The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Volume VI Part 73

Hone, however, did not prosper, in spite of his friends, who were not sufficiently numerous to find the requisite capital.

"Suum Cuique." The boy for whom this epigram was composed was a son of Hessey, the publisher, afterwards Archdeacon Hessey. He was at the Merchant Taylors' School, where it was a custom to compose Latin and English epigrams for speech day, the boys being permitted to get help. Archdeacon Hessey wrote as follows in the Taylorian a few years ago:--

The subjects for 1830 were _Suum Cuique_ and _Brevis esse laboro_.

After some three or four exercise nights I confess that I was literally "at my wits' end." But a brilliant idea struck me. I had frequently, boy as I was, seen Charles Lamb at my father's house, and once, in 1825 or 1826, I had been taken to have tea with him and his sister, Mary Lamb, at their little house, Colebrook Cottage, a whitish-brown tenement, standing by itself, close to the New River, at Islington. He was very kind, as he always was to young people, and very quaint. I told him that I had devoured his "Roast Pig"; he congratulated me on possessing a thorough schoolboy's appet.i.te. And he was pleased when I mentioned my having seen the boys at Christ's Hospital at their public suppers, which then took place on the Sunday evenings in Lent. "Could this good-natured and humorous old gentleman be prevailed upon to give me an Epigram?" "I don't know,"

said my father, to whom I put the question, "but I will ask him at any rate, and send him the mottoes." In a day or two there arrived from Enfield, to which Lamb had removed some time in 1827, not one, but two epigrams, one on each subject. That on _Suum Cuique_ was in Latin, and was suggested by the grim satisfaction which had recently been expressed by the public at the capture and execution of some notorious highwayman.

See also Vol. IV. of this edition for a slightly differing version. Lamb had many years before, he says in a letter to G.o.dwin, written similar epigrams.

"With one exception." Perhaps the Latin verses on Haydon's picture. See Vol. IV.]

LETTER 515

CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON

Enfield, Tuesday. [P.M. May 12, 1830.]

Dear M. I dined with your and my Rogers at Mr. Gary's yesterday. Gary consulted me on the proper bookseller to offer a Lady's MS novel to. I said I would write to you. But I wish you would call on the Translator of Dante at the British Museum, and talk with him. He is the pleasantest of clergymen. I told him of all Rogers's handsome behaviour to you, and you are already no stranger. Go. I made Rogers laugh about your Nightingale sonnet, not having heard one. 'Tis a good sonnet notwithstanding. You shall have the books shortly.

C.L.

[Samuel Rogers had just lent Moxon 500 on which to commence publisher.

Moxon had dedicated his first book to Rogers. This is Moxon's "Sonnet to the Nightingale," but I cannot explain why Rogers laughed:--

Lone midnight-soothing melancholy bird, That send'st such music to my sleepless soul, Chaining her faculties in fast controul, Few listen to thy song; yet I have heard, When Man and Nature slept, nor aspen stirred, Thy mournful voice, sweet vigil of the sleeping And liken'd thee to some angelic mind, That sits and mourns for erring mortals weeping.

The genius, not of groves, but of mankind, Watch at this solemn hour o'er millions keeping.

In Eden's bowers, as mighty poets tell, Did'st thou repeat, as now that wailing call-- Those sorrowing notes might seem, sad Philomel, Prophetic to have mourned of _man_ the _fall_.]

LETTER 516

CHARLES LAMB TO VINCENT NOVELLO

Friday. [P.M. May 14, 1830.]

Dear Novello, Mary hopes you have not forgot you are to spend a day with us on Wednesday. That it may be a long one, cannot you secure places now for Mrs. Novello yourself and the Clarkes? We have just table room for four. Five make my good Landlady fidgetty; six, to begin to fret; seven, to approximate to fever point. But seriously we shall prefer four to two or three; we shall have from 1/2 past 10 to six, when the coach goes off, to scent the country. And pray write _now_, to say you do so come, for dear Mrs. Westwood else will be on the tenters of incert.i.tude.

C. LAMB.

LETTER 517

CHARLES LAMB TO VINCENT NOVELLO

[May 20, 1830.]

Dear N.--pray write immediately to say "The book has come safe." I am anxious, not so much for the autographs, as for that bit of the hair brush. I enclose a cinder, which belonged to _Shield_, when he was poor, and lit his own fires. Any memorial of a great Musical Genius, I know, is acceptable; and Shield has his merits, though Clementi, in my opinion, is far above him in the Sostenuto. Mr. Westwood desires his compliments, and begs to present you with a nail that came out of Jomelli's coffin, who is buried at Naples.

