LETTER 374
CHARLES LAMB TO S.T. COLERIDGE
[? June, 1825.]
My dear Coleridge,—With pain and 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 engagement 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 my coming. I expect Field 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 hope to see your nephew. He will come again. Mary joins in best love to the Gillmans. 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.
[This letter has previously been dated 1829, but I think wrongly. Lamb had no long illness then, and Field was then in Gibraltar, where he was Chief-Justice. Lamb's long illness was in 1825, when Coleridge's Thursday evenings at Highgate were regular. Coleridge's nephew may have been one of several. I fancy it was the Rev. Edward Coleridge. Henry Nelson Coleridge had already left, I think, for the West Indies.]
LETTER 375
CHARLES LAMB TO HENRY COLBURN (?)
[Dated at end: June 14 (? 1825).]
Dear Sir,
I am quite ashamed, after your kind letter, of having expressed any disappointment about my remuneration. It is quite equivalent to the value of any thing I have yet sent you. I had Twenty Guineas a sheet from the London; and what I did for them was more worth that sum, than any thing, I am afraid, I can now produce, would be worth the lesser sum. I used up all my best thoughts in that publication, and I do not like to go on writing worse & worse, & feeling that I do so. I want to try something else. However, if any subject turns up, which I think will do your Magazine no discredit, you shall have it at your price, or something between that and my old price. I prefer writing to seeing you just now, for after such a letter as I have received from you, in truth I am ashamed to see you. We will never mention the thing again.
Your obliged friend & Serv't
C. LAMB.
June 14.
[In the absence of any wrapper I have assumed this note to be addressed to Colburn, the publisher of the New Monthly Magazine. Lamb's first contribution to that periodical was "The Illustrious Defunct" (see Vol. I. of this edition) in January, 1825. A year later he began the "Popular Fallacies," and continued regularly for some months.]
LETTER 376
CHARLES LAMB TO S.T. COLERIDGE
[P.M. July 2, 1825.]
Dear C.—We are going off to Enfield, to Allsop's, for a day or 2, with some intention of succeeding them in their lodging for a time, for this damn'd nervous Fever (vide Lond. Mag. for July) indisposes me for seeing any friends, and never any poor devil was so befriended as I am. Do you know any poor solitary human that wants that cordial to life a—true friend? I can spare him twenty, he shall have 'em good cheap. I have gallipots of 'em—genuine balm of cares—a going—a going—a going. Little plagues plague me a 1000 times more than ever. I am like a disembodied soul—in this my eternity. I feel every thing entirely, all in all and all in etc. This price I pay for liberty, but am richly content to pay it. The Odes are 4-5ths done by Hood, a silentish young man you met at Islinton one day, an invalid. The rest are Reynolds's, whose sister H. has recently married. I have not had a broken finger in them.
They are hearty good-natured things, and I would put my name to 'em chearfully, if I could as honestly. I complimented them in a Newspaper, with an abatement for those puns you laud so. They are generally an excess. A Pun is a thing of too much consequence to be thrown in as a make-weight. You shall read one of the addresses over, and miss the puns, and it shall be quite as good and better than when you discover 'em. A Pun is a Noble Thing per se: O never lug it in as an accessory. A Pun is a sole object for reflection (vide my aids to that recessment from a savage state)—it is entire, it fills the mind: it is perfect as a Sonnet, better. It limps asham'd 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 what it was.
Hood will be gratify'd, as much as I am, by your mistake. I liked 'Grimaldi' the best; it is true painting, of abstract Clownery, and that precious concrete of a Clown: and the rich succession of images, and words almost such, in the first half of the Mag. Ignotum. Your picture of the Camel, that would not or could not thread your nice needle-eye of Subtilisms, was confirm'd by Elton, who perfectly appreciated his abrupt departure. Elton borrowed the "Aids" from Hessey (by the way what is your Enigma about Cupid? I am Cytherea's son, if I understand a tittle of it), and returnd it next day saying that 20 years ago, when he was pure, he thought as you do now, but that he now thinks as you did 20 years ago. But E. seems a very honest fellow. Hood has just come in; his sick eyes sparkled into health when he read your approbation. They had meditated a copy for you, but postponed it till a neater 2d Edition, which is at hand.
Have you heard the Creature at the Opera House—Signor Non-vir sed
VELUTI Vir?
Like Orpheus, he is said to draw storks &c, after him. A picked raisin for a sweet banquet of sounds; but I affect not these exotics. Nos DURUM genus, as mellifluous Ovid hath it.
Fanny Holcroft is just come in, with her paternal severity of aspect. She has frozen a bright thought which should have follow'd. She makes us marble, with too little conceiving. Twas respecting the Signor, whom I honour on this side idolatry. Well, more of this anon.
We are setting out to walk to Enfield after our Beans and Bacon, which are just smoking.
Kindest remembrances to the G.'s ever.
From Islinton,
2d day, 3d month of my Hegira or Flight from Leadenhall.
C.L. Olim Clericus.
["To Allsop's." Allsop says in his Letters… of Coleridge that he and the Lambs were housemates for a long time.
"Vide Lond. Mag. for July"—where the Elia essay "The Convalescent" was printed.
