The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Volume V Part 46

Under this cold marble stone Sleep the sad remains of One, Who, when alive, by few or none

2 Was lov'd, as lov'd she might have been, If she prosp'rous days had seen, Or had thriving been, I ween.

3 Only this cold funeral stone Tells, she was belov'd by One, Who on the marble graves his moan.

I conclude with Love to your Sister and Mrs. W.

Yours affect'y, C. LAMB.

Mary sends Love, &c.

5th March, 1803.

On consulting Mary, I find it will be foolish inserting the Note as I intended, being so small, and as it is possible you _may_ have to _trouble_ us again e'er long; so it shall remain to be settled hereafter. However, the verses shan't be lost.

N.B.--All orders executed with fidelity and punctuality by C. & M. Lamb.

[_On the outside is written:_] I beg to open this for a minute to add my remembrances to you all, and to a.s.sure you I shall ever be happy to hear from or see, much more to be useful to any of my old friends at Grasmere.

J. STODDART.

A _lean_ paragraph of the Doctor's.

C. LAMB.

[Charles Cotton (1630-1687). Wordsworth praises the poem on Winter in his preface to the 1815 edition of his works, and elsewhere sets up a comparison between the character of Cotton and that of Burns.

Hayley's _Life of Cowper_ appeared first in 1803.

Lamb's epitaph was written at the request of Rickman. See also the letter to Manning of April, 1802. Rickman seems to have supplied Lamb with a prose epitaph and asked for a poetical version. Canon Ainger prints an earlier version in a letter to Rickman, dated February 1, 1802. Lamb printed the epitaph in the _Morning Post_ for February 7, 1804, over his initials (see Vol. IV. of this edition). Mary Druit, or Druitt, lived at Wimborne, and according to John Payne Collier, in _An Old Man's Diary_, died of small-pox at the age of nineteen. He says that Lamb's lines were cut on her tomb, but correspondence in _Notes and Queries_ has proved this to be incorrect.

"The Doctor." Stoddart, having taken his D.C.L. in 1801, was now called Dr. Stoddart.

Soon after this letter Mary Lamb was taken ill again.]

LETTER 107

CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE

April 13th, 1803.

My dear Coleridge,--Things have gone on better with me since you left me. I expect to have my old housekeeper home again in a week or two. She has mended most rapidly. My health too has been better since you took away that Montero cap. I have left off cayenned eggs and such bolsters to discomfort. There was death in that cap. I mischievously wished that by some inauspicious jolt the whole contents might be shaken, and the coach set on fire. For you said they had that property. How the old Gentleman, who joined you at Grantham, would have clappt his hands to his knees, and not knowing but it was an immediate visitation of G.o.d that burnt him, how pious it would have made him; him, I mean, that brought the Influenza with him, and only took places for one--a d.a.m.n'd old sinner, he must have known what he had got with him! However, I wish the cap no harm for the sake of the _head it fits_, and could be content to see it disfigure my healthy sideboard again. [_Here is a paragraph erased._]

What do you think of smoking? I want your sober, _average noon opinion_ of it. I generally am eating my dinner about the time I should determine it. [_Another small erasure._]

Morning is a Girl, and can't smoke--she's no evidence one way or other; and Night is so evidently _bought over_, that _he_ can't be a very upright Judge. May be the truth is, that _one_ pipe is wholesome, _two_ pipes toothsome, _three_ pipes noisome, _four_ pipes fulsome, _five_ pipes quarrelsome; and that's the _sum_ on't. But that is deciding rather upon rhyme than reason.... After all, our instincts _may_ be best. Wine, I am sure, good, mellow, generous Port, can hurt n.o.body, unless they take it to excess, which they may easily avoid if they observe the rules of temperance.

Bless you, old Sophist, who next to Human Nature taught me all the corruption I was capable of knowing--And bless your Montero Cap, and your trail (which shall come after you whenever you appoint), and your wife and children--Pi-pos especially.

When shall we two smoke again? Last night I had been in a sad quandary of spirits, in what they call the evening; but a pipe and some generous Port, and King Lear (being alone), had its effects as a remonstrance. I went to bed pot-valiant. By the way, may not the Ogles of Somersetshire be remotely descended from King Lear?

Love to Sara, and ask her what gown she means that Mary has got of hers.

I know of none but what went with Miss Wordsworth's things to Wordsworth, and was paid for out of their money. I allude to a part which I may have read imperfectly in a letter of hers to you.

C. L.

[Coleridge had been in London early in April and had stayed with Lamb in the Temple. From the following letter to his wife, dated April 4, we get light on Lamb's allusion to his "old housekeeper," _i.e._, Mary Lamb, and her rapid mending:--

"I had purposed not to speak of Mary Lamb, but I had better write it than tell it. The Thursday before last she met at Rickman's a Mr. Babb, an old friend and admirer of her mother. The next day she _smiled_ in an ominous way; on Sunday she told her brother that she was getting bad, with great agony. On Tuesday morning she laid hold of me with violent agitation and talked wildly about George Dyer. I told Charles there was not a moment to lose; and I did not lose a moment, but went for a hackney-coach and took her to the private mad-house at Hugsden. She was quite calm, and said it was the best to do so. But she wept bitterly two or three times, yet all in a calm way. Charles is cut to the heart."

