LETTER 513
CHARLES LAMB TO MRS. WILLIAMS
Enfield, Tuesday [April 21, 1830].
Dear Madam,—I have ventured upon some lines, which combine my old acrostic talent (which you first found out) with my new profession of epitaph-monger. As you did not please to say, when you would die, I have left a blank space for the date. May kind heaven be a long time in filling it up. At least you cannot say that these lines are not about you, though not much to the purpose. We were very sorry to hear that you have not been very well, and hope that a little excursion may revive you. Miss Isola is thankful for her added day; but I verily think she longs to see her young friends once more, and will regret less than ever the end of her holydays. She cannot be going on more quietly than she is doing here, and you will perceive amendment.
I hope all her little commissions will all be brought home to your satisfaction. When she returns, we purpose seeing her to Epping on her journey. We have had our proportion of fine weather and some pleasant walks, and she is stronger, her appetite good, but less wolfish than at first, which we hold a good sign. I hope Mr. Wing will approve of its abatement. She desires her very kindest respects to Mr. Williams and yourself, and wishes to rejoin you. My sister and myself join in respect, and pray tell Mr. Donne, with our compliments, that we shall be disappointed, if we do not see him. This letter being very neatly written, I am very unwilling that Emma should club any of her disproportionate scrawl to deface it.
Your obliged servant,
C. LAMB.
[Addressed to "Mrs. Williams, W.B. Donne, Esq., Matteshall, East
Dereham, Norfolk."
Mr. Wing was probably Miss Isola's doctor. Mr. Donne was William Bodham
Donne (1807-1882), the friend of Edward FitzGerald, and Examiner of
Plays.
This was Lamb's acrostic-epitaph on Mrs. Williams:—
Grace Joanna here doth lie:
Reader, wonder not that I
Ante-date her hour of rest.
Can I thwart her wish exprest,
Ev'n unseemly though the laugh
Jesting with an Epitaph?
On her bones the turf lie lightly,
And her rise again be brightly!
No dark stain be found upon her—
No, there will not, on mine honour—
Answer that at least I can.
Would that I, thrice happy man,
In as spotless garb might rise,
Light as she will climb the skies,
Leaving the dull earth behind,
In a car more swift than wind.
All her errors, all her failings,
(Many they were not) and ailings,
Sleep secure from Envy's railings.
Here should come an undated note from Lamb to Basil Montagu, in which Lamb asks for help for Hone in his Coffee-House. "If you can help a worthy man you will have two worthy men obliged to you." Hone, having fallen upon bad times, Lamb helped in the scheme to establish him in the Grasshopper Coffee-House, at 13 Gracechurch Street (see next letter).]
LETTER 514
CHARLES LAMB TO ROBERT SOUTHEY
May 10, 1830.
Dear Southey,—My friend Hone, whom you would like for a friend, I found deeply impressed with your generous notice of him in your beautiful "Life of Bunyan," which I am just now full of. He has written to you for leave to publish a certain good-natured letter. I write not this to enforce his request, for we are fully aware that the refusal of such publication would be quite consistent with all that is good in your character. Neither he nor I expect it from you, nor exact it; but if you would consent to it, you would have me obliged by it, as well as him. He is just now in a critical situation: kind friends have opened a coffee-house for him in the City, but their means have not extended to the purchase of coffee-pots, credit for Reviews, newspapers, and other paraphernalia. So I am sitting in the skeleton of a possible divan. What right I have to interfere, you best know. Look on me as a dog who went once temporarily insane, and bit you, and now begs for a crust. Will you set your wits to a dog?
Our object is to open a subscription, which my friends of the "Times" are most willing to forward for him, but think that a leave from you to publish would aid it.
But not an atom of respect or kindness will or shall it abate in either of us if you decline it. Have this strongly in your mind.
Those "Every-Day" and "Table" Books will be a treasure a hundred years hence; but they have failed to make Hone's fortune.
Here his wife and all his children are about me, gaping for coffee customers; but how should they come in, seeing no pot boiling!
Enough of Hone. I saw Coleridge a day or two since. He has had some severe attack, not paralytic; but, if I had not heard of it, I should not have found it out. He looks, and especially speaks, strong. How are all the Wordsworths and all the Southeys? whom I am obliged to you if you have not brought up haters of the name of
C. LAMB.
P.S.—I have gone lately into the acrostic line. I find genius (such as I had) declines with me, but I get clever. Do you know anybody that wants charades, or such things, for Albums? I do 'em at so much a sheet. Perhaps an epigram (not a very happy-gram) I did for a school-boy yesterday may amuse. I pray Jove he may not get a flogging for any false quantity; but 'tis, with one exception, the only Latin verses I have made for forty years, and I did it "to order."
SUUM CUIQUE
Adsciscit sibi divitias et opes alienas
Fur, rapiens, spolians, quod mihi, quod-que tibi,
Proprium erat, temnens haec verba, Meum-que, Suum-que;
Omne suum est: tandem Cui-que Suum tribuit.
Dat laqueo collum; vestes, vah! carnifici dat;
Sese Diabolo: sic bene: Cuique Suum.
I write from Hone's, therefore Mary cannot send her love to Mrs.
Southey, but I do.
Yours ever, C.L.
[Major's edition of The Pilgrim's Progress, mentioned in a letter to Barton above, was issued in 1830 with a memoir of Bunyan by Southey. It was reviewed in The Times for May 7, 1830, I think probably by Lamb, in the following terms:—
The public is aware that the unexhausted diligence and unwearied pen of Mr. Southey have produced a new and excellent edition of the celebrated Pilgrim's Progress, with the Life of the Author prefixed. This Life is, no doubt, an interesting work, though we wish the author, both in that and in the account, which is attributed to him, of the founder of the Jesuits, contained in a recent periodical work, had taken more time. The narrative in both is hasty and tumultuary, if we may use the latter expression: there is no time or room for reflection; and when a reflection comes, it is so mixed and jambed in with the story, or with quotations from the works or words of the respective heroes of the history, that it escapes unobserved. Could we, without grievous offence, recommend, both to Mr. Southey and Sir Walter Scott, to recollect the man spoken of by Horace?—
quem fama est esse librisque Ambustum propriis."—Sat, i., 61.
Yet still, as we said above, the Life of Bunyan is an interesting work. How different the origin of all the sects and their founders, from that of our sober, staid, and, we trust, permanent establishment, and the learned and pious reformers from whom it sprang!
