The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Volume V Part 92

"Christabel's father."

Each matin bell, the Baron saith, Knells us back to a world of death.

Part II., lines 1 and 2.

"W. H. goes on lecturing." Hazlitt was delivering a course of lectures on the English poets at the Surrey Inst.i.tution.

"'Gentleman' said I." On another occasion Lamb, asked to give a toast, gave the best he knew--woodc.o.c.k on toast. See also his toasts at Haydon's dinner. I do not know when or why the dinner was given to him; perhaps after the failure of "Mr. H."

"Gentleman concern'd in the Stamp office." See note to the preceding letter.

"Our red letter days." Lamb repeats the complaint in his _Elia_ essay "Oxford in the Vacation." In 1820, I see from the Directory, the Accountant's Office, where Lamb had his desk, kept sacred only five red-letter days, where, ten years earlier, it had observed many.

"Mr. Monkhouse," Thomas Monkhouse, a friend of the Wordsworths and of Lamb. He was at Haydon's dinner.

Here should come a note from Lamb to Charles and James Ollier, dated May 28, 1818, which apparently accompanied final proofs of Lamb's _Works_.

Lamb remarks, "There is a Sonnet to come in by way of dedication." This would be that to Martin Burney at the beginning of Vol. II. The _Works_ were published in two volumes with a beautiful dedication to Coleridge (see Vol. IV. of the present edition). Charles Ollier (1788-1859) was a friend of Leigh Hunt's, for whom he published, as well as for Sh.e.l.ley.

He also brought out Keats' first volume. The Olliers' address was The Library, Vere Street, Oxford Street.]

LETTER 243

CHARLES LAMB TO CHARLES AND JAMES OLLIER [P.M. June 18, 1818.]

Dear Sir (whichever opens it)

I am going off to Birmingh'm. I find my books, whatever faculty of selling they may have (I wish they had more for {_your/my_} sake), are admirably adapted for giving away. You have been bounteous. SIX more and I shall have satisfied all just claims. Am I taking too great a liberty in begging you to send 4 as follows, and reserve 2 for me when I come home? That will make 31. Thirty-one times 12 is 372 s.h.i.+llings, Eighteen pounds twelve s.h.i.+llings!!!--but here are my friends, to whom, if you _could_ transmit them, as I shall be away a month, you will greatly oblige the obliged

C. LAMB.

Mr. Ayrton, James Street, Buckingham Gate Mr. Alsager, Suffolk Street East, Southwark, by Horsemonger Lane and in one parcel directed to R. Southey, Esq., Keswick, c.u.mberland one for R. S.; and one for W'm. Wordsworth, Esq'r.

If you will be kind enough simply to write "from the Author" in all 4--you will still further etc.--

Either Longman or Murray is in the frequent habit of sending books to Southey and will take charge of the Parcel. It will be as well to write in at the beginning thus

R. Southey Esq. from the Author.

W. Wordsworth Esq. from the Author.

Then, if I can find the remaining 2, left for me at Russell St when I return, rather than encroach any more on the heap, I will engage to make no more new friends ad infinitum, YOURSELVES being the last.

Yours truly C. L.

I think Southey will give us a lift in that d.a.m.n'd Quarterly. I meditate an attack upon that Cobler Gifford, which shall appear immediately after any favourable mention which S. may make in the Quarterly. It can't in decent _grat.i.tude_ appear _before_.

[We know nothing of Lamb's visit to Birmingham. He is hardly likely to have stayed with any of the Lloyd family. The attack on Gifford was probably the following sonnet, printed in _The Examiner_ for October 3 and 4, 1819:--

ST. CRISPIN TO MR. GIFFORD All unadvised, and in an evil hour, Lured by aspiring thoughts, my son, you daft The lowly labours of the Gentle Craft For learned toils, which blood and spirits sour.

All things, dear pledge, are not in all men's power; The wiser sort of shrub affects the ground; And sweet content of mind is oftener found In cobbler's parlour, than in critic's bower.

The sorest work is what doth cross the grain; And better to this hour you had been plying The obsequious awl with well-waxed finger flying, Than ceaseless thus to till a thankless vein; Still teazing Muses, which are still denying; Making a stretching-leather of your brain.]

