! George writes odes where the rhymes, like right, that I had power and might equal to fashionable man and wife, keep a comfortable my wishes: then would I call the gentry of distance of six or eight lines apart, and calls thy native island, and they should come in that 'observing the laws of verse.' George troops, flocking at the sound of thy prostells you, before he recites, that you must pectus-trumpet, and crowding who shall be listen with great attention, or you'll miss the first to stand in thy list of subscribers! I rhymes. I did so, and found them pretty can only put twelve shillings into thy pocket exact. George, speaking of the dead Ossian, (which, I will answer for them, will not stick exclaimeth, 'Dark are the poet's eyes.' I there long), out of a pocket almost as bare humbly represented to him that his own eyes as thine. Is it not a pity so much fine were dark, and many a living bard's besides, writing should be erased? But, to tell the and recommended 'Clos'd are the poet's eyes.' truth, I began to scent that I was getting But that would not do. I found there was into that sort of style which Longinus and an antithesis between the darkness of his Dionysius Halicarnassus fitly call 'the eyes and the splendour of his genius; and I affected."" acquiesced." The following passage on the same subject occurs in a letter about the same time, addressed TO MR. COLERIDGE. Lamb's apprehensions of the recurrence of his sister's malady were soon realised. An old maid-servant who assisted her in the lodging became ill; Miss Lamb incessantly watched the death-bed; and just as the poor creature died, was again seized with madness. Lamb placed her under medical care ; and, left alone, wrote the following short and miserable letter: TO MR. COLERIDGE. "Now I am on the subject of poetry, I must announce to you, who, doubtless, in your remote part of the island, have not heard tidings of so great a blessing, that George Dyer hath prepared two ponderous volumes full of poetry and criticism. They "May 12th, 1800. impend over the town and are threatened to "My dear Coleridge,-I don't know why fall in the winter. The first volume contains I write, except from the propensity misery every sort of poetry, except personal satire, has to tell her griefs. Hetty died on Friday which George, in his truly original prospectus, night, about eleven o'clock, after eight days' renounceth for ever, whimsically foisting the illness; Mary, in consequence of fatigue and intention in between the price of his book anxiety, is fallen ill again, and I was obliged and the proposed number of subscribers. (If to remove her yesterday. I am left alone in I can, I will get you a copy of his handbill.) a house with nothing but Hetty's dead body He has tried his vein in every species besides to keep me company. To-morrow I bury -the Spenserian, Thomsonian, Masonic and her, and then I shall be quite alone, with Akensidish more especially. The second nothing but a cat, to remind me that the volume is all criticism; wherein he demon- house has been full of living beings like mystrates to the entire satisfaction of the literary self. My heart is quite sunk, and I don't world, in a way that must silence all reply know where to look for relief. Mary will for ever, that the Pastoral was introduced by get better again, but her constantly being Theocritus and polished by Virgil and Pope liable to such relapses is dreadful; nor is it -that Gray and Mason (who always hunt in the least of our evils that her case and all couples in George's brain) have a good deal our story is so well known around us. We are· of poetical fire and true lyric genius-that in a manner marked. Excuse my troubling Cowley was ruined by excess of wit (a you, but I have nobody by me to speak to warning to all moderns)-that Charles Lloyd, me. I slept out last night, not being able to Charles Lamb, and William Wordsworth, in endure the change and the stillness. But I later days, have struck the true chords of did not sleep well, and I must come back to poesy. O George, George! with a head my own bed. I am going to try and get a uniformly wrong, and a heart uniformly friend to come and be with me to-morrow. I am completely shipwrecked. My head is The prospect of obtaining a residence more suited to the peculiar exigencies of his situation than that which he then occupied at Pentonville, gave Lamb comfort, which he expressed in the following short letter house)—to come and lodge with him, at his house in Southampton Buildings, Chancerylane. This was a very comfortable offer to me, the rooms being at a reasonable rent, and including the use of an old servant, besides being infinitely preferable to ordinary lodgings in our case, as you must perceive. As Gutch knew all our story and the perpetual liability to a recurrence in my sister's disorder, probably to the end of her life, I certainly think the offer very generous and very friendly. I have got three rooms (including servant) under 347. a year. Here I soon found myself at home; and here, in six "Dear Manning,-I feel myself unable to weeks after, Mary was well