The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Volume VI Part 2

_Midnight_.

"G.o.d bless you, dear Charles Lamb, I am dying; I feel I have not many weeks left."

[Master Mathew is in Ben Jonson's "Every Man in His Humour."

Lamb's "Beaumont and Fletcher" is in the British Museum. The note quoted by Lamb is not there, or perhaps it is one that has been crossed out.

This still remains: "N.B. I shall not be long here, Charles! I gone, you will not mind my having spoiled a book in order to leave a Relic.

S.T.C., Oct. 1811."]

LETTER 273

CHARLES LAMB TO JAMES GILLMAN

[Dated at end: 2 May, 1821.]

Dear Sir--You dine so late on Friday, it will be impossible for us to go home by the eight o'clock stage. Will you oblige us by securing us beds at some house from which a stage goes to the Bank in the morning? I would write to Coleridge, but cannot think of troubling a dying man with such a request.

Yours truly, C. LAMB.

If the beds in the town are all engaged, in consequence of Mr. Mathews's appearance, a hackney-coach will serve. Wednes'y. 2 May '21.

We shall neither of us come much before the time.

[Mrs. Mathews (who was half-sister of f.a.n.n.y Kelly) described this evening in her _Memoirs_ of her husband, 1839. Her account of Lamb is interesting:--

Mr. Lamb's first approach was not prepossessing. His figure was small and mean; and no man certainly was ever less beholden to his tailor. His "bran" new _suit_ of black cloth (in which he affected several times during the day to take great pride, and to cherish as a novelty that he had long looked for and wanted) was drolly contrasted with his very rusty silk stockings, shown from his knees, and his much too large _thick_ shoes, without polish. His s.h.i.+rt rejoiced in a wide ill-plaited frill, and his very small, tight, white neckcloth was hemmed to a fine point at the ends that formed part of the little bow. His hair was black and sleek, but not formal, and his face the gravest I ever saw, but indicating great intellect, and resembling very much the portraits of King Charles I.

Mr. Coleridge was very anxious about his _pet_ Lamb's first impression upon my husband, which I believe his friend saw; and guessing that he had been extolled, he mischievously resolved to thwart his panegyrist, disappoint the strangers, and altogether to upset the suspected plan of showing him off.

The Mathews' were then living at Ivy Cottage, only a short distance from the Grove, Highgate, where the famous Mathews collection of pictures was to be seen of which Lamb subsequently wrote in the _London Magazine_.

Here should come a note to Ayrton saying that Madame n.o.blet is the least graceful dancer that Lamb ever "did not see."]

LETTER 274

CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN PAYNE COLLIER

May 16, 1821.

Dear J.P.C.,--Many thanks for the "Decameron:" I have not such a gentleman's book in my collection: it was a great treat to me, and I got it just as I was wanting something of the sort. I take less pleasure in books than heretofore, but I like books about books. In the second volume, in particular, are treasures--your discoveries about "Twelfth Night," etc. What a Shakespearian essence that speech of Osrades for food!--Shakespeare is coa.r.s.e to it--beginning "Forbear and eat no more."

Osrades warms up to that, but does not set out ruffian-swaggerer. The character of the a.s.s with those three lines, worthy to be set in gilt vellum, and worn in frontlets by the n.o.ble beasts for ever--

"Thou would, perhaps, he should become thy foe, And to that end dost beat him many times: He cares not for himself, much less thy blow."

Cervantes, Sterne, and Coleridge, have said positively nothing for a.s.ses compared with this.

I write in haste; but p. 24, vol. i., the line you cannot appropriate is Gray's sonnet, specimenifyed by Wordsworth in first preface to L.B., as mixed of bad and good style: p. 143, 2nd vol., you will find last poem but one of the collection on Sidney's death in Spenser, the line,

"Scipio, Caesar, Petrarch of our time."

This fixes it to be Raleigh's: I had guess'd it to be Daniel's. The last after it, "Silence augmenteth rage," I will be crucified if it be not Lord Brooke's. Hang you, and all meddling researchers, hereafter, that by raking into learned dust may find me out wrong in my conjecture!

Dear J.P.C., I shall take the first opportunity of personally thanking you for my entertainment. We are at Dalston for the most part, but I fully hope for an evening soon with you in Russell or Bouverie Street, to talk over old times and books. Remember _us_ kindly to Mrs. J.P.C.

Yours very kindly, CHARLES LAMB. I write in misery.

N.B.--The best pen I could borrow at our butcher's: the ink, I verily believe, came out of the kennel.

[Collier's _Poetical Decameron_, in two volumes, was published in 1820: a series of imaginary conversations on curious and little-known books.

His "Twelfth Night" discoveries will be found in the Eighth Conversation; Collier deduces the play from Barnaby Rich's _Farewell to Military Profession_, 1606. He also describes Thomas Lodge's "Rosalynde," the forerunner of "As You Like It," in which is the character Rosader, whom Lamb calls Osrades. His speech for food runs thus:--

It hapned that day that _Gerismond_, the lawfull king of _France_ banished by _Torismond_, who with a l.u.s.tie crew of outlawes liued in that Forrest, that day in honour of his birth, made a feast to all his bolde yeomen, and frolickt it with store of wine and venison, sitting all at a long table vnder the shadow of Limon trees: to that place by chance fortune conducted Rosader, who seeing such a crew of braue men, hauing store of that for want of which hee and Adam perished, hee slept boldly to the boords end, and saluted the Company thus.--Whatsoeuer thou be that art maister of these l.u.s.tie squires, I salute thee as graciously as a man in extreame distresse may: knowe that I and a fellow friend of mine, are here famished in the forrest for want of foode: perish we must, vnlesse relieued by thy fauours. Therefore if thou be a Gentleman, giue meate to men, and such as are euery way worthie of life: let the proudest Squire that sits at thy table rise and encounter with me in any honourable point of activitie whatsoeuer, and if he and thou proue me not a man, send mee away comfortlesse: if thou refuse this, as a n.i.g.g.ard of thy cates, I will haue amongst you with my sword, for rather wil I die valiantly, then perish with so cowardly an extreame (Collier's _Poetical Decameron_, 174, Eighth Conversation).

Lamb compares with that the pa.s.sage in "As You Like It," II., 7, 88, beginning with Orlando's "Forbear, and eat no more." The character of the a.s.s is quoted by Collier from an old book, _The n.o.blenesse of the a.s.se_, 1595, in the Third Conversation:--

Thou wouldst (perhaps) he should become thy foe, And to that end doost beat him many times; He cares not for himselfe, much lesse thy blowe.

Lamb wrote more fully of this pa.s.sage in an article on the a.s.s contributed to Hone's _Every-Day Book_ in 1825 (see Vol. I. of the present edition).

The line from Gray's sonnet on the death of Mr. Richard West was this:--

And weep the more because I weep in vain.

"Scipio, Caesar," etc. This line runs, in the epitaph on Sidney, beginning "To praise thy life"--

Scipio, Cicero, and Petrarch of our time!

It is generally supposed to be by Raleigh. The next poem, "Silence Augmenteth Grief," is attributed by Malone to Sir Edward Dyer, and by Hannah to Raleigh.]

LETTER 275

CHARLES LAMB TO B.W. PROCTER

[No date. ?Summer, 1821.]

Dear Sir, The _Wits_ (as Clare calls us) a.s.semble at my Cell (20 Russell St. Cov.-Gar.) this evening at 1/4 before 7. Cold meat at 9. Puns at--a little after. Mr. Cary wants to see you, to scold you. I hope you will not fail. Yours &c. &c. &c.

C. LAMB.

Thursday.