The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Volume V Part 83

"Those scoundrels." Princ.i.p.ally the critic of the _Edinburgh_, Jeffrey, but Wordsworth's a.s.sailants generally.

"That subst.i.tution of a sh.e.l.l." In the original draft of "The Blind Highland Boy" the adventurous voyage was made in

A Household Tub, like one of those Which women use to wash their clothes.

In the new version the vessel was a turtle's sh.e.l.l.

"The preface." Wordsworth quotes from Lamb's essay in _The Reflector_ on the genius of Hogarth, referring to the pa.s.sage as "the language of one of my most esteemed Friends." It is Lamb's description of Imagination as that which "draws all things to one, which makes things animate or inanimate, beings with their attributes, subjects with their accessories, take one colour and serve to one effect."

"The four yew trees." The poem is called "Yew Trees." This is the pa.s.sage in question:--

But worthier still of note Are those fraternal Four of Borrowdale, Joined in one solemn and capacious grove; Huge trunks! and each particular trunk a growth Of intertwisted fibres serpentine Up-coiling, and inveterately convolved; Nor uninformed with Phantasy, and looks That threaten the profane;--a pillared shade, Upon whose gra.s.sless floor of red-brown hue, By sheddings from the pining umbrage tinged Perennially--beneath whose sable roof Of boughs, as if for festal purpose, decked With unrejoicing berries--ghostly Shapes May meet at noontide; Fear and trembling Hope, Silence and Foresight; Death the Skeleton And Time the Shadow; there to celebrate, As in a natural temple scattered o'er With altars undisturbed of mossy stone, United wors.h.i.+p; or in mute repose To lie, and listen to the mountain flood Murmuring from Giaramara's inmost caves.

"Picture of Milton." This portrait, a reproduction of which I give in my large edition, is now in America, the property of the New York Public Library.

"V. Bourne." Lamb afterwards translated some of Bourne's _Poemata_ and wrote critically of them in the _Englishman's Magazine_ in 1831 (see Vols. I. and IV.).

"Lord Thurlow." But see Letter to Bernard Barton of December 5, 1828, and note.

"Extracts from those first Poems." Wordsworth included extracts from juvenile pieces, which had been first published in his _Descriptive Sketches_, 1793.

"A female friend"--Dorothy Wordsworth. The three poems were "Address to a Child" (beginning, "What way does the Wind come from?"), "The Mother's Return" and "The Cottager to Her Infant."

"To them each evening had its glittering star ... "--_The Excursion_, Book V.

"Age might but take some hours ..." From Wordsworth's "Small Celandine":--

Age might but take the things Youth needed not.]

LETTER 217

CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH [P.M. April 28, 1815.]

Excuse this maddish letter: I am too tired to write in formal--

Dear Wordsw'th. The more I read of your two last volumes, the more I feel it necessary to make my acknowledgm'ts for them in more than one short letter. The Night Piece to which you refer me I meant fully to have noticed, but the fact is I come so fluttering and languid from business, tired with thoughts of it, frightened with fears of it, that when I get a few minutes to sit down to scribble (an action of the hand now seldom natural to me--I mean voluntary pen-work) I lose all presential memory of what I had intended to say, and say what I can,--talk about Vincent Bourne or any casual image instead of that which I had meditated--by the way, I must look out V. B. for you.--So I had meant to have mentioned Yarrow Visited, with that stanza, "But thou that didst appear so fair--" than which I think no lovelier stanza can be found in the wide world of poetry--yet the poem on the whole seems condemned to leave behind it a melancholy of imperfect satisfaction, as if you had wronged the feeling with which in what preceded it you had resolved never to visit it, and as if the Muse had determined in the most delicate manner to make you, and _scarce make you_, feel it. Else, it is far superior to the other, which has but one exquisite verse in it, the last but one, or the two last--this has all fine, except perhaps that _that_ of "studious ease and generous cares" has a little tinge of the _less romantic_ about it. The farmer of Tilsbury vale is a charming counter part to poor Susan, with the addition of that delicacy towards aberrations from the strict path which is so fine in the Old Thief and the boy by his side, which always brings water into my eyes. Perhaps it is the worse for being a repet.i.tion. Susan stood for the representative of poor Rus in Urbe. There was quite enough to stamp the moral of the thing never to be forgotten. "Fast volumes of vapour" &c. The last verse of Susan was to be got rid of at all events. It threw a kind of dubiety upon Susan's moral conduct. Susan is a servant maid. I see her trundling her mop and contemplating the whirling phenomenon thro' blurred optics; but to term her a poor outcast seems as much as to say that poor Susan was no better than she should be, which I trust was not what you meant to express. Robin Goodfellow supports himself without that _stick_ of a moral which you have thrown away,--but how I can be brought in felo de omittendo for that Ending to the boy builders is a mystery. I can't say positively now--I only know that no line oftener or readier occurs than that "Light hearted boys, I will build up a giant with you." It comes naturally with a warm holyday and the freshness of the blood. It is a perfect summer Amulet that I tye round my legs to quicken their motion when I go out a Maying. (N.B.) I don't often go out a maying.--_Must_ is the tense with me now. Do you take the Pun? Young Romilly is divine, the reasons of his mother's grief being remediless. I never saw parental love carried up so high, towering above the other Loves. Shakspeare had done something for the filial in Cordelia, and by implication for the fatherly too in Lear's resentment--he left it for you to explore the depths of the maternal heart. I get stupid, and flat and flattering-- what's the use of telling you what good things you have written, or--I hope I may add--that I know them to be good. Apropos--when I first opened upon the just mentioned poem, in a careless tone I said to Mary as if putting a riddle "What is good for a bootless bean?" to which with infinite presence of mind (as the jest book has it) she answered, a "shoeless pea." It was the first joke she ever made. Joke the 2d I make you distinguish well in your old preface between the verses of Dr.