enough to join thank you sufficiently for your kind letter. me. So we are once more settled. I am It was doubly acceptable to me, both for the afraid we are not placed out of the reach of choice poetry and the kind honest prose future interruptions. But I am determined which it contained. It was just such a letter to take what snatches of pleasure we can as I should have expected from Manning. between the acts of our distressful drama. TO MR. MANNING. "1800. a visit which I have long put off, to Gutch's family. The sight of the Bodleian Library, and, above all, a fine bust of Bishop Taylor, at All Souls', were particularly gratifying to me; unluckily, it was not a family where I could take Mary with me, and I am afraid there is something of dishonesty in any pleasures I take without her. She never goes anywhere. I do not know what I can add to this letter. I hope you are better by this time; and I desire to be affectionately remembered to Sarah and Hartley. "I am in much better spirits than when I. . . . I have passed two days at Oxford, on wrote last. I have had a very eligible offer to lodge with a friend in town. He will have rooms to let at midsummer, by which time I hope my sister will be well enough to join me. It is a great object to me to live in town,'where we shall be much more private, and to quit a house and a neighbourhood where poor Mary's disorder, so frequently recurring, has made us a sort of marked people. We can be nowhere private except in the midst of London. We shall be in a family where we visit very frequently; only my landlord and I have not yet come to a conclusion. He has a partner to consult. I am still on the tremble, for I do not know where we could go into lodgings that would not be, in many respects, highly exceptionable. Only God send Mary well again, and I hope all will be well! The prospect, such as it is, has made me quite happy. I have just time to tell you of it, as I know it will give you pleasure.-pathological and medical discussions. It is Farewell. C. LAMB." This hope was accomplished, as appears from the following letter :— TO MR. COLERIDGE. "1800. "Dear Coleridge,-Soon after I wrote to you last, an offer was made me by Gutch (you must remember him, at Christ's,-you saw him, slightly, one day with Thomson at our "I expected before this to have had tidings of another little philosopher. Lloyd's wife is on the point of favouring the world. Have you seen the new edition of Burns? his posthumous works and letters? I have only been able to procure the first volume, which contains his life-very confusedly and badly written, and interspersed with dull written by a Dr. Currie. Do you know the well-meaning doctor? Alas, ne sutor ultra crepidam! I hope to hear again from you very soon. Godwin is gone to Ireland on a visit to Grattan. Before he went I passed much time with him, and he has showed me particular attention: N.B. A thing I much like. Your books are all safe: only I have not thought it necessary to fetch away your last batch, which I understand are at Johnson's, tho bookseller, who has got quite as AND WORDSWORTH, [1800 to 1805.] "You shall have my play and the Falstaff letters in a day or two. I will write to Lloyd by this day's post. "God bless you, Manning. Take my trifling as trifling—and believe me seriously and deeply your well-wisher and friend, "C. LAMB." In the following letter Lamb's fantastic spirits find scope freely, though in all kindness, in the peculiarities of the learned and good George Dyer: TO MR. MANNING. "August 22nd, 1800. "Dear Manning,-You needed not imagine Ir would seem from the letters of 1800, any apology necessary. Your fine hare and that the natural determination of Lamb "to fine birds (which just now are dangling by take what pleasure he could between the our kitchen blaze), discourse most eloquent acts of his distressful drama," had led him music in your justification. You just nicked into a wider circle of companionship, and had my palate. For, with all due decorum and prompted sallies of wilder and broader mirth, leave may it be spoken, my worship hath which afterwards softened into delicacy, re- taken physic to-day, and being low and taining all its whim. The following passage, puling, requireth to be pampered. Foh! how which concludes a letter to Manning, else beautiful and strong those buttered onions occupied with merely personal details, proves come to my nose. For you must know we that his apprehensions for the diminution of extract a divine spirit of gravy from those his reverence for sacred things were not materials, which, duly compounded with a wholly unfounded; while, amidst its grotesque consistence of bread and cream (y'clept breadexpressions, may be discerned the repugnance sauce), each to each, giving double grace, do to the philosophical infidelity of some of his mutually illustrate and set off (as skilful goldcompanions he retained through life. The foils to rare jewels) your partridge, pheasant, passage, may, perhaps, be regarded as a sort woodcock, snipe, teal, widgeon, and the other of desperate compromise between a wild lesser