The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Volume VI Part 33

CHARLES LAMB TO S.T. COLERIDGE

[P.M. July 2, 1825.]

Dear C.--We are going off to Enfield, to Allsop's, for a day or 2, with some intention of succeeding them in their lodging for a time, for this d.a.m.n'd nervous Fever (vide Lond. Mag. for July) indisposes me for seeing any friends, and never any poor devil was so befriended as I am. Do you know any poor solitary human that wants that cordial to life a--true friend? I can spare him twenty, he shall have 'em good cheap. I have gallipots of 'em--genuine balm of cares--a going--a going--a going.

Little plagues plague me a 1000 times more than ever. I am like a disembodied soul--in this my eternity. I feel every thing entirely, all in all and all in etc. This price I pay for liberty, but am richly content to pay it. The Odes are 4-5ths done by Hood, a silentish young man you met at Islinton one day, an invalid. The rest are Reynolds's, whose sister H. has recently married. I have not had a broken finger in them.

They are hearty good-natured things, and I would put my name to 'em chearfully, if I could as honestly. I complimented them in a Newspaper, with an abatement for those puns you laud so. They are generally an excess. A Pun is a thing of too much consequence to be thrown in as a make-weight. You shall read one of the addresses over, and miss the puns, and it shall be quite as good and better than when you discover 'em. A Pun is a n.o.ble Thing per se: O never lug it in as an accessory. A Pun is a sole object for reflection (vide _my_ aids to that recessment from a savage state)--it is entire, it fills the mind: it is perfect as a Sonnet, better. It limps asham'd in the train and retinue of Humour: it knows it should have an establishment of its own. The one, for instance, I made the other day, I forget what it was.

Hood will be gratify'd, as much as I am, by your mistake. I liked 'Grimaldi' the best; it is true painting, of abstract Clownery, and that precious concrete of a Clown: and the rich succession of images, and words almost such, in the first half of the Mag. Ignotum. Your picture of the Camel, that would not or could not thread your nice needle-eye of Subtilisms, was confirm'd by Elton, who perfectly appreciated his abrupt departure. Elton borrowed the "Aids" from Hessey (by the way what is your Enigma about Cupid? I am Cytherea's son, if I understand a t.i.ttle of it), and returnd it next day saying that 20 years ago, when he was pure, he _thought_ as you do now, but that he now thinks as you did 20 years ago. But E. seems a very honest fellow. Hood has just come in; his sick eyes sparkled into health when he read your approbation. They had meditated a copy for you, but postponed it till a neater 2d Edition, which is at hand.

Have you heard _the Creature_ at the Opera House--Signor Non-vir sed VELUTI Vir?

Like Orpheus, he is said to draw storks &c, _after_ him. A picked raisin for a sweet banquet of sounds; but I affect not these exotics. Nos DURUM genus, as mellifluous Ovid hath it.

f.a.n.n.y Holcroft is just come in, with her paternal severity of aspect.

She has frozen a bright thought which should have follow'd. She makes us marble, with too little conceiving. Twas respecting the Signor, whom I honour on this side idolatry. Well, more of this anon.

We are setting out to walk to Enfield after our Beans and Bacon, which are just smoking.

Kindest remembrances to the G.'s ever.

From Islinton,

2d day, 3d month of my Hegira or Flight from Leadenhall.

C.L. Olim Clericus.

["To Allsop's." Allsop says in his _Letters... of Coleridge_ that he and the Lambs were housemates for a long time.

"Vide Lond. Mag. for July"--where the _Elia_ essay "The Convalescent"

was printed.

"The Odes"--_Odes and Addresses to Great People, 1825._ Coleridge after reading the book had written to Lamb as follows (the letter is printed by Hood):--

MY DEAR CHARLES,--This afternoon, a little, thin, mean-looking sort of a foolscap, sub-octavo of poems, printed on very dingy outsides, lay on the table, which the cover informed me was circulating in our book-club, so very Grub-Streetish in all its appearance, internal as well as external, that I cannot explain by what accident of impulse (a.s.suredly there was no _motive_ in play) I came to look into it. Least of all, the t.i.tle, Odes and Addresses to Great Men, which connected itself in my head with Rejected Addresses, and all the Smith and Theodore Hook squad.

But, my dear Charles, it was certainly written by you, or under you, or _una eum_ you. I know none of your frequent visitors capacious and a.s.similative enough of your converse to have reproduced you so honestly, supposing you had left yourself in pledge in his lock-up house. Gillman, to whom I read the spirited parody on the introduction to Peter Bell, the Ode to the Great Unknown, and to Mrs. Fry; he speaks doubtfully of Reynolds and Hood. But here come Irving and Basil Montagu.

_Thursday night 10 o'clock_.--No! Charles, it is _you_. I have read them over again, and I understand why you have _anon'd_ the book. The puns are nine in ten good--many excellent --the Newgatory transcendent. And then the _exemplum sine exemplo_ of a volume of personalities, and contemporaneities, without a single line that could inflict the infinitesimal of an unpleasance on any man in his senses: saving and except perhaps in the envy-addled brain of the despiser of your _Lays_.

If not a triumph over him, it is at least an _ovation_. Then, moreover, and besides, to speak with becoming modesty, excepting my own self, who is there but you who can write the musical lines and stanzas that are intermixed?

