The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Volume V Part 29

"Eliza Buckingham." Sara Coleridge's message was probably intended for Eliza, a servant at the Buckingham Street lodgings.

Lambe was _The Anti-Jacobin's_ idea of Lamb's name; and indeed many persons adhered to it to the end. Mrs. Coleridge, when writing to her husband under care of Lamb at the India House, added "e" to Lamb's name to signify that the letter was for Coleridge. Wordsworth later also had some of his letters addressed in the same way--for the same economical reason.

Coleridge's "Lewti" was reprinted, with alterations, from the _Morning Post_, in the _Annual Anthology_, Vol. II. Line 69 ran--

"Had I the enviable power;"

Coleridge changed this to--

"Voice of the Night! had I the power."

"This Lime-tree Bower my Prison; a Poem, addressed to Charles Lamb of the India House, London," was also in the _Annual Anthology_. Lamb objected to the phrase "My gentle-hearted Charles" (see above). Lamb says "five years ago"; he means three. Coleridge did not alter the phrase. It was against this poem that he wrote in pencil on his deathbed in 1834: "Ch. and Mary Lamb--dear to my heart, yea, as it were, my heart.--S. T. C. Aet. 63, 1834. 1797-1834 = 37 years!"

"I have hit off the following"--"A Ballad Denoting the Difference between the Rich and the Poor," first printed among the Imitations of Burton in the _John Woodvil_ volume, 1802, see Vol. IV.

"And wisest Stewart"--Stuart of the _Morning Post_. Adapted from Milton's "Hymn on the Nativity"--

"But wisest Fate says no."

"W.'s (Wordsworth's) tragedy" was "The Borderers." The second edition of _Lyrical Ballads_ was just ready.]

LETTER 62

CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING [P.M. August 9, 1800.]

Dear Manning,--I suppose you have heard of Sophia Lloyd's good fortune, and paid the customary compliments to the parents. Heaven keep the new-born infant from star-blasting and moon-blasting, from epilepsy, marasmus, and the devil! May he live to see many days, and they good ones; some friends, and they pretty regular correspondents, with as much wit as wisdom as will eat their bread and cheese together under a poor roof without quarrelling; as much goodness as will earn heaven! Here I must leave off, my benedictory powers failing me. I could _curse_ the sheet full; so much stronger is corruption than grace in the Natural Man.

And now, when shall I catch a glimpse of your honest face-to-face countenance again--your fine _dogmatical sceptical_ face, by punch-light? O! one glimpse of the human face, and shake of the human hand, is better than whole reams of this cold, thin correspondence--yea, of more worth than all the letters that have sweated the fingers of sensibility from Madame Sevigne and Balzac (observe my Larning!) to Sterne and Shenstone.

Coleridge is settled with his wife and the young philosopher at Keswick with the Wordsworths. They have contrived to sp.a.w.n a new volume of lyrical ballads, which is to see the light in about a month, and causes no little excitement in the _literary world_. George Dyer too, that good-natured heathen, is more than nine months gone with his twin volumes of ode, pastoral, sonnet, elegy, Spenserian, Horatian, Akensidish, and Masonic verse--Clio prosper the birth! it will be twelve shillings out of somebody's pocket. I find he means to exclude "personal satire," so it appears by his truly original advertis.e.m.e.nt. Well, G.o.d put it into the hearts of the English gentry to come in shoals and subscribe to his poems, for He never put a kinder heart into flesh of man than George Dyer's!

Now farewell: for dinner is at hand. C. L.

[Southey's letters contain a glimpse (as Mr. J.A. Rutter has pointed out) of Lamb and Manning by punch-light. Writing in 1824, describing a certain expression of Mrs. Coleridge's face, Southey says:--

First, then, it was an expression of dolorous alarm, such as Le Brun ought to have painted: but such as Manning never could have equalled, when, while Mrs. Lloyd was keeping her room in child-bed, he and Charles Lamb sate drinking punch in the room below till three in the morning-- Manning acting Le Brun's pa.s.sions (punchified at the time), and Charles Lamb (punchified also) roaring aloud and swearing, while the tears ran down his cheeks, that it required more genius than even Shakespeare possessed to personate them so well; Charles Lloyd the while (not punchified) praying and entreating them to go to bed, and not disturb his wife by the uproar they were making.

