The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Volume V Part 41

"Even less than me." Mr. W. C. Hazlitt gives in _Mary and Charles Lamb_ a vivid impression of Lamb's spare figure. A farmer at Widford, Mr.

Charles Tween, himself not a big man, told Mr. Hazlitt that when walking out with Lamb he would place his hands under his arm and lift him over the stiles as if it were nothing. Napoleon's height was 5 feet 6 or 7 inches.

Thomas Caulfield, a brother of the antiquary and print-seller, James Caulfield, was a comedian and mimic at Drury Lane; Whitfield was an actor at Drury Lane, who later moved to Covent Garden.

"An epitaph." These lines were written upon a friend of Rickman's, Mary Druitt of Wimborne. They were printed in the _Morning Post_ for February 7, 1804, signed C. L. See later.]

LETTER 97

(_Fragment_)

CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE

Sept. 8th, 1802.

Dear Coleridge,--I thought of not writing till we had performed some of our commissions; but we have been hindered from setting about them, which yet shall be done to a t.i.ttle. We got home very pleasantly on Sunday. Mary is a good deal fatigued, and finds the difference of going to a place, and coming _from_ it. I feel that I shall remember your mountains to the last day I live. They haunt me perpetually. I am like a man who has been falling in love unknown to himself, which he finds out when he leaves the lady. I do not remember any very strong impression while they were present; but, being gone, their mementos are shelved in my brain. We pa.s.sed a very pleasant little time with the Clarksons. The Wordsworths are at Montagu's rooms, near neighbours to us. They dined with us yesterday, and I was their guide to Bartlemy Fair!

[In the summer of 1802 the Lambs paid a sudden visit to Coleridge at Keswick. Afterwards they went to Grasmere, although the Wordsworths were away from home; but they saw Thomas Clarkson, the philanthropist, then living at Ullswater (see the next letter). They had reached London again on September 5. Procter records that on being asked how he felt when among the lakes and mountains, Lamb replied that in order to bring down his thoughts from their almost painful elevation to the sober regions of life, he was obliged to think of the ham and beef shop near St. Martin's Lane. Lamb says that after such a holiday he finds his office work very strange. "I feel debased; but I shall soon break in my mountain spirit."

The last two words were a recollection of his own poem "The Grandame"--

hers was else A mountain spirit....

This letter, the original of which is I know not where, is here, for dismal copyright reasons, very imperfectly given. Mr. Macdonald prints it apparently in full, although Mrs. Gilchrist in her memoir of Mary Lamb supplies another pa.s.sage, as follows:--"Lloyd has written me a fine letter of friendship all about himself and Sophia and love and cant which I have not answered. I have not given up the idea of writing to him but it will be done very plainly and sincerely, without acrimony."

Lamb also says that Pi-pos (as Coleridge's second child Derwent was called) was the only one, except a beggar's brat, that he had ever wanted to steal from its parents.

He says also: "I was pleased to recognise your blank-verse poem (the Picture) in the _Morn. Post_ of Monday. It reads very well, and I feel some dignity in the notion of being able to understand it better than most Southern readers."

Coleridge's poem "The Picture; or, The Lover's Resolution," was printed in the _Morning Post_ for September 6. Its scenery was probably pointed out to Lamb by Coleridge at Keswick.

Basil Montagu, the lawyer, an old friend of Wordsworth's. It is his son Edward who figures in the "Anecdote for Fathers."

Bartholomew Fair, held at Smithfield, continued until 1855, but its glories had been decreasing for some years.]

LETTER 98

CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING

24th Sept., 1802, London.

