl accompany this safe, and 
 one from Lynn, and the one before spoken of 
 from me, to Canton. But we all hope that 
 these letters may be waste paper. I don't 
 know why I have forborne wi'iting so long. 
 But it is such a forlorn hope to send a scrap 
 of paper straggling over wide oceans. And 
 yet I know when you come home, I shall 
 have you sitting before me at our tire-side just 
 as if you had never been away. In such an 
 instant does the return of a person dissipate 
 all the weight of imaginary perplexity from 
 distance of time and space ! I'll promise 
 you good oysters. Cory is dead that kept 
 the shop opposite St. Dunstan's, but the 
 tougher matocials of the shop survive the 
 perishing frame of its keeper. Oysters con- 
 tinue to fiourish there under as good auspices. 
 Poor Cory ! But if you will absent yourself 
 
 _ 
 
100 
 
 COLERIDGE'S DISCOUESR 
 
 twenty years together, you must not expect 
 numeiiciilly the same population to congratu- 
 late your return which wetted the sea- 
 beach with their tears when you went away. 
 Have you recovered the breathless stone- 
 staring astonishment into which you must 
 have been thrown upon learning at landing 
 that an Emperor of France was living in 
 St. Helena ? "What an event in the solitude 
 of the seas ! like finding a fish's bone at the 
 top of Plinlimmon ; but these things are 
 nothing in our western world. Novelties 
 cease to affect. Come and try what your 
 presence can. 
 
 " God bless you. — Your old friend, 
 
 " C. Lamb." 
 
 "Hie years which Lamb passed in his 
 chambers in Liner Temple Lane were, per- 
 haps, the happiest of his life. His salary was 
 considerably augmented, his fame as an 
 author was rapidly extending; he resided 
 near the spot which he best loved ; and was 
 surrounded by a motley group of attached 
 friends, some of them men of rarest parts, 
 and all strongly attached to him and to his 
 sister. Here the glory of his Wednesday 
 nights shone forth in its greatest lustre. If 
 you did not meet there the favourites of 
 fortune ; authors whose works bore the 
 highest price in Paternoster Eow, and who 
 glittered in the circles of fashion ; you might 
 find those who had thought most deeply ; 
 felt most keenly ; and were destined to pro- 
 duce the most lasting influences on the lite- 
 rature and manners of the age. There 
 Hazlitt, sometimes kindling into fierce pas- 
 sion at any mention of the great reverses of 
 his idol Napoleon, at other times bashfully 
 enunciated the finest criticism on art ; or 
 'dwelt with genial iteration on a passage in 
 Chaucer; or, fresh from the theatre, ex- 
 patiated on some new instance of energy in 
 Kean, or reluctantly conceded a greatness to 
 Kemble ; or detected some popular fallacy 
 with the fairest and the subtlest reasoning. 
 There Godwin, as he played his quiet rubber, 
 or benignantly joined in the gossip of the 
 day, sat an object of curiosity and wonder to 
 the stranger, who had been at one time 
 shocked or charmed with his high specula- 
 tion, and at apother awe-struck by the force 
 and graphic power of his novels. There 
 Coleridge sometimes, though rarely, took hia 
 
 seat ; and then the genial hubbub of voices 
 was still ; critics, philosophers, and poets, 
 were contented to listen ; and toil-worn 
 lawyers, clerks from the Lidia House, and 
 members of the Stock Exchange, grew ro- 
 mantic while he spoke. Lamb used to say 
 that he was inferior then to what he had 
 been in his youth ; but I can scarcely believe 
 it ; at least there is nothing in his eai'ly 
 writing which gives any idea of the riclmess 
 of his mind so lavishly poured out at this 
 time in his happiest moods. Although he 
 looked much older than he was, his hair 
 being silvered all over, and his person tending 
 to corpulency, there was about him no trace 
 of bodily sickness or mental decay, but rather 
 an air of voluptuous repose. His benignity 
 of manner placed his auditors entu-ely at 
 their ease ; and inclined them to listen de- 
 lighted to the sweet, low tone in which he 
 began to discourse on some high theme. 
 Whether he had won for his greedy listener 
 only some raw lad, or charmed a circle of 
 beauty, rank, and wit, who hung breathless 
 on his words, he talked with equal eloquence ; 
 for his subject, not his audience, inspired 
 him. At first his tones were conversational ; 
 he seemed to dally with the shadows of the 
 subject and with fantastic images which bor- 
 dered it ; but gradually the thought grew 
 deeper, and the voice deepened with the 
 thought ; the stream gathering strength, 
 seemed to bear along with it all things which 
 opposed its progress, and blended them with 
 its current ; and stretching away among 
 regions tinted with ethereal colours, was lost 
 at airy distance in the horizon of fancy. His 
 hearers were unable to grasp his theories, 
 which were indeed too vast to be exhibited 
 in tlie longest conversation ; but they per- 
 ceived noble images, generous suggestions, 
 affecting pictures of virtue, which enriched 
 their minds and nurtured theii* best affec- 
 tions. Coleridge was sometimes induced to 
 recite portions of " Christabel," then en- 
 shrined in manuscript from eyes profane, 
 and gave a bewitching eff'ect to its wizard 
 lines. But more pecuhar in its beauty than 
 this, was his recitation of Kubla Khau. As 
 he repeated the passage — 
 
 A damsel with ii ('.ulcimer 
 In a vi.sioii once 1 saw : 
 
 It was an Abyssinian maid, 
 And on her dulcimer sho phiyod, 
 biuging of Muut Aboru I 
 
EPISTLE TO AYRTON. 
 
 l&l 
 
 his voice seemed to mount, and melt into air, 
 as the images grew more visionary, and the 
 suggested associations more remote. He 
 usually met opposition by conceding the point 
 to the objector, and then went on with his 
 high argiiment as if it had never been raised : 
 thas satisfying his antagonist, himself, and 
 all who heard him ; none of whom de- 
 sired to hear his discourse frittered into 
 points, or displaced by the near encounter 
 even of the most brilliant wits. The first 
 time I met him, which was on one of those 
 Wednesday evenings, we quitted the party 
 together between one and two in the moi'n- 
 ing ; Coleridge took my arm and led me 
 nothing loath, at a very gentle pace, to his 
 lodgings, at the Gloucester Coffee-house, 
 pouring into my ear the whole way an 
 argument by which he sought to reconcile 
 the doctrines of Necessity and Free-will, 
 winding on through a golden maze of ex- 
 quisite illustration ; but finding no end, 
 except with the termination of that (to me) 
 enchanted walk. He was only then on the 
 threshold of the Temple of Truth, into which 
 his genius darted its quivering and uncertain 
 rays, but which he promised shortly to light 
 up with unbroken lustre. " I understood a 
 beauty in the words, but not the words : " 
 
 " And -when the stream of sound, 
 WTiich overflowed the soul, had passed away, 
 A consciousness survived that it had left, 
 Deposited upon the silent shore 
 Of memory, images and gentle thoughts, 
 WTiich cannot die, and ■will not be destroyed." 
 
 Men of " great mark and likelihood " — 
 attended those delightful svippers, where the 
 utmost freedom prevailed — including politi- 
 cians of eveiy grade, from Godwin up to the 
 editor of the " New Times." 
 
 Hazlitt has alluded con amove to these 
 meetings in his Essay " On the Conversation 
 of Authors," and has reported one of the 
 most remarkable discussions which graced 
 them in his Essay " On Persons one would 
 wish to have seen," published by his son, 
 in the two volumes of his remains, which 
 with so affectionate a care he has given to the 
 world. In this was a fine touch of Lamb's 
 pious feeling, breaking through his fancies 
 and his humours, which Hazlitt has recorded, 
 but which cannot be duly appreciated, 
 except by those who can recall to memory 
 the suffused eye and quivering lip with which 
 
 he stammered out a reference to the name 
 which he would not utter. " There is only 
 one other person I can ever think of after 
 this," said he. " If Shakspeare was to come 
 into the room, we should all rise to meet 
 him ; but if That Person were to come into 
 it, we should all fall down and kiss the hem 
 of his garment." 
 
 Among the frequent guests in Inner-Temple 
 Lane was Mr. Ayi-ton, the director of the 
 music at the Italian Opera. To him Lamb 
 addressed the following rhymed epistle on 
 17th May, 1817. 
 
 TO WILLIAM AYRTON, ESQ. 
 
 My dear friend. 
 Before I end. 
 Have you any 
 More orders for Don Giovanni, 
 To give 
 Him that doth live 
 Your faithful Zany 1 
 
 Without raillery, 
 I mean Gallery 
 Ones : 
 For I am a person that shuns 
 All ostentation, 
 And being at the top of the fashion ; 
 And seldom go to operas 
 But in forma pauperis ! 
 
 I go to the play 
 In a very economical sort of a way, 
 Rather to see 
 Than be seen ; 
 Though I'm no ill sight 
 Neither, 
 By candle-light 
 And in some kinds of weather. 
 You might pit me 
 
 For height 
 Against Kean ; 
 But in a grand tragic scene 
 I'm nothing : 
 It would create a kind of loathing 
 To see me act Hamlet ; 
 Thcre'd be many a danm let 
 
 Fly 
 At my presumption. 
 
 If I should try, 
 Being a fellow of no gumption. 
 
 By the way, tell me candidly how you relish 
 This, which they call 
 The lapidary style ? 
 
 Opinions vary. 
 The late Mr. Mellish 
 Could never abide it ; 
 
 He thought it vile, 
 
 And coxcombical. 
 My friend the poet laureat. 
 Who is a great lawyer at 
 
 Anything comical. 
 Was the first who tried it ; 
 But Mellish could never abide it ; 
 But it signifies very little what Mellish said, 
 
 Because he is dead. 
 
102 
 
 LETTER TO FIELD. 
 
 For ■who can confute 
 
 A body that's mute ? 
 Or who would fight 
 With a senseless sprite ? 
 
 Or think of troubling 
 An impenetrable old goblin, 
 That's dead and gone, 
 And stiff as stone, 
 To convinee him with arguments pro and con, 
 As if some live logician, 
 Bred up at Merton, 
 Or Mr. Hazlitt, the metaphysician, — 
 Hey, Jlr. Ayrton ! 
 With all your rare tone.* 
 
 For tell me how should an apparition 
 List to your call. 
 Though you talk'd for ever. 
 
 Ever so clever : 
 When his ear itself, 
 By which he must hear, or not hear at all. 
 Is laid on the shelf ? 
 Or put the case 
 (For more grace), 
 It were a female spectre — 
 How could you expect her 
 To take much gust 
 In long speeches. 
 With her tongrie as dry as dust, 
 In a sandy place, 
 Where no peaches, 
 Nor lemons, nor limes, nor oranges hang, 
 To drop on the drought of an arid harangue, 
 Or quench. 
 With their sweet drench. 
 The fiery pangs which the worms inflict. 
 With their endless nibblings. 
 Like quibblings. 
 Which the corpse may dislike, but can ne'er contradict — 
 Hey, Mr. Ayrton 1 
 With all your rare tone. 
 
 I am, 
 
 C. LAMB. 
 
 One of Lamb's most intimate friends and 
 warmest admirers, Barron Field, disappeared 
 from the circle on being appointed to a 
 judicial situation in New South Wales. In 
 the following letter to him, Lamb renewed 
 the feeling with which he had addressed 
 Manning at the distance of a hemisi^here. 
 
 TO MR. FIELD. 
 
 "Aug. 31st, 1817. 
 
 " My dear Barron, — The bearer of this 
 letter so far across the seas is Mr. 
 Lawroy, who comes out to you as a mis- 
 sionary, and whom I have been strongly 
 importuned to recommend to you as a mo.st 
 worthy creature by Mr. Fenwick, a very old, 
 honest friend of mine; of whom, if my 
 
 * From this it may at first appear, that the author 
 meant to ascribe vocal talents to his friend, the Director 
 of the Italian Opera ; but it is merely a " line for 
 rhyme." For, tliough the public were indebted to 
 Mr. A. for many line foreign singers, we believe that ho 
 never claimed to be himself a singer. 
 
 memory does not deceive me, you have had 
 some knowledge heretofore as editor of * The 
 Statesman,' a man of talent, and patriotic. 
 If you can show him any facilities in his 
 arduous undertaking, you will oblige us 
 much. Well, and how does the land of 
 thieves use you ? and how do you pass your 
 time, in your extra-judicial intervals ? Going 
 about the streets with a lantern, like 
 Diogenes, looking for an honest man 1 You 
 may look long enough, I fancy. Do give me 
 some notion of the manners of the inhabit- 
 ants where you are. They don't thieve aU 
 day long do they? No human property 
 could stand such continuous battery. And 
 what do they do when they an't stealing 1 
 
 " Have you got a theatre 1 What pieces 
 are performed 1 Shakspeare's, I suppose ; 
 not so much for the poetry, as for his having 
 once been in danger of leaving his country 
 on account of certain ' small deer.' 
 
 " Have you poets among you ? Cursed 
 plagiarists, I fancy, if you have any. I 
 Avould not trust an idea, or a pocket-handker- 
 chief of mine, among 'em. You are almost 
 competent to answer Lord Bacon's problem, 
 whether a nation of atheists can subsist 
 together. You are practically in one : 
 
 ' So thievish 'tis, that the eighth commandment itself 
 Scarce sccmeth there to be.' 
 
 Our old honest world goes on with little 
 perceptible variation. Of course you have 
 heard of poor Mitchell's death, and that 
 G. Dyer is one of Lord Stanhope's residusrics. 
 I am afraid he has not touched much of the 
 residue yet. He is positively as lean as 
 Cassius. Barnes is going to Demerara, or 
 Essequibo, I am not quite certain which. 
 
 A is turned actor. He came out in 
 
 genteel comedy at Cheltenham this season, 
 and has hopes of a London engagement. 
 
 "For my own history, I am just in the 
 same spot, doing the same thing, (videlicet, 
 little or nothing,) a.s when you left me ; only 
 I have positive hopes that I shall be able to 
 conquer that inveterate, habit of smoking 
 which you may remember I indulged in. I 
 think of making a beginning this evening, 
 viz., Sunday, 31st Aug., 1817, not Wednesday, 
 2nd Feb., 1818, as it will be perhaps when you 
 road this for the first time. There is the 
 dilliculty of writing from one end of the 
 globe (liemispheres I call 'em) to another I 
 
LETTER TO MISS WORDSWORTH. 
 
 103 
 
 Wh}', half the truths I have sent you in this 
 letter will become lies before they reach you, 
 and some of the lies (which I have mixed 
 for variety's sake, and to exercise your 
 judgment in the finding of them out) may 
 be turned into sad realities before you shall 
 be called upon to detect them. Such are the 
 defects of going by different chronologies. 
 Your now is not my now ; and again, your 
 then is not my then ; but my now may be 
 your then, and vice versa. Whose head is 
 competent to these things ? 
 
 "How does Mrs. Field get on in her 
 geography ? Does she know where she is by 
 this time? I am not sure sometimes you 
 are not in another planet ; but then I don't 
 like to ask Capt. Burney, or any of those 
 that know anything about it, for fear of 
 exposing my ignorance. 
 
 " Our kindest remembrances, however, to 
 Mrs. F., if she will accept of reminiscences 
 from another planet, or at least another 
 hemisphere. C. L." 
 
 Lamb's intention of spending the rest of 
 his days in the Middle Temple was not to be 
 Idealised. The inconveniences of being in 
 chambers began to be felt as he and 
 his sister grew older, and in the autumn 
 of this year they removed to lodgings in 
 Eussell-street, Covent Garden, the corner 
 house, delightfully situated between the two 
 great theatres. In November, 1817, Miss 
 Lamb announced the removal to Miss Words- 
 worth in a letter, to which Lamb added the 
 following : — 
 
 TO MISS WOKDSWORTH. 
 
 "Nov. 21st, 1817. 
 
 •' Dear !Miss Wordsworth, — Here we are, 
 transplanted from our native soil. I thouglit 
 we never could have been torn up from the 
 Temple. Indeed it was an ugly wrench, but 
 like a tooth, now 'tis out, and I am easy. 
 We never can strike root so deep in auy other 
 ground. This, where we are, is a light bit of 
 gardener's mould, and if they take us up 
 from it, it will cost no blood and groans, 
 like man-drakes pulled up. We are in the 
 individual spot I like best, in all this great 
 city. The theatres, with all their noises. 
 Covent Garden, dearer to me than any 
 gardens of Alcinoiis, where we are morally 
 sure of the earliest peas and 'spar.igus. 
 
 Bow-street, where the thieves are examined, 
 within a few yards of us. Mary had not 
 been here four-and-twenty hours before .she 
 saw a thief. She sits at the window working ; 
 and casually throwing out her eyes, she sees 
 a concourse of people coming this way, with 
 a constable to conduct the solemnity. These 
 little incidents agreeably diversify a female 
 life. 
 
 " Mary has brought her part of this letter 
 to an orthodox and loving conclusion, which 
 is very well, for I have no room for pansies 
 and remembrances. What a nice holyday I 
 got on Wednesday by favour of a princess 
 dying ! C. L." 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 [1818 to 1820.] 
 
 LETTERS TO 'WORDSTVOnTH, SOVTHET, MANNING, AND 
 COLERIDGE. 
 
 Lamb, now in the immediate neighbour- 
 hood of the theatres, renewed the dramatic 
 associations of his youth, which the failure of 
 one experiment had not chilled. Although he 
 rather loved to dwell on the recollections of 
 the actors who had passed from the stage, 
 than to mingle with the happy crowds who 
 hailed the successive triumphs of ISlr. Kean, 
 he formed some new and steady theatrical 
 attachments. His chief favourites of this 
 I time were Miss Kelly, Miss Burrell of the 
 Olympic, and Munden. The first, then the 
 sole support of the English Opera, became a 
 frequent guest in Great Russell-street, and 
 charmed the circle there by the heartiness 
 of her manners, the delicacy and gentleness 
 of her remarks, and her unaffected sensibility, 
 as much as she had done on the stage. Miss 
 Burrell, a lady of more limited powers, but 
 with a frank and noble style, was discovered 
 by Lamb on one of the visits which he paid, 
 on the invitation of his old friend Elliston, 
 to the Olympic, where the lady performed 
 the hei-o of that happy pai'ody of Moncrieff 's, 
 Giovanni in London. To her Lamb devoted 
 a little article, which he sent to the Exa- 
 miner, in which he thus addresses her : — 
 "But Giovanni, free, fine, frank-spiriieii, 
 single-hearted creature, turning all the mis- 
 chief into fun as harmless as toys, or 
 children's make believe, what praise can we 
 
104 
 
 LETTER TO MRS. WORDSWORTH. 
 
 repay to you adequate to the pleasure which 
 you have given us ? We had better be silent, 
 for you have no name, and our mention will 
 but be thought fantastical. You have taken 
 out the sting from the evil thing, by what 
 magic we know not, for there are actresses 
 of greater merit and likelihood than you. 
 With you and your Giovanni our spirits will 
 hold communion, whenever sorrow or suffer- 
 ing shall be our lot. . We have seen you 
 triumph over the infernal powers ; and pain 
 and Erebus, and the powers of darkness, 
 are shapes of a dream." Miss Burrell soon 
 married a person named Gold, and disap- 
 peared from the stage. To Munden in prose, 
 and Miss Kelly in verse, Lamb has done 
 ample justice. 
 
 Lamb's increasing celebrity, and universal 
 kindness, rapidly increased the number of 
 his visitors. He thus complained, in Avay- 
 ■ward mood, of them to Mrs. Wordsworth : — 
 
 TO MRS. WORDSWORTH. 
 
 "East-India House, 18th Feb., 1818. 
 
 "My dear Mrs. Wordsworth, — I have 
 repeatedly taken pen in hand to answer your 
 kind letter. My sister should more properly 
 have done it, but she having failed, I consider 
 myself answerable for her debts. I am now 
 trying to do it in the midst of commercial 
 noises, and with a quill which seems more 
 ready to glide into arithmetical figures and 
 names of gourds, cassia, cardemoms, aloes, 
 ginger, or tea, than into kindly responses and 
 fx'iendly recollections. The reason why I can- 
 not write letters at home, is, that I am never 
 alone. Plato's — (I write to W. W. now) — 
 Plato's double-animal parted never longed 
 more to be reciprocally re-united in the 
 system of its first creation, than I sometimes 
 do to be but for a moment single and separate. 
 Except my morning's walk to the office, 
 which is like treaduig on sands of gold fur 
 that reason, I am never so. I cannot walk 
 home from office, but some officious friend 
 offers his unwelcome courtesies to accompany 
 me. All the morning I am pestered. I could 
 sit and gravely cast up sums in great books, 
 or compare sum with sum, and write ' paid ' 
 against tlii.s, and 'unpaid' against t'other, 
 and yet reserve in some corner of my mind, 
 'some darling thoughts all my own ' — faint 
 memory of some passage in a book, or the 
 tone of an absent friend's voice — a snatch of 
 
 Miss Burrell's singing, or a gleam of Fanny 
 Kelly's divine plain face. ITie two opera- 
 tions might be going on at the same time 
 without thwarting, as the sun's two motions 
 (earth's I mean), or, as I sometimes turn 
 round till I am giddy, in my back parlour, 
 while my sister is walking longitudinally in 
 the front ; or, as the shoulder of veal twists 
 round with the spit, while the smoke wreathes 
 up the chimney. But there are a set of 
 amateui-s of the Belles Lettres — the gay 
 science — who come to me as a sort of ren- 
 dezvous, putting questions of criticism, of 
 British Institutions, Lalla Kookhs, &c. — what 
 Coleridge said at the lecture last night — who 
 have the form of reading men, but, for any 
 possible use reading can be to them, but to 
 talk of, might as well have been Ante- 
 Cadmeans born, or have lain sucking out the 
 sense of an Egyptian hierogl}7)h as long as 
 the pyramids will last, before they should 
 find it. These pests worrit me at business, 
 and in all its intervals, perplexing my 
 accounts, poisoning my little salutarj' warm- 
 ing-time at the fire, puzzling my paragraphs 
 if I take a newspaper, cramming in between 
 my own free thoughts and a column of 
 figures, which had come to an amicable 
 compromise but for them. Their noise 
 ended, one of them, as I said, accompanies 
 me home, lest I should be solitary for a 
 moment ; he at length takes his welcome 
 leave at the door ; up I go, mutton on table, 
 hungry as hunter, hope to forget my cares, 
 and bury them in the agreeable abstraction 
 of mastication ; knock at the door, in comes 
 
 Mr. , or M , or Demi-gorgon, or my 
 
 brother, or somebody, to prevent my eating 
 alone — a process absolutely necessary to my 
 poor wretched digestion. O, the pleasure of 
 eating alone! — eating my dinner alone ! let 
 me think of it. But in they come, and make 
 it absolutely necessary that I should open a 
 bottle of orange — for my meat turns into 
 stone when any one dines with me, if I have 
 not wine. Wine can mollify stones ; then 
 that wine turns into acidity, acerbity, misan- 
 thropy, a hatred of my intcrruptei-s — (God 
 bless 'em ! I love some of 'cm dearly), and 
 with the hatred, a still greater avcmou to 
 their going away. Bad is the dead sea they 
 bring upon me, choking and deaduuiiig, but 
 worse is the deader dry sand they leave me 
 on, if they go before bed-time. Come never, 
 
I would say to these spoilers of my dinner ; 
 but if you come, never go ! The fact is, 
 this interruption does not happen very often, 
 but every time it comes by surprise, that 
 present bane of my life, orange wine, with 
 all its dreary stifling consequences, follows. 
 Evening company I should always like had I 
 any mornings, but I am saturated with 
 human faces {divine forsooth !) and voices, 
 all the golden morning ; and five evenings in 
 a week, would be as much as I should covet 
 to be in company, but I assure you that is a 
 wonderful week in which I can get two, or 
 one to myself. I am never C. L., but always 
 C. L. & Co. He, who thought it not good 
 for man to be alone, preserve me from the 
 more prodigious monstrosity of being never 
 by myself ! I forget bed-time, but even there 
 these sociable frogs clamber up to annoy 
 me. Once a week, generally some singular 
 evening that being alone, I go to bed at the 
 hour I ought always to be a-bed ; just close 
 to my bed-room window is the club-room of 
 a public-house, where a set of singers, I 
 take them to be chorus singers of the two 
 theatres (it must be both of them), begin their 
 orgies. They are a set of fellows (as I con- 
 ceive) who, being limited by their talents to 
 the burthen of the song at the play-houses, 
 in revenge have got the common popular 
 airs by Bishop, or some cheap composer, 
 arranged for choruses, that is, to be sung all 
 in chorus. At least I never can catch any 
 of the text of the plain song, nothing but the 
 Babylonish choral howl at the tail on't. 
 ' That fuiy being quenched ' — the howl I mean 
 — a burden succeeds of shouts and clappint/ 
 and knocking of the table. At length over- 
 tasked nature drops under it, and escapes 
 for a few hours into the society of the sweet 
 silent creatures of dreams, which go away 
 with mocks and mows at cockcrow. And 
 then I think of the words Christabel's father 
 used (bless me, I have dipt in the wrong 
 ink) to say every morning by way of variety 
 when he awoke : 
 
 ' Every knell, the Baron saith, 
 Wakes \is up to a world of death ' — 
 
 or something like it. All I mean by this 
 senseless interrupted tale, is, that by my 
 central situation I am a little over-companied. 
 Not that I have any animosity against the 
 good creatures that are so anxious to drive 
 
 away the harpy solitude from me. I like 
 'em, and cards, and a cheerful glass ; but I 
 mean merely to give you an idea between 
 office confinement and after-office society, 
 how little time I can call my own. I mean 
 only to draw a picture not to make an 
 inference. I would not that I know of have 
 it otherwise. I only wish sometimes I could 
 exchange some of my faces and voices foi 
 the faces and voices which a late visitatioc 
 brought most welcome, and can-ied away, 
 leaving regret but more pleasure, even a 
 kind of gratitude, at being so often favoured 
 with that kind northern visitation. My 
 London faces and noises don't hear me — I 
 mean no disrespect, or I should explain 
 myself, that instead of their return 220 times 
 a year, and tlie return of W. "W., &c., seven 
 times in 104 weeks, some more equal distri- 
 bution might be found. I have scarce room 
 to put in Mary's kind love, and my poor 
 name, C. Lamb." 
 
 " S. T. C. is lecturing with success. I mean 
 to hear some of the course, but lectures are 
 not much to my taste, whatever the lecturer 
 may be. If 7'ead, they are dismal flat, and 
 you can't think why you are brought toge- 
 ther to hear a man read his works, which 
 you could read so much better at leisure 
 yourself ; if delivered extempore, I am always 
 in pain, lest the gift of utterance should sud- 
 denly fail the orator in the middle, as it did 
 me at the dinner given in honour of me at 
 the London Tavern. ' Gentlemen,' said I, 
 and there I stopped ; the rest my feelings 
 were under the necessity of supplying. Mi-s. 
 Wordsworth will go on, kindly haunting us 
 with visions of seeing the lakes once more, 
 which never can be realised. Between ua 
 there is a great gulf, not of inexplicable 
 moral antipathies and distances, I hope, as 
 there seemed to be between me and that 
 gentleman concerned in the stamp-office, 
 that I so strangely recoiled from at Haydon'a. 
 I think I had an instinct that he was the 
 head of an office. I hate all such people — 
 accountants' deputy accountants. The dear 
 abstract notion of the East India Company, 
 as long as she is unseen, is pretty, rather 
 poetical ; but as she makes herself manifest 
 by the persons of such beasts, I loathe and 
 detest her as the scarlet what-do-you-call-her 
 of Babylon. I thought, after abridging us 
 
106 
 
 LETTERS TO SOUTHET AND COLERIDGE. 
 
 of all our red-letter days, tliey had done 
 their worst, but I was deceived in the length 
 to which heads of offices, those true liberty- 
 haters, can go. They are the tyrants, not 
 Ferdinand, nor Nero — by a decree passed 
 this week, they have abridged us of the 
 immemorially-observed custom of going at 
 one o'clock of a Saturday, the little shadow 
 of a holiday left us. Dear W. W. be thank- 
 ful for liberty." 
 
 Among Lamb's new acquaintances was 
 Mr. Charles Oilier, a young bookseller of 
 considerable literary talent, which he has 
 since exhibited in the original and beautiful 
 tale of " Inesilla," who proposed to him the 
 publication of his scattered writings in a 
 collected form. Lamb acceded ; and nearly 
 all he had then written in prose and verse, 
 were published tliis year by Mr. Oilier and 
 his brother, in two small and elegant volumes. 
 Early copies were despatched to Southey and 
 Wordsworth ; the acknowledgments of the 
 former of whom produced a rejily, from 
 which the following is an extract : — 
 
 TO MR. SOUTHET. 
 
 "Monday, Oct. 2Gth, 1818. 
 
 " Dear Southey, — I am pleased with your 
 friendly remembrances of my little things. 
 I do not know whether T have done a silly 
 thing or a wise one, but it is of no great 
 consequence. I run no risk, and care for no 
 censures. My bread and cheese is stable as 
 the foundations of Leadenhall-street, and if 
 it hold out as long as the ' foundations of 
 our empire in the East,' I shall do pretty 
 well. You and W, W. should have had 
 your presentation copies more ceremoniously 
 sent, but I had no copies when I was leaving 
 town for my holidays, and rather than delay, 
 commissioned my bookseller to send them 
 thus nakedly. By not hearing from W. W. 
 or you, I began to be afraid Murray had not 
 sent them. I do not see S. T. C. so often as 
 I could wish. I am better than I deserve to 
 be. The hot weather lias been such a treat ! 
 Mary joins in this little corner in kindest 
 remembrance.s to you all. C. L." 
 
 Lamb's interest was strongly excited for 
 Mr. Kenney, on the production of his comedy 
 entitled " A Word to the Ladies!''' Lamb had 
 engaged to contribute the prologue ; but the 
 
 promise pressed hard upon him, and he pro- 
 cured the requisite quantity of verse from 
 a very inferior hand. Kenney, who had 
 married Holcroft's widow, had more than 
 succeeded to him in Lamb's regards. Holcroft 
 had considerable dramatic skill ; great force 
 and earnestness of style, and noble sincerity 
 and uprightness of disposition ; but he was 
 an austere observer of morals and manners ; 
 and even his grotesque characters were hardly 
 and painfully sculptured ; while Kenney, 
 with as fine a perception of the ludicrous 
 and the peculiar, was more airy, more indul- 
 gent, more graceful, and exhibited more 
 frequent glimpses of " the gayest, happiest 
 attitude of things." The comedy met with 
 less success than the reputation of the author 
 and brilliant experience of the past had 
 rendered probable, and Lamb had to perform 
 the office of comforter, as he had done on 
 the more unlucky event to Godwin. To tliis 
 play Lamb refers in the following note to 
 Coleridge, who was contemplating a course 
 of lectures on Shakspeare, and who sent 
 Lamb a ticket, with sad forebodings that the 
 course would be his last. 
 
 TO MR. COLERIDGE. 
 
 "Dec. 24th, 1818. 
 
 " My dear Coleridge, — I have been in a 
 state of incessant hurry ever since the receipt 
 of your ticket. It found me incapable of 
 attending you, it being the night of Kenney's 
 new comedy. You know my local aptitudes 
 at such a time ; I have been a thorough 
 rendezvous for all consultations ; my head 
 begins to clear up a little, but it has had 
 bells in it. Thank you kindly for your 
 ticket, though the mournful prognostic wliich 
 accompanies it certainly rendei-s its penna- 
 nent pretensions less marketable; but I trust 
 to hear many a course yet. You excepted 
 Christmas week, by which I understood next 
 week ; I thought Christmas week was that 
 which Christmas Sumlay ushered in. We 
 are sorry it never lies in your way to come 
 to us ; but, dear Mahomet, we will come to 
 you. Will it be convenient to all the good 
 people at Highgate, if we take a stage up, not 
 next Sunday, but the following, \\z., 3rd 
 January, 1819 — shall we be too late to catch 
 a skirt of tlie old out-goer ? — how the ye;u-8 
 cnuuble from under us ! We shall hope to 
 see you before then ; but, if not, let ua know 
 
LETTER TO WORDSWORTH. 
 
 107 
 
 i£ then will be convenient. Can we secure a 
 coach home ? 
 
 " Believe me ever yours, 
 
 " C. Lamb." 
 
 " I have hut one holiday, which is Christ- 
 mas-day itself nakedly : no pretty garnish 
 and fringes of St. John's-day, Holy Inno- 
 cents, &c., that used to bestud it all around 
 in the calendar. Imjirole labor! I write 
 six hours every day in this candle-light fog- 
 den at Leadenhall." 
 
 In the next year [1819] Lamb was gi-eatly 
 pleased by the dedication to him of Words- 
 worth's poem of "The Waggoner," which 
 Wordsworth had read to him in MS. thirteen 
 years before. On receipt of the little volume, 
 Lamb acknowledged it as follows : — 
 
 TO MR. WORDSWORTH. 
 
 "June 7th, 1819. 
 
 " My dear Wordsworth, — You cannot 
 imagine how proud we are here of the 
 dedication. We read it twice for once that 
 we do the poem. I mean all through ; yet 
 * Benjamin * ia no common favourite ; there 
 is a spii'it of beautiful tolerance in it ; it is 
 as good as it was in 1806 ; and it will be as 
 good in 1829, if our dim eyes shall be awake 
 to penise it. Methinks there is a kind of 
 shadowing affinity between the subject of 
 the narrative and the subject of the dedica- 
 tion ; — but I will not enter into personal 
 themes, else, substituting *********** 
 for Ben, and the Honourable United Com- 
 pany of Merchants trading to the East Indies, 
 for the master of the misused team, it might 
 seem, by no far-fetched analogy, to point its 
 dim warnings hitherward ; but I reject the 
 omen, especially as its import seems to have 
 been divei-ted to another ^'ictim. 
 
 " I wUl never write another letter with 
 alternate inks. You cannot imagine how it 
 cramps the flow of the style. I can conceive, 
 Pindar (I do not mean to compare myself to 
 him), by the command of Hiero, the Sicilian 
 tyrant (was not he the tyrant of some place ? 
 fie on my neglect of history) ; I can conceive 
 him by command of Hiero or Perillus set 
 down to pen an Isthmian or Nemean pane- 
 gyric in lines, alternate red and black. I 
 maintain he couldn't have done it ; it would 
 have been a strait-laced torture to his muse ; 
 
 he would have call'd for the bull for a relief. 
 Neither could Lycidas, or the Chorics (liow 
 do you like the word '() of Samson Agonistes, 
 have been written with two inks. Your 
 couplets with points, epilogues to Mr. H.'s, 
 &c., might be even benefited by the twy- 
 fount, where one line (the second) is for 
 point, and the first for rhyme. I think the 
 alternation would assist, like a mould. I 
 maintain it, you could not have written your 
 stanzas on pre-existence with two inks. Try 
 another ; and Rogers, with his silver standish, 
 having one ink only, I will bet my ' Ode on 
 Tobacco,' against the ' Pleasures of Memory,' 
 — and ' Hope,' too, shall \mt more fervour of 
 enthusiasm into the same subject than you 
 can with your two ; he shall do it stans pede 
 in uno, as it were. 
 
 "The 'Waggoner' is very iU put up in 
 boards, at least it seems to me always to open 
 at the dedication ; but that is a mechanical 
 fault. I re-read the 'White Doe of Eyl- 
 stone ; ' the title should be always written 
 
 at length, as Mary Sabilla N , a very 
 
 nice woman of our acquaintance, always 
 signs hers at the bottom of the shortest note. 
 Mary told her, if her name had been Mary 
 
 Ann, she would have signed M. A. N , or 
 
 M. only, dropping the A. ; which makes me 
 think, with some other trifles, that she un- 
 derstands something of human nature. My 
 pen goes galloping on most rhapsodically, 
 glad to have escaped the bondage of two 
 inks. ' 
 
 " Manning hae just sent it home, and it 
 came as fresh to me as the immortal creature 
 it sjjeaks of. M. sent it home with a note, 
 having this passage in it : 'I cannot help 
 writing to you whOe I am reading Words- 
 worth's poem. I am got into the third canto, 
 and say that it raises my opinion of him very 
 much indeed.* 'Tis broad, noble, poetical, 
 with a masterly scanning of human actions, 
 absolutely above common readers. What a 
 manly (implied) iuteri)retation of (bad) party- 
 actions, as trampling the Bible, «S:c.,' and so 
 he goes on. 
 
 " I do not know which I like best, — the 
 prologue (the latter part especially) to P. 
 Bell, or the epilogue to Benjamin. Yes, 1 
 tell stories ; I do know I like the last best ; 
 
 • "N.B. — M., from his peregrinations, is twelve oi 
 fourteen years behind in his knowledge of who has or 
 has not writ^jSn good verse of late." 
 
108 
 
 LETTER TO MANNING. 
 
 and the ' Waggoner' altogetlier is a pleasanter 
 remembrance to me than the ' Itinerant.' If 
 it were not, the page before the first page 
 would and ought to make it so. 
 
 " If, as you say, the ' Waggoner,' in some 
 sort, came at my call, oh for a potent voice to 
 call forth the ' Recluse ' from his profound 
 dormitory, where he sleeps forgetful of his 
 foolish charge — the world. • 
 
 " Had I three inks, I would invoke him ! 
 Talfourd has written a most kind review of 
 J. Woodvil, &c., in the 'Champion.' He is 
 your most zealous admirer, in solitude and 
 in crowds. H. Crabb Robinson gives me 
 any dear prints that I happen to admire, and 
 I love him for it and for other tilings. 
 Alsager shall have his copy, but at jireseut I 
 have lent it for a day ordy, not choosing to 
 part with my own. Mary's love. How do 
 you all do, amanuenses both — marital and 
 sororal ? C. Lamb." 
 
 The next letter which remains is addressed 
 to Manning (returned to England, and domi- 
 ciled in Hertfordshire), in the spring of 1819. 
 
 TO MR. MANNING. 
 
 " My dear M., — I want to know how your 
 brother is, if you have heard lately. I want 
 to know about you. I wish you were nearer. 
 How are my cousins, the Gladmans of 
 Wheathamstead, and farmer Bruton ? Mrs. 
 Bruton is a glorious woman. 
 
 ' Ilail, Mackery End ' — 
 
 This is a fragment of a blank verse poem 
 which I once meditated, but got no further.* 
 The E. I. H. has been thrown into a quan- 
 dary by the strange phenomenon of poor 
 
 , whom I have known man and 
 
 mad-man twenty-seven years, he being elder 
 here than myself by nine years and more. 
 He was always a pleasant, gossiping, lialf- 
 headed, muzzy, dozing, dreaming, walk-about, 
 inoffensive chap ; a little too fond of tlie 
 
 creature ; who isn't at times ? but had 
 
 not brains to work off an over-night's surfeit 
 by ten o'clock next morning, and unfortu- 
 nately, in he wandered the other morning 
 drunk with last night, and with a super- 
 foetation of drink taken in since he set out 
 
 • Sec "Mackery End, in Hertfordshire,"— JSnoy* 0/ 
 Elia, p. 100,— for a cUunninK account of a visit to their 
 oousin in the country with Mr. Barron I'icld. 
 
 from bed. He came staggering under his 
 double burthen, like trees in Java, bearing at 
 once blossom, fruit, and falling fruit, as I 
 have heard you or some other traveller tell, 
 with his face literally as blue as the bluest 
 firmament ; some wretched calico that he 
 had mopped his poor oozy front with had 
 rendered up its native dye, and the devil a 
 bit would he consent to wash it, but swore it 
 was characteristic, for he was going to the 
 sale of indigo, and set up a laugh which I did 
 not think the lungs of mortal man were 
 competent to. It was like a thousand people 
 laughing, or the Goblin Page. He imagined 
 afterwards that the whole oflfice had been 
 laughing at him, so strange did his own 
 sounds strike upon his «o?isensorium. But 
 
 has laughed his last laugh, and awoke 
 
 the next day to find himself reduced from 
 an abused income of 600^. per annum to one- 
 sixth of the sum, after thirty-six years' 
 tolerably good service. The quality of mercy 
 was not strained in his behalf; the gentle 
 dews dropt not on him from heaven. It just 
 came across me that I was writing to Canton, 
 Will you drop in to-morrow night ? Fanny 
 Kelly is coming, if she does not cheat us, 
 Mrs. Gold is well, but proves ' uncoined,' as 
 the lovers about Wheathamstead would say. 
 " I have not had such a quiet half hour to 
 sit down to a quiet letter for many years. I 
 have not been interrupted above four times. 
 I wrote a letter the other day, in alternate 
 lines, black ink and red, and you cannot 
 think how it chilled the flow of ideas. Next 
 Monday is Whit-Monday, What a reflection ! 
 j Twelve years ago, and I should have kept 
 ! that and the following holiday in the fields 
 a Maying. All of those pretty pastoral 
 delights are over. This dead, everlasting 
 dead desk, — how it weighs the spirit of a 
 ' gentleman down ! This dead wood of the 
 desk, instead of your living trees ! But then 
 again, I hate the Joskins, a name for Hert- 
 fordshire bumpkins. Each state of life has 
 its inconvenience ; but then again, mine has 
 more than one. Not that I repine, or 
 grudge, or murmur at my destiny. I have 
 meat and drink, and decent ajiparel ; I shall, 
 at least, when I get a new hat. 
 
 "A reil-haired man just interrupted me. 
 He has broke the current of my tliouglits. 
 I haven't a wonl to adil. I don't know wliy 
 I send this letter, but I have had a hankering 
 
to hear about you some days. Perhaps it 
 will go off before your reply comes. If it 
 don't, I assure you no letter was ever wel- 
 coraer from you, from Pai'is or Macao. 
 
 " C. Lamb." 
 
 The following letter, dated 25th November, 
 1819, is addressed to Miss Wordsworth, on 
 Wordsworth's youngest son visiting Lamb 
 in London. 
 
 TO MISS WORDSWORTH. 
 
 " Dear Miss Wordsworth, — You will think 
 me negligent : but I wanted to see more of 
 Willy before I ventured to express a pre- 
 diction. Till yesterday I had barely seen 
 him — Virgilium tantuni vidi, — but yesterday 
 he gave us his small company to a bullock's 
 heart, and I can pronounce him a lad of 
 promise. He is no pedant, nor bookworm ; 
 so far I can answer. Perhaps he has hitherto 
 paid too little attention to other men's inven- 
 tions, preferring, like Lord Foppington, the 
 'natural sprouts of his own.' But he has 
 observation, and seems thoroughly awake. 
 I am ill at remembering other people's ban 
 mots, but the following are a few : — Being 
 taken over Waterloo Bridge, he remarked, 
 that if we had no mountains, we had a fine 
 river at least ; which was a touch of the 
 comparative : but then he added, in a strain 
 which augured less for his future abilities as 
 a political economist, that he supposed they 
 must take at least a pound a week toll. 
 Like a curious naturalist, he inquired if the 
 tide did not come v.]) a little salty. This 
 being satisfactorily answered, he put another 
 question, as to the flux and reflux ; which 
 being rather cunningly evaded than artfully 
 solved by that she-Aristotle, Mary, — who 
 muttered something about its getting up an 
 hour sooner and sooner every day, — he 
 sagely replied, ' Then it must come to the 
 same thing at last ; ' which was a sjjeech 
 worthy of an infant Halley ! The lion in 
 the 'Change by no means came up to his 
 ideal staudai'd ; so impossible is it ,for 
 Nature, in any of her works, to come up to 
 the standard of a child's iniagination ! The 
 whelps (lionets) he was sorry to find were 
 dead ; and, on particular inquiry, his old 
 friend the ourang outang had gone the way 
 of all flesh also. The grand tiger was also 
 bick, and expected in no short time to 
 
 exchange this transitory world for another, 
 or none. But again, there was a golden 
 eagle (I do not mean that of Charing) which 
 did much arride and console him. William's 
 genius, I take it, leans a little to the figura- 
 tive ; for, being at play at tricktrack (a kind 
 of minor billiard-table which we keep for 
 smaller wights, and sometimes refresh our 
 own mature fatigues with taking a hand at), 
 not being able to hit a ball he had iterate 
 aimed at, he cried out, ' I cannot hit that 
 beast.' Now the balls are usually called 
 men, but he felicitously hit upon a middle 
 term ; a term of approximation and imagina- 
 tive reconciliation ; a something where the 
 two ends of the brute matter (ivory), and 
 their human and rather violent personifica- 
 tion into men, might meet, as I take it : 
 illustrative of that excellent remark, in a 
 certain preface about imagination, explaining 
 ' Like a sea-beast that had crawled forth to 
 sun himself ! ' Not that I accuse William 
 Minor of hereditary plagiary, or conceive the 
 image to have come ex traduce. Eather he 
 seemeth to keep aloof from any source of 
 imitation, and purposely to remain ignorant 
 of what mighty poets have done in this kind 
 before him ; for, being asked if his father 
 had ever been on Westminster Bridge, he 
 answered that he did not know ! 
 
 " It is hard to discern the oak in the acorn, 
 or a temple like St. Paul's in the fii-st stone 
 which is laid ; nor can T quite prefigure what 
 destination the genius of William Minor hath 
 to take. Some few hints I have set down, 
 to guide my future observations. He hath 
 the power of calculation, in no ordinary 
 degree for a chit. He combineth figures, 
 after the first boggle, rapidly ; as in the 
 tricktrack board, where the hits are figui-ed, 
 at first he did not perceive that 15 and 7 
 made 22, but by a little use he could com- 
 bine 8 with 25, and 33 again with 16, which 
 approacheth something in kiud (far let ine 
 be from flattering him by saying in degree) 
 to that of the famous American boy. I am 
 sometimes inclined to think I perceive the 
 future satirist in him, for he hath a sub- 
 sardonic smile wliich bursteth out upon occa- 
 sion ; as when he was asked if London were 
 as big as Ambleside ; and indeed no other 
 answer was given, or proper to be given, to 
 so ensnaring and provoking a question. In 
 the contour of skull, certainly I discern 
 
no 
 
 BARRY CORNWALL.—" LONDON MAGAZINE." 
 
 something paternal. But whether in all 
 respects the future man shall transcend his 
 father's fame, Time, tlie trier of Geniuses, 
 must decide. Be it pronounced peremptorily 
 at present, that Willy is a well-mannered 
 child, and though no great student, hath yet 
 a lively eye for things that lie before him. 
 
 " Given in haste from my desk at Leaden- 
 hall. 
 
 " Yours, and yours most sincerely, 
 
 "C.Lamb." 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 [1820 to 1823.] 
 
 LKTTERS TO ■WORDSWORTH, COLERIDUE, FIELD, WILSON, 
 AND BARTON. 
 
 The widening circle of Lamb's literary 
 friends now embraced additional authors and 
 actors, — famous, or just bursting into fame. 
 He welcomed in the author of the " Dramatic 
 Scenes," who chose to aj^pear in print as 
 Barry Coi'nwall, a sj^irit most congenial with 
 his own in its serious moods, — one whose 
 genius he had assisted to impel towards its 
 kindred models, the great dramatists of 
 Elizabeth's time, and in whose success he 
 received the first and best reward of the 
 efforts he had made to inspire a taste for 
 these old masters of humanity. Mr.Macready, 
 who had just emanci])ated himself from the 
 drudgery of representing tlie villains of tra- 
 gedy, by his splendid performance of Richard, 
 was introduced to him by his old friend 
 Charles Lloyd, who had visited London for 
 change of scene, under great depression of 
 spirits. Lloyd owed a debt of gratitude to 
 Macready which exemplified the true uses of 
 the acted drama with a force which it would 
 take many sermons of its stoutest opponents 
 to reason away. A deep gloom had gradually 
 overcast his mind, and threatened wholly to 
 encircle it, when he was induced to look in 
 at Covcnt-Gardon Theatre and witness the 
 performance of Itoh Roy. The picture which 
 he then beheld of the generous outlaw, — the 
 frank, gallant, noble bearing. — the air and 
 movements, as of one " free of mountain 
 Bolitudes," — the touches of manly ])athos and 
 irresistible coi-diality, delighted and melted 
 him, w(m him from his painful introspections, 
 and brought to him the unwonted relief of 
 
 tears. He went home " a gayer and a wiser 
 man ; " returned again to the theatre, when- 
 ever the healing enjo^Tnents could be renewed 
 there ; and sought the acquaintance of the 
 actor who had broken the melancholy spell 
 in which he was enthralled, and had restored 
 the pulses of his nature to their healthful 
 beatings. The year 1820 gave Lamb an 
 interest in Macready beyond that which he 
 had derived from the introduction of Lloyd, 
 arising from the power with which he ani- 
 mated the first production of one of his oldest 
 friends — " Virginius." Knowles had been a 
 friend and disciple of Hazlitt from a boy ; 
 and Lamb had liked and esteemed him as a 
 hearty companion ; but he had not guessed 
 at the extraordinary dramatic power which 
 lay ready for kindling in his brain, and still 
 less at the delicacy of tact with which he had 
 unveiled the sources of the most profound 
 aft'ections. Lamb had almost lost his taste 
 for acted tragedy, as the sad realities of life 
 had pressed more nearly on him ; yet he 
 made an exception in favour of the first and 
 happiest part of " Virginius," those paternal 
 scenes, which stand alone in the modem 
 drama, and which Macready informed with 
 the fulness of a father's affection. 
 
 The establishment of the "London Maga- 
 zine," under the auspices of Mr. John Scott, 
 occasioned Lamb's introduction to the public 
 by the name, under colour of which he 
 acquired his most bi'illiant reputation — 
 " Elia." The adoption of this signature was 
 purely accidental. His first contribution to 
 the magazine was a description of the Old 
 South-Sea House, where Lamb had passed a 
 few months' noviciate as a clerk, thirty years 
 before, and of its inmates who had long 
 passed away ; and remembering the name of 
 a gay, light-hearted foreigner, who fluttered 
 there at that time, he subscribed his name to 
 the essay. It was afterwards affixed to sub- 
 sequent contributions ; and Lamb used it 
 until, in his " Last Essays of Elia," he bade 
 it a sad farewell. 
 
 Tlio perpetual influx of visitors whom he 
 could not repel ; whom indeed he was always 
 glad to welcome, but whose visits unstrung 
 him, induced him to take lodgings at Dalston, 
 to which he occasionally retired when he 
 wished for repose. The deaths of some who 
 were dear to him cast a melancholy tinge on 
 his mind, as may be seen in the following : — 
 
TO MR. WOIIDSWORTH. 
 
 "March 20th, 1822. 
 
 " My dear "Wordsworth, — A letter from 
 you is very grateful ; I have not seen a 
 Kendal postmai-k so long ! We are pretty 
 well, save colds and rheumatics, and a certain 
 deaduess to everything, which I think I may 
 date from poor John's loss, and another 
 accident or two at the same time, that has 
 made me almost bury myself at Dalston, 
 where yet I see more faces than I could wish. 
 Deaths overset one, and put one out long 
 after the recent gi-ief. Two or three have 
 died within this last two twelvemonths, and 
 so many parts of me have been numbed. 
 One sees a picture, reads an anecdote, stax'ts 
 a casual fancy, and thinks to tell of it to this 
 person in preference to eveiy other : the 
 person is gone whom it would have peculiai-ly 
 suited. It won't do for another. Every 
 departure destroys a class of sympathies. 
 There's Capt. Biirney gone ! What fun has 
 whist now 1 what matters it what you lead, 
 if you can no longer fancy him looking over 
 you 1 One never hears anything, but the 
 image of the particular person occurs with 
 whom alone almost you would care to share 
 the iutelligence — thus one distributes oneself 
 about — and now for so many parts of me I 
 have lost the market. Common natures do 
 not suffice me. Good j^eople, as they are 
 called, won't serve. I want individuals. I 
 am made up of queer points, and I want so 
 many answering needles. The going away 
 of friends does not make the remainder more 
 precious. It takes so much from them as 
 there was a common link. A. B. and C. 
 make a pai'ty. A. dies. B. not only loses 
 A. ; but all A.'s part in C. C loses A.'s part 
 in B., and so the alphabet sickens by subtrac- 
 tion of iuterchangeables. I express myself 
 muddily, capite dolente. I have a dulling cold. 
 My theoiy is to enjoy life, but my practice 
 is against it. I grow ominously tired of 
 official confinement. Thirty years have I 
 served the Philistines, and my neck is not 
 subdued to the yoke. You don't know how 
 wearisome it is to breathe the air of four 
 pent walls, without relief, day after day, all 
 the golden hours of the day between ten and 
 four, without ease or interposition. Tcedet me 
 harum quotidianarum formarum, these pesti- 
 lential clerk-faces always in one's dish. Oh 
 
 for a few years between the grave and the 
 desk : they are the same, save that at tlie 
 latter you are the outside machine. The 
 
 foul enchanter , ' letters four do foi-m his 
 
 name ' — Busirare is his name in hell — that 
 has curtailed you of some domestic comforts, 
 hath laid a heavier hand on me, not in 
 present infliction, but in the taking away the 
 hope of enfranchisement. I dare not whisper 
 to myself a pension on this side of absolute 
 incapacitation and infirmity, till years have 
 sucked me dry ; — Otium cum indignitate. I 
 had thought in a green old age (Oh green 
 thought !) to have retired to Bonder's End, 
 emblematic name, how beautiful ! in the 
 Ware Eoad, there to have made up my 
 accounts with Heaven and the company, 
 toddling about between it and Cheshunt, 
 anon stretching, on some fine Isaac Walton 
 morning, to Hoddesdon or Amwell, careless 
 as a beggar ; but walking, walking ever till 
 I fairly walked myself off my legs, dying 
 walking ! The hope is gone. I sit like 
 Philomel all day (but not singing), with my 
 breast against this thorn of a desk, with the 
 only hope that some pulmonary afilictiou 
 may relieve me. Vide Lord Palmerston's 
 report of the clerks in the War-office, 
 (Debates this morning's ' Times,') by wliich 
 it appears, in twenty years as many clerks 
 have been coughed and catarrhed out of it 
 into their freer graves. Thank you for 
 asking about the pictures. Milton hangs 
 over my fire- side in Covent Garden, (when 
 I am there,) the rest have been sold for an 
 old song, wanting the eloquent tongue that 
 should have set them off ! You have gratified 
 me with liking my meeting with Dodd.* For 
 the Malvolio story — the thing is become in 
 verity a sad task, and I eke it out with any- 
 thing. If I could slip out of it I should be 
 happy, but our chief-i'eputed assistants have 
 forsaken us. The Opium-Eater crossed us 
 once with a dazzling path, and hath ^s 
 suddenly left us darkling ; and, in short, I 
 shall go on from dull to worse, because I 
 cannot resist the booksellers' importunity — 
 the old plea you know of authors, but I 
 believe on my part sincere. Hartley I do 
 not so often see ; but I never see him in 
 unwelcome hour. I thoroughly love and 
 
 • Sec the account of the meeting between Dodd .-ind 
 Jem \\ hite, in Elia's Essay, " On some of the Old 
 Actors." 
 
112 
 
 LETTER TO COLERIDGE. 
 
 honour him. I send you a frozen epistle, 
 but it is winter and dead time of the year 
 with me. May Heaven keep something like 
 spring and summer up with you, strengthen 
 your eyes, and make mine a little lighter 
 to encounter with them, as I hope they shall 
 yet and again, before all are closed. 
 
 " Yours, with every kind remembrance. 
 
 " C. L." 
 
 " I had almost forgot to say, I think you 
 thoroughly right about presentation copies. 
 I should like to see you print a book I should 
 grudge to piirchase for its size. Hang me, 
 but I would have it though ! " 
 
 The following letter, containing the germ 
 of the well-known "Dissertation on Koast 
 Pig," was addressed to Coleridge, who had 
 received a pig as a present, and attributed it 
 erroneously to Lamb. 
 
 TO MR. COLERIDGE. 
 
 " Dear C, — It gives me great satisfaction 
 to hear that the pig turned out so well — they 
 are interesting crea,tures at a certain age — 
 what a pity such buds should blow out mto 
 the maturity of rank bacon ! You had all 
 some of the crackling — and brain sauce— did 
 you remember to rub it with butter, and 
 gently dredge it a little, just before the crisis? 
 Did the eyes come away kindly with no 
 CEdipean avulsion 1 Was the crackling the 
 colour of the ripe pomegranate 1 Had you 
 no cursed complement of boiled neck of mut- 
 ton before it, to blunt the edge of delicate 
 desire ? Did you flesh maiden teeth in it ? 
 Not that I sent the pig, or can form the 
 
 remotest guess what part could play 
 
 in the business. I i-^ver knew him give 
 anything away in my life. He would not 
 begin with strangers. I suspect the i)ig, 
 after all, was meant for me ; but at the 
 unlucky junctui-e of time being absent, the 
 present somehow went round to Highgate. 
 To confess an honest truth, a pig is one of 
 those things I could never think of sending 
 away. Teals, wigeons, snipes, barn-door 
 fowl, ducks, geese — your tame villatic things 
 — Welsh mutton, collars of brawn, sturgeon, 
 fresh or pickled, your potted char, Swiss 
 cheeses, French pies, early grai>e3, musca- 
 dines, I impart as freely unto my friends as 
 to myself. They are but self-extended ; but 
 
 pardon me if I stop somewhere — where the 
 fine feeling of benevolence giveth a higher 
 smack than the sensual rarity, there my 
 friends (or any good man) may command 
 me ; but pigs are pigs, and I myself therein 
 am nearest to myself. Nay, I should think 
 it an affront, an undervaluing done to Nature 
 who bestowed such a boon upon me, if in a 
 churUsh mood I parted with the precious 
 gift. One of the bitterest pangs I ever felt 
 of remorse was when a child — my kind old 
 aunt had strained her pocket-strings to 
 bestow a sixpenny whole plum-cake upon 
 me. In my way home through the Borough, 
 I met a venerable old man, not a mendicant, 
 — but thereabouts ; a look-beggar, not a 
 verbal petitionist ; and in the coxcombry of 
 taught-charity, I gave away the cake to him. 
 I walked on a little in all the pride of an 
 Evangelical peacock, when of a sudden my 
 old aimt's kindness crossed me ; the sum it 
 was to her ; the pleasure she had a right to 
 expect that I — not the old impostor — shoidd 
 take in eating her cake ; the cursed ingrati- 
 tude by which, under the colour of a Chris- 
 tian virtue, I had frustrated her cherished 
 purpose. I sobbed, wept, and took it to heart 
 so grievously, that I think I never suffered 
 the like — and I was light. It was a piece of 
 unfeeling hypocrisy, and proved a lesson to 
 me ever after. The cake has long been 
 masticated, consigned to dunghill with the 
 ashes of that unseasonable pauper. 
 
 " But when Providence, who is better to 
 us all than our aunts, gives me a pig, 
 remembering my temptation and my fall, I 
 shall endeavour to act towards it more in 
 the spirit of the donor's purpose. 
 
 " Yours (short of pig) to command in 
 everything. C. L." 
 
 In the sunmier of 1822 Lamb and his sister 
 visited Paris. The following is a hasty letter 
 addressed to Field on his retui'u. 
 
 ro MR. BARRON FIELD. 
 
 " My dear F., — I scribble hastily at office. 
 Frank wants my letter presently. 1 ami 
 sister are just returned from Paris!! We 
 have eaten frogs. It has been such a treat ! 
 You know our monotonous tenor. Frogs 
 are the nicest little delicate things — rabbity- 
 flavoured. Imagine a Lilliputian rabbit ! 
 They fricassee them ; but in my mind, drest, 
 
LETTERS TO BARTON. 
 
 113 
 
 seethed, plain, with parsley and butter, would 
 have been the decision of Apicius. Paris i3 
 a glorious picturesque old city. London 
 looks mean and new to it, as the town of 
 Washington would, seen after it. But they 
 have no St. Paul's, or Westminster Abbey. 
 Tlie Seine, so much despised by Cockneys, is 
 exactly the size to run through a magnificent 
 street ; jialaces a mile long on one side, lofty 
 Edinbro' stone (O the glorious antiques !) 
 houses on the other. The Thames disunites 
 London and Southwark. I had Talma to 
 supper with me. He has picked up, as I 
 believe, an authentic portrait of Shakspeare. 
 He paid a broker about 40^. English for it. 
 It is painted on the one half of a pair of 
 bellows — a lovely picture, corresponding 
 with the folio head. Tlie bellows has old 
 carved wings I'ound it, and round the visnomy 
 is inscribed, as near as I remember, not 
 divided into rhjme — I found out the rhyme — 
 
 Whom have -we here 
 
 Stuck on this bellows, 
 
 But the Prince of good fellows, 
 
 Willy Shakspeare X 
 
 At top — 
 
 O base and coward luck ! 
 To be here stuck. — Poins. 
 
 At bottom — 
 
 Nay I rather a glorious lot is to him assign'd. 
 Who, like the Almighty, rides upon the wind. 
 
 Pistol. 
 
 " This is all in old carved wooden lettera. 
 The countenance smiling, sweet, and intel- 
 lectual beyond measure, even as he was 
 immeasurable. It may l)e a forgery. They 
 laugh at me and tell me, Ireland is in Paris, 
 and has been putting oif a portrait of the 
 Black Prince. How far old wood may be 
 imitated I cannot say. Ireland was not 
 found out by his parchments, but by his 
 poetry. I am confident no painter on either 
 side the Channel could have painted any 
 thing near like the face I saw. Again, would 
 such a painter and forger have taken 40^. for 
 a thing, if authentic, worth 4000^. 1 Talma 
 is not in the secret, for he had not even 
 found out the i-hymes in the first inscription. 
 He 'is coming over with it, and, my life to 
 Southey's Thalaba, it will gain univei-sal 
 faith. 
 
 "The letter is wanted, and I am wanted. 
 Imagine the blank filled up with all kind 
 things. 
 
 " Our joint hearty remembrances to both 
 of you. Yours, as ever, C. Lamb." 
 
 Soon after Lamb's return from Paris he 
 became acquainted with the poet of the 
 Quakers, Bernard Barton, who, like himself, 
 was engaged in the drudgery of figures. The 
 pure and gentle tone of the poems of his new 
 acquaintance was welcome to Lamb, who 
 liad more sympathy with the truth of nature 
 in modest guise than in the aflfected fux-y of 
 Lord Byron, or the dreamy extravagancies 
 of Shelley. Lamb had written in " Elia " of 
 the Society of Friends with the freedom of 
 one, who, with great respect for the ijrhiciples 
 of the founders of their faith, had little in 
 common with a sect who shunned the 
 pleasures while they mingled in the business 
 of the world ; and a friendly expostulation 
 on the part of Mr. Barton led to such cordial 
 excuses as completely won the heart of tlie 
 Quaker bax'd. Some expression which Lamb 
 let fall at their meeting in Lontlon, from 
 which Mr. Barton had supposed that Lamb 
 objected to a Quaker's writing poetry as 
 inconsistent with his creed, induced Mr. 
 Barton to write to Lamb on his return to 
 Woodbridge, who replied as follows ; — 
 
 TO BERXARD BARTON. 
 
 " India House, 11th Sept. 1822, 
 
 " Dear Sir, — You have misappi-ehended me 
 sadly, if you suppose that I meant to impute 
 any inconsistency in your wi'iting poetry with 
 your religious profession. I do not remember 
 what I said, but it was spoken sportively, I 
 am sure — one of my levities, whicli you are 
 not so used to as iny older friends. I 
 probably was thinking of the light in which 
 your so indulging youi-self would apjjcar to 
 Quakers, and put their objection in my own 
 foolish mouth. I would eat my words 
 (provided they should be written on not very 
 coarse jxxper) rather than I would throw 
 cold water upon your, and my ouce, harmless 
 occupation. 
 
 " I have read Napoleon and the rest with 
 delight. I like them for what they are, and 
 for what they are not. I have sickened on 
 the modern rhodomontade and Byronism, 
 and your plain Quakerish beauty has capti- 
 vated me. It is all wholesome cates, ay, and 
 toothsome too, and withal Quakerish. If I 
 I were George Fox, iind George Fox licenser 
 
114 
 
 LETTERS TO BARTON. 
 
 of the press, they should have my absolute 
 imprimatur. I hope I have removed the 
 impression. 
 
 " I am, like you, a pi-isoner to the desk. I 
 have been chained to that galley thirty years, 
 a long shot. I have almost grown to the 
 wood. If no imaginative poet, I am sure I 
 am a figurative one. Do 'Friends' allow 
 puns ? verbal equivocations ? — they are un- 
 justly accused of it, and I did my little best 
 in the ' Imperfect Sympathies ' to vindicate 
 them. I am very tired of clerking it, but 
 have no remedy. Did you see a Sonnet to 
 this purpose in the Examiner ? — 
 
 ' Who first invented -work, and bound the free 
 And holy-day rejoicing spirit down 
 To the ever-haunting importunity 
 Of business, in the green fields and the town. 
 To plough, loom, anvil, spade ; and oh, most sad. 
 To that dry drudgery at the desk's dead wood ? 
 \C\\a but the being unblest, alien from good, 
 Sabbathless S.itan 1 he who his unglad 
 Task ever plies, 'mid rotatory burnings, 
 That round and round incalculably reel ; 
 For wrath Divine hath made him Uke a wheel 
 In that red realm from which are no returnings ; 
 Where, toiling and ttirmoiling, ever and aye. 
 He and his thoughts keep pensive working-day.' 
 
 " I fancy the sentiment exprest above will 
 be nearly your own. The expression of it 
 probably would not so well suit with a 
 follower of John Woolman. But I do not 
 know whether diabolism is a part of your 
 creed, or where, indeed, to find an exposition 
 of your creed at all. In feelings and mattei-s 
 not dogmatical, I hope I am half a Quaker. 
 Believe me, with great respect, yours, 
 
 " C. Lamb." 
 
 " I shall always be happy to see or hear 
 from you." 
 
 Encouraged by Lamb's kindness, Mr. 
 Barton continued the correspondence, which 
 became the most frequent in whicli Lamb 
 had engaged for many years. The following 
 letter is in acknowledgment of a publication 
 of Mr. Barton's chiefly directed to oppose the 
 theories and tastes of Lord Byron and his 
 friends : — 
 
 TO BERNARD BARTON. 
 
 "Kast-India House, 9th Oct. 1S22. 
 
 " Dear Sir, — I am a.shamed not sooner to 
 have acknowledged your letter and jioem. I 
 think the latter veiy temperate, very serious, 
 and very seasonable. I do not think it will 
 convert the club at Pisa, neither do I think 
 
 it will satisfy the bigots on our side the 
 water. Something like a parody oil the song 
 of Ariel would please them better : — 
 
 ' Full fathom five the Atheist lies, 
 Of his bones are hell-dice made.' 
 
 " I want time, or fancy, to fill up the rest. 
 I sincerely sympathise with you on your 
 doleful confinement. Of time, health, and 
 riches, the first in order is not la.st in excel- 
 lence. Eiches are chiefly good, because they 
 give us Time. "What a weight of wearisome 
 prison hours have I to look back and forward 
 to, as quite cut out of life ! and the sting of 
 the thing is, that for six hours evei-y day I 
 have no business which I could not conti-act 
 into two, if they would let me work task- 
 work. I shall be glad to hear that your 
 grievance is mitigated. 
 
 " I am returning a poor letter. I was 
 formerly a great scribbler in that way, but 
 my hand is out of order. If I said my head 
 too, I should not be very much out, but I 
 will tell no tales of myself; I will therefore 
 end (after my best thanks, with a hope to see 
 you again some time in London), begging you 
 to accept this letteret for a letter — a leveret 
 makes a better present than a gro^s-n hare, 
 and short troubles (as the old excuse goes) 
 are best. 
 
 " I remain, dear sir, yours truly, 
 
 " C. Lamb." 
 
 The next letter will speak for itself. 
 
 TO BERNARD BARTON. 
 
 "Die. 23rd, 1822. 
 
 " Dear Sir, — I have been so distracted with 
 business and one thing or other, I have not 
 had a quiet quarter of an hour for epistolary 
 purposes. Christmas, too, is come, which 
 always puts a rattle into my morning skull. 
 It is a visiting, unquiet, unquakerish season. 
 I get more and more in love with solitude, 
 and proportionately hampered with company. 
 I hope you have some holidays at this period. 
 I have one day — Christmas-day ; alas ! t<)0 
 few to commemorate the season. All work 
 and no l)lay dulls me. Compjiny is not play, 
 but many times hiird work. To play, is for 
 a man to do what he pleases, or to do nothing 
 — to go about soothing his particular fancies. 
 I have lived to a time of life to have outlived 
 the good houi-s, the nine o'clock suppers, with 
 a bright hour or two to clear up in aftor- 
 
LETTER TO WILSON. 
 
 115 
 
 wards. Now you cannot get tea before that 
 hour, and then sit gaping, music-bothered 
 perhaps, till half-past twelve brings up the 
 tray ; and what you steal of convivial enjoy- 
 ment after, is heavily paid for in the disquiet 
 of to-morrow's head. 
 
 " I am pleased with your liking ' John 
 Woodvil,' and amused with your knowledge 
 of our drama being confined to Shakspeare 
 and Miss Baillie. "What a woi-ld of fine ter- 
 ritory between Land's End and Johnny 
 Groat's have you missed traversing ! I could 
 almost envy you to have so much to read. I 
 feel as if I had read all the books I want to 
 read. Oh to forget Fielding, Steele, &c., and 
 read 'em new ! 
 
 " Can you tell me a likely place where I 
 could pick up, cheap, Fox's Journal ? There 
 are no Quaker circulating libraries ? El wood, 
 too, I must have. I rather gi'udge that 
 
 S y has taken up the history of your 
 
 people : I am afraid he will put in some 
 levity. I am afi'aid I am not quite exempt 
 from that fault in certain magazine articles, 
 where I have introduced mention of them. 
 Were they to do again, I would reform them. 
 Why should not you write a poetical account 
 of your old worthies, deducing them from 
 Fox to Woolman ? but I remember you did 
 talk of something of that kind, as a counter- 
 part to the ' Ecclesiastical Sketches.' But 
 would not a poem be more consecutive than 
 a string of sonnets ? You have no martyrs 
 quite to the fire, I think, among you ; but 
 plenty of heroic confessors, spirit-martyi-s, 
 lamb-lions. Think of it ; it would be better 
 than a series of sonnets on ' Eminent Bankers.' 
 I like a hit at our way of life, though it does 
 well for me, better than anything short of all 
 one's time to one's self ; for which alone I 
 rankle with envy at the rich. Books are 
 good, and pictures ai-e good, and money to 
 buy them therefore good, but to buy tirae ! 
 in other words, life ! 
 
 " The ' compliments of the time ' to you, 
 should end my letter ; to a Friend, I suppose, 
 I must say the 'sincerity of the season ; ' I 
 hope they both mean the same. With 
 excuses for this hastily-penned note, believe 
 me, with great respect, C. Lamb." 
 
 In this winter Mr. Walter Wilson, one of 
 the friends of Lamb's youth, applied to him 
 for information respecting De Foe, whose 
 
 life he was about to write. The renewal of 
 the acquaintance was very pleasant to Lamb ; 
 who many years before used to take daily 
 walks with Wilson, and to call him "brother." 
 The following is Lamb's rej^ly : — 
 
 TO MR. WALTER WILSON. 
 
 "E. I. II., IGth December, 1822. 
 
 "Dear Wilson, — Lightning, I was going to 
 call you. You must have thought me negli- 
 gent in not answering your letter sooner. 
 But I have a habit of never writing letters 
 but at the office ; 'tis so much time cribbed 
 out of the Company ; and I am but just got 
 out of the thick of a tea-sale, in which most 
 of the entry of notes, deposits, &c., usually 
 falls to my share. 
 
 " I have nothing of De Foe's but two or 
 three novels, and the 'Plague History.' I 
 can give you no information about him. As 
 a slight general character of what I remem- 
 ber of them (for I have not looked into tliem 
 latterly), I would say that in the appearance 
 oi truth, in all the incidents and conversations 
 that occur in them, they exceed any works 
 of fiction I am acquainted with. It is perfect 
 illusion. The author never appeai-s in these 
 self-narratives (for so they ought to be 
 called, or rather auto-biographies), but the 
 narrator chains us down to an implicit belief 
 in everything he says. There is all the 
 minute detail of a log-book in it. Dates are 
 painfully pressed upon the memory. Facts 
 are repeated over and over in varying 
 phrases, till you cannot choose but believe 
 them. It is like reading evidence given in a 
 court of justice. So anxious the story-teller 
 seems that the truth should be clearly com- 
 prehended, that when he has told us a 
 matter-of-fact, or a motive, in a line or two 
 farther down he repeats it, with his favourite 
 figure of speech, ' I sa}',' so and so, though he 
 had made it abundantly plain before. Tliis 
 is in imitation of the common people's way of 
 speaking, or rather of the way in which they 
 are addressed by a master or mistress, whj 
 wishes to impress something upon their 
 memories, and has a won lerful etftjct upon 
 matter-of-fact readers. Indeed, it is to such 
 principally that he writes. His style is 
 everywhere beautiful, but yJain and homely 
 Robinson Crusoe is delightful to all ranks 
 and classes, but it is easy to see that it is 
 written in phr;iseology peculiarly adapted to 
 
 I 2 
 
116 
 
 LETTERS TO BARTON. 
 
 the lower conditions of readers ; heuce it is 
 an especial favourite with seafaring men, 
 poor boys, servant-maids, &c. His novels 
 are capital kitchen-reading, while they are 
 ■worthy, from their deep interest, to find a 
 shelf in the libraries of the wealthiest, and 
 the most learned. His passion for matter-of- 
 fact narrative sometimes betrayed him into 
 a long relation of common incidents, which 
 might hapjDen to any man, and have no 
 mterest but the intense appearance of tnith 
 in them, to recommend them. The whole 
 latter half or two-thirds of ' Colonel Jack ' 
 is of this description. The beginning of 
 ' Colonel Jack ' is the most affecting natural 
 picti;re of a young thief that was ever drawn. 
 His losing the stolen money in the hollow of 
 a tree, and finding it again when he was in 
 despair, and then being in equal distress at 
 not knowing how to dispose of it, and several 
 similar touches in the early history of the 
 Colonel, evince a deep knowledge of human 
 nature ; and putting out of question the 
 superior romantic interest of the latter, 
 in my mind very . much exceed Crusoe. 
 ' Roxana ' (first edition) is the next in inter- 
 est, though he left out the best pai-t of it in 
 subsequent editions from a foolish hyper- 
 criticism of his friend Southerne. But ' Moll 
 Flanders,' the ' Account of the Plague,' &c., 
 are all of one family, and have the same 
 stamp of character. Believe me, with friendly 
 recollections, Brother (as I used to call 
 you), 
 
 " Yours, C. Lamr." 
 
 How bitterly Lamb felt his East-India 
 bondage, has abundantly appeared from his 
 letters during many years. Yet there never 
 was wanting a secret consciousness of the 
 benefits which it ensured for him, the pre- 
 cious independence which he won by his 
 hours of toil, and the freedom of his mind, to 
 work only "at its own sweet will," which 
 his confinement to the desk obtaiiwjd. This 
 sense of the blessings which a fixed income, 
 derived from ascertained duties, confers, was 
 nobly expressed in reference to a casual 
 fancy in one of the letters of his fellow in 
 clerkly as well as in poetical labours, Bernard 
 Barton — a fancy as alien to the habitual 
 thoughts of his friend, aa to his own — for no 
 one has pursued a steadier course on the 
 
 weary way of duty than the poet whose brief 
 di'eam of literary engrossment incited Lamb 
 to make a generous amends to his ledger for 
 all his unjust reproaches.- The refei-cnces to 
 the booksellers have the colouring of fantas- 
 tical exaggeration, by which he delighted to 
 give effect to the immediate feeling ; but 
 making allowance for this mere play of 
 fancy, how just is the following advice — how 
 wholesome for every youth who hesitates 
 whether he shaU abandon the certain reward 
 of plodding industry for the splendid miseries 
 of authorship ! * 
 
 • It is singular that, some years before, Mr. Barton 
 had received similar advice from a very different poet — 
 Lord Byron. Aa the letter has never been published, 
 and it may be interesting to compare the expressions of 
 two men so different on the same subject, I subjoin it 
 here : — 
 
 "TO BERNARD BARTON, ESQ. 
 
 " St. James' Street, June 1, 1812. 
 " Sir, — The most satisfactory answer to the concluding 
 part of j-our letter is, that Mr. Murray ■will republish 
 your volume, if you still rehiin j-our inclination for the 
 experiment, ■which I trust -will be successful. Some 
 •weeks ago my friend Mr. Rogers showed me some of the 
 stanzas in MS., and I then expressed my opinion of their 
 merit, which a further perusal of the printed volume 
 has given me no reason to revoke. I mention this, as 
 it may not be disagreeable to you to learn, that I enter- 
 tained a very favourable opinion of your powers before 
 I was awaie that such sentiments were reciprocal. 
 Waving your obliging expressions as to my own produc- 
 tions, for wliich I thank you very sincerely, and assure 
 you that I think not lightly of the praise of one ■whose 
 apjirobation is valuable ; will you allow me to talk to 
 you candidly, not critically, on the subject of yours ? 
 You will not suspect me of a wish to discourage, since I 
 pointed out to the publisher the propriety of complying 
 with your wishes. I think more highly of your poetical 
 talents than it would perhaps gratify you to hear ex- 
 pressed, for I believe, from what I observe of your 
 mind, that you arc above flattery. To come to the 
 point, you deserve success ; but ■we knew before Addison 
 wrote his Cato, that desert dues not always command it. 
 But suppose it attained, 
 
 ' You know what ills the aiithor's life assail, 
 Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail.' 
 
 Do not renounce writing, hut never trust entirely to 
 authorship. If you have a profession, retain it ; it will 
 be like Prior's fellowship, a last and sure resource. 
 Compare Mr. Rogers willi other authors of the day ; 
 assuredly he is among the (irst of living poets, but is it 
 to that he owes his station in society, .and his intim.icy 
 in the best circles ? — no, it is to his prudence and respect- 
 ability. The world (a bad one, 1 own) courts him be- 
 cause he has no occasion to court it. He is a poet, nor 
 is he less so because he is something more. I am not 
 sorry to heir that you were not tempted by the vicinity 
 of Capel I.ofTt, Esq., — though, if he had done lor you 
 what he has for the Bloomfiolds, I should never have 
 laughed at his rage for i)atronising. But a truly well- 
 constituted mind will ever be independent. That you 
 may be so is my sincere ■wish ; and if others think as 
 well of your poetry as I do, you will have no cause to 
 complain of your readers. Believe me, 
 
 " Your obliged and obedient servant, 
 
 " liviiov." 
 
 i 
 
LETTERS TO BARTON, 
 
 117 
 
 TO BERNARD BARTON. 
 
 "January 9th, 1823, 
 
 " ' Throw yourself on the world without 
 any rational plan of support, beyond what the 
 chance employ of booksellers would afford 
 you ! ! ! ' 
 
 " Throw yourself rather, my dear sir, from 
 the steep Tarpeian rock, slap-dash headlong 
 upon iron spikes. If you had but five con- 
 solatory minutes between the desk and the 
 bed, make much of them, and live a century 
 in them, rather than turn slave to the book- 
 sellers. They are Turks and Tartars, when 
 they have poor authors at their beck. 
 Hitherto you have been at arm's length from 
 tliem. Come not within their grasp. I have 
 known many authors want for bread, some 
 repining, otliers envjang the blessed security 
 of a counting-house, all agreeing they had 
 rather have been tailors, weavers — what not ? 
 rather than the things they were. I have 
 knoM'n some starved, some to go mad, one 
 dear friend literally dying in a workhouse. 
 You know not what a rapacious, dishonest 
 set these booksellers are. Ask even Southey, 
 who (a single case almost) has made a fortune 
 by book-drudgeiy, what he has found them. 
 Oh, you know not, may you never know ! 
 the miseries of subsisting by authorship. 
 'Tis a i^retty appendage to a situation like 
 yours or mine ; but a slavery, worse than all 
 slavery, to be a bookseller's dejiendant, to 
 drudge your brains for pots of ale, and breasts 
 of mutton, to change your free thoughts and 
 voluntary numbers for ungracious task- work. 
 Those fellows hate us. The reason I take to 
 be, that contrary to other trades, in which 
 the master gets all the credit, (a jeweller or 
 silversmith for instance,) and the journey- 
 man, who really does the fine work, is in the 
 back-ground : in our work the world gives 
 all the credit to us, whom they consider as 
 their jom-neymen, and therefore do they hate 
 us, and cheat us, and oppress us, and would 
 wring the blood of us out, to put another 
 sixpence in their mechanic pouches ! I con- 
 tend that a bookseller has a relative honesty 
 towards authors, not like his honesty to the 
 rest of the world. 
 
 " Keep to your bank, and the bank will 
 keep you. Trust not to the public ; you 
 may hang, starve, drown yourself, for any- 
 thing that worthy personage cares. I bless 
 
 every star, that Providence, not seeing good 
 to make me independent, has seen it next 
 good to settle me upon the stable foundation 
 j of Leadenhall. Sit down, good B. B., in the 
 j banking-office ; what ! is there not from six 
 I to eleven p.m. six days in the week, and is 
 [ there not all Sunday ? Fie, what a super- 
 fluity of man's-time, if you could think so ! 
 Enough for relaxation, mirth, converse, 
 poetry, good thoughts, quiet thoughts. Oh 
 the cozToding, torturing, tormenting thoughts, 
 that disturb the brain of the unlucky wight, 
 who must draw upon it for daily sustenance ! 
 Henceforth I retract all my fond complaints 
 of mercantile employment ; look upon them 
 as lovers' quarrels. I was but half in earnest. 
 "Welcome dead timber of a desk, that makes 
 me live. A little grumbling is a wholesome 
 medicine for the spleen, but in my inner 
 heart do I apjjrove and embrace this our 
 close, but unharassing way of life. I am 
 quite serious. If you can send me Fox, I 
 will not keep it six weeks, and will return it, 
 with warm thanks to yourself and friend, 
 without blot or dog's-ear. You will much 
 oblige me by this kindness. 
 
 " Yours truly, C. Lamb." 
 
 Lamb thus communicated to Mr. Barton 
 his prosecution of his researches into Primi- 
 tive Quakerism, 
 
 TO BERNARD BARTON. 
 
 "February irth, 1S23. 
 " My dear Sir, — I have read quite through 
 the ponderous folio of George Fox. I think 
 SeweU has been judicious in omitting certain 
 parts, as for instance where G. F. has revealed 
 to him the natures of all the creatures in 
 their names, as Adam had. He luckily turns 
 aside from that compendious study of natucal 
 history, which might have superseded Buffon, 
 to his proper spiritual pui*suit3, only just 
 hinting what a philosopher he might have 
 been. The ominous passage is near the 
 beginning of the book. It is clear he means 
 a physical knowledge, without trope or figui'e. 
 Also, pretences to miraculous healing, and 
 the like, are more frequent than I should 
 have suspected from the epitome in SeweU, 
 He is nevei-theless a great sph-itual man, and 
 I feel very much obliged by your procuring 
 me the loan of it. How I like the Quaker 
 plu-ases, though I think they were hardly 
 
118 
 
 LETTERS TO BARTON. 
 
 completed till Woolman. A pretty little 
 manual of Quaker language (v/ith an endea- 
 vour to explain them) might be gathered out 
 of his book. Could not you do it ? I have 
 read through G. F. without finding any 
 explanation of the term first volume in the 
 title-page. It takes in all, botli his life and 
 his death. Are there more last words of 
 him ? Pray how may I return it to Mr. 
 Shewell at Ipswich ? I fear to send such a 
 treasure by a stage-coach ; not that I am 
 afraid of the coachman or the guard reading 
 it ; but it might be lost. Can you put me 
 in a way of sending it in safety ? The kind- 
 hearted owner trusted it to me for six 
 months ; I think I was about as many days 
 in getting through it, and I do not think that 
 I ckipt a word of it. I have quoted G. F. in 
 my ' Quakers' ISIeeting,' as having said he 
 was ' lifted up in spirit,' (which I felt at the 
 time to be not a Quaker phi-a-se.) ' and the 
 judge and jury were as dead men under his 
 feet.' I find no such words in his journal, 
 and I did not get them from Sewell, and the 
 latter sentence I am sure I did not mean to 
 invent : I must have put some other Quaker's 
 words into his mouth. Is it a fatality in me, 
 that everything I touch turns into ' a lie ? ' 
 I once quoted two lines from a translation of 
 Dante, which Hazlitt very gi'eatly admired, 
 and quoted in a book as proof of the stupend- 
 ous power of that poet, but no such lines 
 are to be found in the ti-auslation, which has 
 been searched for the purpose. I must have 
 dreamed them, for I am quite certain I did 
 not forge them knowingly. What a mis- 
 fortune to have a lying memory ! Your 
 description of Mr. Mitford's jilace makes me 
 long for a pippin and some caraways, and a 
 cup of sack in his orchard, when the sweets 
 of the night come in. 
 
 " Farewell. 
 
 " C. Lamb." 
 
 In the beginning of the year 1823, the 
 *' Essays of Elia," collected in a volume, were 
 published by Messrs. Taylor and Hessey, who 
 had become tlie proprietors of the " London 
 Magazine." The book met with a rapid 
 sale, while the magazine in which its contents 
 had apjieared, declined. The anecdote of the 
 three Quakera gravely walking out of the 
 inn where tliey had taken tea on the road, 
 on an extortionate demand, one Jitter the 
 
 other, without paying anything,* had excited 
 some gentle remonstrance on the part of 
 Barton's sister, to which Lamb thus replied. 
 
 TO BERNARD BARTON. 
 
 "March Hth, 1823. 
 
 " Dear Sir, — The approbation of my little 
 book by your sister is very pleasing to me. 
 The Quaker incident did not happen to me, 
 but to Carlisle the surgeon, from whose mouth 
 I have twice heard it, at an interval of ten or 
 twelve years, with little or no variation, and 
 have given it as exactly as I could remember 
 it. The gloss which your sister or you have 
 put upon it, does not strike me as correct. 
 Carlisle drew no inference from it against the 
 honesty of the Quakers, but only in favour 
 of their surpassing coolness ; that they should 
 be capable of committing a good joke, with 
 an utter insensibility to its being any jest at 
 all. I have reason to believe in the truth of 
 it, because, as I have said, I heard him repeat 
 it without variation at such an interval. The 
 story loses sadly in print, for Carlisle is the 
 best story-teller I evir heard. The idea of 
 the discovery of roasting pigs I also borrowed, 
 from my friend Manning, and am willing to 
 confess both my plagiarisms. Should fate 
 ever so order it that you shall ever be in 
 town with your sister, mine bids me say, that 
 she shall have great pleasure in being intro- 
 duced to her. Your endeavour at explaining 
 Fox's insight into the natures of animals 
 must fail, as I shall transcribe the passage. 
 It appears to me that he stopt short in time, 
 and was on the brink of falling with his 
 friend Naylor, my favourite. The book shall 
 be forthcoming whenever your fi"ieud can 
 make convenient to call for it. 
 
 " They have dragged me again into tlie 
 Magazine, but I feel the spirit of the thing 
 in my own mind quite gone. ' Some brains ' 
 (I think Ben Jonson says it) ' will endure 
 but one skimming.' We are about to have 
 an inundation of poetiy from the Lakes — ■ 
 Wordsworth and Southey are coming up 
 strong from the north. How did you like 
 Hartley's sonnets ? The first, at least, ia 
 vastly fine. I am ashamed of the shabby 
 letters I .send, but I am by nature anything 
 but neat. Therein my mother bore mo no 
 Quaker. 1 never could seal a letter without 
 
 " .Sec " Innirilrcl Sympathies." — KHMiys of Elia, p. 74. 
 
dropping the wax on one side, besides scalding 
 my fingers. I never had a seal, too, of my 
 own. Writing to a great man lately, who is 
 moreover very heraldic, I borrowed a seal of 
 a friend, who by the female side quarters the 
 Protectoral arms of Cromwell. How they 
 must have puzzled my correspondent ! My 
 letters are generally charged as double at the 
 Post-office, from their inveterate clumsiness 
 of foldure ; so you must not take it disre- 
 spectful to yourself, if I send you such un- 
 gainly scraps. I think I lose 100^. a-year at 
 the India House, owing solely to my want of 
 neatness in making up accounts. How I 
 puzzle 'em out at last is the wonder. I have 
 to do with millions ! ! 
 
 " It is time to have done my incoherences. 
 " Believe me, yours truly, 
 
 " C. Lamb." 
 
 Lamb thus records a meeting with the 
 poets. 
 
 TO BERNARD BARTON. 
 
 "April 5th, 1823. 
 
 " Dear Sir,-Trl wished for you yesterday. 
 I dined in Parnassus, with Wordsworth, 
 Coleridge, Rogers, and Tom Moore, — ^half the 
 poetry of England constellated and clustered 
 in Gloucester Place ! It was a delightful 
 evening ! Coleridge was in his finest vein of 
 talk — ^had all the talk ; and let 'em talk as 
 evilly as they do of the envy of poets, I am 
 sure not one there but was content to be 
 nothing but a listener. The Muses were 
 dumb, while Apollo lectured, on his and 
 their fine art. It is a lie that poets are 
 envious ; I have known the best of them, 
 and can speak to it, that they give each other 
 their merits, and are the kindest critics as 
 well as best authors. I am scribbling a 
 muddy epistle with an aching head, for we 
 did not quaff Hippocrene last night ; many, 
 it w as hippocrass rather. Pray accept tliis 
 ; s a letter in the mean time, C. L." 
 
 Here is an apology for a letter, referring 
 to a seal used on the letter to which this is 
 an answer — the device was a pelican feeding 
 her young from her own breast. . 
 
 TO BERNARD BARTON. 
 
 " May 3rd, 1823. 
 
 " Dear Sir, — I am vexed to be two letters 
 in your debt, but I have been quite out of 
 
 the vein lately. A philosophical treatise is 
 wanting, of the causes of the backwardness 
 with which persons after a certain time of 
 life set about writing a letter. I always feel 
 as if I had nothing to say, and the iierform- 
 ance generally justifies the presentiment. 
 
 " I do not exactly see why the goose and 
 little goslings should emblematise a Quaker 
 poet that has no children. But after all 
 perhaps it is a pelican. The ' Mene, Mene, 
 Tekel, Upharsiu' around it I cannot deci- 
 pher. The songster of the night pouring 
 out her effusions amid a silent meeting of 
 madge-owlets, would be at least intelligible. 
 A full pause here comes upon me as if I had 
 not a word more left. I will shake my brain, 
 Once ! Twice ! — nothing comes up. George 
 Fox recommends waiting on these occasions. 
 I wait. Nothing comes. G. Fox — that sets 
 me off again. I have finished the ' Journal,' 
 and 400 more pages of the ' Doctrinals,' 
 which I picked up for 7s. 6d. If I get on at 
 this rate, the society will be in danger of 
 having two Quaker poets — to patronise. 
 
 " Believe me cordially yours, 
 
 « C. Lamb." 
 
 The following letter was addressed to 
 Mr. Procter, in acknowledgment of a minia- 
 ture of Pope which he had presented to 
 Lamb. 
 
 TO MR. PROCTER. 
 
 "April 13th, 1823. 
 " Dear Lad, — You must think me a brute 
 beast, a rhinoceros, never to have acknow- 
 ledged the receipt of your precious present. 
 But indeed I am none of those shocking 
 things, but have arrived at that indisposition 
 to letter- writing, which would make it a hard 
 exertion to write three lines to a king to 
 spare a friend's life. Whether it is that the 
 Magazine paying me so niucli a page, I am 
 loath to throw away composition — how much 
 a sheet do you give your correspondents ? 
 I have hung up Pope, and a gem it is, in my 
 town room; I hope foryour approval. Though 
 it accompanies the * Essay on Man,' I think 
 that was not the poem he is here meditating. 
 He would have looked up, somehow affectedly, 
 if he were just conceiving ' Awake, my St. 
 John.' Neither is he in the ' Rape of the 
 Lock ' mood exactly. I tliink he has just 
 
120 
 
 LAMB'S CONTROVEllSY WITH SOUTHEY. 
 
 made out the last lines of the 'Epistle to 
 Jervis,' between gay and tender, 
 
 ' And other beauties envj* Worsley's eyes.' 
 
 " I '11 be hanged if that isn't the line. He 
 is brooding over it, with a dreamy phantom 
 of Lady Mary floating before him. He is 
 thinking which is the eai-liest possible day 
 and hour that she will first see it. What a 
 miniature piece of gentility it is ! Why did 
 you give it me ? I do not like 'you enough 
 to give you anything so good. 
 
 " I have diued with T. Moore and break- 
 fasted with Eogers, since I saw you ; have 
 much to say about them when we meet, 
 which I trust will be in a week or two. I 
 have been over- watched and over-poeted 
 shice Wordsworth has been in town. I was 
 obliged for health sake to wish him gone, 
 but now he is gone I feel a great loss. I am 
 going to Dalston to recruit, and have serious 
 thoughts of — altering my condition, that is, 
 of taking to sobriety. What do you advise 
 me? 
 
 "Eogers spake very kindly of you, as 
 every body does, and none with so much 
 reason as your C. L." 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 [1823.] 
 
 lamb's controversy with SOUTHEY. 
 
 In the year 1823, Lamb appeared, for the 
 first and only time of his life before the 
 public, as an assailant : and the object of his 
 attack was one of his oldest and fastest 
 friends, Mr. Southey. It might, indeed, have 
 been predicted of Lamb, that if ever he did 
 enter the arena of personal controversy, it 
 would be with one who had obtained a place 
 in his affection ; for no motive less powerful 
 
 enlisted on behalf of Hazlitt and Hunt, who 
 had been attacked in this work in a manner 
 which he regarded as unfair ; for the critics 
 had not been content with descanting on the 
 peculiarities in the style and taste of the one, 
 or reprobating the political or personal 
 vehemence of the other, — which were fair 
 subjects of controversy, — but spoke of them 
 witli a contemjjt which every man of lettei-s 
 had a right to resent, as unjust. He had 
 been much annoyed by an allusion to himself 
 in an article on " Hazlitt's PoUtical Essays," 
 which appeared in the Review for November, 
 1819, as " one whom we should wish to see 
 in more respectable company ;" for he felt a 
 compliment paid him at the expense of a 
 friend, as a grievance far beyond any direct 
 attack on himself. He was also exceedingly 
 hurt by a reference made in an article on 
 Dr. Reid's woi-k " On Nervous Afiections," 
 which appeared in July, 1822, to an essay 
 wdiich he had contributed some years before 
 to a collection of tracts published by his 
 friend, Mr. Basil Montague, on the eflfect of 
 spirituous liquors, entitled "' The Confessions 
 of a Diunkard." The contribution of this 
 paper is a striking proof of the prevalence of 
 Lamb's personal regards over all selfish 
 feelings and tastes ; for no one was le.ss 
 disposed than he to Montague's theory or 
 practice of abstinence ; yet he was willing to 
 gratify his friend by this terrible pictme of 
 the extreme effects of intemperance, of which 
 his own occasional deviations fi-om the right 
 line of sobriety had given him hints and 
 glimpses. I'he reviewer of Dr. Reid, ad- 
 verting to this essay, speaks of it as "a fearful 
 picture of the consequences of intemperance, 
 which WE happen to know is a true tale." 
 How far it was from actual truth the " Essays 
 of Elia," the production of a later day, in 
 which the maturity of his feeling, humour, 
 and reason is exhibited, may sutKciently 
 witness. These articles were not written by 
 Mr. Southey ; but they prepared Lamb to 
 
 than the resentment of friendship which 
 deemed itself wounded, could place him iu ' feel acutely any attack from the Review ; 
 a situation so abhorrent to his habitual and a paragraph in an article in the number 
 thoughts. Lamb had, up to this time, little for July, 1823, entitled " Progress of Inli- 
 reason to love reviews or reviewers ; and the delity," in which he recognised the hand of 
 connexion of Southey with " The Quarterly his old friend, gave poignancy to all the 
 Review," while he felt that it raised, and painful associations which had arisen from 
 softened, and refined tlie tone of that powerful 1 the same work, and concentrated them in one 
 organ of a great party, sometimes vexed him bitter feeling. After recording some of the 
 for his friend. Ili.si indiguiition also liad been I confessions of unbelievers of the wreteheduesa 
 
LETTERS TO BARTON. 
 
 121 
 
 which their infidelity brought on them, Mr. 
 Southey thus proceeded : — 
 
 " Unbelievers have not alwnys been honest 
 enough thus to express their real feelings ; 
 but this we know concerning them, that 
 when they have renounced their birthright 
 of hope, they have not been able to divest 
 themselves of fear. From the nature of the 
 human mind, this might be presumed, and in 
 fact it is so. Tliey may deaden the heart 
 and stupify the conscience, but they cannot 
 destroy the imaginative f;vcult3^ There is a 
 i-emaikable proof of this in ' Elia's Essay's,' a 
 book which wants only a sounder religious 
 feeling, to be as delightful as it is original. 
 In that upon ' Witches and the other Night 
 Fears,' he says, ' It is not book, or picture, 
 or the stories of foolish servants, which 
 create these terrors in children ; they can at 
 most but give them a direction. Dear little 
 T. H., who of all children has been brought 
 up with the most scrupulous exclusion of 
 every taint of superstition, who was never 
 allowed to hear of goblin or appai-ition, or 
 scarcely to be told of bad men, or to hear or 
 read of any distressing story, finds all this 
 world of fear, from which he has been so 
 rigidly excluded ah extra, in his own " thick- 
 coming fancies," and from his little midnight 
 pillow this nurse child of optimism will start 
 at shapes, unborrowed of tradition, in sweats 
 to which the reveries of the well-damned 
 murderer are tranquillity.' — This poor child, 
 instead of being trained up in the way he 
 should go, had been bred in the ways of 
 modern philosophy ; he had systematically 
 been prevented from knowing anything of 
 that Saviour who said, ' Suffer little children 
 to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of 
 such is the kingdom of heaven ;' care had 
 been taken that he should not pray to God, 
 nor lie do%vn at night in reliance upon his 
 good providence ! Nor let it be supposed 
 that teri'ors of imagination belong to child- 
 hood alone. The reprobate heart, which has 
 discarded all love of God, cannot so easily rid 
 itself of the fear of the devil ; and even when 
 it succeeds in that also, it will then create a 
 hell for itself. We have heard of unbelievers 
 who thought it probable that they should be 
 awake in their graves ; and this was the 
 opinion for which they had exchanged a 
 Christian's hope of immortality ! " 
 
 The allusion in this paragraph was really, 
 as Lamb was afterwards convinced, intended 
 by Mr. Southey to assist the sale of the book. 
 In haste, having expunged some word which 
 he thought improper, he wi'ote, ^^ sounder 
 religious feeling," not satisfied with the 
 epithet, but meaning to correct it in the 
 proof, which unfortunately was never sent 
 him. Lamb saw it on his return from a 
 month's pleasant holidays at Hastings, and 
 expressed his first impression respecting it in 
 a letter. 
 
 TO BKRNARD BARTON. 
 
 "July 10th, 1823. 
 
 "Dear Sir, — I have just returned from 
 Hastings, whei-e are exquisite views and 
 walks, and where I have given up my soul 
 to walking, and I am now suffering sedentaiy 
 contrasts. I am a long time reconciling to 
 town after one of these excursions. Home 
 is become strange, and will remain so yet a 
 while ; home is the most unforgiving of 
 friends, and always resents absence ; I know 
 its old cordial look will return, but they are 
 slow in clearing up. That is one of the 
 features of this our galley-slavery, that 
 peregrination ended makes things worse. I 
 felt out of water (with aU the sea about me) 
 at Hastings ; and just as I had learned to 
 domiciliate there, I must come back to find 
 a home which is no home. I abused Hastings, 
 but learned its value. There are spots, inland 
 bays, &c., which realise the notions of Juan 
 Fernandez. The best thing I lit upon by 
 accident was a small country church, (by 
 whom or when built unknown,) standing 
 bare and single in the midst of a grove, with 
 no house or appearance of habitation within 
 a quarter of a mile, only passages diverging 
 from it through beautiful woods to so many 
 farm-houses. There it stands like the first • 
 idea of a church, before parishioners were 
 thought of, nothing but birds for its congre- 
 gation ; or like a hermit's oratory (the hei-mit 
 dead), or a mausoleum ; its effect singularly 
 impressive, like a church found in a desert 
 isle to startle Crusoe with a home image ; 
 you must make out a vicar and a congrega- 
 tion from fancy, for surely none come there ; 
 yet it wants not its pulpit, and its font, 
 and all its seemly additaments of our 
 worship. 
 
 " Southey has attacked ' Elia ' on the score 
 
of infidelity, in the Quarterly article, ' Pro- 
 gress of Infidelity.' I had not, nor have seen 
 the Monthly. He might have spared an old 
 friend such a construction of a few careless 
 flights, that meant no hai-m to religion. If 
 all his unguarded expressions on the subject 
 were to be collected — but I love and respect 
 Southey, and will not retort. I hate his 
 review, and his being a reviewer. The hint 
 he has dropped will knock the sale of the 
 book on the head, which was almost at a 
 stop before. Let it stop, — there is coi-n in 
 Tlgypt, while there is cash at Leadenhall ! 
 You and I are something besides being 
 writers, thank God ! 
 
 " Yours truly, C. L." 
 
 This feeling was a little diverted by the 
 execution of a scheme, rather suddenly 
 adopted, of removing to a neat cottage at 
 Islington, where Lamb first found himself 
 installed in the dignity of a householder. 
 He thus describes his residence : — 
 
 TO BERNARD BARTON. 
 
 "September 2nd, 1823. 
 
 " Dear B. B., — What will you not say for 
 my not writing 1 You cannot say, I do not 
 write now. When you come London-ward, 
 you will find me no longer in Covent Garilen ; 
 I have a cottage, in Colebrook Eow, Islington ; 
 a cottage, for it is detached ; a white house, 
 with six good rooms ; the New River (rather 
 elderly by this time) runs (if a moderate 
 walking pace can be so termed) close to 
 the foot of the house ; and behind is a 
 spacious garden with vines (I assure you), 
 Ijears, strawberries, parsnips, leeks, carrots, 
 cabbages, to delight the heart of old i\ Icinous. 
 You enter without passage into a cheerful 
 dining-room, all studded over and rough 
 with old books ; and above is a lightsome 
 tlrawing-room, three windows, full of choice 
 prints. I feel like a great lord, never having 
 liad a house before. 
 
 " The ' London,' I fear, falls oflf. I linger 
 among its creaking rafters, like the last rat ; 
 it will topple down if they don't get some 
 buttresses. They have pulled down tliree ; 
 Hazlitt, Procter, and tlieir beat stay, kind, 
 light-hearted Wainwright, their Janus. The 
 beat is, neither of our fortunes is concerned 
 iu it. 
 
 "I heard of you from Mr. Pulham this 
 morning, and that gave a fillip to my laziness, 
 which has been intolerable ; but I am so 
 taken up with pniniug and gardening, quite 
 a new sort of occupation to me. I have 
 gathered my jargonels, but my Windsor 
 pears are backward. The former were of 
 exquisite raciness. I do now sit under my 
 own vine, and contemplate the growth of 
 vegetable nature. I can now understand in 
 what sense they speak of father Adam. I 
 recognise the paternity, while I watch my 
 tulips. I almost fell with him, for the first 
 day I turned a drunken gardener (as he let 
 in the serpent) into my Eden, and he laid 
 about him, lojiping oflf some choice boughs, 
 &c., which hung over from a neighbour's 
 garden, and in his blind zeal laid waste a 
 shade, which had sheltered their window 
 from the gaze of passers-by. The old gentle- 
 woman (fury made her not handsome) coiild 
 scarcely be reconciled by all my fine words. 
 There was no buttering her parsnips. She 
 talked of the law. What a lapse to commit 
 on the first day of my happy ' garden-state ! ' 
 
 " I hope you transmitted the Fox-Journal 
 to its owner, with suitable thanks. Mr. Gary, 
 the Dante-man, dines with me to-day. He 
 is a model of a country parson, lean (as a 
 curate ought to be), modest, sensible, no 
 obtruder of church dogmas, quite a difierent 
 
 man from . You would like him. Pray 
 
 accept this for a letter, and believe me, with 
 sincere regards, Yours, C. L." 
 
 In the next letter to Barton, Lamb referred 
 to an intended letter to Southey in the 
 M.agazinc. 
 
 TO BERNARD BARTON. 
 
 "September 17th, 1823. 
 
 " Dear Sir, — I have again been reading 
 your ' Stanzas on Bloomfield,' which are the 
 most appropriate that can be imagined, — 
 sweet with Doric delicacy. I like that, — 
 
 ' Oni own more chaste Theocritus ' — • 
 
 just hinting at the fault of the Grecian. I 
 love that stanza ending with, 
 
 ' Words, phrases, fashions, pass away ; 
 But truth and nature live through all.' 
 
 But I shall omit in my own copy the one 
 
ELIA TO SOUTHEY. 
 
 128 
 
 Btauza which alludes to Lord B. I suppose. 
 It spoils the sweetness and oneness of the 
 feeling. Cannot we think of Burns, or Thom- 
 son, without sullying the thought with a 
 reflection out of place upon Lord Rochester ? 
 These verses might have been inscribed upon 
 a tomb ; are in fact an epitaph ; satire does 
 not look pretty upon a tomb-stone. Besides, 
 there is a quotation in it, always bad in 
 verse, seldom advisable in prose. I doubt if 
 their having been in a paper will not prevent 
 T. and H. from insertion, but I shall have a 
 thing to send in a day or two, and shall try 
 them. Omitting that stanza, a very little 
 alteration is wanting in the beginning of the 
 next. You see, I use freedom. How happily, 
 (I flatter not) you have brought in his 
 subjects ; and (I suppose) his fovourite 
 measure, though I am not acquainted with 
 any of his writings but the ' Farmer's Boy.' 
 He dined with me once, and his manners 
 took me exceedingly. 
 
 " I rejoice that you forgive my long silence. 
 I continue to estimate my own-roof comforts 
 highly. How could I remain all my life a 
 lodger 1 My garden thrives (I am told), 
 though I have yet reaped nothing but some 
 tiny salad, and withered carrots. But a 
 garden's a garden anywhere, and twice a 
 garden in London. 
 
 " Do you go on with your ' Quaker Son- 
 nets ? ' have 'em ready with ' Southey's Book 
 of the Church.' I meditate a letter to S. in 
 the ' London,' which perhaps will meet the 
 fate of the Sonnet. 
 
 " Excuse my brevity, for I write painfully 
 at office, liable to a hundred callings off ; and 
 I can never sit down to an epistle elsewhere. 
 I read or walk. If you return this letter 
 to the Post-ofl&ce, I think they will retui-n 
 fourpence, seeing it is but half a one. Believe 
 me, though, Entirely yours, C. L." 
 
 The contemplated expostulation with 
 Southey was written, and appeared in the 
 " London Magazine for October 1823." Lamb 
 did not print it in any subsequent collection 
 of his essays ; but I give it now, as I have 
 reason to know that its publication will cause 
 no painful feelings in the mind of Mr. Southey, 
 and as it forms the only ripple on the kindli- 
 ness of Lamb's personal and literary life. 
 
 LETTER OF ELIA TO ROBERT SOUTHEY, ESQ. 
 
 " Sir, — You have done me an unfriendly 
 office, without perhaps much considering 
 what you were doing. You have given an 
 ill name to ray poor lucubrations. In a recent 
 paper on Infidelity, you usher in a conditional 
 commendation of them with an exception : 
 which, preceding the encomium, and taking 
 up nearly the same space with it, must 
 impress your readers with the notion, that 
 the objectionable parts in them are at least 
 equal in quantity to the pardonable. The 
 censure is in fact the criticism ; the praise — 
 a concession merely. Exceptions usually 
 follow, to qualify praise or blame. But there 
 stands your reproof, in the very front of your 
 notice, in ugly characters, like some bugbear, 
 to frighten all good Christians from pur- 
 chasing. Through you I become an object of 
 suspicion to preceptors of youth, and fathers 
 of families. 'A book, which wants ordy a 
 sounder religious feeling to be as delightful as 
 it is originaU With no further explanation, 
 what must your readers conjecture, but that 
 my little volume is some vehicle for heresy 
 or infidelity ? The quotation, which you 
 honour me by subjoining, oddly enough, is of 
 a character which bespeaks a temperament 
 in the writer the very revei-se of that your 
 reproof goes to insinuate. Had you been 
 taxing me with superstition, the passage 
 would have been pertinent to the censure. 
 Was it worth your while to go so far out of 
 your way to affront the feelings of an old 
 friend, and commit yourself by an irrelevant 
 quotation, for the pleasure of reflecting upon 
 a poor child, an exile at Genoa ? 
 
 " I am at a loss what particular essay you 
 had in view (if my poor ramblings amount 
 to that appellation) when you were in such a 
 hurry to thrust in your objection, like bad 
 news, foremost. — Perhaps the paper on ' Say- 
 ing Graces ' was the obnoxious feature. I 
 have endeavoured there to rescue a voluntary 
 duty — good in place, but never,as I remember, 
 literally commanded — from the charge of an 
 undecent formality. Rightly taken, sir, that 
 paper was not against graces, but want of 
 grace ; not against the ceremony, but the 
 carelessness and slovenliness so often observed 
 in the performance of it. 
 
 " Or was it that on the 'New Year' — in 
 which I have described the feelings of the 
 
121 
 
 ELIA TO SOUTHEY. 
 
 merelj' natural man, on a consideration of the 
 amazing change, which is supposable to take 
 place on our removal from this fleshly scene 1 
 If men would honestly confess their mis- 
 givings (which few men will) there are times 
 when the strongest Christian of us, I believe, 
 has reeled under questions of such staggering 
 obscurity. I do not accuse you of this weak- 
 ness. There are some who tremblingly reach 
 out shaking hands to the guidance of Faith 
 — others who stoutly venture into the dark 
 (their Human Confidence their leader, whom 
 they mistake for Faith) ; and, investing 
 themselves beforehand with cherubic wings. 
 
 to be desperate. Others (with stronger 
 optics), as plainly as witli the eye of flesh, 
 shall behold a (/ive7i king in bliss, and a f/iven 
 chamberlain in torment ; even to the eternising 
 of a cast of the eye in the latter, his own 
 self-mocked and good-humouredly-bome de- 
 formity on e;trth, but supposed to aggravate 
 the uncouth and hideous expression of his 
 pangs in the other place. That one man can 
 presume so far, and that another woidd with 
 shuddering disclaim such confidences, is, I 
 believe, an effect of the nerves purely. 
 
 " If in either of these papers, or elsewhere, 
 I have been betrayed into some levities — not 
 
 as they fancy, find their new robes as fami- afi"ronting the sanctuary,butglancingperhap3 
 
 liar, and fitting to their supposed growth and 
 stature in godliness, as the coat they left off 
 yesterday — some whose hope totters upon 
 ci-utches — others who stalk into futurity upon 
 stilts. 
 
 " The contemplation of a Spiritual World, 
 — which, without the addition of a misgiving 
 conscience, is enough to shake some natures 
 to their foundation — is smoothly got over by 
 others, who shall float over the black billows 
 in their little boat of No-Distrust, as uncon- 
 cernedly as over a summer sea. The differ- 
 ence is chiefly constitutional. 
 
 " One man shall love his friends and his 
 friends' faces ; and, under the uncertainty of 
 conversing with them again, in the same 
 manner and familiar circumstances of sight, 
 speech, &c. as upon earth — in a moment of 
 no irreverent weakness — for a di'eam-while — 
 no more — would be almost content, for a 
 reward of a life of virtue (if he could ascribe 
 such acceptance to his lame performances), 
 to take up liis portion with those he loved, 
 and was made to love, in this good world, 
 which he knows — which was created so lovely, 
 beyond his deservings. Another, embracing 
 a more exalted vision — so that he might 
 receive indefinite additaments of power, 
 knowledge, beauty, glory, &c. — is ready to 
 forego the recognition of humbler indivi- 
 dualities of earth, and the old familiar faces. 
 The shapings of our heavens are the modi- 
 fications of our constitution ; and Mr. Feeble 
 Mind, or Mr. Great Heart, is born in every 
 one of us. 
 
 " Some (and such have been accounted 
 the safest divines) have shrunk from pro- 
 nouncing upon the final sUite of any man ; 
 nor dare they pronounce the case of Judas 
 
 at some of the outskirts and extreme edges, 
 the debateable laud between the holy and 
 profane regions — (for the admixture of man's 
 inventions, twisting themselves with the name 
 of the religion itself, has artfully made it 
 difficult to touch even the alloy, w ithout, in 
 some men's estimation, soiling the fine gold) • 
 — if I have sported within the purlieus of 
 serious matter — it was, I dare say, a humour 
 — be not startled, sir, — which I have iinwit- 
 tingly derived from yourself You have all 
 your life been making a jest of the Devil. 
 Not of the scriptural meaning of that dark 
 essence — personal or allegorical ; for the 
 natm'e is nowhere plainly delivered. I acquit 
 you of intentional irreverence. But indeed 
 you have made wonderfully fi-ee with, and 
 been mighty pleasant ujion, the popular idea 
 and attributes of him. A Noble Lord, your 
 brother Visionary, has scarcely taken greater 
 liberties with the material keys, and merely 
 Catholic notion of St. Peter. — You have 
 flattered him in prose : you have chanted 
 him in goodly odes. You have been his 
 Jester ; volunteer liaureat, and self-elected 
 Court Poet to Beelzebub. 
 
 " You have never ridiculed, I believe, what 
 you thought to be religion, but you are 
 idways girding at what some pious, but per- 
 haps mistaken folks, think to be so. For 
 this reason I am sorry to hear, that you are 
 engaged upon a life of George Fox. I know 
 you will fall into the error of intermixing 
 some comic stuff with your seriousness. The 
 Quakers tremble at the subject in your hands. 
 The Methodists arc shy of you, upon account 
 uUlieir founder. But, above all, our Popish 
 lirethren are most in your debt. The errora 
 of that Church have proved a fruitful source 
 
ELIA TO SOUTHET. 
 
 125 
 
 to your scoffing vein. Their Legend has 
 been a Golden one to you. And here your 
 friends, sir, have noticed a notable incon- 
 sistency. To the imposing rites, the solemn 
 penances, devout austerities of that commu- 
 nion ; the affecting though erring piety of 
 their hermits ; the silence and solitude of the 
 Chartreux — their crossings, their holy waters 
 — their Virgin, and their saints — to these, 
 they say, you have been indebted for the best 
 feelings, and the richest imagery, of your 
 Epic poetry. You have drawn copious drafts 
 upon Loretto. We thought at one time you 
 were going post to Kome — but that in the 
 facetious commentaries, which it is your 
 custom to append so plentifully, and (some 
 say) injudiciously, to your loftiest perform- 
 ances iu this kind, you spurn the uplifted 
 toe, which you but just now seemed to court ; 
 leave his holiness in the lurch ; and show 
 him a fair pair of Protestant heels under 
 3'our Romish vestment. When we think you 
 already at the wicket, suddenly a violent 
 cross wind blows you transverse 
 
 ' Ten thousand leagues awry ■ 
 
 Then might we see 
 
 Cowls, hoods, and habits, with their wearers, tost 
 And flutter'd into rags ; then reliques, heads, 
 Indulgences, dispenses, pardons, bulls, 
 The sport of winds.' 
 
 You pick up pence by showing the hallowed 
 bones, shrine, and crucifix ; and you take 
 money a second time by exposing the trick 
 of them afterwards. You carry your verse 
 to Castle Angelo for sale in a morning ; and 
 swifter than a pedlar can transmute his pack, 
 you are at Canterbury with your prose 
 ware before night. 
 
 " Sir, is it that I dislike you in this merry 
 vein ? The very reverse. No countenance 
 becomes an intelligent jest better than your 
 own. It is your grave aspect, when you look 
 awful upon your poor friends, which I would 
 deprecate. 
 
 " In more than one place, if I mistake 
 not, you have been pleased to compliment 
 me at the expense of my companions. I 
 cannot accept your compliment at such a 
 price. The upbraiding a man's poverty 
 naturally makes him look about him, to see 
 whether he be so poor indeed as he is pre- 
 sumed to be. You have put me upon counting 
 my riches. Eeally, sir, I did not know I was 
 so wealthy in the article of friendships. 
 
 There is , and , whom you never 
 
 heard of, but exemplary characters both, and 
 excellent church-goers ; and N., mine and 
 my father's friend for nearly half a century ; 
 and the enthusiast for Wordsworth's poetiy, 
 
 , a little tainted with Socinianism, it is 
 
 to be feared, but constant in his attachments, 
 
 and a capital critic ; and , a sturdy old 
 
 Athanasian, so that sets all to rights again ; 
 and W., the light, and warm-as-light hearted, 
 Janus of the London ; and the translator of 
 Dante, still a curate, modest and amiable C. ; 
 and Allan C, the large-hearted Scot ; and 
 P — r, candid and affectionate as his own 
 poetry ; and A — p, Coleridge's friend ; and 
 G — n, his more than friend ; and Coleridge 
 himself, the same to me still, as in those old 
 evenings, when we used to sit and speculate 
 (do you remember them, sir 1) at our old 
 Salutation tavern, upon Pantisocracy and 
 
 golden days to come on earth ; and W th 
 
 (why, sir, I might drop my rent-roll here ; 
 such goodly farms and manors have I reck- 
 oned up already. In what possession has not 
 this last name alone est'ated me ! — but I will 
 go on) — and M., the noble-minded kinsman, 
 
 by wedlock, of W th ; and H. C. R, 
 
 unwearied in the offices of a friend ; and 
 Clarkson, almost above the narrowness of 
 that relation, yet condescending not seldom 
 heretofore from the labours of his world- 
 embi-acing charity to bless my humble roof ; 
 and the gall-less and single-minded Dyer ; 
 and the high-minded associate of Cook, the 
 veteran Colonel, with his lusty heart still 
 sending cartels of defiance to old Time ; and, 
 not least, W. A., the last and steadiest left 
 to me of that little knot of whist-players, 
 that used to assemble weekly, for so many 
 years, at the Queen's Gate (you remember 
 them, sir ?) and called Admiral Burney 
 friend. 
 
 "I will come to the point at once. I 
 believe you will not make many exceptions 
 to my associates so far. But I have purposely 
 omitted some intimacies, which I do not yet 
 repent of having contracted, with two gentle- 
 men, diametrically opposed to yourself in 
 principles. You will understand me to 
 allude to the authors of ' Rimini ' and of the 
 ' Table Talk.' And first of the former.— 
 
 " It is an error more particularly inciileni 
 to persons of tlie correctest principles and 
 habits, to seclude themselves from the I'eat 
 
126 
 
 ELIA TO SOUTHEY. 
 
 of mankind, as from another species, and 
 form into knots and clubs. The best people 
 herding thus exclusively, are in danger of 
 contracting a narrowness. Heat and cold, 
 dryness and moisture, in the natural world, 
 do not fly asunder, to split the globe into 
 sectarian parts and separations ; but mingling, 
 as they best may, correct the malignity of 
 any single predominance. The analogy 
 holds, I suppose, in the moral world. If all 
 the good people were to ship themselves ofi" 
 to Terra Incognita, what, in humanity's 
 name, is to become of the refuse 1 If the 
 persons, whom I have chiefly in view, have 
 not pushed matters to this extremity yet, 
 they carry them as far as they can go. Instead 
 of mixing with the infidel and the free- 
 thinker — in the room of opening a negocia- 
 tion, to try at least to find out at which gate 
 the error entered — they huddle close together, 
 in a weak fear of infection, like that pusil- 
 lanimous underling in Spenser — 
 
 ' This is the wandering wood, this Error's den ; 
 A monster vile, whom God and man does hate : 
 Therefore, I reed, heware. Fly, fly, quoth then 
 The fearful Dwarf.' 
 
 j\nd, if they be writers in orthodox journals 
 addressing themselves only to the irritable 
 passions of the unbeliever — they proceed in 
 a safe system of strengthening the strong 
 hands, and confirming the valiant knees ; of 
 converting the already converted, and prose- 
 lyting their own party. I am the more con- 
 vinced of this from a passage in the very 
 treatise which occasioned this letter. It is 
 where, having recommended to the doubter 
 the writings of Michaelis and Lardner, you 
 ride triumphant over the necks of all infidels, 
 sceptics, and dissenters, from this time to the 
 world's end, upon the wheels of two un- 
 answerable deductions. I do not hold it 
 meet to set down, in a miscellaneous com- 
 pilation like this, such religious words as you 
 have thought fit to introduce into the pages 
 of a petulant literary journal. I therefore 
 beg leave to substitute numerals, and refer to 
 the ' Quarterly Review ' (for January) for 
 filling of them up. 'Here,' say you, *as in 
 the history of 7, if these books are authentic, 
 the events which they relate must be true ; 
 if they were written by 8, 9 is 10 and 11.' 
 Your fimt deduction, if it means honestly, 
 rests upon two identical propositions ; though 
 I suspect an unfairness in one of the terms, 
 
 which this would not be quite the proper 
 place for explicating. At all events, you 
 have no cause to triumph ; you have not 
 been proving the premises, but refer for 
 satisfaction therein to very long and laborious 
 works, which may well employ the sceptic a 
 twelvemonth or two to digest, before he can 
 possibly be ripe for your conclusion. When 
 he has satisfied himself about the premises, 
 he will concede to you the inference, I dare 
 say, most readily. — But your latter deduction, 
 viz. that because 8 has written a book con- 
 cerning 9, therefore 10 and 11 was certainly 
 his meaning, is one of the most extraordinary 
 conclusions per saltum, that I have had the 
 good fortune to meet with. As far as 10 is 
 verbally asserted in the writings, all sects 
 must agree with you ; but you cannot be 
 ignorant of the many various ways in which 
 the doctrine of the ******* has been under- 
 stood, from a low figurative expression (with 
 the Unitarians) up to the most mysterious 
 actuality ; in which highest sense alone you 
 and your church take it. And for 11, that 
 there is 7io other possible conclusion — to hazard 
 this in the face of so many thousands of 
 Arians and Socinians, &c., who have drawn 
 so opposite a one, is such a piece of theological 
 hardihood, as, I think, warrants me in con- 
 cluding that, when you sit down to pen 
 theology, you do not at all consider your 
 opponents ; but have in your eye, merely 
 and exclusively, readers of the same way of 
 thinking with yourself, and therefore have 
 no occasion to trouble yourself with the 
 quality of the logic to which you treat them. 
 
 " Neither can I think, if you had had the 
 welfare of the poor child — over whose hope- 
 less condition you whine so lamentably and 
 (I must think) unseasonably — seriously at 
 heart, that you could have taken the step of 
 sticking him up by name — T. H. is as good as 
 naining him — to perpetuate an outrage upon 
 the parental feelings, as long as the ' Quar- 
 terly Review ' shall last. Was it necessary 
 to specify an individual case, and give to 
 Christian compjission the appearance of 
 j)ersonal attack ? Is this the way to con- 
 ciliate unbelievers, or not rather to widen the 
 breach irreparably ? 
 
 "I own I could never think so considerably 
 of myself as to decline the society of an agree- 
 able or worthy man ui)o!i diHorence of oi)iuiou 
 only. Tlu- impediments and tlie facilitations 
 
ELIA TO SOUTHEY. 
 
 127 
 
 to a sound belief are various and inscrutable 
 as the heart of man. Some believe upon 
 weak principles. Others cannot feel the 
 efficacy of the strongest. One of the most 
 candid, most upright, and single-meaning 
 men, I ever knew, was the late Thomas 
 Holcroft. I believe he never said one thing 
 and meant another, in his life ; and, as near 
 as I can guess, he never acted otherwise 
 than with the most scrupulous attention to 
 conscience. Ought we to wish the character 
 false, for the sake of a hollow compliment to 
 Christianity ? 
 
 " Accident introduced me to the acquaint- 
 ance of Mr. L. H. — and the experience of his 
 many friendly qualities confirmed a friend- 
 ship between us. You, who have been mis- 
 represented yourself, I should hope, have not 
 lent an idle ear to the calumnies which have 
 been spread abroad i-especting this gentle- 
 man. I was admitted to his household for 
 some years, and do most solemnly aver that 
 I believe him to be in his domestic relations 
 as correct as any man. He chose an ill- 
 judged subject for a poem ; the peccant 
 humours of which have been visited on him 
 tenfold by the artful use, which his adver- 
 saries have made, of an equivocal term. The 
 subject itself was started by Dante, but 
 better because brieflier treated of. But the 
 crime of the lovers, in the Italian and the 
 English poet, with its aggravated enormity 
 of circumstance, is not of a kind (as the 
 critics of the latter well knew) with those 
 conjunctions, for which Nature herself has 
 provided no excuse, because no temptation. 
 — It has nothing in common with the black 
 horrors, sung by Ford and Massinger. The 
 familiarising of it in tale and fable may be 
 for that reason incidentally more contagious. 
 In spite of Rimini, I must look upon its 
 author as a man of taste, and a poet. He is 
 better than so ; he is one of the most cordial- 
 minded men I ever knew, and matchless as 
 a tire- side companion. I mean not to affront 
 or wound your feelings when I say that, in 
 his more genial moods, he has often reminded 
 me of you. There is the same air of mild 
 dogmatism — the same condescending to a 
 boyish sportiveness — in both your conversa- 
 tions. His handwriting is so much the same 
 with your own, that I have opened more 
 than one letter of his, hoping, nay, not 
 doubting, but it was from you, and have 
 
 been disappointed (he will bear with my 
 saying so) at the discovery of my error. 
 L. H. is unfortunate in holding some loose 
 and not very definite speculations (for at 
 times I think he hardly knows whither his 
 premises would carry him) on marriage — the 
 tenets, I conceive, of the ' Political Justice ' 
 carried a little further. For anything I 
 could discover in his practice, they have 
 reference, like those, to some future possible 
 condition of society, and not to the present 
 times. But neither for these obliquities of 
 thinking (upon which my own conclusions 
 are as distant as the poles asunder) — nor for 
 his political asperities and petulancies, which 
 are wearing out with the heats and vanities 
 of youth — did I select him for a friend ; but 
 for qualities which fitted him for that rela- 
 tion. I do not know whether I flatter 
 myself with being the occasion, but certain 
 it is, that, touched with some misgivings for 
 simdry harsh things which he had written 
 aforetime against our fiiend C, — before he 
 left this country he sought a reconciliation 
 with that gentleman (himself being his own 
 introducer), and found it. 
 
 " L. H. is now in Italy ; on his departure to 
 which land with much regret I took my 
 leave of him and of his little family — seven 
 of them, sir, with their mother — and as kind 
 a set of little people (T. H. and all), as affec- 
 tionate children as ever blessed a parent. 
 Had you seen them, sir, I think you could 
 not have looked upon them as so many little 
 Jonases — but rather as pledges of the 
 vessel's safety, that was to bear such a freight 
 of love. 
 
 " I wish you would read Mr. H.'s lines to 
 that same T. H. ' six years' old, during a 
 sickness : ' — 
 
 ' Sleep breaks at last from out thee. 
 My little patient boy' — 
 
 (they are to be found in the 47th page of 
 * Foliage ') — and ask yourself how far they 
 are out of the spirit of Christianity. I have 
 a letter fi-om Italy, received but the other 
 day, into which L. H. has put as much heart, 
 and as many friendly yearnings after old 
 associates, and native country, as, I think, 
 paper can well hold. It would do you no 
 hurt to give that the perusal also. 
 
 " From the other gentleman I neither 
 expect nor desire (as he is well assured) any 
 
128 
 
 ELIA TO SOUTHEY. 
 
 such concessions as Ij. H. made to C. What 
 hath soured him, and made him to suspect 
 his friends of infideUty towards him, when 
 there was no such matter, I know not. I 
 stood well with him for fifteen years (the 
 proudest of my life), and have ever spoken 
 my full mind of him to some, to whom his 
 panegjTic must naturally be least tasteful. 
 I never in thought swerved from him, I 
 never betrayed him, I never slackened in 
 my admii-ation of him ; I was the same to 
 him (neither better nor worse), though lie 
 could not see it, as in the days when he 
 tliought fit to trust me. At this instant, he 
 may be preparing for me some compliment, 
 above my deserts, as he has sprinkled many 
 such among his admirable books, for which 
 I rest his debtor ; or, for anything I know, 
 or can guess to the contrary, he may be 
 about to read a lecture on my weaknesses. 
 He is welcome to them (as he was to my 
 humble hearth), if they can divert a spleen, 
 or ventilate a fit of suUenness. I wish he 
 would not quarrel with the world at the 
 rate he does ; but the reconciliation must be 
 eff"ected by himself, and I despair of living 
 to see that day. But, protesting against 
 much that he has written, and some things 
 which he chooses to do ; judging him by his 
 conversation which I enjoyed so long, and 
 relished so deeply ; or by his books, in those 
 places where no clouding passion intervenes 
 — I should belie my own conscience, if I said 
 less, than tliat I think W. H. to be, in his 
 natural and healthy state, one of the wisest 
 and finest spirits breathing. So far from 
 being ashamed of that intimacy, which was 
 betwixt us, it is my boast that I was able 
 for so many years to have preserved it 
 entire ; and I think I shall go to my grave 
 without finding, or expecting to find, such 
 another companion. But I forget my man- 
 ners — you will pardon me, sir — I return to 
 the correspondence. 
 
 " Sir, you were pleased (you know where) 
 to invite me to a compliance with the whole- 
 some forms and doctrines of the Church of 
 England. I take your advice with as much 
 kindness as it was meant. But I must think 
 the invitation rather more kind than season- 
 able. I am a Dissenter. The last sect, witli 
 which you can remember me to have made 
 common j)rofession, were the Unitarians. 
 You would think it not very pertinent, if 
 
 (fearing that all was not well with you), I 
 were gravely to invite you (for a remedy) to 
 attend with me a course of Mr. Belsham'a 
 Lectures at Hackney. Perhaps I have 
 scruples to some of your forms and doctrines. 
 But if I come, am I secure of civil treat- 
 ment 1 — The last time I was in any of your 
 places of worship was on Easter Sunday last. 
 I had the satisfaction of listening to a very 
 sensible sei-mon of an argumentative turn, 
 delivered with great propriety, by one of 
 your bishops. The place was Westminster 
 Abbey. As such religion, as I have, has 
 always acted on me more by way of senti- 
 ment than argumentative process, I was not 
 unwilling, after sermon ended, by no un- 
 becoming transition, to pass over to some 
 serious feelings, impossible to be disconnected 
 fx-om the sight of those old tombs, &c. But, 
 by whose order I know not, I was debarred 
 that privilege even for so short a space as a 
 few minutes ; and turned, like a dog or 
 some profane person, out into the common 
 street ; with feelings, which I could not help, 
 but not very congenial to the day or the 
 discourse. I do not know that I f;hall 
 ever venture myself again into one of your 
 churches. 
 
 " You had your education at Westminster ; 
 and, doubtless, among those dim aisles and 
 cloistei-s, you must have gathered much of 
 that devotional feeling in those young yeai-s, 
 on which your purest mind feeds still — and 
 may it feed ! The antiquarian spirit, strong 
 in you, and gracefully blending ever with 
 the religious, may have been sown in you 
 among those wrecks of splendid niortjility. 
 You owe it to the place of your education ; 
 you owe it to your learned fondness for the 
 architecture of your ancestors ; you owe it 
 to the venerablencss of your ecclesiastical 
 establishment, which is daily lessened and 
 called in question through these practices — 
 to speak aloud yf)ur sense of them ; never to 
 desist raising your voice against tliera, till 
 they be totally done away with and abolished ; 
 till the doors of Westminster Abbey be no 
 longer closed against the decent, though low- 
 in-purse, enthusiast, or blameless devotee, 
 who nuist commit an injury against his 
 family economy, if he would be indulged 
 with a bare adniission witliin ils w.dls. You 
 owe it to the decencies, wliich you wish to 
 see maintaint'd in its impressive services, 
 
that our Cathedral be no longer an object of 
 inspection to the poor at those times only, in 
 which they must rob from their attendance 
 on the worship every minute which they can 
 bestow upon the fabric. In vain the public 
 prints have taken up this subject, in vain 
 such poor nameless writers as myself express 
 their indignation. A word from you, sir — 
 a hint in your journal — would be sufficient 
 to fling open the doors of the beautiful temple 
 again, as we can remember them when we 
 were boys. At that time of life, what would 
 the imaginative faculty (such as it is) in 
 both of us, have suffered, if the entrance to 
 so much reflection had been obstructed by 
 the demand of so much silver ! — If we had 
 scraped it up to gain an occasional admission 
 (as we certainly should have done) would 
 the sight of those old tombs have been as 
 impressive to us (while we had been weighing 
 anxiously prudence against sentiment) as 
 when the gates stood open, as those of the 
 adjacent Park ; when we could walk in at 
 any time, as the mood brought us, for a 
 shorter or longer time, as that lasted 1 Is 
 the being shown over a place the same as 
 silently for ourselves detecting the genius of 
 it ? In no part of our beloved Abbey now 
 can a person find entrance (out of service- 
 time) under the sum of two shillings. The 
 rich and the great will smile at the anti- 
 climax, presumed to lie in these two short 
 words. But you can tell them, sir, how much 
 quiet worth, how much capacity for enlarged 
 feeling, how much taste and genius, may co- 
 exist, especially in youth, with a purse 
 incompetent to this demand. — A respected 
 friend of ours, during his late visit to the 
 metropolis, presented himself for admission 
 to Saint Paul's. At the same time a deceutly- 
 clothed man, with as decent a wife, and 
 child, were bargaining for the same indul- I 
 gence. The price was only two-pence each ' 
 person. The poor but decent man hesitated, ' 
 desirous to go in : but there were three of 
 them, and he turned away reluctantly. | 
 Perhaps he wished to have seen the tomb of 
 Nelson. Perhaps the interior of the cathe- 
 dral was his object. But in the state of his 
 finances, even sixpence miglit reasonably 
 seem too much. Tell the aristocracy of the 
 country (no man can do it more impres- 
 sively) ; instruct them of what value these 
 insignificant pieces of money, these minims 
 
 to their sight, may be to their humbler 
 brethren. Shame these sellers out of the 
 Temple ! Show the poor, that you can 
 sometimes think of them in some other light 
 than as mutineers and mal-contents. Con- 
 ciliate them by such kind methods to their 
 superior.<?, civil and ecclesiastical. Stop the 
 I mouths of the railers ; and suffer your old 
 friends, upon the old terms, again to honour 
 and admire you. Stifle not the suggestions 
 of your better nature with the stale evasion, 
 that an indiscriminate admission would ex- 
 pose the tombs to violation. Remember 
 your boy-days. Did you ever see, or hear, 
 ^ of a mob in the Abbey, while it was fi-ee to 
 all ? Do the rabble come there, or trouble 
 I their heads about such speculations ? It is 
 all that you can do to drive them into your 
 churches ; they do not voluntarily offer 
 themselves. They have, alas ! no passion 
 for antiquities ; for tomb of king or prelate, 
 sage or poet. If they had, they would no 
 , longer be the rabble. 
 
 " For forty years that I have known the 
 fabric, the only well-attested charge of 
 violation adduced, has been — a ridiculous 
 dismemberment committed upon the efiigy 
 of that amiable spy. Major Andre. And is 
 it for this — the wanton mischief of some 
 school-boy, fired perhaps with raw notions of 
 transatlantic freedom — or the remote possi- 
 bility of such a mischief occurring again, so 
 easily to be prevented by stationing a 
 constable within the walls, if the vei'gers are 
 incompetent to the duty — is it upon such 
 wretched pretences, tliat the people of Eng- 
 land are made to pay a new Peter's pence, 
 so long abrogated ; or must content them- 
 selves with contemplating the ragged exterior 
 of their Cathedral ? The mischief was done 
 about the time that you were a scholar there. 
 Do you know anything about the unfortunate 
 relic ? — can you help us in this emergency to 
 find the nose ? — or can you give Chantrey a 
 notion (from memory) of its pristine life and 
 vigour? I am willing for peace' sake to 
 subscribe my guinea towards a restoration of 
 the lamented feature. 
 
 " I am, sir, your humble servant, 
 
 "Elia." 
 
 The feeling with which this letter was 
 received by Southey may be beat described 
 
in his own words in a letter to the publisher. 
 " On my part there was not even a momentary 
 feeling of anger ; I was very much surprised 
 and grieved, because I knew how much he 
 would condemn himself. And yet no resent- 
 ful letter was ever Avritten less offensively : 
 his gentle nature may be seen in it through- 
 out." Southey was right in his belief in the 
 revulsion Lamb's feelings would undergo, 
 when the excitement under which he had 
 written subsided ; for although he would 
 retract nothing he had ever said or written 
 in defence of his friends, he was ready at 
 once to suiTender every resentment of his 
 own. Southey came to Ijoudon in the fol- 
 lowing month, and wrote proposing to call at 
 Islington ; and 21st of November Lamb thus 
 replied : — 
 
 TO MR. SOUTHEY. 
 
 " E. I. II., 21st November, 1823. 
 
 "Dear Southey, — The kindness of your 
 note has melted away the mist which was 
 upon me. I have been fighting against a 
 shadow. That accursed Q. E. had vexed me 
 by a gratuitous speaking, of its own know- 
 ledge, that the ' Confessions of a D d ' 
 
 was a genuine description of the state of the 
 writer. Little things, that are not ill meant, 
 may produce much ill. That might have 
 injured me alive and dead. I am in a public 
 office, and my life is insured. I was prepared 
 for anger, and I thought I saw, in a few 
 obnoxious words, a hard case of repetition 
 directed against me. I wish both magazine 
 and review at the bottom of the sea. I shall 
 be ashamed to see you, and my sister (though 
 innocent) will be still more so ; for the folly 
 was done without her knowledge, and has 
 made her uneasy ever since. My guardian 
 angel was absent at that time. 
 
 " I will muster up courage to see you, how- 
 ever, any day next week (Wednesday ex- 
 cepted). We shall hope that you will bring 
 Edith with you. That will be a second 
 mortification. She will hate to see us, but 
 come and heap embers. We deserve it, I 
 for what I've done, and she for being my 
 sister. 
 
 " Do come early in the day, by sun-light, 
 that you may see my Milton. 
 
 "I am at Colebrook-cottage, Colcbrook- 
 row, Islington. A detached whitish house. 
 
 close to the New River, end of Colebrook 
 Terrace, left hand from Sadler's Wells. 
 " Will you let me know the day before ? 
 " Your penitent, C. Lamb. 
 
 " P.S. — I do not think your hand-wi*iting 
 at all like ****'s. I do not think many 
 tilings I did think." 
 
 In the following letter, of the same date, 
 Lamb anticipates the meeting. 
 
 TO BERNARD BARTON. 
 
 " Dear B. B., — I am a.shamed at not 
 acknowledging your kind, little poem, which 
 I must needs like much ; but I protest I 
 thought I had done it at the moment. Is it 
 possible a letter has miscarried ? Did you 
 get one in which I sent you an extract from 
 the poems of Lord Sterling 1 I should 
 wonder if you did, for I sent you none such. 
 There was an incipient lie strangled in the 
 birth. Some people's conscience is so tender ! 
 But, in plain truth, I thank you very much 
 for the verses. I have a very kind letter 
 from the Laureat, with a self-invitation to 
 come and shake hands with me. This is 
 truly handsome and noble. 'Tis worthy of 
 my old idea of Southey. Shall not I, think 
 you, be covered with a red suffusion 1 
 
 " You are too much apprehensive of your 
 complaint : I know many that are always 
 ailing of it, and live on to a good old age. 
 I know a merry fellow (you partly know 
 him) who, when his medical adviser told him 
 he had drunk away all that part, congratu- 
 lated himself (now his liver was gone) that 
 he should be the longest liver of the two. 
 
 " The best way in these cases is to keep 
 yourself as ignorant as you can, as ignorant 
 as the world was before Galen, of the entire 
 inner constiniction of the animal man ; not 
 to be conscious of a midriff ; to hold kidneys 
 (save a sheep and swine) to be an agreeable 
 fiction ; not to know whereabouts the gall 
 grows ; to account the circulation of the 
 blood an idle whimsey of Harvey's ; to 
 acknowledge no mechanism not visible. For, 
 once fix the seat of your disorder, and your 
 fancies flux into it like bad humours. Tlioso 
 medical gentries choose each his favourite 
 part ; one takes the lungs, another the 
 aforesaid liver, and refer to that, whatever 
 in the animal economy ia amiss. Above all, 
 
use exercise, take a little more spirituous 
 liquors, learn to smoke, continue to keep a 
 good conscience, and avoid tampering with 
 hard terms of art — viscosity, scirrhosity, and 
 those bugbears by which simple patients are 
 scared into their graves. Believe the general 
 sense of the mercantile world, which holds 
 that desks are not deadly. It is the mind, 
 good B. B., and not the limbs, that taints by 
 long sitting. Think of the patience of 
 tailoi-s, think how long the Lord Chancellor 
 sits, think of the brooding hen ! I protest 
 I cannot answer thy sister's kind inquiry ; 
 but I judge, I shall put forth no second 
 volume. More praise than buy ; and T. and 
 H. are not particularly disjiosed for martyrs. 
 Thou wilt see a funny passage, and yet a 
 true history, of George Dyer's aquatic 
 incursion in the next ' London.' Beware his 
 fate, when thou comest to see me at my 
 Colebrook-cottage. I have filled my little 
 space with my little thoughts. I wish thee 
 ease on thy sofa ; but not too much indul- 
 gence on it. From my poor desk, thy feUow- 
 sutferer, this bright November, 
 
 "C. L." 
 
 Southey went to Colebrook-cottage, as 
 proposed ; the awkwardness of meeting went 
 off in a moment ; and the affectionate 
 intimacy, which had lasted for almost twenty 
 years, was renewed, to be interrupted only 
 by death. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 [1823 to 1825.] 
 
 LETTERS TO AINSWORTH, BARTON, AND COLERIDGE. 
 
 Lamb was fond of visiting the Universities 
 in the summer vacation, and repeatedly spent 
 his holiday month at Cambridge with his 
 sister. On one of these occasions they met 
 with a little girl, who being in a manner 
 alone in the world, engaged their sympathy, 
 and soon riveted their affections. Emma 
 Isola was the daughter of Mr. Charles Isola, 
 who had been one of the esquire bedells of 
 the University ; her grandfather, Agostino 
 Isola, had been compelled to fly from Milan, 
 because a friend took up an English book in 
 his apartment, which he had carelessly left 
 
 in view. This good old man numbered 
 among his pupils. Gray the poet, Mr. Pitt, 
 and, in his old age, Wordsworth, whom he 
 instructed in the Italian language. His little 
 grand-daughter, at the time when she had 
 the good fortune to win the regard of Mr. 
 Lamb, had lost both her parents, and was 
 spending her holidays with an aunt, who 
 lived with a sister of Mr. Ayi-ton, at whose 
 house Lamb generally played his evening 
 rubber daring his stay at Cambridge. The 
 liking which both Lamb and his sister took 
 for the little orphan, led to their begging her 
 of her aunt for the next holidays ; their 
 regard for her increased ; she regularly spent 
 the holidays with them tiU she left school, 
 and afterwards was adopted as a daughter, 
 and lived generally with them until 1833, 
 when she married Mr. Moxon. Lamb was 
 fond of taking long walks in the country, 
 and as Miss Lamb's strength was not always 
 equal to these pedestrian excursions, she 
 became his constant companion in walks 
 which even extended " to the green fields oi 
 pleasant Hertfordshire." 
 
 About this time. Lamb added to his list of 
 friends, Mr. Hood, the delightful humourist ; 
 Hone, lifted for a short time into political 
 fame by the prosecution of his Parodies, and 
 the signal energy and success of his defence, 
 but now striving by unwearied researches, 
 which were guided by a pure taste and an 
 honest heart, to support a numerous family ; 
 and Ainsworth, then a youth, who has since 
 acquired so splendid a reputation as the 
 author of " Rookwood " and "Crichtou." 
 Mr. Ainsworth, then resident at Manchester, 
 excited by an enthusiastic admiration of 
 Elia, had sent him some books, for which he 
 thus conveyed his thanks to his unseen 
 friend. 
 
 TO MR. AINSWORTH. 
 
 " ludia-IIouse, 9th Dec. 1823. 
 
 "Dear Sir, — I should have thanked you 
 for your books and compliments sooner, but 
 have been waiting for a revise to be sent, 
 which does not come, though I returned the 
 proof on the receipt of your letter. I have 
 read Warner with great pleasure. What an 
 elaborate piece of alliteration and antithesis ! 
 why it must have been a labour far above 
 the most difficult versification. There is a 
 
 K 2 
 
fine simile or picture of Semiramis arming to 
 repel a siege. I do not mean to keep the 
 book, for I suspect you are forming a curious 
 collection, and I do not pretend to anything 
 of the kind. I have not a black-letter book 
 among mine, old Chaucer excepted, and am 
 not bibliomanist enough to like black-letter. 
 It is painful to read ; therefore I must insist 
 on returning it at opportunity, not from 
 contumacy and reluctance to be obliged, but 
 because it must suit you better than me. 
 The loss of a present from should never 
 exceed the gain of a present to. I hold this 
 maxim infallible in the accepting line. — I 
 read j'our magazines with satisfaction. I 
 thoroughly agree with you as to 'The 
 German Faust,' as far as I can do justice to 
 it from an English translation. 'Tis a 
 disagreeable canting tale of seduction, which 
 has nothing to do with the spirit of Faustus 
 — Curiosity. Was the dark secret to be 
 explored, to end in the seducing of a weak 
 girl, which might have been accomplished 
 by earthly agency ? When Marlow gives his 
 Faustus a mistress, he flies him at Helen, 
 flower of Greece, to be sure, and not at Miss 
 Betsy, or Miss Sally Thoughtless. 
 
 • Cut is the branch that bore the goodly fruit, 
 And wither'd is Apollo's laurel tree : 
 Faustus is dead.' 
 
 "What a noble natural transition from 
 metaphor to plain speaking ! as if the 
 figurative had flagged in description of such 
 a loss, and was reduced to tell the fact 
 simply. 
 
 " I must now thank you for your very kind 
 invitation. It is not out of prospect that I 
 may see Manchester some day, and then I 
 will avail myself of your kindness. But 
 holidays are scarce things with me, and the 
 laws of attendance are getting stronger and 
 stronger at Leadenhall. But I shall bear it 
 in mind. Meantime, something may (more 
 probably) bring you to town, where I shall 
 be happy to see you. I am always to be 
 found (alas !) at my desk in the fure pai't of 
 the day. 
 
 " I wonder why they do not send the revise. 
 I leave late at office, and my abode lies out 
 of the way, or I should liave seen about it. 
 If you are impatient, perhaps a line to the 
 printer, directing him to send it me, at 
 Accountant's Oflice, may answer. You will 
 
 see by the scrawl that I only snatch a few 
 minutes from intermitting business. 
 
 " Your obliged servant, C. Lamb." 
 
 "(If I had time I would go over this letter 
 again, and dot all my z's.)" 
 
 To Ainsworth, still pressing him to visit 
 Manchester, he sent the following reply. 
 
 TO MR. ATNSWORTH. 
 
 "I. H., Dec. 29th, 1823. 
 
 " My dear sir, — You talk of months at a 
 time, and I know not what inducements to 
 visit Manchester, Heaven knows how grati- 
 fying ! but I have had my little month of 
 1823 already. It is all over, and without 
 incurring a disagreeable favour, I cannot so 
 much as get a single holiday till the season 
 returns with the next year. Even our half- 
 hour's absences from office are set down in a 
 book ! Next year, if I can spare a day or 
 two of it, I will come to Manchester, but 
 I have reasons at home against longer 
 absences. 
 
 " I am so ill jiist at present — (an illness of 
 my own procuring last night ; who is 
 perfect ?)• — that nothing but your very great 
 kindness could make me write. I will bear 
 in mind the letter to W. W., and you shall 
 have it quite in time, before the 12th. 
 
 " My aching and confused head warns me 
 to leave off". With a muddled sense of grate- 
 fulness, which I shall apprehend more cleai'ly 
 to-morrow, I remain, your friend unseen, 
 
 " C. L." 
 
 " Will your occasions or inclination bring 
 you to London ! It will give me great 
 pleasure to show you everything that IsUng- 
 ton can boast, if you know the meaning of 
 that very Cockney sound. We have the New 
 River ! I am ashamed of this scrawl, but I 
 beg you to accept it for the present. I am 
 full of qualms. 
 
 ' A fool at fifty is a fool indeed.' " 
 
 Bernard Barton still frequently wrote to 
 him : and he did not withhold tiie wished-for 
 reply even when letter-writing was a burtlien. 
 The following gives 
 his indisposition : — 
 
LETTERS TO BARTON. 
 
 188 
 
 TO BEEXARD BARTON. 
 
 "Jan. 9th, 1824. 
 
 Dear B. B., — Do you know what it is to 
 succumb under an insurmountable day-mare, 
 — ' a whoreson lethargy,' Falstaff calls it, — 
 an indisposition to do anjiihing, or to be 
 anything, — a total deaduess and distaste, — a 
 suspension of vitality, — an indifference to 
 iocality, — a numb, soporifical, good-for- 
 nothingness, — an ossification all over, — an 
 oyster-like insensibility to the passing events, 
 — a mind-stupor, — a brawny defiance to the 
 needles of a thrusting-in conscience. Did 
 you ever have a very bad cold, with a total 
 irresolution to submit to water-gruel pro- 
 cesses ? This has been for many weeks my 
 lot, and my excuse ; my fingers drag heavily 
 over this paper, and to my thinking it is 
 three-and-twenty furlongs from here to the 
 end of this demi-sheet. I have not a thing 
 to say ; nothing is of more importance than 
 another ; I am flatter than a denial or a 
 
 pancake ; emptier than Judge 's wig 
 
 when the head is in it ; duller than a country 
 stage when the actors are off it ; a cipher, 
 an ! I acknowledge life at all, only by an 
 occasional convulsional cough, and a perma- 
 nent phlegmatic pain in the chest. I am 
 weary of the world ; life is weary of me. 
 My day is gone into twilight, and I don't 
 think it worth the expense of candles. My 
 wick hath a thief in it, but I can't muster 
 courage to snuff it. I inhale suffocation ; I 
 can't distinguish veal from mutton ; nothing 
 interests me. 'Tis twelve o'clock, and 
 Thurtell is just now coming out upon the 
 New Drop, Jack Ketch alertly tucking up 
 his gi'easy sleeves to do the last ofiice of 
 mortality, yet cannot I elicit a groan or a 
 moral reflection. If you told me the world 
 will be at an end to-morrow, I should just 
 say, ' Will it ? ' I have not volition enough 
 left to dot my I's, much less to comb my 
 eyebrows ; my eyes are set in my head ; my 
 brains are gone out to see a poor relation in 
 Moorfields, and they did not say when they'd 
 come back again ; my skull is a Grub-street 
 attic, to let — not so much as a joint-stool or 
 a crack'd Jordan left in it ; my hand writes, 
 not I, from habit, as chickens run about a 
 little, when their heads are off. O for a 
 vigorous tit of gout, cholic, toothache, — an 
 earwig in my auditory, a fly in my visual 
 
 organs ; pain is life — the sharper, the more 
 evidence of life ; but this apathy, this death ! 
 Did you ever have an obstinate cold, — a six 
 or seven weeks' unintermitting chill and 
 suspension of hope, fear, conscience, and 
 everything 1 Yet do I try all I can to cure 
 it ; I try wine, and spirits, and smoking, and 
 snuff in unsparing quantities, but they all 
 only seem to make me worse, instead of 
 better. 1 sleep in a damp room, but it does 
 me no good ; I come home late o' nights, but 
 do not find any visible amendment ! Who 
 shall deliver me from the body of this 
 death 1 
 
 " It is just fifteen minutes after twelve ; 
 Thurtell is by this time a good way on his 
 journey, baiting at Scorpion perhaps ; Ketch 
 is bargaining for his cast coat and waistcoat ; 
 the Jew demurs at first at three half-crowns, 
 but, on consideration that he may get 
 somewhat by showing 'em in the town, 
 finally closes. C. L." 
 
 Barton took this letter rather seriously, 
 and Lamb thus sought to remove his friendly 
 anxieties. 
 
 TO BERNARD BARTON. 
 
 "Jan. 23rd, 1824. 
 
 "My dear sir, — That peevish letter of 
 mine, which was meant to convey an apology 
 for my incapacity to write, seems to have 
 been taken by you in too serious a light ; it 
 was only my way of telling you I had a 
 severe cold. The fact is, I have been 
 insuperably dull and lethargic for many 
 weeks, and cannot rise to the vigour of a 
 letter, much less an essay. The ' London ' 
 must do without me for a time, for I have 
 lost all interest about it ; and whether I shall 
 recover it again I know not. I will bridle 
 my pen another time, and not teaze and 
 puzzle you with my aridities. I shall begta 
 to feel a little more alive with the spring. 
 Winter is to me (mild or harsh) always a 
 great trial of the spirits. I am ashamed not 
 to have noticed your tribute to Woolman, 
 whom we love so much. It is done in your 
 good manner. Your friend Tayler called 
 upon me some time since, and seems a very 
 amiable man. His last .story is painfully 
 fine. His book I 'like ;' it is only too 
 stuffed with scripture, too parsoni.sh. The 
 
test thing in it is the boy's own story. 
 When I say it is too full of scripture, I mean 
 it is too full of direct quotations ; no book 
 can have too much of silent scripture in it ; 
 but the natural power of a story is dimin- 
 ished when the uppermost purpose in the 
 writer seems to be to recommend something 
 else, viz., Religion. You know what Horace 
 says of the Deiis iyitersit ? I am not able to 
 explain myself, — you must do it for me. My 
 sister's part in the ' Leicester School ' (about 
 two-thirds) was purely her own ; as it was 
 (to the same quantity) in the ' Shakspeare 
 Tales ' which bear my name. I wrote only 
 the ' Witch Aunt ; ' the * First Going to 
 Church ; ' and the final story, about ' A little 
 Indian girl,' in a ship. Yoiir account of my 
 black-balling amused me. I think, as Quakers 
 they did right. There are some things hard 
 to be understood. The more I think, the 
 more I am vexed at having puzzled you with 
 that letter ; but I have been so out of letter- 
 writing of late years, that it is a sore effort 
 to sit down to it ; and I felt in your debt, 
 and sat down waywardly to pay you in bad 
 money. Never mind my dulness ; I am used 
 to long intervals of it. The heavens seem 
 brass to me ; then again comes the refreshing 
 shower — 
 
 ' I have been merry once or twice ere now.' 
 
 " You said something about Mr. Mitford 
 in a late letter, which I believe I did not 
 advert to. I shall be happy to show him my 
 Milton (it is all the show things I have) at 
 any time he will take the trouble of a jaunt 
 to Islington. I do also hope to see Mr. Tayler 
 there some day. Pray say so to both. 
 Coleridge's book is in good part printed, but 
 sticks a little for more copy. It bears an 
 unsaleable title, ' Extracts from Bishop Leigh- 
 ton,' but I am confident there will be plenty 
 of good notes in it. 
 
 "Keep your good spirits up dear B. B., 
 mine will return ; they are at present in 
 abeyance ; but I am rather lethargic tlian 
 misemble. I don't know but a good horse- 
 whip would be more beneficial to me than 
 physic. My head, without aching, will teach 
 yours to ache. It is well I am getting to the 
 conclusion. I will send a better letter when 
 I am a better man. Let me thank you for 
 your kind concern for me, (which I trust will 
 have reason soon to be dissipated,) and 
 
 assure you that it ^ves me pleasure to hear 
 from you. Yours truly. C. L." 
 
 The following sufficiently indicate the 
 circumstances under which they were 
 ■written : — 
 
 TO BERNARD BARTOX. 
 
 "February 25th, 1824. 
 
 "My dear sir, — Your title of 'Poetic 
 Vigils ' arrides me much more than a volume 
 of verse, which has no meaning. The motto 
 says nothing, but I cannot suggest a better. 
 I do not like mottoes, but where they are 
 singtJarly felicitous ; there is foppery in 
 them ; they are un-plain, un-Quakerish ; 
 they are good only where they flow from the 
 title, and are a kind of justification of it. 
 There is nothing about watchings or lucu- 
 brations in the one you suggest, no com- 
 mentary on vigils. By the way, a wag would 
 recommend you to the line of Pope, 
 
 ' Sleepless himself — to give his readers sleep.' 
 
 I by no means wish it ; but it may explain 
 what I mean, — that a neat motto is child of 
 the title. I think ' Poetic Vigils ' as short 
 and sweet as can be desired ; only have an 
 eye on the proof, that the printer do not 
 substitute virgils, which would ill accord 
 with your modesty or meaning. Your 
 suggested motto is antique enough in spelling, 
 and modern enough in phrases, — a good 
 modern antique ; but the matter of it is 
 germain to the purpose, only supposing the 
 title proposed a vindication of yourself from 
 the presumption of authorship. The fii-st 
 title was liable to this objection — that if you 
 were disposed to enlarge it, and the book- 
 seller insisted on its appearance in two tomes, 
 how oddly it would sound, ' A Volume of 
 Vei-se in two Volumes, Second Edition,' &c. 
 You see thro' my wicked intention of cur- 
 tailing this epistolet by the above device of 
 large margin. But in truth the idea of 
 letterising has been oppressive to me of late 
 above your candour to give me credit for. 
 There is Southey, whom I ought to have 
 thanked a fortniglit ago for a present of the 
 ' Church Book : ' I have never had courage 
 to buckle myself in earnest even to acknow- 
 ledge it by six words ; and yet I am accounted 
 by some people a good man. How cheap 
 that character is acquired ! Pay your debU^ 
 
don't borrow money, nor twist your kitten's 
 neck off, or disturb a congregation, &o., your 
 business is done. I know things (thouglits 
 or things, thoughts are things,) of myself, 
 which would make every friend I have fly 
 me as a plague patient. I once * ♦ *j and 
 set a dog upon a crab's leg that was shoved 
 out under a mass of sea-weeds, — a pretty 
 little feeler. Oh ! pah ! how sick I am of 
 that ; and a lie, a mean one, I once told. T 
 stink in the midst of respect. I am much 
 hypt. The fact is, my head is heavy, but 
 there is hope ; or if not, I am better than a 
 poor shell-fish ; not morally, when I set the 
 whelp upon it, but have more blood and 
 spirits. Things may turn up, and I may 
 creep again into a decent opinion of myself. 
 Vanity will return with sunshine. Till when, 
 pardon my neglects, and impute it to the 
 wintry solstice. C. Lamb." 
 
 TO BERNARD BARTON. 
 
 [No date.] 
 
 " Dear B. B., — I am sure I cannot fill a 
 letter, though I should disfurnish my skull to 
 fill it ; but you expect something and shall 
 have a notelet. Is Sunday, not divinely 
 speaking, but humanly and holidaysir-ally, a 
 blessing ? Without its institution, would 
 our rugged taskmasters have given us a 
 leisure day, so often, think you, as once in a 
 month ? or, if it had not been instituted, 
 might they not have given us every sixth 
 day ? Solve me this problem. If we are to 
 go three times a-day to church, why has 
 Sunday slipt into the notion of a kolUday 1 
 A HoLY-day I grant it. The Puritans, I 
 have read in Southey's book, knew the 
 distinction. They made people observe 
 Sunday rigorously, would not let a nursery- 
 maid walk out in the fields with children for 
 recreation on that day. But then — they gave 
 the people a hoUiday from all sorts of work 
 every second Tuesday. This was giving to 
 the two Csesars that which was his respective. 
 Wise, beautiful, thoughtful, generous legis- 
 lators ! Would Wilberforce give us our 
 Tuesdays 1 No ! — he would turn the six 
 days into sevenths, 
 
 And those three smiling seasons of the year 
 Into a Russian winter.' — Old Puiy. 
 
 " I am sitting opposite a person who is 
 making strange distortions with the gout. 
 
 which is not unpleasant — to me at least. 
 What is the reason we do not sympathise 
 with pain, short of some terrible surgical 
 operation ? Hazlitt, who boldly says all he 
 feels, avows that not only he does not pity 
 sick people, but he hates them. I obscurely 
 recognise his meaning. Pain is probably too 
 selfish a consideration, too simply a con- 
 sideration of self-attention. We pity poverty, 
 loss of friends, &c. — more complex things, in 
 which the sufferer's feelings are associated 
 with others. This is a rough thought 
 suggested by the presence of gout ; I want 
 head to extricate it and plane it. What is 
 all this to your letter 1 1 felt it to be a good 
 one, but my turn when I write at all, is 
 perversely to travel out of the record, so that 
 my letters are anji;hing but answers. So 
 you still want a motto ? You must not take 
 my ironical one, because your book, I take 
 it, is too serious for it. Bickerstaff might 
 have used it for his lucubrations. What do 
 you think of (for a title) Religio Tremuli ? 
 or Tremebundi ? There is Eeligio-Medici 
 and Laici. But perhaps the volume is not 
 quite Quakerish enough, or exclusively so, 
 for it. Your own ' Vigils ' is perhaps the 
 best. While I have space, let me congratu- 
 late with you the return of spring, what a 
 summery spring too ! all those qualms about 
 the dog and cray-fish melt before it. I am 
 going to be happy and vain again. 
 
 " A hasty farewell. 
 
 " C. Lamb." 
 
 TO BERNARD BARTON. 
 
 "July 7th, 1824. 
 
 " Dear B. B., — I have been suffering under 
 a severe inflammation of tlie eyes, notwith- 
 standing which I resolutely wont through 
 your very pretty volume at once, which I 
 dare pronounce in no ways inferior to former 
 lucubrations. 'Abroad^ and 'lord' are vile 
 rhymes notwithstanding, and if you count 
 you will wonder how many times you have 
 repeated the word unearthly ; tkrice in one 
 poem. It is become a slang word with the 
 bards ; avoid it in future lustily. * Time ' is 
 fine, but there are better a good deal, I think. 
 The volume does not lie by me ; and, after a 
 long day's smarting fatigue, which has almost 
 put out my eyes (not blind however to your 
 merits), I dai-e not trust myself with long 
 writing. The verses to Bloomfield are the 
 
138 
 
 LETTERS TO BARTON. 
 
 sweetest in the collection. Eeligion is some- 
 times lugged in, as if it did not come natui-ally. 
 I will go over carefully when I get my seeing, 
 and exemplify. You have also too much of 
 singing metre, such as requires no deep ear 
 to make ; lilting measure, in which you have 
 done Woolman injustice. Strike at less 
 superficial melodies. The piece on Nayler is 
 more to my fancy. 
 
 "My eye runs waters. But I will give 
 you a fuller account some day. The book is 
 a very pretty one in more than one sense. 
 The decorative harp, perhaps, too ostenta- 
 tious ; a simple pipe jjreferahle. 
 
 " Farewell, and many thanks. 
 
 " C. Lamb." 
 
 TO BERNARD BARTON. 
 
 " August, 1824. 
 
 " Dear B. B., — I congratulate you on getting 
 a house over your head. I find the comfort 
 of it I am sure. The ' Prometheus,' unbound, 
 is a capital story. The literal rogue ! What 
 if you had ordered ' Elfrida,' in sheets ! she 'd 
 have been sent up, I warrant you. Or bid 
 him clasp his Bible {i. e. to his bosom), he 'd 
 have clapt on a brass clasp, no doubt. 
 
 " I can no more understand Shelley than 
 you can. His poetry is ' thin sown with 
 profit or delight.' Yet I must point to your 
 notice, a sonnet conceived and expressed 
 with a witty delicacy. It is that addressed 
 to one who hated him, but who could not 
 persuade him to hate him again. His coy- 
 ness to the other's passion — (for hate demands 
 a return as much as love, and starves without 
 it) — is most arch and pleasant. Pray, like it 
 very much. For his theories and nostrums, 
 they are oracular enough, but I either com- 
 prehend 'em not, or there is'miching malice' 
 and mischief in 'em, but, for the most jtart, 
 ringing with their owni emptiness. Hazlitt 
 said well of 'em — ' ]SIany are the wiser and 
 better for reading Shakspeare, but nobody 
 was ever wiser or better for reading Shelley.' 
 I wonder you will sow your correspondence 
 on so barren a ground as I am, that make 
 •iuch poor returns. But my head aches at 
 the bare thought of letter-writiug. . I wish 
 all the ink in the ocean dried up, and would 
 listen to the quills shivering up in the candle 
 flame, like parching martyrs. The same 
 indisposition to write it is has stopt my 
 'Elias,' but you will see a futile effort in the 
 
 next number, 'wrung from me with slow 
 pain.' The fact is, my head is seldom cool 
 enough. I am dreadfully indolent. To have 
 to do anything — to order me a new coat, for 
 instance, though my old buttons are slielled 
 like beans — is an efi"ort. My pen stammers 
 like my tongue. What cool craniums those 
 old inditers of folios must have had, what a 
 mortified pulse ! Well ; once more I throw 
 myself on yo\ir mercy. Wishing peace in 
 thy new dwelling, C. Lamb." 
 
 'Mr. Barton, having requested of Lamb 
 some verses for his daughter's album, 
 received the following with the accompanying 
 letter beneath, on 30th September in this 
 year. Surely the neat loveliness of female 
 Quakerism never received before so delicate 
 a compliment ! 
 
 "TUE ALBUM OF LUCY BARTOX. 
 
 Little book, suniamed of white. 
 Clean as yet, and fair to sight. 
 Keep thy attribution right. 
 
 Never disproportion^ scra'wl, 
 Ugly, old, {that's worse than all,) 
 Ou thy maiden clearness fall ! 
 
 In each letter here desigu'd, 
 Let the reader emblem find 
 Neatness of the owner's mind. 
 
 Gilded margins count a sin ; 
 Let thy leaves attraction win 
 By the golden rules within ; 
 
 Sayings fetch'd from sages old ; 
 Laws which Holy Writ unfold, 
 ■Worthy to be graved in gold : 
 
 Lighter fancies ; not excluding 
 Blanu'Icss wit, with nothing rude in. 
 Sometimes mildly interluding 
 
 Amid strains of graver measure : 
 Virtue's self hath oft her pleasure 
 In sweet Muses' groves of leisure. 
 
 Kiddles dark, perplcxini? sense ; 
 
 Darker meanings of offence ; 
 
 Wliut but shades — be banish'd hence ! 
 
 Whitest thoughts, in whitest dress, 
 Candid meanings best express 
 Mind of quiet Quakeress." 
 
 TO BERNARD BARTON. 
 
 " Dear B. B., — ' I am ill at these numbers ;' 
 but if the above be not too mean to have a 
 place in thy daughter's sanctum, take them 
 with pleasure. 
 
 " I began ou another sheet of paper, and 
 just as I had penned the second line of 
 stanza two, an ugly blot fell, to illustrate 
 
my counsel. I am sadly given to blot, and 
 modern blotting-paper gives no redress ; it 
 only smears, and makes it worse. The only 
 remedy is scratching out, which gives it a 
 clerkish look. The most innocent blots are 
 made with red ink, and are rather orna- 
 mentid. Many, they are not always to be 
 distinguished from the effusions of a cut 
 finger. Well, I hope and trust thy tick 
 doleru, or, however you spell it, is vanished, 
 for I have frightful impressions of that tick, 
 and do altogetlier hate it, as an unpaid score, 
 or the tick of a death-watch. I take it to be 
 a species of Vitus's dance (I omit the sanctity, 
 writing to ' one of the men called friends'). 
 I knew a young lady who could dance no 
 other ; she danced it through life, and very 
 queer and fantastic were her steps. 
 
 " Heaven bless thee from such measui'es, 
 and keep thee from the foul fiend, who 
 delights to lead after false fires in the night. 
 Flibbertigibbet, that gives the web, and I 
 forget what else. 
 
 " From my den, as Bunyan has it, 30th. 
 Sep. 1824. C. L." 
 
 Here is a humorous expostulation with 
 Coleridge for carrying away a book from the 
 cottage, in the absence of its inmates. 
 
 TO MR. COLERIDGE. 
 
 [No date.] 
 " Dear C, — Why will you make your 
 visits, which should give pleasure, matter of 
 regret to your friends ? you never come but 
 you take away some folio, that is part of my 
 existence. With a great deal of difficulty I 
 was made to comprehend the extent of my 
 loss. My maid, Becky, brought me a dirty 
 bit of paper, which contained her description 
 of some book which Mr. Coleridge had taken 
 away. It was 'Luster's Tables,' which, for 
 some time, I could not make out. ' What ! 
 has he carried away any of the tables, Becky ? ' 
 * No, it wasn't any tables, but it was a book 
 that he called Luster's Tables.' I was obligcjd 
 to search personally among my shelves, and 
 a huge fissure suddenly disclosed to me the 
 true nature of the damage I had sustained. 
 That book, C, you should not have taken 
 away, for it is not mine, it is the property of 
 a friend, who does not know its value, nor 
 indeed have I been very sedulous in explain- 
 
 ing to him the estimate of it ; but was 
 i-ather contented in giving a sort of corrobo- 
 ration to a hint that he let fall, as to its 
 being suspected to ])e not genuine, so that in 
 all probability it would have fallen to me as 
 a deodand, not but I am as sure it is Luther's, 
 as I am sure that Jack Bunyan wrote the 
 ' Pilgrim's Progress,' but it was not for me to 
 pronounce upon the validity of testimony 
 that had been disputed by learneder clerks 
 than I, so I quietly let it occupy the place it 
 had usurped upon my shelves, and should 
 never have thought of issuing an ejectment 
 against it ; for why should I be so bigoted 
 as to allow rites of hospitality to none but 
 my own books, children, &c. ? — a species of 
 egotism I abhor from my heart. No ; let 
 'em all snug together, Hebrews and Pi'os- 
 elytes of the gate ; no selfish partiality of 
 mine shall make distinction between them ; 
 I charge no warehouse-room for my friends' 
 commodities ; they are welcome to come and 
 stay as long as they like, without paying rent. 
 I have several such strangers that I treat 
 with more than Arabian courtesy ; there 's 
 a cojjy of More's fine poem, which is none of 
 mine, but I cherish it as my own ; I am none 
 of those churlish landlords that advertise 
 the goods to be taken away in ten days' 
 time, or then to be sold to pay expenses. So 
 you see I had no right to lend you that 
 book ; I may lend you my own books, 
 because it is at my own hazard, but it is not 
 honest to hazard a friend's property ; I 
 always make that distinction. I hope you 
 will bring it with you, or send it by Hartley ; 
 or he can bring that, and you the ' Polemical 
 Discourses,' and come and eat some atoning 
 mutton with us one of these days shortly. 
 We are engaged two or three Sundays deep, 
 but always dine at home on week-days at 
 half-past four. So come all four — men and 
 books I mean — my third shelf (northern 
 compartment) from the top has two devilish 
 gaps, where you have knocked out its two 
 eye-teeth. 
 
 " Your wronged friend, 
 
 " C. Lamb." 
 
 The following preface to a letter, addressed 
 to Miss Hutchinson, Mrs. Wordsworth's 
 sister, playing on the pretended defects of 
 Miss Lamb's handwriting, is one of those 
 artifices of affection which, not finding scope 
 
188 
 
 LETTERS TO MISS HUTCHINSON AND BARTON. 
 
 in eulogistic epithets, take refuge in apparent 
 abuse. Lamb himself, at this time, wrote a 
 singularly neat hand, having greatly improved 
 in the India House, where he also learned to 
 flourish, — a facility he took a piide in, and 
 sometimes indulged ; but his flourishes 
 (wherefore it would be too curious to inquire) 
 almost always shaped themselves into a 
 visionary corkscrew, " never made to draw." 
 
 TO MISS HUTCHINSON. 
 
 " Dear Miss H., — Mary has such an invin- 
 cible reluctance to any epistolary exertion, 
 that I am sparing her a mortification by 
 taking the pen from her. The plain truth 
 is, she writes such a pimping, mean, detestable 
 hand, that she is ashamed of the formation 
 of her letters. There is an essential poverty 
 and abjectness in the frame of them. They 
 look like begging letters. And then she is 
 sure to omit a most substantial word in the 
 second draught (for she never ventures an 
 epistle without a foul copy first), which is 
 obliged to be interlined ; which spoils the 
 neatest epistle, you know. Her figures, 
 1, 2, 3, 4, &c., where she has occasion to 
 express numerals, as in the date (25th April, 
 1823), are not figures, but figurantes ; and 
 the combined posse go staggering up and 
 down shameless, as drunkards in the day- 
 time. It is no better when she rules her 
 paper. Her Lines ' are not less erring ' than 
 her words. A sort of unnatural parallel 
 lines, that are perpetually threatening to 
 meet ; which, you know, is quite contrary to 
 Euclid. Her very blots are not bold like 
 this [here a large blot is inserted], but poor 
 smears, half left in and half scratched out, 
 with another smear left in their jjlace. I 
 like a clear letter. A bold free hand, and a 
 fearless flourish. Then she has always to go 
 through them (a second operation) to dot her 
 i's, and cross her t'a. I don't think she can 
 make a corkscrew if she ti-ied, which has 
 such a fine efl'ect at the end or middle of an 
 epistle, and fills up. 
 
 " There is a corkscrew ! One of tlic best 
 I ever drew. By the way, what incomparable 
 whisky that was of M.'s ! But if I am to 
 write a letter, let me begin, and not stand 
 flourishing, like a fencer at a fair. 
 
 " It gives me great pleasure, &c. &c. &c. 
 
 [The letter now bpRins.] 
 
 What a strange mingling of humour and 
 solemn truth is there in the following 
 reflection on Fauntleroy's fate, in a letter 
 addressed to Bernard Barton ? 
 
 TO BERNARD BARTON. 
 
 "Dec. 1st, 1824. 
 
 " And now, my dear sir, trifling apart, the 
 gloomy catastrophe of yesterday morning 
 prompts a sadder vein. The fate of the 
 unfortunate Faimtleroy makes me, whether 
 I will or no, to cast reflecting eyes around on 
 such of my friends as, by a parity of situa- 
 tion, are exposed to a similarity of tempta- 
 tion. My very style seems to myself to 
 become more impressive than usual, with the 
 change of theme. Who that standeth, 
 knoweth but he may yet fall ? Your hands 
 as yet, I am most willing- to believe, have 
 never deviated into other's property. You 
 think it impossible that you could ever 
 commit so heinous an offence ; but so thought 
 Fauntleroy once ; so have thought many 
 besides him, who at last have expiated as he 
 hath done. You are as yet upright ; but you 
 are a banker, at least the next thing to it. 
 I feel the delicacy of the subject ; but cash 
 must pass through your hands, sometimes to 
 a great amount. If in an unguarded hour 
 •but I will hope better. Consider the 
 
 scandal it will brhig upon those of your 
 persuasion. Thousands would go to see a 
 Quaker hanged, that would be indifferent to 
 the fate of a Presbyterian or an Anabaptist. 
 Think of the effect it would have on the sale 
 of your poems alone, not to mention higher 
 considerations ! I tremble, I am sure, at 
 myself, when I think that so many poor 
 victims of the law, at one time of their life, 
 made as sure of never being hanged, as I in 
 my presumption am too ready to do myself. 
 What are we better than they ? Do we 
 come into the world with ditlorent necks ? 
 Is there any distinctive mark under our left 
 ears 1 Are we unstrangulable, I ask you ? 
 Think of these things. I am shocked some- 
 times at the shape of my own fingers, not 
 for their resemblance to the ape tribe (which 
 is something), but for the exquisite ailaptation 
 of them to the purposes of picking, fuigenng, 
 &c. No one that is so framed, I maintain it, 
 but should tremble. C. L." 
 
 In the year 1824, one of Lamb's last ties 
 
to the theatre, as a scene of present enjoy- 
 ment, was severed. Mimden, the rich 
 peculiarities of whose acting he has embahned 
 in one of the choicest " Essays of Elia," 
 quitted the stage in the mellowness of his 
 powers. His relish for Munden's acting was 
 almost a new sense ; he did not compare him 
 with the old comedians, as having common 
 qualities with them, but regarded him as 
 altogether of a different and original style. 
 On the last night of his appearance. Lamb 
 was very desirous to attend, but every place 
 in the boxes had long been secured ; and 
 Lamb was not strong enough to stand the 
 tremendous rush, by enduring which, alone, 
 he could hope to obtain a place in the pit ; 
 when Mimden's gratitude for his exquisite 
 praise anticipated his wish, by providing for 
 him and Miss Lamb places in a corner of 
 the orchestra, close to the stage. The play 
 of the " Poor Gentleman," in which Munden 
 played " Sir Robert Bramble," had concluded, 
 and the audience were impatiently waiting 
 for the farce, in which the great comedian 
 was to delight them for the last time, when 
 my attention was suddenly called to Lainb 
 by Miss Kelly, who sat with my party far 
 withdrawn into the obscurity of one of the 
 upper boxes, but overlooking the radiant 
 hollow which waved below us, to our friend. 
 In his hand, directly beneath the line of stage- 
 lights, glistened a huge porter-pot, which he 
 was draining ; while the broad face of old 
 Munden was seen thrust out from the door 
 by which the musicians enter, watching the 
 close of the draught, when he might receive 
 and hide the portentous beaker from the 
 gaze of the admiring neighbours. Some 
 unknown benefactor had sent four pots of 
 stout to keep up the veteran's heai't during 
 his last trial ; and, not able to drink them 
 all, he bethought him of Lamb, and without 
 considering the wonder which would be 
 excited in the brilliant crowd who surrounded 
 him, conveyed himself the cordial chalice to 
 Iamb's parched lips. At the end of the 
 same farce, Munden found himself unable to 
 deliver from memory a short and elegant 
 address which one of his sons had written 
 for him ; but, provided against accidents, 
 took it from his pocket, wiped his eyes, put 
 on his spectacles, read it, and made his last 
 bow. This was, perhaps, the last night when 
 liamb took a hearty interest in the present 
 
 business scene ; for though he went now and 
 then to the theatre to gratify Miss Isola, or 
 to please an author who was his friend, his 
 real stage henceforth only spread itself out 
 in the selectest chambers of his memory. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 [1825.] 
 
 lamb's emancipation prom the INDIA HOUSE. 
 
 The year 1825 is marked by one of the 
 principal events in Lamb's uneventful life — 
 his retirement from the drudgery of the 
 desk, with a pension equal to two-thirds of 
 his now liberal salary. The following letters 
 vividly exhibit his hopes and his apprehen- 
 sions before he received this noble boon from 
 the East India Company, and his bewilder- 
 ment of pleasure when he found himself in 
 reality free. He has recorded his feelings iu 
 one of the most beautiful of his " Last 
 Essays of Elia," entitled " The Superannuated 
 Man ; " but it will be interesting to contem- 
 plate them, " living as they rose," in the 
 unstudied letters to which this chapter is 
 devoted. 
 
 A New Series of the London Magazine 
 was commenced with this year, in an in- 
 creased size and price ; but the spirit of the 
 work had evaporated, as often happens to 
 periodical works, as the store of rich fancies 
 with which its contributors had begun, was 
 in a measure exhausted. Lamb contributed 
 a "Memoir of Liston," who occasionally 
 enlivened Lamb's evening parties with his 
 society ; and who, besides tlie interest which 
 he derived from his theatrical fame, was 
 recommended to Lamb by the cordial admi- 
 ration he expressed fur Munden, whom he 
 used to imitate in a style deliglitfully blend- 
 ing his own humour witli th:>t of his sometime 
 I'ival. The " Memoir " is altogether a fiction 
 — of whicli, as Lamb did not think it worthy 
 of republication, I will only give a specimen. 
 After a ludicrously improbable account of 
 his hero's pedigree, birth, and early habits, 
 Lamb thus represents his entrance on the 
 life of an actor. 
 
 "We accordingly find him shortly aft r 
 making his debut, as it is called, upon the 
 
140 
 
 LETTERS TO BARTOX. 
 
 Norwich boards, in the season of that year, 
 being then in the 22nd year of his age. 
 Having a natural bent to tragedy, he chose 
 the part of ' Pjrrhus,' in the * Distrest 
 Mother,' to Sally Parker's * Hermione.' We 
 find him afterwards lus 'Barnwell,' ' Alta- 
 mont,' ' Chrimont,' &c. ; but, as if nature had 
 destined him to the sock, an unavoidable 
 infirmity absolutely discapacitated him for 
 tragedy. His person at this latter period of 
 which I have been speaking, was graceful, 
 and even commanding ; his countenance set 
 to gravity ; he had the power of arresting 
 the attention of an audience at first sight 
 almost beyond any other ti-agic actor. But 
 he could not hold it. To understand this 
 obstacle, we must go back a few years, to 
 those appalling reveries at Charnwood. 
 Those illusions, which had vanished before i 
 the dissipation of a less recluse life, and more I 
 free society, now in his solitary tragic studies, 
 and amid the intense calls upon feeling 
 incident to tragic acting, came back upon him 
 with tenfold vividness. In the midst of some 
 most pathetic passage — the parting of Jaffier | 
 with his dying friend, for instance — he would 
 suddenly be sui'prised with a fit of violent j 
 horse laughter. While the spectators were! 
 all sobbing before him with emotion, suddenly ] 
 one of those grotesque faces would peep out 
 upon him, and he could not resist the 
 impulse. A timely excuse once or twice 
 served his purpose, but no audiences could be 
 expected to bear repeatedly this violation of 
 the continuity of feeling. He describes 
 them (the illusions) as so many demons 
 haunting liim, and paralysing every efiFort. 
 Even now, I am told, he cannot recite the 
 famous soliloquy in Hamlet, even in private, 
 without immoderate bursts of laughter. 
 However, what he had not force of reason 
 sufficient to overcome, he had good sense 
 enough to turn to emolument, and determined 
 to make a commodity of his distemper. He 
 prudently exchanged the buskin for the sock, 
 and the illusions instantly ceased, or, if they 
 occurred for a short season, by their very 
 co-operation, added a zest to his comic vein ; 
 some of his most catching faces being (as he 
 expresses it) little more than transcripts and 
 copies of those extraordinary phantasmata." 
 
 He completed his half century on the day 
 Wh&a he addreaaed the following letter 
 
 TO BERNARD BARTON. 
 
 "February 1"*^, 1825. 
 
 " Dear B. B.,— The ' Spirit of the Age ' is 
 by Hazlitt, the characters of Coleridge, &c. 
 he had done better in former publications, 
 the praise and the abuse much stronger, &c., 
 but the new ones are capitally done. Home 
 Tooke is a matchless portrait. My advice is, 
 to borrow it rather than buy it. I have it. 
 He has laid too many colours on my like- 
 ness ; but I have had so much injustice done 
 me in my own name, that T make a rule of 
 accepting as much over-measure to Elia as 
 gentlemen think proper to bestow. Lay it 
 on and spare not. Your gentleman brother 
 sets my mouth a-watering after liberty. Oh 
 that I were kicked out of Leadeuhall with 
 evtry mark of indignity, and a competence in 
 my fob. The birds of the air would not be 
 60 free as I should. How I would prance 
 and curvet it, and pick up cowslips, and 
 ramble about purposeless, as an idiot ! The 
 author-mometer is a good fancy. I have 
 caused great speculation in the dramatic (not 
 t/iT/) world by a lying 'Life of Liston,' all 
 pure invention. The town has swallowed it, 
 and it is copied into newspapers, play-bills, 
 &c., as authentic. You do not know the Droll, 
 and possibly missed reading the article (in 
 our first number, new series). A life more 
 improbable for him to have lived would not 
 be easily invented. But your rebuke, coupled 
 with ' Dream on J. Bunyan,' checks me. I'd 
 rather do more in my favourite way, but feel 
 dry. I must laugh sometimes. I am poor 
 Hypochondriacus, and 7iot Liston. 
 
 " I have been harassed more than usually 
 at office, which has stopt my correspondence 
 lately. I write with a confused aching head, 
 and you must accept tliis apology for a letter. 
 
 " I will do something soon, if I can, as a 
 peace-olferiug to the queen of the East 
 Angles — something she shan't scold about. 
 For the present farewell. 
 
 "Thine, C. L." 
 
 "I am fifty years old this day. Druik my 
 health." 
 
 EYeedom now gleamed on him, and ho 
 became reatlesfi with the api)roach of dclivtw- 
 ance. 
 
LETTER TO WORDSWORTH. 
 
 141 
 
 TO BERNARD BARTON. 
 
 "March 23rd, 1825. 
 
 " Dear B. B., — I have had no impulse to 
 write, or attend to any single object but 
 myself for weeks past — my single self, I by 
 myself — I, I am sick of hope defeiTed. The 
 grand wheel is in agitation, that is to turn 
 up my fortune ; but round it rolls, and will 
 turn up nothing. I have a glimpse of freedom, 
 of becoming a gentleman at large ; biit I am 
 put off from day to day. I have offered my 
 resignation, and it is neither accepted nor 
 rejected. Eight weeks am I kept in this 
 feai*ful suspense. Guess what an absorbing 
 stake I feel it. I am not conscious of the 
 existence of friends present or absent. The 
 East India Directors alone can be that thing 
 to me or not. I have just learned that 
 nothing will be decided this week. "Why 
 the next 1 Why any week 1 It has fretted 
 me into an itch of the fingers ; I rub 'em 
 against paper, and write to you, rather than 
 not allay this scorbuta. 
 
 " While I can write, let me abjure you to 
 
 have no doubts of Irving. Let Mr. M 
 
 drop his disrespect. Irving has prefixed a 
 dedication (of a missionary subject, first part) 
 to Coleridge, the most beautiful, cordial, and 
 sincere. He there acknowledges his obliga- 
 tion to S. T. C. for his knowledge of Gospel 
 truths, the nature of a Christian Church, &c., 
 to the talk of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (at 
 whose Gamaliel feet he sits weekly), rather 
 than to that of all the men living. This from 
 him, the great dandled and petted sectarian 
 — to a religious character so equivocal in the 
 world's eye as that of S. T. C, so foreign to 
 the Kirk's estimate — can this man be a 
 quack ? The language is as affecting as the 
 spirit of the dedication. Some friend told 
 him, ' This dedication will do you no good,' 
 i.e., not in the world's repute, or with your 
 own people. * That is a reason for doing it,' 
 quoth Irving. 
 
 " I am thoroughly pleased with him. He 
 is firm, out-speakiiig, intrepid, and docile as 
 a pupil of Pythagoras. You must like him. 
 " Yours, in tremors of painful hope, 
 
 " C. Lamb." 
 
 These tremors of painful hope were soon 
 changed into certain joy. The following. 
 
 letters contain his own expressions of delight 
 on his deliverance, as conveyed to several of 
 his dearest friends. In the first his happiness 
 is a little checked by the death of Mr. Monk- 
 house, a relation of Mrs. Wordsworth, who 
 had gi-adually won Lamb's affections, and 
 who nobly deserved them. 
 
 TO MR. WORDSWORTH. 
 "Colebrook Cottage, 6th April, 1825. 
 
 " Dear Wordsworth, — I have been several 
 times meditating a letter to you concerning 
 the good thing which has befallen me, but 
 the thought of poor Monkhouse came across 
 me. He was one that I had exulted in the 
 prospect of congi-atulating me. He and you 
 were to have been the first participators, for 
 indeed it has been ten weeks since the first 
 motion of it. Here am I then, after thirty- 
 three years' slavery, sitting in my own room 
 at eleven o'clock this finest of all April 
 mornings, a freed man, with 441 ^. a year for 
 the remainder of my life, live I as long as 
 John Dennis, who outlived his annuity and 
 starved at ninety: 441^., i. e., 450^., with a 
 deduction of 91. for a provision secured to 
 my sister, she being survivor, the pension 
 guaranteed by Act Georgii Tertii, &c. 
 
 "I came home for ever on Tuesday in 
 last week. The incomprehensibleness of my 
 condition overwhelmed me. It was like 
 passing from life into eternity. Every year 
 to be as long as three, i. e., to have three 
 times as much real time — time that is my 
 own, in it ! I wandered about thinking I 
 was happy, but feeling I was not. But that 
 tumultuousness is passing off, and I begin to 
 understand the nature of the gift. Plolydays, 
 even tlie annual month, were always uneasy 
 joys ; their conscious fugitiveness ; the craving 
 after making the most of them. Now, when 
 all is holyday, there are no holydays. I can 
 sit at home, in rain or shine, without a rest- 
 less impulse for walkings. I am daily steady- 
 ing, and shall soon find it as natural to me 
 to be my own master, as it has been irksome 
 to have had a master. !Mary wakes every 
 morning with an obscure feiling that some 
 good has happened to us. 
 
 " and , after their I'eleasements, 
 
 describe the shock of their emancipation much 
 as I feel mine. But it hurt their frames. I 
 eat, drink, and sleep sound as ever. I lay 
 
142 
 
 LETTERS TO BARTON AND MISS HUTCHINSON. 
 
 no anxious schemes for going hitlier and 
 thither, but take tilings as they occur. Yes- 
 terday I excursioned twenty miles ; to-day 
 I write a few letters. Pleasuring was for 
 fugitive play-days, mine are fugitive only in 
 the sense that life is fugitive. Freedom and 
 life co-existent ! 
 
 " At the foot of such a call upon you for 
 gratulation, I am ashamed to advert to that 
 melancholy event. Moukhouse was a cha- 
 racter I learned to love slowly, but it grew 
 upon me, yearly, monthly, daily. What a 
 chasm has it made in our pleasant parties ! 
 His noble friendly face was always coming 
 before me, till this hun-ying event in my life 
 came, and for the time has absorbed all 
 interest ; in fact it has shaken me a little. 
 My old desk companions, with whom I have 
 had such merry hours, seem to repi'oach me 
 for removing my lot fi'om among them. 
 They were pleasant creatures ; but to the 
 anxieties of business, and a weight of possible 
 worse ever impending, I was not equal. 
 Indeed this last winter I was jaded out — 
 winters were always worse than other parts 
 of the year, because the spirits are worse, and 
 I had no day-light. In summer I had day- 
 light evenings. The relief was hinted to me 
 from a superior power when I, poor slave, 
 had not a hope but that I must wait another 
 seven years with Jacob — and lo ! the Eachel 
 which I coveted is brought to me. 
 
 "Have you read the noble dedication of 
 Irving's 'Missionaiy Orations' to S. T. C. 
 "Who shall call this man a quack hereafter 1 
 What the Kirk will think of it neither I nor 
 Irving care. When somebody suggested to 
 him that it would not be likely to do him 
 good, videlicet, among his own people, ' That 
 is a reason for doing it,' was his noble 
 answer. That Irving thinks he has profited 
 mainly by S. T. C, I have no doubt. The 
 very style of the Dedication shows it. 
 
 " Communicate my news to Southey, and 
 beg his pardon for my being so long acknow- 
 ledging his kind present of the ' Church,' 
 which circumstances, having no reference to 
 himself, prevented at the time. Assure him 
 of my deep respect and friendliest feelings. 
 
 " Divide the same, or rather each take the 
 whole to you — I mean you and all yours. 
 To Miss Hutchinson I must write st'parate. 
 
 " Farewell ! and end at last, long selfish 
 letter ! C. Lamb." 
 
 TO BERNARD BARTON. 
 
 "April, 1825. 
 
 " Dear B. B. — My spirits are so tumultuary 
 with the novelty of my recent emancipation, 
 that I have scarce steadiness of hand, much 
 more mind, to compose a letter. I am free, 
 B. B. — free as air ! 
 
 ' Th"^ little bird that wings the sky 
 Knows no such liberty.' 
 
 I was set free on Tuesday in last week at 
 four o'clock. I came home for ever ! 
 
 " I have been describing my feelings as 
 well as I can to Wordsworth in a long letter, 
 and don't care to repeat. Take it briefly, 
 that for a few days I was painfully oppressed 
 by so mighty a change, but it is becoming 
 daily more natural to me. I went and sat 
 among 'em all at my old thirty-three-years' 
 desk yester morning ; and, deuce take me, 
 if I had not yearnings at leaving all my old 
 pen-and-ink fellows, merry, sociable lads, at 
 leaving them in the lurch, fag, fag, fag ! — 
 The comparison of my own superior felicity 
 gave me an}'thing but pleasure. 
 
 " B. B., I would not serve another seven 
 years for seven hundred thousand pounds ! 
 I have got 441^. net for life, sanctioned by 
 act of parliament, with a provision for Mary 
 if she survives me. I will live another fifty 
 years ; or, if I live but ten, they will be 
 thirty, reckoning the quantity of real time 
 in them, i.e. the time that is a man's own. 
 Tell me how you like ' Barbara S.* ; ' will it 
 be received in atonement for the foolish 
 * Vision ' — I mean by the lady 1 A-propos, I 
 never saw Mrs. Crawford in my life ; never- 
 theless it's all true of somebody. 
 
 "Address me, in future, Colebrook- 
 cottage, Islington. I am really nervous (but 
 that will wear off), so take this brief 
 announcement. 
 
 " Yours truly, C. L." 
 
 TO MISS HUTCHINSON. 
 
 ".April 18th, 1825. 
 
 " Dear Miss Hutchinson, — You want to 
 know all about my gaol delivery. Take it 
 then. About twelve weeks since I had a sort 
 
 • The true heroine of this benutiful story is still 
 living, thoiiifh shi; bus left the stage. It is enou(;h to 
 mnlie a sevcret <iu;iker than B. B. feel " thiit there ik 
 some soul of goodness " in players. 
 
LETTER TO SOUTHEY. 
 
 US 
 
 of intimation that a resignation might be 
 well accepted from me. This was a kind 
 bird's whisper. On that hint I spake. 
 G and T furnished me with certifi- 
 cates of wasted health and sore spiiits — not 
 much more than the truth, I promise you — 
 and for nine weeks I was kept in a fright. 
 I had gone too far to recede, and they might 
 take advantage, and dismiss me with a much 
 less sum than I had reckoned on. However, 
 liberty came at last, with a hberal provision. 
 I have given up wliat I could have lived on 
 in the country ; but have enough to live 
 here, by management and scribbling occa- 
 sionally. I would not go back to my prison 
 for seven years longer for 10,000^. a year — 
 seven years after one is fifty, is no trifle to 
 give up. Still I am a young pensioner, and 
 have served but thirty-three years ; very 
 few, I assure you, retire before forty, foi-ty- 
 five, or fifty years' service. 
 
 "You will ask how I bear my freedom ? 
 Faith, for some days I was staggered ; could 
 not comprehend the magnitude of my deliv- 
 erance ; was confused, giddy ; knew not 
 whether I was on my head or my heel, as 
 they say. But those giddy feelings have 
 gone away, and my weather-glass stands at a 
 degree or two above 
 
 " I go about quiet, and have none of that 
 restless hunting after recreation, which made 
 holydays formerly imeasy joys. All being 
 holydays, I feel as if I had none, as they do 
 in heaven, where 'tis all red-letter days. I 
 have a kind letter from the Wordsworths, 
 congratulatory not a little. It is a damp, I 
 do assure you, amid all my prospects, that I 
 can receive none from a quarter upon which 
 T had calculated, almost more than from any, 
 upon receiving congratulations. I had grown 
 to like poor Monkliouse more and more. I 
 do not esteem a soul living or not li'ving more 
 warmly than I had grown to esteem and 
 value him. But words are vain. We have 
 none of us to count upon many years. That 
 is the only cure for sad thoughts. If only 
 some died, and the rest were permanent on 
 earth, what a thing a friend's death would 
 be tlien I 
 
 " I must take leave, having put off answer- 
 ing a load of letters to this morning, and this 
 
 alas ! is the first. Our kindest remembrances 
 to Mrs. Monkhouse, 
 
 " And believe us yours most truly, 
 "C. Lamb." 
 
 In this summer Lamb and his sister paid 
 a long visit to Enfield, which induced their 
 removing thither some time afterwards. 
 The following letter is addi-essed thence, 
 
 TO MR. SOUTHEY, 
 
 "August 19th, 1825. 
 
 "Dear Southey, — ^You'll know who this 
 letter comes from by opening slap-dash upon 
 the text, as in the good old times. I never 
 could come into the custom of envelopes ; 
 'tis a modern foppery; the Plinian corres- 
 pondence gives no hint of such. In single- 
 ness of sheet and meaning, then, I thank you 
 for your little book. I am ashamed to add 
 a codicil of thanks for your ' Book of the 
 Church.' I scarce feel competent to give an 
 opinion of the latter ; I have not i-eadiug 
 enough of that kind to venture at it. I can 
 only say the fact, that I have read it with 
 attention and interest. Being, as you know, 
 not quite a Churchman, I felt a jealousy at 
 the Church taking to herself the whole 
 deserts of Christianity, Catholic and Pro- 
 testant, from Druid extirpation downwards. 
 I caU all good Christians the Church, Capilla- 
 rians and all. But I am in too light a 
 humour to touch these matters. May all 
 our churches flourish ! Two things staggered 
 me in the poem, (and one of them staggered 
 both of us), I cannot away with a beautiful 
 series of vei-ses, as I protest they are, com- 
 mencing ' Jenner.' 'Tis like a choice banquet 
 opened with a pill or an electuary — physic 
 stuff. T'other is, we cannot make out how 
 Edith should be no more than ten years old. 
 By'r Lady, we had taken her to be some 
 sixteen or upwards. We suppose you have 
 only chosen the round number for the metre. 
 Or poem and dedication may be both older 
 than they pretend to ; but then some hint 
 might have been given ; for, as it stands, it 
 may only serve some day to puzzle the parish 
 reckoning. But without inquiring further, 
 (for 'tis ungracious to look into a lady's yeai-s,) 
 the dedication is evidently pleasing and 
 tender, and we wish Edith Llay Southey joy 
 of it. Something, too, struck us as if we had 
 heard of the death of John M;iy. A John 
 
144 
 
 LETTER TO SOUTHEY. 
 
 May's death was a few years since in the 
 papers. We think the tale one of the 
 quietest, prettiest things we liave seen. You 
 have been temperate in the use of localities, 
 which generally spoil poems laid in exotic 
 regions. You mostly cannot stir out (in such 
 things) for humming-birds and fire-flies. A 
 tree is a ISIagnolia, &c. — Can I but like the 
 truly Catholic spirit ? ' Blame as thou 
 raayest the Papist's erring creed ' — which, 
 and other passages, brought me back to the 
 old Anthology days, and the admonitory 
 lesson to ' Dear George ' on ' The Vesper 
 Bell,' a little poem which retains its first hold 
 upon me strangely. 
 
 " The compliment to the translatress is 
 daintily conceived. Nothing is choicer in 
 that sort of wi-iting than to bring in some 
 remote, impossible parallel, — as between a 
 great empress and the inobtrusive quiet soul 
 who digged her noiseless way so perseveringly 
 through that rugged Paraguay mine. How 
 she Dobrizhoff'ered it all out, it puzzles my 
 slender Latinity to conjecture. Why do you 
 seem to sanction Landor's unfeeling allegor- 
 ising away of honest Quixote ! He may as 
 well say Strap is meant to symbolise the 
 Scottish nation before the Union, and Random 
 since that act of dubious issue ; or that 
 Partridge means the Mystical Man, and Lady 
 Bellaston typifies the Woman upon Many 
 Waters. Gebir, indeed, may mean the state 
 of the hop markets last month, for anything 
 I know to the contrary. That all Spain 
 overflowed with romancical books (as Madge 
 Newcastle calls them) was no reason that 
 Cervantes slwuld not smile at the matter of 
 them ; nor even a reason that, in another 
 mood, he might not multiply them, deeply as 
 he was tinctured with the essence of them. 
 Quixote is the father of gentle ridicule, and i 
 at the same time the very depository and 
 treasury of chivalry and highest notions. 
 Marry, when somebody persuaded Cervantes 
 that he meant only fun, and put him upon 
 writing that unfortunate Second Part with 
 the confederacies of that unworthy duke aud 
 most contemptible duchess, Cervantes sacri- 
 ficed his instinct to his understanding. 
 
 " We got yuur little book but last night, 
 being at Eutiekl, to which place we came 
 about a month since, and are having quiet 
 holydays. Mary walks her twelve miles a 
 day some day.s, aud I my twenty on others. 
 
 'Tis all holiday with me now, you know. 
 The change works admirably. 
 
 " For hterary news, in my poor way, I 
 have a one-act farce going to be acted at 
 Haymai'ket ; but when ? is the question. 
 'Tis an extravaganza, and like enough to 
 follow Mr. H. ' The London Magazine ' has 
 shifted its publishers once more, and I shall 
 shift myself out of it. It is fallen. Mj 
 ambition is not at present higher than to 
 write nonsense for the playhouses, to eke out 
 a something contracted income. Tempus erat. 
 There was a time, my dear Cornwallis, when 
 the Muse, &c. But I am now in Mac 
 Fleckno's predicament, — 
 
 ' Promised a play, and dwindled to a farce.' 
 
 " Coleridge is better (was, at least, a few 
 weeks since) than he has been for years. His 
 accomplishing his book at last has been a 
 source of vigour to him. We are on a half 
 visit to his friend Allsop. at a Mrs.Leishman's, 
 Enfield, but expect to be at Colebrook- 
 cottage in a week or so, where, or anywhere, 
 I shall be always most happy to receive 
 tidings from you. G. Dyer is in the height 
 of an uxorious paradise. His honeymoon 
 will not wane till he wax cold. Never was 
 a more happy pair, since Acme and Septimius, 
 and longer. Farewell, with many thanks, 
 dear S. Our loves to all round your 
 Wrekin. Your old friend, 
 
 " C. Lamb." 
 
 The farce referred to in this letter was 
 founded on Lamb's essay " On the Inconveni- 
 ence of being Hanged." It was, perhaps, too 
 slight for the stage, and never was honoured 
 by a trial ; but was ultimately published in 
 " Blackwood's Majiaziue." 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 [1820 to 1S28.] 
 
 l.ETTKRS TO ROBINSON, CARY, COLKRIDOK, I'ATMORK, 
 rUOCTEIl, AND IIAUTON. 
 
 When the first enjoyment of freedom was 
 over, it may be doubted whether Lamb was 
 hap])ier for the change. He lost a grievance 
 on which he could lavish all the fantastical 
 exaggeration of a suflerer without wounding 
 
LETTER TO KOBINSON. 
 
 Hi 
 
 the feelings of any iudividual, and perhaps 
 the loss was scarcely compensated by the 
 listless leisure which it brought him. "When- 
 ever the facile kindness of his disposition 
 permitted, he fled from those temptations of 
 society, which he could only avoid by flight ; 
 and his evening hours of solitude were hai-dly 
 so sweet as when they were the reliefs and 
 restitig-places of his mind, — " glimpses which 
 might make him less forlorn " of the world 
 of poetry and romance. His mornings were 
 chiefly occupied in long walks, sometimes 
 extending to ten or twelve miles, in which at 
 this time he was accompanied by a noble 
 dog, the property of Mr. Hood, to whose 
 humours Lamb became almost a slave,* and 
 who, at last, acquired so portentous au 
 ascendancy that Lamb requested his friend 
 Mr. Patmore to take him under his care. 
 At length the desire of assisting Mr. Hone, 
 in his struggle to support his family by 
 antiquai'ian research and modern pleasantry, 
 renewed to him the blessing of regular 
 labour ; he began the task of reading through 
 the glorious heap of dramas collected at the 
 British Museum under the title of the 
 " Garrick Plays," to glean scenes of interest 
 and beauty for the work of his friend ; and 
 the work of kindness brought with it its own 
 reward. 
 
 • The following allusion to Lamb's subservience to 
 Dash is extracted from one of a scries of papers, written 
 in a most cordial spirit, and with great characteristic 
 power, by the friend to whom Dash was assigned, which 
 appeared in the " Court Magazine." " During these 
 interminable rambles — heretofore pleasant in virtue of 
 their profound loneliness and freedom from restraint. 
 Lamb made himself a perfect slave to the dog — whose 
 habits were of the most extravagantly errant nature, 
 for, generally speaking, the creature was half a mile oft' 
 from his companion either before or behind, scouring 
 the fields or roads in all directions, scampering up or 
 down 'all manner of streets,' and leaving Lamb in a 
 perfect fever of irritation and annoyance ; for he was 
 afraid of losing the dog when it was out of sight, and 
 yet could not persuade himself to keep it hi sight for a 
 moment, by curbing its roving spirit. Dash knew 
 Lamb's weakness in these particulars as well as he did 
 himself, and took a dog-like advantage of it. In the 
 Regent's Park, in particular. Dash had his master com- 
 pletely at his mercy ; for the moment they got into the 
 ring, he used to get through the paling on to the green 
 sward, and disappear for a quarter or half an hour to-' 
 gether, knowing perfectly well that Lamb did not dare' 
 move from the spot where he (Dash) had disappeared, 
 till fuch time as he thought proper to show himself 
 again. And they used to take this particular walk much 
 oftcner than they otherwise would, precisely because 
 Dash liked it and Lamb did not." — Under his second 
 master, we learn from the same source, that Dash 
 " subsided into the best bred and best behaved of his 
 species." 
 
 " It is a sort of office work to me," says 
 Lamb, in a letter to Barton ; " hours ten to 
 four, the same. It does me good. Man mu.st 
 have regular occupation that has been usuil 
 to it." 
 
 The Christmas of 1825 was a melancholy 
 season for Lamb. He had always from a boy 
 spent Christmas in the Temple with Mr. 
 Norris, an officer of the Inner Temple, and 
 this Christmas was made wretched by the 
 last illness of his oldest friend. Anxious to 
 excite the sympathy of tlie Benchers of the 
 Inn for the survivors. Lamb addressed the 
 following letter to a friend as zealous as 
 himself in all generous offices, in order that 
 he might show it to some of the Benchers. 
 
 TO MR. H. C. ROBINSON, 
 
 " Colebrooke Row, Islington, 
 
 "Saturday, 20th Jan. 1826. 
 
 " Dear Eobinson, — I called upon you this 
 morning, and found that you were gone to 
 visit a dying friend, I had been upon a like 
 errand. Poor Norris has been lying dying 
 for now almost a week, such is the peuaUy 
 we pay for having enjoyed a strong constitu- 
 tion ! Whether he knew me or not, I know 
 not ; or whether he saw me through his poor 
 glazed eyes ; but the group I saw about him 
 I shall not forget. Upon the bed, or about 
 it, were assembled his wife and two daughtei-s, 
 and poor deaf Eichard, bis son, looking 
 doubly stupified. There they were, and 
 seemed to have been sitting all the week. I 
 could only reach out a hand to JSIrs. Norris. 
 Speaking was impossible in that mute cham- 
 ber. By this time I hope it is all over witii 
 him. In him I have a loss the world cannot 
 make up. He was my friend and my father's 
 friend all the life I can remember. I seem 
 to have made foolish friendships ever since. 
 Those are friendships which outlive a second 
 generation. Old as I am waxing, in his eyes 
 I was still the child he first knew me. To 
 the last he called me Charley. I have none . 
 to call me Charley now. He was the last 
 link that bound me to the Temple, You are 
 but of yesterday. In him seem to have died 
 the old plainness of manners and singleness 
 of heart. Letters he knew nothing of, nor 
 did his reading extend beyond the pages of 
 the ' Gentleman's Magazine.' Yet there was 
 a pride of literature about him from being 
 
amongst books (he was librarian), and from 
 some scraps of doubtful Latin which he had 
 picked up in his office of entering students, 
 that gave him very diverting airs of pedantry. 
 Can I forget the erudite look with which, 
 when he had befen in vain trying to make out 
 a black-letter text of Chaucer in the Temple 
 Library, he laid it down and told me that — 
 * in those old books, Charley, there is some- 
 times a deal of vei-y indiflFerent spelling ;' 
 and seemed to console himself in the reflec- 
 tion ! His jokes, for he had his jokes, are 
 now ended ; but they were old trusty peren- 
 nials, staples that pleased after decies repetita, 
 and were always as good as new. One song 
 he had, which was reserved for the night of 
 Christmas-day, which we always spent in the 
 Temple. It was an old thing, and spoke of 
 the flat bottoms of oilr foes, and the possi- 
 bility of their coming over in darkness, and 
 alluded to threats of an invasion many years 
 blown over ; and when he came to the part 
 
 ' We'll still make 'em run, and we'll still make 'em 
 sweat, 
 Id spite of the devil, and Brussels Gazette ! ' 
 
 his eyes would sparkle as with the freshness 
 of an impending event. And what is the 
 Brussels Gazette now ? I cry while I enu- 
 merate these trifles. ' How shall we teU 
 them in a stranger's ear ? ' 
 
 " My first motive in writing, and, indeed, 
 in calling on you, was to ask if you were 
 enough acquainted with any of the Benchers, 
 to lav a plain statement before them of the 
 circumstances of the family. I almost fear 
 not, for you are of another hall. But if you 
 can oblige me and my poor friend, who is 
 now insensible to any favours, pray exert 
 yourself You cjinnot say too much good of 
 poor Norris and his poor wife. 
 
 "Yours ever, Charles Lamb." 
 
 La the spring of 1826, the following letters 
 to Bernard Barton were written. 
 
 TO BERNARD BARTON. 
 
 "Feb. 7th, 1826. 
 
 " Dear B. B., — I got your book not more 
 than five days ago, so am not so negligent as 
 I must have apj)eared to you with a fort- 
 night's sin upon luy shoulders. I tell you 
 with sincerity, that I think you have com- 
 
 pletely succeeded in what you intended to 
 do. "What is poetry may be disputed. These 
 are poetry to me at least. They are concise, 
 pithy, and moving. Uniform as they are, and 
 untristorify'd, I read them through at two 
 sittings, without one sensation approaching 
 to tedium. I do not know that among your 
 many kind presents of this nature, this is not 
 my favourite volume. The language is never 
 lax, and there is a unity of design and feeling. 
 You wrote them with love — to avoid the 
 coxcombical phrase, con amore. I am par- 
 ticularly pleased with the 'Spiritual Law,' 
 pages 34 and 35. It reminded me of Quarles, 
 and 'holy Air. Herbert,' as Izaak "Walton 
 calls him ; the two best, if not only, of our 
 devotional poets, though some prefer "Watts, 
 and some Tom Moore. I am far from well, or 
 in my right spiints, and shudder at pen-and- 
 ink work. I poke out a monthly crudity for 
 Colbum in his magazine, which I call 'Popu- 
 lar Fallacies,' and periodically crush a proverb 
 or two, setting up my folly against the wis- 
 dom of nations. Do you see the ' New 
 Monthly ? ' 
 
 '•' One word I must object to in your little 
 book, and it recurs more than once — -faddiss 
 is no genuine compound ; loveless is, because 
 love is a noun as well as verb ; but what is a 
 fode ? And 1 do not quite like whipping the 
 Greek di-ama upon the back of ' Genesis,' 
 page 8. I do not like praise handed in by 
 disparagement ; as I objected to a side cen- 
 sure on Byron, &c. in the ' Lines on Bloom- 
 field.' "With these poor cavils excepted, your 
 verses are without a flaw. 
 
 "C.Lamb." 
 
 to bernard barton. 
 
 "March 20th, 1S2C. 
 
 " Dear B. B., — You may know my letters 
 by the paper and the folding. For the former, 
 I live on scraps obtiiiued in charity from an 
 old friend, whose stationery is a i>ermanent 
 perquisite ; for folding, I shall do it neatly 
 when I learn to tie my neckcloths. I surprise 
 most of my friends, by writing to them on 
 ruled paper, as if I had not got past jwt- 
 hooks ami hangei-s. Sealing-w;iX, I have 
 none on my establishment ; wafers of the 
 coarsest bran supply its place. When my 
 epistles come to be weighed with Pliny's, 
 however superior to the liomau in di-lioute 
 irony, judicious reflections, &c., his gilt ])08t 
 
LETTERS TO BARTON. 
 
 147 
 
 will bribe over the judges to him. All the 
 time I was at the E. I. H., I never 
 mended a pen ; I now cut 'em to the stumps, 
 marring rather than mending the primitive 
 goose-quill. T cannot bear to pay for articles 
 I used to get for nothing. When Adam laid 
 out his first penny upon nonpareils at some 
 stall in ^lesopotamos, I think it went hard 
 with him, reflecting upon his old goodly 
 orchard, where he had so many for nothing. 
 When I write to a great man at the court 
 end, he opens with surprise upon a naked 
 note, such as Whitechapel people interchange, 
 with no sweet degrees of envelope. I never 
 enclosed one bit of paper in another, nor under- 
 stood the rationale of it. Once only I sealed 
 with borrowed wax, to set Walter Scott a 
 wondering, signed with the imperial quartered 
 arms of England, which my friend Field bears 
 in compliment to his descent, in the female 
 line, from Oliver Cromwell. It must have set 
 his antiquarian curiosity upon watering. To 
 your questions upon the currency, I refer 
 you to Mr. Eobinson's last speech, where, if 
 you can find a solution, I cannot. I think 
 this, though, the best ministry we ever 
 stumbled upon ; — gin reduced four shillings 
 in the gallon, wine two shillings in the quart ! 
 This comes home to men's minds and bosoms. 
 ISIy tirade against visitors was not meant 
 
 particularly at you or A. K . I scarce 
 
 know what I meant, for I do not just now 
 feel the grievance. I wanted to make an 
 article. So in another thing I talked of 
 somebody's insipid wife, without a corres- 
 pondent object in my head : and a good lady, 
 a friend's wife, whom I really love, (don't 
 startle, I mean in a licit way,) has looked 
 shyly on me ever since. The blunders of 
 personal application are ludicrous. I send 
 out a character every now and then, on 
 purpose to exercise the ingenuity of my 
 friends. ' Popular Fallacies ' will go on ; 
 that word concluded is an erratum, I suppose 
 for continued. I do not know how it got 
 stuffed in there. A little thing without name 
 will also be printed on the JReligion of the 
 Actors, but it is out of your way, so I recom^ 
 mend you, with true author's hypocrisy, to 
 skip it. We are about to sit down to roast 
 beef, at which we could wish A. K., B. B., 
 and B. B.'s pleasant daughter to be humble 
 partakers. So much for my hint at visitors, 
 which was scarcely calculated for droppers- 
 
 in from Woodbridge ; the sky does not drop 
 such larks every day. My very kindest 
 wishes to you all three, with my sister's best 
 love. C. Lamb." 
 
 TO BERNARD BARTON. 
 
 "May IGth, 1826. 
 
 " Dear B. B., — I have had no spirits lately 
 to begin a letter to you, though I am under 
 obligations to you (how many !) for your neat 
 little poem. 'Tis just what it professes to be, 
 a simple tribute, in chaste verse, serious and 
 sincere. 
 
 "1 do not know how friends will relish it, 
 but we outlyers, honorary friends, like it 
 veiy well. I have had my head and ears 
 stufiFed up with the east ,winds. A continual 
 ringing in my brain of bells jangled, or the 
 spheres touched by some raw angel. It is 
 not George the Third trying the Hundredth 
 Psalm 1 I get my music for nothing. But 
 the weather seems to be softening, and will 
 thaw my stunnings. Coleridge, writing to 
 me a week or two since, begins his note — 
 ' Summer has set in with its usual severity.' 
 A cold summer is all I know of disagreeable 
 in cold. I do not mind the utmost rigour of 
 real winter, but these smiling hypocrities of 
 Mays wither me to death. My head has 
 been a ringing chaos, like the day the winds 
 were made, befoi-e they submitted to the 
 discipline of a weathercock, before the 
 quarters were made. In the street, with the 
 blended noises of life about me, I hear, and my 
 head is lightened ; but in a room the hubbub 
 comes back, and I am deaf as a sinner. Did 
 I tell you of a pleasant sketch Hood has 
 done, which he calls — ' Very deaf indeed ? ' 
 It is of a good-natured stupid-looking old 
 gentleman, whom a footpad has stopped, but 
 for his extreme deafness cannot make him 
 understand what he wants. The unconscious 
 old gentleman is extending his ear trumpet 
 very complacently, and the fellow is firing a 
 pistol into it to make him hear, but the ball 
 will pierce his skull sooner than the report 
 reach his sensorium. I choose a very little 
 bit of paper, for my ear hisses when I bend 
 down to write. I can hardly read a book, for 
 I miss that small soft voice which the idea of 
 articulated words raises (almost impercept- 
 ibly to you) in a silent reader. I seem too 
 deaf to see what I read. But with a touch 
 or two of returning zej>hyr my head will 
 
 L 2 
 
148 
 
 LETTERS TO COLERIDQE AXD GARY. 
 
 melt. What lies you poets tell about the 
 May ! It is the most uugenial part of the 
 year. Cold crocuses, cold primroses, you 
 take your blossoms in ice — a painted sun. 
 
 ' Unmeaning joy around appears, 
 And nature smiles as if she sneers.' 
 
 " It is ill with me when I begin to look 
 which way the wind sits. Ten years ago, I 
 literally did not know the point from the broad 
 end of the vane, which it was that indicated 
 the quai-ter. I hope these ill winds have 
 blo^sTi over you as they do through me. 
 
 " So A. K. keeps a school ; she teaches 
 nothing wrong, I 'II answer for 't. I have a 
 Dutch print of a school-mistress ; little old- 
 fashioned Fleming! ings, with only one face 
 among them. She a princess of a school- 
 mistress, wielding a rod for form more than 
 use ; the scene, an old monastic chajjel, with 
 a Madonna over her head, looking just as 
 serious, as thoughtful, as pure, as gentle as 
 herself. 'Tis a type of thy friend. 
 
 "Yours with kindest wishes to your 
 daughter and friend, in which Mary joins, 
 
 «C. Lamb." 
 
 About this time a little sketch was taken 
 of Lamb, and published. It is certainly not 
 flattering ; but there is a touch of Lamb's 
 character in it. He sent one of the prints to 
 Coleridge, with the following note. 
 
 TO MR. COLERIDGE. 
 
 "June 1st, 1826. 
 " Dear Coleridge, — If I know myself, nobody 
 more detests the display of pereonal vanity, 
 which is implied in the act of sitting for one's 
 picture, than myself. But the fact is, that 
 the likeness which accompanies this letter 
 was stolen from my person at one of my un- 
 guarded moments by some too partial artist, 
 and my friends are pleased to think that he 
 has not much flattered me. Whatever its 
 merits may be, you, who have so great an 
 interest in the original, will have a satisfaction 
 in tracing the features of one that luis so long 
 esteemed you. There are times when in a 
 friend's absence these graphic representations 
 of him almost seem to bring back the man 
 himself The painter, whoever he was, seems 
 to have taken me in one of those disengaged 
 moments, if I may so term them, when the 
 
 native character is so much more honestly 
 displayed than can be possible in the 
 restraints of an inforced sitting attitude. 
 Perhaps it rather describes me as a thinking 
 man, than a man in the act of thought. 
 Whatever its pretensions, I know it will be 
 dear to you, towards whom I should wish my 
 thoughts to flow in a sort of an undress 
 ratlier than in the more studied graces of 
 diction. 
 
 " I am, dear Coleridge, yours sincerely, 
 " C. Lamb." 
 
 In the following summer, Lamb and his 
 sister went on a long visit to Enfield, which 
 ultimately led to his giving up Colebrooke- 
 cottage, and becoming a constant resident at 
 that place. It was a great sacrifice to him, 
 who loved London so well ; but his sister's 
 health and his own required a secession from 
 the crowd of visitors who pressed on him at 
 Islington, and whom he could not help wel- 
 coming. He thus invited Mr. Cary, once 
 librarian of the British Museum, to look in 
 upon his retreat. 
 
 TO MR. CART. 
 
 " Dear Sir, — It is whispered me that you 
 will not be imwilling to look into our doleful 
 hermitage. Without more preface, you will 
 gladden our cell by accompanying our old 
 chums of the London, Djirley and A. C, to 
 Enfield on Wednesday. You shall have her- 
 mit's fare, with talk as seraphical as the 
 novelty ©f tlie divine life will permit, with an 
 innocent retrospect to the world which we 
 have left, when I will thank you for your 
 hospitable ofi'er at Chiswick, and with plain 
 hermit reasons evince the necessity of abiding 
 here. 
 
 " Without hearing from you, then, you 
 shall give us leave to expect you. I have 
 long had it on my conscience to invite you, 
 but spirits have been low ; juid I am indebted 
 to chance for this awkward but most sincere 
 invitation. 
 
 " Yours, with best loves to Mrs. Cary, 
 
 " C. LASm." 
 
 " D. knows all about the coaches. Oh, for 
 a Museum in the wilderness ! " 
 
 The following letter was addressed about 
 
LETTERS TO COLERIDGE AND BARTON. 
 
 149 
 
 this time to Coleridge, who was seriously 
 contemplating a poetical pantomime. 
 
 TO MR. COLERIDGE. 
 
 "1826. 
 
 "Dear C, — ^We will with great pleasure 
 be with you on Thursday in the next week 
 early. Your finding out my style in your 
 nephew's pleasant book is surprising to me. 
 I want eyes to descry it. You are a little 
 too hard upon his morality, though I confess 
 he has more of Sterne about him than of 
 Sternhold. But he saddens into excellent 
 sense before the conclusion. Your query 
 shall be submitted to Miss Kelly, though it 
 is obvious that the pantomime, when done, 
 will be more easy to decide upon than in 
 proposal. 1 say, do it by all means. I have 
 Decker's play by me, if you can filch any- 
 thing out of it. Miss G — , with her kitten 
 eyes, is an actress, though she shows it not 
 at all ; and pupil to the former, whose ges- 
 tures she mimics in comedy to the disparage- 
 ment of her own natural manner, which is 
 agreeable. It is funny to see her bridling up 
 her neck, which is native to F. K. ; but there 
 is no setting another's manners ujion one's 
 shoulders any more than their head. I am 
 glad you esteem Manning, though you see 
 but his husk or shrine. He discloses not, 
 save to select worshippers, and will leave the 
 world without any one hardly but me know- 
 ing how stupendous a creature he is. I am 
 perfecting myself in the ' Ode to Eton Col- 
 lege ' against Thursday, that I may not 
 appear unclassic. I have just discovered 
 that it is much better than the ' Elegy.' 
 
 "In haste, C. L." 
 
 " PS. — I do not know what to say to your 
 latest theory about Nero being the Messiah, 
 though by all accounts he was a 'nointed 
 one." 
 
 Lamb's desire for dramatic success was not 
 even yet wholly chilled. In this summer 
 he wrote a little piece on the story 6f 
 Crabbe's tale of the " Confidant," which was 
 never produced, but ultimately published in 
 " Blackwood's Magazine." It runs on agree- 
 ably in melodious blank verse, entirely free 
 from the occ;isional roughnesses of " John 
 Woodvil," but has not sufficient breadth or 
 
 point for the stage, 
 following letter. 
 
 He alludes to it in the 
 
 TO BERNARD BARTON. 
 
 " Aupr. 10th, lft27. 
 
 " Dear B. B., — I have not been able to 
 answer you, for we have had, and are having, 
 (I just snatch a moment,) our poor quiet 
 retreat, to which we fled from society, full of 
 company, — some staying with us, and this 
 moment, as I write, almost, a heavy iniporta- 
 tion of two old ladies has come in. Whither 
 can I take wing, from the oppression of 
 human faces ? Would I were in a wilderness 
 of apes, tossing cocoa-nuts about, grinning 
 and grinned at ! 
 
 "M was hoaxing you, surely, about 
 
 my engraving ; 'tis a little sixpenny thing, 
 too like by half, in which the draughtsman 
 has done his best to avoid flattery. Tliere 
 have been two editions of it, which I think 
 are all gone, as they have vanished from the 
 window where they hung, — a print-shop, 
 corner of Great and Little Queen-streets, 
 Lincoln's Inn Fields, — where any London 
 friend of yours may inquire for it ; for I am 
 (though you wo7i't understand it) at Enfield 
 Chase. We have been here near three 
 months, and shall stay two more, if people 
 will let us alone ; but tliey persecute us from 
 village to village. So, don't direct to Isling- 
 ton again, till further notice. I am trying 
 my hand at a drama, in two acts, founded 
 on Crabbe's 'Confidant,' mutatis mutandis. 
 You like the Odyssey; did you ever read 
 my 'Adventures of Ulysses,' founded on 
 Chapman's old translation of it ? for children 
 or men. Chapman is divine, and my abridg- 
 ment has not quite emptied him of his 
 divinity. When you come to town I'll show 
 it you. You have well described your old 
 fiishioned grand paternal hall. Is it not odd 
 that every one's earliest recollections are of 
 some such place ! I had my Blakesware 
 (Blakesmoor in the ' London '). Nothing tills 
 a child's mind like a large old mansion ; 
 bettor if un — or partially — occupied; peopled 
 with the spirits of deceased members of the 
 county, and justices of the quorum. Would 
 I were buried in the peopled solitudes of one, 
 with my feelings at seven years old ! Those 
 marble busts of the emperors, they seemed 
 as if they were to stand for ever^ as they had 
 stood from the living days of Home, in that 
 
150 
 
 LETTERS TO BARTON AND PATMORE. 
 
 old marble hall, and I too partake of their 
 permanency. Eternity was, while I thought 
 not of Time. But he thought of me, and 
 they are toppled down, and com covers the 
 spot of the noble old dwelling and its princely 
 gardens. I feel like a grasshopper that, 
 chirping about the grounds, escaped the 
 scythe only by my littleness. Even now he 
 is whetting one of his smallest razors to clean 
 wipe me out, perhaps. Well ! " 
 
 The following is an acknowledgment of 
 some verses which Lamb had begged for 
 Miss Isola's album. 
 
 "Aug. 28th, 1827. 
 
 " Dear B. B., — I am thankful to you for 
 your ready compliance with my wishes. 
 Emma is delighted with your verses ; I have 
 sent them, with four album poems of my 
 
 own, to a Mr. E , who is to be editor of 
 
 a more superb pocket-book than has yet 
 appeared, by far ! the property of some 
 wealthy booksellers ; but whom, or what its 
 name, I forgot to ask. It is actually to have 
 in it schoolboy exercises by his present 
 Majesty and the late Duke of York. "Words- 
 worth is named as a contributor. E , 
 
 whom I have slightly seen, is editor of a 
 forthcome or coming review of foreign books, 
 and is intimately connected with Lockhart, 
 &c. So I take it that this is a concern of 
 Murray's. Walter Scott also contributes 
 mainly. I have stood off a long time from 
 these annuals, which are ostentatious trum- 
 pery, but could not withstand the request of 
 Jameson, a particular friend of mine and 
 Coleridge. 
 
 " I shall hate myself in frippery, strutting 
 along, and vying finery with beaux and 
 belles, with ' future Lord Byrons and sweet 
 L. E. Ls.' Your taste, I see, is less simple 
 than mine, which the difference in our per- 
 suasions has doubtless effected. In fact, of 
 late you have so Frenchifii'd your style, 
 larding it with hors de combats, and au deso- 
 poirs, that o' my conscience the Foxian blood 
 is quite dried out of you, and the skipping 
 Monsieur si)irit has been infused. 
 
 "If you have anything you'd like to send 
 further, I dare say an hunourablo place would 
 be given to it ; but I have not heard from 
 F since I sent mine, nor shall probably 
 
 again, and therefore I do not solicit it as 
 from him. Yesterday I sent off my tragi- 
 comedy to Mr. Keiable. Wish it luck. I 
 made it all ('tis blank verse, and I think of 
 the true old dramatic cut) or most of it, in 
 the green lanes about Enfield, where I am, 
 and mean to remain, in spite of your per- 
 emptory doubts on that head. Your refusal 
 to lend your poetical sanction to my ' Icon,' 
 and your reasons to Evans, are most sensible. 
 Maybe I may hit on a line or two of my own 
 jocular ; maybe not. Do you never London- 
 ize again ? I should like to taik over old 
 poetry with you, of which I have much, and 
 you, I think, little. Do your Drummonds 
 allow no holydays ? I would willingly come 
 and work for you a three weeks or so, to let 
 you loose. Would I could sell or give you 
 some of my leisure ! Positively, the best 
 thing a man can have to do is nothing, and 
 next to that perhaps — good works. I am 
 but poorlyish, and feel myself writing a dull 
 letter ; poorlyish from company ; not gener- 
 ally, for I never was better, nor took more 
 walks, fourteen miles a day on an average, 
 with a sporting dog, Dash. You would not 
 know the plain jjoet, any more than he doth 
 recognise James Naylor trick'd out au deser- 
 poy (how do you spell it ?). 
 
 " C. L.i3iB." 
 
 The following was written to the friend to 
 whom Lamb had intrusted Dash, a few days 
 after the parting. 
 
 TO MR. PATMORE. 
 " Mrs. Lcishinan's, Chase, Enfield. 
 
 " Dear P., — Excuse my anxiety, but how 
 is Dash ? I should have asked if Mrs. 
 
 P 6 kept her rules, and was improving ; 
 
 but Dash came uppermost. The order of 
 our thoughts shoulil be the order of our 
 writing. Goes he muzzled, or aperto ore? 
 Are his intellects sound, or does he w.-iuder 
 a little in his conversation ? You cannot be 
 too careful to watch the first syiui)tom3 of 
 incoherence. The fii-st illogical snarl he 
 makes, to St. Luke's with him. All the dogs 
 liere are going mail, if you believe tlie over- 
 seers ; but I protest they seem to me very 
 rational and collected. But nothing is so 
 deceitful as mad people, to tliose who Jire not 
 used to them. Try him with hot water : if 
 
LETTERS TO BARTON, 
 
 151 
 
 he won't lick it up it is a sign — he does not 
 like it. Does his tail wag horizontally, or 
 perpendicularly 1 That has decided the fate 
 of many dogs in Enfield. Is his general 
 depoi-tment cheerful ? I mean when he is 
 pleased — for otherwise there is no judging. 
 You can't be too careful. Has he bit any of 
 the children yet 1 If he has, have them shot, 
 and keep him for curiosity, to see if it was 
 the hydrophobia. They say all our army in 
 India had it at one time ; but that was in 
 Hi/der-Ally's time. Do you get paunch for 
 him ? Take care the sheep was sane. 
 You might pull out his teeth (if he would 
 let you), and then you need not mind if he 
 were as mad as a Bedlamite. It would be 
 rather fun to see his odd ways. It might 
 
 amuse Mrs. P and the children. They'd 
 
 have more sense than he. He'd be like a fool 
 kept in a family, to keep the household in 
 good humour with their own understanding. 
 You might teach him the mad dance, set to 
 the mad howL Madge Owlet would be nothing 
 to him. ' My ! how he capers ! ' [/?i the 
 margin is written, ' One of the children speaks 
 this.*'''] • • * What I scratch out is a 
 German quotation, from Lessing, on the bite 
 of rabid animals ; but I remember you don't 
 
 read German. But ^Mrs. P niay, so I 
 
 wish I had let it stand. The meaning in 
 English is — 'Avoid to approach an animal 
 suspected of madness, as you would avoid 
 fire or a pz'ecipice,' which I think is a sensible 
 observation. The Germans are certainly 
 profounder than we. If the slightest sus- 
 picion arises in your breast that all is not 
 right with him, muzzle him and lead him in 
 a string (common pack-thread will do — he 
 don't care for twist) to Mr. Hood's, his 
 quondam master, and he'U take him in at 
 any time. You may mention your suspicion, 
 or not, as you like, or as you think it may 
 wound or not Mir. H.'s feelings. Hood, I 
 know, will wink at a few follies in Dash, in j 
 consideration of his former sense. Besides, 
 Hood is deaf, and, if you hinted anything, 
 ten to one he would not hear you. Besides 
 you will have discharged your conscience, 
 and laid the child at the right door, as they 
 say. 
 
 " We are dawdling our time away very 
 idly and pleasantly at a Mrs. Leishman's, 
 
 • Here three lines are carefully erased. 
 
 Chase, Enfield, where, if you come a-hunting, 
 we can give you cold meat and a tankard. 
 Her husband is a tailor ; but that, you know, 
 does not make her one. I knew a jailor 
 (which rhymes), but his wife was a fine 
 lady, 
 
 " Let us hear from you respecting Mrs. 
 
 P 's regimen. I send my love in a 
 
 to Dash. 
 
 « C. Lamb." 
 
 On the outside of the letter is written : 
 
 " Seriously, I wish you would call upon 
 Hood when you are that way. He's a capital 
 fellow. I've sent him two poems, one 
 ordered by his wife, and written to order ; 
 and 'tis a week since, and I've not heard 
 from him. I fear something is the matter. 
 
 " Our kindest remembrance to Mrs. P." 
 
 He thus, in December, expresses his misery 
 in a letter. 
 
 TO BERNARD BARTON, 
 
 "Dec. 4th, 1827. 
 
 " My dear B. B., — I have scarce spirits to 
 write, yet am harassed with not writing. 
 Nine weeks are completed, and Mary does 
 not get any better. It is pei-fectly exhausting. 
 Enfield, and everything, is very gloomy. 
 But for long experience I should fear her 
 ever getting well. I feel most thankful for 
 the spinsterly attentions of your sister. 
 Thank the kind ' knitter in the sim ! ' What 
 nonsense seems verse, when one is seriously 
 out of hope and spirits ! I mean, that at 
 this time I have some nonsense to write, 
 under pain of incivility. Would to the 
 fifth heaven no coxcombess had invented 
 Albums. 
 
 " I have not had a Bijoux, nor the slightest 
 
 notice from about omitting four out of 
 
 five of my things. The best thing is never 
 to hear of such a thing as a bookseller again, 
 or to think there are publishers. Second- 
 hand stationers and old book-stalls for me. 
 Authorship should be an idea of the past. 
 Old kings, old bishops, are venerable ; all 
 present is hollow. I cannot make a letter. 
 I have no straw, not a pennyworth of chaff, 
 only this may stop your kind importunity' to 
 
152 
 
 LETTER TO A LADY. 
 
 know about us. Here is a comfortable house, 
 but no tenants. One does not make a house- 
 hold. Do not thuik I am quite in despair ; 
 but, in addition to hope protracted, I have a 
 stupifying cold and obsti'ucting headache, 
 and the sun is dead. 
 
 " I will not fail to apprise you of the 
 revival of a beam. Meantime accept this, 
 rather than think I have forgotten you all. 
 Best remembrances. 
 
 " Yours and theirs truly, 
 
 " C. Lamb." 
 
 A proposal to erect a memorial to Clarkson, 
 upon the spot by the way-side where he 
 stopped when on a journey fx-om Cambridge 
 to London, and formed the great resolution 
 of devoting his life to the abolition of tlie 
 slave-trade, produced from Lamb the follow- 
 ing letter to the lady who had announced it 
 to him : — 
 
 " Dear Madam, — I return your list with 
 my name. I sliould be sorry that any respect 
 should be going on towards Clarkson, and I 
 be left out of the conspiracy. Otherwise I 
 frankly own that to pillarise a man's good 
 feelings in his lifetime is not to my taste. 
 Monuments to goodness, even after death, 
 are equivocal. I turn av/ay from Howard's, 
 T scarce know why. Goodness blows no 
 trumpet, nor desires to have it blown. We 
 should be modest for a modest m,an — as he is 
 for himself The vanities of life — art, poetry, 
 skill military — are subjects for trophies ; not 
 the silent thoughts arising in a good man's 
 mind in lonely places. Was I Clarkson, I 
 should never be able to walk or ride near 
 the spot again. Instead of bread, we are 
 giving him a atone. Instead of the locality 
 recalling the noblest nKjment of his existence, 
 it is a place at which his friends (that is, 
 himself) blow to the world, * What a good 
 man is he ! ' I sat down upon a hillock at 
 Forty Hill yesternight, — a tine contemplative 
 evening, — with a tliousand good speculations 
 about mankind. How I yeju'nod with cheap 
 benevolence ! I shall go and inquire of the 
 stone-cutter, that cuts the tombstones here, 
 what a stone with a short inscription will 
 cost ; just to say, ' Here C. Lamb loved his 
 brethren of mankind.' Everybody will come 
 
 there to love. As I can't well put my own 
 name, I shall put about a subscription : 
 
 Mrs. . 
 
 .£0 
 
 5 
 
 
 
 Procter . . . 
 
 . 
 
 2 
 
 6 
 
 G. Dvcr . . 
 
 . 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 Mr. Godwin . 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 Mrs. Godwin 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 Mr. Irving . 
 
 
 
 a watch-chain. 
 
 Mr. . . 
 
 
 
 ( the proceeds of 
 \ first edition. 
 
 £0 8 6 
 
 " I scribble in haste from here, where we 
 
 shall be some time. Pray request Mr. 
 
 to advance the guinea for me, which shall 
 fiiithfully be forthcoming, and pardon me 
 that I don't see the proposal in quite the 
 light that he may. The kindness of his 
 iiioti\'es, and his power of appreciating the 
 noble j)assage, I thoroughly agree in. 
 " With most kind regai'ds to him, I conclude 
 " Dear madam, your.s truly, 
 
 "C. Lajib." 
 
 " From Mrs. Leishman's, Chase, Enfield." 
 
 The following appears to have been written 
 in October 1828. 
 
 TO BERNARD BARTON. 
 
 "Oct. nth, 1828. 
 
 " A splendid edition (jf 'Banyan's Pilgrim !' 
 Why, the thought is enough to turn one's 
 moral stomach. His cockle-hat and staff 
 transformed to a smart cock'd beaver, and a 
 jemmy cane ; his amice grey, to the last 
 Regent-street cut : and his painful p;dmer's 
 pace to the modern swagger. Stop thy 
 friend's sacrilegious hand. Nothing can be 
 done for B. but to reprint the old cuts in as 
 homely but good a style as possible. The 
 Vanity Fair, and the Pilgrims there — the 
 Silly-soothness in his setting-out counteujince 
 — the Christian Idiocy (in a good sense), of 
 his admiration of the sheplierds on the 
 Delectable mountains ; the lions, so truly 
 allegorical, and remote from any similitude 
 to Pidcock's ; the great head (the author's), 
 capacious of dreams and similitudes, dream- 
 ing in the dungeon. Perhaps you ilon't know 
 my edition, what I had when a child. If you 
 do, can you bear new designs from M;u-tin, 
 enamelled into copper or silver plate by 
 Heath, accompanied with verses from Mrs. 
 Hemans' pen. O how unlike his own ! 
 
LETTERS TO BARTON'. 
 
 163 
 
 tt'ouUht thou divert thyself from melancholr ? 
 
 \Vo\il(lst thou be pleasant, yet be far from folly? 
 
 ■\Voul(lst thou read riddles, and their explanation t 
 
 Or else be drowned in thy contemplation ? 
 
 Dost thou love picking meat ? or wouldst thou see 
 
 A man i' the clouds, and hear him speak to thee J 
 
 Wouldst thou be in a dream, and yet not sleep ? 
 
 Or wouldst thou in a. moment lau^h and weep ? 
 
 Or woiildst thou lose thyself, and catch no harm, 
 
 And find thyself apain without a charm I 
 
 Wouldst read thyself, and read thou knowest not what, 
 
 And yet know whether thou art blest or not 
 
 By reading the same lines ? O then come hither, 
 
 And lay my book, thy head, and heart together. 
 
 John Buntan. 
 
 Show me any such poetry in any one of the 
 fifteen forthcoming combinations of show and 
 emptiness, yclept ' Annuals.' So there's 
 verses for thy vei'ses ; and now let me tell 
 you, that the sight of your hand gladdened 
 me, I have been daily trying to write to 
 you, but paralysed. You have spurred me 
 on this tiny effort, and at intervals I hope to 
 hear from and talk to you. But my spirits 
 have been in an opprest way for a long long 
 time, and they are things ■which must be to 
 you of faith, for who can explain denression ? 
 Yes, 1 am hooked into the ' Gem,' but only 
 for some lines written on a dead infant of the 
 Editor's, which being, as it were, his pro- 
 perty, I could not refuse their appearing ; 
 but 1 hate the paper, the type, the gloss, the 
 daudy plates, the names of contributors 
 poked up into your eyes in first page, and 
 wliitkcd through all the covers of magazines, 
 the barefaced sort of emulation, the immodect 
 candidateship. Brought into so little space 
 — in those old ' Londons,' a signature was 
 lost in the wood of matter, the paper coarse 
 (till latterly, which spoiled them) ; in shoi-t, 
 I detest to appear in an Annual. What a 
 fertile genius (and a quiet good soul witlial) 
 is Hood ! He has fifty things in hand ; 
 farces to supply the Adelphi for the season ; 
 a comedy for one of the great theatres, just 
 ready ; a whole entertainment, by himself, 
 for Mathews and Yates to figure in ; a medi- 
 tated Comic Annual for next year, to be 
 nearly done by himself. You'd like him 
 very much. 
 
 " Wordsworth, I see, has a good ijtiany 
 pieces announced in one of 'em, not our Gem. 
 W. Scott has distributed himself like a 
 bribe haunch among 'em. Of all the poets, 
 Gary has had the good sense to keep quite 
 clear of 'em, with clergy-gentle-mauly right 
 notions. Don't think I set up for being 
 
 proud on this point ; I like a bit of flattery, 
 tickling my vanity, as well as any one. But 
 these pompous masquerades without masks 
 (naked names or faces) I hate. So there's a 
 bit of my mind. Besides, they infallibly cheat 
 you ; I mean the booksellers. If I get but a 
 copy, I only expect it from Hood's being my 
 friend. Coleridge has lately been here. He 
 too is deep among the prophets, the year- 
 servers, — the mob of gentlemen annuals. 
 But they'll cheat him, I know. And now, 
 dear B. B., the sun shining out merrily, and 
 the dirty clouds we had yesterday having 
 washed their own faces cle;in with their own 
 rain, tempts me to wander up Winchmore 
 Hill, or into some of the delightful vicinages 
 of Enfield, which I hope to show you at some 
 time when you can get a few days up to the 
 great town. Believe me, it would give both 
 of us great pleasure to show you our pleasant 
 farms and villages. 
 
 " We both join in kindest loves to you and 
 youi's. C. Lamb, redivivus." 
 
 The following is of December, and closes 
 the letters which remain of this year. 
 
 TO BERNARD BARTON. 
 
 "Dec. 5th, 1828. 
 " Dear B. B., — I am ashamed to receive so 
 many nice books from j-^ou, and to have none 
 to send you in return. You are always 
 sending me some fruits or wholesome pot- 
 herbs, and mine is the garden of the Sluggard, 
 nothing but weeds, or scarce they. Never- 
 theless, if I knew how to ti-ansmit it, I would 
 send you Blackwood's of this month, which 
 contains a little drama, to have your opinion 
 of it, and how far I have improved, or other- 
 wise, upon its prototj-pe. Thank you for 
 your kind sonnet. It does me good to see 
 the Dedication to a Christian Bishop. I am 
 for a comprehension, as divines call it ; but 
 so as that the Church shall go a good deal 
 more than half way over to the silent 
 Meeting-house. I have ever said that the 
 Quakers are the only professors of Christian- 
 ity, as I read it in the Evangiles ; I say pro- 
 fessors — marry, as to practice, with their 
 gaudy hot types and poeticid vanities, they 
 are much as one with the sinful. Martin's 
 Frontispiece is a very fine thing, let C. L. say 
 what he please to the contraiy. Of the Foems» 
 
154 
 
 LETTERS TO BARTON. 
 
 I like them as a volume, better than any one 
 of the preceding ; particularly, ' Power and 
 Gentleness' — 'The Present' — 'Lady Russell ;' 
 with the exception that I do not like the 
 noble act of Curtius, true or false — one of 
 the grand foundations of the old Roman pa- 
 triotism — to be sacrificed to Lady R.'s taking 
 notes on her husband's trial. If a tiling is 
 good, why invidiously bring it into light with 
 something better ? There are too few heroic 
 things in this world, to admit of our mar- 
 shalling them in anxious etiquettes of prece- 
 dence. Would you make a poem on the 
 story of Ruth, (pretty story !) and then say — 
 Ay, but how much better is the story of 
 Joseph and his brethren ! To go on, the 
 stanzas to ' Chalon ' want the name of Clark- 
 son in the body of them ; it is left to infer- 
 ence. The 'Battle of Gibeon' is spirited, 
 again ; but you sacrifice it in last stanza to 
 the song at Bethlehem. Is it quite orthodox 
 to do so ? The first was good, you suppose, 
 for that dispensation. Why set the word 
 against the word ? It puzzles a weak 
 Christian. So Watts' Psalms are an imjslied 
 censure on David's. But as long as the 
 Bible is supposed to be an equally divine 
 emanation with the Testament, so long it will 
 stagger weaklings to have them set in oppo- 
 sition. 'Godiva' is delicately touched. I 
 have always thought it a beautiful story, 
 characteristic of the old English times. But 
 I could not help amusing myself with the 
 thought — if Martin had chosen this subject 
 for a frontispiece — there would have been 
 in some dark corner a white lady, white 
 as the walker on the waves, riding upon 
 some mystical quadruped ; and high above 
 would have risen ' tower above tower a massy 
 structure high' — the Tenterden steeples of 
 Coventry, till the poor cross would scarce 
 have known itself among the clouds ; 
 and far above them all the distant Clint 
 hills peering over chimney-pots, piled up, 
 Ossa-on-Olympus fashion, till the admiring 
 spectator (admirer of a noble deed) might 
 have gone look for the lady, as you must 
 hunt for the other in the lobster. But M. 
 should be made royal architect. What 
 palaces he would pile ! But then, what par- 
 liamentary grants to make them good ! 
 Nevertheless, I like the frontispiece. ' The 
 Elephant ' is pleasant ; and I am glad you 
 are getting into a wider scope of subjects. 
 
 There may be too much, not religion, but too 
 many good words in a book, till it becomes a 
 rhapsody of words. I will just name, that 
 you have brought in the 'Song to the 
 Shepherds ' in four or five, if not six places. 
 Now this is not good economy. The 'Enoch' 
 is fine ; and here I can sacrifice ' Elijah ' to 
 it, because 'tis illustrative only, and not dis- 
 paraging of the latter prophet's departure. 
 I like this best in the book. Lastly, I much 
 like the ' Heron ; ' 'tis exquisite. Know you 
 Lord Thurlow's Sonnet to a biixl of that sort 
 on Lacken water ? If not, 'tis indispensable 
 I send it you, with my Blackwood. 'Fludyer' 
 is pleasant, — you are getting gay and Hood- 
 ish. What is the enigma ? Money ? If not, 
 I fairly confess I am foiled, and sphynx must 
 
 eat me. Four times I've tried to 
 
 write — eat me, and the blotting pen turns 
 it into — cat me. And now I will take my 
 leave with saying, I esteem thy verses, like 
 thy present, honour thy frontispicer, and 
 right reverence thy patron and dedicatee, 
 and am, dear B. B., 
 
 " Yours heartily, C. Lamb." 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 [1829, 1830.] 
 
 LETTERS TO KOBINSON, PROCTEB, BAllTON, ■WILSON, 
 OILMAN, WOnDSWORTH, AND DYER. 
 
 Having decided on residing entirely at 
 Enfield, Lamb gave up Colebrooke-cottage, 
 and took what he described in a notelet to 
 me as "an odd-looking gambogish-coloured 
 house," at Chase-side, Enfield. The situation 
 was far from picturesque, for the opposite 
 side of the road only presented some middling 
 tenements, two dissenting-chapels, and a 
 ])ublic house decorated with a swinging sign 
 of a Rising Sun ; but the neighbouring field- 
 walks were j)lcasant, and the country, i\a he 
 liked to say, quite as good as Westmoreland. 
 
 He continued occasional contributions to 
 the New Monthly, especially the sorios of 
 " Popular Fallacies ; " w^rote short articles in 
 the Athenseum ; and a great many acrostics 
 on the names of his friends. He had now a 
 neiglibour in Mr. Serjeant Wilde, to whom 
 he was introduced by Mr Burney, and whom 
 
LETTERS TO ROBINSON AND PROCTER. 
 
 155 
 
 he held in high esteem, though Lamb cared 
 nothing for forensic eloquence, and thought 
 very little of eloquence of any kind ; which, 
 it must be confessed, when printed is the 
 most vapid of all reading. What political 
 interest could not excite, personal regard 
 produced in favour of his new friend ; and 
 Lamb supplied several versified squibs and 
 snatches of electioneering songs to grace 
 Wilde's contests at Newark. With these 
 slender avocations his life was dull, and only 
 a sense of duty induced him to persist in 
 absence from London. 
 
 The following letter was written in ac- 
 knowledgment of a parcel sent to Miss 
 Lamb, comprising (what she had expressed 
 a wish to have) a copper coal-scoop, and a 
 pair of elastic spectacles, accompanied by a 
 copy of "Pamela," which having been bor- 
 rowed and supposed to be lost, had been 
 replaced by another in Lamb's library. 
 
 TO MR. H. C. ROBINSON. 
 
 "Enfield, Feb. 27th, 1829. 
 
 " Dear E., — Expectation was alert on the 
 receipt of your strange-shaped present, while 
 yet undisclosed from its fuse envelope. Some 
 said, 'tis a viol da Gamba, others pronounced 
 it a fiddle ; I, myself, hoped it a liqueur case, 
 pregnant vfiih eau,-de-vie &ndi such odd nectar. 
 When midwifed into daylight, the gossips 
 were at a loss to pronounce upon its species. 
 Most took it for a marrow-spoon, an apple- 
 scoop, a banker's guinea-shovel ; at length its 
 true scope appeared, its drift, to save the 
 back-bone of my sister stooping to scuttles. 
 A philanthropic intent, borrowed, no doubt, 
 from some of the Colliers. You save people's 
 backs one way, and break 'em again by loads 
 of obligation. The spectacles are delicate 
 and Vulcanian. No lighter texture than 
 their steel did the cuckoldy blacksmith frame 
 to catch Mrs. Vulcan and the Captain in. 
 For ungalled forehead, as for back uubursten, 
 you have !^Llry's thanks. Marry, for my 
 own peculium of obligation, 'twas superero- 
 gatory. A second part of Pamela was eiough 
 in conscience. Two Pamelas in a house are 
 too much, without two Mr. B.'s to reward 
 'em. 
 
 " Mary, who is handselling her new aerial 
 perspectives upon a pair of old worsted 
 stockings trod out in Cheshunt lanes, sends 
 
 her love : I, great good-liking. Bid us a 
 personal farewell before you see the Vatican. 
 " Charles Lamb." 
 
 The following letter to his friend, who so 
 prosperously combines conveyancing with 
 poetry, is a fair sample of Lamb's elaborate 
 and good-natured fictions. It is hardly 
 necessary to say, that the reference to a 
 coolness between him and two of his legal 
 friends, is part of the fiction. 
 
 TO MR. PROCTER. 
 
 "Jan. 19tb, 1829. 
 
 " My dear Procter, — I am ashamed not to 
 have taken the di'ift of yoiu* pleasant letter, 
 which I find to have been pure invention. 
 But jokes are not suspected in Boeotian 
 Enfield. We are plain people, and our talk 
 is of corn, and cattle, and Waltham markets. 
 Besides, I was a little out of sorts when I 
 received it. The fact is, I am involved in a 
 case which has fretted me to death, and I 
 have no reliance except on you to extricate 
 me. I am sure you will give me your best 
 legal advice, having no professional friend 
 besides, but Eobinson and Talfourd, with 
 neither of whom, at present, I am on the 
 best of terms. My brother's widow left a 
 will, made during the lifetime of my brother, 
 in which I am named sole executor, by which 
 she bequeaths forty acres of arable property, 
 which it seems .she held under covert baron, 
 unknown to my brother, to the heirs of the 
 body of Elizabeth Dowden, her married 
 daughter by a first husband, in fee simjile, 
 recoverable by fine ; invested property, mind, 
 for there is the difficulty ; subject to leet and 
 quit-rent ; in short, worded in the most 
 guarded temis, to shut out the property from 
 Isaac Dowden, the husband. Intelligence 
 has just come of the death of this person in 
 India, where he made a will, entailing this 
 property (which seemed entangled enough 
 already) to the heirs of his body, that should 
 not be born of his wife, for it seems by the 
 law in India, natural children can recover. 
 They have put the cause into Exchequer 
 process here, removed by certiorari from the 
 native courts ; and the question is, whether 
 I should, as executor, try the cause here, or 
 again re-remove it to the Supreme Sessions 
 at Bangalore, wliich I understand I can, or 
 
156 
 
 LETTERS TO PROCTER. 
 
 plead a hearing before the Privy Council 
 here. As it involves all the little property 
 of Elizabeth Dowden, I am anxious to t;ike 
 the fittest steps, and what may be least 
 expensive. For God's sake assist me, for the 
 case is so embarrassed that it deprives me of 
 sleep and appetite. M. Burney thinks there 
 is a case like it in chap. 170, sec. 5, in ' Fearn's 
 Contingent Remainders.' Pray read it over 
 with him dispassion.ately, and let me have 
 the result. The complexity lies in the ques- 
 tionable power of the husband to aUenate ui 
 usum ; enfeoffments whereof he was only 
 collaterally seised, &c. 
 
 " I had another favour to beg, which is the 
 beggarliest of beggings. A few lines of verse 
 for a young friend's album (six will be 
 enough). M. Bm-ney will tell you who she 
 is I want 'em for. A girl of gold. ' Six lines 
 
 — make 'em eight — signed Barry C . 
 
 They need not be very good, as I chiefly want 
 'era as a foil to mine. But I shall be seriously 
 obliged by any refuse scrap. We are in the 
 last ages of the world, when St. Paul pro- 
 phesied that women should be ' headstrong, 
 lovers of their own wills, having albums.' I 
 fled hither to escape the albumean persecution, 
 and had not been in my new house twenty- 
 four hours, when the daughter of the next 
 house came in with a friend's album to beg 
 a contribution, and the following day inti- 
 mated she had one of her own. Two more 
 have sprung up since. If I take the wings 
 of the morning and fly mito the uttermost 
 parts of the earth, there will albums be. 
 New Holland has albums. But the age is to 
 be complied with. M. B. will tell you the 
 sort of girl I request the ten lines for. Some- 
 what of a pensive cast, what you admire. 
 The lines may come before the law question, 
 as that cannot be determined before Hilary 
 Term, and I wish your deliberate judgment 
 on that. The other may be flimsy and super- 
 ficial. And if you have not burnt your 
 returned letter, pray resend it me, as a 
 monumental token of my stupidity." 
 
 Lamb was as unfortunate in his commu- 
 nications with the annuals, as unhappy in 
 the importunities of the fair owners of albums. 
 His favourite pieces were omitted ; and a 
 piece not Lis, called " The Widow," was, by a 
 license of friendship, which Lamb forgave, 
 
 inserted in one of them. He thus complains 
 of these grievances in a letter which he 
 wrote on the marriage of the daughter of a 
 fi'iend to a great theoretical chemist. 
 
 TO MR. PROCTER. 
 
 "Jan. 22nd, 1829. 
 
 " Rumour tells us that Miss is mar- 
 ried. Who is 1 Have I seen him at 
 
 Montacutes ? I hear he is a great chemist. 
 I am sometimes chemical myself. A thought 
 strikes me with horror. Pray heaven he 
 may not have done it for the sake of trying 
 chemical experiments upon her, — young 
 female subjects are so scarce. An't you glad 
 about Burke's case ! We may set off the 
 Scotch murders against the Scotch novels. 
 Hare, the Great Unhanged. 
 
 " M. B. is richly worth your knowing. He 
 is on the top scale of my friendship ladder, 
 on which an angel or two is still climbing, 
 and some, alas ! descending. Did you cee a 
 sonnet of mine in Blackwood's last ? Curious 
 construction ! Elaborata facilitas ! And now 
 I'll tell. 'Twas written for ' The Gem,' but 
 the editors declined it, on the plea that it 
 would shock all mothers; so they published 
 ' The Widow ' instead. I am born out of time. 
 I have no conjecture about what the present 
 world calls delicacy, I thought ' Rosamund 
 Gray' was a pretty modest thing. He.^sey 
 assures me that the world would not bear it. 
 I have lived to grow into an indecent charac- 
 ter. When my sonnet was rejected, I ex- 
 cl.'iimed, ' Hang the age, I will write for 
 antiquity ! " 
 
 " Erratum in sonnet. — Last line but some- 
 thing, for tender, read tend. The Scotch do 
 not know our law terms ; but I find some 
 remains of honest, plain, old writing lurking 
 there still. They were not so mealy-mouthed 
 as to I'efuse my verses. Maybe 'tis their 
 oatmeal. 
 
 " Blackwood sent me 20^. for the drama. 
 Somebody cheated me out of it next day ; 
 and my new pair of breeches, just sent home, 
 cracking at first putting on, I exclaimed, in 
 my wrath, 'All tailors are cheats, and all 
 men are tadors,' Then I was better. 
 
 "C. L." 
 
 The next contains Lamb's thanks for the 
 vei'ses he had begged for Miss Isola's album. 
 
LETTERS TO PROCTER. 
 
 157 
 
 They comprehended a compliment turning 
 on the words Isola Bella. 
 
 TO MR. PROCTER. 
 
 "The comings in of an incipient convey- 
 ancer are not adequate to the receipt of three 
 twopenny post non-paids in a week. There- 
 fore, after this, T condemn my stub to long 
 and deep silence, or shall awaken it to write 
 to lords. Lest those raptures in this honey- 
 moon of my correspondence, which you avow 
 for the gentle person of my Nuncio, after 
 passing through certain natural grades, as 
 Love, Love and Water, Love with the chill 
 off, then subsiding to that point which the 
 heroic suitor of his wedded dame, the noble- 
 spirited Lord Eaudolph in the play, declares 
 to be the ambition of his passion, a recipro- 
 cation of ' complacent kindness,' — should 
 suddenly plum down (scarce staying to bait 
 at the mid point of indifference, so hungry it 
 is for distaste) to a loathing and blank aver- 
 sion, to the rendering probable such counter 
 expressions as this, — 'Hang that infernal 
 two-penny postman,' (words which make the 
 not yet glutted inamorato ' lift up his hands 
 and wonder who can use them.') While, 
 then, you are not ruined, let me assure thee, 
 O thou above the painter, and next only 
 under Giraldus Oambrensis, the most immor- 
 tal and worthy to be immortal Barry, thy 
 most ingenious and golden cadences do take 
 my fancy mightily. But tell me, and tell 
 me truly, gentle swain, is that Isola Bella a 
 true spot in geographical denomination, or a 
 floating Delos in thy brain. Lurks that fair 
 island in verity in the bosom of Lake Mag- 
 giore, or some other with less poetic name, 
 which thou hast Cornwallized for the occa- 
 sion. And what if Maggiore itself be but a 
 coinage of adaptation ? Of this, pray resolve 
 me immediately, for my albuniess will be 
 catechised on this subject ; and how can I 
 prompt her 1 Lake Leman I know, and 
 Lemon Lake (in a punch bowl) I have swum 
 in, though those lymphs be long since dry. 
 But Maggiore may be in the moon. Un- 
 sphinx this riddle for me, for my sjielves 
 have no gazetteer." 
 
 The following letters contain a noble 
 instance of Lamb's fine consideration, and 
 exquisite feeling in morality. 
 
 TO MR. PROCTER* 
 
 "Jan. 29th, 1829. 
 
 "When Miss was at Enfield, which 
 
 she was in summertime, and owed her 
 health to its sun and genial influences, she 
 visited (with young lady like impertinence) a 
 poor man's cottage that had a pretty baby 
 (O the yearning !), gave it fine caps and 
 sweetmeats. On a day, broke into the parlour 
 our two maids uproarious. ' O ma'am, who 
 
 do you think Miss has been working a 
 
 cap for ? ' 'A child,' answered Mary, in 
 true Shandean female simplicity. ' It's the 
 man's child as was taken up for sheep- 
 stealing.' Miss was staggered, and 
 
 would have cut the connection, but by main 
 force I made her go and take her leave of 
 her protegee. I thought, if she went no 
 more, the Abactor or Abactor's wife (vide 
 Ainsworth) would suppose she had heard 
 something ; and I have delicacy for a sheep- 
 stealer. The overseers actually overhauled 
 a mutton-pie at the baker's (his first, last, 
 and only hope of mutton-pie), which he never 
 came to eat, and thence inferred his guilt. 
 Per occasionem cuj us, I framed the sonnet ; 
 observe its elaborate construction. I was 
 four days about it. 
 
 ' THE GIPSY'S MALISON. 
 
 " Suck, baby, suck ! mother's love grows by giving, 
 Drain the sweet founts that only thrive by 
 wasting ; 
 Black manho(;cl comes, when riotous guilty living 
 Hands thee the cup that shall be death in 
 tasting. 
 Kiss, baby, kiss ! mother's lips shine by kisses, 
 Choke the warm breath that else would fall in 
 blessings ; 
 Black manhood comes, when turbulent guilty blisses 
 
 Tend thee the kiss that poisons 'mid caressings. 
 Hang, baby, hang ! mother's love loves such forces, 
 Strain the fond neck that bends still to thy 
 clinging ; 
 Black manhood comes, when violent lawless courses 
 Leave thee a spectacle in rude air swinging." 
 So sang a withcr'd beldam energetical, 
 And bann'd the ungiving door with lips pro- 
 phetical.' 
 
 " Barry, study that sonnet. It is curiously 
 and perversely elaborate. 'Tis a choking 
 subject, and therefore the reader is directed 
 to the structure of it. See you ? and was 
 this a fourtecner to be rejected by a trumpery 
 annual I foi-sooth, 'twould shock all mothers ; 
 and may all mothers, who would so be 
 shocked, be hanged ! as if mothers were such 
 sort of logicians as to infer the future hanging 
 
158 
 
 LETTERS TO PROCTER AND BARTON. 
 
 of their cliild from the theoretical liangibility 
 (or capacity of being hanged, if the judge 
 pleases) of every infant born with a neck on. 
 Oh B. C. my whole heart ia faint, and my 
 whole head is sick (how is it 1) at this cursed, 
 canting, unmasculine age ! " 
 
 There is a little Latin letter about the 
 same time to the same friend. 
 
 TO MR. PROCTER. 
 
 "Feb. 2nd, 1829. 
 
 " Facundissime Poeta ! quanquam istius- 
 modi epitheta oratoribus potitis quam poetis 
 attinere facild scio — tamen, facundissime ! 
 
 "Commoratur nobiscum jamdiu, in agro 
 Enfeldiense, scilicet, leguleius futurus, illus- 
 trissimus Martinus Burneius, otium agens, 
 negotia nominalia, et officinam clientum 
 vacuam, paululum fugiens. Orat, implorat 
 te — nempe, Martinus — ut si (qu6d Dii 
 faciant) fort^ fortunS,, absente ipso, advenerit 
 tardus cliens, eum certiorem feceris per 
 literas hAc missas. Intelligisne ? an me 
 Anglic^ et barbarice ad te hominem perdoc- 
 tum scribere oportet ? C. Agnus." 
 
 " Si status de franco tenemento datur avo, 
 et in eodem facto si mediate vel immediate 
 datur hceredibus vel hwredibus corporis dicti 
 avi, postrema hsec verba sunt Limitationis 
 non Perquisitionis. 
 
 " Dixi. Carlagnulus." 
 
 An allusion to Eogers, worthy of both, 
 occurs in a letter 
 
 TO BERNARD BARTON. 
 
 "June 3rd, 1829. 
 
 " Dear B. B., — to get out of home themes, 
 have you seen Southey's ' Dialogues ? ' His 
 lake descriptions, and the account of his 
 library at Keswick, are very fine. But he 
 needed not have called up the ghost of 
 More to hold the conversations with ; which 
 might as well have passed between A. and 
 B., or Caius and Lucius. It is making too 
 free with a defunct Chancellor and Martyr. 
 
 " I feel as if I had nothing farther to write 
 about. O ! I forget the prettiest letter I 
 ever read, that I have received from 
 ' Pleasures of Memory ' Rogers, in acknow- 
 
 ledgment of a sonnet I sent him on the loss 
 of his brother. 
 
 " It is too long to transcribe, but I hope to 
 show it you some day, as I hope some time 
 again to see you, when all of us are well. 
 Only it ends thus, 'We were nearly of an 
 age (he was the elder) ; he was the only 
 person in the world in whose eyes I always 
 ajjpeared young.' " 
 
 What a lesson does the following read to 
 lis from one who, while condemned to unin- 
 teresting industry, thought happiness con- 
 sisted in an affluence of time ! 
 
 TO BERNARD BARTON. 
 " Enfield Chase-side, Saturday, 25th July. 
 A.D. 1829, 11 A.M. 
 
 "There — a fuller, plumper, juicier date 
 never dropt from Idumean palm. Am I in 
 the dative case now 1 if not, a fig for dates, 
 which is more than a date is worth. I never 
 stood much affected to these limitary speci- 
 alities. Least of all, since the date of my 
 superannuation. 
 
 ' What have I with time to do ? 
 Slaves of desks, 'twas meant for you.' 
 
 But town, with all my native hankering after 
 it, is not what it was. Tiie streets, the shops 
 are left, but all old friends are gone. And 
 in London I was frightfully convinced of this 
 as I passed houses and places, empty caskets 
 now. I have ceased to care almost about 
 anybody. The bodies I cared for are in 
 graves, or dispersed. My old clubs, that 
 lived so long, and flourished so steadily, are 
 crumbled away. When I took leave of our 
 adopted young friend at Charing Cross, 'twas 
 heavy unfeeling rain, and I had no where to 
 go. Home have I none, and not a symjm- 
 thising house to turn to in the great city. 
 Never did the waters of heaven pour down 
 on a forlorner head. Yet I tried ten days at 
 a sort of a friend's house, but it was large and 
 straggling, — one of the individuals of my old 
 long knot of friends, card-players, pleasant 
 companions, that have tumbled to pieces, 
 into dust and other things ; and I got home 
 on Thursday, convinced that I was better to 
 get home to my hole at Enfield, and hide 
 like a sick cat in my corner. And to make 
 
LETTER TO WILSON. 
 
 169 
 
 me more aloue, our ill-tempered maid is gone, 
 •who, with all her airs, was yet a home-piece 
 of furniture, a record of better days ; the 
 young thing that has succeeded her is good 
 and attentive, but she is nothing. And I have 
 no one here to talk over old matters with. 
 Scolding and quarrelling have something of 
 familiarity, and a community of interest; 
 they imply acquaintance ; they are of re- 
 sentment, which is of the family of dear- 
 ness. 
 
 " I can neither scold nor quarrel at this 
 insignificant implement of household services ; 
 she is less than a cat, and just better than a 
 deal dresser. What I can do, and do over-do, 
 is to walk ; but deadly long are the days, these 
 summer all-day days, with but a half hour's 
 candle-light, and no fire-light. I do not 
 write, tell your kind inquisitive Eliza, and 
 can hardly read. In the ensuing Blackwood 
 will be an old rejected farce of mine, which 
 may be new to you, if you see that same 
 medley. 'Tis cold work authorship, without 
 something to puff one into fashion. Could 
 you not vrrite something on Quakerism, for 
 Quakers to read, but nominally addressed to 
 Non-Quakers, explaining your dogmas — 
 waiting on the Spirit — by the analogy of 
 human calmness and patient waiting on the 
 judgment 1 I scarcely know what I mean, 
 but to make Non-Quakers reconciled to your 
 doctrines, by showing something like them 
 in mere human operations ; but I hardly 
 understand myself, so let it pass for nothing. 
 I pity you for over-work, but, I assure you, 
 no work is worse. The mind preys on itself, 
 the most unwholesome food. I bragged 
 formerly that I could not have too much 
 time. I have a surfeit. With few years to 
 come, the days are wearisome. But weari- 
 ness is not eternal. Something will shine out 
 to take the load off that flags me, which is 
 at present intolerable. I have killed an hour 
 or two ta this poor scrawl. I am a sanguinary 
 murderer of time, and would kill him inch- 
 meal just now. But the snake is vital. 
 Well : I shall write merrier anon. 'Tis the 
 present copy of my countenance I send, and 
 to complain is a little to alle\-iate. May you 
 enjoy yourself as far as the wicked world 
 wiU let you, and think that you are not 
 quite alone, as I am ! Health to Lucia, and 
 to Anna, and kind remembrances. 
 
 " Your forlorn C. L." 
 
 The cares of housekeeping pressed too 
 heavily on Miss Lamb, and her brother 
 resolved to resign the dignity of a house- 
 keeper for the independence of a lodger. A 
 couple of old dwellers in Enfield, hard by his 
 cottage, had the good fortune to receive 
 them. Lamb refers to the change in the 
 following letter, acknowledging the receipt 
 of Wilson's " Life of De Foe," in which a 
 criticism from his pen was inserted, embody- 
 ing the sentiments which he had expressed 
 some years before. 
 
 TO MR. WALTER WILSON. 
 
 "Enfield, 15th November, 1829. 
 " My dear Wilson, — I have not opened a 
 packet of unknown contents for many years, 
 that gave me so much pleasure as when I 
 disclosed your three volumes. I have given 
 them a careful i^erusal, and they have taken 
 their degree of classical books iipon my 
 shelves. De Foe was always my darling, but 
 what darkness was I in as to far the larger 
 part of his writings ! I have now an epi- 
 tome of them all. I think the way in which 
 you have done the 'Life' the most judicious 
 you could have pitched upon. You have 
 made him tell his own story, and your com- 
 ments are in keeping with the tale. Why, I 
 never heard of such a work as ' the Review.' 
 Strange that in my stall-hunting days I 
 never so much as lit upon an odd volume of 
 it. This circumstance looks as if they were 
 never of any great circulation. But I may 
 have met with 'em, and not knowing the 
 prize, overpast 'em. I was almost a stranger 
 to the whole history of Dissenters in those 
 reigns, and picked my way through that 
 strange book the ' Consolidator ' at random. 
 How affecting are some of his personal 
 appeals : what a machine of projects he set 
 on foot, and following wi-iters have picked 
 his pocket of the patents ! I do not under- 
 stand whereabouts in Eoxana he himself left 
 off. I always thought the complete-tourist- 
 sort of description of the town she passes 
 through on her last embarkation miserably 
 unseasonable, and out of place. I knew not 
 they were spurious. Enlighten me as to 
 where the apocryphal matter commences. I, 
 by accident, can coxTect one A. D., ' Family 
 Instructor,' vol. ii. 1718 ; you say his first 
 volume had then reached the fourth edition ; 
 
160 
 
 LETTER TO OILMAN. 
 
 now I have a fifth, printed for Eman 
 Matthews, 1717. So have I plucked one 
 rotten date, or rather picked it up where it 
 had inadvertently fallen, from your flourisli- 
 ing date tree, the Palm of Engaddi, I may 
 take it for my pains. I think yours a book 
 which every public library must have, and 
 every English scholar should have. I am 
 sure it has enriched my meagre stock of the 
 author's works. I seem to be twice as 
 opulent. Mary is by my side just finishing 
 the second volume. It must have interest to 
 divert her away so long from her modern 
 novels. Colburn will be quite jealous. I 
 was a little disappointed at ray ' Ode to the 
 Treadmill ' not finding a place, but it came 
 out of time. The two papers of mine will 
 puzzle the reader, being so akin. Odd, that , 
 never keeping a scrap of my own letters, ' 
 with some fifteen years' interval I should 
 nearly have said the same things. But 1 
 shall always feel happy in having my name 
 go down any how with De Foe's, and that of 
 his historiographer. T promise myself, if 
 not immortality, yet diuternity of being read 
 in consequence. We have both had much 
 illness this year ; and feeling infirmities and 
 fretfulness grow upon us, we have cast oS" the 
 cares of housekeeping, sold off our goods, 
 and commenced boarding and lodging with 
 a very comfortable old couple next door to 
 where you found us. We use a sort of com- 
 mon table. Nevertheless, we have reserved 
 a private one for an old friend ; and when 
 Mrs. Wilson and you revisit Babylon, we 
 shall pray you to make it yours for a season. 
 Our very kindest remembrances to you 
 both. 
 
 " From your old friend &uA. fellow-journalist, 
 now in two instances. 
 
 « C. Lamb." 
 
 " Hazlitt is going to make your book a 
 basis for a review of De Foe's Novels in ' the 
 Edinbro.' I wish I had liealth and spirits to 
 do it. Hone I have not seen, but I doubt 
 not he will be much pleased with your per- 
 formance. I very much hope you will give 
 us an account of Duntun, &c. But wliat I 
 shouUl more like to see would be a life and 
 times of Bunyan. Wishing health to you, 
 and long life to your healthy book, again I 
 Bubscribe me, 
 
 " Yours ill verity, C. L." 
 
 About the same time, the following letter 
 was written, alluduig to the same change. 
 
 TO MR. OILMAN. 
 "Chase-side, Enfield, 26th Oct. 182.'). 
 
 " Dear Oilman, — Allsop brought me your 
 kind message yesterday. How can 1 account 
 for having not visited Highgate this long 
 time 1 Change of place seemed to have 
 changed me. How grieved I was to hear in 
 what indifferent liealth Coleridge has been, 
 and I not to know of it ! A little school 
 divinity, well applied, may be healing. I 
 send him honest Tom of Aquin ; that was 
 always an obscure great idea to me : I never 
 thought or dreamed to see him in the flesh, 
 but t'other day I rescued him from a .stall in 
 Barbican, and brought him off in triumph. 
 He comes to greet Coleridge's acceptance, 
 for his shoe-latchets I am unworthy to 
 unloose. Yet there are pretty pro's and 
 con's, and such unsatisfactory learning in him. 
 Commend me to the question of etiquette — 
 ' utriim anminciatio debuerit fi^ri per angelum ' 
 — Qucest. 30, Articidus 2. I protest, till now 
 I had thought Gabriel a fellow of some mark 
 and livelihood, not a simple esquire, as I find 
 him. Well, do not break your lay brains, 
 nor I neither, with these curious nothings. 
 They are nuts to our dear friend, whom 
 hoping to see at your first friendly hint that 
 it will be convenient, I end with begging our 
 very kindest loves to Mrs. Oilman. We 
 have had a sorry house of it here. Our 
 spirits have been reduced till we were at 
 hope's end what to do. Obliged to quit this 
 house, and afraid to engage another, till in 
 exti-emity, I took the desperate resolve of 
 kicking house and all down, like Bunyan's 
 pack ; and here we are in a new life at board 
 and lodging, with an honest couple our 
 neighbours. We have ridded ourselves of 
 the cares of dirty acres ; and the change, 
 thoutrh of less than a week, has had the most 
 beneficial effects on Mary already. She 
 looks two years and a half younger for it. 
 j But we have had sore trials. 
 ! " God send us one happy meeting ! — Yours 
 faithfully, C. Lamb." 
 
 The first result of the experiment was 
 happy, as it brought improved health to 
 Miss Lamb; to which Lamb refers in tlio 
 
following letter to his Suffolk friend, who 
 had announced to him his appointment as 
 assignee under a bankruptcy. 
 
 TO BERNARD BARTON. 
 
 " December 8th, 1829. 
 " My dear B. B., — ^You are very good to 
 have been uneasy about us, and I have the 
 .satisfaction to tell you, that we are both in 
 better health and spirits than we have been 
 for a year or two past ; I may say, than we 
 have been since we have been at Enfield. 
 The cause may not appear quite adequate, 
 when I tell you, that a course of ill-health 
 and spirits brought us to the determination 
 of giving up our house here, and we are 
 boarding and lodging with a worthy old 
 couple, long inhabitants of Enfield, where 
 everything is done for us without our trouble, 
 further than a reasonable weekly payment. 
 "We should have done so before, but it is not 
 easy to flesh and blood to give up an ancient 
 establishment, to discard old Penates, and 
 from house-keepers to turn house-sharers. 
 (N.B. We are not in the workhouse.) Dio- 
 cletian, in his garden, found more repose 
 than on the imperial seat of Eome ; and the 
 nob of Charles the Fifth ached seldomer 
 under a monk's cowl than under the diadem. 
 "With such shadows of assimilation we coun- 
 tenance our degradation. With such a load 
 of dignified cares just removed from our ; 
 shoulders, we can the more understand and i 
 pity the accession to yours, by the advance- | 
 ment to an assigneeship. I will tell you I 
 honestly, B. B., that it has been long my 
 deliberate judgment that all bankrupts, of 
 what denomination, civil or religious, soever, 
 ought to be hanged. The pity of mankind 1 
 has for ages run in a wrong channel, and has 
 been diverted from poor creditors — (how 
 many have I known sufferers ! Hazlitt has 
 just been defrauded of 100^. by his 
 bookseller-friend's breaking) — to scoundrel ! 
 debtoi-s. I know all the topics, — that dis- 
 tress may come upon an honest man withput 
 his fault ; that the failure of one that' he ' 
 trusted was his calamity, &c. Then let both ; 
 be hanged. O how careful this would make ' 
 traders ! These are my deliberate thoughts, I 
 after many years' experience in mattei-s of 
 trade. What a world of trouble it would 
 save you, if Friend **•** had been imme- 
 
 diately hanged, without benefit of clergy, 
 which (being a Quaker 1 presume) he could 
 not reasonably insist upon. Why, after 
 slaving twelve months in your assign- 
 business, you will be enabled to declare 7d. 
 in the pound in all human probability. B. B., 
 he should be hanged. Trade will never re- 
 flourish in this land till such a law is 
 established. I write big, not to save ink but 
 eyes, mine having been troubled with reading 
 through three folios of old Fuller in almost 
 as few days, and I went to bed last night in 
 agony, and am writing with a vial of eye- 
 water before me, alternately dipping in vial 
 and inkstand. This may inflame my zeal 
 against bankrupts, but it was my speculation 
 when I could see better. Half the world's 
 misery (Eden else) is owing to want of 
 money, and all that want is owing to bank- 
 rupts. I declare I would, if the state wanted 
 practitioners, turn hangman myself, and 
 should have great pleasure in hanging the 
 first after my salutary law should be estab- 
 lished. I have seen no annuals, and wish to 
 see none. I like your fun upon them, and 
 was quite pleased with Bowles's sonnet. 
 Hood is, or was, at Brighton ; but a note 
 (prose or rhyme) to him, Eobert-street, 
 Adelphi, I am sure, would extract a copy of 
 his, which also I have not seen. Wishing 
 you and yours all health, I conclude whUe 
 these frail glasses are to me — eyes. 
 
 «C. L." 
 
 Tlie following letter, written in the begin- 
 ning of 1830, describes his landlord and land- 
 lady, and expresses, with a fine solemnity, 
 the feelings which still held him at Enfield. 
 
 TO MR. WORDSWORTH. 
 
 "Jan. 22nd, 1S30. 
 " And is it a year since we parted from 
 you at the steps of Edmonton stage ? There 
 are not now the years that there used to be. 
 The tale of the dwindled age of men, reported 
 of succcssional mankind, is tnie of the same 
 man only. We do not live a year in a year 
 now. 'Tis a punctum stans. The seasons 
 pa.s3 us with indifference. Spring cheei-s not, 
 nor winter heightens our gloom ; autumn 
 hath foregone its moralities, — they are ' hey- 
 p;iss repass,' as in a show-box. Yet, as fur 
 a.s last year, occurs back, — for they scarce 
 
162 
 
 LETTER TO WORDSWORTH. 
 
 show a reflex now, they make no memory as 
 lieretofore, — 'twas sufficiently gloomy. Let 
 the sullen nothing pass. Suffice it, that after 
 sad spirits, prolonged through many of its 
 months, as it called them, we have cast our 
 skins ; have taken a farewell of the pompous, 
 troublesome trifle, called housekeeping, and 
 are settled down into poor boarders and 
 lodgers at next door with an old couple, the 
 Baucis and Baucida of dull Enfield. Here 
 we have nothing to do with our victuals but 
 to eat them ; with the garden bvit to see it 
 grow ; with the tax-gatherer but to hear him 
 knock ; with the maid but to hear her 
 scolded. Scot and lot, butcher, baker, are 
 things unknown to us, save as spectators of 
 the pageant. We are fed we know not how ; 
 quietists, — confiding ravens. We have the 
 otium pro dignitate, a respectable insignifi- 
 cance. Yet in the self-condemned oblivious- 
 ness, in the stagnation, some molesting 
 yearnings of life, not quite killed, rise, 
 prompting me that there was a London, and 
 that I was of that old Jerusalem. In dreams 
 I am in Fleet Market, but I wake and cry to 
 sleep again. I die hard, a stubborn Eloisa 
 in this detestable Paraclete. What have I 
 gained by health 1 Intolerable dullness. 
 What by early hours and moderate meals 1 
 A total blank. O ! never let the Ipng poets 
 be believed, who 'tice men from the cheerful 
 haunts of streets, or think they mean it not 
 of a countx-y village. In the ruins of Pal- 
 myra I could gird myself up to solitude, or 
 muse to the snorings of the Seven Sleepers ; 
 but to have a little teazing image of a town 
 about one ; country folks that do not look 
 like country folks ; shops two yards square, 
 half a dozen apples and two penn'orth 
 of overlooked ginger-bread for the lofty 
 fruiterers of Oxford-street ; and, for the 
 immortal book and print stalls, a circulating 
 library that stands stiU, where the sliow- 
 picture is a last year's Valentine, and whither 
 the fame of the last ten Scotch novels has 
 not yet travelled, — (maiTy, they just begin to 
 be conscious of the Redgauntlet :) — to have 
 a new plastered flat church, and to be wishing 
 that it was but a cathedral ! Tlie very 
 blackguards here are degenerate ; the top- 
 ping gentry stock brokers ; the passengers 
 too many to insure your quiet, or let you go 
 about whistling or gaping, too few to be the 
 fine indifl'ereiit pageants of Fleet-street. 
 
