LETTER 186
CHARLES LAMB TO HENRY CRABB ROBINSON
[Dated by H. C. R. Feb. 7, 1810.]
Dr R.—My Brother whom you have met at my rooms (a plump good looking man of seven and forty!) has written a book about humanity, which I transmit to you herewith. Wilson the Publisher has put it in his head that you can get it Reviewed for him. I dare say it is not in the scope of your Review—but if you could put it in any likely train, he would rejoyce. For alas! our boasted Humanity partakes of Vanity. As it is, he teazes me to death with chusing to suppose that I could get it into all the Reviews at a moment's notice—I!! who have been set up as a mark for them to throw at, and would willingly consign them all to Hell flames and Megaera's snaky locks.
But here's the Book—and don't shew it Mrs. Collier, for I remember she makes excellent Eel soup, and the leading points of the Book are directed against that very process.
Yours truly C. LAMB.
At Home to-night—Wednesday [February 7].
[Addressed to "Henry Robinson, Esq., 56 Hatton Garden, 'with a Treatise on Cruelty to Animals.'"
Lamb's brother, John Lamb, who was born in 1763, was now Accountant of the South-Sea House. His character is described by Lamb in the Elia essay "My Relations," where he figures as James Elia. Robinson's Diary later frequently expresses Robinson's dislike of his dogmatic ways.
The pamphlet has been identified by Mr. L.S. Livingston as A Letter to the Right Hon. William Windham, on his opposition to Lord Erskine's Bill for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. It was published by Maxwell & Wilson at 17 Skinner Street in 1810. No author's name is given. One copy only is known, and that is in America, and the owner declines to permit it to be reprinted. The particular passage referring to eel pie runs thus:—
"If an eel had the wisdom of Solomon, he could not help himself in the ill-usage that befalls him; but if he had, and were told, that it was necessary for our subsistence that he should be eaten, that he must be skinned first, and then broiled; if ignorant of man's usual practice, he would conclude that the cook would so far use her reason as to cut off his head first, which is not fit for food, as then he might be skinned and broiled without harm; for however the other parts of his body might be convulsed during the culinary operations, there could be no feeling of consciousness therein, the communication with the brain being cut off; but if the woman were immediately to stick a fork into his eye, skin him alive, coil him up in a skewer, head and all, so that in the extremest agony he could not move, and forthwith broil him to death: then were the same Almighty Power that formed man from the dust, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, to call the eel into a new existence, with a knowledge of the treatment he had undergone, and he found that the instinctive disposition which man has in common with other carnivorous animals, which inclines him to cruelty, was not the sole cause of his torments; but that men did not attend to consider whether the sufferings of such insignificant creatures could be lessened: that eels were not the only sufferers; that lobsters and other shell fish were put into cold water and boiled to death by slow degrees in many parts of the sea coast; that these, and many other such wanton atrocities, were the consequence of carelessness occasioned by the pride of mankind despising their low estate, and of the general opinion that there is no punishable sin in the ill-treatment of animals designed for our use; that, therefore, the woman did not bestow so much thought on him as to cut his head off first, and that she would have laughed at any considerate person who should have desired such a thing; with what fearful indignation might he inveigh against the unfeeling metaphysician that, like a cruel spirit alarmed at the appearance of a dawning of mercy upon animals, could not rest satisfied with opposing the Cruelty Prevention Bill by the plea of possible inconvenience to mankind, highly magnified and emblazoned, but had set forth to the vulgar and unthinking of all ranks, in the jargon of proud learning, that man's obligations of morality towards the creatures subjected to his use are imperfect obligations!"
Robinson's review was, I imagine, The London Review, founded by Richard Cumberland in February, 1809, which, however, no longer existed, having run its brief course by November, 1809.
"Megæra's snaky locks." From Paradise Lost, X., 559:—
and up the trees Climbing, sat thicker than the snaky locks That curl'd Megæra.
Here should come another letter from Lamb to Charles Lloyd, Senior, dated March 10, 1810. It refers to Mr. Lloyd's translation of the first seven books of the Odyssey and is accompanied by a number of criticisms. Lamb advises Mr. Lloyd to complete the Odyssey, adding that he would prize it for its Homeric plainness and truths above the confederate jumble of Pope, Broom and Fenton which goes under Pope's name and is far inferior to his Iliad. Among the criticisms is one on Mr. Lloyd's use of the word "patriotic," in which Lamb says that it strikes his ears as being too modern; adding that in English few words of more than three syllables chime well into a verse. The word "sentiment" calls from him the remark that he would root it out of a translation of Homer. "It came in with Sterne, and was a child he had by Affectation."]
LETTER 187
CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN MATHEW GUTCH
[April 9th, 1810.]
Dear Gutch,—I did not see your brother, who brought me Wither; but he understood, he said, you were daily expecting to come to town: this has prevented my writing. The books have pleased me excessively: I should think you could not have made a better selection. I never saw "Philaretè" before—judge of my pleasure. I could not forbear scribbling certain critiques in pencil on the blank leaves. Shall I send them, or may I expect to see you in town? Some of them are remarks on the character of Wither and of his writings. Do you mean to have anything of that kind? What I have said on "Philaretè" is poor, but I think some of the rest not so bad: perhaps I have exceeded my commission in scrawling over the copies; but my delight therein must excuse me, and pencil-marks will rub out. Where is the Life? Write, for I am quite in the dark. Yours, with many thanks,
C. LAMB.
Perhaps I could digest the few critiques prefixed to the Satires, Shepherds Hunting, &c., into a short abstract of Wither's character and works, at the end of his Life. But, may be, you don't want any thing, and have said all you wish in the Life.
