The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Volume VI Part 34

[Aitken was an Edinburgh bookseller who edited _The Cabinet; or, The Selected Beauties of Literature_, 1824, 1825 and 1831. The particular interest of the letter is that it shows Lamb to have wanted to publish _Rosamund Gray_ a third time in his life. Hitherto we had only his statement that Hessey said that the world would not bear it. Aitken printed the story in _The Cabinet_ for 1831. Previously he had printed "Dream Children" and "The Inconveniences of being Hanged."

I have been told (but have had no opportunity of verifying the statement) that the b.u.t.tons, for one of whom the appended acrostic was written, were cousins of the Lambs.

Here should come an unpublished letter to Miss Kelly thanking her for tickets and saying that Liston is to produce Lamb's farce "The p.a.w.nbroker's Daughter," which "will take."

Here should come a letter from Lamb to Hone, dated Enfield, July 25, 1825. Lamb had written some quatrains to the editor of the _Every-Day Book_, which were printed in the _London Magazine_ for May, 1825. Hone copied them into his periodical, accompanied by a reply. Lamb began:--

I like you, and your book, ingenuous Hone!

Hone's reply contained the sentiment:--

I am "ingenuous": it is all I can Pretend to; it is all I wish to be.

See the _Every-Day Book_, Vol. I., July 9. Hone at this time was occupying Lamb's house at Colebrooke Row, while the Lambs were staying at the Allsops' lodgings at Enfield.

Lamb again refers to "The p.a.w.nbroker's Daughter." He says it is at the theatre now and Harley is there too. This would be John Pritt Harley, the actor. The play, as it happened, was never acted.

Here should come three notes to Thomas Allsop in July and August, 1825, one of which d.a.m.ns the afternoon sun. Given in the Boston Bibliophile edition.]

LETTER 379

CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON

[P.M. August 10, 1825.]

We shall be soon again at Colebrook.

Dear B.B.--You must excuse my not writing before, when I tell you we are on a visit at Enfield, where I do not feel it natural to sit down to a Letter. It is at all times an exertion. I had rather talk with you, and Ann Knight, quietly at Colebrook Lodge, over the matter of your last.

You mistake me when you express misgivings about my relishing a series of scriptural poems. I wrote confusedly. What I meant to say was, that one or two consolatory poems on deaths would have had a more condensed effect than many. Scriptural-- devotional topics--admit of infinite variety. So far from poetry tiring me because religious, I can read, and I say it seriously, the homely old version of the Psalms in our Prayer-books for an hour or two together sometimes without sense of weariness.

I did not express myself clearly about what I think a false topic insisted on so frequently in consolatory addresses on the death of Infants. I know something like it is in Scripture, but I think humanly spoken. It is a natural thought, a sweet fallacy to the Survivors--but still a fallacy. If it stands on the doctrine of this being a probationary state, it is liable to this dilemma. Omniscience, to whom possibility must be clear as act, must know of the child, what it would hereafter turn out: if good, then the topic is false to say it is secured from falling into future wilfulness, vice, &c. If bad, I do not see how its exemption from certain future overt acts by being s.n.a.t.c.hed away at all tells in its favor. You stop the arm of a murderer, or arrest the finger of a pickpurse, but is not the guilt incurred as much by the intent as if never so much acted? Why children are hurried off, and old reprobates of a hundred left, whose trial humanly we may think was complete at fifty, is among the obscurities of providence. The very notion of a state of probation has darkness in it. The all-knower has no need of satisfying his eyes by seeing what we will do, when he knows before what we will do. Methinks we might be condemn'd before commission. In these things we grope and flounder, and if we can pick up a little human comfort that the child taken is s.n.a.t.c.h'd from vice (no great compliment to it, by the bye), let us take it. And as to where an untried child goes, whether to join the a.s.sembly of its elders who have borne the heat of the day--fire-purified martyrs, and torment-sifted confessors--what know we? We promise heaven methinks too cheaply, and a.s.sign large revenues to minors, incompetent to manage them. Epitaphs run upon this topic of consolation, till the very frequency induces a cheapness. Tickets for admission into Paradise are sculptured out at a penny a letter, twopence a syllable, &c. It is all a mystery; and the more I try to express my meaning (having none that is clear) the more I flounder. Finally, write what your own conscience, which to you is the unerring judge, seems best, and be careless about the whimsies of such a half-baked notionist as I am. We are here in a most pleasant country, full of walks, and idle to our hearts desire. Taylor has dropt the London. It was indeed a dead weight. It has got in the Slough of Despond. I shuffle off my part of the pack, and stand like Xtian with light and merry shoulders. It had got silly, indecorous, pert, and every thing that is bad. Both our kind _remembrances_ to Mrs. K. and yourself, and stranger's-greeting to Lucy--is it Lucy or Ruth?--that gathers wise sayings in a Book. C. LAMB.

