The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Volume VI Part 22

Keep your good spirits up, dear BB--mine will return--They are at present in abeyance. But I am rather lethargic than miserable. I don't know but a good horse whip would be more beneficial to me than Physic.

My head, without aching, will teach yours to ache. It is well I am getting to the conclusion. I will send a better letter when I am a better man. Let me thank you for your kind concern for me (which I trust will have reason soon to be dissipated) & a.s.sure you that it gives me pleasure to hear from you.--

Yours truly C.L.

["The London must do without me." Lamb contributed nothing between December, 1823 ("Amicus Redivivus"), and September, 1824 ("Blakesmoor in H----shire").

Barton's tribute to Woolman was the poem "A Memorial to John Woolman,"

printed in Poetic Vigils.

Taylor was Charles Benjamin Tayler (1797-1875), the curate of Hadleigh, in Suffolk, and the author of many religious books. Lamb refers to _May You Like It_, 1823.

"What Horace says":--

Nec deus intersit nisi dignus vindice nodus Inciderit.

_Ars Poetica_, 191, 192.

Neither let a G.o.d interfere, unless a difficulty worth a G.o.d's unravelling should happen (Smart's translation).

"My Black Balling." _Elia_ had been rejected by a Book Club in Woodbridge.

"Coleridge's book"--the _Aids to Reflection_, 1825. The first intention had been a selection of "Beauties" from Bishop Leighton (1611-1684), Archbishop of Glasgow, and author, among other works, of _Rules and Instructions for a Holy Life_.

"The Decision against Hunt." John Hunt, the publisher of _The Liberal_, in which Byron's "Vision of Judgment" had been printed in 1822, had just been fined 100 for the libel therein contained on George III.

Here should come a note from Lamb to Charles Ollier, thanking him for a copy of his _Inesilla; or, The Tempter: A Romance, with Other Tales_.]

LETTER 341

CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON

[P.M. February 25, 1824.]

My dear Sir--Your t.i.tle of Poetic Vigils arrides me much more than A Volume of Verse, which is no meaning. The motto says nothing, but I cannot suggest a better. I do not like mottoes but where they are singularly felicitous; there is foppery in them. They are unplain, un-Quakerish. They are good only where they flow from the t.i.tle and are a kind of justification of it. There is nothing about watchings or lucubrations in the one you suggest, no commentary on Vigils. By the way, a wag would recommend you to the Line of Pope

Sleepless himself--to give his readers sleep--

I by no means wish it. But it may explain what I mean, that a neat motto is child of the t.i.tle. I think Poetic Virgils as short and sweet as can be desired; only have an eye on the Proof, that the Printer do not subst.i.tute Virgils, which would ill accord with your modesty or meaning.

Your suggested motto is antique enough in spelling, and modern enough in phrases; a good modern antique: but the matter of it is germane to the purpose only supposing the t.i.tle proposed a vindication of yourself from the presumption of authorship. The 1st t.i.tle was liable to this objection, that if you were disposed to enlarge it, and the bookseller insisted on its appearance in Two Tomes, how oddly it would sound--

A Volume of Verse in Two Volumes 2d edition &c--

You see thro' my wicked intention of curtailing this Epistolet by the above device of large margin. But in truth the idea of letterising has been oppressive to me of late above your candour to give me credit for.

There is Southey, whom I ought to have thank'd a fortnight ago for a present of the Church Book. I have never had courage to buckle myself in earnest even to acknowledge it by six words. And yet I am accounted by some people a good man. How cheap that character is acquired! Pay your debts, don't borrow money, nor twist your kittens neck off, or disturb a congregation, &c.-- your business is done. I know things (thoughts or things, thoughts are things) of myself which would make every friend I have fly me as a plague patient. I once * * *, and set a dog upon a crab's leg that was shoved out under a moss of sea weeds, a pretty little feeler.--Oh! pah! how sick I am of that; and a lie, a mean one, I once told!-- I stink in the midst of respect.

I am much hypt; the fact is, my head is heavy, but there is hope, or if not, I am better than a poor sh.e.l.l fish--not morally when I set the whelp upon it, but have more blood and spirits; things may turn up, and I may creep again into a decent opinion of myself. Vanity will return with sunshine. Till when, pardon my neglects and impute it to the wintry solstice.

C. LAMB.

[The motto eventually adopted for Barton's _Poetic Vigils_ was from Vaughan's _Silex Scintillans:_--

Dear night! this world's defeat; The stop to busie fools; care's check and curb; The day of spirits; my soul's calm retreat Which none disturb!]