LETTER 244

CHARLES LAMB TO ROBERT SOUTHEY

Monday, Oct. 26th, 1818.

Dear Southey,--I am pleased with your friendly remembrances of my little things. I do not know whether I have done a silly thing or a wise one; but it is of no great consequence. I run no risk, and care for no censures. My bread and cheese is stable as the foundations of Leadenhall Street, and if it hold out as long as the "foundations of our empire in the East," I shall do pretty well. You and W.W. should have had your presentation copies more ceremoniously sent; but I had no copies when I was leaving town for my holidays, and rather than delay, commissioned my bookseller to send them thus nakedly. By not hearing from W.W. or you, I began to be afraid Murray had not sent them. I do not see S.T.C. so often as I could wish. He never comes to me; and though his host and hostess are very friendly, it puts me out of my way to go see one person at another person's house. It was the same when he resided at Morgan's.

Not but they also were more than civil; but after all one feels so welcome at one's own house. Have you seen poor Miss Betham's "Vignettes"? Some of them, the second particularly, "To Lucy," are sweet and good as herself, while she was herself. She is in some measure abroad again. I am _better than I deserve_ to be. The hot weather has been such a treat! Mary joins in this little corner in kindest remembrances to you all.

C.L.

[The letter treats of Lamb's _Works_, just published. Matilda Betham followed up _The Lay of Marie_ with a volume ent.i.tled _Vignettes_.

"I am _better than I deserve_." Why Lamb underlined these words I do not know, but it may have been a quotation from Coleridge. Carlyle in his account of his visit to Coleridge at Highgate (in the _Life of John Sterling_) puts it into Coleridge's mouth in connection with a lukewarm cup of tea. Although lukewarm it was better, he said, than he deserved.

That was later, but it may have been a saying of which Coleridge was fond.]

LETTER 245

CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE Dec. 24th, 1818.

My dear Coleridge,--I have been in a state of incessant hurry ever since the receipt of your ticket. It found me incapable of attending you, it being the night of Kenney's new comedy[1] ... You know my local apt.i.tudes at such a time; I have been a thorough rendezvous for all consultations. My head begins to clear up a little; but it has had bells in it. Thank you kindly for your ticket, though the mournful prognostic which accompanies it certainly renders its permanent pretensions less marketable; but I trust to hear many a course yet. You excepted Christmas week, by which I understood _next week_; I thought Christmas week was that which Christmas Sunday ushered in. We are sorry it never lies in your way to come to us; but, dear Mahomet, we will come to you.

Will it be convenient to all the good people at Highgate, if we take a stage up, _not next Sunday_, but the following, viz., 3rd January, 1819--shall we be too late to catch a skirt of the old out-goer;--how the years crumble from under us! We shall hope to see you before then; but, if not, let us know if _then_ will be convenient. Can we secure a coach home?

Believe me ever yours, C. LAMB.

I have but one holiday, which is Christmas-day itself nakedly: no pretty garnish and fringes of St. John's day, Holy Innocents &c., that used to bestud it all around in the calendar. _Improbe labor!_ I write six hours every day in this candle-light fog-den at Leadheall.

[Footnote 1: Canon Ainger supplies the four missing words: "which has utterly failed."]

[The ticket was for a new course of lectures, either on the History of Philosophy, or Six Plays of Shakespeare, both of which began in December, 1818, and continued into 1819.

Kenney's new farce was "A Word for the Ladies," produced at Covent Garden on December 17.

"To catch a skirt of the old out-goer." A reference to Coleridge's line--

I saw the skirts of the departing year.

Somewhere at this point should come a delightful letter from Lamb to John Chambers. John Chambers was the brother of Charles Chambers. He was a colleague of Lamb's at the India House (see the _Elia_ essay "The Superannuated Man"), and survived until 1872. It was to John Chambers that Lamb made the remark that he (Lamb) was probably the only man in England who had never worn boots and never ridden a horse. The letter, which is concerned with the peculiarities of India House clerks, is famous for the remark on Tommy Bye, a fellow-clerk at the India House, that "his sonnets are most like Petrarch of any foreign poet, or what we may suppose Petrarch would have written if Petrarch had been born a fool." We meet Bye again in the next letter but one to Wordsworth. I can find no trace of his sonnets in book form. Possibly they were never published.]