The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Volume V Part 42

Your Wordsworth nuptials (or rather the nuptials of a certain Edmund of yours) fill me with joy in your report. May you prosper, Mary, fortunate beyond compare, and perchance comparable to that ancient Virgin Mary (a comparison more than Caesarean) since "blessed art thou among women:"

perhaps also it will be no impiety to compare Wordsworth himself your husband to the Angel of Salutation, since (like the angel) from heaven descend both Muses and the servants of the Muses: whose devoutest votary I always know Wordsworth to be. Congratulations to thee, Dorothea, in this new alliance: you also a.s.suredly are another "gift of G.o.d."

As for your Ludus [Lloyd], whom you talk of as an "American," I pa.s.s him by as no sportsman (as sport goes): what kind of sport is it, to alienate utterly the good will of the whole Columbian people, our own kin, sprung of the same stock, for the sake of one Ludd [Lloyd]? I seek the material for diversion: you heap on War.

Finally, fare you well, and pray tell me what you think of my Latinity.

Kindly wish health and beauty from me to our flying possum or (as you prefer to call it) roving Fish. Good health to your wife and my friend Hartley. My sister and I are well. She also sends you greeting. I do not see how to get on farther: I am a man in debt [or possibly in "fetters"].

P.S.--I had almost forgot, I have by me two volumes of the Latin writings of John Milton, which (D.V.) I will have sent you sooner or later by Mary: but you know me no way precipitate in this kind: the accused pleads guilty. This only remains to be said, that the aforesaid volumes are handsome and contain all the Latin works of J. M. At present I dwell with much delight on his vigorous defence of the English people.

I will be sure to observe diligently your Stuartial tidings.

Again and again farewell: and pray be mindful of me.

Coleridge's "Hymn before Sun-rise, in the Vale of Chamouni," was printed in the _Morning Post_ for September 11, 1802. The poem contains this pa.s.sage:--

G.o.d! let the torrents, like a shout of nations, Answer! and let the ice-plains echo, G.o.d!

G.o.d! sing ye meadow-streams with gladsome voice!

Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds!

And they too have a voice, yon piles of snow, And in their perilous fall shall thunder, G.o.d!

Canon Ainger suggests that by Tod, the unlucky doctor, Lamb meant Dr.

William Dodd (1729-1777), the compiler of the _Beauties of Shakespeare_ and the forger, who was hanged at Tyburn.

"Your comparisons." Coleridge's "Comparison of the Present State of France with that of Rome under Julius and Augustus Caesar" was printed in the _Morning Post_, September 21, September 25, and October 2, 1802. See _Essays on His Own Times_, 1850, Vol. III., page 478.

Wordsworth's marriage to Mary Hutchinson, on October 4, 1802, had called forth from Coleridge his ode on "Dejection," printed in the _Morning Post_ for the same day, in which Wordsworth was addressed as Edmund. In later editions Coleridge suppressed its personal character.

Ludus is Lloyd. Lamb means by "American" what we should mean by pro-American.

"Stuartial." Referring to Daniel Stuart of the _Morning Post_.]

LETTER 100

CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE

Oct. 11th, 1802.

Dear Coleridge,--Your offer about the German poems is exceedingly kind; but I do not think it a wise speculation, because the time it would take you to put them into prose would be nearly as great as if you versified them. Indeed, I am sure you could do the one nearly as soon as the other; so that, instead of a division of labour, it would be only a multiplication. But I will think of your offer in another light. I dare say I could find many things of a light nature to suit that paper, which you would not object to pa.s.s upon Stuart as your own, and I should come in for some light profits, and Stuart think the more highly of your a.s.siduity. "Bishop Hall's Characters" I know nothing about, having never seen them. But I will reconsider your offer, which is very plausible; for as to the drudgery of going every day to an editor with my sc.r.a.ps, like a pedlar, for him to pick out, and tumble about my ribbons and posies, and to wait in his lobby, &c., no money could make up for the degradation. You are in too high request with him to have anything unpleasant of that sort to submit to.