But that for which we chiefly notice this work of Mr. Southey, is the very last sentence in it, wherein is contained his frank and honourable recommendation (though not more than they deserve) of the works of one whom the iron hand of oppression would have levelled with the dust:—
"In one of the volumes collected from various quarters, which were sent to me for this purpose, I observe the name of W. Hone, and notice it that I may take the opportunity of recommending his Every-Day Book and Table Book to those who are interested in the preservation of our national and local customs. By these very curious publications their compiler has rendered good service in an important department of literature; and he may render yet more, if he obtain the encouragement which he well deserves."
Not only we, and the person mentioned in this paragraph, but all the friends of pure English literature,—all the curious in old English customs,—in short, all intelligent men, with the hearts of Englishmen in them,—owe Mr. Southey their gratitude for this recommendation: it springs from a just taste and right feeling united.
Hone wrote to The Times at once to thank both the paper and Southey for the compliment. A few days later, on May 21, appeared an article in The Times containing correspondence between Hone and Southey. I quote the introduction, again probably the work of Lamb, and Southey's letter (see Lamb's letter to Hone below):—
We alluded some days ago to the handsome notice of Mr. Hone in Mr. Southey's Life of Bunyan. The following correspondence has since been sent to us: it displays in an advantageous light the modesty of Mr. Hone and the amiable and candid disposition of Mr. Southey. The business, wholly foreign to Mr. Hone's former pursuits, which is alluded to in the letter, is explained in an advertisement in this day's paper.
* * * * *
"To Mr. Hone, 13, Gracechurch-Street,
"Keswick, April 26.
"Sir,—Your letter has given me both pain and pleasure. I am sorry to learn that you are still, in the worldly sense of the word, an unfortunate man,—that you are withdrawn from pursuits which were consonant to your habits and inclinations, and that a public expression of respect and good-will, made in the hope that it might have been serviceable to you, can have no such effect.
"When I observed your autograph in the little book, I wrote to inquire of Mr. Major whether it had come to his hands from you, directly or indirectly, for my use, that, in that case, I might thank you for it. It proved otherwise, but I would not lose an opportunity which I had wished for.
"Judging of you (as I would myself be judged) by your works, I saw in the editor of the Every-Day and Table Books a man who had applied himself with great diligence to useful and meritorious pursuits. I thought that time, and reflection, and affliction, (of which it was there seen that he had had his share,) had contributed to lead him into this direction, which was also that of his better mind. What alteration had been produced in his opinions it concerned not me to inquire; here there were none but what were unexceptionable,—no feelings but what were to be approved. From all that appeared, I supposed he had become 'a sadder and a wiser man:' I therefore wished him success in his literary undertakings.
"The little parcel which you mention I shall receive with pleasure.
"I wish you success in your present undertaking, whatever it be, and that you may one day, under happier circumstances, resume a pen which has, of late years, been so meritoriously employed. If your new attempt prosper, you will yet find leisure for intellectual gratification, and for that self-improvement which may be carried on even in the busiest concerns of life.
"I remain, Sir, yours with sincere good will,
"ROBERT SOUTHEY."
In the advertisement columns of the same issue of The Times (May 21) was the following notice, drawn up, I assume, by Lamb:—
THE FAMILY OF WILLIAM HONE, in the course of last winter, were kindly assisted by private friends to take and alter the premises they now reside in, No. 13, Gracechurch-street, for the purpose of a coffeehouse, to be managed by Mrs. Hone and her elder daughters; but they are in a painful exigency which increases hourly, and renders a public appeal indispensable. The wellwishers to Mr. Hone throughout the kingdom, especially the gratified readers of his literary productions (in all of which he has long ceased to have an interest, and from none of which can he derive advantage), are earnestly solicited to afford the means of completing the fittings and opening the house in a manner suited to its proposed respectability. If this aid be yielded without loss of time, it will be of indescribable benefit, inasmuch as it will put an end to many grievous anxieties and expenses, inseparable from the lengthened delay which has hitherto been inevitable, and will enable the family to immediately commence the business, which alone they look forward to for support. Subscriptions will be received by the following bankers:—Messrs. Ransom and Co., Pall-mall east; Messrs. Dixon, Sons, and Brookes, Chancery-lane; Messrs. Ladbroke and Co., Bank-buildings, Cornhill; and by Mr. Clowes, printer, 14, Charing-cross; Mr. Thomas Rodd, bookseller, 2, Great Newport-street; Mr. Griffiths, bookseller, 13, Wellington-street, Strand; Mr. Effingham Wilson, bookseller, Royal Exchange; and Messrs. Fisher and Moxhay, biscuit-bakers, 55, Threadneedle-street.
The first list of subscriptions, headed by "Charles Lamb, Esq., Enfield, £10," came to £103. This was Monday, May 31. The next list was published on June 10, accompanied by the following note in the body of the paper:—
The subscriptions for Mr. Hone, it will be perceived, are going on favourably. In the list now published is the name of the Duke of Bedford, who has sent 20_l_. His cause has been warmly espoused by the provincial journals, more than 20 of which have inserted his appeal gratuitously, with offers to receive and remit subscriptions. The aphorism, "he gives twice who gives quickly," could not receive a more cogent application than in the present instance, for the funds are required to enable Mr. Hone to commence business in his new undertaking, where he is already placed with his family, liable to rent and taxes, and other claims, but gaining nothing until his outfit is completed.
Hone, however, did not prosper, in spite of his friends, who were not sufficiently numerous to find the requisite capital.
"Suum Cuique." The boy for whom this epigram was composed was a son of Hessey, the publisher, afterwards Archdeacon Hessey. He was at the Merchant Taylors' School, where it was a custom to compose Latin and English epigrams for speech day, the boys being permitted to get help. Archdeacon Hessey wrote as follows in the Taylorian a few years ago:—
The subjects for 1830 were Suum Cuique and Brevis esse laboro. After some three or four exercise nights I confess that I was literally "at my wits' end." But a brilliant idea struck me. I had frequently, boy as I was, seen Charles Lamb at my father's house, and once, in 1825 or 1826, I had been taken to have tea with him and his sister, Mary Lamb, at their little house, Colebrook Cottage, a whitish-brown tenement, standing by itself, close to the New River, at Islington. He was very kind, as he always was to young people, and very quaint. I told him that I had devoured his "Roast Pig"; he congratulated me on possessing a thorough schoolboy's appetite. And he was pleased when I mentioned my having seen the boys at Christ's Hospital at their public suppers, which then took place on the Sunday evenings in Lent. "Could this good-natured and humorous old gentleman be prevailed upon to give me an Epigram?" "I don't know," said my father, to whom I put the question, "but I will ask him at any rate, and send him the mottoes." In a day or two there arrived from Enfield, to which Lamb had removed some time in 1827, not one, but two epigrams, one on each subject. That on Suum Cuique was in Latin, and was suggested by the grim satisfaction which had recently been expressed by the public at the capture and execution of some notorious highwayman.
