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My tailor has brought me home a new coat lapelled, with a velvet collar.
He assures me everybody wears velvet collars now. Some are born
fashionable, some achieve fashion, and others, like your humble servant,
have fashion thrust upon them. The rogue has been making inroads
hitherto by modest degrees, foisting upon me an additional button,
recommending gaiters; but to come upon me thus in a full tide of luxury,
neither becomes him as a tailor or the ninth of a man. My meek gentleman
was robbed the other day, coming with his wife and family in a one-horse
shay from Hampstead; the villains rifled him of four guineas, some
shillings and halfpence, and a bundle of customers' measures, which they
swore were bank-notes. They did not shoot him, and when they rode off he
addressed them with profound gratitude, making a congee: "Gentlemen, I
wish you good-night; and we are very much obliged to you that you have
not used us ill!" And this is the cuckoo that has the audacity to foist
upon me ten buttons on a side and a black velvet collar,--a cursed ninth
of a scoundrel!
When you write to Lloyd, he wishes his Jacobin correspondents to address
him as _Mr._ C. L. Love and respects to Edith. I hope she is well.
Yours sincerely,
C. LAMB.
[1] This quaint scholar, a marvel of simplicity and universal optimism,
is a constantly recurring and delightfully humorous character in the
Letters. Lamb and Dyer had been schoolfellows at Christ's Hospital.
[2] John Woodvil.
[3] Coleridge and Wordsworth, who started for Germany together.
XVIII.
TO SOUTHEY.
_March_ 20, 1799,
I am hugely pleased with your "Spider," "your old freemason," as you
call him. The three first stanzas are delicious; they seem to me a
compound of Burns and. Old Quarles, those kind of home-strokes, where
more is felt than strikes the ear,--a terseness, a jocular pathos which
makes one feel in laughter. The measure, too, is novel and pleasing. I
could almost wonder Rob Burns in his lifetime never stumbled upon it.
The fourth stanza is less striking, as being less original. The fifth
falls off. It has no felicity of phrase, no old-fashioned phrase
or feeling.
"Young hopes, and love's delightful dreams,"
savor neither of Burns nor Quarles; they seem more like shreds of many a
modern sentimental sonnet. The last stanza hath nothing striking in it,
if I except the two concluding lines, which are Burns all over. I wish,
if you concur with me, these things could be looked to. I am sure this
is a kind of writing which comes tenfold better recommended to the
heart, comes there more like a neighbor or familiar, than thousands of
Hamnels and Zillahs and Madelons. I beg you will send me the
"Holly-tree," if it at all resemble this, for it must please me. I have
never seen it. I love this sort of poems, that open a new intercourse
with the most despised of the animal and insect race. I think this vein
may be further opened; Peter Pindar hath very prettily apostrophized a
fly; Burns hath his mouse and his louse; Coleridge, less successfully,
hath made overtures of intimacy to a jackass,--therein only following at
unresembling distance Sterne and greater Cervantes. Besides these, I
know of no other examples of breaking down the partition between us and
our "poor earth-born companions." It is sometimes revolting to be put in
a track of feeling by other people, not one's own immediate thoughts,
else I would persuade you, if I could (I am in earnest), to commence a
series of these animal poems, which might have a tendency to rescue some
poor creatures from the antipathy of mankind. Some thoughts come across
me: for instance, to a rat, to a toad, to a cockchafer, to a
mole,--people bake moles alive by a slow oven-fire to cure consumption.
Rats are, indeed, the most despised and contemptible parts of God's
earth, I killed a rat the other day by punching him to pieces, and feel
a weight of blood upon me to this hour. Toads, you know, are made to
fly, and tumble down and crush all to pieces. Cockchafers are old sport;
then again to a worm, with an apostrophe to anglers,--those patient
tyrants, meek inflictors of pangs intolerable, cool devils; [1] to an
owl; to all snakes, with an apology for their poison; to a cat in boots
or bladders. Your own fancy, if it takes a fancy to these hints, will
suggest many more. A series of such poems, suppose them accompanied with
plates descriptive of animal torments,--cooks roasting lobsters,
fishmongers crimping skates, etc.,--would take excessively, I will
willingly enter into a partnership in the plan with you; I think my
heart and soul would go with it too,--at least, give it a thought. My
plan is but this minute come into my head; but it strikes me
instantaneously as something new, good, and useful, full of pleasure and
full of moral. If old Quarles and Wither could live again, we would
invite them into our firm. Burns hath done his part.