[The London Magazine pa.s.sed into the hands of Henry Southern in September, 1825. Lamb's last article for it was in the August number--"Imperfect Dramatic Illusion," reprinted in the _Last Essays of Elia_ as "Stage Illusion."]

LETTER 380

CHARLES LAMB TO ROBERT SOUTHEY

August 10, 1825.

Dear Southey,--You'll know who this letter comes from by opening slap-dash upon the text, as in the good old times. I never could come into the custom of envelopes; 'tis a modern foppery; the Plinian correspondence gives no hint of such. In singleness of sheet and meaning then I thank you for your little book. I am ashamed to add a codicil of thanks for your "Book of the Church." I scarce feel competent to give an opinion of the latter; I have not reading enough of that kind to venture at it. I can only say the fact, that I have read it with attention and interest. Being, as you know, not quite a Churchman, I felt a jealousy at the Church taking to herself the whole deserts of Christianity, Catholic and Protestant, from Druid extirpation downwards. I call all good Christians the Church, Capillarians and all. But I am in too light a humour to touch these matters. May all our churches flourish! Two things staggered me in the poem (and one of them staggered both of us).

I cannot away with a beautiful series of verses, as I protest they are, commencing "Jenner." 'Tis like a choice banquet opened with a pill or an electuary-- physic stuff. T'other is, we cannot make out how Edith should be no more than ten years old. By'r Lady, we had taken her to be some sixteen or upwards. We suppose you have only chosen the round number for the metre. Or poem and dedication may be both older than they pretend to; but then some hint might have been given; for, as it stands, it may only serve some day to puzzle the parish reckoning. But without inquiring further (for 'tis ungracious to look into a lady's years), the dedication is eminently pleasing and tender, and we wish Edith May Southey joy of it. Something, too, struck us as if we had heard of the death of John May. A John May's death was a few years since in the papers. We think the tale one of the quietest, prettiest things we have seen. You have been temperate in the use of localities, which generally spoil poems laid in exotic regions. You mostly cannot stir out (in such things) for humming-birds and fire-flies. A tree is a Magnolia, &c.--Can I but like the truly Catholic spirit? "Blame as thou mayest the Papist's erring creed"--which and other pa.s.sages brought me back to the old Anthology days and the admonitory lesson to "Dear George" on the "The Vesper Bell," a little poem which retains its first hold upon me strangely.

The compliment to the translatress is daintily conceived. Nothing is choicer in that sort of writing than to bring in some remote, impossible parallel,--as between a great empress and the in.o.btrusive quiet soul who digged her noiseless way so perseveringly through that rugged Paraguay mine. How she Dobrizhoffered it all out, it puzzles my slender Latinity to conjecture. Why do you seem to sanction Lander's unfeeling allegorising away of honest Quixote! He may as well say Strap is meant to symbolise the Scottish nation before the Union, and Random since that act of dubious issue; or that Partridge means the Mystical Man, and Lady Bellaston typifies the Woman upon Many Waters. Gebir, indeed, may mean the state of the hop markets last month, for anything I know to the contrary. That all Spain overflowed with romancical books (as Madge Newcastle calls them) was no reason that Cervantes should not smile at the matter of them; nor even a reason that, in another mood, he might not multiply them, deeply as he was tinctured with the essence of them.

