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know about us. Here is a comfortable house, there to love. As I can't well put my own but no tenants. One does not make a house- name, I shall put about a subscription: hold. Do not think I am quite in despair; but, in addition to hope protracted, I have a stupifying cold and obstructing headache, and the sun is dead.

"I will not fail to apprise you of the revival of a beam. Meantime accept this, rather than think I have forgotten you all. Best remembrances.

"Yours and theirs truly,

"C. LAMB."

A proposal to erect a memorial to Clarkson, upon the spot by the way-side where he stopped when on a journey from Cambridge to London, and formed the great resolution of devoting his life to the abolition of the slave-trade, produced from Lamb the following letter to the lady who had announced it to him :

"Dear Madam,-I return your list with my name. I should be sorry that any respect should be going on towards Clarkson, and I be left out of the conspiracy. Otherwise I frankly own that to pillarise a man's good feelings in his lifetime is not to my taste. Monuments to goodness, even after death, are equivocal. I turn away from Howard's, I scarce know why. Goodness blows no trumpet, nor desires to have it blown. We should be modest for a modest man-as he is for himself. The vanities of life-art, poetry, skill military-are subjects for trophies; not the silent thoughts arising in a good man's mind in lonely places. Was I Clarkson, I should never be able to walk or ride near the spot again. Instead of bread, we are giving him a stone. Instead of the locality recalling the noblest moment of his existence, it is a place at which his friends (that is, himself) blow to the world, 'What a good man is he!' I sat down upon a hillock at Forty Hill yesternight,-a fine contemplative evening, with a thousand good speculations about mankind. How I yearned with cheap benevolence! I shall go and inquire of the stone-cutter, that cuts the tombstones here, what a stone with a short inscription will cost; just to say, 'Here C. Lamb loved his brethren of mankind.' Everybody will come

Mrs.
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"I scribble in haste from here, where we shall be some time. Pray request Mr. to advance the guinea for me, which shall that I don't see the proposal in quite the faithfully be forthcoming, and pardon me motives, and his power of appreciating the light that he may. The kindness of his noble passage, I thoroughly agree in. "With most kind regards to him, I conclude "Dear madam, yours truly,

"C. LAMB."

"From Mrs. Leishman's, Chase, Enfield."

The following appears to have been written in October 1828,

TO BERNARD BARTON.

"Oct. 11th, 1828.

"A splendid edition of 'Bunyan's Pilgrim !' Why, the thought is enough to turn one's moral stomach. His cockle-hat and staff transformed to a smart cock'd beaver, and a jemmy cane; his amice grey, to the last Regent-street cut: and his painful palmer's pace to the modern swagger. Stop thy friend's sacrilegious hand. Nothing can be done for B. but to reprint the old cuts in as homely but good a style as possible. The Vanity Fair, and the Pilgrims there-the Silly-soothness in his setting-out countenance

the Christian Idiocy (in a good sense), of his admiration of the shepherds on the Delectable mountains; the lions, so truly allegorical, and remote from any similitude to Pidcock's; the great head (the author's), capacious of dreams and similitudes, dreaming in the dungeon. Perhaps you don't know my edition, what I had when a child. If you do, can you bear new designs from Martin, enamelled into copper or silver plate by Heath, accompanied with verses from Mrs. Hemans' pen. O how unlike his own!

Wouldst thou divert thyself from melancholy?
Wouldst thou be pleasant, yet be far from folly?
Wouldst thou read riddles, and their explanation?
Or else be drowned in thy contemplation?

Dost thou love picking meat? or wouldst thou see
A man i' the clouds, and hear him speak to thee?
Wouldst thou be in a dream, and yet not sleep?
Or wouldst thou in a moment laugh and weep?
Or wouldst thou lose thyself, and catch no harm,
And find thyself again without a charm?
Wouldst read thyself, and read thou knowest not what,
And yet know whether thou art blest or not
By reading the same lines? O then come hither,
And lay my book, thy head, and heart together.

JOHN BUNYAN,

Show me any such poetry in any one of the fifteen forthcoming combinations of show and emptiness, yclept 'Annuals.' So there's verses for thy verses; and now let me tell you, that the sight of your hand gladdened me. I have been daily trying to write to you, but paralysed. You have spurred me on this tiny effort, and at intervals I hope to hear from and talk to you. But my spirits have been in an opprest way for a long long time, and they are things which must be to you of faith, for who can explain depression? Yes, I am hooked into the 'Gem,' but only for some lines written on a dead infant of the Editor's, which being, as it were, his property, I could not refuse their appearing; but I hate the paper, the type, the gloss, the dandy plates, the names of contributors poked up into your eyes in first page, and whisked through all the covers of magazines, the barefaced sort of emulation, the immodest candidateship. Brought into so little space -in those old 'Londons,' a signature was lost in the wood of matter, the paper coarse (till latterly, which spoiled them); in short, I detest to appear in an Annual. What a fertile genius (and a quiet good soul withal) is Hood! He has fifty things in hand; farces to supply the Adelphi for the season; a comedy for one of the great theatres, just ready; a whole entertainment, by himself, for Mathews and Yates to figure in; a meditated Comic Annual for next year, to be nearly done by himself. You'd like him very much.