Poor Sam Le Grice! I am afraid the world and the camp and the university
have spoiled him among them. 'Tis certain he had at one time a strong
capacity of turning out something better. I knew him, and that not long
since, when he had a most warm heart. I am ashamed of the indifference I
have sometimes felt towards him. I think the devil is in one's heart. I
am under obligations to that man for the warmest friendship and
heartiest sympathy, [2] even for an agony of sympathy expressed both by
word and deed, and tears for me when I was in my greatest distress. But
I have forgot that,--as, I fear, he has nigh forgot the awful scenes
which were before his eyes when he served the office of a comforter to
me. No service was too mean or troublesome for him to perform. I can't
think what but the devil, "that old spider," could have suck'd my heart
so dry of its sense of all gratitude. If he does come in your way,
Southey, fail not to tell him that I retain a most affectionate
remembrance of his old friendliness, and an earnest wish to resume our
intercourse. In this I am serious. I cannot recommend him to your
society, because I am afraid whether he be quite worthy of it. But I
have no right to dismiss him from _my_ regard. He was at one time, and
in the worst of times, my own familiar friend, and great comfort to me
then. I have known him to play at cards with my father, meal-times
excepted, literally all day long, in long days too, to save me from
being teased by the old man when I was not able to bear it.
God bless him for it, and God bless you, Southey!
C. L.
[1] Leigh Hunt says: "Walton says that an angler does no hurt but to
fish; and this he counts as nothing.... Now, fancy a Genius fishing for
us. Fancy him baiting a great hook with pickled salmon, and, twitching
up old Izaac Walton from the banks of the River Lee, with the hook
through his ear. How he would go up, roaring and screaming, and thinking
the devil had got him!
"'Other joys
Are but toys.'
WALTON."
[2] See Letter VI.
XIX.
TO THOMAS MANNING [1].
_March_ 1, 1800.
I hope by this time you are prepared to say the "Falstaff's Letters" are
a bundle of the sharpest, queerest, profoundest humors of any these
juice-drained latter times have spawned. I should have advertised you
that the meaning is frequently hard to be got at,--and so are the future
guineas that now lie ripening and aurifying in the womb of some
undiscovered Potosi; but dig, dig, dig, dig, Manning! I set to with an
unconquerable propulsion to write, with a lamentable want of what to
write. My private goings on are orderly as the movements of the spheres,
and stale as their music to angels' ears. Public affairs, except as they
touch upon me, and so turn into private, I cannot whip up my mind to
feel any interest in, I grieve, indeed, that War and Nature and Mr.
Pitt, that hangs up in Lloyd's best parlour, should have conspired to
call up three necessaries, simple commoners as our fathers knew them,
into the upper house of luxuries,--bread and beer and coals, Manning.
But as to France and Frenchmen, and the Abbe Sieyes and his
constitutions, I cannot make these present times present to me. I read
histories of the past, and I live in them; although, to abstract senses,
they are far less momentous than the noises which keep Europe awake. I
am reading Burnet's "Own Times." Did you ever read that garrulous,
pleasant history? He tells his story like an old man, past political
service, bragging to his sons on winter evenings of the part he took in
public transactions when "his old cap was new." Full of scandal, which
all true history is. No palliatives; but all the stark wickedness that
actually gives the _momentum_ to national actors. Quite the prattle of
age and outlived importance. Truth and sincerity staring out upon you
perpetually in _alto relievo_. Himself a party man, he makes you a party
man. None of the cursed philosophical Humeian indifference, so cold and
unnatural and inhuman! None of the cursed Gibbonian fine writing, so
fine and composite. None of Dr. Robertson's periods with three members.