"The Odes"—Odes and Addresses to Great People, 1825. Coleridge after reading the book had written to Lamb as follows (the letter is printed by Hood):—
MY DEAR CHARLES,—This afternoon, a little, thin, mean-looking sort of a foolscap, sub-octavo of poems, printed on very dingy outsides, lay on the table, which the cover informed me was circulating in our book-club, so very Grub-Streetish in all its appearance, internal as well as external, that I cannot explain by what accident of impulse (assuredly there was no motive in play) I came to look into it. Least of all, the title, Odes and Addresses to Great Men, which connected itself in my head with Rejected Addresses, and all the Smith and Theodore Hook squad. But, my dear Charles, it was certainly written by you, or under you, or una eum you. I know none of your frequent visitors capacious and assimilative enough of your converse to have reproduced you so honestly, supposing you had left yourself in pledge in his lock-up house. Gillman, to whom I read the spirited parody on the introduction to Peter Bell, the Ode to the Great Unknown, and to Mrs. Fry; he speaks doubtfully of Reynolds and Hood. But here come Irving and Basil Montagu.
Thursday night 10 o'clock.—No! Charles, it is you. I have read them over again, and I understand why you have anon'd the book. The puns are nine in ten good—many excellent —the Newgatory transcendent. And then the exemplum sine exemplo of a volume of personalities, and contemporaneities, without a single line that could inflict the infinitesimal of an unpleasance on any man in his senses: saving and except perhaps in the envy-addled brain of the despiser of your Lays. If not a triumph over him, it is at least an ovation. Then, moreover, and besides, to speak with becoming modesty, excepting my own self, who is there but you who can write the musical lines and stanzas that are intermixed?
Here, Gillman, come up to my Garret, and driven back by the guardian spirits of four huge flower-holders of omnigenous roses and honeysuckles—(Lord have mercy on his hysterical olfactories! What will he do in Paradise? I must have a pair or two of nostril-plugs, or nose-goggles laid in his coffin)—stands at the door, reading that to M'Adam, and the washer-woman's letter, and he admits the facts. You are found in the manner, as the lawyers say! so, Mr. Charles! hang yourself up, and send me a line, by way of token and acknowledgment. My dear love to Mary. God bless you and your Unshamabramizer.
S.T. COLERIDGE.
Reynolds was John Hamilton Reynolds. According to a marked copy in the
possession of Mr. Buxton Forman, Reynolds wrote only the odes to Mr.
M'Adam, Mr. Dymoke, Sylvanus Urban, Elliston and the Dean and Chapter of
Westminster.
The newspaper in which Lamb complimented the book was the New Times, for April 12, 1825. See Vol. I. of the present edition for the review, where the remarks on puns are repeated. The "Mag. Ignotum" was the ode to the Great Unknown, the author of the Scotch novels. In the same paper on January 8, 1825, Lamb had written an essay called "Many Friends" (see Vol. I.) a little in the manner of this first paragraph.
"Your picture of the Camel." Probably the story of a caller told by
Coleridge to Lamb in a letter.
"Your Enigma about Cupid." Possibly referring to the following passage in the Aids to Reflection, 1825, pages 277-278:—
From the remote East turn to the mythology of Minor Asia, to the Descendants of Javan who dwelt in the tents of Shem, and possessed the Isles. Here again, and in the usual form of an historic Solution, we find the same Fact, and as characteristic of the Human Race, stated in that earliest and most venerable Mythus (or symbolic Parable) of Prometheus—that truly wonderful Fable, in which the characters of the rebellious Spirit and of the Divine Friend of Mankind ([Greek: Theos philanthropos]) are united in the same Person: and thus in the most striking manner noting the forced amalgamation of the Patriarchal Tradition with the incongruous Scheme of Pantheism. This and the connected tale of Io, which is but the sequel of the Prometheus, stand alone in the Greek Mythology, in which elsewhere both Gods and Men are mere Powers and Products of Nature. And most noticeable it is, that soon after the promulgation and spread of the Gospel had awakened the moral sense, and had opened the eyes even of its wiser Enemies to the necessity of providing some solution of this great problem of the Moral World, the beautiful Parable of Cupid and Psyche was brought forward as a rival FALL OF MAN: and the fact of a moral corruption connatural with the human race was again recognized. In the assertion of ORIGINAL SIN the Greek Mythology rose and set.
"Have you heard the Creature?"—Giovanni Battista Velluti (1781-1861), an Italian soprano singer who first appeared in England on June 30, 1825, in Meyerbeer's "Il Crociato in Egitto." He received £2,500 for five months' salary.]
LETTER 377
CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[P.M. July 2, 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 drawn 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 favoured 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 rememb'ces to her, and how glad we are we can say that 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 understand that phrase of the worldlings.
I am hardly able to appreciate your volume now. But I liked the
dedicat'n much, and the apology for your bald burying grounds. To
Shelly, but that is not new. To the young Vesper-singer, Great
Bealing's, Playford, and what not?
If there be a cavil it is that the topics of religious consolation, however beautiful, are repeated till a sort of triteness attends them. It seems as if you were for ever losing friends' children by death, and reminding their parents of the Resurrection. Do children die so often, and so good, in your parts? The topic, taken from the considerat'n that they are snatch'd 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.
["My poor pittance"-"The Convalescent."
"Your Book"-Barton's Poems, 4th edition, 1825. The dedication was to
Barton's sister, Maria Hack.
"Anne Knight." A Quaker lady, who kept a school at Woodbridge.]
LETTER 378
CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN AITKEN
Colebrooke Cottage, Islington, July 5, 1825.
