to a sound belief are various and inscrutable | been disappointed (he will bear with my as the heart of man. Some believe upon saying so) at the discovery of my error. weak principles. Others cannot feel the L. H. is unfortunate in holding some loose efficacy of the strongest. One of the most and not very definite speculations (for at candid, most upright, and single-meaning times I think he hardly knows whither his men, I ever knew, was the late Thomas premises would carry him) on marriage-the Holcroft. I believe he never said one thing and meant another, in his life; and, as near as I can guess, he never acted otherwise than with the most scrupulous attention to conscience. Ought we to wish the character false, for the sake of a hollow compliment to Christianity?

The

seven

tenets, I conceive, of the Political Justice' carried a little further. For anything I could discover in his practice, they have reference, like those, to some future possible condition of society, and not to the present times. But neither for these obliquities of thinking (upon which my own conclusions "Accident introduced me to the acquaint- are as distant as the poles asunder) — nor for ance of Mr. L. H.- and the experience of his his political asperities and petulancies, which many friendly qualities confirmed a friend- are wearing out with the heats and vanities ship between us. You, who have been mis- of youth-did I select him for a friend; but represented yourself, I should hope, have not for qualities which fitted him for that relalent an idle ear to the calumnies which have tion. I do not know whether I flatter been spread abroad respecting this gentle- myself with being the occasion, but certain man. I was admitted to his household for it is, that, touched with some misgivings for some years, and do most solemnly aver that sundry harsh things which he had written I believe him to be in his domestic relations aforetime against our friend C., - before he as correct as any man. He chose an ill-left this country he sought a reconciliation judged subject for a poem; the peccant with that gentleman (himself being his own humours of which have been visited on him introducer), and found it. tenfold by the artful use, which his adver- "L. II. is now in Italy, on his departure to saries have made, of an equivocal term. which land with much regret I took my subject itself was started by Dante, but leave of him and of his little familybetter because brieflier treated of. But the of them, sir, with their mother and as kind crime of the lovers, in the Italian and the a set of little people (T. H. and all), as affecEnglish poet, with its aggravated enormity tionate children as ever blessed a parent. of circumstance, is not of a kind (as the Had you seen them, sir, I think you could critics of the latter well knew) with those not have looked upon them as so many little conjunctions, for which Nature herself has Jonases - but rather as pledges of the provided no excuse, because no temptation. vessel's safety, that was to bear such a freight -It has nothing in common with the black of love. horrors, sung by Ford and Massinger. The familiarising of it in tale and fable may be for that reason incidentally more contagious. In spite of Rimini, I must look upon its author as a man of taste, and a poet. He is better than so; he is one of the most cordialminded men I ever knew, and matchless as a fire-side companion. I mean not to affront or wound your feelings when I say that, in his more genial moods, he has often reminded me of you. There is the same air of mild dogmatism-the same condescending to a boyish sportiveness in both your conversations. His handwriting is so much the same with your own, that I have opened more than one letter of his, hoping, nay, not "From the other gentleman I neither doubting, but it was from you, and have expect nor desire (as he is well assured) any

"I wish you would read Mr. H.'s lines to that same T. H. 'six years old, during a sickness :'—

'Sleep breaks at last from out thee,
My little patient boy'―

(they are to be found in the 47th page of
Foliage') and ask yourself how far they
are out of the spirit of Christianity. I have
a letter from Italy, received but the other
day, into which L. II. has put as much heart,
and as many friendly yearnings after old
associates, and native country, as, I think,
paper can well hold. It would do you no
hurt to give that the perusal also.