LETTER 342

CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON

[P.M. 24 March, 1824.]

DEAR B.B.--I hasten to say that if my opinion can strengthen you in your choice, it is decisive for your acceptance of what has been so handsomely offered. I can see nothing injurious to your most honourable sense. Think that you are called to a poetical Ministry--nothing worse--the Minister is worthy of the hire.

The only objection I feel is founded on a fear that the acceptance may be a temptation to you to let fall the bone (hard as it is) which is in your mouth and must afford tolerable pickings, for the shadow of independence. You cannot propose to become independent on what the low state of interest could afford you from such a princ.i.p.al as you mention; and the most graceful excuse for the acceptance, would be, that it left you free to your voluntary functions. That is the less _light_ part of the scruple. It has no darker shade. I put in _darker_, because of the ambiguity of the word light, which Donne in his admirable poem on the Metempsychosis, has so ingeniously ill.u.s.trated in his invocation

1 2 1 2 Make my _dark heavy_ poem, _light_ and _light_--

where the two senses of _light_ are opposed to different opposites. A trifling criticism.--I can see no reason for any scruple then but what arises from your own interest; which is in your own power of course to solve. If you still have doubts, read over Sanderson's Cases of Conscience, and Jeremy Taylor's Ductor Dubitantium, the first a moderate Octavo, the latter a folio of 900 close pages, and when you have thoroughly digested the admirable reasons pro and con which they give for every possible Case, you will be--just as wise as when you began.

Every man is his own best Casuist; and after all, as Ephraim Smooth, in the pleasant comedy of Wild Oats, has it, "there is no harm in a Guinea." A fortiori there is less in 2000.

I therefore most sincerely congratulate with you, excepting so far as excepted above. If you have fair Prospects of adding to the Princ.i.p.al, cut the Bank; but in either case do not refuse an honest Service. Your heart tells you it is not offered to bribe you _from_ any duty, but _to_ a duty which you feel to be your vocation. Farewell heartily C.L.

[In the memoir of Barton by Edward FitzGerald, prefixed to the _Poems and Letters_, it is stated that in this year Barton received a handsome addition to his income. "A few members of his Society, including some of the wealthier of his own family, raised 1200 among them for his benefit [not 2000 guineas, as Lamb says]. It seems that he felt some delicacy at first in accepting this munificent testimony which his own people offered to his talents." Birton had written to Lamb on the subject.]

LETTER 343

CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON

[(Early spring), 1824.]

I am sure I cannot fill a letter, though I should disfurnish my scull to fill it. But you expect something, and shall have a Note-let. Is Sunday, not divinely speaking, but humanly and holydaysically, a blessing?

Without its inst.i.tution, would our rugged taskmasters have given us a leisure day, so often, think you, as once in a month?--or, if it had not been inst.i.tuted, might they not have given us every 6th day? Solve me this problem. If we are to go 3 times a day to church, why has Sunday slipped into the notion of a _Holli_day? A Holyday I grant it. The puritans, I have read in Southey's Book, knew the distinction. They made people observe Sunday rigorously, would not let a nursery maid walk out in the fields with children for recreation on that day. But _then_--they gave the people a holliday from all sorts of work every second Tuesday.

This was giving to the Two Caesars that which was _his_ respective.

Wise, beautiful, thoughtful, generous Legislators! Would Wilberforce give us our Tuesdays? No, d--n him. He would turn the six days into sevenths,

And those 3 smiling seasons of the year Into a Russian winter.

_Old Play_.

I am sitting opposite a person who is making strange distortions with the gout, which is not unpleasant--to me at least. What is the reason we do not sympathise with pain, short of some terrible Surgical operation?

Hazlitt, who boldly says all he feels, avows that not only he does not pity sick people, but he hates them. I obscurely recognise his meaning.

Pain is probably too selfish a consideration, too simply a consideration of self-attention. We pity poverty, loss of friends etc. more complex things, in which the Sufferers feelings are a.s.sociated with others. This is a rough thought suggested by the presence of gout; I want head to extricate it and plane it. What is all this to your Letter? I felt it to be a good one, but my turn, when I write at all, is perversely to travel out of the record, so that my letters are any thing but answers. So you still want a motto? You must not take my ironical one, because your book, I take it, is too serious for it. Bickerstaff might have used it for _his_ lucubrations. What do you think of (for a t.i.tle)