None of Mr. Roscoe's sage remarks, all so apposite, and coming in so
clever, lest the reader should have had the trouble of drawing an
inference. Burnet's good old prattle I can bring present to my mind; I
can make the Revolution present to me: the French Revolution, by a
converse perversity in my nature, I fling as far _from_ me. To quit this
tiresome subject, and to relieve you from two or three dismal yawns,
which I hear in spirit, I here conclude my more than commonly obtuse
letter,--dull up to the dulness of a Dutch commentator on Shakspeare. My
love to Lloyd and Sophia.
C. L.
[1] To this remarkable person we are largely indebted for some of the
best of Lamb's letters. He was mathematical tutor at Caius College,
Cambridge, and in later years became somewhat famous as an explorer of
the remoter parts of China and Thibet. Lamb had been introduced to him,
during a Cambridge visit, by Charles Lloyd, and afterwards told Crabb
Robinson that he was the most "wonderful man" he ever met. An account of
Manning will be found in the memoir prefixed to his "Journey to Lhasa,"
in 1811-12. (George Bogle and Thomas Manning's Journey to Thibet and
Lhasa, by C.R. Markham, 1876.)
XX.
TO COLERIDGE,
_May_ 12, 1800,
My Dear Coleridge,--I don't know why I write, except from the propensity
misery has to tell her griefs. Hetty [1] died on Friday night, about
eleven o'clock, after eight days' illness; Mary, in consequence of
fatigue and anxiety, is fallen ill again, and I was obliged to remove
her yesterday. I am left alone in a house with nothing but Hetty's dead
body to keep me company. To-morrow I bury her, and then I shall be quite
alone, with nothing but a cat to remind me that the house has been full
of living beings like myself. My heart is quite sunk, and I don't know
where to look for relief. Mary will get better again; but her constantly
being liable to such relapses is dreadful; nor is it the least of our
evils that her case and all our story is so well known around us. We are
in a manner _marked_. Excuse my troubling you; but I have nobody by me
to speak to me. I slept out last night, not being able to endure the
change and the stillness. But I did not sleep well, and I must come back
to my own bed. I am going to try and get a friend to come and be with me
to-morrow. I am completely shipwrecked. My head is quite bad. I almost
wish that Mary were dead. God bless you. Love to Sara and Hartley.
C. LAMB.
[1] The Lambs' old servant.
XXI.
TO MANNING.
Before _June_, 1800.
Dear Manning,--I feel myself unable to thank you sufficiently for your
kind letter. It was doubly acceptable to me, both for the choice poetry
and the kind, honest prose which it contained. It was just such a letter
as I should have expected from Manning.
I am in much better spirits than when I wrote last. I have had a very
eligible offer to lodge with a friend in town. He will have rooms to let
at midsummer, by which time I hope my sister will be well enough to join
me. It is a great object to me to live in town, where we shall be much
more _private_, and to quit a house and neighborhood where poor Mary's
disorder, so frequently recurring, has made us a sort of marked people.
We can be nowhere private except in the midst of London. We shall be in
a family where we visit very frequently; only my landlord and I have not
yet come to a conclusion. He has a partner to consult. I am still on the
tremble, for I do not know where we could go into lodgings that would
not be, in many respects, highly exceptionable. Only God send Mary well
again, and I hope all will be well! The prospect, such as it is, has
made me quite happy. I have just time to tell you of it, as I know it
will give you pleasure. Farewell.
C. LAMB.
XXII.
TO COLERIDGE,
_August_, 6, 1800.
Dear Coleridge,--I have taken to-day and delivered to Longman and Co.,
_Imprimis_: your books, viz., three ponderous German dictionaries, one
volume (I can find no more) of German and French ditto, sundry other
German books unbound, as you left them, Percy's Ancient Poetry, and one
volume of Anderson's Poets. I specify them, that you may not lose any.
