The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Volume V Part 21

CHARLES LAMB TO ROBERT SOUTHEY [Probably November, 1798.]

The following is a second Extract from my Tragedy _that is to be_,--'tis narrated by an old Steward to Margaret, orphan ward of Sir Walter Woodvil;--this, and the Dying Lover I gave you, are the only extracts I can give without mutilation. I expect you to like the old woman's curse:

_Old Steward_.--One summer night, Sir Walter, as it chanc'd, Was pacing to & fro in the avenue That westward fronts our house, Among those aged oaks, said to have been planted Three hundred years ago By a neighb'ring Prior of the Woodvil name, But so it was, Being overtask't in thought, he heeded not The importune suitor who stood by the gate, And beg'd an alms.

Some say he shov'd her rudely from the gate With angry chiding; but I can never think (Sir Walter's nature hath a sweetness in it) That he would use a woman--an old woman-- With such discourtesy; For old she was who beg'd an alms of him.

Well, he refus'd her; Whether for importunity, I know not, Or that she came between his meditations.

But better had he met a lion in the streets Than this old woman that night; For she was one who practis'd the black arts.

And served the devil--being since burn'd for witchcraft.

She look'd at him like one that meant to blast him, And with a frightful noise ('Twas partly like a woman's voice, And partly like the hissing of a snake) She nothing said but this (Sir Walter told the words):

"A mischief, mischief, mischief, And a nine-times killing curse, By day and by night, to the caitive wight Who shakes the poor like snakes from his door, And shuts up the womb of his purse; And a mischief, mischief, mischief, And a nine-fold withering curse,-- For that shall come to thee, that will render thee Both all that thou fear'st, and worse."

These words four times repeated, she departed, Leaving Sir Walter like a man beneath Whose feet a scaffolding had suddenly fal'n: So he describ'd it.

_Margaret_.--A terrible curse!

_Old Steward_.--O Lady, such bad things are told of that old woman, As, namely, that the milk she gave was sour, And the babe who suck'd her shrivel'd like a mandrake; And things besides, with a bigger horror in them, Almost, I think, unlawful to be told!

_Margaret_.--Then must I never hear them. But proceed, And say what follow'd on the witch's curse.

_Old Steward_.--Nothing immediate; but some nine months after, Young Stephen Woodvil suddenly fell sick, And none could tell what ail'd him: for he lay, And pin'd, and pin'd, that all his hair came off; And he, that was full-flesh'd, became as thin As a two-months' babe that hath been starved in the nursing;-- And sure, I think, He bore his illness like a little child, With such rare sweetness of dumb melancholy He strove to clothe his agony in smiles, Which he would force up in his poor, pale cheeks, Like ill-tim'd guests that had no proper business there;-- And when they ask'd him his complaint, he laid His hand upon his heart to show the place Where Satan came to him a nights, he said, And p.r.i.c.k'd him with a pin.-- And hereupon Sir Walter call'd to mind The Beggar Witch that stood in the gateway, And begg'd an alms-- _Margaret_.--I do not love to credit Tales of magic.

Heav'n's music, which is order, seems unstrung; And this brave world, Creation's beauteous work, unbeautified, Disorder'd, marr'd, where such strange things are acted.

This is the extract I brag'd of, as superior to that I sent you from Marlow. Perhaps you smile; but I should like your remarks on the above, as you are deeper witch-read than I.

[The pa.s.sage quoted in this letter, with certain alterations, became afterwards "The Witch," a dramatic sketch independent of "John Woodvil."

By the phrase "without mutilation," Lamb possibly means to suggest that Southey should print this sketch and "The Dying Lover" in the _Annual Anthology_. That was not, however, done. "The Witch" was first printed in the _Works_, 1818.

Here should come a letter from Lamb to Robert Lloyd, postmarked November 20, 1798, not available for this edition. In this letter Lamb sends Lloyd the extract from "The Witch" that was sent to Southey.]

LETTER 40

CHARLES LAMB TO ROBERT SOUTHEY

Nov. 28th, 1798.