[John Mathew Gutch (1776-1861), whom we have met before, was at this time living at Bristol, where he owned, edited and printed Felix Farley's Bristol Journal. He had been printing for his own pleasure an edition of George Wither's poems, which he had sent to Lamb for his opinion, intending ultimately to edit Wither fully. Lamb returned the volumes with a number of comments, many of which he afterwards incorporated in his essay "On the poetry of George Wither," printed in his Works in 1818. Gutch subsequently handed the volumes to his friend Dr. John Nott of the Hot Wells, Bristol, who had views of his own upon Wither, and who commented in his turn on the poet and on Lamb's criticism of the poet. In course of time the volumes fell into Lamb's hands again, when Nott's comments on Wither and on Lamb received treatment. They were ultimately given by Lamb to his friend Brook Pulham of the India House (who made the caricature etching of "Ælia") and are now in the possession of Mr. A.C. Swinburne, who told the story of the book in the Nineteenth Century for January, 1885, reprinted in his Miscellanies, 1886. Some passages from that article will be found in the notes to Lamb's essay on Wither in Vol. I. of the present edition. The last word was with Nott, for when Gutch printed a three- or four-volume edition of Wither in 1820, under Nott's editorship, many of Lamb's best things were included as Nott's.]
LETTER 188
CHARLES LAMB TO BASIL MONTAGU
Mr. Hazlitt's: Winterslow, near Sarum, 12th July, 1810.
Dear [Montagu],—I have 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 any body 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 stopt payment; and every body 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 cash at the Salisbury bank; and I do suppose it to be the unhappiest county in England this, where I am making holiday.
We purpose 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 of my natural rest which I suffered 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, but 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 d——d 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.
[If the date is correct we must suppose that the Lambs had made a second visit to the Hazlitts and were intending to return by way of Oxford (see next Letter).
Basil Montagu was a barrister and humanitarian, a friend of Wordsworth and Coleridge, and afterwards step-father-in-law of Procter. He was born in 1770 and lived until 1851. Lamb probably addressed to him many other letters, also to his third wife, Carlyle's "noble lady." But the correspondence was destroyed by Mrs. Procter.
The MSS. referred to cannot now be identified.]
LETTER 189
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM HAZLITT
August 9th, 1810.
Dear H.,—Epistemon is not well. Our pleasant excursion has ended sadly for one of us. You will guess I mean my sister. She got home very well (I was very ill on the journey) and continued so till Monday night, when her complaint came on, and she is now absent from home.
I am glad to hear you are all well. I think I shall be mad if I take any more journeys with two experiences against it. I find all well here. Kind remembrances to Sarah—have just got her letter.
H. Robinson has been to Blenheim. He says you will be sorry to hear that we should 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 are 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 see 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.
[Hazlitt subsequently saw the Blenheim Titians and wrote of them with gusto in his description of the Picture Galleries of England.
Next should come a letter from Lamb to Mrs. Thomas Clarkson, dated September 18, 1810, not available for this edition; relating to the illness of Mary Lamb and stating that she is "quite restored and will be with me in little more than a week."]
LETTER 190
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
Friday, 19 Oct., 1810. E.I.Ho.
Dr W.—I forwarded the Letter which you sent to me, without opening it, to your Sister at Binfield. She has returned it to me, and begs me to tell you that she intends returning from B. on Monday or Tuesday next, when Priscilla leaves it, and that it was her earnest wish to spend another week with us in London, but she awaits another Letter from home to determine her. I can only say that she appeared so much pleased with London, and that she is so little likely to see it again for a long time, that if you can spare her, it will be almost a pity not. But doubtless she will have heard again from you, before I can get a reply to this Letter & what she next hears she says will be decisive. If wanted, she will set out immediately from London. Mary has been very ill which you have heard I suppose from the Montagues. She is very weak and low spirited now. I was much pleased with your continuation of the Essay on Epitaphs. It is the only sensible thing which has been written on that subject & 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 so few good Epitaphs after all?
A very striking instance of your position might be found in the Church yard 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 different, and all ingenious, with the Author's name at the Bottom of each. The sweet Swan of Thames has artfully diversified his strains & 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 uncertainty he had never thought, but the word death he had often seen separate & conjunct with other words, till he had learned to skill 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 scull that never reached in thought and thorough imagination two inches, or further than from his hand to his mouth, or from the vestry to the Sounding Board. [But the] epitaphs were trim and sprag & patent, & pleased 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 new, must have suffered something in passing thro' so many thousand applications, many of them no doubt quite misplaced, as I have seen in Islington Churchy'd (I think) an Epitaph to an Infant who died Ætatis 4 months, with this seasonable inscription appended, Honor thy Fath'r. and Moth'r. that thy days may be long in the Land &c.—Sincerely wishing your children better [words cut out with signature].
[Binfield, near Windsor, was the home of Dorothy Wordsworth's uncle, Dr.
Cookson, Canon of Windsor.
Priscilla, nèe Lloyd, a sister of Charles Lloyd, had married
Christopher Wordsworth, afterwards Master of Trinity, in 1804.
Wordsworth's "Essay on Epitaphs" was printed in part in The Friend, February 22, 1810. For the remainder see Wordsworth's Works, Part II. began with a reference to Rosamund Gray. I quote the passage containing the turgid example.
Let us return to an instance of common life. I quote it with reluctance, not so much for its absurdity as that the expression in one place will strike at first sight as little less than impious; and it is indeed, though unintentionally so, most irreverent. But I know no other example that will so forcibly illustrate the important truth I wish to establish. The following epitaph is to be found in a church-yard in Westmoreland; which the present Writer has reason to think of with interest as it contains the remains of some of his ancestors and kindred. The date is 1673.
"Under this Stone, Reader, inter'd doth lye,
Beauty and Virtue's true epitomy.