But

proud on this point; I like a bit of flattery,
tickling my vanity, as well as any one.
these pompous masquerades without masks
(naked names or faces) I hate. So there's a
bit of my mind. Besides, they infallibly cheat
you; I mean the booksellers. If I get but a
copy, I only expect it from Hood's being my
friend. Coleridge has lately been here. He
too is deep among the prophets, the year-
servers, the mob of gentlemen annuals.
But they'll cheat him, I know. And now,
dear B. B., the sun shining out merrily, and
the dirty clouds we had yesterday having
washed their own faces clean with their own
rain, tempts me to wander up Winchmore
Hill, or into some of the delightful vicinages
of Enfield, which I hope to show you at some
time when you can get a few days up to the
great town. Believe me, it would give both
of us great pleasure to show you our pleasant
farms and villages.

"We both join in kindest loves to you and
yours.
C. LAMB, redivivus."

The following is of December, and closes the letters which remain of this year.

TO BERNARD BARTON.

"Dec. 5th, 1828. "Dear B. B.,-I am ashamed to receive so many nice books from you, and to have none to send you in return. You are always sending me some fruits or wholesome potherbs, and mine is the garden of the Sluggard, nothing but weeds, or scarce they. Nevertheless, if I knew how to transmit it, I would send you Blackwood's of this month, which contains a little drama, to have your opinion of it, and how far I have improved, or otherwise, upon its prototype. Thank you for your kind sonnet. It does me good to see the Dedication to a Christian Bishop. I am for a comprehension, as divines call it; but so as that the Church shall go a good deal more than half way over to the silent Meeting-house. I have ever said that the "Wordsworth, I see, has a good many Quakers are the only professors of Christianpieces announced in one of 'em, not our Gem. ity, as I read it in the Evangiles; I say proW. Scott has distributed himself like a fessors-marry, as to practice, with their bribe haunch among 'em. Of all the poets, gaudy hot types and poetical vanities, they Cary has had the good sense to keep quite are much as one with the sinful. Martin's clear of 'em, with clergy-gentle-manly right Frontispiece is a very fine thing, let C. L. say notions. Don't think I set up for being what he please to the contrary. Of the Poems,

I like them as a volume, better than any one There may be too much, not religion, but too of the preceding; particularly, 'Power and many good words in a book, till it becomes a Gentleness'-'The Present'-'Lady Russell;' rhapsody of words. I will just name, that with the exception that I do not like the you have brought in the 'Song to the noble act of Curtius, true or false-one of Shepherds' in four or five, if not six places. the grand foundations of the old Roman pa- Now this is not good economy. The 'Enoch' triotism-to be sacrificed to Lady R.'s taking is fine; and here I can sacrifice 'Elijah' to notes on her husband's trial. If a thing is it, because 'tis illustrative only, and not disgood, why invidiously bring it into light with paraging of the latter prophet's departure. something better? There are too few heroic, I like this best in the book. Lastly, I much things in this world, to admit of our marshalling them in anxious etiquettes of precedence. Would you make a poem on the story of Ruth, (pretty story!) and then say Ay, but how much better is the story of Joseph and his brethren! To go on, the stanzas to 'Chalon' want the name of Clarkson in the body of them; it is left to infer

ence.

.....

"Yours heartily,

CHAPTER XVII.