daughters of the ark. My friendship, gaiety and religious impressions obscured struggling with my carnal and fleshly prubut not effaced; and intimating his disap-dence (which suggests that a bird a man is probation of infidelity, with a melancholy the proper allotment in such cases), yearneth sense of his own unworthiness seriously to sometimes to have thee here to pick a wing express it. or so. I question if your Norfolk sauces match our London culinaric. TO MR. MANNING. George Dyer has introduced me to the "Coleridge inquires after you pretty often. table of an agreeable old gentleman, Dr. I wish to be the pandar to bring you to- A-, who gives hot legs of mutton and gether again once before I die. When we grape pies at his sylvan lodge at Isleworth ; die, you and I must part; the sheep, you where, in the middle of a street, he has shot know, take the right hand, and the goats the up a wall most preposterously before his left. Stripped of its allegory, you must know, small dwelling, which, with the circumstance the sheep are I, and the Apostles and the of his taking several panes of glass out of Martyrs, and the Popes, and Bishop Taylor bedroom windows (for air) causeth his and Bishop Horsley, and Coleridge, &c. &c. ; neighbours to speculate strangely on the the goats are the Atheists and the Adulterers, and dumb dogs, and Godwin and M..... g, and that Thyestean crew-yaw! how my saintship sickens at the idea! state of the good man's pericranicks. Plainly, he lives under the reputation of being deranged. George does not mind this circumstance; he rather likes him the better for it. The Doctor, in his pursuits, joins agricultural calculate the precise date of his death, I would to poetical science, and has set George's write a novel on purpose to make George the brains mad about the old Scotch writers, hero. I could hit him off to a hair.* George Barbour, Douglas's Æneid, Blind Harry, &c. brought a Dr. A- -to see me. The Doctor We returned home in a return postchaise is a very pleasant old man, a great genius for (having dined with the Doctor), and George agriculture, one that ties his breeches-knees kept wondering and wondering, for eight or with packthread, and boasts of having had nine turnpike miles, what was the name, and disappointments from ministers. The Doctor striving to recollect the name of a poet an- happened to mention an epic poem by one terior to Barbour. I begged to know what Wilkie, called the 'Epigoniad,' in which he was remaining of his works. "There is no- assured us there is not one tolerable line from thing extant of his works, Sir, but by all beginning to end, but all the characters, accounts he seems to have been a fine incidents, &c., verbally copied from Homer. genius!' This fine genius, without anything George, who had been sitting quite inattento show for it, or any title beyond George's tive to the Doctor's criticism, no sooner heard courtesy, without even a name; and Barbour, the sound of Homer strike his pericranicks, and Douglas, and Blind Harry, now are the than up he gets, and declares he must see predominant sounds in George's pia mater, that poem immediately: where was it to be and their buzzings exclude politics, criticism, had? An epic poem of 8000 lines, and he and algebra-the late lords of that illustrious not hear of it! There must be some things lumber-room. Mark, he has never read any good in it, and it was necessary he should of these bucks, but is impatient till he reads see it, for he had touched pretty deeply upon them all at the Doctor's suggestion. Poor that subject in his criticisms on the Epic. Dyer! his friends should be careful what George has touched pretty deeply upon the sparks they let fall into such inflammable Lyric, I find; he has also prepared a dissertation on the Drama and the comparison of the English and German theatres. As I rather doubted his competency to do the latter, knowing that his peculiar turn lies in the lyric species of composition, I questioned George what English plays he had read. I found that he had read Shakspeare (whom he calls an original, but irregular, genius); but it was a good while ago; and he has dipped into Rowe and Otway, I suppose having found their names in 'Johnson's Lives' at full length; and upon this slender ground he has undertaken the task. He matter. "Could I have my will of the heathen, I would lock him up from all access of new ideas; I would exclude all critics that would not swear me first (upon their Virgil) that they would feed him with nothing but the old, safe, familiar notions and sounds (the rightful aborigines of his brain) - Gray, Akenside, and Mason. In these sounds, reiterated as often as possible, there could be nothing painful, nothing distracting. "God bless me, here are the birds, smoking hot! "All that is gross and unspiritual in me never seemed even to have heard of Fletcher, rises at the sight! "Avaunt friendship, and all memory of absent friends! C. LAMB." In the following letter, the exciting subjects of Dr. A- and Dyer are further played on :- TO MR. COLERIDGE. "August 26th, 1800. "George Dyer is the only