_Secundo_: a dressing-gown (value, fivepence), in which you used to sit
and look like a conjuror when you were translating "Wallenstein." A case
of two razors and a shaving-box and strap. This it has cost me a severe
struggle to part with. They are in a brown-paper parcel, which also
contains sundry papers and poems, sermons, _some few Epic_ poems,--one
about Cain and Abel, which came from Poole, etc., and also your tragedy;
with one or two small German books, and that drama in which Got-fader
performs. _Tertio_: a small oblong box containing _all your letters_,
collected from all your waste papers, and which fill the said little
box. All other waste papers, which I judged worth sending, are in the
paper parcel aforesaid. But you will find _all_ your letters in the box
by themselves. Thus have I discharged my conscience and my lumber-room
of all your property, save and except a folio entitled Tyrrell's
"Bibliotheca Politica," which you used to learn your politics out of
when you wrote for the Post,--_mutatis mutandis, i. e._, applying past
inferences to modern _data_. I retain that, because I am sensible I am
very deficient in the politics myself; and I have torn up--don't be
angry; waste paper has risen forty per cent, and I can't afford to buy
it--all Bonaparte's Letters, Arthur Young's Treatise on Corn, and one or
two more light-armed infantry, which I thought better suited the
flippancy of London discussion than the dignity of Keswick thinking.
Mary says you will be in a passion about them when you come to miss
them; but you must study philosophy. Read Albertus Magnus de Chartis
Amissis five times over after phlebotomizing,--'t is Burton's
recipe,--and then be angry with an absent friend if you can. Sara is
obscure. Am I to understand by her letter that she sends a _kiss_ to
Eliza Buckingham? Pray tell your wife that a note of interrogation on
the superscription of a letter is highly ungrammatical! She proposes
writing my name _Lambe? Lamb_ is quite enough. I have had the
Anthology, and like only one thing in it,--_Lewti_; but of that the
last stanza is detestable, the rest most exquisite! The epithet
_enviable_ would dash the finest poem. For God's sake (I never was more
serious), don't make me ridiculous any more by terming me gentle-hearted
in print, or do it in better verses. [1] It did well enough five years
ago, when I came to see you, and was moral coxcomb enough at the time
you wrote the lines, to feed upon such epithets: but, besides that, the
meaning of "gentle" is equivocal at best, and almost always means
"poor-spirited;" the very quality of gentleness is abhorrent to such
vile trumpetings. My _sentiment_ is long since vanished. I hope my
_virtues_ have done _sucking_. I can scarce think but you meant it in
joke. I hope you did, for I should be ashamed to think you could think
to gratify me by such praise, fit only to be a cordial to some
green-sick sonneteer.
[1] An allusion to Coleridge's lines, "This Lime-Tree Bower my Prison,"
wherein he styles Lamb "my gentle-hearted Charles."
XXIII.
TO MANNING.
_August_, 1800.
Dear Manning,--I am going to ask a favor of you, and am at a loss how to
do it in the most delicate mariner. For this purpose I have been looking
into Pliny's Letters, who is noted to have had the best grace in begging
of all the ancients (I read him in the elegant translation of Mr.