At her appearance the noone-son
Blush'd and shrunk in 'cause quite outdon.
In her concentered did all graces dwell:
God pluck'd my rose that He might take a smel.
I'll say no more: but weeping wish I may
Soone with thy dear chaste ashes com to lay.
Sic efflevit Maritus."
Can anything go beyond this in extravagance? yet, if the fundamental thoughts be translated into a natural style, they will be found reasonable and affecting—"The woman who lies here interred, was in my eyes a perfect image of beauty and virtue; she was to me a brighter object than the sun in heaven: God took her, who was my delight, from this earth to bring her nearer to Himself. Nothing further is worthy to be said than that weeping I wish soon to lie by thy dear chaste ashes. Thus did the husband pour out his tears."
Wordsworth wrote an epitaph on Lamb, but it was too long to be used. A few lines are now on the tablet in Edmonton Church.
Lamb had begun his criticisms of churchyard epitaphs very early: Talfourd tells that, when quite a little boy, after reading a number of flattering inscriptions, he asked Mary Lamb where all the bad people were buried.]
LETTER 191
MARY LAMB TO MISS WORDSWORTH
[P.M. November 13, 1810.]
My dear friend—My brother's letter, which I did not see, I am sure has distressed you sadly. I was then so ill as to alarm him exceedingly, and he thought me quite incapable of any kind of business. It is a great mortification to me to be such an useless creature, and I feel myself greatly indebted to you for the very kind manner in which you take this ungracious matter: but I will say no more on this unpleasant subject. I am at present under the care of Dr. Tuthill. I think I have derived great benefit from his medicines. He has also made a water drinker of me, which, contrary to my expectations, seems to agree with me very well.
I very much regret that you were so untimely snatched away; the lively recollection you seem to retain of London scenes will I hope induce you to return, in happier times, for I must still hope for better days.
We have had many pleasant hours with Coleridge,—if I had not known how ill he is I should have had no idea of it, for he has been very chearful. But yet I have no good news to send you of him, for two days ago, when I saw him last, he had not begun his course of medicine & regimen under Carlisle. I have had a very chearful letter from Mrs. Clarkson. She complained a little of your friend Tom, but she says she means to devote the winter to the task of new molding him, I am afraid she will find it no easy task.
Mrs. Montague was very sorry to find you gone. I have not seen much of her, for I have kept very much at home since her return. I mean to stay at home and keep early hours all this winter.
I have a new maid coming this evening. Betty, that you left here, went from me last week, and I took a girl lately from the country, who was fetched away in a few days by her sister, who took it into her head that the Temple was an improper place for a girl to live in. I wish the one that is coming may suit me. She is seven & twenty, with a very plain person, therefore I may hope she will be in little danger here.
Henry Robinson, and many other friends that you made here, enquire continually after you. The Spanish lady is gone, and now poor Robinson is left quite forlorn.
The streets remind me so much of you that I wish for you every showy shop I pass by. I hope we had many pleasant fireside hours together, but I almost fear the stupid dispirited state I was in made me seem a very flat companion; but I know I listened with great pleasure to many interesting conversations. I thank you for what you have done for Phillips, his fate will be decided in about a week. He has lately breakfasted with Sir Joseph Banks, who received him with great civility but made him no promise of support. Sir Joseph told him a new candidate had started up who it was expected would be favoured by the council. I am afraid Phillips stands a very poor chance.
I am doing nothing, I wish I was, for if I were once more busily employed at work, I should be more satisfied with myself. I should not feel so helpless, & so useless.
I hope you will write soon, your letters give me great pleasure; you have made me so well acquainted with all your household, that I must hope for frequent accounts how you are all going on. Remember us affectionately to your brother & sister. I hope the little Katherine continues mending. God bless you all & every one.
Your affectionate friend
M. LAMB.
Nov'r. 13, 1810.
LETTER 192
CHARLES LAMB TO Miss WORDSWORTH
(Added to same letter)
Mary has left a little space for me to fill up with nonsense, as the Geographers used to cram monsters in the voids of their maps & 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 aquavorous now for full four days, and it seems a moon. I am full of cramps & rheumatisms, and cold internally so that fire won't warm me, yet I bear all for virtues sake. Must I then leave you, Gin, Rum, Brandy, Aqua Vitae—pleasant jolly fellows—Damn Temperance and them that first invented it, some Anti Noahite. Coleridge 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 2d to see where the 1st is gone, the 3d to see no harm happens to the second, a fourth to say there's another coming, and a 5th to say he's not sure he's the last. William Henshaw is dead. He died yesterday, aged 56. It was but a twelvemonth or so back that his Father, an ancient Gunsmith & my Godfather, sounded me as to my willingness to be guardian to this William in case of his (the old man's) death. William had three times broke in business, twice in England, once in t'other Hemisphere. He returned from America a sot & hath liquidated all debts. What a hopeful ward I am rid of. Ætatis 56. I must have taken care of his morals, seen that he did not form imprudent connections, given my consent before he could have married &c. From all which the stroke of death hath relieved me. Mrs. Reynolds is the name of the Lady to whom I will remember you to-morrow. Farewell. Wish me strength to continue. I've been eating jugg'd Hare. The toast & water makes me quite sick.
C. LAMB.
[After the preceding letter Mary Lamb had been taken ill—but not, I think, mentally—and Dorothy Wordsworth's visit was put off.
Coleridge, The Friend having ceased, had come to London with the Montagus on October 26 to stay with them indefinitely at 55 Frith Street, Soho. But a few days after his arrival Montagu had inadvisedly repeated what he unjustifiably called a warning phrase of Wordsworth's concerning Coleridge's difficult habits as a guest—the word "nuisance" being mentioned—and this had so plunged Coleridge in grief that he left Soho for Hammersmith, where his friends the Morgans were living. Montagu's indiscretion led to a quarrel between Coleridge and Wordsworth which was long of healing. This is no place in which to tell the story, which has small part in Lamb's life; but it led to one of the few letters from Coleridge to Lamb that have been preserved (see Mr. E.H. Coleridge's edition of Coleridge's Letters, page 586).