I can have no objection to your printing "Mystery of G.o.d" with my name and all due acknowledgments for the honour and favour of the communication; indeed, 'tis a poem that can dishonour no name. Now, that is in the true strain of modern modesto-vanitas ... But for the sonnet, I heartily wish it, as I thought it was, dead and forgotten. If the exact circ.u.mstances under which I wrote could be known or told, it would be an interesting sonnet; but to an indifferent and stranger reader it must appear a very bald thing, certainly inadmissible in a compilation.

I wish you could affix a different name to the volume; there is a contemptible book, a wretched a.s.sortment of vapid feelings, ent.i.tled "Pratt's Gleanings," which hath d.a.m.ned and impropriated the t.i.tle for ever. Pray think of some other. The gentleman is better known (better had he remained unknown) by an Ode to Benevolence, written and spoken for and at the annual dinner of the Humane Society, who walk in procession once a-year, with all the objects of their charity before them, to return G.o.d thanks for giving them such benevolent hearts.

I like "Bishop Bruno;" but not so abundantly as your "Witch Ballad,"

which is an exquisite thing of its kind.

I showed my "Witch" and "Dying Lover" to Dyer last night; but George could not comprehend how that could be poetry which did not go upon ten feet, as George and his predecessors had taught it to do; so George read me some lectures on the distinguishing qualities of the Ode, the Epigram, and the Epic, and went home to ill.u.s.trate his doctrine by correcting a proof sheet of his own Lyrics. George writes odes where the rhymes, like fashionable man and wife, keep a comfortable distance of six or eight lines apart, and calls that "observing the laws of verse."

George tells you, before he recites, that you must listen with great attention, or you'll miss the rhymes. I did so, and found them pretty exact. George, speaking of the dead Ossian, exclaimeth, "Dark are the poet's eyes." I humbly represented to him that his own eyes were dark [?

light], and many a living bard's besides, and recommended "Clos'd are the poet's eyes." But that would not do. I found there was an ant.i.thesis between the darkness of his eyes and the splendour of his genius; and I acquiesced.

Your recipe for a Turk's poison is invaluable and truly Marlowish....

Lloyd objects to "shutting-up the womb of his purse" in my Curse (which for a Christian witch in a Christian country is not too mild, I hope); do you object? 1 think there is a strangeness in the idea, as well as "shaking the poor like snakes from his door," which suits the speaker.

Witches ill.u.s.trate, as fine ladies do, from their own familiar objects, and snakes and the shutting up of wombs are in their way. I don't know that this last charge has been before brought against 'em, nor either the sour milk or the mandrake babe; but I affirm these be things a witch would do if she could.

My Tragedy will be a medley (as [? and] I intend it to be a medley) of laughter and tears, prose and verse, and in some places rhyme, songs, wit, pathos, humour, and, if possible, sublimity; at least, it is not a fault in my intention, if it does not comprehend most of these discordant colours. Heaven send they dance not the "Dance of Death!" I hear that the Two n.o.ble Englishmen have parted no sooner than they set foot on German earth, but I have not heard the reason--possibly, to give novelists an handle to exclaim, "Ah me! what things are perfect?" I think I shall adopt your emendation in the "Dying Lover," though I do not myself feel the objection against "Silent Prayer."

My tailor has brought me home a new coat lapelled, with a velvet collar.

He a.s.sures me everybody wears velvet collars now. Some are born fashionable, some achieve fashion, and others, like your humble servant, have fashion thrust upon them. The rogue has been making inroads. .h.i.therto by modest degrees, foisting upon me an additional b.u.t.ton, recommending gaiters; but to come upon me thus in a full tide of luxury, neither becomes him as a tailor nor the ninth of a man. My meek gentleman was robbed the other day, coming with his wife and family in a one-horse shay from Hampstead; the villains rifled him of four guineas, some shillings and half-pence, and a bundle of customers' measures, which they swore were bank-notes. They did not shoot him, and when they rode off he addrest them with profound grat.i.tude, making a congee: "Gentlemen, I wish you good night, and we are very much obliged to you that you have not used us ill!" And this is the cuckoo that has had the audacity to foist upon me ten b.u.t.tons on a side and a black velvet collar--A d.a.m.n'd ninth of a scoundrel!