Melmoth); but not finding any case there exactly similar with mine, I am
constrained to beg in my own barbarian way. To come to the point, then,
and hasten into the middle of things, have you a copy of your Algebra [1]
to give away? I do not ask it for myself; I have too much reverence for
the Black Arts ever to approach thy circle, illustrious Trismegist! But
that worthy man and excellent poet, George Dyer, made me a visit
yesternight on purpose to borrow one, supposing, rationally enough, I
must say, that you had made me a present of one before this; the
omission of which I take to have proceeded only from negligence: but it
is a fault. I could lend him no assistance. You must know he is just now
diverted from the pursuit of BELL LETTERS by a paradox, which he has
heard his friend Frend [2] (that learned mathematician) maintain, that
the negative quantities of mathematicians were _merae nugae_,--things
scarcely _in rerum natura_, and smacking too much of mystery for
gentlemen of Mr. Frend's clear Unitarian capacity. However, the dispute,
once set a-going, has seized violently on George's pericranick; and it
is necessary for his health that he should speedily come to a resolution
of his doubts. He goes about teasing his friends with his new
mathematics; he even frantically talks of purchasing Manning's Algebra,
which shows him far gone, for, to my knowledge, he has not been master
of seven shillings a good time. George's pockets and ----'s brains are
two things in nature which do not abhor a vacuum.... Now, if you could
step in, in this trembling suspense of his reason, and he should find on
Saturday morning, lying for him at the Porter's Lodge, Clifford's
Inn.--his safest address,--Manning's Algebra, with a neat manuscriptum
in the blank leaf, running thus, "FROM THE AUTHOR!" it might save his
wits and restore the unhappy author to those studies of poetry and
criticism which are at present suspended, to the infinite regret of the
whole literary world. N.B.--Dirty books, smeared leaves, and dogs' ears
will be rather a recommendation than otherwise. N.B.--He must have the
book as soon as possible, or nothing can withhold him from madly
purchasing the book on tick.... Then shall we see him sweetly restored
to the chair of Longinus,--to dictate in smooth and modest phrase the
laws of verse; to prove that Theocritus first introduced the Pastoral,
and Virgil and Pope brought it to its perfection; that Gray and Mason
(who always hunt in couples in George's brain) have shown a great deal
of poetical fire in their lyric poetry; that Aristotle's rules are not
to be servilely followed, which George has shown to have imposed great
shackles upon modern genius. His poems, I find, are to consist of two
vols., reasonable octavo; and a third book will exclusively contain
criticisms, in which he asserts he has gone _pretty deeply_ into the
laws of blank verse and rhyme, epic poetry, dramatic and pastoral
ditto,--all which is to come out before Christmas. But above all he has
_touched_ most _deeply_ upon the Drama, comparing the English with the
modern German stage, their merits and defects. Apprehending that his
_studies_ (not to mention his _turn_, which I take to be chiefly towards
the lyrical poetry) hardly qualified him for these disquisitions, I
modestly inquired what plays he had read. I found by George's reply that
he _had_ read Shakspeare, but that was a good while since: he calls him
a great but irregular genius, which I think to be an original and just
remark. (Beaumont and Fletcher, Massinger, Ben Jonson, Shirley, Marlowe,
Ford, and the worthies of Dodsley's Collection,--he confessed he had
read none of them, but professed his _intention_ of looking through them
all, so as to be able to _touch_ upon them in his book.) So Shakspeare,
Otway, and I believe Rowe, to whom he was naturally directed by
Johnson's Lives, and these not read lately, are to stand him in stead of
a general knowledge of the subject. God bless his dear absurd head!
By the by, did I not write you a letter with something about an
invitation in it?--but let that pass; I suppose it is not agreeable.
N.B. It would not be amiss if you were to accompany your _present_ with
a dissertation on negative quantities.
C. L.
[1] Manning, while at Cambridge, published a work on Algebra.
[2] The Rev. William Frend, who was expelled from Cambridge for
Unitarianism.
XXIV.
TO MANNING.
1800.
George Dyer is an Archimedes and an Archimagus and a Tycho Brahe and a
Copernicus; and thou art the darling of the Nine, and midwife to their
wandering babe also! We take tea with that learned poet and critic on
Tuesday night, at half-past five, in his neat library; the repast will
be light and Attic, with criticism. If thou couldst contrive to wheel up
thy dear carcase on the Monday, and after dining with us on tripe,
calves' kidneys, or whatever else the Cornucopia of St. Clare may be
willing to pour out on the occasion, might we not adjourn together to
the Heathen's, thou with thy Black Backs, and I with some innocent
volume of the Bell Letters,--Shenstone, or the like; it would make him
wash his old flannel gown (that has not been washed, to my knowledge,
since it has been _his_,--Oh, the long time!) with tears of joy. Thou
shouldst settle his scruples, and unravel his cobwebs, and sponge off
the sad stuff that weighs upon his dear wounded pia mater; thou shouldst
restore light to his eyes, and him to his friends and the public;
Parnassus should shower her civic crowns upon thee for saving the wits
of a citizen! I thought I saw a lucid interval in George the other
night: he broke in upon my studies just at tea-time, and brought with
him Dr. Anderson, an old gentleman who ties his breeches' knees with
packthread, and boasts that he has been disappointed by ministers. The
Doctor wanted to see _me_; for, I being a poet, he thought I might
furnish him with a copy of verses to suit his "Agricultural Magazine."