Carlisle was Sir Anthony Carlisle (1768-1840), the surgeon and a friend of Lamb.
"The Spanish lady"—Madam Lavaggi. See Robinson's Diary, 1869, Vol.
I., page 303.
"Phillips." This would be Ned Phillips, I presume, not the Colonel. I have not discovered for what post he was trying.
"The little Katherine." Catherine Wordsworth, born September 6, 1808, lived only until June 4, 1812.
"I have been aquavorous." Writing to Dorothy Wordsworth on December 23 Crabb Robinson says that Lamb has abstained from alcohol and tobacco since Lord Mayor's Day (November 9).
"William Henshaw." I know nothing more of this unfortunate man.]
LETTER 193
MARY LAMB TO MISS WORDSWORTH
[P.M. Nov. 23, 1810.]
My dear Friend, Miss Monkhouse left town yesterday, but I think I am able to answer all your enquiries. I saw her on Sunday evening at Mrs. Montagu's. She looked very well & said her health was greatly improved. She promised to call on me before she left town but the weather having been very bad I suppose has prevented her. She received the letter which came through my brother's hands and I have learned from Mrs. Montagu that all your commissions are executed. It was Carlisle that she consulted, and she is to continue taking his prescriptions in the country. Mr. Monkhouse & Mr. Addison drank tea with us one evening last week. Miss Monkhouse is a very pleasing girl, she reminds me, a little, of Miss Hutchinson. I have not seen Henry Robinson for some days past, but I remember he told me he had received a letter from you, and he talked of Spanish papers which he should send to Mr. Southey. I wonder he does not write, for I have always understood him to be a very regular correspondent, and he seemed very proud of your letter. I am tolerably well, but I still affect the invalid—take medicines, and keep at home as much as I possibly can. Water-drinking, though I confess it to be a flat thing, is become very easy to me. Charles perseveres in it most manfully.
Coleridge is just in the same state as when I wrote last—I have not seen him since Sunday, he was then at Mr. Morgan's but talked of taking a lodging.
Phillips feels a certainty that he shall lose his election, for the new candidate is himself a Fellow of the Royal Society, and [it] is thought Sir Joseph Banks will favour him. It will now be soon decided.
My new maid is now sick in bed. Am I not unlucky? She would have suited me very well if she had been healthy, but I must send her away if she is not better tomorrow.
Charles promised to add a few lines, I will therefore leave him plenty of room, for he may perhaps think of something to entertain you. I am sure I cannot.
I hope you will not return to Grasmere till all fear of the Scarlet Fever is over, I rejoice to hear so good an account of the children and hope you will write often. When I write next I will endeavour to get a frank. This I cannot do but when the parliament is sitting, and as you seemed anxious about Miss Monkhouse I would not defer sending this, though otherwise it is not worth paying one penny for.
God bless you all.
Yours affectionately
M. LAMB.
LETTER 194
CHARLES LAMB TO Miss WORDSWORTH
(Added to same letter)
We are in a pickle. Mary from her affectation of physiognomy has hired a stupid big country wench who looked honest, as she thought, and has been doing her work some days but without eating—eats no butter nor meat, but prefers cheese with her tea for breakfast—and now it comes out that she was ill when she came with lifting her mother about (who is now with God) when she was dying, and with riding up from Norfolk 4 days and nights in the waggon. She got advice yesterday and took something which has made her bring up a quart of blood, and she now lies, a dead weight upon our humanity, in her bed, incapable of getting up, refusing to go into an hospital, having no body in town but a poor asthmatic dying Uncle, whose son lately married a drab who fills his house, and there is no where she can go, and she seems to have made up her mind to take her flight to heaven from our bed.—O God! O God!—for the little wheelbarrow which trundled the Hunchback from door to door to try the various charities of different professions of Mankind!
Here's her Uncle just crawled up, he is far liker Death than He. O the Parish, the Parish, the hospital, the infirmary, the charnel house, these are places meet for such guests, not our quiet mansion where nothing but affluent plenty and literary ease should abound.—Howard's House, Howard's House, or where the Parylitic descended thro' the sky-light (what a God's Gift) to get at our Savior. In this perplexity such topics as Spanish papers and Monkhouses sink into comparative insignificance. What shall we do?—If she died, it were something: gladly would I pay the coffin maker and the bellman and searchers—O Christ. C. L.
[Miss Monkhouse was the daughter of the Wordsworths' and Lambs' friend,
Thomas Monkhouse.
"Mr. Addison." I have not traced this gentleman.
Miss Hutchinson was Sarah Hutchinson, sister of Mrs. Wordsworth.
"The Hunchback." In the Arabian Nights.
"Howard's House." This would be Cold-Bath Fields Prison, erected in 1794 upon some humane suggestions of Howard the Philanthropist.]
LETTER 195
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM HAZLITT
Wednesday, November 28, 1810.