See also Vol. IV. of this edition for a slightly differing version. Lamb had many years before, he says in a letter to Godwin, written similar epigrams.
"With one exception." Perhaps the Latin verses on Haydon's picture. See
Vol. IV.]
LETTER 515
CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON
Enfield, Tuesday. [P.M. May 12, 1830.]
Dear M. I dined with your and my Rogers at Mr. Gary's yesterday. Gary consulted me on the proper bookseller to offer a Lady's MS novel to. I said I would write to you. But I wish you would call on the Translator of Dante at the British Museum, and talk with him. He is the pleasantest of clergymen. I told him of all Rogers's handsome behaviour to you, and you are already no stranger. Go. I made Rogers laugh about your Nightingale sonnet, not having heard one. 'Tis a good sonnet notwithstanding. You shall have the books shortly.
C.L.
[Samuel Rogers had just lent Moxon £500 on which to commence publisher.
Moxon had dedicated his first book to Rogers. This is Moxon's "Sonnet to the Nightingale," but I cannot explain why Rogers laughed:—
Lone midnight-soothing melancholy bird,
That send'st such music to my sleepless soul,
Chaining her faculties in fast controul,
Few listen to thy song; yet I have heard,
When Man and Nature slept, nor aspen stirred,
Thy mournful voice, sweet vigil of the sleeping
And liken'd thee to some angelic mind,
That sits and mourns for erring mortals weeping.
The genius, not of groves, but of mankind,
Watch at this solemn hour o'er millions keeping.
In Eden's bowers, as mighty poets tell,
Did'st thou repeat, as now that wailing call—
Those sorrowing notes might seem, sad Philomel,
Prophetic to have mourned of man the fall.]
LETTER 516
CHARLES LAMB TO VINCENT NOVELLO
Friday. [P.M. May 14, 1830.]
Dear Novello, Mary hopes you have not forgot you are to spend a day with us on Wednesday. That it may be a long one, cannot you secure places now for Mrs. Novello yourself and the Clarkes? We have just table room for four. Five make my good Landlady fidgetty; six, to begin to fret; seven, to approximate to fever point. But seriously we shall prefer four to two or three; we shall have from 1/2 past 10 to six, when the coach goes off, to scent the country. And pray write now, to say you do so come, for dear Mrs. Westwood else will be on the tenters of incertitude.
C. LAMB.
LETTER 517
CHARLES LAMB TO VINCENT NOVELLO
[May 20, 1830.]
Dear N.—pray write immediately to say "The book has come safe." I am anxious, not so much for the autographs, as for that bit of the hair brush. I enclose a cinder, which belonged to Shield, when he was poor, and lit his own fires. Any memorial of a great Musical Genius, I know, is acceptable; and Shield has his merits, though Clementi, in my opinion, is far above him in the Sostenuto. Mr. Westwood desires his compliments, and begs to present you with a nail that came out of Jomelli's coffin, who is buried at Naples.
[Vincent Novello writes on this: "A very characteristic note from Dear Charles Lamb, who always pretended to Rate all kinds of memorials and Relics, and assumed a look of fright and horror whenever he reproached me with being a Papist, instead of a Quaker, which sect he pretended to doat upon." The book would be Novello's album, with Lamb's "Free Thoughts on Eminent Composers" in it (see next letter but one).
Shield was William Shield (1748-1829), the composer. He was buried in Westminster Abbey in the same grave as Clementi. Nicolo Jomelli (1714-1774) was a Neapolitan composer.]
LETTER 518
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM HONE
May 21, 1830.
Dear Hone—I thought you would be pleased to see this letter. Pray if you have time to, call on Novello, No. 66, Great Queen St. I am anxious to learn whether he received his album I sent on Friday by our nine o'clock morning stage. If not, beg inquire at the Old Bell, Holborn.
CHARLES LAMB.
Southey will see in the Times all we proposed omitting is omitted.
[See notes to the letter to Southey above.]
LETTER 519
CHARLES LAMB TO SARAH HAZLITT
[Enfield, Saturday, May 24th, 1830.]
Mary's love? Yes. Mary Lamb quite well.
Dear Sarah,—I found my way to Northaw on Thursday and a very good woman behind a counter, who says also that you are a very good lady but that the woman who was with you was naught. These things may be so or not. I did not accept her offered glass of wine (home-made, I take it) but craved a cup of ale, with which I seasoned a slice of cold Lamb from a sandwich box, which I ate in her back parlour, and proceeded for Berkhampstead, &c.; lost myself over a heath, and had a day's pleasure. I wish you could walk as I do, and as you used to do. I am sorry to find you are so poorly; and, now I have found my way, I wish you back at Goody Tomlinson's. What a pretty village 'tis! I should have come sooner, but was waiting a summons to Bury. Well, it came, and I found the good parson's lady (he was from home) exceedingly hospitable.
Poor Emma, the first moment we were alone, took me into a corner, and said, "Now, pray, don't drink; do check yourself after dinner, for my sake, and when we get home to Enfield, you shall drink as much as ever you please, and I won't say a word about it." How I behaved, you may guess, when I tell you that Mrs. Williams and I have written acrostics on each other, and she hoped that she should have "no reason to regret Miss Isola's recovery, by its depriving her of our begun correspondence." Emma stayed a month with us, and has gone back (in tolerable health) to her long home, for she comes not again for a twelvemonth. I amused Mrs. Williams with an occurrence on our road to Enfield. We travelled with one of those troublesome fellow-passengers in a stage-coach, that is called a well-informed man. For twenty miles we discoursed about the properties of steam, probabilities of carriages by ditto, till all my science, and more than all, was exhausted, and I was thinking of escaping my torment by getting up on the outside, when, getting into Bishops Stortford, my gentleman, spying some farming land, put an unlucky question to me: "What sort of a crop of turnips I thought we should have this year?" Emma's eyes turned to me, to know what in the world I could have to say; and she burst into a violent fit of laughter, maugre her pale, serious cheeks, when, with the greatest gravity, I replied, that "it depended, I believed, upon boiled legs of mutton." This clench'd our conversation; and my Gentleman, with a face half wise, half in scorn, troubled us with no more conversation, scientific or philosophical, for the remainder of the journey. Ayrton was here yesterday, and as learned to the full as my fellow-traveller. What a pity that he will spoil a wit and a devilish pleasant fellow (as he is) by wisdom! He talk'd on Music; and by having read Hawkins and Burney recently I was enabled to talk of Names, and show more knowledge than he had suspected I possessed; and in the end he begg'd me to shape my thoughts upon paper, which I did after he was gone, and sent him.