 Confining, room-keeping, thickest winter, is 
 yet more bearable here than the gaudy 
 months. Among one's books at one's fire 
 by candle, one is soothed into an oblivion 
 that one is not in the country ; but with the 
 light the gi'een fields return, till I gaze, and 
 in a calenture can plunge myself into St. 
 Giles's. O ! let no native Londoner imagine 
 that health, and rest, and innocent occupa- 
 tion, interchange of converse sweet, and 
 recreative study, can make the country any- 
 thing better than altogether odious and 
 detestable. A garden was the primitive 
 prison, till man, with Promethean felicity 
 and boldness, luckily sinned himself out of it. 
 Thence followed Babylon, Nineveh, Venice, 
 London, haberdashers, goldsmiths, taverns, 
 playhouses, satires, epigrams, puns, — these 
 all came in on the town part, and the thither 
 side of innocence. Man found out inven- 
 tions. From my den I return you condolence 
 for your decaying sight ; not for anything 
 there is to see in the coimtry, but for the 
 miss of the pleasure of reading a London 
 newspaper. The poets are as well to listen 
 to ; anything high may, nay must, be read 
 out ; you read it to yourself with an 
 imaginary auditor ; but the light paragraphs 
 must be glid over by the proper eye ; 
 mouthing mumbles their gossamery sub- 
 stance. 'Tis these trifles I should mourn in 
 fading sight. A newspaper is the single 
 gleam of comfort I receive here ; it comes 
 from rich Cathay with tidings of mankind. 
 Yet I could not attend to it, read out by the 
 most beloved voice. But your eyes do not 
 get worse, I gather. O for the collyrium of 
 Tobias inclosed in a whiting's liver, to send 
 you with no apocryphal good wishes ! The 
 last long time I heard from you, you had 
 knocked your head against something. Do 
 not do so ; for your head (I do not flatter) is 
 not a knob, or the top of a brass nail, or the 
 end of a nine-pin, — unless a Vulcanian ham- 
 mer could fairly batter a * Recluse ' out of it ; 
 then would I bid the smirched god knock 
 and knock lustily, the two-handed skinker. 
 Mary must squeeze out a \me proprid manu, 
 but indeed her fingers have been incorrigibly 
 nervous to letter writing for a long interval. 
 'Twill please you all to hear, that though I 
 fret like a lion in a net, her present health 
 and spirits are better than they have been 
 for some time past ; she is ab.-<olutely tnree 
 
LETTER TO WORDSWORTH. 
 
 163 
 
 years and a half younger, as I tell her, since I 
 we have adopted this boarding plan. 
 
 " Our providers are an honest pair, Dame 
 
 W and her husband ; he, when the light 
 
 of prosperity shined on them, a moderately 
 . thriving haberdasher within Bow bells, re- 
 tired since with something under a com- 
 petence ; writes himself parcel gentleman ; 
 hath borne parish offices ; sings fine old sea 
 songs at threescore and ten ; sighs only now 
 and then when he thinks that he has a 
 son on his hands about fifteen, whom he 
 finds a difficulty in getting out into the 
 world, and then checks a sigh with muttering, 
 as I once heard him prettily, not meaning to 
 be heard, ' I have married my daughter, 
 however ; ' takes the weather as it comes ; 
 outsides it to town in severest season ; and 
 o' winter nights tells old stories not tending 
 to litei'ature, (how comfortable to author-rid 
 folks !) and has 07ie anecdote, upon which 
 and about forty pounds a year he seems to 
 have retired in green old age. It was how 
 he was a rider in his youth, travelling for 
 shops, and once (not to balk his employer's 
 bargain) on a sweltering day in August, rode 
 foaming into Dunstable upon a mad horse, 
 to the dismay and expostulatory wonder- 
 ment of inn-keepers, ostlers, &c., who de- 
 clared they would not have bestrid the beast 
 to win the Derby. Understand, the creature 
 galled to death and desperation by gad-flies, 
 cormorant- winged, worse than beset Inachus' 
 daughter. This he tells, this he brindles 
 and burnishes on a winter's eve ; 'tis his star 
 of set glory, his rejuvenescence, to descant 
 upon. Far from me be it {dii avertant) to look 
 a gift story in the moiith, or cruelly to surmise 
 (as those who doubt the plunge of Curtius) 
 that the inseparate conjuncture of man and 
 beast, the centaur-phenomeDon that stag- 
 gered all Dunstable, might have been the 
 effect of unromantic necessity ; that the 
 horse-part carried the reasoning, willy nilly ; 
 that needs must when such a devU drove ; 
 that certain spiral configurations in the 
 
 frame of T W unfriendly to aliglit- 
 
 ing, made the alliance more forcible than 
 voluntary. Let him enjoy his fame for me, 
 nor let me hint a whisper that shall dis- 
 mount Bellerophon. But in case he was an 
 involuntary martyr, yet if in the fiery con- 
 flict he buckled the soul of a constant haber- 
 dasher to him, and adopted his flames, let 
 
 accident and him share the glory. You 
 
 would all like T W . *[ ] How 
 
 weak is painting to describe a man ! Say 
 that he stands four feet and a nail high by 
 his own yard measure, which, like the 
 sceptre of Agamemnon, shall never sprout 
 again, still you have no adequate idea ; nor 
 when I tell you that his dear hump, which I 
 have favoured in the picture, seems to me of 
 the buffalo — indicative and repository of mild 
 qualities, a budget of kindnesses — still you 
 have not the man. Knew you old Norris of 
 the Temple ? sixty years ours and our 
 fathers' friend ? He was not more natural 
 to us than this old W., the acquamtance of 
 scarce more weeks. Under his roof now 
 ought I to take my rest, but that back- 
 looking ambition tells me I might yet be a 
 Londoner ! Well, if we ever do move, we 
 have incumbrances the less to impede us ; 
 all our fui'niture has fiided under the 
 auctioneer's hammer, going for nothing, like 
 the tarnished frippery of the prodigal, and 
 we have only a spoon or two left to bless us. 
 Clothed we came iuto Enfield, and naked we 
 must go out of it. I would live in London 
 shirtless, bookless. Henry Crabb is at 
 Rome; advices to that effect have reached 
 Bury. But by solemn legacy he bequeathed 
 at parting (whether he should live or die) a 
 turkey of Suffolk to be sent every succeeding 
 Christmas to us and divers other friends. 
 What a genuine old bachelor's action ! I 
 fear he will find the air of Italy too classic. 
 His station is in the Harz forest ; his soul is 
 be-Goethed. iMiss Kelly we never see ; Tal- 
 fourd not this half year : the latter flourishes, 
 but the exact number of his children, God 
 forgive me, I have utterly forgotten ; we 
 single people are often out in our count 
 there. Shall I say two? We see scarce 
 anybody. Can I cram loves enough to you 
 all in this little O ? Excuse particularising. 
 
 " C. L." 
 
 A letter which, addressed to Mr. Gilmau, 
 was intended both for him and his great 
 guest Coleridge, gives another version of the 
 
 same character. " One anecdote " of T 
 
 W is repeated in it, with the substitution 
 
 • Here was a rude sketch of a pontlcman answeriug 
 to the description. 
 
 H 2 
 
m 
 
 LETTERS TO OILMAN. 
 
 of Devizes for Dunstable. Which is the 
 veritable place must remain a curious question 
 for future descant, as the hero is dead, and 
 his anecdote sum-ives alone in these pages. 
 It seems that Miss Lamb had accompanied 
 his landlord on a little excairsion. 
 
 TO Mr.. OILMAN. 
 
 " Dear G., — The excursionists reached 
 home, and the good town of Enfield, a little 
 after four, without slip or dislocation. Little 
 has transpired concerning the events of the 
 back-journey, save that on passing the house 
 of 'Squire Mellish, situate a stone bow's cast 
 
 fi'om the hamlet, Father "W , with a 
 
 good-natured wonderment, exclaimed, ' I can- 
 not think what is gone of Mr. Mellish's 
 rooks. I fancy they have taken flight some- 
 where, but I have missed them two or three 
 years past.' All this while, according to his 
 fellow-traveller's report, the rookery was 
 darkening the air above with undiminished 
 population, and deafening all ears but his 
 with their cawings. But nature has been 
 gently withdrawing such phenomena from 
 
 the notice of T W 's senses, from 
 
 the time he began to miss the rooks. T. 
 
 W has passed a retired life in this 
 
 hamlet, of thirty or forty years, living upon 
 the minimum wdiich is consistent with gen- 
 tility, yet a star among the minor gentry, 
 receiving the bows of the tradespeople, and 
 courtesies of the alms' women, daily. Cliildren 
 Aencrate him not less for his external show of 
 gentry, than they wonder at him for a gentle 
 rising endorsation of the person, not amount- 
 ing to a hump, or if a hump, innocuous as 
 the hump of the buffalo, and coronative of as 
 mild qualities. 'Tis a throne on winch 
 patience seems to sit — the proud perch of a 
 self-respecting humility, stooping with con- 
 descension. Tliereupon the cares of life 
 have sate, and rid him easily. For he has 
 thrid the angustice doviils with dexterity. 
 Life opened upon him with comparative 
 brilliancy. He set out as a rider or traveller 
 for a wholesale house, in which capacity he 
 tells of many hair-breadth escapes that befell 
 him ; one especially, how he rode a mad horse 
 into the town of Devizes ; how horse and 
 rider arrived in a foam, to the utter conster- 
 nation of the expostulating hostler.s, inn- ' 
 keepers, &c. It seems it was sultry weather, ' 
 piping hot ; the steed tormented into frenzy 
 
 with gad-flies, long past being roadworthy ; 
 but safety and the interest of the house he 
 rode for were incompatible things ; a fall in 
 serge cloth was expected, and a mad entrance 
 they made of it. Whether the exploit was 
 purely voluntary, or partially ; or whether a 
 certain personal defiguration in the man part 
 of this extraordinary centaur (non-assistive 
 to partition of natures) might not enforce the 
 conjunction, I stand not to inquire. I look 
 not with 'skew eyes into the deeds of heroes. 
 The hosier that was burnt with his shop in 
 Field-lane, on Tuesday night, shall have past 
 to heaven for me like a INfarian Martyr, 
 provided always, that he consecrated the 
 fortuitous incremation with a short ejacula- 
 tion in the exit, as much as if he had taken 
 his state degi-ees of martyrdom informd in 
 the market vicinage. There is adoptive as 
 well as acquisitive sacrifice. Be the animus 
 what it might, the fact is indisputable, that 
 this composition was seen flying all abroad, 
 and mine host of Daintry may yet remember 
 its passing through his town, if his scores are 
 not more faithful th:in his memory. After 
 
 this exploit (enough for one man), T 
 
 W seems to have subsided into a less 
 
 hazardous occupation ; and in the twenty- 
 fifth year of his age, we find him a haber- 
 dasher in Bow-lane : yet still retentive of his 
 early riding (though leaving it to rawer 
 stomachs), and Christmasly at night sithence 
 to this last, and shall to his late.st Christmas, 
 hath he, doth he, and shall he, tell after 
 supper the story of the insane steed and the 
 desperate rider. Save for Bedlam or Luke's 
 no eye could have guessed that melting day 
 what house he rid for. But he reposes on 
 his bridles, and after the ujis and downs 
 (metaphoric only) of a life behind the 
 counter — hard riding sometimes, I fear, for 
 poor T. W. — with the scrapings together of 
 the shop, and one anecdote, he hath finalh'- 
 settled at Enfield ; by hard economising, 
 gardening, building for himself, hath reared 
 a mansion : married a daughter ; qu.alified a 
 son for a counting-house ; gotten the respect 
 of high and low ; served for self or substitute 
 the greater parish oflices ; hath a sjiecial 
 voice at vestries ; and, domiciliating us, liath 
 reflected a portion of his house-keeping 
 respectability upon your luimble servants. 
 We are greater, being his lodgers, than when 
 we were substantial renters. His name is a 
 
LETTERS TO OILMAN. 
 
 165 
 
 passport to take otf the sneers of the native 
 EufieWers against obnoxious foreigners. "We 
 
 are endenizened. Thus much of T. W 
 
 have I thought fit to acquaint you, that you 
 may see the exemplary reliance upon Provi- 
 dence with which I entrusted so dear a 
 charge as my own sister to the guidance of 
 the man that rode the mad horse into 
 Devizes. To come from his heroic character, 
 all the amiable qualities of domestic life 
 concentre in this tamed Bellerophon. He is 
 excellent over a glass of grog ; just as 
 pleasant without it ; laughs when he hears a 
 joke, and when (which is much ofteuer) he 
 hears it not ; sings glorious old sea songs on 
 festival nights ; and but upon a slight 
 acquaintance of two years, Coleridge, is as 
 dear a deaf old man to us, as old Norris, rest 
 his soul ! was after fifty. To him and his 
 scanty literature (what there is of it, sound) 
 have we flown from the metropolis and its 
 cursed annualists, reviewers, authors, and tlie 
 whole muddy ink press of that stagnant 
 pool. 
 
 " Now, Gilman again, you do not know the 
 treasure of the Fullers. I calculate on 
 having massy reading till Christmas. All I 
 want here, is books of the true sort, not 
 those things in boards that moderns mistake 
 for books, what they club for at book clubs. 
 
 " I did not mean to cheat you with a blank 
 side, but my eye smarts, for which I am 
 taking medicine, and abstain, this day at least, 
 from any aliments but milk-porridge, the 
 innocent taste of which I am anxious to 
 renew after a half century's disacquaintance. 
 If a blot fall here like a tear, it is not jsathos, 
 but an angry eye. 
 
 " Farewell, while my specilla are sound. 
 " Yours and yours, C Lamb," 
 
 The next letter to Coleridge's excellent 
 host, is a reply to a request from an inipoi*- 
 tunate friend of his correspondent, that he 
 would write something on behalf of tlie 
 Spitalfields' weavers. Alien as such a ta,sk 
 would have been to his habits of thought'or 
 composition, if Lamb had been acquainted 
 with that singular race, living in their high, 
 narrow, over-peopled houses, in the tliickest 
 part of London, yet almost apart from the 
 great throng of its dwellers ; indulging their 
 straitened sympathies in the fostering of the 
 
 more tender animals, as rabbits and pigeons 
 nurtured in their garrets or cellars ; or cul- 
 tivating some stunted plants with an intuitive 
 love of nature, unfed by any knowledge of 
 verilure beyond Hoxton ; their painful in- 
 dustiy, theii- uneducated morals, their eager 
 snatches of pleasure from the only quickening 
 of their intellect, by liquors which make glad 
 the heart of man ; he would scarcely have 
 refused the offered retainer for them. 
 
 TO MR. OILMAN. 
 
 "March 8tli, IS 30. 
 
 " My dear G.,— Your friend B (for I 
 
 knew him immediately by the smooth 
 satinity of his style) must excuse me for 
 advocating the cause of his friends in Spital- 
 fields. The fact is, I am retained by the 
 Norwich people, and have ali-eady appeared 
 in their paper under the signatures of ' Lucius 
 Sergius,' 'Bluff,' 'Broad-Cloth,' 'No-Trade-to- 
 the-Woollen-Trade,' 'Anti-plush,' &c., in 
 defence of druggets and long camblets. And 
 without this pre-engagement, I feel I should 
 naturally have chosen a side opposite 
 
 to , for in the silken seemingness of 
 
 his nature there is that which offends me. 
 My flesh tingles at such catei'pillars. He 
 shall not crawl me over. Let him and his 
 workmen sing the old burthen, 
 
 ' Heigh ho, ye weavers I ' 
 
 for any aid I shall offer them in this 
 emergency. I was over Saint Luke's the 
 other day with my friend Tuthill, and 
 mightily pleased with one of his contrivances 
 for the comfort and amelioration of the 
 students. They have double cells, in which 
 a pair may lie feet to feet horizontally, and 
 chat the time away as rationally as they can. 
 It must certainly be more sociable for them 
 these warm raving niglits. The right-hand 
 truckle in one of these friendly recesses, at 
 present vacant, was preparing, I understood, 
 for Mr. Irving. Poor fellow ! it is time he 
 removed from Pentonville. I followed him 
 as far as to Highbury the other day, with a 
 mob at his heels, calling out upon Ermigiddon, 
 who I suppose is some Scotch moderator. 
 He squinted out his favourite eye last Friday, 
 in the fury of possession, upon a poor woman's 
 shoulders that was crying matches, and has 
 not missed it. The companion truck, as far 
 as I could measure it with my eye, would 
 
186 
 
 LETTERS TO BARTON AND SOUTHEY. 
 
 conveniently fit a person about the length of 
 Coleridge, allowing for a reasonable drawing 
 up of the feet, not at all painful. Does he 
 talk of moving this quarter? You and I 
 have too much sense to trouble ourselves with 
 revelations; marry, to the same in Greek, 
 you may have something professionally to 
 say. Tell C. that he was to come and see us 
 some fine day. Let it be before he moves, 
 for in his new quarters he will necessarily 
 be confined in his conversation to his brother 
 prophet. Conceive the two Eabbis foot to 
 foot, for there are no Gamaliels there to 
 affect a humbler posture ! All are masters 
 in that Patmos, where the law is perfect 
 equality ; Latmos, I should rather say, for 
 they will be Luna's twin darlings ; her 
 affection will be ever at the full. Well ; keep 
 your brains moist with gooseberry this mad 
 March, for the devil of exposition seeketh 
 dry places. C. L." 
 
 Here is a brief reply to the questioning of 
 Lamb's true-hearted correspondent. Barton, 
 who doubted of the personal verity of Lamb's 
 " Joseph Paice," the most polite of merchants. 
 This friend's personal acquaintance with 
 Lamb had not been frequent enough to teach 
 him, that if Lamb could innocently "lie 
 like truth," he made up for this freedom, by 
 sometimes making truth look like a lie. His 
 accotmt of JSIi*. Paice's politeness, could be 
 attested to the letter by living witnesses. 
 
 TO BERNARD BARTON. 
 
 " Dear B. B., — To reply to you by return 
 of post, I must gobble up my dinner, and 
 despatch this in proprid persond to the office, 
 to be in time. So take it from me hastily, 
 that you are perfectly welcome to furnish 
 A. C. with the scrap, which I had almost 
 forgotten writing. The more my character 
 comes to be known, the less my veracity will 
 come to be suspected. Time every day cleai-s 
 up some suspected narrative of Herodotus, 
 Bruce, and others of us great travellers. 
 Why, that Joseph Paice was as real a person 
 as Joseph Hume, and a great deal pleasauter. 
 A careful observer of Ufe, Bernard, has no 
 need to invent. Nature romances it for him. 
 Dinner plates rattle, and I positively shall 
 incur indigestion by carrying it half concocted 
 to the post-house. Let me congratulate you 
 
 on the spring coming in, and do you in 
 return condole ■wath me on the winter going 
 out. When the old one goes, seldom comes 
 a better. I dread the prospect of summer, 
 with his all-day-long days. No need of his 
 assistance to make country places dull. 
 With fire and candle-light, I can dream 
 myself in Holborn. With lightsome skies 
 shining in to bed-time I cannot. This 
 Meschek, and these tents of Kedar — I would 
 dwell in the skirts of Jericho rather, and 
 think every blast of the coming in mail a 
 ram's horn. Give me old London at fire 
 and plague times, rather than these tepid 
 gales, healthy country air, and purposeless 
 exercise. 
 
 " Leg of mutton absolutely on the table. 
 
 " Take our hasty loves and short farewell. 
 
 " C. L." 
 
 Lamb's kindness to Hone was not confined 
 to his contributions to the "Eveiy-day Book," 
 and the " Table Book." Those pleasant and 
 blameless works had failed to supply an 
 adequate income for a numerous family, and 
 Lamb was desirous of interesting his influen- 
 tial friends in a new project of Hone's, to 
 establish himself in a coffee-house conducted 
 in a superior style. With this view, he wrote 
 to Southey, who, nobly forgetting Hone's old 
 heresies in politics or parodies, had made a 
 genial reference to his late woi-k in his " Life 
 of Bunyan." 
 
 TO MR. SOUTHEY. 
 
 "May 10th, 1830. 
 
 " Dear Southey, — My friend Hone, whom 
 you would like for a friend, I found deeply 
 impressed with your generous notice of him 
 in your beautiful ' Life of Bunyan,' which I 
 am just now full of. He has written to you 
 for leave to publish a certain good-natured 
 letter. I write not this to enforce his request, 
 for we are fully aware that the refusal of 
 such publication would be quite consistent 
 with all that is good in your character. 
 Neither he nor I expect it from you, nor 
 exact it ; but if you would consent to it, you 
 would have me obliged by it, as well as him. 
 He is just now in a critical situation : kind 
 friends have opened a coffee-house for him in 
 the City, but their means have not extended 
 to the purchase of coffee-pots, credit for 
 
LETTER TO DYER. 
 
 167 
 
 Reviews, newspapers, and other parapher- 
 nalia. So I am sitting in the skeleton of a 
 possible divan. What right I have to 
 interfere, you best know. Look on me as 
 a dog who went once temporarily insane, 
 and bit you, and now begs for a crust. Will 
 you set your wits to a dog ? 
 
 "Our object is to open a subsci'iption, 
 
 which my friends of the are most 
 
 willing to forward for him, but think that a 
 leave from you to publish would aid it. 
 
 "But not an atom of respect or kindness 
 will or shall it abate in either of us, if you 
 decline it. Have this strongly in your mind. 
 "Those 'Every-day' and 'Table' Books 
 will be a treasure a hundred years hence, but 
 they have failed to make Hone's fortune. 
 
 "Here his wife and all his children are 
 about me, gaping for coflFee customers ; but 
 how should they come in, seeing no pot 
 boiling ! 
 
 " Enough of Hone. I saw Coleridge a day 
 or two since. He has had some severe 
 attack, not paralytic ; but, if I had not heard 
 of it, I should not have found it out. He 
 looks, and especially speaks, strong. How 
 are all the Wordsworths, and all the 
 Southeys, whom I am obliged to you if you 
 have not brought up haters of the name of 
 
 " C. Lamb ? 
 
 " P.S. — I have gone lately into the acrostic 
 line. I find genius (such as I had) declines 
 with me, but I get clever. Do you know 
 anybody that wants charades, or such things, 
 for Albums 1 I do 'em at so much a sheet. 
 Perhaps an epigram (not a very happy-gram) 
 I did for a school-boy yesterday may amuse. 
 I pray Jove he may not get a flogging for any 
 false quantity ; but 'tis, with one exception, 
 the only Latin verses I have made for forty 
 years, and I did it 'to order.' 
 
 CUIQUE SUUM. 
 
 Adsciscit sibi divitias et opes alicnas 
 
 Fur, rapiens, spolians, quod niihi, quod-que tibi, 
 
 Proprium erat, temnens hsec verba, meum-que, 
 tuum-que / 
 
 Omne suum est : tandem Cui-que Suum tribuit. 
 
 Dat resti collum ; restes, vah ! carniflci dat ; 
 Scse Diabolo, sic bene ; Cuique Suum. 
 
 " I write from Hone's, therefore Mary 
 cannot send her love to Mrs. Sou they, but 
 I do. 
 
 " Yours ever, C. L." 
 
 A rural conflagration at this time kindled 
 the noblest range of Lamb's tlioughts, which 
 he expressed in the following letter. The 
 light he flashes on the strange power exerted 
 by the half-witted incendiary shows in it 
 something of a fearful gi-andeur. It is 
 addressed 
 
 TO MR. DYER. 
 
 "Dec. 20th, 1830. 
 
 "Dear Dyer, — I should have written before 
 to thank you for your kind letter, written 
 with your o\vn hand. It glads us to see your 
 writing. It will give you pleasure to hear 
 that after so much illness we are in tolerable 
 health and spirits once more. Poor Enfield, 
 that has been so peaceable hitherto, has 
 caught the inflammatory fever ; the tokens 
 are upon her ; and a great fire was blazing 
 last night in the barns and haystacks of a 
 farmer, about half a mile from us. Where 
 will these things end ? There is no doubt of 
 its being the work of some ill-disposed rustic, 
 but how is he to be discovered ? They go to 
 work in the dark with strange chemical 
 preparations, unknown to our forefathers. 
 There is not even a dark lantern, to have a 
 chance of detecting these Guy Fauxes. We 
 are past the iron age, and are got into the 
 fiery age, undreamed of by Ovid. You are 
 lucky in Clifibrd's Inn, where I think you 
 have few ricks or stacks worth the burning. 
 Pray, keep as little corn by you as you can 
 for fear of the worst. It was never good 
 times in England since the poor began to 
 speculate upon their condition. Formerly 
 they jogged on with as little reflection as 
 horses. The whistling ploughman went 
 cheek by jowl with his brother that neighed. 
 Now the biped carries a box of phosphorus in 
 his leather breeches, and in the dead of night 
 the half-illuminated beast steals his magic 
 potion into a cleft in a barn, and half the 
 country is grinning with new fires. Farmer 
 Graystock said something to the touchy 
 rustic, that he did not relish, and he writes 
 his distaste in flames. What a power to 
 intoxicate his crude brains, just muddlingly 
 awake to perceive that something is wrong 
 in the social system, — what a hellish faculty 
 above gunpowder ! Now the rich and poor 
 are fairly pitted. We shall see who can hang 
 or burn fastest. It is not always revenge 
 that stimulates these kindlings. There is a 
 
love of exerting mischief ! Think of a dis- 
 respected clod, that was trod into earth ; that 
 was nothing; on a sudden by damned arts 
 refined into an exterminating angel, devour- 
 ing the fruits of the earth, and their growers, 
 in a mass of fire ; what a new existence ! 
 "What a temptation above Lucifer's ! Would 
 clod be anything but a clod, if he could resist 
 it ? Why, here was a spectacle last night 
 for a whole country, a bonfire visible to 
 London, alanning her guilty towei's, and 
 shaking the Monument with an ague fit, all 
 done by a little vial of phosphor in a clown's 
 fob. How he must grin, and shake his empty 
 noddle in clouds ! The Vulcanian epicure ! 
 Alas ! can we ring the bells backward ? Can 
 we unlearn the arts that pretend to civilise, 
 and then burn the world ? There is a march 
 of science ; but who shall beat the drums for 
 its retreat ? Who shall persuade the boor 
 that phosphor wiU not ignite 1 Seven goodly 
 stacks of hay, with corn-barns proportionable, 
 lie smoking ashes and chaff, which man and 
 beast would sputter out and reject like those 
 apples of asphaltes and bitumen. The food 
 for the inhabitants of earth will quickly 
 disappear. Hot rolls may say, ' Fuimus 
 panes, fuit quartern-loaf, et iugens gloria 
 apple-pasty-orum.' That the good old 
 munching system may last thy time and 
 mine, good un-incendiary George ! is the 
 devout prayer of thine, 
 
 " To the last crust, C. Lamb.'' 
 
 In 1830, Lamb took a journey to Bury 
 St. Edmund's, to fetch Miss Isola to her 
 adopted home, from a visit which had been 
 broken by her illness. It was on his return 
 that Lamb's repartee to the query of the 
 statistical gentleman as to the prosjjeots of 
 the turnip crop, which has been repeatedly 
 published, was made. The following is his 
 own version of it, contained in a letter 
 addressed to Miss Isola's hostess, on their 
 arrival. 
 
 " A rather talkative gentleman, but very 
 civil, engaged me in a discourse for full 
 twenty niilos, on the probable advantages of 
 steam carriages, which, being merely pro- 
 blematical, I bore my part in with some 
 credit, in spite of ray totally un-engineer-like 
 faculties. But when, somewhere about Stan- 
 
 stead, he put an unfortunate question to me, 
 as to the 'probability of its turning out a 
 good turnip season,' and when I, who am 
 still less of an agriculturist than a steam 
 philosopher, not knowing a turnip from a 
 potato ground, innocently made answer, that 
 ' I believed it depended very much upon 
 boiled legs of mutton,' my unlucky reply set 
 Miss Isola a laughing to a degree that 
 disturbed her tranquillity for the only 
 moment in our journey. I am afraid my 
 credit sank very low with my other fellow- 
 traveller, who had thought he had met with 
 a well-informed passenger, which is an 
 accident so desirable in a stage-coach. We 
 were rather less communicative, but still 
 friendly, the rest of the way." 
 
 To the same lady, having sent him an 
 acrostic on his sister's name, he replied with 
 a letter which contained one on hers, and the 
 following notice of his own talent in the 
 acrostic line. 
 
 " Dear Madam, — I do assure you that your 
 verses gratified me very much, and my sister 
 is quite proud of them. For the first time in 
 my life I congratulated myself upon the 
 shortness and meanness of my name. Had 
 it been Schwartzenberg or Esterhazy, it 
 would have put you to some puzzle. I am 
 afraid I shall sicken you of acrostics, but 
 this last was written to order. I beg you to 
 have inserted in your county paper, some- 
 thing like this advertisement. ' To the 
 nobility, gentry, and others, about Bury. — 
 C. Lamb respectfully infoi-ms his friends juid 
 the public in general, that he is leaving off 
 business in the acrostic line, as he is going 
 into an entirely new line. Kebuses ami 
 charades done as usual, and upon the old 
 terms. Also, epitaphs to suit the memory of 
 any person deceased.' 
 
 "I thought I had adroitly escaped the 
 rather unpliable name of ' Williams,' curtail- 
 ing your poor daughters to their proper 
 surnames, but it seems you would not let me 
 off so easily. If these trilles amuse you, 1 am 
 paiil. Though really 'tis an operation too 
 much like — 'A, apple-pie; B, bit it.' To 
 make amends, I request leave to lend you 
 the ' Excursion,' and to recommend, in jiaili- 
 cular, the ' Churchyard Stories ; ' in the 
 
ALBUM VERSES.— LAST LETTERS. 
 
 169 
 
 seventh book, I think. They will strengthen 
 
 the tone of your mind after its weak diet on 
 
 acrostics." 
 
 « • • ♦ 
 
 In 1830, a small volume of poems, the 
 gleanings of some years, during which Lamb 
 had devoted himself to prose, under his name 
 of "Elia," was published by Mr. Moxon, 
 under the title of "Album Verses," and 
 which Lamb, in token of his strong regard, 
 dedicated to the Pubhsher. An unfavour- 
 able review of them in the Literary Gazette 
 produced some verses from Southey, which 
 were inserted in the " Times," and of which the 
 following, as evincing his unchanged friend- 
 ship, may not unfitly be inserted here. The 
 residue, being more severe on Lamb's critics 
 than Lamb himself would have wished, may 
 now be spared. 
 
 Charles Lamb, to those who know thee justly dear 
 For rarest genius, and for sterling worth, 
 Unchanging friendship, warmth of heart sincere, 
 And wit that never gave an ill thought birth, 
 Nor ever in its sport intix'd a sting ; 
 To us who have admired and loved thee long, 
 It is a proud as well as pleasant thing 
 To hear thy good report, now borne along 
 Upon the honest breath of public praise : 
 We know that with the elder sons of song, 
 In honouring whom thou hast delighted still. 
 Thy name shall keep its course to after days. 
 
 This year closed upon the grave of Hazlitt. 
 Lamb visited him frequently during his last 
 ilhiess, and attended his funeral. They had 
 taken great delight in each other's conversa- 
 tion for many years ; and though the indif- 
 ference of Lamb to the objects of Hazlitt's 
 passionate love or hatred, as a politician, at 
 one time produced a coolness, the warmth of 
 the defence of Hazlitt in " Elia's Letter to 
 Southey " renewed the old regard of the 
 philosopher, and set all to rights. Hazlitt, 
 in his turn, as an Edinburgh Reviewer, had 
 opportunities which he delighted to use, of 
 alluding to Lamb's Specimens and Essays, 
 and making him amends for the severity of 
 ancient criticism, which the editor, who could 
 well afford the genial inconsistency, was too 
 generous to exclude. The conduct, indepd, 
 of that distinguished person to Hazlitt, espe- 
 cially in his last illness, won Lamb's admira- 
 tion, and wholly effaced the recollection of 
 the time when, thii"ty yeara before, his play 
 had been denied ci'itical mercy under his rule. 
 Hazlitt's death did not so much shock Lamb 
 
 afterwards, when he felt the want of those 
 essays which he had used periodically to 
 look for with eagerness in the magazines and 
 reviews which they alone made tolerable to 
 him ; and when he realised the dismal 
 certainty that he should never again enjoy 
 that rich discourse of old poets and painters 
 with which so many a long winter's night 
 had been gladdened, or taste life with an 
 additional relish in the keen sense of enjoy- 
 ment which endeared it to his companion. 
 
 CHAPTEE XVIII. 
 
 [1830 to 1834.] 
 lame's last letters and death. 
 
 After the year 1830, Lamb's verses and 
 essays were chiefly given to his friends ; the 
 former consisting of album contributions, the 
 latter of little essences of observation and 
 criticism. Mr. Moxon, having established a 
 new magazine, called the "Englishman's 
 Magazine," induced him to write a scries of 
 papers, some of which were not inferior to 
 his happiest essays. At this time, his old 
 and excellent friend. Dyer, was much annoyed 
 by some of his witticisms, — which, in truth, 
 were only Lamb's modes of expi'essing his 
 deep-seated regard ; and at the quotation of 
 a couplet in one of his early poems, which he 
 had suppressed as liable to be misconstrued 
 by Mr. Eogers. Mr. Barker had unfortu- 
 nately met with the unexpurgated edition 
 which contained this dubious couplet, and in 
 his "Memorials of Dr. Parr" quoted the 
 passage ; which, to 'Mr. Dyer's delicate feel- 
 ings,* conveyed the apprehension that IMr. 
 Rogers would treat the suppression aa 
 
 » Mr. Dyer also complained to Mr. Lamb of some 
 suggestions in tlia, which annoyed him, not so much 
 for his own sake as for the sake of others, who, in the 
 delicacy of his apprehcnsiveness, he thought might feel 
 aggrieved by imputations which were certainly not in- 
 tended, and which they did not deserve. One passage in 
 Elia, hinting that he had been hardly dealt with by 
 schoolmasters, under whom he had been a teacher in his 
 younger days, hurt him ; as, in fact, he was treated by 
 them with the most considerate generosity and kindness. 
 Another passage which he regarded as implying that he 
 had been underpaid by booksellers also ve.\ed him ; us 
 his labours have always been highly esteemed, and have, 
 according to the rate of remuneration of learned men, 
 
 been well compensated by Mr. Yalpy .oiid others. Tho 
 at the time, as it weighed down his spirits ; truth is that Lamb wrote from a vague recollection, 
 
170 
 
 LETTER TO DYER 
 
 colourable, and refer the revival of the lines 
 to his sanction. The following letter was 
 written to dispel those fears from his mind. 
 
 TO MR. DYER. 
 
 "Feb. 22nd, 1831. 
 
 " Dear Byer, — Mr. Rogers, and Mr. Rogers' 
 friends, are perfectly assured, that you never 
 intended any harm by an innocent couplet, 
 and that in the revivification of it by blun- 
 dering Bai-ker you had no hand whatever. 
 To imagine that, at this time of day, Rogers 
 broods over a fantastic expression of more 
 than thirty j'ears' standing, would be to sup- 
 pose him indulging his ' pleasures of memory' 
 with a vengeance. You never penned a line 
 which for its own sake you need, dying, wish 
 to blot. You mistake your heart if you 
 think you can write a lampoon. Your whips 
 ai'e rods of roses. Your spleen has ever had 
 for its objects \T.ces, not the vicious ; abstract 
 offences, not the concrete sinner. But you 
 are sensitive, and wince as much at the con- 
 sciousness of having committed a compliment, 
 as another man would at the perpetration 
 of an affront. But do not lug me into the 
 same soreness of conscience with yourself. 
 I maintain, and will to the last hour, that I 
 never writ of you but con amore. That if 
 any allusion was made to your near-sighted- 
 ness, it was not for the purpose of mocking 
 an infii-mity, but of connecting it with 
 scholar-like habits : for, is it not erudite and 
 scholarly to be somewhat near of sight, be- 
 fore age naturally brings on the malady ? 
 You could not then plead the obrepens senectus. 
 Did I not moreover make it an apology for a 
 certain absence, which some of your friends 
 may have experienced, when you have not on 
 a sudden made recognition of them in a casual 
 street-meeting ? and did I not strengthen 
 your excuse for this slowness of recog- 
 uition, by further accounting morally for the 
 present engagement of your mind in worthy 
 objects \ Did I not, in your person, make 
 the handsomest apology for absent-of-mind 
 people that was evei* made ? If these things 
 
 without intending any personal reference at all to 
 Mr. Dyer himself, and only seeking to illustrate the 
 pure, Kimple, and elevated character of a man of letters 
 " unspotted from the world." Probably no one has ever 
 applied these suggestions to the parties for whose repu. 
 tation Mr. Dyer has been so honourably anxious but 
 himself ; but it is due to his feelings to state that they 
 ore founded In error. 
 
 be not so, I never knew what I wrote, or 
 meant by my writing, and have been penning 
 libels all my life without being aware of it. 
 Does it follow that I should have exprest 
 myself exactly in the same way of those dear 
 old eyes of yours now, now that Father Time 
 has conspired with a hard task-master to put 
 a last extinguisher upon them. I should as 
 soon have insulted the Ans wei er of Salmasius, 
 when he awoke up from his ended task, and 
 saw no more with mortal vision. But you 
 are many films removed yet from ^Milton's 
 calamity. You write perfectly intelligibly. 
 Marry, the letters are not all of the same 
 size or tallness ; but that only shows your 
 proficiency in the hands, text, german-hand, 
 court-hand, sometimes law-hand, and affords 
 variety. You pen better than you did a 
 twelvemonth ago ; and if you continue to 
 improve, you bid fair to win the golden pen 
 which is the prize at your young gentlemen's 
 academy. But you must be aware of Valpy, 
 and his printing-house, that hazy cave of Tro- 
 phonius, out of which it was a mercy that 
 you escaped with a glimmer. Beware of 
 MSS. and Varise Lectiones. Settle the text 
 for once in your mind, and stick to it. You 
 have some years' good sight in you yet, if you 
 do not tamper with it. It is not for you (for 
 us I should say), to go poring into Greek con- 
 tractions, and star-gazing upon slim Hebrew 
 points. "We have yet the sight 
 
 Of sun, and moon, and star, throughout the year, 
 And man and woman. 
 
 You have vision enough to discern Mrs. Dyer 
 from the other comely gentlewoman who lives 
 up at staircase No. 5; or, if you should make 
 a blunder in the twilight, Mrs. Dyer has too 
 much good sense to be jealous for a mere 
 effect of imperfect optics. But don't try to 
 write the Lord's Prayer, Creed, and Ten 
 Commandments, in the compass of a half- 
 penny ; nor run after a midge, or a mote, to 
 catch it ; and leave off hunting for needles 
 in bushels of hay, for all these things 
 strain the eyes. The snow is six feet deep in 
 some parts here. I nmst put on jack-boots 
 to get at the post-office with tliis. It is not 
 good for weak eyes to pore upon snow too 
 much. It lies in drifts. I wonder wliat its 
 drift is ; only that it makes good pancakes, 
 remind Mrs. Dyer. It turns a pretty green 
 world into a white one. It glares too much 
 
TO THE EDITOR OF THE « ATHEN^UM." 
 
 171 
 
 for an innocent colour methinks. I wonder 
 why you tliink I dislike gilt edges. They 
 set off a letter marvellously. Youi-s, for in- 
 stance, looks for all the world like a tablet 
 of curious hieroglyphics in a gold frame. But 
 don't go and lay this to your eyes. You 
 always wrote hieroglyphically, yet not to 
 come up to the mystical notations and 
 conjuring characters of Dr. Parr. You 
 never wrote what I call a schoolmaster's 
 
 hand, like C ; nor a woman's hand, like 
 
 S ; nor a missal hand, like Porson ; nor 
 
 an all-of-the-wrong-side sloping hand, like 
 
 Miss H ; nor a dogmatic, Mede-and- 
 
 Persian, peremptory hand, like E ; but 
 
 you ever wrote what I call a Grecian's 
 hand ; what the Grecians write (or used) at 
 Christ's Hospital ; such as Whalley would 
 have admired, and Boyer have applauded, 
 but Smith or Atwood (writing-masters) 
 would have horsed you for. Your boy-of- 
 genius hand and your mercantile hand are 
 various. By your flourishes, I should think 
 you never learned to make eagles or cork- 
 screws, or flourish the governors' names in 
 the writing-school ; and by the tenor and 
 cut of your letters, I suspect you were never 
 in it at all. By the length of this scrawl you 
 will think 1 have a design ujion your oj^tics ; 
 but I have writ as large as I could, out of 
 respect to them ; too large, indeed, for beauty. 
 Mine is a sort of deputy Grecian's hand ; a 
 little better, and more of a worldly hand, 
 than a Grecian's, but still remote from the 
 mercantile. I don't know how it is, but I 
 keep my rank in fancy still since school-days. 
 I can never forget I was a deputy Grecian ! 
 And writing to you, or to Coleridge, besides 
 afiection, I feel a reverential deference as to 
 Grecians still. I keep my soaring way above 
 the Great Ei*asmians, yet far beneath the 
 other. Alas ! what am I now ? what is a 
 Leadenhall clerk, or India pensioner, to a 
 deputy Grecian ? How ai-t thou fallen, 
 O Lucifer ! Just room for our loves to 
 Mrs. D., &c. C. Lamb." 
 
 The death of Munden reviving his recol- 
 lections of "the veteran comedi<an," called 
 forth the following letter of tlie 11th 
 February, 1832, to the editor of the " Athe- 
 naeum," whom Lamb had, for a long time, 
 numbered among his friends. 
 
 TO THE EDITOR OF THE " ATHENiEUM. 
 
 " Dear Sir, — Your communication to me of 
 the death of Munden made me weep. Now, 
 Sir, I am not of the melting mood. But, in 
 these serious times, the loss of half the 
 world's fun is no trivial deprivation. It was 
 my loss (or gain shall I call it) in the early 
 time of my play-going, to have missed all 
 Mundcn's acting. There was only he and 
 Lewis at Covent Garden, while Drury Lane 
 was exuberant with Parsons, Dodd, &c., such 
 a comic company as, I suppose, the stage 
 never showed. Thence, in the evening of 
 my life I had Munden all to myself, more 
 mellowed, richer, perhaps, than ever. I can- 
 not say what his change of faces produced in 
 me. It was not acting. He was not one of 
 my ' old actors.' It might be better. His 
 jDower was extravagant. I saw him one 
 evening in three drunken characters. Three 
 farces were played. Que part was Dosey — 
 I forget the rest ; but they wei'e so discrimi- 
 nated that a stranger might have seen them 
 all, and not have dreamed that he was seeing 
 the same actor. I am jealous for the actors 
 who pleased my youth. He was not a Par- 
 sons or a Dodd, but he was more wonderful. 
 He seemed as if he could do an}i;hing. He 
 was not an actor, but something better, if you 
 please. Shall I instance Old Foresight, in 
 ' Love for Love,' in which Parsons was at 
 once the old man, the astrologer, &c. Munden 
 dropped the old man, the doater — which 
 makes the character — but he substituted for 
 it a moon-struck character, a perfect abstrac- 
 tion from this earth, that looked as if he had 
 newly come dowTi from the planets. Now, that 
 is not what I call acting. It might be better. 
 He was imaginative ; he could impress upon 
 an audience an idea — the low one, perhaps, of 
 a leg of mutton and turuij^s ; but such was 
 the grandeur and singleness of his expres- 
 sions, that that single expression would 
 convey to all his auditory a notion of all the 
 pleasures they had all received from all the 
 legs of mutton and turnips they had ever eaten 
 in their lives. Now, this is not acting, nor 
 do I set down Munden amongst my old actors. 
 He was only a wonderful miui, exerting his 
 vivid impressions through tlie agency of the 
 stage. In one only thing did I see him act — 
 — that is, support a character ; it was in a 
 wretched farce, called ' Johimy Gilpin,' lor 
 
172 
 
 LETTER TO GARY. 
 
 Dowton's benefit, in which he did a cockney. 
 The thing ran but one night ; but wlien I 
 say that Listen's Luhin Log was nothing to 
 it, I say little : it was transcendent. And 
 here let me say of actors, envious actors, that 
 of Munden, Liston was used to speak, almost 
 with the enthusiasm due to the dead, in terms 
 of such allowed superiority to every actor 
 on the stage, and this at a time when Munden 
 was gone by in the world's estimation, that it 
 convinced me that artists (in which term I 
 include poets, painters, &c.), are not so 
 envious as the world think. I have little 
 time, and therefore enclose a criticism on 
 "Munden's Old Dosey and his general acting,* 
 by a friend. C. Lamb." 
 
 " ]Mi\ Munden appears to us to be the most 
 classical of actors. He is that in high farce, 
 which Kemble was in high tragedy. The 
 lines of these great artists are, it must be 
 admitted, sufficiently distinct ; but the same 
 elements are in both, — the same directness 
 of purpose, the same singleness of aim, the 
 same concentration of power, the same iron- 
 casing of inflexible manner, the same statue- 
 like precision of gesture, movement, and 
 attitude. The hero of farce is as little 
 affected with impulses from without, as the 
 retired Prince of Tiagedians. There is some- 
 thing solid, sterling, almost adamantine, in 
 the building up of his most grotesque cha- 
 racters. Wlieu he fixes liis wozider-working 
 face in any of its most amazing varieties, it 
 looks as if the picture were carved out from 
 a rock by Nature in a sportive vein, and 
 might last for ever. It is like what we can 
 imagine a mask of the old Grecian Comedy 
 to have been, only that it lives, and breathes, 
 and changes. His most fantastical gestures 
 are the grand ideal of farce. He seems as 
 though he belonged to the earliest and the 
 stateliest age of Comedy, when instead of 
 superficial fijibles and the airy varieties of 
 fashion, she had the grand aspc^rities of man 
 to work on, when her grotesque images had 
 something romantic about them, and when 
 humour and parody were themselves heroic. 
 His expressions of feeling and bursts of 
 enthusiasm are among the moat genuine 
 
 » A little article inserted in "The Champion" before 
 Lamb wrote his ensay on the Acting of Munden. Lamb's 
 repetition may cast on it sufficient interest to excuse its 
 repetition here. 
 
 which we have ever felt. They seem to come 
 up from a depth of emotion in the heart, and 
 burst through the sturdy casing of manner 
 with a strength which seems increased ten- 
 fold by its real and hearty obstacle. The 
 workings of his spirit seem to expand his 
 frame, till we can scarcely believe that by 
 measure it is small : for the space which he 
 fills in the imagination is so real, that we 
 almost mistake it for that of corporeal dimen- 
 sions. His Old Dosey, in the excellent farce of 
 ' Past Ten o'Clock,' is his grandest effort of 
 this kind, and we know of nothing finer. He 
 seems to have a ' heart of oak ' indeed. His 
 description of a sea-fight is the most noble 
 and triumjDhant piece of enthusiasm which 
 we remember. It is as if the spirits of a 
 whole crew of nameless heroes ' were swell- 
 ing in his bosom.' "We never felt so ardent 
 and proud a sympathy with the valour of 
 England as when we heard it. May health 
 long be his, thus to do our hearts good — for 
 we never saw any actor whose merits have 
 the least resemblance to his even in species ; 
 and when his genius is withdrawn from the 
 stage, we shall not have left even a term by 
 which we can fitly describe it." 
 
 The following letter is 
 
 TO MR. GARY. 
 
 " Assidens est mihi bona soror, Euripiden 
 evolvens, donum vestrum, carissime Cary, 
 pro quo gratias agimus, lecturi atque itenim 
 lecturi idem. Pergratus est liber ambobus, 
 nempe ' Sacerdotis Comniiserationis,' sacrum 
 opus a te ipso Humauissiinte Religionis 
 Sacerdote dono datum. Lachrymantes gavi- 
 suri sumus ; est ubi dolor fiat voluptas ; nee 
 semper dulce mihi est ridere ; aliquando 
 commutandum est he ! he ! he ! cum heu I 
 heu ! heu ! 
 
 " A Musis Tragicis me nou pcnitus abhor- 
 ruisse testis sit Carmen Calamitosum, nescio 
 quo autore linguri prius vernacula scriptum, 
 et nuperrime a me ipso Latiue vei-sum, 
 scilicet, 'Tom Tom of Islington.' Teuuiatine \ 
 
 ' Thomas Thomas de Islington, 
 Uxorcm duxit Die qu-Wam Solis, 
 Abduxit domum sequcuti die, 
 Kiiiit baeulum subsequenti, 
 Vapulat ilia postcrft, 
 Algrotnt Buccedcnti, Mortua fit crastinft.' 
 
LETTERS TO COLERIDGE AND CARY. 
 
 173 
 
 Et miro ganclio afficitur Thomas luce postera 
 quod subsequenti (nempe, Dominica) uxor 
 sit efferenda. 
 
 ' En Iliades Dompsticas ! 
 En oii-culnm calamitatum ! 
 Plane hcbdomadalem tragoediam.' 
 
 I nunc et confer Euripiden vestrum his 
 iuctibus, hac morte uxoria ; confer Alcesten ! 
 Ilecuben ! quas nou antiquas Heroinas 
 Dolorosas. 
 
 " SufTundor genas lachi-jTnis tantas strages 
 revolvens. Quid restat nisi quod Tecum 
 Tuam Caram salutamus ambosque valere 
 jubeamus, nosmet ipsi bene valentes. 
 
 " Elia. 
 
 " DaUim ab asro Enfeldiensi, Maii die sexta, 1831." 
 
 Coleridge, now in declining health, seems 
 to have feared, from a long intermission of 
 Lamb's visits to Highgate, that there was 
 some estrangement between them, and to 
 have written to Lamb xmder that fear. The 
 following note shows how much he was 
 mistaken. 
 
 TO IIR. COLERIDGE. 
 
 "AprU 14th, 1832. 
 
 "My dear Coleridge, — Not an unkind 
 thought has passed in my brain about you. 
 But I have been wofuUy neglectful of you, 
 so that I do not deserve to announce to you, 
 that if I do not hear from you before then, I 
 will set out on Wednesday morning to take 
 you by the hand. I would do it this moment, 
 but an unexpected visit might flurry you. I 
 shall take silence for acquiescence ; and 
 come. I am glad you could write so long a 
 letter. Old loves to, and hope of kind looks 
 frf>m, the Gilmans when I come. 
 
 " Yours, semper idem, 
 
 C. L. 
 
 " If you ever thought an oflFence, much 
 more wrote it, against me, it must have l^een 
 in the times of Noah, and the great waiters 
 swept it away. Mary's most kind love, and 
 maybe a wrong prophet of your bodings ! — 
 here she is crying for mere love over your 
 letter. I wring out less, but not sincerer 
 showers. 
 
 " IMy direction is simply, Enfield." 
 
 Lamb's regard for !Mr. Caiy had now 
 ripened into a fast friendship ; and by agree- 
 ment he dined every third Wednesday in the 
 month at the Museum. In general, these 
 were occasions on which Lamb observed the 
 strictest rules of temperance ; but once 
 accident of stomach or of sentiment caused a 
 woful deviation, which Lamb deplored in the 
 following letter. 
 
 TO MR. CART. 
 
 " I protest I know not in what words to 
 invest my sense of the shameful violation of 
 hospitality, which I was guilty of on that 
 fatal Wednesday. Let it be blotted from 
 the calendar. Had it been committed at a 
 layman's house, say a merchant's or a manu- 
 facturer's, a cheesemonger's, or greengrocer's, 
 or, to go higher, a barrister's, a member of 
 Parliament's, a rich banker's, I should have 
 felt alleviation, a drop of self-pity. But to be 
 s ^en deliberately to go out of the house of a 
 clergyman drunk ! a clergj^man of the Church 
 of England too ! not that alone, but of an 
 expounder of that dark Italian Hiei-ophant, 
 an exposition little short of his who dared 
 unfold the Apocalypse : divine riddles both ; 
 and, without supernal grace vouchsafed, Arks 
 not to be fingered without present blasting 
 to the touchers. And then, from what house ! 
 Not a common glebe, or vicarage (which yet 
 had been shameful), but from a kingly reposi- 
 tory of sciences, human and divine, with the 
 primate of England for its guardian, arrayed 
 in public majesty, from which the profane 
 vulgar are bid fly. Could all those volumes 
 have taught me nothing better ! With feverish 
 eyes on the succeeding dawn I opened upon 
 the faint light, enough to distinguish, in a 
 strange chamber, not immediately to be recog- 
 nised, garters, hose, waistcoat, neckerchief, 
 arranged in dreadful order and proportion, 
 which I knew was not mine own. 'Tis the 
 common symptom, on awaking, I judge my 
 last night's condition from. A tolerable 
 scattering on the floor I hail as being too 
 probably my own, and if the candlestick be 
 not removed, I assoil myself. But this 
 finical aiTangement, this finding everything 
 in the morning in exact diametrical rectitude, 
 torments me. By whom Avas I divested ? 
 Bui'ning blushes ! not by the fair hands of 
 nymphs, the Buft'am Gi'aces ? Eemote 
 whispers suggested that I coached it home in 
 
174 
 
 LETTER TO CART, 
 
 triumph. Far be that from -working pride 
 in nie, for I was unconscious of the locomotion. 
 That a young Mentor accompanied a repro- 
 bate old Telemachus ; that, the Trojan like, 
 he bore his charge upon his shoulders, 
 while the wretched incubus, in glimmering 
 sense, hiccuped drunken snatches of flying 
 on the bats' wings after sunset. An 
 aged servitor was also hinted at, to make 
 disgrace more complete, one, to whom ray 
 ignominy may offer further occasions of 
 revolt (to which he was before too fondly 
 inclining) from the true faith ; for, at a sight 
 of my helplessness, what move was needed to 
 drive him to the advocacy of independency ? 
 Occasion led me through Great Russell 
 Street yesterday. I gazed at the great 
 knocker. My feeble hands in vain essayed 
 to lift it. T dreaded that Argus Portitor, 
 who doubtless lanterned me out on that 
 prodigious night. I called the Elginian 
 marbles. They were cold to my suit. I 
 shall never again, I said, on the wide gates 
 unfolding, say, without fear of thrusting 
 back, in a light but a peremptory air, ' I am 
 going to Mr. Gary's.' I passed by the walls 
 of Balclutha. I had imaged to myself a 
 zodiac of third Wednesdays irradiating by 
 glimpses the Edmonton duluess. I dreamed 
 of Highmore ! I am de-vited to come on 
 Wednesdays. Villanous old age, that, with 
 second childhood, brings linked hand in 
 hand her inseparable twin, new inexperience, 
 which knows not effects of liquor. Where I 
 was to have .sate for a sober, middle-aged- 
 and-a-half-gentleman, literary too, the neat 
 fingered artist can educe no notions but of a 
 dissoluted Silenus, lecturing natural philo- 
 sophy to a jeering Chromius, or a Muasilus. 
 Pudet. From the context gather the lost 
 name of ." 
 
 In 1833 the choicest prose essays, which 
 Lamb had written since the publication of 
 Elia, were collected and published — as witli 
 a melancholy foreboding — under the title of 
 " The Last Essays of Elia ; " by Mr. Moxon. 
 The work contains ample proof that the 
 powers of the author had ripened rather 
 than declined ; for tlic paper called "Blakes- 
 moor in H-^sliire." which embodies hia 
 recollection of tlie old mansion in which his 
 grandmother lived as housekeeper ; those 
 
 on EllistoD, " Captain Jackson," and " The 
 Old Margate Hoy," are among the most 
 original, the least constrained, and the most 
 richly coloured of his works. It was favour- 
 ably noticed by almost all the i)rincipal 
 critics — by many enthusiastically and siu- 
 cerely praised — and an admirable notice in 
 "The Quarterly" was published just after 
 the foreboding of the title was fulfilled. His 
 indisposition to write, however, increased ; 
 but in creating so much, excellent in its kind, 
 so complete in itself, and so little tinged with 
 alloy, he had, in truth, done enough, and 
 had earned in literature, as in the drudgeiy 
 of the desk, a right to repose. Yet, still 
 ready to obey the call of friendship, he wrote 
 both prologue and epilogue to Knowles's play 
 of " The Wife ; " the composition of which 
 must have been mere labour, as they are 
 only decently suited to the occasion, and 
 have no mark or likelihood to repay the 
 vanity of the poet. 
 
 Miss Isola's marriage, which left Lamb 
 and his sister once more alone, induced them 
 to draw a little nearer to theii- friends ; and 
 they fixed their abode in Ghurch-street, 
 Edmonton, within reach of the Enfield walks 
 which custom had endeared to them. There 
 with his sister he continued, regidarly visiting 
 London and dining with Mr. Gary on every 
 third Wednesday. The following notelet is 
 in answer to a letter inclosing a list of 
 candidates for a widows' fund society, for 
 which he was entitled to vote. 
 
 TO MR. CART, 
 
 "Dear Sir, — The unbounded range of 
 munificence presented to my choice, staggers 
 me. What can twenty votes do for one 
 hundred and two widows ? I cast my eyes 
 hopeless among the viduage. N.B. Southey* 
 might be ashamed of himself to let his aged 
 mother stand at the top of the list, with his 
 100^. a year and butt of sack. Sometimes I 
 sigh over No. 12, Mrs. Carve-ill, some poor 
 relation of mine, no doubt. No. 15 has my 
 wishes, but then she is a Welsh one. I have 
 Ruth upon No. 21. I'd tug hard for No. 24. 
 No. 25 ip an anomaly, there can be no Mrs. 
 Hogg. No. 34 ensnares me. No. 73 should 
 not have met so foolish a person. No. 92 
 
 • A .Mis'. Soutlioy hoiulcd tlio inclosed list. 
 
may bob it as she likes, but she catches no 
 cherry of me. So I have even fixed at hap- 
 hazard, as you'll see. 
 
 " Yours, every third Wednesda}', 
 
 " C. L." 
 
 Lamb was entirely destitute of what is 
 commonly called " a taste for music." A few 
 old tunes ran in his head ; now and then the 
 expression of a sentiment, though never of 
 song, touched him with rare and exquisite 
 delight ; and Braham in his youth, Miss 
 Rennell, who died too soon, and who used to 
 sing the charming air, " In infancy our hopes 
 and fears," and Miss Burrell, won his ear and 
 his heart. But usually music only confused 
 him, and an opera — to which he once or twice 
 tried to accompany Miss Isola — was to him 
 a maze of sound in which he almost lost his 
 wits. But he did not, therefore, take less 
 pleasure in the success of Miss Clara Novello, 
 — whose family he had known for many 
 years, — and to whom he addressed the 
 following lines, which were inserted in the 
 "Athenaeum," of July 26, in this his last 
 year. 
 
 TO CLARA X . 
 
 The Gods have made me most unmusical, 
 With feelings that respond not to the call 
 Of stringed harp, or voice — obtuse and mute 
 To hautboy, sackbut, dulcimer, and flute ; 
 King David's lyre, that made the madness flee 
 From Saul, had been but a jew's-harp to me : 
 Theorbos, violins, French horns, guitars, 
 I/cave in my wounded ears inflicted scars ; 
 I hate those triUs, and shakes, and sounds that 
 
 float 
 Upon the captive air ; I know no note, 
 Nor ever shall, whatever folks may say. 
 Of the strange mysteries of Sol and Fa ; 
 I sit at oratorios like a fish, 
 Incapable of sound, and only ^vish 
 The thing was over. Yet do I admire, 
 O tuneful daughter of a tuneful sire. 
 Thy painful labours in a science, which 
 To your deserts I pray may make you rich 
 As much as you are loved, and add a gi-ace 
 To the most musical Novello race. 
 Women lead men by the nose, some cynics say ; 
 You draw them by the eai- — a delicater way. 
 C. Lamb. 
 
 He had now to sustain the severest of his 
 losses. After a long and painful ilhiess — 
 borne with an heroic patience which con- 
 cealed the intensity of his sufferings from 
 the bystanders, Coleridge died. As in the 
 instance of Hazlitt, Lamb did not feel the 
 immediate blow so acutely as he himself 
 
 expected — ^but the calamity sank deep into 
 his mind, and was, I believe, seldom far from 
 his thoughts. It had been arranged that the 
 attendance at the funeral should be confined 
 to the family of the departed poet and philo- 
 sopher, and Lamb, therefore, was spared the 
 misery of going through the dismal ceremony 
 of mourning. For the first week he forebore 
 to write ; but at its close he addressed the 
 following short letter to one of the family of 
 him whom he once so justly denominated 
 Coleridge's " more than friend." Like most 
 of Lamb's letters, it is undated, but the post- 
 mark is Aug. 3, 1834. 
 
 TO THE REV. JAMES OILMAN. 
 
 " My dear Sir, — The sad week being over, 
 I must write to you to say, that I was glad 
 of being spared from attending ; I have no 
 words to express my feeling with you all. I 
 can only say that when you think a short 
 visit from me would be acceptable, when 
 your father and mother shall be able to see 
 me with comfort, I will come to the bereaved 
 house. Express to them my tenderest re- 
 gards and hopes that they will continue our 
 friends still. We both love and respect 
 them as much as a human being can, and 
 finally thank them with our hearts for what 
 they have been to the poor departed. 
 
 " God bless you all. C. Lajib." 
 
 "Mr. Walden's, 
 " Church-street, Edmont^m." 
 
 Shortly after, assured that his presence 
 would be welcome, Lamb went to Highgate. 
 There he asked leave to see the nurse who 
 had attended upon Coleridge ; and being 
 struck and affected by the feeling she mani- 
 fested towards his friend, insisted on her 
 receiving five guineas from him, — a gratuity 
 which seemed almost incomprehensible to 
 I the poor woman, but which Lamb could not 
 ' help giving as an immediate expression of 
 his own gratitude. From her he learned the 
 effort by which Coleridge had suppressed the 
 expre.ssion of his sufferings, and the discovery 
 affected him even more than the news of liia 
 death. He would startle his friends some- 
 times by suddenly exclaiming, " Coleridge is 
 dead ! " and then pass on to common themes, 
 having obtained the momentary relief of 
 
oppressed spirits. He still continued, how- 
 ever, his monthly visits to Mr. Gary ; and 
 was ready to write an acrostic, or a compli- 
 mentary epigram, at the suggestion of any 
 friend. The following is the last of his effu- 
 sions in verse. 
 
 TO MARGARET W .. 
 
 Margaret, in happy lionr 
 Christcn'd from tliat humble flower 
 
 ^Vllich we a daisy * call ! 
 May thy pretty namesake be 
 In all things a type of thee, 
 
 And image thee in all. 
 
 Like it you show a modest face. 
 An unpretending native grace ; — 
 
 The tulip, and the pink, 
 The china and the damask rose. 
 And every flaunting flower that blows. 
 
 In the comparing shrink. 
 
 Of lowly fields you think no scorn ; 
 Yet gayest gardens would adorn, 
 
 And grace wherever set. 
 Home-seated in your lonely bower, 
 Or wedded — a transplanted flower — 
 I bless you, Margaret ! 
 
 Chakles Lamb. 
 Edmonton, Oct. 8th, 1834. 
 
 A present of game, from an unknown 
 admirer, produced the following acknowledg- 
 ment, in the "Athenaeum " of 30th November, 
 destined to be, in sad verity, the last essay 
 of Elia. 
 
 THOUGHTS ON PRESENTS OF GAME, &C. 
 
 " "We love to have our friend in the country 
 sitting thus at our table % proxy ; to appre- 
 hend his presence (though a hundred miles 
 may be between us) by a turkey, whose 
 goodly aspect reflects to us his ' plump cor- 
 pusculum ;' to taste hiin in grouse or wood- 
 cock ; to feel him gliding down in the toast 
 peculiar to the latter ; to concorporate liira 
 m a slice of Canterbury brawn. This is 
 indeed to have him within ourselves ; to 
 know him intimately ; such participation is 
 metliinks unitive, as tlie old theologians 
 phrase it." — Last Essays of Elia. 
 
 " Elia presents his acknowledgments to his 
 'Correspondent unknown,' for a basket of pro- 
 digiously fine game. He takes for granted 
 that so amiable a character nmst be a reader 
 of the " Athenajum," else he had meditated a 
 notice in the " Times." Now if this friend had 
 consulted the Delphic oracle for a present 
 
 • Mnrgueritc, in French, signifies a daisy. 
 
 suited to the palate of Elia, he could not 
 have hit upon a morsel so acceptable. The 
 birds he is barely thankful for : pheasants 
 are poor fowls disguised in fine feathers. 
 But a hare roasted hard and brown, with 
 gravy and melted butter ! — old Mr. Chambers, 
 the sensible clergyman in Warwickshire, 
 whose son's acquaintance has made many 
 hours happy in the life of Elia, used to allow 
 a pound of Epping to every hare. Perhaps 
 that was over-doing it. But, in spite of the 
 note of Philomel, who, like some fine poets, 
 that think no scorn to adopt plagiarisms 
 from a humble brother, reiterates every 
 spring her cuckoo cry of 'Jug, Jug, Jug,' 
 Elia pronoances that a hare, to be truly 
 palated, must be roasted. Jugging sophisti- 
 cates her. In our way it eats so ' crips,' as 
 Mrs. Minikin says. Time was, when Elia 
 was not arrived at his taste, that he preferred 
 to all luxuries a roasted pig. But he dis- 
 claims all such green-sickness appetites in 
 future, though he hath to acknowledge the 
 receipt of many a delicacy in that kind from 
 correspondents — good, but mistaken men — 
 in consequence of their eiToueous suj)posi- 
 tion, that he had carried up into mature life 
 the prepossessions of childhood. From the 
 worthy Vicar of Enfield he acknowledges a 
 tithe contribution of extraordinary sapor. 
 The ancients must have loved hares. Else 
 why adopt the word lepores (obviouslv from 
 lepus) but for some subtle analogy betweer. 
 the delicate flavour of the latter, and the 
 finer relishes of wit in what we most poorly 
 translate pleasantries. The fine madnesses 
 of the poet are the very decoction of liis diet. 
 Thence is he hare-brained. Harum-scarum 
 is a libellous unfounded phrase, of modern 
 usage. 'Tis true the liare is the most cir- 
 cumspect of animals, slee])ing with her eye 
 open. Her ears, ever erect, keep them in 
 that wholesome exercise, which conduces 
 them to form the very tit-bit of the admirei's 
 of this noble animal. Noble will I call her, 
 in spite of her detractors, who from occa- 
 sional domon.strations of the principle of 
 self-preservation (common to all animals), 
 ! infer in her a defect of heroism. Half a 
 hundred hoi-semen, with thrice the number 
 of dogs, scour the couutr}' in pursuit of puss 
 across three counties ; and because the well- 
 Havoured beast, weighing the odds, is willing 
 to evade the hue and cry, with her delicate 
 
LETTER TO CHILDS. 
 
 177 
 
 eai's shrinking perchance from discord — 
 comes the grave naturalist, Linnajus per- 
 chance, or Buffon, and gravely sets down the 
 hare as a — timid animal. Why Acliilles, or 
 Bally Dawson, would have declined the 
 preposterous combat. 
 
 " In fact, how light of digestion we feel 
 after a hare ! How tender its processes 
 after swallowing ! What chyle it promotes ! 
 How ethereal ! as if its living celerity were 
 a type of its nimble coursing through the 
 animal juices. The notice might be longer. 
 It is intended less as a Natural History of 
 the Hare, than a cursory thanks to the 
 country 'good Unknown.' The hare has 
 many friends, but none sincerer than 
 
 "Elia." 
 
 A short time only before Lamb's fatal 
 illness, he yielded to my urgent importunity, 
 and met a small party of his friends at dinner 
 at my house, where we had provided for him 
 some of the few articles of food which now 
 seemed to hit his fancy, and among them the 
 hare, which had supplanted pig in his just 
 esteem, with the hope of exciting his very 
 delicate appetite. We were not disappointed ; 
 he ate wnth a relish not usual with him of 
 late years, and passed the evening in his 
 happiest mood. Among the four or five who 
 met him on this occasion, the last on which 
 I saw him in health, were his old friends 
 Mr. Barron Field, INIr. Procter, and Mr. 
 Forster, the author of the " Lives of Eminent 
 English Statesmen," a friend of comparatively 
 recent date, but one with whom Lamb found 
 himself as much at home as if he had known 
 him for years. Mr. Field, in a short but 
 excellent memoir of Lamb, in the " Annual 
 Biogi-aphy and Obituary " of 1836, has 
 brovight this evening vividly to recollection ; 
 and I have a melancholy satisfaction in 
 quoting a passage from it as he has recorded 
 it. After justly eulogising Lamb's sense of 
 " The Virtue of Suppression in Writing," 
 Mr. Field proceeds : — i 
 
 " We remember, at the very last supper 
 we ate with him, he quoted a passage from 
 Prioi*'s ' Henry and Emma,' illustrative of 
 this discipline ; and yet he said that he loved 
 Prior as much as any man, but that his 
 * Henry and Emma ' was a vapid paraphrase 
 
 of the old poem of ' The Nutbrowne Maydc.' 
 For example, at the denoueinent of the ballad 
 Prior makes Henry rant out to his devoted 
 Emma — 
 
 ' In me behold the potent Edgar's heir, 
 Illustrious Earl ; him terrible in -war. 
 Lot Loire confess, for she has felt his sword. 
 And trembling fled before the British lord.* 
 
 And so on for a dozen couplets, heroic, as 
 they are called. And then Mr. Lamb made 
 us mark the modest simplicity with which 
 the noble youth discloses himself to his 
 mistress in the old poem : — 
 
 ' Now, understand. 
 
 To Westmoreland, 
 
 yVTiich is my heritage, 
 
 (in a iiarenthcsis, as it were,) 
 
 I will you bring. 
 
 And with a ring, 
 By way of marriage, 
 
 I will you take, 
 
 And lady make. 
 As shortly as I can. 
 
 So have you won 
 
 An Earle's son. 
 And not a banish'd man.' 
 
 " How he loved these old rhymes, and with 
 what justice ! " 
 
 In December !Mr. Lamb received a letter 
 from a gentleman, a stranger to him, — 
 Mr. Childs, of Bungay, whose copy of "Elia" 
 had been sent on an oriental voyage, and 
 who, in order to replace it, applied to Mr, 
 Lamb. The following is his reply : — 
 
 TO MR. CHILDS. 
 ••Monday. Church-street, Edmostom, 
 (not Eniicid, as you erroneously 
 direct yours). 
 
 " Dear Sir, — The volume which you seem 
 to want, is not to be had for love or money. 
 I with difficulty procured a copy for myself. 
 Yours is gone to enlighten the tawny 
 Hindoos. What a supreme felicity to the 
 author (only he is no traveller) on the Ganges 
 or Hydaspes (Indian streams) to meet a 
 smutty Gentoo ready to burst with laughing 
 at the tale of Bo-Bo ! for doubtless it hath 
 been translated into all the dialects of the 
 East. I grieve the less, that Europe should 
 want it. 1 cannot gather from your letter, 
 whether you are aware that a second series 
 of the Essays is published by Moxon, iu 
 
178 
 
 DEATH OF LAMB. 
 
 Dover-street, Piccadilly, called 'The Last 
 Essays of Elia,' and, I am told, is not inferior 
 to the former. Shall I order a copy for you, 
 and -will you accept it. Shall I lend you, at 
 the same time, my sole copy of the former 
 volume (Oh ! return it) for a month or two ? 
 In return, you shall favour me with the loan 
 of one of those Norfolk-bred grunters that 
 you laud so highly ; I promise not to keep it 
 above a day. What a funny name Bungay 
 is ! I never dreamt of a correspondent 
 thence. I used to think of it as some 
 Utopian town, or borough in Gotham land. 
 I now believe in its existence, as part of 
 merry England. 
 
 [Here are some lines scratched out.] 
 The part I have scratched out is the best of 
 the letter Let me have your commands. 
 " Ch. Lamb, alias Eua." 
 
 A few days after this letter was written, 
 an accident befel Mr. Lamb, which seemed 
 trifling at first, but which terruinated in a 
 fatal issue. In taking his daily morning 
 walk on the London road as far as the inn 
 where John Gilpin's ride is pictured, he 
 stumbled against a stone, fell, and slightly 
 injured his face. The wounds seemed healing, 
 when erysipelas in the head came on, and he 
 sunk beneath the disease, happily without 
 pain. On Friday evening Mr. Eyle, of the 
 India House, who had been appointed co- 
 executor with me of his will some years 
 before, called on me, and informed me that 
 he was in danger. I went over to Edmonton 
 on the ftllowing morning, and found hira 
 very weak, and nearly insensible to things 
 passmg around him. Now and then a few 
 words were audible, from which it seemed 
 that his mind, in its feebleness, was intent 
 on kind and hospitable thoughts. His last 
 cori'espondent, Mr. Childs, had sent a present 
 of a turkey, instead of the suggested pig ; 
 and the broken sentences which could be 
 heard, were of some meeting of friends to 
 J arlake of it. I do not think he knew me ; 
 aud having vainly tried to engage his atten- 
 tion, I quitted him, not believing his death 
 BO near at hand. In less than an liour 
 afterwards, his voice gradually grew fainter, 
 as he still murmurod tlie names of Moxon, 
 Procter, aud some other old friends, and he 
 sank inio deatli as placidly as into sleep. On 
 
 the following Saturday his remains were laid 
 in a deep grave in Edmonton churchyard, 
 made in a spot which, about a fortnight 
 before, he had pointed out to his sister, on 
 an afternoon wintry walk, as the place where 
 he wished to be buried. 
 
 So died, in the sixtieth year of his age, one 
 of the most remarkable and amiable men 
 who have ever lived. Few of his numerous 
 friends were aware of his illness before they 
 heard of his death ; and, until that illness 
 seized him, he had appeared so little changed 
 by time, so likely to continue for several 
 years, and he was so intimately associated 
 with every-day engagements and feelings, 
 that the news was aa strange as it was 
 mournful. When the first sad surprise was 
 over, several of his friends strove to do 
 justice to their own recollections of hira; 
 and articles upon his character and writings, 
 all written out of the heart, appeared from 
 Mr. Procter in the " Athenajum," from Mr. 
 Forster in the " New Monthly Magazine," from 
 Mr. Patmore in the " Court Magazine," and 
 from Mr. Moxon in Leigh Hunt's " London 
 Journal," besides others whose authors ai-e 
 unknown to me ; and subsequently many 
 affectionate allusions, from pens which his 
 own had inspired, have been gleaned out in 
 various passages of " Blackwood," " Eraser," 
 "Tait," and almost every periodical work of 
 reputation. The " Recollections of Coleridge " 
 by Mr. Allsop, also breathed the spirit of 
 admiration for his elevated genius, which 
 the author — one whom Lamb held in the 
 highest esteem for himself, and for his 
 devotion to Coleridge — had for yeai-s ex- 
 pressed both in his words and in deeds. But 
 it is not possible for the subtlest chiu-acter- 
 islic power, even when animated by the 
 warmest personal regard, to give to those 
 who never had the privilege of his com- 
 panionship an idea of what Lamb was. 
 There was an apparent contradiction in him, 
 which seemed an inconsistency between 
 thoughts closely Jissociated, and whieii was 
 in reality notliiug but the contradiction of 
 his genius and his fortune, fanUistically 
 exhibitmg itself in diflerent aspects, which 
 close iutimacy could alone appreciate. Ue 
 would stai'tle you with the finest perception 
 of truth, separating, by a i)lirase, tlie real 
 from a tissue of conventional falsehoods, juul 
 the next luomonL, by some whimsical iuveu- 
 
CHARACTER OF LAMB. 
 
 179 
 
 tion, make you "doubt truth to be a liar." 
 He would touch the inmost pulse of pro- 
 found affection, and then break off in some 
 jest, which would seem profane "to ears 
 polite," but carry as profound a meaning to 
 those who had the right key, as his most 
 pathetic suggestions ; and where he loved 
 and doted most, he would vent the over- 
 flowing of his feelings in words that looked 
 like rudeness. He touches on this strange 
 resource of love in his " Farewell to Tobacco," 
 in a passage which may explain some startling 
 freedoms with those he himself loved most 
 deiu'ly. 
 
 " Irony all, and feign'd abuse, 
 
 Such as perplext lovers use, 
 At a need, when in despair, 
 To paint forth the fairest fair ; 
 Or in part but to express 
 That exceeding comeliness 
 \\'hich their fancies doth so strike. 
 They borrow language of dislike; 
 And, instead of ' dearest Miss,' 
 Jewel, honey, sweetheart, bliss, 
 And those forms of old admiring. 
 Call her cockatrice and siren, 
 Basilisk, and all that's evil, 
 AVitch, hyena, mermaid, devil, 
 Ethiop, wench, and blackamoor. 
 Monkey, ape, and twenty more ; 
 Friendly traitress, loving foe, — 
 Not that she is truly so. 
 But no other way they know 
 A contentment to express. 
 Borders so upon excess, 
 That they do not rightly wot 
 Whether it be pain or not." 
 
 Thus, in the very excess of affection to his 
 sister, whom he loved above all else on eartli, 
 he would sometimes address to her some 
 words of seeming reproach, yet so tinged 
 with a humorous irony that none but an 
 entire sti-anger could mistake his drift. His 
 anxiety for her health, even in his most 
 convivial moments, was unceasing. If, in 
 company, he perceived she looked languid, he 
 would repeatedly ask her, "Mary, does your 
 head ache ]" "Don't you feel unwell ? " and 
 would be satisfied by none of her gentle 
 assurances, that his fears were groundless. 
 He was always afraid of her sensibilities 
 being too deeply engaged, and if in her 
 presence any painful accident or history ^vas 
 discussed, he would turn the conversation 
 with some desperate joke. Miss Beetham, 
 the author of the " Lay of Marie," which 
 Lamb esteemed one of the most graceful and 
 truly feminine works in a literature rich in 
 female genius, who has reminded me of the 
 
 trait in some recollections of Lamb, with 
 which she has furnished me, relate.s, that 
 once wlien she was speaking to Miss Lamb 
 of Charles, and in her earnestness Miss Lamb 
 had laid her hand kindly on the eulogi.st's 
 shoulder, he came up hastily and interrupted 
 them, saying, " Come, come, we must not 
 talk sentimentally," and took up the conver- 
 sation in his gayest strain. 
 
 Many of Lamb's witty and curious sayings 
 have been repeated since his death, which 
 are worthy to be held in undying remem- 
 brance ; but tliey give no idea of the general 
 tenor of his conversation, which was far more 
 singular and delightful in the traits, which 
 could never be recalled, than in the epigram- 
 matic turns which it is possible to quote. It 
 was fretted into perpetual eddies of verbal 
 felicity and happy tliought, with little tranquil 
 intervals reflecting images of exceeding ele- 
 gance and grace. He sometimes poured out 
 puns in startling succession ; sometimes 
 curiously contrived a train of sentences to 
 introduce the catastrojihe of a pun, which, in 
 that case, was often startling from its own 
 demerit. At Mr. Cary's one day, he intro- 
 duced and kept up an elaborate dissertation 
 on the various uses and abuses of the word 
 nice; and when its variations were exhausted, 
 showed what he had been driving at by 
 exclaiming, " Well ! now we have held a 
 Council of Nice." "A pun," said he in a 
 letter to Coleridge, in which he eulogised 
 the Odes and Addresses of his friends Hood 
 and Reynolds, " is a thing of too much 
 consequence to be tlirown in as a make- 
 weight. Yoa shall read one of the Addresses 
 twice over and miss the puns, and it sliall be 
 quite as good, or better, than when you 
 discover them. A pun is a noble thing per 
 se. O never bring it in as an accessory ! A 
 pun is a sole digest of reflection (vide my 
 * Aids ' to that awaking from a savage state) ; 
 it is entire ; it fills the mind ; it is as perfect 
 as a sonnet ; better. It limps ashamed in 
 the train and retinue of humour. It knows 
 it should have an establishment of its own. 
 The one, for instance, I made the other day ; 
 I forget which it was." Indeed, Lamb's 
 choicest puns and humorous expressions 
 could not be recollected. They were born of 
 the evanescent feeling, and died with it ; 
 " one moment hriyht, then gone for ever." 
 The shocks of ple;isurable surprise were so 
 
 N 2 
 
180 
 
 CHARACTER OF LAMB. 
 
 rapid in succession, and the thoughts suggested 
 so new, that one destroyed the other, and left 
 only the sense of delight behind. Frequently 
 as I had the happiness of seeing him during 
 twenty years, I can add nothing from my 
 o\\Ti store of recollection to those which 
 have been collected by othei-s, and those 
 I will abstain from repeating, so vapid 
 would be their effect when printed com- 
 pared to that which they produced when, 
 stammered out, they gave to the moment 
 its victory. 
 
 It cannot be denied or concealed that 
 Lamb's excellences, moral and intellectual, 
 were blended with a single frailty ; so inti- 
 mately associating itself with all that was 
 most charming in the one, and sweetest in 
 the other, that, even if it were right to with- 
 draw it wholly from notice, it would be 
 impossible without it to do justice to his 
 virtues. The eagerness with which he would 
 quaff exciting liquors, from an eai'ly period 
 of life, proved that to a physical peculiarity 
 of constitution was to be ascribed, in the first 
 instance, the strength of the temptation with 
 which he was assailed. This kind of corpoi-eal 
 need ; the struggles of deep thought to over- 
 come the bashfuluess and the impediment of 
 speech which obstructed its utterance ; the 
 dull, heavy, ii'ksome labours which hung 
 heavy on his mornings, and dried up his 
 spirits ; and still more, the sorrows which 
 had environed him, and which prompted him 
 to snatch a fearful joy ; and the unboiiuded 
 craving after sympathy with human feelings, 
 conspired to disarm his power of resisting 
 when the means of indulgence were actually 
 before him. Great exaggerations have been 
 prevalent on this subject, countenanced, no 
 doubt, by the "Confessions" which, in the 
 proiijgality of his kindness, he contributed to 
 his friend's collection of essays antl uutlio- 
 rities against the use of spirituous liquors ; 
 for, ulthough he had rarely the power to 
 ov(!rcome the temptation when presented, he 
 made heroic sacrifices in flight. His final 
 abaiidonmcnt of tol)acco, after many inef- 
 fectual atteni])ts, was one of these — a princely 
 sacrifice. lie liad loved smoking, "'not 
 wisely, but too well," for he had been content 
 to use the coarsest varieties of the " great 
 plant," When Dr. Pari', — who took only the 
 finest tobacco, used to half fill his l)ipe with 
 tuilt, and smoked with a philusophic calmness. 
 
 — saw Ijamb smoking the strongest prepa- 
 ration of the weed, puffing out smoke like 
 some furious Enchanter, he gently laid down 
 his pipe, and asked him, how he had acquired 
 his power of smoking at such a rate ? Lamb 
 replied, " I toiled after it, sir, as some men 
 toil after virtue." Partly to .shun the 
 temptations of society, and partly to preserve 
 his sister's health, he fled from London, 
 where his pleasures and his heart were, and 
 buried himself in the solitude of the country, 
 to him always dismal. He would even deny 
 himself the gratification of meeting Words- 
 worth or Southey, or use it very sparingly 
 during their visits to London, in order that 
 the accompaniments of the taljle might not 
 entice him to excess. And if sometimes, 
 after miles of solitary communing with- his 
 own sad thoughts, the village inn did invite 
 him to quaff a glass of sparkling ale ; and if 
 when his retreat was lighted up with the 
 presence of some old friend, he was unable to 
 refrain from the small portion which was too 
 much for his feeble frame, let not the stout- 
 limbed and the happy exult over the conse- 
 quence ! Drinking with him, except so far 
 as it cooled a feverish thii-st, was not a 
 scnsitel, but an intellectual pleasure ; it 
 lighted up his fading fancy, enriched his 
 humour, and impelled the struggling thought 
 or beautiful image into day ; and perhaps by 
 requiring for him some portion of that 
 allowance which he extended to all human 
 frailties, endeared him the more to those 
 who so often received, and were delighted to 
 bestow it. 
 
 Lamb's indulgence to the failings of othei-s 
 could hardly indeed be termed allowance ; 
 the name of charity is too cold to suit it. 
 He did not merely love hii^ friends in spite of 
 their errors, but he loved them errors and 
 all ; so near to him was everything human. 
 Ho numbered among his associates, men of 
 all varieties of ojnnion — philosophical, reli- 
 gious, and political — and found something to 
 like, not only in the men themselves, but in 
 themst'lves as associated with their theories 
 and their schemes. In the high and calm, 
 but devious speculations of dodwiii ; in the 
 fierce hatreds of Hazlitt ; in the gentle and 
 glorious mystieLsm of Coleridge; in the sturdy 
 opposition of Tlielwall to tlic goveriunent ; 
 in Leigh Hunt's softened and funcy-8treak<Ml 
 patriotism ; in the gallant Toryism of Stod- 
 
CHARACTER OF LAMB. 
 
 181 
 
 dart ; he found traits which made the indi- 
 viduals more dear to liim. "When Leigh 
 Hunt was imprisoned in Cokl Bath Fielils 
 for a libel, T^amb was one of his most constant 
 visitors — and when Thelwall was striving to 
 bring the "Champion" into notice, Lamb 
 was ready to assist him with his pen, and to 
 fancy himself, for the time, a Jacobin.* In 
 this lai'ge intellectual tolerance, he resembled 
 Professor Wilson, wlio, notwithstanding his 
 own decided opinions, has a compass of mind 
 large enough to embrace all otliers wliich 
 liave noble alliances within its range.t But 
 not only to opposite opinions, and devious 
 liabits of thought, was Lamb indulgent ; he 
 discovered " the soul of goodness in things 
 evil" so vividly, that the surrounding evil 
 disajipeared from his mental vision. Nothing 
 — no discovery of error or of crime — could 
 divorce his sympathy from a man who had 
 once engaged it. He saw in the spendtlirift, 
 the outcast, only the innocent companion of 
 
 • The following- little poem — quite out of Lamb's 
 usual style — was written for that jourual. 
 
 THE THREE GRAVES. 
 
 Close hy the ever-burning brimstone beds, 
 
 Where Bcdloe, Oatcs, and Judas hide their heads, 
 
 I saw great Satiin like a sexton stand, 
 
 With his intolerable spade in hand, 
 
 DitTijing thrue graves. Of cotfin-shape they were. 
 
 For those who, coflinlcss, must enter thtre, 
 
 With unblest rites. The slirouds were of that cloth 
 
 Whieh Clotho weaved in her blackest wrath ; 
 
 The dismal tint oppress'd the eye, that dwelt 
 
 Upon it long, like darkness to be felt. 
 
 The pillows to these baleful beds were toads, 
 
 Large, living, livid, melancholy loads, 
 
 ^\■hosc softness shock'd. Worms of all monstrous size 
 
 Craw I'd round ; and one upcoil'd, which never dies, 
 
 A doleful bell, inculcating despair, 
 
 Was always ringing in the heavy air. 
 
 And all around the detestable pit 
 
 Strange headless ghosts and quartcr'd forms did flit ; 
 
 Kivers of blood from living traitors spilt, 
 
 By treachery stung from poverty to guilt. 
 
 I ask'd the fiend, for whom those rites were meant ? 
 
 " These graves," quoth he, " when life's brief oil is 
 spent, 
 
 When the dark night comes, and they're sinking bed- 
 wards, 
 
 I mean for Castles, Oliver, and Edwards." 
 
 + Lamb only once met that remarkable person, — who 
 has probably more points of resemblance to him than 
 any other living poet, — and was quite charmed' with 
 him. They walked out from Enfield together, and 
 strolled happily a long summer's day, not omitting, 
 however, a call for a refreshing draught. Lamb called 
 for a pot of ale or porter — half of which would have 
 been his own usual allowance ; and was delighted to 
 hear the Professor, on the appearance of the foaming 
 tankard, say reproachfully to the waiter, " And one 
 for me 1 " 
 
 his school-days or the joyous associate of his 
 convivial hours, and he did not even make 
 penitence or reform a condition of liis regard. 
 Perhaps he had less sympathy with phi- 
 lanthropic schemers for the improvement 
 of the world than with any other class of 
 men ; but of these he numbered two of tlie 
 greatest, Clarkson the destroyer of the 
 slave-trade, and Basil Montague the con- 
 stant opponeirt of the judicial infliction of 
 death ; and the labours of neither have been 
 in vain ! 
 
 Tothosewhowerenot intimately acquainted 
 with Lamb, tlie strong disinclination to con- 
 template another state of being, which he 
 sometimes expressed in his serious conversa- 
 tion, and wliich he lias solemnly confessed in 
 his " New Year's Eve," might cast a doubt 
 on feelings which were essentially pious. 
 The same peculiarity of nature whicliattached 
 him to the narrow and crowded streets, in 
 preference to the mountain and the glen — 
 which made him loth to quit even painful 
 circumstances and unpleasant or ill-timed 
 company ; the desire to .seize and gnisp all 
 that was nearest, bound him to earth, and 
 prompted his sympathies to revolve within a 
 narrow circle. Yet in tliat very power of 
 adhesion to outward things, might be dis- 
 cerned the strength of a spirit destined to 
 live beyond them. Within the contracted 
 sphere of his habits and desires, he detected 
 the subtlest essences of Christian kindliness, 
 shed over it a light from heaven, and peopled 
 it with divine fancies and 
 
 " Thoughts whose very sweetness yieldcth proof 
 That they were born for immortality." 
 
 Although he numbered among his asso- 
 ciates freetliinkers and sceptics, he had a 
 great dislike to any profane handling of 
 sacred subjects, and always discouraged 
 polemical discussion. One evening, when 
 Irving and Coleridge were in company, jind 
 a young gentleman had spoken slightingly of 
 religion. Lamb remained silent ; but when 
 the party broke uj), lie said to the youth who 
 had thus annoyed his guests, "Pray, did you 
 come here in a hat, sir, or in a turban ] " 
 
 The range of Lamb's reading was varied, 
 but yet 'peculiar. He rejoiced in all old 
 English authors, but cared little for the 
 moderns, except one or two ; and those whom 
 he loved as authors because they were his 
 
182 
 
 CHARACTER OF LAMB. 
 
 friends. Attached always to things of flesh 
 and blood rather than to "the bare earth 
 and mountains bare, and grass in the green 
 field," he chiefly loved the great dramatists, 
 whose beauties he supported, and sometimes 
 heightened, in his suggestive criticisms. 
 While he enjoyed Wordsworth's poetry, 
 especially "The Excursion," with a love 
 which grew upon him from his youth, he 
 would repeat some of Pope's divine compli- 
 ments, or Dryden's lines, weighty with 
 sterling sense or tremendous force of satire, 
 with eyes trembling into tears. The come- 
 dies of Wycherley, and Congreve, and 
 Farquhar, were not to him gross and sensual, 
 but airy, delicate creations, framed out of 
 coarse materials it might be, but evaporating 
 in wit and gi'ace, harmless eftusions of the 
 intellect and the fancy. The ponderous 
 dulness of old controversialists, the dead 
 weight of volumes of once fierce dispute, of 
 which time had exhausted the venom, did 
 not appal him. He liked the massive reading 
 of the old Quaker records, the huge density 
 of old schoolmen, better than the flippancy 
 of modern criticism. If you spoke of Lord 
 Byron, he would turn the subject by quoting 
 the lines descriptive of his namesake in 
 Love's Labour Lost — " Oft have I heard of 
 you, my Lord Byron," &c. — for he could find 
 nothing to revere or love in the poetry of 
 that extraordinary but most uncomfortable 
 poet ; except the apostrophe to Parnassus, 
 in which he exults in the sight of the real 
 mountain instead of the mere poetic image. 
 All the Laras, and Giaours, and Childe 
 Harolds, were to him but "unreal mockeries," 
 — the phantasms of a feverish <lream, — forms 
 which did not appeal to the sympathies of 
 mankind, and never can find root among 
 them. Shelley's poetry, too, was icy cold to 
 him ; except one or two of the minor poems, 
 in which he could not help admiring the 
 exquisite beauty of the expression ; and the 
 " Ceuci," in which, notwithstanding the 
 painful nature of the subject, there is a 
 warmth and passion, and a correspondent 
 6imj)licity of diction, which prove how 
 mighty a poet the author would have become 
 had he lived long enough for his feelings to 
 have free discourse with his creative power, 
 liespoudiiig only to the touch of human 
 aff'ectiou, he could not bear poetry which, 
 instead of making the whole woi-ld kin. 
 
 renders our own passions and frailties and 
 virtues strange to us ; presents them at a 
 distance in splendid masquerade ; exalts them 
 into new and unauthorised mythology, and 
 crystallises all our freshest loves and mant- 
 ling joys into clusters of radiant fancies. He 
 made some amends for his indifi"erence to 
 Shelley, by his admiration of Mrs. Shelley's 
 " Frankenstein," which he thought the most 
 extraordinary realisation of the idea of a 
 being out of nature which had ever been 
 effected. For the Scotch novels he cared 
 very little, not caring to be puzzled with 
 new plots, and prefen-ing to read Fielding, 
 and Smollett, and Richardson, whose stories 
 were familiar, over and over again, to being 
 worried with the task of threading the maze 
 of fresh adventure. But the good-natured- 
 uess of Sir Walter to all his contemporaries 
 won his admiration, and he heartily rejoiced 
 in tiie greatness of his fame, and the rich 
 rewards showered upon him, and desired 
 they might accumulate for the glory of 
 literature and the triumph of kindness. He 
 was never introduced to Sir Walter ; but he 
 used to speak with gratitude and pleasure of 
 the circumstances under which he saw him 
 once in Fleet-street. A man, in the dress 
 of a mechanic, stopped him just at Imier 
 Temple-gate, and said, touching his hat, 
 " I beg your pardon, sir, but perhaps you 
 would like to see Sir Walter Scott ; that is 
 he just crossing the road ;" and Lamb stam- 
 mered out his hearty thanks to his truly 
 humane informer. 
 
 Of his own writings it is now superfluous 
 to speak ; for, after having encountered long 
 derision and neglect, they have taken their 
 place among the classics of his language. 
 They stand alone, at once singular and 
 delightful. They are all carefully elaborated ; 
 yet never were works written in a liigher 
 defiance to the conventional pomp of style. 
 A sly hit, a happy pun, a humorous com- 
 bination, lets the light into the intricacies 
 of the subject, and supplies the place of 
 ponderous sentences. As his serious con- 
 versation was liis best, so his serious writing 
 is far i)referable to his fantastical humours, 
 — cheering as thoy are, and suggestive ever 
 as they are of high and invigorating thoughts. 
 Seeking his materials, for the most part, in 
 the common paths of life, — often in the 
 humblest, — he gives an importance to every- 
 
thing, and sheds a grace over all. The spirit 
 of gentility seems to breathe around all his 
 pei-sous ; he detects the venerable and the 
 excellent in the narrowest circumstances 
 and humblest conditions, with the same 
 subtilty which reveals the hidden soul of the 
 greatest works of genius. In all things ha 
 is most human. Of all modern writers, his 
 works are most immediately directed to give 
 us heart-ease and to make us happy. 
 
 Among the felicities of Lamb's chequered 
 life, that which he esteemed most, was his 
 mtimate fiiendship with some of the greatest 
 of our poets, — Coleridge, Southey, and 
 Wordswortli ; the last and greatest of whom 
 ha-s paid a tribute to his memory, which may 
 fitly close this memoir. 
 
 " To a orood Man of most dear memory 
 This Stone is sacred. Here he lies apart 
 From the great city where he first drew breath, 
 Was reared and taught ; and humbly earned his 
 
 bread, 
 To the strict labours of the merchant's desk 
 By duty chained. Not seldom did those tasks 
 Tease, and the thought of time so spent depress 
 His spirit, but the recompense was high ; 
 Firm Independence, Bounty's rightful sire ; 
 Aflfections, warm as sunshine, free as air ; 
 And when the precious hours of leisure came. 
 Knowledge and wisdom, gained from converse sweet 
 With books, or while he ranged the crowded streets 
 With a keen eye, and overflowing heart : 
 So genius triumphed over seeming wrong. 
 And poured out truth in works by thoughtful love 
 Inspired— works potent over smiles and tears. 
 And as round mountain-tops the lightning plays, 
 Thus innocently sported, breaking forth 
 As from a cloud of some grave sympathy, 
 Humour and wild instinctive wit, and ail 
 The vivid flashes of his spoken words. 
 From the most gentle creature nursed in fields 
 Had been derived the name he bore — a name, 
 \\'herever Christian altars have been raised, 
 Hallowed to meekness and to innocence ; 
 And if in him meekness at times gave way, 
 Provoked out of herself by troubles strange, 
 Many and strange, that hung about his life ; 
 Still, at the centre of his being, lodged 
 A soul by resignation sanctified : 
 And if too often, self-reproached, he felt 
 That innocence belongs not to our kind, 
 A power that never ceased to abide in him, 
 Charity, 'mid the multitude of sins 
 That she can cover, left not his exposed 
 To an unforgiving judgment from just Heaven. 
 O, he was good, if e'er a good man lived ! 
 
 • • • • 
 
 From a reflecting mind and sorrowing heart 
 Those simple lines flowed with an earnest wish, 
 Though but a doubting hope, that they might serve 
 Fitly to guard the precious dust of him 
 Whose virtues called them forth. That aim is 
 
 missed ; 
 For much that truth most urgently required 
 
 Had from a faltering pen been asked in vain : 
 Yet, haply, on the printed page received, 
 The imperfect record, there, may stand unblamed 
 As long as verse of mine shall breathe the air 
 Of memory, or see the light of love. 
 
 Thou -wert a scorner of the fields, my Friend, 
 But more in show than truth ; and from the fields, 
 And from the mountains, to thy rural grave 
 Transported, my soothed spirit hovers o'er 
 Its green untrodden turf, and blowing flowers ; 
 And taking up a voice shall speak (though still 
 Awed by the theme's peculiar sanctity. 
 Which words less free presumed not even to touch) 
 Of that fraternal love, whose heaven-Ut lamp 
 From infancy, through manhood, to the last 
 Of threescore years, and to thy latest hour. 
 Burnt on with ever-strengthening light, enshrined 
 Within thy bosom. 
 
 ' Wonderful ' hath been 
 The love established between man and man, 
 ' Passing the love of women ; ' and between 
 Man and his help-mate in fast wedlock joined 
 Through God, is raised a spirit and soul of love 
 Without whose blissful influence Paradise 
 Had been no Paradise ; and earth were now 
 A waste where creatures bearing human form, 
 Direst of savage beasts, would roam in fear. 
 Joyless and comfortless. Our days glide on ; 
 And let him grieve who cannot choose but grieve 
 That he hath been an Elm without his Vine, 
 And her bright dower of clustering charities. 
 That, round his trunk and branches, might have 
 
 clung 
 Enriching and adorning. Unto thee, 
 Not so enriched, not so adorned, to thee 
 Was given (say rather thou of later birth 
 Wert given to her) a Sister — 'tis a word 
 Timidly uttered, for she lives, the meek. 
 The seif-restraining, and the ever-kind ; 
 In whom thy reason and intelligent heart 
 Found — for all interests, hopes, and tender cares. 
 All softening, humanising, hallowing powers, 
 WTicther withheld, or for her sake unsought — 
 More than sufficient recompense ! 
 
 Her love 
 (What weakness prompts the voice to tell it here ?) 
 Was as the love of mothers ; and when years, 
 Lifting the boy to man's estate, had called 
 The long-protected to assiune the part 
 Of a protector, the first filial tie 
 Was undissolved ; and, in or out of sight, 
 Kemained imperishably interwoven 
 With life itself. Thus, 'mid a shifting world. 
 Did they together testify of time 
 And seasons' diff'ercnee — a double tree 
 With two collateral stems spnmg from one root ; 
 Such were they — and such through life they miyht 
 
 have been 
 In union, in partition only such ; 
 Otherwise wrought the will of the Most High ; 
 Yet, through all visitations and all trials, 
 Still they were faithful ; like two vessels launched 
 From the same beach one ocean to explore 
 AVith mutual help, and sailing — to their league 
 True, as inexorable winds, or bars 
 Floating or fixed of polar ice, allow. 
 
 But turn we rather, let my spirit turn 
 With thine, O silent and invisible Friend ! 
 To those dear intervals, nor rare nor brief. 
 When reunited, and by choice withdrawn 
 From miscellaneous converse, ye were taught 
 That the remembrance of toregone distress, 
 
 M 
 
And the worse fear of future ill (-nliicli oft 
 Dotli hang around it, as a sickly child 
 Upon its mother) may he both alike 
 Disarmed of power to unsettle present frood 
 So prized, and things inward and outward held 
 In such an even balance, that the heart 
 Acknowledges God's grace, his mercy feels, 
 And in its depth of gratitude is still. 
 
 O gift divine ol quiet sequestration ! 
 
 The hermit, exercised in prayer and praise. 
 
 And feeding daily on the hope of heaven. 
 
 Is happy in his vow, and fondly cleaves 
 
 To life-long sinirleness ; but happier far 
 
 "Was to your souls, and, to the thoughts of otheib, 
 
 A thousand times more beautiful appeared. 
 
 Your dual loneliness. The sacred tie 
 
 Is broken ; yet why grievf ? for Time but boldfl 
 
 His moiety in trust, till Joy shall lead 
 
 To the blest world where parting is unknown." 
 
FINAL MEMORIALS 
 
 CHARLES LAMB: 
 
 CONSISTIKQ 
 
 CHIEFLY OF HIS LETTERS NOT BKFORE PUBLISHED, WITH SKETCHES OP 
 SOME OP HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 SIR THOMAS NOON TALFOUED, D.C.L 
 
 O.^E OK UIS EiECUTORS. 
 
TO 
 
 WILLIAM WOEDSWOETH, ESQ. D.C.L 
 
 POET LAUREAIE, 
 
 THESE FINAL MEMORIALS 
 
 f 
 
 OP ONE WHO CHERISHED HIS FRIENDSHIP AS A COMFORT AMIDST GRIEFS 
 
 AVD A GLORY AMIDST DEPRESSIOXS, ARE, 
 
 WITH AFFECTION AND RESPECT. 
 
 INSCRIBED 
 
 BT ONE WHOSE PRIDE IS TO HAVE BEEN IN OLD TIME HIS EARNEST ADMIREB, 
 
 AND ONE OP WHOSE FONDEST WISHES IS 
 
 THAT HE MAY BE tONQ SPARED TO ENJOY FAME, UARELT ACCORDED 
 
 TO THE LrS'INQ. 
 
 -J 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 Nearly twelve years have elapsed since the Letters of Charles Lamb, accompanied 
 by such slight sketch of his Life as might link them together, and explain the circum- 
 stances 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 friend* 
 who might possibly have felt a moment's pain at the publication of some of thosa 
 eft'usions of kindness, in which they are sportively mentioned, have been removed by 
 death ; and the dismissal of the last, and to him the dearest of all, his sister, while it 
 has brought to her the repose she siglied for ever since she lost him, has released his 
 biographer from a difficulty which has hitherto prevented a due appreciation of some 
 of his noblest qualities. Her most lamentable, but most innocent agency in the event 
 which consigned her for life to his protection, forbade the introduction of any letter, 
 or allusion to any incident, which miglit ever, in the long and dismal twilight of 
 consciousness which she endured, shock her by the recurrence of long past and terrible 
 sorrows ; and the same consideration for her induced the suppi-ession of every 
 passage which referred to the malady with which she was through life at intervals 
 afflicted. Although her death had removed the objection to a reference to her 
 intermittent suffering, it still left a momentous question, whether even then, when no 
 relative remained to be affected by the disclosure, it would be right to unveil the 
 dreadful calamity which marked one of its earliest visitations, and which, though 
 known to most of those who were intimate with the surviving sufferers, had never 
 been publicly associated with their history. When, however, I reflected that the 
 truth, while in no wise affectmg the gentle excellence of one of them, cjists new and 
 solemn lights on the character of the other ; that while his frailties have received an 
 ample shai-e of that indulgence which he extended to all human weaknesses, their 
 chief exciting cause has been hidden ; that his moral strength and the extent of his 
 self-sacrifice have been hitherto unknown to the world ; I felt that to develope all 
 which is essential to the just appreciation of his rare excellence, was due both to him 
 and to the public. While I still hesitated as to the extent of disclosure needful for 
 this purpose, my lingering doubts were removed by the appearance of a full statement 
 of the melancholy event, with all the details capable of being collected from the 
 
188 
 
 PREFACK 
 
 newspapers of the time, in the " British Quarterly Eeview," and the diflFusion of the 
 passage, extracted thence, through sevend other journals. After this publication, no 
 doubt could remain as to the propriety of publishing the letters of Lamb on this 
 event, eminently exalting the characters of himself and his sister, and enabling the 
 reader to judge of the sacrifice which followed it. 
 
 I have also availed myself of the opportunity of introducing some letters, the 
 objection to publishing which has been obviated by the same great healer. Time ; and 
 of adding others which I deemed too trivial for the public eye, when the whole wealth 
 of his letters lay before me, collected by Mi\ Moxon from the distinsruished corre- 
 spondents of Lamb, who kindly responded to his request for permission to make the 
 public sharers in their choice epistolary treasures. The appreciation which the 
 letters alx-eady published, both in this country and in America — perhaps even more 
 remarkable in America than in England — ^have attained, and the interest which the 
 lightest fragments of Lamb's correspondence, which have accidentally appeared in 
 other quarters, have excited, convince me that some lettera which I withheld, as 
 doubting their worthiness of the public eye, will not now be unwelcome. There is, 
 indeed, scarcely a note — a notelet—(sLS he used to call his very little lettei*s) Lamb ever 
 wrote, which has not some tinge of that quaint sweetness, some hint of that peculiar 
 union of kindness and whim, which distinguish him from all other poets and humorists. 
 I do not think the reader will complain that — with some verj"^ slight exceptions, which 
 personal considerations still render necessary — I have made him a partaker of all 
 the epistolary treasures which the generosity of Lamb's correspondents placed at 
 IVIr. Moxon's disposal. 
 
 When I first considered the materials of this work, I purposed to combine them 
 with a new edition of the former volumes ; but the consideration that such a course 
 would be unjust to the possessors of those volumes induced me to present them to the 
 public in a separate form. In accomplishing that object, I have felt the difficulty of 
 connecting the letters so as to render their attendant circumstances intelligible, 
 without falling into repetition of passages in the previous biography. My attempt has 
 been to make these volumes subsidiary to the former, and yet complete in themselves ; 
 but I fear its imperfection will require much indulgence from the reader. The italics 
 and capitals used in printing the letters are always those of the writer ; and the little 
 passages sometimes prefixed to lettei-s, have been prmted as in the originals. 
 
 In venturing to introduce some notices of Lamb's deceased companions, I have 
 been impelled partly by a desire to explain any allusion in the letters which might be 
 misunderstood by those who are not familiar with the fine vagaries oi Lamb's 
 affection, and partly by the hope of giving some faint notion of the entire circle with 
 which Lamb is associated in the recollection of a few survivors. 
 
 T. N. T. 
 
 London, July, 1848. 
 
FINAL MEMORIALS OF CHARLES LAMB. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 LETTERS OP LAMB TO COLERIDGE, IN THB SPRING AMD 
 SUMMER OP 1796. 
 
 In the year 1795, Charles Lamb resided 
 with his father, mother, and sister, in lodg- 
 ings at No. 7, Little Queen-street, Holborn. 
 The father was rapidl^v sinking into dotage ; 
 the mother suflered under an infii-mity which 
 deprived her of the use of her limbs ; and 
 the sister not only undertook the office of 
 daily and nightly attendance on her mother, 
 but sought to add by needle-work to their 
 slender resoui'ces. Their income then con- 
 sisted of an annuity which Mr. Lamb the 
 elder derived from the old Bencher, Mr. Salt, 
 whom he had faithfully served for many 
 yeai-s ; Charles's salary, which, being that of 
 a clerk of three years' standing in the India 
 House, could have been but scanty ; and a 
 small payment made for boai-d by an old 
 maiden aunt, who resided with them. In 
 this year Lamb, being just twenty years of 
 age, began to write verses — partly incited by 
 the example of his old friend, Coleridge, 
 whom he regarded with as much reverence 
 as affection, and partly inspii-ed by an attacli- 
 ment to a young lady residing in the neigh- 
 bourhood of Islington, who is commemorated 
 in his early verses as " the fair-haired maid." 
 How his love prospered we cannot ascertain ; 
 but we know how nobly that love, and all 
 hope of the earthly blessings attendant on 
 such an affection, were resigned on the catas- 
 trophe 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 Coleridge in the first bloom of 
 life and genius, unshaded by the mysticism 
 which it afterwards gloi-ified — full of bound- 
 less ambition, love, and hope ! Tliere was a 
 tendency to insanity in his family, which had 
 been more than once develoiJed in his sister ; 
 and it was no matter of surprise that in 
 tlie dreariness of his solitude it fell upon 
 him ; and tliat, at the close of the year, lie 
 was subjected for a few weeks to the re- 
 straint 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 exemjjtion — an exemption 
 the more remarkable when his afflictions 
 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 claim ; so that a life of self- 
 sacrifice was rewarded by the preservation 
 of unclouded reason. 
 
 The following letter to Coleridge, then 
 residing at Bristol, which is undated, but 
 which is proved by circumstances to have 
 been^v^•itten in the spring of 1796, and which 
 is probably the earliest of Lamb's letters 
 which have been preserved, contains his own 
 account of this seizure. Allusion to the 
 same event will be perceived in two letters 
 of the same year, after which no reference 
 to it appears in his correspondence, nor can 
 any be remembered in his couversatioad 
 with his deai-est friends. 
 
190 
 
 LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 
 
 TO MR. COLERTT)GE. 
 
 " 1796. 
 
 " Dear C , make yourself perfectly easy 
 
 about May. I paid his bill when I sent your 
 clothes. I was flush of money, and am so still 
 to all the purposes of a single life ; so give 
 yourself no further concern about it. The 
 money would be superfluous to me if I had it. 
 
 " When Southey becomes as modest as 
 his predecessor Milton, and publishes his 
 Epics in duodecimo, I will read 'em ; a 
 guinea a book is somewhat exorbitant, 
 nor have I the opportunity of borrowing 
 the work. The extracts from it in the 
 Monthly Reviews, and the short passages 
 in your Watchman, seem to me much 
 superior to anything in his partnership 
 account with Lovell. Your poems T shall 
 procure forthwith. There were noble lines 
 in what you inserted in one of your uumbei's, 
 from ' Religious Musings ; ' but I thought 
 them elaborate. I am somewhat glad you 
 have given up that paper ; it must have been 
 dry, unprofitable, and of dissonant mood to 
 your disposition. I wish you success in all 
 your undertakings, and am glad to hear you 
 are employed about the ' Evidences of Re- 
 ligion.' There is need of multiplying such 
 books a hundi-edfold in this philosophical 
 age, to prevent converts to atheism, for they 
 seem too tough disputants to meddle with 
 afterwards. 
 
 " Le Grice is gone to make puns in Corn- 
 wall. He has got a tutorship to a young boy 
 living with his mother, a widow-lady. He 
 will, of course, initiate him quickly in 'what- 
 soever things are lovely, honourable, and of 
 good report.' Coleridge ! I know not what 
 suffering scenes you have gone through at 
 Bristol. My life has been somewhat diver- 
 sified of late. The six weeks that liuished 
 hust year and began this, your very humble 
 sci-vant spent very agreeably in a madhouse, 
 at Hoxton. I am got somewhat rational 
 now, and don't bite any one. But mad I 
 was ! An<l many a vagary my imagination 
 played with me, enough to make a volume, if 
 all were told. My sonnets I have extended 
 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 Vorligcrn) 
 
 ' Original letters of FalstafT, Shallow,' &c., a 
 copy you shall have when it comes out. 
 They are without exception the best imita- 
 tions I ever saw. Coleridge ! it may con- 
 vince you of my regards for you when I tell 
 you ray 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 written in my prison- 
 house in one of my lucid intervab. 
 
 TO MY SISTER. 
 
 " If from my lips Rome 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 e'er inclined 
 Too highly, and with partial eye 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, 
 AVeeping my sorrows with me, who repay 
 
 But ill the mighty debt of love I owe, 
 Mary, to thee, my sister and my friend. 
 
 " With these lines, and with that sister's 
 
 kindest remembrances to C , I conclude. 
 
 " Yours sincerely. Lamb." 
 
 " Your * Condones ad Populum ' are the 
 most eloquent politics that ever came in my 
 way. 
 
 " Write when convenient — not as a task, 
 for here is nothing in this letter to answer. 
 
 " We cannot send our remembrances to 
 Mrs. C, not having seen her, but believe me 
 our best good wishes attend you both. 
 
 " My civic and poetic compliments to 
 Southey if at Bristol ; — why, he is a 
 very Leviathan of Bards — the small min- 
 now, I ! " 
 
 In the spring of this year, Coleridge pro- 
 posed the association 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 trans- 
 mitted to Coleridge for this purpose, accom- 
 }>anied by remarks so characteristic na to 
 induce the hope tiiat the reader will forgive 
 
LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 
 
 191 
 
 tlie introduction of these small gems of verse 
 which were published in due course, for the 
 sake of the orifdual settiuff. 
 
 TO MR. COLERIDGE. 
 
 1796. 
 
 " I am in such violent pain with the head- 
 ache, that I am fit for nothing but tran- 
 scribing, scarce for that. When I get your 
 poems, and the ' Joan of Arc,' I will exercise 
 my presumption in giving you my opinion of 
 'em. The mail does not come in before to- 
 morrow (Wednesday) morning. The fol- 
 lowing Sonnet was composed during a 
 walk dowTi into Hertfordshire early in last 
 summer : — 
 
 " 'Xhe Lord of Light shakes off his drowsyhed.* 
 Fresh from his couch up springs the lusty sun, 
 And girds himself his mighty race to run ; 
 
 Meantime, by truant love of rambling led 
 
 I turn my back on thy detested walls, 
 Proud city, and thy sons I leave behind 
 A selfish, sordid, money-getting kind. 
 
 Who shut their ears when holy Freedom calls. 
 
 I pass not thee so lightly, humble spire. 
 That mindest me 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 Bowles's, ' To 
 the green handet in the peaceful plain.' 
 Your ears are not so very fastidious ; many 
 jieople would not like words so prosaic and 
 familiar in a Sonnet as Islington and Hert- 
 fordsliire. The next was written within a 
 day or two of the last, on revisiting 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 shady pathways sweet ; 
 
 Oft-times would Anna seek the silent scene, 
 Shrouding her beauties in the lone 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 I ; 
 
 And from the cottage turned me with a sigh. 
 
 " The next retains a few lines fr(im a 
 Sonnet of mine which you once remarked 
 had no ' body of thought ' in it. I agree with 
 
 * " Drowsyhed " I have met with, I think, in Spenser. 
 'Tis an old thing, but it rhj-mes with led, and rhyming 
 covers a multitude of licences. — C. Lamb's Manuscripts. 
 
 you, but have preserved a part of it, and it 
 runs thus. I flatter 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 ecstacy 
 The care -crazed mind, like some still melody : 
 
 Speaking most plain the thoughts which do possess 
 Her gentle sprite, peace and meek quietness, 
 And innocent loves,* and maiden purity : 
 
 A look whereof 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 joys, vain loves, and buried hopes regret. 
 
 " The next and last I value most of all. 
 'Twas composed close upon the heels of the 
 last, in that very wood I had in mind when 
 I wrote — ' Methinks how dainty sweet.' 
 
 " We were two pretty babes, the youngest 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 was, we two had wept to have been apart : 
 But when, with show of seeming good beg^uil'd, 
 I left the garb and manners of a child. 
 And my first love for man's society. 
 
 Defiling with the world my virgin heart — 
 My loved companion dropt a tear, and fled. 
 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 re- 
 member having read them previously, for the 
 credit of my tenth and eleventh lines. Parnell 
 has two lines (wliioh probably suggested the 
 above) to ' Contentment.' 
 
 WTiither, ah ! whither art thou fled 
 To hide thy meek contented t head J 
 
 " Cowley's exquisite ' Elegy on the death 
 of his friend Harvey,' suggested the phrase 
 of ' we two.' 
 
 Was there a tree that did not know 
 The lovo betwixt us two t 
 
 "So much for acknowledged plagiarisms, 
 
 • Cowley uses this phrase with a somewhat differmt 
 meaning. I meant, loves of relatives, friends, &».. — 
 C. Lamb's Manuscripts. 
 
 f An odd epithet for Contentment in a poet so poetical 
 as Parnell. — C. Lamb's Manuscripts. 
 
192 
 
 LETTEItS TO COLERIDGE. 
 
 the confession of which I know not whether 
 it has more of vanity or modesty in it. As to 
 my blank verse, I am so dismally slow and 
 sterile of ideas (I speak from ray heart) that 
 I much question if it will ever come to any 
 issue. I have hitherto only hammered out a 
 few independent, unconnected 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 
 favour to beg of you, that you never mention 
 Mr. May's affair in any sort,' much less thhik 
 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 yesterday'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 
 Bristol ; 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 humour 
 with present insipids. Should anything bring 
 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 it. I saw Le 
 Grice the day before his departure, and men- 
 tioned incidentally his ' teaching the young 
 idea how to shoot.' Knowing him and the 
 probability there is of people having a pro- 
 pensity to pun in his company, you will 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 
 pamphlet lately, satirical upon college decla- 
 mations. 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 1 You sported 
 some of his sublimities, I see, in your Watch- 
 man. Very decent things. So much for to- 
 night from your afflicted, hcadachey, sore- 
 throatoy, humble servaut, 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 in terspei-sed. 
 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 disjwsi- 
 tion thoroughly to relish good writmg. I 
 have re-read it in a more favourable mo- 
 ment, and hesitate not to pronounce it 
 sublime. If there be anything In it ap- 
 proaching to tumidity (which I meant not 
 to infer ; by elaborate I meant simply la- 
 boured), it is the gigantic hj7)erbole by 
 which you describe the evils of existing 
 society ; ' snakes, lions, hyenas, and behe- 
 moths,' 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 dis- 
 herited of Earth,' and ' the strange beatitude ' 
 which the good man shall recognise in heaven, 
 as well as the particularising of the children 
 of wretchedness (I have unconsciously in- 
 cluded 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-chattering 
 month.' 
 
 They are exactly such epithets as Burns 
 would have stumbled on, whose poem on the 
 ploughcd-up daisy you seem to have had in 
 mind. Your complaint that of your readei-s 
 some thought there was too much, some too 
 little original matter in your numbere, 
 reminds me of poor dead Parsons in the 
 
 * Critic' ' Too little incident ! Give mc 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 th;inks, in common 
 with those of all who love gooii poetry, for 
 'The Braes of Y;irrow.' I congratulate you 
 on the enemies you must have made l)y your 
 splendid invective against the barterers in 
 human flesh and sinews. Coleridge ! you 
 will rejoice to hear thtx'. Cowpcr is recovered 
 from his lunacy, and is employed on his 
 translation of the Italian, &c., poems of 
 Milton for an edition where F\i.''eli presides 
 
 I as designer. Coleridge ! to an idler like 
 
myself, to write and receive letters are both 
 very pleasant, but I wish not to break in 
 upon your valuable time by expecting to 
 hear very frequently from you. Eeserve 
 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, have given way to the duties of pro- 
 viding for a family. The mail is come in, but 
 no parcel ; yet this is Tuesday. Farewell, 
 then, till to-morrow, for a niche and a nook I 
 must leave for criticisms. By the way I 
 hope you do not send your own 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 without delight. Poor Lovell ' 
 my heart almost accuses me for the light 
 manner I spoke of him above, not dreaming 
 of his death. My heart bleeds for your 
 accumulated troubles ; God send you through 
 'em with patience. I conjure you dream not 
 that I will ever think of being repaid ; the 
 rery word is galling to the ears. I have 
 read all your ' Eeligious Musings' with unin- 
 terrupted feeUngs of profound admiration. 
 You may safely rest your fame on it. The 
 best remaining things are what 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 who 
 have seen 'em. Your impassioned manner 
 of recitation I can recall at any time to mine 
 own heart and to the eai-s of the bystanders. 
 I rather wish you had left the monody on 
 Chattei-ton concluding as it did abruptly. It 
 had more of unity. The conclusion of your 
 * Eeligious Musings,' I fear will entitle you 
 to the reproof of your beloved woman, who 
 wisely will not sutler your fancy to run riot, 
 but bids you walk humbly with your God. 
 The very last words, ' I exercise my young 
 noviciate thought in ministeries of heart- 
 stirring song,' though not now new to me, 
 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 woi-thy of Milton ; 
 but in my mind yield to your 'Eeligious 
 
 IMusinga.' I shall read the whole carefully, 
 and in some future letter take the liberty to 
 particularise my opinions of it. Of what is 
 new to me among your poems next to the 
 ' Musings,' that beginning ' My Pensive 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 ISIrs. C. checking your 
 wild wanderings, which yve 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, admu'able, 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 want room to teU you how we are charmed 
 with your verses in the manner of Spenser, 
 &c. &c. &c. &c. &c. I am glad you resume 
 the ' "Watchman.' Change the name ; leave 
 out all articles of news, and whatever things 
 are peculiar to newspapers, and confine your- 
 self 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 the work prospers. If I am vain 
 enough to think I can be a contributor, rely 
 on my inclinations. Coleridge ! in reading 
 your ' Eeligious Musings,' I felt a transient 
 superiority over you. I have seen Priestly, 
 I love to see his name repeated in your 
 writings. I love and honour him almost 
 prof;inely. You would be charmed with his 
 Sermons, if you never read 'em. You have 
 doubtless read his books illustrative of the 
 doctrine of Necessity. Prefixed to a late 
 work of his in answer to Paine, there is a 
 preface giving an account of the man, and hia 
 services to men, written by Lindsey, hia 
 dearest friend, well worth your reading. 
 
 " 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 Mi-s. 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 tiieir 
 
194 
 
 LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 
 
 selection and correction for the contemplated 
 volume. The reply is contained in the fol- 
 lowing 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 MU. COLERIDGE. 
 
 "With 'Joan of Arc' I have been de- 
 lighted, amazed ; I had not presumed to 
 expect anything of such excellence from 
 Southey. "V7hy the jjoem is alone sufficient 
 to redeem the character of the age we live 
 in from the imputation 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 subject is well chosen. It opens well. 
 To become more particular, I will notice in 
 tlieir order a few passages that chiefly struck 
 me on perusal. Page 26, ' Fierce and terrible 
 Benevolence ! ' is a phrase full of grandeur 
 and originality. The whole context made 
 me feel 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 2ud Book, the first forty lines in par- 
 ticular are majestic and high-sounding. 
 Indeed the whole vision of the Palace of 
 Ambition and what follows are supremely 
 excellent. Your simile of the Laplander, 
 'By Niemi's lake, or Balda Zhiok, or the 
 mossy stone of Solfar-Kapper,' * will bear 
 comparison with any in Milton for fulness of 
 circumstance and lofty-pacedness of versifi- 
 cation. Southey's similes, though many of 
 'em are capital, are all inferior. In one of 
 his books, the simile of the oak in the storm 
 occurs, I think, four times. To return ; the 
 light in which you view the heathen deities 
 is accurate and beautiful. Southey's personi- 
 fications in this book arc so many fine and 
 faultless pictures. I 'was much pleased with 
 your manner of accounting for the reason 
 why monarchs take delight in war. At the 
 447th line you have placed Proj)hets and 
 Enthusiasts cheek by jowl, on too intimate a 
 footing for the dignity of the former. Ncces- 
 sarian-like-spcaking, it is coriect. Page 98, 
 
 • Lnpl.ind mountain"!. The vcvhcs referred to are 
 published in Mr. Coleridge's I'oem entitled " The Destiny 
 111 Nations : a Yisiuu." 
 
 ' Dead is the Douglas ! cold thy warrior 
 frame, illustrious Buchan,' &c., are of kindred 
 excellence with Gray's ' Cold is Cadwallo's 
 tongue,' &c. How famously the Maid baffles 
 the Doctors, Seraphic and IiTefragable, 'with 
 all their trumpery ! ' Page 126, the proces- 
 sion, the appearances of the Maid, of the 
 Bastard Son of Orleans and of Tremouille, 
 are full of fire and fancy, and exquisite 
 melody of versification. The personifications 
 from line 303 to 309, in the heat of the 
 battle, had better been omitted ; they are 
 not very striking, and only encumber. The 
 converse which Joan and Conrade hold on 
 the banks of the Loire is altogether beau- 
 tiful. Page 313, the conjecture that in dreams 
 'all things are that seem,' is one of those 
 conceits which the Poet delights to admit 
 into his creed — a creed, by the way, more 
 marvellous and mystic than ever Athanasius 
 dreamed of. Page 315, I need only meyition 
 those lines ending with ' She saw a serpent 
 gnawing at her heart ! ' They are good 
 imitative lines, ' he toiled and toiled, of toil 
 to reap no end, but endless toil and never- 
 ending woe.' Page 347, Cruelty is such as 
 Hogarth might have painted her. Page 361, 
 all the passage about Love (where he seems 
 to confound conjugal love with creating and 
 preserving love) is very confused, and sickens 
 me with a load of useless personifications ; 
 else that ninth Book is the finest in the 
 volume — an exquisite combination of the 
 ludicrous and the terrible : I have never read 
 either, even in translation, but such I con- 
 ceive to be the manner of Dante or Ariosto. 
 The tenth Book is the most languid. On the 
 whole, considering the celerity whei'cwith 
 the poem was finished, I was astonished at 
 the unfrequency of weak lines. I had ex- 
 pected to find it verbose. Joan, I think, 
 does too little in battle ; Dunois perhaps the 
 same ; Conrade too nmch. The anecdotes 
 interspersed among the battles refresh the 
 mind very agreeably, and I am deliglited 
 with the very many passages of simple 
 pathos abounding throughout the poem, 
 passages which the author of 'Crazy Kate' 
 might have written. Has notMjister Southey 
 spoke very slightingly, in his preface, and 
 disparagingly of Cowper's Homer ? What 
 makes him reluctant to give Cowper Jiis 
 fame? And does not Southey use too often 
 the expletives ' did,' and ' does 1 ' They have 
 
LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 
 
 195 
 
 a good effect at times, but are too incon- 
 siderable, or rather become blemislies, when 
 they raarlc a style. On the whole, I expect 
 Southey one day to rival Milton : I already 
 deem liim equal to Cowpcr, and superior to 
 all living poets besides. What says Cole- 
 ridge ? The ' Monody on Henderson ' is 
 immensely/ good, the rest of that little volume 
 is readable, and above mediocrity. I proceed 
 to a more pleasant task ; pleasant because 
 the poems are yours ; pleasant because you 
 impose the tjisk on me ; and j^leasant, let me 
 add, because it will confer a whimsical im- 
 portance on me, to sit in judgment upon your 
 rhymes. First, though, let me thank you 
 again and again, in my own and my sister's 
 name, for your invitations ; nothing could 
 give us more pleasure than to come, but 
 (were there no other reasons) while my 
 brother's leg is so bad it is out of the 
 question. Poor fellow ! he is very feverish 
 and light-headed, but Cruikshanks has pro- 
 nounced the symptoms favourable, and gives 
 us every hope that there will be no need of 
 amputation : God send not ! We are neces- 
 sarily confined with him all the afternoon 
 and evening till very late, so that I am 
 stealing a few minutes to write to you. 
 
 " Thank you fur your frequent letters ; you 
 are the only correspondent, and, I might 
 add, the only friend I have in the world. I 
 go nowhere, and have no acquaintance. Slow 
 ot jfpeech, and reserved of manners, no one 
 seeks or cares for my society ; and I am left 
 alone. Allen calls only occasionally, as 
 though it were a duty rather, and seldom 
 stays ten minutes. Then judge how thank- 
 ful I am for your letters ! Do not, however, 
 burthen yourself with the correspondence. 
 I trouble you again so soon, only in obedience 
 to your injunctions. Complaints ajjai-t, pro- 
 ceed we to our task. I am calltd away to 
 tea ; thence must wait upon my brother ; 
 so must delay till to-morrow. Farewell, 
 Wednesday. 
 
 " Thursday. — I wiU first notice wliat is 
 new to me. Thirteenth page ; ' The thrilling 
 tones that concentrate the soul ' is a nPrv|0U3 
 line, and the six first lines of page 14 ai'e \^ery 
 pretty ; the twenty-first efiusion a perfect 
 thing. That in the manner of Spenser is 
 very sweet, particulai'ly at the close : the 
 thirty-fifth efiusion is most exquisite ; that 
 line in particular, * And, tranquil, muse upon 
 
 tranquillity.' It is the very reflex ple:xsure 
 that distinguishes the tranquillity of a think- 
 ing being from that of a shepherd, a modem 
 one I would be understood to mean, a 
 Damffitas, one that keeps other people's 
 sheep. . Certainly, Coleridge, your letter from 
 Shurton Bars has less merit than most 
 things in your volume ; personally it may 
 chime in best with your own feelings, and 
 therefore you love it best. It has, however, 
 great merit. In your fourth epistle that is 
 an exquisite paragraph, and fancy-full, of ' A 
 stream there is which rolls in lazy flow,' 
 &c. &c. ' Murmurs sweet undersong 'mid 
 jasmin bowers ' is a sweet line, and so are 
 the three next. The concluding simile is 
 far-fetched — ' tempest-honoured ' is a quaint- 
 ish phrase. 
 
 " Yours is a poetical family. I was much 
 surprised and pleased to see the signature of 
 Sara to that elegant coniposition, the filtti 
 epistle. I dare not criticise the 'Eeligious 
 Musings ; ' 1 like not to select any part, where 
 all is excellent. I can only admire, and 
 thank you for it in the name of a Christian, 
 as well as a lover of good poetry ; only let 
 me ask, is not that thought and those words 
 in Young, ' stands in the sun,' — or is it only 
 such as Yoimg, in one of his better moments, 
 might have wi it ? — 
 
 ' Belicvp thou, O my soul, 
 Life is a vision shadowy of truth ; 
 And vice, and anguish, aud the wormy grave, 
 Shapes of a dream ! ' 
 
 I thank you for these lines in the name of a 
 necessarian, and for what follows in next 
 paragraph, in the name of a child of fancy. 
 After all, you cannot, nor ever will, write 
 anything with which I shall be so delighted 
 as what I have heard yourself repeat. You 
 came to town, and I saw you at a time when 
 your heai't was yet bleeding with recent 
 wounds. Like yourself, I was sore galled 
 with disappointed hope ; you had 
 
 -' many an holy lay 
 
 TTiat, mourning, soothed the mourner on his way ; ' 
 
 " I had ears of sympathy to drink them in, 
 and they 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 you again. I image to myself 
 the little smoky room at the Salutation and 
 
 02 
 
Cat, where we have sat 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 of quiet life ! ' In your 
 conversation you had blended so many 
 pleasant f;uicies that they cheated me of my 
 grief But in your absence the tide of 
 melancholy 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 fervours 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 trouble- 
 some ! 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 fancy till you 
 have gone mad ! All now seems to me vapid, 
 comparatively so. Excuse this selfish digres- 
 sion. Your 'Monody' is so superlatively 
 excellent, that I can only wish 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 com- 
 pressed, and, I think, more energetic, though 
 I am sensible at the exjjenae of many 
 lieautiful lines. Let it begin 'Is this the 
 liind of song-ennobled line ? ' and proceed to 
 ' Otway's famislied form;' then, 'Thee 
 Chatterton,' 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 his poor unsheltered head 
 Did Penury her sickly mildew shed ; 
 And Hoon are fled the churnis of early grace. 
 And joy's wild gleams that lightened o'er bis face.' 
 
 Then 'youth of tumultuous soul' to 'sigh,' 
 tis before. The rent may al! stand down to 
 
 ' gaze upon the waves below.' What follows 
 now may come next as detached verses, 
 suggested by the Monody, rather than a part 
 of it. They are, indeed, in themiselves, very 
 sweet : 
 
 ' And we, at sober eve, would round thee throng, 
 Ilanging enraptured on thy stately song ! ' 
 
 in particular, perhaps. If I am obscure, you 
 may understand me by counting lines : 1 
 have proposed omitting twenty-four lines : 
 I feel that thus compressed it would gain 
 energy, but think it most likely you will not 
 agree with me ; for who shall go about to 
 bring opinions to Yhe bed of Procrustes, and 
 inti'oduce among the sons of men a monotony 
 of identical feelings 1 I only propose with 
 diffidence. Reject you, if you please, with 
 as little remorse as you would the colour 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. 
 Forster's scholars) out of the Mominj, 
 Chronicle into the Watchman, and thence 
 back into your collection. It is very prettv, 
 and you seem to think so, but, may be, 
 o'erlooked its chief merit, that of filling up a 
 whole yiage. I had once deemed sonnets of 
 unrivalled use that way, but your Epitaphs, 
 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,' recall (none more forcibly) 
 to my mind the tones in which i/ou recited it. 
 I will not notice, in this tedious (to you) 
 manner, verses which 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 re- 
 christened from a Sonnet to an Effn.siou. 
 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 liad lost the 
 copy, and I felt not a little proud at seeing 
 my name in your verse. The complaint of 
 
LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 
 
 197 
 
 Ninathoma (first stanza in particular) is the 
 best, or only good imitation, of Ossian I ever 
 saw — your ' Eestless Gale ' excepted. ' To 
 an Infant ' is most sweet ; is not ' foodful,' 
 though, very liarsh ? Would not ' dulcet ' 
 fruit be less harsh, or some other friendly 
 bi-syllable ? In ' Edmund,' ' Frenzy ! fierce- 
 eyed child ' 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 Eoss ' it was a 
 better line thus : 
 
 ' If 'neatU this roof thy wine-cheered moments pass,' 
 
 than as it stands now. Time nor nothing 
 can reconcile me to the concluding five lines 
 of ' Kosciusko : ' caU it anything 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,' &c. 
 
 "I love my sonnets because they are 
 the reflected images of my own feelings 
 at different times. To instance, in the 
 thirteenth — 
 
 ' How reason reeled,' &c., 
 
 are good lines, but must spoil the whole with 
 me, who know it is only a fiction of yours, 
 and that the ' rude dashiugs ' did in fact not 
 ' rock me to repose.' I grant the same 
 objection applies not to the former sonnet ; 
 but still I love my own feelings ; they are 
 dear to memory, though they now and then 
 wake a sigh or a tear. ' Thinking on divers 
 things foredone,' I charge you, Coleridge, 
 spare my ewe -lambs ; and though a gentle- 
 man may borrow six lines in an epic poem (1 
 should have no objection to borrow five 
 hundred, and without acknowledging), stUl, 
 in a sonnet, a personal poem, I do not ' ask 
 my friend the aiding verse ; ' I would not 
 wrong your feelings, by proposing any 
 improvements (did I think myself capable 
 of suggesting 'em) in such personal poems as 
 *Thou bleedest, my poor heart,' — 'od s^, — I 
 am caught — I have already done it ; but 
 that simile I propose abridging, would not 
 change the feeling or introduce any alien 
 ones. Do you understand me ? In the 
 twenty-eighth, however, and in the ' Sigli,' 
 and that composed at Clevedon, things that 
 
 come from the heart direct, not by the 
 medium of the fancy, I would not suggest an 
 alteration. When my blank verse is finished, 
 or any long fancy poem, ' pi-opino tibi alter- 
 andum, cut-up-andum, abridgandum,' just 
 what you will with it ; but spare my ewe- 
 lambs ! That to 'Mrs. Siddons,' now, you 
 were welcome to improve, if it had been 
 worth it ; but I say unto you again, Cole- 
 ridge, spare my ewe-lambs ! I must confess 
 were they mine, I should omit, in editione 
 secundd, effusions two and three, because 
 satiric, and below the dignity of the poet of 
 'Religious Musings,' fifth, seventh, half of 
 the eighth, that ' Written in early youth,' as 
 far as ' thousand eyes,' — though I pai't not 
 imreluctantly with that lively line — 
 
 ' Chaste joyance dancing in her bright blue eyes.' 
 
 and one or two just thereabouts. But I 
 would substitute for it that sweet poem 
 called ' Recollection,' in the fifth number of 
 the Watchman, better, I think, than the 
 remainder of this poem, though not differing 
 materially : as the poem now stands it looks 
 altogether confused ; and do not omit those 
 lines upon the ' Early Blossom,' in your 
 sixth number of the Watchman ; and I 
 would omit the tenth effusion, or what would 
 do better, alter and improve the last four 
 lines. In fiict, I suppose, if they were mine, 
 I should not omit 'em ; but your verse is, for 
 the most part, so exquisite, that I like not 
 to see aught of meaner matter mixed with it. 
 Forgive my petulance, and often, I fear, ill- 
 founded criticisms, and forgive me that I 
 have, by this time, made your eyes and head 
 ache with my long letter ; but I cannot 
 forego hastily the pleasure and pride of thus 
 conversing with you. You did not tell nxe 
 whether I was to include the ' Condones ad 
 PojDulum ' in my remarks on your poems. 
 They are not unfrequently sublime, and I 
 think you could not do better than to turn 
 'em into verse — if you have nothing else to 
 
 do. A , I am sorry to say, is a confirmed 
 
 Atheist ; S , a cold-heai'ted, well-bred, 
 
 conceited disciple of Godwin, does him no 
 good. 
 
 " How I sympathise with you on the dull 
 duty of a reviewer, and heartily damn with 
 
 you Ned E and the Prosodist. I shall, 
 
 however, wait impatiently for the articles in 
 the Critical Review, next month, becauae 
 
198 
 
 LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 
 
 they are yours. Young Evans (W. Evans, a 
 branch of a family you were once so intimate 
 with) is come into our office, and sends his 
 love to you ! Coleridge ! I devoutly wish 
 that Fortune, who has made sport with you 
 so long, may play one freak more, throw you 
 into London, or some spot near it, and there 
 snug-ify you for life. 'Tis a selfish, but 
 natural wish for me, cast as I am ' on life's 
 wide plain, friendless.' Are you acquainted 
 with Bowles? I see, by his last Elegy, 
 (written at Bath,) you are near neighbours. 
 Thursday. 
 
 *' I do not know that I entirely agi-ee with 
 you in your stiicture upon my sonnet ' To 
 Innocence.' To men whose hearts are not 
 quite deadened by their commerce with the 
 world, innocence (no longer familiar) becomes 
 an awful idea. So I felt when I wrote it. 
 Your other censures (qualified and sweetened, 
 though, with praises somewhat extravagant) 
 I perfectly coincide with ; yet I choose to 
 retain the world ' lunar ' — indulge a ' lunatic' 
 in his loyalty to his mistress the moon ! I 
 have just been reading a most pathetic copy 
 of verses on Sophia Pringle, who was hanged 
 and burnt for coining. One of the strokes of 
 pathos (which are very many, all somewhat 
 obscure), is ' She lifted up her guilty foi-ger 
 to heaven.' A note explains, by ' forger,' her 
 right hand, with which she forged or coined 
 the base metal. For pathos read batlios. 
 You have put me out of conceit with my 
 blank verse by your ' Religious Musings.' I 
 think it will come to nothing. I do not like 
 'em enough to send 'era. I have just been 
 reading a book, which I may be too partial 
 to, as it was the delight of my childliood ; 
 but I will recommend it to you ; — it is Izaak 
 Walton's ' Complete Angler.' All the scien- 
 tific part you may omit in reading. The 
 dialogue is very simple, full of pastoral 
 beauties, and will charm you. Many pretty 
 old verses ai-e intersiicrsed. This letter, 
 which would be a week's work reading only, 
 I do not wish you to answer it in less than a 
 month. 1 shall be richly content with a 
 letter from you some day early in July ; 
 though, if you get any how settled before then, 
 pray let me know it immediately ; 'twould 
 give me much 8atisfacti(m. Concerning the 
 Unitarian chapel, the salary is the only 
 scruple that tlie most rigid moralist would 
 admit as valid. Concerning the tutorage, is 
 
 not the salary low, and absence from your 
 fam'ly unavoidable ? London is the onlj 
 fostering soil for genius. Nothing more 
 occurs just now ; so I will leave you, in 
 mercy, one small white spot empty below, 
 to repose your eyes upon, fatigued as they 
 must be, with the wilderness of words they 
 have by this time painfully travelled tlu-ough. 
 God love you, Coleridge, and prosper you 
 through life ; though mine will be loss if 
 your lot is to be cast at Bristol, or at Notting- 
 ham, or anywhere but London. Our loves 
 to Mrs. C . C. L. 
 
 " Friday, \Oth June, 179C." 
 
 Coleridge, settled in his melancholy cot- 
 tage invited Lamb to visit him. The hope 
 — the expectation — the disappointment, are 
 depicted in the following letter, written in 
 the summer of the eventful year 1796. 
 
 TO MR. COLERIDGE. 
 
 " JiUy 1st, 179G. 
 
 " The first moment I can come I will ; but 
 my hopes of coming yet a while, yet hang on 
 a ticklish thread. The coach I come by is 
 immaterial, as I shall so easily, by your 
 direction, find ye out. My mother is gi'Own 
 so entirely helpless (not having any use of 
 her lindis) that Mary is necessarily confined 
 from ever sleeping out, she being her bed- 
 follow. She thanks you though, and will 
 accompany me in spirit. Most exquisite 
 are the lines from Withers. Your own lines, 
 introductory to your poem on ' Self,' run 
 smoothly and pleasurably, and I exhort you 
 to continue 'em. What shall I say to your 
 'Dactyls?' They are what you would call 
 good per se, but a parody on some of 'em is 
 just now suggesting itself, and you shall have 
 it rough and unlicked ; I mark with figures 
 the lines paroilied : — 
 
 4. — Sorely j'our D.ietyls do drag ntonj; limp-footed. 
 
 5. — Sad is the measure that hanpt a clo(f round 'ora'80. 
 
 6. — Meapre and lanjjuid, proclaimin); its wretchedness. 
 
 1. — Weary, uiisatisUed, not a little sick of 'cm. 
 11. — Cold is my tired heart, I have no charity. 
 
 2. — Painfully travelliiiir thus over the niirirod road. 
 
 7.- — O bepone, measure, half Latin, half Lnglish, then. 
 12. — Dismal your Dactyls are, God help ye, rhyming 
 onesl 
 
 " I possibly may not come this fortnight ; 
 therefore, all thou hast to do is not to look 
 for me any particular day, only to write woixJ 
 
immediately, if at any time you quit Bristol, 
 lest I come and Taffy be not at home. I 
 hope T can come in a day or two ; but young 
 
 S , of my office, is suddenly taken ill in 
 
 this very nick of time, and I must officiate 
 for him till he can come to work again ; had 
 the knave gone sick, and died, and been 
 buried at any other time, philosophy might 
 have afforded one comfort, but just now I 
 have no patience with him. Quarles I am as 
 great a stranger to as I was to Withers. I 
 wish you would try and do something to 
 bring our elder bards into more general 
 fame. I writhe with indignation when, in 
 books of criticism, where common-place quo- 
 tation is heaped upon quotation, I find no 
 mention of such men as Massinger, or Beau- 
 mont and Fletcher, men with whom succeed- 
 ing dramatic writers (Otway alone excepted)* 
 can bear no manner of comparison. Stupid 
 Knox hath noticed none of 'em among his 
 extracts. 
 
 " Thursday. — [Mrs. C can scarce guess 
 
 how she has gratified me by her veiy kind 
 letter and sweet little poem. I feel i\\a.ilshould 
 thank her in rhyme, but she must take my 
 acknowledgment, at present, in plain honest 
 prose. The uncertainty in which I yet 
 stand, whether I can come or no, damps my 
 spirits, reduces me a degree below prosaical, 
 and keeps me in a suspense that fluctuates 
 between hope anil fear. Hope is a charming, 
 lively, blue-eyed wench, and I am always 
 glad of her company, but could dispense with 
 the visitor she brings with her — her younger 
 sister. Fear, a white-livered, lily-cheeked, 
 bashful, palpitating, awkward hussy, that 
 hangs, like a gi-een girl, at her sister's apron- 
 strings, and will go with her whithersoever 
 she goes. For the life and soul of me, I could 
 not improve those lines in your poem on the 
 Prince and Princess, so I changed them to 
 
 • An exception he certainly -would not have made a 
 few years afterwards ; for he used to mention two pretty 
 lines in the " Orphan," 
 
 " Sweet as the shepherd's pipe upon the mountains, 
 With all his fleecy flock at feed beside him," 
 
 I 
 as a redeeming passage amidst mere stage trickeries. 
 The great merit which lies in the construction of 
 " Venice Preserved," was not in his line of appreciation ; 
 and he thought Thomson's reference to Otway's ladies — 
 
 — " poor Monimia moans, 
 
 And Belvidera pours her soul in love," 
 worth both heroines. 
 
 what you bid me, and left 'em at Perry's.t 
 I think 'em altogether good, and do not see 
 why you were solicitous about any alteration. 
 I have not yet seen, but will make it my 
 business to see, to-day's Chronicle, for your 
 verses on Home Tooke. Dyer stanza'd him 
 in one of the papers tother day, but, I think, 
 unsuccessfully. Tuoke's friends meeting was, 
 I suppose, a dinner of condolence.^ I am 
 not sorry to find you (for all Sara) immersed 
 in clouds of smoke and metajihysics. You 
 know I had a sneaking kindness for this last 
 noble science, and you taught me some smat- 
 tering of it. I look to become no mean pro- 
 ficient under your tuition. Coleridge, what 
 do you mean by saying you wrote to me 
 about Plutarch and Porphyry ] I received 
 no such letter, nor remember a syllable of 
 the matter, yet am not apt to forget any part 
 of your epistles, least of all, au injunction 
 like that. I will cast about for 'em, tho' 
 I am a sad hand to know what books are 
 worth, and both these worthy gentlemen are 
 alike out of my line. To-morrow ] shall be 
 less suspensive, and in better cue to write, so 
 good bye at present. 
 
 " Friday Evening. — That execrable aristo- 
 crat and knave R has given me an abso- 
 lute refusal of leave. The poor man cannot 
 guess at my disappointment. Is it not hard, 
 * this dread dependence on the low-bred 
 mind % ' Continue to write to me tho', and 
 I must be content. Our loves and best good 
 wishes attend upon you both. Lamb." 
 
 " S did return, but there are two or 
 
 thi'ee more ill and absent, which was the 
 plea for refusing me. I shall never have 
 heart to ask for holidays again. The man 
 
 next him in office, C , furnished him with 
 
 the objections. C. Lamb." 
 
 The little copy of verses in which Lamb 
 commemorated and softened his disajipoint- 
 ment, bearing date (a most unusual circum- 
 stance with Lamb), 5th July, 1796, was in- 
 closed in a letter of the following day, which 
 refers to a scheme Coleridge had formed of 
 settlin" in London on au invitation to share 
 
 t Some " occasional" verses of Coleridge's written to 
 order for the Morning Chronicle. 
 
 X This was just after the Westminster Election, in 
 which Mr. Tooke was defeated. 
 
the Editorship of the Morning Chronicle. 
 The poem includes a lamentation over a 
 fantastical loss — that of a draught of the 
 Avon " which Shakespeare drank ; " some- 
 what strangely confounding the Avon of 
 Stratford with that of Bristol. It may be 
 doubted whetlier Shakespeare knew the 
 taste of the waves of one Avon more than of 
 the other, or whether Lamb would not have 
 found more kindred with the world's poet 
 in a glass of sack, than in the water of either 
 stream. Coleridge must have enjoyed the 
 misplaced sentiment of his friend, for he was 
 singularly destitute of sympathy with local 
 associations, which he regarded as interfering 
 with the pure and simple impression of great 
 deeds or thoughts ; denied a special interest 
 to the Pass of Thermopylse : and instead of 
 subscribing to purchase "Shakespeare's 
 House," would scarcely have admitted the 
 peculiar sanctity of the spot which enshrines 
 his ashes. 
 
 TO SARA AND HEK SAMUEL. 
 
 " Was it so hard a thin<r ? — I did but ask 
 A fleeting holiday. One little -n'cek, 
 Or haply two, bad bounded my request. 
 
 \\Tiat, if the jaded steer, who all day long 
 Had borne the heat and labour of the plough, 
 W'hen evening came, and her sweet cooling hour, 
 Should seek to trespass on a neighbour copse, 
 Where greener herbage waved, or clearer streams 
 Invited hi;n to slake his burning thirst? 
 That man were crabbed, who should say him nay ; 
 That man were churlish, who should drive him 
 
 thence ! 
 A blessing light upon your heads, ye good, 
 Yc hospitable pair ! I may not come, 
 To catch on Clifden's heights the summer gale ; 
 I may not come, a pilgrim, to the banks 
 Of Avon, lucid stream, to taste the wave 
 Which Shakespeare drank, our British Helicon : 
 Or with mine eye intent on Ucdolill'e towers, 
 To muse in tears on that mysterious youth, 
 Cruelly slighted, who to London walls, 
 In evil hour, shaped his disastrous course. 
 
 Complaint begone ; begone, unkind reproof: 
 Take up, my song, take up a merrier strain, 
 For yet again, and lo ! from Avon's vales 
 Another ' minstrel ' cometh ! Youth endear'd, 
 God and good angels guide thee on thy way. 
 And gentler fortunes wait the friends I love. 
 
 " C. L." 
 
 The letter accompanying 
 begins cheerfully thus ; 
 
 those 
 
 " What can I do till you send word what j 
 priced and placed house you should like ? i 
 
 Islington, possibly, you would not like ; to 
 me 'tis classical ground. Knightsbridge is a 
 desirable situation for the air of the parks ; 
 St. George's Fields is convenient for its con- 
 tiguity to the Bench. Choose ! But are you 
 really coming to town ? The hope of it has 
 entirely disarmed my petty disappointment 
 of its nettles, yet I rejoice so much on my 
 own account, that I fear I do not feel enough 
 pure satisfaction on yours. Wliy, surely, the 
 joint editorship of the Chronicle must be 
 very comfortable and secure living for a man. 
 But should not you read French, or do you ? 
 and can you write with sufficient moderation, 
 as 'tis called, when one suppresses the one 
 half of what one feels or could say on a sub- 
 ject, to chime in the better with popular 
 lukewarmness ? White's ' Letters ' are near 
 publication ; could you review 'em or get 'em 
 reviewed ? Are you not connected with the 
 Critical Review 1 His fx'ontispiece is a good 
 conceit — Sir John learning to dance to please 
 Madam Page, in dress of doublet, &c., from 
 the upper half, and modern pantaloons with 
 shoes, &c., of the eighteenth century, from the 
 lower half ; and the whole work is full of 
 goodly quips and rare fancies, ' all deftly 
 masqued like hoar antiquity ' — much supe- 
 rior to Dr. Kenrick's ' Falstaff's Wedding,' 
 
 which you have seen. A sometimes 
 
 laughs at superstition, and religion, and the 
 like. A living fell vacant lately in the gift 
 of the Hospital : White informed him that 
 he stood a fair chance for it. He scruple** 
 and scrujjled about it, and at last, to use iiis 
 own words, 'tampered' with Godwin to 
 know whether the thing was honest or not. 
 
 Godwin said nay to it, and A rejected 
 
 the living ! Could the blindest poor papist 
 have bowed more servilely to his priest or 
 casuist ? Why sleep the Watchman's an- 
 swers to that Godwin 1 I beg you will not 
 delay to alter, if you mean to keep those hist 
 lines I sent you. Do that and read those for 
 your pains : — 
 
 TO THE POET COWrER. 
 
 " Cowpcr, I thank my God that thou art heal'd ! 
 Thine wa« the sorest malady of all ; 
 And I am sad to think that it should light 
 I'pon the worthy head ! liut thou art hcul'd. 
 And thou art yet, we trust, the destined man, 
 liorn to reanimate the lyre, whose chords 
 Have slumber'd, and have idle lain so long; 
 To the immortal sounding of whose strings 
 Did Milton frame the statcly-paeM Terse ; 
 
Among -whose wires with light finger plaj'ing, 
 Our ^Ider bard, Spenser, a gentle name. 
 The lady Muses' dearest darling child, 
 Elicited the deftest tunes yet heard 
 In hall or bower, taking the delicate car 
 Of Sidney and his peerless Maiden Queen. 
 
 Thou, then, take up the mighty epic strain, 
 Cowper, of England's Eards, the wisest and the 
 best. 
 
 " I have read your climax of praises in 
 those three Reviews. These mighty spouters 
 out of panegyric waters have, two of 'em, 
 scattered their spray even upon me, and the 
 waters are cooling and refreshing. Prosaically, 
 the Monthly reviewers have made indeed a 
 large article of it, and done you justice. The 
 Critical have, in tlieir wisdom, selected not 
 the very bast specimens, and notice not, 
 except as one name on the muster-roll, the 
 ' lleligious Musings.' I suspect Master Dyer 
 to have been the writer of that article, as the 
 substance of it was the very remarks and 
 the very language he used to me one day. I 
 fear you will not accord entirely with my 
 sentiments of Cowper, as expressed above 
 (perhaps scarcely just) ; but the poor gentle- 
 man has just recovered from his lunacies, 
 and that begets pity, and pity love, and love 
 admiration ; and then it goes hard with 
 people but they lie ! Have you read the 
 Ballad called * Leonora,' in the second number 
 of the Monthly Magazine ! If you have ! ! ! ! 
 There is another fine song, from the same 
 author (Burger), in the third number, of 
 scarce inferior merit ; and (vastly below 
 these) there are some happy specimens of 
 English hexameters, in an imitation of Ossian, 
 in the fifth number. For your Dactyls — I 
 am soiTy you are so sore about 'em — a very 
 Sir Fretful ! In good troth, the Dactyls are 
 good Dactyls, but their measure is naught. 
 Be not yourself ' half anger, half agony,' if I 
 pronounce your darling lines not to be the 
 Dest you ever wrote in all your life — you have 
 written much. 
 
 " Have a care, good Master Poet, of the 
 Statute de Contumelid. What do you mean 
 by calling IMadame Mara, — harlot and 
 naughty things ? * The goodness of the verse 
 
 • "I detest 
 
 These scented rooms, where, to a gaudy throng, 
 Heaves the proud harlot her distended breast 
 In intricacies of laborious song." 
 
 Lines composed in a Concert Room, by S. T. C. 
 
 would not save you in a court of justice. 
 But are you really coming to town l Cole- 
 ridge, a gentleman called in London lately 
 from Bristol, and inquired whether there 
 were any of the family of a Mr. Chambers 
 living : this Mr. Chambers, he said, had been 
 the making of a friend's fortune, who wished 
 to make some return for it. He went away 
 without seeing her. Now, a Mrs. Reynolds, 
 a very intimate friend of ours, whom you 
 have seen at our house, is the only daughter, 
 and all that survives, of Mr. Chambers ; and 
 a very little supply would be of service to 
 her, for she married very unfortunately, and 
 has pai-ted with her husband. Pray find out 
 this Mr. Pember (for that was the gentleman's 
 friend's name) ; he is an attorney, and lives 
 at Bristol. Find him out, and acquaint him 
 with the circumstances of the case, and offef 
 to be the medium of supply to Mrs. Reynolds, 
 if he chooses to make her a present. She is 
 in very distressed circumstances. Mr. Pember, 
 attorney, Bristol. Mr. Chambers lived in 
 the Temple ; Mrs. Reynolds, his daughter, 
 was my schoolmistress, and is in the room at 
 this present writing. This last circumstance 
 induced me to write so soon again. I have 
 not further to add. Our loves to Sara. 
 Thursday. C. Lamb." 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 LETTERS OP LAMB TO COLEHIDUE, CHIEFLY BELATING TO 
 THE DEATH OF MRS. LAMB, ANL. MISS LAMD'S SUBSE- 
 aUENT CONDITIOy. 
 
 The autumn of 1796 found Lamb engaged 
 all the morning in task-work at tlie India 
 House, and all the evening in attempting to 
 amuse his father by playing cribbage ; some- 
 times snatching a few minutes for his only 
 plea.sure, writing to Coleridge ; while Miss 
 Lamb was worn down to a state of extreme 
 nervous misery, by attention to needlework 
 by day, and to her mother by nigl\t, until the 
 insanity, which had been manifested more 
 than once, hroke out into frenzy, which, on 
 Thursday, 22nd of September, proved fatal 
 to her mother. The following account of the 
 proceedings on the incpiest, copied from the 
 " Times " of Monday, 26th September, 1 706, 
 supplies the details of this terrible calamity, 
 
202 
 
 LETTERS TO COLERIDGE, 
 
 doubtless with accuracy, except that it would 
 seem, from Lamb's ensuing letter to Colei'idcfe, 
 that he, and not the landlord, took the knife 
 fi'om the unconscious hand. 
 
 " On Friday afternoon, the coroner and a 
 jury sat on the body of a lady in the neigh- 
 bourhood of Holbom, who died in consequence 
 of a wound from her daughter the preceding 
 day. It appeared, by the evidence adduced, 
 that, while the family were preparing for 
 dinner, the young lady seized a case-knife 
 lying on the table, and in a menacing manner 
 pursued a little girl, her apprentice, round 
 the room. On the calls of her infirm mother 
 to forbear, she renounced her first object, 
 and, with loud shrieks, approached her 
 parent. Tlie child, by her cries, quickly 
 brought up the landlord of the house, but 
 too late. The dreadful scene presented to 
 him the mother lifeless, pierced to the heart, 
 on a chair,. Ler daughter yet wildly standing 
 over her with the fatal knife, and the old 
 man, her father, weeping by her side, himself 
 bleeding at the forehead from the efiects of a 
 severe blow he received from one of the 
 forks she had been madly hurling about the 
 room. 
 
 " For a few days prior to this, the family 
 had observed some symptoms of insanity in 
 her, which had so much iuoreased on the 
 Wednesday evening, that her brother, early 
 the next morning, went to Dr. Pitcaii'n, but 
 that gentleman was not at home. 
 
 "It seems the young lady had been once 
 before deranged. 
 
 " The jury, of course, brought in their 
 verdict — Lunacy.''' * 
 
 The following is Lamb's account of the 
 event to Coleridge : — 
 
 " September 27th, 1796. 
 "My dearest Friend, — AVhite, or some of 
 my friends, or the public papers, by this time 
 may have informed you of the terrible cala- 
 mities that have fallen on our family. I will 
 
 • A Btatcment nearly similar to this will be foiinil in 
 several other journals of the (lay, and in the Annual 
 Ilcpistcr for ihe year. The " True Uriton " adds : — " It 
 appears Hhe had been before, in the earlier part of her 
 life, deranged, from the harassing fatiKiies of too much 
 business. As her carriage towards her mother liad 
 always been ailectionate in the extreme, it is believed 
 her increased attachment to her, as hir inllrmities called 
 
 only give you the outlines : — ^My poor dear, 
 dearest sister, in a fit of insanity, haa been 
 the death of her own mother. I was at 
 hand only time enough to snatch the knife 
 out of her grasp. She is at present in a 
 madhouse, from whence I fear she must be 
 moved to an hospital. God has preserved to 
 me my senses, — I eat, and drink, and sleep, 
 and have my judgment, I believe, very 
 sound. My poor father was slightly wounded 
 and I am left to take care of him and my 
 aunt. Mr. Norris, of the Blue-coat School, 
 has been very very kind to us, and we have 
 no other friend ; but, thank God, I am very 
 calm and composed, and able to do tl>e best 
 that remains to do. Write as religious a 
 letter as possible, but no mention of what is 
 gone and done with. With me ' the former 
 things are passed away,' and I have some- 
 thing more to do than to feel. 
 
 " God Almighty have us well in his keep- 
 ing. C IjAMB.'" 
 
 "Mention nothing of poetiy. I have 
 destroyed every vestige of past vanities of 
 that kind. Do as you please, but if you 
 publish, publish mine (I give free leave) 
 without name or initial, and never send me 
 a book, I charge you. 
 
 " Your own judgment will convince you 
 not to take any notice of this yet to your 
 dear wife. You look after your family, — I 
 have my reason and strength left to take 
 care of mine. I charge you. don't think of 
 coming to see me. Write. I will not .see 
 you if you come. God Almighty love you 
 and all of us. C. Lamb." 
 
 After the inquest. Miss Lamb was placed 
 in an Asylum, where she w.as, in a short 
 time, restored to reason. The following is 
 Lamb's next letter : — 
 
 TO MR. COLERIUOE. 
 
 " October 3rd, 1796. 
 
 "My dearest Friend, — Your letter was an 
 inestimable treasure to me. It will be a 
 
 for it by day and by night, caused her loss of reason at 
 this time. It has liecn stated in some of the morning' 
 papers that she has an insane brother in conlinement ; 
 hut this is without foundation." None of the account 
 pive the names of the sufferers ; but in the index to .up 
 Anniuil lleifister, the luionymous account is referred U\ 
 with Mrs Lamb's numo. 
 
comfort to you, I know, to know that our 
 prospects are somewhat brighter. My poor 
 dear, dearest sister, the unhappy and un- 
 conscious instrument of the Almighty's judg- 
 ments on our house, is restored to her senses ; 
 to a dreadful sense and recollection of what 
 has past, awful to her mind and impressive 
 (as it must be to the end of life), but tem- 
 pered with religious resignation and the 
 reasonings of a sound judgment, which, in 
 this early stage, knows how to distinguish 
 between a deed committed in a ti-ansient fit 
 of frenzy, and the terrible guilt of a mother's 
 murder. I have seen her. I found her, this 
 morning, calm and serene ; far, very very 
 far from an indecent forgetful serenity ; she 
 has a most affectionate and tender concern 
 for what has happened. Indeed, from the 
 beginning, frightful and hopeless as her dis- 
 order seemed, I had confidence enough in her 
 strength of mind and religious principle, to 
 look forward to a time when even she might 
 recover ti-anquillity. God be praised, Cole- 
 ridge, wonderful as it is to tell, I have never 
 once been otherwise than collected and calm ; 
 even on the dreadful day, and in the midst 
 of the terrible scene, I preserved a tranquil- \ 
 lity which bystanders may have construed 
 into indifference — a tranquillity not of 
 despair. Is it folly or sin in me to say that ' 
 it "was a religious principle that most sup- 
 ported me ? I allow much to other favour- 
 able circumstances. I felt that I had some- 
 thing else to do than to regret. On that first 
 evening, my aunt was lying insensible, to all 
 appearance like one dying, — my father, with 
 his poor forehead plaistered over, from a 
 wound he had received from a daughter I 
 dearly loved by him, and who loved him no 
 less dearly, — my mother a dead and murdered 
 corpse in the next room — yet was I wonder- 
 fully supported. I closed not my eyes in 
 sleep that night, but lay without terrors and 
 without despair. I have lost no sleep since. 
 I had been long used not to rest in things of 
 sense, — had endeavoured after a comprehen- 
 sion of mind, unsatisfied with the ' ignorant 
 present time,' and tJds kept me up. /I had 
 the whole weight of the family thrown on 
 me ; for my brother, little disposed (I speak 
 not without tenderness for him) at any time 
 to take care of ohl age and infirmities, had 
 now, with his bad leg, an exemption from 
 Buch duties, and I was now left alone. One 
 
 little incident may serve to make you under- 
 j stand my way of managing my mind. Within 
 ' a day or two after the fatal one, we dressed 
 for dinner a tongue which we had had salted 
 for some weeks in the house. As I sat down, 
 a feeling like remorse struck me ; — this 
 ' tongue poor Mary got for me, and can I par- 
 take of it now, when she is far away ? A 
 thought occurred and relieved me, — if I give 
 in to this way of feeling, there is not a chair, 
 a room, an object in our rooms, that will not 
 awaken the keenest griefs ; I must rise above 
 such weaknesses. I hope this was not want 
 ' of true feeling. I did not let this carry me, 
 though, too far. On the very second day, 
 (I date from the day of horrors,) as is usual 
 in such cases, there were a matter of twenty 
 ' people, I do think, supping in our room ; 
 they prevailed on me to eat loith them (for 
 to eat I never refused). They were all making 
 merry in the room ! Some had come fi-oni 
 friendship, some from busy curiosity, and 
 some fz-om interest ; I was gouig to partake 
 with them ; when my recollection came that 
 my poor dead mother was lying in the next 
 room — the very next room ; — a mother who, 
 through life, wished nothing but her children's 
 welfare. Indignation, the rage of grief, some- 
 thing like remorse, rushed upon my mind. 
 In an agony of emotion I found my way 
 mechanically to the adjoining room, and fell 
 on my knees by the side of her coffin, asking 
 forgiveness of heaven, and sometimes of her, 
 for forgetting her so soon. Tranquillity 
 returned, and it was the only violent emotion 
 that mastered me, and I think it did me 
 good. 
 
 " I mention these things because I hate 
 concealment, and love to give a faithful 
 journal of what passes within me. Our 
 friends have been very good. Sam Le Grice, 
 who was then in town, was with me the three 
 or four first days, and was as a brother to 
 me, gave up every hour of his time, to the 
 very hurting of his health and spirits, in con- 
 stant attendance and humouring my poor 
 father ; talked with him, read to him, played 
 at cribbage with him (for so short is the old 
 man's recollection, that he was playing at 
 canls, as though nothing had happened 
 while the coroner's inquest was sitting over 
 the way!) Sanmel wept tenderly when he 
 went away, for his mother wrote him a very 
 severe letter on his loitering so long in town, 
 
and he was forced to go. Mr. Norris, of 
 Cln-ist's Hospital, has been as a father to me 
 — Mrs. Norris as a mother ; though we had 
 few ch-^ims on them. A gentleman, brother 
 to my godmother, from whom we never had 
 right or reason to expect any such assist- 
 ance, sent my fether twenty pounds ; and to 
 crown all these God's blessings to our family 
 at such a time, an old lady, a cousin of my 
 father and aunt's, a gentlewoman of fortune, 
 is to take my aunt and make her comfortable 
 for the short remainder of her days. My 
 aunt is recovered, aud as well as ever, and 
 highly pleased at thoughts of going — and has 
 generously given up the interest of her little 
 money (which was formerly paid my father 
 for her board) wholely and solely to my 
 sister's use. Beckoning this, we have, Daddy 
 and I, for our two selves and an old maid- 
 servant to look after him, when I am out, 
 which will be necessary, 170^. or 180^. rather 
 a-year, out of which we can spare 50^. or 60^. 
 at least for Mary while she stays at Isliugton, 
 where she must and shall stay during her 
 father's life, for his and her comfort. I know 
 John will make speeches about it, but she 
 shall not go into an hospital. The good lady 
 of the madhouse, and her daughter, an elegant, 
 sweet-behaved young lady, love her, and are 
 taken with her amazingly ; and I know from 
 her own mouth she loves them, and longs to 
 be with them as much. Poor thing, they 
 say she was but the other morning saying, 
 she knew she must go to Bethlem for life ; 
 that one of her brothers would have it so, but 
 the other would wish it not, but be obliged 
 to go with the stream ; that she had often as 
 she passed Bethlem thought it likely, ' here 
 it may be my fate to end my days,' conscious 
 of a certain flightiness in her poor head 
 oftentimes, and mindful of more than one 
 severe illness of that nature before. A 
 legacy of 100^., which my father will have 
 at Christmas, and this 20^. I mentioned 
 before, with what is in the house, will much 
 more than set us clear. If my father, :ui old 
 servant-maid, and I, can't live, and live com- 
 fortably, on 130^. or 1201. a-year, we ought to 
 burn by slow fires ; and I almost would, 
 that Mary might not go into an hospital. 
 Let me U(jt leave one unfavourable iiuprt-s- 
 siou on your mind respecting my brother. 
 Since tliis luuj iiapjiened, he has been vivy 
 kmd and brotherly ; but I fear for his mind, 
 
 — ^he has taken his ease in the world, and is 
 not fit himself to struggle Avith difiiculties, 
 nor has much accustomed himself to throw 
 himself into their way ; and I know his 
 language is already, ' Charles, you must take 
 care of yourself, you must not abridge your- 
 self of a single pleasure you have been used 
 to,' &c. &c., and in that style of talking. But 
 you, a necessarian, can respect a difference of 
 mind, and love what is amiable in a chai-acter 
 not perfect. He has been very good, — but I 
 fear for his mind. Thank God, I ciui uncon- 
 nect myself with him, and shall manage all 
 my father's moneys in future my.-elf, if I take 
 charge of Daddy, which poor John has not 
 even hinted a wish, at any future time even, 
 to share with me. The lady at this madhouse 
 assures me that I may dismiss immediately 
 both doctor and apothecary, retaining occa- 
 sionally a composing di-aught or so for a 
 while ; and there is a less expensive esta- 
 blishment in her house, where she will only 
 not have a room and nurse to herself, for 50^. 
 or guineas a-year — the outside would be 60^. 
 — you know, by economy, how much more 
 even I shall be able to spare for her comforts. 
 She will, I fjincy, if she stays, make one of 
 the family, rather than of the patients ; and 
 the old and young ladies I like exceedingly, 
 and she loves dearly ; and they, as the saying 
 is, take to her very extraordinarily, if it is 
 extraordinary that people who see my sister 
 should love her. Of all the people I ever 
 saw in the world, my poor sister was most 
 and thoroughly devoid of the least tincture 
 of selfishness. I will enlarge upon her 
 qualities, poor dear, dearest soul, in a future 
 letter, for my own comfort, for I uudei-staud 
 her thorougidy ; and, if I mistake not, in 
 the most trying situation that a human being 
 can be fomul in, she will be found (I speak 
 not with suflicient humility, I fe:u', but 
 humanly and ibolishly speaking), she will bo 
 found, I trust, unifonuly great and amiable. 
 God keep her in her present mind, to whom 
 be thaidvs and praise for all His dispensations 
 to mankind ! C. Lamb." 
 
 "Tluse mentioned good fortunes jmd 
 change of prospects had idmost brought my 
 mind over to the extreme, the very opposite 
 to despaii", I was in danger of making my- 
 self too hapjiy. Your letter brought me back 
 to a view of tlun-'s which 1 had entertained 
 
LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 
 
 205 
 
 from the beginning. I hope (for Mary 
 I can answer) — but I hope that / shall 
 thi'ough life never have less recollection, nor 
 a fainter impression, of what has happened 
 than I have now. 'Tis not a light thing, nor 
 meant by the Almighty to be received 
 lightly. I must be serious, circumspect, and 
 deeply religious through life ; and by such 
 means may both, of us escape madness in 
 future, if it so please the Almighty ! 
 
 " Send me word how it fares with Sara. 
 I repeat it, your letter was, and will be, an 
 inestimable treasure to me. You have a 
 view of what my situation donands of 
 me, like my own view, and I trust a just 
 one. 
 
 " Coleridge, continue to write ; Init do not 
 for ever offend me by talking of sending me 
 cash. Sincerely, and on my soul, we do not 
 want it. God love you both. 
 
 "T will write again very soon. Do you 
 write directly." 
 
 As Lamb recovered from the shock of his 
 own calamity, he found comfort in gently 
 admonishing his friend on that imbecility of 
 jiurpose which attended the development of 
 his mighty genius. His next lettei', com- 
 mencing with this office of friendship, soon 
 reverts to the condition of that sufferer, who 
 was endeared to him the more because others 
 shrank from and forsook her. 
 
 TO MR. COLERIDGE. 
 
 " October 17th, 179G. 
 " My dearest Friend, — I grieve from my 
 very soul to observe you in your plans of 
 life, veering about from this hope to the 
 other, and settling nowhere. Is it an un- 
 toward fatality (speaking humanly) that 
 does this for you — a stubborn, irresistible 
 concurrence of events — or lies the fault, as 
 I fear it does, in your own mind ? You seem 
 to be taking up splendid schemes of fortune 
 only to lay them down again ; and your 
 fortunes are an ignis fatuus that has been 
 conducting you, in thought, from Lancjaster- 
 court, Strand, to somewhere near Matlock ; 
 then jumping across to Dr. Somebody's, 
 whose son's tutor you were likely to be ; 
 and, would to God, the dancing demon may 
 conduct you at last, in peace and comfort, to 
 the * life and labours of a cottager.' You 
 
 see, from the above awkward playfuhiess of 
 fancy, that my spirits are notquite depressed. 
 I should ill deserve God's blessings, which, 
 since the late terrible event, have come down 
 in mercy upon us, if I indulo;ed regret or 
 querulousness. Mary continues serene and 
 cheerful. I have not by me a little letter 
 she wrote to me ; for, though I see her 
 almost every day, yet we delight to write to 
 one another, for we can scarce see each other 
 but in company with some of the people of 
 the house. I have not the letter by me, but 
 will quote from memory what she wrote in 
 it : ' I have no bad terrifying dreams. At 
 midnight, when I happen to awake, the nurse 
 sleeping by the side of me, with the noise of 
 the poor mad people around me, I have no 
 fear. The spirit of my mother seems to 
 descend and smile upon me, and bid me live 
 to enjoy the life and reason which the 
 Almighty has given me. I shall see her 
 again in heaven ; she will then understand 
 me better. My grandmother, too, will 
 understand me better, and will then say no 
 more, as she used to do, ' Polly, what are 
 those poor crazy moythered brains of yours 
 thinking of always ? ' Poor Mary ! my 
 mother indeed never understood her right. 
 She loved her, as she loved us all, with a 
 mother's love ; but in opinion, in feeling, 
 and sentiment, and disposition, bore so 
 distant a resemblance to her daughter, that 
 she never understood her right ; never could 
 believe how much she loved her ; but met 
 her caresses, her protestations of filial 
 affection, too frequently with coldness and 
 repulse. Still she was a good mother. God 
 forbid I should think of her but most respect- 
 fully, most affectionately. Yet she would 
 always love my brother above Mary, who 
 was not worthy of one-tenth of that affection 
 which Mary had a right to claim. But it is 
 my sister's gratifying recollection, that every 
 act of duty and of love she could pay, every 
 kindness, (and I speak true, when I say to 
 the hurting of her health, and most probably 
 in great part to the derangement of her 
 senses) through a long course of infirmities 
 and sickness, she could show her, she ever 
 did. I will, some day, as I promised, enlarge 
 to you upon my sister's excellences ; 'twill 
 seem like exaggeration, but I will do it. At 
 present, short letters suit my state of mind 
 best. So take my kindest wishes for your 
 
206 
 
 LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 
 
 comfort and establishment in life, and for 
 Sara's welfare and comforts with you. God 
 love you. God love us all. 
 
 « C. Lamb." 
 
 Miss Lamb's gradual restoration to com- 
 fort, and her brother's earnest watchfulness 
 over it, are iUusti'ated in the following frag- 
 ment of a letter : — 
 
 TO MR. COLERIDGE. 
 
 *' October 28th, 1796. 
 
 " I have satisfaction in being able to bid 
 you rejoice with me in my sister's continued 
 reason, and composedness of mind. Let us 
 both be thankful for it. I continue to visit 
 her very frequently, and the people of the 
 house are vastly indulgent to her ; she is 
 likely to be as comfortably situated in all 
 respects as those who pay twice or thrice 
 the sum. They love her, and she loves them, 
 and makes herself very useful to them. 
 Benevolence sets out on her journey with a 
 good heart, and puts a good face on it, but 
 is apt to limp and gi-ow feeble, unless she 
 calls in the aid of self-iuterest, by way of 
 crutch. In Mary's case, as far as respects 
 those she is with, 'tis well that these prin- 
 ciples are so likely to co-operate. I am 
 rather at a loss sometimes for books for her, 
 — our readmg is somewhat contined, and we 
 have nearly exhausted our London libraiy. 
 She has her hands too full of work to read 
 much, but a little she must read, for reading 
 was her daily bread." 
 
 Two months, though passed by Lamb in 
 anxiety and labour, but cheered by Miss 
 Lamb's continued possession of reason, so 
 far restored the tone of his mind, that his 
 interest in the volume which had been con- 
 templated to introduce his first verses to the 
 world, in association with those of his friend, 
 was enkindled anew. While cherisliing the 
 liope of reunion with his sister, and painfully 
 wresting his leisure hours from poetry and 
 Col ridge to amuse the dotage of his father, 
 he watclied over hia own I'eturning sense of 
 enjoyment with a sort of holy jealousy, 
 apprelionhive lest ho 8ho\dd forget too soon 
 the terrible visitation of Heaven. At this 
 time he tlius writes: — 
 
 TO MR. COLERIDGE. 
 
 " December 2nd, 1796. 
 "I have delayed writing thus long, not 
 liaving by me my copy of your poems, which 
 I had lent. I am not satisfied with all your 
 intended omissions. Why omit 40, 63, 84 ? 
 above all, let me protest strongly against 
 your rejecting the 'Complaint of Ninathoma,' 
 86. The words, I acknowledge, are Ossian's, 
 but you have added to them the ' music of 
 Card.' If a vicarious substitute be wanting, 
 sacrifice (and 'twill be a piece of self-denial 
 too), the ' Epitaph on an Infant,' of which its 
 author seems so proud, so tenacious. Or, if 
 your heart be set on ferpetuating the four- 
 line wonder, I'll tell you what do ; sell the 
 copyright of it at once to a country statuary ; 
 commence in this manner Death's prime 
 poet-laureate ; and let your verses be adopted 
 in every village round, instead of those 
 hitherto famous ones : — 
 
 ' Afflictions sore long time I bore, 
 Physicians were in vain.' • 
 
 "I have seen your last very beautiful poem 
 in the Monthly Magazine : write thus, and 
 you most generally have written thus, and 
 I shall never quarrel with you about simpli- 
 city. With regard to my lines — 
 
 ' Laugh all that weep,' &c. 
 
 I would willingly sacrifice them ; but my 
 portion of the volume is so ridiculously little, 
 that, in honest truth, I can't spare them : as 
 things are, I have very slight pretensions to 
 participate in the title-page. White's book 
 is at length reviewed in the Monthly ; was 
 it your doing, or Dyer's, to wliora I sent 
 him ? — or, rather, do you not write in the 
 Critical ? — for I observed, in an article of 
 this month's, a line quoted out of that sonnet 
 on Mi'S. Siddons, 
 
 ' With eager wondering, and perturb'd delight.' 
 
 And a line from that sonnet would not readily 
 have occurred to a stranger. That sonnet, 
 Coleridge, brings afresh to my mind the time 
 
 • This epitaph, which, notvithstanding Lamb's gentle 
 banter, occupieil an entire p:ige in the book, is curious — 
 " a niiruclo iusteiid of wit " — for it is a cummon.placc 
 of Coleridge, who, investing ordinary things with a 
 dreamy splendour, or weighing them down with accu- 
 mulated thouK'lit, haM rarely if ever written a stanra so 
 smoollily vapid — so devoid of merit or otfeiiee — (uulesj 
 
LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 
 
 207 
 
 when you wrote those on Bowles, Priestly, 
 Burke ; — 'twas two Christmases atjo, alid in 
 that nice little smoky room at the Salutation, 
 wliich is ever now continually presenting 
 itself to my recollection, with all its asso- 
 ciated train of pipes, tobacco, egg-hot, welsh- 
 rabbits, metaphysics, and poetry. — Are we 
 never to meet again ? How differently I am 
 circumstanced now ! I have never met with 
 any one — never shall meet with any one — 
 who could or can compensate me for the loss 
 of your society. I have no one to talk all 
 these matters about to ; I lack friends, I 
 lack books to supply their absence : but these 
 complaints ill become me. Let me compare 
 my present situation, prospects, and state of 
 mind, with what they were but two months 
 back^ — but two months ! O my friend, I am 
 in danger of forgetting the awful lessons then 
 presented to me ! Remind me of them ; 
 remind me of my duty ! Talk seriously with 
 me when you do write ! I thank you, from 
 my heart I thank you, for your solicitude 
 about my sister. She is quite well, but must 
 not, I fear, come to live with us yet a good 
 while. In the first place, because, at present, 
 it would hurt her, and hurt my father, for 
 them to be together : secondly, from a regard 
 to the world's good report, for, I fear, tongues 
 will be busy whenever that event takes place. 
 Some have hinted, one man has pressed it 
 (in me, that she should be in perpetual con- 
 finement : what she hath done to deserve, 
 or the necessity of such an hardship, I see 
 not ; do you ? I am starving at the India 
 House, — near seven o'clock without my 
 dinner, and so it has been, and will be, 
 almost all the week.' I get home at night 
 o'erweai'ied, quite faint, and then to cards 
 with my father, who will not let me enjoy 
 a meal in peace ; but I must conform to my 
 situation, and I hope I am, for the most part, 
 not unthankful. 
 
 " I am got home at last, and, after repeated 
 games at cribbage, have got my father's 
 leave to write awhile ; with difficulty got it, 
 for when I expostulated about playing any 
 more, he very aptly replied, ' If you won't 
 
 it be an offence to make fade do duty as a verb active) 
 as the following : — 
 
 " Ere sin could blight or sorrow fade. 
 Death came with friendly care ; 
 The opening bud to Heaven convey'd. 
 And bade it blossom there." 
 
 play with me, you might as well not come 
 home at all.' The argument was unanswer- 
 able, and I set to afresh. I told you I do 
 not approve of your omissions, neither do 
 I quite coincide with you in your arrange- 
 ments. I have not time to point out a better, 
 and I suppose some self-associations of your 
 own have determined their place as they 
 now stand. Your beginning, indeed, with 
 the ' Joan of Arc ' lines I coincide entirely 
 with. I love a splendid outset — a magnificent 
 portico, — and the diapason is grand. When 
 I read the ' Eeligious Musings,' I think how 
 poor, how unelevated, unoriginal, my blank 
 verse is — ' Laugh all that weep,' especially, 
 where the subject demanded a grandeur of 
 conception ; and I ask what business they 
 have among yours ? but friendship covereth 
 a multitude of defects. I want some loppings 
 made in the 'Chatterton ;' it wants but a 
 little to make it rank among the finest 
 irregular lyrics I ever read. Have you time 
 and inclination to go to work upon it — or is 
 it too late — or do you think it needs none ? 
 Don't reject those verses in one of your 
 Watchmen, * Dear native brook,' &c. ; nor I 
 think those last lines you sent uie, in which 
 ' all efl"ortless ' is without doubt to be pi-e- 
 ferred to ' inactive.' If I am writing more 
 than ordinarily dully, 'tis that I am stupilied 
 with a tooth-ache. Hang it ! do not omit 
 48, 52, and 53 : what you do retain, though, 
 call sonnets, for heaven's sake, and not 
 efiusions. Spite of your ingenious anticipa- 
 tion of ridicule in your preface, the five last 
 lines of 50 are too good to be lost, the rest 
 is not much worth. My tooth becomes 
 importunate — I must finish. Pray, pray, 
 write to me : if you knew with what an 
 anxiety of joy I open such a long packet as 
 you last sent me, you would not grudge 
 giving a few minutes now and then to this 
 intercourse (the only intercourse I tear we 
 two shall ever have) — this conversation with 
 your friend — such 1 boast to be called. God 
 love you and yours ! Write me when vou 
 move, lest I direct wrong. Has Sara no 
 poems to publish ? Those lines, 129, are 
 probably too light for the volume where the 
 'Eeligious Musings' are, but I remember 
 some very beau ti/u I lines, addressed by some- 
 body at Bristol to somebody in London. 
 God bless you once more. Thursday-night. 
 
 " C. Lamb." 
 
20S 
 
 LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 
 
 In another letter, about this time (De- 
 cember, 1796), Lamb transmitted to Cole- 
 ridge two Poems for the volume — one a 
 copy of vei"ses " To a Young Lady going out 
 to India," which were not inserted, and are 
 not worthy of presei-vation ; tlie other, en- 
 titled, " The Tomb of Douglas," which was 
 inserted, and which he chiefly valued as a 
 memorial of his impression of Mrs. Siddons' 
 acting in Lady Randolph. The following 
 passage closes the sheet. 
 
 " At length I have done with verse- 
 making ; not th.at I relish other people's 
 poetry less ; their's comes from 'em without 
 eifort, mine is the difficult operation of a 
 brain scanty of ideas, made more difficult by 
 disuse. I have been reading 'The Task' 
 with fresh delight. I am glad you love 
 Cowper : I could forgive a man for not en- 
 joying Miltpn, but I would not call that man 
 my friend who should be offended with the 
 • divine chit-chat of Cowper.' Write to me. 
 God love you and yours. C. L." 
 
 The following, of 10th December, 1796, 
 illustrates Lamb's almost wayward admira- 
 tion of his oidy friend, and a feeling — how 
 temporary with him ! — of vexation with the 
 imperfect sympathies of his elder brother. 
 
 TO MR. COLERIDGE. 
 
 " You sent me some very sweet lines rela- 
 tive to Burns, but it was at a time when in 
 my highly agitated and perhaps distorted 
 state of mind, 1 thought it a duty to read 'em 
 hastily and burn 'em. I burned all my own 
 verses ; all my book of extracts from Beau- 
 mont and Fletcher and a thousand sources : 
 I burned a little journal of my foolish pas- 
 sion which I had a long time kept — 
 
 ' Noting ere they past away 
 The little lines of yesterday.* 
 
 I almost burned all your lettei-s, — I did as bad, 
 1 lent 'em to a friend to keep out of my brother's 
 sij^ht, should he come and make inquisition 
 into our papers, for much as he dwelt upon 
 your conversation, while you were among us, 
 and delighted to be with you, it has been his 
 fashion ever since to depreciate and cry you 
 down,— you were the cause of my maduess — 
 you and your damned foolish sensibility and 
 melancholy — and he lamented with a true 
 
 brotherly feeling that we ever met, even as 
 the s6her citizen, when his son went astray 
 upon the mountains of Parnassus, is said to 
 have * cursed wit and Poetry and Pope.' I 
 quote wrong, but no matter. These letters 
 I lent to a friend to be out of the way, for 
 a season, but I have claimed them in vain, 
 and shall not cease to regret their loss. Your 
 packets, posterior to the date of my misfor- 
 tunes, commencmg with that valuable conso- 
 latory epistle, are every day accumulating — 
 they are sacred things with me." 
 
 The following long letter, bearing date on 
 the outside, 5th January, 1797, is addressed to 
 Mr, Coleridge at Stowey, near Bridgewater, 
 whither he had removed from Bristol, to 
 enjoy the society and protection of his friend 
 Mr. Poole. The original is a curious speci- 
 men of clear compressed penmanship ; being 
 contained in three sides of a sheet of fools- 
 cap, 
 
 TO MR. COLERIDGE. 
 
 " Sunday morning. — You cannot surely 
 mean to degrade the Joan of Arc into a pot- 
 girl. You are nut going, I hope, to annex 
 to that most splendid ornament of Southey's 
 poem all this cock-and-a-bull story of Joan, 
 the publican's daughter of Neufchatel, with 
 the lamentable episode of a waggoner, his 
 wife, and six children. The texture wiU be 
 most lamentably disjiroportionate. The first 
 forty or fifty lines of these addenda ai'e, no 
 doubt, in their way, admirable, too ; but 
 many would prefer the Joan of Southey. 
 
 ' On mightiest deeds to hrood 
 Of shadowy vastness, such as made my heart 
 Throb fast ; anon I paused, and in a state 
 Of half expectance listened to the wind ; ' 
 
 ' They wondered at me, who had known me once 
 • A cheerful careless damsel ; ' 
 
 ' The eye, 
 
 Tliat of the circling throng and of the visible 
 
 world 
 Unseeing, saw the shapes of holy phantasy ; ' 
 
 I see nothing in your description of the Maid 
 eqtial to these. There is a fine originality 
 certainly in those lines — 
 
 • For she had lived in this bad world 
 As in a place of tombs, 
 And touched not the pollutions of the dead ; ' 
 
 but your 'fierce vivacity' is a faint copy of 
 
LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 
 
 £09 
 
 the Tierce and terrible beuevolence' of 
 Sou'.hey ; added to this, th;it it will look like 
 rivalship in you, and extort a comparison 
 with Southey, — I think to your disadvantage. 
 And the lines, considered in themselves as an 
 addition to what you had before written, 
 (strains of a far higher mood,) are but such 
 as ]\Iadame Fancy loves in some of her more 
 familiar moods, at such times as she has met 
 Noll Goldsmith, and walked and talked with 
 him, calling him ' old acquaintance.' Southey 
 certainly has no pretensions to vie with you 
 in the sublime of poetry ; but he tells a plain 
 taJe better than you. I will enumerate some 
 woful blemishes, some of 'em sad deviations 
 from that simplicity which was your aim. 
 'Hailed who might be near ' (the ' canvas- 
 coverture moving,' by the by, is laughable) ; 
 ' a woman and six children ' (by the way, — 
 why not nine childi-en 1 It would have been 
 just half as pathetic again) : ' statues of sleep 
 they seemed ' : ' frost-mangled wi'etch ' : 
 ' green putridity ' : ' hailed him immortal ' 
 (rather ludicrous again) : ' voiced a sad and 
 simple tale' (abomiuable !) : 'improvendered' : 
 * such his tale ' : 'Ah ! suffering to the height 
 of what was suffered ' (a most insufferable 
 line) : ' amazements of affright ' ; ' the hot 
 sore brain attributes its own hues of ghastli- 
 ness and torture ' (what shocking confusion 
 of idc;\s) ! 
 
 "In these delineations of common and 
 natural feelings, in the familiar walks of 
 poetry, you seem to resemble Montauban 
 dancing with Eoubigne's tenants, ' much of 
 his native loftiness remained in the execution.'' 
 
 " I was reading your ' Eeligious Musings ' 
 the other day, and sincerely I think it the 
 noblest poem in the language, next after the 
 ' Paradise Lost,' and even that was not made 
 the vehicle of such grand truths. ' There is 
 one mind,' &c., down to ' Almighty's throne,' 
 are without a rival in the whole compass of 
 my poetical reading. 
 
 ' stands in the sun, and with no partial gaze, 
 Views all creation.' 
 
 I wish I could have written those lines^ I 
 rejoice that I am able to relish them. (The 
 loftier walks of Pindus are your proper 
 region. There you have no compeer in 
 modem times. Leave the lowlands, unenvied, 
 in possession of such men as Cowper and 
 Southey. Thus am I pouring balsam Into 
 
 the wounds I may have been inflicting on 
 my poor friend's vanity. 
 
 " In your notice of Southey's new volume 
 you omit to mention the most pleasing of all, 
 the 'Miniature' — 
 
 ' There were 
 "Who formed high hopes and flattering ones of thee, 
 Young Robert ! ' 
 
 ' Spirit of Spenser ! — was the wanderer wrong t ' 
 
 " Fairfax I have been in quest of a long 
 time. Johnson, in his ' Life of Waller,' gives 
 a most delicious specimen of him, and adds, 
 in the true manner of that delicate critic, aa 
 well as amiable man, ' It may be presumed 
 that this old version wmII not be much read 
 after the elegant translation of my friend, 
 Mr. Hoole.' I endeavoured — I wished to 
 gain some idea of Tasso from this Mr. Hoole, 
 the great boast and ornament of the India 
 House, but soon desisted. I found him more 
 vapid than smallest small beer ' sun- 
 vinegared.' Your 'Dream,' do-vvn to that 
 exquisite line — • 
 
 ' I can't tell half his adventures,' 
 
 is a most happy resemblance of Chaucer. 
 The remainder is so so. The best line, I 
 think, is, ' He belong'd, I believe, to the witch 
 Melancholy.' By the way, when will our 
 volume come out 1 Don't deUy it till you 
 have written a new Joan of Ai-c. 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 cor- 
 respondents — such poor and honest dogs as 
 John Thelwall, particularly. I cannot say I 
 know Colson, at least intimately ; ] 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 restraint on me. I cannot think what 
 subject would suit your epic genius ; some 
 philosophical subject, I conjecture, in which 
 shall be blended the sublime of poetry and 
 of science. Your proposed ' Hymiis ' will be 
 a fit preparatory study wherewith ' to dis- 
 cipline 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 ho favourably of 
 
210 
 
 LETTERS TO COLERIDGK 
 
 poor Mary ; I would to God all did so too. | 
 But I very much fear she must not think of I 
 coming home in my father's lifetime. It is 
 very hard upon her ; but oiir 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 complain. My poor old aunt, whom you 
 have seen, the kindest, goodest creature to 
 me when I was at school ; who used to , 
 toddle there to bring me good things, when I, I 
 school-boy like, only despised her for it, and 1 
 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 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 favourite : 
 
 ' Xo after friendship e'er can raise 
 The endearments of our early days ; 
 Nor e'er the heart such fondness prove. 
 As when it first began to love.' 
 
 " Lloyd has kindly left me, for a keep-sake, 
 * John Woolman.' You have read it, he says, 
 and like it. Will you excuse one short ex- 
 tract ? I think it could not have escaped 
 you. — * Small treasure to a resigned mind is 
 sufficient. How happy is it to be content 
 with a little, to live iu humility, and feel that 
 in us, which breathes out this language — 
 
 Abba ! Father ! ' I am almost ashamed 
 
 to patch up a letter in this miscellaneous soi-t 
 ■ — but I please myself in the thought, that 
 anything from me will be acceptable 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 town, 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 
 
 imagery, Hartley's five Motives to Conduct : 
 — 1. Sensation ; 2. Imagination ; 3. Ambi- 
 tion ; 4. S)Tnpathy ; 5. Theopathy : — First, 
 Banquets, music, &c., effeminacy, — and their 
 insufficiency. Seco7id. ' Beds of hyacinth and 
 roses, where young Adonis oft reposes ; ' 
 ' Fortunate Isles ; ' ' The pagan Elysium,' 
 &c. ; poetical pictures ; antiquity as pleasing 
 to the fancy ; — their emptiness ; madness, 
 &c. Third. Warriore, 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, rela- 
 tionship, &c. Fifth. Hermits ; Christ and 
 his apostles ; martyrs ; heaven, &c. An 
 imagination like yours, from these scanty 
 hints, may expand into a thousand great 
 ideas, if indeed you at all comprehend my 
 scheme, which I scarce do myself. 
 
 ^'■Monday morn. — * A London letter — Nine- 
 pence half-penny ! ' Look you, master poet, 
 I have remorse as well as another man, and 
 my bowels can sound upon occasion. But I 
 must put you to this charge, for I cannot 
 keep back my protest, howcA'er 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 writing till you invent some more 
 reasonable mode of conveyance. 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 yc//o2P-complexioned, 
 cojyper-coloxiTeAjwhite-Yweved gentlemen, who 
 never prove themselves their friends ! Don't 
 you think your verses on a ' Young Ass ' 
 too trivial a companion for the ' lieligious 
 Musings 1 ' — ' 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 ' Chattertcn,' 
 which it does but encumber, and it will be 
 a rich little poem. I hope you expuiige 
 great part of the old notes in the new edi- 
 tion : that, in particular, most barefaced, 
 unfounded, impuiient 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 tliem both. The 
 1 author of the ' I'kasuros of Memory' wae 
 
LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 
 
 211 
 
 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 1 Lloyd told me of some 
 verses on his mother. If you have them by 
 you, pray send 'em me. I do so love him ! 
 Nev'er 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 imbe- 
 cility and the son from his wearisome duties. 
 With his life, the annuity he had derived 
 from the old bencher he had served so faith- 
 fully, 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 — per- 
 fectly sensible and calm, — and he was pas- 
 sionately desirous of obtaining her liberty. 
 The sur\aving members of the family, espe- 
 cially his brother John, who enjoyed a fair 
 income in the South Sea House, opposed her 
 discharge ; — and painful doubts were sug- 
 gested by the autboritiesof the parish, where 
 the terrible occurrence happened, whether 
 they 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 recurrence of dangerous frenzy. 
 But Charles came to her 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 for 
 life ; and he kept his word. Whether any 
 communication with the Home Secretary 
 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 communi- 
 cation took place, on wliioh 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 the same time, he abandoned all 
 thoughts of love and marriage ; and with an 
 income of scarcely more than 100^. a-year, 
 derived from his clerkship, aided for a little 
 while by the old aunt's small annuity, set 
 out on the journey of life at twenty-two 
 years of age, cheerfully, with his beloved 
 companion, endeared to him the more by her 
 strange calamity, and the constant appre- 
 hension of a recurrence of the malady which 
 had caused it ! 
 
 CHAPTEE III. 
 
 LETTERS TO COLEKIDGE AND MANNING IN LAMB's PIRST 
 TEARS OF LIFE WITH HIS SISTER. 
 
 [1797 to 1800.] 
 
 The anxieties of Lamb's new position were 
 assuaged during the spring of 1797, by fre- 
 quent communications with Coleridge re- 
 specting the anticipated volume, and by some 
 additions to his own share in its jDages. He 
 was also cheered by the company of Lloyd, 
 who, having resided for a few months with 
 Coleridge, at Stowey, came to London 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 delight at 
 Lloyd's visit, which, although afterwards 
 inserted in the volume, are so weU 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 surprise, no doubt, that Lloyd is 
 with me in town. The emotions I felt on his 
 coming so unlooked-for, arc not ill expressed 
 in what follows, and what, if you do not 
 object to them as too personal, and to the 
 world obscure, or otherwise wanting in 
 worth, I should wish to make a part of 
 our little volume. I shall be sorry if that 
 v^olume comes out, as it necessarily must do, 
 
 J 
 
212 
 
 LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 
 
 unless you print those very schoolboy-ish 
 verses I sent you on not getting leave to 
 come dbwii to Bristol last summer. I say I 
 shall be sorry that I have addressed you in 
 nothing which can appear in our joint 
 vohime ; 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 hearts, and I love you in all the naked 
 honesty of prose. God bless 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 mouth, and where I hope to recognise 
 your poem on Burns. 
 
 CHALLES LLOYD, AN UNEXPECTED \aSITOR. 
 
 Alone, obscure, -without a friend, 
 
 A cheerless, solitary thingr, 
 ^^^ly seeks my Lloyd the stranger out ? 
 
 What offering can the stranger bring 
 
 Of social scenes, home-bred delighta, 
 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 be awhile with me content 
 
 To stay, a kindly loiterer, here ? 
 
 For this a gleam of random joy 
 
 Hath flush'd my unaccustom'd cheek ; 
 
 And, with an o'er-charged bursting heart, 
 I feel the thanks, I cannot speak. 
 
 O ! sweet are all the Muse's lays, 
 
 And sweet the charm of matin bird — 
 
 'Twas lor.g, since these estranged ears 
 The sweeter voice of friend had heard. 
 
 The voice hath spoke : the pleasant sounds 
 
 In memory's car, 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 chcrish'd be ; 
 I'll think less meanly of myself, 
 
 That Lloyd will sometimes think on me. 
 
 " Coleridge, would to God you were in 
 Lo)idon with us, or Ave two at Stowey with 
 
 you all. Lloyd takes up his abode at the 
 Bull and Mouth Inn ; the Cat and Salutation 
 would have had a charm more forcible for 
 me. nodes coenceque 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 almost 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. Lasib." 
 
 It would seem, from the following frag- 
 ment of a letter of 7th April, 1797, that 
 Lamb, at first, took a small lodging for his 
 sister apart from his own — but soon to be 
 for life united. 
 
 TO MR. COLERIDGE. 
 
 " By the way, Lloyd 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 
 Sundays, 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 AddcrLda to the volume, and is ]u-e- 
 served .among his collected poems, and thus 
 proceeds : 
 
 TO MR. COLERIDGE. 
 
 •' April 15th, 1797 
 
 " Tlie above you will please to print imme- 
 diately before the blank verse fragments. 
 Tell me if you like it. I fear the latter half 
 is unequal to the fomier, in parts of which 
 I think you wijl discover a delicacy of 
 pencilling not quite lui-Spenser-liko. Tho 
 latter half aims at the mecu^ure, but has 
 failed to attain tho jMctrij of Milton in hia 
 
' Comus,' aiul Fletchor in that exquisite 
 thing ycleped the 'Faithful Sliepherdess,' 
 vvhei-e they both use eight-syllable lines. 
 But this latter half was finished in great 
 haste, and as a task, not from that impulse 
 Avliich affects the name of inspiration. 
 
 " By the way, I have lit upon Fairfax's 
 'Godfrey of Bullen,' for half-a-crown. Re- 
 joice with me. 
 
 " Poor dear Lloyd ! I had a letter from 
 him yesterday ; his state of mind is truly 
 alarming. He has, by his own confession, 
 kept a letter of mine unopened three weeks, 
 afraid, he says, to open it, lest I should speak 
 upbraidingly to him ; and yet this very 
 letter of mine was in answer to one, wherein 
 he informed me that an alarming illness had 
 alone prevented him from writing. You will 
 pray with me, I know, for his recovery, for 
 surely, Coleridge, 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 in- 
 sanity, 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 compensation 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 room for me, | 
 leisure for me, and are you all pretty well 1 ; 
 Tell me all this honestly — immediately. And j 
 by what rZay-coach could I come soonest and j 
 nearest to Stowey 1 A few months hence 
 may suit you better ; certainly me, as well. ' 
 
 • Poor Charles Lloj-d ! These apprehensions •were 
 sadly realised. Delusions of the most mehincholy kind 
 thickened over his latter days — yet left his admirable 
 intellect free for the finest processes of severe reasoning. 
 At a time when, like Cowpcr, he believed himself the 
 especial subject of Divine wrath, he could bear his part 
 in the most subtle disquisition on questions of religion, 
 mor.nls, and poetry, with the nicest accuracy of percep- 
 tion and the most exemplary candour ; and, after an 
 ar^'ument of hours, revert, with a faint 6mile, to his 
 owii despair I 
 
 If so, say so. I long, I yearn, with all the 
 longings of a child do I desire to see you, to 
 come among you — to see the young philo- 
 sopher, 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 sceneiy.' There is a 
 sort of sacrilege in my letting such ideas slip 
 out of my mind and memory. Still that 
 
 R remaineth — 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 con- 
 nected with my heart and soul, with meaner 
 matter or subjects to me less interesting. 
 I can talk, as I can tliink, notliing else. 
 Thursday. C. Lamb." 
 
 The visit was enjoyed ; the book was 
 published ; and Lamb was once more left to 
 the daily labours of the India House and the 
 unceasing anxieties of his home. H is feelings, 
 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 
 affections, but in the vicissitudes of the 
 imaginative philosopher's fortune and the 
 constancy of his day-dreamings. 
 
 WRITTEN A TWELVEMONTH AFTER THE 
 EVENTS. 
 
 [Friday next, Coleridge, is the day on which my mother 
 died.] 
 
 Alas ! how am I chang'd ! where be the tears, 
 
 The sobs, and forc'd suspensions of the breath, 
 
 And all the dull desertions of the heart 
 
 With which I hung o'er my dear mother's corse ? 
 
 AVherc be the blest subsidings of the storm 
 
 Within ; the sweet rcsigncdncss 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 ! Thou didst not keep 
 
 Her soul in death. O keep not now, my Lord, 
 
 Thy servants in far worse — in spiritual death 
 
 And darkness — blacker than those feared shadows 
 
 O' 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' I 
 
214 
 
 LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 
 
 Give ns new flesh, new birth ; Elect of teaven 
 May we become, in thine election sure 
 Contain'd, and to one purpose stedfast drawn — 
 Our souls' salvation. 
 
 Thou and I, dear friend, 
 With filial recoRTiition 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 smiles 
 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 fittiiig me to ask, nor thee to give), 
 Vain loves, and " wanderings with a fair-hair'd maid :" 
 (Child of the dust as I am,) who so long 
 My foolish heart steep'd in idolatry. 
 And creature-loves. Forgive it, O my Maker I 
 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 ? Where the joyous troops 
 Of childJ-en, and the haunts I did so love ? 
 
 my companions ! O ye loved names 
 
 Of friend, or playmate dear, gone are ye now. 
 .Gone divers ways ; to honour and credit some j 
 And some, I fear, to ignominy and shame ! j 
 
 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 
 I'hc 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 wi-ote when I had re- 
 turned 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 lilfe 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 I And now I go 
 
 Again to mingle with a world impure; 
 
 With 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 1 now complain not. Deal with me, 
 
 Omniscient Father, as thou judgest best. 
 
 And in thy season soften thou my heart. 
 
 1 pray not for myself : 1 pray for him 
 
 Whose soul is sore pci plcxed. Shine thon on him. 
 
 Father of lights ! and in the difticult paths 
 
 Make plain his way before him ; his own thoughts 
 
 May he not think — his own ends not pursue — 
 
 8o shall he best perform thy will on earth. 
 
 Greatest and Best, Thy will be ever ours I 
 
 • [Note in the margin of MS.] " This is almost 
 literal from a letter of my sister's — less than a year 
 «go." 
 
 t [Note in the margin of MS.] " Alluding to some 
 of my old play-fellows being, literally, ' on the town,' 
 and 8omc otherwise wretched." 
 
 " The former of these poems I wrote with 
 Tmusual celerity t'other morning at office 
 I exjiect you to like it better than anything 
 of mine ; Lloyd does, and I do myself. 
 
 " 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. 
 I " 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 sliall get angry, and call you hard 
 names — Manchineel and I don't know what 
 else. I wish you wottld 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 oflF, and that is 
 transitory. 
 
 ' When time drives flocks from field to fold. 
 When ways grow foul and blood gets cold,' 
 
 I shall remember where I left my coat. 
 Meet emblem wilt thou be, old Winter, of a 
 friend's neglect — cold, cold, cold ! 
 
 « C. Lamb." 
 
 The following lines, which Lamb trans- 
 mitted to his new friend Southey, bespeak 
 the remarkable serenity with which, when 
 the first shock was over and the duties 
 of life-long love arranged. Lamb was able 
 to contemplate the victim of his sister's 
 frenzy : * 
 
 Thou should'ft 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 oft-times was I to thee 
 And yet, in all our little biokcringa, 
 
 • These linos are now first introduced in this Edition ; 
 — becoming known to the Editor by their publication in 
 the first volume of " Southcy'sLife and Correspondence," 
 p. 325, where they appear in a Utter from Southey to 
 Mr. Wynn. Tho Biographer courteously adds, that they 
 would have been sent to the Kditor, but tliat lluy were 
 not observed till after the publication of the First Edition 
 of these Memoriali. 
 
Domestic jars, there was I know not what 
 
 Of tender feelinu that were ill cxchanfr'd 
 
 For this world's chilling friendships, and their smiles 
 
 F.uniliar, whom the heart calls strangers still. 
 
 A heavy lot hath he, most wretched man, 
 
 Wlio lives the last of all his family ! 
 
 He looks around him, and his eye discerns 
 
 The face of the stranper ; and his heart is sick. 
 
 Man of the world, what can'st thou do for him ! 
 
 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 I 
 
 Say less than this, and say it to the winds. 
 
 An addition to Lamb's household-cares is 
 thus mentioned in a letter 
 
 TO MR. COLERIDGE. 
 
 " December 10th, 1797. 
 " In truth, Coleridge, I am perplexed, and 
 at times almost cast down. I am beset with 
 perplexities. The old hag of a wealthy rela- 
 tion, who took my aujit off our hands in the 
 beginning of trouble, has found out that she 
 is 'indolent 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 recollections 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 sti-aitened 
 we are already, how unable already to answer 
 any demand which sickness or any extra- 
 ordinary expense may make. I know this, 
 and all unused as I am to struggle with per- 
 plexities, I am somewhat nonplussed, to say 
 no worse. This prevents me from a thorough 
 relish of what Lloyd's kindness and youi-'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 Unitarian congre- 
 gation at Shrewsbury ; a hope of short 
 duration. The following letter was addressed 
 by Lamb to him at this time as "S. T. Cole- 
 ridge " — as if the Mr. were dropped and the 
 " Reverend " not quite adopted — " at the 
 Reverend A. Rowe's, Shrewsbury, Shrop- 
 shire." The tables are turned here ; — Lamb, 
 instead of accusing Coleridge of neglect, 
 takes the charge to himself, in deep humility 
 of spirit, and regards the effect of Miss 
 Lamb's renewed illnesses on his mind as 
 inducing indifference, with an affecting self- 
 jealousy. 
 
 TO MR. COLERIDGE. 
 
 " January 28th, 179S. 
 
 "You have writ me many kind letters, 
 and I have answered none of them. I don't 
 deserve your attentions. An unnatural in- 
 difference has been creeping on me since my 
 hist misfoi'tunes, or I should have seized the 
 first opening of a correspondence with ^ou. 
 To you I owe much, under God. In my 
 brief acquaintance with you in London, your 
 conversations won me to the better cause, 
 and rescued me from the polluting spirit of 
 the world. I might have been a worthless 
 character without you ; as it is, I do possess 
 a certain improvable portion of devotional 
 feeling.s, tho' when I view myself in the light 
 of divine truth, and not according to the 
 common measures of human judgment, I am 
 altogether corrupt and sinful. This is no 
 cant. I am very sincere. 
 
 " These last afllictions, 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 suffi- 
 ciently disciplined me ; but the event ought 
 to humble me ; if God's judgments now fail 
 to take away from me the heart of stone, 
 what more grievous trials ought I not to 
 expect 1 I have been very querulous, im- 
 patient under the rod — full of little jealousies 
 and heart burnings. — I had well nigh quar- 
 relled with Charles Lloyd — and for no other 
 rejison, 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 con- 
 tinually wished me to be from home, he was 
 drawing me from the consideration of my 
 
210 
 
 LETTERS TO COLERIDGE AND SOUTHET. 
 
 poor dear Mary's situation, ratlier than 
 assisting me to 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 
 accustomed to impart my dearest feelings, 
 tho' fiom 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 creature did with the kindest 
 intentions in the world, but they produced in 
 me nothing but soreness and discontent. I 
 became, as he complained, 'jaundiced ' to- 
 wards him . . . but he has forgiven me — and 
 his smile, I hope, will draw all such humours 
 from me. I am recovering, God be praised 
 for it, a healthiness of miud, 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' tlie whole 
 
 of our lives A careless and a dissolute 
 
 spirit has advanced upon me with large 
 strides — 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 ray 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 madness. 
 I think, you would almost make her dance 
 within an inch of the precipice ; she must bo 
 with duller fancies, and cooler intellects. 
 I know a young man of this description, 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 tliat kiud 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, endeavour to engage my miud in 
 some constant and innocent pureuit. I know 
 my capacities better than you do. 
 
 " .A ccept 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 
 esteem that his guileless simplicity of charac- 
 ter and gentleness 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 quali- 
 fications and tastes — Lamb, in all things 
 original, and rejoicing in the quaint, the 
 strange, the extravagant ; Dyer, the quint- 
 essence of learned commonplace ; Lamb 
 wildly catching the most evanescent spirit of 
 wit and poetry ; Dyer, the wondering dis- 
 ciple of their established forms. Dyer offi- 
 ciated 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 
 sentimental attachments in Germany, or 
 flirted with revolutionary Fr;Hice, 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 pecvdiarities ; 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, ad- 
 dressed — 
 
 TO MR. SOUTHET. 
 
 " I showed my 'Witch,' and 'Dying liOver,' 
 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 
 predecessoi-s 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, j 
 by correcting a proof sheet of his own Lyrica. | 
 
George writes odes -where the rhymes, like 
 fashionable man and wife, keep a comfortable 
 distance of six or eight lines apart, and calk 
 that ' observing the laws of verse.' George 
 tells you, before lie recites, that you must 
 listen with gi-eat attention, or you'll miss the 
 rhymes. I did so, and found them pretty 
 exact. George, speaking of the dead Ossian, 
 exclaimeth, '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'dare the poet's eyes.' 
 But that would not do. I found there was 
 an antithesis between the darkness of his 
 eyes and the splendour of his genius ; and I 
 acquiesced." 
 
 right, that I had power and might equal to 
 my wishes : then would I call the gentry of 
 thy native island, and they should come in 
 troops, flocking at the sound of thy pros- 
 pectus-trumpet, and crowding who shall be 
 first to stand in thy list of subscribers ! I 
 can only put twelve shillings 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 1 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 
 afi-ected.'" 
 
 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 wintei'. The first volume contains 
 every sort of poetiy, except personal satire, 
 which George, in his truly original prospectus, 
 renounceth for ever, whimsically 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 evei'y species besides 
 — the Spenserian, Thomsonian, Masonic and 
 Akeiisidish more especially. The second 
 volume is all criticism ; wherein he demon- 
 strates to the entire 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 — ^^hat 
 Cowley was ruined by excess of wii; (a 
 warning to all moderns) — that Charles Lloyd, 
 Charles Lamb, and William "VVordswortli, in 
 later days, have struck the true chords of 
 poesy. O George, George ! with a head 
 uniformly wrong, and a heart imiformly 
 
 Lamb's apprehensions of the recui-rence of 
 his sister's malady were soon realised. An 
 old maid-servant who assisted her in the 
 lodging became ill ; Miss Lamb incessantly 
 watched the death-bed ; and just as the poor 
 creature died, was again seized with mad- 
 ness. Lamb placed her under medical care ; 
 and, left alone, wrote the following short 
 and miserable letter : — 
 
 TO MR. COLERIDGE. 
 
 " May 12th, 1800. 
 " My dear Coleridge, — I don't know why 
 I write, except 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 
 nothing but a cat, to remind me that the 
 house has been full of living beings like my- 
 self My heart is quite suuk, and I don't 
 know where to look for relief Mary will 
 get better again, but her constantly being 
 liable to such relapses is dreadful ; nor is it 
 the least of our evils that her case and all 
 our story is so well known around us. We are 
 in a manner marked. Excuse my troubling 
 I you, but I have nobody by me to speak to 
 me. I slept out last night, not being able to 
 I 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 
 fi-icnd to come and be with me to-morrow. 
 
218 
 
 LETTERS TO MANNING AND COLERIDGE. 
 
 I am completely shipwrecked. My head is 
 quite bad. I almost wish that Mary were 
 dead. — God bless you. Love to Sara and 
 Hartley. — Monday. 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 sufficiently 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 spiiits 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 me to live in town, where 
 we shall be much more 'private, and to quit a 
 house and a neighbourhood where poor 
 Mary's disorder, so frequently recurring, has 
 made us a sort of marked people. We can 
 be nowhere private except in the midst of 
 London. We shall be in a family where we 
 visit very fi-equently ; 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 prospect, 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 pleasure. — 
 Farewell. C. Lamb." 
 
 Tliis hope was accomplished, as appears 
 from the following letter : — 
 
 TO MR. COLERIDQE. 
 
 •' 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 
 me, the rooms being at a reasonable rent, and 
 including the use of an old servant, besides 
 being infinitely preferable to ordinary lodg- 
 ings in our case, as you must perceive. As 
 Gutch knew 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 (in- 
 cluding servant) under 34^. a year. Here I 
 soon found myself at home ; and here, in six 
 weeks after, Mary was well enough to join 
 me. So we 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 Oxford, on 
 a visit which 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 particularly gratif}ing 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 without 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 Sarah and Hartley. 
 
 " I expected before this to have had tidings 
 of another little philosopher. Lloyd's wife 
 is on the point of favouring the world. 
 
 " Have you seen the new edition of Bums ? 
 his posthumous works and lettei-s 1 I have 
 only been able to procure the first volume, 
 wliich contains his life — very confusedly and 
 badly written, and interspersed with dull 
 pathological and medical discussions. It is 
 written by a Dr. Currie. Do you know the 
 well-meaning doctor ? Alas, ne stctor ultra 
 crepidam I 
 
 " I hope to hear again from you very soon. 
 Godwin is gone to Ireland on a visit to 
 Grattan. Before he went I passed much 
 time with him, and he 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, wliich I understand ai*e at John- 
 son's, tho bookseller, wlio has got quite as 
 
LETTERS TO MANNING. 
 
 219 
 
 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 
 Bent you at Grassmere about Christabel, and 
 comply with my request contained therein. 
 
 " Love to all friends round Skiddaw. 
 
 " C. Lamb." 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS TO MANNING, COLERIDGE, 
 AND WORDSWORTH. 
 
 [1800 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 cii-cle of companionship, and had 
 prompted sallies of wilder and broader mirth, 
 which afterwards softened into delicacy, re- 
 taining all its whim. The following passage, 
 which concludes a letter to Manning, else 
 occupied with merely personal details, proves 
 that his apprehensions for the diminution of 
 his reverence for sacred things were not 
 wholly unfounded ; while, amidst its grotesque 
 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 desiderate compi-omise between a wild 
 gaiety and religious impressions obscured 
 but not efiaced ; and intimating his disap- 
 probation of infidelity, with a melancholy 
 sense of his own unworthmess seriously to 
 express it. 
 
 TO MR. MANNING. 
 
 " Coleridge inquires after you pretty often. 
 I wish to be the pandar to bring you to- 
 gether again once before I die. When we 
 die, you and I must part ; the sheep, you 
 know, take the right hand, and the goats the 
 left. Stripped of its allegory, you must know, 
 the sheep are /, and the Apostles and the 
 Martyrs, and the Popes, and Bishop Taylor 
 and Bishop Horsley, and Coleri<lge, &c. &c. ; 
 the goats are the Atheists and the Adulterers, 
 
 and dumb dogs, and Godwin and M g, 
 
 and that Thyestsean 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 trifling — and believe me seriously 
 and deeply your well -wisher and friend, 
 
 " C. Lamb." 
 
 In the following letter Lamb's fantastic 
 spirits find scope freely, though in all kind- 
 ness, in the peculiarities of the learned and 
 good George Dyer : — 
 
 TO MR. MANNING. 
 
 " August 22nd, 1800. 
 
 " Dear Manning, — You needed not imagine 
 any apology necessary. Your fine hare and 
 fine birds (which just now 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 pampei-ed. Poh ! 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 
 consistence of bread and cream (y'clept bread- 
 sauce), each to each, giving double gi'ace, do 
 mutually illustrate and set ofi" (as skilful gold- 
 foils to rare jewels) your partridge, pheasant, 
 woodcock, snipe, teal, widgeon, and the other 
 lesser daughters of the ark. My friendship, 
 struggling with my carnal and fleshly pru- 
 dence (which suggests that a bu'd a man is 
 the proper allotment in such cases), yearneth 
 sometimes to have thee here to pick a wing 
 or so. I question if your Norfolk sauces 
 match our London culinaric. 
 
 " George Dyer has introduced me to the 
 table of an agreeable 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 preposterously before his 
 small dwelling, which, with the circumstance 
 of his taking several panes of glass out of 
 bedroom windows (for air) causeth his 
 neighbours to speculate strangely on the 
 state of the good man's pericranicks. Plainly, 
 he lives under the reputation of being de- 
 ranged. George does not mind this circum- 
 stance : he rather likes him the better for it. 
 
^20 
 
 LETTER TO COLERIDGE. 
 
 The Doctor, in his pursuits, joins agricultural 
 to poetical science, and has set George's i 
 brains mad about the old Scotch writers, ! 
 Barbour, Douglas's ^neid, Blind Harry, &c. 
 We returned home in a return postchaise 
 (having dined with the Doctor), and George 
 kept wondering and wondering, for eight or 
 nine turnpike miles, Avhat was the name, and 
 striving to recollect the name of a poet an- 
 terior to Barbour, I begged to know what 
 •was remaining of his works. * Thei'e is no- 
 thing extant of his works. Sir, but by all 
 accounts he seems to have been a fine 
 genius ! ' This fine genius, without anything 
 to show for it, or any title beyond George's 
 courtesy, without even a name ; and Barbour, 
 and Douglas, and Blind Harry, now are the 
 predominant sounds in George's pia mater, 
 and their buzzings exclude politics, criticism, 
 and algebra — the late 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, 
 reiterated as often as possible, there could 
 be nothing painful, nothing distracting. 
 
 " God bless me, here are the birds, smoking 
 hot ! 
 
 " All that is gross and unspiritual in me 
 rises at the sight I 
 
 " Avaunt friendship, and all memory of 
 absent friends ! C. Lamb." 
 
 In tlie following letter, tlie exciting sub- 
 jects of Dr. A and Dyer are further 
 
 played on : — 
 
 TO MR. COLERIDGE. 
 
 " Aub'ust20th, 1800. 
 
 " George Dyer is the only literary cha- 
 racter I am happily 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 hjiir.* George 
 
 brought a Dr. A to see me. The Doctor 
 
 is a very pleasant old man, a great genius for 
 agriculture, one that ties his breeches-knees 
 with packthread, and boa.sts 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 inatten- 
 tive to the Doctor's criticism, no sooner heard 
 the sound of Horner 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 disser- 
 tation on the Drama and the comparison of 
 the English and German theatres. As I 
 rather doubted his competency to do the 
 latter, knowing that his peculiar turn lies in 
 the lyric species of composition, 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 was 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 heai-d of Fletcher, 
 Ford, Marlowe, Miissinger, and the worthies 
 of Dodsley's Collection ; but he is to read all 
 these, to prepare him for bringing out his 
 ' Parallel ' in tlie winter. I find ho is also 
 determined to vindicate Poetry from the 
 shackles Avhich Aristotle and some othei-s 
 have imposed upmi it, which is very good- 
 natured of him, and very necess;u*y just 
 now ! Now I am touching so deeply 
 ujx)]! poetry, can I forget that I have just 
 
 • This passage, thus fur, is printed in the former 
 voluiuos ; the remainder wus then Bupprcssecl (with other 
 passnues noiv for the lirst time piibliKhed) relatini; to 
 Mr. Dyer, lest they sliould give pain to that excellent 
 perwm then living. 
 
LETTERS TO MANNING. 
 
 221 
 
 received from D a magnificent copy of 
 
 his Guinea Epic. Four-and-twenty Books to 
 read in the dog-days ! I got as far as the 
 Mad Monk the first day, and fainted. Mr. 
 
 D 's genius strongly points him to the 
 
 Pastoral, but his inclinations divert him 
 perpetually from his calling. He imitates 
 Southey, as Eowe did Shakspeare, with his 
 ' Good morrow to ye ; good master Lieu- 
 tenant.' Instead of a man, a woman, a 
 daughter, he constantly writes one a man, 
 one a woman, one his daughter. Instead of 
 the king, the hero, he constantly writes, he 
 the king, he the hero ; two flowers of rhetoric, 
 
 palpably from the ' Joan.' But Mr. D 
 
 soai-s 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 nothing, with adders' tongues for 
 bannisters — Good Heaven ! 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 together ! 
 
 " 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 
 excision of the reproduced passages : — 
 
 TO MR. MANNING. 
 
 1800. 
 
 "Dear Manning,^! am going to ask a 
 favour 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 have had the best grace in 
 begging of all the 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 thii^gs ; 
 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 tliy circle, illustrious Trismegist ! 
 But that worthy man, and excellent Poet, 
 George Dyer, made me a visit yesternight, 
 
 on purpose to borrow one, supposing, ration- 
 ally 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 assistance. 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 ma- 
 thematician) maintain, that the nesrative 
 I quantities of mathematicians were meroe 
 ■ nugce, things scarcely in rerum nati/rd, and 
 smacking too much of mystery for gentlemen 
 of Mr. Freud's clear Unitarian capacity. 
 However, the dispute once set a-going, has 
 seized violently on George's pericranick ; 
 I and it is necessary for his health that he 
 I should speedily come to a resolution of his 
 , doubts. He goes about teasing his friends 
 , with his new mathematics ; he even fran- 
 tically talks of purchasing Manning's Algebra, 
 which shows him far gone, for, to my know- 
 ^ ledge, he has not been master of seven 
 shillings a good time. George's pockets and 
 
 ■ 's brains are two things in nature which 
 
 j do not abhor a vacuum. , . . Now, if you 
 ] could step in, in this trembling suspense of 
 ! his reason, and he should find on Saturday 
 I morning, lying for him at the Porter's Lodge, 
 ' Cliflbrd's Inn, — his safest address — Man- 
 I ning's Algebra, with a neat manuscription 
 j in the blank leaf, running thus, ' From the 
 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 infinite regret of the whole 
 literary world. N.B. — Dirty books, smeared 
 leaves, and dogs' ears, will be rather a 
 recommendation than otherwise. N.B. — He 
 must have the book as soon as possible, or 
 nothing can withhold him fi'om madly pur- 
 chasing the book on tick. . . , Then shall 
 we see him sweetly restored to the chair of 
 Longinus — to dictate in smooth and modest 
 phrase the laws of verse ; to prove that 
 Theocritus first introduced the Pastoral, 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 
 
 • Mr. Frend, many years the Actuary of the Rock 
 Insurance Office, in early life the champion of Unitarian- 
 ism at Cambridge ; the objrct of a great University's 
 dis|.<leasiire ; in short, the "village Hampden" of the 
 day. 
 
LETTERS TO MANNING. 
 
 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 imposed 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 studies (not 
 to mention his turn, which I take to be 
 chiefly towards the lyrical poetry) hardly 
 qualified him for these disquisitions, I 
 modestly inquired what plays he had read ? 
 I found by George's reply that he had read 
 Shakspeare, but that was a good while 
 since : he calls him a great but irregular 
 genius, which I think to be an original 
 and just remark. (Beaumont and Fletcher, 
 Massinger, Ben Jouson, Shirley, Marlowe, 
 Ford, and the worthies of Dodsley's Collec- 
 tion — he confessed he had read none of them, 
 but professed his intention of looking through 
 them all, so as to be able to toiich upon them 
 in his book.) So Shakspeare, Otway, and I 
 believe Eowe, to whom he was naturally 
 directed by Johnson's Lives, and these not 
 read lately, are to stand him in stead of a 
 general knowledge of the subject. God 
 bless his dear absui-d head ! 
 
 " By the by, did I not write you a letter 
 with something about an invitation in it ? 
 — but let that pass ; I suppose it is not 
 agreeable. 
 
 " N.B. It would not be amiss if you were 
 to accompany your present with a dissertation 
 on negative quantities. C. L." 
 
 The " Algebra " arrived ; and Lamb wrote 
 the following invitation, in hope to bring the 
 author and the presentee together. 
 
 ro MR. MANNING. 
 
 " 1800. 
 
 " George Dyer is an Archimedes, and an 
 Archimagus, and a Tycho Brah6, and a 
 Copernicus ; and thou art the darling of the 
 Nine, and midwife to their wandering babe 
 
 also ! "We take tea with that learned poet 
 and critic on Tuesday night, at half-past five, 
 in his neat library ; the repa.st will be light 
 and Attic, with criticism. If thou couldst 
 contrive to wheel up thy dear carcase on 
 the Monday, and after dining with us on 
 tripe, calves' kidneys, or whatever else the 
 Cornucopia of St. Clare may be willing to 
 pour out on the occasion, might we not 
 adjourn together to the Heathen's — thou with 
 thy ELick Backs, and I with some innocent 
 volume of the Bell Letters, Shenstone or the 
 like: it would make him wash his old flannel 
 gown (that has not been washed to my 
 knowledge since it has been his — Oh the long 
 time !) with tears of joy. Thou shouldst 
 settle his scruples and unravel his cobwebs, 
 and sponge off" the sad stuff that weighs upon 
 his dear wounded pia mater ; thou shouldst 
 restore light to his eyes, and him to his 
 friends and the public ; Parnassus should 
 shower her civic crowns upon thee for saving 
 the wits of a citizen ! I thought I saw a 
 lucid interval in George the other night — 
 he broke in upon my studies just at tea-time, 
 
 and brought with him Dr. A , an old 
 
 gentleman who ties his breeches' knees with 
 packthread, and boasts that he has been 
 disaj^pointed by ministers. The Doctor 
 wanted to see one; for I being a Poet, he 
 thought I might furnish him with a copy of 
 A'crses to suit his Agricultural Magazine. 
 The Doctor, in the course of the conversation, 
 mentioned a poem called the ' Epigoniad * 
 by one Wilkie, an epic poem, in which there 
 is not one tolerable good line all through, 
 but every incident and speech borrowed from 
 Homer. George had been sitting inattentive, 
 seemingly, to what was going on — hatching 
 of negative quantities — when, suddenly, the 
 njime of his old friend. Homer, stung his 
 pericranicks, and, jumj)ing up, he begged to 
 know where he could meet with Wilkie's 
 works. * It was a curious fact that tliere 
 should be such an epic poem and he not know 
 of it ; and he must get a copy of it, as he was 
 going to touch pretty deeply upon the subject 
 of the Epic — and he was sure there must be 
 some tilings good in a poem of 8000 lines ! ' 
 I was pleased witli this transient return of 
 his reason and recurrence to his old ways of 
 thinking : it gave mo great hopes of a 
 recovery, which nothing but your book can 
 completely insure. Pray come on Monday, 
 
LETTERS TO MANNING. 
 
 223 
 
 if you can, and stay your own time. I have 
 a good large room, with two beds in it, in 
 the liandsomest of which thou shalt repose 
 a-nights, and dream of Splieroides. I hope 
 you will understand by the nonsense of this 
 letter that I am not melancholy at the 
 thoughts of thy coming : I thought it neces- 
 sary to add this, because you love precision. 
 Take notice that our stay at Dyer's will not 
 exceed eight o'clock, after which our pursuits 
 will be our own. But indeed, I think a little 
 recreation among the Bell Letters and poetry 
 will do you some service in the interval of 
 severer studies. I hope we shall fully discuss 
 with George Dyer what I have never yet 
 heard done to my satisfiiction, the reason of 
 Dr. Johnson's malevolent strictures on the 
 higher species of the Ode." 
 
 Manning could not come ; and Dyer's 
 subsequent symptoms are described in the 
 following letter : — 
 
 TO MR. MANNING. 
 
 " December 27th, 1800. 
 
 "At length George Dyer's plirenesis has 
 come to a crisis ; he is raging and furiously 
 mad. I waited upon the Heathen, Thursday 
 was a se'nnight ; the first symptom which 
 struck my eye and gave me incontrovertible 
 proof of the fotal truth was a pair of nankeen 
 t)antaloons four times too big for him, which 
 the said Heathen did pertinaciously aflBrm 
 to be new. 
 
 " They were absolutely ingrained with the 
 accumulated dirt of ages ; but he affirmed 
 them to be clean. He was going to visit a 
 lady that was nice about those things, and 
 that's the reason he wore nankeen that 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 thi'ough every crevice, door, 
 window or wainscot, expressly formed for 
 the exclusion of such impertinents. Then 
 he caught at a proof sheet, and catched up a 
 laundress'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 
 n-ind in a risrht 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 impressions of his Poems, which 
 were ready for delivery to subscribers( and 
 the Preface must all be expunged ; there 
 were eighty pages of Preface, and not till 
 that morning had he discovered that in the 
 very first page of said Preface he had set out 
 with a principle of Criticism fundamentally 
 wrong, which vitiated all his following 
 reasoning ; the Prefxee must be expunged, 
 although it cost him 30^., the lowest calcu- 
 lation, taking in paper and printing ! In 
 vain have his real friends remonstrated 
 against this Midsummer 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 ! ' 
 
 " I've often wished I lived in the Golden 
 Age, before doubt, and propositions, and 
 corollaries, got into the world. Now, as 
 
 Joseph D , a Bard of Nature, sings, going 
 
 up Malvern Hills. 
 
 ' now steep ! how painful the ascent ; 
 It needs the evidence of close deduction 
 To know that ever I shall gain the lop.' 
 
 You must know that Joe is lame, so that he 
 had some reason for so singing. These two 
 lines, I assure you, are taken totidem Uteris 
 from a very popidar 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 surj)assing speech 
 in it. Some king is told that his enemy has 
 engaged twelve archers to come over in a 
 boat from an enemy's country and way-lay 
 him ; he thereupon pathetically exclaims — 
 
 ' Ttvelve, dost thou say ! Curse on those dozen villains ! ' 
 
 D read two or three acts out to us, very 
 
 gravely on both sides till he came to this 
 heroic touch, — and then he asked what we 
 laughed at ? I had no more muscles that 
 day. A poet that chooses to read out his 
 own verses has but a limited power over 
 you. There is a bound where his authority 
 
221 
 
 LETTERS TO MANNING AND WILSON. 
 
 The following letter, written sometime in 
 1801, shows that Lamb had succeeded in 
 obtaining occasional employment as a writer 
 of epigrams for newspapers, by which he 
 added something to his slender income. The 
 disparaging reference to Sir James Mackin- 
 tosh must not be taken as expressive of 
 Lamb's deliberate opinion of that distin- 
 guished person. Mackintosh, at this time, 
 was in great disfavour, for his supposed 
 apostasy from the principles of his youth, 
 with Lamb's philosophic friends, whose 
 minds were of temperament less capable 
 than that of the author of the VindicicB 
 Gallicce of being diverted from abstract 
 theories of liberty by the crimes and sufferings 
 which then attended the great attempt to 
 reduce them to practice. Lamb, through 
 life, utterly indifferent to politics, was always 
 ready to take part with his friends, and 
 probably scouted, with them, Mackintosh as 
 a deserter. 
 
 " I will close my letter of simple inquiry 
 with an epigram on Mackintosh, the Vindicice 
 Gallicce-m-Aa. — who has got a place at last — 
 one of the last I did for the Albion : — 
 
 ' ']'hou!?h thou'rt like Jnd.is, an apostate black, 
 In the resemblance one thing thou (':o>t lack; 
 Mlien he had gotten his ill-purchas'd pelf, 
 He went away, and wisely hang'd himself : 
 'J'his thou may do at last, yet much I doubt. 
 If thou hast any Bowels to gush out I ' 
 
 "Yours, as ever. 
 
 C. Lamb." 
 
 TO MR. MANNING. 
 
 1801. 
 
 " Dear Manning, — I have forborne writing 
 so long (and so 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 neglect — from illness, or some mishap 
 which may have befallen you, I begin to be 
 anxious. You may have been burnt ovtt, or j 
 you may have married, or you may have 
 broken a limb, or turned country parson ; 
 any of these would be excuse sufficient for 
 not coming to my supper. I am not so 
 unforgiving as the nobleman in Saint Mark, j 
 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 
 oracular response. 
 
 '' I have been confined some days with 
 swelled cheek and rheumatism — they divide 
 and govern me with a viceroy-headache in 
 the middle. I can neither write nor read 
 without great pain. It must be something 
 like obstinacy that I choose this time to 
 write to you in after many months iutel*- 
 ruption. 
 
 Some sportive extravagance which, how- 
 ever inconsistent with Lamb's early senti- 
 ments of reverent piety, was very far from 
 indicating an irreligious purpose, seems to 
 have given offence to Mr. Walter WUson, 
 and to have induced the following letter, 
 illustrative of the writer's feelings at this 
 time, on the most momentous of all sub- 
 jects : — 
 
 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 Eichmond ; you knew me well 
 enough before, that a very little liquor will 
 cause a considerable 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 
 80 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 wliich I 
 may have made use of in a moment of levity, 
 in your presence, witliout sullicient regard 
 to your leelhigs — do not conclude that I ara 
 an inveterate enemy to all religion. I have 
 had a time of seriousness, and I have known 
 the importance and reality of a religious 
 belief. Latterly, I acknowledge, much of 
 my seriousness has gone off, whether from 
 new company, or some other new associa- 
 tions ; but I still retain at bottom a convic- 
 tion of the truth, and a certainty of the 
 usefulness of religion. I will not pretend to 
 more gravity or feeling thjin I at prese r.t 
 possess; my intention is not to pe^.■^uade 
 
LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 
 
 225 
 
 \ou that any great alteration is probable in 
 ;ne ; sudden converts ai'e superficial and 
 transitory ; I only want you to believe that 
 I have stamina of seriousness within me, and 
 tliat 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 Coleridsre visited London, and at 
 his departure left the superintendence of a 
 new edition of his poems to Lamb. The fol- 
 lowing 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 even- 
 ing meetings : — 
 
 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 housekeeper home 
 again in a week or two. She has mended most 
 rapidly. My health too has been better 
 since you took away that Montero cap. I 
 have left off cayenned eggs and such bolsters 
 to discomfoi't. There was death in that cap. 
 I mischievously wislied that by some inau- 
 spicious jolt the whole contents might be 
 shaken, and the coach set on fire ; for you 
 said they had that property. How the old 
 gentleman, who joined you at Grantham, 
 would have clapt his hands to his knees, and 
 not knowing Vmt it was an immediate visita- 
 tion 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 liim ! 
 However. I wish the cap no harm for the 
 sake of the head it Jits, and could be content 
 to see it disfigure my healthy side-board , 
 again. ; 
 
 " What do you think of smoking ? I Want 
 your sober, average, noon opinion of it. I j 
 generally am eating my dinner about the 
 time I should detennine it. i 
 
 " Morning is a girl, and can't smoke — ' 
 Bhe'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 ; two pipes tooth- 
 some ; three pipes noisome ; four pipes ful- 
 some ; five pipes quarrelsome, and that's the 
 sum on't. But that is deciding rather upon 
 rhyme than reason. . . . After all, our in- 
 stincts 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 children — Pipos esjjecially. 
 
 " When shall we two smoke again 1 Last 
 night I had been in a sad quandary of spirits, 
 in what they call tlie 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 of Somersetshire be remotely 
 descended from King Lear. C. L." 
 
 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 human 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 1 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 ; I,ongman 
 sent to me to arrange them, the old and the 
 now together. It seems you have left it to 
 him ; so I classed them, as nearly as I could, 
 according to dates. First, after the Dedica- 
 tion, (which must march first,) and which I 
 have transplanted from before the Preface, 
 (which stood like a dead wall of prose be- 
 tween,) to be the firet poem — then comes ' The 
 
226 
 
 LETTERS TO COLERTDQE. 
 
 Pixies,' and the things most juvenile — then 
 on 'TFo Chatterton,' &c. — on, lastly, to the 
 ' Ode on the Departing Year,' and ' Musings,* 
 — which finish. Longman wanted the Ode 
 first, but the arrangement I have made is 
 precisely that marked out in the Dedication, 
 following the order of time. I told Long- 
 man I was sure that you would omit a good 
 portion of tlie first edition. I instanced 
 several sonnets, &c.— but that was not his 
 plan, and, as you have done nothing in it, all 
 I could do was to arrange 'em on the sup- 
 position that all were to be retained. A few 
 I positively rejected ; such as that of ' The 
 Thimble,' and that of ' Flicker and Flicker's 
 wife,' and that not in the manner of Spenser, 
 which you yourself had stigmatised — and 
 ' The Man of Ross,' • — I doubt whether I 
 should this last. It is not too late to save it. 
 The first proof is only just come. I have 
 been forced to call that Cupid's Elixir, 
 * Kisses.' It stands in your first volume, as 
 an Elfusion, so that, instead of prefixing 
 The Kiss to that of ' One Kiss, dear Maid,' 
 &c., I have ventured to entitle it ' To Sara.' 
 I am aware of the nicety of changing even 
 so mere a trifle as a title to so short a piece, 
 and subverting old associations ; but two 
 called " Kisses ' would have been absolutely 
 ludicrous, and ' Effusion ' is no name, and 
 these poems come close together. I promise 
 you not to alter one word iu 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 liim. Write as soon as you possibly 
 can ; for, without making myself responsible, 
 I feel myself, in some sort, accessary 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 Eoss,' which is too 
 familiar in Pope,) but no others — you have 
 your cue. For my part, I liad rather all the 
 Juvenilia were; kept — memorial causd. 
 
 " Robert Lloyd has written me a masterly 
 letter, containing a character of liis father ; 
 — see how diil'mnt from Charles he views 
 the old man ! {Literatim.) * My father 
 smokes, rei)eat8 Homer in Greek, and Virgil, 
 and is learning, when from bu.siness, with all 
 the vigour of a young man, Itjvlian. He i.s, 
 
 really, a wonderful man. He mixes public 
 and private business, the intricacies of dis- 
 ordering life with his religion and devotion. 
 No one more rationally enjoys the romantic 
 scenes of nature, and the chit-chat and little 
 vagaries of his children ; and, though 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 opporttinities of noting 
 him) is most exquisite. ' Charles is become 
 steady as a church, and as straightforward 
 as a Roman Road. It would di.stract him to 
 mention anything that was not as plain as 
 sense ; he seems to have run the whole 
 scenery of life, and now rests as the formal 
 precisian of non-existence.' Here is genius 
 I think, and 'tis seldom a young man, a 
 Lloyd, looks at a father (so differing) with 
 such good nature while he is alive. "Write — 
 " I am in post-haste, C. Lamb, 
 
 " Love, &c., to Sara, P. and H." 
 
 Tlie next letter, containing a further ac- 
 count of Lamb's superintendence of tlie new 
 edition, bears the date of Saturday, 27th May, 
 1803. 
 
 TO MR. COLERIDGE. 
 
 " My dear Coleridge, — Tlie 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 jour- 
 neying to the green Islands of the Blest — 
 voyages in time of war are very precarious 
 — or at least, that you will take them iu your 
 way to the Azores. Pray be careful of this 
 letter till it has done its duty, for it is to in- 
 form you that I have booked off your watch 
 (laid in cotton like an untimely fruit), 
 and with it Cond iliac, and all otiier books 
 of yours which were left hero. Tlu'se will 
 set out on Monday next, the 2l)th May, 
 by Kendal waggon, fi-om White Horse, 
 
LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH. 
 
 227 
 
 Cripplegate. You will make seasonable in- 
 quiries, for a watch mayn't come your way 
 again in a hurry. I have been repeatedly 
 after Tobin, and now hear that he is in the 
 country, not to return till middle of June. 
 I will take care and see him with the earliest. 
 But cannot you write pathetically to him, 
 enforcing a speedy mission of your books for 
 literary purposes 1 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 busi- 
 ness is to take a short cut down Holboru- 
 hill, up Snow do., on to Wood-street, &c. ? 
 Tlie former mode seems a sad superstitious 
 subdivision of labour. Well ! the 'Man of 
 Eoss ' is to stand ; Longman begs for it ; the 
 printer stands with a wet sheet in one hand, 
 and a useless Pica in the other, in tears, 
 pleading for it ; I relent. Besides, it was a 
 Salutation poem, and has the mark of the 
 beast ' Tobacco ' upon it. Thus much I have 
 done ; I have swept off the lines about 
 widoifs and orphans in second edition, which 
 (if you remember) you most awkwardly and 
 Ulogically caused to be inserted between two 
 Ifs, to the great breach and disunion of said 
 Jfs, which now meet again (as in fii-st 
 edition), like two clever lawyers ai'guing a 
 cose. Another reason for subtracting the 
 pathos was, that the ' Man of Koss ' is too 
 familiar, to need telling what he did, espe- 
 cially in worse lines than Pope told it, and it 
 now stands simply as ' Reflections at an Inn 
 about a known Character,' and sucking an 
 old story into an accommodation with pre- 
 sent feelings. Here is no breaking spears 
 with Pope, but a new, independent, and 
 really a very pretty poem. In fact 'tis as I 
 used to admire it in the first volume, and I 
 have even dared to restore 
 
 ' If 'neath this roof thy winccheer'd moments pass,' 
 for 
 ' Beneath this roof if thy cheer'd moments pass.' 
 
 'Cheer'd' is a sad general word, ' wine-cheer' d"" 
 I'm sure you'd give me, if I had a speaking- 
 trumpet to sound to you 300 miles. But I 
 am your factotum, and that save in this 
 instance, which is a single case, and I can't 
 get at you, shall be next to a fac-nihil — at 
 most, & 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 1 
 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. WORDS>VORTH. 
 
 " 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 
 Sexton' made me cnj. 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 Shakspearian 
 character of the ' happy man,' in the 
 ' Brothers,' 
 
 -'that creeps about the fields. 
 
 Following his fancies by the hour, to bring 
 Tears down his cheek, 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 bmls, altho' he 
 hear them not. Here the mind knowingly 
 passes a fiction upon herself, first substituting 
 her own feelings for the Beggar's, and in the 
 same breath detecting the fallacy, will not 
 part with the wish. The ' Poet's Epitaph ' 
 is disfigured, to my taste, by the common 
 satire ujion 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 o-mi. 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 
 
 Q 2 
 
228 
 
 LETTEKS TO WORDSWORTH. 
 
 don't slide into the mind of the reader while 
 he is imagining no such matter. An intelli- 
 gent reader finds a sort of insult in being 
 told, ' I will teach you how to think upon 
 this subjecL' This fault, if I am right, is 
 in a ten-thousandth worse degree to be found 
 in Sterne, and many many novelists and 
 modem 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 diifereut from ' Robinson 
 Crusoe,' 'ITie Vicar of Wakefield,' 'Roderick 
 Random,' and other beautiful, bare narratives. 
 There is implied an imwritten compact 
 between author and reader ; " I will tell you 
 a story, 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 with 
 praise and blame. I have written so much, 
 only that you may not think I have passed 
 
 over your book without observation 
 
 I am sorry that Coleridge has christened his 
 'Ancient Marinere' ' a Poet's Reverie ;' it is 
 as bad as Bottom the Weaver's declaration 
 that he is not a lion, but only the scenical 
 representation of a lion. WTiat new idea is 
 gained by this title but one subversive of all 
 credit — which the tale should force upon us, 
 — of its truth ! 
 
 For me, I was never so affected with any 
 human tale. After firet 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 totally differ from 
 your idea that the 'Marinei-e' should liave 
 had a character and profession. This is a 
 beauty in 'Gulliver's Travels,' where the mind 
 is kept in a placid state of little wonder- 
 ments ; but the 'Ancient Marinere' under- 
 goes such trials as overwhelm and bury all 
 individuality or memory of what lie was — 
 like the state of a man in a bail dream, one 
 terrible peculiarity of which is, that all 
 consciousness of personality is gone. Your 
 other observation is, I think sis well, a little 
 unfounded : the ' Marinere,' from being con- 
 versant in supernatural events, has acquired 
 a supernatural and strange cast of phrase, 
 eye, appearance, &c., which frighten the 
 • wedding-guest. ' You will excuse my 
 
 remarks, because I am hurt and vexed that 
 you should think it necessary, with a prose 
 apology, to open the eyes of dead men that 
 cannot see. 
 
 "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 Tintem Abbey * 
 in the first." 
 
 The following letter was addressed, on 
 28th September, 1805, when Lamb waa 
 bidding his generous farewell to Tobacco, to 
 Wordsworth, then living in noble poverty 
 with his sister in a cottage by Grasmere. 
 which is as sacred to some of his old admirei'S 
 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, slie is not always 
 so certain of the true orthography of them ; 
 and that, and a poor handwriting (in this 
 age of female calligraphy), often deters her, 
 where no other reason does.* 
 
 " We have neither of us been veiy 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 afford each 
 other, denominated us, not unaptly, Gum- 
 Boil and Tooth-Ache, for they used to say 
 that a gum-boil is a great x*elief to a tooth- 
 ache. 
 
 " We have been two tiny excursions this 
 summer for three or four days each, to a 
 place near Harrow, and to Egham, where 
 Cooper's Hill is : and that is the total history 
 of our rustications this year. Ahis ! how 
 poor a round to Skiddaw and Helvellyii, and 
 Borrowdale, and the magnificent sesiiuipe- 
 dalia of the year 1802. Poor old Molly ! to 
 have lost her pride, that ' List infirmity of 
 
 * This U mere bAUtcr ; Miim I^mb wrote a Tcry good 
 hnnd. 
 
noble minds,' and her cow. Fate need not 
 have set lier wits to such an old Molly. I 
 am heartily sorry for her. Remember us 
 lovingly to her ; and in particular remember 
 us to Mi-s. Clarkson in the most kind manner. 
 
 " I hope, by ' southwards,' you mean that 
 she will be at or near London, for she is a 
 gi-eat favourite of both of us, and we feel fur 
 her health as much as possible for any one 
 to do. Slie is one of the friendliest, com- 
 fortablest 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 ^-.ffairs, 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 idle- 
 ness, 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, vapouring 
 out of a pipe, and going off 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 holida}- ; I 
 am sure that indolence — indefeasible indo- 
 lence — is the true state of man, and business 
 the invention of the old Teazer, whose inter- 
 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 
 pretence of ' Commerce allying distant shores. 
 Promoting and difiiising knowledge, good,' 
 &c. &c. Yours truly, 
 
 " C. Lamb." 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 LETTERS TO HAZLITT, ETC. 
 [1805 to 1810.] 
 
 About the year 1805 Larab was introduced 
 to one, whose society through life was one of 
 his chief pleasures — the great critic and 
 thinker, William Hazlitt — who, at that time, 
 
 ' The " Farewell to Tobacco" ^ns trnnscribed on the 
 next page ; but the actual eacriAce was not completed 
 M some years .tfter. 
 
 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. — lam a little surprised at no letter 
 ft-om you. This day week, to wit, Saturday, 
 the 8th of March, 1806, I book'd off by the 
 Wem coach, Bull and Mouth Inn, directed 
 to i/ou, at the Rev. Mr. Hazlitt's, Wem, 
 Shropshire, a parcel containing, besides a 
 book, &c., a rare print, which I take to be a 
 Titian ; begging the said W. H. to acknow- 
 ledge the receipt thereof; which 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 precious a parcel may not moulder 
 away for want of looking after. What do 
 you in Shropshire when so many fine pictures 
 are a-going a-going every day in London ? 
 IMonday I visit the Marquis of Lansdowne's, 
 in Berkeley 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 sold this month, and in May, the 
 first private collection in Europe, Welbore 
 Ellis Agar's. And there are you perverting 
 Nature in lying landscapes, filched from old 
 rusty Titians, such as I can scrape up here 
 to send you, with an additament from Shrop- 
 shire nature thrown in to make the whole 
 look unnatural. I am afraid of your mouth 
 watering when I tell you that Manning and I 
 got into Angerstein's on Wednesday. Mo7i 
 Dieu / Such Claudes ! Four Claudes bought 
 for more than 10,000/. (those who talk of 
 Wilson being equal to Claude are either 
 mainly ignorant or stupid) ; one of these waa 
 perfectly miraculous. What colours short 
 of bondjide sunbeams it could be painted in, 
 I am not earthly colourman 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. obsei-vod, 
 indicating great men, or affecting it, but so 
 
sweetly disposed ; all leaning separate ways, 
 but so easy, like a flock of some divine 
 shepherd ; the colouring, like the economy 
 of the picture, so sweet 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, fidgetty 
 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 and the library 
 are shown), when he writes a common letter, 
 as I am doing, surrounded with twenty 
 pictures worth 60,000^. What a luxury ! 
 Apicius and Heliogabalus, hide your dimi- 
 nished heads ! 
 
 "Yours, my dear painter, 
 
 " C. Lamb." 
 
 Hazlitt married Miss Sarah Stoddart, 
 sister of the present Sir John Stoddart, who 
 became very intimate with Lamb and his 
 sister. To her Lamb, on the 11th December, 
 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 determined 
 not to be cast down. I am going to leave off 
 tobacco, 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 feai* of ill- 
 luck. You were much better out of the 
 house. Tf it had taken, your partaking of 
 our good luck would have been one of our 
 greatest joys. As it is, we shall expect you 
 at the time you mentioned. But whenever 
 you come you shall be most welcome. 
 "God bless you, dear Sarah, 
 
 " Yours, most truly, C. L. 
 
 " Mary is by no means unwell, but I made 
 Lcr 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 substantial 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 
 astonishing, but they jnelded 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 
 heart. Well, 'tis withdrawn, and there is 
 an end. 
 
 " Better luck to us, C. Lamb. 
 
 {Tttrn ovcr.'\ 
 
 " P.S. Pray, when any of you write to the 
 Clarksons, give our kind loves, and say we 
 shall not be able to come and see them at 
 Christmas, as I shall have but a day or two, 
 and tell them we bear our mortification 
 pretty well." 
 
 About this time Miss Lamb sought to 
 contribute to her brother's scanty income 
 by presenting the plots of some of Shaks- 
 peare's plays in prose, with the spirit of the 
 poet's genius interfused, and many of hia 
 happiest expressions preserved, in which 
 good work I^amb assisted her ; though he 
 always insisted, as he did in reference to 
 " Mrs. Leicester's School," that her portions 
 were the best. The following letter refers to 
 some of those aids, and gives a pleasant 
 instance of that sliyuess in Hazlitt, which ho 
 
LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH AND HAZLITT. 
 
 231 
 
 never quite overcame, and which aflforded 
 a striking contrast to the boldness of his 
 published thoughts. 
 
 TO MR. WORDSWORTH. 
 
 " 1806. 
 
 " 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 
 3uch 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 does 
 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 sneei-ed, 
 nor giggled, nor wliispered — but they were 
 young girls — and he sat and frowned blacker 
 and blacker, indignant that there should be 
 such a thing as youth and beauty, till he 
 tore me away before supper, in perfect 
 misery, and owned he could not bear young 
 girls ; they drove him mad. So I took him 
 home to my old nurse, where he recovered 
 perfect 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 Corinthtini. The 
 managers, I thank my stars, have settled 
 that question for me. 
 
 " 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 .solitude in a little inn on Salisbury 
 Plain, to which he became deeply attached, 
 and which he has associated with 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 
 respecting the painter's retreat, to which he 
 thus replied in a letter to 
 
 THE REV. MR. HAZLITT. 
 
 " Temple, 18th February, 1808. 
 
 "Sir, — I am truly concei-ned 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 linen to a place called Winter- 
 slow, in the county of Wilts (not far from 
 Salisbury), where the lady lives whose cottage, 
 pictured upon a card, if you opened my letter 
 you have 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 cai'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 WUliam'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, moreovei', that he shall be in 
 to^^'n in a fortnight. 
 
 " My sister joins in respects to you and 
 Mi-s. Hazlitt, and in our kindest remem- 
 brances and wishes for the restoration of 
 Peggy's health. 
 
 " I am, Sir, your humble servant, 
 
 " C. Lamb." 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. Hazlitt afterwards took up 
 their temporai-y abode at Winterslow, to 
 which place Miss Lamb addressed the 
 following letter, containing interesting details 
 
232 
 
 MISS LAMB TO MRS. H.VZLITT. 
 
 of her own and her brother's life, and illus- 
 trating her own gentle character : — 
 
 TO MnS. HAZLITT. 
 
 "December 10th, 1808. 
 "My dear Sarah, — I hear of you from 
 your brother, but you do not wi'ite yourself, 
 nor docs Hazlitt. I beg 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 quarter whatsoever. 
 Hazlitt was most brilliant, most ornamental, 
 as a Wednesday-man, but he was a more 
 useful 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 clai-et 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. Eeynolds. Through 
 the medium of Wroughton, there came an 
 invitation and proposal from T. S., that C. L. 
 should write some scenes in a speaking 
 pantomime, the other parts of which Tom 
 now, and his father formerly, have manu- 
 factured between them. So in the Christ- I 
 mas holidays my brother, and his two great 
 associates, we expect will be all tliree damned 
 together ; this i.s, I mean if Charles's share, 
 which is df)ne 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 refusing me was 'no 
 exquisite reason,' for it was because he must 
 write a letter to Manning in thi-ee or four 
 week.s, and therefore 'he could not be always 
 writing letter.'*,' he said. I wanted him to 
 tell your hus})and about a great work which 
 Godwin is going to pul)lisli to enlighten the 
 world once more, and I shall not be able to 
 make out what it is. He ((iodwin) took his 
 usual walk one evening, a fortniglit since, to 
 the end of Hatton Garden and back ajiain. 
 
 During that walk a thought came into hia 
 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 qualifications. This 
 wooden slab and white cross to be perpetuated 
 to the end of time ; to survive tiie fall of 
 empires, and the destruction of cities, by 
 means of a map, which, in case of an insur- 
 rection among tlie people, or any other cause 
 by which a city or country may be destroyed, 
 was to be carefully preserved ; and then, 
 whan things got again into their usual order, 
 the white-cross-wooden-slab-makers were to 
 go to work again and set the wooden 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, which is followed by very 
 fine writing on the benefits he conjectures 
 wo\dd follow if it were done ; very excellent 
 thoughts on death, and our feelings concern- 
 ing dead friends, and the advantages an old 
 country has over a new one, even in the 
 slender memorials we have of great men who 
 once flourished. 
 
 " Chai'les is come home and wants his 
 dinner, and so the dead men must be no 
 moi-e thought of. Tell us how you go on, 
 and liow you like Winterslow imd winter 
 evenings. Knowles hus not yet got back 
 again, but he is in butter spirits. John 
 Hazlitt was here on Wednesday. Our love 
 to Hazlitt. 
 
 " Yours, aflfectionately, 
 
 " M. liAMB." 
 
 " Saturday." 
 
 To this letter Charles added the following 
 postscript : — 
 
 " There came this morning a printed pro- 
 spectus from ' S. T. Coleridge, Grasmere.' of 
 
LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 
 
 233 
 
 a weekly paper, to be called * The Friend ; ' 
 a flaming 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. 
 
 " C. Lamb." 
 
 During the next year Lamb and his sister 
 produced their charming little book of 
 " Poetry for Children," and removed from 
 ^liti'e Court to those rooms in Inner Temple 
 Lane, — most dear of all their abodes to the 
 memory of their ancient friends — where first 
 I knew them. The change produced its 
 natural and sad effect on Miss Lamb, during 
 whose absence Lamb addi-essed the following 
 various letter 
 
 TO MR. COLERIDGE. 
 
 •' June 7th, 1809. 
 " Dear Coleridge, — I congratulate you on 
 the appearance of ' The Friend.' Your first 
 number promises well, and I have no 
 doubt the succeeding numbers will fulfil 
 the promise. I had a kind letter from you 
 some time since, which I have left unan- 
 swered. I am also obliged to you, I believe, 
 for a review in the Annual, am I not ? The 
 Monthly Review sneers at me, and asks ' if 
 Comus is not good enough for Mr. Lamb ? ' 
 because I have said no good serious dramas 
 have been written since the death of Charles 
 the First, except " Samson Agonistes ; ' so 
 because they do not know, or won't re- 
 member, that Comus was written long before, 
 I am to be set down as an undervaluer of 
 Milton. O, Coleridge ! do kill those reviews, 
 or they will kill us ; kill all we like ! Be a 
 friend to all else, but their fue. 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 tliem on Saturday 
 week ; and on Monday following, Mary was 
 taken ill with fatigue of moving, and atfected, 
 I believe, by the novelty of the home she 
 could not sleep, and 1 am left alone with a 
 
 maid quite a stranger to me, and she haa 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 are 
 delicious, and the best look backwards into 
 Hare Court, where there is a pump always 
 going. Just now it is dry. Hare 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 m a new mansion. They are in their 
 infancy to me ; I do not feel them yet ; no 
 hearth has blazed to them yet. How I hate 
 and dread new places ! 
 
 " 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 seud 
 you, in a week or two, two volumes of 
 Juvenile Poetry, done by Mary and me 
 within the last six months, and that tale in 
 prose which Wordsworth 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. O money, money, how blindly thou 
 hast been worshipped, and how stupidly 
 abused ! Thou ai-t health and liberty, and 
 strength, and he that has thee may rattle 
 his pockets at the foul fiend ! 
 
 " Nevertheless, do not understand by this 
 that I have not quite enough for my occasions 
 for a year or two to come. While I think 
 on it, Coleridge, I fetch 'd away my books 
 which you had at the Courier Oflice, and 
 found all but a third volume of the old plays, 
 containing ' The White Devil,' Green's ' Tu 
 Quoque,' and the ' Honest Whore,' per- 
 haps the most valuable volume of them all— 
 
234 
 
 LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 
 
 that I could not find. Pray, if you can, send my packet to you ?— by what convey- 
 remember what you did with it, or where ance 1 — ^by Longman, Short-man, or how 1 
 you took it out with you a walking perhaps ; Give my kindest remembrances to the 
 send me word, for, to use the old plea, it j Wordsworths. Tell him he must give me 
 spoils a set. I found two other volumes a book. My kind love to Mrs. W. and to 
 (you had three), the ' Arcadia,' and Daniel, ^ Dorothy separately and conjointly. I wish 
 enriched with manuscript notes. I wish you could all come and see me in my new 
 every book I have were so noted. They have ' rooms. God bless you all. C. L." 
 
 thoroughly converted me to relish Daniel, or ' 
 to say I relish him, for, after all, I believe I 
 
 did relish him. You well call him sober- A journey into Wiltshire, to visit Hazlitt, 
 minded. Your notes are excellent. Perhaps followed Miss Lamb's recovery, and produced 
 you've forgot them. I have read a review the following letters : — 
 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 write, 
 or let some of you write. Clarksou tells me 
 
 TO MR. COLERIDGE. 
 
 "Monday, Oct. 30th, 1809. 
 
 " Dear Coleridge, — I have but this moment 
 received your letter, dated the 9th instant. 
 
 1 1 „ ^ •n-^,.^ „^„ r.,,^c.A having just come oflF a journey from Wilt- 
 vou are m a smoky house. Have you cured i , . ° ■', _ , , •' .,, -.r 
 
 it ? It is hard to cure anything of smoking. 
 Our little poems are but humble, but they 
 have no name. You must read them, 
 
 shire, where I have been with Mary on a 
 visit to Hazlitt. The journey has been of 
 infinite service to her. We have had nothing 
 
 remembering they were task-work; and i ^.^^^^ f ^^^^J'^^ f y«. .^^d daily walks from 
 perhaps you will admire the mimber oil^^f^l^"" ^•^^^^^l^^'^'^^l^^^^^^^ ^^^ ^^^^ 
 subjects, all of children, picked out by an 
 
 Wilton, Salisbury, Stonchenge, &c. Her 
 illness lasted but six weeks ; it left her 
 weak, but the country has made us whole. 
 We came back to our Hogarth Eooni. I 
 have made several acquisitions since you 
 saw them, — and found Nos. 8, 9, 10 of The 
 Friend. The account of Luther in the 
 
 old Bachelor and an old Maid. Many parents 
 
 would not have found so many. Have 
 
 you read ' Ccelebs 1 ' It has reached eight 
 
 editions in so many weeks, yet literally it is 
 
 one of the very poorest sort of common 
 
 novels, with the draw-back of dull religion ^.^ ^ , . „ _li ■ t 
 
 • -x TT 1 i.T- 1- • 1, 1 • I ,,^ ! Warteburg is as fine as anj-tlung 1 ever 
 
 m it. Had the religion been high and! ,_ ^° "^ , , 
 
 flavoured, it would have been something. I 
 
 borrowed this ' Ccelebs in Search of a Wife," 
 
 of a very careful, neat lady, and returned it 
 
 with this stuff written in the beginning : — 
 
 read.* God forbid that a man who has such 
 
 ' If oyer I marry a wife 
 
 I'd many n landlord's daughter, 
 Tor then I may sit in the bar, 
 
 And drink cold brandy-and-water.' 
 
 " I don't expect you can find time from 
 your 'Friend' to write to me much, but write 
 something, for there has been a long silence. 
 You know Holcroft is dead. Godwiu is well. 
 He has written a vei-y pretty, absurd book 
 about sepulclires. He was aft'ronted because 
 I told him it was better than Hervey, but 
 not so good as Sir T. Browne. This letter 
 is all about books ; but my head aches, and 
 I hardly know what I write ; but I could 
 not let ' The Friend ' pass without a con- 
 gratuLatory epistle. I won't criticise till it 
 comes to a volume. Toll me how I shall 
 
 * The Warteburg is a Castle, standing on a loftj* rock, 
 about two miles from the city of Eisenach, in which 
 Luther was confined, imdcr the friendly arrest of the 
 Elector of Saxony, after Charles V. had pronounced 
 against him the Ban 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 Enemy. In the 
 Essay referred to, Coleridge accounts for the story — 
 depicting the state of the great prisoner's mind in most 
 vivid colours — and then presenting the following picture, 
 which so nobly justifies Lamb's eulogy, that 1 venture 
 to gratify myself by inserting it bore. 
 
 " Methinks I see him sitting, the heroic student, in 
 his chamber in the Warteburg, with his midnight lamp 
 before him, seen by the late traveller in the distant pliin 
 of liischofsroda, as a star on the mountain ! Below it lies 
 the Hebrew Bible open, on which he gazes ; his brow 
 pressing on his palm, brooding 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 natural and living tongue. And he himself 
 does not understand it ! Thick darkness lies on the 
 original text ; he counts the letters, he calls up the roots 
 of each separate word, and (luestions them as the faml- 
 liar Spirits of an Oracle. In vain; thick durkiioui 
 
things to say should be silenced for want of 
 1001. This Custom-and -Duty- Age would 
 have made the Preacher on the Mount take 
 out a licence, and St. Paul's Epistles not 
 missible v.-ithout a stamp. O that you may 
 find means to go on ! But alas ! where is 
 Sir G. Beaumont ?—Sotheby? What is 
 become of the rich Auditoi's in Albemarle 
 Street ? Your letter has saddened me. 
 
 " 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 power over 
 me was like that which Milton's pamplilets 
 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 1 
 I am out of the world of readers. I hate all 
 that do read, for they read nothing but 
 reviews and new books. I gather myself 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 new, has more aptitudes 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 
 
 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 .■Vntichrist, which he so gladly, 
 when he can, rebukes for idolatrous falsehood, that had 
 dared place 
 
 ' Within the sanctuary itself their shrines, 
 Abominations — ' 
 
 Now — O thought of humiliation — he must entreat its 
 aid. See ! there has the sly spirit of apostacy worked-in 
 a phrase, which favours the doctrine of purgatory, 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 he then at length confess, 
 must he subscribe the name of Luther to an exposition 
 which consecrates a weapon for the hand of the idolatrous 
 Hierarchy J Never ! Never ! 
 
 " There still remains one auxiliary in reserve, the 
 translation of the Seventy. The Alexandrine Greeks, 
 anterior to the Church itself, could intend no* support to 
 its corruptions — The Septuagint will have profaned 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. O honoured Luther ! as 
 easily mightesl thou convert the whole City of Rome, 
 
 time. My rooms are luxurious ; one is for 
 prints and one for books ; a summer and a 
 winter-parlour. When shall I ever see you 
 in them ? C. L." 
 
 MISS LAMB TO MRS. HAZLITT. 
 
 " November 7th, 1809. 
 
 " My dear Sarah, — The dear, quiet, lazy, 
 delicious month we spent with you is remem- 
 bered 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 diy loaf, 
 which offended you, now comes in at night 
 unaccompanied ; but, sorry am I to add, it 
 is soon followed by the pipe. We smoked 
 the very first night of our arrival. 
 
 " Great news ! I have just been inter- 
 
 with the Pope and the conclave of Cardinals inclusively, 
 as strike a spark of light from the words, and notliing but 
 tcords, of the Alexandrine version. Disappointed, de- 
 spondent, enraged, ceasing to think, yet continuing his 
 brain on the stretch in solicitation of a thought ; and 
 gi-adually giving himself up to angry fancies, to recollec- 
 tions 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 
 counterweight of his senses and of their impressions 
 being withdiawn) 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 the arch-fiend coming forth on the 
 wall of the room, from the very spot, perhaps, on which 
 his eyes had been fixed, vacantly, during the perplexed 
 moments of his former meditation : the inkstand which 
 he had at the same time been using, becomes associated 
 with it ; and in that struggle of rage, which in these 
 distempered dreams almost constantly precedes the help, 
 less 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 imagination and his eyes are possessed by thf 
 dream, he actually hurls it. Some weeks after, perhaps, 
 during which interval he had often mused on the 
 incident, undetermined whether to deem it a visitation 
 of Satan to him in the body or out of the body, he dis- 
 covers for the first time the dark spot on his wall, and 
 receives it as a sign and pledge vouchsafed to him of the 
 event having actually taken place." 
 
236 
 
 LETTER TO H^ZLITT. 
 
 rupted by Mr. Daw, who came to tell me he 
 was yesterday elected a Royal Academician. 
 He said none of his own friends voted for 
 him, he got it by strangers, who were pleased 
 with his picture of Mrs. Wliite. 
 
 " Charles says he does not believe North- 
 cote 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 
 Manniiig-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 now 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 com- 
 panions. 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 
 wi-ite some more lottery puffs ; if that ends 
 in smoke the twenty pounds is a sui-e card, 
 and has made us very joyful. 
 
 " I continue very well, and return you 
 very sincere thanks for my good liealth 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 your suppers when you come to 
 town again. She (Jane) broke two of the 
 Hogartli glasses, while we were away, where- 
 at I made a great noise. Farewell. Love 
 to William, and Charles's love and good 
 wishes for the speedy arrival of the ' Life of 
 Holcroft,' and the bearer thereof. 
 
 " Yours, mo.st affectionately, 
 
 " Tue»day. M. LaMB, 
 
 " Charles told Mrs. , Hazlitt had found 
 
 a well in his 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. 
 
 " iTour 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 conse- 
 quence of the sad effects which the excite- 
 ments of travel and change produced in his 
 beloved companion. The following refers to 
 one of these disasters : — 
 
 TO MR. HAZLITT. 
 
 " Au^st 9th, 1810. 
 
 " Dear H., — Epistemon is not well. Our 
 pleasant excursion has ended sadly for one 
 of us. You will guess I mean my sistei-. 
 She got home very well (I was very ili 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 1 take any more 
 journeys with two experiences against it. I 
 find all well here. Kind remembrances to 
 Sarah, — have just got lier letter. 
 
 " H. Robinson has been to Blenheim, he 
 says you will be sorry to hear that we should 
 not have asked for the Titian 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 ai'e all Titians, Jupiter and 
 Ledas, 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. 
 Well, I shall never sec it. 
 
 " I have lost all wish for sights. God bless 
 you. I shall be glad to see you in London. 
 " Yours truly, C. Lamb." 
 
 " Thursday." 
 
 Mr. Wordsworth's Essay on Epitaphs, 
 afterwards appended to "The Excursion," 
 produced the following letter :— 
 
TO MR. WORDSWORTH. 
 
 " Friday, lOtU Oct. 1810. E. I. Ho. 
 
 " Dear "W., — Mary has been very ill, which 
 you have heard, I suppose, from the ISIou- 
 tagues. 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 sensible 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 feeling under it. It is perfectly a 
 test. But what is the reason we have no 
 good epitaphs after all 1 
 
 " A very 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 not well know which, has dignified 
 every grave stone, for the last few years, 
 with bran-new verses, all difi"erent, and all 
 ingenious, with the author's name at the 
 bottom of each. This sweet Swan of Thames 
 has artfully diversified his strains and his 
 rhymes, that the same thought never occurs 
 twice ; more justly, perhaps, as no thought 
 ever occurs at all, there was a physical 
 impossibility that the same thought should 
 recur. It is long since I saw and read these 
 inscriptions, but I remember the impression 
 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 uncei-taiuty, 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 with a tongue 
 that dangles from a skull that never reached 
 in thought and thorough imagination two 
 inches, or fui-ther 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 j)leased the survivors of 
 Thames Ditton above the old mumpsimus of 
 'Afflictions Sore.' .... To do justice though, 
 it must be owned that even the excellent 
 feeling which dictated this dirge when now, 
 must have suflFered something in passing 
 
 through so many thousand applications, 
 many of them no doubt quite misplaced, aa 
 I have seen in Islington churchyard (I think) 
 an Epitaph to an infant, who died ' yEtatis 
 four months,' with this seasonable inscription 
 appended, ' Honour thy father and thy 
 mother ; that thy days may be long in the 
 land,' &c. Sincerely wishing your children 
 long life to honour, &c. 
 
 " I remain, C. Lamb." 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 letters to wordswobth, etc., chiefly respecting 
 ■Wordsworth's poems. 
 
 [1815 to 1818.] 
 
 The admirers of "Wordsworth — few, but 
 energetic and hopeful — were delighted, and 
 his opponents e.xcited to the expression of 
 their utmost spleen, by the appearance, in 
 1814, of "The Excursion," (in the quarto 
 form marked by the bitter flippancy of Lord 
 Byron) ; and by the publication, 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. Giffbrd, then the Editor of the Quarterly 
 Review, for which it was written. The fol- 
 lowing letter is in acknowledgment of an 
 early cojjy of " The Excursion." 
 
 TO MR. WORDSWORTH. 
 
 1814. 
 
 " 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 M. 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 on my 
 memory (a bad term for the remains of an 
 impression so recent) is the Tales of the 
 Church-yard ; — the only girl among seven 
 
238 
 
 brethren, bom out of due time, and not 
 duly taken away again ; — the deaf man 
 and the blind man ; — the Jacobite and the 
 Hanoverian, whom anlipathies 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 
 
 LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH. 
 
 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 matter about 
 mountain scenery, yet not so much aa 
 to overpower and discountenance a poor 
 Londoner or south-countryman entirely, 
 though Mary seems to have felt it occasion- 
 ally a little too powerfully, for it was her 
 remark during reading it, that by your 
 system it was doubtful whether a liver in 
 towns had a soul to be saved. She almost 
 
 to pick out of this best of books upon the trembled for that invisible part of us in her, 
 best subjects for partial naming. That " ~ ' " - — 
 
 gorgeous sunset is famous ; * I think it must 
 have been the identical one we saw^ on Salis- 
 
 biu-y 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 he nor I had gifted eyes 
 to see those symbols of common things glo- 
 rified, such as the prophets saw them in 
 that sunset — the wheel, the potter's clay, 
 the washpot, the wine-press, the almond- 
 tree rod, the baskets -of figs, the four-fold 
 visaged head, the throne, and Him that sat 
 thereon.t 
 
 " One feeling I was particularly struck 
 with, as what I recognised so veiy lately at | Park." 
 Harrow Church on entering in it after a hot 
 and secular day's pleasure, the instantaneous 
 coolness and calming, almost transforming Lamb was delighted with the proposition, 
 properties of a country church just entered ; made through Southey, that he should re- 
 a certain frao-rance which it has, either from view " The Excursion " in the " Quarterly " 
 
 " 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 Begent, all that was country-fy'd in the 
 Parks is all but obliterated. The vei-y colour 
 of green is vanished ; the whole surface of 
 Hyde Park is dry crumbling sand (Arabia 
 Arenosa), not a vestige or hint of grass ever 
 having grown there ; booths and drinking- 
 places go all round it for a mile and half, I 
 am confident — I might say two miles in 
 circuit — the stench of liquors, bad tobacco, 
 dirty people and provisions, conquers the air, 
 and we are stifled and sufi"ocated in Hyde 
 
 — though he had never before attempted 
 contemporaneous criticism, and cherished a 
 dislike to it, which the event did not diminish. 
 The ensuing letter was addressed while me- 
 ditating on his office, and uneasy lest he 
 
 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 
 
 ■yvords — but I am feeling that which I cannot 
 
 express. The reading your lines about it 
 
 fixed me for a time, a monument in Harrow ! should lose it for want of leisure. 
 
 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 
 
 • The pftssaffc to wliich tlic allusion applies docs not 
 picture a sunset, but the effect of sunlight on a receding 
 mist anionff the mountains, in the second book of " The 
 Excursion." 
 
 f " Fix'd resemblances ■were seen 
 
 To implements of ordinary use, 
 But vast in size, in substance ftloriftcd ; 
 Such as by Hebrew Prophets •were beheld 
 In vision — forms uncouth of miKhtiest powers, 
 For admiration and mysterious awe." 
 
 TO MR. WORDSWORTH. 
 
 " 1814. 
 
 " My dear W. — I liave scarce time or quiet 
 to ex])lain my present situation, how unquiet 
 and distracted it is, owing to the absence of 
 some of my compeers, and to the deficient 
 state of payments at E. I, H., owing 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 <lay. 
 i The nature of my work, too, puzzling and 
 
LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH. 
 
 239 
 
 hurrying, has so shaken my spirits, that 
 my sleep is nothing but a succession of 
 dreams of business I cannot do, of as- 
 sistants that give me no assistance, of 
 terrible responsibilities. I reclaimed your 
 book, which Hazlitt has uncivilly kept, only 
 two di^ys ago, and have made shift to read it 
 again with shattered brain. It does not lose 
 — rather some parts have come out with a 
 prominence I did not perceive before — but 
 such was my aching head yesterday (Sunday), 
 that tlie book was like a mountain landscape 
 to one that should walk on the edge of a 
 precipice ; I perceived beauty dizzily. Now, 
 what I would say is, that I see no prospect 
 of a quiet half-day, or hour even, till this 
 week and the next are past. I then hope to 
 get four weeks' absence, and if then is time 
 enough to begin, I will most gladly do what 
 is required, though I feel my inability, for 
 my brain is always desultory, and snatches 
 off hints from things, but can seldom follow 
 a ' work ' methodically; But that shall be 
 no excuse. What I beg you to do is, to let 
 me know from Southey, if that will be time 
 enough for the ' Quarterly.' i. e., suppose it 
 done in three weeks from this date (19th 
 Sept.) : if not, it is my bounden duty to 
 express my regret, and decline it. Mary 
 thanks you, and feels highly grateful for 
 your ' Patent of Nobility,' and acknowledges 
 the author of ' The Excursion ' as the legiti- 
 mate Fountain of Honour. "We both agree, 
 that, to our feeling, Ellen is best as she is. 
 To us there would have been something re- 
 pugnant in her challenging her Penance as a 
 Dowiy ; 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 vigour in them ; * 
 particularly something about an old ruin 
 being too modern for your Primeval Nature, 
 and about a lichen. I forget the passage, but 
 the whole wore an air of despatch. That 
 objection which M. Burney had imbibed 
 from him about Voltaire, I explained to 
 M. B. (or tried) exactly on your principle of 
 
 * This refers to an article of Hazlitt on " The Excur- 
 sion " in the " Examiner," very fine in passages, but 
 more characteristic of the critic than descriptive of the 
 poem. 
 
 its being a characteristic speech. * That it 
 was no settled comparative estimate of \o\- 
 taire with any of his own tribe of buffoons — 
 no injustice, even if yott, spoke it, for T dared 
 say you never could relish ' Candide.' I 
 know I tried to get through it about a 
 twelvemonth since, and couldn't for the 
 dulness. Now I think I have a wider range 
 in buffoonery than you. Too much tolera- 
 tion perhaps. 
 
 " I finish this after a raw ill-baked dinner 
 fast gobbled up to set me off to ofiice again, 
 after working there till near four. O 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 
 Written Word, Apropos ; is the Poet of 
 ' The Excursion ' a Christian 1 or is it the 
 Pedlar and the Priest that are ? 
 
 " I find I miscalled that celestial splendour 
 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 Southey. I am ashamed to go bargain- 
 ing 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 an}i;hing, lohen done, 1 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 was written after the fatal 
 critique was despatched to the Editor, and 
 before its appearance. 
 
 • The passage in which the copy of " Candide," found 
 in the apartment of the Rcchisc, is described as " the 
 dull production of a scoffer's brain," which had excited 
 Hazlitt to tncrgctic vindication of Voltaire from the 
 charge of dulness. 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 man wretched. 
 
240 
 
 LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH. 
 
 TO MR. WORDSWORTH. 
 
 «' 1814. 
 
 " Dear TV. — Your experience about tailors 
 seems to be in point blank opposition to 
 Burton, as much as the author of ' The Ex- 
 cursion ' does, toto ccelOy differ in his notion of 
 a country life, from the picture which W. H. 
 has exhibited of the same. But, with a little 
 explanation, you and B. may be reconciled. 
 It is evident that he confined his observa- 
 tions to the genuine native London Tailor. 
 Wliat 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 
 liarmony with the common, moderate, self- 
 enjoyment of the rest of mankind. A flying- 
 tailor, I venture to say, is no more in rerum 
 naturd than a flying-horse or a Gryphon. 
 His wheeling his airy-flight from the pre- 
 cipice you mention, had a parallel in the 
 melancholy Jew who toppled from the monu- 
 ment. Were his limbs ever found 1 Then, 
 the man who cures diseases by words, is 
 evidently an inspired tailor. Burton never 
 aflSrmed that the art of sewing disqualified 
 the practiser of it from being a fit organ for 
 supernatural revelation. He never enters 
 into such subjects. 'Tis the common, unin- 
 spired tailor which he speaks of. Again, the 
 person who makes his smiles to be heard, is 
 evidently a man under possession ; a demo- 
 niac tailor. A greater hell than his own 
 must have a hand in this. I am not cei'tain 
 that the cause which you advocate has much 
 reason for triumph. You seem to me to 
 substitute light-headedness for light-hearted- 
 ness by a trick, or not to know the difference. 
 I confess, a grinning tailor would shock me. 
 Enough of tailors ! 
 
 " The ' 'scapes ' of the Great God Pan, 
 ■who appeared among your mountains some 
 dozen years since, and his narrow chance of 
 being submerged by ^he swains, afforded me 
 much pleasure. I can conceive the water- 
 nymphs pulling 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, 
 
 * Monthly Magazine. 
 
 signed H., and adding, * I take your corre- 
 spondent to be the .same with Ilylas.' Hylaa 
 had put forth a pastoi'al 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 ia that 
 perilous flood.' One J. Scott* (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 peculiar 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 difiiculty, and can scarce command my 
 o-wn resolution to sit at writing an hour 
 together. I am a poor ci-eature, but I am 
 leaving off gin. I hope you will see good- 
 will in the thing. I had a difiiculty to per- 
 form not to make it all p.anegyric ; 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, btit that 
 both are close to me, among the nearest of 
 persons and things. I do but act the stranger 
 in the Review. Then, I was puzzled about 
 extracts and determined upon not giving one 
 that had been in the ' Examiner ; ' for 
 extracts repeated give an idea that there is 
 a meagre allowance 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. 
 T/ie7i it is the first review I ever did, and I 
 did not know how long I might make it. 
 But it must speak for itself, if Gittbrd and his 
 crew do not put words in its mouth, which 
 I expect. Farewell. Love to all. Mary keeps 
 very bad. C. Lamb." 
 