DEAR Sir,—With thanks for your last No. of the Cabinet— as I cannot arrange with a London publisher to reprint "Rosamund Gray" as a book, it will be at your service to admit into the Cabinet as soon as you please. Your h'ble serv't, CH's LAMB.
EMMA, eldest of your name,
Meekly trusting in her God
Midst the red-hot plough-shares trod,
And unscorch'd preserved her fame.
By that test if you were tried,
Ugly names might be defied;
Though devouring fire's a glutton,
Through the trial you might go
'On the light fantastic toe,'
Nor for plough-shares care a BUTTON.
[Aitken was an Edinburgh bookseller who edited The Cabinet; or, The Selected Beauties of Literature, 1824, 1825 and 1831. The particular interest of the letter is that it shows Lamb to have wanted to publish Rosamund Gray a third time in his life. Hitherto we had only his statement that Hessey said that the world would not bear it. Aitken printed the story in The Cabinet for 1831. Previously he had printed "Dream Children" and "The Inconveniences of being Hanged."
I have been told (but have had no opportunity of verifying the statement) that the Buttons, for one of whom the appended acrostic was written, were cousins of the Lambs.
Here should come an unpublished letter to Miss Kelly thanking her for tickets and saying that Liston is to produce Lamb's farce "The Pawnbroker's Daughter," which "will take."
Here should come a letter from Lamb to Hone, dated Enfield, July 25, 1825. Lamb had written some quatrains to the editor of the Every-Day Book, which were printed in the London Magazine for May, 1825. Hone copied them into his periodical, accompanied by a reply. Lamb began:—
I like you, and your book, ingenuous Hone!
Hone's reply contained the sentiment:—
I am "ingenuous": it is all I can
Pretend to; it is all I wish to be.
See the Every-Day Book, Vol. I., July 9. Hone at this time was occupying Lamb's house at Colebrooke Row, while the Lambs were staying at the Allsops' lodgings at Enfield.
Lamb again refers to "The Pawnbroker's Daughter." He says it is at the theatre now and Harley is there too. This would be John Pritt Harley, the actor. The play, as it happened, was never acted.
Here should come three notes to Thomas Allsop in July and August, 1825, one of which damns the afternoon sun. Given in the Boston Bibliophile edition.]
LETTER 379
CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[P.M. August 10, 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, where 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 Ann Knight, quietly at Colebrook Lodge, over the matter of your last. You mistake me when you express misgivings about my relishing a series of scriptural poems. I wrote confusedly. What I meant to say was, that one or two consolatory poems on deaths would have had 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 think 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 fallacy. If it stands on the doctrine of this being a probationary state, it is liable to this dilemma. Omniscience, 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 favor. 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 we 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 all-knower has no need of satisfying his eyes by seeing what we will do, when he knows before what we will do. Methinks we might be condemn'd before commission. In these things we grope and flounder, and if we can pick up a little human comfort that the child taken is snatch'd from vice (no great compliment to it, by the bye), let us take it. And as to where an untried 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 them. 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, seems best, 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 Xtian with light and merry shoulders. It had got silly, indecorous, pert, and every thing that is bad. Both our kind remembrances to Mrs. K. and yourself, and stranger's-greeting to Lucy—is it Lucy or Ruth?—that gathers wise sayings in a Book. C. LAMB.
[The London Magazine passed into the hands of Henry Southern in
September, 1825. Lamb's last article for it was in the August
number—"Imperfect Dramatic Illusion," reprinted in the Last Essays of
Elia as "Stage Illusion."]
LETTER 380
CHARLES LAMB TO ROBERT SOUTHEY
August 10, 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 correspondence gives no hint of such. In singleness 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 reading 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 Protestant, from Druid extirpation downwards. I call all good Christians the Church, Capillarians 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 verses, as I protest they are, commencing "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 years), the dedication is eminently pleasing and tender, and we wish Edith May Southey joy of it. Something, too, struck us as if we had heard of the death of John May. A John May's death was a few years since in the papers. We think the tale one of the quietest, prettiest things we have 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 Magnolia, &c.—Can I but like the truly Catholic spirit? "Blame as thou mayest 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 "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 writing 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 Dobrizhoffered it all out, it puzzles my slender Latinity to conjecture. Why do you seem to sanction Lander's unfeeling allegorising 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 should 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 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 and most contemptible duchess, Cervantes sacrificed his instinct to his understanding.
We got your little book but last night, being at Enfield, to which place we came about a month since, and are having quiet holydays. Mary walks her twelve miles a day some days, and I my twenty on others. 'Tis all holiday with me now, you know. The change works admirably.
For literary news, in my poor way, I have a one-act farce going to be acted at the Haymarket; 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. My ambition is not at present higher than to write nonsense for the playhouses, to eke out a somewhat contracted income. Tempus erat. There was a time, my dear Cornwallis, when the Muse, &c. But I am now in MacFleckno'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 Colebrooke 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.
[In the letter to Barton of March 20, 1826, Lamb continues or amplifies his remarks on his own letter-writing habits.
"Capillarians." The New English Dictionary gives Lamb's word in this connection as its sole example, meaning without stem.
"The poem"—Southey's Tale of Paraguay, 1825, which begins with an address to Jenner, the physiologist:—
Jenner! for ever shall thy honour'd name,
and is dedicated to Edith May Southey—
Edith! ten years are number'd, since the day.
Edith Southey was born in 1804. The dedication was dated 1814.
John May was Southey's friend and correspondent. It was not he that had died.