C. LAMB."

like the 'Heron;' 'tis exquisite. Know you Lord Thurlow's Sonnet to a bird of that sort on Lacken water? If not, 'tis indispensable I send it you, with my Blackwood. 'Fludyer' is pleasant,—you are getting gay and Hoodish. What is the enigma? Money? If not, I fairly confess I am foiled, and sphynx must eat me. Four times I've tried to The 'Battle of Gibeon' is spirited, write-eat me, and the blotting pen turns again; but you sacrifice it in last stanza to it into-cat me. And now I will take my the song at Bethlehem. Is it quite orthodox leave with saying, I esteem thy verses, like to do so? The first was good, you suppose, thy present, honour thy frontispicer, and for that dispensation. Why set the word right reverence thy patron and dedicatee, against the word? It puzzles a weak and am, dear B. B., Christian. So Watts' Psalms are an implied censure on David's. But as long as the Bible is supposed to be an equally divine emanation with the Testament, so long it will stagger weaklings to have them set in opposition. 'Godiva' is delicately touched. I have always thought it a beautiful story, characteristic of the old English times. But I could not help amusing myself with the thought-if Martin had chosen this subject for a frontispiece-there would have been in some dark corner a white lady, white HAVING decided on residing entirely at as the walker on the waves, riding upon Enfield, Lamb gave up Colebrooke-cottage, some mystical quadruped; and high above and took what he described in a notelet to would have risen 'tower above tower a massy me as 66 'an odd-looking gambogish-coloured structure high'-the Tenterden steeples of house," at Chase-side, Enfield. The situation Coventry, till the poor cross would scarce was far from picturesque, for the opposite have known itself among the clouds; side of the road only presented some middling and far above them all the distant Clint tenements, two dissenting-chapels, and a hills peering over chimney-pots, piled up, public house decorated with a swinging sign Ossa-on-Olympus fashion, till the admiring of a Rising Sun; but the neighbouring fieldspectator (admirer of a noble deed) might walks were pleasant, and the country, as he have gone look for the lady, as you must liked to say, quite as good as Westmoreland. hunt for the other in the lobster. But M. He continued occasional contributions to should be made royal architect. What the New Monthly, especially the series of palaces he would pile! But then, what par- "Popular Fallacies;" wrote short articles in liamentary grants to make them good! Nevertheless, I like the frontispiece. The Elephant' is pleasant; and I am glad you are getting into a wider scope of subjects.

[1829, 1830.]

LETTERS TO ROBINSON, PROCTER, BARTON, WILSON,
GILMAN, WORDSWORTH, AND DYER.

the Athenæum; and a great many acrostics on the names of his friends. He had now a neighbour in Mr. Serjeant Wilde, to whom he was introduced by Mr Burney, and whom

"CHARLES LAMB.”

he held in high esteem, though Lamb cared her love: I, great good-liking. Bid us a nothing for forensic eloquence, and thought personal farewell before you see the Vatican. very little of eloquence of any kind; which, it must be confessed, when printed is the most vapid of all reading. What political interest could not excite, personal regard produced in favour of his new friend; and Lamb supplied several versified squibs and snatches of electioneering songs to grace Wilde's contests at Newark. With these slender avocations his life was dull, and only a sense of duty induced him to persist in absence from London.

The following letter was written in acknowledgment of a parcel sent to Miss Lamb, comprising (what she had expressed a wish to have) a copper coal-scoop, and a pair of elastic spectacles, accompanied by a copy of "Pamela," which having been borrowed and supposed to be lost, had been replaced by another in Lamb's library.

TO MR. H. C. ROBINSON.

"Enfield, Feb. 27th, 1829. "Dear R.,-Expectation was alert on the receipt of your strange-shaped present, while yet undisclosed from its fusc envelope. Some said, 'tis a viol da Gamba, others pronounced it a fiddle; I, myself, hoped it a liqueur case, pregnant with eau-de-vie and such odd nectar. When midwifed into daylight, the gossips were at a loss to pronounce upon its species. Most took it for a marrow-spoon, an applescoop, a banker's guinea-shovel; at length its true scope appeared, its drift, to save the back-bone of my sister stooping to scuttles. A philanthropic intent, borrowed, no doubt, from some of the Colliers. You save people's backs one way, and break 'em again by loads of obligation. The spectacles are delicate and Vulcanian. No lighter texture than their steel did the cuckoldy blacksmith frame to catch Mrs. Vulcan and the Captain in. For ungalled forehead, as for back unbursten, you have Mary's thanks. Marry, for my own peculium of obligation, 'twas supererogatory. A second part of Pamela was enough in conscience. Two Pamelas in a house are too much, without two Mr. B.'s to reward 'em.

"Mary, who is handselling her new aerial perspectives upon a pair of old worsted stockings trod out in Cheshunt lanes, sends

The following letter to his friend, who so prosperously combines conveyancing with poetry, is a fair sample of Lamb's elaborate and good-natured fictions. It is hardly necessary to say, that the reference to a coolness between him and two of his legal friends, is part of the fiction.

TO MR. PROCTER.