 The apprehension expressed at the close 
 of the last letter wa.s dismally verified. The 
 following contains Lamb's first burst of au 
 
 • .\ftcrwHr(lfi the distlngiiidhcd and unfortunate cditof 
 of the London Miiguzinc. 
 
indignation which lasted amidst all his gen- 
 tleness and tolerance unquenched through 
 life:— 
 
 TO MR. WORDSWORTH. 
 
 " 1814. 
 
 "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 Gilford 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 suffered 
 me to be called a lunatic in his Review.* 
 The language he has altered throughout. 
 "Whatever inadequateness it had to its sub- 
 ject, it was, in point of composition, the 
 pi'ettiest piece of prose I ever writ ; and so 
 my sister (to whom 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 utter 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 Excui"sion ' * walks through common 
 forests as through some Dodona or enchanted 
 wood, and every casual bird that flits upon 
 the boughs, like that miraculous 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 mtelUgent 
 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.' t 
 
 • In alluding to Lamb's note on the great scene of 
 " The Broken Heart," where Calantha dances on, after 
 hearing at every pause of some terrible calamity, a writer 
 in the " Quarterly" had affected to excuse the writer as 
 a " maniac ; " a suggestion which circumstances rendered 
 most cruel. 
 
 t Though the article on "The Excursion," in the 
 
 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 natui-ally, not obtruding 
 them 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 methodism;' 
 and after follows, ' and therefore the tale of 
 Margaret should have been postponed ' (I 
 forget my words, or his words) ; now the 
 reasons for postponing it are as deducible 
 from what goes befoi-e, as they are from the 
 104th Psalm. Tlie passage whence I deduced 
 it, has vanished, but clajjping a colon before 
 a therefore is always reason enough for 
 Mr. Baviad Gifford to allow to a reviewer 
 that is not himself. T assure you my com- 
 plaints 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 with 
 it, because I have been feeding my fancy for 
 some months with the notion of pleasing 
 you. Its imperfection or inadequateness in 
 size and method I knew ; but for the writing- 
 part of it I was fully satisfied ; I hoped it 
 would make more than atonement. Ten or 
 twelve distinct 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 i)iece. How are you served ! 
 aud the labours of years tui'ned into contempt 
 by scouncb'els ! 
 
 " But I could not but protest against your 
 
 " Edinburgh Review," commenced "This will never do ! " 
 it contained ample illustrations of the author's genius, 
 and helped the world to di-^prove its oracular beginning. 
 
242 
 
 LETTERS TO MISS HUTCHINSON AND WORDSWORTH. 
 
 taking that thing as mine. Eveiy pretty 
 expression (I know there were many) ; every 
 warm expression (tliere was notliing else) 
 is vulgarised and frozen. — But if they catch 
 me in their camps again, let them spitchcock 
 me ! They had a right to do it, as no name 
 appears to it, and Mr. Shoemaker Gifford, I 
 suppose, never waived a right he had since 
 he commenced author. Heaven confound 
 him and all caitiffs ! C L." 
 
 The following letter to Mrs. Wordsworth's 
 sister, who resided with the poet at Eydal, 
 relates to matters of yet nearer interest. 
 
 TO MISS HUTCHINSON. 
 
 " Thursday, 19th Oct., 1815. 
 
 " Dear Miss H., — 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 
 favourable symptoms. The return of her 
 disorder has been frightfully 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 fi-om 
 some cause we have no control over or con- 
 jecture of. It cuts sad gi'eat slices out of 
 the time, the little time, we shall have to live 
 together. I don't know but the recurrence 
 of these ilbicsses 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 forgot 
 that we are otherwise. By God's blessing, 
 in a few weeks we may be making our meal 
 together, or sitting in the 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 assailable ; we are 
 strong fur the time as rocks; — 'the wind 
 is tempered to the shorn Lambs.' I'oor 
 C. Lloyd, and ])0()r Priscilla ! 1 feel I 
 hardly feel enough for him ; my own calami- 
 ties press about me, and iuvohe me in a 
 
 thick integument not to be reached at by 
 other folks' misfortunes. But I feel all I 
 can — all tlie kindness I can, towards you all 
 — God bless you ! I hear nothing from Cole- 
 ridge. Yciu's truly, C. Lamb." 
 
 The following three letters best speak for 
 themselves : — 
 
 TO ME. WORDSWORTH. 
 
 "The conclusion of this epistle getting 
 gloomy, I have chosen this part to desire 
 our kindest loves to Mrs. Wordsworth and 
 to Dorothea. Will none of you ever be in 
 Loudon again ? 
 
 " 1815. 
 
 " Dear Wordsworth, — You have made me 
 very proud with your successive book 
 presents. I have been carefully through 
 the two volumes, to see that nothing was 
 omitted which 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 scoundrels. I 
 would not have had you c>fi'er up the poorest 
 rag that lingered upon the stript shoulders 
 of little Alice Fell, to have atoned all their 
 malice ; I would not have given 'em a red 
 cloak to save their souls. I am afraid lest 
 that substitution 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 w;is a good honest tub in its 
 place, and nothing could fairly be said 
 against it. You say you made the altcnition 
 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 
 you should write. I wish I could set my 
 name to it. Imprimatur, — but you have set 
 it there yourself, and 1 thank you. I had 
 rather be a door- keeper in your margin, 
 than have their j>n)udest text swelling with 
 my eulogies. The jwenis in the volumes, 
 wliich are new to me, are so much in the 
 
LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH. 
 
 243 
 
 old tone, that I hardly received them as 
 
 novelties. Of tliose, of which I had no 
 
 previous knowledge, the ' Four Yew Trees,'* 
 
 and the mysterious company which you have 
 
 assembled there, most strucic me — 'Death 
 
 the Skeleton and Time the Shadow.' It is a 
 
 siglit not for every youthful poet to dream 
 
 of ; it is one of the last results he must have 
 
 gone thmking on for years for. 'Laodamia ' 
 
 is a very original poem ; I mean original 
 
 with reference to your own manner. You 
 
 have nothing like it. I should have 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 -collector, 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 many years. Its age 
 
 is ascertainable from the state of the canvas, 
 
 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 
 
 fiimiliar. Since I saw you I have had a 
 
 treat in the reading way, which comes not 
 
 every day,t the Latin Poems of V. Bourne, 
 
 which were quite new to me. What a heart 
 
 th;it man had, all laid out upon town scenes, 
 
 a proper counterpoise to some peojjWs rural 
 
 extra vagauzas. Why I mention him is, that 
 
 your ' Power of Music ' reminded me of his 
 
 |)oem 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 Newton's ' Principia ? ' I was 
 
 lately fatiguing myself with going through a 
 
 volume of fine words by Lord Thurlow ; 
 
 excellent words ; and if the heart could live 
 
 by words 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 consequence of shutting his 
 
 eyes and thinking he is in the age of the old 
 
 Elizabeth poets. From thence I turned to 
 
 / 
 • The poem on the four great yew trees of Borro'w- 
 dale, which the poet has, by the most potent magic of 
 the imagination, converted into a temple for the ghastly 
 forms of Death and Time " to meet at noon-tide," — a 
 passage surely not surpassed in any English poetry 
 written since the days of Milton. 
 
 + The following little passage about Vincent Bourne 
 has been previously printed. 
 
 Bourne. What a sweet, unpretending, pretty- 
 mannered, matter-fill 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 he content 
 with the language which Gay and Prior 
 wrote in ? 
 
 "I am almost soriy that you printed 
 extracts from those first poems,* or that you 
 did not ijrint them at length. They do not 
 read to me as they do altogether. 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 peiiod of your life. 
 All the rest of your poems are so much of a 
 piece, they might have been written in tlie 
 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.'t The one on 
 the wind is masterly, but not new to us. 
 Being only three, perhajis you might have 
 clapt a D. at the corner, and let it have 
 ])ast as a printer's mark to the uninitiated, 
 as a delightful 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 ci-uelly engaged, and like to be. On 
 Friday I was at oflSce from ten in the 
 morning (two hours dinner except) to eleven 
 at night ; last night till nine. My business 
 and oihce 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 two-thirds as dead, 
 for time that a man may call his o^vn is his 
 life ; and hard work and thinking about it 
 taint even the K-isure hours, — stain Sunday 
 with work-day contemplations. This is 
 Sunday : and the head-ache I have is part 
 
 • The " Evening Walk," and " Descriptive Sketches 
 among the Alps" — Wordsworth's earliest poems— now 
 happily restored in their entirety to their proper places 
 in the poet's collected works. 
 
 f By Miss Dorothea Wordsworth, 
 
 B 2 
 
244 
 
 LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH. 
 
 late 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 th^m each evening harl its puttering star, 
 And every sabbath-day its golden sun ' — 
 
 to such straits am I driven for the life of 
 life, Time ! O that from that superfluity of 
 holiday-leisure my youth wasted, ' Age might 
 but take some hours youtli wanted not.' 
 N.B. — I have left oiF spirituous liquors for 
 four or more months, with a moral certainty 
 of its lasting.* Farewell, dear Word.sworth ! 
 
 " O 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 sti'eets, — scarce a 
 desk. Earthquakes swallow up this mei'can- 
 tile city and its 'gi-ipple 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 office. 
 
 " Farewell, in haste, from a head that is 
 too ill to methodise, a stomach to digest, and 
 all oat of tune. Better harmonies await 
 you ! C. Lamb." 
 
 TO MR. WORDSWORTH. 
 
 " Excuse this maddlsh letter ; I am too 
 tired to write informd. 
 
 "1815. 
 
 " Dear Wordsworth, — The more I read of 
 your two last volumes, the more I feel it 
 necessary to make my acknowledgments for 
 them in more than one short letter. The 
 ' Night Piece,' to which you refer me, I 
 meant fully to have noticed ; but, tlie fact is, 
 I come so fluttering and languid from 
 business, tired with thoughts of it, frightened 
 with fears of it, tluit when I get a few 
 minutes to sit down to scribble (an action of 
 the haud now seldom natural to me — I mean 
 
 • Alas ! for n\oral certainty in this moral but mortal 
 ■world ! Lamb's resolution to leave off spirituous liquors 
 was a brave one ; but he strengthened and rewarded it 
 by such copiuus lihivtion.^ of porter, that his .sister, for 
 ■whose sake mainly he attempted the sacrillcc, entreated 
 him to " live like liiniself," and in a few weeks after this 
 (SiiUiance he obeyed her. 
 
 voluntary pen-work) I lose all presential 
 memory of what I liad intended to say, and 
 say what I can, talk about Vincent Bourne, 
 or any casual image, instead of that which 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 satisfac- 
 tion, as if you had wronged the feeling with 
 which, in what preceded it, you had resolved 
 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 less 
 romantic about it. ' The Farmer of Tilsbury 
 Vale ' is a charming counterpart to ' Poor 
 Susan,' with the addition of that delicacy 
 towards aberrations from the strict path, 
 which is so fine iu the ' Old Thief and the 
 Boy by his side,' which always brings water 
 into my eyes. Perhaps it is the worse for 
 being a repetition ; ' Susan ' stood for the 
 representative of poor Rus in Urhe. Tliere 
 was quite enough to stamp the moral of the 
 thing never to be forgotten ; ' bright volumes 
 of vapour,' &c. The last verse of Susan was 
 to be got rid of, at all events. It threw a 
 kind of dubiety upon Susan's moral conduct. 
 Susan is a servant maid. I see her trundling 
 her mop, and contemplating the whirling 
 phenomenon through blurred optics ; but to 
 term her ' a poor outcast ' seems as much a.s 
 to say that poor Susan was no better than 
 she should be, which I tru.st was not wliat 
 you meant to express, llobin Goodfellow 
 supports himself without that stick of a moral 
 which you have thrown away ; but how I 
 can be brought in felo de omittendo for that 
 ending to the Boy-buildei-s is a mystery. I 
 can't say positively now, — I only know that 
 no line ofteuer or readier occurs than that 
 'Light-hearted boys, I will build up a Ciiaut 
 
 • " But thou, that didst appear so fair 
 To fonil imapinaliou, 
 Uost rival in the light of dny 
 lUr delicate creation." 
 
LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH. 
 
 245 
 
 with you.' It comes naturally, with a warm 
 holiday, and the freshness of the blood. It 
 is a perfect summer amulet, that I tie round 
 my legs to quicken their motion when I go 
 out a maying. (N.B.) I don't often go out a 
 maying ; — Must is the tense with me now. 
 Do you lake the pun? Young Eomilly is 
 divine ; * the reasons of his mother's grief 
 being remediless — I never saw parental love 
 carried up so high, towering above the other 
 loves — Shivkspeare had done something for 
 the filial, in Coi-delia, and, by implication, 
 for the fatherly too, in Lear's resentment ; 
 he left it for you to explore the depths of the 
 maternal heart. I get stupiil, and flat, and 
 flattering ; what's the use of telling you v/hat 
 good things you have written, or — I hope I 
 may add — that I know tiiem to be good ] 
 Apropos — when I first opened upon the just- 
 mentioned poem, in a careless tone, I said to 
 Mary, as if putting a riddle, ' What is good 
 for a bootless bene ? ' To which, with infinite 
 presence of mind, (as the jest-book has it) 
 she answered, ' a shoeless pea.' It was the 
 first joke she ever made. Joke the second I 
 make. You distinguish well, in your old 
 prefece, between the verses of Dr. Johnson, 
 of the ' Man in the Strand,' and that from 
 ' The Babes in the Wood.' I was thinking, 
 whether taking your own glorious lines — 
 
 ' And from the love which was in her soul 
 For her youthful rvomiUy,' 
 
 which, by the love I bear my own soul, I 
 think have no parallel in any of the best old 
 ballads, and just altering it to — 
 
 ' And from the great respect she felt 
 I'or Sir Samuel Komilly,' 
 
 would not have explained the boundaries of 
 prose expression, and poetic feeling, neai'ly 
 as well. Excuse my levity on such an occa- 
 sion. I never felt deeply in my life if that 
 poem did not make me, both lately and when 
 I read it in MS. No alderman ever longed 
 after a haunch of buck venison more th;m I 
 for a .spiritual taste of that ' White Doe' you 
 promise. I am sure it is superlative, cir will 
 be when drest, i. e., printed. All things read 
 raw to me in MS. ; to compare magna parvia, 
 
 • The admirable little poem, entitled "The Force of 
 Prayer," developing the depths of a widowed mother's 
 grief, whose only son has been dro\vned in attempting 
 to leap over the precipice of the " Wharf" at Bolton 
 
 I cannot endure my own writings in that 
 state. The only one which I think would 
 not very much win upon me in print is 
 Peter Bell. But I am not certain. You ask 
 me about your preface. I like both that and 
 the supplement without an exception. The 
 account of what you mean by imagination is 
 j veiy valuable to me. It will help me to like 
 I some things in poetry better, which is a little 
 humiliating in me to confess. I thought I 
 could not be instructed in that science (I 
 mean the critical), as I once heard old obscene, 
 beastly Peter Pindar, in a dispute on Milton, 
 say he thought that if he had reason to value 
 himself upon one thing more than another, 
 it was in knowing what good verse was. 
 Wlio looked over your proof-sheets and left 
 ordebo in that line of Virgil ? 
 
 "My brother's picture of Milton is very 
 finely painted, that is, it might have been 
 done by a hand next to Vandyke's. It is the 
 genuine Milton, and an object of quiet gaze 
 for the half-hour at a time. Yet though I 
 am confident there is no better one of him, 
 the face does not quite answer to Milton. 
 There is a tinge of ^;e^i< (or petite, how do you 
 spell it ?) querulousness about it ; yet, hang 
 it ! now I remember better, there is not ; it 
 is calm, melancholy and poetical. 0)ie of the 
 copies of the poems you sent has precisely 
 the same pleasant blending of a sheet of 
 second volume with a sheet of first. I think 
 it was page 245 ; but I sent it and had it 
 rectified. It gave me, in the first impetus 
 of cutting the leaves, just such a cold squelch 
 as going down a plausible turning and sud- 
 denly reading ' No thoroughfare.' Kobinson's 
 is entire : I wish you would write more 
 criticism about Spenser, &c. I think I could 
 say something about him myself, but, Lord 
 bless me ! these ' merchants and their spicy 
 
 Abbey. The first line, printed in old English characters, 
 from some old Knglish ballad, 
 
 ' What is good for a bootless bene I " 
 
 suggests Miss Lamb's single pun. The following are the 
 profoundcst stanzas among those which excite her 
 brother's most just admiration : — 
 
 " If for a lover the lady wept, 
 A solace she might borrow 
 From death and from the passion of deatb ■^— 
 Old Wharf might heal her sorrow. 
 
 She weeps not for the wedding-day, 
 
 Which was to be to-morrow : 
 Her hope was a further-looking hope. 
 
 And hers is a mother's sorrow." 
 
•246 
 
 LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH. 
 
 drugs,' which are so harmonious to sing of, 
 they lime-twig up my poor soul and body, 
 till I shall forget I ever thought myself a bit 
 of a genius ! I can't even put a few thoughts 
 on paper for a newspaper. I 'engross ' when 
 I should 'pen' a paragraph. Confusion blast 
 all mercantile transactions, all traffic, ex- 
 change of commodities, intercourse between 
 nations, all the consequent civilisation, and 
 wealth, and amity, and link of society, and 
 getting rid of prejudices, and knowledge of 
 the face of the globe ; and rot the very firs 
 of the forest, that look so romantic alive, 
 and die mto desks ! Yale. 
 
 " Yours, dear W., and all yours, 
 
 " C. Lamb." 
 
 TO MR. WORDSWORTH, 
 
 " April 9th, 1816. 
 
 " Dear Wordsworth, — Thanks for the 
 books you have given me and for all the 
 books you mean to give me. I will bind up 
 the Political Sonnets and Ode according to 
 your suggestion. I have not bound the 
 poems yet. I wait till people have done 
 borrowing them. I think I shall get a chain 
 and chain tliem to my shelves, more Bodleiano, 
 and people may come and read them at 
 chain's length. For of those who borrow, 
 some read slow ; some mean to read but 
 don't read ; and some neither read nor meant 
 to read, but borrow to leave you an opinion 
 of their sagacity. I must do my money- 
 borrowing friends the justice to say that 
 there is nothing of this caprice or wantonness 
 of alienation in them. When they borrow 
 my money they never fail to make use of it. 
 Coleridge has been here about a fortnight. 
 His health is tolerable at present, though 
 beset with temptations. In the first place, 
 the Covent Garden Manager has declined 
 accepting his Tragedy, though (having read 
 it) I see no reason upon earth why it might 
 not have run a very fair chance, though, 
 it certainly wants a prominent part for a 
 Miss O'Neil or a Mr. Kean. However, he 
 is going to-day to write to Lord Byron to get 
 it to Drury. Should you see Mrs. C, who 
 has ju.st written to C. a letter, which I have 
 given him, it will be as well to say nothing 
 about its fate, till some answer is shaped 
 from Drury. Ho has two volumes printing 
 together at Bristol, both finishod as far as 
 the composition goes ; tlie latter containing 
 
 his fugitive poems, the former his Literary 
 Life. Nature, who conducts every creature, 
 by instinct, to its best end, has skilfully 
 directed C. to take up his abode at a Chvmist's 
 Laboratory in Norfolk-street. She might as 
 well have sent a Helluo Lihrorum for cure to 
 the Vatican. God keep him inviolate among 
 the traps and pitfalls ! He has done pretty 
 well as yet. 
 
 "Tell Mifss H., my sister is every day 
 wishing to be quietly sitting down to answer 
 her very kind letter, but while C. stays she 
 can hardly find a quiet time ; God bless him ! 
 
 " Tell Mrs. W. her postscripts are always 
 agi'eeable. They are so legible too. Your 
 manual-graphy is terrible, dark asLycophron. 
 'Likelihood,' for instance, is thus typified 
 
 * I should not wonder if the constant 
 
 making out of such paragi'aphs is the cause 
 of that weakness in Mrs. W.'s eyes, as she is 
 tenderly pleased to express it. Dorothy, I 
 hear, has mounted spectacles ; so you have 
 deoculated two of your dearest relations in 
 life. Well, God bless you, and continue to 
 give you power to write with a finger of 
 power upon our he:irts what you fail to 
 impress, in corresponding lucidness, upon 
 our outward eye-sight ! 
 
 " Mary's love to all ; she is quite well. 
 
 " I am called off to do the deposits on 
 Cotton Wool — but why do I relate this to 
 you, who want faculties to comprehend the 
 great mystery of deposits, of interest, of 
 warehouse rent, and contingent fund ? Adieu ! 
 
 '' C. L.IVMB. 
 
 " A longer letter when C. is gone back 
 into the country, relating his success, &n\ — 
 my judgment of yowr new book.s, &c. &c. — I 
 am scarce quiet enough while he stays. 
 
 " Yours again, C. L." 
 
 The next letter is fantastically written 
 beneath a regular official order, the words in 
 italics being printed. 
 
 "Sir, — Please to state the weights and 
 amounts of tht following Lots of 
 sold Side, 181 for 
 
 " Your obedient Servant, 
 
 "CuAs. Lamb. 
 
 • Here la a most inimitable seruwl. 
 
LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH. 
 
 247 
 
 " Accountant's Office, 26th April, 1816.» 
 "Dear W., — I have jvist finished the 
 pleasing task of correcting the re\nse of the 
 poems and letter. I hope they will come 
 out faultless. One blunder I saw and 
 shuddered at. The hallucinating rascal had 
 printed battered for battened, this last not 
 conveyiiig any distinct sense to his gaping 
 soul. The Eeader (as they c;Ul 'em) had dis- 
 covered it, and given it the marginal brand, 
 but the substitutory n had not yet appeared. 
 I accompanied his notice with a most pathetic 
 address to tlie printer not to neglect the cor- 
 rection. I know how such a blunder would 
 ' batter at your peace.' With regard to the 
 works, the Letter I read with unabated 
 satisfaction. Such a thing was wanted ; 
 called for. The parallel of Cotton with 
 Burns I heartily approve. Iz. Walton hal- 
 lows any page in which his reverend name 
 appears. ' Duty archly bending to purposes 
 of general benevolence ' is exquisite. The 
 poems I endeavoured not to understand, but 
 to n ad them with my eye alone, and I think 
 I succeeded. (Some people will do that 
 when they come out, you'll say.) As if I 
 were to luxiu'iate to-morrow at some picture- 
 gallery I was never at before, and going by 
 to-day by chance, found the door open, and 
 having but five minutes to look about me, 
 peeped in ; just such a chastised peep I took 
 witli my mind at the lines my luxuriating 
 eye was coursing over unrestrained, not to 
 anticipate another day's fuller satisfoctiou. 
 Coleriilge is printing ' Christabel,' by Lord 
 Byron's recommendation to Muri'ay, with 
 what he calls a vision, ' Kubla Khan,' which 
 said vision he repeats so euchantiugly that it 
 irradiates and brings heaven and elysiau 
 bowers into my parlour while he sings or 
 says it ; but there is an observation, ' Never 
 tell thy dreams,' and I am almost afraid that 
 * Kubla Khan ' is an owl that won't bear 
 day-light. I fear lest it should be discovered 
 by the lantern of typography and clear re- 
 ducting to letters no better than nonsense 
 or no sense. When I was young, I used to 
 chant with ecstacy'MiLD Arcadians ever 
 BLOOMING,' till somebody told me it was 
 meant to be nonsense. Even yet I have a 
 lingering attacliment to it, and I think it 
 
 * This is shown by the postmark to be an error ; it 
 should be 1818. 
 
 better than ' Windsor Forest,' ' Dying Chris- 
 tian's Address,' &c. Coleridge has sent his 
 tragedy to D. L. T. ; it cannot be acted this 
 season, and by their manner of receiving, I 
 hope he will be able to alter it to make them 
 accept it for next. He is, at present, under 
 the medical care of a Mr. Oilman (Killman?) 
 at Highgate, where he plays at leaving off 
 laud — m ; I think his essentials not touched ; 
 he is very bad, but then he wonderfully picks 
 up another day, and his face, when he repeats 
 his verses, hath its ancient glory ; an arch- 
 angel a little damaged. Will Miss H. 
 pardon our not replying at length to her 
 kind letter ? We are not quiet enough ; 
 Morgan is with us every day, going betwixt 
 Higligate and the Temple. Coleridge is 
 absent but four miles, and the neighbourhood 
 of such a man is as exciting as the presence 
 of fifty ordinary pei'sons. 'Tis enough to be 
 within the whiff and wind of his genius for 
 us not to possess our souls in quiet. If I 
 lived with him or the Author of the Excursion, 
 I should, in a veiy little time, lose my own 
 identity, and be dragged along in the current 
 of other people's thoughts, hampered in a 
 net. How cool I sit in this ofiice, with no 
 possible interruption further than what I 
 may term material / There is not as much 
 metaphysics in thirty-six of the people here 
 as there is in the fii-st page of Locke's 
 ' Treatise on the Human Understanding,' 
 or as much poetiy as in any ten lines of the 
 ' Pleasures of Hope,' or more natui-al ' Beg- 
 gar's Petition.' I never entangle myself in 
 any of their speculations. Interruptions, if 
 I try to write a letter even, I have dreadful. 
 Just now, within four lines, I was called oflF 
 for ten minutes to consult dusty old books 
 for the settlement of obsolete erroi-s. I hold 
 you a guinea you don't find tiie chasm where 
 I left off, so excellently the wounded sense 
 closed again and was healed. 
 
 " N.B. — Nothing said above to the con- 
 trary, but that I hold the personal presence 
 of the two mentioned potent spirits at a rate 
 as high as any ; but I pay dearer ; what 
 amuses others robs me of myself ; my mind 
 is positively discharged into their greater 
 currents, but flows with a willing violence. 
 As to your question about work ; it is far 
 less oppressive to me than it was, from cir- 
 cumstances ; it takes all the golden part of 
 
243 
 
 " LONDON 1LA.GAZINE "-^OHN SCOTT. 
 
 the day away, a solid lump, from ten to four ; 
 but it does not kill my peace as before. Some 
 day or other I shall be in a taking again. My 
 head aches, and you have had enough. God 
 bless you ! C. L^imb." 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE "LONDON MAGAZINE" CHARACTER AND FATE OF 
 
 MR. JOHN SCOTT, ITS KDITOH — GLIMPSE OF MR. THOMAS 
 
 GRIFFITHS WAINWKIGHT, 0>E OF ITS CONTRIIiUTOIls 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS LI?inERS OP LAMB TO WORDSWORTH, 
 COLERIDGE, AND OTHERS. 
 
 [1818 to 1825.] 
 
 Lamb's association with Hazlitt in the year 
 1820 introduced him to that of the " Loudon 
 Magazine," which supplied the finest sti- 
 mulus his intellect had ever received, and 
 induced the composition of the Essays fondly 
 and familiarly kno^vn under the fantastic 
 title of Elia. Never was a 23eviodical work 
 commenced with happier auspices, numbering 
 a list of contributors more original in thought, 
 more fresh in spirit, more sportive in fancy, 
 or directed by an editor better qualified by 
 nature and study to preside, than this 
 " London." There was Lamb, with humanity 
 ripened among town-bred experiences, and 
 pathos matured by sorrow, at his wisest, 
 sagest, airiest, i?idiscreetest, best ; Barry 
 Cornwall, in the first bloom of his modest 
 and enduring fame, streaking the darkest 
 passion with beauty ; John Hamilton Eey- 
 nolds, lighting up the wildest eccentricities 
 and most striking features of many-coloured 
 life with vivid fancy ; and, with others of 
 less note, Hazlitt, whose pen, unloosed from 
 the chain which earnest thought and meta- 
 physical dreaminge had woven, gave radiant 
 expres.sion to the results of the solitary 
 musings of many years. Over these con- 
 tributors John Scott presided, himself a 
 critic of remarkable candour, eloquence, and 
 discrimination, unfettered by the dogmas of 
 contending schools of poetry and art ; apt to 
 discern the good and beautiful in all ; and 
 having, as editor, that whicli Kent recog- 
 nised in Lear, wliich subjects revere in 
 kings, and boys admire in schoolmasters, 
 and contri!)ut()rs should welcome in editors 
 — authority ; — not manifested in a worrying, 
 teasing, intolerable interference in small 
 
 matters, but in a judicious and steady super- 
 intendence of the whole ; with a wise allow- 
 ance of the occasional excesses of wit and 
 genius. In this respect, Mr. Scott difiered 
 entirely from a celebrated poet, who was 
 induced, just a year after, to undertake the 
 Editorship of the " New Monthly Magazine," 
 an office for which, it may be said, with all 
 veneration for his poetic genius, he was the 
 most unfit person who could be found in the 
 wide world of letters — who regarded a maga- 
 zine as if it were a long affidavit, or a short 
 answer in Chancery, in which the absolute 
 truth of every sentiment and the propriety of 
 every jest were verified by the editor's oath 
 or solemn affirmation ; who stopped the press 
 for a week at a comma ; balanced contending 
 epithets for a forti^ight ; and, at last, grew 
 rash in despair, and tossed the nearest, and 
 often the worst article, " unwhipped of 
 justice," to the impatient printer. Mr. Scott, 
 indeed, was more fit to preside over a little 
 commonwealth of authors than to hold a 
 despotic rule over subject contributors ; he 
 had not the airy grace of Jeffrey by which 
 he might give a certain fiuniliar liveliness to 
 the most laborious disquisitions, and shed 
 the glancing light of fancy among party 
 manifestoes ; — nor the boisterous vigour of 
 Wilson, riotous in power, reckless in wisdom, 
 fusing the production of various intellects, 
 into one bi'illiant reflection of his own master- 
 mind ; — and it was well that he wanted 
 these weapons of a tyranny which his chief 
 contributors were too original and too sturdy 
 to endure. He heartily enjoyed his position ; 
 duly appreciated his contributors and him- 
 self; and when he gave audience to some 
 young aspirant for periodical honoui"s at a 
 late breakfast, amidst the luxurious con- 
 fusion of newspapers, reviews, and uncut 
 novels, lying about in fascinating litter, and 
 cai'elessly enunciated schemes for bright suc- 
 cessions of essays, he seemed destined for 
 many years of that happy excitement in 
 which thought perpetually glows into uu- 
 rurtled but energetic language, and is itssured 
 by the echoes of the world. 
 
 Alas ! a few days after he thus appeared 
 the object of admiration and envy to a young 
 visitor, in his rooms in York-street, he wjis 
 stretched on a bed of mental agony — the 
 foolish victim of the guilty custom of a 
 world which would have lauyhed at him for 
 
regarding himself as within the sphere of its 
 opinion, if he had not died to shame it ! In 
 a luckless hour, instead of seeking to oppose 
 the bitter personalities of "Blackwood" by 
 the exhibition of a serener powez-, he rushed 
 with spurious chivalry into a personal con- 
 test ; caught up tlie weapons which he had 
 himself denounced, and sought to unmask 
 his opponents and draw them beyond the 
 pale of literary courtesy ; placed himself 
 thus in a doubtful position in which he could 
 neither consistently reject an appeal to the 
 conventional arbitrament of violence nor 
 embrace it ; lost his most legitimate oppor- 
 tunity of daring the unhallowed strife, and 
 found another with an antagonist connected 
 with the quarrel only by too zealous a 
 friendship ; and, at last, met his death almost 
 by lamentable accident, in the uncertain 
 glimmer of moonlight, from the hand of one 
 who went out resolved not to harm him ! 
 Such was the melancholy result — first of a 
 controversy too envenomed — and afterwai-ds 
 of enthralment in usages, absurd in all, but 
 most absurd when applied by a literary man 
 to a literary quarrel. Apart from higher 
 considerations, it may befit a life destined for 
 the listless excesses of gaiety to be cast on 
 an idle brawl ; — " a youth of folly, an old 
 age of cards " may be no great sacrifice to 
 preserve the hollow truce of fashionable 
 society ; but for men of thought — whose 
 minds are their possession, and who seek to 
 live in the minds of others by sympathy with 
 their thoughts — for them to hazard a thought- 
 ful being because they dare not own that 
 they prefer life to death — contemplation to 
 the grave — the preparation for etei-nity to 
 the unbidden entrance on its terrors, would 
 be ridiculous if it did not become ti-agical. 
 " Sir, I am a metaphysician ! " said Hazlitt 
 once, when in a fierce dispute respecting the 
 colours of Holbein and Vandyke, words 
 almost became things ; " and nothing makes 
 an impression upon me but abstract ideas ; " 
 and woeful, indeed, is tlie mockery when 
 thinkers condescend to be duellists ! 
 
 The Magazine did not perish with its 
 Editor ; though its unity of pm'pose was lost, 
 it was still rich in essays of surpassing indi- 
 vidual merit ; among which the masterly 
 vindication of the true di-amatic style by 
 Darley ; the articles of Gary, the admirable 
 translator of Dante ; and the " Confessions 
 
 of an English Opium Eater," held a distin- 
 guished place. Mr. De Quincy, whose youth 
 had been inspired by enthusiastic admiration 
 of Coleridge, shown in contributions to " The 
 Friend," not unworthy of his master, and 
 substantial contributions of the blessings of 
 fortune, came up to London, and found an 
 admiring welcome from Messrs. Taylor and 
 Hessey, the publishers into whose hands the 
 " London Magazine " had passed. After the 
 good old fashion of the great trade, these 
 genial booksellers used to assemble their 
 contributors round their hospitable table in 
 Fleet Street, where Mr. De Quincy was intro- 
 duced to his new allies. Among the contri- 
 butors who partook of their professional 
 festivities, was a gentleman whose subse- 
 quent career has invested the recollection 
 of his appearances in the familiarity of 
 social life with fearful interest — Mr. Thomas 
 Grilfiths Wainwright. He was then a young 
 man ; on the bright side of thirty ; with a 
 sort of undress military air, and the conver- 
 sation of a smart, lively, clever, heartless, 
 voluptuous coxcomb. It was whispered that 
 he had been an ofiicer in the Dragoons ; had 
 spent more than one fortune ; and he now 
 condescended to take a part in pei-iodical 
 literature, with the careless grace of an 
 amateur who felt himself above it. He was 
 an artist also ; sketched boldly and graphi- 
 cally ; exhibited a portfolio of his own 
 di-awings of female beauty, in which the 
 voluptuous trembled on the borders of the 
 indelicate ; and seized on the critical depai't- 
 ment of the Fine Ai'ts, both in and out of 
 the Magazine, undisturbed by the presence 
 or pretensions of the finest critic on Art 
 who ever wrote — "William Hazlitt. On this 
 subject, he composed, for the Magazine, 
 under the signatui-e of "Janus Weather- 
 cock," articles of flashy assumption — in 
 which disdainful notices of living artists were 
 set oft' by fascinating references to the pei'- 
 sonal appearance, accomplishments, and luxu- 
 rious appliances of the WTiter, ever the fii-st 
 hero of his essay. He created a new sensa- 
 tion in the sedate circle, not only by his 
 braided surtouts, jewelled fingers, and vari- 
 ous neck-handkerchiefs, but by o.sti.ntatious 
 contempt for everything in the world but 
 elegant enjoyment. Lamb, who delighted to 
 find sympathy in dissimilitude, fancied that 
 he really liked him ; took, as he ever did, 
 
250 
 
 LETTER TO WORDSWORTH. 
 
 the genial side of character ; and, instead of 
 disUkiiig tlie rake in the critic, thought it 
 pleasant to detect so much taste and good- 
 nature in a fashionable roue ; and regarded 
 all his vapid gaiety, which to severer observ- 
 ers looked like impertinence, as the playful 
 effusion of a remarkably guileless nature. 
 "We lost sight of him when the career of the 
 " London Magazine " ended ; and Lamb did 
 not live to learn the sequel of his history. 
 
 In 1819, Mr. Wordsworth, encouraged by 
 the extending circle of his earnest admirers, 
 announced for publication his "Peter Bell" 
 — a poem wi-itten in the first enthusiasm of 
 his system, and exemplifying, amidst beauty 
 and pathos of the finest essence, some of its 
 most startling peculiarities. Some wicked 
 jester gifted with more ingeuuitj'^ and bold- 
 ness than wit, anticipated the real " Simon 
 Pure," by a false one, burlesquing some of 
 the characteristics of the poet's homeliest 
 style. This grave hoax produced the follow- 
 ing letter from Lamb, appro])riately written 
 in alternate lines of red and black ink, till 
 the last sentence, in which the colours are 
 alternated, word by word — even to the sig- 
 nature — and " Mary's love," at the close ; so 
 that " Mary " is black, and her " love " red. 
 
 TO MR. WORDSWORTH. 
 
 " 1S19. 
 
 " Dear Wordsworth, — I received a copy of 
 * Peter Bell ' a week ago, and I hope the 
 author will not be offended if I say I do not 
 much relish it. The humour, if it is meant 
 for humour, is forced ; and then the price ! 
 — sixpence would have been dear for it. 
 Mind I do not mean your ' Peter Bell,' but 
 a 'Peter Bell,' which preceded it about a 
 week, and is in every bookseller's shop 
 window in London, the type and paper 
 nothing differing from the true one, the 
 preface signed W. W., and the supplemen- 
 tary preface quoting as the author's words 
 an extract from the supplementary preface 
 to the 'Lyrical Ballads.' Is there no law 
 against tliese rascals ? I would have this 
 Lambert Simnel whipt at the cart's tail. 
 Who started the spurious ' P. B.' I have not 
 heard. I should guess, one of the sneering 
 
 ; but I have heard no name mentioned. 
 
 ' Peter Bell ' (not the mock one) is excellent. 
 
 For its matter I mean. I cannot say the 
 style of it quite satisfies me. It is too 
 lyrical. The auditors to whom it is feigned 
 to be told, do not arride me. I had rather 
 it had been told me, the reader, at once. 
 ' Hartleap Well ' is the tale for me ; in 
 matter as good as this, in manner infinitely 
 before it, in my poor judgment. Why did 
 you not add ' The Waggoner ' ? — Have I 
 thanked you, though, yet, for ' Peter Bell ' ? 
 I would not not have it for a good deal of 
 
 money. C is very foolish to scribble 
 
 about books. Neither his tongue nor fingers 
 are very retentive. But I shall not say any- 
 thing to him about it. He would only begin a 
 very long story with a very long face, and I 
 see him far too seldom to teaze him with 
 affaira of business or conscience when I do 
 see him. He never comes near our house, 
 and when we go to see him he is generally 
 writing, or thinking : he is writing in his 
 study till the dinner comes, and that is 
 scarce over before the stage summons us 
 away. The mock ' P. B.' had only this effect 
 on me, that after twice reading it over in 
 hopes to find something diverting in it, I 
 reached your two books off the shelf, and 
 set into a steady reading of them, till I had 
 nearly finished both before I went to bed. 
 The two of your last edition, of course, I mean. 
 And in the morning I awoke determined 
 to take down the ' Excursion.' I wish the 
 scoundi'cl imitator could know this. But 
 why waste a wish on him ? I do not believe 
 that paddling about with a stick in a pond, 
 and fishing up a dead author, whom his 
 intolerable wi'ongs had driven to that deed 
 of desperation, would turn the heart of one 
 of these obtuse literary Bells. Tliere is no 
 Cock for such Peters ; — hang 'em ! I am 
 glad this aspiration came upon the red ink 
 line. It is more of a bloody curse. I have 
 i delivered over your other presents to 
 Alsager and G. D. A., I am sure, will value 
 I it, and be proud of the hand from which it 
 I came. To G. D. a poem is a poem. Hia 
 ' own as good as anybody's, and, God bless 
 1 him ! anybody's as good as his own ; for I 
 do not think he has the most distjuit guess 
 of the possibility of one poem being better 
 than another. The gods, by denying him 
 the very faculty itself of discrimination, have 
 effectually cut olf every seed of envy in his 
 bosom. But with envy, they excidod curiosity 
 
LETTERS TO COLERIDGE AND MISS WORDSWORTH. 
 
 251 
 
 also ; and if you wish the copy again, which 
 you destined for him, I think I shall be able 
 to find it again for you, on his third shelf, 
 where he stufiFs his presentation copies, 
 uncut, in shape and matter resembling a 
 lump of dry dust ; but on carefully removing 
 that stratum, a tiling like a pamphlet will 
 emerge. I have tried this with iifty different 
 poetical works that have been given G. D. 
 in return for as many of his own per- 
 formances, and I confess I never had any 
 scruple in taking mij own again, Avherever I 
 found it, shaking the adherences off — and by 
 this means one copy of ' my works ' served 
 for G. D. — and, with a little dusting, was 
 
 made over to my good friend Dr. G , 
 
 who little thought whose leavings he was 
 taking when he made me that graceful bow. 
 By the way, the Doctor is the only one of 
 my acquaintance who bows gracefully, my 
 town acquaintance, I mean. How do you 
 like my way of writing with two inks ? I 
 think it is pretty and motley. Suppose 
 Mi's. W. adopts it, the next time she holds 
 the pen for you. My dinner waits. I have 
 no time to indulge any linger in these 
 laborious curiosities. God bless jou, and 
 cause to thrive and burgeon whatsoever you 
 write, and fear no inks of miserable poet- 
 asters. Yours truly, 
 
 " Charles Lamb, 
 " Mary's love." 
 
 The following letter, probably written 
 about this time, is entirely in red ink. 
 
 TO MR. COLERIDGK. 
 
 " Dear Coleridge, — A letter wi-itten in the 
 blood of your poor friend would indeed be of 
 a nature to startle you ; but this is nought 
 but harmless red ink, or, as the witty mer- 
 cantile phrase hath it, clerk's blood. Hang 
 'em ! my brain, skin, flesh, bone, carcase, 
 soul, time is all theirs. The Royal Exchange, 
 Gresham's Folly, hath me body and spirit. 
 
 I admire some of 's lines on you, and I 
 
 admire your postponing reading them. He 
 is a sad tattler, but this is under the rose. 
 Twenty years ago he estranged one friend 
 from me quite, whom I have been regretting, 
 but never could regain since ; he almost 
 alienated you also from me, or me from you, 
 I don't know which. But that breach i3 
 
 closed. The dreary sea is filled up. He has 
 lately been at work ' tolling again,' as they 
 call it, a most gratuitous piece of mischief, 
 and has caused a coolness betwixt me and a 
 (not fi'iend exactly, but) intimate acquaint- 
 ance. I suspect also, he saps Manning's 
 faith in me, who am to Manning moi-e than 
 an acquaintance. Still I like his writing 
 verses about you. Will your kind host and 
 hostess give us a dinner next Sunday, and 
 better still, not expect us if the weather 
 is very bad. Why you should refuse twenty 
 guineas per sheet for Blackwood's or any 
 other magazine passes my poor comprehen- 
 sion. But, as Sti'ap says, 'you know best.' 
 I have no quarrel with you about prsepran- 
 dial avocations, so don't imagine one. That 
 Manchester sonnet* I think very likely is 
 Capel LofiVs. Another sonnet appeared with 
 the same initials in the same paper, which 
 
 turned out to be P 's. What do the 
 
 rascals mean % Am I to have the fathering 
 of what idle rhymes every beggarly poet- 
 aster pours forth ! Who put your marine 
 sonnet ' about Browne ' into ' Blackwood ' ? 
 I did not. So no more, till we meet. 
 
 "Ever yours, C.L." 
 
 The following letter (of post-mark 1822) is 
 addressed to Trinity College, Cambridge, 
 when Miss Wordsworth was visiting her 
 brother, Dr. Wordswoi-th. 
 
 " TO MISS WORDSWORTH. 
 
 " Mary perfectly approves of the appro- 
 priation of the feathers, and wishes them 
 peacock's for your fair niece's sake. 
 
 " 1822. 
 
 "Dear Miss Woi'dsworth, — I had just 
 written the above endearing words when 
 
 M tapped me on the shoulder with an 
 
 invitation to cold goose pie, which I was 
 not bird of that sort enough to decline. 
 
 Mrs. M , I am most happy to say, is 
 
 better. Mary has been tormented with a 
 rheumatism, which is leaving her. I am 
 suflfering from the festivities of the season. I 
 wonder how my misused carcase holds it out, 
 I have played the experimental philosopher 
 
 * A sonnet in " Blackwood," dated Manchester, and 
 sigmed C. L. 
 
252 
 
 LETTER TO WILSON. 
 
 on it, that's certain. "Willy* shall "be wel- 
 come to a mince-pie, and a bout at com- 
 merce whenever he comes. He was in our 
 eye. I am glad you liked my new year's 
 speculations, everybody likes them, except 
 the author of the ' Pleasures of Hope.' Dis- 
 appointment attend him ! How I like to be 
 liked, and what I do to be liked ! They 
 flatter me in magazines, newspapers, and all 
 the minor reviews ; the Quarterlies hold 
 aloof. But they must come into it in time, 
 or their leaves be waste jjaper. Salute Trinity 
 Library in my name. Two special things 
 are worth seeing at Cambridge, a portrait 
 of Cromwell, at Sydney, and a better of 
 Dr. Harvey, (who found out that blood was 
 red) at Dr. Da\'y's ; you should see them. 
 Coleridge is pretty well ; I have not seen 
 him, but hear often of him from Allsop, who 
 sends me hares and pheasants twice a week ; 
 I can hardly take so fast as he gives. I have 
 almost forgotten butcher's meat, as plebeian. 
 Are you not glad the cold is gone % I find 
 winters not so agreeable as they used to be 
 ' when winter bleak had charms for me.' I 
 cannot conjure up a kind similitude for those 
 snowy flakes. Let them keep to twelfth 
 cakes ! 
 
 " Mrs. P , our Cambridge friend, has 
 
 been in town. You do not know the W 's 
 
 in Trumpingtou Street. They are capital 
 people. Ask anybody you meet who is the 
 biggest woman in Cambridge, and I'll hold 
 
 you a wager they'll say Mrs. ; she broke 
 
 down two benches in Trinity gardens, one on 
 the confines of St. John's, whicii occasioned a 
 litigation between the Societies as to re- 
 pairing it. In warm weather, she retires 
 into an ice-cellar (literally !), and dates the 
 returns of the years from a hot Thursday 
 some twenty years back. She sits in a room 
 with opposite doors and windows, to let in a 
 thorough draught, which gives her slenderer 
 friends tooth-aches. She is to be seen in the 
 market every morning at ten cheapening 
 fowls, which I observe the Cambridge poul- 
 terers are not sufficiently careful to stump. 
 
 "Having now answered most of the points 
 contained in your letter, let me end with 
 assuring you of our very best kindness, and 
 excuse Mary for not handling the pen on 
 this occasion, csj)eeially as it has fallen into 
 
 • Mr. Wordsworth's second son, then at the Charter- 
 bo use. 
 
 so much better hands ! Will Dr. W. accept 
 of my respects at the end of a foolish letter ? 
 
 "C. L." 
 
 The following letter to Mr. Walter Wilson, 
 who was composing a " Life of De Foe," in 
 reply to inquiries on various points of the 
 great novelist's history, is dated 24th Feb., 
 1823. 
 
 TO MR. WALTER WILSON. 
 
 " Dear W., — I write that you may not 
 think me neglectful, not that I have anything 
 to say. In answer to your questions, it was 
 at your house I saw an edition of ' Roxana,' 
 the preface to which stated that the author 
 had left out all that part of it which related | 
 to Eoxana's daughter persisting in imagining ' 
 herself to be so, in spite of the mother's 
 denial, from certain hints she had picked up, 
 and throwing herself continually in her 
 mother's way (as Savage is said to have done 
 in the way of his, prying in at windows to 
 get a glimpse of her), and that it was by 
 advice of Southern, who objected to the 
 circumstances as being untrue, when the 
 rest of the story was founded on fact ; which 
 shows S. to have been a stupid-ish follow. 
 The incidents so resemble Savage's story, 
 that I taxed Godwin with taking Falkner 
 from his life by Dr. Johnson. You should 
 have the edition (if you have not parted with 
 it), for I saw it never but at your place at 
 the Mews' Gate, nor did I then read it to 
 compare it with my own ; only I know the 
 daughter's curiosity is the best part of my 
 ' Roxana.' The prologue you speak of was 
 mine, and so named, but not worth much. 
 You ask me for two or three pages of verse. 
 I have not written so much since you knew 
 me. I am altogether prosaic. Llay be I 
 may touch olf a sonnet in time. I do not 
 prefer ' Colonel Jack ' to either ' itobinsoii 
 Crusoe ' or ' Roxana.' I only spoke of the 
 beginning of it, his childish history. The 
 rest is poor. I do not know anywhere any 
 good character of De Foe besides what you 
 mention.* I do not know that Swift meu- 
 
 • Those who wish to read an adniirublo character of 
 Do l''ou, associated with the most valuable iiiloriUiitioii 
 rospi-clinif his personal history, should revert to an uilicle 
 in the " KdinburK'h Keview " on Ue l-'oc, attiibutvd to 
 the author of the " Lives of the Statesnieu of the C'<jiu- 
 monwcalth," and of the delightful " biography of Oliver 
 Uoldsndth," almost as charming as its subject. 
 
LETTERS TO MISS HUTCHINSON AND MRS. HAZLITT. 
 
 253 
 
 tiona him ; Pope does. I forget if D'Israeli 
 has. Dunlop I think has nothing of him. 
 He is quite new ground, and scarce known 
 beyond ' Crusoe.' I do not know who wrote 
 'Quarl.' I never thought of 'Quarl' as 
 having an author. It is a poor imitation ; 
 the monkey is the best in it, and his pretty 
 dishes made of shells. Do you know the paper 
 in the ' Englishman ' by Sir Eichard Steele, 
 giving an account of Selkirk 1 It is admira- 
 ble, and has all the germs of ' Crusoe.' You 
 must quote it entire. Captain G. Carleton 
 wrote his own memoirs, they are about Lord 
 Peterborough's campaign in Spain, and a 
 good book. ' Puzzelli ' puzzles me, and I am 
 in a cloud about ' Donald M'Leod.' I never 
 heard of them ; so you see, my dear Wilson, 
 what poor assistances I can give in the way 
 of information. I wish your book out, for I 
 shall like to see anything about De Foe or 
 from you. Your old friend, C. Lamb. 
 
 " From my and your old compound." 
 
 iron one of the two that ' shuts amain ' — and 
 that is the reason I am locked up. Mean- 
 while of afternoons we pick up primroses at 
 Dalston, and Mary con-ects me when I call 
 'em cowslips. God bless you all, and pray, re- 
 member me euphoniously to Mr. G . 
 
 That Lee Priory must be a dainty bower. 
 Is it built of flints 1 — and does it stand at 
 Kingsgate 1 " 
 
 In this year. Lamb made his greatest essay 
 in house-keeping, by occuppng Colebrook 
 Cottage at Islington, on the banks of his 
 beloved New Eiver. There occurred the 
 immersion of George Dyer at noontide, which 
 supplies the subject of one of "The Last 
 Essays of Elia ; " and which is veritably re- 
 lated in the following letter of Lamb, which 
 is curious, as containing the germ of that 
 delightful article, and the first sketches of 
 the Brandy-and-Water Doctor therein cele- 
 brated as miraculous 
 
 The following is the fragment of a letter 
 addressed in the beginning of 1823 to IVIiss 
 Hutchinson at Eamsgate whither she had 
 gone with an invalid relative. 
 
 TO MISS HUTCHINSON. 
 
 " April 25th, 1823. 
 
 "Dear Miss H., — It gives me great pleasure 
 (the letter now begins) to heai- that you got 
 
 down so smoothly, and that Mrs. M 's 
 
 spirits are so good and enterprising. It shows 
 whatever her posture may be, that her mind 
 at least is not supine. I hope the excursion 
 will enable the former to keep pace with its 
 outstripping neighbour. Pray present our 
 kindest wishes to her and all ; (tliat sentence 
 should properly have come into the Postscript, 
 but we aiiy mercurial spirits, there is no 
 keeping us in). * Time ' (as was said of one 
 of us) ' toils after us in vain.' I am afraid 
 our co-visit with Coleridge was a dream. I 
 shall not get away before the end (or middle) 
 of June, and then you will be frog-hopping 
 at Boulogne ; and besides, I think the 
 Gilmans would scarce trust him with us ; I 
 have a malicious knack at cutting of apron- 
 strings. The Saints' days you speak of have 
 long since fled to heaven, with Astroea, and 
 the cold piety of the age lacks fervour to 
 recall them ; only Peter left his key — the 
 
 TO MRS. HAZLITT. 
 
 " November, 1823. 
 " Dear Mrs. H., — Sitting down to write a 
 letter is such a painful operation to Mary, 
 that you must accept me as her proxy. You 
 have seen our house. What I now tell you 
 is literally true. Yesterday week, George Dyer 
 called upon us, at one o'clock, (bright noon 
 day) on his way to dine with Mi-s. Barbauld, 
 at Ne-svdngton. He sat with Mary about half 
 an hour, and took leave. The maid saw him 
 go out, from her kitchen window, but sud- 
 denly losing sight of him, ran up in a fright 
 to Mary. G. D., instead of keeping the slip 
 that leads to the gate, had deliberately, staff 
 in hand, in broad open day, marched into 
 the New Eiver. He had not his spectacles 
 on, and you know his absence. Who helped 
 him out, they can hardly tell, but between 'em 
 they got him out, drenched thro' and thro'. 
 A mob collected by that time, and accom- 
 panied him in. ' Send for the Doctor ! ' they 
 said : and a one-eyed fellow, dirty and drunk, 
 was fetched from the public-house at the end, 
 where it seems he lurks, for the sake of pick- 
 ing up water-practice ; having formerly had 
 a medal from the Humane Society, for some 
 rescue. By his advice, the patient was put 
 between blankets ; and when I came home 
 at four, to dinner, I found G. D. a-bed, and 
 
raving, light-headed, with the brandy-and 
 water which the doctor had administered. 
 He sung, laughed, whimpered, screamed, 
 babbled of guardian angels, would get up 
 and go home ; but we kept him there by 
 force ; and by next morning he departed 
 sobered, and seems to have received no 
 injury. All my friends are open-mouthed 
 about having paling before the river, but I 
 cannot see, because an absent man chooses to 
 walk into a river, with his eyes open, at 
 midday, I am any the more likely to be 
 drowned in it, coming home at midnight. 
 
 " I have had the honour of dining at the 
 Mansion House, on Thursday last, by special 
 card from the Lord Mayor, who never saw 
 my face, nor I his ; and all from being a 
 writer in a magazine ! The dinner costly, 
 served on massy plate, champagne, pines, &c. ; 
 forty-seven present, among whom, the Chair- 
 man, and two other directors of the India 
 Company. There's for you! and got away 
 pretty sober ! Quite saved my credit ! 
 
 " We continue to like our house prodi- 
 giously. Our kind remembrances to you 
 and yours. — Yours truly, C. Lamb. 
 
 " I am pleased that H. liked my letter to 
 the Laureate." 
 
 Requested by the Quaker Poet, to advise 
 him on a proposal for appropriating a large 
 sum of money raised by a few admiring 
 friends to his comfort in advancing years. 
 Lamb gave his wise and genial judgment in 
 the following letter 
 
 TO BERNARD BARTON. 
 
 " March 24th, 1824. 
 
 "DearB. B., — I hasten to say that if my 
 opini(m can strengthen you in your choice, it is 
 decisive for your acceptance of what has been 
 so handsomely offer'd. lean see notliing in- 
 jurious to your most honourable sense. 
 Think that you are called to a poetical 
 Ministry — nothing worse — the Minister is 
 worthy of the hire. — The only objection I 
 feel is founded on a fear that the accej)tance 
 may be a temptation to you to let fall the 
 bone (hard as it is) which is in your mouth 
 and must afl'ord tolerable pickings, for the 
 shadow of indopon<lonco. You cannot pro- 
 pose to become independont on what tlie low 
 state of interest could afford you from such a 
 
 principal as you mention ; and the most 
 graceful excuse for the acceptance, would be. 
 that it left you free to your voluntary 
 functions. That is the less licjht part of the 
 scruple. It hiis no darker shade. I put in 
 darker, because of the ambiguity of the word 
 light, which Donne in his admirable poera 
 on the Metempsychosis, has so ingeniously 
 illustrated in his invocation — 
 
 12 I 3 
 
 ' Make my dark heavy poem, light and tight.' 
 
 where two senses of light are opposed to dif- 
 ferent opposites. A trifling criticism. — I 
 can see no reason for any scniple then but 
 what arises from your own interest ; which 
 is in your own power of course to solve. If 
 you still have doubts, read over Sanderson's 
 Cases of Conscience, and Jeremy Taylor's 
 Ductor Dubitantium, the first a moderate 
 octavo, the latter a folio of 900 close pages, 
 and when you have thoroughly digested the 
 admirable reasons pro and con which they 
 
 give for every possible case, you will be 
 
 just as wise as when you began. Every man 
 is his own best Casuist ; and after all, as 
 Ephi-aim Smooth in the pleasant comedy of 
 ' Wild Oats,' has it, ' there is no harm in a 
 Guinea.' A fortiori there is less in 2000. 
 
 " I therefore most sincerely congratulate 
 with you, excepting so far as excepted above. 
 If you have fair prospects of adding to the 
 principal, cut the Bank ; but in either case 
 do not refuse an honest Service. Your heart 
 tells you it is not offered to bribe you from 
 any duty, but to a duty which you feel to be 
 your vocation. Fai'ewell heartily. 
 
 « C. L." 
 
 The following, with its grotesque sketches, 
 is addressed also 
 
 TO BERNARD BARTON. 
 
 " Decern brr 1st, 1824. 
 
 "Dear B. B.,— If Mr. Mitf..rd will send 
 me a full and circumstantial descrijttion of 
 his desired vases, I will transmit the same 
 to a gentleman resident at Canton, whom I 
 think I have interest enough in to take the 
 projier care for their execution. But Mr. M. 
 must have patience. China is a gi-eat way 
 off, further perhaps than he thinks ; and his 
 next year's roses must be content to wither 
 in a Wedgwood pot. Ho will jjloase to say 
 whether he should like his Arms upon them, 
 &c, I send herewith some j)attern8 wliieli 
 
LETTER TO MISS HUTCHINSON. 
 
 256 
 
 suggest themselves to me at the first blush 
 of the subject, but he will probably consult 
 his own taste after all. 
 
 The last pattern is obviously fitted for 
 ranunculuses only. The two former may 
 indifferently hold daisies, marjoram, sweet 
 Williams, and that sort. My friend in Canton 
 is Inspector of Teas, his name is Ball ; and I 
 can think of no better tunnel. I shall expect 
 Mr. M.'s decision. 
 
 " Taylor and Hessey finding their maga- 
 zine goes off very heavily at 2s. 6d. are pru- 
 dently going to raise their price another 
 shilling ; and having already more authors 
 than they want, intend to increase the 
 number of them. If they set up against the 
 New Monthly, they must change tlieir pre- 
 sent hands. It is not tying the dead carcase 
 of a Eeview to a half-dead Magazine will do 
 their business. It is like G. D. multiplying 
 his volumes to make 'em sell better. When 
 he finds one will not go off, he publishes two ; 
 two stick, he tries three ; three hang fire, he 
 is confident that four will have a better 
 chance. C. L." 
 
 The following letter to Miss Hutchinson, 
 at Torquay, refers to some of Lamb's later 
 articles, published in the "London Magazine," 
 which, in extending its size and pretensions 
 to a three-and-sixpenny miscellany, had lost 
 much of its spirit. He exults, however, in 
 his veracious " Memoir of Liston ! " 
 
 TO MISS HUTCHINSON. 
 
 " The brevity of this is owing to scratching 
 it off at my desk amid expected interruptions. 
 By habit, I can write letters only at olHce. 
 
 " January 20th, 1825. 
 
 " Dear Miss H., — Thank you for aj noble 
 goose, which wanted only the massive in- 
 crustation that we used to pick-axe open, 
 about this season, in old Gloster Place. When 
 eliall we eat another goose pie together 'I 
 The pheasant, too, must not be forgotten ; 
 twice sua big, and half as good as a partridge. 
 
 You ask about the editor of the ' London ; ' I 
 know of none. This first specimen is flat and 
 pert enough to justify subscribers who 
 grudge t'otlier shilling. De Quincy's ' Parody' 
 was submitted to him before printed, and 
 had his Probatum* The ' Horns ' is in a 
 poor taste, resembling the most laboured 
 papers in the ' Spectator.' I had signed it 
 ' Jack Horner ' ; but Taylor and Hessey said 
 it would be tlioiight an offensive article, 
 unless T put my known signature to it, and 
 wrung from me my slow consent. But did 
 you read the ' Memoir of Liston ' ? — and did 
 you guess whose it was ? Of all the lies 1 
 ever put off, I value this most. It is from 
 top to toe, every paragi'aph, pure invention, 
 and has passed for gospel ; has been repub- 
 lished in newspapers, and in the penny play- 
 bills of the night, as an authentic account. 
 I shall certainly go to the naughty man some 
 day for my fibbings. In the next number I 
 figure as a theologian ! and have attacked 
 my late bi'ethren, the Unitarians. What 
 Jack Pudding tricks I shall play next, I 
 know not ; I am almost at the end of my 
 tether. Coleridge is quite blooming, but his 
 book has not budded yet. I hope I have 
 spelt Torquay right now, and that this will 
 find you all mending, and looking forward to 
 a London flight with the Spring. Winter, we 
 have had none, but plenty of foul weather. 
 I have lately picked uj) an epigram which 
 pleased me — 
 
 " ' Two noble earls, whom if I quote. 
 Some folks might call me sinner, 
 The one invented half a coat, 
 The other half a dinner. 
 
 The plan was good, as some will say, 
 
 And iitted to console one ; 
 Because, in this poor starving; day, 
 
 Few can afl'ord a whole one.' 
 
 " I have made the lame one still lamer by 
 imperfect memory ; but spite of bald diction, 
 a little done to it might improve it into a 
 good one. You have nothing else to do at 
 Torquay. Suppose you try it. Well, God 
 bless you all, as wishes Mary most sincerely, 
 with many thanks for letter, &c. Elia." 
 
 • Mr. de Quincy had commenced a series of letters in 
 the "London Magazine," "To a Yoimg Man whoso 
 education has been neglected," as a vehicle for conveying 
 miscellaneous information in his admirable style. Upon 
 this hint Lamb, with the assent which Mr. de Quincy 
 could well afford to give, contributed a parody on the 
 echcme, in "A Letter to an Old Gentleman whoae 
 education has been neglected." 
 
256 
 
 LETTERS TO MANNING AND WORDSWORTH. 
 
 The first dawning hope of Lamb's emanci- 
 pation from the India House is suggested in 
 the following note to Manning, proposing a 
 visit, in which he refers to a certificate of 
 non-capacity for hard desk-work, given by a 
 medical friend. 
 
 TO MR. MANNING. 
 
 "My dear M. — You might have come 
 inopportunely a week since, when we had an 
 inmate. At present and for as long as ever 
 you like, our castle is at your service. I 
 
 saw T yesternight, who haa done for me 
 
 what may 
 
 * To all my nights and days to come, 
 
 Give solely sovran sway and masterdom.' 
 
 But I dare not hope, for fear of disappoint- 
 ment. I cannot be more explicit at present. 
 But I have it under his own hand, that I am 
 OTOTi-capacitated, (I cannot write it in-) for 
 business. O joyous imbecility ! Not a 
 susurration of this to anybody ! 
 
 " Mary's love. C. Lamb." 
 
 The dream was realised — in April 1825, 
 the " world-wearied clerk " went home for 
 ever — with what delight has been told in 
 the elaborate raptures of his " Superannuated 
 Man," and in the letters already published. 
 The following may be now added to these, 
 illucidative of his too brief raptures. 
 
 TO MR. WOTIDSWORTH. 
 
 " Dear W. — I write post-haste to ensure 
 a frank. Thanks for your hearty congratu- 
 lations ! I may now date from the sixth 
 ■week of my ' Hegira, or Flight from Leaden- 
 hall.' I have lived so much in it, that a 
 summer seems already past ; and 'tis but 
 early May yet with you and other people. 
 How I look down on the slaves and drudges 
 of the world ! Its inhabitants are a vast 
 cotton-web of spin-spin-spinners ! the 
 carking cares ! O the money-grubbers ! 
 Sempiternal muckworms ! 
 
 "Your Virgil I have lost sight of, but 
 suspect it is in the hands of Sir (>. Beaiunont ; 
 I think that circumstance made me shy of 
 procuring it before. Will you write to him 
 about it ? — and your commands shall be 
 obeyed to a tittle. 
 
 "Coleridge has just finished his prize 
 
 Essay, by which, if it get the prize, he'U 
 touch an additional 100^. I fancy. His 
 book, too, (' Commentary on Bishop Leigh- 
 ton,') is quite finished, and "penei Taylor and 
 Hessey. 
 
 " In the ' London ' which is just out 
 (1st May,) are two papers entitled the 
 * Superannuated Man,' which I wish you to 
 see ; and also, 1st April, a little thing called 
 
 ' Barbara S ,' a story gleaned from IMiss 
 
 Kelly. The L. M., if you can get it, will 
 save my enlargement upon the topic of my 
 manumission. 
 
 "I must scribble to make up my hiatus 
 crumenoe ; for there are so many ways, pious 
 and profligate, of getting rid of money in this 
 vast city and suburbs, that I shall miss my 
 THIRDS. But couragio ! I despair not. Your 
 kind hint of the cottage was well thrown out ; 
 an anchorage for aqe and school of economy, 
 ■when necessity comes ; but without this 
 latter, I have an unconquerable terror of 
 changing place. It does not agree with us. 
 I say it from conviction ; else I do sometimes 
 ruralise in fancy. 
 
 "Some d — d people are come in, and I 
 must finish abruptly. By d — d, I only mean 
 deuced. 'Tis these suitors of Penelope that 
 make it necessaiy to authorise a little for 
 gin and mutton, and such trifles. 
 
 " Excuse my abortive scribble. 
 
 " Yours, not in more haste than heart, 
 
 " C. L. 
 
 "Love and recollects to all the Wms., 
 Doras, JNIaries round your Wrekin. 
 
 " Mary is capitally well. Do write to Sir 
 G. B., for I am shyish of applying to him." 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 LETTEUS OF I.AMb's LAST VKARS. 
 
 [1825 to 183-1.] 
 
 How imperfectly the emancipation, so 
 r.-ipturously hailed, fulfilled its promises ; 
 how Lamb left Isslington for Enfield, and 
 there, after a while, subsided into a lodger ; 
 and how, at last, he settled at Edmonton to 
 die, sufliciently apjiear in the former series of 
 his letters. Those which occupy this chapter, 
 scattered tlirough nine yciu-a, have either 
 
been subsequently communicated by tlie 
 kindness of the possessors, or were omitted 
 for some personal reason which has lost its 
 force in time. The following, addressed in 
 1829 to the Editor, on occasion of his giving 
 to a child the name of " Charles Lamb," 
 though withheld from an indisposition to 
 intrude matters so personal to himself on the 
 reader, may now, on his taking farewell of 
 the subject, find its place. 
 
 TO MR. TALFOITRD. 
 
 " Dear Talfourd, — You could not have ' 
 told me of a more friendly thing than you j 
 have been doing. I am proud of my name- | 
 sake. I shall take care never to do any 
 dii-ty action, pick pockets, or anyhow get 
 myself hanged, for fear of reflecting ignominy 
 u])on your young Chrisom. I have now a ! 
 motive to be good. I shall not omnis 
 moriar ; — my name borne down the black j 
 gulf of oblivion. ! 
 
 " I shall survive in eleven letters, five 
 more than Caesar. Possible' I shall come to [ 
 be knighted, or more ! Sir C. L. Talfourd, ' 
 Bart. ! | 
 
 "Yet hath it an authorish twann with it, ' 
 which will wear out with my name for i 
 poetry. Give him a smile from me till I see i 
 him. If you do not drop down before, some I 
 day in the tceek after Tiext I will come and I 
 take one night's lodging with you, if con- ; 
 venient, before you go hence. You shall ■ 
 name it. We are in town to-morrow speciaU | 
 gratid, but by no arrangement can get up ' 
 near you. 
 
 " Believe us both, with greatest regards, 
 yours and Mrs. Talfourd's. 
 
 " Charles Lamb-Philo-Talfourd. 
 " I come as near it as I can." * 
 
 • The child who bore the name so honoured by his 
 parents, survived his god-father only a year — dying at 
 Brighton, whither he had been taken in the vain hope 
 of restoration, on the 3rd December, 1835. Will tlie 
 reader forgive the weakness which prompts the desire, in 
 this place, to link their memories together, by insojting 
 a few verses which, having been only published at the 
 end of the last smaU edition of the Editor's dramas, may 
 have missed some of the friendly eyes for which they 
 were written 1 
 
 Our gentle Charles has pass'd away 
 
 From earth's short bondage free, 
 And left to us its leaden day 
 
 And mist-eushroiidcu sea. 
 
 The following eight Letters, evoked by 
 Lamb's excellent and indefatigable corres- 
 pondent. Barton, speak for themselves : — ■ 
 
 TO BERNARD BARTON. 
 
 "July 2nd, 1825. 
 
 " My dear B. B., — My nervous attack has 
 so unfitted me that I have not courage to sit 
 down to a letter. My poor pittance in the 
 * London ' you will see is di'awn from my 
 sickness. Your book is very acceptable to 
 me, because most of it is new to me ; but 
 your book itself we cannot thank you for 
 more sincerely than for the introduction you 
 favoui-ed us with to Anne Knight. Now 
 cannot I write Mrs. Anne Knight for the 
 
 life of me. She is a very pleas , but I 
 
 won't write all we have said of her so often 
 to ourselves, because I suspect you would 
 read it to her. Only give my sister's and 
 my kindest remembrances to her, and how 
 
 Here, by the ocean's terraced side. 
 Sweet hours of hope were known. 
 
 When first the triumph of its tide 
 Seem'd omen of our own. 
 
 That eager joy the sea-breeze gave. 
 
 When first it raised his hair. 
 Sunk with each day's retiring wave, 
 
 Beyond the reach of prayer. 
 
 The sun-blink that through drizzling mist, 
 
 To flickering hope akin, 
 Lone wares with feeble fondness kiss'd, 
 
 No smile as faint can win ; 
 
 Yet not in vain with radiance weak 
 The heavenly stranger gleams — 
 
 Not of the world it lights to speak. 
 But that from whence it streams. 
 
 That world our patient sufTercr sought, 
 
 Serene with pitying eyes. 
 As if his mounting spirit caught 
 
 The wisdom of the skies. 
 
 With boundless love it look'd abroad 
 For one bright moment given, 
 
 Shone with a loveliness that awed, 
 And quiver'd into Heaven. 
 
 A year made slow by care and toil 
 
 Has paced its weary round. 
 Since Death cnrich'd with kindred spoil 
 
 The snow-clad, frost-ribb'd ground. 
 
 Then Lamb, with whose endearing name 
 
 Our boy m'c proudly graced. 
 Shrank from the warmth of sweeter fame 
 
 Than ever bard embraced. 
 
 Still 'twas a mournful joy to think 
 
 Our darling might supply. 
 For years to us, a living link 
 
 With name that cannot die. 
 
 And though such fancy gleam no more 
 
 On earthly sorrow's night. 
 Truth's nobler torch unveils the shore 
 
 Wliich lends to both its light. 
 
258 
 
 LETTER TO BARTON. 
 
 glad we are we can say tliat word. If ever 
 she come to Southwark again, I count upon 
 another pleasant Bridge walk with her. 
 Tell her, I got home, time for a rubber ; but 
 poor Tryphena will not undei*stand that 
 phrase of the worldlings. 
 
 " I am hardly able to appreciate your 
 volume now ; but 1 liked the dedication 
 much, and the apology for your bald burying 
 grounds. To Shelley, but that is not new. 
 To the young vesper-singer, Great Bealings, 
 Playford, and what not ? 
 
 " If there be a cavil, it is that the topics 
 of religious consolation, however beautiful, 
 are relocated till a sort of triteness attends 
 them. It seems as if you were for ever 
 losing friends' children by death, and re- 
 minding their parents of the Resurrection. 
 Do children die so often, and so good in 
 your parts ? The topic taken from the con- 
 sideration that they are snatched away from 
 possible vanities, seems hardly sound ; for to 
 an Omniscient eye their conditional failings 
 must be one with their actual ; but I am too 
 unwell for theology. 
 
 " Such as I am, 
 " I am yours and A. K.'s truly, 
 "C.Lamb." 
 
 to bernard barton. 
 
 "August 10th, 1825. 
 
 " We shall be soon again at Colebrook. 
 
 " Dear B. B., — You must excuse my not 
 writing before, when I tell you we are on a 
 visit at Enfield, Avhere I do not feel it natural 
 to sit down to a letter. It is at all times an 
 exertion. I had rather talk with you, and 
 Anne Knight, quietly at Colebrook Lodge, 
 over the matter of your last. You mistake 
 
 The nursling tlicre that hand may take, 
 
 None ever grasp'd in vain, 
 And smiles of well-known sweetness wake, 
 
 Without their tinge of pain. 
 
 Though, 'twixt the child and child-like bard 
 
 Late sccm'd distinction wide, 
 They now may trace, in Heaven's regard. 
 
 How near they were allied. 
 
 Within the infant's ample brow 
 
 Blytho fancies lay unfurl'd, 
 Which all uncrush'd may open now 
 
 To charm a sinless world. 
 
 Though the soft t.\Ax\\, of those eyes 
 Might ne'er with Lamh's conipcto-^ 
 
 Ne'er sparkle with a wit as wise, 
 Or melt in tears, as sweet, 
 
 me when you express misgivings about my 
 relishing a series of scriptural poems. I 
 wrote confusedly — what I meant to say w;u9, 
 that one or two consolatory poems on deaths 
 would have liad a more condensed effect than 
 many. Scriptural — devotional topics — admit 
 of infinite variety. So far from poetry tiring 
 me because religious, I can read, and I say 
 it seriously, the homely old version of the 
 Psalms in our Prayer-books for an hour or 
 two together sometimes without sense of 
 weariness. 
 
 " I did not express myself clearly about 
 what I thiuk a false topic insisted on so 
 frequently in consolatory addresses on the 
 death of infants. I know something like it 
 is in Scripture, but I think humanly spoken. 
 It is a natural thought, a sweet fallacy to 
 the survivors — but still a fixllacy. If it stands 
 on the doctrine of this being a jirobationary 
 state, it is liable to this dilemma. Omni- 
 science, to whom possibility must be clear as 
 act, must know of the child, what it would 
 hereafter turn out : if good, then the topic 
 is false to say it is secured from falling into 
 future wilfulness, vice, &c. If bad, I do not 
 see how its exemption from certain future 
 overt acts, by being snatched away at all 
 tells in its favour. You stop the arm of a 
 murderer, or arrest the finger of a pickpurse, 
 but is not the guilt incurred as much by the 
 intent as if never so much acted. Why 
 children are hurried off, and old reprobates 
 of a hundred left, whose trial humanly wo 
 may think was complete at fifty, is among 
 the obscurities of providence. The very 
 notion of a state of probation has darkness 
 in it. The AU-knower has no need of satis- 
 fying his eyes by seeing what we will do, 
 when he knows before what we will do. 
 
 The nurseling's unforgottcn look 
 
 A kindred love reveals, 
 With his who never friend forsook, 
 
 Or hurt a thing that feels. 
 
 In thought profound, in wildest glee, 
 In sorrow's lengthening range, 
 
 His guileless soul of infancy 
 Kndured no spot or change. 
 
 From traits of each our lovo receive* 
 
 For comfort nobler scope ; 
 While light which child-like genius leavct 
 
 Confirms the infant's hope : 
 
 And in that hope with sweetness fraught 
 
 Be aching hearts beguiled, 
 To blend in one delighthil thought 
 
 The I'oel and the Child I 
 
Methinks we might be condemned before 
 coniinission. In these things we grope and 
 flounder, and if we can ])ick up a little human 
 comfort that the child taken is suatch'd from 
 vice (no great compliment to it, by the by) 
 let us take it. And as to where an iintried 
 child goes, whether to join the assembly of 
 its elders who have borne the heat of the day 
 — fire-purified martyrs, and torment-sifted 
 confessors — what know we ? We promise 
 heaven, methinks, too cheaply, and assign 
 large revenues to minors, incompetent to 
 manage tliem. Epitaphs run upon this topic 
 of consolation, till the very frequency induces 
 a cheapness. Tickets for admission into 
 Paradise are sculptured out at a penny a 
 letter, twopence a syllable, &c. It is all a 
 mystery, and the more I try to express my 
 meaning (having none that is clear), the 
 more I flounder. Finally, write what your 
 own conscience, which to you is the unerring 
 judge, deems beat, and be careless about the 
 whimsies of such a half-baked notionist as I 
 am. "We are here in a most pleasant country, 
 full of walks, and idle to our hearts' desire. 
 Taylor has dropt the ' London.' It was indeed 
 a dead weight. It has got in the Slough of 
 Despond. I shuffle off my part of the pack, 
 and stand like Christian with light and 
 merry shoulders. It had got silly, indecorous, 
 pert, and everything that is bad. Both our 
 kind remembrances to Mrs. K. and yourself, 
 and strangers'-greeting to Lucy — is it Lucy 
 or Ruth ? — that gathers wise sayings in a 
 Book. C. Lamb." 
 
 TO BERNARD BARTON. 
 
 •1826. 
 
 For I just make ends meet. We will wait 
 the arrival of the trinkets, and to ascertain 
 their full expense, and then bring in the bill, 
 
 "Colburn hud something of mine in last 
 month, which he has had in hand these seven 
 months, and had lost, or couldn't find room 
 for : I was used to different treatment in the 
 ' London,' and have forsworn periodicals. I 
 am going thro' a coui-se of reading at the 
 Museum : the Garrick plays, out of part of 
 which I have formed my specimens. 1 have 
 two thou.sand to go thro'; and in a few weeks 
 have despatched the tythe of 'em. It is a 
 sort of office to me ; hours, ten to four, the 
 same. It does me good. Man must have 
 regular occupation, that has been used to it. 
 
 " Will you pardon my neglect ? Mind, 
 again I say, don't show this to M. ; let me 
 wait a little longer to know the event of his 
 luxuries. Heaven send him his jars 
 uucrack'd, and me my . 
 
 " Yours, with kindest wishes to your 
 daughter and fiiend, in which Mary joins, 
 
 "C. L." 
 
 TO BERNARD BARTON. 
 
 1826. 
 
 "Dear B. B., — I don't know why I have 
 delay'd so long writing. 'Twas a fault. The 
 under current of excuse to my mind was that ' 
 I had heard of the vessel in which Mitford's 
 jars were to come ; that it had been obliged 
 to put into Batavia to refit (which accounts ; 
 for its delay), but was daily expected. Days ' 
 are past, and it comes not, and the mermaids 
 may be drinking their tea out of his china 
 for aught I know ; but let's hope m^t. In 
 the meantime I have paid 28/., &c. for the 
 freight and prime cost. But do not mention 
 it. I was enabled to do it by a receipt of 
 30/. from Colburn, with whom, however, I 
 have done. I should else have run short. 
 
 "Dear B. B., — The Bust/ Bee, as Hood after 
 Dr. Watts apostrophises thee, and well dost 
 thou deserve it for thy labours in the IMuses' 
 gardens, wandei'ing over parterres of Think- 
 on-mes and Forget-me-nots, to a total 
 impossibility of forgetting thee, — thy letter 
 was acceptable, thy scruples may be dis- 
 missed, thou art rectus in curia, not a word 
 more to be said, verhum sapienti, and so forth, 
 the matter is decided with a white stone, 
 classically, mark me, and the apparitions 
 vanish'd which haunted me, only tiie cramp, 
 Caliban's distemper, clawing me in the 
 calvish part of my nature, makes me ever 
 and anon roar buUishly, squeak cowardishly, 
 and limp cri]>ple-ishly. Do I write quakerly 
 and simply, 'tis my most Master Mathews' 
 like intention to do it. See Ben Jonson. — I 
 think you told me your acquaintance with 
 the Drama was confin'd to Shakspeare and 
 Miss Baillie : some read only !Milton and 
 C'roly, The gap is as from an ananas to a 
 turnip, I have fighting in my head the plots, 
 characters, situations, and sentiments of 400 
 old plays (bran new to me) which I have 
 been digesting at the ^Museum, ami my 
 
appetite sharpens to twice as many more, 
 \N'hich I mean to course over this winter. I 
 can scarce avoid dialogue fashion in this 
 letter, I soliloquise my meditations, and 
 habitually speak dramatic blank verse with- 
 out meaning it. Do you see Mitfoi-d 1 He 
 will tell you something of my labours. Tell 
 him I am sorry to have missed seeing him, 
 to have talked over those old Trea-sures. I 
 am still more sorry for his missing Pots. 
 But I shall be sure of the earliest intelligence 
 of the Lost Tribes. His Sacred Specimens 
 are a thankful addition to my shelves. 
 Marry, I could wish he had been more 
 careful of corrigenda. T have discover'd 
 certain which have slipt his errata. I put 
 'em in the next page, as perhaps thou canst 
 transmit them to him. For what purpose, 
 but to grieve him (which yet I should be 
 sorry to do), but then it shows my learning, 
 and the excuse is complimentary, as it 
 implies their correction in a future edition. 
 His own things in the book are magnificent, 
 and as an old Christ's Hospitaller I was 
 particularly refresh'd with his eulogy on our 
 Edward. Many of the choice excerpta were 
 new to me. Old Christmas is a coming, to 
 the confusion of Puritans, Muggletoniaus, 
 Anabaptists, Quakers, and that unwassailing 
 crew. He cometh not with his wonted gait, 
 he is shrunk nine inches in his girth, but is 
 yet a lusty fellow. Hood's book is mighty 
 clever, and went off GOO copies the first day. 
 Sion's Songs do not disperse so quickly. The 
 next leaf is for Rev. J. M. In this adieu, 
 thine briefly, in a tall friendship, 
 
 " 0. Lamb." 
 
 TO BERNARD BARTON. 
 
 "June 11, 1827. 
 
 " Dear B. B., — Martin's ' Belshazzar ' (the 
 picture) I have seen. Its architectural effect 
 is stupendous, but the human figures, the 
 squalling contorted little antics that are 
 playing at being frightened, like children at 
 a sliam ghost, wlio half know it to be a ma.sk, 
 are detestable. Then the letters are nothing 
 more than a transparency lighted np, such 
 as a Lord might order to be lit up on a 
 sudden at a Christmas gambol, to scare the 
 hidies. The ti/pe is aa plain as Baskerville's 
 — they should have been dim, full of mystery, 
 letters to the mind rather than the eye. 
 
 " Eembrandt has painted only Belshazzar 
 and a courtier or two, (taking a part of the 
 banquet for the whole) not fribbled out a 
 mob of fine folks. Then every thing is so 
 distinct, to the very necklaces, and that 
 foolish little prophet. "Wliat 07ie point is 
 there of interest ? Tl\e ideal of such a 
 subject is, that you the spectator should see 
 nothing but what at the time you would 
 have seen, — the hand, and the King, — not to 
 be at leisure to make tailor-remarks on the 
 dresses, or. Dr. Kitchener-like, to examine 
 the good things at table. 
 
 "Just such a confused piece is his 'Joshua,' 
 frittered into ^ thousand fragments, little 
 armies here, little armies there — you should 
 see only the Sun and Joshtia. If I remember, 
 he has not left out that luminary entirely, 
 but for Joshua, I was ten minutes a finding 
 him out. Still he is showy in all that is not 
 the human figure or the preternatural 
 interest : but the first are below a drawing 
 school girl's attainment, and the last is a 
 phantasmagoric trick, — ' Now you shall see 
 what you shall see, dare is Balshazar and 
 dare is Daniel.' 
 
 " You have my thoughts of M., and so adieu ! 
 
 " C. L.VMB." 
 
 TO BERNARD BARTON. 
 
 1827. 
 
 " My dear B. B., — You will understand 
 my silence when I tell you that my sister, on 
 the very eve of entering into a new house we 
 have taken at Enfield, was surprised with 
 an attack of one of her sad long illnesses, 
 which deprive me of her society, though not 
 of her domestication, for eight or nine weeks 
 together. I see her, but it does her no good. 
 But for this, we have the snuggest, most 
 comfortable house, with every thing most 
 compact and desirable. Colehrook is a 
 wilderness. The books, prints, &c., are come 
 here, and the New River came down with 
 us. The familiar prints, the bust, the Milton, 
 seem scarce to have changed their rooms. 
 One of her last observations was ' how 
 frightfully like this room is to our room in 
 Islington' — our up-stairs room, she meant. 
 How I hope you will come some better daj', 
 and judge of it ! Wo have tried quiet hero 
 for four months, and I will answer for the 
 comfort of it enduring. 
 
LETTERS TO BARTON. 
 
 2C1 
 
 " On emptying my bookshelves I found an 
 XTlysses, wliich I will send to A. K. when 
 I go to town, foi" her accejjtance — unless the 
 book be out of print. One likes to have one 
 copy of every tiling one does. I neglected 
 to keep one of 'Poetry for Children,' the 
 johit pi-oduction of Mary and me, and it is 
 not to be had for love or money. It had in 
 tlie title page 'by the Author of Mrs. Lester's 
 School.' Know you any one that has it, and 
 would exchange it ? 
 
 "Strolling to Waltham Cross the other 
 day, I hit off these lines. It is one of the 
 Crosses which Edward I. caused to be built 
 for his wife at every town where her corpse 
 rested between Northaiaptonshire and 
 London. 
 
 " A stately cross each sad spot doth attest, 
 AVhercat the corpse of Eleanor did rest, 
 From llerdby fetch'd — her spoiise so honour'd her — • 
 To sleep with royal dust at Westminster. 
 And, if less pompous obsequies were thine, 
 Duke Brunswick's daughter, princely Caroline, 
 Grudge not, great ghost, nor count thy funeral losses : 
 Thou in thy life-time had'st thy share of crosses, 
 
 " My dear B. B. 
 
 "My head aches with this little excursion. 
 "Pray accept two sides for three for once, 
 "And believe me 
 
 " Yours sadly, 
 
 "C. L." 
 
 " Chase Side, Enfield." 
 
 TO BERNARD BARTON. 
 
 "1827. 
 
 "My dear B., — We are all pretty well 
 again and comfoi'table, and I take a first 
 o])i)ortunity of sending the Adventures of 
 Llysses, hoping that among us — Homer, 
 Chapman, aud Co. — we shall afford you some 
 pleasure. I fear it is out of print ; if not, 
 A. K. will accept it, with widlies it were 
 bigger ; if another copy is not to be had, it 
 reverts to me and my heirs for ever. With 
 it I send a trumpery book ; to which, v/ithout 
 my knowledge, the editor of the Bijoux has 
 contributed Lucy's verses ; I am fisham'd to 
 ask her acceptance of the trash accompanying 
 it. Adieu to Albums — for a great while — I 
 said when I came here, and had not been 
 fixed for two days, but my landlord's daughter 
 (not at the Pot house) requested me to write 
 in her female friends', and in her own ; if 
 I fio to , thou art there also, O all 
 
 pervading Album ! All over the Leeward 
 Islands, in Newfoundland, aud the Back 
 Settlements, I understand there is no otlier 
 reading. They haunt me. I die of Albo- 
 phobia ! C. L." 
 
 TO BERNARD BARTON. 
 
 '1827. 
 
 " My dear L. B., — A gentleman I never 
 saw before brought me your welcome present 
 — imagine a scraping, fiddling, fidgetting, 
 petit-maitre of a dancing school advancing 
 into my plain parlour with a coupee and a 
 sideling bow, and presenting the book as if 
 he had been handing a glass of lemonade to 
 a young miss — imagine this, and contrast it 
 with the serious nature of the book pre- 
 sented ! Then task your imagination, resei-v- 
 ing this picture, to conceive of quite an 
 opposite messenger, a lean, strait-locked, 
 whey-faced Methodist, for such was he in 
 reality who brought it, the Genius (it seems) 
 of the Wesleyau Magazine. Certes, friend 
 B., thy Widow's Tale is too horrible, spite of 
 the lenitives of Keliglon, to embody in verse ; 
 I hold prose to be the appi-opriate expositor 
 of such atrocities ! No offence, but it is a 
 cordial that makes the heart sick. Still thy 
 skill in compounding it I do not deny. I turn 
 to what gave me less mingled pleasure. I find 
 mark'd with pencil these pages in thy pretty 
 book, and fear I have been penurious. 
 
 « Page 52, 53— Capital. 
 
 „ 59 — 6th stanza, exquisite simile. 
 
 „ 61 — 11th stanza, equally good. 
 
 „ 108 — 3rd stanza, I long to see 
 
 Van Balen. 
 „ 111 — A downright good sonnet. 
 
 Dixi. 
 „ 153 — Lines at the bottom. 
 
 So you see, I read, hear, and marky if I don't 
 learn. In short this little volume is no dis- 
 credit to any of your former, and betrays 
 none of the senility you fear about. — Apro})03 
 of Van Balen, an artist who painted me 
 lately, had painted a blackamoor praying, 
 aud not tilling his canvas, stuffed in his little 
 girl aside of blackey, gaping at him unmean- 
 ingly ; and then did'nt know what to call it. 
 Now for a picture to be promoted to the 
 Exhibition (Suffolk Street) as Historical, a 
 
262 
 
 LETTERS TO MOXOK 
 
 subject is requisite. What does me 1 I but 
 christen it the ' Young Catechist ' and fur- 
 bishM it with diaU)gue following, which 
 dubb'd it an Historical Painting. Nothing 
 to a friend at need. 
 
 " WHiile this tawny Ethiop praycth, 
 Paintpr, who is she that stayeth 
 By, -with skin of whitest lustre ; 
 Sunny locks, a shining fluster ; 
 Saint-like seeming to direct him 
 To the Power that must protect him ? 
 Is she of the heav'n-horn Three, 
 Meek Hope, strong Faith, sweet Charity 1 
 Or some Cherub 1 
 
 They you mention 
 Far transcend my weak invention. 
 'Tis a simple Christian child, 
 Missionary young and mild, 
 From her store of script'ral knowledge, 
 (Bible-taught, without a college) 
 AVhich by reading she could gather, 
 Teaches him to say Our Father 
 To the common Parent, w^ho 
 Colour nut respects, nor hue. 
 ^\'hitc and black in him have part, 
 AVho looks not to the skin, but heart. 
 
 When I'd done it, the artist (who had clapt 
 in Miss merely as a fill-space) swore I ex- 
 ]nest his full meaning, and the daniosel 
 l)rldled up into a missionary's vanity. I like ' 
 verses to explain pictures ; seldom pictures 
 to illustrate poems. Your woodcut is a 
 rueful lignum mortis. By the by, is the 
 willow likely to marry again ? 
 
 " I am giving the fruit of my old play 
 reading at the Museum to Hone, who sets 
 forth a portion weekly in the Table Book. 
 Do you see it 1 How is Mitford ?— I '11 just 
 hint that the pitcher, the cord and the bowl 
 are a little too often repeated (passim) in 
 your book, and that in page 17, last line 
 but 4, him is put for /le, but the poor widow 
 I take it had small leisure for grammatical 
 niceties. Don't you see there's he, myself, 
 antl him ; why not both him ? likewise im- 
 perviously is cruelly spelt imperiously. These 
 are trifles, and I honestly like your book and 
 you for giving it, though I really am ashamed 
 of so many presents. I can think of no 
 news, then'fore 1 will end with mine and 
 Mary's kindest remembrances to you and 
 yours, C. L." 
 
 Wliilo Lamb was residing at Enfield, the 
 frien<l8liip wliich, in 1824, he had formed 
 with I\Ii-. Moxon, led to very frequent inter- 
 Cdursc, destined, in alter years, to be rendered 
 
 habitual, by the maniage of his friend with 
 the young lady whom he regarded almost as 
 a daughter. In 1828 Mr. Moxon, at the 
 request of Mr. Hui-st, of the firm of Iluret, 
 Chance, and Co., applied to Lamb to supply 
 an article for the " Keejisake," which he, 
 always disliking the flimsy elegancies of the 
 Annuals — sadly opposed to his own exclusive 
 taste fur old, standard, moth-eaten books — 
 thus declined : — 
 
 TO MR. MOXON. 
 
 " March 19th, 1828. 
 
 " My dear M. — It is my firm determina- 
 tion to have nothing to do with ' Forget-me- 
 Nots ' — pray excuse me as civilly as you can 
 to Mr. Hurst. I will take care to refuse any 
 other ajoplications. The things which Pick- 
 ering has, if to be had again, I have promised 
 absolutely, you know, to poor Hood, from 
 whom I had a melancholy epistle yesterday ; 
 besides that Emma has decided objections 
 to her own and her friend's Album verses 
 being published ; but if she gets over that, 
 they are decidedly Hood's, 
 
 *• Till we meet, farewell. Loves to Dash.* 
 
 " C. L." 
 
 The following introduced Mr. Patniure to 
 Mr. Moxon : — 
 
 TO MR. MOXON. * 
 
 "May 3rd, 1828. 
 
 " Dear M. — My friend Patmore, author of 
 the * Months,' a very pretty publication — 
 of sundry Essays in the ' London,' ' New 
 Monthly,' &c.. wants to dispose of a volume 
 or two of 'Tales.' Perhaps they miglit 
 chance to suit Hurst ; but be that as it may, 
 he will call upon you, nnder favour of my 
 recommendation ; and as he is returning to 
 France, where he lives, if you can do any- 
 thing for him in the Treaty line, to save liini 
 dancing over the Channel every week, I nm 
 sure you will. I said I'd never trouble you 
 again ; but how vain are the resolves of 
 mortal man ! P. is a very hearty friendly 
 good fellow — and was poor John Scott's 
 second, as I will be yours when you want 
 one. May you never be mine .' 
 { " Yours truly, C. L." 
 
 1 " Enfield." 
 
 '• * The great do(r, which wn», ot one Imu-, tin- icn^laiit 
 companion of his long walks. 
 
LETTERS TO BARTON, COLERIDGE, AND OILMAN. 
 
 263 
 
 The following letter exemplifies some of 
 the most remarkable peculiarities of thought 
 and intellectual sentiment which streaked, 
 without darkening, Lamb's evening of life. 
 
 TO BERNARD BARTON. 
 
 "March 25th, 1829. 
 
 " Dear B. B., — I have just come from Town, 
 where I have been to get my bit of quarterly 
 pension. And have brought home, from 
 stalls in Barbican, the old ' Pilgrim's Pro- 
 gress,' with the prints — Vanity Fair, &c. — 
 now scarce. Four shillings. Cheap. And 
 also one of whom I have oft heai'd and had 
 dreams, but never saw in the flesh — that is 
 in sheepskin — ' The whole theologic works 
 of 
 
 Thomas Aquinas ! ' 
 
 My arms ached with lugging it a mile to the 
 stage, but the burden was a pleasure, such as 
 old Auchises was to the shoulders of ^neas 
 — or the Lady to the Lover in old romaace, 
 who having to carry her to the top of a high 
 mountain — the price of obtaining her — 
 clambered with her to the top, and fell dead 
 with fatigue. 
 
 ' O, the glorious old Schoolmen ! ' 
 
 'Iliere must be something in him. Such 
 gx'eat names imply greatness. Who hath 
 seen Michael Angelo's things — of us that 
 never pilgrimaged to Rome — and yet which 
 of us disbelieves his greatness ? How I will 
 revel in his cobwebs and subtleties, till my 
 brain spins ! 
 
 " N.B. I have writ in the old Hamlet — 
 offer it to Mitford in my name, if he have 
 not seen it. 'Tis woefully below our editions 
 of it. But keep it, if you like. 
 
 " I do not mean this to go for a letter, 
 only to apprize you, that the parcel is booked 
 fur you this 25th March, 1829, from the 
 Four Swans, Bishopsgate. With both our 
 loves to Lucy and A. K., 
 
 " Yours ever, C. L." 
 
 The following notes, undated, but of 
 about 1829, were addressed to Coleridge, 
 under the genial care of Mr. Gilman at 
 Highgate : — 
 
 TO MR. COLERIDGE. 
 
 " Dear C. — Your sonnet is capital. The 
 paper ingenious,* only that it split into four 
 parts (besides a side splinter) in the carriage. 
 I have transferred it to the common English 
 paper, manufactured of rags, for better pre- 
 servation. I never knew before how the 
 ' Iliad ' and ' Odyssey ' were written. 'Tis 
 strikingly corroborated by observations on 
 Cats. These domestic animals, put 'em on a 
 rug before the fire, wink their eyes up, and 
 listen to the kettle, and then purr, which is 
 their poetry. 
 
 " On Sunday week we kiss your hands (if 
 they are clean). This next Sunday I have 
 been engaged for some time. 
 
 " With remembrances to your good host 
 and hostess, 
 
 " Yours ever, C. Lamb." 
 
 TO MR. COLERIDGE. 
 
 " My dear Coleridge, — With pain ancT 
 grief, I must entreat you to excuse us on 
 Thursday. My head, though externally 
 correct, has had a severe concussion in my 
 long illness, and the very idea of an engage- 
 ment hanging over for a day or two, forbids 
 my rest, and I get up miserable. I am not 
 well enough for company. I do assure you, 
 no other thing prevents me coming. I expect 
 
 and his brothers this or to-morrow 
 
 evening, and it worries me to death that 
 I am not ostensibly ill enough to put 'em off. 
 I will get better, when I shall hoj^e to see 
 your nephew. He will come again. Mary 
 joins in best love to the Gilmans. Do, 
 I earnestly entreat you, excuse me. I assure 
 you, again, that I am not fit to go out yet. 
 " Yours (though shattered), 
 
 " C. Lamb." 
 
 "Tuesday." 
 
 Tlie next two notelets are addressed to 
 Coleritlge's excellent host, on the occasion 
 of borrowing and retui'uing the works of 
 Fuller :— 
 
 TO MR. OILMAN. 
 
 " Pray trust me with the ' Church His- 
 toiy,' as well as the ' Worthies.' A moon 
 
 • Some gauzy tissue paper on which the sonnet was 
 copied. 
 
shall restore both. Also give me back * Him 
 of Aquinum.' In return you have the light 
 of my countenance* A<lieu. 
 
 . " P.S. A sister also of mine cnmes with it. 
 A son of Nimshi drives her. Their driving 
 will have been furious, impassioned. Pray 
 God tliey have not toppled over the tunnel ! 
 I promise you I fear their steed, bred out of 
 the wind without father, semi-!Melchisedec- ■ 
 ish, hot, phaetontic. From my country 
 lodgings at Enfield. C. L." 
 
 TO MR. OILMAN. 
 
 " Dear Oilman, — Pray do you, or S. T. C, 
 
 immediately write to say you have received 
 
 back the golden works of the deai', fine, silly 
 
 old angel, which I part from, bleeding; and 
 
 to say how the winter has used you all. 
 
 I " It is our intention soon, weatlier per- 
 
 I mitting, to come over for a day at Ilighgate ; 
 
 for beds we will trust to the Gate-House, 
 
 I should you be full : tell me if we may come 
 
 j casually, for in this change of climate, there 
 
 is no naming a day for walking. With best 
 
 loves to Mi-s. Oilman, &c., 
 
 " Yours, mopish but in health, 
 
 " C. Lamb." 
 
 " I shall be uneasy till I hear of Fuller's 
 sale arrival." 
 
 The following two letters, addressed to 
 Mr. H. C. Robinson, when afflicted with 
 rheumatism, are in Lamb's wildest strain of 
 mirth. In the first, he pretends to endure 
 all the pain he believes his friend to be 
 suffering, and attributes it to his own incau- 
 tious habits : in the second he attributes the 
 suffering to his friend In a strain of exagger- 
 ation, probably intended to make the reality 
 more tolerable by comparison :— 
 
 TO MR. 11. C. ROCINSON. 
 
 "April 10th, 1829. 
 " Dear Robinson, — We are afraid you will 
 slip from us from England without again 
 seeing ua. It wouhl be charity to come and 
 see me. I have these three days been laid 
 tip with strong rheumatic pains, in loins, 
 
 • A Hkvtch of Lnmb, l)y an amateur artist. 
 
 back, shoulders. I shriek sometimes from 
 the violence of them. I get scarce any sleep, 
 and the consequence is, I am restless, and 
 want to change sides as I lie, and I cannot 
 turn without vesting on my hands, and so 
 turning all my body all at once, like a log 
 with a lever. While this rainy weather 
 lasts, I have no hope of alleviation. I have 
 tried flannels and embrocation in vain. Ju.st 
 at the hip joint the pangs sometimes are so 
 excruciating, that I cry out. It is as violent 
 as tlie cramp, and far more continuous. I am 
 ashamed to whine about these complaints to 
 you, who can ill enter into them ; but indeed 
 they are sharp. You go about, in rain or 
 fine, at all hours, without discommodity. 
 I e.i\Yy you yotir immunity at a time of life 
 not much removed from my owii. But you 
 owe your exemption to temperance, which it 
 is too late for me to pursue. I, in my life 
 time, have had my good things. Hence my 
 frame is brittle — your's strong as brass. 
 I never knew any ailment you had. You 
 can go out at night in all weathers, sit up all 
 hours. Well, I don't? want to moralise, I 
 only wish to say that if you are inclined to a 
 giime at double-dumby, I would try and 
 bolster up myself in a chair for a rubber or 
 so. My days are tedious, but less so, and 
 less painful, than my nights. May you never 
 know tlie pain and difficulty I have in writing 
 so much ! Mary, who is most kind, joins in 
 the wisih ! C. IjAMB." 
 
 TUE COMPANION LETTER TO THE SAME. 
 (a week afterwards.) 
 
 "I do confess to mischief. It was the 
 subtlest diabolical piece of malice heart ol 
 man has contrived. I have no more rheu- 
 matism than that poker. Kever was freer 
 from all pains and aches. Every joint sotmd, 
 to the tip of the ear from the extremity of 
 the lesser toe. The report of thy torments 
 was blown circuitously here from Bury. I 
 could not resist the jeer. I conceived you 
 writhing, when you sliould just receive my 
 congratulations. How mad you'd be. Well, 
 it is not in my method to inflict pangs. I 
 leave that to Heaven. But in the existing 
 pangs of a friend I have a shore. His dis- 
 quietude crowns my exemption. I imagine 
 you howling, and pace across the room, 
 sliooting out my free arms, legs, &c., / \/j 
 
LETTERS TO BARTON AND WORDSWORTH. 
 
 265 
 
 this way and that way, with an assurance of 
 not kindling a spark of pain from them. I 
 deny that Nature meant us to sympathise 
 with agonies. Those face-contortions, re- 
 tortions, distortions have the merriness of 
 antics. Nature meant them for farce — not 
 so pleasant to the actor, indeed ; but Grimaldi 
 cries when we laugh, and 'tis but one that 
 suffers to make thousands rejoice. 
 
 " You say that shampooing is ineffectual. 
 But, fer se, it is good, to show the introvolu- 
 tions, extravolutions, of which the animal 
 frame is capable — to show what the creature 
 is receptible of, short of dissolution. 
 
 " You are worst of nights, an't you ? You 
 never was rack'd, was you 1 I should like an 
 authentic map of those feelings. 
 
 " You seem to have the flying gout. You 
 can scarcely screw a smile out of 3'our face, 
 can you ? T sit at immunity and sneer ad 
 libitum. 'Tis now the time for you to make 
 good resolutions. I may go on breaking 'em 
 for anything the worse I find myself. Your 
 doctor seems to keep you on the long cure. 
 Precipitate healings are never good. Don't 
 come while you are so bad ; I shan't be able 
 to attend to your throes and the dumby at 
 once. I should like to know how slowly the 
 pain goes off. But don't write, unless the 
 motion will be likely to make your sensibility 
 more exquisite. 
 
 " Your affectionate and truly healthy I 
 friend, C. Lamb. 
 
 " Mary thought a letter from me might 
 amuse you ui your torment." 
 
 The illness of Mr. Barton's daughter drew 
 from Lamb the following expression of 
 kindred loneliness and sorrow : — 
 
 TO BERNARD BARTON. 
 
 " July 3id, 1829. 
 "Dear B. B., — I am very much grieved 
 indeed for the indisposition of poor Lucy. 
 Your letter found me in domestic troubles. 
 My sister is again taken ill, and I am,' obliged 
 to remove her out of the house for many 
 weeks, I fear, before I can hope to have her 
 again. I have been very desolate indeed. 
 My loneliness is a little abated by our young 
 friend Emma having just come here for her 
 holydays, and a schoolfellow of hers that was. 
 
 with her. Still the house is not the same, 
 tho' she is the same. Mary had been pleasing 
 herself with the prospect of seeing her at 
 this time ; and with all tlieir company, the 
 house feels at times a frightftil solitude. May 
 you and I in no very long time have a more 
 cheerful theme to write about, and congratu- 
 late upon a daughter's and a sister's perfect 
 recovery. Do not be long without telling 
 me how Lucy goes on. I have a right to 
 call her by her quaker-name, you know. 
 Emma knows that I am writing to you, and 
 begs to be remembered to you with thank- 
 fulness for your ready contribution. Her 
 album is filling apace. But of her con- 
 tributors one, almost the flower of it, a 
 most amiable young man and late acquaint- 
 ance of mine, has been carried off by con- 
 sumption, on return from one of the Azores 
 islands, to which he went with hopes of 
 mastering the disease, came back improved, 
 went back to a most close and confined 
 counting-house, and relapsed. His name 
 was Dibdin, grandson of the Songster. 
 
 « C. L." 
 
 The following graphic sketch of the happy 
 temperament of one of Lamb's intimate 
 friends, now no more, is contained in a 
 letter to — 
 
 MR. WORDSWORTH. 
 
 " A is well, and in harmony with him- 
 self and the world. J don't know how he, and 
 those of his. constitution, kee}! their nerves 
 so nicely balanced as they do. Or, have 
 they any ? Or, are they made of ^^ack- 
 thread 1 He is proof against weathei', in- 
 gratitude, meat underdone, every weapon of 
 fate. I have just now a jagged end of a 
 tooth pricking against my tongue, which 
 meets it half way, in a wantonness of pro- 
 vocation ; and tliere they go at it, the tongue 
 pricking itself, like the viper against tlie 
 tile, and the tooth galling all the gum inside 
 and out to torture ; tongue and tooth, tooth 
 and tongue, hard at it ; and I to pay the 
 rcckoi'ing, till all my mouth is as hot as 
 brimstone ; and I'd venture the roof of my 
 mouth, that at this moment, at which I 
 conjecture my full-happiness'd friend is pick- 
 ing his crackers, that not one of the double 
 rows of ivory in his privileged mouth has as 
 
2G6 
 
 LETTER TO AYRTON. 
 
 much as a flaw in it, but all perform their 
 functions, and, liaving performed them, 
 expect to be picked, (luxurious steeds !) and 
 rubbed down. I don't think he could be 
 robbed, or have his house sot on fire, or even 
 want money. I have heai-d him expi-ess a 
 similar opinion of his own infallibility. I 
 keep acting here Heautontimorumenos. 
 
 " Have you seen a curious letter in the 
 Morning Chronicle, by C. L.,* the genius of 
 absurdity, respecting Bonaparte's suing out 
 his Habeas Corpus 1 That man is his own 
 moon. He has no need of ascending into 
 that gentle planet for mild inlluences." 
 
 In the spring of the year, Mr. Murray, the 
 eminent publisher, through one of Lamb's 
 oldest and most cherished friends, Mr. 
 Ayrton, proposed that he should undertake 
 a continuation of his Specimens of the Old 
 English Dramatists. The proposal was com- 
 municated by Mr. Ayrton to Lamb, then at 
 Enfield, and then too painfully anxious for 
 the recovery of Miss Isola, who was danger- 
 ously ill in Suffolk to make the arrangement 
 desired. The following is the reply : — 
 
 TO MR. AYRTON. 
 " Mr. Westwood'a, Chase Side, Enfield. 
 " Htli Miirch, 1830. 
 
 " My dear Ayrton, — Your letter, which 
 was only not so pleasant as your appearance 
 would have been, has revived some old 
 images ; PhiUips,t (not the Colonel), with 
 his few hairs bristUng up at the charge of a 
 
 * Caijel Lofft, a barrister residing in Suffolk, a well- 
 known whis: and friend of M;ijor Wyvil and Miijor Cart- 
 wright, wlio sometimo.s lialf vexed Lamb by signing, as 
 he had a riglit, their common initials to a sonnet. He 
 ■wrote a very vehement letter, contending that the deten- 
 tion of Napoleon on board a vessel off the coast, pre- 
 paratory to his being sent to St. Helena, was illegal, and 
 that the captain of tlie vessel would be comiicUed to 
 surrender him in obedience to a writ of Habeas Corpus. 
 
 + Kdward I'liillijjs, Esq., Secretary to the Right Hon. 
 Charles Abbott, Speaker of the Mouse of Commons. The 
 " Colonel" alluded to was the Lieutenant of Marines 
 who accompanied Capt. Cook in his last voyage, and on 
 shore with that great man when he fell a victim to his 
 humanity. On the deatli of liis commander, I-ieiitenant 
 I'hillips, himself wounded, swanj off to the boats ; but 
 eeeing one of his marines struggling in the water to escape 
 the natives who were pursuing him, gallantly swam back, 
 protected his miin at the peril of his own life, and both 
 reached their boat in safety. He afterwards married that 
 accomplbthed and amiable daugliter of Dr. Uurney, whose 
 name so freiiuenlly occurs in the I)i:iry and Correspond- 
 encc of her sister, .Madame U'Arblay. 
 
 revoke, which he declares impossible ; ihe 
 old Captain's significant nod over the right 
 shoulder * (was it not ?) ; Mrs. B 's de- 
 termined questioning of the score, after the 
 game was absolutely gone to the d — 1 ; the 
 plain but hospitable cold boiled-beef suppers 
 at sideboard ; all which fancies, redolent of 
 middle age and strengthful spirits, come 
 across us ever and anon in this vale of 
 deliberate senectitude, ycleped Enfield. 
 
 " You imagine a deep gulf between you 
 and us ; and there is a pitiable hiatus in 
 kind between St. James's Park and this 
 extremity of Middlesex. But the mere dis- 
 tance in turnpike roads is a trifle. The roof 
 of a coach swings you down in an hour or 
 two. We have a sure hot joint on a Sunday, 
 and when had we better ? I suppose you 
 know that ill health has obliged us to give 
 up housekeeping, but we have an asylum at 
 the very next door — only twenty-four inches 
 further from town, which is not material in 
 a country expedition — where a table d'hdte 
 is kept for us, without trouble on our parts, 
 and we adjourn after dinner, when one of 
 the old world (old friends) drops casually 
 down among us. Come and find us out ; 
 and seal our judicious change with your 
 approbation, whenever the whim bites, or 
 the sun prompts. No need of announcement, 
 for we are sure to be at home. 
 
 " I keep putting off' the subject of my 
 answer. In truth I am not in spirits at 
 present to see Mr. Murray on such a business ; 
 but pray offer him my acknowledgments, 
 and an assurance that I should like at least 
 one of his propo.sitions, as I have so 
 much additional matter for the Specimens, 
 as might make two volumes in all ; or 
 ONE (new edition) omitting such better 
 known authors as Beaumont and Fletcher, 
 Jonson, &c. 
 
 " But we are both in trouble at present. 
 A very dear young friend of ours, who jiassed 
 her Christmas holidays here, has been taken 
 dangerously ill with a fever, from which she 
 is very precariously recovering, and I expect 
 a summons to fetch her when she is well 
 enough to bear the journey from Bury. 
 It is Emma Isola, with wiiom wo got 
 acquainted at our lirst visit to your sister, 
 at Cambridge, and she hivs lK>en an occiusioual 
 
 • Captain (afterwards Adniirnll, Jame.i llurney. 
 
LETTERS TO MRS. WILLIAMS AND MRS. HAZLITT. 
 
 267 
 
 inmate with us— and of late years much more 
 frequently — ever since. While she is in this 
 danger, and till she is out of it, and here in 
 a prubable way to recovery, I feel that I 
 have no spirits for an engagement of any 
 kind. It has been a terrible shock to us ; 
 therefore I beg that you will make my 
 handsomest excuses to Mr. Murray. 
 
 " Our very kindest loves to Mrs. A. and the 
 younger A.'s. Your uaforgotten, 
 
 " C. Lamb." 
 
 Good tidings soon reached Lamb of Miss 
 Tsola's health, and he went to Fornham to 
 bring her, for a month's visit, to Enfield. 
 The following are portioiis of letters addressed 
 to the lady from whose care he had removed 
 her, after their arrival at home, other parts 
 of which have been already published. 
 
 TO MRS. WILLIAMS. 
 
 " Enfield, April 2nd, 1830. 
 
 " Dear Madam, — I have great pleasure in 
 letting you know Miss Isola has suflfered 
 verj" little from fatigue on her long journey ; 
 I am ashamed to say that I came home 
 rather the more tired of the two. But I am 
 a very unpractised traveller. We found my 
 sister very well in health, only a little 
 impatient to see her ; and, after a few 
 hysterical tears for gladness, all was comfort- 
 al>le again. We arrived here from Epping 
 between five and six. 
 
 " How I employed myself between Epping 
 and Enfield, the poor verses in the front of 
 my paper may inform you, which you may 
 please to christen an 'Acrostic in a cross- 
 road,' and which I wish were worthier of tlie 
 lady they refer to, but I ti-ust you will plead 
 my pardon to her on a subject so delicate as 
 a lady's good name. Your candour must 
 acknowledge that they are written sti-aight. 
 And now, dear madam, I have left myself 
 hardly space to express my sense of the 
 friendly reception I found at Fornham. 
 Mr. Williams will tell you that we had the 
 pleasure of a slight meeting with him, on the 
 road, where I could almost have told him, 
 but that it seemed ungracious, that such had 
 been your hospitality, that I scarcely missed 
 the good master of the family at Fornham, 
 though heartily I should have rejoiced to 
 have made a little longer acquaintance with. 
 
 him. I will say nothing of our deeper 
 obligations to both of you, because I think 
 we agreed at Fornham that gratitude may 
 be over-exacted on the part of the obliging, 
 and over-expressed on the pai-t of the obliged 
 pei-son. 
 
 " Miss Tsola is wi'iting, and will tell you 
 that we are going on very comfortably. Her 
 sister is just come. She blames my last 
 verses, as being more written on Mr. Williams 
 than on yourself; but how should I have 
 parted whom a Superior Power has brought 
 together? I beg you will jointly accept of 
 all our best respects, and pardon your 
 obsequious if not troublesome correspondent, 
 
 " C. L. 
 
 " P.S. — I am the worst folder-up of a 
 letter in the world, except certain Hottentots, 
 in the land of CaliVe, who never fold up their 
 letters at all, wi-iting very badly upon 
 skins, &c." 
 
 The following contains Lamb's account of 
 the same journey, addressed to Buxton : — • 
 
 TO MRS. HAZLITT. 
 
 " May 24th, 1830. 
 
 " Mary's love ? Yes. Mary Lamb is 
 quite well. 
 
 " Dear Sarah, — I found my way to Nor- 
 thaw on Thursday, and saw a very good 
 woman behind a counter, who says also that 
 you are a very good lady. I did not accept 
 her offered glass of wine (home-made, I take 
 it) but craved a cup of ale, with which I 
 seasoned a slice of cold lamb, from a sand- 
 wich box, which I ate in her back i)arlour, 
 and proceeded for Berk ham pstead, &c. ; lost 
 myself over a heath, and had a day's plea- 
 sure. I wish you could walk as I do, and 
 as you used to do. I am sorry to find you 
 are so poorly ; and, now I have found my 
 way, I wish you back at Goody Tomlinson's. 
 What a pretty village 'tis. I should have 
 come sooner, but wtis waiting a summons to 
 Bury. Well, it came, and I found the good 
 pai-son's lady (he was from home) exceedingly 
 hospitable. 
 
 " Poor Emma, the first moment we were 
 alone, took me into a comer, and said, ' Now, 
 
268 
 
 LETTER TO MOXON. 
 
 pray, don't drink; do check yourself after 
 dinner, for my sake, and when we get home 
 to Enfield, you shall drink as much as ever 
 you please, and I won't say a word about it.' 
 How I behaved, you may guess, when I tell 
 you that ]Mrs. Williams and I have written 
 acrostics on each other, and she hoped that 
 she should have * no reason to regret Miss 
 Isola's recovery, by its depriving her of our 
 begun correspondence.' Emma stayed a 
 month with us, and has gone back (in toler- 
 able health) to her long home, for she 
 comes not again for a twelvemonth. I 
 amused j\Irs. Williams with an occurrence 
 on our road to Enfield.* We travelled with 
 one of those troublesome fellow-passengers 
 in a stage-coach, that is called a well-informed 
 man. For twenty miles we discoursed about 
 the properties of steam, probabilities of 
 carriages by ditto, till all my science, and 
 more than all, was exhausted, and I was 
 thinking of escaping my torment by getting 
 up on the outside, when, getting into Bishops 
 Stortford, my gentleman, spying some farm- 
 ing land, put an unlucky question to me : 
 ' What sort of a crop of turnips I thought we 
 should have this year ? ' Emma's eyes turned 
 to me, to know what in the world I could 
 have to say ; and she burst into a violent 
 fit of laughter, maugre her pale, serious 
 cheeks, when, with the greatest gravity, I 
 replied, that ' it depended, I believed, upon 
 boiled legs of mutton.' This clenclied our 
 conversation, and my gentleman, with a foce 
 half wise, half in scorn, troubled us with no 
 more conversation, scientific or philosophical, 
 
 for the remainder of the journey. S 
 
 was here yesterday, and as learned to the 
 full as my fellow-traveller. What a pity 
 that he will spuil a wit, and a most pleasant 
 
 fellow (as he is) by wisdom. N. Y t is 
 
 as good, and as odd as ever. We had a 
 dispute about the word 'heir,' which I con- 
 tended was pronounced like 'air;' he said 
 that might be in common parlance ; or that 
 we might so use it, speaking of the ' Ileir-at- 
 Law,' a comedy ; but that in the law courts 
 it w;is necessary to give it a full aspiration, 
 and to say hayer ; he thought it might even 
 vitiate a cause, if a counsel pronounced it 
 
 • This little anecdote was told by I.amb in a Mter 
 previously publi.slicd, but not quite so richly as here. 
 
 t A very old and dear IVicnd of Lamb who had just 
 been culled to the har. 
 
 otherwise. In conclusion, he * would consult 
 Serjeant Wilde,' who gave it against him. 
 Sometimes he falleth into the water ; some- 
 times into -the fire. lie came down here, and 
 insisted on reading Virgil's ' Eneid ' all 
 through with me, (which he did) because a 
 counsel must know Latin. Another time he 
 read out all the Gospel of St. John, because 
 Biblical quotations are very emphatic in a 
 court of justice. A third time, he would 
 carve a fowl, which he did very ill-favouredly, 
 because ' we did not know how indispensable 
 it was for a barrister to do all those sort of 
 things well ? Those little things were of 
 more consequence than we supposed.' So 
 he goes on, harassing about tlie way to 
 prosperity, and losing it. With a long head, 
 but somewhat a v.rong one — harum-scarum. 
 Why does not his guardian angel look to 
 him \ He deserves one : may be, he has 
 tired him out. 
 
 " I am with this long scrawl, but I thought 
 in your exile, you might like a letter. Com- 
 mend me to all the wonders in Derbyshire, 
 and tell the devil I humbly kiss — my hand 
 to him. Yours ever, C. Laiib." 
 
 " Enfield, Saturday." 
 
 The esteem which Lamb had always 
 cherished for Mr. Rogers, was quickened 
 into a livelier feeling by the generous 
 interest which the poet took in the success 
 of Mr. Muxon, who was starting as a pub- 
 lisher. The following little note shows the 
 state of his feelings at this time towai'ds two 
 distinguished persons. 
 
 TO MR. MOXON. 
 
 " Enfield, Tuesday. 
 
 " Dear M., — I dined with your and my 
 Eogors, at Mr. Gary's, yesterday. Gary con- 
 sulted me on the proper bookseller to otier a 
 lady's MS. novel to. I said I would write 
 to yoM. But I wish you wonld call on the 
 translator of Dante, at the British Museum, 
 and talk with him. He is tlie pkvisantest 
 of clergymen. I told him of all llogers's 
 handsome beiiaviour to you, and you aro 
 already no stranger. Go ! I made Rogora 
 laugh about your Nightingale Sonnet, not 
 having heard one. 'Tis a good 8<^)nuet, not- 
 with.standing. You shall have the bonks 
 sh.utly. G. K." 
 
LETTERS TO BARTON AND MOXON, 
 
 269 
 
 The petty criticisms on the small volume 
 of " Album Verses," by which a genial trifle, 
 intended to mark the commencement of the 
 career of a dear friend, was subjected to ab- 
 surd severity, and which called forth a little 
 indignant poem from the Laureate, provoked 
 the following notice from Lamb, in a letter 
 addressed 
 
 TO BERNARD BARTON. 
 
 "August 30th, 1830. 
 
 " Dear B.B., — My address is 34, Southamp- 
 ton Buildings, Holborn. For God's sake do 
 not let me be pestei-'d with Annuals. They 
 are ail rogues who edit them, and something 
 else who write in them. I am still alone, 
 and very much out of sorts, and cannot spur 
 up my mind to writing. The sight of one of 
 those j'ear books makes me. sick. I get no- 
 thing by any of 'em, not even a copy. 
 
 " Thank you for your warm interest about 
 my little volume, for the critics on wliich I 
 care the five hundred thousandth part of tlie 
 tythe of a half-farthing. I am too old a 
 Militant for that. How noble, tho', in E. S.,* 
 to come forward for an old friend, who had 
 treated him so unwortliily. — 
 
 " Moxon has a shop without customers, I 
 a book without readers. But what a clamour 
 against a poor collection of Album verses, as 
 if we had put forth an Epic. I cannot 
 scribble a long letter — I am, when not at 
 foot, very desolate, and take no interest in 
 anything, scarce hate anything, but Annuals. 
 I am in an interregnum of thought and feel- 
 ing. Wliat a beautiful aiitunm morning this 
 is, if it was but with me as in times past 
 when the candle of the Lord shined round 
 me. I cannot even muster enthusiasm to 
 admire the French heroism. In better times 
 I hope we may some day meet, and discuss 
 an old poem or two. But if you'd have me 
 not sick, no more of Annuals. 
 
 " C. fi., Ex-Elia. 
 
 " Love to Lucy and A. K. always." 
 
 In 1830, Lamb tried the experiment of 
 lodging a little while in London ; but Miss 
 Lamb's malady compelled him to return to 
 the solitude of Enfield. He thus communi- 
 cates the sad state of his sister ; — 
 
 • Robert Sou^hey. 
 
 TO MR. MOXON. 
 
 " Dear Moxon, — I have brought my sister 
 to Enfield, being sure that she had no ho])e 
 of recovery in London. Her state of mind ia 
 deplorable beyond any example. I almost 
 fear whether she has strength at her time of 
 life ever to get out of it. Here she must be 
 nursed, and neither see nor hear of anything 
 in the world out of her sick chamber. Tlio 
 mere hearing that Southey had called at our 
 lodgings totally upset her. Pray see him, or 
 hear of him at Mr. Rickman's, and excuse 
 my not writing to him. I dare not write, or 
 receive a letter in her presence ; every little 
 task so agitates her. Westwood will receive 
 any letter for me, and give it me privately. 
 
 " Pray assure Southey of my kindliest 
 feelings towards him, and, if you do not see 
 him, send this to him. 
 
 " Kindest remembrances to your sister, 
 and believe me ever youis, C. Lamb. 
 
 " Eemember me kindly to the Allsops." 
 
 The following curious piece of moderu 
 Latin was addressed 
 
 TO BERNARD B.VRTON. 
 
 " April, 1831. 
 
 " Vir Bone ! — Recepi literas tuas amicis- 
 simas, et in mentem venit responsuro mihi, 
 vel raro, vel nunquam, inter nos intercedisse 
 Latinam linguam, organum rescribendi, 
 loquendive. Epistolse tuse, Plinianis elegantiis 
 (supra quod Tremulo deceat) refertie, tarn a 
 verbis Plinianis adeo abhorrent, ut ne vocera 
 quamquam (Romanam scilicet) habere vide- 
 aris, quam ' ad canem,' ut aiunt, ' rejectare 
 possis.' Forsan desuetudo Latiuissandi ad 
 vernaculani linguam usitandam, plusquam 
 opus sit, coegit. Per adagia qu£edam nota, et 
 in ore omnium pervulgata, ad Latinitatis 
 perdit£E recuperationem revocare te institui. 
 
 " Felis in abaco est, et segre videt. 
 
 " Omne quod splendet nequaquam aurum 
 putes, 
 
 " Imponas equo mendicum, equitabit idem 
 ad diabolum. 
 
 " Fur commodi^ a fure prenditur. 
 
 " O Maria, Maria, valdo contbaria, quo- 
 modo crescit hortulus tuus ? 
 
 " Nunc majora canamus. 
 
 " Thomas, Thomas, de Islington, uxorom 
 
270 
 
 LETTERS TO MOXON. 
 
 duxit die nuperS, DominicS,. Eeduxit doinum 
 poster^. Succedenti baculum emit. Postridie 
 ferit illam. -^grescit ilia subsequenti. 
 ProximS, (nempe Veneris) est mortua. Plu- 
 rinium gestiit Thomas, qudd appropiuquauti 
 Sabbato efferenda sit. 
 
 "Homer quidam Johannulus in angulo 
 sedebat, artocreas quasdam deglutiens. In- 
 seruit poUices, prima nana evelleus, et magnS, 
 voce exclamavit ' Dii boni, quam bonus puer 
 fio!' 
 
 " Diddle-diddle-dumkins ! mens unions 
 fillus Johannes cubitum ivit, integris braccis, 
 caliga un§, tantdm, indutus. Diddle-diddle, 
 &G. Da Capo. 
 
 " Hie adsum saltans Joannula. Cum 
 nemo adsit milii, semper resto sola. 
 
 " Enigma mihi hoc solvas, et CEdipus 
 fies. 
 
 " QuS, ratione assimulandus sit equus 
 Tremulo ? 
 
 " Quippe cui tota communicatio sit per 
 Hay et Neigh, juxta consilium illud Domi- 
 nicum, ' Fiat omnis communicatio vestra Yea 
 et Nay.' 
 
 " In liis nugis caram diem consume, dum 
 invigilo valetudini carioris nostrse Emma;, 
 quae apud nos jamdudum aegrotat. Salvere 
 vos jubet mecum Maria mea, ipsa Integra 
 valetudine. Elia. 
 
 " Ab agro Enfeldiense datum, Aprilis nescio 
 quibus Calendis — Davua sum, uon Caleu- 
 darius. 
 
 " P.S.— Perdita in toto est Billa Refor- 
 matura." 
 
 ]yir. jMoxon, having become the publisher 
 of " The Englishman's Magazine," obtained 
 Lamb's aid, as a couti'ibutor of miscellaneous 
 articles, which were arranged to appear 
 under tlie comprehensive title of "Petei-'s 
 Net." The following accompanied his first 
 coutrihution, in whicii some reminiscences of 
 the lloyal Academy were enshrined, 
 
 TO Mil. MOXON. 
 
 " August, 1831. 
 "Dear M., — The It. A. here memorised was 
 George Dawo, whom I knew well, and heanl 
 many anecdotes of, fi-om Daniels and 
 
 Westall, at H. Rogers's ; to each of them it 
 will be well to send a magazine in my name. 
 It will fly like wildfire among the Royal 
 Academicians and artists. Could you get hold 
 of Procter ? — his chambers are in Lincoln's 
 Iim, at Montague's ; or of Janus Weathercock ? 
 — both of their j^rose is capital. Don't en- 
 courage poetry. Tlie ' Peter's Net ' does not 
 intend funn}' things oidy. All is fish. And 
 leave out the sickening 'Elia 'at the end. 
 Then it may comprise letters and characters, 
 addressed to Peter ; but a signature forces it 
 to be all characteristic of the one man, Elia, 
 or the one man, Peter, which cramped me 
 formerly. I have agreed not for my sister to 
 know the subjects I choose, till the magazine 
 comes out ; so beware of speaking of 'em, or 
 writing about 'era, save generally. Be jiarti- 
 cular about this warning. Can't you drop 
 in some afternoon, and take a bed 1 The 
 ' AthenjBum ' has been hoaxed with some ex- 
 quisite poetry, that was, two or three months 
 ago, in * Hone's Book.' I like your first 
 number capitally. But is not it small ? 
 Come and see us, week-day if possible. 
 
 " Send, or bring me. Hone's number for 
 August. The anecdotes of E. and of G. D. 
 are substantially true ; what does Elia (or 
 Peter) care for dates 1 
 
 " The poem I mean, is in ' Hone's Book,' 
 as far back as April. I do not know who 
 wrote it j but 'tis a poem I envy — that and 
 Montgomery's ' Last Man : ' I envy the 
 winters, because I feel I could have done 
 something like them. C. L." 
 
 The following contains Lamb's character- 
 istic acknowledgment of a payment on ac- 
 comit of these contributions. 
 
 TO MR. MOXON. 
 
 •' Sept. 5th, 1831. 
 " Dear !M., — Your letter's contents pleased 
 me. I am only afraid of taxing you. Yet I 
 want a stimulus, or I think I should drag 
 sadly. I shall keep the moneys in trust, till 
 1 see you fairly over the next 1st January. 
 Then I sliall look upon 'em as earned. No 
 part of your letter gave mo more j)hasure (no, 
 not tlie 10^., tho' you may grin) than that 
 you will revisit old Entiohl, which I hope 
 will be always a pleasant idea to you. 
 
 " Youi-s, very fai<.lil'ully, C L" 
 
LETTER TO MOXON. 
 
 271 
 
 The magazine, although enriched with 
 Lamb's articles, and some others of great 
 merit, did not meet with a success so rapid 
 as to requite the proprietor for the labour 
 and anxiety of its production. The following 
 is Lamb's letter, in reply to one announcing 
 a determination to discontinue its publi- 
 cation : — 
 
 TO MR. MOXON. 
 
 " Oct. 2-lth, 1831. 
 
 " To address an abdicated monarch is a 
 nice point of breeding. To give him his lost 
 titles is to mock him ; to withhold 'era is to 
 wound him. But his minister, who falls with 
 him, may be gracefully sympathetic. I do 
 honestly feel for your diminution of honours, 
 and regret even the pleasing cares which are 
 part and parcel of greatness. Your magna- 
 nimous submission, and the cheerful tone of 
 your renunciation, in a letter, which, without 
 flattery, would have made an ' Article,' and 
 which, rarely as I keep letters, shall be pre- 
 served, comfort me a little. Will it please, 
 or plague you, to say that when your parcel 
 came I cursed it, for my pen was warming 
 in my hand at a ludicrous description of a 
 Landscape of an E,.A., which I calculated 
 upon sending you to-morrow, the last day 
 you gave me ] Now any one calling in, or a 
 letter coming, puts an end to my writing for 
 the day. Little did I think that the mandate 
 had gone out, so destructive to my occupa- 
 pation, so relieving to the apprehensions of 
 the whole body of R.A.'s ; so you see I had 
 not quitted the ship whde a plank was re- 
 maining. 
 
 " To drop metaphoi-s, I am sure you have 
 done wisely. The very spirit of your epistle 
 speaks that you have a weight off your mind. 
 I have one on mine ; the cash in hand, which, 
 
 as less truly says, bvirns in my pocket. 
 
 I feel queer at returning it, (who does not ?) 
 you feel awkward at retaking it, (who ought 
 not ?) — is there no middle way of adjusting 
 this fine embarrassment ? I think I have hit 
 upon a medium to skin the sore place over, 
 if not quite to heal it. You hinted that 
 there might be something under 10^., by and 
 by, accruing to me — DeviVs Money ; * (you 
 are sanguine, say 11. \0s.) ; that I entirely 
 renounce, and abjure all fliture interest in : 
 
 • Alluding to a little extravagance of Lamb's — scarcely 
 ■worth recollecting — in emulation of the "Devil's Walk" 
 of bouthey and Co. 
 
 I insist upon it, and, *by him I will not 
 name,' I won't touch a penny of it. That 
 will split your loss, one half, and leave me 
 conscientious possessor of wliat I hold. Less 
 than your assent to this, no proposal will I 
 accept of. 
 
 " The Rev. Mr. , whose name you have 
 
 left illegible (is it Seagull?) never sent me 
 any book on Christ's Hospital, by which I 
 could dream that I was indebted to him for 
 a dedication. Did G. D. send his penny 
 tract to me, to convert me to Unitarianisni ? 
 Dear, blundering soul ! why I am as old a 
 one Goddite as himself. Or did he think his 
 cheap publication would bring over the 
 Methodists over the way here ? * However, 
 I '11 give it to the pew ojjener, in whom I 
 have a little interest, to hand over to the 
 clerk, whose wife she sometimes drinks tea 
 with, for him to lay befoi-e the deacon, who 
 exchanges the civility of the hat with him, 
 for to transmit to the minister, who shakes 
 hands with him out of chapel, and he, in aU 
 odds, will light his pipe with it. 
 
 " I wish very much to see you. I leave it 
 to you to come how you will ; we shall be 
 very glad (we need not repeat) to see your 
 sister, or sisters, with you ; but for you, 
 indiAddually, I will just hint that a dropping 
 in to tea, tmlooked for, about five, stopping 
 bread-and-cheese and gin-and-water, is worth 
 a thousand Sundays. I am naturally miser- 
 able on a Sunday ; but a week-day evening 
 and supper is like old times. Set out now, 
 and give no time to deliberation. 
 
 " P.S. — The second volume of ' Elia ' is 
 delightful (ly bound, I mean), and quite 
 cheap. Why, man, 'tis a unique ! 
 
 '■ If I write much more 1 shall expand 
 into an article^ which I cannot affoid to let 
 you have so cheap. By the by, to show the 
 perverseness of human will, while I thought 
 I must fui'nish one of those accursed things 
 monthly, it seemed a labour above Hercules' 
 * Twelve ' in a year, which -were evidently 
 monthly contributions. Now I am emanci- 
 pated, I feel as if I had a thousand Essays 
 swelling within me. False feelings both ! 
 
 " Your ex-Lampoonist, or Lamb-punnist, 
 from Enfield, October 24, or ' last day 
 but one for receiving articles that can be 
 inserted.' " 
 
 • Hcfcrring to a chapel opposite his lodging at Enfield. 
 
272 
 
 LETTERS TO MOXON AND TALFOURD. 
 
 The following was addressed soon after, 
 
 TO MR. MOXON. 
 
 " Feb. 1832. 
 
 " Dear Moxon, — Tlie snows are ancle- 
 deep, slush, and mire, that 'tis hard to get to 
 the post-office, aTid cruel to send the maid 
 out. 'Tis a sloncjli of despair, or I should 
 sooner liave thanked you for your offer of 
 the * Life^ which we shall very much like to 
 have, a!)d will retui-n duly. I do not know 
 when I shall be in town, but in a week or 
 two, at farthest, when T will come as far as 
 you, if I can. We are moped to death with 
 confinement within doors. T send you a 
 curiosity of G. Dyer's tender conscience. 
 Between thirty and forty years since, G. 
 published the ' Poet's Fate,' in which were 
 two very harmless lines about Mr. Rogers, 
 but Mr. R, not quite approving of them, they 
 were left out in a subsequent edition, 1801. 
 But G. has been worrying about them ever 
 since ; if I have heard him once, I have 
 heard him a hundred times, express a remorse 
 proportioned to a consciousness of having 
 been guilty of an atrocious libel. As the 
 devil would have it, a man they call Barker, 
 in his * Parriana ' has quoted the identical 
 two lines, as they stood in some obscure 
 edition anterior to 1801, and the withers of 
 poor G. are again wrung. His letter is a 
 gem ; with his poor blind eyes it has been 
 laboured out at six sittings. The histoiy of 
 the couplet is in page 3 of this irregular 
 production, in which every variety of shape 
 and size that letters can be twisted into is 
 to be found. Do show his part of it to Mr. R. 
 some day. If he has bowels, they must 
 melt at the contrition so queerly charactered 
 of a contrite sinner. G. was born, I verily 
 think, without original sin, but chooses to 
 have a conscience, as every Christian gentle- 
 man should liave ; his dear old face is 
 insusceptible of the twist they call a sneer, 
 yet he is apprehensive of being suspected of 
 that ugly ajjpearance. When he makes a 
 compliment, lie thinks he has given an 
 affront — a name is personality. But show 
 (no hurry) this unique recantation to Mr. R. : 
 'tis like a dirty pocket-handkerchief, mucked 
 with tears of some indigent Magrlalen. 
 There is the impress of sincerity in every 
 pot-liook and hanger ; and tlien the gilt 
 frame to such a jjauper picture ! It should 
 go into the Museum. 
 
 " Come when the weather will possibly 
 let you ; I want to see the Wordsworths, but 
 I do not much like to be all night away. It 
 is dull enough to be here together, but it is 
 duller to leave Mary ; in short, it is painful, 
 and in a flying visit I should hardly catch 
 them. I have no beds for them if they came 
 down, and but a sort of a house to receive 
 them in ; yet I shall regret their departure 
 unseen ; I feel cramped and straitened every 
 way. Where are they ? 
 
 "We have heard fx-om Emma but once, 
 and that a month ago, and are very anxious 
 for another letter. 
 
 " You say we have forgot your powers of 
 being serviceable to us. That we never shall ; 
 I do not know what I should do withoiit 
 you when I want a little commission. Now 
 then : there are left at Miss Buffon's, the 
 ' Tales of the Castle,' and certain volumes of 
 the ' Retrospective Review.' The first should 
 be conveyed to Novello's, and the Reviews 
 should be taken to Talfourd's office, ground- 
 floor, east side. Elm Court, Middle Temple, 
 to Avhom I should have written, but my 
 spirits are wretched ; it is quite an effort to 
 write this. So, with the ' Life^ I have cut 
 you out three pieces of service. What can I 
 do for you here, but hope to see you very 
 soon, and think of you with most kindness ? 
 I fear to-morrow, between rains and snows 
 it would be impossible to expect you, but do 
 not let a practicable Sunday pass. We 
 are always at home. 
 
 "Mary joins in remembrances to your 
 sistei', whom we hope to see in any finc-ish 
 weather, when she'll venture. 
 
 " Remember us to Allsop, and all the dead 
 people ; to whom, and to London, we seem 
 dead." 
 
 In Febraary, 1833, the following letter 
 was ad<lressed by Lamb to the editor, on hia 
 being made Serjeant : — 
 
 TO MR. SEPvJEANT TALFOUKD. 
 
 "My dear T., — Now cannot I call him 
 Serjeant ; what is there in a coif ] Tho.se 
 canvas-sleeves protective from ink,* when he 
 Avas a hiw-chit — a Chitti/\u\g, (let the leathern 
 
 • Mr. Lamb alw.iys insisf cd that the costume referred 
 to wns worn when he first ({huidened hi« youiiff friend by 
 u call at Mr. Chitty's Chambers. I am afraid it i« ail 
 mjocryphal. 
 
LETTERS TO MOXON AND WORDSWORTH. 
 
 273 
 
 apron be apocryplial) do more 'specially plead 
 to the Jury Court, of old niemoiy. The 
 costume (will he agnize it ?) was as of a desk- 
 fellow, or Socius Plutei. Methought I spied 
 a brother ! 
 
 "That familiarity is extinct for ever. 
 Curse me if I can call him Mr. Serjeant — 
 except, mark me, in company. Honour 
 where honour is due ; but should he ever 
 visit us, (do you think he ever will, Mary ?) 
 what a distinction should I keep up between 
 him and our less fortunate friend, H. C. R. ! 
 Decent respect shall always be the Crabb's 
 — but, somehow, short of reverence. 
 
 " Well, of my old friends, I have lived to 
 see two knighted, one made a judge, another 
 in a fair way to it. Why am I restive ? 
 why stands my sun upon Gibeah ? 
 
 " Variously, my dear Mrs. Talfourd, [I can 
 be more familiar with her !] Mrs. Serjeant 
 Talfourd, — my sister prompts me — (these 
 ladies stand upon ceremonies) — has the con- 
 gratulable news aifected the members of our 
 small community. Mary comjirehended it 
 at once, and entered into it heartily. Mrs. 
 
 W was, as usual, perverse ; wouldn't, or 
 
 couldn't, understand it. A Serjeant ? She 
 thought Mr. T. was in the law. Didn't know 
 that he ever 'listed. 
 
 " Emma alone truly sympathised. She had 
 a silk gown come home that very day, and 
 has precedence before her learned sisters 
 accordingly. 
 
 "We are going to drink the health of Mr. 
 and Mrs. Serjeant, with all the young 
 serjeantry — and that is all that I cnn see 
 that I shall get by the promotion. 
 
 " Valete, et mementote amici quondam 
 vestri humillimij C. L." 
 
 The following note to Mr. Moxon, on some 
 long forgotten occasion of momentary dis- 
 pleasure, the nature and object of which is 
 uncertain, — contains a fantastical exaggera- 
 tion of anger, which, judged by those who 
 knew the writei", \sill only illustrate the 
 entire absence of all the bad passions of 
 hatred and contempt it feigns. / 
 
 TO MR. ilOXON. 
 
 1833. 
 
 " Dear M., — Many thanks for the books ; 
 but most thanks for one immortal sentence : 
 ' If I do not cheat Lira, never triLst me again.' 
 
 I do not know whether to admire most, the 
 wit or justness of the sentiment. It has my 
 cordial ai>probation. My sense of meum 
 and timm applauds it. I maintain it, the 
 eightli commandment hath a secret special 
 reservation, by wliich the reptile is exempt 
 from any protection from it. As a dog, or a 
 nigger, he is not a holder of property. Not 
 a ninth of what he detains from the world is 
 his own. Keep your hands from picking 
 and stealing, is no ways referable to hia 
 acquists. I doubt whether bearing false 
 witness against thy neighbour at all contem- 
 plated this possible scrub. Could Moses 
 have seen the speck in vision ? An ex post 
 facto law alone could relieve him ; and we 
 are taught to expect no eleventh command- 
 ment. The outlaw to the Mosaic dispensa- 
 tion ! — unworthy to have seen Moses behind ! 
 — to lay his desecrating hands upon Elia ! 
 Has the irreverent ark-toucher been struck 
 blind, I wonder ? The more I think of him, 
 the less I think of him. His meanness is 
 invisible with aid of solar microscope. My 
 moral eye smarts at him. The less flea that 
 bites little fleas ! The great Beast ! The 
 beggarly Nit ! 
 
 " More when we meet ; mind, you'll come, 
 two of you ; and couldn't you go off in the 
 morning, that we may have a day-long curse 
 at him, if curses are not dishallowed by 
 descending so low ? Amen. Maledicatur in 
 extremis ! C. L." 
 
 In the sjjring of 1833, Lamb made his 
 last removal from Enfield to Edmonton. He 
 was about to lose the society of Miss Isola, 
 on the eve of marriage, and determined to 
 live altogether with his sister, whether in 
 her sanity or her madness. This change Wiia 
 announced in the following letter 
 
 TO MR. WORDSWORTH. 
 
 " End of May nearly. 
 " Dear Wordsworth, — Your letter, save in 
 what respects your dear sister's health, 
 cheered me in my new solitude. Mary is ill 
 again. Her illnesses encroach yearly. The 
 last was three mouths, followed by two of 
 depression most dreadful. I look back upon 
 her earlier attacks with longing. Nice little 
 durations of six weeks or so, followed by 
 complete restoration, — shocking as they were 
 to me then. In short, half her life she ia 
 
274 
 
 LETTER TO MOXON. 
 
 dead to me, and the other half is made 
 anxious with fears and lockings forward to 
 the next shock. With such prospects, it 
 seemed to me neces;<ary that she should no 
 longer live witli me, and be fluttered with 
 continual removals ; so I am come to live 
 with her, at a Mr. Walden's, and his wife, 
 who take in patients, and have arranged to 
 lodge and board us only. Tliey have had 
 the care of her before. I see little of her, 
 alas ! I too often hear her. Sunt lachrymse 
 renim ! and you and I must bear it. 
 
 "To lay a little moi-e load on it, a circum- 
 stance has happened, cujtis pars mag^ui fui, 
 and which, at another crisis, I should have 
 more rejoiced in. I am about to lose my 
 old and only walk-companion, whose mirthful 
 spirits were the ' youth of our house,' Emma 
 Isola. I have her here now for a little while, 
 but she is too nervous, properly to be under 
 such a roof, so she will make short visits, — be 
 no more an inmate. With my perfect 
 approval, and more than concurrence, she is 
 to be wedded to Moxon, at the end of 
 August — so 'perish the roses and the 
 flowers ' — how is it ? 
 
 " Now to the brighter side. I am eman- 
 cipated from Enfield. I am with attentive 
 people, and younger. I am three or four 
 miles nearer the great city ; coaches half- 
 price less, and going always, of wldch I avail 
 myself. I have few friends left there, one or 
 two though, most beloved. But London 
 streets and faces cheer me inexpressibly, 
 though of the latter, there should be not one 
 known one remaining. 
 
 " Thank you for your cordial reception of 
 ' Elia.' Inter nos, the ' Ariadne ' is not a 
 darling with me ; several incongruous things 
 are in it, but in the composition it served me 
 as illustrative, 
 
 "I want you in the ' Popular Fallacies ' * 
 to like the ' Home that is no home,' and 
 * Rising with the lark.' 
 
 " I am feeble, but cheerful in this my 
 genial hot weather. Walked sixteen miles 
 yesterday. I can't read much in summer 
 time. 
 
 " With my kindest love to all, and prayers 
 for dear Dorothy, 
 
 " I remain most aflFectionately yours, 
 " C. Lamb. 
 
 • A RsricH of articloR contvihutctl, under this title, by 
 I.iimb, to the " New Muntlil.v MuKazinc." 
 
 " At "Mr. Walden's, Church-street, Edmon- 
 ton, Middlesex. 
 
 " Moxon has introduced Emma to Rogers, 
 and he smiles upon the project. I have 
 given E. my ISIiltox, (will you pardon me ? *) 
 in part of a portion. It hangs famously in 
 his Murray-like shop." 
 
 On the approach of the wedding-day, 
 fixed for 30th July, Lamb turned to the 
 account of a half-tearful men-iment, the gift 
 of a watch to the young lady whom he was 
 about to lose. 
 
 TO MR. MOXON. 
 
 "July 24th, 1833. 
 
 " For God's sake give Emma no more 
 watches ; one has turned her head. She is 
 arrogant and insulting. She said something 
 very tmpleasant to our old clock in the 
 passage, as if he did not keep time, and j'et 
 he had made her no appointment. She takes 
 it out every instant to look at the moment- 
 hand. She lugs us out into the fields, 
 because there the bird-boys ask you, ' Pray, 
 sir, can you tell us what's o'clock ? ' and she 
 answers them punctually. She loses all her 
 time looking to see ' what the time is.' I 
 overheard her whispering, ' Just so many 
 hours, minutes, &c., to Tuesday ; I think 
 St. George's goes too slow.' This little pre- 
 sent of Time ! — why, — 'tis Eternity to her ! 
 
 " What can make her so fond of a ginger- 
 bread watch ? 
 
 " She has spoiled some of the movements. 
 Between ourselve.'^, she has kissed away 
 * half-past twelve,' which I suppose to be the 
 canonical hour in Hanover Square. 
 
 " Well, if ' love me, love my watch,' 
 answers, she will keep time to you. 
 
 " It goes right by the Horse Guards. 
 
 "Dearest M., — Never mind opposite + 
 nonsense. She does not love you for the 
 wiitch, but the watch for you. I will be at 
 the wedding, and keep the 30th July, .-.s 
 long as my poor months last me, as a festival, 
 gloriously. Yours ever, Elia. 
 
 • It had been proposed by I.anib that Sir. W. should 
 be the possessor iil tlie portrait if he outlived his frifiid, 
 Hiul that afterwards it was to be bequeathed to Christ's 
 CoUetfe, Cambridge. 
 
 + Written on the opposite page to that in wliicb the 
 previous atlectionatc banter appears. 
 
LETTERS TO MR. AND MRS. MOXON AND GARY. 
 
 275 
 
 " We have not heard from Caiubriilge. I 
 will write the moment we do. 
 
 " Edmonton, 24th July, tweutj^ minutes 
 past three by Emma's watch." 
 
 Miss Lamb was in the sad state of mental 
 estrangement up to the day of tlie wedding ; 
 but then in the constant companionship of 
 her brother at Edmonton. The following 
 cluster of little lettei-s to the new married 
 pair — the first from Charles, introducing one 
 from Mary — shows the happy effect of the 
 news on her mental health. 
 
 TO MR. AND MRS. MOXON. 
 
 "August, 1833. 
 
 " Dear Mr. and Mrs. Moxon, — Time very 
 short. I wrote to Miss Fryer, and had the 
 sweetest letter about you, Emma, that ever 
 ft-iendship dictated. 'I am full of good 
 wishes, I am crying with good wishes,' she 
 says ; but you shall see it. 
 
 " Dear Moxon, — I take your writing most 
 kindly, and shall most kindly your writing 
 from Paris. 
 
 " I want to crowd another letter to Miss 
 Fryer into the little time after dinner, before 
 post-time. So with twenty thousand con- 
 gi-atulations, Yours, C. L. 
 
 " I am calm, sober, happy. Turn over for 
 the 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 follow- 
 ing from Miss Lamb : — 
 
 " My dear Emma and Edward 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 unansicered questions 
 which I ventured to ask in vain, was cleared 
 up on the wedding-day b\' Mrs. W.* taking a 
 glass of wine, and, with a total change of 
 couutcnimce, begging leave to drink Mr. and 
 Mrs. Moxon's health. It restored me from 
 
 • The wife of th'; landlord of the house at Edmonton. 
 
 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 WRionT's and 
 purchasing shoes. We pass our time in 
 cards, walks, and reading. We attack Tasso 
 soon. C. L. 
 
 " Never was such a calm, or such a re- 
 covery. 'Tis her own woixls, uudictated." 
 
 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 
 Ml", and Mrs. Moxon were on their wedding 
 tour : — 
 
 TO REV. H. F. CART. 
 
 "Sept. 9th, 1833. 
 
 " Dear Sir, — Yom- packet I have only just 
 received, owing, I suppose, to the absence of 
 Moxon, who is flaunting 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 repetition) glad to 
 see you here, or anywhere. 
 
 " I will take my time with 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 typography. 
 
 " Youre, most truly, C. Lajib. 
 
 " P.S. — Pray kt 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 ti-aualation. I think we 
 
 T 2 
 
270 
 
 LETTERS TO MOXON. 
 
 scarce left anything unmadeout. But our; 
 partner has left us, and we have not yet i 
 resumed. Mary's chief pride in it was that 
 slie should some day brag of it to you. Your i 
 ' Dante ' and Sandys' ' Ovid ' are the only , 
 helpmates of translations. Neither of you j 
 shirk a word. 
 
 " Fairfox's ' Tasso ' is no translation ' 
 at all. It's better in some places, but it 
 merely observes the number of stanzas ; 
 as for images, similes, &c., he finds 'em [ 
 himself, and never ' troubles Peter for the j 
 matter.' 
 
 " In haste, dear Gary, yours ever, I 
 
 " C. L.VMB. 
 
 " Has M. sent 3-ou ' Elia,' second volume ? 
 if not he shall." 
 
 Miss Lamb did not escape all the cares of 
 housekeeping by the new arrangement : the 
 following little note shows the grotesque 
 uses to which Lamb turned the smaller 
 household anxieties : — 
 
 TO MR. JIOXON. 
 
 1833. 
 
 " Dear M., — Mary and I are very poorly. 
 We have had a sick child, who, sleeping or 
 not sleeping, next me, with a pasteboard par- 
 tition between, killed my sleejj. Tlie little 
 bastard is gone. My bedfellows ai-e cough 
 and cramp ; we sleep three in a bed. Domes- 
 tic arrangements (baker, butclicr, and all) de- 
 volve 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 wel- 
 come communication of Sonnets, addressed 
 by tlie briih'groom to the fair object of 
 Lamb's regard — beautiful in tliemselves — 
 and endeared to Lamb by honoured memo- 
 ries and generous hopes ; — 
 
 TO MR. MOXON. 
 
 "Nov. 29th, 1833. 
 
 " Mary is of opinion •vs'ith me, tliat two of 
 these Sonnets are of a higher grade than any 
 poeti-y you have done yet. The one to Emma 
 is so pretty ! I liave only allowed myself 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 
 linos in the room of the four last. Read 
 'Darby and Joan,' in Mrs. Moxon's first 
 album. There you'll see how 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 
 hoi^e 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 sliall say ' there is 
 small comfort in them.' You have begun a 
 sort of character of Emma in them, very 
 sW'Cetly ; carry it on, if you can through the 
 last lines. 
 
 " I love the sonnet to ray heart, and you 
 shall finish it, and I'll be hanged if I furnish 
 a line towards it. So much for that. The 
 next best is to the Ocean. 
 
 ' Tc gallant -n-jnds, if e'er your lusty cheeks 
 Blew longing lovtr to his mistress' side, 
 O, puff your 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 ! 
 
 " Perhajjs * O Ocean ' (though 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 witli. 
 
 " If I return the Sonnets, tliink it no dis- 
 respect, for I look fur a printed copy. You 
 have done bettor than ever. And now for a 
 reason I did not notice 'em earlier. On 
 Wednesday they came, and on Wednesday I 
 was a-gadding. Mary gave me a holiday, 
 and I setoif 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. 
 
LETTER TO ROGERS. 
 
 277 
 
 thinking to traverse "Wardour-street, &c., 
 ■when, diabolically, I -was 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 (O, march of intellect !) plenty of lite- 
 rary conversation, and more acquaintance 
 with the state of modern poetry than I could 
 keep up with. I was positively distanced. 
 Knowles' play, which, epilogued by me, la}'^ 
 on the Piano, alone made me hold up my 
 head. When I came home, I read your 
 letter, and glimpsed at your beautiful sonnet, 
 
 ' Fair art thou as the morning, my j'oung bride,' 
 
 and dwelt upon it in a confused brain, but 
 determined not to open them all next daj^, 
 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. "Why can't you ! Do. We are 
 thankful to your sister for being of the party. 
 Come, and bring a sonnet on Mary's birth- 
 day. 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 wrote for the 
 Pawnbrokeress's album. She is a Miss 
 Brown, engaged 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) : — • 
 
 " May your fame, 
 And fortune, Frances, NVhiten with your name ! ' i 
 
 Not bad as a pun. I ivill expect you before 
 two on Tuesday. I am well and happy, 
 tell E." 
 
 Tlie following is Lamb's letter of acknow- 
 ledgment to the author of the " Pleasures of 
 Memory," for an early copy of his " Illus- 
 trated Poems," of a share in the publication 
 of which, Mr. Moxon was "justly vain." The 
 artistical allusions are to Stothard ; the allu- 
 sions to the poet's own kindnesses need no 
 explanation to those who have been enabled 
 by circumstances, which now and then trans- 
 pire, to guess at thegenerous course of his life. 
 
 TO MR. ROGERS. 
 
 "Dec. 1833. 
 " My dear Sir, — Your book, by the unre- 
 mitting punctuality of your publisher, has 
 reached me thus early. I have not opened 
 it, nor will till tomorrow, when I promise 
 myself a thorough reading of it. The 
 ' Pleasi(res of Memory ' was the first school- 
 present I made to Mrs. 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 
 pei'son S'-ems 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 
 agreeable to your artist. I met that dear old 
 man at poor Henry's, with you, and again at 
 Cary's, and it was sublime to see him sit, 
 deaf, and enjoy all that was going on in mirth 
 with the company. He reposed upon the 
 many graceful, many fiintastic images he had 
 created ; with them he dined, and took wine. 
 I have ventured at an antagonist copy o( 
 verses, in the ' Athen£Bum,' to him, in which 
 he is as 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 Boy- 
 dell's Shakspeare Gallery do me with Shak- 
 .speare ? to have Opie's Shakspeaiv, North- 
 cote's Shakspeare, light-headed Fuseli's Shak- 
 speare, heavy-headed Eomney's Shakspeare, 
 wooden-headed West's Shakspeare (though 
 he did the best in Lear), deaf-headed Eey- 
 nolds's Shakspeare, instead of my, and 
 everybody's Shakspeare ; to be tied down to 
 an authentic face of Juliet ! to have Imogen's 
 portrait ! to confine the illimitable ! 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 criticLsras. 
 It is not the flatteringest compliment in a 
 letter to ;ui 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 
 parcel. It was a little tantalising to me to 
 receive a letter from Landor, Gebir Landor, 
 from Florence, to say he was just sittiag 
 down to read my 'Elia,' just i*eueivcd ; but 
 
278 
 
 LETTERS TO MISS FRYER AND WORDSWORTH. 
 
 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 carriages 
 in Dover-street, on the morn of publication, 
 do not barricade me out. 
 
 "With many thanks, and most respectful 
 remembrances to your sister, 
 
 " Yours, C. Lamb. 
 
 " Have you seen Coleridge's happy exem- 
 plification 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 — care- 
 ful soul I " 
 
 Lamb and his sister were now, for the last 
 year of their united lives, always together. 
 What his feelings were iu this companion- 
 ship, when his beloved associate was deprived 
 of reason, will be seen in the following most 
 affecting letter, to an old schoolfellow and 
 very dear friend of Mrs. Moxon's — since 
 dead — who 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 heretofore. 
 Your admonitions are not lost upon me. 
 Your kindness has sunk into my heart. 
 Have faith in me ! It is no new 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 discern a 
 strong mind struggling with the billows that 
 have gone over it. I could be nowhere hap- 
 pier 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 jjoor life, she fetches thousands 
 
 of names and things that never would have 
 dawned upon me again, and thousands from 
 the ten years she lived before me. What 
 took place from early girlhood to her coming 
 of age principally, lives again (ever)' important 
 thing, and every trifle) in her brain, with the 
 \nvidnes3 of real presence. For twelve hours 
 incessantly she will pour out without inter- 
 mission, all her past life, forgetting nothing 
 pouring out name after name to the Waldem 
 as a dream ; sense and nonsense ; truths and 
 errors huddled together ; a medley between 
 inspiration and possession. What things we 
 are ! I know you wiU 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 Walton 
 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 
 vei-y kindly would I end it, could I find 
 adequate expressions to your kindness. We 
 did set our minds on seeing you iu spring. 
 One of us will indubitably. But I am not 
 skilled in almanac learning, 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 Woobuan. 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. WORDSWORTH. 
 
 " Church-street, £dmonton, 
 
 "February 22, 1834. 
 
 "Dear Wordsworth, — I write from a house 
 of mourning. The oldest and best friends I 
 have left are in trouble. A branch of them 
 (and they of the best stock of (jod's creatures, 
 I believe) is estiiblishing a school at Carlisle ; 
 
 her name is L M ; her a/ldnsa, 75, 
 
 Castle-street, Carlisle ; her (pialities (and 
 her motives for this exertion) are the most 
 
LETTERS TO GARY AND MRS. DYER. 
 
 279 
 
 b 
 
 amiable, most upright. For thirty years she 
 has been tried by rae, and on her behaviour 
 I wouM stake my soul. O, if you can recom- 
 mend 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 exem- 
 plary female I ever knew. Moxon tells me 
 you 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 JNIai'y is ill again, after a 
 short lucid intei-val of four or five months. 
 In .short, I may call her half dead to me. 
 How good you are to me. Yours with fer- 
 vour of friendship, for ever, C. L. 
 
 "If you want references, the Bishop of 
 
 Carlisle may be one. L 's sister (as good 
 
 as she, she cannot be better though 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. Cary once a juunth, to which Lamb 
 looked forward witli almost boyish eager- 
 ness, 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. — " Wo 
 are thinking," he says, ^' o{ roa,st s/ioulder of 
 mutton with onion sauce, but I scorn to 
 prescribe to the hospitalities of mine host." 
 The foUowmg, after these festivities had been 
 interrupted by Mr. Cary's visit to the Conti- 
 nent, is their last memorial : — 
 
 TO MR. CARY. 
 
 "Sept. 12, 1834. 
 
 " By Cot's plessing we wUl 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, WestphaliaA hams, 
 and Botargoes of Altona. But perhaps you 
 have seen, not tiisted any of these things. 
 
 " Yours, very glad to cliain you back again 
 to your proper centre, books and Bibliothecae, 
 " C. and M. Lamb. 
 
 " I have only got your note just now per 
 negligentiam perinif/ui Moxoni." 
 
 The following little ndte has a mournful 
 interest, as Lamb's last scrap of writing. It 
 is dated on the very day on which erysipelas 
 followed the accident, apparently trifling, 
 which, five days after, terminated in his 
 death. It is addressed to the wife of his 
 oldest surviving friend : — 
 
 TO MRS. DYER 
 
 " Dec. 22n(l, 1834. 
 
 "Dear Mrs, Dyer, — I am very uneasy 
 about a Book 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 Theatrum Poetarum,' but it is an 
 English book. I think I left it in the parlour. 
 It is Mr. Cary's book, and I would not lose 
 it for the world. Pray, if you find it, book it 
 at the Swan, Snow Hill, by an Edmonton 
 stage immediately, directed to Mr. Lamb, 
 Chui'ch-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. 
 
 lamb's wf.dnksday nights comparkd witu the evkn- 
 
 ixos of holland house his dead companions, 
 
 dyer, godwin, tiielwall, hazlitt, barnes, hat- 
 don, coleridge, and ojukrs last glimpses of 
 
 chables and mary lamb. 
 
 ' Gone ; all are gone, the old familiar faces I ' 
 
 Two circles of rare social enjoyment — dif- 
 fering as widely as possible in all external 
 circumstances — but each superior in its kind 
 to all others, during the same period frankly 
 opened to men of letters — now existing only 
 in tlie memories of those who are fast depart- 
 ing from us — may, without ofiience, be placed 
 side by side in grateful recollection ; they 
 are the dinnex's at Holland House and the 
 suppers of " the Lambs " at the Temple, 
 Great Russell-street, and Islington. Strange, 
 at first, ?^ this j uxta-position may seem, a 
 
280 
 
 HOLLAND U0USE-LA3IB'S SUPPER& 
 
 little i-eflection will convince the few sur- 
 vivors who have enjoyed both, that it in- 
 volves no injustice to either; wliile with 
 those who are too young to have been ad- 
 mitted to these rare festivities, we nia}* 
 exercise the privilege of age by boasting what 
 good fellowship was once enjoyed, and what 
 " good talk " tliere was once in tlie world ! 
 
 But let us call to mind the aspects of each 
 scene, before we attempt to tell of the con- 
 versation, 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 season, say a Saturday in 
 June. It is scarcely seven — for the luxuries 
 of the house are enhanced by a punctuality 
 in the main object of the day, which yields to 
 no dilatory guest of whatever pretension — 
 and you are seated in an oblong room, rich 
 in old gilding, opposite a deep recess, pierced 
 by large old windows through which the rich 
 branches of trees bathed in golden light, just 
 admit the faint outline of the Surrey Hills. 
 Among the guests are some perhaps of the 
 highest rank, ahvays some of high political 
 importance, aVjout whom the interest of busy 
 life gathers, intermixed Avith otliers eminent 
 already in literature or art, or of that dawn- 
 ing promise wliich the hostess delights to 
 discover and the host to smile on. All are 
 assembled for the purpose of enjoyment ; the 
 anxieties of the minister, the feverish strug- 
 gles of the partisan, the silent toils of tlie 
 artist or critic, are finished for the week ; 
 profes-sionalandliteraryjealousiesare hushed; 
 sickness, decrepitude, and death are silently 
 voted shadows ; and the brilliant assemblage 
 is prepared to exercise to the highest degree 
 the extraordinary privilege of mortiils to live 
 in the knowledge of mortality without its 
 consciousness, and to people the present liour 
 with delights, as if a man lived and laughed 
 and enjoyed in this world for ever. Every 
 appliance of physical luxury which the most 
 delicate art can supply, attends on each ; 
 every faint wish which luxury creates is 
 anticipated ; the noblest and most gracious 
 count-nance in the world smiles over the 
 happiness it is ditlusing, and redoubles it by 
 coi'dial invitations and encouraging words, 
 which set the humblest stranger guest at 
 perfect ease. As the dinner merges into the 
 dessert, and the sunset casts a richer glow on 
 
 the branches, still, or lightly waving in the 
 evening light, and on the scene wifhin, the 
 harmony of all sensations becomes more per- 
 fect ; a delighted and delighting chuckle in- 
 vites attention to some joyous sally of the 
 richest intellectual wit reflected in the faces 
 of all, even to the favourite page in green, 
 wlio attends his mistress with duty like that 
 of the antique world ; the choicest wines are 
 enhanced 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 more serious rewarded the Statesman's 
 toils and shortened his days ; until at length 
 the serener pleasure of conversation, of the 
 now carelessly scattei'ed 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 ^^alls." One 
 happy peculiarity of these jissemblies was, 
 the number of persons in different stations 
 and of various celebrity, who were gratified 
 by seeing, still more, in hearing 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 tnie 
 dignity of the other, modestly expanding 
 under the most genial auspices. 
 
 Now turn to No. 4, Inner Temple Lane, at 
 ten o'clock, when the sedater j^art of the 
 company are assembled, and the happier 
 stragglers are dropping in from the J^lay. 
 Let it be any autumn or winter month, when 
 the fire is blazing steadily, and the clean- 
 swept hearth and whi.st- tables speak of the 
 spirit of JNIrs. Battle, and serious looks require 
 " the riguur of the game." The furniture is 
 old-fashioned and worn ; the ceiling low, :uid 
 not wholly inistaincd by traces of " the great 
 plant," though now virtuously forborne : but 
 the Hogarths, in narrow black frames, 
 abounding in infinite thought, humour and 
 pathos, enrich the walls ; and all things wear 
 an air of comfort and hearty English welcome. 
 Lamb himself, yet unrclaxed by the gla.ss, ia 
 sitting with a soil of Quaker primness at the 
 whist-table, the gentkncss of his melancholy 
 smilxj half lost in his intentness on the 
 game ; his pjirtner, the author of " Politiail 
 
LAMB'S SUPPERS. 
 
 281 
 
 Justice," (the majestic expression of liis large 
 head not disturbed by disproportion of liis 
 comparatively diminutive stature,) is regard- 
 ing his hand with a philosophic but not a 
 careless eye ; Captain Burney, only not vener- 
 able because so young in spirit, sits between 
 them ; and H. C. R., 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 clex'ks 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 few hairs 
 bristling " at gentle objurgation, watclies his 
 partner M. B., dealing, with "soul more 
 white" * than the hands of which Lamb once 
 said, " M., if dirt was trum^Ds, 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 f;ite, free-will, fore-knowledge absolute," I 
 with Leigh Hunt ; and, if you chouse to j 
 listen, you will scarcely know which most to ' 
 admire — the severe logic of the melancholy 
 reasoner, or its graceful evasion by the trick- 
 some fantasy of the joyous poet. Basil 
 Montague, gentle enthusiast in the cause of 
 humanity, which he has lived to see 
 triumphant, is pouring into the outstretched 
 ear of George Dyer some tale of legalised 
 injustice, wluch the recipient is vainly en- 
 deavouring to comprehend. Soon the room 
 fills ; in slouches Hazlitt from the theatre, 
 where his stubborn anger for Napoleon's 
 defeat at Waterloo has been softened by Miss 
 Stephens's angelic notes, which might " chase 
 anger, and grief, and fear, and sorrow, and 
 pain from mortal or inmiortal minds ; " 
 Kenney, with a tremulous pleasure, an- 
 nounces that there is a crowded house to the 
 ninth reprcsentatiou of his new comedy, of 
 which Lamb lays dowix his cards to inquire ; 
 or Ayrton, mildly ratliaut, whispers the con- 
 
 • Lamb's Sonnet, dcilicatoi-y of his tiist volume of 
 prose to this cherished friend, thus concludes : — I 
 
 " Free fioni self-seeking, envy, low design, 
 I have not found a whiter soul than thine." 
 
 tinual 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, with news of its brighter 
 human-kind, and with looks reflecting the 
 public favour — Listen, grave beneath the 
 weight of the town's regards — or Miss Kelly, 
 unexhausted in spirit by alternating the 
 drolleries of high farce with the terrible 
 pathos of melodrama, — or Charles Kemble 
 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 direction 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 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 labour of the brain, is 
 not less than that of the guests at the most 
 charming of aristocratic banquets. As the 
 hot water and its accompaniments appear, 
 and the severities of whist relax, the light 
 of conversation thickens : Hazlitt, 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 
 hajipy Barron Field to admire and echo ; the 
 various driblets of talk combine into a stream, 
 Avhile Miss Lamb moves gently about to see 
 that each modest stranger is duly served j 
 turning, now and then, an anxious loving eye 
 on Charles, which is softened into a half 
 humorous expression of resignation to inevit- 
 able fate, as he mixes his second tumbler ! 
 This is on ordinary nights, when the accus- 
 tomed Wednesday -men assemble ; but there is 
 a difl'erence on great extra nights, gladdened 
 by " the bright visitations' of Wordsworth or 
 Coleridge : — tlie cordiality of the welcome is 
 the same, but a sedater wistlom prevails. 
 Happy hours were they for the young disciple 
 of the then desperate, now triumi)hant cause 
 of Wordsworth's genius, to be admitted to 
 
282 
 
 SOCIAL COMPARISON. 
 
 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 hiiu 
 recite its noblest passages — and to join in his 
 brave defiance of the fashion of the age — was 
 the solemn pleasure of such a season ; and, of 
 course, superseded all minor disquisitions. 
 So, when Coleridge came, argument, wit, 
 humour, criticism were hushed ; the pertest, 
 smartest, and the cleverest felt that all were 
 assembled to listen ; and if a card-table had 
 been filled, or a dispute begun before he was 
 excited to continuous speech, his gentle voice, 
 undulating in music, soon 
 
 " Suspended icJiM, and took witb ravishment 
 The thronging audience." 
 
 The conversation which animated each of 
 these memorable 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 
 appliances ; that of the bowered saloon of 
 Holland House having more of earnestness 
 and dejith, and that of the Temple-attic more 
 of airy grace than would be predicated by a 
 superficial observer. The former possessed 
 the peculiar interest of directly bordering on 
 the scene of political conflict — gathering to- 
 gether the most eloquent leaders of the Whio- 
 party, whose repose from energetic action 
 sjjoke of the week's conflict, and in whom the 
 moment's enjoyment derived a peeidiar 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 
 tlie soldi.?rs' banquet in the pause of victory. 
 Tlie pervading spirit of Lamb's parties waa 
 also that of social progress ; but it was the 
 spirit of the dreamers and thinkers, not of 
 the c(,mbatants of the world — mi;n*wlio, it 
 may be, drew tlicir theories from a deeper 
 range of medilatiun, and emln-aced the future 
 with more coniprehensive hope — but about 
 whom the immediate interest of party did 
 not gather ; wliose victories were all within ; 
 whoso rewards were visions of blessings 
 
 for their species in the furthest horizon 
 of benevolent prophecy. If a profounder 
 thought was sometimes dragged to light in 
 the dim circle of Lamb's companions than was 
 native to the brighter sphere, it was still a 
 rare felicity to watch there the union ot 
 elegance with purpose in some leader of 
 party — the delicate, almost fi-agile grace of 
 illustration in some one, perhaps destined to 
 lead advancing multitudes or to withstaud 
 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 beneatli it. If the alterna- 
 tions in the former oscillated between wider 
 extremes, touching on the wildest farce and 
 most earnest tragedy of life ; tlie rich space 
 of brilliant comedy which lived ever between 
 them in the latter, was diversified by serious 
 interests 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 hap- 
 I^iest language, with a more rapid perception 
 of secret affinities ; was capable of producing 
 ei)igi'ammatic splendour reflected more per- 
 manently 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 vjist 
 and various knowledge ; but there the com- 
 petition between these great talkers ends, 
 and the contrast begins; the contrast be- 
 tween 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 viist and joyous memory all the 
 mighty past lived and gloweil anew ; whose 
 declamations presented, not groups tinged 
 with distant liglit, like those of Coleridge, 
 but a scries of historical figures in relief, ex- 
 hibited in bright succession, as if by dioramic 
 art there glided before us embossed surfaces 
 of heroic life.* Jtogers too, was tliere — con- 
 necting the literature of the hist age with 
 
 • X tukc leave to copy the plowing picture of the 
 cvcningt) of Ilolhind House and of its adiuinible nuit>t(.-r, 
 drawn by this favourite guo^t liiniHcIf, from an ariieU' 
 
SOCIAL COMPARISON. 
 
 283 
 
 this, partakingof someof the best character- 
 istics 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 Moore, who paused in the 
 
 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 favourite resort of wits and beauties — of painters 
 and poets — of scholars, philosophers, and statesmen. 
 They will then remember, with strange tenderness, 
 many objects once familiar to them — the avenue and 
 the terrace, the busts and the paintings ; the carving, 
 the grotesque gilding, and the enigmatical mottoes. 
 With peculiar fondness, they will rccal 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 recollect, not unmoved, those shelves loaded 
 with the varied learning of many lands and many ages ; 
 those portraits in which were preserved the features of 
 the best and wisest Englishmen of two generations. 
 They will recollect how many 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 who have left to posteiity things so 
 ■written as it shall not willingly let them die — were 
 there mixed with all that was lovelie^t and gayest in 
 the society of the most 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 was discussed in one corner, and the last 
 comedy of Scribe in another ; while 'W ilkie gazed with 
 modest admiration on UejTiolds' Baretti ; while Jlackin- 
 tosh 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 
 gi-ace — with which the princely hospitality of tliat 
 ancient mansion was disiiensed. They will remember 
 the venerable and benignant countenance, and the 
 cordial voice of him who bade them welcome. They 
 will remember that temper which years of pain, of sick- 
 ness, 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 conversation, so natural, 
 so animated, so various, so rich with observation and 
 anecdote ; that wit which never gave a wound ; that 
 e.Kquisite mimicry which ennobled, instead of degrading ; 
 that goodness of heart which appeared in every look 
 and accent, and gave additional value to every talent 
 and acquirement. They will remember, too, that he 
 whose name they hold in reverence was not less distin- 
 guished by the inflexible uprightness of his (political 
 conduct, than by his loving disposition and his winning 
 manners. They will remember that, in the last lines 
 which he traced, be expressed his joy that he had done 
 nothing unworthy of the friend of I'ox and Grey ; and 
 they will have reason to feel similar joy, if, in looking 
 back on many troubled years, they cannot accuse them- 
 selves of having done anything unworthy of men who 
 were distinguished by the friendship of Lord Holland." 
 
 fluttering expression of graceful trifles, to 
 whisper some deep-toned thought of Ireland's 
 wrongs and sorrows. 
 
 Literatui'e and Art supplied the favourite 
 topics to each of these assemblies, — both 
 discussed with earnest admiration, but sur- 
 veyed in different aspects. The conversation 
 at Lord Holland's was wont to mirror the 
 happiest aspects of the living mind ; to cele- 
 brate the latest discoveries in science ; to 
 echo the quarterly decisions of imperial 
 criticism ; to reflect the modest glow of 
 young reputations ; — all was 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 which 
 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 
 dusty recesses ; nothing could be more 
 foreign to its embrace than the modern 
 circulating library, even when it teemed with 
 the Scotch novels. Whatever the subject was, 
 however, in the more aristocratic, or the 
 humbler sphere, it was always discussed by 
 those best entitled to talk on it ; no others 
 had a chance of being heard. This remark- 
 able freedom from bores was produced in 
 Lamb's circle by the authoritative texture of 
 its commanding minds ; in Lord Holland's, 
 by the more direct, and more genial in- 
 fluence of the hostess, which checked that 
 tenacity of subject and opinion which some- 
 times broke the charm of Lamb's parties by 
 " a duel in the form of a debate." Perhaps 
 beyond any other liostess, — certainly far be- 
 yond 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 which she 
 presided, and restrained each to its appro- 
 priate 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 famous 
 battle-field ; to encoui'age the generous praise 
 of friendship when the speaker and the 
 
284 
 
 SOCIAL COMPARISON. 
 
 subject reflected interest on each other ; or win 
 from an awkward man of science the secret 
 liistory of a discovery which had astonished 
 the world ; to conduct these brilliant deve- 
 lopments 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 enjoyment was sometimes 
 wielded without the entire concealment of 
 its despotism ; if a decisive check sometimes 
 rebuked a speaker who might intercept the 
 variegated beauty of JeflVey's indulgent 
 criticism, or the jest announced and self- 
 rewarded in Sydney Smith's cordial and 
 triumphant laugh, the authority was too 
 cleai'ly exerted for the evening's prosperity, 
 and too manifestly impelled by an urgent 
 consciousness of the value of these golden 
 hours which were fleeting within its confines, 
 to sadden the enforced silence with more than 
 a momentary regret. If ever her prohibition 
 — clear, abrupt, and decisive, — indicated 
 more than a preferable regard for livelier dis- 
 course, it was when a depreciatory tone was 
 adopted towards genius, or goodness, or 
 honest endeavour, or when some friend, per- 
 sonal or intellectual, was mentioned in 
 slighting phrase. Habituated to a generous 
 partisanship, by strong sympathy 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 tendency, ol'ten more 
 idle than malicious, to soften down the in- 
 tellectual claims of the absent, which so 
 insidiously besets literary conversation, and 
 teaches a superficial insincerity, even to sub- 
 stantial esteem and regard, and which was 
 sometimes insinuated into the conversation 
 of Lamb's friends, though never into his own, 
 found no favour in her presence ; and hence 
 the conversations over which she presided, 
 perhaps beyond all that ever flashed with a 
 kindred splendour, were marked by that in- 
 tegrity of good nature which might admit 
 of their exact repetition to every living indi- 
 vidual whose merits were discussed, witliout 
 the danger of inflicting pain. Under her 
 auspices, not only all critical, but all personal 
 talk was tinged with kindness ; the strong 
 interest which slie took in the happiness of 
 her friends, shed a peculiar suuuiness over the 
 aspects of life presented by the common 
 
 topics of alliances, and mannages, and pro- 
 motions ; and there was not a hopeful en- 
 gagement, or a happy wedding, or a promo- 
 tion 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 congra- 
 tulation as on a part of her own fortune. 
 Although there was necessarily a preponder- 
 ance in her society of the sentiment of 
 popular 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 viru- 
 lence in sudden disappointment, was ever 
 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 gidd}' edge of some 
 great party struggle, the festivities of the 
 ev-ening might take a more serious cast, as 
 news arrived from the scene of contest, and 
 the pleasure might be deepened by the peril ; 
 but the feeling was always restrained by the 
 supremacy given to those permanent 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 conversa- 
 tion lived a little longer in the smaller circle 
 which Lady Holland still drew almost daily 
 around her ; honouring his memory by fol- 
 lowing his example, and struggling against 
 the perpetual sense of unutterable bereave- 
 ment, by rendering to literature that honour 
 and those reliefs, which English aristocracy 
 has too often denied it ; and seeking conso- 
 lation in making othei-s proud and happy. 
 That lingering happiness is extinct now ; 
 Lamb's kindred circle — kinthed, though so 
 diflerent — tlispersed almost before he died ; 
 the " thoughts that wandered throuy,h eter- 
 nity," are no longer expressed in time ; the 
 fancies and conceits, " gay creatures of the 
 element " of social delight, " that in the 
 colours of the rainbow lived, and playcil in 
 the jdighted clouds," flicker only in the buck- 
 ward jjei-spective of w;ming years ; and for 
 the survivors, I nia}' venture to allinu, no such 
 conversation as they have shared in either 
 cii'cle will ever be theirs again iu this world 1 
 
GEORGE DYER. 
 
 285 
 
 Before closing these last Memorials of 
 Charles aiifl Mary Lamb, it may be permitted 
 me to glance separately at some of the 
 friends who are grouped around them in 
 memory, 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's youthful reverence, for he liad 
 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 amount- 
 ing to awe, gave place to a familiar habit of 
 loving banter, which, springing from the 
 depths 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 world, both pure and 
 good ;" among them he passed, unconscious 
 of time, from youth to extreme age, vege- 
 tating on their dates and forms, and " tiivial 
 fond records," in the learned air of great 
 libraries, or the dusty confusion of his own, 
 with the least possible a):)prehension of any 
 human interest vital in their pages, or of any 
 spii'it of wit or fancy glancing across them, 
 His life was an Academic pastoral. Me- 
 thinks I see his gaunt, awkward form, set 
 off by trousers too short, like those outgrown 
 by a gawky lad, and a rusty coat as much 
 too large for the wearer, hanging about him 
 like those gai'ments which the aristocratic 
 Milesian peasantry prefer to the most com- 
 fortable 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 curiosity 
 which has gently disturbed his studies as to 
 the authorship of the Waverley Novels, by 
 telling him, in the strictest confidence, that 
 they are the works of Lord Castlereagti, just 
 returned from the Congress of Sovereigjis at 
 Vienna ! Off he runs, with animated stride 
 and shambling enthusiasm, nor stops till he 
 reaches Maida HUl, 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 whioh George is laden ! 
 Or shall I endeavour to revive the bewildered 
 look with which, just after he had been an- 
 nounced 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?" "O dear no! Mr. Lamb," re- 
 sponded he with earnest seriousness, but not 
 without 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 con- 
 sent ; they may raise you to the peerage 
 without your even knowing it." " I hope 
 not. Ml*. Lamb ; indeed, mdeed, I hope not ; 
 it would not suit me at all," responded Dyer, 
 and went his way, musing on the possibility 
 of a strange honour descending on his re- 
 luctant brow. Or shall 1 recall the visible 
 presentment of his bland unconsciousness of 
 evil when his sportive friend taxed it to the 
 utmost, by suddenly asking what he thought 
 of the murderer Williams, who, after de 
 stroying two families in Eatcliffe Highway, 
 had broken prison by suicide, and whose 
 body had just before been conveyed, in shock- 
 ing procession, to its cross-road grave ! The 
 desperate attempt to compel the gentle 
 optimist to speak ill of a mortal creature 
 produced no happier success than the answer, 
 " Why, I should think, Mr. Lamb, he must 
 have been rather an eccentric character." 
 This simplicity of a nature 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 battle with fortune. Dyer 
 was the son of very poor parents, residing 
 in an eastern suburb of London, Stepney or 
 Bethnal-greenwai'd, where he attracted the 
 attention of two elderly 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 ex- 
 hibition and his scholarly accomplishments 
 to help him. On he went, however, placid, 
 if not rejoicing, through the difficulties 
 of a life illustrated only by 8cholai"ship ; 
 
286 
 
 WILLIAM GODWIN. 
 
 encountering tremendous labours ; unresting 
 yet serene ; until at eighty-five he breathed 1 
 out the most blameless of lives, which began 
 in a struggle to end in a learned dream ! 
 
 Mr. GrODWiN, who during the happiest i 
 period of Lamb's weekly parties, was a con- ; 
 stant assistant at his whist-table, resembled j 
 Dyer in simplicity of manner and devotion 
 to letters ; but the simplicity was more 
 superficial, and the devotion more profound 
 than the kindred qualities in the guileless 
 scholar ; and, instead of forming the entire 
 being, only marked the surface of a nature 
 beneath which extraordinary power lay 
 hidden. As the absence of worldly wisdom 
 subjected Dyer to the sportive sallies of 
 Lamb, so a like deficiency in Godwin ex- 
 posed him to the coarser mirth of Mr. Home 
 Tooke, who was sometimes inclined to seek 
 relaxation for the iron muscles of his imper- 
 turbable mind in trying to make a philosopher 
 look foolish. To a stranger's gaze the author 
 of the " Political Justice " and " Caleb 
 "Williams," as he appeared in the Temple, 
 always an object of curiosity except to his 
 familiars, presented none of those charac- 
 teristics with which fancy had invested the 
 daring speculator and relentless novelist ; 
 nor, when he broke silence, did his language 
 tend to reconcile the reality with the expec- 
 tation. The disproportion of a frame which, 
 low of stature, was surmounted by a massive 
 head which might befit a presentable giant, 
 was rendered almost imperceptible, not by 
 any vivacity of expression, (for his coun- 
 tenance was rarely lighted up by the 
 deep-seated genius within,) but by a 
 gracious suavity of manner which many 
 " a fine old English gentleman " might envy. 
 His voice was small ; the topics of his 
 ordinary conversation trivial, and discussed 
 with a delicacy and precision which might 
 almost be mistaken for finical ; and the pre- 
 sence of the most interesting persons in 
 literary society, of which he had enjoyed 
 the best, would not prevent him from falling 
 after dinner into the most profound sleep. 
 This gentle, drowsy, spiritless demeanour, 
 presents a striking contrast to a reputation 
 which once filled Europe with its echoes ; 
 but it was, in truth, when rightly under- 
 stood, perfectly consistent with those in- 
 tellectual elements which in some raised tlie 
 most enthusiastic admiration, and from 
 
 others elicited the wildest denunciations of 
 visionary terror. 
 
 In !Mi'. Godwin's mind, the faculty of 
 abstract reason so predominated over all 
 others, as practically to extinguish them ; 
 and his taste, akin to this faculty, sought 
 only for its development through the medium 
 of composition for the press. He had no 
 imagination, no fancy, no wit, no humour ; 
 or if he possessed any of those faculties, they 
 were obscured by that of pure reason ; and 
 being wholly devoid of the quick sensibility 
 which irritates speech into eloquence, and 
 of the passion for immediate excitement and 
 applause, which tends to its presentment 
 before admiring assemblies, he desired no 
 other audience than that which he could 
 silently address, and learned to regard all 
 things through a contemplative medium. In 
 this sense, far more than in the extravagant 
 application of his wildest theories, he levelled 
 all around him ; admitted no greatness but 
 that of literature ; and neither desired nor 
 revered any triumphs but those of thought. 
 If such a reasoning faculty, guided by such a 
 disposition, had been applied to abstract 
 sciences, no effect remarkable beyond that 
 of rare excellence, would have been produced ; 
 but the apparent anomalies of Mr. Godwin's 
 intellectual history arose from the applica- 
 tion of his power to the passions, the 
 interests, and the hopes of mankind, at a 
 time when they enkindled into frightful 
 action, and when he calmly worked out his 
 problems among their burning elements with 
 the " ice-brook's temper," and the severest 
 logic. And if some extreme conclusions were 
 inconsistent with the faith and the duty which 
 alone can sustain and regulate our nature, 
 there was no small compensation in the 
 severity of the pi'ocess to which the student 
 was impelled, for the slender peril which 
 might remain lest the results should be 
 practically adopted. A system founded on 
 pure reason, which rejected the impulses of 
 natural atfection, the delights of gratitude, 
 the influences of prejudice, tlie bondage of 
 custom, the animation of personal hope ; 
 which appealed to no passion — which 
 suggested no luxury — which excited no 
 animosities — and which offered no prize for 
 the obsei-vance of its laws, except a par- 
 ticipation in the exp.uiding glories of progres- 
 sive humanity, was little calculated to allure 
 
WILLIAM GODWIN. 
 
 287 
 
 from the accustomed paths of ancient ordi- 
 nance any man disposed to walk in them by 
 the lights from heaven. On the other hand, 
 it was a healthful diversion fi'om those 
 seductions in which the heart secretly ener- 
 vates and infects the understanding, to invite 
 the revolutionary speculator to the contem- 
 plation of the distant and the refined ; by 
 the pursuit of impracticable error to brace 
 the mind for the achievement of everlasting 
 truth ; and on the " heat and flame of the 
 distemper " of an impassioned democracy to 
 " sprinkle cool patience." The idol Political 
 Justice, of which he was the slow and 
 laborious architect, if it for a while enchanted, 
 did not long enthral or ever debase its 
 worshippers ; " its bones were marrowless, its 
 blood was cold," — but there was surely 
 "speculation in its eyes" which "glared 
 withal " into the future. Such high casuistry 
 as it evoked has always an ennobling ten- 
 dency, even when it dallies with error ; the 
 direction of thought in youth is of less con- 
 sequence than the mode of its exercise ; and 
 it is only when the base interests and sensual 
 passions of mortality pander to the under- 
 standing that truth may fear for the issue. 
 
 The author of this cold and passionless 
 intellectual phantasy looked out upon the 
 world he hoped to inform from recesses 
 of contemplation which the outward inci- 
 dents of life did not disturb, and which, when 
 closed, left him a common man, appearing to 
 superficial observers rather below than above 
 the level of ordinary talkers. To his inward 
 gaze the stupendous changes which agitated 
 Europe, at the time he wrote, were silent as 
 a picture. The pleasure of his life was to 
 think ; its business was to write ; all else in 
 it was vanity. Eegarding his own being 
 through the same spiritualising medium, he 
 saw no reason why the springs of its exist- 
 ence should wear out, and, in the spring-time 
 of his speculation, held that man might 
 become immortal on earth by the effort of 
 the will. His style partook of the quality of 
 his intellect and the character of its purposes 
 — it was pure, simple, colourless. Hig most 
 imaginative passages are inspired only by a 
 logic quickened into enthusiasm by tlie 
 anticipation of the approaching discovery of 
 truth — the dawning Eureka of the reasoner ; 
 they are usually composed of " line upon 
 line and precept upon precept," without an 
 
 involution of style, or an eddy in the thought. 
 He sometimes complained, though with the 
 benignity that always marked his estimate 
 of his opponents, that Mr. Malthus's style 
 was too richly ornamented for argument ; 
 and certainly, with all its vivacity of illus- 
 tration it lacks the transparent simplicity 
 of his own. The most palpable result which 
 he ever produced by his writings was the 
 dark theory in the first edition of the work 
 on Population, which was presented as an 
 answer to his reasoning on behalf of the 
 perfectibility of man ; and he used to smile 
 at his ultimate triumph, when the writer, 
 who had only intended a striking paradox, 
 tamed it down to the wisdom of economy, 
 and adapted it to Poor-law uses ; neutralised 
 his giant spectres of Vice and Misery by the 
 practical intervention of Moral Restraint ; 
 and left the optimist, Godwin, still in 
 unclouded possession of the hope of universal 
 peace and happiness, postponed only to that 
 time when passicm shall be subjected to 
 reason, and population, no more rising like a 
 resistless tide, between adamantine barriers 
 to submerge the renovated earth, shall obey 
 the commands of wisdom ; rise and fall as 
 the means of subsistence expand or contract ; 
 and only contribute an impulse to the 
 universal harmony. 
 
 The persons of Mr. Godwin's romances — 
 stranger still — are the naked creations of 
 the same intellectual power, marvellously 
 endowed with galvanic life. Though with 
 happier sjanmetry, they are as much made 
 out of chains and links of reasoning, as the 
 monster was fashioned by the chemistry 
 of the student, in the celebrated novel of 
 his gifted daughter. Falkland, and Caleb 
 Williams, are the mere impersonations of 
 the unbounded love of reputation, and 
 irresistible curiosity ; these ideas are de- 
 veloped in each with masterly iteration — to 
 the two ideas all causes give way ; and 
 materials are subjected, often of remarkable 
 coarseness, to the refinement of the concep- 
 tion. Hazlitt used to observe of these two 
 charactei's, that the manner they are played 
 into each other, was equal to anything of 
 the kind in the drama ; and there is no doubt 
 that the opposition, though at the cost of 
 probability, is most powerfully maintained ; 
 but the effect is partly owing to the absence 
 of all extrinsic interest which could interfere 
 
288 
 
 JOHN TIIELWALL. 
 
 with the main purpose ; the beatings of the 
 heai't become audible, not only from their 
 own intensity, but from the desolation which 
 the author has expanded around them. The 
 consistency in e.ach is that of an idea, not of 
 a character ; and if the effect of form and 
 colour is produced, it is, as in line engraving, 
 by the infinite minuteness and delicacy of 
 the single strokes. In like manner, the 
 incidents by which the author seeks to 
 exemplify the wrongs inflicted by power on 
 goodness in civilised society, are utterly 
 fantastical ; nothing can be more minute, 
 nothing more unreal ; the youth being in- 
 volved by a web of circumstances woven to 
 immesh him, which the condition of society 
 that the author intends to repudiate, renders 
 impossible ; and which, if true, would prove 
 not that the framework of law is tjTannous, 
 but that the will of a single oppressor may 
 elude it. Tlie subject of "St. Leon" is 
 more congenial to the author's power ; but 
 it is, in like manner, a logical development 
 of the consequences of a being prolonged on 
 earth through ages ; and, as the dismal vista 
 expands, the skeleton speculators crowd in 
 to mock and sadden us ! 
 
 Mr. Godwin was thus a man of two 
 beings, which held little discourse with each 
 other — the daring inventor of theories con- 
 structed of air-drawTi diagrams — and the 
 simple gentleman, who suffered nothing to 
 disturb or excite him, beyond his study. He 
 loved to walk in the crowded streets of Lon- 
 don, not like Lamb, enjoying the infinite 
 varieties of many-coloured life around him, 
 but because he felt, amidst the noise, and 
 crowd, and glare, more intensely the imper- 
 turbable stillness of his own contemplations. 
 His means of comfortable support were 
 mainly supplied by a shop in Skiunei'-street, 
 where, under the auspices of" M. J. Godwin 
 & Co.," tlie prettiest and wisest books for 
 children issued, which old-fashioned parents 
 presented to their cliildren, without suspect- 
 ing that the graceful lessons of piety and 
 goodness which charmed away the selfishness 
 of infancy, were published, and sometimes 
 revised, and now and then written, by a 
 philosopher wliora they would scarcely 
 venture to name ! He met the exigencies 
 which the vicissitudes of business sometimes 
 caused, with the trusting simplicity which 
 marked his course — he aaked lii.s friends for 
 
 aid without scruple, considering that their 
 means were justly the due of one who toiled 
 in thought for their inward life, and had 
 little time to provide for his own outward 
 existence ; and took their excuses, when 
 offered, without doubt or offence. The veiy 
 next day after I had been honoured and 
 delighted by an introduction to hirn at 
 Laml)'s chambers, I was made still more 
 proud and happy by his appearance at my 
 own on such an errand — which my poverty, 
 not my will, rendered abortive. After some 
 pleasant chat on indifferent matters, he care- 
 lessly observed, that he had a little bill for 
 150?. falling due on the morrow, which he 
 had forgotten till tliat morning, and desired 
 the loan of the necessary amount for a few 
 weeks. At first, in eager hope of being able 
 thus to oblige one whom I regarded with 
 admiration akin to awe, I began to consider 
 whether it was possible for me to raise such 
 a sum ; but, alas ! a moment's reflection 
 sufficed to convince me that the hope was 
 vain, and I was obliged, with much confusion, 
 to assure my distinguished visitor how glad 
 I should have been to seiwe him, but that I 
 was only just starting as a special pleader, 
 was obliged to write for magazines to help 
 me on, and had not such a sum in the world. 
 " Oh dear," said the philosopher, " I thought 
 you were a young gentleman of fortune — 
 don't mention it — don't mention it ; I shall 
 do very well elsewhere :" — and then, in the 
 most gracious manner, reverted to our farmer 
 topics ; and sat in my small room for half an 
 hour, as if to convince me that my want of 
 fortune made no difference in his esteem. A 
 slender tribute to the literature he had 
 loved and served so well, was accorded to 
 him in the old age to which he attained, by 
 [ the gift of a sinecure in the Exchequer, of 
 about 200?. a-year, connected with the 
 custody of the Records ; and the last time I 
 saw him, he was heaving an immense key 
 to unlock the musty treasures of which he 
 was guardian — how unlike those he had 
 unlocked, with finer talisman, for the 
 astonisliment and alarm of one generation, 
 and the delight of all others ! 
 
 John Thklwall, who had once exulted in 
 the appellation of Citizen Thehvall, having 
 been associated with Coleridge and Soutlioy 
 in their days of enthusiastical dreaming, 
 though a more precise and pnuti-'al reformer 
 
 L. 
 
JOHN THELWALL. 
 
 289 
 
 than either, was introduced by them to Lamb, 
 and was welcomed to his circle, in the true 
 Catholicism of its spirit, although its master 
 cared nothing for the Roman virtue which 
 Thelwall devotedly cherished, and which 
 Home Tooke kept in uncertain vibration be- 
 tween a rebellion and a hoax. Lamb justly 
 esteemed Thelwall as a thoroughly honest 
 man ; — not honest merely in reference to the 
 moral relations of life, but to the processes 
 of thought ; one whose mind, acute, vigorous, 
 and direct, perceived only the object imme- 
 diately before it, and, undisturbed by colla- 
 teral circumstances, reflected, with literal 
 fidelity, the impression it received, and main- 
 tained it as sturdily against the beauty that 
 might soften it, or the wisdom that might 
 mould it, as against the tyranny that would 
 stifle its expression. " If to be honest as the 
 world goes, is to be one man picked out of 
 ten thousand," to be honest as the mind 
 works is to be one man of a million ; and 
 such a man was Thelwall. Starting with 
 imperfect education from the thraldom of 
 domestic oppression, with slender knowledge, 
 but with fiery zeal, into the dangers of poli- 
 tical enteri^rise, and treading fearlessly on 
 the verge of sedition, he saw notliiug before 
 him but powers which he assumed to be 
 despotism and vice, and rushed headlong to 
 crush them. The point of time — just that 
 when the accumulated force of public opinion 
 had obtained a virtual mastery over the 
 accumulated corruptions of ages, but when 
 power, still unconvinced of its danger, pre- 
 sented its boldest front to opposing intellect, 
 or strove to crush it in the cruelty of 
 awaking fear — gave scope for the ai'deut 
 temperament of an orator almost as poor in 
 scholastic cultivation as in external fortune ; 
 but strong in integrity, and rich in burning 
 words. 
 
 Thus passionate, Thelwall spoke boldly 
 and vehemently — at a time when indignation 
 was thought to be virtue ; but there is no 
 re.oson to believe he ever meditated any 
 treason except that accumulated in the archi- 
 tectural sophistry of Lord Eldon, by -yvhich 
 he proved a person who desired tb awe 
 the Government into a change of policy 
 to be guilty of compassing the king's death 
 — as thus : — that the king must resist the 
 proposed alteration in his measures — that 
 resisting he must be deposed — imd that being 
 
 deposed, he must necessarily die ; — though 
 his boldness of speech placed him in jeopardy 
 even after the acquittals of his simple- 
 minded associate Hardy, and his enigmatical 
 instructor Tooke, who forsook him, and left 
 him, when acquitted, to the mercy of the 
 world. His life, which before this event had 
 been one of self-denial and purity remarkable 
 in a young man who had imbibed the im- 
 pulses of revolutionary France, partook of 
 considerable vicissitude. At one time, he 
 was raised by his skill in correcting im- 
 pediments of speech, and teaching elocution 
 as a science, into elegant competence — at 
 other times saddened by the difficulties of 
 poorly requited literary toil and wholly un- 
 requited patriotism ; but he preserved his 
 integrity and his cheerfulness — "a man of 
 hope and forward-looking mind even to the 
 last." Unlike Godwin, whose profound 
 thoughts slowly struggled into form, and 
 seldom found utterance in conversation, — 
 speech was, in him, all in all, his delight, his 
 profession, his triumph, with little else than 
 passion to inspii-e or colour it. The flaming 
 orations of his "Tribune," rendered more 
 piquant bj'^ the transparent masquerade of 
 ancient history, which, in his youth, " touched 
 monied worldlings with dismay," and infi'cted 
 the poor with dangerous anger, seemed vapid, 
 spiritless, and shallow Avhen addressed 
 through the press to the leisure of the 
 thoughtful. The light which glowed with 
 so formidable a lustre before the evening 
 audience, vanished on closer examination, 
 and proved to be only a harmless phantom- 
 vapour which left no traces of destructive 
 energy behind it. 
 
 Thclwiill, in person small, compact, mus- 
 cular — with a head denoting indomitable 
 resolution, and features deeply furrowed by 
 the ardent workings of the mind, — was as 
 energetic in all his pursuits and enjoyments 
 as in iDolitical action. He was earnestly de- 
 voted to the Drama, and enjoyed its greatest 
 representations with the freshness of a boy 
 who sees a play for the first time. He hailed 
 the kindred energy of Kean with enthu- 
 siastic praise ; but abjuring the narrowness 
 of his political vision in matters of taste, did 
 justice to the nobler qualities of ]\Irs. Siddons 
 and her brothers. In literature and art also, 
 he relaxed the bigotry of his liberal intoler- 
 ance, and expatiated in their wider fields 
 
290 
 
 ^VILLIAM HAZLITT. 
 
 with a taste more catholic. Here Lamb was 
 ready with his sympathy, which indeed even 
 the political zeal, that he did not share, was 
 too hearted to repel. Although generally de- 
 testing lectures on literature as superficial 
 and vapid substitutes for quiet reading, and 
 recitations as unreal mockeries of the true 
 Drama, he sometimes attended the enter- 
 tainments, composed of both, which Tlielwall, 
 in the palmy days of his prosperity, gave at 
 his house in Lincoln's Inn Fields, not on 
 politics, which he had then forsaken for 
 elocutionary science, though maintaining the 
 principles of his youth, but partly on elocu- 
 tion, and partly on poetry and acting, into 
 which he infused the fiery enthusiasm of his 
 natm-e. Sometimes, indeed, his fervour 
 animated his disquisitions on the philosophy 
 of speech with greater warmth than he re- 
 served for more attractive themes ; the 
 melted vowels were blended into a rainbow, 
 or dispersed like fleecy clouds ; and the 
 theory of language was made interesting by 
 the honesty and vigour of the speaker. Like 
 all men who have been chiefly self-taught, 
 he sometimes presented common-places as 
 original discoveries, with an air which 
 strangers mistook for quackery ; but they 
 were unjust ; to the speaker these were the 
 product of his own meditation, though 
 familiar to many, and not rarely possessed 
 the charm of originality in their freshness. 
 Lamb at least, felt that it was good, among 
 other companions of richer and moi'e com- 
 prehensive intelligence, to have one friend 
 who was undisturbed by misgiving either for 
 himself or his cause ; who enunciated wild 
 paradox and worn-out common-place with 
 equal confidence ; and who was ready to 
 sacrifice ease, fortune, fame — everything but 
 speech, and, if it had been possible, even that 
 — to the cause of truth or friendship. 
 
 William IIazlitt was, for many years, 
 one of the brightest and most constant orna- 
 ments of Lamb's parties ; — linked to him in 
 the fii-m bond of intellectual friendship — 
 which remained unsV-.^iken in spite of some 
 superficial dill'erenccs, " short and far be- 
 tween," arising from Lamb's insensibility to 
 Hazlitt's political animosities and his ad- 
 herence to Southcy, Wordsworth, and Cole- 
 ridge, who shared them. IIazlitt in his 
 boyhood had derived from his father that 
 attachment to abstract truth for its own sake, 
 
 and that inflexible determination to cherish 
 it, which naturally predominated in the 
 being of the minister of a small i-ural con- 
 gregation, who cherished religious opinions 
 adverse to those of the great body of his 
 countr3'men, and waged a spiritual warfare 
 throughout his peaceful course. Thus dis- 
 ciplined, he was introduced to the friendship 
 of youthful poets, in whom the dawn of 
 the French Revolution had enkindled hope, 
 and passion, and opinions tinctured with 
 hope and passion, which he eagerly em- 
 braced ; and when changes passed over the 
 prospects of mankind, which induced them, 
 in maturer years, to modify the doctrines 
 they had taught, he I'esented these defections 
 almost as personal wrongs, and, when his 
 pen found scope, and his tongue utterance, 
 wrote and spoke of them with such bitter- 
 ness as can only spring from the depths of 
 old affection. No writer, however, except 
 Wilson, did such noble justice to the poetry 
 of Wordsworth, when most despised, and to 
 the genius of Coleridge, when most obscured ; 
 he cherished a true admiration for each in 
 "the last recesses of the mind," and defended 
 them with dogged resolution against the 
 scorns and slights of the world. Still the 
 superficial difference was, or seemed, too wide 
 to admit of personal intercourse ; and I do 
 
 i not think that during the many years which 
 elapsed between my introduction to Lamb 
 and Hazlitt's death, he ever met either of 
 the poets at the rooms of the man they united 
 in loving. 
 
 Although Mr. Hazlitt was thus staunch in 
 his attachment to principles which he re- 
 
 1 verenced as true, he was by no means risrid 
 
 ' in his mode of maintaining and illustrating 
 them ; but, on the contrary, frequently 
 diminished the immediate efiect of his 
 reasonings by the prodigality and richness 
 of the allusions with which he embossed 
 them. He ha<l as uncjuenchable a desire for 
 truth as others have for wealth, or power, or 
 fame ; he pursued it with sturdy singleness 
 of purpose ; and enunciatod it without favour 
 or fear. But, besides that love of truth, that 
 sincerity in pursuing it, and that boldness in 
 telling it, he had also a forvont aspiration 
 
 ' after the beautiful ; a vivid sense of pleasure, 
 and an intense consciousness of his own indi- 
 vidual being, which sometimes produced 
 obstacles to the current of speculation, by 
 
WILLIAM HAZLITT. 
 
 291 
 
 which it was broken into dazzling eddies or 
 urged into devious windings. Acute, fervid, 
 vigorous, as his mind was, it wanted the one 
 great central power of Imagination, which 
 brings all the other faculties into harmonious 
 action ; multiplies them into each other ; 
 makes truth visible in the forms of beauty, 
 and substitutes intellectual vision for proof. 
 Thus, in him, truth and beauty lielil divided 
 empire. In him, the spirit was willing, but 
 the flesh was strong ; and, when these con- 
 tend, it is not difficult to anticipate the result ; 
 " for the power of beauty shall sooner trans- 
 form honesty from what it is into a bawd, 
 than the person of honesty shall transform 
 beauty into its likeness." This " sometime 
 paradox" was vividly exemplified in Hazlitt's 
 personal history, his conversation, and his 
 writings. To the solitudes of the country 
 in which he mused on " fate, free -will, fore- 
 knowledge absolute," a temperament of un- 
 usual ardour had given an intense interest, 
 akin to that with which Rousseau has 
 animated and oppressed the details of his 
 early years. 
 
 He had not then, nor did he find till long 
 afterwards, power to embody his meditations 
 and feelings in words. The consciousness 
 of thoughts which he could not hope ade- 
 quately to express, increased his natural 
 reserve, and he turned for relief to the art of 
 painting, in which he might silently realise 
 his dreams of beauty, and repay the loveli- 
 ness of nature by fixing some of its fleeting 
 aspects in immortal tints. A few old prints 
 from the old masters awakened the sjjirit of 
 emulation within him ; the sense of beauty 
 became identified in his mind with that of 
 glory and duration ; while the peaceful 
 labour he enjoyed calmed the tumult in his 
 veins, and gave steadiness to his pure and 
 distant aim. He pursued the art with an 
 earnestness and patience which he vividly 
 describes in his essay, " On the Pleasure of 
 Painting ; " and to which he frequently re- 
 verted in the happiest moods of his convei-- 
 sation ; and, although in this, his chosen 
 pursuit, he failed, the passionate des|re for 
 success, and the long struggle to attain it, 
 left deep traces in his mind, heightening his 
 keen perception of external things, and 
 mingling with all his speculations airy shapes 
 and hues which he had vainly striven to 
 transfer to canvas. A painter may acquire 
 
 a fine insight into the nice distinctions of 
 character, — he may copy manners in words 
 as he does in colours, — but it may be appre- 
 hended that his course as a severe reason er 
 will be somewhat "troubled with thick- 
 coming fancies." And if the successful 
 pursuit of art may thus disturb the process 
 of abstract contemplation, how much more 
 may an unsatisfied ambition ruflle it ; bid 
 the dark threads of thought glitter with 
 radiant fancies unrealised, and clothe the 
 diagrams of speculation with the fragments 
 of picture which the mind cherishes the more 
 fondly, because the hand refused to realise ? 
 What wonder, if, in the mind of an ardent 
 youth, thus struggling in vain to give palpable 
 existence to the shapes of loveliness which 
 haunted him, "the homely beauty of the 
 good old cause " should assume the fasci- 
 nations not properly its own ? 
 
 This association of beauty with reason 
 diminished the immediate effect of Mr. 
 Hazlitt's political essays, Avhile it enhanced 
 their permanent value. It was the fashion, 
 in his lifetime, to denounce him as a sour 
 Jacobin ; but no description could be more 
 unjust. Under the influence of some bitter 
 feeling, or some wayward fancy, he occasion- 
 ally poured out a furious invective against 
 those whom he regarded as the enemies of 
 liberty, or as apostates from her cause ; but, 
 in general, tJie force of his expostulation, or 
 his reasoning, was diverted (unconsciously to 
 himself) by figures and phantasies, by fine 
 and quaint allusions, by quotations from his 
 favourite authors, introduced with singular 
 felicity, as respects the direct link of associa- 
 tion, but tending, by their very beauty, to 
 unnerve the mind of the reader, and substi- 
 tute the sense of luxury for clear conviction, 
 or noble anger. In some of his essays, where 
 the reasoning is most cogent, every other 
 sentence contains some exquisite passage 
 from Shakspeare, or Fletcher, or Words- 
 worth, trailing after it a line of golden asso- 
 ciations ; or some reference to a novel, over 
 which we have a thousand times forgotten 
 the wrongs of mankind ; till, in the recurring 
 shocks of pleasurable surprise, the main argii- 
 raent is forgotten. When, for example, he 
 compares the position of certain political 
 waverei-s to that of Clarissa Harlowe con- 
 fronting the ravisher who would repeat his 
 outrage, with the penknife pointed to her 
 
292 
 
 WILLIAM HAZLITT. 
 
 breast, and her eyes uplifted to Heaven, and 
 describes them as having been, like her, 
 trepanned into a house of ill-fame, near Pall 
 Mall, and there defending their soiled virtue 
 with their penknives ; wliat reader, at the 
 suggestion of the stupendous scene which the 
 allusion directly revives, can think or care 
 about the renegade of yesterday ? Here, 
 again, is felt the want of that Imagination 
 which brings all things into one, tinges all 
 our thoughts and sympathies with one hue, 
 and rejects every ornament which does not 
 heighten or prolong the feeling which it seeks 
 to embody. 
 
 Even when he retaliates on Southey for 
 attacking his old co-patriots, the poetical 
 associations which bitter remembrance sug- 
 gests, almost neutralise the vituperation ; he 
 brings every " flower which sad embroidery 
 wears to strew the laureate hearse," where 
 ancient regards are interred ; and merges all 
 the censure of the changed politician in praise 
 of the simple dignity and tlie generous labours 
 of a singulai'ly noble and unsullied life. So 
 little does he regard the unity of sentiment 
 in his compositions, that in his "Letter to 
 GitFord," after a series of just and bitter 
 retorts on his maligner as "the fine link 
 which connects literature with the police," 
 he takes a fancy to teach that " ultra-crepi- 
 darian critic " his own theory of the natural 
 disinterestedness of the human mind, and 
 develops it, not in the dry, hard, mathematical 
 style in which it was first enunciated, but 
 "o'er informed" with the glow of sentiment, 
 and terminating in an eloquent rhapsody. 
 This latter portion of the letter is one of the 
 noblest of his cflfusions,but it entirelydestroys 
 the first in the mind of the reader ; for who, 
 when thus contemplating tl)e living wheels 
 on wliichhuman benevolence is borne onwards 
 in its triumphant career, and the spirit witli 
 which tliey are instinct, can think of the lite- 
 rary wasp wliich had settled for a moment 
 upon them, and who had just befoi-e been 
 mercilessly transfixed with minikin arrows ? 
 
 But the most signal exam})le of the in- 
 fluences which " tlie show of things " exer- 
 cised over Mr. Hazlitt's mind was the setting 
 up the Emperor Napoleon as his idol. He 
 strove to justify tliis ])redilection to himself 
 by referring it to the revolutionary origin of 
 his hero, and the contempt with which he 
 trampled upon the claims of legitimacy, and 
 
 humbled the pride of kings. But if his " only 
 love " thus spning " from his only hate," it 
 was not cherished in its blossom by antipa- 
 thies. If there had been nothing in his mind 
 which tended to aggrandisement and glory, 
 and which would fain reconcile the principles 
 of freedom with the lavish accumulation of 
 power, he might have desired tlie triumph ot 
 young tyranny over legitimate thrones ; but 
 he would scarcely have watched its progress 
 and its fall " like a lover and a child." His 
 feeling for Bonaparte in exile was not a sen- 
 timent of respect for fallen gi-eatness ; not a 
 desire to trace " tlie soul of goodness in 
 things evil ;" not a loathing of the treatment 
 the Emperor received from "his cousin king.s" 
 in the day of adversity ; but entire aflfection 
 mingling with the current of the blood, and 
 pervading the moral and intellectual being. 
 Nothing less than this strong attachment, at 
 once personal and refined, would have enabled 
 him to encounter the toil of collecting and 
 arranging facts and dates for four volumes of 
 narrative, which constitute his " Life of 
 Napoleon ;" — a drudgery too abhoi-rent to his 
 habits of mind as a thinker, to be sustained 
 by any stimulus wliich the prospect of remu- 
 neration or the hope ofapjilause could supply. 
 It is not so much in the ingenious excuses 
 which he discovers for the worst acts of his 
 hero — oflered even for the midnight execution 
 of the Duke d'Enghien and the invasion of 
 Spain — that the stamp of personal devotion 
 is obvious, as in the graphic force with which 
 he has delineated the short-lived splendours 
 of the Imperial Court, and " the trivial fond 
 records " he has gathered of every vestige of 
 human feeling by which he could reconcile 
 the Imperial CjTiic to the species he scorned. 
 The first two volumes of his work, although 
 redeemed by scattered thoughts of true ori- 
 ginality and depth, arc often confused and 
 spiritless ; the characters of the jtrinoipal 
 revolutionists are drawn too much in the 
 style of awkward, sprawling caricatures ; but 
 when the hero casts all his rivals into the 
 distance, erects himself the individual enemy 
 of Engliuid, consecrates his power by religious 
 ceremonies, and defines it by the circle of a 
 crown, the author's strength becomes concen- 
 trated ; his narrative assumes an epic dignity 
 and fervour ; dallies with the flowere of 
 usurped prerogative, and glows with " the 
 long-resounding march and emrgy divine." 
 
WILLIAM HAZLITT. 
 
 293 
 
 How lia]ipy and proud is he to picture the 
 
 meeting of the Eniperor with the Pope, and 
 the gi-andeui-s of the coronation ! How he 
 grows wanton in celebrating the fetes of the 
 Tuileries, as "presentuig all the elegance of 
 enchanted pageants," and laments them as 
 " gone like a fairy revel ! " How he " lives 
 along the line" of Austerlitz, and rejoices 
 in its thunder, and hails its setting sun, and 
 exults in the minutest details of the subse- 
 quent meeting of the conquered sovereigns at 
 the feet of the conqueror ! How he expa- 
 tiates on the fatal marriage with " the deadly 
 Austrian," (as Mr. Cobbett justly called 
 Maria Louisa), as though it were a chapter 
 in romance, and sheds the grace of beauty on 
 the imperial picture ! How he kindles with 
 martitil ardour as he describes the prepara- 
 tions against Russia ; miisters the myriads of 
 barbarians with a show of dramatic justice ; 
 and fondly lingers among the brief trium))hs 
 of Moskwa on the verge of the terrible catas- 
 trophe ! The narrative of that disastrous 
 expedition is, indeed, written with a master's 
 hand ; we see the " grand army " marching 
 to its destruction through the immense ])er- 
 spective : the wild hordes flying before the 
 terror of its " coming ;" the barbaric magni- 
 ficence of Moscow towering in the remote 
 distance ; and when we gaze upon the sacri- 
 ficial conflagi-ation of the Kremlin, we feel 
 that it is worthy to become the funeral pile 
 of the conqueror's glories. It is well for the 
 readers of this splendid work, that there is 
 more in it of the painter than of the meta- 
 pliysician ; that its style glows with the 
 fervour of battle, or stiffens with the spoils of 
 victory ; yet we wonder that this monument 
 to imperial grandeur should be raised from 
 the dead level of jacobinism by an honest 
 and profound thinker. The solution is, that 
 although he was this, he was also more — 
 that, in opinion, he was devoted to the cause 
 of the people ; but that, in feeling, he required 
 some individual object of worship ; that he 
 selected Napoleon as one in whose origin and 
 career he might at once impersonate his 
 principles and gratify his ali'ectiond; and 
 that lie adhered to his own idea with heroic 
 obstinacy, when the "child and chami)ion of 
 the Republic " openly sought to repress all 
 feeling and thought, but such as he could 
 cast in his own iron moulds, and scoffed 
 at popular enthusiasm even while it bore 
 
 him to the accomplishment of his loftiest 
 desires. 
 
 Mr. Hazlitt had little inclination to talk or 
 write about contemporary authors, and still 
 less to read them. He was with difficulty 
 persuaded to look into the Scotch novels, but 
 when he did so, he found them old in sub- 
 stance though new in form, read them with 
 as much avidity as the rest of the woi'ld, and 
 expressed better than any one else what all 
 the woi^ld felt about them. His hearty love 
 of them, however, did not diminish, but 
 aggravate his dislike of the political opinions 
 so zealously and consistently maintained, of 
 their great author : and yet the strength of 
 his hatred towards that which was accidental 
 and transitory only set off the unabated 
 power of his regard for the great and the 
 lasting. Coleridge and Wordsworth were 
 not moderns to him, for they were the 
 inspirers of his youth, which was his own 
 antiquity, and the feelings which were the 
 germ of their poetry had sunk deep into his 
 heart. With the exception of the works of 
 these, and of his friends Barry Cornwall and 
 Sheridan Knowles, in whose successes he re- 
 joiced, he held modern literature in slight 
 esteem, and regarded the discoveries of 
 science and the visions of optimism with an 
 undazzled eye. His "large discourse of 
 i-eason " looked not before, but after. He 
 felt it a sacred duty, as a lover of genius and 
 art, to defend the fame of the mighty dead. 
 When the old painters were assailed in 
 "The Catalogue Raisonne of the British 
 Institution," he was "touched with noble 
 anger." AU his own vain longings after the 
 immortality of the works which were libelled, 
 — all the tranquillity and beauty they had 
 shed into his soul, — all his compi-ehension of 
 the sympathy and delight of thousands, 
 which, accumulating through long time, had 
 attested their worth — were fused together to 
 dazzle and subdue the daring critic who 
 would disturb the judgment of ages. So, 
 when a popular ])oet assailed the fame of 
 Rousseau, seeking to reverse the deci^on of 
 posterity on what that great though unhappy 
 writer had achieved by suggesting tlie opinion 
 of people of condition in his neighbourhood 
 on tlie figure he made to their apprehensions 
 Avhile in the service of Madame de Warrens, 
 he vindicated the prerogatives of genius 
 with the true logic of passion. Few tfiiuga 
 
294 
 
 WILLIAM HAZLITT. 
 
 irritated him more than the claims set up for 
 the present generation to be wiser and better 
 tlian tliose wliich have gone before it. He 
 had no power of imagination to embrace the 
 golden clouds which Imng over the Future, 
 but he rested and expatiated in the Past. To 
 his a])prehension human good did not appear 
 a slender shoot of yesterday, like the bean- 
 stalk in the fairy tale, aspiring to the skies, 
 and leading to an enchanted castle, but a huge 
 growth of intertwisted fibres, grasping the 
 earth by numberless roots of custom, habit, 
 and affection, and bearing vestigos of "a 
 thousand storms, a thousand thunders." 
 
 AVhen I first met Hazlitt, in the year 1815, 
 he was staggering under the blow of Water- 
 loo. The re-appearance of his imperial idol 
 on the coast of France, and his triumphant 
 march to Paris, like a fairy vision, had ex- 
 cited liis admiration and sympathy to the 
 utmost pitch ; and though in many resjjects 
 sturdily English in feeling, he could scai'cely 
 forgive the valour of the conquerors ; and 
 bitterly resented the captivity of the Emperor 
 in St. Helena, which followed it, as if he had 
 sustained a personal wrong. On this subject 
 only, he was " eaten up with passion ; " on 
 all others he was the fairest, the most candid 
 of reasoners. His countenance was then 
 handsome, but marked by a painful exj)i'es- 
 sion ; his black hair, which had curled stiffly 
 over his temples, had scarcely received its 
 first tints of grey ; his gait was awkward ; 
 his dress was neglected ; and, in the com- 
 pany of strangers, his bashfulness was almost 
 painful— but when, in the society of Lamb 
 and one or two others, he talked on his 
 favourite themes of old English books, or old 
 Italian pictures, no one's conversation could 
 be more delightful. The poets, from inter- 
 course with whom he had di-awn so much of 
 his taste, and who had contributed to shed 
 the noble infection of beauty tlu-ough his 
 reasoning faculties, had scarcely the oppor- 
 tunity of appreciating their progress. It 
 was, in afLi;r years, by the fire-side of " the 
 Lamhs," that his tongue was gradually 
 loosened, and his passionate thouglits found 
 appropriate woi-ds. There, his struggles to 
 express the line conceptions with which his 
 mind wtus tilled were encouraged by entire 
 sympathy; there he began to stammer out 
 his just and original conceptions of Chaucer 
 and Spenser, and other Kngli-sh poets and 
 
 prose writers, more talked of, though not 
 laetter known, by their countrymen ; there 
 he was thoroughly understood and dexter- 
 ously cheered by Miss Lamb, whose nice 
 discernment of his first efforts in conversa- 
 tion were dwelt upon by him with affectionate 
 gratitude, even when most out of humour 
 with the world. Wlien he mastered his 
 diffidence, he did not talk for effect, to dazzle, 
 or suqirise, or annoy, but with the most sim- 
 ple and honest desii'e to make his view of the 
 subject in hand entirely a])prehended by his 
 hearer. There was sometimes an obvious 
 struggle to do this to his own satisfaction ; 
 he seemed labouring to drag his thought to 
 light from its deep lurking-place ; and, with 
 timid distrust of that power of expression 
 which he had found so late in life, he often 
 betrayed a fear lest he had failed to make 
 himself understood, and recurred to the sub- 
 ject again and again, that he might be assured 
 he had succeeded. With a certain dogged- 
 ness of manner, he showed nothing prag- 
 matical or exclusive ; he never drove a prin- 
 ciple to its utmost possible consequences 
 but, like Locksley, " allowed for the wind." 
 For some years previous to his death he ob- 
 served an entire abstinence from fermented 
 liquors, which he had once quaffed with the 
 proper relish he had for all the good things 
 of this life, but which he courageously re- 
 signed when he found the indulgence perilous 
 to his health and faculties. The cheerful- 
 ness with which he made this sacrifice was 
 one of the most amiable traits in his cha- 
 racter. He had no censure for others, who, 
 in the same dangers, were less wise or less 
 resolute ; nor did he think he had earned, 
 by his own constancy, any right to intrude 
 advice which he knew, if wanted, must be 
 unavailing. Nor did he profess to be a con- 
 vert to the general system of abstinence, 
 which was advanced by one of hi.s kindest 
 and stauncIiL'st friends ; he avowed that he 
 yielded to necessity ; and instead of avoiding 
 the sight of that which he could no longer 
 taste, he was seldom no hapi)y as when he 
 sat with friends at their wine, participating 
 the sociality of the time, and renewing his 
 own past enjoyment in that of his compa- 
 nions, without regret and without envy. 
 Like Dr. Johnson, he made himself poor 
 amends for the loss of wine by drinking tea, 
 not so largely, indeed, as the lu-ro of i Juswell, 
 
WILLIAM HAZLITT. 
 
 296 
 
 but at least of equal potency ; for he might 
 have challenged Mrs. Thrale and all her sex 
 to make stronger tea than his own. In 
 society, as in politics, he was no flincher. 
 He loved " to hear the chimes at midnight," 
 without considering them as a summons to 
 rise. At these seasons, when in his happiest 
 mood, he used to dwell on the conversational 
 jjowors of his friends, and live over again the 
 delightful hours he had passed with them ; 
 repeat the pregnant puns that one had made ; 
 tell over again a story with which another 
 had convulsed the room ; or expatiate on the 
 eloquence of a third ; alwaj's best pleased 
 when he could detect some talent which was 
 unregarded by the world, and giving alike, 
 to the celebrated and the unknown, due 
 honour. 
 
 Mr. Hazlitt delivered three courses of lec- 
 tures at the Surrey Institution, on T/te Eng- 
 lish Poets; on The English Comic Writers; 
 and on The Age of Elizabeth ; which Lamb 
 (under protest against lectures in general) 
 regularly attended, an earnest admirer, amidst 
 crowds with whom the lecturer had " an im- 
 perfect sympathy." They consisted chiefly 
 of Dissenters, who agreed with him in his 
 hatred of Lord Castlereagh, and his love of 
 religious freedom, but who " loved no plays ; " 
 of Quakers, who appi'oved him as the earnest 
 opponent of slavery and capital punishment, 
 but who " heard no music ; " of citizens, 
 devoted to the main chance, who had a 
 hankering after "the improvement of the 
 mind ; " but to whom his favourite doctrine 
 of its natural disinterestedness was a riddle ; 
 of a few enemies who came to sneer ; and a 
 few fi'iends, who were eager to learn and to 
 admire. The comparative insensibility of 
 the bulk of Ins audience to his finest pas- 
 sages sometimes provoked him to awaken 
 their attention by points which broke the 
 train of his discourse ; after which, he could 
 make himself amends by some abrupt para- 
 dox which miglit set their prejudices on edge, 
 and make them fancy they were shocked. 
 He stai'tled many of them at the onset, by 
 observing, that, since Jacob's drean^, " the 
 heavens have gone farther oiF, and become 
 astronomical ; " a fine extravagance, which 
 the ladies and gentlemen, who had grown 
 astronomical themselves under the preceding 
 lecturer, felt called on to resent as an attack 
 on their severer studies. When he read a 
 
 well-known extract from Cowper, comparing 
 a poor cottager with Voltaire, and had pro- 
 nounced the line : " A truth the brilliant 
 Frenchman never knew," they broke into a 
 joyous shout of self-gi-atulation, that they 
 were so much wiser than the scornful French • 
 man. When he passed by Mrs. Hannah 
 More with observing that " she had written 
 a great deal which he had never read," a 
 voice gave expression to the general commi- 
 seration and surprise, by calling out " More 
 pity for you ! " They were confounded at 
 his reading with more emphasis, perhaps, 
 than discretion, Gay's epigrammatic lines on 
 Sir Eichard Blackstone, in which scriptural 
 persons are too freely hitched into rhyme ; 
 but he went doggedly on to the end, and, by 
 his perseverance, baffled those who, if he had 
 acknowledged himself wrong, by stopping, 
 would have visited him with an outburst of 
 displeasure which he felt to be gathering. 
 He once had a more edifying advantage over 
 them. He was enumerating the humanities 
 which eiideared Dr. Johnson to his mind, 
 and at tlie close of an agreeable catalogue, 
 mentioned, as last and noblest, "his carry- 
 ing the poor victim of disease and dissipation 
 on his back, through Fleet-.street," at which 
 a titter arose from some, who were struck 
 by the picture, as ludicrous, and a murmur 
 from others, who deemed* the allusion unfit 
 for ears polite : he paused for an instant, and 
 then added, in his sturdiest and most impres- 
 sive manner, — "an act which realises the 
 parable of the Good Samaritan ; " at which 
 his moral and his delicate hearers shrunk, 
 rebidved, into deep silence. He was not elo- 
 quent, in the true sense of the term ; for his 
 thoughts were too weighty to be moved along 
 by the shallow stream of feeUng which an 
 evening's excitement can rouse. He wrote 
 all his lectures, and read them as they were 
 written ; but his deep voice and earnest man- 
 ner suited his matter welL He seemed to 
 dig into his subject, and not in vain. In 
 delivering his longer quotations, he had 
 scarcely continuity enough for the versifica^ 
 tion of Shakspeare and Milton, " with linked 
 sweetness long drawn out ; " but he gave 
 Pope's brilliant satire and delightful compli- 
 ments, which are usually complete within 
 the couplet, with an elegance and point which 
 the poet himself, could he have heai-d, would 
 have felt as indicating their highest praise. 
 
290 
 
 THOMAS BARNES. 
 
 Iklr, Hazlitt, having suffered for many 
 years from derangement of the digestive 
 organs, for which perhaps a moderate use of 
 fermented liquors would have been prefer- 
 able to abstinence, solaced only by the in- 
 tense tincture of tea in which he found re- 
 fuge, worn out at last, died on 18th Sept., 
 1S;30, at the age of fifty-two. Lamb fre- 
 quently visited him during his sufferings, 
 which were not, as has been erroneously 
 suggested, aggravated by the want of need- 
 ful comforts ; for although his careless habits 
 had left no provision for sickness, his friends 
 gladly acknowledged, by their united aid, the 
 deep intellectual obligations due to the great 
 thinker. In a moment of acute pain, when 
 the needless appi'ehension for the future 
 rushed upon him, he dictated a brief and 
 peremptory letter to the editor of the " Edin- 
 burgh Eeview," requiring a considerable re- 
 mittance, to which he had no claim but that 
 of former remunerated sei'vices, which the 
 friend, who obeyed his bidding, feared might 
 excite displeasure ; but he mistook Francis 
 Jeffrey ; the sum demanded was received by 
 return of post, with the most anxious wishes 
 for Hazlitt's recovery — just too late for him 
 to understand his error. Lamb joined a few 
 friends in attending his funeral in the church- 
 yard of St. Anne's Soho, where he was in- 
 teri'ed, and felt his loss — not so violently at 
 the time, as mournfully in the frequent re- 
 currence of the sense that a chief source of 
 intellectual pleasure was stopped. His per- 
 sonal frailties are nothing to us now ; his 
 thoughts survive ; in tlicm we have his better 
 part entire, and in them must be traced his 
 true history. The real events of his life are 
 not to be traced in its external changes ; as 
 his engagement by the "Morning Chronicle," 
 or his transfer of his services to the "Times," 
 or his introduction to the " Edinburgh Re- 
 view ; " but in the progress and develop- 
 ment of his fine understanding as nurtured 
 and checked and swayed by liis affections. 
 His warfare was within ; its spoils are ours ! 
 One of the soundest and most elegant 
 scholars whom the school of Christ's Hospital 
 ever px-oduced, Mr. Thomas B.vrnes, was a 
 frequent guest at Lamb's chambers in the 
 Temple ; and though the responsibilities he 
 undertook, before Lamb quitted that, his 
 happiest abode, prevented him from visiting 
 often at Great Kussoll-streot, at Islington, 
 
 or Enfield, he was always ready to assist by 
 the kind word of the powerful journal in 
 which he became most potent, the expanding 
 reputation of his school-mate and friend. 
 After establishing a high social and intel- 
 lectual character at Cambridge, he had en- 
 tered the legal profession as a special pleader, 
 but was prevented from applying the need- 
 ful devotion to that laborious pursuit by 
 violent rheumatic affections, which he solaced 
 by writing critiques and essays of rare merit. 
 So shattered did he appear in health, that 
 when his friends learned that he had ac- 
 cepted the editorship of the " Times " news- 
 paper, they almost shuddered at the attempt 
 as suicidal, and anticipated a speedy ruin to 
 his constitution from the pressure of constant 
 labour and anxiety, on the least healthful 
 hours of toil. But he had judged better 
 than they of his own physical and intel- 
 lectual i*esources, and the mode in which the 
 grave responsibility and constant exertion of 
 his office would affect both ; for the regular 
 effort consolidated his feverish strength, gave 
 evenness and trano^uillity to a life of serious 
 exertion, and supplied, for many years, power 
 equal to the perpetual demand ; affording a 
 striking example how, when finely attuned, 
 the mind can influence the body to its uses. 
 The facile adaptation of his intellect to hia 
 new duties was scarcely less remai'kable 
 tliau the mastery it achieved over his desul- 
 tory habits and physical infirmities ; for, 
 until then, it had seemed more refined than 
 vigorous — more elegant than weight;;y' — too 
 fastidious to endure the supervision and 
 arrangement of innumerable reports, pai*a^ 
 graphs, and essays ; but, while a scholarly 
 grace was shed by him through all he wrote 
 or moulded, the needful vigour was never 
 wanting to the high office of superintending 
 the gi'eat daily miracle ; to the discipline of 
 its vju'ious contributors ; or to the composi- 
 tion of articles wliich he was always I'eady, 
 on the instant of emergency, to supply. 
 
 Ml". Barnes, linked by school associations 
 with Leigli iluut, filled the theatrical depart- 
 ment of criticism in the " Examiner " during 
 the period when the Editor's imprisonment 
 for alleged libel on the Prince Itegeut pre- 
 cluded his attendance on the theatres. It Wiia 
 no easy ollicc of friendship to supply the place 
 of Hunt in the department of criticism, he 
 may be almost siiid to have invented ; but 
 
THOMAS BARNES. 
 
 297 
 
 Mr. Barnes, though in a different style, well 
 sustained the attractions of the " Theatrical 
 Examiner." Fortunately the appearance of 
 Mr. Kean during this interval enabled him 
 to gratify the profound enthusiasm of his 
 nature, without doing violence to the f;isti- 
 dious taste to which it was usually subjected. 
 • He perceived at once the vivid energy of the 
 new actor ; understood his faults to be better 
 than the excellences of ordinary aspirants ; 
 and hailed him with the most generous 
 praise — the more valuable as it proceeded 
 from one rarely induced to render applause, 
 and never yielding it except on the conviction 
 of true excellence. Hazlitt, who contributed 
 theatrical criticism, at the same time, to the 
 " Morning Chronicle," and who astounded the 
 tame mediocrity of Mr. Perry's subordinates 
 by his earnest eulogy, and Barnes, had the 
 satisfaction of first appreciating this un- 
 friended performer, and, while many were 
 offended by the daring novelty of his style, 
 and more stood aloof with fashionable indif- 
 ference from a deserted theatre, of awakening 
 that spirit which retrieved the fortunes of 
 Old Drury — which revived, for a brilliant 
 interval, the interest of the English stage, 
 and which bore the actor on a tide of in- 
 toxicating success that " knew no retiring 
 ebb " till it was unhappily checked by his 
 own lamentable frailties.* 
 
 The manners of Mr. Barnes, though ex- 
 tremely courteous, were so reserved as to 
 seem cold to strangers ; but they were 
 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 midnight," holding inveterate but 
 
 • As the essays of Mr. Barnes have never been col- 
 lected, I take leave to present to the reader the conclusion 
 of his article in the " Examiner " of February 27, 1814, 
 on the first appearance of Mr. Kean in Kichard : — 
 
 " In the heroic parts, he animated every spectator 
 ■with his own feelings ; when he exclaimed ' that a thou- 
 sand hearts were swelling in his bosom,' the house 
 shouted to express their accordance to a truth sb nobly 
 exemplified by the energy of his voice, by the grandeur 
 of his mien. His death-scene was the grandest concep- 
 tion, and executed in the most impressive manner ; it 
 was a piece of noble poetry, expressed by action instead 
 of language. He fights desperately : he is disarmed .and 
 exhausted of all bodily strength : he disdains to fall, and 
 his strong volition keeps him standing : he fixes that 
 head, full of intellectual and heroic power, directly on 
 the enemy : he bears up his chest with an expression 
 
 delighted controversy with Lamb, respecting 
 the tragic power of Dante as compared with 
 that of Sliakspeare. Dante was 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 kindred 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 
 stand on Lear, and urged the supremacy of 
 the child-changed father against all the 
 possible Ugolinos of the world. Some re- 
 ference having been made by Lamb to his 
 own exposition of Lear, which had been 
 recently published in a magazine, edited by 
 Leigh Hunt, under the title of "The Re- 
 flector," touched another and a tenderer 
 string of feeling, turned a little the course of 
 his enthusiasm the more to inflame it, and 
 brought out a burst of affectionate admira- 
 tion 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 perspiration, exclaiming to Lamb, 
 " And do I not know, my boy, that you have 
 written about Shakspeare, and Shakspeare's 
 own Lear, finer than any one ever did in the 
 world, and won't I let the world know it ?" 
 He was right ; there is no criticism in the 
 world more worthy of the genius it estimates 
 than that little passage referred to on Lear ; 
 few felt it then like Barnes ; thousands have 
 
 which seems swelling with more than human spirit : he 
 holds his uplifted arm in calm but dreadful defiance of 
 his conqueror. But he is but man, and he falls after 
 this sublime eflfort senseless to the gjround. We have 
 felt our eyes gush on reading a passage of exquisite 
 poetry. We 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 be a difi'cience of opinion ; but here 
 there was no room to doubt, no reason could be imprudent 
 enough to hesitate. Every heart beat an echo responsive 
 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 to appreciate 
 such an exalted degree of excellence." 
 
298 
 
 BENJAMIN ROBERT HAYDON. 
 
 read it since, here, and tens of thousands in 
 America ; and have felt as he did ; and 
 will answer for the truth of that excited 
 hour. 
 
 ^Ir. Barnes combined singular acuteness 
 of undei-standing 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 abundantly 
 duped himself. He might caution the public ! 
 to be on their guard against impostors of^ 
 every kind, but his heart was open to every 
 species of delusion w-hich came in the shape 
 of misery. Poles — real and theatrical — 
 refugees, pretenders of all kinds, found their 
 way to the " Times' " inner office, and though 
 the inexorable editor excluded their lucu- 
 brations from the precious space of its 
 columns, he rarely omitted to make them j 
 amends by Inrge contributions from his 
 purse. The intimate acquaintance 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 most 
 feverish agitations ; a dupe in the midst of 
 the quickest apprehensions ; and while, with 
 unbending pride, he repelled the slightest 
 interfei-ence Avith 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 was seen in his 
 later years in Lamb's circle, he is inde- 
 structibly associated with it in the recollec- 
 tion of the f';w survivors of its elder days ; 
 and they will lament with me that the in- 
 fluences 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 j)urest uses. 
 
 Among Lamb's early acquaintances and 
 constant admirers was an artist whose 
 chequered career and mehmcholy death gave 
 au interest to the recollections with which 
 he is linked independent of that which be- 
 longs to his pictures — Bknjamin JlonKUT 
 Haydon. Tlie ruling misfortune of liis life 
 was somewhat akin to that disproportit)n in 
 Hazlitt's mind to which 1 have adverted, but 
 
 productive in his case of more disastrous 
 results — the possession of two different 
 faculties not harmonised into one, and 
 struggling for mastery — in that disarrange- 
 ment of the faculties in which the unpro- 
 ductive talent becomes not a mere negative, 
 but neutralises the other, and even turns its 
 good into evil. Haydon, the son of a re- 
 spectable ti-adesmaa at Plymouth, was 
 endowed with two capacities, 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 
 imder 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. He 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 
 temperament was yet further ruflled by the 
 arduous and complicated struggle. With 
 boundless intellectual ambition, he sought to 
 excel in the loftiest dejjartment of his art ; 
 and undertook the double responsibility of 
 painting great pictures and of creating the 
 taste which should appreciate, and enforcing 
 the patronage which shoidd reward them. 
 
 The patronage of hiL,'h art, not then adopted 
 by the government, and far beyond the means 
 of individuals of the middle class, necessiirily 
 appertained to a few niembers of the ainsto- 
 cracy, who alone could encourage and remu- 
 nerate the painters of history. Although the 
 l)eginning of jNlr. Haydon 's career wiis not 
 uncheered by aristocratic favour, the con- 
 trast between the greatness of his own 
 conceptions and the humility of the course 
 which prudence suggested lis necessary to 
 obtain for himself the means of developing 
 them on canvas, fevered his nature, wiiLch, 
 ardent in gratitude for the appreciation and 
 assistance of the wealthy to a ilegree which 
 
BENJAMIN ROBERT HAYDON. 
 
 299 
 
 might even be mistaken for servility, was 
 also impatient of the general indifference 
 to the cause of which he sought to be, not 
 only the ornament, but unhappily for him, 
 also the champion. Alas ! he there " per- 
 ceived 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 oppo- 
 sition, 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 contest with 
 the Royal Academy ; frequently suspended 
 the gentle Inboxirs of the pencil for the vehe- 
 ment use of the pen ; and thus gave to his 
 course an air of defiance which jirevented 
 the calm appreciation of his nobler woi-ks, 
 and increased the mischief by reaction. In- 
 dignant 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 embairassments, the 
 direct result of his struggle with fortune ; 
 a succession of feverish triumphs and disap- 
 pointments, the fruits of his contest with 
 power ; and worse perhaps tlian either, the 
 frequent diversion of his own genius from its 
 natural course, and the hurried and imper- 
 fect development of its most majestic con- 
 ceptions. To paint as finely as he sometimes 
 did in the ruflded pauses of his passionate 
 controversy, and amidst the terrors of im- 
 pending want, was to display large innate 
 resources 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 chapning 
 the world of art, instead of attempting also 
 to instruct or reform it ! 
 
 Mr. Haydon's coui-se, though thus troubled, 
 was one of constant animation, and illus- 
 trated by hours of triumph, the more radiant 
 because they were snatched from adverse 
 
 fortune and a reluctant people. The exhi- 
 bition of a single picture by an artist at war 
 with the Academy which exhibited a tlicu- 
 sand pictures at the same price — creating a 
 sensation not only among artists and patrons 
 of art, but among the most secluded literary 
 circles — and engaging the liii;hest 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 sticcess. It was a 
 proud moment for the daring painter, when, 
 at the opening of the first of these Exhi- 
 bitions, while the crowd of visitors, distin- 
 guished 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 en- 
 kindled 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, Mrs. Siddons walked slowly up to the 
 centre of the room, surveyed it in silence for 
 a minute or two, and then ejaculated, in her 
 deep, low, thrilling voice, " It is perfect ! " 
 quelled all opposition, and removed the 
 doubt, from his own mind at least, for ever. 
 
 Although the great body of artists to 
 whose corporate power Mr. Haydon was so 
 passionately opposed, naturally stood aside 
 from his path, it was cheered by the atten- 
 tion and often by the applause of the chief 
 literary spirits of the age, who were attracted 
 by a fierce intellectual struggle. Sir Walter 
 Scott, Wordsworth, Hazlitt, Godwin, Shelley, 
 Hunt, Coleridge, Lamb, Keats— and many 
 young writers for penodical works, in the 
 freshness of unhacknied authorshii) — 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 wiih his own ; making common 
 cause with him, " while the whole world 
 seems adverse to desert ; " admonishing him 
 i *' 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 
 I another sonnet, the fine autumnal conception 
 
300 
 
 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGR 
 
 in the picture of Napoleon on the rock of 
 St. Helena, with his back to the spectator, j 
 contemplating the blank sea, left desolate by ' 
 the sunken sun. The Conqueror of Napoleon 
 also recognised the artist's claims, and sup- | 
 plied him with another great siibject, in the ' 
 contemplation of the solitude of Waterloo 
 by its hero, ten years after the victory. 
 
 Mr. Haydon's -v-ividness of mind burst out ' 
 in his conversation, 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 remark- 
 able persons of his time, and seen strange 
 varieties of " many-coloured life " — gifted 
 with a rapid perception of character and a 
 painter's eye for effect, — he was able to hit 
 off, with startling facility, sketches in words 
 which lived before 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 par- 
 tially attained ; the national attention had 
 been directed to high art ; but he did not 
 personally share in the benefits he had 
 greatly contributed to win. Even his cartoon 
 of the Curse in Paradise failed to obtain a 
 prize when he entered the arena with un- 
 fledged 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 neighbouring exposure 
 of the clever manikin, General Tom Thumb, 
 quite vanquished him. It Wiis indeed a 
 melancholy ontrast; — the unending suc- 
 cession 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. Oj^jjosition, abuse, 
 even neglect he could have borne, but the 
 sense of ridicule involved in such a juxta- 
 position drove him to despair. No one who 
 knew him ever apprehended from his disasters 
 such a catastrophe as that which clu.seil them. 
 He had always cherished a belief in the 
 religion of our Church, and avowed it among 
 scoffing uubelievei'8 ; and that belief he 
 Asserted even in the wild fragiuents he 
 
 penned in his last terrible hour. His friends 
 thought that even the sense of the injustice 
 of tlie world would have contributed with 
 his undimraed consciousness of his own 
 powers to enable him to endure. In his 
 domestic relations also he was happy, lilessed 
 in the affection of a wife 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 loveliness 
 he had created. Those who knew him best 
 feel the strongest assurance, that notwith- 
 standing the appeai-ances of preparation 
 which attended his extraordinary suicide, 
 his mind was shattered to pieces — all dis- 
 torted and broken — with only one feeling 
 left entire, the perversion of which led to the 
 deed, a hojje to awtdien sympathy in death 
 for those whom living he could not shelter. 
 The last hurried Hues he wrote, entitled 
 " Haydon's last Thoughts," consisted of a 
 feverc-d comparison between the Duke ot 
 Wellington and Napoleon, in which he 
 seemed to wish to repair some supposed 
 injustice which in speech or writing he had 
 done to the Conqueror. It was enclosed in a 
 letter addressed to three friends, written in 
 the hour of his death, and containing sad 
 fragmental memorials of those passionate 
 hoi)es, fierce struggles, and bitter disjippoint- 
 ments which brought him thi'ough distrac- 
 tion to the grave ! 
 
 A visit of Coleridge was always regarded 
 by Lamb, as an opportunity to atlord a r;ire 
 gratification to a few friemls, who, he knew, 
 would prize it ; and I well remember the 
 flush of prideful pleasui'e 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 invita- 
 tion for the evening. This v/iis true self- 
 sacrifice ; for Lamb would have infinitely 
 preferred having his inspired frii^nd to 
 himself and his sister, for a brief ronew.-U 
 of the old Salutation delights ; but, I 
 believe, he never permitted himself to enjoy 
 this exclusive treat. The j)lejisure he 
 conferred was great ; for of all celebrated 
 ])ei-sons I ever saw, Coleridge alouo sur- 
 passed the expectation createt.1 by his 
 writings ; for he not onl}' was, but appeared 
 
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 
 
 301 
 
 to be, greater than the noblest things he 
 had -written. 
 
 Lamb nsed to speak, sometimes with a 
 moistened eye and quivering lip, of Coleridge 
 •when young, and wish tliat we could have 
 seen him in the spring-time of his genius, at 
 a supper in the little sanded parlour of the 
 old Salutation hostel. The promise of those 
 days was never realised, by the execution of 
 any of the mighty works he planned ; but 
 the very failure gave a sort of mournful 
 interest to the " large discourse, looking 
 before and after," to which we were en- 
 chanted listeners ; to the wisdom which lives 
 ouly in our memories, and must perish with 
 them. 
 
 From Coleridge's early works, some notion 
 may be gleaned of what he ivas ; when the 
 steep ascent of fame rose directly before him, 
 while he might loiter to dally with the ex- 
 pectation of its summit, without ignobly 
 shrinking from its labom-s. His endowments 
 at that time — the close of the last century 
 — when literature had faded into a fashion 
 of poor langiiage, 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 presenting its results with the 
 vividness of prophecy ; a power of imaginative 
 reasoning which peopled the nearer ground 
 of contemplation with thoughts 
 
 " All plumed like estriches, like eag-lcs bathed, 
 As full of spirit as the month of May, 
 And gorgeous as the sun at Jlidsummer," 
 
 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 cii'cles, 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 hoiizon of his 
 genius. "The Ancient Mariner," printed 
 with the " Lyrical Ballads," 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 Cole- 
 ridge seemed the harbinger of the golden 
 years his enthusiasm predicted and painted ; 
 — of those days of peace on earth and good 
 wiU among men, which the best and greatest 
 minds have rejoiced to anticipate — and the 
 earnest belief in which is better than all 
 frivolous enjoyments, all worldly wisdom, all 
 worldly success. And if the noontide of his 
 genius did not fulfil his youth's promise of 
 manly vigour, nor the setting of his earthly 
 life honour it by an answering serenity of 
 greatness — they still have left us abundant 
 reason to be gi-ateful that the glorious frag- 
 ments of his mighty and imperfect being 
 were ours. Cloud after cloud of German 
 metaphysics rolled before his imagination— 
 which it had power 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 dnig, which 
 opens glittering scenes of fantastic beauty on 
 the waking soul to leave it in arid desolation, 
 too often veiled it in partial eclipse, and 
 blended fitful light with melancholy blackness 
 over its vast domain ; but the great central 
 light remained unquenched, and cast its 
 gleams through every department of human 
 knowledge. A boundless capacity to receive 
 and retain intellectual treasure made him the 
 possessor of vaster stores of lore, classical, 
 antiquarian, historical, biblical, and miscel- 
 laneous, than were ever vouchsafed, at least 
 in our time, to a mortal being ; goodly 
 structures of divine philosophy rose before 
 him like exlialations on the table-land of 
 that his pi'odigious knowledge ; but, alas ! 
 there was a deficiency of the power of volun- 
 tary action which would have left him un- 
 able to embody the shapes of a shepherd's 
 dreams, and made him feeble as ;m infant 
 before the overpowering majesty of his own ! 
 Hence Ids literary life became one splendid 
 and sad prospectus — resembling only the 
 portal of a mighty temple which it was for- 
 bidden 1X3 to enter — but whence strains of 
 rich music issuing " took the prisoned soul 
 
802 
 
 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 
 
 and lapped it in Elysium," and fragments of 
 oracular wisdom startled the thought they 
 could not satisfy. 
 
 Hence the riches of his mind were de- 
 veloped, 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, he sought the gentle 
 stimulus of social admiration, and under its 
 influence poured forth, without stint, the 
 marvellous resources of a mind rich in the. 
 spoils of time — richer — richer far in its own 
 glorious imagination and delicate fancy ! 
 There was a noble prodigality in these out- 
 pourings ; a generous disdain of self; an 
 earnest desire to scatter abroad the seeds of 
 wisdom and beauty, to take root wherever 
 they might fall, and spring up without 
 bearing his name or impress, which might 
 remind the listener of the Si-st days of poetry 
 before it became individualised by the press, 
 when the Homeric rhapsodist wandered 
 through new-born cities and scattered hovels, 
 flashing u^jon the minds of the wondering 
 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 
 ascertain the reciter's property, nor marble 
 at once perpetuate and shed chillness on his 
 fame — 
 
 " nis bounty was as boundless as tbe sea, 
 His love as det p." 
 
 Like the ocean, in all its variety of gentle 
 moods, his discourse perpetually ebbed and 
 flowed, — nothing in it angular, nothing of 
 Bet purpose, but now trembling as the voice 
 of divine philosophy, "not harsh nor crab- 
 bed, 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 patli of 
 moonlight on the black water ; and, if ever 
 receding from the shore, ch-iven by some sud- 
 den gust of inspiration, disclosing the trea- 
 sures of the deep, like the rich strond in 
 Spenser, " far sunken in their sunless trea- 
 suries," to be covered anon by the foam of 
 the same immortal tide. The benignity of 
 his manner befitted the beauty of ids disqui- 
 sitions ; his voice rose from the gentlest 
 pitch of conversation to the height of im- 
 passioned elo(juence without efi'ort, as his 
 
 language expanded from some common topic 
 of the day to the loftiest abstractions ; aa- 
 ccjiding by a winding track of spiral glory lo 
 the highest truths which the naked eye could 
 discern, and suggesting starry regions, be- 
 yond, which his own telescopic gaze might 
 possibly decipher. If his entranced hearers 
 often were unable 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 beauty 
 in the words, if not the words ;" and a wis- 
 dom and piety in the illustrations, 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 biblical knowledge, 
 though sometimes eddying in splendid con- 
 jecture, was alwa3's employed with pious 
 reverence ; the morality suggested was at 
 once elevated and genial ; the charity hoped 
 all things; and the mighty imaginative rea- 
 soner seemed almost to realise the condition 
 suggested by the great Apostle, "that he 
 understood all mysteries and all knowledge, 
 and spake with the tongues both of men and 
 angels ! " 
 
 After Coleridge had found his last earthly 
 refuge, under the wise and generous care of 
 Mr. Oilman, at Highgate, he rarely visited 
 Lamb, and my opportunities of observing 
 him ceased. From those who were more 
 fiivoured, as well as from the fragments I 
 have seen of his last effusions, I know that, 
 amidst suffering and weakness, his mighty 
 mind concentrated its energies on the highest 
 subjects whicix had ever kindled them ; that 
 the speculations, which sometimes seemed 
 like paradox, because their extent was too 
 vast to be comprehended in a single grasp of 
 intellectu:d vision, were informed by a seroner 
 wisdom ; that his perceptions of the central 
 truth became more undivided, and his piety 
 more profound and humble. His love for 
 Charles and Mary Lamb continued, to the 
 last, one of the strongest of his human atl'ec- 
 tions — (.f wliieli,by tlie kindness of a friend,' 
 I possess an athcting memorial under his 
 liand, written in tlie margin of a volume oi 
 his "Sybilline Loaves," which — after "his 
 
 • Mr. lUehard Welsh, of llen("iin(r, editor of the Berk- 
 shire Chronicle- oiie of Ilie iiblest productions of tho 
 Conservative TeriodioiU I'roM. 
 
LAMB'S DEAD COMPANIONS- 
 
 SOS 
 
 life-long habit — hehas enriched by manuscript 
 annotations. The poem, beside which it is 
 mscribed, 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 
 " gentVj-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. ^t. 63. 1834. 
 
 1797 
 
 1834. 
 
 37 years ! 
 
 This memorandum, which is penned with 
 remarkable neatness, 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 multiply in the true time, 
 dialled in heaven, its minutes into years ! 
 
 These friends of Lamb's whom I have 
 ventured to sketch in companionship with 
 him, and Southey also, whom I only once 
 saw, are all gone ; — and others of less note 
 in the woi-ld'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-d-tete, but who, in 
 company, seemed only a courteous gentle- 
 man, more disposed to listen than to talk. 
 In good old age departed Admiral Burney, 
 frank-hearted voyager with Captain Cook 
 round the world, who seemed to unifee our 
 society with the circle over which Dr. John- 
 son 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 murdors, and how he, a 
 child, had shuddered at the handcuffs on his 
 teacher's hands when taken away in the 
 post-chaise to prison ; — the Admiral being 
 liimself the centre of a little circle which his 
 sister, the famous authoress of " Evelina," 
 " Cecilia," and " Camilla," sometimes graced. 
 John Lamb, the jovial and burly, who dared 
 to argue with Hazlitt on questions of art ; 
 Barron Field, who with veneration enough 
 to feel all the despised greatness of Words- 
 worth, had a sparkling vivacity, and, con- 
 nected with Lamb by the link of Christ's 
 Hospital associations, shared largely in his 
 regard ; Eickman, the sturdiest of jovial 
 companions, severe in the discipline of whist 
 as at the table of the House of Commons, ot 
 which he was the principal clerk ; and Al- 
 sager, so calm, so bland, so considerate — all 
 are gone. These were all Temple guests — 
 friends of Lamb's early days ; but the com- 
 panions of a later time, who first met in 
 Great Eussell-street, or Dalston, or Isling- 
 ton, or Enfield, have been wofuUy thinned ; 
 Allan Cunningham, stalwart of form and 
 stout of heart and verse, a ruder Burns ; 
 Cary, Lamb's " jileasantest of clergj^men," 
 whose sweetness of disposition and manner 
 would have prevented a stranger from guess- 
 ing that he was the poet who had rendered 
 the adamantine poetry of Dante into Eng- 
 lish with kindred power ; Hood, so grave 
 and sad and silent, that you were astonished 
 to recognise in him the outpourer of a thou- 
 sand wild fancies, the detector of the inmost 
 springs of pathos, and the powerful vindi- 
 cator of poverty and toil before the hearts of 
 the prosperous ; the Eeverend Edward Ir- 
 ving, who, after fulfilling an old prophecy he 
 made in Scotland to Hazlitt, that he would 
 astonish and shake the world by his preach- 
 ing, 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 throng- 
 ing on the memory from the mist of years — 
 Alius ; 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 col- 
 lateral branches of their stock are extinct, 
 and their upward pedigree lost in those 
 
304 
 
 LAMB FULLY KNOWN. 
 
 humble tracks on -which the steps of Time 
 leave so light an impress, that the dust of a 
 few years obliterates all trace, and affords 
 no clue to search collaterally for surviving 
 relatives. The world has, therefore, all the 
 materials for judging of them which can be 
 possessed by those, 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 characters by the 
 new and solemn lights which are now, for 
 the first time, fully cast upon them. 
 
 Except to the few who were acquainted 
 with the tragical occurrences of Lamb's early 
 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 won- 
 dered 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 auj^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 pei*- 
 ceiving) through the ensanguined cloud of 
 misfortune which had fallen upon his family, 
 the unstained 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 Avithout pluming himself upon 
 his brotherly nobleness as a virtue, or seek- 
 ing to repay himself (as some uneasy martyrs 
 do) by small instalments of long repining, — 
 but that he carried the spirit of the hour in 
 which he first knew and took his course, to 
 his last. So far from thinking that his sacri- 
 fice of youth and love to his sister gave him 
 a licence to follow his own caprice at the ex- 
 pense 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 Coleridge 
 show ; but that miglit have been a mere 
 temporary exaltation — the attendant fervour 
 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 exag- 
 gerates 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 uaser, and better 
 than I, and all my wretched imperfections 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 me ; and I know I have been wasting 
 and teasing her life for five years j^ast in- 
 cessantly 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 devo- 
 tion of the entire nature was not exercised 
 merely in the consciousness of a past tragedy ; 
 but during the frequent recurrences of the 
 calamity which caused it, and the constant 
 apprehension of its terrors ; and this fur a 
 large portion of life, in poor lodgings, wliere 
 the brother and sister were, or fancied them- 
 selves, " marked people ; " where from an 
 income incapable of meeting the expense of 
 the sorrow witliout sedulous privations, he 
 contrived to hoard, not for holiday enjoy- 
 ment, or future solace, but to provide for 
 expected distress. Of the misery attendant 
 on this anticipation, aggravated by jealous 
 fears lest some imprudence or error of his 
 own should have hastened the inevitable 
 evil, we 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. 
 
LAMB FULLY KNOWN. 
 
 305 
 
 "Your long kind letter has not been 
 thrown away, but poor Mary, to whom it is 
 addressed, cannot yet relisli it. She has 
 been attacked by one of her severe illnesses, 
 and is at present frovi 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 easy to say what is best to do. Being 
 by ourselves is bad, and going out is bad. I 
 get so irritable and wretched with fear, that 
 I constantly hasten on the disorder. You 
 cannot conceive the misery of such a fore- 
 sight. I am sure that, f)r the week before 
 she left me, I was littif^ better tlian light- 
 headed. I now am calm, but sadly taken 
 down and flat. I have every reason to sup- 
 pose that this illness, like all her former ones, 
 will be 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 followed by a seizure ; and, 
 when they ventured to take it, a strait- 
 waistcoat, carefully packed by Miss Lamb 
 herself, was their constant companion. Sad 
 experience, at last, induced the abandonment 
 of the amiual excursion, and Lamb was con- 
 tented with walks in and near London, 
 during the interval of labour. Miss Lamb 
 experienced, and full well undex'stood jsre- 
 monitory symptoms of the attack, in rest- 
 lessness, 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 pleasure — a bitter mockery ! On one 
 occasion Mr. Charles Lloyd met them, slowly 
 pacing together a little footpath in Hoxton 
 fields, both weeping bitterly, and four^d on 
 joining them, that they were taking their 
 solemn way to the accustomed Asylum ! 
 
 AYill any one, acquainted with these secret 
 passages of Lamb's history, wonder that, 
 with a strong physical inclination for the 
 stimulus and support of strong drinks — 
 
 which man is framed moderately to rejoice 
 in — he should snatch some wild pk-asure 
 " 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 sliould 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 recollected that he 
 had himself been visited, when in the dawn 
 of maidiood, with his sister's malady, the 
 seeds of which were lurking in his frame. 
 While that natural predisposition may ex- 
 plain an occasional fliglitiness of expression 
 on serious matters, fruit of some wayward 
 fancy, which flitte<l through his brain, with- 
 out disturbing his constant reason or reaching 
 his heart, and some little extravagances of 
 fitful mirth, how does it heighten tlie moral 
 coui-age by which the disease was controlled 
 and the severest duties performed ! Never 
 surely was there a more striking example of 
 the power of a virtuous, rather say, of a 
 pious, wish to conquer the fiery suggestions 
 of latent insanity than that presented by 
 Lamb's history. Nervous, tremulous, as he 
 seemed — so slight of frame that he looked 
 only fit for the most placid fortime — when 
 the dismal emergencies which chequei-ed his 
 life arose, he acted with as much promjititude 
 and vigour as if he had never penned a 
 stanza nor taken a glass too m\ich, or was 
 strung with herculean sinews. None of 
 those temptations, in which misery is the 
 most i^otent, to hazard a lavisli exi^emliture 
 for an enjoyment to be secured against fate 
 and fortune, ever tempted him to exceed his 
 income, when scantiest, by a shilling. He 
 had always a i-eserve for poor Mary's periods 
 of seclusion, 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 
 after the prudent and classical taste of Lord 
 Stowell, in " the elegant simplicity of the 
 Three per Conts.") to secure comfort to Miss 
 Lamb, when his pension should cease with 
 him, even if the India Company, his great 
 employers, had not acted nobly by the 
 memory of their inspired clerk — as they did 
 — and gave her the annuity to which a wife 
 would have been entitled — but of which he 
 
306 
 
 LAMB FULLY KNOWN. 
 
 could not feel assured. Living among 
 literary men, some less distinguished and 
 less discreet tiian tl\ose whom we have men- 
 tioned, lie was constantly impoi-tuued to 
 relieve distresses which an improvident 
 speculation iu literature produces, and which 
 the recklessness attendant on the empty 
 vanity of self-exaggerated talent renders 
 desperate and merciless ; — and to the impor- 
 tunities of such hopeless petitioners he gave 
 too largely — though he used sometimes to 
 express a painful sense that he was diminish- 
 ing his own store without conferring any 
 real benefit. " Heaven," he used to say, 
 " does not owe me sixpence for all T have 
 given, or lent (as they call it) to such impor- 
 tunity ; I only gave it because I could not 
 bear to refuse it ; and I have done good by 
 my weakness." On the other hand, he used 
 to seek out occasions of devoting a part of 
 his surplus to those of his friends whom he 
 believed it would really serve, and almost 
 forced loans, or gifts in the disguise of loans, 
 upon them. If he thought one, in such a 
 position, would be the liappier for 50^. or 
 100^., he would carefully procixre a note for 
 the sum, and, perliaps, for days before he 
 might meet the object of his friendly purpose, 
 keep the note iu his waistcoat pocket, burning 
 in it to be produced, and, wlien the occasion 
 arrived — " iu the sweet of the night " — he 
 would crumple it up in his liand and stammer 
 out his difficulty of disposing of a little 
 money ; " I don't know what to do with it — 
 pray take it — pray use it — j'ou will do me a 
 kindness if you will " — he would say ; and 
 it was hard to disoblige him ! Let any one 
 who has been induced to regard Larub as a 
 poor, slight, excitable, and excited being, 
 consider that such acts as these were not in- 
 frequent — that he exercised hospitality of a 
 substantial kind, without stint, all his life — 
 tliat he spared no expense for the conifurt of 
 his sister, there only lavisli — and that he died 
 leaving sufficient to accomplish all his wishes 
 for survivors — and think what the sturdy 
 quality of his goodness must have been 
 amidst all the heart-aches and liead-aches of 
 his life — and ask the virtue which li;is been 
 supported by strong nerves, whether it has 
 often produced any good to match it ? 
 
 The iulluence of tlie events now disclosed 
 may be traced in the development and direc- 
 tion of Lamb's faculties and tastes, and iu 
 
 the wild contrasts of expression which acme- 
 times startled strangers. Tlie literary pre- 
 ferences disclosed in his early letters, are 
 often inclined to the superficial in poetry 
 and thought — the theology of Priestley, 
 though embraced with pious earnestness — 
 the "divine chit-chat" of Cowper — the 
 melodious sadness of Bowles ; and his own 
 style, breathing a graceful and modest sweet- 
 ness, is without any decided character. But 
 by the terrible realities of his experience, he 
 was turned to seek a kindred interest in the 
 "sterner stuff" of old tragedy — to catas- 
 trophes more fearful even than his own — to 
 the aspects of " pale passion " — to shapes of 
 heroic daring and more heroic suffering — to 
 the agonising contests of opposing affections, 
 and the ■v'ictories of the soul over calamity 
 and death, which the old English drama dis- 
 closes, and in the contemplation of wiiich he 
 saw his own suftering nature at once mirrored 
 and exalted. Thus, instead of admiring, as 
 he once admired, Rowe and Otway, even 
 Massinger seemed too declamatory to satisfy 
 him ; in Ford, Decker, Marlowe and Webster, 
 he found the most awful struggles of affec- 
 tion, and the " sad embroidery " of fancy- 
 streaked gi'ief, and expressed his kindred 
 feelings in those little quintessences of criti- 
 cism which are ajipended to the noblest 
 scenes in his "Specimens;" and, seeking 
 amidst the sunnier and more varied world of 
 Shakspeare for the profoundest and most 
 earnest passion developed there, obtained 
 that marvellous insight into the soul of Leui' 
 which gives to his presentment of its riches 
 almost the character of creation. On the 
 other hand, it was congenial pastime with 
 him to revel in the opposite excellences of 
 Beaumont and Fletcher, who changed the 
 domain of tragedy into fairy-land ; turned all 
 its terror and its sorrow " to fiivour and to 
 prettiness ;" shed the rainbow hues of .spor- 
 tive fancy with equal hand among tynuita 
 and victims, the devdted and the faithless, 
 suifering and joy ; represented the beauty of 
 gooilness as a happy accideut, vice as a way- 
 ward aberration, ami invoked the remorse of 
 a moment to change them as with a har- 
 lequin's waiul ; unrealised the terrible, and 
 left "nothing serious in mortality," but 
 reduced the straggle of life to a glittering 
 and heroic game to be played splendidly out, 
 and quitted without a sigh. But neither 
 
LAMB FULLY KNOWN. 
 
 307 
 
 Lamb's own secret griefs, nor the tastes 
 which they nurtured, ever shook his faith 
 in the requisitions of duty, or induced him 
 to dally with that moral pai-adox to which 
 near acquaintance with the great errors of 
 mighty natures is sometimes a temptation. 
 Never, either in writing or in speech did he 
 purposely confound good with evil. For the 
 new theories of morals which gleamed out 
 in the conversation of some of his friends, he 
 had no sympathy ; and, though in his bound- 
 less indulgence to the perversities and faults 
 of those whom long familiarity had endeared 
 to him, he did not suffer their frailties to 
 impair his attachment to the individuals, he 
 never palliated the frailties themselves ; still 
 less did he emblazon them as virtues. 
 
 No one, acquainted with Lamb's story, will 
 wonder at the eccentric wildness of his mirth 
 — his violent changes from the serious to the 
 farcical — the sudden reliefs of the " heat- 
 oppressed brain," and heart weighed down 
 by the sense of ever impending sorrow. His 
 whim, however, almost always bordered on 
 wisdom. It w:u5 justly said of him by Hazlitt, 
 "His serious conversation, like his serious 
 writing, is his beat. No one ever stam- 
 mered out such fine, piquant, deep, eloquent 
 things in half-a-dozen half sentences ; his 
 jests scald like teai-s, and he probes a ques- 
 tion with a play on words." 
 
 Although Lamb's conversation vibrated 
 between the intense and the gi'otesque, his 
 writings are replete with quiet pictures of 
 the humbler scenery of middle life, touched 
 with a graceful and loving hand. "We may 
 trace in them the experience of a nature 
 bred up in slender circumstances, but imbued 
 with a certain innate spirit of gentility 
 suggesting a respect for all its moderate 
 appliances and unambitious pleasures. The 
 same spirit pervaded all his own domestic 
 arrangements, so that the intensity of his 
 affliction was ameliorated by as much comfoxi; 
 as satisfaction in the outward furniture of 
 life can give to slender fortune. 
 
 The most important light, however, shed 
 on Lamb's intellectual life by a knowledge of 
 his true history, is that which elucidates the 
 change from vivid religious impressions, 
 manifested in his earlier letters, to an 
 apparent indifference towards immortal in- 
 terests and celestial relations, which he 
 
 confesses in a letter to Mr. Walter Wilson.* 
 The truth is, not that he became an 
 unbeliever, or even a sceptic, but that the 
 peculiar disasters in which he was plunged, 
 and the tendency of his nature to seek 
 immediate solaces, induced an habitual 
 reluctance to look boldly into futurity. That 
 conjugal love, which anticipates with fur- 
 looking eye prolonged existence in posterity, 
 was denied to his self-sacrifice ; irksome 
 labour wearied out the heart of his day.s ; 
 and over his small household, Madness, like 
 Death in the vision of Milton, continually 
 " shook its dart," and only, at the best, 
 " delayed to strike." Not daring to look 
 onward, even for a little month, he acquired 
 the habitual sense of living entirely in the 
 present ; enjoying with tremulous zest the 
 security of the moment, and making some 
 genial, but sad, amends for the want of all 
 the perspective of life, by clea\'ing, with 
 fondness, to its nearest objects, and becoming 
 attached to them, even when least interest- 
 ing in themselves. 
 
 This perpetual grasping at transient relief 
 from the minute and vivid present, associated 
 Lamb's affections intimately and closely with 
 the small details of daily existence ; these 
 became to him the "jutting frieze " and 
 " coigue of vantage " in which his home-bred 
 fancy " made its bed and procreant cradle ;" 
 these became imbued with his thoughts, and 
 echoed back to him old feelings and old 
 loves, till his inmost soul shivered at the 
 prospect of being finally wrenched from 
 them. Enthralled thus in the prison of an 
 earthly home, he became perplexed and 
 bewildered at the idea of an existence 
 which, though holier and happier, would 
 doubtless be entirely different from that to 
 which he was bound by so many delicate 
 films of custom. '* Ah ! " he would say, " we 
 shall have none of these little passages of 
 this life hereafter — none of our little quarrels 
 and makings-up — no questionings about 
 sixpence at whist;" and, thus repelled, he 
 clung more closely to " the bright minutes " 
 which he strung " on the thread of keen 
 domestic anguish ! " It is this intense feel- 
 ing of the " nice regards of flesh and blood ;" 
 this dwelling in petty felicities ; which makes 
 us, apart from religious fears, unwilling to 
 
 • Page 224. 
 
 X 2 
 
808 
 
 MAIIY LAMB. 
 
 die. Small associations make death terrible, 
 because we know, tbat parting with this life, 
 we part from their company ; whereas great 
 thoughts make death less fearful, because we 
 feel that they will be our companions in all 
 worlds, and link our future to our present 
 being in all ages. Such thoughts assuredly 
 were not dead in a heart like Lamb's ; they 
 were only veik-d by the nearer presences of 
 familiar objects, and sometimes, perhaps, 
 bursting in upon him in all their majesty, 
 produced those startling references to sacred 
 things, in which, though not to be quoted 
 with approval, there was no conscious pro- 
 faneness, but rather a wayward, fitful, dis- 
 turbed piety. If, indeed, when borne beyond 
 the present, he sought to linger in the past ; 
 to detect among the dust and cobwebs of 
 antiquity, beauty, which had lurked there 
 from old time, rather than to " rest and ex- 
 patiate in a life to come," no anti-christian 
 sentiment .spread its chillness over his spirit. 
 The shrinking into mortal life was but the 
 weakness of a nature which shed the sweet- 
 ness of the religion of its youth through the 
 sorrows and the snatches of enjoyment which 
 crowded his after years, and only feebly per- 
 ceived its final glories, which, we may humbly 
 hope, its immortal part is now enjoying. 
 
 Shortly before his death. Lamb had bor- 
 rowed of Mr. Gary, Phillips's "Theatrum 
 Poetarum Anglicanorum," which, when re- 
 turned by Mr. Moxon, after the event, was 
 found with the leaf folded down at the 
 account of Sii- Philip Sydney. Its receipt 
 was acknowledged by the following lines : — 
 
 " So shcmld it be, my gentle friend ; 
 Thy leaf last closed at Sydney's end. 
 Thou too, like Sydney, wouldst have given 
 The water, thirsting and near heaven ; 
 Nay, were it wine, flU'd to the brim. 
 Thou hadst looked hard, but given, like him. 
 
 And art thou mingled then among 
 
 Those famous sons of ancient song ? 
 
 And do tliey gather round, and praise 
 
 Thy re'-ish of their nobler lays? 
 
 W'axing in mirth to hear thee tell 
 
 With what strange mortals thou didst dwell; 
 
 At thy quaint sallies more delighted. 
 
 Than any's long among them lighted I 
 
 'Tis done : and thou hast joined a crew, 
 To whom thy soul was justly due ; 
 And yet I tliink, where'er tliou be, 
 They'll scarcely love thee more than we."* 
 
 * These lines, charaeferistie both of the writer and 
 the subject, are copied from the Memoir of the translator 
 of Dante, by his son, tlic llov. Henry Cary, which, 
 
 Little could any one, observing Miss Lamb 
 in the habitual serenity of her demeanour, 
 gue-^fs the calamity in which site had partaken, 
 or the malady which frightfully chequered 
 her life. From Mr. Lloyd, who, although 
 saddened by impending delusion, was always 
 found accurate in his recollection of long p:ist 
 events and convereatious, I learned that she 
 had described herself, on her recovery from 
 the fatal attack, as liaving experienced, wliile 
 it was subsiding, such a conviction that she 
 was absolved in heaven from all taint of tlie 
 deed in which she had been the agent — such 
 an assurance that it was a dispensation of 
 Providence for good, though so terrible — 
 such a sense, that her mother knew her entire 
 innocence, and shed down blessings upon 
 her, as though she had seen the reconcile- 
 ment in solemn vision — that she was not 
 sorely afllicted by the recollection. It was 
 as if the old Greek notion, of the necessity 
 for the unconscious shcdder of blood, else 
 polluted though guiltless, to pass through a 
 religious purification, had, in her case, been 
 happily accomplished ; so that, not only was 
 she without remorse, but without other sor- 
 row than attends on the death of an infirm 
 parent in a good old age. She never shrank 
 from alluding to her mother, when any topic 
 connected with her own youth made such 
 a reference, in ordinary respects, natural ; 
 but spoke of her as though no fearful remem- 
 brance was associated with the image ; so 
 that some of her most intimate friends, who 
 knew of the disaster, believed that she had 
 never become aware of her own share in its 
 horrors. It is still more singular tliat, in the 
 wanderings of her insanity, amidst all the 
 vast throngs of imagery she presented of her 
 early days, this picture never recurred, or, if 
 ever, not associated with shapes of terror. 
 
 Miss Lamb would have been remarkable 
 for the sweetness of her disposition, the 
 clearness of her undei-standing, and the gentle 
 wisdom of all her acts and words, even if 
 these qualities had not been presented in 
 marvellous contrast with the distraction 
 under which slie suthred for weeks, latterly 
 for months, in every year. There was no 
 tinge of insanity discernible in her manner 
 
 enriched by many interesting memorials of eontempo- 
 raries, presents as valuable a picture of rare ability luid 
 excellence as ever was traced by the fine observation of 
 liliul luvo. 
 
MARY LAJIB. 
 
 809 
 
 to the most observant eye ; not even in 
 those distressful periods when the premoni- 
 tory symptoms had apprised lier of its ap- 
 pi-oach, and she was making pi-eparations for 
 seclusion. In all its essential sweetness, her 
 character was like her brother's ; while, by a 
 temper more placid, a spirit of enjoyment 
 more serene, she was enabled to guide, to 
 counsel, to cheer him, and to protect lum on 
 the verge of the mysterious calamity, from 
 the depths of which she rose so often un- 
 ruffled to his side. To a friend in any diffi- 
 culty she was the most comfortable of 
 advisers, the wisest of consolers. Hazlitt 
 used to say, that he never met with a woman 
 who could reason, and had met with only 
 one thoroughly reasonable — the sole excep- 
 tion being Mary Lamb. She did not wish, 
 howevei", to be made an exception, to a 
 general disparagement of her sex ; for in all 
 her thoughts and feelings she was most 
 womanly — keeping, under even undue sub- 
 ordination, to her notion of a woman's 
 province, intellect of rare excellence, which 
 flashed out when the restraints of gentle 
 habit and humble manner were withdrawn 
 by the terrible force of disease. Thougli her 
 convereation in sanity was never marked by 
 sniai'tness or repartee, seldom rising beyond 
 that of a sensible quiet gentlewoman appre- 
 ciating and enjoying the talents of her friends, 
 it was otherwise in her madness. Lamb, in 
 his letter to a female friend, announcing his 
 determination to be entirely with her, speaks 
 of her pouring out memories of all the events 
 and persons of her younger days ; but he 
 does not mention, what I am able from 
 repeated experiences to add, that her ram- 
 blLugs often sparkled with brilliant descrip- 
 tion and shattered beauty. She would fancy 
 herself in the days of Queen Anne or George 
 the First, and describe the brocaded dames 
 and courtly manners, as though she luul been 
 bred among tliem, in the best style of the old 
 comedy. It was all broken and disjointed, 
 so that the hearer could remember little of 
 her discourse ; but the fragments were like 
 the jewelled speeches of Cougreve, only 
 shaken from their setting. There was some- 
 tunes even a vein of crazy logic running 
 through them, associating things essentially 
 most dissimilar, but connecting them by a 
 verbal association in strange order. As a 
 mere physical instance of deranged intellect, 
 
 her condition was, I believe, extraordinary ; 
 it was as if the finest elements of mind had 
 been shaken into fantastic combinations like 
 those of a kaleidoscope; — but not for the pur- 
 pose of exhibiting a curious phenomenon of 
 mental aberration are the aspects of her 
 insanity unveiled, but to illustrate the moral 
 force of gentleness by which the faculties 
 that thus sparkled when restraining wisdom 
 was withdrawn, were subjected to its sway, 
 in her periods of reason. 
 
 The following letter fi'om Miss Lamb to 
 Miss Wordsworth, on one of the chief exter- 
 nal events of Lamb's history, the removal 
 from the Temple to Covent Garden, will il- 
 lustrate the cordial and womanly strain of 
 her observation on the occurrences of daily 
 life, and afford a good idea of her habitual 
 conversation among her friends. 
 
 " My dear Miss Wordsworth, — Your kind 
 letter has given us very great pleasure, the 
 sight of your handwriting was a most wel- 
 come sui'prise to us. We have heard good 
 tidings of you by all our friends who were so 
 fortunate as to visit you this summer, and 
 rejoice to see it confirmed by yourself. You 
 have quite the advantage, in volunteering a 
 letter ; there is no merit in rejjlying to so 
 welcome a stranger. 
 
 " We have left the Temple. I think you 
 will be sorry to hear this. I know I have 
 never been so well satisfied with thinking of 
 you at Rydal Mount, as when I could connect 
 the idea of you with your own Grasmere 
 Cottage. Our rooms were dirty and out of 
 repaix', and the inconveniences of living in 
 chambers became every year more irksome, 
 and so, at last, we mustered up resolution 
 enough to leave the good old place, that so 
 long had sheltered us, and here we are, 
 living at a bmzier's shop. No. 20, in Russell- 
 street, Covent-garden, a place all alive with 
 noise and bustle ; Drury-lane Theati-e in 
 sight from our front, and Covent-garden from 
 our back windows. The hubbub of the car- 
 riages returning from the play does not 
 annoy me in the least ; strange that it does 
 not, for it is quite tremendous. I quite enjoy 
 looking out of the window, and listening to 
 the calling up of the carriages, and the 
 squabbles of the coachmen and liukboys. It 
 is the oddest scene to look down upon ; I am 
 sure you would be amuaed with it. It ia 
 
310 
 
 MARY LAMB. 
 
 ■well I am in a cheerful place, or I should 
 have many misgivings about leaving the 
 Temple. I look forward with great pleasure 
 to the prospect of seeing my good friend, 
 Miss Hutchinson. I wish Rydal Mount, with 
 all its inhabitants enclosed, were to be trans- 
 planted with her, and to remain stationary 
 in the midst of Covent-garden. 
 
 * • • • * 
 
 " Charles has had all his Hogarths bound 
 in a book ; they were sent home yesterday, 
 and now that I have them altogether, and 
 perceive the advantage of peeping close at 
 them through my spectacles, I am reconciled 
 to the loss of them hanging round the room, 
 which lias been a great mortification to me — 
 in vain I tried to console myself with looking 
 at our new chairs and carpets, for we have 
 got new chairs, and carpets covering all over 
 our two sitting-rooms ; I missed my old 
 friends, and could not be comforted — then T 
 would resolve to learn to look out of the 
 window, a habit I never could attain in my 
 life, and I have given it up as a thing quite 
 impracticable — yet when I was at Brighton, 
 last summer, the first week 1 never took my 
 eyes otf from the sea, not even to look in a 
 book : I had not seen the sea for sixteen 
 
 years. Mrs. M , who was with us, kept 
 
 her liking, and continued her seat in tlie 
 window till the very last, while Charles and 
 T played truants, and wandered among the 
 hills, which we magnified into little moun- 
 tains, and almost as good as Westmoreland 
 scenery : certainly we made discoveries of 
 many pleasant walks, which few of the 
 Brighton visitors have ever dreamed of — for 
 like as is the case in the neighbourhood of 
 London, after the first two or three miles we 
 were sure to find ourselves in a perfect soli- 
 tude. I hope we shall meet before the walk- 
 ing faculties of either of us fail ; you say you 
 can walk fifteen miles with ease ; that is 
 exactly my stint, and more fatigues me ; four 
 or five miles every third or fourth day, keep- 
 ing very quiet between, was all Mrs. M 
 
 could accomplish. 
 