Dear Hazlitt—I sent you on Saturday a Cobbett, containing your reply to the Edinburgh Review, which I thought you would be glad to receive as an example of attention on the part of Mr. Cobbett to insert it so speedily. Did you get it? We have received your pig, and return you thanks; it will be dressed in due form, with appropriate sauce, this day. Mary has been very ill indeed since you saw her; that is, as ill as she can be to remain at home. But she is a good deal better now, owing to a very careful regimen. She drinks nothing but water, and never goes out; she does not even go to the Captain's. Her indisposition has been ever since that night you left town; the night Miss W[ordsworth] came. Her coming, and that d——d Mrs. Godwin coming and staying so late that night, so overset her that she lay broad awake all that night, and it was by a miracle that she escaped a very bad illness, which I thoroughly expected. I have made up my mind that she shall never have any one in the house again with her, and that no one shall sleep with her, not even for a night; for it is a very serious thing to be always living with a kind of fever upon her; and therefore I am sure you will take it in good part if I say that if Mrs. Hazlitt comes to town at any time, however glad we shall be to see her in the daytime, I cannot ask her to spend a night under our roof. Some decision we must come to, for the harassing fever that we have both been in, owing to Miss Wordsworth's coming, is not to be borne; and I would rather be dead than so alive. However, at present, owing to a regimen and medicines which Tuthill has given her, who very kindly volunteer'd the care of her, she is a great deal quieter, though too much harassed by company, who cannot or will not see how late hours and society teaze her.
Poor Phillips had the cup dash'd out of his lips as it were. He had every prospect of the situation, when about ten days since one of the council of the R. Society started for the place himself, being a rich merchant who lately failed, and he will certainly be elected on Friday next. P. is very sore and miserable about it.
Coleridge is in town, or at least at Hammersmith. He is writing or going to write in the Courier against Cobbett, and in favour of paper money.
No news. Remember me kindly to Sarah. I write from the office.
Yours ever, C. LAMB.
I just open'd it to say the pig, upon proof, hath turned out as good as I predicted. My fauces yet retain the sweet porcine odour. I find you have received the Cobbett. I think your paper complete.
Mrs. Reynolds, who is a sage woman, approves of the pig.
["A Cobbett." This was Cobbett's Political Register for November 24, 1810, containing Hazlitt's letter upon "Mr. Malthus and the Edinburgh Reviewers," signed "The Author of a Reply to the Essay on Population." Hazlitt's reply had been criticised in the Edinburgh for August, probably only just published.
The postscript contains Lamb's first passage in praise of roast pig.
I place next the following undated letter to Godwin from Mr. Kegan Paul's William Godwin: His Friends and Contemporaries, as it seems to be connected with the decision concerning visitors expressed in the letter to Hazlitt.]
LETTER 196
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM GODWIN
Dear Godwin,—I have found it for several reasons indispensable to my comfort, and to my sister's, to have no visitors in the forenoon. If I cannot accomplish this I am determined to leave town.
I am extremely sorry to do anything in the slightest degree that may seem offensive to you or to Mrs. Godwin, but when a general rule is fixed on, you know how odious in a case of this sort it is to make exceptions; I assure you I have given up more than one friendship in stickling for this point. It would be unfair to those from whom I have parted with regret to make exceptions, which I would not do for them. Let me request you not to be offended, and to request Mrs. G. not to be offended, if I beg both your compliances with this wish. Your friendship is as dear to me as that of any person on earth, and if it were not for the necessity of keeping tranquillity at home, I would not seem so unreasonable.
If you were to see the agitation that my sister is in, between the fear of offending you and Mrs. G. and the difficulty of maintaining a system which she feels we must do to live without wretchedness, you would excuse this seeming strange request, which I send you with a trembling anxiety as to its reception with you, whom I would never offend. I rely on your goodness.
C. LAMB.
LETTER 197
MARY LAMB TO SARAH HAZLITT
[? End of 1810 or early 1811.]
My dear Sarah,—I have taken a large sheet of paper, as if I were going to write a long letter; but that is by no means my intention, for I only have time to write three lines to notify what I ought to have done the moment I received your welcome letter. Namely, that I shall be very much joyed to see you. Every morning lately I have been expecting to see you drop in, even before your letter came; and I have been setting my wits to work to think how to make you as comfortable as the nature of our inhospitable habits will admit. I must work while you are here; and I have been slaving very hard to get through with something before you come, that I may be quite in the way of it, and not teize you with complaints all day that I do not know what to do.
I am very sorry to hear of your mischance. Mrs. Rickman has just buried her youngest child. I am glad I am an old maid; for, you see, there is nothing but misfortunes in the marriage state.
Charles was drunk last night, and drunk the night before; which night before was at Godwin's, where we went, at a short summons from Mr. G., to play a solitary rubber, which was interrupted by the entrance of Mr. and little Mrs. Liston; and after them came Henry Robinson, who is now domesticated at Mr. Godwin's fireside, and likely to become a formidable rival to Tommy Turner. We finished there at twelve o'clock (Charles and Liston brim-full of gin and water and snuff): after which Henry Robinson spent a long evening by our fireside at home; and there was much gin and water drunk, albeit only one of the party partook of it. And H.R. professed himself highly indebted to Charles for the useful information he gave him on sundry matters of taste and imagination, even after Charles could not speak plain for tipsiness. But still he swallowed the flattery and the spirits as savourily as Robinson did his cold water.
Last night was to be a night, but it was not. There was a certain son of one of Martin's employers, one young Mr. Blake; to do whom honour, Mrs. Burney brought forth, first rum, then a single bottle of champaine, long kept in her secret hoard; then two bottles of her best currant wine, which she keeps for Mrs. Rickman, came out; and Charles partook liberally of all these beverages, while Mr. Young Blake and Mr. Ireton talked of high matters, such as the merits of the Whip Club, and the merits of red and white champaine. Do I spell that last word right? Rickman was not there, so Ireton had it all his own way.
The alternating Wednesdays will chop off one day in the week from your jolly days, and I do not know how we shall make it up to you; but I will contrive the best I can. Phillips comes again pretty regularly, to the great joy of Mrs. Reynolds. Once more she hears the well-loved sounds of, 'How do you do, Mrs. Reynolds? How does Miss Chambers do?'