FREE THOUGHTS ON SOME EMINENT COMPOSERS
Some cry up Haydn, some Mozart,
Just as the whim bites. For my part,
I do not care a farthing candle
For either of them, or for Handel.
Cannot a man live free and easy,
Without admiring Pergolesi!
Or thro' the world with comfort go
That never heard of Doctor Blow!
So help me God, I hardly have;
And yet I eat, and drink, and shave,
Like other people, (if you watch it,)
And know no more of stave and crotchet
Than did the un-Spaniardised Peruvians;
Or those old ante-queer-Diluvians
That lived in the unwash'd world with Jubal,
Before that dirty Blacksmith Tubal,
By stroke on anvil, or by summ'at,
Found out, to his great surprise, the gamut.
I care no more for Cimerosa
Than he did for Salvator Rosa,
Being no Painter; and bad luck
Be mine, if I can bear that Gluck!
Old Tycho Brahe and modern Herschel
Had something in them; but who's Purcel?
The devil, with his foot so cloven,
For aught I care, may take Beethoven;
And, if the bargain does not suit,
I'll throw him Weber in to boot!
There's not the splitting of a splinter
To chuse 'twixt him last named, and Winter.
Of Doctor Pepusch old queen Dido
Knew just as much, God knows, as I do.
I would not go four miles to visit
Sebastian Bach-or Batch-which is it?
No more I would for Bononcini.
As for Novello and Rossini,
I shall not say a word about [to grieve] 'em,
Because they're living. So I leave 'em.
Martin Burney is as odd as ever. We had a dispute about the word "heir," which I contended was pronounced like "air;" he said that might be in common parlance; or that we might so use it, speaking of the "Heir-at-Law," a comedy; but that in the Law Courts it was necessary to give it a full aspiration, and to say Hayer; he thought it might even vitiate a cause, if a Counsel pronounced it otherwise. In conclusion, he "would consult Serjeant Wilde;" who gave it against him. Sometimes he falleth into the water, sometimes into the fire. He came down here, and insisted on reading Virgil's "Eneid" all through with me (which he did,) because a Counsel must know Latin. Another time he read out all the Gospel of St. John, because Biblical quotations are very emphatic in a Court of Justice. A third time, he would carve a fowl, which he did very ill-favoredly, because "we did not know how indispensable it was for a Barrister to do all those sort of things well. Those little things were of more consequence than we supposed." So he goes on, harassing about the way to prosperity, and losing it. With a long head, but somewhat a wrong one—harum-scarum. Why does not his guardian angel look to him? He deserves one—: may be, he has tired him out.
I am——with this long scrawl, but I thought in your exile, you might like a letter. Commend me to all the wonders in Derbyshire, and tell the devil I humbly kiss—my hand to him. Yours ever,
C. LAMB.
["Free Thoughts." The version in Ayrton's album differs a little from this, the principal difference being in line 13, "primitive" for "un-Spaniardised." Lamb's story of the origin of the verses is not necessarily correct. I fancy that he had written them for Novello before he produced them in reply to Ayrton's challenge. When sending the poem to Ayrton in a letter at this time, not available for this edition (written apparently just after Novello had paid the visit, referred to above), Lamb wrote that it was written to gratify Novello.
Mary Lamb (or Charles Lamb, personating her) appended the following postscript to the verses in Novello's album:—
The reason why my brother's so severe,
Vincentio is—my brother has no ear:
And Caradori her mellifluous throat
Might stretch in vain to make him learn a note.
Of common tunes he knows not anything,
Nor "Rule, Britannia" from "God save the King."
He rail at Handel! He the gamut quiz!
I'd lay my life he knows not what it is.
His spite at music is a pretty whim—
He loves not it, because it loves not him.
M. LAMB.
"Serjeant Wilde"-Thomas Wilde (1782-1855), afterwards Lord Truro, a friend of Lamb's, who is said to have helped him with squibs in the Newark election in 1829, when Martin Burney was among his supporters (see Vol. V. of my large edition, page 341).
Here had I permission, I would print Lamb's letter to Ayrton, given in the Boston Bibliophile edition, incorporating the same poem.]
LETTER 520
CHARLES LAMB TO SARAH HAZLITT
June 3, 1830.
Dear Sarah,—I named your thought about William to his father, who expressed such horror and aversion to the idea of his singing in public, that I cannot meddle in it directly or indirectly. Ayrton is a kind fellow, and if you chuse to consult him by Letter, or otherwise, he will give you the best advice, I am sure, very readily. I have no doubt that M. Burney's objection to interfering was the same—with mine. With thanks for your pleasant long letter, which is not that of an Invalid, and sympathy for your sad sufferings, I remain, in haste,
Yours Truly,
Mary's kindest Love.
[There was some talk of William Hazlitt Junr. becoming a pupil of Braham and taking up music seriously. He did not do so.
Here should come a note from Lamb to Hone, dated Enfield, June 17, 1830, in which Lamb offers Hone £1 per quarter for yesterday's Times, after the Coffee-House customers have done with it. He ends with the wish, "Vivant Coffee, Coffee-potque!"]
LETTER 521
CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[P.M. June 28, 1830.]
DEAR B.B.—Could you dream of my publishing without sending a copy to you? You will find something new to you in the vol. particularly the Translations. Moxon will send to you the moment it is out. He is the young poet of Xmas, whom the Author of the Pleasures of Memory has set up in the bookvending business with a volunteer'd loan of £500—such munificence is rare to an almost stranger. But Rogers, I am told, has done many goodnatured things of this nature. I need not say how glad to see A.K. and Lucy we should have been,—and still shall be, if it be practicable. Our direction is Mr. Westwood's, Chase Side Enfield, but alas I know not theirs. We can give them a bed. Coaches come daily from the Bell, Holborn.
You will see that I am worn to the poetical dregs, condescending to Acrostics, which are nine fathom beneath Album verses—but they were written at the request of the Lady where our Emma is, to whom I paid a visit in April to bring home Emma for a change of air after a severe illness, in which she had been treated like a daughter by the good Parson and his whole family. She has since return'd to her occupation. I thought on you in Suffolk, but was 40 miles from Woodbridge. I heard of you the other day from Mr. Pulham of the India House.
Long live King William the 4th.
S.T.C. says, we have had wicked kings, foolish kings, wise kings, good kings (but few) but never till now have we had a Blackguard King—
Charles 2d was profligate, but a Gentleman.
I have nineteen Letters to dispatch this leisure Sabbath for Moxon to send about with Copies-so you will forgive me short measure—and believe me
Yours ever
C.L.
