TO MR. HAZLITT.

noble minds,' and her cow. Fate need not scarcely conscious of his own literary powers, have set her wits to such an old Molly. I was striving hard to become a painter. At am heartily sorry for her. Remember us the period of the following letter (which is lovingly to her; and in particular remember dated 15th March, 1806) Hazlitt was residing us to Mrs. Clarkson in the most kind manner. with his father, an Unitarian minister, at "I hope, by 'southwards,' you mean that Wem. she will be at or near London, for she is a great favourite of both of us, and we feel for her health as much as possible for any one "Dear H.-I am a little surprised at no letter to do. She is one of the friendliest, com- from you. This day week, to wit, Saturday, fortablest women we know, and made our the 8th of March, 1806, I book'd off by the little stay at your cottage one of the Wem coach, Bull and Mouth Inn, directed pleasantest times we ever past. We were to you, at the Rev. Mr. Hazlitt's, Wem, quite strangers to her. Mr. C. is with you Shropshire, a parcel containing, besides a too; our kindest separate remembrances to book, &c., a rare print, which I take to be a him. As to our special affairs, I am looking Titian; begging the said W. H. to acknowabout me. I have done nothing since the ledge the receipt thereof; which he not beginning of last year, when I lost my having done, I conclude the said parcel to be newspaper job, and having had a long idle- lying at the inn, and may be lost; for which ness, I must do something, or we shall get reason, lest you may be a Wales-hunting at very poor. sometimes I think of a farce, this instant, I have authorised any of your but hitherto all schemes have gone off; an family, whosoever first gets this, to open it, idle brag or two of an evening, vapouring that so precious a parcel may not moulder out of a pipe, and going off in the morning; but now I have bid farewell to my 'sweet enemy,' Tobacco, as you will see in my next page, I shall perhaps set nobly to work. Hang work!

"I wish that all the year were holiday; I am sure that indolence. - indefeasible indolence is the true state of man, and business the invention of the old Teazer, whose interference doomed Adam to an apron and set him a hoeing. Pen and ink, and clerks and desks, were the refinements of this old torturer some thousand years after, under pretence of Commerce allying distant shores, Promoting and diffusing knowledge, good,' &c. &c. Yours truly,

CHAPTER V.

"C. LAMB."

LETTERS TO HAZLITT, ETC.
[1805 to 1810.]

ABOUT the year 1805 Lamb was introduced to one, whose society through life was one of his chief pleasures the great critic and thinker, William Hazlitt - who, at that time,

* The "Farewell to Tobacco" was transcribed on the next

page; but the actual sacrifice was not completed till some years after.

away for want of looking after. What do you in Shropshire when so many fine pictures are a-going a-going every day in London? Monday I visit the Marquis of Lansdowne's, in Berkeley Square. Catalogue 2s. 6d. Leonardos in plenty. Some other day this week, I go to see Sir Wm. Young's, in Stratford Place. Hulse's, of Blackheath, are also to be sold this month, and in May, the first private collection in Europe, Welbore Ellis Agar's. And there are you perverting Nature in lying landscapes, filched from old rusty Titians, such as I can scrape up here to send you, with an additament from Shropshire nature thrown in to make the whole look unnatural. I am afraid of your mouth watering when I tell you that Manning and I got into Angerstein's on Wednesday. Mon Dieu! Such Claudes! Four Claudes bought for more than 10,000l. (those who talk of Wilson being equal to Claude are either mainly ignorant or stupid); one of these was perfectly miraculous. What colours short of bona fide sunbeams it could be painted in, I am not earthly colourman enough to say; but I did not think it had been in the possibility of things. Then, a music-piece. by Titian- -a thousand-pound picture - five figures standing behind a piano, the sixth playing; none of the heads, as M. observed, indicating great men, or affecting it, but so

TO MR. WORDSWORTH.