"The Vesper Bell"—"The Chapel Bell," which was not in the Annual
Anthology, but in Southey's Poems, 1797. Dear George would perhaps be
Burnett, who was at Oxford with Southey when the verses were written.
"The compliment to the translatress." Southey took his Tale of Paraguay from Dobrizhoffer's History of the Abipones, which his niece, Sara Coleridge, had translated. Southey remarks in the poem that could Dobrizhoffer have foreseen by whom his words were to be turned into English, he would have been as pleased as when he won the ear of the Empress Queen.
"Landor's … allegorising." Landor, in the conversation between "Peter Leopold and the President du Paty," makes President du Paty say that Cervantes had deeper purpose than the satirising of knight-errants, Don Quixote standing for the Emperor Charles V. and Sancho Panza symbolising the people. Southey quoted the passage in the Notes to the Proem. Lamb's Elia essay on the "Defect of Imagination" (see Vol. II.) amplifies this criticism of Don Quixote.
"A one-act farce." This was, I imagine, "The Pawnbroker's Daughter," although that is in two acts. It was not, however, acted.
George Dyer had just been married to the widow of a solicitor who lived opposite him in Clifford's Inn.
Here should come three unimportant notes to Hone with reference to the Every-Day Book—adding an invitation to Enfield to be shown "dainty spots."]
LETTER 381
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS ALLSOP
[P.M. Sept. 9, 1825.]
My dear Allsop—We are exceedingly grieved for your loss. When your note came, my sister went to Pall Mall, to find you, and saw Mrs. L. and was a little comforted to find Mrs. A. had returned to Enfield before the distresful event. I am very feeble, can scarce move a pen; got home from Enfield on the Friday, and on Monday follow'g was laid up with a most violent nervous fever second this summer, have had Leeches to my Temples, have not had, nor can not get, a night's sleep. So you will excuse more from Yours truly, C. LAMB.
Islington, 9 Sept.
Our most kind rememb'ces to poor Mrs. Allsop. A line to say how you both are will be most acceptable.
[Allsop's loss was, I imagine, the death of one of his children.]
LETTER 382
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS ALLSOP
[P.M. Sept. 24, 1825.]
My dear Allsop—Come not near this unfortunate roof yet a while. My disease is clearly but slowly going. Field is an excellent attendant. But Mary's anxieties have overturned her. She has her old Miss James with her, without whom I should not feel a support in the world. We keep in separate apartments, and must weather it. Let me know all of your healths. Kindest love to Mrs. Allsop. C. LAMB.
Saturday.
Can you call at Mrs. Burney 26 James Street, and tell her, & that I can see no one here in this state. If Martin return— if well enough, I will meet him some where, don't let him come.
[Field was Henry Field, Barren Field's brother.
Here should come a note from Lamb to Hone, dated September 30, 1825, in which Lamb describes the unhappy state of the house at Colebrooke Row, with himself and his sister both ill.
Here also should come a similar note to William Ayrton. "All this summer almost I have been ill. I have been laid up (the second nervous attack) now six weeks."
On October 18 Lamb sends Hone the first "bit of writing" he has done "these many weeks."]
LETTER 383
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM HONE
[P.M. Oct. 24, 1825.]
I send a scrap. Is it worth postage? My friends are fairly surprised that you should set me down so unequivocally for an ass, as you have done, Page 1358.
HERE HE IS
what follows?
THE ASS
Call you this friendship?
Mercy! What a dose you have sent me of Burney!—a perfect opening* draught.
*A Pun here is intended.
[This is written on the back of the MS. "In re Squirrels" for Hone's Every-Day Book (see Vol. I. of this edition). Lamb's previous contribution had been "The Ass" which Hone had introduced with a few words.]
LETTER 384
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS ALLSOP
[Dec. 5, 1825.]
Dear A.—You will be glad to hear that we are at home to visitors; not too many or noisy. Some fine day shortly Mary will surprise Mrs. Allsop. The weather is not seasonable for formal engagements.
Yours most ever,
C. LAMB.
Satr'd.
[Here should come a note to Manning at Totteridge, signed Charles and Mary Lamb, and dated December 10, 1825. It indicates that both are well again, and hoping to see Manning at Colebrooke.]
LETTER 385
CHARLES LAMB TO CHARLES OLLIER
[No date. ? Dec., 1825.]
Dear O.—I leave it entirely to Mr. Colburn; but if not too late, I think the Proverbs had better have L. signd to them and reserve Elia for Essays more Eliacal. May I trouble you to send my Magazine, not to Norris, but H.C. Robinson Esq. King's bench walks, instead.
Yours truly
C. LAMB.
My friend Hood, a prime genius and hearty fellow, brings this.
[Lamb's "Popular Fallacies" began in the New Monthly Magazine in January, 1826. Henry Colburn was the publisher of that magazine, which had now obtained Lamb's regular services. The nominal editor was Campbell, the poet, who was assisted by Cyrus Redding. Ollier seems to have been a sub-editor.]
LETTER 386
CHARLES LAMB TO CHARLES OLLIER
Colebrook Cottage, Colebrook Row, Tuesday [early 1826].
Dear Ollier,—I send you two more proverbs, which will be the last of this batch, unless I send you one more by the post on THURSDAY; none will come after that day; so do not leave any open room in that case. Hood sups with me to-night. Can you come and eat grouse? 'Tis not often I offer at delicacies.