My dear Manning,--Since the date of my last letter, I have been a traveller. A strong desire seized me of visiting remote regions. My first impulse was to go and see Paris. It was a trivial objection to my aspiring mind, that I did not understand a word of the language, since I certainly intend some time in my life to see Paris, and equally certainly never intend to learn the language; therefore that could be no objection. However, I am very glad I did not go, because you had left Paris (I see) before I could have set out. I believe, Stoddart promising to go with me another year prevented that plan. My next scheme, (for to my restless, ambitious mind London was become a bed of thorns) was to visit the far-famed Peak in Derbyshire, where the Devil sits, they say, without breeches. _This_ my purer mind rejected as indelicate. And my final resolve was a tour to the Lakes. I set out with Mary to Keswick, without giving Coleridge any notice; for my time being precious did not admit of it. He received us with all the hospitality in the world, and gave up his time to show us all the wonders of the country. He dwells upon a small hill by the side of Keswick, in a comfortable house, quite enveloped on all sides by a net of mountains: great floundering bears and monsters they seemed, all couchant and asleep. We got in in the evening, travelling in a post-chaise from Penrith, in the midst of a gorgeous sunshine, which trans.m.u.ted all the mountains into colours, purple, &c. &c. We thought we had got into fairyland. But that went off (as it never came again--while we stayed we had no more fine sunsets); and we entered Coleridge's comfortable study just in the dusk, when the mountains were all dark with clouds upon their heads. Such an impression I never received from objects of sight before, nor do I suppose 1 can ever again.

Glorious creatures, fine old fellows, Skiddaw, &c. I never shall forget ye, how ye lay about that night, like an intrenchment; gone to bed, as it seemed for the night, but promising that ye were to be seen in the morning. Coleridge had got a blazing fire in his study; which is a large, antique, ill-shaped room, with an old-fashioned organ, never played upon, big enough for a church, shelves of scattered folios, an aeolian harp, and an old sofa, half-bed, &c. And all looking out upon the last fading view of Skiddaw and his broad-breasted brethren: what a night! Here we stayed three full weeks, in which time I visited Wordsworth's cottage, where we stayed a day or two with the Clarksons (good people and most hospitable, at whose house we tarried one day and night), and saw Lloyd. The Wordsworths were gone to Calais. They have since been in London and past much time with us: he is now gone into Yorkshire to be married to a girl of small fortune, but he is in expectation of augmenting his own in consequence of the death of Lord Lonsdale, who kept him out of his own in conformity with a plan my lord had taken up in early life of making everybody unhappy. So we have seen Keswick, Grasmere, Ambleside, Ulswater (where the Clarksons live), and a place at the other end of Ulswater--I forget the name--to which we travelled on a very sultry day, over the middle of Helvellyn. We have clambered up to the top of Skiddaw, and I have waded up the bed of Lodore. In fine, I have satisfied myself, that there is such a thing as that which tourists call _romantic_, which I very much suspected before: they make such a spluttering about it, and toss their splendid epithets around them, till they give as dim a light as at four o'clock next morning the lamps do after an illumination. Mary was excessively tired, when she got about half-way up Skiddaw, but we came to a cold rill (than which nothing can be imagined more cold, running over cold stones), and with the reinforcement of a draught of cold water she surmounted it most manfully. Oh, its fine black head, and the bleak air atop of it, with a prospect of mountains all about, and about, making you giddy; and then Scotland afar off, and the border countries so famous in song and ballad! It was a day that will stand out, like a mountain, I am sure, in my life. But I am returned (I have now been come home near three weeks--I was a month out), and you cannot conceive the degradation I felt at first, from being accustomed to wander free as air among mountains, and bathe in rivers without being controlled by any one, to come home and _work_. I felt very _little_. I had been dreaming I was a very great man. But that is going off, and I find I shall conform in time to that state of life to which it has pleased G.o.d to call me.

Besides, after all, Fleet-Street and the Strand are better places to live in for good and all than among Skiddaw. Still, I turn back to those great places where I wandered about, partic.i.p.ating in their greatness.

After all, I could not _live_ in Skiddaw. I could spend a year--two, three years--among them, but I must have a prospect of seeing Fleet-Street at the end of that time, or I should mope and pine away, I know. Still, Skiddaw is a fine creature. My habits are changing, I think: _i.e._ from drunk to sober. Whether I shall be happier or not remains to be proved. I shall certainly be more happy in a morning; but whether I shall not sacrifice the fat, and the marrow, and the kidneys, _i.e._ the night, the glorious care-drowning night, that heals all our wrongs, pours wine into our mortifications, changes the scene from indifferent and flat to bright and brilliant!--O Manning, if I should have formed a diabolical resolution, by the time you come to England, of not admitting any spirituous liquors into my house, will you be my guest on such shameworthy terms? Is life, with such limitations, worth trying?

