The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Volume V Part 36

"When thou First camest into the World, as it befalls To new-born Infants, thou didst sleep away Two days: and _Blessings from Thy father's Tongue Then fell upon thee_."

The lines were thus undermarked, and then followed "This Pa.s.sage, as combining in an extraordinary degree that Union of Imagination and Tenderness which I am speaking of, I consider as one of the Best I ever wrote!"

2d Specimen.--A youth, after years of absence, revisits his native place, and thinks (as most people do) that there has been strange alteration in his absence:--

"And that the rocks And everlasting Hills themselves were changed."

You see both these are good Poetry: but after one has been reading Shakspeare twenty of the best years of one's life, to have a fellow start up, and prate about some unknown quality, which Shakspeare possessed in a degree inferior to Milton and _somebody else_!! This was not to be _all_ my castigation. Coleridge, who had not written to me some months before, starts up from his bed of sickness to reprove me for my hardy presumption: four long pages, equally sweaty and more tedious, came from him; a.s.suring me that, when the works of a man of true genius such as W. undoubtedly was, do not please me at first sight, I should suspect the fault to lie "in me and not in them," etc. etc. etc. etc.

etc. What am I to do with such people? I certainly shall write them a very merry Letter. Writing to _you_, I may say that the 2d vol. has no such pieces as the three I enumerated. It is full of original thinking and an observing mind, but it does not often make you laugh or cry.--It too artfully aims at simplicity of expression. And you sometimes doubt if Simplicity be not a cover for Poverty. The best Piece in it I will send you, being _short_. I have grievously offended my friends in the North by declaring my undue preference; but I need not fear you:--

"She dwelt among the untrodden ways Beside the Springs of Dove, A maid whom there were few [none] to praise And very few to love.

"A violet, by a mossy stone, Half hidden from the eye.

Fair as a star when only one Is s.h.i.+ning in the sky.

"She lived unknown; and few could know, When Lucy ceased to be.

But she is in the grave, and oh!

The difference to me."

This is choice and genuine, and so are many, many more. But one does not like to have 'em rammed down one's throat. "Pray, take it--it's very good--let me help you--eat faster."

[It cannot be too much regretted that Lamb's "very merry Letter" in answer to Wordsworth and Coleridge's remonstrances has not been preserved.

At the end of the letter is a pa.s.sage which can be read only in the Boston Bibliophile edition, referring to Dyer's Poems, to _John Woodvil_ and to G.o.dwin.]

LETTER 83

CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING

[Late February, 1801.]

You masters of logic ought to know (logic is nothing more than a knowledge of _words_, as the Greek etymon implies), that all words are no more to be taken in a literal sense at all times than a promise given to a tailor. When I expressed an apprehension that you were mortally offended, I meant no more than by the application of a certain formula of efficacious sounds, which had _done_ in similar cases before, to rouse a sense of decency in you, and a remembrance of what was due to me! You masters of logic should advert to this phenomenon in human speech, before you arraign the usage of us dramatic geniuses.

Imagination is a good blood mare, and goes well; but the misfortune is, she has too many paths before her. 'Tis true I might have imaged to myself, that you had trundled your frail carca.s.s to Norfolk. I might also, and did imagine, that you had not, but that you were lazy, or inventing new properties in a triangle, and for that purpose moulding and squeezing Landlord Crisp's three-cornered beaver into fantastic experimental forms; or that Archimedes was meditating to repulse the French, in case of a Cambridge invasion, by a geometric hurling of folios on their red caps; or, peradventure, that you were in extremities, in great wants, and just set out for Trinity-bogs when my letters came. In short, my genius (which is a short word now-a-days for what-a-great-man-am-I) was absolutely stifled and overlaid with its own riches. Truth is one and poor, like the cruse of Elijah's widow.

Imagination is the bold face that multiplies its oil: and thou, the old cracked pipkin, that could not believe it could be put to such purposes.

Dull pipkin, to have Elijah for thy cook! Imbecile recipient of so fat a miracle! I send you George Dyer's Poems, the richest production of the lyric muse _this century_ can justly boast: for Wordsworth's L.B. were published, or at least written, before Christmas.

Please to advert to pages 291 to 296 for the most astonis.h.i.+ng account of where Shakspeare's muse has been all this while. I thought she had been dead, and buried in Stratford Church, with the young man _that kept her company_,--

"But it seems, like the Devil, Buried in Cole Harbour.

Some say she's risen again, 'Gone prentice to a Barber."

N.B.--I don't charge anything for the additional ma.n.u.script notes, which are the joint productions of myself and a learned translator of Schiller, John Stoddart, Esq.

N.B. the 2nd.--I should not have blotted your book, but I had sent my own out to be bound, as I was in duty bound. A liberal criticism upon the several pieces, lyrical, heroical, amatory, and satirical, would be acceptable. So, you don't think there's a Word's--worth of good poetry in the great L.B.! I daren't put the dreaded syllables at their just length, for my back tingles from the northern castigation. I send you the three letters, which I beg you to return along with those former letters, which I hope you are not going to print by your detention. But don't be in a hurry to send them. When you come to town will do. Apropos of coming to town, last Sunday was a fortnight, as I was coming to town from the Professor's, inspired with new rum, I tumbled down, and broke my nose. I drink nothing stronger than malt liquors.

