The Best Letters of Charles Lamb Part 17

[1] "But thou, that didst appear so fair To fond imagination, Dost rival in the light of day Her dilicate Creation"

[2] Better known as "Rural Architecture."

[3] The first line of the poem on Bolton Abbey:--

"'What is good for a bootless bene?'

With these dark words begins my fate; And their meaning is, whence can comfort spring When Prayer is of no avail?"

LVI.

TO SOUTHEY.

_May_ 6, 1815.

Dear Southey,--I have received from Longman a copy of "Roderick," with the author's compliments, for which I much thank you. I don't know where I shall put all the n.o.ble presents I have lately received in that way; the "Excursion," Wordsworth's two last volumes, and now "Roderick," have come pouring in upon me like some irruption from Helicon. The story of the brave Maccabee was already, you may be sure, familiar to me in all its parts. I have, since the receipt of your present, read it quite through again, and with no diminished pleasure. I don't know whether I ought to say that it has given me more pleasure than any of your long poems. "Kehama" is doubtless more powerful, but I don't feel that firm footing in it that I do in "Roderick;" my imagination goes sinking and floundering in the vast s.p.a.ces of unopened-before systems and faiths; I am put out of the pale of my old sympathies; my moral sense is almost outraged; I can't believe, or with horror am made to believe, such desperate chances against omnipotences, such disturbances of faith to the centre. The more potent, the more painful the spell. Jove and his brotherhood of G.o.ds, tottering with the giant a.s.sailings, I can bear, for the soul's hopes are not struck at in such contests; but your Oriental almighties are too much types of the intangible prototype to be meddled with without shuddering. One never connects what are called the "attributes" with Jupiter. I mention only what diminishes my delight at the wonder-workings of "Kehama," not what impeaches its power, which I confess with trembling.

But "Roderick" is a comfortable poem. It reminds me of the delight I took in the first reading of the "Joan of Arc." It is maturer and better than _that_, though not better to me now than that was then. It suits me better than "Madoc." I am at home in Spain and Christendom. I have a timid imagination, I am afraid; I do not willingly admit of strange beliefs or out-of-the-way creeds or places. I never read books of travel, at least not farther than Paris or Rome. I can just endure Moors, because of their connection as foes with Christians; but Abyssinians, Ethiops, Esquimaux, Dervises, and all that tribe, I hate; I believe I fear them in some manner. A Mahometan turban on the stage, though enveloping some well-known face (Mr. Cook or Mr. Maddox, whom I see another day good Christian and English waiters, innkeepers, etc.), does not give me pleasure unalloyed. I am a Christian, Englishman, Londoner, _Templar_, G.o.d help me when I come to put off these snug relations, and to get abroad into the world to come! I shall be like _the crow on the sand_, as Wordsworth has it; but I won't think on it,--no need, I hope, yet.

The parts I have been most pleased with, both on first and second readings, perhaps, are Florinda's palliation of Roderick's crime, confessed to him in his disguise; the retreat of Pelayo's family first discovered; his being made king,--"For acclamation one form must serve, _more solemn for_ the _breach_ of _old observances_." Roderick's vow is extremely fine, and his blessing on the vow of Alphonso,--

"Towards the troop be spread his arms, As if the expanded soul diffused itself, And carried to all spirits, _with the act_, Its affluent inspiration."

It struck me forcibly that the feeling of these last lines might have been suggested to you by the Cartoon of Paul at Athens. Certain it is that a better motto or guide to that famous att.i.tude can nowhere be found. I shall adopt it as explanatory of that violent but dignified motion.

I must read again Landor's "Julian;" I have not read it some time. I think he must have failed in Roderick, for I remember nothing of him, nor of any distinct character as a character,--only fine-sounding pa.s.sages. I remember thinking also he had chosen a point of time after the event, as it were, for Roderick survives to no use; but my memory is weak, and I will not wrong a fine poem by trusting to it.

The notes to your poem I have not read again; but it will be a take-downable book on my shelf, and they will serve sometimes at breakfast, or times too light for the text to be duly appreciated,-- though some of 'em, one of the serpent Penance, is serious enough, now I think on't.

Of Coleridge I hear nothing, nor of the Morgans. I hope to have him like a reappearing star, standing up before me some time when least expected in London, as has been the case whilere.

I am _doing_ nothing (as the phrase is) but reading presents, and walk away what of the day-hours I can get from hard occupation. Pray accept once more my hearty thanks and expression of pleasure for your remembrance of me. My sister desires her kind respects to Mrs. S. and to all at Keswick.

Yours truly,

C. LAMB.

LVII.

TO MISS HUTCHINSON. [1]

_October_ 19, 1815.