The Doctor, in the course of the conversation, mentioned a poem, called
the "Epigoniad," by one Wilkie, an epic poem, in which there is not one
tolerable good line all through, but every incident and speech borrowed
from Homer.
George had been sitting inattentive seemingly to what was going
on,--hatching of negative quantities,--when, suddenly, the name of his
old friend Homer stung his pericranicks, and, jumping up, he begged to
know where he could meet with Wilkie's work. "It was a curious fact that
there should be such an epic poem and he not know of it; and he _must_
get a copy of it, as he was going to touch pretty deeply upon the
subject of the epic,--and he was sure there must be some things good in
a poem of eight thousand lines!" I was pleased with this transient
return of his reason and recurrence to his old ways of thinking; it gave
me great hopes of a recovery, which nothing but your book can completely
insure. Pray come on Monday if you _can_, and stay your own time. I have
a good large room, with two beds in it, in the handsomest of which thou
shalt repose a-nights, and dream of spheroides. I hope you will
understand by the nonsense of this letter that I am _not_ melancholy at
the thoughts of thy coming; I thought it necessary to add this, because
you love _precision_. Take notice that our stay at Dyer's will not
exceed eight o'clock, after which our pursuits will be our own. But
indeed I think a little recreation among the Bell Letters and poetry
will do you some service in the interval of severer studies. I hope we
shall fully discuss with George Dyer what I have never yet heard done to
my satisfaction,--the reason of Dr. Johnson's malevolent strictures on
the higher species of the Ode.
C. LAMB.
XXV.
TO COLERIDGE.
_August_ 14, 1800.
My head is playing all the tunes in the world, ringing such peals! It
has just finished the "Merry Christ Church Bells," and absolutely is
beginning "Turn again, Whittington." Buz, buz, buz; bum, bum, bum;
wheeze, wheeze, wheeze; fen, fen, fen; tinky, tinky, tinky; _cr'annch_.
I shall certainly come to be condemned at last. I have been drinking too
much for two days running. I find my moral sense in the last stage of a
consumption, and my religion getting faint. This is disheartening, but I
trust the devil will not overpower me. In the midst of this infernal
torture Conscience is barking and yelping as loud as any of them. I have
sat down to read over again, and I think I do begin to spy out something
with beauty and design in it. I perfectly accede to all your
alterations, and only desire that you had cut deeper, when your hand
was in.
* * * * *
Now I am on the subject of poetry, I must announce to you, who,
doubtless, in your remote part of the island, have not heard tidings of
so great a blessing, that George Dyer hath prepared two ponderous
volumes full of poetry and criticism. They impend over the town, and are
threatened to fall in the winter. The first volume contains every sort
of poetry except personal satire, which George, in his truly original
prospectus, renounceth forever, whimsically foisting the intention in
between the price of his book and the proposed number of subscribers.
(If I can, I will get you a copy of his _handbill_.) He has tried his
_vein_ in every species besides,--the Spenserian, Thomsonian, Masonic,
and Akensidish more especially. The second volume is all criticism;
wherein he demonstrates to the entire satisfaction of the literary
world, in a way that must silence all reply forever, that the pastoral
was introduced by Theocritus and polished by Virgil and Pope; that Gray
and Mason (who always hunt in couples in George's brain) have a good
deal of poetical fire and true lyric genius; that Cowley was ruined by
excess of wit (a warning to all moderns); that Charles Lloyd, Charles
Lamb, and William Wordsworth, in later days, have struck the true chords
of poesy. Oh, George, George, with a head uniformly wrong and a heart
uniformly right, that I had power and might equal to my wishes; then
would I call the gentry of thy native island, and they should come in
troops, flocking at the sound of thy prospectus-trumpet, and crowding
who shall be first to stand in thy list of subscribers! I can only put
twelve shillings into thy pocket (which, I will answer for them, will
not stick there long) out of a pocket almost as bare as thine. Is it not
a pity so much fine writing should be erased? But, to tell the truth, I
began to scent that I was getting into that sort of style which Longinus
and Dionysius Halicarnassus fitly call "the affected."