Here, Gillman, come up to my Garret, and driven back by the guardian spirits of four huge flower-holders of omnigenous roses and honeysuckles--(Lord have mercy on his hysterical olfactories! What will he do in Paradise? I must have a pair or two of nostril-plugs, or nose-goggles laid in his coffin)--stands at the door, reading that to M'Adam, and the washer-woman's letter, and he admits _the facts_. You are found _in the manner_, as the lawyers say! so, Mr. Charles! hang yourself up, and send me a line, by way of token and acknowledgment. My dear love to Mary. G.o.d bless you and your Unshamabramizer.

S.T. COLERIDGE.

Reynolds was John Hamilton Reynolds. According to a marked copy in the possession of Mr. Buxton Forman, Reynolds wrote only the odes to Mr.

M'Adam, Mr. Dymoke, Sylva.n.u.s Urban, Elliston and the Dean and Chapter of Westminster.

The newspaper in which Lamb complimented the book was the _New Times_, for April 12, 1825. See Vol. I. of the present edition for the review, where the remarks on puns are repeated. The "Mag. Ignotum" was the ode to the Great Unknown, the author of the Scotch novels. In the same paper on January 8, 1825, Lamb had written an essay called "Many Friends" (see Vol. I.) a little in the manner of this first paragraph.

"Your picture of the Camel." Probably the story of a caller told by Coleridge to Lamb in a letter.

"Your Enigma about Cupid." Possibly referring to the following pa.s.sage in the _Aids to Reflection_, 1825, pages 277-278:--

From the remote East turn to the mythology of Minor Asia, to the Descendants of Javan _who dwelt in the tents of Shem, and possessed the Isles_. Here again, and in the usual form of an historic Solution, we find the same _Fact_, and as characteristic of the Human _Race_, stated in that earliest and most venerable Mythus (or symbolic Parable) of Prometheus--that truly wonderful Fable, in which the characters of the rebellious Spirit and of the Divine Friend of Mankind ([Greek: Theos philanthropos]) are united in the same Person: and thus in the most striking manner noting the forced amalgamation of the Patriarchal Tradition with the incongruous Scheme of Pantheism. This and the connected tale of Io, which is but the sequel of the Prometheus, stand alone in the Greek Mythology, in which elsewhere both G.o.ds and Men are mere Powers and Products of Nature. And most noticeable it is, that soon after the promulgation and spread of the Gospel had awakened the moral sense, and had opened the eyes even of its wiser Enemies to the necessity of providing some solution of this great problem of the Moral World, the beautiful Parable of Cupid and Psyche was brought forward as a _rival_ FALL OF MAN: and the fact of a moral corruption connatural with the human race was again recognized. In the a.s.sertion of ORIGINAL SIN the Greek Mythology rose and set.

"Have you heard _the Creature?_"--Giovanni Battista Velluti (1781-1861), an Italian soprano singer who first appeared in England on June 30, 1825, in Meyerbeer's "Il Crociato in Egitto." He received 2,500 for five months' salary.]

LETTER 377

CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON

[P.M. July 2, 1825.]

My dear B.B.--My nervous attack has so unfitted me, that I have not courage to sit down to a Letter. My poor pittance in the London you will see is drawn from my sickness. Your Book is very acceptable to me, because most of it [is] new to me, but your Book itself we cannot thank you for more sincerely than for the introduction you favoured us with to Anne Knight. Now cannot I write _Mrs._ Anne Knight for the life of me.

She is a very pleas--, but I won't write all we have said of her so often to ourselves, because I suspect you would read it to her. Only give my sister's and my kindest rememb'ces to her, and how glad we are we can say that word. If ever she come to Southwark again I count upon another pleasant BRIDGE walk with her. Tell her, I got home, time for a rubber; but poor Tryphena will not understand that phrase of the worldlings.

I am hardly able to appreciate your volume now. But I liked the dedicat'n much, and the apology for your bald burying grounds. To Sh.e.l.ly, but _that_ is not new. To the young Vesper-singer, Great Bealing's, Playford, and what not?

If there be a cavil it is that the topics of religious consolation, however beautiful, are repeated till a sort of triteness attends them.

It seems as if you were for ever losing friends' children by death, and reminding their parents of the Resurrection. Do children die so often, and so good, in your parts? The topic, taken from the considerat'n that they are s.n.a.t.c.h'd away from _possible vanities_, seems hardly sound; for to an omniscient eye their conditional failings must be one with their actual; but I am too unwell for Theology. Such as I am, I am yours and A.K.'s truly

C. LAMB.

["My poor pittance"-"The Convalescent."

"Your Book"-Barton's _Poems_, 4th edition, 1825. The dedication was to Barton's sister, Maria Hack.

"Anne Knight." A Quaker lady, who kept a school at Woodbridge.]

LETTER 378

CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN AITKEN

Colebrooke Cottage, Islington, July 5, 1825.

DEAR Sir,--With thanks for your last No. of the Cabinet-- as I cannot arrange with a London publisher to reprint "Rosamund Gray" as a book, it will be at your service to admit into the Cabinet as soon as you please.

Your h'ble serv't, CH's LAMB.

EMMA, eldest of your name, Meekly trusting in her G.o.d Midst the red-hot plough-shares trod, And unscorch'd preserved her fame.

By that test if _you_ were tried, Ugly names might be defied; Though devouring fire's a glutton, Through the trial you might go 'On the light fantastic toe,'

Nor for plough-shares care a b.u.t.tON.