The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Volume V Part 80

26th August, 1814.

Let the hungry soul rejoice: there is corn in Egypt. Whatever thou hast been told to the contrary by designing friends, who perhaps inquired carelessly, or did not inquire at all, in hope of saving their money, there is a stock of "Remorse" on hand, enough, as Pople conjectures, for seven years' consumption; judging from experience of the last two years.

Methinks it makes for the benefit of sound literature, that the best books do not always go off best. Inquire in seven years' time for the "Rokebys" and the "Laras," and where shall they be found?--fluttering fragmentally in some thread-paper--whereas thy "Wallenstein" and thy "Remorse" are safe on Longman's or Pople's shelves, as in some Bodleian; there they shall remain; no need of a chain to hold them fast--perhaps for ages--tall copies--and people shan't run about hunting for them as in old Ezra's shrievalty they did for a Bible, almost without effect till the great-great-grand-niece (by the mother's side) of Jeremiah or Ezekiel (which was it?) remembered something of a book, with odd reading in it, that used to lie in the green closet in her aunt Judith's bedchamber.

Thy caterer Price was at Hamburgh when last Pople heard of him, laying up for thee, like some miserly old father for his generous-hearted son to squander.

Mr. Charles Aders, whose books also pant for that free circulation which thy custody is sure to give them, is to be heard of at his kinsmen, Messrs. Jameson and Aders, No. 7, Laurence-Pountney-Lane, London, according to the information which Crabius with his parting breath left me. Crabius is gone to Paris. I prophesy he and the Parisians will part with mutual contempt. His head has a twist Alemagne, like thine, dear mystic.

I have been reading Madame Stael on Germany. An impudent clever woman.

But if "Faust" be no better than in her abstract of it, I counsel thee to let it alone. How canst thou translate the language of cat-monkeys?

Fie on such fantasies! But I will not forget to look for Proclus. It is a kind of book which when one meets with it one shuts the lid faster than one opened it. Yet I have some b.a.s.t.a.r.d kind of recollection that somewhere, some time ago, upon some stall or other, I saw it. It was either that or Plotinus, 205-270 A.D., Neoplatonist, or Saint Augustine's "City of G.o.d." So little do some folks value, what to others, _sc_. to you, "well used," had been the "Pledge of Immortality."

Bishop Bruno I never touched upon. Stuffing too good for the brains of such "a Hare" as thou describest. May it burst his pericranium, as the gobbets of fat and turpentine (a nasty thought of the seer) did that old dragon in the Apocrypha! May he go mad in trying to understand his author! May he lend the third volume of him before he has quite translated the second, to a friend who shall lose it, and so spoil the publication; and may his friend find it and send it him just as thou or some such less dilatory spirit shall have announced the whole for the press; lastly, may he be hunted by Reviewers, and the devil jug him! So I think I have answered all the questions except about Morgan's cos-lettuces. The first personal peculiarity I ever observed of him (all worthy souls are subject to 'em) was a particular kind of rabbit-like delight in munching salads with oil without vinegar after dinner--a steady contemplative browsing on them--didst never take note of it?

Canst think of any other queries in the solution of which I can give thee satisfaction? Do you want any books that I can procure for you? Old Jimmy Boyer is dead at last. Trollope has got his living, worth 1000 a-year net. See, thou sluggard, thou heretic-sluggard, what mightest thou not have arrived at! Lay thy animosity against Jimmy in the grave.

Do not _entail_ it on thy posterity.

CHARLES LAMB.

[Coleridge's play "Remorse" had been published by Pople in 1813. A copy of the first edition now brings about thirty shillings; but this is largely owing to the presence in the volume of Lamb's prologue. But _Rokeby_ and _Lara_ bring their pounds too.

"Thy caterer Price." I do not identify.

Charles Aders we shall meet. Crabius was, of course, Crabb Robinson.

"Such 'a Hare.'" Julius Charles Hare (1795-1855), who afterwards knew Coleridge, was then at Cambridge, after living at Weimar. I find no record of his translating Bruno; but this possibly was he.