Johnson of the man in the Strand, and that from the babes of the wood. I was thinking whether taking your own glorious lines--

And for the love was in her soul For the youthful Romilly--

which, by the love I bear my own soul, I think have no parallel in any of the best old Balads, and just altering it to--

And from the great respect she felt For Sir Samuel Romilly--

would not have explained the boundaries of prose expression and poetic feeling nearly as well. Excuse my levity on such an occasion. I never felt deeply in my life, if that poem did not make me, both lately and when I read it in MS. No alderman ever longed after a haunch of buck venison more than I for a Spiritual taste of that White Doe you promise.

I am sure it is superlative, or will be when _drest_, i.e. printed. All things read raw tome in MS.--to compare magna parvis, I cannot endure my own writings in that state. The only one which I think would not very much win upon me in print is Peter Bell. But I am not certain. You ask me about your preface. I like both that and the Supplement without an exception. The account of what you mean by Imagination is very valuable to me. It will help me to like some things in poetry better, which is a little humiliating in me to confess. I thought I could not be instructed in that science (I mean the critical), as I once heard old obscene beastly Peter Pindar in a dispute on Milton say he thought that if he had reason to value himself upon one thing more than another it was in knowing what good verse was. Who lookd over your proof sheets, and left _ordebo_ in that line of Virgil?

My brothers picture of Milton is very finely painted, that is, it might have been done by a hand next to Vand.y.k.e's. It is the genuine Milton, and an object of quiet gaze for the half hour at a time. _Yet_ tho' I am confident there is no better one of him, the face does not quite answer to Milton. There is a tinge of pet.i.t (or pet.i.te, how do you spell it) querulousness about. Yet hang it, now I remember better, there is not--it is calm, melancholy, and poetical.

_One_ of the copies you sent had precisely the same pleasant blending of a sheet of 2d vol. with a sheet of 1st. I think it was page 245; but I sent it and had it rectifyd. It gave me in the first impetus of cutting the leaves just such a cold squelch as going down a plausible turning and suddenly reading "no thoroughfare." Robinson's is entire; he is gone to Bury his father.

I wish you would write more criticism, about Spenser &c. I think I could say something about him myself--but Lord bless me--these "merchants and their spicy drugs" which are so harmonious to sing of, they lime-twig up my poor soul and body, till I shall forget I ever thought myself a bit of a genius! I can't even put a few thoughts on paper for a newspaper. I "engross," when I should pen a paragraph. Confusion blast all mercantile transactions, all traffick, exchange of commodities, intercourse between nations, all the consequent civilization and wealth and amity and link of society, and getting rid of prejudices, and knowlege of the face of the globe--and rot the very firs of the forest that look so romantic alive, and die into desks. Vale.

Yours dear W. and all yours'. C. LAMB.

[_Added at foot of the first page:_] N.B. Don't read that Q. Review--I will never look into another.

[Lamb continues his criticism of the 1815 edition of Wordsworth's _Poems_. The "Night Piece" begins--

The sky is overcast.

The stanza from "Yarrow Visited" is quoted on page 557. The poem followed "Yarrow Unvisited" in the volume. The one exquisite verse in "Yarrow Unvisited" first ran:--

Your cottage seems a bower of bliss, It promises protection To studious ease and generous cares And every chaste affection.

Wordsworth altered to--

A covert for protection Of tender thoughts that nestle there, The brood of chaste affection.

"Poor Susan" had in the 1800 version ended thus:--

Poor Outcast! return--to receive thee once more The house of thy Father will open its door, And thou once again, in thy plain russet gown, May'st hear the thrush sing from a tree of its own.

Wordsworth expunged this stanza in the 1815 edition. "Fast volumes of vapour" should be "Bright volumes of vapour." For the Old Thief see "The Two Thieves."

"_Felo de omittendo._" See the preceding letter, where Lamb remonstrated with Wordsworth for omitting the last lines from "Rural Architecture."

Wordsworth seems to have charged Lamb with the criticism that decided their removal.

"The Pun." Canon Ainger pointed out that Hood, in his "Ode to Melancholy," makes the same pun very happily:--

Even as the blossoms of the May, Whose fragrance ends in must.

"Young Romilly." In "The Force of Prayer," which opens with the question--

What is good for a bootless bene?

Later Mary Lamb made another joke, when at Munden's farewell performance she said, "Sic transit gloria Munden!"

The stanzas from which Lamb quotes run:--

"What is good for a bootless bene?"

The Falconer to the Lady said; And she made answer "Endless sorrow!"

In that she knew that her Son was dead.

She knew it by the Falconer's words, And from the look of the Falconer's eye; And from the love which was in her soul For her youthful Romilly.