Pray do let us see your Quakeresses if possible.
[Lamb's Album Verses was almost ready. The translations were those from Vincent Bourne.
William IV. came to the throne on June 26, 1830.
"I have nineteen Letters." The fact that none of these is forthcoming helps to illustrate the imperfect state of Lamb's correspondence as (even among so many differing editions) we now have it. But of course the number may have been an exaggeration.
Here should come a note from Lamb to Hone, dated July 1, 1830, in which Lamb asks that the newspaper be kept as he is meditating a town residence (see next letter).
Here probably should come an undated letter to Mrs. John Rickman, accompanying a gift of Album Verses. Lamb says: "Will you re-give, or lend me, by the bearer, the one Volume of juvenile Poetry? I have tidings of a second at Brighton." He proposes that he and Mrs. Rickman shall some day play old whist for the two.]
LETTER 522
CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[P.M. 30 August, 1830.]
Dear B.B.—my address is 34 Southampton Buildings, Holborn. For God's sake do not let me [be] pester'd with Annuals. They are all rogues who edit them, and something else who write in them. I am still alone, and very much out of sorts, and cannot spur up my mind to writing. The sight of one of those Year Books makes me sick. I get nothing by any of 'em, not even a Copy—
Thank you for your warm interest about my little volume, for the critics on which I care [? not] the 5 hundred thousandth part of the tythe of a half-farthing. I am too old a Militant for that. How noble, tho', in R.S. to come forward for an old friend, who had treated him so unworthily. Moxon has a shop without customers, I a Book without readers. But what a clamour against a poor collection of album verses, as if we had put forth an Epic. I cannot scribble a long Letter—I am, when not at foot, very desolate, and take no interest in any thing, scarce hate any thing, but annuals. I am in an interregnum of thought and feeling—
What a beautiful Autumn morning this is, if it was but with me as in times past when the candle of the Lord shined round me—
I cannot even muster enthusiasm to admire the French heroism.
In better times I hope we may some day meet, and discuss an old poem or two. But if you'd have me not sick no more of Annuals.
C.L. Ex-Elia.
Love to Lucy and A.K. always.
[The Literary Gazette, Jerdan's paper, had written offensively of Album Verses and its author's vanity in the number for July 10, 1830. Southey published in The Times of August 6 some lines in praise of Lamb and against Jerdan. It was Southey's first public utterance on Lamb since the famous letter by Elia to himself, and is the more noble in consequence. The lines ran thus:—
TO CHARLES LAMB
On the Reviewal of his Album Verses in the Literary Gazette
Charles Lamb, to those who know thee justly dear
For rarest genius, and for sterling worth,
Unchanging friendship, warmth of heart sincere,
And wit that never gave an ill thought birth,
Nor ever in its sport infix'd a sting;
To us who have admired and loved thee long,
It is a proud as well as pleasant thing
To hear thy good report, now borne along
Upon the honest breath of public praise:
We know that with the elder sons of song
In honouring whom thou hast delighted still,
Thy name shall keep its course to after days.
The empty pertness, and the vulgar wrong,
The flippant folly, the malicious will,
Which have assailed thee, now, or heretofore,
Find, soon or late, their proper meed of shame;
The more thy triumph, and our pride the more,
When witling critics to the world proclaim,
In lead, their own dolt incapacity.
Matter it is of mirthful memory
To think, when thou wert early in the field,
How doughtily small Jeffrey ran at thee
A-tilt, and broke a bulrush on thy shield.
And now, a veteran in the lists of fame,
I ween, old Friend! thou art not worse bested
When with a maudlin eye and drunken aim,
Dulness hath thrown a jerdan at thy head.
SOUTHEY.
Leigh Hunt attacked Jerdan in the Examiner in a number of "Rejected
Epigrams" signed T.A. See later. He also took up the matter in the
Tatler, in the first number of which the following "Inquest
Extraordinary" was printed:—
Last week a porter died beneath his burden;
Verdict: Found carrying a Gazette from Jerdan.
Moxon's shop without customers was at 64 New Bond Street. "The candle of the Lord." In my large edition I gave this reference very thoughtlessly to Proverbs xx. 27. It is really to Job. xxix. 3.
"The French heroism." The July Revolution, in which the Bourbons were routed and Louis Philippe placed on the throne.]
LETTER 523
CHARLES LAMB TO SAMUEL ROGERS
[Dated at end: Oct. 5, 1830.]
Dear Sir,—I know not what hath bewitch'd me that I have delayed acknowledging your beautiful present. But I have been very unwell and nervous of late. The poem was not new to me, tho' I have renewed acquaintance with it. Its metre is none of the least of its excellencies. 'Tis so far from the stiffness of blank verse—it gallops like a traveller, as it should do—no crude Miltonisms in [it]. Dare I pick out what most pleases me? It is the middle paragraph in page thirty-four. It is most tasty. Though I look on every impression as a proof of your kindness, I am jealous of the ornaments, and should have prized the verses naked on whitybrown paper.
I am, Sir, yours truly,
C. LAMB.
Oct. 5th.
[Rogers had sent Lamb a copy of his Italy, with illustrations by Turner and Stothard, which was published by Moxon with other firms in 183O. This is the middle paragraph on page 34:—
Here I received from thee, Basilico,
One of those courtesies so sweet, so rare!
When, as I rambled thro' thy vineyard-ground
On the hill-side, thou sent'st thy little son,
Charged with a bunch almost as big as he,
To press it on the stranger. May thy vats
O'erflow, and he, thy willing gift-bearer,
Live to become a giver; and, at length,
When thou art full of honour and wouldst rest,
The staff of thine old age!]
LETTER 524
CHARLES LAMB TO VINCENT NOVELLO
[P.M. November 8, 1830.]
Tears are for lighter griefs. Man weeps the doom
That seals a single victim to the tomb.
But when Death riots, when with whelming sway
Destruction sweeps a family away;
When Infancy and Youth, a huddled mass,
All in an instant to oblivion pass,
And Parent's hopes are crush'd; what lamentation
Can reach the depth of such a desolation?
Look upward, Feeble Ones! look up, and trust
That He, who lays this mortal frame in dust,
Still hath the immortal Spirit in His keeping.
In Jesus' sight they are not dead, but sleeping.
Dear N., will these lines do? I despair of better. Poor Mary is in a deplorable state here at Enfield.
Love to all,
C. LAMB.
[The four sons and two daughters of John and Ann Rigg, of York, had been drowned in the Ouse. A number of poets were asked for verses, the best to be inscribed on a monument in York Minster. Those of James Montgomery were chosen.