I have spun out my three lines amazingly. Now for family news. Your brother's little twins are not dead, but Mrs. John Hazlitt and her baby may be, for any thing I know to the contrary, for I have not been there for a prodigious long time. Mrs. Holcroft still goes about from Nicholson to Tuthil, and from Tuthil to Godwin, and from Godwin to Tuthil, and from Tuthil to Godwin, and from Godwin to Tuthil, and from Tuthil to Nicholson, to consult on the publication, or no publication, of the life of the good man, her husband. It is called the Life Everlasting. How does that same Life go on in your parts? Good bye, God bless you. I shall be glad to see you when you come this way.
Yours most affectionately,
M. LAMB.
I am going in great haste to see Mrs. Clarkson, for I must get back to dinner, which I have hardly time to do. I wish that dear, good, amiable woman would go out of town. I thought she was clean gone; and yesterday there was a consultation of physicians held at her house, to see if they could keep her among them here a few weeks longer.
[This letter is dated by Mr. Hazlitt November 30, 1810, but I doubt if that can be right. See extract from Crabb Robinson above, testifying to Lamb's sobriety between November 9 and December 23.
Liston was John Liston (1776?-1846), the actor, whose mock biography Lamb wrote some years later (see Vol. I. of this edition). His wife was a diminutive comedienne, famous as Queen Dollalolla in "Tom Thumb." Lamb may have known Liston through the Burneys, for he is said to have been an usher in Dr. Burney's school—Dr. Charles Burney, Captain Burney's brother.
"Henry Robinson." Crabb Robinson's Diary shows us that his domestication by Godwin's fireside was not of long duration. I do not know who Tommy Turner was. Mr. Ireton was probably William Ayrton, the musical critic, a friend and neighbour of the Burneys, and later a friend of the Lambs, as we shall see.
"The alternating Wednesdays." The Lambs seem to have given up their weekly Wednesday evening, which now became fortnightly. Later it was: changed to Thursday and made monthly.
Mrs. Reynolds had been a Miss Chambers.]
LETTER 198
MARY LAMB TO MATILDA BETHAM
[No date. Feb., 1811.]
My dear Matilda,—Coleridge has given me a very chearful promise that he will wait on Lady Jerningham any day you will be pleased to appoint; he offered to write to you; but I found it was to be done tomorrow, and as I am pretty well acquainted with his tomorrows, I thought good to let you know his determination today. He is in town today, but as he is often going to Hammersmith for a night or two, you had better perhaps send the invitation through me, and I will manage it for you as well as I can. You had better let him have four or five days' previous notice, and you had better send the invitation as soon as you can; for he seems tolerably well just now. I mention all these betters, because I wish to do the best I can for you, perceiving, as I do, it is a thing you have set your heart upon. He dined one [d]ay in company with Catilana (is that the way you spell her Italian name?—I am reading Sallust, and had like to have written Catiline). How I should have liked, and how you would have liked, to have seen Coleridge and Catilana together!
You have been very good of late to let me come and see you so seldom, and you are a little goodish to come so seldom here, because you stay away from a kind motive. But if you stay away always, as I fear you mean to do, I would not give one pin for your good intentions. In plain words, come and see me very soon; for though I be not sensitive as some people, I begin to feel strange qualms for having driven you from me.
Yours affectionately,
M. LAMB.
Wednesday.
Alas! Wednesday shines no more to me now.
Miss Duncan played famously in the new comedy, which went off as famously. By the way, she put in a spiteful piece of wit, I verily believe of her own head; and methought she stared me full in the face. The words were "As silent as an author in company." Her hair and herself looked remarkably well.
[Angelica Catalani (1782-1849) was the great singer. I find no record of
Coleridge's meeting with her.
"Miss Duncan." Praise of this lady in Miss Hardcastle and other parts
will be found in Leigh Hunt's Critical Essays on the Performers of the
London Theatres, 1807. At this time she was playing with the Drury Lane
Company at the Lyceum. They produced several new plays.]
LETTER 199
(Fragment)
CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN MORGAN
[Dated at end: March 8, 1811.]
There—don't read any further, because the Letter is not intended for you but for Coleridge, who might perhaps not have opened it directed to him suo nomine. It is to invite C. to Lady Jerningham's on Sunday. Her address is to be found within. We come to Hammersmith notwithstanding on Sunday, and hope Mrs. M. will not think of getting us Green Peas or any such expensive luxuries. A plate of plain Turtle, another of Turbot, with good roast Beef in the rear, and, as Alderman Curtis says, whoever can't make a dinner of that ought to be damn'd. C. LAMB.
Friday night, 8 Mar., 1811.
[This is Lamb's only existing letter to Coleridge's friend, John Morgan.
Coleridge had not found a lodging and was still with the Morgans at 7
Portland Place, Hammersmith.
Alderman Sir William Curtis, M.P., afterwards Lord Mayor of London, was the subject of much ridicule by the Whigs and Radicals, and the hero of Peter Pindar's satire "The Fat Knight and the Petition." It was he who first gave the toast of the three R.'s—"reading, riting and rithmetic."]
LETTER 200
MARY LAMB TO SARAH HAZLITT
2 Oct., 1811.
Temple.
My dear Sarah,—I have been a long time anxiously expecting the happy news that I have just received. I address you because, as the letter has been lying some days at the India House, I hope you are able to sit up and read my congratulations on the little live boy you have been so many years wishing for. As we old women say, 'May he live to be a great comfort to you!' I never knew an event of the kind that gave me so much pleasure as the little long-looked-for-come-at-last's arrival; and I rejoiced to hear his honour has begun to suck—the word was not distinctly written and I was a long time making out the solemn fact. I hope to hear from you soon, for I am desirous to know if your nursing labours are attended with any difficulties. I wish you a happy getting-up, and a merry christening.