"Mary's love to all of you- I wouldn't let her write.

sweetly disposed; all learning separate ways, | The following is Lamb's account of the but so easy, like a flock of some divine same calamity, addressed shepherd; the colouring, like the economy of the picture, so sweet and harmonious- -as good as Shakspeare's Twelfth Night,'almost, that is. It will give you a love of order and cure you of restless, fidgety passions for a week after-more musical "Dear Wordsworth, than the music which it would, but cannot, last night, and failed. yet in a manner does, show. I have no room the subject was not for the rest. Let me say, Angerstein sits in John Bull must have solider fare than a - his study (only that and the library letter. We are pretty stout about it; have

a room

Mr. H.' came out

I had many fears; substantial enough.

had plenty of condoling friends; but, after all, we had rather it should have succeeded. You will see the prologue in most of the morning papers. It was received with such shouts as I never witnessed to a prologue. It was attempted to be encored. How hard!a thing I did merely as a task, because it was wanted, and set no great store by; and 'Mr. H.'!! The quantity of friends we had in the house-my brother and I being in public offices, &c. astonishing, but they yielded at last to a few hisses.

was

"A hundred hisses! (Hang the word, I write it like kisses- how different! - a hundred hisses outweigh a thousand claps. The former come more directly from the heart. Well, 'tis withdrawn, and there is an end. "Better luck to us, C. LAMB.

[Turn over.] "P. S. Pray, when any of you write to the Clarksons, give our kind loves, and say we shall not be able to come and see them at Christmas, as I shall have but a day or two, and tell them we bear our mortification pretty well."

About this time Miss Lamb sought to contribute to her brother's scanty income by presenting the plots of some of Shakspeare's plays in prose, with the spirit of the poet's genius interfused, and many of his happiest expressions preserved, in which good work Lamb assisted her; though he always insisted, as he did in reference to "Mrs. Leicester's School," that her portions were the best. The following letter refers to

"Mary is by no means unwell, but I made some of those aids, and gives a pleasant her let me write."

instance of that shyness in Hazlitt, which he

never quite overcame, and which afforded a striking contrast to the boldness of his published thoughts.

TO MR. WORDSWORTH.

"1806.

fantastic letter, in the nature of a hoax, having puzzled his father, who expected him at Wem, caused some inquiries of Lamb, respecting the painter's retreat, to which he thus replied in a letter to

THE REV. MR. HAZLITT.

"Sir, I am

Mary is just stuck fast in All's Well that Ends Well.' She complains of having "Temple, 18th February, 1808. to set forth so many female characters in truly concerned that any boys' clothes. She begins to think Shaks- mistake of mine should have caused you peare must have wanted. Imagination. I, uneasiness, but I hope we have got a clue to to encourage her, for she often faints in the William's absence, which may clear up all prosecution of her great work, flatter her apprehensions. The people where he lodges with telling her how well such a play and in town have received direction from him to such a play is done. But she is stuck fast, forward some linen to a place called Winterand I have been obliged to promise to assist slow, in the county of Wilts (not far from her. To do this, it will be necessary to Salisbury), where the lady lives whose cottage, leave off tobacco. But I had some thoughts of pictured upon a card, if you opened my letter, doing that before, for I sometimes think it does you have doubtless seen, and though we not agree with me. W. Hazlitt is in town. I have had no explanation of the mystery took him to see a very pretty girl, professedly, since, we shrewdly suspect that at the time where there were two young girls the very of writing that letter which has given you head and sum of the girlery was two young all this trouble, a certain son of yours (who is girls they neither laughed, nor sneered, both painter and author) was at her elbow, nor giggled, nor whispered but they were and did assist in framing that very cartoon young girls and he sat, and frowned blacker which was sent to amuse and mislead us in and blacker, indignant that there should be town, as to the real place of his destination. such a thing as youth and beauty; till he tore me away before supper, in perfect misery, and owned he could not bear young girls-they drove him mad. So I took him home to my old nurse, where he recovered perfect tranquillity. Independent of this, and as I am not a young girl myself, he is a great acquisition to us. He is, rather imprudently I think, printing a political pamphlet on his own account, and will have to pay for the paper, &c. The first duty of an author, I take it, is never to pay anything. But non cuivis contigit adire Corinthum. The managers, I thank my stars, have settled that question for me.

"Yours, truly,

C. LAMB."

"And some words at the back of the said cartoon, which we had not marked so narrowly before, by the similarity of the handwriting to William's, do very much confirm the suspicion. If our theory be right, they have had the pleasure of their jest, and I am afraid you have paid for it in anxiety.