 "(jiod bless you and yours. Love to all 
 and eaeh on(!. 
 
 " I am ever yours most affectionately, 
 " M. Lamb." 
 
 Of that deeper vein of sentiment in Mary 
 Lamb, seldom revealed, the following pas- 
 
 sages from a letter to the same lady, refer- 
 ring to the death of a brother of her beloved 
 correspondent, may be offered as a companion 
 specimen. 
 
 " My dear Miss Wordsworth, — I thank 
 you, my kind friend, for your most comfort- 
 able letter ; till I saw your own handwriting 
 I could not persuade myself that I should do 
 well to write to you, though I have often at- 
 tempted it ; but I always left off dissatisfied 
 with what I had written, and feeling that I 
 was doing an improper thing to intrude upon 
 your sorrow, I wished to tell you that you 
 would one day feel the kind of peaceful state 
 of mind and sweet memory of the dead, 
 which you so happily describe as now almost 
 begun ; but I felt that it was improper, and 
 most grating to the feelings of the afilicted, 
 to say to them that the memory of their 
 affection would in time become a constant 
 part, not only of their dream, but of their 
 most wakeful sense of happiness. That you 
 would see every object with and through 
 your lost brother, and that that would at 
 last become a real and everlasting source of 
 comfort to you, I felt, and well knew, from 
 my own experience in sorrow ; but till you 
 yourself began to feel this I djd not dare toll 
 you so ; but I send you some poor lines 
 which I wrote under this conviction of mind, 
 and before I heai'd Coleridge was returning 
 home. I will transcribe them now, before I 
 finish my letter, lest a false shame prevent 
 me then, for I know they are much worse 
 than they ought to be, written, as they were, 
 with strong feeling, and on such a subject ; 
 every line seems to me to be borrowed, but 
 I had no better way of expressing my 
 thoughts, and I never have the power of 
 .•dtering or amending anything I have once 
 laid aside with dissatisfaction. 
 
 " Why is he wandering on the sen t — 
 
 Coleridge sUould now with Wordbworth be. 
 By Blow di'grees he'd stciil awny 
 Their woe, und gently bring a itiy 
 (So happily he'd lime relief,) 
 Of comfort from their very grief. 
 He'd tell them that their brother dead, 
 When years have passed o'er their head, 
 Will be rementbered with eiich holy, 
 True, and perfect melancholy, 
 That ever this lost brother John 
 Will be their heart's companion. 
 Ills voice they'll always hear, 
 His face they'll always see; 
 There's nought in ilfe so sweet 
 As such u incmorx." 
 
The excellence of Mary Lamb's naUire 
 was happily developed in her portion of those 
 books for children — " wisest, virtuousest, 
 discreetest, l>est," — which she wrote in con- 
 junction with her brother, the " Poetry for 
 ChiMren,"the "Tales from Shakspeare," and 
 "Mrs. Leicester's School." How different 
 from the stony nutriment provided for those 
 delicate, apprehensive, atfectionate creatures, 
 in the utilitarian books, which starve their 
 little hearts, and stuff their little heads with 
 shallow science, and impertinent facts, and 
 selfish morals ! One verse, which she did not 
 print — the conclusion of a little poem sup- 
 posed to be expressed in a letter by the son 
 of a family who, when expecting the return 
 of its father from sea, received news of his 
 death, — recited by her to MJr. Martin Bui-- 
 ney, and retained in his fond recollection, 
 may afford a concluding example of the 
 healthful wisdom of her lessons : — 
 
 •' I can no longer feigii to be 
 A thoughtless child in infancy ; 
 I tried to write like young Mavie, 
 
 But I am James her brother ; 
 And I can feel — but she's too young — 
 Yet blessings on her prattling tongue, 
 
 She sweetly soothes my mother." 
 
 Contrary to Lamb's expectation, who 
 feared (as also' his friends feared with him) 
 the desolation of his own survivorshij), which 
 the difference of age rendered probable, Miss 
 Lamb survived him for nearly eleven j-ears. 
 When he died she was mercifully in a state 
 of partial estrangement, which, while it did 
 not wholly obscure her mind, deadened her 
 feelings, so that sm she gradually regained 
 her perfect senses she felt as gradually the 
 full force of the blow, and was the better 
 able calmly to bear it. For awhile she 
 declined the importunities of her friends, 
 that she would leave Edmonton for a resi- 
 dence nearer London, where they might 
 more frequently visit her. He was there, 
 asleep in the old churchyard, beneath the 
 turf near which they had stood together, 
 and had selected for a resting-place ; to this 
 spot she used, when well, to stroll out mourn- 
 fully in the evening, and to this sp6t she 
 would contrive to lead any friend who came 
 in the summer evenings to drink tea and 
 went out with her afterwarda for a walk.* 
 
 * The following Sonnet, by Mr. Moxon, written at 
 
 At length, as her illness became more fre- 
 quent, and her frame much weaker, she was 
 induced to take up her abode under genial 
 care, at a pleasant house in St. John's Wood, 
 where she was surrounded by the old books 
 and prints, and was frequently visited by her 
 reduced number of surviving friends. Re- 
 peated attacks of her malady weakened her 
 mind, but she retained to the last her sweet- 
 ness of disposition unimpaired, and gently 
 sunk into death on the 20th May, 1847. 
 
 A few survivors of the old circle, now 
 sadly thinned, attended her remains to the 
 spot in Edmonton churchyard, where they 
 were laid above those of her brother. With 
 them was one friend of later days — but who 
 had become to Ijamb as one of his oldest 
 companions, and for whom Miss Lamb che- 
 rished a strong regard — ^Ir. John Forster, 
 the author of " The Life of Goldsmith," in 
 which Lamb would have rejoiced, as written 
 in a spirit congenial with his own. In ac- 
 cordance with Lamb's own feeling, so far as 
 it could be gathered from his expressions on 
 a subject to which he did not often, or wil- 
 lingly, refer, he had been interred in a deep 
 grave, simply dug, and wattled round, but 
 without any affectation of stone or brick- 
 work to keep the human dust from its kin- 
 dred earth. So dry, however, is the soil of 
 the quiet chui'chyard that the excavated 
 earth left perfect walls of stiff clay, and per- 
 mitted us just to catch a glimpse of the still 
 untarnished edges of the coffin in which all 
 the mortal part of one of the most delightful 
 persons who ever lived was contained, and 
 on which the remains of her he had loved 
 with love " passing the love of woman " were 
 
 this period of tranquil sadness in Miss Lamb's life, so 
 beautifully embodies the reverential love with which the 
 sleeping and the mourning were regarded by one of their 
 nearest friends, that I gratify myself by extracting it 
 from the charming little voliuue of his Sonnets, which it 
 adorns : — 
 
 Here sleeps, beneath this bank, where daisies grow, 
 
 The kindliest sprite earth holds within her breast ; 
 
 In such a spot I would this frame should rest, 
 When I to join my friend far hence shall go. 
 Jlii only mate is now tlie minstrel lark, 
 
 Who chants her morning music o'er his bed. 
 Save she who comes each evening, ere the bark 
 
 Of watch-dog gathers drowsy folds, to shed 
 A sister's tears. Kind Heaven, upon her head, 
 
 Do thou in dove-like guise thy spirit pour, 
 And in her aged path some flowerets spread 
 
 Of earthly joy, should Time for her in store 
 Have weary days and nights, ere she shall gr«*t 
 TTiin whom she longs in Paradise to meet. 
 
312 
 
 LAST EARTHLY REMAINS. 
 
 hencefortli to rest ; — the last glances we shall 
 ever have even of tliat covering ; — concealed 
 from us as we parted by the coffin of the 
 sister. We felt, I believe, after a moment's 
 strange ehudderiiig, that the re-union was 
 well accomplished ; and although the time- 
 hearted son of Admiral Burney, who had 
 known and loved the pair we quitted from a 
 
 child, and wlio had been among the dearest 
 objects of existence to him, refused to be 
 comforted, — even he will now join the scanty 
 remnant of their friends in the softened re- 
 membrance that " they were lovely in their 
 lives," and own with them the consolation 
 of adding, at last, " that in death they are 
 not divided ! " 
 
 
I 
 
THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 
 
 THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE. 
 
 Eeader, in thy passage from the Bank — 
 where thou hast been receiving thy half- 
 yearly dividends (supposing thou art a lean 
 annuitant like myself) — to the Flower Pot, 
 to secure a place for Dalston, or Shacklewell, 
 or some otlier thy suburban retreat northerly, 
 — didst thou never observe a melanclioly- 
 looking, handsome, brick and stone edifice, 
 to the left — where Threadneedle-street abuts 
 upon Bishopsgate 1 I dare say thou hast 
 often admired its magnificent portals ever 
 gaping wide, and disclosing to view a grave 
 court, with cloisters, and pillars, with few or 
 no traces of goers-iu or comers-out — a desola- 
 tion something like Balclutha's.* 
 
 This was once a house of trade, — a centre 
 of busy interests. The throng of merchants 
 was here — the quick pulse of gain — and here 
 some forms of business are still kept up, 
 though the soul be long since fled. Here are 
 still to be seen stately porticos ; imposing 
 staircases, offices roomy as the state apart- 
 ments in palaces — deserted, or thinly peopled 
 with a few straggling clerks ; the still more 
 sacred interiors of court and committee- 
 rooms, with venerable faces of beadles, door- 
 keepers — directors seated in form on solemn 
 days (to proclaim a dead dividend), at long 
 worm-eaten tables, that have been mahogany, 
 with tarnished gilt-leather coveritigs, sup- 
 porting massy silver inkstands long since 
 dry; — the oaken wainscots hung with 
 
 • I passed by the walls of Balclutha, and they were 
 desolate. — Ossiaj<. 
 
 pictures of deceased governors and sub- 
 governors, of Queen Anne, and the two first 
 monarchs of the Brunswick dynasty : — huge 
 charts, which subsequent discoveries have 
 antiquated ; dusty maps of Mexico, dim as 
 dreams, — and soundings of the Bay of 
 Panama ! Tlie long passages hung with 
 buckets, appended, in idle row, to walls, 
 whose substance might defy any, short of the 
 last, conflagration : — with vast ranges of 
 cellarage under all, where dollars and pieces- 
 of-eight once lay, an " unsuimed heap," for 
 Mammon to have solaced his solitary heart 
 withal, — long since dissipated, or scattered 
 into air at the blast of the breaking of that 
 
 famous Bubble. 
 
 Such is the South-Sea House. At least, 
 such it was forty years ago, when I knew it, 
 — a magnificent relic ! What alterations 
 may have been made in it since, I have had 
 no opportunities of verifying. Time, I take 
 for granted, has not freshened it. No wind 
 has resuscitated the face of the sleeping 
 waters. A tliicker crust by this time stag- 
 nates upon it. The moths, that were then 
 battening upon its obsolete ledgera and day- 
 books, have rested from their depredations, 
 but other light generations have succeeded, 
 making fine fretwork among their single and 
 double entries. Layers of dust have accu- 
 mulated (a superfoetation of dirt !) upon the 
 old layers, tliat seldom used to be disturbed, 
 save by some curious finger, now and then, 
 inquisitive to explore the mode of book- 
 
keeping in Queen Anne's reign ; or, -with less 
 hallowed curiosity, seeking to unveil some 
 of the mysteries of that tremendous ho^\_x, 
 whose extent the petty peculators of our day 
 look back upon with the same expression of 
 incredulous admiration, find hopeless ambi- 
 tion of rivalry, as would become the puny 
 face of modern conspiracy contemplating the 
 Titan size of Vaux's superhuman plot. 
 
 Peace to the manes of the Bubble ! Silence 
 and destitution are upon thy walls, proud 
 house, for a memorial ! 
 
 Situated as thou art, in the very heart of 
 stirring and living commerce, — amid the fret 
 and fever of speculation — with the Bank, 
 and the 'Change, and the India-House about 
 thee, in the hey-day of present prosperity, 
 with their important faces, aa it were, in- 
 sulting thee, their itoor neighbour out of busi- 
 ness — to the idle and merely contemplative, 
 — ^to such as me, old house ! there is a charm 
 in thy qviiet : a cessation — a coolness from 
 business — an indolence almost cloistral — 
 which is delightful ! With what reverence 
 have I paced thy great bare rooms and 
 courts at eventide ! They spoke of tlie past : 
 — ^the shade of some dead accountant, witli 
 visionary pen in ear, would flit by me, stiff 
 as in life. Living accounts and accountants 
 puzzle me. I have no skill in figuring. But 
 thy great dead tomes, which scarce three 
 degenerate clerks of the present day could 
 lift from their enshrining shelves — with their 
 old fantastic flourishes, and decorative rubric 
 interlaciugs — their sums in trij^le columnia- 
 tions, set down with formal superfluity of 
 ciphers — with pious sentences at tlie be- 
 ginning, without which our religious ances- 
 tors never ventured to open a book of busi- 
 ness, or bill of lading — the costly vellum 
 covers of some of them almost persuading 
 us that we are got into some better librari/, — 
 are very agreeable and edifying spectacles. 
 I can look upon these defunct dragons with 
 complacency. Thy heavy odd-shaped ivory- 
 handled pen-knives (our ancestors had every- 
 thing on a larger scale than we have hearts 
 for) are as good as anything from Hercu- 
 laneum. Tlie pounce-boxes of our days have 
 gone retrograde. 
 
 The very clerks whicli I remember in the 
 South-Sea House — I speak of forty ye;irs 
 back — had an air very diHerent from those 
 iu the public offices that I have had to do 
 
 with since. They partook of the genius of 
 tlie place ! 
 
 Tliey were mostly (for the establishment did 
 not admit of superfluous salaries) bachelors. 
 Generally (for they had not much to do) 
 persons of a curious and speculative turn of 
 mind. Old-fashioned, for a reason mentioned 
 before. Humourists, for tliey were of all 
 descriptions ; and, not having been brought 
 together in early life (which has a tendency 
 to assimilate the members of corporate bodies 
 to each other), but, for the most part, placed 
 in this house in ri])e or middle age, they 
 necessarily carried into it their separate 
 habits and oddities, unqualified, if I may so 
 speak, as into a common stock. Hence they 
 foi'med a sort of Noah's ark. Odd fishes. 
 A lay-monastery. Domestic retainei-s iu a 
 great house, kept mOre for show than use. 
 Yet pleasant fellows, full of chat — and not 
 a few among them had arrived at considerable 
 proficiency on the German flute. 
 
 The cashier at that time was one Evans, a 
 Cambro-Briton. He had something of the 
 choleric complexion of his coimtrymeu 
 stamped on his visage, but was a worthy 
 sensible man at bottom. He wore his hair, 
 to the last, powdered and frizzed out, in 
 the fashion which I remember to have seen 
 in caricatures of what were termed, in my 
 young days, Maccaronies. He was the last 
 of that race of beaux. Melancholy as a gib- 
 cat over his counter all the forenoon, I think 
 I see him, making up his cash (as they call 
 it) with tremulous fingers, as if he feared 
 every one about him w;is a defaulter ; iu his 
 hypochondry ready to imagine himself one ; 
 haunted, at least, with the idea of the po.ssi- 
 bility of his becomirg one ; his tristful 
 visage clearing up a little over his roast neck 
 of veal at Auderton's at two (where his 
 pictm-e still hangs, taken a little before his 
 death by desire of the master of the cofiee- 
 house, which he had frequented for the last 
 five-and-twenty years), but not attaining the 
 meridian of its animation till evening brought 
 on the hour of tea and visiting. The sinml- 
 taneous sound of his well-known rap at the 
 door with the stroke of the clock announcing 
 six, was a topic of never-failing mirth in the 
 families which this dear old bachelor glad- 
 dened with his presence. Then was his 
 forte, his glorilicd hour ! How would he 
 chirj), and expand, over a mulliu ! How 
 
THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE. 
 
 317 
 
 would he dilate into secret liistory ! His 
 countryman, Pennant himself, in particular, 
 could not be more eloquent than he in 
 relation to old and new London — the site 
 of old theatres, churches, streets gone to 
 decay — where Rosamond's Pond stood — the 
 Mulberry gai-deus — and the Conduit in 
 Cheap — with many a pleasant anecdote, 
 derived from paternal tradition, of those 
 grotesque figures which Hogarth has im- 
 mortalised in his picture of Noon, — the 
 worthy descendants of those heroic con- 
 fessors, who, flying to this country, from 
 the wrath of Louis the Fourteenth and his 
 dragoons, kept alive the flame of jjure reli- 
 gion in tlie sheltering obscurities of Hog- 
 lane, and the vicinity of the Seven Dials ! 
 
 Deputy, under Evans, was Thomas Tame. 
 He had the air. and stoop of a nobleman. 
 You wo\ild have taken him for one, had you 
 met him in one of the passages leading to 
 Westminster-hall. By stoop, I mean that 
 gentle bending of the body forwards, which, 
 in great men, must be supposed to be the 
 effect of an habitual condescending atten- 
 tion to the applications of their inferiors. 
 While he held you in converse, you felt 
 strained to the height in the colloquy. The 
 conference OA^er, you were at leisure to smile 
 at the comparative insignificance of the pre- 
 tensions which had just awed you. His 
 intellect was of the shallowest order. It did 
 not reach to a saw or a proverb. His mind 
 was in its original state of white paper. A 
 sucking-babe might have posed him. AVhat 
 was it then ? Was he rich ? Ala-s, no ! 
 Thomas Tame was very poor. Both he and 
 his wife looked outwardly gentlefolks, when I 
 fear all was not well at all times within. She 
 had a neat meagre person, which it was 
 evident she had not sinned in over-pamper- 
 ing ; b\it in its veins was noble blood. She 
 traced her descent, by some labyrinth of 
 relationship, which I never thoroughly under- 
 stood, — much less can explain with any 
 heraldic certainty at this time of daj', — to 
 the illustrious, but unfortunate house of 
 Derwentwater. This was the secret of 
 Thomas's stoop. This was the thought — 
 the sentiment — the bright solitary star of 
 your lives, — ye mild and happy pah-, — which 
 cheered you in tlie night of intellect, and in 
 the obscurity of your station ! This was to 
 you instead of riches, instead of rank, instead 
 
 of glittering attainments : and it was worth 
 them all together. You insulted none with 
 it ; but, while you wore it as a piece of defen- 
 sive armour only, no insult likewise could 
 reach you through it. Decus et solamen. 
 
 Of quite another stamp was the then ac- 
 countant, John Tipp. He neither pretenderl to 
 high blood, nor, in good truth, cared one fig 
 about the matter. He " thought an accoun- 
 tant the greatest character in the world, and 
 himself the greatest accountant in it." Yet 
 John was not without his hobby. The fiddle 
 relieved his vacant hours. He sang, certainly, 
 with other notes than to the Orphean lyre. 
 He did, indeed, scream and scrape most 
 abominably. His fine suite of official rooms 
 in Threadneedle-street, which, without any- 
 thing very substantial appended to them, 
 were enough to enlarge a man's notions of 
 himself that lived in them, (I know not who 
 is the occupier of them now,) resounded 
 fortnightly to the notes of a concert of " sweet 
 breasts," as our ancestors vrould have called 
 them, culled from club-rooms and orchestras 
 — chorus-singers — first and second violon- 
 cellos — double-basses — and clarionets — who 
 ate his cold mutton, and drank his punch, and 
 praised his ear. He sate like Lord Midas 
 among them. But at the desk Tipp was quite 
 another sort of creature. Thence all ideas, 
 that were purely ornamental, were banished. 
 You could not sj^eak of anything romantic 
 without rebuke. Politics were excluded. A 
 newspaper was thought too refined and 
 abstracted. The whole duty of man con- 
 sisted in writing ofl' dividend warrants. The 
 striking of the annual balance in the com- 
 pany's books (which, perhaps, differed from 
 the balance of last year in the sum of 
 251. Is. Gd) occupied his days and nights for 
 a mouth previous. Not that Tip was blind 
 to the deadness of thinc/s (as they call them 
 in the city) in his beloved house, or did not 
 sigh for a return of the old stirring days 
 when South-Sea hopes were young — (he was 
 indeed equal to the wielding of any the most 
 intricate accounts of the most flourishing 
 company in these or those days) : — but to a 
 genuine accountant the diiference of proceeds 
 is as nothing. The fractional farthing is as 
 dear to his heart as the thousands which 
 stand before it. He is the true actor, who, 
 whether his part be a prince or a pea-sant, 
 must act it with like intensity. With Tipp 
 
318 
 
 THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE. 
 
 form was everything. His life was formal. 
 His actions seemed ruled with a ruler. His 
 pen was not less erring than his heart. He 
 made the best executor in the world ; he 
 was plagued with incessant executorships 
 accordijigly, which excited his spleen and 
 soothed his vanity in equal ratios. He would 
 swear (for Tipp swore) at the little or])lians, 
 whose rights he would guard with a tenacity 
 like the gi-asp of the dying hand, that com- 
 mended their interests to his protection. 
 With all this there was about him a sort of 
 timidity — (liis few enemies used to give it a 
 worse name) — a something which, in reve- 
 rence to the dead, we will place, if you please, 
 a little on this side of the heroic. Nature 
 certainly had been pleased to endow John 
 Tipp with a sufficient measure of the 
 principle of self-preservation. There is a 
 cowardice which we do not despise, because 
 it has nothing base or treacherous in its 
 elements ; it betrays itself, not you : it is 
 mere temperament ; the absence of the 
 romantic and the enterprising ; it sees a lion 
 in the way, and will not, with Fortinbras, 
 " greatly find quarrel in a straw," when some 
 supposed honour is at stake. Tipp never 
 mounted the box of a stage-coach in his life ; 
 or leaned against the rails of a balcony ; or 
 walked upon the ridge of a parapet ; or 
 looked down a precipice ; or let off a gun ; 
 or went upon a water-party ; or would 
 willingly let you go, if he could have helped 
 it : neither was it recorded of him, that for 
 lucre, or for intimidation, he ever forsook 
 friend or principle. 
 
 Whom next shall we summon from the 
 dusty dead, in whom common qualities 
 become uncommon 1 Can I forget thee, 
 Henry Man, the wit, the polished man of 
 letters, the author, of the South-Sea House ? 
 who never enteredst thy office in a morning, 
 or quittedst it in mid-day — (what didst t/iou 
 in an office ?) — without some quirk that left 
 a sting ! Thy gibes and thy jokes are now 
 extinct, or survive but in two forgotten 
 volumes, which I had the good fortune to 
 rescue from a stall in Barbican, not three 
 days ago, and found thee terse, fresh, epigram- 
 matic, as alive. Thy wit is a little gone by 
 in these fastidious days — thy topics are staled 
 by the "new-born gauds " of tlie time : — but 
 great thou used to be ui Public Ledgers, and 
 in Chronicles, upon Chatham, and Shelburuc, 
 
 and Rockingham, and Howe, and Burgojiie, 
 and Clinton, and the war which ended in 
 the tearing from Great Britain her rebellious 
 colonics, — and Keppel, and Wilkes, and 
 Sawbridge, and Bull, and Dunning, and 
 Pratt, and Richmond, — and such small 
 politics. 
 
 A little less facetious, and a great deal 
 more obstreperous, was fine rattling, rattle- 
 headed Plumer. He was descended, — not 
 in a right line, reader, (for his lineal preten- 
 .sions, like his personal, favoured a little of 
 the sinister bend,) from the Plumere of 
 Hertfordshire. So tradition gave him out ; 
 and ceitain family features not a little 
 sanctioned the opinion. Certainly old Walter 
 Plumer (liis reputed author) had been a rake 
 in his days, and visited much in Italy, and 
 had seen the world. He was uncle, bachelor- 
 uncle to the fine old whig still living, who 
 has represented the county in so many 
 successive parliaments, and has a fine old 
 mansion near Ware. Walter flourished in 
 George the Second's days, and was the same 
 who was summoned before the House of 
 Commons about a business of fi'anks, with 
 the old Duchess of Marlborough. You may 
 read of it in Johnson's lAfe of Cave. Cave 
 came off cleverly in that business. It is 
 certain our Plumer did nothing to discoun- 
 tenance the rumour. He rather seemed 
 pleased whenever it was, with all gentleness, 
 insinuated. But, besides his family preten- 
 sions, Plumer was an engaging fellow, and 
 sang gloriously. 
 
 IMot so sweetly sang Plumer as thou 
 
 sangest, mild, child-like, pastoral M ; a 
 
 flute's breathing less divinely whispering 
 than thy Arcadian melodies, when, in tones 
 worthy of Arden, thou didst chant that song 
 sung by Amiens to the banished Duke, which 
 proclaims the winter wind more lenient than 
 for a man to be ungrateful. Thy sire was 
 old surly M , the unapproachable church- 
 warden of Bishopsgate. He knew not what 
 he did, when he begat thee, like spring, 
 gentle offspring of blustering winter : — only 
 unfortunate in thy ending, which should 
 have been mild, conciliatory, swiU)-like. 
 
 Much remains to sing. Many fantiistic 
 shapes rise up, but they must be mine ^u 
 private : — already I have fooled the reader to 
 the top of his bent ;— else could 1 omit that 
 strange creature Woollett, who existed in 
 
OXFORD IN THE VACATION. 
 
 819 
 
 trying the question, and bought litigations ? 
 — and still stranger, inimitable, solemn 
 Hepworth, from whose gravity Newton 
 might have deduced the law of gravitation. 
 How profoundly would he nib a pen — 
 with what deliberation would he wet a 
 
 wafer ! 
 
 But it is time to close — night's wheels are 
 rattling ftist over me — it is proper to have 
 done with this solemn mockex-y. 
 
 Header, what if I have been playing with 
 thee all this while? — peradventure the very 
 names, which I have summoned up before 
 thee, are fantastic — insubstantial — like 
 Henry Pimpernel, and old John Naps of 
 Greece : 
 
 Be satisfied that something answering to 
 them has had a being. Their importance ia 
 from the past. 
 
 OXFORD IN THE VACATION. 
 
 Casting a preparatory glance at the bottom 
 of this article — as the wary connoisseur in 
 prints, with cursory eye (which, while it 
 reads, seems as though it read not), never 
 fails to consult the quis scidpsit in the corner, 
 before he pronounces some rare piece to be a 
 
 Vivares, or a "Woollet methiuks I hear 
 
 you exclaim, reader. Who is Elia ? 
 
 Because in my last I tried to divert thee 
 with some half-forgotten humours of some 
 old clerks defunct, in an old house of busi- 
 ness, long since gone to decay, doubtless you 
 have already set me down in your mind as 
 
 one of the self-same college a votaiy of 
 
 the desk — a notched and cropt scrivener — 
 one that sucks his sustenance, as certain sick 
 people are said to do, through a quill. 
 
 Well, I do agnize something of the sort. I 
 confess that it is my humour, my fancy — in 
 the fore-part of the day, when the mind of 
 your man of letters requires some relaxation 
 — (and none better than such as at first sight 
 seems most abhorrent from his beloved 
 studies) — to while away some good hours of 
 my time in the contemplation of indigos, 
 cottons, raw silks, piece-goods, flowered or 
 otlierwise. In the first place * * ♦ * 
 and then it sends you home with such in- 
 creased appetite to your books * ♦ • 
 not to say, that your outside sheets, and 
 waste wrappers of foolscap, do receive into 
 them, most kindly and naturally, the impres- 
 sion of sonnets, epigrams, essays — so that the 
 very parings of a counting-house are, in some 
 sort, the settings up of an author. The en- 
 franchised quill, that has plodded all the 
 morning among the cart-rucks of figures and 
 ciphers, frisks and curvets so at its ease over 
 
 the flowery carpet-ground of a midnight dis- 
 sertation. — It feels its promotion. * • • 
 So that you see, upon the whole, the literary 
 dignity of Elia is very little, if at all, com- 
 promised in the condescension. 
 
 Not that, in my anxious detail of the many 
 commodities incidental to the life of a public 
 oflice, I would be thought blind to certain 
 flaws, which a cunning carper might be able 
 to pick in this Joseph's vest. And here I 
 must have leave, in the fulness of my soul, to 
 regret the abolition, and doing-away-with 
 altogether, of those consolatory interstices 
 and sprinklings of freedom, through the four 
 seasons, — the red-letter days, now become, to 
 all intents and purposes, dead-letter days. 
 There was Paul, and Stephen, and Barnabas — 
 
 Andrew and John, men famous in old times 
 
 — we were used to keep all their days holy 
 as long back as I was at school at Christ's. 
 I remember their effigies, by the same token,, 
 in the old Basket Prayer Book. There hung 
 
 Peter in his uneasy posture holy Bartlemy 
 
 in the troublesome act of flaying, after the 
 famous Marsyas by S])agnoletti. 1 ho- 
 noured them all, and could almost have wept 
 the defalcation of Iscariot — so much did we 
 love to keep holy memories sacred : — only 
 methought I a little grudged at the coalition 
 of the better Jude with Simon — clubbing (as it 
 were) their sanctities together, to make up 
 one poor gaudy-day between them — as an 
 economy unworthy of the dispensation. 
 
 These were bright visitations in a scholar's 
 and a clerk's life — " far oflf their coming 
 shone." — I was as good as an almanac in 
 those days. I could have told you such a 
 
320 
 
 OXFORD IN THE VACATION. 
 
 saint's day falls out next week, or the week 
 after. Peradventure the Epiphany, by some 
 periodical infelicity, would, once in six years, 
 merge in a Sabbath. Now am I little better 
 than one of the profane. Let me not be 
 thonght to arraign the wisdom of my civil 
 superiors, who have judged the further obser- 
 vation of these holy tides to be papistical, 
 supei-stitious. Only in a custom of such long 
 standing, methinks, if their Holinesses the 
 Bishops had, in decency, been first S04inded 
 
 but I am wading out of my depths. I 
 
 am not the man to decide the limits of civil 
 
 and ecclesiastical authority 1 am plain 
 
 Elia — no Selden, nor Archbishop Usher — 
 though at present in the thick of their books, 
 here in the heart of learning, under the 
 shadow of the miglity Bodley. 
 
 I can here play the gentleman, enact the 
 student. To such a one as myself, who has 
 been defrauded in his young years of the 
 sweet food of academic institution, nowhere 
 is so pleasant, to while away a few idle weeks 
 at, as one or other of the Universities. Their 
 vacation, too, at this time of the year, ftiUs in 
 so pat with ours. Here I can take my walks 
 unmolested, and fancy myself of what degree 
 or standing I please. I seem admitted ad 
 eundem. I fetch up past opportunities. I 
 can rise at the chapel-bell, and dream that it 
 rings for me. In moods of humility I can be 
 a Sizar, or a Servitor. When the peacock 
 vein rises, I strut a Gentleman Commoner. 
 In graver moments, I proceed Master of 
 Arts. Indeed I do not think I am much 
 unlike that respectable character. I have 
 seen your dim-eyed vergers, and bed-makers 
 in spectacles, drop a bow or a curtsy, as I 
 pass, wisely mistaking me for something of 
 the sort. I go about in black, which favours 
 the notion. Only in Christ Church reverend 
 quadrangle, I can be content to pass for 
 nothing short of a Seraphic Doctor. 
 
 The walks at these times are so much one's 
 own, — the tall trees of Christ's, the groves of 
 Magdalen ! The halls deserted, and with 
 open doors inviting one to slip in unperceived, 
 and pay a devoir to some Founder, or noble 
 or royal Benefactress (that should have been 
 ouis), whose portrait seems to smile upon 
 their ovcr-lookud bo.id.sinan, and to adopt me 
 for their own. Then, to take a peep in by 
 the way at the butteries, and sculleries, redo- 
 lent of antique hospitality : the immeuse 
 
 caves of kitchens, kitchen firejilaces, cordial 
 recesses ; ovens whose first pies were baked 
 four centuries ago ; and spits which have 
 cooked for Chaucer ! Not the meanest 
 minister among the dishes but is hallowed 
 to me through his imagination, and the Cook 
 goes forth a Manciple. 
 
 Antiquity ! thou wondrous charm, what 
 art thou ? that, being nothing, art every- 
 thing ! Wlien thou iceH, thou wert not anti- 
 quity — then thou wert nothing, but hadst a 
 remoter antiquity, as thou calledst it, to look 
 back to with blind veneration ; thou thyself 
 being to thyself flat, jejune, modern ! What 
 mystery lurks in this retroversion ? or what 
 half Januses * are we, that cannot look for- 
 ward with the same idolatry with which we 
 for ever revert ! The mighty future is as 
 nothing, being everything 1 the past is every- 
 thing, being nothing ! 
 
 What were thy dark ages ? Surely the sun 
 rose as brightly then as now, and man got 
 him to his work in the morning. Why is it 
 we can never hear mention of them without 
 an accompanying feeling, as though a palpable 
 obscure had dimmed the fiice of things, 
 and that our ancestors wandered to and fro 
 groping ! 
 
 Above all thy rarities, old Oxenford, what 
 do most arride and solace me, are thy 
 repositories of mouldering learning, thy 
 shelves 
 
 What a place to be in is an old library ! 
 It seems as though all the souls of all the 
 writers, that have bequeathed their labours 
 to these Bodleians, were reposing here, as in 
 some dormitory, or middle state. I do not 
 want to handle, to profane the leaves, their 
 winding-sheets. I could as soon dislodge a 
 shade. I seem to inhale learning, walking 
 amid their foliage ; and the odour of their 
 old moth-scented coverings is fragrant as the 
 first bloom of those sciential apples which 
 grew amid the hap])y orchard. 
 
 Still less have I curiosity to disturb the 
 elder repose of MSS. Those varice lectionei, 
 so tempting to the more erudite palates, do 
 but disturb and unsettle my faith. I am no 
 Herculanean raker. The credit of the three 
 witnesses might have slept unimpeached for 
 me. I leave these curiosities to Porson, ami 
 to G. D. — whom, by the way, I found busy as 
 
 • Junuses of one face. — Sin Thomas Browns. 
 
 i 
 
11^ 
 
 S^77o? U 
 
 OXFORD IN THE VACATION. 
 
 821 
 
 a moth over some rotten archive, rummaged 
 out of some seldom-explored press, in a nook 
 at Oriel. With long poring, he ia grown 
 almost into a book. He stood as passive as 
 one by the side of the old shelves. I longed 
 to new coat him in russia, and assign him his 
 place. He might have mustered for a tall 
 Scapula. 
 
 D. is assiduous in his visits to these seats 
 of learning. No inconsiderable portion of 
 his moderate fortune, I apprehend, is con- 
 sumed in journeys between them and Clif- 
 ford's-inn — where, like a dove on the asp's 
 nest, he has long taken up his unconscious 
 abode, amid an incongruous assembly of 
 attorneys, attorneys' clerks, apparitors, pro- 
 moters, vermin of the law, among whom he 
 sits " in calm and sinless peace." The fangs 
 of the law pierce him not — the winds of liti- 
 gation blow over his humble chambers — the 
 hard sheriff's oflicer moves his hat as he 
 passes-i— legal nor illegal discourtesy touches 
 him — none thinks of offering violence or 
 injustice to him — you would as soon " strike 
 an abstract idea." 
 
 D. has been engaged, he tells me, through 
 a course of laborious years, in an investiga- 
 tion into all curious matter connected witli 
 the two Universities ; and has lately lit upon 
 a MS. collection of charters, relative to 
 C , by which he hopes to settle some dis- 
 puted points — particularly that long contro- 
 versy between them as to priority of founda- 
 tion. The ardour with which he engages in 
 these liberal pursuits, I am afraid, has not 
 met with all the encouragement it deserved, 
 
 either here, or at C . Your caputs, and 
 
 heads of colleges, care less than anybody else 
 about these questions. — Contented to suck 
 the milky fountains of their Alma Maters, 
 without inquiring into the venerable gentle- 
 women's years, they rather hold sucli curio- 
 sities to be impertinent — unreverend. They 
 have their good glebe lands in mami, and 
 care not much to rake into the title deeds. I 
 gather at least so much from other sources, 
 for D. is not a man to complain. 
 
 D. started like an unbroke heifer, when I 
 interrupted him. A priori it was not 'very 
 probable that we should have met in Oriel. 
 But D. would have done the same, had I 
 accosted him on the sudden in his own w.alks 
 in Clitford's-inn, or in the Temple. In addi- 
 tion to a provoking short-sightedness (the 
 
 effect of late studies and watchinga at the 
 midnight oil) D. is the most absent of men. 
 He made a call the other morning at our 
 friend M.'s in Bedford-square ; and, finding 
 nobody at home, was ushered into the hall, 
 where, asking for pen and ink, with great 
 exactitude of purpose he enters me his name 
 in the book — which ordinarily lies about in 
 such places, to record the failures of the un- 
 timely or unfortunate visitor — and takes his 
 leave with many ceremonies and professions 
 of regret. Some two or three hours after, 
 his walking destinies I'eturned him into the 
 same neighbourhood again, and again the 
 quiet image of the fire-side circle at M.'s — 
 Mrs. M. presiding at it like a Queen Lar, 
 with pretty A. S. at her side — striking irre- 
 sistibly on his fancy, he makes another call 
 (forgetting that they wei'e "certainly uot 
 to return from the country before that day 
 week"), and disappointed a second time, 
 inquires for pen and paper as before : again 
 the book is brought, and in the line just 
 above that in which he is about to print 
 his second name (his re-script) — his first 
 name (scarce dry) looks out upon him like 
 another Sosia, or as if a man should sud- 
 denly encounter his own duplicate ! — The 
 effect may be conceived. D. made many a 
 good resolution against any such lapses in 
 future. I hope he will not keep them too 
 rigorously. 
 
 For with G.D. — to be absent from the 
 body is sometimes (not to speak it profanely) 
 to be present with the Lord. At the very 
 time when, personally encountering thee, he 
 
 passes on with no recognition or, being 
 
 stopped, starts like a thing surprised — at 
 that moment, reader, he is on Mount Tabor 
 — or Parnassus — or co-spliered with i'lato — ■ 
 or, with Harrington, framing "immortal 
 commonwealths" — devising some plan of 
 amelioration to thy country, or thy species 
 peradventure meditating some indivi- 
 dual kindness or courtesy, to be done to thee 
 thyself, the returning consciousness of which 
 made him to start so guiltily at thy ob- 
 truded personal presence. 
 
 D. is delightful anywhere, but he is at the 
 best in such places as these. He cares not 
 much for Bath. He is out of his element at 
 Buxton, at Scarborough, or Harrowgate. 
 The Cam and the Isis are to him " better 
 than all the waters of Damascus." On the 
 
CHRIST'S nOSPITAL FIVE-AND-THIRTY YEARS AGO. 
 
 Muses' bill he is happy, and good, as one of 
 the Shepherds on the Delectable Mountains ; 
 and when be goes about with you to show 
 
 you the halls and colleges, you think you 
 have with you the Interpreter at the House 
 Beautiful. 
 
 CHRIST'S HOSPITAL FIVE-AND-THIRTY YEARS AGO. 
 
 In Mr. Lamb's " Works," published a year 
 or two siuce, I find a magnificent eulogy on 
 my old school,* such as it was, or now ap- 
 pears to him to have been, between the years 
 1782 and 1789. It happens very oddly that 
 my own standing at Christ's was nearly cor- 
 responding with his ; and, with all gratitude 
 to him for his entliusiasm for the cloisters, I 
 think he has contrived to bring together 
 whatever can be said in praise of them, 
 dropping all the other side of the argument 
 most ingeniously. 
 
 I remember L. at school, and can -well re- 
 collect that he had some peculiar advantages, 
 which I and others of his schoolfellows had 
 not. His friends lived in town, and were 
 near at hand ; and he had the privilege of 
 going to see them almost as often as he 
 wished, through some invidious distinction, 
 which was denied to us. The pi-esent worthy 
 sub-treasurer to the Inner Temple can ex- 
 plain how that happened. He had his tea 
 and hot rolls in a morning, while Ave wei-e 
 battening upon our quarter of a penny loaf — 
 our crug — moistened with attenuated small 
 beer, in wooden piggins, smacking of the 
 pitched leathern jack it was poured from. 
 Our Monday's milk porritch, blue and taste- 
 less, and the pease soup of Saturday, coarse 
 and choking, were enriched for him witli a 
 slice of '' extraordinary bread and butter," 
 from the hot loaf of the Temple. The Wed- 
 nesday's mess of millet, somewhat less re- 
 pugnant — (we had three banyan to four 
 meat days in the week) — was endeared to 
 his palate with a lump of double-refined, and 
 a smack of ginger (to make it go down the 
 more glibly) or the fragrant cinnamon. In 
 lieu of our halfjnclcled Sundays, or quite fresh 
 boiled beef on Thursdays (strong as caro 
 equina), with detestable marigolds floating 
 in the jjail to poison the broth — our scanty 
 
 • HcoolU-ctions of CUrUt's Ilospitnl. 
 
 mutton scrags on Fridays — and ratlier more 
 savoury, but grudging, portions of the same 
 flesh, rotten-roasted or rare, on the Tuesdays 
 (the only dish which excited our appetites, and 
 disappointed our stomachs, in almost equal 
 proportion) — he had hishot plate of roast veal, 
 or the more tempting gi-iskin (exotics un 
 known to our palates), cooked in the pater- 
 nal kitchen (a great thing), and brought him 
 daily by his maid or aunt ! I remember the 
 good old relative (in whom love forbade 
 pride) squatting down upon some odd stone 
 in a by-nook of the cloisters, disclosing the 
 viands (of higher regale than those cates 
 which the ravens ministered to the Tish- 
 bite) ; and the contending passions of L. at 
 the unfolding. There was love for the 
 bringer ; shame for the thing brought, and 
 the manner of its bringing ; sympathy for 
 those who were too many to share in it ; and, 
 at top of all, hunger (eldest, strongest of the 
 passions ! ) predominant, breaking down the 
 stony fences of shame, and awkwardness, and 
 a troubling over-consciousness. 
 
 I was a poor friendless boy. My paAnts, 
 and those who should care for me, were far 
 away. Those few acquaintances of theirs, 
 which they could reckon upon being kind to 
 me in the great city, after a little forced 
 notice, which they had the gi-ace to take of 
 me on my first arrival in town, soon grew 
 tired of my holiday vi.sits. They seemed to 
 them to recur too often, tliough I thought 
 them few enough ; and, one after another, 
 they all failed me, and I felt myself alone 
 among six hundred playniatcs. 
 
 Othe cruelty of separating a poor lad from 
 his early homestead ! The yeju-nings which 
 I used to have towards it in those unfledged 
 years ! How, in my dreams, would my native 
 town (far in the west) come back, with its 
 church, and trees, and faces ! How I would 
 wake weeping, and in the anguish of my hesu't 
 exclaim upon sweet Calue in Wiltshire ! 
 
CHRIST'S HOSPITAL FIVE-AND-THIRTY YEARS AGO. 
 
 323 
 
 To this late hour of my life, I trace im- 
 pressions left by the recollection of those 
 friendless holidays. The long warm days of 
 summer never return but they bring with 
 them a gloom from the haunting memory of 
 those whole-day leaves, when, by some strange 
 arrangement, we were turned out for the 
 live-long day, upon our own hands, whether 
 we had friends to go to or none. I remember 
 those bathing excui-sions to the New River 
 which L. recalls with such relish, bettei', I 
 think, than he can — for he was a home-seek- 
 ing lad, and did not much care for such water- 
 pastimes : — How merrily we would sally forth 
 into the fields ; and strip under the first 
 warmth of the sun ; and wanton like young 
 dace in the streams ; getting us appetites for 
 noon, which those of us that were penniless 
 (our scanty morning crust long since ex- 
 hausted) had not the means of allaying — 
 while the cattle, and the bii-ds, and the fishes 
 were at feed about us and we had nothing to 
 satisfy our cravings — the very beauty of the 
 day, and the exercise of the pastime, and the 
 sense of liberty, setting a keener edge upon 
 them ! How faint and languid, finally, we 
 would return, towards night-fall, to our 
 desired morsel, half-rejoicing, half-reluctant, 
 that the hours of our uneasy liberty had ex- 
 pired ! 
 
 It was worse in the days of winter, to go 
 prowling about the streets objectless — shiver- 
 ing at cold windows of print-shops, to extract 
 a little amusement ; or haply, as a last resort 
 in the hopes of a little novelty, to pay a 
 fifty-times repeated visit (where our indivi- 
 dual faces should be as well known to the 
 warden as those of his own charges) to the 
 Lions in the Tower — to whose levee, by 
 courtesy immemorial, we had a prescriptive 
 title to admission. 
 
 L.'s governor (so we called the patron who 
 presented us to the foundation) lived in a 
 manner under his paternal roof. Any com- 
 plaint which he had to make was sure of 
 being attended to. This was understood at 
 Christ's, and was an eflfectual screen to him 
 against the severity of masters, or worse 
 tyranny of the monitors. The oppressions 
 of these young brutes are heart-sickening to 
 call to recollection. I have been called out 
 of my bed, and waked for the purpose, in the 
 coldest winter nights — and this not once, but 
 night after night — in my shirt, to receive the 
 
 discipline of a leathern thong, with eleven 
 other sufferers, because it pleased my callow 
 overseer, when there has been any talking 
 heard after we were gone to bed, to make 
 the six last beds in the dormitory, where the 
 youngest children of us slept, answerable for 
 an offence they neither dared to commit nor 
 had the power to hinder. The same execra- 
 ble tyranny drove the younger part of us 
 from the fires, when our feet were perishing 
 with snow ; and, under the crudest penalties, 
 forbade the indulgence of a drink of water 
 when we lay in sleepless summer nights 
 fevered with the season and the day's sports. 
 
 There was one H , who, I learned, in 
 
 after days was seen expiating some maturer 
 offence in tlie hulks. (Do I flatter myself 
 in fancying that this might be the planter of 
 that name, who suffered — at Nevis, I think, 
 or St. Kitts, — some few years since ? My 
 friend -Tobin was the benevolent instrument 
 of bringing him to the gallows.) This petty 
 Nero actually branded a boy who had offended 
 him with a red-hot iron ; and nearly starved 
 forty of us with exacting contributions, to 
 the one half of our bread, to pamper a young 
 ass, which, incredible as it may seem, with 
 the connivance of the nui-se's daughter (a 
 young flame of his) he had contrived to 
 smuggle in, and keep upon the leads of the 
 ward, as they called our dormitories. This 
 game went on for better than a week, till the 
 foolish beast, not able to fare well but he 
 must cry roast meat — happier than Caligula's 
 minion, could he have kept his own counsel 
 — but, foolisher, alas ! than any of his species 
 in the fables — waxing fat, and kicking, in 
 the fulness of bread, one unlucky minute 
 would needs proclaim his good fortune to 
 the world below ; and, laying out his simple 
 throat, blew such a ram's-horn blast, as (top- 
 pling down the walls of his own Jericho) set 
 concealment any longer at defiance. The 
 client was dismissed, with certain attentions, 
 to Smithfield ; but I never understood that 
 the patron underwent any censure on the 
 occasion. This was in the stewardship of 
 L.'s admired Perry. 
 
 Under the same facile administration, can 
 L. have forgotten the cool impunity with 
 which the nurses used to carry away openly, 
 in open platters, for their own tables, one 
 out of two of every hot joint, which the 
 careful matron had been seeing scrupulously 
 
 J 
 
 Y 2 
 
824 
 
 CHRIST'S HOSPITAL FIVE-AND-THIRTY YEARS AGO. 
 
 ■weighed out for our dinners ? These things 
 were daily practised in that magnificent 
 apartment which L. grown connoisseiir since, 
 (we presume) praistes so highly for the grand 
 paintings " by Verrio, and others," with 
 which it is "hung round and adorned." But 
 the sight of sleek well-fed blue-coat boys in 
 pictures was, at that time, I believe, little 
 consolatorj' to him, or us, the living ones, 
 who saw the better part of our provisions 
 carried away before our faces by harpies ; 
 and oui*selves reduced (with the Trojan in 
 the hall of Dido) 
 
 To feed our mind with idle portraiture. 
 
 L. has recorded the repugnance of the 
 school to gags, or the fat of fresh beef boiled ; 
 and sets it down to some superstition. But 
 these unctuous morsels are never grateful to 
 young palates (children are universally fat- 
 haters), and in strong, coarse, boiled meats, 
 unsodted, are detestable. A gag-eater in our 
 time was equivalent to a goule, and held in 
 
 equal detestation. suffered under the 
 
 imputation : 
 
 'Twas said 
 
 He ate strange flesh. 
 
 He was observed, after dinner, carefully to 
 gather up the remnants left at his table (not 
 many nor very choice fragments, you may 
 credit me) — and, in an especial manner, these 
 disreputable morsels, which he would con- 
 vey away and secretly stow in the settle that 
 stood at his bedside. None saw when he 
 ate them. It was rumoured that he privately 
 devoured them in the night. He wa? watched, 
 but no traces of such midnight practices were 
 discoverable. Some reported that on leave- 
 days he had been seen to carry out of the 
 bounds a large blue check handkerchief, full 
 of something. This then must be the ac- 
 cursed thing. Conjecture next was at work 
 to imagine how he could dispose of it. Some 
 said he sold it to the beggars. This belief 
 generally prevailed. He went about moping. 
 None spake to him. No one would play with 
 him. He was excommunicatetl ; put out of 
 the pale of the school. He was too powerful 
 a boy to be beaten, but he underwent every 
 mode of that negative punishment, which is 
 more grievous tlian many stripes. Still he 
 persevered. At length he was observed by 
 two of his schoolfellows, who were deter- 
 
 mined to get at the secret, and had traced 
 him one leave-day for the purpose, to enter a 
 large worn-out building, such as there exist 
 specimens of in Chancery-lane, which are let 
 out to various scales of pauperism, with open 
 door and a common staircase. After him 
 they silently slunk in, and followed by stealth 
 up four flights, and saw him tap at a poor 
 wicket, which was opened by an aged woman, 
 meanly clad. Suspicion was now rij)ened 
 into certainty. The informers had secured 
 their victim. They had him in their toils. 
 Accusation was formally preferred, and retri- 
 bution most signal was looked for. Mr. Hath- 
 away, the then steward (for this happened a 
 little after my time), with that patient saga- 
 city which tempered all his conduct, deter- 
 mined to investigate the matter before he 
 proceeded to sentence. The result was that 
 the supposed mendicants, the receivers or 
 purchasers of the mysterious scraps, turned 
 
 out to be the parents of , an honest 
 
 couple come to decay — whom this seasonable 
 supply had, in all probability, saved from 
 mendicancy ; and that this young stork, at 
 the exjiense of his own good name, had all 
 this while been only feeding the old birds ! 
 — The governors on this occasion, much to 
 their honour, voted a present relief to the 
 
 family of , aiid presented him with a 
 
 silver medal. The lesson which the steward 
 read upon rash judgment, on the occasion 
 
 of publicly delivering the medal to , I 
 
 believe would not be lost upon his auditory. 
 — I had left school then, but I well remember 
 
 . He was a tall, shambling youth, with 
 
 a cast in his eye, not at all calculated to con- 
 ciliate hostile prejudices. I have since seen 
 him carrying a baker's basket. I think I 
 heard he did not do quite so well by himself 
 as he had done by the old folks. 
 
 I was a hypochondriac lad ; and the sight 
 of a boy in fetters, upon the day of my first 
 putting on the blue clothes, was not exactly 
 fitted to assuage the natural terrors of initia- 
 tion. I was of tender years, barely turned of 
 seven ; and had only read of such things iu 
 books, or seen them but in dreams. I was 
 told he had run a way. This was the punish- 
 ment for the first offence. — As a novice I 
 was soon after taken to see the dungeons. 
 These were little, square. Bedlam cells, wlu-ro 
 ! a boy could just lie at his length upon straw 
 and a blanket — a mattress, I think, was 
 
CHRIST'S HOSPITAL FIVE-AND-THIRTY YEARS AGO. 
 
 326 
 
 afterwards substituted — with a peep of light, 
 let in askance, from a prison-orifice at top, 
 barely enough to read by. Here the poor 
 boy was locked in by himself all day, without 
 sight of any but the porter who brought 
 him his bread and water — who might not 
 speak to him; — or of the beadle, who came 
 twice a week to call him out to receive his 
 periodical chastisement, which was almost 
 welcome, because it separated him for a brief 
 interval from solitude : — and here he was 
 shut up by himself 0/ ni^r/i^^ out of the reach 
 of any sound, to suffer whatever horroi's the 
 weak nerves, and superstition incident to 
 his time of life, might subject him to.* This 
 was the penalty for the second offence. 
 Wouldst thou like, reader, to see what 
 became of him in the next degree ? 
 
 The culprit, who had been a third time an 
 offender, and whose expulsion was at this 
 time deemed irreversible, was brought forth, 
 as at some solemn auto da fe, arrayed in 
 uncouth and most appalling attire — all trace 
 of his late " watchet weeds," carefully effaced, 
 he was exposed in a jacket resembling those 
 which London lamplighters fonnerly de- 
 lighted in, with a cap of the same. The 
 effect of this divestiture was such as the 
 ingenious devisers of it could have antici- 
 pated. With his pale and frighted features, 
 it was as if some of those disfigurements in 
 Dante had seized upon him. In this dis- 
 guisement he was brought into the hall, 
 {L.^s favourite state-room), where awaited him 
 the whole number of his school-fellows, whose 
 joint lessons and sports he was thenceforth 
 to share no more ; the awful presence of the 
 steward, to be seen for the last time ; of the 
 executioner beadle, clad in his state robe for 
 the occasion ; and of two faces more, of direr 
 import, because never but in these extremities 
 visible. These were governors ; two of whom 
 by choice, or charter, were always accustomed 
 to ofiiciate at these Ultima Supplicia ; not to 
 mitigate (so at least we understood it), but 
 to enforce the uttermost stripe. Old Bamber 
 Gascoigne, and Peter Aubert, I remember, 
 were colleagues on one occasion, when the 
 
 • One or two instnnccs of lunacy, or attempted suicide, 
 accordingly, at length convinced the governors of the 
 impolicy of this part of the sentence, and the midnight 
 torture to the spirits was dispensed with. — This fancy of 
 dungeons for children was a sprout of Howard's brain ; 
 for which (saving the reverence due to Holy Paul) me- 
 thinks, I could willingly spit upon his statue. 
 
 beadle turning rather pale, a glass of brandy 
 was ordered to prepare him for the mysteries. 
 The scourging was, after the old Ex)man 
 fashion, long and stately. The lictor accom- 
 panied the criminal quite round the hall. 
 We were generally too faint with attending 
 to the previous disgusting circumstances, to 
 make accurate report with our eyes of the 
 degree of corporal suffering inflicted. Report, 
 of course, gave out the back knotty and livid. 
 After scourging, he was made over, in his 
 iSan Benito, to his friends, if he had any (but 
 commonly such poor runagates were friend- 
 less), or to his parish oflicer, who, to enhance 
 the effect of the scene, had his station allotted 
 to him on the outside of the hall gate. 
 
 These solemn pageantries were not played 
 off so often as to spoil the general mirth of 
 the community. We had plenty of exercise 
 and recreation after school hours ; and, for 
 myself, I must confess, that I was never 
 happier, than in them. The Upper and the 
 Lower Grammar Schools were held in the 
 same room ; and an imaginary line only 
 divided their bounds. Their character was 
 as different as that of the inhabitants on the 
 two sides of the Pyrenees. The Rev. James 
 Boyer was the Upper Master ; but the Rev. 
 Matthew Field presided over that portion of 
 the apartment of which I had the good fortune 
 to be a member. We lived a life as careless 
 as bii'ds. We talked and did just what we 
 pleased, and nobody molested us. We carried 
 an accidence, or a grammar, for form ; but, 
 for any trouble it gave us, we might take 
 two years in getting through the verbs depo- 
 nent, and another two in forgetting all that 
 we had learned about them. There was 
 now and then the formality of saying a lesson, 
 but if you had not learned it, a brush across 
 the shoulders (just enough to disturb a fly) 
 was the sole remonstrance. Field never 
 used the rod ; and in truth he wielded the 
 cane with no great good will — holding it 
 " like a dancer." It looked in his hands 
 rather like an emblem than an instrument of 
 authority ; and an emblem, too, he was 
 ashamed of He was a good easy man, that 
 did not care to rufiie his own peace, nor 
 perhaps set any great consideration upon the 
 value of juvenile time. He came among us, 
 now and then, but often stayed away whole 
 days from us ; and when he came it made 
 no difference to us — he had his private room 
 
32G 
 
 CHRIST'S HOSPITAL FIVE-AND-THIRTY YEARS AGO. 
 
 to retire to, the short time he stayed, to be 
 out of the sound of our noise. Our mirth 
 and uproar went on. We had classics of our 
 own, without being beholden to " insolent 
 Greece or haughty Rome," that passed 
 current among us — Peter Wilkins — the 
 Adventures of the Hon. Captain Robert 
 Boyle — the Fortunate Blue Coat Boy — and 
 ice like. Or we cultivated a turn for 
 mechauic and scientific operations ; making 
 little sun-dials of paper ; or weaving those 
 ingenious parentheses called cat-cradles ; or 
 making dry peas to dance upon the end of a 
 tin pipe ; or studying the art military over 
 that laudable game " French and English," 
 and a hundi-ed other such devices to pass 
 away the time — mixing the useful with the 
 agreeable — as would have made the souls of 
 Rousseau and John Locke chuckle to have 
 seen us. 
 
 Matthew Field belonged to that class of 
 modest divines who affect to mix in equal 
 l)roportion the gentleman, the scholar, and the 
 Christian; but, I know not how, the fii-st 
 ingredient is generally found to be the pre- 
 dominating dose in the composition. He 
 was engaged in gay parties, or with his 
 courtly bow at some episcopal levee, when 
 he should have been attending upon us. He 
 had for many years the classical charge of a 
 hundred children, during the four or five 
 first years of their education ; and his very 
 highest form seldom proceeded further than 
 two or three of the introductory fables of 
 Phjedrus. How things were suffered to go 
 on thus, I cannot guess. Boyer, who was the 
 proper person to have remedied these abuses, 
 always affected, perhaps felt, a delicacy in 
 interfering in a province not strictly his own. 
 I have not been without my suspicions, that 
 he was not altogether displeased at the 
 contrast we presented to his end of the 
 school. We were a sort of Helots to his 
 young Spartans. He would sometimes, with 
 ironic deference, send to borrow a rod of the 
 Under Master, and then, with Sai'donic grin, 
 observe to one of his upper boys, " how neat 
 and fresh the twigs lookeJ." While his pale 
 students were battering their brains over 
 Xenophon and Plato, with a silence as deep 
 as that enjoyed by the Samite, we were 
 enjoying ourselves at our ease in our little 
 Goshen. We saw a little into the secrets of 
 his discipline, and the prospect did but the 
 
 more reconcile us to our lot. His thunders 
 rolled innocuous for us : his storms came 
 near, but never touched us ; contrary to 
 Gideon's miracle, while all around were 
 drenched, our fleece was dry.* His boys 
 turned out the better scholars ; we, I suspect, 
 have the advantage in temper. His pupils 
 cannot speak of him without something of 
 terror allaying their gratitude ; the remem- 
 brance of Field comes back with all the 
 soothing images of indolence, and summer 
 •slumbers, and work like play, and innocent 
 idleness, and Elysian exemptions, and life 
 itself a " playing holiday." 
 
 Though sufficiently removed from the 
 jurisdiction of Boyer, we were near enough 
 (as I have said) to understand a little of his 
 system. We occasionally heard sounds of 
 the Ululantes, and caught glances of Tartarus. 
 B. was a rabid pedant. His English style 
 was crampt to barbai-ism. His Easter 
 anthems (for his duty obliged him to those 
 periodical flights) were grating as sci-annel 
 pipes.t — He would laugh, ay, and heartily, 
 but then it must be at Flaccus'a quibble 
 
 about Rex or at the tristis sever itas in 
 
 vultu, or inspicere in patinas, of Terence — 
 thin jests, which at their first broaching 
 could hardly have had vis enough to move a 
 Roman muscle. — He had two wigs, both 
 pedantic, but of difl'erent omen. The one 
 serene, smiling, fresh powdered, betokening 
 a mild day. The other, an old, discoloured, 
 unkempt, angry caxon, denoting frequent and 
 bloody execution. Woe to the school, when 
 he made his morning appearance in his passi/, 
 or passionate wig. No comet expounded 
 surer. — J. B. had a lieavy hand. I have 
 known him double his knotty fist at a poor 
 trembling child (the maternal milk hardly 
 diy upon its lips) with a " Sirrah, do you 
 presume to set your wits at me 1 " — Nothing 
 was more common than to see him make a 
 headlong entry into the school-room, from 
 his inner recess, or library, and, with turbu- 
 
 • Cowley, 
 t In this and evcrythinB B. wus the antipodes of hi« 
 coadjutor. While the former was ditrpnK his brains for 
 crude anthems, worth a jii^-nut, F. would be recreating 
 liis gentlemanly fancy in the more flowery walks of the 
 Muses. A little dramatic efl'usion of his, under the name 
 of Vcrtumnus and Pomona, is not yet forgotten by the 
 chroniclers of that sort of literature. It was accepted 
 by Garrick, but the town did not Rive it their iu\nction. — 
 B. used to say of it, in a way of half-compliment, half- 
 irony, that it was too cldJtsirnl for rrpreariitation. 
 
CHRIST'S HOSPITAL FIVE-AND-THIRTY YEARS AGO. 
 
 327 
 
 lent eye, singling out a lad, roar out, " Od's 
 my life, sirrah," (his favourite adjuration) 
 " I have a great mind to whip you," — then, 
 with as sudden a retracting impulse, fling 
 back into his lair — and, after a cooling lapse 
 of some minutes (during which all but the 
 culprit had totally forgotten the context) 
 drive headlong out again, piecing out his 
 imperfect sense, as if it had been some 
 Devil's Litany, with the expletory yell — 
 " and I WILL, too." — In his gentler moods, 
 when the rabidus furor was assuaged, he had 
 resort to an ingenious method, peculiar, for 
 what I have heard, to himself, of whipping 
 the boy, and reading the Debates, at tlie same 
 time ; a paragraph, and a lash between ; 
 which in those times, when parliamentary 
 oratory was most at a height and flourishing 
 in these realms, was not calculated to impress 
 the patient with a veneration for the difl^user 
 graces of rhetoric. 
 
 Once, and but once, the uplifted rod was 
 known to fall iuefiectual from his hand — 
 
 when droll squinting "W having been 
 
 caught putting the inside of the master's 
 desk to a use for which the architect had 
 clearly not designed it, to justify himself, 
 with great simplicity averred, that he did 
 not knoio that the thing had been forewarned. 
 This exquisite in-ecognition of any law ante- 
 cedent to the oral or declaratory, struck so 
 irresistibly upon the f;incy of all who heanl 
 it (the pedagogue himself not excepted) — 
 that remission was unavoidable. 
 
 L. has given credit to B.'s gi-eat merits as 
 an instructor. Coleridge, in his literary life, 
 has pronounced a more intelligible and ample 
 encomium on them. The author of the 
 Country Spectator doubts not to compare 
 him with the ablest teachers of antiquity. 
 Perhaps we cannot dismiss him better than 
 with the pious ejaculation of C. — when he 
 heard that his old master was on his death- 
 bed : " Poor J. B. ! — may all his faults be 
 forgiven ; and may he be wafted to bliss by 
 little cherub boys all head and wings, with no 
 bottoms to reproach his sublunary infirmities." 
 
 Under him were many good and sound | 
 scholars bred. — First Grecian of my time ! 
 was Lancelot Pepys Stevens, kindest of boys 
 and men, since Co-gi-ammar-master (and 
 
 inseparable companion) with Dr. T e. 
 
 What an edifying spectacle did this brace of 
 friends present to those who remembered the 
 
 anti-socialities of their predecessors ! — You 
 never met the one by chance in the street 
 without a wonder, which was quickly dis- 
 sipated by the almost immediate sub-appear- 
 ance of the other. Generally arm-in-arm, 
 these kindly coadjutors lightened for each 
 other the toilsome duties of their profession, 
 and when, in advanced age, one found it 
 convenient to retire, the other was not long 
 in discovering that it suited him to lay down 
 the fasces also. Oh, it is pleasant, as it is 
 rare, to find the same arm linked in yours at 
 forty, which at thirteen helped it to turn 
 over the Cicero De Amicitid, or some tale of 
 Antique Friendship, which the young heart 
 even then was burning to anticipate ! — 
 
 Co-Grecian with S. was Th , who has 
 
 since executed with ability various diplomatic 
 
 functions at the Northern courts. Th 
 
 was a tall, dark, saturnine youth, sparing of 
 speech , with raven locks. — Thomas Fanshaw 
 Middleton followed him (now Bishop of 
 Calcutta), a scholar and a gentleman in his 
 teens. He has the reputation of an excel- 
 lent critic ; and is author (besides the 
 Country Spectator) of a Treatise on the 
 Greek Article, against Sharpe. M. is said 
 to bear his mitre high in India, where the 
 regni novitas (I dare say) suflaciently justifies 
 the bearing. A humility quite as primitive 
 as that of Jewel or Hooker might not be 
 exactly fitted to impress the minds of those 
 i\nglo- Asiatic diocesans with a reverence for 
 home institutions, and the church which 
 those fathers watered. The manners of M. 
 at school, though firm, were mild and un- 
 assuming. — Next to M. (if not senior to him) 
 was Eichai'ds, author of the Aboriginal 
 Britons, the most spirited of the Oxford 
 Prize Poems ; a pale, studious Grecian. — 
 
 Then fcUowed poor S , ill-fated M ! 
 
 of these the Muse is silent. 
 
 Finding some of Edward's race 
 Unhappy, pass their annals by. 
 
 Come back into memory, like as thou wert 
 in the day-spring of thy fancies, with hope 
 like a fiery column before thee — the dark 
 pillar not yet turned — Samuel Taylor Cole- 
 ridge — Logician, Metaphysician, Bard ! — 
 How have I seen the casual passer through 
 the Cloisters stand still, intranced with ad- 
 miration (while he weighed the disproportion 
 between the speech and the garb of the 
 
328 
 
 THE TWO RACES OF MEN. 
 
 young Mirandula), to bear thee unfold, in 
 thy deep and sweet intonations, the mysteries 
 of Jamblichus, or Plotinus (fur even in those 
 years thou waxedst not pale at such philo- 
 sophic draughts), or reciting Homor in his 
 
 Greek, or Pindar while the walls of the 
 
 old Grey Friars re-echoed to the accents of 
 the inspired charity-hoy ! — Many were the 
 "wit-combats," (to dally awhile with the 
 words of old Fuller,) between him and 
 
 C. V. Le G , " which two I behold like a 
 
 Spanish great galleon, and an English man 
 of war ; Mfister Coleridge, like the former, 
 was built far higher in learning, solid, 
 but slow in his performances. C. V. L., 
 with the English man of war, lesser in 
 bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with 
 all tides, tack about, and take advantage of 
 all winds, by the quickness of his wit and 
 invention." 
 
 Nor shalt thou, their compeer, be quickly 
 forgotten, Allen, with the cordial smile, and 
 still more cordial laugh, with which thou 
 wert wont to make the old Cloisters shake, 
 in thy cognition of some poignant jest of 
 theii-s ; or the anticipation of some more 
 material, and, peradventure practical one, of 
 thine own. Extinct are those smiles, with 
 
 that beautiful countenance, with which (for ! 
 thou wert the Nireus formosiis of the school) 
 in the days of thy maturer waggery, thou 
 didst disarm the wrath of infuriated town- 
 damsel, who, incensed by provoking pinch, 
 turning tigress-like round, suddenly con- 
 verted by thy angel-look, exchanged the 
 
 half-formed terrible '^ U ," for a gentler 
 
 greeting — " bless thy handsome face ! " 
 
 Next follow two, who ought to be now 
 alive, and the friends of Elia — the junior 
 
 Le G and F ; who impelled, the 
 
 former by a roving temper, the latter by 
 too quick a sense of neglect — ill capable of 
 enduring the slights poor Sizai-s are some- 
 times subject to in our seats of learning 
 ■ — exchanged their Alma Mater for the 
 camp ; perishing, one by climate, and one 
 
 on the plains of Salamanca : — Le G , 
 
 sanguine, volatile, sweet-natured ; F , 
 
 dogged, faithful, auticipative of insult, warm- 
 heai'ted, with something of the old Roman 
 height about him. 
 
 Fine, frank-hearted Fr , the present 
 
 master of Hertford, with Marmaduke T , 
 
 mildest of Missionai'ies — and both my good 
 friends still — close the catalogue of Grecians 
 in my time. 
 
 THE TWO RACES OF MEN. 
 
 The human species, according to the best 
 theory I can form of it, is composed of two 
 distinct races, the men who borrow, and the 
 men who lend. To these tv/o original diversities 
 may be reduced all those inipertiuent classi- 
 fications of Gothic and Celtic tribes, white 
 men, black men, red men. All the dwellers 
 upon earth, "Parthians, and Medes, and 
 Elamites," flock hither, and do naturally fall 
 in with one or other of these primary dis- 
 tinctions. The infinite superiority of the 
 former, which I choose to designate as the 
 great race, is discernible in their figure, port, 
 and a certain instinctive sovereignty. The 
 latter are born di-graded. " He shall serve 
 his brethren." There is something in the 
 air of one of this cast, lean and suspicious ; 
 contrasting with the open, trusting, generous 
 manners of the other. 
 
 Observe who have been the greatest 
 borrowers of all ages — Aloibiades — Falstaff 
 — Sir Richard Steele — our late incomparable 
 Brinsley — what a family likeness in all four ! 
 
 What a careless, even deportment hath 
 your bori'ower ! what rosy gills ! what a 
 beautiful reliance on Providence doth he 
 manifest, — taking no more thought than 
 lilies ! What contempt for money, — account- 
 ing it (yours and mine especially) no better 
 than dross ! What a liberal confounding of 
 those pedimtic distinctions of meum and 
 tuum! or rather, what a noble simplification 
 of language (beyond Tooke), resolving these 
 supposed opposites into one clear, intelligible 
 pronoun adjective ! — What neai* approaches 
 doth he make to the primitive community, — 
 to the extent of one half of the princi])K' at 
 least. 
 
THE TWO RACES OP MEN. 
 
 829 
 
 He is the true taxer who " calleth all the 
 world up to be taxed ; " and the distance is 
 as vast between him and one of us, as sub- 
 sisted between the Augustan Majesty and 
 the poorest obolary Jew that paid it tribute- 
 pittance at Jerusalem ! — His exactions, too, 
 have such a cheerful, voluntary air ! So far 
 removed from your sour parochial or state- 
 gatherers, — those ink-horn varlets, who carry 
 their want of welcome in their faces ! He 
 Cometh to you with a smile, and troubleth 
 you with no receipt ; confining himself to no 
 set season. Every day is his Candlemas, or 
 his Fejist of Holy Michael. He ajiplieth the 
 lene tormentum of a pleasant look to your 
 purse, — which to that gentle warmth expands 
 her silken leaves, as naturally as the cloak 
 of the traveller, for which sun and wind 
 contended ! He is the true Propontic which 
 never ebbeth ! The sea which taketh hand- 
 somely at each man's hand. In vain the 
 victim, whom he delighteth to honour, 
 struggles with destiny ; he is in the net. 
 Lend therefore cheerfully, O man ordained 
 to lend — that thou lose not in the end, 
 v,'ith thy worldly penny, the reversion 
 promised. Combine not preposterously in 
 thine own person the penalties of Lazarus 
 and of Dives! — but, when thou seest the 
 proper authority coming, meet it smilingly, 
 as it were half-way. Come, a handsome 
 sacrifice ! See how light he makes of 
 it ! Strain not courtesies with a noble 
 enemy. 
 
 Reflections like the foregoing were forced 
 upon my mind by the death of my old 
 friend, Ealph Bigod, Esq., who parted this 
 life, on Wednesday evening ; dying, as 
 he had lived, without much trouble. He 
 boasted himself a descendant from mighty 
 ancestors of that name, who heretofore 
 held ducal dignities in this realm. In 
 his actions and sentiments he belied not 
 the stock to which he pretended. Early in 
 life he found himself invested with ample 
 revenues ; which, with that noble disinterest- 
 edness which I have noticed as inherent 
 in men of the great race, he took almost 
 immediate measures entirely to dissipate 
 and bring to nothing : for there is some- 
 thing revolting in the idea of a king holding 
 a private purse ; and the thoughts of Bigod 
 were all regal. Thus furnished by the 
 very act of disfurnishment ; getting rid of the 
 
 cumbersome luggage of riches, more apt (as 
 one sings) 
 
 To slacVon virtue, and abate her edg'p, 
 
 Than prompt her to do aught may merit praise, 
 
 he set forth, like some Alexander, upon 
 his great enterpi-ise, "borrowing and to 
 borrow ! " 
 
 In his periegesis, or triumphant progress 
 throughout this island, it has been calculated 
 that he laid a tythe part of the inhabitants 
 under contribution. I reject this estimate 
 as greatly exaggerated : — but having had the 
 honour of accompanying my friend divers 
 times, in his perambulations about this vast 
 city, I own I was greatly struck at first with 
 the prodigious number of faces we met, who 
 claimed a sort of respectful acquaintance 
 with us. He was one day so obliging as to 
 explain the phenomenon. It seems, these 
 were his tributaries ; feedei-s of his ex- 
 chequer ; gentlemen, his good friends (as he 
 was pleased to express himself), to whom he 
 had occasionally been beholden for a loan. 
 Their multitudes did no way disconcert him. 
 He rather took a pride in numbering them ; 
 and, with Comus, seemed pleased to be 
 " stocked with so fair a herd." 
 
 With such sources, it was a wonder how 
 he contrived to keep his treasury always 
 empty. He did it by force of an aphorism, 
 which he had often in his mouth, that 
 " money kept longer than three days stinks." 
 So he made use of it whUe it was fresh. A 
 good part he drank away (for he was an 
 excellent toss-pot) ; some he gave away, the 
 rest he threw away, literally tossing and 
 hurling it violently from him — as boys do 
 burrs, or as if it had been infectious, — into 
 jionds, or ditches, or deep holes, inscrutable 
 cavities of the earth ; — or he would bury it 
 (where he would never seek it again) by a 
 river's side under some bank, which (he 
 would facetiously observe) paid no interest 
 — but out away from him it must go 
 peremptorily, as Hagar's ofl'spring into the 
 wilderness, while it was sweet. He never 
 missed it. The streams were perennial 
 wliich fed his fisc. When new supplies be- 
 came necessary, the first person that had 
 the felicity to fall in with him, friend or 
 stranger, was sure to contribute to the 
 deficiency. For Bigod had an uixdeniable 
 way with him. He had a cheerful, open 
 
330 
 
 THE TWO RACES OF MEN. 
 
 exterior, a quick jovial eye, a bald forehead, 
 just touched with grey {cana fides). He 
 anticipated no excuse, and found none. 
 And, waiving for a while my theory as to 
 the great race, I would put it to the most 
 untheorising reader, who may at times have 
 disposable coin in his pocket, whether it is 
 not more repugnant to the kindliness of his 
 nature to refuse such a one as I am describing, 
 than to say no to a poor petitionary rogue 
 (your bastard borrower), who, by his mump- 
 ing visnomy, tells you, that he expects 
 nothing better ; and, therefore, whose pre- 
 conceived notions and expectations you do in 
 reality so much less shock in the refusal. 
 
 When I think of this man ; his fiery 
 glow of heart ; his swell of feeling ; how 
 magnificent, how ideal he was ; how great 
 at the midnight hour ; and when I com- 
 pare with him the companions with whom 
 I have associated since, I gnidge the saving 
 of a few idle ducats, and think that I am 
 fallen into the society of lenders, and little 
 men. 
 
 . To one like Elia, whose treasures are rather 
 cased in leather covers than closed in iron 
 coffers, there is a class of alienators more 
 formidable than that which I have touched 
 \ipon ; I mean your borrowers of looks — 
 those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the 
 symmetry of shelves, and creators of odd 
 volumes. There is Comberbatch, matchless 
 in his depredations ! 
 
 That foul gap in the bottom shelf facing 
 you, like a great eye-tooth knocked out — 
 (you are now with me in my little back study 
 
 in Bloomsbur}', reader !) with the huge 
 
 Switzer-like tomes on each side (like the 
 Guildhall giants, in their reformed posture, 
 guardant of nothing) once held the tallest of 
 my folios, Opera Bonaventura, choice and 
 massy divinity, to which its two supporters 
 (school divinity also, but of a lesser calibre, — 
 Bellarmine, and Holy Thomas), showed but 
 as dwarfs, — itself an Ascapart ! — that Com- 
 berbatch abstracted upon the faith of a theory 
 he holds, which is more easy, I confess, for 
 me to suffer by than to refute, namely, tliat 
 " the title to property in a book (my Bona- 
 venture, for instance), is in exact ratio to the 
 claimant's powers of understanding and ap- 
 preciating the same." Should he go on acting 
 upon this theory, which of our shelves is 
 safe ? 
 
 The slight vacuum in the left-hand case — 
 two shelves from the ceiling — scarcely dis- 
 tinguishable but by the quick eye of a loser — 
 was whilom the commodious resting-place of 
 Brown on Urn Burial. C. will hardly allege 
 that he knows more about that treatise than 
 I do, who introduced it to him, and was in- 
 deed the first (of the moderns) to discover its 
 beauties — but so have I known a foolish 
 lover to praise his mistress in the presence 
 of a rival more qualified to carry her off 
 than himself. Just below, Dodsley's dramas 
 want their fourth volume, where Vittoria 
 Corombona is ! The remainder nine are 
 as distasteful as Priam's refuse sons 
 when the Fates borroiced Hector. Here 
 stood the Anatomy of Melancholy, in 
 sober state. There loitered the Complete 
 Angler ; quiet as in life, by some stream 
 side. In yonder nook, John Buncle, a 
 widower-volume, with " eyes closed," mourns 
 his ravished mate. 
 
 One justice I must do my friend, that if he 
 sometimes, like the sea, sweeps away a 
 treasure, at another time, sea-like, he throws 
 up as rich an equivalent to match it. I have 
 a small under-collection of this nature (my 
 friend's gatherings in his various calls), 
 picked up, he has forgotten at what odd 
 places, and deposited with as little memory 
 at mine. I take in these orphans, the twice- 
 deserted. Tliese proselytes of the gate are 
 welcome as the true Hebrews. There they 
 stand in conjunction ; natives, and natu- 
 ralised. The latter seem as little disposed to 
 inquire out their true lineage as I am. — I 
 charge no warehouse-room for these deo- 
 dands, nor shall ever put myself to the im- 
 gentlemanly trouble of advertising a sale of 
 them to pay expenses. 
 
 To lose a volume to C. carries some sense 
 and meaning in it. You are sure that he 
 will make one hearty meal on your viands, 
 if he can give no account of the platter after 
 it. But what moved thee, wayward, spiteful 
 K., to be so importunate to carry off with 
 thee, in spite of teara and adjurations to thee 
 to forbear, the liCtters of that princely 
 woman, the thrice noble Margaret Newcastle ? 
 — knowing at the time, and knowing that I 
 knew also, thou most assuredly wouldst 
 never turn over one leaf of the illustrious 
 fulio : — wliat but the mere spirit of contra- 
 diction, and childi.sh lo^'O of getting tlie better 
 
NEW YEAR'S EVE. 
 
 331 
 
 of thy friend ? — Then, worst cut of all ! 
 to transport it with thee to the Gallican 
 land — 
 
 Unworthy land to harbour such a sweetness, 
 A virtue in which all ennobling thoughts dwelt, 
 Pure thoughts, kind thoughts, high thoughts, her 
 sex's wonder I 
 
 hadst thou not thy play-books, and books 
 
 of jests and fancies, about thee, to keep thee 
 merry, even as thou keepest all companies 
 with thy quips and mirthful tales 1 Child of 
 the Green-room, it was unkmdly done of 
 thee. Thy wife, too, that part-French, better- 
 pai't Englishwoman ! — that she could fix upon 
 no other treatise to bear away, in kindly 
 token of remembering us, than the works of 
 Fulke Greville, Lord Brook — of which no 
 Frenchman, nor woman of France, Italy, or 
 Englami, was ever by nature constituted to 
 
 comprehend a tittle ! — Was there not Zimmer- 
 inan 011 Solitude ? 
 
 Reader, if haply thou art blest with a 
 modfTate collection, be shy of showing it ; or 
 if thy heart overfloweth to lend them, lend 
 thy books ; but let it be to such a one as 
 S. T. C. — he will return them (generally anti- 
 cipating the time appointed) with usury ; 
 enriched with annotations tripling their 
 value. I have had experience. Many are 
 these precious MSS. of his — (in matter often- 
 times, and almost in quantity not unfre- 
 quently, vying with the originals) in no very 
 clerkly hand — legible in my Daniel ; in old 
 Burton ; in Sir Thomas Browne ; and those 
 abstruser cogitations of the Greville, now, 
 alas ! wandering in Pagan lands. I counsel 
 thee, shut not thy heart, nor thy libraiy, 
 against S. T. C. 
 
 NEW YEAR'S EVE. 
 
 Evert man hath two birth-days : two 
 days, at least, in every year, which set him 
 upon revolving the lapse of time, as it affects 
 his mortal duration. The one is that which 
 in an especial manner he termeth his. In 
 the gradual desuetude of old observances, 
 this custom of solemnising our proper birth- 
 day hath nearly passed away, or is left to 
 children, who reflect nothing at all about the 
 matter, nor understand anything in it beyond 
 cake and orange. But the birth of a New 
 Year is of an interest too wide to be preter- 
 mitted by king or cobbler. No one ever re- 
 garded the first of January with indifference. 
 It is that from which all date their time, and 
 count upon what is left. It is the nativity of 
 our common Adam. 
 
 Of all sound of all bells — (bells, the music 
 nighest bordering upon heaven) — mo.st solemn 
 and touching is the peal which rings out the 
 Old Year. I never hear it without a gather- 
 ing-up of my mind to a concentration Of ah 
 the images that have been diffused over the 
 past twelvemonth ; all I have done or suf- 
 fered, performed or neglected — in that 
 regretted time. I begin to know its worth, 
 as when a person dies. It takes a personal 
 
 colour ; nor was it a poetical flight in a con- 
 temporary, when he exclaimed, 
 
 I saw the skirts of the departing Tear. 
 
 It is no more than what in sober sadness 
 every one of us seems to be conscious of, in 
 that awful leave-taking. I am sure I felt it, 
 and all felt it with me, last night ; though 
 some of my companions affected rather to 
 manifest an exhilaration at the birth of the 
 coming year, than any very tender regrets 
 for the decease of its predecessor. But I am 
 none of those who — 
 
 Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest. 
 
 I am naturally, beforehand, shy of novel- 
 ties ; new books, new faces, new years, — 
 from some mental twist which makes it 
 difficult in me to face the prospective. I 
 have almost ceased to hope ; and am sanguine 
 only in the prospects of other (former) years. 
 I plunge into foregone visions and conclusions. 
 I encounter pell-mell with past disappoint- 
 ments. I am armour-proof against old dis- 
 couragements. I forgive, or overcome in fancy, 
 old adversaries. I play over again/or love, as 
 the gamesters phrase it, games, for which I 
 
882 
 
 NEW YEAR'S EVE. 
 
 once paid so dear. I would scarce now have 
 any of those untoward accidents and events 
 of my life reversed. I would no more alter 
 them than the incidents of some well-con- 
 trived novel. Methinks it is better that I 
 should have pined away seven of my goldenest 
 years, when I was thrall to the fair hair, 
 and fairer eyes of Alice W — n, than that so 
 passionate a love-adventure should be lost. 
 It was better that our family should have 
 missed that legacy, which old Dorrell cheated 
 us of, than that I should have at this moment 
 two thousand pounds in han:o, and be 
 without the idea of that specious old 
 rogue. 
 
 In a degree beneath manhood, it is my in- 
 firmity to look back upon those early days. 
 Do I advance a paradox, when I say, that, 
 skipping over the intervention of forty years, 
 a man may have leave to love himself, with- 
 out the imputation of self-love '{ 
 
 If I know aught of myself, no one whose 
 mind is introspective — and mine is painfully 
 so — can have a less respect for his present 
 identity, than I have for the man Elia. I 
 know him to be light, and vain, and humoui*- 
 some ; a notorious * * * ; addicted to * * * * : 
 averse from counsel, neither taking it nor 
 offering it ; — * * * besides ; a stammering 
 buffoon ; what you will ; lay it on, and sjiare 
 not : I subscribe to it all, and much more 
 than thou canst be willing to lay at his door 
 — but for tlie child Elia, that " other m(!," 
 there, in the back-ground — I must take 
 leave to cherish the remembrance of that 
 young master — ^vith as little reference, I 
 protest, to this stupid changeling of five-and- 
 forty, as if it had been a child of some other 
 house, and not of my parents. I can cry 
 over its patient smidl-pox at five, and 
 lougher medicaments. I can lay its poor 
 fevered head upon the sick pillow at Christ's, 
 and wake with it in surprise at the gentle 
 posture of maternal tenderness hanging over 
 it, that unknown had watched its sleep. I 
 know how it shrank from any the least 
 colour of falsehood. God help thee, Elia, 
 how art thou changed ! — Thou art sophis- 
 ticated. — I know how honest, how courageous 
 (for a weakling) it was — how religious, how 
 imaginative, how hopeful ! From what have 
 I not fallen, if the child I remember wjia 
 indeed myself, — and not some dissembling 
 guardian, prt'sonting a false identity, to give 
 
 the rule to my unpractised steps, and re- 
 gulate the tone of my moral being ! 
 
 That I am fond of indulging, beyond a hope 
 of sympathy, in such retrospection, may be 
 the symptom of some sickly idiosyncrasy. Or 
 is it owing to another cause : simply, that 
 being without wife or family, I have not 
 learned to project myself enough out of 
 myself ; and having no offspring of my own 
 to dally with, I turn back upon memory, and 
 adopt my own early idea, as my heir and 
 fevourite ? If these speculations seem fan- 
 tastical to thee, reader — (a busy man per- 
 chance), if I tread out of the way of thy 
 sympathy, and am singularly conceited only, 
 I retire, impenetrable to ridicule, under the 
 phantom cloud of Elia. 
 
 The elders, with whom I was brought up, 
 were of a character not likely to let slip the 
 sacred observance of any old institution ; and 
 the ringing out of the Old Year was kept by 
 them with circumstances of peculiar ceremony. 
 — In those days the sound of those midnight 
 chimes, though it seemed to raise hilarity in 
 all around me, never failed to bring a train 
 of pensive imagery into my fancy. Yet I 
 then scarce conceived what it meant, or 
 thought of it as a reckoning that concerned 
 me. Not childhood alone, but the young 
 man till thirty, never feels practically that 
 he is moi-tal. He knows it indeed, and, if 
 need were, he could preach a homily on the 
 fragility of life ; but he brings it not home to 
 himself, any more than in a hot June we can 
 appropriate to our imagination the freezing 
 days of December. But now, shall I confess 
 a truth ? — I feel these audits but too power- 
 fully. I begin to count the probabilities of 
 my duration, and to grudge at the expendi- 
 ture of moments and shortest periods, like 
 misei-s' farthings. In proportion as the 
 years both lessen and shorten, I set more 
 count upon their periods, and would fuiii lay 
 my ineffectual finger upon the spoke of the 
 great wheel. I am not content to pass away 
 " like a weaver's shuttle." Those metaphoi-s 
 solace me not, nor sweeten the unpiUatable 
 draught of mortality. I care not to be 
 carried with the tide, that smoothly bears 
 imman life to eternity ; and reluct at the in- 
 evitable coui-se of destiny. I am in love with 
 this green earth ; the face of town and 
 country ; the unspeakable rural solitudes, 
 .and the sweet security of streets. I would 
 
NEW YEAR'S EVE. 
 
 333 
 
 set up my tabernacle here. I am content to 
 stand still at the age to which I am arrived ; 
 I, and my friends : to be no younger, no 
 richer, no handsomer. I do not want to be 
 weaned by age ; or drop, like mellow fruit, 
 as they say, into tlie grave. — Any alteration, 
 on this earth of mine, in diet or in lodging, 
 puzzles and discomposes me. My house- 
 hold-gods plant a terrible fixed foot, and are 
 not rooted up without blood. They do not 
 willingly seek Lavinian shores. A new state 
 of being staggers me. 
 
 Sun, and sky, and breeze, and solitary 
 walks, and summer holidays, and the green- 
 ness of fields, and the delicious juices of 
 meats and fishes, and society, and the cheer- 
 ful glass, and candle-light, and fireside con- 
 versations, and innocent vanities, and jests, 
 and irony itself — do these things go out with 
 life? 
 
 Can a ghost laugh, or shake his gaunt 
 sides, when you are pleasant with him ? 
 
 And you, my midnight darlings, my Folios ! 
 must I part with the intense delight of 
 having you (huge armfuls) in my embraces ? 
 Must knowledge come to me, if it come at 
 all, by some awkward experiment of intuition, 
 and no longer by this familiar process of 
 reading ? 
 
 Shall 1 enjoy friendships there, wanting the 
 smiling indications which point me to them 
 here, — the recognisable face — the "sweet 
 assurance of a look ? " — 
 
 In winter this intolerable disinclination to 
 dying — to give it its mildest name — does 
 more especially haunt and beset me. In a 
 genial August noon, beneath a sweltering 
 sky, death is almost problematic. At those 
 times do such poor snakes as myself enjoy 
 an immortality. Then we expand and 
 burgeon. Then we are as strong again, as 
 valiant again, as wise again, and a great deal 
 taller. The blast that nips and shrinks me, 
 puts me in thoughts of death. All things 
 allied to the insubstantial, wait upon that 
 master feeling ; cold, numbness, dreams, per- 
 plexity ; moonlight itself, with its shadowy 
 and spectral appearances, — that cold ghost 
 of the sun, or Phoebus' sickly sister, like that 
 innutritions one denounced in the Canticles : 
 — I am none of her minions — I hold with 
 the Persian. 
 
 Wliatsoevcr thwarts, or puts me out of my 
 way, brings deatli into my mind. All parl.ial 
 
 evils, like humours, run into that capital 
 plague-sore. — I have heard some profess an 
 indifference to life. Such hail the end of 
 their existence as a port of refuge ; and speak 
 of the grave as of some soft arms, in which 
 they may slumber as on a pillow. Some have 
 
 wooed death but out upon thee, I say, 
 
 thou foul, ugly phantom ! I detest, abhor, 
 execrate, and (with Friar John) give thee to 
 six score thousand devils, as in no instance 
 to be excused or tolerated, but shunned as 
 an universal viper ; to be branded, proscribed, 
 and spoken evil of! In no way can I be 
 brought to digest thee, thou thin, melancholy 
 Privation, or more frightful and confounding 
 Positive ! 
 
 Those antidotes, prescribed against the fear 
 of thee, are altogether frigid and insulting, 
 like thyself. For what satisfaction hath a 
 man, that he shall " lie down with kings and 
 emperors in death," who in his life-time 
 never greatly coveted the society of such 
 bed-fellows 1 — or, forsooth, that " so shall 
 the fairest face appear ? " — why, to comfort 
 me, must Alice W — n be a goblin ] More 
 than all, I conceive disgust at those imperti- 
 nent and misbecoming familiarities, inscribed 
 upon your ordinary tombstones. Every dead 
 man must take upon himself to be lecturing 
 me with his odious truism, that " Such as 
 he now is I must shortly be." Not so shortly, 
 friend, perhaps as thou imaginest. In the 
 mean time I am alive. I move about. I am 
 worth twenty of thee. Know thy betters ! 
 Thy New Years' days are past. I survive, 
 a jolly candidate for 1821. Another cup of 
 wine — and while that turncoat bell, that just 
 now mournfully chanted the obsequies of 
 1820 departed, with changed notes lustily 
 rings in a successor, let us attune to its peal 
 the song made on a like occasion, by hearty, 
 cheerful Mr. Cotton. 
 
 THE NEW YEAR. 
 
 IIark, the cock crows, and yon bright star 
 Tells us, the d;iy himselfs not far ; 
 And see where, breaking from the night, 
 lie gilds the western hills with light. 
 ^^'ith him old Janus duth appear, 
 Peeping into the future year, 
 With such a look as seems to say 
 The prospect is not good that way. 
 Thus do we rise ill sights to see, 
 And 'gainst ourselves to prophesy ; 
 When the prophetic fear of things 
 A more tormenting mischief brings. 
 More full of soul-tormenting gall 
 Than direst mischiefs can befall. 
 
834 
 
 MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST. 
 
 But stay ! but stay ! mctbinks my sight. 
 
 Better inform'd by clearer light, 
 
 Discerns si-reneness in that brow, 
 
 That all contracted seem'd but now. 
 
 His revers'd face may show distaste. 
 
 And frown upon the ills are past ; 
 
 But that which this way looks is clear. 
 
 And smiles upon the New-born Year. 
 
 He looks too from a place so high, 
 
 The year lies open to his eye ; 
 
 And all the moments open are 
 
 To the exact discoverer. 
 
 Tet more and more he smiles upon 
 
 The happy revolution. 
 
 ^^'hy should we then suspect or fear 
 
 The influences of a year, 
 
 So smiles upon us the first morn. 
 
 And speaks us good so soon as born ? 
 
 Plague on't ! the last was ill enough. 
 
 This cannot but make better proof; 
 
 Or, at the worst, as we brush'd through 
 
 The last, why so wc may this too ; 
 
 And then the next in reason shou'd 
 
 Be superexccUently good : 
 
 For the worst ills (we daily see) 
 
 Have no more perpetuity 
 
 Than the best fortunes that do fall ; 
 
 AVTiich also bring us -wherewithal 
 
 Longer their being to support. 
 
 Than those do of the other sort : 
 
 And who has one good year in three, 
 And yet repines at destiny, 
 Appears ungrateful in the case. 
 And merits not the good he has. 
 Then let us welcome the New Guest 
 With lusty brimmers of the best : 
 Mirth always should Good Fortune meet. 
 And renders e'en Disaster sweet ; 
 And though the Princess turn her back, 
 Let us but line ourselves with sack. 
 We better shall by far hold out, 
 Till the next Year she face about. 
 
 How say you, reader — do uot these verses 
 smack of the rough magnanimity of the old 
 English vein ? Do they not fortify like a 
 cordial ; enlarging the heart, and productive 
 of sweet blood, and generous spirits, in the 
 concoction ? Where be those puling fears 
 of death, just now expressed or affected 1 — ■ 
 Passed like a cloud — absorbed in the pui'ging 
 sunlight of clear poetry — clean waslied away 
 by a wave of genuine Helicon, your only Spa 
 for these hj^pochondries — And now another 
 cup of the generous ! and a merry New Year, 
 and many of them to you all, my masters ! 
 
 MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST. 
 
 " A CLEAR fire, a clean hearth, and the 
 rigour of the game." This was the celebrated 
 rvish of old Sarah Battle (now with God), 
 who, next to her devotions, loved a good 
 game of whist. She was none of your luke- 
 warm gamesters, your half-and-half players, 
 who have no objection to take a hand, if j'ou 
 want one to make up a rubber ; who affirm 
 that they have no pleasure in winning ; that 
 they like to win one game and lose another ; 
 that they can while away an hour very 
 agreeably at a card-table, but are indifferent 
 whether they play or no ; and will desire an 
 adversary', who has slipped a wrong card, to 
 take it up and play another. Tliese insuffer- 
 able triflers are the curse of a table. One of 
 these flies will spoil a whole pot. Of such it 
 may be said that they do not play at cards, 
 but only ])lay at playing at them. 
 
 Sarah Battle was none of that breed. She 
 detested them, as I do, from her heart antl 
 soul, and would not, save upon a striking 
 emergency, willingly scat herself at the same 
 table with them. She loved a thorough- 
 paced partner, a determined enemy. She 
 
 took, and gave, no concessions. She hated 
 favours. She never made a revoke, nor ever 
 passed it over in her adversary without 
 exacting the utmost forfeitiire. She fought 
 a good 6ght : cut and thrust. She held not 
 her good sword (her cards) " like a dancer." 
 She sate bolt upright ; and neither showed 
 you her cards, nor desired to see yours. All 
 people have their blind side — their super- 
 stitions ; and I have heard her declare, 
 under the rose, that hearts was her favourite 
 suit. 
 
 I never in my life — and I knew Sarah 
 Battle many of the best years of it — saw her 
 take out her snuff-box when it was her turn 
 to play ; or snuff a candle in the middle of a 
 game ; or ring for a servant, till it was fairly 
 over. She never introduced, or coiniived at, 
 miscellaneous conversation during its process. 
 As she emphatically observed, cards were 
 canls ; and if I ever saw unmingled distaste 
 in her fine last-century countenance, it wa.s 
 at the airs of a young gontloinan of a literary 
 turn, who had botniwitli difficulty pei-suadod 
 to take a hand ; and who, in Lis excess of 
 
MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST. 
 
 3?5 
 
 candour, declared, that he thought there was 
 no harm in unbending the mind now and 
 tlien, after serious studies, in recreations of 
 that kind ! She could not bear to have her 
 noble occupation, to which she wound up 
 her faculties, considered in that light. It 
 was her business, her duty, the thing she 
 came into the world to do, — and she did it. 
 She unbent her mind aftei-wards over a 
 book. 
 
 Pope was her favourite author : his Rajje 
 of the Lock her favourite work. She once 
 did me the favour to play over with me (with 
 the cards) his celebrated game of Ombre in 
 that poem ; and to explain to me how far it 
 agreed with, and in what points it would be 
 found to differ from, tradrille. Her illustra- 
 tions were apposite and poignant ; and I had 
 the pleasure of sending the substance of them 
 to Mr. Bowles ; but I suppose they came too 
 late to be inserted among his ingenious notes 
 upon that author. 
 
 Quadrille, she has often told me, was her 
 first love ; but whist had engaged her maturer 
 esteem. The former, she said, was showy 
 and specious, and likely to allure young 
 persons. The uncertainty and quick shifting 
 of partners — a thing which the constancy of 
 whist abhors ; the dazzling supremacy and 
 regal investiture of Spadille- — absurd, as she 
 justly observed, in the pure aristocracy of 
 whist, where his crown and garter give him 
 no proper power above his brother-nobility 
 of the Aces ; — the giddy vanity, so taking to 
 the inexperienced, of playing alone ; above 
 all, the overpowering attractions of a Sans 
 Prendre Vole, — to the triumph of which there 
 is certainly nothing parallel or approaching, 
 in the contingencies of whist ; — all these, she 
 would say, make quadrille a game of captiva- 
 tion to the young and enthusiastic. But 
 whist was the solider game : that was her 
 word. It was a long meal ; not, like qua- 
 drille, a feast of snatches. One or two 
 rubbers might co-extend in duration with an 
 evening. They gave time to form rooted 
 friendships, to cultivate steady enmities. 
 She despised the chance-stai'ted, capricious, 
 and ever fluctuating alliances of the other. 
 Tlie skirmishes of quadrille, she would say, 
 reminded her of the petty ephemeral em- 
 broilments of the little Italian states, depicted 
 Dy Miichiavel : perpetually changing postures 
 and connexions ; bitter foes to-day, sugared 
 
 darlings to-morrow ; kissing and scratching 
 in a breath ; — but the wars of whist were 
 comparable to the long, steady, deep-rooted, 
 rational, antipathies of the great French and 
 English nations. 
 
 A grave simplicity was what she chiefly 
 admired in her favourite game. There was 
 nothing silly in it, like the nob in cribbage — 
 nothing superfluous. No flushes — that most 
 irrational of all pleas that a reasonable being 
 can set up : — that any one should claim four 
 by virtue of holding cards of the same mark 
 and colour, without reference to the playing 
 of the game, or the individual worth or 
 pretensions of the cards themselves ! She 
 held this to be a solecism ; • as pitiful an 
 ambition at cards as alliteration is in author- 
 ship. She despised superficiality, and looked 
 deeper than the colours of things. — Suits 
 were soldiers, she would say, and must have 
 an uniformity of array to distinguish them : 
 but what should we say to a foolish squire, 
 who should claim a merit from dressing up 
 his tenanti-y in red jackets, that never were 
 to be marshalled — never to take the field ? 
 — She even wished that whist were more 
 simple than it is ; and, in my mind, would 
 have stripped it of some appendages, which, 
 in the state of human frailty, may be venially, 
 and even commendably, allowed of. She 
 saw no reason for the deciding of the trump 
 by the turn of the card. Why not one suit 
 always trumps ? — Why two colours, when 
 the mark of the suits would have sufficiently 
 distinguished them without it ? — • 
 
 " But the eye, my dear Madam, is agreeably 
 refreshed with the variety. Man is not a 
 creature of pure reason — he must have his 
 senses delightfully appealed to. We see it 
 in Roman Catholic countries, where the 
 music and the paintings draw in many to 
 worship, whom your quaker spirit of unsen- 
 sualising would liave kept out. — You youreelf 
 have a pretty collection of paintings — but 
 confess to me, whether, walking in your 
 gallery at Sandham, among those clear 
 Vandykes, or among the Paul Potters in the 
 ante-room, you ever felt your bosom glow 
 with an elegant delight, at all comparable 
 to that you have it in your power to ex- 
 perience most evenings over a well-arranged 
 assortment of the court-cards ? — the pretty 
 antic habits, like heralds in a procession — the 
 gay triumph ^assuring scarlets — the contrast- 
 
836 
 
 MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST. 
 
 ing deadly-killing sables — the ' hoary majesty 
 of spades ' — Pam in all his gloiy ! — 
 
 " All these might be dispensed \\'ith ; and 
 ■with their naked names upon the drab paste- 
 board, the game might go on very well, 
 pictureless. But the heauty of cards would 
 be extinguished for ever. Stripped of all 
 that is imaginative in them, they must 
 degenerate into mere gambling. Imagine a 
 dull deal board, or di-um head, to spread 
 them on, instead of that nice verdant carpet 
 (next to nature's), fittest arena for those 
 courtly combatants to play their gallant 
 jousts and turneys in ! — Exchange those 
 delicately-turned ivory markers — (work of 
 Chinese artist, unconscious of their sj-mbol, 
 — or as profanely slighting their tnie appli- 
 cation as the arrantest Ephesian journeyman 
 that turned out those little shrines for the 
 goddess) — exchange them for little bits of 
 leather (our ancestors' money) or chalk and 
 a slate ! " — 
 
 The old lady, with a smile, confessed the 
 soundness of my logic ; and to her appro- 
 bation of my arguments on her favourite 
 topic that evening, I have always fancied 
 myself indebted for the legacy of a curious 
 cribbage-board, made of the finest Sienna 
 marble, which her maternal uncle (old 
 "Walter Plumer, whom I have elsewhere 
 celebrated) brought with him from Florence : 
 — this, and a trifle of five hundred pounds, 
 came to me at her death. 
 
 The former bequest (which I do not least 
 value) I have kept with religious care ; 
 though she herself, to confess a tinith, was 
 never greatly taken with cribbage. It w;is 
 an essentially vulgar game, I have heard her 
 say, — disputing with her uncle, who was veiy 
 partial to it. She could never heartily bring 
 her mouth to pronounce " Go " — or " That's 
 a go." She called it an ungrammatical game. 
 The pegging teased her. I once knew her to 
 forfeit a rubber (a five-dollar stake) becjuise 
 she would not take advantage of the turn-up 
 knave, which would liave given it her, but 
 which she must have claimed by the dis- 
 graceful tenure of declaring "ticofor /lis 
 heels." There is sonu'thing extremely genteel 
 in this sort of .self-denial. Sarah Battle was 
 a gentlewoman born. 
 
 Piquet she held the best game at the cards 
 for two persons, 1 hough she would ridicule 
 the pedantry of the terms — such as i>ique — 
 
 repique — the capot — they savoured (she 
 thought) of affectation. But games for two, 
 or even three, she never greatly cared for. 
 She loved the quadrate, or square. She 
 would argue thus : — Cards are warfare : the 
 ends are gain, with glory. But cards are 
 war, in disguise of a sport : when single 
 adversai'ies encounter, the ends proposed are 
 too palpable. By themselves, it is too close 
 a fight ; with spectators, it is not much 
 bettered. No looker-on can be interested, 
 except for a bet, and then it is a mere affair 
 of money ; he cares not for your luck sympa- 
 theticalii/, or for your play. — Three are still 
 worse ; a mere naked war of every man 
 against every man, as in cribbage, without 
 league or alliance ; or a rotation of petty and 
 contradictory interests, a succession of heai-t- 
 less leagues, and not much more hearty 
 infractions of them, as in tradrille. — But in 
 square games (she meant u-hist), all that is 
 possible to be attained in card-playing is 
 accomplished. There are the incentives of 
 profit with honour, common to every species 
 — though the latter can be but very imper- 
 fectly enjoyed in those other games, where 
 the spectator is only feebly a participator. 
 But the parties in whist are spectators and 
 principals too. They are a theatre to them- 
 selves, and a looker-on is not wanted. He is 
 rather woise than nothing, and an imperti- 
 nence. Whist abhors neutrality, or interests 
 beyond its sphere. You glory in some sur- 
 prising stroke of skill or fortune, not because 
 a cold — or even an interested — bystander 
 witnesses it, but because your partner sym- 
 pathises in the contingency. You win for 
 two. You triumph for two. Two are 
 exalted. Two again are mortified ; which 
 divides their disgrace, as the conjunction 
 doubles (by taking off' the invidiousneas) 
 your glories. Two losing to two are better 
 reconciled, than one to one in that close 
 butchery. The hostile feeling is weakened 
 by multiplying the chiuinels. War becomes 
 a civil game. By such reasonings as these 
 the old lady was accustomed to defend her 
 favourite pastime. 
 
 No inducement could ever prevail upon 
 her to play at any game, where chance 
 entered into the composition, for nothing. 
 Chance, she would argue — and here again, 
 admire the subtlety of her conclusion; — 
 chance is nothing, but where something else 
 
depends upon it. It is obvious that cannot 
 be glory. What rational cause of exultation 
 could it give to a man to turn up size ace a 
 hundred times together by himself? or before 
 spectators, where no stake was depending ? 
 — Make a lottery of a hundred thousand 
 tickets with but one fortunate number — and 
 what possible principle of our nature, except 
 stupid wonderment, could it gratify to gain 
 that number as many times successively, 
 without a prize ? Therefore she disliked tlie 
 mixture of chance in backgammon, where it 
 was not played for money. She called it 
 foolish, and those people idiots, who were 
 taken with a lucky hit under such circum- 
 stances. Games of pure skill were as little 
 to her fancy. Played for a stake, they were 
 a mere system of over-reaching. Played for 
 glory, they were a mere setting of one man's 
 wit, — his memory, or combination-faculty 
 rather — against another's ; like a mock- 
 engagement at a review, bloodless and profit- 
 less. She could not conceive a game wanting 
 the spritely infusion of chance, the handsome 
 excuses of good fortune. Two people playing 
 at chess in a corner of a room, whilst whist 
 was stirring in the centre, would inspire 
 her with insufferable horror and ennui. 
 Those well-cut similitudes of Castles, and 
 Knights, the imagery of the board, she 
 would argue, (and I think in this case justly,) 
 were entirely misplaced and senseless. Those 
 hard head-contests can in no instance 
 ally with the fancy. They reject form 
 and colour. A pencil and dry slate (she 
 used to say) were the proper arena for 
 such combatants. 
 
 To those puny objectors against cards, as 
 nurturing the bad pa.ssions, she would retort, 
 that man is a gaming animal. He must be 
 always trying to get the better in something 
 or other : — that this passion can scarcely be 
 UKjre safely expended than upon a game at 
 cards : that cards are a temporary illusion ; 
 in truth, a mere drama ; for we do but play 
 at being mightily concerned, where a few 
 idle shillings are at stake, yet, during the 
 
 illusion, we are as niiglitily concerned as 
 those whose stake is crowns and kingdoms. 
 They are a sort of dream-fighting ; much 
 ado ; great battling, and little bloodshed ; 
 mighty means for disproportioned ends 
 quite as diverting, and a great deal more 
 innoxious, than many of those more seriovis 
 games of life, which men play, without 
 esteeming them to be such. — 
 
 With great deference to the old lady's 
 judgment in these matters, I think I have 
 experienced some moments in my life, when 
 playing at cards for nothing has even been 
 agreeable. When I am in sickness, or not 
 in the best spirits, I sometimes call for the 
 cards, and play a game at piquet for love 
 with my cousin Bridget — Bridget Elia. 
 
 I grant there is something sneaking in it ; 
 but with a tooth-ache, or a sprained ankle, 
 — when you are subdued and humble, — you 
 are glad to jiut up with an inferior spring of 
 action. 
 
 There is such a thing in nature, I am con- 
 vinced, as sick whist. 
 
 I grant it is not the highest style of man 
 — I deprecate the manes of Sarah Battle — 
 she lives not, alas ! to whom I should 
 apologise. 
 
 At such times, those terms which my old 
 friend objected to, come in as something 
 admissible. — I love to get a tierce or a 
 quatoi-ze, though they mean nothing. I am 
 subdued to an inferior interest. Those 
 shadows of winning amuse me. 
 
 That last game I had with my sweet 
 cousin (I capotted her) — (dai-e I tell thee, 
 how foolish I am 1) — I wished it might have 
 lasted for ever, though we 'gained nothing, 
 and lost nothing, though it was a mere shade 
 of play : I would be content to go on in that 
 idle fully for ever. The pipkin should be 
 ever boiliug, that was to prepare the "gentle 
 lenitive to my foot, which Bridget w;w 
 doomed to apply after the game was over : 
 and, as I du not much relish appliances, 
 there it should ever bubble, Bridget and I 
 should be ever playing. 
 
A CHAPTER ON EAES. 
 
 I HAVE no ear. — 
 
 Mistake me not, reader — nor imagine that 
 I am by nature destitute of those exterior 
 twin appendages, hanging ornaments, and 
 (architecturally speaking) hamlsome volutes 
 to the human capital. Better my mother 
 had never borne me. — I am, I think, rather 
 delicately than copiously provided with those 
 conduits ; and I feel no disposition to envy 
 the mule for his plenty, or the mole for 
 her exactness, in those ingenious laby- 
 rinthine inlets — those indispensable side- 
 intelligencers. 
 
 Neither have I incurred, or done anything 
 to incur, with Defoe, that hideous disfigure- 
 ment, which constrained him to draw upon 
 assurance — to feel " quite unabashed," and 
 at ease upon that article. I was never, I 
 thank my stars, in the pillory ; nor, if I read 
 them aright, is it within the compass of my 
 destiny, that I ever should be. 
 
 When therefore I say that I have no ear, 
 you will understand me to mean— /or music. 
 To say that this heart never melted at the 
 concord of sweet sounds, would be a foul 
 self-libel. " Water ])arted from the sea " never 
 fails to move it strangely. So does " In 
 infancy^ But they were used to be sung at 
 her harpsichord (the old-fashioned instru- 
 ment in vogue in those days) by a gentle- 
 woman — the gentlest, sure, that ever merited 
 the appellation — the sweetest — why .should I 
 hesitate to name Mrs. S , once the bloom- 
 ing Fanny Weatheral of the Temjile — who 
 had power to thrill the soul of Elia, small 
 imp as he was, even in his long coats ; and 
 to make him glow, tremble, and blush with 
 a passion, that not faintly indicated the day- 
 si)ring of that absorbing sentiment which 
 was afterwards destined to overwhelm and 
 subdue his nature quite for Alice W n. 
 
 I even think that sentimentally I am dis- 
 posed to harmony. But organically I am 
 incaj)able of a tune. I have been j)nictising 
 " God save the King " all my life ; whistling 
 and humming of it over to myself in solitary 
 comers ; and am not yet arrived, they tell 
 
 me, within many quavers of it. Yet hath 
 the loyalty of Elia never been impeached. 
 
 I am not without suspicion, that I have an 
 undeveloped faculty of music within me. 
 For thrumming, in my wild way, on my 
 friend A.'s piano, the other morning, while 
 he was engaged in an adjoining parlour, — on 
 his return he was pleased to say, " he thovght 
 it could not he the maid!" On his first 
 surprise at hearing the keys touched in some- 
 what an airy and masterful way, not dream- 
 ing of me, his suspicions had lighted on 
 Jenny. But a grace, snatched from a superioi" 
 refinement, soon convinced him that some 
 being — technically perhaps deficient, but 
 higher informed from a principle common to 
 all the fine arts — had swayed the keys to a 
 mood which Jenny, with all her (less culti- 
 vated) enthusiasm, could never have elicited 
 from them. I mention this as a proof of my 
 friend's penetration, and not with any view 
 of disparaging Jenny. 
 
 Scientifically I could never be made to 
 understand (yet have I taken some pains) 
 what a note in music is ; or how one note 
 should diflfer from another. Much less in 
 voices can I distinguish a soprano from a 
 tenor. Only sometimes the thorough-bass- 
 I contrive to guess at, from its being 
 supereminently harsh and disagreeable. I 
 tremble, however, for my misajiplication of 
 the simplest terms of that which I disclaim. 
 While I ))rofess my ignorance, I scarce know 
 what to say I am ignorant of. I hate, 
 perhaps, brimisnomers. ISostenuto and adagio 
 stand in the like relation of obscurity to 
 me ; and Sol, Fa, Mi, Re, is as conjuring as 
 Baralipton. 
 
 It is hard to stand alone in an age like 
 this, — (constituted to the quick and critical 
 perception of all harmonious combinations, I 
 verily believe, beyond all ])receding ages, 
 since Jubal stumbled ui)on the gamut,) to 
 remain, as it were, singly uninij)ressible to 
 the magic infiuences of an art, which is said 
 to have such an especial stroke at soothing, 
 elevating, and refining the passions. — Yot, 
 
A CHAPTER ON EAItS. 
 
 339 
 
 rather than break the candid current of my 
 confessions, I must avow to you, that I have 
 received a great deal more pain than pleasure 
 from this so cried-up faculty. 
 
 I am constitutionally susceptible of noises. 
 A carpenter's hammer, in a warm summer 
 noon, will fret me into more than midsummer 
 madness. But those unconnected, unset 
 sounds are nothing to the measured malice 
 of music. The ear is passive to those single 
 strokes ; willingly enduring stripes while it 
 hath no task to con. To music it cannot be 
 passive. It will strive — mine at least will — 
 spite of its inaptitude, to thrid the maze ; 
 like an unskilled eye painfully poring upon 
 hieroglyphics. I have sat through an Italian 
 Opera, till, for sheer ymiii, and inexplicable 
 anguish, I have rushed out into the noisiest 
 places of the crowded streets, to solace 
 myself with sounds, which I was not obliged 
 to follow, and get rid of the distracting 
 torment of endless, fruitless, barren attention! 
 I take refuge in the unpretending assemblage 
 of honest common-life sounds ; — and the 
 purgatory of the Enraged Musician becomes 
 my paradise. 
 
 I have sat at an Oratorio (that profana- 
 tion of the pui-poses of the cheerful play- 
 house) watching the faces of the auditory 
 in the pit (what a contrast to Hogarth's 
 Laughing Audience ! ) immoveable, or aflfect- 
 ing some faint emotion — till (as some have 
 said, that our occupations in the next world 
 will be but a shadow of what delighted us 
 in this) I have imagined myself in some cold 
 Theatre in Hades, where some of the forms 
 of the earthly one should be kept up, with 
 none of the enjoyment ; or like that 
 
 Party in a parlour 
 
 All silent, and all damked. 
 
 Above all, those insufferable concertos, and 
 pieces of music, as they are called, do plague 
 and embitter my apprehension. — Words are 
 something ; but to be exposed to an endless 
 battery of mere sounds ; to be long a dying ; 
 to lie stretched upon a rack of roses ; to 
 keep up languor by unintermitted effort ; to 
 pile honey upon sugar, and sugar upon 
 honey, to an interminable tedious sweet- 
 ness ; to till up sound with feeling, and 
 strain ideas to keep pace with it ; to gaze on 
 empty frames, and be forced to make the 
 pictures for yourself ; to read a book, all stops, 
 
 and be obliged to supply the verbal matter ; 
 to invent extempore tragedies to answer to 
 the vague gestures of an inexplicable ram- 
 bling mime — these are faint shadows of 
 what I have undergone from a series of the 
 ablest-executed pieces of this empty instrur- 
 mental music. 
 
 I deny not, that in the opening of a concert, 
 I have expei'ienced something vastly lulling 
 and agreeable : — afterwards followeth the 
 languor and the oppression. — Like that dis- 
 appointing book in Patmos ; oi", like the 
 comings on of melancholy, described by 
 Burton, doth music make her first insinua- 
 ting approaches : — " Most pleasant it is to 
 such as are melancholy given to walk alone 
 in some solitary grove, betwixt wood and 
 water, by some brook side, and to meditate 
 upon some delightsome and pleasant subject, 
 which shall affect him most, amahilis insania, 
 and mentis gratissimiis error. A most incom- 
 pai'able delight to build castles in the air, to 
 go smiling to themselves, acting an infinite 
 variety of parts, which they suppose, and 
 strongly imagine, they act, or that they see 
 done. — So delightsome these toys at first, 
 they could spend whole days and nights 
 without sleep, even whole years in such con- 
 templations, and fantastical meditations, 
 which are like so many dreams, and will 
 hardly be drawn from them — winding and 
 unwinding themselves as so many clocks, 
 and still pleasing their humours, until at the 
 last the SCENE turns upon a sudden, and 
 they being now habitated to such medita- 
 tions and solitary places, can endure no 
 company, can think of nothing but harsh 
 and distasteful subjects. Fear, sorrow, sus- 
 picion, subrusticus 2>udor, discontent, cares, 
 and weariness of life, surprise them on a 
 sudden and they can think of nothing else ; 
 continually suspecting, no sooner are their 
 eyes open, but this infernal plague of melan- 
 choly seizeth on them, and terrifies their 
 souls, repi'esenting some dismal object to 
 their minds ; which now, by no means, no 
 labour, no persuasions, they can avoid, they 
 camiot be rid of, they cannot resist." 
 
 Something like this "scene turning" 
 I have experienced at the evening parties, 
 at the house of my good Catholic friend 
 
 Nov ; who, by the aid of a capital 
 
 organ, himself the most finished of players, 
 converts his drawing-room into a chapel, his 
 
 Z 2 
 
340 
 
 ALL FOOLS' DAY. 
 
 week days into Sundays, and these latter 
 into minor heavens.* 
 
 When my friend commences upon one of 
 those solemn anthems, which peradventure 
 struck upon my heedless ear, ramblinir. in 
 the side aisles of the dim Abbey, some five- ' 
 aud-thirty years since, waking a new sense, 
 and putting a soul of old religion into my 
 young apprehension — (whether it be that, in 
 which the Psalmist, weary of the persecu- 
 tions of bad men, wisheth to himself dove's 
 wings — or that other, which, with a like 
 measure of sobriety and pathos, inquireth 
 by what means the young man shall best 
 cleanse his mind) — a holy calm pervadeth 
 me. — I am for the time 
 
 — rapt above earth, 
 And possess joys not promised at my birth. 
 
 But when this master of the spell, not 
 content to have laid a soul prostrate, goes 
 on, in his power, to inflict more bliss than 
 lies in her capacity to receive, — imj^atient to 
 overcome her " earthly" with his " heavenly," 
 — still pouring in, for protracted hours, fresh 
 waves and fresh from the sea of sound, or 
 from that inexhausted German ocean, above 
 
 which, in triumphant progress, dolphin- 
 seated, ride those Arions Haydn and Mozart, 
 with their attendant Tritons, Bach, Beethoven, 
 and a countless tribe, whom to attempt to 
 reckon up would but plunge me again in 
 the deeps, — I stagger under the weight of 
 harmony, reeling to and fro at my wits' 
 end; — clouds, as of frankincense, oppress 
 me — priests, altars, censers, dazzle before 
 me — the genius of his religion hath me in 
 lier toils — a shadowy triple tiara invests the 
 brow of my friend, late so naked, so ingen- 
 uous — he is Pope, — and by him .'^its, like as 
 in the anomaly of dreams, a she-Pope too, — 
 tri-coroneted like himself I — I am converted, 
 and )"et a Protestant ; — at once malleus here- 
 ticorum, and myself grand heresiarch : or 
 three heresies centre in my person : — I am 
 Marcion, Ebion, and Cerinthus — Gog and 
 Magog — what not ? — till the coming in of 
 the friendly supper-tray dissipates the fig- 
 ment, and a draught of true Lutheran beer 
 (in which chiefly my friend shows himself 
 no bigot) at once reconciles me to the ration- 
 alities of a purer foith ; and restores to me 
 the genuine unterrifying aspects of my 
 pleasant-countenanced host and hostess. 
 
 ALL FOOLS' DAY. 
 
 The compliments of the season to my 
 worthy masters, and a meri-y first of April 
 to us all ! 
 
 Many happy returns of this day to you — 
 and you — and you. Sir — nay, never frown, 
 man, nor put a long face upon the matter. 
 Do not we know one another 1 what need of , 
 ceremony among friends 1 we have all a 
 touch of that same — you understand me — j 
 a speck of the motley. Beshrew the man 
 who on such a day as this, the general festival, 
 should affect to stand aloof. I am none of 
 those sneakers. I am free of the corpora- 
 tion, and care not who knows it. He that 
 meets me in the forest to-day, shall meet 
 with no wise-acre, I can tell him. Stultus 
 sum, Trunshite me that, and take the 
 
 • I have been there, and Btill ■would go ; 
 TIb like a UtUe heaven below. — Dn. \\'\TTf. 
 
 meaning of it to yourself for your pains. 
 What ! man, we have four quarters of the 
 globe on our side, at the least computation. 
 
 Fill us a cup of that sparkling gooseberiy 
 — we will drink no wise, melancholy, politic 
 port on this day — and let us troll the catch 
 of Amiens — due ad me — due ad me — how 
 goes it ? 
 
 Here shall he see 
 Ciross fools as he. 
 
 Now would I give a trifle to know, his- 
 torically and aiithentically, who was the 
 greatest fool that ever lived. I wouKl cer- 
 tainly give him in a bnmper. Slurry, of the 
 presi-nt breed, I think I could without much 
 difficulty name you the party. 
 
 Remove your cap a little further, if you 
 please : it hides my bauble. And now each 
 man bestride his hobby, and dust away his 
 
ALL FOOLS' DAY. 
 
 341 
 
 bells to what tune he pleases. I will give 
 you, for my part, 
 
 The crazy old church clock, 
 
 And the bewildered chimes. 
 
 Good master Empedocles, you are -wel- 
 come. It is long since you went a salaman- 
 der-gathering down ^tua. Worse than 
 sampliire-picking by some odds. 'Tis a 
 mercy your worship did not singe your 
 mustachios. 
 
 Ha ! Cleombrotus ! and what salads in 
 faitlx did you light upon at the bottom of 
 the Mediterranean ? You were founder, 
 I take it, of the disinterested sect of the 
 Caleuturists. 
 
 Gebir, my old free-mason, and prince of 
 plasterers at Babel, bring in your trowel, 
 most Ancient Grand ! You have claim to 
 a seat here at my right hand, as patron of 
 the stammerers. You left your work, if 
 I remember Herodotus correctly, at eight 
 hundred million toises, or thereabout, above 
 the level of the sea. Bless us, what a long bell 
 you must have pulled, to call your top work- 
 men to their nuncheon on the low grounds 
 of Shinar. Or did you send up your garlic 
 and onions by a rocket 1 I am a rogue if 
 I am not ashanied to show you our Monu- 
 ment on Fish-street Hill, after your altitudes. 
 Yet we think it somewhat. 
 
 What, the magnanimous Alexander in 
 tears ?— cry, baby, put its finger in its eye, it 
 shall have another globe, round as an orange, 
 pretty moppet ! 
 
 Mister Adams 'odso, I honoxir your 
 
 coat — jiray do us the favour to read to us 
 tliat sermon, which you lent to Mistress 
 Slipslop — the twenty and second in your 
 p(jrtmanteau there — on Female Inconti- 
 nence — the same — it will come in most 
 irrelevantly and impertinently seasonable to 
 the time of the day. 
 
 Good Master Raymund Lully, you look 
 wise. Pray correct that error. 
 
 Duns, spare your definitions. I must fine 
 you a bumper, or a paradox. We will have 
 nothing said or done syllogistically this day. 
 Kemove those logical forms, waiter, that no 
 gentleman break the tender shins of his 
 apprehension stumbling across them. 
 
 Master Stephen, you are late. — Ha ! Cokes, 
 is it you '? — Aguecheek, my dear knight, let 
 me pay my devoir to you. — Master Shallow, 
 
 your worship's poor servant to command. 
 — Master Silence, I will use few words with 
 you. — Slender, it sliall go hard if I edge not 
 you in somewhere — You six will engross all 
 the poor wit of the company to-day. — I know 
 it, I know it. 
 
 Ha ! honest E. , my fine old Librarian 
 
 of Ludgate, time out of mind, art thou here 
 again ? Bless thy doublet, it is not over- 
 new, threadbare as thy stories : — what dost 
 thou flitting about the world at this rate ? — 
 Thy customers are extinct, defunct, bed-rid, 
 have ceased to read long ago. — Thou goest 
 still among them, seeing if, peradventure, 
 thou canst hawk a volume or two. — Good 
 Granville S , thy last patron, is flown. 
 
 King Pandion, he is dead, 
 
 All thy friends are lapt iu lead. — 
 
 Nevertheless, noble R , come in, and 
 
 take 3'our seat here, between Armado and 
 Quisada ; for in true courtesy, in gravity, in 
 fantastic smiling to thyself, in courteous 
 smiling upon others, in the goodly ornature 
 of well-ajiparelled speech, and the commend- 
 ation of wise sentences, thou art nothing 
 inferior to those accomplished Dons of Spain. 
 The spirit of chivalry forsake me for ever, 
 when I forget thy singing the song of 
 Macheath, which declares that he might be 
 liappy with either, situated between those 
 two ancient spinsters — when I forget the 
 inimitable formal love which thou didst 
 make, turning now to the one, and now to 
 the other, with that Malvolian smile — as it 
 Cervantes, not Gay, had written it for his 
 hero ; and as if thousands of periods must 
 revolve, befoi'e the mirror of courtesy could 
 have given his invidious preference between 
 a pair of so goodly-propertied and merit- 
 orious-equal damsels. » « • » 
 
 To descend from these altitudes, and not 
 to protract our Fools' Banquet beyond its 
 appropriate day, — for I fear the second of 
 Ai)ril is not many hours distant — in sober 
 verity I will confess a truth to thee, reader. 
 I love a Fool — as naturally, as if I were of 
 kith and kin to him. When a child, with 
 child-like apprehensions, that dived not 
 below the surface of the matter, I read 
 those Parables — not guessing at the involved 
 wisdom — I had more yearnings towards 
 that simple architect, that built his house 
 upon the sand, than I entertained for his 
 
more cautious neighbour : I grudged at the 
 hard censure pronounced upon the quiet 
 soul that kept his talent ; and — prizing theii- 
 simplicity beyond the more provident, and, 
 to my apprehension, somewhat unfeminhu 
 wariness of their competitors — I felt a kind- 
 liness, that almost amounted to a tendre, for 
 those five thoughtless virgins. — I have never 
 made an acquaintance since, that lasted : or 
 a friendship, that answered ; with any that 
 had not some tincture of the absurd in their 
 charactei-s. I venerate an honest obliquity 
 of understanding. The more laughable 
 blunders a man shall commit in your com- 
 pany, the more tests he giveth you, that he 
 will not betray or overreach you. I love 
 the safety, which a palpable hallucination 
 
 warrants ; the security, which a word out of 
 season ratifies. And take my word for this, 
 reader, and say a fool told it you, if you 
 please, that he who hath not a dram of folly 
 in his mixture, hath pounds of much worse 
 matter in his composition. It is observed, 
 that "the foolisher the fowl or fish, — wood- 
 cocks, — dotterels — cods'-heads, &c., the finer 
 the flesh thereof," and what are commonly 
 the world's received fools, but such whereof 
 the world is not worthy ? and what have 
 been some of the kindliest patterns of our 
 species, but so many darlings of absurdity, 
 minions of the goddess, and her white boys ? 
 — Reader, if you wrest my words beyond 
 their fair construction, it is you, and not I, 
 that are the April Fool. 
 
 A QUAKERS' MEETING. 
 
 still-born Silence ' thou that art 
 
 Flood-gate of the deeper heart ! 
 
 Offspring of a heavenly kind ! 
 
 Frost o' the mouth, and thaw o' the mind ! 
 
 Secrecy's confidant, and he 
 
 Who makes religion mystery ! 
 
 Admiration's speaking'st tongue ! 
 
 Leave, ihy desert shades among, 
 
 Kevereud hermits' hallow'd cells, 
 
 Where retired devotion dwells 1 
 
 With thy enthusiasms come. 
 
 Seize our tongues, and strike us dumb ! • 
 
 Reader, would'st thou know what true 
 peace and quiet mean ; would'st thou find a 
 refuge from the noises and clamours of the 
 multitude ; would'st thou enjoy at once soli- 
 tude and society ; would'st thou possess the 
 depth of thine own spirit in stillness, without 
 being shut out from the consolatory faces of 
 thy species ; would'st thou be alone and yet 
 accompanied ; solitary, yet not desolate ; 
 singular, yet not without some to keep thee 
 in countenance ; a unit in aggregate ; a 
 simple in composite :— come with me into a 
 Quakers' Meeting. 
 
 Dost thou love silence deep as that " be- 
 fore the winds were made ? " go not out 
 into the wilderness, descend not into the pro- 
 fundities of the earth ; shut not up tliy case- 
 ments ; nor pour wax into the little cells of 
 thy ears, with little-faith'd self-mistrusting 
 
 • From " Poems of all Bortu," by Richard Fleckno, 
 1663. 
 
 Ulysses. — Retire with me into a Quakers' 
 Meeting. 
 
 For a man to refrain even fii'om good words, 
 and to hold his peace, it is comiuendable ; 
 but for a multitude it is great mastery. 
 
 What is the stillness of the desert com- 
 pared with this place 1 what the uncommuni- 
 cating muteness of fishes \ — ^here the goddess 
 reigns and revels. — " Boreas, and Cesias, 
 and Argestes loud," do not with their inter- 
 confounding uproars more augment the 
 brawl — nor the waves of the blown Baltic 
 with their clubbed sounds — than their oppo- 
 site (Silence her sacred self) is multiplied 
 and rendered more intense by numbers, 
 and by sympathy. She too hath her deeps, 
 that call imto deeps. Negation itself hath 
 a positive more and less; and closed eyes 
 would seem to obscure the great obscurity 
 of midnight. 
 
 Thex-e are wounds which an imperfect 
 solitude cannot heal. By imperfect I mean 
 that which a man enjoyeth by himself. The 
 perfect is that which he c;in sometimes attain 
 in crowds, but nowhere so absolutely ;is in a 
 Quakers' Meeting. — Those fii-st heruiita did 
 certainly understand this principle, wheu 
 they retired into Egyptian solitudes, not 
 singly, but in shoals, to enjoy one another's 
 want of conversation. The Carthusian v 
 
A QUAKERS' MEETING. 
 
 343 
 
 bound to his brethren by this agreeing spirit 
 of incomraunicativeness. In secular occa- 
 sions, what so pleasant as to be reading a book 
 through a long winter evening, with a friend 
 sitting by — say, a wife — he, or she, too, (if 
 that be probable,) reading another, without 
 interruption, or oral communication ? — can 
 there be no sympathy without the gabble of 
 words ? — away with this inhuman, shy, 
 single, shade-and-cavern-haunting solitari- 
 ness. Give me, Master Zimmermanu, a sym- 
 patlietic solitude. 
 
 To pace alone in the cloisters or side aisles 
 of some cathedral, time-stricken ; 
 
 Or under hanging mountains, 
 Or by the fall of fountains ; 
 
 is but a vulgar luxury compared witli that 
 which those enjoy who come together for 
 the pui'posea of more complete, abstracted 
 solitude. This is the loneliness " to be felt." 
 — The Abbey Church of Westminster hath 
 nothing so solemn, so spirit-soothiug, as the 
 naked walls and benches of a Quakers' Meet- 
 ing. Here are no tombs, no inscriptions. 
 
 -Sands, ignoble things. 
 
 Dropt from the ruined sides of kings — 
 
 but here is something which throws Anti- 
 quity herself into the foreground — Silence — 
 eldest of things — language of old Night — 
 primitive discourser — to which the insolent 
 decays of mouldering grandeur have but 
 arrived by a violent, and, as we may say, 
 vmnatural progression. 
 
 How reverend is the view of these hushed heads, 
 Looking tranquillity ! 
 
 Nothing-plotting, nought-caballing, unmis- 
 chievous synod ! convocation without in- 
 trigue ! parliament without debate ! what 
 a lesson dost thou read to council, and to 
 consistory ! — if my pen treat of you lightly — 
 as haply it will wander — yet my spirit hath 
 gravely felt the wisdom of your custom, 
 when sitting among you in deepest peace, 
 which some out-welling tears would rather 
 confirm than disturb, I have revertetj to the 
 times of your begiiiuings, and the sowings of 
 the seed by Fox and Dewesbury. — I have 
 witnessed that which brought before my eyes 
 your heroic tranquillity, inflexible to the 
 rude jests and serious violences of the inso- 
 lent soldiery, republican or royalist, sent to 
 
 molest you — for ye sate betwixt the fires ot 
 two persecutions, the outcast and olf-scouring 
 of church and presbytery. — I have seen the 
 reeling sea-ruffian, who had wandered into 
 your receptacle with the avowed mtention of 
 disturbing your quiet, from the very spirit of 
 the place receive in a moment a new heart, 
 and presently sit among ye as a lamb amidst 
 lambs. And I remember Penn before his 
 accusers, and Fox in the bail dock, where he 
 was lifted up in spirit, as he tells us, and 
 " the Judge and the Jury became as dead 
 men under his feet." 
 
 Reader, if you are not acquainted with it, 
 I would recommend to you, above all church- 
 narratives, to read Sewel's History of the 
 Quakers, It is in folio, and is the ab- 
 stract of the journals of Fox and the primi- 
 tive Friends. It is far more edifying and 
 affecting than anything you will read of 
 Wesley and his colleagues. Here is nothing 
 to stagger you, nothing to make you mistrust, 
 no suspicion of alloy, no drop or dreg of the 
 worldly or ambitious spirit. You will here 
 read the true story of that much-injured, 
 ridiculed man (who perhaps hath been a by- 
 word in your mouth) — James Naylor : what 
 dreadful sufi'erings, with what patience, he 
 endured, even to the boring through of his 
 tongue with red-hot irons, without a mur- 
 mur ; and with what strength of mind, when 
 the delusion he had fallen into, which they 
 stigmatised for blasphemy, had given way to 
 clearer thoughts, he could renounce his error, 
 in a strain of the beautifullest humility, yet 
 keep his first grounds, and be a Quaker still ! 
 — so different from the pi'actice of your com- 
 mon converts from enthusiasm, who, when 
 they apostatize, apostatize all, and think they 
 can never get far enough from the society of 
 their former errors, even to the renunciation 
 of some saving truths, with which they had 
 been mingled, not implicated. 
 
 Get the writings of John Woolman by 
 heart ; and love the early Quakers. 
 
 How far the followers of these good men 
 in our days have kept to the primitive spirit, 
 or in what proportion they have substituted 
 formality for it, the Judge of Spirits can 
 idone determine. I have seen faces in their 
 assemblies upon which the dove sate visibly 
 brooding. Others, again, I have watched, 
 when my thoughts should have been better 
 engaged, in which I could possibly detect 
 
•Mi 
 
 THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER 
 
 nothing but a blank inanity. But quiet was 
 in all, and the disposition to unanimity, and 
 the absence of the tierce controversial work- 
 ings. — If the spiritual pretensions of the 
 Quakers have abatetl, at least they make few 
 pretences. Hypocrites they certainly are 
 not, in their preaching. It is seldom, indeed, 
 that you shall see one get up amongst them 
 to hold forth. Only now and then a trem- 
 bling, female, generally ancient, voice is heard 
 — you cannot guess from what pai't of the 
 rueeting it proceeds — with a low, buzzing, 
 musical sound, laying out a few words which 
 "she thought might suit the condition of 
 some present," with a quaking diffidence, 
 which leaves no possibility of supposing that 
 anything of female vanity was mixed up, 
 where the tones were so full of tenderness, 
 and a restraining modesty. — The men, for 
 what I have observed, speak seldomer. 
 
 Once only, and it was some ye;irs ago, I 
 witnessed a sample of the old Foxian orgasm. 
 It was a man of giant stature, who, as 
 Wordsworth phrases it, might have danced 
 " from head to foot equijit in iron mail." 
 His frame was of iron, too. But he was 
 malleable. I saw him shake all over with 
 the spirit — I dare not say of delusion. The 
 strivings of the outer man were uimtterable 
 — he seemed not to speak, but to be spoken 
 from, I saw the .strong man bowed down, 
 and his knees to fail — his joints all seemed 
 loosening — it was a figure to set off against 
 Paul preaching — the words he uttered were 
 few, and sound — he was evidently resisting 
 his will — keeping down his own word-wisdom 
 with more mighty effort than the world's 
 orators strain for theirs. " He had been a 
 WIT in his youth," he told us, with expres- 
 sions of a sober remorse. And it was not 
 
 till long after the impression had begun to 
 wear away that I was enabled, with some- 
 tliing like a smile, to recal the striking in- 
 congruity of the confession — underst.-uiding 
 the term iu its worldly acceptation — with 
 the frame and physiognomy of the person 
 before me. His brow would have scared 
 away the Levities — the Jocos Eisus-que — 
 faster than the Loves fled the face of Dis at 
 Enna. — By wit, even in his youth, I will be 
 sworn he understood something far within 
 the limits of an allowable liVierty. 
 
 More frequently the Meeting is broken up 
 without a word hav'ing been spoken. But 
 the mind has been fed. You go away with 
 a sermon not made with liands. You have 
 been in the milder caverns of Ti'ophonius ; 
 or as in some den, where that fiercest and 
 savagest of all wild creatures, the Tongue, 
 that unruly member, has strangely lain tied 
 up and captive. You have bathed with still- 
 ness. — O, when the spirit is sore fretted, 
 even tired to sickness of the janglings and 
 nonsense-noises of the world, what a balm 
 and a solace it is to go and seat yourself for 
 a quiet lialf hour upon some undisputed cor- 
 ner of a bench, among the gentle Quakei-s ! 
 
 Theii* garb and stillness conjoined, pre- 
 sent a uniformity, tranquil and herd-like 
 — as in the pasture — "forty feeding like 
 one." — 
 
 The very garments of a Quaker seem in- 
 capable of receiving a soil ; and cleanliness 
 in them to be something more than the 
 absence of its contrary. Every Quakeress is 
 a lily ; and when they come up in bands to 
 their Whitsun-conferences, whitening the 
 easterly streets of the metropolis, fi-om all 
 parts of the United Kingdom, they show like 
 troops of the Shining Ones. 
 
 THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER. 
 
 My reading has been lamentably desultory 
 and immethodical. Odd, out of the way, old 
 English plays, and treatises, have supplied 
 me with most of my notions, and ways of 
 feeling. In every thing that relates to 
 science, I am a whole Encyclopaxlia beliind 
 the rest of the world. I should have soarwlv 
 
 cut a figure among the franklins, or country 
 gentlemen, in king John's days. I know less 
 geography than a school- boy of six weeks' 
 standing. To me a map of old Ortclius is jis 
 authentic as Arrowsmith. I do not know 
 whereabout Africa merges into Asia ; whether 
 Ethiopia lie in one or other of those great 
 
THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER. 
 
 345 
 
 divisions ; nor can form the remotest conjec- 
 ture of the position of New South Wiiles, or 
 Van Diemen's Land. Yet do I hold a corre- 
 spondence with a very dear friend in the first- 
 named of these two Terroe lucognitte. I have 
 no astronomy. I do not know where to look for 
 the Bear, or Charles's Wain ; the place of any 
 star ; or the name of any of them at siglit. I 
 guess at Venus only by her brightness — and 
 if the sun on some portentous moi'u were to 
 make his first appearance in the West, I verily 
 believe, that, while all the world were gasj)- 
 ing in appi-ehension about me, I alone should 
 stand uuterrified, from sheer incuriosity and 
 want of observation. 0£ history and chrono- 
 logy I possess some vague jDoints, such as one 
 cannot help picking up in the course of 
 miscellaneous study ; but I never deliberately 
 sat down to a chronicle, even of my own 
 country. I have most dim apprehensions of 
 the four great monarchies ; and sometimes 
 the Assyrian, sometimes the Persian, floats 
 as first, in my f;incy. I make the widest 
 conjectures concerning Egypt, and her shep- 
 herd kings. My friend M., with great pains- 
 taking, got me to think I understood the fii'st 
 proposition in Euclid, but gave me over in 
 despair at the second. I am entirely un- 
 acquainted with the modern languages ; and, 
 like a better man than myself, have " small 
 Latin and less Greek." I am a stranger to 
 the shapes and texture of the commonest 
 trees, herbs, flowers — not from the circum- 
 stance of my being town-born — for I should 
 have brought the same inobservant spirit 
 into the world with me, had I first seen it 
 " on Devon's leafy shores," — and am no less 
 at a loss among purely town-objects, tools, 
 engines, mechanic processes. — Not that I 
 afiect ignorance — but my head has not many 
 mansions, nor spacious ; and I have been 
 obliged to fill it with such cabinet curiosities 
 as it can hold without aching. I sometimes 
 wonder, how I have passed my probation 
 with so little discredit in the world, as I have 
 done, upon so meagre a stock. But the fact 
 is, a man may do very well with a very little 
 knowledge, and scarce be found out, ip mixed 
 company ; everybody is so much more ready 
 to produce his own, than to call for a display 
 of your acquisitions. But in a tete-a-tete 
 there is no shuffling. The truth will out. 
 There is nothing which I dread so much, as 
 the being left alone for a quarter of an hour 
 
 with a sensible, well-informed man, that does 
 not know me. I lately got into a dilemma 
 of this sort. — 
 
 In one of my daily jaunts between Bishops- 
 gate and Shacklewell, the coach stopped to 
 take up a staid-looking gentleman, about the 
 wrong side of thirty, who was giving his 
 parting directions (while the steps were 
 adjusting), in a tone of mild authority, to a 
 tall youth, who seemed to be neither his clerk, 
 his sou, nor his servant, but something 
 partaking of all three. The youth was dis- 
 missed, and we drove on. As we were the 
 sole passengers, he naturally enough addressed 
 his conversation to me ; and we discussed 
 the merits of the fare, the civility and 
 punctuality of the driver ; the circumstance 
 of an opposition coach having been lately set 
 up, with the probabilities of its success — to 
 all which I was enabled to return pretty 
 satisfactory answers, having been drilled into 
 this kind of etiquette by some years' daily 
 practice of riding to and fro in the stage 
 aforesaid — when he suddenly alarmed me 
 by a startling question, whether I had seen 
 the show of prize cattle that moi-ning in 
 Smithfield ? Now, as I had not seen it, and 
 do not greatly care for such sort of exhibitions, 
 I was obliged to return a cold negative. He 
 seemed a little mortified, as well as astonished, 
 at my declaration, as (it appeared) he was 
 just come fresh from the sight, and doubtless 
 had hojied to compai-e notes on the subject. 
 However, he assured me that I had lost a 
 fine treat, as it far exceeded the show of last 
 year. We were now approaching Norton 
 Eolgate, when the sight of some shop-goods 
 ticketed freshened him up into a dissertation 
 upon the cheapness of cottons this spring. I 
 was now a little in heart, as the nature of 
 my morning avocations had brought me into 
 some sort of familiarity with the raw 
 material ; and I was surprised to find how 
 eloquent I was becoming on the state of the 
 India market — when, presently, he dashed 
 my incipient vanity to the earth at once, by 
 inquiring whether I had ever made any 
 calculation as to the value of the rental of all 
 the retail shops in London. Had he asked 
 of me, what song the Syrens sang, or what 
 name Achilles assumed when he hid himself 
 among women, I might, with Sir Thomas 
 Browne, have hazarded a " wide solution." * 
 • Urn Burial 
 
346 
 
 THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER. 
 
 My companion saw my embarrassment, and, 
 the almshouses beyond Shored itch just 
 coming in view, with great good-nature and 
 dexterity shifted liis conversation to tlie 
 subject of pubUc charities ; which led to the 
 comparative merits of provision for the poor 
 in past and present times, with observations 
 on the old monastic institutions, and charita- 
 ble orders ; but, finding me rather dimly 
 impressed with some glimmering notions 
 from old poetic associations, than strongly 
 fortified with any speculations reducible to 
 calculation on the subject, he gave the matter 
 up ; and, the country beginning to open more 
 and more upon us, as we approached the 
 turnpike at Kingsland (the destined ter- 
 mination of his journey), he put a home 
 thrust upon me, in the most unfortunate 
 position he could have chosen, by advancing 
 some queries relative to the North Pole 
 Expedition. While I was muttering out 
 something about the Panorama of those 
 strange regions (which I had actually seen), 
 by way of parrying the question, the coach 
 stopping relieved me from any further appre- 
 hensions. My companion getting out, left 
 me in the comfortable possession of my igno- 
 rance ; and I heard him, as he went off, 
 putting questions to an outside passenger, 
 who had alighted with him, regai'ding an 
 epidemic disorder, that had been rife about 
 Dalston, and which my friend assured him 
 had gone through five or six schools in that 
 neighbourhood. The truth now flashed upon 
 me, that my companion was a schoolmaster ; 
 and that the youth, whom he had parted 
 from at our first acquaintance, must have 
 been one of the bigger boys, or the usher. — 
 He was evidently a kind-hearted man, who 
 did not seem so much desirous of provoking 
 discussion by the questions wiiich he put, as 
 of obtaining information at any rate. It did 
 not appear that he took any interest, either, 
 in such kind of uiquiries, for their own sake ; 
 but that he was in some way bound to seek 
 for knowledge. A greenish-coloured coat, 
 which he had on, foi'bade me to surmise tliat 
 he was a clergyman. The adventure gave 
 birth to some reflections on the ditforence 
 between pei-sons of his profession in past and 
 present times. 
 
 Rest to the souls of those fine old Peda- 
 gogues ; the breed, long since extinct, of the 
 Lilys, ami the Linacres : who believing that 
 
 all learning was contained in the languages 
 which they taught, and despising every other 
 acquirement a.s superficial and useless, came 
 to their task as to a sport ! Passing from 
 infancy to age, they dreamed away all their 
 days as in a grammar-school. Eevolving in 
 a perpetual cycle of declensions, conjugations, 
 syntaxes, and prosodies ; renewing constantly 
 the occupations which had charmed their 
 studious childhood ; rehearsing continually 
 the part of the pjust ; life must have slipped 
 from them at last like one day. They were 
 always in their first garden, reaping harvests 
 of their golden time, among their Flori nad 
 their Spici-legia ; in Arcadia still, but kings ; 
 the fenile of their sway not much harsher, 
 but of like dignity with that mild sceptre 
 attributed to king Basileus ; the Greek and 
 Latin, their stately Pamela and their 
 Philoclea ; with the occasional duncery of 
 some untoward tyro, serving for a refreshing 
 interlude of a Mopsa, or a clown Damoetas ! 
 
 With what a savour doth the Pi-eface to 
 Colet's, or (as it is sometimes called) Paul's 
 Accidence, set forth ! "To exhort every 
 man to the learning of grammar, that in- 
 tendeth to attain the understanding of the 
 tongues, wherein is contained a great trea- 
 sury of wisdom and knowledge, it would 
 seem but vain and lost labour ; for so much 
 as it is known, that nothing can surely be 
 ended, whose beginning is either feeble or 
 faulty ; and no buildi)ig be perfect whereas 
 the foundation and groundwork is ready to 
 fall, and unable to uphold the burden of the 
 frame." How well doth this stately pream- 
 ble (comparable to those which Milton com- 
 meudeth as " having been the usage to prefix 
 to some solemn law, tiien first promulgated 
 by Solon or Lycurgus") correspond witli and 
 illustrate that pious zeal for conformity, ex- 
 pressed in a succeeding clause, which would 
 fence about grammar-rules with the severity 
 of faith-articU'S ! — " iis for the diversity of 
 grammars, it is well profitably taken away 
 by the king majesties wisdom, who foresee- 
 ing the inconvenience, and favourably pro- 
 viding the remedie, caused one kind of 
 grammar by sundry learned men to be dili- 
 gently drawn, and so to be set out, only 
 everywhere to be taught for the use of 
 learners, and for the hurt in changing of 
 schoolmaisters." What a gu^to in that 
 which follows : "wherein it is profitable that 
 
THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER. 
 
 S47 
 
 he [the pupil] can orderly decline his uouu 
 and his verb." His noun ! 
 
 The fine dre.om is fading away fast ; and 
 the least concern of a teacher in the present 
 day is to inculcate grammar-rules. 
 
 The modern schoolmaster is expected to 
 know a little of everything, because his pupil 
 is required not to be entirely ignorant of 
 anything. He must be superficially, if I 
 may so say, omniscient. He is to know 
 something of pneumatics ; of chemistry ; of 
 whatever is curious or proper to excite the 
 attention of the youthful mind ; an insight 
 into mechanics is desirable, with a touch of 
 statistics ; the quality of soils, &c., botany, 
 the constitution of his country, cxiTn multis 
 aliis. You may get a notion of some pai't of 
 his expected duties by consulting the famous 
 Tractate on Education, addressed to Mr. 
 Hartlib. 
 
 All these things — these, or the desire of 
 them — he is expected to instil, not by set 
 lessons from professors, which he may charge 
 in the bill, but at school intervals, as he 
 walks the streets, or saunters through green 
 fields (those natural instructors), with his 
 pupils. The least part of what is expected 
 from him is to be done in school-hours. He 
 must insinuate knowledge at the mollia tem- 
 pora fandi. He must seize every occasion — 
 the season of the year — the time of the day 
 — a passing cloud — a rainbow — a waggon of 
 hay — a regiment of soldiers going by — to in- 
 culcate something useful. He can receive 
 no pleasure from a casual glimpse of Nature, 
 but must catch at it as an object of instruc- 
 tion. He must interpret beauty into the 
 picturesque. He cannot relish a beggar- 
 man, or a gipsy, for thinking of the suitable 
 improvement. Notliing comes to him, not 
 spoiled by the sophisticating medium of 
 moral uses. The Universe — that Great Book, 
 as it has been called — is to him, indeed, to 
 all intents and purposes, a book out of which 
 he is doomed to read tedious homilies to dis- 
 tasting schoolboys. — Vacations themselves 
 are none to him, he is only rather worse off 
 than before ; for commonly he has Some in- 
 trusive upper-boy fastened upon him at such 
 times ; some cadet of a great family ; some 
 neglected lumj) of nobility, or gentry ; that 
 he must drag after him to the play, to the 
 Panorama, to Mr. Hartley's Orrery, to the 
 Panopticon, or into the country, to a friend's 
 
 house, or his favourite watering-place. 
 Wherever he goes this uneasy shadow at- 
 tends him. A boy is at his board, and in his 
 path, and in all his movements. He is boy- 
 rid, sick of peipetual boy. 
 
 Boys are capital fellows in their own way, 
 among their mates ; but they are unwhole- 
 some companions for grown people. The 
 restraint is felt no less on the one side than 
 on the other.— Even a child, that " plaything 
 for an hour," tires always. The noises of 
 children, playing their own fancies — as I 
 now hearken to them, by fits, sporting on 
 the green before my window, while I am 
 engaged in these grave speculations at my 
 neat suburban retreat at Shacklewell — ^by 
 distance made more sweet — inexpressibly 
 take from the labour of my task. It is like 
 writing to music. They seem to modulate 
 my periods. They ought at least to do so 
 — for in the voice of that tender age there is 
 a kind of poetry, far unlike the harsh pi-ose- 
 accents of man's conversation. — I should but 
 spoil their sport, and diminish my own 
 sympathy for them, by mingling in their 
 pastime. 
 
 I would not be domesticated all my days 
 with a person of very superior capacity to 
 my own — not, if I know myself at all, from 
 any considerations of jealousy or self-compa- 
 rison, for the occasional communion with 
 such minds has constituted the fortune and 
 felicity of my life — but the habit of too con- 
 stant intercourse with spirits above you, 
 instead of raising you, keeps you down. 
 Too frequent doses of original thinking from 
 othei-s, restrain what lesser portion of that 
 faculty you may possess of your own. You 
 get entangled in another man's mind, even 
 as you lose yourself in another man's grounds. 
 You are walking with a tall varlet, whose 
 strides out-pace yours to lassitude. The 
 constant operation of such potent agency 
 would reduce me, I am convinced, to im- 
 becility. You may derive thoughts from 
 others ; your way of thinking, the mould in 
 which your thoughts are cast, must be your 
 own. Intellect may be imparted, but not 
 each man's intellectual frame. — 
 
 As little as I should wish to be always 
 thus dragged upward, as little (or rather 
 still less) is it desirable to be stunted down- 
 wards by your associates. The trumpet does 
 not more stun you by its loudness, than a 
 
348 
 
 THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER. 
 
 whisper teases you by its provoking inaudi- 
 bility. 
 
 Why are we never quite at our ease in the 
 presence of a schoolmaster ? — because we are 
 conscious that he is not quite at his ease in 
 ours. He is awiiward, and out of ])lace, in 
 the society of his equals. He cornea like 
 Gulliver from among his little people, and he 
 cannot fit the stature of his understanding to 
 yours. He cannot meet you on the square. 
 He wants a point given him, like an in- 
 different whist-])layer. He is so used to 
 teaching, that he wants to be teaching you. 
 One of these proft-ssor.s, upon my complain- 
 ing that these little sketches of mine were 
 anything but methodical, and that I was 
 unable to make them otherwise, kintlly 
 offered to instruct me in the method by 
 which young gentlemen in /as seminary were 
 taught to compose English themes. The 
 jests of a schoolmaster are coarse, or thin. 
 Tliey do not tell out of school. He is under 
 the restraint of a formal or didactive hypo- 
 crisy in company, as a clergyman is under a 
 moral one. He can no more let his intellect 
 loose in society than the other can his incli- 
 nations. — He is forlorn among his coevald ; 
 his juniors cannot be his friends. 
 
 " I take blame to myself," said a sensible 
 man of this profession, writing to a fiiend 
 respecting a youth who had quitted his 
 school abru]jtly, " that your nephew was not 
 more attached to me. But persons in my 
 situation are more to be pitied than can 
 well be imagined. We are surrounded by 
 young, and, consequently, ardently affection- 
 ate hearts, but xce can never hope to share an 
 atom of their affections. The relation of 
 master and scholar forbids tiiis. IIoxo pleasing 
 this must be to you, how I envy your fecliiu/s! 
 my friends will sometimes say to me, when 
 they see young men whom I have educated 
 return after some years' absence from school, 
 their eyes shining with pleasure, while they 
 shake hands with their old master, bringing 
 a present of game to me, or a toy to my wife, 
 and thanking me in the warmest terms for 
 my care of their education. A holiday is 
 begged fur tlie boys ; the house is a scene of 
 ha])pincss; I, only, am sad at heiu't. — This 
 fine-si)irited and warm-hearted youth, who 
 fancies he repays his master with gratitude 
 for the care of his boyish years — this young 
 man — in the eight long years I watched over 
 
 him with a parent's anxiety, never could 
 repay me with one look of genuine feeling. 
 He was proud, when I praised ; he was sub- 
 missive, when I reproved him ; but he did 
 never love me — and what he now mistakes for 
 gratitude and kindness for me, is but tlie 
 pleasant sensation which all persons feel at 
 revisiting the scenes of their boyish hopes 
 and fears ; and the seeing on equal terms the 
 man they were accustomed to look up to with 
 reverence. My wife, too," this interesting 
 correspondent goes on to say, " my once dar- 
 ling Anna, is the wife of a schoolmaster. — 
 When I married her — knowing that tlie wife 
 of a schoolmaster ought to be a busy notable 
 creature, and fearing that my gentle Anna 
 woidd ill supply the loss of my dear bustling 
 mother, just then dead, who never sat still, 
 was in every part of tlie house in a moment, 
 and whom I was obliged sometimes to 
 threaten to fasten down in a chair, to save 
 her from fatiguing herself to death — I ex- 
 pressed my fears that I was bringing her 
 into a way of life unsuitable to her ; and 
 she, who loved me tenderly, promised for 
 my sake to exert herself to perfurm the 
 duties of her new situation. Slie promised, 
 and she has kept her word. What wonders 
 will not woman's love perform ? — My house 
 is managed with a propriety and decorum 
 unknown in other schools ; my boys are well 
 fetl, look healthy, and have eveiy proper ac- 
 commodation ; and ail this performed with 
 a careful economy, that never descends to 
 meanness. But I have lost my gentle help- 
 less Anna ! When we sit down to enjoy an 
 hour of repose after the fatigue of the day, I 
 am compelled to listen to what have been 
 her useful (and they are really useful) em- 
 ployments through the day, and what she 
 proposes for her to-morrow's task. Her 
 heart antl her features are changed by the 
 duties of her situation. To the boys, she 
 never ai)pears other than the master's wife, 
 and she looks up to me as the boys' master ; 
 to whom all sliow of love and affection would 
 be highly improper, and unbecoming the 
 dignity of her situation and mine. Yet this 
 my gratitude forbids me to hint to her. For 
 my sake she submitted to be this altered 
 creature, and can 1 reproach her for it 1 " — 
 For the communication of this letter 1 am 
 indebted to my cousin Bridget. 
 
IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 
 
 S49 
 
 IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 
 
 I am of a constitution so general, that it consorts and sympathizcth -with all things ; I have no antipathy, or 
 rather idiosyncrasy in anything. Those natural repugnancies do not touch me, nor do I behold with prejudice 
 the French, Italian, Spaniard, or Dutch. — EeUgio Medici. 
 
 That the author of the Eeligio Medici, 
 mounted upon the airy stilts of abstraction, 
 conversant about notional and conjectural 
 essences ; in whose categories of Being the 
 possible took the upper hand of the actual ; 
 should have overlooked the impertinent indi- 
 vidualities of such poor concretions as man- 
 kind, is not much to be admired. It is 
 rather to be wondered at, that in the genus 
 of animals he should have condescended to 
 distinguish that species at all. For myself 
 — earth-bound and fettered to the scene of 
 my activities, — 
 
 standing on earth, not rapt above the sky, 
 
 I confess that I do feel the differences of 
 mankind, national or individual, to an un- 
 healthy excess. I can look with no indiffer- 
 ent eye upon things or persons. Whatever 
 is, is to me a matter of taste or distaste ; or 
 when once it becomes indifferent, it begins to 
 be disrelishing. I am, in plainer words, a 
 bundle of prejudices — made up of likings 
 and dislikings — the veriest thrall to sympa- 
 thies, apathies, antipathies. In a certain 
 sense, I hope it may be said of me that I am 
 a lover of my species. I can feel for all 
 indifferently, but I cannot feel towards all 
 equally. The more purely-English word that 
 expresses sympathy, will better explain my 
 meaning. I can be a friend to a worthy man, 
 who upon another account cannot be my 
 mate or fellow. I cannot like all people 
 alike.* 
 
 I have been trying all my life to like 
 Scotchmen, and am obliged to desist from 
 the experiment in despair. They cannot 
 like me — and in truth, I never knew one of 
 that nation who attempted to do it. There 
 is something more plain and ingenuous in 
 
 • I would he understood as confining myself to the 
 subject of imperfect sympathies. To nations or classes 
 of men there can be no direct antipathy. There maybe 
 individuals born and constellated so opposite to another 
 individual nature, that the same sphere cannot hold 
 
 their mode of proceeding. "We know one 
 another at first sight. There is an order of 
 imperfect intellects (under which mine must 
 be content to rank) which in its constitution 
 is essentially anti-Caledonian. The owners 
 of the sort of faculties I allude to, have 
 minds rather suggestive than comprehensive. 
 They have no pretences to much clearness 
 or precision in their ideas, or in their manner 
 of expressing them. Their intellectual ward- 
 robe (to confess fairly) has few whole pieces 
 in it. They are content with fragments and 
 scattered pieces of Truth. She presents no 
 full front to them — a feature or side-face at 
 the most. Hints and glimp.=ies, germs and 
 crude essays at a system, is the utmost they 
 pretend to. They beat up a little game per- 
 adventure — and leave it to knottier heads, 
 more robust constitutions, to run it down. 
 The light that lights them is not steady and 
 polar, but mutable and shifting : waxing, 
 and again waning. Their conversation is 
 accordingly. They will throw out a random 
 word in or out of season, and be content t\ 
 let it pass for what it is worth. They cannot 
 speak always as if they were upon their oath 
 — but must be understood, speaking or 
 writing, with some abatement. They seldom 
 wait to mature a proposition, but e'en bring 
 
 them. I have met \nth my moral antipodes, and can 
 believe the story of two persons meeting (who never saw 
 one another before in their lives) and instantly fighting. 
 
 -We by proof find there should be 
 
 'Twist man and man such an antipathy. 
 That though he can show no just reason why 
 For any former wrong or injury. 
 Can neither find a blemish in his fame, 
 Nor aught in face or feature justly blame, 
 Can challenge or accuse him of no evil, 
 Yet notwithstanding hates him as a devil. 
 
 The lines are from old Ilcywood's " Hierarchic of Angels," 
 and he Lubjoins a curious story in confirmation, of a 
 Spaniard who attempted to assassinate a King Ferdinand 
 of Spain, and being put to the rack could give no other 
 reason for the deed but an inveterate antipathy which be 
 had taken to the first sight of the King. 
 
 -The cause which to that act corapcll'd him 
 
 Was, he ne'er loved him since he first beheld him. 
 
350 
 
 IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 
 
 it to market in the green ear. They delight 
 to impart their defective discoveries as they 
 arise, without waiting for their full develop- 
 ment. They are no systematizers, and would 
 but err more by attempting it. Their minds, 
 as I said before, are suggestive merely. The 
 brain of a true Caledonian (if I am not mis- 
 taken) is constituted upon quite a diflfereut 
 plan. His Minerva is bom in panoply. You 
 are never admitted to see his ideas in their 
 growth — if, indeed, they do grow, and are 
 not rather put together upon principles of 
 clock-work. You never catch his mind in an 
 undress. He never hints or suggests any- 
 thing, but unlades his stock of ideas in 
 perfect order and completeness. He brings 
 his total wealth into company, and gravely 
 unpacks it. His riches are always about 
 him. He never stoops to catch a glittering 
 something in your presence to share it with 
 you, before he quite knows whether it be 
 true touch or not. You cannot cry halves to 
 anything that he finds. He does not find, 
 but bring. You never witness his first 
 apprehension of a thing. His understanding 
 is always at its meridian — you never see the 
 first dawn, the early streaks. — He has no 
 falterings of self-susi^iciou. Surmises, guesses, 
 misgivings, half-intuitions, semi-conscious- 
 nesses, partial illuminations, dim instincts, 
 embryo conceptions, have no place in his 
 brain, or vocabulary. The twilight of dubiety 
 uever falls upon him. Is he orthodox — he 
 has no doubts. Is he an infidel — he has 
 none either. Between the affirmative and 
 the negative there is no border-land with 
 him. You cannot hover with him upon the 
 confines of truth, or wander in the maze of 
 a probable argument. He always keeps the 
 path. You cannot make excursions with 
 him — for he sets you right. His taste never 
 fluctuates. His morality never abates. He 
 cannot compromise, or understand middle 
 actions. There can be but a right and a 
 wrong. His conversation is as a book. His 
 aflTirmations have the sanctity of an oath. 
 You must speak upon the square with him. 
 He stops a metaphor like a suspected person 
 in an enemy's country. " A healthy book ! " 
 — said one of his countrymen to me, who 
 had venturefl to give that appellation to 
 John Bunelu, — " Did I catch riglitly what 
 you said ? I have heard of a man in healtli, 
 Jind of a healthy slate of body, but I do not 
 
 see how that epithet can be properly applied 
 to a book." Above all, you must beware of 
 indirect expressions before a Caledonian 
 Clap an extinguisher upon your irony, if you 
 are unhappily blest with a vein of it. Re- 
 j member you are upon your oath. I have 
 ' a print of a graceful female after Leonardo 
 ' da Vinci, which I was showing off to 
 I Mr. * * » * After he had examined it mi- 
 nutely, I ventured to ask him how he liked 
 I MY BEAUTY (a fooUsh name it goes by among 
 my friends) — when he very gravely assured 
 me, that " he had considerable respect for 
 my character and talents " (so he was pleased 
 to say), " but had not given himself much 
 thought about the degree of my personal 
 pretensions." The misconception staggered 
 me, but did not seem much to disconcert 
 him. — Persons of this nation are particularly 
 fond of affii'ming a truth — which nobody 
 doubts. They do not so properly afiirm, as 
 annunciate it. They do indeed appear to 
 have such a love of truth (as if, like virtue, 
 it were valuable for itself) that all tinith 
 becomes equally valuable, whether the pro- 
 position that contains it be new or old, dis- 
 puted, or such as is impossible to become a 
 subject of disputation. I was present not 
 long since at a party of North Britons, 
 where a son of Burns was expected ; aud 
 happened to drop a silly expression (in my 
 South British way), that I wished it were 
 the father instead of the son — when four of 
 them started up at once to inform me, that 
 " that was impossible, because he was dead.'* 
 An impracticable wish, it seems, was more 
 than they could conceive. Swift has hit off 
 this part of their character, namely their 
 love of truth, in his biting way, but with an 
 illiberality that necessarily confines the 
 passage to the margin.* The tediousness of 
 these people is certainly provoking. I wonder 
 if they ever tire one another ! — In my early 
 life I had a passionate fondness for the 
 poetry of Bui-ns. I have sometimes foolishly 
 
 • There arc some people who think they sufflcienfly 
 acquit themselves, and entertain their company, with 
 relalint; facts of no consequence, not at all out of the 
 road of such common incidents as happen every day ; 
 and this I have observed more freciuently among the 
 Scots than any other nation, who are very careful not t« 
 omit the minutest circumstances of time or place; which 
 kind of discourse, if it were not a little relieved by tho 
 uncouth terms and phrases, as well im accent and gesture, 
 peculiar to that country, would be hardly toleriiblo. — 
 Hints iuu'urdi an £aMty un VuiiitTnitioti. 
 
IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 
 
 351 
 
 hoped to ingratiate myself with his country- 
 men by expressing it. But I have always 
 found that a true Scot resents your admira- 
 tion of his compatriot, even more than he 
 would your contempt of him. The latter he 
 imputes to your " imperfect acquaintance 
 with many of the words which he uses ; " 
 and the same objection makes it a presump- 
 tion in you to suppose that you can admire 
 him. — Thomson they seem to have forgotten. 
 Smollett they have neither forgotten nor 
 forgiven, for his delineation of Eory and his 
 companion, upon their first introduction to 
 our metropolis. — Speak of Smollett as a 
 great genius, and they will retort upon you 
 Hume's History compared with his Continu- 
 ation of it. What if the historian had con- 
 tinued Humphrey Clinker ? 
 
 I have, in the abstract, no disrespect for 
 Jews. They are a piece of stubborn anti- 
 quity, compared with which Stonehenge is 
 in its nonage. They date beyond the pyra- 
 mids. But I should not care to be in habits 
 of familiar intercourse with any of that 
 nation. I confess that I have not the nerves 
 to enter their synagogues. Old prejudices 
 cling about me. I cannot shake off the story 
 of Hugh of Lincoln. Centuries of injury, 
 contempt, and hate, on the one side, — of 
 cloaked revenge, dissimulation, and hate, on 
 the other, between our and their fathers, 
 must and ought to affect the blood of the 
 children. I cannot believe it can run clear 
 and kindly yet ; or that a few fine words, 
 such as candour, liberality, the light of a 
 nineteenth century, can close up the breaches 
 of so deadly a disunion. A Hebrew is no- 
 where congenial to me. He is least dis- 
 tasteful on 'Change — for the mercantile spirit 
 levels all distinctions, as all are beauties in 
 the dark. I boldly confess that I do not 
 relish the approximation of Jew and Chris- 
 •tian, which has become so fashionable. The 
 reciprocal endearments have, to me, some- 
 thing hypocritical and unnatural in them. 
 I do not like to see the Church and Syna- 
 gogue kissing and congeeing in awkwai'd 
 postures of an affected civility. If they are 
 converted, why do they not come over to us 
 altogether 1 Why keep up a form of sepa- 
 ration, when the life of it is fled ? If they 
 can sit with us at table, why do they keck 
 at our cookery ? I do not understand 
 these half convertites. Jews chi-iatianizing 
 
 — Christians judaizing — ^puzzle me. 1 like 
 fish or flesh. A moderate Jew is a more 
 confounding piece of anomaly than a wet 
 Quaker. The spirit of the synagogue ia 
 
 essentially separative. B would have 
 
 been more in keeping if he had abided by 
 the faith of his forefathers. There is a fine 
 scorn in his face, which nature meant to be 
 
 of Christians. The Hebrew spirit is 
 
 strong in him, in spite of his proselytism. 
 He cannot conquer the Shibboleth. How it 
 bi'eaks out, when he sings, " The Children 
 of Israel passed through the Red Sea ! " 
 The auditors, for the moment, are as Egyp- 
 tians to him, and he rides over our necks 
 in triumph. There is no mistaking him. 
 
 B has a strong expression of sense in his 
 
 countenance, and it is confirmed by his sing- 
 ing. The foundation of his vocal excellence 
 is sense. He sings with understanding, as 
 Kemble delivered dialogue. He would sing 
 the Commandments, and give an appropriate 
 character to each prohibition. His nation, 
 in general, have not over-sensible counte- 
 nances. How should they ? — but you seldom 
 see a silly expression among them. — Gain, 
 and the pursuit of gain, sharpen a man's 
 visage. I never heard of an idiot being born 
 among them. — Some admire the Jewish 
 female-physiognomy. I admire it — but with 
 trembling. Jael had those full dark inscru- 
 table eyes. 
 
 In the Negro countenance you will often 
 meet with strong traits of benignity. I have 
 felt yearnings of tenderness towards some of 
 these faces — or rather masks — that have 
 looked out kindly upon one in casual encoun- 
 ters in the streets and highways. I love 
 what Fuller beautifully calls — these " images 
 of God cut in ebony." But I should not like 
 to associate with them, to sliare my meals 
 and my good-nights with them — because 
 they are black. 
 
 I love Quaker ways, and Quaker worship. 
 I venerate the Quaker principles. It does 
 me good for the rest of the day when I meet 
 any of their people in my path. When I am 
 rutfled or disturbed by any occurrence, the 
 sight, or quiet voice of a Quaker, acts upon 
 me as a ventilator, lightening the air, and 
 taking off a load from the bosom. But 
 I cannot like the Quakers (as Desdemona 
 would say) '' to live with them." I am all 
 over sopliisticated — with huiuoui's, fancies, 
 
352 
 
 IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 
 
 craving hourly sympathy. I must have 
 hooks, pictures, theatres, chit-chat, scandal, 
 jokes, ambiguities, and a thousand whim- 
 wnams, which their simpler taste can do 
 without. I should starve at their primitive 
 banquet. My appetites are too high for 
 the salads ^vliich (according to Evelyn) 
 Eve dressed for the angel, my gusto too 
 excited 
 
 To sit a guest with Daniel at his pulse. 
 
 The indirect answers which Quakers are 
 often found to return to a question put to 
 them may be explained, I think, without the 
 vulgar assumption, that they are more given 
 to evasion and equivocating than other 
 people. Tliey naturally look to their words 
 more carefully, and are more cautious of 
 committing themselves. They have a pecu- 
 liar character to keep up on this head. They 
 stand in a manner upon their veracity. 
 A Quaker is by law exempted from taking 
 an oath. The custom of resorting to an 
 oath in extreme cases, sanctified as it is by 
 all religious antiquity, is apt (it must be 
 confessed) to introduce into the laxer sort of 
 minds tlie notion of two kinds of truth — the 
 one applicable to the solemn affairs of jvistice, 
 and the other to the common proceedings of 
 daily intercourse. As truth bound upon the 
 conscience by an oath can be but truth, so 
 in the common affirmations of the shop and 
 the market-place a latitude is expected, and 
 conceded upon questions wanting this solemn 
 covenant. Something less than truth satis- 
 fies. It is common to hear a person say, 
 " You do not expect me to speak as if I 
 were upon my oath." Hence a great deal 
 of incorrectness and inadvertency, short of 
 falsehood, creeps into ordinary conversation ; 
 and a kind of secondary or laic-truth is 
 tolerated, where clergy-truth — oath-truth, 
 by the nature of the circumstances, is not 
 required. A Quaker knows none of this 
 distinction. His simple affirmation being 
 received, upon the most sacred occasions, 
 without any further test, stamps a value 
 upon the words which he is to use upon the 
 most indifferent topics of life. He looks to 
 them, naturally, with more severity. You 
 can have of him no more than his word. 
 He knows, if ho is caught tripping in a 
 casual ex])resaion, he forfeits, for himself at 
 least, his claim to the invidious exemption. 
 
 He knows that his syllables are weighed — 
 
 and how far a consciousness of this particular 
 watchfulness, exerted against a person, has a 
 tendency to produce indirect answers, and a 
 diverting of the question by hone.st means, 
 might be illustrated, and the practice justi- 
 fied, by a more sacred example than is proper 
 to be adduced upon this occasion. The 
 admirable presence of mind, which is noto- 
 rious in Quakers upon all contingencies, 
 might be traced to this imposed self-watch- 
 fulness — if it did not seem rather an humble 
 and secular scion of that old stock of reli- 
 gious constancy, which never bent or fal- 
 tered, in the Primitive Friends, or gave way 
 to the winds of persecution, to the violence 
 of judge or accuser, under trials and racking 
 examinations. " You will never be the 
 wiser, if I sit here answering your questions 
 till midnight," said one of those upright 
 Justicers to Penn, who had been putting 
 law-cases with a puzzling subtlety. " There 
 after as the answers may be," retorted the 
 Quaker. The astonishing composure of thi.= 
 people is sometimes ludicrously displayed in 
 lighter instances. — I was travelling in 
 stage-coach with three male Quakers, but- 
 toned up in the sti'aitest non-conformity of 
 their sect. We stopped to bait at Andover, 
 where a meal, partly tea apparatus, partly 
 supper, was set before us. My friends con- 
 fined themselves to the tea-table. I in my 
 way took sujiper. When the landlady 
 brought in the bill, the eldest of my com- 
 panions discovered that she had charged 
 for both meals. This was resisted. Mine 
 hostess was very clamorous and positive. 
 Some mild arguments were used on the part 
 of the Quakers, for wliich the heated mind 
 of the good lady seemed by no means a fit 
 recipient. The guard came in with his usual 
 peremptory notice. The Quakeis pulled out 
 their money and formally tendered it — so 
 much for tea — I, in humble imitation, tender- 
 ing mine — for the supper which I had taken. 
 Slie would not relax in her dcmimd. So they 
 all three quietly put up their silver, as did 
 myself, and marched out of the room, the 
 eldest and gravest going first, with myseli 
 closing up the rear, who thought I could 
 not do better than follow the example of 
 such grave and warrantable jwrsonages. 
 We got in. The steps went up. The coacii 
 drove otf. The murmui*s of mine hostcsa, 
 
WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT FI-:ARS. 
 
 3r.3 
 
 not very indistinctly or arabigiionsly pro- 
 nounced, became after a time inaudible — and 
 now my conscience, ■which the whimsical 
 scene had for a while suspended, beginning 
 to give some twitches, I waited, in the hope 
 that some justification would be offered by 
 these serious persons for the seeming injus- 
 tice of their conduct. To my great surprise 
 
 not a syllable was dropped on the subject. 
 They sat as mute as at a meeting. At length 
 the eldest of them broke silence, by inquiring 
 of his next neighbour, " Hast thee heard how 
 indigos go at the India House?" and the 
 question operated as a soporific ou my moral 
 feeling as far as Exeter. 
 
 WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT FEARS. 
 
 We are too hasty when we set down our 
 ancestors in the gross for fools, for the mon- 
 strous inconsistencies (as they seem to us) 
 involved in their creed of witchcraft. In the 
 relations of this visible world we find them 
 to have been as rational, and shrewd to 
 detect an historic anomaly, as oui-selves. 
 But when once the invisible world was sup- 
 posed to be opened, and the lawless agency 
 of bad spiints assumed, what measures of 
 probability, of decency, of fitness, or propor- 
 tion — of that which distinguishes the likely 
 from the palpable absurd — could they have 
 to guide them in the rejection or admission 
 of any particular testimony ? — That maidens 
 pined away, wasting iuA^ardly as their waxen 
 images consumed before a fire — that corn 
 was lodged, and cattle lamed — that whirl- 
 winds uptore in diabolic revelry the oaks of 
 the forest — or that spits and kettles only 
 danced a feai'ful innocent vagary about some 
 rustic's kitchen when no wind was stirring 
 — were all equally probable where no law of 
 agency was understood. That the prince of 
 the powers of darkness, passing by the flower 
 and pomp of the earth, should lay prepos- 
 terous siege to the weak fantasy of indigent 
 eld — has neither likelihood nor unlikelihood 
 d priori to us, who have no measure to guess 
 at his policy, or standard to estimate what 
 rate those anile souls may fetch iu the devil's 
 market. Nor, when the wicked are ex- 
 pressly symbolised by a goat, was it to be 
 wondered at so much, that he should come 
 sometimes in that body, and assert his meta- 
 phor. — That the intercourse was opened at 
 all between both worlds was perliaps the 
 mistake — but that once assumed, I see no 
 reason for disbelieving one attested story of 
 
 this nature more than another on the score 
 of absurdity. There is no law to judge of 
 the lawless, or canon by which a dream may 
 be criticised. 
 
 I have sometimes thought that I could ni:>t 
 have existed in the days of received witch- 
 craft ; that I could not have slept in a village 
 where one of those reputed hags dwelt. 
 Our ancestors were bolder, or more obtuse. 
 Amidst the universal belief that these 
 wretches were in league with the author of 
 all e\'il, holding hell tributary to their mut- 
 tering, no simple Justice of the Peace seems 
 to have scrupled issuing, or silly Headborough 
 serving, a warrant upon them — as if they 
 should subpoena Satan ! — Prosj^ero in hia 
 boat, with his books and wand about him, 
 suffers himself to be conveyed away at the 
 mercy of his enemies to an unknown island. 
 He might have raised a storm or two, we 
 think, on the passage. His acquiescence is 
 in exact analogy to the non-resistance of 
 witches to the constituted powers. — What 
 stops the Fiend in Spenser from tearing 
 Guyon to pieces — or who had made it a con- 
 dition of his prey that Guyon must take 
 assay of the glorious bait — we have no guess. 
 We do not know the laws of that country. 
 
 From my childhood I was extremely in- 
 quisitive about witches and witch-stories. 
 My maid, and more legendary aunt, supplied 
 me with good store. But I shall mention 
 the accident which directed my curiosity 
 originally Into this channel. In my father's 
 book-closet, the History of the Bible by 
 Stackhouse occupied a distinguished station. 
 The pictures with which it abounds — one of 
 the ark, in particuhu', and another of Solo- 
 mon's temple, delineated with all the fidelity 
 
 A A 
 
SSi 
 
 WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT FEARS. 
 
 of ocular admeasurement, as if the artist had 
 been upon tlie spot — attracted my childish 
 attention. There was a picture, too, of the 
 Witch raising up Samuel, which I wish that 
 I had never seen. "VVe shall come to that 
 hereafter. Stackhouse is in two huge tomes 
 — and there was a pleasure in removing 
 folios of that magnitude, which, with infinite 
 straining, was as much as I could manage, 
 from the situation which they occupied upon 
 an u])per shelf. I have not met with the 
 work from that time to this, but I remember 
 it consisted of Old Testament stories, orderly 
 set down, with the objection appended to each 
 story, and the solution of the objection regu- 
 larly tacked to that. The objection was a 
 summary of whatever difficulties had been 
 opposed to the credibility of the history, by 
 tlie slii'ewduess of ancient or modern in- 
 fidelity, drawn up with an almost compli- 
 mentary excess of candour. The solution 
 was brief, modest, and satisfactory. The 
 bane and antidote were both before you. To 
 doubts so put, and so quashed, there seemed 
 to be an end for ever. The dragon lay dead, 
 for the foot of the veriest babe to trample on. 
 But — like as was rather feared than realised 
 from that slain monster in Spenser — from 
 the womb of those crushed errors young 
 dragonets would creep, exceeding the prowess 
 of so tender a Saint George as myself to van- 
 quish. The habit of expecting objections to 
 every passage set me upon starting more ob- 
 jections, for the glory of finding a solution of 
 my own for them. I became staggered and 
 perplexed, a sceptic in long-coats. The pretty 
 Bible stories which I had read, or heard read 
 in church, lost their purity and sincerity of 
 impression, and were turned into so many 
 historic or chronologic theses to be defended 
 against whatever impuguers. I was not to 
 disl)elieve them, but — the next thing to that 
 — I was to be quite sure that some one or 
 other would or had disbelieved them. Next 
 to making a child an infidel is the letting 
 him know that there are infidels at all. 
 Credulity is the man's weakness, but the 
 child's strength. O, how ugly sound scrip- 
 tural dc)ubt3 from the mouth of a babe and a 
 suckling ! — I .should have lost myself in 
 tliese maze's, and have pined away, I think, 
 with such unfit sustenance as these husks 
 aflurdcd, but for a fortunate piece of ill- 
 fortune which aljout this time befel me. 
 
 Turning over the picture of the ark with 
 too much haste, I unhappily made a breach 
 in its ingenious fabric — driving my incon- 
 siderate fingers right through the two larger 
 quadru])cils — the elej)hant and the camels, 
 that stare (as well they might) out of the 
 two last windows next the steerage in that 
 unique piece of naval architecture. Stack- 
 house was hencefi^'th locked up, and became 
 an interdicted treasure. With the book, the 
 objections and solutions gradually cleared out 
 of my head, and have seldom returned since 
 in any force to trouble me. — But there was 
 one impression which I had imbibed from 
 Stackhouse which no lock or bar could shut 
 out, and which was destined to try my 
 childish nerves rather more seriously. — That 
 detestable picture ! 
 
 I was dreadfully alive to nervous terrors. 
 The night-time, solitude, and the dark, were 
 my hell. Tlie sufferings I endured in this 
 nature would justify the expression. I never 
 laid my head on my pillow, I suppose, from 
 the fourth to the seventh or eighth year of 
 my life — so far as memory serves in things 
 so long ago — without an assurance, which 
 realised its own prophecy, of seeing .some 
 frightful spectre. Be old Stackhouse then 
 acqiutted in part, if I say, that to his picture 
 of the Witch raising up Samuel — (O that 
 old man covered with a mantle !) — I owe — 
 not my midnight terrors, the hell of my in- 
 fancy — but the shape and manner of their 
 visitation. It was he who dressed up for me 
 a hag that nightly sate upon my pillow — a 
 sure bedfellow, when my aunt or my maid 
 was for from me. All day long, while the 
 book was permitted me, I dreamed waking 
 over his delineation, and at night (if 1 may 
 use so bold an expression) awoke into sleep, 
 and found the vision true. I durst not, 
 even in the day-light, once enter the chamber 
 where I slept, without my face turned to the 
 window, aversely from the bed where my 
 witch-ridden pillow was. Parents do not 
 know what they do when they leave tender 
 babes alone to go to sleej) in the tlark. The 
 feeling about for a friendly arm — the hoping 
 for a familiar voice — when they wake scream- 
 ing — and find none to soothe them — what a 
 terrible shaking it is to their })Oor nerves ! 
 The k('e])ing them up till midnight, through 
 candle-light and the unwholesome hours, as 
 they are called, — would, I am satisfied, in a 
 
WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT FEARS. 
 
 855 
 
 » 
 
 medical point of view, prove the tetter cau- 
 tion. — That detestable picture, as I have said, 
 qave the fashion to my dreams — if dreams 
 they were — for the scene of them was inva- 
 luably the room in which I lay. Had I 
 never met with the picture, the fears would 
 have come self-pictured in some shape or 
 other — 
 
 Headless bear, black man, or ape — 
 
 but, as it was, my imaginations took that 
 form. — It is not book, or picture, or the 
 stories of foolish servants, which create these 
 terrors in children. They can at most but 
 give them a direction. Dear little T. H., 
 who of all children has been brought up with 
 the most scrupulous exclusion of every taint 
 of superstition — who was never allowed to 
 hear of goblin or apparition, or scarcely to be 
 told of bad men, or to read or hear of any 
 distressing story — finds all this world of fear, 
 from which he has been so rigidly excluded 
 ab extra, in his own " thick-coming fancies ; " 
 and from his little midnight pillow, this 
 nurse-child of optimism will start at shapes, 
 unborrowed of tradition, in sweats to which 
 the reveries of the cell-damned murderer are 
 tranquillity. 
 
 Gorgons, and Hydras, and Chimaeras dire 
 — stories of Celaeno and the Harpies — may 
 reproduce themselves in the brain of supex'- 
 stition — but they were there before. They 
 are transcripts, types — the archetypes are in 
 us, and eternal. How else should the recital 
 of that, which we know in a waking sense to 
 be false, come to affect us at all ? — or 
 
 Names, ■whose sense -we see not, 
 
 Fray us with things that be not J 
 
 Is it that we naturally conceive terror from 
 such objects, considered in their capacity of 
 being able to inflict upon us bodily injury ? 
 ■ — O, least of all ! These terrors are of older 
 standing. They date beyond body — or, with- 
 out the body, they would have been the same. 
 All the cruel, tormenting, defined devils in 
 Dante — tearing, mangling, choking, stifling, 
 scorching demons — are they one half so 
 fearful to the spirit of a man, as the simple 
 idea of a spirit unembodied following him — 
 
 Like one that on a lonesome road 
 Doth walk in fear and dread, 
 And having once turn'd round, walks on 
 And turns no more his head ; 
 
 Because he knows a frlffhtful fiend 
 Doth close behind him tread.' 
 
 That the kind of fear here treated of is 
 purely spiritual — that it is strong in propor- 
 tion as it is objectless upon earth — that it 
 predominates in the period of sinlesa infancy 
 — are difficulties, the solution of which might 
 afford some probable insight into our ante- 
 mundane condition, and a peep at least into 
 the shadowland of pre-existence. 
 
 My night-fancies have long ceased to be 
 afflictive. I confess an occasional night- 
 mare ; but I do not, as in early youth, keep 
 a stud of them. Fiendish faces, with the 
 extinguished taper, will come and look at me ; 
 but I know them for mockeries, even while 
 I cannot elude their presence, and I fight and 
 grapple with them. For the credit of my 
 imagination, I am almost ashamed to say how 
 tame and prosaic my tlreama are grown. 
 They are never romantic, seldom even niral. 
 They are of architecture and of buildings — 
 cities abroad, which I have never seen and 
 hardly have hoped to see. I have traversed, 
 for the seeming length of a natural day, 
 Rome, Amsterdam, Paris, Lisbon — their 
 churches, palaces, sqviares, market-places, 
 shops, suburbs, ruins, with an inexpressible 
 sense of delight — a map-like distinctness of 
 trace — and a day-light vividness of vision, 
 that was all but being awake. — I have 
 formerly travelled among the Westmoreland 
 fells — my highest Alps, — but they are objects 
 too mighty for the grasp of my di-eaming 
 recognition ; and I have again and again 
 awoke with ineffectual struggles of the inner 
 eye, to make out a shape in any way what- 
 ever, of Helvellyn. Methought I was in that 
 country, but the mountains were gone. The 
 poverty of my dreams mortifies me. There 
 is Coleridge, at his will can conjure up icy 
 domes, and pleasure-houses for Kubla Khan, 
 and Abyssinian maids, and songs of Abara, 
 and caverns, 
 
 Where Alph, the sacred river, runs, 
 
 to solace his night solitudes — when I cannot 
 muster a fiddle. Barry Cornwall has his 
 tritons and his nereids gamboling before him 
 in nocturnal visions, and proclaiming sons 
 born to Neptvme — when my stretch of imagi- 
 native activity can hardly, in the night 
 
 • Mr. Coleridge's Ancient Mariner. 
 
356 
 
 VALENTINES DAY. 
 
 season, raise up the ghost of a fish-wife. To 
 set my feilures in somewhat a morti^'ing 
 light — it was after reading the noble Dream 
 01 this poet, that my fancy ran strong upon 
 these marine spectra ; and the poor plastic 
 power, such as it is, within me set to work, 
 to humour my folly in a sort of dream that 
 very night. Methought I was upon the ocean 
 billows at some sea nuptials, riding and 
 mounted high, with the customary train 
 sounding their conchs before me, (I mj'self, 
 you may be sure, the leadinq ffod,) and joUily 
 we went careering over the main, till just 
 where Ino Leucothea should have greeted 
 me (I think it was Ino) with a white embrace, 
 the billows gradually subsiding, fell from a 
 sea-roughness to a sea calm, and thence to a 
 river motion, and that river (as happens in 
 the familiarisation of di^eams) was no other 
 
 than the gentle Thames, which landed me in 
 the wafture of a pLicid wave or two, alone, 
 safe ami inglorious, somewhere at the foot of 
 Lambetli palace. 
 
 The degree of the soul's creativeness in 
 sleep might furnish no whimsical criterion of 
 the quantum of poetical faculty resident in 
 the same soul waking. An old gentleman, 
 a friend of mine, and a humourist, used to 
 carry this notion so far, that when he saw 
 any stripling of his acquaintance ambitious 
 of becoming a poet, his fir.st question would 
 be, — " Young man, what sort of dreams have 
 you ? " I have so much faith in my old 
 friend's theory, that when I feel that idle 
 vein returning upon me, I presently subside 
 into my proper element of prose, remem- 
 bering those eluding nereids, and that 
 inauspicious inland lauding. 
 
 VALENTINE'S DAY. 
 
 Hail to thy returning festival, old Bishop 
 Valentine ! Great is thy name in the rubric, 
 thou venerable Arch-flamen of Hymen ! 
 Immortal Go-between ; who and what 
 manner of person art thou? Art thou but 
 a name, typifying the restless principle which 
 impels poor humans to seek perfection in 
 union ? or wort thou indeed a mortal prelate, 
 with thy tippet and thy rochet, thy apron on, 
 and decent lawn sleeves ? Mysterious per- 
 sonage ! like unto thee, assuredly, there is 
 no otlier mitred father in the calendar ; not 
 Jerome, nor Ambrose, nor Cyril ; nor tlie 
 consigner of undipt infants to eternal tor- 
 ments, Austin, whom all mothers hate ; nor 
 he who hated all mothers, Orlgen ; nor 
 Bishop Bull, nor Archbishop Parker, nor 
 Whitgift. Thou comest attended with 
 thousands and ten thousands of little Loves, 
 and the air is 
 
 Bnish'd with the hiss of rustling wings. 
 
 Singing Cupids are thy choristers and thy 
 precentors ; and instead of the crosier, the 
 mystical arrow is borne before thee. 
 
 In other words, this is the day on which 
 those charming little missives, ycleped Va- 
 lentines, cross and intercross each otlier at 
 
 every street and turning. The weary and 
 all forspent twoj^enny postman sinks be- 
 neath a load of delicate embarrassments, not 
 his own. It is scarcely credible to what an 
 extent this ephemeral courtship is carried on 
 in this loving town, to the great enrichment 
 of porters, and detriment of knockers and 
 bell-wires. In these little visual interi)reta- 
 tions, no emblem is so common as the /learf^ 
 — that little three-cornered exponent of all 
 our hopes and feai-s, — the bestuck and 
 bleeding heart ; it is twisted and tortured 
 into more allegories and affectations than an 
 opera-hat. What authority we have in his- 
 tory or mythology for placing the head- 
 quarters and metropolis of God Cupid in this 
 anatomical seat rather than in any other, is 
 not very clear ; but we have got it, and it 
 will serve as well as any other. Else we 
 miglit eiisily imagine, upon some other system 
 which might have prevailed for anything 
 which our jjathology knows to the contrary, 
 a lover addressing his mistress, in perfect 
 simplicity of feeling, "Madam, my liver and 
 fortune are entirely at your disposal ;" or 
 putting a delicate question, "Amanda, have 
 you a midriff to bestow ?" But custom h:i3 
 settled these things, and awarded the seat of 
 
VALENTINE'S DAY. 
 
 357 
 
 sentiment to the aforesaid triangle, while its 
 less fortunate neiglibours wait at animal and 
 anatomical distance. 
 
 Not many sounds in life, and I include all 
 urban and all rural sounds, exceed in in- 
 terest a knock at the door. It " gives a very 
 echo to the throne where hope is seated." 
 But its issues seldom answer to tliis oracle 
 within. It is so seldom that just the person 
 we w;iut to see comes. But of all the cla- 
 morous visitations the welcomest in expecta- 
 tion is the sound that ushers in, or seems to 
 usher in, a Valentine, As the raven himself 
 was hoarse that announced the fatal entrance 
 of Duncan, so the knock of the postman on 
 this day is light, aii-y, confident, and befitting 
 one that bringeth good tidings. It is less 
 mechanical than on other days ; you will 
 say, " That is not the post I am sure." 
 Visions of Love, of Cupids, of Hymens ! — 
 delightful eternal common-places, which 
 " having been will always be ;" which no 
 school-boy nor school-man can write away ; 
 having your irreversible throne in the fancy 
 and affections — what are your transports, 
 when the happy maiden, opening with care- 
 ful finger, careful not to break the emble- 
 matic seal, bursts ujsou the sight of some 
 well-designed allegory, some type, some 
 youthful fancy, not without verses — 
 
 Lovers all, 
 A madrigal, 
 
 or some such device, not over abundant in 
 sense — young Love disclaims it, — and not 
 quite silly — something between wind and 
 water, a chorus where the sheep might 
 almost join the shej^therd, as they did, or as I 
 apprehend they did, in Arcadia. 
 
 All Valentines are not foolish ; and I 
 shall not easily forget thine, my kind friend 
 (if I may have leave to call you so) E. B. — 
 E. B. lived opposite a young maiden whom 
 he had often seen, unseen, from his pai'lour 
 window in C — e-street. She was all joyous- 
 ness and innocence, and just of an age to 
 enjoy receiving a Valentine, and just of a 
 temper to bear the disappointment of niissiug 
 one with good-humour. E. B. is an artist of 
 no common powers ; in the fancy parts of 
 designing, perhaps inferior to none ; his 
 name is known at the bottom of many a ' 
 well-executed vignette in the way of hisi 
 
 profession, but no fui'ther ; for E. B. is 
 modest, and the world meets nobody half- 
 way. E. B. meditated how he could repay 
 this young maiden fur many a favour which 
 she had done him unknown ; for when a 
 kindly face greets us, though but passing by, 
 and never knows us again, nor we it, we 
 should feel it as an obligation : and E. B. 
 did. Tliis good artist set himself at work to 
 please the damsel. It was just before Va- 
 lentine's day three years since. He wrought, 
 unseen and unsuspected, a wondrous work. 
 We need not say it was on the finest gilt 
 paper with borders — full, not of common 
 hearts and heartless allegory, but all the 
 prettiest stories of love from Ovid, and older 
 poets than Ovid (for E. B. is a scholar). 
 There was P^n'amus and Thisbe, and be sure 
 Dido was not forgot, nor Hero and Leander, 
 and swans more th;iu sang in CJayster, with 
 niottos and fanciful devices, such as beseemed, 
 — a work in shoi't of magic. Iris dipt the 
 woof. This on Valentine's eve he com- 
 mended to the all-swallowing indiscriminate 
 orifice — (O ignoble trust !) — of the common 
 post ; but the humble medium did its duty, 
 and from his watchful stand, the next morn- 
 ing he saw the cheerful messenger knock, 
 and by and by the precious charge deli- 
 vered. He saw, unseen, the happy girl un- 
 fold the Valentine, dance about, clap her 
 hands, as one after one the pretty emblems 
 unfolded themselves. She danced about, not 
 with light love, or foolish expectations, for 
 she had no lover ; or, if she had, none she 
 knew that could have created those bright 
 images which delighted her. It was more 
 like some fairy present ; a God-send, as our 
 familiarly pious ancestors termed a benefit 
 received where the benefactor was unknown. 
 It would do her no harm. It would do her 
 good for ever after. It is good to love the 
 unknown. I only give this as a specimen of 
 E. B. and his modest way of doing a concealed 
 kindness. 
 
 Good morrow to my Valentine, sings poor 
 Ophelia ; and no better wisli, but with better 
 auspices, we wish to all faithful level's, who 
 are nofr too wise to despise old legends, but 
 are content to rank themselves humble dio- 
 cesans of old Bishop Vtdentine and hia true 
 church. 
 
S58 
 
 MY RELATIONS. 
 
 MY RELATIONS. 
 
 I AM arrived at that point of life at which 
 a man may account it a blessing, as it is a 
 singularity, if he have either of his parents 
 surviving. I have not that felicity — and 
 sometimes think feelingly of a passage in 
 Browne's Christian Morals, where he speaks 
 of a man that hath lived sixty or seventy 
 years in the world. " In such a compass of 
 time," he says, " a man may have a close 
 apprehension what it is to be forgotten, 
 when he hath lived to find none who could 
 remember his father, or scarcely the friends 
 of his youth, and may sensibly see with what 
 a face in no long time Oblivion will look 
 upon himself." 
 
 I had an aunt, a dear and good one. She 
 was one whom single blessedness had soured 
 to the world. She often used to say, that I 
 was the only thing in it which she loved ; 
 and, when she thought I was quitting it, she 
 grieved over me with mother's tears. A 
 partiality quite so exclusive my reason can- 
 not altogether approve. She was from morn- 
 ing till night poring over good books, and 
 devotional exercises. Her favourite volumes 
 were, Thomas h Kempis, in Stanhope's trans- 
 lation ; and a Roman Catholic Prayer Book, 
 with the matins and complines regularly set 
 down, — terms which I was at that time too 
 young to understand. She persisted in 
 reading them, although admonished daily 
 concerning their Papistical tendency ; and 
 went to church every Sabbath as a good 
 Protestant should do. These were the only 
 books she studied ; though, I think at one 
 period of her life, she told me, she had read 
 with great satisfaction the Adventures of an 
 Unfortunate Young Nobleman. Finding the 
 door of the chapel in Essex-street open one 
 day — it was in the infancy of that heresy — • 
 she went in, liked the sermon, and the 
 manner of worship, and frequented it at in- 
 tervals for some time after. She came not 
 for doctrinal points, and never missed them. 
 With some little asperities in her consti- 
 tution, which I have above hinted at, she 
 was a steadfast, friendly beuig, and a fine 
 
 old Christian. She was a woman of strong 
 sense, and a shrewd mind — extraordinary at 
 a repartee ; one of the few occasions of her 
 breaking silence — else she did not much 
 value wit. The only secular employment I 
 lemember to have seen her engaged in, was, 
 the splitting of French beans, and dropping 
 them into a china basin of fair water. The 
 odour of those tender vegetables to tiiis day 
 comes back upon my sense, redolent of 
 soothing recollections. Certainly it is the 
 most delicate of culinary operations. 
 
 Male auuts, as somebody calls them, I had 
 none — to remember. By the uncle's side I 
 may be said to have been born an oiphan. 
 Brother, or sister, I never had any — to know 
 them. A sister, I think, that should have 
 been Elizabeth, died in both our infancies. 
 What a comfort, or what a care, may I not 
 have missed in her ! — But I have cousins 
 sprinkled about in Hertfordshire — bt-sides 
 two, with whom I have been all my life in 
 habits of the closest intimacy, and whom I 
 may term cousins par excellence. These are 
 James and Bridget Elia. They are older 
 than myself by twelve, and ten, years ; and 
 neither of them seems disposed, in matters 
 of advice and guidance, to waive any of the 
 prerogatives which primogeniture confere. 
 May they continue still in the same mind ; 
 and when they shall be seventy-five, and 
 seventy-three, years old (I cannot sj)are them 
 sooner), persist in treating me in my grand 
 climacteric precisely as a stripling, or 
 younger brother ! 
 
 James is an inexplicable cousin. Nature 
 hath her unities, which not every critic can 
 penetrate : or, if we feel, we cannot 
 exi)lain them. The pen of Yorick, and of 
 none since his, could have drawn J. E. entire 
 — those fine Shandean lights and shades, 
 which make up his story. I must limp after 
 in my poor antithetical manner, as the fates 
 have given me grace and talent. J. E. tlien 
 • — to the eye of a common observer at least — 
 seemeth made up of contradictory principles. 
 The genuine child of impulse, the frigid 
 
MY RELATIONS. 
 
 359 
 
 philosopher of prudence — tlie phlegm of my 
 cousin's doctrine is invariably at war with 
 his temperament, which is high sanguine. 
 With always some fii-e-new project in his 
 brain, J. E. is the systematic opponent of 
 innovation, and crier down of everj-thing 
 that has not stood the test of age and experi- 
 ment. With a hundred fine notions chasing 
 one another hourly in his foncy, he is startled 
 at the least approach to the romantic in 
 others : and, determined by his own sense in 
 everything, commends you to the guidance 
 of common sense on all occasions. — With a 
 touch of the eccentric iu all which he does, 
 or says, he is only anxious that you should 
 not commit yourself by doing anything ab- 
 surd or singular. On my once letting slip at 
 table, that I was not fond of a certain 
 populai" dish, he begged me at any rate not 
 to say so — for the world would think me 
 mad. He disguises a passionate fondness 
 for works of high art (whereof he hath 
 amassed a choice collection), under the pre- 
 text of buying only to sell again — that his 
 enthusiasm may give no encouragement to 
 yours. Yet, if it were so, why does that 
 piece of tender, pastoral Domenichino hang 
 still by his wall % — is the ball of his sight 
 much more dear to him % — or what picture- 
 dealer can talk like him % 
 
 Whereas mankind in general are observed 
 to warp tlieir speculative conclusions to the 
 bent of their individual humours, his theories 
 are sure to be in diametrical opposition to 
 his constitution. He is courageous as Charles 
 of Sweden, upon instinct ; chary of his per- 
 son upon principle, as a travelling Quaker. 
 He has been preaching up to me, all my life, 
 the doctrine of bowing to the great — the 
 necessity of forms, and manner, to a man's 
 getting on in the world. He himself never 
 aims at either, that I can discover, — and has 
 a spix'it, that would stand upright in the 
 presence of the Cham of Tartary. It is 
 pleasant to hear him discourse of patience — 
 extolling it as the truest wisdom — and to 
 see him during the last seven minutes that 
 his dinner is getting ready. Nature never 
 ran up in her haste a more restless piece of 
 woikmanship than when she moulded this 
 impetuous cousin — and Art never turned out 
 a more elaborate orator than he can display 
 himself to be, upon this favourite topic of 
 the advantages of quiet and contentedness 
 
 in the state, whatever it be, that we are 
 placed in. He is triumphant on this tlieme, 
 when he has you safe in one of those sliort 
 stages that ply for the western road, in a 
 very obstructing manner, at the foot of John 
 Murray's street — where you get in when it 
 is empty, and are expected to wait till the 
 vehicle hath completed her just freight — a 
 trying three quarters of an hour to some 
 people. He wonders at your fidgetiness, — 
 "where could we be better than we are, tlius 
 sitting, thus consulting ?" — "prefers, for his 
 part, a state of rest to locomotion," — with an 
 eye all the while upon tlie coachman, — 
 till at length, waxing out of all patience, 
 at your want of it, he breaks out into 
 a pathetic remonstrance at the fellow for 
 detaining us so long over the time which 
 he had professed, and declares peremptorily, 
 that " the gentleman in the coach is deter- 
 mined to get out, if he does not drive on that 
 instant." 
 
 Very quick at inventing an argument, or 
 detecting a sojjhistry, he is incapable of at- 
 tending you in any chain of arguing. Indeed 
 he makes wild work with logic ; and seems 
 to jump at most admirable conclusions by 
 some process, not at all akin to it. Conso- 
 nantly enough to this, he hath been heard to 
 deny, ujjon certain occasions, that there 
 exists such a facility at all in man as reason; 
 and wondereth how man came first to have 
 a conceit of it — enforcing his negation with 
 all the might of reasoning he is master of. He 
 has some speculative notions against laughter, 
 and will maintain that laughing is not natural 
 to him — when perad venture the next moment 
 his lungs shall crow like Chanticleer. He 
 says some of the best things in the world — 
 and deelareth that wit is his aversion. It 
 was he wlio said, upon seeing the Eton V)oys 
 at play in their grounds — What a pity to 
 think, that these fine ingenuoiis lads in a few 
 years will all be changed into frivolous Members 
 of Farliamcnt ! 
 
 His youth was fiery, glowing, tempestuous 
 — and in age he discovereth no symptom of 
 cooling. This is that which I admire in him. 
 I hate people who meet Time half-way. I 
 am for no compromise with that inevitable 
 spoiler. While he lives, J. E. will take his 
 swing. — It does me good, as I walk towards 
 the street of my daily avocation, on some 
 fine May morning, to meet him maixhiug in a 
 
360 
 
 MY RELATIONS. 
 
 quite opposite direction, with a jolly handsome 
 presence, and shining sanguine face, that 
 indicates some purchase in his eye — a Claude 
 • — or a Houbima — for much of his eiiviahle 
 leisure is consumed at Christie's andPhillips's 
 •^r whei-e not, to pick up i)ictures, and such 
 gauds. On these occasions he mostly stoj>- 
 peth me, to read a short lecture on the ad- 
 vantage a person like me possesses above 
 himself, in having his time occupieil with 
 
 limited sympathy with what you feel or do. 
 He lives in a world of his own, and makes 
 slender guesses at what passes in your mind. 
 He never pierces the marrow of your habits. 
 He will tell an old-established play-goer, that 
 Mr. Such-a-one, of So-and-so (naming one of 
 the theatres), is a very lively comedian — as 
 a piece of news ! He advertised me but the 
 otiier day of some pleasant green lanes which 
 he had found out for me, knowing me to he a 
 
 business which he «u(5i do — assureth me tlmt | great walker, in my own immediate vicinity 
 he often feels it hang heavy on his hands — j — who have haunted the identical spot any 
 wishes he had fewer holidays — and goes off — time these twenty years ! — He has not much 
 Westward Ho ! — chanting a tune, to Pali respect for that class of feelings which goes 
 MaU — perfectly convinced that he has con- by the name of sentimental. He applies the 
 vinced me — while I proceed in my opposite definition of real evil to bodily sufferings 
 direction tuneless. j exclusively — and rejecteth all othei-s as 
 
 It is pleasant, again, to see this Professor imaginary. He is affected by the sight, or 
 of Indifference doing the honours of his new the bare supposition, of a creature in pain, 
 purchase, when he has fairly housed it. You to a degree which I have never witnessed 
 must Anew it in every light, till he has found out of womankind. A constitutional aciite- 
 the best— placing it at this distance, and at ness to this class of sufferings mny in part 
 that, but always suiting the focus of your account for this. The animal tribe in par- 
 sight to his own. You must spy at it ticular he taketh under his especial protec- 
 throuoh your fingers, to catch the aerial tion. A broken-winded or spur-galled horse 
 perspective — though you assure him that to is sure to find an advocate in him. An over- 
 you the landscape shows much more agree- loaded ass is his client for ever. He is the 
 able without that artifice. Woe be to the apostle to the brute kind — the never-failing 
 luckless wiglit who docs not only not respond i fiieud of those who have none to care for 
 to his rapture, but who should drop an un- them. The contemplation of a lobster boiled, 
 seasonable intimation of preferring one of] or eels skinned alive, will wring him so, that 
 his anterior bargains to the present ! — The ! " all for pity he could die." It will take the 
 last is always his best hit — his " Cynthia of ^ savour from his palate, and the rest from his 
 the minute." — Alas! how many a mild Ma- 1 pillow, for days and nights. With the in- 
 
 donna have I known to come in — a Raphael ! 
 — keep its ascendancy for a few brief moons 
 — then, after certain intermedial degrada- 
 tions, from the front drawing-room to the 
 back gallery, thence to the dark parlour, — 
 adopted in turn by each of the Carracci, 
 under successive lowering ascriptions of 
 filiation, mildly breaking its fall — consigned 
 to the oblivious lumber-room, go out at last a 
 Lucca Giordano, or plain Carlo Maratti ! 
 
 tense feeling of Thomas Clarkson, he wanted 
 only the steadiness of pursuit, and unity of 
 purpose, of that " true yoke-fellow with 
 Time," to have effected as much for the 
 Animal as he hatli done for the Negro Crea- 
 tion. But my uncontrollable cousin is but 
 imperfectly formed for purposes which de- 
 mand co-operation. He cimnot wait. His 
 amelioration plans must be ripened in a day. 
 For this reason he has cut but an equivocal 
 
 which things when I beheld — musing upon : figure in benevolent societies, and combina- 
 
 tlie chances and mutabilities of fate below, 
 hath made me to reflect upon the altered 
 condition of great personages, or that woeful 
 Queen of Eichard the Second — 
 
 -set forth in pomp, 
 
 She came adorni-d hitlicr like sweet May. 
 Sent buck like Ilallowmass or shortest day. 
 
 With great love for you, J. E. hath but a 
 
 tions for the alleviation of huuian sufferings. 
 His zeal const:intly makes him to outrun, 
 and jmt out, his coadjutors. He thinks of 
 relieving, — while they tlunk of debating. 
 He was black-balled out of a society for the 
 
 Relief of**«*» *, 
 
 because the fervour of his humanity toiled 
 beyond the formal api>reheiiBion, and creep- 
 ing processes of his lussociates. 1 shall always 
 
MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE, 
 
 3G1 
 
 consider this distinction as a patent of nobi- 
 lity in the Elia family ! 
 
 Do I mention these seeming inconsisten- 
 cies to smile at, or i;pbraid,my iinique cousin ? 
 Marry, heaven, and all good manners, and 
 the understanding that should be between 
 kinsfolk, forbid ! — With all the strange- 
 nesses of this strangest of the Elias — I would 
 not have him in one jot or tittle other than 
 lie is ; neither would I barter or exchange 
 
 my wild kinsman for the most exact, regular, 
 and every way consistent kinsman breathing. 
 
 In my next, reader, I may perhaps give 
 you some account of my cousin Bridget — if 
 you are not already surfeited with cousins — 
 and take you by the hand, if you are willing 
 to go with us, on an excursion which we 
 made a summer or two since, in search of 
 inore cousins — ■ 
 
 Througli the green plains of pleasant Hertfordshire 
 
 MACKERY END, IN HERTFOEDSHIEE. 
 
 Bridget Elia has been my housekeeper 
 for many a long year. I have obligations to 
 Bridget, extending beyond the period of 
 memory. We house together, old bachelor 
 and maid, in a soi't of double singleness ; 
 with such tolerable comfort, upon the whole, 
 tliat I, for one, find in myself no sort of dis- 
 position to go out upon the mountains, with 
 the rash king's offspring, to bewail my celi- 
 bacy. We agree pretty well in our tastes 
 and habits — yet so, as " with a difference." 
 We are generally in harmony, with occasional 
 bickerings — as it should be among near re- 
 lations. Our sympathies are _rather under- 
 stood, than expressed ; and once, upon my 
 dissembling a tone in my voice more kind 
 than ordinary, my cousin burst into tears, 
 and complained that I was altered. We are 
 both great readers in different directions. 
 While I am hanging over (for the thousandth 
 time) some passage in old Burton, or one of 
 his strange contemporaries, she is abstracted 
 in some modern tale, or adventure, whereof 
 our common reading-table is daily fed with 
 assiduously fresh supplies. Narrative teases 
 me. I have little concern in the progress of 
 events. She must have a story — well, ill, or 
 indifferently told — so there be life stirring in 
 it, and plenty of good or evil accidents. The 
 fluctuations of fortune in fiction — and almost 
 in real life — have ceased to interest, or 
 operate but dully upon me. Out-of-the-way 
 humours and opinions — heads with some 
 diverting twist in them — the oddities of 
 authorship please me most. My cousin has 
 a native disrelish of anything that sounds 
 odd or bizarre. Nothing goes down with 
 
 her, that is quaint, irregular, or out of the 
 road of common sympathy. She "holds 
 Nature more clever." I can pardon her 
 blindness to the beautiful obliquities of the 
 Eeligio Medici ; but she must apologise to 
 me for certain disrespectful insinuations, 
 which she has been pleased to throw out 
 latterly, touching the intellectuals of a dear 
 favourite of mine, of the last century but 
 one — the thrice noble, chaste, and virtuous, 
 — but again somewhat fantastical, and ori- 
 giu;d brained, generous Margaret Newcastle. 
 
 It has been the lot of my cousin, oftener 
 perhaps than I could have wished, to have 
 had for her associates and mine, free-thinkers 
 — leaders, and disciples, of novel philosophies 
 and systems ; but she neither wrangles with, 
 nor accepts, their opinions. That which was 
 good and venerable to hei', when a child, re- 
 tains its authority over her mind still. She 
 never juggles or plaj^s tricks with her under- 
 standing. 
 
 We are both of us inclined to be a little 
 too positive ; and I have observed the result 
 of our disputes to be almost uniformly this 
 — that in matters of fact, dates, and circum- 
 stances, it turns out, that I was in the right, 
 and my cousin in the wrong. But where we 
 have differed upon moral points ; upon some- 
 thing proper to be done, or let alone ; what- 
 ever heat of opposition, or steadiness of con- 
 viction, I set out with, I am sure always, in 
 the long-run, to be brought over to her way 
 of thinking. 
 
 I must touch upon the foibles of my kins- 
 woman with a gentle hand, for Bridget does 
 not like to be told of her faults. She hath 
 
362 
 
 MACKERY EXD, IN HERTFORDSHIRE. 
 
 an awkward trick (to say no worse of it) of 
 reidiug in company : at wliich times slie will 
 answer yei or no to a question, without fully 
 undei-standing its purport — which is pro- 
 voking, and derogatory in the highest degree 
 to the dignity of the putter of the said ques- 
 tion. Her presence of mind is equal tu the 
 most pressing trials of life, but will some- 
 times desert her upon trifling occasions. 
 When the purpose requires it, and is a thing 
 of moment, she can speak to it greatly ; but 
 in matters which are not stutf of the con- 
 science, she hath been known sometimes to 
 let slip a word less seasonably. 
 
 Her education in youth was not much at- 
 tended to ; and she happily missed all that 
 train of female garniture, which passeth by 
 the name of accomplishments. She was 
 tumbled early, by accident or design, into a 
 spacious closet of good old English reading, 
 without much selection or prohibition, and 
 browsed at will upon that fair and whole- 
 some pasturage. Had I twenty girls, they 
 should be brought up exactly in this fashion. 
 I know not whether their chance in wedlock 
 might not be diminished by it ; but 1 can 
 answer for it, that it makes (if the worst 
 come to the worst) most incomparable old 
 maids. 
 
 In a season of distress, she is the truest 
 comforter ; but in the teasing accidents, and 
 minor perplexities, which do not call out the 
 will to meet them, she sometimes maketh 
 matters worse by an excess of participation. 
 If she does not always divide your trouble, 
 upon the pleasanter occasions of life she is 
 sure always to ti-eble your satisfaction. She 
 is excellent to be at a play with, or upon a 
 visit; but best, when she goes a journey with 
 you. 
 
 We made an excursion together a few 
 summers since, into Hertfordshire, to beat 
 up the quarters of some of our less-known 
 relations in that fine corn coimtry. 
 
 The oldest thing I remember is Mackery 
 End ; or Mackarel End, as it is spelt, perhaps 
 moi"e properly, in some old maps of Hertford- 
 shire ; a farm-house, — deliglitfuUy situated 
 within a gentle walk from Wheatliami)stead. 
 I can just remember having been there, on a 
 visit to a great-aunt, when I was a chiUl, 
 under the care of Bridget ; who, as I have 
 said, is oMer than myself by some ten years. 
 I wish that I could throw into a heap the 
 
 remainder of our joint existences ; that we 
 might share them in equal division. But 
 that is impossible. The house was at that 
 time in the occupation of a substantial 
 yeoman, who liad married my grandmother's 
 sister. His name was Gladman. My grand- 
 mother was a Bruton, married to a Field. 
 The Gladmans and the Brutous are still 
 flourishing in that part of the county, but 
 the Fields are almost extinct. More than 
 forty years had elapsed since the visit I 
 speak of ; and, for the greater portion of that 
 period, we had lost sight of the other two 
 branches also. Who or what sort of persons 
 inherited Mackery End — kindred or strange 
 folk — we were afraid almost to conjecture, 
 but determined some day to explore. 
 
 By somewhat a circuitous route, taking 
 the noble park at Luton in our way from 
 St. Albans, we arrived at the spot of our 
 anxious curiosity about noou. The sight of 
 the old farm-house, though every trace of it 
 was eifaeed from my recollection, ati'ected me 
 with a ple;isure which I had not experienced 
 for many a year. For though / had forgotten 
 it,%'e had never forgotten being there together, 
 and we had been talking about Mackery End 
 all our lives, till memory on my part became 
 mocked with a phantom of itself, jmd I 
 thought I knew the aspect of a place, which, 
 when present, O how unlike it was to that, 
 which I had conjured up so many times 
 instead of it ! 
 
 Still the air breathed balmily about it ; 
 the season was in the " heai-t of June," and 
 I could say with the poet. 
 
 But thou, that didst appear so fair 
 
 To fond iin;i(;ination, 
 Dost rival in the light of day 
 
 llcr delicate creation ! 
 
 Bridget's was more a waking bliss than 
 mine, for she e;\sily remembered her old 
 acquaintance again — some altered features, 
 of course, a little grudged at. At first, 
 indeed, she was ready to disbelieve for joy; 
 but the scene soon re-confirnied itself in her 
 afiections — and she traversed every out-jx)st 
 of the old mansion, to the wood-house, the 
 orchard, the place where the pigeon-house 
 had stood (house and birds were idike flown) 
 — with a breathless imi)atience of recognition, 
 which was more pardonable perhaps than 
 decorous at the age of fifty odd. But Bridget 
 in some things is behind her years. 
 
MY FIRST PLAY. 
 
 363 
 
 The only thing left was to get into the 
 house — and that was a difficulty which to 
 me singly would have been insurmountable ; 
 for I am terribly shy in making myself 
 known to strangers and out-of-date kinsfolk. 
 Love, stronger than scruple, winged my 
 cousin in without me ; but she soon returned 
 with a creature that might have sat to a 
 sculptor for the image of Welcome. It was 
 the youngest of the Gladmans ; who, by 
 marriage with a Bruton, had become mistress 
 of the old mansion. A comely brood are 
 the Brutons. Six of them, females, were 
 noted as the handsomest young women in 
 the county. But this adopted Bruton, in 
 my mind, was better than they all — more 
 comely. She was born too late to have 
 remembered me. She just recollected in 
 early life to have had her cousin Bridget 
 once pointed out to her, climbing a stUe. 
 But the name of kindred, and of cousinship, 
 was enough. Those slender ties, that prove 
 slight as gossamer in the rending atmosphere 
 of a metropolis, bind faster, as we found it, in 
 hearty, homely, loving Hertfordshire. In 
 five minutes we were as thoroughly acquainted 
 as if we had been bom and bred up together ; 
 were familiar, even to the calling each other 
 by our Christian names. So Christians 
 should call one another. To have seen 
 Bridget, and her — it was like the meeting of 
 the two scriptural cousins ! There was a 
 grace and dignity, an amplitude of form and 
 stature, answering to her mind, in this 
 farmer's wife, which woidd have shined in a 
 
 palace — or so we thought it. We were made 
 welcome by husband and wife equally — we, 
 and our friend that was with us. — I had 
 almost forgotten him — but B. F. will not so 
 soon forget that meeting, if peradventure he 
 shall read this on the far distant shores where 
 the kangaroo haunts. The fatted calf was 
 made ready, or rather was already so, as if 
 in anticipation of our coming ; and, after an 
 appropriate glass of native wine, never let 
 me forget with what honest pride this hospi- 
 table cousin made us proceed to Wheathanip- 
 stead, to introduce us (<as some new-found 
 rarity) to her mother and sister Gladmans, 
 who did indeed know something more of us, 
 at a time when she almost knew nothing. — 
 With what corresponding kindness we were 
 received by them also — how Bridget's 
 memory, exalted by the occasion, warmed 
 into a thousand half-obliterated recollections 
 of things and j^ersons, to my utter astonish- 
 ment, and her own — and to the astoundment 
 of B. F. who sat by, almost the only thing 
 that was not a cousin there, — old effaced 
 images of more than half-forgotten names 
 and circumstances still crowding back upon 
 her, as words written in lemon come out 
 upon exposure to a fi-iendly warmth, — when 
 I forget all this, then may my country cousins 
 forget me ; and Bridget no more remember, 
 that in the days of weakling infancy I was 
 her tender charge — as I have been her cjire 
 in foolish manhood since — in those pretty 
 pastoral walks, long ago, about Mackery 
 End, in Hertfordshire. 
 
 » 
 
 MY FIRST PLAY. 
 
 At the north end of Cross-court there yet 
 stands a portal, of some architectural preten- 
 sions, though reduced to humble use, serving 
 at present for an entrance to a printing-office. 
 This old door-way, if you are young, reader, 
 you m.ay not know was the identical pit 
 entrance to oldDrury — Gan-ick's Drury — all 
 of it that is left. I never pass it without 
 shaking some forty years from off my 
 shoulders, recurring to the evening when I 
 passed through it to see my first play. The 
 aftemoou had been wet, and the condition of 
 
 our going (the elder folks and myself) was, 
 that the rain should cease. With what a 
 beating heart did I watch from the window 
 the puddles, from the stillness of which I was 
 taurfht to prognosticate the desired cessation ! 
 I seem to remember the last spui-t, and the 
 glee with which I ran to jinnounce it. 
 
 We went with ordera, which my godfather 
 F. had sent us. He kept the oil shop (now 
 Davies's) at the corner of Featherstoue- 
 buildings, in Holbom. F. was a tall grave 
 person, lofty in speech and had pretensions 
 
MY FIRST PLAY. 
 
 above his rank. He associated in those days 
 ■with John Palmer, the comedian, whose gait 
 and bearing he seemed to copy ; if John 
 (which is quite as likely) did not rather 
 borrow somewhat of his manner from my 
 godfather. He was also known to, and 
 visited by, Sheridan. It was to his house in 
 Holbom that young Brinsley brought his 
 first wife on her elopement with him from 
 a boarding-school at Bath — the beautiful 
 Maria Linley. My parents were present 
 (over a quadrille table) when he arrived in 
 the evening with his harmonious charge. 
 From either of these connexions it may be 
 inferred that my godfather could command 
 an order for the then Drury-lane theatre at 
 pleasure — and, indeed, a pretty liberal issue 
 of those cheap billets, in Brinsley's easy 
 autogi-aph, I have heard him say was the 
 sole remuneration which he had received for 
 many years' nightly illumination of the 
 orchestra and vaiious avenues of that theatre 
 • — and he was content it should be so. The 
 honour of Sheridan's familiarity — or sup- 
 posed familiarity — was better to my godfather 
 than money. 
 
 F. was the most gentlemanly of oilmen ; 
 grandiloquent, yet courteous. His delivery 
 of the commonest matters of fact was 
 Ciceronian. He had two Latin words almost 
 constantly in his mouth (how odd sounds 
 Latin from an oilman's lips I), which my 
 better knowledge since has enabled me to 
 correct. In strict pronunciation they should 
 have been sounded vice versA — Vjut in those 
 young yeai'S they impressed me with more 
 awe than they would now do, read aright 
 from Seneca or Varro — in his own peculiar 
 pronunciation, monosyllabically elaborated, 
 or Anglicised, into something like verse verse. 
 By an imposing manner, and the help of 
 these distorted syllables, he climbed (hut 
 that was little) to the highest parochial 
 honours which St. Andrew's has to bestow. 
 
 He is dead — and thus much I thought due 
 to his memory, both lor my first orders 
 (little wondrous talismans ! — slight keys, and 
 insignificant to outward sight, but opening 
 to me more than Arabian j)aradises !) and 
 moreover that by his testamentary beueH- 
 cence I came into possession of the only 
 landed property which I could ever call my 
 own — situate near the road-way vilhiL^e of 
 pleasant Puckeridge, in Hertfordshii'e. When 
 
 I journeyed down to take possession, and 
 planted foot on my own ground, the stately 
 habits of the donor descended upon me, and 
 I strode (shall I confess the vanity ?) with 
 larger paces over my allotment of three 
 quarters of an acre, with its commodious 
 mansion in the midst, with the feeling of an 
 English freeholder that all betwixt sky and 
 centre was my own. The estate has passed 
 into more prudent hands, and nothing but 
 an agrarian can restore it. 
 
 In those days were pit orders. Beslirew 
 the uncomfortable manager who abolished 
 them ! — with one of these we went. I 
 remember the waiting at the door — ^not that 
 which is left — but between that and an 
 inner door in shelter — O when shall I be 
 such an expectant again ! — with the cry of 
 nonpareils, an indispensable play-house ac- 
 companiment in those days. As near a.s I 
 can recollect, the fashionable pronunciation 
 of the theatrical fruiteresses then was, 
 " Chase some oranges, chase some numparels, 
 chase a bill of the play ; " — chase pro chuse. 
 But when we got in, and I beheld the green 
 curtain that veiled a heaven to my imagina- 
 tion, which was soon to be disclosed — the 
 breathless anticipations I endured ! I had 
 seen something like it in the plate prefixed 
 to Troilus and Cx'essida, in Eowe's Shak- 
 speare — the tent scene with Diomede — -and 
 a sight of that plate can always bring back 
 in a measure the feeling of that evening. — 
 The boxes at that time, full of well-di-essed 
 women of quality, projected over the pit : 
 and the pilasters reaching down were adoiiied 
 with a glistering substance (I know not what) 
 under glass (as it seemed), resembling — a 
 homely fancy — but I judged it to be sugar- 
 candy — yet, to myraised imagination, divested 
 of its homelier qualities, it appeared a glorified 
 candy ! — The orchestra lights at length arose, 
 those " fair Auroras ! " Once the bell 
 sounded. It was to ring out yet once again 
 — and, incapable of the anticipation, I 
 reposed my shut eyes in a sort of resignation 
 ui)on the maternal lap. It rang the second 
 time. The curtain drew u]) — I was not past 
 six years old and the play was Artaxerxes ! 
 
 I had dabbled a little in the Univoi-sal 
 History — the ancient jiart of it — .iiid liore 
 was the court of Persia. — It wiis being 
 admitted to a sight of the psist. I took no 
 proper interest in the action going on, for I 
 
MY FIRST PLAY. 
 
 3fi- 
 
 understood not its iniport — ^but I heard the 
 word Darlns, and I was in the midst of 
 Daniel. AH feeling was absorbed in vision. 
 Gorgeons vests, gardens, palaces, princesses, 
 passed before me. I knew not players. I 
 was in Persepolis for the time, and the 
 burning idol of their devotion almost con- 
 verted me into a worshipper. I was awe- 
 struck, and believed those significations to be 
 something more than elemental fires. It 
 was all enchantment and a dream. No such 
 pleasure has since visited me but in dreams. 
 — Harlequin's invasion followed ; where, I 
 remember, the transformation of the magis- 
 trates into reverend beldams seemed to me 
 a piece of grave historic justice, and the 
 tailor carrying his own head to be as sober 
 a vei'ity as the legend of St. Deiiys. 
 
 The next play to which I was taken was 
 the Lady of the Manor, of which, with the 
 exception of some scenery, very faint traces 
 are left in my memory. It was followed liy 
 a pantomime, called Lun's Ghost — a satiric 
 touch, I apprehend, upon Rich, not long since 
 dead — but to my apprehension (too sincere 
 for satire), Lun was as remote a piece of 
 antiquity as Lud — the father of a line of 
 Harlequins — transmitting his dagger of lath 
 (the wooden sceptre) through countless ages. 
 I saw the primeval Motley come from his 
 silent tomb in a ghastly vest of white patch- 
 work, like the apparition of a dead rainbow. 
 So Harlequins (thought I) look when they 
 are dead. 
 
 My third play followed in quick succession. 
 It was the Way of the "World. I think 
 I must have sat at it as grave as a judge ; 
 for, I remember, the hysteric affectations of 
 good Lady Wishfort affected me like some 
 solemn tragic passion. Robinson Crusoe 
 followed ; in which Crusoe, man Friday, and 
 the parrot, were as good and authentic as 
 in the story. — The clownery and pantaloonery 
 of these pantomimes have clean passed out of 
 my head. I believe, I no more laughed at 
 them, than at the same age I should have 
 been disposed to laugh at the grotesque 
 Gothic heads (seeming to me then replete 
 with devout meaning) that gape, and griu, in 
 stone around the inside of the old Hound 
 Church (my church) of the Templars. 
 
 I saw these plays in the season 1781-2, 
 when I was from six to seven years old. 
 After the intervention of six or seven other 
 years (for at school all play-going was in- 
 hibited) I again entered the doors of a 
 theatre. That old Artaxerxes evening had 
 never done ringing in my fancy. I expected 
 the same feelmgs to come again with the 
 saine occasion. But we differ from ourselves 
 less at sixty and sixteen, than the latter does 
 from six. In that interval what had I not 
 lost ! At the first period I knew nothing, 
 understood nothing, discriminated nothing. 
 I felt all, loved all, wondered all — 
 
 Was nourished, I could not tell how — • 
 
 I had left the temple a devotee, and was 
 returned a rationalist. The same things 
 were there materially ; but the emblem, the 
 reference, was gone ! — The green curtain was 
 no longer a veil, drawn between two worlds, 
 the unfolding of which was to bring back 
 past ages to present a " royal ghost," — but a 
 certain quantity of green baize, which was 
 to separate the audience for a given time 
 from certain of their fellow-men who were 
 to come forward and pretend those parts. 
 The lights — the orchestra lights — came up a 
 clumsy machinery. The first ring, and the 
 second ring, was now but a trick of the 
 prompter's bell — which had been, like the 
 note of the cuckoo, a pjhantom of a voice, 
 no hand seen or guessed at which ministered 
 to its warning. The actoi-s w^ere men and 
 women painted. I thought the fault was in 
 them ; but it was in myself, and the altera- 
 tion which those many centuries, — of six 
 short twelvemonths — had wrought in me. 
 — Perhaps it was fortunate for me that the 
 play of the evening was but an indifferent 
 comedy, as it gave me time to crop some 
 unreasonable expectations, which might have 
 interfered with the genuine emotions with 
 which I was soon after enabled to enter upon 
 the first appearance to me of iSIrs. Siddous 
 in Isabella. Comparison and retrospection 
 soon yielded to the present attraction of 
 the scene ; and the theatre became to me, 
 upon a new stock, the most delightful ol 
 recreations. 
 
366 
 
 MODERN GALLANTRY. 
 
 MODERN GALLANTRY, 
 
 In comparing modem with ancient man- 
 ners, we are pleased to compliment ourselves 
 upon the point of gallantry ; a certain obse- 
 quiousness, or deferential respect, which 
 we are supposed to pay to females, as 
 females. 
 
 I shall believe that this principle actuates 
 our conduct, when I can forget, that in the 
 nineteenth century of the era from which 
 we date our civility, we are but just begin- 
 ning to leave off the very frequent practice 
 of whipping females in public, in common 
 with the coarsest male offenders. 
 
 I shall believe it to be influential, when 
 I can shut my eyes to the fact, that in 
 England women are still occasionallj' — 
 hanged. 
 
 I shall believe in it, when actresses are no 
 longer subject to be hissed off a stage by 
 gentlemen. 
 
 I shall believe in it, when Dorimant hands 
 a fish-wife across the kennel ; or assists the 
 apple-woman to pick up her wandering 
 fruit, which some unlucky dray has just 
 dissipated. 
 
 I sliall believe in it, when the Dorimants 
 in humbler life, who would be thought in 
 their way notable adopts in this refinement, 
 shall act upon it in places where they are not 
 known, or think themselves not observed — 
 when I shall see the traveller for some rich 
 tradesman part with his admired box-coat, 
 to spread it over the defenceless shoulders of 
 the poor woman, who is passing to her parish 
 on the roof of the same stage-coach with 
 him, drenched in the rain — when I shall no 
 longer see a woman standing up in the pit of 
 a London theatre, till she is sick and faint 
 with the exertion, with men about her, 
 seated at their ease, and jeering at her dis- 
 tress ; till one, that seems to have more 
 manners or conscience than the rest, signi- 
 ficantly declares " she should be welcome to 
 his seat, if she were a little younger and 
 handsomer." Place this dapper warehouse- 
 man, or that rider, in a circle of tlieir own 
 female acquaintance, and you shall confess 
 
 you have not seen a politer-bred man in 
 I^othbury. 
 
 Lastly, I shall begin to believe that there is 
 some such principle influencing our conduct, 
 when more than one-half of the drudgery 
 and coan-^e servitude of the world shall cease 
 to be perfoiTned by women. 
 
 Until that day conies, I shall never believe 
 this boasted point to be ami;hing more than 
 a conventional fiction ; a pageant got up 
 between the sexes, in a certain rank, and at 
 a certain time of life, in which both find 
 their account equally. 
 
 I shall he even disposed to rank it among 
 the salutary fictions of life, when in polite 
 circles I shall see the same attentions paid 
 to age as to youth, to homely features as to 
 handsome, to coarse complexions as to clear 
 — to the woman, as she is a woman, not as 
 she is a beauty, a fortune, or a title. 
 
 I shall believe it to be something more 
 than a name, wheu a well-dressed gentleman 
 in a well-dressed company can advert to the 
 topic of fenuile old age without e.xciting, and 
 intending to excite, a sneer : — when the 
 phrases " antiquated virginity," and such a 
 one has "overstood her market," pronounced 
 in good company, shall raise immediate 
 offence in man, or woman, that shall hear 
 them spoken. 
 
 Joseph Paice, of Bread-street-hill, mer- 
 chant, and one of the Directors of the South- 
 Sea company — the same to whom Edwards, 
 the Shakspeare commentator, has addressed 
 a fine sonnet — was the only pattern of con- 
 sistent gallantry I have met with. He took 
 me under his shelter at an early age, and 
 bestowed some pains upon me. I owe to his 
 precepts and example whatever there is of 
 the man of business (and that is not much) 
 in my composition. It was not his fault 
 that I did not profit more. Tiiough bred a 
 Presbyterian, and brought uj) a merchant, 
 he was the finest gentleman of his time. 
 He had not one system of attention to 
 females in the orawing-roora, and another in 
 the shop, or at the stall. I do not mean that 
 
MODERN GALLANTRY. 
 
 367 
 
 » 
 
 he made no distinction. But he never lost 
 sight of sex, oi- overlooked it in the casual- 
 ties of a disadvantageous situation. I have 
 seen him stand bareheaded — smile if you 
 please — to a poor servant girl, while she has 
 been inquiring of him the way to some 
 street — in such a posture of unforced civility, 
 as neither to embarrass her in the accept- 
 ance, nor himself in the oflEer, of it. He was 
 no dangler, in the common acceptation of 
 the word, after women : but he reverenced 
 and upheld, in every form in which it came 
 before him, womanhood. I have seen him — 
 nay, smile not — tenderly escorting a market- 
 woman, whom he had encountered in a 
 shower, exalting his umbrella over her poor 
 basket of fruit, that it might receive no 
 damage, with as much carefulness as if she 
 had been a Countess. To the reverend form 
 of Female Eld he would yield the wall 
 (though it were to an ancient beggar-woman) 
 with more ceremony than we can aiford to 
 show our gi-andams. He was the Preux 
 Chevalier of Age ; the Sir Calidoi'e, or 
 Sir Tristan, to those who have no Calidores 
 or Tristans to defend them. The roses, that 
 had long faded thence, still bloomed for him 
 in those withered and yellow cheeks. 
 
 He was never married, but in his youth 
 he paid his addresses to the beautiful Susan 
 Winstanley — old Winstanley's daughter of 
 Clapton — who dying in the early days of 
 their courtship, confirmed in him the reso- 
 lution of perpetual bachelorship. It was 
 during their short courtship, he told me, 
 that he had been one day treating his mis- 
 tress with a profusion of civil speeches — the 
 common gallantries — to which kind of thing 
 she had hitherto manifested no repugnance 
 — but in this instance with no effect. He 
 could not obtain from her a decent acknow- 
 ledgment in return. She rather seemed to 
 resent his compliments. He could not set it 
 down to caprice, for the lady had always 
 shown herself above that littleness. When 
 lie ventured on the following day, finding 
 her a little better humoui-ed, to expostulate 
 with her on her coldness of yesterday, she 
 confessed, with her usual frankness, tllat she 
 had no sort of dislike to his attentions ; 
 that she could even endure some high-flown 
 compliments ; that a young woman placed 
 in her situation had a right to expect all sort 
 of civil things said to her ; that she hoped 
 
 she could digest a dose of adulation, short 
 of insincerity, with a.s little injury to her 
 humility as most young women : but that— 
 a little before he had commenced his compli- 
 ments — she had overheard him by accident, 
 in rather rough language, rating a young 
 woman, who had not brought home his 
 cravats quite to the appointed time, and she 
 thought to herself, " As I am Miss Susan 
 Winstanley, and a young lady — a reputed 
 beauty, and known to be a fortune, — I can 
 have my choice of the finest speeches from 
 the mouth of this very fine gentleman who 
 is courting me — but if I had been poor 
 Mary Such-a-one {naminc] the milliner), — 
 and had failed of bringing home the cravats 
 to the appointed hour- — though perhaps I had 
 sat up half the night to forward them — what 
 sort of compliments should I have received 
 then 1 — And my woman's pride came to my 
 assistance ; and I thought, that if it were 
 only to do me honour, a female, like myself, 
 might have received handsomer usage : and 
 I was determined not to accept any fine 
 speeches, to the compromise of that sex, the 
 belonging to wliich was after all my strongest 
 claim and title to them." 
 
 I think the lady discovered both gene- 
 rosity, and a just way of thinking, in this 
 rebuke Avhich she gave her lover ; and I have 
 sometimes imagined, that the uncommon 
 strain of courtesy, which through life regu- 
 lated the actions and behaviour of my friend 
 towards all of womankind indiscriminately, 
 owed its happy origin to this seasonable 
 lesson from the lips of his lamented mistress. 
 
 I wish the whole female world would en- 
 tertain the same notion of these things that 
 Miss Winstanley showed. Then we should 
 see something of the spirit of consistent 
 gallantry ; and no longer witness the anomaly 
 of the same man — a pattern of true polite- 
 ness to a wife — of cold contempt, or rudeness, 
 to a sister — the idolater of his female mis- 
 tress — the disparager and despiser of his 
 no less female aunt, or unfortunate — still 
 female — maiden ftousin. Just so much re- 
 spect as a woman derogates from her own 
 sex, in whatever condition placed — her hand- 
 maid, or dependant — she deserves to have 
 diminished from herself on that score ; and 
 probably will feel the diminution, when youth, 
 and beauty, and advantages, not inseparable 
 fi-om sex, shall lose of their attraction. 
 
368 
 
 THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE. 
 
 \\niat a woman shoiild demand of a man attentions, incident to individual preference, 
 in courtsliip, or after it, is first — respect , be so many pretty additaments and orua- 
 
 for her as she is a woman ; — and next to 
 that — to be respected by him above all other 
 women. But let her stand upon her female 
 
 ments — as many, and as fanciful, as you 
 please — to that main structure. Let her 
 first lesson be with sweet Susan Winstanlev 
 
 character as upon a foundation ; and let the i — to reverence her sex. 
 
 THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLK 
 
 I WAS bom, and passed the first seven 
 years of my life, in the Temple. Its church, 
 its halls, its gardens, its foimtain, its river, I 
 had almost said — for in those young years, 
 what was this king of rivers to me but a 
 stream that watered our pleasant places 1 
 — these are of my oldest recollections. I 
 repeat, to this day, no verses to myself more 
 frequently, or with kindlier emotion, than 
 those of Spenser, where he speaks of this 
 spot. 
 
 There -when they came, -whereas those bricky towers, 
 The which on Themraes brode asjed back cloth ride, 
 Where now the studious lawyers have tlieir bowers, 
 There whylome wont the Teniplcr knights to bide, 
 Till they decayed through pride. 
 
 Indeed, it is the most elegant spot in the 
 metropolis. What a transition for a country- 
 man visiting London for the first time — the 
 passing from the crowded Strand or Fleet- 
 street, by unexpected avenues, into its mag- 
 nificent ample squares, its classic green re- 
 cesses ! What a cheerful, liberal look hath 
 that portion of it, which, from three sides, 
 overlooks the greater garden ; that goodly 
 pile 
 
 Of building strong, albeit of Paper hight, 
 
 confronting with massy contrast, the lighter, 
 older, more fantastically shrouded one, 
 named of Harcourt, with the cheerful Crown 
 Office-row (place of my kindly engendure), 
 right opposite the stately stream, which 
 washes tlie garden-foot with her yet scarcely 
 trade-polluted waters, and seems but just 
 weaned from her Twickenham Naiades ! a 
 man would give something to have been 
 born in such ])laces. What a collegiate 
 aspect ha-s that fine Elizabethan hall, where 
 the fountain plays, which I have made to 
 rise and fall, how many times ! to the 
 
 astoundment of the young urchins, my con- 
 temporaries, who, not being able to guess at 
 its recondite machinery, were almost tempted 
 to hail the wondrous work as magic ! What 
 an antique air had the now almost efiaced 
 sun-dials, with their moral inscriptions, 
 seeming coevals with that Time which they 
 measured, and to take their revelations of its 
 flight immediately from heaven, holding cor- 
 re.spondence with the fountain of light ! 
 How would the dai"k line steal imperceptibly 
 on, watched by the eye of childhood, eager 
 to detect its movement, never catched, nice 
 as an evanescent cloud, or the first arrests of 
 sleep ! 
 
 Ah ! yet doth beauty like a dial hand 
 
 Steal from his figure, and no p;icc perceived ! 
 
 What a dead thing is a clock, with its 
 ponderous embowelments of lead and brass, 
 its pert or solemn dulness of communication, 
 compared with the simple altar-like struc- 
 ture, and silent heart-language of the old 
 dial ! It stood as the garden god of Chris- 
 tian gardens, ^^^ly is it almost everywhere 
 vanished ? If its business use be superseded 
 by more elaborate inventions, its moral uses, 
 its beauty, might have pleaded for its con- 
 tinuance. It spoke of moderate labours, of 
 jileasures not protracted after sun-set, of 
 temperance, and good houre. It was the 
 primitive clock, the horologe of the firet 
 world. Adam could scarce have missed it 
 in Paradise. It was the measure ajij^ropriate 
 for sweet jilants and flowers to sjtring by, 
 for the birds to apjiortion their silver warl>- 
 llngs by, for flocks to piisture and be led to 
 fold by. The shepherd "carved it out 
 quaintly in the sun ;" and, turning philo- 
 8()j)her by the very occupation, provided it 
 with mottoes more touching than tomlw 
 
THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE. 
 
 869 
 
 stones. It was a pretty device of the gar- 
 dener, recorded by Marvell, who, in the days 
 of artificial gardening, made a dial ov;t of 
 herbs and flowers. I must quote his verses 
 a little higher up, for they are full, as all his 
 serious poetry was, of a witty delicacy. They 
 will not come in awkwardly, I hope, in a talk 
 of fountains and sun-dials. He is speaking 
 of sweet garden scenes : — 
 
 >< 
 
 What wondrous life is this I lead! 
 
 Kipe apples drop about my head. 
 
 The luscious clusters of the vine 
 I Upon my mouth do crush their wine. 
 : The nectarine, and curious peach. 
 
 Into my hands themselves do reach. 
 
 Stumbling on melons, as I pass, 
 
 Insnarcd with flowers, I fall on grass. 
 
 Meanwhile the mind from pleasure less 
 
 Withdraws into its happiness. 
 
 The mind, that ocean, where each kind 
 
 Does straight its own resemblance find ; 
 
 Yet it creates, transcending these. 
 
 Far other worlds and other seas ; 
 
 Annihilating all that's made 
 — To a green thought in a green shade. 
 
 Here at the fountain's sliding foot. 
 
 Or at some fruit-tree's mossy root, 
 
 Casting the body's vest aside. 
 
 My soul into the boughs docs glide ; 
 
 There, like a bird, it sits and sings. 
 
 Then wets and claps its silver wings, 
 
 And, till prepared for longer flight, 
 
 Waves in its plumes the various light. 
 
 How well the skilful gardener drew, 
 
 Of flowers and herbs, this dial new ! 
 
 A%'herc, from above, the milder sun 
 
 Does through a fragrant zodiac run ; 
 
 And, as it works, the industrious bee 
 
 Computes its time as well as we. 
 
 How could such sweet and wholesome hours 
 -c^ Be reckon'd, but witli herbs and flowers ? * 
 
 The artificial fountains of the metropolis 
 are, in like manner, fast vanishing. Most of 
 them are dried up or bricked over. Yet, 
 where one is left, as in that little green nook 
 behind the South-Sea House, what a fresh- 
 ness it gives to the di-eary pile ! Four little 
 winged marble boys used to play their virgin 
 fancies, spouting out ever fresh streams from 
 their innocent-wanton lips in the square of 
 Lincoln's Inn, when I was no bigger than 
 they were figured. Tiiey are gone, and the 
 spring choked ' up. The fashion, they tell 
 me, is gone by, and these things are esteemed 
 childish. A\hy not, then, gratify children, 
 by letting them stand ? Lawyers, I suppose, 
 were children once. They are awakening 
 images to them at least. Why must every- 
 thing smack of man and mannish ? Is the 
 world all grown up ? Is childhood dead ? 
 
 • from a copy of verses entitled The Garden. 
 
 Or is there not in the bosoms of the wisest 
 and the best some of the child's heart left, to 
 respond to its earliest enchantments 1 The 
 figures were grotesque. Are the stiff-wigged 
 living figures, that still flitter and chatter 
 about that area, less Gothic in appearance ? 
 or is the splutter of their hot rhetoric one- 
 half so refreshing and innocent as the little 
 cool playful streams those exploded cherubs 
 uttered ? 
 
 They have lately gothicised the entrance 
 to the Inner Temple-hall, and the library 
 front ; to assimilate them, I suppose, to the 
 body of the hall, which they do not at all 
 resemble. What is become of the winged 
 horse that stood over the former ? a stately 
 amis ! and who has removed those frescoes 
 of the Virtues, which Italianised the end of 
 the Paper-buildings 1 — my first hint of alle- 
 gory ! They must account to me for these 
 things, which I miss so greatly. 
 
 The terrace is, indeed, left, which we used 
 to call the parade ; but the traces are passed 
 away of the footsteps which made its pave- 
 ment awful ! It is become common and 
 profane. The old benchers had it almost 
 sacred to themselves, in the forepart of the 
 day at least. They might not l-e sided or 
 jostled. Their air and dress asserted the 
 parade. You left wide spaces betwixt you 
 when you passed them. We walk on even 
 terms witli their successors. The roguish 
 
 eye of J 11, ever ready to be delivered of 
 
 a jest, almost invites a stranger to vie a 
 repartee with it. But what insolent familiar 
 durst have mated Thomas Coventry ?^ 
 whose person was a quadrate, his step massy 
 and elephantine, his face square as the lion's, 
 his gait peremptory and path-keeping, indi- 
 vertible from his way as a moving column, 
 the scarecrow of his inferiors, the brow- 
 beater of equals and superiors, who made a 
 solitude of children wherever he came, for 
 they fled his insufferable presence, as they 
 would have shunned an Elisha bear. His 
 growl was as thunder in their ears, whether 
 he spake to them in mirth or in rebuke ; his 
 invitatory notes being, indeed, of all, the 
 most repulsive and horrid. Clouds of snufl" 
 aggravating the natural terroi-s of his speech, 
 broke from each majestic nostril, darkening 
 the air. He took it, not by pinches, but a 
 palmful at once, — diving for it under the 
 mighty flaps of his old-fashioned waistcoat 
 
 B B 
 
870 
 
 THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE. 
 
 pocket ; his waistcoat red and angry, his ' 
 coat dark rappee, tinctured by dye original, 
 and by adjuncts, witli buttons of obsolete 
 gold. And so he paced tlie terrace. 
 
 By his side a milder form was sometimes 
 to be seen ; the pensive gentility of Samuel 
 Salt. They were coevals, and had nothing 
 but that and their benchership in common, i 
 In i^olitics Salt was a whig, and Coventry a 
 staunch tory. Many a sarciistic growl did 
 the latter cast out — for Coventry had a 
 rough spinous humour — at the political con- 
 federates of his associate, which rebounded 
 from the gentle bosom of the latter like 
 cannon-balls from wool. You could not ruffle 
 Samuel Salt. 
 
 S. had the reputation of being a very 
 clever man, and of excellent discernment in 
 the chamber practice of the law. I suspect 
 his knowledge did not amount to much. 
 When a case of difficult disposition of money, 
 testamentary or otherwise, came before him, 
 he ordinarily handed it over, with a few in- 
 structions, to his man Lovel, who was a 
 quick little fellow, and would despatch it 
 out of hand by the light of natural under- 
 standing, of which he had an uncommon 
 share. It was incredible what repute for 
 talents S. enjoyed by the mere trick of 
 gravity. He was a shy man ; a child might 
 pose him in a minute — indolent and procras- 
 tinating to the last degree. Yet men would 
 give him credit for vast application, in spite 
 of himself. He was not to be trusted with 
 himself with impunity. He never dressed 
 for a dinner i)ai'ty but he forgot his sword — 
 they wore swords then — or some other neces- 
 sary part of his equipage. Lovel had his eye 
 upon liim on all these occasions, and ordinarily 
 gave him his cue. If there was anything 
 which he could speak unseasonably, he was 
 sure to do it. — He was to dine at a relative's 
 of the unfortunate Miss Blandy on the day 
 of her execution ; — and L., who had a wary 
 foresight of his probable hallucinations, be- 
 fore lie set out schooled him, with great 
 anxiety, not in any possible manner to allude 
 to her story that day. S. promised faithfully 
 to observe the injunction. He had not been 
 seated m the parlour, where the company 
 ■was expecting the dinner summons, four 
 minutes, when, a pause in the conversation 
 ensuing, he got up, looked out of window, 
 and pulling down his ruffles — an ordinary 
 
 motion with him — observed, " it was a 
 gloomy day," and added, " Miss Blandy must 
 be hanged by this time, I suppose." Instances 
 of this sort were perpetual. Yet S. was 
 thought by some of the greatest men of his 
 time a fit person to be consulted, not alone 
 in matters pertaining to the law, but in the 
 ordinary niceties and embarrassments of 
 conduct — from force of manner entirely. 
 He never laughed. He had the same good 
 fortune among the female world, — was a 
 known toast with the ladies, and one or two 
 are said to have died for love of him — I sup- 
 pose, because he never trifled or talked gal- 
 lantry witli them, or paid them, indeed, 
 hardly common attentions. He had a fine 
 face and person, but wanted, methought, the 
 spirit that should have shown them off with 
 advantage to the women. His eye lacked 
 
 lustre. — Not so, thought Susan P ; who, 
 
 at the advanced age of sixty, was seen, in 
 the cold evening time, unaccompanied, wet- 
 
 ing the pavement of B d Row, with tears 
 
 that fell in drops which might be heard, be- 
 cause her friend had died that day — he, 
 whom she had pursued with a hopeless pas- 
 sion for the last forty years — a passion, 
 which years could not extinguish or abate ; 
 nor the long-resolved, yet gently-enforced, 
 puttiugs-off of unrelenting bachelorhood dis- 
 suade from its cherished purpose. Mild 
 
 Susan P , thou hast now thy friend in 
 
 heaven ! 
 
 Thomas Coventry was a cadet of the noble 
 family of that name. He passed his youth 
 in contracted circumstances, which gave him 
 early those parsimonious habits wliich in 
 after life never forsook him ; so that with 
 one windfall or another, about the time I 
 knew him he was master of four or five 
 hundred thousand pounds ; nor did he look 
 or walk worth a moidore less. He lived in 
 a gloomy house opposite the pump in Ser- 
 jeant's-inn. Fleet-street. J., the counsel, is 
 doing self-imposed penance in it, for what 
 reason I divine not, at this day. C had an 
 agieeable seat at North Cray, wliere he 
 seldom spent above a day or two at a time 
 in the summer ; but preferred, during the 
 hot months, standing at his window in this 
 damp, close, well-like mansion, to watch, ;is 
 he said, "the mai<ls drawing water all day 
 long." I suspect lie liad his within-door 
 reasons for the preference, llic curnus tt 
 
THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE. 
 
 371 
 
 arma fuSre. He might think his ti'easnres 
 more safe. His house had the aspect of a 
 strong-box. C. was a close hunks — a hoarder 
 rather than a miser — or, if a miser, none of 
 the mad Elwes breed, who have brought dis- 
 credit upon a character which cannot exist 
 without certain admirable points of steadi- 
 ness and unity of purpose. One may hate a 
 true miser, but cannot, I suspect, so easily 
 despise him. By taking care of the pence he 
 is often enabled to part with the pounds, 
 upon a scale that leaves us careless generous 
 fellows halting at an immeasurable distance 
 behind. C. gave away 30,000^. at once in 
 his life-time to a blind charity. His house- 
 keeping was severely looked after, but he 
 kept the table of a gentleman. He would 
 know who came in and Mho went out of his 
 house, but his kitchen chimney was never 
 suffered to freeze. 
 
 Salt was his opposite in this, as in all — 
 never knew what he was worth in the world ; 
 and having but a competency for his rank, 
 which his indolent habits were little calcu- 
 lated to improve, might have suffered severely 
 if he had not had honest people about him. 
 Lovel took care of everything. He was at 
 once his clerk, his good servant, his dresser, 
 his friend, his " flapper," his guide, stop- 
 watch, auditor, treasurer. He did nothing 
 without consulting Lovel, or failed in any- 
 thing without expecting and fearing his ad- 
 monishing. He put himself almost too much 
 in his hands, had they not been the purest 
 in the world. He resigned his title almost 
 to respect as a master, if L. could ever have 
 forgotten for a moment that he was a ser- 
 vant. 
 
 I knew this Lovel. He was a man of an 
 incorrigible and losing honesty. A good 
 fellow withal, and " would strike." In the 
 cause of the oppressed he never considei-ed 
 inequalities, or calculated the number of his 
 opponents. He once wrested a sword out of 
 the hand of a man of quality that had drawn 
 upon him, and pommelled him severely with 
 the hilt of it. The swordsman had offered 
 insult to a female — an occasion upon 'which 
 no odds against him could have prevented 
 the interference of Lovel. He would stand 
 next day bareheaded to the same person 
 modestly to excuse his interference — for L. 
 never forgot rank where something better 
 was not concerned. L. was the liveliest 
 
 little fellow breathing, had a face as gay as 
 Garrick's, whom he was said greatly to re- 
 semble (I have a portrait of him which con- 
 firms it), possessed a fine turn for humorous 
 poetry — next to Swift and Prior — moulded 
 heads in clay or plaster of Paris to admira- 
 tion, by the dint of natural genius merely ; 
 turned cribbage boards, and such small 
 cabinet toys, to perfection ; took a hand at 
 quadrille or bowls with equal facility ; made 
 punch better than any man of his degree in 
 England ; had the merriest quips and con- 
 ceits ; and was altogether as brimful of 
 rogueries and inventions as you could desire. 
 He was a brother of the angle, moreover, 
 and just such a free, heai'ty, honest com- 
 panion as Mr. Izaak Walton would have 
 chosen to go a-fishing with. I saw him in 
 his old age and the decay of his faculties, 
 palsy-smitten, in the last sad stage of human 
 weakness — " a remnant most forlorn of what 
 he was," — yet even then his eye would light 
 up upon the mention of his favourite Garrick. 
 He was greatest, he would say, in Bayes — 
 " was upon the stage nearly throughout the 
 whole performance, and as busy as a bee." 
 At intervals, too, he would speak of his for- 
 mer life, and how he came up a little boy 
 from Lincoln, to go to service, and how his 
 mother cried at parting with him, and how 
 he returned, after some few years' absence, 
 in his smart new livery, to see her, and she 
 blessed herself at the change, and could 
 hardly be brought to believe that it was 
 " her own bairn." And then, the excitement 
 subsiding, he would weep, till I have wished 
 that sad second-childhood might have a 
 mother still to lay its head upon her lap. 
 But the common mother of us all in no long 
 time after i-eceived him gently into hera. 
 
 With Coventry, and with Salt, in their 
 walks upon the terrace, most commonly 
 Peter Pierson would join to make up a 
 third. They did not walk linked arm-in- 
 arm in those days — "as now our stout 
 triumvirs sweep the streets," — but generally 
 with both hands folded behind them for 
 state, or with one at least behind, the other 
 carrying a cane. P. was a benevolent, but 
 not a prepossessing man. He had that in 
 his face which you could not term unhappi- 
 ness ; it rather implied an incapacity of 
 being happy. His cheeks were colourless, 
 even to whiteness. His look was uninv'ting, 
 
 B B 2 
 
S72 
 
 THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE. 
 
 resembling (but without his sourness) that 
 of our great philanthropist. I know that he 
 did good acts, but I could never make out 
 what he was. Contemporary with these, 
 but subordinate, was Daines Barringtou — 
 another oddity — he walked burly and square 
 — in imitation, I think, of Coventry — how- 
 belt he attained not to the dignity of liis 
 prototype. Nevertheless, he did pretty well, 
 upon the strength of being a tolerable anti- 
 quarian, and having a brother a bishop. 
 When the account of his year's treasurership 
 came to be audited tlie following singidur 
 charge was unanimously disallowed by the 
 bench : "Item, disbursed Mr. Allen, the gar- 
 dener, twenty shillings for stuff" to poison tlie 
 sparrows, by my oi'ders." Next to him was 
 old Barton — a jolly negation, who took u])on 
 him the ordering of the bills of fare for the 
 parliament chamber, where the benchers 
 dine — answering to the combination rooms 
 at College — much to the easement of his less 
 epicurean brethren. I know nothing more 
 of him. — Then Bead, and Twopeny — Read, 
 good-humoured and personable — Twopeny, 
 good-humoured, but thin, and felicitous in 
 jests upon his own figure. If T. was thin, 
 Wharry was attenuated and fleeting. Many 
 must remember him (for he was rather of 
 later date) and his singular gait, which was 
 performed by three steps and a jump regu- 
 larly succeeding. The steps were little 
 eflForts, like that of a child beginning to walk ; 
 the jump comparatively vigorous, as a foot 
 to an inch. Where he learned this figure, 
 or what occasioned it, I could never discover. 
 It was neither graceful in itself, nor seemed 
 to answer the purpose any better than com- 
 mon walking. The extreme tenuity of his 
 frame, I suspect, set him upon it. It was a 
 trial of ])oi.sing. Tvvoijeny would often rally 
 him upon liis leanness, and hail him as Bro- 
 ther Lusty ; but W. had no relish of a joke. His 
 features were spiteful. I have heard that he 
 would pinch his cat's ejirs extremely when 
 anytliing liad offended him, Jackson — the 
 omniticieut Jackson he was called — was of 
 this period. He had the reputation of i>os- 
 sessing more multifarious knowledge than 
 any man of liis time. He was the Friar 
 Bacon of tlie less literate portion of the 
 Teuij)le. I remember a pleasant passage of 
 the cook apjjlying to him, with much for- 
 mality of ajiology, for instructions how to 
 
 ■write down edge bone of beef in his bill of 
 <;ommons. He wa.s supposed to know, if any 
 man in the world did. He decided the ortho- 
 graphy to be — as I liave given it — forti- 
 fying his authority with such anatomical 
 reasons as dismissed the manciple (for the 
 time) learned and happy. Some do spell it 
 yet, perversely, aitch bone, from a fanciful 
 resemblance between its shape and that of 
 the aspirate so denominated. I had almost 
 forgotten Mingay with the iron hand — but 
 he was somewhat later. He had lo.'?t his 
 right hand by some accident, and supplied it 
 with a grappling-hook, which he wielded 
 with a tolerable adroitness. I detected the 
 substitute before I was old enough to reason 
 whether it were artificial or not. I remem- 
 ber the astonishment it raised in me. He 
 was a blustering, loud-talking person ; and I 
 reconciled the phenomenon to my ideas as 
 an emblem of power — somewhat like the 
 horns in the forehead of Michael Angelo's 
 Moses. Baron Maseres, who walks (or did 
 till very lately) in the costume of the reign 
 of George the Second, closes my imperfect 
 recollections of the old benchers of the Inner 
 Temple. 
 
 Fantastic forms, whither are ye fled ? Or, 
 if the like of you exist, why exist they no 
 more for me ? Ye inexplicable, half-under- 
 stood appearances, why comes in reason to 
 tear away the preternatural mist, bright or 
 gloomy, that enshrouded you ? Why make 
 ye so sorry a figure in my relation, who 
 made up to me — to my childish eyes — the 
 mythology of the Temple 1 In those days I 
 saw Gods, as "old men covered with a 
 mantle," walking upon the earth. Let the 
 dreams of classic idolatry perish, — extinct be 
 the fairies and fairy trumpery of legendary 
 fabling, in the heart of cliildhood there will, 
 for ever, spring up a well of innocent or 
 wholesome superstition — the seeds of exag- 
 geration will be busy there, and vitsU — from 
 every-day forms educing the unknown and 
 the uncommon. In that little Goshen there 
 will be light when the grown world flounders 
 about in the dai-kness of sense and mate- 
 riality. While childhood, and while dream.s, 
 reducing childhood, shall be left, ipiagination 
 sliall not have .sj)read her holy wings toUdly 
 to lly the earth. 
 
 r.S. — I have done injustice to the soft 
 
GRACE BEFORE MEAT. 
 
 S7S 
 
 shade of Samuel Salt. See what it is to 
 trust to imperfect memory, and the erring 
 notices of childhood ! Yet I protest I always 
 thought that he had been a bachelor ! This 
 gentleman, R. N. informs me, married young, 
 and losing his lady in cliildbed, within tlie 
 first year of their union, fell into a deep 
 melancholy, from the effects of which, pro- 
 bably, he never thoroughly recovered. In 
 what a new light does this place his rejection 
 (O call it by a gentler name !) of mild Susan 
 P , unravelling into beauty certain pecu- 
 liarities of this very shy and retiring cha- 
 racter ! Henceforth let no one receive the 
 narratives of Elia for true records ! They 
 are, in truth, but shadows of fact — verisimi- 
 litudes, not verities — or sitting but upon the 
 remote edges and outskirts of history. He 
 is no such honest chronicler as K. N., and 
 would have done better perhaps to have con- 
 sulted that gentleman before he sent these 
 incondite reminiscences to press. But the 
 worthy sub-treasurer — who respects his old 
 and his new masters — would but have been 
 puzzled at the indecorous liberties of Elia. 
 The good man wots not, peradventure, of the 
 licence which Magazines have arrived at in 
 this plain-speaking age, or hardly dreams of 
 
 their existence beyond the Gentleinan''s — his 
 furthest monthly excursions in this nature 
 having been long confined to the holy ground 
 of honest Urhaii's obituary. May it be long 
 before his own name shall help to swell those 
 columns of unenvied flattery! — Meantime. 
 O ye New Benchers of the Inner Temple, 
 cherish him kindly, for he is liimself the 
 kindliest of human creatures. Should infir 
 mities overtake him — he is yet in green and 
 vigorous senility — make allowances for them, 
 remembering that " ye yourselves are old." 
 So may the Winged Horse, your ancient 
 badge and cognisance, still flourish ! so may 
 future Hookers and Seldens illustrate your 
 church and chambers ! so may the sparrow.s, 
 in default of more melodious quiristers, un- 
 poisoned hop about your walks ; so may the 
 fresh-coloured and cleanly nursery-maid, 
 who, by leave, airs her playful charge in 
 your stately gardens, drop he)- prettiest blush- 
 ing curtsy as ye pass, reductive of juvenes- 
 cent emotion ! so may the younkers of this 
 generation eye you, pacing your stately ter- 
 race, with the same superstitious veneration 
 with which the child Elia gazed on the 
 Old Worthies that solemnised the parade 
 before ye ! 
 
 GRACE BEFORE MEAT. 
 
 The custom of saying grace at meals had, 
 probably, its origin in the early times of the 
 world, and the hunter-state of man, when 
 dinners were precarious things, and a full 
 meal was something more than a common 
 V;lessing ! when a belly-full was a wind-fall, 
 and looked like a special providence. In the 
 shouts and triumphal songs with which, after 
 a season of sharp abstinence, a lucky booty 
 of deer's or goat's flesh would naturally be 
 ushered home, existed, perhaps, the germ of 
 the modern grace. It is not othei-wise easy 
 to be understood, why the blessing of fbod — 
 the act of eating — should liave had a pai-ti- 
 cular expression of thanksgiving annexed to 
 it, distinct fx-om that implied and silent grati- 
 tude with which we are expected to enter 
 upon the enjoyment of the many other various 
 gifts and good things of existence. 
 
 I own that I am disposed to say grace 
 upon twenty other occasions in the course of 
 the day besides my dinnei*. I want a form 
 for setting out upon a pleasant walk, for a 
 moonlight ramble, for a fi-iendly meeting, or 
 a solved problem. Why have we none for 
 books, those spiritual repasts — a gi'ace before 
 Milton — a grace before Shakspeare — a devo- 
 tional exercise proiier to be said before 
 reading the Fairy Queen ? — but the received 
 ritual having prescribed these forms to the 
 solitary ceremony of mauducation, I shall 
 confine my observations to the • experience 
 which I have had of the grace, properly so 
 called ; commending my new scheme for 
 extension to a niche in the grand jjhilosophi- 
 cal, poetical, and perchance in part heretical, 
 liturgy, now compiling by my friend Homo 
 Human us, for the use of a certain snug <^ou- 
 
374 
 
 GRACE BEFORE MEAT. 
 
 gregation of Utopian Eabelaesiaii Ch ristians, 
 no matter where assembled. 
 
 The form, then, of the benediction before 
 eating has its beauty at a poor man's table, 
 or ;»t the simple and unprovocative repast of 
 children. It is here that the gi-ace becomes 
 exceedingly graceful. The indigent man, 
 who hardly knows whether he shall have a 
 meal the next day gr not, sits down to his 
 fare with a present sense of the blessing, 
 which can be but feebly acted by the rich, 
 into whose minds the conception of wanting 
 a dinner could never, bvit by some extreme 
 theory, have entered. The proper end of 
 food — the animal sustenance — is barely con- 
 templated by them. The poor man's bread 
 is his daily bread, literally his bread for the 
 day. Their courses are perennial. 
 
 Again the plainest diet seems the fittest to 
 be preceded by the gi-ace. That which is 
 least stimulative to appetite, leaves the mind 
 most free for foreign considerations. A man 
 may feel thankful, heartily thankful, over a 
 dish of plain mutton with turnips, and have 
 leisure to reflect upon the ordinance and 
 institution of eating ; when he shall confess 
 a pertui'bation of mind, inconsistent with the 
 purposes of the grace, at the presence of 
 venison or turtle. When I have sate (a 
 rarus /iOS2}es) at rich men's tables, with the 
 savoury soup and messes steaming up the 
 nostrils, and UKjiatening the lips of the guests 
 with desire and a distracted choice, I have 
 felt the introduction of that ceremony to be 
 unseasonable. With the ravenous orgasm 
 upon you, it seems impertinent to interpose 
 a religious sentiment. It is a confusion of 
 purpose to mutter out praises from a mouth 
 that waters. The heats of ei^icurism put out 
 the gentle flame of devotion. The incense 
 which rises round is jiagan, and the belly- 
 god intercepts it for his own. The very 
 excess of the provision beyond the needs, 
 takes away all sense of proportion between 
 the end and means. The giver is veiled by 
 bis gifts. You are startled at the injustice of 
 returning thanks — for what ? — for having too 
 much, while so many starve. It is to praise 
 the Gods ami.ss. 
 
 I have observed this awkwardness felt, 
 scarce consciously perhaps, by the good man 
 who says the grace. I have seen it in clergy- 
 men and others — a sort of shame — a sense of 
 tlie co-pi'esence of circumstances which un- 
 
 hallow the blessing. After a devotional tone 
 put on for a few seconds, how rapidly the 
 speaker will fall into his common voice ! 
 helping himself or his neighbour, as if to get 
 rid of some uiieasy sensation of lij'pocrisy. 
 Not that the good man was a hypocrite, or 
 was not most conscientious in the discharge 
 of the duty ; but he felt in his inmost mind 
 the incompatibility of the scene and the 
 viands before him with the exercise of a 
 calm and rational gratitude. 
 
 I hear somebody exclaim, — Would you 
 have Christians sit down at table, like hogs 
 to their troughs, without remembering the 
 Giver ? — no — I would have them sit down as 
 Christians, remembering the Giver, and less 
 like hogs. Or if their appetites must run 
 riot, and they must pamper themselves with 
 delicacies for which east and west are ran- 
 sacked, I would have them postpone their 
 benediction to a fitter season, when appetite 
 is laid ; when the still small voice can be 
 heard, and the reason of the grace returns — 
 with temperate diet and restricted dishes. 
 Gluttony and surfeiting ai'e no proper occa- 
 sions for thanksgiving. When Jeshurun 
 waxed f:it, we read that he kicked. Virgil 
 knew the harpy-nature better, when he put 
 into the mouth of Celieno anything but a 
 blessing. We may be gi-atefuUy sensible of 
 the deliciousness of some kinds of food beyond 
 others, though that is a meiuier and inferior 
 gratitude : but the proper object of the grace 
 is sustenance, not relishes ; daily bread, not 
 delicacies ; the means of life, and not the 
 means of pampering the carcass. With what 
 frame or composure, I wonder, can a city 
 chaplain pronounce his beuodietion at some 
 great Hall-feast, when he knows that his 
 last concluding pious word — and that in all 
 probability, the sacred name which he 
 preaches — is but the signal for so many 
 impatient harpies to commence their foul 
 orgies, with as little sense of true thank- 
 fulness (which is temperance) as those 
 Virgilian fowl I It is well if the good 
 man himself does not feel his devotions a 
 little clouded, those foggy sensuous steams 
 mingling with and polluting the pure altar 
 sacritice. 
 
 The severest satire upon full tables and 
 surfeits is the banquet which Satan, in tho 
 " Paradise Eogained," jjrovides for a tcmj>t«- 
 tion in the wilderness: 
 
 I 
 
GRACE BEFORE MEAT. 
 
 375 
 
 A table richly spread in rcRal mode 
 With dishes piled, and meats of noblest sort 
 And savour ; beasts of chase, or fowl of iramc. 
 In pastry built, or from the spit, or boiled, 
 Gris-amber-steamed ; all fish from sea or shore. 
 Freshet or purling brook, for wliich was drained 
 Pontus, and Lucrine bay, and Afric coast. 
 
 The Tempter, I -waiTant you, thought these 
 cates would go down without the recom- 
 mendatory preface of a benediction. They 
 are like to be short graces where the devil 
 plays the host. — I am afraid the poet wants 
 his usual decorum in this place. Was he 
 thinking of the old Roman luxury, or of a 
 gaudy day at Cambridge? This was a tempta- 
 tion fitter for a Heliogabalus. The whole 
 banquet is too civic and culinary, and the 
 accompaniments altogether a profanation of 
 that deep, abstracted holy scene. The mighty 
 artillery of sauces, which the cook-fiend 
 conjures up, is out of proportion to the 
 simple wants and plain hunger of the guest. 
 He that disturbed him in his dreams, from 
 his dreams might have been taught better. 
 To the temperate fantasies of the famished 
 Son of God, what sort of feasts presented 
 themselves ? — He dreamed indeed, 
 
 As appetite is ■wont to dream, 
 
 Of meats and drinks, nature's refreshment sweet. 
 
 But what meats ? — 
 
 Him thought, he by the brook of Cherith stood, 
 And saw the ravens with their horny beaks 
 Food to Elijah bringing even and morn ; 
 Though ravenous, taught to abstain from what they 
 
 brought ; 
 He saw the prophet also how he fled 
 Into the desert and how there he slept 
 Under a juniper ; then how awaked 
 He found his supper on the coals prepared, 
 And by the angel was bid rise and eat, 
 And ale the second time after repose, 
 The strength whereof sufficed him forty days : 
 Sometimes, that with Elijah he partook, 
 Or as a guest with Daniel at his pulse. 
 
 Nothing in Milton is finelier fancied than 
 these temperate dreams of the divine 
 Hungerer. To which of these two visionary 
 banquets, think you, would the introduction 
 of what is called the grace have been the 
 most fitting and pertinent ? 
 
 Theoretically I am no enemy to graces ; 
 but practically I own that (before meat 
 especially) they seem to involve something 
 awkward and unseasonable. Our appetites, 
 of one or another kind, are excellent spurs 
 to our reason, which might otherwise but 
 feebly set about the great ends of preserving 
 
 and continuing the species. They are fit 
 blessings to be contemplated at a distance 
 with a becoming gratitude ; but the moment 
 of appetite (the judicious reader will appre- 
 hend me) is, perhaps, the least fit season for 
 that exercise. The Quakers, who go about 
 their business of every description with more 
 calmness than we, have more title to the use 
 of these benedictory prefaces. I have always 
 admired their silent grace, and the more 
 because I have observed tlieir applications 
 to the meat and drink following to be less 
 passionate and sensual than ours. They are 
 neither gluttons nor wine-bibbers as a people. 
 They eat, as a horse bolts his chopped hay, 
 with indifference, calmness, and cleanly ch-- 
 eumstaiices. They neither grease nor slop 
 themselves. When I see a citizen in his bib 
 and tucker, I cannot imagine it a surplice. 
 
 I am no Quaker at my food. I confess I 
 am not indiiferent to the kinds of it. Thu.-.e 
 unctuous morsels of deer's flesh were nut 
 made to be received with dispassionate 
 services. I hate a man who swallows it, 
 affecting not to know what he is eating. I 
 suspect his taste in higher matters. I shrink 
 instinctively from one who professes to like 
 minced veal. There is a physiognomical 
 
 character in the tastes for food. C holds 
 
 that a man cannot have a pure mind who 
 refuses apple-dumplings. I am not certain 
 but he is right. With the decay of my first 
 innocence, I confess a less and less relish 
 daily for those innocuous cates. The wliole 
 vegetable tribe have lost their gust with me. 
 Only I stick to asparagus, which still seems 
 to inspire gentle thoughts. I am impatient 
 and querulous under culinary disappoint- 
 ments, as to come home at the dinner hour, 
 for instance, expecting some savoury mess, 
 and to find one quite tasteless and sapidless. 
 Butter ill melted — that commonest of kitchen 
 failures — puts me beside my tenor. — The 
 author of the Eambler used to make inarticu- 
 late animal noises over a favourite food. Was 
 this the music quite proper to be preceded 
 by the grace ? or would the pious man have 
 done better to postpone his devotions to a 
 season when the blessing might be contem- 
 plated with less perturbation ? I quarrel 
 with no man's tastes, nor would set my thin 
 face against those excellent things, in their 
 way, jollity and feasting. But aa these 
 exercises, however laudable, have little in 
 
376 
 
 GRACE BEFORE MEAT. 
 
 tliem of grace or gracefulness, a man should 
 be sure, before he ventures so to grace them, 
 that while he is pretending his devotions 
 otherwhere, he is not secretly kissing his 
 hand to some great fish — ^his Dagou — with a 
 special consecration of no ark but the fat 
 tureen before him. Graces are the sweet 
 preluding strains to the banquets of angels 
 and children ; to the roots and severer repasts 
 of tlie Chartreuse ; to the slender, but not 
 slenderly acknowledged, refection of the poor 
 and humble man : but at the heaped-up 
 boards of the pampered and the luxurious 
 they become of dissonant mood, less timed 
 and tuned to the occasion, methinks, than 
 the noise of those better befitting organs 
 would be which children hear tales of, at 
 Hog's Norton. We sit too long at our meals, 
 or are too curious in the study of them, or 
 ioo disordered in our aiiplication to them, or 
 engross too great a portion of those good 
 things (which should be common) to our 
 share, to be able with any grace to say grace. 
 To be thankful for what we grasp exceeding 
 our proportion, is to add hypocri.sy to injustice. 
 A lurking sense of this truth is what makes 
 the performance of this duty so cold and 
 spiritless a service at most tables. In houses 
 where the grace is as indispensable as the 
 napkin, who has not seen that never-settled 
 question arise, as to who shall say it ? while 
 the good man of the house and the visitor 
 clergyman, or some other guest belike of 
 next authority, from years or gravity, shall 
 be bandying about the oflfice between them 
 as a matter of compliment, each of them not 
 unwilling to shift the awkward burthen of 
 an equivocal duty from his own shoulders ? 
 
 I once drank tea in company with two 
 Methodist divines of different persuasions, 
 whom it was my fortune to introduce to each 
 other for the first time that evening. Before 
 the first cup was handed round, one of these 
 reverend gentlemen put it to the other, with 
 all due solemnity, whether he chose to sai/ 
 anything. It seems it is the custom witii 
 some sectaries to put up a short prayer before 
 
 this meal also. His reverend brother did 
 not at first quite apprehend him, but upon 
 an explanation, with little less importance 
 he made answer that it was not a custom 
 known in his church : in which courteous 
 evasion the other acquiescing for good man- 
 nei-s' sake, or in compliance with a weak 
 brother, the supplementary or tea-grace was 
 waived altogether. With what spirit might 
 not Lucian have painted two priests, of his 
 religion, playing into each other's hands the 
 compliment of performing or omitting a 
 sacrifice, — the hungry God meantime, doubt- 
 ful of his incense, with expectant nostrils 
 hovering over the two flamens, and (as be- 
 tween two stools) going away in the end 
 without his supper. 
 
 A short form upon these occasions is felt 
 to want reverence ; a long one, I am afraid, 
 cannot escape the charge of imijertinence. 
 I do not quite approve of the ej)igramraatic 
 conciseness with which that equivocal wag 
 (but my pleasant school-fellow) C. V. L., 
 when importuned for a grace, used to inquire, 
 first slyly leering down the table, " Is there 
 no clergymau here," — significantly adding, 
 " Thank G — ." Nor do I think our old form 
 at school quite pertinent, where we were 
 used to preface our bald bread-aud-cheese- 
 suppers with a preamble, connecting with 
 that humble blessing a recognition of bene- 
 fits the most awful and overwhelming to the 
 imagination which religion has to offer. Koii 
 tunc illis erat locus. I remember we were 
 put to it to reconcile the phrase " good crea- 
 tures," upon which the blessing rested, with 
 the fare set before us, wilfully undi-i-standing 
 that expression in a low and animal sense, — 
 till some one recalled a legend, which told 
 how, in the golden days of Christ's, the 
 young Hosijitallora were wont to have smok- 
 ing joints of roixst meat upon their nightly 
 boards, till some pious benefactor, commiser- 
 ating the decencies, rather than the palates, 
 of the children, commuted our flesh for gar- 
 ments, and gave us — liorresco reftrena — trou» 
 sers instead of mutton. 
 
DREAM CHILDREN J A REVERIE. 
 
 377 
 
 DEEAM CHILDREN ; A EEVERIE. 
 
