The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Volume VI Part 23

RELIGIO TREMULI OR TREMEBUNDI

There is Religio-Medici and Laici.--But perhaps the volume is not quite Quakerish enough or exclusively for it--but your own VIGILS is perhaps the Best. While I have s.p.a.ce, let me congratulate with you the return of Spring--what a Summery Spring too! all those qualms about the dog and cray-fish melt before it. I am going to be happy and _vain_ again.

A hasty farewell C. LAMB.

["Southey's Book"--_The Book of the Church_.

"Would Wilberforce give us our Tuesdays?"--William Wilberforce, the abolitionist and the princ.i.p.al "Puritan" of that day.]

LETTER 344

CHARLES LAMB TO MRS. THOMAS ALLSOP

[P.M. April 13, 1824.]

Dear Mrs. A.--Mary begs me to say how much she regrets we can not join you to Reigate. Our reasons are --1st I have but one holyday namely Good Friday, and it is not pleasant to solicit for another, but that might have been got over. 2dly Manning is with us, soon to go away and we should not be easy in leaving him. 3dly Our school girl Emma comes to us for a few days on Thursday. 4thly and lastly, Wordsworth is returning home in about a week, and out of respect to them we should not like to absent ourselves just now. In summer I shall have a month, and if it shall suit, should like to go for a few days of it out with you both _any where_. In the mean time, with many acknowledgments etc. etc., I remain yours (both) truly, C. LAMB.

India Ho. 13 Apr. Remember Sundays.

LETTER 345

CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM HONE [No date. April, 1824.]

Dear Sir,--Miss Hazlitt (niece to Pygmalion) begs us to send to you _for Mr. Hardy_ a parcel. I have not thank'd you for your Pamphlet, but I a.s.sure you I approve of it in all parts, only that I would have seen my Calumniators at h.e.l.l, before I would have told them I was a Xtian, _tho'

I am one_, I think as much as you. I hope to see you here, some day soon. The parcel is a novel which I hope Mr. H. may sell for her. I am with greatest friendliness

Yours C. LAMB.

Sunday.

["Pygmalion." A reference to Hazlitt's _Liber Amoris; or, The New Pygmalion_, 1823.

Hone's pamphlet would be his _Aspersions Answered: an Explanatory Statement to the Public at Large and Every Reader of the "Quarterly Review_," 1824.

Here should come a note from Lamb to Thomas Hardy, dated April 24, 1824, in which Lamb says that Miss Hazlitt's novel, which Mr. Hardy promised to introduce to Mr. Ridgway, the publisher, is lying at Mr. Hone's.

Hardy was a bootmaker in Fleet Street.]

LETTER 346

CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON

May 15, 1824.

DEAR B.B.--I am oppressed with business all day, and Company all night.

But I will s.n.a.t.c.h a quarter of an hour. Your recent acquisitions of the Picture and the Letter are greatly to be congratulated. I too have a picture of my father and the copy of his first love verses; but they have been mine long. Blake is a real name, I a.s.sure you, and a most extraordinary man, if he be still living. He is the Robert [William]

Blake, whose wild designs accompany a splendid folio edition of the "Night Thoughts," which you may have seen, in one of which he pictures the parting of soul and body by a solid ma.s.s of human form floating off, G.o.d knows how, from a lumpish ma.s.s (fac Simile to itself) left behind on the dying bed. He paints in water colours marvellous strange pictures, visions of his brain, which he a.s.serts that he has seen. They have great merit. He has _seen_ the old Welsh bards on Snowdon--he has seen the Beautifullest, the strongest, and the Ugliest Man, left alone from the Ma.s.sacre of the Britons by the Romans, and has painted them from memory (I have seen his paintings), and a.s.serts them to be as good as the figures of Raphael and Angelo, but not better, as they had precisely the same retro-visions and prophetic visions with themself [himself]. The painters in oil (which he will have it that neither of them practised) he affirms to have been the ruin of art, and affirms that all the while he was engaged in his Water paintings, t.i.tian was disturbing him, t.i.tian the III Genius of Oil Painting. His Pictures--one in particular, the Canterbury Pilgrims (far above Stothard's)--have great merit, but hard, dry, yet with grace. He has written a Catalogue of them with a most spirited criticism on Chaucer, but mystical and full of Vision. His poems have been sold hitherto only in Ma.n.u.script. I never read them; but a friend at my desire procured the "Sweep Song." There is one to a tiger, which I have heard recited, beginning--

"Tiger, Tiger, burning bright, Thro' the desarts of the night,"

which is glorious, but, alas! I have not the book; for the man is flown, whither I know not--to Hades or a Mad House. But I must look on him as one of the most extraordinary persons of the age. Montgomery's book I have not much hope from. The Society, with the affected name, has been labouring at it for these 20 years, and made few converts. I think it was injudicious to mix stories avowedly colour'd by fiction with the sad true statements from the parliamentary records, etc., but I wish the little Negroes all the good that can come from it. I batter'd my brains (not b.u.t.ter'd them--but it is a bad _a_) for a few verses for them, but I could make nothing of it. You have been luckier. But Blake's are the flower of the set, you will, I am sure, agree, tho' some of Montgomery's at the end are pretty; but the Dream awkwardly paraphras'd from B.

