The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Volume V Part 23

If you come to town by Ash Wednesday [February 6], you will certainly see Lloyd here--I expect him by that time.

My sister Mary was never in better health or spirits than now.

[Writing in June, 1799, to Robert Lloyd, Priscilla, his sister, says: "Lamb would not I think by any means be a person to take up your abode with. He is too much like yourself--he would encourage those feelings which it certainly is your duty to suppress. Your station in life--the duties which are pointed out by that rank in society which you are destined to fill--differ widely from his." When next we hear of Robert Lloyd he has returned to Birmingham, where his father soon afterwards bought him a partners.h.i.+p in a bookselling and printing business.

"Col. Despard." I have not found the verses. Colonel Edward Marcus Despard, after a career that began brilliantly, was imprisoned in the spring of 1798 and executed for High Treason in 1803.

The rhymed pa.s.sage from _John Woodvil_ is that which is best known.

Hazlitt relates that G.o.dwin was so taken with it when he first read it that he asked every one he met to tell him the author and play, and at last applied to Lamb himself.]

LETTER 44

CHARLES LAMB TO ROBERT SOUTHEY March 15th, 1799.

Dear Southey,--I have received your little volume, for which I thank you, though I do not entirely approve of this sort of intercourse, where the presents are all one side. I have read the last Eclogue again with great pleasure. It hath gained considerably by abridgment, and now I think it wants nothing but enlargement. You will call this one of tyrant Procrustes' criticisms, to cut and pull so to his own standard; but the old lady is so great a favourite with me, I want to hear more of her; and of "Joanna" you have given us still less. But the picture of the rustics leaning over the bridge, and the old lady travelling abroad on a summer evening to see her garden watered, are images so new and true, that I decidedly prefer this "Ruin'd Cottage" to any poem in the book.

Indeed I think it the only one that will bear comparison with your "Hymn to the Penates" in a former volume.

I compare dissimilar things, as one would a rose and a star for the pleasure they give us, or as a child soon learns to choose between a cake and a rattle; for dissimilars have mostly some points of comparison. The next best poem, I think, is the First Eclogue; 'tis very complete, and abounding in little pictures and realities. The remainder Eclogues, excepting only the "Funeral," I do not greatly admire. I miss _one_, which had at least as good a t.i.tle to publication as the "Witch,"

or the "Sailor's Mother." You call'd it the "Last of the Family." The "Old Woman of Berkeley" comes next; in some humours I would give it the preference above any. But who the devil is Matthew of Westminster? You are as familiar with these antiquated monastics, as Swedenborg, or, as his followers affect to call him, the Baron, with his invisibles. But you have raised a very comic effect out of the true narrative of Matthew of Westminster. 'Tis surprising with how little addition you have been able to convert with so little alteration his incidents, meant for terror, into circ.u.mstances and food for the spleen. The Parody is _not_ so successful; it has one famous line indeed, which conveys the finest death-bed image I ever met with:

"The doctor whisper'd the nurse, and the surgeon knew what he said."

But the offering the bride three times bears not the slightest a.n.a.logy or proportion to the fiendish noises three times heard! In "Jaspar," the circ.u.mstance of the great light is very affecting. But I had heard you mention it before. The "Rose" is the only insipid piece in the volume; it hath neither thorns nor sweetness, and, besides, sets all chronology and probability at defiance.

"Cousin Margaret," you know, I like. The allusions to the "Pilgrim's Progress" are particularly happy, and harmonise tacitly and delicately with old cousins and aunts. To familiar faces we do a.s.sociate familiar scenes and accustomed objects; but what hath Apollidon and his sea-nymphs to do in these affairs? Apollyon I could have borne, though he stands for the devil; but who is Apollidon? I think you are too apt to conclude faintly, with some cold moral, as in the end of the poem called "The Victory"--

"Be thou her comforter, who art the widow's friend;"

a single common-place line of comfort, which bears no proportion in weight or number to the many lines which describe suffering. This is to convert religion into mediocre feelings, which should burn, and glow, and tremble. A moral should be wrought into the body and soul, the matter and tendency, of a poem, not tagged to the end, like a "G.o.d send the good s.h.i.+p into harbour," at the conclusion of our bills of lading.