I

such concessions as L. H. made to C. What | (fearing that all was not well with you), I bath soured him, and made him to suspect were gravely to invite you (for a remedy) to his friends of infidelity towards him, when attend with me a course of Mr. Belsham's there was no such matter, I know not. Lectures at Hackney. Perhaps I have stood well with him for fifteen years (the scruples to some of your forms and doctrines. proudest of my life), and have ever spoken But if I come, am I secure of civil treatmy full mind of him to some, to whom his ment?—The last time I was in any of your panegyric must naturally be least tasteful. places of worship was on Easter Sunday last. I never in thought swerved from him, II had the satisfaction of listening to a very never betrayed him, I never slackened in sensible sermon of an argumentative turn, my admiration of him; I was the same to delivered with great propriety, by one of him (neither better nor worse), though he your bishops. The place was Westminster could not see it, as in the days when he Abbey. As such religion, as I have, has thought fit to trust me. At this instant, he always acted on me more by way of sentimay be preparing for me some compliment, ment than argumentative process, I was not above my deserts, as he has sprinkled many unwilling, after sermon ended, by no unsuch among his admirable books, for which becoming transition, to pass over to some I rest his debtor; or, for anything I know, serious feelings, impossible to be disconnected or can guess to the contrary, he may be from the sight of those old tombs, &c. But, about to read a lecture on my weaknesses. by whose order I know not, I was debarred He is welcome to them (as he was to my that privilege even for so short a space as a humble hearth), if they can divert a spleen, few minutes; and turned, like a dog or or ventilate a fit of sullenness. I wish he some profane person, out into the common would not quarrel with the world at the street; with feelings, which I could not help, rate he does; but the reconciliation must be but not very congenial to the day or the effected by himself, and I despair of living discourse. I do not know that I shall to see that day. But, protesting against ever venture myself again into one of your much that he has written, and some things churches. which he chooses to do; judging him by his conversation which I enjoyed so long, and relished so deeply; or by his books, in those places where no clouding passion intervenes -I should belie my own conscience, if I said less, than that I think W. H. to be, in his natural and healthy state, one of the wisest and finest spirits breathing. So far from the religious, may have been sown in you being ashamed of that intimacy, which was among those wrecks of splendid mortality. betwixt us, it is my boast that I was able You owe it to the place of your education; for so many years to have preserved it you owe it to your learned fondness for the entire; and I think I shall go to my grave architecture of your ancestors; you owe it without finding, or expecting to find, such to the venerableness of your ecclesiastical another companion. But I forget my man- establishment, which is daily lessened and -you will pardon me, sir - I return to called in question through these practicesthe correspondence. to speak aloud your sense of them; never to desist raising your voice against them, till they be totally done away with and abolished; till the doors of Westminster Abbey be no longer closed against the decent, though lowin-purse, enthusiast, or blameless devotee, who must commit an injury against his family economy, if he would be indulged with a bare admission within its walls. You owe it to the decencies, which you wish to see maintained in its impressive services,

ners

66

Sir, you were pleased (you know where) to invite me to a compliance with the wholesome forms and doctrines of the Church of England. I take your advice with as much kindness as it was meant. But I must think the invitation rather more kind than seasonable. I am a Dissenter. The last sect, with which you can remember me to have made common profession, were the Unitarians. You would think it not very pertinent, if

"You had your education at Westminster; and, doubtless, among those dim aisles and cloisters, you must have gathered much of that devotional feeling in those young years, on which your purest mind feeds still — and may it feed! The antiquarian spirit, strong in you, and gracefully blending ever with

brethren.

for antiquities; for tomb of king or prelate, sage or poet. If they had, they would no longer be the rabble.

that our Cathedral be no longer an object of to their sight, may be to their humbler inspection to the poor at those times only, in Shame these sellers out of the which they must rob from their attendance Temple! Show the poor, that you can on the worship every minute which they can sometimes think of them in some other light bestow upon the fabric. In vain the public than as mutineers and mal-contents. Conprints have taken up this subject, in vain ciliate them by such kind methods to their such poor nameless writers as myself express superiors, civil and ecclesiastical. Stop the their indignation. A word from you, sir mouths of the railers; and suffer your old a hint in your journal - would be sufficient friends, upon the old terms, again to honour to fling open the doors of the beautiful temple and admire you. Stifle not the suggestions again, as we can remember them when we of your better nature with the stale evasion, were boys. At that time of life, what would that an indiscriminate admission would exthe imaginative faculty (such as it is) in pose the tombs to violation. Remember both of us, have suffered, if the entrance to your boy-days. Did you ever see, or hear so much reflection had been obstructed by of a mob in the Abbey, while it was free to the demand of so much silver!—If we had all? Do the rabble come there, or trouble scraped it up to gain an occasional admission their heads about such speculations? It is (as we certainly should have done) would all that you can do to drive them into your the sight of those old tombs have been as churches; they do not voluntarily offer impressive to us (while we had been weighing themselves. They have, alas! no passion auxiously prudence against sentiment) as when the gates stood open, as those of the adjacent Park; when we could walk in at any time, as the mood brought us, for a shorter or longer time as that lasted? Is the being shown over a place the same as silently for ourselves detecting the genius of it? In no part of our beloved Abbey now can a person find entrance (out of servicetime) under the sum of two shillings. The rich and the great will smile at the anticlimax, presumed to lie in these two short words. But you can tell them, sir, how much quiet worth, how much capacity for enlarged feeling, how much taste and genius, may coexist, especially in youth, with a purse incompetent to this demand.-A respected friend of ours, during his late visit to the metropolis, presented himself for admission to St. Paul's. At the same time a decentlyclothed man with as decent a wife, and child, were bargaining for the same indulgence. The price was only two-pence each The poor but decent man hesitated, desirous to go in: but there were three of them, and he turned away reluctantly. Perhaps he wished to have seen the tomb of Nelson. Perhaps the interior of the cathedral was his object. But in the state of his finances, even sixpence might reasonably seem too much. Tell the aristocracy of the country (no man can do it more impressively); instruct them of what value these insignificant pieces of money, these minims

person.