Dear Miss H.,--I am forced to be the replier to your letter, for Mary has been ill, and gone from home these five weeks yesterday. She has left me very lonely and very miserable. I stroll about, but there is no rest but at one's own fireside; and there is no rest for me there now. I look forward to the worse half being past, and keep up as well as I can.

She has begun to show some favorable symptoms. The return of her disorder has been frightfully soon this time, with scarce a six-months'

interval. I am almost afraid my worry of spirits about the E. I. House was partly the cause of her illness: but one always imputes it to the cause next at hand,--more probably it conies from some cause we have no control over or conjecture of. It cuts sad great slices out of the time, the little time, we shall have to live together. I don't know but the recurrence of these illnesses might help me to sustain her death, better than if we had had no partial separations. But I won't talk of death. I will imagine us immortal, or forget that we are otherwise. By G.o.d's blessing, in a few weeks we may be making our meal together, or sitting in the front row of the pit at Drury Lane, or taking our evening walk past the theatres, to look at the outside of them, at least, if not to be tempted in. Then we forget we are a.s.sailable; we are strong for the time as rocks,--"the wind is tempered to the shorn Lambs." Poor C. Lloyd and poor Priscilla! I feel I hardly feel enough for him; my own calamities press about me, and involve me in a thick integument not to be reached at by other folks' misfortunes. But I feel all I can, all the kindness I can, towards you all. G.o.d bless you! I hear nothing from Coleridge.

Yours truly,

C. LAMB.

[1] Mrs. Wordsworth's sister.

LVIII.

TO MANNING.

_December_ 25, 1815.

Dear Old Friend and Absentee,--This is Christmas Day, 1815, with us; what it may be with you I don't know,--the 12th of June next year, perhaps; and if it should be the consecrated season with you, I don't see how you can keep it. You have no turkeys; you would not desecrate the festival by offering up a withered Chinese bantam, instead of the savoury grand Norfolcian holocaust, that smokes all around my nostrils at this moment from a thousand firesides. Then what puddings have you?

Where will you get holly to stick in your churches, or churches to stick your dried tea-leaves (that must be the subst.i.tute) in? What memorials you can have of the holy time, I see not. A chopped missionary or two may keep up the thin idea of Lent and the wilderness; but what standing evidence have you of the Nativity? 'Tis our rosy-cheeked, homestalled divines, whose faces shine to the tune of _unto us a child was born_,--faces fragrant with the mince-pies of half a century, that alone can authenticate the cheerful mystery. I feel, I feel my bowels refreshed with the holy tide; my zeal is great against the unedified heathen. Down with the PaG.o.das; down with the idols,--Ching-chong-fo and his foolish priesthood! Come out of Babylon, oh my friend, for her time is come, and the child that is native, and the Proselyte of her gates, shall kindle and smoke together! And in sober sense what makes you so long from among us, Manning? You must not expect to see the same England again which you left.

Empires have been overturned, crowns trodden into dust, the face of the Western world quite changed; your friends have all got old, those you left blooming, myself (who am one of the few that remember you)--those golden hairs which you recollect my taking a pride in, turned to silvery and gray. Mary has been dead and buried many years; she desired to be buried in the silk gown you sent her. Rickman, that you remember active and strong, now walks out supported by a servant-maid and a stick.

Martin Burney is a very old man. The other day an aged woman knocked at my door and pretended to my acquaintance. It was long before I had the most distant cognition of her; but at last together we made her out to be Louisa, the daughter of Mrs. Topham, formerly Mrs. Morton, who had been Mrs. Reynolds, formerly Mrs. Kenney, whose first husband was Holcroft, the dramatic writer of the last century. St. Paul's church is a heap of ruins; the Monument isn't half so high as you knew it, divers parts being successively taken down which the ravages of time had rendered dangerous; the horse at Charing Cross is gone, no one knows whither,--and all this has taken place while you have been settling whether Ho-hing-tong should be spelled with a-- or a--. For aught I see, you had almost as well remain where you are, and not come, like a Struldbrug, into a world where few were born when you went away. Scarce here and there one will be able to make out your face; all your opinions will be out of date, your jokes obsolete, your puns rejected with fastidiousness as wit of the last age. Your way of mathematics has already given way to a new method which, after all, is, I believe, the old doctrine of Maclaurin new-vamped up with what he borrowed of the negative quant.i.ty of fluxions from Euler.