 ► 
 
 Children love to listen to stories about 
 their elders, when they were children ; to 
 stretch their imagination to the conception 
 of a traditionary great-uncle, or grandame, 
 whom they never saw. It was in this spirit 
 that my little ones crept about me the other 
 evening to hear about their great-grand- 
 mother Field, who lived in a great house in 
 Norfolk (a hundred times bigger than that 
 in which they and papa lived) which had 
 been the scene — so at least it was generally 
 believed in that part of the country — of the 
 tragic incidents which they had lately become 
 familiar with from the ballad of the Children 
 in the Wood. Certain it is that the whole 
 story of the children and their cruel uncle 
 was to be seen fairly carved out in wood 
 upon the chimney-piece of the great hall, the 
 whole story down to the Robin Redbreasts ; 
 till a foolish rich person pulled it down to 
 set up a marble one of modern invention in 
 its stead, with no story ujDon it. Here Alice 
 put out one of her dear mother's looks, too 
 tender to be called upbraiding. Then I went 
 on to say, how religious and how good their 
 great-grandmother Field was, how beloved 
 and respected by everybody, though she was 
 not indeed the mistress of this great house, 
 but had only the charge of it (and yet in 
 some respects she might be said to be the 
 mistress of it too) committed to her by the 
 owner, who preferred living in a newer and 
 more fashionable mansion which he had pur- 
 chased somewhere in the adjoining county ; 
 but still she lived in it in a manner as if it 
 had been her own, and kejJt up the dignity 
 of the great house in a sort while she lived, 
 which afterwards came to decay, and was 
 nearly pulled down, and all its old orna- 
 ments stripped and carried away to tlie 
 owner's other house, where they were setup, 
 and looked as awkward as if some one were 
 to carry away the old tombs they had seen 
 lately at the Abbey, and stick them up hi 
 Lady C.'s tawdiy gilt drawing-room. Here 
 John smiled, as much as to say, " that would 
 be fooliah iisdeed." And then I told how, 
 
 when she came to die, her funeral was 
 attended by a concourse of all the poor, and 
 some of the gentry too, of the neighbourhood 
 for many miles round, to show their respect 
 for her memory, because she had been such 
 a good and religious woman ; so good indeed 
 that she knew all the Psalteiy by heart, ay, 
 and a great part of the Testament besides. 
 Here little Alice spread her hands. Then 
 I told what a tall, upright, graceful person 
 their great-grandmother Field once was ; and 
 how in her youth she was esteemed the best 
 dancer — here Alice's little right foot played 
 an invohintary movement, till, upon my look- 
 ing grave, it desisted — the best dancer, I was 
 saying, in the county, till a cruel disease, 
 called a cancer, came, and bowed her down 
 with pain ; but it could never bend her good 
 .spirits, or make them stoop, but they were 
 still upright, because she was so good and 
 religious. Then I told how she was used to 
 sleep by hei-self in a lone chamber of the 
 great lone house ; and how she believed that 
 an apparition of two infants was to be seen 
 at midnight gliding up and down the great 
 staircase near where she slept, but she said 
 " those innocents would do her no harm ; " 
 and how frightened I used to be, though in 
 those days I had my maid to sleep with me. 
 because I was never half so good or reli- 
 gious as she — and yet I never saw the infants. 
 Here John exjianded all his eyebrows and 
 tried to look courageous. Then I told how 
 good she was to all her grandchildren, having 
 us to the great house in the holydays, where 
 I in particular used to spend many hours by 
 myself, in gazing upon the old busts of the 
 twelve Caesai-3, that had been Emj^erora of 
 Rome, till the old marble heads would seem 
 to live again, or I to be turned into marble 
 with them ; how I never could be tii'ed with 
 roaming about that huge mansion, with its 
 vast empty rooms, with their worn-out hang- 
 uigs, fluttering tapestry, and carved oaken 
 pannels, with the gilding almost rubbed out 
 — sometimes in the spacious old-t'asiiioned 
 gardens, which I had almost to myself, unless 
 
378 
 
 DREAM CHILDREN ; A REVERIE. 
 
 when now and then a solitary gardening man 
 would cross me — and how the nectarines and 
 peaches hung upon the walls, without my 
 ever offering to pluck them, because they 
 were forbidden fruit, unless now and then, — 
 and because I had more pleasure in strolling 
 about among the old melancholy-looking yew- 
 trees, or the firs, and picking up the red 
 berries, and the fir-apples, which were good 
 for nothing but to look at — or in lying about 
 upon the fresh grass with all the fine 
 garden smells around me — or basking in the 
 orangery, till I could almost fancy myself 
 ripening too along with tlie oranges and the 
 limes in that grateful warmth — or in watch- 
 ing the dace that darted to and fro in the 
 fish-pond, at the bottom of the garden, with 
 here and there a great sulky pike hanging 
 midway down the water in silent state, as if 
 it mocked at their impertinent friskings, — ■ 
 I had more pleasure in these busy-idle diver- 
 sions than in all the sweet flavours of peaches, 
 nectarines, oranges, and such-like common 
 baits of children. Here John slyly deposited 
 back upon the plate a bunch of grapes, which, 
 not unobserved by Alice, he had meditated 
 dividing with her, and both seemed willing 
 to relinquish them for the present as irrele- 
 vant. Then, in somewhat a more heightened 
 tone, I told how, though their great-grand- 
 mother Field loved all her grandchildren, 
 yet in an especial manner she might be said 
 
 to love their uncle, John L , because he 
 
 was so handsome and spirited a youth, and 
 a king to the rest of us ; and, instead of 
 moping about in solitary corners, like some 
 of us, he would mount the most mettlesome 
 horse he could get, when but an imp no 
 bigger than themselves, and make it carry 
 him half over the county in a morning, and 
 join the hunters when there were any out — 
 and yet he loved the old great house and 
 gardens too, but had too much si)irit to be 
 always pent up within their boundaries — 
 and how their uncle grew up to man's estate 
 as brave as he was haudsome, to the admira- 
 tion of everybody, but of their great-grand- 
 motiier Field most especially ; and how he 
 used to carry me upon his back when I was 
 a lame-footed boy — for he was a good bit 
 older than me — many a mile when I could 
 not walk for pain ; — and how in after life he 
 bfcame lame-footed too, and I diil not always 
 (I fear) make allowances enough for him 
 
 when he was impatient, and in pain, nor 
 remember suflRciently how considerate he had 
 been to me when I was lame-footed ; and 
 how when he died, though he had not been 
 dead an hour, it seemed as if he had died 
 a great while ago, such a distance there is 
 betwixt life and death ; and how I bore his 
 death as I thought pretty well at first, but 
 afterwards it haunted and haunted me ; and 
 though I did not cry or take it to heart as 
 some do, and as I think he would have done 
 if I had died, yet I missed him all day long, 
 and knew not till then how much I had 
 loved him. I missed his kindness, and I 
 missed his crossness, and wished him to be 
 alive again, to be quarrelling with him (for 
 we quarrelled sometimes), rather than not 
 have him again, and wjis as uneasy without 
 him, as he their poor uncle must have been 
 when the doctor took off his limb. — Here the 
 children fell a crying, and asked if their little 
 mourning which they had on was not for 
 uncle John, and they looked up, and prayed 
 me not to go on about their uncle, but to tell 
 them some stories about their pretty dead 
 mother. Then I told how for seven long 
 years, in hope sometimes, sometimes in de- 
 spair, yet persisting ever, I courted the fair 
 Alice W — n ; and, as much as children 
 could understand, I explained to them what 
 coyness, and difiiculty, and denial, meant in 
 maidens — when suddenly, turning to Alice, 
 the soul of the first Alice looked out at her 
 eyes with such a reality of re-presentment, 
 that I became in doubt which of them stood 
 tliere before me, or whose that bright hair 
 was ; and while I stood gazing, both the 
 children gradually grew fainter to my view, 
 receding, and still receding, till nothing at 
 last but two mournful features were seen in 
 the uttermost distance, which, without speech, 
 strangely impressed upon me the efl'ects of 
 speech : " We are not of Alice, nor of thee, 
 nor are we children at all. The children of 
 Alice call Bai-trum father. We are nothing ; 
 less than nothing, and dreams. We are only 
 what might have been, and must wait upon 
 the tedious shores of Lethe millions of ages 
 
 before we have existence, aiul a name " 
 
 and immediately awaking, I found myself 
 quietly seated in my bachelor arm-chair, 
 where I had fallen asleep, with the faithful 
 Bridget unchanged by my side — but John L. 
 (or James Elia) was gone for ever. 
 
DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS. 
 
 87» 
 
 DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS. 
 
 IN A LETTEE TO B. F. ESCl., AT SYDNEY, NEW SOUTH WALES, 
 
 My dear F. — Wlien I think how welcome 
 the sight of a letter from the world where 
 you were born must be to you in that 
 strange one to which you have been trans- 
 planted, I feel some compunctious visitings 
 at my long silence. But, indeed, it is no 
 easy effort to set about a correspondence at 
 our distance. The weary world of waters 
 between us oppresses the imagination. It is 
 difficult to conceive how a scrawl of mine 
 should ever stretch across it. It is a sort of 
 presumption to expect that one's thoughts 
 should live so far. It is like writing for pos- 
 terity ; and reminds me of one of Mi-s. 
 Rowe's superscriptions, " Alcander to Stre- 
 phon in the shades." Cowley's Post-Angel 
 is no more than would be expedient in such 
 an intercourse. One drops a packet at Lom- 
 bard-street, and in twenty-four hours a friend 
 in Cumberland gets it as fresh as if it came 
 in ice. It is only like whispering through a 
 long trumpet. But suppose a tube let down 
 from the moon, with yourself at one end and 
 the man at the other ; it would be some balk 
 to the spirit of conversation, if you knew 
 that the dialogue exchanged with that m- 
 teresting theosophist would take two or three 
 revolutions of a higher luminary in its pas- 
 sage. Yet, for aught I know, you may be 
 some parasangs nigher that primitive idea — 
 Plato's man — than we in England here have 
 the honour to reckon ourselves. 
 
 Epistolary matter usually compriseth three 
 topics ; news, sentiment, and puns. In the 
 latter, I include all non-serious subjects ; or 
 subjects serious in themselves, but treated 
 after my fashion, non-seriously. — And tirst, 
 for news. In them the most desirable cir- 
 cumstance, I suppose, is that they shall be 
 ti'ue. But what security can I haVe tliat 
 what I now send you fur truth shall not, 
 before you get it, unaccountably turn into a 
 lie ? For instance, our mutual friend P. is at 
 this present writing — my Now — in good 
 health, and enjoys a fair share of worldly 
 reputation. You are glad to hear it. Tliis 
 
 is natural and friendly. But at this present 
 reading — your Now — he may possibly be in 
 the Bench, or going to be hanged, wliich in 
 reason ought to abate something of your 
 transport {i. e. at hearing he was well, &c.), 
 or at least considerably to modify it. I am 
 going to the play this evening, to have a 
 laugh with Munden. You have no theatre, 
 
 I think you told me, in your land of d d 
 
 realities. You naturally lick your lips, and 
 envy me my felicity. Think but a moment, 
 jind you will correct the hateful emotion. 
 "Why it is Sunday morning with you, and 
 1823. This confusion of tenses, this grand 
 solecism of tivo pi-esents, is in a degree 
 common to all postage. But if I sent you 
 word to Bath or Devizes, that I was ex- 
 pecting the aforesaid treat this evening, 
 though at the m(jment you received the in- 
 telligence my full feast of fun would be over, 
 yet there would be for a day or two after, as 
 you would well know, a smack, a relish left 
 upon my mental palate, which would give 
 rational encouragement for you to foster a 
 poi-tion, at least, of the disagreeable passion, 
 which it was in part my intention to pro- 
 duce. But ten mouths hence, your envy or 
 your sympathy would be as useless as a 
 passion spent upon the dead. Not only does 
 truth, in these long intervals, un-essence 
 herself, but (what is harder) one cannot 
 venture a crude fiction, for the fear that it 
 may ripen into a truth upon the voyage. 
 What a wild improbable banter I put upon 
 
 you, some three years since, of AVill 
 
 Weatherall having married a servant-maid ! 
 I remember gravely consulting you how we 
 were to receive her — for Will's wife was in 
 no case to be rejected ; and your no less 
 serious replication in the matter ; how ten- 
 derly you advised an abstemious introduction 
 of literary topics before the lady, with a 
 caution not to be too forward in bringing on 
 the carpet matters more within the sphere of 
 I her intelligence ; your deliberate judgment, 
 or rather wise suspension of sentence, how 
 
880 
 
 DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS. 
 
 far jacks, and spits, and mops, could, with 
 propriety, be introduced as subjects ; whether 
 the conscious avoiding of all such matters in 
 discourse would not have a worse look than 
 the taking of them casually in our way ; in 
 what manner we should cany ourselves to 
 our maid Becky, Mrs. William Weatherall 
 being by ; whether we should show more 
 delicacy, and a truer sense of respect for 
 Will's wife, by treating Becky with our cus- 
 tomary chiding before her, or by an unusual 
 deferential civility paid to Becky, as to a 
 person of great worth, but thrown by the 
 caprice of fate into a humble station. TJiere 
 were difficulties, I remember, on both sides, 
 which you did me the favour to state with 
 the precision of a lawyer, united to the ten- 
 derness of a friend. .1 laughed in my sleeve 
 at your solemn pleadings, when lo ! while I 
 was valuing myself upon this flam put upon 
 you in New South Wales, the devil in Eng- 
 land, jealous possibly of any lie-children not 
 his own, or working after my copy, has 
 actually instigated our friend (not three days 
 since) to the commission of a matrimony, 
 which I had only conjured up for your 
 diversion. William Weatherall has married 
 Mrs. Cotterel's maid. But to take it in its 
 truest sense, you will see, my dear F., that 
 news from me must become history to you ; 
 which I neither profess to write, nor indeed 
 care much fur reading. No person, under a 
 diviner, can, with any prospect of veracity, 
 conduct a correspondence at such an arm's 
 length. Two pi-ophets, indeed, might thus 
 interchange intelligence with effi3ct ; the 
 epoch of the writer (Ilabakkuk) falliiig in 
 with the true present time of the receiver 
 (Daniel) ; but then we ai-e no prophets. 
 
 Then as to sentiment. It fares little 
 better with that. This kind of dish, above 
 all, requires to be served up hot, or sent off 
 in water-plates, that your friend may have it 
 almost as warm as yourself. If it have time 
 to cool, it is the most tasteless of all cold 
 meats. T have often smiled at a conceit of 
 the late Lord C. It seems that travelling 
 somewhere about Geneva, he came to some 
 pretty green spot, or nook, where a willow, 
 or something, hung so fantastically and in- 
 vitiiigly over a stream— was it 1 — or a rock ? 
 — no matter — but the stillness and the re- 
 pose, after a wuary journey, 'Lis likely, in a 
 languid moment of his Lordship's hot, rest- 
 
 less life, so took his fancy that he could 
 imagine no place so proper, in the event of 
 his death, tu lay his bones in. This was all 
 very natural and excusable as a sentiment, 
 and shows his character in a very pleasing 
 light. But when from a passing sentiment 
 it came to be an act ; and when, by a posi- 
 tive testamentary disposal, his remains were 
 actually carried all that way from England ; 
 who was there, some desperate sentimen- 
 talists excepted, that did not ask the ques- 
 tion. Why could not his Loi-dship have found 
 a spot as solitary, a nook as romantic, a tree 
 as green and pendent, with a stream as em- 
 blematic to his purpose, in Surrey, in Dorset, 
 or in Devon 1 Conceive the sentiment 
 boarded up, freighted, entered at the Custom 
 House (startling the tide-waiters with the 
 novelty), hoisted into a ship. Conceive it 
 pawed about and handled between the rude 
 jests of tarpauiin ruffians — a thing of its 
 delicate texture — the salt bilge wetting it 
 till it became as vapid as a damaged lustring. 
 Suppose it in material danger (mariners have 
 some superstition about sentiments) of being 
 tossed over in a fresh gale to some propitia- 
 tory shark (spirit of Saint Gothard, save us 
 from a quietus so foreign to the deviser's 
 purpose !) but it has happily evaded a fishy 
 consummation. Trace it then to its lucky 
 landing — at Lyons shall we say ? — I have 
 not ^he map before me — jostled upon four 
 men's shoulders — baiting at this town — 
 stopping to refresh at t'other village — 
 waiting a passport here, a license there ; the 
 sanction of the magistracy in this district, 
 the concurrence of the ecclesiastics in that 
 canton ; till at length it arrives at its desti- 
 nation, tired out and jaded, from a brisk 
 sentiment into a feature of silly pride or 
 tawdry senseless affectation. How few sen- 
 timents, my dear F., I am afraid we can set 
 down, in the sailor's phrase, as quite sea- 
 worthy. 
 
 Lastly, as to the agreeable levities, which, 
 though contomptlble in bulk, are the twink- 
 ling corpuscula which siiould ii-radiate a 
 right friendly epistle — your ))uus and small 
 jests are, I apprehend, extremely circum- 
 scribed in their sj)herc of action. They are 
 so far from a capacity of being jjacked up 
 and sent beyond sea, tliey will scarce endure 
 to be trans])orted by hand from tiiis roum Lo 
 the next. Their vigour is as the instant of 
 
DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS. 
 
 881 
 
 their birth. Their nutriment for their brief 
 existence is the intellectual atmosphere of 
 the by-standers : or this last is the fine slime 
 of Nilus — the melior lutus — whose maternal 
 recipiency is as necessary as the sol pater to 
 their equivocal generation. A pun hath a 
 liearty kind of present ear-kissing smack 
 with it ; you can no more transmit it in its 
 pristine flavour than you can send a kiss. — 
 Have you not tried iu some instances to 
 palm off a yesterday's pun upon a gentleman, 
 and has it answered ? Not but it was new 
 to his hearing, but it did not seem to come 
 new from you. It did not hitch in. It was 
 like picking up at a village ale-house a two- 
 days'-old newspaper. You have not seen it 
 before, but you resent the stale thing as an 
 affront. This sort of merchandise above all 
 requires a quick return. A pun, and its 
 recognitory laugh, must be co-instantaneous. 
 The one is the brisk lightning, the other the 
 fierce thunder. A moment's intei'val, and 
 the link is snapped. A pun is reflected from 
 a friend's face as from a mirror. Who would 
 consult his sweet visnomy, if the polished 
 surface were two or three minutes (not to 
 speak of twelve months, my dear F.) in 
 giving back its copy ? 
 
 I cannot image to myself whereabout you 
 are. When I try to fix it, Peter Wilkins's 
 island comes across me. Sometimes you 
 seem to be in the Hades of Thieves. I see 
 Diogenes prying among you with his per- 
 petual fruitless lantern. What must you be 
 willing by this time to give for the sight of 
 an honest man ! You must almost have for- 
 gotten how ive look. And tell me what your 
 Sydneyites do 1 are they th**v*ng all day 
 long ? Merciful heaven ! what property can 
 stiind against such a depredation ! The 
 kangaroos — your Aborigines — do they keep 
 their primitive simplicity un-Europe-taiuted, 
 with those little short fore puds,.lookiiig like 
 a lesson framed by nature to the pickpocket ! 
 Marry, for diving into fobs they are rather 
 lamely provided d priori ; but if the hue 
 raid cry were once up, they would show as 
 \air a pair of hind-shifters as the expertest 
 loco-motor in the colony. We hear the most 
 improbable tales at this distance. Pray is 
 it true that the young Spartans among you 
 are born with six fingers, which spoils their 
 
 scanning ? — It must look very odd, but use 
 reconciles. For their scansion, it is less to 
 be regretted ; for if they take it into their 
 heads to be poets, it is odds but they turn 
 out, the greater part of them, vile plagiarists. 
 Is there much diff'erence to see, too, between 
 the son of a th**f and the grandson ? or 
 where does the taint stop ? Do you bleach 
 in three or in four generations ? I have 
 many questions to put, but ten Delphic 
 voyages can be made in a shorter time than 
 it will take to satisfy my scruples. Do you 
 grow your own hemp 1 — What is your staple 
 trade, — exclusive of the national profession, 
 I mean ? Your locksmiths, I take it, are 
 some of your great capitalists. 
 
 I am insensibly chatting to you as fami- 
 liarly as when we used to exchange good- 
 morrows out of our old contiguous windows, 
 in pump-famed Hare-court in the Temple. 
 Why did you ever leave that quiet corner ? 
 — Why did I ? — with its complement of four 
 poor elms, from whose smoke-dyed barks, 
 the theme of jesting ruralists, I picked my 
 first lady-bii-ds ! My heart is as dry as that 
 spring sometimes proves in a thirsty August, 
 when I revert to the space that is between 
 us ; a length of passage enough to render 
 obsolete the phrases of our English letters 
 before they can reach you. But while I trJk 
 I think you hear me, — thoughts dallying 
 with vain surmise — 
 
 Aye me ! -n-hile thee the seas and sounding shores 
 Hold far away. 
 
 Come back, before I am grown into a very 
 old man, so as you shall hardly know me. 
 Come, before Bridget walks on crutches. 
 Girls whom you left children have become 
 sage matrons while you are tarrying there. 
 The blooming Miss W — r (you remember 
 Sally W — r) called upon us yesterday, an 
 aged crone. Folks whom you knew die off 
 every year. Formerly, I thought that death 
 was wearing out, — I stood ramparted about 
 with so many healthy friends. The depar- 
 ture of J. W., two springs back, corrected 
 my delusion. Since then the oUl divoi-cer 
 has been busy. If you do not make haste to 
 return, there will be little left to greet you, 
 of me, or mine.. 
 
THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS. 
 
 I LIKE to meet a sweep — understand me — 
 not a grown sweeper — old chimney-sweepers 
 are by no means attractive — but one of those 
 tender novices, blooming through their first 
 nigritude, the maternal washings not quite 
 effaced from the cheek — such ;is come forth 
 with the dawn, or somewhat earlier, with 
 their little professional notes sounding like 
 the peep peep of a young sparrow ; or liker 
 to the matin lark should I pronounce them, 
 in their aerial ascents not seldom anticipating 
 the sun-rise ? 
 
 I have a kindly yearning toward these dim 
 specks — poor blots — innocent blacknesses — 
 
 I reverence these young Africans of our 
 own growth — these almost clergy imps, who 
 sport their cloth without assumption ; and 
 from their little pulpits (the tops of chimneys,) 
 in the nipping air of a December morning, 
 preach a lesson of patience to mankind. 
 
 When a child, what a mysterious pleasure 
 it was to witness their operation ! to see a 
 chit no bigger than one's-self, enter, one knew 
 not by what process, into what seemed the 
 fauces Averni — to pursue him in imagination, 
 as he went sounding on through so many dark 
 stifling caverns, horrid shades ! to shudder 
 with the idea that " now, surely, he must be 
 lost for ever ! " — to revive at hearing his 
 feeble shout of discovered day-light — and 
 then (O fulness of delight!) running out of 
 doors, to come just in time to see the sable 
 phenomenon emerge in safety, the brandished 
 weapon of his art victorious like some flag 
 waved over a conquered citadel ! T seem to 
 remember having been told, that a bad swe(>p 
 was once left in a stack with his brush, to 
 indicate wliich way the wind blew. It was 
 an awiul spectacle certainly ; not much 
 unlike the old stage direction in Macbeth, 
 where the " Apparition of a child ci-owned, 
 with a tree in his hand, rises." 
 
 Reader, if thou meetest one of these small 
 gentry in thy early rambles, it is good to give 
 hira a penny. It is better to give him two- 
 pence. If it be starving weather, and to the 
 proper troubles of his hard occupation, a pair 
 
 of kibed heels (no imnsual accompaniment) 
 be superadded, the demand on thy humanity 
 will surely rise to a tester. 
 
 There is a composition, the ground-work 
 of which I have understood to be the sweet 
 wood 'yclept sassafras. This wood boiled 
 down to a kind of tea, and tempered with an 
 infusion of milk and sugar, hath to some 
 tastes a delicacy beyond the China luxurj-. 
 I know not how thy palate may relish it ; 
 for myself, with every deference to the 
 judicious Mr. Read, who hath time out of 
 mind kept open a shop (the only one he avers 
 in London) for the vending of this " whole- 
 some and pleasant beverage," on the south- 
 side of Fleet-street, as thou approachest 
 Bridge-street — the only Salopian house — I 
 have never yet adventured to dip my own 
 particular lip in a basin of his commended 
 ingredients — a cautious premonition to the 
 olftxctories constantly whispering to me, that 
 my stomach must infallibly, with all due 
 courtesy, decline it. Yet I have seen palates, 
 otlierwise not uninstructed in dietetical 
 elegancies, sup it up with avidity. 
 
 I know not by what particular conforma- 
 tion of the organ it happens, but I have 
 always found that this composition is sur- 
 prisingly gratifying to the palate of a young 
 chimney-sweeper — whether the oily particles 
 (sassafi'as is slightly oleaginous) do attenuate 
 and soften the fuliginous concretions, which 
 are sometimes found (in dissections) to adhere 
 to the roof of the mouth in these unfledged 
 practitioners ; or wlu-ther Nature, sensible 
 that she had mingled too much of bitter wood 
 in the lot of these raw victims, caused to 
 grow out of the earth her sa.ssafras for a 
 sweet lenitive — but so it is, tliat no possible 
 taste or odour to the senses of a young 
 chimney-sweeper can conA'cy a delicate ex- 
 citement comparable to this mixture. Being 
 penniless, they will yet hang their black 
 heads over the ascending steam, to gratify 
 one sense if possible, seemingly no less 
 pleased than those domestic animals — cats — 
 when they purr over a ncw-fouud sprig of 
 
THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS. 
 
 883 
 
 valerian. There is something more in these 
 sympathies than philosophy can inculcate. 
 
 Now albeit Mr. Bead boasteth, not with- 
 out reason, that his is the only Salopian house; 
 yet be it known to thee, reader — if thou art 
 one wlio keepest what are called good houi-s, 
 thou art haply ignorant of the fact — he hath 
 a race of industrious imitators, who from 
 stalls, and under open sky, dispense the same 
 savoury mess to humbler customers, at that 
 dead time of the dawn, when (as extremes 
 meet) the rake, reeling home from his mid- 
 night cups, and the hard-handed artisan 
 leaving his bed to resume the premature 
 labours of the day, jostle, not unfrequently 
 to the manifest disconcerting of the former, 
 for the honours of the pavement. It is the 
 time when, in summer, between the expired 
 and the not yet relumined kitchen-fires, the 
 kennels of our fair metropolis give forth their 
 least satisfactory odours. The rake, who 
 wisheth to dissipate his o'ernight vapours in 
 more grateful coffee, curses the ungenial 
 fume, as he passeth ; but the arti.san stops to 
 taste, and blesses the fragrant breakfast. 
 
 This is saloop — the precocious herb- woman's 
 darling — the delight of the early gardener, 
 who transports his smoking cabbages by 
 break of day from Hammei-smith to Covent- 
 garden's famed piazzas — the delight, and oh ! 
 I fear, too often the envy, of the unjjennied 
 sweep. Him shouldst thou haply encounter, 
 with his dim visage pendent over the grateful 
 steam, regale him with a sumptuous basin 
 (it will cost thee but three-halfpennies) and a 
 slice of delicate bread and butter (an added 
 halfpenny) — so may thy culinary fires, eased 
 of the o'er-charged secretions from thy worse- 
 placed hospitalities, curl up a lighter volume 
 to the welkin — so may the descending soot 
 never taint thy costly well-ingredienced 
 soups — nor the odious cry, quick-reaching 
 from street to street, of the Jired chimney, 
 invite the rattling engines from ten adjacent 
 parishes, to disturb for a casual scintillation 
 thy peace and pocket ! 
 
 I am by nature extremely susceptible of 
 street affronts ; the jeers and taunts bi the 
 populace; the low-bred triumph they display 
 over the casual trip, or .splashed stocking, of 
 a gentleman. Yet can I endure the jocularity 
 of a young sweep with something more than 
 forgiveness. — In the last winter but one, 
 pacing along Cheapside with my accustomed 
 
 precipitation when I walk westward, a 
 treacherous slide brought me upon my back 
 in an instant. I scrambled up witli pain 
 and shame enough — yet outwardly trying to 
 face it down, as if nothing had happened — 
 when the roguish grin of one of the.se younw 
 wits encountered me. There he stood, point- 
 ing me out with liis dusky finger to the mob, 
 and to a poor woman (I suppose his mother) 
 in particular, till the tears for the exquisite- 
 ness of the fun (so he thought it) worked 
 themselves out at the cornex-s of his poor red 
 eyes, red from many a previous weeping, and 
 soot-inflamed, yet twinkling through all with 
 such a joy, snatched out of desolation, that 
 
 Hogarth but Hogarth has got him 
 
 already (how could he miss him ?) in the 
 March to Finchley, grinning at the pieman 
 — there he stood, as he stands in the picture, 
 irremovable, as if the jest wsis to last forever 
 — with such a maximum of glee, and minimum 
 of mischief, in his mirth — for the gi'in of a 
 genuine sweep hath absolutely no malice in 
 it — that I coidd have been content, if the 
 honour of a gentleman might endure it, to 
 have remained his butt and his mockery till 
 midnight. 
 
 I am by theory obdurate to the seductive- 
 ness of what are called a fine set of teeth. 
 Every paii- of rosy lips (the ladies must 
 pardon me) is a casket presumably holding 
 such jewels; but, methinks, they should take 
 leave to " air " them as frugally as possible. 
 The fine lady, or fine gentleman, who show 
 me their teeth, show me bones. Yet must I 
 confess, that from the mouth of a true sweep 
 a display (even to ostentation) of those white 
 and .shining ossifications, strikes me as an 
 agreeable anomaly in manners, and an allow- 
 able piece of foppery. It is, as when 
 
 A sable cloud 
 Turns forth her silver lining on the night. 
 
 It is like some remnant of gentry not quite 
 extinct ; a badge of better days ; a hint of 
 nobility : — and, doubtless, under the ob- 
 scuring darkness and double night of their 
 forlorn di.sguisement, oftentimes lurketh good 
 blood, and gentle conditions, derived from 
 lost ancestry, and a lapsed pedigree. Tlie 
 premature apjirenticements of these tender 
 victims give but too much encouragement, 
 I fear, to clandestine and almost infantile 
 abductions ; the seeds of civility and true 
 
884 
 
 THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS. 
 
 courtesy, so often discernible in these young 
 grafts (not otherwise to be accounted for) 
 plainly hint at some forced adoptions ; many 
 noble Rachels mourning for their children, 
 even in our days, countenance the fact ; the 
 tales of fairy-spiriting may shadow a lament- 
 able verity, and the recovery of the young 
 Montagu be but a solitary instance of good 
 fortune out of many irreparable and hopeless 
 defiliations. 
 
 In one of the state-beds at Arundel Castle, 
 a few years since — under a ducal canopy — 
 (that seat of the Howards is an object of 
 curiosity to visitors, chiefly for its beds, in 
 which the late duke was especially a connois- 
 seur) — encircled with curtains of delicatest 
 crimson, with starry coronets inwoven — 
 folded between a pair of sheets whiter and 
 softer than the lap where Venus lulled 
 Ascanius — was discovered by chance, after 
 all methods of search had failed, at noon-day, 
 fast asleep, a lost chimney-sweeper. The 
 little creature, having somehow confounded 
 his passage among the intricacies of those 
 lordly chimneys, by some unknown aperture 
 had alighted upon this magnificent chamber ; 
 and, tired with his tedious explorations, was 
 unable to resist the delicious invitement to 
 repose, which he there saw exhibited ; so 
 creeping between the sheets very quietly, 
 laid his black head upon the pillow, and slept 
 like a young Howard. 
 
 Such is the account given to the visiters 
 at the Castle. — But I cannot help seeming to 
 perceive a confirmation of what I had just 
 hinted at in this story. A high instinct 
 was at work iu the case, or I am mistaken. 
 Is it probable that a poor child of that descrip- 
 tion, with whatever weariness he might be 
 visited, would have ventured, under such a 
 penalty as he would be taught to expect, to 
 uncover the sheets of a Duke's bed, and 
 deliberately to lay himself down between 
 thorn, when the rug, or the carpet, presented 
 an obvious couch, still far above his preten- 
 sions — is this probable, I would ask, if the 
 great power of nature, which I contend for, 
 had not been manifested within him, prouii)t- 
 ing to the adventure ? Doubtless this young 
 nobleman (for such my mind misgives nie 
 that he must be) wiis allured by some memory, 
 not amounting to full consciousness, of his 
 condition in infancy, when he was used to be 
 lapped by liis mother, or his nurse, in just 
 
 such sheets as he there found, into which he 
 was now but creeping back as into his proper 
 incunabula, and resting-place. — By no other 
 theory than by this sentiment of a pre- 
 existent state (as I may call it), can I explain 
 a deed so venturous, and, indeed, upon any 
 other system, so indecorous, in this tender, 
 but unseasonable, sleeper. 
 
 My pleasant friend Jem White was so 
 impressed with a belief of metamorphoses 
 like this frequently taking place, that in some 
 sort to reverse the wrongs of fortune in these 
 poor changelings, he instituted an annual 
 feast of chimney-sweepers, at which it was 
 his pleasure to officiate as host and waiter. 
 It was a solemn supper held in Smithfield, 
 npon the yearly retui-n of the fair of St. 
 Bartholomew. Cards were issued a week 
 before to the master-sweeps in and about the 
 metropolis, confining the invitation to their 
 younger fry. Now and then an elderly 
 stripling would get in among us, and be good- 
 naturedly winked at ; but our main body 
 were infantry. One unfortunate wight, 
 indeed, who, relying iipou his dusky suit, 
 had intruded himself into our party, but by 
 tokens was providentially discovered in time 
 to be no chimney-sweeper, (all is not soot 
 which looks so,) was quoited out of the 
 presence with universal indignation, as net 
 having on the wedding garment ; but iu 
 general the greatest hannony prevailed. The 
 place chosen was a convenient spot among 
 the pens, at the north side of the fair, not so 
 far distant as to be impervious to the agree- 
 able hubbub of that vanity ; but remote 
 enough not to be obvious to the interruption 
 of every gaping spectator in it. The guests 
 assembled about seven. In those little tem- 
 porary parlours three tables were spread 
 with napery, not so fine as substiuitial, and 
 at every board a comely hostess presided 
 with her pan of hissing sausages. The 
 nostrils of the young rogues dilated at the 
 savour. James White, as head waiter, had 
 charge of the first table ; and myself, •with 
 our trusty companion BiooD, ordinarily 
 ministered to the other two. There was 
 clambering and jostling, you may be sure, 
 who should get at the first table — for 
 llochester in his maddest days could not 
 have done tlie humours of the scone with 
 more spirit than my friend. After some 
 general expression of thouks for the honour 
 
A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS. 
 
 385 
 
 the company had done him, his inaugural 
 ceremony was to clasp the greasy waist of 
 old dame Ursula (the fattest of the three), 
 that stood frying and fretting, half-blessing, 
 half-cursing " the gentleman," and imprint 
 upon her chaste lips a tender salute, whereat 
 the universal host would set up a shout that 
 tore the concave, while hundreds of grinning 
 teeth startled the night with their brightness. 
 it was a pleasure to see the sable younkers 
 lick in the unctuous meat, with his more 
 unctuous sayings — how he would fit the tit- 
 bits to the puny mouths, reserving the 
 lengthier links for the seniors — how he 
 would intercept a morsel even in the jaws of 
 some young desperado, declaring it " must 
 to the pan again to be browned, for it was 
 not fit for a gentleman's eating " — how he 
 woidd recommend this slice of white bread, 
 or that jiiece of kissing-crust, to a tender 
 juvenile, advising them all to have a care of 
 cracking their teeth, which were tlieir best 
 patrimony, — how genteely he would deal 
 about the small ale, as if it were wine, 
 naming the brewer, and protesting, if it were 
 not good, he should lose their custom ; with 
 a special recommendation to wipe the lij) 
 before drinking. Then we had our toasts — 
 
 " The King,"—" the Cloth,"— which, whether 
 they understood or not, was equally diverting 
 and flattering ; — and for a crowning senti- 
 ment, which never failed, " May the Brush 
 supersede the Laurel ! " All these, and 
 fifty other fancies, which were rather felt 
 than comprehended by his guests, would he 
 utter, standing upon tables, and prefacing 
 every sentiment with a " Gentlemen, give 
 me leave to propose so and so," which was a 
 prodigious comfort to those young orphans ; 
 every now and then stuffing into his mouth 
 (for it did not do to be squeamish on these 
 occasions) indiscriminate pieces of those 
 reeking sausages, which pleased them 
 mightily, and was the savouriest part, you 
 may believe, of the entertainment. 
 
 Golden lads and lasses must, 
 
 As chimney-sweepers, coDie to dust — 
 
 James White is extinct, and with him 
 these suppers have long ceased. He carried 
 away with him half the fun of the world when 
 he died — of my world at least. His old 
 clients look for him among the pens ; and, 
 missing him, reproach the altered feast of 
 St. Bartholomew, and the glory of Smithfield 
 departed for evei*. 
 
 A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGAES, 
 
 IN THE METROPOLIS. 
 
 The all-sweeping besom of societariau re- 
 foi'uiation — your only modern Alcides' club 
 to rid the time of its abuses — is uplift with 
 many-handed sway to extirpate the last 
 fluttering tatters of the bugbear Mendicity 
 from the metropolis. Scrijjs, wallets, bags — 
 staves, dogs, and crutches — the whole men- 
 dicant fraternity, with all their baggage, 
 are fast posting out of the purlieus of this 
 eleventh pei'secution. From the crowded 
 crossing, from the corners of streets and 
 turnings of alleys, the parting Genii^s of 
 Beggary is " with sighing sent." 
 
 I do not approve of this wholesale going 
 to work, this impertinent crusado, or bellum 
 ad exterminationem, proclaimed against a 
 species. Much good might be sucked from 
 these Beggars. 
 
 They were the oldest and the honourablest 
 form of pauperism. Tlieir appeals were to 
 our common nature ; less revolting to an in- 
 genuous mind than to be a supj)liant to the 
 particular humoui-s or caprice of any fellow- 
 creature, or set of fellow-creatures, parochial 
 or societarian. Theirs were the only rates 
 uninvidious in the levy, ungrudged in the 
 assessment. 
 
 There was a dignity springing from the 
 very depth of their desolation ; as to be 
 naked is to be so much nearer to the being 
 a man, than to go in livery. 
 
 The greatest spirits have felt this in their 
 reverses ; and wiien Dionysius from king 
 turned schoolmaster, do we feel anything 
 towards him but contempt ? Could Van- 
 dyke have made a picture of him, swaying 
 
 C C 
 
386 
 
 A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS. 
 
 a ferula for a sceptre, which would have 
 affected our minds with the same heroic 
 pity, the same compassionate admiration, 
 with which we regard his Belisarius begging 
 for an oholum ? "Would the moral have been 
 more graceful, more pathetic ? 
 
 The Blind Beggar in the legend — the father 
 of pretty Bessy — whose story doggrel rlijTues 
 and ale-house signs cannot so degrade or 
 attenuate but that some sparks of a lustrous 
 spirit will shine through the disguisements 
 — this noble Earl of Cornwall (as indeed he 
 was) and memorable sport of fortune, fleeing 
 from the unjust sentence of his liege lord, 
 stript of all, and seated on the flowering 
 green of Betlmal, with his more fresh and 
 springing daughter by his side, illumining 
 his rags and his beggary — would the child 
 and parent have cut a better figure doing 
 the honours of a counter, or expiating their 
 fallen condition upon the three-foot eminence 
 of some sempstering shop-board ? 
 
 In tale or history your Beggar is ever the 
 just antipode to your King. The poets and 
 romancical writers (as dear Margaret New- 
 castle would call them,) when they would 
 most shai-ply and feelingly paint a reverse of 
 fortune, never stojj till they have brought 
 down their hero in good earnest to rags and 
 the wallet. The depth of the descent illus- 
 trates the height he falls from. There is no 
 medium which can be presented to the 
 imagination witliout ofi'ence. There is no 
 breaking the fall. Lear, thrown from his 
 palace, must divest him of his garments, till 
 he answer " mere nature ; " and Cresseid, 
 fallen from a prince's love, must extend her 
 pale arms, pale with other whiteness than of 
 beauty, supplicating lazar arms with bell 
 and clap-dish. 
 
 The Luciiin wits knew this very well ; 
 and, with a converse policy, when they would 
 expresss scorn of greatness without the pity, 
 they show us an Alexander in the .shades 
 cobbling shoes, or a Semiramis getting up 
 foul linen. 
 
 How would it sound in song, that a great 
 monarch had declined his aflectiona upon the 
 daughter of a baker ! yet do we feel the 
 imagination at all violated when we read the 
 " true ballad," where King Cophetua woos 
 the beggar maid ? 
 
 Pauperism, pauper, poor man, are expres- 
 sions of pity, but i)ity alloyeil with contempt. 
 
 No one properly contemns a Beggar, Poverty 
 is a comparative thing, and each degree of 
 it is mocked by its " neighbour grice." Its 
 poor rents and comings-in are soon summed 
 up and told. Its pretences to property are 
 almost ludicrous. Its pitiful attempts to 
 save excite a smile. Every scornful com- 
 panion can weigh his trifle-bigger purse 
 against it. Poor man reproaches poor man 
 in the street with impolitic mention of his 
 condition, his own being a shade better, 
 while the rich pass by and jeer at both. No 
 rascally comparative insults a Beggar, or 
 thinks of weighing purses with him. He is 
 not in the scale of comparison. He is not 
 under the measure of property. He con- 
 fessedly hath none, any more than a dog or 
 a sheep. No one twitteth him with ostenta- 
 tion above his means. No one accuses him 
 of pride, or upbraideth him with mock 
 humility. None jostle with him for the 
 wall, or pick quarrels for precedency. No 
 wealtliy neighbour seeketh to eject him from 
 hi§ tenement. No man sues him. No man 
 goes to law with him. If I were not the in- 
 dependent gentleman that I am, rather than 
 I would be a retainer to the great, a led 
 captain, or a poor relation, I would choose, 
 out of the delicac}' and true greatness of my 
 mind, to be a Beggar. 
 
 Eags, which are the reproach of poverty, 
 are the Beggar's robes, and gi'aceful insignia 
 of his profession, his tenure, his full dress, 
 the suit in which he is expected to show 
 himself in public. He is never out of the 
 fashion, or limpeth awkwardly behind it. 
 He is not required to put on court mourn- 
 ing. He weareth all colours, feai'ing none. 
 His costume hath undergone less change 
 than the Quaker's. He is the only man 
 in the univei*se who is not obliged to study 
 ajipearances. Tlie ups and downs of tlie 
 worhl concern him no longer. He alone 
 coutinueth in one stay. The price of stock 
 or land aflecteth him not. The fluctuations 
 of agricultui'al or commerciid jirosperity 
 touch him not, or at worst but change hia 
 customers. He is not expected to become 
 bail or surety for any one. No man troubleth 
 him with questiiniiug his religion or politics. 
 He is the only free man in the universe. 
 
 The Mendicants of this great city were so 
 
 many of lier sights, her lions, I can no more 
 
 ' spare them than I could the Cries of Loudou. 
 
No comer of a street is complete without 
 them. They are as indispensable as the 
 Ballad Singer ; and in their picturesque 
 attire as ornamental as the signs of old 
 London. Tliey were tlie standing morals, 
 emblems, mementos, dial-mottos, the spital 
 sermons, the books for children, the salutary 
 checks and pauses to the high and rushing 
 tide of greasy citizenry — 
 
 -Look 
 
 Upon that poor and broken bankrupt there. 
 
 Above all, those old blind Tobits that used 
 to line the wall of Lincoln's-inn Garden, 
 before modern fostidiousness had expelled 
 tliem, casting up their ruined orb? to catch 
 a ray of jiity, and (if possible) of light, with 
 their faithful Dog Guide at their feet, — 
 whither are they fled ? or into what corners, 
 blind as themselves, have they been driven, 
 out of the wholesome air and sun-warmth ? 
 immersed between four walls, in what wither- 
 ing poor-house do they endure the penalty of 
 double darkness, where the chink of the 
 dropt half-penny no more consoles their for- 
 lorn bereavement, far from the sound of the 
 cheerful and hope-stirring tread of the pas- 
 senger ? Where hang their useless staves ? 
 and who will farm their dogs ? — Have the 
 overseers of St. L — caused them to be shot ? 
 or were they tied up in sacks and dropt into 
 the Thames, at the suggestion of B — , the 
 
 mild rector of ? 
 
 Well fare the soul of imfastidious Vincent 
 Bourne, most classical, and at the same time, 
 most English of the Latinists ! — who has 
 treated of this human and quadrupedal 
 alliance, this dog and man friendship, in 
 the sweetest of his poems, the Epitaphium 
 in Canem, or, Dog^s Epitaph. Eeadei", peruse 
 it ; and say, if customary sights, which could 
 call up such gentle poetry as this, were of a 
 nature to do more harm or good to the moral 
 sense of the passengers through the daily 
 thoroughfai-es of a vast and busy metropolis. 
 
 Pauperis hie Iri requiesco Lyciscus, herilis, 
 
 Dum vixi, tutela vigil columenque sonoctiE, 
 
 Dux caeco fidus : ncc, mc duccnte, solcbat, / 
 
 PrcDtenso hinc atque hinc baculo, per Iniqua locomm 
 
 Incertam explorare viam ; scd fila secutus, 
 
 Quce dubios regercnt passQs, vestigia tuta 
 
 Fixit inoffeuso gressu ; geliduraque scdile 
 
 In nudo aactus saxo, qua prsctereuntium 
 
 Vnda frequens confluxit, ibi miserisquc tonebras 
 
 Lamentis, noctemque oculis ploravit obortam. 
 
 Ploravit nee frustra ; obolum dedit alter et alter, 
 
 Queis corda et mentcm indiderat natura bcnignani. 
 
 Ad latus interea jacui sopitus hcrile, 
 
 Vol mcdiis vigil in somnis ; ad herilia jussa 
 
 Aurcsque atque animum arrectus, scu frustula amic6 
 
 Porrexit sociasque dapes, seu longa dici 
 
 ToBdia perpessus, reditum sub nocte parabat. 
 
 Hi mores, b;ce vita fuit, dum fata sinebant, 
 Dum neque languebam morbis, nee inertc senecta ; 
 QuoB tandem obrcpsit, vcterique satellite ceecum 
 Orbavit dominum : prigci sed gratia facti 
 Ne tota intereat, longos delccta per annos, 
 f;xiguum hunc Irus tumulum de cespite fecit, 
 Etsi inopis, iion ingrata?, munuscula dextrae ; 
 Carmine signavitquc brevi, dominumque canemque 
 Quod memoret, fidumque cancm dominumque benigntun. 
 
 Poor Irus' faithful -wolf-dog here I lie, 
 
 That wont to tend my old blind master's steps, 
 
 His guide and guard ; nor, while my service lasted, 
 
 Had he occasion for that staff, with which 
 
 He now goes picking out his path in fear 
 
 Over the highways and crossings ; but would plant, 
 
 Safe in the conduct of my friendly string, 
 
 A firm foot forward still, till he had reach'd 
 
 His poor seat on some stone, nigh where the tide 
 
 Of passers by in thickest confluence flow'd : 
 
 To whom with loud and passionate laments 
 
 From morn to eve his dark estate he wail'd. 
 
 Nor wail'd to all in vain : some here and there, 
 
 The well-disposed and good, their pennies gave. 
 
 I meantime at his feet obsequious slei)t ; 
 
 Not all-asleep in sleep, but heart and car 
 
 Prick'd up at his least motion ; to receive 
 
 At his kind hand my customary crumbs, 
 
 And common portion in his feast of scraps ; 
 
 Or when night warn'd us homeward, tired and spent 
 
 With our long day and tedious beggary. 
 
 These were my manners, this my way of life 
 Till age and slow disease me overtook, 
 And scver'd from my sightless master's side. 
 But lest the grace of so good deeds should die, 
 Through tract of years in mute oblivion lost, 
 This slender tomb of turf hath Irus reared, 
 Cheap monument of no ungrudging hand. 
 And with short verse inscribed it, to attest, 
 In long and lasting union to attest, 
 The virtues of the Beggar and his Dog. 
 
 These dim eyes have in vain explored for 
 some months past a well-known figure, or 
 part of the figure of a man, who used to 
 glide his comely upper half over the pave- 
 ments of London, wheeling along with most 
 ingenious celerity upon a machine of wood ; 
 a spectacle to natives, to foreigners, and to 
 children. He was of a robust make, with a 
 florid sailor-like complexion, and his head 
 was bare to the storm and sunshine. He 
 was a natural curiosity, a speculation to the 
 scientific, a prodigy to the simple. The in- 
 fant would stare at the mighty man brought 
 down to his own level. The common cripple 
 would despise hiaown pusillanimity, viewing 
 the hale stoutness, and hearty heart, of this 
 half-luubed giant. Few but must have 
 noticed him ; for the accident which brought 
 him low took place during the riots of 1780, 
 and he has been a groundling so long. He 
 
 c c 2 
 
388 
 
 A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS. 
 
 seemed earth-born, an Antseus, and to suck 
 in fresh viorour from the soil which he neigh- 
 boured. He wa.s a grand fragment ; as 
 good as an Elgin marble. The nature, 
 which should have recruited his reft legs 
 and thighs, was not lost, but only retired 
 into his upper parts, and he was half a 
 Hercules. 1 heard a tremendous voice thun- 
 dering and growling, as before an earth- 
 quake, and casting down my eyes, it was 
 this mandrake reviling a steed that had 
 started at his portentous appearance. He 
 seemed to want but his just stature to have 
 rent the offending quadruped in shivers. 
 He was as the man-part of a centaur, from 
 which the horse-lialf had been cloven in 
 some dire Lapithan controversy. He moved 
 on, as if he could have made shift with yet 
 half of the body-portion which was left him. 
 The OS sublime was not wanting ; and he 
 threw out yet a jolly countenance upon the 
 heavens. Forty-and-two years had he driven 
 this out-of-door trade, and now that his hair 
 is grizzled in the service, but his good spirits 
 no way impaired, because he is not content 
 to exchange his free air and exercise for the 
 restraints of a poor-house, he is exi)iatiug his 
 contumacy in one of those houses (ironically 
 christened) of Correction. 
 
 "Was a daily spectacle like tliis to be 
 deemed a nuisance, which called for legal in- 
 terference to remove ? or not rather a salu- 
 tary and a touching object to the passers- 
 by in a great city 1 Among her shows, 
 her museums, and supplies for ever-gaping 
 curiosity (and what else but an accumula- 
 tion of sights — endless sights — is a great 
 city ; or for what else is it desiraV)le ?) was 
 there not room for one Lusus (not Naturce, 
 indeed, but) Accidentium ? What if in forty- 
 and-two-years' going about, tlie man had 
 scraped together enough to give a portion to 
 his child, (as tlie rumour ran) of a few hun- 
 dreds — whom had he injured 1 — whom had 
 he imposed upon ? The contributors had 
 enjoj^ed their sight for their pennies. AVhat 
 if after being exposed all day to the heats, 
 the rains, and the frosts of heaven — shuUling 
 his ungainly trunk along in an elaborate and 
 painful motion — he was enabled to retire at 
 night to enjoy hiniscir at a club of his fellow 
 cripples over a dish of hot meat and vege- 
 tables, as the chai'ge was gravely brought 
 against liim by a clergyman deposing before 
 
 a House of Commons' Committee — was this, 
 or was his truly paternal consideration, 
 which (if a fact) deserved a statue rather 
 than a whipjiing-post, and is inconsistent, at 
 least, with the exaggeration of nocturnal 
 orgies which he has been slandered with — a 
 reason that lie should be deprived of his 
 chosen, harmless, nay edifying, way of life, 
 and be committed in hoary age for a sturdy 
 vagabond ? — 
 
 There was a Yorick once, whom it would 
 not have shamed to have sate down at the 
 cripples' feast, and to have thrown in his 
 benediction, ay, and his mite too, for a com- 
 panionable symbol. " Age, thou hast lost 
 thy breed." — 
 
 Half of these stories about the prodigious 
 fortunes made by begging are (I verily be- 
 lieve) misers' calumnies. One was much 
 talked of in the public papei-s some time 
 since, and the usual charitable inferences 
 deduced. A clerk in the Bank was surprised 
 with the announcement of a five-hundred- 
 pound legacy left him by a person whose 
 name he was a stranger to. It seems that 
 in his daily morning walks from Peckham 
 (or some village thereabouts) where he lived, 
 to his office, it had been his practice for the 
 last twenty years to di-op his halfpenny duly 
 into the hat of some blind Bartimeus, that 
 sate begging alms by the way-side in the 
 Borough. The good old beggar recognised 
 his daily benefactor by the voice only ; and, 
 when he- died, left all the amassings of his 
 alms (that had been half a century perhaps 
 in the accumulating) to his old Bank friend. 
 Was this a story to purse up people's heai'ts, 
 and pennies, against giving an alms to the 
 blind 1 — or nut rather a beautiful moral of 
 well-directed charity on the one part, and 
 noble gratitude upon the other ? 
 
 I sometimes wish I had been that Bank 
 clerk. 
 
 I seem to remember a poor old grateful 
 kind of creature, blinking, and looking up 
 with his no eyes in the sun — 
 
 Is it possible I could have steeled my puree 
 against him ? 
 
 Perhaps I had no small change. 
 
 Reader, do not be frightened at the hard 
 words imposition, imposture — give, and ask 
 no questions. Cast thy lnvad upon the waters. 
 Some have imawarcs (like this Bank clerk) 
 entertained angels. 
 
A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG. 
 
 389 
 
 Shut not thy purse-strings always against 
 painted distress. Act a charity sometimes. 
 When a poor creature (outwai'dly and visibly 
 such) comes before thee, do not stay to in- 
 quire whether the " seven small children," 
 in whose name he implores thy assistance, 
 have a veritable existence. Rake not into 
 the bowels of unwelcome truth to save a half- 
 penny. It is good to believe him. If he be 
 
 not all that he pretendeth, give, and under a 
 personate fatlier of a family, think (if thou 
 pleasest) that thou hast relieved an indigent 
 bachelor. When they come witli their coun- 
 tei-feit looks, and mumping tones, think them 
 players. You pay your money to see a 
 comedian feign these things, which, concern- 
 ing these poor people, thou canst not cer- 
 tainly tell whether they are feigned or not. 
 
 A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG. 
 
 ;M^vnkind, says a Chinese manuscript, 
 which my friend M. was obliging enough to 
 read and explain to me, for the first seventy 
 thousand ages ate their meat raw, clawing 
 or biting it from the living animal, just as 
 they do in Abyssinia to this day. This 
 period is not obscurely hinted at by their 
 great Confucius in the second chapter of his 
 ^lundane Mutations, where he designates a 
 kind of golden age by the term Cho-fang, 
 literally the Cooks' Holiday. The manuscript 
 goes on to say, that the art of roasting, or 
 rather broiling (which I take to be the elder 
 brother) "w^as accidentally discovered in the 
 manner following. The swine-herd, Ho-ti, 
 having gone out into the woods one morning, 
 as his manner was, to collect mast for his 
 hogs, left his cottage in the care of his eldest 
 son Bo-bo, a great lubberly boy, who being 
 fond of playing with fire, as younkers of his 
 age commonly are, let some sparks escape 
 into a bundle of straw, which kindling quickly, 
 spread the conflagration over eveiy part of 
 their poor mansion, till it was reduced to 
 ashes. Together with the cottage (a sorry 
 antediluvian make-shift of a building, you 
 may think it), what was of much more im- 
 portance, a fine litter of new-farrowed pigs, 
 no leas than nine in number, perished. China 
 pigs have been esteemed a luxury all over 
 the East, from the remotest periods that we 
 read of. Bo-bo was in the utmost consterna- 
 tion, as you may think, not so much lor the 
 sake of the tenement, which his father and 
 he could easily build up again with a few 
 dry branches, and the labour of an hour or 
 two, at any time, as for the loss of the pigs. 
 While he was thinking what he should say 
 
 to his father, and wringing his hands over 
 the smoking remnants of one of those un- 
 timely sufferers, an odour assailed his nostrils, 
 unlike any scent which he had before ex- 
 perienced. What could it proceed from ? — 
 not from the burnt cottage — he had smelt 
 that smeU before — indeed this was by no 
 means the first accident of the kind which 
 had occurred through the negligence of this 
 unlucky young fire-brand. Much less did it 
 resemble that of any known herb, weed, or 
 flower. A premonitory moistening at the 
 same time overflowed his nether lip. He 
 knew not what to think. He next stooped 
 do^vn to feel the pig, if there were any signs 
 of life in it. He burnt his fingers, and to 
 cool them he applied them in his booby 
 fashion to his mouth. Some of the crumbs 
 of the scorched skin had come away with his 
 fingers, and for the first time in his life (in 
 the world's life indeed, for before him no 
 mail had known it) he taisted — crackling / 
 Again he felt and fumbled at the pig. It 
 did not burn him so much now, still he licked 
 his fingers from a sort of habit. The truth 
 at length broke into his slow understiuiding, 
 that it was the pig that smelt so, and the pig 
 that tasted so delicious ; and surrendering 
 himself up to the new-born pleasure, he fell 
 to tearing up whole handfuls of the scorched 
 skin with the flesh next it, and was criimmiug 
 it down his throat in his beastly ti-shion, 
 when his sire entered amid the smoking 
 rafters, armed with retributory cudgel, and 
 finding how aflairs stood, bogjui to rain blows 
 upon the young rogue's shouldei-s, as thick 
 as hail-stones, which Bo-bo heeded not 
 any more than if tliey had been flies. The 
 
390 
 
 A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG, 
 
 tickling pleasure, which he experienced in his 
 lower regions, had rendered him quite callous 
 to any inconveniences he might feel in those 
 remote quaitera. His fatlier might lay on, 
 but he could not beat him from his pig, till 
 he had fairly made an end of it, when, be- 
 coming a little more sensible of his situation, 
 something like the following dialogue ensued. 
 
 " You gi-aceless whelp, what have you got 
 there devouring ? Is it not enough that 
 you have burnt me down three houses with 
 your dog's tricks, and be hanged to you ! but 
 you must be eating fire, and I know not 
 what — what have you got there, I say 1 " 
 
 " father, the pig, the pig I do come and 
 taste how nice the burnt pig eats." 
 
 The ears of Ho-ti tingled with horror. He 
 cursed his son, and he cursed himself that 
 ever he should beget a son that should eat 
 burnt pig. 
 
 Bo-bo, whose scent was wonderfully 
 sharpened since morning, soon raked out 
 another pig, and fairly rending it asunder, 
 thrust the lesser half by main force into the 
 fists of Ho-ti, still shouting out, " Eat, eat, 
 eat the burnt pig, father, only taste — O 
 Lord ! " — with such-like barbarous ejacula- 
 tions, cramming all the while as if he would 
 choke. 
 
 Ho-ti trembled every joint while he 
 grasped the abominable thing, wavering 
 whether he should not put his son to death 
 for an unnatural young monster, when the 
 crackling scorching his fingers, as it had 
 done his son's, and applying the same remedy 
 to them, he in his turn tasted some of its 
 flavour, which, make what sour mouths he 
 would for a pretence, proved not altogether 
 displeasing to him. In conclusion (for the 
 manuscript here is a little tedious), both 
 father and sou fairly set down to the mess, 
 and never left oft" till they had despatched all 
 that remained of the litter. 
 
 Bo-bo was strictly enjoined not to let the 
 secret escape, for the neighbours would cer- 
 tainly have stoned them for a couple of 
 abominable wretches, who coukl tliink of 
 improving upon the good meat which God 
 had sent them. Nevertheless, strange stories 
 got about. It w;is observed tliat Ilo-ti's 
 cottage was burnt down now more frecjuently 
 th;m ever. Notliing but fires from this time 
 forward. Some would break out in broad 
 day, others in the night-time. As often as 
 
 the sow farrowed, so sure was the house of 
 Ho-ti to be in a blaze ; and Ho-ti himself, 
 which was the more remarkable, instead of 
 chastising his son, seemed to grow more in- 
 dulgent to him than ever. At length they 
 were watched, the terrible mystery dis- 
 covered, and father and son summoned to 
 take their trial at Pekin, then an inconsider- 
 able assize town. Evidence was given, the 
 obnoxious food itself produced in court, and 
 verdict about to be pronounced, when the 
 foreman of the jury begged that some of the 
 burnt pig, of which the culprits stood 
 accused, might be handed into the box. He 
 handled it, and they all handled it ; and 
 burning their fingers, as Bo-bo and his father 
 had done before them, and nature prompting 
 to each of them the same remedy, against the 
 face of all the facts, and the clearest charge 
 which judge had ever given, — to the surprise 
 of the whole court, townsfolk, strangers, 
 reporters, and all present — without leaving 
 the box, or any manner of consultation what- 
 ever, they brought in a simultaneous verdict 
 of Not Guilty. 
 
 The judge, who was a shrewd fellow, 
 winked at the manifest iniquity of the 
 decision : and when the court was dismissed, 
 went pi-ivily and bought up all the pigs that 
 could be had for love or money. In a few 
 days his lordship's town-house wjis observed 
 to be on fire. The thing took wing, and now 
 there was nothing to be seen but fire in 
 every direction. Fuel and pigs grew enor- 
 mously dear all over the district. The 
 insurance-offices one and all shut up shop. 
 People built slighter and slighter every day, 
 until it was feared that tiie very science of 
 architecture would in no long time be lost to 
 the world. Thus this custom of firing houses 
 continued, till in process of time, says my 
 manuscript, a sage arose, like our Locke, who 
 made a discovery that the flesh of swine, 
 or indeed of any other animal, might be 
 cooked {burnt, as they called it) witliout the 
 necessity of consuming a whole house to 
 dress it. Tlieai first beg.-m the rude form of 
 a gridiron. Iloiisting by the string or spit 
 came in a century or two later, I forget in 
 wliose dynasty. By such slow degrees, con- 
 cludes the manuscript, do the most useful, 
 and seemingly the must obvious, arts make 
 their way among mankind 
 
 Without placing too inii>licit faith in t!ic 
 
A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG. 
 
 891 
 
 account above given, it must be agreed that of filthy conversation — from these sins ho is 
 if a wortliy pretext for so dangerous an expe- happily snatched away — 
 riment as setting houses on lire (especially 
 
 in these days) could be assigned in favour of 
 any culinary object, that pretext and excuse 
 mi<dit be found in roast pig. 
 
 Ere sin could blight or sorrow fade, 
 Death came with timely care — 
 
 his memory is odoriferous — no clown curseth, 
 
 Of all tlie delicacies in the whole mundus while his stomach half rejecteth, the rank 
 edibilis, I will maintain it to be the most bacon — no coalheaver bolteth him in reeking 
 delicate — -princeps obsoniorum. sausages — he hath a fair sepulchre in the 
 
 I speak not of your grown porkers — ' grateful stomach of the judicious epicure^ 
 things between pig and pork — those hobby- and for such a tomb might be content to die. 
 dehoys — but a young and tender suckling — He is the best of sapors. Pine-apple is 
 under a moon old — guiltless as yet of the sty great. She is indeed almost too transcend- 
 — with no original speck of the amor immun- ent — a delight, if not sinful, yet so like to 
 ditice, the hereditary failing of the fii-st sinning that really a teuder-couscienced 
 parent, yet manifest — his voice as yet not person would do well to pause — too ravishing 
 broken, but something between a childish for mortal taste, she woundeth and exco- 
 treble and a grumble — the mild forerunner riateth the lij3S that approach her — like 
 or prceludium of a grunt, j lovers' kisses, she biteth — she is a pleasure 
 
 He must be roasted. I am not ignorant that bordering on pain from the fierceness and 
 our ancestors ate them seethed, or boiled — | insanity of her i-elish — but she stojipeth at 
 but what a sacrifice of tlie exterior tegument ! 
 
 There is no flavour comparable, I will 
 contend, to that of the crisp, tawny, well- 
 watched, not over-roasted, crackling, as it is 
 well called — the very teeth are invited to their 
 share of the pleasure at this banquet in over- 
 coming the coy, brittle resistance — with the 
 adhesive oleaginous — O call it not fat ! but 
 an indefinable sweetness growing up to it — 
 the tender blossoming of fat — fat ci'02)ped in 
 the bud — taken in the shoot — in the first 
 innocence — the cream and quintessence of 
 
 the child-pig's yet pure food the lean, no 
 
 lean, but a kind of animal manna — or, 
 rather, fat and lean (if it must be so) so 
 blended and runnuig into each other, that 
 both together make but one ambrosian 
 result or common substance. 
 
 Behold him, while he is "doing" — it 
 seemeth rather a refreshing warmth, than a 
 scorching heat, that he is so passive to. How 
 equably he tv/irleth round the string! — Now 
 he is just done. To see the extreme sensil)i- 
 lity of that tender age ! he hath wept out 
 his pi-etty eyes — radiant jellies — shooting 
 stars. — 
 
 See him in the dish, his second cradle, how 
 meek he lieth ! — wouldst thou have hdd this 
 innocent grow up to the grossuess and indo- 
 cility which too often accompany matuier 
 swinehood? Ten to one he would havt- 
 proved a glutton, a sloven, an obstinate, dis- 
 agreeable animal — w.illuwing in ail maunvr 
 
 the palate — she meddleth not with the appe- 
 tite — and the coarsest hunger might barter 
 her consistently for a mutton-chop. 
 
 Pig — let me speak his praise — is no less 
 provocative of the appetite, than he is satis- 
 factory to the criticaluess of the censorious 
 palate. The strong man may batten on him, 
 and the weakling refuseth not his mild juices. 
 
 Unlike to mankind's mixed characters, a 
 bundle of virtues and vices, inexplicably 
 intertwisted, and not to be unravelled with- 
 out hazard, he is — good throughout. No 
 part of him is better or worse than another. 
 He helpeth, as f.ir as his little means extend, 
 all aroimd. He is the least envious of ban- 
 quets. He is all neighbours' fare. 
 
 I am one of those, who freely and un- 
 grudgingly impart a share of the good things 
 of this life which fall to their lot (few jis 
 mine :u-e in this kind) to a friend, I protest 
 I take as great an interest in my friend's 
 pleasures, his relishes, and proper satis- 
 factions, as in mine own. " Presents," I 
 often say, " endear Absents." Hares, 
 pheasants, partridges, snipes, barn-door 
 chickens (those " tame villatic fowl,") capons, 
 plovei-s, brawn, barrels of oysters, I dispense 
 as freely as I receive them. I love to taste 
 them, as it were, upon the tongue of my 
 fiiend. But a stop must be put somewhere. 
 One would not, like Lear, "give everything.'' 
 I make my stand upon pig. Methinks it is 
 an ingratitude to the Giver of all good flavours 
 
392 A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT OF THE BEHAVIOUR OF MARRIED PEOPLE. 
 
 to extra-domiciliate, or send out of the house 
 slightingly (under pretext of friendship, or I 
 know not what) a blessing so particularly 
 adapted, predestined, I may say, to my 
 individual palate — It argues an insensibility. 
 I remember a touch of conscience in this 
 kind at school. My good old aunt, who 
 never parted from me at the end of a holiday 
 without stuffing a sweetmeat, or some nice 
 thing into my pocket, had dismissed me one 
 evening with a smoking plum-cake, fresh 
 from the oven. In my way to school (it was 
 over London bridge) a grey-headed old 
 beggar saluted me (I have no doubt, at this 
 time of day, that he was a ' counterfeit.) I 
 had no pence to console him with, and in the 
 vanity of self-denial, and the very coxcombry 
 of charity, schoolboy-like, I made him a pre- 
 sent of — the whole cake ! I walked on a 
 little, buoyed up, as one is on such occasions, 
 with a sweet soothing of self-satisfaction ; 
 but before I had got to the end of the bridge, 
 miy better feelings returned, and I burst into 
 tears, thinking how ungrateful I had been to 
 my good aunt, to go and give her good gift 
 away to a stranger that I had never seen 
 before, and who might be a bad man for 
 aught I knew ; and then I thought of the 
 pleasure my aunt would be taking in tliink- 
 ing that I — I myself, and not another — would 
 eat her nice cake — and what should I say to 
 her the next time I saw her — how naughty I 
 was to part with her pretty present ! — and 
 the odour of that spicy cake came back upon 
 my recollection, and the pleasure and the 
 curiosity I had taken in seeing her make it, 
 and her joy when she sent it to the oven, and 
 how di.sappointed she would feel that I had 
 never had a bit of it in my mouth at last — 
 and I blamed my impertinent spirit of alms- 
 
 giving, and out of-place hypocrisy of good- 
 ness ; and above all I wished never to see 
 the face again of that insidious, good-for-no- 
 thing, old grey imposter. 
 
 Our ancestors were nice in their method 
 of sacrificing these tender victims. We read 
 of ])igs whipt to death with something of a 
 shock, as we hear of any other obsolete 
 custom. The age of discipline is gone by, or 
 it would be curious to inquire (in a philoso- 
 phical light merely) what effect this process 
 might have towards intenerating and dulci- 
 fying a substance, naturally so mild and 
 dulcet as the flesh of young pigs. It looks 
 like refining a violet. Yet we should be 
 cautious, while we condemn the inhumanity, 
 how we censure the wisdom of the practice. 
 It might impart a gusto. — 
 
 I remember an hypothesis, argued upon by 
 the young students, when I was at St. Omer's, 
 and maintained with much learning and 
 ]>leasantry on both sides, " Whether, sup- 
 posing that the flavour of a pig who obtained 
 his death by whipping (per flagellationem 
 extremam) superadded a pleasure upon the 
 palate of a man more intense than any 
 possible suffering we can conceive in the 
 animal, is man justified in using that method 
 of putting the animal to death ? " I forget 
 the decision. 
 
 His sauce should be considered. Deci- 
 dedly, a few bread crumbs, done up with hia 
 liver and brains, and a dash of mild sage. 
 But banish, dear Mrs. Cook, I beseech you, 
 the whole onion tribe. Barbecue your whole 
 hogs to your palate, steep them in shalots, 
 stuff them out Avith plantations of the rank 
 and guilty garlic ; you cannot poison them, 
 or make them stronger than they are — but 
 consider, he is a weakling — a flower. 
 
 A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT OF THE BEHAVIOUR OF MARRIED PEOPLK 
 
 As a single man, I have spent a good deal 
 of my time in noting down the infirmities of 
 Married People, to console myself for those 
 superior ploasuios, which tliey tell me I have 
 lost by remaining sis I am. 
 
 I cannot say that the quarrels of men and 
 their wives ever made any great impression 
 
 upon me, or had much tendency to strengthen 
 me in those anti-social resolutions, which I 
 touk up long ago upon more substantial con- 
 siderations. What oftenest ofleuds me at 
 the houses of married persons where I visit, 
 is an error of quite a different description ;— 
 it is that they are too loving. 
 
A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT OF THE BEHAVIOUR OF MARRIED PEOPLE, 
 
 393 
 
 Not too loving neither : that does not ex- 
 plain my meaning. Besides, why should that 
 offend me ? The very act of separating them- 
 selves from the rest of the world, to have the 
 fuller enjoyment of each other's society, 
 implies that they prefer one another to all 
 the world. 
 
 But what I complain of is. that they carry 
 this preference so undisguisedly, they perk 
 it up in the foces of us single people so 
 shamelessly, you cannot be in their company 
 a moment without being made to feel, by 
 some indirect hint or ojien avowal, that you 
 are not the object of this preference. Now 
 there are some things which give no offence, 
 while implied or taken for granted merely ; 
 but expressed, there is much offence in them. 
 If a man were to accost the first homely- 
 featured or plaia-dressed young woman of 
 his acquaintance, and tell her bluntly, that 
 she was not handsome or rich enough for 
 him, and he could not marry her, he would 
 desei've to be kicked for his ill manners ; yet 
 no less is implied in the fact, that having 
 access and opportunity of putting the question 
 to her, he has never yet thought fit to do it. 
 The young woman understands this as clearly 
 as if it were put into words ; but no reason- 
 able young woman would think of making 
 this the ground of a quarrel. Just as little 
 right have a married couple to tell me by 
 speeches, and looks that are scarce less plain 
 than speeches, tliat I am not the happy man, 
 — the lady's choice. It is enough that I know 
 I am not : I do not want this perpetual re- 
 minding. 
 
 The display of superior knowledge or riches 
 may be made sufficiently mortifying ; but 
 these admit of a palliative. The knowledge 
 which is brought out to insult me, may acci- 
 dentally improve me ; and in the rich man's 
 houses and pictures, — his parks and gardens, 
 I have a temporary usufruct at least. But 
 the display of married happiness has none of 
 these palliatives : it Is throughout pure, un- 
 recompensed, unqualified insult. 
 
 Marriage by its best title is a monopoly, 
 and not of the least invidious sort. It/ is the 
 cunning of most possessors of any exclusive 
 privilege to keep their advantage as much 
 out of sight as possible, that their less 
 favoured neighbours, seeing little of the 
 benefit, may the less be disposed to question 
 the right. But these married monopolists 
 
 thrust the most obnoxious part of their 
 patent into our faces. 
 
 Nothing is to me more distasteful than 
 that entire complacency and satisfaction 
 which beam in tlie countenances of a new- 
 married couple, — in that of the lady particu- 
 larly : it tells you, that her lot is disposed of 
 in this world : that you can have no hopes of 
 her. It is true, I have none : nor wishes 
 either, perhaps ; but this is one of those 
 truths which ought, as I said before, to be 
 taken for granted, not expressed. 
 
 The excessive airs which those people give 
 themselves, founded on the ignorance of us un- 
 married people, would be more offensive if they 
 were less irrational. We will allow them to 
 understand the mysteries belonging to their 
 own craft better than we, who have not had 
 the happiness to be made free of the com- 
 pany : but their arrogance is not content 
 within these limits. If a single person pre- 
 sume to offer his opinion in their presence, 
 though upon the most indifferent subject, he 
 is immediately silenced as an incompetent 
 person. Nay, a young married lady of my ac- 
 quaintance, who, the best of the jest was, had 
 not changed her condition above a fortnight 
 before, in a question on which I had the 
 misfortune to differ from her, respecting the 
 properest mode of breeding oysters for the 
 London market, had the assurance to ask 
 with a sneer, how such an old Bachelor as I 
 could pretend to know anything about such 
 matters ! 
 
 But what I have spoken of hitherto is no- 
 thing to the airs which these creatures give 
 themselves wlien they come, as they generally 
 do, to have children. When I consider how 
 little of a rarity children are, — that every 
 street and blind alley swarms with them, — 
 that the poorest people commonly have them 
 in most abundance, — that there are few mar- 
 riages that are not blest with at least one of 
 these bargains, — Low often they turn out ill, 
 and defeat the fond hopes of tlieir parents, 
 taking to vicious courses, which end in 
 poverty, disgrace, the gallows, &c. — I cannot 
 for my life tell what cause for pride there 
 can possibly be in having them. If they were 
 young phoenixes, indeed, that were born but 
 one in a year, there might be a pretext. But 
 when they are so common 
 
 I do not advert to the insolent merit which 
 they assume with their husbands on these 
 
occasions. Let them look to that. But why 
 we, who are not their natural-bom subjects, 
 should be expected to bring our spices, myrrh, 
 and incense, — our tribute and homage of 
 admiration, — I do not see. 
 
 " Like as the arrows in the hand of the 
 giant, even so are the young children : " so 
 says the excellent office in our Prayer-book 
 appointed for the churching of women. 
 " Happy is the man that hath his quiver full 
 of them : " So say I ; but then don't let him 
 discharge his quiver upon us that are weapon- 
 less ; — let them be arrows, but not to gall 
 and stick us. I have generally observed that 
 these arrows are double-headed : they have 
 two forks, to be sure to hit with one or the 
 other. As for instance, where you come into 
 a house which is full of children, if you 
 happen to take no notice of them (you are 
 thinking of something else, perhaps, and turn 
 a deaf ear to their innocent caresses), you are 
 set down as untractable, morose, a hater of 
 children. On the other hand, if you find 
 them more than usually engaging, — if you 
 are taken with their pretty manners, and 
 .set about in eax'nest to romp and play 
 with them, some pretext or other is sure 
 to be found for sending them out of the 
 room ; they are too noisy or boisterous, or 
 
 Mr. does not like children, "With one 
 
 or other of these folks the arrow is sure to 
 hit you. 
 
 I could forgive their jealou-sy, and dispense 
 with toying with their brats, if it gives them 
 any pain ; but I think it unreasonable to be 
 called upon to love them, where I see no 
 occasion, — to love a whole family, perhaps 
 eight, nine, or ten, indiscriminately, — to love 
 all the pretty dears, because children are so 
 engaging ! 
 
 I know there is a proverb, " Love me, love 
 my dog : " that is not always so very practi- 
 cable, particularly if the dog be set upon you 
 to tease you or snap at you in sport. But a 
 dog, or a lesser thing — any inanimate sub- 
 stance, as a keepsake, a watch or a ring, a 
 tree, or the place where we Lust parted when 
 my friend went away upon a long ab-sence, 
 I can make shift to luve, because I love him, 
 and anything that reminds me of him ; pro- 
 vided it be in its nature indifferent, and apt 
 to receive whatever hue fancy can give it. 
 But children have a real cliaracter, and an 
 essential beiui' of themselves : they are 
 
 amiable or unamiable per se ; I must love or 
 hate them as I see cause for either in their 
 qualities. A child's nature is too serious a 
 thing to admit of its being regarded as a 
 mere appendage to another being, and to be 
 loved or hated accordingly : they stand with 
 me upon their own stock, as much as men 
 and women do. Oh ! but you will say, sure 
 it is an attractive age, — there is something 
 in the tender years of infancy that of itself 
 charms us ? Tliat is the very reason why I 
 am more nice about them. I know that a 
 sweet child is the sweetest thing in nature, 
 not even excepting the delicate creatures 
 which bear them ; but the prettier the kind 
 of a thing is, the more desirable it is that it 
 should be pretty of its kind. One daisy 
 differs not much from another in glory ; but 
 a violet should look and smell the daintiest. 
 — I was always rather squeamish in my 
 women and children. 
 
 But this is not the worst : one must be 
 admitted into their familiarity at least, before 
 they can complain of inattention. It implies 
 visits, and some kind of intercourse. But if 
 the husband be a man with whom you have 
 lived on a friendly footing before marriage — 
 if you did not come in on the wife's side — if 
 you did not sneak into the house in her 
 train, but were an old friend in fast habits 
 of intimacy before their courtship was so 
 much as thought on, — look about you — your 
 tenure is precarious — before a twelvemonth 
 shall roll over your head, you shall find your 
 old friend gradually grow cool and altered 
 towards you, and at last seek ojiportunities 
 of breaking with you. I have scarce a 
 married friend of my acquaintance, upon 
 whose firm faith I can rely, whose friendship 
 did not commence after the -period of his 
 marriage. With some limitations, they can 
 endure that ; but that the good man should 
 have dared to enter into a solemn league of 
 friendshii> in which they were not consulted, 
 though it happened before they knew him, 
 — before they that are now man and wife 
 ever met, — this is intolerable to them. Every 
 long friendship, every old authentic inti- 
 macy, must be brought into their office to 
 be new stamped with their currency, as 
 a sovereign jirince calls in the good old 
 money that was eoiueil in some reign before 
 he was born or thought of, to be new marked 
 and minted with the stiunp of his authority, 
 
A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT OF THE BEHAVIOUR OF MARRIED PEOPLE. 
 
 895 
 
 before he will let it pass current in the 
 world. You may guess what luck generally 
 befalls such a rusty piece of metal as I am 
 in these neto mintings. 
 
 Innumerable are the ways which they take 
 to insult and worm you out of their hus- 
 band's confidence. Laughing at all you say 
 with a kind of wonder, as if you were a 
 queer kind of fellow that said good things, 
 but an oddity, is one of the ways ; — they have 
 a particular kind of stare for the pui-pose ; — 
 till at last the husband, who used to defer to 
 your judgment, and would pass over some 
 excrescences of understanding and manner 
 for the sake of a general vein of observation 
 (not quite vulgar) which he perceived in 
 you, begins to suspect whether you are not 
 altogether a humourist, — afellow well enough 
 to have consorted with in his bachelor days, 
 but not quite so proper to be introduced to 
 ladies. This may be called the staring way ; 
 and is that which has oftenest been put in 
 practice against me. 
 
 Then there is the exaggerating way, or 
 the way of irony ; that is, where they find 
 you an object of especial regard with their 
 husband, who is not so easily to be shaken 
 from the lasting attachment founded on 
 esteem which he has conceived towards you, 
 by never qualified exaggerations to cry up 
 all that you say or do, till the good man, 
 who understands well enough that it is all 
 done in compliment to him, grows weary of 
 the debt of gratitude which is due to so 
 mvich candour, and by relaxing a little on 
 his part, and taking dowTi a peg or two in 
 his enthusiasm, sinks at length to the kindly 
 level of moderate esteem — that " decent 
 affection and complacent kindness " towards 
 you, where slie herself can join in sympathy 
 with him without much stretch and violence 
 to her sincerity. 
 
 Another way (for the ways they have to 
 accomplish so desirable a purpose are infi- 
 nite) is, with a kind of innocent simplicity, 
 continually to mistake what it was which 
 first made their husband fond of you. If an 
 esteem for something excellent in your |nor;il 
 character was that which riveted the chain 
 which she is to break, upon any imaginary 
 discovery of a want of poignancy in yuur 
 conversation, she will cry, " I tliouglit, my 
 
 dear, you described your friend, Mr. , 
 
 a.s a great wit \ " If, on the other hand, it 
 
 was for some supposed charm in your conver- 
 sation that he first grew to like you, and was 
 content for this to overlook some trifling 
 irregularities in your moral deportment, upon 
 the first notice of any of these .she as readily 
 exclaims, " This, my dear, is your good 
 
 Mr ! " One good lady wliom I took 
 
 the liberty of expostulating with for not 
 showing me quite so much respect as I 
 thought due to her husband's old friend, had 
 the candour to confess to me that she had 
 
 often heard Mr. speak of me before 
 
 marriage, and that she had conceived a great 
 desire to be acquainted with me, but that 
 the sight of me had very much disappointed 
 her expectations ; for from her husbaml's 
 representations of me, she had formed a 
 notion that she was to see a fine, tall, officer- 
 like-looking man (I use her very words), the 
 very reverse of which proved to be the 
 truth. This was candid ; and I had the 
 civility not to ask her in return, how she 
 came to pitch upon a standard of personal 
 accomplishments for her husband's friends 
 which differed so much from his own ; for 
 my friend's dimensions as near as possible 
 ajjproximate to mine ; he standing five feet 
 five in his shoes, in whicli I have the advan- 
 tage of him by about half an inch ; and he 
 no more than myself exhibiting any indica- 
 tions of a martial character in his air or 
 countenance. 
 
 These are some of the mortifications which 
 I have encountered in the absurd attempt 
 to visit at their houses. To enumerate 
 them all would be a vain endeavour ; I shall 
 therefore just glance at the very common 
 impropriety of which married ladies are 
 guilty, — of treating us as if we were their 
 husbands, and vice versd. I mean, when 
 they use us with familiarity, and their hus- 
 bands with ceremony. Testacea, for instance, 
 kept me the other night two or three hours 
 beyond my usual time of supping, while she 
 
 was fretting because Mr. did not come 
 
 home, till the oysters were all spoiled, rather 
 than she would be guilty of the impoliteness 
 of touching one in his absence. This w;is 
 reversing the point of good manners : for 
 ceremony is an invention to take ofi" the 
 uneasy feeling which we derive from know- 
 ing ourselves to be less the object of love 
 and esteem with a fellow-creature than some 
 other person is. It endeavours to make up 
 
896 
 
 ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. 
 
 by superior attentions in little points, for 
 that invidious preference which it is forced 
 to deny in the greater. Had Testacea kept 
 the oysters back for me, and withstood her 
 husband's importunities to go to supper, she 
 would have acted according to the strict 
 rules of propriety. I know no ceremony 
 that ladies are bound to observe to their 
 husbands, beyond the point of a modest 
 behaviour and decorum : therefore I must 
 protest against the vicarious gluttony of 
 Cerasia, who at her own table sent away 
 
 a dish of Morellas, which I was applying to 
 with great good-will, to her husband at the 
 other end of the table, and recommended a 
 plate of less extraordinary gooseberries to 
 my unwedded palate in their stead. Neither 
 
 can I excuse the wanton affront of 
 
 But I am weary of stringing up all my 
 married acquaintance by Eoman denomina- 
 tions. Let them amend and change their 
 manners, or I promise to record the full- 
 length English of their names, to the terror 
 of all such desperate offenders in future. 
 
 ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. 
 
 The casual sight of an old Play Bill, 
 which I ])icked up the other day — I know 
 not by what chance it was preserved so long 
 — tempts me to call to mind a few of the 
 Players, who make the principal figure in it. 
 It presents the cast of parts in the Twelfth 
 Night, at the old Drury-lane Theatre two- 
 and-thirty yeare ago. There is something 
 very touching in these old remembrances. 
 They make us think how we once used to 
 read a Play Bill — not, as now peradventure, 
 singling out a favourite performer, and cast- 
 ing a negligent eye over the rest ; but spell- 
 ing out every name, down to the very mutes 
 and servants of the scene ; — when it was 
 a matter of no small moment to us whether 
 Whitfield, or Packer, took the part of Fabian ; 
 when Benson, and Burton, and Philliraore — 
 names of small account — had an importance, 
 beyond what we can be content to attribute 
 now to the time's best actors. — " Orsino, by 
 Mr. Barrymore." — What a full Shakspearian 
 sound it carries ! how fresh to memory arise 
 the image and the manner of the gentle actor I 
 
 Those who have only seen Mrs. Jordan 
 within the last ten or fifteen years, can have 
 no adequate notion of her performance of 
 such jjarts as Ophelia ; Helena, in All's Well 
 tliat Ends Well ; and Viola in this i)lay. 
 Her voice had latterly acciuired a coarseness, 
 which suited well enough with lier Nells and 
 Hoydens, but in those days it sank, with her 
 steady, melting eye, into the heart. Her 
 joyous parts — in wliich her memory now 
 chiefly lives — in her youth were outdone by 
 
 her ])laintive ones. There is no giving an 
 account how she delivered the disguised 
 story of her love for Orsino. It was no set 
 speech, that she had foreseen, so as to weave 
 it into an harmonious period, line necessarily 
 following line, to make up the music — yet I 
 have heard it so spoken, or rather read, not 
 without its grace and beauty — but, when she 
 had declared her sister's history to be a 
 " blank," and that she " never told her love," 
 there was a pause, as if the story had ended 
 — and then the image of the " worm in the 
 bud," came up as a new suL'gcstion — and the 
 heightened image of" Patience " still followed 
 after that, as by some growing (and not 
 mechanical) process, thought springing up 
 after thought, I would almost say, as they 
 were watered by her tears. So in those liui' 
 lines — 
 
 Right loyal cantos of contemned love — 
 Hollow your name to the reverberate hills — 
 
 there was no preparation made in the fore- 
 going image for that which was to follow. 
 She used no rhetoric m her passion ; or it 
 was nature's own rhetoric, moist legitimate 
 then, when it seemed altogether without rule 
 or law. 
 
 Mrs. Powel (now Mrs. Benard), then in 
 the pride of her beauty, made an admirable 
 Olivia. She was particularly excellent in 
 her imbending scenes in couveitiation with 
 the Clown. I have seen some Olivias — !U»d 
 those very sensible actresses too — wlio in 
 these interlocutions have seemed to .set their 
 
ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. 
 
 897 
 
 wits at the jester, and to vie conceits with 
 him in downright emulation. But she used 
 liim for her sport, like what he was, to trifle 
 a leisure sentence or two with, and then to 
 be dismissed, and she to be the Great Laily 
 still. She touched the imperious fantastic 
 humour of the character with nicety. Her 
 fine spacious person filled the scene. 
 
 The part of Malvolio has, in my judgment, 
 been so often misunderstood, and the general 
 merits of the actor, who then played it, so 
 unduly appreciated, that I shall hope for 
 pardon, if I am a little prolix upon these 
 points. 
 
 Of all the actors who flourished in my 
 time — a melancholy phrase if taken aright, 
 reader — Bensley had most of the swell of 
 soul, was greatest in the delivery of heroic 
 conceptions, the emotions consequent upon 
 the presentment of a great idea to the fancy. 
 He had the true poetical enthusiasm — the 
 rarest faculty among players. None that I 
 remember possessed even a portion of that 
 fine madness which he threw out in Hot- 
 spur's famous rant about glory, or the trans- 
 ports of the Venetian incendiary at the 
 vision of the fired city. His voice had the 
 dissonance, and at times the inspiriting 
 effect, of the trumpet. His gait was uncouth 
 and stiffj but no way embarrassed by affec- 
 tation ; and the thorough-bred gentleman 
 was uppermost in eveiy movement. He 
 seized the moment of passion witli greatest 
 truth ; like a faithful clock, never striking 
 before the time ; never anticipating or 
 leading you to anticipate. He was totally 
 destitute of trick and artifice. He seemed 
 come upon the stage to do the poet's message 
 simply, and he did it with as genuine fidelity 
 as the nuncios in Homer deliver the errands 
 of the gods. He let the passion or the 
 sentiment do its own work without pi'op or 
 bolstering. He would have scorned to 
 mountebank it ; and betrayed none of that 
 cleverness which is the bane of serious acting. 
 For this reason, his lago was the only 
 endux'able one which I remember to have 
 seen. No spectator, from his action, could 
 divine more of his artifice than Othello was 
 supposed to do. His confessions in soliloquy 
 alone put you in possession of the mystery. 
 There were no by-intimations to make the 
 audience fancy their own discernment so 
 much greater than that of the Moor — who 
 
 commonly stands like a great helpless mark, 
 set up for mine Ancient, and a quantity of 
 barren spectators, to shoot their bolts at. The 
 lago of Bensley did not go to work so grossly. 
 There was a triumphant tone about the 
 character, natural to a general consciousness 
 of power ; but none of that petty vanity 
 which chuckles and cannot contain itself 
 upon any little successful stroke of its 
 knavery — as is common with your small 
 villains, and green probationers in mischief. 
 It did not clap or crow before its time. It 
 was not a man setting his wits at a child, 
 and winking all the while at other children, 
 who are mightily pleased at being let into 
 the secret ; but a consummate villain en- 
 trapping a noble nature into toils, against 
 which no discernment was available, where 
 the manner was as fathomless as the purpose 
 seemed dai'k, and without motive. The part 
 of Malvolio, in the Twelfth Night, was per- 
 foiTued by Bensley, with a richness and a 
 dignity, of which (to judge from some recent 
 castings of that character) the very tradition 
 must be worn out from the stage. No 
 manager in those days would have dreamed 
 of gi\ing it to Mr. Baddeley, or Mr. Parsons ; 
 when Bensley was occasionally absent from 
 the theatre, John Kemble thought it no 
 derogation to succeed to the part. Malvolio 
 is not essentially ludicrous. He becomes 
 comic but by accident. He is cold, austere, 
 repelling ; but dignified, consistent, and, for 
 what appears, rather of an over-stretched 
 morality. Maria describes him as a sort of 
 Puritan ; and he might have worn his gold 
 chain with honour in one of our old round- 
 head families, in the service of a Lambert, or 
 a Lady Fairfax. But his morality and his 
 manners are misplaced in lUyria. He is 
 opposed, to the proper levities of the piece, 
 and falls in the unequal contest. Still his 
 pride, or his gravity (call it which you will), is 
 inherent, and native to the man, not mock or 
 affected, which latter only are the fit objects 
 to excite laughter. His qiiality is at the 
 best unlovely, but neither buffoon nor con- 
 temptible. His bearing is lofty, a little 
 above his station, but probably not much 
 above his deserts. We see no reason why 
 he should not have been brave, honourable, 
 accomplished. His careless committal of the 
 ring to the ground (wliich he was com- 
 missioned to restore to Cesario), bespeaks a 
 
398 
 
 ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. 
 
 generosity of birth and feeling. His dialect 
 on all occasions is that of a gentleman, and a 
 man of education. We must not confound 
 him with the eternal old, low steward of 
 comedy. He is master of the household to a 
 great princess ; a dignity probably conferred 
 upon him for other respects than age or 
 length of service. Olivia, at the first indi- 
 cation of his supposed madness, declares that 
 she " would not have him miscarry for half 
 of her dowry." Does this look as if the 
 character was meant to appeal' little or 
 insignificant ? Once, indeed, she accuses 
 him to his face — of what ? — of being " sick 
 of self-love," — but with a gentleness and 
 considerateness, whicli could not have been, 
 if she had not thought that this particular 
 infirmity shaded some virtues. His rebuke 
 to the knight, and his sottish revellers, is 
 sensible and spirited ; and when we take 
 into consideration the unprotected condition 
 of his mistress, and the strict regard with 
 which her state of real or dissembled 
 mourning would draw the eyes of the world 
 upon her house-affiurs, Malvolio might feel 
 the honour of the family in some sort in his 
 keeping ; as it appears not that Olivia had 
 any more brothers, or kinsmen, to look to it 
 — for Sir Toby had dropped all such nice 
 respects at the buttery-hatch. That Malvolio 
 was meant to be represented as possessing 
 estimable qualities, the expression of the 
 Duke, in his anxietj^ to have him reconciled, 
 almost infers : " Pursue him, and entreat 
 him to a peace." Even in his abused state 
 of cliains and darkness, a sort of greatness 
 seems never to desert him. He argues 
 highly and well witli the supposed Sir Tojias, 
 and philosophises gallantly upon his straw.* 
 There must have been some shadow of worth 
 about the man ; he must have been some- 
 thing more than a mere vapour — a thing of 
 straw, or Jack in oflSce — before Fabian and 
 Maria could have ventured sending him upon 
 a courting-errand to Olivia. There was some 
 consonancy (as he would say) in the under- 
 taking, or the jest would have been too bold 
 even for that house of misrule. 
 
 • Clown. WTiat is the opinion of rythaRxiras con- 
 cerning wilcl fowl ? 
 
 ifal. That the soul of our grandam might haply in- 
 habit a bird. 
 
 Cl(nim. What tliinkpHt thou of his opinion! 
 
 Mai. 1 think nobly of the soul, and no way approve of 
 his opinion. 
 
 Bensley, accordingly, threw over the part 
 an air of Spanish loftiness. He looked, 
 spake, and moved like an old Castilian. He 
 was starch, spruce, opinionated, but his 
 superstructure of pride seemed bottomed 
 upon a sense of worth. There was some- 
 thing in it beyond the coxcomb. It was big 
 and swelling, but you could not be sure that 
 it was hollow. You might wish to see it 
 taken down, but you felt that it was upon an 
 elevation. He was magnificent from the 
 outset ; but when the decent sobrieties of 
 the character began to give way, and the 
 poison of self-love, in his conceit of the 
 Countess's affection, gradually to work, you 
 would have thought that the hero of La 
 Mancha in person stood before you. Hov 
 he went smiling to himself ! with what 
 ineffable carelessness would he twirl his gold 
 chain ! what a dream it was ! you were 
 infected with the illusion, and did not wish 
 that it should be removed ! j'ou had no room 
 for laughter ! if an unseasonable reflection 
 of morality obtruded itself, it was a deep 
 sense of the pitiable infirmity of man's 
 nature, that can lay him open to such 
 frenzies — but, in truth, you rather admired 
 than pitied the lunacy while it lasted — you 
 felt that an hour of such mistake was worth 
 an age with the eyes open. Who would not 
 wish to live but for a day in the conceit of 
 such a lady's love as Olivia ? Why, the 
 Duke would have given his principality but 
 for a quarter of a minute, sleeping or waking, 
 to have been so deluded. The man seemed 
 to tread upon air, to taste manna, to walk 
 witli his head in the clouds, to mate Hyjierion. 
 O! shake not the castles of his pride— endure 
 yet for a season bright moments of confidence 
 — "stand still, ye watches of the element," 
 that Malvolio may be still in fancy fair 
 Olivia's lord ! — but fate and retribution sjiy 
 no — I hear the mischievous titter of ^Maria 
 — the witty taunts of Sir Toby — the still 
 more insupportable triumj^h of the foolish 
 knight — the counterfeit Sir Topas is un- 
 masked — and " thus the whirligig of time," 
 ;is the true clown hath it, " brings in his 
 revenges." I confess that I never saw the 
 catastro])he of this character, while Bensley 
 played it, without a kinil of tnigie interest. 
 There was good foolery too. Few now 
 remember Dodd. What an Agueohoek the 
 stage lost in him ! Lovegrove, who came 
 
 i 
 
ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. 
 
 391> 
 
 nearest to the old actors, revived the 
 character some few seasons ago, and made it 
 sufficiently grotesque ; but Dodd was it, as it 
 came out of nature's hands. It might be 
 said to remain in puris naturalibus. In 
 expressing slowness of apprehension, this 
 actor surpassed all others. You could see 
 the first dawn of an idea stealing slowly over 
 his countenance, climbing up by little and 
 little, with a painful process, till it cleai'ed 
 up at last to the fulness of a twilight con- 
 ception — its highest meridian. He seemed 
 to keep back his intellect, as some have had 
 the power to retard their pulsation. The 
 balloon takes less time in filling than it took 
 to cover the expansion of his broad moony 
 face over all its quai'ters with expi-ession. 
 A glimmer of uiiderstandiiig would appear 
 in a corner of his eye, and for lack of fuel 
 go out again. A part of his forehead would 
 catch a little intelligence, and be a long time 
 in communicating it to the remainder. 
 
 I am ill at dates, but I think it is now 
 better than five-and-twenty years ago, that 
 walking in the gardens of Gray's Inn — they 
 were then far finer than they are now — the 
 accursed Verulam Buildings had not en- 
 croached upon all the east side of them, 
 cutting out delicate gi-een crankles, and 
 shouldering away one of two of the stately 
 alcoves of the terrace — the survivor stands 
 gaping and relationless as if it remembered 
 its brother — they are still the best gardens 
 of any of the Inns of Court, my beloved 
 Temple not forgotten — have the gravest 
 character ; their aspect being altogether 
 reverend and law-breatliing — Bacon has left 
 the impress of his foot upon their gravel 
 
 walks taking my afternoon solace on a 
 
 summer day upon the aforesaid terrace, a 
 comely sad personage came towards me, 
 whom, from his grave air and deportment, I 
 judged to be one of the old Benchers of the 
 Inn. He had a serious, thoughtful forehead, 
 and seemed to be in meditations of mortality. 
 As I have an instinctive awe of old Benchers, 
 I was passing him with that sort of sub- 
 indicative token of respect which one is apt 
 to demonstrate towards a venerable sti'anger, 
 and which rather denotes an inclination to 
 greet him, than any positive motion of the 
 body to that effect — a species of humility 
 and will-worship which I observe, nuie times 
 out of ten, rather puzzles than pleases the 
 
 person it is offered to — when the face turning 
 full upon me, strangely identified itself with 
 that of Dodd. Upon close inspection I was 
 not mistaken. But could this sad thouglitful 
 countenance be the same vacant face of folly 
 which I had hailed so often under circum- 
 stances of gaiety ; which I had never seen 
 without a smile, or recognised but as the 
 usher of mirth ; that looked out so formally 
 flat in Foppington, so frothily pert in 
 Tattle, so impotent! y busy in Backbite ; so 
 blankly divested of all meaning, or resolutely 
 expressive of none, in Acres, in Fribble, and 
 a thousand agreeable impertinences? "Was 
 this the face — full of thought and carefidness 
 ■ — that had so often divested itself at will of 
 every trace of either to give me diversion, to 
 clear my cloudy face for two or three hours 
 at least of its furrows ? Was this the face — 
 manly, sober, intelligent — which I had so 
 often despised, made mocks at, made merry 
 with ? The remembrance of the freedoms 
 which I had taken with it came upon me 
 with a reproach of insult. I could have 
 asked it pardon. I thought it looked upon 
 me with a sense of injurj\ There is some- 
 thing strange as well as sad in seeing actors 
 — ycur pleasant fellows particularly — sub- 
 jected to and suffering the common lot ; — 
 their fortunes, their casualties, their deaths, 
 seem to belong to the scene, their actions to 
 be amenable to poetic justice only. We can 
 hardly connect them with more awful 
 responsibilities. The death of this fine actor 
 took place shortly after this meeting. He 
 had quitted the stage some months ; and, as 
 I learned afterwards, had been in the habit 
 of resorting daily to these gardens, almost to 
 the day of his decease. In these serious 
 walks, probably, he was divesting himself of 
 many scenic and some real vanities — weaning 
 himself from the frivolities of the lesser and 
 the greater theatre — doing gentle penance 
 for a life of no very reprehensible fooleries — 
 taking ofi" by degrees the buffoon mask, 
 which he might feel he had worn too long — 
 and rehearsing for a more solemn cast of 
 part. Dying, he " put on the weeds of 
 Dominic."* 
 
 • Dodd was a man of rcadinp, and loft at his death a 
 choice collection of old Encrlish literature. I should 
 judge him to have been a man of -wit. I know one 
 instance of an impromptu wliich no length of study 
 could have bettered. My merry friend, Jem White, hud 
 seen him one evening in Aguecheek, and recognising 
 
40J 
 
 ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. 
 
 If few can remember Dodd, many yet 
 living will not easily forget the pleasant 
 creature, who in those days enacted the part 
 of the Clown to Dodd's Sir Andrew. — 
 Eichard, or rather Dicky Suett — for so in 
 his life-time he delighted to be called, and 
 time hath ratified the appellation — lieth 
 buried on the north side of the cemeteiy of 
 Holy Paul, to whose service his nonage and 
 tender years were dedicated. There are 
 ■who do yet remember him at that period — 
 his pipe clear and harmonious. He would 
 often speak of his chorister days, when he 
 was " cherub Dicky." 
 
 What clipped his wings, or made it expe- 
 dient that he should exchange the holy for the 
 profane state ; whether he had lost liis good 
 voice (his best recommendation to that 
 office), like Sir John, "with hallooing and 
 singing of anthems ;" or whether he was 
 adjudged to lack something, even in those 
 early years, of the gi-avity indispensable to 
 an occupation which professeth to " com- 
 merce with the skies," — I could never rightly 
 learn ; but we find him, after the probation 
 of a twelvemonth or so, reverting to a secular 
 condition, and become one of us. 
 
 I think he was not altogether of that 
 timber out of which cathedral seats and 
 sounding-boards are hewed. But if a glad 
 heart — kind, and therefore glad — be any 
 part of sanctity, then might the robe of 
 Motley, with which he invested himself with 
 so much humility after his deprivation, and 
 which he wore so long with so mucli blame- 
 less satisfnction to himself and to the public, 
 be accepted for a surplice — his white stole, 
 and alhe. 
 
 The first fruits of his secularisation was 
 an engagement upon the boards of Old 
 Drury, at which theatre he commenced, as I 
 have been told, with adopting the manner of 
 Parsons in old men's characters. At the 
 period in which most of us knew him, he 
 was no more an imitator than he was in any 
 true sen.se himself imitable. 
 
 He was the Robin Goodfellow of tlie stage. 
 He came in to trouble all things with a 
 welcome perplexity, himself no whit troubled 
 
 Dodd the next day in Fleet Street, was irresistibly im- 
 pelled to takf oH' his li;it and salute him as the identical 
 Kniifht of the iiroccdini? evenini? with a " Save you, Sir 
 Andrew." Uudd, not at all disconcerted at this unusual 
 address from a stran^'cr, with a courteous hulf-rcbuking 
 wave of the hand, jiut him off with an "Away, Foul," 
 
 for the matter. He was known, like Puck, 
 by his note — IJa ! Ha ! Ila ! — sometimes 
 deepening to Ho ! Ho ! Ho ! with an irre- 
 sistible accession, derived, perhaps, remotely 
 from his ecclesiastical education, foreign to 
 his prototype of — La ! Thousands of 
 hearts yet respond to the chuckling La ! 
 of Dicky Suett, brought back to their remem- 
 brance by the faithful transcript of his friend 
 Mathews's mimicry. The " force of nature 
 could no further go." He drolled upon the 
 stock of these two syllables richer than the 
 cuckoo. 
 
 Care, that troubles all the world, was for- 
 gotten in his composition. Had he had but 
 two grains (nay, half a grain) of it, he could 
 never have supported himself upon those 
 two spider's strings, which served him (in 
 the latter part of his unmixed existence) as 
 legs. A doubt or a scruple must have made 
 him totter, a sigh have puffed him down ; 
 the weight of a fz-own had staggered him*, a 
 wrinkle made him lose his balance. But on 
 he went, scrambling upon those airy stilts of 
 his, with Eobin Goodfellow, " thorough brake, 
 thorough briar," reckless of a scratched face 
 or a torn doublet. 
 
 Shakspeare foresaw him, when he framed 
 his fools and jesters. They have all the true 
 Suett stamp, a loose and shambling gait, a 
 slippery tongue, this last the ready midwife 
 to a without-pain-delivered jest ; in words, 
 light as air, venting truths deep as the 
 centre ; with idlest rhymes tagging conceit 
 when busiest, singing with Lear in the 
 tempest, or Sir Toby at the buttery-hatch. 
 
 Jack Bannister and he had the fortune to 
 be more of personal favourites with the town 
 than any actors before or after. Tlie differ- 
 ence, I take it, was this : — Jack was more 
 beloved for his sweet, good-natured, moral 
 pretensions. Dicky was more liked for his 
 sweet, good-natured, no pretensions at all. 
 Your whole conscience stirred with Ban- 
 nister's performance of Walter in the Chil- 
 dren in the Wood — but Dicky seemed like a 
 thing, as Shakspeare says of Love, too young 
 to kni)W what conscience is. He put us 
 ; into Vesta's days. Evil fled before him — not 
 as from Jack, as from an antagonist, — but 
 because it could not touch him, any more 
 than a caiuion-ball a fly. He wiis delivered 
 from the burtlun of that death ; and, wlien 
 Death came himself, not iu metaphor, to 
 
ON SOME OP THE OLD ACTORS. 
 
 401 
 
 fetch Dicky, it is recorded of him by Robert 
 Pahner, wlio kindly watched his exit, that 
 he received the last stroke, iieitlier varying 
 his accustomed tranquillity, nor tune, with 
 the simple exclamation, worthy to liave been 
 recorded in his epitaph — OLa ! La ! Bohhy ! 
 The elder Palmer (of stage-treading cele- 
 brity) commonly played Sir Toby in those 
 days ; but there is a solidity of wit in the 
 jests of that half-Falstaff which he did not 
 quite fill out. He was as much too showy 
 as Moody (who sometimes took the part) was 
 dry and sottish. In sock or buskin there 
 was an air of swaggering gentility about 
 Jack Palmer. He was a gentleman with a 
 slight infusion of the footman. His brother 
 Bob (of recenter memory), who was his 
 shadow in everything while he lived, and 
 dwindled into less than a shadow afterwards 
 — was a gentleman with a little stronger in- 
 fusion of the latter ingredient ; that was all. 
 It is amazing how a little of the more or less 
 makes a difference in these things. When 
 you saw Bobby in the Duke's Servant,* you 
 said " What a pity such a pretty fellow was 
 only a servant ! " When you saw Jack 
 figuring in Captain Absolute, you thought 
 you could trace his promotion to some lady 
 of quality who fancied the handsome fellow 
 in his tojjknot, and had bought him a com- 
 mission. Therefore Jack in Dick Amlet was 
 insuperable. 
 
 Jack had two voices, both plausible, hypo- 
 critical, and insinuating ; but his secondary 
 or supplemental voice still more decisively 
 histrionic than his common one. It was 
 reserved for the spectator ; and the dramatis 
 personae were supposed to know nothing at 
 all about it. The lies of Young Wilding, 
 and the sentiments in Joseph Surface, were 
 thus marked out in a sort of italics to the 
 audience. This secret coi-respondence with 
 the company before the curtain (which is 
 the bane and death of tragedy) has an ex- 
 tremely happy effect in some kinds of comedy, 
 in tlie more highly artificial comedy of Con- 
 greve or of Sheridan especially, where the 
 absolute sense of reality (so indispensable to 
 scenes of interest) is not required, or would 
 rather interfere to diminish your pleasure. 
 The fact is, you do not believe in such cha- 
 racters as Surface — the villain of artificial 
 comedy — even while you read or see them. 
 
 • High Life Below St.iirs. 
 
 If you did, they would shock and not divert 
 you. When Ben, in Love for Love, returns 
 from sea, the following exquisite dialogue 
 occurs at his fix-st meeting with his father : — 
 
 Sir Sampson. Thou hast been many a weary leaf?tio 
 Ben, since I saw thee. 
 
 Ben. Ey, oy, been. Been far enough, an that be all. 
 — Well, father, and how do all at home? how does 
 brother Dick, and brother Val ? 
 
 Sir Sampson. Dick ! body o' me, Dick has been dead 
 these two years. I writ you word when you were at 
 Leghorn. 
 
 Ben. .Mess, that's true ; Marry, I had forgot. Dick's 
 dead, as you say — well, and how? — I have a many 
 questions to ask you — 
 
 Here is an instance of insensibility which 
 in real life would be revolting, or i-ather in 
 real life could not have co-existed with the 
 warm-hearted temperament of the charactei-. 
 But when you read it in the spirit with 
 which such playful selections and specious 
 combinations rather than strict metaphrases 
 of nature should be taken, or when you saw 
 Bannister play it, it neither did, nor does, 
 wound the moral sense at all. For what is 
 Ben — the pleasant sailor which Bannister 
 gives us — but a piece of satire — a creation 
 of Congreve's fancy — a dreamy combination 
 of all the accidents of a sailor's character — 
 his contempt of money — his credulity to 
 women — with that necessary estrangement 
 from home which it is just within the 
 verge of credibility to suppose might produce 
 such an hallucination as is here described. 
 We never think the worse of Ben for it, or 
 feel it as a stain upon his character. But 
 when an actor comes, and instead of the 
 delightful phantom — the creature dear to 
 half-belief — which Bannister exhibited — dis- 
 plays before our eyes a dowiu-ight concretion 
 of a Wapping sailor — a J0II3' warm-hearted 
 Jack Tar — and nothing else — when instead 
 of investing it with a delicious confusedness 
 of the head, and a veering undirected good 
 ness of purpose — he gives to it a downright 
 daylight uuderstaiiding, and a full conscious- 
 ness of its actions ; thrusting forward the 
 sensibilities of the character with a pretence 
 as if it stood upon nothing else, and was to 
 be judged by them alone — we feel the discord 
 of the thing ; the scene is disturbed 1, a real 
 man has got in among the dramatis personam, 
 and puts them out. We want the sailor 
 turned out. We feel that his true place is 
 not behind tlie curtain, but in the first or 
 second gallery. 
 
 J 
 
 D D 
 
402 
 
 ON THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF THE LAST CENTURY. 
 
 ON THE ARTIFICIAL COJ^IEDY OF THE LAST CENTI7EY. 
 
 Thb artificial Comedy, or Comedy of man- 
 ners, is quite extinct on our stage. Congreve 
 and Farquhar show their heads once in seven 
 years only, to be exploded and put down 
 instantly. The times cannot bear them. Is 
 it for a few wild speeches, an occasional 
 licence of dialogue ? I think not altogether. 
 The business of their dramatic characters 
 will not stand the moral test. We screw 
 everjiihing up to that. Idle gallantry in a 
 fiction, a dream, the passing pageant of an 
 evening, startles us in the same way as the 
 alarming indications of profligacy in a son 
 or ward in real life should startle a parent 
 or guardian. We have no such middle 
 emotions as dramatic interests left. We see 
 a stage libertine playing his loose pranks of 
 two hours' duration, and of no after conse- 
 quence, with the severe eyes which inspect 
 real vices with their bearings upon two 
 worlds. We are spectators to a plot or 
 intrigue (not reducible in life to the point of 
 strict morality), and take it all for truth. 
 We substitute a real for a dramatic person, 
 and judge him accordingly. We try him in 
 our courts, from which there is no appeal to 
 the dramatis jiersonce, his peers. We have 
 been spoiled with — not sentimental comedy 
 — but a tyrant far more pernicious to our 
 pleasures which lias succeeded to it, the ex- 
 clusive and all-devouring drama of common 
 life ; where the moral point is everything ; 
 where, instead of the fictitious half-believed 
 personages of the stage (the phantoms of old 
 comedy), we recognise ourselves, our bi'others, 
 aunts, kinsfolk, allies, patrons, enemies, — the 
 same as in life, — with an interest in what is 
 going on so hearty and substantial, that we 
 cannot afi'ord our moral judgment, in its 
 deepest and most vital results, to compromise 
 or slumber for a moment. What is there 
 transacting, by no modification is made to 
 aifect us in any other manner than the same 
 events or characters would do in our relation- 
 fihipa of life. We carry our fire-side concerns 
 to the theatre with us. We do not go thither 
 
 like our ancestors, to escape from the pressure 
 of reality, so much as to confirm our expe- 
 rience of it ; to make assurance double, and 
 take a bond of fate. We must live our toil- 
 some lives twice over, as it was the mournful 
 privilege of Ulysses to descend twice to the 
 shades. All that neutral ground of character, 
 which stood between vice and virtue ; or 
 which in fact was indifferent to neither, 
 where neither properly was called in ques- 
 tion ; that happy breathing-place from the 
 burthen of a perpetual moral questioning — 
 the sanctuary and quiet Alsatia of hunted 
 casuistry — is broken up and disfranchised, 
 as injurious to the interests of society. The 
 privileges of the place are taken away by 
 law. We dare not dally with images, or 
 names, of wron?. We bark like foolish dogs 
 at shadows. We dread infection from the 
 scenic representation of disorder, and fear a 
 painted pustule. In our anxiety that our 
 morality should not take cold, we wrap it 
 up in a great blanket surtout of precaution 
 against the breeze and sunshine. 
 
 I confess for myself that (with no great 
 delinquencies to answer for) I am glad for a 
 season to take an airing beyond the diocese 
 of the strict conscience, — not to live always 
 in the precincts of the law-courts, — but now 
 and then, for a dream-while or so, to imagine 
 a world with no meddling restrictions — to 
 get into recesses, whither the hunter cannot 
 follow me — 
 
 Secret shades 
 
 Of woody Ida's inmost grove, 
 While yet there was no fear of Jove. 
 
 I come back to my cage and my restraint 
 the fresher and more healthy for it. I wear 
 my shackles more contentedly for having 
 respired the breath of an imaginary freedom. 
 I do not know how it is with othei-s, but I 
 feel the better always for the perusal of one 
 of Congreve's — nay, why should I not add 
 even of Wyclierley's^-comedies. I am the 
 gayer at least for it ; and I could never 
 
ON THE AKTIFICIAL COMEDY OF THE LAST CENTURY. 
 
 403 
 
 connect those sports of a witty fancy in any 
 shape with any resnlt to he drawn from 
 them to imitation in real life. Hhey^are-a 
 world of themselves almost as much as fairy- 
 lanJT^ Take one of their characters, male or 
 female (with few exceptions they are alike), 
 and place it in a modern play, and my 
 virtuous indignation shall rise against the 
 profligate wretch as warmly as the Catos of 
 the pit could desire ; because in a modern 
 play I am. to judge of the right and the 
 ■wrong. The standard o{ police is the measure 
 of political justice. The atmosphere will 
 blight it ; it cannot live here. It has got into 
 a moral world, where it has no business, 
 from which it must needs fall headlong ; as 
 dizzy, and incapable of making a stand, as a 
 Swedenboi'gian bad spirit that has wandered 
 unawares into the sphere of one of his Good 
 ■^Men, or Angels. But in its own world do 
 \ we feel the creature is so very bad ? — The 
 iFainalls and the Mirabels, the Dorimants 
 and the Lady Touchwoods, in their own 
 sphere, do not oflfend my moral sense ; in 
 fact they do not appeal to it at all. Tliey 
 seem engaged in their proper element. They 
 break through no laws, or conscientioiis 
 restraints. They know of none. They have 
 got out of Christendom into the land — what 
 shall I call it ? — of cuckoldry — the Utopia 
 of gallantry, where pleasure is duty, and the 
 manners perfect freedom. It is altogether a 
 speculative scene of things, which has no 
 reference whatever to the world that is. No 
 good person can be justly offended as a 
 spectator, because no good person sufiers on 
 the stage. Judged morally, every character 
 in these plays — the few exceptions only are 
 mistakes — is alike essentially vain and worth- 
 less. The great art of Congreve is especially 
 shown in this, that he has entirely excluded 
 from his scenes — some little generosities in 
 the part of Angelica perhaps excepted — not 
 only anything like a faultless character, but 
 any pretensions to goodness or good feelings 
 whatsoever. Whether he did this designedly, 
 or instinctively, the efiect is as happy, as 
 the design (if design) was bold. I used to 
 wonder at the sti-ange power which his Way 
 of the World in particular possesses of 
 interesting you all along in the pursuits of 
 characters, for whom you absolutely care 
 nothing — for you neither hate nor love his 
 personages — and I think it is owing to this 
 
 very indifference for any, that you endure 
 the whole. lie has spread a privation of 
 moral light, I will call it, rather than by 
 the ugly name of palpable darkness, over 
 his creations ; and his shadows flit before 
 you without distinction or prefei-ence. 
 Had he introduced a good character, a single 
 gush of moral feeling, a revulsion of the 
 judgment to actual life and actual duties, 
 the impertinent Goshen would have only 
 lighted to the discovery of deformities, 
 which now are none, because we think 
 them none. 
 
 Translated into real life, the characters of 
 his, and his friend Wycherley's dramas, are 
 profligates and strumpets, — the business of 
 their brief existence, the undivided pursuit 
 of lawless gallantry. No other spring of 
 action, or possible motive of conduct, is re- 
 cognised ; principles which, universally acted 
 upon, must reduce this frame of things to a 
 chaos. But we do them wrong in so trans- 
 lating them. No such efl'ects are produced, 
 in their world. When we are among them, 
 we are amongst a chaotic people. We are 
 no t to ju dge them by our usages, l^o re- 
 verend instvEutions are insulted by their pro- 
 ceedings — for they have none among them. 
 No peace of families is violated — for no 
 family ties exist among them. No purity of 
 the marriage bed is stained — for none is sup- 
 posed to have a being. No deep afiections 
 are disquieted, no holy wedlock bands are 
 snapped asunder — for affection's depth and 
 wedded faith are not of the growth of that 
 soil. There is neither right nor wrong, — 
 gratitude or its opposite, — claim or duty, — 
 paternity or sonship. Of what consequence 
 is it to Virtue, or how is she at all concerned 
 about it, whether Sir Simon, or Dappei-wit 
 steal away Miss Martha ; or who is the 
 father of Lord Froth's or Sir Paul Pliaufs 
 children ? 
 
 Th^jviiQle-is-JH^aasing pageant^where. we 
 should sit ^ as unconcerned at the issues, for 
 life or death, as at a battle of the frogs and 
 mice. But, like Don Quixote, we take part 
 against the puppets, and quite as imperti- 
 nently. We dare not contemplate an At- 
 hintis, a scheme, out of which our cox- 
 combical moral sense is for a little transitory 
 ease excluded. We have not the courage to 
 imagine a state of things for which there is 
 neither reward nor ounishment^^ We cling 
 
 D D 2 
 
404 
 
 ON THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF THE LAST CENTURY, 
 
 to the painful necessities of shame and blame. 
 "We ■would indict our very dreams. i 
 
 Amidst the mortifying circumstances at- i 
 tendant upon growing old, it is something to 
 have seen the School for Scandal in its glory. 
 This comedy grew out of Congreve and , 
 Wycherlcy, but gathered some allays of the 
 sentimental comedy which followed theii-s. 
 It is impossible that it should be now acted, 
 though it continues, at long intervals, to be 
 announced in the bills. Its hero, when 
 Palmer played it at least, was Joseph Sur- 
 face. When I remember the gay boldness, 
 the graceful solemn plausibility,the measured 
 step, the insinuating voice — to express it iu 
 a word — the iiaHamght_£ctoZ villany of the 
 part, so different from the pressure of con- 
 scious actual wickedness, — the hypocritical 
 assumption of hypocrisy, — which made Jack 
 so deservedly a favourite in that character, I 
 must needs conclude the present generation 
 of playgoers more virtuous than myself, or 
 more dense. I freely confess that he divided 
 the palm with me with his better bi'other ; 
 that, in fact, I liked him quite as well. Not 
 but there are passages, — like that, for in- 
 stance, where Joseph is made to refuse a 
 pittance to a poor relation, — incongruities 
 •which Sheridan was forced upon by the 
 attempt to join the artificial with the senti- 
 mental comedy, either of which must destroy 
 the other — but over these obstructions Jack's 
 manner floated him so lightly, that a refusal 
 from him no more shocked you, tlian the 
 easy compliance of Charles gave you in reality 
 any pleasure ; you got over the paltry ques- 
 tion as quickly as you could, to get back into 
 the regions of pure comedy, where no cold 
 moral reigns. The highly artificial manner 
 of Palmer in this character counteracted 
 every disagreeable impression which you 
 miglit have received from the contrast, sup- 
 posing them real, between the two brothers. 
 You did not believe in Joseph with the same 
 faith with which you believed in Charles. 
 The latter was a pleasant reality, the former 
 a no less pleasant poetical foil to it. The 
 comedy, I have said, is incongruous ; a 
 mixture of Congreve with sentimental in- 
 compatibilities ; the gaiety upon the whole 
 is buoyant ; but it required the consummate 
 art of Palmer to reconcile the discordant 
 elements. 
 
 A pLayer witli Jack's talents, if we had one 
 
 now, would not dare to do the pai-t in the 
 same manner. He woidd instinctively avoid 
 every turn which might tend to unrealise, 
 and so to make the character fascinating, ^e 
 mustjtake_Jiis j^ue from his spectators, who 
 would expect a bad man and a good man as 
 rigidly opposed to each other as the death- 
 beds of those geniuses are contrasted in the 
 prints, which I am sorry to say have disap- 
 peared from the windows of my old friend 
 Carrington Bowles, of St. Paul's Churchyard 
 memory — (an exhibition as venerable as the 
 adjacent cathedral, and almost coeval) of the 
 bad and good man at the hour of death ; 
 where the ghastly apprehensions of the 
 former, — and truly the grim phantom with 
 his reality of a toasting-fork is not to be 
 despised, — so finely contrast with the meek 
 complacent kissing of the rod, — taking it in 
 like honey and butter, — with which the latter 
 submits to the scythe of the gentle bleeder 
 Time, who wields his lancet with the appre- 
 hensive finger of a popular young ladies' 
 surgeon. What flesh, like loving grass, would 
 not covet to meet half-way the stroke of 
 such a delicate mower.? — John Palmer was 
 twice an actor in this exquisite part. He 
 was playing to you all the while that he was 
 playing upon Sir Peter and his lady. You 
 had the first intimation of a sentiment be- 
 fore it was on his lips. His altered voice 
 was meant to you, and you were to suppose 
 that his fictitious co-flutterers on the stage 
 perceived nothing at all of it. What was it to 
 you if that half reality, the husband, was over- 
 reached by the puj)petry — or the thin thing 
 (Lady Teazle's reputation) was i)ei-S'.iaded it 
 was dying of a plethory ? The fortunes of 
 Othello and Desdemona were not concerned 
 in it. Poor Jack has passed from the stage 
 in good time, that he did not live to this our 
 age of seriousness. The pleasant old Tea/.le 
 King, too, is gone in good time. His manner 
 would scarce have passed current in our day. 
 We must love or liate — acquit or condemn^ 
 censure or pity — exert our detestable cox- 
 combry of moral judgment upon everything. 
 Josejih Surface, to go down now, nuist be a 
 downright revolting villain — no compromise 
 — his first appearance must shock and give 
 horror — his si)ccious jilausibilities, which the 
 pleasurable faculties of our fathers wolcDUU'd 
 with such hearty greetings, knowing that no 
 harm (dramatic harm even) could come, or 
 
ON THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF THE LAST CENTURY. 
 
 40£ 
 
 •was meant to come, of them, must inspire 
 a cold and killing aversion. Charles (the 
 real canting person of the scene — for the 
 hypocrisy of Joseph has its ulterior legitimate 
 ends, but his brother's professions of a good 
 heart centre in downright self-satisfaction) 
 must be loved, and Joseph hate J. To balance 
 one disagreeable reality with another, Sir 
 Peter Teazle must be no longer the comic 
 idea of a fretful old bachelor bridegroom, 
 whose teasings (while King acted it) were 
 evidently as much played off at you, as they 
 were meant to concern anybody on the stage, 
 — he must be a real person, capable in law 
 of sustaining an injury — a person towards 
 whom duties are to be acknowledged — the 
 genuine crim. con. antagonist of the villanous 
 seducer Joseph. To realise him more, his 
 suiferings under his unfortunate match must 
 have the downright pungency of life — must 
 (or should) make you not mirthful but un- 
 comfortable, just as the same jDredicameut 
 would move you in a neighbour or old friend. 
 The delicious scenes which give the play its 
 name and zest, must affect you in the same 
 serious manner as if you heard the reputa- 
 tion of a dear female friend attacked in your 
 real presence. Crabtree and Sir Benjamin — 
 those poor snakes that live but in the sun - 
 shine of your mirth — must be ripened by 
 this hot-bed jirocess of realisation into asps 
 <jr amphisbsBnas ; and Mi's. Candour — O ! 
 frightful ! — become a hooded serpent. Oh ! 
 who that remembers Parsons and Dodd — 
 the wasp and butterfly of the School for 
 Scandal — in those two characters ; and 
 charming natural Miss Pope, tlie perfect 
 gentlewoman as distinguished from the fine 
 lady of comedy, in this latter part — would 
 forego the true scenic delight — the escape 
 from life — the oblivion of consequences — the 
 holiday barring out of the pedant Reflection 
 — those Saturnalia of two or three brief 
 hours, well won from the world — to sit in- 
 stead at one of our modern plays — to have 
 his coward conscience (that forsooth must 
 not be left for a moment) stimulated with 
 perpetual appeals — dulled rather,, and 
 blunted, as a faculty without repose must be 
 — and his moral vanity pampered with images 
 of notional justice, notional beneficence, lives 
 saved without the spectator's risk, and 
 fortunes given away that cost the author 
 nothing 1 
 
 No piece was, perhaps, ever so completciv 
 cast in all its parts as tliis manaf/er\s corned?/. 
 Miss Farren had succeeded to Mrs. Abington 
 in Lady Teazle ; and Smith, the original 
 Charles, had retired when I first saw it. The 
 rest of the characters, with very slight e.x:- 
 cei^tions, remained. I remember it was then 
 the fashion to cry down John Kemble, who 
 took the part of Charles after Smith ; but, 1 
 thought, very unjustly. Smith, I fancy was 
 more airy, and took the eye with a certain 
 gaiety of person. He brought with him no 
 sombre recollections of tragedy. He hail 
 not to expiate the fault of having pleased 
 beforehand in lofty declamation. He had no 
 sins of Hamlet or of Richard to atone for. 
 His failure in these parts was a passport to 
 success in one of so opposite a tendency. 
 But, as far as I could judge, the weighty 
 sense of Kemble made up for more personal 
 incapacity than he had to answer for. His 
 harshest tones in this part came steeped and 
 dulcified in good-humour. He made his 
 defects a grace. His exact declamatory 
 manner, as he managed it, only served to 
 convey the points of his dialogue with more 
 precision. It seemed to head the shafts to 
 carry them deeper. Not one of his sparkling 
 sentences was lost. I remember minutely 
 how he delivered each in succession, and 
 cannot by any effort imagine how any of 
 them could be altereil for the better. No 
 man could deliver brilliant dialogue — the 
 dialogue of Congreve or of Wycherley — be- 
 cause none understood it — half so well as 
 John Kemble. His Valentine, in Love for 
 Love, was, to my recollection, faultless. He 
 flagged sometimes in the intervals of tragic 
 passion. He would slumber over the level 
 parts of an heroic character. His Macbeth 
 has been known to nod. But he always 
 seemed to me to be particularly alive to 
 pointed and witty dialogue. The relaxing 
 levities of tragedy have not been touched by 
 any since him — the playful court-bred spirit 
 in which he condescended to tlie players 
 in Hamlet — the spoi-tive relief which he 
 threw into the darker shades of Richard 
 — disappeared with him. He had his 
 sluggish moods, his torpors — but they were 
 the halting-stones and resting-place of his 
 tragedy — politic savings, and fetches of 
 the breath — husbandry of the lungs, where 
 nature pointed him to be an economist — 
 
406 
 
 ON THE ACTING OF MUNDEN. 
 
 rather, I think, than errors of the jurlg- 
 raeut. They were, at worst, less painful 
 than the eternal tormenting unappeasable 
 
 vigilance, — tlie "liilless dragon eyes," of 
 present fasliionable tragedy. 
 
 ON THE ACTING OF MUNDEN. 
 
 Not many niglits .ago, I had come home 
 from seeing this extraordinary performer in 
 Cockletop ; and when I retired to my pillow, 
 his whimsical image still stuck by me, in a 
 manner as to threaten sleep. In vain I tried 
 to divest myself of it, by conjuring up the 
 most opposite associations. I resolved to be 
 serious. I raised up the gravest topics of 
 life ; private misery, public calamity. All 
 would not do : 
 
 There the antic sate 
 
 Mocking our state 
 
 his queer visnomy — his bewildering costume 
 — all the strange things which he had i-;iked 
 together — his serpentine rod, swagging about 
 in his pocket — Cleopatra's tear, and the rest 
 of his relics — O'Keefe's wild farce, and his 
 wilder commentary — till the passion of laugh- 
 ter, like grief in excess, relieved itself by its 
 own weight, inviting the sleep which in the 
 first instance it had driven away. 
 
 But I was not to escape so easily. No 
 sooner did I fall into slumbers, than the 
 same image, only more perplexing, assailed 
 me in the shape of dreams. Not one Muuden, 
 but five hundred, were dancing before me, 
 like the faces which, whether yuu will or no, 
 come when you have been taking opium — 
 all the strange combinations, which this 
 strangest of all strange mortals ever shot 
 his proper countenance into, from the day he 
 came commissioned to dry up the tears of 
 the town for the loss of the now almost 
 forgotten Kdwin. O for the power of tlie 
 pencil to have fixed them when I awoke ! 
 A season or two since, there w;us exhibited 
 a Hogarth gallery. I do not see why there 
 should not be a Munden gallery. In rich- 
 ness and variety, the latter would not fall 
 far sliurt of tlie former. 
 
 There is one face of Farley, one face of 
 Kniglit, one (l»ut what a one it is !) of Listuu ; 
 but Munden has none that you can properly 
 
 pin down, and call his. When you think he 
 has exhausted his battery of looks, in un- 
 accountable warfare with your gravity, 
 suddenly he sprouts out an entirely new set 
 of features, like Hydra. He is not one, but 
 legion ; not so much a comedian, as a com- 
 pany. If his name could be multiplied like 
 his countenance, it might fill a play-bill. 
 He, and he alone, literally makes feces : 
 applied to any other person, the phrase is 
 a mere figure, denoting certain modifications 
 of the human countenance. Out of some 
 invisible wardx'obe he dips for faces, as his 
 friend Suett used for wigs, and fetches 
 them out as easily. I should not be sur- 
 prised to see him some day put out the 
 head of a river-horse ; or come forth a 
 pewitt, or lapwing, some feathered metamor- 
 phosis. 
 
 I have seen this gifted actor in Sir Chris- 
 topher Curry — in old Dornton — diffuse a 
 glow of sentiment which has made the pulse 
 of a crowded theatre beat like that of one 
 man ; when he has come in aid of the pulpit, 
 doing good to the moi-al heart of a people. 
 I have seen some faint approaches to this 
 sort of excellence in other players. But in 
 the grand grotesque of farce, Munden stands 
 out as single and unaccompanied as Hogarth. 
 Hogarth, strange to tell, had no followers. 
 Tiie school of Munden began, and must end, 
 with himself. 
 
 Can any man worider, like him ? can any 
 man see (/hosts, like him? ov Jight with his 
 own shadow — "sessa" — as he does in that 
 strangely-neglected thing, the Cobbler of 
 Preston — where his alternations from the 
 Cobbler to the Alagnitico, and from the 
 Magniiico to the Cobbler, keep the brain of 
 the sj)ectator in as wild a ferment, as if 
 some Arabian Night wei'o being acted before 
 him. Who like him c;ui throw, or ever 
 attempted to throw, a i)reternatund interest 
 over the commonest daily-life objects ? A 
 
ON THE ACTING OF MUNDEN. 
 
 407 
 
 table or a joint-stool, in his conception, rises 
 into a dignity equivalent to Cassiopeia's 
 chair. It is invested with constellatory im- 
 portance. You could not speak of it with 
 more deference, if it were mounted into the 
 firmament. A beggar in the hands of 
 Michael Angelo says Fuseli, rose the Patri- 
 arch of Poverty So the gusto of Munden 
 autiquates and ennobles what it touches. 
 
 His pots and his ladles are as grand and 
 primal as the seething-pots and hooks seen 
 in old prophetic vision. A tub of butter 
 contemplated by him, amounts to a Platonic 
 idea. He understands a leg of mutton iu 
 its quiddity. He stands wondering, amid 
 the common-place materials of life, like 
 primaeval man with the sun and stars about 
 him. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 BY A FRIEND OF THE LATE ELIA. 
 
 This poor gentleman, who for some months past had been in a declining way, 
 hath at length paid his final tribute to nature. 
 
 To say truth, it is time he were gone. The humour of the thing, if ever there 
 was much in it, was pretty well exhausted ; and a two years' and a half existence has 
 been a tolerable duration for a phantom. 
 
 I am now at liberty to confess, that much which I have heard objected to my late 
 friend's writings was well-founded. Crude they are, I grant you — a sort of unlicked, 
 incondite things — villanously pranked in an affected array of antique modes and 
 phrases. They had not been his, if they had been other than such ; and better it is, 
 that a writer should be natural in a self-pleasing quaintness, than to affect a naturalness 
 (so called) that should be strange to him. Egotistical they have been pronounced by 
 some who did not know, that what he tells us, as of himself, was often true only 
 (historically) of another ; as in a former Essay (to save many instances) — where under 
 i\xQ first person (his favourite figure) he shadows forth the forlorn estate of a country- 
 boy placed at a London school, far from his friends and connections — in direct opposition 
 to his own early history. If it be egotism to imply and twine with his own identity 
 the griefs and affections of another — making himself many, or reducing many unto 
 himself — then is the skilful novelist, who all along brings in his hero or heroine, 
 speaking of themselves, the gi-eatest egotist of all ; who yet has never, therefore, been 
 accused of that narrowness. And how shall the intenser dramatist escape being faulty, 
 who, doubtless, under cover of passion uttered by another, oftentimes gives blameless 
 vent to his most inward feelings, and expresses his own atoiy modestly ? 
 
 My late fi'iend was in many respects a singular chai-acter. Those who did not 
 like him, hated him ; and some, who once liked him, afterwards became his bitterest 
 haters. The truth is, he gave himself too little concern what he uttered, and in whose 
 presence. He observed neither time nor place, and would e'en out with what caore 
 uppermost. With the severe religionist he would pass for a free-thinker ; while tho 
 other faction set him down for a bigot, or persuaded themselves that he belied his 
 sentiments. Few understood him ; / and I am not certain that at all times he quite 
 understood himself. He too much affected that dangerous figure — irony. He sowed 
 doubtful speeches, and reaped plain, unequivocal hatred. — He would interrupt the 
 gravest discussion with some light jest ; and yet, perhaps, not quite irrelevant in ears 
 that could understand it. Your long and much talkers hated him. The informal 
 habit of his mind, joined to an inveterate impediment of speech, forbade him to be an 
 
412 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 orator ; and he seemed determined that no one else should play that part when he was 
 present. He was petit and ordinary in his person and appearance. I have seen him 
 sometimes in what is called good company, but where he has been a stranger, sit 
 silent, and be suspected for an odd fellow ; till some unlucky occasion provoking it, he 
 would stutter out some senseless pun (not altogether senseless perhaps, if rightly 
 taken), which has stamped his character for the evening. It was hit or mi.ss with him ; 
 but nine times out of ten, he contrived by this device to send away a whole company 
 his enemies. His conceptions rose kindlier than his utterance, and his happiest 
 impromptus had the appearance of eflfort. He has been accused of trying to be witty, 
 when in truth he was but struggling to give his poor thoughts articulation. He chose 
 his companions for some individuality of character which they manifested. — Hence, 
 not many persons of science, and few professed literati, were of his councils. They 
 were, for the most part, persons of an uncertain fortune ; and, as to such people 
 commonly nothing is more obnoxious than a gentleman of settled (though moderate) 
 income, he passed with most of them for a great miser. To my knowledge this was 
 a mistake. His intimados, to confess a truth, were in the world's eye a ragged 
 regiment. He found them floating on the surface of society ; and the colour, or 
 something else, in the weed pleased him. The burrs stuck to him — but they were 
 good and loving burrs for all that. He never greatly cared for the society of what 
 are called good people. If any of these were scandalised (and offences were sure to 
 arise) he could not help it. Wlicn he has been remonstrated with for not making 
 more concessions to the feelings of good people, he would retort by asking, what one 
 point did these good people ever concede to him ? He was temperate in his meals 
 and diversions, but always kept a little on this side of abstemiousness. Only in the 
 use of the Indian weed he might be thought a little excessive. He took it, he would 
 say, as a solvent of speech. Marry — as the friendly vapour ascended, how his prattle 
 would curl up sometimes with it ! the ligaments which tongue-tied him, were loosened, 
 and the stammerer proceeded a statist ! 
 
 I do not know whether I ought to bemoan or rejoice that my old friend is departed. 
 His jests were beginning to grow obsolete, and his stories to be found out. He felt 
 the approaches of age ; and while he pretended to cling to life, you saw how slender 
 were the ties left to bind him. Discoursing with him latterly on this subject, he 
 expressed himself with a pettishness, which I thought unworthy of him. In our 
 walks about his suburban retreat (as ho called it) at Shacklewell, some children 
 belonging to a school of industry had met us, and bowed and curtseyed, as he thought, 
 in an especial manner to him. " They take me for a visiting governor," he muttered 
 earnestly. He had a horror, which he carried to a foible, of looking like anything 
 important and parochial. He thought that he approached nearer to that stamp daily. 
 He had a general aversion from being treated like a grave or respectable character, 
 and kept a wary ej^e upon the advances of age that should so entitle him. He herded 
 always, while it was possible, with people younger than himself. He did not conform 
 to the march of time, but was dragged along in the procession. His manners lagged 
 behind his years. He was too much of the boy-man. The toga virilis never sate 
 gracefully on his shoulders. The impressions of infancy had bunit into him, and he 
 resented the impertinence of manhood. These were weaknesses ; but such as they 
 were, they are a key to explicate some of his writings. 
 
THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 
 
 BLAKESMOOR IN H- 
 
 -SHIEE. 
 
 I DO not know a pleasure more affecting 
 tlian to range at will over the deserted 
 apartments of some fine old family mansion. 
 The traces of extinct grandeui- admit of a 
 better passion than envy : and contempla- 
 tions on the great and good, whom we fancy 
 in succession to have been its inhabitants, 
 weave for us illusions, incompatible with the 
 bustle of modern occupancy, and vanities of 
 foolish present aristocracy. The same differ- 
 ence of feeling, I think, attends us between 
 entering an empty and a crowded church. 
 In the latter it is chance but some present 
 human fx'ailty — an act of inattention on the 
 part of some of the auditqiy — or a trait of 
 affectation, or worse, vain-glory on that of 
 the preacher — puts us by our best thoughts, 
 disharmonising the place and the occasion. 
 But wouldst thou know the beauty of holi- 
 ness 1 — go alone on some week-day, borrow- 
 ing the keys of good Master Sexton, traverse 
 the cool aisles of some counti-y church : 
 think of the piety that has kneeled there — 
 the congregations, old and young, that have 
 found consolation there — the meek pastoi' — 
 the docile parishioner. With no disturbing 
 emotions, no cross conflicting comparisons, 
 drink in the tranquillity of the place, tiU 
 thou thyself become as fixed and motionless 
 as the marble effigies that kneel and weep 
 ai'ound thee. 
 
 Joui-neying northward lately, I could not 
 resist going some few miles out of my road 
 to look upon the remains of an old great 
 
 house with which I had been impressed m 
 this way in infancy. I was apprised that; 
 the owner of it had lately pulled it down : 
 still I had a vague notion that it could not 
 all have perished, that so much solidity with 
 magnificence could not have been crushed 
 all at once into the mere dust and rubbish 
 which I found it. 
 
 The work of ruin had proceeded -n-ith a 
 swift hand indeed, and the demolition of a 
 few weeks had reduced it to — an antiquity. 
 
 I was astonished at the indistinction of 
 everything. Where had stood the great 
 gates ? What bounded the court-yard ? 
 Whereabout did the out-houses commence 1 
 A few bricks only lay as representatives of 
 that which was so stately and so spacious. 
 
 Death does not shrink up his human vic- 
 tim at this rate. The burnt ashes of a man 
 weigh more in their proportion. 
 
 Had I seen these brick-and-mortar knaves 
 at their process of destruction, at the pluck- 
 ing of every panel I should have felt the 
 varlets at my heart. I should have cried 
 out to tliem to sjmre a plank at least out of 
 the cheerful store-room, in whose hot window- 
 seat I used to sit and read Cowley, with the 
 grass-plot before, and the hum and flappings 
 of that one solitary wasp that ever haunted 
 it about me — it is in mine ears now, as oft 
 as summer returns ; or a panel of the yellow- 
 room. 
 
 Why, every plank and panel of that Louse 
 for me had magic in it. The tapestried 
 
414 
 
 BLAKESMOOR IN H SHIRE. 
 
 bedrooms — tapestry so much better than 
 pamting — not adorning merely, but peopling 
 the wainscots — at which childhood ever and 
 anon would steal a look, shifting its coverlid 
 (replaced as quickly) to exercise its tender 
 courage in a momentary eye-encounter with 
 those stem bright visages, staring reci- 
 procally — all Ovid on the walls, in colours 
 vivider than his descriptions. Actseon in 
 mid sprout, with the unappeasable prudery 
 of Diana ; and the still more provoking, 
 and almost culinary coolness of Dan 
 Phoebus, eel-fashion, deliberately divesting 
 of Marsyas. 
 
 ITien, that haunted room — in which old 
 Mrs. Battle died — whereiiito I have crept, 
 but always in the daytime, with a passion of 
 fear ; and a sneaking curiosity, terror-tainted, 
 to hold communication with the past. — How 
 shall they build it up again ? 
 
 It was an old deserted place, yet not so 
 long deserted but that traces of the splen- 
 dour of past inmates were everywhere appa- 
 rent. Its furniture was still standing — even 
 to the tarnished gilt leather battledores, and 
 crumbling feathers of shuttlecocks in the 
 nursery, which told that children had once 
 played there. But I was a lonely child, and 
 had the range at will of every apartment, 
 knew every nook and comer, wondered and 
 worshipped everywhere. 
 
 The solitude of childhood is not so much 
 the mother of thought, as it is the feeder of 
 love, and silence, and admiration. So strange 
 a passion for the place possessed me in those 
 years, that, though there lay — I shame to 
 say how few roods distant from the mansion 
 — half hid by trees what I judged some 
 romantic lake, such was the spell which 
 bound me to the house, and such my careful- 
 ness not to pass its strict and proper pre- 
 cincts, that the idle waters lay unexplored 
 for me ; and not till late in life, curiosity 
 prevailing over elder devotion, I found, to 
 my astonishment, a pretty brawling brook 
 had been the Lacus Incognitus of my infancy. 
 Variegated views, extensive prospects — and 
 those at no great distance from the house — 
 I was told of such — what were they to me, 
 being out of the boundaries of my Eden ? — 
 So far from a wish to roam, I would have 
 drawn, methought, still closer the fences of 
 my chosen jirison ; and have been hemmed 
 in by a yet securer cincture of those excluding 
 
 garden walls. I could have exclaimed with 
 that garden-loving poet — 
 
 Bind me, ye -woodbines, in your twines ; 
 Curl me about, ye ^deling vines ; 
 And oh so close your circles lace. 
 That I may never leave this place ; 
 But, lest your fetters prove too weak, 
 Ere I your silken bondape break, 
 Do you, O brambles, chain me too, 
 And, courteous briars, nail me through. 
 
 I was here as in a lonely temple. Snug 
 fire-sides — the low-built roof — pai'loui-s ten 
 feet by ten — frugal boards, and all the home- 
 liness of home — these were the condition of 
 my birth — the wholesome soil which I was 
 planted in. Yet, without impeachment to 
 their tenderest lessons, I am not sorry to 
 have had glances of something beyond ; and 
 to have taken, if but a peep, in childhood, 
 at the contrasting accidents of a great for- 
 tune. 
 
 To have the feeling of gentility, it is not 
 necessary to have been born gentle. The 
 pride of ancestry may be had on cheaper 
 terms than to be obliged to an imjiortunate 
 race of ancestors ; and the coatless anti- 
 quary in his unemblazoned cell, revoh-ing 
 the long line of a Mowbray's or De Clifibrd's 
 pedigi-ee, at those sounding names may warm 
 himself into as gay a vanity as these who do 
 inherit them. The claims of birth are ideal 
 merely, and what herald shall go about to 
 strip me of an idea ? Is it trenchant to 
 their swords ? can it be hacked ofi" as a spur 
 can ? or torn away like a tarnished garter ? 
 
 "What else were the families of the great 
 to us 1 what pleasure should we take in their 
 tedious genealogies, or their capitulatory 
 brass monuments ? "NMiat to us the unin- 
 terrupted current of their bloods, if our own 
 did not answer within ua to a cognate and 
 correspondent elevation. 
 
 Or wherefore else, O tattered and dimin- 
 ished 'Scutcheon that hung upon the 
 time-worn walls of thy princely stairs, 
 Blakesmoor ! have I in childhood so oft 
 stood poring upon the mystic characters — 
 thy emblematic supporters, with their pro- 
 phetic " Eesurgam " — till, evorj' dreg of 
 peasantry purging off, I received into myself 
 Very Gentility ] Thou wert first in my 
 morning eyes ; and of nights hiust detained 
 my steps from bedward, till it was but a stop 
 from gazing at thee to dreaming on thee. 
 
 lliis is the only true gentry by adoption ; 
 
POOR RELATIONS. 
 
 4ib 
 
 the veritable change of blood, and not, as 
 empirics have fabled, by transfusion. 
 
 Who it was by dying that had earned the 
 splendid trophy, I know not, I inquired not ; 
 but its fading rags, and colours cobweb- 
 stained, told that its subject was of two 
 centuries back. 
 
 And what if my ancestor at that date was 
 some Damoetas — feeding flocks — not his own, 
 upon the hills of Lincoln — did I in less 
 earnest vindicate to myself the family trap- 
 pings of this once proud ^gon 1 repaying by 
 a backward triumph the insults he might 
 possibly have heaped in his life-time upon 
 ray poor pastoral progenitor. 
 
 If it were presumption so to speculate, the 
 present owners of the mansion had least 
 reason to complain. They had long forsaken 
 the old house of their fathers for a newer 
 trifle ; and I was left to appropriate to 
 myself what images I could pick up, to raise 
 my fancy, or to soothe uiy vanity. 
 
 I was the true descendant of those old 
 
 "W" s ; and not the present family of that 
 
 name, who had fled the old waste places. 
 
 Mine was that gallery of good old family 
 portraits, which as I have gone over, giving 
 them in fancy my own family name, one — 
 and then another — would seem to smile, 
 reaching forward from the canvas, to recog- 
 nise the new relationship ; while the rest 
 looked grave, as it seemed, at the vacancy 
 in their dwelling, and thoughts of fled 
 posterity. 
 
 The Beauty with the cool blue pastoral 
 drapery, and a lamb — that hung next the 
 great bay window — with the bright yellow 
 
 H shire hair, and eye of watchet hue — so 
 
 like my Alice ! — I am persuaded she was a 
 true Elia — ^Mildi-ed Elia, I take it. 
 
 Mine, too, Blakesmoor, was thy noble 
 Marble Hall, with its mosaic pavements, and 
 its Twelve Caesars — stately busts in marble 
 — ranged I'ound ; of whose countenances, 
 young reader of faces as I was, the frowning 
 beauty of Nero, I remember, had most of luy 
 wonder : but the mild Galba had my love. 
 There they stood in the coldness of death, 
 yet freshness of immortality. 
 
 Mine, too, thy lofty Justice Hall, with its 
 one chair of authority, high-backed and 
 wickered, once the terror of luckless poacher, 
 or self-forgetful maiden — so common since, 
 that bats have roosted in it. 
 
 Mine, too, — whose else ? — thy costly fruit- 
 garden, with its sun-baked southern wall ; 
 the ampler pleasure-garden, rising backwards 
 from the house in triple terraces, with 
 flower-pots now of palest lead, save that a 
 speck here and there, saved from the 
 elements, bespake tlieir pristine state to have 
 been gilt and glittering ; the verdant quarters 
 backwarder still ; and, stretching still beyond, 
 in old formality, thy firry wilderness, the 
 haunt of the sqiurrel, and the day-long 
 murmuring wood-pigeon, with tliat antique 
 image in the centre, God or Goddess I wist 
 not ; but child of Athens or old Eome paid 
 never a sincerer worship to Pan or to 
 Sylvanus in their native groves, than I to 
 that fragmental mystery. 
 
 Was it for this, that I kissed my childish 
 hands too fervently in your idol-worshij), 
 walks and windings of Blakesmoor ! for 
 this, or what sin of mine, has the plough 
 passed over your pleasant places ? I some- 
 times think that as men, when they die, 
 do not die all, so of their extinguished 
 habitations thei-e may be a hope — a genu to 
 be revivified. 
 
 POOR RELATIONS. 
 
 — ♦ — 
 
 A Poor Relation — is the most irrelevant 
 thing in nature, — a piece of impertinent 
 correspondency, — an odious approximation, 
 — a haunting conscience, — a preposterous 
 shadow, lengthening in the noon-tide of our 
 prosperity, — an unwelcome remembrancer, — 
 a perpetually recurring mortification, — a 
 
 drain on your purse, a more intolerable dun 
 upon your pride, — a drawback upon success, 
 — a rebuke to your rising, — a stain in your 
 blood, — a blot on your 'scutcheon, — a rent in 
 your garment, — a death's-head at your ban- 
 quet, — Agathocles' pot, — a Mordecai in your 
 gate, a Lazarus at your door, — a lion in your 
 
416 
 
 POOR RELATIONS. 
 
 path, — a frog in your chamber, — a fly in 
 your ointment, — a mote in your eye, — a 
 triumph to your enemy, an apology to your 
 friends, — the one thing not needful, — the 
 hail in harvest, — the ounce of sour in a 
 pound of sweet. 
 
 He is known by his knock. Your heart 
 
 t^lleth you "That is Mr. ." A rap, 
 
 between familiarity and respect ; that de- 
 mands, and at the same time seems to 
 despair of, entertainment. He entereth 
 smiling and — embarrassed. He holdeth out 
 his hand to you to shake, and — draweth it 
 back again. He casually looketh in about 
 dinner-time — when the table is full. He 
 oflFereth to go away, seeing jow have company 
 —but is induced to stay. He filleth a chair^ 
 and your visitor's two children are accom- 
 modated at a side-table. He never cometh 
 upon open days, when your wife says, with 
 some complacency, "My dear, perhaps Mr. 
 
 will drop in to-day." He remembereth 
 
 birth-days — and professeth he is fortunate to 
 have stumbled upon one. He declareth 
 against fish, the turbot being small — yet 
 suffereth himself to be importuned into a 
 slice, against his first resolution. He sticketh 
 by the port — ^yet will be prevailed upon to 
 empty the remainder glass of claret, if a 
 stranger press it upon him. He is a puzzle 
 to the servants, who are fearful of being too 
 obsequious, or not civil enough, to him. The 
 guests think "they have seen him before." 
 Every one speculateth upon his condition ; 
 and the most part take him to be — a tide- 
 waiter. He calleth you by your Christian 
 name, to imply that his other is the same 
 with your own. lie is too familiar by half, 
 yet you wish he had less diffidence. With 
 half the familiarity, he might pass for a 
 casual dependant ; with more boldness, he 
 •would be in no danger of being taken for 
 what he is. He is too humble for a friend ; 
 yet taketli on him more state than befits a 
 client. He is a worse guest than a country 
 tenant, inasmuch as he bringeth up no rent 
 — yet 'tis odds, from his garb and demeanour, 
 that your guests take him for one. He is 
 asked to make one at the whist table ; 
 refuseth on the score of poverty, and — 
 resents being left out. When the company 
 break up, he proffereth to go for a coach — 
 and lets the servant go. He recollects 
 your grandfather ; and will thrust in some 
 
 mean and quite unimportant anecdote— of 
 the family. He knew it when it was not 
 quite so flourishing as "he is blest in seeing 
 it now." He reviveth past situations, to 
 institute what he calleth — favourable com- 
 parisons. With a reflecting sort of con- 
 gratulation, he will inquire the price of your 
 furniture ; and insults you with a special 
 commendation of your window-curtains. 
 He is of opinion that the urn is the more 
 elegant shape, but, after all, there was some- 
 thing more comfoi'table about the old tea- 
 kettle — which you must remember. He 
 dare say you must find a great convenience 
 in having a carriage of your own, and 
 appealeth to your lady if it is not so. 
 Inquireth if you have had your arms done 
 on vellum yet ; and did not know, till lately, 
 that such-and-such had been the crest of the 
 family. His memory is unseasonable ; his 
 compliments perverse ; his talk a trouble ; 
 his stay pertinacious ; and when he goeth 
 away, you dismiss his chair into a corner, as 
 precipitately as possible, and feel fairly rid 
 of two nuisances. 
 
 There is a worse evil under the sun, and 
 that is — a female Poor Relation. You may 
 do something with the other ; you may pass 
 him oif tolerably well ; but your indigent 
 she-relative is hopeless. " He is an old 
 humourist," you may say, " and affects to go 
 threadbare. His circumstances are better 
 than folks would take them to be. You are 
 fond of having a Character at your table, 
 and truly he is one." But in the indications 
 of female poverty there can be no disguise. 
 No woman dresses below herself from caprice. 
 The truth must out without shuffling. " She 
 
 is plainly related to the L s ; or what 
 
 does she at their house ?" She is, in all 
 probability, your wife's cousin. Nine times 
 out of ten, at least, this is the case. — Her 
 garb is something between a gentlewoman 
 and a beggar, yet the former evidently 
 predominates. Sho is most provokingly 
 humble, and ostentatiously sensible to her 
 inferiority. He may require to be repressed 
 sometimes — cUiquando sxtffiaminandus eroU — 
 but there is no raising her. You send her 
 soup at dinner, and she begs to be helped — 
 
 after the gentlemen. Mr. requests tlie 
 
 honour of taking wine with her ; she 
 hesitates between Port and Madeira, and 
 chooses the former — because he does. She 
 
POOR RELATIONS. 
 
 417 
 
 calls the servant Sir; and insists on not 
 troubling him to hold her plate. The house- 
 keejjer patronises her. The children's 
 governess takes upon her to correct her, 
 when she has mistaken the piano for 
 harpsichord. 
 
 Eichard Amlet, Esq., in the play, is a 
 notable instance of the disadvantages to 
 which this chimerical notion of affinity 
 constituting a claim to acquaintance, may 
 subject the spirit of a gentleman. A little 
 foolish blood is all that is betwixt him and a 
 lady with a great estate. His stars are 
 perpetually crossed by the malignant 
 maternity of an old woman, who persists in 
 calling him "her son Dick." But she has 
 wherewithal in the end to recompense his 
 indignities, and float him again upon the 
 brilliant surface, under which it had been 
 her seeming business and i)leasure all along 
 to sink him. All men, besides, are not of 
 Dick's temperament. I knew an Amlet in 
 real life, who, wanting Dick's buoyancy, sank 
 
 indeed. Poor W was of my own 
 
 standing at Clirist's, a tine classic, and a 
 youth of promise. . If he had a blemish, it 
 was too much pride ; but its quality was 
 inofiensive ; it was not of that sort which 
 hardens the heart, and serves to keep 
 inferiors at a distance ; it only sought to 
 ward ofi" derogation from itself. It was the 
 principle of self-respect carried as f:ir as it 
 could go, without infringing upon that 
 respect, which he would have every one else 
 equally maintain for himself He would 
 have you to think alike with him on this 
 topic. Many a quarrel have I had with him, 
 when we were rather older boys, and our 
 talluess made us more obnoxious to obser- 
 vation in the blue clothes, because I would 
 not thread the alleys and blind ways of the 
 town with him to elude notice, when we have 
 been out together on a holiday in the streets 
 of this sneering and prying metropolis. 
 
 W went, sore with these notions, to 
 
 Oxford, where the dignity and sweetness of 
 a scholar's life, meeting with the alloy of a 
 humble inti'oduction, wrought in hin< a 
 passionate devotion to the place, with a 
 profound aversion from the society. The 
 servitor's gown (worse than his school array) 
 clung to him with Nessian venom. He 
 thought himself ridiculous in a garb, under 
 which Latimer must have walked erect, and 
 
 in which Hooker, in his young days, possibly 
 flaunted in a vein of no discommendable 
 vanity. In the depth of college shades, or in 
 his lonely chamber, the poor student shrunk 
 fi-om observation. He found shelter among 
 books, which insult not ; and studies, that 
 ask no questions of a youth's finances. He 
 was lord of his library, and seldom cared for 
 looking out beyond his domains. The healing 
 influence of studious pursuits was upon him, 
 to soothe and to abstract. He was almost a 
 healthy man ; when the waywardness of his 
 fate broke out against him with a second and 
 
 worse malignity. The father of W had 
 
 hitherto exercised the humble pi'ofession of 
 
 house-painter at N , near Oxford. A 
 
 supposed interest with some of the heads of 
 colleges had now induced him to take up his 
 abode in that city, with the hope of being 
 employed upon some public works whicl- 
 were talked of From that moment I reaa 
 in the countenance of the young man the 
 determination which at length tore him from 
 academical pursuits for ever. To a person 
 unacquainted with our universities, the 
 distance between the gownsmen and the 
 townsmen, as they are called — the trading 
 part of the latter especially — is carried to an 
 excess that would appear harsh and incre- 
 dible. The temperament of W 's father 
 
 was diametrically the reverse of his own. 
 
 Old "W was a little, busy, cringing 
 
 tradesman, who, with his son upon his arm, 
 would stand bowing and scraping, cap in 
 hand, to any thing that wore the semblance 
 of a gown — insensible to the winks and 
 opener remonstrances of the young man, to 
 whose chamber-fellow, or eqiud in standing, 
 perhaps, he was thus obsequiously and 
 gratuitously ducking. Such a state of things 
 
 could not last. W must change the air 
 
 of Oxford, or be suffocated. He chose the 
 former ; and let the sturdy moralist, who 
 strains the point of the filial duties as high 
 as they can bear, censure the dereliction ; to 
 cannot estimate the struggle. I stood with 
 
 W , the last afternoon I ever saw him, 
 
 under the eaves of his i)aternal dwelling. 
 It was in the fine lane leading from the 
 High-street to the back of * * * * college, 
 
 where W kejit his rooms. He seemed 
 
 thoughtful and more reconciled. I ventured 
 to rally him — finding him in a better mood — 
 upon a representation of the Ajtist Evan- 
 
 £ E 
 
418 
 
 POOR RELATIONS. 
 
 gelist, which the old man, whose affairs were 
 beginning to flourish, had caused to be set 
 up in a splendid sort of frame over his really 
 handsome shop, either as a token of pros- 
 perity or badge of gratitude to his saint. 
 
 W looked up at the Luke, and, like 
 
 Satan, " knew his mounted sign — and fled." 
 A letter on his father's table, the next 
 morning, announced that he had accepted a 
 commission in a regiment about to embark 
 for Portugal. He was among the first who 
 perished before the walls of St. Sebastian. 
 
 I do not know how, upon a subject which 
 I began with treating half seriously, I sliould 
 have fallen upon a recital so eminently pain- 
 ful ; but this theme of poor relationship is 
 
 against him in some argument, touching their 
 youthful days. The houses of the ancient 
 city of Lincoln are divided (as most of my 
 readers know) between the dwellers on the 
 hill and in the valley. This marked dis- 
 tinction formed an obvious division between 
 the boys who lived above (however brought 
 together in a common school) and the boys 
 whose paternal residence was on the plain ; a 
 sufficient cause of hostility in the code of 
 these young Grotiuses. My father had been 
 a leading Mountaineer ; and would still main- 
 tain the general superiority, in skill and 
 hardihood, of the Above Boys (his own 
 faction) over the Beloio Boys (so were they 
 called), of which party his contemporary had 
 
 replete with so much matter for tragic as well been a chieftain. Many and hot were the 
 as comic associations, that it is difficult to ' skirmishes on this topic — the only one upon 
 keep the account distinct without blending, j which the old gentleman was ever brought 
 The earliest impressions which I received on out— and bad blood bred ; even sometimes 
 this matter, are certainly not attended with almost to the recommencement (so I ex- 
 anj-thiug painful, or very humiliathig, in the pected) of actual hostilities. But my father, 
 recalling. At my father's table (no very ^ who scorned to insist upon advantages, 
 splendid one) was to be found, every Satur- generally contrived to turn the conversation 
 day, the mysterious figure of an aged gentle- upon some adroit by-commendation of the 
 man, clothed in neat black, of a sad yet old Minster ; in the general preference of 
 comely appearance. His deportment was of which, before all other cathedrals in the 
 the essence of gravity ; his words few or ! island, the dweller on the hill, and the plain- 
 none ; and I was not to make a noise in his born, could meet on a conciliating level, and 
 presence. I had little inclination to have | lay down their less imiiortant differences, 
 done so— for my cue was to admire in silence. Once only I saw the old gentleman really 
 A particular elbow-chair was appropriated rufiled, and I remembered with anguish the 
 to him, which was in no case to be violated, thought that came over me : " Perhaps he 
 A peculiar sort of sweet jiuddiug, which will never come here again." He had been 
 appeared on no other occasion, distinguished pressed to take another plate of the viand, 
 tlie days of his coming. I used to tliiuk him Avhich I have already mentioned as the indis- 
 
 a prodigiously rich man. All I could make 
 out of him was, that he and my father had 
 been schoolfellows, a world ago, at liincolu, 
 and that he came from the Mint. The Mint 
 I knew to be a place where all the money 
 was coined — and I thought he was the owner 
 
 pensable concomitant of his visits. He had 
 refused with a resistance amounting to 
 rigour, when my aunt, an old Liucolnian, but 
 who had something of this, in common with 
 my cousin Bridget, that she would sonii'timcs 
 press civility out of season — uttered the 
 
 of all that money. Awful ideas of the Tower following memorable application — " Do take 
 twined themselves about his presence. He ^ another slice, Mr. Billet, for you do not get 
 seemed above human infirmities and passions. ' pudding every day." The old gentleman 
 A sort of melancholy grandeur invested him. said nothing at the time — but he took occa- 
 From some inexplicable doom I fancied him sion in the course of the evening, when some 
 obliged to go about in an eternal suit of argument had intervened between them, to 
 mourning; a captive — a stately being let out utter with an emphasis which chilled the 
 of the Tower on Saturdays. Often have I ' company, and which chills me now as I 
 wondered at the temerity of my lather, who, write it — "Woman, you are superannuated ! " 
 in si)ite of an habitual general respect which John Billet did not survive long alter tho 
 we all in common manifested towards him, digesting of this alfront ; but he survived 
 would venture now and then to stand up long enough to assure me that peace waa 
 
DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND READING. 
 
 419 
 
 actually restored ! and, if I remember aright, 
 another pudding was discreetly substituted 
 in the place of tliat which liad occasioned the 
 offence. He died at the IMint (anno 1781), 
 where he had long held, what he accounted, 
 a comfortable independence ; and with live 
 
 pounds, fourteen shillings, and a penny, which 
 were found in his escnitoire after his decease, 
 left the world, blessing God that he had 
 enough to bury him, and that he had never 
 been obliged to any man for a sixpence. This 
 was — a Poor Relation. 
 
 DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND EEADTNG. 
 
 To mind the inside of a book is to entertain one's self with the forced product of another man's brain. Now 
 I think a man of quality and breeding may be much amused with the natural sprouts of his own. 
 
 Lord Foppington, in the Relapse. 
 
 An ingenious acquaintance of my own was ' come bolt upon a withering Population 
 so much sti-uck with this bright sally of his Essay. To expect a Steele or a Farquhar, 
 
 Lordship, that he has left off reading 
 altogether, to the great improvement of his 
 originality. At the hazard of losing some 
 credit on this head, I must confess that I 
 dedicate no inconsiderable portion of my 
 time to other people's thoughts. I dream 
 away my life in others' speculations. I love 
 to lose myself in other men's minds. "When 
 I am not walking, I am reading ; I cannot 
 sit and think. Books think for me. 
 
 I have no repugnances. Shaftesbury is not 
 too genteel for me, nor Jonathan Wild too 
 low. I can read anything which I call a book. 
 There are things in that shape which I cannot 
 allow for such. 
 
 In this catalogue of hooks which are no 
 books — biblia a-biblia — I reckon Court Calen- 
 dars, Directories, Pocket Books, Draught 
 Boards, bound and lettered on the back, 
 Scientific Treatises, Almanacs, Statutes at 
 Large : the works of Hume, Gibbon, Robert- 
 son, Beattie, Soame Jenyus, and generally, 
 all those volumes which " no gentleman's 
 library should be without : " the Histories of 
 Flavins Josephus (that learned Jew), and 
 Paley's Moral Philosophy. With these ex- 
 ceptions, I can read almost anytliing. I bless 
 my stars for a taste so catholic, so uuex- 
 cluding. 
 
 I confess that it moves my spleen to see 
 tliese thirujs in books' clothing perched upon 
 shelves, like false saints, usurpers of true 
 shrines, intruders into the sanctuary, thrust- 
 ing out the legitimate occupants. To reach 
 down a well-bound semblance of a volume, 
 and hope it some kind-hearted play-book, 
 then, opening what " seem its leaves," to 
 
 and find — Adam Smith. To view a well- 
 arranged assortment of block-headed Ency- 
 clopaedias (Anglicanas or Metropolitanas) set 
 out in an array of russia, or morocco, when a 
 tithe of that good leather would comfortably 
 re-clothe my shivering folios — would renovate 
 Paracelsus himself, and enable old Raymund 
 LuUy to look like himself again in the world. 
 I never see these impostors, but I long to 
 strip them, to warm my ragged veterans in 
 their spoils. 
 
 To be strong-backed and neat-bound is the 
 desideratum of a volume. Magnificence 
 comes after. This, when it can be afforded, 
 is not to be lavished upon all kinds of books 
 indiscriminately. I would not dress a set of 
 Magazines, for instance, in full suit. Tlie 
 dishabille, or half-binding (with russia backs 
 ever) is our costume. A Shakspeare or a 
 Milton (unless the first editions), it were 
 mere foppery to trick out in gay apparel. 
 Tlie possession of them confers no distinction. 
 The exterior of them (the things themselves 
 being so common), strange to say, raises no 
 sweet emotions, no tickling sense of property 
 in the owner. Thomson's Sea-sons, again, 
 looks best (I maintain it) a little torn and 
 dog's-eared. How beautiful to a genuine 
 lover of reading are the sullied leaves, and 
 worn-out appearance, nay, the very odour 
 (beyond russia), if we would not forget kind 
 feelings in fastidiousness, of an old " Circu- 
 lating Library " Tom Jones, or Vicar of 
 Wakefield ! How they speak of the thou- 
 sand thumbs that have turned over their 
 pages with delight ! — of the lone sempstress, 
 whom they may have cheered (milliner, or 
 
 E £ 2 
 
420 
 
 DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND READING. 
 
 harder-working mantua-maker) after her 
 long day's needle-toil, running far into mid- 
 night, when she has snatched an hour, ill 
 spared from sleep, to steep her cares, as in 
 some Lethean cup, in spelling out their 
 enchanting contents ! Who would have them 
 a whit less soiled ? What better condition 
 could we desire to see them in ? 
 
 In some respects the better a book is, the 
 less it demands from binding. Fielding, 
 Smollett, Sterne, and all that class of per- 
 petually self-reproductive volumes — Great 
 Nature's Stereotypes — we see them indi- 
 vidtially perish with less regret, because we 
 know the copies of them to be " eterne." 
 But where a book is at once both good and 
 rare — where the individual is almost the 
 species, and when thai perishes, 
 
 We know not -n-here is that Promethean torch 
 That can its light relumine. 
 
 such a book, for instance, as the Life of the 
 Duke of Newcastle, by his Duchess — no 
 casket is rich enough, no casing sufficiently 
 durable, to honour and keep safe such a jewel. 
 Not only rare volumes of this description, 
 which seem hopeless ever to be reprinted, 
 but old editions of writers, such as Sir Philip 
 Sydney, Bishop Taylor, Milton in his prose 
 works. Fuller — of whom we have reprints, 
 yet the books themselves, though they go 
 about, and are talked of here and there, we 
 know have not endenizened themselves (nor 
 possibly ever will) in the national heart, so 
 as to become stock books — it is good to 
 possess these in durable and costly covers. 
 I do not care for a First Folio of Shakspeare. 
 I rather prefer the common editions of Rowe 
 and Tonson, without notes, and with plates, 
 which, being so execrably bad, serve as majjs 
 or modest remembrancers, to the text ; and 
 without pretending to any sujiposable emula- 
 tion with it, are so much better than the 
 Shakspeare gallery engravings, which did. 
 I have a community of feeling with my 
 countrymen about his Plays, and I like those 
 editions of him best which have been oftenest 
 tumbled about and handled. — On the con- 
 trary, 1 cannot read Beaumont and Fletcher 
 but in Folio. The Octavo editions are pain- 
 ful to look at. I have no sympathy with 
 them. If they were as much read as the 
 cuiTont editions of tlie other poet, I should 
 prefer them iu that sliupo to the older one. 
 
 I do not know a more heartless sight than 
 the reprint of the Anatomy of Melancholy. 
 What need was there of unearthing the bones 
 (3f that fentastic old great man, to expose 
 them in a winding-sheet of the newest fashion 
 to modern censure ? what hapless stationer 
 could dream of Burton ever becoming 
 popular ? — The wretched Malone could not 
 do worse, when he bribed the sexton of 
 Stratford church to let him whitewash the 
 painted effigy of old Shakspeare, which stood 
 there, in rude but lively fashion depicted, to 
 the very colour of the cheek, the eye, the 
 eyebrow, hair, the very dress he used to 
 w'ear — the only authentic testimony "we had, 
 however imperfect, of these curious parts and 
 parcels of him. They covered him over with 
 
 a coat of white paint. By , if I had been 
 
 a justice of peace for Warwickshire, I would 
 have clapt both commentator and sexton fast 
 in the stocks, for a pair of meddling sacri- 
 legious varlets. 
 
 I think I see them at their work — these 
 sapient trouble-tombs. 
 
 Shall I be thought fantastical, if I confess, 
 that the names of some of our poets sound 
 sweeter, and have a finer relish to the ear — 
 to mine, at least — than that of Milton or of 
 Shakspeare ? It may be, that the latter are 
 more staled and rang upon in common dis- 
 course. The sweetest names, and which 
 carry a perfume in the mention, are. Kit 
 Marlowe, Drayton, Drummond of Haw- 
 thornden, and Cowley. 
 
 Much depends upon when and xchei-e you 
 read a book. In the five or six impatient 
 minutes, before the dinner is quite ready, 
 who would think of taking up the Fairy 
 Queen for a stop-gap, or a volume of Bishop 
 Andrewes' sermons ? 
 
 Milton almost requires a solemn service of 
 music to be played before you enter uitoii 
 him. But he brings his music, to which, 
 who listens, had need bring docile thoughts, 
 and purged ears. 
 
 Winter evenings — the world shut out — 
 with less of ceremony the gentle Shakspeare 
 enters. At such a season the Tempest, or his 
 own Winter's Tale — 
 
 These two poets you caimot avoid reading 
 aloud — to yourself, or (as it chances) to some 
 single person listening. More than one — 
 and it degenerates into an audience. 
 
 Books of quick interest, that hurry on for 
 
DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND READING. 
 
 421 
 
 incidents, are for the eye to glide over only. 
 It will not do to read them out. I could 
 never listen to even the better kind of 
 modern novels without extreme irksomeness. 
 
 A newspaper, read out, is intolerable. In 
 some of the Bank offices it is the custom (to 
 save so much individual time) for one of the 
 clerks — who is the best scholar — to com- 
 mence upon the " Times," or the " Chronicle," 
 and recite its entire contents aloud, />?-o bono 
 publico. With every advantage of lungs and 
 elocution: the effect is singularly vapid. In 
 barbers' shops and public-houses a fellow 
 will get up and spell out a paragraph, which 
 he communicates as some discovery. Another 
 follows with his selection. So the entire 
 journal transpires at length by piece-meal. 
 Seldom-readers are slow readers, and, with- 
 out this expedient, no one in the company 
 would probably ever travel through the con- 
 tents of a whole paper. 
 
 Newspapers always excite curiosity. No 
 one ever lays one down without a feeling of 
 disappointment. 
 
 What an eternal time that gentleman in 
 black, at Nando's, keeps the paper ! I am 
 sick of hearing the water bawling out inces- 
 santly, " The 'Chronicle ' is in hand. Sir." 
 
 Coming into an inn at night — having 
 ordered your supper — what can be more de- 
 lightful than to find lying in the window- 
 seat, left there time out of mind by the care- 
 lessness of some former guest — two or three 
 numbers of the old Town and Country 
 Magazine, with its amusing ^e<e-d-^^te pictures 
 
 — " The Eoyal Lover and Lady G ; " 
 
 " The Melting Platonic and the old Beau," — 
 and such-like antiquated scandal ? Would 
 you exchange it — at that time, and in that 
 place — for a better book ? 
 
 Poor Tobin, who latterly fell blind, did not 
 regret it so much for the weightier kinds of 
 reading — the Paradise Lost, or Comus, he 
 could have read to him — but he missed the 
 pleasure of skimming over with his own eye 
 a magazine, or a light pamphlet. 
 
 I should not care to be caught in the 
 serious avenues of some cathedral alone/ and 
 reading Candide. 
 
 I do not remember a more whimsical 
 surprise than having been once detected — by 
 a familiar damsel — reclined at my ease upon 
 the grass, on Primrose Hill (her Cythcra), 
 reading — Pamela. There was nothing in the 
 
 book to make a man seriously ashamed at 
 the exposure ; but a.s she seated herself down 
 by me, and seemed determined to read in 
 company, I could have wished it had been 
 — any other book. We read on very 
 sociably for a few pages ; and, not finding 
 the author much to her taste, she got up, and 
 — went away. Gentle casuist, I leave it to 
 thee to conjecture, whether the blush (for 
 there was one between us) was the property 
 of the nymph or the swain in this dilemma. 
 Prom me you shall never get the secret. 
 
 I am not much a friend to oiit-of-doors 
 reading. I cannot settle my spirits to it. I 
 knew a Unitai'ian minister, who was generally 
 to be seen upon Snow-hill (as yet Skinner's- 
 street was not), between the hours of ten and 
 eleven in the morning, studying a volume of 
 Lardner. I own this to have been a strain 
 of abstraction beyond my reach. I used to 
 admire how he sidled along, keeping clear of 
 secular contacts. An illiterate encounter 
 with a porter's knot, or a bread-basket, 
 would have quickly put to flight all the 
 theology I am master of, and have left me 
 worse than indifferent to the five points. 
 
 There is a class of street readers, whom I 
 can never contemplate without affection — 
 the poor gentry, who, not having where- 
 withal! to buy or hire a book, filch a little 
 learning at the open stalls — the owner, with 
 his hard eye, casting envious looks at them 
 all the while, and thinking when they will 
 have done. Venturing tenderly, page after 
 page, expecting every moment when he shall 
 interpose his interdict, and yet unable to 
 deny themselves the gratification, they 
 
 "snatch a fearful joy." Martin B , in this 
 
 way, by daily fragments, got through two 
 volumes of Clarissa, when the stall-keeper 
 damped his laudable ambition, by askhig 
 him (it wiis in his younger days) whether he 
 meant to purchase the work. M. declares, 
 that under no circumstance in his life did he 
 ever peruse a book with half the satisfaction 
 which he took in those uneasy snatches. A 
 quaint poetess of our day has moralised upon 
 this subject in two very touching but homely 
 stanzas. 
 
 I saw a boy with eager eye 
 Open a book upon a stall. 
 And read, as he'd devour it all ; 
 Which when the stall-man did espy, 
 8ooa to the boy I heard him call. 
 
422 
 
 STAGE ILLUSION. 
 
 " You Sir, you never buy a book. 
 Therefore in one you shall not look." 
 The boy pass'd slowly on, and with a siph 
 He wish'd he never had been taugrht to read. 
 Then of the old churl's books he should have had no 
 need. 
 
 Of sufferings the poor have many, 
 Which never can the rich annoy : 
 
 I soon perceived another boy, 
 
 "WTio look'd as if he had not any 
 
 Food, for that day at least — enjoy 
 
 The sijfht of cold meat in a tavern larder. 
 
 This boy's case, then thought I, is surely harder, 
 
 Thus hungry, longing, thus without a penny, 
 
 Beholding choice of dainty-dressed meat : 
 
 No wonder if ho wish he ne'er had learn'd to eat. 
 
 STAGE ILLUSION. 
 
 A PLAT is said to be well or ill acted, in 
 proportion to the scenical illusion produced. 
 Whether such illusion can in any case be 
 perfect, is not the question. The nearest 
 approach to it, we are told, is, when the actor 
 appears wholly unconscious of the presence 
 ^ of spectators. Iii_±i:agedy:— in all which is 
 tciLafiect_tlie_Jeelings^tlus undivided atten- 
 ticajutohisstage business seems indispens- 
 able. Yet it is, in fact, dispensed with every 
 day by our cleverest tragedians ; and while 
 these references to an audience, in the shape 
 of rant or sentiment, are not too frequent or 
 palpable, a sufficient quantity of illusion for 
 the purposes Of dramatic interest may be said 
 to be i^roduced in spite of them. But, tragedy 
 apart, it may be inquired whether, in certain 
 characters in comedy, especially those which 
 are a little extravagant, or which involve 
 some notion repugnant to the moral sense, 
 it is not a proof of the highest skill in the 
 comedian when, without absolutely appealing 
 to an audience, he keeps up a tacit under- 
 standing with them : and makes them, un- 
 consciously to themselves, a party in the 
 scene. The utmost nicety is required in the 
 mode of doing this ; but we speak only of the 
 great artists in the profession. 
 
 The most mortifying infirmity in human 
 nature, to feel in ourselves, or to contemplate 
 in another, is, perhaps, cowardice. To see a 
 coward done to the life upon a stage would 
 produce anything but mirth. Yet we most 
 of us remember Jack Bannister's cowards. 
 Could anything be more agreeable, more 
 pleasant ? We loved the rogues. How was 
 this effected but by the exquisite art of the 
 actor in a perpetual sub-insiiuiation to us, 
 the spectators, even in the extremity of the 
 shaking fit, that ho w;is not half such a 
 
 coward as we took him for ? We saw all 
 tlie common symptoms of the malady upon 
 him ; the quivering lip, the cowering knees, 
 the teeth chattering ; and could have sworn 
 " that man was frightened." But we forgot 
 all the while — or kept it almost a secret to 
 ourselves — that he never once lost his self- 
 possession ; that he let out, by a thousand 
 droll looks and gestures — meant at us, and 
 not at all supposed to be %asible to his fellows 
 in the scene, that his confidence in his own 
 resources had never once deserted him. Was 
 this a genuine picture of a coward ; or not 
 rather a likeness, which the clever artist 
 contrived to palm upon us instead of an 
 original ; while we secretly connived at the 
 delusion for the purpose of greater pleasure, 
 than a more genuine counterfeiting of the 
 imbecility, helplessness, and utter self-de- 
 sertion, wdiich we know to be concomitants 
 of cowardice in real life, could have given us 1 
 
 Why are misers so hateful in the world, 
 and so endurable on the stage, but because 
 the skilful actor, by a sort of sub-reference, 
 rather than direct appeal to us, disjirms tiie 
 character of a great deal of its odiousness, by 
 seeming to engage our compassion for the 
 insecure tenure by which he holds his money- 
 bags iuul parchments 1 By this subtle vt-nt 
 half of the hatefulness of the character — the 
 self-closeness with which in real life it coils 
 itself up from the sympathies of men — 
 evaporates. The miser becomes sympathetic ; 
 i. e. is no genuine miser. Hero again a 
 diverting likeness is substituted for a very 
 disagreeable reality. 
 
 Sjileen, irritability — the pitiable infirmities 
 of old men, which produce only pain to be- 
 hold in the realities, counterfeited upon a 
 sUvge, divert not altogether for the comic 
 
STAGE ILLUSION". 
 
 423 
 
 appendages to them, but in part from an 
 inner conviction that tliey are being acted 
 before us ; that a likeness only is going on, 
 and not the tiling itself. They please by 
 being done under the life, or beside it ; not 
 to the life. When Gattie acts an old man, is 
 he angry indeed ? or only a pleasant counter- 
 feit, just enough of a likeness to recognise, 
 without pressing upon us the uneasy sense of 
 a reality 1 
 
 Comedians, paradoxical as it may seem, 
 may be too natural. It was tlie-case with a 
 late actor. Nothing could be more earnest 
 or true than the manner of Mr. Emery ; this 
 told excellently in his Tyke, and characters 
 of a tragic cast. But when he carried the 
 same rigid exclusiveness of attention to the 
 stage business, and wilful blindness and obli- 
 vion of everything before the curtain into 
 his comedy, it produced a harsh and dissonant 
 effect. He was out of keeping with the rest 
 of the Personce Dramatis. There was as little 
 link between him and them, as betwixt him- 
 self and tlie audience. He was a third estate, 
 dry, repulsive, and unsocial to all. In- 
 dividually considered, his execution was 
 masterly. But comedy is not this unbending 
 /Ihing ; for this reason, that the same degree 
 
 of credibility is n ot requ ired of it as to 
 serious s cenes. The degrees of credibility 
 demanded to the two things, may be illus- 
 trated by the d ifferent sort of trut h which we 
 expect when a man tells us a mournful or a 
 merry story. If we suspect the former of 
 falsehood in any one tittle, we reject it alto- 
 gether. Our tears refuse to flow at a 
 suapected-impiisition. But the teller of a 
 mirthful tale has latitude allowed him. We 
 \ .are content _with less than absolute truth. 
 'Tis the same with dramatic illusion. We 
 confess we love in comedy to see an audience 
 naturalised behind the scenes, taken into the 
 interest of the drama, welcomed as by- 
 standers however. There is something un- 
 gracious in a comic actor holding himself 
 aloof from all participation or concern with 
 those who are come to be diverted by him. 
 Macbeth must see the dagger, and no ear but 
 his own be told of it ; but an old fool in 
 farce may think he sees something, and by 
 
 conscious words and looks express it, as 
 plainly as he can speak, to pit, box, and gal- 
 lery. When an impertinent in tragedy, an 
 Osric, for instance, breaks in upon the 
 serious passions of the scene, we approve ot 
 the contempt with which he is treated. But 
 when the pleasant impertinent of comedy, 
 in a piece purely meant to give delight, and 
 raise mirth out of whimsical perplexities, 
 worries the studious man with taking up his 
 leisure, or making his house his home, the 
 same sort of contempt expressed (however 
 natural) would destroy the balance of delight 
 in the spectators. To make the intrusion 
 comic, the actor who plays the annoyed mau 
 must a l ittle d esert nature ; he must, in short, 
 be thinking of the audience, and exjjress only 
 so much dissatisfaction and peevishness as 
 is consistent with the pleasure of comedy. 
 In other words, his perplexity must seem 
 half put on. If he repel the intruder with 
 tlie sober set face of a man in earnest, and 
 mox-e esjDecially if he deliver his expostula- 
 tions in a tone which in the world must 
 necessarily provoke a duel ; his real-life 
 manner will destroy tlie whimsical and 
 purely dramatic existence of the other cha- 
 racter (which to render it comic demands 
 an antagonist comicality on the part of the 
 character opposed to it), and convert what 
 was meant for mirth, rather than belief, into 
 a downright piece of impertinence indeed, 
 which would raise no diversion in us, but 
 rather stir pain, to see inflicted in earnest 
 upon any unworthy person. A very judicious 
 actor (in most of his parts) seems to have 
 fallen into an error of this sort in his playing 
 with Mr. Wrench in the fai'ce of Free and 
 Easy. 
 
 Many instances would be tedious ; these 
 may suflice to show that comic acting atleast 
 does not always demand Jrom^ the performer 
 that strict abstraction from^lLi-eferense to 
 anTaudience whic h is e xacted of it ; but that 
 in some cases a sort of compromise may take 
 place, and all the purposes of dramatic de- 
 light be attained by a judicious understand- 
 ing, not too openly announced, between the 
 ladies and gentlemen — on both sides of the 
 cui'taiu. 
 
424 
 
 TO THE SHADE OF ELLISTON. 
 
 TO THE SHADE OF ELLISTON. 
 
 JoTousEST of once embodied spirits, wliithor 
 at length hast thou flown '/ to what genial 
 region are we permitted to conjecture that 
 thou hast flitted 1 
 
 Art thou sowing thy wild oats yet (the 
 harvest time was still to come with thee) 
 upon casual sands of Avei'nus ? or art thou 
 enacting Rover (as we would gladlier think) 
 by wandering Elysian streams ? 
 
 This mortal frame, while thou didst play 
 thy brief antics amongst us, was in truth 
 anytliing but a prison to thee, as the vain 
 Piatonist dreams of this bodi/ to be no better 
 than a county gaol, forsooth, or some house 
 of durance vile, whereof the five senses are 
 the fetters. Thou knewest better than to be 
 in a hurry to cast off those gyves ; and had 
 notice to quit, I fear, before thou wert quite 
 ready to abandon this fleshy tenement. It 
 was thy Pleasure-House, thy Palace of 
 Dainty Devices : thy Louvre, or thy White- 
 Hall. 
 
 What new mysterious lodgings dost thou 
 tenant now 1 or when may we exjject thy 
 aerial house-warming 1 
 
 Tartarus we know, and we have read of 
 the Blessed Shades ; now cannot I intelligibly 
 fancy thee in either. 
 
 Is it too much to hazard a conjecture, that 
 (as the sclioolmen admitted a receptttcle 
 ajjart for Patriarchs and un-chrisom babes) 
 there may exist — not far perchance from 
 that store-house of all vanities, whicli Milton 
 saw in vision — a Limbo somewhere for 
 Players 1 and that 
 
 Up tliitlior like nerial vapours fly 
 
 lioth all Stage thinj?s, and all Ihat in Stape things 
 
 built thrir fond hopes of glory, or lasting fanie ? 
 
 All the unacconijAislicd works of Autliors' bunds, 
 
 Abortive, monstrous, or unkindly mixed, 
 
 Dainn'd upon earth, fleet thither — 
 
 I'lay, Opera, Farce, with all their trumpery. — 
 
 There, by the neighbouring moon (by 
 some not imjiroperly supposed thy Regent 
 Planet upon earth), mayst thou not still be 
 .acting tliy managerial pranks, gri'at dis- 
 embotlied Lessee l but Lessee still, and still 
 ii manasrer. 
 
 In Green Rooms, impervious to mortal 
 eye, the muse beholds tliee wielding posthu- 
 mous empire. 
 
 Thin ghosts of Figurantes (never plump 
 on earth) circle thee in endlessly, and still 
 their song is Fie on sinful Phantasy ! 
 
 Magnificent were thy capriccios on this 
 globe of earth, Robert William Elliston ! 
 for as yet we know not thy new name in 
 heaven. 
 
 It irks me to think, that, stript of thy 
 regalities, thou shouldst ferry over, a poor 
 forked shade, in crazy Stygian wherry. 
 Metliinks 1 hear the old boatman, paddling 
 by the weedy wharf, with raucid voice, 
 bawling " Sculls, Sculls:" to which, with 
 waving hand, and majestic action, thou 
 deignest no reply, other than in two curt 
 monosyllables, " No : Oars." 
 
 But the laws of Pluto's kingdom know 
 small difference between king, and cobbler ; 
 manager, and call-boy ; and, if haply your 
 dates of life were conterminaut, you are 
 quietly taking your passage, cheek by cheek 
 (O ignoble levelling of Death) with the 
 shade of some I'ecently departed candle- 
 snuffer. 
 
 But mercy ! what strippings, what tearing 
 off of histrionic robes, and private vanities ! 
 what denudations to the bone, before the 
 surly Fei-ryman will admit you to set a foot 
 within his battered lighter. 
 
 Crowns, sceptres ; shield, sword, and 
 truncheon ; thy own coronation robes (for 
 thou hast brought the whole property- 
 man's wardrobe with thee, enough to sink a 
 navy); the judge's ermine; the coxcomb's 
 wig; the snuffbox d la Foppincfton — all 
 must overboard, he positively swears — and 
 that Ancient Mariner brooks no ileniid ; 
 for, since the tiresome nionodrame of 
 the old Thracian Harper, Charon, it is 
 to be believed, hath shown small taate for 
 theatricals. 
 
 Ay, now 'tis done. You are just boat- 
 weight ; pura et puta anima. 
 
 But, bless me, how little you look ! 
 
ELLISTONIANA. 
 
 425 
 
 So shall we all look — kings and keysars — 
 stripped for the last voyage. 
 
 But the murky rogue pushes off. Adieu, 
 pleasant, and thrice pleasant shade ! with 
 my parting thanks for many a heavy hour of 
 life lightened by thy harmless extravaganzas, 
 public or domestic. 
 
 Ehadamanthus, who tries the lighter 
 causes below, leaving to his two brethren 
 the heavy calendars — honest Rhadamanth, 
 always partial to players, weighing their 
 parti-coloured existence here upon earth, — 
 making account of the few foibles, that may 
 have shaded thy real life, as we call it, 
 
 (though, substantially, scarcely less a vapour 
 th.an thy idlest vagaries upon the boards of 
 Drury,) as but of so many echoes, natural 
 re-percussions, and results to be expected 
 from the assumed extravagancies of thy 
 secondary or mock life, nightly upon a stage 
 — after a lenient castigation, with rods lighter 
 than of those Medusean ringlets, but just 
 enough to " whip the offending Adam out of 
 thee," shall courteously dismiss thee at the 
 right hand gate — tlie o. p. side of Hades — 
 that conducts to masques and merry-makings 
 in the Theatre Eoyal of Proserpine. 
 
 PLAUDITO, ET VALETO. 
 
 ELLISTONIANA. 
 
 Mr acquaintance with the pleasant crea- 
 ture, whose loss we all deplore, was but 
 slight. 
 
 My first introduction to E., which after- 
 wards ripened into an acquaintance a little 
 on this side of intimacy, was over a counter 
 in the Leamington Spa Library, then newly 
 entered upon by a branch of his family. 
 E., whom nothing misbecame — to auspicate, 
 I suppose, the filial concern, and set it a-going 
 with a lustre — was serving in person two 
 damsels fair, who had come into the shop 
 ostensibly to inquire for some new publica- 
 tion, but in reality to have a sight of the 
 illustrious shopman, hoping some conference. 
 Witii what an air did he reach down the 
 volume, dispassionately giving his opinion of 
 the worth of the work in question, and 
 laiinching out into a dissertation on its com- 
 parative merits with those of certain publi- 
 cations of a similar stamp, its rivals ! his 
 enchanted customers fairly hangirag on his 
 lips, subdued to their authoritative sentence. 
 So have I seen a gentleman in comedy acting 
 the shopman. So Lovelace sold his gloves in 
 King Street. I admired the histrionic art, 
 by which he contrived to carry cleai^ away 
 every notion of disgrace, from the occupation 
 he had so generously submitted to ; and from 
 that hour I judged him, with no alter repent- 
 ance, to be a person with whom it would be 
 a felicity to be more acquainted. 
 
 To descant upon his merits as a Comedian 
 
 would be superfluous. With his blended 
 private and professional habits alone I have 
 to do ; that harmonious fusion of the manners 
 of the player into those of every-day life, 
 which brought the stage boards into streets, 
 and dining-parlours, and kept up the play 
 when the play was ended. — " I like Wrench," 
 a friend was saying to him one day, "be- 
 cause he is the same, natural, easy creature, 
 on the stage, that he is off." " My case 
 exactly," retorted Elliston — with a charming 
 forgetfulness, that the converse of a pro- 
 position does not always lead to the same 
 conclusion — " I am the same person off the 
 stage that I am on." The inference, at first 
 sight, seems identical ; but examine it a 
 little, and it confesses only, that the one 
 performer was never, and the other always, 
 acting. 
 
 And in truth this was the charm of Ellis- 
 ton's private deportment. You had .spirited 
 performance always going on before your 
 eyes, with nothing to pay. As where a 
 monarch takes up his casual abode for a 
 night, the poorest hovel which he honours by 
 liis sleeping in it, becomes ipso facto for that 
 time a palace ; so wherever Elliston walked, 
 sate, or stood still, there was the theatre. 
 He carried about with him his pit, boxes, 
 and galleries, and set up his portable play- 
 house at cornei-s of streets, and in the market- 
 places. Upon flintiest pavements he trod 
 the boards still ; and if his theme chanced to 
 
426 
 
 ELLISTONIANA. 
 
 be passionate, the green baize carpet of 
 tragedy spontaneously rose beneath his feet. 
 Now this was hearty, and showed a love for 
 his art. So Apelles always painted — in 
 thought. So G. D. always poetises. I hate 
 a lukewarm artist. I have known actors — 
 and some of them of EUiston's own stamp — 
 who shall have agreeably been amusing you 
 in the part of a rake or a coxcomb, through 
 the two or three houi-s of their dramatic 
 existence ; but no sooner does the curtain 
 fall with its leaden clatter, but a spirit of 
 lead seems to seize on all their faculties. 
 They emerge sour, morose persons, intolerable 
 to their families, servants, &c. Another 
 shall have been expanding your heart with 
 generous deeds and sentiments, till it even 
 beats with yearnings of universal sympathy ; 
 you absolutely long to go home and do some 
 good action. The play seems tedious, till 
 you can get fairly out of the house, and 
 realise your laudable intentions. At length 
 the final bell rings, and this cordial repre- 
 sentative of all that is amiable in human 
 breasts steps forth — a miser. Elliston was 
 more of a piece. Did he play Eanger 1 and 
 did Eanger fill the general bosom of the 
 town with satisfaction 1 why should he not 
 be Eanger, and diffuse the same cordial 
 satisfaction among his private circles ? with 
 his temperament, his animal spirits, his good- 
 nature, his follies perchance, could he do 
 better tlian identify himself with his imper- 
 sonation ? Are we to like a pleasant rake, 
 or coxcomb, on the stage, and give oui'selves 
 airs of aversion for the identical character, 
 presented to us in actual life ? or what would 
 the performer have gained by divesting him- 
 self of the impersonation ? Could the man 
 Elliston have been essentially different from 
 his part, even if he had avoided to reflect to 
 us ' studiously, in private circles, the airy 
 briskness, the forwardness, and 'scape-goat 
 trickeries of his prototype ? 
 
 " But there is something not natural in 
 this everlasting acting ; we want the real 
 man," 
 
 Are you quite sure that it is not the man 
 himself, whom you cannot, or will not see, 
 under some adventitious trappings, which, 
 nevertheless, sit not at all inconsistently upon 
 him ? What if it is the nature of some men 
 to be highly artificial ? The fault is least 
 reprehensible in players. Cibbcr was his 
 
 own Foppington, with almost as much wit as 
 Vanbrugh could add to it. 
 
 "My conceit of his person," — it is Ben 
 Jonson speaking of Lord Bacon, — "was 
 never increased towards him by his place or 
 honours. But I have, and do reverence him 
 fur the yreatness, that was only proper to 
 himself; in that he seemed to me ever one 
 of the greatest men, that had been in many 
 ages. In liis adversity I ever prayed that 
 Heaven would give him strength ; for great- 
 ness he could not want." 
 
 The quality here commended was scarcely 
 less conspicuous in the subject of these idle 
 reminiscences than in my Lord Verulion. 
 Those who have imagined that an unexpected 
 elevation to the direction of a great London 
 Theatre affected the consequence of Elliston, 
 or at all changed his nature, knew not tlie 
 essential greatness of the man whom they 
 disparage. It was my fortune to encounter 
 him near St. Duustan's Church (which, with 
 its punctual giants, is now no more than 
 dust and a shadow), on the morning of his 
 election to that high oflice. Gnispiug my 
 hand with a look of significance, he only 
 uttered, — " Have you heard the news ? " — 
 then, with another look following up the 
 blow, he subjoined, "I am the future 
 Manager of Drury Lane Theatre." — Breath- 
 less as he saw me, he stayed not for con- 
 gratulation or reply, but mutely stalked 
 away, leaving me to chew upon his new- 
 blown dignities at leisure. In fact, nothing 
 could be said to it. Expressive silence alone 
 could muse his praise. This was in his great 
 style. 
 
 But was he less great, (be witness, O ye 
 Powers of Equanimity, that supported in 
 the ruins of Carthage the consular exile, and 
 more recently transmuted, for a more illus- 
 trious exile, the barren constableship of Elba 
 into an image of Imperial France), when, in 
 melancholy aftcr-yeai-s, agani, much near the 
 same spot, I met him, when that sceptre had 
 been wrested from his hand, iuid his dominion 
 was curtailed to the petty managership, and 
 part proprietorship, of the small Olympic, 
 his Elba ? He still played nightly upon the 
 boanls of Drury, but in parts, alas ! allotted 
 to him, not magnificently distributed by him. 
 Waiving his great loss Jis nothing, and mag- 
 nificently sinking the sense of fallen material 
 grandeur in the more liberal resentment of 
 
ELLISTONIANA. 
 
 427 
 
 depreciations done to his more lofty intellec- 
 txial pretensions, " Have you heard " (his cus- 
 tomary exoi'dium) — " have you heard," said 
 he, " how they treat me ? they put me in 
 comerfy." Thought I — but his finger on his 
 lips forbade any verbal interruption — "where 
 could they have put you better % " Then, 
 after a pause — "Where I formerly played 
 Romeo, I now play Mercutio," — and so again 
 he stalked away, neither staying, nor caring 
 for, responses. 
 
 O, it was a rich scene, — but Sir A 
 
 C , the best of story-tellers and surgeons, 
 
 who mends a lame narrative almost as well 
 as he sets a fracture, alone could do justice 
 to it, — that I was a witness to, in the tar- 
 nished room (that had once been green) of 
 that same little Olympic. There, after his 
 deposition from Imperial Drury, he substi- 
 tuted a throne. That Olympic Hill was his 
 " highest heaven ; " himself " Jove in his 
 chair." There he sat in state, while before 
 hiin, on complaint of prompter, was brought 
 for judgment — how shall I describe her ? — 
 one of those little tawdry things that flirt at 
 the tails of choruses — a probationer for the 
 town, in either of its senses — the pertest 
 little drab — a dirty fringe and appendage of 
 the lamp's smoke — who, it seems, on some 
 disapprobation expressed by a "highly re- 
 spectable " audience, — had precipitately 
 quitted her station on the boards, and with- 
 drawn her small talents in disgust. 
 
 " And how dare you," said her manager, — 
 assuming a censorial severity, which would 
 have crushed the confidence of a Vestris, 
 and disarmed that beautiful Rebel herself of 
 her professional caprices — I verily believe, 
 he thouglit her standing before him — " how 
 dare you. Madam, withdraw yourself, without 
 a notice, from your theatrical duties % " " I 
 was hissed, Sir." " And you have the pre- 
 sumption to decide upon the taste of the 
 town 1" "I don't know that. Sir, but I will 
 never stand to be hissed," was the subjoinder 
 of young Confidence — when gathering up 
 his features into one significant mass of 
 wonder, pity, and expostulatory indignation 
 — in a lesson never to have been lost upon 
 a creature less forward than she who stood 
 before him — his words were these ; " They 
 have hissed me." 
 
 'Twas the identical argument d fortiori, 
 which the son of Peleus uses to Lycaon 
 trembling under his lance, to persuade him 
 to take liis destiny with a good grace. " I 
 too am mortal." And it is to be believed 
 that in both cases the rhetoric missed of its 
 application, for want of a proper understand- 
 ing with the faculties of the respective 
 recipients. 
 
 " Quite an Opera pit," he said to me, as he 
 was courteously conducting me over the 
 benches of his Surrey Theatre, the last 
 retreat, and recess, of his every-day waning 
 grandeur. 
 
 Those who knew Elliston, will know the 
 manner in which he pronounced the latter 
 sentence of the few words I am about to 
 record. One proud day to me he took his 
 roast mutton witli us in the Temple, to which 
 I had superadded a preliminary haddock. 
 After a rather plentiful partaking of the 
 meagre banquet, not unrefreshed with the 
 humbler sort of liquors, I made a sort of 
 apology for the humility of the fare, observing 
 that foi my own part I never ate but one 
 dish at dinner. "I too never eat but one 
 thing at dinner," — was liis reply — then after 
 a pause — " reckoning fish as nothing." The 
 manner was all. It was as if by one peremp- 
 tory sentence he had decreed the annihilation 
 of all the savoury esculents, which the pleasant 
 and nutritious-food-giving Ocean pours forth 
 upon poor humans from her watery bosom. 
 This was greatness, tempered with considerate 
 tenderness to the feelings of his scanty but 
 welcoming entertainer. 
 
 Oreat wert thou in thy life, Robert William 
 Elliston ! and not lessened in tliy death, if 
 report speak truly, which says that thou 
 didst direct that thy mortal remains should 
 repose under no inscription but one of pure 
 Latiniti/. Classical was tliy bringing up ! 
 and beautiful was the feeling on tliy last bed, 
 which, connecting the man with the boy, 
 took thee back to thy latest exei'cise of 
 imagination, to the days when, undreaming 
 of Theatres and Managerships, thou wei-t 
 a scholar, and an early ripe one, under the 
 i-oofs buiided by the munificent and pious 
 Colet. For thee the Pauline Muses weep. 
 In elegies, that shall silence this crude prose, 
 1 they shall celebrate thy praise. 
 
428 
 
 THE OLD MARGATE HOY. 
 
 THE OLD MAEGATE HOY. 
 
 I AM fond of passing my vacations (I believe 
 I have said so before) at one or other of the 
 Universities. Next to these my choice would 
 fix me at some woody spot, such as the 
 neighbourhood of Henley aifords in abund- 
 ance, on the banks of my beloved Thames. 
 But somehow or other my cousin contrives 
 to wheedle me, once in three or four seasons, 
 to a watering-place. Old attachments cling 
 to her in spite of experience. We have been 
 dull at Worthing one summer, duller at 
 Brighton another, dullest at Eastbourn a 
 third, and are at this moment doing dreary 
 penance at — Hastings ! — and all because we 
 were happy many years ago for a brief week 
 at Margate. That was our first sea-side 
 experiment, and many circumstances com- 
 bined to make it the most agreeable holiday 
 of my life. We had neither of us seen the 
 sea, and we had never been fi'om home so 
 long together in company. 
 
 Can I forget thee, thou old Margate Hoy, 
 with thy weather-beaten, sun-burnt captain, 
 and bis rough accommodations — ill ex- 
 changed for the foppery and fresh-water 
 niceness of the modern steam-packet ? To 
 the winds and waves thou committedst thy 
 goodly freightage, and didst ask no aid of 
 magic fumes, and spells, and boiling caldrons. 
 With the gales of heaven thou wentest 
 swimmingly ; or, when it was their pleasure, 
 stoodest still with sailor-like patience. Thy 
 course was natural, not forced, as in a hot- 
 bed ; nor didst thou go poisoning the breath 
 of ocean with sulphureous smoke — a great 
 sea chimera, chimneying and furnacing the 
 deep ; or liker to that fire-god parching up 
 Scatuander. 
 
 Can I forget thy honest, yet slender crew, 
 with their coy reluctant responses (yet to 
 the suppression of anything like contempt) 
 to the raw questions, which we of the great 
 city would be ever and anon putting to tliom, 
 aa to the uses of this or that strange naval 
 implement ? 'Specially can I forget thee, 
 thou happy medium, tliou shade of refuge 
 between us and them, conciliating interpreter 
 
 of their skill to our simplicity, comfortable 
 ambassador l)etween sea and land ! — whose 
 sailor-trousei-s did not more convincingly 
 assure thee to be an adopted denizen of the 
 former, than thy white cap, and whiter apron 
 over them, with thy neat-figured practice in 
 thy culinary vocation, bespoke thee to have 
 been of inland nurture heretofore — a master 
 cook of Eastcheap ? How busily didst 
 thou ply thy multifarious occupation, cqok, 
 mariner, attendant, chamberlain : here, there, 
 like another Ariel, flaming at once about all 
 parts of the deck, yet with kindlier minis- 
 trations — not to assist the tempest, but, as if 
 touched with a kindred sense of our infirmi- 
 ties, to soothe the qualms which that untried 
 motion might haply raise in our crude land- 
 fancies. And when the o'erwashing billows 
 drove us below deck (for it was far gone in 
 October, and we had stifi" and blowing 
 weather), how did thy officious ministerings, 
 still catering for our comfort, with cards, 
 and cordials, and thy more cordial conversa- 
 tion, alleviate the closeness and the confine- 
 ment of thy else (truth to say) not very 
 savoury, nor very inviting, little cabin ? 
 
 With these additaments to boot, we had 
 on board a fellow-passenger, whose discourse 
 in verity might have beguiled a longer voyage 
 than we meditated, and have made mirth 
 and wonder abound as far as the Azores. 
 He was a dark, Spanish-complexioned young 
 man, remarkably handsome, with an officer- 
 like assurance, and an insuppressible volu- 
 bility of a.ssertion. He was, in fact, the 
 greatest liar I had met with then, or since. 
 He was none of your hesitating, half-story- 
 tellers (a most painful description of mortaLs) 
 wlio go on sounding your belief, and only 
 giving you as much as they see you can 
 swallow at a time — the nibbling pickpockets 
 of your patience — but one who committed 
 downright, daylight depredations upon his 
 neighboui-'s faith. He did not stand shivering 
 upon the brink, but was a hearty, thorough- 
 paced liar, and plunged at once into the 
 depths of your credulity. I partly believe. 
 
THE OLD MARGATE HOY. 
 
 429 
 
 he made pretty sure of his company. Not 
 many rich, not many wise, or learned, com- 
 posed at that time the common stowage of a 
 Margate packet. We were, I am afraid, a 
 set of as unseasoned Londoners (let our 
 enemies give it a worse name) as Alderman- 
 bury, or Watliugstreet. at that time of day 
 could have supplied. There might be an 
 exception or two among us, but I scorn to 
 make any invidious distinctions among such 
 a jolly, companionable ship's company, as 
 those were whom I sailed with. Something 
 too must be conceded to the Genius Loci. 
 Had the confident fellow told us half the 
 legends on land, which he favoured us with 
 on the other element, I flatter myself the 
 good sense of most of us would have revolted. 
 But we wei'e in a new world, with every- 
 thing unfamiliar about us, and the time and 
 place disposed us to the reception of any 
 prodigious marvel whatsoever. Time has 
 obliterated from my memory much of his 
 wild fablings ; and the rest would appear 
 but dull, as wi-itten, and to be read on shore. 
 He had been Aide-de-camp (among other 
 rare accidents and fortunes) to a Persian 
 Prince, and at one blow had stricken off the 
 head of the King of Carimania on horseback. 
 He, of course, married the Prince's daughter. 
 I forget what unlucky turn in the politics of 
 that court, combining with the loss of his 
 consort, was the reason of his quitting Persia ; 
 but, with the rapidity of a magician, he 
 transported himself, along with his heai-ers, 
 back to England, where we still found him in 
 the confidence of great ladies. There was 
 some story of a princess — Elizabeth, if I 
 remember — having intrusted to his care an 
 extraordinary casket of jewels, upon some 
 extraordinary occasion — but, as I am not 
 certain of the name or circumstance at this 
 distance of time, I must leave it to the 
 Royal daughters of England to settle the 
 honour among themselves in private. I 
 cannot call to mind half his pleasant wonders ; 
 but I perfectly remember, that in the course 
 of his travels he had seen a phoenix ; and he 
 obligingly undeceived us of the vulgar error, 
 that there is but one of that species at a time, 
 assuring us that they were not unconmion in 
 some parts of Upper Egypt. Hitherto he 
 had found tlie most implicit listeners. His 
 dreaming fancies had transported us beyond 
 the "ignorant present." But when (still 
 
 hardying more and more in his triumphs 
 over our simplicity) he went on to afliirm 
 that he had actually sailed through the legs 
 of the Colossus at Rhodes, it really became 
 necessary to make a stand. And here I 
 must do justice to the good sense and 
 intrepidity of one of our party, a youth, that 
 had hitherto been one of his most deferential 
 auditors, who, from his recent reading, made 
 bold to assure the gentleman, that there 
 must be some mistake, as " the Colossus in 
 question had been destroyed long since;" 
 to whose o^^inion, delivei-ed with all modesty, 
 our hero was obliging enough to concede 
 thus much, that "the figure was indeed a 
 little damaged." This was the only opposi- 
 tion he met with, and it did not at all seem 
 to stagger him, for he proceeded with his 
 fables, which the same youth appeared to 
 swallow with still more complacency than 
 ever, — confirmed, as it were, by the extreme 
 candour of that concession. With these 
 prodigies he wheedled us on till we came in 
 sight of the Reculvers, which one of our own 
 company (liaviug been the voyage before) 
 immediately recognising, and pointing out to 
 us, was considered by us as no ordinary 
 seaman. 
 
 All this time sat upon the edge of the deck 
 quite a difi'erent character. It was a lad, 
 apparently very poor, very infirm, and very 
 patient. His eye was ever on the sea, with 
 a smile ; and, if he caught now and then 
 some snatches of these wild legends, it was 
 by accident, and they seemed not to concern 
 him. The waves to him whispered more 
 pleasant stories. He was as one, being with 
 us, but not of us. He heard the bell of 
 dinner ring without stirring ; and when 
 some of us pulled out our private stores — 
 our cold meat and our salads — he produced 
 none, and seemed to want none. Only a 
 solitary biscuit he had laid in ; provision for 
 the one or two days and niglits, to which 
 these vessels then were oftentimes obliged 
 to prolong their voyage. Uix)n a nearer 
 acquaintance with him, which he seemed 
 neither to court nor decline, we learned that 
 he was going to Margate, with the hope of 
 being admitted into the Infirmaiy there for 
 sea-bathing. His disease was a scrofula, 
 which appeared to have eaten all over him. 
 He expressed great hopes of a cure ; and 
 when we asked him, whether he had any 
 
430 
 
 THE OLD MARGATE HOY. 
 
 friends where he was going, he replied, " he 
 had no friends." 
 
 These pleasant, and some moiimful pas- 
 sages ■with the first sight of the sea, co- 
 operating with youth, and a sense of holi- 
 days, and out-of-door adventure, to me 
 that had been pent up in populous cities for 
 many months befoi-e, — have left upon my 
 mind the fragrance as of summer days gone 
 by, bequeathing nothing but their remem- 
 brance for cold and wintry hours to chew 
 upon. 
 
 Will it be thought a digression (it may 
 spare some unwelcome comparisons), if I 
 endeavour to account for the dissatisfaction 
 which 1 have heard so many persons confess 
 to have felt (as I did myself feel in part on 
 this occasion), at the sight of the sea for the 
 first time ? I think the reason usually given 
 ■ — referring to the incapacity of actual ob- 
 jects for satisfying our preconceptions of 
 them — scarcely goes deep enough into the 
 question. Let the same person see a lion, an 
 elephant, a mountain for the first time in his 
 life, and he shall perhaps feel himself a little 
 mortified. The things do not fill up that 
 space, which the idea of tlwrn seemed to take 
 up iu his mind. But they have still a cor- 
 respondency to his first notion, and in time 
 grow up to it, so as to produce a very similar 
 impression : enlarging themselves (if I may 
 say so) upon familiarity. But the sea re- 
 mains a disappointment. — Is it not, that in 
 the latter we had expected to behold (absurdly, 
 I grant, but, I am afraid, by the law of 
 imagination, unavoidably) not a definite ol> 
 ject, as those wild beasts, or that mountain 
 corapassable by the eye, but all the sea at 
 
 once, THE COMMENSURATE ANTAGONIST OF THE 
 
 EARTH ? I do not say we tell ourselves so 
 much, but the craving of the mind is to be 
 satisfied with nothing less. I will sujipose 
 the case of a young person of fifteen (as I 
 then was) knowing nothing of the sea, but 
 from description. lie comes to it for the 
 first time — all that he has been reading of it 
 all his life, and that the most enthusiastic 
 part of life, — all he has gathered from narra- 
 tives of wandering seamen, — what he has 
 gained from true voyages, and what he 
 cherishes as credulously from romance and 
 poetry, — crowding their images, and exacting 
 strange tributes from expectation. — He 
 thinks of the great deep, Jiud of those who 
 
 go down unto it ; of its thousand isles, and 
 of the vast continents it washes ; of its re- 
 ceiving the mighty Plate, or Orellana, into 
 its bosom, without disturbance, or sense of 
 augmentation ; of Biacay swells, and the 
 mariner 
 
 For many a day, and many a dreadful night, 
 Incessant labouring round the stormy Cape ; 
 
 of fatal rocks, and the " still-vexed Ber- 
 moothes ; " of great whirlpools, and the 
 water-spout ; of sunken ships, and sumless 
 treasures swallowed up in the unrestoring 
 depths ; of fishes and quaint monstei's, to 
 which all that is tenible on earth — 
 
 Be but as buggs to frighten babes withal, 
 Compared with the creatures in the sea's entral, 
 
 of naked savages, and Juan Fernandez ; of 
 pearls, and shells ; of coral beds, and of en- 
 chanted isles ; of mermaids' grots — 
 
 I do not assert that in sober earnest he 
 expects to be shown all these wonders at 
 once, but he is under the tyranny of a mighty 
 faculty, which haunts him with confused 
 hints and shadows of all these ; and when 
 the actual object opens first upon him, seen 
 (in tame weather, too, most likely) from our 
 uuromantic coasts — a speck, a slip of sea- 
 water, as it shows to him — what can it prove 
 but a veiy unsatisfying and even diminutive 
 entertainment ? Or if he has come to it 
 from the mouth of a river, was it much more 
 than the river widening ? and, even out of 
 sight of land, what had he but a flat watery 
 horizon about him, nothing comparable to 
 the vast o'er-curtaining sky, his familiar 
 object, seen daily without dread or amaze- 
 ment ? — Who, in similar circumstances, h:\s 
 not been tempted to exclaim with Charoba, 
 in the poem of Gebir, 
 
 Is this the mighty ocean ! is this all ' 
 
 I love town, or country ; but this detest- 
 able Cinque Port is neither. I hate these 
 scrubbed shoots, thrusting out their starved 
 foliage from between the horrid fissures of 
 dusty innutritions rocks ; which the amateur 
 calls " verdure to the edge of the sea." I 
 require woods, and they show me stunted 
 coj)pices. I cry out for the water-brooks, 
 and j)ant for fresh streams, and inland 
 umrmurs. I cannot stand all day on tlio 
 naked beach, watching the capricious hues 
 
THE OLD MARGATE HOY. 
 
 431 
 
 of the sea, shifting like the colours of a dying 
 mullet. I am tired of looking out at the 
 windows of this island-prison. I would fain 
 retire into the interior of my cage. While I 
 gaze upon the sea, I want to be on it, over it, 
 across it. It binds me in with chains, as of 
 iron. My thouglits are abroad. I should 
 not so feel in Staifordshire. There is no 
 home for me here. There is no sense of 
 home at Hastings. It is a place of fugitive 
 resort, an heterogeneous assemblage of sea- 
 mews and stock-brokers, Amphitrites of the 
 town, and misses that coquet with the Ocean. 
 If it were what it was in its primitive shape, 
 and what it ought to have remained, a fair, 
 honest fishing-town, and no more, it were 
 something — Avith a few straggling fishermen's 
 huts scattered about, artless as its cliffs, and 
 with their materials filched from them, it 
 were something. I could abide to dwell 
 with Meshech ; to assort with fisher- swains, 
 and smugglers. There are, or I dream there 
 are, many of this latter occupation here. 
 Their faces become the place. I like a 
 smuggler. He is the only honest thief. He 
 robs nothing but the revenue, — an abstrac- 
 tion I never greatly cared about. I could go 
 out with them in their mackerel boats, or 
 about their less ostensible business, with 
 some satisfiiction. I can even tolerate those 
 poor victims to monotony, who from day to 
 day pace along the beach, in endless progress 
 and recurrence, to watch their illicit country- 
 men — townsfolk or brethren perchance — 
 whistling to the sheathing and unsheathing 
 of their cutlasses (their only solace), who, 
 under the mild name of preventive service, 
 keep up a legitimated civil warfare in the 
 deplorable absence of a foreign one, to show 
 their detestation of run hollands, and zeal 
 for Old England. But it is the visitants from 
 town, that come here to say that they have 
 been here, with no more relish of the sea 
 than a pond-perch or a dace might be sup- 
 posed to have, that are my aversion. I feel 
 like a foolish dace in these regions, and have 
 as little toleration for myself here, as for 
 them. What can they want here ? if they 
 had a true relish of the ocean, why have 
 they brought all this land luggage with 
 them ? or why pitch their civilised tents in 
 the desert ? What mean these scanty book- 
 rooms — marine libraries as they entitle them 
 
 — if the sea were, as they would have us 
 believe, a book " to read strange matter in ? " 
 what are their foolish concert-rooms, if they 
 come, as they would fain be thought to do, 
 to listen to the music of the waves 1 All is 
 false and lioUow pretension. They come, 
 because it is the fashion, and to spoil the 
 nature of the place. They are, mostly, as I 
 have said, stock-brokers ; but I have watched 
 the better sort of them — now and then, an 
 honest citizen (of the old stamp), in the 
 simplicity of his heart, shall bring down his 
 wife and daughters, to taste the sea breezes. 
 I always know the date of their arrival. It 
 is easy to see it in their countenance. A 
 day or two they go wandering on the 
 shingles, picking up cockle-shells, and think- 
 ing them great things ; but, in a poor week, 
 imagination slackens : they begin to discover 
 that cockles produce no pearls, and then — 
 O then ! — if 1 could interpret for the pretty 
 creatures (I know tliey have not the courage 
 to confess it themselves) how gladly would 
 tliey exchange their sea-side rambles for a 
 Sunday walk on the green-sward of their 
 accustomed Twickenham meadows ! 
 
 I would ask of one of these sea-charmed 
 emigrants, who think they truly love the 
 sea, with its wild usages, what would their 
 feelings be, if some of the unsophisticated 
 aborigines of this place, encouraged by their 
 courteous questionings here, should venture, 
 on the faith of such assured sympathy be- 
 tween them, to return the visit, and come up 
 to see — London. I must imagine them with 
 their fishing-tackle on their back, as we 
 carry our town necessaries. What a sensa- 
 tion would it cause in Lothbury ? What 
 vehement laughter would it not excite 
 among 
 
 The daughters of Chcapsidc, and -wives of Lombard-street I 
 
 I am sure that no town-bred or inland- 
 born subjects can feel their true and natural 
 nourishment at these sea-places. Nature, 
 where she does not mean us for mariners 
 and vagabonds, bids us stay at home. The 
 salt foam seems to nourish a spleen. I am 
 not half so good-natured as by the milder 
 waters of my natural river. I would ex- 
 change these sea-gulls for swans, and scud 
 a swallow for ever about the banks of 
 Thamesis. 
 
432 
 
 THE CONVALESCENT. 
 
 THE CONVALESCENT. 
 
 A PRETTY severe fit of indisposition which, 
 under tlie name of a nervous fever, has made 
 a prisoner of me for some weeks past, and is 
 but slowly leaving me, has reduced me to an 
 incapacitj' of reflecting upon any topic foreign 
 to itself Expect no healthy couclusiona 
 from me this month, reader ; I can oflfer you 
 only sick men's di-eams. 
 
 And truly the whole statp of sickness is 
 such ; for what else is it but a magnificent 
 dream for a man to lie a-bed, and draw day- 
 light curtains about him ; and, shutting out 
 the sun, to induce a total oblivion of all the 
 works which are going on under it ? To be- 
 come insensible to all the operations of 
 life, except the beatings of one feeble pulse ? 
 
 If there he a regal solitude, it is a sick 
 bed. How the patient lords it there ; what 
 caprices he acts without control ! how king- 
 like he sways his pillow — tumbling, and toss- 
 ing, and shifting, and lowering, and thumping, 
 and flatting, and moulding it, to the ever- 
 varying requisitions of his throbbing temples. 
 
 He changes sides oftener than a politician. 
 Now he lies full length, then half-length, 
 obliquely, transversely, head and feet quite 
 across the bed ; and none accuses him of ter- 
 giversation. Within the four curtains he is 
 absolute. They are his Mare Clausum. 
 
 How sickness enlarges the dimensions of a 
 man's self to himself ! he is his own exclusive 
 object. Supreme selfishness is inculcated 
 upon him as his only duty. 'Tis the Two 
 Tables of the Law to him. He has nothing 
 to think of but how to get well. What 
 passes out of doors, or within them, so lie 
 hear not the jarring of them, afiects him 
 not. 
 
 A little while ago . he was greatly con- 
 cerned in the event of a lawsuit, which was 
 to be the making or the marring of his 
 dearest friend. He was to be seen trudging 
 about upon thi.s man's errand to fifty quarters 
 of the town at once, jogging this witness, re- 
 freshiiig tliat solicitor. The cause was to 
 come on yesterday. He is absolutely aa in- 
 different to the decision, as if it were a 
 
 question to be tried at Pekin. Peradventure 
 from some whispering, going on about the 
 house, not intended for his hearing, he picks 
 up enough to make him understaml, that 
 things went cross-grained in the court yester- 
 day, and his friend is ruined. But the 
 word "friend," and the word "ruin," dis- 
 turb him no more than so much jargon. 
 He is not to think of anything but how to 
 get better. 
 
 What a world of foreign cares are merged 
 in that absorbing consideration ! 
 
 He has put on the strong armour of sick- 
 ness, he is wrapped in the callous hide of 
 suffering ; he keeps his sympathy, like some 
 curious vintage, under trusty lock and key, 
 for his own use only. 
 
 He lies pitying himself, honing and moan- 
 ing to himself; he yearneth over himself; 
 his bowels are even melted within him, to 
 think what he suffers ; he is not ashamed to 
 weep over himself. 
 
 He is for ever plotting how to do some 
 good to himself; studying little stratagems 
 and artificial alleviations. 
 
 He makes the most of himself ; dividing 
 himself, by an allowable fiction, into Jis many 
 distinct individuals, jis he hath sore and 
 sorrowing members. Sometimes he medi- 
 tates — as of a thing apart from him — upon his 
 ]30or aching head, and that dull pain which, 
 dozing or waking, lay in it all the jiast night 
 like a log, or ])alpable substance of pain, not 
 to be removed without opening the very 
 skull, aa it seemed, to take it thence. Or he 
 l)ities his long, clammy, attenuated fingere. 
 He compassionates himself all over ; and his 
 bed is a very discipline of humanity, and 
 tender heart. 
 
 He is his own sympathiser ; and in- 
 stinctively feels that none can so well per- 
 form that oilice for liim. He cares for few 
 sj)ectators to his tragedy. Only that })unctual 
 face of the old nui-se pleases him, that an- 
 nounces his broths and liis cordials. He 
 likes it because it is so unmoved, and be- 
 cause he can pour forth his feverish ejacu- 
 
lationa before it a3 aureservedly as to his 
 
 bed-post. 
 
 To the world's bviainess he is dead. He 
 undei-stands not what the callings and occu- 
 pations of mortals are ; only he has a glim- 
 mering conceit of some such thing, when the 
 doctor makes his daily call : and even in the 
 lines on that busy face he reads no multiplicity 
 of patients, but solely conceives of himself as 
 tJte sick man. To what other uneasy conch 
 the good man is hastening, when he slips out 
 of his chamber, folding up his thin douceur 
 so carefully, for fear of rustling — is no specu- 
 lation which he can at present entertain. He 
 thinks only of the regular return of the 
 same phenomenon at the same hour to- 
 morrow. 
 
 Household rumours touch him not. Some 
 faint murmur, indicative of life going on 
 within the house, soothes him, while he 
 knows not distinctly what it is. He is not 
 to know anything, not to think of anything. 
 Servants gliding up or down the distant 
 staircase, treading as upon velvet, gently 
 keep his ear awake, so long as he troubles 
 not himself further than with some feeble 
 guess at their errands. Exacter knowledge 
 would be a burthen to him : he can just 
 endure the pi-essure of conjecture. He opens 
 his eye faintly at the dull stroke of the 
 muffled knocker, and closes it again without 
 asking " Who was it 1 " He is flattered by 
 a general notion that inquiries are making 
 after him, but he cares not to know the name 
 of the inquirer. In the general stillness, and 
 awiul hush of the house, he lies in state, and 
 feels his sovereignty. 
 
 To be sick is to enjoy monarchal prero- 
 gatives. Compare the silent tread, and quiet 
 ministry, almost by the eye only, with which 
 lie is served — with the careless demeanour, 
 the unceremonious goings in and out (slap- 
 ping of doors, or leaving them open) of the 
 very same attendants, when he is getting a 
 little better — and you will confess, that from 
 the bed of sickness (throne let me rather call 
 it) to the elbow-chair of convalescence, is a 
 fall from dignity, amounting to a deposition. 
 
 How convalescence shrinks a man back to 
 his pristine stature ! where is now the s^jacc, 
 which he occupied so lately, in his own, in 
 the family's eye ? 
 
 Tlie scene of his regalities, his sick room, 
 which was his presence chamber, where he 
 
 lay and acted his despotic fancies — how is it 
 reduced to a common bed-room ! The trim- 
 ness of the vei-y bed has something petty 
 and unmeaning about it. It is made every 
 day. How unlike to that wavy, many-fur- 
 rowed, oceanic surface, wliich it presented 
 so short a time since, when to make it was a 
 service not to be thonglit of at oftener than 
 three or four day revolutions, when the pa- 
 tient was with pain and grief to be lifted 
 for a little while out of it, to submit to the 
 encroachments of unwelcome neatness, and 
 decencies which his shaken frame deprecated ; 
 then to be lifted into it again, for another 
 three or four days' respite, to flounder it out 
 of shape again, while every fresh furrow was 
 an historical record of some shifting pos- 
 ture, some uneasy turning, some seeking 
 for a little ease ; and the shrunken skin 
 scarce told a truer story than the crumpled 
 coverlid. 
 
 Hushed are those mysterious sighs — those 
 groans — so much more awful, while we 
 knew not from what caverns' of vast hidden 
 suffering they proceeded. The Leinieau 
 pangs are quenched. The riddle of sickness 
 is solved ; and Philoctetes is become an ordi- 
 nary personage. 
 
 Perhajis some relic of the sick man's dream 
 of greatness survives in the still lingering 
 visitations of the medical attendant. But 
 how is he, too, changed with everything else ! 
 Can this be he — this man of news — of chat — 
 of anecdote — of everything but physic — can 
 this be he, who so lately came between the 
 patient and his cruel enemy, as on some 
 solemn embassy from Nature, erecting lier- 
 self into a high mediating party 1 — Pshaw ! 
 'tis some old woman. 
 
 Farewell with him all that made sickness 
 pompous — the spell that hushed the house- 
 hold — the desert-like stillness, felt through- 
 out its inmost chambers — the mute attend- 
 ance — the inquiry by looks — the still softer 
 delicacies of self-attention — the sole and 
 single eye of distemper alonely fixed upon 
 itself — world-thoughts excluded — the miui a 
 world unto himself — his own theatre — 
 
 What a speck is he dwindled into ! 
 
 In this flat swamp of convalescence, left by 
 the ebb of sickness, yet far enough from the 
 terra firma of established health, your note, 
 dear Editor, reached me, requesting — an 
 
434 
 
 SANITY OF TRUE GENIUS. 
 
 ai-ticle. In Articulo Mortis, thought I ; 
 out it is something hard — and the quibble, 
 wi'etched as it was, relieved me. The sum- 
 mons, unseasonable as it appeared, seemed to 
 link me on again to the petty businesses of 
 life, which I had lost sight of ; a gentle 
 call to activity, however trivial ; a wholesome 
 meaning from that preposterous dream of 
 self-absorption — the puffy state of sickness — 
 in which I confess to have lain so long, insen- 
 sible to the magazines and monarchies, of the 
 
 world alike ; to its laws, in(^ to its literature. 
 The hypochondriac flatus is subsidiug ; the 
 acres, which in imagination I had spread 
 over — for the sick man swells in the sole con- 
 templation of his single sufferings, till he 
 becomes a Tit3'us to himself — are wasting to 
 a span ; and for the giant of self-importance, 
 which I was so lately, you have me once 
 again in my natural pretensions — the lean 
 and meagre figure of your insignificant 
 Essayist. 
 
 SANITY OF TRUE GENIUS. 
 
 So far from the position holding true, that 
 great wit (or genius, in our modern way of 
 speaking) has a necessary alliance with 
 insanity, the greatest wits, on the contrary, 
 will ever be found to be the sanest writers. 
 It is impossible for the mind to conceive of a 
 mad Shakspeare. The greatness of wit, by 
 which the poetic talent is here chiefly to be 
 understood, manifests itself in the admirable 
 balance of all the faculties. Madness is the 
 disproportionate straining or excess of any 
 one of them. " So strong a wit," says Cow- 
 ley, speaking of a poetical friend, 
 
 " did Nature to him frame, 
 
 As all things but his judgment overcame ; 
 
 His judgment like the heavenly moon did sho'w, 
 
 Tempering that mighty sea below." 
 
 The ground of the mistake is, that men, find- 
 ing in the raptures of the higher poetry a 
 condition of exaltation, to which they have 
 no parallel in their own experience, besides 
 the spurious resemblance of it in dreams and 
 fevers, impute a state of dreaminess and 
 fever to the poet. But the true puet dream s 
 bei ng awake. He is r <^i jyf^^o'jfiprl hy lii.s 
 lamiuiiiiLjovep-it. 
 
 subject, but^ _hasj lniiiiiii();) nvtvu-it. In the 
 groves of Eden he walks familiar as in his 
 native paths. He ascends the empyrean 
 heaven, and is not intoxicated. He treads 
 the burning marl without dismay ; he wins 
 his flight without self-loss through realms of 
 chaos " and old night." Or if, abandoning 
 himself to that severer chaos of a " human 
 mind untuned," he is content awhile to be 
 mad with Lear, or to hate ni.ankind (a sort of 
 uuwlneHs) with Tinion, neither is that mad- 
 
 ness, nor this misanthropy, so unchecked, but 
 that, — never lettin g the reins of reason whoUy 
 go, while mostJie_a££ms- to do so^he has 
 his better genius still whispering at his ear, 
 with the good servant Kent suggesting saner 
 counsels, or with the honest steward Flavins 
 recommending kindlier resolutions. Where 
 he seems most to recede from humanity, hd^ 
 will be found the truest to it. From beyond 
 the scope of Nature if he summon possible 
 existences, he subjugates them to the law of 
 her consistency. He is beautifully loyal to 
 that sovereign directress, even when he 
 appears most to betray and desert her. His 
 ideal tribes submit to policy ; his very 
 monsters are tamed to his hand, even as that 
 wild sea-bi'ood, shephei-ded by Proteus. He 
 tames, and he clothes tliem with attributes 
 of flesh and blood, till tliey wonder at them- 
 selves, like Indian Islanders forced to submit 
 to European vesture. Caliban, the Witches, 
 are as true to the laws of their own nature >, 
 (ours with a difference), as Otiiello, Hamlet, 
 and Macbeth. Herein the great_aiulthe 
 li ttle wits arc difl'erenced : that if the latter 
 wander ever so little from nature or .actual 
 existence, they lose themselves, and their 
 readers. Their phantoms are lawless ; their 
 visions night-mares. T hey do not creat e, 
 which implies sh aping and consiste ncy. Their 
 imaginations arc not active — for to bo active 
 is to call something into act and form — but 
 passive, as men in sick dreams. For the 
 su£er-natural, or something super-added to 
 what we know' of nalTirc, they give you the 
 plainly uou-uatural. And if this wore all. 
 
CAPTAIN JACKSON. 
 
 435 
 
 and that tliese mental hallucinations were 
 discoverable only in the treatment of subjects 
 out of nature, or transcending it, the judg- 
 ment might with some plea be pardoned if 
 it ran riot, and a little wantonised : but 
 even in the describing of real and every-day 
 life, that which is before their eyes, one of 
 tliese lesser wits shall more deviate from 
 nature — show more of that inconsequence, 
 which has a natural alliance with frenzy, — 
 than a great genius in his " maddest fits," as 
 Withei's somewhere calls them. We appeal 
 to any one that is acquainted with the com- 
 mon run of Lane's novels, — as they existed 
 some twenty or thirty years back, — those 
 scanty intellectual viands of the whole female 
 reading public, till a happier genius arose, and 
 expelled for ever the innutritious phantoms, — 
 whether he has not found his brain more 
 " betossed," his memory more puzzled, his 
 sense of when and where more confounded, 
 among the improbable events, tlie incoherent 
 incidents, the inconsistent characters, or no- 
 characters, of some third-rate lovc-iutrigne — 
 where the persons shall be a Lord Gleuda- 
 mour and a Miss Elvers, and the scene only 
 alternate between Bath and Bond-street — a 
 more bewildering dreaminess induced upon 
 him, than he has felt wandering over all the 
 fairy-grounds of Spenser. In the productions 
 we refer to, nothi ng but names and places is 
 familiax; the persons are neither of this 
 world nor of any other conceivable one ; an 
 endless stream of activities without jDurpose, 
 of purposes destitute of motive : — we meet 
 phantoms in our known walks ; fantasques 
 only christened. I n the poet we have nam es 
 which announce fiction ; and we have abso- 
 lutely no place at all,~Tor the things and 
 persona of the Fairy Queen prate not of their 
 " whereabout." But in their inner na ture, 
 and the lawof_t]]eir spppt^b mid ■•ij^timiSj w^e 
 
 are at home, and upon acquainted o[rou nd 
 The one turns life into a dream ; the other 
 to the wildest dreams gives the sobi-ieties fif 
 every-day occurrences. By what_subtl(i_art X 
 of tracing tlie niental processes it is eifected, 
 we are not phih>sophers enough to explain, 
 but in that wonderful episode of the cave of 
 Mammon, in which the Money God appears 
 first in the lowest form of a miser, is then a 
 worker of metals, and becomes the god of all 
 the treasures of the world ; and has a 
 daughter, Ambition, before whom all the 
 world kneels for favours — with the Hesperian 
 fruit, the waters of Tantalus, with Pilate 
 washing his hands vainly, but not imperti- 
 nently, in the same stream — that we should 
 be at one moment in the cave of an old 
 hoarder of treasures, at the next at the forge 
 of the Cyclops, in a palace and yet in hell, all 
 at once, with the shifting mutations of the 
 most rambling dream, and our judgment yet 
 all the time awake, and neither able nor 
 willing to detect the fallacy, — is a proof of 
 that hidden sanity which still guides the jwet 
 in the wildest seeming aberrations. 
 
 It is not enough to say that the whole 
 episode is a copy of the mind's conceptions in 
 sleep ; it is, in some sort — but what a copy ! 
 Let the most romantic of us, that has been 
 entertained all night with the spectacle of 
 some wild and magnificent vision, recombine 
 it in the morning, and try it by his wakuig 
 judgment. That which appeared so shifting, 
 and yet so coherent, while that faculty was 
 passive, when it comes under cool examina- 
 tion shall appear so reasonless and so un- 
 linked, that we are ashamed to have been so 
 deluded ; and to have taken, though but in 
 sleep, a monster for a god. But the transi- 
 tions in this episode are every whit as violent 
 as in the most extravagant dream, and yet 
 the waking judgment ratifies them. 
 
 CAITTAIN JACKSON. 
 
 Among the deaths in our obituary for this suades me, that this could have been no other 
 
 month, I observe with concern " At his cot- 
 tage on the Bath road. Captain Jackson." 
 The name and attribution are common 
 enough ; but a feeling like reproach per- 
 
 in fact than my dear old friend, who some 
 five-and-twenty years ago rented a tenement, 
 which he was pleased to dignify with the 
 appellation here used, about a mile from 
 
 F F 2 
 
436 
 
 CAPTAIN JACKSON. 
 
 AVestbourn Green. Alack, how good men, 
 and the good turns they do us, slide out of 
 memory, and are recalled but by the surprise 
 of some such sad memento as that which now 
 lies before us ! 
 
 He whom I mean was a retired half-pay 
 officer, with a wife and two gro\^^l-up daugh- 
 ters, whom he maintained with the port and 
 notions of gentlewomen upon that slender 
 professional allowance. Comely girls they 
 were too. 
 
 And was I in danger of forgetting this 
 man ? — his cheerful suppers— the noble tone 
 of hospitality, when first you set your foot in 
 the cottage — the anxious ministerings about 
 you, where little or nothing (God knows) 
 was to be mini.stered. — Althea's horn iu 
 a poor platter — the power of self-onchaut- 
 meut, by which, in his magnificent wishes 
 to entertain you, he multiplied his metms 
 to bounties. 
 
 You saw with your bodily eyes indeed 
 what seemed a bare scrag, cold savings from 
 the foregone meal — remnant hardly suffi- 
 cient to send a mendicant from the door 
 contented. But in the copious will — the 
 revelling imagination of your host — the 
 " mind, the mind. Master Shallow," whole 
 beeves were spread before you — hecatombs — 
 no end appeared to the profusion. 
 
 It was the widow's cruse — the loaves and 
 fishes ; carving could not lessen, nor help- 
 ing diminish it — the stamina were left — the 
 elemental bone still flourished, divested of 
 its accidents. 
 
 •' Let us live while we can," methinks I 
 hear the open-handed creature exclaim ; 
 " while we have, let us not want," " here' is 
 plenty left ; " " want for nothing " — with 
 many more such hospitable sayings, the spurs 
 of appetite, and old concomitants of smoking 
 boards, and feast-oppressed chargers. Then 
 sliding a slender ratio of Single Gloucester 
 upon his wife's plate, or the daughters', he 
 would convey the remanent rind into his own, 
 with a merry quirk of " the nearer the 
 bone," &c., and declaring that he universally 
 preferred tlie outside. For we had our 
 table distinctions, you are to know, and some 
 of us iu a manner sate above the salt. None ' 
 but his guest or guests dreamed of tasting 
 flesli luxuries at night, the fragments were ' 
 ver^ hospitibiis sacra. But of one thing or 
 another there was always enough, and 
 
 leavings : only he would sometimes finish the 
 remainder crust, to show that he wished no 
 savings. 
 
 Wine we had none ; nor, except on very 
 rare occasions, sjjirits ; but the sensation of 
 wiue was there. Some thin kind of ale I 
 remember — "British beverage," he would 
 say ! " Push about, my boys ; " " Drink to 
 your sweethearts, girls." At every meagre 
 draught a toast must ensue, or a song. All 
 the foi-ms of good liquor were there, with 
 none of the effects wanting. Shut your eyes, 
 and you would swear a capacious bowl of 
 punch was foaming in the centre, with beams 
 of generous Port or Madeii-a radiating to it 
 from each of the table cornei-s. You got 
 flustered, without knowing whence ; tipsy 
 upon words ; and reeled under the potency 
 of his unperforming Bacchanalian encourage- 
 ments. 
 
 "We had our songs — " Why, Soldiers, why," 
 — and the " British Grenadiers " — in which 
 last we were all obliged to bear chorus. 
 Both the daughters sang. Their proficiency 
 was a nightly theme — the mastei's he had 
 given them — the " no-expense " which he 
 spared to accomplish theiu in a science " so 
 necessary to young women." But then — 
 they could not sing "without the instru- 
 ment." 
 
 Sacred, and, by me, never-to-be-violated, 
 secrets of Poverty ! Should I disclose your 
 honest aims at grandeur, yo\ir makeshift 
 efforts of magnificence ? Sleep, sleep, with 
 all thy broken keys, if one of the bunch be 
 extant ; thrummed by a thousiind ancestral 
 thumbs ; de.ar, cracked spinnet of dearer 
 Louisa ! Without mention of mine, be dumb, 
 tliou thin accompanier of her tliinner warble ! 
 A veil be spread over the dear delighted face 
 of the well-deluded father, who now haply 
 listening to cliei-ubic notes, scarce feels 
 sincerer pleasure than when she awakened 
 thy time-shaken chords responsive to the 
 twitterings of that slender image of a voice. 
 
 We were not without our literary talk 
 either. It did not extend far, but as far aa 
 it went, it was good. It was bottomed well ; 
 liad good grounds to go upon. In the cottatje 
 was a room, which tradition autlicnticatetl to 
 have been the same in wliich Glover, in liis 
 occasional retirements, li.ad penned the greater 
 part of his Lcoiiitlas. This cinrumstance was 
 nightly quoted, though none of the present 
 
CAPTAIN JACKSON. 
 
 437 
 
 inmates, that I could discover, appeared ever 
 to have met with the poem iu qucstiou. But 
 that was no niattez-. Glover had written 
 there, and the anecdote was pressed into the 
 account of the family importance. It diffused 
 a learned air through the apartment, the little 
 side casement of which (the poet's study 
 window), opening upon a superb view as far 
 as the pretty spire of Harrow, over domains 
 and patrimonial acres, not a rood nor square 
 yard whereof our host could call his own, yet 
 gave occasion to an immoderate expansion of 
 — vanity shall I call it ? — in his bosom, as he 
 showed them in a glowing summer evening. 
 It was all his, he took it all in, and communi- 
 cated rich portions of it to his guests. It 
 was a part of his largess, his hospitality ; it 
 was going over his grounds ; he was lord for 
 the time of showing them, and you the 
 implicit lookers-up to his magnificence. 
 
 He was a juggler, who threw mists before 
 yonr eyes — you had no time to detect his 
 fallacies. He would say, "Hand me the 
 silver sugar tongs ; " and before you could 
 discover it was a single spoon, and that plated, 
 he would disturb and captivate your imagin- 
 ation by a misnomer of " the ui-n " for a tea- 
 kettle ; or by calling a homely bench a sofa. 
 Rich men direct you to their furniture, poor 
 ones divert you from it ; he neither did one 
 nor the other, but by simply assuming that 
 everything was handsome about him, you 
 were positively at a demur what you did, or 
 did not see, at the cottage. With nothing to 
 live on, he seemed to live on everything. He 
 had a stock of wealth in his mind ; not that 
 which is properly termed Content, for in 
 truth he was not to be contained at all, but 
 overflowed all bounds by the force of a 
 magnificent self-delusion. 
 
 Enthusiasm is catching ; and even his 
 wife, a sober native of North Britain, who 
 generally saw things more as they were, was 
 not proof against the continual collision of 
 his ci'edulity. Her daughters wei-e rational 
 and discreet young women ; in the main, 
 perhaps, not insensible to their true circum- 
 stances. I have seen them assume a thought- 
 ful aii" at times. But such was the pre- 
 ponderating opulence of his fancy, that I am 
 
 persuaded, not for any half hour together 
 did they ever look their own prospects fairly 
 in the face. There was no resisting the 
 vortex of his temperament. His riotous 
 imagination conjured up handsome settle- 
 ments before their eyes, which kept them up 
 in the eye of the world too, and seem at last 
 to have realised themselves ; for they both 
 have married since, I am told, more than 
 respectably. 
 
 It is long since, and my memory waxes 
 dim on some subjects, or I should wish to 
 convey some notion of the manner in which 
 the pleasant creature described the circum- 
 stances of his own wedding-day, I faintly 
 remember something of a chaise-and-four, in 
 which he made his entry into Glasgow on 
 that morning to fetch the bride home, or carry 
 her thither, I forget which. It so completely 
 made out the stanza of the old ballad — 
 
 Wlien wc came down tlirough Glasgow town, 
 
 AVe were a comely si^ht to see ; 
 My love was clad in black velvet, 
 
 And I myself in cramasic. 
 
 I suppose it was the only occasion upon 
 which his own actual splendour at all corre^ 
 sponded with the world's notions on that 
 subject. In homely cart, or travelling caravan, 
 by what ever humble vehicle they chanced 
 to be transported in less prosperous days, 
 the ride through Glasgow came back upon 
 his fancy, not as a humiliating contrast, but 
 as a fair occasion for reverting to that 
 one day's state. It seemed an "equipage 
 etern" from which no power of fate or fortune, 
 once mounted, had power thereafter to dis- 
 lodge him. 
 
 There is some merit in putting a handsome 
 face upon indigent circumstances. To bully 
 and swagger away the sense of them before 
 strangers, may not be always discommendable. 
 Tibbs, and Bobadil, even when detected, have 
 more of our admiration than contempt. But 
 for a man to put the cheat upon himself ; to 
 play the Bobadil at home ; and, steeped iu 
 poverty up to the lips, to fancy himself all 
 the while chin-deep in riches, is a strain of 
 constitutional plulosophy, and a mastery over 
 fortune, which was reserved for my old friend 
 Captain Jackson. 
 
438 
 
 THE SUPERANNUATED JIAN. 
 
 THE SUPERA.NNUATED MAN. 
 
 Sera tamen reepexit 
 Libertas. Virgil. 
 
 A Clerk I was in London gay. — O'Keefe. 
 
 If peradveuture, Reader, it has been thy 
 lot to waste the golden years of thy life — thy 
 shining youth — in the irksome confinement 
 of an office ; to have thy prison days pro- 
 longed through middle age down to decrepi- 
 tude and silver haii's, without hope of release 
 or respite ; to have lived to forget that there 
 are such things as holidays, or to remember 
 them but as the prerogatives of childhood ; 
 then, and then only, will you be able to 
 appreciate my delivei'ance. 
 
 It is now six-and-thirty years since I took 
 my seat at the desk in Mincing-lane. Melan- 
 choly was the transition at fourteen from the 
 abundant playtime, and the frequently-inter- 
 vening vacations of school days, to the eight, 
 nine, and sometimes ten hours' a-day attend- 
 ance at the counting-house. But time 
 partially reconciles us to anything. I 
 gradually became content — doggedly con- 
 tented, as wikl animals in cages. 
 
 It is true I had my Sundays to myself ; 
 but Sundays, admirable as the institution of 
 them is for purposes of worship, are for that 
 very reason the very worst adapted for days 
 of unbending and recreation. In particular, 
 there is a gloom for me attendant upon a 
 city Sunday, a weight in the air. I miss the 
 cheerful cries of London, the music, and the 
 ballad-singers — thebuzz and stirring murmur 
 of the streets. Those eternal bells depress 
 me. 'J'he closed shops rei)el n)e. Prints, 
 pictures, all the glittering and endless succes- 
 sion of knacks and gewgaws, and ostentatiously 
 displayed wares of tradesmen, which make 
 a week-day saunter through the less busy 
 parts of the metroi)olis so delightful — are 
 shut out. No book-stalls deliciously to idle 
 over — No busy faces to recreate the idle man 
 who conten)plates them ever passing by — the 
 very face of business a charm by contrast to 
 his temporary relaxation from it. Nothing 
 to be seen but uuhajjpy countenances — or 
 half-happy at best — of emancipated 'prentices 
 
 and little tradesfolks, with here and there a 
 servant-maid tliat has got leave to go out, 
 who, slaving all the week, with the habit has 
 lost almost the capacity of enjoying a free 
 hour ; and livelily expressing the hoUowness 
 of a day's pleasuring. The very strollers in 
 the fields on that day look anything but 
 comfortable. 
 
 But besides Sundays, I had a day at 
 Easter, and a day at Christmas, with a full 
 week in the summer to go and air myself in 
 my native fields of Hertfordshire. This last 
 was a great indulgence ; and the prospect of 
 its recurrence, I believe, alone kept me up 
 through the year, and made my durance 
 tolerable. But when the week came round, 
 did the glittering phantom of the distance 
 keep touch with me ? or rather was it not a 
 series of seven uneasy days, spent in restless 
 pursuit of pleasure, and a wearisome anxiety 
 to find out how to make the most of them ? 
 Where was the quiet, where the promised 
 rest ? Before I had a taste of it, it was 
 vanished. I was at the desk again, counting 
 upon the fifty-one tedious weeks that must 
 intervene before such another snatch would 
 come. Still the prospect of its coming threw 
 something of an illumination upon the dai'ker 
 side of my captivity. "Without it, as I have 
 said, I could scarcely have sustained my 
 thraldom. 
 
 Independently of the rigoui"s of attendance, 
 I have ever been haunted with a sense 
 (perhaps a mere caprice) of incapacity for 
 business. This, during my latter years, had 
 increased to such a degree, that it was visible 
 in all the lines of my countenance. My 
 health and my good spirits flagged. I hatl 
 perpetuiUly a dread of some crisis, to whicli 
 I should bo found unequal. Besides my 
 daylight servitude, I served over ag;un all 
 night in my sleep, and would awake with 
 terrors of imaginary false entries, erroi-a in 
 my accounts, and the like. 1 was fifty years 
 
THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. 
 
 439 
 
 of age, and no prospect of emancipation 
 presented itself. I had grown to my desk, 
 as it were ; and the wood had entered into 
 my soul. 
 
 My fellows in the office would sometimes 
 rally me upon the trouble legible in my counte- 
 nance ; but I did not know that it had raised 
 the suspicions of any of my employers, when, 
 on the fifth of last month, a day ever to be 
 
 remembered by me, L , the junior partner 
 
 in the firm, calling me on -one side, directly 
 taxed me with my bad looks, and frankly 
 inquired the cause of them. So taxed, I 
 honestly made confession of my infirmity, 
 and added that I was afraid I should even- 
 tually be obliged to resign his service. He 
 spoke some words of course to hearten me, 
 and there the matter rested. A whole week 
 I remained labouring under the impression 
 that I had acted imprudently in my dis- 
 closure ; that I had foolishly given a handle 
 against myself, and had been anticipating 
 my own dismissal. A week passed in this 
 manner, the most anxious one, I verily 
 believe, in my whole life, when on the evening 
 of the 12th of April, just as I was about 
 quitting my desk to go home (it might be 
 about eight o'clock) I received an awful 
 summons to attend the presence of the 
 whole assembled firm in the fonnidable 
 back parlour. I thought now my time is 
 surely come, I have done for myself, I am 
 going to be told that they have no longer 
 
 occasion for me. L , I could see, smiled 
 
 at the terror I was in, which was a little 
 I'elief to me, — when to my utter astonishmeut 
 
 B , the eldest partner, began a formal 
 
 harangue to me on the length of my services, 
 my very meritorious conduct during the 
 whole of the time (the deuce, thought I, how 
 did he find out that 1 I protest I never had 
 the confidence to think as much). He went 
 on to descant on the expediency of retii-ing 
 at a certain time of life (liow my heart 
 panted !), and asking me a few questions as 
 to the amount of my own property, of which 
 I have a little, ended with a proposal, to 
 which his three partners nodded aj grave 
 assent, that I should accept from th^ house, 
 which I had served so well, a pension fur 
 life to the amount of two-thirds of my 
 accustomed salary — a magnificent ofi'er ! I 
 do not know what I answered between 
 surprise and gratitude, but it was understood 
 
 that I accepted their proposal, and I was told 
 tliat I was free from that hour to leave their 
 service. I stammered out a bow, and at just 
 ten minutes after eight I went home — for 
 ever. This noble benefit — gratitude forbids 
 me to conceal their names — I owe to the 
 kindness of the most munificent firm in the 
 world — the house of Boldero, Merryweather, 
 Bosanquet, and Lacy. 
 
 £sto perpetua ! 
 
 For the first day or two I felt stunned, 
 overwhelmed. I could only apprehend my 
 felicity ; I was too confused to taste it sin- 
 cerely. I wandered about, thinking I was 
 happy, and knowing that I was not. I was 
 in the condition of a prisoner in the old 
 Bastile, suddenly let loose after a forty years' 
 confinement. I could scarce trust myself 
 with myself It was like passing out of 
 Time into Eternity — for it is a sort of Eter- 
 nity for a man to have his Time aU to him- 
 self. It seemed to me that I had more 
 time on my hands than I could ever manage. 
 From a poor man, poor in Time, I was 
 suddenly lifted up into a vast revenue ; I 
 could see no end of my possessions ; I wanted 
 some steward, or judicious bailiff, to manage 
 my estates in Time for me. And here let 
 me caution persons grown old in active busi- 
 ness, not lightly, nor without weighing their 
 own resources, to forego their customary 
 employment all at once, for there may be 
 danger in it. I feel it by myself, but I know 
 that my resources are sufiicient ; and now 
 that those first giddy raptures have subsided, 
 I have a quiet home-feeling of the blessed- 
 ness of my condition. I am in no hurrj'. 
 Having all holidays, I am as though I had 
 none. If Time hung heavy upon me, I could 
 walk it away ; but I do not walk all day 
 long, as I used to do in those old transient 
 holidays, thirty miles a day, to make the 
 most of them. If Time were troublesome, 
 I could read it away ; but I do not read in 
 that violent measure, with which, having no 
 Time my own but candlelight Time, I used 
 to weary out my head and eyesight in by- 
 gone winters. I walk, read, or scribble (as 
 now), just when the fit seizes me. I no 
 longer hunt after pleasure ; I let it come to 
 me. I am like the man 
 
 that's born, and has his years come to him. 
 
 In some green desert. 
 
440 
 
 THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. 
 
 " Years ! " you will say ; " what is this 
 superannuated simpleton calculating upon ? 
 He has already told us he is past fifty." 
 
 I have indeed li\*ed nominally fifty years, 
 but deduct out of them the hours which 
 I have lived to other jieople, aud not to 
 myself, and you will find me still a young 
 fellow. For that is the only true Time, which 
 a man can properly call his own, that which 
 he has all to himself; the rest, though iu 
 some sense he may be said to live it, is other 
 people's Time, not his. The remnant of my 
 poor days, long or short, is at least multiplied 
 for me threefold. My ten next years, if I 
 stretch so fai', will be as long as any preced- 
 ing thirty. 'Tis a fair rule-of-three sum. 
 
 Among the strange fantasies which beset 
 me at the commencement of my freedom, 
 and of which all traces are not yet gone, one 
 was, that a vast tract of time had intervened 
 since I quitted the Counting House. I could 
 not conceive of it as an affair of yestei'day. 
 The partners, aud the clerks with whom 
 I had for so many years, and for so many 
 hours in each day of the year, been closely 
 associated — being suddenly removed from 
 them — they seemed as dead to me. There 
 is a fine passage, which may serve to illus- 
 trate this fancy, in a Tragedy by Sir Robert 
 Howard, speaking of a friend's death : — 
 
 'Twas but just now he went away ; 
 
 1 have not since had time to shed a tear ; 
 And yet the distance docs the same appear 
 As if he had been a thousand years from me. 
 Time takes no measure in Eternity. 
 
 To dissipate this awkward feeling, I have 
 been fain to go among them once or twice 
 since ; to visit my old desk-fellows — my co- 
 brethren of the quill — that I had left below 
 in the state militant. Not all the kindness 
 with which they received me could quite 
 restore to me that })leasaut familiarity, whioh 
 I had heretofore enjoyed among them. We 
 cracked some of our old jokes, but methought 
 they went off but faintly. My old desk ; 
 the peg where I hung my hat, were appro- 
 priated to another. I knew it must be, but 
 
 1 could not take it kindly. D 1 take me, 
 
 if I did not feel some remorse — beast, if 
 I had not — at quitting my old compeers, the 
 faithful partners of my toils ibr six-and- 
 thirty years, that smoothed for me wiLli their 
 jokes and coniunh'ums tlic ruggedness of my 
 professional road. 
 
 then, after all ? or was I a coward simply ? 
 Well, it is too late to repent ; and I also 
 know that these suggestions are a common 
 fallacy of the mind on such occasions. But 
 my heai't smote me. I had violently broken 
 the bands betwixt as. It was at least not 
 courteous. I shall be some time before I get 
 quite reconciled to the separation. Farewell, 
 old cronies, yet not for long, for ag;iin aud 
 again I will come among ye, if I shall have 
 
 your leave. Farewell, Ch , dry, sarcastic, 
 
 and friendly ! Do , mild, slow to move, 
 
 an<l gentlemanly ! PI , ofiicious to do, 
 
 and to volunteer, good services I — and thou, 
 thou dreary pile, tit mansion for a Gresham 
 or a Whittington of old, stately house of 
 Merchnnts ; with thy labyrinthine passages, 
 and light-exchuling. pent-up oflices, where 
 caudles for one-half the yeiir supplied the 
 place of the sun's light ; unhealthy contri- 
 butor to my weal, stern fosterer of my living, 
 farewell ! In thee remain, and not in the 
 obscure collection of some wandering book- 
 seller, my " works ! " There let them rest, 
 as I do from my labours, piled on thy massy 
 shelves, more MSS. in folio than ever Aquinas 
 left, aud full as useful ! My mantle I be- 
 queath among ye. 
 
 A fortniglit has passed since the date of 
 my first communication. At that perioil 
 I was ai^proaching to tranquillity, but had 
 not reached it. I boasted of a calm indeed, 
 but it was comparative only. Something of 
 the first flutter was left ; an unsettling sense 
 of novelty ; the dazzle to weak eyes of un- 
 accustomed light. I missed my old chains, 
 forsooth, as if they had been some necessary 
 part of my apparel. I was a poor Carthu- 
 sian, from strict cellular discipline suddenly 
 by some revolution returned ujjou the world. 
 I am now as if I had never been other th;ai 
 my own master. It is natural to me to go 
 where I please, to do what I please. I find 
 myself at eleveu o'clock iu the day in Bund- 
 street, and it seems to me that I have been 
 sauntering there at that very hour for years 
 past. I digress into Soho, to explore a book- 
 stall. Methinks I have been thirty yeai-s 
 a collector. Tiiere is nothing strange nor 
 new in it. I find myself before a fine 
 picture in the morning. Was it ever other- 
 wise ? What is become of Fish-atreet Ilill ? 
 Where is Fenchuich-street ? Stones of old 
 Minciug-hine, which I have worn with my 
 
THE GENTEEL STYLE IN WTIITING. 
 
 441 
 
 daily pilgrimage for six-and-thirty years, to 
 the footsteps of what toil-woru clerk are 
 your everlasting flints now vocal 1 I indent 
 the gayer flags of Pall Mall. It is 'Change 
 time, and I am strangely among the Elgin 
 marbles. It was no hyperbole when I ven- 
 tured to compare the change in my condition 
 to a passing into another world. Time stands 
 still in a manner to me. I have lust all dis- 
 tinction of season. I do not know the day 
 of the week or of the month. Each day 
 used to be individually felt by me in its refer- 
 ence to the foreign post days ; in its distance 
 from, or propinquity to, the next Sunday. 
 I had my Wednesday feelings, my Saturday 
 nights' sensations. The genius of each day 
 was upon me distinctly during the whole of 
 it, aflecting my appetite, spirits, &c. The 
 phantom of the next day, with the dreary 
 five to follow, sate as a load upon my 
 poor Sabbath recreations. AVhat charm has 
 washed that Ethiop white ? What is gone 
 of Black Monday ? All days are the same. 
 Sunday itself — that unfortunate ftiilure of a 
 holiday, as it too often proved, what with my 
 sense of its fugitiveness, and over-care to get 
 the greatest quantity of pleasure out of it — 
 is melted down into a week day. I can spare 
 to go to church now, without grudging the 
 huge cantle wliich it used to seem to cut 
 out of the holiday. I have Time for every- 
 thing. I can visit a sick friend. I can 
 interrupt the man of much occupation when 
 he is busiest. I can ijisult over him with an 
 
 invitation to take a day's pleasure with me 
 to Windsor this fine May-morning. It is 
 Lucretian pleasure tobehold the poor drudges, 
 whom I have left behind in the world, cark- 
 ing and caiing ; like horses in a mill, drudg- 
 ing on in the same eternal round — and what 
 is it all for ? A man can never have too 
 much Time to himself, nor too little to do. 
 Had I a little son, I would christen him 
 NoTniNG-TO-DO ; he should do nothing. Man, 
 I verily believe, is out of his element as long 
 as he is operative. I am altogether for the 
 life contemplative. Will no kindly earth- 
 quake come and swallow up those accursed 
 cotton mills ? Take me that lumber of a 
 desk there, and bowl it down 
 
 As low as to the fiends. 
 
 I am no longer ***** ♦^ clerk to the 
 Firm of, &c. I am Ketired Leisure. I am 
 to be met with in trim gardens. I am already 
 come to be known by my vacant face and 
 careless gesture, perambulating at no fixed 
 pace, nor with any settled purpose. I walk 
 about ; not to and from. Tliey tell me, a 
 certain cum dignitate air, that has been 
 buried so long with my other good parts, 
 has begun to shoot forth in my person. I 
 grow into gentility perceptibly. When I 
 take up a newspaper, it is to read the state 
 of the opera. Opus operatum est. I have 
 done all that I came into this world to do. 
 I have worked task-work, and have the rest 
 of the day to myself. 
 
 THE GENTEEL STYLE IN WEITING. 
 
 It is an ordinary criticism, that my Lord 
 Shaftesbury, and Sir William Temple, are 
 models of the genteel style in writing. We 
 should prefer saying — of the lordly, and the 
 gentlemanly. Nothing can be more unlike, 
 than the inflated finical rhapsodies of Shaf- 
 tesbury and the plain natural chit-chat of 
 Temple. The man of rank is discernible in 
 both writers ; but in the one it is only in- 
 sinuated gracefully, in the other it stands 
 out olfensively. The peer seems to have 
 written with his coronet on, and his Earl's 
 mantle before him ; the commoner in hii> 
 
 elbow-chair and undress. — What can be 
 more pleasant than the way in which the 
 retired statesman peeps out in his es.^ays, 
 penned by the latter in his delightful retreat 
 at Shene 1 They scent of Nimeguen and the 
 Hague. Scarce an authority is quoted under 
 an ambassador. Don Francisco de Melo, a 
 " Portugal Envoy in England," tells him it 
 was frequent in his country for men, spent 
 with age and other decays, so as tliey could 
 not hope for above a year or two of life, to 
 ship themselves away in a Brazil fleet, and 
 after their ai-rival there to go on a great 
 
442 
 
 THE GENTEEL STYLE IN WRITING. 
 
 length, sometimes of twenty or thirty years, 
 or more, by the force of that vigour they 
 recovered with that remove. " Whether 
 such an effect (Temple beautifully adds) 
 might grow from the air, or the fruits of 
 that climate, or by approaching nearer the 
 sun, which is the fountain of light and lieat, 
 when tlieir natural heat was so fur decayed : 
 or whether the piecing out of an old man's 
 life were worth the pains ; I cannot tell : 
 perhaps the play is not worth the candle." 
 Monsieur Pompone, "French Ambassador 
 in his (Sir William's) time at the Hague," 
 certifies him, that in his life he had never 
 heard of any man in France that arrived at 
 a hundred years of age ; a limitation of life 
 which the old gentleman imputes to the ex- 
 cellence of their climate, giving them such a 
 liveliness of temper and humour, as disposes 
 them to more pleasures of all kinds than in 
 other countries ; and moralises upon the 
 matter veiy sensibly. The "late Robert 
 Earl of Leicester" furnishes him with a 
 story of a Countess of Desmond, married 
 out of England in Edward the Foui'th's 
 time, and who lived far in King James's 
 reign. The " same noble person " gives him 
 an account, how such a year, in the same 
 reign, there went about the country a set of 
 morrice-dancers, composed of ten men who 
 danced, a Maid- Marian, and a tabor and 
 pipe ; and how these twelve, one with ano- 
 ther, made up twelve hundred years. " It 
 was not so much (says Temple) that so many 
 in one small county (Hertfordshire) should 
 live to that age, as that they should be in 
 vigour and in humour to travel and to dance." 
 Monsieur Zulichem, one of his " colleagues 
 at the Hague," informs him of a cure for 
 the gout ; which is confirmed by another 
 "Envoy," Monsieur Serinehanips, in that 
 t(jwii, who had tried it. — Old Prince Mau- 
 rice of Nassau recommends to him the use 
 of hammocks in that complaint ; having 
 been allured to sleep, while suHering under it 
 himself, by the " C(mstant motion or swing- 
 ing of those airy beds." Count Egmont, and 
 the llhinegrave who " was killed last sum- 
 mer before Maestricht," impai't to him their 
 experiences. 
 
 But the rank of the writer is never more in- 
 nocently disclosed, than where he takes for 
 granted the compliinents paid by foreigners 
 to his fruit-trees. For the taste and perfec- 
 
 tion of what we esteem the best, he can truly 
 say, that the French, who have eaten his 
 peaches and grapes at Shene in no very ill 
 year, have generally concluded that the last 
 are as good as any they have eaten in France 
 on this side Fontainebleau ; and the first as 
 good as any they have eat in Gascony. 
 Italians have agreed his white figs to be as 
 good as any of that sort in Italy, which is 
 the earlier kind of white fig there ; for in 
 the later kind and the blue, we cannot come 
 near the warm climates, no more than in the 
 Frontignac or Muscat grape. His orange- 
 trees, too, are as large as any lie saw when 
 he was young in France, except those of 
 Fontainebleau ; or what he has seen since in 
 the Low Countries, except some very old 
 ones of the Prince of Orange's. Of grapes 
 he had the honour of bringing over four 
 sorts into England, which he enumerates, 
 and supposes that they are all by this time 
 pretty common among some gardeners in 
 his neighbourhood, as well as several per- 
 sons of quality ; for he ever thought all 
 things of this kind " the commoner they are 
 made the better." The garden pedantry 
 with which he asserts that 'tis to little pur- 
 pose to plant any of the best fruits, as 
 peaches or grapes, hardly, he doubts, beyond 
 Northamptonshire at the furthest north- 
 wards ; and praises the " Bishop of Mun- 
 ster at Cosevelt," for attempting nothing 
 beyond cherries in that cold climate ; is 
 equally pleasant and in character. " I may 
 perhaps " (he thus ends his sweet Garden 
 Essay with a passage vv'orthy of Cowley) " be 
 allowed to know something of this trade, 
 since I have so long allowed myself to be 
 good for nothing else, which few men will 
 do, or enjoy their gardens, without often 
 looking abroad to see how other matters 
 play, what motions in the state, and what 
 invitations they may hope for into other 
 scenes. For my own part, as the country 
 life, and this i)art of it more particularly, 
 were the inclination of my youth itself, so 
 they are the pleasure of my age ; ami I can 
 truly say that, among many great employ- 
 ments that have fallen to my share, 1 have 
 never asked or sought for any of them, hut 
 have often endeavoured to escape from them, 
 into the case and freedom of a {)rivate scene, 
 where a man may go his own way and his 
 own jmce, iu the common paths and circles 
 
THE GENTEEL STYLE IN WRITING. 
 
 443 
 
 of life. 'The measure of choosing well is 
 whether a man likes what he has chosen, 
 which, I thank God, has befallen me ; and 
 though among the follies of my life, building 
 and planting have not been the least, and 
 have cost me more than I have the confi- 
 dence to own ; yet they have been fully re- 
 compensed by the sweetness and satisfaction 
 of this retreat, where, since my resolution 
 taken of never entering again into any public 
 employments, I have passed five years with- 
 out ever once going to town, though I am 
 almost in sight of it, and have a house there 
 always ready to receive me. Nor has this 
 been any sort of affectation, as some have 
 thought it, but a mere want of desire or 
 humour to make so small a remove ; for 
 when I am in this corner, I can truly say 
 with Horace, Me quoties rejicit, <&c. 
 
 " Me, -when the cold Digcntian stream revives, 
 What does my friend believe I think or ask ? 
 Let me yet less possess, so I may live, 
 Whatc'er of life remains, unto myself. 
 Way I have books enough ; and one year's store, 
 Not to depend upon each doubtful hour : 
 This is enough of mighty Jove to pray, 
 Who, as he pleases, gives and takes away." 
 
 The writings of Temple are, in general, 
 after this easy copy. On one occasion, 
 indeed, his wit, which was mostly subordi- 
 nate to nature and tenderness, has seduced 
 him into a string of felicitous antitheses ; 
 which, it is obvious to remark, have been 
 a model to Addison and succeeding essay- 
 ists. " Who would not be covetous, and 
 with reason," he says, " if health could be 
 purchased with gold 1 who not ambitious, if 
 it were at the command of power, or restoi-ed 
 by honour ? but, alas ! a white staff will not 
 help gouty feet to walk better than a common 
 cane ; nor a blue riband bind up a wound 
 so well as a fillet. The glitter of gold, or of 
 diamonds, will but hurt soi'e eyes instead of 
 curing them ; and an aching head will be no 
 more eased by wearing a crown than a 
 common nightcap." In a far better style, 
 and more accordant with his otvti humour of 
 plainni;ss, are the concluding sentences of 
 his " Discourse upon Poetry." Temple took 
 a part in the controversy about the aiicient 
 and the modei'n learning ; and, with that 
 partiality so natural and so graceful in an 
 old man, whose state engagements had left 
 
 him little leisure to look into modem pro- 
 ductions, while his retirement gave him 
 occasion to look back upon the classic studies 
 of his youth — decided in favour of the latter. 
 " Certain it is," he says, " that, whether the 
 fierceness of the Gothic humours, or noise of 
 their perpetual wars, frighted it away, or 
 that the imequal mixture of the modem 
 languages would not bear it — the great 
 heights and excellency both of poetry and 
 music fell with the Eoman learning and 
 emjiire, and have never since recovered 
 the admiration and applauses that before 
 attended them. Yet, such as they are 
 amongst us, they must be confessed to be the 
 softest and the sweetest, the most general and 
 most innocent amusements of common time 
 and life. They still find room in the courts 
 of princes, and the cottages of shepherds. 
 They serve to revive and animate the dead 
 calm of poor and idle lives, and to allay or 
 divert the violent passions and perturbations 
 of the greatest and the busiest men. And 
 both these eflects are of equal use to human 
 life ; for the mind of man is like the sea, 
 which is neither agreeable to the beholder 
 nor the voyager, in a calm or in a storm, but 
 is so to both when a little agitated by gentle 
 gales ; and so the mind, when moved by soft 
 and easy passions or affections. I know very 
 well that many who pretend to be wise by 
 the forms of being grave, are apt to despise 
 both poetry and music, as toys and trifies too 
 light for the use or entertainment of serious 
 men. But whoever find themselves wholly 
 insensible to their charms, would, I think, 
 do well to keep their own counsel, for fear 
 of reproaching their own temper, and bring- 
 ing the goodness of their natures, if not of 
 their understandings, into question. While 
 this world lasts, I doubt not but the pleasure 
 and request of these two entertainments will 
 do so too ; and happy those that content 
 themselves with these, or any other so easy 
 and so innocent, and do not trouble the 
 world or other men, because they cannot 
 be quiet themselves, though nobody hurts 
 them." " When all is done (he concludes), 
 human life is at the greatest and the best 
 but like a froward child, that must be played 
 with, and humoured a little, to keep it quiet, 
 till it falls asleep, and then the care is over." 
 
BAEBARA 
 
 On the noon of the 14th of November, 
 1743 or 4, I forget wliich it was, just as the 
 
 clock had struck one, Barbara S , with 
 
 her accustomed punctuality, ascended the 
 long rambling staircase, witli awkward inter- 
 posed landing-places, which led to the office, 
 or rather a sort of box with a desk in it, 
 whereat sat the then Treasurer of (what few 
 of our readers may remember) the Old Bath 
 Theatre. All over the island it was the 
 custom, and remains so I believe to this day, 
 for the players to receive their weekly stipend 
 on the Saturday. It was not much that 
 Barbara had to claim. 
 
 This little maid had just entered her 
 eleventh year ; but her important station at 
 the theatre, as it seemed to her, with the 
 benefits which she felt to accrue from her 
 pious application of her small earnings, had 
 given an air of womanhood to her steps and 
 to her behaviour. You woukl have taken 
 her to have been at least five years older. 
 
 Till latterly she had merely been employed 
 in choruses, or where children were wanted 
 to fill up the scene. But the manager, 
 observing a diligence and adroitness in her 
 above her age, had for some few months past 
 intrusted to her the performance of whole 
 parts. You may guess the self-consequence 
 of the promoted Barbara. She had already 
 drawn tears in young Arthur ; had rallied 
 Richard with infantine petulance iu the 
 Duke of York ; and in her turn had rebuked 
 that pctidance when she was Prince of 
 Wales. She would have done the elder child 
 in Morton's pathetic afteri)iece to the life ; 
 but as yet the " Children in the Wood " was 
 not. 
 
 Long after this little girl was grown an 
 aged woman, I have seen some of these 
 small parts, each making two or three pages 
 at most, coj)ied out in the rudest hand of the 
 then prompter, who doubtless transcribed 
 a little more carefully and faii-ly for the 
 gi'owu-up tragedy ladies of the establish- 
 ment. But such as they were, blotted and 
 scrawled, as fur a child's use, she kept them 
 
 all ; and in the zenith of her after reputation 
 it was a delightful sight to behold them 
 bound up in costliest morocco, each single — 
 each small part making a book — with fine 
 clasps, gilt-splashed, &c. She had conscien- 
 tiously kept them as they had been delivered 
 to her ; not a blot had been effaced or 
 tampered with. They w^ere precious to her 
 for their affecting remembrancings. They 
 were her principia, her rudiments ; the 
 elementary atoms ; the little steps by which 
 she pressed forward to perfection. " What," 
 she would say, " could India-rubber, or a 
 pumice-stone, have done for these darlings ?" 
 
 I am in no hurry to begin my story — 
 indeed I have little or none to tell — so I will 
 just mention an observation of hers con- 
 nected with that interesting time. 
 
 Not long before she died I had been dis- 
 coursing with her on the quantity of real 
 present emotion which a great tragic per- 
 former experiences during acting. I ventured 
 to think, that though in the first mstanco 
 such players must have possessed the feel- 
 ings A\hich they so powerfully called up in 
 others, yet by frequent repetition those feel- 
 ings must become deadened in great measure, 
 and the performer trust to the memory of 
 ])ast emotion, rather than express a present 
 one. She indignantly repelled the notion, 
 that with a truly groat tragedian the opera- 
 tion, by which such effects were produced 
 upon an audience, could ever degrade itself 
 into what was purely mechanical. With 
 much delicacy, avoiding to instance in her 
 se^-experience, she told me, that so long ago 
 as when she used to play the part of the 
 Little Son to Mrs. Porter's Isabella, ( I think 
 it was,) when that impressive actress has 
 been bending over her iu some heart-rending 
 collo(]uy, she has felt real hot tears come 
 trickling from her, which (to use her power- 
 ful expression) have perfectly scalded her 
 back. 
 
 I am not quite so sure that it was 
 Mrs. Porter ; but it was some great actress 
 of that day. The name is indilleront ; but 
 
BARBARA S- 
 
 445 
 
 the fact of the scalding tears I most dis- 
 tinctly remember. 
 
 I was always fond of the society of players, 
 and am not sure that an impediment in my 
 speech (which certainly kept me out of the 
 pulpit) even more than certain personal dis- 
 qualifications, which ai-e often got over in 
 that profession, did not prevent me at one 
 time of life from adopting it. I have had 
 the honour (I must ever call it) once to 
 have been admitted to the tea-table of 
 Miss Kelly. I have played at serious whist 
 with Mr, Listen. I have chattered with 
 ever good-humoured Mrs. Charles Kemble. 
 I have conversed as friend to friend with 
 her accomplished husband. I have been 
 indulged with a classical conference with 
 Macready ; and with a sight of the Playei'- 
 picture gallery, at Mr. Mathews's, when the 
 kind owner, to remunerate me for my love 
 of the old actors (whom he loves so much), 
 went over it with me, supplying to his capital 
 collection, what alone tlie ai'tist could not 
 give them — voice ; and their living motion. 
 Old tones, half- faded, of Dodd, and Parsons, 
 and Baddeley, have lived again for me at 
 his bidding. Only Edwin he could not restore 
 
 to me. I have supjjed with ; but I am 
 
 growing a coxcomb. 
 
 As I was about to say — at the desk of the 
 then treasui-er of the old Bath theatre — 
 not Diamond's — presented herself the little 
 Barbara S . 
 
 The parents of Barbara had been in repu- 
 table cii'cumstances. The father had prac- 
 tised, I believe, as an apothecary in the 
 town. But his practice, from causes which 
 I feel my own infirmity too sensibly that 
 way to arraign — or perhaps from that pure 
 infelicity which accompanies some people in 
 their walk through life, and which it is 
 impossible to lay at the door of imprudence 
 — was now reduced to nothing. They were 
 in tact in the very teeth of starvation, when 
 the manager, who knew and respected them 
 in better days, took the little Barbara into 
 his company. 
 
 At the period I commenced withj her 
 slender earnings were the sole support of 
 the family, including two younger sisters. 
 I must throw a veil over some mortifying 
 circumstances. Enough to say, that her 
 Saturday's pittance was the only chance of a 
 Sunday's (generally their only) meal of meat. 
 
 One thing I will only mention, that in 
 some cliild's part, where in her theatrical 
 character she was to sup off a roast fowl 
 (O joy to Barbara !) some comic actoi', who 
 was for the night caterer for this dainty — in 
 the misguided humour of his part, threw 
 over the dish such a quantity of salt (O grief 
 and pain of heart to Barbara !) that when 
 she crammed a portion of it into her mouth, 
 she was obliged sputteriugly to reject it ; 
 and what with shame of her ill-acted part, 
 and i")ain of real appetite at missing such 
 a dainty, her little heart sobbed almost to 
 breaking, till a Hood of tears, which the well- 
 fed spectators were totally unable to com- 
 prehend, mercifully relieved her. 
 
 This was the little starved, meritorious 
 maid, who stood before old Eavenscroft, the 
 treasurer, for her Saturday's payment. 
 
 Eavenscroft was a man, I have heard many 
 old theatrical people besides herself say, of 
 all men least calculated for a treasurer. He 
 had no head for accounts, paid away at 
 random, kept scarce any books, and summing 
 up at the week's end, if he found himself 
 a pound or so deficient, blest himself that it 
 was no worse. 
 
 Now Barbara's weekly stipend was a bare 
 half guinea. — By mistake he popped into 
 her hand — a whole one. 
 
 Barbara tripped away. 
 
 She was entirely unconscious at first of 
 the mistake : God knows, Eavenscroft would 
 never have discovered it. 
 
 But when she had got down to the fii-st of 
 those uncouth landing-places, she became 
 sensible of an unusual weight of metal press- 
 ing her little hand. 
 
 Now mark the dilemma. 
 
 She was by nature a good child. From 
 her parents and those about her she had 
 imbibed no contrary influence. But then 
 they had taught her nothing. Poor men's 
 smoky cabins are not always poi'ticoes of 
 moral philosophy. This little maid had no 
 instinct to evil, but then she might be said 
 to have no fixed principle. She had heard 
 honesty commended, but never dreamed of 
 its application to herself. She thought of it 
 as sumething which concerned grown-up 
 peujjle, men and women. She had never 
 known temptation, or thought of preparing 
 resistance against it. 
 
 Her first impulse was to go back to the 
 
446 
 
 THE TOMBS IN THE ABBEY. 
 
 old treasurer, and explain to him his blunder. 
 He was already so confused with age, besides 
 a natural want of punctuality, that she 
 would have had some difficulty in making 
 him understand it. She saw that in an 
 instant. And then it was such a bit of 
 money 1 and then the image of a larger 
 allowance of butcher's-nieat on their table 
 next day came across hei-, till her little eyes 
 glistened, and her mouth moistened. But 
 then Mr. Ravenscroft had always been so 
 good-natured, had stood her friend behind 
 the scenes, and even recommended her pro- 
 motion to some of her little parts. But 
 again the old man was reputed to be worth 
 a world of money. He was supposed to have 
 fifty pounds a-year clear of the theatre. And 
 then came staring upon her the figures of 
 her little stockiugless and shoeless sisters. 
 And when she looked at her own neat white 
 cotton stockings, which her situation at the 
 theatre had made it indispensable for her 
 mother to provide for her, with hard 
 straining and pinching from the family 
 stock, and thought how glad she should be 
 to cover their poor feet with the same — and 
 how then they could accompany her to 
 rehearsals, which they had hitherto been 
 precluded from doiug, by reason of their 
 unfashionable attire,— in these thoughts she 
 reached the second landing-place — the second, 
 I mean, from the top — for there was still 
 another left to traverse. 
 
 Now virtue sujiport Barbara ! 
 
 And that never-failing friend did step in 
 — for at that moment a strength not her 
 own, T have heard her say, was revealed to 
 her — a reason above reasoning — and without 
 
 her own agency, as it seemed (for she never 
 felt her feet to move), she found herself 
 transported back to the individuiJ desk she 
 had just quitted, and her hand in the old 
 hand of liavenscroft, who in silence took 
 back the refunded treasure, and who had 
 been sitting (good man) in.sensible to the 
 lapse of minutes, which to her were anxious 
 ages, and from that moment a deep peace 
 fell upon her heart, and she knew the quality 
 of honesty. 
 
 A year or two's unrepining application to 
 her profession brightened up the feet, and the 
 prospects, of her little sisters, set the whole 
 family upon their legs again, and released 
 her from the difficulty of discussing moral 
 dogmas upon a landing-place. 
 
 I have heard her say that it was a surprise, 
 not much short of mortification to her, to 
 see the coolness with which the old man 
 pocketed the diff'erence, which had caused 
 her such mortal throes. 
 
 This anecdote of herself I had m the year 
 1800, from the mouth of the late Mi"s. 
 Crawford,* then sixty-seven years of age 
 (she died soon after) ; and to her struggles 
 upon this childish occasion I have sometimes 
 ventured to think her indebted for that 
 power of rending the heart in the repre- 
 sentation of conflicting emotions, for which 
 in after years she was considered as little 
 inferior (if at all so in the part of Lady 
 Eandolph) even to Mi-s. Siddons. 
 