For forty years that I have known the fabric, the only well-attested charge of violation adduced, has been- a ridiculous dismemberment committed upon the effigy of that amiable spy, Major André. And is it for this. -the wanton mischief of some school-boy, fired perhaps with raw notions of transatlantic freedom- or the remote possibility of such a mischief occurring again, so easily to be prevented by stationing a constable within the walls, if the vergers are incompetent to the duty is it upon such wretched pretences, that the people of England are made to pay a new Peter's pence, so long abrogated; or must content themselves with contemplating the ragged exterior of their Cathedral? The mischief was done about the time that you were a scholar there. Do you know anything about the unfortunate relic?-can you help us in this emergency to find the nose?—or can you give Chantrey a notion (from memory) of its pristine life and vigour? I am willing for peace' sake to subscribe my guinea towards a restoration of the lamented feature.

"I am, sir, your humble servant,
"ELIA."

The feeling with which this letter was received by Southey may be best described

C. LAMB.

"P.S.-I do not think your hand-writing I do not think many

in his own words in a letter to the publisher. close to the New River, end of Colebrook "On my part there was not even a momentary Terrace, left hand from Sadler's Wells. feeling of anger; I was very much surprised "Will you let me know the day before? and grieved, because I knew how much he "Your penitent, would condemn himself. And yet no resentful letter was ever written less offensively: his gentle nature may be seen in it through- at all like ****'s. out." Southey was right in his belief in the things I did think." revulsion Lamb's feelings would undergo, when the excitement under which he had written subsided; for although he would retract nothing he had ever said or written in defence of his friends, he was ready at once to surrender every resentment of his own. Southey came to London in the following month, and wrote proposing to call at Islington; and 21st of November Lamb thus replied:

TO MR. SOUTHEY.

"E. I. H., 21st November, 1823.

"Dear Southey,- The kindness of your note has melted away the mist which was I have been fighting against a upon me. shadow. That accursed Q. R. had vexed me by a gratuitous speaking, of its own knowledge, that the "Confessions of a D-d' was a genuine description of the state of the writer. Little things, that are not ill meant, may produce much ill. That might have injured me alive and dead. I am in a public office, and my life is insured. I was prepared for anger, and I thought I saw, in a few obnoxious words, a hard case of repetition directed against me. I wish both magazine and review at the bottom of the sea. I shall be ashamed to see you, and my sister (though innocent) will be still more so; for the folly was done without her knowledge, and has made her uneasy ever since. My guardian angel was absent at that time.

In the following letter, of the same date, Lamb anticipates the meeting.

TO BERNARD BARTON.

"Dear B. B.,- I am ashamed at not acknowledging your kind, little poem, which I must needs like much; but I protest I thought I had done it at the moment. Is it possible a letter has miscarried? Did you get one in which I sent you an extract from the poems of Lord Sterling? I should wonder if you did, for I sent you none such. There was an incipient lie strangled in the birth. Some people's conscience is so tender! But, in plain truth, I thank you very much for the verses. I have a very kind letter from the Laureat, with a self-invitation to come and shake hands with me. This is truly handsome and noble. 'Tis worthy of my old idea of Southey. Shall not I, think you, be covered with a red suffusion?

"You are too much apprehensive of your complaint: I know many that are always ailing of it, and live on to a good old age. I know a merry fellow (you partly know him) who, when his medical adviser told him he had drunk away all that part, congratu lated himself (now his liver was gone) that he should be the longest liver of the two.

"The best way in these cases is to keep yourself as ignorant as you can, as ignorant as the world was before Galen, of the entire inner construction of the animal man; not

I will muster up courage to see you, how-to be conscious of a midriff; to hold kidneys ever, any day next week (Wednesday excepted). We shall hope that you will bring Edith with you. That will be a second mortification. She will hate to see us, but come and heap embers. We deserve it, I for what I've done, and she for being my sister.

(save a sheep and swine) to be an agreeable fiction; not to know whereabouts the gall grows; to account the circulation of the blood an idle whimsey of Harvey's; to acknowledge no mechanism not visible. For, once fix the seat of your disorder, and your fancies flux into it like bad humours. Those

Do come early in the day, by sun-light, medical gentries choose each his favourite that you may see my Milton.

"I am at Colebrook-cottage, Colebrookrow, Islington. A detached whitish house,

part; one takes the lungs, another the aforesaid liver, and refer to that, whatever in the animal economy is amiss. Above all,