Lamb's first articulate doubts as to smoking are expressed in this letter. One may perhaps take in this connection the pa.s.sage on tobacco and alcohol in the "Confessions of a Drunkard" (see Vol. I.).

"Montero cap"--a recollection of _Tristram Shandy_.

The Ogles and King Lear (_i.e._, leer)--merely a pun.]

LETTER 108

CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE

[No date. May, 1803.]

Mary sends love from home.

DR. C.,--I do confess that I have not sent your books as I ought to be [have] done; but you know how the human freewill is tethered, and that we perform promises to ourselves no better than to our friends. A watch is come for you. Do you want it soon, or shall I wait till some one travels your way? You, like me, I suppose, reckon the lapse of time from the waste thereof, as boys let a c.o.c.k run to waste: too idle to stop it, and rather amused with seeing it dribble. Your poems have begun printing; Longman sent to me to arrange them, the old and the new together. It seems you have left it to him. So I cla.s.sed them, as nearly as I could, according to dates. First, after the Dedication, (which must march first) and which I have transplanted from before the Preface (which stood like a dead wall of prose between) to be the first poem--then comes "The Pixies," and the things most juvenile--then on "To Chatterton," &c.--on, lastly, to the "Ode on the Departing Year," and "Musings,"--which finish. Longman wanted the Ode first; but the arrangement I have made is precisely that marked out in the dedication, following the order of time. I told Longman I was sure that you would omit a good portion of the first edition. I instanced in several sonnets, &c.--but that was not his plan, and, as you have done nothing in it, all I could do was to arrange 'em on the supposition that all were to be retained. A few I positively rejected; such as that of "The Thimble," and that of "Flicker and Flicker's wife," and that _not_ in the manner of Spenser, which you yourself had stigmatised--and the "Man of Ross,"--I doubt whether I should this last. It is not too late to save it. The first proof is only just come. I have been forced to call that Cupid's Elixir "Kisses." It stands in your first volume as an Effusion, so that, instead of prefixing The Kiss to that of "One Kiss, dear Maid," &c., _I_ have ventured to ent.i.tle it "To Sara." I am aware of the nicety of changing even so mere a trifle as a t.i.tle to so short a piece, and subverting old a.s.sociations; but two called "Kisses" would have been absolutely ludicrous, and "Effusion" is no name; and these poems come close together. I promise you not to alter one word in any poem whatever, but to take your last text, where two are. Can you send any wishes about the book? Longman, I think, should have settled with you. But it seems you have left it to him. Write as soon as you possibly can; for, without making myself responsible, I feel myself in some sort accessory to the selection which I am to proof-correct. But I decidedly said to Biggs that I was sure you would omit more. Those I have positively rubbed off I can swear to _individually_, (except the "Man of Ross," which is too familiar in Pope,) but no others--you have your cue.

For my part, I had rather all the _Juvenilia_ were kept--_memories causa_.

Rob Lloyd has written me a masterly letter, containing a character of his father;--see, how different from Charles he views the old man!

_Literatim_ "My father smokes, repeats Homer in Greek, and Virgil, and is learning, when from business, with all the vigour of a young man Italian. He is really a wonderful man. He mixes public and private business, the intricacies of discording life with his religion and devotion. No one more rationally enjoys the romantic scenes of nature, and the chit-chat and little vagaries of his children; and, though surrounded with an ocean of affairs, the very neatness of his most obscure cupboard in the house pa.s.ses not unnoticed. I never knew any one view with such clearness, nor so well satisfied with things as they are, and make such allowance for things which must appear perfect Syriac to him." By the last he means the Lloydisms of the younger branches. His portrait of Charles (exact as far as he has had opportunities of noting him) is most exquisite. "Charles is become steady as a church, and as straightforward as a Roman road. It would distract him to mention anything that was not as plain as sense; he seems to have run the whole scenery of life, AND NOW RESTS AS THE FORMAL PRECISIAN OF NON-EXISTENCE." Here is genius I think, and 'tis seldom a young man, a Lloyd, looks at a father (so differing) with such good nature while he is alive. Write--

I am in post-haste, C. LAMB.

Love, &c., to Sara, P., and H.

[The date is usually given as March 20, but is May 20; certainly after Coleridge's visit to town (see preceding letter).

_Poems_, by S. T. Coleridge, third edition, was now in preparation by Longman & Rees. Lamb saw the volume through the press. The 1797 second edition was followed, except that Lloyd's and Lamb's contributions were omitted, together with the following poems by Coleridge: "To the Rev. W.

J. H.," "Sonnet to Koskiusko," "Written after a Walk" (which Lamb inaccurately called "Flicker and Flicker's Wife"), "From a Young Lady"

("The Silver Thimble"), "On the Christening of a Friend's Child,"

"Introductory Sonnet to Lloyd's 'Poems on the Death of Priscilla Farmer.'" "The Man of Ross" (whom Pope also celebrates in the _Moral Essays_, III., lines 250-290) was retained, and also the "Lines in the Manner of Spenser." The piece rechristened "Kisses" had been called "The Composition of a Kiss." Biggs was the printer. See also the next letter.

Of Robert Lloyd's father we hear more later.]