Poor G.o.dwin! I was pa.s.sing his tomb the other day in Cripplegate churchyard. There are some verses upon it, written by Miss--, which if I thought good enough I would send you. He was one of those who would have hailed your return, not with boisterous shouts and clamors, but with the complacent gratulations of a philosopher anxious to promote knowledge, as leading to happiness; but his systems and his theories are ten feet deep in Cripplegate mould. Coleridge is just dead, having lived just long enough to close the eyes of Wordsworth, who paid the debt to nature but a week or two before. Poor Col., but two days before he died he wrote to a bookseller proposing an epic poem on the "Wandering of Cain," in twenty-four books. It is said he has left behind him more than forty thousand treatises in criticism, metaphysics, and divinity: but few of them in a state of completion. They are now destined, perhaps, to wrap up spices. You see what mutation the busy hand of Time has produced, while you have consumed in foolish, voluntary exile that time which might have gladdened your friends, benefited your country--But reproaches are useless. Gather up the wretched relics, my friend, as fast as you can, and come to your old home. I will rub my eyes and try to recognize you. We will shake withered hands together, and talk of old things,--of St. Mary's church and the barber's opposite, where the young students in mathematics used to a.s.semble. Poor Crisp, that kept it afterwards, set up a fruiterer's shop in Trumpington Street, and for aught I know resides there still; for I saw the name up in the last journey I took there with my sister just before she died. I suppose you heard that I had left the India House and gone into the Fishmongers'

Almshouses over the bridge. I have a little cabin there, small and homely; but you shall be welcome to it. You like oysters, and to open them yourself; I'll get you some if you come in oyster time. Marshall, G.o.dwin's old friend, is still alive, and talks of the faces you used to make. [1]

Come as soon as you can.

C. LAMB.

[1] The reversal of this serio-humorous mingling of fiction and forecast will be found in the next letter.

LIX.

TO MANNING.

_December_ 26, 1815.

Dear Manning,--Following your brother's example, I have just ventured one letter to Canton, and am now hazarding another (not exactly a duplicate) to St. Helena. The first was full of unprobable romantic fictions, fitting the remoteness of the mission it goes upon; in the present I mean to confine myself nearer to truth as you come nearer home. A correspondence with the uttermost parts of the earth necessarily involves in it some heat of fancy; it sets the brain agoing; but I can think on the half-way house tranquilly. Your friends, then, are not all dead or grown forgetful of you through old age,--as that lying letter a.s.serted, antic.i.p.ating rather what must happen if you keep tarrying on forever on the skirts of creation, as there seemed a danger of your doing,--but they are all tolerably well, and in full and perfect comprehension of what is meant by Manning's coming home again. Mrs.

Kenney never let her tongue run riot more than in remembrances of you.

f.a.n.n.y expends herself in phrases that can only be justified by her romantic nature. Mary reserves a portion of your silk, not to be buried in (as the false nuncio a.s.serts), but to make up spick and span into a bran-new gown to wear when you come. I am the same as when you knew me, almost to a surfeiting ident.i.ty. This very night I am going to _leave off tobacco!_ Surely there must be some other world in which this unconquerable purpose shall be realized. The soul hath not her generous aspirings implanted in her in vain. One that you knew, and I think the only one of those friends we knew much of in common, has died in earnest. Poor Priscilla! Her brother Robert is also dead, and several of the grown-up brothers and sisters, in the compa.s.s of a very few years.

Death has not otherwise meddled much in families that I know. Not but he has his horrid eye upon us, and is whetting his infernal feathered dart every instant, as you see him truly pictured in that impressive moral picture, "The good man at the hour of death." I have in trust to put in the post four letters from Diss, and one from Lynn, to St. Helena, which I hope will accompany this safe, and one from Lynn, and the one before spoken of from me, to Canton. But we all hope that these letters may be waste paper. I don't know why I have foreborne writing so long; but it is such a forlorn hope to send a sc.r.a.p of paper straggling over wide oceans. And yet I know when you come home, I shall have you sitting before me at our fireside just as if you had never been away. In such an instant does the return of a person dissipate all the weight of imaginary perplexity from distance of time and s.p.a.ce! I'll promise you good oysters. Cory is dead, that kept the shop opposite St. Dunstan's, but the tougher materials of the shop survive the perishing frame of its keeper. Oysters continue to flourish there under as good auspices. Poor Cory! But if you will absent yourself twenty years together, you must not expect numerically the same population to congratulate your return which wetted the sea-beach with their tears when you went away. Have you recovered the breathless stone-staring astonishment into which you must have been thrown upon learning at landing that an Emperor of France was living at St. Helena? What an event in the solitude of the seas,--like finding a fish's bone at the top of Plinlimmon; but these things are nothing in our Western world. Novelties cease to affect. Come and try what your presence can.

G.o.d bless you! Your old friend,

C. LAMB.