Quixote is the father of gentle ridicule, and at the same time the very depository and treasury of chivalry and highest notions. Marry, when somebody persuaded Cervantes that he meant only fun, and put him upon writing that unfortunate Second Part with the confederacies of that unworthy duke and most contemptible d.u.c.h.ess, Cervantes sacrificed his instinct to his understanding.

We got your little book but last night, being at Enfield, to which place we came about a month since, and are having quiet holydays. Mary walks her twelve miles a day some days, and I my twenty on others. 'Tis all holiday with me now, you know. The change works admirably.

For literary news, in my poor way, I have a one-act farce going to be acted at the Haymarket; but when? is the question. 'Tis an extravaganza, and like enough to follow "Mr. H." "The London Magazine" has shifted its publishers once more, and I shall shift myself out of it. It is fallen.

My ambition is not at present higher than to write nonsense for the playhouses, to eke out a somewhat contracted income. _Tempus erat_.

There was a time, my dear Cornwallis, when the Muse, &c. But I am now in MacFleckno's predicament,--

"Promised a play, and dwindled to a farce."

Coleridge is better (was, at least, a few weeks since) than he has been for years. His accomplishing his book at last has been a source of vigour to him. We are on a half visit to his friend Allsop, at a Mrs.

Leishman's, Enfield, but expect to be at Colebrooke Cottage in a week or so, where, or anywhere, I shall be always most happy to receive tidings from you. G. Dyer is in the height of an uxorious paradise. His honeymoon will not wane till he wax cold. Never was a more happy pair, since Acme and Septimius, and longer. Farewell, with many thanks, dear S. Our loves to all round your Wrekin.

Your old friend, C. LAMB.

[In the letter to Barton of March 20, 1826, Lamb continues or amplifies his remarks on his own letter-writing habits.

"Capillarians." The _New English Dictionary_ gives Lamb's word in this connection as its sole example, meaning without stem.

"The poem"--Southey's _Tale of Paraguay_, 1825, which begins with an address to Jenner, the physiologist:--

Jenner! for ever shall thy honour'd name,

and is dedicated to Edith May Southey--

Edith! ten years are number'd, since the day.

Edith Southey was born in 1804. The dedication was dated 1814.

John May was Southey's friend and correspondent. It was not he that had died.

"The Vesper Bell"--"The Chapel Bell," which was not in the _Annual Anthology_, but in Southey's _Poems_, 1797. Dear George would perhaps be Burnett, who was at Oxford with Southey when the verses were written.

"The compliment to the translatress." Southey took his _Tale of Paraguay_ from Dobrizhoffer's _History of the Abipones_, which his niece, Sara Coleridge, had translated. Southey remarks in the poem that could Dobrizhoffer have foreseen by whom his words were to be turned into English, he would have been as pleased as when he won the ear of the Empress Queen.

"Landor's ... allegorising." Landor, in the conversation between "Peter Leopold and the President du Paty," makes President du Paty say that Cervantes had deeper purpose than the satirising of knight-errants, Don Quixote standing for the Emperor Charles V. and Sancho Panza symbolising the people. Southey quoted the pa.s.sage in the Notes to the Proem. Lamb's _Elia_ essay on the "Defect of Imagination" (see Vol. II.) amplifies this criticism of Don Quixote.

"A one-act farce." This was, I imagine, "The p.a.w.nbroker's Daughter,"

although that is in two acts. It was not, however, acted.

George Dyer had just been married to the widow of a solicitor who lived opposite him in Clifford's Inn.

Here should come three unimportant notes to Hone with reference to the _Every-Day Book_--adding an invitation to Enfield to be shown "dainty spots."]

LETTER 381

CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS ALLSOP