The Best Letters of Charles Lamb Part 27

Oh, the old books we shall peruse here!

Oh, the new nonsense we shall trifle over there!

Oh, Sir T. Browne, here!

Oh, Mr. Hood and Mr. Jerdan, there!

Thine,

C. (URBa.n.u.s) L. (SYLVa.n.u.s)--(Elia ambo).

[1] By Charles Cotton.

XCVII.

TO P. G. PATMORE.

_September_, 1827.

Dear P.,--Excuse my anxiety, but how is Dash? I should have asked if Mrs. Patmore kept her rules and was improving; but Dash came uppermost.

The order of our thoughts should be the order of our writing. Goes he muzzled, or _aperto ore_? Are his intellects sound, or does he wander a little in _his_ conversation. You cannot be too careful to watch the first symptoms of incoherence. The first illogical snarl he makes, to St. Luke's with him! All the dogs here are going mad, if you believe the overseers; but I protest they seem to me very rational and collected.

But nothing is so deceitful as mad people, to those who are not used to them. Try him with hot water; if he won't lick it up, it's a sign he does not like it. Does his tail wag horizontally or perpendicularly?

That has decided the fate of many dogs in Enfield. Is his general deportment cheerful? I mean when he is pleased, for otherwise there is no judging. You can't be too careful. Has he bit any of the children yet? If he has, have them shot, and keep _him_ for curiosity, to see if it was the hydrophobia. They say all our army in India had it at one time; but that was in _Hyder_-Ally's time. Do you get paunch for him?

Take care the sheep was sane. You might pull his teeth out (if he would let you), and then you need not mind if he were as mad as a Bedlamite.

It would be rather fun to see his odd ways. It might amuse Mrs. P. and the children. They'd have more sense than he. He'd be like a fool kept in a family, to keep the household in good humor with their own understanding. You might teach him the mad dance, set to the mad howl.

_Madge Owlet_ would be nothing to him. "My, how he capers!" (_In the margin is written "One of the children speaks this_.") ... What I scratch out is a German quotation, from Lessing, on the bite of rabid animals; but I remember you don't read German. But Mrs. P. may, so I wish I had let it stand. The meaning in English is: "Avoid to approach an animal suspected of madness, as you would avoid fire or a precipice,"--which I think is a sensible observation. The Germans are certainly profounder than we. If the slightest suspicion arises in your breast that all is not right with him, muzzle him and lead him in a string (common packthread will do; he don't care for twist) to Mr.

Hood's, his quondam master, and he'll take him in at any time. You may mention your suspicion, or not, as you like, or as you think it may wound, or not, Mr. H.'s feelings. Hood, I know, will wink at a few follies in Dash, in consideration of his former sense. Besides, Hood is deaf, and if you hinted anything, ten to one he would not hear you.

Besides, you will have discharged your conscience, and laid the child at the right door, as they say.

We are dawdling our time away very idly and pleasantly at a Mrs.

Leishman's, Chase, Enfield, where, if you come a-hunting, we can give you cold meat and a tankard. Her husband is a tailor; but that, you know, does not make her one. I know a jailor (which rhymes), but his wife was a fine lady.

Let us hear from you respecting Mrs. P.'s regimen. I send my love in a-- to Dash.

C. LAMB.

XCVIII.

TO BERNARD BARTON.

_October_ 11, 1828.

A splendid edition of Bunyan's Pilgrim! [1] Why, the thought is enough to turn one's moral stomach. His c.o.c.kle-hat and staff transformed to a smart c.o.c.ked beaver and a jemmy cane; his amice gray to the last Regent Street cut; and his painful palmer's pace to the modern swagger! Stop thy friend's sacrilegious hand. Nothing can be done for B. but to reprint the old cuts in as homely but good a style as possible,--the Vanity Fair and the Pilgrims there; the silly-soothness in his setting-out countenance; the Christian idiocy (in a good sense) of his admiration of the shepherds on the Delectable mountains; the lions so truly allegorical, and remote from any similitude to Pidc.o.c.k's; the great head (the author's), capacious of dreams and similitudes, dreaming in the dungeon. Perhaps you don't know my edition, what I had when a child.

If you do, can you bear new designs from Martin, enamelled into copper or silver plate by Heath, accompanied with verses from Mrs. Hemans's pen? Oh, how unlike his own!

"Wouldst thou divert thyself from melancholy?

Wouldst thou be pleasant, yet be far from folly?

Wouldst thou read riddles and their explanation?

Or else be drowned in thy contemplation?

Dost thou love picking meat? or wouldst thou see A man i' the clouds, and hear him speak to thee?

Wouldst thou be in a dream, and yet not sleep?

Or wouldst thou in a moment laugh and weep?

Or wouldst thou lose thyself, and catch no harm, And find thyself again without a charm?

Wouldst read _thyself_, and read thou knowest not what, And yet know whether thou art blest or not By reading the same lines? Oh, then come hither, And lay my book, thy head, and heart together."