Yours most kindly, C. LAMB.
LETTER 387
CHARLES LAMB TO CHARLES OLLIER
January, 1826.
Dear O.,—We lamented your absence last night. The grouse were piquant, the backs incomparable. You must come in to cold mutton and oysters some evening. Name your evening; though I have qualms at the distance. Do you never leave early? My head is very queerish, and indisposed for much company; but we will get Hood, that half Hogarth, to meet you. The scrap I send should come in AFTER the "Rising with the Lark."
Yours truly.
Colburn, I take it, pays postages.
[The scrap was the Fallacy "That we Should Lie Down with the Lamb," which has perhaps the rarest quality of the series.
Here perhaps should come two further notes to Ollier, referring to some articles on Chinese jests by Manning.
Here should come a letter to Mr. Hudson dated February 1, 1826, recommending a nurse for a mental case. Given in the Boston Bibliophile edition.]
LETTER 388
CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[P.M. February 7, 1826.]
My kind remembrances to your daughter and A.K. always.
Dear B.B.—I got your book not more than five days ago, so am not so negligent as I must have appeared to you with a fortnight's sin upon my shoulders. I tell you with sincerity that I think you have completely 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 unhistorify'd, I read them thro' 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 cox-combical phrase, con amore. I am particularly pleased with the "Spiritual Law," page 34-5. It reminded me of Quarles, and Holy Mr. Herbert, as Izaak Walton calls him: the two best, if not only, of our devotional poets, tho' some prefer Watts, and some Tom Moore.
I am far from well or in my right spirits, and shudder at pen and ink work. I poke out a monthly crudity for Colburn in his magazine, which I call "Popular Fallacies," and periodically crush a proverb or two, setting up my folly against the wisdom of nations. Do you see the "New Monthly"?
One word I must object to in your little book, and it recurs more than once—FADELESS is no genuine compound; loveless is, because love is a noun as well as verb, but what is a fade?—and I do not quite like whipping the Greek drama upon the back of "Genesis," page 8. I do not like praise handed in by disparagement: as I objected to a side censure on Byron, etc., in the lines on Bloomfield: with these poor cavils excepted, your verses are without a flaw. C. LAMB.
[Barton's new book was Devotional Verses: founded on, and illustrative of Select Texts of Scripture, 1826. See the Appendix for "The Spiritual Law."
"Holy Mr. Herbert." Writing to Lady Beaumont in 1826 Coleridge says: "My dear old friend Charles Lamb and I differ widely (and in point of taste and moral feeling this is a rare occurrence) in our estimate and liking of George Herbert's sacred poems. He greatly prefers Quarles—nay, he dislikes Herbert."
Barton whipped the Greek drama on the back of Genesis in the following stanza, referring to Abraham's words before preparing to sacrifice Isaac:—
Brief colloquy, yet more sublime,
To every feeling heart,
Than all the boast of classic time,
Or Drama's proudest art:
Far, far beyond the Grecian stage,
Or Poesy's most glowing page.
For Lamb's reference to Byron, see above.]
LETTER 389
CHARLES LAMB TO CHARLES OLLIER
[P.M. March 16, 1826.]
D'r Ollier if not too late, pray omit the last paragraph in "Actor's
Religion," which is clumsy. It will then end with the word Mugletonian.
I shall not often trouble you in this manner, but I am suspicious of
this article as lame.
C. LAMB.
["The Religion of Actors" was printed in the New Monthly Magazine for April, 1826. The essay ends at "Muggletonian." See Vol. I. of this edition.]
LETTER 390
CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[P.M. March 20, 1826.]
Dear B.B.—You may know my letters by the paper and the folding. For the former, I live on scraps obtained in charity from an old friend whose stationary is a permanent perquisite; for folding, I shall do it neatly when I learn to tye my neckcloths. I surprise most of my friends by writing to them on ruled paper, as if I had not got past pothooks and hangers. Sealing wax, 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 Roman in delicate irony, judicious reflexions, etc., his gilt post 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. I 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 Mesopotamos, 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 inclosed one bit of paper in another, nor understand the rationale of it. Once only I seald with borrow'd wax, to set Walter Scott a wondering, sign'd with the imperial quarterd arms of England, which my friend Field gives in compliment to his descent in the female line from O. Cromwell. It must have set his antiquarian curiosity upon watering. To your questions upon the currency, I refer you to Mr. Robinson's last speech, where, if you can find a solution, I cannot. I think this tho' the best ministry we ever stumbled upon. Gin reduced four shillings in the gallon, wine 2 shillings in the quart. This comes home to men's minds and bosoms. My 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 talkd of somebody's insipid wife, without a correspondent 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 stuff'd in there. A little thing without name will also be printed on the Religion of the Actors, but it is out of your way, so I recommend 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.
["Mr. Robinson's last speech." Frederick John Robinson, afterwards Earl of Ripon, then Chancellor of the Exchequer under the Earl of Liverpool. The Government had decided to check the use of paper-money by stopping the issue of notes for less than £5; and Robinson had made a speech on the subject on February 10. The motion was carried, but to some extent was compromised. It was Robinson who, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, found the money for building the new British Museum and purchasing Angerstein's pictures as the beginning of the National Gallery.
"My tirade against visitors"—the Popular Fallacy "That Home is Home," in the New Monthly Magazine for March.
"Somebody's insipid wife." In the Popular Fallacy "That You Must Love Me and Love My Dog," in the February number, Lamb had spoken of Honorius' "vapid wife."
