The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Volume VI Part 15

LETTER 314

CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON

[P.M. 5 April 1823.]

Dear Sir--You must think me ill mannered not to have replied to your first letter sooner, but I have an ugly habit of aversion from letter writing, which makes me an unworthy correspondent. I have had no spring, or cordial call to the occupation of late. I have been not well lately, which must be my lame excuse. Your poem, which I consider very affecting, found me engaged about a humorous Paper for the London, which I had called a "Letter to an _Old Gentleman_ whose Education had been neglected"--and when it was done Taylor and Hessey would not print it, and it discouraged me from doing any thing else, so I took up Scott, where I had scribbled some petulant remarks, and for a make s.h.i.+ft father'd them on Ritson. It is obvious I could not make your Poem a part of them, and as I did not know whether I should ever be able to do to my mind what you suggested, I thought it not fair to keep back the verses for the chance. Mr. Mitford's sonnet I like very well; but as I also have my reasons against interfering at all with the Editorial arrangement of the London, I transmitted it (not in my own hand-writing) to them, who I doubt not will be glad to insert it. What eventual benefit it can be to you (otherwise than that a kind man's wish is a benefit) I cannot conjecture. Your Society are eminently men of Business, and will probably regard you as an idle fellow, possibly disown you, that is to say, if you had put your own name to a sonnet of that sort, but they cannot excommunicate Mr. Mitford, therefore I thoroughly approve of printing the said verses. When I see any Quaker names to the Concert of Antient Music, or as Directors of the British Inst.i.tution, or bequeathing medals to Oxford for the best cla.s.sical themes, etc.--then I shall begin to hope they will emanc.i.p.ate you. But what as a Society can they do for you? you would not accept a Commission in the Army, nor they be likely to procure it; Posts in Church or State have they none in their giving; and then if they disown you--think--you must live "a man forbid."

I wishd for you yesterday. I dined in Parna.s.sus, with Wordsworth, Coleridge, Rogers, and Tom Moore--half the Poetry of England constellated and cl.u.s.tered in Gloster Place! It was a delightful Even!

Coleridge was in his finest vein of talk, had all the talk, and let 'em talk as evilly as they do of the envy of Poets, I am sure not one there but was content to be nothing but a listener. The Muses were dumb, while Apollo lectured on his and their fine Art. It is a lie that Poets are envious, I have known the best of them, and can speak to it, that they give each other their merits, and are the kindest critics as well as best authors. I am scribbling a muddy epistle with an aking head, for we did not quaff Hippocrene last night. Many, it was Hippocras rather. Pray accept this as a letter in the mean time, and do me the favor to mention my respects to Mr. Mitford, who is so good as to entertain good thoughts of Elia, but don't show this almost impertinent scrawl. I will write more respectfully next time, for believe me, if not in words, in feelings, yours most so.

["Your poem." Barton's poem was ent.i.tled "A Poet's Thanks," and was printed in the _London Magazine_ for April, 1823, the same number that contained Lamb's article on Ritson and Scott. It is one of his best poems, an expression of contentment in simplicity. The "Letter to an Old Gentleman," a parody of De Quincey's series of "Letters to a Young Gentleman" in the _London Magazine_, was not published until January, 1825. Scott was John Scott of Amwell (Barton's predecessor as the Quaker poet), who had written a rather foolish book of prose, _Critical Essays on the English Poets_. Ritson was Joseph Ritson, the critic and antiquarian. See Vol. I. of the present edition for the essay. Barton seems to have suggested to Lamb that he should write an essay around the poem "A Poet's Thanks." Mitford's sonnet, which was printed in the _London Magazine_ for June, 1823, was addressed commiseratingly to Bernard Barton. It began:--

What to thy broken Spirit can atone, Unhappy victim of the Tyrant's fears;

and continued in the same strain, the point being that Barton was the victim of his Quaker employers, who made him "prisoner at once and slave." Lamb's previous letter shows us that Barton was being worked from nine till nine, and we must suppose also that an objection to his poetical exercises had been lodged or suggested. The matter righted itself in time.