With the exception of an Epilogue for a Private Theatrical, I have written nothing now for near 6 months. It is in vain to spur me on. I must wait. I cannot write without a genial impulse, and I have none.

'Tis barren all and dearth. No matter; life is something without scribbling. I have got rid of my bad spirits, and hold up pretty well this rain-d.a.m.n'd May.

So we have lost another Poet. I never much relished his Lords.h.i.+p's mind, and shall be sorry if the Greeks have cause to miss him. He was to me offensive, and I never can make out his great _power_, which his admirers talk of. Why, a line of Wordsworth's is a lever to lift the immortal spirit! Byron can only move the Spleen. He was at best a Satyrist,--in any other way he was mean enough. I dare say I do him injustice; but I cannot love him, nor squeeze a tear to his memory. He did not like the world, and he has left it, as Alderman Curtis advised the Radicals, "If they don't like their country, d.a.m.n 'em, let 'em leave it," they possessing no rood of ground in England, and he 10,000 acres.

Byron was better than many Curtises.

Farewell, and accept this apology for a letter from one who owes you so much in that kind.

Yours ever truly, C.L.

[Lamb's portrait of his father is reproduced in Vol. II. of my large edition. The first love verses are no more.

William Blake was at this time sixty-six years of age. He was living in poverty and neglect at 3 Fountain Court, Strand. Blake made 537 ill.u.s.trations to Young's _Night Thoughts_, of which only forty-seven were published. Lamb is, however, thinking of his edition of Blair's _Grave_. The exhibition of his works was held in 1809, and it was for this that Blake wrote the descriptive catalogue. Lamb had sent Blake's "Sweep Song," which, like "Tiger, Tiger," is in the _Songs of Innocence_, to James Montgomery for his _Chimney-Sweepers' Friend and Climbing Boys' Alb.u.m_, 1824, a little book designed to ameliorate the lot of those children, in whose interest a society existed. Barton also contributed something. It was Blake's poem which had excited Barton's curiosity. Probably he thought that Lamb wrote it. Lamb's mistake concerning Blake's name is curious in so far as that it was Blake's brother Robert, who died in 1787, who in a vision revealed to the poet the method by which the _Songs of Innocence_ were to be reproduced.

"The Dream awkwardly paraphras'd from B." The book ended with three "Climbing-Boys' Soliloquies" by Montgomery. The second was a dream in which the dream in Blake's song was extended and prosified.

"An Epilogue for a Private Theatrical." Probably the epilogue for the amateur performance of "Richard II.," given by the family of Henry Field, Barren Field's father (see Vol. IV. of the present edition).

"Another great Poet." Byron died on April 19, 1824.

"Alderman Curtis." See note above.]

LETTER 347

CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON

July 7th, 1824.

DEAR B.B.--I have been suffering under a severe inflammation of the eyes, notwithstanding which I resolutely went through your very pretty volume at once, which I dare p.r.o.nounce in no ways inferior to former lucubrations. "_Abroad_" and "_lord_" are vile rhymes notwithstanding, and if you count you will wonder how many times you have repeated the word _unearthly_--thrice in one poem. It is become a slang word with the bards; avoid it in future l.u.s.tily. "Time" is fine; but there are better a good deal, I think. The volume does not lie by me; and, after a long day's smarting fatigue, which has almost put out my eyes (not blind however to your merits), I dare not trust myself with long writing. The verses to Bloomfield are the sweetest in the collection. Religion is sometimes lugged in, as if it did not come naturally. I will go over carefully when I get my seeing, and exemplify. You have also too much of singing metre, such as requires no deep ear to make; lilting measure, in which you have done Woolman injustice. Strike at less superficial melodies. The piece on Nayler is more to my fancy.

My eye runs waters. But I will give you a fuller account some day. The book is a very pretty one in more than one sense. The decorative harp, perhaps, too ostentatious; a simple pipe preferable.

Farewell, and many thanks. C. LAMB.

[Barton's new book was _Poetic Vigils_, 1824. It contained among other poems "An Ode to Time," "Verses to the Memory of Bloomfield," "A Memorial of John Woolman," beginning--