When you write to Lloyd, he wishes his Jacobin correspondents to address him as _Mr_. C. L. Love and respects to Edith. I hope she is well.

Yours sincerely, C. LAMB.

[The poem "Mystery of G.o.d" was, when printed in the _Annual Anthology_ for 1799, ent.i.tled "Living without G.o.d in the World." Lamb never reprinted it. It is not clear to what sonnet Lamb refers, possibly that to his sister, printed on page 78, which he himself never reprinted. It was at that time intended to call Southey's collection _Gleanings_; Lamb refers to the _Gleanings_ of Samuel Jackson Pratt (1749-1814), a very busy maker of books, published in 1795-1799. His _Triumph of Benevolence_ was published in 1786.

Southey's witch ballad was "The Old Woman of Berkeley."

George Dyer's princ.i.p.al works in verse are contained in his _Poems_, 1802, and _Poetics_, 1812. He retained the epithet "dark" for Ossian's eyes.

Southey's recipe for a Turk's poison I do not find. It may have existed only in a letter.

A reference to the poem in Letter 39 will explain the remarks about witches' curses.

The Two n.o.ble Englishmen (a sarcastic reference drawn, I imagine from Palamon and Arcite) were Coleridge and Wordsworth, then in Germany.

Nothing definite is known, but they seem quite amicably to have decided to take independent courses.

"Lloyd's Jacobin correspondents." This is Lamb's only allusion to the attack which had been made by _The Anti-Jacobin_ upon himself, Lloyd and their friends, particularly Coleridge and Southey. In "The New Morality," in the last number of Canning's paper, they had been thus grouped:--

And ye five other wandering Bards that move In sweet accord of harmony and love, C-----dge and S--tb--y, L--d, and L--be & Co.

Tune all your mystic harps to praise Lepaux!

--Lepaux being the high-priest of Theophilanthropy. When "The New Morality" was reprinted in _The Beauties of "The AntiJacobin_" in 1799, a savage footnote on Coleridge was appended, accusing him of hypocrisy and the desertion of his wife and children, and adding "_Ex uno disce_ his a.s.sociates Southey and Lamb." Again, in the first number of the _Anti-Jacobin Review and Magazine_, August, 1798, was a picture by Gilray, representing the worshippers of Lepaux, wherein Lloyd and Lamb appeared as a toad and a frog reading their own _Blank Verse_, and Coleridge and Southey, as donkeys, flourish "Dactylics" and "Saphics."

In September the federated poets were again touched upon in a parody of the "Ode to the Pa.s.sions":--

See! faithful to their mighty dam, C----dge, S--th--y, L--d, and L--b In splay-foot madrigals of love, Soft moaning like the widow'd dove, Pour, side-by-side, their sympathetic notes; Of equal rights, and civic feasts, And tyrant kings, and knavish priests, Swift through the land the tuneful mischief floats.

And now to softer strains they struck the lyre, They sung the beetle or the mole, The dying kid, or a.s.s's foal, By cruel man permitted to expire.

Lloyd took the caricature and the verses with his customary seriousness, going so far as to indite a "Letter to _The Anti-Jacobin_ Reviewers,"

which was printed in Birmingham in 1799. Therein he defended Lamb with some vigour: "The person you have thus leagued in a partnership of infamy with me is Mr. Charles Lamb, a man who, so far from being a democrat, would be the first person to a.s.sent to the opinions contained in the foregoing pages: he is a man too much occupied with real and painful duties--duties of high personal self-denial--to trouble himself about speculative matters."]

LETTER 41

CHARLES LAMB TO ROBERT SOUTHEY

Dec. 27, 1798.

Dear Southey,--Your friend John May has formerly made kind offers to Lloyd of serving me in the India house by the interest of his friend Sir Francis Baring--It is not likely that I shall ever put his goodness to the test on my own account, for my prospects are very comfortable. But I know a man, a young man, whom he could serve thro' the same channel, and I think would be disposed to serve if he were acquainted with his case.