The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Volume V Part 28

Here should come a letter from Lamb to Robert Lloyd, in which he describes a visit to Gutch's family at Oxford, and mentions his admiration for a fine head of Bishop Taylor in All Souls' Library, which was an inducement to the Oxford visit. He refers to Charles Lloyd's settlement in the Lakes, and suggests that it may be the means of again uniting him and Coleridge; adding that such men as Coleridge and Wordsworth would exclude solitude in the Hebrides or Thule.

The following undated letter, which may be placed a little too soon in its present position, comes with a certain fitness here:--]

LETTER 59

CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN MATHEW GUTCH

[No date. 1800.]

Dear Gutch, Anderson is not come home, and I am almost afraid to tell you what has happen'd, lest it should seem to have happened by my fault in not writing for you home sooner.--

This morning Henry, the eldest lad, was missing. We supposd he was only gone out on a morning's stroll, and that he would return, but he did not return & we discovered that he had opened your desk before he went, & I suppose taken all the money he could find, for on diligent search I could find none, and on opening your Letter to Anderson, which I thought necessary to get at the key, I learn that you had a good deal of money there.

Several people have been here after you to-day, & the boys seem quite frightened, and do not know what to do. In particular, one gentleman wants to have some writings finished by Tuesday--For G.o.d's sake set out by the first coach. Mary has been crying all day about it, and I am now just going to some law stationer in the neighbourhood, that the eldest boy has recommended, to get him to come and be in the house for a day or so, to manage. I cannot think what detains Anderson. His sister is quite frightend about him. I am very sorry I did not write yesterday, but Henry persuaded me to wait till he could ascertain when some job must be done (at the furthest) for Mr. Foulkes, and as nothing had occurrd besides I did not like to disturb your pleasures. I now see my error, and shall be heartily ashamed to see you.

[_That is as far as the letter goes on the first page. We then turn over, and find (as Gutch, to his immense relief, found before us) written right across both pages:_]

A BITE!!!

Anderson is come home, and the wheels of thy business are going on as ever. The boy is honest, and I am thy friend. And how does the coach-maker's daughter? Thou art her Phaeton, her Gig, and her Sociable.

Commend me to Rob.

C. LAMB.

Sat.u.r.day.

[This letter is the first example extant of Lamb's tendency to hoaxing.

Gutch was at that time courting a Miss Wheeley, the daughter of a Birmingham coachbuilder. It was while he was in Birmingham that Lamb wrote the letter. Anderson was his partner in business. Rob would be Robert Lloyd, then at Birmingham again. This, and one other, are the only letters of Lamb to Gutch that escaped destruction.]

LETTER 60

CHARLES LAMB TO S.T. COLERIDGE

[? Late July, 1800.]

Dear Coleridge,--Soon after I wrote to you last, an offer was made me by Gutch (you must remember him? at Christ's--you saw him, slightly, one day with Thomson at our house)--to come and lodge with him at his house in Southampton Buildings, Chancery-Lane. This was a very comfortable offer to me, the rooms being at a reasonable rent, and including the use of an old servant, besides being infinitely preferable to ordinary lodgings _in our case_, as you must perceive. As Gutch knew all our story and the perpetual liability to a recurrence in my sister's disorder, probably to the end of her life, I certainly think the offer very generous and very friendly. I have got three rooms (including servant) under 34 a year. Here I soon found myself at home; and here, in six weeks after, Mary was well enough to join me. So we are once more settled. I am afraid we are not placed out of the reach of future interruptions. But I am determined to take what s.n.a.t.c.hes of pleasure we can between the acts of our distressful drama.... I have pa.s.sed two days at Oxford on a visit, which I have long put off, to Gutch's family. The sight of the Bodleian Library and, above all, a fine bust of Bishop Taylor at All Souls', were particularly gratifying to me; unluckily, it was not a family where I could take Mary with me, and I am afraid there is something of dishonesty in any pleasures I take without _her_. She never goes anywhere. I do not know what I can add to this letter. I hope you are better by this time; and I desire to be affectionately remembered to Sara and Hartley.

I expected before this to have had tidings of another little philosopher. Lloyd's wife is on the point of favouring the world.

Have you seen the new edition of Burns? his posthumous works and letters? I have only been able to procure the first volume, which contains his life--very confusedly and badly written, and interspersed with dull pathological and _medical_ discussions. It is written by a Dr.

Currie. Do you know the well-meaning doctor? Alas, _ne sutor ultra crepitum_! [_A few words omitted here_.]

I hope to hear again from you very soon. G.o.dwin is gone to Ireland on a visit to Grattan. Before he went I pa.s.sed much time with him, and he has showed me particular attentions: N.B. A thing I much like. Your books are all safe: only I have not thought it necessary to fetch away your last batch, which I understand are at Johnson's the bookseller, who has got quite as much room, and will take as much care of them as myself--and you can send for them immediately from him.

I wish you would advert to a letter I sent you at Grasmere about "Christabel," and comply with my request contained therein.

Love to all friends round Skiddaw.

C. LAMB.

[The Coleridges had recently moved into Greta Hall, Keswick.

Thomson would, I think, be Marmaduke Thompson, an old Christ's Hospitaller, to whom Lamb dedicated _Rosamund Gray_. He became a missionary.