It was quite a slip of my pen, in my Latin letter, when I told you I had Milton's Latin Works. I ought to have said his Prose Works, in two volumes, Birch's edition, containing all, both Latin and English, a fuller and better edition than Lloyd's of Toland. It is completely at your service, and you must accept it from me; at the same time, I shall be much obliged to you for your Latin Milton, which you think you have at Howitt's; it will leave me nothing to wish for but the "History of England," which I shall soon pick up for a trifle. But you must write me word whether the Miltons are worth paying carriage for. You have a Milton; but it is pleasanter to eat one's own peas out of one's own garden, than to buy them by the peck at Covent Garden; and a book reads the better, which is our own, and has been so long known to us, that we know the topography of its blots and dog's-ears, and can trace the dirt in it to having read it at tea with b.u.t.tered m.u.f.fins, or over a pipe, which I think is the maximum. But, Coleridge, you must accept these little things, and not think of returning money for them, for I do not set up for a factor or general agent. As for the fantastic debt of 15., I'll think you were dreaming, and not trouble myself seriously to attend to you. My bad Latin you properly correct; but _natales_ for _nates_ was an inadvertency: I knew better. _Progrediri_ or _progredi_ I thought indifferent, my authority being Ainsworth. However, as I have got a fit of Latin, you will now and then indulge me with an _epistola_. I pay the postage of this, and propose doing it by turns. In that case I can now and then write to you without remorse; not that you would mind the money, but you have not always ready cash to answer small demands--the _epistolarii nummi_.

Your "Epigram on the Sun and Moon in Germany" is admirable. Take 'em all together, they are as good as Harrington's. I will muster up all the conceits I can, and you shall have a packet some day. You and I together can answer all demands surely: you, mounted on a terrible charger (like Homer in the Battle of the Books) at the head of the cavalry: I will lead the light horse. I have just heard from Stoddart. Allen and he intend taking Keswick in their way home. Allen wished particularly to have it a secret that he is in Scotland, and wrote to me accordingly very urgently. As luck was, I had told not above three or four; but Mary had told Mrs. Green of Christ's Hospital! For the present, farewell: never forgetting love to Pi-pos and his friends.

C. LAMB.

[Coleridge, who seems to have been asked by Stuart of the _Morning Post_ for translations of German verse, had suggested, I presume, that he should supply Lamb (who knew no German) with literal prose translations, and that Lamb should versify them, as he had in the case of "Thekla's Song" in Coleridge's translation of the first part of _Wallenstein_ nearly three years before. Lamb's suggestion is that he should send to Stuart epigrams and paragraphs in Coleridge's name. Whether or not he did so, I cannot say.

Bishop Hall's _Characters of Vices and Virtues_ was published in 1608.

Coleridge may have suggested that Lamb should imitate them for the _Morning Post_. Lamb later came to know Hall's satires, for he quotes from them in his review of Barron Field's poems in 1820.

Milton's prose works were edited by Thomas Birch, and by John Toland in folio.

"My bad Latin"--in the letter of October 9, 1802. Ainsworth was Robert Ainsworth, compiler of the _Thesaurus Linguae Latinae_, 1736, for many years the best Latin dictionary.

"Your Epigram"--Coleridge's Epigram "On the Curious Circ.u.mstance that in the German Language the Sun is feminine and the Moon masculine." It appeared in the _Morning Post_ on October 11, 1802. Coleridge had been sending epigrams and other verse to the _Post_ for some time. Harrington was Sir John Harington (1561-1612), the author of many epigrams.

Stoddart and Allen we have met. I do not know anything of Mrs. Green.]

LETTER 101

CHARLES LAMB TO S.T. COLERIDGE

Oct. 23rd, 1802.

Your kind offer I will not a second time refuse. You shall send me a packet and I will do them into English with great care. Is not there one about W'm. Tell, and would not that in the present state of discussions be likely to _tell_? The Epigrams I meant are to be found at the end of Harrington's Translation of Orlando Furioso: if you could get the book, they would some of them answer your purpose to modernize. If you can't, I fancy I can. Baxter's Holy Commonwealth I have luckily met with, and when I have sent it, you shall if you please consider yourself indebted to me 3s. 6d. the cost of it: especially as I purchased it after your solemn injunctions. The plain case with regard to my presents (which you seem so to shrink from) is that I have not at all affected the character of a DONOR, or thought of violating your sacred Law of Give and Take: but I have been _taking_ and partaking the good things of your House (when I know you were not over-abounding) and I now _give_ unto you of mine; and by the grace of G.o.d I happen to be myself a little super-abundant at present. I expect I shall be able to send you my final parcel in about a week: by that time I shall have gone thro' all Milton's Latin Works. There will come with it the Holy Commonwealth, and the identical North American Bible which you helped to dogs ear at Xt's.--I call'd at Howell's for your little Milton, and also to fetch away the White Cross Street Library Books, which I have not forgot: but your books were not in a state to be got at then, and Mrs. H. is to let me know when she packs up. They will be sent by sea; and my little praecursor will come to you by the Whitehaven waggon accompanied with pens, penknife &c.--Mrs. Howell was as usual very civil; and asked with great earnestness, if it were likely you would come to Town in the winter. She has a friendly eye upon you.