Charles sends his love, perhaps though he will write a scrap to Hazlitt at the end. He is now looking over me, he is always in my way, for he has had a month's holydays at home, but I am happy to say they end on Monday—when mine begin, for I am going to pass a week at Richmond with Mrs. Burney. She has been dying, but she went to the Isle of Wight and recovered once more, and she is finishing her recovery at Richmond. When there I intend to read Novels and play at Piquet all day long.
Yours truly,
M. LAMB.
LETTER 201
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM HAZLITT
(Added to same letter)
Dear Hazlitt,
I cannot help accompanying my sister's congratulations to Sarah with some of my own to you on this happy occasion of a man child being born—
Delighted Fancy already sees him some future rich alderman or opulent merchant; painting perhaps a little in his leisure hours for amusement like the late H. Bunbury, Esq.
Pray, are the Winterslow Estates entailed? I am afraid lest the young dog when he grows up should cut down the woods, and leave no groves for widows to take their lonesome solace in. The Wem Estate of course can only devolve on him, in case of your brother leaving no male issue.
Well, my blessing and heaven's be upon him, and make him like his father, with something a better temper and a smoother head of hair, and then all the men and women must love him.
Martin and the Card-boys join in congratulations. Love to Sarah. Sorry we are not within Caudle-shot. C. LAMB.
If the widow be assistant on this notable occasion, give our due respects and kind remembrances to her.
[William Hazlitt's son, William Hazlitt, afterwards the Registrar, was born on September 26, 1811, He had been preceded by another boy, in 1809, who lived, however, only a few months.
"H. Bunbury." Henry William Bunbury, the caricaturist and painter, and the husband of Goldsmith's friend, Catherine Horneck, the "Jessamy Bride." He died in 1811.
The Card-boys would be Lamb's Wednesday visitors.
Here should come a letter from Lamb to Charles Lloyd, Senior, dated
September 8, 1812. It is printed in Charles Lamb and the Lloyds: a
letter of criticism of Mr. Lloyd's translation of the Epistles of
Horace.
A letter from Lamb to Charles Lloyd, Junior, belonging to this period, is now no more, in common with all but two of his letters, the remainder of which were destroyed by Lloyd's son, Charles Grosvenor Lloyd. Writing to Daniel Stuart on October 13, 1812, Wordsworth says. "Lamb writes to Lloyd that C.'s play [Coleridge's "Remorse"] is accepted."
We now come to a period of three years in Lamb's life which is represented in the correspondence by only two or three letters. Not until August 9, 1814, does he return to his old manner. During this time Lamb is known to have written his first essay on Christ's Hospital, his "Confessions of a Drunkard," the little but excellent series of Table-Talk in The Examiner and some verses in the same paper. Possibly he wrote many letters too, but they have disappeared. We know from Crabb Robinson's Diary that it was a social period with the Lambs; the India House work also becoming more exacting than before.]
LETTER 202
CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN DYER COLLIER
[No date. Probably 1812.]
Dear Sir—Mrs. Collier has been kind enough to say that you would endeavour to procure a reporter's situation for W. Hazlitt. I went to consult him upon it last night, and he acceded very eagerly to the proposal, and requests me to say how very much obliged he feels to your kindness, and how glad he should be for its success. He is, indeed, at his wits' end for a livelihood; and, I should think, especially qualified for such an employment, from his singular facility in retaining all conversations at which he has been ever present. I think you may recommend him with confidence. I am sure I shall myself be obliged to you for your exertions, having a great regard for him.
Yours truly,
C. LAMB.
Sunday morning.
[John Payne Collier, who prints this in his Old Man's Diary, adds: "The result was that my father procured for Hazlitt the situation of a parliamentary reporter on the Morning Chronicle; but he did not retain it long, and as his talents were undoubted, Mr. Perry transferred to him the office of theatrical critic, a position which was subsequently held for several years by a person of much inferior talents."
Crabb Robinson mentions in his Diary under the date December 24, 1812, that Hazlitt is in high spirits from his engagement with Perry as parliamentary reporter at four guineas a week.
I place here, not having any definite date, a letter on a kindred subject from Mary Lamb:—]
LETTER 203
MARY LAMB TO MRS. JOHN DYER COLLIER
[No date.]
Dear Mrs. C.—This note will be given to you by a young friend of mine, whom I wish you would employ: she has commenced business as a mantua-maker, and, if you and my girls would try her, I think she could fit you all three, and it will be doing her an essential service. She is, I think, very deserving, and if you procure work for her among your friends and acquaintances, so much the better. My best love to you and my girls. We are both well.
Yours affectionately,
MARY LAMB.
[John Payne Collier remarks: "Southey and Coleridge, as is well known, married two sisters of the name of Fricker. I never saw either of them, but a third sister settled as a mantua-maker in London, and for some years she worked for my mother and her daughters. She was an intelligent woman, but by no means above her business, though she was fond of talking of her two poet-married relations. She was introduced to my mother by the following note from Mary Lamb, who always spoke of my sisters as her girls."
Mary Lamb had herself worked as a mantua-maker for some years previous to the autumn of 1796.]
LETTER 204
CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN SCOTT
[P.M. (? Feb.), 1814.]
Sir—Your explanation is perfectly pleasant to me, and I accede to your proposal most willingly.
As I began with the beginning of this month, I will if you please call upon you for your part of the engagement (supposing I shall have performed mine) on the 1st of March next, and thence forward if it suit you quarterly.—You will occasionally wink at BRISKETS & VEINY PIECES.
Your hble. Svt.
C. LAMB.
Saturday.
[John Scott (1783-1821) we shall meet later, in 1820, in connection with the London Magazine, which he edited until the fatal termination of his quarrel with Blackwood's. Scott had just become editor of The Champion.
