The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Volume VI Part 97

LETTER 603

(_Fragment_)

CHARLES LAMB TO CHARLES COWDEN CLARKE

[No date. End of June, 1834.]

We heard the Music in the Abbey at Winchmore Hill! and the notes were incomparably soften'd by the distance. Novello's chromatics were distinctly audible. Clara was faulty in B flat. Otherwise she sang like an angel. The trombone, and Beethoven's walzes, were the best. Who played the oboe?

[The letter refers to the performance of Handel's "Creation" at the Musical Festival in Westminster Abbey on June 24, 1834, when Novello and Atwood were the organists, and Clara Novello one of the singers.]

LETTER 604

CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN FORSTER

[P.M. June 25, 1834.]

D'r F.--I simply sent for the Miltons because Alsop has some Books of mine, and I thought they might travel with them. But keep 'em as much longer as you like. I never trouble my head with other people's quarrels, I do not always understand my own. I seldom see them in Dover Street. I know as little as the Man in the Moon about your joint transactions, and care as little. If you have lost a little portion of my "good will," it is that you do not come and see me. Arrange with Procter, when you have done with your moving accidents.

Yours, ambulaturus,

C.L.

LETTER 605

CHARLES LAMB TO J. FULLER RUSSELL

[Summer, 1834.]

M'r Lamb's compt's and shall be happy to look over the lines as soon as ever Mr. Russell shall send them. He is at Mr. Walden's, Church, _not Bury_--St, Edm'd.

_Line_ 10. "Ween," and "wist," and "wot," and "eke" are antiquated frippery, and unmodernize a poem rather than give it an antique air, as some strong old words may do. "I guess," "I know," "I knew," are quite as significant.

31. Why "ee"--barbarous Scoticism!--when "eye" is much better and chimes to "cavalry"? A sprinkling of dis-used words where all the style else is after the approved recent fashion teases and puzzles.

37. [Anon the storm begins to slake, The sullen clouds to melt away, The moon becalmed in a blue lake Looks down with melancholy ray.]

The moon becalmed in a blue lake would be more apt to _look up_. I see my error--the sky is the lake--and beg you to laugh at it.

59. What is a maiden's "een," south of the Tweed? You may as well call her prettily turned ears her "lugs."

"On the maiden's lugs they fall" (verse 79).

144. "A coy young Miss" will never do. For though you are presumed to be a modern, writing only of days of old, yet you should not write a word purely unintelligible to your heroine. Some understanding should be kept up between you. "Miss" is a nickname not two centuries old; came in at about the Restoration. The "King's Misses" is the oldest use of it I can remember. It is Mistress Anne Page, not Miss Page. Modern names and usages should be kept out of sight in an old subject. W. Scott was sadly faulty in this respect.

208. [Tear of sympathy.] Pity's sacred dew. Sympathy is a young lady's word, rife in modern novels, and is almost always wrongly applied. To sympathize is to feel--_with_, not simply _for_ another. I write verses and _sympathize_ with you. You have the tooth ache, I have not; I feel for you, I cannot sympathize.

243. What is "sheen"? Has it more significance than "bright"? Richmond in its old name was Shene. Would you call an omnibus to take you to Shene? How the "all's right" man would stare!

363. [The violet nestled in the shade, Which fills with perfume all the glade, Yet bashful as a timid maid Thinks to elude the searching eye Of every stranger pa.s.sing by, Might well compare with Emily.]

A strangely involved simile. The maiden is likend [_sic_] to a _violet_ which has been just before likened to a _maid_. Yet it reads prettily, and I would not have it alter'd.

420. "Een" come again? In line 407 you speak it out "eye," bravely like an Englishman.

468. Sorceresses do not entice by wrinkles, but, being essentially aged, appear in a.s.sumed beauty.

[This communication and that which follows (with trifling omissions) were sent to _Notes and Queries_ by the late Mr. J. Fuller Russell, F.S.A., with this explanation: "I was residing at Enfield in the Cambridge Long Vacation, 1834, and--perhaps to the neglect of more improving pursuits--composed a metrical novel, named 'Emily de Wilton,'

in three parts. When the first of them was completed, I ventured to introduce myself to Charles Lamb (who was living at Edmonton at the time), and telling him what I had done, and that I had 'scarcely heart to proceed until I had obtained the opinion of a competent judge respecting my verses,' I asked him to 'while away an idle hour in their perusal,' adding, 'I fear you will think me very rude and very intrusive, but I am one of the most nervous souls in Christendom.'

Moved, possibly, by this diffident (not to say unusual) confession, Elia speedily gave his consent."

The poem was never printed. Lamb's pains in this matter serve to show how kindly disposed he was in these later years to all young men; and how exact a sense of words he had.

In the British Museum is preserved a sheet of similar comments made by Lamb upon a ma.n.u.script of P.G. Patmore's, from which I have quoted a few pa.s.sages above. In _Charles Lamb and the Lloyds_ will also be found a number of interesting criticisms on a translation of Homer.]

LETTER 606

CHARLES LAMB TO J. FULLER RUSSELL

[Summer, 1834.]

Sir,--I hope you will finish "Emily." The story I cannot at this stage antic.i.p.ate. Some looseness of diction I have taken liberty to advert to.

It wants a little more severity of style. There are too many prettinesses, but parts of the Poem are better than pretty, and I thank you for the perusal.

Your humble Servt.

C. LAMB.

Perhaps you will favour me with a call while you stay.

Line 42. "The old abbaye" (if abbey _was_ so spelt) I do not object to, because it does not seem your own language, but humoursomely adapted to the "how folks called it in those times."

82. "Flares"! Think of the vulgarism "flare up;" let it be "burns."

112. [In her pale countenance is blent The majesty of high intent With meekness by devotion lent, And when she bends in prayer Before the Virgin's awful shrine,-- The rapt enthusiast might deem The seraph of his brightest dream, Were meekly kneeling there.]

"Was" decidedly, not "were." The deeming or supposition, is of a reality, not a contingency. The enthusiast does not deem that a thing may be, but that it _is_.