[Vincent Novello writes on this: "A very characteristic note from Dear Charles Lamb, who always pretended to Rate all kinds of memorials and _Relics_, and a.s.sumed a look of fright and horror whenever he reproached me with being a _Papist_, instead of a _Quaker_, which sect he pretended to doat upon." The book would be Novello's alb.u.m, with Lamb's "Free Thoughts on Eminent Composers" in it (see next letter but one).

Shield was William Shield (1748-1829), the composer. He was buried in Westminster Abbey in the same grave as Clementi. Nicolo Jomelli (1714-1774) was a Neapolitan composer.]

LETTER 518

CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM HONE

May 21, 1830.

Dear Hone--I thought you would be pleased to see this letter. Pray if you have time to, call on Novello, No. 66, Great Queen St. I am anxious to learn whether he received his alb.u.m I sent on Friday by our nine o'clock morning stage. If not, beg inquire at the _Old Bell_, Holborn.

CHARLES LAMB.

Southey will see in the _Times_ all we proposed omitting is omitted.

[See notes to the letter to Southey above.]

LETTER 519

CHARLES LAMB TO SARAH HAZLITT

[Enfield, Sat.u.r.day, May 24th, 1830.]

Mary's love? Yes. Mary Lamb quite well.

Dear Sarah,--I found my way to Northaw on Thursday and a very good woman behind a counter, who says also that you are a very good lady but that the woman who was with you was naught. These things may be so or not. I did not accept her offered gla.s.s of wine (home-made, I take it) but craved a cup of ale, with which I seasoned a slice of cold Lamb from a sandwich box, which I ate in her back parlour, and proceeded for Berkhampstead, &c.; lost myself over a heath, and had a day's pleasure.

I wish you could walk as I do, and as you used to do. I am sorry to find you are so poorly; and, now I have found my way, I wish you back at Goody Tomlinson's. What a pretty village 'tis! I should have come sooner, but was waiting a summons to Bury. Well, it came, and I found the good parson's lady (he was from home) exceedingly hospitable.

Poor Emma, the first moment we were alone, took me into a corner, and said, "Now, pray, don't _drink_; do check yourself after dinner, for my sake, and when we get home to Enfield, you shall drink as much as ever you please, and I won't say a word about it." How I behaved, you may guess, when I tell you that Mrs. Williams and I have written acrostics on each other, and she hoped that she should have "no reason to regret Miss Isola's recovery, by its depriving _her_ of our begun correspondence." Emma stayed a month with us, and has gone back (in tolerable health) to her long home, for _she_ comes not again for a twelvemonth. I amused Mrs. Williams with an occurrence on our road to Enfield. We travelled with one of those troublesome fellow-pa.s.sengers in a stage-coach, that is called a well-informed man. For twenty miles we discoursed about the properties of steam, probabilities of carriages by ditto, till all my science, and more than all, was exhausted, and I was thinking of escaping my torment by getting up on the outside, when, getting into Bishops Stortford, my gentleman, spying some farming land, put an unlucky question to me: "What sort of a crop of turnips I thought we should have this year?" Emma's eyes turned to me, to know what in the world I could have to say; and she burst into a violent fit of laughter, maugre her pale, serious cheeks, when, with the greatest gravity, I replied, that "it depended, I believed, upon boiled legs of mutton."

This clench'd our conversation; and my Gentleman, with a face half wise, half in scorn, troubled us with no more conversation, scientific or philosophical, for the remainder of the journey. Ayrton was here yesterday, and as _learned_ to the full as my fellow-traveller. What a pity that he will spoil a wit and a devilish pleasant fellow (as he is) by wisdom! He talk'd on Music; and by having read Hawkins and Burney recently I was enabled to talk of Names, and show more knowledge than he had suspected I possessed; and in the end he begg'd me to shape my thoughts upon paper, which I did after he was gone, and sent him.

FREE THOUGHTS ON SOME EMINENT COMPOSERS

Some cry up Haydn, some Mozart, Just as the whim bites. For my part, I do not care a farthing candle For either of them, or for Handel.

Cannot a man live free and easy, Without admiring Pergolesi!

Or thro' the world with comfort go That never heard of Doctor Blow!

So help me G.o.d, I hardly have; And yet I eat, and drink, and shave, Like other people, (if you watch it,) And know no more of stave and crotchet Than did the un-Spaniardised Peruvians; Or those old ante-queer-Diluvians That lived in the unwash'd world with Jubal, Before that dirty Blacksmith Tubal, By stroke on anvil, or by summ'at, Found out, to his great surprise, the gamut.

I care no more for Cimerosa Than he did for Salvator Rosa, Being no Painter; and bad luck Be mine, if I can bear that Gluck!