"Jimmy Boyer." The Rev. James Boyer, Headmaster of Christ's Hospital in Lamb and Coleridge's day, died in 1814. His living, the richest in the Hospital's gift, was that of Colne Engaine, which pa.s.sed to the Rev.

Arthur William Trollope, Headmaster of Christ's Hospital until 1826.

Boyer had been a Spartan, and Coleridge and he had had pa.s.sages, but in the main Coleridge's testimony to him is favourable and kindly (see Lamb's Christ's Hospital essay, Vol. II. of this edition).]

LETTER 208

CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

[P.M. illegible. Sept. 19, 1814.]

My dear W. I have scarce time or quiet to explain my present situation, how unquiet and distracted it is.... Owing to the absence of some of my compeers, and to the deficient state of payments at E. I. H. owing to bad peace speculations in the Calico market (I write this to W. W., Esq.

Collector of Stamp duties for the conjoint northern counties, not to W.

W. Poet) I go back, and have for this many days past, to evening work, generally at the rate of nine hours a day. The nature of my work too, puzzling and hurrying, has so shaken my spirits, that my sleep is nothing but a succession of dreams of business I cannot do, of a.s.sistants that give me no a.s.sistance, of terrible responsibilities. I reclaimed your book, which Hazlit has uncivilly kept, only 2 days ago, and have made shift to read it again with shatterd brain. It does not lose--rather some parts have come out with a prominence I did not perceive before--but such was my aching head yesterday (Sunday) that the book was like a Mount'n. Landscape to one that should walk on the edge of a precipice. I perceived beauty dizzily. Now what I would say is, that I see no prospect of a quiet half day or hour even till this week and the next are past. I then hope to get 4 weeks absence, and if _then_ is time enough to begin I will most gladly do what you require, tho' I feel my inability, for my brain is always desultory and s.n.a.t.c.hes off hints from things, but can seldom follow a "work" methodically. But that shall be no excuse. What I beg you to do is to let me know from Southey, if that will be time enough for the "Quarterly," i.e. suppose it done in 3 weeks from this date (19 Sept.): if not it is my bounden duty to express my regret, and decline it. Mary thanks you and feels highly grateful for your Patent of n.o.bility, and acknowleges the author of Excursion as the legitimate Fountain of Honor. We both agree, that to our feeling Ellen is best as she is. To us there would have been something repugnant in her challenging her Penance as a Dowry! the fact is explicable, but how few to whom it could have been renderd explicit!

The unlucky reason of the detention of Excursion was, Hazlit and we having a misunderstanding. He blowed us up about 6 months ago, since which the union hath snapt, but M. Burney borrowd it for him and after reiterated messages I only got it on Friday. His remarks had some vigor in them, particularly something about an old ruin being _too modern for your Primeval Nature, and about a lichen_, but I forget the Pa.s.sage, but the whole wore a slovenly air of dispatch and disrespect. That objection which M. Burney had imbibed from him about Voltaire, I explaind to M. B.

(or tried) exactly on your principle of its being a characteristic speech. That it was no settled comparative estimate of Voltaire with any of his own tribe of buffoons--no injustice, even _you_ spoke it, for I dared say you never could relish Candide. I know I tried to get thro' it about a twelvemonth since, and couldn't for the Dullness. Now, I think I have a wider range in buffoonery than you. Too much toleration perhaps.

I finish this after a raw ill bakd dinner, fast gobbled up, to set me off to office again after working there till near four. O Christ! how I wish I were a rich man, even tho' I were squeezed camel-fashion at getting thro' that Needles eye that is spoken of in the _Written Word_.

Apropos, are you a Xtian? or is it the Pedlar and the Priest that are?

I find I miscalld that celestial splendor of the mist going off, a _sunset_. That only shews my inaccuracy of head.

Do pray indulge me by writing an answer to the point of time mentioned above, or _let Southey_. I am asham'd to go bargaining in this way, but indeed I have no time I can reckon on till the 1st week in Octo'r. G.o.d send I may not be disappointed in that!

Coleridge swore in letter to me he would review Exc'n. in the Quarterly.