The truth is, that my liquors bring a nest of friendly harpies about my house, who consume me. This is a pitiful tale to be read at St. Gothard; but it is just now nearest my heart. Fenwick is a ruined man. He is hiding himself from his creditors, and has sent his wife and children into the country. Fell, my other drunken companion (that has been: nam hic caestus artemque repono), is turned editor of a "Naval Chronicle."

G.o.dwin (with a pitiful artificial wife) continues a steady friend, though the same facility does not remain of visiting him often. That b.i.t.c.h has detached Marshall from his house, Marshall the man who went to sleep when the "Ancient Mariner" was reading: the old, steady, unalterable friend of the Professor. Holcroft is not yet come to town. I expect to see him, and will deliver your message. How I hate _this part_ of a letter. Things come crowding in to say, and no room for 'em. Some things are too little to be told, _i.e._ to have a preference; some are too big and circ.u.mstantial. Thanks for yours, which was most delicious.

Would I had been with you, benighted &c. I fear my head is turned with wandering. I shall never be the same acquiescent being. Farewell; write again quickly, for I shall not like to hazard a letter, not knowing where the fates have carried you. Farewell, my dear fellow.

C. LAMB.

[Lamb suggests in Letter 54 that he knew some French. Marshall we met in the letters to G.o.dwin of December 14,1800, and to Manning, December 16, 1800.

"Holcroft"--Thomas Holcroft (1745-1809), a miscellaneous writer, who is best known by his play "The Road to Ruin." Lamb says of him in his "Letter to Southey" (see Vol. I. of this edition) that he was "one of the most candid, most upright, and single-meaning men" that he had ever met.]

LETTER 99

CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE October 9, 1802.

CAROLUS AGNUS COLERIDGIO SUO S.

Carissime--Scribis, ut nummos scilicet epistolarios solvam et postremo in Tartara abeam: immo tu potius Tartaric.u.m (ut aiunt) deprehendisti, qui me vernacula mea lingua pro scriba conduct.i.tio per tot annos satis eleganter usum ad Latine impure et canino fere ore latrandum per tuasmet epistolas bene compositas et concinnatas percellere studueris. Conabor tamen: Attamen vereor, ut aedes istas nostri Christi, inter quas tanta diligentia magistri improba [?improbi] bonis literulis, quasi per clysterem quendam injectis, infra supraque olim penitus imbutus fui, Barnesii et Marklandii doctissimorum virorum nominibus adhuc gaudentes, barbarismis meis peregrinis et aliunde quaesitis valde dehonestavero [_sic_]. Sed pergere quocunque placet. Adeste igitur, quotquot estis, conjugationum declinationumve turmae, terribilia spectra, et tu imprimis ades, Umbra et Imago maxima obsoletas (Diis gratiae) Virgae, qua novissime in mentem recepta, horresc.u.n.t subito natales [nates], et parum deest quo minus braccas meas ultro usque ad crura demittam, et ipse puer pueriliter ejulem.

Ista tua Carmina Chamouniana satis grandia esse mihi constat; sed hoc mihi nonnihil displicet, qud in iis illae montium Grisosonum inter se responsiones totidem reboant anglice, _G.o.d, G.o.d_, haud aliter atque temet audivi tuas monies c.u.mbrianas resonare docentes, _Tod, Tod_, nempe Doctorem infelicem: vocem certe haud Deum Sonantem. Pro caeteris plaudo.

Itidem comparationes istas tuas satis callidas et lepidas certe novi: sed quid hoc ad verum? c.u.m illi Consulari viro et _mentem irritabilem_ istam Julianam: et etiam _astutias frigidulas_ quasdam Augusto propriores, nequaquam congruenter uno afflatu comparationis causa insedisse affirmaveris: necnon nescio quid similitudinis etiam c.u.m Tiberio tertio in loco solicite produxetis. Quid tibi equidem c.u.m uno vel altero Caesare, c.u.m universi Duodecim ad comparationes tuas se ultro tulerint? Praeterea, vetustati adnutans, comparationes iniquas odi.