Barton and his daughter visited Lamb at Colebrooke Cottage somewhen about this time. Mrs. FitzGerald, in 1893, wrote out for me her recollections of the day. Lamb, who was alone, opened the door himself. He sent out for a luncheon of oysters. The books on his shelves, Mrs. FitzGerald remembered, retained the price-labels of the stalls where he had bought them. She also remembered a portrait over the fireplace. This would be the Milton. In the Gem for 1831 was a poem by Barton, "To Milton's Portrait in a Friend's Parlour."]
LETTER 391
CHARLES LAMB TO S.T. COLERIDGE
March 22nd, 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. I say, do it by all means. I have Decker's play by me, if you can filch anything out of it. Miss Gray, with her kitten eyes, is an actress, though she shows it not at all, and pupil to the former, whose gestures she mimics in comedy to the disparagement 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 upon 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 knowing how stupendous a creature he is. I am perfecting myself in the "Ode to Eton College" against Thursday, that I may not appear unclassic. I have just discovered that it is much better than the "Elegy."
In haste, C.L.
P.S.—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.
["Next week early." Canon Ainger's text here has: "May we venture to bring Emma with us?"
"Your nephew's pleasant book"—Henry Nelson Coleridge's Six Months in the West Indies in 1825. In the last chapter but one of the book is an account of the slave question, under the title "Planters and Slaves."
"Sternhold"—Thomas Sternhold, the coadjutor of Hopkins in paraphrasing the Psalms.
"The pantomime." Coleridge seems to have had some project for modernising Dekker for Fanny Kelly. Mr. Dykes Campbell suggested that the play to be treated was "Old Fortunatus."
"Miss Gray." I have found nothing of this lady.
"Manning." Writing to Robert Lloyd twenty-five years earlier Lamb had said of Manning: "A man of great Power—an enchanter almost.—Far beyond Coleridge or any man in power of impressing —when he gets you alone he can act the wonders of Egypt. Only he is lazy, and does not always put forth all his strength; if he did, I know no man of genius at all comparable to him."
"Against Thursday." Coleridge was "at home" on Thursday evenings. Possibly on this occasion some one interested in Gray was to be there, or the allusion may be a punning one to Miss Gray.
"Your latest theory." I cannot explain this.]
LETTER 392
CHARLES LAMB TO H.F. CARY
April 3, 1826.
Dear Sir,—It is whispered me that you will not be unwilling to look into our doleful hermitage. Without more preface, you will gladden our cell by accompanying our old chums of the London, Darley and Allan Cunningham, to Enfield on Wednesday. You shall have hermit's fare, with talk as seraphical as the novelty of the divine life will permit, with an innocent retrospect to the world which we have left, when I will thank you for your hospitable offer 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; and I am indebted to chance for this awkward but most sincere invitation.
Yours, with best love to Mrs. Cary, C. LAMB.
Darley knows all about the coaches. Oh, for a Museum in the wilderness!
[Cary, who had been afternoon lecturer at Chiswick and curate of the
Savoy, this year took up his post as Assistant Keeper of the Printed
Books at the British Museum. George Darley, who wrote some notes to
Gary's Dante, we have met. Allan Cunningham was the Scotch poet and
the author of the Lives of the Painters, the "Giant" of the London
Magazine. The Lambs seem to have been spending some days at Enfield.
Here should come a note from Lamb to Ollier asking for a copy of the
April New Monthly Magazine for himself, and one for his Chinese friend
(Manning) if his jests are in.]
LETTER 393
CHARLES LAMB TO VINCENT NOVELLO
[P.M. May 9, 1826.]
Dear N. You will not expect us to-morrow, I am sure, while these damn'd
North Easters continue. We must wait the Zephyrs' pleasures. By the bye,
I was at Highgate on Wensday, the only one of the Party.
Yours truly C. LAMB.
Summer, as my friend Coleridge waggishly writes, has set in with its usual severity.
Kind rememb'ces to Mrs. Novello &c.
LETTER 394
CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[P.M. May 16, 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. I do not know how Friends will relish it, but we out-lyers, Honorary Friends, like it very well. I have had my head and ears stuff'd up with the East winds. A continual ringing in my brain of bells jangled, or The Spheres touchd by some raw Angel. It is not George 3 trying the 100th psalm? 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 hypocrites of Mays wither me to death. My head has been a ringing Chaos, like the day the winds were made, before they submitted to the discipline of a weather-cock, 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 naturd stupid looking old gentleman, whom a footpad has stopt, 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 chuse 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 imperceptibly to you) in a silent reader. I seem too deaf to see what I read. But with a touch or two of returning Zephyr my head will melt. What Lyes you Poets tell about the May! It is the most ungenial 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 the [?that] indicated the Quarter. I hope these ill winds have blowd over you, as they do thro' me. Kindest rememb'ces to you and yours. C.L.
["Your neat little poem." It is not possible to trace this poem.
Probably, I think, the "Stanzas written for a blank leaf in Sewell's
History of the Quakers," printed in A Widow's Tale, 1827.
"George 3." Byron's "Vision of Judgment" thus closes:—
King George slipp'd into Heaven for one;
And when the tumult dwindled to a calm,
I left him practising the hundredth psalm.
This is Hood's sketch, in his Whims and Oddities:—
[Illustration: "Very deaf indeed."]
"Unmeaning joy around appears…" I have not found this.]