Therefore, tho' _that_ shall not stop me, yet if I can do anything, _when_ done, I must know of him if he has anything ready, or I shall fill the world with loud exclaims.

I keep writing on, knowing the Postage is no more for much writing, else so f.a.ggd & disjointed I am with d.a.m.nd India house work, I scarce know what I do. My left arm reposes on "Excursion." I feel what it would be in quiet. It is now a sealed Book.

O happy Paris, seat of idleness and pleasure! From some return'd English I hear that not such a thing as a counting house is to be seen in her streets, scarce a desk--Earthquakes swallow up this mercantile city and its gripple merchants, as Drayton hath it, "born to be the curse of this brave isle." I invoke this not on account of any parsimonious habits the mercantile interest may have, but, to confess truth, because I am not fit for an office.

Farewell, in haste, from a head that is ill to methodize, a stomach to digest, and all out of Tune. Better harmonies await you.

C. LAMB.

[Wordsworth had been appointed in 1813 Distributor of Stamps for the county of Westmoreland. Lamb is writing again about _The Excursion_, which at the instigation of Southey, to whom Wordsworth had made the suggestion, he is to review for the _Quarterly_.

"Hazlitt and we having a misunderstanding." The precise cause of the trouble we do not know, but in Crabb Robinson's _Diary_, in 1811, it is said that a slight coolness had begun between the two men on account of money which Lamb did not feel justified in lending to Hazlitt. Between 1811 and 1814, however, they were friendly again. It was Hazlitt's hostile att.i.tude to Wordsworth that brought about Robinson's split with him, although that also was mended: literary men are short haters.

Hazlitt reviewed _The Excursion_--from Lamb's copy, which in itself was a cause of grievance--in _The Examiner_, in three numbers, August 21, 28 and October 2. Wordsworth had described _Candide_, in Book II., as the "dull product of a scoffer's pen." Hazlitt wrote thus:--

... We cannot however agree with Mr. Wordsworth that _Candide_ is _dull_. It is, if our author pleases, "the production of a scoffer's pen," or it is any thing, but dull. _Ra.s.selas_ indeed is dull; but then it is privileged dulness. It may not be proper in a grave, discreet, orthodox, promising young divine, who studies his opinions in the contraction or distension of his patron's brow, to allow any merit to a work like _Candide_; but we conceive that it would have been more in character, that is, more manly, in Mr. Wordsworth, nor do we think it would have hurt the cause he espouses, if he had blotted out the epithet, after it had peevishly escaped him. Whatsoever savours of a little, narrow, inquisitorial spirit, does not sit well on a poet and a man of genius. The prejudices of a philosopher are not natural....

Lamb himself made the same criticism, three years later, at Haydon's dinner party.

Hazlitt had also said of _The Excursion_ that--

Such is the severe simplicity of Mr. Wordsworth's taste, that we doubt whether he would not reject a druidical temple, or time-hallowed ruin, as too modern and artificial for his purpose. He only familiarises himself or his readers with a stone, covered with lichens, which has slept in the same spot of ground from the creation of the world, or with the rocky fissure between two mountains, caused by thunder, or with a cavern scooped out by the sea. His mind is, as it were, coeval with the primary forms of things, holds immediately from nature; and his imagination "owes no allegiance" but "to the elements."

"Are you a Xtian?"--referring to the sentiments of Wanderer and the Pastor--two characters of _The Excursion_.

"A _sunset_." See preceding letter to Wordsworth.

Here should come a letter from Lamb to Southey, dated October 20, 1814, stating that Lamb has deposited with Mr. Grosvenor Bedford, Southey's friend and correspondent, his review of _The Excursion_. "Who can cram into a strait coop of a review any serious idea of such a vast and magnificent poem?"]

LETTER 209

MARY LAMB TO BARBARA BETHAM (Aged 14) Nov'r. 2, 1814.

It is very long since I have met with such an agreeable surprise as the sight of your letter, my kind young friend, afforded me. Such a nice letter as it is too. And what a pretty hand you write. I congratulate you on this attainment with great pleasure, because I have so often felt the disadvantage of my own wretched handwriting.