C. L.
XXVI.
TO MANNING.
_August_ 22, 1800.
Dear Manning,--You need not imagine any apology necessary. Your fine
hare and fine birds (which just now are dangling by our kitchen blaze)
discourse most eloquent music in your justification. You just nicked my
palate; for, with all due decorum and leave may it be spoken, my worship
hath taken physic to-day, and being low and puling, requireth to be
pampered. Fob! how beautiful and strong those buttered onions come to my
nose! For you must know we extract a divine spirit of gravy from those
materials which, duly compounded with a consistence of bread and cream
(yclept bread-sauce), each to each giving double grace, do mutually
illustrate and set off (as skilful gold-foils to rare jewels) your
partridge, pheasant, woodcock, snipe, teal, widgeon, and the other
lesser daughters of the ark. My friendship, struggling with my carnal
and fleshly prudence (which suggests that a bird a man is the proper
allotment in such cases), yearneth sometimes to have thee here to pick a
wing or so. I question if your Norfolk sauces match our London
culinarie.
George Dyer has introduced me to the table of an agreeable old
gentleman, Dr. Anderson, who gives hot legs of mutton and grape pies at
his sylvan lodge at Isleworth, where, in the middle of a street, he has
shot up a wall most preposterously before his small dwelling, which,
with the circumstance of his taking several panes of glass out of
bedroom windows (for air), causeth his neighbors to speculate strangely
on the state of the good man's pericranicks. Plainly, he lives under the
reputation of being deranged. George does not mind this circumstance; he
rather likes him the better for it. The Doctor, in his pursuits, joins
agricultural to poetical science, and has set George's brains mad about
the old Scotch writers, Barbour, Douglas's AEneid, Blind Harry, etc. We
returned home in a return postchaise (having dined with the Doctor); and
George kept wondering and wondering, for eight or nine turnpike miles,
what was the name, and striving to recollect the name, of a poet
anterior to Barbour. I begged to know what was remaining of his works.
"There is nothing _extant_ of his works, sir; but by all accounts he
seems to have been a fine genius!" This fine genius, without anything to
show for it or any title beyond George's courtesy, without even a name,
and Barbour and Douglas and Blind Harry now are the predominant sounds
in George's pia mater, and their buzzings exclude politics, criticism,
and algebra,--the late lords of that illustrious lumber-room. Mark, he
has never read any of these bucks, but is impatient till he reads them
_all_, at the Doctor's suggestion. Poor Dyer! his friends should be
careful what sparks they let fall into such inflammable matter.
Could I have my will of the heathen, I would lock him up from all access
of new ideas; I would exclude all critics that would not swear me first
(upon their Virgil) that they would feed him with nothing but the old,
safe, familiar notions and sounds (the rightful aborigines of his
brain),--Gray, Akenside, and Mason. In these sounds, reiterated as often
as possible, there could be nothing painful, nothing distracting.
God bless me, here are the birds, smoking hot!
All that is gross and unspiritual in me rises at the sight!
Avaunt friendship and all memory of absent friends!
C. LAMB.
XXVII.
TO COLERIDGE.
_August_ 26, 1800.
George Dyer is the only literary character I am happily acquainted with.
The oftener I see him, the more deeply I admire him. He is goodness
itself. If I could but calculate the precise date of his death, I would
write a novel on purpose to make George the hero. I could hit him off
to a hair.