The finis.h.i.+ng of the "Sailor" is also imperfect. Any dissenting minister may say and do as much.

These remarks, I know, are crude and unwrought; but I do not lay claim to much accurate thinking. I never judge system-wise of things, but fasten upon particulars. After all, there is a great deal in the book that I must, for time, leave _unmentioned_, to deserve my thanks for its own sake, as well as for the friendly remembrances implied in the gift.

I again return you my thanks.

Pray present my love to Edith. C. L.

[Southey's little volume was Vol. II. of the second edition of his _Poems_, published in 1799. The last of the English Eclogues included in it was "The Ruined Cottage," slightly altered from the version referred to in letter 38. The "Hymn to the Penates" brought the first volume of this edition to a close. The first Eclogue was "The Old Mansion House."

"The Old Woman of Berkeley" was called "A Ballad showing how an Old Woman rode double and who rode before her." It was preceded by a long quotation in Latin from Matthew of Westminster. Matthew of Westminster is the imaginary name given to the unknown authors of a chronicle called _Flares Historiarum_, belonging probably to the fifteenth century. The Parody was "The Surgeon's Warning," which begins with the two lines that Lamb prints as one:--

The Doctor whisper'd to the Nurse, And the Surgeon knew what he said.

"The Rose" was blank verse, addressed to Edith Southey. "Cousin Margaret" was a "Metrical Letter Written from London," in which there are allusions to Bunyan. The reference to Apollidon is explained by these lines:--

The Sylphs should waft us to some goodly isle, Like that where whilome old Apollidon Built up his blameless spell.]

LETTER 45

CHARLES LAMB TO ROBERT SOUTHEY

March 2Oth, 1799.

I am hugely pleased with your "Spider," "your old freemason," as you call him. The three first stanzas are delicious; they seem to me a compound of Burns and Old Quarles, those kind of home-strokes, where more is felt than strikes the ear; a terseness, a jocular pathos, which makes one feel in laughter. The measure, too, is novel and pleasing. I could almost wonder Rob. Burns in his lifetime never stumbled upon it.

The fourth stanza is less striking, as being less original. The fifth falls off. It has no felicity of phrase, no old-fas.h.i.+oned phrase or feeling.

"Young hopes, and love's delightful dreams,"

savour neither of Burns nor Quarles; they seem more like shreds of many a modern sentimental sonnet. The last stanza hath nothing striking in it, if I except the two concluding lines, which are Burns all over. I wish, if you concur with me, these things could be looked to. I am sure this is a kind of writing, which comes tenfold better recommended to the heart, comes there more like a neighbour or familiar, than thousands of Hamuels and Zillahs and Madelons. I beg you will send me the "Holly-tree," if it at all resemble this, for it must please me. I have never seen it. I love this sort of poems, that open a new intercourse with the most despised of the animal and insect race. I think this vein may be further opened; Peter Pindar hath very prettily apostrophised a fly; Burns hath his mouse and his louse; Coleridge, less successfully, hath made overtures of intimacy to a jacka.s.s, therein only following at unresembling distance Sterne and greater Cervantes. Besides these, I know of no other examples of breaking down the part.i.tion between us and our "poor earth-born companions." It is sometimes revolting to be put in a track of feeling by other people, not one's own immediate thoughts, else I would persuade you, if I could (I am in earnest), to commence a series of these animal poems, which might have a tendency to rescue some poor creatures from the antipathy of mankind. Some thoughts come across me;--for instance--to a rat, to a toad, to a c.o.c.kchafer, to a mole--People bake moles alive by a slow oven-fire to cure consumption.

Rats are, indeed, the most despised and contemptible parts of G.o.d's earth. I killed a rat the other day by punching him to pieces, and feel a weight of blood upon me to this hour. Toads you know are made to fly, and tumble down and crush all to pieces. c.o.c.kchafers are old sport; then again to a worm, with an apostrophe to anglers, those patient tyrants, meek inflictors of pangs intolerable, cool devils; to an owl; to all snakes, with an apology for their poison; to a cat in boots or bladders.