Southey's reminiscence, though interesting, is very confusing. Lamb does not seem to have visited Cambridge between the end of 1799 and January 5, 1800. At the latter date the Lloyds were in the north. Possibly Southey refers to an earlier illness of Mrs. Lloyd, which, writing after a long interval, he confused with confinement.

"Balzac." Not, of course, the novelist; but Jean Louis Guez de Balzac (1594-1654) the letter-writer.

Two or three lines have been omitted from this letter which can be read as written only in the Boston Bibliophile edition.]

LETTER 63

CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING

[P.M. August 11, 1800.]

My dear fellow (_N.B._ mighty familiar of late!) for me to come to Cambridge now is one of G.o.d Almighty's impossibilities. Metaphysicians tell us, even He can work nothing which implies a contradiction. I can explain this by telling you that I am engaged to do double duty (this hot weather!) for a man who has taken advantage of this very weather to go and cool himself in "green retreats" all the month of August.

But for you to come to London instead!--muse upon it, revolve it, cast it about in your mind. I have a bed at your command. You shall drink rum, brandy, gin, aqua-vitae, usquebaugh, or whiskey a' nights; and for the after-dinner trick I have eight bottles of genuine port, which, if mathematically divided, gives 1-1/7 for every day you stay, provided you stay a week. Hear John Milton sing,

"Let Euclid rest and Archimedes pause."

Twenty-first Sonnet.

And elsewhere,--

"What neat repast shall feast us, light[1] and choice, Of Attic taste, with wine,[2] whence we may rise To hear the lute well touch'd, or artful voice Warble immortal notes and Tuscan air?"

Indeed, the poets are full of this pleasing morality--

"Veni cito, Domine Manning!"

Think upon it. Excuse the paper: it is all I have.

_N.B._--I lives at No. 27 Southampton Buildings, Holborn.

C. LAMB.

[Footnote 1: We poets generally give _light_ dinners.]

[Footnote 2: No doubt the poet here alludes to port wine at 38s. the dozen.]

LETTER 64

CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE

Thursday, Aug. 14, 1800.

Read on and you'll come to the _Pens_.

My head is playing all the tunes in the world, ringing such peals. It has just finished the "Merry Christ Church Bells," and absolutely is beginning "Turn again, Whittington." Buz, buz, buz: b.u.m, b.u.m, b.u.m: wheeze, wheeze, wheeze: feu, feu, feu: tinky, tinky, tinky: _craunch_. I shall certainly come to be d.a.m.ned at last. I have been getting drunk for two days running. I find my moral sense in the last stage of a consumption, and my religion burning as blue and faint as the tops of evening bricks. h.e.l.l gapes and the Devil's great guts cry cupboard for me. In the midst of this infernal torture, Conscience (and be d.a.m.n'd to her), is barking and yelping as loud as any of them.

I have sat down to read over again, and I think I do begin to spy out something with beauty and design in it. I perfectly accede to all your alterations, and only desire that you had cut deeper, when your hand was in.

In the next edition of the "Anthology" (which Phoebus avert and those nine other wandering maids also!) please to blot out _gentle-hearted_, and subst.i.tute drunken: dog, ragged-head, seld-shaven, odd-eyed, stuttering, or any other epithet which truly and properly belongs to the gentleman in question. And for Charles read Tom, or Bob, or Richard _for more delicacy_. d.a.m.n you, I was beginning to forgive you and believe in earnest that the lugging in of my proper name was purely unintentional on your part, when looking back for further conviction, stares me in the face _Charles Lamb of the India House. Now_ I am convinced it was all done in malice, heaped sack-upon-sack, congregated, studied malice. You Dog! your 141st page shall not save you. I own I was just ready to acknowledge that there is a something not unlike good poetry in that page, if you had not run into the unintelligible abstraction-fit about the manner of the Deity's making spirits perceive his presence. G.o.d, nor created thing alive, can receive any honour from such thin show-box attributes.