Show me any such poetry in any one of the fifteen forthcoming combinations of show and emptiness 'yclept "Annuals." So there's verses for thy verses; and now let me tell you that the sight of your hand gladdened me. I have been daily trying to write to you, but [have been]

paralyzed. You have spurred me on this tiny effort, and at intervals I hope to hear from and talk to you. But my spirits have been in an oppressed way for a long time, and they are things which must be to you of faith, for who can explain depression? Yes, I am hooked into the "Gem," but only for some lines written on a dead infant of the editor's [2] which being, as it were, his property, I could not refuse their appearing; but I hate the paper, the type, the gloss, the dandy plates, the names of contributors poked up into your eyes in first page, and whisked through all the covers of magazines, the barefaced sort of emulation, the immodest candidates.h.i.+p. Brought into so little s.p.a.ce,--in those old "Londons," a signature was lost in the wood of matter, the paper coa.r.s.e (till latterly, which spoiled them),--in short, I detest to appear in an Annual. What a fertile genius (and a quiet good soul withal) is Hood! He has fifty things in hand,--farces to supply the Adelphi for the season; a comedy for one of the great theatres, just ready; a whole entertainment by himself for Mathews and Yates to figure in; a meditated Comic Annual for next year, to be nearly done by himself. You'd like him very much.

Wordsworth, I see, has a good many pieces announced in one of 'em, not our "Gem." W. Scott has distributed himself like a bribe haunch among 'em. Of all the poets, Cary [3] has had the good sense to keep quite clear of 'em, with clergy-gentlemanly right notions. Don't think I set up for being proud on this point; I like a bit of flattery, tickling my vanity, as well as any one. But these pompous masquerades without masks (naked names or faces) I hate. So there's a bit of my mind. Besides, they infallibly cheat you,--I mean the booksellers. If I get but a copy, I only expect it from Hood's being my friend. Coleridge has lately been here. He too is deep among the prophets, the year-servers,--the mob of gentleman annuals. But they'll cheat him, I know. And now, dear B. B., the sun s.h.i.+ning out merrily, and the dirty clouds we had yesterday having washed their own faces clean with their own rain, tempts me to wander up Winchmore Hill, or into some of the delightful vicinages of Enfield, which I hope to show you at some time when you can get a few days up to the great town. Believe me, it would give both of us great pleasure to show you our pleasant farms and villages.

We both join in kindest loves to you and yours.

C. LAMB _redivivus_.

[1] An _edition de luxe_, ill.u.s.trated by John Martin, and with an Introduction by Southey. See Macaulay's review of it.

[2] Hood's.

[3] The translator of Dante.

XCIX.

TO PROCTER.

_January_ 22, 1829.

Don't trouble yourself about the verses. Take 'em coolly as they come.

Any day between this and midsummer will do. Ten lines the extreme. There is no mystery in my incognita. She has often seen you, though you may not have observed a silent brown girl, who for the last twelve years has rambled about our house in her Christmas holidays. She is Italian by name and extraction. [1] Ten lines about the blue sky of her country will do, as it's her foible to be proud of it. Item, I have made her a tolerable Latinist. She is called Emma Isola. I shall, I think, be in town in a few weeks, when I will a.s.suredly see you. I will put in here loves to Mrs. Procter and the Anti-Capulets [Montagus], because Mary tells me I omitted them in my last. I like to see my friends here. I have put my lawsuit into the hands of an Enfield pract.i.tioner,--a plain man, who seems perfectly to understand it, and gives me hopes of a favorable result.

Rumor tells us that Miss Holcroft is married. Who is Baddams? Have I seen him at Montacute's? I hear he is a great chemist. I am sometimes chemical myself. A thought strikes me with horror. Pray Heaven he may not have done it for the sake of trying chemical experiments upon her,--young female subjects are so scarce! An't you glad about Burke's case? We may set off the Scotch murders against the Scotch novels,--Hare the Great Unhanged. [2]

Martin Burney is richly worth your knowing. He is on the top scale of my friends.h.i.+p ladder, on which an angel or two is still climbing, and some, alas! descending. I am out of the literary world at present. Pray, is there anything new from the admired pen of the author of "The Pleasures of Hope"? Has Mrs. He-mans (double masculine) done anything pretty lately? Why sleeps the lyre of Hervey and of Alaric Watts? Is the muse of L. E. L. silent? Did you see a sonnet of mine in Blackwood's last? [3]

Curious construction! _Elaborata facilitas!_ And now I 'll tell. 'Twas written for "The Gem;" but the--editors declined it, on the plea that it would _shock all mothers_; so they published "The Widow" instead. I am born out of time, I have no conjecture about what the present world calls delicacy. I thought "Rosamund Gray" was a pretty modest thing.

Hessey a.s.sures me that the world would not bear it. I have lived to grow into an indecent character. When my sonnet was rejected, I exclaimed, "d.a.m.n the age; I will write for Antiquity!"

_Erratum_ in sonnet. Last line but something, for "tender" read "tend,"

The Scotch do not know our law terms, but I find some remains of honest, plain old writing lurking there still. They were not so mealy mouthed as to refuse my verses. Maybe, 't is their oatmeal,