LETTER 395
CHARLES LAMB TO S.T. COLERIDGE
June 1st, 1826.
Dear Coleridge,—If I know myself, nobody more detests the display of personal 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 unguarded 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 has 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 enforced 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 rather than in the more studied graces of diction.
I am, dear Coleridge, yours sincerely, C. LAMB.
[The portrait to which Lamb refers will be found opposite page 706 in my large edition. It was etched by Brook Pulham of the India House. It was this picture which so enraged Procter when he saw it in a printshop (probably that referred to by Lamb in a later letter) that he reprimanded the dealer.
Here should come a charming letter to Louisa Holcroft dated June, offering her a room at Enfield "pretty cheap, only two smiles a week."]
LETTER 396
CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN BATES DIBDIN
Friday, someday in June, 1826. [P.M. June 30, 1826.]
Dear D.—My first impulse upon opening your letter was pleasure at seeing your old neat hand, nine parts gentlemanly, with a modest dash of the clerical: my second a Thought, natural enough this hot weather, Am I to answer all this? why 'tis as long as those to the Ephesians and Galatians put together—I have counted the words for curiosity. But then Paul has nothing like the fun which is ebullient all over yours. I don't remember a good thing (good like yours) from the 1st Romans to the last of the Hebrews. I remember but one Pun in all the Evangely, and that was made by his and our master: Thou art Peter (that is Doctor Rock) and upon this rock will I build &c.; which sanctifies Punning with me against all gainsayers. I never knew an enemy to puns, who was not an ill-natured man.
Your fair critic in the coach reminds me of a Scotchman who assured me that he did not see much in Shakspeare. I replied, I dare say not. He felt the equivoke, lookd awkward, and reddish, but soon returnd to the attack, by saying that he thought Burns was as good as Shakspeare: I said that I had no doubt he was—to a Scotchman. We exchangd no more words that day.—Your account of the fierce faces in the Hanging, with the presumed interlocution of the Eagle and the Tyger, amused us greatly. You cannot be so very bad, while you can pick mirth off from rotten walls. But let me hear you have escaped out of your oven. May the Form of the Fourth Person who clapt invisible wet blankets about the shoulders of Shadrach Meshach and Abednego, be with you in the fiery Trial. But get out of the frying pan. Your business, I take it, is bathing, not baking.
Let me hear that you have clamber'd up to Lover's Seat; it is as fine in that neighbourhood as Juan Fernandez, as lonely too, when the Fishing boats are not out; I have sat for hours, staring upon a shipless sea. The salt sea is never so grand as when it is left to itself. One cock-boat spoils it. A sea-mew or two improves it. And go to the little church, which is a very protestant Loretto, and seems dropt by some angel for the use of a hermit, who was at once parishioner and a whole parish. It is not too big. Go in the night, bring it away in your portmanteau, and I will plant it in my garden. It must have been erected in the very infancy of British Christianity, for the two or three first converts; yet hath it all the appertenances of a church of the first magnitude, its pulpit, its pews, its baptismal font; a cathedral in a nutshell. Seven people would crowd it like a Caledonian Chapel. The minister that divides the word there, must give lumping penny-worths. It is built to the text of two or three assembled in my name. It reminds me of the grain of mustard seed. If the glebe land is proportionate, it may yield two potatoes. Tythes out of it could be no more split than a hair. Its First fruits must be its Last, for 'twould never produce a couple. It is truly the strait and narrow way, and few there be (of London visitants) that find it. The still small voice is surely to be found there, if any where. A sounding board is merely there for ceremony. It is secure from earthquakes, not more from sanctity than size, for 'twould feel a mountain thrown upon it no more than a taper-worm would. Go and see, but not without your spectacles. By the way, there's a capital farm house two thirds of the way to the Lover's Seat, with incomparable plum cake, ginger beer, etc. Mary bids me warn you not to read the Anatomy of Melancholy in your present low way. You'll fancy yourself a pipkin, or a headless bear, as Burton speaks of. You'll be lost in a maze of remedies for a labyrinth of diseasements, a plethora of cures. Read Fletcher; above all the Spanish Curate, the Thief or Little Nightwalker, the Wit Without Money, and the Lover's Pilgrimage. Laugh and come home fat. Neither do we think Sir T. Browne quite the thing for you just at present. Fletcher is as light as Soda water. Browne and Burton are too strong potions for an Invalid. And don't thumb or dirt the books. Take care of the bindings. Lay a leaf of silver paper under 'em, as you read them. And don't smoke tobacco over 'em, the leaves will fall in and burn or dirty their namesakes. If you find any dusty atoms of the Indian Weed crumbled up in the Beaum't and Fletcher, they are mine. But then, you know, so is the Folio also. A pipe and a comedy of Fletcher's the last thing of a night is the best recipe for light dreams and to scatter away Nightmares. Probatum est. But do as you like about the former. Only cut the Baker's. You will come home else all crust; Rankings must chip you before you can appear in his counting house. And my dear Peter Fin Junr., do contrive to see the sea at least once before you return. You'll be ask'd about it in the Old Jewry. It will appear singular not to have seen it. And rub up your Muse, the family Muse, and send us a rhyme or so. Don't waste your wit upon that damn'd Dry Salter. I never knew but one Dry Salter, who could relish those mellow effusions, and he broke. You knew Tommy Hill, the wettest of dry salters. Dry Salters, what a word for this thirsty weather! I must drink after it. Here's to thee, my dear Dibdin, and to our having you again snug and well at Colebrooke. But our nearest hopes are to hear again from you shortly. An epistle only a quarter as agreeable as your last, would be a treat.