"Jan. 19th, 1829. "My dear Procter,-I am ashamed not to have taken the drift of your pleasant letter, which I find to have been pure invention. But jokes are not suspected in Boeotian Enfield. We are plain people, and our talk is of corn, and cattle, and Waltham markets. Besides, I was a little out of sorts when I received it. The fact is, I am involved in a case which has fretted me to death, and I have no reliance except on you to extricate me. I am sure you will give me your best legal advice, having no professional friend besides, but Robinson and Talfourd, with neither of whom, at present, I am on the best of terms. My brother's widow left a will, made during the lifetime of my brother, in which I am named sole executor, by which she bequeaths forty acres of arable property, which it seems she held under covert baron, unknown to my brother, to the heirs of the body of Elizabeth Dowden, her married daughter by a first husband, in fee simple, recoverable by fine; invested property, mind, for there is the difficulty; subject to leet and quit-rent; in short, worded in the most guarded terms, to shut out the property from Isaac Dowden, the husband. Intelligence has just come of the death of this person in India, where he made a will, entailing this property (which seemed entangled enough already) to the heirs of his body, that should not be born of his wife, for it seems by the law in India, natural children can recover. They have put the cause into Exchequer process here, removed by certiorari from the native courts; and the question is, whether I should, as executor, try the cause here, or again re-remove it to the Supreme Sessions at Bangalore, which I understand I can, or

TO MR. PROCTER.

"Jan. 22nd, 1829.

plead a hearing before the Privy Council inserted in one of them. He thus complains here. As it involves all the little property of these grievances in a letter which he of Elizabeth Dowden, I am anxious to take wrote on the marriage of the daughter of a the fittest steps, and what may be least friend to a great theoretical chemist. expensive. For God's sake assist me, for the case is so embarrassed that it deprives me of sleep and appetite. M. Burney thinks there is a case like it in chap. 170, sec. 5, in 'Fearn's Contingent Remainders.' Pray read it over with him dispassionately, and let me have the result. The complexity lies in the questionable power of the husband to alienate in usum; enfeoffments whereof he was only collaterally seised, &c.

is mar

"Rumour tells us that Miss ried. Who is ? Have I seen him at Montacutes? I hear he is a great chemist. I am sometimes chemical myself. A thought strikes me with horror. Pray heaven he may not have done it for the sake of trying chemical experiments upon her, young female subjects are so scarce. An't you glad about Burke's case! We may set off the Scotch murders against the Scotch novels. Hare, the Great Unhanged.

I have no conjecture about what the present world calls delicacy. I thought 'Rosamund Gray' was a pretty modest thing. Hessey

"I had another favour to beg, which is the beggarliest of beggings. A few lines of verse for a young friend's album (six will be enough). M. Burney will tell you who she is I want 'em for. A girl of gold. Six lines "M. B. is richly worth your knowing. He | -make 'em eight-signed Barry Cis on the top scale of my friendship ladder, They need not be very good, as I chiefly want on which an angel or two is still climbing, 'em as a foil to mine. But I shall be seriously and some, alas! descending. Did you see a obliged by any refuse scrap. We are in the sonnet of mine in Blackwood's last? Curious last ages of the world, when St. Paul pro- construction! Elaborata facilitas! And now phesied that women should be 'headstrong, I'll tell. 'Twas written for 'The Gem,' but lovers of their own wills, having albums.' I the editors declined it, on the plea that it fled hither to escape the albumean persecution, would shock all mothers; so they published and had not been in my new house twenty-The Widow' instead. I am born out of time. four hours, when the daughter of the next house came in with a friend's album to beg a contribution, and the following day intimated she had one of her own. Two more have sprung up since. If I take the wings of the morning and fly unto the uttermost parts of the earth, there will albums be. New Holland has albums. But the age is to be complied with. M. B. will tell you the sort of girl I request the ten lines for. Somewhat of a pensive cast, what you admire. The lines may come before the law question, as that cannot be determined before Hilary Term, and I wish your deliberate judgment on that. The other may be flimsy and superficial. And if you have not burnt your returned letter, pray resend it me, as a monumental token of my stupidity."

Lamb was as unfortunate in his communications with the annuals, as unhappy in the importunities of the fair owners of albums. His favourite pieces were omitted; and a piece not his, called "The Widow," was, by a license of friendship, which Lamb forgave,

assures me that the world would not bear it.

I have lived to grow into an indecent character. When my sonnet was rejected, I exclaimed, 'Hang the age, I will write for antiquity!"

"Erratum in sonnet.-Last line but something, for tender, read tend. The Scotch do not know our law terms; but I find some remains of honest, plain, old writing lurking there still. They were not so mealy-mouthed as to refuse my verses. Maybe 'tis their oatmeal.

"Blackwood sent me 207. for the drama. Somebody cheated me out of it next day; and my new pair of breeches, just sent home, cracking at first putting on, I exclaimed, in my wrath, 'All tailors are cheats, and all men are tailors.' Then I was better.

"C. L."

The next contains Lamb's thanks for the verses he had begged for Miss Isola's album

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