George brought a Dr. Anderson [1] to see me. The Doctor is a very
pleasant old man, a great genius for agriculture, one that ties his
breeches-knees with packthread, and boasts of having had disappointments
from ministers. The Doctor happened to mention an epic poem by one
Wilkie, called the "Epigoniad," in which he assured us there is not one
tolerable line from beginning to end, but all the characters, incidents,
etc., verbally copied from _Homer_. George, who had been sitting quite
inattentive to the Doctor's criticism, no sooner heard the sound of
_Homer_ strike his pericraniks, than up he gets, and declares he must
see that poem immediately: where was it to be had? An epic poem of eight
thousand lines, and _he_ not hear of it! There must be some things good
in it, and it was necessary he should see it, for he had touched pretty
deeply upon that subject in his criticisms on the Epic. George had
touched pretty deeply upon the Lyric, I find; he has also prepared a
dissertation on the Drama, and the comparison of the English and German
theatres. As I rather doubted his competency to do the latter, knowing
that his peculiar _turn_ lies in the lyric species of composition, I
questioned George what English plays he had read. I found that he _had_
read Shakspeare (whom he calls an original, but irregular, genius), but
it was a good while ago; and he has dipped into Rowe and Otway, I
suppose having found their names in Johnson's Lives at full length; and
upon this slender ground he has undertaken the task. He never seemed
even to have heard of Fletcher, Ford, Marlowe, Massinger, and the
worthies of Dodsley's Collection; but he is to read all these, to
prepare him for bringing out his "Parallel" in the winter. I find he is
also determined to vindicate poetry from the shackles which Aristotle
and some others have imposed upon it,--which is very good-natured of
him, and very necessary just now! Now I am _touching_ so _deeply_ upon
poetry, can I forget that I have just received from Cottle a magnificent
copy of his Guinea Epic. [2] Four-and-twenty books to read in the dog
days! I got as far as the Mad Monk the first day, and fainted. Mr,
Cottle's genius strongly points him to the _Pastoral_, but his
inclinations divert him perpetually from his calling. He imitates
Southey, as Rowe did Shakspeare, with his "Good morrow to ye, good
master Lieutenant," Instead of _a_ man, _a_ woman, _a_ daughter, he
constantly writes "one a man," "one a woman," "one his daughter."
Instead of _the_ king, _the_ hero, he constantly writes, "he the king,"
"he the hero,"--two flowers of rhetoric palpably from the "Joan." But
Mr, Cottle soars a higher pitch; and when he _is_ original, it is in a
most original way indeed. His terrific scenes are indefatigable.
Serpents, asps, spiders, ghosts, dead bodies, staircases made of
nothing, with adders' tongues for bannisters,--Good Heaven, what a brain
he must have! He puts as many plums in his pudding as my grandmother
used to do; and, then his emerging from Hell's horrors into light, and
treading on pure flats of this earth--for twenty-three books together!
C. L.
[1] See preceding Letter.
[2] Alfred.
XXVIII.
TO COLERIDGE.
_October_ 9, 1800.
I suppose you have heard of the death of Amos Cottle. I paid a solemn
visit of condolence to his brother, accompanied by George Dyer, of
burlesque memory. I went, trembling, to see poor Cottle so immediately
upon the event. He was in black, and his younger brother was also in
black. Everything wore an aspect suitable to the respect due to the
freshly dead. For some time after our entrance, nobody spake, till
George modestly put in a question, whether "Alfred" was likely to sell.
This was Lethe to Cottle, and his poor face wet with tears, and his kind
eye brightened up in a moment. Now I felt it was my cue to speak. I had
to thank him for a present of a magnificent copy, and had promised to
send him my remarks,--the least thing I could do; so I ventured to
suggest that I perceived a considerable improvement he had made in his
first book since the state in which he first read it to me. Joseph, who
till now had sat with his knees cowering in by the fireplace, wheeled
about, and with great difficulty of body shifted the same round to the
corner of a table where I was sitting, and first stationing one thigh
over the other, which is his sedentary mood, and placidly fixing his
benevolent face right against mine, waited my observations. At that
moment it came strongly into my mind that I had got Uncle Toby before
me, he looked so kind and so good. I could not say an unkind thing of
"Alfred." So I set my memory to work to recollect what was the name of
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