"I dined in Parna.s.sus." This dinner, at Thomas Monkhouse's, No. 34 Gloucester Place, is described both by Moore and by Crabb Robinson, who was present. Moore wrote in his _Journal_:--

"Dined at Mr. Monkhouse's (a gentleman I had never seen before) on Wordsworth's invitation, who lives there whenever he comes to town. A singular party. Coleridge, Rogers, Wordsworth and wife, Charles Lamb (the hero at present of the _London Magazine_), and his sister (the poor woman who went mad in a diligence on the way to Paris), and a Mr.

Robinson, one of the _minora sidera_ of this constellation of the Lakes; the host himself, a Maecenas of the school, contributing nothing but good dinners and silence. Charles Lamb, a clever fellow, certainly, but full of villainous and abortive puns, which he miscarries of every minute. Some excellent things, however, have come from him."

Lamb told Moore that he had hitherto always felt an antipathy to him, but henceforward should like him.

Crabb Robinson writes:--

"_April 4th_.--Dined at Monkhouse's. Our party consisted of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Lamb, Moore, and Rogers. Five poets of very unequal worth and most disproportionate popularity, whom the public probably would arrange in the very inverse order, except that it would place Moore above Rogers. During this afternoon, Coleridge alone displayed any of his peculiar talent. He talked much and well. I have not for years seen him in such excellent health and spirits. His subjects metaphysical criticism--Wordsworth he chiefly talked to. Rogers occasionally let fall a remark. Moore seemed conscious of his inferiority. He was very attentive to Coleridge, but seemed to relish Lamb, whom he sat next. L.

was in a good frame--kept himself within bounds and was only cheerful at last.... I was at the bottom of the table, where I very ill performed my part.... I walked home late with Lamb."

Many years later Robinson sent to The Athenaeum (June 25, 1853) a further and fuller account of the evening.]

LETTER 315

CHARLES LAMB TO B.W. PROCTER

April 13th, 1823.

Dear Lad,--You must think me a brute beast, a rhinoceros, never to have acknowledged the receipt of your precious present. But indeed I am none of those shocking things, but have arrived at that indisposition to letter-writing, which would make it a hard exertion to write three lines to a king to spare a friend's life. Whether it is that the Magazine paying me so much a page, I am loath to throw away composition--how much a sheet do you give your correspondents? I have hung up Pope, and a gem it is, in my town room; I hope for your approval. Though it accompanies the "Essay on Man," I think that was not the poem he is here meditating.

He would have looked up, somehow affectedly, if he were just conceiving "Awake, my St. John." Neither is he in the "Rape of the Lock" mood exactly. I think he has just made out the last lines of the "Epistle to Jervis," between gay and tender,

"And other beauties envy Worsley's eyes."

I'll be d.a.m.n'd if that isn't the line. He is brooding over it, with a dreamy phantom of Lady Mary floating before him. He is thinking which is the earliest possible day and hour that she will first see it. What a miniature piece of gentility it is! Why did you give it me? I do not like you enough to give you anything so good.

I have dined with T. Moore and breakfasted with Rogers, since I saw you; have much to say about them when we meet, which I trust will be in a week or two. I have been over-watched and over-poeted since Wordsworth has been in town. I was obliged for health sake to wish him gone: but now he is gone I feel a great loss. I am going to Dalston to recruit, and have serious thoughts--of altering my condition, that is, of taking to sobriety. What do you advise me?

T. Moore asked me your address in a manner which made me believe he meant to call upon you.

Rogers spake very kindly of you, as every body does, and none with so much reason as your

C.L.

[This is the first important letter to Bryan Waller Procter, better known as Barry Cornwall, who was afterwards to write, in his old age, so pleasant a memoir of Lamb. He was then thirty-five, was practising law, and had already published _Marcian Colonna_ and _A Sicilian Story_.

The Epistle to Mr. Jervas (with Mr. Dryden's translation of Fresnoy's _Art of Painting_) did not end upon this line, but some eighteen lines later. I give the portrait in my large edition.

"Lady Mary." By Lady Mary Lamb means, as Pope did in the first edition, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. But after his quarrel with that lady Pope altered it to Worsley, signifying Lady Frances Worsley, daughter of the Duke of Marlborough and wife of Sir Robert Worsley.]