"Another little philosopher." Derwent Coleridge was born September 14, 1800. Lloyd's eldest son, Charles Grosvenor Lloyd, was born July 31, 1800.

Dr. James Currie's Life of Burns was prefixed to an edition of his poems in 1800. Dugald Stewart called it "a strong and faithful picture." It was written to raise funds for Burns' widow and family.

G.o.dwin had gone to stay with Curran: he saw much of Grattan also.

Johnson, the publisher and bookseller, lived at 72 St. Paul's Churchyard. He published Priestley's works.]

LETTER 61

CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE

Aug. 6th, 1800.

Dear Coleridge,--I have taken to-day, and delivered to Longman and Co., _Imprimis_: your books, viz., three ponderous German dictionaries, one volume (I can find no more) of German and French ditto, sundry other German books unbound, as you left them, Percy's Ancient Poetry, and one volume of Anderson's Poets. I specify them, that you may not lose any.

_Secundo_: a dressing-gown (value, fivepence), in which you used to sit and look like a conjuror, when you were translating "Wallenstein." A case of two razors and a shaving-box and strap. This it has cost me a severe struggle to part with. They are in a brown-paper parcel, which also contains sundry papers and poems, sermons, _some few Epic_ Poems,--one about Cain and Abel, which came from Poole, &c., &c., and also your tragedy; with one or two small German books, and that drama in which Gotfader performs. _Tertio_: a small oblong box containing _all your letters_, collected from all your waste papers, and which fill the said little box. All other waste papers, which I judged worth sending, are in the paper parcel aforesaid. But you will find _all_ your letters in the box by themselves. Thus have I discharged my conscience and my lumber-room of all your property, save and except a folio ent.i.tled Tyrrell's Bibliotheca Politica, which you used to learn your politics out of when you wrote for the Post, _mutatis mutandis, i.e._, applying past inferences to modern _data_. I retain that, because I am sensible I am very deficient in the politics myself; and I have torn up--don't be angry, waste paper has risen forty per cent., and I can't afford to buy it--all Buonaparte's Letters, Arthur Young's Treatise on Corn, and one or two more light-armed infantry, which I thought better suited the flippancy of London discussion than the dignity of Keswick thinking.

Mary says you will be in a d.a.m.ned pa.s.sion about them when you come to miss them; but you must study philosophy. Read Albertus Magnus de Chartis Amissis five times over after phlebotomising,--'tis Burton's recipe--and then be angry with an absent friend if you can. I have just heard that Mrs. Lloyd is delivered of a fine boy, and mother and boy are doing well. Fie on sluggards, what is thy Sara doing? Sara is obscure.

Am I to understand by her letter, that she sends a _kiss_ to Eliza Buckingham? Pray tell your wife that a note of interrogation on the superscription of a letter is highly ungrammatical--she proposes writing my name _Lamb_? Lambe is quite enough. I have had the Anthology, and like only one thing in it, _Lewti_; but of that the last stanza is detestable, the rest most exquisite!--the epithet _enviable_ would dash the finest poem. For G.o.d's sake (I never was more serious), don't make me ridiculous any more by terming me gentle-hearted in print, or do it in better verses. It did well enough five years ago when I came to see you, and was moral c.o.xcomb enough at the time you wrote the lines, to feed upon such epithets; but, besides that, the meaning of gentle is equivocal at best, and almost always means poor-spirited, the very quality of gentleness is abhorrent to such vile trumpetings. My _sentiment_ is long since vanished. I hope my _virtues_ have done _sucking_. I can scarce think but you meant it in joke. I hope you did, for I should be ashamed to think that you could think to gratify me by such praise, fit only to be a cordial to some green-sick sonneteer.

I have hit off the following in imitation of old English poetry, which, I imagine, I am a dab at. The measure is unmeasureable; but it most resembles that beautiful ballad of the "Old and Young Courtier;" and in its feature of taking the extremes of two situations for just parallel, it resembles the old poetry certainly. If I could but stretch out the circ.u.mstances to twelve more verses, i.e., if I had as much genius as the writer of that old song, I think it would be excellent. It was to follow an imitation of Burton in prose, which you have not seen. But fate "and wisest Stewart" say No.

I can send you 200 pens and six quires of paper _immediately_, if they will answer the carriage by coach. It would be foolish to pack 'em up _c.u.m multis libris et caeteris_,--they would all spoil. I only wait your commands to coach them. I would pay five-and-forty thousand carriages to read W.'s tragedy, of which I have heard so much and seen so little--only what I saw at Stowey. Pray give me an order in writing on Longman for "Lyrical Ballads." I have the first volume, and, truth to tell, six shillings is a broad shot. I cram all I can in, to save a multiplying of letters--those pretty comets with swingeing tails.

I'll just crowd in G.o.d bless you!

C. LAMB.

Wednesday night.

[The epic about Cain and Abel was "The Wanderings of Cain," which Coleridge projected but never finished. The drama in which Got-fader performs would be perhaps "Faust"--"Der Herr" in the Prologue--or some old miracle play.

"'Tis Burton's recipe." Lamb was just now steeped in the _Anatomy_; but there is no need to see if Burton says this.