 • The maiden name of this lady -was Street, which 
 she chancred by successive marriasfe?, for those of Dancer, 
 Barry, and Crawford. 8he was Mrs. Crawford, a third 
 time a widow, when I knew her. 
 
 THE TOMBS IN THE ABBEY. 
 
 IN A LETTER TO R- 
 
 TiiouGH in some points of doctrine, and 
 pei'liaps of discipline, I am diffident of 
 lending a perfect assent to tliat church 
 which you have so wortliily histori/ied, yet 
 may the ill time never come to me, when 
 with a chilled heart or a portion of irreverent 
 sentiment, I shall enter lier beautiful and 
 time-hallowed Edifices. Judge, then, of my 
 
 mortification when, after attending the 
 choral anthems of last Wednesday at West- 
 minster, and being de.«iirous of renewing my 
 acquaintance, after lapsed years, witli tlio 
 tombs and antiquities tliere, I found myself 
 excluded ; turned out, like a dog, or somo 
 profane person, into the common street, with 
 feelings not very congenial to the pbce, or 
 
THE TOMBS IN THE ABBEY. 
 
 447 
 
 to the solemn service which I had been 
 listeniii<T to. Tt was a jai* after tliat music. 
 
 You liad your education at Westminster ; 
 and doubtless among those dim aisles and 
 cloisters, you must have gathered much of 
 that devotional feeling in those young years, 
 on which your purest mind feeds still — and 
 may it feed ! The antiquarian spirit, strong 
 in you, and gracefully blending ever with 
 the religious, may have been sown in you 
 among those wrecks of splendid mortality. 
 You owe it to the place of your education ; 
 you owe it to your learned fondness for the 
 architecture of your ancestors ; you owe it 
 to the venerableness of your ecclesiastical 
 establishment, which is daily lessened and 
 called in question through these practices — 
 to speak aloud your sense of them ; never to 
 desist raising your voice against them, till 
 they be totally done away with and abolished ; 
 till the doors of Westminster Abbey be no 
 
 silently for ourselves detecting the genius of 
 it ? In no part of our beloved Abljcy now 
 can a person find entrance (out of service 
 time) under the sum of two shillings. The 
 ricli and the great will smile at the anti- 
 climax, presumed to lie in these two short 
 words. But you can tell them, sir, how 
 much quiet worth, how much capacity for 
 enlarged feeling, how much taste and genius, 
 may coexist, especially in youth, with a 
 purse incompetent to this demand. A 
 respected friend of ours, during his late visit 
 to the metropolis, presented himself for 
 admission to St. Paul's. At the same time a 
 decently clothed man, with as decent a -wdfe 
 and cliild, were bargaining for the same 
 indulgence. The price was only two-pence 
 each person. The poor but decent man 
 hesitated, desirous to go in ; but there were 
 three of them, and he turned away reluc- 
 tantly. Perhaps he wished to have seen the 
 
 longer closed against the decent, though tomb of Nelson. Perhaps the Interior of 
 low-in-purse, enthusiast, or blameless devotee, I the Cathedral was his object. But in the 
 who must commit an injury against his state of his finances, even sixpence mi'^ht 
 family economy, if he would be indulged ! reasonably seem too much. Tell the Aris- 
 with a bare admission within its walls. You i tocracy of the country (no man can do it 
 owe it to the decencies, which you wish to j more impressively) ; instruct them of what 
 
 see maintained, in its impressive ser^dces, 
 that our Cathedral be no longer an object of 
 inspection to the poor at those times only, in 
 which they must rob from their attendance 
 on the worship every minute which they can 
 bestow upon the fabric. In vain the public 
 prints have taken up this subject, — in vain 
 such poor, nameless writers as myself express 
 their indignation. A word from you, sir, — a 
 hint in your Journal — would be sufficient to 
 fling open the doors of the Beautiful Temple 
 again, as we can remember them when we 
 were boys. At that time of Hfe, what would 
 the imaginative faculty (such as it is) in 
 both of us, have suifered, if the entrance to 
 so much reflection had been obstructed by 
 the demand of so much silver ! — If we had 
 scraped it up to gain an occasional admission 
 (as we certainly should have done) would 
 the sight of those old tombs have been as 
 impressive to us (while we have ibeen 
 weighing anxiously prudence against senti- 
 ment) as when the gates stood open as those 
 of the acljacent Park ; when we could walk 
 
 value these insignificant pieces of money, 
 these minims to their sight, may be to their 
 humbler brethren. Shame these Sellers out 
 of the Temple. Stifle not the suggestions of 
 your better nature with the pretext, that an 
 indiscriminate admission would expose the 
 Tombs to violation. Remember your boy- 
 days. Did you ever see, or hear, of a mob 
 in the Abbey, while it was free to all ? Do 
 the rabble come there, or trouble their heads 
 about such speculations ? It is all that you 
 can do to drive them into your churches ; 
 they do not voluntarily offer themselves. 
 They have, alas ! no passion for antiquities ; 
 for tomb of king or prelate, sage or poet. 
 If they had, they would be no longer the 
 rabble. 
 
 For forty years that I have kno-n-n the 
 Fabric, the only well-attested charge of 
 violation adduced, has been — a ridiculous 
 dismemberment committed upon the effigy 
 of that amiable spy. Major Andr6. And is 
 it for this — the wanton mischief of some 
 school-boy, fired perhaps with raw notions 
 
 in at any time, as the mood brought us, for a of Transathintic Freedom — or the remote 
 shorter or longer time, as that lasted ? Is possibility of such a mischief occurring again, 
 the being shown over a place the same as so easily to be prevented by stationing a 
 
448 
 
 AMICUS REDIVIVUS. 
 
 constable within the walls, if the vergers are 
 incompetent to the duty — is it upon such 
 wretched pretences that the people of 
 England are made to pay a new Peter's 
 Pence, so long abrogated ; or must content 
 
 themselves with contemplating the ragged 
 Exterior of their Cathedral ? The mischief 
 was done about the time that you were a 
 scholar there. Do you know anything about 
 the unfortunate relic ? — 
 
 AMICUS EEDIVIVUS. 
 
 — ♦ — 
 
 Where were yc, Nj-mphs, when the remorseless deep 
 Closed o'er the head of your loved Lycidas ? 
 
 I DO not know when I have experienced a 
 stranger sensation, than on seeing my old 
 friend, G. D., who had been paying me a 
 morning visit, a few Sundays back, at my 
 cottage at Islington, upon taking leave, 
 instead of tui-ning down the right-hand path 
 by which he had entered — with stalf in 
 hand, and at noonday, deliberately march 
 right forwards into the midst of the stream 
 that runs by us, and totally disappear. 
 
 A spectacle like this at dusk would have 
 been appalling enough ; but in the broad, 
 open daylight, to witness such an unreserved 
 motion towards self-destruction in a valued 
 friend, took from me all power of speculation. 
 
 How I found my feet I know not. Con- 
 sciousness was quite gone. Some spirit, not 
 my own, whirled me to the spot. I remember 
 nothing but the silvery apparition of a good 
 white head emerging ; nigh which a staff 
 (the hand unseen that wielded it) pointed 
 upwards, as feeling for the skies. In a 
 moment (if time was in that time) he was 
 on my shoulders ; and I — freighted with a 
 load more precious than his who bore 
 Anchises. 
 
 And here I cannot but do justice to the 
 officious zeal of sundry passers by, who, 
 albeit arriving a little too late to participate 
 in the honours of the rescue, in philanthropic 
 shoals came thronging to communicate thfir 
 advice as to the recovery ; prescribing 
 variously the application, or non-application, 
 of salt, (fee, to the person of the patient. 
 Life, meantime, was ebbing fa.st away, 
 amidst the stifle of conflicting judgments, 
 when one, more sagacious than the rest, by 
 a bright thought, proposed sending for the 
 Doctor. Trite as the counsel was, and 
 impossible, as one should think, to be missed 
 
 on, — shall I confess ? — in this emergency it 
 was to me na if an Angel had spoken. 
 Great previous exertions — and mine had nut 
 been inconsiderable — are commonly followed 
 by a debility of purpose. This was a moniont 
 of irresolution. 
 
 MoNOcuLus — for so, in default of catching 
 his true name, I choose to designate the 
 medical gentleman who now appeared — is a 
 grave, middle-aged pei-son, who, without 
 having studied at the college, or truckled to 
 the pedantry of a diploma, hath employed a 
 great poi-tion of his valuable time in experi- 
 mental processes upon the bodies of unfor- 
 tunate fellow-creatures, in whom the vital 
 spark, to mere vulgar thinking, would seem 
 extinct and lost for ever. He omitteth no 
 occasion of obtruding his services, from a 
 case of common surfeit suffocation to the 
 ignobler obstructions, sometimes induced by 
 a too-wilful application of the Y)\a.iit cannabis 
 outwardly. But though he declineth not 
 altogether these drier extinctions, his occu- 
 pation tendeth, for the most part, to water- 
 practice ; for the convenience of which, he 
 hath judiciously fixed his quai-ters near the 
 grand reptisitory of tlie stream mentioned, 
 where day and night, from his little watch- 
 tower, at the ^Middleton's Head, he listeneth 
 to detect the wrecks of drowned mortality — 
 partly, as he saitli, to be upon the spot — and 
 partly, because the li(iuitls which he useth to 
 prescribe to himself and his patients, on 
 these distressing occasions, are ordinarily 
 more conveniently to be found at these com- 
 mon hostelries than in the sho]>s and phials 
 of the apotlieciu'ies. His ear Iiath arrived 
 to such tinesse by jiractice, that it is reported 
 he can distinguish a plunge, at lialf a furlong 
 distance ; and can tell if it bo casual or 
 
AMICUS REDIVIVUS. 
 
 449 
 
 deliberate. He weareth a medal, suspended 
 over a suit, originally of a sad brown, but 
 which, by time and frequency of nightly 
 divings, h;is been dinged into a true profes- 
 sional sable. He passeth by the name of Doc- 
 tor, and is remarkable for wanting his left eye. 
 His remedy — after a sufficient application of 
 warm blankets, friction, &c., is a simple 
 tumbler or more, of the purest Cognac, 
 with water, made as hot as the convalescent 
 can bear it. Where he findeth, as in the 
 case of my friend, a squeamish subject, he 
 condescendeth to be the taster ; and showeth, 
 by his own examjDle, the innocuous nature of 
 Ae prescription. Nothing can be more kind 
 or encouraging than this procedure. It 
 dddeth contidence to the patient, to see his 
 medical adviser go hand in hand with him- 
 self in the remedy. "When the doctor 
 swalloweth his own draught, what peevish 
 invalid can refuse to pledge him in the 
 potion ? In fine, Monoculus is a humane, 
 sensible man, who, for a slender pittance, 
 scarce enough to sustain life, is content to 
 wear it out in the endeavour to save the lives 
 of others — his pretensions so moderate that 
 with difficulty I could press a crown upon 
 him, for the price of restoring the existence 
 of such an invaluable creature to society 
 as G. D. 
 
 It was pleasant to observe the effect of the 
 subsiding alarm upon the nerves of the dear 
 absentee. It seemed to have given a shake 
 to memory, calling up notice after notice, of 
 all the providential deliverances he had ex- 
 perienced in the course of his long and inno- 
 cent life. Sitting up in my couch — my couch 
 which, naked and void of furniture hitherto, 
 for the salutary repose which it administered, 
 shall be honoured with costly valance, at 
 some price, and henceforth be a state-bed at 
 Colebrook, — he discoursed of marvellous 
 escapes — by cai-elessness of nurses — b}' pails 
 of gelid, and kettles of the boiling element, 
 in infancy — by orchard pranks, and snapping 
 twigs, in schoolboy frolics — by descent of 
 tiles at Trumpington, and of heavier tomes 
 at Pembroke — by studious watohings, in- 
 ducing frightful vigilance — by want, and the 
 fear of want, and all the sore throbbings of 
 the learned head. — Anon, he would burst out 
 into little fragments of chanting — of songs 
 long ago — ends of deliverance hymns, not 
 remembered before since childhood, but 
 
 coming up now, when his heart was made 
 tender as a child's — for the tremor cordis, in 
 the retrospect of a recent deliverance, as in 
 a case of impending danger, acting ujion an 
 innocent heart, will produce a .self-ten ler- 
 ness, which we should do ill to christen 
 cowardice ; and Shakspeare, in the latter 
 crisis, has made his good Sir Hugh to remem- 
 ber the sitting by Babylon, and to mutter of 
 shallow rivers. 
 
 "Waters of Sir Hugh Middleton — what a 
 spark you were like to have extinguished for 
 ever ! Your salubrious streams to this City, 
 for now near two centuries, would hardly 
 have atoned for what you were in a moment 
 washing away. Mockery of a river — liquid 
 artifice — wretched conduit ! henceforth rank 
 with canals and sluggish aqueducts. Was it 
 for this that, smit in boyhood with the ex])lo- 
 rations of that Abyssinian traveller, I paced 
 the vales of Amwell to explore your tribu- 
 tai-y springs, to trace your salutary waters 
 sparklmg through green Hertfordshire, and 
 cultured Enfield parks 1 — Ye have no swans 
 — no Naiads — no river God — or did the 
 benevolent hoary aspect of my friend tempt 
 ye to suck him in, that ye also might have 
 the tutelary genius of your waters ? 
 
 Had he been drowned in Cam, there would 
 have been some consonancy in it ; but what 
 willows had ye to w^ave and rustle over his 
 moist sepulture ? — or, having no name, 
 besides that unmeaning assumption of eternal 
 novity, did ye think to get one by the noble 
 prize, and henceforth to be termed the 
 Stream Dyerian ? 
 
 And could such spacious virtue find a grave 
 Beneath the imposthumed bubble of a wave I 
 
 I protest, George, you shall not venture 
 out again — no, not by daylight — without a 
 suflicient pair of spectacles — in your musing 
 moods especially. Your absence of mind we 
 have borne, till your presence of body came 
 to be called in question by it. You shall not 
 go wandering into Euripus with Aristotle, if 
 we can help it. Eie, man, to turn dipper at 
 your years, after your many tracts in favour 
 of sprinkling oiily ! 
 
 I have uotliiug but water in my head 
 o'uights since this frightful accident. Some- 
 times I aiu with Clarence in Lis dream. At 
 others, I behold Christian beginning to sink, 
 and crying out to his good brother Hopeful 
 
 G 
 
450 
 
 SOME SONNETS OF SIR PHIIsIP SYDNEY. 
 
 (that is, to me), " I sink in deep waters ; the 
 billows go over my head, all the waves go 
 over me. Selah." Then I have before me 
 Palinurus, just letting go the steerage. I 
 cry out too late to save. Next follow — a 
 mournful procession — suicidal faces, saved 
 against their will from drowning ; dolefully 
 trailing a length of reluctant gratefulness, 
 with ropy weeds pendent from locks of 
 watchet hue — constrained Lazari — Pluto's 
 half-subjects — stolen fees from the grave — 
 bilking Charon of his fare. At their head 
 Arion — or is it G. D. ? — in his singing gar- 
 ments marcheth singly, with harp in hand, 
 and votive garland, which Machaon (or 
 Dr. Hawes) snatcheth straight, intending to 
 suspend it to the stern God of Sea. Then 
 follow dismal streams of Lethe, in which the 
 half-drenched on earth are constrained to 
 drown downright, by wharfs where Ophelia 
 twice acts her muddy death. 
 
 And, doubtless, there is some notice in that 
 invL-sible world when one of us ajjproacheth 
 (as my friend did so lately) to their inexorable 
 precincts. When a soul knocks once, twice, 
 at Death's door, the sensation aroused within 
 
 the palace must be considerable ; and the 
 grim Feature, by modem science so often 
 dispossessed of his prey, must have learned 
 by this time to pity Tantalus. 
 
 A pulse assuredly was felt along the line 
 of the Elysian shades, when the near arrival 
 of G. D. was announced by no equivocal 
 indications. From their seats of Asphodel 
 arose the gentler and the graver ghosts — 
 poet, or historian — of Grecian or of Roman 
 lore — to crown with unfading chaplets 
 the half-finished love-labours of their un- 
 wearied scholiixst. Him Markland ex- 
 pected — him Tyrwhitt hoi)ed to encounter 
 — him the sweet lyrist of Peter House, whom 
 he had barely seen upon earth,* with newest 
 
 airs prepared to greet ; and patron of 
 
 the gentle Christ's boy, — who should have 
 been his. patron through life — the mild 
 Askew, with longing aspirations leaned fore- 
 most from his venerable ^sculapian chair, 
 to welcome into that happy company the 
 matured virtues of the man, whose tender 
 scions in the boy he himself upon earth had 
 so prophetically fed and watered. 
 
 • Graium tantum vidit. 
 
 SOME SONNETS OF SIE PHILIP SYDNEY. 
 
 Sydney's Sonnets — I speak of the best of 
 them — are among the very best of their soi-t. 
 They fall below the plain moral dignity, the 
 sanctity, and high yet modest si)irit of self- 
 approval, of Milton, in his conipositions of a 
 similar structure. Tliey are in truth what 
 Milton, censuring the Arcadia, says of that 
 work (to which they are a sort of after-tune 
 or application), " vain and amatorious " 
 enough, yet the things in their kind (as he 
 confesses to be true of the romance) may be 
 " full of worth and wit." They savour of the 
 Courtier, it must be allowed, and not of the 
 Commonwcaltiisnian. But Milton was a 
 Courtier when he wrote the Masque at Lud- 
 low Ciistle, and still more a Courtier when 
 he composed the Arcades. When the 
 national struggle was to begin, he becomingly 
 ca.st tliese vanities V)ehind him ; and if the 
 order of time had thrown Sir Philip upon the 
 crisis which preceded the revolution, there is 
 
 no reason why he should not have acted the 
 same part in that emergency, which has 
 glorified the name of a later Sydney. He diil 
 not want for plainness or boldness of spirit. 
 His letter on the Frencli match may testify 
 he could speak his mind freely to Princes. 
 The times did not call him to the scaflbld. 
 
 The Sonnets which we oftenest CiiU to 
 mind of Milton were the com]H)sitions of his 
 maturest yeai-s. Those of Sydney, which I 
 am about to produce, were vyritten in the 
 very heyday of his blood. fThey are stuck 
 full of amorous fancies — far-fetched conceits, 
 befitting his occupation ; for True Love 
 thinks no labour to send out Thoughts upon 
 the vast and more than Indian voyages, to 
 biing home rich pearls, outlandish wealth, 
 gums, jewels, spicery, to sacrifice in self- 
 dej)reciating similitiule.s, as shadows of truo 
 amiabilities in the Beloveijy We must bo 
 Lovers — or at lejist the cooling toucli of time, 
 
SOME SONNETS OP SIR PHILIP SYDNEY. 
 
 451 
 
 the circum prcecordia frigus must not have 
 so damped our faculties, as to take away our 
 recollection that we were once so — before we 
 can duly appreciate the glorious vanities, and 
 graceful hyperboles, of the passion. The 
 images which lie before our feet (though by 
 some accounted the only natural) are least 
 natural for the high Sydnean love to express 
 its fancies by. They may serve for the loves 
 of TibuUus, or the dear Author of the School- 
 mistress ; for passions that creep and whine 
 in Elegies and Pastoral Ballads. I am sure 
 Milton never loved at this rate. I am afraid 
 some of his addresses {ad Leonoram I mean) 
 have rather erred on the farther side ; and 
 that the poet came not much short of a 
 religious indecorum, when he could thus 
 apostrophise a singing-girl : — 
 
 Angelus unicuique suus {sic credite gentes) 
 
 Obtigit irthcrcis ales ab oidinibiis. 
 Quid mirmn, Leonora, tibi si gloria major, 
 
 Nam tua prjesentcm vox sonat ipsa Deum ? 
 Aut Deus, aut vacui certe mens tertia cocli, 
 
 Per tua sccretu guttura serpit agens ; 
 Serpit agens, facilisquc docet mortalia corda 
 
 Sensim immortali assucscere posse sono. 
 Quod si cuncta quidem Deus est, per cuNcxAauE 
 
 FUSUS, 
 In TE una LOaUITUR, CaiTERA MUTVS HABET. 
 
 This is loving in a strange fashion ; and it 
 requires some candour of construction 
 (besides the slight darkening of a dead 
 language) to cast a veil over the ugly appear- 
 ance of something very like blasphemy in 
 the last two verses. I think the Lover 
 would have been staggered if he had gone 
 about to express the same thought in English. 
 I am sure Sydney has no flights like this. 
 His extravaganzas do not strike at the sky, 
 though he takes leave to adopt the pale Dian 
 into a fellowship with his mortal passions. 
 
 I. 
 
 With how sad steps, Moon, thou climb'st the skies ; 
 
 How silently ; and with how wan a face ! 
 
 What ! may it bo, that even in heavenly place 
 
 That busy Archer his sharp arrow tries ? 
 
 Sure, if that long-with-love-acquainted eyes 
 
 Can judge of love, thou feel'st a lover's case ; 
 
 I read it in thy looks ; thy languisht grace 
 
 To me, that feel the like, thy state descries. 
 
 Then, even of fellowship, O Moon, tell me. 
 
 Is constant love dcem'd there but want of wit ? 
 
 Are beauties there as proud as here they be \ j 
 
 Do they above love to be loved, and yet 
 
 Those lovers scorn, whom that love doth possess ? 
 
 Do they call virtue there — ungratefulness ! 
 
 The last line of this poem is a little 
 obscured by transposition. He means, Do 
 they call ungratefulness there a virtue ? 
 
 Como, Sleep, O Sleep, the certain knot of peace, 
 The baiting place of wit, the balm of woe, 
 The poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release, 
 The indifferent judge between the high and low ; 
 With shield of proof shield me from out the prease ' 
 Of those fierce darts despair at me doth throw ; 
 
 make in me those civil wars to cease : 
 
 1 will good tribute pay if thou do so. 
 
 Take thou of me sweet pillows, sweetest bed ; 
 A chamber deaf to noise, and blind to light ; 
 A rosy garland, and a weary head. 
 And if these things, as being thine by right, 
 Move not thy heavy grace, thou shalt in me, 
 Livelier than elsewhere, Stella's image see. 
 
 The curious wits, seeing dull pensiveness 
 Bewray itself in my long-settled eyes, 
 "Whence those same fumes of melancholy rise, 
 .With idle pains, and missing aim, do guess. 
 Some, that know how my spring I did address, 
 Deem that my Muse some fruit of knowledge plies ; 
 Others, because the Prince my service tries, 
 Think, that I think state errors to redress ; 
 But harder judges jud;rf, ambition's rage, 
 Scourge of itself, still climbing slippery place, 
 Holds my young brain captived in golden cage. 
 O fools, or over-wise ! alas, the race 
 Of all my thoughts hath neither stop nor start, 
 But only Stella's eyes, and Stella's heart. 
 
 Because I oft in dark abstracted guise 
 Seem most alone in greatest company. 
 With dearth of words, or answers quite awry. 
 To them that would make speech of speech arise ; 
 They deem, and of their doom the rumour flies, 
 That poison foul of bubbling Pride doth lie 
 So in my swelling breast, that only I 
 Fawn on myself, and others do despise ; 
 Yet Pride, I think, doth not my soul possess, 
 WTiich looks too oft in his unflattering glass ; 
 But one worse fault — Ambition — I confess. 
 That makes me oft my best friends overpass. 
 Unseen, unheard — while Thought to highest place 
 Bends all his powers, even unto Stella's grace. 
 
 Having this day, my horse, my hand, my lance. 
 Guided so well that I obtained the prize. 
 Both by the judgment of the English eyes. 
 And of some sent from that stveet enemy, — France ; 
 Horsemen my skill in horsemanship advance ; 
 Townsfolk my strength ; a daintier judge applies 
 His praise to sleight, which from good use doth rise ; 
 Some lucky wits impute it hut to chance ; 
 Others, because of both sides I do take 
 My blood from them, who did excel in this, 
 Think Nature me a man of arms did make. 
 How far they shot awry ! the true cause is, 
 Stella looked on, and from her heavenly face 
 Sent forth the beams which made so fair my race. 
 
 In martial sports I had my cunning tried. 
 And yet to break more staves did me address, 
 While with the people's shouts (I must confess) 
 Youth, luck, and praise, even fiU'd my veins with 
 
 pride — 
 When Cupid having me (his slave] descried 
 
 Press. 
 
 a G 2 
 
452 
 
 SOME SONNETS OF SIR PHILIP SYDNEY. 
 
 In Mars's livery, prancing in the press, 
 
 " WTiat now, Sir Fool I " said he : "I ■would no less ; 
 
 Look here, 1 say." I look'd, and Stella spied, 
 
 Who hard by made a window send forth light. 
 
 My heart then quaked, then dazzled were mine eyes ; 
 
 One hand forgot to rule, th' other to fight ; 
 
 Nor trumpet's sound I heard, nor friendly cries. 
 
 My foe came on, and beat the air for me — 
 
 Till that her blush made me my shame to see. 
 
 No more, my dear, no more these counsels try ; 
 
 give my passions leave to run their race ; 
 Let Fortune lay on me her worst disgrace ; 
 
 Let folk o'erchargcd with brain against me cry ; 
 Let clouds bedim my face, break in mine eye ; 
 Let me no steps, but of lost labour, trace ; 
 Let all the earth with scorn recount my case — • 
 But do not will me from my love to fly. 
 
 1 do not envy Aristotle's wit. 
 
 Nor do aspire to CiEsar's bleeding fame ; 
 Nor aught do care, though some above me sit ; 
 Nor hope, 'nor wish, another course to frame, 
 But that which once may win thy cruel heart : 
 .Thou art my wit, and thou my virtue art. 
 
 Love still a boy, and oft a wanton, is, 
 
 School'd only by his mother's tender eye ; 
 
 What wonder then, if he his lesson miss, 
 
 When for so soft a rod dear play he ti'v ? 
 
 And yet my Star, because a sugar'd kiss 
 
 In sport I suck'd, while she asleep did lie. 
 
 Doth lour, nay chide, nay threat, for only this. 
 
 Sweet, it was saucy Love, not humble I. 
 
 But no 'scuse serves ; she makes her wrath appear , 
 
 In beauty's throne — see now who dares come near 
 
 Those scarlet judges, threat'ning bloody pain? 
 
 heav'nly Fool, thy most kiss-worthy face 
 
 Anger invests with such a lovely grace, , 
 
 That anger's self I needs must kiss again. 
 
 I never drank of Aganippe well, 
 
 Nor ever did in shade of Tempo sit. 
 
 And Muses scorn with vulgar brains to dwell ; 
 
 Poor lay-man I, for sacred rites unfit. 
 
 Some do I hear of Poet's fury tell. 
 
 But (God wot) wot not what they mean by it ; 
 
 And this I swear by blackest brook of hell, 
 
 I am no pick-purse of another's wit. 
 
 How falls it then, that with so smooth an ease 
 
 My thoughts I speak, and what I speak doth flow 
 
 In verse, and that my verse best wits doth please T 
 
 Guess mc the cau.se — what is it thus ? — fye, no. 
 
 Or so ? — much less. How then ? sure thus it is, 
 
 My lips are sweet, inspired with Stella's kiss. 
 
 Of all the kings that ever here did reign, 
 Kdward, named Fourth, as first in praise I name, 
 Not for his fair outside, nor well-lined brain — 
 Although less gifts imp feathers oft on Fame. 
 Nor that he could, young-wise, wise-valiant, frame 
 Ilis sire's revenge, join'd with a kingdom's gain ; 
 And, gain'd by Mars could yet mad Mars so tame, 
 That lliihince wrigh'd what Sword did late obtain. 
 Nor that lie made the Floure-dc-hice so 'fraid. 
 Though strongly hedged of bloody Lions' paws, 
 That witty Lewis to him a tribute paid. 
 Nor this, nor that, nor any such small causes 
 But only, for this worthy knight durst prove 
 To lose his crown rather than fail his love. 
 
 happy Thames, that didst my Stella bear, 
 
 1 saw thyself, with many a smiling line 
 Upon thy cheerful face, Joy's livery wear, 
 While those fair planets on thy streams did shine; 
 The boat for joy could not to dance forbear, 
 "While wanton winds, with beauty so divine 
 Ravish'd, stay'd not, till in her golden hair 
 They did themselves (O sweetest pri.son) twine. 
 And fain those jEoI's youth there would their stay 
 Have made ; but, forced by nature still to fly, 
 First did with pufling kiss those locks display. 
 She, so dishevell'd, blush'd ; from window I 
 With sight thereof cried out, O fair disgrace, 
 
 Let honour's self to thee grant highest place 1 
 
 Highway, since you my chief Parnassus be ; 
 And tliat my Aluse, to some ears not unswcet. 
 Tempers her words to trampling liorsis' fcct. 
 More soft than to a chamber melody ; 
 Now blessed You bear onward blessed Me 
 To Iler, where I my heart safe left shall meet. 
 My Muse and I must you of duty greet 
 AVith thanks and wishes, wishing thankfully. 
 Be you still fair, honour'd by public heed. 
 By no encroachment wrong'd, nor time forgot ; 
 Nor blamed for blood, nor shamed for sinful deed. 
 And that you know, I envy you no lot 
 Of highest wish, I wish you so much bliss, 
 Hundreds of years you Stblul'b feet may kiss. 
 
 Of the foregoing, the first, the second, and 
 the hist sonnet, are my favourites. But the 
 general beauty of them all is, that they are 
 ao perfectly charactei'istical. The spirit of 
 " learning and of chivalry,"— of which union, 
 Spenser has entitled Sydney to have been 
 the "president," — shines through them. I 
 confess I can see nothing of the "jejune " or 
 "frigid " in them ; much less of the "stiff" 
 and " cumbrous " — which I have sometimes 
 heard objected to the Arcadia. The verse 
 runs off swiftly and gallantly. It might have 
 been tuned to the trumpet ; or tempered (as 
 himself expresses it) to " tram])ling hoi-ses' 
 feet." They abound in felicitous phrases — 
 
 O heav'nly Fool, thy most kiss-worthy face — 
 
 Slh Sonnet. 
 
 Sweet pillows, sweetest bed ; 
 
 A chamber deaf to noise, and blind to light ; 
 A rosy garland, and a weary head. 
 
 2nd Sonnet.' 
 
 Thot sweet enemy, — France — 
 
 5th Sonnet. _ 
 
 But they are not rich in words only in 
 vague and mdocaiised feelings — the failing 
 too much of some poetry of the present day 
 — they are full, material, and circumstan- 
 tiated. Time and place appropriates every 
 one of them. It is not a fever of passion v- 
 wasting itself upon a thin diet of dainty 
 
NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO. 
 
 453 
 
 words, but a transcendent passion pervading 
 and illuminating action, pui-suits, studies, 
 feats of arms, the opinions of contemporaries 
 and his judgment of them. An historical 
 thread runs through them, which almost 
 affixes a date to them ; marks the when and 
 where they were written. 
 
 I have dwelt the longer upon what I con- 
 ceive the merit of these poems, because I 
 have been hurt by the wantonness (I wish I 
 could treat it by a gentler name) with which 
 W. H. takes evei-y occasion of insulting the 
 memory of Sir Philip Sydiiey. But the de- 
 cisions of the Author of Table Talk, &c. 
 (most profound and subtle where they are, 
 as for the most part, just) are more safely to 
 be relied upon, on subjects and authors he 
 has a partiality for, than on such as he has 
 conceived an accidental prejudice against. 
 Milton wrote sonnets, and was a king-hater ; 
 and it was congenial perhajis to sacrifice a 
 courtier to a patriot. But I was unwilling 
 to lose a, fine idea from my mind. The noble 
 images, passions, sentiments, and poetical 
 delicacies of character, scattered all over the 
 Arcadia (spite of some stiffness and encum- 
 berment), justify to me the chai-acter which 
 his contemporaries have left us of the writer. 
 I cannot think with the " Critic," that Sir 
 Philip Sydney was that opprobrious thing 
 which a foolish nobleman in his insolent 
 hostility chose to term him. I call to mind 
 the epitaph made on him, to guide me to 
 juster thoughts of him ; and 1 repose upon 
 the beautiful lines in the " Friends Passion 
 for his Astrophel," printed with the Elegies 
 of Spenser and others. 
 
 You knew — -who knew not Astrophel ? 
 (That I should live to say I knew, 
 
 And have not in possession still !) — 
 Things known permit me to renew — 
 Of him you know his merit such, 
 I cannot say — you hear — too much. 
 
 Within these woods of Arcady 
 
 He chief delight iind pleasure took ; 
 
 And on the mountain I'artheny, 
 
 Upon the crystal liquid brook, 
 The Muses met him every day, 
 That taught him sing, to write, and say. 
 
 When he descended down the mount, 
 Ilis personage seemed most divine : 
 A thousand graces one might count 
 Upon his lovely cheerful eyne. 
 
 To hear him speak, and sweetly smile. 
 You were in Paradise the while, 
 
 A sivcet attractive kind of grace ; 
 
 A full assurance given by looks; 
 
 Continual comfort in a face. 
 
 The lineaments of Gospel books — 
 I trow that count'nunce cannot lye, 
 Whose thoughts are legible in the eye. 
 
 Above all others this is he, 
 Which erst approved in his song, 
 That love and honour might agree, 
 And that pure love will do no wrong. 
 
 Sweet saints, it is no sin or blame 
 
 To love a man of virtuous name. 
 
 Did never love so sweetly breathe 
 
 In any mortal breast bclore : 
 
 Did never Muse inspire beneath 
 
 A Poet's brain with finer store. 
 
 He wrote of Love with high conceit, 
 And Beauty rcar'd above her height. 
 
 Or let any one read the deeper sorrows (grief 
 running into rage) in the Poem, — the last in 
 the collection accompanying the above, — 
 which from internal testimony I believe to 
 be Lord Brooke's — beginning with " Silence 
 augmenteth grief," and then seriously ask 
 himself, whether the subject of such absorb- 
 ing and confounding regrets could have been 
 that thing which Lord Oxford termed him. 
 
 NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO. 
 
 Dan Stuart once»told us, that he did not 
 remember that he ever deliberately wqilked 
 into the Exhibition at Somerset House in his 
 life. He miglit occasionally have escoi'ted a 
 party of ladies across the way that were 
 gouig in ; but he never went in of his 
 own head. Yet the office of the " Morning 
 Post" newspaper stood then just where it 
 
 I does now — we are carrying you back, Reader, 
 some thirty years or more — with its gilt- 
 globe-topt front facing that emporiimi of our 
 artists' grand Annual Exposure. We some- 
 times wisli that we had observed the same 
 abstinence with Daniel. 
 
 A word or two of D. S. He ever appeared 
 to us one of the finest-tempered of Editors 
 
454 
 
 NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO. 
 
 Perry, of the Morning Chronicle, was equally but, above all, dress, ftimished the material. 
 jjleasant, Avith a da.«;h, no slight one either, of The length of no paragraph was to exceed 
 tlie courtier. S. was frank, plain, and English seven lines. Shorter they might be, but they 
 all over. We have worked for both these must be poignant. 
 
 gentlemen. A fashi(jn of Jlesh, or rather joinir-coloured 
 
 It is soothing to contemplate the head of hose for the ladies, luckily coming up at the 
 
 the Ganges ; to trace the first little bubblings juncture when we were on our probation for 
 
 the place of Chief J ester to S.'s Paper, esta- 
 blished our reputation in that line. We 
 were pronounced a " capital hand." O the 
 conceits which we varied upon red in all its 
 prismatic differences ! from the trite and 
 
 of a mighty river, 
 
 With holy reverence to approach the rocks, 
 Whence glide the streams renowned in ancient song. 
 
 Fired with a perusal of the Abyssinian 
 Pilgrim's exploratory ramblings after the ! obvious flower of Cytherea, to the flaming 
 cradle of the infant Nilus, we well remember costume of the lady that has her sitting 
 on one fine summer holyday (a " whole day's upon " many waters." Then there was the 
 leave " we called it at Christ's hospital) sal- j collateral topic of ankles. What an occasion 
 lying forth at rise of sun, not very well pro- to a truly chaste writer, like ourself, of 
 visioned either fur such an undertaking, to touching that nice brink, and yet never 
 trace the current of the New River — IMiddle- i tumbling over it, of a seemingly ever approxi- 
 toiiian stream ! — to its scaturient source, as we mating something '" not quite proper ; " while, 
 had read, in meadows by fair Amwell. like a skilful posture-master, balancing be- 
 Gallantly did we commence our solitary twixt decorums and their opposites, he keeps 
 quest — for it was essenti;U to the dignity of the line, from which a hair'.s-breadth devia- 
 a Discovert, that no eye of sclioolboy, save tiou is destruction ; hovering in the confines 
 our own, should beam on the detection. By of light and darkness, or where " both seem 
 flowery spots, and verdant lanes skirting ' either ;" a hazy uncertain delicacy; Auto- 
 Hornsey, Hope trained us on in many a lycus-like in the Play, still putting off his 
 baffling turn ; endless, hopeless meanders, as expectant auditory with " Whoop, do me no 
 it seemed ; or as if the jealous waters had harm, good man!" But, above all, that 
 dodged us, reluctant to have the humble spot : conceit arrided us most at that time, 
 of their nativity revealed ; till spent, and and still tickles our midriff to remember, 
 nigh famished, before set of the same sun, we I where, allusively to the flight of Astroea 
 sate down somewhere by Bowes Farm near ' — ultima Cctlestum terras reliquit — we pro- 
 Tottenham, with a titlie of our proposed nounced — in reference to the stockings still 
 labours only yet iiccnjmpiished ; sorely con- — that Modesty, taking her final leave 
 vinced in spirit, that that Brucian enterprise of mortals, her last Blush was visible 
 was as yet too arduous for our young in her ascent to the Heavens bv the 
 
 tract of the glowing instep. This 
 might be called the crowning conceit : and 
 was esteemed tolerable writing in those 
 days. 
 
 But the fashion of jokes, with all other 
 things, ])asses away ; as did tlie transient 
 mode which had so favoured us. The ankles 
 of our fair friends in a few weeks began to 
 reassume their whiteness, and left us scarce 
 a leg to stautl upon. Other female whims 
 followed, but none metliought so pregnant, 
 so iuvitatory of shrewd conceits, and mora 
 
 shoulders. 
 
 Not more refreshing to the thirsty curio- 
 sity of the traveller is the tracing of some 
 mighty waters up to their shallow fontlet, 
 than it is to a pleased and candid reader to 
 go back to the inexperienced essays, the first 
 callow flights in authorship, of some esta- 
 blished name in literature ; from the Gnat 
 which preluded to the yEueid, to the Duck 
 which iSamuel Johnson trod on. 
 
 In those days every Morning Paper, as an 
 essential X'etainer to its establishment, kept 
 
 an author, who was bountl to furnish daily a \ than single meanings, 
 quiuitum of witty paragraphs. Sixpence a Somebody has said, that to swallow six 
 joke — and it was thought pretty high too — cross-buns daily, consecutively for a fortnight, 
 was Dan Stuart's settled remuneration in would surfeit the stoutest digestion. But to 
 these cases. The chat of the day, scandal, have to furnish as many jokes daily, and 
 
NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO. 
 
 455 
 
 that not for a fortnight, but for a long 
 twelvemonth, as we were constrained to do, 
 was a little harder exaction. " Man goeth 
 forth to his work until the evening " — from 
 a reasonable hour in the morning, we pre- 
 sume it was meant. Now, as our main 
 occup.ation took us up from eight till five 
 every day in the City ; and as our evening 
 hours, at that time of life, had generally to 
 do with anything rather than business, it 
 follows, that the only time we could spare 
 for this manufactory of jokes — our supple- 
 mentary livelihood, that supplied us in every 
 waut beyond mere bread and cheese — was 
 exactly that part of the day which (as we 
 have heard of No Man's Land) may be fitly 
 denominated No Man's Time ; that is, no 
 time in which a man ought to be up, and 
 awake, in. To speak more plainly, it is that 
 time of an hour, or an hour and a half's 
 duration, in w'hich a man, whose occasions 
 call him up so preposterously, has to wait for 
 his breakfast. 
 
 O those head-aches at dawn of day, when 
 at five, or half past five in summer, and 
 not much later in the dark seasons, we were 
 compelled to rise, having been perhaps not 
 above four hours in bed — (for we were no 
 go-to-beds with the lamb, though we 
 anticipated the lark ofttimes in her rising — 
 we like a parting cup at midnight, as all 
 young men did before these effeminate times, 
 and to have our friends about us — we were 
 not constellated under Aquarius, that watery 
 sign, and therefore incapable of Bacchus, 
 cold, washy, bloodless — we were none of 
 your Basilian water-sponges, nor had taken 
 our degrees at Mount Ague — we were right 
 toping Capulets, jolly comp;inions, we and 
 they) — but to have to get up, as we said 
 before, curtailed of half our fair sleep, fivsting, 
 with only a dim vista of refreshing bohea, 
 in the distance — to be necessitated to rouse 
 ourselves at the detestable rap of an okl hag 
 of a domestic, who seemed to take a diabolical 
 pleasure in her announcement that it was 
 " time to rise ;" and whose chappy knuckles 
 we have often yearned to amputate,; and 
 string them up at our chamber door, t6 be a 
 terror to all such unseasonable rest-breakers 
 in future 
 
 "ITacil" and sweet, as VirgH sings, had 
 been the " descending " of the over-night, 
 balmy the first sinking of the heavy head 
 
 upon the pUlow ; but to get up, as he goes 
 on to say, 
 
 — rcvocare gradus, superasqne evadere ad auras — 
 
 and to get up moreover to make jokes with 
 malice prepended — there was the " labour," 
 there the " work." 
 
 No Egyptian taskmaster ever devised a 
 slavery like to that, our slavery. No fractious 
 operants ever turned out for half the tyranny 
 which this necessity exercised upon us. 
 Half a dozen jests in a day, (bating Sundays 
 too,) why, it seems nothing ! "We make 
 twice the number every day in our lives as 
 a matter of course, and claim no Sabbatic.d 
 exemptions. But then they come into our 
 head. But when the head has to go out to 
 them — when the mountain must go to 
 Mahomet — 
 
 Reader, try it for once, only for one short 
 twelvemonth. 
 
 It was not every week that a fashion of 
 pink stockings came up ; but mostly, instead 
 of it, some rugged untractable subject ; some 
 topic impossible to be contorted into the 
 risible ; some feature, upon which no smile 
 could play ; some flint, from which no process 
 of ingenuity could procure a scintillation. 
 There they lay ; there your appointed tale 
 of brick-making was set before you, which 
 you must finish, with or without straw, as 
 it happened. The craving Dragon — the Public 
 — like him in Bel's temple — must be fed ; it 
 expected its daily rations ; and Daniel, and 
 ourselves, to do us justice, did the best we 
 could on this side bursting him. 
 
 WhUe we were wringing out coy spright- 
 linesses for the Post, and writhing under the 
 toil of what is called " easy writing," Bob 
 Allen, our quondam schoolfellow, w;is tapping 
 his impracticable brains in a like service for 
 the "Oracle." Not that Robert troubled 
 himself much about wit. If his paragraphs 
 had a sprightly air about them, it was 
 sufficient. He carried this nonchidance so 
 far at last, that a matter of intelligence, and 
 that no very important one, was not seldom 
 palmed upon his employers for a good jest ; 
 for example sake — '' Walking yesterda)/ monv- 
 inq casually down Snow Hill, who sliould we 
 meet but Mr. Deputy Humphreys / we rejoice 
 to add, that the worthy Deputy appeared to 
 enjoy a good state of health. We do not ever 
 remember to have seen him look better'' Thia 
 
456 
 
 NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO. 
 
 gentleman so surprisingly met upon Snow 
 Hill, from some peculiarities in gait or 
 gesture, was a constant butt for mirth to the 
 small paragraph-mongers of the day ; and 
 our friend thouglit that he might have his 
 fling at him wiih the rest. We met A. in 
 Holborn shortly after tliis extraordinary 
 rencounter, which he told with tears of 
 satisfaction in his eyes, and chuckling at the 
 anticipated effects of its announcement next 
 day in the paper. TVe did not quite com- 
 prehend where the wit of it lay at the time ; 
 nor was it easy to be detected, when the 
 thing came out advantaged by type and 
 letter-press. He had better have met any- 
 thing that morning than a Common Council 
 Man. His services were shortly after 
 dispensed with, on the plea that his para- 
 graphs of late had been deficient in point. 
 The one in question, it must be owned, had 
 an ail*, in the opening especially, proper to 
 awaken curiosity ; and the sentiment, or 
 moral, wears the aspect of humanity and 
 good neighbourly feeling. But somehow the 
 conclusion was not judged altogether to 
 answer to the magnificent promise of the 
 premises. We traced our friend's pen after- 
 wards in the " True Briton," the " Star," the 
 "Traveller," — from all which he was suc- 
 cessively dismissed, the Proprietors having 
 " no further occasion for his services." 
 Nothing was easier than to detect him. 
 When wit failed, or topics ran low, there 
 constantly appeared the following — "/i{ is 
 not geiuralbj known that the three Blue Balls 
 at the Pawnbrokers' shops are the ancient arms 
 of Lombardy. The Lombards were the first 
 nioncy-hrokers in Europe." Bob has done 
 more to set the public right on this important 
 point of blazonry, tlian the whole College of 
 I L raids. 
 
 The ai)pointnie)it of a regular wit has 
 long ceased to be a part of the economy of a 
 Morning Paper. Editors find their own 
 jokes, or do as well without them. Parson 
 Este, and Topham, brought up the set 
 custom of " witty paragraphs " first in the 
 " World." Boaden was a reigning para- 
 graphist in his day, and succeeded poor 
 Allen in the " Oracle." But, as we said, the 
 fashion. of jokes passes away ; and it would 
 be (liffi(;ult to discover in the biographer of 
 Mrs. Siildons, any traces of tliat vivacity and 
 lancy which charmed the whole town at the 
 
 commencement of the present centiiry. Even 
 the prelusive delicacies of the present writer 
 — the curt "Astrsean allusion" — would be 
 thought pedantic and out of date, in these 
 da\s. 
 
 From the oflfice of the !Morning Post (for 
 we may as well exhaust our Newspaper 
 Reminiscences at once) by change of property 
 in tlie paper, we were transferred, mortifying 
 exchange! to the office of the Albion 
 Newspaper, late Rjickstrow's Museum, in 
 Fleet-street. What a transition — from a 
 handsome apai-tment, from rose-wood desks, 
 and silver inkstands, to an office — no office, 
 but a den rather, but just redeemed from 
 the occupation of dead monsters, of which it 
 seemed redolent — from the centre of loyalty 
 and fashion, to a fucus of vulgarity and 
 sedition ! Here in murky closet, inadequate 
 from its square contents to the receipt of 
 the two bodies of Editor, and humble 
 paragraph-maker, together at one time, sat 
 in the discharge of his new editorial functions 
 (the " Bigod " of Elia) the redoubted John 
 Fenwick. 
 
 F., without a guinea in his pocket, and 
 having left not many in the pockets of his 
 friends wliom he might command, liad 
 purchased (on tick doubtless) the whole and 
 sole Eilitorship, Proprietorship, with all the 
 rights and titles (such as tliey wore worth) 
 of the Albion from one Lovell ; of whom we 
 know nothing, save that he had stood in the 
 pillory for a libel on the Prince of Wales. 
 With this hopeless concern — for it had been 
 sinking ever since its commencement, and 
 coukl now reckon upon not more than a 
 hundred subscribers — F. resolutely detei'- 
 mined upon pulling down the Government 
 in tlie first instance, and making both our 
 fortunes by way of corollary. For seven 
 weeks and more tlid this infatuated democrat 
 go about borrowing seven-shilling pieces, 
 and lesser coin, to meet the daily demands 
 of the Stamp office, which allowed no credit 
 to publications of that side in politics. An 
 outcast fi'om politer bread, we attached our 
 small talents to the forlorn fortunes of our 
 friend. Our occupation now was to writo 
 treason. 
 
 liecolleetions of feelings — whicli were all 
 that now remained from our first boyish 
 lieats kindled by the French Ilevulution, 
 when^ if we were misleil, we errecl in the 
 
ON THE PRODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART. 
 
 457 
 
 company of some who are accounted very 
 good men now — rather than any tendency 
 at this time to Republican doctrines — assisted 
 us in assvmiing a style of writing, while the 
 paper lasted, consonant in no very under 
 tone — to the right earnest fanaticism of F. 
 Our cue was now to insinuate, rather than 
 recommend, possible abdications. Blocks, 
 axes, Whitehall tribunals, were covered with 
 flowers of so cunning a periphrasis — as 
 Mr. Bayes says, never naming the thing 
 directly — that the keen eye of an Attorney 
 General was insufficient to detect the lurking 
 snake among them. There were times, 
 indeed, when we sighed for our more gentle- 
 man-like occupation under Stuart. But 
 with change of masters it is ever change 
 of service. Already one paragraph, and 
 another, as we learned afterwards from a 
 gentleman at the Treasury, had begun to 
 
 bo marked at that office, with a view of its 
 V)eing submitted at least to the attention of 
 the proper Law Officers — when an unlucky, 
 or rather lucky epigram from our pen, aimed 
 
 at Sir J s M h, who was on the eve 
 
 of departing for India to reap the fruits of 
 his apostacy, as F. pronounced it, (it is hardly 
 worth particularising,) happening to offend 
 the nice sense of Lord, or, as he then 
 delighted to be called, Citizen Stanhope, 
 deprived F. at once of the Itist hopes of a 
 guinea from the last patron that luul stuck 
 by us ; and breaking up our establishment, 
 left us to the safe, but somewhat mortifying, 
 neglect of the Crown Lawyers. It was about 
 this time, or a little earlier, that Dan Stuart 
 made that curious confession to uis, that he 
 had " never deliberately walked into an 
 Exhibition at Somerset House in his life." 
 
 BARRENNESS OF THE IMAGINATIVE FACULTY IN THE PRODUCTIONS 
 
 OF MODERN ART. 
 
 Hogarth excepted, can we produce any 
 one painter within the last fifty years, or 
 since the humour of exhibiting began, that 
 has treated a story iraaginatively ? By this 
 we mean, upon whom his subject has so 
 acted, that it has seemed to direct him — not 
 to be arranged by him ? Any upon whom 
 its leading or collateral points have impressed 
 themselves so tyrannically, that he dared not 
 treat it otherwise, lest he should falsify a 
 yrevel ation ? Any that has imparted to his 
 compositions, not merely so much truth as is 
 enough to convey a story with clearness, but 
 that.indiy idualisiug p roperty, whjch should 
 keep t.hfi subject so ti-eated distinct in 
 featurfi__irpm .every other subject, however 
 similar, and to common apprehensions almost 
 identical ; so as that we might say, this and 
 tliis pax't could have found an appropriate 
 place in no other picture in the world but 
 this ? Is there anythijig in modern art — we 
 will not demand that it should be equal — 
 but in any way analogous to wliat Titian has 
 effected, in tliat wonderful brinidn<i together 
 of two tim es in the "Ariadne," in the 
 National Gallery ? Precipitous, with his 
 
 reeling satyr rout about him, re-peopling and 
 re-illuming suddenly the waste places, drunk 
 with a new fury beyond the grape, I^acclnis, 
 born in fire, fire-like flings himself at the 
 Cretan. This is the ti me_ present. With 
 this telling of the story — an artist, and no 
 ordinary one, might remain richly proud. 
 Guido, in his harmonious version of it, saw 
 no further. But from the depths of the 
 imaginative spirit Titian has recalled past 
 time, and laid it contributory with the present 
 to one simultaneous effect. With the desert 
 all ringing with the mad cymbnls of his 
 followers, made lucid with the presence and 
 new offers of a god, — as if unconscious of 
 Bacchus, or but idly casting her eyes as upon 
 some uncoucerning pageant — her soul undis- 
 tracted from Theseus — Ariadne is still pacin^f 
 the solitary shore in as much heart-silence, 
 and in almost the same local solitude, vvitli 
 which she awoke at day-break to catch the 
 forlorn last glances of the sail that bore away 
 the Athenian. 
 
 Here are two points miraculously co- 
 unithig ; fierce society, with the feeling of 
 solitude still absolute ; noon-day revelations, 
 
458 
 
 ON THE PRODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART. 
 
 with the accidents of the dull grey davra 
 unquenched and lingering ; tjie presen t 
 B;tcchu3 ,jv it.>i <^^p jnrrg^ Ari a diie ; ttW<^ st-nc ifa) 
 w ith doubj eTime ; separatejand harmonising. 
 Had the artist made the woman one shade 
 less indiflFerent to the God ; still more, had 
 she expressed a rapture at his advent, where 
 would have been the story of the mighty 
 desolation of the heart previous ? merged in 
 the insii)id accident of a flattering offer met 
 with a welcome acceptance. The broken 
 heart for Theseus was not lightly to be 
 pieced up by a God. 
 
 We have before us a fine rough print, 
 from a picture by Ra phael in the Vatican. 
 It is the Presentation of the new-born Eve 
 to Adam by the Almighty. A fairer mother 
 of mankind we might imagine, and a goodlier 
 sire perhaps of men since born. But these 
 are matters subordinate to the conception of 
 the situation, displayed in this extraordinary 
 production. A tolerably modern artist 
 would have been satisfied with tempering 
 certain raptures of connubial anticipation, i 
 with a suitable acknowledgment to the j 
 Giver of the blessing, in the countenance of 
 the fii-st bridegroom ; something like the 
 divided attention of the child (Adam was 
 here a child-man) between the given toy, 
 and tlie mother who had just blest it with 
 the bauble. This is the obvious, the first- 
 sight view, the superficial. An artist of a 
 higher graile, considering the awful jiresence 
 they were in, would have taken care to 
 subtract something from the expi-ession of 
 the more human passion, and to heighten the 
 more spiritual one. This would be as much 
 as an exhibition-goer, from the ojjening of 
 Somerset House to last year's show, has been 
 encouraged to look for. It is obvious to hint 
 at a lower expression yet, in a picture that, 
 for respects of drawing and colouring, might 
 be deemed not wholly inadmissible within 
 these art-fostering walls, in which the 
 rajitures should be as ninety-nine, the grati- 
 tude as one, or perhaps zero ! By neither 
 the one passion nor the other has Baphajj l 
 expounded the situation^of Adam. { Sing ly 
 upon his brow sits th eabsorJiilig^aL'Qae-of 
 "-^woiKler at the cre ated miracle ^ 'i^hojiiojiient 
 is se ized Uy the JLi iiitive artlstj perhaps not 
 BelPconsci(jU3 of his art, in which neither of 
 the conflicting emotioua — a moment how 
 abstracted ! — have had time to spring up, or 
 
 to battle for indecorous ma.stery. — We have 
 seen a landsctape of a justly admired neoteric, 
 in which he aimed at delineating a fiction, 
 one of the most severely beautiful in antiquity 
 — the gardens of the Hesperides. To do 
 
 Mr. justice, he had painted a laudable 
 
 orchard, with fitting seclusion, and a veritable 
 dragon (of which a Polypheme, by Poussin, 
 is somehow a fac-simile for the situation), 
 looking over into the world shut out back- 
 wai'ds, so that none but a "still-climbing 
 Hercules " could hope to catch a peep at the 
 admired Ternary of Recluses. No conven- 
 tual porter could keep his eyes better than 
 this custos with the " lidless eyes." He not 
 only sees that none do intrude into that 
 privacy, but, as clear as daylight, that none 
 but Hercules aut Diabolus by any manner of 
 means can. So far all is weU. We have 
 absolute solitude here or nowhere. Ab extra 
 the damsels are snug enough. But here the 
 artist's courage seems to have failed liim. 
 He began to pity his pretty charge, and, to 
 comfort the irksomeness, has peopled their 
 solitude with a bevy of lair attendants, maids 
 of honour, or ladies of the bed-chamber, 
 according to the approved etiquette at a 
 court of the nineteenth century ; giving to 
 the whole scene the air of a fete champetre, if 
 we will but excuse the absence of the gentle- 
 men. This is well, and AVatteauish. But 
 what is become of the solitary mystery — the 
 
 Daughters three, 
 That sing around the golden tree t 
 
 This is not the way in which Poussin would 
 have treated this subject. 
 
 The paintings, or rather the stupendous 
 architectural designs, of a modern .u'tist, have 
 been urged as objections to the theory of our 
 motto. They are of a character, we confess, 
 to stagger it. His towered structures are of 
 the highest order of the material sublime. 
 Whether they were dreams, or transcripts of 
 some elder workmanship — Assyrian ruins 
 old — restored by this mighty artist, they 
 satisfy our most stretched and craving con- 
 ceptions of the glories of the antique world. 
 It is a pity that they were ever peopleil. On 
 that sitkf, the imagination of the artist halts, 
 and ajipeai-s defective. Let us examine the 
 point of the story in the " Belshazzjir's 
 Feast." We will introduce it by an apposite 
 anecdote. 
 
ON THE PRODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART. 
 
 469 
 
 The court historians of the day record, that 
 at the first dinner given by the l.ate King 
 (then Prince RegeTit) at the Pavilion, the 
 following characteristic frolic was played off. 
 The guests were select and admiring ; the 
 banquet profuse and admirable ; the lights 
 lustrous and oriental ; the eye was perfectly 
 dazzled with the display of plate, among 
 ■which the great gold salt-cellar, brought from 
 the regalia in the Tower for this especial 
 purpose, itself a tower ! stood conspicuous 
 for its magnitude. And now the Rev. * * * *, 
 the then admired court Chaplain, was pro- 
 ceeding with the grace, when, at a signal 
 given, the lights were suddenly overcast, and 
 a huge transparency was discovered, in which 
 glittered in gold letters — 
 
 "Brighton — Earthquake— Swallow-up- 
 alive ! " 
 
 Imagine the confusion of the guests ; the 
 Georges and garters, jewels, bracelets, moulted 
 upon the occasion ! The fans dropped, and 
 picked up the next morning by the sly court- 
 pages ! Mrs. Fitz-what's-her-name fainting, 
 and the Countess of * * * holding the smell- 
 ing-bottle, till the good-liumoured Prince 
 caused harmony to be restored, by calling in 
 fresh candles, and declaring that the whole 
 was nothing but a pantomime hoax, got up 
 by the ingenious Mr. Farley, of Covent 
 Garden, from hints which his Eoyal High- 
 ness himself had furnished ! Then imagine 
 the infinite applause that followed, the 
 mutual rallyings, the declarations that " they 
 were not much frightened," of the assembled 
 galaxy. 
 
 The point of time in the picture exactly 
 answers to the appearance of the trans- 
 parency in the anecdote. The huddle, the 
 flutter, the bustle, the escape, the alarm, and 
 the mock alai-m ; the prettinesses heightened 
 by consternation ; the courtier's fear which 
 w;is flattery ; and the lady's which was 
 atfectation ; all that we may conceive to 
 have taken place in a mob of Brighton 
 courtiers, sympathising with the well-acted 
 surprise of their sovereign ; all this, p,nd no 
 more, is exhibited by the well-dressed lords 
 and ladies in the Hall" of Belus. Just this 
 sort of consternation we have seen among a 
 flock of disquieted wild geese at the report 
 only of a gun having gone ofl" ! 
 
 But is this vulgar fright, this mere animal 
 
 anxiety for the preservation of their persons, 
 — such as we have witnessed at a theatre, 
 when a slight alarm of fire has been given — 
 an adequate exponent of a supernatural 
 terror ? the way in which the finger of God, 
 writing judgments, would have been met by 
 the withered conscience ? There is a human 
 fear, and a divine fear. The one is disturbeil, 
 restless, and bent upon escape. The other is 
 bowed down, efi'ortless, passive. When the 
 spirit appeared before Eli|)haz in the visions 
 of the night, and the hair of his flesh stood 
 up, was it in the thoughts of the Temanite 
 to ring the bell of his chamber, or to call up 
 the servants ? But let us see in the text 
 what there is to justify all this huddle of 
 vulgar consternation. 
 
 From the words of Daniel it appears that 
 Belshazzar had made a great feast to a 
 thousand of his lords, and drank wine before 
 the thousand. The golden and silver vessels 
 are gorgeously enumerated, with the princes, 
 the king's concubines, and his wives. Then 
 follows— 
 
 " In the same hour came forth fingers of a 
 man's hand, and wrote over against the 
 candlestick upon the plaster of the wall of 
 the king's palace ; and the king saw the part 
 of the hand that wrote. Then the king's 
 countenance was changed, and his thoughts 
 troubled him, so that the joints of his loins 
 were loosened, and his knees smote one 
 against another." 
 
 This is the plain text. By no hint can it 
 be otherwise inferred, but that the appearance 
 was solely confined to the fancy of Belshazzar, 
 that his single brain was troubled. Not a 
 word is spoken of its being seen by any else 
 there present, not even by the queen herself, 
 who merely undertakes for the interpretation 
 of the phenomenon, as related to her, doubt- 
 less, by her husband. The lords are simply 
 said to be astonished ; i. e. at the trouble and 
 the change of countenance in their sovereign. 
 Even the prophet does not appear to have 
 seen the scroll, which the king saw. He 
 recals it only, as Joseph did the Dream to 
 the King of Egypt. " Then was the part of 
 the hand sent Irom him [the Lord], and this 
 writing was written." He speaks of the 
 phantiism as past. 
 
 Then what becomes of this needless multi- 
 plication of the miracle ? this message to a royal 
 conscience, singly expressed — for it was said, 
 
160 
 
 ON THE PRODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART. 
 
 " Thy kingdom is divided," — simultaneously 
 impressed upon the fancies of a thousand 
 courtiers, who were implied in it neither 
 directly nor grammatically 1 
 
 But admitting the artist's own version of 
 the story, and that the sight was seen also by 
 the thousand courtiers — let it have been 
 visible to all Babylon — as the knees of Bel- 
 shazzar were shaken, and his coimtenance 
 troubled, even so would the knees of every 
 man in Babylon, and their countenances, as 
 of an individual man, have been troubled ; 
 bowed, bent down, so would they have re- 
 mained, stupor-fixed, with no thought of 
 struggling with that inevitable judgment. 
 
 Not all that is optically possible to be 
 seen, is to be shown in evei-y picture. The 
 eye delightedly dwells upon the brilliant 
 >^mdividualities in a " Marriage at Cana," by 
 Veronese, or Titian, to the very texture and 
 colour of the wedding garments, the ring 
 glittering upon the bride's fingers, the metal 
 and fashion of the wine-])ots ; for at such 
 seasons there is leisure and luxury to be 
 curious. But in a " day of judgment," or in 
 a " day of lesser horrors, yet divine," as at 
 the impious feast of Belshazzar, the eye 
 should see, as the actual eye of an agent or 
 patient in the immediate scene would see, 
 only in masses and iudistinction. Not only 
 the female attire and jewelry exposed to the 
 critical eye of fashion, as minutely as the 
 dresses in a Lady's Magazine, in the criticised 
 pictui-e, — but perhaps the curiosities of ana- 
 tomical science, and studied diversities of 
 posture, in the falling angels and sinners of 
 Michael Angelo, — have no business in their 
 great subjects. There was no leisure for them. 
 
 By a wise falsification, the great masters 
 of painting got at theFr true conclusions ; by 
 not showing the actual appca)'ances, that is, 
 all that was to be seen at any given moment 
 by an indifferent eye," but only what the eye 
 might be supposed to see in the doing or 
 suffering of some ijorteutous action, tjup- 
 pose the moment of the swallowing up of 
 I*ompeii. There they were to be seen — 
 houses, columns, architectural proportions, 
 differences of public and private buildings, 
 men and women at their standing occupa- 
 tions, the diversified thousand postures, 
 attitudes, dresses, in some confusion truly, 
 but physically they were visible. But what 
 eye saw them at that eclipsing moment, 
 
 which reduces confusion to a kind of unity, 
 and when the senses are upturned from their 
 proprieties, when sight and liearing axe a 
 feeling only ? A thousand years have pa.ssed, 
 and we are at leisure to contemplate the 
 weaver fixed standing at hia shuttle, the 
 baker at his oven, and to turn over with 
 antiquarian coolness the pots and pans of 
 Pompeii. 
 
 " Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon, and 
 thou. Moon, in the valley of Ajalon." Who, 
 in reading this magnificent Hebraism, in his 
 conception, sees aught but the heroic son of 
 Nun, with the outstretched-arm, and the 
 greater and lesser light obsequious ? Doubt* 
 less there were to be seen hill and dale, and 
 chariots and horsemen, on open plain, or 
 winding by secret defiles, and all the circum- 
 stances and stratagems of war. But whose 
 eyes would have been conscious of this array 
 at the inter})osition of the synchi'onic mii-acle ? 
 Yet in tlie picture of this subject by the artist 
 of the " Belshazzar's Feast " — no ignoble 
 work eithei- — the marshalling and landscape 
 of the war is everything, the miracle sinks 
 into an anecdote of the day ; and the eye 
 may " dart through rank and file travei-se " 
 for some minutes, before it shall discover, 
 among his armed followers, which is Joshua ! 
 Not modern art alone, but ancient, where 
 only it is to be found if an^'where, can be 
 detected erring, from defect of this imagina- 
 tive faculty. The world has nothing to show 
 of the preternatural in painting, transcending 
 the figure of Lazar us bursting his grave- 
 clothes, in the great picture at Angerstein"s. 
 It seems a thing between two beings. A 
 ghastly horror at itself struggles with newly- 
 apjH-ehendiug gratitude at second life be- 
 stowed. It cannot forget that it was a ghost, k 
 It has liardly felt that it is a body. It has 
 to tell of the woidd of spii'its. — Was it from 
 a feeling, that the crowd of half-impassioned 
 liy-stantlers, and the still more irrelevant 
 herd of passers-by at a distance, who have 
 not heard, or but faintly have been told of 
 the passing miracle, admirable as they are 
 in design and hue — for it is a glorifieil work 
 — do not respoml adequately to the action — 
 that tlie single figure of the Lazarus lias 
 been attributed to Michael Angelo, and the 
 mighty Sebastian unfairly robbed of the 
 lame of the greater hidf of the interest 1 
 Now that there were not indifferent pissera- 
 
ON THE PRODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART. 
 
 461 
 
 by within actual scope of the eyes of those 
 present at the miracle, to whom the sound of 
 it had but faintly, or not at all, reached, it 
 would be hardihood to deny ; but would 
 they see them ? or can the mind in the con- 
 ception of it admit of such unconcerning ob- 
 jects ; can it think of them at all ? or what 
 associating league to the imagination can 
 there be between the seers, and the seers 
 not, of a presential miracle ? 
 
 Were an artist to paint upon demand a 
 picture of a Jlryad, we will ask whether, in 
 the present low state of expectation, the 
 patron would not, or ought not be fully satis- 
 fied with a beautiful naked figure recumbent 
 under wide-stretched oaks 1 Disseat those 
 woods, and place the same figure among 
 fountains, and falls of pellucid water, and 
 you have a — Naiad ! Not so in a rough print 
 we have seen after Julio Eomano, we think 
 — for it is long since — there, by no process, 
 with mere change of scene, could the figure 
 have reciprocated characters. Long, gro- 
 tesque, fantastic, yet with a grace of her 
 own, beautiful in convolution and distortion, 
 linked to her coimatural tree, co-twisting 
 with its limbs her own, till both seemed 
 either — these, animated branches; those, 
 disanimated members — yet the animal and 
 vegetable lives sufficiently kept distinct — his 
 Dryad lay — an ajij^roximation of two natures, 
 which to conceive, it must be seen ; analogous 
 to, not the same with, the delicacies of 
 Ovidian transfoi'matious. 
 
 To the lowest subjects, and, to a superficial 
 compiehension, the most barren, the Great 
 Masters gave loftiness and fruitfulness. The 
 large eye of genius saw in the meanness of 
 present objects their capabilities of treatment 
 from their relations to some grand Past or 
 Future. How has Eaphael — we must still 
 linger about the Vatican — treated the humble 
 craft of the ship-builder, in his " Building of 
 the Ark ] " It is in that scrijjtural series, 
 to which we have referred, and which, judg- 
 ing from some tine rough old graphic sketches 
 of them which we possess, seem to be of a 
 higher and more poetic grade than even the 
 Cartoons. The dim of sight are tl'ie timid 
 and the shriukuig. Tliere is a cowardice in 
 modern art. As the Frenchman, of whom 
 Coleridge's friend made the prophetic guess 
 at Kome, from the beard and horns of the 
 Moses of Michael Angelo collected no in- 
 
 ferences beyond that of a He Goat and a 
 Cornuto ; so from this subject, of mere me- 
 chanic promise, it would instinctively turn 
 away, as from one incapable of investiture 
 with any grandeur. The dock -yards at Wool- 
 wich would object derogatory associations. 
 The depot at Chatham would be the mote 
 and the beam in its intellectual eye. But 
 not to the nautical preparations in the ship- 
 yards of Civita Vecchia did Raphael look for 
 instructions, when he imagined the building 
 of the Vessel that was to be conservatory of 
 the wrecks of the species of drowned man- 
 kind. In_the_intensity:. of the action, he 
 kee_ps eviT out of sight the meanness of the 
 operation. There is the Patriarch, in calm 
 lorethought, and with holy prescience, giving 
 directions. And there are his agents — the 
 solitary but sufficient Three — hewing, sawing, 
 every one with the might and earnestness of 
 a Demiurgus ; under some instinctive rather 
 than technical guidance ! giant-nmscled ; 
 every one a Hei-cules, or liker to those 
 Vulcanian Thi-ee, that in sounding caverns 
 under Mongibello wrought in fire — Brontes, 
 and black Steropes, and Pyracmon. So work 
 the workmen that should repair a world ! 
 
 Artists again err in the confounding of 
 poetic with pictorial subjects. In the latter, 
 the exterior accidents are nearly everything, 
 the unseen qualities as nothing. Othello's 
 colour — the infirmities and corpulence of a Sir 
 John Falstatf — do they haunt us perpetually 
 in the reading 1 or are they obtruded upon 
 our conceptions one time for ninety-nine 
 that we are lost in admiration at the re- 
 spective moral or intellectual attributes of 
 the character ? But in a picture Othello is 
 alicays a Blackamoor ; and the other only 
 Plump Jack. Deeply corporealised, and 
 enchained hopelessly in the grovelling fetters 
 of externality, must be the mind, to which, 
 in its better moments, the image of the high- 
 souled, high-iutelligenced Quixote — the 
 ei-rant Star of Knighthood, made more 
 tender by eclipse — has never presented itself 
 divested from tlie unhallowed accompani- 
 ment of a Sancho, or a rabblement at the 
 heels of Eosinante. That man has read his 
 book by halves ; he has laughed, mistaking 
 his author's purport, which was — tears. The 
 artist that pictures Quixote (and it is in this 
 degrading point that he is every season held 
 up at our Exhibitions) in the shallow hope of 
 
462 
 
 ON THE PRODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART. 
 
 exciting mirth, would have joined the rabble i 
 at the heels of his starved steed. We wish 
 not to see <^a< counterfeited, which we would 
 not have wished to see in the reality. Con- 
 scious of the heroic inside of the noble 
 Quixote, who, on hearing that his withei'ed 
 person was passing, would have stepped over 
 his threshold to gaze upon his forlorn habili- 
 meuts, and the " strange bed-fellows which 
 misery brings a man acquainted with ? " 
 Shade of Cervantes ! who in thy Second 
 Part could put into the mouth of thy Quixote 
 those high aspirations of a super-chivalrous 
 gallantry, where he replies to one of the 
 shepherdesses, apprehensive that he would 
 spoil their pretty net-works, and inviting 
 him to be a guest with them, in accents like 
 these : " Truly, fairest Lady, Actieou was not 
 more astonished when he saw Diana bathing 
 herself at the fountain, than I have been in 
 beholding your beauty : I commend the 
 manner of your pastime, and thank you for 
 your kind offers ; and, if I may serve you, so 
 I may be sure you will be obeyed, you may 
 command me : for my profession is this. To 
 show myself thankful, and ^, doer of good to 
 all sorts of people, especially of the rank tliat 
 your person shows you to be ; and if those 
 nets, as they take up but a little piece of 
 ground, should take up the whole world, T 
 would seek out new worlds to pass through, 
 rather than break them : and (he adds) that 
 you may give credit to this my exaggeration, 
 behold at least he that promiseth you this, 
 is Don Quixote de la Mancha, if haply this 
 name hath come to your hearing." Illus- 
 trious Romancer I wei'e the " fine frenzies," 
 which possessed the brain of thy own 
 Quixote, a fit subject, as in this Second Part, 
 to be exposed to the jeers of Duennas and 
 Serving men ? to be monstered, and shown 
 up at the heartless banquets of great men ? 
 Was that pitiable iutirmity, which in thy 
 First Part misleads him, always frovi within, 
 into half-ludicrous, but more thjm half-com- 
 passionable and admirable errors, not inflic- 
 tion enough from heaven, that men by 
 studied artifices must devise and practise 
 upon the liumour, to inflame where they 
 should soothe it 1 Why, Goneril would have 
 blushed to practise upon the abdicated king 
 
 at this rate, and the she-wolf Regan not have 
 endured to play the pranks upon his fled 
 wits, which thou hast made thy Quixote 
 suffer in Duchesses' halls, and at the hands 
 of that unworthy nobleman.* 
 
 In the First Adventures, even, it needed 
 all the art of the most consummate artist in 
 the Book way that the world hath yet seen, 
 to keep up in the mind of the reader the 
 heroic attributes of the character without 
 relaxing ; so as absolutely that they shall 
 suffer no alloy from the 'debasing fellowship 
 of the clown. If it ever obtrudes itself as a 
 disharmony, are we inclined to laugh ; or not, 
 rather, to indulge a contrary emotion ? — 
 Cervantes, stung, perchance, by the relish 
 with which his Reading Public had received 
 the fooleries of the man, more to their palates 
 than the generosities of the master, in the 
 sequel let his pen run riot, lost the harmony 
 and the balance, and sacrificed a great idea 
 to the taste of his contemporaries. We 
 know that in the present day the Kniglit 
 has fewer admirers than the Squire. Anti- 
 cipating, what ilid actually happen to him — 
 as afterwards it did to his scarce inferior 
 follower, the Author of " Guzman de Alfa- 
 rache " — that some less knowing hand would 
 prevent him by a spurious Second Part ; and 
 judging that it would be easier for his com- 
 petitor to out-bid him in the comicalities, 
 than in the romance, of his work, he aban- 
 doned his Knight, and has fairly set up the 
 Squire for his Hero. For what else has he 
 unsealed the eyes of Sancho 1 and instead of 
 that twilight state of semi-insanity — the 
 madness at second-hand — the contagion, 
 caught from a stronger mind infected — that 
 war between native cunning, and hereditary 
 dufei-ence, with which he has hitherto accom- 
 j)anied his miister — two for a pair almost — 
 does he substitute a downright Knave, with 
 open eyes, for his own ends only following a 
 confessed Madman ; and offering at one time 
 to lay, if not actually laying, hands uj)on 
 him ! From the moment that Sancho loses 
 his reverence, Don Quixote is become — a 
 treatable lunatic. Our artists handle him 
 accordingly. 
 
 • Yet from this Second Part, our cried-up pictures 
 arc mostly selected ; the waiting. women with beards, &c. 
 
THE WEDDING. 
 
 463 
 
 THE WEDDING. 
 
 I DO not know when I have been better 
 pleased than at being invited last week to 
 be present at the wedding of a friend's 
 daughter. I like to make one at these cere- 
 monies, which to us old people give back our 
 youth in a manner, and restore our gayest 
 season, in the remembrance of our own 
 success, or the regrets, scarcely less tender, 
 of our own youthful disappointments, in 
 this point of a settlement. On these occa- 
 sions I am sure to be in good-humour for 
 a week or two after, and enjoy a reflected 
 honey-moon. Being without a family, I am 
 flattered with these temporary adoptions 
 into a friend's family ; I feel a sort of cousin- 
 hood, or uncleship, for the season ; I am 
 inducted into degrees of affinity ; and, in the 
 participated socialities of the little com- 
 munity, I lay down for a brief while my 
 solitary bachelorship. I carry this humour 
 so far, that I take it unkindly to be left out, 
 even when a funeral is going on in the house 
 of a dear friend. But to my subject. 
 
 The union itself had been long settled, 
 but its celebration had been hitherto deferred, 
 to an almost unreasonable state of suspense 
 in the lovers, by some invincible prejudices 
 which the bride's father had unhappily con- 
 tracted upon the subject of the too early 
 man-iages of females. He has been lec- 
 turing any time these five years — for to that 
 length the courtship has been protracted — 
 upon the propriety of putting off the so- 
 lemnity, till the lady should have completed 
 her five-and-twentieth year. We all began 
 to be afraid that a suit, which as yet had 
 abated of none of its ardours, miglit at last 
 be lingered on, till passion had time to cool, 
 and love go out in the experiment. But 
 a little wheedlmg on the part of his wife, 
 who was by no means a party to these over- 
 strained notions, joined to some serious ex- 
 postulations on tluit of his friends, who, 
 from the growing infirmities of the old 
 gentleman, could not promise ourselves many 
 years' enjoyment of his compimy, and were 
 anxious to bring matters to a conclusion 
 
 during his lifetime, at length prevailed ; and 
 on Monday last the daughter of my old 
 
 friend, Admiral , having attained the 
 
 womanly age of nineteen, was conducted to 
 
 the church by her pleasant cousin J , 
 
 who told some few years older. 
 
 Before the youthful part of my female 
 readers express their indignation at tlie 
 abominable loss of time occasioned to the 
 lovers by the preposterous notions of my old 
 friend, they will do well to consider the 
 reluctance which a fond parent naturally 
 feels at parting with his child. To this 
 unwillingness, I believe, in most cases may 
 be traced the ditference of opinion on this 
 point between child and parent, whatever 
 pretences of interest or prudence may be 
 held out to cover it. The hard-heartedness 
 of fathers is a fine theme for romance writers, 
 a sure and moving topic ; but is there not 
 something untender, to say no more of it, in 
 the hurry which a beloved child is sometimes 
 in to tear herself from the paternal stock, 
 and commit herself to strange graftings ? 
 The pase is heightened where the lady, as in 
 the present instance, happens to be an only 
 child. I do not understand these matters 
 experimentally, but I can make a shrewd 
 guess at the wounded pride of a parent upon 
 these occasions. It is no new observation, 
 I believe, that a lover in most cases has no 
 rival so much to be feared as the father. 
 Certainly there is a jealousy in unparalleled 
 subjects, which is little less heart-rending 
 than the passion wliich we more strictly 
 christen by that name. Mothers' scruples 
 are more easily got over ; for this reason, 
 I suppose, that the protection transferred to a 
 husband is less a derogation and a loss to their 
 authority than to the paternal. Mothers, 
 besides, have a trembling foresight, which 
 paints the inconveniences (impossible to be 
 conceived in the same degree by the other 
 parent) of a life of forlorn celibacy, which 
 the refusal of a tolerable match may entail 
 upon their child. Mothers' instinct is a surer 
 guide here, than the cold reasonings of a 
 
4fi4 
 
 THE WEDDING. 
 
 father on such a topic. To this instinct may 
 be imputed, and by it alone maj"^ be excused 
 the unbeseeminfj artifices, by which some 
 wives push on the matrimonial projects of 
 their daughters, which the husband, however 
 approving, shall entertain with comparative 
 indifference. A little shamelessness on th¥f 
 head is pardonable. With this explanation, 
 forwardness becomes a grace, and maternal 
 importunity receives the name of a virtue. — 
 But the parson stays, while I preposterously 
 assume his office ; I am preaching, while the 
 bride is on the threshold. 
 
 Nor let any of my female readers suppose 
 that the sage reflections which have just 
 escaped me have, the obliquest tendency of 
 application to the young lady, who, it will 
 be seen, is about to venture upon a change 
 in her condition, at a mature and competent 
 age, and not without the fullest ap2)robation 
 jf all parties. I only deprecate very hasty 
 marriages. 
 
 It had been fixed that the cei-emony should 
 be gone through at an early hour, to give 
 time for a little dejcune afterwards, to which 
 a select party of friends had been invited. 
 We were in church a little before the clock 
 struck eight. 
 
 Nothing could be more judicious or grace- 
 ful than the dress of the bride-maids — the 
 three charming Miss Foresters — on this 
 morning. To give the bride an oppoi't^unity 
 of shining singly, tlujy had come habited all 
 in green. I am 111 at describing female 
 apparel ; but while she stood at the altar in 
 vestments wliite and candid as her thoughts, 
 a sacrificial whiteness, they assisted in rol)es, 
 such as might become Diana's nymphs — 
 Foresters indeed — as .sucli who had not yet 
 come to the resolution of putting off cold 
 virginity. These young maids, not being so 
 blest as to have a mother living, I am told, 
 keep single for their father's sake, and live 
 altogether so happy with their remaining 
 parent, that the heai-ts of their lovers are 
 evir broken with the prospect (so inaus- 
 picious to tlieir hopes) of such uninterrupted 
 and ])rovokiiig home-comfort. Galhiut girls ! 
 each a victim worthy of Iph.igenia ! 
 
 I do not know what business I have to be 
 present in solemn places. I cannot divest 
 me of an unseasonable disposition to levity 
 upon the most awful occasions. I was never 
 cut out for a public functionary. Ceremony 
 
 and I have long shaken hands ; but 1 could 
 not resist the impoilunities of the young" 
 lady's father, whose gout unhappily confined 
 him at home, to act as parent on this occa- 
 sion, and give aivay the bride. Something 
 ludicrous occurred to me at this most serious 
 of all moments — a sense of my inifitness to 
 have the disposal, even in imagination, of 
 the sweet young creature beside me. I fear 
 I was betrayed to some lightness, for the 
 awful eye of the parson — and the rector's 
 eye of Saint Mildred's in the Poultiy is no 
 trifle of a rebuke — was upon me in an 
 instaTit, souring my incipient jest to the 
 tristful severities of a funeral. 
 
 This was the only misbehaviour which 
 I can plead to upon this solemn occasion, 
 unless what was objected to me after 
 the ceremony, by one of the handsome 
 
 Miss T s, be accounted a solecism. She 
 
 was pleased to say that she had never seen a 
 gentleman before me give away a bride, in 
 black. Now black has been my ordinary 
 apparel so long — indeed I take it to be the 
 proper costume of an author — the stage 
 sanctions it — that to have appeared in some 
 lighter colour would have raised more mirth 
 at my expense, than the anomaly had created 
 censure. But I could perceive that the 
 bride's mother, and some' elderly ladies 
 pi-esent (God bless them !) would have been 
 well content, if I had come in any other 
 colour than that. But I got over the omen 
 by a lucky apologue, which I remembered 
 out of Piipay, or some Indian authoi-, of 
 all the birds being invited to the linnet's 
 wedduig, at whicli, when all the rest came 
 in their gayest feathers, the raven alone 
 apologised for his cloak because " he had no 
 other." This tolerably reconciled the elders. 
 But with the young people all was merri- 
 ment, and shaking of hands, and congratu- 
 lations, and kissuig away tlie bride's teai-s, 
 and kissing from her in return, till a yuuug 
 lady, who ;i.ssumeil some experience in these 
 matters, having worn the nuptial bauds 
 some four or five weeks longer tiian her 
 friend, rescued her, ardily observing, with 
 iialf an e}e upon the briilegroom, that at 
 this rate she would have " none left." 
 
 My friend tlie Aihniral was in fine wig 
 and buckle on this occjision — a striking con- 
 trast to his usual neglect of personal appoar- 
 auce, lie did not once shove up his borrowed 
 
THE WEDDING. 
 
 4sr> 
 
 locks (his custom ever at his morning studies) 
 to betray the few grey stragglers of his 
 own beneath them. He wore an aspect of 
 thoughtful satisfaction. I trembled for the 
 hour, which at length approached, when 
 after a protracted breakfast of three hours — 
 if stores of cold fowls, tongues, hams, botar- 
 goes, dried fruits, wines, cordials, &c., can 
 deserve so meagre an appellation — the coach 
 was announced, which was come to carry 
 off the bride and bridegroom for a season, 
 as custom has sensibly ordained, into the 
 country ; upon which design, wishing them 
 a felicitous journey, let us return to the 
 assembled guests. 
 
 As when a well-graced actor leaves the stage, 
 
 The eyes of men 
 
 Are idly bent on him that enters next, 
 
 so idly did we bend our eyes upon one 
 another, Avhen the chief performers in the 
 morning's pageant had vanished. None told 
 his tale. None sipped her glass. The poor 
 Admiral made an effort — it was not much. 
 I had anticipated so far. Even the infinity 
 of full satisfaction, that had betrayed itself 
 through the prim looks and quiet deport- 
 ment of his lady, began to wane into some- 
 thing of misgiving. No one knew whether 
 to take their leaves or stay. We seemed 
 assembled upon a silly occasion. In this 
 crisis, betwixt tarrying and departure, I must 
 do justice to a foolish talent of mine, which 
 had otherwise like to have brought me into 
 disgrace in the fore-pai-t of the day ; I mean 
 a power, in any emergency, of thinking and 
 giving vent to all manner of strange non- 
 sense. In this awkward dilemma I found it 
 sovereign. I rattled off some of my most 
 excellent absurdities. All were willing to be 
 relieved, at any expense of reason, from the 
 pressure of the intolerable vacuum which 
 had succeeded to the morning bustle. By 
 this means I was fortunate in keeping 
 together the better part of the company to 
 a late hour; and a rubber of whist (the 
 Admiral's favourite game) with some rare 
 
 strokes of chance as well as skill, which 
 came opportunely on his side — lengthened 
 out till midnight — dismissed the old gentle- 
 man at last to his bed with comparatively 
 easy spirits. 
 
 I have been at my old friend's various 
 times since. I. do not know a visiting place 
 where every guest is so perfectly at his ease ; 
 nowhere, where harmony is so strangely the 
 result of confusion. Everybody is at cross 
 purposes, yet the effect is so much better 
 than uniformity. Contradictory orders ; 
 servants pulling one way ; master and mis- 
 tress driving some other, yet both diverse ; 
 visitors huddled up in corners ; chairs 
 unsymmetrised ; candles disposed by chance ; 
 meals at odd hours, tea and supper at once, 
 or the latter preceding the former ; the host 
 and the guest conferring, yet each upon a 
 different topic, each understanding himself, 
 neither trying to understand or hear the 
 other ; draughts and politics, chess and 
 political economy, cards and conversation on 
 nautical matters, going on at once, without 
 the hope, or indeed the wish, of distin- 
 guishing them, make it altogether the most 
 perfect concordia discors you shall meet with. 
 Yet somehow the old house is not quite 
 what it should be. The Admiral still enjoys 
 his pipe, but he has no Miss Emily to fill it 
 for him. The instrument stands where it 
 stood, but she is gone, whose delicate touch 
 could sometimes for a short minute appease 
 the warring elements. He has learnt, as 
 Marvel expresses it, to " make his destiny 
 his choice." He bears bravely up, but he 
 does not come out with his flashes of wild 
 wit so thick as formerly. His sea-songs 
 seldomer escape him. His wife, too, looks as 
 if she wanted some younger body to sculd 
 and set to rights. We all miss a junior 
 presence. It is wondei-ful how one young 
 maiden freshens up, and keeps green, the 
 paternal roof. Old and young seem to have 
 an interest in her, so long as she is not 
 absolutely disposed of. The youthfulness of 
 the house is flown. Emily is married. 
 
 H H 
 
406 
 
 REJOICINGS UPON THE NEW YEARS COMING OF AGE. 
 
 REJOICINGS UPON THE NEW YEAR'S COMING OF AGE. 
 
 The Old Tear being dead, and the New 
 Year coming of age, which he does, by 
 Calendar Law, as soon as the breath is out 
 of the old gentleman's body, nothing would 
 serve the young spark but he must give a 
 dinner upon the occasion, to which all the 
 Days in the year were invited. Tlie Festivals, 
 whom he deputed as his stewards, were 
 mightily taken with the notion. They had 
 been engaged time out of mind, they said, in 
 providing mirth and good cheer for mortals 
 below ; and it was time they should have a 
 taste of their own bounty. It was stiflBy 
 debated among them Avhether the Fasts 
 should be admitted. Some said the appear- 
 ance of such lean, starved guests, with their 
 mortified faces, would pervert the ends of 
 the meeting. But the objection was over- 
 rided by Christmas Day, who had a design 
 upon Ash Wednesday (as you shall hear), and 
 a mighty desire to see how the old Domine 
 would behave himself in his cups. Only 
 the Vigils were requested to come with 
 their lanterns, to light the gentlefolks home 
 at night. 
 
 All the Days came to their day. Covers 
 were provided for three hundred and sixty- 
 five guests at the principal table ; with an 
 occasional knife and fork at the side-board 
 fur the Twenty-Ninth of February. 
 
 I should have told you that cards of 
 invitation had been issued. The carriers 
 were the Hours ; twelve little, merry, 
 whirligig foot-pages, as you should desire to 
 see, that went all round, and found out the 
 persons invited well enough, with the ex- 
 ception of Easter Day, Shrove Tuesday, and a 
 few such Moveables, who had lately shifted 
 their quarters. 
 
 Well, they all met at last, foul Days, fine 
 Days, all sorts of Days, and a rare din they 
 made of it. There was nothing but. Hail ! 
 fellow Day, — well met — brother Day — sister 
 Day — only Lady Day kept a little on the 
 aloof, and seemed somewhat scornful. \et 
 some said. Twelfth Day cut her out and out, 
 {or she came in a tiffany suit, white and 
 
 gold, like a queen on a frost-cake, all royal, 
 glittering, and Epifhanous. The rest came, 
 some in green, some in white — but old Lent 
 and his family were not yet out of mourning. 
 Eainy Days came in, dripping ; and sun- 
 shiny Days helped them to change their 
 stockings. Wedding Day was there in his 
 marriage finery, a little the worse for wear. 
 Pay Day came late, as he always does ; and 
 Doomsday sent word — he might be expected. 
 
 April Fool (as my young lord's jester) took 
 upon himself to marshal the guests, and 
 wild work he made with it. It would have 
 posed old Erra Pater to have found out any 
 given Day in the year, to erect a scheme 
 upon — good Days, bad Days, were so shuflBed 
 together, to the confounding of all sober 
 horoscopy. 
 
 He had stuck the Twenty-First of June 
 next to the Twenty-Second of December, and 
 the former looked like a Maj-pole siding a 
 marrow-bone. Ash Wednesday got wedged 
 in (as was concerted) betwixt Christmas and 
 Lord Mayor s Days. Lord ! how he laid 
 about him ! Nothing but barons of beef 
 and turkeys would go down with him — to 
 the great greasing and detriment of his new 
 sackcloth bib and tucker. And still Christmas 
 Day was at his elbow, plying him with the 
 wassail-bowl, till he roared, and hiccujip'd, 
 and protested there was no faith in dried 
 ling, but commended it to the devil for a 
 sour, windy, acrimonious, censorious, hy-po- 
 crit-crit-ci'itical mess, and no dish for a 
 gentleman. Then he dipt his fist into the 
 middle of the great custard that stood before 
 his left hand neighbour, and daubed his 
 hungry beard all over with it, till you would 
 have taken him for the Last Day in December, 
 it so hung in icicles. 
 
 At another part of the table, Shroi'e 
 Tuesday was helping the Second of September 
 to some cock broth, — which courtesy the 
 latter returned with the delicate thigh of a 
 hen pheasant — so there was no love lost for 
 that matter. The Last of Leixt was spunging 
 upon Shrovetide's pancakes ; which ApriL 
 
REJOICINGS UPON THE NEW YEAR'S COMING OF AGE. 
 
 46T 
 
 Fool perceiving, told him he did well, for 
 pancakes were proper to a good fry-day. 
 
 In another part, a hubbub arose about the 
 Thirtieth of January, who, it seems, being a 
 sour, puritanic character, that thought 
 nobody's meat good or sanctified enough for 
 him, had smuggled into the room a calf's 
 head, which he had had cooked at home for 
 that piu'pose, thinking to feast thereon 
 incontinently ; but as it lay in the dish, 
 March Manyiceathers, who is a very fine lady, 
 and subject to the meagrims, screamed out 
 there was a " human head in the platter," 
 and raved about Herodias' daughter to that 
 degree, that the obnoxious viand was obliged 
 to be removed ; nor did she recover her 
 stomach till she had gulped down a Restora- 
 tive, confected of Oak Apple, which the merry 
 Twenty-Ninth of May always carries about 
 with him for that purpose. 
 
 The King's health* being called for after 
 this, a notable dispute arose between the 
 Twelfth of August (a zealous old Whig 
 gentlewoman) sind the Twenty-Third of April 
 (a new-fangled lady of the Tory stamp), as 
 to which of them should have the honour to 
 propose it. August gi'ew hot upon the 
 matter, affirming time out of mind the 
 prescriptive right to have lain with her, till 
 l>er rival had basely supplanted her ; whom 
 she represented as little better than a kept 
 mistress, who went about mfine clothes, while 
 she (the legitimate Birthday) had scarcely 
 a rag, &c. 
 
 April Fool, being made mediator, con- 
 firmed the right, in the strongest form of 
 words, to the appellant, but decided for 
 peace' sake that the exercise of it should 
 remain with the present possessor. At the 
 same time, he slyly rounded the first lady in 
 the ear, that an action might lie against the 
 Crown for bi-geny. 
 
 It beginning to grow a little duskish. 
 Candlemas lustily bawled out for lights, 
 which was opposed by all the Days, who 
 protested against burning daylight. Then 
 fair water was handed round in silver ewei-s, 
 and the same lady was observed to tak6 an 
 unusual time in Washing herself. 
 
 May Day, with that sweetness which is 
 peculiar to her, in a neat speech proposing 
 the health of the founder, crowned her 
 
 • King George IV. 
 
 goblet (and by her example the rest of the 
 company) with garlands. This being d.jne, 
 the lordly New Year, from the upper end of 
 the table, in a cordial but somewhat lofty 
 tone, returned thanks. He felt proud on an 
 occasion of meeting so many of his worthy 
 father's late tenants, promised to improve 
 their farms, and at the same time to abate 
 (if anything was found unreasonable) in their 
 rents. 
 
 At the mention of this, the four Quarter 
 Days involuntarily looked at each other, and 
 smiled ; jipril Fool whistled to an old tune 
 of " New Brooms ; " and a surly old rebel at 
 the further end of the table (who was 
 discovered to be no other than the Fifth of 
 November) muttered out, distinctly enough 
 to be heard by the whole company, words to 
 this effect, that " when the old one is gone, 
 he is a fool that looks for a better." Wliich 
 rudeness of his, the guests resenting, unani- 
 mously voted his expulsion ; and the male- 
 content was thrust out neck and heels into 
 the cellar, as the properest place for such a 
 boutefeu and firebrand as he had shown 
 himself to be. 
 
 Order being restored — the young lord 
 (who, to say truth, had been a little rufHed, 
 and put beside his oratory) in as few, and 
 yet as obliging words as possible, assured 
 them of entii-e welcome ; and, with a graceful 
 turn, singling out poor Twenty-Ninth of 
 February, that had sate all this while mum- 
 chance at the side-board, begged to couple 
 his health with that of the good company 
 before him — which he drank accordingly ; 
 observing that he had not seen his honest 
 face any time these four years — with a 
 number of endearing expressions besides. 
 At the same time, removing the solitary Day 
 fi'om the forlorn seat which had been 
 assigned him, he stationed him at his own 
 board, somewhere between the Greek Calends 
 and Latter Lammas. 
 
 Ash Wednesday, being now called upon for 
 a song, with his eyes fast stuck in his bead, 
 and as well as the Canary he had swallowed 
 would give him leave, struck up a Carol, 
 which Christmas Day had taught hira for the 
 nonce ; and was followed by the latter, who 
 gave " Miserere," in fine style, hitting ofi" the 
 mumping notes and lengthened drawl of Old 
 Mortification with infinite humour. April 
 Fool swore they had exchanged conditions; 
 
 H H 2 
 
468 
 
 OLD CHINA- 
 
 but Good Friday was observed to look 
 extremely grave ; and Sunday held her fan 
 before her face that she might not be seen to 
 smile. 
 
 Shrove-tide, Lord Mayor's Day, and April 
 Fool, next joined in a glee — 
 
 Which is the properest day to drink ? 
 
 in which all the Days chiming in, made a 
 merry burden. 
 
 They next fell to quibbles and conundnims. 
 The question being proposed, who had the 
 greatest number of followers — the Quarter 
 Days said, there could be no question as to 
 that ; for they had all the creditors in the 
 world dogging their heels. But April Fool 
 gave it in favour of the Forty Days before 
 Easter ; because the debtors in all cases out- 
 numbered the creditors, and they kept lent 
 all the year. 
 
 All this while Valentine's Day kept 
 courting pretty 3fay, who sate next him, 
 slipping amorous billets-doux under the table, 
 till the Day Days (who are naturally of a 
 warm constitution) began to be jealous, and 
 to bark and rage exceedingly. April Fool, 
 who likes a bit of sport above measure, and 
 had some pretensions to the lady besides, as 
 being but a cousin once removed, — clapped 
 and halloo'd them on ; and as fast as their 
 indignation cooled, those mad wags, the 
 Ember Days, were at it with their bellows, to 
 blow it into a flame ; and all was in a 
 ferment ; till old Madam Septuagesima (who 
 boasts herself the Mother of the Days) wisely 
 diverted the conversation with a tedious 
 tale of the lovers which she could reckon 
 
 when she was young ; and of one Master 
 Rogation Day in particular, who was for 
 ever putting the qtiestion to her ; but she 
 kept him at a di.stance, as the chronicle 
 would tell — by which I apprehend she 
 meant the Almanack. Then she rambled 
 on to the Days that were gone, the good old 
 Days, and so to the Days before the Flood — 
 which plainly showed her old head to be 
 little better than crazed and doited. 
 
 Day being ended, the Days cjilled for their 
 cloaks and great-coats, and took their leaves. 
 Lord Mayor's Day went oflF in a Mist, as 
 usual ; Shortest Day in a deep black Fog, that 
 wrapt the little gentleman all round like a 
 hedge-hog. Two Vigils — so watchmen are 
 called in heaven — saw Christmas Day safe 
 home — they had been used to the business 
 before. Another Vigil — a stout, sturdy, 
 patrole, cidled the Eve of St. Christopher — 
 seeing Ash Wednesday in a condition little 
 better than he should be — e'en whipt him 
 over his shoulders, pick-a-back fashion, 
 and Old Mortification went floating home 
 singing — 
 
 On the bat's back do I fly, 
 
 and a number of old snatches besides, between 
 drunk and sober ; but very few Aves or 
 Penitentiaries (you may believe me) were 
 among them. Longest Day set off westward 
 in beautiful crimson and gold — the rest, 
 some in one fashion, some in another ; but 
 Valentine and pretty May took their de- 
 parture together in one of the prettiest 
 silveiy twilights a Lover's Day could wish 
 to set in. 
 
 OLD CHINA. 
 
 I HAVE an almost feminine partiality for 
 old china. When I go to see any great house, 
 I inquire for the china-closet, and next for 
 the picture gallery. I cannot defend the 
 order of i)reference, but by saying, that we 
 have all some taste or other, of too ancient a 
 date to admit of our remembering distinctly 
 that it was an acquired one. I can call to 
 mind the first play, and the first exhibition, 
 that I wa.s taken to ; but I am not couacioiis 
 
 I of a time when china jars and saucers were 
 introduced into my imagination. 
 
 I had no repugnance then — why should I 
 now have ? — to those little, lawless, azure- 
 tinctured grotesques, that under the notion 
 of men and women, float about, luicircum- 
 scribed by any element, in that world before 
 perspective — a china tea-cup. 
 
 I like to see my old friends — whom distance 
 cannot dliuinish — figuring up in the air (.so 
 
 J 
 
they appear to our optics), yet on terra firma 
 still — for so we must in courtesy interpret 
 that speck of deeper blue, — which the decorous 
 artist, to prevent absurdity, had made to 
 spring up beneath their sandals. 
 
 I love the men with women's faces, and 
 the women, if possible, with still more 
 womanish expressions. 
 
 Here is a young and courtly Mandarin, 
 handing tea to a lady fi'om a salver — two 
 miles oflF. See how distance seems to set off 
 respect ! And here the same lady, or 
 another — for likeness is identity on tea-cups — 
 is stepping into a little fairy boat, moored on 
 the hither side of this calm garden river, 
 with a dainty mincing foot, which in a right 
 angle of incidence (as angles go in our world) 
 must infallibly land her in the midst of a 
 flowery mead — a furlong off on the other 
 side of the same strange stream ! 
 
 Farther on — if far or near can be predicated 
 of their world — see horses, trees, pagodas, 
 dancing the hays. 
 
 Here — a cow and rabbit couchant, and co- 
 extensive — so objects show, seen through 
 the lucid atmosphere of fine Cathay. 
 
 I was pointing out to my cousin last 
 evening, over our Hyson, (which we are old- 
 fashioned enough to drink unmixed still of 
 an afternoon) some of these speciosa miracvla 
 upon a set of extraordinaiy old blue china 
 (a recent purchase) which we were now for 
 the first time using ; and could not help 
 remarking, how favourable circumstances 
 had been to us of late years, that we could 
 afford to please the eye sometimes with 
 trifles of this sort — when a passing sentiment 
 seemed to overshade the brows of my com- 
 panion. I am quick at detecting these 
 sunmier clouds in Bridget. 
 
 " I wish the good old times would come 
 again," she said, " when we were not quite 
 so rich. I do not mean, that I want to be 
 poor ; but there was a middle state " — so 
 she was pleased to ramble on, — " in which I 
 am sure we were a great deal happier. A 
 purchase is but a pui'cliase, now that you 
 have money enough and to spare. Fomuerly 
 it used to be a triumph. Wlieu we coveted a 
 cheap luxury (and, O ! how much ado I had 
 to get you to consent in those times !) — we 
 were used to have a debate two or three days 
 before, and to weigh the for and against, and 
 think what we might spare it out of, and what 
 
 saving we could hit upon, that should be an 
 equivalent. A thing was worth buying then, 
 when we felt the money that we paid for it. 
 
 " Do you remember the bi-own suit, which 
 you made to hang upon you, till all your 
 friends cried shame upon you, it grew so 
 thread-bare — and all because of that folio 
 Beaumont and Fletcher, which you dragged 
 home late at night from Barker's in Coveut- 
 garden 1 Do you remember how we eyed it 
 for weeks before we could make up our 
 minds to the purchase, and had not come to 
 a determination till it was near ten o'clock 
 of the Saturday night, when you set off from 
 Islington, fearing you should be too late — 
 and when the old bookseller with some 
 grumbling opened his shop, and by the 
 twinkling taper (for he was setting bed- 
 wards) lighted out the relic from his dusty 
 treasures — and when you lugged it home, 
 wishing it were twice as cumbersome — and 
 when you presented it to me — and when we 
 were exploring the perfectness of it {collating 
 you called it)— and while I was repairing 
 some of the loose leaves with paste, which 
 your impatience would not suffer to be left 
 till daybreak — was there no pleasure in 
 being a poor man 1 or can those neat black 
 clothes which you wear now, and are so 
 careful to keep brushed, since we have 
 become rich and finical, give you half the 
 honest vanity, with which you flaunted it 
 about in that overworn suit — your old 
 corbeau — for four or five weeks longer than 
 you should have done, to pacify your con- 
 science for the mighty sum of fifteen — or 
 sixteen shillings was it ? — a great affair we 
 thought it then — which you had lavished on 
 the old folio. Now you can afford to buy 
 any book that pleases you, but I do not see 
 that you ever bruig me home any nice old 
 purchases now. 
 
 "When you came home with twenty 
 apologies for laying out a less number of 
 shillings upon that print after Lionardo, 
 which we christened the ' Lady Blanch ; ' 
 when you looked at the purchase, and 
 thought of the money — and thought of the 
 money, and looked again at the picture — was 
 there no pleasure in being a poor man \ Now, 
 you have nothing to do but to walk into 
 Colnaghi's, and buy a wilderness of Lionardos. 
 Yet do you ? 
 
 " Then, do you remember our pleasant 
 
470 
 
 OLD CHINA. 
 
 walks to Enfield, and Potter's bar, and 
 Waltham, when we had a holyday — holydays, 
 and all other fun, are gone now we are rich 
 — and tlie little hand-basket in which I used 
 to deposit our day's fare of savory cold lamb 
 and salad — and how you would pry about at 
 noon-tide for some decent hoiise, where we 
 might go in and produce our store — only 
 paying for the ale that you must call for — 
 and speculate upon the looks of the landlady, 
 and whether she was likely to allow us a 
 table-cloth — and wish for such another 
 honest hostess, as Izaak Walton has described 
 many a one on the pleasant banks of the 
 Lea, when he went a fishing — and sometimes 
 they would prove obliging enough, and some- 
 times they would look grudgingly upon us — 
 but we had cheerful looks still for one another, 
 aud would eat our plain food savorily, 
 scarcely grudging Piscator his Trout Hall 1 
 Now — when we go out a day's pleasuring, 
 which is seldom moreover, we ride part of 
 the way — and go into a fine inn, and order 
 the best of dinners, never debating the 
 expense — which after all, never has half the 
 relish of those chance country snaps, when 
 we were at the mercy of uncertain usage, and 
 a precarious welcome. 
 
 " You are too proud to see a play any- 
 where now but in the pit. Do you remember 
 where it was we used to sit, when we saw 
 the Battle of Hexham, and the Surrender of 
 Calais, and Bannister and Mrs. Bland in the 
 Children in the "Wood — when we squeezed 
 out our shillings a-piece to sit three or fuur 
 times in a season in the one-sliilling gallery 
 — where you felt all the time that you ought 
 jtot to have bi'ought me — and more strongly 
 I felt obligation to you for having brought 
 me — and the pleasure was the better for a 
 little shame — and when the curtain drew up, 
 what cared we fur our place in the house, or 
 what mattered it where we were sitting, 
 when our thoughts were with Rosalind in 
 Arden, or with Viola at the Court of Illyria. 
 You used to say, that the Gallery was the 
 best jjlace of all for enjoying a play socially 
 — that the relish of such exhibitions must be 
 in pnj})ortion to the infrequency of going — 
 that the company we met there, not being in 
 general readers of plays, were obliged to 
 attend the more, aud did attend, to what was 
 (joing on, on the stage — because a word lost 
 would have been a chasm, which it Avas 
 
 impossible for them to fill up. With such 
 reflections we consoled our pride then — and 
 I appeal to you, whether as a woman, I 
 met generally with less attention and accom- 
 modation than I have done since in more 
 expensive situations in the house ? The 
 getting in indeed, and the crowding up those 
 inconvenient staircases, was bad enough, — 
 but there was still a law of civility to woman 
 recognised to quite as great an extent as 
 we ever found in the other passages — and 
 how a little difficulty overcome heightened 
 the snug seat and the play, afterwards ! Now 
 we can only pay our money and walk in. 
 You cannot see, you say, in the galleries now. 
 I am sure we saw, aud heard too, well enough 
 then — but sight, and all, I think, is gone 
 with our poverty. 
 
 " There was pleasure in eating straw- 
 berries, before they became quite common — 
 in the first dish of peas, while they were yet 
 dear — to have them for a nice supper, a treat. 
 What treat can we have now 1 If we were to 
 treat ourselves now — that is, to have dainties 
 a little above our means, it would be selfish 
 and wicked. It is the very little more that 
 we allow ourselves beyond what the actual 
 poor can get at, that makes what I call a 
 treat — when two people living together, as 
 we have done, now and then indulge them- 
 selves in a cheap luxury, which both like ; 
 while each apologises, and is willing to take 
 bcjth halves of the blame to his single share. 
 I see no harm in people making much of 
 themselves, in that sense of the word. It 
 may give them a hint how to make much of 
 others. But now, what I mean by the word 
 — we never do make much of ourselves. 
 None but the poor can do it. I do not mean 
 the veriest poor of all, but persons as we 
 were, just above poverty. 
 
 " I know what you were going to say, that 
 it is mighty pleasant at the end of the year 
 to make all meet, — and much ailo we used 
 to have every Thirty-fii-st Night of December 
 to account for our exceedings — miuiy a long 
 face did you make over your puzzled accounts, 
 and in contriving to make it out how we 
 had spent so much — or that we had not 
 spent so much — or that it was impo.ssible 
 we should spend so much next year — and still 
 we found our slender capital decreasing — 
 but then, — betwixt ways, and projects, autl 
 compromises of one sort or another, anil 
 
THE CHILD ANGEL ; A DREAM. 
 
 471 
 
 talk of curtailing this charge, and doing with- 
 out that for the futui'e — and the hope that 
 youth brings, and laughing si)irits (in which 
 you were never poor till now), we pocketed 
 up our loss, and in conclusion, witli ' lusty 
 brimmers ' (as you used to quote it out of 
 hearty cheerful Mr. Cotton, as you called him), 
 we used to welcome in ' the coming guest.' 
 Now we have no reckoning at all at the end of 
 .the old year — no flattering pi'omises about 
 the new year doing better for us." 
 
 Bridget is so sparing of her speech on most 
 occasions, that when she gets into a rhetori- 
 cal vein, I am careful how I interrupt it. 
 I could not help, however, smiling at the 
 phantom of wealth which her dear imagina- 
 tion had conjured up out of a clear income of 
 
 poor hundred pounds a year. " It is 
 
 true we were happier when we were poorer, 
 but we were also younger, my cousin. I am 
 afraid we must put up with the excess, for if 
 we were to shake the superflux into the sea, 
 we should not much mend ourselves. That 
 we had much to struggle with, as we grew 
 up together, we have reason to be most 
 thankful. It strengthened and knit our com- 
 pact closer. We could never have been what 
 we have been to each other, if we had always 
 had the sufficiency which you now complain of 
 The resisting power — those natural dilations 
 of the youthful spirit, which circumstances 
 cannot straiten — with us are long since 
 passed away. Competence to age is supple- 
 
 mentary youth, a sorry supplement indeed, 
 but I fear the best that is to be had. We 
 must ride where we formerly walked : live 
 better and lie softer — and shall be wise to do 
 so — than we had means to do in those good 
 old days you speak of Yet could those days 
 return — could you and I once more walk our 
 thirty miles a day — could Bannister and Mrs. 
 Bland again be young, and you and I be 
 young to see them — could the good old one- 
 shiUiug gallery days return — they are dreams, 
 my cousin, now — but could you and I at this 
 moment, instead of this quiet ai-gument, V)y 
 our well-carpeted fireside, sitting on this 
 luxurious sofa — be once more struggling up 
 those inconvenient staircases, pushed about, 
 and squeezed, and elbowed by the poorest 
 rabble of poor gallery scramblers — could 
 I once more hear those anxious shrieks 
 of yours — and the delicious Thank God, 
 ive are safe, which always followed when 
 the topmost stair, conquered, let in the 
 first light of the whole cheerful theatre 
 down beneath us — I know not the fathom 
 luie that ever touched a descent so deep 
 as I would be willing to bury more wealth 
 in than Croesus had, or the great Jew 
 
 K is supposed to have, to purchase it. 
 
 And now do just look at that merry little 
 Chinese waiter holding an iimbrella, big 
 enough for a bed- tester, over the head of that 
 pretty insipid half Madona-ish chit of a lady 
 in that very blue summer-house." 
 
 THE CHILD ANGEL ; A DEEAM. 
 
 I CHANCED upon the jDrettiest, oddest, fan- 
 tastical thing of a dream the other night, that 
 you shall hear of I had been reading the 
 " Loves of the Angels," and went to bed with 
 my head full of speculations, suggested by 
 that extraordinary legend. It had given 
 birth to innumerable conjectures ; and, I 
 remember the la.st waking thought, which I 
 gave expression to on my pillow, waa a sort 
 of wonder, " what could come of it." 
 
 I was suddenly traiLsported, how or 
 whither I could scarcely make out — but to 
 some celestial region. It was not the real 
 heavens neither — not the downright Bible 
 
 heaven — ^but a kind of fairy-land heaven, 
 about which a poor humau fancy may have 
 leave to sport and air itself, I will hope, 
 without presumption. 
 
 Methought — what wild things dreams are ! 
 — I was present — at what would you ima- 
 gine ? — at im angel's gossiping. 
 
 Whence it came, or how it came, or who 
 bid it come, or whether it came pui'ely of its 
 own head, neither you nor I know — but 
 there lay, sure enough, wrapt in its little 
 cloudy swaddling-bands — a Child Angel. 
 
 Sim-threads — filmy beams — ran through 
 the celestial napery of what seemod itrf 
 
472 
 
 THE CHILD ANGEL; A DREAM. 
 
 princely cradle. All the ■winged orders 
 hovered round, watching when the new-bora 
 should open its yet closed eyes ; which, when 
 it did, first one, and then the other — with a 
 solicitude and apprehension, yet not such as, 
 stained with fear, dim the expanding eyelids 
 of mortal infants, but as if to explore its path 
 in those its unhereditary palaces — what an 
 inextinguishable titter that time spared not 
 celestial visages I Nor wanted there to my 
 seeming — O, the inexplicable simpleness of 
 dreams I — bowls of that cheering nectar, 
 
 — which mortals caudle call below. 
 
 Nor were wanting faces of female minis- 
 trauts, — stricken in years, as it might seem, 
 —so dexterous were those heavenly attend- 
 ants to counterfeit kindly similitudes of earth, 
 to greet with terrestrial child- rites the young 
 present, which earth had made to heaven. 
 
 Then were celestial harpings heard, not in 
 full symphony, as those by which the spheres 
 are tutored ; but, as loudest instruments on 
 earth speak oftentimes, mufHed ; so to accom- 
 modate their sound the better to the weak 
 ears of the imperfect-born. And, with the 
 noise of those subdued soundings, tlie Angelet 
 sprang forth, fluttering its rudiments of 
 pinions — but forthwith flagged and was re- 
 covered into the arms of those full-winged 
 angels. And a wonder it was to see how, as 
 years went round in heaven — a year in 
 dreams is as a day — continually its white 
 shoulders put forth buds of wings, but want- 
 ing the perfect angelic nutriment, anon was 
 shorn of its aspiring, and fell fluttering — still 
 caught by angel hands, for ever to put forth 
 shoots, and to fall fluttering, because its birth 
 was not of the unmixed vigour of heaven. 
 
 And a name was given to the Babe Angel, 
 and it was to be called Ge- Urania, because its 
 production was of earth and heaven. 
 
 And it could not taste of death, by reason 
 of its adoption into immortal palaces : but it 
 was to know weakness, and reliance, and the 
 shadow of human imbecility ; and it went 
 with a lame gait ; but in its goings it ex- 
 ceeded all mortal cliiliiren in grace and swift- 
 ness. Then pity first sprang up in angelic 
 bosoms ; and yearnings (like the human) 
 touched thum at the sight of the immortal 
 lame one. 
 
 And with pain did then first those In- 
 tuitive Essences, with pain and strife to 
 
 their natures (not grief), put back their 
 bright intelligences, and reduce their ethereal 
 minds, schooling them to degrees and slower 
 processes, so to adapt their lessons to the 
 gradual illumination (as must needs be) of 
 the half-earth-born ; and what intuitive no- 
 tices they could not repel (by reason that 
 their nature is, toknow all things at once) the 
 half-heavenly novice, by the better part of its 
 nature, aspired to receive into its under- 
 standing ; so that Humility and Aspiration 
 went on even-paced in the instruction of the 
 glorious Amphibium. 
 
 But, by reason that Mature Humanity is 
 too gross to breathe the air of that super-sub- 
 tile region, its portion was, and is, to be a 
 child for ever. 
 
 And because the human part of it might 
 not press into the heart and inwards of the 
 palace of its adoption, those fuU-natured 
 aiigels tended it by turns in the purlieus of the 
 palace, where were shady groves and rivulets, 
 like this green earth from which it came ; so 
 Love, with Voluntary Humility, waited upon 
 the entertainment of the new-adopted. 
 
 And myriads of years rolled round (in 
 dreams Time is nothing), and still it kept, 
 and is to keep, perpetual childhood, and is 
 the Tutelar Genius of Childhood upon earth, 
 and still goes lame and lovely. 
 
 By the banks of the river Pison is seen, 
 lone sitting by the grave of the terrestrial 
 Adah, whom the angel Nadir loved, a Child ; 
 but not the same which I saw in heaven. 
 A mournful hue overcasts its lineaments ; 
 nevertheless, a correspondency is between 
 the child by the grave, and that celestial 
 orphan, whom I saw above : and the dimness 
 of the gi'ief upon the heavenly, is a shadow 
 or emblem of that which stains the beauty 
 of the ten-estrial. And this corresiwndeucy 
 is not to be understood but by dreams. 
 
 And in the archives of heaven I had grace 
 to read, how that once the angel Nadir, 
 being exiled from his place for mortal pas- 
 sion, upspringing on the wings of pai-ental 
 love (such power had pai'cutal love for a 
 moment to suspend the else-irrevocable law) 
 appeared for a brief instant in his station, 
 anil, depositing a wondrous Birth, straight- 
 way disappeared, and the palaces knew him 
 no mox'e. Antl tliis charge was the seU'-sjiUie 
 Babe, wlio goeth lame and lovely — but Adah 
 sleepeth by the river Pison. 
 
CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD. 
 
 478 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD. 
 
 Dehortations from the use of strong 
 liquors have been the favourite topic of sober 
 declairaers in all ages, and have been received 
 ■with abundance of applause by water-drink- 
 ing critics. But with the patient himself, 
 the man that is to be cured, unfortunately 
 their sound has seldom prevailed. Yet the 
 evil is acknowledged, the remedy simple. 
 Abstain. No force can oblige a man to raise 
 the glass to his head against his will. 'Tis 
 as easy as not to steal, not to tell lies. 
 
 Alas ! the hand to pilfer, and the tongue 
 to bear false witness, have no constitutional 
 tendency. These are actions indifferent to 
 them. At the first instance of the refoi-med 
 will, they can be brought off without a 
 murmur. The itching finger is but a figure 
 in speech, and the tongue of the liar can with 
 the same natural delight give forth useful 
 truths with which it has been accustomed to 
 scatter their pernicious contraries. But 
 when a man has commenced sot 
 
 O pause, thou sturdy moralist, thou person 
 of stout nerves and a strong head, whose 
 liver is happily untouched, and ere thy gorge 
 riseth at the name which I have written, first 
 learn what the thing is ; how much of com- 
 passion, how much of human allowance, thou 
 mayest virtuously mingle with thy disappro- 
 bation. Trample not on the ruins of a man. 
 Exact not, under so terrible a penalty as 
 infamy, a resuscitation from a state of death 
 almost as real as that from which Lazarus 
 rose not but by a miracle. 
 
 Begin a reformation, and custom will make 
 it easy. But what if the beginning be dread- 
 ful, the first steps not like climbing a moun- 
 tain but going through fire ? what if the 
 whole system must undergo a change violent 
 as that which we conceive of the mutation of 
 form in some msects ? what if a process 
 comparable to flaying alive be to be gone 
 through ? is the weakness that sinks under 
 such struggles to be confounded with the 
 pertinacity which clings to other vices, which 
 have induced no constitutional necessity, no 
 engagement of the whole victim,body and soul ? 
 
 I have known one in that state, when he 
 has tried to abstain but for one evening, — 
 though the poisonous potion had long ceased 
 to bring back its first enchantments, though 
 he was sure it would rather deepen his 
 gloom than brighten it, — in the violence of 
 the struggle, and the necessity he has felt of 
 getting rid of the present sensation at any 
 rate, I have known him to scx-eam out, to 
 cry aloud, for the anguish and pain of the 
 strife within him. 
 
 "Why should I hesitate to declare, that the 
 man of whom I speak is myself ? I have no 
 puling apology to make to mankind. I see 
 them all in one way or another deviating 
 from the pure reason. It is to my own na- 
 ture alone I am accountable for the woe that 
 I have brought upon it. 
 
 I believe that there are constitutions, 
 robust heads and iron insides, whom scarce 
 any excesses can hurt ; whombrandy(I have 
 seen them drink it like wine), at all events 
 whom wine, taken in ever so plentiful a 
 measure, can do no worse injury to than just 
 to muddle their faculties, perhaps never very 
 pellucid. On them this discourse is wasted. 
 They would but laugh at a weak brother, 
 who, trying his strength with them, and 
 coming off foiled fi'om the contest, would 
 fain persuade them that such agonistic exer- 
 cises are dangerous. It is to a very different 
 description of persons I speak. It is to the 
 weak, the nervous ; to those who feel the 
 want of some artificial aid to raise their 
 spirits in society to what is no more than tlie 
 ordinary pitch of all around them without it. 
 This is the secret of our drinking. Such 
 must fly the convivial board in the first in- 
 stance, if they do not mean to sell themselves 
 for term of life. 
 
 Twelve years ago I had completed my six- 
 and-twentieth year. I had lived from the 
 period of leaving school to that time pretty 
 much in solitude. My companions were 
 chiefly books, or at most one or two living 
 ones of my own book-loving and sober stamp. 
 I rose early, went to bed betimes, and the 
 
474 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD. 
 
 faculties which God had given me, I have 
 reason to think, did not rust in me unused. 
 
 About that time I fell in with some com- 
 panions of a different order. They were 
 men of boisterous spirits, sitters up a-nights, 
 disputants, drunlien ; yet seemed to have 
 something noble about them. We dealt 
 about the wit, or what passes for it after 
 midnight, jovially. Of the quality called 
 fancy I certainly possessed a larger sliare 
 than my companions. Encouraged by their 
 applause, I set up for a professed joker ! I, 
 who of all men am least fitted for such an 
 occupation, having, in addition to the greatest 
 difficulty which I experience at all times of 
 finding words to express my meaning, a na- 
 tural nervous impediment in my speech ! 
 
 Header, if you are gifted with nerves like 
 mine, aspire to any character but that of a 
 wit. When you find a tickling relish upon 
 your tongue disposing you to that sort of 
 conversation, especially' if you find a pretei-- 
 natural flow of ideas setting in upon you at 
 the sight of a bottle and fresh glasses, avoid 
 giving way to it as you would fly your 
 greatest destruction. If you cannot crush 
 the power of fancy, or that within you which 
 you mistake for such, divert it, give it some 
 other play. Write an essay, pen a character 
 or description, — but not as I do now, with 
 tears trickling down your cheeks. 
 
 To be an object of compassion to friends, 
 of derision to foes ; to be suspected by 
 strangers, stared at by fools ; to be esteemed 
 dull when you cannot be witty, to be ap- 
 plauded for witty when you know that you 
 have been dull ; to be called upon for the 
 extemporaneous exercise of that faculty 
 which no pi-emeditation can give ; to be 
 spurred on to efforts which end in contempt ; 
 to be set on to provoke mirth which procures 
 the procurer hatred ; to give pleasure and 
 be paid with squinting malice ; to swallow 
 draughts of life-destroying wine which are 
 to be distilled hiio airy breath to tickle vain 
 auditors ; to mortgage miserable morrows 
 for nights of madness ; to waste whole seas 
 of time upon those who pay it back in little 
 inconsiderable drops of grudging Ji}iplause, — 
 are the wages of buffoonery and death. 
 
 Time, which has a sure stroke at dissolving 
 all connexions which have no solidor fasten- 
 ing than this liquid cement, more kind to 
 me than my own taste or penetration, at 
 
 length opened my eyes to the Bupposed 
 
 qualities of my first friends. No trace of 
 them is left but in the vices which they in- 
 troduced, and the habits they infixed. In 
 them my friends survive still, and exercise 
 ample retribution for any supposed infidelity 
 that I may have been guilty of towards 
 them. 
 
 My next more immediate companions were 
 and are persons of such intrinsic and felt 
 worth, that though accidentally their ac- 
 quaintance has proved pernicious to me, I 
 do not know that if the thing were to do 
 over again, I should have the courage tfi 
 eschew the mischief at the price of forfeiting 
 the benefit. I came to them reeking from 
 the steams of my late over-heated notions of 
 companionship ; and the slightest fuel which 
 they unconsciously afforded, was sufficient to 
 feed my old fires into a propensity. 
 
 They were no drinkers, but, one from pro- 
 fessional habits, and another from a custom 
 derived from his fiither, smoked tobacco. 
 The devil could not have devised a moi*e 
 subtle trap to re-take a backsliding penitent. 
 The transition, from gulping down draughts 
 of liquid fire to puffing out innocuous blasts 
 of dry smoke, was so like cheating him. But 
 he is too hard for us when we hope to com- 
 mute. He beats us at barter ; and when we 
 think to set off a new failing against an old 
 infirmity, 'tis odds but he puts the trick 
 iipon us of two for one. That (comparatively) 
 white devil of tobacco brought with him in 
 the end seven worse than himself 
 
 It were impertinent to carry the reader 
 through all the processes by which, from 
 smokmg at first with malt liquor, I took my 
 degrees through thin wines, through stronger 
 wine and water, through small punch, to 
 those juggling compositions, which, under 
 the name of mixed hquors, slur a great deal 
 of brandy or other poison under less and less 
 water continually, until they come next to 
 none, and so to none at all. But it is hateful 
 to disclose the secrets of my Tartarus. 
 
 I shoidd repel my readers, fiom a mere 
 incai)acity of believing me, were I to tell 
 them what tobacco has been to me, the 
 drudging service which I have paid, the 
 slavery which I have vowed to it. How, 
 when I have resolved to quit it, a feeling as 
 of ingratitude has started up ; how it has i)ut 
 on personal claims and made the demands 
 
CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD. 
 
 476 
 
 of a friend upon me. How the reading of 
 it casually in a book, as where Adams takes 
 his whiff in the chimney-corner of some 
 inn in Joseph Andrews, or Piscator in the 
 Complete Angler breaks his fast upon a 
 morning pipe in that delicate room Piscator- 
 ibus Sacrum, has in a moment broken down 
 the resistance of weeks. How a pipe was 
 ever in my midnight path before me, till the 
 vision' forced me to realise it, — how then 
 its ascending vapoui's curled, its fragrance 
 lulled, and the thousand delicious minister- 
 ings conversant about it, employing every 
 faculty, extracted the sense of pain. How 
 from illuminating it came to darken, from a 
 quick solace it turned to a negative relief, 
 thence to a restlessness and dissatisfaction, 
 thence to a positive misery. How, even now, 
 when the whole secret stands confessed in 
 all its dreadful truth before me, I feel myself 
 linked to it beyond the power of revocation. 
 Bone of my bone 
 
 Persons not accustomed to examine the 
 motives of their actions, to reckon up the 
 countless nails that rivet the chains of habit, 
 or perhaps being bound by none so obdurate 
 as those I have confessed to, may recoil from 
 this as from an ovei'charged picture. But 
 what short of such a bondage is it, which in 
 spite of protesting friends, a weeping wife, 
 and a reprobating world, chains down many 
 a poor fellow, of no original indisposition to 
 goodness, to his pipe and his pot 1 
 
 I have seen a print after Correggio, in 
 which three female figures are ministering 
 to a man who sits fast bound at the root of 
 a tree. Sensuality is soothing him, Evil 
 Habit is nailing him to a branch, and Repug- 
 nance at the same instant of time is applying 
 a snake to his side. In his face is feeble 
 delight, the recollection of past rather than 
 perception of pi'esent pleasures, languid 
 enjoyment of evil with utter imbecility to 
 good, a Sybaritic effeminacy, a submission to 
 bondage, the springs of the will gone down 
 Uke a broken clock, the sin and the suffering 
 co-instantaneous, or the latter forerunning 
 the former, remorse preceding action — all 
 this represented in one point of time. — When 
 I saw this, I admired the wonderful skill of 
 the painter. But when I went away, I wept, 
 because I thouglit of my own condition. 
 
 Of that there is no hope that it should 
 ever change. The watei"s have gone over 
 
 me. But out of the black depths, could I be 
 heard, I would cry out to all those who have 
 but set a foot in the perilous flood. Could 
 the youth, to whom the flavour of his first 
 wine is delicious aa the opening scenes of 
 life or the entering upon some newly dis- 
 covered paradise, look into my desolation, 
 and be made to understand what a dreary 
 thing it is when a man shall feel himself 
 going down a precipice with open eyes 
 and a passive will, — to see his destruction 
 and have no power to stop it, and yet to feel 
 it all the way emanating from himself ; to 
 i perceive all goodness emptied out of him, 
 and yet not to be able to forget a time when 
 it was otherwise ; to bear about the piteous 
 spectacle of his own self ruins : — could he 
 see my fevered eye, feverish with last night's 
 drinking, and feverishly looking for this 
 night's repetition of the folly ; could he feel 
 the body of the death out of which 1 ciy 
 hourly with feebler and feebler outcry to be 
 delivered, — it were enough to make him dash 
 the sparkling beverage to the earth in all 
 the pride of its mantling temptation ; to 
 make him clasp his teeth, 
 
 and not undo 'em 
 To suffer wet damnation to run thro' em. 
 
 Yea, but (methiuks I hear somebody 
 object) if sobriety be that fine thing you 
 would have us to understand, ifthe comforts 
 of a cool brain are to be preferred to that 
 state of heated excitement which you describe 
 and dejjlore, what hinders in your instance 
 that you do not return to those habits from 
 which you would induce others never to 
 swerve 1 if the blessing be worth preserving, 
 is it not worth recovering 1 
 
 Recovering ! — O if a wish could transport 
 me back to those days of youth, when a 
 di-aught from the next cleai* spring could 
 slake any heats which summer suns and 
 youthful exercise had power to stir up in the 
 blood, how gladly would I return to thee, 
 pure element, the drink of children, and of 
 child-like holy hennit ! In my dreams I can 
 sometimes fimcy thy cool refreshment purling 
 over my burnmg tongue. But my waking 
 stomach rejects it. That which refreshes 
 innocence only makes me sick and faint. 
 
 But is there no middle way betwixt total 
 abstinence and the excess which kills you \ 
 — For your sake, reader, and that you may 
 
476 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF A DllUNKARD. 
 
 never attain to my experience, with pain 
 I must utter the dreadful truth, that there 
 is none, noue that I can find. In my stage 
 of habit (I speak not of habits less confirmed 
 — for some of them T believe the advice to 
 be most prudential) in the stage w Inch I have 
 reached, to stop short of that measure which 
 is sufficient to draw on torpor and sleep, the 
 benumbing apoplectic sleep of the drunkard, 
 is to have taken none at all. The pain of 
 the self-denial is all one. And what that is, 
 I had rather the reader should believe on 
 my credit, than know from his own trial. 
 He will come to know it, whenever he shall 
 arrive in that state, in which, paradoxical as 
 it may appear, reason shall only visit him 
 through intoxication : for it is a fearful truth, 
 that the intellectual faculties by repeated 
 acts of iutemperance may be driven from 
 their ordei'ly sphere of action, their clear 
 daylight ministeries, until they shall be 
 brought at last to depend, for the faint 
 manifestation of tlieir departing energies, 
 upon the returning periods of the fatal 
 madness to which they owe their devasta- 
 tion. The drinking man is never less himself 
 than during his sober iutei'vals. Evil is so 
 far his good.* 
 
 Behold me then, in the robust period of 
 life, reduced to imbecility and decay. Hear 
 me count my gains, and the profits which 
 I have derived from the midniglit cup. 
 
 Twelve years ago, I was possessed of a 
 healthy frame of mind and body. I w;is 
 never strong, but I think my constituti >n 
 (for a weak one) was as happily exempt 
 from the tendency to any malady as it was 
 possible to be. .1 scarce knew wliat it was 
 to ail anything. Now, except when I am 
 losing myself in a sea of drink, I am never 
 free from those uneasy sensations in kead 
 and stomach, which are so much worse to 
 bear tlian any definite pains or aches. 
 
 At that time I was seUloiu in bed after 
 six in tiie morning, summer and winter. 
 I awoke refreshed, jmd seldom without some 
 merry thoughts in my head, or some piece of 
 
 • When poor M painted his Inst picture, with a 
 
 pencil in one tromblinK hiind, und u glustt ul' brandy und 
 water in the oilier, hi« ilngern owed the conipurative 
 Btcadines* with which they were enabled to uro thnniKh 
 their task in an imperfect niannrr, to a temporary (Irm- 
 ness derived Irom a reiHliliun of practices, tlio (general 
 ett'ect of which hud ishakeu both them und him so 
 terribly. 
 
 a aong to welcome the new-bom day. Now, 
 the first feeling which besets me, after 
 stretching out the hours of recumbence to 
 their last possible extent, is a forecast of the 
 wearisome day that lies before me, with a 
 secret wish that I could have lain on still, 
 or never awaked. 
 
 Life itself, my waking life, has much of 
 the confusion, the trouble, and obscure per- 
 plexity, of an ill dream. In the day time 
 I stumble upon dark mountains. 
 
 Business, which, though never very par- 
 ticularly adapted to my nature, yet as some- 
 thing of necessity to be gone through, and 
 therefore best undertaken with cheerfulness, 
 I used to enter upon with some degree of 
 alacrity, now wearies, affrights, peqilexes 
 me. I fancy all sorts of discouragements, 
 and am ready to give up an occupation which 
 gives me bread, from a harassing conceit of 
 incapacity. The slightest commission given 
 me by a friend, or any small duty which 
 I have to perform for myself, as giving ordei-s 
 to a tradesman, &c. haunts me as a labour 
 impossible to be got through. So nmch the 
 springs of action are broken. 
 
 The same cowardice attends me in all my 
 intercourse with mankind. I dai-e not pro- 
 mise that a friend's honour, or his cause, 
 would be safe in my keeping, if I were put 
 to the expense of any manly resolution in 
 defendiug it. So much tlie s]jrings of moral 
 action are deadened within me. 
 
 My favourite occupations in times past 
 now cease to entertain. I can do nothing 
 readily. Application for ever so short a time 
 kills me. This poor abstract of my condition 
 was penned at long intervals, with scarcely 
 any attempt at coune.\ion of thought, which 
 is now difficult to me. 
 
 The noble passages which formerly do- 
 lighted me in iiistory or poetic fiction, now 
 only draw a few weak tears, allied to dotage. 
 My broken and ilispiriteil nature seems to 
 sink before anything great and admirable. 
 
 I perpetually catch myself in tears, for any 
 cause, or none. It is inexpressible how much 
 this infirmity adds to a sense of ahame, and 
 a general feeling of tleterioration. 
 
 These are some of the instances, concerning 
 which I can say with truth, that it was nut 
 always so with me. 
 
 Shall 1 lift up the veil of in}' weakness 
 any further \ — or is '.his disclosure siilKeient / 
 
POPULAR FALLACIES. 
 
 477 
 
 I am a poor nameless egotist, who have no 
 vjinity to consult by these Confessions. I 
 know not whether I shall be laughed at, or 
 heard seriously. Such as they are, I com- 
 
 mend them to the reader's attention, if he 
 find his own case any way touched. I have 
 told him what I am come to. Let him stop 
 in time. 
 
 POPULAR FALLACIES. 
 
 1.— THAT A BULLY IS ALWAYS A COWARD. 
 
 This axiom contains a principle of com- 
 pensation, which disposes us to admit the 
 truth of it. But there is no safe trusting to 
 dictionaries and definitions. We should 
 more willingly fall in with this popular 
 language, if we did not find brutality some- 
 times awkwardly coupled with valour in the 
 same vocabulaiy. The comic writers, with 
 their poetical justice, have contributed not a 
 little to mislead us upon this point. To see 
 a hectoring fellow exposed and beaten upon 
 the stage, has something in it wonderfully 
 diverting. Some people's share of animal 
 spirits is notoriously low and defective. It 
 has not strength to raise a vapour, or furnish 
 out the wind of a tolerable bluster. These 
 love to be told that huffing is no part of 
 valour. The truest courage with them is 
 that which is the least noisy and obtrusive. 
 But confront one of these silent heroes with 
 the swaggerer of real life, and his confidence 
 in the theory quickly vanishes. Pretensions 
 do not uniformly bespeak non-performance. 
 A modest, inoftensive deportment does not 
 necessarily imply valour ; neither does the 
 absence of it justify us in denying that 
 quality. Hickman wanted modesty — we do 
 not mean him of Clarissa — but who ever 
 doubted his courage ] Even the poets — 
 upon whom this equitable distribution of 
 qualities should be most binding — have 
 thought it agreeable to nature to depart 
 from the rule upon occasion. Harapha, in 
 the " Agonistes," is indeed a bully upon the 
 received notions. Milton has made him at 
 once a blusterer, a giant, and a dastardj But 
 Almanzor, in Dryden, talks of driving armies 
 singly before him — and does it. Tom Brown 
 had a shrewder insight into this kind of 
 character than either of his predecessors. 
 He divides the palm more equably, and 
 allows his hero a sort of dimidiate pre- 
 
 eminence : — " Bully Dawson kicked by half 
 the town, and half the town kicked by 
 Bully Dawson." This was true distributive 
 justice. 
 
 II.— THAT ILL-GOTTEN GAIN NEVER PROSPERS. 
 
 The weakest part of mankind have this 
 saying commonest in their mouth. It is the 
 trite consolation administered to the easy 
 dupe, when he has been tricked out of his 
 money or estate, that the acquisition of it 
 will do the owner no good. But the rogues 
 of this world — the prudenter part of them, 
 at least, — know better ; and if the obser- 
 vation had been as true as it is old, would 
 not have failed by this time to have 
 discovered it. They have pretty sharp 
 distinctions of the fluctuating and the 
 permanent. " Lightly come, lightly go," is 
 a proverb, which they can very well afford 
 to leave, when they leave little else, to the 
 losers. They do not always find manors, got 
 by rapine or chicanery, insensibly to melt 
 away, as the poets will have it ; or that all 
 gold glides, like thawing snow, from the 
 thief's hand that grasps it. Church land, 
 alienated to lay uses, was formerly denounced 
 to have this slippery quality. But some 
 portions of it somehow always stuck so fa.st, 
 that the denunciators have been fain to 
 postpone the prophecy of refundment to a 
 late posterity. 
 
 III.— THAT A MAN MUST NOT LAUGH AT HIS 
 OWN JEST. 
 
 The severest exaction surely ever invented 
 upon the self-denial of poor human nature ! 
 This is to expect a gentleman to give a treat 
 without partaking of it ; to sit esurient at 
 his own table, and commend the flavour of 
 his venison upon the absurd strength of hia 
 never touching it himself. On the contrai'y, 
 
478 
 
 POPULAR FALLACIES. 
 
 we love to see a wag taste his own joke to 
 his party ; to watch a quirk or a merry 
 conceit flickering upon the lips some seconds 
 before the tongue is delivered of it. If it be 
 good, fresh, and racy — begotten of the 
 occasion ; if he that uttei-s it never thought 
 it before, he is naturally the first to be 
 tickled with it ; and any suppression of such 
 complacence we hold to be churlish and 
 insulting. "VVTiat does it seem to imply but 
 that your company is weak or foolish enough 
 to be moved by an image or a fancy, that 
 shall stir you not at all, or but faintly ? 
 This is exactly the humour of the fine 
 gentleman in Mandeville, who, while he 
 dazzles his guests with the display of some 
 costly toy, affects himself to " see nothing 
 considerable in it." 
 
 IV.— THAT SUCH A ONE SHOWS HIS BREEDING. 
 —THAT IT IS EASY TO PERCEIVE HE IS 
 NO GENTLEM.4.N. 
 
 A SPEECH fi'om the poorest sort of people, 
 which always indicates that the party 
 vituperated is a gentleman. The very fact 
 which they deny is that which galls and 
 exasperates tliem to use this language. The 
 forbearance with which it is usually received 
 is a proof what interpretation the bystander 
 sets upon it. Of a kin to this, and still less 
 politic, are the phrases with which, in their 
 street rhetoric, they ply one another more 
 grossly ; — He is a poor creature. — He has not 
 
 a rag to cover dr. ; though this last, we 
 
 confess, is more frequently applied by females 
 to females. They do not perceive that the 
 satire glances upon themselves. A poor 
 man, of all thmgs in the world, should not 
 upbraid an antagonist with poverty. Are 
 there no other topics — as, to tell him liis 
 
 father was hanged — his sister, &c. , 
 
 without exposing a secret which should be 
 kept snug between them ; and doing an 
 afi"ront to the order to which they have the 
 honour equidly to belong ? All this while 
 they do n(jt see how the wealthier man 
 stands by and laughs in his sleeve at both. 
 
 v.— THAT THE POOR COPY THE VICES OF 
 THE RICH. 
 
 A SMOOTH text to the letter ; and, preached 
 from the pulpit, is sure of a docile audience 
 
 from the pews lined with satin. It is twice 
 sitting upon velvet to a foolish squire to be 
 told, that he — and not perverse nature, as the 
 homilies would make us imagine, is the true 
 cause of all the irregularities in his parish. 
 This is striking at the root of free-will indeed, 
 and denying the originality of sin in any 
 sense. But men are not such implicit sheep 
 as this comes to. If the abstinence from evil 
 on the part of the upper classes is to derive 
 itself from no higher principle than the 
 apprehension of setting ill patterns to the 
 lower, we beg leave to discharge them from 
 all squeamishuess on that score : they may 
 even take their fill of pleasures, where they 
 can find them. The Genius of Poverty, 
 hamjiered and straitened as it is, is not so 
 barren of invention, but it can trade upon 
 the staple of its o^vn vice, without drawing 
 upon their capital. The poor are not quite 
 such servile imitators as they take them for. 
 Some of them are very clever artists in their 
 way. Here and there we find an original. 
 Who taught the poor to steal, to pilfer ? 
 They did not go to the great for schoolmas- 
 ters in these faculties surely. It is well if in 
 some vices they allow us to be — no copyists. 
 In no other sense is it true that the poor 
 copy them, than as servants may be said to 
 take after their mastere and mistresses, when 
 they succeed to their revereionary cold meats. 
 If the master, from indisposition or some 
 other cause, neglect his food, the servant 
 dines notwithstanding. 
 
 " O, but (some will say) the force of 
 example is great." We knew a lady who 
 was so scrupulous on this head, that she 
 would put up with the calls of the most 
 impertinent visitor, rather than let her ser- 
 vant say she was not at home, for fear of 
 teaching her maid to tell an untruth ; and 
 this in the very face of the fiict, which she 
 knew well enough, that the wench was one 
 of the greatest liars upon the earth without 
 teaching ; so much so, that her mistress 
 possibly never heard two words of consecu- 
 tive truth from her in her life. But nature 
 must go for nothing : example must be every- 
 thing. This liar in grain, who never opened 
 her mouth without a lie, must be guarded 
 against a remote inference, which she (pretty 
 cuiiuist !) might possibly draw from a form 
 of words — literally fal.'^e, but essentially 
 deceiving no one — that under some circum- 
 
POPULAR FALLACIES. 
 
 479 
 
 stances a fib migM not be so exceedingly 
 sinful — a fiction, too, not at all in her own 
 way, or one that she could be suspected of 
 adopting, for few servant-wenches care to be 
 denied to visitors. 
 
 This word example reminds us of another 
 fine word which is in use upon these occa- 
 sions — encouragement. " People in our sphere 
 must not be thought to give encouragement 
 to such proceedings." To such a frantic 
 height is this princi])le capable of being 
 carried, that we have known individuals who 
 have thought it within the scope of their 
 influence to sanction despair, and give eclat 
 to — suicide. A domestic in the family of a 
 county member lately deceased, from love, or 
 some unknown cause, cut his throat, but not 
 successfully. The poor fellow was othei'wise 
 much loved and respected ; and great interest 
 was used in his behalf, upon his recovery, 
 that he might be permitted to retain his 
 place ; his word being first pledged, not 
 without some substantial sponsors to promise 
 for him, that the like should never happen 
 again. His master was inclinable to keep 
 him, but his mistress thought otherwise ; 
 and John in the end was dismissed, her lady- j 
 sliip declaring that she " could not think of 
 e ueouraging any such doings in the county." 
 
 VI.— THAT ENOUGH IS AS GOOD AS A FEAST. 
 
 Not a man, woman, or child, in ten miles 
 round Guildhall, who really believes this 
 saying. The inventor of it did not believe it 
 him.self. It was made in revenge by some- 
 body, who was disappointed of a regale. It 
 is a vile cold-scrag-of-mutton sophism ; a lie 
 palmed upon the palate, which knows better 
 tilings. If nothing else could be said for a 
 feast, this is sufticient, that from the super- 
 flux there is usually something left for the 
 next day. Morally interpreted, it belongs to 
 a class of provei-bs which have a tendency to 
 make us undervalue mone>/. Of this cast 
 are those notable observations, that money is 
 not health ; riches cannot purchase every- 
 thing : the metaphor which makes gold to 
 be mere muck, with the morality which 
 traces fine clothing to the sheep's back, and 
 denounces pearl as the unhandsome excre- 
 tion of an oyster. Hence, too, the phrase 
 which imputes dirt to acres — a sophistry so 
 barefaced, that even the literal sense of it is 
 
 true only in a wet season. This, and abund- 
 ance of similar sage saws assuming to incul- 
 cate content, we verily believe to have been 
 the invention of some cimning borrower, who 
 had designs upon the purse of his wealthier 
 neighbour, which he could only hope to carry 
 by force of these verbal jugglings. Translate 
 any one of these sayings out of the artful 
 metonymy which envelopes it, and the trick 
 is apparent. Goodly legs and shoulders ol 
 mutton, exhilarating cordials, books, pictures, 
 the opportunities of seeing foreign countries, 
 independence, heart's ease, a man's own time 
 to himself, are not mtick — however we may 
 be pleased to scandalise with that appella- 
 tion the faithful metal that provides them 
 for us. 
 
 VII.— OF TWO DISPUTANTS THE WARMEST IS 
 GENERALLY IN THE WRONG. 
 
 Our experience would lead us to quite an 
 opposite conclusion. Tt.nper, indeed, is no 
 test of truth ; but warmth and earnestness 
 are a proof at least of a man's own con\iction 
 of the rectitude of that which he maintaijis. 
 Coolness is as often the result of an unprin- 
 cipled indifference to truth or falsehood, as 
 of a sober confidence in a man's own side in 
 a dispute. Nothing is more insulting some- 
 times than the appearance of this phihjso- 
 phic temper. There is little Titubus, tlic 
 stammering law-stationer in Lincoln's-inn — 
 we have seldom known this shrewd little 
 fellow engaged in an argument where we 
 were not convinced he had the best of it, if 
 his tongue would but fairly have seconded 
 him. When he has been spluttering excel- 
 lent broken sense for an hour together, 
 writhing and labouring to be delivered of 
 the point of dispute — the very gist of the 
 controversy knocking at his teeth, which like 
 some obstinate iron-grating still obstructed 
 its deliverance — his puny frame convulsed, 
 and face reddening all over at an unfairness 
 in the logic which he wanted articulation to 
 expose, it has moved our gall to see a smooth 
 portly fellow of an adversary, that cared 
 not a button for the merits of the question, 
 by merely laying his hand upon the head of 
 the stationer, and desiring him to be calm 
 (your tall disputants have always the advan 
 tage), with a provoking sneer carry the 
 argument clean from him in the opiui(m of 
 
uo 
 
 POPULAR FALLACIES. 
 
 all the by-standers, who have gone away 
 clearly convinced that Titubus must have 
 been in the wrong, because he was in a 
 
 passion ; and that Mr. , meaning his 
 
 opponent, is one of the fairest and at the 
 same time one of the most dispassionate 
 arguers breathing. 
 
 \'ni.— THAT VERBAL ALLUSIONS ARE NOT ■V\^T, 
 BECAUSE THEY WILL NOT BEAR A TRANS- 
 LATION. 
 
 The same might be said of the wittiest 
 local allusions. A custom is sometimes as 
 difficidt to explain to a foreigner as a pun. 
 What would become of a great part of the 
 wit of the last age, if it were tried by this 
 test ? How would certain topics, as alder- 
 mauity, cuckoldry, have sounded to a Teren- 
 tian auditory, though Terence himself had 
 been alive to translate them 1 Senator 
 urbanus with Curruca to boot for a synonyme, 
 would but faintly have done the business. 
 Words, iuvolving notions, are hard enough 
 to render ; it is too much to expect us to 
 translate a sound, and give an elegant version 
 to a jingle. The Virgilian harmony is not 
 translatable, but by substituting harmonious 
 sounds in another language for it. To Latin- 
 ise a pun, we must seek a pun in Latin, that 
 will answer to it ; as, to give an idea of the 
 double endings in Hudibras, we must have 
 recourse to a similar practice in the old 
 monkish doggrel. Dennis, the fiercest op- 
 pugner of puns in ancient or modern times, 
 professes himself highly tickled with the 
 " a stick," chiming to " ecclesiastic." Yet 
 what is this but a species of pun, a verbal 
 consonance ? 
 
 IX.— THAT THE WORST PUNS ARE THE BEST. 
 
 If by worst be only meant the most far- 
 fetched and startling, we agree to it. A puu 
 is not bound by the laws which limit nicer 
 wit. It is a pistol let off at the ear ; not a 
 featlier to tickle tlie intellect. It is an antic 
 which does not stand upon maimei's, but 
 comes bounding into the presence, and does 
 not show the less comic for being dragged 
 in sometimes by the head and shoulders. 
 What though it limp a little, or prove de- 
 fective in one leg ? — all the better. A ])un 
 may easily be too curious and artificial- 
 
 Who has not at one time or other been at a 
 pai-ty of professoi's (himself perhaps an old 
 offender in that line), where, after ringing a 
 round of the most ingenious conceits, every 
 man contributing his shot, and some there 
 the most expert shooters of the day ; after 
 making a poor word run the gauntlet till it 
 is ready to drop ; after hunting and winding 
 it througli all the possible ambages of similar 
 sounds ; after squeezing, and hauling, and 
 tugging at it, till tlie very milk of it will not 
 yield a drop further, — suddenly some obscure, 
 unthought-of fellow in a corner, who was 
 never 'prentice to the trade, whom the com- 
 pany for very pity passed over, as we do by a 
 known poor man when a money-subscription 
 is going round, no one calling upon him for 
 his quota — has all at once come out with 
 something so whimsical, yet so pertinent ; so 
 brazen in its pretensions, yet so impossible 
 to be denied ; so exquisitely good, and so 
 deplorably bad, at the same time, — that it 
 has proved a Robin Hood's shot ; anything 
 ulterior to that is despaired of; and the 
 pai'ty breaks up, unanimously voting it to be 
 the very worst (that is, best) pun of the 
 evening. This species of wit is the better 
 for not being perfect in all its parts. Wliat 
 it gains in completeness, it loses in natural- 
 ness. The more exactly it satisfies the 
 critical, the less hold it has upon some other 
 faculties. The puns which are most enter- 
 taining are those which will lea.st bear an 
 analysis. Of this kind is the following, re- 
 corded with a sort of stigma, in one of Swift's 
 Miscellanies. 
 
 An Oxford scholar, meeting a porter who 
 was carrying a hare through the streets, 
 accosts him with this extraordinary question : 
 " Prithee, friend, is that thy own hare, or a 
 wig ? " 
 
 There is no excusing this, and no resisting 
 it. A man might blur ten sides of paper 
 in attempting a defence of it against a critic 
 who should be laughter-proof. The quibble 
 in itself is not considerable. It is only a 
 new turn given by a little false pronunciation, 
 to a very common, though not very courteous 
 inquiry. Put by one gentleman to another at 
 a dinner-party, it would have been vapid ; to 
 the mistress of the house it would have 
 shown much less wit than rudeness. We 
 must take in the totidity of time, place, and 
 person ; the pert look of the inquiring 
 
POPULAR FALLACIES. 
 
 481 
 
 scholar, the desponding loolcs of the puzzled 
 porter : the one stopping at leisure, the other 
 hurrying on with his burden ; the innocent 
 though rather abrupt tendency of the first 
 member of the question, with the i;tter and 
 inextricable irrelevancy of the second ; the 
 place— a public street,not favourable to frivo- 
 lous investigations ; the affrontive quality of 
 the primitive inquiry (the common question) 
 invidiously transferred to the derivative (the 
 new turn given to it) in the implied satire ; 
 namely, that few of that tribe are expected 
 to eat of the good things which they carry, 
 they being in most countries considered 
 rather as the temporary trustees than owners 
 of such dainties, — which the fellow was 
 beginning to understand ; but then the wig 
 again comes in, and he can make nothing of 
 it ; all put together constitute a picture : 
 Hogarth could have made it intelligible on 
 canvass. 
 
 Yet nine out of ten critics will pronounce 
 this a very bad piin, because of the defective- 
 ness in the concluding member, which is its 
 very beauty, and constitutes the surprise. 
 The same person shall cry up for admirable 
 the cold quibble from Virgil about the 
 broken Cremona ;* because it is made out 
 in all its parts, and leaves nothing to the 
 imagination. We venture to call it cold ; 
 because, of thousands who have admired it, 
 it would be difficult to find one who has 
 heartUy chuckled at it. As appealing to the 
 judgment merely (setting the risible faculty 
 aside), we must pronounce it a monument of 
 curious felicity. But as some stories are said 
 to be too good to be true, it may with equal 
 truth be asserted of this biverbal allusion, 
 that it is too good to be natural. One can- 
 not help suspecting that the incident was in- 
 vented to fit the line. It wovild have been 
 better had it been less perfect. Like some 
 VLrgilianhemistichs,it has suffered by filling 
 lip. The nimium Vicina was enough in 
 conscience ; the Cremonce afterwards loads it. 
 It is, in fact, a double pun ; and we have 
 always observed that a superfoetation in this 
 sort of wit is dangerous. When a man has 
 said a good thing, it is seldom politic to follow 
 it up. We do not care to be cheated a 
 second time ; or, perhaps the mind of man 
 (with revex-ence be it spoken) is not capacious 
 enough to lodge two puns at a time. The 
 • Swift. 
 
 impression, to be forcible, must bo simulta- 
 neous and undivided. 
 
 X.— THAT HANDSOME 19 THAT HANDSOME DOES. 
 
 Those who use this proverb can never 
 have seen Mrs. Coni-ady. 
 
 The soul, if we may believe Plotinus, is a 
 ray from the celestial beauty. As she pai*- 
 takes more or less of this heavenly light, she 
 informs, with corresponding characters, the 
 fleshly tenement which she chooses, and 
 frames to herself a suitable mansion. 
 
 All which only proves that the soul of Mrs. 
 Conrady, in her pre-existent state, was no 
 great judge of architecture. 
 
 To the same effect, in a Hymn in honour 
 of Beauty, divine Spenser platonising, 
 sings : — 
 
 Every spirit as it is more pure, 
 
 And hath in it the more of heavenly light, 
 So it the fairer hody doth procure 
 To hahit in, and it more fairly dig'ht 
 With cheerful grace and amiable sight. 
 For of the soul the body form doth take : 
 For soul is form and doth the body make. 
 
 But Spenser, it is clear, never saw Mrs. 
 Conrady. 
 
 These poets, we find, are no safe guides in 
 philosophy ; for here, in his very next stanza 
 but one, is a saving clause, which throws us 
 all out again, and leaves us as much to seek 
 as ever ; — 
 
 Yet oft it falls, that many a gentle mind 
 Dwells in deformed tabernacle drown'd, 
 Either by chance, against the course of kind. 
 Or through unaptncss in the substance found, 
 WTiich it assumed of some stubborn ground. 
 That will not yield unto her form's direction, 
 But is performed with some foul imperfection. 
 
 From which it would follow, that Spenser 
 had seen somebody like Mrs. Conrady. 
 
 The spirit of this good lady — her previous 
 anima — must have stumbled upon one of 
 these untoward tabernacles which he speaks 
 of. A more rebellious commodity of clay for 
 a ground, as the poet calls it, no gentle mind 
 ^and sure hers is one of the gentlest — ever 
 had to deal with 
 
 Pondering upon her inexplicable visage — 
 inexplicable, we mean, but by this modifica- 
 tion of the theory — we have come to a con- 
 clusion that, if one must be plain, it is better 
 to be plain all over, than amidst a tolerable 
 residue of featui-es to hanjc out one that shall 
 
 I I 
 
482 
 
 POPULAR FALLACIEa 
 
 he exceptionable. No one can say of Mrs. 
 Conrad y's countenance that it would be better 
 if she had but a nose. It is impossible to 
 pull her to pieces in this manner. We have 
 seen the most malicious beauties of her own 
 sex baffled in the attempt at a selection. The 
 tout-ensemhle defies particularising. It is too 
 complete — too consistent, as we may say — 
 to admit of these invidious reservations. It 
 is not as if some Apelles had picked out here 
 a lip — and there a chin — out of the collected 
 ugliness of Greece, to frame a model by. 
 It is a sjTnmetrical whole. We challenge 
 the minutest connoisseur to ca^nl at any part 
 or parcel of the countenance in question ; to 
 say that this, or that, is improperly placed. 
 We are convinced that true ugliness, no le.ss 
 than is affirmed of true beauty, is the result 
 of harmony. Like that, too, it reigns without 
 a competitor. No one ever saw Mrs. Con- 
 rady, without pronouncing her to be the 
 plainest woman that he ever met with in the 
 course of his life. The first time that you 
 are indulged with a sight of her fiice, is an 
 era in your existence ever after. You are 
 glad to have seen it — like Stonehenge. No 
 one can pretend to forget it. No one ever 
 apologised to her for meeting her in the 
 street on such a day and not knowing her : 
 the pretext would be too bare. Nobody can 
 mistake her for another. Nobody can say of 
 her, " I think I have seen that face some- 
 where, but I cannot call to mind where." 
 you must remember that in such a parlour 
 it first struck you — like a bust. You won- 
 dered where tlie owner of the house had 
 picked it up. You wondered more when it 
 began to move its lips — so mildly too ! No 
 one ever thought of asking her to sit for her 
 picture. Lockets are for remembrance ; and 
 it would be clearly superfluous to hang an 
 image at your heart, which, once seen, can 
 never be out of it. It is not a mean face 
 eitlier ; its entire originality precludes that. 
 Neither is it of that order of plain faces 
 which improve upon accjuaintance. Some 
 very good but ordinary people, by an mi- 
 wearied perseverance in good offices, put a 
 cheat upon our eyes ; juggle our senses out 
 of tlieir natural impressions ; and set us 
 upon discovering good indications in a coun- 
 tenance, wliich at first siglit promised notliing 
 less. We detect gdiitleiuss, which liad escaped 
 us, lurking about an under lijj. IJut vvIilii 
 
 Mrs. Conrady has done you a service, her 
 fiice remains the same ; when she has done 
 you a thousand, and you know that she is 
 ready to double the number, still it is that 
 individual face. Neither can you say of it, 
 that it would be a good face if it were not 
 marked by the small pox — a compliment 
 which is always more admissive than excusa- 
 tory — for either Mrs. Conrady never had the 
 small-pox : or, as we say, took it kindly. No, 
 it stands upon its own merits fairly. There 
 it is. It is her mark, her token ; that which 
 she is known by. 
 
 XI.— THAT \VE MUST NOT LOOK A GIFT HORSE 
 IN THE MOUTH. 
 
 Nor a lady's age in the parish register. 
 We hope we have more delicacy than to do 
 either ; but some faces spare us the trouble 
 of these dental inquiries. And what if the 
 beast, which my friend would force upon 
 my acceptance, prove, upon the face of it, a 
 sorry Kosinante, a lean, ill-favoured jade, 
 whom no gentleman could think of setting 
 up in his stables ? Must I, rather than not 
 be obliged to my friend, make her a com- 
 panion to Eclipse or Lightfoot! A horse- 
 giver, no more than a horse-seller, has a 
 right to palm his spavined article upon us 
 for good wai'e. An equivalent is expected 
 in either case ; and, with my own good will, 
 I would no more be cheated out of my 
 thanks than out of my money. Some people 
 have a knack of putting upon you gifts of 
 no real value, to engage yuu to substantial 
 gratitude. We thank them for nothing. 
 Our friend Mitis carries this humour of 
 never refusing a present, to the very point 
 of absurdity — if it were possible to couple 
 the ridiculous with so much mist;iken deli- 
 cacy, and i-eal good-nature. Not an apart- 
 ment in his fine house (and he has a true 
 taste in household decorations), but is stuffed 
 up with some preposterous print or mirror 
 — the worst adapted to his panels that may 
 be — the presents of his friends that know 
 his weakness ; while his noble Vandykes 
 are displaced, to make room for a set of 
 daubs, the work of some wretched artist of 
 'lis acquaintance, who, having had them re- 
 turned upon his liand.s for bad likenesses, 
 finds his aciount in bestowing them here 
 gratis. The good creature liaa not the heart 
 
POPULAR FALLACIES. 
 
 483 
 
 to mortify the painter at the expense of an 
 honest refusal. It is pleasant (if it did not 
 vex one at the same time) to see him sitting 
 in his dining parlour, surrounded with ob- 
 scure aunts and cousins to God knows whom, 
 whUe the true Lady Marys and Lady Bettys 
 of his own honourable family, in favour to 
 these adopted frights, are consigned to the 
 stair-case and tlie lumber-room. In like 
 manner his goodly shelves are one by one 
 stripped of his favourite old authoi's, to give 
 place to a collection of presentation coj)ies — 
 the flour and bran of modern poetry. A 
 presentation copy, reader — if haply you are 
 yet innocent of such favours — is a copy of a 
 book which does not sell, sent you by the 
 author, with his foolish autograph at the 
 beginning of it ; for which, if a stranger, he 
 only demands your friendship ; if a brother 
 author, he expects from you a book of yours, 
 which does sell, in return. We can speak 
 to experience, having by us a tolerable 
 assortment of these gift-horses. Not to ride 
 a metaphor to death — we are willing to ac- 
 knowledge, that in some gifts there is sense. 
 A duplicate out of a fi-iend's library (where he 
 has more than one copy of a rare authoi-) is 
 intelligible. There are favours, short of the 
 pecuniary — a thing not fit to be hinted at 
 among gentlemen — which confer as much 
 grace upon the acceptor as the offerer ; the 
 kind, we confess, which is most to our palate, 
 is of those little conciliatory missives, which 
 for their vehicle generally choose a hamper 
 — little odd presents of game, fi-uit, perhaps 
 wine — though it is essential to the delicacy 
 of the latter, that it be home-made. We 
 love to have our friend in the country sitting 
 thus at our table by proxy ; to apprehend 
 his presence (though a hundred miles may 
 be between us) by a turkey, whose goodly 
 aspect reflects to us his "plump corpuscu- 
 lum ; " to taste him in grouse or woodcock ; 
 to feel him gliding down in the toast pecu- 
 liar to the latter ; to concorporate him in a 
 slice of Canterbury brawn. This is indeed 
 to have him within ourselves ; to know him 
 intimately : such participation is methiiiks 
 unitive, as the old theologians phrase it. 
 For these considerations we should be sorry 
 if cei'tain restrictive regulations, which are 
 thought to bear hard upon the peasantry of 
 this country, were entirely done away with. 
 A hare, as the law now stands, makes many 
 
 friends. Caius conciliates Titius (knowing 
 his goM) with a leash of partridges. Titius 
 (suspecting his partiality for them) pa-sses 
 them to Lucius ; who, in his turn, preferring 
 his friend's relish to his own, makes them 
 over to Marcius ; till in their ever-widening 
 progress, and round of unconscious circummi- 
 gration, they distribute the seeds of harmony 
 over half a parish. We are well-disposed to 
 this kind of sensible remembrances ; and are 
 the less apt to be taken by those little airy 
 tokens — impalpable to the palate — which, 
 under the names of rings, lockets, keep-sakes, 
 amuse some people's fancy mightily. We 
 could never away with these indigestible 
 trifles. They are the very kickshaws and 
 foppery of friendship. 
 
 XII.— THAT HOME IS HOME THOUGH IT IS 
 NEVER SO HOMELY. 
 
 Homes there are, we are sure, that are no 
 homes ; the home of the very poor man, and 
 another which wc shall speak to presently. 
 Crowded places of cheap entertainment, and 
 the benches of alehouses, if they could speak, 
 might bear mom-nful testimony to the first. 
 To them the very poor man resorts for an 
 image of the home, which he cannot find at 
 home. For a starved grate, and a scanty 
 firing, that is not enough to keep alive the 
 natural heat in the fingers of so many shiver- 
 ing children with their mother, he finds in 
 the depths of winter always a blazing hearth, 
 and a hob to warm his pittance of beer by. 
 Instead of the clamours of a wife, made 
 gaunt by famishing, he meets with a cheer- 
 ful attendance beyond the merits of the 
 trifle which he can aflbrd to spend. He has 
 companions which his home denies him, for 
 the very poor man has no visitors. He can 
 look into the goings on of the world, and 
 speak a little to politics. At home there are 
 no politics stirring, but the domestic. All 
 interests, real or imaginaiy, all topics that 
 should expand the mind of man, and con- 
 nect him to a sympathy with general exist- 
 ence, are crushed in the absorbing consider- 
 ation of food to be obtained for the family. 
 Beyond the price of bread, news is senseless 
 and impertinent. At home there is no lar- 
 der. Here there is at least a show of plenty , 
 and while he cooks his lean scrap of butcher's 
 meat before the common bars, or munches 
 
 I I 2 
 
484 
 
 POPULAR FALLACIES. 
 
 his humbler cold viands, his relishing bread 
 and cheese with an onion, in a corner, where 
 no one reflects upon liis poverty, he has a 
 sight of the substantial joint providing for 
 the landlord and his family. He takes an 
 interest in the dressing of it ; and while he 
 assists in removing the trivet from the fire, 
 he feels that there is such a thing as beef 
 and cabbage, which he was beginning to for- 
 get at home. All this while he deserts his 
 wife and children. But what wife, and what 
 children ? Prosperous men, who object to 
 this desertion, image to themselves some 
 clean contented family like that which they 
 go home to. But look at the countenance of 
 the poor wives who follow and persecute 
 their good-man to the door of the public- 
 house, which he is about to enter, when 
 something like shame would restrain him, 
 if stronger misery did not induce him to 
 pass the threshold. That face, ground by 
 want, in which every cheerful, every con- 
 versable lineament has been long effaced by 
 miser)', — is that a face to stay at home with? 
 is it more a woman, or a wild cat 1 alas ! it 
 is the face of the wife of his youth, that 
 once smiled upon him. It can smile no 
 longer. What comforts can it share ? what 
 burthens can it lighten 1 Oh, 'tis a fine 
 thing to talk of the humble meal shared to- 
 gether ! But what if there be no bread in 
 the cupboard 1 The innocent prattle of his 
 children takes out the sting of a man's 
 poverty. But the children of the very poor 
 do not prattle. It is none of the least fright- 
 ful features in that condition, that there is 
 no childislmess in its dwellings. Poor people, 
 said a sensible old nurse to us once, do not 
 bring up their cliildren ; they drag them up. 
 The little careless darling of the wealthier 
 nursery, in their hovel is transformed be- 
 times into a premature reflecting person. 
 No one has time to dandle it, no one thinks 
 it worth while to coax it, to soothe it, to 
 toss it up and down, to humour it. Tlicre is 
 none to kiss away its tears. If it cries, it 
 can only be beaten. It has been prettily 
 said, that "a babe is fed with milk and 
 praise." But the aliment of this poor babe 
 was thin, uunourishing ; the return to its 
 little baby-tricks, and efforts to engage at- 
 tention, bitter ceaseless objurgation. It 
 never had a toy, or knew what a coral 
 meant. It grew up without the lullaby of 
 
 nurses, it was a stranger to the patient 
 fondle, the hushing caress, the attracting 
 novelty, the costlier plaything, or the cheaper 
 off-hand contrivance to divert the child ; the 
 prattled nonsense (best sense to it), the wise 
 impertinences, the wholesome lies, the apt 
 story interposed, that puts a stop to present 
 sufferings, and awakens the passions of young 
 wonder. It was never sung to — no one ever 
 told to it a tale of the nursery. It was 
 dragged up, to live or to die as it happened. 
 It had no young dreams. It broke at once 
 into the ii'on realities of life. A child exists 
 not for the very poor as any object of dalli- 
 ance; it is only another mouth to be fed, 
 a pair of little hands to be betimes inured 
 to labour. It is the rival, till it can be the 
 co-operator, for food with the parent. It is 
 never his mirth, his diversion, his solace : it 
 never makes him young again, with recall- 
 ing his young times. The children of the 
 very poor have no young times. It makes 
 the very heart to bleed to overhear the 
 casual street-talk between a poor woman 
 and her little girl, a woman of the better 
 sort of poor, in a condition rather above the 
 squalid beings which we have been contem- 
 plating. It is not of toys, of nursery book.s, 
 of summer holidays (fitting that age) ; of the 
 promised sight, or play ; of praised suffi- 
 ciency at school. It is of mangling and 
 clear-starching, of the price of coals, or of 
 potatoes. The questions of the child, that 
 should be the very outpourings of curiosity 
 in idleness, are marked with forecast and 
 melancholy providence. It has come to be 
 a woman, — before it was a child. It has 
 learned to go to market ; it chaffers, it 
 haggles, it envies, it murmurs ; it is know- 
 ing, acute, shai-jiened ; it never prattles. 
 Had we not reason to say that the home of 
 the very poor is no home ? 
 
 There is yet another home, which we are 
 constrained to deny to be one. It has a 
 larder, which the home of the poor man 
 wants ; its fireside conveniences, of which 
 the poor dream not. But with all this, it is 
 no home. It is — the house of a man that is 
 infested with many visitors. May we bo 
 branded for the veriest churl, if we deny our 
 iieart to the many noble-hearted friends 
 that at times exchange tlicir dwelling fur 
 i>ur i)oor roof! It is nut of guests that 
 wc comjilain, but of endless, purjioseless 
 
POPULAR FALLACIES. 
 
 485 
 
 visitants ; droppers in, as they are called. 
 We sometimes wonder from what sky they 
 fall. It is the very error of the position of 
 our lodging ; its horoscopy was ill calcu- 
 lated, being just situate in a medium — a 
 plaguy suburban mid-space — fitted to catch 
 idlers from town or country. We are older 
 than we were, and age is easily put out of 
 its way. We have fewer sands in our glass 
 to reckon upon, and we cannot brook to see 
 them drop in endlessly succeeding imperti- 
 nences. At our time of life, to be alone 
 sometimes is as needful as sleep. It is the 
 refreshing sleep of the day. The growing 
 infirmities of age manifest themselves in no- 
 tliing more strongly, than in an inveterate 
 dislike of interruption. The thing which we 
 are doing, we wish to be permitted to do. 
 We have neither much knowledge nor de- 
 vices ; but there are fewer in the place to 
 which we hasten. We are not willingly put 
 out of our way, even at a game of nine-pins. 
 While youth was, we had vast reversions in 
 time future ; we are reduced to a present 
 pittance, and obliged to economise in that 
 article. We bleed away our moments now 
 as hardly as our ducats. We cannot bear 
 to have our thin wardrobe eaten and fretted 
 into by moths. We are willing to barter our 
 good time with a friend, who gives us in 
 exchange his own. Herein is the distinction 
 between the genuine guest and the visitant. 
 This latter takes your good time, and gives 
 you his bad in exchange. The guest is do- 
 mestic to you as your good cat, or household 
 bird ; the visitant is your fly, that flaps in at 
 your window, and out again, leavmg no- 
 thing but a sense of disturbance, and victuals 
 spoiled. The inferior functions of life begin 
 to move heavily. We cannot concoct our 
 food with interruptions. Our chief meal, to 
 be nutritive, must be solitary. With diffi- 
 culty we can eat before a guest ; and never 
 Tinderstood what the relish of public feasting 
 meant. Meats have no sapor, nor digestion 
 fair play, in a crowd. The unexpected 
 coming in of a visitant stops the machine. 
 There is a punctual generation who time 
 their calls to the precise commencement of 
 your dining-hour — not to eat — but to see 
 you eat. Our knife and fork drop in- 
 stinctively, and we feel that we have swal- 
 lowed our latest moi^sel. Others again show 
 their genius, as we have said, in knocking 
 
 the moment you have just sat down to a 
 book. They have a [)cculiar compassionate 
 sneer, with which they " hope that they do 
 not interrupt your studies." Though they 
 flutter oflf the next moment, to carry their 
 impertinences to the nearest student that 
 they can call their friend, the tone of the 
 book is spoiled ; we shut the leaves, and 
 with Dante's lovers, read no more that day. 
 It were well if the effect of intrusion were 
 simply co-extensive with its presence, but it 
 mars all the good hours afterwards. These 
 scratches in appearance leave an orifice that 
 closes not hastily. " It is a prostitution of 
 the bravery of friendship," says worthy 
 l!isho2> Taylor, " to spend it upon impertinent 
 people, who are, it may be, loads to their 
 families, but can never ease my loads." This 
 is the secret of their gaddings, their visits, 
 and morning c;ills. They too have homes, 
 which are — no homes. 
 
 XIII.— THAT YOU MUST LOVE ME AND LOVE 
 MY DOG. 
 
 " Good su*, or madam — as it may be — we 
 most willingly embrace the ofl'er of your 
 friendship. We have long known your ex- 
 cellent qualities. We have wished to have 
 you nearer to us ; to hold you within the 
 very innermost fold of our heart. We can 
 have no reserve towards a person of your 
 open and noble nature. The frankness of 
 your humour suits us exactly. We have 
 been long looking for such a friend. Quick 
 — let us disburthen our troubles into each 
 other's bosom — let us make our single joys 
 shine by reduplication — But yap, yap, yap ! 
 what is this confounded cur ? he has 
 fastened his tooth, which is none of the 
 bluntest, just in the fleshy part of my leg." 
 
 " It is my dog, sir. You must love him 
 for my sake. Here, Test — Test — Test ! " 
 
 " But he has bitten me." 
 
 " Ay, that he is apt to do, till you are 
 better acquainted with him, I have had 
 him thi-ee years. He never bites me." 
 
 Yap, yap, yap / — " He is at it again," 
 
 " Oh, sir, you must not kick him. He does 
 not like to be kicked. I expect my dog 
 to be treated with all the respect due to 
 myself," 
 
 " But do you always take him out with 
 you, when you go a friendship-hunting ? " 
 
486 
 
 POPULAR FALLACIES. 
 
 " Invariably. 'Tis the sweetest, prettiest, 
 best-conditioned animal. I call him my test 
 — the touchstone by which to try a friend. 
 No one can properly be said to love me, who 
 does not love him." 
 
 " Excuse us, dear sir — or madam, afore- 
 said — if upon further consideration we are 
 obliged to decline the otherwise invaluable 
 offer of your friendship. We do not like 
 dogs." 
 
 " Mighty well, sir, — you know the con- 
 ditions — you may have worse offers. Come 
 along. Test." 
 
 The above dialogue is not so imaginary, 
 but that, in the intercourse of life, we have 
 had frequent occasions of breaking off an 
 agreeable intimacy by reason of these canine 
 appendages. They do not always come in 
 the shape of dogs ; they sometimes wear the 
 more plausible and human character of kins- 
 folk, near acquaintances, my friend's friend, 
 his partner, his wife, or his children. We 
 could never yet form a friendship — not to 
 speak of more delicate correspondence — how- 
 ever much to our taste, without the inter- 
 vention of some third anomaly, some imper- 
 tinent clog affixed to the relation — the 
 understood do^ in the proverb. The good 
 things of life are not to be had singly, but 
 come to us with a mixture ; like a school- 
 boy's holiday, with a task affixed to the tail 
 of it. What a delightfid companion is * * * *, 
 if he did not always bring his tall cousin 
 with him ! He seems to grow with him ; 
 like some of those double bii-ths which we 
 remember to have read of with such wonder 
 and delight in the old " Athenian Oracle," 
 where Swift commenced author by writing 
 Pindaric Odes (what a beginnmg for him !) 
 upon Sir William Temple. There is the 
 picture of the brother, with the little brother 
 peeping out at his shoulder ; a species of 
 fraternity, which we have no name of kin 
 close enough to comprehend. When * * • ♦ 
 comes, poking in his head and shoulder into 
 your room, as if to feel his entry, you think, 
 surely you have now got him to yourself — 
 what a three hours' chat wo shall have ! — 
 but ever in the haunch of him, and before 
 his diflidcnt body is well disclosed in your ' 
 apartment, aijpears the haunting shadow of 
 the cousin, oviir])eering his modest kinsman, 
 and sure to overlay the expected good talk 
 with his insufferable procerity of stature, and 
 
 uncorresponding dwarfishness of observation. 
 Misfortunes seldom come alone. 'Tis hard 
 when a blessing comes accompanied. Cannot 
 we like Sempronia, without sitting down to 
 chess with her eternal brother ; or know 
 Sulpicia, without knowing all the round of 
 her card-playing relations ? — must my 
 friend's brethren of necessity be mine also ? 
 must we be hand and glove with Dick Selby 
 the parson, or Jack Selby the calico-printer, 
 because W. S., who is neither, but a ripe 
 wit and a ciitic, has the misfortune to claim 
 a common parentage with them ? Let him 
 lay down his brothers ; and 'tis odds but we 
 will cast him in a pair of oui-s (we have a 
 superflax) to balance the concession. Let 
 F. H. lay down his garrulous uncle ; and 
 Honorius dismiss his vapid wife, and super- 
 fluous establishment of six boys : things be- 
 tween boy and manhood — too ripe for play, 
 too raw for conversation — that come in, im- 
 pudently staring their father's old friend 
 out of countenance ; and will neither aid 
 nor let alone, the conference ; that we may 
 once more meet upon equal terms, as we 
 were wont to do in the disengaged state of 
 bachelorhood. 
 
 It is well if your friend, or mistress, be 
 content with these canicular probations. 
 Few young ladies but in this sense keep a 
 dog. But when Kutilia hounds at you her 
 tiger aunt ; or Euspina expects you to 
 cherish and fondle her viper sister, whom 
 she has preposterously taken into her bosom, 
 to try stinging conclusions upon your con- 
 stancy ; they must not complain if the house 
 be rather thin of suitors. Scylla must have 
 broken off many excellent matches in her 
 time, if she insisted upon all, that loved her, 
 loving her dogs also. 
 
 An excellent story to this moral is told of 
 Merry, of Delia Cruscan memory. In tender 
 youth he loved and courted a modest ap- 
 panage to the Opera — in truth a dancer,— 
 who had won him by the artless contrast 
 between her manners and situation. She 
 seemed to him a native violet, that had been 
 transplanted by some rude accident into 
 that exotic and artificial hotbed. Nor, in 
 truth, was she less genuine and sincere than 
 she appeared to him. He wooed and won 
 this liower. Only for appearance' sake, and 
 for due honour to the bride's relations, she 
 cravctl that she might have the attendiince 
 
POPULAR FALLACIES. 
 
 487 
 
 of her friends and kindred at the approaching 
 solemnity. The request was too amiable 
 not to be conceded : and in this solicitude 
 for conciliating the good-will of mere rela- 
 tions, he found a presage of her superior 
 attentions to himself, when the golden shaft 
 should have " killed the flock of all affections 
 else." The morning came : and at the Star 
 and Garter, Richmond — the i^lace appointed 
 for the breakfasting — accompanied with one 
 English friend, he impatiently awaited what 
 reinforcements the bride should biing to 
 grace the ceremony. A rich muster she had 
 made. They came in six coaches — the whole 
 corps du ballet — French, Italian, men and 
 women. Monsieur de B., the famous 
 piroiietter of the day, led his fair spouse, but 
 craggy, from the banks of the Seine. The 
 Prima Donna had sent her excuse. But the 
 first and second Buffa were there ; and 
 Signer Sc — , and Signora Ch — , and Madame 
 V — , with a countless cavalcade besides of 
 chorusers, figurantes ! at the sight of whom 
 Merry afterwards declared, that "then for 
 the first time it struck him seriously, that he 
 was about to marry — a dancer." But there 
 was no help for it. Besides, it was her day ; 
 these were, in fact, her friends and kinsfolk. 
 The assemblage, though whimsical, was all 
 very natural. But when the bride — handing 
 out of the last coach a still more extraordi- 
 nai-y figure than the rest — presented to him as 
 her father — the gentleman that was to give 
 her axcay — no less a person than Signor 
 Delpiui himself — with a sort of pride, as 
 much as to say. See what I have brouglit to 
 do us honour ! — the thought of so extraor- 
 dinary a paternity quite overcame him ; and 
 slipping away under some pretence from the 
 bride and her motley adherents, poor Merry 
 took horse from the back yard to the nearest 
 sea-coast, from which, shipping himself to 
 America, he shortly after consoled himself 
 with a more congenial match in the jierson 
 of Miss Brunton ; relieved from his intended 
 clown father, and a bevy of painted buflas 
 for bridemaids. 
 
 XIV.— THAT WE SHOULD RISE WITH THE LARK. 
 
 At what precise minute that little airy 
 musician doffs his night gear, and prepares 
 to tune up his unseasonable matins, we are 
 not naturalists enough to determine. But 
 
 for a mere human gentleman — that has no 
 orchestra business to call him from his warm 
 bed to such preposterous exercises — we take 
 ten, or half after ten (eleven, of course, 
 during this Christmas solstice), to be the 
 very earliest hour at which he can begin to 
 think of abandoning his pillow. To think of 
 it, we say ; for to do it in earnest requires 
 another half hour's good consideration. Not 
 but there are pretty sun-risings, as we are 
 told, and such like gawds, abroad in the 
 world, in summer-time especially, some 
 hours before what we have assigned ; which 
 a gentleman may see, as they say, only for 
 getting up. But having been tempted once 
 or twice, in earlier life, to assist at those 
 ceremonies, we confess our curiosity abated. 
 We are no longer ambitious of being the 
 sun's courtiers, to attend at his morning 
 levees. We hold the good hours of the dawn 
 too sacred to waste them upon such obser- 
 vances ; which have in them, besides, some- 
 thing Pagan and Persic. To say truth, we 
 never anticipated our usual hour, or got up 
 with the sun (as 'tis called), to go a journey, 
 or upon a foolish whole day's pleasuring, but 
 we suffered for it all the long hours after 
 in listlessness and headaches ; Nature hei-- 
 self sufiiciently declaring her sense of our 
 presumption in aspiring to regulate our frail 
 waking courses by the measures of that 
 celestial and sleepless traveller. We deny 
 not that there is something sprightly and 
 vigorous, at the outset especially, in these 
 break-of-day excursions. It is flattering to 
 get the start of a lazy world ; to conquer 
 death by proxy in his image. But the seeds 
 of sleep and mortality are in us ; and we pay 
 usually, in strange qualms before night falls, 
 the penalty of the unnatural inversion. 
 Therefore, while the busy part of mankind 
 are fast huddling on their clothes, are alread) 
 up and about their occupations, content to 
 have swallowed their sleep by wholesale ; 
 we choose to linger a-bed, and digest our 
 dreams. It is the very time to recombine 
 the wandering images, which night in a 
 confused mass presented ; to snatch them 
 from forgetfulness ; to shape, and mould 
 them. Some people have no good of their 
 dreams. Like fiist feeders, they gulp them 
 too grossly, to taste them curiously. We love 
 to chew the cud of a foregone vision : to 
 collect the scattered rays of a brighter 
 
483 
 
 POPULAR FALLACIES. 
 
 phantasm, or act over again, with firmer 
 nerves, the sadder nocturnal tragedies ; to 
 drag into day-light a struggling and half- 
 vanishing niglit-mare ; to handle and examine 
 he terrors, or the airy solaces. We have 
 too much respect for these spiritual com- 
 munications, to let them go so lightly. We 
 are not so stupid, or so careless as that 
 Imperial forgetter of his dreams, that we 
 should need a seer to remind us of the form 
 of them. They seem to us to have as much 
 significance as our waking concerns : or 
 rather to import us more nearly, as more 
 nearly we a]iproach by years to the shadowy 
 world, whither we are hastening. We have 
 shaken hands with the world's business ; 
 we have done with it ; we have discharged 
 oursclf of it. Why should we get up ? we 
 have neither suit to solicit, nor affairs to 
 manage. The drama has shut in upon us at 
 the fourth act. We have nothing here to 
 expect, but in a short time a sick bed, and 
 a dismissal. We delight to anticipate death 
 by such shadows as night afibrds. We are 
 already half acquainted with ghosts. We 
 were never much in the world. Disappoint- 
 ment early struck a dark veil between us 
 and its dazzling illusions. Our spirits showed 
 grey before our hairs. The mighty changes 
 of the world already appear as but the vain 
 stuff out of which dramas are composed. 
 We have asked no more of life than what 
 the mimic images in play-houses present us 
 with. Even those types have waxed fainter. 
 Our clock appears to have struck. We are 
 SUPERANNUATED. In this dearth of mundane 
 satisfaction, we contract politic alliances 
 with .shadows. It is good to have friends at 
 court. The abstracted media of dreams 
 seem no ill introduction to that spiritual 
 presence, upon which, in no long time, we 
 expect to be thrown. We are trying to 
 know a little of the usages of that coUiny ; 
 to Icam the language, and the faces we shall 
 meet with there, that we may be the less 
 awkward at our first coming among them. 
 We willingly call a phantom our fellow, as 
 knowing we shall soon be of their dark com- 
 panionship. Therefore, we cherish dreams. 
 We try to spell in them the alphabet of the 
 invisible world ; and think we ki»ow already, 
 how it shall Ije with us. Those uncouth 
 shapes, which, while we clung to flesh and 
 blood, affrighted us, have become familiar. 
 
 We feel attenuated into their meagre 
 essences, and have given the hand of half- 
 way approach to incorporeal being. We 
 once thought life to be something ; but it 
 has unaccountably fallen from us before its 
 time. Therefore we choose to dally with 
 visions. The sun has no purposes of ours to 
 light U3 to. Why should we get up ? 
 
 XV.— THAT WE SHOULD LIE DOWN WITH THE 
 LAMB. 
 
 We could never quite understand the 
 philosophy of this arrangement, or the 
 wisdom of our ancestors in sending us for 
 instruction to these woolly bedfellows. A 
 sheep, when it is dark, has nothing to do but 
 to shut his silly eyes, and sleep if he can. 
 Man found out long sixes, — Hail, candle- 
 light ! without disparagement to sun or 
 moon, the kindliest luminary of the three — 
 if we may not rather style thee their radiant 
 deputy, mild viceroy of the moon ! — We love 
 to read, talk, sit silent, eat, drink, sleep, by 
 candle-light. They are everybody's sun and 
 moon. This is our peculiar and household 
 planet. Wanting it, what savage unsoci:U. 
 nights must our ancestors have spent, 
 wintering in caves and unillumined fast- 
 nesses ! They must have lain about and 
 grumbled at one another in the dark. What 
 repartees could have passed, when you must 
 have felt about for a smile, and handled a 
 neighbour's cheek to be sure that he undex- 
 stood it ? This accounts for the seriousness 
 of the elder poetry. It has a sombre cast 
 (tiy Hesiod or Ossian), derived from the 
 tradition of those unlantern'd nights. Jokes 
 came in with candles. We wonder how they 
 saw to pick up a pin, if they had any. How 
 did they sup ? what a melange of chance 
 carving they must have made of it ! — here 
 one had got a leg of a goat, when he wanted 
 a horse's shoulder — there another had dipped 
 his scooped palm in a kid-skin of wild honey, 
 when he meditated right miire's milk. There 
 is neither good eating nor drinking in fresco. 
 Who, even in these civilised times, has never 
 experienced this, when at some economic 
 table he has commenced dining after dusk, 
 and waited for the flavour till the lights 
 came ? The senses absolutely give and take 
 reciprocally. Can you tell pork from veal 
 in the dark ? or distinguish Sherris fi-om 
 
POPULAR FALLACIES. 
 
 489 
 
 pure Malaga ? Take away the candle from 
 the smoking man ; by the glimmering of the 
 left ashes, he knows that he is still smoking, 
 but he knows it only by an inference ; till 
 the restored light, coming in aid of the 
 olfactories, reveals to both senses the full 
 aroma. Then how he redoubles his puflfs ! how 
 he burnishes ! — there is absolutely no such 
 thing as reading but by a candle. We have 
 tried the affectation of a book at noon-day 
 in gardens, and in sultry arbours ; but it was 
 labour thrown away. Those gay motes in 
 the beam come about you, hovering and 
 teasing, like so many coquettes, that will 
 have you all to their self, and are jealous of 
 your abstractions. By the midnight taj^er, 
 the writer digests his meditations. By the 
 same light we must approach to their perusal, 
 if we would catch the flame, the odour. It 
 is a mockery, all that is reported of the 
 influential Phojbus. No true poem ever 
 owed its birth to the sun's light. They are 
 abstracted works — 
 
 Thing's that were born, -when none but the still night, 
 And his dumb candle, saw his pinching throes. 
 
 IMarry, daylight — daylight might furnish the 
 images, the crude material ; but for the fine 
 shapings, the ti'ue turning and filing (as 
 mine author hath it), they must be content 
 to hold their inspiration of the candle. The 
 mild internal light, that reveals them, like 
 fires on the domestic hearth, goes out in the 
 sun-shine. Night and silence call out the 
 starry fancies. Milton's Morning Hymn in 
 Paradise, wc would hold a good wager, was 
 penned at midnight ; and Taylor's rich 
 description of a sun-rise smells decidedly 
 of the taper. Even ourself, in these 
 our humbler lucubrations, tune our best- 
 measured cadences (Prose has her cadences) 
 not unfrequently to the charm of the drowsier 
 watchman, " blessing the doors ; " or the 
 wild sweep of winds at midnight. Even now 
 a loftier speculation than we have yet 
 attempted, courts our endeavours. We 
 would indite something about the Solar 
 System. — Betty, bring the candles. j 
 
 XVI.— THAT A SULKY TEMPER IS A MISFORTUNE. 
 
 We grant that it is, and a very serious 
 one — ^to a man's friends, and to all that have 
 to do with him ; but whether the condition 
 
 of the man himself is so much to be deplored 
 may admit of a question. We can speak a 
 little to it, being ourselves but lately 
 recovered — we whisper it in confidence, 
 reader, — out of a long and desperate fit of the 
 suUens. Was the cure a blessing? The 
 conviction which wi-ought it, came too 
 clearly to leave a scruple of the fanciful 
 injuries — for they were mere fancies — which 
 had provoked the humour. But the humour 
 itself was too self-pleasing, while it lasted — 
 we know how bare we lay ourself in the 
 confession — to be abandoned all at once with 
 the grounds of it. We still brood over 
 wrongs which we know to have been 
 imaginary ; and for our old acquaintance 
 
 N , whom we find to have been a truer 
 
 friend than we took him for, we substitute 
 some phantom — a Caius or a Titius — as like 
 him as we dare to form it, to wreak our yet 
 unsatisfied resentments on. It is moi'tifying 
 to fall at once from the pinnacle of neglect ; 
 to forego the idea of having been ill-used 
 and contumaciously treated by an old friend. 
 The first thing to aggrandise a man in his 
 own conceit, is to conceive of himself as 
 neglected. There let him fix if he can. To 
 undeceive him is to deprive him of the most 
 tickling morsel within the range of self- 
 complacency. No flattery can come near it. 
 Happy is he who suspects his friend of an 
 injustice ; but supremely blest, who thinks 
 all his friends in a conspiracy to depress and 
 undervalue him. There is a pleasure (we 
 sing not to the profane) far beyond the 
 reach of all that tlie world calls joy — a deep, 
 enduring satisftiction in the depths, where 
 the superficial seek it not, of discontent. 
 Were we to recite one half of this mystery, 
 — which we were let into by our late dis- 
 satisfaction, all the world would be in love 
 with disrespect ; we should wear a slight for 
 a bracelet, and neglects and contumacies 
 would be the only matter for courtship. 
 Unlike to that mysterious book in the 
 Apocalypse, the study of this mystery is 
 unpalatable only in the commencement. 
 The first sting of a suspicion is grievous ; 
 but wait — out of that wound, which to flesh 
 and blood seemed so difllcult, there is balm 
 and honey to be extracted. Your friend 
 passed you on such or such a day, — having 
 in his company one that you conceived 
 worse than ambiguously disposed towards 
 
490 
 
 POPULAR FALLACIEa 
 
 you, — passed you in the street without 
 notice. To be sure, he is something short- 
 sighted ; and it was in your power to have 
 accosted him. But facts and sane inferences 
 are trifles to a true adept in the science of 
 dissatisfaction. He must have seen you ; 
 
 and S , who was with him, must have \ 
 
 been the cause of the contempt. It galls ! 
 you, and well it may. But have patience. 
 Go home, and make the worst of it, and you I 
 are a made man from this time. Shut \ 
 yourself up, and — rejecting, as an enemy to | 
 your peace, every whispering suggestion 
 that but insinuates there may be a mistake 
 — reflect seriously upon the many lesser 
 instances which you had begun to perceive, 
 in proof of your friend's disaffection towards 
 you. None of them singly was much to the 
 purpose, but the aggregate weight is positive ; 
 and you have this last affront to clench 
 them. Thus far the process is anything but 
 agreeable. But now to your relief comes in 
 the compai-ative faculty. You conjure up 
 all the kind feelings you have had for your 
 friend ; what you have been to him, and 
 what you would have been to him, if he 
 would have sufiered you ; how you defended 
 him in this or that place ; and his good 
 name — his literary reputation, and so forth, 
 was always dearer to you than your own ! 
 Your heart, spite of itself, yearns towards 
 him. You could weep tears of blood but for 
 a restraining pride. How say you ! do you 
 not yet begin to apprehend a comfort 1 — 
 some allay of sweetness in the bitter waters ? 
 Stop not here, nor penuriously cheat youi-self 
 of your reversions. You are on vantage 
 ground. Enlarge' your speculations, and 
 take in the rest of your friends, as a spark 
 kindles more sparks. Was there one among 
 them who has not to you proved hollow, 
 false, slippery as water ? Begin to think 
 that the relation itself is inconsistent with 
 mortality. That the very idea of friendship, 
 with its component parts, as honour, fidelity, 
 steadiness, exists but in your single bosom. 
 IraagQ yourself to yourself, as the only 
 possible friend in a world incapable of that 
 communion. Now the gloom thickens. The 
 little star of self-love twinkles, that is to 
 encourage you through deeper glooms than 
 this. You are not yet at the half point of 
 your elevation. You are not yet, believe 
 
 I 
 
 me, half sulky enough. Adverting to the 
 world in general (as these circles in the mind 
 will spread to infinity), reflect with what 
 strange injustice you have been treated in 
 quarters where (setting gratitude and the 
 expectation of friendly returns aside as 
 chimeras) you pretended no claim beyond 
 justice, the naked due of all men. Think 
 the very idea of right and fit fled from the 
 earth, or your breast the solitary receptacle 
 of it, till you have swelled yourself into at 
 least one hemisphere ; the other being the 
 vast Arabia Stony of your fi-iends and the 
 world aforesaid. To grow bigger every 
 moment in your own conceit, and the world 
 to lessen ; to deify yourself at the expense 
 of your species ; to judge the world — this is 
 the acme and supreme point of your mystery 
 — these the true Pleasures of Sulkiness. 
 We profess no more of this grand secret 
 than what ourself experimented on one 
 rainy afternoon in the last week, sulking in 
 our study. We had proceeded to the penul- 
 timate point, at which the true adept seldom 
 stops, where the consideration of benefit 
 forgot is about to merge in the meditation 
 of general injustice — when a knock at the 
 door was followed by the entrance of the 
 very friend whose not seeing of us in the 
 morning (for we will now confess the case 
 our own), an accidental oversight, had given 
 rise to so much agreeable generalisation ! 
 To mortify us still more, and take down the 
 whole flattering superstructure which pride 
 had piled upon neglect, he had brought in 
 
 his hand the identical S , in whose 
 
 favour we had suspected him of the contu- 
 macy. Asseverations were needless, where 
 the frank manner of them both was con- 
 victive of the injurious nature of the 
 suspicion. We fancied that they perceived 
 our embarrassment ; but were too proud, or 
 something else, to confess to the secret of it. 
 We had been but too lately in the condition 
 of the noble patient in Argos : — 
 
 Qui se crcdcbiit miros audirc trapocdos. 
 In vacuo ln>tus sessor phiusorquc thcatro— 
 
 and could have exclaimed with equal reason 
 against the friendly hands that cured us — 
 
 Pol, me occidistis, amlci, 
 Non Bcrvistis, ait ; cui »ic cxtorta voluptna, 
 Ut demptus per vim meuti« KruLiiioimus error. 
 
TO 
 
 JNIARTIN CnARLES LURNEY, Esq. 
 
 FouGiVE me, Burnet, if to thee these late 
 
 And hasty products of a critic pen, 
 
 Thyself no common judge of books aud men, 
 
 lu feeliug of thy worth I dedicate. 
 
 My verse was offered to an older friend ; 
 
 The humbler prose has fallen to thy share : 
 
 Nor could I miss the occasion to declare, 
 
 What spoken in thy presence must offend — • 
 
 That, set aside some few caprices wild, 
 
 Tliose humoui'ous clouds that flit o'er brightest days, 
 
 In all my threadings of this worldly maze, 
 
 (And I have watched thee almost ft-oni a child). 
 
 Free from self-seeking, envy, low design, 
 
 I have not found a whiter soul than thine. 
 
ROSAMUND GRAY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 It was noontide. The sun was very hot. 
 An old gentlewoman sat spinning in a little 
 arbour at the door of her cottage. She was 
 blind ; and her grand-daughter was reading 
 the Bible to her. The old lady had just left 
 her work, to attend to the story of Ruth. 
 
 " Orpah kissed her mother-in-law ; but 
 Ruth clave unto her." It was a passage she 
 could not let pass without a comment. The 
 moral she drew from it was not very neiu, 
 to be sure. The girl had heard it a hundred 
 times before — and a hundred times more she 
 could have heard it, without suspecting it to 
 be tedious. Rosamund loved her grand- 
 mother. 
 
 The old lady loved Rosamund too ; and 
 she had reason for so doing. Rosamund was 
 to her at once a child and a servant. She 
 had only her left in the world. They two 
 lived together. 
 
 They had once known better days. The 
 story of Rosamund's parents, their failure, 
 their folly,and distresses, may be told another 
 time. Our tale hath grief enough in it. 
 
 It was now about a year and a half since 
 old Margaret Gray had sold off all her 
 effects, to pay the debts of Rosamund's 
 father — just after the mother had died of a 
 broken heart ; for her husband had' fled his 
 country to hide his shame in a foreign land. 
 At that period the old lady retired to a small 
 cottage in the village of Widford in Hert- 
 fordshire. 
 
 Rosamund, in her thirteenth year, was left 
 
 destitute, without fortune or friends : she 
 went with her grandmother. In all this 
 time she had served her faithfully and 
 lovingly. 
 
 Old Margaret Gray, when she first came 
 into these parts, had eyes, and could see. 
 The neighbours said, they had been dimmed 
 by weeping : be that as it may, she was 
 latterly grown quite blind. "God is very 
 good to us, child ; I can feel you yet." Tliis 
 she would sometimes say ; and we need not 
 wonder to hear, that Rosamund clave unto 
 her grandmother. 
 
 Margaret retained a spirit unbroken by 
 calamity. There was a principle within, 
 which it seemed as if no outward circum- 
 stances could reach. It was a religious 
 principle, and she had taught it to Rosamund ; 
 for the girl had mostly resided with her 
 grandmother from her earliest years. Indeed 
 she had taught her all that she knew herself; 
 and the old lady's knowledge did not extend 
 a vast way. 
 
 Margaret had drawn her maxims from 
 observation ; and a pretty long experience 
 in life had contributed to make her, at times, 
 a little positive : but Rosamund never argued 
 with her grandmother. 
 
 Their library consisted chiefly in a large 
 family Bible, with notes and expositions by 
 various learned expositors, from Bishop 
 Jewell downwards. 
 
 This might never be suffered to lie about 
 like other books, but was kept constantly 
 wrapt up in a handsome case of green velvet, 
 with gold tassels — the only relic of departed 
 
494 
 
 ROSAMUND GRAY. 
 
 grandeur they had brought with them to the 
 cottage — evei-ything else of vahie had been 
 sold off for the purpose above mentioned. 
 
 This Bible Eoaamund, when a child, had 
 never dared to open without permission ; 
 and even yet, from habit, continued the 
 custom. Margaret had parted with none of 
 her authority ; indeed it was never exerted 
 with much harshness ; and happy was 
 Rosamund, though a girl grown, when she 
 could obtain leave to read her Bible. It was 
 a treasure too valuable for an indiscriminate 
 use ; and Margaret still pointed out to her 
 grand-daughter where to read. 
 
 Besides this, they had the " Complete 
 Angler, or Contemplative Man's Recreation," 
 with cuts — " Pilgrim's Progress," the first 
 part — a Cookery Book, with a few dry sprigs 
 of rosemary and lavender stuck here and 
 there between the leaves, (I suppose to point 
 to some of the old lady's most fiivourite 
 receipts,) and there was "Wither's Emblems," 
 an old book, and quaint. The old-fashioned 
 pictures in this last book were among the 
 first exciters of the infant Rosamund's 
 curiosity. Her contemplation had fed upon 
 them in rather older years. 
 
 Rosamund had not read many books 
 besides these ; or if any, they had been only 
 occasional companions : these were to 
 Rosamund as old friends, that she had long 
 known. I know not whether the peculiar 
 cast of her mind might not be traced, in part, 
 to a tincture she had received, early in life, 
 from Walton and Wither, from John Bunyan 
 and her Bible. 
 
 Rosamund's mind was pensive and re- 
 flective, rather than what passes usually for 
 clever or acute. From a child she was 
 remarkably shy and thoughtful— this was 
 taken for stupidity and want of feeling ; and 
 the child has been sometimes whipt for being 
 a stubborn thing, when her little heart was 
 almost bursting with affection. 
 
 Even now her grandmother would often 
 reprove her, when she found her too grave 
 or melancholy ; give her si:)rightly lectures 
 aVjout good-humour and rational mirth ; 
 and not unfrequently fall a-crying herself, 
 to the great discredit of her lecture. Those 
 tears endeared her the more to Rosamund. 
 
 Margaret would say, " Child, I love you to 
 cry, when I think you are only remembering 
 your poor dear father and motlier ; — 1 would 
 
 have you think about them sometimes — it 
 would be strange if you did not ; but I fear, 
 Rosamund — I fear, girl, you sometimes think 
 too deeply about your own situation and 
 poor prospects in life. When you do so, you 
 do wrong — remember the naughty rich man 
 in the parable. He never had any good 
 thoughts about God, and his religion : and 
 that might have been your case." 
 
 Rosamund, at these times, could not reply 
 to her ; she was not in the habit of arguing 
 with her grandmother ; so she was quite 
 silent on these occasions — or else the girl 
 knew well enough herself, that she had only 
 been sad to tliink of the desolate condition 
 of her best friend, to see her, in her old age, 
 so infirm and blind. But she had never been 
 used to make excuses, when the old lady 
 said she was doing wrong. 
 
 The neighbours were all very kind to 
 them. The veriest rustics never passed 
 them without a bow, or a pulling off of the 
 hat — some show of courtesy, awkward 
 indeed, but affectionate — with a " Good- 
 morrow, madam," or " young madam," as it 
 might happen. 
 
 Rude and savage natures, who seem bom 
 with a propensity to express contempt for 
 anything that looks like prosperity, yet felt 
 respect for its declining lustre. 
 
 The farmers, and better sort of people, (as 
 they are called,) all promised to provide for 
 Rosamund when her grandmother should 
 die. Margaret trusted in God and believed 
 them. 
 
 She used to say, " I have lived many 
 years in the world, and have never known 
 people, good people, to be left without some 
 friend ; a relation, a beneftictor, a something. 
 God knows our wants — that it is not good 
 for man or woman to be alone ; and he 
 always sends us a helpmate, a leaning place, 
 a somewhat."" Upon this sure ground of 
 experience, did Margaret build her trust in 
 Providence. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Rosamund had just made an end of hei 
 story, (as I was about to relate,) and was 
 listening to the ai)plication of the moral, 
 (which said application she was old enough 
 
ROSAMUND GRAY. 
 
 495 
 
 to have made herself, but her grandmother 
 still continued to treat her, in many respects, 
 as a child, and llosamund was in no haste to 
 lay claim to the title of womanhood,) when 
 a j'oung gentleman made his appeai'ance and 
 interrupted them. 
 
 It was young Allan Clare, who had 
 brought a present of peaches, and some 
 roses, for Rosamund. 
 
 He laid his little basket down on a seat of 
 the arbour ; and in a respectful tone of voice, 
 as though he were addressing a parent, 
 inquii'ed of Margaret " how she did." 
 
 The old lady seemed pleased with his 
 attentions — answered his inquiries by say- 
 ing, that " her cough was less troublesome 
 a-nights, but she had not yet got rid of it, 
 and probably she never might ; but she did 
 not like to tease young people with an 
 account of her infirmities." 
 
 A few kind words passed on either side, 
 when young Clare, glancing a tender look 
 at the girl, who had all this time been silent, 
 took leave of them with saying, " I shall 
 bring Elinor to see you in the evening." 
 
 When he was gone, the old lady began to 
 prattle. 
 
 " That is a sweet-dispositioned youth, and 
 I do love him dearly, I must say it — there is 
 such a modesty in all he says or does — he 
 should not come here so often, to be sure, 
 but I don't know how to help it ; there is so 
 much goodness in him, I can't find it in my 
 heart to forbid him. But, Rosamund, girl, 
 I must tell you beforehand ; when you grow 
 older, Mr. Clare must be no companion for 
 you : while you were both so yoimg it was 
 all very well — but the time is coming, when 
 folks will think harm of it. if a rich young 
 gentleman, like Mr. Clare, comes so ofteu to 
 our poor cottage. — Dost hear, sriri ? Why 
 don't you answer ? Come, I did not mean 
 to say anything to hurt you — speak to mo, 
 Rosamund — nay, I must not have you be 
 sullen — I don't love people that are sullen." 
 
 And in this manner was this poor soul 
 running on, unheard and unheeded, when it 
 occurred to her, that po-isibly the girl might 
 not be within hearing. 
 
 And true it was, that Rosamund had 
 slunk away at the first mention of Mr. Clare's 
 good qualities : and when she returned, 
 which was not till a few minutes after 
 Margaret had made an end of her fine 
 
 harangue, it is certain her cheeks did look 
 very ros;/. That might have been from the 
 heat of the day or from exercise, for she had 
 been walking in the garden. 
 
 Margaret, we know, was blind ; and, in 
 this case, it was lucky for Rosamund tha, 
 she was so, or she might have made some 
 not unlikely surmises. 
 
 I must not have my reader infer from this, 
 that I at all think it likely, a young maid of 
 fourteen would fall in love without asking 
 her grandmother's leave — the thing itself is 
 not to be conceived. 
 
 To obviate all suspicions, I am disposed to 
 communicate a little anecdote of Rosamund 
 
 A month or two back her grandmother 
 had been giving her the strictest prohibi- 
 tions, in her walks, not to go near a certain 
 spot, which was dangerous from the cir- 
 cumstance of a huge overgrown oak-tree 
 spreading its prodigious arms across a deep 
 chalk-pit, which they partly concealed. 
 
 To this fatal place Rosamund came one 
 day — female curiosity, v\'e know, is older 
 than the flood — let us not think hardly of 
 the girl, if she partook of the sexual failing. 
 
 Rosamund ventured further and furtlier — 
 climbed along one of the branches — ap- 
 proached the forbidden chasm — her foot 
 slipped — she was not killed — but it was by 
 a mercy she escaped — other branches inter- 
 cepted her fall — and with a palpitating heart 
 she made her way back to the cottage. 
 
 It happened that evening, that her grand- 
 mother was in one of her best humours, 
 caressed Rosamund, talked of old times, and 
 what a blessing it was they two found a 
 shelter in their little cottage, and in con- 
 clusion told Rosamund, " she was a good 
 girl, and God would one day reward her fur 
 her kindness to her old blind grandmother." 
 
 This was more than Rosamund could bear. 
 Her morning's disobedience came fresh into 
 her mind ; she felt she did not deserve all 
 this from Margaret, and at last burst into 
 a fit of crying, and made confession of her 
 fault. The old gentlewoman kissed and 
 forgave her, 
 
 Rosamund never went near that naughty 
 chasm again. 
 
 Margaret would never have heard of this, 
 if Rosamund had not told of it herself. But 
 this young maid had a delicate moral sense, 
 which would not suffer her to take advantags 
 
496 
 
 ROSAMUND GRAY. 
 
 of her granflmother, to deceive her, or 
 conceal anything from her, though Margaret 
 was old, and blind, and easy to be imposed 
 upon. 
 
 Another virtuous trait I recollect of Rosa- 
 mund, and now I am in the vein will tell it. 
 
 Some, I know, will think these things 
 trifles — and they are so — but if these 
 minuti<T make my reader better acquainted 
 with Eosamund, I am content to abide the 
 imputation. 
 
 These promises of character, hints, and 
 early indications of a siceet nature, are to me 
 more dear, and choice in the selection, than 
 any of those pretty wild flowers, which this 
 young maid, this virtuous Eosamund, has 
 ever gathered in a fine May morning, to 
 make a posy to place in the bosom of her 
 old blind friend. 
 
 Eosamund had a very just notion of draw- 
 ing, and would often employ her talent in 
 making sketches of the surrounding scenery. 
 
 On a landscape, a larger piece than she 
 had ever yet attempted, she had now been 
 working for three or four months. She had 
 taken great pains with it, given much time 
 to it, and it was nearly finished. For icho.te 
 particular inspection it was designed, I will 
 not venture to conjecture. "We know it 
 could not have been for her grandmother's. 
 
 One day she went out on a short errand, 
 and left her landscape on the table. When 
 she returned, she found it go7ie. 
 
 Rosamund from the first suspected some 
 mischief, but held her tongue. At length 
 she made the fatal discovery. Margaret, in 
 her absence, had laid violent hands on it ; 
 not knowing what it was, but taking it for 
 some waste-paper, had torn it in half, and 
 with one half of this elaborate composition 
 had twisted herself up— a thread-paper ! 
 
 Eosamund spread out her hands at sight 
 of the disaster, gave her grandmother a 
 roguish smile, but said not a word. She 
 knew the poor soul would only fret, if she 
 told her of it, — and when once Margaret 
 w;is set a fretting for other people's misfor- 
 tunes, the fit held her pretty long. 
 
 So Eosamund that very afternoon began 
 Another piece of the same size and subject ; 
 and Margaret, to her dying d.ay, never 
 dreamed of the mischief she luul uncon- 
 Bcioualy done. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 RosAiruND Gray was the most beautiful 
 young creature that eyes ever beheld. Her 
 face had the sweetest expression in it — a 
 gentleness — a modesty — a timidity — a certain 
 charm — a grace without a name. 
 
 There was a sort of melancholy mingled 
 in her smile. It was not the thoughtless 
 levity of a girl — it was not the restrained 
 simper of premature womanhood — it was 
 something which the poet Young might have 
 remembered, when he composed that perfect 
 line, 
 
 " Soft, modest, melancholy, female, fair." 
 
 She was a mild-eyed maid, and everybody 
 loved her. Young Allan Clare, when but a 
 boy, sighed for her. 
 
 Her yellow hair fell in bright and curling 
 clusters, liko 
 
 " Those hanging locks 
 Of young Apollo." 
 
 Her voice was tiembling and musical. A 
 graceful diflidence pleaded for her whenever 
 she spake — and, if she said but little, that 
 little found its way to the heart. 
 
 Young, and artless, and innocent, meaning 
 no harm, and thinking none ; aflectionatc as 
 a smiling infant — playful, yet inobtrusive, as 
 a weaned lamb — everybody loved her. 
 Young Allan Clare, when but a boy, sighed 
 for her. 
 
 Tlie moon is shining in so brightly at my 
 window, where I write, that I feel it a crime 
 not to suspend my employment awhile to 
 gaze at her. 
 
 See how she glideth, in maiden honour, 
 through the clouds, who divide on either 
 side to do her homage. 
 
 Beautiful vision ! — as I contemplate thee, 
 an internal harmony is communicated to my 
 mind, a moral brightness, a tacit analogy of 
 mental purity ; a calm like that we ascribe 
 in fancy to the favoured inhabitants of thy 
 fairy regions, " argent fields." 
 
 I marvel not, O moon, that heathen people, 
 in the " olden times," did woi-shij) thy deity 
 — Cynthia, Diana, Hecate. Christian Europe 
 invokes thee not by these names now — her 
 idolatry is of a blai^kcr stain : Belial is her 
 God — she worahips Mammon. 
 
ROSAMUND GRAY. 
 
 497 
 
 False things are told concerning thee, fair 
 planet — for I will ne'er believe that thou 
 canst take a perverse pleasure in distorting 
 the brains of us, poor mortals. Lunatics ! 
 moonstruck ! Calumny invented, and folly 
 took up, these names. I would hope better 
 things from thy mild aspect and benign 
 influences. 
 
 Lady of Heaven, thou lendest thy pure 
 lamp to light the way to the virgin mourner, 
 when she goes to seek the tomb where her 
 warrior lover lies. 
 
 Friend of the distressed, thou speakest 
 only peace to the lonely sufferer, who walks 
 forth in the placid evening, beneath thy 
 gentle light, to chide at fortune, or to com- 
 plain of changed friends, or unhappy loves. 
 
 Do I dream, or doth not even now a 
 heavenly calm descend from thee into my 
 bosom, as I meditate on the chaste loves of 
 Rosamund and her Clare ! 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Allan Clare was just two years older 
 than Rosamund. He was a boy of fourteen, 
 when he first became acquainted with her — 
 it was soon after she had come to reside with 
 her grandmother at Widford. 
 
 He met her by chance one day, carry- 
 ing a pitcher in her hand, which she had 
 been filling from a neighbouring well — the 
 pitcher was heav)^, and she seemed to be 
 bending with its weight. 
 
 Allan insisted on carrying it for her — for 
 he thought it a sin that a delicate young 
 maid, like her, should be so employed, and 
 he stand idle by. 
 
 Allan had a propensity to do little kind 
 offices for everybody — but at the sight of 
 Rosamund Gray, his first fire was kindled — 
 his young mind seemed to have found an 
 object, and his enthusiasm was from that 
 time forth awakened. His visits, from that 
 day, were pretty frequent at the cottage. 
 
 He was never haj)pier than when he could 
 get Rosamund to walk out with him. He 
 would make her admire the scenes he ad- 
 mired — fancy the wild flowers he fancied — 
 watch the clouds he was watching — and not 
 unfrequently repeat to her poetry which he 
 loved, and make her love it. 
 
 On their return, the old lady, who con- 
 sidered them yet as but children, would bid 
 Rosamund fetch Mr. Clare a glass of her 
 currant-wine, a bowl of new milk, or some 
 cheap dainty which was more welcome to 
 Allan than the costliest delicacies of a 
 l^rince's court. 
 
 The boy and girl, for they were no more 
 at that age, grew fond of each other — more 
 fond than either of them suspected. 
 
 " They •would sit, and sitrh, 
 And look upon each other, and conceive 
 Not -nhat they ail'd ; yet something they did ail, 
 And yet were well — and yet they wore not well ; 
 And what was their disease, they could not tell." 
 
 And thus, 
 
 " In this first garden of their simplcness 
 They spent their childhood." 
 
 A circumstance had lately happened, which 
 in some sort altered the nature of their 
 attachment. 
 
 Rosamund was one day reading the tale of 
 " Julia de Roubignii " — a book which young 
 Clare had lent her. 
 
 Allan was standing by, looking over her 
 with one hand thrown round her neck, and 
 a finger of the other pointing to a passage in 
 Julia's third letter. 
 
 " Maria ! in my hours of visionary in- 
 dulgence, I have sometimes painted to myself 
 a husband — no matter whom — comforting me 
 amidst the distresses which fortune had laid 
 upon us. I have smiled ujDon him through 
 my tears ; tears, not of anguish, but of ten- 
 derness ! — our children were playing around 
 us, imconscious of misfortune ; we had 
 taught them to be humble, and to be happy ; 
 our little shed was resei'ved to us, and their 
 smiles to cheer it. — I have imagined the 
 luxury of such a scene, and afiiiction became 
 a part of my dream of happiness." 
 
 The girl blushed as she read, and ti-emb!ed 
 — she had a sort of confused sensation, that 
 Allan was noticing her — yet she durst not 
 lift her eyes from the book, but continued 
 reading, scarce knowing what she read. 
 
 Allan guessed the cause of her confusion, 
 Allan trembled too — his colour came and 
 went — his feelings became impetuous — and 
 flinging both arms round her neck, he kissed 
 his young favourite. 
 
 Rosamund was vexed and pleased, soothed 
 and frightened, all in a moment — a fit of 
 tears came to her i-elief 
 
 K K 
 
498 
 
 R0SA3IUXD GRAY. 
 
 Allan had indulged before in these little 
 freedoms, and Rosamnnd had thought no 
 harm of them ; but from this time the girl 
 grew timid and reserved — distant in her 
 manner, and careful of her behaviour in 
 Allan's presence — not seeking his society as 
 before, but rather shunning it — flelighting 
 more to feed upon his idea in absence. 
 
 Allan too, from this day, seemed changed : 
 his manner became, though not less tender, 
 yet more respectful and diffident — his bosom 
 felt a throb it had tQl now not known, in 
 the society of Rosamund — and, if he was 
 less familiar with her than in former times, 
 that charm of delicacy had superadded a 
 grace to Rosamund, which, while he feared, 
 he loved. 
 
 There is a mysterious character, heightened, 
 indeed, by fancy and passion, but not with- 
 out foundation in reality and observation, 
 which true lovers have ever imputed to the 
 object of their affections. This character 
 Rosamund had now acquired with Allan — 
 something angelic, perfect, exceeding nature. 
 
 Young Clare dwelt very near to the cot- 
 tage. He had lost his parents, who were 
 rather wealthy, early in life ; and was left to 
 the care of a sister some ten years older than 
 himself. 
 
 Elinor Clare was an excellent young lady 
 — discreet, intelligent, and affectionate. 
 Allan revered her as a parent, while he loved 
 her as his own familiar friend. He told all 
 the little secrets of his heart to her — but 
 there was one, which he had hitherto unac- 
 countably concealed from her — namely, the 
 extent of his regard for Rosamund. 
 
 Elinor knew of his visits to the cottage, 
 and was no stranger to the persons of Mar- 
 garet and her grand-daughter. She had 
 several times met them, when she had been 
 walking with her brother — a civility usually 
 passed on either side — but Elinor avoided 
 troubling her brother with any unseasonable 
 questions. 
 
 Allan's heart often beat, and he has been 
 going to tell his sister all — but something 
 like shame (false or true, I shall not stay to 
 inquire) had hitherto kept him back ; — still 
 the secret, unrovealed, hung upon his con- 
 science like a ciiine — for his temjier had a 
 Hweet and noble frankness in it, which 
 besjiake him ytit a virgin from the world. 
 
 There was a line optjuneas in his counte- 
 
 nance — the character of it somewhat resem- 
 bled Rosamund's — except that more fire and 
 enthusiasm were discernible in Allan's j his 
 eyes were of a darker blue than Rosamund's 
 — his hair was of a che-stnut colour — his 
 cheeks niddy, and tinged with brown. There 
 was a cordial sweetness in Allan's smile, the 
 like to which I never saw in any other face. 
 
 Elinor had hitherto connived at her 
 brother's attachment to Rosamund. Elinor, 
 I believe, was something of a physiognomist, 
 and thought she could trace in the counte- 
 nance and manner of Rosamund, qualities 
 which no brother of hers need be ashamed to 
 love. 
 
 The time was now come when Elinor was 
 desirous of knowing her brother's favourite 
 more intimately — an opportunity offered of 
 breaking the matter to Allan. 
 
 The morning of the day in which he 
 carried his present of fruit and flowers to 
 Rosamund, his sister had observed him more 
 than usually busy in the garden, culling fruit 
 with a nicety of choice not common to him. 
 
 She came up to him, unobserved, and, 
 taking him by the arm, inquired, with a 
 questioning smile — " "What are you doing, 
 Allan 1 and who are those peaches designed 
 for ? " 
 
 " For Rosamund Gray " — he replied — and 
 his heart seemed relieved of a burthen which 
 had long oppressed it. 
 
 " I have a mind to become acquainted 
 with youi" handsome friend — will you intro- 
 duce me, Allan ? I think I should like to go 
 and see her this afternoon." 
 
 " Do go, do go, Elinor — you don't know 
 what a good creature she is ; and old blind 
 Margaret, you will like her very much." 
 
 His sister promised to accomj)any him after 
 dinner ; and they parted. Allan gatliercd no 
 more peaches, but hastily cropping a few 
 roses to fling into his basket, went away with 
 it half-filled, being impatient to announce 
 to Rosamund the coming of her promised 
 visitor. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 When Allan returned home, he foimd nn 
 invitation had been left for him, in hia 
 absence, to spend that evening with a young 
 
ROSAMUND GRAY. 
 
 49y 
 
 friend, who had just quitted a public school 
 in London, and was come to pass one night 
 in his fathei-'s house at "Widford, previous to 
 his departure the next morning for Edin- 
 burgh University. 
 
 It was Allan's bosom friend — they had not 
 met for some mouths — and it was probable 
 a much longer time must intervene before 
 they should meet again. 
 
 Yet Allan could not help looking a little 
 blank when he first licard of the invitation. 
 This was to have been an important evening. 
 But Elinor soon relieved her brother by ex- 
 pressing her readiness to go alone to the 
 cottage. 
 
 " I will not lose the pleasure I promised 
 myself, whatever you may determine upon, 
 Allan ; I will go by myself rather than be 
 disappointed." 
 
 " Will you, will you, Elinor ? " 
 
 Elinor promised to go — and I believe, 
 Allan, on a second thought, was not very 
 sorry to be spared the awkwardness of intro- 
 ducing two persons to each othei", both so 
 dear to him, but either of whom might 
 happen not much to fancy the other. 
 
 At times, indeed, he was confident that 
 Elinor mtist love Eosamund, and Eosamund 
 must love Elinor ; but there were also times 
 in which he felt misgivings — it was an event 
 he could scarce hope for very joy ! 
 
 Allan's real presence that evening was more 
 at the cottage than at the house, where his 
 bodily semblance was visiting — his friend 
 could not help complaining of a certain 
 absence of mind, a coldness he called it. 
 
 It might have been expected, and in the 
 course of things predicted, that Allan would 
 have asked his friend some questions of what 
 had happened since their last meeting, what 
 his feelings were on leaving school, the 
 probable time when they should meet again, 
 and a hundred natural questions which 
 friendship is most lavish of at such times ; 
 but nothing of all this ever occurred to Allan 
 — they did not even settle the method of 
 their future correspondence. 
 
 The consequence was, as might have been 
 expected, Allan's friend thought him much 
 altered, and, after his departure, sat down 
 to compose a doleful sonnet about a " faithless 
 friend." — I do not find that he ever finished 
 it — indignation, or a deai"th of rhymes, 
 causing him to break off in the middle. 
 
 CHAPTEE VI. 
 
 In my catalogue of the little library at 
 the cottage, I forgot to mention a book of 
 Common Prayer. My reader's fancy miglit 
 easily have supplied the omission — old ladies 
 of Margaret's stamp (God bless them !) may 
 as well be without their spectacles, or their 
 elbow chair, as their prayer-book — I love 
 them for it. 
 
 Margaret's was a handsome octavo, printed 
 by Baskerville, the binding red, and fortified 
 with silver at the edges. Out of this book 
 it was their custom every afternoon to read 
 the proper psalms appointed for the day. 
 
 The way they managed was this : they 
 took verse by verse — Eosamund read her 
 little portion, and Margaret repeated hers 
 in turn, from memory — for Margaret could 
 say all the Psalter by heart, and a good part 
 of the Bible besides. She would not unfre- 
 quently put the girl right when she stumbled 
 or skipped. This JNIargaret imputed to 
 giddiness — a quality which Eosamund was 
 by no means remarkable for — but old ladies, 
 like Margaret, are not in all instances alike 
 discriminative. 
 
 They had been employed in this manner 
 just before Miss Clare arrived at the cottage. 
 The psalm they had been reading was the 
 hundred and fourth — Margaret was naturally 
 led by it into a discussion of the works of 
 creation. 
 
 There had been thunder in the course of 
 the day — an occasion of instruction which 
 the old lady never let pass — she began — 
 
 " Thunder has a very awful sound — some 
 say God Almighty is angry whenever it 
 thunders — that it is the voice of God 
 speaking to us ; for my part, I am not afi-aid 
 of it " 
 
 And in this manner the old lady was 
 going on to particularise, as usual, its 
 beneficial efiiects, in clearing the air, de- 
 stroying of vermin, &c., when the entrance 
 of Miss Clare put an end to her discourse. 
 
 Eosamund received her with respectful 
 tenderness — and, taking her grandmother 
 by the hand, said, with great sweetness, — 
 " Miss Clare is come to see you, grand- 
 mother." 
 
 " I beg pardon, lady — I cannot see you — 
 but you are heartily welcome. Is your 
 
 K K 2 
 
500 
 
 ROSAJIUND GRAY. 
 
 brother with you, Miss Clare ? — I don't hear 
 him." 
 
 " He could not come, madam, hut he sends 
 his love by me." 
 
 "You have an excellent brother, Miss 
 Clare — but pray do us the honour to take 
 some refreshment — Rosamund " 
 
 And the old lady was going to give 
 directions for a bottle of her currant wine — 
 when Elinor, smiling, said " she was come to 
 take a cup of tea with her, and expected to 
 find no ceremony." 
 
 " After tea, I promise myself a walk with 
 you, Rosamund, if your grandmother can 
 spare you." Rosamund looked at her grand- 
 mother. 
 
 " Oh, for that matter, I should be sorry to 
 debar the girl from any pleasure — I am sure 
 it's lonesome enough for her to be with me 
 always — and if Miss Clare will take you out, 
 child, I shall do very well by myself till you 
 return — it will not be the first time, you 
 know, that I have been left here alone — 
 some of the neighbours will be dropping in 
 bye and bye — or, if not, I shall take no 
 harm." 
 
 Rosamund had all the simple manners of n 
 child ; she kissed her grandmother, and 
 looked happy. 
 
 All tea-time the old lady's discourse was 
 little more tlian a panegyric on young Clare's 
 gooil qualities. Elinor looked at her young 
 friend, and smiled. Rosamund was beginning 
 to look grave — but there was a cordial 
 .sunshine in the face of Elinor, before which 
 any clouds of reserve that had been gathering 
 on Rosamund's soon brake away. 
 
 "Does your grandmother ever go out, 
 Rosamund ? " 
 
 Margaret prevented tlie girl's rcjily, by 
 saying — " My dear young lady, I am an ohl 
 woman, and very infirm — Rosamund takes 
 me a few paces beyond the door sometimes 
 — but I walk very badly — I love best to sit 
 in our little arbour when the sun shines — I 
 can yet feel it warm and cheerful — and, if 1 
 lose the beauties of the season, I shall be 
 very happy if you and Rosamund can take 
 delight in this fine summer evening." 
 
 " I shall want to rob you of Rosamund's 
 company now and then, if we like one 
 another. I had hoped to have seen you, 
 madam, at our house. I don'L know whether 
 we could not make room for you to come 
 
 and live with us — what say you to it ? 
 Allan would be proud to tend you, I am 
 sure ; and Rosamund and I should be nice 
 company." 
 
 Margaret was all unused to such kind- 
 nesses, and wept — Margaret had a great 
 spirit — yet she was not above accepting an 
 obligation from a worthy person — there was 
 a delicacy in Miss Clare's manner — she could 
 have no interest but pure goodness, to induce 
 her to make the offer — at length the old lady 
 spake from a full heart. 
 
 " Miss Clare, this little cottage received us 
 in our distress — it gave us shelter when 
 we had no home — we have praised God 
 in it — and, while life remains, I think I 
 shall never part from it — Rosamund does 
 everything for me " — 
 
 " And will do, grandmother, as long as I 
 live ; " — and then Rosamund fell a-crying. 
 
 " You are a good girl, Rosamund ; and if 
 you do but find friends when I am dead and 
 gone, I shall want no better accommodation 
 while I live — but God bless j'ou, lady, a 
 thousand times, for your kind ofler." 
 
 Elinor was moved to tears, and, aflfecting a 
 sprightliness, bade Rosamund prepare for 
 her walk. The gii'l jmt on her white silk 
 bonnet ; and Elinor thought she ncA^er beheld 
 so lovely a creature. 
 
 They took leave of Margaret, and walked 
 out together ; they rambled over all Rosa- 
 mund's favourite haunts — through many a 
 sunny field — by secret glade or wood-walk, 
 where the girl had wandered so often with 
 her beloved Clare. 
 
 Who now so happy as Rosamund 1 She 
 had oft-times heard Allan sjieak with great 
 tenderness of his sister — she was now ramb- 
 ling, arm in arm, with that very sister, the 
 " vaunted sister " of her friend, her beloved 
 Clare. 
 
 Not a tree, not a bush, scarce a wild- 
 flower in their path, but revived in Rosa- 
 mund some tender recollection, a convei-sation 
 perhaps, or some chaste endearment. Life, 
 and a new scene of things, were now opening 
 before her — she was got into a fairy land of 
 uncertain existence. 
 
 Rosamund was too happy to talk much — 
 but Elinor wjis deliglited with lier when she 
 did talk : — the girl's remarks were suggcstotl 
 most of them by the passing scene — and they 
 betrayed, all of them, the livelinesa of present 
 
ROSAMUND GRAY. 
 
 501 
 
 impulse ; — her conversation did not consist 
 in a comparison of vapid feeling, an inter- 
 change of sentiment lip-deep — it had all the 
 freshness of young sensation in it. 
 
 Sometimes they talked of Allan. 
 
 "Allan is very good," said Rosamund, 
 "very good indeed to my grandmother — he 
 will sit with her, and hear her stories, and 
 read to her, and try to divert her a hundred 
 ways. I wonder sometimes he is not tired. 
 She talks him to death ! " 
 
 "Then you confess, Rosamund, that the 
 old lady does tire you sometimes V 
 
 " Oh no, I did not mean that — it's very 
 diiferent — I am used to all her ways, and I 
 can humour her, and jilease her, and I ought 
 to do it, for she is the only friend I ever had 
 in the world." 
 
 The new friends did not conclude their 
 walk till it was late, and Rosamund began 
 to be apprehensive about the old lady, who 
 had been all this time alone. 
 
 On their retui-n to the cottage, they found 
 that Margaret had been somewhat impatient 
 — old ladies, good old ladies, will be so at 
 times — age is timorous and suspicious of 
 danger, where no danger is. 
 
 Besides, it was Mai-garet's bed-time, for 
 she kept very good hours — indeed, in the 
 distribution of her meals, and sundry other 
 particulars, she resembled the livers in the 
 antique world, more than might well beseem 
 a creature of this. 
 
 So the new friends parted for that night — 
 Elinor having made Margaret promise to 
 give Rosamund leave to come and see her 
 the next day. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Miss Clare, we may be sure, made her 
 brother very happy, when she told him of 
 the engagement she had made for the 
 morrow, and how delighted she had been 
 with his handsome friend. 
 
 Allan, I believe, got little sleep that night. 
 I know not, whether joy be not a more 
 troublesome bed-fellow than grief — hope 
 keeps a body very wakeful, I know. 
 
 Elinor Clare was the best good creatui-e — 
 the least selfisli human being I ever knew — 
 alwaj's at work for other people's good. 
 
 planning other people's happiness — cod 
 tinually forgetful to consult for her own 
 pei'sonal gratifications, except indirectly, in 
 the welfare of another ; — while her parents 
 lived, the most attentive of daughters— since 
 they died, the kindest of sisters — I never 
 knew but oiie like her. It happens that I 
 have some of this young lady's letters in my 
 possession — I shall present my reader with 
 one of them. It was written a short time 
 after the death of her mother, and addressed 
 to a cousin, a dear friend of Elinor's, who 
 was then on tlie point of being married to 
 Mr. Beaumont, of Staffordshire, and had 
 invited Elinor to assist at her nuptials. I 
 will transcribe it with minute fidelity. 
 
 ELINOK CLAKE TO MARIA LESLIE. 
 
 Widford, July the — , 17—. 
 
 Health, Innocence, and Beauty, shall be 
 thy bridemaids, my sweet cousin. I have no 
 heart to undertake the office. Alas ! what 
 have I to do in the house of feasting ? 
 
 Maria ! I fear lest my griefs should prove 
 obtrusive. Yet bear with me a little — I have 
 recovered already a share of my former 
 spirits. 
 
 I fear more for Allan than myself. The 
 loss of two such parents, within so short an 
 interval, bears vei-y heavy on him. The boy 
 hangs about me from morning till night. He 
 is perpetually forcing a smile into his poor 
 pale cheeks — you know the sweetness of his 
 smile, Maria. 
 
 To-day, after dinner, when he took his 
 glass of wine in his hand, he burst into teai*s, 
 and would not, or could not then, tell me 
 the reason — afterwards he told me — " he 
 had been used to di-ink Mamma's health 
 after dinner, and that came into his head 
 and made him cry." I feel the claims the 
 boy has upon me — I perceive that I am 
 living to some end — and the thought sup- 
 ports me. 
 
 Already I have attained to a state of com- 
 placent feelings — my mother's lessons were 
 not thrown away upon her Elinor. 
 
 In the visions of last night her spirit 
 seemed to stand at my bed-side— a light, as 
 of noonday, shone upon the room — she 
 opened my curtains — she smiled upon me 
 wT.th the same placid smile as in her life- 
 time. I felt no fear. " ElLuor," she said 
 
502 
 
 ROSAMUND GRAY. 
 
 " for my sake take care of young Allan," — 
 and'I awokp with calm feelings. 
 
 Maria ! sliall not the meeting of blessed 
 spirits, think you, be something like this ? — 
 I think, I could even now behold my mother 
 without dread — I would ask pardon of her 
 for all my past omissions of duty, for all the 
 little asperities in my temper, which have 
 so often grieved her gentle spirit when 
 living. Maria ! I think she would not turn 
 away from me. 
 
 Oftentimes a feeling, more vivid than 
 memory, brings her before me — I see her sit 
 in her old elbow chair — her arms folded upon 
 her lap — a tear upon her cheek, that seems 
 to upbraid her unkind daughter for some 
 inattention — I wipe it away and kiss her 
 honoured lips. 
 
 Maria ! when I have been fancying all 
 this, Allan will come in, with his poor eyes 
 red with weeping, and taking me by the 
 hand, destroy the vision in a moment. 
 
 I am prating to you, my sweet cousin, but 
 it is the prattle of the heart, which Maria 
 loves. Besides, whom have I to talk to of 
 these things but you ? — you have been my 
 counsellor in times past, my companion, and 
 sweet familiar friend. Bear with me a little 
 — I mourn the " cherishers of my infancy." 
 
 I sometimes count it a blessing that my 
 father did not prove the survivor. You 
 know something of his story. You know 
 there was a foul tale current — it was the 
 
 busy malice of that bad man, S , 
 
 which helped to spread it abroad — you will 
 recollect the active good-nature of our 
 
 friends W and T ; what pains they 
 
 took to undeceive people — with the better 
 sort their kind labours prevailed ; but there 
 was still a party who shut their ears. You 
 know the issue of it. My fathei-'s great 
 spirit bore up against it for some time — my 
 father never was a bad man — but that spirit 
 was broken at the last — antl the greatly- 
 injured man was forced to leave his old 
 paternal dwelling in Staffordshire — for the 
 neighbours had begun to point at him. 
 Maria ! I have seen them poirii at him, and 
 have been ready to drop. 
 
 In tliis part of the country, where the 
 slander had not readied, he sought a retreat 
 — and he found a still more grateful asylum 
 iu the daily solicitudes of the best of wives. 
 
 "An enemy hath done this," I have heard 
 
 him say — and at such times my mother 
 would speak to him so soothingly of forgive- 
 ness, and long-sufferuig, and the bftaring of 
 injuries with patience ; would heal all his 
 wounds with so gentle a touch ; — I have 
 seen the old man weep like a child. 
 
 The gloom that beset his mind, at times 
 betrayed him into scepticism — he has doubted 
 if there be a Providence ! I have heard liim 
 say, " God has built a brave world, but me- 
 thinks he has left his creatures to bustle in 
 it how they may." 
 
 At such times he could not endure to hear 
 my mother talk in a religious sti-ain. He 
 would say, "Woman, have done — you con- 
 found, you perplex me, when you talk of 
 these mattei-s, and for one day at least unfit 
 me for the business of life." 
 
 I have seen her look at him — O God, 
 Maria ! such a look ! it plainly spake that 
 she was willing to have shared her precious 
 hope with the partner of her earthly cares — 
 but she found a repulse — 
 
 Deprived of such a wife, think you, the old 
 man could long have endured his existence 1 
 or what consolation would his wretched 
 daughter have had to oflFer him, but silent 
 aud imbecile tears 1 
 
 ]\Iy sweet cousin, you will think me tedious 
 — aud I am so — but it does me good to talk 
 these matters over. And do not you be 
 alarmed for me — my sorrows are subsiding 
 into a deep and sweet i-esignation. I shall 
 soon be sufficiently composed, I know it, to 
 participate in my friend's haiipiness. 
 
 Let me caU her, while yet I may, my own 
 Maria Leslie ! Methinks, I shall not like 
 you by any other name. Beaumont ! !Maria 
 Beaumont ! it hath a strange sound with it — 
 I shall never be reconciled to this name — 
 but do not you fear — Maria Leslie shall 
 plead with me for Maria Beaumont. 
 
 And now, my sweet Friend, 
 
 God love you, and your 
 
 Elinor Clare. 
 
 I find in my collection several lettei-s, 
 written soon after the date of the preceding, 
 and addi-essed all of them to Maria Beaumont. 
 — I am tempted to make some short extracts 
 from these — my talc will suffer interruption 
 by them — but I was willing to preserve 
 whatever memorials I could of Elinor Clar« 
 
FROM ELINOR CLARE TO MARIA BEAUMONT. 
 (an extuact.) 
 
 " 1 HAVE been strolling out for half 
 
 an hour in the fields; and my mind has been 
 occupied by thoughts which Maria has a 
 right to participate. I have been bringing 
 my mother to my recollection. My heart 
 ached with the remembrance of infiimitieS/ 
 that made her closing years of life so sore a 
 ti'ial to her. 
 
 I was concerned to think that our family 
 ditferences have been one source of disquiet 
 to her. I am sensible that this last we are 
 apt to exaggerate after a person's death — 
 and surely, in the main, there was consider- 
 able harmony among the members of our 
 little family — still I was concerned to think 
 that we ever gave her gentle spirit disquiet. 
 
 I thought on years back — on all my 
 
 parents' friends — the H s, the F s, 
 
 on D S , and on many a merry even- 
 ing, in the fireside circle, in that comfortable 
 back parlour — it is never used now. — 
 
 O ye Matravises * of the age, ye know not 
 what ye lose in despising these petty topics 
 of endeared remembrance, associated circum- 
 stances of past times ; — ye know not the 
 throbbings of the heart, tender yet affection- 
 ately familiar, which accompany the dear 
 and honoured names oi father or oi mother. 
 
 Maria ! I thought on all these things ; 
 my heart ached at the review of them — it 
 yet aches, while I write this — but I am 
 never so satisfied with my train of thoughts, 
 as when they run upon these subjects — the 
 tears they draw from us, meliorate and soften 
 the heart, and keep fresh within us that 
 memory of dear friends dead, which alone 
 can fit us for a readmission to theii- society 
 hereafter." 
 
 FROM ANOTHER LETTER. 
 
 " I HAD a bad dream this morning — 
 
 that Allan was dead — and who, of all persons 
 In the world do you think, put on mourning 
 for him ? Why — Matravis. This alone might 
 cure me of superstitious thoughts, if I were 
 inclined to them ; for why should Matravis 
 mourn for us, or oui' family 1 — StiU it was 
 pleasant to awake, and find it but a dream. — 
 
 • This uame will be explained presently. 
 
 Methinks something like an awaking from 
 an ill di'eam shall the Resurrection from 
 the Dead be. — Materially different from our 
 accustomed scenes, and ways of life, the 
 World to coTne may possibly not be — still it is 
 represented to us under the notion of a Rest, 
 a Sabbath, a state of bliss." 
 
 FROM ANOTHER LETTER. 
 
 " Methinks. you and I should have 
 
 been born under the same roof, sucked the 
 same milk, conned the same horn-book, 
 thumbed the same Testament, together : — 
 for we have been more than sisters, Maria ! 
 
 Something will still be whispering to me, 
 that I shall one day be inmate of the same 
 dwelling with my cousin, pai'taker with her 
 in all the delights which spring from mutual 
 good offices, kind words, attentions in sick- 
 ness and in health, — conversation, sometimes 
 innocently trivial, and at others profitably 
 serious ; — books read and commented on, 
 together ; meals ate, and walks taken, toge- 
 ther, — and conferences, how we may best do 
 good to this poor person or that, and wean 
 our spirits from the world's cares, without 
 divesting ourselves of its charities. What a 
 picture I have drawn, Maria ! and none of 
 all these things may ever come to pass." 
 
 FROM ANOTHER LETTER. 
 
 " Continue to write to me, my sweet 
 
 cousin. Many good thoughts, resolutions, 
 and proper views of things, pass through the 
 mind in the course of the day, but are lost 
 for want of committing them to paper. 
 Seize them, Maria, as they pass, these Birds 
 of Paradise, that show themselves and are 
 gone, — and make a grateful present of the 
 precious fugitives to your friend. 
 
 To use a homely illustration, just rising in 
 my fancy, — shall the good housewife take 
 such pains in pickling and pi-eserving her 
 worthless fruits, her walnuts, her apricots, 
 and quinces — and is there not much spiritual 
 housewifery/ in treasuring up oiu* mind's best 
 fruits — our heart's meditations in its most 
 favoured moments ? 
 
 This sad simile is much in the fiishiou of 
 the old Moralisers, such as I conceive honest 
 Baxter to have been, such as Quarles and 
 Wither were with their curious, serio-comic, 
 
504 
 
 ROSAMUND GRAY. 
 
 qv.aint emblems. But they sometimes reach 
 llio heart, when a more elegant simile rests 
 in the fancy. 
 
 Not low and mean, like these, but beauti- 
 fully familiarised to our conceptions, and 
 condescending to human thoughts and 
 notions, are all the discourses of our Lord — 
 conveyed in parable, or similitude, what 
 easy access do they win to the heart, 
 through the medium of the delighted imagi- 
 nation ! speaking of heavenly things in fable, 
 or in simile, drawn from earth, from objects 
 common, accustomed. 
 
 Life's business, with such delicious little 
 interruptions as our correspondence affords, 
 how pleasant it is ! — why can we not paint 
 on the dull paper our whole feelings, exquisite 
 as they rise up ? " 
 
 FROM ANOTHER LETTER. 
 
 " I HAD meant to have left off at this 
 
 place ; but looking back, I am sorry to find 
 too gloomy a cast tincturing my last page — a 
 representation of life false and unthankful. 
 Life is not all vanity and disappointment — it 
 hath much of evil in it, no doubt ; but to 
 those who do not misuse it, it affords comfort, 
 tem-porary comfort, much — much that endears 
 us to it, and dignifies it — many true and 
 good feelings, I trust, of which we need not 
 be ashamed — hours of tranquillity and hope. 
 But the morning was dull and overcast, and 
 my spirits were under a cloud. I feel my 
 error. 
 
 Is it no blessing that we two love one 
 another so dearly — that Allan is left me — 
 that you are settled in life — that worldly 
 affairs go smooth with us both — above all 
 that our lot hath fallen to us in a Christian 
 country ? Maria ! these things are not little. 
 I will consider life as a long feast, and not 
 forget to say grace." 
 
 FROM ANOTHER LETTER. 
 
 " Allan has written to me — you 
 
 know, he is on a visit at his old tutor's in 
 Gloucestershire — he is to I'eturn home on 
 Thursday — Allan is a dear boy — he con- 
 cludes his letter, which is very affectionate 
 throughout, in this manner — 
 
 Elinor, I charge you to learn the folloAV ing 
 stanza by heart — 
 
 The monarch may forget his crown. 
 
 That on his he.id an hour hath been ; 
 The bridegroom may forget his bride 
 
 Was made his wedded wife yestrc-en ; 
 The mother may forget her child. 
 
 That smiles so sweetly on her knee : 
 But I'll remember thee, Gleneairn, 
 
 And all that thou bust done for me. 
 
 The lines are in Burns — you know, we 
 read him for the first time together at 
 Margate — and I have been used to refer 
 them to you, and to call you, in my mind, 
 Gleneairn, — for you were always very good to 
 me. I had a thousand failings, but you 
 would love me in spite of them all. I am 
 going to drink your health." 
 
 I shall detain my reader no longer from 
 the narrative. 
 
 CHAPTEE VIII. 
 
 They had but four rooms in the cottage. 
 Margaret slept in the biggest room up-stairs, 
 and her grand-daughter in a kind of closet 
 adjoining, where she could be within hearing, 
 if her grandmother should call her in the 
 night. 
 
 The girl was often disturbed in that 
 manner — two or three times in a night she 
 has been forced to leave her bed, to fetch 
 her grandmother's cordials, or do some little 
 service for her — but she knew that 
 Margaret's ailings were real and pressing, 
 and Rosamund never complained — never 
 suspected, that lier grandmother's requisi 
 tions had anything unreasonable in them. 
 
 The night she parted with Miss Clai-e, 
 she had helped Margaret to bed, as usual — 
 and, after saying her prayers, as the custom 
 was, kneeling by the old lady's bed-side, 
 kissed her grandmother, and wished her a 
 good-night — Margaret blessed her, and 
 charged her to go to bed directly. It was 
 her customary injunction, tind Rosamund 
 had never dreamed of disobeying. 
 
 So she retired to her little room. The 
 night was warm and clear — the moon very 
 bright — her window commanded a view of 
 scenes she had been tracing in the day-time 
 with Miss Clare. 
 
 All the events of the day past, the occur- 
 rences of their walk arose in her mind. She 
 
ROSAMUND GRAY. 
 
 50fi 
 
 fancied she should like to retrace those 
 scenes — but it w<'i3 now nine o'clock, a late 
 hour in the village. 
 
 Still she fancied it would be very charming 
 — and then her grandmother's injunction 
 came powerfully to her recollection — she 
 sighed, and turned from the window — and 
 walked up and down her little room. 
 
 Ever, when she looked at the window, the 
 wish returned. It was not so very late. The 
 neighbours were yet about, passing under 
 the window to their homes — she thought, 
 and thought again, till her sensations became 
 vivid, even to painfulness — her bosom was 
 aching to give them vent. 
 
 The village clock struck ten ! — the neigh- 
 bours ceased to pass under the window. 
 Rosamund, stealing down stairs, fastened 
 the latch behind her, and left the cottage. 
 
 One, that knew her, met her, and observed 
 her with some surprise. Another recollects 
 having wished her a good-night. Rosamund 
 never returned to the cottage. 
 
 An old man, that lay sick in a small house 
 adjoining to Margaret's, testified the next 
 morning, that he had plainly heard the old 
 creature calling for her grand-daughter. All 
 the night long she made her moan, and 
 ceased not to call upon the name of Rosa- 
 mund. But no Rosamund was there — the 
 voice died away, but not till near day-break. 
 
 When the neighbours came to search in 
 the morning, Margaret was missing ! She 
 had straggled out of bed, and made her way 
 into Rosamund's room — worn out with 
 fatigue and fright, when she foimd the girl 
 not there, she had laid herself down to die — 
 and, it is thought, she died praying — for she 
 was discovered in a kneeling posture, her 
 arms and face extended on the pillow, where 
 Rosamund had slept the night before — a 
 smile was on her face in death. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Fain would I draw a veil over the 
 transactions of that night — but I cannot — 
 grief, and burning shame, forbid me to be 
 silent — black deeds are about to be made 
 public, which reflect a stain upon our com- 
 mon nature. 
 
 Rosamund, enthusiastic and improvident, 
 
 wandered unprotected to a distance from 
 her guardian doors — through lonely glens, 
 and wood walks, where she had rambled 
 many a day in safety — till she arrived at a 
 shady copse, out of the hearing of any human 
 habitation. 
 
 Matravis met her. " Flown with inso- 
 lence and wine," returning home late at 
 night, he passed that way ! 
 
 Matravis was a very ugly man. Sallow 
 complexioned ! and if hearts can wear that 
 colour, his heart was sallow-complexioned 
 also. 
 
 A young man with gray deliberation ! 
 cold and .systematic in all his plans ; and all 
 his plans were evil. His very lust was 
 systematic. 
 
 He would brood over his bad purposes 
 for such a dreary length of time that, it 
 might have been expected, some solitary 
 check of conscience must have intervened 
 to save him from commission. But that 
 Light from Heaven was extinct in his dark 
 bosom. 
 
 Nothing that is great, nothing that is 
 amiable, existed for this unhappy man. He 
 feared, he envied, he suspected ; but he never 
 loved. The sublime and beautiful in nature, 
 the excellent and becoming in morals, were 
 things placed beyond the capacity of his 
 sensations. He loved not poetry — nor ever 
 took a lonely walk to meditate — never beheld 
 virtue, which he did not try to disbelieve, or 
 female beauty and innocence, which he did 
 not lust to contaminate. 
 
 A sneer was perpetually upon his face, 
 and malice grinning at his heart. He would 
 say the most ill-natured things, with the 
 least remorse, of any man I ever knew. 
 This gained him the reputation of a wit — 
 other traits got him the reputation of a 
 villain. 
 
 And this man formei-ly paid his court to 
 Elinor Clare ! — with what success I leave 
 my readers to determine. It was not in 
 Elinor's nature to despise any living thing — 
 but in the estimation of this man, to be 
 rejected was to be despised — and Matravis 
 never forgave. 
 
 He had long turned his eyes upon 
 Rosamund Gray. To steal from the bosom 
 of her friends the jewel they prized so much, 
 the little ewe lamb they held so dear, wa.s 
 a scheme of delicate revenge, and Matravis 
 
5iy6 
 
 ROSAMUND GRAY. 
 
 had a two-fold motive for accomplishing this 
 young maid's ruin. 
 
 Often had he met her in her favourite 
 solitudes, but found her ever cold and 
 inaccessible. Of late the girl had avoided 
 straying far from her own home, in the fear 
 of meeting him — but she had never told her 
 fears to Allan. 
 
 Matravis had, till now, been content to be 
 a villain within the limits of the law — but, 
 on the present occasion, hot fumes of wine, 
 co-operating with his deep desire of revenge, 
 and the insolence of an unhoped-for meeting, 
 overcame his customary prudence, and 
 Matra^ds rose, at once, to an audacity of 
 glorious mischief. 
 
 Late at night he met her, a lonely, un- 
 protected virgin — no friend at hand — no 
 place near of refuge. 
 
 Rosamund Gray, my soul is exceeding 
 sorrowful for thee — I loathe to tell the 
 hateful circumstances of thy wrongs. Night 
 and silence were the only witnesses of this 
 young maid's disgrace — Matravis fled. 
 
 Eosamund, polluted and disgraced, wan- 
 dered, an abandoned thing, about the fields 
 and meadows till day-break. Not caring to 
 return to the cottage, she sat herself down 
 before the gate of Miss Clare's house— in a 
 stupor of grief. 
 
 Elinor was just rising, and had opened the 
 windows of her chamber, when she perceived 
 her desolate young friend. She ran to 
 embrace her — slie brought her into the house 
 — she took her to her bosom — she kissed her 
 — she spake to her ; but Eosamuud could 
 not speak. 
 
 Tidings came from the cottage. Margaret's 
 death was an event which could not be kept 
 concealed from Rosamund. When the sweet 
 maid heard of it, she languished, and fell 
 sick — she never held up her head after that 
 time. 
 
 If Rosamund had been a sister, she could 
 not have been kindlier treated than by her 
 two friends. 
 
 Allan had ])rospect8 in life — might, in 
 time, have married into any of the first 
 families in Hertfordshire — but Rosamund 
 Gray, humbled though she was, and put to 
 shame, had yet a charm for him — and he 
 would have been content to share his fortunes 
 with her yet, if Rosanmnd would have lived 
 to be his comj)anion. 
 
 But this was not to be — and the girl soon 
 after died. She expired in tlie arms of 
 Elinor — quiet, gentle, as she lived — thankful 
 that she died not among strangers — and 
 expressing, by signs rather than words, a 
 gratitude for the most trifling services, the 
 common offices of humanity. She died 
 uncomplaining ; and this young maid, this 
 untaught Rosamund, might have given a 
 lesson to the grave philosopher in death 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 I WAS but a boy when these events took 
 place. All the village remember the story, 
 and tell of Rosamund Gray, and old blind 
 Margaret. 
 
 I parted from Allan Clare on that disas- 
 trous night, and set out for Edinburgh the 
 next morning, before the facts were com- 
 monly known — I heard not of them — and it 
 was four months before I received a letter 
 from Allan. 
 
 " His heart," he told me, " was gone from 
 him — for his sister had died of a frenzy 
 fever ! " — not a word of Rosamimd in the 
 letter — I was left to collect her story from 
 sources which may one day be explained. 
 
 I soon after quitted Scotland, on the death 
 of my father, and returned to my native 
 village. Allan had left the place, and I 
 could gain no information, whether he were 
 dead or living. 
 
 I passed the cottage. I did not dare to 
 look that way, or to inquire who lived there. 
 A little dog, that had been Rosamund's, was 
 yelping in my path. I laughed aloud like 
 one mad, whose mind had suddenly gone 
 from him — I stared vacantly around me, like 
 one alienated from common perceptions. 
 
 But I was young at that time, and the 
 impression beciuue gradually weakened as I 
 mingled in the business of life. It is now 
 ten years since these events took place, and I 
 sometimes think of them as unreal. Allan 
 Clare was a dear friend to me — but there 
 are times when Allan and his sister, Mar- 
 garet and her grand-daughter, appear like 
 personages of a dream — an idle drejuu. 
 
ROSAMUND GRAY. 
 
 607 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Strange things have happened unto me — I 
 seeia scarce awake — but I will recollect my 
 thoughts, and try to give an account of 
 what has befallen me 1 1 the few last weeks. 
 
 Since my father's d';ath our family have 
 resided in London. I am in practice as a 
 surgeon there. My mother died two years 
 after we left Widford. 
 
 A month or two ago, I had been busying 
 myself in drawing up the above narrative, 
 intending to make it public. The employ- 
 ment had forced my mind to dwell upon 
 facts, which had begun to fade from it — the 
 memory of old times became vivid, and more 
 vivid — I felt a strong desire to revisit the 
 scenes of my native village — of the young 
 loves of Rosamund and her Clare. 
 
 A kind of dread had hithei-to kept me 
 back ; but I was restless now, till I had 
 accomplished my wish. I set out one morn- 
 ing to walk — I reached Widford about eleven 
 in the forenoon — after a slight breakfast at 
 my inn — where I was mortified to perceive 
 the old landlord did not know me again — 
 (old Thomas Billet — he has often made angle- 
 rods for me when a child) — I rambled over 
 all my accustomed haunts. 
 
 Our old house was vacant, and to be sold. 
 I entered, unmolested, into the room that 
 had been my bedchamber. I kneeled down 
 on the spot where my little bed had stood — 
 1 felt like a child — I prayed like one — it 
 seemed as though old times were to return 
 again — I looked round involuntarily, exiject- 
 ing to see some face I knew — but all was 
 naked and mute. The bed was gone. My 
 little pane of paiuted window, through whicli 
 I loved to look at the sun when I awoke 
 in a fine summer's morning, was taken out, 
 and had been replaced by one of conmiou 
 glass. 
 
 I visited, by turns, every chamber — they 
 were all desolate and unfm-uished, one ex- 
 cepted, in which the owner had left a harp- 
 sichord, probably to be sold — I touched the 
 keys — I played some old Scottish tunes, 
 which had delighted me when a cliild. Past 
 associations revived with the music — blended 
 with a sense of unreality, which at last be- 
 came too powerful — I rushed out of the room 
 to give vent to my feelings. 
 
 I wandered, scarce knowing where, into 
 an old wood, that stands at the back of the 
 house — we calleil it the Wilderness. A well- 
 kuown form was missing, that used to meet 
 me in this place — it was thine — Ben Moxam 
 — the kindest, gentlest, politest of human 
 beings, yet was he nothing higher than a 
 gardener in the family. Honest creature ! 
 thou didst never pass me in my childish 
 rambles, without a soft speech, and a smile. 
 I remember thy good-natured face. But 
 there is one thing, for which I can never for- 
 give thee, Ben Moxam — that thou didst join 
 with an old maiden aunt of mine in a ci-uel 
 plot, to lop away the hanging branches of tlie 
 old fir-trees — I remember them sweeping to 
 the ground. 
 
 I have often left my chUdish sports to 
 ramble in this place — its glooms and its soli- 
 tude had a mysterious charm for my yoimg 
 mind, nurturing within me tliatlove of quiet- 
 ness and lonely thinking, which has accom- 
 panied me to maturer years. 
 
 In this Wilderness I found myself, after a 
 ten years' absence. Its stately fir-trees were 
 yet standing, with all their luxuriant com- 
 pany of underwood — the squirrel was there, 
 and the melancholy cooings of the wood- 
 pigeon — all was as I had left it — my heart 
 softened at the sight — it seemed as though 
 my character had been suffering a change 
 since I forsook these shades. 
 
 My parents were both dead — I had no 
 counsellor left, no experience of age to direct 
 me, no sweet voice of reproof. The Lord 
 had taken away my friends, and I knew not 
 where he had laid them. I paced round the 
 wilderness, seeking a comforter. I prayed 
 that I might be restored to that state of in- 
 nocence, in which I had waudered in those 
 shades. 
 
 Methought my request was heard, for it 
 seemed as though the stains of manhood 
 were passing from me, and I were relapsing 
 into the purity and simplicity of childhood. 
 I was content to have been moulded into a 
 perfect child. I stood still, as in a trance. 
 1 dreamed that I was enjoying a pei-sonal 
 intercourse with my heavenly Father— and, 
 extravagantly, put off the shoes from my 
 feet — for the place where I stood I thought, 
 was holy ground. 
 
 This state of mind could not last long, and 
 I retui'ned with languid feelings to my inn. 
 
508 
 
 ROSAMUND GRAY. 
 
 I ordered my dinner — green peas and a 
 sweetbread — it had been a favourite dish 
 ■with me in my childhood — I was allowed to 
 have it on my birth-days. I was impatient 
 to see it come upon table — but, when it 
 came, I could scarce eat a mouthful — my 
 tears choked me. I called for wine — I drank 
 a pint and a half of red wine — and not till 
 then had I dared to visit the church-yard, 
 where my parents were interred. 
 
 The cottage lay in my way — ^IMargaret had 
 chosen it for that very reason, to be near 
 the church — for the old lady was regular in 
 her attendance on public worship — I passed 
 ou — and in a moment found myself among 
 the tombs. 
 
 I had been present at my father's burial, 
 and knew the spot again — my mother's 
 funeral I was prevented by illness from at- 
 tending — a plain stone was placed over the 
 grave, with their initials carved upon it — for 
 they both occupied one grave. 
 
 I prostrated myself before the spot — I 
 kissed the earth that covered them — I con- 
 templated, with gloomy delight, the time 
 when I should mingle my dust with theirs 
 — and kneeled, with my arms incumbent on 
 the grave stone, in a kind of mental prayer 
 — for I could not speak. 
 
 Having performed these duties, I arose 
 with quieter feelings, and felt leisure to 
 attend to indiflfei-ent objects. — Still I con- 
 tinued in the church-yard, reading the 
 various inscriptions, and moralising on them 
 with that kind of levity, which will not un- 
 frequently spring up in the mind, in the 
 midst of deep melancholy. 
 
 I read of nothing but careful parents, 
 loving husbands, and dutiful children. I said 
 jestingly, where be all the 6rtf/ people buried? 
 Bad parents, bad husbands, b;id children — 
 what cemeteries are appointed for these ? — 
 do they not sleep in consecrated ground ? or 
 is it but a pious fiction, a generous oversight, 
 in the survivors, which thus tricks out men's 
 epit;iplis when dead, who, in their life-time, 
 discharged the offices of life, perhaps, but 
 lamely 1 Their failings, with their reproaches, 
 now sleep with them in the grave. Man 
 liars not with the dmd. It is a trait of human 
 nature, for which I love it. 
 
 I had not observed, till now, a little group 
 assembled at the other end of the church- 
 vard ; it was a company of children, who 
 
 were gathered round a young man, dressed 
 in black, sitting on a grave-stone. 
 
 He seemed to be asking them questions — 
 probably, about their learning — and one 
 little dirty ragged-headed fellow was clam- 
 bering up his knees to kiss him. The 
 children had been eatii g black cherries — for 
 some of the stones wen scattered about, and 
 their mouths were smeared with them. 
 
 As I drew near them, I thought I dis- 
 cerned in the stranger a mild benignity of 
 countenance, which I had somewhere seen 
 before — I gazed at him more attentively. 
 
 It was Allan Clare ! sitting on the grave 
 of his sister. 
 
 I threw my arms about his neck. 1 ex- 
 claimed " Allan " — he turned his eyes upon 
 me — ^he knew me — we both wept aloud — it 
 seemed as though the interval since we 
 parted had been as nothing — I cried out, 
 "Come, and tell me about these things." 
 
 I drew him away from his little friends — 
 he parted with a show of reluctance from 
 the church-yard — Margaret and her grand- 
 daughter lay buried there, as well as his 
 sister — I took him to my inn — secured a 
 room, where we might be private — ordered 
 fresh wine — scarce knowhig what I did, I 
 danced for joy. 
 
 Allan was quite overcome, and taking me 
 by the hand, he said, " This repays me for 
 all." 
 
 It was a proud day for me — I had found 
 the friend I thought dead — earth seemed to 
 me no longer valuable, than as it containeil 
 him ; and existence a blessing no longer 
 than while I should live to be his comforter. 
 
 I began, at leisure, to survey him with 
 more attention. Time .and grief had left few 
 traces of that fine enthttsiasm, which once 
 burned in his countenance — his eyes had lost 
 their original fire, but they retained an un- 
 common sweetness, and whenever they were 
 turned upon me, their smile pierced to my 
 heart. 
 
 " Allan, I fear you have been a sufferer ? " 
 He rej)lied not, and I could not press him 
 further. I could not call the dead to life 
 again. 
 
 So we drank and told old stories — and 
 repeated old poetry — and sang old songs — 
 as if nothing had happened. We sat till very 
 late. I forgot that I lunl pui-posed returuiugto 
 town that evening — to Alhui all places were 
 
ROSAMUND GRAY. 
 
 609 
 
 alike — I grew noisy, he grew cheerful — 
 Allan's old manners, old enthusiasm, were re- 
 turning upon him — we laughed, we wept, we 
 mingled our tears, and talked extravagantly. 
 
 Allan was my chamber-fellow that night 
 • — and lay awake planning schemes of living 
 together under the same roof, entering upon 
 similar pursuits, — and praising God, that we 
 had met. 
 
 I was obliged to return to town the next 
 morning, and Allan proposed to accompany 
 me. " Since the death of his sister," he told 
 me, "he had been a wanderer." 
 
 In the course of our walk he unbosomed 
 himself without reserve — told me many par- 
 ticulars of his way of life for the last nine 
 or ten years, which I do not feel myself at 
 liberty to divulge. 
 
 Once, on my attempting to cheer him, 
 when I perceived him over thoughtful, he 
 replied to me in these words : 
 
 "Do not regard me as unhappy when 
 you catch me in these moods. I am never 
 more happy than at times when, by the cast 
 of my countenance, men judge me most 
 miserable. 
 
 " My friend, the events which have left 
 this sadness behind them are of no recent 
 date. The melancholy which comes over me 
 with the recollection of them is not hurtful, 
 but only tends to soften and tranquillise my 
 mind, to detach me from the restlessness of 
 human pursuits. 
 
 " The stronger I feel this detachment, the 
 more I find myself drawn heavenward to the 
 contemplation of spiritual objects. 
 
 " I love to keep old friendshijjs alive and 
 warm within me, because I expect a renewal 
 of them in the World of Spirits. 
 
 " I am a wandering and unconnected thing 
 on the earth. I have made no new friend- 
 ships, that can compensate me for the loss of 
 the old — and the more I know mankind, the 
 more does it become necessary for me to 
 supply their loss by little images, recollec- 
 tions, and circumstances of past pleasures. 
 
 " I am sensible that I am surrounded by 
 a multitude of very worthy people, plain- 
 hearted souls, sincere and kind. But they 
 have hitherto eluded my pursuit, and will 
 continue to bless the little circle of their 
 families and friends, while I must remain a 
 stranger to them. 
 
 " Kept at a distance by mankind, I have 
 
 not ceased to love them — and could 1 find 
 the cruel persecutor, the malignant instru- 
 ment of God's judgments on me and mine 
 I think I would forgive, and try to love him 
 too. 
 
 " I have been a quiet sufierer. From the 
 beginning of my calamities it was given to 
 me, not to see the hand of man in them. I 
 perceived a mighty arm, which none but 
 myself could see, extended over me. I gave 
 my heart to the Purifier, and my will to the 
 Sovereign Will of the Universe. The irre- 
 sistible wheels of destmy passed on in their 
 evei-lasting rotation, — and I suffered myself 
 to be carried along with them without com- 
 plaining." 
 
 CHAPTEE Xn. 
 
 Allan told me that for some years past, 
 feeling himself disengaged from every per- 
 sonal tie, but not alienated from human 
 sympathies, it had been his taste, his humour 
 he called it, to spend a great portion of his 
 time in hospitals and lazar-houses. 
 
 He had found a vsayward pleasure, he re- 
 fused to name it a virtue, in tending a 
 description of people, who had long ceased 
 to expect kindness or friendliness from man- 
 kind, but were content to accept the reluct- 
 ant services, which the oftentimes unfeeling 
 instruments and servants of these well-meant 
 institutions deal out to the poor sick people 
 under their care. 
 
 It is not medicine, it is not broths and 
 coarse meats, served up at a stated hour 
 with all the hard formalities of a prison — it 
 is not the scanty dole of a bed to die on — 
 which dying man requires from his species. 
 
 Looks, attentions, consolations, — in a word, 
 sympathies, are what a man most needs in 
 this awful close of mortal suflferings. A 
 kind look, a smile, a drop of cold water to 
 the parched lip — for these things a man shall 
 bless you in death. 
 
 And these better things than cordials did 
 Allan love to administer — to stay by a bod- 
 side the whole day, when something disgust- 
 ing in a patient's distemper has kept the 
 very nurses at a distance — to sit by, while 
 the poor wx-etch got a little sleep — and be 
 there to smile upon him when he awoke — to 
 
510 
 
 ROSAMUND GRAY. 
 
 slip a guinea, now and then, into the hands 
 of a nurse or attendant — these things have 
 been to Allan as privileges, for which he was 
 content to live ; choice marks, and circum- 
 stances, of }iis Milker's goodness to him. 
 
 And I do not know whether occupations 
 of this kind be not a spring of purer and 
 nobler delight (certainly instances of a more 
 disinterested virtue) than arises from what 
 are called Friendships of Sentiment. 
 
 Between two persons of liberal education, 
 like opinions, and common feelings, often- 
 times subsists a Variety of Sentiment, which 
 disposes each to look upon the other as the 
 only being in the universe worthy of friend- 
 ship, or capable of understanding it, — them- 
 selves they consider as the solitary receptacles 
 of all that is delicate in feeling, or stable in 
 attachment : Avhen the odds are, that under 
 every green hill, and in every crowded street, 
 people of equal worth are to be found, who 
 do more good in their generation, and make 
 less noise in the doing of it. 
 
 It was in consequence of these benevolent 
 propensities, I have been describing, that 
 Allan oftentimes discovered considerable in- 
 clinations in favour of my way of life, which 
 I have before mentioned as being that of a 
 surgeon. He would frequently attend me 
 on my visits to patients ; and I began to 
 think that he had serious intentions of 
 making my profession his study. 
 
 He was present with me at a scene — a 
 death-led scene — I shudder when I do but 
 think of it. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 I WAS sent for the other morning to the 
 assistance of a gentleman, who had been 
 w> unded in a duel, — and his wounds by un- 
 skilful treatment liad been brought to a 
 dangerous crisis. 
 
 The uncommonnesa of the name, which 
 was Matravis, suggested to me, that this 
 might possibly be no other than Allan's old 
 enemy. Under this apprehension, I did 
 what I could to dissuade Allan from ac- 
 oompanjHng me — but he seemed bent upon 
 going, and even pleased himself with the 
 notion, that it might lie within his ability to 
 do the unhappy man some service. So he 
 went with me. 
 
 When we came to the house, which was 
 in Soho-square, we discovered that it was 
 indeed the man — the identical Matravis, who 
 had done all that mischief in times past — but 
 not in a condition to excite any other sensa- 
 tion than pity in a heai't more hard than 
 Allan's. 
 
 Intense pain had brought on a delirium — 
 we perceived this on first entering the room 
 — for the wretched man was raving to him- 
 self — talking idly in mad unconnected sen- 
 tences — ^that yet seemed, at times, to have a 
 reference to past facts. 
 
 One while he told us his dream. "He 
 had lost his way on a great heath, to which 
 there seemed no end — it was cold, cold, cold, 
 — and dark, very dark — an old woman in 
 leading-strings, blind, was groping about for 
 a guide " — and then he frightened me, — 
 for he seemed disposed to be jocular, and 
 sang a song about " an old woman clothed 
 in grey," and said " he did not believe in a 
 devU." 
 
 Presently he bid us " not tell Allan Clare." 
 — Allan was hanging over him at that very 
 moment, sobbing. — I could not resist the 
 impulse, but cried out, " This is Allan Clare 
 — Allan Clare is come to see you, my dear 
 Sir." — The wretched man did not hear me, I 
 believe, for he turned his head away, and 
 began talking of charnel-houses, and dead 
 men, and " whether they knew anything that 
 passed in their coffins." 
 
 Matravis died that night. 
 
ESSAYS. 
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OF CHEIST'S HOSPITAL. 
 
 To comfort the desponding parent with 
 the thought that, without diminishing tlie 
 stock which is imperiously demanded to fur- 
 nish the more pressing and homely wants of 
 our nature, he has disposed of one or more 
 perhaps out of a numerous offsjiring, under 
 the shelter of a care scarce less tender than 
 the paternal, where not only their bodily 
 cravings shall be supplied, but that mental 
 pabulum is also dispensed, which He hath 
 declared to be no less necessary to our sus- 
 tenance, who said, that, " not by bread alone 
 man can live : " for this Christ's Hospital 
 unfolds her bounty. Here neither, on the 
 one hand, are the youth lifted up above 
 their family, which we must suppose liberal, 
 though reduced ; nor on the other hand, are 
 they liable to be depressed below its level 
 by the mean habits and sentiments which a 
 common charity-school generates. It is, in 
 a word, an Institution to keep those who 
 have yet held up their heads in the world 
 from sinking ; to keep alive the spirit of a 
 decent household, when poverty was in dan- 
 ger of crushing it ; to assist those who are 
 the most willing, but not always the most 
 able, to assist themselves ; to sejiarate a 
 child from his family for a season, in order 
 to render him back hereafter, with feelings 
 and habits more congenial to it, than he 
 could even have attained by remaining at 
 home in the bosom of it. It is a preserving 
 and renovating principle, an antidote for the 
 res angusta domi, when it presses, as it always 
 does, most heavily upon the most ingenuous 
 natures. 
 
 This is Christ's Hospital ; and whether 
 its character would be improved by con- 
 
 fining its advantages to the very lowest of 
 the people, let those judge who have wit- 
 nessed the looks, the gestures, the behaviour, 
 the manner of their play with one another, 
 their deportment towards strangers, the 
 whole aspect and physiognomy of that vast 
 assemblage of boys on the London founda- 
 tion, who freshen and make alive again with 
 their sports the else mouldering cloisters 
 of the old Grey Friars — which strangei*s 
 who have never witnessed, if they pass 
 through Newgate-street, or by Smithfield, 
 would do well to go a little out of their 
 way to see. 
 
 For the Christ's Hospital boy feels that 
 he is no charity-boy ; he feels it in the anti- 
 quity and regality of the foundation to which 
 he belongs ; in the usage which he meets 
 with at school, and the treatment he is ac- 
 customed to out of its bounds ; in the 
 respect and even kindness, which his well- 
 known garb never fails to procure him in 
 the streets of the metropolis ; he feels it in 
 his education, in that measure of classical 
 attainments, which every individual at that 
 school, though not destined to a learned pro- 
 fession, has it in his power to procure, at- 
 tainments which it would be worse than 
 folly to put it in the reach of the labouring 
 classes to acquire: he feels it in the number- 
 less comforts, and even magnificences, which 
 suiTound him ; in his old and aAvful cloisters, 
 with their traditions ; in his spacious school- 
 rooms, and in the well-ordered, airy, and 
 lofty rooms where he sleeps ; in his stately 
 diuing-hall, hung round with pictures, by 
 Verrio, Lely, and others, one of them sur- 
 passing in size and grandeur almost any 
 
512 
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OF CHRIST'S HOSPITAL. 
 
 other in the kingdom ; * above all, in the 
 very extent and maguitiide of the body to 
 which he belongs, and the consequent spirit, 
 the intelligence, and public conscience, which 
 is the result of so many various yet wonder- 
 fully combining members. Compared with 
 this last-named advantage, what is the stock 
 of information, (I do not here speak of book- 
 learning, but of that knowledge which boy 
 receives from boy,) the mass of collected 
 opinions, the intelligence in common, among 
 the few and nari-ow members of an ordinary 
 boarding-school ? 
 
 The Christ's Hospital or Blue-coat boy, 
 has a distinctive character of his own, as far 
 removed from the abject qualities of a 
 common charity-boy as it is from the dis- 
 gusting forwardness of a lad brought up at 
 some other of the public schools. There is 
 pride in it, accumulated from the circum- 
 stances which 1 have described, as differ- 
 encing him from the former ; and there 
 is a restraining modesty from a sense of 
 obligation and dependence, which must ever 
 keep his deportment from assimilating to 
 that of the latter. His very garb, as it is 
 antique and venerable, feeds his self-respect ; 
 as it is a badge of dependence, it restrains 
 the natural petulance of that age from 
 breaking out into overt acts of insolence. 
 This produces silence and a reserve before 
 strangers, yet not that cowardly shyness 
 which boys mewed up at home will feel ; 
 he will speak up when spjoken to, but the 
 stranger must begin the conversation with 
 him. Within his bounds he is all fire 
 and play ; but in the streets he steals 
 along with all the self-concentration of a 
 young monk. He is never known to mix 
 with other boys, they are a sort of laity to 
 him. All this proceeds, I have no doubt, 
 from the continual consciousness which he 
 carries about him of the difference of his 
 dress from that of the rest of the world ; 
 with a modest jealousy over himself, lest, by 
 over-hastily mixing with common and secular 
 playfellows, he should commit the dignity of 
 his cloth. Nor let any one laugh at this ; 
 for, considering the projiensity of the 
 
 • By Vrrrio, roprcsrnting James the Second on his 
 throne, RurrouiKlcU by lim CDiiitier.s, (all curious poi- 
 traitB,) recoivinff the inatliemutital pupils at their annual 
 presentation : a ountom still kept up on Nuw-year's-day 
 at Court. 
 
 multitude, and especially of the small 
 multitude, to ridicule anything unusual in 
 dress — above all, where such peculiarity 
 may be construed by malice into a mark of 
 disparagement — this reserve will appear to 
 be nothing more tlian a wise instinct in the 
 Blue-coat boy. That it is neither pride nor 
 rnstieity, at least that it has none of the 
 offensive qualities of either, a stranger may 
 soon satisfy himself by putting a question to 
 any of these boys : he may be sure of an 
 answer couched in terms of plain civility, 
 neither loquacious nor embarrassed. Let 
 him put the same question to a parish-boy, 
 
 or to one of the trencher-caps in the 
 
 cloisters, and the impudent reply of the one 
 shall not fail to exasperate any more than 
 the certain servility, and mercenary eye to 
 reward, which he will meet with in the 
 other, can fail to depress and sadden him. 
 
 The Christ's Hospital boy is a religious 
 character. His school is eminently a religious 
 foundation ; it has its peculiar prayei-s, its 
 services at set times, its graces, liymns, and 
 anthems, following each other in an almost 
 monastic closeness of succession. This 
 religious character in him is not always 
 untinged with superstition. That is not 
 wonderful, when we consider the thousand 
 tales and traditions which must circulate, 
 with undisturbed credulity, amongst so many 
 boys, that have so few checks to their belief 
 from any intercourse with the world at 
 large ; upon whom their equals in age must 
 work so much, their eldei-s so little. With 
 this leaning towards an over-belief in matters 
 of religion, which will soon correct itself 
 when he comes out into society, may be 
 classed a turn for romance above most other 
 boys. This is to be traced in the same 
 manner to their excess of society with each 
 other, and defect of mingling with the world. 
 Hence the peculiar avidity with which such 
 books as the Arabian Nights' Entertain- 
 ments, and others of a still wilder cast, ai'e, 
 or at least were in my time, sought for 
 by the boys. I remember when some half- 
 dozen of them set off from scliool, without 
 map, card, or compass, on a serious expedition 
 to find out Vhilip QuarlVs Island. 
 
 Tlie Christ's lIosi)ital boy's sense of right 
 and wrong is peculiarly tender and ajipiv- 
 hensive. It is even apt to run out into 
 ceremonial observances, and to impose a 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF CHRIST'S HOSPITAL. 
 
 513 
 
 yoke upon itself beyond the strict obligations 
 of the moral law. Those who were con- 
 temporaries with me at that school thirty 
 years ago, will remember with what more 
 than Judaic rigour the eating of the fat of 
 certain boiled meats* was interdicted. A 
 boy would have blushed as at the exposure 
 of some heinous immorality, to have been 
 detected eating that forbidden portion of his 
 allowance of animal food, the whole of which, 
 while he was in health, was little more than 
 sufficient to allay his hunger. The same, or 
 even greater, refinement was shown in the 
 rejection of certain kinds of sweet-cake. 
 What gave rise to these supererogatory 
 penances, these self-denying ordinances, I 
 could never learn ; t they certainly argue no 
 defect of the conscientious principle. A 
 little excess in that ai'ticle is not undesirable 
 in youth, to make allowance for the inevitable 
 waste which comes in maturer years. But 
 in the less ambiguous line of duty, in those 
 directions of the moral feelings which cannot 
 be mistaken or depreciated, I will relate 
 what took place in the year 1785, when 
 Mr. Perry, the steward, died. I must be 
 pardoned for taking my instances from my 
 own times. Indeed, the vividness of my 
 recollections, while I am upon this subject, 
 almost bring back those times ; they are 
 pi'esent to me still. But I believe that in the 
 years which have elapsed since the period 
 which I speak of, the character of the 
 Christ's Hospital boy is very little changed. 
 Their situation in point of many comforts is 
 improved ; but that which I ventured before 
 to term the public conscience of the school, 
 the pervading moral sense, of which every 
 mind partakes and to which so many 
 individual minds contribute, remains, I 
 believe, pretty much the same as when I 
 left it. I have seen, within this twelvemonth 
 almost, the change which has been produced 
 upon a boy of eight or nine years of age, 
 upon being admitted into that school ; how, 
 from a pert young coxcomb, who thought 
 
 • Under the denomination of gaga. 
 
 + I am told that the late steward [Mr. Ilatha-way] who 
 evinced on many occasions a most praiseworthy anxiety 
 to promote the comfort of the boys, had occasion for all 
 his address and perseverance to eradicate the first of 
 these unfortunate prejudices, in which he at length happily 
 succeeded, and thereby restored to one-half of the animal 
 nutrition of the school those honours which painful 
 superstition and blind zeal had so long conspired to with- 
 hold from it. 
 
 that all knowledge was comprehended within 
 his shallow brains, because a smattering of 
 two or three languages and one or two 
 sciences were stuflfed into him by injudicious 
 treatment at home, by a mixture with the 
 wholesome society of so many schoolfellows, 
 in less time than I have spoken of, he has 
 sunk to his own level, and is contented to be 
 carried on in the quiet orbit of modest 
 self-knowledge in which the common mass of 
 that unpresumptuous assemblage of boys 
 seem to move : from being a little unfeeling 
 mortal, he has got to feel and reflect. Nor 
 would it be a difficult matter to show how, 
 at a school like this, where the boy is neither 
 entirely separated from home, nor yet 
 exclusively imder its influence, the best 
 feelings, the filial for instance, are brought 
 to a maturity which they could not have 
 attained under a completely domestic edu- 
 cation ; how the relation of a parent is 
 rendered less tender by unremitted associa- 
 tion, and the very awfuluess of age is best 
 apprehended by some sojourning amidst 
 the comijarative levity of youth ; how 
 absence, not drawn out by too great exten- 
 sion into alienation or forgetfuluess, puts an 
 edge upon the relish of occasional intercourse, 
 and the boy is made the better child by that 
 which keeps the force of that relation from 
 being felt as jDerpetually pressing on him ; 
 how the substituted paternity, into the care 
 of which he is adopted, while in everything 
 substantial it makes up for the natural, in 
 the necessary omission of individual fond- 
 nesses and partialities, directs tlie mind 
 only the more strongly to appreciate tliat 
 natural and first tie, in whicli such weak- 
 nesses are the bond of strength, and the 
 ajjpetite which craves after them betrays no 
 perverse palate. But these speculations 
 rather belong to the question of the com- 
 parative advantages of a 2Jublic over a 
 private education in general. I must get 
 back to my favourite school ; and to that 
 which took place when our old and good 
 steward died. 
 