LETTER 316

CHARLES LAMB TO SARAH HUTCHINSON

[P.M. April 25, 1823.]

Dear Miss H----, Mary has such an invincible reluctance to any epistolary exertion, that I am sparing her a mortification by taking the pen from her. The plain truth is, she writes such a pimping, mean, detestable hand, that she is ashamed of the formation of her letters.

There is an essential poverty and abjectness in the frame of them. They look like begging letters. And then she is sure to omit a most substantial word in the second draught (for she never ventures an epistle, without a foul copy first) which is obliged to be interlined, which spoils the neatest epistle, you know [_the word "epistle" is underlined_). Her figures, 1, 2, 3, 4, &c., where she has occasion to express numerals, as in the date (25 Apr 1823), are not figures, but Figurantes. And the combined posse go staggering up and down shameless as drunkards in the day time. It is no better when she rules her paper, her lines are "not less erring" than her words--a sort of unnatural parallel lines, that are perpetually threatening to meet, which you know is quite contrary to Euclid [_here Lamb has ruled lines grossly unparallel_]. Her very blots are not bold like this [_here a bold blot_], but poor smears [_here a poor smear_] half left in and half scratched out with another smear left in their place. I like a clean letter. A bold free hand, and a fearless flourish. Then she has always to go thro' them (a second operation) to dot her i s, and cross her t s.

I don't think she can make a cork screw, if she tried--which has such a fine effect at the end or middle of an epistle--and fills up--

[_Here Lamb has made a corkscrew two inches long_.]

There is a corkscrew, one of the best I ever drew. By the way what incomparable whiskey that was of Monkhouse's. But if I am to write a letter, let me begin, and not stand flouris.h.i.+ng like a fencer at a fair.

It gives me great pleasure (the letter now begins) to hear that you got down smoothly, and that Mrs. Monkhouse's spirits are so good and enterprising. It shews, whatever her posture may be, that her mind at least is not supine. I hope the excursion will enable the former to keep pace with its out-stripping neighbor. Pray present our kindest wishes to her, and all. (That sentence should properly have come in the Post Script, but we airy Mercurial Spirits, there is no keeping us in).

Time--as was said of one of us--toils after us in vain. I am afraid our co-visit with Coleridge was a dream. I shall not get away before the end (or middle) of June, and then you will be frog-hopping at Boulogne. And besides I think the Gilmans would scarce trust him with us, I have a malicious knack at cutting of ap.r.o.n strings. The Saints' days you speak of have long since fled to heaven, with Astraea, and the cold piety of the age lacks fervor to recall them--only Peter left his key--the iron one of the two, that shuts amain--and that's the reason I am lockd up.

Meanwhile of afternoons we pick up primroses at Dalston, and Mary corrects me when I call 'em cowslips. G.o.d bless you all, and pray remember me euphoneously to Mr. Gnwellegan. That Lee Priory must be a dainty bower, is it built of flints, and does it stand at Kingsgate? Did you remem

[_This is apparently the proper end of the letter. At least there is no indication of another sheet_.]

[Addressed to "Miss Hutchinson, 17 Sion Hill, Ramsgate, Kent," where she was staying with Mrs. Monkhouse. I give a facsimile of it in my large edition.

"'Time'--as was said of one of us." Johnson wrote of Shakespeare, in the Prologue at the opening of Drury Lane Theatre in 1747:--

And panting Time toil'd after him in vain.

"The Saints' days." See note to the letter to Mrs. Wordsworth, Feb. 18, 1818.

"Mr. Gnwellegan." Probably Lamb's effort to write the name of Edward Quillinan, afterwards Wordsworth's son-in-law, whose first wife had been a Miss Brydges of Lee Priory.

"Lee Priory"--the home of Sir Egerton Brydges, at Ickham, near Canterbury, for some years. He had, however, now left, and the private press was closed.

In _Notes and Queries_, November 11, 1876, was printed the following sc.r.a.p, a postscript by Charles Lamb to a letter from Mary Lamb to Miss H. I place it here, having no clue as to date, nor does it matter:--]