I read daily your political essays. I was particularly pleased with "Once a Jacobin:" though the argument is obvious enough, the style was less swelling than your things sometimes are, and it was plausible _ad populum_. A vessel has just arrived from Jamaica with the news of poor Sam Le Grice's death. He died at Jamaica of the yellow fever. His course was rapid and he had been very foolish; but I believe there was more of kindness and warmth in him than in almost any other of our schoolfellows. The annual meeting of the Blues is to-morrow, at the London Tavern, where poor Sammy dined with them two years ago, and attracted the notice of all by the singular foppishness of his dress.

When men go off the stage so early, it scarce seems a noticeable thing in their epitaphs, whether they had been wise or silly in their lifetime.

I am glad the snuff and Pi-pos's Books please. "Goody Two Shoes" is almost out of print. Mrs. Barbauld's stuff has banished all the old cla.s.sics of the nursery; and the shopman at Newbery's hardly deigned to reach them off an old exploded corner of a shelf, when Mary asked for them. Mrs. B.'s and Mrs. Trimmer's nonsense lay in piles about.

Knowledge insignificant and vapid as Mrs. B.'s books convey, it seems, must come to a child in the _shape_ of _knowledge_, and his empty noddle must be turned with conceit of his own powers when he has learnt that a Horse is an animal, and Billy is better than a Horse, and such like; instead of that beautiful Interest in wild tales which made the child a man, while all the time he suspected himself to be no bigger than a child. Science has succeeded to Poetry no less in the little walks of children than with men. Is there no possibility of averting this sore evil? Think what you would have been now, if instead of being fed with Tales and old wives' fables in childhood, you had been crammed with geography and natural history?

d.a.m.n them!--I mean the cursed Barbauld Crew, those Blights and Blasts of all that is Human in man and child.

As to the Translations, let me do two or three hundred lines, and then do you try the Nostrums upon Stuart in any way you please. If they go down I will bray more. In fact, if I got or could but get 50 l. a year only, in addition to what I have, I should live in affluence.

Have you antic.i.p.ated it, or could not you give a Parallel of Bonaparte with Cromwell, particularly as to the contrast in their deeds affecting _foreign_ states? Cromwell's interference for the Albigenses, B[uonaparte]'s against the Swiss. Then Religion would come in; and Milton and you could rant about our countrymen of that period. This is a hasty suggestion, the more hasty because I want my Supper. I have just finished Chapman's Homer. Did you ever read it?--it has most the continuous power of interesting you all along, like a rapid original, of any, and in the uncommon excellence of the more finished parts goes beyond Fairfax or any of 'em. The metre is fourteen syllables, and capable of all sweetness and grandeur. Cowper's d.a.m.n'd blank verse detains you every step with some heavy Miltonism; Chapman gallops off with you his own free pace. Take a simile for an example. The council breaks up--

"Being abroad, the earth was overlaid With flockers to them, that came forth; as when of frequent bees Swarms rise out of a hollow rock, repairing the degrees _Of their egression endlessly, with ever rising new_ From forth their sweet nest; as their store, still as it faded, grew, _And never would cease sending forth her cl.u.s.ters to the spring_, They still crowd out so: this flock here, that there, belabouring The loaded flowers. So," &c. &c.

[_Iliad_, Book II., 70-77.]

What _endless egression of phrases_ the dog commands!

Take another: Agamemnon wounded, bearing his wound heroically for the sake of the army (look below) to a woman in labour.

"He, with his lance, sword, mighty stones, poured his heroic wreak On other squadrons of the foe, whiles yet warm blood did break Thro' his cleft veins: but when the wound was quite exhaust and crude, The eager anguish did approve his princely fort.i.tude.

As when most sharp and bitter pangs distract a labouring dame, Which the divine Ilithiae, that rule the painful frame Of human childbirth, pour on her; the Ilithiae that are The daughters of Saturnia; with whose extreme repair The woman in her travail strives to take the worst it gives; With thought, it _must be, 'tis love's fruit, the end for which she lives; The mean to make herself new born, what comforts_ will redound: So," &c.

[_Iliad_, Book XI., 228-239.]