Yours most truly C. LAMB
Timothy B. Dibdin, Esq., No. 9, Blucher Row, Priory, Hastings.
[Dibdin, who was in delicate health, had gone to Hastings to recruit, with a parcel of Lamb's books for company. He seems to have been lodged above the oven at a baker's. This letter contains Lamb's crowning description of Hollingdon Rural church.
"A Caledonian Chapel." Referring to the crowds that listened to Irving.
"Peter Fin." A character in Jones' "Peter Finn's Trip to Brighton," 1822, as played by Liston.
"Tommy Hill." In the British Museum is preserved the following brief note addressed to Mr. Thomas Hill—probably the same. The date is between 1809 and 1817:—]
LETTER 397
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS HILL
D'r Sir It is necessary I see you sign, can you step up to me 4 Inner
Temple Lane this evening. I shall wait at home.
Yours,
C. LAMB.
[I have no notion to what the note refers. It is quite likely, Mr. J.A. Rutter suggests, that Hill the drysalter, a famous busy-body, and a friend of Theodore Hook, stood for the portrait of Tom Pry in Lamb's "Lepus Papers" (see Vol. I.). S.C. Hall, in his Book of Memories, says of Hill that "his peculiar faculty was to find out what everybody did, from a minister of state to a stableboy."]
LETTER 398
CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN BATES DIBDIN
[P.M. July 14, 1826.]
Because you boast poetic Grandsire,
And rhyming kin, both Uncle and Sire,
Dost think that none but their Descendings
Can tickle folks with double endings?
I had a Dad, that would for half a bet
Have put down thine thro' half the Alphabet.
Thou, who would be Dan Prior the second,
For Dan Posterior must be reckon'd.
In faith, dear Tim, your rhymes are slovenly,
As a man may say, dough-baked and ovenly;
Tedious and long as two Long Acres,
And smell most vilely of the Baker's.
(I have been cursing every limb o' thee,
Because I could not hitch in Timothy.
Jack, Will, Tom, Dick's, a serious evil,
But Tim, plain Tim's—the very devil.)
Thou most incorrigible scribbler,
Right Watering place and cockney dribbler,
What child, that barely understands A,
B, C, would ever dream that Stanza
Would tinkle into rhyme with "Plan, Sir"?
Go, go, you are not worth an answer.
I had a Sire, that at plain Crambo
Had hit you o'er the pate a damn'd blow.
How now? may I die game, and you die brass,
But I have stol'n a quip from Hudibras.
'Twas thinking on that fine old Suttler, }
That was in faith a second Butler; }
Mad as queer rhymes as he, and subtler. }
He would have put you to 't this weather
For rattling syllables together;
Rhym'd you to death, like "rats in Ireland,"
Except that he was born in High'r Land.
His chimes, not crampt like thine, and rung ill,
Had made Job split his sides on dunghill.
There was no limit to his merryings
At christ'nings, weddings, nay at buryings.
No undertaker would live near him,
Those grave practitioners did fear him;
Mutes, at his merry mops, turned "vocal."
And fellows, hired for silence, "spoke all."
No body could be laid in cavity,
Long as he lived, with proper gravity.
His mirth-fraught eye had but to glitter,
And every mourner round must titter.
The Parson, prating of Mount Hermon,
Stood still to laugh, in midst of sermon.
The final Sexton (smile he must for him)
Could hardly get to "dust to dust" for him.
He lost three pall-bearers their livelyhood,
Only with simp'ring at his lively mood:
Provided that they fresh and neat came,
All jests were fish that to his net came.
He'd banter Apostolic castings,
As you jeer fishermen at Hastings.
When the fly bit, like me, he leapt-o'er-all,
And stood not much on what was scriptural.
P.S.
I had forgot, at Small Bohemia
(Enquire the way of your maid Euphemia)
Are sojourning, of all good fellows
The prince and princess,—the Novellos—
Pray seek 'em out, and give my love to 'em;
You'll find you'll soon be hand and glove to 'em.
In prose, Little Bohemia, about a mile from Hastings in the Hollington road, when you can get so far. Dear Dib, I find relief in a word or two of prose. In truth my rhymes come slow. You have "routh of 'em." It gives us pleasure to find you keep your good spirits. Your Letter did us good. Pray heaven you are got out at last. Write quickly.
This letter will introduce you, if 'tis agreeable. Take a donkey. 'Tis
Novello the Composer and his Wife, our very good friends.
C.L.
[Dibdin must have sent the verses which Lamb asked for in the previous letter, and this is Lamb's reply. Pride of ancestry seems to have been the note of Dibdin's effort. Probably there is a certain amount of truth in Lamb's account of the resolute merriment of his father. It is not inconsistent with his description of Lovel in the Elia essay "The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple."
"I have stol'n a quip." The manner rather than the precise matter, I think.
Here should come a letter from Lamb to the Rev. Edward Coleridge, Coleridge's nephew, dated July 19, 1826. It thanks the recipient for his kindness to the child of a friend of Lamb's, Samuel Anthony Bloxam, Coleridge having assisted in getting Frederick Bloxam into Eton (where he was a master) on the foundation. Samuel Bloxam and Lamb were at Christ's Hospital together.]