It was possibly the death of Hazlitt, on September 18, while the Lambs were in their London lodgings, that brought on Mary Lamb's attack.]
LETTER 525
CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON
November 12, 1830.
Dear Moxon,—I have brought my sister to Enfield, being sure that she had no hope of recovery in London. Her state of mind is deplorable beyond any example. I almost fear whether she has strength at her time of life ever to get out of it. Here she must be nursed, and neither see nor hear of anything in the world out of her sick chamber. The mere hearing that Southey had called at our lodgings totally upset her. Pray see him, or hear of him at Mr. Rickman's, and excuse my not writing to him. I dare not write or receive a letter in her presence; every little task so agitates her. Westwood will receive any letter for me, and give it me privately. Pray assure Southey of my kindliest feelings towards him; and, if you do not see him, send this to him.
Kindest remembrances to your sister, and believe me ever yours, C. LAMB.
Remember me kindly to the Allsops.
[Southey was visiting Rickman, then Clerk Assistant to the House of
Commons, where he lived.]
LETTER 526
CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON
[No date. ? Dec., 1830.]
Dear M. Something like this was what I meant. But on reading it over, I see no great fun or use in it. It will only stuff up and encroach upon the sheet you propose. Do as, and what, you please. Send Proof, or not, as you like. If you send, send me a copy or 2 of the Album Verses, and the Juvenile Poetry if bound.
I am happy to say Mary is mending, but not enough to give me hopes of being able to leave her. I sadly regret that I shall possibly not see Southey or Wordsworth, but I dare not invite either of them here, for fear of exciting my sister, whose only chance is quiet. You don't know in what a sad state we have been.
I think the Devil may come out without prefaces, but use your discretion.
Make my kindest remembces to Southey, with my heart's thanks for his
kind intent. I am a little easier about my Will, and as Ryle is
Executor, and will do all a friend can do at the Office, and what little
I leave will buy an annuity to piece out tolerably, I am much easier.
Yours ever
C.L.
To 64 New Bond St.
[I cannot say to what the opening sentences refer: probably an advertisement for Satan in Search of a Wife ("the Devil"), which Lamb had just written and Moxon was publishing.
The reference to the Juvenile Poetry suggests that Moxon had procured some of the sheets of the Poetry for Children which Godwin brought out in 1809, and was binding up a few. This theory is borne out by the statement in the letter to Mrs. Norris, later, that the book was not to be had for love or money, and the circumstance that in 1833 Lamb seems to send her a copy. Ryle was Charles Ryle. an India House clerk, and Lamb's executor with Talfourd.]
LETTER 527
CHARLES LAMB TO GEORGE DYER
Dec. 20, 1830.
Dear Dyer,—I would have written before to thank you for your kind letter, written with your own hand. It glads us to see your writing. It will give you pleasure to hear that, after so much illness, we are in tolerable health and spirits once more. Miss Isola intended to call upon you after her night's lodging at Miss Buffam's, but found she was too late for the stage. If she comes to town before she goes home, she will not miss paying her respects to Mrs. Dyer and you, to whom she desires best love. Poor Enfield, that has been so peaceable hitherto, has caught the inflammatory fever, the tokens are upon her! and a great fire was blazing last night in the barns and haystacks of a farmer, about half a mile from us. Where will these things end? There is no doubt of its being the work of some ill-disposed rustic; but how is he to be discovered? They go to work in the dark with strange chemical preparations unknown to our forefathers. There is not even a dark lantern to have a chance of detecting these Guy Fauxes. We are past the iron age, and are got into the fiery age, undream'd of by Ovid. You are lucky in Clifford's Inn where, I think, you have few ricks or stacks worth the burning. Pray keep as little corn by you as you can, for fear of the worst.
It was never good times in England since the poor began to speculate upon their condition. Formerly, they jogged on with as little reflection as horses: the whistling ploughman went cheek by jowl with his brother that neighed. Now the biped carries a box of phosphorus in his leather-breeches; and in the dead of night the half-illuminated beast steals his magic potion into a cleft in a barn, and half a country is grinning with new fires. Farmer Graystock said something to the touchy rustic that he did not relish, and he writes his distaste in flames. What a power to intoxicate his crude brains, just muddlingly awake, to perceive that something is wrong in the social system!-what a hellish faculty above gunpowder!
Now the rich and poor are fairly pitted; we shall see who can hang or burn fastest. It is not always revenge that stimulates these kindlings. There is a love of exerting mischief. Think of a disrespected clod that was trod into earth, that was nothing, on a sudden by damned arts refined into an exterminating angel, devouring the fruits of the earth and their growers in a mass of fire! What a new existence!—what a temptation above Lucifer's! Would clod be any thing but a clod, if he could resist it? Why, here was a spectacle last night for a whole country!—a Bonfire visible to London, alarming her guilty towers, and shaking the Monument with an ague fit—all done by a little vial of phosphor in a Clown's fob! How he must grin, and shake his empty noddle in clouds, the Vulcanian Epicure! Can we ring the bells backward? Can we unlearn the arts that pretend to civilize, and then burn the world? There is a march of Science; but who shall beat the drums for its retreat? Who shall persuade the boor that phosphor will not ignite?
Seven goodly stacks of hay, with corn-barns proportionable, lie smoking ashes and chaff, which man and beast would sputter out and reject like those apples of Asphaltes and bitumen. The food for the inhabitants of earth will quickly disappear. Hot rolls may say: "Fuimus panes, fuit quartern-loaf, et ingens gloria Apple-pasty-orum." That the good old munching system may last thy time and mine, good un-incendiary George, is the devout prayer of thine,
To the last crust,
CH. LAMB.
[Incendiarism, the result of agricultural distress and in opposition to the competition of the new machinery, was rife in the country at this time.]
LETTER 528
CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON
[No date. ? Christmas, 1830.]
Dear M. A thousand thanks for your punctualities. What a cheap Book is the last Hogarth you sent me! I am pleased now that Hunt diddled me out of the old one. Speaking of this, only think of the new farmer with his 30 acres. There is a portion of land in Lambeth parish called Knaves Acre. I wonder he overlook'd it. Don't show this to the firm of Dilk & C'o. I next want one copy of Leicester School, and wish you to pay Leishman, Taylor, 2 Blandford Place, Pall Mall, opposite the British Institution, £6. 10. for coat waistcoat &c. And I vehemently thirst for the 4th No. of Nichols's Hogarth, to bind 'em up (the 2 books) as "Hogarth, and Supplement." But as you know the price, don't stay for its appearance; but come as soon as ever you can with your bill of all demands in full, and, as I have none but £5 notes, bring with you sufficient change. Weather is beautiful. I grieve sadly for Miss Wordsworth. We are all well again. Emma is with us, and we all shall be glad of a sight of you. COME ON Sunday, if you can; better, if you come before. Perhaps Rogers would smile at this.—A pert half chemist half apothecary, in our town, who smatters of literature and is immeasurable unletterd, said to me "Pray, Sir, may not Hood (he of the acres) be reckon'd the Prince of wits in the present day?" to which I assenting, he adds "I had always thought that Rogers had been reckon'd the Prince of Wits, but I suppose that now Mr. Hood has the better title to that appellation." To which I replied that Mr. R. had wit with much better qualities, but did not aspire to the principality. He had taken all the puns manufactured in John Bull for our friend, in sad and stupid earnest. One more Album verses, please.