You wish for London news. I rely upon your sister Ann for gratifying you in this respect, yet I have been endeavouring to recollect whom you might have seen here, and what may have happened to them since, and this effort has only brought the image of little Barbara Betham, unconnected with any other person, so strongly before my eyes that I seem as if I had no other subject to write upon. Now I think I see you with your feet propped upon the fender, your two hands spread out upon your knees--an att.i.tude you always chose when we were in familiar confidential conversation together--telling me long stories of your own home, where now you say you are "Moping on with the same thing every day," and which then presented nothing but pleasant recollections to your mind. How well I remember your quiet steady face bent over your book. One day, conscience struck at having wasted so much of your precious time in reading, and feeling yourself, as you prettily said, "quite useless to me," you went to my drawers and hunted out some unhemmed pocket-handkerchiefs, and by no means could I prevail upon you to resume your story books till you had hemmed them all. I remember, too, your teaching my little maid to read--your sitting with her a whole evening to console her for the death of her sister; and that she in her turn endeavoured to become a comforter to you, the next evening, when you wept at the sight of Mrs. Holcroft, from whose school you had recently eloped because you were not partial to sitting in the stocks. Those tears, and a few you once dropped when my brother teased you about your supposed fondness for an apple dumpling, were the only interruptions to the calm contentedness of your unclouded brow. We still remain the same as you left us, neither taller nor wiser, or perceptibly older, but three years must have made a great alteration in you. How very much, dear Barbara, I should like to see you!

We still live in Temple Lane, but I am now sitting in a room you never saw. Soon after you left us we we[re] distressed by the cries of a cat, which seemed to proceed from the garrets adjoining to ours, and only separated from ours by a locked door on the farther side of my brother's bedroom, which you know was the little room at the top of the kitchen stairs. We had the lock forced and let poor puss out from behind a pannel of the wainscot, and she lived with us from that time, for we were in grat.i.tude bound to keep her, as she had introduced us to four untenanted, unowned rooms, and by degrees we have taken possession of these unclaimed apartments--First putting up lines to dry our clothes, then moving my brother's bed into one of these, more commodious than his own room. And last winter, my brother being unable to pursue a work he had begun, owing to the kind interruptions of friends who were more at leisure than himself, I persuaded him that he might write at his ease in one of these rooms, as he could not then hear the door knock, or hear himself denied to be at home, which was sure to make him call out and convict the poor maid in a fib. Here, I said, he might be almost really not at home. So I put in an old grate, and made him a fire in the largest of these garrets, and carried in one table, and one chair, and bid him write away, and consider himself as much alone as if he were in a new lodging in the midst of Salisbury Plain, or any other wide unfrequented place where he could expect few visitors to break in upon his solitude. I left him quite delighted with his new acquisition, but in a few hours he came down again with a sadly dismal face. He could do nothing, he said, with those bare whitewashed walls before his eyes. He could not write in that dull unfurnished prison.

The next day, before he came home from his office, I had gathered up various bits of old carpetting to cover the floor; and, to a little break the blank look of the bare walls, I hung up a few old prints that used to ornament the kitchen, and after dinner, with great boast of what an improvement I had made, I took Charles once more into his new study.

A week of busy labours followed, in which I think you would not have disliked to have been our a.s.sistant. My brother and I almost covered the wall with prints, for which purpose he cut out every print from every book in his old library, coming in every now and then to ask my leave to strip a fresh poor author--which he might not do, you know, without my permission, as I am elder sister. There was such pasting, such consultation where their portraits, and where the series of pictures from Ovid, Milton, and Shakespear would show to most advantage, and in what obscure corner authors of humbler note might be allowed to tell their stories. All the books gave up their stores but one, a translation from Ariosto, a delicious set of four and twenty prints, and for which I had marked out a conspicuous place; when lo! we found at the moment the scissars were going to work that a part of the poem was printed at the back of every picture. What a cruel disappointment! To conclude this long story about nothing, the poor despised garret is now called the print room, and is become our most favorite sitting room.