"But I hope your uneasiness will now be removed, and you will pardon a suspense occasioned by Love, who does so many worse mischiefs every day.

"The letter to the people where William lodges says, moreover, that he shall be in town in a fortnight.

My sister joins in respects to you and Mrs. Hazlitt, and in our kindest remen)brances and wishes for the restoration of Peggy's health.

"I am, Sir, your humble servant,

"C. LAMB."

Hazlitt, coming to reside in town, became a frequent guest of Lamb's, and a brilliant ornament of the parties which Lamb now began to collect on Wednesday evenings. He seems, in the beginning of 1808, to have sought solitude in a little inn on Salisbury Mr. and Mrs. Hazlitt afterwards took up Plain, to which he became deeply attached, their temporary abode at Winterslow, to and which he has associated with some of which place Miss Lamb addressed the rolhis profoundest meditations; and some lowing letter, containing interesting details

of her own and her brother's life, and illus- During that walk a thought came into his trating her own gentle character:

TO MRS. HAZLITT.

"December 10th, 1808. "My dear Sarah, I hear of you from your brother, but you do not write yourself, nor does Hazlitt. I beg that one or both of you will amend this fault as speedily as possible, for I am very anxious to hear of your health. I hope, as you say nothing about your fall to your brother, you are perfectly recovered from the effects of it.

"You cannot think how very much we miss you and H. of a Wednesday evening – all the glory of the night, I may say, is at an end. Phillips makes his jokes, and there is no one to applaud him; Rickman argues, and there is no one to oppose him.

mind, which he instantly sate down and improved upon till he brought it, in seven or eight days, into the compass of a reasonablesized pamphlet.

To propose a subscription to all welldisposed people to raise a certain sum of money, to be expended in the care of a cheap monument for the former and the future great dead men; the monument to be a white cross, with a wooden slab at the end, telling their names and qualifications. This wooden slab and white cross to be perpetuated to the end of time; to survive the fall of empires, and the destruction of cities, by means of a map, which, in case of an insurrection among the people, or any other cause by which a city or country may be destroyed. was to be carefully preserved; and then, "The worst miss of all to me is, that when when things got again into their usual order, we are in the dismals there is now no hope the white-cross-wooden-slab-makers were to of relief from any quarter whatsoever. go to work again, and set the wooden slabs Hazlitt was most brilliant, most ornamental, in their former places. This, as nearly as as a Wednesday-man, but he was a more I can tell you, is the sum and substance of useful one on common days, when he dropt it; but it is written remarkably well — in in after a quarrel or a fit of the glooms. his very best manner-for the proposal The Sheffington is quite out now, my brother having got merry with claret and Tom Sheridan. This visit, and the occasion of it, is a profound secret, and therefore I tell it to nobody but you and Mrs. Reynolds. Through the medium of Wroughton, there came an invitation and proposal from T. S., that C. L. should write some scenes in a speaking pantomime, the other parts of which, Tom now, and his father formerly, have manufactured between them. So in the Christmas holidays, my brother, and his two great associates, we expect, will be all three damned together; this is, I mean, if Charles's share, which is done and sent in, is accepted.

no

"I left this unfinished yesterday, in the hope that my brother would have done it for me. His reason for refusing me was exquisite reason,' for it was because he must write a letter to Manning in three or four weeks, and therefore he could not be always writing letters,' he said. I wanted him to tell your husband about a great work which Godwin is going to publish, to enlighten the world once more, and I shall not be able to make out what it is. He (Godwin) took his usual walk one evening, a fortnight since, to the end of Hatton Garden and back again.

(which seems to me very like throwing salt on a sparrow's tail to catch him,) occupies but half a page, which is followed by very fine writing on the benefits he conjectures would follow if it were done; very excellent thoughts on death, and our feelings concerning dead friends, and the advantages an old country has over a new one, even in the slender memorials we have of great men who once flourished.

"Charles is come home and wants his dinner, and so the dead men must be no more thought of. Tell us how you go on, and how you like Winterslow and winter evenings. Knowles has not yet got back again, but he is in better spirits. John Hazlitt was here on Wednesday. Our love to