Lamb's only contribution to The Champion under Scott, which can be identified, is the essay "On the Melancholy of Tailors," but there is little doubt that he supplied many of the extracts from old authors which were printed from time to time, and possibly one or two comic letters also. See the letter of Dec. 12, 1814.]
LETTER 205
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
[Dated at end: August 9, 1814.]
Dear Wordsworth, I cannot tell you how pleased I was at the receit 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 accomplishd that pleasure a second time before I wrote to thank you, but M. Burney 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 brethren, born out of due time and not duly taken away again—the deaf man and the blind man—the Jacobite and the Hanoverian whom antipathies 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 I saw you first at Stowey, did not make her reappearance less fresh. I don't know what to pick out of this Best of Books upon the best subjects for partial naming.
That gorgeous Sunset is famous, I think it must have been the identical one we saw on Salisbury plain five years ago, that drew Phillips from the card table where he had sat from rise of that luminary to its unequall'd set, but neither he nor I had gifted eyes to see those symbols of common things glorified such as the prophets saw them, in that sunset—the wheel—the potter's clay—the wash pot—the wine press—the almond tree rod—the baskets of figs—the fourfold visaged head, the throne and him that sat thereon.
One feeling I was particularly struck with as what I recognised so very lately at Harrow Church on entering in it after a hot and secular day's pleasure,—the instantaneous coolness and calming, almost transforming, properties of a country church just entered—a certain fragrance which it has—either from its holiness, or being kept shut all the week, or the air that is let in being pure country—exactly what you have reduced into words but I am feeling I cannot. The reading your lines about it fixed me for a time, a monument, in Harrow Church, (do you know it?) with its fine long Spire white as washd marble, to be seen by vantage of its high scite as far as Salisbury spire itself almost—
I shall select a day or two very shortly when I am coolest in brain to have a steady second reading, which I feel will lead to many more, for it will be a stock book with me while eyes or spectacles shall be lent me.
There is a deal of noble matter about mountain scenery, yet not so much as to overpower and discountenance a poor Londoner or South country man entirely, though Mary seems to have felt it occasionally 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 trembled for that invisible part of us in her.
Save for a late excursion to Harrow and a day or two on the banks of the Thames this Summer, rural images were fast fading from my mind, and by the wise provision of the Regent all that was countryfy'd in the Parks is all but obliterated. The very colour of green is vanishd, 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 suffocated in Hyde Park.
Order after Order has been issued by L'd. Sidmouth in the name of the Regent (acting in behalf of his Royal father) for the dispersion of the varlets, but in vain. The vis unita of all the Publicans in London, Westm'r., Marybone, and miles round is too powerful a force to put down. The Regent has rais'd 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—
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, "O 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, corkscrews, 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 Banditti) which one of the dogs had transported from the Garonne to the Serpentine. The unusual scene, in H. Park, by Candlelight in open air, good tobacco, bottled stout, made it look like an interval in a campaign, 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 splendent—the Rockets in clusters, in trees and all shapes, spreading about like young stars 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 'em, 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 & household, we remain—yours sincerely
C. LAMB and sister.
9 Aug., 1814.
[With this letter Lamb's second epistolary period may be said to begin.
Wordsworth had sent Lamb a copy of The Excursion, which had been published in July, 1814. In connection with this letter Lamb's review of the poem in the Quarterly (see Vol. I. of this edition) should be read. The tales of the churchyard are in Books VI. and VII. The story of Margaret had been written in 1795.
The "sunset scene" (see letter of September 19, 1814) is at the end of
Book II. Lamb refers to his visit to Hazlitt at Winterslow, near
Salisbury, in 1809, with Mary Lamb, Colonel Phillips and Martin Burney.
Wordsworth was not with them. This is the passage:—
So was he lifted gently from the ground,
And with their freight homeward the shepherds moved
Through the dull mist, I following—when a step,
A single step, that freed me from the skirts
Of the blind vapour, opened to my view
Glory beyond all glory ever seen
By waking sense or by the dreaming soul!
The appearance, instantaneously disclosed,
Was of a mighty city—boldly say
A wilderness of building, sinking far
And self-withdrawn into a boundless depth,
Far sinking into splendour—without end!
Fabric it seemed of diamond and of gold,
With alabaster domes, and silver spires,
And blazing terrace upon terrace, high
Uplifted; here, serene pavilions bright,
In avenues disposed; there, towers begirt
With battlements that on their restless fronts
Bore stars—illumination of all gems!
By earthly nature had the effect been wrought
Upon the dark materials of the storm
Now pacified; on them, and on the coves
And mountain-steeps and summits, whereunto
The vapours had receded, taking there
Their station under a cerulean sky.
Oh, 'twas an unimaginable sight!
Clouds, mists, streams, watery rocks and emerald turf,
Clouds of all tincture, rocks and sapphire sky,
Confused, commingled, mutually inflamed,
Molten together, and composing thus,
Each lost in each, that marvellous array
Of temple, palace, citadel, and huge
Fantastic pomp of structure without name,
In fleecy folds voluminous, enwrapped.
Right in the midst, where interspace appeared
Of open court, an object like a throne
Under a shining canopy of state
Stood fixed; and fixed resemblances were seen
To implements of ordinary use,
But vast in size, in substance glorified;
Such as by Hebrew Prophets were beheld
In vision—forms uncouth of mightiest power
For admiration and mysterious awe.
In August, 1814, London was in a state of jubilation over the declaration of peace between England and France. Lord Sidmouth, late Mr. Addington, the Home Secretary, known as "The Doctor," was one of Lamb's butts in his political epigrams.
"* * * * * *." I assume these stars to stand for Godwin.]