The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Volume VI Part 88

But on the faith of a Gentleman, you shall have it back some day _for another_. The 3 I send. I think 2 of the blunders perfectly immaterial.

But your feelings, and I fear _pocket_, is every thing. I have just time to pack this off by the 2 o Clock stage. Yours till me meet

At all events I behave more gentlemanlike than Emma did, in returning the copies.

Yours till we meet--DO COME.

Bring the Sonnets--

Why not publish 'em?--or let another Bookseller?

[Dr. Cresswell was vicar of Edmonton. Having married the daughter of a tailor--or so Mr. Fuller Russell states in his account of a conversation with Lamb in _Notes and Queries_--he was in danger of being ribaldly a.s.sociated with Satan's matrimonial adventures in Lamb's ballad. I cannot explain to what book Lamb refers: possibly to the _Last Essays of Elia_, which Moxon, having found errors in, wished to withdraw, subst.i.tuting another. The point probably cannot be cleared up. The sonnets would be Moxon's own, which he had printed privately (see a later letter).]

LETTER 570

CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON

[P.M. March 30, 1833.]

D'r M. Emma and we are _delighted_ with the Sonnets, and she with her nice Walton. Mary is deep in the novel. Come as early as you can. I stupidly overlookd your proposal to meet you in Green Lanes, for in some strange way I _burnt my leg_, s.h.i.+n-quarter, at Forster's;* it is laid up on a stool, and Asbury attends. You'll see us all as usual, about Taylor, when you come.

Yours ever

C.L.

*Or the night I came home, for I felt it not bad till yesterday. But I scarce can hobble across the room.

I have secured 4 places for night: in haste.

Mary and E. do not dream of any thing we have discussed.

[I fancy that the last sentence refers to an offer for Miss Isola's hand which Moxon had just made to Lamb.]

LETTER 571

CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON

[No date. Spring, 1833.]

Dear M. many thanks for the Books; the _Faust_ I will acknowledge to the Author. But most thanks for one immortal sentence, "If I do not _cheat_ him, never _trust_ me again." I do not know whether to admire most, the wit or justness of the sentiment. It has my cordial approbation. My sense of meum and tuum applauds it. I maintain it, the eighth commandment hath a secret special reservation, by which the reptile is exempt from any protection from it; as a dog, or a n.i.g.g.e.r, he is not a holder of property. Not a ninth of what he detains from the world is his own. Keep your hands from picking and stealing is no ways referable to his acquists. I doubt whether bearing false witness against thy neighbor at all contemplated this possible scrub. Could Moses have seen the speck in vision? An ex post facto law alone could relieve him, and we are taught to expect no eleventh commandment. The out-law to the Mosaic dispensation!--unworthy to have seen Moses' behind--to lay his desecrating hands upon Elia! Has the irriverent ark-toucher been struck blind I wonder--? The more I think of him, the less I think of him. His meanness is invisible with aid of solar microscope, my moral eye smarts at him. The less flea that bites little fleas! The great Beast! the beggarly nit!

More when we meet.

Mind, you'll come, two of you--and couldn't you go off in the morning, that we may have a daylong curse at him, if curses are not dis-hallowed by descending so low? Amen.

Maledicatur in extremis.

[Abraham Hayward's translation of Faust was published by Moxon in February, 1833. Lamb's letter of thanks was said by the late Edmund Yates to be a very odd one. I have not seen it.

We may perhaps a.s.sume that Moxon's reply to Lamb's letter stating that Taylor's claim had been paid contained the "immortal sentence."

"Not a ninth." A tailor (Taylor) is only a ninth of a man.

"The less flea." Remembering Swift's lines in "On Poetry, a Rhapsody":--

So, naturalists observe, a flea Has smaller fleas that on him prey; And these have smaller still to bite 'em, And so proceed _ad infinitum_.]

LETTER 572

CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN FORSTER

[No date. ? March, 1833.]

Swallow your d.a.m.n'd dinner and your brandy and water fast--

& come immediately

I want to take Knowles in to Emma's only female friend for 5 minutes only, and we are free for the even'g.

I'll do a Prologue.

[The prologue was for Sheridan Knowles' play "The Wife." Lamb wrote both prologue and epilogue (see Vol. IV.).]

LETTER 573

CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON

[No date. ? April 10, 1833.]

Dear M. The first Oak sonnet, and the Nightingale, may show their faces in any Annual unblus.h.i.+ng. Some of the others are very good.

The Sabbath too much what you have written before.

You are destined to s.h.i.+ne in Sonnets, I tell you.

Shall we look for you Sunday, we did in vain Good Friday [April 5].

[_A signature was added by Mrs. Moxon for Mr. Frederick Locker-Lampson, evidently from another letter_:--]