Your own fancy, if it takes a fancy to these hints, will suggest many more. A series of such poems, suppose them accompanied with plates descriptive of animal torments, cooks roasting lobsters, fishmongers crimping skates, &c., &c., would take excessively. I will willingly enter into a partners.h.i.+p in the plan with you: I think my heart and soul would go with it too--at least, give it a thought. My plan is but this minute come into my head; but it strikes me instantaneously as something new, good and useful, full of pleasure and full of moral. If old Quarles and Wither could live again, we would invite them into our firm. Burns hath done his part. I the other day threw off an extempore epitaph on Ensign Peac.o.c.k of the 3rd Regt. of the Royal East India Volunteers, who like other boys in this scarlet tainted age was ambitious of playing at soldiers, but dying in the first flash of his valour was at the particular instance of his relations buried with military honours! like any veteran scarr'd or chopt from Blenheim or Ramilies. (He was buried in sash and gorget.)

MARMOR LOQUITUR

He lies a Volunteer so fine, Who died of a decline, As you or I, may do one day; Reader, think of this, I pray; And I numbly hope you'll drop a tear For my poor Royal Volunteer.

He was as brave as brave could be, n.o.body was so brave as he; He would have died in Honor's bed, Only he died at home instead.

Well may the Royal Regiment swear, They never had such a Volunteer.

But whatsoever they may say, Death is a man that will have his way: Tho' he was but an ensign in this world of pain; In the next we hope he'll be a captain.

And without meaning to make any reflection on his mentals, He begg'd to be buried in regimentals.

Sed hae sunt lamentabilis nugae--But 'tis as good as some epitaphs you and I have read together in Christ-Church-yard.

Poor Sam. Le Grice! I am afraid the world, and the camp, and the university, have spoilt him among them. 'Tis certain he had at one time a strong capacity of turning out something better. I knew him, and that not long since, when he had a most warm heart. I am ashamed of the indifference I have sometimes felt towards him. I think the devil is in one's heart. I am under obligations to that man for the warmest friends.h.i.+p and heartiest sympathy, even for an agony of sympathy exprest both by word and deed, and tears for me, when I was in my greatest distress. But I have forgot that! as, I fear, he has nigh forgot the awful scenes which were before his eyes when he served the office of a comforter to me. No service was too mean or troublesome for him to perform. I can't think what but the devil, "that old spider," could have suck'd my heart so dry of its sense of all grat.i.tude. If he does come in your way, Southey, fail not to tell him that I retain a most affectionate remembrance of his old friendliness, and an earnest wish to resume our intercourse. In this I am serious. I cannot recommend him to your society, because I am afraid whether he be quite worthy of it. But I have no right to dismiss him from _my_ regard. He was at one time, and in the worst of times, my own familiar friend, and great comfort to me then. I have known him to play at cards with my father, meal-times excepted, literally all day long, in long days too, to save me from being teased by the old man, when I was not able to bear it.

G.o.d bless him for it, and G.o.d bless you, Southey.

C. L.

[Peter Pindar (Dr. John Wolcot) has an ode "To a Fly, taken out of a Bowl of Punch." He also wrote "The Lousiad."

"Poor earth-born companions." From Burns' "Lines to a Mouse," 2nd Stanza, line 5.

"Toads are made to fly." Filliping the toad was an old pastime. A toad was placed on one end of a piece of wood, laid crosswise over a stone.

The other end was struck with a beetle (_i.e._, a mallet), and the toad flew into the air. Falstaff says: "Fillip me with a three-man beetle."

As to worms and fishermen, the late Mrs. Coe, who as a girl had known Lamb at Widford, told me that he could rarely, if ever, be tempted to join the anglers. Affixing the worm was too much for him. "Barbarous, barbarous," he used to say.

Lamb's project for a series of animal poems has to some extent been carried out by a living poet, Mr. A. C. Benson. Neither Lamb nor Southey pursued it.

We met Sam Le Grice in the letter of October 3, 1796. To what escapade Lamb refers I do not know, but he was addicted to folly. It was Sam Le Grice of whom Leigh Hunt in his _Autobiography_ tells the excellent tale that he excused himself to his master for not having performed a task, by the remark that he had had a "lethargy."

In April of this year died John Lamb, the father. Charles Lamb probably at once moved from 45 Chapel Street to No. 36, where Mary Lamb joined him.