Adieu.
C.L.
["Hunt." This would, I think, be not Leigh Hunt but his nephew, Hunt of Hunt & Clarke. The diddling I cannot explain. Leishman was the husband of Mrs. Leishman, the Lambs' old landlady at Enfield.
"Miss Wordsworth"—Dorothy Wordsworth, who was ill.
"Perhaps Rogers would smile at this." I take the following passage from the Maclise Portrait Gallery:—
In the early days of the John Bull it was the fashion to lay every foundling witticism at the door of Sam Rogers; and thus the refined poet and man of letters became known as a sorry jester.
John Bull was Theodore Hook's paper. Maginn wrote in Fraser's Magazine:—
Joe Miller vails his bonnet to Sam Rogers; in all the newspapers, not only of the kingdom but its dependencies,—Hindostan, Canada, the West Indies, the Cape, from the tropics,—nay, from the Antipodes to the Orkneys, Sam is godfather— general to all the bad jokes in existence. The Yankees have caught the fancy, and from New Orleans to New York it is the same,—Rogers is synonymous with a pun. All British-born or descended people,—yea the very negro and the Hindoo—father their calembourgs on Rogers. Quashee, or Ramee-Samee, who knows nothing of Sir Isaac Newton, John Milton, or Fraser's Magazine, grins from ear to ear at the name of the illustrious banker, and with gratified voice exclaims, "Him dam funny, dat Sam!"]
LETTER 529
CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON
[P.M. February 3, 1831.]
Dear Moxon, The snows are ancle deep slush and mire, that 'tis hard to get to the post office, and cruel to send the maid out. 'Tis a slough of despair, or I should sooner have thankd you for your offer of the Life, which we shall very much like to have, and will return duly. I do not know when I shall be in town, but in a week or two at farthest, when I will come as far as you if I can. We are moped to death with confinement within doors. I send you a curiosity of G. Dyer's tender-conscience. Between 30 and 40 years since, G. published the Poet's Fate, in which were two very harmless lines about Mr. Rogers, but Mr. R. not quite approving of them, they were left out in a subsequent edition 1801. But G. has been worryting about them ever since; if I have heard him once, I have heard him a hundred times express a remorse proportiond to a consciousness of having been guilty of an atrocious libel. As the devil would have it, a fool they call Barker, in his Parriana has quoted the identical two lines as they stood in some obscure edition anterior to 1801, and the withers of poor G. are again wrung. His letter is a gem—with his poor blind eyes it has been laboured out at six sittings. The history of the couplet is in page 3 of this irregular production, in which every variety of shape and size that Letters can be twisted into, is to be found. Do shew his part of it to Mr. R. some day. If he has bowels, they must melt at the contrition so queerly character'd of a contrite sinner. G. was born I verily think without original sin, but chuses to have a conscience, as every Christian Gentleman should have. His dear old face is insusceptible of the twist they call a sneer, yet he is apprehensive of being suspected of that ugly appearance. When he makes a compliment, he thinks he has given an affront. A name is personality. But shew (no hurry) this unique recantation to Mr. R. 'Tis like a dirty pocket handkerchief muck'd with tears of some indigent Magdalen. There is the impress of sincerity in every pot-hook and hanger. And then the gilt frame to such a pauper picture! It should go into the Museum. I am heartily sorry my Devil does not answer. We must try it a little longer, and after all I think I must insist on taking a portion of the loss upon myself. It is too much you should lose by two adventures. You do not say how your general business goes on, and I should very much like to talk over it with you here. Come when the weather will possibly let you. I want to see the Wordsworths, but I do not much like to be all night away. It is dull enough to be here together, but it is duller to leave Mary; in short it is painful, and in a flying visit I should hardly catch them. I have no beds for them, if they came down, and but a sort of a house to receive them in, yet I shall regret their departure unseen. I feel cramped and straiten'd every way. Where are they?
We have heard from Emma but once, and that a month ago, and are very anxious for another letter.
You say we have forgot your powers of being serviceable to us. That we never shall. I do not know what I should do without you when I want a little commission. Now then. There are left at Miss Buffam's, the Tales of the Castle, and certain vols. Retrospective Review. The first should be conveyd to Novello's, and the Reviews should be taken to Talfourd's office, ground floor, East side, Elm Court, Middle Temple, to whom I should have written, but my spirits are wretched. It is quite an effort to write this. So, with the Life, I have cut you out 3 Pieces of service. What can I do for you here, but hope to see you very soon, and think of you with most kindness. I fear tomorrow, between rains and snows, it would be impossible to expect you, but do not let a practicable Sunday pass. We are always at home!
Mary joins in remembrances to your sister, whom we hope to see in any fine-ish weather, when she'll venture.
Remember us to Allsop, and all the dead people—to whom, and to London, we seem dead.
["The Life." The Life which every one was then reading was Moore's Life of Byron.
"George Dyer's." The explanation is that years before, in his Poems, 1801, Dyer had written in a piece called "The Poet's Fate"—
And Rogers, if he shares the town's regard,
Was first a banker ere he rose a bard.
In the second edition Dyer altered this to—
And Darwin, if he share the town's regard,
Was first a doctor ere he rose a bard.
Lamb notes the alteration in his copy of the second edition, now in the
British Museum. In 1828-1829 appeared Parriana, by Edmund Henry
Barker, which quoted the couplet in its original form, to Dyer's
distress.
Tales of the Castle. By the Countess de Genlis. Translated by Thomas Holcroft]
LETTER 530
CHARLES LAMB TO GEORGE DYER
Feb. 22nd, 1831.