 And I will .say, that when I think of the 
 frc(iuent instances which I have met with in 
 children, of a hard-heartedness, a callousness, 
 and insensibility to the loss of relations, even 
 of those who have begot and nourished them, 
 I cannot but consider it as a proof of some- 
 thing in the peculiar conformation of that 
 
 L L 
 
514 
 
 HECOLLECTIOXS OF CHRIST'S HOSPITAL, 
 
 school, favourable to the expansion of the 
 best feelings of our nature, that, at the 
 period which I am noticing, out of five 
 hundred boys there was not a dry eye to be 
 found among them, nor a heart that did not 
 beat with genuine emotion. Every impulse 
 to play, until the funeral day was past, 
 seemed suspended throughout the school ; 
 and the boys, lately so mirthful and sprightly, 
 were seen pacing their cloisters alone, or in 
 sad groups standing about, few of them 
 without some token, such as their slender 
 means could pro\ade, a black riband or 
 something, to denote respect and a sense of 
 their loss. The time itself was a time of 
 anarchy, a time in which all authority (out 
 of school hours) was abandoned. The ordi- 
 nary restraints were for those days super- 
 seded ; and the gates, which at other times 
 kept us in, were left without watchers. Yet, 
 with the exception of one or two graceless 
 boys at most, who took advantage of that 
 suspension of authorities to sJcidk out, as it 
 was called, the whole body of that great 
 school kept rigorously within their bounds, 
 by a voluntai-y self-imprisonment ; and they 
 who broke bounds, though they escaj^ed 
 punishment from any master, fell into a 
 general disrepute among us, and, for that 
 which at any other time would have been 
 applauded and admired as a mark of spirit, 
 were consigned to infamy and reprobation ; 
 so much natural government have gratitude 
 and the principles of reverence and love, and 
 so much did a respect to their dead friend 
 prevail with these Christ's Hospital boys, 
 above any fear which his pi'esence among 
 them when living could ever produce. And 
 if the imiiressious which were made on my 
 mind so long ago are to be trusted, very 
 richly did their steward deserve this tribute. 
 It is a pleasure to me even now to call to 
 mind his portly form, the regal awe which 
 he always contrived to inspire, in spite of a 
 tenderness and even weakness of nature that 
 would have enfeebled the reins of discipline 
 in any other master ; a yearning of tender- 
 ness towards those under his protection, 
 which could make five liundred boys at once 
 feel towards liini each as to their individual 
 father. He had faults, with which we had 
 QOthiug to do ; but, with all his faults, hi- 
 decd, Mr. Perry was a most extraordinary 
 creature. Contemporary with him and 
 
 still living, though he has long since resigned 
 his occupation, will it be impertinent to 
 mention the name of our excellent upper 
 grammar -master, the E«v. James Boyer? 
 He was a disciplinarian, indeed, of a difi'erent 
 stamp from him whom I have just described ; 
 but, now the terrors of the rod, jvnd of a 
 temper a little too hasty to leave the more 
 nervous of us quite at our ease to do justice 
 to his merits in those days, are long since 
 over, ungrateful were we if we should refuse 
 our testimony to that unwearied assiduity 
 with which he attended to the particular 
 improvement of each of us. Had we been 
 the offspring of the first gentry in the land, 
 he could not have been instigated by the 
 strongest views of recompense and reward 
 to have made himself a greater slave to the 
 most laborious of all occupations than he 
 did for us sons of charity, from whom, or 
 from our parents, he could exjiect nothing. 
 He has had his reward in the satisfaction of 
 having discharged his duty, in the pleasurable 
 consciousness of having advanced the re.^^pect- 
 ability of that institution to which, both man 
 and boy, he was attached ; in the honours to 
 which so many of his pupils have success- 
 fully asj^ired at both our Universities ; and 
 in the staff with which the Governors of the 
 Hospital, at the close of his hard labours, 
 with the highest expressions of the obliga- 
 tions the school lay under to him, unani- 
 mously voted to present him. 
 
 I have often considei-ed it among the 
 felicities of the constitution of this school, 
 that the offices of steward and schoolmaster 
 are kept distinct ; the strict business of 
 education alone devolving upon the latter, 
 while the former has the charge of all 
 things out of school, the control of the pro- 
 visions, the regulation of meals, of dress, of 
 play, and the ordinary intercourse of the 
 boys. By this division of management, a 
 superior respectability must attach to the 
 teacher while his office is unmixed with any 
 of these lower concerns. A still greater 
 advantage over the construction of common 
 boarding-schools is to be found in the settled 
 salaries of the masters, rendering thera 
 totally free of obligation to any individual 
 pupil or his parents. This never fails to 
 have its effect at schools where each boy can 
 reckon up to a liair what profit the master 
 derives from him, w^ero he views him every 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF CHRIST'S HOSPITAL. 
 
 'A 5 
 
 day in the lii^ht of a caterer, a provirler for 
 the family, wlio is to get so much by him in 
 each of his meals. Boys will see and con- 
 sider these things ; and how much nuist tlie 
 sacred character of preceptor suffer in their 
 minds by these degrading associations ! Tlie 
 very bill which the pupil carries liome with 
 him at Christmas, eked out, perhaps, with 
 elaborate though necessary minuteness, in- 
 structs him that his teachers have other 
 ends than the mere love to learning, in the 
 lessons which they give him ; and though 
 they put into his hands the fine sayings of 
 Seneca or Epictetus, yet they themselves are 
 none of those disinterested pedagogues to 
 teach philosophy gratis. The master, too, is 
 sensible that he is seen in this light ; and 
 how much this must lessen that affectionate 
 regard to the learners which alone can 
 sweeten the bitter labour of instruction, and 
 convert the whole business into unwelcome 
 and uninteresting task-work, many precep- 
 tors that I have conversed with on the sub- 
 ject are ready, with a sad heart, to acknow- 
 ledge. From this inconvenience the settled 
 salaries of the masters of this school in great 
 measure exempt them ; while the happy 
 custom of choosing masters (indeed every 
 officer of the establishment) from those who 
 have received their education there, gives 
 them an interest in advancing the character 
 of the school, and binds them to observe a 
 tenderness and a respect to the children, in 
 which a stranger, feeling that independence 
 which I have spoken of, might well be 
 expected to fail. 
 
 In aff'ectionate recollections of the place 
 where he was bred uji, in hearty recognitions 
 of old schoolfellows met with again after the 
 lapse of years, or in foreign countries, the 
 Christ's Hospital boy yields to none ; I 
 might almost say, he goes beyond most other 
 boys. The very compass and magnitude of 
 the school, its thousand bearings, the space 
 it takes up in the imagination beyond the 
 ordinary schools, impresses a remembrance, 
 accompanied with an elevation of mind, that 
 attends him through life. It is too big, too ' 
 affecting an object, to pass away quickly 
 from his mind. The Christ's Hospital boy's 
 friends at school are commonly his intimates 
 through life. For me, I do not know whether I 
 a constitutional imbecility does not incline , 
 me too obstinately to cling to the remem- , 
 
 brances of childhood ; in an inverted i-atio 
 to the usual sentiments of mankind, nothing 
 that I have been engaged in since seems of 
 any value or importance, comjiared to the 
 colours which imagination gave to everytliiuf 
 then. I belong to no bod?/ corporate such as 
 I then made a part of — And here, before I 
 close, taking leave of the genei-al reader, 
 and addressing myself solely to my old 
 school-fellows, that were contemporaries with 
 me from the year 1782 to 1789, let me have 
 leave to remember some of those circum- 
 stances of our school, which they will not 
 be unwilling to have brought back to their 
 minds. 
 
 And first, let us remember, as first in 
 importance in our childish eyes, the young 
 men (as they almost were) who, under the 
 denomination of Grecians, were waiting the 
 expiration of the period when they should 
 be sent, at the charges of the Hospital, to 
 one or other of our universities, but more 
 frequently to Cambridge. These youths, 
 from their superior acquirements, their 
 superior age and stature, and the fewness of 
 their numbers, (for seldom above two or 
 three at a time were inaugurated into that 
 high order,) drew the eyes of all, and espe- 
 cially of the younger boys, into a reverent 
 observance and admiration. How tall they 
 iised to seem to us ! how stately would they 
 pace along the cloisters ! while the play of 
 the lesser boys was absolutely suspended, or 
 its boisterousness at least allayed, at their 
 presence ! Not that they ever beat or 
 struck the boys — that would have been to 
 have demeaned themselves — the dignity of 
 their persons alone insured them all resjiect. 
 The task of blows, of corporal chastisement, 
 they left to the common monitors, or lieads 
 of ward.'^, who, it must be confessed, in our 
 time had rather too much licence allowed 
 them to oppress and misuse their inferiors ; 
 and the interference of the Grecian, who 
 may be considered as the spiritual power, 
 was not unfrequently called for, to mitigate 
 by its mediation the hea\'y unrelenting arm 
 of this temporal power, or monitor. In fine, 
 the Grecians were the solemn Muftis of the 
 school. ^ras were computed from their 
 time ; — it used to be said, such or such a 
 
 thing was done when S or T w;i3 
 
 Grecian. 
 
 As I ventured to call the Grecians, the 
 
 L l2 
 
516 
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OF CHRIST'S HOSPITAL. 
 
 Muftis of the school, the King's boys,* as 
 their character then was, may well pass for 
 the Janissaries. They were the terror of all 
 the other boys ; bred up under that hardy 
 sailor, as well as excellent mathematician, 
 and co-navigator with Captain Cook, William 
 Wales. All his systems were adapted to fit 
 them for the rough element which they were 
 destined to encounter. Frequent and severe 
 punishments, which were expected to be 
 borne with more than Spartan fortitude, 
 came to be considered less as inflictions of 
 disgrace than as trials of obstinate endurance. 
 To make his boys hardy, and to give them 
 early sailor-habits, seemed to be his only 
 aim ; to this every thing was subordinate. 
 Moral obliquities, indeed, were sure of 
 receiving their full recompense, for no occa- 
 sion of laying on the lash was ever let slip ; 
 but the eflfects expected to be produced from 
 it were something very difi'erent from con- 
 trition or mortification. There was in 
 William Wales a perpetual fund of humour, 
 a constant glee about him, which heightened 
 by an inveterate provincialism of north- 
 country dialect, absolutely took away the 
 sting from his severities. His jiunishments 
 were a game at patience, in which the 
 master was not always worst contented when 
 he found himself at times overcome by his 
 pupil. What success this discipline had, or 
 how the eflfects of it operated upon the after- 
 lives of these King's boys, I cannot say : but 
 I am sure that, for the time, they were abso- 
 lute nuisances to the rest of the school. 
 Hardy, brutal, and often wicked, they were 
 the most graceless lump in the whole mass ; 
 older and bigger than the other boys, (for, 
 by the system of their education they were 
 kept longer at school by two or three years 
 than any of the rest, except the Grecians,) 
 they were a constant terror to the younger 
 part of the school ; and some who may read 
 this, I doubt not, will remember the conster- 
 nation into which the juvenile fry of us were 
 thrown, when the ciy was raised in the 
 cloisters, that the First Order was coming — 
 for so they termed the first form or class of 
 those boys. Still these sea-boys answered 
 some good purposes, in the scliool. They 
 were the military class among the boys, 
 foremost in athletic exercises, who extended 
 
 • The mathcmnticnl pupils, bred up to the sea, on the 
 fouDdation of Charles the Hccond. 
 
 the fame of the prowess of the school far 
 and near; and the apprentices in the vicinage, 
 and sometimes the butchers' boys in the 
 neighbouring market, had sad occasion to 
 attest their valour. 
 
 The time would fail me if I were to 
 attempt to enumerate all those circum- 
 stances, some pleasant, some attended with 
 some pain, which, seen through the mist of 
 distance, come sweetly softened to the 
 memory. But I must crave leave to re- 
 member our transcending superiority in 
 those invigorating sports, leap-frog, and 
 basting the bear ; our delightful excursions 
 in the summer holidays to the New River, 
 near Newington, where, like otters, we 
 would live the long day in the water, never 
 caring for dressing ourselves, when we had 
 once stripped ; our savoury meals afterwai-ds, 
 when we came home almost famished with 
 staying out all day without our diimers ; our 
 visits at other times to the Tower, where, 
 by ancient privilege, we had free access to 
 all the curiosities ; our solemn processions 
 through the City at Easter, with the Lord 
 Mayor's largess of buns, wine, and a shilling, 
 with the festive questions and civic plea- 
 santi'ies of the dispensing Aldermen, which 
 were more to us than all the rest of the 
 banquet ; our stately suppings in public, 
 where the well-lighted hall, and the conflu- 
 ence of well-dressed company who came to 
 see us, made the whole look more like a 
 concert or assembly, than a scene of a plain 
 bread and cheese collation; the annual 
 orations upon St. Matthew's day, in which 
 the senior scholar, before he had done, 
 seldom failed to reckon up, among those 
 who had done honour to our school by being 
 educated in it, the names of those accom- 
 plished critics and Greek scholars, Joshua 
 Barnes and Jeremiah ]Markland (I marvel 
 they left out Camden while they were about 
 it). Let me have leave to remember our 
 hymns and anthems, and well-toned organ ; 
 the doleful tune of the burial anthem 
 clumnted in the solonm cloistei-s, upon the 
 seldom-occurring funeral of some school- 
 fellow ; the festivities at Christmas, when 
 the richest of us would club our stock to 
 have a gauily day, sitting round tlie fire, 
 rejilenished to the huigiit with logs, and the 
 pennyless, and he tliat could contribute 
 nothing, partook in all the mirth, and in 
 
ON THE TRAGEDIES OF SHAKSPEARE. 
 
 317 
 
 some of the substantialities of the feasting ; 
 the carol sung by night at that time of the 
 year, which, when a young boj', I have so 
 often lain awake to hear from seven (the 
 hour of going to bed) till ten, when it was 
 sung by the older boys and monitors, and 
 have listened to it, in their rude chaunting, 
 till I have been transported in fancy to the 
 fields of Bethlehem, and the song which was 
 sung at that season, by angels' voices to the 
 shepherds. 
 
 Nor would I willingly forget any of those 
 things which administered to our vanity. 
 The hem-stitched bands and town-made 
 shirts, which some of the most fashionable 
 among us woi-e ; the town-girdles, with 
 buckles of silver, or shining stone ; the 
 badges of the sea-boys ; the cots, or superior 
 shoe-strings, of the monitors ; the medals of 
 the markers ; (those who were appointed to 
 hear the Bible read in the wards on Sunday 
 morning and evening,) which bore on their 
 obverse in silver, as cei'tain parts of our 
 
 garments carried, in meaner metal, the coun- 
 tenance of our Founder, that godly and royal 
 child. King Edward the Sixth, the flower of 
 the Tudor name — the young flower that was 
 untimely cropt, as it began to fill our laud 
 with its early odours — the boy- patron of 
 boys — the serious and holy child who walked 
 with Cranmer and Ridley — fit associate, in 
 those tender years, for the bishops, and 
 future martyrs of our Church, to receive, or, 
 (as occasion sometimes proved,) to give in- 
 struction. 
 
 " But, ah ! what means the silent tear? 
 Why, e'en 'mid joy, my bosom heave ? 
 Ye long-lost scenes, cnohantmcnts dear ! 
 Lo ! now I linger o'er your grave. 
 
 " — Fly, then, ye hours of rosy hue, 
 
 And bear away the bloom of years ! 
 And quick succeed, ye sickly crew 
 
 Of doubts and son-ows, pains and fears ! 
 
 " Still will I ponder Fate's unaltered plan, 
 
 Kor, tracing back the child, forget that I am man." • 
 
 ♦ Lines meditated in the cloisters of Christ's Hospital, 
 in the " Poetics" of Mr. George Dyer. 
 
 ON THE TRAGEDIES OF SHAKSPEARE. 
 
 CONSIDERED WITH REFEIIENCE TO THEIR FIT.NESS FOR STAGE-REPRESENTATION. 
 
 Taking a turn the other day in the Abbey, 
 I was struck with the affected attitude of a 
 figure, which I do not remember to have 
 seen before, and which upon examination 
 proved to be a whole-length of the celebrated 
 Mr. Gairick. Though I would not go so far 
 with some good Catholics abroad as to shut 
 players altogether out of consecrated ground, 
 yet I own I was not a little scandalised at 
 the introduction of theatrical airs and ges- 
 tures into a place set apart to remind us of 
 the saddest realities. Going nearer, I found 
 inscribed under this harlequin figure the 
 following lines : — 
 
 " To paint fair Nature, by divine command 
 Uer magic pencil in his glowing hand, 
 A Shakspcare rose ; then, to expand his fame 
 Wide o'er this brcatliing world, a Ganick canite. 
 Thougli sunk in death the forms the I'oet drew, 
 The Actor's genius biide them breathe anew ; 
 Though, like the bard himself, in night they lay, 
 Immortal Garrick called them back to day : 
 .\nd till Eternity with power sublime 
 Shall mark the mortal hour of hoary Time, 
 Shakspcare and Garrick like twin-stars shall shine. 
 And earth iiradiate with a beiim divine." 
 
 It would be an insult to my readers' 
 understandings to attempt anything like a 
 criticism on this farrago of false thoughts 
 and nonsense. But the reflection it led me 
 into was a kind of wonder, how, from the 
 days of the actor here celebrated to our own, 
 it should have been the fashion to compli- 
 ment every performer in his turn, that has 
 had the luck to please the Town in any of 
 the great characters of Shakspeai'e, with the 
 notion of possessing a mind congenial with 
 the poefs : how people should come thus un- 
 accountably to confound the power of origi- 
 nating poetical images and conceptions with 
 the faculty of being able to read or recite 
 the same when put into words ;* or what 
 
 • It is observable that we fall into this confusion only 
 in dramatic recitations. We never dream that the gen- 
 tleman who reads Lucretius in public with great applause, 
 is therefore a great poet and philosopher ; nor do we 
 find that Tom Davis, the bookseller, who is recorded to 
 have recited the Paradise Lost better tlvxn any man in 
 Kngland in his day (though I cannot help thinking there 
 must bo some mistake in this tradition) was Uierefore, 
 by his intimate friends, set upon a level with M,ilU)a. 
 
518 
 
 ON THE TRAGEDIES OF SHAKSPEARE. 
 
 connection that absolute mastery over the 
 heart and soul of man, which a great dra- 
 matic poet possesses, has with those low 
 tricks upon the eye and ear, which a player 
 by obsei-ving a few general eflects, which 
 some common passion, as grief, anger, &c., 
 usual!)' has upon the gestures and exterior, 
 can so easily compass. To know the internal 
 workings and movements of a great mind, 
 of an Othello or a Hamlet for instance, the 
 when and the u-liy and the how far they 
 shoidd be moved ; to what pitch a passion is 
 becoming ; to give the reins and to pull in 
 the curb exactly at the moment when the 
 drawing in or the slackening is most gi-ace- 
 tul ; seems to demand a reach of intellect of 
 a vastly different extent from that which is 
 employed upon the bare imitation of the 
 signs of these passions in the countenance or 
 gesture, which signs are usually observed to 
 be most lively and emphatic in the weaker 
 sort of minds, and which signs can after all 
 but indicate some passion, as I said before, 
 anger, or grief, generally ; but of the motives 
 and grounds of the passion, wherein it differs 
 from the same passion in low and vulgar 
 natures, of these the actor can give no more 
 idea by his face or gesture than the eye 
 (without a metaphor) can speak, or the 
 muscles utter intelligible sounds. But such is 
 the instantaneous nature of the impressions 
 which we take in at the eye and ear at a 
 play-house, compared with the slow appre- 
 hension oftentimes of the understanding in 
 reading, that we are apt not only to sink the 
 play-wi'iter in tlie consideration which we 
 pay to the actor, but even to identify in our 
 minds, in a pervei'se manner, the actor with 
 the character which he represents. It is 
 difficult for a frequent play-goer to disem- 
 barrass the idea of Hamlet from the jK-rson 
 and voice of Mr. K. We speak of Lady 
 Macbeth, while we are in reality thinking of 
 Mrs. S. Nor is tiiis confusion incidental 
 alone to unlettered persona, who, not possess- 
 ing the advantage of reading, are necessarily 
 dependent u[)on tiie stage-player for all the 
 jjleasure which they can receive from the 
 drama, and to whom the very idea of what 
 en author is cannot be made comprehensible 
 without some pain and perplexity of mind : 
 the eri'or is one from which pei-sons other- 
 wise not meanly lettered, find it almost im- 
 possible to extricate themselves. 
 
 Never let me be so ungrateful as to forget 
 the very high degree of satisfaction which I 
 received some ye.ai-s back from seeing for the 
 first time a tragedy of Shakspeare performed, 
 in which those two great performers sus- 
 tained the principal parts. It seemed to 
 embody and realise conceptions which had 
 hitherto assumed no distinct shape. But 
 dearly do we pay all our life after for this 
 I juvenile pleasure, this sense of distinctness. 
 j When tlie novelty is past, we find to our 
 I cost that instead of realising an idea, we 
 have only materialised and brought down a 
 fine vision to the standard of flesh and blood. 
 We have let go a dream, in quest of an 
 unattainable substance. 
 
 How cruelly this operates upon the mind, 
 to have its free conceptions thus cramped and 
 pressed down to the measure of a strait- 
 lauing actuality, may be juilged from that 
 delightful sensation of freshness, with which 
 we turn to those plays of Shaksjieare which 
 have escaped being performed, and to those 
 passages in the acting plays of the same 
 writer which have happily been left out in 
 the performance. How far the very custom 
 of hearing anything spouted, withers and 
 blows upon a fine passage, may be seen in 
 those speeches from Henry the Fifth, &c. 
 which are current in the mouths of school- 
 boys, from their being to be found in EnfieliTs 
 Speaker, and such kind of books ! I confess 
 myself utterly unable to appreciate that 
 celebrated soliloquy in Hamh-t, beginning 
 " To be or not to be," or to tell whether it be 
 good, bad or indifferent, it has been so 
 handled and pawed about by declamatory 
 boys and men, and torn so inhumanly from 
 its living place and principle of continuity in 
 the i)lay, till it is become to me a perfect 
 dead member. 
 
 It may seem a paradox, but I cannot help 
 being of opinion that the plays of Shakspeare 
 are less calculated for performance on a 
 stage, than those of almost any other dramatist 
 whatever. Their distinguishing excellence is 
 a reason that they should be so. There is 
 so much in them, which comes not under 
 the province of acting, with which eye, and 
 tone, and gesture, have nothing to do. 
 
 The glory of tlie scenic art is to personate 
 passion, and the turns of ptission ; ami the 
 more coai-se and palpable tiie pjissiou is, the 
 more hold upon the eyes ami ears of the 
 
ON THE TRAGEDIES OF SHAKSPEARE. 
 
 519 
 
 spectators the performer obviously possesses. 
 For this reason, scolding scenes, scenes where 
 two persons talk themselves into a fit of fury, 
 and then in a surprising manner talk them- 
 selves out of it again, have always been the 
 most po]>ular upon our stage. And the 
 reason is plain, because the spectators are 
 here most palpably ai)pealed to, they are the 
 projjer judges in this war of words, they are 
 the legitimate ring that should be formed 
 round such "intellectual jirize-fighters." 
 Talking is the direct object of the imitation 
 here. But in all the best dramas, and in 
 Shakspeare above all, how obvious it is, that 
 the form of speaking, whether it be in 
 soliloquy or dialogue, is only a medium, and 
 often a highly artificial one, for putting the 
 reader or spectator into possession of that 
 knowledge of the inner structure and work- 
 ings of mind in a character, which he could 
 otherwise never have arrived at in that form 
 of composition by any gift short of intuition. 
 We do here as we do with novels w-ritteu in 
 the epistolary form. How many improprieties, 
 perfect solecisms in letter-writing, do we put 
 up with in Clarissa and other books, for the 
 sake of the delight which that form ujion.the 
 whole gives ns ! 
 
 But the practice of stage representation 
 reduces everything to a controversy of 
 elocution. Every character, from the bois- 
 terous blasphemings of Bajazetto the shrink- 
 ing timidity of womanhood, must play the 
 orator. The love dialogues of Romeo and 
 Juliet, those silver-sweet sounds of lovers' 
 tongues by night ! the more intimate and 
 sacred sweetne.ss of nuptial colIo<:iuy between 
 an Othello or a Posthumus with their 
 married wives, all those delicacies which are 
 so delightful in the reading, as when we read 
 of those youthful dalliances in Paradise — 
 
 " As besecm'd 
 Fair couple link'd in happy nuptial league, 
 Alone ; " 
 
 by the inherent fault of stage representation, 
 how are these things sullieil and turned from 
 their very nature by being exposed to a large 
 assembly ; when such speeches Jis Imogen 
 addresses to her lord, come drawling out of 
 the mouth of a hired actress, whose court- 
 ship, though nominally addressed to the 
 personated Posthumus, is manifestly aimed 
 at the spectators, who are to judge of her 
 endearments juid her returns of love ! i 
 
 The character of Hamlet is perhaps that 
 by which, since the days of Betterton, a 
 succession of popular performers have had 
 the greatest ambition to distinguish them- 
 selves. The length of the j)art may be one 
 of their reasons. But for the character itself, 
 we find it in a play, and therefore we juilge 
 it a fit subject of di'amatic i-epresentation. 
 The play itself abounds in maxims and 
 reflections beyond any otlier, and therefore 
 we consider it as a proper vehicle for con- 
 veying moral instruction. But Hamlet him- 
 self — what does he suffer meanwhile by being 
 dragged forth as the public schoolmaster, to 
 give lectures to the crowd ! Why, nine parts 
 in ten of what Hamlet does, are transactions 
 between himself and his moral sense ; they 
 are the effusions of his solitary musings, 
 which he retires to holes and corners and the 
 most sequestered parts of the palace to pour 
 forth ; or rather, they are the silent medita- 
 tions with which his bosom is bursting, 
 reduced to xcords for the sake of the reader, 
 who must else remain ignorant of what is 
 passing there. These profound sorrows, these 
 light-aud-noise-abhori-ing ruminations, which 
 the tongue scarce dares utter to deaf walls 
 and chambers, how can they be rej)resented 
 by a gesticulating actor, who comes and 
 mouths them out before an aiidience, making 
 four hundred people his confidants at once ! 
 I say not that it is the fault of the actor so 
 to do ; he must pronounce them ore rotiLndo ; 
 he must accompany them with his eye ; he 
 must insinuate them into his auditory by 
 some trick of eye, tone or gesture, or he fails. 
 lie must he thinking all the xohile of his appear- 
 ance, because he knows that all the while the 
 spectators are judging of it. And this is the 
 way to represent the shy, negligent, retiring 
 Hamlet ! 
 
 It is true that there is no other mode of 
 conveying a vast quantity of thought and 
 feeling to a great portion of the audience, 
 who otherwise would never earn it for them- 
 selves by reading, and the intellectual acqui- 
 sition gained this way may, for aught I know, 
 l>e inestimable ; but I am not arguing that 
 Hamlet should not be acted, but how much 
 Hamlet is made another thing by being 
 acted. I have heard much of the wonders 
 which Garrick performed in this part ; but 
 ;us I never saw him, I must have leave to 
 doubt whether the representation of such a 
 
character came within the pro^nnce of his ! natural indeed, they are grounded deep in 
 art. Those who tell me of him, speak of 
 his eye, of tlie magic of his eye, and of his 
 
 commanding voice : physical properties, 
 vastly desirable in an actor, and without 
 whicli he can never insinuate meaning into 
 an a' ditory, — but what have they to do with 
 Hamlet ; what have they to do with intellect ? 
 In fact, the things aimed at in theati-ical 
 representation, are to arrest the spectator's 
 eye upon the form and the gesture, and so to 
 gain a more favourable hearing to what is 
 spoken : it is not wliat the character is, but 
 how he looks ; not what he says, but how he 
 speaks it. I see no reason to think tliat if 
 the play of Hamlet were written over again 
 
 nature, so deep that the depth of them lies 
 out of the reach of most of us. You shall 
 hear the same persons say that George 
 Barnwell is very natural, and Othello ia 
 very natural, that they are both very deep ; 
 and to them they are the same kind of thing. 
 At the one they sit and shed teai-s, because 
 a good sort of young man is tempted by a 
 naughty woman to commit a trifling pecca- 
 dillo, the murder of an uncle or so,* that is 
 all, and so comes to an untimely end, which 
 is so moving ; and at the other, because a 
 blackamoor in a fit of jealousy kills his 
 innocent white wife ; and the odds are that 
 ninety-nine out of a hundred would willingly 
 
 by some such writer as Banks or Lillo, behold the same catastrophe hap])en to both 
 
 retaining the process of the story, but totally 
 omitting all the poetry of it, all the divine 
 features of Shakspeare, his stupendous intel- 
 lect ; and only taking care to give us enough 
 of passionate dialogue, which Banks or 
 
 the heroes, and have thought the rope more 
 due to Othello than to Barnwell. For of 
 the texture of Othello's mind, the inward 
 construction marvellously laid open with all 
 its strengths and weaknesses, its heroic 
 
 Lillo were never at a loss to furnish ; T see ^ confidences and its human misgivings, its 
 not how the efi'ect could be much different agonies of hate springing from the depths 
 upon an audience, nor how the actor has | ^f i^yg^ they see no more than the spectators 
 it in his power to represent Shakspeare ^t a cheajser rate, who pay their pennies 
 to us differently from his representation I a-piece to look through the man's telescope 
 of Banks or Lillo. Hamlet would still , 1,^ Leicester-fields, see into the inward plot 
 be a youthful accomplished prince, and , ^iid topography of the moon. Some dim 
 must be gracefully personated ; he might be j thing or other they see ; they see an actor 
 puzzled in his mind, wavering in his conduct, I personating a passion, of grief, or anger, for 
 seemingly cruel to Ophelia ; he might see a justance, and they recognise it as a copy of 
 ghost, and start at it, and address it kindly the usual external effects of such passions ; 
 when he found it to be his father ; all this in ^^ ^^ ^g^st as being true to that si/mbol of the 
 the poorest and mo.st homely language of the emotion which passes current at the theatre for 
 
 it, for it is often no more than that : but of 
 thejjrounds of the passion, its correspomlence 
 tb a^eat orTleroic nature, which is the only 
 worthy o^bjecj^ oF tragedy, — that common 
 auditors know anything of this, or can have 
 
 • If this note could hope to meet the eye of nny of the 
 MiiiiciKcrs, I would cutri'iit and brp of them, in the iisiine 
 of both the Galleries, that this insult upon the nioriility 
 
 servilest creeper after nature that ever con- 
 sulted the palate of an audience ; without 
 troubling Shakspeare for the matter: and I 
 .see not but there would be room for all the 
 power wJiich an actor has, to display itself 
 All the passions and changes of passion 
 might remain : for those are much less 
 difficult to write or act than is thought ; it 
 is a trick ea.sy to be attained, it is but rising of the common people of London should cease to be 
 
 or falling a note or £wo in the voice, a ^ ^'^'^'•"''"y '•'-i»-"/^'i/'» "''' •^"''^'V' ^•<^''''«- ^vhy are the 
 
 o • •/• £• 1 I- 11 ; l''tiit"'C8 of ll'is famous and well-governed cily, instead 
 
 whisper with a significant loreboding look : of an amusement, to be treated over and over aifain with 
 to announce its approach, and so contagious a nauseous sermon of Oeorge Barnwell ? Why «< llie 
 ^, . ,. •, i> L- • I c/id o/ </ifiV fii/a» are we to place the oallous f Were 
 
 the counterfeit appearance ot any emotion is, j „„ ^^^^^^ ^ ^^^,^,j „„j ^^^^^^ ^^^ „ „,.p,^^.„. „, ^^„^, t„ 
 
 that let the words be what they will, the have smh an example placed before his eyes. It is 
 
 look and tone shall carry it off and make it """">■ '""''""< ""^'^■-"""•der too trivial to exhibit it *« 
 
 *' . done ujjon such shfcht motives; — it is atlnbuting too 
 
 pass foi- deep skill in the passions. | ,„„ch to such characters ns MilhviH)d:— it is putting 
 
 It is common for people to talk of things into the heads of good young men, which Ihey 
 
 f^, , , , 1 . ^ I J.1 i. would never otherwise have dreamed of. I'nc'.es that 
 
 Shak.spcares plays being so natural; that ,,i,„^ anything of their live.. bUouW fain, petition the 
 everybody cau understand him. They are ' chumbcrlain against it. 
 
ON THE TRAGEDIES OF SHAKSPEARE. 
 
 621 
 
 any such uotions dinned into them by the 
 mere strength of an actor's lungs, — that appre- 
 hensions foreign to them should be tluis 
 infused into them by storm, I can neither 
 believe, nor understand how it can be possible. 
 
 We talk of Shakspeare's admirable ob- 
 servation of life, when we should feel, that 
 not from a petty inquisition into those clieap 
 and every-day characters which surrounded 
 him, as they surround us, but from his own 
 mind, which was, to borrow a phrase of 
 Ben Jonson's, the very " sphere of hu- 
 manity," he fetched those images of virtue 
 and of knowledge, of which every one of us 
 recognising a part, think we comprehend in 
 our natures the whole ; and oftentimes 
 mistake the powers which he positively 
 creates in us, for nothing more than indi- 
 genous faculties of our own minds, which 
 only waited the application of corresponding 
 virtues in him to return a full and clear echo 
 of the same. 
 
 To return to Hamlet. — Among the dis- 
 tinguishing features of that wonderful cha- 
 racter, one of the most interesting (yet 
 painful) is that soreness of mind which 
 makes him treat the intrusions of Polonius 
 with harshness, and that asperity which he 
 piits on in his interviews with Ophelia. 
 These tokens of an unhinged mind (if they 
 be not mixed in the latter case with a 
 profound artifice of love, to alienate Ophelia 
 by affected discourtesies, so to prepare her 
 mind for the breaking off of that loving 
 intercourse, which can no longer find a place 
 amidst business so serious as that which he 
 ha.s to do) are parts of his character, which 
 to reconcile with our admiration of Hamlet, 
 the most patient considei'ation of his situation 
 is no more than necessary ; they are what 
 we forgive afterwards, and explain by the 
 whole of his character, but at the time they 
 are harsh and unpleasant. Yet such is the 
 actor's necessity of giving strong blows to 
 the audience, that I have never seen a player 
 in this character, who did not exaggerate 
 and sti'ain to the utmost these ambiguous 
 features, — these temporary deformities in 
 the character. They make liim express a 
 vulgar scorn at Polonius which utterly 
 degrades his gentility, and which no ex- 
 planation can render palatable ; they make 
 him show contempt, and curl up the nose 
 at Oi^helia's father, — coutemjjt in its very 
 
 grossest and most hateful form ; but they 
 get applause by it : it is natural, people say ; 
 that is, the words are scornful, and the actor 
 expresses scorn, and that tliey can judge of : 
 but why so nuich scorn, and of that sort, 
 they never think of asking. 
 
 So to Ophelia. — All the Hamlets that I 
 have ever seen, rant and rave at her as if 
 slie had committed some great crime, and 
 the audience ai'e highly pleased, because the 
 words of tlie part are satirical, and they are 
 enforced by the strongest expression of 
 satirical indignation of which the face and 
 voice are capable. But then, whether 
 Hamlet is likely to have put on such brutal 
 appearances to a lady whom he loved so 
 dearly, is never thought on. The truth is, 
 that in all such deep affections as had 
 subsisted between Hamlet and Ophelia, 
 tliere is a stock of supererogatory love, (if I 
 may venture to use the exjiression,) wiiich 
 in any great grief of heart, especially where 
 that which preys upon the mind cannot be 
 communicated, confers a kind of indulgence 
 upon the grieved party to express itself, 
 even to its heart's dearest object, in the 
 language of a temporary alienation ; but it 
 is not alienation, it is a distraction purely, 
 and so it always makes itself to be felt by 
 that object : it is not anger, but grief 
 assuming the appearance of anger, — love 
 awkwardly counterfeiting hate, as sweef 
 countenances when they tiy to frown ; but 
 such sternness and fierce disgust as Hamlet 
 is made to show, is no counterfeit, but the 
 real face of absolute aversion, — of irrecon- 
 cileable alienation. It may be said he puts 
 on the madman ; but then he should only so 
 far put on this counterfeit lunacy as his own 
 real distraction will give him leave ; that is, 
 incompletely, imperfectly ; not in that con- 
 firmed, practised way, like a master of his 
 art, or as Dame Quickly would say, " like 
 one of those harlotry players." 
 
 I mean no disrespect to any actor, but the 
 sort of ple;isure wlneh Shakspeare's ]jl;iy3 
 give in the acting seems to me not at all to 
 differ from that which the audience receive 
 from those of other writers ; and, they being 
 ill themselves essentially so different from all 
 others, I must conclude that there is some- 
 t hing in th ejiature of acting which levels 
 >lljlistinctions. And, in fact, who does not 
 speak mdlfferently of the Gamester and ol 
 
522 
 
 ON THE TRAGEDIES OF SHAKSPEAJRE. 
 
 Macbeth as fine stage performances, and the merit of being an admirer of Shakspeare ? 
 
 praise the Mrs. Bcverlej'^ in the same way A true lover of his excellences he certainly 
 
 as the Lady Macbeth of Mrs. S. ? Bolvidera, was not ; for would any true lover of them 
 
 and Calista, and Isabella, and Euphrasia, have admitted into his matchless scenes such 
 
 are they less liked than Imogen, or than ribald trash as Tate and Gibber, and the 
 Juliet, or than Desdemona ? Are tliey not ' rest of them, that 
 
 spoken of and remembered in the same way ? .. ^vjth their darkness durst affront his light," 
 Is not the female performer as great (as they 
 
 call it) in one as in the other ? Did not 
 
 have foisted into the acting plays of 
 
 Garrick shine, and was he not ambitious of i Shakspeare 1 I believe it impossible that he 
 shinuig, in every drawling tragedy that his ' could have had a proper reverence for 
 wretched day produced,— the i)roductions of Shakspeare, and have condescended to go 
 the Hills, and the Murphys, and the Browns, through that inteiijolated scene in Richard 
 —and shall he have that honour to dwell in tlie Third, in which Richard tries to break 
 our minds for ever as an inseparable con- his wife's heart by telling her he loves 
 coniitant with Shakspeare? A kindred another woman, and says, "if she survives 
 mind ! O who can read that affecting sonnet this she is immortal." Yet I duubt not he 
 
 delivered this vulgar stuff with as much 
 
 anxiety of emphasis as any of the genuine 
 
 parts : and for acting, it is as well calculated 
 
 as any. But we have seen the part of 
 
 Richard lately produce great fame to an 
 
 actor by his manner of playing it, and it lets 
 
 us into the secret of acting, and of populai" 
 
 judgments of Shakspeare derived from 
 
 acting. Not one of the spectators who have 
 
 witnessed Mr. C.'s exertions in that part, 
 
 but has come away with a proper conviction 
 
 Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most that Richard is a very wicked man, and kills 
 
 "^^^'■— " 1 little chikli-eu in their beds, with something 
 
 Who can read these instances of jealous ; like the pleasure which the giants and ogres 
 
 self-watchfulness in our sweet Shakspeare, | in children's books are represented to have 
 
 and dream of any congeniality between him | taken in that practice ; moreover, that he is 
 
 of Shakspeare which alludes to his profession 
 as a player : — 
 
 " Oh for my sake do you with Fortune eliide, 
 The guilty goddess of my harmless deeds, 
 That (lid not betti.T for my life provide 
 Than public means which public custom breeds — 
 Thence comes it that my name receives a brand ; 
 Knd almost thence my nature is subdued 
 To what it works in, like the dyer's hand." — 
 
 Or that other confession : — 
 
 " Alas ! 'tis true, 1 have gone here and there, 
 And made myself a motley to thy view, 
 
 and one that, by every tradition of him, 
 appears to have been as mere a player as 
 ever existed ; to have had his mind tainted 
 with the lowest players' vices, — envy and 
 jealousy, and miserable cravings after 
 applause ; one who in the exercise of his 
 profession was jealous even of the women- 
 performers that stood in his way ; a manager 
 full of managerial tricks and stratagems 
 and finesse ; that any resemblance should be 
 dreamed of between him and Shakspeare, — 
 Shakspeare who, in the plenitude and con- 
 sciousness of his own powers, could with 
 that noble mode.sty, which w6 can neither 
 imitate nor appreciate, express himself thus 
 of his own sense of his own defects : — 
 
 " Wisliing me like to one more rich in hope, 
 
 Keaturcd like him, like liim with friend" poRSOst ; 
 DcHiring thia man's art, and thai man's scope," 
 
 I am almost disposed to deny to Gariick 
 
 very close and siirewd, and devilish cunning, 
 for you could see that by his eye. 
 
 But is, in fact, this the impression we have 
 in reading the Richard of Shakspeare ? Do 
 we feel anything like disgust, as we do at 
 that butcher-like rejjresentatiou of him that 
 passes for him on the stage '/ A horror at 
 his crimes blends with the effect which we 
 feel, but how is it qualified, how is it carried 
 off, by the rich intellect which he displays, 
 his resources, his wit, his buoyant spirits, 
 his vast knowledge and insight into cha- 
 racters, tlie poeti-y of his part, — not an atom 
 of all which is made perceivable in Mr. C.'s 
 way of acting it. Nothing but his crimi-s, 
 his actions, is visible ; they are prominent 
 and staring ; the murderer stands out, but 
 where is the h^fty genius, the man of vast 
 cai>acity, — the profound, the witty, accom- 
 plished Ilichard ? 
 
 The truth is, the characters of Shakspeare 
 
UN THE TRAGEDIES OF SHAKSPEAllE. 
 
 523 
 
 are so much the objects of meditation rather ; So to see Lear acted, — to see an old man 
 fhanJoT^urterest or curiosity as to their tottering about the stage with a walking- 
 actions,^fIiat while we are reading any of stick, turned out of doors by his daughters 
 his great criminal characters, — Macbeth, in a rainy night, has nothing in it but wliat 
 Richard, even liigo, — w'e think not so much is painful and disgusting. We want to take 
 
 of the crimes wliich they commit, as of the 
 ambition^ the aspiring spirit, the intellectual 
 activity, Avhich prompts them to overleap 
 these moral fences. Barnwell is a wretched 
 
 him into shelter and relievo him. That is 
 all the feeling which the acting of Lear ever 
 produced in me. But the Lear of Sliakspeare 
 cannot be acted. The contemptible machi- 
 
 murderer ; there is a certain fitness between nery by which they mimic the storm wliich 
 his neck and the rope ; he is the legitimate he goes out in, is not more inadequate to 
 heir to the gallows ; nobody who thinks at represent the horrors of the real elements, 
 all can think of any alleviating circum- than any actor can be to represent Lear ; 
 stances in his case to make him a fit object they might more easily propose to personate 
 of mercy. Or to take an instance from the j the Satan of Milton upon a stage, or one of 
 higher tragedy, what else but a mere assassin Michael Angelo's tei-rible figures. The great- 
 is Glenalvon ? Do we think of anything but j ness of Lear is not in corjioral dimension, 
 of the crime which he commits, and the rack but in intellectual : the explosions of his 
 which he desei'ves 1 That is all which we passion are terrible as a volcano ; they are 
 really think about him. Whereas in corre- storms tuvniiig up and disclosing to the 
 •sponding characters in Shaksiieare, so little bottom tliat sea, his mind, with all its vast 
 do the_actions comparatively aftect us, that riches. It is his mind which is laid bare. 
 whiletlifijLuipulses, the inner mind in all its This case of flesh and blood seems too insig- 
 pervealed_gi'eatness, solely seems real and is | nificaut to be thought on ; even as he himself 
 exclusivelyjitteuded to, the crime is compa- : neglects it. On the stage we see nothing 
 ratively nothing: But when we see these but corporal infirmities and weakness, the 
 things represented, the acts which they do impotence of rage ; while we read it, we see 
 are comparatively everything, their impulses not Lear, but we are Lear, — we are in his 
 nothing. The state of sublime emotion into mind, we are sustained by a grandeur which 
 which we are elevated by those images of baffles the malice of daughters and storms ; 
 night and horror which Macbeth is made to j in the aberrations of his reason, we discover 
 utter, that solemn prelude wnth which he a mighty irregular power of 
 entertains the time till the bell shall strike 
 which is to call him to murder Duncan, — 
 when we no longer read it in a book, when 
 we have given up that vantage ground of 
 abstraction which reading possesses over 
 seeing, and come to see a mzin in his bodily 
 shape before our eyes actually preparing to 
 commit a murder, if the acting be true and 
 impressive, as I have witnessed it in Mr. K.'s 
 performance of that j^art, the painful anxiety 
 about the act, the natural longing to jjrevent 
 it wiiile it yet seems unperpetratt-d, the too 
 
 . close pressing semblance of reality, give a 
 
 V pain and an uneasiness which totally destroy 
 \ll tlie delight which the words in the book 
 convey, where the deed doing never presses 
 uj)OU us with the painful sense of presence : it 
 rather seems to belong to history, — to some- 
 thing past and inevitable, if it has anything 
 to do with time at all The sublime images, 
 thejDoetry alone, is that which is present to 
 our nunds^ih'the reading. 
 
 power 
 immethodised from the onlinary purposes of 
 life, but exerting its powers, as the wind 
 blows where it listeth, at will upon the 
 corruptions and abuses of mankind. Wliat 
 have looks, or tones, to do with that sublime 
 identification of his age with that of the 
 heavens themselves, when, in his reproaches to 
 them for conniving at the injustice of Ills 
 children, he rennnds them that " tliey them- 
 selves are old 1 " What gesture shall we 
 appropriate to this ? What has the voice or 
 tlie eye to do with sucli things ? But the 
 play is beyond all art, as the tamperings witli 
 it show : it is too hard and stony ; it must 
 have love-scenes, and a happy ending. It is 
 not enough that Cordelia is a daughter, she 
 must shine as a lover too. Tate has put hisi 
 hook in the nostrils of this Leviathan, for 
 Garrick and his foIlowei"S, the show-men of 
 the scene, to draw the mighty beast about 
 more easily. A happy ending ! — as if the 
 living martyrdom that Lear had gone 
 
524 
 
 ON THE TRAGEDIES OF SHAKSPEARE. 
 
 through, — the flaying of his feelings alive, 
 did not make a fair dismissal from the stage 
 of life the only decorous thing for liim. If 
 he is to live and be happy after, if he could 
 sustain this world's burden after, why all 
 this pudder and preparation, — why torrnqjit 
 us with all this unnecessary sympathy ? As 
 if the childish pleasure of getting his gilt 
 robes and sceptre again could tempt him to 
 act over again his misused station — as if, at 
 his years and with his experience, anything 
 was left but to die. 
 
 Lear is essentially impossible to be repre- 
 sented on a stage. But how many dramatic 
 personages are there in Shakspeare, which 
 though more tractable and feasible (if I may 
 so speak) than Lear, yet from some circum- 
 stance, some adjunct to their character, are 
 improper to be shown to our bodily eye ! 
 Othello for instance. Nothing can be more 
 soothing, more flattering to the nobler parts 
 of our natures, than to read of a young 
 Venetian lady of the highest extraction, 
 through the force of love and from a sense of 
 merit in him whom she loved, laying aside 
 every consideration of kindred, and country, 
 and colour, and wedding with a cood-hlack 
 Moor — (for such he is represented, in the 
 imperfect state of knowledge respecting 
 foreign countries in those days, compared 
 with our own, or in compliance with popular 
 notions, though the Moors are now well 
 enough known to be by many shades less 
 unwoi'thy of a white woman's fancy) — it is 
 the perfect triumph of virtue over accidents, 
 of the imagination overtlie senses. She sees 
 Othello's colour in his mind. But upon the 
 stage, when the imagination is no longer the 
 ruling faculty, but we are left to our poor 
 unassisted senses, I appeal to every one that 
 has seen Othello played, whether he did not, 
 on the contrary, sink Othello's mind in his 
 colour ; whether he did not find something 
 extremely revolting in the courtship and 
 wedded caresses of Otlicllo and Desdemona ; 
 and whether the actual sight of the thing did 
 n(jt over-weigh all that beautil'ul compi-omise 
 which we make in reading ; — and the reason 
 it should do so is obvious, because there is 
 just so much reality presented to our senses 
 as to give a ])erception of disagreement, with 
 not enough of belief in tlie internal motives, 
 —all that which is unseen, — to overpower 
 and reconcile the first and obvious preju- 
 
 dices. * What we see upon a stage is body 
 and bodily action ; what we are conscious of 
 in reading is almost exclusively the mind, 
 and its movements ; and this I think may 
 sufficiently account for the very different sort 
 of delight with which the same play so often 
 affects us in the reading and the seeing. 
 
 It requires little reflection to perceive, that 
 if those characters in Shakspeare which are 
 within the precincts of nature, have yet 
 something in them which appeals too exclu- 
 sively to the imagination, to admit of their 
 being made objects to the senses without 
 suffering a change and a diminution, — ^that 
 still stronger the objection must lie against 
 representing another line of characters, 
 which Shakspeare has introduced to give a 
 wildness and a supernatural elevation to his 
 scenes, as if to remove them still farther from 
 that assimilation to common life in which 
 their excellence is vulgarly supposed to 
 consist. AVhen we read the incantations of 
 those terrible beings the Witches in Macbeth, 
 though some of the ingredients of their 
 hellish composition savour of the grotesque, 
 yet is the effect upon us other than the most 
 serious and appalling that can be imagined ? 
 Do we not feel sjiell-bound as Macbeth was \ 
 Can any mirth accompany a sense of their 
 presence ? We might as well laugh under 
 a consciousness of the principle of Evil 
 himself being truly and really present with 
 us. But attempt to bring these tilings on to 
 a stage, and you turn them instantly into so 
 many old women, that men and children are 
 to laugh at. Contrary to the old saying, that 
 " seeing is believing," the sight actually 
 destroys the faith ; and the mirth in which 
 we indulge at their expense, when we see 
 these creatures upon a stage, seems to be a 
 sort of indemnification which we make to 
 ourselves for the terror which they put us in 
 when reading made them an object of belief, 
 
 • The error of siipposini; that becnuse Othello's colour 
 does not offend us in the rcadinp, it sliuuld lUso not 
 offend us in the secinp, is just such a falhicy us sup- 
 posing that an Adam and Eve in a picture sh:ill affect us 
 just as tliey do in the poem. But in tlie pwni we for a 
 while have Paradisaical senses given us, which vanish 
 when we see a man and his wife without clothes in the 
 picture. The painters themselves feel this, ns is appn. 
 rent by the awkward shifts they have recourse to, to 
 make them look not quite naked ; by a sort of prophetic 
 anachronism, antedating the invention of flg.leaves. So 
 in the reading of the Jilay, we see with Desdemonu's 
 eyes: in the seeing of it, wo uro forced to look with 
 our own. 
 
ON THE TRAGEDIES OF SHAKSPEARE. 
 
 625 
 
 • — when we surrendered up our reason to the 
 poet, as chil(h-en to their nurses and their 
 elders ; and we laugh at our fears as children, 
 who thought they saw something in the dark, 
 triumph when the bringing in of a candle 
 discovers the vanity of their fears. For this 
 exposure of supernatural agents upon a stage 
 is truly bringing in a candle to expose their 
 own delusiveness. It is the solitary taper 
 and the book tliat generates a faith in these 
 terrors : a ghost by chandelier light, and in 
 good company, deceives no spectators, — a 
 ghost that can be measured by the eye, and 
 his human dimensions made out at leisure. 
 The sight of a well-lighted house, and a well- 
 dressed audience, shall arm the most nervous 
 child against any apprehensions : as Tom 
 Brown says of the impenetrable skin of 
 Achilles with his impenetrable armour over 
 it, " Bully Dawson would have fought the 
 devil with such advantages." 
 
 Much has been said, and deservedly, in 
 reprobation of the vile mixture which Dryden 
 has thrown into the Tempest : doubtless 
 without some such vicious alloy, the impure 
 ears of that age would never have sate out 
 to hear so nmch innocence of love as is 
 contained in the sweet courtship of Ferdinand 
 and Miranda. But is the Tempest of 
 Shakspeare at all a subject for stage repre- 
 sentation ] It is one thing to read of an 
 enchanter, and to believe the wondrous tale 
 while we are reading it ; but to have a 
 conjuror brought before us in his conjuring- 
 gown, with his spirits about him, which none 
 but himself and some hundred of favoured 
 spectators befoi-e the curtain are supposed to 
 see, involves such a quantity of the hatefvl 
 incredible, that all our reverence for the 
 author cannot hinder us from perceiving 
 such gross attempts upon the senses to be in 
 the highest degree childish and inefRcicnt. 
 Spirits and fairies cannot be represented, 
 they cannot even be painted, — they can only 
 be believed. But the elaborate and anxious 
 provision of scenery, which the luxury of the 
 age demands, in these cases works a quite 
 contrary eflfect to what is intended. That 
 which in comedy, or plays of familiar life, 
 adds so much to the life of the imitation, in 
 plays which appeal to the higher faculties 
 positively destroys the illusion which it is 
 introduced to aid. A parlour or a drawing- 
 room, — a library opening into a garden — a 
 
 garden with an alcove in it, — a street, or the 
 piazza of Covent-garden, does well enough 
 in a scene ; we are content to give as much 
 credit to it as it demands ; or rather, we 
 think little about it, — it is little more than 
 reading at the top of a page, " Scene, a 
 garden ;" we do not imagine ourselves there, 
 but we readily admit the imitation of familiar 
 objects. But to think by the help of painted 
 trees and caverns, which we know to be 
 painted, to transjiort our minds to Prospero, 
 and his island and his lonely cell ; * or by 
 the aid of a fiddle dexterously thrown in, in 
 an interval of sjjcaking, to make us believe 
 that we hear those supernatural noises of 
 which the isle was full : the Orrery Lecturer 
 at the Haymarket might as well hope, by 
 his musical glasses cleverly stationed out of 
 sight behind his apparatus, to make us 
 believe that we do indeed hear the crystal 
 spheres ring out that chime, which if it were 
 to enwi'ap our fancy long, Milton thinks, 
 
 " Time would run back and fetch the age of pold, 
 And speckled Vanity 
 W^ould fickcn soon and die, 
 
 And leprous Sin would melt from earthly mould ; 
 Yea, Hell itself would pass away, 
 And leave its dolorous mansions to the peering day." 
 
 The garden of Eden, with our first parents 
 in it, is not more impossible to be shown 
 on a stage, than the Enchanted isle, with 
 its no less interesting and innocent fii-st 
 settlers. 
 
 The subject of Scenery is closely con- 
 nected with that of the Dresses, which are 
 so anxiously attended to on our stage. I 
 remember the last time I saw Macbeth 
 played, the discrepancy I felt at the changes 
 of garment which he varied, the shiftings 
 and re-shiftings, like a Romish priest at mass. 
 The luxury of stage-improvements, and the 
 importunity of the public eye, require this. 
 The coronation robe of the Scottish monarch 
 was fairly a counterpart to that which our 
 King wears when he goes to the Parliament- 
 house, just so full and cumbersome, and set 
 out with ermhie and pearls. And if things 
 must be represented, I see not what to find 
 fault with in this. But in reading, what 
 
 • It will be siiid these things are done in pictures. 
 But pictures and scenes arc very different thinps. 
 Painting is a world of itself, but in scene-painting there 
 is the attempt to deceive : and there is the discordancy, 
 never to be got over, between painted scenes and real 
 people. 
 
520 
 
 CHARACTEPvS OF DRAMATIC WRITERS. 
 
 robe are we conscious of ? Some dim images 
 of royalty — a crown and sceptre may float 
 before our eyes, but who shall describe the 
 fashion of it ? Do we see in our mind's eye 
 what Webb or any other robe-maker could 
 pattern ? This is the inevitable consequence 
 of imitatins: everything, to make all things 
 natural. Whereas the reading of a tragedy 
 is a fine abstraction. It presents to the 
 fancy just so much of external appearances 
 as to make us feel that we are among 
 flesh and blood, while by far the greater 
 and better part of our imagination is 
 employed upon the thoughts and internal 
 machinery of the character. But in act- 
 ing, scenery, dress, the most contemptible 
 things, call upon us to judge of their 
 naturalness. 
 
 Perhaps it would be no bad similitude, to 
 liken the pleasure which we take in seeing 
 one of these fine plays acted, compared with 
 that quiet delight which we find in the read- 
 ing of it, to the difierent feelings with which 
 a reviewer, and a man that is not a reviewei-, 
 reads a fine poem. The accursed critical 
 habit — the being called upon to judge and 
 pronounce, must make it quite a different 
 thing to the former. In seeing these plays 
 acted, we are aff'ected just as judges. 
 Wlien Hamlet compares the two pictures of 
 Gertrude's first and second husband, who 
 
 wants to see the pictures ? But in the acting, 
 a miniature must be lugged out ; which we 
 know not to be the picture, but only to show 
 how finely a miniature may be represented. 
 This showing of everything levels all things : 
 it makes tricks, bows, and curtseys, of im- 
 portance. Mrs. S. never got more fame by 
 anything than by the manner in which she 
 dismisses the guests in the banquet-scene in 
 Macbeth : it is as much remembered as any 
 of her thrilling tones or impressive looks. 
 But does such a trifle as this enter into the 
 imaginations of the readers of that wild and 
 wonderful scene 1 Does not the mind dis- 
 miss the fejisters as rapidly as it can ? Does 
 it care about the gi-acefulness of the doing 
 it ? But by acting, and judging of acting, 
 all these non-essentials are raised into an 
 importance, injurious to the main interest of 
 the i^lay. 
 
 I have confined my observations to the 
 tragic parts of ShaksjDeare. It would be no 
 very difficult task to extend the inquiry to 
 his comedies ; and to show why Falstaff, 
 Shallow, Sir Hugh Evans, and the rest, ai-e 
 equally incompatible with stage representa- 
 tion. The length to which this Essay has 
 run will make it, I am afraid, sufficiently 
 distasteful to the Amateurs of the Theatre, 
 without going any deeper into the subject at 
 present. 
 
 CHARACTERS OF DRAMATIC WRITERS, 
 
 CONTEMPOUAUY WITH SBAKSPEARE. 
 
 When I selected for publication, in 1808, 
 Specimens of English Dramatic Poets who 
 lived about the time of Shakspeare, the kind 
 of extracts which I was anxious to give 
 were not so much passages of wit and 
 humour, though the old plays are rich in ' 
 such, as scenes of passion, sometimes of the 
 deepest quality, interesting_situations, seri- ' 
 (JUS descriptions, that which is more nearly j 
 allied to poetry than to wit, and to tragic ' 
 rather than to comic poetry. The plays 
 which I made choice of were, witli few 
 exceptions, such as treat of human life and 
 mannens, rather tlian niaaques\nd Arcadian 
 pastorals, with their train of abstractions. 
 
 unimpassioned deities, passionate mortals 
 — Claius, and Medorus, and Amintas, and 
 Amaryllis. M^ leading design was to illus- 
 trate what may be calleiT th e innral s ense of 
 our ancestors. To show in what manner 
 they felt, when tliey placed themselves by 
 the power of imagination in trying circum- 
 stances, iyJlie^Qonflicta of duty and passion, 
 oy the sti4fo -of contend 'j:g duties ; what 
 sort of loves and enmities theirs were ; how 
 their griefs were tempered, and their fuU- 
 swoln joys abated : how much of Sliakspcaro 
 shines in the great men his contemporaries, 
 and how far in liis divine mind antl manin^rs 
 he surpassed them and all mankind. I was 
 
CHARACTERS OF DRAMATIC WRITERS. 
 
 527 
 
 also desirous to bring together some of 
 the most admired scenes of Fletcher and 
 Massinger, in the estimation of the world 
 the only dramatic poets of that age entitled 
 to be considered after Shakspeare, and, by 
 exhibiting them in the same volume with 
 the more impressive scenes of old Marlowe, 
 Heywood, Tonrncur, Webster, Ford, and 
 otliers, to show what we^ had slighted, while 
 beyond all proportion we had been crying 
 up one or two fiivourite names. From the 
 desultory criticisms which accompanied that 
 publication, I have selected a few which 
 I thought would best stand by themselves, 
 as requiring least immediate reference to 
 the play or passage by which they were 
 suggested. 
 
 CHRISTOrnEU MARLOWE. 
 
 Lust^s Dominion, or the Lascivioris Queen. 
 — This tragedy is in King Cambyses' vein ; 
 rape, and murder, and superlatives ; " huffing 
 braggart puft lines," such as the play- writers 
 anterior to Shakspeare are full of, and Pistol 
 but coldly imitates. 
 
 Tamburlaine the Great, or the Scythian 
 Shepherd. — The luues of Tamburlaine are 
 perfect midsummer madness. Nebuchad- 
 nezzar's are mere modest pretensions com- 
 pared with the thundering vaunts of this 
 Scythian Shepherd. He comes in drawn by 
 conquered kings, and reproaches these pam- 
 pered jades of Asia that they can draw but 
 twenty miles a day. Till I saw this passage 
 with my own eyes, I never believed that it 
 wa^j anything more than a pleasant burlesque 
 of mine Ancient's. But I can assure my 
 readers that it is soberly set down in a play, 
 which their ancestors took to be serious. 
 
 Edward the Second. — In a very different 
 style from mighty Tamburlaine is the Tragedy 
 of Edward the Second. The reluctant pangs 
 of abdicating royalty in Edward furnished 
 hints, which Shakspeare scarcely improved 
 in his Eicliard the Second ; and the death- 
 scene of Marlowe's king moves pity and 
 terror beyond any scene ancient or modern 
 with which I am acquainted. 
 
 The Rich Jew of Malta. — Marlowe's Jew 
 does not approach so near to Shakspeare's, 
 as his Edward the Second does to Richard 
 the Second. Barabas is a mere monster 
 brought in with a large painted nose to 
 please the rabble. He kills in sport, poisons 
 
 whole nunneries, invents infernal machines. 
 He is just such an exhibition as a century or 
 two earlier might have been played before 
 the Londoners " by the royal command," 
 when a general pillage and massacre of the 
 Hebrews had been previously resolved on in 
 the cabinet. It is curious to see a super- 
 stition wearing out. The idea of a .Tew, 
 wliich our pious ancestors contemplated with 
 so much horror, has nothing in it now revolt- 
 ing. We have tamed the claws of the beast, 
 and pared its nails, and now we take it to 
 our arms, fondle it, write plays to flatter it ; 
 it is visited by princes, affects a taste, patron- 
 ises the arts, and is the only liberal and 
 gentlemanlike thing in Christendom. 
 
 Doctor Faustus. — The growing horrors of 
 Faustus's last scene are awfully marked by 
 the hours and half hours as they expire, and 
 brijig him nearer and nearer to the exact- 
 meut of his dire compact. It is indeed an 
 agony and a fearful coUuctation. Marlowe 
 is said to have been tainted with atheistical 
 positions, to have denied God and the Trinity. 
 To such a genius the history of Faustus must 
 have been delectable food : to wander in 
 fields where curiosity is forbidden to go, to 
 approach the dark gulf, near enough to look 
 in, to be busied in speculations wliich are 
 the rottenest part of the core of the fruit that 
 fell from the tree of knowledge.* Barabas 
 the Jew, and Faustus the conjuror, are off- 
 springs of a mind which at least delighted to 
 dally with interdicted subjects. They both 
 talk a language which a believer would have 
 been tender of putting into the mouth of a 
 chai'acter though but in fiction. But the 
 holiest minds have sometimes not thought it 
 repiehensible to counterfeit impiety in the 
 person of another, to bring Vice upon the 
 stage speaking her own dialect ; and, them- 
 selves being armed with an unction of self- 
 confident impunity, have not scrupled to 
 handle and touch that familiarly which 
 would be death to others. Milton, in the 
 person of Satan, has started speculations 
 hardier than any which the feeble armouiy 
 of the atheist ever furnished ; and the precise, 
 strait-laced Eichai'dson has strengthened 
 Vice, from the mouth of Lovelace, with 
 
 • Error, entering into the world with Sin among U8 
 poor .\damitcs, may be said to spring from the tree of 
 knowledge itself, and from the rotten kernels of that 
 fii'.al apple. — IIoiccll'3 Letters. 
 
528 
 
 CHARACTKRS OF DRAMATIC WRITERS. 
 
 entangling sophistries and abstruse pleas 
 against her adversary Virtue, which Sedley, 
 Villiers, and Rochester wanted depth of 
 libertmism enough to have invented. 
 
 rnOMAS DECKER. 
 
 Old FortuncUus. — The humour of a frantic 
 lover in the scene where Orleans to his 
 friend Galloway defends the passion with 
 which himself, being a prisoner in the English 
 king's court, is enamoured to frenzy of the 
 king's daughter Agripyua, is done to the life. 
 Orleans is as passionate an innamorato as 
 any which Shakspeare ever drew. He is 
 just such another adept in Love's reasons. 
 The sober people of the world are with him, 
 
 " A swarm of fools 
 Crowding together to be counted wise." 
 
 He talks " pure Biron and Romeo;" he is 
 almost as poetical as they, quite as philoso- 
 phical, only a little madder. After all, 
 Love's sectaries are a reason unto them- 
 selves. We have gone retrograde to the 
 noble heresy, since the days when Sidney 
 proselyted our nation to this mixed health 
 and disease : the kindliest symptom, yet the 
 most alarming crisis, in the ticklish state of 
 youth ; the nourisher and the destroyer of 
 hopeful wits ; the mother of twin births, 
 wisdom and folly, valour and weakness ; the 
 servitude above freedom ; the gentle mind's 
 religion ; the liberal superstition. 
 
 The Holiest Whore. — There is in the second 
 part of this play, where Bellafrout, a re- 
 claimed harlot, recounts some of the misei'ies 
 of her profession, a simple picture of honour 
 and shame, contrasted without violence, and 
 expressed without immodesty ; which is 
 worth all the strong lines against the harlot's 
 profession, with which both parts of this 
 play are offensively crowded. A satirist is 
 always to be suspected, who, to make vice 
 odious, dwells upon all its acts and minutest 
 circumstances with a sort of relish and re- 
 trospective fondness. But so near are the 
 boundaries of panegyric and invective, that 
 a worn-out sinner is sometimes found to 
 make the best declairaer against sin. Tlie 
 same high-sea.sone<l descriptions, which in 
 liis unregenerate state served but to inflame 
 liis appetites, in his new province of a 
 moralist will serve him, a little turned, to 
 
 expose the enormity of those appetites in 
 other men. When Cervantes, with such 
 proficienc)' of fondness dwells upon the Don's 
 library, who sees not that he has been a 
 great reader of books of knight-errantry — 
 perhaps wa.s at some time of his life Ln danger 
 of falling into those very extravagances 
 which he ridiculed so happily in his hero ! 
 
 JOHN MARSTON. 
 
 Antonio and Mellidn. — The situation of 
 Andrugio and Lucio, in the first part of this 
 tragedy, — where Andrugio, Duke of Genoa, 
 banished his country, with the loss of a son 
 supposed drowned, is cast upon the territory 
 of his mortal enemy the Duke of Venice, 
 with no attendants but Lucio an old noble- 
 man, and a page — resembles that of Lear 
 and Kent, in that king's distresses. An- 
 drugio, like Lear, manifests a king-like 
 impatience, a turbulent greatness, an aflected 
 resignation. The enemies which he enters 
 lists to combat, " Despair and mighty Grief 
 and sharp Impatience," and the forces which 
 he brings to vanquish them, " cornets of 
 horse," &c., are in the boldest style of allegory. 
 They are such a " race of mourners " as the 
 " infection of sorrows loud " in the intellect 
 might beget on some " pregnant cloud " in 
 the imagination. The prologue to the second 
 part, for its passionate earnestness, and for 
 the tragic note of preparation which it 
 sounds, might have preceded one of those old 
 tales of Thebes or Pelops' line, which Milton 
 has so highly commended, as free fi\nn the 
 common error of the poets in his day, of 
 " intermixing comic stuff with tragic sadness 
 and gravity, brought in without discretion 
 corruptly to gratify the people." It is aa 
 solemn a preparative as the " warning voice 
 which he who saw the Apocalypse heard 
 cry." 
 
 What You Will. — I shall ne'er forget how 
 
 he went cloath'd. Act I. Scene 1. — To judge 
 
 of the liberality of these notions of dress, we 
 
 must advert to tlie days of Gresliam, and 
 
 tlie consternation which a jihenomenon 
 
 habited like the merchant here described 
 
 I would have excited among the flat round 
 
 I caps and cloth stockings upon 'Change, when 
 
 those "original arguments or tokens of a 
 
 citizen's vocation were in fjushion, not more 
 
 ... 
 for thrift and usefulness tiian for distinction 
 
 I 
 
CHARACTERS OF DRAMATIC WRITERS. 
 
 62a 
 
 and grace." The blank uniformity to -which 
 all professic.nal distinctions in apparel have 
 been long hastening, is one instance of the 
 decay of symbols among us, which whether 
 it hiis contributed or not to make us a more 
 intellectual, has certainly made us a less 
 imaginative i>eople. Shakspeare knew the 
 force of signs : a " malignant and a turbaned 
 Turk." This " meal-cap miller," says the 
 author of God's Revenge against Murder, 
 to express his indignation at an atrocious 
 outrage committed by the miller Pierot upon 
 the person of the fair Marieta. 
 
 AUTHOR UNKNOWN. 
 
 The Merry Devil of Edmonton. — The scene 
 in this delightful comedy, in which Jern- 
 ingham, " with the true feeling of a zealous 
 friend," touches the griefs of Mounchensey, 
 seems written to make the reader happy. 
 Few of our dramatists or novelists have 
 attended enough to this. They torture and 
 wound us abundantly. They are economists 
 only in delight. Nothing can be finer, more 
 gentlemanlike, and nobler, than the conver- 
 sation and compliments of these young men. 
 How delicious is Eaymond Mouncheusey's 
 forgetting, in his fears, that Jeruingham has 
 a " Saint in Essex ; " and how sweetly his 
 friend reminds him ! I wish it could be 
 ascertained, which there is some grounds for 
 believing, that Michael Drayton was the 
 author of this piece. It would add a worthy 
 appendage to the renown of that Panegyrist 
 of my native Earth ; who has gone over her 
 soil, in his Polyolbion, Avith the fidelity of a 
 herald, and the i^aiuful love of a son ; who 
 has not left a rivulet, so narrow that it may 
 be stepped over, without honourable men- 
 tion ; and has animated hills and streams 
 with life and passion beyond the dreams of 
 old mythology. 
 
 THOMAS HEYWOOD. 
 
 A Woman Killed with Kindness. — Hey wood 
 is a sort of prose Shakspeare. His scenes are 
 to the full as natural and affecting. But we 
 miss the poet, that which in Shakspeare 
 always appears out and above the surface of 
 the nature. Heywood's characters, in this 
 play, for instance, his country gentlemen, &c. 
 are exactly what we see, but of the best kind 
 
 of what we see in life. Shakspeare makes 
 us believe, while we are among his lovely 
 creations, that they are nothing but what we 
 are familiar with, as in dreams new things 
 seem old ; but we awake, and sigh for the 
 difference. 
 
 The English Traveller. — Heywood's preface 
 to this play is interesting, as it shows the 
 heroic indifference about the opinion of pos- 
 terity, which some of these great writers seem 
 to have felt. There is a magnanimity in 
 authorship, as in everything else. His ambi- 
 tion seems to have been confined to the 
 pleasure of hearing the players speak his 
 lines while he lived. It does not appear that 
 he ever contemplated the possibility of being 
 read by after ages. What a slender pittance of 
 fame was motive sufficient to the production 
 of such plays as the English Traveller, the 
 Challenge for Beauty, and the "Woman Killed 
 with Kindness ! Po.stcrity is bound to take 
 care that a writer loses nothing by such a 
 noble modesty. 
 
 THOMAS MIDDLETON AND WILLIAM ROWLEY. 
 
 A Fair Quarrel. — The insipid levelling 
 morality to which the modern stage is tied 
 down, would not admit of such admirable 
 passions as these scenes are filled with. A 
 puritanical obtuseness of sentiment, a stupid 
 infantile goodness, is creeping among us, 
 instead of the vigorous passions, and virtues 
 clad in flesh and blood, with which the old 
 dramatists present us. Those noble and 
 liberal casiiists could discern in the dif- 
 ferences, the quarrels, the animosities of 
 men, a beauty and truth of moral feeling, no 
 less than in the everlastingly inculcated 
 duties of forgiveness and atonement. With 
 us, all is hypocritical meekness. A recon- 
 ciliation scene, be the occasion never so 
 absurd, never fails of applause. Our audiences 
 come to the theatre to be complimented ou 
 their goodness. They compare notes with 
 the amiable characters in the play, and find 
 a wonderful sympathy of disposition between 
 them. We have a common stock of dramatic 
 morality, out of which a writer may be suj)- 
 plied without the trouble of copying it from 
 originals within his own breast. To know 
 the boundaries of hpuour, to be judiciously 
 valiant, to have a temperance which shall 
 beget a smoothness in the angry swellings of 
 
530 
 
 CHARACTERS OF DRA:^LA.TIC WRITERS. 
 
 youth, to esteem life as nothing when the 
 sacred reputation of a parent is to be de- 
 fended, yet to shake and tremble under a 
 pious cowardice when that ark of an honest 
 confidence is found to be frail and tottering, 
 to feel the true blows of a real disgrace 
 blunting that sword which the imaginary 
 strokes of a supposed iiilse imputation had 
 put so keen an edge upon but lately ; to do, 
 or to imagine this done, in a feigned story, 
 asks something more of a moral sense, some- 
 what a greater delicacy of perception in 
 questions of right and wrong, than goes to 
 the writing of two or three hacknied sentences 
 about the laws of honour as opposed to the 
 laws of the land, or a commonplace against 
 duelling. Yet such things would stand a 
 writer now-a-days in far better stead than 
 Ca})tain Agar and his conscientious honour ; 
 and he would be considered as a far better 
 teacher of morality than old Rowley or 
 Middleton, if they were living. 
 
 WILLIAM ROWLEY. 
 
 A Neio 'Wonder ; a Woman never Yext. — 
 The old play-writers are distinguished by an 
 honest boldness of exhibition, — they show 
 everything without being ashamed. If a 
 reverse in fortune is to be exhibited, they 
 fairly bring us to the prison-grate and the 
 alms-basket. A poor man on our stage is 
 always a gentleman ; he may be known by a 
 peculiar neatness of apparel, and by wearing 
 black. Our delicacy, in fact, forbids the 
 dramatising of distress at all. It is never 
 shown in its essential properties ; it appears 
 but as the adjunct of some virtue, as some- 
 thing which is to be relieved, from the appro- 
 bation of which relief the spectators are to 
 derive a certain soothing of self-re fei-red 
 satisfaction. We turn away from the real 
 essences of things to hunt after their relative 
 shadows, moral duties ; whereas, if the truth 
 of things were fairly represented, the relative 
 luties might be safely trusted to themselves, 
 and moral philosophy lose the name of a 
 science. 
 
 THOMAS MIDDLETON. 
 
 The Witch. — Though some resemblance 
 may be traced between the charms in Mac- 
 tH'tb and Ihe incantations in this play, which 
 
 is supposed to have preceded it. this coinci- 
 dence will not detract much from the origi- 
 nality of Shakspeare. His witches are dis- 
 tinguished from the witches of Middleton by 
 essential differences. These are creatures to 
 whom man or woman, plotting some dire mis- 
 chief, might resort for occasional consulta- 
 tion. Those originate deeds of blood, and 
 begin bad impulses to men. From the moment 
 that their eyes first meet with Macbeth's, he 
 is spell-bound. That meeting sways his 
 destiny. He can never break the fascina- 
 tion. These witches can hurt the body ; 
 those have power over the soul. Hecate in 
 Middleton has a son, a low buffoon : the hags 
 of Sliakspeare have neither child of their 
 own, nor seem to be descended from any 
 parent. They are foul anomalies, of whom 
 we know not whence they are sprvmg, nor 
 whether they have beginning or ending. 
 As they are without human passions, so they 
 seem to be without human relations. They 
 come with thunder and lightning, and vjuiish 
 to airy music. This is all we know of them. 
 Except Hecate, they have no iiames ; which 
 heightens their mysteriousness. The names, 
 and some of the properties which the other 
 author has given to his hags, excite smiles. 
 The "We'ii-d Sisters are serious things. Their 
 presence cannot co-exist with mirth. But 
 in a lesser degree, the witches of Middleton 
 are fine creations. Their power, too, is, in 
 some measure, over the mind. They raise 
 jars, jealousies, strifes, " like a thick scurf" 
 over life. 
 
 WILLIAM KOWLEY,— THOMAS DECKER,— 
 JOHN FORD, ETC. 
 
 The Witch of Edmonton. — Mother Sawyer, 
 in this wild i)lay, differs from the hags of 
 both Middleton and Shakspeare. She is the 
 plain, traditional, old-woman witch of our 
 ancestors ; poor, deformed, and ignonint ; 
 the terror of villages, herself amenable to 
 a justice. That should be a hardy sheriff, 
 with the power of the county at his hei;ls, 
 that would lay hands on the AVeird Sisters. 
 Tiiey are of another jurisdiction. But upon 
 the common and received opinion, the author 
 (or authors) have engrafted strong fanc-y. 
 There is something frightfully earnest in hor 
 invocations to the Familiar. 
 
K 
 
 CHARACTERS OF DllAMATIC WRITERS. 
 
 581 
 
 CYRIL TOURNEUR. 
 
 The Revenger's Tragedy. — The reality and 
 life of the dialogue, in which Vindici and 
 Hippolito first tempt their mother, and then 
 threaten her with death for consenting to 
 the dishonour of their sister, passes any 
 scenical illusion I ever felt. I never read it 
 but my ears tingle, and I feel a hot blush 
 overspread my cheeks, as if I were presently 
 about to proclaim such malefactions of myself, 
 as the brothers here rebuke in their un- 
 natural parent, in words more keen and 
 dagger-like than those which Hamlet speaks 
 to liis mother. Such power has the passion 
 of shame truly personated, not only to strike 
 guilty creatures unto the soul, but to " appal" 
 even those that are " free." 
 
 JOnX WEBSTER. 
 
 The Duchess of Malfy. — All the several 
 parts of the dreadful apparatus with which 
 the death of the Duchess is ushered in, the 
 waxen images which counterfeit death, the 
 wild masque of madmen, the tomb-maker, 
 the bellman, the living person's dirge, the 
 moi-tification by degrees, — are not more 
 remote from the conceptions of ordinary 
 vengeance, than the strange character of 
 suifering which they seem to bring upon 
 their victim is out of the imagination of ordi- 
 nary poets. As they are not like inflictions 
 of this life, so her language seems not of this 
 world. She has lived among horrors till she 
 is become " native and endowed unto that 
 element." She speaks the dialect of despair ; 
 T^ her tongue has a sraatch of T;u'tarus and the 
 souls in bale. To move a horror skilfully, 
 to touch a soul to the quick, to lay upon fear 
 as much as it can bear, to wean and weary a 
 life till it is ready to drop, and then step in 
 with mortal instruments to take its last for- 
 feit : this only a Webster can do. Inferior 
 geniuses may " upon horror's head horrors 
 accumulate," but they cannot do this. They 
 mistake quantity for quality ; they " terrify 
 babes with painted devils ; " but they know 
 not how a soul is to be moved. Their terrors 
 want dignity, their affrightmenta are without 
 decorum. 
 
 The White Devil, or Vittoria Coromhoym. — 
 This White Devil of Italy sets off a bad cause 
 so speciously, and pleads with such an 
 
 innocence-resembling boldness, that we seem 
 to see that matchless beauty of her face 
 which inspires such gay confidence into her, 
 and are ready to expect, when she has done 
 her pleadings, that her very judges, her 
 accusers, the grave ambassadors wlio sit as 
 spectators, and all the court, will rise and 
 make proffer to defend her, in spite of the 
 utmost conviction of her guilt; as the Shep- 
 herds in Don Quixote make proffer to follow 
 the beautiful Shepherdess Marcela, " without 
 making any profit of her manifest resolution 
 made there in their hearing." 
 
 " So sweet and lovely does she make the shame, 
 Which, like a canker in the fragrant rose, 
 Does spot the beauty of her budding name ! " 
 
 I never saw anything like the funeral dirge 
 in this play for the death of Mareello, except 
 the ditty wliich reminds Ferdinand of his 
 drowned father in the Tempest. As that is 
 of the water, watery ; so this is of the earth, 
 earthy. Both have that intenseness of feel- 
 ing, which seems to resolve itself into the 
 element which it contemplates. 
 
 In a note on the Spanish Tragedy in the 
 Specimens, I have said that there is nothing 
 in the undoubted plays of Jonson which 
 would authorise us to suppose that he could 
 have supplied the additions to Hieronymo. 
 I suspected the agency of some more potent 
 spirit. I thought that Webster might have 
 furnished them. They seemed full of that 
 wild, solemn, preternatural cast of grief which 
 bewildei's us in the Duchess of Malfy. On 
 second consideration, I think this a hasty 
 criticism. They are more like the overflow- 
 ing griefs and talking distraction of Titus 
 Andronicus. The sorrows of the Duchess 
 set inward ; if she talks, it is little more than 
 soliloquy imitating conversation in a kind of 
 bravery. 
 
 JOHN FORD. 
 
 The Broken Heart. — I do not know where 
 to find, in any play, a catastrophe so granri, 
 so solemn, and so surprising, as in this. This 
 is indeed, according to Milton, to describe 
 high passions and high actions. The forti- 
 tude of the Spartan boy, who let a beast 
 gnaw out his bowels till he died, without 
 expressing a groan, is a faint bodily image of 
 this dilaceration of the spirit, and exentcr**- 
 tion of the inmost mind, which Calantha, 
 
 iti M 2 
 
532 
 
 CHARACTExIS OF DRAMATIC WRITERS. 
 
 with a holy violence against her nature, 
 keeps closely covered, till the last duties of a 
 wife and a queen are fulfilled. Stories of 
 mai'tyrdom are but of chains and the stake ; 
 a little bodily suffering. These torments 
 
 " On the purest spirits prey, 
 
 As on entrails, joints, and limbs, 
 
 With answerable pains, but more intense." 
 
 "What a noble thing is the soul, in its 
 strengths and in its weaknesses ! Wlio 
 would be less weak than Calantha 1 "Who 
 can be so strong? The expression of this 
 transcendent scene almost bears us in imagi- 
 nation to Calvary and the Cross ; and we 
 seem to perceive some analogy between the 
 scenical sufferings which we are here con- 
 templating and the real agonies of that final 
 completion to which we dare no more than 
 hint a reference. Ford was of the first order 
 of poets. He sought for sublimity, not by 
 parcels, in metaphors or visible images, but 
 directly where she has her full residence, in 
 the heart of man ; in the actions and suffer- 
 ings of the greatest minds. There is a gran- 
 deur of the soul, above mountains, seas, and 
 the elements. Even in the poor perverted 
 reason of Giovanni and Auuabella, in the 
 play* which stands at the head of the modern 
 collection of the works of this author, we 
 discern traces of that fiery particle, which, 
 in the irregular starting from out the road of 
 beaten action, discovers something of a right 
 line even in obliquity, and shows hints of an 
 improvable greatness in the lowest descents 
 and degradations of our nature. 
 
 FUUvE GKEVILLE, LORD BROOKE. 
 
 Alaham, Mustapha. — The two tragedies of 
 Lord Brooke, printed among his poems, 
 might with more propriety have been termed 
 political treatises than plays. Their author 
 has strangely contrived to make passion, 
 character, and interest, of the highest order, 
 subservient to the expression of state dog- 
 mas and mysteries. He is nine parts 
 Machiavel and Tacitus, for one part Sopho- 
 cles or Seneca. In this writer's estimate of 
 the powers of the mind, tlie under.standiiig 
 must have held a most tyrannical pre- 
 eminence. Whether we look into his plays 
 
 ' 'Tis I'ity Hbc's a WUorc. 
 
 or his most passionate love-poems, we shall 
 find all frozen and made rigid with intellect. 
 The finest movements of the human heart, 
 the utmost grandeur of which the soul ia 
 capable, are essentially comprised in the 
 actions and speeches of Cselica and Camena. 
 Shakspeare, who seems to have had a peculiar 
 delight in contemplating womanly perfec- 
 tion, whom for his many sweet images of 
 female excellence all women are in an 
 especial manner hound to love, has not raised 
 the ideal of the female character higher than 
 Lord Brooke, in these two women, has done. 
 But it requires a study equivalent to the 
 learning of a new language to understand 
 their meaning when they speak. It is indeed 
 hard to hit : 
 
 " Much like thy riddle, Samson, in one day 
 Or seven though one should musing sit." 
 
 It is as if a being of pure intellect should 
 take upon him to express the emotions of oui 
 sensitive natures. There would be all know- 
 ledge, but sympathetic expressions would be 
 wanting. 
 
 BEN JOXSON. 
 
 27(6 Case is Altered. — The passion for wealth 
 has worn out much of its grossness in tract 
 of time. Our ancestors certainly conceived 
 of money as able to confer a distinct gratifi- 
 cation in itself, not considered simjily as a 
 symbol of wealth. Tlie old poets, when they 
 introduce a miser, make him address his 
 gold as his mistress ; as sometliing to be seen, 
 felt, and hugged ; as capable of satisfying 
 two of the senses at least. The substitution 
 of a thin, unsatisfying medium in the place 
 of the good old tangible metal, has made 
 avarice quite a Platonic affection in compa- 
 rison with the seeing, touching, and handling 
 pleasures of the old Chrysopliilites. A bank- 
 note can no more satisfy the touch of a true 
 sensualist in this ])assion, than Creusa could 
 return her iuusband's euibrace in the shades. 
 Sec the Cave of Mammon in S])onser ; Bara- 
 bas's contemi)lation of his wealth, in the Rich 
 Jew of Malta ; Luke's raptures in the City 
 Madam ; the idolati-y and absolute gold- 
 worsliip of the miser Jaques in this early 
 comic production of Ben Jonson's. Above 
 all, hear Guzman, in that excellent old trans- 
 lation of the Si)anishIlogue, expatiate on tlie 
 " ruddy cheeks of your gulden ruddocks, 
 
CHARACTERS OF DRAMATIC WRITERS. 
 
 533 
 
 your Spanish pistoleta, your plump and full- 
 faced Portuguese, and your clear-skinned 
 pieces-of-eiglit of Castile," which lie and his 
 fellows tlie oeggars kept secret to themselves, 
 and did privately enjoy in a plentiful manner. 
 " For to have them to pay them away Is not to 
 enjoy tliem ; to enjoy them is to have them 
 lying by us ; having no other need of them 
 than to use them for the clearing of the eye- 
 sight, and the comforting of our senses. 
 These we did carry about with us, sewing 
 them in some patches of our doublets near 
 unto the heart, and as close to the skin as we 
 could handsomely quilt them in, holding 
 them to be restorative." 
 
 Poetaster. — This Koman play seems written 
 to confute those enemies of Ben in his own 
 days and ours, who have said that he made 
 a ])edantical iise of his learning. He has 
 here revived the whole Court of Augustus, 
 by a learned spell. "We are admitted to the 
 society of the illustrious dead. Virgil, 
 Horace, Ovid, Tibullus, converse in our own 
 tongue more finely and poetically than they 
 were used to express themselves in their 
 native Latin. Nothing can be imagined 
 more elegant, refined, and court-like, than 
 the scenes between this Louis the Fourteenth 
 of antiquity and his literati. The whole 
 essence and seci-et of that kind of inter- 
 coiirse is contained therein. The economical 
 liberality by which greatness, seeming to 
 waive some part of its prerogative, takes 
 care to lose none of the essentials ; the 
 prudential liberties of an inferior, which 
 flatter by commanded boldness and soothe 
 with complimentary sincerity ; — these, and 
 a thousand beautiful passages from his New 
 Inn, his Cynthia's Eevels, and from those 
 numerous court-masques and entertainments, 
 which he was in the daily habit of furnishing, 
 might be adduced to sliow the poetical fancy 
 and elegance of miud of the supposed rugged 
 old bard. 
 
 Alchemist. — ^The judgment is perfectly over- 
 whelmed by the torrent of images, words, 
 and book-knowledge, with which Epicure 
 Mammon (Act ii., Scene 2) confounds and 
 stuns his incredulous hearer. They come 
 pouring out like the successive falls of Nilus. 
 They " doubly redouble strokes upon the 
 foe." Description outstrides proof. We are 
 made to believe effects before we have 
 testimony for their causes. If there is no 
 
 one image which attains the height of the 
 sublime, yet the confluence and a.ssembln<Te 
 of them all produces a result equal to the 
 grandest poetry. The huge Xerxoan army 
 countervails against single Achilles. Epicnire 
 Mammon is the most determined offspring of 
 its autlior. It has the wliole " matter and 
 copy of tlie fatlier — eye, nose, lip, the trick of 
 his frown." It is just such a swaggerer as 
 contemporaries have described old Ben to be. 
 Meercraft, Bobadil, the Host of the New Inn, 
 have all his image and superscription. But 
 Mammon is arrogant pretension personified. 
 Sir Samson Legend, in Love for Love, is such 
 another lying, overbearing character, but lie 
 does not come up to Epicure Mammon. 
 What a "towering bravery" there is in his 
 sensuality ! he affects no pleasure under a 
 Sultan. It is as if " Egypt with Assyria 
 strove in luxury." 
 
 GEORGE CHAPMAN. 
 
 Bussi/D'A mbois, Byroii's Conspiracy, ByrorCs 
 Tragedi/. &c. <&c. — Webster has happily cha- 
 racterised the " full and heightened style " of 
 Chapman, who, of all the Biglish play-writers, 
 perhaps approaches nearest to Shakspeare in 
 the descriptive and didactic, in passages 
 which are less purely dramatic. He corJd 
 not go out of himself, as Shakspeare cuuld 
 shift at pleasure, to inform and animate 
 other existences, but in himself he had an 
 eye to perceive and a soul to embi-ace all 
 forms and modes of being. He would have 
 made a great epic poet, if indeed he has not 
 abundantly shown himself to be one ; for his 
 Homer is not so properly a translation as the 
 stories of Achilles and Ulysses rewritten. 
 The eai'nestness and passion which he has 
 put into every part of these poems would be 
 incredible to a reader of mere modern trans- 
 lations. His almost Greek zeal for the glory 
 of his heroes can only be paralleled by that 
 fierce sph-it of Plebrew bigotry, with which 
 Milton, as if personating one of the zealots of 
 the old law, clothed himself when he sat 
 down to paint the acts of Samson against the 
 uncircumcised. The great obstacle to Chap- 
 man's translations being read, is their uu- 
 conquerable quaintuess. He pours out in 
 the same breath the most just jukI natural, 
 and the most violent and crude exprLSsions. 
 He seems to grasp at whatever words come 
 
334 
 
 CHARACTERS OF DRAMATIC WRITERS. 
 
 first to h.and while the enthusiasm is upon 
 liim, ;is if all other must be inadequate to the 
 divine me.-ining. But passion (the all in all 
 in poetry) is everywhere present, raising the 
 low, dignifying the mean, and putting sense 
 into the absurd. He makes his readers 
 glow, weep, tremble, take any affection which 
 he pleases, be moved by wonls, or in spite 
 of them, be disgusted, and overcome their 
 disgust. 
 
 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.— JOHN FLETCHER. 
 
 MaiiVs Tragedy. — One characteristic of the 
 excellent old poets is, their being able to 
 bestow grace upon subjects which naturally 
 do not seem susceptible of any. I will 
 mention two instances. Zelmaue in the 
 Arcadia of Sidney, and Helena in the All's 
 "Well that Ends Well of Shakspeare. What 
 can be more unpromising, at first sight, than 
 the idea of a young man disguising himself 
 in woman's attire, and passing himself oflf for 
 a woman among women ; and that for a long 
 space of time ? Yet Sir Philip has preserved 
 so matchless a decorum, that neither does 
 Pyrocles' manhood suffer any stain for the 
 effeminacy of Zelmaue, nor is the respect due 
 to the princesses at all diminished when the 
 deception comes to be known. In the 
 sweetly-constituted mind of Sir Philijj Sidney, 
 it seems as if no ugly thought or unhandsome 
 meditation could find a harbour. He turned 
 all that he touched into images of honour 
 and virtue. Helena in Shakspeare is a young 
 woman seeking a man in marriage. The 
 ordinary rules of courtship are reversed, the 
 habitual feelings are crossed. Yet with such 
 exquisite address this dangerous subject is 
 handled, that Helena's forwardness loses her 
 no honour ; delicacy dispenses with its laws 
 in her favour, and nature, in her single case, 
 .seems content to suffer a sweet violation. 
 Aspatia, in the Maid's Tragedy, is a character 
 equally difficult with Helena, of being 
 managed with grace. She too is a slighted 
 woman, refused by the man who had once 
 engaged to marry her. Yet it is artfully 
 contrived, that while we pity we respect her, 
 and she descends without degradation. Such 
 wonders true poetry and pa.ssion can do, to 
 confer dignity upon subjects which do not 
 seem capable of it. But Aspatia must not 
 be comj)ared at all points with Helena ; she 
 
 does not so absolutely predominate over her 
 situation but she sufi'ers some diminution, 
 some abatement of the full lustre of the 
 female character, which Helena never does. 
 Her character has many degrees of sweet- 
 ness, some of delicacy ; but it has weakness, 
 which, if we do not despi.se, we are sorry for. 
 After all, Beaumont and Fletcher were but 
 an inferior sort of Shakspeares and Sidneys. 
 PhUaster. — The character of Bellario must 
 have been extremely popular in its day. 
 For many years after the date of Philaster's 
 first exhibition on the stage, scarce a play 
 can be found without one of these women- 
 pages in it, following in the train of some 
 pre-engaged lover, calling on the gods to 
 bless her happy rival (his mistress), whom no 
 doubt she secretly curses in her heart, giving 
 rise to many pretty equivoques by the way on 
 the confusion of sex, and either made happy 
 at last by some surprising tui-n of fate, or 
 dismissed with the joint pity of the lovers 
 and the audience. Donne hiis a copy of 
 verses to his mistress, dissuading her from a 
 resolution, which she seems to have taken up 
 from some of these scenical representations, 
 of following him abroad as a page. It is so 
 earnest, so weighty, so rich in poetry, in 
 sense, in wit, and pathos, that it deserves to 
 be read as a solemn close in future to all 
 such sickly fancies as he there deprecates. 
 
 JOHN FLETCHER. 
 
 Thierry and Theodoret. — The scene where 
 Ordella offers her life a sacrifice, that the 
 king of France may not be chiKUess, I have 
 always considered as the finest in all Fletcher, 
 and Ordella to be the moist perfect notion of 
 the female heroic character, next to Calantha 
 in the Broken Heiu-t. She is a piece of 
 sainted nature. Yet, noble as the whole 
 passage is, it must be confessed that the 
 manner of it, compared with Shakspeare's 
 finest scenes, is faint and languid. Its 
 motion is cii'cular, not progressive. Each 
 line revolves on itself in a sort of separate 
 orbit. Tiiey do not join into one another 
 like a running-hand. Fletcher's ideas moved 
 slow ; his versification, though sweet, is 
 tedious, it stops at every turn ; he lays line 
 upon line, making up one after the other, 
 adding image to image so deliberately, that 
 wo see their junctures. Shakspeare minglca 
 
SPECIMENS FROM THE WRITINGS OF FULLER. 
 
 535 
 
 everj-tluug, runs line into line, embarrasses 
 sentences and metapliors ; before one idea 
 has burst its shell, another is hatched and 
 clanioi-ous for disclosure. Another striking 
 diflerence between Fletcher and Shakspeare 
 is the fondness of the former for unnatural 
 and violent situations. He seems to have 
 thought tliat notliing great could be pro- 
 duced in an ordinary way. The chief inci- 
 dents in some of his most admired tragedies 
 show this.* Sliaksjieare had nothing of this 
 contortion in his mind, none of that craving 
 after violent situations, and flights of strained 
 and improbable virtue, which I think always 
 betraj's an imperfect moral sensibility. The 
 wit of Fletcher is excellent,t like his serious 
 scenes, but there is something strained and 
 far-fetched in both. He is too mistrustful of 
 Nature, he always goes a little on one side 
 of her. — Shakspeare chose her without a 
 reserve : and had riches, power, understand- 
 ing, and length of days, with her for a dowry. 
 Faithful Sheplierdess. — If all the parts of 
 this delightful pastoral had been in unison 
 with its many innocent scenes and sweet 
 lyric intermixtures, it had been a poem fit 
 to vie with Comus or the Arcadia, to have 
 been put into the hands of boys and virgins, 
 to have made matter for young dreams, like 
 the loves of Hermia and Lysander. But a 
 spot is on the face of this Diana. Nothing 
 short of infatuation could have driven 
 Fletcher upon mixing with this" blessedness" 
 such an ugly deformity as Chloe, the wanton 
 shepherdess ! If Chloe was meant to set off 
 Clorin by contrast, Fletcher should have 
 known that such weeds by juxtaposition do 
 not set off, but kill sweet flowers. 
 
 * Wife for a Month, Cupid's Eevenge, Double 
 Marriage, &c. 
 
 t AVit without Money, and his comedies generally. 
 
 PHILIP MASSINGER.— THOMAS DECKER. 
 
 The Virgin Martyr. — This play has some 
 beauties of so very high an order, that with 
 all my respect for Massinger, I do not think 
 he had poetical enthusiasm capable of rising 
 up to them. His associate Decker, who 
 wrote Old Fortunatus, had poetry enough 
 for anything. The very impurities v/liich 
 obtrude themselves among the sweet pieties 
 of this play, like Satan among the Sons of 
 Heaven, have a strength of contrast, a raci- 
 ness, and a glow, in them, which are beyond 
 Massinger. They are to the religion of the 
 rest what Caliban is to Miranda. 
 
 PHILIP MASSINGER.— THOMAS MIDDLETOX.— 
 WILLIAM ROWLEY. 
 
 Old Law. — There is an exquisiteness oi 
 moral sensibility, making one's eyes to gush 
 out tears of delight, and a poetical strange- 
 ness in the circumstances of this sweet tragi- 
 comedy, which are imlike anything in the 
 dramas which Massinger Avrote alone. The 
 pathos is of a subtler edge. Middleton and 
 Eowley, who assisted in it, had both of them 
 finer geniuses than their associate. 
 
 JAMES SHIRLEY. 
 
 Claims a place amongst the worthies of this 
 period, not so much for any transcendent 
 talent in himself, as that he was the last 
 of a great race, all of whom spoke nearly 
 the same language, and had a set of 
 moral feelings and notions in common. A 
 new language, and quite a new turn of 
 tragic and comic interest, came in with the 
 Restoration. 
 
 SPECIMENS FEOM THE WRITINGS OF FULLER, 
 
 THE CHUKCH BISTOEIAN. 
 
 The writings of Fuller are usually de- 
 signated by the title of quaint, and with 
 sufficient reason ; for such was his natural 
 bias to conceits, that I doubt not upon most 
 occasions it would have been going out of his 
 
 way to have expressed himself out of them. 
 But his wit is not always a lumen siccum, a 
 dry faculty of surprising ; on the contrary, 
 his conceits are oftentimes deeply steeped in 
 human feeling and piission. Above all, his 
 
>3d 
 
 SPECIMENS FROM THE WRITINGS OF FULLER. 
 
 way of telling a story, for its eager liveliness, 
 and the peri^etual running commentary of 
 the narrator happily blended with the nar- 
 ration, is perhaps unequalled. 
 
 As liis works are now scarcely perused 
 but by antiquaries, I thought it might not 
 be unacceptable to my readers to present 
 them with some specimens of his manner, in 
 single thoughts and phrases ; and in some 
 few passages of greater length, chiefly of a 
 narrative description. I shall ai-range them 
 as I casually find them in my book of 
 extracts, without being solicitous to specify 
 the particular work from which they are 
 taken. 
 
 Pyramids. — "The Pyramids themselves, 
 doting with age, have forgotten the names of 
 their founders." 
 
 Virtue in a short person. — " His soul had 
 but a short diocese to visit, and therefore 
 might the better attend the effectual in- 
 forming thereof." 
 
 Intellect in a very tall one. — " Ofttimes such 
 who are built four stories high, are observed 
 to have little in their cock-loft." 
 
 Naturals. — " Their heads sometimes so 
 little, that there is no room for wit ; some- 
 times so long, that there is no wit for so 
 much room." 
 
 Negroes. — "The image of God cut in 
 ebony." 
 
 School-divinity. — "At the first it will be 
 as welcome to thee as a prison, and their 
 very solutions will seem knots unto thee." 
 
 Mr. Perkins the Divine. — " He had a 
 capacious head, with angles winding and 
 roomy enough to lodge all controversial in- 
 tricacies." 
 
 The same. — "He would pronounce the 
 word Damn with such an emphasis as left 
 a doleful echo in his auditors' eax-s a good 
 while after." 
 
 Judyes in capital cases. — " O let him 
 take heed how he strikes that hath a dead 
 hand." 
 
 Memory. — "Philosophers place it in the 
 rear of the head, and it seems the mine of 
 memory lies there, because there men 
 naturally dig for it, scratching it when they 
 are at a loss." 
 
 Fancy. — " It is the most boundless and 
 restless faculty of the soul ; for while the 
 Understanding and the Will are kept, as it 
 were, in libera cusiodia to their objects of 
 
 verum et bonum, the Fancy is free from all 
 engagements : it digs without spade, sails 
 without ship, flies without wings, builds 
 without charges, fights without bloodshed ; 
 in a moment striding from the centre to 
 the circumference of the world ; by a kind 
 of omnipotency creating and annihilating 
 things in an instant ; and things divorced 
 in Nature are married in Fancy as in a law- 
 less place." 
 
 Infants. — " Some, admiring what motivea 
 to mix-th infants meet with in their silent 
 and solitary smiles, have resolved, how truly 
 I know not, that then they converse with 
 angels ; as indeed such cannot among mortals 
 find any fitter companions." 
 
 Music. — " Such is the sociableness of music, 
 it conforms itself to all com])anie3 both in 
 mirth and mourning ; complying to imjjrove 
 that passion with which it finds the auditors 
 most affected. In a word, it is an invention 
 which might have beseemed a son of Seth 
 to have been the father thereof: though 
 better it was that Cain's great-grandchild 
 should have the credit fii'st to find it, than 
 the world the uuhappiness longer to have 
 wanted it." 
 
 St. Monica. — " Drawing near her death, 
 she sent most pious thoughts as harbingers 
 to heaven, and her soul saw a glimpse of 
 happiness through the chinks of her sickness- 
 broken body." * 
 
 Mortality. — "To smell to a turf of fresh 
 earth is wholesome for the body, no less are 
 thoughts of mortality cordial to the soul." 
 
 Virgin. — "No lordling husband shall at 
 the same time command her presence and 
 distance ; to be always near in constant 
 attendance, and always to stand aloof in 
 awful observance." 
 
 Elder Brother. — " Is one who made haste 
 to come into the world to bring his parents 
 the first news of male posterity, and is well 
 rewarded for his tidings." 
 
 Bishop Fletcher. — "llis pride was rather 
 on him than in him, as only gait and gestui-e 
 deep, not sinking to his heart, though cause- 
 lessly condemned for a proud man, as who 
 was a good hypocrite, and far more humble 
 than he appeared." 
 
 Masters of Colleges. — "A little allay of 
 
 * " The Roul'g dnrk cottnge, bnttcr'd and dccayod, 
 Lets in new liKliUi through chinks which tim« 
 has made." — Walleu. 
 
 i^M^dki 
 
dulness in a Master of a College makes him 
 fitter to manage secular affairs." 
 
 The Good reoman. — " Is a gentleman in 
 ore, whom the next age may see refined." 
 
 Good Parent. — " For his love, therein like 
 a well-drawn pictui-e, he eyes all his children 
 alike." 
 
 Beformxiy in Children. — "This partiality 
 is tyranny, when parents dospi.se those that 
 are deformed ; enough to break those whom 
 God had bowed before." 
 
 Good Master. — " In coi'recting his servant 
 he becomes not a slave to his own passion. 
 Not cruelly making new indentures of the 
 flesh of his apprentice. He is tender of his 
 servant in sickness and age. If crippled in 
 his service, his house is his hospital. Yet 
 how many thi'ow away those dry bones, out 
 of the which themselves have sucked the 
 marrow ! " 
 
 Good Widoiv. — " If she can speak but little 
 good of him [her dead husband] she speaks 
 but little of him. So handsomely folding up 
 her discourse, that his virtues are shown 
 outwards, and his vices wrapt up in silence ; 
 as counting it barbarism to throw dirt on 
 his memory, who hath mould cast on his 
 body." 
 
 Horses. — " These are men's wmgs, where- 
 with they make such speed. A generous 
 creature a horse is, sensible in some sort of 
 honour ; and made most handsome by that 
 which defoiTus men most — pride." 
 
 Martyrdom. — " Heart of oak hath some- 
 times warped a little in the scorching heat 
 of persecution. Their want of true courage 
 herein cannot be excused. Yet many cen- 
 sure them for surrendering up their forts 
 after a long siege, who would have yielded 
 up their own at the first summons. — Oh ! 
 there is more required to make one valiant, 
 than to Ciill Oranmer or Jewel coward ; as if 
 the fire in Smithfield had been no hotter 
 than what is painted in the Book of Martyrs." 
 
 Text of St. Pait^. — "St. Paul saith, Let 
 not the sun go down on your wrath, to carry 
 news to the antipodes in another world of 
 thy revengeful nature. Yet let us take the 
 Apostle's meaning rather than his /words, 
 with all possible speed to depose our passion ; 
 not understanding him so literally, that we 
 may take leave to be angry till sunset : then 
 might our wrath lengthen with the days ; and 
 men in Greenland, where the day lasts above 
 
 a quarter of a year, have plentiful scope for 
 revenge." * 
 
 Bishop Erownrig. — " He carried learning 
 enough in numerato about nim in Mi; pockets 
 for any discourse, and had much luoie at 
 home in his chests for any serious dispute." 
 
 Modest Want. — " Those that with diligence 
 fight against poverty, though neither conquer 
 till death makes it a drawn battle, expect 
 not but prevent their craving of thee : for 
 God forbid the heavens should never rain, 
 till the earth first opens her mouth ; seeing 
 some grotiJids tvill sooner burn than chap." 
 
 Death-led Temptations. — "The devil is most 
 busy on the last day of his term ; and a 
 tenant to be outed cares not what mischief 
 he doth." 
 
 Conversation. — " Seeing we are civilised 
 Englishmen, let us not be naked savages in 
 our talk." 
 
 Wounded Soldier. — " Halting is the state- 
 liest march of a soldier ; and 'tis a brave 
 sight to see the flesh of an ancient as torn as 
 his colours." 
 
 Wat Tyler. — " A misogrammatist ; if a good 
 Greek word may be given to so barbarous a 
 rebel." 
 
 Heralds. — " Heralds new mould men's 
 names — taking from them, adding to them, 
 melting out all the liquid letters, torturing 
 mutes to make them speak, and making 
 vowels dumb, — to bring it to a fallacious 
 homonomy at the last, that their names may be 
 the same with those noble houses they pre- 
 tend to." 
 
 Antiquarian Diligence. — "It is most worthy 
 observation, with what diligence he [Camden] 
 inquired after ancient places, making hue 
 and cry after many a city which was run 
 away, and by certain marks and tokens pur- 
 suing to find it ; as by the situation on the 
 Eoman highways, by just distance from other 
 ancient cities, by some afiinity of name, by 
 tradition of the inhabitants, by Roman coins 
 digged up, and by some appearance of ruins. 
 A broken urn is a whole evidence ; or an 
 
 * This whimsical prevention of a consequence which 
 no one would have thought of deducing, — setting up an 
 absurduin on purpose to hunt it down — placing guards 
 as it were at the very outposts of possibility, — gravely 
 giving out laws to insanity and prescribing moral fences 
 to distcmpeccd intellects, could never have entered into 
 a head less entertainingly constructed than that of Fuller, 
 or Sir Thomas Browne, the very air of whose style the 
 conclusion of this passage most aptly imitates. 
 
MS 
 
 SPECIMENS FROM THE WRITINGS OF FULLER 
 
 old gate still surviving, out of which the city 
 is run out. Besides, commonly some new 
 spruce town not far off is grown out of the 
 ashes thereof, which yet hath so much natural 
 affection as dutifully to own those reverend 
 ruins for her mother." 
 
 Henry de Essex. — " He is too well known 
 in our English Chronicles, being Baron of 
 Ealeigh, in Essex, and Hereditary Standai'd 
 Bearer of England. It happened in the reign 
 of this king [Henry II.] there w:is a fierce 
 battle fought in Flintshire, at Coleshall, be- 
 tween the English and Welsh, wherein this 
 Henry de Essex animum et signum, simul 
 abjecit, betwixt traitor and coward, cast away 
 both his courage and banner together, occa- 
 sioning a great overthrow of EuglLsh. But 
 he that had the baseness to do, had the bold- 
 ness to deny the doing, of so foul a fact ; 
 until he was challenged in combat by Robert 
 de Momford, a knight, eye-witness thereof, 
 and by him overcome in a duel. Whereupon 
 his large inheritance was confiscated to the 
 king, and he himself, partly thrust, partly 
 going, into a convent, hid his head in a cowl, 
 under which, betwixt shame and sanctity, he 
 blushed out the remainder of his life."* — 
 Worthies, article Bedfordshire. 
 
 Sir Edward llaricood, Knt. — " I have read 
 of a bird, which hath a face like, and yet 
 will prey upon, a man : who coming to the 
 water to drink, and finding there by reflec- 
 tion, that he had killed one like himself, 
 pineth away by degrees, and never after- 
 wards enjoyeth itself. f Such is in some sort 
 
 * The fine imagination of Fuller has done what mig-ht 
 have been pronounced impossible : it has given an inte- 
 rest and a holy character to coward infamy. Nothing 
 can be more beautiful than the concluding account of the 
 last days, and expiatory retirement, of poor lleury de 
 Kssex. The address with which the whole of this little 
 story is told is most consummate : tlie iharni of it seems 
 to consist in a perpetual balance of antitheses not too 
 violently opposed, and the consequent activity of mind in 
 which the reader is kept: — "Betwixt traitor and 
 coward" — " baseness to do, boldness to deny " — " partly 
 thrust, partly going, into a convent " — " betwixt shame 
 and sanctity." The reader by this artifice is taken into 
 a kind of partnership with the writer, — his judtrmcnt is 
 exercised in settling the preponderance, — he feels as if 
 he were consulted as to the issue. But the modern his. 
 torian flings at once the dead weight of his own judg- 
 ment into the scale, and settles the matter. 
 
 + I do not know where Fuller rea<lof this bird ; but a 
 more awful and affecting story, and moralising of u story, 
 in Natural History, or rather in that Fabulous Natural 
 History where poets and mythologists found the Fha-nix 
 and the Unicorn, and " other strange fowl," is nowhere 
 cxt^mt. It is a fable which Sir Thomas Browne, if he 
 had heard of it, would have exploded among his Vulgar 
 
 the condition of Sir Edward. This accident, 
 that he had killed one in a private quarrel, 
 put a period to his carnal mirth, and was a 
 covering to his eyes all the days of his life. 
 No possible provocations could afterwards 
 tempt him to a duel ; and no wonder that 
 one's conscience loathed that whereof he had 
 surfeited. He refused all challenges with 
 more honour than others accepted them ; it 
 being well known, that he would set his foot 
 as far in the face of his enemy as any man 
 alive." — Worthies, article Lincolnshire. 
 
 Decayed Gentry. — " It happened in the 
 reign of King James, when Henry Earl of 
 Huntingdon was Lieutenant of Leicestershire, 
 that a labourer's son in that country was 
 pressed into the wars ; as I take it, to go 
 over with Count Mansfield. The old man at 
 Leicester requested his son might be dis- 
 charged, as being the only staff of his age, 
 who by his industry maintained him and his 
 mother. The Earl demanded his name, 
 which the man for a long time was loath to 
 tell (as suspecting it a fault for so poor a 
 man to confess the truth), at last he told his 
 name was Hastings. ' Cousin Hastings,' said 
 the Earl, ' we cannot all be top branches of 
 the tree, though we all spring from the same 
 root ; your son, my kinsman, shall not be 
 pressed.' So good was the meeting of 
 modesty in a poor, with courtesy in an hon- 
 ourable jserson, and gentry I believe in both. 
 And I have reason to believe, that some who 
 justly own the surnames and blood of Bohuns, 
 Mortimers, and Plantagenets (though igno- 
 rant of their own extractions,) are hid in the 
 heap of common people, where they find that 
 under a thatched cottage wliich some of their 
 ancestors could not enjoy in a leaded castle, 
 — contentment, with quiet and security." — 
 Worthies, article Of Shire-Reeves or Shirifes. 
 
 Tenderness of Conscience in a Trudcsnuin. — 
 " Thomas Curson, born in Allhallows, Lom- 
 bard-street, armourer, dwelt without Bishops- 
 
 Errors ; but the delight which he would hnve taken in 
 the discu.'ising of its probabilities, would have shown 
 that the truth of the fuel, though the avowed object of 
 his search was not so much the motive which put him 
 upon the investigatitm, as those hidden alHnities and 
 poetical analogies, — those essential verities in Uie appli- 
 cation of strange fable, which made him linger with such 
 reluctant delay among the last fading lights of popular 
 tradition ; and not seldom to conjure up a superstition, 
 that had been long extinct, from its dusty grave, to inter 
 it himself with greater ceremonies and solemnities of 
 burial. 
 
 !^k 
 
SPECIMENS FROM THE WRITINGS OF FULLER. 
 
 631; 
 
 gate. It happened that a stage-player bor- 
 rowed a rusty musket, which had lain long 
 loger in his shop : now though his part were 
 comical, he therewith acted an unexpected 
 tragedy, killing one of the standers by, the 
 gun casually going off on the stage, which 
 he suspected not to be charged. Oh the 
 difference of divers men in the tenderness of 
 their consciences ! some are scarce touched 
 with a wound, whilst others ai'e wounded 
 with a touch therein. This poor armoui-er 
 was highly afflicted therewith, though done 
 ag.ainst his will, yea, without his know- 
 ledge, in his absence, by another, out of 
 mere chance. Hereupon he resolved to give 
 all his estate to pious uses : no sooner had he 
 gotten a round sum, but jiresently he posted 
 with it in his apron to the Court of Alder- 
 men, and was in pain till by their direction 
 he had settled it for the relief of poor in his 
 own and other parishes, and disposed of some 
 hundreds of pounds accordingly, as I am 
 credibly informed by the then churchwardens 
 of the said jjarish. Thus as he conceived him- 
 self casually (though at a great distance) to 
 have occasioned the death of one, he was 
 the immediate and direct cause of giving a 
 comfortable living to many." 
 
 Burning of JVickliffe's Body hy Order of the 
 Council of Constance. — " Hitherto [a.d. 1428] 
 the corpse of John Wickliffe had quietly 
 slept in his grave about forty-one years after 
 his death, till his body was reduced to bones, 
 and his bones almost to dust. For though the 
 earth in the chancel of Lutterworth, in Leices- 
 tershire, where he was interred, hath not so 
 quick a digestion with the earth of Aceldama, 
 to consume flesh in twenty-four hours, yet 
 sucli the appetite thereof, and all other 
 English graves, to leave small revei'sions of 
 a body after so many years. But now such 
 the spleen of the Council of Constance, as 
 they not only cursed his memox'y as dying an 
 obstinate heretic, but ordered that his bones 
 (with this charitable caution, — if it may be 
 iliscerned from the bodies of other faithful 
 
 people) be taken out of the ground, .and 
 thrown far off from any Christian burial. 
 In obedience hereunto, Richai-d Fleming, 
 Bishop of Lincoln, Diocesan of Lutterworth, 
 sent his officers (vultures with a quick sight, 
 scent, at a dead carcass) to ungrave him. Ac- 
 cordingly to Lutterworth they come, Sumner, 
 Commissary, Official, Chancellor, Proctors, 
 Doctors, and their servants, (so that the 
 remnant of thebodywouldnot hold out aboue 
 amongst so many hands,) take what was left 
 out of the grave, and burnt them to ashes, 
 and cast them into Swift, a neighbouring 
 brook, running hard by. Thiis this brook has 
 conveyed his ashes into Avon, Avon into Severn, 
 Severn into the narrow seas, they into the 
 main ocean; aiid thus the ashes of Wickliffe 
 are the emblem of his doctrine, which now is 
 dispersed all the world over."* — Church 
 History. 
 
 * The concluding period of this most lively narrative 
 I will not call a conceit : it is one of the grandest con- 
 ceptions 1 ever met with. One feels the ashes of Wick- 
 liffe gliding away out of the reach of the Sumners, Com- 
 missaries, Officials, Proctors, Doctors, and all the 
 puddcring rout of executioners of the impotent rage of 
 the buttled Council : from Swift into Avon, from Avon 
 into Severn, from Severn into the narrow seas, from the 
 narrow seas into the main ocean, where they become the 
 emblem of his doctrine, " dispersed all the world over." 
 Hamlet's tracing the body of Coesar to the clay that 
 stops a beer barrel is a no less curious pursuit of 
 " ruined mortality ; " but it is in an inverse ratio to this : 
 it degrades and saddens us, for one part of our nature at 
 least ; but this expands the whole of our nature, and 
 gives to the body a sort of ubiquity, — a diffusion as far as 
 the actions of its partner can have reach or influence. 
 
 I have seen this passage smiled at, and set down as a 
 quaint conceit of old Fuller. But what is not a conceit 
 to those who read it in a temper different from that in 
 which the writer composed it ? The most pathetic parts 
 of poetry to cold tempers seem and are nonsense, 
 as divinity was to the Greeks foolishness. When 
 Kichard II., meditating on his own utter annihilation aa 
 to royalty, cries out, 
 
 " O that I were a mockery king of snow, 
 To melt before the sun of Bolingbroke," 
 
 if we had been going on pace for pace with the passion 
 before, this sudden conversion of a strong-felt metaphor 
 into sonicthing to be actually realised in nature, like that 
 of Jeremiah, " Oh ! that my head were waters, and mine 
 eyes a fountain of tears," is strictly and strikingly 
 natural ; but come unprepared upon it, and it is a con- 
 ceit : and so is a "head " turned into " water*." 
 
540 
 
 ON THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF HOGARTH. 
 
 ON THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF HOGARTH ; 
 
 WITH SOME REMARKS ON A PASSAGE IN THE WRITINGS OF THE LATE ME. BA&BT. 
 
 One of the earliest and noblest ■enjoy- 
 ments 1 had when a hoy, was in the contem- 
 plation of those capital prints by Hogarth, 
 the Harlofs and Rake's Progresses, which, 
 along with some others, hung upon the walls 
 of a great hall in an old-fasliioned house in 
 
 shire, and seemed the solitary tenants 
 
 (with myself) of that antiquated and life- 
 deserted apartment. 
 
 Recollection of the manner in which those 
 prints used to affect me has often made me 
 wonder, when I have heard Hogarth de- 
 scribed as a mere comic painter, as one of 
 those whose chief ambition was to raise a 
 laugh. To deny that tliere are throughout 
 the prints which I have mentioned circum- 
 stances introduced of a laughable tendency, 
 would be to run counter to the common 
 notions of mankind ; but to suppose tliat in 
 their riding character they appeal chiefly to 
 the i-isible faculty, and not first and foremost 
 to the very heart of man, its best and most 
 serious feelings, would be to mistake no less 
 grossly their aimand purpose. Aset of severer 
 Satires (for they are not so much Comedies, 
 which they have been likened to, as they are 
 strong and masculine Satires) less mingled 
 with anything of mere fun, were never 
 written upon paper, or graven upon copper. 
 They resemble Juvenal, or tlie satiric touches 
 in Timou of Athens. 
 
 I was pleased with the reply of a gentleman, 
 who being asked which book he esteemed 
 most in his librai-y, answered, — " Shak- 
 speare:" being asked which he esteemed 
 next best, replied, " Hogartli." His graphic 
 representations are indeed books : they have 
 the teeming, fniitful, suggestive meaning of 
 words. Other pictures we look at, — his 
 prints we read. 
 
 In pursuance of this parallel, I have some- 
 times euterlaiiied myself with comi)aring the 
 Timon of Alhem of Shakspeare (wliicii I 
 have just lueiitioncd) and Hogarth's Rakes 
 Progress togethei-. The story, tiie moi-al, in 
 both is nearly the same. Tlie wild coui-so of 
 
 riot and extravagance, ending in the one with 
 driving the Prodigal from the society of men 
 into the solitude of the deserts, and in the 
 other with conducting the Rake through his 
 several stages of dissipation into the still 
 more complete desolations of the mad-house, 
 in the play and in tlie picture, are described 
 with almost equal force and nature. The 
 levee of the Rake, which forms the subject 
 of the second plate in the series, is almost a 
 transcript of Timon's levee in the opening 
 scene of that play. -We find a dedicating 
 poet, and other similar characters, in both. 
 
 The concluding scene in the R/xke's Progress 
 is perhaps superior to the last scenes of 
 Tiraoii. If we seek fur something of kindred 
 excellence in poetry, it must be in the scenes 
 of Lear's beginning madness, where the King 
 and the Foul and the Tom-o'-Bedlam conspire 
 to produce such a medley of mirth checked 
 by misery, and misery rebuked by mirth ; 
 where the society of those "stiauge bed- 
 fellows " which misfortunes have brought 
 Lear acquainted witli, so finely sets forth the 
 destitute state of the monarch ; while the 
 lunatic bans of the one, and the disjointed 
 sayings and wild but pregnant allusions of 
 the other, so wonderfully sympathise with 
 that confusion, which they seem to assist in 
 the production of, in the senses of that 
 "child-changed father." 
 
 In the scene in BeiUam, which terminates 
 the Rakers Progress, we find the same assort- 
 ment of the ludicrous with the terrible. 
 Here is desperate madness, the overturning 
 of originally strong thinking faculties, at 
 which we shudder, as we contemphite the 
 duration and pressure of atlliction which it 
 must have asked to destroy such a building ; 
 — and here is the gradual hurtless lapse into 
 idiocy, of faculties, which at their best of 
 timi'S never having been strong, we look 
 upon the consummation of their decaj' with 
 no more of pity than is consistent with a 
 smile. The mad tailor, the poor driveller 
 that has gone out of his wita (and truly he 
 
ON THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF HOGARTH. 
 
 541 
 
 appears to have had no great journey to go 
 to get past their confines) for the love (if 
 Charming Betty Careless, — these lialf-laugh- 
 able, scarce-pitiable objects, take off from the 
 horror which the principal figure would of 
 itself raise, at the same time that they assist 
 the feeling of the scene by contributing to 
 the general notion of its subject : — 
 
 " Madness, thou chaos of ihe brain, 
 
 What art, that pleasure piv'st and pain ? 
 
 Tyranny of Fancy's reip:n ! 
 
 Mcclianic Fancy, that can build 
 
 Vast labyrinths and mazes wild. 
 
 With rule disjointed, shapeless measure, 
 
 Fill'd with horror, fiU'd with pleasure ! 
 
 Shapes of horror, that would even 
 
 Cast doubts of mercy upon heaven ; 
 
 Shapes of pleasure, that but seen, 
 
 Would split the shaking sides of Spleen." • 
 
 Is it carrying the spirit of comparison to 
 excess to remark, that in the poor kneeling 
 weeping female who accompanies her seducer 
 in his sad decay, there is something analogous 
 to Kent, or Caius, as he delights rather to 
 be called, in Lear, — the noblest pattern of 
 virtue which even Shakspeare has conceived, 
 — who follows his royal master in banishment, 
 that had pronounced his banishment, and, 
 forgetful at once of his wrongs and dignities, 
 taking on himself the disguise of a menial, 
 retains his fidelity to the figure, his loyalty 
 to the carcass, the shadow, the shell and 
 empty husk of Lear ? 
 
 In the perusal of a book, or of a picture, 
 much of the impression which we receive 
 depends upon the habit of mind which we 
 bring with us to such perusal. The same 
 circumstance may make one person laugh, 
 which shall render another very serious ; or 
 in the same person the first impression may 
 be corrected by after-thought. The mis- 
 employed incongruous characters at the 
 Harlot's Funeral, on a superficial inspection, 
 provoke to laughter ; but when we have 
 sacrificed the first emotion to levity, a very 
 different fi'ame of mind succeeds, or the 
 painter lias lost half his purpose. I never 
 look at that wonderful assemblage of depraved 
 beings, who, without a grain of reverence or 
 pity in their perverted minds, are perfqrming 
 the sacred exteriors of duty to the relics of 
 their departed partner in folly, but I am as 
 much moved to sympathy from the very 
 want of it in them, as I should be by the 
 
 * Lines inscribed under the plate. 
 
 finest representation of a virtuous death-bed 
 surrounded by real mourners, jjious children, 
 weeping friends, — perha])s more by the very 
 Contrast. What refiections does it not awake, 
 of the dreadful heartless state in which the 
 creature (a female too) must have lived, who 
 in death wants the accompaniment of one 
 genuine tear. That wretch who is removing 
 the lid of the coffin to gaze upon the corpse 
 with a face which indicates a perfect negation 
 of all goodness or womanhood — the hypocrite 
 parson and his demure partner — all the 
 fiendish group — to a thoughtful mind present 
 a moral emblem more affecting than if the 
 poor friendless carcass had been depicted as 
 thrown out to the woods, where wolves had 
 assisted at its obsequies, itself furnishing 
 forth its own funeral banquet. 
 
 It is easy to laugh at such incongruities as 
 are met together in this picture, — incongruous 
 objects being of the very essence of laughter, 
 — but surely the laugh is far different in its 
 kind from that thoughtless species to which 
 we are moved by mere farce and grotesque. 
 We laugh when Ferdinand Count Fatliom, 
 at the first sight of the white cliffs of Br. tain, 
 feels his heart yearn with filial fondness 
 towards the land of his progenitors, which he 
 is coming to fleece and plunder, — we smile 
 at the exquisite irony of the passage, — but if 
 we are not led on by such passages to some 
 more salutaxy feeling than laughter, we are 
 very negligent perusers of them in book or 
 picture. 
 
 It is the fashion with those who cry up 
 the great Historical Scliool in this country, 
 at the head of which Sir Joshua Reynolds is 
 placed, to exclude Hogarth from that school, 
 as an artist of an inferior and vulgar class. 
 Those persons seem to me to confound the 
 painting of subjects in common or vulgar 
 life with the being a vulgar artist. The 
 quantity of thought which Hogarth crowds 
 into every picture would alone unvulgarise 
 every subject which he might choose. Let 
 us take the lowest of his subjects, the print 
 called Gin Lane. Here is plenty of poverty 
 and low stuff to disgust upon a superficial 
 view ; and accordingly a cold spectator feels 
 himself immediately disgusted and repelled. 
 I have seen many turn away from it, not 
 being able to bear it. Tlie same persons 
 would perhaps have looketl with great com- 
 placency upon Poussiu's celebrated pictiu'e 
 
542 
 
 ON THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF HOGARTH. 
 
 of the Plague at Athens.* Disease and Death 
 and bewildering Terror, in Athenian garments, 
 are endurable, and come, as the delicate 
 critics express it, within the " limits of 
 pleasurable sensation." But the scenes of 
 their own St. Giles's, delineated by their own 
 countryman, are too shocking to think of 
 Yet if we could abstract our minds from the 
 fascinating colours of the picture, and forget 
 the coarse execution (in some respects) of the 
 print, intended as it was to be a cheap plate, 
 accessible to the poorer sort of people, for 
 ■whose instruction it was done, I think we 
 could have no hesitation in conferring the 
 palm of superior genius upon Hogarth, 
 comparing tliis work of his with Pou.ssin's 
 picture. There is more of imagination in it 
 — that power which draws all things to one, 
 — which makes things animate and inani- 
 mate, beings with their attributes, subjects, 
 and their accessories, take one colour and 
 serve to one effect. Everything in the print, 
 to use a vulgar expression, tells. Every part 
 is full of " strange images of death." It is 
 perfectly amazing and astounding to look at. 
 Not only the two prominent figures, the 
 woman and the half-dead man, which are as' 
 terrible as anything which Michael Angelo 
 ever drew, but everything else in the print, 
 contributes to bewilder and stupify, — the 
 very houses, as I heard a friend of mine 
 express it, tumbling all about in various 
 directions, seem drunk — seem absolutely reel- 
 ing from the effect of that diabolical spirit 
 of frenzy which goes forth over the whole 
 composition. To show the poetical and 
 almost prophetical conception in the artist, 
 one little circumstance may serve. Not 
 content with the dying and dead figures, 
 which he has strewed in profusion over the 
 proper scene of the action, he shows you 
 what (of a kindred nature) is passing beyond 
 it. Close by the shell, in which, by direction 
 of the parish beadle, a man is depositing his 
 wife, is an old wall, whieli, partaking of the 
 universal decay around it, is tumbling to 
 pieces. Tiirough a gap in this wall are seen 
 three figures, which appear to make a part 
 in some funeral procession which is ])assing 
 by on the other side of the wall, out of the 
 sphere of the composition. This extending 
 of the interest beyond the boumls of the 
 
 • At the lute Mr. IIopc'H, in Cavcndish-siiuarc. 
 
 subject could only have been conceived by a 
 great genius. Shakspeare, in his description 
 of the painting of the Trojan War, in his 
 Tarquinand Liicrece, has introduced a similar 
 device, where the painter made a part stand 
 for the whole : — 
 
 " For much imaprinary work was there, 
 Conceit deceitful, so compact, so kind, 
 That for Achilles' image stood his spear, 
 Grip'd in an armed hand ; himself behind 
 Was left unseen, save to the eye of mind : 
 A hand, a foot, a face, a leg, a head. 
 Stood for the whole to be imagined." 
 
 This he well calls imaginary u-orl; where 
 the spectator must meet the artist in his 
 conceptions half way ; and it is peculiar to 
 the confidence of high genius alone to trust 
 so much to spectatoi-s or readers. Lesser 
 artists show everything distinct and full, as 
 they require an obiect to be made out to 
 themselves before they can comprehend it. 
 
 When I thmk of the power displayed in 
 this (I will not hesitate to say) sublime 
 print, it seems to me the extreme narrowness 
 of system alone, and of that rage for classifi- 
 cation, by which, in matters of taste at least, 
 we are perpetually perplexing, instead of 
 arranging, our ideas, that would make us 
 concede to the work of Poussin above 
 mentioned, and deny to this of Hogarth, the 
 name of a grand serious composition. 
 
 We are for ever deceiving ourselves with 
 names and theories. We call one man a 
 great historical painter, because ho has taken 
 for his subjects kings or great men, or 
 transactions over which time has thrown a 
 grandeur. We term another the painter of 
 common life, and set him down in our minds 
 for an artist of an inferior class, without 
 reflecting whether the quantity of thoiiglit 
 shown by the latter may not much more 
 than level the distinction which their mere 
 choice of subjects may seem to pl.-ice between 
 them ; or whether, in fact, from that very 
 common life a groat artist may not extract 
 as deep an interi'st as another man from that 
 which we are pleased to call history. 
 
 I entertain the highest rosi)oct for the 
 talents and virtues of Kej-noMs, but I do not 
 like that his reputation should overshadow 
 and stifle the merits of such a man as 
 Hogarth, nor that to mere names and 
 classifications we should be content to 
 sacrifice one of the greatest ornaments of 
 England. 
 
ON THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF HOGARTH. 
 
 543 
 
 I would ask the most enthusiastic admirer 
 of Reynolds, whether iu the countenances of 
 his Staring and Grinning Despair, which he 
 has given us for tlie faces of Ugolino and 
 dying Beaufort, there be anything com- 
 parable to the expression which Hogarth 
 has put into the face of his broken-down 
 rake in the last plate but one of the Rake's 
 Progress* where a letter from the manager 
 is brought to him to say that his play " will 
 not do ? " Here all is easy, natural, undis- 
 torted, but withal what a mass of woe is 
 here accumulated ! — the long history of a 
 mis-spent life is compressed into the coun- 
 tenance as plainly as the series of plates 
 before had told it ; here is no attempt at 
 Gorgonian looks, which are to freeze the 
 beholder — no grinning at the antique bed- 
 posts — no face-making, or consciousness of 
 the presence of spectators in or out of the 
 picture, but grief kept to a man's self, a face 
 retiring from notice with the shame which 
 great anguish sometimes brings with it, — a 
 final leave taken of hope, — the coming on of 
 vacancy and stupefaction, — a beginning 
 alienation of mind looking like tranquillit}'. 
 Here is matter for the mind of the beholder 
 to feed on fur the hour together, — matter to 
 feed and fertilise the mind. It is too real to 
 admit one thought about the power of the 
 artist who did it. "When we compare the 
 expression in subjects which so faii-ly admit 
 of comparison, and find the superiority so 
 clearly to remain with Hogarth, shall the 
 mere contemptible difference of the scene of 
 it being laid, in the one case, in our Fleet or 
 King's Bench Prison, and, in the other, in 
 the State Prison of Pisa, or the bed-room of 
 a cardinal, — or that the subject of the one 
 has never been authenticated, and the other 
 is matter of history, — so weigh down the 
 real points of the comparison, as to induce 
 us to rank the artist who has chosen the one 
 scene or subject (though confessedly inferior 
 in that which constitutes the soul of his art) 
 in a class from which we exclude the better 
 genius (who has happened to make choice of 
 the other) with something like disgrace ] * 
 
 • The first perhaps in all Hogarth for serious expres- 
 sion. That which comes next to it, I think, is the jaded 
 morning countenance of the debauchee in the second 
 plate of the Mnrriafie Alamode, which lectures on the 
 vanity of pleasure us audibly as anything in Ecnlesiastes. 
 
 t Sir Joshua Reynolds, somewhere in his Lectures, 
 speaks of the presumption of Hogarth in attempting the 
 
 The Boys under DemonioKal Possession of 
 Raphael and Domenichino, by what law of 
 classification are we bound to assign them to 
 belong to the great style in painting, and to 
 degrade into an inferior class the Rake of 
 Hogarth when he is the Madman in the 
 Bedlam scene ? I am sure he is far more 
 impressive than either. It is a face wliich 
 no one that has seen can easily forget. There 
 is the stretch of human suff"ering to tlie 
 utmost endurance, severe bodily pain brought 
 on by strong mental agony, the frightful 
 obstinate laugh of madness, — yet all so 
 unforced and natural, that those who never 
 were witness to madness in real life, think 
 they see nothing but what is familiar to 
 them in this face. Here are no tricks of 
 distortion, nothing but the natural face of 
 agony. This is high tragic painting, and we 
 might as well deny to Shakspeare the 
 honours of a great tragedian, because he has 
 interwoven scenes of mirth with the serious 
 business of his plays, as refuse to Hogarth 
 the same praise for the two concluding 
 scenes of the Rake's Progress, because of the 
 Comic Lunatics * which he has tiirown into 
 the one, or the Alchymist that he has 
 introduced in the other, who is paddling in 
 the coals of his furnace, keeping alive the 
 
 grand style in painting, by which he means his choice of 
 certain Scripture subjects. Hogarth's excursions into 
 Holy Land were not very numerous, but what he has 
 left us in this kind have at least this merit, that they 
 have expression of some sort or other in them, — the 
 Child Moses before Pharaoh's Daughter, for instance : 
 which is more than can be said of Sir Joshua Reynolds's 
 liepose in Egypt, painted for Macklin's Bible, where for 
 a Madonna he has substituted a sleepy, insensible, un- 
 motherly girl, one so little worthy to have been selected 
 as the Mother of the Saviour, that she seems to have 
 neither heart nor feeling to entitle her to become a 
 mother at all. But indeed the race of Virgin Mary 
 painters seems to have been cut up, root and branch, at 
 the Reformation. Our artists are too good Protestants 
 to give life to that admirable commixture of maternal 
 tenderness with reverential awe and wonder approaching 
 to worship, with which the Virgin Mothers of L. da 
 Vinci and Raphael (themselves by their divine counte- 
 nances inviting men to worship) contemplate the union 
 of the two natures in the person of their Heaven-born 
 Infant. 
 
 ♦ " There are of madmen, as there are of tame. 
 All humour'd not alike. We have here some 
 So apish and fantastic, \My with a feather ; 
 And though 'twould grieve a soul to see God'i 
 
 image 
 So blemish'd and dcfac'd, yet do they act 
 Such antick and such pretty lunacies, 
 That, spite of sorrow, they will make you smile. 
 Others again we hare, like angry lions. 
 Fierce as wild bulls, untameable as Hies." 
 
 S'lnest Whina, 
 
<>44 
 
 ON THE GENIUS >AND CHARACTER OF HOGARTH. 
 
 flames of vain hope -within the very walls of 
 the prison to which the vanity has conducted 
 him, which have taught the darker lesson of 
 extinguished hope to the desponding figure 
 who is the principal person of the scene. 
 
 It is the force of tliese kindly admixtures 
 which assimilates the scenes of Hogarth and 
 of Sh.ikspeare to the drama of real life, 
 where no such thing as pure tragedy is to 
 be found ; but merriment and infelicity, 
 ponderous crime and feather-light vanity, 
 like twi-formed births, disagreeing com- 
 plexions of one intertexture, perpetually 
 unite to show forth motley spectacles to the 
 world. Then it is that the poet or painter 
 shows his art, when in the selection of these 
 comic adjuncts he chooses such circum- 
 stances as sliall relieve, contrast with, or fall 
 into, without forming a violent opposition to 
 his principal object. Who sees not that the 
 Grave-digger in Hanilet, the Fool in Lear, 
 have a kind of correspondency to, and fall in 
 with, the subjects which they seem to 
 interrupt : while the comic stuff in Venice 
 Preserved, and the doggrel nonsense of the 
 Cook and his poisoning associates in the 
 RoUo of Beaumont and Fletcher, are pure, 
 irrelevant, impertinent discords, — as bad as 
 the quarrelling dog and cat under the table 
 of the Lord and the Disciples at Emmaus of 
 Titian ? 
 
 Not to tire the reader with perpetual 
 reference to prints which he may not be 
 fortunate enough to possess, it may be suffi- 
 cient to remark, that the same tragic cast of 
 expression and incident, blended in some 
 instances with a greater alloy of comedy, 
 characterises his other great work, the 
 Marriage Alanwde, as well as those less 
 elaborate exertions of his genius, the prints 
 called Industry and Idleness, the Distrest 
 Poet, &c. forming, with the Harlot's and 
 Rake's Progresses, the most considerable if 
 not the largest class of his productions, — 
 enough surely to rescue Hogarth from the 
 imputation of being a more buffoon, or one 
 whose general aim wjis only to shake the 
 sides. 
 
 There remains a very numerous class of 
 his i)crformances, the object of which must 
 be conffS.sed to be principally comic. ]*.ut in 
 all of them will be found something to dis- 
 tiugui.sh them from the droll jjroductions of 
 Bunbury and others. They have this differ- 
 
 ence, that we do not merely laugh at, we are 
 led into long trains of reflection by them. 
 In this respect they resemble the characters 
 of Chaucer's Pilgrirns, which have strokes 
 of humour in them enough to designate 
 them for the most part as comic, but our 
 strongest feeling still is wonder at the com- 
 prehensiveness of genius which could crowd, 
 as poet and painter have done, into one small 
 canvas so many diverse yet co-operating 
 materials. 
 
 The faces of Hogarth have not a mere 
 momentary interest, as in caricatures, or 
 those grotesque physiognomies which we 
 sometimes catch a glance of in the street, 
 and, struck with their whimsicality, wish 
 for a pencil and the power to sketch them 
 down ; and forget them again as rapidly, — 
 but they are permanent abiding ideas. Not 
 the sports of nature, but her necessary 
 eternal classes. We feel that we cannot part 
 with any of them, lest a link should be 
 broken. 
 
 It is worthy of observation, that he has 
 seldom drawn a mean or insignificant coun- 
 tenance.* Hogarth's mind was eminently 
 reflective ; and, as it has been well observed 
 of Shakspeare, that he has transfused his 
 own poetical character into the persons of 
 his drama (they are all more or less poets) 
 Hogarth has impressed a thinking character 
 upon the persons of his canvas. This remark 
 must not be taken univei-sally. The ex- 
 quisite idiotism of the little gentleman in 
 the bag and sword beating his drum in the 
 print of the Enraged Jfusician, would of 
 itself rise up against so sweeping an asser- 
 tion. But I think it will be found to be 
 true of the generality of his countenances. 
 The knife-grinder and Jew flute-player in the 
 plate just mentioned, may serve jis instances 
 instead of a thousand. They have intense 
 thinking faces, though the purpose to which 
 they are subservient by no means required 
 it ; but indeed it seems as if it was ))ainful 
 to Hogarth to contemplate mere vacancy or 
 insignificance 
 
 • If there arc any of that description, they are in his 
 Sirollitiff Players, a print which lius bien cried up by 
 Lord Orford us the ricliest of liis productions, and it may 
 he, for \vh:vt I know, in the mere lumber, tlie properties, 
 anil dead furniture of tlie scene, but in living churacter 
 and expre^sion it is (for Hogarth] lamviitalily poor and 
 wanting ; it is perhaps the only one of his performaiicci 
 at which wu have a right to feel disgusted. 
 
ON THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF HOGARTH. 
 
 545 
 
 This reflection of the artist's own intellect 
 from the faces of his cliaracters, is one reason 
 why the works of Hogarth, so mi;ch more 
 than those of any other artist, are objects of 
 meditation. Our intellectual natures love 
 the mirror which gives them back their own 
 likenesses. The mental eye will not bend 
 long with delight upon vacancy. 
 
 Another line of eternnl separation between 
 Hogarth and tlie common painters of droll 
 or burlesque subjects, with whom he is often 
 confounded, is the sense of beauty, which in 
 the most unpromising subjects seems never 
 wholly to have deserted him. " Hogarth 
 himself," says Mr. Coleridge,* from whom I 
 have borrowed this observation, speaking of 
 a scene which took place at Katzeburg, 
 "never drew a more ludicrous distortion, 
 both of attitude and physiognomy, than this 
 effect occasioned : nor was there wanting 
 beside it one of those beautiful female faces 
 which the same Hogarth, in whom the satirist 
 never extinguished that love of beauty ichich 
 belonged to him as a poet, so often and so 
 gladly introduces as the central figure in a 
 ci'owd of humorous deformities, which figure 
 (such is the power of true genius) neither 
 acts nor is meant to act as a contrast ; but 
 diffuses through all and over each of the 
 group a spirit of reconciliation and human 
 kindness ; and even when the attention is 
 no longer consciously directed to the cause of 
 this feeling, still blends its tenderness with 
 our laughter : and thus 2>revents the instructive 
 merriment at the whims of nature, or the 
 foibles or humours of our fellow-men, from 
 degenerating into the heart-poison of contempt 
 or hatred.'" To the beautiful females in 
 Hogarth, which Mr. C. has pointed out, 
 might be added, the frequent introduction 
 of children (which Hogarth seems to have 
 taken a particular delight in) into his pieces. 
 They have a singular effect in giving ti'an- 
 quillity and a portion of their own innocence 
 to the subject. The baby riding in its 
 mother's lap in the March to Finchley, (its 
 careless innocent face placed directly behind 
 the intriguing time-furrowed countenance of 
 the treason -plotting French priest,) perfectly 
 sobers the whole of that tumultuous scene. 
 The boy mourner winding up his top witli 
 BO much unpretending insensibility in the 
 
 • The Friend, No. XVI. 
 
 plate of the Harlot's Funeral, (the only thing 
 in that assembly that is not a hypocrite,) 
 quiets and soothes the mind that has been 
 disturbed at the sight of so much depraved 
 man and woman kind. 
 
 I had written thus far, when I met with a 
 passage in the writings of the late Mr. Barry, 
 which, as it ialls in with the vtdgar notion 
 respecting Hogarth, which this Essay has 
 been employed in combating, I shall take the 
 liberty to transcribe, with such remarks as 
 may suggest themselves to me in the tran- 
 scription ; referring the reader for a full 
 answer to that which has gone before, 
 
 " Notwithstanding Hogarth's merit dors undoubtedly 
 entitle him to an honourable place among the artists, 
 and that his little compositions, considered as so many 
 dramatic rcpicscntations, abounding with humour, cha. 
 racier, and extensive observations on the various inci- 
 dents of low, faulty, and vicious life, are very in- 
 geniously brought together, and frequently tell "their 
 own story with more facility than is often found in many 
 of the elevated and more noble inventions of Rajjliael 
 and other great men ; yet it must be honestly confessed, 
 that in what is called knowledge cf the figure, foreigners 
 have justly observed, that Hogarth is often so raw and 
 unformed, as hardly to desei-ve the name of an artist. 
 But this capital defect is not often perceivable, as 
 examples of the naked and of elevated nature but rarely 
 occur in his subjects, which are for the most part filled 
 with cliaracters that in their nature tend to deformity ; 
 besides his figures are small, and the joncturcs, and other 
 difficulties of drawing that might occur in their limbs, 
 are artfully concealed with their clothes, rags, &c. But 
 what would atone for all his defects, even if they were 
 twice told, is his admirable fund of invention, ever inex- 
 haustiblc in its resources; and his satyr, which is 
 always sharp and pertinent, and often highly moral, was 
 (except in a few instances, where he weakly and meanly 
 suffered his integrity to give way to his envy) seldom or 
 never employed in a dishonest or unmanly wiiy. Hogarth 
 has been often imitated in his satirical vein, sometimes 
 in his humorous : but very few have attempted to rival 
 him in his moral walk. The line of art pursued by my 
 very ingenious predecessor and brother Academician, 
 Mr. Penny, is quite distinct from that of Hogarth, and 
 is of a much more delicate and superior relish ; he 
 attempts the heart, and reaches it, whilst Hogarth's 
 general aim is only to shake the sides ; in other respects 
 no comi)arison can be thought of, as Mr. I'cnny has all 
 that knowledge of the figure and academical skill which 
 the other wanted. As to Mr. Bunbury, who had so 
 happily succeeded in the vein of humour and caricatura, 
 he has for some time past altogether relinquished it, for 
 the more amiable pursuit of beautiful nature : this 
 indeed, is not to be wondered at, when we recollect that 
 he has, in Mrs. Bunbury, so admiral)le an exemplar of 
 the most finished grace and beauty continually at his 
 elbow. But (to say all that occurs to me on this subject) 
 perhaps it may be reasonably doubted, whether the being 
 much conversant with Hogarth's method of exposing 
 meanness, deformity, and vice, in many of his works, la 
 not rather a dangerous, or, at least, a worthless pursuit; 
 which, if it docs not find a false relish and a love of and 
 search after satyr and buffoonery in the spectator, is at 
 least not unlikely to give him one. Life is short ; and 
 the little leisure of it is much better laid out upon that 
 species of art which is emjiloycd about the amiable and 
 the admirable, as it is more likely to be attended witfi 
 
 N N 
 
546 
 
 ON THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF HOGARTH. 
 
 bettor and nobler consequences to ourselves. These two 
 pursuits in art may be compared with two sets of people 
 ■with whom we mipht associate ; if we pive ourselves up 
 to the Footes, the Kenricks, &c. we shall be continually 
 busied and paddling in whatever is ridiculous, faulty, 
 and vicious in life ; whrrens there are those to be found 
 ■with whom we should be in the constant pursuit and 
 study of all that gives a value and a dignity to htiman 
 nature." [Account of a Srries of Pictures in the Great 
 Room of the Society of Arts, Manufactures, and Com. 
 merco, at the Adelphi, by James Barry, R.A., Professor 
 of Painting to the Royal Academy ; reprinted in the last 
 quarto edition of his works.] 
 
 It must be honestly confessed, that in 
 
 what is called knowledge of the figure, fortigners have 
 justly observed," &c. 
 
 It is a secret well known to the professors 
 of the art and mystery of criticism, to insist 
 ■upon what they do not find in a man's works, 
 and to pass over in silence what they do. 
 That Hogarth did not draw the naked figure 
 so well as Michael Angelo might be allowed, 
 especially as " examples of the naked," as 
 Mr. Barry acknowledges, " rarely (he might 
 almost have said never) occur in his sub- 
 jects ; " and that his figures under their 
 draperies do not discover all the fine graces 
 of an Antinoiis or an Apollo, may be con- 
 ceded likewise ; perhaps it was more suitable 
 to his purpose to represent the average forms 
 of mankind in the mediocrity (as Mr. Burke 
 expresses it) of the age in which he lived : 
 but that his figures in general, and in his 
 best subjects, are so glaringly incorrect as is 
 here insinuated, I dare trust my own eye so 
 far as positively to deny the fact. And there 
 is one part of the figure in which Hogarth 
 is allowed to have excelled, which these 
 foreigners seem to have overlooked, or 
 perhaps calculating from its proportion to 
 the whole (a seventh or an eighth, I forget 
 which,) deemed it of trifling importance ; I 
 mean the human face ; a small part, rcckon- 
 ^^S oy geographical inches, in the map of 
 man's body, but here it is that the painter 
 of expression must condense the wondei-s of 
 his skill, even at the expense of neglecting 
 the "jonctures and other difficulties of 
 drawing in the liml)s," which it must be a 
 cold eye that, in the interest so strongly 
 demanded by Hogarth's countenances, lia.s 
 leisure to survey and censure. 
 
 " The line of art pursued by my very ingenious prede- 
 cessor and brother Academician, Mr. Penny." 
 
 The fii-rtt impression caused in me by 
 reading this passage was an eager desire to 
 
 know who this "Mr. Penny was. Tliis great 
 Kurpasscr of Hogarth in the " delicacy of his 
 relish," and the "line which he pursued," 
 where is he, what are his works, what baa 
 he to show 1 In vain I tried to recollect, 
 till by hapi)ily putting the question to a 
 friend who is more conversant in the works 
 of the illustrious obscure than myself, I 
 leanit that he was the painter of a Death of 
 Wolfe which missed the prize the year that 
 the celebrated picture of "West on the same 
 subject obtained it ; that he also made a 
 picture of the Marquis of Granhy relieving 
 a Sick Soldier ; moreover, that he was the 
 inventor of two pictures of Suspended and 
 Restored Animation, which I now remember 
 to have seen in the Exhibition some years 
 since, and the prints from which are still 
 extant in good men's houses. This then, I 
 suppose, is the line of subjects in which 
 Mr. Penny was so much superior to Hogarth. 
 I confess I am not of that opinion. Tiie 
 relieving of poverty by the purse, and the 
 restoring a young man to his parents by 
 using the methods prescribed by the Humane 
 Society, are doubtless very amiable subjects, 
 pretty things to teach the first rudiments of 
 humanity ; they amount to about as much 
 iurstruction as the stories of good boys that 
 give away their custards to poor beggar-boys 
 in children's books. But, good God ! is this 
 milk for babes to be set up in opposition to 
 Hogarth's moral scenes, his strong ineat for 
 men ? As well might we prefer the fulsome 
 verses upon their own goodness to which 
 the gentlemen of the Literary Fund annually 
 sit still with such shameless patience to 
 listen, to the satires of Juvenal and Persius ; 
 because the former ai'e full of tender images 
 of Worth relieveil by Charity, and Charity 
 stretching out her hand to rescue sinking 
 Genius, and the theme of the latter is men's 
 crimes and follies with their black con- 
 sequences — forgetful meanwhile of those 
 strains of moral pathos, those sublime heart- 
 touches, which these poets (in them chiefly 
 sliowiug themselves poets) are perpetually 
 darting across the otherwise appalling gloom 
 of tlieir subject — consolatory renicmbrancers, 
 when their pictures of guilty mankind have 
 made us oven to despair for our species, 
 tliat there is such a thing as virtue and 
 moral dignity in the worKl, that her uu- 
 (pieuchable spark is not utterly out — 
 
 ^s^t^ 
 
ON THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF HOGARTH. 
 
 647 
 
 refreshing admonitious, to which we turn 
 for shelter from the too great heat and 
 asperity of the general satire. 
 
 And is there nothing analogous to this in 
 Hogarth ? nothing which " attempts and 
 reaches the heart ? " — no aim beyond that of 
 "shaking the sides?" — If the kneeling 
 ministering female in the last scene of the 
 Rake's Progress, the Bedlam scene, of which 
 I have spoken before, and have dared almost 
 to parallel it with the most absolute idea of 
 Virtue which Shakspeare has left us, be not 
 enough to disprove the assertion ; if the sad 
 endings of the Harlot and the Eake, the 
 passionate heart-bleeding entreaties for for- 
 giveness which the adulterous wife is pouring 
 forth to her assassinated and dying lord iu 
 the last scene but one of the Marriage 
 Alamode, — if these be not things to touch 
 the heart, and dispose the mind to a medi- 
 tative tenderness : is there nothing sweetly 
 conciliatory in the mild patient face and 
 gesture with which the wife seems to allay 
 and ventilate the feverish irritated feelings 
 of her poor poverty-distracted mate (the 
 true copy of the genus irritahile) in the print 
 of the Distrest Poet? or if an image of 
 maternal love be required, where shall we 
 find a sublimer view of it than in that aged 
 woman in Industry and Idleness (plate V.) 
 who is clinging with the fondness of hope 
 not quite extinguished to her brutal vice- 
 hardened child, whom she is accompanying 
 to the ship wliich is to bear him away from 
 his native soil, of which he has been adjudged 
 unworthy : in whose shocking face every 
 trace of the human countenance seems 
 obliterated, and a brute beast's to be left 
 instead, shocking and repulsive to all but 
 her who watched over it in its cradle before 
 vt was so sadly altered, and feels it must 
 belong to her while a pulse by the vindictive 
 laws of his country shajl be suffered to con- 
 tinue to beat in it. Compared with such 
 things, what is Mr. Penny's "knowledge of 
 the figure and academical skill which 
 Hogarth wanted ? " 
 
 With respect to what fullows concerning 
 another gentleman, with the congratulations 
 to him on his escape out of the regions of 
 " humour and caricatura," in which it 
 appeal's he was in danger of travelling side 
 by side with Hogarth, I can only congratu- 
 late my country, that Mrs. Hogarth kuew 
 
 her province better than, by disturbing her 
 husband at his palette, to divert him from 
 that universality of subject, which has 
 .stamped him perhaps, next to Shakspeare, 
 the most inventive genius which this island 
 has pi-oduced, into the "amiable pursuit of 
 beautiful nature," i.e. copying ad infinitura 
 the individual charms and graces of Mrs. .tl. 
 
 " Hogarth's method of rsposinjr meannoRs, doformity, 
 ;\nd vico, paddling in whatcvci* is ridiculous, faulty, and 
 vicious." 
 
 A person unacquainted with the works 
 thus stigmatised would be apt to imagine 
 that in Hogarth there was nothing else to 
 be found but subjects of the coarsest and 
 most repulsive nature. That his imagination 
 was naturally unsweet, and that he delighted 
 in i-aking into every species of moral filth. 
 That he preyed upon sore places only, and 
 took a pleasure in expo.sing the unsound and 
 rotten parts of human nature : — whereas, 
 with the exception of some of the .plates of 
 the Harlot's Progress, which are harder iu 
 their character than any of the rest of his 
 productions, (the Stages of Cruelty I omit as 
 mere worthless caricaturas, foreign to his 
 general habits, the offspring of his fancy in 
 some wayward humour,) thei'e is scarce one 
 of his pieces where vice is most strongly 
 satirised, in which some figure is not intro- 
 duced upon which the moral eye may rest 
 satisfied ; a face that indicates goodness, or 
 perhaps mere good-humouredness and care- 
 lessness of mind (negation of evil) only, yet 
 enough to give a relaxation to the frowning 
 brow of satire, and keep the general air from 
 tainting. Take the mild, supplicating posture 
 of patient Poverty iu the poor woman that 
 is persuading the pawnbroker to accept her 
 clothes in pledge, in the plate of Gin Lane, 
 for an instance. A little does it, a little of 
 the good nature overpowers a world of had. 
 One cordial honest laugh of a Tom Jones 
 absolut(.-ly clears the atmosphere that was 
 reeking with the black putrifying breathings 
 of a hypocrite Blifil. One homely expostu- 
 lating shrug from Strap warms the whole 
 air which the suggestions of a gentlemanly 
 ingratitude from his friend Random had 
 begun to freeze. One " Lord bless us ! " of 
 parson Adams upon the wickedness of the 
 times, exorcises and jjurges off the mass of 
 iniquity which the world-knowledge of even 
 
 N N 2 
 
648 
 
 ON THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF HOGARTH. 
 
 a Fielding could cull out and rake together. 
 But of the severer class of Ilogarth's per- 
 formances, enough, I trust, has been said to 
 show that they do not merely shock and 
 repulse ; that there is in them the " scorn of 
 vice" and the "pity" too; something to 
 touch the heart, and keep alive the sense of 
 moral beauty; the "lacrymse rerum,"' and 
 the sorrowing by which the heart is made 
 better. If they be bad things, then is satire 
 and tragedy a bad thing ; let us proclaim at 
 once an age of gold, and sink the existence 
 of vice and misexy in our speculations : 
 let us 
 
 " -wink, and shut our approhonsions up 
 
 From common sense of what men were and are :" 
 
 let US make believe with the children, that 
 every body is good and happy ; and, with 
 Dr. Swift, write panegyrics upon the world. 
 
 But that larger half of Hogarth's works, 
 which were painted more for entertainment 
 than instruction (though such was the sug- 
 gestiveness of his mind that there is always 
 something to be learnt from them), his 
 humorous scenes, — are they such as merely 
 to disgust and set us against our species 1 
 
 The confident assertions of such a man as 
 I consider the late Mr. Bariy to have been, 
 have that weight of authority in them which 
 staggers at first hearing, even a long pre- 
 conceived opinion. When I read his pathetic 
 admonition concerning the shortness of life, 
 and how much better the little leisure of it 
 were laid out upon " that species of art which 
 is employed aliout the amiable and the ad- 
 mirable;" and Hogarth's "mctliod," pro- 
 scribed as a " dangerous or worthless pur- 
 suit," I began to tiiink there was something 
 in it ; that I might have been indulging all 
 my life a passion for the Avorks of this artist, 
 to the utter prejudice of my taste and mural 
 sense ; but my first convictions griidually 
 returned, a world of good-natured English 
 faces came up one by one to my recollec- 
 tion, and a glance at the matchless Election 
 Entertainment, which I have the ha])pi- 
 ness to have hanging up in my i)arlour, 
 subverted ]\Ir. Barry's whole theory Lu an 
 instant. 
 
 In that inimitable print, (which in my 
 judgment as far exceeds the more known 
 and celebrated March to Finchlei/, as the best 
 comedy ux.ceeda the best farce that ever was 
 
 written,) let a person look till he be saturated, 
 and when he has done wondering at the in- 
 ventiveness of genius which could bring so 
 many characters (more than thirty distinct 
 classes of face) into a room and set them 
 down at table together, or otherwise dispose 
 them about, in so natural a manner, engage 
 them in so many easy sets and occupations, 
 yet all partaking of the spirit of the occasion 
 which brought them together, so that we 
 feel that nothing but an election time could 
 have assembled them ; having no central 
 figure or principal group, (for the hero ol 
 the piece, the Candidate, is properly set aside 
 in the levelling indistinction of the day, one 
 must look for him to find him,) nothing to 
 detain the eye from passing from part to 
 part, where every part is alike instinct with 
 life, — for here are no furniture-faces, 
 figures brought in to fill up the scene like 
 stage choruses, but all dramatis personse : 
 when he shall have done wondering at all 
 these faces so strongly charactered, yet 
 finished with the accuracy of the finest 
 miniatui'e ; when he shall have done ad- 
 mii-ing the numberless appendages of the 
 scene, those gratuitous doles which rich 
 genius flings into the heap when it has 
 already done enough, the oA'er-measure 
 which it delights in giving, as if it felt its 
 stores were exhaustless ; the dumb rhetoric 
 of the scenery — for tables, and chairs, and 
 joint-stools in Hogarth are living and signi- 
 ficant things ; the witticisms that are ex- 
 l^ressed by words, (all artists but Hogarth 
 have failed when they have endeavoured to 
 combine two mediums of expression, and 
 have introduced words into their piot\ires,) 
 and the iniwritten luimberless little aUusive 
 ]>lea.santries that are scattered about ; the 
 Work that is going on in the scene, and 
 beyond it, as is made visible to the "eye of 
 mind," by the molj which chokes up the 
 doorway, and the sword that has forced an 
 entrance before its master; when he shall 
 have sulficiently admired this wealth of 
 genius, let him fairly say what is the result 
 left on his mind. Is it an impression of the 
 vileness and worthlessness of his species ? or 
 is it not the general feeling which remains, 
 after the individual faces have cejisod to act 
 sensibly on his mind, a kindly one in favour 
 of his species? wjus not the general air of 
 the aceue wholesome 2 did it do the heai't 
 
 ^^ 
 
 ^^ 
 
ON THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF HOGARTH, 
 
 549 
 
 hurt to be among it? Something of a 
 riotous spirit to be sure is there, some 
 worldly-mindedness iu some of the faces, a 
 Doddiiigtonian smoothness which does not 
 promise any superfluous degree of sincerity 
 in the fine gentleman who has been the 
 occasion of calling so much good company 
 together ; but is not the general cast of 
 expression in tlie faces of the good sort ? do 
 they not seem cut out of the good old rock, 
 substantial English honesty ? would one fear 
 treachery among characters of tlieir expres- 
 sion ? or shall we call their honest mirth and 
 seldom-returning relaxation by the hard 
 names of vice and profligacy? Tliat poor 
 country fellow, that is grasping his staff 
 (which, from that difficulty of feeling them- 
 selves at home which poor men experience 
 at a feast, he has never parted with since he 
 came into the room), and is enjoying with a 
 relish that seems to fit all the capacities of 
 his soul the slender joke, which that facetious 
 wag his neighbour is practising upon the 
 gouty gentleman, whose eyes the effort to 
 suppress pain has made as round as rings — 
 does it shock the " dignity of human nature" 
 to look at that man, and to sympathise with 
 him in the seldom-heard joke which has 
 unbent his care-worn, hai'd-working visage, 
 and drawn ii"on smiles from it ? or with that 
 full-hearted cobbler, who is honouring with 
 the grasp of an honest fist the unused palm 
 of that annoyed patrician, whom the licence 
 of the time has seated next him 1 
 
 I can see nothing " dangerous " in the 
 contemplation of such scenes as this, or tlie 
 Enraged Musician, or the Southxoark Fair, or 
 twenty other pleasant pruats which come 
 crowding in upon my recollection, in which 
 the restless activities, the diversified bents 
 and humours, the blameless peculiarities of 
 men, as they deserve to be called, rather 
 than their " vices and follies," are held up in 
 a laughable point of view. All laughter is 
 not of a dangerous or soul-hardening ten- 
 dency. There is the petrifying sneer of a 
 demon which excludes and kills Love, and 
 there is the cordial laughter of a man which 
 implies and cherishes it. What heart' was 
 ever made the worse by joining in a hearty 
 laugh at the simplicities of Sir Hugh Evans 
 or Parson Adams, where a sense of the 
 ridiculous mutually kindles and is kindled 
 
 by a perception of the amiable ? Tliat 
 tunuiltuous harmony of singers that are 
 roaring out the words, " The world shall 
 bow to the Assyrian throne," from the ojjcra 
 of Judith, in the third plate of the series 
 called the Four Groups of Heouh ; which the 
 quick eye of Hogarth must have struck off 
 in the very infancy of the rage for sacred 
 oratorios in this country, while " Music yet 
 was young ;" when we have done smiluig at 
 the deafening distortions, which these 
 tearers of devotion to rags and tatters, these 
 takers of heaven by storm, in their boisterous 
 mimicry of the occupation of angels, are 
 making, — what unkindly impression is left 
 behind, or what more of harsh or con- 
 temptuous feeling, than when we quietly 
 leave Uncle Toby and Mi-. Shandy riding 
 their hobby-horses about the room 1 The 
 conceited, long-backed Sign-painter, that 
 with all the self-applause of a Eapliael or 
 CoiTeggio (the twist of body which his 
 conceit has thrown him into has something 
 of the Correggiesque in it), is contemplating 
 the picture of a bottle, which he is drawing 
 from an actual bottle that hangs beside him, 
 in the print of Beer Street, — while we smile 
 at the enormity of the self-delusion, can we 
 help loving the good-humour and self-cora- 
 l^laceucy of the fellow ? would we willingly 
 wake hini from his dream ? 
 
 I say not that all the ridiculous subjects 
 of Hugarth have, necessarily, something in 
 them to make us like them ; some are 
 indifferent to us, some in their natures 
 rejjulsive, and only made interesting by the 
 wondei-ful skill and truth to nature in the 
 painter ; but I contend that there is in most 
 of them that spi-iukling of the better nature, 
 which, like holy water, chases away and 
 disperses the contagion of the bad. They 
 have this in them, besides, that they bring 
 us acquainted with the every-day human 
 face, — they give us skill to detect those 
 gradations of sense and virtue (which escape 
 the careless or fastidious observer) in the 
 countenances of the world about us ; and 
 prevent that disgust at common life, that 
 tcbdium quotidianarum formarum, which an 
 unrestricted passion for ideal forms and 
 beauties is iu danger of producing. In this, 
 as in many other things, they are antilogous 
 to the beat novels of Smollett or Fielding. 
 
550 
 
 ON THE POETICAL WORKS OF GEORGE WITHER. 
 
 ON THE POETICAL WORKS OF GEORGE WITHER. 
 
 The poems of G. Wither are distinguii-hed ■ 
 by a hearty homeliness of maimer, and a 
 plain moral speaking. He seems to have 
 passed his life in one continued act of an 
 innocent self-pleasing. That which he calls 
 his Motto is a continued self-eulogy of two 
 thousand lines, yet we read it to the end 
 without any feeling of distaste, almost 
 without a consciousness that we have been 
 listening all the while to a man praising 
 himself. There are none of the cold particles 
 in it, the hardness and self-ends, which 
 render vanity and egotism hateful. He seems 
 to be praising another person, under the 
 mask of self : or rather, we feel that it was 
 indifferent to him where he found the virtue 
 which he celebrates ; whether another's 
 bosom or his own were its chosen receptacle. 
 His poems are full, and this in particular is 
 one downright confession, of a generous self- 
 seeking. But by self he sometimes means a 
 great deal, — his friends, his principles, his 
 country, the human race. 
 
 Whoever expects to find in the satirical 
 pieces of this writer any of those peculiarities 
 which pleased him in the satires of Dryden 
 or Pope, will be grievously disappointed. 
 Here are no high-linished characters, no nice 
 ti-aits of individual nature, few or no 
 personalities. Tlie game run down is coarse 
 general vice, or folly as it appears in classes. 
 A liar, a drunkard, a coxcomb, is stript and 
 whipt ; no Shaftesbury, no Villiers, or 
 Wharton, is curiously anatomised, and read 
 upon. But to a well-natured mind there is 
 a charm of moral sensibility running through 
 tliem, which amply compensates the want of 
 those luxuries. Wither seems everywhere 
 bursting with a love of goodness, and a 
 hatred of all low and base actions. At this 
 day it is hard to discover what parts of the 
 poem here particularly alluded to. Abuses 
 Stript and W/dpt, could have occasioned the 
 imprisonment of the author. Was Vice in [ 
 High Places mure suspicious than now i 
 had she more power ; or more leisure to 
 Uaten after ill reports 1 That a mjm should 
 
 be convicted of a libel when he named no 
 names but Hate, and En\'y, and Lust, and 
 Avarice, is like one of the indictments in the 
 Pilgrim's Progress, where Faithful is 
 arraigned for having " railed on our noble 
 Prince Beelzebub, and spoken contemptibly 
 of his honourable friends, the Lord Old Man, 
 the Lord Carnal Delight, and the Lord 
 Luxurious." What unlucky jealousy could 
 have tempted the great men of those days to 
 appropriate such innocent abstractions to 
 themselves 1 
 
 Wither seems to have contemplated to a 
 degree of idolatry his owa possible virtue. 
 He is for ever anticipating persecution and 
 martyrdom ; fingering, as it were, the flames, 
 to try how he can bear them. Perhaps his 
 premature defiance sometimes made him 
 obnoxious to censures which he would other- 
 wise have slipped by. 
 
 The homely versification of these Satires is 
 not likely to attiact in the present day. It 
 is cei-taiuly not such as we should expect 
 from a poet " soaring in the high region 
 of his fancies, with his garland and his 
 singing robes about him ; " * nor is it such 
 as he has shown in his Fhilarete, and in some 
 parts of his Shepherds Uiinting. He seems 
 to have adopted this dress with voluntary 
 humility, as fittest for a moral teacher, as 
 our divines choose sober grey or black ; but 
 in their humility consists their sweetness. 
 The deepest tone of moral feeling in them 
 (though all throughout is weighty, earnest, 
 and passionate) is in those pathetic injunc- 
 tions against shedding of blood in quiUTels, 
 in the chapter entitled Revenge. The story 
 of his own forbearance, which fiillows, is 
 highly interesting. While the Christian 
 sings his own victory over Angei", the Man 
 of Courage cannot help peeping out to let 
 you know, that it was some higher princii)le 
 tlian /ear which counselled this forluaiance. 
 
 Wiietlier encaged, or roaming at liberty, 
 Wither never seems to have abated a jot of 
 that free spirit which sets its mark upon his 
 • Milton. 
 
 ^- 
 
ON THE POETICAL WORKS OF GEORGE WITHER. 
 
 551 
 
 writings, as much as a predominant feature 
 of independence impresses every p.'i,;^e of our 
 late glorious Eui-us ; but the elder poet 
 wraps his proof-armour closer about him, 
 the other wears his too much outwards ; he 
 is thinking too nuich of annoying tlie foe to 
 be quite easy witliin ; the spiritual defences 
 of Witlier are a perpetual source of inward 
 sunshine, the magnanimity of the modern is 
 not without its alloy of soreness, and a sense 
 of injustice, which seems perpetually to gall 
 and iri'itate. Wither was better skilled in 
 tlie "sweet uses of adversity;" he knew 
 how to extract the "precious jewel" from 
 the head of the " toad," without drawing any 
 of the "ugly venom" along with it. Tlie 
 prison notes of "Wither are finer than the 
 wood notes of most of his poetical brethren. 
 The description in the Fourth Eclogue of his 
 Shepherds Hunting (which was composed 
 during his imprisonment in the Marsh alsea) 
 of the power of the Muse to extract pleasure 
 from common objects, has been oftener 
 quoted, and is more known, than any part of 
 his writings. Indeed, the whole Eclogue is 
 in a strain so much above not only what 
 himself, but almost what any other poet has 
 written, that he himself could not help 
 noticing it ; he remarks that his spirits had 
 been raised higher than they were wont, 
 " through the love of poesy." Tlie praises of 
 Poetry liave been often sung in ancient and 
 in modern times ; strange j^owers have been 
 ascribed to it of influence over animate and 
 inanimate auditors ; its force over fascinated 
 crowds has been acknowledged ; but, before 
 Wither, no one ever celebrated its power at 
 home, the wealtli and the strength which this 
 divine gift confers iipon its possessor. Fame, 
 and that too after death, was all which 
 hitherto the poets had promised themselves 
 from their art. It seems to have been left 
 to Witlicr to discover that poetry was a 
 present possession, as well as a ricli reversion, 
 au'l that the Muse had promise of both 
 livoa, — of this, and of that which was to 
 coma. 
 
 The Mistress of P hilar ete is in substnuce a 
 l)anegyric protracted through several 'thou- 
 sand lines in the mouth of a single speaker, 
 but diversified, so as to produce an almost 
 dramatic effectjiby the artful introduction of 
 some ladies, who are rather auditors than 
 interlocutors in the scene ; and of a boy, 
 
 whose singing furnishes pretence for an occa- 
 sional change of metre : though the seven- 
 syllable line, in wliich the main part of it is 
 written, is that in which Wither lias shown 
 himself so great a master, that I do not 
 know that I am always thankful to him for 
 the exchange. 
 
 Wither has chosen to bestow upon the 
 lady whom he commends the name of Arete, 
 or Virtue ; and, assuming to himself the 
 character of Philarete, or Lover of Virtue, 
 there is a sort of propriety in that heaped 
 measure of perfections which he attributes 
 to this partly real, partly allegorical person- 
 age. Drayton before him had shadowed his 
 mistress under the name of Idea, or Perfect 
 Pattern, and some of the old Italian love- 
 strains are couched in such religious terms 
 as to make it doubtful whether it be a mis- 
 tress, or Divine Grace, which the poet is 
 addressing. 
 
 In this poem (full of beauties) there are 
 two passages of pre-eminent merit. The 
 first is where the lover, after a flight of 
 rapturoiis commendation, expresses his won- 
 der why aU men that are about his mistress, 
 even to her very servants, do not view her 
 with the same eyes that he does. 
 
 \ 
 
 \ 
 
 \ 
 
 " Sometime I do admire 
 All men burn not with desire : 
 Nay, I muse her servants are not 
 Pleading love ; but O ! they dare not. 
 And I therefore wonder, why 
 They do not g-row sick and die. 
 Sure they would do so, but that, 
 By the ordinance of fate, 
 There is some concealed thing, 
 So each gazer limiting. 
 He can see no more of merit, 
 Than beseems his worth and spirit. 
 For in her a grace there shines, 
 That o'er-d;iring thoughts confines, 
 Making worthless men despair 
 To be loved of one so fair. 
 Tea, the destinies agree. 
 Some good judgments blind should be, 
 And not gain the power of knowing 
 Those rare beauties in her growing. 
 Reason doth as much imuly : 
 For, if every judging eye, 
 Which beholdeth her, should there 
 Find what excellences are, 
 All, o'crcome by those perfections, 
 Would be captive to affections. 
 So, in happiness unblcst. 
 She for lovers should not rest." 
 
 The other is, where he has been comparing 
 her beauties to gold, and stars, and the most 
 excellent things in nature ; and, fearing to 
 be accused of hyperbole, the common charge 
 against poets, vindicates himself bv boldly 
 
552 
 
 ON THE POETICAL WORIiS OF GEORGE WITHER, 
 
 taking upon liim, tliat these comjxarisons are 
 no liyperboles ; but tliat the best things in 
 nature do, in a lover's eye, fall short of those 
 excellences which he adores iu her. 
 
 " What pearls, what rubies can 
 Seem so lovely fair to man, 
 As her lips whom he doth love, 
 When in sweet discourse they move, 
 Or her lovelier teeth, the while 
 She doth bless him with a smile J 
 Stars indeed fair creatures be ; 
 Yet amongst us where is he 
 Joys not more the whilst he lies 
 Sunning in his mistress' eyes, 
 Than in all the glimmering light 
 Of a starry winter's night ? 
 Note the beauty of an eye — 
 And if aught you praise it by 
 Leave such passion in your mind, 
 Let my reason's eye be blind. 
 Mark if ever red or white 
 Any where gave such delight. 
 As when they have taken place 
 In a worthy wotoan's face. 
 • • * • 
 
 I must praise her as I may. 
 Which I do mine own rude way. 
 Sometimes setting forth her glories 
 By unheard of allegories " — &c. 
 
 To the measure in ^yhich these lines are 
 written the wits of Queen Anne's days 
 contemptuously gave tlie name of Namby 
 Pamby, in ridicule of Ambrose Philips, who 
 has used it in some instances, as iu the lines 
 
 on Cuzzoni, to my feeling at least, very deli- 
 ciously ; but Wither, whose darling measure 
 it seems to have been, may show, that in 
 skilful hands it is capable of expressing the 
 subtilest movements of passion. So true it 
 is, which Drayton seems to have felt, that it 
 is the poet who modifies the metre, not the 
 metre the poet ; in his own words, that 
 
 " It's possible to climb ; 
 To kindle, or to stake ; 
 
 Altho' in tjkelton's rhime." • 
 
 In the 
 
 • A long line is a line wc are long repeating. 
 Shepherds Hunting take the following — 
 
 " If thy verse doth brarely tower, 
 As she mahes wng, she gets power ; 
 Yet the higher she doth soar, 
 She's affronted still the more, 
 'Till she to the high'st hath past, 
 Then she rests with fame at last." 
 
 What longer measure can go beyond the majesty of 
 this ! what Alexandrine is half so long in pronouncing 
 or expresses labour slowly but strongly surmounting 
 difficulty with the life with which it is done in the 
 second of these lines '! or what metre could go beyond 
 these from Philarete — 
 
 " Her true beauty leaves behind 
 Apprehensions in my mind 
 Of more sweetness, than all art 
 Or inventions can impart. 
 noughts too deep to be cxpress'd^ 
 And too atrong to be luppreas'd." 
 
 y- i 
 
 
LETTEES, 
 
 UNDER ASSUMED SIGNATURES, PUBLISHED IN " THE REFLECTOR" 
 
 THE LONDONER. 
 
 TO THE EDTTOR OF THE REFLECTOR. 
 
 Mr. Eeflector, — I was bom iinder the 
 shadow of St. Duustan's steeple, just where 
 the conflux of the eastern and western in- 
 habitants of this two-fold city meet and 
 justle in friendly opposition at Templo-bar. 
 The same day which gave me to the world, 
 saw London happy in the celebration of her 
 great amiual feast. This I cannot help look- 
 ing upon as a lively omen of the future great 
 good-will which I was destined to bear 
 toward the city, resembling in kind that 
 solicitude which every Chief Magistrate is 
 supposed to feel for whatever concerns her 
 interests and well-being. Indeed I consider 
 myself in some sort a speculative Lord Mayor 
 of London : for though circumstances un- 
 happily preclude me from the hope of ever 
 arriving at the dignity of a gold chain and 
 Spital Sermon, yet thus much will I say of 
 mysejf in truth, that Whittington with his 
 Cat (just emblem of vigilance and a furred 
 gown) never went beyond me in affection 
 which I bear to the citizens. 
 
 I wa.s born, as you have heard, in a crowd. 
 This has begot in me an entire aifection for 
 that way of life, amounting to an almost 
 insurmountable aversion from solitude and 
 rural scenes. This aversion was never in- 
 terrupted or suspended, excipt for a few 
 years in the younger part of my life, during 
 a period in which I had set my affections 
 upon a channing young woman. Every man, 
 while the passion is upon him, is for a time 
 at least addicted to groves and meadows and 
 purling streams. During this short period 
 of my existence, I contracted just familiarity 
 
 enough with rural objects to understand 
 tolerably well ever after the poets, when they 
 declaim in such passionate terms in favour 
 of a country life. 
 
 For my own part, now the fit is past, I 
 have no hesitation in declaring, that a mob 
 of happy faces ci'owding up at the \>it door 
 of Driu'y-lane Theatre, just at the hour of 
 six, gives me ten thousand sincerer pleasures, 
 than I could ever receive from all the flocks 
 of silly sheep that ever whitened the plains 
 of Arcadia or Epsom Downs. 
 
 This passion for crowds is nowhere feasted 
 so full as in London. The man must have a 
 rare recipe for melancholy who can be dull 
 in Fleet-street. I am naturally inclined to 
 hypochondria, but in London it vanishes, 
 like all other ills. Often, when I have felt 
 a weariness or distaste at home, have I 
 rushed out into her crowded Strand, and 
 fed my humour, till tears have wetted my 
 cheek for unutterable sympathies with the 
 multitudinous moving picture, which she 
 never fails to present at all hours, like the 
 scenes of a shifting pantomime. 
 
 The very deformities of London, which 
 give distaste to others, from habit do not 
 displease me. The endless succession of 
 shops where Fancy miscalled Fdly is sup- 
 plied with perpetual gauds and Toys, excite 
 in me no puritanical aversion. I gladly be- 
 hold every appetite supplied with its proper 
 food. The obliging customei', and the obliged 
 tradesman — things which live by bowmg, 
 and things which exist but for homage — do 
 not affect me with disgust ; from habit I 
 
554 ON BURIAL SOCIETIES ; AND THE CHARACTER OF AN UNDERTAKER. 
 
 perceive nothing but urbanity, where other 
 men, more refined, discover nieannuss: Hove 
 the very smoke of London, because it has 
 been the medium most familiar to my vision. 
 I see grand principles of honour at work in 
 the dirty I'iiig which encompasses two com- 
 batants with fists, and principles of no less 
 eternal justice in the detection of a pick- 
 pocket. The salutary astonishment with 
 which an execution is surveyed, convinces 
 me more forcibly than a hundred volumes of 
 abstract polity, that the universal instinct of 
 man in all ages has leaned to order and good 
 government. 
 
 Thus an art of extracting- morality from 
 the commonest incidents of a town life is 
 
 attained by the same well-natured alchjTny 
 with which tlie Foresters of Arden, in a 
 beautiful country, 
 
 " Found tonf^ucs m trcps, books in the running brooks, 
 Sermons in stones, and good in everything." 
 
 Where has spleen her food but in London ! 
 Humour, Interest, Curiosity, suck at her 
 measureless breasts without a possibility of 
 being satiated. Nursed amid lier noise, her 
 crowds, lier beloved smoke, what have I been 
 doing all my life, if I have not lent out my 
 heart with usury to such scenes ! 
 
 T am, Sir, your faithful servant 
 
 A LONDONBB. 
 
 ON BUETAL SOCIETIES ; AND THE CHAEACTEE OF AN UNDEETAKER. 
 
 TO THE EDITOR OF " THE REFLECTOR. 
 
 Mr. Eeflector, — I was amused the other 
 day with having the following notice thrust 
 into my hand by a man who gives out bills 
 at the corner of Fleet-market, Whether he 
 saw any prognostics about me, that made 
 him judge such notice seasonable, I cannot 
 say ; I might perhaps carry iu a countenance 
 (naturally not very florid) traces of a fever 
 which had not long left me. Those fellows 
 have a good instinctive way of guessing at 
 the sort of peojjle that are likeliest to pay 
 attention to their jiapers. 
 
 " BURIAL SOCIETY. 
 
 " A favourable opportunity now offers to 
 any person, of either sex, who would wish to 
 be buried in a genteel manner, by paying 
 one shilling entrance, and two-pence per 
 week for the benefit of the stock. Members 
 to be free in six mouths. The mo'jcy to be 
 paid at Mr. Middleton's, at the sign of the 
 Fir.4 and tlie Last, Stonecuttcr's-street, Fleet- 
 market, "flie deceased to be furnished as 
 follows : — A strong elm coffin, covered witli 
 superfine black, and furnislied with two rows, 
 all round, close drove, V)est japanned nails, 
 and adorned with ornamental drujis, a hand- 
 some plate of inscrlptiun, Angel above, and 
 Flower beneath, and four pair of hau(.laome 
 
 handles, with wrought gi-ipes ; the coflSn to 
 be well pitched, lined, and rulfled with fine 
 crape ; a handsome crape shroud, cap, and 
 pillow. For use, a handsome velvet pall, 
 three gentlemen's cloaks, three crape hat- 
 bands, three hoods and scai-fs, and six pair of 
 gloves ; two porters equipped to attend the 
 funeral, a man to attend the same with band 
 and gloves ; also, the buriiil fees paid, if not 
 exceeding one guinea." 
 
 " Man," says Sir Thomas Browne, " is a 
 noble animal, sjilendid in ashes, and pompous 
 in the grave." Whoever drew up this little 
 advertisement certainly, understood this 
 appetite in the species, and has made abun- 
 dant provision for it. It really almost in- 
 duces a tcedium vitce upon one to read it 
 Methinks I could be willing to die, in death 
 to be so attended. The two rows all round 
 close-drove best black japanned nails, — how 
 feelingly do thoy invite, and almost irre- 
 sistibly persuade us to come and be fa.steued 
 down ! what aching head can resist the 
 temptation to i-cpose, which the crap« shroud, 
 the cap, and the pillow present ; what sting 
 is there in death, which the liandles with 
 wrought gripes are not calculated to ])luek 
 away ? what victory in the grave, whieli tho 
 drops and tho velvnt jiall do not render at 
 lejwt extremely disjjutablo 1 but above all, 
 
 Hriii 
 
ON BURIAL SOCIETIES ; AND THE CHARACTER OF AN UNDERTAKER. 565 
 
 the pretty emblematic plate with the Angel 
 above and the Flower beneath, takes me 
 miglitily. 
 
 The notice goes on to inform us, that 
 though the society has been established but 
 a very few years, upwards of eleven hundi'ed 
 persons have put down their names. It is 
 really an affecting consideration to think of 
 so many poor people, of the industrious and 
 hanl-working class (for none but such would 
 be possessed of such a generous forothouglit) 
 clubbing their twopences to save tlie reproach 
 of a parish funeral. Many a poor fellow, I 
 dare swear, has that Angel and Flower kept 
 from the Anqel and Funchhoui, while, to 
 proVide himself a bier, he has curtailed him- 
 self of beer. Many a savoury morsel has- the 
 living body been de]H-ived of, that the lifeless 
 one might be served up in a richer state to 
 the worms. And sure, if the body could 
 understand the actions of the soul, and 
 entertain generous notions of things, it would 
 thank its provident partner, that she had 
 been more solicitous to defend it from dis- 
 honours at its dissolution, than careful to 
 pamper it with good things in the time of its 
 union. If Ctesar were chiefly anxious at his 
 death how he might die must decently, every 
 Burial Society may be considered as a club 
 of Cajsars. 
 
 Nothing tends to keep up, in the iiJagi- 
 natious of the poorer sort of people, a generous 
 horror of the workhouse more than tlie 
 manner in Avhich pauper funerals are con- 
 ducted in this metropolis. The coffin nothing 
 but a few naked jjlanks coarsely put together, 
 — the want of a pall (that decent and well- 
 imagined veil, which, hiding the coffin that 
 hides the body, keeps that which would 
 shock us at two removes from us), the 
 coloured coats of tlie nieu that are hired, at 
 cheaj) rates, to carry the body, — altogether, 
 give the notion of the deceased having been 
 some person of an ill life and conversation, 
 some oue who may not claim the entire rites 
 of Christian burial, — one by whom some 
 parts of the sacred ceremony would be de- 
 secrated if they shoidd be bestowed aipon 
 him. I meet these meagi-e processions some- 
 times in the street. They are sure to make 
 me out of humour and melancholy all the 
 day after. They have a harsh and ominous 
 aspect. 
 
 K there is anything in the prospectus 
 
 issued from Mr. Middleton's, Stonecutter's- 
 strect, which plea.ses me less than the rest, 
 it is to find that the six pair of gloves are to 
 be returned, that they are only lent, or, as 
 the bill expresses it, for use, on the occasion. 
 The hood, scarfs, and hat-bands, may properly 
 enough be given up after the solemnity ; the 
 cloaks no gentlemen would think of keeping; 
 but a pair of gloves, once fitted on, ought not 
 in courtesy to be re-demanded. The wearer 
 sliould certaiidy have the fee-simple of them. 
 The cost woidd be but trifling, and they 
 would be a jjroper memorial of the day. 
 This part of the Proposal wants i-econ- 
 sidering. It is not conceived in the same 
 liberal way of thinking as the rest. I am 
 also a little doubtful whether the limit, 
 within which the burial-fee is made payable, 
 should not be extended to thirty shillings. 
 
 Some provision too ought undoubtedly to 
 be made in favour of those well-intentioned 
 persons and well-wishers to the fund, who, 
 having all along paid their subscriptions 
 regularly, ax"e so unfortunate as to die before 
 the six months, which would entitle them to 
 their freedom, are quite completed. One can 
 hardly imagine a more distressing case than 
 that of a poor fellow lingering on in a con- 
 sumption till tlie period of his freedom is 
 almost in sight, and then finding himself 
 going with a velocity which makes it doubt- 
 ful wliether he shall be entitled to his funeral 
 honours : his quota to which he nevertheless 
 squeezes out, to the diminution of the com- 
 forts which sickness demands. I think, in 
 such cases, some of the contribution money 
 ought to revert. "With some such modifica- 
 tions, which might easily be introduced, I 
 see nothing in tiiese Proposals of Mr. Mid- 
 dleton which is not strictly fair and genteel ; 
 and heartily recommend them to all persons 
 of moderate incomes, in either sex, who are 
 willing that this perishable part of them 
 should quit the scene of its mortal activities 
 with as hamlsome circumstances as possible. 
 
 Before I quit the subject, I must guard 
 my readers against a scandal, which they may 
 be apt to take at the place whence these 
 Proposals jairport to be issued. From the 
 sign of the First and the Last, they may 
 conclude that Mr. Middletou is some pub- 
 licjin, who, in assembling a club of this 
 description at his house, may have a sinister 
 end of his own, altogether foreign to the 
 
556 ON BURIAL SOCIETIES : AND THE CHARACTER OF AN UNDERTAKER. 
 
 solemn pui'pose for wliicli the club is pre- 
 tended to be instituted. I must set them 
 right by informing them that the issuer of 
 these Proposiils is no publican, though he 
 hangs out a sign, but an honest superinten- 
 dant of funerals, who, by the device of a | 
 Cradle and a Coffin, connecting both ends of 
 human existence together, has most ingeni- 
 ously contrived to insinuate, that thefi'aiuers i 
 of these ^;-5^ and last receptacles of mankind 
 divide this our life betwixt them, and tliat 
 all that passes from the midwife to the imder- 
 taker may, in strict proj)riety, go for notldng: i 
 an awful and instructive lesson to human j 
 vanity. 
 
 Looking over some papers lately that fell 
 into my hands by chance, and appear to have 
 been written about the beginning of the last 
 century, I stumbled, among the rest, upon 
 the following short Essay, which the writer 
 calls, " The Character of an Undertaker." It 
 is written with some stiffness and peculiari- 
 ties of style, but some parts of it, I think, 
 not unaptly characterise the profession to 
 which Mr. Middleton has the honour to 
 belong. The writer doubtless had in his 
 mind the entertaining character of Sable, in 
 Steele's excellent comedy of Tlie Funeral. 
 
 CHAEACTER OF AN UNDERTAKER. 
 
 " He is master of the ceremonies at burials 
 and mourning assemblies, grand marshal at 
 funeral processions, the only true yeoman of 
 the body, over which he exercises a dicta- 
 torial authority from the moment that the 
 breath has taken leave to that of its final 
 commitment to the earth. His ministry 
 begins where the physician's, the lawyer's, 
 and the diviue'.s, end. Or if some part of the 
 functions of the latter run parallel with his, 
 it is only in ordine ad spiritualia. His 
 temporalities remain imquestioned. He is 
 arbitrator of all questions of honour which 
 may concern the defunct ; and upon slight 
 inspection will pronounce how long he may 
 remain in this u{)per wf)rld with credit to 
 himself, and when it will be prudent for his 
 repuliitiun that he should retire. His deter- 
 mination in these jioints is peremptory and 
 without ajijjeal. Yet, with a modesty pecu- 
 liar to his jirofe.ssion, he meddles not out of 
 his own si)lioi-e. Wiih the good or bad 
 actions of the deceased in hia life-time he has 
 
 nothing to do. He leaves the friends of the 
 dead man to form their own conjectures aa 
 to the place to which the departed spirit is 
 gone. His care is only about the exuviae. 
 He concerns not himself even about the 
 body as it is a structure of parts internal, 
 and a wonderful microcosm. He leaves such 
 curious speculations to the anatomy pro- 
 fessor! Or, if anything, he is averse to such 
 wanton inquiries, as delighting rather that 
 the pails which he has care of should be 
 returned to their kindred dust in as hand- 
 some and unmutilated condition as possible; 
 that the grave should have its full and 
 unimpaired tribute, — a complete and just 
 carcass. Nor is he only careful to provide 
 for the body's eutireuess, but for its accom- 
 modation and ornament. He orders the 
 fashion of its clothes, and designs the sjTn- 
 metry of its dwelling. Its vanity has an 
 innocent survival in him. He is bed-maker 
 to the dead. The pillows which he lays 
 never rumple. The day of interment is the 
 theatre in whfch he displays the mysteries of 
 his ai't. It is hard to describe what he is, or 
 rather to tell what he is not, on that day: 
 for, being neither kinsman, servant, nor 
 friend, he is all in turns ; a transceudaut, 
 running through all those relations. His 
 office is to supply the place of self-agency in 
 the ^mily, who are presumed incapable of it 
 through grief. He is eyes, and ears, and 
 hands, to the whole household. A draught 
 of wine cannot go round to the muuruei-s, 
 but he must minister it. A chair may 
 hardly be restored to its place by a less 
 solemn hand than his. He takes upon him- 
 self all functions, and is a sort of ephemeral 
 major-domo ! He distributes his attentions 
 among the company assembled according to 
 the degree of affliction, which he calculates 
 from the degree of kin to the deceased ; and 
 mai-shals them accordingly in the procession. 
 He himself is of a sad and tristful counte- 
 nance ; yet such as (if well examined) is not 
 without some show of patience and resigna- 
 tion at bottom ; jjrefiguring, as it were, to 
 the friends of the deceased, what their grief 
 shall be when the lumd of Time shall have 
 softened and taken down the bitterness of 
 tlieir first anguish ; so handsomely can he 
 fore-sh:ii)e and antioipato the work of Time. 
 Ljistly, with his wand, as wiLJi another <livi- 
 niug rod, he calculates the depth of ciirth 
 
ON THE DANGER OP CONFOUNDING MORAL WITH PERSONAL DEFORMITY. 657 
 
 at ■which the bones of the dead man may in dust to dust, which is the last friendly 
 rest, which he ordinarily contrives may be office that he undertakes to do." 
 at such a distance from the surface of this j Begging your pardon for detaining you 
 eartli, as may frustrate the profane attempts so long among " gi-aves, and worms, juid 
 of such as would violate his repose, yet suffi- epitaplis," 
 
 ciently on this side the centre to give his 
 friends hopes of an easy and practicable 
 resurrection. And here we leave him, casting 
 
 I am, Sir, 
 
 Your humble servant, 
 
 MORITURUS. 
 
 ON THE DANGER OF CONFOUNDING MORAL WITH PERSONAL 
 
 DEFORMITY. 
 
 ■WITH A HINT TO THOSE WHO HAVE THE FRAMING OP ADVERTISEMENTS FOE APPREHENDIKG OFFENDERS. 
 
 ♦ 
 
 TO THE EDITOR OF " THE REFLECTOR." 
 
 Mr. Reflector, — Thsre is no science in 
 their pretensions to which mankind are more 
 apt to commit grievmis mistakes, than in the 
 supposed very obvious one of pliysiognomy. 
 I quarrel not ' with the princi^jles of this 
 science, as they are laid down by learned 
 professors ; much less am I disposed, with 
 some people, to deny its existence altogether 
 as any inlet of knowledge that can be de- 
 pended upon. I believe that there is, or may 
 be, an art to " read the mind's construction 
 in the face." But, then, in every species of 
 reading, so much depends upon the eyes of 
 the reader ; if they are blear, or apt to 
 dazzle, or inattentive, or strained with too 
 much attention, the optic power will inful- 
 libly bring home false reports of what it 
 reads. How often do we say, upon a cursory 
 glance at a stranger, "What a fine open 
 countenance he has ! " who, upon second in- 
 spection, proves to have the exact features of 
 a knave ? Nay, in much more intimate 
 acquaintances, how a delusion of this kind 
 shall continue for months, years, and then 
 break up all at once. 
 
 Ask the married man, who has been so 
 but for a short space of time, if those blue 
 eyes where, during so many years of anxious 
 courtship, truth, sweetness, serenity, seemed 
 to be written in characters which could not 
 be misunderstood — ask liim if the characters 
 which they now convey be exactly the same ? 
 — if for truth he does not read a dull virtue 
 (the mimic of constancy) which changes not, 
 only because it wants the judgment to make 
 a preference ? — if for sweetness he does not 
 
 read a stupid habit of looking pleased at 
 everything ? — if for serenity he does not read 
 animal tranquillity, the dead pool of the* 
 heart, which no breeze of passion can stir 
 into health? Alas! what is this book of 
 the countenance good for, which when we 
 have read so long, and thought that we un- 
 derstood its contents, there comes a countless 
 list of heart-breaking eiTata at the end ! 
 
 But these are the pitiable mistakes to 
 which love alone is subject. I have inad- 
 vertently wandered from my purpose, which 
 was to expose quite an opposite blunder, into 
 which we are no less apt to fall, through 
 hate. How ugly a person looks upon wliose 
 reputation some awkward aspersion hangs, 
 and how suddenly his countenance clears up 
 with his character ! I remember being per- 
 suaded of a man whom I had conceived an 
 ill opinion of, that he had a very bad set of 
 teeth ; which, since I have had better oppor- 
 tunities of being acquainted with his face and 
 facts, I find to have been the very reverse 
 of the truth. That crooked old woman, I 
 once said, speaking of an ancient gentle- 
 woman, whose actions did not square alto-^ 
 gether with my notions of the rule of right. 
 The unanimous surprise of the company be- 
 fore wliom I uttered these words soon con- 
 vinced me that I had confounded mental with 
 bodily obliquity, and that there was nothing 
 tortuous about the old lady but her deeds. 
 
 This humour of mankind to deny personal 
 comeliness to those witli whose moral attri- 
 butes they are dissatisfied, is very strongly 
 shown in those advertisements wliich stare ua 
 
558 ON THE DANGER OF CONFOUNDING MORAL WITH PERSONAL DEFORMITY. 
 
 in the face from the -walls of every street, 
 and, with the tempting bait wliich they hang 
 forth, stimulate at once cupidity and an 
 abstract love of justice in the breast of every 
 passing peruser : I mean, the advertisements 
 offering rewards for the apprehension of ab- 
 sconded culprits, sti-ayed apprentices, bank- 
 rupts who have conveyed away their effects, 
 debtors that have run away from their bail. 
 I obsen'-e, that in exact proportion to the 
 indignity with which the prosecutor, who is 
 commonly the framer of the advertisement, 
 conceives he has been treated, the personal 
 pretensions of the fugitive are denied, and 
 his defects exaggerated. 
 
 A fellow whose misdeeds have been 
 directed against the public in general, and 
 in whose delinquency no individual shall feel 
 himself particularly intei-ested, generally 
 meets with fair usage, A coiner or a smug- 
 gler shall get off tolerably well. His beauty, 
 ifhe has any, is not much underrated, his 
 deformities are not much magnified. A run- 
 away apprentice, who excites perhaps the 
 next least degree of spleen in his prosecutor, 
 generally escapes with a pair of bandy legs ; 
 if he has taken anything with him in his 
 flight, a hitch in his gait is generally super- 
 added. A bankrupt, who has been guilty of 
 •withdrawing his effects, if his case be not 
 very atrocious, commonly meets with mild 
 usage. But a debtor, who has left his bail 
 in jeopardy, is sure to be described in cha- 
 racters of unmingled deformity. Here the 
 personal feelings of the bail, which may be 
 allowed to be somewhat poignant, are ad- 
 mitted to interfere ; and, ;us wrath and re- 
 .venge commonly strike in the dark, the 
 colours ai'e laid on with a gro.ssncss whiclx 
 I am convinced must often defeat its own 
 purpose. The fish that casts an inky 
 cloud about him that his enemies may not 
 find him, cannot more obscure himself by 
 that device than the blackening representa- 
 tions of these angry advertisers must inevi- 
 tably serve to cloak and screen the pei"sons 
 of those who have injured them from detec- 
 tion. I have before me at this moment one 
 of these bills, which runs thus : — 
 
 " FIFTY POUNDS REWAUD, 
 
 " Run away from his bail, John Tomkin.<i, 
 formerly resident in i'rinces-strcet, Sohu, but 
 
 lately of Clerkenwell. Whoever shall ap- 
 prehend, or cause to be apprehended and 
 lodged in one of his Majesty's jails, the said 
 John Tonikins, shall receive the above re- 
 ward. He is a thickset, sturdy man. about 
 five foot six inches high, halts in his left le-g, 
 with a stoop in his gait, with coarse red hair, 
 nose short and cocked up, with little grey 
 eyes, (one of them bears the effect of a blow 
 which he has lately received,) with a pot 
 belly ; speaks with a thick and disagreeable 
 voice ; goes shabbily drest ; had on when he 
 went away a greasy shag gi-eat-coat with 
 rusty yellow buttons." 
 
 Now although it is not out of the compass 
 of possibility that John Tomkins aforesaid 
 may comprehend in his agreeable person all 
 the above-mentioned aggregate of chai-ms ; 
 yet, from my observation of the manner in 
 which these advertisements are usually 
 drawn up, though I have not the pleasure 
 of knowing the gentleman, yet would I lay a 
 wager, that an advertisement to the following 
 effect would have a much better chance of 
 apprehending and laying by the heels this 
 John Tonikins than the above description, 
 although penned by one who, from the good 
 services which he appears to have done for 
 him, has not improbably been blessed with 
 some years of previous intercoui"se with the 
 said John. Taking, then, the above adver- 
 tisement to be true, or nearly so, down to 
 the words "left leg" inclusive, (though I 
 have some doubt if the blemish there im- 
 plied amount to a positive lameness, or be 
 perceivable by any but the nearest friends of 
 John,) I would proceed thus: — 
 
 — '• Leans a little forward in his walk ; his 
 hair thick and inclining to auburn ; his nose 
 of the middle size, a little turned up at the 
 end ; lively hazel eyes, (the contusion, as its 
 effects are probablj' gone off by this time, I 
 judge better omitted ;) inclines to be corpu- 
 lent ; his voice thick but j)leasing. especially 
 when lie sings ; had on a decent shag great- 
 coat wilh yellow buttons," 
 
 Now I would stake a considerable wager 
 (though \>y no means a positive man) that 
 some such mitigated description would lead 
 the beagles of the law into a much surer 
 track for finding this ungracious varlet, than 
 to set them upon a false scent after fictitious 
 ugline.'^s and fictitious shabbinoss ; though, 
 to do those gentlemen justice, I have no 
 
 ^^ 
 
ON THE DANGER OF CONFOUNDING MORAL WITH PERSONAL DEFORMITY. 659 
 
 doubt their experience has taught them in 
 all such cases to abate a great deal of the 
 deformity which they are instructed to ex- 
 pect, and has discovered to tliem that the 
 Devil's agents upon this earth, like their 
 master, are far less ugly in reality than they 
 are painted. 
 
 I am afraid, Mr. Reflector, that I shall be 
 thought to have gone wide of my subject, 
 wliich was to detect the practical errors of 
 physiognomy, properly so called ; whereas I 
 have introduced pliysical defects, such as 
 lameness, the effects of accidents upon a 
 man's person, his wearing apparel, &c., as 
 circumstances on which the eye of dislike, 
 looking askance, may report erroneous con- 
 clusions to the undei'standing. But if we 
 are liable, through a kind or an unkind 
 passion, to mistake so grossly concerning 
 things so exterior and palpable, how much 
 , more ai'e we likely to err respecting those 
 nicer and less perceptible hints of character 
 in a fixce whose detection constitutes the 
 triumph of the phj'sioguoraist ! 
 
 To revert to those bestowers of unmerited 
 deformity, the framers of advertisements for 
 the apprehension of delinquents, a sincere 
 desire of promoting the end of public justice 
 induces me to address a word to them on 
 the best means of attaining those ends. I 
 will endeavour to lay down a few practical, 
 or rather negative, rules for their use, for my 
 ambition extends no further than to arm 
 them with cautions against the self-defeating 
 of their own purposes : — 
 
 1. Imprimis, then, Mr. Advertiser ! If 
 the culprit whom you are willing to recover 
 be one to w-liom in times jiast you have 
 shown kindness, and been disposed to think 
 kindly of him yourself, but he has deceived 
 .your trust, and has run away, and left you 
 with a load of debt to answer for him, — sit 
 down calmly, and endeavour to behold him 
 through the spectacles of memory rather 
 than of present conceit. Image to 3'ourself, 
 before you pen a tittle of his description, the 
 Bame plausible, good-looking man who took 
 you in ; and try to put away from your 
 mind every intrusion of that deceitful S]/)ectre 
 which perpetually obtrudes itself in the 
 room of your former friend's known visage. 
 It will do you more credit to have been 
 deceived by such a one ; and depend upon it, 
 the traitor will convey to the eyes of the 1 
 
 world in general much more of that first 
 idea which you formed (perhaps in part 
 erroneous) of his pliysiognomy, than of that 
 frightful substitute which you have suffered 
 to creep in upon your mind and usurp upon 
 it ; a creature which has no archetype except 
 in your own brain. 
 
 2. If you be a master that have to adver- 
 tise a runaway apprentice, tliough the yi'Uiig 
 dog's faults are known only to you, and no 
 doubt his conduct has been aggravating 
 enough, do not presently set him down as 
 having crooked ankles. lie may have a good 
 pair of legs, and run away notwithstanding. 
 Indeed, tlie latter does rather seem to imply 
 the former. 
 
 3. If the uidiappy perscm against whom 
 your laudable vengeance is directed be a 
 thief, think that a thief may have a good 
 nose, good eyes, good ears. It is indis- 
 pensable to his profession that he be pos- 
 sessed of sagacity, foresight, vigilance ; it is 
 more than probable, then, that he is endued 
 with the bodily types or instruments of 
 these qualities to some tolerable degree of 
 perfectness. 
 
 4. If petty larceny be his offence, I exhort 
 you, do not confound meanness of crime 
 with diminutiveness of stature. These things 
 have no connexion. I have known a tall 
 man stoop to the basest action, a short man 
 aspire to the height of crime, a fair man be 
 guilty of the foulest actions, &c. 
 
 5. Perhaps the offender has been guilty of 
 some atrocious and aggravated murder. 
 Here is the most difficult case of all. It is 
 above all requisite that such a daring 
 violator of the peace and safety of society 
 should meet with his reward, a violent and 
 ignominious death. But how shall we get 
 at him ? Who is there among us that has 
 known him before he committed the offence, 
 that shall take upon him to say he can sit 
 down coolly and pen a dispassionate descrip- 
 tion of a murderer ? The tales of our 
 nursery, — the reading of our youth, — the 
 ill-lookhig man that was hired by the Uncle 
 to despatch the Children in the Wood, — the 
 grim ruffians who smothered the babes in 
 the Tower, — the black and beetle-browed 
 assassin of Mrs. Rjitcliffe, — the shag-liaii-od 
 villain of Mr. Monk liCwis, — the Tarquin 
 tread, and mill-stone dropping eyes, of 
 Murder in Shakspeare, — the exaggeratioua 
 
560 
 
 0^ THE INCONVENIENCES RESULTING FROM BEING HANGED. 
 
 of picture and of poetry, — what we have read 
 and what we have dreamed of, — rise up and 
 crowd in upon us such eye-scaring portraits 
 of the man of blood, that our pen is abso- 
 hitely forestalled ; we commence poets when 
 we should play the part of strictest historians, 
 and the very blackness of hoiTor which the 
 deed calls up, serves as a cloud to screen the 
 doer. The fiction is blameless, it is accordant 
 with those wise prejudices with which 
 nature has guarded our innocence, as with 
 impassable barriers, against the commission 
 of such appalling crimes ; but, meantime, the 
 criminal escapes ; or if, — owing to that wise 
 abatement in their expectation of deformity, 
 which, as I hinted at before, the officers of 
 pursuit never fail to make, and no doubt in 
 cases of this sort they make a more than 
 ordinary allowance, — if, owing to this or any 
 accident, the offender is caught and brought 
 to his trial, who that has been led out of 
 cui'iosity to witness such a scene has not 
 
 with astonishment reflected on the difference 
 between a real committer of a murder, and the 
 idea of one wliich he has been collecting and 
 heightening all his life out of books, dreams, 
 &c. ? The fellow, perhaps, is a sleek, smug- 
 looking man, with light hair and eyebrows, 
 — the latter by no means jutting out or like 
 a crag, — and with none of those marks 
 which our fancy had pre-bestowed upon 
 him. 
 
 I find I am getting unawares too serious ; 
 the best way on such occasions is to leave 
 off, which I shall do by generally recom- 
 mending to all prosecuting advertisers not 
 to confound crimes with ugliness ; or rather, 
 to distinguish between that physiognomical 
 deformity, which I am willing to grant 
 always accompanies crime, and mere physical 
 ugliness, — wliich signifies nothing, is the 
 opponent of nothing, and may exist in a good 
 or bad person indifferently. 
 
 Crito. 
 
 ON THE INCONVENIENCES EESULTING FROM BEING HANGED. 
 
 TO THE EDITOR OF " THE REFLECTOR. 
 
 Sir, — I am one of those unhappy persons 
 whose misfortunes, it seems, do not entitle 
 them to the benefit of pure pity. All that is 
 bestowed upon me of that kindest alleviator 
 of human miseries comes dashed with a 
 double portion of contempt. My griefs have 
 nothing in them that is felt as sacred by the 
 bystanders. Yet is my afiliction, in truth, 
 of the deepest grain — the heaviest task that 
 was ever given to mortal patience to sustain. 
 Time, that wears out all other sorrows, can 
 never modify or soften mine. Here they 
 must continue to gnaw as long at that fatal 
 mark 
 
 Why was I ever born 1 Why was inno- 
 cence in my person suffered to be branded 
 with a stain which was appointed only for 
 the blackest guilt 1 What had I done, or 
 my parents, that a disgrace of mine should 
 involve a whole posterity in infamy ? I am 
 almost tempted to believe, that, in some pre- 
 existeiit stiite, crimes to which this sublunary 
 life of mine hath been as much a stranger as 
 the babe that is newly born into it, have 
 
 drawn down upon me this vengeance, so 
 disproportionate to my actions on this 
 globe. 
 
 My brain sickens, and my bosom labours 
 to be delivered of the weight that presses 
 U])on it, j-^et my conscious pen shrinks from 
 the avowal. But out it must 
 
 O, Mr. Reflector ! guess at the wretch's 
 misery who now writes this to you, when, 
 with tears and burning blushes, he is obliged 
 to confess that he has been — itangkd 
 
 M(^thinks I hear an involuntary excla- 
 mation burst from you, as your imagination 
 jiresents to you fearful images of your 
 correspondent unknown — hanged ! 
 
 Fear not, Mr. Editor. No disembodied 
 spirit has the honour of addressing you. I 
 am llesli and blood, an unfortunate system 
 of bones, muscles, sinews, tu'teries, like 
 yourself 
 
 Tlicn, I presume, you mean to he pleamnt. — 
 That expression of yours, Mr. Correspondent, 
 juKst be taken somehow in a metaphorical 
 sense 
 
ON THE INCONVENIENCES RESULTING FROM BEING HANGED. 
 
 661 
 
 In the plainest sense, without trope or 
 figiire — Yes, Mr. Editor ! this neck of mine 
 has felt the fatal noose, — these hands have 
 tremblingly held up the corroborative pvayei-- 
 book, — these lips have sucked the moisture 
 of the last consolatory orange, — this tongue 
 has chanted the doleful cantata which no 
 performer was ever called upon to repeat, — 
 this face has had the veiling night-cap drawn 
 over it 
 
 But for no crime of mine. — Far be it from 
 me to arraign the justice of my country, 
 which, though tardy, did at length recognise 
 my innocence. It is not for me to reflect 
 upon judge or jury, now that eleven years 
 have elapsed since the eiToneous sentence 
 was pronounced. Men will always be fallible, 
 and perhaps circumstances did appear at the 
 time a little strong 
 
 Suffice it to say, that after hanging four 
 minutes, (as the spectators were pleased to 
 compute it, — a man that is being strangled, 
 I know from experience, has altogether a 
 diflferent measure of time from his friends 
 who are breathing leisurely about him, — I 
 suppose the minutes lengthen as time 
 approaches eternity, in the same manner as 
 the miles get longer as you travel north- 
 ward,) — after hanging four minutes, accord- 
 ing to the best calculation of the bystanders, 
 a reprieve came, and I was cut down 
 
 Really I am ashamed of deforming your 
 pages with these technical phrases — if I 
 knew how to express my meaning shorter 
 
 But to proceed. — My first care after I had 
 been brought to myself by the usual methods, 
 (those methods that are so interesting to the 
 operator and his assistants, who are pretty 
 numerous on such occasions, — but which no 
 patient was ever desirous of undergoing a 
 second time for the benefit of science,) my 
 first care was to provide myself with an 
 enormous stock or cravat to hide the place — 
 you understand me ; — my next care was to 
 procure a residence as distant as possible 
 from that part of the country where I had 
 sufiered. For that reason I chose the 
 metropolis, as the place where wounded 
 honour (I had been told) could lurk with 
 the least danger of exciting inquiry, and 
 stigmatised innocence had the best chance of 
 hiding her disgrace in a crowd. I sought 
 out a new circle of acquaintance, and my 
 circumstances happily enabling me to pursue 
 
 my fancy in that respect, I endeavoured, by 
 mingling in all the pleasures which the town 
 affords, to efface the memory of what I had 
 undergone. 
 
 But, alas ! such is the portentous and all- 
 pervading chain of connexion which links 
 together the head and members of this great 
 community, my scheme of lying perdu waa 
 defeated almost at the outset. A country- 
 man of mine, whom a foolish law-suit had 
 brought to town, by chance met me, and the 
 secret was soon blazoned about. 
 
 In a short time, I found myself deserted 
 by most of those who had been my intimate 
 friends. Not that any guilt was supposed 
 to attach to my character. My officious 
 countryman, to do him justice, had been 
 candid enough to explain my perfect inno- 
 cence. But, somehow or other, there is a 
 wimt of strong virtue in mankind. We have 
 2:)lenty of the softer instincts, but the heroic 
 character is gone. How else can I account 
 for it, that of all my numerous acquaintance, 
 among whom I had the honour of ranking 
 sundry persons of education, talents, and 
 worth, scarcely here and there one or two 
 could be found who had the courage to 
 associate with a man that had been hanged. 
 
 Those few who did not desert me altogether 
 were persons of strong but coarse minds ; 
 and from the absence of all delicacy in them 
 I suffered almost as much as from the 
 superabundance of a false species of it in the 
 others. Those who stuck by me were the 
 jokers, who thought themselves entitled by 
 the fidelity which they had shown towards 
 me to use me with what familiarity they 
 pleased. Many and unfeeling are the jests 
 that I have suffered from these rude (because 
 faithful) Achateses. As they passed me in 
 the streets, one would nod significantly to 
 his companion and say, pointing to me, 
 Smoke his cravat, and ask me if I had got a 
 wen, that I was so solicitous to cover my 
 neck. Another would inquire, "What news 
 from * * * Assizes 1 (which you may guess, 
 Mr. Editor, was the scene of my shame,) and 
 whether the sessions was like to prove a 
 maiden one 1 A third would offer to insure 
 me from drowning. A fourth would tease 
 me with inquiries how I felt when I was 
 swinging, whether I had not something like 
 a blue flame dancing before my eyes ? A 
 fifth took a fancy never to call me anything 
 
 o o 
 
 e 
 
562 
 
 ON THE INCONVENIENCES RESULTING FROM BEING HANGED. 
 
 but Lazarus. And an eminent bookseller 
 and piiblislier, — who, in his zeal to present 
 the public with new facts, had he lived in 
 those days, I am confident, would not have 
 scrupled waiting upon the person himself 
 last mentioned, at the most critical period of 
 his existence, to solicit a few facts relative to 
 resuscitation, — had the modesty to oflfer me 
 — guineas per sheet, if I would write, in his 
 Magazine, a physiological account- of my 
 feelings upon coming to myself. 
 
 But these were evils which a moderate 
 fortitude might have enabled me to struggle 
 with. Alas ! Mr. Editor, the women, — 
 whose good graces I had always most 
 assiduously cultivated, from whose softer 
 minds I had hoped a more delicate and 
 generous sympathy than I found in the men, 
 — the women began to shun me — this was 
 the unkindest blow of all. 
 
 But is it to be wondered at ? How couldst 
 thou imagine, wretchedest of beings, that 
 that tender creature Serajihina would fling 
 her pretty arms about that neck which 
 previous circumstances had rendered in- 
 famous ? That she would put up with the 
 refuse of the rope, the leavings of the cord ? 
 Or that any analogy could subsist between 
 the knot which binds true lovers, and the 
 knot which ties malefactors 1 
 
 I can forgive that pert baggage Flirtilla, 
 who, when I complimented her one day on 
 the execution which her eyes had done, 
 replied, that, to be sure, Mr. * * was ajudge 
 of those things. But from thy more exalted 
 mind, Celestina, I expected a more unpre- 
 judiced decision. The person whose true 
 name I conceal under this appellation, of all 
 the women that I was ever acquainted with 
 had the most manly turn of mind, which she 
 had improved by i-eading and the best con- 
 versation. Her understanding was not more 
 masculine than her manners and whole 
 disposition were delicately and truly feminine. 
 She was the daughter of an officer who had 
 fallen in the service of his country, leaving 
 his widow, and Celestina, an only child, witli 
 a fortune sufficient to set them above want, 
 but not to enable them to live in splendour. 
 I had the mother's permission to pay my 
 addresses to the young lady, and Celestina 
 seemed to approve of my suit. 
 
 Often and ol'teii have I poured out my 
 overcharged soul in the presence of Celestina, 
 
 complaining of the hard and unfeeling 
 prejudices of the world ; and the sweet maid 
 has again and again declared, that no 
 irrational prejudice should hinder her from 
 esteeming every man according to his 
 intrinsic worth. Often has she repeated the 
 consolatory assurance, that she could never 
 consider as essentially ignominious an acci- 
 dent, which was indeed to be deprecated, but 
 which might have haT)Pened to the most 
 innocent of mankind. Then would she set 
 forth some illustrious example, which her 
 reading easily furnished, of a Phocion or a 
 Socrates unjustly condemned ; of a R:ileigh 
 or a Sir Thomas More, to whom late pos- 
 terity had done justice ; and by soothing 
 my fancy with some such agreeable parallel, 
 she would make me almost to triumph in 
 my disgrace, and convert my shame into 
 glory. 
 
 In such entertaining and instructive con- 
 versations the time passed on, till I impor- 
 tunately urged the mistress of my affections 
 to name the day for our union. To this she 
 obligingly consented, and I thought myself 
 the happiest of mankind. But how was I 
 surprised one morning on the receipt of the 
 following billet fi-om my charmer : — 
 
 Sir, — You must not impute it to levity, 
 or to a worse failing, ingratitude, if, with 
 anguish of heart, I feel myself compelled by 
 irresistible arguments to recall a vow which 
 I fear I made with too little consideration. 
 I never can be yours. The reasons of my 
 decision, which is final, are in my own bi-east, 
 and you must everlastingly remain a stranger 
 to them. Assure yourself that I can never 
 cease to esteem you as I ought. 
 
 Celestina. 
 
 At the sight of this paper, I ran in frjuitic 
 haste to Celestina's lodgings, where I learned, 
 to my infinite mortification, that the mother 
 and daughter were set off" on a journey to a 
 distjint part of the country, to visit a rela- 
 tion, and were not expected to return in less 
 than four months. 
 
 Stunned by this blow, which loft mo with- 
 out the courage to solicit an ex|)lanatiou by 
 letter, even if 1 had known where they were, 
 (for the particular iuldress was industriously 
 concealeil from me,) 1 waited with imi>atience 
 the termination of the period, in the vain 
 
ON THE INCONVENIENCES RESULTING FROM BEING HANGED. 
 
 56J 
 
 hope that I might be permitted to have a 
 chance of softening the harsh decision by 
 a personal interview with Cclestina after 
 her return. But before three montlis were 
 at an end, I learned from the newspapers 
 that my beloved had — given her hand to 
 another ! 
 
 Heart-broken as I was, I was totally at a 
 loss to account for the strange step which 
 she had taken ; and it was not till some 
 years after that I learned the true reason 
 from a female relation of hers, to whom it 
 seems Celestina had confessed in confidence, 
 that it was no demerit of mine that had 
 caused her to break oif the match so abruptly, 
 nor any preference which she might feel for 
 any other person, for she preferred me (she 
 was pleased to say,) to all mankind ; but 
 when she came to lay the matter closer to 
 her heart, she found that she never should 
 be able to bear the sight — (I give you her 
 very words as they were detailed to me by 
 her relation) — the sight of a man in a night- 
 cap, who had appeared on a public platform 
 — it would lead to such a disagreeable asso- 
 ciation of ideas! And to this pimctilio I 
 was sacrificed. 
 
 To pass over an infinite series of minor 
 mortifications, to which this last and heaviest 
 might well render me callous, behold me 
 here, Mr. Editor! in the thirty-seventh year 
 of my existence, (the twelfth, reckoning from 
 my re-animation,) cut off from all respectable 
 connexions ; rejected by the fairer half of 
 the community, — who in my case alone seem 
 to have laid aside the characteristic pity 
 of their sex ; punished because I was once 
 punished unjustly; suffering for no other 
 reason than because I once had the mis- 
 fortune to suffer without any cause at all. 
 In no otlier country, I think, but this, could 
 a man have been subject to such a life-long 
 persecution, when once his innocence had 
 been clearly established. 
 
 Had I crawled forth a rescued victim from 
 the rack in the horrible dungeons of the In- 
 quisition, — had I heaved myself up from a 
 half bastinado in China, or been torn from 
 the just-entering, ghastly impaling stake 
 in Barbary, — had I dropt alive from the 
 knout in Russia, or come off with a g;ished 
 neck from the half-mortal, scarce-in-time- 
 retracted cimeter of an executioueering slave 
 in Turkey. — I might have borne about the 
 
 remnant of this frame (the mangled trophy 
 of reprieved innocence) with credit to my- 
 self, in any of those barbarous countries. 
 No scorn, at least, would have mingled 
 with the pity (small as it might be) with 
 which what was left of me would have been 
 surveyed. 
 
 The singularity of my case has often led me 
 to inquire into the reasons of the general levity 
 with which the subject of hanging is treated 
 as a topic in this country. I say, as a topic : 
 for let the very persons who speak so lightly 
 of the thing at a distance be brought to view 
 the real scene, — let the platfoi-m be bona 
 fide exhibited, and the trembling culprit 
 brought forth, — the case is changed ; but as 
 a topic of conversation, I appeal to the vulgar 
 jokes which pass curreut in every street. 
 But why mention them, when the politest 
 authors have agreed in making use of this 
 subject as a source of the ridiculous 1 Swift, 
 and Pope, and Prior, are fond of recurring 
 to it. Gay has built an entire drama upon 
 this single foiuidation. The whole interest 
 of the Beggar's Opera may be said to hang 
 upon it. To such writers as Fielding and 
 Smollett it is a perfect bonne-houche. — Hear 
 the facetious Tom Brown, in his Comical 
 Vieto of London and Westminster, describe 
 the Order of the Show at one of the Tyburn 
 Executions in his time : — " Mr. Ordinary 
 visits his melancholy flock in Newgate by 
 eight. Doleful procession up Holborn-hill 
 about eleven. Men handsome and proper that 
 were never thought so before, which is some 
 comfort however. Arrive at the fatal place 
 by twelve. Burnt brandy, women, and sab- 
 bath-breaking, repented of. Some few peni- 
 tential drops fall under the gallows. Sheriffs' 
 men, parson, pickpockets, criminals, all very 
 busy. The last concluding peremptory psalm 
 struck up. Show over by one." — In this 
 sportive strain does this misguided wit think 
 proper to play with a subject so serious, 
 which yet he would hardly have done if he 
 had not known tliat there existed a predis- 
 position in the habits of his unaccountable 
 countrymen to consider the subject as a jest. 
 But what shall we say to Shakspeare, who, 
 (not to mention the solution which the Orave- 
 digger in Handet gives of his fellow-work- 
 man's problem,) in that scene in Measure for 
 Measure, where the Clov)n calls upon Master 
 Baraardine to get up and be hanged, which 
 
 o o 2 
 
564 
 
 ON THE INCONVENIENCES RESULTING FROM BEING HANGED. 
 
 he declines on the score of being sleepy, has 
 actually gone out of his way to gratify this 
 amiable propensity in his countrymen ; for 
 it is plain, from the use that was to be made 
 of his head, and from Ahhorson's asking, " Is 
 the axe upon the block, sirrah ? " that be- 
 heading, and not hanging, was the punish- 
 ment to which Barnardine was destined. 
 But Shakspeare knew that the axe and block 
 were pregnant with no ludicrous images, and 
 therefore falsified the historic truth of his 
 own drama (if I may so speak), rather than 
 he would leave out such excellent matter for 
 a jest as the suspending of a fellow-creature 
 in mid-air has been ever esteemed to be by 
 Englishmen. 
 
 One reason why the ludicrous never fails 
 to intrude itself into our contemplations upon 
 this mode of death, I suppose to be, the ab- 
 surd posture into which a man is thrown 
 who is condemned to dance, as the vulgar 
 delight to express it, upon nothing. To see 
 him whisking and wavering in the air, 
 
 " As the ■wind you know will wave a man ; " • 
 
 to behold the vacant carcase, from which the 
 life is newly dislodged, shifting between 
 earth and heaven, the sport of every gust ; 
 like a weathercock, sei-ving to show from 
 which point the wind blows ; like a maukin, 
 fit only to scare away birds ; like a nest left 
 to swing upon a bough when the bird is 
 flown : these are uses to which we cannot 
 without a mixture of spleen and contempt 
 behold the human carcase reduced. We 
 string up dogs, foxes, bats, moles, weasels. 
 Man surely deserves a steadier death. 
 
 Another reason why the ludicrous asso- 
 ciates more forcibly with this than with any 
 other mode of punishment, I cannot help 
 thinking to be, the senseless costume with 
 which old prescription has thought fit to 
 clothe the exit of malefactors in this country. 
 Let a man do what he will to abstract from 
 his imagination all idea of the whimsical, 
 something of it will come across him when 
 he contemplates the figureof a fellow-creature 
 in the day-time (in iiowcver distressing a 
 situation) in a niglit-cap. Wliether it be 
 that this nocturnal addition has something 
 discordant with daylight, or tliat it is thu 
 dress which we arc seen in at those times 
 
 • ,Bieroniino in the Spaniah Trngedj-. 
 
 when we are " seen," as the Angel in Milton 
 expresses it, " least wise," — this, I am afraid, 
 will always be the case ; unless, indeed, aa 
 in my instance, some strong personal feeling 
 overpower the ludicrous altogether. To me, 
 when I reflect upon the train of misfortunes 
 which have pursued men through life, owing 
 to that accursed drapery, the cap presents as 
 purely frightful an object as the sleeveless 
 yellow coat and devil-painted mitre of the 
 San Benitos. — An ancestor of mine, who 
 sufiered for his loyalty in the time of the 
 civil wars, was so sensible of the truth of 
 what I am here adv;\ncing, that on the morn- 
 ing of execution, no entreaties could prevail 
 upon him to submit to the odious dishabille, 
 as he called it, but he insisted upon wear- 
 ing and actually suff"ered in, the identical, 
 flowing periwig which he is painted in, in 
 the gallei'y belonging to my uncle's seat in 
 shire. 
 
 SuflTer me, Mr. Editor, before I quit the 
 subject, to say a word or two respecting the 
 minister of justice in this country ; in plain 
 words, I mean the hangman. It has always 
 appeared to me that, in the mode of inflicting 
 capital punishments with us, there is too 
 much of the ministry of the human hand. The 
 guillotine, as performing its functions more 
 of itself and sparing human agency, though a 
 cruel and disgusting exhibition, in my mind 
 has many ways the advantage over oitr way. 
 In beheading, indeed, as it was formerly prac- 
 tised in England, and in whipping to death, 
 as is sometimes practised now, the hand of 
 man is no doubt sufficiently busy ; bixt there 
 is something less repugnant in these down- 
 right blows than in the officious barber-like 
 ministerings of the other. To have a fellow 
 with his hangman's hands fumbling about 
 your collar, atljusting the thing as your valet 
 would regulate your cravat, valuing himself 
 on his menial dexterity 
 
 I never shall forget meeting ray rascal, — 
 I mean the fellow who officiated for me, — in 
 London last winter. I think I see him now, 
 — in a waistcoat that had been mine, — 
 smirking along as if he knew me 
 
 In some parts of Germany, that fellow's 
 oflice is by law declared infamous, and his 
 posterity incajjublc of being eunobied. Tliey 
 have hereditary liangmen, or had at le;ust, 
 in the .same manner as they had hereili- 
 tary other great offic^ers of state ; and the 
 
ON THE MELANCHOLY OF TAILORS. 
 
 566 
 
 hangmen's families of two adjoining parishes 
 intermarried with each other, to keep the 
 breed entire. I wisli something of the same 
 kind were established in Eu<;fland. 
 
 But it is time to quit a subject which teems 
 
 witli disugreeable images 
 
 Permit me to subscribe myself, Mr. Editor* 
 Your unfortunate friend, 
 
 Pensilis. 
 
 ON THE MELANCHOLY OF TAILOES 
 
 " Scdct. ffiternumquo sedebit, 
 Infclii Theseus." Vikgil. 
 
 That there is a professional melancholy, if 
 I may so express myself, incident to the 
 occupation of a tailor, is a fact which I think 
 very few will venture to dispute. I may 
 safely appeal to my readers, whether they 
 ever knew one of that faculty that was not 
 of a temperament, to say the least, far re- 
 moved from mercurial or jovial. 
 
 Observe the suspicious gravity of their 
 gait. The peacock is not more tendei-, from 
 a consciousness of his peculiar infirmity, 
 than a gentleman of this profession is of 
 being known by the same infallible testi- 
 monies of his occupation. " Walk, that I 
 may know thee." 
 
 Do you ever see him go whistling along 
 the foot-path like a carman, or brush through 
 a crowd like a baker, or go smiling to himself 
 like a lover 1 Is he forward to thrust into 
 mobs, or to make one at the ballad-singer's 
 audiences ? Does he not rather slink by 
 assemblies and meetings of the people, as one 
 that wisely declines popular observation ? 
 
 How extremely rare is a noisy tailor ! a 
 mirtliful and obstreperous tailor ! 
 
 " At my nativity," says Sir Thomas 
 Bi'owne, " my ascendant was the earthly 
 sign of Scorpius ; I was born in the planetary 
 hour of Saturn, and I think I have a piece 
 of that leaden planet in me." One would 
 think that he were anatomising a tailor ! 
 save that to the latter's occupation, methinks, 
 a woollen plauet would seem more consonant, 
 and that he should be born when the sun 
 was in Aries. — He goes on : "I am no 
 way facetious, nor disposed for the mirth 
 and galliardise of company." How true a 
 type of the whole trade ! Eminently eco- 
 nomiciil of liis words, you shall seldom hear 
 a jest come from one of them. He sometimes 
 furnishes subject for a repartee, but rarely 
 (I think) contributes one ore propria. 
 
 Drink itself does not seem to elevate him, 
 or at least to call out of him any of the ex- 
 ternal indications of vanity. I cannot say 
 that it never causes his pride to swell, but it 
 never bi'eaks out. I am even fearful that it 
 may swell and rankle to an alarming degree 
 inwai'dly. For pride is near of kin to me- 
 lancholy ! — a hurtful obstruction from the 
 ordinary outlets of vauity being shut. It is 
 this stoppage which engenders proud 
 humours. Therefore a tailor may be proud. 
 I think he is never vain. The display of his 
 gaudy patterns, in that book of his which 
 emulates the rainbow, never raises any 
 inflations of that emotion in him, corres- 
 ponding to what the wig-maker (for instance) 
 evinces, when he expatiates on a curl or a bit 
 of hair. He spreads them forth with a sullen 
 incapacity for pleasure, a real or affected 
 indifference to grandeur. Cloth of gold 
 neither seems to elaie, nor cloth of frieze to 
 depress him — according to tlie beautiful 
 motto which formed the modest imprese of 
 the shield worn by Charles Brandon at his 
 marriage with the king's sister. Nay, I doubt 
 whether he would discover any vain-glorious 
 complacence in his colom-s, though " Iris " 
 herself " dipt the woof." 
 
 In further corroboration of this argument 
 — who ever saw the wedding of a tailor an- 
 nounced in the newspapers, or the birth of 
 liis eldest son ? 
 
 When was a tailor known to give a dance, 
 or to be himself a good dancer, or to perform 
 exquisit(-ly on the tight-i-ope, or to sliine in 
 any such light and airy pastimes ? to sing, 
 or play on the violin 1 
 
 Do they much care for public rejoicings, 
 hghtiugs up, ringing of bells, firing of Ciiu- 
 nons, &c. ? 
 
 Valiant I know they can be ; but I appeal 
 to those who were witnesses to the exploits 
 
666 
 
 OX THE MELANCHOLY OF TAILORS. 
 
 of Eliot's famous troop, whether in their 
 fiercest charges they betrayed anytliiug of 
 that thoughtless oblivion of death with 
 which a Frenohuian jigs into battle, or 
 whether they did not show more of the 
 melancholy valour of the Spaniard, upon 
 whou' they charged ; that deliberate courage 
 whi..'h contemplation and sedentary habits 
 breathe ? 
 
 Are they often great newsmongers ? — I 
 have known some few among them arrive 
 at the dignity of speculative politicians ; but 
 that light and cheerful every-day interest in 
 the affairs and goings on of the world, which 
 makes the barber * sucb delightful company, 
 T think is rarely observable in them. 
 
 This characteristic pensiveness in them 
 being so notorious, I wonder none of those 
 wi'iters, who have expressly treated of me- 
 lancholy, should have mentioned it. Burton, 
 whose book is an excellent abstract of all the 
 authors in that kind who preceded him, and 
 who treats of every si:)ecies of this malady, 
 from the hypochondriacal or windy to the 
 heroical or love melancholy, has strangely 
 omitted it. Shakspeare himself has over- 
 looked it. "I have neither the scholar's 
 melancholy (saith Jaques), which is emula- 
 tion ; nor the courtier's, which is jiroud ; nor 
 the soldier's, which is politic ; nor the lover's, 
 which is all these:" and then, when you 
 might expect him to have brought in, " nor 
 the tailor's, which is " so and so, he comes to 
 an end of his enumeration, and falls to a 
 defining of his own melancholy. 
 
 Milton likewise has omitted it, where he 
 had so fair an opportunity of bringing it in, 
 in his Penseroso. 
 
 But the partial omissions of historians 
 proving nothing against the existeiioe of any 
 
 • Having incidentally mentioned the barber in ii com- 
 parison ui piolcssional tcniijcramcnts, I hope no otlicr 
 trade will take utfcnce, or looli upon it as an incivility 
 done to them, if I say, that in courtesy, humanity, and 
 all the conversational and social graces which " gladden 
 life," I esteem no profession comparable tolas. Indeed, 
 80 {fveat is the goodwill which I Ijear to this useful and 
 agreeable body of men, that, residing in one of the Inns 
 of Court (where the best specimens of them are to be 
 found, except perhaps at the universities), there arc seven 
 of them to whom I am personally known, and who 
 never pass me without the compliment of the hat on 
 either side. Jly truly polite and uil)anc friend, Mr. 
 
 A m, of l-'lower-dc-lucc-court, in I'leet-strect, will 
 
 fortfive jny mention of him in particular. I can truly 
 »ay, '.hat 1 never spent a ([uartcr of an hour under his 
 hands without deri\ing some profit from the agreeable 
 discussi(ms which are always going ou there. 
 
 well-attested fact, I shall proceed and endea- 
 vour to ascertain the causes why this pensive 
 turn should be so predominant in people of 
 this profession above all others. 
 
 And first, may it not be, that the custom 
 of wearing apparel being derived to us from 
 the fall, and one of the most mortifying 
 products of that unhappy event, a certain 
 seriousness (to say no more of it) may in the 
 order of things have been intended .to be 
 impressed upon the minds of that race of 
 men to whom in all ages the care of con- 
 triving the human apparel has been en- 
 trusted, to keep up the memory of the first 
 institution of clot) .es, and serve as a standing 
 remonstrance against those vanities which 
 the absurd conversion of a memorial of our 
 shame into an ornament of our persons was 
 destined to produce 1 Correspondent in 
 some sort to this, it may be remarked, that 
 the tailor sitting over a cave or hollow place, 
 in the caballistick language of his order is 
 said to have certain melancholy region.? always 
 open ujider his feet. — But waiving fui'ther 
 inquiry into final causes, where the best of 
 us can only wander in the dark, let us try to 
 discover the efficient causes of this melan- 
 choly. 
 
 I think, then, that they may be reduced 
 to two, omitting some subordinate ones, viz. 
 
 The sedentary habits of the tailor. — 
 Something peculiar in his diet. — 
 
 First, his sedentary habits. — In Doctor 
 Norris's famous narrative of the frenzy of 
 Mr. John Dennis, the patient, being ques- 
 tioned as to the occasion of the swelling in 
 his legs, replies that it came "by criticism ;" 
 to which the learned doctor seeming to 
 demur, as to a distemper which he had never 
 read of, Dennis (who a])i)eai-s not to have 
 been mad ujjon all subjects) rejoins, with 
 some warmth, that it was no distemper, but 
 a noble art ; that he had sat fourteen hours 
 a day at it ; anil that the other was a pi-etty 
 doctor not to know that there was a commu- 
 nication between the brain and the legs ! 
 
 When we consider that this sitting for 
 fourteen houi"S continuously, which the critic 
 ])t()l)ably i)nictised only while he was writing 
 his " remarks," is no more than what tlie 
 tailor, in the ordinary j)ursuance of Ids art, 
 submits to daily (Sundays excepted) tliroiigii- 
 out the year, shall we wonder to find the 
 
brain affected, and in a manner overclouded, 
 from that indissoluble sympathy between 
 the noble and It'ss noble parts of the body 
 which Dennis hints at ? Tlie unnatural and 
 painful manner of his sitting must also 
 greatly aggravate the evil, insomuch that I 
 have sometimes ventured to liken tailors at 
 their boards to so many envious Junos, sitting 
 cross-legged to hinder the birth of their 02vn 
 /elicit}/. The legs trausversed thus (xj cross- 
 wise, or decussated, was among the ancients 
 the posture of malediction. Tlie Turks, who 
 practise it at this day, are noted to be a 
 melancholy people. 
 
 Secondly, liis diet. — To which purpose I 
 find a most remarkable passage in Burton, 
 in his chapter entitled " Bad diet a cause of 
 
 melancholy." " Amongst herbs to be eaten 
 (he says) I find goui-ds, cucumbers, melons, 
 disallowed ; but especially cabbage. It 
 causeth troublesome dreams, and sends up 
 black vapours to the brain. Galen, jLoc. 
 Affect, lib. iii. cap. 6, of all herbs condemns 
 CABBAGE. And Isaack, lib. ii. cap. 1, animce 
 gravitatem facit, it brings heaviness to the 
 soul." I could not omit so flattering a testi- 
 mony from an author who, having no theory 
 of his own to serve, has so unconsciously 
 contributed to the confirmation of mine. It 
 is well known that this last-named vegetable 
 has, from the earliest periods which we can 
 discover, constituted almost the sole food of 
 this extraordinary race of people. 
 
 Burton, Junior. 
 
 HOSPITA ON THE IMMODERATE INDULGENCE OF THE PLEASURES 
 
 OF THE PALATE. 
 
 rO THE EDITOR OF " THE REFLECTOR.' 
 
 Mr. Eeflector, — My husband and I are. 
 fond of company, and being in easy circum- 
 stances, we are seldom without a i)arty to 
 dinner two or three days in a week. The 
 utmost cordiality has hitherto prevailed at 
 our meetings ; but there is a young gentle- 
 man, a near i-elation of my husband's, that 
 has lately come among us, whose preposterovis 
 behaviour bids fair, if not timely checked, to 
 disturb our tranquillity. He is too great a 
 favourite with my hvisband in other respects, 
 for me to remonstrate with him in any other 
 than this distant way. A letter printed in 
 your publication may catch his eye ; for he 
 is a great reader, and makes a point of seeing 
 all the new things that come out. Indeed, 
 lie is by no means deficient in understanding. 
 My husband says that he has a good deal of 
 wit ; but for my part I cannot say I am any 
 judge of that, having seldom observed him 
 open his mouth except for purposes very 
 foreign to conversation. In short, Sirj tliis 
 young gentleman's failing is, an immoderate 
 indulgence of his palate. The first time he 
 dined with us, he thought it necessary to 
 extenuate the length of time he kept the 
 dinner on the table, by declaring that he had 
 taken a very long walk in the morning, and 
 
 came in fasting ; but as that excuse could 
 not serve above once or twice at most, he 
 h;)3 latterly dropped the mask altogether, 
 and chosen to appear in his own proper 
 colours without reserve or apology. 
 
 You cannot imagine how unpleasant his 
 conduct has become. His way of staring at 
 the dishes as they are brought in, has abso- 
 lutely something immodest in it : it is like 
 the stare of an impudent man of fashion at 
 a fine woman, when she first comes into a 
 room. I am positively in pain for the dishes, 
 and cannot hel]:) thinking they have con- 
 sciousness, and will be put out of counte- 
 nance, he treats them so like what they 
 are not. 
 
 Then again he makes no scruple of keeping 
 a joint of meat on the table, Jilter the cheese 
 and fruit are brought m, till he has what he 
 calls done ^cith it. Now how awkward this 
 looks, where there are ladies, you may judge, 
 Mr. Reflector, — how it disturbs the order 
 and comfort of a meal. And yet I always 
 make a point of helping him first, contrary 
 to all good manners, — befure any of my 
 female friends are helped, — that he may 
 avoid this very error. I wish he would eat 
 before he comes out. 
 
568 
 
 ON THE niMODERATE INDULGENCE OF THE PALATK 
 
 What makes his proceedings more particu- 
 larly offensive at our house is, that my 
 husband, though out of common politeness 
 he is obliged to set dishes of animal food 
 before his visitors, yet himself and his whole 
 family, (myself included) feed entirely on 
 vegetables. We have a theory, that animal 
 food is neither wholesome nor natural to 
 man ; and even vegetables we refuse to eat 
 until they have undergone the operation of 
 tire, in consideration of those numberless 
 little living creatures which the glass helps 
 ns to detect iu every fibre of the plant or 
 root before it be dressed. On the same 
 theory we boil our water, which is our only 
 drink, before we suffer it to come to table. 
 Our chikli-en are perfect little Pythagoreans : 
 it would do you' good to see them iu their 
 nursery, stuffing their dried fruits, figs, 
 raisins, and milk, which is the only approach 
 to animal food which is allowed. They have 
 no notion how the substance of a creature 
 that ever had life can become food for an- 
 other creature. A beef-steak is an absurdity 
 to them ; a mutton-chop, a solecism in 
 'terms; a cutlet, a word absolutely without 
 any meaning ; a butcher is nonsense, except 
 BO far as it is taken for a man who delights 
 in blood, or a hero. In this happy state of 
 innocence we have kept their minds, not 
 allowing them to go into the kitchen, or to 
 hear of any preparations for tlie dressing of 
 animal food, or even to know that such 
 things are practised. But as a state of 
 ignorance is incompatible with a certain age, 
 and as my eldest girl, who is ten years old 
 next Midsummer, must shortly be introduced 
 into the world and sit at table with us, where 
 she will see some things which will shock all 
 her received notions, I have been endeavour- 
 ing by little and little to break her mind, and 
 prepare it for the disagreeable impressions 
 which must be forced u))on it. The first hint 
 I gave her upon the subject, I could see her 
 recoil from it with the same hori-or with 
 which we listen to a tale of Anthro- 
 pophagism ; but she has gradually grown 
 
 more reconciled to it, in some measure, from 
 my telling her that it was the custom of the 
 world, — to which, however senseless, we 
 must submit, so far as we could do it with 
 innocence, not to give offence ; and she has 
 shown so miich strength of mind on other 
 occasions, which I have no doubt is owing to 
 the calmness and serenity superinduced by 
 her diet, that I am in good hopes when the 
 proper season for her debrtt arrives, she may 
 be brought to endure the sight of a roasted 
 chicken or a dish of sweet-breads for the 
 first time without fainting. Such being the 
 nature of our little household, you may guess 
 what inroads into the economy of it, — what 
 revolutions and turnings of things upside 
 down, the example of such a feeder as 
 Mr. is calculated to produce. 
 
 I wonder, at a time like the present, when 
 the scarcity of every kind of food is so 
 painfully acknowledged, that shame has no 
 effect upon him. Can he have read Mr. 
 Malthus's Thoughts on the Ratio of Food 
 to Population ? Can he think it reasonable 
 that one man should consume the sustenance 
 of many ? 
 
 The young gentleman has an agreeable air 
 and person, such as are not unlikely to 
 recommend him on the score of matrimony. 
 But his fortune is not over large ; and what 
 prudent young woman would think of em- 
 barking hers with a man who would bring 
 three or four mouths (or what is equivalent 
 to them) into a family ? She might as 
 reasonably choose a widower in the same 
 circumstances, with three or four children. 
 
 I cannot think who he takes after. His 
 father and mother, by all accounts, were 
 very moderate eaters ; only I have heard 
 that the latter swallowed her victuals very 
 fast, and the former had a lodious custom of 
 sitting long at his meals. Perhaps he takes 
 after both. 
 
 I wish you would turn this iu your 
 thouglits, Mr. Reflector, and give us your 
 ideas on the subject of excessive eatmg, and, 
 particularly, of animal food. Hosi-ita. 
 
EDAX ON APPETITE. 
 
 569 
 
 EDAX ON APPETITE. 
 
 TO THE EDITOR OF " THE REFLECTOR.' 
 
 Mr. Eeflector, — I am going to lay before 
 you a case of the most iniquitous persecution 
 that ever poor devii suffered. 
 
 You must know, then, that I have been 
 visitdd with a calamity ever since my birth. 
 How shall I mention it without offending 
 delicacy ? Yet out it must. My sufferings, 
 then, have all arisen from a most inordinate 
 appetite 
 
 Not for wealth, not for vast possessions, — 
 then might I have hoped to find a cure in 
 some of those precepts of philosophers or 
 poets, — those verba et voces which Horace 
 speaks of ; — 
 
 " quibus hunc lenire dolorem 
 Possis, et magnara morbi deponere partem ; " 
 
 not for glory, not for fame, not for applause, 
 — for against this disease, too, he tells us 
 there are certain piacula, or, as Pope has 
 chosen to render it, 
 
 " rhymes, ■which fresh and fresh applied, 
 Will cure the arrant'st puppy of his pride ; " 
 
 nor yet for pleasure, properly so called : the 
 strict and virtuous lessons which I received 
 in early life from the best of jjai-ents, — a 
 pious clerg}'man of the Church of England, 
 now no more, — I trust have rendered me 
 sufficiently secui-e on that side : 
 
 No, Sir, for none of the^se things ; but an 
 appetite, in its coarsest and least metaphorical 
 sense, — an appetite for food. 
 
 The exorbitances of my arrow-root and 
 pappish days I cannot go back fai* enough to 
 remember ; only I have been told that my 
 mother's constitution not admitting of my 
 being nursed at home, the woman who had 
 the care of me for that purpose u.sed to make 
 most extravagant demands tor my pretended 
 excesses in that kind ; which my parents, 
 rather than believe anything unpleasant of 
 me, chose to impute to the known covetous- 
 ness and mercenary disposition of that sort 
 of people. This blindness continued on their 
 part after I was sent for home, up to the 
 
 period when it was thought proper, on 
 account of my advanced age, that I should 
 mix with other boys more unreservedly than 
 I had hitherto done. I was accordingly sent 
 to boarding-school. 
 
 Here the melancholy truth became too 
 apparent to be disguised. The prying 
 republic of which a great school consists 
 soon found me out : there was no shifting 
 the blame any longer upon other people's 
 shoulders, — no good-natured maid to take 
 upon herself the enormities of which I stood 
 accused in the article of bread and butter, 
 besides the crying sin of stolen ends ot 
 puddings, and cold pies strangely missing. 
 The truth was but too manifest in my looks, 
 — in the evident signs of inanition which 1 
 exhibited after the fullest meals, in spite of 
 the double allowance which my master was 
 privately instructed by my kind parents to 
 give me. The sense of the ridiculous, which 
 is but too much alive in grown persons, is 
 tenfold more active and alei't in boys. Once 
 detected, I was the constant butt of their 
 arrows, — the mark against which every puny 
 leveller directed his little shaft of scorn. The 
 very Graduses and Thesauruses were raked 
 for phrases to pelt me with by the tiny 
 pedants. Ventri natus — Veutri deditus, — 
 Vesana gula, — Escarum gurges, — Dapibus 
 indulgens, — Non dans fraena gul<e, — Sectans 
 lautae fez-cula mensae, resounded whex'esoever 
 I passed. I led a weary life, suHering the 
 penalties of guilt for that which was no 
 crime, but only following the blameless 
 dictates of nature. The remembrance of 
 those childish reproaches haunts me yet 
 oftentimes in my dreams. My school-ilays 
 come again, and the liorror I used to feel, 
 when, in some silent corner, retired from the 
 notice of my unfeeling playfellows, I have 
 sat to mumble the solitary slice of ginger- 
 bread allotted me by the bounty of con- 
 siderate friends, and have aclied at heart 
 because I could not spare a portion of it, as 
 I saw other boys do, to some favom'ite boy ; 
 
570 
 
 EDAX ON APPETITE. 
 
 for if I know ray own heart, I was never 
 selfish, — never possessed a luxury which I 
 did not hasten to communicate to others ; 
 but my food, alas ! was none ; it was an 
 indispensable necessary ; I could as soon 
 have spared the blood in my veins, as have 
 parted that with my companions. 
 
 Well, no one stage of suffering lasts for 
 ever : we should grow reconciled to it at 
 length, I suppose, if it did. The miseries of 
 my school-days had their end ; I was once 
 more restored to the paternal dwelling. The 
 affectionate solicitude of my parents was 
 directed to the good-natured purpose of 
 concealing, even from myself, the infirmity 
 which haunted me. I was continually tdd 
 that I was growing, and the appetite I tlis- | 
 played was humanely represented as being 
 nothing more than a symptom and an effect 
 of that. I used even to be complimented 
 upon it. But this temporary fiction could 
 not endure above a year or two. I ceased to 
 grow, but, alas ! I did not cease my demands 
 for alimentai'y sustenance. 
 
 Those times are long since past, and with 
 them have ceased to exist the fond conceal- 
 ment — the indulgent blindness — the delicate 
 overlooking — the compassionate fiction. I 
 and my infirmity are left exposed and bare 
 to the broad, unwinking eye of the world, 
 which nothing can elude. My meals are 
 scanned, my mouthfuls weighed in a balance ; 
 that which appetite demands is set down to 
 the account of gluttony,— a sin which my 
 whole soul abhors — nay, which Nature her- 
 self has put it out of my power to commit. 
 I am constitutionally disenabled from that 
 vice ; for how can he be guilty of excess who 
 never can get enough l Let them cease, 
 then, to watch my plate ; and leave off their 
 ungracious comparisons of it to the seven 
 baskets of fragm6uts, and the supernaturally- 
 repleuished cup of old Baucis : and be 
 thankful that their more phlegmatic stomachs, 
 not their virtue, have saved them from the 
 like reproaches. I do not see tliat any of 
 them desist from eating till the holy rage of 
 hunger, as some one calls it, is supplied. 
 Alas ! I am doomed to stop short of that 
 continence. 
 
 What am I to do ? I am by disposition 
 inclined to conviviality and the social meal. 
 I am no gourmand : I require no dainties : I 
 should despise the board of Heliogabidus, 
 
 except for its long sitting. Tliose vivacious, 
 long-continued meals of the latter R<jmaus, 
 indeed, I justly envy ; but the kind of fare 
 which the Curii and Dentati put up with, I 
 could be content with. Dentatus I have 
 been called, among other unsavoury jesta. 
 Doublemeal is another name which my 
 acquaintance have palmed upon me, for an 
 innocent piece of policy which I put in 
 practice for some time without being found 
 out ; which was — agoing the round of my 
 friends, beginning with the most primitive 
 feeders among them, who take their dinner 
 about one o'clock, and so successively drop- 
 ping in upon the next and the next, till by 
 the time I got among my more fashionable 
 intimates, whose hour was six or seven, I 
 have nearly made up the body of a just and 
 complete meal (as I reckon it), without 
 taking more than one dinner (as they account 
 of dinners) at one person's house. Since I 
 have been found out, I endeavour to make 
 up by a damper, as I call it, at home, before 
 I go out. But alas ! with me, increase of 
 appetite truly grows by what it feeds on. 
 What is peculiarly offensive to me at those 
 dinner-parties is, the senseless custom of 
 cheese, and the dessert afterwards. I have 
 a rational antipathy to the former ; and for 
 fruit, and those other vain vegetable substi- 
 tutes for meat (meat, the only legitimate 
 aliment for human creatures since the Flood, 
 as I take it to be deduced from that per- 
 mission, or ordinance rather, given to Noah 
 and his descendants), I hold them in perfect 
 contempt. Hay for horsesj^ I remember a 
 pretty apologue, which Mandeville tells, very 
 much to this purpose, in his Fable of the 
 Bi.-es : — He brings in a Lion arguing with a 
 Merchant, who had ventured to expostulate 
 with this king of beasts upon his violent 
 methods of feeding. The Lion thus retorts : 
 — " Savage I am ; but no creature can be 
 called cruel but what either by malice or 
 insensibility extinguishes his natural pity. 
 The Lion was born without compassion ; we 
 follow the instinct of our nature ; the gods 
 liave appointed us to live upon the wjiste 
 and spoil of other animals, jmd as long as 
 we can meet with dead ones, we never hunt 
 after the living ; 'tis only man, mischievous 
 man, that can nxake death a sport. Nature 
 tauglit your stomach to crave nothing but 
 vegetables. — (Under favour of the Lion, if he 
 
EDAX ON APPETITE. 
 
 571 
 
 meant to assert this universally of mankind, ' 
 it is not true. However, what he says 
 presently is very sensible.) — Your violent 
 fondness to change, and greater eagerness 
 after novelties, have prompted you to the 
 destruction of animals without justice or 
 necessity. The Lion has a ferment within 
 him, tliat consumes the toughest skin and 
 hardest bones, as well as the flesh of all 
 animals, without exception. Your squeamish 
 stomach, in which the digestive heat is weak 
 and inconsiderable, won't so much as admit 
 of the most tender parts of them, unless 
 above half the concoction has been performed 
 by artificial fire beforehand ; and yet what 
 animal have you spared, to satisfy the 
 caprices of a languid appetite ? Langiiid, I 
 say ; for what is man's hunger if compared 
 with the Lion's 1 Yours, when it is at the 
 worst, makes you faint ; mine makes me 
 mad : oft have I tried with roots and herbs 
 to allay the violence ol it, but in vain ; 
 nothing but large quantities of flesh can any 
 ways appease it." — AUowing fur the Lion 
 not having a prophetic instinct to take in 
 every lusus naturae that was possil^le of the 
 human appetite, he was, generally speaking, 
 in the right ; and the Merchant was so 
 impressed with his argument that, we are 
 told, he replied not, but fainted away. O, 
 Mr. Reflector, that I were not obliged to 
 add, that the creature who thus argues was 
 but a type of me ! Miserable man ! / am 
 that Lion ! " Oft have I tried with roots 
 and herbs to allay that violence, but in vain ; 
 
 nothing but ." 
 
 Those tales which are renewed as often as 
 the editors of ijapers want to fill up a space 
 in their unfeeling columns, of great eaters, — 
 people that devour whole geese and legs of 
 mutton /or wagers, — are sometimes attempted 
 to be drawn to a parallel with my case. 
 This wilful confounding of motives and 
 circumstances, which make all the diScrence 
 of moral or immoral in actions, just suits the 
 sort of talent which some of my acquaintance 
 pride themselves upon. Wagers ! — I thank 
 Heaven, I was never mercenary, nor could 
 consent to prostitute a gift (though but a 
 left-handed one) of nature, to the enlarging 
 of my worldly substance ; prudent as the 
 necessities, which that fatal gift have involved 
 me in, might have made such a prostitution 
 to appear in the eyes of an indelicate world. 
 
 Eather let me say, that to the satisfaction 
 of that talent which was given me, I have 
 been content to sacrifice no common expect- 
 ations ; for such I had from an old lady, a 
 near relation of our familv '" whose good 
 graces I had the fortune to stand, till one 
 
 fatal evening . You have seen, Mr. 
 
 Reflector, if you have ever passed your time 
 much in country towns, the kind of suppers 
 which elderly ladies in those places have 
 lying in petto in an adjoining parlour, next 
 to that where they are entertaining their 
 periodically-invited coevals with cards and 
 muffins. The cloth is usually spread some 
 half-hour before the final rubber is decided, 
 whence they adjourn to sup upon what may 
 emphatically be called nothing; — a sliver of 
 ham, purposely contrived to be transparent 
 to show the china-dish through it, neigh- 
 bouring a slip of invisible brawn, which 
 abuts upon something they call a tartlet, as 
 that is bravely supported by an atom of 
 marmalade, flanked in its turn by a grain of 
 potted beef, with a power of such dishlings, 
 minims of hospitality, spread in defiance of 
 human nature, or rather with an utter 
 ignorance of wliat it demands. Being engaged 
 at one of these card-parties, I was obliged to 
 go a little before supper time (as they face- 
 tiously called the point of time in which 
 they are taking these shadowy refections), 
 and the old lady, with a sort of fear shining 
 through the smile of courteous hospitality 
 that beamed in her countenance, begged me 
 to step into the next room and take some- 
 thing before I went out in the cold, — a 
 proposal which lay not in my nature to deny. 
 Indignant at the airy prospect I saw before 
 me, I set to, and in a trice despatched the 
 whole meal intended for eleven persons, — 
 fish, flesh, fowl, pastry, — to the sprigs of 
 garnishing parsley, and the last fearful 
 custard that quaked upon the board. I need 
 not desciibe the consternation, when in due 
 time the dowagers adjourned from their 
 cards. Where Avas the supper 1 — and the 
 
 servants' answer, Mr. had eat it all. 
 
 — That freak, however, jested me out of a 
 good three hundred pounds a year, which I 
 afterwards was informed for a certainty the 
 old lady meant to leave me. I mention it 
 not in illustration of the unhappy faculty 
 which I am possessed of ; for any unlucky 
 wag of a schoolboy, with a tolerable appetite. 
 
572 
 
 EDAX ON APPETITE. 
 
 could have done as much "without feeling 
 any hurt after it, — oul}' that you may judge 
 whether I am a man likely to set my talent 
 to sale, or to requh-e the pitiful stimulus of 
 a wager. 
 
 I have read in Pliny, or in some author of 
 that stamp, of a reptile in Africa, whose 
 venom is of that hot, destructive quality, 
 that wheresoever it fastens its tooth, the 
 whole substance of the animal that has been 
 bitten in a few seconds is reduced to dust, 
 crumbles away, and absolutely disappears : 
 it is called, from this quality, tiie Aunihilator. 
 Why am I forced to seek, in all the most 
 prodigious and portentous facts of Natural 
 History, for creatures typical of myself? 
 I am that snake, that Annihilator : "wherever 
 I fasten, in a few seconds ." 
 
 happy sick men, that are groaning under 
 the want of that very thing, the excess of 
 which is my torment \ O fortunate, too 
 fortunate, if you knew your happiness, 
 invalids ! "What would I not give to 
 exchange this fierce concoctive and digestive 
 heat, — this rabid fury which vexes me, 
 which tears and torments me, — for your 
 quiet, mortified, hermit-like, subdued, and 
 sanctified stomachs, your cool, chastened 
 inclinations, and coy desires for food ! 
 
 To what unhappy figuration of the parts 
 intestine I owe this unnatural craving, I 
 must leave to the anatomists and the 
 physicians to determine : they, like the rest 
 of the world, have doubtless their eye upon 
 me ; aud as I have been cut up alive by the 
 sarcasms of my friends, so I shudder when 
 I contemplate tlie probability that this 
 animal fi'ame, when its restless appetites 
 
 shall have ceased their importunity, may be 
 cut up also (horrible suggestion !) to deter- 
 mine in what system of solids or fluids this 
 original sin of my constitution lay lurking. 
 What work will they make with their acids 
 and alkalines, their serums and coagulums, 
 eflfervescences, viscous matter, bile, chyle, 
 and acrimonious juices, to explain that cause 
 which Nature, who willed the effect to ymnish 
 me for my sins, may no less have determined 
 to keep in the dark from them, to punish 
 thena for their presumption ! 
 
 You may ask, Mr. Reflector, to what 
 purpose is my appeal to you ; what can you 
 do for me ? Alas ! I know too well that my 
 case is out of the reach of advice,— out of the 
 reach of consolation. But it is some relief 
 to the wounded heart to impart its tale of 
 misery ; aud some of my acquaintance, who 
 may read my case in your pages under a 
 borrowed name, may be induced to give it a 
 more humane consideration than I could 
 ever yet obtain from them under my own. 
 Make them, if possible, to reflect, that an 
 original peculiarity of constitution is no 
 crime ; that not that which goes into the 
 mouth desecrates a man, but that which 
 comes out of it, — such as sarcasm, bitter 
 jests, mocks and taunts, and ill-natured 
 observations ; and let them consider, if there 
 be such things (which we have all heard of) 
 as Pious Treacheiy, Imiocent Adultery, &c., 
 whether there may not be also such a thing 
 as Innocent Gluttony. 
 
 I shall only subscribe myself, 
 
 Your afflicted servant, 
 
 Ed AX. 
 
CURIOUS FRAGMENTS. 
 
 EXTRACTED FROM A COMMON-PLACE BOOK, 
 
 WHICH BELONGED TO ROBERT BURTON, THE FAMOU3 AUTHOR OF THE ANATOSTT OK MELANCHOLY 
 
 EXTRACT I. 
 
 I Democrttus Junior, have put my finish- 
 ing pen to a tractate De Melancholia, this 
 day, December 5, 1620. First, I blesse the 
 Trinity, which hath given me health to pro- 
 secute my woi'thlesse studies thus far, and 
 make supplication, with a Laus Deo, if in any 
 case these my poor labours may be found in- 
 strumental to weede out black melancholy, 
 carking cares, harte-grief, from the mind of 
 man. Sed hoc magis volo qtiam e.vpecto. 
 
 1 turn now to my book, i nunc liber, goe 
 forth, my brave Anatomy, child of my brain- 
 sweat, and yee, candidi lectores, lo ! here I 
 give him up to you, even do with him what 
 you please, my mastei-s. Some, I suppose, 
 will applaud, commend, cry him up (these 
 are my friends), hee is a flos rarus, forsooth, 
 a none-such, a Phoenix, (concerning whom 
 see Plinius and Mandeuille, though Fienus de 
 Monstris doubteth at large of such a bird, 
 whom Montaltus confuting argueth to have 
 been a man malce scrupidositatis, of a weak 
 and cowardlie faith : Christopherus a Vega is 
 with him in this). Others again will blame, 
 hiss, reprehende in many things, cry down 
 altogether my collections, for crude, inept, 
 putid, post coe/iam scripta, Coryate coxdd write 
 better upon a fvll meal, verbose, inerudite, 
 and not sufficiently abounding in authorities, 
 dogmata, sentences of learneder writers which 
 have been before me, when as that first- 
 named sort clean otherwise judge of my 
 labours to bee nothing else but a messe of 
 opinions, a vortex attracting indiscriminate, 
 gold, pearls, hay, straw, wood, excrement, an 
 exchange, tavern, marte, for foreigners to 
 congregate, Danes, Swedes, Hollanders, Lom- 
 bards, so many strange faces, dresses, saluta- 
 tions, languages, all which Wolfixis behelde 
 
 with great content upon the Venetian Rialto, 
 as he describes diffusedly in his book the 
 World's Epitome, which Sannazar so be- 
 ])raiseth, e contra our Polydore can see no- 
 thing in it ; they call me singular, a pedant, 
 fantastic, words of reproach in this age, which 
 is all too neoterick and light for my humour. 
 One Cometh to me sighing, complaining. 
 He expected universal remedies in my Ana- 
 tomy ; so many cures as there are distem- 
 peratures among men. I have not put his 
 afiection in my cases. Hear you his cjise. 
 My fine Sir is a lover, an inamorata, a Pyra- 
 mus, a Romeo ; he walks seven years dis- 
 consolate, moping, because he cannot enjoy 
 his miss, insanus amor is his melancholy, 
 the man is mad ; delirat, he dotes ; all this 
 while his Glycera is rude, spiteful, not to be 
 entreated, churlish, spits at him, yet exceed- 
 ing fair, gentle eyes (which is a beauty), hair 
 lustrous and smiling, the trope is none of 
 mine, JEJneas Sylvius hath crines ridentes — 
 in conclusion she is wedded to his rival, a 
 boore, a Corydon, a rustic, omnino ignarus, he 
 can scarce construe Corderius, yet haughty, 
 fantastic, opinidtre. Tlie lover travels, goes 
 into foreign parts, peregrinates, amoris ergo, 
 sees manners, customs, not English, converses 
 with pilgrims, lying travellers, monks, her- 
 mits, those cattle, pedlai-s, travelling gentry, 
 Egyptians, natural wonders, unicorns (tliough 
 Aldobrandus will have them to be figments), 
 satyrs, semi-viri, apes, monkeys, baboons, 
 curiosities artificial, pyramides, Virgilius his 
 tombe, relicks, bones, which are nothing but 
 ivory as Melancthon judges, though Cornu- 
 tus leaneth to think them bones of dogs, 
 cats, (why not men ?) which subtill priests 
 vouch to have been saints, martyrs, heu 
 Pietasl By that time he has ended his 
 course, fugit hora, seven other years are 
 
expired, gone by, time is he should returri, he 
 taketh ship for Britaine, much desired of his 
 friends, faveharU veiiti, Neptune is curteis, 
 after some weekes at sea he landeth, rides 
 post to town, greets his family, kinsmen, 
 compotores, those jokers his frie^ids that were 
 wont to tipple with him at alehouses; these 
 wonder now to see the change, quantum 
 mutatus, the man is quite another thing, he is 
 disenthralled, manumitted, he wonders what 
 so bewitched him, he can now both seo, hear, 
 smell, handle, converse with his mistress, 
 single by reason of the death of his rival, 
 a widow having children, grown willing, 
 prompt, amorous, showing no such great 
 dislike to second nuptials, he might have 
 her for asking, no such thing, his mind is 
 changed, he loathes his former meat, had 
 liever eat ratsbane, aconite, his humour is to 
 die a bachelour ; marke the conclusion. In 
 this humour of celibate seven other years 
 are consumed in idleness, sloth, world's plea- 
 sures, which fatigate, satiate, induce weari- 
 nesse, vapours, tcedium vitce : When upon a 
 day, behold a wonder, redit Amor, the man 
 la as sick as ever, he is commenced lover 
 upon the old stock, walks with his hand 
 thrust in his bosom for negligence, moping 
 he leans his head, face yellow, beard flowing 
 and incomposite, eyes sunken, anhelus, breath 
 wheezy and asthmatical,by reason of over^mich 
 sighing : society he abhoi'S, solitude is but a 
 hell, what shall he doe ? all this while his 
 mistresse is forward, coming, amantissima, 
 ready to jump at once into his moiUh, her he 
 hateth, feels disgust when she is but men- 
 tioned, thinks her ugly, old, a painted Jesa- 
 beel, Alecto, Megara, and Tisiphone all at 
 once, a Corinthian Lais, a strumpet, only not 
 handsome ; that which he affecteth so mucli, 
 that which drives him mad, distracted, j)hre- 
 netic, beside himself, is no beauty which 
 lives, nothing in rerum naturd (so lie might 
 entertain a hope of a cure), but something 
 which is not, can never be, a certain fantastic 
 opinion or notional image of his mistresse, 
 that which she was, and that which hee 
 thought her to be, in former times, how 
 beautiful! torments him, frets him, follows 
 him, makes him that he wishes to die. 
 
 This Caprichio, iSir Humourous, hee cometh 
 to me to be cui'ed. I counsel marriage with 
 his mistresse, according to Ifippocrates his 
 method, together with milk-diet, herbs, jiloes, 
 
 and wild parsley, good in such cases, though 
 Aviccima preferreth some sorts of wild fowl, 
 teals, widgeons, beccaficos, which men in 
 Sussex eat. lie flies out in a passion, ho ! ho ; 
 and falls to calling me names, dizzard, ass, 
 lunatic, moper. Bedlamite, Pseudo-Derao- 
 critus. I smile in his fiice, bidding him 
 be patient, tranquil, to no purpose, he still 
 rages : I think this man must fetch his re- 
 medics from Utopia, Fairy Land, Islands in 
 the Moone, &c. 
 
 EXTRACT II. 
 
 ***** Much disputacyons of fierce 
 wits amongst themselves, in logomachies, 
 subtile controversies, many dry blows given 
 on either side, contentions of learned men, 
 or such as would be so thought, as Bodinus 
 de Periodis saith of such an one, arrident 
 amici ridet mundus, in English, this man his 
 cronies they cocker him up, they flatter him, 
 he would fayne appear somebody, meanwhile 
 the world thinks him no better than a diz- 
 zard, a ninny, a sophist. * * 
 
 * * * Philosophy ruiniing mad, madness 
 philosophizing, nmch idle-learned inquiries, 
 what truth is ? and no issue, fruit, of all 
 these noises, only huge books are written, 
 and who is the wiser ]****♦ Men sit- 
 ting in the Doctor's chair, we marvel how 
 they got there, being homines inteUectils pul- 
 verulenti as Trincauellius notes ; they care 
 not so they may raise a dust to smother the 
 eyes of their oppugners ; homines parvulis- 
 simi, as Lemnius, whom Alcuinhere'm taxeth 
 of a crude Latinism ; dwarfs, minims, the 
 least little men, these spend their time, 
 and it is odds but they lose their time and 
 wits too into the bargain, chasing of nimble 
 and retiring Truth: Iler they prosecute, her 
 still they worship, libant, they make liba- 
 tions, spilling the wine, as those old Romans 
 in their sacriticials, Cerealia, May-games: 
 Truth is the game all these hunt after, to 
 tho extreme perturbacyon and drying up of 
 the moistures, humidum radicale exsiccant, aa 
 Ualen, in his counsels to one of these wear- 
 wits, brain-moppers, spunges, saith. ♦ • • • 
 and for all this nunquam metam attingunt 
 and how should tlioy '? they bowle awr)i, 
 shooting beside tiie marke ; whereas it should 
 aj)pear, that Truth absolute on this jilanet of 
 ours is sc;ux'ely to be found, but in her atedc 
 
CURIOUS FRAGMENTS. 
 
 576 
 
 Qneene Opinion predominates, governs, whose 
 shifting and ever mutable Lampas, me seem- 
 eth, is man's destinie to follow, she praecur- 
 seth, she guideth him, before his uncapable 
 eyes she frisketh her tender lights, which 
 entertayne the child-man, untill what time 
 his sight be strong to endure the vision of 
 Very Truth, which is in the heavens, the 
 vision beatifical, as Anianus expounds in his 
 argument against certain mad wits which 
 helde God to be corporeous ; these were 
 dizzards, fools, gothamites. * * * * but and 
 if Very Truth be extant indeede on earth, as 
 some hold she it is which actuates men's 
 deeds, purposes, ye may in vaine look for 
 her in the learned universities, halls, colleges. 
 Truth is no Doctoresse, she takes no degrees 
 at Paris or Oxford, amongst great clerks, 
 disputants, subtile Aristotles, men nodosi in- 
 genii, able to take Lully by the chin, but often- 
 times to such an one as myself, an Idiota or 
 common person, no great things, melancho- 
 lizing in woods where ^^•aters are, quiet places 
 by rivers, fountains, whereas the silly man 
 expecting no such matter, thinketh only how 
 best to delectate and refresh his myude con- 
 tinually with Natura her pleasaunt scenes, 
 woods, water-falls, or Art her statelie gar- 
 dens, parks, terraces, Belvideres, on a sudden 
 the goddesse herself Truth has appeared, 
 with a shyuing lyghte, and a sparklyng 
 countenance, so as yee may not be able 
 lightly to resist her. 
 
 • * « « * 
 
 EXTRACT III. 
 
 This morning. May 2, 1662, having first 
 broken my fast upon eggs and cooling salades, 
 mallows, water-cresses, those herbes, accord- 
 ing to ViUanovus his prescription, who dis- 
 allows the use of meat in a morning as gross, 
 fat, hebetant, feral, altogether fitter for wild 
 beasts than men, e contra commendeth this 
 herb-diete for gentle, humane, active, con- 
 ducing to contemplation in most men, I be- 
 took myselfe to the nearest fields. (Being in 
 London I commonly dwell in the suburbes, as 
 airiest, quietest, loci mtisis propriores, free 
 from noises of caroches, waggons, mechanick 
 and base workes, workshoppes, also sights, 
 pageants, spectacles of outlandish birtls, 
 fishes, crocodiles, Indians, mermaids ; adde 
 quarrels, fightings, wranglings of the com- 
 
 mon sort, plehs, the rabble, duelloes with 
 fists, proper to this island, at which the 
 stiletto'd and secret Italian laughs.) With- 
 drawing myselfe from these buzzing and illi- 
 terate vanities, with a bezo las manos to the 
 city, I begin to inhale, draw in, .snufi" up, as 
 horses dilatis naribus snort the fresh aires 
 with exceeding great delight, when suddenly 
 there crosses me a procession, sad, hea^'y, 
 dolourous, tristfull, melancholick, able to 
 change mii-th into dolour, and overcast a 
 clearer atmosphere than possibly the neigh- 
 bourhoods of so great a citty can afford. An 
 old man, a poore man deceased, is borne on 
 men's shoulders to a poore buriall, without 
 solemnities of hearse, mourners, plumes, 
 mutce persoiu^, those personate actors that will 
 weep if yee shew them a piece of silver ; none 
 of those customed civilities of children, kins- 
 folk, dependants, following the coflin ; he died 
 a poore man, his friends accessores opuni, those 
 cronies of his that st\ick by him so long as he 
 had a penny, now leave him, forsake him, 
 shun him, desert him; they think it much 
 to follow his putrid and stinking carcase to 
 the grave ; his children, if he had any, for 
 commonly the case stands thus, this poore 
 man his son dies before him, he survives, 
 poore, indigent, base, dejected, miserable, &c., 
 or if he have any which survive him, sua 
 negotia agunt, they mind their own business, 
 forsooth, cannot, will not, find time, leisure, 
 inclination, extremum munus perficere, to fol- 
 low to the pit their old indulgent father, 
 which loved them, stroked them, caressed 
 them, cockering them up, quantum potuit, as 
 farre as his means extended, while they were 
 babes, chits, minims, hee may rot in his 
 grave, lie stinking in the sun for them, have 
 no buriall at ail, they care not. nefas! 
 Chiefly I noted the cotfin to have been with- 
 out a paU, nothing but a few planks, of 
 cheapest wood that could be had, ruxked, 
 having none of the ordinary symptomata of a 
 funerall, those locularii which b;ire the body 
 having on diversely coloured coats, and none 
 black: (one of these reported the deceased 
 to have been an almsman seven yeares, a 
 pauper, harboured and fed in the workhouse 
 of St. Giles-in-the-Fields, to whose proper 
 buryiug-ground he w;is now going for inter- 
 ment.) All which when I behelde, hardly I 
 refrained from weeping, and incontinently I 
 fell to musing : " K this man had been rich, 
 
676 
 
 CURIOUS FRAGMENTS. 
 
 a CroRsus, a Cra.'ssus. or as rich as ^Vliittington, 
 what porape. charge, lavish cost, expenditure, 
 of rich h\xTiaM,cererrwniall-obseqiLies, obsequious 
 ceremonies, had been thought too good for 
 such an one ; what store of panegjTicks, 
 elogies, funeral orations, &c., some beggarly 
 poetaster, worthy to be beaten for his ill 
 rimes, crying him up, hee was rich, generous, 
 bountiful, polite, learned, a Maecenas, while 
 as in very deede he was nothing lesse : what 
 weeping, sighing sorrowing, honing, com- 
 plaining, kinsmen, friends, relatives, four- 
 tieth cousins, poor relatives, lamenting for 
 
 the deceased ; hypocriticall heirs, sobbing, 
 striking their breasts (they care not if he 
 had died a year ago) ; so many clients, 
 dependants, flatterers, parasites, cunning 
 GnoUhoes, tramping on foot after the hearse, 
 all their care is, who shall stand fairest with 
 the successour ; he mean time (like enough) 
 spurns them from him, spits at them, treads 
 them under his foot, will have nought to do 
 with any such cattle. I think him in the 
 right : II(ec sunt majora gravitate Uera^liti. 
 These follies are enough to give crying Uera- 
 ditxM a fit of the spleene. 
 
MR. H 
 
 A FARCE, IN TWO ACTS. 
 
 AS IT WAS PERFORMED AT DRURT LANE THEATRE, DECEMBER, 1806. 
 
 *• Mr. H , thou \rcrt damned. Bright shone the morning on the play-bills that announced thy appear. 
 
 ancc, and the streets were filled with the buzz of persons asking one another if they would go to see Mr. II , 
 
 and answering that they would certainly ; but before night the gaiety, not of the author, but of his friends 
 and the town, was eclipsed, for thou wcrt damned ! Hadst thou been anonymous, thou haply mightst have 
 lived. But thou didst come to an untimely end for thy tricks, and for want of a better name to pass them 
 off ." 'Dicatrical Examiner. 
 
 Mr. n . 
 
 Belvil 
 Landlord Try 
 
 CHARACTERS. 
 
 Mr, EUistoK. Melesinda . . . Miss Mellon. 
 
 Mr, Bartley. Maid to Melesinda . Mrs. Sarlowe. 
 
 Mr. Wetmtzer. Gentlemen, Ladies, Waiters, Servants, &c. 
 
 Scene — Bath. 
 
 PROLOGUE, SPOKEN BY MR. ELLISTON 
 
 Ip we have sinn'd in paring down a name. 
 All civil, well-bred authors do the same. 
 Survey the columns of our daily writers — 
 You'll find that some Initials are great fighters. 
 How fierce the shock, how fatal is the jar. 
 When Ensign W. meets Lieutenant R. 
 With two stout seconds, just of their own gizzard, 
 Cross Captain X. and rough old General Izzard ! 
 Letter to Letter spreads the dire alarms, 
 Till half the Alphabet is up in arms. 
 Nor with less lustre have Initials shone, 
 To grace the gentler annals of Crim. Con. 
 Where the dispensers of the public lash 
 Soft penance give ; a letter and a dash — 
 Where Vice reduced in size shrinks to a failing. 
 And loses half her grossncss by curtailing. 
 Faux pas arc told in such a modest way, — 
 " The affair of Colonel B — with Mrs. A — " 
 You must forgive them — for what is there, say, ; 
 Which Huch a pliant Vowel must not grant 
 
 To such a very pressing Consonant 1 
 
 Or who poetic justice dares dispute. 
 
 When, mildly melting at a lover's suit, 
 
 The wife's a Liquid, her good man a Mute ? 
 
 Even in the homelior scenes of honest life. 
 
 The coarse-spun intercourse of man and wife, 
 
 Initials I am told have taken place 
 
 Of Deary, Spouse, and that old-fashion'd race ; 
 
 And Cabbage, ask'd by brother Snip to tea, 
 
 Replies " I'll come — but it don't rest with me — 
 
 I always leaves them things to Mrs. C." 
 
 should this mincing fashion ever spread 
 
 From names of living heroes to the dead, 
 
 How would Ambition sigh, and hang the head, 
 
 As each loved syllable should melt away — 
 
 Her Alexander turn'd into Great A — 
 
 A single C. her Coesar to express — 
 
 Her Scipio shrimk into a Roman S — 
 
 And, nick'd and dock'd to these new modes of speech, 
 
 Great Hannibal him-self a Mr. H . 
 
 r p 
 
MR. H- 
 
 A FARCE. IN TWO ACTS. 
 
 ACT I. 
 
 Scene. — A Public Boom in an Inn. Landlord, 
 Waiters, Gentlemen, die. 
 
 Enter Mr. H. 
 
 Mr. H. Landlord, has the man brought 
 home my boots ? 
 
 Landlord. Yes, Sir. 
 
 Mr. H. You have paid him ? 
 
 Landlord. There is the receipt, Sir, only 
 not quite filled up, no name, only blank — 
 " Blank, Dr. to Zekiel Spanish for one pair of 
 best hessians." Now, Sir, he wishes to know 
 what name he shall put in, who he shall 
 say " Dr." 
 
 Mr. H. Why, Mr. H. to be sure. 
 
 Landlord. So I told him, Sir ; but Zekiel 
 has some qualms about it. He says he 
 thinks that ]Mr, H. only would not stand 
 good in law. 
 
 Mr. H. Eot his impertinence ! Bid him 
 put in Nebuchadnezzar, and not trouble me 
 ^th his scruples. 
 
 Landlord. I shall, Sir. iExit. 
 
 Enter a Waiter. 
 
