The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Volume VI Part 36

LETTER 386

CHARLES LAMB TO CHARLES OLLIER

Colebrook Cottage, Colebrook Row, Tuesday [early 1826].

Dear Ollier,--I send you two more proverbs, which will be the last of this batch, unless I send you one more by the post on THURSDAY; none will come after that day; so do not leave any open room in that case.

Hood sups with me to-night. Can you come and eat grouse? 'Tis not often I offer at delicacies.

Yours most kindly, C. LAMB.

LETTER 387

CHARLES LAMB TO CHARLES OLLIER

January, 1826.

Dear O.,--We lamented your absence last night. The grouse were piquant, the backs incomparable. You must come in to cold mutton and oysters some evening. Name your evening; though I have qualms at the distance. Do you never leave early? My head is very queerish, and indisposed for much company; but we will get Hood, that half Hogarth, to meet you. The sc.r.a.p I send should come in AFTER the "Rising with the Lark."

Yours truly.

Colburn, I take it, pays postages.

[The sc.r.a.p was the Fallacy "That we Should Lie Down with the Lamb,"

which has perhaps the rarest quality of the series.

Here perhaps should come two further notes to Ollier, referring to some articles on Chinese jests by Manning.

Here should come a letter to Mr. Hudson dated February 1, 1826, recommending a nurse for a mental case. Given in the Boston Bibliophile edition.]

LETTER 388

CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON

[P.M. February 7, 1826.]

My kind remembrances to your daughter and A.K. always.

Dear B.B.--I got your book not more than five days ago, so am not so negligent as I must have appeared to you with a fortnight's sin upon my shoulders. I tell you with sincerity that I think you have completely succeeded in what you intended to do. What is poetry may be disputed.

These are poetry to me at least. They are concise, pithy, and moving.

Uniform as they are, and unhistorify'd, I read them thro' at two sittings without one sensation approaching to tedium. I do not know that among your many kind presents of this nature this is not my favourite volume. The language is never lax, and there is a unity of design and feeling, you wrote them _with love_--to avoid the c.o.x-_combical_ phrase, con amore. I am particularly pleased with the "Spiritual Law," page 34-5. It reminded me of Quarles, and Holy Mr. Herbert, as Izaak Walton calls him: the two best, if not only, of our devotional poets, tho' some prefer Watts, and some _Tom Moore_.

I am far from well or in my right spirits, and shudder at pen and ink work. I poke out a monthly crudity for Colburn in his magazine, which I call "Popular Fallacies," and periodically crush a proverb or two, setting up my folly against the wisdom of nations. Do you see the "New Monthly"?

One word I must object to in your little book, and it recurs more than once--FADELESS is no genuine compound; loveless is, because love is a noun as well as verb, but what is a fade?--and I do not quite like whipping the Greek drama upon the back of "Genesis," page 8. I do not like praise handed in by disparagement: as I objected to a side censure on Byron, etc., in the lines on Bloomfield: with these poor cavils excepted, your verses are without a flaw. C. LAMB.

[Barton's new book was _Devotional Verses: founded on, and ill.u.s.trative of Select Texts of Scripture_, 1826. See the Appendix for "The Spiritual Law."

"Holy Mr. Herbert." Writing to Lady Beaumont in 1826 Coleridge says: "My dear old friend Charles Lamb and I differ widely (and in point of taste and moral feeling this is a rare occurrence) in our estimate and liking of George Herbert's sacred poems. He greatly prefers Quarles--nay, he dislikes Herbert."

Barton whipped the Greek drama on the back of Genesis in the following stanza, referring to Abraham's words before preparing to sacrifice Isaac:--

Brief colloquy, yet more sublime, To every feeling heart, Than all the boast of cla.s.sic time, Or Drama's proudest art: Far, far beyond the Grecian stage, Or Poesy's most glowing page.

For Lamb's reference to Byron, see above.]

LETTER 389

CHARLES LAMB TO CHARLES OLLIER

[P.M. March 16, 1826.]

D'r Ollier if not too late, pray omit the last paragraph in "Actor's Religion," which is clumsy. It will then end with the word Mugletonian.

I shall not often trouble you in this manner, but I am suspicious of this article as lame.

C. LAMB.

["The Religion of Actors" was printed in the _New Monthly Magazine_ for April, 1826. The essay ends at "Muggletonian." See Vol. I. of this edition.]

LETTER 390

CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON

[P.M. March 20, 1826.]

Dear B.B.--You may know my letters by the paper and the folding. For the former, I live on sc.r.a.ps obtained in charity from an old friend whose stationary is a permanent perquisite; for folding, I shall do it neatly when I learn to tye my neckcloths. I surprise most of my friends by writing to them on ruled paper, as if I had not got past pothooks and hangers. Sealing wax, I have none on my establishment. Wafers of the coa.r.s.est bran supply its place. When my Epistles come to be weighed with Pliny's, however superior to the Roman in delicate irony, judicious reflexions, etc., his gilt post will bribe over the judges to him. All the time I was at the E.I.H. I never mended a pen; I now cut 'em to the stumps, marring rather than mending the primitive goose quill. I cannot bear to pay for articles I used to get for nothing. When Adam laid out his first penny upon nonpareils at some stall in Mesopotamos, I think it went hard with him, reflecting upon his old goodly orchard, where he had so many for nothing. When I write to a Great man, at the Court end, he opens with surprise upon a naked note, such as Whitechapel people interchange, with no sweet degrees of envelope: I never inclosed one bit of paper in another, nor understand the rationale of it. Once only I seald with borrow'd wax, to set Walter Scott a wondering, sign'd with the imperial quarterd arms of England, which my friend Field gives in compliment to his descent in the female line from O. Cromwell. It must have set his antiquarian curiosity upon watering. To your questions upon the currency, I refer you to Mr. Robinson's last speech, where, if you can find a solution, I cannot. I think this tho' the best ministry we ever stumbled upon. Gin reduced four s.h.i.+llings in the gallon, wine 2 s.h.i.+llings in the quart. This comes home to men's minds and bosoms. My tirade against visitors was not meant _particularly_ at you or A.K. I scarce know what I meant, for I do not just now feel the grievance. I wanted to make an _article_. So in another thing I talkd of somebody's _insipid wife_, without a correspondent object in my head: and a good lady, a friend's wife, whom I really _love_ (don't startle, I mean in a licit way) has looked shyly on me ever since. The blunders of personal application are ludicrous. I send out a character every now and then, on purpose to exercise the ingenuity of my friends. "Popular Fallacies"

will go on; that word concluded is an erratum, I suppose, for continued.

I do not know how it got stuff'd in there. A little thing without name will also be printed on the Religion of the Actors, but it is out of your way, so I recommend you, with true Author's hypocrisy, to skip it.

We are about to sit down to Roast beef, at which we could wish A.K., B.B., and B.B.'s pleasant daughter to be humble partakers. So much for my hint at visitors, which was scarcely calculated for droppers in from Woodbridge. The sky does not drop such larks every day.

My very kindest wishes to you all three, with my sister's best love.

C. LAMB.

["Mr. Robinson's last speech." Frederick John Robinson, afterwards Earl of Ripon, then Chancellor of the Exchequer under the Earl of Liverpool.

The Government had decided to check the use of paper-money by stopping the issue of notes for less than 5; and Robinson had made a speech on the subject on February 10. The motion was carried, but to some extent was compromised. It was Robinson who, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, found the money for building the new British Museum and purchasing Angerstein's pictures as the beginning of the National Gallery.

"My tirade against visitors"--the Popular Fallacy "That Home is Home,"

in the _New Monthly Magazine_ for March.