Istas Wordsworthianas nuptias (vel potius cujusdam _Edmundii_ tui) te retulisse mirific.u.m gaudeo. Valeas, Maria, fortunata nimium, et antiquae illae Mariae Virgini (comparatione plusquam Caesareana) forsitan comparanda, quoniam "beata inter mulieres:" et etiam forta.s.se Wordsworthium ipsum tuum maritum Angelo Salutatori aequare fas erit, quoniam e Coelo (ut ille) descendunt et Musae et ipsi Musicolae: at Wordsworthium Musarum observantissimum semper novi. Necnon te quoque affinitate hac nova, Dorothea, gratulor: et tu certe alterum _donum Dei_.

Istum Ludum, quem tu, Coleridgi, Americanum garris, a Ludo (ut Ludi sunt) maxime abhorrentem praetereo: nempe quid ad Ludum attinet, totius illae gentis Columbianae, a nostra gente, eadem stirpe orta, ludi singuli causa voluntatem perperam alienare? Qua.s.so ego materiam ludi: tu Bella ingeris.

Denique valeas, et quid de Latinitate mea putes, dicas; facias ut opossum illum nostrum volantem vel (ut tu malis) quendam Piscem errabundum, a me salvum et pulcherrimum esse jubeas. Valeant uxor tua c.u.m Hartleiio nostro. Soror mea salva est et ego: vos et ipsa salvere jubet. Ulterius progrediri [? progredi] non liquet: h.o.m.o sum aeratus.

P.S.--Pene mihi exciderat, apud me esse Librorum a Johanno Miltono Latine scriptorum volumina duo, quae (Deo volente) c.u.m caeteris tuis libris ocyus citius per Maria [?] ad te missura [_sic_] curabo; sed me in hoc tali genere rerum nullo modo _festinantem_ novisti: habes confitentem reum. Hoc solum dici [_sic_] restat, praedicta volumina pulchra esse et omnia opera Latina J. M. in se continere. Circa defensionem istam Pro Pop. Ang. acerrimam in praesens ipse praeclaro gaudio moror.

Jussa tua Stuartina faciam ut diligenter colam.

Iterum iterumque valeas: Et facias memor sis nostri.

[I append a translation from the pen of Mr. Stephen Gwynn:--

CHARLES LAMB TO HIS FRIEND COLERIDGE, GREETING.

DEAR FRIEND--You write that I am to pay my debt, to wit in coin of correspondence, and finally that I am to go to Tartarus: no but it is you have caught a Tartar (as the saying is), since after all these years employing my own vernacular tongue, and prettily enough for a hired penman, you have set about to drive me by means of your well composed and neatly turned epistles to gross and almost doggish barking in the Latin. Still, I will try: And yet I fear that the Hostel of our Christ,--wherein by the exceeding diligence of a relentless master I was in days gone by deeply imbued from top to bottom with polite learning, instilled as it were by a clyster--which still glories in the names of the erudite Barnes and Markland, will be vilely dishonoured by my outlandish and adscit.i.tious barbarisms. But I am determined to proceed, no matter whither. Be with me therefore all ye troops of conjugations and declensions, dread spectres, and approach thou chiefest, Shade and Phantom of the disused (thank Heaven) Birch, at whose entry to my imagination a sudden shiver takes my rump, and a trifle then more would make me begin to let down my breeches to my calves, and turning boy, howl boyishly.

That your Ode at Chamounix is a fine thing I am clear; but here is a thing offends me somewhat, that in the ode your answers of the Grison mountains to each other should so often echo in English G.o.d, G.o.d--in the very tone that I have heard your own lips teaching your c.u.mbrian mountains to resound Tod, Tod, meaning the unlucky doctor--a syllable a.s.suredly of no G.o.dlike sound. For the rest, I approve.

Moreover, I certainly recognise that your comparisons are acute and witty; but what has this to do with truth? since you have given to the great Consul at once that irritable mind of Julius, and also a kind of cold cunning, more proper to Augustus--attributing incongruous characteristics in one breath for the sake of your comparison: nay, you have even in the third instance laboriously drawn out some likeness to Tiberius. What had you to do with one Caesar, or a second, when the whole Twelve offered themselves to your comparison? Moreover, I agree with antiquity, and think comparisons odious.