I am going to change my lodgings, having received a hint that it would be agreeable, at our Lady's next feast. I have partly fixed upon most delectable rooms, which look out (when you stand a tiptoe) over the Thames and Surrey Hills, at the upper end of King's Bench walks in the Temple. There I shall have all the privacy of a house without the enc.u.mbrance, and shall be able to lock my friends out as often as I desire to hold free converse with my immortal mind; for my present lodgings resemble a minister's levee, I have so increased my acquaintance (as they call 'em), since I have resided in town. Like the country mouse, that had tasted a little of urban manners, I long to be nibbling my own cheese by my dear self without mouse-traps and time-traps. By my new plan, I shall be as airy, up four pair of stairs, as in the country; and in a garden, in the midst of [that] enchanting, more than Mahometan paradise, London, whose dirtiest drab-frequented alley, and her lowest bowing tradesman, I would not exchange for Skiddaw, Helvellyn, James, Walter, and the parson into the bargain. O!

her lamps of a night! her rich goldsmiths, print-shops, toyshops, mercers, hardwaremen, pastry-cooks! St. Paul's Churchyard! the Strand!

Exeter Change! Charing Cross, with the man _upon_ a black horse! These are thy G.o.ds, O London! Ain't you mightily moped on the banks of the Cam! Had not you better come and set up here? You can't think what a difference. All the streets and pavements are pure gold, I warrant you.

At least I know an alchemy that turns her mud into that metal,--a mind that loves to be at home in crowds.

'Tis half-past twelve o'clock, and all sober people ought to be a-bed.

Between you and me, the "Lyrical Ballads" are but drowsy performances.

C. LAMB (as you may guess).

[Lamb refers in his opening sentences to a letter from himself to Manning which no longer exists. In Manning's last letter, dated February 24, he complains that he found on returning to Cambridge three copies of a letter from Lamb suggesting that he was offended because he had not answered.

The pa.s.sage in George Dyer's _Poems_ between pages 291 and 296 is long, but it is so quaint and so ill.u.s.trative of its author's mind that I give it in full, footnotes and all, in the Appendix to this volume.

Stoddart we have already met. He had translated, with Georg Heinrich Noehden, Schiller's _Fiesco_, 1796, and _Don Carlos_, 1798. The copy of Dyer's _Poems_ annotated by Lamb and Stoddart I have not seen.

"So, you don't think there's a Word's-worth..." Manning had written, on February 24, 1801, of the second volume of _Lyrical Ballads_: "I think 'tis utterly absurd from one end to the other. You tell me 'tis good poetry--if you mean that there is nothing puerile, nothing bombast or conceited, everything else that is so often found to disfigure poetry, I agree, but will you read it over and over again? Answer me that, Master Lamb." The three letters containing the northern castigation are unhappily lost.

"My back tingles." "Back" is not Lamb's word.

"I am going to change my lodgings." The Lambs were still at 34 Southampton Buildings; they moved to 16 Mitre Court Buildings just before Lady Day, 1801.

"James, Walter, and the parson." In Wordsworth's poem "The Brothers."

Exeter Change, which stood where Burleigh Street now is, was a great building, with bookstalls and miscellaneous stalls on the ground floor and a menagerie above. It was demolished in 1829.]

LETTER 84

CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING April, 1801.

I was not aware that you owed me anything beside that guinea; but I dare say you are right. I live at No. 16 Mitre-court Buildings, a pistol-shot off Baron Maseres'. You must introduce me to the Baron. I think we should suit one another mainly. He lives on the ground floor for convenience of the gout; I prefer the attic story for the air! He keeps three footmen and two maids; I have neither maid nor laundress, not caring to be troubled with them! His forte, I understand, is the higher mathematics; my turn, I confess, is more to poetry and the belles lettres. The very ant.i.thesis of our characters would make up a harmony.

You must bring the baron and me together.--N.B. when you come to see me, mount up to the top of the stairs--I hope you are not asthmatical--and come in flannel, for it's pure airy up there. And bring your gla.s.s, and I will shew you the Surrey Hills. My bed faces the river so as by perking up upon my haunches, and supporting my carcase with my elbows, without much wrying my neck, I can see the white sails glide by the bottom of the King's Bench walks as I lie in my bed. An excellent tiptoe prospect in the best room: cas.e.m.e.nt windows with small panes, to look more like a cottage. Mind, I have got no bed for you, that's flat; sold it to pay expenses of moving. The very bed on which Manning lay--the friendly, the mathematical Manning! How forcibly does it remind me of the interesting Otway! "The very bed which on thy marriage night gave thee into the arms of Belvidera, by the coa.r.s.e hands of ruffians--"

(upholsterers' men,) &c. My tears will not give me leave to go on. But a bed I will get you, Manning, on condition you will be my day-guest.

I have been ill more than month, with a bad cold, which comes upon me (like a murderer's conscience) about midnight, and vexes me for many hours. I have successively been drugged with Spanish licorice, opium, ipecacuanha, paregoric, and tincture of foxglove (tinctura purpurae digitalis of the ancients). I am afraid I must leave off drinking.

[Francis Maseres (1731-1824), whom Lamb mentions again in his _Elia_ essay on "The Old Benchers," was the mathematician (hence his interest to Manning) and reformer. His rooms were at 5 King's Bench Walk. He became Cursitor Baron of the Exchequer in 1773. To the end he wore a three-cornered hat, a wig and ruffles. Priestley praised the Baron's mathematical labours, in which he had the support of William Frend.]

LETTER 85

CHARLES LAME TO THOMAS MANNING