Dear Dyer,—Mr. Rogers, and Mr. Rogers's friends, are perfectly assured, that you never intended any harm by an innocent couplet, and that in the revivification of it by blundering Barker you had no hand whatever. To imagine that, at this time of day, Rogers broods over a fantastic expression of more than thirty years' standing, would be to suppose him indulging his "Pleasures of Memory" with a vengeance. You never penned a line which for its own sake you need (dying) wish to blot. You mistake your heart if you think you can write a lampoon. Your whips are rods of roses. Your spleen has ever had for its objects vices, not the vicious-abstract offences, not the concrete sinner. But you are sensitive, and wince as much at the consciousness of having committed a compliment, as another man would at the perpetration of an affront. But do not lug me into the same soreness of conscience with yourself. I maintain, and will to the last hour, that I never writ of you but con amore. That if any allusion was made to your near-sightedness, it was not for the purpose of mocking an infirmity, but of connecting it with scholar-like habits: for is it not erudite and scholarly to be somewhat near of sight, before age naturally brings on the malady? You could not then plead the obrepens senectus. Did I not moreover make it an apology for a certain absence, which some of your friends may have experienced, when you have not on a sudden made recognition of them in a casual street-meeting, and did I not strengthen your excuse for this slowness of recognition, by further accounting morally for the present engagement of your mind in worthy objects? Did I not, in your person, make the handsomest apology for absent-of-mind people that was ever made? If these things be not so, I never knew what I wrote or meant by my writing, and have been penning libels all my life without being aware of it. Does it follow that I should have exprest myself exactly in the same way of those dear old eyes of yours now—now that Father Time has conspired with a hard task-master to put a last extinguisher upon them? I should as soon have insulted the Answerer of Salmasius, when he awoke up from his ended task, and saw no more with mortal vision. But you are many films removed yet from Milton's calamity. You write perfectly intelligibly. Marry, the letters are not all of the same size or tallness; but that only shows your proficiency in the hands—text, german-hand, court-hand, sometimes law-hand, and affords variety. You pen better than you did a twelvemonth ago; and if you continue to improve, you bid fair to win the golden pen which is the prize at your young gentlemen's academy. But you must beware of Valpy, and his printing-house, that hazy cave of Trophonius, out of which it was a mercy that you escaped with a glimmer. Beware of MSS. and Variae Lectiones. Settle the text for once in your mind, and stick to it. You have some years' good sight in you yet, if you do not tamper with it. It is not for you (for us I should say) to go poring into Greek contractions, and star-gazing upon slim Hebrew points. We have yet the sight
Of sun, and moon, and star, throughout the year,
And man and woman.
You have vision enough to discern Mrs. Dyer from the other comely gentlewoman who lives up at staircase No. 5; or, if you should make a blunder in the twilight, Mrs. Dyer has too much good sense to be jealous for a mere effect of imperfect optics. But don't try to write the Lord's Prayer, Creed, and Ten Commandments, in the compass of a halfpenny; nor run after a midge or a mote to catch it; and leave off hunting for needles in bushels of hay, for all these things strain the eyes. The snow is six feet deep in some parts here. I must put on jack-boots to get at the post-office with this. It is not good for weak eyes to pore upon snow too much. It lies in drifts. I wonder what its drift is; only that it makes good pancakes, remind Mrs. Dyer. It turns a pretty green world into a white one. It glares too much for an innocent colour, methinks. I wonder why you think I dislike gilt edges. They set off a letter marvellously. Yours, for instance, looks for all the world like a tablet of curious hieroglyphics in a gold frame. But don't go and lay this to your eyes. You always wrote hieroglyphically, yet not to come up to the mystical notations and conjuring characters of Dr. Parr. You never wrote what I call a schoolmaster's hand, like Clarke; nor a woman's hand, like Southey; nor a missal hand, like Porson; nor an all-of-the-wrong-side-sloping hand, like Miss Hayes; nor a dogmatic, Mede-and-Persian, peremptory hand, like Rickman; but you ever wrote what I call a Grecian's hand; what the Grecians write (or used) at Christ's Hospital; such as Whalley would have admired, and Boyer have applauded, but Smith or Atwood (writing-masters) would have horsed you for. Your boy-of-genius hand and your mercantile hand are various. By your flourishes, I should think you never learned to make eagles or corkscrews, or flourish the governors' names in the writing-school; and by the tenor and cut of your letters I suspect you were never in it at all. By the length of this scrawl you will think I have a design upon your optics; but I have writ as large as I could out of respect to them—too large, indeed, for beauty. Mine is a sort of deputy Grecian's hand; a little better, and more of a worldly hand, than a Grecian's, but still remote from the mercantile. I don't know how it is, but I keep my rank in fancy still since school-days. I can never forget I was a deputy Grecian! And writing to you, or to Coleridge, besides affection, I feel a reverential deference as to Grecians still. I keep my soaring way above the Great Erasmians, yet far beneath the other. Alas! what am I now? what is a Leadenhall clerk or India pensioner to a deputy Grecian? How art thou fallen, O Lucifer! Just room for our loves to Mrs. D., &c.
C. LAMB.
["I never writ of you but con amore." Lamb refers particularly to the Elia essay "Oxford in the Vacation" in the London Magazine, where G.D.'s absence of mind and simplicity of character were dwelt upon more intimately than Dyer liked (see Vol. II.).
Dyer was gradually going blind.
"The Answerer of Salmasius"—Milton.
"Comely" Mrs. Dyer. But in the letter to Mrs. Shelley, Mrs. D. had been "plain"!
Dyer had been a Grecian before Lamb was born. Clarke would be Charles
Cowden Clarke, with whose father Dyer had been an usher. Miss Hayes we
have met. The Rev. Peter Whalley was Upper Grammar Master in Dyer's day;
Boyer, Lamb and Coleridge's master, succeeded him in 1776. Smith was
Writing Master at the end of the seventeenth century.
Lamb had never become a Grecian, having an impediment in his speech which made it impossible that he should take orders, the natural fate of Grecians, with profit. Great Erasmus and Little Erasmus are still the names of classes in the Blue-Coat School. Grecians were the Little Erasmians.
Here should come a letter from Lamb to P.G. Patmore, dated April 10, 1831, in which Lamb says of the publisher of the New Monthly Magazine: "Nature never wrote Knave upon a face more legible than upon that fellow's—'Coal-burn him in Beelzebub's deepest pit.' I can promise little help if you mean literary, when I reflect that for 5 years I have been feeling the necessity of scribbling but have never found the power…. Moxon is my go between, call on him, 63 New Bond St., he is a very good fellow and the bookseller is not yet burn'd into him." Patmore was seeking a publisher for, I imagine, his Chatsworth.
Here should come a letter from Lamb, dated April 13, 1831, which Canon Ainger considers was written to Gary and Mr. Hazlitt to Coleridge. It states that Lamb is daily expecting Wordsworth.]