literary character I am happily acquainted with; the oftener I see him, the more deeply I admire him. He is goodness itself. If I could but Ford, Marlowe, Massinger, and the worthies of Dodsley's Collection; but he is to read all these, to prepare him for bringing out his 'Parallel' in the winter. I find he is also determined to vindicate Poetry from the shackles which Aristotle and some others have imposed upon it, which is very goodnatured of him, and very necessary just now ! Now I am touching so deeply upon poetry, can I forget that I have just This passage, thus far, is printed in the former volumes; the remainder was then suppressed (with other Mr. Dyer, lest they should give pain to that excellent passages now for the first time published) relating to person then living. received from D a magnificent copy of on purpose to borrow one, supposing, rationhis Guinea Epic. Four-and-twenty Books to ally enough, I must say, that you had made read in the dog-days! I got as far as the me a present of one before this; the omission Mad Monk the first day, and fainted. Mr. of which I take to have proceeded only from D's genius strongly points him to the negligence; but it is a fault. I could lend Pastoral, but his inclinations divert him him no assistance. You must know he is perpetually from his calling. He imitates just now diverted from the pursuit of the Southey, as Rowe did Shakspeare, with his BELL LETTERS by a paradox, which he has 'Good morrow to ye; good master Lieu- heard his friend Frend,* (that learned matenant.' Instead of a man, a woman, a thematician) maintain, that the negative daughter, he constantly writes one a man, quantities of mathematicians were mera one a woman, one his daughter. Instead of nuga, things scarcely in rerum naturâ, and the king, the hero, he constantly writes, he smacking too much of mystery for gentlemen the king, he the hero; two flowers of rhetoric, of Mr. Freud's clear Unitarian capacity. palpably from the 'Joan.' But Mr. D- However, the dispute once set a-going, has soars a higher pitch: and when he is original, seized violently on George's pericranick; it is in a most original way indeed. His and it is necessary for his health that he terrific scenes are indefatigable. Serpents, should speedily come to a resolution of his asps, spiders, ghosts, dead bodies, staircases made of nothing, with adders' tongues for bannisters-Good Heaven! what a brain he must have. He puts as many plums in his pudding as my grandmother used to do;and then his emerging from Hell's horrors into light, and treading on pure flats of this earth-for twenty-three Books together! "C. L." The following letter, obviously written about the same time, pursues the same theme. There is some irritation in it; but even that is curious enough to prevent the excision of the reproduced passages :— TO MR. MANNING. "1800. "Dear Manning,-I am going to ask a favour of you, and am at a loss how to do it in the most delicate manner. For this purpose I have been looking into Pliny's Letters, who is noted to have had the best grace in begging of all the ancients (I read him in the elegant translation of Mr. Melmoth), but not finding any case there exactly similar with mine, I am constrained to beg in my own barbarian way. To come to the point then, and hasten into the middle of things; have you a copy of your Algebra to give away? I do not ask it for myself; I have too much reverence for the Black Arts, ever to approach thy circle, illustrious Trismegist! But that worthy man, and excellent Poet, George Dyer, made me a visit yesternight, doubts. He goes about teasing his friends with his new mathematics; he even frantically talks of purchasing Manning's Algebra, which shows him far gone, for, to my knowledge, he has not been master of seven shillings a good time. George's pockets and -'s brains are two things in nature which do not abhor a vacuum. . . . Now, if you could step in, in this trembling suspense of his reason, and he should find on Saturday morning, lying for him at the Porter's Lodge, Clifford's Inn,-his safest address-Manning's Algebra, with a neat manuscription in the blank leaf, running thus, 'FROM THE AUTHOR!' it might save his wits and restore the unhappy author to those studies of poetry and criticism, which are at present suspended, to the infinite regret of the whole literary world. N.B.-Dirty books, smeared leaves, and dogs' ears, will be rather a recommendation than otherwise. N.B.-He must have the book as soon as possible, or nothing can withhold him from madly purchasing the book on tick. . . . Then shall we see him sweetly restored to the chair of Longinus-to dictate in smooth and modest phrase the laws of verse; to prove that Theocritus first introduced the Pastoral, and Virgil and Pope brought it to its perfection ; that Gray and Mason (who always hunt in couples in George's brain) have shown a ... * Mr. Frend, many years the Actuary of the Rock Insurance Office, in early life the champion of Unitarianism at Cambridge; the object of a great University's displeasure; in short, the "village Hampden" of the day. |