 Waiter. Sir, Squire Level's man is below, 
 with a hare and a brace of pheasants for 
 Mr. H. 
 
 Mr. II. Give the man half-a-crown, and 
 bid him return my best respects to his master. 
 Presents, it seems, will find me out, with any 
 name or no name. 
 
 Enter 2d Waiter. 
 
 2d Waiter. Sir, tlie man that makes up the 
 Directory i.s at tlie door. 
 
 Mr. II. Give him a shilling ; that is what 
 these follows come for. 
 
 2d Waiter. lie has sent up to know by 
 wliat name your Honour will please to be 
 inserted. 
 
 Mr. II. Zounds, follow, I give him a 
 Bhilliug for leaving out my name not for 
 
 putting it in. This is one of '.he plaguy 
 comforts of going anonymous [Exit 2d Waiter. 
 
 Enter Zd Waiter. 
 
 3d Waiter. Two letters for !Mr. H. [ExU. 
 
 Mr. H. From ladies (opens them). This 
 from Melesiuda, to remind me of the morning 
 call I jjromised ; the pretty creature posi- 
 tively languishes to be made Mrs. H. I 
 believe I must indulge her {affectedly). This 
 from her cousin, to bespeak me to some 
 party, I s\ipi»ose {opening it). — Oh, " this 
 evening " — " Tea and cards " — {survei/i7ig 
 himself with complacency). Dear H., tliou 
 art certainly a pretty fellow. I wonder 
 what makes thee such a favoxirite among 
 the ladies : I wish it may not be owing to the 
 concealment of thy unfortunate pshaw ! 
 
 Enter Ath Waiter. 
 
 4th Waiter. Sir, one !Mr. Printagain is 
 inquiring for you. 
 
 Mr. II. Oh, I remember, the poet ; he is 
 publishing by subscription. Give him a 
 guinea, and tell him he may put me down. 
 
 4th Waiter. What name shall I tell him, 
 Sir ? I 
 
 Mr. H. Zounds, he is a poet ; let him fancy 
 a name. C-^'-^'"' *"' '>■"''<'■. 
 
 Enter 5th Waita: 
 
 5th Waiter. Sir, Bartlemy the lame beggar, 
 that you sent a private donation to last 
 Monday, has by some accident discovered 
 his benefactor, and is at the door waiting to 
 return thanks. 
 
 Mr. II. Oil, poor fellow, who could put it 
 into his head i Now I shall be teased by 
 all liis tribe, when once this is known. Well, 
 tell liira I am glad I could bo of any service 
 to him, and send him away. 
 
 5th Waiter. I woukl have done so, Sir ; 
 but the object of his call now, he says, ia 
 only to know who he is obliged ta 
 
 J/r. H. Why, me. 
 
MILH- 
 
 A FARCE. 
 
 579 
 
 5th Waiter. Yes, Sir. 1 
 
 Mr. H. Me, me, me ; who else, to be sure ? 
 
 5th Waiter. Yes, Sir ; out he is anxious to 
 know the name of liis benefactor. 
 
 Mr. H. Here is a pampered rogue of a 
 beggar, that cannot be obliged to a gentle- 
 man in the way of his profession, but he 
 must know the name, birth, parentage and 
 education of his benefactor ! I warrant you, 
 next he will require a certificate of one's 
 good behaviour, and a magistrate's licence in 
 one's pocket, lawfully empowering so and 
 so to — give an alms. Any thing more ? 
 
 5th Waiter. Yes, Sir ; here has been Mr. 
 Patriot, with the county petition to sign ; 
 and Mr. Failtime, that owes so much money, 
 has sent to remind you of your promise to 
 bail him. 
 
 Mr. H. Neither of which I can do, while 
 I have no name. Here is more of the 
 plaguy comforts of going anonymous, that 
 one can neither serve one's friend nor one's 
 country. Damn it, a man had better be 
 ■without a nose, than without a name. I will 
 not live long in this mutilated, dismembered 
 state ; I will to Melesinda this instant, and 
 try to forget these vexations. Melesinda ! 
 there is music in the name ; but then, hang it ! 
 there is none in mine to answer to it. \_Exit. 
 
 {While tin. H. has been speaking, two Gentlemen have been 
 observing him curiously.) 
 
 1st Gent. Who the devil is this extra- 
 ordinary personage ? 
 
 2d Gent. Wlio ? Why 'tis Mr. H. 
 
 l5^ Gent. Has he no more name 1 
 
 2d Gent. None that has yet transpired. 
 No more ! why that single letter has been 
 enough to inflame the imaginations of all the 
 ladies in Bath. He has been here but a 
 fortnight, and is already received into all the 
 first families. 
 
 1st Gent. Wonderful ! yet, nobody know 
 who he is, or where he comes from ! 
 
 2d Geiit. He is vastly rich, gives away 
 money as if he had infinity ; dresses well, as 
 you see ; and for address, the mothers are 
 all dying for fear the daughter should get 
 him ; and for the daughters, he may com- 
 mand them as absolutely as . Melesinda, 
 
 the rich heiress, 'tis thought, will carry him. 
 
 \st Gent. And is it possible that a mere 
 anonymous. — 
 
 2d GerU. Phoo ! that is the charm. — ^Who 
 is he ? and what is he ? and what is hia 
 
 name ? The man with the great nose on 
 
 his face never excited more of the gaping 
 passion of wonderment in the dames of 
 Strasburg, than this new-comer, with the 
 single letter to hia name, has lighted up 
 among the wives and maids of Bath : his 
 simply having lodgings here, draws more 
 visiters to the house than an election. Come 
 with me to the Parade, and I will show yo;x 
 more of him. lExeunt. 
 
 Scene in ilie Street. Mr. H. walking, Belvil 
 meeting him. 
 
 Belvil. My old Jamaica schoolfellow, that 
 I have not seen for so many years ? it must 
 • — it can be no other tlian Jack (going up to 
 him). My dear Ho 
 
 Mr. H. {Stopping his mouth). Ho ! the 
 
 devil, hush. 
 
 Belvil. Why sure it is — 
 
 Mr. H. It is, it is your old friend Jack, 
 that shall be nameless. 
 
 Belvil. My dear Ho 
 
 Mr. H. {Stopping him). Don't name it. 
 
 Belvil. Name what ? 
 
 Mr. H. My curst unfortunate name. I 
 have reasons to conceal it for a time. 
 
 Belvil. I understand you — Creditors, Jack ? 
 
 Mr. H. No, I assure you. 
 
 Belvil. Snapp'd up a ward, peradventure, 
 and the whole Chanceiy at your heels ? 
 
 Mr. H. I don't use to travel with such 
 cumbersome luggage. 
 
 Beloil. You ha'n't taken a purse 1 
 
 Mr. 11. To relieve you at once from all 
 disgi-aceful conjecture, you must kuow, 'tis 
 nothing but the sound of my name. 
 
 Belvil. Ridiculous ! 'tis true yours is none 
 of the most romantic ; but what can that 
 signify in a man % 
 
 Mr. H. You must umlerstand that I am in 
 some credit with the ladies. 
 
 Belvil. With the ladies ! 
 
 Mr. H. And truly I think not without 
 some pretensions. My fortune — 
 
 Belvil. Sufficiently splendid, if T may judge 
 from your appearance. 
 
 Mr. H. My figure — 
 
 Belvil. Airy, gay, and imposing. 
 
 Mr. H. My parts — 
 
 Belvil. Bright. 
 
 Mr. H. !My conversation — 
 
 Belvil. Equally remote from flippancy and 
 taciturnity. 
 
 p P 2 
 
680 
 
 MR. H , A FARCE. 
 
 2lr. H. Butthenmynarue— damumyname! 
 
 Behil. Cliildish ! 
 
 Mr. H. Not so. Oil, Belvil, you are blest 
 ■with one which sighing virgins may repeat 
 without a blush, and for it change the 
 paternal. But what virgin of any delicacy 
 (and I require some in a wife) would endure 
 to be called Mrs. ? 
 
 Belvil. Ha, ha, ha ! most absurd. Did 
 not Clementina Faleonbridge, the romantic 
 Clementina Faleonbridge, fancy Tommy 
 Potts 1 and Kosabella Sweetlips sacrifice 
 her mellifluous appellative to Jack Deady ? 
 Matilda her cousin married a Gubbins, and 
 her sister Amelia a Clutterbuck. 
 
 Mr. II. Potts is tolerable, Deady is sufifer- 
 able, Gubbins is bearable, and Clutterbuck 
 is endurable, but Ho 
 
 Belvil. Hush, Jack, don't betray yourself. 
 But you are really ashamed of the family 
 name ? 
 
 Mr. II. Ay, and of my father that begot 
 me, and my father's father, and all their 
 forefathers that have borne it since the 
 Conquest 
 
 Belvil. But how do you know the women 
 are so squeamish ? 
 
 Mr. II. I have tried them. I tell you 
 there is neither maiden of sixteen nor widow 
 of sixty but would turn up their noses at it. 
 I have been refused by nineteen virgins, 
 twenty-nine relicts, and two old maids. 
 
 Belvil. That was hard indeed, Jack. 
 
 Mr. II. Parsons have stuck at publishing 
 the banns, because they averred it was a 
 Jieathenish name ; parents have lingered 
 their consent, because they suspected it was 
 a fictitious name ; and rivals have declined 
 my challenges, because they jjretended it was 
 an ungentlemanly name. 
 
 Belvil. Ha, ha, ha! but what coui'se do 
 you mean to pursue ? 
 
 Mr. II. To engage the aifections of some 
 generous girl, who will be content to take 
 me as Mr. H. 
 
 Belvil. Mr. H. 
 
 Mr. II. Yes, that is the name I go by 
 here ; you know one likes to be as near the 
 truth as possible. 
 
 Belvil. Certainly. But what then ? to get 
 her to consent — 
 
 Mr. If. To accompany me to the altar 
 
 without a name in short, to suspend her 
 
 cui'iosity (that is all) till the moment the 
 
 priest shall pronounce the irrevocable charm, 
 which makes two names one 
 
 Belvil. And that name and then she 
 
 must be pleased, ha, Jack ? 
 
 Mr. II. Exactly such a girl it has been my 
 
 fortune to meet with ; hark'e (whispers) 
 
 {rmisin(f). Yet, hang it ! 'tis cruel to betray 
 her confidence. 
 
 Belvil. But the family name, Jack ? 
 
 Mr. H. As you say, the family name must 
 be perpetuated. 
 
 Belvil. Though it be but a homely one. 
 
 Mr. II. True ; but come, I will show you 
 the house where dwells this credulous melt- 
 ing fair. 
 
 Belvil. Ha, ha ! my old friend dwindled 
 down to one letter. lExeunt. 
 
 Scene. — An Apartment in Melesinda's House. 
 Melesinda sola, as if musing. 
 
 Melesinda. H, H, H. Sure it must be 
 something precious by its being concealed. 
 It can't be Homer, that is a Heathen's name ; 
 nor Horatio, that is no surname ; what if it 
 be Hamlet 1 the Lord Hamlet — pretty, and 
 I his poor distracted Oi)helia ! No, 'tis none 
 of these ; 'tis Harcourt or Hargrave, or some 
 such sounding name, or Howard, high-born 
 Howard, that would do ; maybe it is Harley, 
 methinks my H. resembles Harley, the 
 feeling Harley. But I hear him ! and from 
 his own lips I will once for ever be resolved. 
 
 Enter Mr. H. 
 
 Mr. II. My dear Melesinda. 
 
 Melesinda. My dear H. that is all you give 
 me power to swear allegiance to, — to be 
 enamoured of inarticulate sounds, and call 
 with sighs ujjon an empty letter. But I 
 will know. 
 
 2Ir. II. My dear Melesinda, press me no 
 more for the disclosure of that, which in the 
 face of day so soon must be revealed. CiUl 
 it whim, humour, caprice, in me. Suppose 
 I have sworn an oath, never, till the cere- 
 mony of onr marriage is over, to disclose my 
 true name. 
 
 Melesinda. Oh ! H, II, H. I cherish hero 
 a fire of restless curiosity which consumes 
 me. 'Tia appetite, jKission, call it whim, 
 caprice, in me. Suppose I have sworn, I 
 must and will know it this very night. 
 
Mr. H. Ungenerous Mclesinda ! I iinplove 
 you to give mo this one pi-oof of your 
 confidence. The holy vow once past, your 
 H. shall not have a secret to withhold. 
 
 Melesinda. My H. has overcome : his 
 Melesinda shall pine away and die, before 
 she dare express a saucy inclination ; but 
 what shall I call you till we are married 1 
 
 Mr. II. Call me ? call me anything, call mo 
 Love, Love ! ay Love : Love will do Very well. 
 
 Melesinda. How many syllables is it, Love ? 
 
 Mr. II. How many ? ud, that is coming to 
 the question with a vengeance ! One, two, 
 three, four, — what does it signify how many 
 syllables % 
 
 Melesinda. How many syllables, Love ? 
 
 Mr. II. My Melesinda's mind, I had hoped, 
 was superior to this childish curiosity. 
 
 Melesinda. How many letters are there 
 
 in it ? \_ExU Me. \\. followed hy Melesinda, 
 
 repeating the question. 
 
 Scene. — A Room in the Inn. Two Waiters 
 disputing. 
 
 \st Waiter. Sii* Harbottle Hammond, you 
 may depend upon it. 
 
 2o? Waiter. Sir Harry Hardcastle, I tell you. 
 
 \st Waiter. The Hammonds of Huntingdon- 
 shire. 
 
 2d Waiter. The Hardcastles of Hertford- 
 shire. 
 
 1a-^ Waiter. The Hammonds. 
 
 2c/ Waiter. Don't tell me : docs not 
 Hardcastle begin with an H 1 
 
 \st Waiter. So does Hammond for that 
 matter. 
 
 2d Waiter. Faith, so it does if you go to 
 spell it. I did not think of that. I begin to 
 to be of your opinion ; he is certainly a 
 Hammond. 
 
 \st Waiter. Here comes Susan Chamber- 
 maid : may be she can tell. 
 
 Enter Susan. 
 
 Both. Well, Susan, have you heard any- 
 thing who the strange gentleman is 1 
 
 Susan. Haven't you heard ? it's all come 
 out ! Mrs. Guesswell, the parson's widow, 
 has been here, about it. I overheard: lior 
 talking in confidence to Mrs. Setter and 
 Mrs. Pointer, and she says they were holding 
 a sort of a cummitty about it. 
 
 Both. What? What? 
 
 Susan. There can't be a doubt of it, she 
 
 says, what from his j^^cr and the appearance 
 he cuts, and his sumpshous way of living, 
 and above all fi-om the i-eraarkablo circum- 
 stance that his surname should begin with 
 an 11, that he must be — 
 
 Both. Well, well— 
 
 Susan. Neithei' more nor less than the 
 Prince. 
 
 Both. Prince ! 
 
 Susan. The Prince of Hessey-Cassel in 
 disguise. 
 
 Both. Very likely, very likely. 
 
 Susan. Oh, there can't be a doubt on it. 
 Mi's. Guesswell says she knows it. 
 
 \st Waiter. Now if we could be sure that 
 the Prince of Hessy what-do-you-call-him 
 was in England on his travels. 
 
 2d Waiter. Get a newspaper. Look in the 
 newspapers. 
 
 Susan. Fiddle of the newspapers ; who 
 else can it be ? 
 
 Both. That is very true {gravehj). 
 
 Enter Landlord. 
 
 Landlord. Here, Susan, James, Philip, 
 where are you all 1 The London coach is 
 come in, and there is Mr. Fillaside, the fat 
 passenger, has been bawling for somebody 
 to help him oif with his boots. 
 
 [The Chambermaid and Waiters slip out. 
 
 (Solus.) The house is turned upside down 
 since the strange gentleman came into it. 
 Nothing but guessing and speculating, and 
 speculating and guessing ; waiters and 
 chambermaids getting into corners and 
 speculating ; ostlers and stable-boys specu- 
 lating in the yard ; I believe the very horses 
 in the stable are speculating too, for there 
 they stand in a musing posture, nothing for 
 them to eat, and not seeming to care whether 
 they have anything or no ; and after all 
 what does it signify ? I hate such curious 
 
 odso, I must take this box up iuto his 
 
 bed-room — he charged me to see TO it 
 
 myself ; — I hate such inquisitive 1 
 
 wonder what is in it — it feels heavy ; (reads) 
 " Leases, title-deeds, wills." Here now a 
 man might satisfy his curiosity at once. 
 Deeds must have names to them, so must 
 leases and wills. But I wouldn't — no I 
 
 wouldn't it is a pretty box too — prettily 
 
 dovetailed — I admire the fashion of it much. 
 But I'd cut my fingers off, before I'd do buch 
 a dirty — what have I to do — curse the 
 
how they rattle ! — rattle in one's 
 pockets — the keys and the half-pence {takes 
 out a hunch and plays with them). I wonder 
 if any of these wuuld fit ; one might just try 
 them, but I wouldn't lift ujj tlie lid if they 
 did. Oh no, wliat should I be tlie richer fur 
 knowing ? {All this time he tries the keys one 
 hy one). What's his name to me 1 a thousand 
 names begin with an H. I hate people that 
 are always prying, poking and prying into 
 things, — thi-usting tlieir finger into one place 
 — a mighty little hole this — and their keys ! 
 into another. Oh Lord ! little rusty fits it ! 
 but what is that to me ? I wouldn't go to — 
 no, no — but it is odd little rusty should just 
 happen — {While he is turning up the lid of 
 the box, Mk.H. enters behind him unperceived.) 
 
 Mr. H. What are you about, you dog ? 
 
 Landlord. Oh Lord, Sir ! pardon ; no thief, 
 as I hope to be saved. Little Pi-y was always 
 honest. 
 
 Mr. II. What else could move you to open 
 that box ? 
 
 Landlord. Sir, don't kill me, and I will 
 confess the whole truth. This box happened 
 to be lying — that is, I happened to be carrying 
 this box, and I happened to have my keys 
 out, and so — little rusty happened to fit 
 
 Mr. H. So little rusty happened to fit ! — 
 and would not a rope tit that rogue's neck 1 
 I see the papers have not been moved : all 
 is safe, but it was as well to frighten him a 
 little {aside). Come, Landlord, as I think 
 you honest, and suspect you only intended 
 to gratify a little foolish curiosity 
 
 Landlord. That was all, Sir, upon my 
 veracity. 
 
 Mr. H. For this time I will pass it over. 
 Your name is Pry, I think ? 
 
 Landlord. Yes, Sir, Jeremiah Pry, at your 
 service. 
 
 Mr. H. An apt name : you have a prying 
 tem»er — I mean, some little curiosity — a 
 so]#of iuquisitiveness about you. 
 
 Landlord. A natural thirst after know- 
 ledge you may call it, Sir. When a bcjy, I 
 was never easy but when I was tlu'usting 
 up the lids of some of my school-fellows' 
 boxes, — not to steal anything, upon ray 
 honour. Sir, — only to see what was in them ; 
 have had pens stuck in my eyes for peeping 
 through key-holes after knowledge ; could 
 never see a cold pie with the legs dangling 
 out at top, but my fingers were for lifting 
 
 up the crust, — just to try if it were pigeon 
 or partridge, — for no other reason in the 
 world. Surely I think my passion for nuts 
 was owing to the pleasure of cracking the 
 shell to get at something concealed, more 
 tliau to any delight I took in eating the 
 kei-nel. In short, Sir, this appetite has grown 
 Avith my growth. 
 
 Mr. H. You will certainly be hanged some 
 day for peeping into some bureau or other, 
 just to see what is in it. 
 
 Landlord. That is my feai", Sir. The 
 thumps and kicks I have had for peering 
 into parcels, and turning of letters inside 
 out, — just for curiosity! The blankets 1 
 have been made to dance in for searching 
 parish registers for old ladies' ages, — just 
 for curiosity ! Once I was dragged through 
 a horse-pond, oidy for peeping into a closet 
 that had glass doors to it, while my Lady 
 Bluegarters was undressing, — just for 
 curiosity ! 
 
 Mr. II. A very harmless piece of curiositj', 
 truly ; and now, Mr. Pry, first have the 
 goodness to leave that box with me, and 
 then do me the favour to carry your curiosity 
 so far, as to inquire if my servants are 
 within. 
 
 Landlord. I shall, Sir. Here, David, 
 Jonathan, — I think I hear them coming, — 
 shall make bold to leave you, Sir. {Exit. 
 
 Mr. H. Another tolerable specimen of the 
 comforts of going anonymous ! 
 
 Enter Two Footmen. 
 
 \st Footman. You speak first. 
 
 id Footman. No, you had better speak. 
 
 1st Footman. You promised to begin. 
 
 Mr. II, They have something to say to me. 
 The rascals want their wages raised, I 
 suppose ; there is always a favour to be 
 asked when they come smiling. Well, poor 
 rogues, service is but a hard bargain at the 
 best. I think I must not be close with them. 
 Well, David — well, Jonathan. 
 
 \st Footman. We have served your honour 
 faithfully 
 
 2d Footman. Hope your honour won't take 
 offence 
 
 Mr. II The old story, I suppose — wages T 
 
 1st Footman. That's not it, your honour. 
 
 2d Footman. You speak. 
 
 1st Footman. liut if your honour woi IJ 
 just be pleased to 
 
MR, H , A FARCE. 
 
 583 
 
 2^? Footman. Only be pleased to 
 
 Mr. H. Be quick with what you have to 
 say, for I am in haste. 
 
 \st Footman. Just to 
 
 2d Footman. Let us know who it is 
 
 \st Footman. Who it is we have the honour 
 to serve. 
 
 Mr. H. Why me, me, me ; you serve me. 
 
 2d Footman. Yes, Sir ; but we do not 
 know who you are, 
 
 Mr. H Childish curiosity ! do not you 
 serve a rich master, a gay master, an 
 indulgent master ? 
 
 \st Footman. Ah, Sir ! the figure you make 
 is to us, your poor servants, the principal 
 mortification. 
 
 2d Footman. AVhen we get over a pot at 
 the public-house, or in a gentleman's kitchen, 
 or elsewhere, as poor servants must have 
 their pleasures — when the question goes 
 round, who is your master ? and who do you 
 serve 1 and one says, I serve Lord So-and-so, 
 and another, I am Squire Such-a-one's 
 footman 
 
 \.3t Footman. We liave nothing to say for 
 it, but that we serve Mr. H. 
 
 2d Footman. Or Squire H. 
 
 Mr. H. Keally j'ou are a couple of pretty 
 modest, reasonable personages ! but I hope 
 you will take it as no offence, gentlemen, if, 
 upon a dispassionate review of all that you 
 have said, I think fit not to tell you any 
 more of my name, th;m I have chosen for 
 especial pur^wses to communicate to the rest 
 of the world. 
 
 1st Footman. Why, then, Sir, you may suit 
 yourself. 
 
 2d Footman. We tell you plainly, we 
 cannot stay. 
 
 \st Footman. We don't choose to serve 
 Mr. H. 
 
 2d Footman. Nor any Mr. or Squire in the 
 alphabet 
 
 \st Footman. That lives in Chris-cross Row. 
 
 Mr. H. Go, for a couple of ungrateful, 
 inquisitive, senseless rascals ! Go hiuig, 
 starve, or drown! — Rogues, to speak thus 
 irreverently of tlie alphabet — I shall live to 
 see you glad to serve old Q — to curl the wig 
 of great S — adjust tlie dot of little i — stand 
 behind the chair of X, Y, Z — wear the 
 livery of Etcsetera — and ride behind the 
 sulky of And-by-itself-and ! \_Exit in a rage. 
 
 ACT II. 
 
 Scene. — A handsome Apartment well lirjhted, Tea, 
 Cards, dkc. — A . large party of Ladies and 
 Gentlemen; among them Mel.esinda. 
 
 1st Lady. I wonder when the charming 
 man will be here. 
 
 2d Lady. He is a delightful creature ! 
 Such a polish 
 
 Zd Lady. Such an air in all that he does 
 or says 
 
 Ath Lady. Yet gifted with a strong under- 
 standing 
 
 bth Lady. But has your ladyship the 
 remotest idea of what his true name is ? 
 
 1st Lady. Tliey say, his very servants do 
 not know it. His French valet, that has 
 lived with him these two years 
 
 2d Lady. There, Madam, I must beg leave 
 to set you right : my coachman 
 
 1st Lady. I have it from the very best 
 authority : my footman 
 
 2d Lady. Then, Madam, you have set your 
 servants on 
 
 1st Lady. No, Madam, I would scorn any 
 such little mean ways of coming at a secret. 
 For my part, I don't think any secret of that 
 consequence. 
 
 2d Lady. That's just like me ; I make a 
 rule of troubling my head with nobody's 
 business but' my own. 
 
 Mdesinda. But then, she takes care to 
 make everybody's business her own, and so 
 to justify herself that way {Aside^ 
 
 1st Lady. My dear Melesinda, you look 
 thoiightful. 
 
 Melesinda. Nothing. 
 
 2d Lady. Give it a name. 
 
 Melesinda. Perhaps it is nameless. 
 
 1st Lady. As the object Come, never 
 
 blush, nor deny it, child. Bless me, what 
 great ugly thing is that, that dangles at 
 your bosom ? 
 
 Melesinda. This ? it is a cross : how do 
 you like it 1 
 
 2d Lady. A cross ! Well, to me it looks 
 for all the world like a great staring H. 
 
 {Tlere a general Umgh.) 
 
 Melesinda. Malicious creatm-es ! Believe 
 me it is a cross, and nothing but a cross. 
 
 1st Lady. A cross, I believe, you would 
 willingly hang at. 
 
584 
 
 MR. H , A FARCE. 
 
 Mdesinda. Intolerable spite ! | 
 
 (Mn. II. IS announced.) 
 
 Enter Mr. H. 
 
 \st Lady. 0, Mr. H., we are so glad 
 
 2cZ Ladij. We have been so dull 
 
 'id Ladif. So perfectly lifeless You owe 
 
 it to us, to be more than commonly enter- 
 taining. 
 
 Mr. H. Laflies, this is so obliging 
 
 Ath Lady. O, INIi-. H., those rauuuculas you 
 said were dying, pretty things, they have got 
 
 tjth Lady. I have worked that sprig you 
 commended — I want you to come 
 
 Mr. II. Ladies 
 
 6;;^ Lady. I have sent for that piece of 
 music from London. 
 
 Mr. II. The Mozart — {seeing Melesinda) 
 — Melesinda ! 
 
 Several Ladies at once. Nay, positively, 
 Melesinda, you shan't engross him all to 
 yourself. 
 
 IWhile the Ladies are pressing ahout Mk. H., the gentle- 
 men show signs of displeasure. 
 
 1st Gent. We shan't be able to edge in a 
 word, now this coxcomb is come. 
 
 2c? Oe7it. Damn him, I will afFi'ont him. 
 
 l5^ Gent. Sir, with your leave, I have a 
 word to say to one of these ladies. 
 
 2(^ Gent. If we could be heard 
 
 [^The Ladies pay no attention but to Mr. II. 
 
 Mr. H. You see, gentlemen, how the matter 
 stands. {Hums an air.) I am not my own 
 master: positively I exist and breathe but 
 to be agi-eeable to these Did you speak ? 
 
 \st Gent. And affects absence of mind — 
 Puppy ! 
 
 Mr. II. Who spoke of absence of mind ; did 
 you. Madam ? How do you do. Lady Wear- 
 well — how do ? I did not see your ladyship 
 before — what was I about to say — — absence 
 of mind. I am the most unhappy dog in 
 that way, sometimes spurt out the strangest 
 things — the most mal-S,-propos — witliout 
 meaning to give the least offence, upon 
 my lionour — slieer absence of mind — things 
 I woidd have given the world not to have said. 
 
 \8t Gent. Do you hear the coxcomb ? 
 
 \st Lady. Gn^at wits, they say 
 
 ^d Lady. Your fine geniuses are most 
 given 
 
 3fZ Lady. Men of bright parts are com- 
 monly too vivacious 
 
 Mr. H. But you shall hear. I was to dine 
 the other day at a great Nabob's that must 
 be nameless, who, between ourselves, is 
 strongly suspecte<l of — being very rich, that's 
 all. John, my valet, who knows my foible, 
 cautioned me, while he was dressing me, as 
 he usually does where he thinks there's a 
 danger of my committing a lapsus, to take 
 care in my conversation how I made any 
 allusion direct or indirect to presents — you 
 understand me ? I set out double charged 
 with my fellow's consideration and my own ; 
 and, to do myself justice, behaved with toler- 
 able circumspection for the first half-hour or 
 so — till at last a gentleman in company, who 
 was indulging a free vein of raillery at the 
 expense of the ladies, stumbled upon that 
 expression of the poet, which calls them 
 " fair defects." 
 
 \st Lady. It is Pope, I believe, who says it. 
 
 Mr. II. No, Madam ; Milton. Where was 
 I ? Oh, " fair defects." This gave occasion to . 
 a critic in company, to daliver his opinion on 
 the phrase — that led to an enumeration of 
 all the various words which might have been 
 used instead of " defect," as want, absence, 
 poverty, deficiency, lack. This moment I, 
 who had not been attending to the ])rogress 
 of the argument, (as the denouement will 
 show) starting suddenly up out of one of my 
 reveries, by some unfortunate connexion of 
 ideas, which the last fatal word had excited, 
 the devil ])ut it into my head to turn round 
 to the Nabob, who was sitting next me, and 
 in a very marked maimer (as it seemed to 
 the company) to put the question to him, 
 Pray, Sir, what may be the exact value of a 
 lack of rupees ? You may guess the confusion 
 which followed. 
 
 \st Lady. What a distressing circumstance ! 
 
 2(/ Lady. To a delicate mind 
 
 2d Lady. IIow en>barra.ssing 
 
 AtJi Lady. I dtdare, I quite pity you. 
 
 \st Gent. Pupjiy ! 
 
 Mr. II. A Baronet at the table, seeing my 
 dilemma, jogged my elbow ; and a good- 
 natured Duchess, who doe.s everything with 
 a grace peculiar to hei*self, trod on my toes 
 at that instant : this brought me to myself, 
 and — covered with blushes, and pitied by all 
 the ladies — I withdrew. 
 
 \st Lady. IIow charmingly he tells a story. 
 
 %l Lady. But how ilistressing ! 
 
 Mr. II. Lord S(]uandercoun3el, wlu> is my 
 
MR. II- 
 
 A FARCE. 
 
 585 
 
 particular friend, was pleased to rally me in 
 his iniuiitable way upon it next day. I shall 
 never forget a sensible thing he said on the 
 occasion — speaking of absence of mind, my 
 foible — says he, my dear Hogs 
 
 Several Ladies. Hogs what — ha — 
 
 Mr. JI. My dear Hogsflesh — my name — 
 (here a universal scream) — O my cursed unfor- 
 tunate tongue ! — H. I mean — where was I ? 
 
 1st Lady. Filthy — abominable ! 
 
 2rf Lady. Unutterable ! 
 
 Zd Lady. Hogs foh ! 
 
 \th Lady. Disgusting ! 
 
 bth Lady. Vile ! 
 
 %th Lady. Shocking ! 
 
 \st Lady. Odious ! 
 
 2c? Lady. Hoga ^pah ! 
 
 3c? Jjady. A smelling bottle — look to Miss 
 Melesinda. Poor thing ! it is no wonder. 
 You had better keep off from her, Mr. 
 Hogsflesh, and not be pressing about her in 
 her circumstances. 
 
 \st Gent. Good time of day to you, Mr. 
 Hogsflesh. 
 
 2fl? Gent. The compliments of the season to 
 you, Mr. Hogsflesh. 
 
 Mr. H. This is too much — flesh and blood 
 cannot endure it. 
 
 \st Gent. Wliat flesh ?— hog's-flesh ? 
 
 2(/ Gent. How he sets \yp his bristles ! 
 
 Mr.H. Bristles! 
 
 \st Gent. He looks as fierce as a hog in 
 armour. 
 
 Mr. II. A hog ! ^Madam ! {here he 
 
 severally accosts the Ladies, who by turns repel 
 him.) 
 
 \st Lady. Extremely obliged to you for 
 your attentions ; but don't want a partner. 
 
 2{/ Lady. Greatly flattered by your pre- 
 ference : but believe I sliall remain single. 
 
 2d Lady. Shall always acknowledge your 
 politeness ; but have no thoughts of altering 
 my condition. 
 
 AthLady. Always be happy to respect you 
 as a friend ; but you must not look for 
 anything further. 
 
 bth Lady. No doubt of your ability to 
 make any woman happy ; but have no 
 thoughts of changing my name. 
 
 (ith Lady. Must tell you, Sir, that if, by 
 your insinuations, you think to prevail with 
 me, you have got the wrong sow by the ear. 
 Does he think any lady would go to pig with 
 him ? 
 
 Old Lady. Must beg you to be less parti- 
 cular in your addresses to me. Does he take 
 me for a Jew, to long after forbidden meats ? 
 
 Mr. II. I shall go mad ! — to be refused by 
 old Mother Damnable — she that's so old, 
 nobody knows whether she was ever married 
 or no, but passes for a maid by courtesy ; 
 her juvenile exploits being beyond the 
 farthest stretch of tradition ! — old Mother 
 Damnable ! 
 
 \_Exeunt all, either pitying or seeming to avoid him. 
 
 Scene. — Tlie street. 
 Belvil and another Gentleman. 
 
 Belvil. Poor Jack, I am really sorry for 
 him. The account which you give me of 
 his mortifying change of reception at the 
 assembly, would be highly diverting, if it 
 gave me less pain to hear it. "With all his 
 amusing absurdities, and amongst them not 
 the least, a predoiuinant desire to be thought 
 well of by the fair sex, he has an abundant 
 share of good-nature, and is a man of 
 honour. Notwithstanding all that has hap- 
 pened, Melesinda may do worse than take 
 him yet. But did the women resent it so 
 deeply as you say 1 
 
 Gent. O, intolerably — they fled him as 
 fearfully when 'twas once blown, as a man 
 would be avoided, who was suddenly dis- 
 covered to have marks of the plague, and as 
 fast ; when before they had been ready to 
 devour the foolishest thing he could say. 
 
 Belvil. Ha ! ha ! so frail is the tenure by 
 which these women's favourites commonly 
 hold their envied pre-eminence. Well, I 
 must go find him out and comfort him. I 
 suppose, I shall find him at the inn. 
 
 Gent. Either there or at Melesinda's — 
 
 Adieu ! lExeunt 
 
 Scene. — Mr. H 's Apartment. 
 
 Mr. II. (solus.) Was ever anything so 
 mortifying 1 to be refused by old Mother 
 Damnable ! — with such jiarts and address, — 
 and the little squeamish devils, to dislike me 
 for a name, a sound. — Oh my cursed name ! 
 that it was something I could be revenged 
 on ! if it were alive, that I might tread upon 
 it, or crush it, or pummel it, or kick it, or spit 
 it out — for it sticks in my throat, and will 
 choke me. 
 
 My l)laguy ancestors ! if they had left me 
 but a Van, or a Mac, or an L-ish O', it had 
 
586 
 
 MR. H , A FARCE. 
 
 been something to qualify it. — ^Mynheer Van 
 Hngaflesh, — or Sawney Mac Hogsflesh, — or 
 Sir Phelim O'Hogsflesh, — but downright 
 
 blunt . If it had been any otlier 
 
 name in the world, I could have borne it. 
 If it had been the name of a beast, as Bull, 
 Fox, Kid, Lamb, Wolf, Lion ; or of a bird, 
 as Sparrow, Hawk, Buzzard, Daw, Finch, 
 Nightingale ; or of a fish, as Spi-at, Herring, 
 Salmon ; or the name of a thing, as Ginger, 
 Hay, Wood ; or of a colour, as Black, Grey, 
 White, Green ; or of a sound, as Bray ; 
 or the name of a month, as March, May ; 
 or of a place, as Baruet, Baldock, Hitchen ; 
 or the name of a coin, as Farthing, 
 Penny, Twopenny ; or of a profession, 
 as Butcher, Baker, Cari)enter, Piper, Fisher, 
 Fletcher, Fowler, Glover ; or a Jew's 
 name, as Solomons, Isaacs, Jacobs ; or a 
 personal name, as Foot, Leg, Crookshanks, 
 Heaviside, Sidebottom, Longbottom, Eams- 
 bottom, Winterbottom ; or a long name, as 
 Blanch enh a gen, or Blanchenhausen ; or a 
 short name, as Crib, Crisp, Crips, Tag, Trot, 
 Tub, Phips, Badge, Papps, or Prig, or Wig, 
 or Pip, or Trip ; Trip had been something, 
 
 but Ho . ( Walh about in great agitation 
 
 — recovering his calmness a little, sits down.) 
 
 Farewell the most distant thoughts of 
 marriage ; the finger-circling ring, the purity- 
 figuring glove, the envy-pining bridemaids, 
 the wishing parson, and the simjicring clerk. 
 Farewell the ambiguous blush-raising joke, 
 the titter-provoking pun, the morning- 
 stirring drum. — No son of mine shall exist, 
 to bear my ill-fated name. No nurse come 
 chuckling, to tell me it is a boy. No midwife, 
 leering at me from under the lids of pro- 
 fessional gravity. I dreamed of caudle. — 
 (Sings in a melancholy tone) Lullaby, 
 Lullaby, — hush-a-by-baby — how like its papa 
 it is ! — {Makes tnotions as if he was nursing.) 
 And then, when gi'own up, " Is this your son. 
 Sir 1 " " Yes, Sir, a poor copy of me, a sad 
 young dog, — just what his father was at his 
 age, — I have four more at home." Oh! oh! oh! 
 
 Enter Landlord. 
 
 Mr. IT. Landlurd, I must pack up to- 
 night ; you will see all my things got ready. 
 
 Landlord. Hope your Honour does not 
 iiitt-nd to quit the Blue Boar, — sorry any- 
 thing has happened. 
 
 Mr. n. He has heard it all. 
 
 Landlord. Your Honour has had some 
 mortification, to be sure, as a man may say ; 
 you have brought your pigs to a fine market. 
 
 Mr. n. Pigs I 
 
 Landlord. What then ? take old Pry's 
 advice, and never mind it. Don't scorch 
 your crackling for 'em. Sir. 
 
 Mr. H. Scorch my crackling ! a queer 
 phrase ; but I suppose he don't mean to 
 affront me. 
 
 Landlord. What is done can't be undone ; 
 you can't make a silken purse out of a sow's 
 ear. 
 
 Mr. H. As you say. Landlord, thinking of 
 a thing does but augment it. 
 
 Landlord. Does but hogment it, indeed. Sir. 
 
 Mr. II. Hogment it ! damn it, I said 
 augment it. 
 
 Landlord. Lord, Sir, 'tis not everybody has 
 such gift of fine phrases as your Honour, that 
 can lard his discourse — 
 
 Mr. H. I-ard ! 
 
 Landlord. Suppose they do smoke you — 
 
 Mr. II. Smoke me ! 
 
 Landlord. One of my phrases ; never mind 
 rciy words, Sir, my meaning is good. We all 
 mean the same thing, only you express 
 yourself one way, and I another, that's all. 
 The meaning's the same ; it is all poi-k. 
 
 Mr. H. That's another of your phrases, I 
 
 presume. [BM rings, and the Landlord called/or. 
 
 Landlord. Anon, anon. 
 
 Jlr. H. Oh, I wish I were anonymous. 
 
 \EzeuHt several ways. 
 
 Scene. — Mtlesinda's Apartment. 
 Melesinda and Maid. 
 
 Maid. Lord, Madam ! before I'd take on 
 as you do about a foolish — what signifies a 
 name 1 Hogs — Hogs — what is it — is just as 
 good as any other, for what I see. 
 
 Melcsinda. Ignorant creature ! yet she is 
 perhaps blest in the absence of those ideas, 
 which, while they add a zest to the few 
 pleasures wliich fall to the lot of superior 
 natures to enjoy, doubly edge the 
 
 Maid. Superior natures ! a fig ! If he's 
 hog by name, he's not hog by nature, that 
 don't follow — his name don't make him 
 anything, does it ? He don't grunt the more 
 for it, nor squeak, that ever I hear ; be 
 likes his victuals out of a plate, as other 
 Christians do ; you never see him go to the 
 trough 
 
MR. H- 
 
 A FARCE. 
 
 587 
 
 Melesinda. Unfeeling wretch ! yet possibly 
 her intentions 
 
 Maid. For instance, Madam, my name is 
 Finch — Betty Finch. I don't whistle the 
 more for that, nor long after canary-seed 
 while I can get good wholesome mutton — 
 no, nor you can't catch me by throwing salt 
 on my tail. If you come to that, hadn't I a 
 young man used to come after me, they said 
 courted me — his name was Lion, Francis Lion, 
 a tailor ; but though he was fond enough of 
 me, for all that he never oifered to eat me. 
 
 Melesinda. How fortunate that the dis- 
 covery has been made before it was too late ! 
 Had I listened to his deceits, and, as the 
 perfidious man had almost persuaded me, 
 precipitated myself into an inextricable 
 engagement before 
 
 Maid. No great harm if you had. You'd 
 only have bought a pig in a poke — and what 
 then 1 Oh, here he comes creeping 
 
 Enter Mr. H. abject. 
 
 Go to her, Mr. Hogs — Hogs — Hogsbristles, 
 what's your name ? Don't be afraid, man — 
 don't give it up — she's not crying — only 
 summat has made her eyes red — she has got 
 a sty in her eye, I believe — {going). 
 
 Melesinda. You are not going, Betty ? 
 
 Maid. O, Madam, never mind me — I shall 
 be back in the twinkling of a pig's whisker, 
 as they say. \_Exit. 
 
 Mr. II. JMelesinda, you behold before you 
 a wretch who would have betrayed your 
 confidence — but it was love that prompted 
 him ; who would have trick'd you, by an 
 unworthy concealment, into a participation 
 of that disgrace which a supei-ficial world 
 has agreed to attach to a name — but with it 
 you would have shared a fortune not con- 
 temptible, and a heart — but 'tis over now. 
 That name he is content to bear alone — to 
 go where the persecuted syllables shall be no 
 more heard, or excite no meaning — some 
 spot where his native tongue has never 
 penetrated, nor any of his countrymen have 
 lauded, to plant their unfeeling satire, their 
 brutal wit, and national ill mauners-^-where 
 no Englishmen — {Ilere Melesinda, who has 
 been pouting during this speech, fetches a deep 
 sigh). Some yet undiscovered Otaheite, 
 where witless, unapprehensive savages shall 
 innocently pronounce the ill-fated sounds, 
 and think them not inharmomous. 
 
 Melesinda. Oh ! 
 
 Mr. II. Who knows but among the female 
 natives might be found ■ 
 
 Melesinda. Sir ! {raising her head.) 
 
 Mr. H. One who would be more kind than 
 — some Oberea — Queen Oberea. 
 
 Melesinda. Oh ! 
 
 Mr. H. Or what if I were to seek for 
 proofs of reciprocal esteem among unprfr- 
 judiced African maids, in Monomotopa ? 
 
 Enter Servant. 
 
 Servant. Mr. Belvil. [ExU- 
 
 Enter Belvil, 
 
 Mr. H. ]Monomotopa {mtising). 
 
 Belvil. Heyday, Jack ! what means this 
 mortified face ? nothing has happened, I 
 hope, between this lady and you 1 I beg 
 pardon, Madam, but understanding my friend 
 was with you, I took the liberty of seeking 
 him here. Some little difference possibly 
 which a third person can adjust — not a 
 word. Will you. Madam, as this gentleman's 
 friend, suffer me to be the arbitrator—- 
 strange — hark'ee, Jack, nothing has come 
 out, has there ? you understand me. Oh, I 
 guess how it is — somebody has got at yoiu* 
 secret ; you haven't blabbed it yourself, 
 have you ? ha ! ha ! ha ! I could find in 
 my heart — Jack, what would you give me if 
 I should relieve you ? 
 
 Mr. H. No power of man can relieve me 
 {sighs) ; but it must lie at the root, gnawing 
 at the root — here it will lie. 
 
 Belvil. No power of man ? not a common 
 man, I grant you : for instance, a subject — 
 it's out of the power of any subject. 
 
 Mr. II Gnawing at the root — there it will lie. 
 
 Belvil. Such a thing has been known as a 
 name to be changed ; but not by a subject — 
 {shows a Gazette). 
 
 Mr. II. Gnawing at the root — {suddenly 
 snatches the paper out of Belvil's hand) — ha' 
 pish ! nonsense ! give it me — what ! {reads) 
 promotions, bankrupts — a great many bank- 
 rupts this week — there it will lie. {Lays it 
 doivn, takes it up again, and reads.) " The 
 King has been graciously pleased" — gnawing 
 at the root — "graciously pleased to grant 
 unto John Hogsflesh," — the devil — " Hogs- 
 flesh, Esq., of Sty Hall, in the county of 
 Hants, his royal licence and authority" — O 
 Lord ! O Lord ! — " that he and his issue " — 
 me and my issue — " may take and use the 
 
583 
 
 ME. H , A FARCE. 
 
 surname and arras of Bacon" — Bacon, the 
 surname ami arms of Bacon — " in pursuance 
 of an injunction contained in the last will 
 and testament of Nicholas Bacon, Esq., his 
 late uncle, as well as out of grateful respect 
 to his memory : " — grateful respect ! poor 
 
 old soul here's more — " and that such 
 
 arms may be first duly exemplified " — they 
 shall, I will take care of that — " according to 
 the laws of arms, and recorded in the 
 Herald's Office." 
 
 Belvil. Come, Madam, give me leave to 
 put my own interpretation upon your silence, 
 and to plead for my friend, that now that 
 only obstacle which seemed to stand in the 
 way of your union is removed, you will suffer 
 me to complete the happiness which my news 
 seems to have brought him, by introducing 
 him with a new claim to your favour, by the 
 name of Mr.. Bacon. {Tahes their hands and 
 joins them, which Melesinda seems to give 
 consent to with a smile.) 
 
 Mr. H. Generous Melesinda ! my dear 
 friend — " he and his issue," me and my issue ! 
 — O Lord !— 
 
 Belvil. I wish you joy, Jack, with all my 
 heart. 
 
 Mr. II. Bacon, Bacon, Bacon — how odd it 
 sounds ! I could never be tired of hearing it. 
 There was Lord Chancellor Bacon. Metliiuks 
 1 have some of the Verulam blood in me 
 already. — IVIethinks I could look through 
 Nature — there was Friar Bacon, a conjuror, 
 — I feel as if I could conjure too 
 
 Enter a Seirant. 
 
 Servant. Two young ladies and an old lady 
 are at the door, inquiring if you see company, 
 Madam. 
 
 Mr. II. " Surname and arms " — 
 Melesinda. Show them nj). — JMy dear Mr. 
 Bacon, moderate your joy. 
 
 Enter three Ladies, being part of those who were at 
 the Assembly. 
 
 \st Ladij. My dear Melesinda, how do you 
 do? 
 
 2nd Lady. How do you do ? "We have 
 been so concerned for you 
 
 Old Lady. We have been so concerned — 
 
 {seeing him) — ^Ir. Hogsflesh 
 
 Mr. II. There's no such person — nor there 
 never was — nor 'tis not fit there should be 
 — " surname and arms " 
 
 Belvil. It is true what my friend would 
 express ; we have been all in a mistake, 
 ladies. Very true, the name of this gen- 
 tleman was what you call it, but it is so no 
 longer. The succession to the long-contested 
 Bacon estate is at length decided, and with 
 it my friend succeeds to the name of his 
 deceased relative. 
 
 Mr. H. " His Majesty ha.s been graciously 
 pleased " — 
 
 \st Lady. I am sure we all join in hearty 
 congratulation — (sighs). 
 
 2nd Lady. And wish you joy with all our 
 hearts — {heigh ho !) 
 
 Old Lady. And hope you will enjoy the 
 name and estate many yeai*s — {cries). 
 
 Belvil. Ha ! ha ! ha ! mortify them a little, 
 Jack. 
 
 \st Lady. Hope you intend to stay 
 
 2nd Lady. With us some time 
 
 Old Lady. In these parts 
 
 Mr. II. Ladies, for your congratulations I 
 thank you ; for the favours you have lavished 
 on me, and in particular for this lady's 
 {turning to the old Lady) good opinion, I rest 
 your debtor. As to any future favours — 
 {accosts them severally in the order in which he 
 was re/used by them at the assembly) — [Madam, 
 shall always acknowledge your politeness ; 
 but at present, you see, I am engaged with 
 a partner. Always be happy to respect you 
 as a friend, but you must not look for any- 
 thing further. Must beg of you to be less 
 particular in your addresses to me. Ladies 
 all, with this piece of advice, of Bath and you 
 
 Your ever grateful servant takes his leave. 
 Lay your plans surer when you jtlot to^ 
 
 grieve ; 
 See, while you kindly mean to mortify 
 Another, the wild arrow do not fly, 
 And gall yourself For once you've been 
 
 mistaken ; 
 Your shafts have miss'd their aim — Hog»- 
 
 flesh has saved his Bacon. 
 
DEDICATION. 
 
 TO S. T. COLERIDGE, ESQ. 
 My dear Coleridge, 
 
 You will smile to see the slender labours of your friend designated by the title of 
 IVorls ; but such was the wish of the gentlemen who have kindly undertaken the trouble of 
 collecting them, and from their judgment could be no nppcal. 
 
 It would be a kind of disloyalty to offer to any one but yourself a volume containing the 
 carhj pieces, which were first published among your poems, and were fairly derivatives from you 
 and them. My friend Lloyd and myself came into our first battle (autliorship is a sort of warfare) 
 under cover of the greater Ajax. How this association, which shall ahva} s be a dear and proud 
 recollection to me, came to be broken, — who snapped the three-fold cord, — whether yourself (but I 
 know that was not the case) grew ashamed of your former companions, — or whether (which is by 
 nuicli the more probable) some ungracious bookseller was author of the separation, — I cannot 
 tell ; — but wanting the support of your friendly elm, (I speak for myself,) my vine has, 
 since that time, put forth few or no fruits ; the sap (if ever it had any) has become, in a 
 manner, dried up and extinct ; and you will find your old associate, in his second volume, 
 dwindled into prose and criticism. 
 
 Am I right in assuming this as the cause ? or is it that, as years come upon us, (except 
 with some more healthy-happy spirits,) Life itself loses much of its Poetry for us? we transcribe 
 but what we read in the great volume of Nature; and, as the characters grow dim, we turn off, and 
 look another way. You yourself write no Christabels, nor Ancient Mariners, now. 
 
 Some of the Sonnets, which shall be carelessly turned over by the general reader, may 
 
 happily awaken in you remembrances, which I should be sorry should be ever totally cztioct — 
 the memory 
 
 *' Of summer, days and of deligbtful years — " 
 
 oven so far back as to those old suppers at our old •»••»»»»»* Inn,— when life was fresh, and topic* 
 
 • Prefixed to the Author's works published in 1818. 
 
692 DEDICATION. 
 
 exhaustless, — and you firat kindled in me, if not the power, yet the love of poetry, and beauty, 
 
 and kindliness, — 
 
 " What words have I heard 
 Spoke at the Mermaid ! " 
 
 The world has given you many a shrewd nip and gird since that time, but cither my eye8 arc 
 grown dimmer, or my old friend is the same who stood before mc three-and-twenty years ago — liis 
 hair a little confessing the hand of Time, but still shrouding the same capacious brain, — his heart not 
 altered, scarcely where it " alteration finds." 
 
 One piece, Coleridge, I have ventured to publish in its original form, though I have heard you 
 complain of a certain over-imitation of the antique in the style. If I could see any way of getting 
 rid of the objection, without rc-writing it entirely, I would make some sacrifices. But when I wrote 
 John Woodvil, I never proposed to myself any distinct deviation from common English. 1 had been 
 newly initiated in the writings of our elder dramatists : Beaumont and Fletcher, and Massinger, were 
 then a. first love ; and from what I was so freshly conversant in, what wonder if my language imper- 
 ceptibly took a tinge ? The very time which I had chosen for uiy story, that which immediately 
 followed the Restoration, seemed to require, in an English play, that the English should be of rather 
 an older cast than that of the precise year in which it happened to be written. I wisb it had not 
 some faults, which I can loss vindicate than the language. 
 
 I remain, 
 
 My dear Coleridge, 
 /- Yours, 
 
 With unabated esteem, 
 
 C. LAMB. 
 
POEMS. 
 
 HESTER. 
 
 When maidens such as Hester die, 
 Their place ye may not well supply, 
 Though ye among a thousand try, 
 With vain endeavour. 
 
 A month or more hath she been dead, 
 Yet cannot I by force be led 
 To think upon the wormy bed. 
 And her together. 
 
 A springy motion in lier gait, 
 A rising step, did indicate 
 Of pride and joy no common rate. 
 That flush'd her spu'it. 
 
 I know not by what name beside 
 I shall it call : — if 'twas not pride. 
 It was a joy to that allied. 
 She did inherit. 
 
 Her parents held the Quaker rule, 
 Which doth the human feeling cool. 
 But she was train' d in Nature's school, 
 Nature had blest her. 
 
 A waking eye, a prying mind, 
 A heart that stirs, is bard to bind, 
 A hawk's keen sight ye cannot blind, 
 Ye could not Hester. 
 
 My sprightly neighbour ! gone before 
 To that unknown and silent shore. 
 Shall we not meet, as heretofore, 
 Some summer morning, 
 
 "UTien from thy cheerful eyes a ray 
 Hath struck a bliss upon the day, 
 A bliss that would not go away, 
 A sweet fore-warning } 
 
 TO CHARLES LLOYD. 
 
 AN UNEXrfXTKD VISITER. 
 
 Alone, obscure, without a friend, 
 
 A cheerless, solitary thing, 
 Wliy 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 be awhile with me content 
 
 To stay, a kindly loiterer, here : 
 
 For this a gleam of random joy 
 
 Hath flush'd my unaccustom'd cheek ; 
 
 And, with an o'ercharged bursting heart, 
 I feel the thanks I cannot speak. 
 
 Oh ! sweet are all the Muses' 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 gi-ateful sense shall cherish'd be ; 
 
 I'll think less meanly of mj'self. 
 
 That Lloyd will sometimes think on me. 
 
 Q Q 
 
THE THREE FRIENDS. 
 
 Three young maids in friendship met ; 
 
 Mary, Martlia, Margaret. 
 
 Margaret was tall and fair, 
 
 Martha shorter by a hair ; 
 
 If the first excell'd in feature, 
 
 Th' other's grace and ease were gi-eater ; 
 
 Mary, though to rival loth. 
 
 In their best gifts equall'd both. 
 
 Tlioy a due proportion kept ; 
 
 Martha mourn'd if Margaret wept ; 
 
 Margaret joy'd when any good 
 
 She of Martha understood ; 
 
 And in sympathy for cither 
 
 Mary was outdone by neither. 
 
 Thus far, for a happy space, 
 
 All three ran an equal race, 
 
 A most constant friendship proving, 
 
 Equally beloved and loving ; 
 
 All their wishes, joys, the same; 
 
 Sisters only not in name. 
 
 Fortune upon each one smiled. 
 As upon a fav'rite child ; 
 "Well to do and well to see 
 "Were the parents of all three ; 
 Till on Martha's father crosses 
 Brought a flood of worldly losses, 
 And his fortunes rich and great 
 Changed at once to low estate ; 
 Under which o'erwhelming blow 
 Martha's mother was laid low ; 
 She a hapless orphan left. 
 Of maternal care bereft. 
 Trouble following trouble fast, 
 Lay in a sick bed at last. 
 
 In the depth of her affliction 
 Martha now receiv'd conviction. 
 That a true and faithful friend 
 Can the surest comfort lend. 
 Night and day, with friendship tried. 
 Ever constant by her side 
 Was her gentle Mary found. 
 With a love that knew no bound ; 
 And the solace she impai-tcd 
 Saved her dying broken-hearted. 
 
 In this scene of earthly things 
 Not one good unmixed springs. 
 Tliat which had to Martha proved 
 A Bwect consolation, moved 
 Difierent feelings of regret 
 In the mind of Margaret. 
 She, whoso love was not less dear, 
 Nor affection less sincere 
 
 To her friend, was, by occasion 
 Of more distant habitation, 
 Fewer visits forced to pay her ; 
 When no other cause did stay her ; 
 And her Mary living nearer, 
 Margaret began to fear her. 
 Lest her visits day by day 
 Martha's heart should steal away. 
 That whole heart she ill could spare her, 
 Where till now she'd been a sharer. 
 From this cause with grief she pined, 
 Till at length her health declined. 
 All her cheerful spirits flew. 
 Fast as Martha's gather'd new ; 
 And her sickness waxed sore, 
 Just when Martha felt no more. 
 
 Mary, who had quick suspicion 
 Of her alter'd friend's condition. 
 Seeing Martha's convalescence 
 Less demanded now her presence. 
 With a goodness, built on reason, 
 Changed her measures with the season 
 Turn'd her steps from Martha's door, 
 Went where she was wanted more ; 
 All her care and thoughts were set 
 Now to tend on Margaret. 
 Maiy living 'twixt the two. 
 From her home could oft'ner go, 
 Either of her friends to see, 
 Thau they could together be. 
 
 Truth explain'd is to suspicion 
 Evermore the best physician. 
 Soon her visits had the effect; 
 All that Margaret did suspect. 
 From her fancy vanish'd clean ; 
 She was soon what she had been, 
 And the colour she did lack 
 To her foded cheek came back. 
 Wounds which love had made her feci, 
 Love alone had power to heal. 
 
 Martha, who the frequent visit 
 Now had lost, and sore did miss it, 
 With impatience waxed cross. 
 Counted Mai"garct's gain her loss : 
 All that Mary did confer 
 On her friend, thought due to her. 
 In her girlish bosom rise 
 Little foolish jealousies, 
 Whicli into such rancour wrought, 
 She one day for Margaret sought; 
 Finding her by chance alone, 
 She began, with roiiaons shoMm, 
 To insinuate a fear 
 Whether Moi-y woa Bincere ; 
 
MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 695 
 
 Wish'd that Margaret would take lieed 
 
 "Whence her actions did proceed. 
 
 For herself, she'd long been minded 
 
 Not with outsides to bo blinded ; 
 
 All that pity and compassion, 
 
 She believed was affectation ; 
 
 In her heart she doubted whether 
 
 Mary cared a pin for either. 
 
 She could keep whole weeks at distance, 
 
 And not know of their existence, 
 
 While all things remain'd the same ; 
 
 But, when some misfortune came. 
 
 Then she made a great parade 
 
 Of her sjTBpathy and aid, — 
 
 Not that she did really grieve. 
 
 It was only mcike-helieve, 
 
 And she cared for nothing, so 
 
 She might her fine feelings show, 
 
 And get credit, on her part. 
 
 For a soft and tender heart. 
 
 With such speeches, smoothly made, 
 She found methods to persuade 
 Margaret (who being sore 
 From the doubts she'd felt before, 
 Was prepared for mistrust) 
 To believe her reasons just ; 
 Quite destroy'd that comfort glad, 
 \\liich in Mary late she had ; 
 Made her, in experience' spite. 
 Think her friend a hypocrite, 
 And resolve, with cruel scoff. 
 To renounce and cast her off. 
 
 See how good turns ai'e rewarded ! 
 She of both is now discarded. 
 Who to both had been so late 
 Their support in low estate, 
 All their comfort, and their stay — 
 Now of both is cast away. 
 But the league her presence chcrish'd, 
 Losing its best prop, soon perish'd ; 
 She, that was a link to either. 
 To keep them and it together. 
 Being gone, the two (no wonder) 
 That were left, soon fell astinder; — 
 Some civilities were kept, 
 But the heart of fi-iendship slept ; 
 Love with hollow forms was fed, 
 But the life of love lay dead : — / 
 
 A cold intercourse they held. 
 After Mary was expell'd. 
 
 Two long years did intervene 
 Since they'd either of them seen. 
 Or, by letter, any word 
 Of their old companion heard, — 
 When, upon a day once walking, 
 Of indifferent matters talking. 
 They a female figure met ; 
 Martha said to Margaret, 
 " That young maid in face does carry 
 A resemblance strong of Mary." 
 Margaret, at nearer sight, 
 Own'd her observation right ; 
 But they did not far proceed 
 Ere they knew 'twas she indeed. 
 She — but, ah ! how changed they view her 
 From that person which they knew lier ! 
 Her fine face disease had scarr'd. 
 And its matchless beauty marr'd : — 
 But enough was left to trace 
 Mary's sweetness — Mary's grace. 
 When her eye did first behold them, 
 How they blush'd ! — but, when she told them, 
 How on a sick bed she lay 
 Months, while they had kept away. 
 And had no inquiries made 
 If she were alive or dead ; — 
 How, for want of a true friend, 
 She was brought near to her end, 
 And was like so to have died. 
 With no friend at her bed-side ; — • 
 How the constant irritation, 
 Caused by fruitless expectation 
 Of their coming, had extended 
 The illness, when she might have mended, — 
 Then, then, how did reflection 
 Come on them with recollection ! 
 All that she had done for them, 
 How it did their fault condemn ! 
 
 But sweet Mary, still the same, 
 Kindly eased them of their shame ; 
 Spoke to them with accents bland, 
 Took them friendly by the hand ; 
 Bound them both with promise fost, 
 Not to speak of troubles past ; 
 Made them on the spot declare 
 A new league of friendship there ; 
 Which, without a word of strife. 
 Lasted thenceforth long as life. 
 Martha now and Margaret 
 Strove who most should pay the debt 
 Which they owed her, nor did vary 
 Ever after from their Mary. 
 
 Q Q 2 
 
596 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 TO A RIVER IN WHICH A CHILD WAS 
 DROWNED. 
 
 Smiling river, smiling river, 
 
 On thy bosom sun-beams play ; 
 Though they're fleeting, and retreating. 
 
 Thou hast more deceit than they. 
 
 In thy channel, in thy channel, 
 
 Choked with ooze and gravlly stones. 
 
 Deep immersed, and uuhearsed, 
 
 Lies young Edwai'd's corse : his bones 
 
 Ever whitening, ever whitening. 
 As thy waves against them dash ; 
 
 What thy torrent, in the cuiTeut, 
 Swallow'd, now it helps to wash. 
 
 As if senseless, as if senseless 
 
 Things had feeling in this case ; 
 What so blindly, and unkindly. 
 
 It destroy'd, it now does grace. 
 
 THE OLD FAMILIAR FACES. 
 
 I HAVE had playmates, I have had companions. 
 In my days of childhood, in my joyful school- 
 days, 
 All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. 
 
 I have been laughing, I have been carousing, 
 Drinking late, sitting late, with my bosom cronies, 
 All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. 
 
 I loved a love once, fairest among women ; 
 Closed are her doors on me, I must not see her — 
 All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. 
 
 I have a friend, a kinder friend has no man ; 
 Like an ingrate, I left my friend abruptly ; 
 Left him, to muse on the old familiar faces. 
 
 Ghost-like I paced round the haunts of my child- 
 hood. 
 Earth seem'd a desert I was bound to traverse, 
 Seeking to find the old familiar faces. 
 
 Friend of my bosom, thou more than a brother, 
 Wliy wert not thou born in my father's dwelling'? 
 So might we talk of the old familiar faces — 
 
 How 8omo they have died, and some they liavo 
 
 left me, 
 And some are taken from mo ; all arc departed ; 
 All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. 
 
 HELEN. 
 
 High-born Helen, round your dwelling 
 These twenty yeai-s I've paced in vain : 
 
 Haughty beauty, thj' lover's duty 
 Hath been to glory in his pain. 
 
 High-born Helen, proudly telling 
 
 Stories of thy cold disdain ; 
 I starve, I die, now you comply. 
 
 And I no longer can complain. 
 
 Those twenty yeara I've lived on tears, 
 Dwelling for ever on a frown ; 
 
 On sighs I've fed, your scorn my bread ; 
 I perish now you kind are grown. 
 
 Can I, who loved my beloved 
 
 But for the scorn " was in her eye," 
 
 Can I be moved for my beloved. 
 
 When she " returns me sigh for sigh 1 " 
 
 In stately pride, by my bed-side, 
 High-born Helen's portrait's hung ; 
 
 Deaf to my praise, my mournful laya 
 Are nightly to the portrait sung. 
 
 To that I weep, nor ever sleep, 
 
 Complaining all night long to her — 
 
 Helen, grown old, no lonf/cr cold, 
 Said, " You to all men I prefer." 
 
 A VISION OF REPENTANCE. 
 
 I SAW a famous fountain, in my dream, 
 Where shady path- ways to a valley led; 
 
 A weeping willow lay upon that stream, 
 
 And all around the fountain brink were spread 
 
 Wide-branching trees, with dark green leaf rich 
 clad, 
 
 Forming a doubtful twilight— desolate and sad. 
 
 The place was such, that whoso cntor'd in. 
 Disrobed was of every earthly thought, 
 
 And straight became as one that knew not sin, 
 Or to the world's first innocence was brouglit; 
 
 Enseem'd it now, ho stood on holy ground. 
 
 In sweet and tender melancholy wrapt around. 
 
 A most sti-ange calm stole o'er my soothtid sprite ; 
 
 Long time I stood, and longer had I staid. 
 When lo ! I saw, saw by tlie sweet moon-liglit. 
 
 Which came in silence o'er that silent shade, 
 Whore, near the fountain, somethinij like DKsrAiii 
 Made, of that weeping willow, garlands for iicr hair. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 697 
 
 And eke with painful fingers she inwove 
 Many an uncouth stem of savage thorn — 
 
 " The willow garland, tliat was for her love, 
 And these her bleeding temples would adorn." 
 
 With sighs her heart nigh hurst, salt tears fast fell, 
 
 As mournfully she bended o'er that sacred well. 
 
 To whom when I addrest myself to speak, 
 She lifted up her eyes, and nothing said ; 
 
 The delicate red came mantling o'er her cheek, 
 And, gath'ring up her loose attire, she fled 
 
 To the dark covert of that woody sliade. 
 
 And in her goings seem'd a timid gentle maid. 
 
 Revolving in my mind what this should mean. 
 And why that lovely lady plained so ; 
 
 Perplex'd in thought at that mysterious scene. 
 And doubting if 'twere best to stay or go, 
 
 I cast mine eyes in wistful gaze around. 
 
 When from the shades came slow a small and 
 plaintive sound. 
 
 " PsTcnE am I, who love to dwell 
 In these brown shades, this woody dell, 
 Where never busy mortal came. 
 Till now, to pry upon my shame. 
 
 At thy feet what thou dost see 
 The waters of repentance be. 
 Which, night and day, I must augment 
 With tears, like a true penitent, 
 
 If haply so my day of grace 
 
 Be not yet past ; and this lone place, 
 
 O'er-shadowy, dark, excludcth hence 
 
 All thoughts but grief and penitence." • 
 
 " Why dost thou weep, thou gentle maid ! 
 And wherefore in this barren shade 
 Thy hidden thoughts with sorrow feed? 
 Can thing so fair repentance needi" 
 
 " ! I have done a deed of shame. 
 And tainted is my virgin fame. 
 And stain'd the beauteous maiden white 
 In which my bridal robes were dight." 
 
 " And who the promised spouse f declare: 
 
 And what those bi'idal garments were." 
 
 " Severe and saintly righteousness ' 
 Composed the cleju- white bridal dress ; 
 Jesos, the Son of Heaven's high King, 
 Bought with his blood the marriage ring. 
 
 A wretched sinful creature, I 
 Deem'd lightly of that sacred tie, 
 
 Gave to a treacherous world my heart, 
 And play'd the fooli:<li wanton's part. 
 Soon to tlicse murky shades I came, 
 To hide from the sun's light my shame. 
 And still I haunt this woody doll, 
 And bathe me in that healing well, 
 "Wliose waters clear have influence 
 From sin's foul stains the soul to cleanse ; 
 And, night and day, I them augment. 
 With tears, like a true penitent. 
 Until, duo expiation made, 
 And fit atonement fully paid, 
 The Lord and Bridegroom mc present. 
 Where in sweet sti'ains of high consent 
 God's throne before, the Seraphim 
 Shall chant the ecstatic maiTiage hymn." 
 
 " Now Christ restore thee soon " — I said. 
 And thenceforth all my dream was fled. 
 
 DIALOGUE BETWEEN A MOTHER AND 
 CHILD. 
 
 " LADY, lay your costly robes aside, 
 No longer may you gloiy in your pride." 
 
 Wherefore to-day art singing in mine ear 
 Sad songs were made so long ago, my dear ? 
 This day I am to be a bride, you know. 
 Why sing sad songs, were made so long ago ? 
 
 CHILD. 
 
 mother, lay your costly robes aside, 
 For you may never be another's bride. 
 That line I learn'd not in the old sad song. 
 
 I pray thee, pretty one, now hold thy tongue, 
 Play with the bride-maids ; and be glad, my boy. 
 For thou shalt be a second father's joy. 
 
 GUILD. 
 
 One father fondled me upon his knee. 
 One father is enough, alone, for me. 
 
 QUEEN ORIANA'S DREAM. 
 
 On a bank with roses shaded, 
 Whose sweet scent the violets aided, 
 Violets whose breath alone 
 Yields but feeble smell or none, 
 (Sweeter bed Jove ne'er reposed on 
 When his eyes Olympus closed on,) 
 
598 MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 While o'er head six slaves did hold 
 
 In a costly palace if the child with a pin 
 
 Canopy of cloth o' gold, 
 
 Do but chance to prick a finger, straight tho 
 
 And two more did music keep, 
 
 doctor is called in ; 
 
 Which might Juno lull to sleep, 
 
 In a wretched workhouse men are left to perish 
 
 Oriana, who was queen 
 
 For want of proper cordials, which their old age 
 
 To the mighty Tamerlane, 
 
 might cherish. 
 
 That was lord of all the land 
 
 
 Between Thrace and Samarchand, 
 
 In a costly palace Youth enjoys his lust ; 
 
 While the noontide fervor beam'd. 
 
 In a wretched workhouse Age, in coruei-s thrust, 
 
 Mused herself to sleep, and drcam'd. 
 
 Thinks upon the former days, when he was well 
 
 
 to do, 
 
 Thus far, in magnific strain, 
 
 Had children to stand by him, both fiiends and 
 
 A young poet soothed his vein, 
 
 kinsmen too. 
 
 But he had nor prose nor numbers 
 
 
 To express a princess' slumbers. — 
 
 In a costly palace Youth his temples hides 
 
 Youthful Richard had strange fancies, 
 
 With a new-devised penike that reaches to his 
 
 Was deep versed in old romances. 
 
 sides ; 
 
 And could talk whole hours upon 
 
 In a wi-etched workhouse Age's crown is bare. 
 
 The Great Cham and Prester John, — 
 
 With a few thin locks just to fence out the cold 
 
 Tell the field in which the Sophi 
 
 air. 
 
 From the Tartar won a trophy — 
 
 
 What he read with such delight of. 
 
 In peace, as in war, 'tis our young gallants 
 
 Thought he could as eas'ly write of — 
 
 pride, 
 
 But his over-young invention 
 
 To walk, each one i' the streets, with a rapier by 
 
 Kept not pace with brave intention. 
 
 his side. 
 
 Twenty suns did rise and set. 
 
 That none to do them injury may have pretence 
 
 And he could no further get; 
 
 Wretched Age, in poverty, must brook oflence. 
 
 But, unable to proceed. 
 
 
 Made a virtue out of need. 
 
 And, his labours wisclier deem'd of. 
 
 
 
 Did omit ivhat the queen dreainJd of. 
 
 
 
 HYPOCHONDRIACUS. 
 By myself walking, 
 
 A BALLAD. 
 
 NOTING THE DIFFERENCE OP BlCn AND POOR, IN THE 
 
 To myself tiilking, 
 
 WAYS OP A KICH NOBI.e's PALACE AND A POOn 
 
 When as I i-uminate 
 
 WORKHOUSE. 
 
 
 
 On my untoward fate, 
 
 To the Tunc of the " Old and Toung Courtier." 
 
 Scarcely seem I 
 
 In a costly palace Youth goes clad in gold ; 
 
 Alone sufficiently, 
 
 In a wretched workhouse Age's limbs are cold : 
 
 Black thoughts contmually 
 
 'J'hcre they sit, the old men by a shivering fire, 
 
 Crowding my privacy ; 
 
 Still close and closer cowering, warmth is their 
 
 They come unbidden, 
 
 dcsue. 
 
 Like foes at a wedding. 
 
 
 Thrusting their faces 
 
 In a costly palace, when the brave gallants dine, 
 
 In better guests' places. 
 
 They have store of good venison, with old canaiy 
 
 Peevish and malcconteut, 
 
 wine, 
 
 Clownish, impertinent. 
 
 With singing and music to heighten the cheer; 
 
 Dashing the morrimeut: 
 
 Coai'se bits, with grudging, are the pauper's best 
 
 So in like fasliious 
 
 fare. 
 
 Dim cogitations 
 
 
 Follow and haunt me, 
 
 In a costly palace Youth is still carest 
 
 Striving to daimt me, 
 
 By a train of attendants which laugh at my young 
 
 In my heart fostering, 
 
 Lord's jest ; 
 
 In my ears wliisperiug, 
 
 In a wretched workhouse the contrary prevails : 
 
 " Thy fiiends lue troachoroua, 
 
 Does Age begin to prattle '( — no man heark'neth 
 
 Tiiy foes are dangerous, 
 
 to IiIh tales. 
 
 Thy dreams ominous." 
 
MISCELLANEOUS. 699 
 
 Fierce Anthropophagi, 
 
 And all about us does express 
 
 Spectra, Diaboli, 
 
 (Fancy and vni in richest dress) 
 
 What scared St. Anthony, 
 
 A Sicilian fruitfuluess. 
 
 Hobgoblins, Lemures, 
 
 
 Dreams of Antipodes, 
 
 Thou through such a mist dost show ua. 
 
 Night-riding Incubi 
 
 That our best fiieuds do not know us. 
 
 Troubling the fantasy, 
 
 And, for those allowed features, 
 
 All dire illusions 
 
 Due to reasonable creatures. 
 
 Causing confusions ; 
 
 Liken'st us to fell Chimeras, 
 
 Figments heretical. 
 
 Monsters that, who see us, fear us ; 
 
 Scruples fantiistical, 
 
 Worse than Cerberus or Geryon, 
 
 Doubts diabolical ; 
 
 Or, who first loved a cloud, Ixion. 
 
 Abaddon vexeth me. 
 
 
 Mahu perpleseth me. 
 
 Bacchus we know, and we allow 
 
 Lucifer teareth me 
 
 His tipsy rites. But what art thou, 
 
 
 That but by reflex canst show 
 
 Jesut Maria/ liberate nos ab his diris tentalio- 
 
 What his deity can do. 
 
 tabus Inimici. 
 
 As the false Egyptian spell 
 
 
 Aped the true Hebrew miracle? 
 Some few vapours thou may'st raise, 
 
 
 
 The weak brain may serve to amaze. 
 
 A FAREWELL TO TOBACCO. 
 
 But to the reins and nobler heart 
 
 Mat the Babylonish curse 
 
 Canst nor life nor heat impart. 
 
 Sti-aight confound my stammering verse, 
 
 Brother of Bacchus, later born. 
 
 If I can a passage see 
 
 The old world was sure forlorn 
 
 In this word-perplexity. 
 
 Wanting thee, that aidest more 
 
 Or a fit expx-essiou find, 
 
 The god's victories than before 
 
 Or a language to my mind, 
 
 All his panthers, and the brawls 
 
 (Still the phrase is wide or scant) 
 
 Of his piping Bacchanals. 
 
 To take leave of thee, great plant ! 
 
 These, as stale, we disallow. 
 
 Or in any terms relate 
 
 Or j udge of ^/tee meant : only thou 
 His true Indian conquest ai't; 
 
 Half my love, or half my hate : 
 
 For I hate, yet love, thee so, 
 
 And, for ivy round his dart. 
 
 That, whichever thing I show, 
 
 The refoi-med god now weaves 
 
 The plain truth will seem to be 
 
 A finer thyrsus of thy leaves. 
 
 A constrain'd hyperbole. 
 
 
 And the passion to proceed 
 
 Scent to match thy rich perfume 
 
 More from a mistress than a weed. 
 
 Chemic art did ne'er presmue 
 
 
 Through her quaint alembic strain, 
 
 Sooty retainer to the vine. 
 
 None so sov'reigu to the brain. 
 
 Bacchus' black servant, negro fine ; 
 
 Nature, that did in thee excel. 
 
 Sorcerer, that mak'st us dote upon 
 
 Framed again no second smell. 
 
 Thy begi-imed complexion. 
 
 Roses, violets, but toys 
 
 And, for thy pernicious sake. 
 
 For the smaller sort of boys. 
 
 More and greater oaths to break 
 
 Or for gi-eener damsels meant; 
 
 Than reclaimed lovei-s take 
 
 Thou ai-t the only manly scent. 
 
 'Gainst women : thou thy siege dost lay 
 
 
 Much too in the female way, 
 
 Stinking'st of the stinking kind, 
 
 While thou suck'st the lab'ring breath 
 
 Filth of the mouth and fog of the mind. 
 
 Faster than kisses or than death. 
 
 Africa, that brags her foison. 
 
 / 
 
 Breeds no such prodigious poison. 
 
 Thou in such a cloud dost bind us, 
 
 Henbane, nightshade, both together. 
 
 That our worst foes cannot find us. 
 
 Hemlock, aconite 
 
 And ill fortune, that would thwai-t ua. 
 
 
 Shoots at rovers, shooting at us ; 
 
 Nay, rather, 
 
 While each man, through thy height'ning steam, 
 
 Plant divine, of rarest virtue ; 
 
 Does like a smoking Etna seem. 
 
 Blisters on the tongue would hurt you. 
 
600 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 'Twas but in a sort I blamed thee ; 
 None e'er prosper'd who defamed thee ; 
 Irony all, and feigu'd abuse, 
 Such as perplex'd lovers use, 
 At a need, when, in despair 
 To paint forth their fairest fair, 
 Or in part but to express 
 That exceeding comeliness 
 Which their fancies doth so strike, 
 They borrow language of dislike ; 
 And, instead of Dearest Miss, 
 Jewel, Honey, Sweetheai-t, Bliss, 
 And those forms of old admiring, 
 Call her Cockatrice and Siren, 
 Basilisk, and all that's evil, 
 ■\Vitch, Hyena, Mermaid, Devil, 
 Ethiop. "Wench, and Blackamoor, 
 Monkey, Ape, and twenty more ; 
 Friendly Trait'rcss, loving Foe, — 
 Not that she is truly so. 
 But no other way they know 
 A contentment to express, 
 Borders so upon excess. 
 That they do not rightly wot 
 Whether it be pain or not. 
 
 Or, as men, constrain' d to part 
 With what's nearest to their heart. 
 While their sorrow's at the height, 
 Lose discrimination quite. 
 And their hasty wrath let fall. 
 To appease their frantic gall. 
 On the darling thing whatever, 
 Whence they feel it death to sever, 
 Though it be, as they, perforce. 
 Guiltless of the sad divorce. 
 
 For I must (nor let it grieve thee. 
 Friendliest of plants, that I must) leave thee. 
 For thy sake, tobacco, I 
 Would do anything but die, 
 And but seek to extend my daya 
 Long enough to sing thy praise. 
 But, as she, who once hath been 
 A king's consort, is a queen 
 Ever after, nor will bate 
 Any tittle of her state. 
 Though a widow, or divorced. 
 So I, from thy converse forced, 
 The old name and style retain, 
 A right Katherine of Spain ; 
 And a seat, too, 'mongst the joys 
 Of the blest Tobacco Boys; 
 Where, tliough I, by sour physician. 
 Am debarr'd the full fruition 
 Of tliy favours, I may catch 
 Some collateral Bwcets, and snatch 
 
 Sidelong odours, that give life 
 Like glances from a neighbour's wife ; 
 And still live in the by -places 
 And the suburbs of thy graces ; 
 And in thy borders take delight. 
 An unconqucr'd Canaanite. 
 
 TO T. L. H. 
 
 A CHILD. 
 
 Model of thy parent dear. 
 Serious infant wortii a fear 
 In thy unfaltering visage well 
 Pictm-ing forth the sou of Tell, 
 When on his forehead, firm and good. 
 Motionless mark, the apple stood; 
 Guileless traitor, rebel mild. 
 Convict unconscious, culprit child ! 
 Gates that close with u-on roar 
 Have been to thee thy nursery door; 
 Chains that chink in checidess cells 
 Have been thy rattles and thy bells ; 
 Walls contrived for giant sin 
 Have hemm'd thy faultless weakness in ; 
 Near thy sinless bed black Guilt 
 Her discordant house hath built. 
 And fill'd it with her monstrous brood — 
 Sights, by thee not understood — 
 Sights of fear, and of distress, 
 Tliat pass a harmless infant's guess ! 
 
 But the clouds, that overcast 
 Thy young morning, may not last ; 
 Soon shall arrive the rescuing hour 
 That yields thee up to Nature's power : 
 Nature, that so late doth greet thee. 
 Shall in o'erflowing measure meet thee. 
 She shall recompense with cost 
 For every lesson thou h.ost lost. 
 Then wandering up thy sire's loved hill,* 
 Tliou shalt take thy airy fill 
 Of health and pastime. Birds shall sing 
 For till/ ddiijht each May morning. 
 Mid new-yeau'd lambkins thou shalt play, 
 Hai'dly less a lamb than they. 
 Then thy prison's longtheu'd bound 
 Sliall bo the hori/on skii'ting round : 
 And, while thou fiUest thy lap with flowers^ 
 To make amends for wintry hours, 
 The breeze, the sunshine, and the place, 
 Shall from thy teniler brow oflace 
 Eacli vestige of untimely care. 
 That boui' restraint had graven there ; 
 
 * Hompstcad. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 601 
 
 And ou thy every look impress 
 A more excelling childishness. 
 
 So shall be thy days beguiled, 
 Thornton Hunt, my favourite child. 
 
 BALLAD. 
 
 FROM THE UERMAN. 
 
 The clouds are blackeuing,the storms threatening, 
 And ever the forest maketh a moan : 
 
 Billows are breaking, the damsel's heart aching, 
 Thus by herself she singeth alone, 
 Weeping right plenteously. 
 
 " The world is empty, the heart is dead surely, 
 In this ■world plainly all seemeth amiss : 
 
 To thy breast, holy one, take now thy little one, 
 I have had earnest of all earth's bliss, 
 Living right lovingly." 
 
 DAVID IN THE CAVE OF ADULLAM. 
 
 David and his three captains bold 
 
 Kept ambush once within a hold. 
 
 It was in Adullam's cave. 
 
 Nigh which no water they could have, 
 
 Nor spring, nor running brook was near 
 
 To quench the thirst tliat parch'd them there. 
 
 Then David, king of Israel, 
 
 Straight bethought him of a well, 
 
 AVhich stood bet^ide the city gate. 
 
 At Bethlem ; where, before his state 
 
 Of kingly dignity, he had 
 
 Oft drunk his fill, a shepherd lad ; 
 
 But now his fierce Philistine foe 
 
 Eucamp'd before it he does know. 
 
 Yet ne'er the less, with heat opprest. 
 
 Those three bold captains he addrcst ; 
 
 And wish'd that one to him would bring 
 
 Some water from his native spring. 
 
 His valiant captains instantly 
 
 To execute his will did fly. 
 
 The mighty Three the ranks broke through 
 
 Of armed foes, and water drew 
 
 For David, their beloved king, 
 
 At his own sweet native spring. 
 
 Back through their arm'd foes they haste, 
 
 "With the hard-earn'd treasure graced.' 
 
 But when the good king David found 
 
 What they had done, he on the ground 
 
 The water pour'd. " Because," said he, 
 
 " That it was at the jeopardy 
 
 Of your three lives this thing ye did, 
 
 That I should drink it, God forbid." 
 
 SALOME. 
 
 Once on a charger there was laid, 
 And brought before a royal maid, 
 As price of attitude and grace, 
 A guiltless head, a holy face. 
 
 It was on Herod's natal day, 
 Who o'er Judea's land held sway. 
 He married his own brothci-'s wife, 
 Wicked Hcrodias. She the life 
 Of John the Baptist long had sought, 
 Because he openlj' had taught 
 Tliat she a life unlawful led, 
 Having her husband's brother wed. 
 
 This was he, that saintly John, 
 Who in the wilderness alone 
 Abiding, did for clothing wear 
 A garment made of camel's hair; 
 Honey and locusts were his fuod. 
 And he was most severely good. 
 He preached penitence and tears. 
 And waking first tlie sinner's fears. 
 Prepared a path, made smooth a way, 
 For his divmer Master's day. 
 
 Herod kept in princely state 
 His birth-day. On his throne he sate. 
 After the feast, beholding her 
 Who danced with grace peculiar ; 
 Fair Salome, who did excel 
 All in that land for dancing well. 
 The feastful monarch's heart was fired, 
 And whatsoe'er thing she desired, 
 Though half his kingdom it should be, 
 He in his pleasure swore tliat he 
 Would give the graceful Salome. 
 The damsel was Herodias' daugliter : 
 She to the queen hastes, and besought her 
 To teach her what great gift to name. 
 Instructed by Hcrodias, came 
 The damsel back : to Herod said, 
 " Give me John the Baptist's head ; 
 And in a charger let it be 
 Hither straightway brought to me." 
 Herod her suit would fain deny, 
 But for his oath's sake must comply. 
 
 When painters would by art express 
 Beauty in unloveliness. 
 Thee, Herodias' daughter, thee, 
 They fittest subject tiike to be. 
 They give thy form and features grace ; 
 But ever in thy beauteous face 
 They show a steadfast cruel gaze, 
 An eye unpitying ; and amaze 
 
602 MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 In all beholders deep they mark, 
 
 Thou pretty art and fair, 
 
 That thou betniyest not one spark 
 
 But with the lady Blanch thou never must com- 
 
 Of feeling for the ruthless deed, 
 
 pare. 
 
 That did thy praiseful dance succeed. 
 
 No need for Blanch her history to tell ; 
 
 For on the head they make you look, 
 
 Whoever saw her face, they there did read it 
 
 As if a sullen joy you took, 
 
 well. 
 
 A cruel triumph, wicked pride, 
 
 But wlicn I look on thee, I only know 
 
 That for yom* sport a saint had died. 
 
 There lived a pretty maid some hundred years 
 
 
 ago. 
 
 LINES 
 
 
 SUGGESTED BY A PICTtJIlE OF TWO FEMALES BY LIONARDO 
 
 LINES 
 
 DA VINCI. 
 
 ON THE CELEBRATED PICTURE BY LIOKARDO DA VISCI, 
 
 The lady Blanch, regardless of all her lover's fears, 
 
 CALLED THE VIRGIK OF THE SOCKS. 
 
 To the Ui-s'Iine convent hastens, and long the 
 
 While young John runs to gi-eet 
 
 Abbess hears. 
 
 The greater Infant's feet. 
 
 " Blanch, my cliild, repent ye of the com-tly 
 
 The Mother standing by, with trembling 
 
 life ye lead." 
 
 passion 
 
 Blanch look'd on a rose-bud and little seem'd to 
 
 Of devout admiration. 
 
 heed. 
 
 Beholds the engaging mystic play, and pretty 
 
 She look'd on the rose-bud, she look'd round. 
 
 adoration ; 
 
 and thought 
 
 Nor knows as yet the full event 
 
 On all her heart had whisper' d, and all the Nun 
 
 Of those so low beginnings. 
 
 had taught. 
 
 From whence we date our winnings, 
 
 " I am worshipp'd by lovers, and brightly shines 
 
 But wonders at the intent 
 
 my fame, 
 
 Of those new rites, and what that strange child- 
 
 " All Christendom resoundeth the noble Blanch's 
 
 worship meant. 
 
 name. 
 
 But at her side 
 
 " Nor shall I quickly wither like the rose-bud 
 
 An angel doth abide. 
 
 from the tree. 
 
 With such a perfect joy 
 
 " My queen-like graces shining when my beauty's 
 
 As no dim doubts alloy, 
 
 gone from me. 
 
 An intuition, 
 
 " But when the sculptured marble is I'ais'd o'er 
 
 A glory, an amenity. 
 
 my head. 
 
 Passing the dark condition 
 
 " And the matchless Blanch lies lifeless among 
 
 Of blind humanity, 
 
 the noble dead, 
 
 As if he surely knew 
 
 " This saintly lady Abbess hath made me justly 
 
 All the blest wonder should ensue, 
 
 fear. 
 
 Or he had lately left the upper sphere, 
 
 " It nothing will avail me that I were worshipp'd 
 
 And had read all the sovnm schemes and divine 
 
 here." 
 
 riddles there. 
 
 LINES 
 
 ON THE SAME. 
 
 ON THE SAME PICTURE BEING llEMOVED TO MAKE PLACE 
 
 Maternal lady with the virgin grace, 
 
 FOU A POUTRAIT OF A LADY BY TITIAN. 
 
 Heaven born thy Jesus scometh sure. 
 
 
 Who art thou, fair one, who usurp'st the place 
 
 And thou a virgin pure. 
 
 Of Blanch, the lady of the matchless grace 3 
 
 Lady most perfect, when thy sinless face 
 
 Come, fair and ])relty, tell to mo. 
 
 Men look upon, they wish to bo 
 
 Who, in thy lifetime, thou might'st bo. 
 
 A Catholic, Madonna fair, to worehip tliee. 
 
SONNETS. 
 
 603 
 
 SONNETS. 
 
 TO MISS KELLY. 
 
 u are not, Kelly, of the common strain, 
 That stooj) their pride and female houom* down 
 To please that many-headed heast the town. 
 And vend their lavish smiles and tricks for gain ; 
 By fortune thrown amid the actors' train, 
 You keep your native dignity of thought ; 
 The plaudits that attend you come unsought, 
 As tributes due unto your natural vein. 
 Your tears have passion in them, and a gr9,ce 
 Of genuine freshness, which our hearts avow ; 
 Your smiles are winds whose ways we cannot 
 
 trace. 
 That vanish and return we know not how — 
 And please the better from a pensive face, 
 A thoughtful eye, and a reflecting brow. 
 
 OX THE SIGHT OF SWANS IN KENSINGTON 
 GARDEN. 
 Queen-bird that sittest on thy shining-nest, 
 And thy young cygnets without sorrow hatchest. 
 And thou, thou other royal bii-d, that watchest 
 Lest the wliite mother wandering feet molest : 
 Shrined are your offspriug in a crystal cradle, 
 Brighter than Helen's ere she yet had burst 
 Her shelly prison. They shall be born at first 
 Strong, active, graceful, perfect, swan-like able 
 To tread the land or waters with security. 
 Unlike poor human births, conceived in sin, 
 In grief brought forth, both outwardly and in 
 Confessing weakness, eiTor, and impurity. 
 Did heavenly creatures own succession's line. 
 The births of heaven like to yours would shine. 
 
 Was it some sweet device of Faery 
 That mock'd my steps with many a lonely glade. 
 And fiincied wanderings with a fairhair'd miiid ] 
 Have these things been? or what rare witchery, 
 Impregning with delights the charmed air, 
 Enlighted up the semblance of a smile 
 In those fine eyes? methought they spake ^he while 
 Soft soothing things, which might enforce despaii- 
 To drop the murdering knife, and let go by 
 His foul resolve. And does the lonely glade 
 Still court the footsteps of the fair-hair'd maid ? 
 Still in her locks the gales of summer sigh ? 
 While I forlorn do wander reckless where. 
 And 'mid my wanderings meet no Anna there. 
 
 Methinks how dainty sweet it were, reclined 
 
 Beneath the vast out-stretching branches high 
 
 Of some old wood, in cai-eless sort to lie, 
 
 Nor of the busier scenes we left behind 
 
 Aught envying. And, Anna ! mild-eyed maid ! 
 
 Beloved ! I were well content to play 
 
 With thy free tresses all a summer's day, 
 
 Losing the time beneath the greenwood shade. 
 
 Or we might sit and tell some tender tale 
 
 Of faithful vows repaid by cruel scom, 
 
 A tale of true love, or of friend forgot ; 
 
 And I would teach thee, lady, how to rail 
 
 In gentle sort, on those who practise not 
 
 Or love or Ijity, though of woman born. 
 
 When lastlrovcd these windingwood-walks green. 
 Green winding walks, and shady pathways sweet, 
 Oft-times would Anna seek the silent scene. 
 Shrouding her beauties in the lone 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 the fair-hair'd maid, 
 I pass'd the little cottage which she loved. 
 The cottage which did once my all contain ; 
 It spake of days which ne'er must come again. 
 Spake to my heart, and much my heart was moved. 
 " Now fair befall thee, gentle maid ! " said I, 
 And from the cottage turn'd me with a sigh. 
 
 THE F.WIILY NAJIE, 
 
 What reason first imposed thee, gentle name. 
 Name that my father bore, and his sire's sire. 
 Without reproach? we trace our stream no 
 
 higher ; 
 And I, a childless man, may end the same. 
 Perchance some shepherd on Lincolnian plains. 
 In manners guileless as his own sweet flocks. 
 Received thee first amid the merry mocks 
 And arch allusions of his fellow swains. 
 Perchance from Salem's holier fields return'd. 
 With glory gotten on the heads abhorr'd 
 Of faithless Saracens, some martial lord 
 Took HIS meek title, in whose zeal he buni'd, 
 Whate'er the fount whence thy beginnings came. 
 No deed of mine shall shame thee, gentle name. 
 
If from my lips some angry accents fell, 
 Peevish complaint, or harsh reproof unkind, 
 'Twas but the en-or 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 ever inclined 
 Too highly, and with a partial eye to see 
 No blemish. Thou to me didst ever show 
 Kindest affection ; and would 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 my friend. 
 
 A TIMID grace sits trembling in her eye. 
 
 As loath to meet the rudeness of men's sight, 
 
 Yet shedding a delicious lunar light, 
 
 That steeps in kind oblivious ecstacy 
 
 The care-crazed mind, like some still melody : 
 
 Speaking most plain the thoughts which do 
 
 possess 
 Her gentle sprite : peace, and meek quietness, 
 And innocent loves, and maiden purity : 
 A look whereof 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 bretliren of mankind. 
 Tui-n'd are those lights from me, who fondly yet 
 Past joys, vain loves, and buried hopes regret. 
 
 TO JOHN LAMB, ESQ., OF THE SOUTH-SEA- 
 HOUSE. 
 
 John, you were figuring in the gay career 
 Of blooming manliood with a young man's joy. 
 When I was yet a little peevish boy — 
 Though time has made the diifereuce disappear 
 
 Betwixt our ages, which then seem'd so great — 
 And still by rightful custom you retain 
 Much of the old authoritative strain, 
 And keep the elder brother up in state. 
 ! you do well in this. 'Tis man's worst deed 
 To let the "' things that have been " run to waste. 
 And in the unmeaning present sink the past : 
 In whose dim glass even now I faintly read 
 Old buried forms, and faces long ago, 
 Which you, and I, and one more, only know. 
 
 ! I could laugh to hear the midnight wind. 
 That, rushing on its way with careless sweep, 
 Scatters the ocean waves. And I could weep 
 Like to a child. For now to my raised mind 
 On wings of winds comes wild-eyed Phantasy, 
 And her rude visions give severe delight. 
 O winged bark ! how swift along the night 
 Pass'd thy jjroud keel ! nor shall I let go by 
 Lightly of that drear hour the memory, 
 Wlien wet and chilly on thy deck I stood, 
 Unbonnettc J, and gazed upon the flood. 
 Even till it seem'd a pleasant thing to die, — 
 To be resolv'd into th' elemental wave. 
 Or take my portion with the winds that rave. 
 
 We were two pretty babes, the youngest she, 
 The youngest, and the loveliest fai-, I ween. 
 And Innocence her name. The time has been. 
 We two did love each other's company ; 
 Time was, we two had wept to have been apart. 
 But when bj' show of seeming good beguiled, 
 I left the garb and manners of a child, 
 And my first love for man's society. 
 Defiling with the world my virgin heart — 
 My loved companion dropp'd a tear, and fled. 
 And hid in deepest shades her awful head. 
 Beloved, who shall tell me where thou art — 
 In what delicious Edeu to be found — 
 That I may seek thee the wide world around! 
 
BLANK VERSK 
 
 606 
 
 BLANK VERSE. 
 
 CHILDHOOD. 
 
 In my poor mind it is most sweet to muse 
 
 Upon the clays gone by ; to act in thought 
 
 Past seasons o'er, and be again a cliild ; 
 
 To sit in fancy on the turf-clad slope, 
 
 Down which the child would roll ; to pluck gay 
 
 flowers. 
 Make posies in the sun, which the child's hand 
 (Childhood offended soon, soon reconciled). 
 Would throw away, and straiglit take up again. 
 Then fling them to the winds, and o'er the lawn 
 Bound with so playful and so light a foot. 
 That the pi-ess'd daisy scarce declined her head. 
 
 THE GRANDAME. 
 
 On the green hill top, 
 Hard by the house of prayer, a modest roof, 
 And not distinguish'd from its neighbour-barn, 
 Save by a slender-tapering length of spire. 
 The Gramlame sleeps. A plain stone barely tells 
 The name and date to the chance jjassenger. 
 For lowly born was she, and long had eat, 
 Well-earn'd, the bread of service : — hers was else 
 A mountain spirit, one that entertain'd 
 Scorn of base action, deed dishonourable, 
 Or aught unseemly. I remember well 
 Her reverend image ; I remember, too. 
 With what a zeal she served her master's house ; 
 A.nd how the prattling tongue of garrulous age 
 Delighted to recount the oft-told tale 
 Or anecdote domestic. Wise she was, 
 And wondrous skill'd in genealogies, 
 And could in apt and voluble terms discourse 
 Of births, of titles, and alliances ; 
 Of marriages, and intermarriages ; 
 Relationship remote, or near of kin ; 
 Of friends offended, family disgraced — 
 JIaiden high-born, but wayward, disobeying 
 Parental strict injunction, and regardless/ 
 Of unmix'd blood, and ancestry remote, 
 Stooping to wed with one of low degree. 
 But these are not thy praises ; and I wrong 
 Thy honour'd memory, recording chiefly 
 Tilings light or trivial. Better 'twere to tell. 
 How with a nobler zeal, ami warmer love. 
 She served her heavenly Master. I have seen 
 
 Tliat reverend form bent down with age and 
 
 pain. 
 And rankling malady. Yet not for this 
 Ceased she to praise her Maker, or withdrew 
 Her trust in him, her faith, an humble hope — • 
 So meekly had she learn'd to bear her cross — 
 For she had studied patience in the school 
 Of Christ ; much comfort she had thence derived. 
 And was a follower of the Nazarene. 
 
 THE SABBATH BELLS. 
 
 The cheerful sabbath bells, wherever heard, 
 
 Strike pleasant on tlie sense, most like the voice 
 
 Of one, who from the far-off hills proclaims 
 
 Tidings of good to Zion : chiefly when 
 
 Their piercing tones fall sudden on the ear 
 
 Of the contemplant, solitaiy man, 
 
 Whom thoughts abstruse or high have chanced 
 
 to lure 
 Forth from the walks of men, revolving oft, 
 And oft again, hard matter, which eludes 
 And baffles his pursuit — thought-sick and tired 
 Of coutroverey, where no end appears, 
 No clue to his research, the lonely man 
 Half wishes for society again. 
 Him, thus engaged, the sabbath bells salute 
 Sudden/ his heart awakes, his eai"s drink in 
 The cheering music ; his relenting soul 
 Yearns after all the joys of social life, 
 And softens with the love of human kind. 
 
 FANCY EMPLOYED ON DIVINE SL^JECTS. 
 
 Thk ti-uant Fancy was a wanderer ever, 
 A l(Jne enthusiast maid. She loves to walk 
 In the bright visions of empyreal light. 
 By the green pastures, and the fragi-ant meads. 
 Where the perpetual flowers of Eden blow ; 
 By crystal streams, and by the living watej-s. 
 Along whose margin grows the wondrous tree 
 Whose leaves shall heal the nations ; underneath 
 Whose holy shade a refuge .shall be found 
 From p.'uu and want, and all the ills that wait 
 On mortal life, from sin and death for ever. 
 
606 
 
 BLANK VERSE. 
 
 COMPOSED AT MIDNIGHT. 
 
 From broken visions of perturbed rest 
 
 I wake, and start, and fear to sleep again. 
 
 How total a privation of all sounds, 
 
 Sights, and familiar objects, man, bird, beast, 
 
 Herb, tree, or flower, and prodigal light of 
 
 heaven. 
 'Twere some relief to catcb the drowsy cry 
 Of the mechanic watchman, or the noise 
 Of revel reeling home from midnight cups. 
 Those are the moanings of the dying man, 
 AVTio lies in the upper chamber ; restless moans, 
 And interrupted only by a cough 
 Consumptive, torturing the wasted lungs. 
 So in the bitterness of death he lies. 
 And waits in anguish for the morning's light. 
 What can that do for him, or what restore ? 
 Short taste, faint sense, affecting notices. 
 And little images of pleasures past, 
 Of health, and active life — health not yet slain. 
 Nor the other grace of life, a good name, sold 
 For sin's black wages. On his tedious bed 
 He writhes, and turns him from the accusing 
 
 light, 
 And finds no comfort in the sun, but says 
 " When night comes I shall get a little rest." 
 Some few groans more, death comes, and there 
 
 an end. 
 'Tis darkncBs and conjecture all beyond ; 
 Weak Nature foars, though Charity must hope. 
 And Fancy, most licentious on such themes 
 Where decent reverence well had kept her 
 
 mute. 
 
 Hath o'er-stock'd hell with devils, and brouglit 
 
 down 
 By her enormous fablings and msui lies, 
 Discredit on the gospel's serious truths 
 And salutary fears. The man of parts, 
 Poet, or prose declaimer, on his couch 
 Lolling, like one indifferent, fabricates 
 A heaven of gold, where he, and such as he. 
 Their heads encompassed with crowns, their 
 
 heels 
 With fine wings garlanded, shall tread the stars 
 Beneath their feet, heaven's pavement, far re- 
 moved 
 From damned spirits, and the torturing cries 
 Of men, his brcth'ren, fashiou'd of the earth. 
 As he was, nourish'd with the self-s;\me bread, 
 Belike his kindred or companions once — 
 Through everlasting ages now divorced. 
 In chains and savage torments to repent 
 Short years of folly on earth. Their groans 
 
 unheard 
 In heav'n, the saint nor pity feels, nor care, 
 For those thus sentenced — pity might disturb 
 The delicate sense and most divine repose 
 Of spirits angelical. Blessed be God, 
 The measure of his judgments is not fix'd 
 By mau's erroneous standard. He discerns 
 No sucb inordinate ditt'erence and vast 
 Betwixt the sinner and the saint, to doom 
 Such disproportiou'd fates. Compared with him. 
 No man on earth is holy call'd : they best 
 Stand in his sight approved, who at his feet 
 Their little crowns of virtue cast, and yield 
 To him of his own works the praise, his due. 
 
JOHN WOODVIL. 
 
 A TRAGEDY. 
 
 CHARACTERS. 
 
 8iH "Walter Woodtil, 
 
 John, I , . 
 
 Wiw sons, 
 Simon, J 
 
 LOVEL, 
 
 Gray, 
 
 pretended friends of John. 
 
 Sandford. Sir Walter's old steward. 
 Margaret. Orphan ward of Sir Walter. 
 Four Gentlemen. John's riotous companions. 
 Servants. 
 
 Scene— /or the most part at Sir Walter's mansion in Detonsiiire ; 
 at other times in the Forest of Sherwood. 
 
 Time — soon after the Restoration. 
 
 ACT THE FIRST. 
 
 Scene— -i4 Servants' Apartment in Woodvil Hall. Servants 
 drinking — Time, the Morning. 
 
 A Song, hy Daniel. 
 " When the King enjoys his own again." 
 
 Pdcr. A delicate song. Where didst learn it, 
 fellow ? 
 
 Dan. Even there, where thou leamest thy 
 oaths and thy politics — at our master's table. — 
 Where else should a serving-man pick up his 
 poor accomplishments ? 
 
 Mar, Well spoken, Daniel. rare Daniel ! 
 his oaths and his politics ! excellent ! 
 
 Fran. And where didst pick up thy knavery, 
 Daniel ? 
 
 Peter. That came to him by inheritance. His 
 family have supplied the shire of Devon, time 
 out of mind, with good thieves and bad serving- 
 men. All of his race have come into the world 
 without their conscience. 
 
 Mar. Good thieves, and bad serving-men ! 
 Better and better. I marvel what Daniel hath 
 got to say in reply. 
 
 Dan. I marvel more when thou wilt say any 
 thing to the purpose, thou shallow serving-man, 
 whose swiftest conceit carries thee no higher 
 
 than to apprehend with difficulty the stale jesta 
 of us thy compeers. When was't ever known to 
 club thy own particular jest among us] 
 
 Mar. Most unkind Daniel, to speak such biting 
 things of me ! 
 
 Fran. See — if he hath not brought tears into 
 the poor fellow's eyes with the saltness of hia 
 rebuke. 
 
 Dan. No offence, brother Martin — I meant 
 none, 'Tis true. Heaven gives gifts, and with- 
 holds them. It has been pleased to bestow upon 
 me a nimble invention to the manufacture of a 
 jest; and upon thee, Martin, an indifferent bad 
 capacity to understand my meaning. 
 
 Mar. Is that alii I am content. Here's my 
 hand. 
 
 Fran. Well, I like a little innocent mirth 
 myself, but never could endure bawdiy. 
 
 Dan. Quot homines tot scntentice. 
 
 Mar. And what is that ! 
 
 Dan. 'Tis Greek, and argues difference of 
 opinion. 
 
 Mar. I hope there is none between us. 
 
 Dan. Here's to thee, brother Martin. {Drinks.) 
 
 Mar. And to thee, Daniel. (Drinls.) 
 
 Fran. And to thee, Peter. (D/'inks.) 
 
 Peter. Thank you, Francis. And here's to 
 thee. (Drinks.) 
 
 Mar. I shall be fuddled anon. 
 
608 
 
 JOHN WOODVIL, A TRAGEDY. 
 
 Dan. And drunkenness I hold to be a very 
 despicable vice. 
 
 All. ! a shocking vice. {They drink rowid.) 
 
 Peter. In aa much aa it taketh away the 
 understanding. 
 
 Dan. And makes the eyes red. 
 
 Peter. And the tongue to stammer. 
 
 Dan. And to blab out secrets. 
 
 [During this conversation they continue drinking. 
 
 Peter. Some men do not know an enemy from^ 
 a friend when they are drunk. 
 
 Dan. Certainly sobriety is the health of the 
 soul. 
 
 Mar. Now I know I am going to be drxmk. ' 
 
 Dan. How canst toll, dry-bones ] 
 
 Mar. Because I begin to be melancholy. 
 That's always a sign. 
 
 Fran. Take care of Martin, he'll topple off his 
 seat else. [Martin drops asleep. 
 
 Peter. Times are greatly altered, since yoimg 
 master took upon himself the government of 
 this household. 
 
 All. Greatly altered. 
 
 Fran. I think every thing be altered for the 
 better since His Majesty's blessed restoration. 
 
 Peter. In Sir Walter's days there was no 
 encouragement given to good house-keeping. 
 
 All. None. 
 
 Dan. For instance, no possibility of getting 
 drunk before two in the afternoon. 
 
 Peter. Every man his allowance of ale at break- 
 fast — his quart ! 
 
 All. A quart ! ! {In derision.) 
 
 Dan. Nothing left to our own sweet discretions. 
 
 Peter. Whereby it may appear, we were treated 
 more like bea-sts than what we were — discreet 
 and reasonable serving-men. 
 
 All. Like beasts. 
 
 Mar. {Opening his eyes.) Like beasts. 
 
 Dan. To sleep, wagtail ! 
 
 Fran. I marvel all this while where the old 
 gentleman has found means to secrete himself. 
 It seems no man has heard of him since the day 
 of tlie King's return. Can any tell why our 
 young master, being favoured by the court, 
 should not have interest to pi'ocure his father's 
 pardon ? 
 
 Dan. Marry, I think 'tis the obstinacy of the 
 old Knight, that will not bo beholden to the 
 court for his safety. 
 
 Mar. Now that is wilful. 
 
 Fran. But can any tell me the place of his 
 concealment 1 
 
 Peter. Tliat cannot I ; but I liave my con- 
 jectures. 
 
 Dan. Two hundreil jinuTuls, as I hear, to the 
 man that shall apprehend liini. 
 
 Fran. Well, I have my suspicions. 
 
 Peta'. And so have I. 
 
 Mar. And I can keep a secret 
 
 Fran, {to Peter.) Warwickshire, you mean. 
 
 [Aside. 
 Peter. Perhaps not. 
 Fran. Nearer, perhaps. * 
 
 Peter. I say nothing. 
 
 Dan. I hope there ia none in this company 
 would be mean enough to betray him. 
 All. Lord surely not. 
 
 ['ITiey drink to Sir Walter's safety. 
 
 Fran. I have often wondered how our master 
 came to be excepted by name in the late Act of 
 Oblivion. 
 
 Dan. Shall I tell the reason 1 
 
 All. Ay, do. 
 
 Dan. 'Tis thouglit he is no gi-eat friend to the 
 present happy establishment. 
 
 All ! monstrous ! 
 
 Peter. Fellow servants, a thought strikes me. 
 — Do we, or do we not, come under the pen.'dtiea 
 of the treason-act, by reason of our being privy 
 to tills man's concealment ? 
 
 All. Truly a sad consideration. 
 
 To them enters Sasdford suddenly. 
 
 Sand. You well-fed and unprofitable grooms, 
 Maintain'd for state, not use ; 
 You lazy feasters at another's cost. 
 That eat like maggots into an estate, 
 And do as little work. 
 Being indeed but foul excrescences. 
 And no just parts in a well-order'd family ; 
 You base and rascal imitators. 
 Who act up to the height your master's vices. 
 But CiUinot road his virtues in your bond : 
 Winch of you, as I enter'd, spake of betraying? 
 Was it you, or you, or thin-fiice, was it you ? 
 
 Mar. Whom docs he call thin-face ? 
 
 Sand. No prating, loon, but tell mo who he 
 was. 
 That I may brain the villain with my staff, 
 That seeks Sir Walter's life ! 
 You miserable men, 
 
 With minds more slavish than your slave's estate, 
 Have you that noble bounty so forgot, 
 Which took you from the looms, and from the 
 
 plouglis, 
 Which better had ye follow'd, fed ye, clothed ye, 
 And cntortiun'd yo in a worthy service, 
 Wliere your best wages was the world's repute, 
 That thvis ye seek his life, by whom yo live. 
 Have you forgot too. 
 How often ill old times 
 
 Vuur ihunkeu uiirtiis have stuun'd day's sober 
 ears, 
 
JOHN WOODVIL, A TRAGEDY. 
 
 609 
 
 Carousing full cups to Sir Walter's health 1 — 
 Whom now ye would betray, but tliat he lies 
 Out of the I'cach of your poor treacheries. 
 This learn from me, 
 
 Our master's secret sleeps with trustier tongues, 
 Than will unlock themselves to carls like you. 
 Go, get you gone, you knaves. Who stii's 1 this 
 
 staff 
 Sliall teach you better manners else. 
 
 All. Well, we are going. 
 
 Sand. And quickly too, ye had better, for I see 
 Young mistress Margaret coming this way. 
 
 lEceunt all but Sanokoiid. 
 
 Enter Margaret, as in a fright, pursued by a Gentleman, 
 who, seeing Sandford, retires muttering a cttrse. 
 
 Sand. Good morrow to my fair misti'ess. 'Twas 
 
 a chance 
 I saw you, lady, so intent was I 
 On chiding hence these graceless serving-men. 
 Who cannot break their fast at morning meals 
 Without debauch and mis-timed riotings. 
 This house hath been a scene of nothing else 
 But atheist riot and profane excess, 
 Since my old master quitted all his rights here. 
 Marg. Each day I endure fresh insult from the 
 
 scorn 
 Of Woodvil's friends, the uncivil jests 
 And free discourses of the dissolute men 
 That haunt this mansion, making me theii' 
 
 mii-th. 
 Sand. Does my young master know of these 
 
 affronts? 
 Marg. I cannot tell. Perhaps he has not been 
 
 told. 
 Perhaps he might have seen them if he would. 
 I have known him more quick-sighted. Let that 
 
 pass. 
 All tilings seem changed, I think. I had a 
 
 friend, 
 (I can't but weep to think him alter'd too,) 
 These things are best forgotten ; but I knew 
 A man, a young man, young, and full of 
 
 honour. 
 That would have pick'd a quarrel for a straw. 
 And fought it out to the extremity, 
 E'en with the dearest friend he had alive, 
 On but a bare surmise, a possibility, 
 That Margaret had suffer'd an affront. 
 Some are too tame, that were too splenetic 
 
 once. ;' 
 
 Sand. 'Twere best he should be told of these 
 
 affronts. 
 Marg. I am the daughter of his father's friend, 
 Sir Walter's orphan ward. 
 I am not his sei-vant maid, that I should wait 
 The opportunity of a gracious hearing, 
 
 Enquire the times and seasons when to put 
 My peevish prayer up at young Woodvil's feet, 
 And sue to him for slow redress, who was 
 Himself a suitor late to Margaret. 
 I am somewhat proud : and W'oodvil taught me 
 
 pride. 
 I wa* his favourite once, his playfellow in infancy, 
 And joyful mistress of his youth. 
 None once so pleasant in his eyes as Margaret. 
 His conscience, his religion, Margaret was. 
 His dear heart's confessor, a heart within that 
 
 heart, 
 And all dear things summ'd up in her alone. 
 As Margaret smil'd or frown'd John liv'd or 
 
 died; 
 His dress, speech, gesture, studies, friendships, 
 
 aU 
 Being fashion'd to her liking. 
 His flatteries taught me first this self-esteem. 
 His flatteries and cai-csses, while he loved. 
 The world esteem'd her happy, who had won 
 His heart, who won all hearts; 
 And ladies envied me the love of Woodvil. 
 Sand. He doth affect the coui-ticr's life too 
 
 much, 
 Whose art is to forget. 
 And that has wrought this seeming change in 
 
 him, 
 That was by nature noble. 
 'Tis these court-plagues, that swarm about our 
 
 house, 
 Have done the mischief, making his fancy giddy 
 With images of state, preferment, place, 
 Tainting his generous spirits with ambition. 
 
 Marg. I know not how it is ; 
 A cold protector is John grown to mc. 
 The mistress, and presumptive wife, of Woodvil 
 Can never stoop so low to supplicate 
 A man, her equal, to redress those wrongs. 
 Which he was bound first to prevent ; 
 But which his own neglects have sanctiou'd 
 
 rather, 
 Both sanction'd and provok'd : a mark'd neglect. 
 And strangeness fastening bitter on his love. 
 His love, which long has been upon the wane. 
 For me, I am determined what to do : 
 To leave this house this night, aud lukewarm 
 
 John, 
 And trust for food to the earth and Providence. 
 
 iSrtnc?. lady, have a care 
 Of these indefinite and spleen-bred resolves. 
 You know not half the dangers that attend 
 Upon a life of wand'ring, which your thoughts 
 
 now. 
 Feeling the swellings of a lofty anger. 
 To your abused fancy, as 'tis likely. 
 Portray without its terroi"s, painting lies 
 
 R R 
 
610 
 
 JOHN WOOD VI L, A TRAGEDY. 
 
 Aud representments of fallacious liberty — 
 You know not what it is to leave the roof that 
 
 shelters you, 
 Marg. I have thought on every possible event, 
 The dangers and discouragements you speak o^ 
 Even till my woman's heart hath ceased to fear 
 
 them. 
 And cowardice grows enamour'd of rare accidents; 
 Nor am I so unfurnish'd, as you think. 
 Of practicable schemes. 
 
 Sand. Now God forbid ; think twice of this, 
 
 dear lady. 
 • Marg. I pray you spare me, Mr. Sandford. 
 And once for all believe, nothing can shake my 
 
 purpose. 
 Sand. But what course have you thought on ? 
 Marg. To seek Sir Walter in the forest of 
 
 Sherwood. 
 I have lettei-s from young Simon, 
 Acquainting me with all the circumstances 
 Of theu' concealment, place, and manner of life, 
 And the merry hours they spend in the green 
 
 haunts 
 Of Sherwood, nigh which place they have ta'en a 
 
 house 
 In the towTi of Nottingham, and pass for 
 
 foreigners, 
 Wearing the dress of Frenchmen. — 
 All which I have perused with so attent 
 And child-like longings, that to my doting ears 
 Two sounds now seem like one. 
 One meaning in two words, Sherwood and 
 
 Liberty. 
 And, gentle Mr. Sandford, 
 'Tis you that must provide now 
 The means of my departure, which for safety 
 Must be in boy's apparel. 
 
 Sand. Since you will have it so 
 (My careful ago trembles at all may happen), 
 I will engage to furnish you. 
 I have the keys of the wardrobe, and can fit you 
 With garments to your size. 
 I know a suit 
 Of lively Lincoln green, that shall much grace 
 
 you 
 In the wear, being glossy fresh, and worn but 
 
 seldom. 
 Young Stephen Woodvil wore them while he 
 
 lived. 
 I have the keys of all this house and passages, 
 Aud ere day-break will rise and let you forth. 
 What things soe'er you have need of I can furnish 
 
 you; 
 And will provide a horse and trusty guide, 
 To bear you on your way to Nottingham. 
 
 Marg. That once this day aud night were 
 
 fairly past ! 
 
 For then I'll bid this house and love farewell : 
 Farewell, sweet Devon; farewell, lukewann 
 
 John ; V 
 
 For with the morning's light will Margaret be 
 
 gone. 
 Thanks, courteous Mr. Sandford. — 
 
 {Exeunt diver* tcags. 
 
 ACT THE SECOND. 
 
 Scene. — An Apartment in WoodvU Bali. 
 John Woodvil — alone. (^Leading parts of a Utter.) 
 
 " When Love grows cold, and indifference has 
 usurped upon old Esteem, it is no marvel if the 
 world begin to account that dependence, which 
 hitherto has been esteemed honourable shelter. 
 The course I have taken, (in leaving this house, 
 not easily wrought thereunto,) seemed to me best 
 for the once-for-all releasing of yourself (who in 
 times past have deserved well of me) from the 
 now daily, and not-to-be-eudured tribute of 
 forced love, and ill-dissembled reluctance of 
 afiection. Margaret." 
 
 Gone ! gone ! my girl ? so hasty, Margaret ! 
 And never a kiss at parting ? shallow loves. 
 And likings of a ten daj's' growth, use courtesies. 
 And show red eyes at parting. Who bids 
 
 " Farewell " 
 In the same tone he cries " God speed you, 
 
 sir ? " 
 Or tells of joyful victories at sea. 
 Where he hath ventures; does not rather 
 
 muffle 
 His organs to emit a leaden sound. 
 To suit the melancholy dull '• farewell," 
 Which they iu Heaven not use 1 — 
 So peevish, Margaret ? 
 But 'tis the common error of your sex 
 When our idolatry slackens, or grows less, 
 (As who of woman born can keep his faculty 
 Of Admiration, being a decaying faculty, 
 For ever strain'd to tho pitch? or can at 
 
 pleas ui'o 
 Make it renewable, as some appetites are. 
 As, namely. Hunger, Thirst ! — ) this being the 
 
 case. 
 They tax us with neglect, and love grown cold, 
 Coin plaiuings of the perfidy of men, 
 Which into maxims pass, and apothegms 
 To bo retail'd in ballads. — 
 
 I know them all. 
 They are jealous, when our larger hearts receive 
 
JOHN WOODVIL, A TRAGEDY. 
 
 611 
 
 More guests than one. (Love in a woman's 
 
 heart 
 Being all in one.) For me, I am sure I have 
 
 room liere 
 For more disturbers of my sleep than one. 
 Love shall have part, but love shall not have 
 
 all. 
 Ambition, Pleasure, Vanity, all by turns, 
 Shall lie in my bed, and keep me fresh and 
 
 waking ; 
 Yet Love not be excluded. — Foolish wench, 
 I could have loved her twenty years to come, 
 And still have kept my liking. But since 'tis so, 
 Why, fare thee well, old play -fellow ! I'll try 
 To squeeze a tear for old acquaintance' sake. 
 I shall not grudge so much. 
 
 To him enters Lovel. 
 
 Lovel. Bless us, Woodvil ! what is the matter ? 
 I protest, man, I thought you had been weeping. 
 
 Wood. Nothing is the matter ; only the wench 
 has forced some water into my eyes, which will 
 quickly disband. 
 
 Lovel. I cannot conceive you. 
 
 Wood. Margaret is flown. 
 
 Lovel. Upon what pretence 1 
 
 Wood. Neglect on my part : which it seems 
 she has had the wit to discover, maugre all my 
 pains to conceal it. 
 
 Lovel. Then, you confess the charge 1 
 Wood. To say the truth, my love for her has 
 of late stopped short on this side idolatiy. 
 
 Lovel. As all good Christians' should, I think. 
 Wood. I am sure, I could have loved her still 
 within the limits of warrantable love. 
 
 Lovel. A kind of brotherly affection, I take it. 
 Wood. We should have made excellent man 
 and wife in time. 
 
 Lovel. A good old couple, when the snows fell, 
 to crowd about a sea-coal fire, and talk over old 
 matters. 
 
 Wood. While each should feel, what neither 
 cared to acknowledge, that stories oft repeated 
 may, at last, come to lose some of their grace by 
 the repetition. 
 
 Lovel. Which both of you may yet live long 
 enough to discover. For, take my word for it, 
 Margaret is a bird that will come back to you 
 without a lure. 
 
 Wood. Never, never, Lovel. Spite of my levity, 
 with tears I confess it, she was a lady o'f most 
 confirmed honour, of an unmatchable spirit, and 
 determinate in all virtuous resolutions ; not 
 hasty to anticipate an affront, nor slow to feel, 
 where just provocation was given. 
 
 Lovel. What made you neglect her, then ? 
 Wood. Mere levity and youthfulness of blood, 
 
 a malady incident to young men ; physicians 
 call it caprice. Nothing else. He that slighted 
 her knew her value : and 'tis odds, but, for thy 
 sake, JIargaret, John will yet go to his grave a 
 
 bachelor. [A noise heard, as of orie. drunk and singing. 
 
 Lovel. Here comes one, that will quickly dissi- 
 pate these humours. 
 
 Enter one drunk. 
 
 Drunken Man. Good-morrow to you, gentle- 
 men. Mr. Lovel, I am your humble servant. 
 Honest Jack Woodvil, I will get drunk with you 
 to-morrow. 
 
 Wood. And why to-morrow, honest Mr. Free- 
 man ? 
 
 Drunl-en Man. I scent a traitor in that question. 
 A beastly question. Is it not his Majesty's birth- 
 d.ay ? the day of all days in the year, on which 
 King Charles the Second was graciously pleased 
 to be born. (Sings.) " Great pity 'tis such days 
 as those should come but once a year." 
 
 Lovel. Drunk in a morning ! foh ! how he 
 stinks ! 
 
 Drunken Man. And why not drunk in a 
 morning 1 canst tell, bully ? 
 
 Wood. Because, being the sweet and tender 
 infancy of the day, methinks, it should ill endure 
 such early blightings. 
 
 Drunken Man. I grant you, 'tis in some sort 
 the youth and tender nonage of the day. Youth 
 is bashful, and I give it a cup to encourage it. 
 (Sings.) "Ale that will make Grimalkin prate." — 
 At noon I drink for thirst, at night for fellow- 
 ship, but, above all, I love to usher in the bashful 
 morning under the auspices of a freshening stoop 
 of liquor. (Sings.) " Ale in a Saxon rumkin then, 
 makes valour burgeon in tall men." — But, I crave 
 pardon. I fear I keep that gentleman from 
 serious thoughts. There be those that wait for 
 me in the cellar. 
 
 Wood, ^\'ho are they ? 
 
 Drunken Man. Gentlemen, my good fi-iends, 
 Cleveland, Delaval, and Truby. I know by this 
 time they are all clamorous for me. C-'^-^'' singing. 
 
 Wood. This keeping of open house acquaints a 
 man with strange companions. 
 
 Enter, at another door. Three calling /or IIaery Frkemax. 
 
 Harry Freeman, Harry Freeman. 
 
 He is not here. Let us go look for him, 
 
 ^Vhere is Freeman ? 
 
 Where is Harry? lExeunt the Three, calling for 
 
 Freeman. 
 
 Wood. Did you ever see such gentry ? (laitghing.) 
 These are they that fatten ou ale and tobacco 
 in a morning, drink burnt brandy at noon to 
 promote digestion, and piously conclude with 
 
612 
 
 JOHN WOODVIL, A TRAGEDY. 
 
 quart bumpers after supper, to prove their 
 
 loj-alty. 
 
 Lovel. Come, shall we adjourn to the Tenuis 
 Court ? 
 
 Wood. No, you shall go with me into the 
 galleiy, where I will sliow you the Vandylct I 
 have purchased. " The late King taking leave of 
 his children." 
 
 Lovel. I will but adjust my dress, and attend 
 you. IFxit Lovel. 
 
 John Wood, {alone.) Now Universal England 
 
 getteth drunk 
 For joy, that Charles, her monarch, is restored : 
 And she, that sometime wore a saintly mask, 
 The stale-grown vizor from her face doth pluck. 
 And weareth now a suit of mori'is bells, 
 With which she jingling goes through all her 
 
 towns and villages. 
 The baffled factions in their houses skulk ; 
 The commonwealthsman, and state machinist. 
 The cropt fanatic, and fifth-mouarchy-man, 
 Who heareth of these visionaries now ? 
 They and their dreams have ended. Fools do 
 
 sing, 
 Where good men yield God thanks ; but politic 
 
 spu'its. 
 Who live by observation, note these changes 
 Of the popular mind, and thereby serve their 
 
 ends. 
 Then why not I ? What's Charles to me, or 
 
 Oliver, 
 But as my own advancement hangs on one of 
 
 them? 
 
 I to myself am chief. 1 know. 
 
 Some shallow mouths cry out, that I am smit 
 With tlie gauds and show of state, the point of 
 
 place. 
 And tnck of precedence, the ducks, and nods 
 Which weak minds pay to rank. 'Tis not to sit 
 In place of worship at the roj'al masques, 
 Their pastimes, plays, and Whitehall banquetings, 
 For none of these. 
 Nor yet to be seen whispering with some gi-eat 
 
 one. 
 Do I affect the favours of the court. 
 I would be great, for greatness hath great power, 
 And that's the fruit I reach at. — 
 Great spirits ask great play-room. Who could sit, 
 With these prophetic swellings in my brea.st, 
 That prick and goad me on, and never cease, 
 To the fortunes something tells mo I was born tol 
 Who, with such monitors within to stir him. 
 Would sit him down, with lazy arms across, 
 A unit, a tiling without a name in the state, 
 A something to be goveru'd, not to govcra, 
 A fishing, hawking, hunting, country gentleman 1 
 
 {Exit. 
 
 SCEKE. — Sherwood Fnrest. 
 
 Sib Walteb Woodvil. Simox Woodvil. {Disguiaed as 
 Frenchmen.) 
 
 Sir W. How fares my boy, Simon, my youngest 
 born, 
 My hope, my pride, young Woodvil, speak to me 
 Some grief untold weighs heavy at thy heart : 
 I know it by thy alter'd cheer of late. 
 Thinkest thy brother plays thy father false ? 
 It is a mad and thriftless prodigal, 
 Grown proud upon the favours of the court ; 
 Court manners, and court fashions, he afifects, 
 And in the heat and uncheck'd blood of youth. 
 Harbours a company of riotous men, 
 All hot, and young, court-seekers, like himself. 
 Most skilful to devour a patrimony ; 
 And these have eat into my old estates. 
 And these have drain'd thy father's cellars dry ; 
 But these so common faults of youth not named, 
 (Things which themselves outgrow, left to them- 
 selves,) 
 I know no quality that stains his honour. 
 My life upon his faith and noble mind. 
 Son John could never play thy father false. 
 Simon. I never thought but nobly of my 
 brother, 
 Touching his honour and fidelity. 
 Still I could wish him charier of his person. 
 And of his time more frugal, than to spend 
 In riotous living, gi-aceless society, 
 And mirth unpalatable, hours better employ'd 
 (With those persuasive graces nature lent him) 
 In fervent pleadings for a fiither's life. 
 
 Sir W. I would not owe my life to a jealous 
 court. 
 Whose shallow policy I know it is, 
 On some reluctant acts of prudent mercy, 
 (Not voluntaiy, but extorted by the times. 
 In the first tremblings of new-fixed power. 
 And recollection smarting from old wounds,) 
 On these to build a spurious popularity. 
 Unknowing what free gi'ace or mercy mean, 
 They fear to punish, therefore do they pardon. 
 For this cause have I oft forbid my son. 
 By letters, overtures, open solicitings, 
 Or closet tamperings, by gold or fee. 
 To beg or bargain with the court for my life. 
 Simon. And John has tii'cn you, father, at 
 your word, 
 True to the letter of his paternal charge. 
 
 Sir W. Well, my good cause, and Iny good 
 conscience, boy, 
 Shall bo for sons to me, if John prove false. 
 Men die but once, and the opportunity 
 Of a noble death is not an evory-day fortune : 
 It is a gift which noble spirits pray for. 
 
JOHN WOODVIL, A TRAGEDY. 613 
 
 Simon. I would not wrong my brother 
 
 b. 
 
 Marg. Bon jour, messieurs. Ye have handsome 
 
 surmise ; 
 
 
 English faces. 
 
 I know him generous, full of gentle qualities, 
 
 
 I should have ta'en ye else for other two. 
 
 Incapable of base compliances. 
 
 
 I came to seek in the forest. 
 
 No prodigal in his nature, but affecting 
 
 
 Sir W. WTio are thev ? 
 
 This sliow of bravery for ambitious ends. 
 
 
 Marj. A galknt brace of Frenchmen, curl'd 
 
 He drinks, for 'tis the humour of the court, 
 
 
 monsieurs, 
 
 And drink may one day wrest the secret from 
 
 him. 
 And pluck you from your hidiug-place in the 
 sequel. 
 
 Sir W. Fair death shall be my d(Jom, and foul 
 life his. 
 Till when, we'll Uve as free in this green forest. 
 As yonder deer, who roam uii fearing treason : 
 Who seem the aborigines of this place. 
 Or Sherwood theirs by tenure. 
 
 Simon. 'Tis said, that Robert Eai-1 of Hunting- 
 don, 
 Men call'd him Robin Hood, an outlaw bold. 
 With a merry crew of hunters here did haunt, 
 Not si^aring the kiug's venison. May one believe 
 The antique tale ? 
 
 Sir W. There is much likelihood. 
 
 Such bandits did in England erst abound. 
 When polity was young. I have read of the 
 
 pranks 
 Of tbat mad archer, and of the tax he levied 
 On travellers, whatever their degree, 
 Baron, or knight, whoever pass'd these woods, 
 Layman, or priest, not sparing the bishop's 
 
 mitre 
 For spiritual regards ; nay, once, 'tis said, 
 He robb'd the king himself. 
 
 Simon. A perilous man (smilinr/). 
 
 Sir W. How quietly we live here. 
 Unread in the world's business. 
 And take no note of all its slippery changes. 
 'Twere best we make a world among ourselves, 
 A little world, 
 
 Without the ills and falsehoods of the greater ; 
 We too being all the inhabitants of ours. 
 And kings and subjects both in one. 
 
 Simon. Only the dangerous errors, fond conceits, 
 Which make the business of that greater world. 
 Must have no place in ours : 
 As, namely, riches, honours, birth, place, courtesy, 
 Good fame and bad, rumours and popular noises. 
 Books, creeds, opinions, prejudices national, 
 Humoui-s particular. 
 
 Soul-killing lies, and truths that work smaill good. 
 Feuds, factions, enmities, relationships. 
 Loves, hatreds, sympathies, antipathies, 
 And all the intricate stuff quarrels are made of. 
 
 Margaret tntei-s in hoy's apparel. 
 Sir W. What pretty boy have we here ? 
 
 That, men say, haunt these woods, affecting 
 
 privacy. 
 More than the manner of their countrymen. 
 
 Simon. We have here a wonder. 
 The face is Margaret's face. 
 
 Sir W. The face is Alargaret's, but the dress 
 the same 
 My Stephen sometime wore. iTo MARGAUiii 
 
 Suppose us them ; whom do men say we ai'e 't 
 Or know you what you seek 1 
 
 Marg. A worthy pair of exiles. 
 Two whom the politics of state revenge, 
 In final issue of long civil broils, 
 Have houseless driven from your native France, 
 To wander idle in these English woods. 
 Where now ye live ; most part 
 Thinking on home, and all the joys of France, 
 Where grows the purple vine. 
 
 Sir W. These woods, yotmg stranger, 
 And gi'assy pastures, which the slim deer loves, 
 Are they less beauteous than the land of France, 
 AVhere grows the purple vinel 
 
 Marg. I cannot tell. 
 
 To an indifferent eye both show alike. 
 Tis not the scene, 
 
 'But all familiar objects in the scene-. 
 Which now ye miss, that constitute a difference'. 
 Ye had a country, exiles, ye have none now ; 
 Friends had ye, and much wealth, ye now have 
 
 nothing ; 
 Our mannei-s, laws, our customs, all ai-e foreign 
 
 to you, 
 I know ye loathe them, cannot learn them readily ; 
 And there is reason, exiles, ye should love 
 Our English earth less than your land of France, 
 Where grows the purple vine ; where all delights 
 
 grow 
 Old custom has made pleasant. 
 
 Sir W. You, that are read 
 
 So deeply in our stoiy, what are you ? 
 
 Marg. A bare adventurer ; in brief a woman. 
 That put strange garments on, and came thus far 
 To seek an ancient friend : 
 And having spent her stock of idle words, 
 And feeling some tears coming. 
 Hastes now to clasp Sir Walter Woodvil's knees. 
 And beg a boon for Margaret ; his poor ward. 
 
 \_Kneelinif. 
 
 Sir W. Not at my feet, Margaret ; not at mj 
 feet. 
 
614 
 
 JOHN WOODVIL, A TRAGEDY. 
 
 Marg. Yes, till her suit is answered. 
 
 Sir W. Name it. 
 
 Marg. A little boon, and yet so great a grace, 
 She fears to ask it. 
 
 Sir W. Some riddle, Margaret ? 
 
 Marg. No riddle, but a plain request. 
 
 Sir IF. Name it. 
 
 Marg. Free liberty of Sherwood, 
 
 And leave to take her lot with you iu the forest. 
 
 Sir W. A scant petition, Margaret ; but take it, 
 Seal'd with an old man's tears. — 
 Rise, daughter of Sir Rowland. 
 
 [Addressing them both. 
 
 you most worthy. 
 You constant followers of a man proscribed, 
 Following poor misery in the throat of danger ; 
 Fast servitoi-s to crazed and penniless poverty. 
 Serving poor poverty without hope of gain ; 
 Kind children of a sire unfortunate ; 
 Green clinging tendrils round a tinink decayed. 
 Which needs must bring on you timeless decay ; 
 Fair living forms to a dead carcase j oin'd ;— 
 What shall I say? 
 
 Better the dead w^ere gather'd to the dead, 
 Than death and life in disproportion meet. — 
 Go, seek your fortunes, children. — 
 
 Simon. Why, whither should we go ] 
 
 Sir W. You to the Court, where now joxlt 
 brother John 
 Commits a I'ape on Fortune. 
 
 Simon. Luck to John ! , 
 
 A light-heel'd strumpet, when the sport is done. 
 
 Sir W. You to the sweet society of your equals. 
 Where the world's fashion smiles on youth and 
 beauty. 
 
 Marg. Where young men's flatteries cozen 
 young maids' beauty. 
 There pride oft gets the vantage hand of duty. 
 There sweet humility withers. 
 
 Simon. Mistress Margaret, 
 
 How fared my brother John, when you left 
 Devon 1 
 
 Marg. John was well, sir. 
 
 Simon. 'Tis now nine months almost. 
 
 Since I saw home. What new friends has John 
 
 made? 
 Or keeps he bis first love ? — I did suspect 
 Some foul disloyalty. Now do I know, 
 John has proved false to her, for Margaret 
 
 weeps. 
 It is a scurvy brother. 
 
 Sir W. Flo upon it. 
 
 All men are false, I think. The date of love 
 Is out, expired ; its stories all grown stale, 
 O'erpast, forgotten, like an antique tale 
 Of Hero anil Leander. 
 
 Simo7i. I have known some men that are too 
 
 general-contemplative for the narrow passion. I 
 am in some sort a general lover. 
 
 Marg. In the name of the boy God, who plays 
 at hoodman blind with the Muses, and cares not 
 whom he catches : what is it you love ? 
 
 Simon. Simply, all things that live. 
 From the crook'd worm to man's imperial form. 
 And God-resembling likeness. The poor fly, 
 That makes short holiday in the sun beam. 
 And dies by some child's hand. The feeble bird 
 With little wings, yet greatly venturous 
 In the upper sky. Tlie fish in th' other element. 
 That knows no touch of eloquence. What else ? 
 Yon tall and elegant stag, 
 Wlio paints a dancing shadow of his horns 
 In the water, where he drinks. 
 
 Marg. I myself love all these things, yet so as 
 with a difierence : — for example, some animals 
 better than othei-s, some men ratlier than other 
 men ; the nightingale before the cuckoo, the 
 swift and graceful palfrey befoi-e tlie slow and 
 asinine mule. Your humour goes to confound 
 all qualities. What sports do you use in the 
 forest? — 
 
 Simon. Not many ; some few, as thus : — 
 To see the sun to bed, and to arise, 
 Like some hot amourist with glowing eyes, 
 Bursting the lazy bauds of sleep that boimd him. 
 With all his fires and travelling glories round him. 
 Sometimes the moon on soft night clouds to rest. 
 Like beauty nestling in a young man's breast, 
 And all the winking stars, her handmaids, keep 
 Admiring silence, while those lovers sleep. 
 Sometimes outstretcht, iu very idleness, 
 Nought doing, saying little, thinking less. 
 To view the leaves, thin dancers upon air. 
 Go eddying round; and small birds, how they 
 
 fai-e. 
 When mother Autumn fills their beaks with com, 
 Filch'd from tlie careless Amalthea's horn ; 
 And how the woods berries and worms provide 
 Without their pains, when eai-th has nought be- 
 side 
 To answer their small wants. 
 To view the graceful deer come tripping by. 
 Then stop, and gaze, then turn, they know no*. 
 
 why. 
 Like bashful youukcrs in society. 
 To mark the structure of a plant or tree, 
 And all fair things of ciu-th, how fair they be. 
 
 Marg. (smiling.) And, aftorwaids, them paint -t- 
 in simile. I 
 
 Sir W. Mistress Margaret will haVe need of 
 some rofroshmeut. Please you, we have some 
 poor viands witliin. 
 
 Mttrg. Indeed I etnnd in need of them. 
 
 SirW. Under tlio «hado of athick-sproadiug tree, 
 
JOHN WOODVIL, A TRAGEDY. 
 
 616 
 
 Upon the grass, no better carpeting, 
 
 We'll eat our noon-tide meal ; and, dinner done, 
 
 One of us shall repair to Nottingham, 
 
 To seek some safe night-lodging in the town, 
 
 Where you may sleep, while here with us you 
 
 dwell, 
 By day, in the forest, expecting better times. 
 And gentler habitations, noble Margaret. 
 Siinon. Allans, yomig Frenchman — 
 Marg. A lions, Sir Englishman. The time has 
 
 been 
 I've studied love-lays in the English tongue. 
 And been enamour'd of rare poesy : 
 Which now I must unlearn. Henceforth, 
 Sweet mother-tongue, old English speech, adieu ; 
 For Margaret has got new name and language 
 
 new. [Exeunt. 
 
 ACT THE THIRD. 
 
 Scene. — An Apartment of State in Woodvil Ball. 
 
 Cavaliers drinking. 
 John Woodvil, Lovel, Gray, and four more. 
 
 John. More mirth, I beseech you, gentlemen — 
 Mr. Gray, you are not merry. — 
 
 Gray. More wine, say I, and mirth shall ensue 
 in course. What ! we have not yet above three 
 half pints a man to answer for. Brevity is the 
 soul of drinking, as of wit. Despatch, I say. 
 More wine. (Fills.) 
 
 1st Gent. I entreat you. let there be some order, 
 some method, in our drinkiugs. I love to lose 
 my reason with my eyes open, to commit the 
 deed of drunkenness with forethought and deli- 
 beration. I love to feel the fumes of tlae liquor 
 gathenug here, like clouds. 
 
 '2nd Gmt. And I am for plunging into madness 
 at once. Damn order, and method, and steps, 
 and degrees, that he speaks of. Let confusion 
 have her legitimate work. 
 
 Lord. I marvel why the poets, who, of all men, 
 methiuks, should possess the hottest livers, and 
 ■ most empyreal fancies, should aficct to see such 
 virtues in cold water. 
 
 Gray. Virtue in cold water ! ha ! ha ! ha ! — 
 
 John. Because your poet-born hath an internal 
 wine, richer than lippara or canaries, yet un- 
 crushed from any grapes of earth, unpi'essed in 
 mortal wine-presse.'f. 
 
 3rd Gent. What may be the name of this wine? 
 
 John. It hath as many names as qualities. It 
 is denominated indiilerently, wit, conceit, inven- 
 tion, inspiration, but its most royal and compre- 
 hensive name is fancy. 
 
 3rd Gent. And where keeps he this sovereign 
 liqiior ? 
 
 John. Its cellars are in the brain, whence your 
 true poet deriveth intoxication at will ; while his 
 animal spirits, catching a pride from the quality 
 and neighbourhood of their noble relative, the 
 brain, refuse to be sustained by wines and fermen- 
 tations of earth. 
 
 3rd Gent. But is your poet-born always tipsy 
 with tills liquor ? 
 
 John. He hath his stoopings and reposes ; but 
 his proper element is the sky, and in the suburbs 
 of the cmpj-rean. 
 
 3rd Gent. Is your wine-intellectual so exquisite 1 
 henceforth, I, a man of plain conceit, will, in all 
 humility, content my mind with canaries. 
 
 4th Gent. I am for a song or a catch. When 
 will the catches come on, the sweet wicked 
 catches ] 
 
 John. They cannot be introduced with pro- 
 priety before midnight. Every man must commit 
 his twenty bumpers first. We are not yet well 
 roused. Frank Lovel, the glass stands with you. 
 
 Jjovel. Gentlemen, the Duke. (Fills.) 
 
 All. The Duke. (TheydnnL) 
 
 Gray. Can any toll, why his Grace, being a 
 Papist — 
 
 John. Pshaw ! we will have no questions of 
 state now. Is not this his Majesty's birth-day ] 
 
 Gray. What follows ? 
 
 John. That every man should sing, and bo 
 joyful, and ask no questions. 
 
 2nd Gent. Damn politics, they spoil drinking. 
 
 3rd Gent. For certain, 'tis a blessed monarchy. 
 
 2nd Gent. The cursed fanatic days we have 
 seen ! The times have been when swearing was 
 out of fashion. 
 
 3rd Gent. And drinking. 
 
 1st Gait. And wenching. 
 
 Gray. The cursed yeas and forsooths, which 
 we have heard uttered, when a man could not 
 rap out an innocent oath, but straight the air was 
 thought to be infected. 
 
 Lovel. Twas a plea.sant trick of the saint, which 
 that trim puritan Swear-not-at-all Smooth-speech 
 used, when his spouse chid him with an oath for 
 committing with his seiwaut maid, to cause his 
 house to be fumigated with burnt brandy, and 
 ends of scripture, to disperse the devil's breath, 
 as he termed it. 
 
 All. Ha ! ha ! ha ! 
 
 Gray. But 'twas plcasantcr, when the other 
 saint Resistthe-devil-und-he-wiUjiee-from-thee I'ure- 
 man was overtaken in the act, to plead an illusio 
 vi.sfis, and maintain his .sanctity upon a supposed 
 power in the adversaa-y to counterfeit the shapes 
 of things. 
 
All. Ha ! ha ! ha ! 
 
 John. Another round, and then let every man 
 devise what trick he can in his fancy, for the 
 better manifesting our loyalty this day. 
 
 Gray. ShaJl we hang a puritan ? 
 
 John. No, that has been done already in Cole- 
 m;in-street. 
 
 2nd Gent. Or fire a conventicle ? 
 
 John. That is stale too. 
 
 Zrd Gent. Or bum the Assembly's catechism ? 
 
 Ath Gent. Or drink the king's health, every 
 man standing upon his head naked ? 
 
 John (to Lovd). We have here some pleasant 
 madness. 
 
 3)'d Gent. WTio shall pledge me in a pint 
 bumper, while we drink to the king upon our 
 knees ? 
 
 Lovd. \Miy on our knees, Cavalier 1 
 • John {smilinfj). For more devotion, to be sure. 
 {To a servant.) Sirrah, fetch the gilt goblets. 
 
 [The goblets are brought. They drink the King's health, 
 kneeling. A shout of general approbation following 
 the first appearance of the goblets. 
 
 John. We have here the unchecked virtues of 
 tlie grape. How the vapours curl upwards ! It 
 were a life of gods to dwell in such an element : 
 to see, and hear, and talk brave things. Now fie 
 upon these casual potations. That a man's most 
 exalted reason should depend upon the ignoble 
 fermenting of a fruit, which sparrows pluck at as 
 vfell as we ! 
 
 Gray (aside to Lovd). Observe how he is 
 ravished. 
 
 Lovd. Vanity and gay thoughts of wine do 
 meet in him and engender madness. 
 
 [ While the rest are engaged in a wild kind of talk, John 
 advances to the front of the stage, and solilo<jHis'js. 
 
 John. My spiiits turn to fire, they mount so 
 fast. 
 My joys ai'e turbulent, my hopes show like 
 
 fruition. 
 Tlieso high and gusty relishes of life, sure, 
 Have no allayings of mortality in them. 
 I am too hot now, and o'ercapable. 
 For the tedious processes, and creeping wisdom, 
 Of human acts, and enterprises of a man. 
 I want some seasonings of adversity, 
 Some strokes of the old mortifier Calamity, 
 To take these swellings down, divines call vanity. 
 
 1st Gent. Mr. Woodvil, Mr. Woodvil. 
 
 2nd Gent. Where is Woodvil? 
 
 Gray. Let him alone. I have scon him in these 
 lunes before. His abstractions must not taint the 
 good mirth. 
 
 John (conlinuiny to soliloquise). for some 
 friend now, 
 To conceal nothing from, to have no secrets. 
 
 How fine and noble a thing is confidence. 
 How reasonable too, and almost godlike ! 
 Fast cement of fiist friends, band of society. 
 Old natural go-between in the world's business, 
 Where civil life and order, wantuig this ccmeut. 
 Would presently rush back 
 Into the pristine state of sifigularity. 
 And each man stand alone. 
 
 (.4 servant enters.) 
 
 Servant. Gentlemen, the fireworks are ready. 
 
 1st Gent. What be they 1 
 
 Loi-el. The work of London artists, which our 
 host lias provided in honour of this day. 
 
 2nd Gent. 'Sdcath, who would part with his 
 wine for a rocket 1 
 
 Lovd. Why trulj', gentlemen, as our kind host 
 has been at the pains to provide this spectacle, 
 we can do no less tlian be present at it. It will 
 not take up much time. Every man may return 
 fresh and thirsting to his liquor. 
 
 3rd Gent. There's reason in what he says. 
 
 2nd G'jnt. Charge on then, bottle in hand. 
 There's husbandry in that. 
 
 IT/iey go out, singing. Only LoVEX remains, wfto oltervei 
 Woodvil. 
 
 John (still talking to himsdf.) This Lovel here's 
 of a tough honesty, 
 Would put the rack to the proofl He is not of 
 
 that sort 
 "Which haunt my hoxise, snorting the liquors. 
 And when their wisdoms are afloat with wine, 
 Spend vows as fast as vapours, which go off 
 Even with the fumes, their fathera. He is one. 
 Whose sober morning actions 
 Shame not his o'crnight's promises; 
 Talks little, flatters less, and makes no promises; 
 AMiy this is he, whom the dark-wisdom'd fate 
 Might ti-ust her counsels of predestination 
 
 with. 
 And the world be no loser. 
 
 Why should I fear this uianl [Seeing Lovku 
 
 Where is the company gone? 
 
 Lovd. To see the fireworks, where you will be 
 expected to follow. But I perceive you ai-o 
 better engaged. 
 
 John. 1 have been meditating this half hour 
 On all the properties of a brave friendship, 
 The mysteries that are in it, the noble uses. 
 Its limits withal, and its nice boundai-ies. 
 E.crmpli grutid, how far n man 
 Jlay lawfully forswear himself fur his friend ; 
 What quantity of lies, some of them brave ones, 
 He may lawfully incur in a friend's behalf; 
 What oaths, blood crimes hero'litarr quaiix«Is, 
 Night brawls, fu-rco words, and iluols in tlio 
 morning, 
 
JOHN WOODVIL, A TRAGEDY. 
 
 617 
 
 He need not stick at, to maintain his friend's 
 honour, or his cause. 
 
 ■ Lovel. I think m;my men would die for their 
 friends. 
 John. Death ! why 'tis nothing. Wc go to it for 
 sport, 
 
 To gain a name, or purse, or please a sullen 
 humour, 
 
 When one has worn his fortune's livery thread- 
 bare, 
 
 Or his splecn'd mistress frowns. Husbands will 
 venture on it. 
 
 To cure the hot fits and cold shakings of jealousy. 
 
 A friend, sir, must do more. 
 
 Lovel. Can he do more than die 1 
 John. To serve a friend this he may do. Pray 
 mark me. 
 
 Having a law within (great spirits feel one) 
 
 He cannot, ought not, to be bound by any 
 
 Positive laws or ord'nances extern. 
 
 But may reject all these: by the law of friend- 
 ship 
 
 He may do so much, be they, indifferently, 
 
 Penn'd statutes, or the land's unwritten usages, 
 
 As public fame, civil compliances. 
 
 Misnamed honour, trust in matter of secrets. 
 
 All vows and promises, the feeble mind's 
 religion, 
 
 (Binding our morning knowledge to approve 
 
 What last night's ignorance spake ;) 
 
 The ties of blood withal, and prejudice of kin. 
 
 Sir, these weak terrore 
 
 Must never shake me. I know what belongs 
 
 To a worthy friendship. Come, you shall have 
 my confidence. 
 Z/ovel. I hope you think me worthy. 
 John. You will smile to hear now — 
 
 Sir Walter never has been out of the island. 
 Lovel. You amaze me. 
 John. That same repoi-t of his escape to France 
 
 Was a fine tale, forged by myself — 
 
 Ha ! ha ! 
 
 I knew it would stagger him. 
 
 Lovtl. Pray, give me leave. 
 
 Where has he dwelt, how lived, how lain con- 
 ceal'd ? 
 
 Sure I may ask so much. 
 
 John. From place to place, dwelling in no 
 place long. 
 
 My brotlier Simon still hath borne him company, 
 
 {'Tis a brave youth, I envy him all his vi/i-tues). 
 
 Disguised in foi-eign garb, they pass for French- 
 men, 
 
 Two Protestant exiles from the Limousin 
 
 Newly arrived. Their dwelling's now at Not- 
 tingham, 
 Where no soul knows them. 
 
 Lovel. Can you assign any reason, why a gen- 
 tleman of Sir Walter's known prudence should 
 expose his person so lightly 1 
 
 John, I believe, a certain fondness, 
 A child-like cleaving to the land that gave him 
 
 birth, 
 Chains him like fato. 
 
 Lovel. I have known some exiles thus 
 
 To linger out the term of the law's indulgence, 
 To the hazard of being known. 
 
 John. You may suppose sometimes 
 They use the neighb'ring Sherwood for their 
 
 sport, 
 Their exercise and freer recreation. — 
 I see you smile. Pray now, be careful. 
 
 Lovel. I am no babbler, sir ; you need not fear 
 
 me. 
 John. But some men have been known to talk 
 in their sleep. 
 And tell fine tales that way. 
 
 Lovel. I have heard so much. But, to say 
 
 truth, I mostly sleep alone. 
 John. Or drink, sir ? do you never drink too 
 freely ? 
 Some men will drink, and tell you all their 
 secrets. 
 Lovel. ^Vhy do you question me, who know 
 
 my habits 1 
 John. I think you are no sot, 
 No tavorn-troubler, worshipper of the grape ; 
 But all men drink sometimes, 
 And veriest saints at festivals relax, 
 The marriage of a friend, or a wife's birth-day. 
 Lovel. How much, sir, may a man with safety 
 
 drink ? [Smiling. 
 
 John. Sir, three half pints a day is reason- 
 able; 
 I care not if you never exceed that quantity. 
 
 Lovel. I shall observe it ; 
 On holidays two quarts. 
 
 John. Or stay ; you keep no wench 1 
 
 Lovel. Ha! 
 
 John. No painted mistress for your private 
 hours 1 
 You keep no whore, sir ? 
 
 Lovel. What does he mean ? 
 
 John, ^^^^o for a close embrace, a toy of sin, 
 And amorous praising of your worship's breath, 
 In rosy junction of four melting lips, 
 Can kiss out secrets from you ! 
 
 L</vel. How strange this passionate bchavioui 
 shows in you ! 
 Sure you think me some weak one. 
 
 John. Pray pardon me some fears. 
 You Lave now the pledge of a dear father's life. 
 I am a son — would fain be thought a loving 
 one; 
 
618 
 
 JOHN WOODVIL, A TRAGEDY. 
 
 You may allow me some fears : do not despise 
 
 me. 
 If, in a posture foreign to my spirit, 
 And by our well-knit friendship I conjure you. 
 Touch not Sir Walter's life. [Kneelt. 
 
 You see these tears. My father's an old man. 
 Pray let him live. 
 
 Lovel. I must be bold to tell you, these new 
 freedoms 
 Show most unhandsome in you. 
 
 John (rising). Ha ! do you say so ? 
 
 Sure, you are not gi'own proud upon my 
 
 secret ! 
 Ah ! now I see it plain. He woidd be babbling. 
 No doubt a garrulous and hard-faced traitor — 
 But I'll not give you leave. iDraws. 
 
 Lovel. What does this madman mean ? 
 
 John. Come, sir ; here is no subterfuge ; 
 You must kill me, or I kill you. 
 
 Lovel (drawing). Then self-defence plead my 
 excuse. 
 Have at you, sir. iThey figla. 
 
 John. Stay, sir. 
 
 I hope you have made your will. 
 If not, 'tis no great matter. 
 A broken cavalier has seldom much 
 He can bequeath : an old worn peruke, 
 A snuffbox with a picture of Prince Rupert, 
 A rusty sword he'll swear was used at Naseby, 
 Though it ne'er came within ten miles of the 
 
 place ; 
 And, if he's very rich, 
 A cheap edition of the Icon Badlike, 
 Is mostly all the wealth he dies possest of. 
 You say few prayers, 1 fancy ; — 
 So to it airain. [They fight again. Lovel is disarmed. 
 
 Lovel. You had best now take my life. I guess 
 you mean it. 
 
 John (musing). No : — Men will say I fcar'd 
 him, if I kill'd him. 
 Live still, and be a traitor iu thy wish, 
 But never act thy thought, being a coward. 
 That vengeance, which thy soul shall nightly 
 
 thirst for, 
 And tliis disgrace I've done you cry aloud for. 
 Still have the will without the power to execute. 
 So now I leave you, 
 Feeling a sweet security. No doubt 
 My secret shall remain a virgin for you ! — 
 
 [Goes out amiling, in scorn. 
 
 Lovel (rising). For once you are mistaken iu 
 your man. 
 The deed you wot of shall forthwith bo done. 
 A bird let loose, a secret otit of hand, 
 Returns not back. Why, then 'tis baby policy 
 To menace him who hath it iu his keeping. 
 I willf^o look for Gray ; 
 
 Then, northward ho ! such tricks as we shall 
 
 play 
 Have not been seen, I think, in merry Sherwood, 
 Since the days of Robin Hood, that archer good. 
 
 ACT THE FOURTH. 
 
 --♦- - 
 Scene. — An Apartment in Woodtril BaU. 
 
 JOHM WooDviL, (Alone.) 
 
 A weight of wine lies heavy on my head. 
 
 The unconcocted follies of last night. 
 
 Now all those jovial fancies, and bright hopes. 
 
 Children of wine, go off like dreams. 
 
 This sick vertigo here 
 
 Preacheth of temperance, no sermon better. 
 
 These black thoughts, and dull melancholy, 
 
 That stick like burrs to the brain, will they ne'er 
 
 leave me ? 
 Some men are full of choler, when tliey ar& 
 
 drunk; 
 Some brawl of matter foreign to themselves ; 
 And some, tlie most resolved fools of all. 
 Have told their dearest secrets in their cups. 
 
 Scene.— Tie Forest. 
 Sib Walter. Simon. Lovel. Grat. 
 
 Lovel. Sir, we are sorry we cannot return your 
 French salutation. 
 
 G-ray. Nor otherwise consider this garb you 
 tru.st to than as a poor disguise. 
 
 Lorel. Nor use much ceremony with a traitor. 
 
 Gray. Therefore, without much induction of 
 superfluous words, I attach you. Sir Walter 
 Woodvil, of High Treason, in the King's name. 
 
 Lovel. And of taking part in the great Rebellion 
 against our late lawful Sovereign, Charles the 
 First. 
 
 Simon. John has betrayed us, father. 
 
 Lovel. Come, sir, you had best surrender fairly. 
 We know you, sii-. 
 
 Simmi. Hang yc, villains, ye are two better 
 known than trusted. I have seen those faces 
 before. Are ye not two beggarly retaiutrs, 
 trencher-parasites, to John? I think ye rank 
 above his footmen. A sort of bod and board 
 worms — locusts that infest our house ; a leprosy 
 that long has hung upon its walls and pnncoly 
 apartments, rcuchiug to fill all the corners of tuy 
 brotlier'a once noble heart. 
 
 Oray. Wo arc his friends. 
 
 Simon. Fie, sir, do not weep. How these 
 rogues will triumph ! Shall I whip off their 
 heads, father] [Dravt 
 
JOHN WOODVIL, A TRAGEDY. 
 
 619 
 
 Lovel. Come, sir, though this show handsome 
 in you, being his son, yet the law must have its 
 course. 
 
 Shnon. And if I tell ye the law shall not have 
 its course, cannot ye be content ? Courage, 
 father; shall such thing's as these apprehend a 
 man ? Which of ye will venture upon me 1 — 
 Will you, Mr. Constable self-elect 1 or you, sir, 
 with a pimple on your nose, got at Oxford by 
 hard drinking, your only badge of loyalty? 
 
 Gray. 'Tis a brave youth — I cannot strike at 
 him. 
 
 Simon. Father, why do you cover your face 
 with your hands 1 Why do you fetch your 
 breath so hard? See, villains, his heart is burst! 
 O villains, he cannot speak. One of you run for 
 some water ; quickly, ye knaves ; will ye have 
 your throats cut ? IThcy both slink off. 
 
 How is it with you. Sir Walter? Look up, sir, 
 the villains are gone. He hears me not, and this 
 deep disgrace of treacherj' in his son bath touched 
 him even to the death. most distuned and 
 distempered world, where sons talk their aged 
 fathers into their graves ! Garrulous and diseased 
 world, and still empty, rotten and hollow talking 
 world, where good men decay, states turn round 
 in an endless mutability, and still fur the worse ; 
 nothing is at a sttiy, nothing abides but vanity, 
 chaotic vanity. — Brother, adieu ! 
 
 There lies the parent stock which gave us life. 
 Which I will see consign'd with tears to eai-th. 
 Leave thou the solemn funeral rites to me, 
 Grief and a true remorse abide with thee. 
 
 [Hears in the hody. 
 
 ^CT.n'R.— Another Part of the Forest. 
 Marg. {alone.) It was an error merely, and no 
 
 crime. 
 An iinsuspecting openness in youth. 
 That from his lips the fatal secret drew, 
 Which should have slept like one of nature's 
 
 mysteries, 
 Unveil'd by any man. 
 Well, he is dead ! 
 
 And what should Margaret do in the forest ? 
 ill-starr'd John ! 
 
 Woodvil, man enfeoff 'd to despair ! 
 Take thy farewell of peace. 
 never look again to see good days. 
 Or close thy lids in comfortable nights, / 
 Or ever think a happy thought again. 
 If what I have heard be ti-ue. — 
 Forsaken of the world must Woodvil live, 
 If he did tell these men. 
 
 No tongue must speak to him, no tongue of man 
 Salute him, when he wakes up in a morning; 
 
 Or bid "good night" to John. Who seeks to live 
 In amity with thee, must for thy sake 
 Abide the world's reproach. What then ? 
 Shall Margaret join the clamours of the world 
 Against her friend ? undiscerning world, 
 That cannot from misfortune separate guilt, 
 No, not in thought ! never, never, John. 
 Prepared to share the fortunes of her friend 
 For better or for worse thy Margaret comes, 
 To pour into thy wovmds a healing love, 
 And wake the memory of an ancient friendship. 
 And pardon me, thou spirit of Sir Walter, 
 Who, in comjiassion to the wretched living. 
 Have but few tears to waste upon the dead. 
 
 ^CKS-R.— Woodvil Hall. 
 Sandford. Margaret. {As from a Journey.') 
 
 Sand. The violence of the sudden mischance 
 hath so wrought in him, who by nature is allied 
 to nothing less than a self-debasing humour of 
 dejection, that I have never seen anything more 
 changed and spirit-broken. He hath, with a 
 pei'emptoiy resolution, dismissed the partners of 
 his riots and late hours, denied his house and 
 person to their most earnest solicitings, and will 
 be seen by none. He keeps ever alone, and his 
 gi-ief (which is solitaiy) does not so much seem 
 to possess and govern in him, as it is by him, 
 with a wilfulness of most manifest affection, 
 entertained and cherished. 
 
 Marg. How bears he up against the common 
 rumour ? 
 
 Sand. With a strange indifference, which who- 
 soever dives not into the uiceness of his sorrow 
 might mistake for obdurate and insensate. Yet 
 are the wings of his pride for ever dipt ; and yet 
 a virtuous predominance of filial grief is so ever 
 uppermost, that you may discover his thoughts 
 less troubled with conjecturing what living 
 opinions will say, and judge of his deeds, than 
 absorbed and buried with the dead, whom his 
 indiscretion made so. 
 
 Marg. I knew a greatness ever to be resident 
 in him, to which the admiring eyes of men 
 should look up even in the declining and bank- 
 rupt state of his pride. Fain would I see him, 
 fain talk with him ; but that a sense of respect, 
 which is violated, when without deliberation we 
 press into the society of the unhappy, checks 
 and holds me back. How, think you, he would 
 bear my presence ? 
 
 Sand. As of an assured friend, whom in the 
 forgetfulness of his fortimes he past by. See 
 him you must ; but not to-night. The newness 
 of the sight shall move the bitterest compunc- 
 tion and the truest remoi-se ; but afterwards, 
 
620 
 
 JOHN WOODVIL, A TRAGEDY. 
 
 trust me, dear lady, the happiest eflfects of a 
 returning peace, and a gracious comfort, to him, 
 to you, and all of us. 
 
 Mary. I think he would not deny me. He 
 hath ere this received fiirewell letters from his 
 brother, who hath taken a resolution to estrange 
 himself, for a time, from country, friends, and 
 kindred, and to seek occupation for his sad 
 thoughts in travelling in foreign places, where 
 sights remote and extern to himself may draw 
 from him kindly and not painful ruminations. 
 
 Sand. I was present at the receipt of the letter. 
 The contents seemed to affect him, for a moment, 
 with a more lively pa.~siou of grief than he has 
 at any time outwardly shown. He wept with 
 many tears (which I had not before noted in 
 him), and appeared to be touched with the sense 
 as of some imkindness; but the cause of their 
 Bad separation and divorce quickly recurring, he 
 presently returned to his former inwardness of 
 suffering. 
 
 Marg. The reproach of his brother's presence 
 at this hour would have been a weight more than 
 could be sustained by his already oppressed and 
 sinking spirit. — Meditating upon these intricate 
 and wide-spread sorrows, hath brought a heaviness 
 upon me, as of sleep. How goes the night ] — 
 
 Sand. An hour past sun-set. You shall first 
 refresh your limbs (tired with travel) with meats 
 and some cordial wine, and then betake your no 
 less wearied mind to repose. 
 
 Marg. A good rest to us all. 
 
 Sand. Thanks, lady. 
 
 ACT THE FIFTH. 
 
 John Woodvil {dressing). 
 
 John. How beautiful {handling his mourning) 
 
 And comely do these mourning garments show ! 
 
 Sure Grief hath set his sacred impress here. 
 
 To claim the woiid's respect ! they note so 
 
 feelingly 
 By outward types the serious man within. — 
 Alas ! what part or portion can I claim 
 In all the decencies of virtuous sorrow, 
 Which other mourners use ? as namely, 
 Tliis black attire, abstraction from society. 
 Good thoughts, and frequent sighs, and seldom 
 
 smiles, 
 A cleaving sadness native to the brow. 
 All sweet condolements of iike-grioved friends, 
 (That steal away the sense of loss almost) 
 Men's pity, and good offices 
 Wliich enemies themselves do for us then, 
 Putting their hostile disposition oit 
 
 As we put off our high thoughts and proud looks. 
 [PUusts, and olaervu the pirlurea. 
 
 These pictures must be taken down : 
 
 The portraitures of our most ancient family 
 
 For nigh three hundred years ! How have I 
 
 listen'd, 
 To hear Sir Walter, with an old man's pride, 
 Holding me in his arms, a prating boy. 
 And pointing to the pictures where they hung, 
 Repeat by course their worthy histories, 
 (As Hugh de Widville, Walter, first of the name. 
 And Anne the handsome, Stephen, and famous 
 
 John : 
 Telling me, I must be his famous John.) 
 But that was in old times. 
 Now, no more 
 
 Must I grow proud upon our house's pride. 
 I rather, I, by most unheard-of crimes, 
 Have backward tainted all then- noble blood. 
 Rased out the memory of an ancient family. 
 And quite reversed the honours of our house. 
 Who now shall sit and tell us anecdotes ? 
 The secret history of his own times, 
 And fa-shions of the world when he was young : 
 How England slept out three-and-twenty years, 
 While Carr and Villiers ruled the baby king : 
 The costly fancies of the pedant's reign, 
 Balls, feastiugs, huntings, shows in allegory. 
 And Beauties of the court of James the First 
 
 Margaret enters. 
 John. Comes Margaret here to witness my 
 disgrace 1 
 0, lady, I have suffer'd loss. 
 And diminution of my honour's brightness. 
 You bring some images of old times, Margaret, 
 That should be now forgotten. 
 
 Marg. Old times should never be forgotten, 
 John. 
 I came to talk about them with my friend. 
 
 John. I did refuse you, Margaret, in my pride. 
 Marg. If John rejected ilai-garet in his pride, 
 (As wlio does not, being splenetic, refuse 
 Sometimes old playfellows,) the spleen being 
 
 gone. 
 The offence no longer lives. 
 
 Woodvil, those were happy days, 
 
 When wo two fii-st began to love. When first. 
 
 Under pretence of visiting my father, 
 
 (Being then a stripling nigh upon my age,) 
 
 You came a wooing to his daughter, John. 
 
 Do you remera'oer, 
 
 Witli what a coy reserve and seldom speech, \ 
 
 (Yoiu)g maidens must be chary of tlieir speech,) ! 
 
 1 kept the honours of my maiden pride ? 
 I was your favoiu-ito then. 
 
 John. O Miu-giuct, Murgarot ! 
 
JOHN WOODVIL, A TRAGEDY. 
 
 621 
 
 These your submissions to my low estate, 
 And cleavings to the fates of sunken Woodvil, 
 Write bitter things 'gamst my unworthiness. 
 Thou perfect pattern of thy slander'd sex, 
 Whom miseries of mine could never alienate, 
 Nor change of fortune shake ; wliom injuries, 
 And slights (the worst of injuries) which moved 
 Thy nature to return scorn with like scorn, 
 Then when you left in virtuous pride this house, 
 Could not so separate, but now in this 
 My day of shame, when all the world forsake me, 
 You only visit me, love, and forgive mo. 
 
 Marg. Dost yet remember the green arbour, 
 John, 
 In tlie south gardens of my father's house, 
 Where we have seen the summer sun go down, 
 Exchanging true love's vows without restraint ? 
 And that old wood, you call'd your wilderness. 
 And vow'd in sport to build a chapel in it. 
 There dwell 
 
 " Like hermit poor 
 
 In pensive place obscure," 
 
 And tell your Ave Maries by the curls 
 (Dropping like golden beads) of Margaret's hair ; 
 And make confession seven times a day 
 Of every thought that stray 'd from love and 
 
 Margaret ; 
 And I your saint the penance should appoint — 
 Believe me, sir, I will not now be laid 
 Aside, like an old fashion. 
 
 John. lady, poor and abject are my thoughts ; 
 My pride is cured, my hopes are under clouds, 
 I have no part in any good man's love. 
 In all earth's pleasures portion have I none, 
 I fade and wither in my own esteem. 
 This earth holds not alive so poor a thing as I am. 
 I was not always thus. [ Weeps. 
 
 Marg. Thou noble nature. 
 
 Which lion-like didst awe the inferior creatures, 
 Now trampled on by beasts of basest quality. 
 My dear heart's lord, life's pride, soul-honour'd 
 
 John ! 
 Upon her knees (regard her poor request) 
 Your favourite, once beloved Margaret, kneels. 
 John. What would'st thou, lady, ever honour'd 
 
 Margai'et 1 
 Marg. Tliat John would think more nobly of 
 
 himself, 
 More worthily of high Heaven ; 
 And not for one misfortune, child of chaijce. 
 No crime, but unforeseen, and sent to punish 
 The less offence with image of the greater. 
 Thereby to work the soul's humility, 
 (Which end hath happily not been frustrate 
 
 quite,) 
 not for one offence mistrust Heaven's mercy, 
 
 Nor quit thy hope of happy days to come — 
 John yet ha.s many happy days to live; 
 To live and make atonement. 
 
 John. Excellent lady, 
 
 Whose suit hath drawn this softness from my 
 
 eyes. 
 Not the world's scorn, nor failing off of friends, 
 Could ever do. Will you go with me, Margaret] 
 
 Afarg. {^rising.) Go whither, John 
 
 John. Go in with me, 
 
 And pray for the peace of our unquiet minds? 
 
 Marg. That I will, John. iExeunt. 
 
 ScENK. — An inner Apartment. 
 Soli's is discovered kneeling. — Mai.oaret standing over him. 
 
 John {rises.) I cannot bear 
 To see you waste that youth and excellent beauty, 
 ('Tis now the golden time of tlie day with you,) 
 In tending such a broken wretch as I am. 
 
 Marg. John will break Margaret's heart, if he 
 speak so. 
 
 sir, sir, sir, you are too melancholy. 
 
 And I must call it caprice. I am somewhat bold 
 Perhaps in this. But you are now my patient, 
 (You know you gave nie leave to call you so.) 
 And I must chide these pestilent humours from 
 you. 
 John. They are gone. — 
 Mark, love, how cheerfully I speak ! 
 
 1 can smile too, and I almost begin 
 
 To understand what kind of creature Hope is. 
 
 Marg. Now this is better, this mirth becomes 
 you, John. 
 
 John. Yet tell me, if I over-act my mirth 
 (Being but a novice, I may fall into that error). 
 That were a sad indecency, you know. 
 
 Marg. Nay, never fear. 
 I will be mistress of your humours. 
 And you shall frown or smile by the book. 
 And herein I shall be most peremptory. 
 Cry, " This shows well, but that inclines to 
 
 levity ; 
 This frown has too much of the Woodvil in it, 
 But that fine sunshine has redeem'd it quite." 
 
 John. How sweetly Margai-et robs me of my- 
 self ! 
 
 Marg. To give you in your stead a better self ! 
 Such as you were, when these eyes first beheld 
 You mounted on your sprightly steed. White 
 
 Margery, 
 Sir Rowhmd my father's gift, 
 And all my maidens gave my heart for lost. 
 I was a young thing then, being newly come 
 Home from my convent education, wl«ere 
 Seven years I had wasted in the bosom of Franco: 
 Returning home true protestant, you call'd me 
 
622 
 
 JOHN WOODVIL, A TRAGEDY. 
 
 Your little heretic nun. How timid-bashful 
 Did John salute his love, being newly seen ! 
 Sir Rowland term'd it a rai-e modesty, 
 A nd praised it in a youth. 
 
 John. Now Mai-garct weeps herself. 
 {A noise of bells heard). 
 
 Marg. Hark the bells, John. 
 
 John. Those are the church bells of St. Mary 
 Ottery. 
 
 Marg. I know it. 
 
 John. St. Mary Ottery, my native village 
 In the sweet shire of Devon. 
 Those are the bells. 
 
 Marg. Wilt go to church, John ? 
 
 John. I have been thei-e already. 
 
 Marg. How canst say thou hast been there 
 already? The bells are only now ringing for 
 morning service, and hast thou been at church 
 already ] 
 
 John. I left my bed betimes, I could not sleep, 
 And when I rose, I look'd (as my custom is) 
 From mj^ chamber window, where I can see the 
 
 sun rise ; 
 And the first object I discei-n'd 
 Was the glistering spire of St. Maiy Ottery. 
 
 Marg. Well, John. 
 
 John. Then I remember'd 'twas the sabbath-day. 
 Immediately a wish arose in my mind, 
 To go to church and pray with Christian people. 
 And then I check'd myself, and said to myself, 
 " Thou hast been a heathen, John, these two years 
 
 past, 
 (Not having been at church in all that time,) 
 And is it fit, that now for the first time 
 Thou should'st ofiend the eyes of Christian people 
 With a murderer's presence in the house of 
 prayer ? 
 
 Thou would'st but discompose their pious 
 
 thoughts. 
 And do tliyself no good : for how could'st thou 
 
 pi-ay, 
 With unwash'd hands, and lips unused to tlie 
 
 oflices 1 " 
 And then J. at my own presumption smiled ; 
 And then I wept that 1 should smile at all. 
 Having such cause of grief ! I wept outright ; 
 Tears like a river flooded all my face. 
 And I began to pray, and found I could pray ; 
 And still I yearn'd to say my prayers in the 
 
 church. 
 " Doubtless (said I) one might find comfort in it." 
 So stealmg down the stairs, like one that fear'd 
 
 detection. 
 Or was about to act unlawful business 
 At that dead time of dawn, 
 I flew to the church, and found the doors wide 
 
 open. 
 (Whether by negligence I knew not, 
 Or some peculiar grace to me vouchsafed, 
 For all things felt like mystery). 
 Marg. Yes. 
 
 John. So entering in, not without fear, 
 I past into the family pew. 
 And covering up my eyes for shame. 
 And deep perception of unworthiness, 
 Upon the little hassock knelt me down. 
 Where I so oft had kneel'd, 
 A docile infant by Sir Walter's side ; 
 And, thinking so, I wept a second flood 
 More poignant tlian the first 
 But afterwards was greatly comforted. 
 It seem'd, the guilt of blood was passing from mo 
 Even in the act and agony of tears, 
 And all my sins forgiven. 
 
THE WITCH. 
 
 A DRAMATIC SKETCH OP THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 CHARACTERS. 
 
 Or.D Servant iti the Family of Sir Francis Fairford. Stranobr. 
 
 Servant. One summer night Sir Francis, as it 
 chanced, 
 Was pacmg to and fro in the avenue 
 That westward fronts our house, 
 Among those aged oaks, said to have been planted 
 Three hundred years ago, 
 By a neighb'ring prior of the Fairford name. 
 Being o'ertask'd in thought, he heeded not 
 The importunate suit of one who stood by the 
 
 gate, 
 And begg'd an alms. 
 
 Some say he shoved her rudely from the gate 
 With angiy chiding; but I can never think 
 (Our master's nature hath a sweetness in it) 
 That he could use a woman, an old woman. 
 With such discourtesy ; but he refused her — 
 And better had he met a lion in his path 
 Than that old woman that night ; 
 For she was one who practised the black arts. 
 And served the devil, being since burnt for witch- 
 craft. 
 She look'd at him as one that meant to blast him, 
 And with a frightful noise, 
 ('Twas partly like a woman's voice. 
 And partly like the hissing of a snake,) 
 She nothing said but this 
 (Sir Francis told the words) : — 
 
 A mischief, mischief, mischief, 
 And a nine-times killing curse, 
 By day and by night, to the caitiff 'wight, 
 
 Who shakes the poor like snakes from his door, 
 
 And shuts up the womb of his purse. / 
 
 And still she cried — 
 
 A mischief. 
 And a nine-fold ■withering curse : 
 For that shall come to thee that will undo thee, 
 Both all that thou fearest and worse. 
 
 So saying, she departed. 
 Leaving Sir Francis like a man, beneath 
 Whose feet a scaffolding was suddenly falling ; 
 So he described it. 
 
 Stranger. A terrible curse ! ^\^lat folio w'd 1 
 
 Servant. Nothing immediate, but some twc 
 months after, 
 Young Philip Fairford suddenly fell sick. 
 And none could tell what ail'd him ; for he lay. 
 And pined, and pined, till all his hair fell off. 
 And he, that was full flesh'd, became as thin 
 As a two-month's babe that has been starved in 
 
 the nursing. 
 And sure I think 
 
 He boi'e his death-wound like a little child ; 
 With such rare sweetness of dumb melancholy 
 He strove to clothe his agony in smiles. 
 Which he would force up in his poor pale cheeks, 
 Like ill-timed guests that had no proper dwelling 
 
 there ; 
 And, when they ask'd him his complaint, he laid 
 His Hand upon his heart to show the place. 
 Where Susan came to him a-nights, he said. 
 And prick'd him with a pin. — 
 And thereupon Sir Francis call'd to mind 
 The beggar-witch that stood by tlie gateway 
 And begg'd an alms. 
 
 Stranger. But did the witch confess ? 
 
 Sen'ant. All this and more at her death. 
 
 Stranger. I do not love to credit tales of mapic. 
 Heaven's music, which is Order, seems unstrung, 
 And this brave world 
 (The mystery of God) unbeautified, 
 Disorder'd, marr'd, where such sti-ange things are 
 acted. 
 
ALBUM VERSES. 
 
 WITH A FEW OTHERS. 
 
 DEDICATION. 
 
 TO THE PUBLISHER. 
 
 Deak MoiON, 
 
 I do not know to whom a Dedication of these Trifles is more properly due than to yourself. You 
 suggested the printing of them. You were desirous of exhibiting a specimen of the manner in which 
 Publications, entrusted to your future care, would appear. With more propriety, perhaps, the "Christmas," 
 or some other of your own simple, unpretending Compositions, might have served this purpose. But I forget 
 ^you have bid a long adieu to the Muses. I had on my hands sundry Copies of Verses written for Album* — 
 
 Those books kept by modern young Ladies for show, 
 Of which their plain Grandmothers nothing did know — 
 
 or otherwise floating about in Periodicals ; which you have chosen in this manner to embody. I feci little 
 interest in their publication. They are simply — Advertisement Verses. 
 
 It is not for me, nor you, to allude in public to the kindness of our honoured Friend, under whose auspices 
 you are become a Publisher. May that fine-minded Veteran in Verse enjoy life long enough to see his patronage 
 justified ? I venture to predict that your habits of industry, and your cheerful spiiit, will carry you through 
 
 the world. 
 
 I am, Dear Moxou, your Friend and sincere Well-Wisher, 
 
 Enfield, Ut June, 1839. CUAKLKS LAMP. 
 
 IN THE AUTOGRAPH BOOK OF 
 MRS. SERGEANT W . 
 
 Had I a power, Lady, to my will, 
 You should not want Hand Writings. I would fill 
 Your leaves with Autographs — resplendent names 
 Of Knights and Sqviires of old, and courtly Dames, 
 Kings, Emperors, Popes. Next under these 
 
 should stand 
 The hands of famous Lawyers — a grave baud — 
 Wlio in their Courts of Law or Equity 
 Have best upheld Freedom and Proportj'. 
 These should moot cases in your book, and vie 
 To show their reading and their Sorgeantry. 
 But I have none of these ; nor can I send 
 The notes by Bullen to her Tyrant jjcnu'd 
 In her authentic hand ; nor in Hoft hours 
 Linos writ by Rosamund in Clifford's bowei-s. 
 The lack of curious Siguatiu-es I moan, 
 And want the courage to subscribe my own. 
 
 TO DORA W , 
 
 ON BF.INO ASKED BY HER PATHER TO WHITE IN HER 
 ALBUM. 
 
 An Album is a Banquet : from tlie store, 
 In his intelligential Orchard gi'owing, 
 Your Sire might heap your board to overQowing : 
 One shaking of the Tree — 'twould ask no lauro 
 To set a Salad forth, more rich than that 
 Which Evelyn * in his princely cookery fancied : 
 Or that more rare, b^' Eve's neat hands enhanced, 
 Where, a pleased guest, the Angelic Virtue sat. 
 But like the all-gi-iusping Founder of the Feast, 
 Whom Nathan to the sinning king did tAX, 
 From his less wealthy neighbours he exacts ; 
 Spares his own flocks, and takes tho poor man's 
 
 beant. 
 Obedient to his bidding, lo, I am, 
 A zoalouB, meek, contribiUory Lamb. 
 
 • Acetariu, a Discourse of Ballets, by J. E. 1700. 
 
ALBUM VERSES. 
 
 426 
 
 IN THE ALBUM OF A CLERGYMAN'S 
 LADY. 
 
 An Album is a Garden, not for show 
 
 Planted, but use ; where wholesome herbs should 
 
 grow. 
 A Cabinet of curious porcelain, where 
 No fancy enters, but what's rich or rare. 
 A Chapel, where mere ornamental things 
 Are pure as crowns of saints, or angels' wings. 
 A List of living friends ; a holier Room 
 For names of some since mouldering in the tomb, 
 AATioseblooming memories life's cold laws survive; 
 And, dead elsewhere, they here yet speak and live. 
 Such, and so tender, should an Album be ; 
 And, Lady, such I wish this book to thee. 
 
 IN THE ALBUM OF EDITH S . 
 
 In Christian world Mart the garland wears ! 
 Rebecca sweetens on a Hebrew's ear ; 
 Quakers for pure Pbiscilla are more clear ; 
 And the light Gaul by amorous Ninon swears. 
 Among the lesser lights how LuCT shines ! 
 What air of ft-agi-ance Rosamond throws round ! 
 How like a hymn doth sweet Cecilia sound ! 
 Of Marthas, and of Abigails, few lines 
 Have braggd in verse. Of coarsest household stuff 
 Should homely Joan be fashion'd. But can 
 You Barbara resist, or Marian ? 
 And is not Clare for love excuse enough ? 
 Yet, by my faith in numbers, I profess. 
 These all, than Saxon Edith, please me less. 
 
 IN THE ALBUM OF ROTHA Q . 
 
 A passing glance was all I caught of thee. 
 In my own Enfield haunts at random roving. 
 Old friends of ours were with thee, faces loving ; 
 Time short : and salutations cursoiy. 
 Though deep, and hearty. The familiar Name 
 Of you, yet unfiirailiar, raised in me 
 Thoughts — what the daughter of that Man should 
 
 be, 
 Who call'd our Wordsworth friend. My thoughts 
 
 did frame i 
 
 A growing Maiden, who, from day to day 
 Advancing still in stature, and in grace, 
 Would all her lonely Father's griefs eflface. 
 And his paternal cares ■with usury pay. 
 I still retain the phantom, as I can ; 
 And call the gentle image — Quillinan. 
 
 IN THE ALBUM OF CATHERINE ORKNEY. 
 
 Canadia ! boast no more the toils 
 Of hunters for the furry spoils ; 
 Your whitest ermines are but foils 
 To brighter Catherine Orkney. 
 
 That such a flower should ever burst 
 From climes with rigorous winter curst ! — - 
 We bless you, that so kindly nurst 
 
 This flower, this Catherine Orkney. 
 
 We envy not your proud display 
 Of lake — wood — vast Niagara ; 
 Your greatest pride we've borne away. 
 How spared you Catherine Orkney 1 
 
 That Wolfe on Heights of Abraham fell, 
 To your reproach no more we tell : 
 Canadia, you repaid us well 
 
 With rearing Catherine Orkney. 
 
 Britain, guard with tenderest care 
 The charge allotted to your share : 
 You've scarce a native maid so fair. 
 So good, as Catherine Orkney. 
 
 IN THE ALBUM OF LUCY BARTON. 
 
 Little Book, sumamed of white, 
 Clean as yet, and fair to sight, 
 Keep thy attribution right. 
 
 Never disproportion'd scrawl ; 
 Ugly blot, that's worse than all ; 
 On thy maiden clearness fall ! 
 
 In each letter, here design'd, 
 Let the reader emblem'd find 
 Neatness of the owner's mind. 
 
 Gilded margins count a sin. 
 Let thy leaves attraction win 
 By the golden rules within ; 
 
 Sayings fctch'd from sages old ; 
 Laws which Holy Writ unfold. 
 Worthy to be graved in gold : 
 
 Lighter fancies not excluding : 
 Blameless wit, with notliing rude in, 
 Sometimes mildly interluding 
 
 Amid strains of graver measure : 
 Virtue's self hath oft her pleivsure 
 In sweet Muses' groves of leisure. 
 
626 
 
 ALBUM VERSES. 
 
 Riddles dark, perplexing sense ; 
 
 Darker meanings of offeuee ; 
 
 What but shades — be bauisli'd hence. 
 
 Whitest thoughts in whitest dress, 
 Candid meanings, best express 
 Mind of quiet Quakeress. 
 
 IN THE ALBUM OF MRS. JANE TOWERS. 
 
 Lady unknown, who crav'st from me Unknown 
 Tlie trifle of a verse these leaves to grace. 
 How shall I find fit matter ? with what face 
 Address a face that ne'er to mc was shown ] 
 Thy looks, tones, gesture, manners, and what 
 
 not. 
 Conjecturing, I wander in the dark. 
 I know thee only Sister to Charles Clarke ! 
 But at that name my cold muse waxes hot, 
 And swears tliat thou art such a one as he, 
 Warm, laughter-loving, with a touch of madness. 
 Wild, glee-provoking, pouring oil of gladness 
 From frank heart without guile. And, if 
 
 thou be 
 The pure reverse of this, and I mistake — 
 Demure one, I will like thee for his sake. 
 
 IN THE ALBUM OF MISS 
 
 Such goodness in your face doth sliine, 
 With modest look, without design. 
 That I despair, poor pen of mine 
 
 Can e'er express it. 
 To give it words I feebly try ; 
 My spirits fail mo to supply 
 Befitting language for 't, and I 
 
 Can only bless it ! 
 
 But stop, rash verse I and don't abuse 
 A bashful Midden's ear with news 
 Of her own virtues. She '11 refuse 
 
 Praise sung so loudly. 
 Of that same goodness you admire, 
 The best part is, she don't aspire 
 To praise — nor of herself desire 
 
 To think too proudly. 
 
 IN MY OWN ALBUM. 
 
 FREsn clad from heaven in robes of white, 
 
 A young probationer of light. 
 
 Thou wert, my soul, an album bright, 
 
 A spotless leaf ; but thought, and care. 
 
 And friend and foe, in foul or fair, 
 
 Have " written strange defeatures " there ; 
 
 And Time with heaviest hand of all. 
 Like that fierce writing on the wall. 
 Hath stamp'd sad dates — he can't recall ; 
 
 And eiTor gilding worst designs — 
 Like speckled snake that strays and shines- 
 Betrays his path by crooked lines ; 
 
 And vice hath left his ugly blot ; 
 And good resolves, a moment hot, 
 Fairly began — but finish'd not ; 
 
 And fruitless, late remorse doth trace — 
 Like Hebrew lore a backward pace — 
 Her irrecoverable race. 
 
 Disjointed numbers ; sense unknit ; 
 Huge reams of folly, shreds of wit; 
 Compose the mingled mass of it. 
 
 My scalded eyes no longer brook 
 Upon this ink-blurr'd thing to look — 
 Go, shut the leaves, and clasp the book. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 687 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 ANGEL HELP.* 
 
 This rare tablet doth include 
 
 Poverty with Sanctitude. 
 
 Past midnight this poor maid hath spun, 
 
 And yet the work is not half done, 
 
 Which must supply from earnings scant 
 
 A feeble bed-rid parent's want. 
 
 Her sleep-charged eyes exemption ask, 
 
 And Holy hands take up the task ; 
 
 Unseen the rock and spindle ply, 
 
 And do her earthly drudgeiy. 
 
 Sleep, saintly poor one ! sleep, sleep on ; 
 
 And, waking, find thy labours done. 
 
 Perchance she knows it by her dreams; 
 
 Her eye hath caught the golden gleams, 
 
 Angelic presence testifymg, 
 
 That round her eveiy where are flying ; 
 
 Ostents from which she may presume, 
 
 That much of heaven is in the room. 
 
 Skirting her own bright hair they i-un, 
 
 And to the sunny add more sun : 
 
 Now on that aged face they fix, 
 
 Streaming from the Cnicifix ; 
 
 The flesh-clogg'd spirit disabusing, 
 
 Death-disarming sleeps infusing, 
 
 Prelibations, foretastes high. 
 
 And equal thoughts to live or die. 
 
 Grardener bright from Eden's bower, 
 
 Tend with care that lily flower • 
 
 To its leaves and root infuse 
 
 Heaven's sunshine, Heaven's dews. 
 
 'Tis a type, and 'tis a pledge. 
 
 Of a crowning privilege. 
 
 Careful as that lily flower, 
 
 This Maid must keep her precious dower ; 
 
 Live a sainted Maid, or die 
 
 Martyr to virginity. 
 
 ON AN INFANT DYING AS SOON AS BORN. 
 
 I SAW where in the shroud did lurk 
 A curious frame of Nature's work. 
 A flow rez crushed in the bud, , 
 
 A nameless piece of Babyhood, ' 
 
 * Supgcsted by a drawing in the possession of Chnrlrs 
 Aders, Esq., in which is represented the legend of a poor 
 female Saint ; who, having spun past midnight, to main- 
 tain a hcd-rid mother, has fallen asleep from fatigue, and 
 Angels are finishing her work. In another p.irt of the 
 chamber, an angel is tending a lily, the emblem of purity. 
 
 Was in her cradle-coffin lying; 
 
 Extinct, with scarce the sense of dying : 
 
 So soon to excliange the imprisoning womb 
 
 For darker closets of the tomb ! 
 
 She did but ope an eye, and put 
 
 A clear beam forth, then straight up shut 
 
 For the long dark : ne'er more to see 
 
 Through glasses of mortality. 
 
 Riddle of destiny, who can show 
 
 What thy short visit meant, or know 
 
 What thy errand here below ] 
 
 Shall we say, that Nature blind 
 
 Check'd her hand, and changed her mind. 
 
 Just when she had exactly wrought 
 
 A finish'd pattern without fault ? 
 
 Could she flag, or could she tire, 
 
 Or lack'd she the Promethean fire 
 
 (With her nine moons' long workings sicken'd) 
 
 That should thy little limbs have quicken'd? 
 
 Limbs so firm, they seem'd to assure 
 
 Life of health and days mature : 
 
 Woman's self in miniature ! 
 
 Limbs so fair, they might supply 
 
 (Themselves now but cold imagery) 
 
 The sculptor to make Beauty by. 
 
 Or did the stern-eyed Fate descry, 
 
 That babe, or mother, one must die ; 
 
 So in mercy left the stock. 
 
 And cut the branch ; to save the shock 
 
 Of young years widow'd ; and the pain, 
 
 When Single State comes back again 
 
 To the lone man who, 'reft of wife. 
 
 Thenceforward drags a maimed life 1 
 
 The economy of Heaven is dark ; 
 
 And wisest clerks have miss'd the mark, 
 
 Why Human Buds, like this, should fall, 
 
 More brief than fly ephemeral, 
 
 That has his day ; while shrivell'd crones 
 
 StiS'en with age to stocks and stones ; 
 
 And crabbed use the conscience sears 
 
 In sinners of an hundred years. 
 
 Mother's prattle, mother's kiss, 
 
 Baby fond, thou ne'er wilt miss. 
 
 Rites, which custom does impose, 
 
 Silver bells and baby clothes ; 
 
 Coral redder than those lips, 
 
 Which pale death did late eclipse; 
 
 Music framed for infants' glee. 
 
 Whistle never tuned for thee ; 
 
 Though tliou want'st not, tliou shalt have them, 
 
 Loving hearts were they which gave them 
 
 S S 2 
 
C28 MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 Let not one be missing ; nurse, 
 
 Saint-like seeming to direct him 
 
 See them laid upon the hearse 
 
 To the Power that must protect him ? 
 
 Of infant slain by doom perverse. 
 
 Is she of the Heaven-bom Three, 
 
 Why should kings and nobles have 
 
 Meek Hope, strong Faith, sweet Charity ; 
 
 Pictured trophies to their grave ; 
 
 Or some Cherub 1 — 
 
 And we, churls, to thee deny 
 
 
 Thy pretty toys with thee to lie, 
 
 They you mention 
 
 A more harmless vanity 1 
 
 Far transcend my weak invention. 
 
 
 'Tis a simple Christian child, 
 
 
 Missionary young and mild. 
 
 From her stock of Scriptural knowledge. 
 
 
 
 Bible-taught without a college. 
 
 THE CHRISTENIXG. 
 
 Which by reading she could gather 
 
 
 Teaches him to say Odr Father 
 
 Arrat'd — a half-angelic sight — 
 
 To the common Parent, who 
 
 In vests of pure Baptismal white, 
 
 Colour not respects, nor hue. 
 
 The Mother to the Font doth bring 
 
 White and black in Him have part. 
 
 The little helpless nameless thing, 
 
 Who looks not to the skin, but heart. 
 
 With hushes soft and mild caressing. 
 
 
 At once to get — a name and blessing. 
 
 
 
 Close by the babe the Priest doth stand, 
 
 
 The Cleansing Water at his hand. 
 
 TO A YOUNG FRIEND, 
 
 Which must assoil the soul within 
 
 ON HER TWENTY-FIRST BIRTHDAY. 
 
 From every stain of Adam's sin. 
 
 Crown me a cheerful goblet, while I pray 
 
 The Infant eyes the mystic scenes, 
 
 A blessing on thy yeare, young Isola ; 
 
 Nor knows what all this w-onder means ; 
 
 Young, but no more a child. How swift have 
 
 And now he smiles, as if to say 
 
 flown 
 
 " I am a Christian made this day ;" 
 
 To me thy girlish times, a woman grown 
 
 Now frighted clings to Nurse's hold, 
 
 Beneath my heedless eyes ! in vain I rack 
 
 Shrinking from the water cold, 
 
 My fancy to believe the almanac. 
 
 Whose virtues, rightly understood, 
 
 That speaks thee Twenty-One. Thou shouldst 
 
 Are, as Bethesda's waters, good. 
 
 have still 
 
 Strange words— The World, The Flesh, The 
 
 Remain'd a child, and at thy sovereign will 
 
 Devil- 
 
 Gambul'd about our house, as in times past. 
 
 Poor Babe, what can it know of Evil ] 
 
 Ungrateful Emma, to grow up so fast, 
 
 But we must silently adore 
 
 Hastening to leave thy friends ! — for which 
 
 Mystei-ious truths, and not explore. 
 
 intent. 
 
 Enougli for him, in after-times, 
 
 Fond Runagate, be this thy punishment : 
 
 When he shall read these artless rhymes, 
 
 After some thirty years, spent in such bliss 
 
 If, looking back upon this day 
 
 As this e;u-th can afford, where still we miss 
 
 With quiet conscience, he can say — 
 
 Something of joy entire, may'st thou grow old 
 
 '' I have in part redcem'd the pledge 
 
 As we whom thou hast left ! That wish was 
 
 Of my Baptismal privilege ; 
 
 cold. 
 
 And more and more will strive to flee 
 
 far more aged and wrinkled, till folks say, 
 
 All which my Sponsors kind did then renounce 
 
 Looking upon thee reverend in decay, 
 
 for me." 
 
 " This Dame, for length of days, and virtues 
 
 
 rare. 
 With her respected Grandsiro may compare." 
 Grandchild of that respected Isola, 
 
 
 
 Thou shouldst have had about thee on this day 
 
 THE YOUNG CATECHIST.* 
 
 Kind looks of Parents, to congratulate 
 
 While this tawny Ethiop prayeth, 
 
 Their Pride grown nyt to woman's grave estate. 
 
 Painter, who is she that stayeth 
 
 But they have died, and left thoe, to advance 
 
 By, witli skin of whitest lustre. 
 
 Thy fortunes how thou may'st, and owe to chance 
 
 Sunny locks, a shining cluster, 
 
 The frienils which nature gi'udgod. And thou 
 
 
 wilt find, 
 
 • A picture by Henry Meyer, Esq. 
 
 Or make such, Emma, if I am not blind 
 
SONNETS. 
 
 I'yl9 
 
 To thee and thy deserrings. That last strain 
 Had too much sorrow in it. Fill again 
 Another cheerful goblet, while I say 
 " Health, and twice hciUth, to our lost Isola." 
 
 SHE IS GOING. 
 
 For their elder Sister's hair 
 Mai-tha does a wreath prepare 
 Of bridal rose, ornate and gay : 
 To-morrow is the wedding day. 
 
 She is goin" 
 
 Mary, youngest of^he three, 
 Laughing idler, full of glee, 
 Ann in arm does fondly chain her, 
 Thinking, poor trifler, to detain her — 
 But she's going. 
 
 Vex not, maidens, nor regret 
 Thus to part with Margaret. 
 Charms like yours can never stay 
 Long within dooi-s ; and one day 
 
 You'll be going. 
 
 SONNETS. 
 
 HARMONY IN UNLIKENESS. 
 
 By Enfield lanes, and Wiuchmore's verdant hill, 
 Two lovely damsels cheer my lonely walk : 
 The fair Maria, as a vestal, still ; 
 And Emma brown, exuberant in talk. 
 With soft and Lady speech the first applies 
 The mild correctives that to grace belong 
 To her redundant friend, who her defies 
 With jest, and mad discovirse, and bursts of song. 
 differing Pair, yet sweetly thus agreeing, 
 What music from your happy discord rises, 
 While your companion hearing each, and seeing. 
 Nor this, nor that, but both together, prizes ; 
 This lesson teaching, which our souls may 
 
 strike. 
 That hai-monies may be in things unlike ! 
 
 WRITTEN AT CAMBRIDGE. 
 
 I WAS not train'd in Academic bowers. 
 And to those learned streams I nothing owe 
 AYliich copious from those twin fair founts do flow; 
 Mine have been anything but studious hours. 
 Yet can I fancy, wandering mid thy towers. 
 Myself a nursling, Granta, of thy lap ; 
 My brow seems tightening with the Doctor's cap. 
 And I walk gowned ; feel unusual powers. 
 Strange forms of logic clothe my admiring speech. 
 Old Ramus' ghost is busy at my brain ; 
 And my skull teems with notions infinite. 
 Be still, ye reeds of Camus, while I teach 
 Truths, which transcend the searching School- 
 men's vein. 
 And half had stagger'd that stout Stagirite ! 
 
 TO A CELEBRATED FEMALE PERFORMER 
 IN THE "BLIND BOY." 
 
 Rare artist ! who with half thy tools, or none, 
 
 Canst execute with ease thy curious art, 
 
 And press thy powerful'st meanings on the 
 
 heart, 
 Unaided by the eye, expression's throne ! 
 While each blind sense, intelligential grown 
 Beyond its sphere, performs the eS'ect of sight : 
 Those orbs alone, wanting their proper might, 
 All motionless and silent seem to moan 
 The unseemly negligence of nature's hand. 
 That left them so forlorn. What praise is thine, 
 mistress of the passions ; artist fine ! 
 AVho dost our souls against our sense command. 
 Plucking the horror from a sightless face, 
 Lending to blank deformity a grace. 
 
 WORK. 
 
 Who first invented work, and bound the free 
 
 And hoi yday- rejoicing spirit down 
 
 To the ever-haunting importunity 
 
 Of business in the green fields, and the town — 
 
 To plough, loom, anvil, spade — and oh ! most .sad, 
 
 To that dry drudgery at the desk's dead wood ] 
 
 Who but the Being unblest, alien from good, 
 
 Sabbathless Satan ! he who his unglad 
 
 Task ever plies 'mid rotatory burnings, 
 
 That round and roimd incalculably reel — 
 
 For wrath divine hath made him like a wheel — 
 
 In that red realm from which are no returniuga : 
 
 Where toiling, and turmoiling, ever and aye 
 
 He, and hid thoughts, keep pensive working-day. 
 
630 
 
 SONNETS. 
 
 LEISURE. 
 
 TnET talk of time, and of time's galling yoke, 
 That like a mill-stone on man's mind doth 
 
 press. 
 Which only works and business can redress : 
 Of divine Leisure such foul lies are spoke, 
 Wounding her fair gifts with calumnious stroke. 
 But might I, fed with silent meditation, 
 Assoiled live from that fiend Occupation — 
 Improhus Labor, which my spirits hath broke — 
 I 'd drink of time's rich cup, and never surfeit : 
 Fling in more days than went to make the 
 
 gem 
 That crown 'd the white top of Mcthusalem : 
 Yea on my weak neck take, and never forfeit. 
 Like Atlas bearing up the dainty sky. 
 The heaven-sweet burthen of eternity. 
 
 DEUS NOBIS H^C OTIA FECIT. 
 
 TO SAMUEL ROGERS, ESQ. 
 
 Rogers, of all the men that I have known 
 
 But slightly, who have died, your Brother's 
 
 loss 
 Touch'd me most sensibly. There came across 
 My mind an image of the cordial tone 
 Of your fraternal meetings, where a guest 
 I more than once have sat ; and grieve to 
 
 think. 
 That of that threefold cord one precious link 
 By Death's rude hand is sever'd from the rest. 
 
 Of our old gentry he appear'd a stem — 
 A Magistrate who, while the evil-doer 
 He kept in terror, could respect the Poor, 
 And not for every trifle harass them, 
 As some, divine and laic, too oft do. 
 This man's a private loss, and public too 
 
 THE GIPSY'S MALISON. 
 
 " Suck, baby, suck ! motlier's love grows by 
 
 giving ; 
 Drain the sweet founts that only thrive by 
 
 wasting ; 
 Black manhood comes, when riotous guilty living 
 Hands thee the cup that shall be death in 
 
 tasting. 
 
 Kiss, baby, kiss ! mother's lips shine by kisses ; 
 Choke the warm breath that else would fall in 
 
 blessings ; 
 Black manhood comes, when turbulent guilty 
 
 blisses 
 Tend thee the kiss that poisons 'mid caressings. 
 
 Hang, baby, hang ! mother's love loves such 
 
 forces. 
 Strain the fond neck that bends still to thy 
 
 clinging ; 
 Black manhood comes, when violent lawless 
 
 courses 
 Leave thee a spectacle in rude air swinging." 
 
 So sang a wither'd Beldam energetical. 
 And bann'd the ungiviug door with lips pro- 
 phetical. 
 
 COMMENDATORY VERSES, Etc. 
 
 TO J. S. KNOWLES, ESQ. 
 
 ON HIS TUAOEDY OP VIKOINIUS. 
 
 Twelve years ago I know thee, Knowles, and 
 
 then 
 Esteemed you a perfect specimen 
 Of those fine spirits warm-soul'd Ireland sends, 
 To teach us colder English how a friend's 
 Quick pulse should beat. I knew you bravo, 
 
 and plain. 
 Strong-sensed, rough-wittod, above fear or gain ; 
 But nothing further had the gift to espy. 
 Sudden you ro-appeai*. With wonder I 
 
 Hear my old friend (turn'd Shakspeare) read a 
 
 scene 
 Only to his inferior in the clean 
 Pivsses of pathos : with such fouco-liko art — 
 Ere we can see the steel, 'tis in our heart. 
 Ahnost without the aid language affords. 
 Your piece seems wrought. That huffing 
 
 medium, worcU, 
 (Which in the modern Tamburliunes quite sway 
 Our shamed souls from their bias) in your 
 
 play 
 Wo scarce attend to. Hastier passion drawi 
 Our tears on credit: and we find the cause 
 
COMMENDATORY VERSES, ETC. 
 
 631 
 
 Some two hours after, spelling o'er again 
 
 Those strange few words at ease, that wrought 
 
 the pain. 
 Proceed, old friend ; and, as the year returns, 
 Still snatch some new old story from the urns 
 Of long-dead virtue. We, that knew befoi'e 
 Your worth, may admire, we cannot love you 
 
 more. 
 
 TO THE AUTHOR OF POEMS, 
 
 PUBLISHED UNDER THE NAME OF BAHEY CORNWALL. 
 
 Let hate, or gi-osser heats, their foulness mask 
 
 Under the vizor of a borrow'd name; 
 
 Let things eschew the light deserving blame : 
 
 No cause hast thou to blush for thy sweet task. 
 
 "Marcian Colonna " is a dainty book ; 
 
 And thy " Sicilian Tale " may boldly pass ; 
 
 Thy " Dream " 'bove all, in which, as ifti a 
 
 glass. 
 On the great world's antique glories we may 
 
 look. 
 No longer then, as " lowly substitute, 
 Factor, or Procteu, for another's gains," 
 Suffer the admiring world to be deceived ; 
 Lest thou thyself, by self of fame bereaved, 
 Lament too late the lost prize of thy pains. 
 And heavenly tunes piped through an alien 
 
 flute. 
 
 Verse-honouring Phceous, Father of bright Days, 
 Must needs bestow on you both good and 
 many, 
 
 Who, building trophies of his Children's praise, 
 Run their rich Zodiac through, not missing any. 
 
 Dan Phccbus loves your book — trust me, friend 
 Hone — 
 
 The title only errs, he bids me say : 
 For while such art, wit, reading, there are shown. 
 
 He swears, 'tis not a work of every day. 
 
 TO THE EDITOR OF THE "EVERYDAY 
 BOOK." 
 
 I LIKE you, and youi* book, ingenuous Hone ! 
 
 In whose capacious all-embracing leaves 
 The veiy marrow of tradition's shown ; 
 
 And all that history — much that fiction — 
 weaves. 
 
 By every sort of taste your work is graced. 
 
 Vast stores of modern anecdote we find, 
 With good old story quaintly interlaced — 
 
 The theme as various as the reader's mind. 
 
 Rome's lie-fraught legends you so truly paint — 
 Yet kindly, — that the half-turu'd Catholic 
 
 Scarcely forbears to smile at his own saint, 
 And cannot curse the candid heretic. 
 
 Rags, relics, witches, ghosts, fiends, croWd your 
 page ; 
 Our fathers' mummeries we well-pleased be- 
 hold, 
 And, proudly conscious of a purer age, 
 Forgive some fopperies in the times of old. 
 
 TO T. STOTHARD, ESQ. 
 
 ON HIS ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE POEMS OF MR. ROGERS. 
 
 Consummate Artist, whose undying name 
 
 With classic Rogers shall go down to fame. 
 
 Be this thy crowning work ! In my young days 
 
 How often have I, with a child's fond gaze, 
 
 Pored on the pictur'd wonders* thou hadst done: 
 
 Clarissa mournful, and prim Grandison ! 
 
 All Fielding's, Smollett's heroes, rose to view; 
 
 I saw, and I believed the phantoms true. 
 
 But, above all, that most romantic talef 
 
 Did o'er my raw credulity prevail. 
 
 Where Glums and Ga\\Tics wear mysterious things. 
 
 That serve at once for jackets and for wings. 
 
 Age, that enfeebles other men's designs, 
 
 But heightens thine, and thy free draught refines. 
 
 In several ways distinct you make us feel — 
 
 Graceful as Raphael, as Watteau genteel. 
 
 Your lights and shades, as Titianesque, we praise; 
 
 And warmly wish you Titian's length of days. 
 
 TO A FRIEND ON HIS MARRIAGE. 
 
 What makes a happy wedlock 1 What has fate 
 Not given to thee in thy well-chosen mate ? 
 Good sense — good humour; — these are triviid 
 things. 
 
 Dear M , that each trite encomiast sings. 
 
 But she hath these, and more. A mind exempt 
 
 Fi'om every low-bred passion, where contempt. 
 
 Nor envy, nor detraction, ever found 
 
 A harbour yet ; an understanding sound ; 
 
 Just views of right and wrong ; perception full 
 
 Of the deform'd, and of the beautiful. 
 
 In life and manners ; wit above her sex, 
 
 Which, as a gem, her sprightly converse decks ; 
 
 Exuberant fancies, prodigal of mirth. 
 
 To gladden woodland walk, or winter hearth ; 
 
 A noble nature, conqueror in the strife 
 
 Of conflict with a hard discouraging life, 
 
 * lUustrntions of the British NovclUta, 
 t Peter Wilkiai. 
 
632 
 
 COMMENDATORY VERSES, ETC. 
 
 Strengthening the veins of virtue, pa^t the power 
 Of those whose days have been one silken hour, 
 Spoil'd fortune's pamper'd offspring ; a keen sense 
 Alike of benefit, and of offence, 
 With reconcilement quick, that instant springs 
 From the charged heart with nimble angel wings; 
 "VMiile gi-ateful fcefings, like a signet sign'd 
 By a strong hand, seem burn'd into her mind. 
 If these, dear friend, a dowry can confer 
 Richer than land, thou hast them all in her ; 
 And beauty, which some hold the chiefest boon, 
 Is in thy bargain for a make- weight thrown. 
 
 [In a leaf of a quarto edition of the " Lives of the 
 Saints, -written in Spanish by the learned and reverend 
 father, Alfonso Villegas, Divine, of the Order of St. 
 Dominick, set forth in English by John Heiffham, Anno 
 1630," bought at a Catholic book-shop in Duke-street, 
 Lincoln's Inn Fields, I found, carefully inserted, a painted 
 flower, seemingly coeval vith the book itself ; and did 
 not, for some time, discover that it opened in the middle, 
 and was the cover to a very humble draught of a St. Anne, 
 with the Virgin and Child ; doubtless the performance of 
 some poor but pious Catholic, whose meditations it 
 assisted.] 
 
 LIFT with reverent hand that tamish'd flower. 
 That shrines beneath her modest canopy 
 Memorials dear to Romish piety ; 
 Dim specks, rude shapes, of Saints ! in fervent 
 
 hour 
 The work perchance of some meek devotee, 
 Who, poor in worldly treasures to set forth 
 The sanctities she worshipp'd to their worth, 
 In this imperfect tracery might see 
 Hints, that all Heaven did to her sense reveal. 
 Cheap gifts best fit poor givers. We are told 
 Of the lone mite, the cup of water cold, 
 That in their way approved the offerer's zeal. 
 True love shows costliest, where tlie means are 
 
 scant ; 
 And, in their reckoning, they a^ownd, who want. 
 
 THE SELF-ENCHANTED. 
 
 I HAD a sense in dreams of a beauty rare. 
 Whom Fate had spell-botmd, and rooted there. 
 Stooping, like some enchanted theme. 
 Over the marge of that crystal stream, 
 Where the blooming Greek, to Echo blind, 
 With Self-love fond, had to waters pined. 
 Ages had waked, and ages slept. 
 And that bending posture still she kept : 
 For her eyes she may not tiun away, 
 
 'Till a fairer object shall pass that way 
 
 'Till an image more beauteous this world can 
 
 show. 
 Than her own which she sees in the mirror below. 
 Pore on, fair Creature ! for ever pore. 
 Nor dream to be disenchanted more : 
 For vain is expectance, and wish in vain, 
 'Till a new Narcissus can come ag;dn. 
 
 TO LOUISA M , 
 
 ■WHOM 1 VSED TO CALL "mONKBV." 
 
 Louisa, serious grown and mild, 
 I knew you once a romping child. 
 Obstreperous much and very wild. 
 Then you would clamber up my knees. 
 And strive with every art to tease. 
 When every ai-t of yours could please. 
 Those things would scarce be proper now. 
 But they are gone, I know not how. 
 And woman's written on your brow. 
 Time draws his finger o'er the scene ; 
 But I cannot forget between 
 The Thing to me you once have been; 
 Each sportive sally, wild escape, — 
 The scoff, the banter, and the jape,— 
 And antics of my gamesome Ape. 
 
TRANSLATIONS. ' 
 
 633 
 
 TRANSLATIONS. 
 
 FKOM THE LATIN OF VINCENT BOURNE. 
 
 THE BALLAD SINGERS. 
 
 Where seven fair Streets to one tall Column * 
 
 draw. 
 Two Nj'mphs have ta'en their stand, in hats of 
 
 straw ; 
 Their yellower necks huge beads of amber grace. 
 And by their trade they're of the Sirens' I'ace : 
 With cloak loose-pinn'd on each, that has been 
 
 red, 
 But long with dust and dirt discoloured 
 Belies its hue ; in mud beliind, before, 
 From heel to middle leg becrusted o'er. 
 One a small infant at the breast does bear ; 
 And one in her right hand her tuneful ware, 
 Which she would vend. Their station scarce is 
 
 taken, 
 When youths and maids flock round. His stall 
 
 foi-saken. 
 Forth comes a Son of Crispin, leathem-capt, 
 Prepai'ed to buy a ballad, if one apt 
 To move his fancy offers. Crispin's sons 
 Have, from uncounted time, with ale and bims, 
 Cherish'd the gift of Song, which sorrow quells ; 
 And, working single in their low-rooft cells. 
 Oft cheat the tedium of a winter's night 
 With anthems wai'bled in the Muses' spight. — 
 Who now hath caught the alai-m? the Servant 
 
 Maid 
 Hath heard a buzz at distance ; and, afraid 
 To miss a note, with elbows red comes out. 
 Leaving his forge to cool, Pyracmon stout 
 Thrusts in his imwash'd visage. He stands by, 
 AVho the hard trade of Porterage does ply 
 With stooping shoulders. What cares he ! he sees 
 The assembled ring, nor heeds his tottering 
 
 knees. 
 But pricks his ears up with the hopes of song. 
 So, while the Bard of Rhodope his wrong 
 Bewail'd to Proserpine on Tliracian strings, 
 The tasks of gloomy Orcus lost their stings, 
 And stone- vext Sysiphus forgets his load. 
 Hither and thither from the sevenfold road 
 Some cart or waggon crosses, which divides 
 The close-wedged audience ; but, as when the 
 
 tides 
 
 • Seven Dials. 
 
 To ploughing ships give way, the ship being paat, 
 
 They re-unite, so these unite as fast. 
 
 The older Songstress hitherto hath spent 
 
 Her elocution in the argument 
 
 Of their great Song in prose ; to wit, the woes 
 
 Which Maiden true to faithless Sailor owes — 
 
 Ah! " Wandeinng He I" — which now in loftier 
 
 verse 
 Pathetic they alternately rehearse. 
 All gaping wait the event. This Critic opes 
 His right ear to the strain. The other hopes 
 To catch it better with his left. Long trade 
 It were to tell, how the deluded Maid 
 A victim fell. And now right greedily 
 All hands are stretching forth the songs to buy. 
 That are so tragical ; which She, and She, 
 Deals out, and sbvjs the ivhile ; nor can there be 
 A breast so obdurate here, that %vill hold back 
 His contribution from the gentle rack 
 Of Music's pleasing torture. Irus' self. 
 The staff-propt Beggar, his thin gotten pelf 
 Brings out from pouch, where squalid farthings 
 
 rest, 
 And boldly claims his ballad with the best. 
 An old Dame only lingers. To her purse 
 The penny sticks. At length, with harmless 
 
 curse, 
 " Give me," she cries. " I'll paste it on my wall. 
 While the wall lasts, to show what ills befall 
 Fond hearts, seduced from Innocency's way ; 
 How Maidens fall, and Mariners betray." 
 
 TO DAVID COOK, 
 
 OF THE PABISH OP ST. MAROAIIET's, WESTMINSTER, 
 WATCHMAN. 
 
 FoK much good-natured verse received &om thee, 
 A loving verse take in return from me. 
 " Good morrow to my masters," is your cry ; 
 And to our David " twice as good," say I. 
 Not Peter's monitor, shrill Chanticleer, 
 Crows the approach of dawn in notes more clear, 
 Or tells the hours more faithfully. AVhile night 
 Fills half the world with shadows of affi-ight, 
 You with your lantern, partner of your round, 
 Traverse the paths of Margaret's hallow'd bound. 
 
The tales of ghosts which old wives' ears drink up, 
 The drunkard reeling home from tavern cup. 
 Nor prowling robber, your firm soul appal ; 
 Arm'd with thy faithful staff, thou slight'st 
 
 them all. 
 But if the market gard'ner chance to pass, 
 Bringing to town his fruit, or early grass. 
 The gentle salesman you with candour greet, 
 And with reit'rated " good mornings " meet. 
 Annoimcing your approach by formal bell, 
 Of nightly weather you the changes tell ; 
 ■\\Tiether the Moon sliiues, or her head doth 
 
 steep 
 In rain-portending clouds. WTicn mortals sleep 
 In downy rest, you bi-ave the snows and sleet 
 Of winter ; and in alley, or in street, 
 Relieve your midnight progress with a verse. 
 What though fastidious Phcjebus frown averse 
 On your didactic strain — indulgent Night 
 With caution hath seal'd up both ears of Spite, 
 And critics sleep while j'ou in staves do sound 
 The praise of long-dead Saints, whose Days 
 
 abound 
 In wintry months ; but Crispin chief proclaim : 
 Who stirs not at that Prince of Cobblers' name ? 
 Profuse in loyalty some couplets shine. 
 And wish long days to all the Brunswick line ! 
 To youths and virgins they chaste lessons read ; 
 Teach wives and husbands how their hves to 
 
 lead ; 
 Maids to be cleanly, footmen free from vice ; 
 How death at last all ranks doth equalise ; 
 And, in conclusion, pray good years befall, 
 With store of wealth, your "worthy masters 
 
 aU." 
 For this and other tokens of good \vill. 
 On boxing-day may store of shillings fill 
 Your Christmas purse ; no householder give less, 
 When at each door your blameless suit you 
 
 press : 
 And what you wish to us (it is but reason) 
 Receive in turn — the compliments o' th' season ! 
 
 ON A SEPULCHRAL STATUE OF AN 
 INFANT SLEEPING. 
 
 Beautiful Infant, who dost keep 
 
 Thy posture here, and sleep'st a marble sleep. 
 
 May the repose unbroken be. 
 
 Which the fine Artist's hand hath lent to 
 
 thee. 
 While thou onjoy'st along with it 
 That which no art, or craft, could ever hit. 
 Or counterfeit to mortal sense, 
 Th« hcRven-infuadd sleep of Innocence I 
 
 EPITAPH ON A DOG. 
 
 Poor Irus' faithful wolf-dog here I he. 
 
 That wont to tend my old blind master's steps. 
 
 His guide and guard ; nor, while my service 
 
 lasted, 
 Had he occasion for that staff, with which 
 He now goes picking out his path in fear 
 Over the highways and crossings, but would plant 
 Safe in the conduct of my friendly string, 
 A firm foot forward still, till he had reach'd 
 His poor seat on some stone, nigh where the tide 
 Of passers-by in thickest confluence flow'd : 
 To whom with loud and passionate laments 
 From morn to eve his dark estate he wail'd. 
 Nor wail'd to all in vain : some here and there, 
 The well-disposed and good, their pennies gave. 
 I meantime at his feet obsequious slept ; 
 Not all-asleep in sleep, but heart and ear 
 Prick'd uj) at his least motion, to I'eceivo 
 At his kind hand my customary crumbs. 
 And common portion in his feast of scraps ; 
 Or when night wai-n'd us homeward, tired and 
 
 spent 
 With our long day and tedious beggaiy. 
 These were my manners, this my way of life, 
 Till age and slow disease me overtook. 
 And sevcr'd from my sightless master's side. 
 But lest the grace of so good deeds should die. 
 Through tract of years in mute oblivion lost. 
 This slender tomb of turf hath Irus rear'd. 
 Cheap monument of no uugnidging hand. 
 And with short verse inscribed it, to attest, 
 In long and lasting union to attest. 
 The virtues of the Beggar and his Dog. 
 
 THE RIVAL BELLS. 
 
 A TUNEFUL challenge rings from either side 
 
 Of Thames' faix" banks. Thy twice six Bolls, 
 
 St. Bride, 
 Peal swift and shrill ; to which more slow reply 
 The deep-toned eight of Jlary Ovory. 
 Such liarmony from the contention flows. 
 That the divided ear no preference knows ; 
 Betwixt them both disparting Music's State, 
 Wliilo one exceeds in number, one in weight. 
 
 NEWTON'S PRINCIPIA 
 
 Great Newton's self, to whom the world's in 
 
 debt, 
 Owed to School Mistress sago his Alphabet; 
 
TRANSLATIONS. 
 
 C35 
 
 But quickly wiser than his Teacher grown, 
 Discover'd properties to her unknown ; 
 Of A plus B, or mimus, learn'd the use, 
 Known Quantities from unknown to educe ; 
 And made — no doubt to that old dame's sur- 
 prise — ji;/ 
 The Clirist-Cross-Row his Ladder to the skies. 
 Yet, whatsoe'er Geometricians say. 
 Her Lessons were his true Principia ! 
 
 THE HOUSEKEEPER. 
 
 The frugal snail, with fore-cast of repose, 
 Carries his house with him, where'er he goes ; 
 Peeps out — and if there comes a shower of 
 
 rain. 
 Retreats to his small domicile amain. 
 Touch but a tip of him, a horn — 'tis well — 
 He curls up in his sanctuary shell. 
 He's his own landlord, his own tenant ; stay 
 Long as he will, he dreads no Quarter Day. 
 Himself he boards and lodges ; both invites. 
 And feasts, himself; sleeps with himself o' nights. 
 He spares the upholsterer trouble to procure 
 Chattels ; himself is his own furnitui'o. 
 And his sole riches. Wheresoe'er he roam — 
 Knock when you will— he's sure to be at home. 
 
 ON A DEAF AND DUMB ARTIST.* 
 
 And hath thy blameless life become 
 
 A prey to the devouring tomb ? 
 
 A moi-e mute silence hast thou known, 
 
 A deafness deeper than thine own, 
 
 WTiile Time was? and no fi-iendly Muse, 
 
 That mark'd thy life, and knows thy dues. 
 
 Repair with qxiickening verse the breach. 
 
 And write thee into light and speech ? 
 
 The Power, that made the Tongue, restrain'd 
 
 Thy lips from lies, and speeches feign'd ; 
 
 Who made the Hearing, without wrong 
 
 Did rescue thine from Siren's song. 
 
 He let thee see the ways of men. 
 
 Which thou with pencil, not with pen, 
 
 Careful Beholder, down didst note, 
 
 And all their motley actions quote, 
 
 Thyself unstain'd the while. From look 
 
 Or gesture reading, more than hooh, I 
 
 In letter'd pride thou took'st no part, 
 
 Contented with the Silent Art, 
 
 Thyself as silent. Might I be 
 
 As speechless, deaf, and good, as He ! 
 
 • Benjamin Ferrers — Died a.d. 1732. 
 
 ^THE FEMALE ORATORS. 
 
 Nigh London's famous Bridge, a Gate more 
 
 famed 
 Stands, or once stood, from old Belinus named, 
 So judged Antiquity ; and thei-oin wrongs 
 A name, allusive strictly to two Tongues* 
 Her School hard by the Goddess Rhetoric opes, 
 And gratis deals to Oyster-wives her Tropes. 
 With Nereid green, green Nereid disputes. 
 Replies, rejoins, confutes, and still confutes. 
 One her coarse sense by metaphors expounds, 
 And one in literalities abounds ; 
 In mood and figm-e these keep up the din : 
 Words midtiply, and every word tells in. 
 Her hundred throats here bawling Slander 
 
 strains ; 
 And unclothed Venus to her tongue gives reins 
 In terms, which Demosthenic force outgo. 
 And baldest jests of foul-mouth'd Cicero. ' 
 
 Right in the midst great Ate keeps her stand, 
 And from her sovereign station taints the land. 
 Hence Pulpits rail ; grave Senates learn to jar ; 
 Quacks scold ; and Billmgsgate infects the Bar. 
 
 PINDARIC ODE TO THE TREAD-MILL. 
 I. 
 
 Inspire my spirit, Spirit of De Foe, 
 
 That sang the Pillory, 
 
 In loftier strains to show 
 
 A more sublime Jlachine 
 
 Than that, where thou wort seen, 
 
 With neck out-stretcht and shoulders ill .awry, 
 
 Courting coarse plaudits from vile crowds 
 
 below — 
 A most unseemly show ! 
 
 In such a place 
 
 Who could expose thy face, 
 
 Historiographer of deathless Crusoe ! 
 
 That paiut'st the strife 
 
 And all the naked ills of savage life, 
 
 Far above Rousseau ? 
 
 Rather myself liad stood 
 
 In that ignoble wood. 
 
 Bare to the mob, on holyday or high day. 
 
 If nought else could atone ^ 
 
 For waggish libel, 
 
 I swear on bible, 
 
 I would have spared him for thy sake alone, 
 
 Man Friday ! 
 
 • Bilinguh in the Latin. 
 
636 
 
 EPICEDIUM. 
 
 Our ancestors' were sour days. 
 Groat Master of Romance ! 
 A milder doom had fallen to thy chance 
 In our days : 
 Thy sole assignment 
 Some sohtary confinement, 
 (Not worth thy care a carrot,) 
 Where in world-hidden cell 
 Thou thy own Crusoe might have acted well, 
 Only without the parrot ; 
 By sure experience taught to know, 
 Whether the qualms thou mak'st him feel were 
 truly such or no. 
 
 But stay ! methinks in statelier measure — 
 
 A more companionable pleasure — 
 
 I see thy steps the mighty Tread- Mill trace, 
 
 (The subject of my song, 
 
 Delay'd however long,) 
 
 And some of thine own race, 
 
 To keep thee company, thou bring'st with thee 
 
 along. 
 Tlicre with thee go, 
 Link'd in like sentence, 
 With regulated pace and footing slow, 
 Kach old acquaintance, 
 
 JRogue — harlot — thief — that live to future ages ; 
 Through many alabour'd tome, 
 Raukly embalai'd in thy too natural pages. 
 Faith, friend De Foe, thou art quite at home ! 
 Not one of thy groat offspring thou dost lack, 
 From pirate Singleton to pilfering Jack. 
 Here Flandrian Moll her brazen incest brags; 
 Vice-stript Roxana, penitent in rags, 
 There jjoiuts to Amy, treading equal chimes, 
 The faithful handmaid to her faithless crimes. 
 
 Incompetent my song to raise 
 
 To its just height thy praise, 
 
 Great Mill 1 
 
 That by thy motion proper 
 
 (No thanks to wind, or sail, or working rill). 
 
 Grinding that stubborn corn, the Human will, 
 
 Turn'st out men's consciences. 
 
 That were begrimed before, as clean and sweet 
 
 As flour from purest wheat, 
 
 Into thy hopper. 
 
 All reformation short of thee but nonsense is, 
 
 Or human, or divine. 
 
 Compared witli thco, 
 
 What are the labours of that Jumping Sect, 
 
 Which feeble laws connive at rather than respect 
 
 Thou dost not bump. 
 
 Or jump. 
 
 But waik men into virtue ; betwixt crime 
 
 And slow repentance giving breathing time, 
 
 And leisure to be good ; 
 
 Instructing with discretion demi-repe 
 
 How to direct their steps. 
 
 Thou best Philosopher made out of wood ! 
 
 Not that which framed the tub. 
 
 Where sate the Cynic cub. 
 
 With nothing in his bosom sympathetic ; 
 
 But from those groves derived, I deem, 
 
 Where Plato nursed his dream 
 
 Of immortality; 
 
 Seeing that clearly 
 
 Thy system all is merely 
 
 Peripatetic. 
 
 Thou to thy pupils dost such lessons give 
 
 Of how to hve 
 
 With temperance, sobriety, morality, 
 
 (A new art,) 
 
 That from thy school, by force of virtuous deeds. 
 
 Each TjTo now proceeds 
 
 A " Walking Stewart ! " 
 
 GOING OR GONE. 
 I. 
 Fine merry franions. 
 Wanton companions. 
 My daj's are ev'n banyans 
 
 With thinking upon ye ! 
 How Death, that last stinger, 
 Finis-writer, end-bringer. 
 Has laid his chill finger. 
 
 Or is laying on ye. 
 
 There 's rich Kitty Whcatloy, 
 With footing it featly 
 That took me completely, 
 
 She sleeps in the Kirk House; 
 And poor Pully Perkin, 
 ^\'lloso Dad was still lirking 
 The jolly ale fiikin, 
 
 She's gone to the Work-houae ; 
 
 Fine Gard'ner, Bon CiU'tor 
 (In ton counties no smarter) 
 Has ta'ou his departure 
 
 For Pro8eri)ino'8 orcliardM ; 
 
FREE THOUGHTS ON SEVERAL EMINENT COMPOSERS. 637 
 
 And Lily, postilion, 
 
 
 With cheeks of vermilion, 
 
 IX, 
 
 Is one of a million 
 
 And prudent Miss Wither 
 
 That fill up the church-yards ; 
 
 Not in jest now doth wither. 
 
 
 And soon must go — whither 
 
 IV. ^ 
 
 Nor I well, nor you know ; 
 
 And, lusty as Dido, 
 
 And flaunting Miss Waller, 
 
 Fat Clemitson's widow 
 
 That soon must befall her. 
 
 Flits now a small shadow 
 
 Whence none can reciill her, 
 
 By Stygian hid ford ; 
 
 Though proud once as Juno ! 
 
 And good Master Clapton 
 Has thirty years uapt on, 
 
 
 
 The ground he last hapt on. 
 
 
 Intomb'd by fair Widford ; 
 
 
 FREE THOUGHTS ON SEVERAL EMINENT 
 
 V. 
 
 COMPOSERS. 
 
 And gallant Tom Dockwra, 
 
 Some cry up Haydn, some Mozart, 
 
 Of Nature's finest crockeiy. 
 
 Just as the whim bites ; for my part. 
 
 Now but thin air and mockery. 
 
 I do not care a farthing candle 
 
 Lurks by Avernus, 
 
 For either of them, or for Handel. — 
 
 Whose honest grasp of hand 
 
 Cannot a man live free and easy, 
 
 Still, while his life did stand, 
 
 Without admiring Pergolesi 1 
 
 At friend's or foe's command, 
 
 Or through the world with comfort go, 
 
 Almost did burn us. 
 
 That never heard of Doctor Blow 1 
 
 
 So help me heaven, I hardly have ; 
 
 VI. 
 
 And yet I eat, and drink, and shave. 
 
 Roger de Coverloy 
 
 Like other people, if you watch it. 
 
 Not more good man than he ; 
 
 And know no more of stave or crotchet. 
 
 Yet has he equally 
 
 Than did the primitive Peruvians ; 
 
 Push'd for Cocytus, 
 
 Or those old ante-queer-diluvians 
 
 With drivelling Worral, 
 
 That lived in the unwash'd world with Jubal, 
 
 And wicked old Dorrell, 
 
 Before that dirty blacksmith Tubal 
 
 'Gainst whom I've a quarrel, 
 
 By stroke on anvil, or by summ'at. 
 
 Whose end might affright us ! — 
 
 Found out, to his great surprise, the gamut. 
 
 
 I care no more for Cimarosa, 
 
 VII, 
 
 Than he did for Salvator Rosa, 
 
 Kindly hearts have I known ; 
 
 Being no piunter ; and bad luck 
 
 Kindly hearts, they are flown ; 
 
 Be mine, if I can bear that Gluck ! 
 
 Here and there if but one 
 
 Old Tycho Brahe, and modern Herschel, 
 
 Linger yet uneffaced, 
 
 Had something in them ; but who's Purcel ] 
 
 Imbecile tottering elves. 
 
 The devil, with his foot so cloven. 
 
 Soon to be wreck'd on shelves, 
 
 For aught I care, may take Beethoven ; 
 
 These scarce are half themselves, 
 
 And, if the bargain does not smt. 
 
 With age and cai'e crazed. 
 
 I'll throw him Weber in to boot. 
 
 
 There's not the splitting of a splinter 
 
 VIII. 
 
 To choose 'twixt him last named, and Winter. 
 
 But this day Fanny Hutton 
 
 Of Doctor Pepusch old queen Dido 
 
 Her last dress has put on ; 
 
 Knew just as much, God knows, as I do. 
 
 Her fine lessons forgotten, 
 
 I would not go four miles to visit 
 
 She died, as the dunce died ; 
 
 Sebastian Bach ; (or Batch, which is it 1) 
 
 And prim Betsy Chambers, j 
 
 No more I would for Bononcini, 
 
 Decay 'd in her members. 
 
 As for Novello, or Rossini, 
 
 No longer remembei-s 
 
 I shall not say a word to gineve 'em, 
 
 Things, as she once did ; 
 
 Because they're living ; so I leave 'em. 
 
THE WIFE'S TRIAL; 
 
 OR, 
 
 THE INTRUDING WIDOW. 
 
 a ©ramatic |3ocm. 
 
 FOUNDED ON MR. CRABBE's TALE OF " THE CONFIDANT." 
 
 CHARACTERS. 
 
 Mr. Seley, a Wiltshire Gentleman, t Lucy, Sister to Selby. 
 
 KATHtRiNB, Wife to Selby. \ Mrs. Frampton, A Widme. 
 
 Servants. 
 Scene — at Mr. Selhy's Souse, or in the grounds adjacent. 
 
 Scene — A Library. 
 Mk. Selby. Katheuine. 
 
 Selhy. Do not too for mistake me, gentlest wife ; 
 I meant to chide your virtues, not youi'self, 
 And those too with allowance. I have not 
 Been blest by thy fair side with five white years 
 Of smooth and even wedlock, now to touch 
 With any strain of harshness on a string 
 Hath yielded me such music. 'Twas the quality 
 Of a too grateful nature in my Katlierine, 
 That to the lame performance of some vows, 
 And common courtesies of man to wife, 
 Attributing too much, hath sometimes seem'd 
 To esteem as favours, what in that blest union 
 Are but reciprocal and trivial dues, 
 As fairly yours as mine : 'twas this I thought 
 Gently to reprehend. 
 
 J^ath. In fiicndship's barter 
 
 The riches we exchange .should hold .some level, 
 And corresponding worth. Jewels for toys 
 Demand some thanks thrown in. You took me, 
 
 sir. 
 To that blest haven of my peace, your bosom, 
 An orphan founder'd in the world's black storm. 
 Poor, you have made me rich; from lonely maiden, 
 Your cherish'd and your full-accompanied wife. 
 
 Sdby. But to divert the subject : Kate too fond, 
 I woidd not wrest your meanings ; else that word 
 Accompanied, and full-accompanied too, 
 Might raise a doubt in some men, that their wives 
 Haply did think their company too long; 
 And over-company, we know by proof. 
 Is worse than no attendance. 
 
 Kath. I must guess, 
 
 You speak this of the Widow — 
 
 Selby. 'Twas a bolt 
 
 At random shot ; but if it hit, beheve me, 
 I am most sorry to have wounded you 
 Through a friend's side. I know not how we 
 
 have swerved 
 From our first talk. I was to caution you 
 Against this fault of a too grateful nature : 
 Which, for some girlish obligations past. 
 In that relenting season of the heart, 
 When slightest favours pass for benefits 
 Of endless binding, would entail upon you 
 An iron slavery of obsequious duty 
 To the proud will of an imperious woman. 
 
 Kuth. The favours are not slight to hor I owe. 
 
 Sdby. Slight or not slight, the tribute she 
 exacts 
 Cancels all duos — [A voice toUhin. 
 
 oven now I hear her call you 
 
THE WIFE'S TRIAL ; OR, THE INTRUDING WIDOW. 
 
 639 
 
 In such a tone, as lordliest mistresses 
 ]<^xpcct a slave's attendance. Prithee, Kate, 
 Let her expect a brace of minutes or so. 
 Siiy you are busy. Use her by degrees 
 To some less hard exactions. 
 
 Kath. I conjure you. 
 
 Detain me not. I will return — 
 
 Sclby. Sweet wife, 
 
 Use thy own pleasure — [£'a;t«KATHERiNE. 
 
 but it troubles me. 
 A visit of three days, as was pretended, 
 Spun to ten tedious weeks, and no hint given 
 When she will go ! I would this buxom Widow 
 Were a thought handsomer ! I'd fixirly try 
 My Katherine's constancy ; make desperate love 
 In seeming earnest ; and raise up such broils, 
 That she, not I, should be the first to warn 
 The insidious guest depart. 
 
 Be-enter Kathebine. 
 
 So soon return'd 1 
 What was our Widow's will 1 
 
 Kath. A trifle, sir. 
 
 Selby. Some toilet service — to adjust her head, 
 Or help to stick a pin in the right place— 
 Kath. Indeed 'twas none of these. 
 Sc.lhy. Or new vamp up 
 
 The tarnisli'd cloak she came in. I have seen 
 
 her 
 Demand such service from thee, as her maid. 
 Twice told to do it, would blush angry-red, 
 And pack her few clothes up. Poor fool ! fond 
 
 slave ! 
 And yet my dearest Kate ! — This day at least 
 (It is our wedding-day) we spend in freedom. 
 And will forget our Widow. — Philip, our coach — 
 Why weeps my wife ? You know, I promised 
 
 you 
 An airing o'er the pleasant Hampshire downs 
 To the blest cottage on the green hill side, 
 Where first I told my love. I wonder much. 
 If the crimson pai'lour hath exchanged its hue 
 For colours not so welcome. Faded though it be. 
 It will not show less lovely than the tinge 
 Of this faint red, contending with the pale. 
 Where once the fuU-flush'd health gave to this 
 
 cheek 
 An apt resemblance to the fruit's warm side, 
 That bears my Katherine's name. — 
 
 Our carriage, Philip. 
 
 Enter a Servant. , 
 
 Now, Robin, what make you here 1 ' 
 
 Servant. May it please you, 
 
 The coachman has driven out ^vith Mrs. Framptou. 
 
 Selby. He had no orders — 
 
 Servant. None, sir, that I know of. 
 
 But from the lady, who expects some letter 
 
 At the next Post Town. 
 
 Selby. Go, Robin. ^Exit Servant. 
 
 How is tliis ? 
 
 Kath. I came to tell you so, but fear'd your 
 anger — 
 
 Selby. It was ill done though of this Mistress 
 Frampton, 
 This forwai'd Widow. But a ride's poor loss 
 Imports not much. In to your chamber, love, 
 Where you with music may begiule the hour. 
 While I am tossing over dusty tomes. 
 Till our most reasonable friend returns. 
 
 Kath. I am all obedience. [Exit Katiieriwe. 
 
 Selby. Too obedient, Kate, 
 
 And to too many masters. I can hardly 
 On such a day as this refrain to speak 
 My sense of this injurious friend, this pest, 
 This household evil, this close-clinging fiend. 
 In rough tei-ms to my wife. 'Death, my ovra 
 
 servants 
 ControU'd above me ! orders countermanded ! 
 What nest 1 IServant enters and announces the Sister. 
 
 Enter Lucy. 
 Sister ! I know you are come to welcome 
 This day's return. 'Twas well done. 
 
 Liicy. You seem ruffled. 
 
 In years gone by this day was used to be 
 The smoothest of the year. Your honey turn'd 
 So soon to gall ? 
 
 Selby. Gall'd am I, and with cause. 
 
 And rid to death, yet cannot get a riddance. 
 Nay, scarce a ride, by this proud Widow's leave. 
 
 Lucy. Something you wrote me of a Mistress 
 Frampton. 
 
 Selby. She came at first a meek admitted guest. 
 Pretending a short stay ; her whole deportment 
 Seem'd as of one obliged. A slender trunk. 
 The wardrobe of her scant and ancient clothing, 
 Bespoke no more. But in few days her dress. 
 Her looks, were proudly changed. And now she 
 
 flaunts it 
 In jewels stolen or borrow'd from my wife ; 
 Who owes her some sti-ange service, of what 
 
 nature 
 I must be kept in ignorance. Katherine's meek 
 And gentle spiiit cowers beneath her eye, 
 As spell-bound by some witch. 
 
 Lucy. Some mystery hangs on it. 
 
 How bears she in her carriage towards yourself ! 
 
 Selby. As one who fears, and yet not greatly 
 cares 
 For my displeasure. Sometimes I have thought, 
 A secret glance would tell me she could love, 
 If I but gave encouragement. Before me 
 She keeps some moderation ; but is never 
 Closeted with my wife, but in the end 
 
640 
 
 THE WIFE'S TRIAL; OR, THE INTRUDING WIDOW. 
 
 I find my Katherine in briny tears. 
 
 From the small cbambei-, where she first was 
 
 lodged, 
 The gradual fiend by specious wriggling arts 
 Has now ensconced herself in the best part 
 Of this large mansion ; calls the left wing her 
 
 own ; 
 Commands my servants, equipage. — I hear 
 Her hated tread. What makes she back so Boonl 
 
 Enter Mrs. Frampton. 
 Mrs. F. 0, I am jolter'd, bruised, and shook to 
 deatli, 
 With your vile Wiltshire roads. The villain 
 
 Philip 
 Chose, on my conscience, the perversest tracks, 
 And stoniest hard lanes in all the county. 
 Till I was fain get out, and so walk back. 
 My eiTaud unperform'd at Andover. 
 
 Lucy. And I shall love the knave for ever after. 
 
 \^Aside. 
 
 Mrs. F. A friend with you ! 
 
 Selhy. My eldest sister, Lucy, 
 
 Come to congratulate this returning morn. — 
 Sister, my wife's friend. Mistress Frampton. 
 
 Mrs. F. Pray, 
 
 Be seated, for your brother's eake, you are 
 
 welcome. 
 I had thought this day to have spent in homely 
 
 fashion 
 With the good couple, to whose hospitality 
 I stand so far indebted. But your coming 
 Makes it a feast. 
 
 Lucy. She does the honours natui-ally — 
 
 [Aside. 
 
 Selby, As if she were the mistress of the house — 
 
 [Aside. 
 
 Mrs. F. I love to be at home with loving 
 friends. 
 To stand on ceremony with obligations. 
 Is to restrain the obliger. That old coach, 
 
 though. 
 Of yours jumbles one strangely. 
 
 Selhy. I shall order 
 
 An equipage soon, more easy to you, madam — 
 
 Lucy. To drive her and her pride to Lucifer, 
 I hope he means. [Aside. 
 
 Mrs. F. I must go trim myself; this humbled 
 garb 
 Would shame a wedding-feast. I have your leave 
 For a shoi-t absence^ — and your Katherine — 
 
 ScUiy. You'll find her in her closet — 
 
 Mrs. F. Fare you well, then. 
 
 [Kxit. 
 
 Selhy. Hew like you her a.ssurancc ? 
 
 Lucy. Even so well, 
 
 That if this Widow were my giiest, not yours. 
 
 She should have coach enough, and scope to ride. 
 My merry groom should in a trice convey her 
 To Sarum Plain, and set her down at Stonehenge, 
 To pick her path through those antiques at 
 
 leisure ; 
 She should take sample of our Wiltshire flints. 
 0, be not lightly jealous ! nor surmise, 
 That to a wanton bold-faced thing like this 
 Your modest shrinking Katherine could impart 
 Secrets of any worth, especially 
 Secrets that touch'd your peace. If there be 
 
 aught, 
 My life upon't, 'tis but some girlish story 
 Of a First Love ; which even the boldest wife 
 Might modestly deny to a husband's ear. 
 Much more your timid and too sensitive Kathenne. 
 
 Selby. I think it is no more ; and will dismiss 
 My further fears, if ever I have had such. 
 
 Lucy. Shall we go walk 1 I'd see your gardens, 
 brother ; 
 And how the new trees thrive, I recommended. 
 Your Katherine is engaged now — 
 
 Selhy. I'll attend you. 
 
 [Extant. 
 
 Scene — Servants' Hall. 
 Housekeeper, Phit.tp, and others, laughing. 
 Houselceeper. Our Lady's guest, since her short 
 ride, seems ruffled. 
 And somewhat in disorder. Philip, Philip, 
 I do suspect some roguery. Yom- mad tricks 
 Will some day cost you a good place, I warrant. 
 Philip. Good Mistress Jane, our serious houso-"" 
 keeper, 
 And sage Duenna to the maids and scullions, 
 We must have leave to laugh ; our brains are 
 
 younger. 
 And undisturb'd with care of keys and pantries. 
 We are wild things. 
 
 Butler. Good Philip, tell us all. 
 
 All. Ay, as you live, tell, tell — 
 Philip. Mad fellows, you shall have it. 
 The Widow's bell rang lustily and loud — 
 
 Butler. I think that no one can mistake her 
 
 ringing. 
 Waitituj-maid. Our Lady's ring is soft sweet 
 music to it. 
 More of entreaty hath it than command. 
 
 Philij). I lose my story, if you interrupt nie 
 thus. 
 The bell, I say, rang fiercely ; and a voice 
 More slirill than bell, call'd out for " Coachman 
 
 Philij) !" 
 I straigiit obey'd, as 'tis my name and office. 
 " Drive mo," (juoth she, "to the next market town, 
 Wliore I have liojio of letters." I made haste ; 
 Put to the hor.ses, saw her safely coach' d, 
 
Aud drove her — 
 
 Waiting -viaid. By the straight high road to 
 Anduvcr, 
 I guess — 
 
 Philip. Pray, warrant things within your 
 knowledge. 
 Good Mistress Abigail ; look to your dressings, 
 Aud leave the skill in horses to the coachman. 
 Butler. He'll have his humour; best not 
 
 interrupt him. 
 Philip. 'Tis market-day, thought I ; and the 
 poor beasts. 
 Meeting such droves of cattle and of people, 
 May take a fright ; so down the lane I trundled, 
 Where Goodman Dobson's crazy mare was 
 
 founder'd. 
 And where the flints were biggest, and ruts 
 
 widest, 
 By ups and downs, and such bone-cracking 
 
 motions 
 We flounder'd on a furlong, till my madam, 
 In policy, to save the few joints left her. 
 Betook her to her feet, and there we parted. 
 All. Ha ! ha ! ha ! 
 Butler. Hang her, 'tis pity such as she should 
 
 ride. 
 Waithig-maid. I think she is a witch ; I have 
 tired myself out 
 With sticking pins in her pillow ; still she 'scapes 
 them — 
 Butler. And I with helping her to mum for 
 claret. 
 But never yet could cheat her dainty palate. 
 HoU'Sekeeper. Well, well, she is the guest of our 
 good Mistress, 
 And so should be respected. Though, I think, 
 Our Master cares not for her company, 
 He would ill brook we should express so much 
 By rude discourtesies, and short attendance. 
 Being but servants. {A Bell rings furiously.) 
 
 'Tis her bell speaks now ; 
 Good, good, bestir yourselves : who knows who's 
 wanted 1 
 Butler. But 'twas a merry trick of Philip 
 coachman. ^Exeunt. 
 
 SOENK. — Mrs. Selhy's Chamber. 
 Mrs. Frampton, Kathf.rine, working. 
 Mrs. P. I am thinking, child, how contrary our 
 fates / 
 
 Have traced our lots through life. — Another 
 
 needle. 
 This works untowardly. — An heiress bom 
 To splendid prospects, at our common school 
 1 was as one above you all, not of you ; 
 Hai my distinct prerogatives ; my freedoms, 
 
 Denied to you. Pray, listen — 
 
 Kath. I must hear, 
 
 What you are pleased to speak — how my heart 
 sinks here ! [Aside. 
 
 Mrs. F. My chamber to myself, my separate 
 maid, 
 My coach, and so forth. — Not that needle, simple 
 
 one. 
 With the great staring eye fit for a Cyclops ! 
 Mine own are not so blinded with their griefs, 
 But I could make a shift to thread a smaller. 
 A cable or a camel might go through this, 
 And never strain for the passage. 
 
 Kath. I will fit you. — 
 
 Intolerable tyranny ! [Asidt. 
 
 Mrs. F. Quick, quick ; 
 
 You were not once so slack. — As I was saying. 
 Not a young thing among ye, but observed me 
 Above the mistress. Who but I was sought to 
 In all your dangers, all your little difficulties, 
 Your girlish scrapes ? I was the scape goat still. 
 To fetch you ofi"; kept all your secrets, some, 
 Perhaps, since then — 
 
 Kath. No more of that, for mercy, 
 
 If you'd not have me, sinking at your feet, 
 Cleave the cold eai'th for comfort. [KneeU. 
 
 Mrs.F. This tome? 
 
 This posture to your friend had better suited 
 The orplian Katherine in her humble school-daya 
 To the then rich heiress, than the wife of Selby, 
 Of wealthy Mr. Selby, 
 
 To the poor widow Fi'ampton, sunk as she is. 
 Come, come, 
 
 'Twas something, or 'twas nothing, that I said ; 
 I did not mean to fright you, sweetest bed-fellow ! 
 You once were so, but Selby now engrosses you. 
 I'll make him give you up a night or so ; 
 In faith I will : that we may lie, and talk 
 Old tricks of school-days over. 
 
 Kath. Hear me, madam — 
 
 Mrs. F. Not by that name. Your friend — 
 
 Kath. My truest friend. 
 
 And saviour of my honour ! 
 
 Mrs. F. This sounds better ; 
 
 You still shall find me such. 
 
 Kath. That you have graced 
 
 Our poor house with your presence hitherto. 
 Has been my greatest comfort, the so.e solace 
 Of my forlorn and hardly guess'd estate. 
 You have been pleased 
 To accept some trivial hospitalities. 
 In part of payment of a long arrcar 
 I owe to you, no less than for my life. 
 
 Mrs. F. You speak my services too large. 
 
 Kath. Nay, less ; 
 
 For what an abject thing were life to me 
 Without your silence on my dreadfal secret I 
 
 T T 
 
And I would wish the league we have renew'd 
 Might be perpetual — 
 
 Mrs. F. Have a care, fine madam ! 
 
 [•■IsWe. 
 Kaili. That one house still might hold us. 
 But my husband 
 Has shown himself of late — 
 
 Mrs. F. How, Mistress Selby? 
 
 Kath. Not, not impatient. You misconstrue 
 him. 
 He honours, and he loves, nay, he must love 
 The friend of his wife's youth. But there are 
 
 moods. 
 In which — 
 
 Mrs. F. I understand you ; — in which husbands, 
 And wives that love, may wish to be alone. 
 To nurse the tender fits of new-born dalliance, 
 After a five yeai's' wedlock. 
 
 Kath. Was that well. 
 
 Or charitably put ? do these pale cheeks 
 Proclaim a wanton blood 1 This wasting form 
 Seem a fit theatre for Levity 
 To play his love-tricks on ; and act such follies, 
 As even in Afiiection's first bland Moon 
 Have less of grace than pardon in best wedlocks? 
 I was about to say, that there are times, 
 When the most frank and sociable man 
 May surfeit on most loved society, 
 Preferring loneness rather — 
 Mrs. P. To my company — 
 
 Kath. Ay, yours, or mine, or any one's. Nay, 
 take 
 Not this unto yourself. Even in the newness 
 Of our first married loves 'twas sometimes so. 
 For solitude, I have heard my Selby say. 
 Is to the mind as rest to the corjjoral functions ; 
 And he would call it oft, the darfs soft sleep. 
 Mrs. F. What is your drift] and whereto tends 
 this speech, 
 Rhetorically labour'd 1 
 
 Kath. That you would 
 
 Abstain but from our house a month, a week ; 
 make request but for a single day. 
 Mrs. F. A month, a week, a day ! A single 
 hour 
 la every week, and month, and the long year, 
 And all the years to come ! My footing here, 
 Slipt once, recovers never. From the state 
 Of gilded roofs, attendance, luxuries. 
 Parks, gardens, sauntering walks, or wholesome 
 
 rides. 
 To the bare cottage on the withering moor, 
 Where I myself am servant to myself. 
 Or only waited on by blackest thoughts — 
 I sink, if tins be so. No ; here I sit. 
 Kath, Then I am lost for ever ! 
 
 \Sinka at her feel — cuiUuti diups. 
 
 Scene. — An Apartment contiguous to tht last, 
 Selbv, as if listening. 
 Selby. The sounds have died away. "What am 
 
 I changed to ] 
 What do I here, list'ning like to an abject, 
 Or heartless^ wittol, that must hear no good. 
 If he hear aught ] ' This shall to the ear of 
 
 your husband." 
 It was the Widow's word. I guess'd some 
 
 mystery. 
 And the solution with a vengeance comes. 
 What can my wife have left untold to me, 
 That must be told by proxy ? I begin 
 To call in doubt the course of her life past 
 Under my very eyes. She hatli not been good. 
 Not virtuous, not discreet ; she hath not outrun 
 My wishes still with prompt and meek observance. 
 Perhaps she is not fair, sweet-voiced ; her eyes 
 Not like the dove's ; all this as well may be, 
 As that she should entreasure up a secret 
 lu the peculiar closet of her breast. 
 And grudge it to my ear. It is my right 
 To claim the halves in any truth she owns, 
 As much as in the babe I have by her ; 
 Upon whose face henceforth I fear to look. 
 Lest I should fancy in its innocent brow 
 Some strange shame written. 
 
 Enter LuCY. 
 Sister, an anxious word with you. 
 From out the chamber, where my wife but now 
 Held talk with her encroaching friend, I heard 
 (Not of set purpose heark'uing, but by chance) 
 A voice of chiding, answei-'d by a tone 
 Of rej^lication, such as the meek dove 
 Makes, when the kite has clutch'd her. The high 
 
 Widow 
 Was loud and stormy. I distinctly heard 
 One threat pronounced — " Your husband shall 
 
 know all." 
 I am no listener, sister ; and I hold 
 A secret, got by such unmanly shift, 
 The pitiful'st of thefts ; but what mine ear, 
 I not intending it, receives perforce, 
 I count my lawful prize. Some subtle meaning 
 Lurks in this fiend's behaviour ; which, by force. 
 Or fraud I must make mine. 
 
 Lucy. The gentlest means 
 
 Are still the wisest. What, if you should pi'ess] 
 Your wife to a disclosure ! 
 
 Selby. I have tried 
 
 All gentler means ; thrown out low hints, which, 
 
 though 
 Merely suggestions still, have never fail'd 
 To blanch her cheek with feara. Koughliur to 
 
 insist. 
 
THE WIFE'S TRIAL ; OR, THE INTRUDING WIDOW. 
 
 643 
 
 Would be to kill, where I but meant to heal. 
 
 Lucy. Your own description gave that Widow 
 out 
 As one not much precise, nor over coy, 
 And nice to listen to a suit of love. 
 What if you feign'd a courtship, putting on, 
 (To woi-li the seci'et fi'om her easy faith,) 
 For honest ends, a most dishonest seeming ] 
 
 Sdby. I see your drift, and partly meet your 
 counsel. 
 But must it not in me appear prodigious. 
 To say the least, unnatural, and suspicious. 
 To move hot love, where I have shown cool scorn, 
 And uudissembled looks of blank aversion ] 
 
 Lucy. Vain woman is the dupe of her own 
 charms, 
 And easily credits the resistless power, 
 That in besieging beauty lies, to cast down 
 The slight-built fortress of a casual hate. 
 
 Selby. I am resolved — 
 
 Lucy. Success attend your wooing ! 
 
 Selby. And I'll about it roundly, my wise sister. 
 
 ^Exeunt. 
 
 Scene. — The Library. 
 Mb. Selby. Mes. Frampton. 
 
 Selby. A fortunate encounter. Mistress Framp- 
 ton. 
 My purpose was, if you could spare so much 
 From your sweet leisure, a few words in private. 
 
 Mis. F. What mean his alter'd tones ] These 
 looks to me, 
 Whose glances yet he has repell'd ^vith coolness 1 
 Is the wind changed ? I'll veer about with it. 
 And meet him in all fashions. [Aside. 
 
 All my leisure, 
 Feebly bestow'd upon my kind friends here, 
 Would not express a tithe of the obligements 
 I every hour incur. 
 
 Selby. No more of that. 
 
 I know not why, my wife hath lost of late 
 Much of her cheerful spirits. 
 
 Mrs. F. It was my topic 
 
 To-day; and every day, and all day long, 
 I still am chiding with her. " Child," I said. 
 And said it pretty roundly — it may be 
 I was too peremptory — we elder school-fellows. 
 Presuming on the advantage of a year 
 Or two, which, in that tender time, seem'd much. 
 In after years, much like to elder sisters. 
 Are prone to keep the authoritative style, J 
 When time has made the difference most ridicu- 
 lous — 
 
 Selby. The observation 's shrewd. 
 
 Mrs. F. " Child," I was saying, 
 
 " If some wives had obtain'd a lot like yours," 
 And then perhaps I sigh'd, " they would not sit 
 
 In comers moping, like to sullen moppets, 
 That want their will, but dry their eyes, and look 
 Their cheerful husbands in the face," perhaps 
 I said, tlieir Selbys, " with proportion'd looks 
 Of honest joy." 
 
 Selby. You do suspect no jealousy? 
 
 Mrs. F. What is his import ? Whereto tends 
 his speech ] [Asi ie. 
 
 Of whom, or what, should she be jealous, sir? 
 
 Selby. I do not know, but women have their 
 fancies ; 
 And underneath a cold indifference. 
 Or show of some distaste, iiusbands have mask'd 
 A growing fondness for a female friend, 
 Which the wife's eye was shai'p enough to see, 
 Before the friend had wit to find it out. 
 You do not quit us soon ? 
 
 Afrs. F. 'Tis as I find ; 
 
 Your Katherine profits by my lessons, sir. — 
 Means this man honest ? Is there no deceit] [Aside. 
 
 Selby. She cannot choose. — Well, well, I have 
 been thinking. 
 And if the matter were to do again — 
 
 Mrs. F. What matter, sir 1 
 
 Selby. This idle bond of wedlock ; 
 
 These sour-sweet briars, fetters of hai-sh silk ; 
 I might have made, I do not say a better. 
 But a more fit choice in a wife. 
 
 Mrs. F. The parch' d ground. 
 
 In hottest Julys, drinks not in the showers 
 More greedily than I his words ! [Aside. 
 
 Selby. My humour 
 
 Is to be frank and jovial ; and that man 
 Affects me best, who most reflects me in 
 My most fi'ee tempei'. 
 
 Mrs. F. Were you free to choose. 
 
 As jestingly I'll put the supposition. 
 Without a thought reflecting on your Katherine, 
 What sort of Woman would you make your 
 choice 1 
 
 Selby. I like your humour and will meet your 
 jest. 
 She should be one about my Katherine's age; 
 But not so old, by some ten yeai-s, in gravity. 
 One that would meet my mii-th, sometimes out- 
 run it; 
 No muling, pining moppet, as you said, 
 Nor moping maid that I must still be teaching 
 The freedoms of a wife all her life after : 
 But one that, having worn the chain before, 
 (And worn it lightly, as report gave out,) 
 Enfranchised from it by her poor fool's death. 
 Took it not so to heait that I need dread 
 To die myself, for fear a second time 
 To wet a widow's eye. 
 
 Mrs. F. Some veidows, sir, 
 
 Hearing you talk so wildly, would be apt 
 
644 
 
 THE WIFE'S TRIAL; OR, THE INTRUDING WIDOW. 
 
 To put strange misconstruction on your words. 
 
 As aiuiing at a Turkish liberty, 
 
 Wliere the free husband hath his several mates. 
 
 His Penseroso, his Allegro wife, 
 
 Te suit liis sober or his frolic fit. 
 
 SeViy. How judge you of that latitude ? 
 Mrs. P. As one, 
 
 European customs bred, must judge. Had I 
 Been bom a native of the liberal East, 
 
 might have thought as they do. Yet I knew 
 A niai-ried man that took a second wife, 
 And (the man's circumstances duly weigh'd, 
 With all their bearings) the considerate world 
 Nor much approved, nor much condcmn'd the 
 deed. 
 Selby. You move my wonder strangely. Pray, 
 
 proceed. 
 Mrs. P. An eye of wanton liking he had placed 
 Upon a Widow, who Uked him again. 
 But stood on terms of honourable love, 
 And scrupled wronging his most virtuous wife — 
 When to their ears a lucky rumour ran. 
 That this demure and saintly-seeming wife 
 Had a first husband living ; with the which 
 Being question'd, she but faintly could deny. 
 " A priest indeed there was ; some words had 
 
 pass'd, 
 But scarce amounting to a marriage rite. 
 Her friend was absent ; she supposed him dead ; 
 And, seven years parted, both were free to 
 choose." 
 Selhy. What did the indignant husband ? Did 
 he not 
 With violent handlings scigmati-se the cheek 
 Of the deceiving wife, who had entail'd 
 Shame on their innocent babe ? 
 
 Mrs. P. He neither tore 
 
 His wife's locks nor his own; but wisely weighing 
 His own offence with hers in equal poise, 
 And woman's weakness 'gainst the strength of 
 
 man, 
 Came to a calm and witty compromise. 
 He coolly took his gay-faced widow home. 
 Made her his second wife ; and still the first 
 Lost few or none of her prerogatives. 
 The servants call'd her mistress still ; she kept 
 Tlie keys, and had the total ordering 
 Of the house affairs; and, some slight toys 
 
 excepted. 
 Was all a moderate wife would wish to be. 
 
 Selhy. A talc full of dramatic incident ! — 
 And if a man should put it in a play, 
 How sliould he name the pai-ties] 
 
 Mrs. P. The man's name 
 
 Through time I have forgot — the widow's too ; — 
 But his fii-fit wife's first name, her maiden one, 
 Was — not unlike to that your Katherine bore. 
 
 Before she took the honor'd style of Selby. 
 
 Selhy. A dangerous meaning in your riddle 
 lurks. 
 One knot is yet unsolved ; that told, this strange 
 And most mysterious drama ends. The name 
 Of that first husband — 
 
 Enter Ldct. 
 
 Mrs. P. Sir, yo\ir pardon — 
 
 The allegory fits your private ear. 
 Some half hour hence, in the garden's secret walk. 
 We shall have leisure. iExit. 
 
 Selby. Sister, whence come you 1 
 
 Lucy. From your poor Katherine's chamber, 
 where she droops 
 In sad presageful thoughts, and sighs, and weeps, 
 And seems to pray by turns. At times she looks 
 As she would pour her secret in my bosom — 
 Then starts, as I have seen her, at the mention 
 Of some immodest act. At her request. 
 I left her on her knees. 
 
 Selhy. The fittest posture ; 
 
 For great has been her fault to Heaven and me. 
 She married me with a fii-st husband living, 
 Or not known not to be so, which, in the judg- 
 ment 
 Of any but indifferent honesty, 
 Must be esteem'd the same. The shallow Widow, 
 Caught by my art, under a riddling veil 
 Too thin to hide her meaning, hath confess'd all. 
 Your coming in broke off the conference, 
 When she was ripe to tell the fatal name 
 That seals my wedded doom. 
 
 Lucy. Was she so forward 
 
 To pour her hateful meanings in your ear 
 At the first hint 1 
 
 Selhy. Her newly flatter'd hopes 
 
 Array'd themselves at first in forms of doubt; 
 And with a female caution she stood off 
 Awhile, to read the meaning of my suit. 
 Which with such honest seeming I enforced. 
 That her cold scruples soon gave way; and now 
 She rests prepai'cd, as mistress, or as wife. 
 To seize the place of her betrayed friend — 
 Mynmch offending, but more suffering, Katherine. 
 
 Lucy. Into what labyrinth of fearful shapes . 
 My simple project has conducted you — 
 Were but my wit as skilful to invent 
 A clue to lead you forth ! — 1 call to mind 
 A letter, which your wife received from the Cape, 
 Soon after you wore married, with some circum- 
 stances 
 Of mystery too. 
 
 Selby. I well remember it. 
 
 That letter did confirm the truth (she said) 
 Of a friend's death, which she had long fear'd true, 
 But know not for a fact. A youth of promise 
 
THE WIFE'S TRIAL ; OR, THE INTRUDINQ WIDOW. 
 
 645 
 
 She gave him out — a hot adventurous spirit — 
 That had set sail in quest of golden dreams, 
 And cities in the heart of Central Afric ; 
 But named no names, nor did I care to press 
 My question further, in the passionate grief 
 She show'd at the receipt. Might tliis be he ? 
 
 Lmy. Tears were not all. When that first 
 shower was past, 
 With clasp'd hands she raised her eyes to Heav'n, 
 As if in thankfulness for some escape, 
 Or strange deliverance, in the news implied, 
 Which sweeten'd that sad news. 
 
 Selby. Something of that 
 
 I noted also — 
 
 Lv,aj. In her closet once. 
 
 Seeking some other ti'ifie, I espied 
 A rmg, in mournful chai-acters deciphering 
 The death of " Robert Halford, aged two 
 And twenty." Brother, I am not given 
 To the confident use of wagers, which I hold 
 Unseemly in a woman's argument ; 
 But I am strangely tempted now to risk 
 A thousand pounds out of my patrimony, 
 (And let my future husband look to it, 
 If it be lost,) that this immodest Widow 
 Shall name the name that tallies with that ring. 
 
 Selby. That wager lost, I should be rich indeed — 
 Rich in my rescued Kate — rich in my honour, 
 Which now was bankrupt. Sister, I accept 
 Your merry wager, with an aching heart 
 For very fear of winning. 'Tis the hour 
 That I should meet my Widow in the walk, 
 The south side of the garden. On some pretence 
 Lure forth my Wife that way, that she may wit- 
 ness 
 Our seeming courtship. Keep us still in sight. 
 Yourselves unseen ; and by some sign I '11 give, 
 (A finger held up, or a kerchief waved,) [us. 
 
 You'll know your wager won— tlien break upon 
 As if by chance. 
 
 Lucy. I apprehend your meaning — 
 
 Selby. And may you prove a true Cassandra 
 here. 
 Though my poor acres smart for't, wagering sister ! 
 
 [^Exeunt. 
 
 Scene. — Mrs. Selby'.i chamber. 
 Mrs. Frami'ton. Kathf.rinr. 
 Mrs. F. Did I express myself in terms so strong] 
 Kuth. As nothing could have more afifrighted 
 
 me. 
 Mrs. F. Think it a hurt friend's jest, i^ retri- 
 bution 
 Of a suspected cooling hospitality. 
 And, for my staj-ing here, or going hence, 
 (Now I remember something of our argument,) 
 Selby and I can settle that between us. 
 You look amazed. What if your husband, child, 
 
 Himself haa courted me to stay ] 
 
 Kuth. You move 
 
 My wonder and my pleasure equally. 
 
 Mrs. F. Yes, courted mc to stay, waved all ob- 
 jections, 
 Made it a favour to yourselves ; not me. 
 His troublesome guest, as you surmised. Child, 
 
 child. 
 When I recall his flattering welcome, 1 
 Begin to think the burden of my presence 
 Was— 
 
 Kath. What, for Heaven — 
 
 Mrs. F. A little, little spice 
 
 Of jealousy — that's all — an honest pretext. 
 No wife need blush for. Say that you should sec, 
 (As oftentimes we widows take such freedoms, 
 Yet still on this side virtue,) in a jest 
 Your husband pat me on the cheek, or steal 
 A kiss, while you were by, — not else, for virtue's 
 sake. 
 
 Kath. I could endure all this, thinking my 
 husband 
 Meant it in sport — 
 
 Mrs. F. But if in downright earnest 
 
 (Putting myself out of the question here) 
 Your Selby, as I partly do suspect, 
 Own'd a divided heart — 
 
 Kath. My own would break — 
 
 Mrs. F. Why, what a blind and witless fool it is. 
 That will not see its gains, its infinite gains — 
 
 Kath. Gain in a loss. 
 
 Or mirth in utter desolation ! 
 
 Mrs. F. He doating on a face — suppose it mine. 
 Or any other's tolerably fair — 
 What need you care about a senseless secret? 
 
 Kath. Perplex'd and fearful woman ! I in part 
 Fathom your dangerous meaning. You have 
 
 broke 
 The worse than iron band, fretting the soul. 
 By which you held me captive. Whether my 
 
 husband 
 Is what you gave him out, or your fool'd fancy 
 But dreams he is so, either way I am free. 
 
 Mrs. F. It talks it bravely, blazons out its 
 shame ; 
 A very heroine while on its knees ; 
 Rowe's Penitent, an absolute Calista? 
 
 Kath. Not to thy wretched self these tears are 
 falling; 
 But to my husband, and offended Heaven, 
 Some drops are due — and then I sleep in peace. 
 Relieved from frightful dreams, my dreams 
 though sad. f-^'-^'* 
 
 Mrs. F. I have gone too far. Who knows but 
 in this mood 
 She may forestall my story, win on Selby 
 By a frank confession 1 — and the time draws on 
 
646 
 
 THE WIFE'S TRIAL ; OR, THE INTRUDING WIDOW. 
 
 For our appointed meeting. The game's des- 
 perate, 
 For which I play. A moment's difiference 
 May make it hers or mine. I fly to meet him. 
 
 lExit. 
 
 Scene. — A garden, 
 Mb. Selby. Mrs. Fbampton. 
 
 Selby. I am not so ill a guesser, Mrs. Frampton, 
 Not to conjecture, that some passages 
 In your uufinish'd story, rightly interpreted, 
 Glanced at my bosom's peace ; 
 
 You knew my wife ] 
 
 Mrs. F. Even from her earliest school days — 
 What of that ? 
 Or how is she concern'd in my fine riddles, 
 Framed for the hour's amusement ! 
 
 Selby. By my hopes 
 
 Of my new interest conceived in you, 
 And by the honest passion of my heart. 
 Which not obliquely I to you did hint ; 
 Come from the clouds of misty allegory. 
 And in plain language let me hear the worst. 
 Stand I disgraced, or no ] 
 
 Mrs. F. Then, by my hopes 
 
 Of my new interest conceived in you. 
 And by the kindling passion in viy breast, 
 Wliich through my riddles you had almost read, 
 Adjured so strongly, I will tell you all. 
 In her school years, then bordering on fifteen. 
 Or haply not much past, she loved a youth — 
 
 Selby. My most ingenuous Widow — 
 
 Mrs. F. Met him oft 
 
 By stealth, where I still of the party was — 
 
 Selby. Prime confidant to all the school, I war- 
 rant. 
 And general go-between — [Aside. 
 
 Mrs. F. One mom he came 
 
 In breathless haste. "The ship was under sail. 
 Or in few hours would be, that must convey 
 Him and his destinies to barbarous shores, 
 Where, should he perish by inglorious hands. 
 It would be consolation in his death 
 To have call'd his Kathcrine his." 
 
 Selby. Thus far the story 
 
 Tallies with what I hoped. [.A.^ide. 
 
 Mrs. F. Wavering between 
 
 The doubt of doing wrong, and losing him ; 
 And my dissuasions not o'er hotly urged, 
 Whom he had flatter'd with the bride-maid's 
 part ; — 
 
 Selby. I owe my subtle Widow, then, for tliis. 
 
 [vl.s/-fe. 
 
 Mrs. F. Briefly, wo went to chm'ch. The cere- 
 mony 
 Scarcely was huddled over, and the ring 
 Yet cold upon her finger, when they parted — 
 
 He to his ship ; and we to school got back. 
 Scarce miss'd, before the dinner-bell could ring. 
 
 Selby. And from that hour — 
 
 Mrs. F. Nor sight, nor news of him. 
 
 For aught that I could hear, she e'er obtain'd. 
 
 Selby. Like to a man that hovers in suspense 
 Over a letter just received, on which 
 The black seal hath impress'd its ominous token. 
 Whether to open it or no, so I 
 Suspended stand, whether to press my fate 
 Further, or check ill curiosity, [name 
 
 That tempts me to more loss. — The name, the 
 Of this fine youth ] 
 
 Mrs. F. What boots it, if 'twere told ? 
 
 Selby. Now, by our loves, 
 
 And by my hopes of happier wedlocks, some day 
 To be accomplish' d, give me his name ! 
 
 Mrs. F. 'Tis no such serious matter. It was — 
 Huntingdon. 
 
 Selby. How have three little syllables pluck'd 
 from me 
 A world of countless hopes ! — [Aside. 
 
 Evasive Widow. 
 
 Mrs. F. How, sir ! — I like not this. lAside. 
 
 Selby. No, no, I meant 
 
 Nothing but good to thee. That other woman. 
 How shall I call her but evasive, false. 
 And treacherous 1 — by the trust I place in thee, 
 Tell me, and tell me truly, was the name 
 As you pronounced it ] 
 
 Mrs. F. Huntingdon — the name, 
 
 Which his paternal grandfather assumed, 
 Together with the estates of a remote 
 Kinsman : but our high-spirited youth — 
 
 Selby. Yes— 
 
 Mi-s F. Disdaining 
 
 For sordid pelf to truck the family honoui-s, 
 At risk of the lost estates, resumed the old style, 
 And answer'd only to the name of — 
 
 Selby. What— 
 
 Mrs. F. Of Halford— 
 
 Selby. A Huntingdon to Halford changed so 
 soon ! 
 Why, then I see, a witch hath her good spells, 
 As well as bad, and can by a backward charm 
 Unrufile the foul storm she has just been raising. 
 \ Aside. He makes the signal. 
 My frank, fair-spoken Widow I let this kiss, 
 Which yet aspires no higher, speak my thanks. 
 Till I can think on greater. 
 
 Enter LuCY and Kathkrink. 
 Mrs. F. Interrupted! 
 
 Selby. My sister hero ! and see, where with her 
 comes 
 My serpent gliding in an angel's form, 
 To taint the now-born Eden of our joyfl* 
 
THE WIFE'S TRIAL ; OR, THE INTRUDING WIDOW. 
 
 647 
 
 Why should wo fear them ? We'll not stir a foot, 
 Nor coy it for their pleasures, [//t courts the Widow. 
 
 Lucy (to Katherinc). This your free. 
 
 And sweet ingenuous confession, binds mo 
 For ever to you ; and it shall go hard, 
 But it shall fetch you back your husband's heart, 
 That now seems blindly straying ; or, at worst. 
 In me you have still a sister. — Some wives, 
 
 brother. 
 Would think it strange to catch their husbands 
 
 thus 
 Alone with a trim widow ; but your Katheriue 
 Is arm'd, I think, with patience. 
 
 Kath. I am fortified 
 
 With knowledge of self-faults to endure worse 
 
 wrongs. 
 If they be wi'ongs, than he can lay upon me ; 
 Even to look on, and see him sue in earnest. 
 As now I think he does it but in seeming. 
 To that ill woman. 
 
 Selhy. Good words, gentle Kate, 
 
 And not a thought irreverent of our Widow. 
 Why 'twere unmannerly at any time. 
 But most uncourteous on our wedding day. 
 When we should show most hospitable. — Some 
 wine ! [ ^Vine is brought. 
 
 I am for sports. And now I do remember. 
 The old Egyptians at their banquets placed 
 A charnel sight of dead men's skulls before them. 
 With images of cold mortality. 
 To temper their fierce joys when they grew 
 
 rampant. 
 I like the custom well : and ere we crown 
 With freer mirth the day, I shall propose, 
 In calmest recollection of our spu-its, 
 We di'ink the solemn ' Memory of the Dead ' — 
 
 Mrs. F. Or the supposed dead — [Aside to him. 
 
 Selbi/. Pledge me, good, wife — [She Jills. 
 
 Nay, higher yet, till the brimm'd cup swell o'er. 
 
 Kuth. I catch the awful import of your words ; 
 And, though I could accuse you of unkindness. 
 Yet as yom" lawful and obedient wife, 
 Wliile that name last (as I perceive it fading, 
 Nor I much longer may have leave to use it) 
 I calmly take the ofi&ce you impose ; 
 And on my knees, imploring their forgiveness. 
 Whom I in heaven or earth may have offended. 
 Exempt from starting tears, and woman's weak- 
 ness, 
 I pledge you, sir — the Memoi-y of the Dead ! 
 
 [She drinks knjieling. 
 
 Selhy. 'T\s gently and discreetly said, and like 
 My former loving Kate. 
 
 Mrs. F. Does he relent 1 [.-iside. 
 
 Selhy. That ceremony past, we give the day 
 To unabated sport. And, in requital 
 Of Certain stories and quaint allegories, 
 
 ^Vhich my rare Widow hath been telling to me 
 To raise my morning mirth, if she will lend 
 Her patient hearing, I will here recite 
 A Parable ; and, the more to suit her taste. 
 The scene is laid in the East. 
 
 Mrs. F. I long to hear it. 
 
 Some tale, to fit his wife. \_Asidt. 
 
 Kath. Now, comes my Trial. 
 
 Lucy. The hour of your deliveiance is at hand. 
 If I presage right. Bear up, gentlest sister. 
 
 Selhy. " The Sultan Haroun" — Stay — now I 
 have it — 
 " The Caliph Haroun in his orchards had 
 A fruit-tree, bearing such delicious fruits. 
 That he reserved them for his proper gust ; 
 And through the Palace it was Death proclaim'd 
 To any one that should purloin the same." 
 
 Mrs. F. A heavy peuance for so light a fault— 
 
 Selhy. Pray you, be silent, else you put me out. 
 " A crafty page, that for advantage watch'd. 
 Detected in the act a brother page. 
 Of his own yeats, that was his bosom friend ; 
 And thenceforth he became that other's lord. 
 And like a tyrant he demean'd himself. 
 Laid forced exactions on his fellow's purse ; 
 And when that poor means fail'd, held o'er his 
 
 head 
 Threats of impending death in hideous forms; 
 Till the small culprit on his nightly couch 
 Dream'd of strange pains, and felt his body writhe 
 In tortuous pangs around the impaling stake." 
 
 Mi's. F. 1 like not this beginning — 
 
 Selhy. Pray you, attend. 
 
 " The Secret, like a night-hag, rid his sleeps. 
 And took the youthful pleasures from his days. 
 And chased the youthful smoothness from his 
 
 brow. 
 That from a rose-cheek'd boy he waned and waned 
 To a pale skeleton of what he was ; 
 And would have died, but for one lucky chance." 
 
 KatJi. Oh ! 
 
 Mrs. F. Your wife — she faints — some cordial — 
 smell to this. 
 
 Selhy. Stand off. My sister best will do that 
 office. 
 
 Mrs. F. Are all his tempting speeches come to 
 this ? [Aside. 
 
 Selby. What ail'd my wife 1 
 
 Kath. A warning faintness, sir, 
 
 Seized on my spirits, when you came to where 
 You said " a lucky chance." I am better now : 
 Please you go on. 
 
 Selby. The sequel shall be brief. 
 
 Kath. But, brief, or long, I feel my fate hangs 
 on it. [Aside 
 
 Selby. " One morn the Caliph, in a covert hid 
 Close by an aibour where the two boys talk'd, 
 
648 
 
 THE WIFE'S TRTAL; OR, THE INTRUDING WIDOW. 
 
 (As oft, we read, that Eastern soyereigns 
 Would play the eaves-dropper, to learn the truth, 
 Imperfectly received from mouths of slaves,) 
 O'erheard their dialogue ; and heard enough 
 To judge aright the cause, and know his cue. 
 The following day a Cadi was despatch'd 
 To summon both before the judgment-seat; 
 The lickerish culprit, almost dead with fear. 
 And the informing friend, who readily, 
 Fired with fair promises of large reward, 
 And Caliph's love, the hateful truth disclosed." 
 Mrs. P. What did the Caliph to the oflfending 
 
 boy, 
 That had so grossly err'd 1 
 
 Selby. His sceptred hand 
 
 He forth in token of forgiveness stretch'd, 
 And clapp'd his cheeks, and courted him with 
 
 gifts. 
 And he becamfe once more his favourite page. 
 
 Mrs. P. But for that other — 
 
 Sdby. He dismiss'd him straight, 
 
 From dreams of grandeur, and of Caliph's love, 
 To the bare cottage on the withering moor. 
 
 Whore friends, turn'd fiends, and liollow con- 
 fidants. 
 And widows, hide, who in a husband's ear 
 Pour baneful truths, but tell not all the truth ; 
 And told him not that Robin Halford died 
 Some moons before his marriage-bells were rung. 
 Too near dishonour hast thou trod, dear wife, 
 And on a dangerous cast our fates were set ; 
 But Heav'u, that will'd our wedlock to be blest. 
 Hath iuterposed to save it gracious too. 
 Your penance is — to dress your cheek in smiles, 
 And to be once again my merry Kate. — 
 Sister, your baud. 
 
 Your waj;er won makes me a happy man, 
 Though poorer, Heav'a knows, by a thousand 
 
 pounds. 
 The sky clears up after a dubious day. 
 Widow, your hand. I read a penitence 
 In this dejected brow ; and in this shame 
 Your fault is buried. You shall in with us, 
 And, if it please you, taste our nuptial fare : 
 For, till this moment, I can joyful say, 
 Was never truly Selby's Wedding Day. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 t-ONDON : 
 DRADDUKV, KVANS, AND CO., I'KINTF.RS, WIIITr.I'RI ARS. 
 
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