if then will be convenient. Can we secure a he would have call'd for the bull for a relief. 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 fogden at Leadenhall." Neither could Lycidas, or the Chorics (how do you like the word?) of Samson Agonistes have been written with two inks. Your couplets with points, epilogues to Mr. H.'s, &c., might be even benefited by the twyfount, where one line (the second) is for point and the first for rhyme. I think the alternation would assist, like a mould. maintain it, you could not have written your stanzas on pre-existence with two inks. Try another; and Rogers, with his silver standish, having one ink only, I will bet my 'Ode on Tobacco,' against the 'Pleasures of Memory,' I In the next year [1819] Lamb was greatly pleased by the dedication to him of Words--and 'Hope,' too, shall put more fervour of worth's poem of "The Waggoner," which Wordsworth had read to him in MS. thirteen years before. On receipt of the little volume, Lamb acknowledged it as follows: TO MR. WORDSWORTH. "June 7th, 1819. "My dear Wordsworth, — You cannot imagine how proud we are here of the dedication. We read it twice for once that we do the poem. I mean all through; yet 'Benjamin' is no common favourite; there is a spirit of beautiful tolerance in it; it is as good as it was in 1806; and it will be as good in 1829, if our dim eyes shall be awake to peruse it. Methinks there is a kind of shadowing affinity between the subject of the narrative and the subject of the dedication; but I will not enter into personal themes, else, substituting * * * * * * * * * for Ben, and the Honourable United Company of Merchants trading to the East Indies, for the master of the misused team, it might seem, by no far-fetched analogy, to point its dim warnings hitherward; but I reject the omen, especially as its import seems to have been diverted to another victim. "I will never write another letter with alternate inks. You cannot imagine how it cramps the flow of the style. I can conceive, Pindar (I do not mean to compare myself to him), by the command of Hiero, the Sicilian tyrant (was not he the tyrant of some place? fie on my neglect of history); I can conceive him by command of Hiero or Perillus set down to pen an Isthmian or Nemean panegyric in lines, alternate red and black. I maintain he couldn't have done it; it would have been a strait-laced torture to his muse; enthusiasm into the same subject than you can with your two; he shall do it stans pede in uno, as it were. "The Waggoner' is very ill put up in boards, at least it seems to me always to open at the dedication; but that is a mechanical fault. I re-read the White Doe of Rylstone;' the title should be always written at length, as Mary Sabilla N-, a very nice woman of our acquaintance, always signs hers at the bottom of the shortest note. Mary told her, if her name had been Mary Ann, she would have signed M. A. N————, or M. only, dropping the A.; which makes me think, with some other trifles, that she understands something of human nature. My pen goes galloping on most rhapsodically, glad to have escaped the bondage of two inks. "Manning has just sent it home, and it came as fresh to me as the immortal creature it speaks of. M. sent it home with a note, having this passage in it: I cannot help writing to you while I am reading Wordsworth's poem. I am got into the third canto, and say that it raises my opinion of him very much indeed.* 'Tis broad, noble, poetical, with a masterly scanning of human actions, absolutely above common readers. What a manly (implied) interpretation of (bad) partyactions, as trampling the Bible, &c.,' and so he goes on. "I do not know which I like best, prologue (the latter part especially) to P. Bell, or the epilogue to Benjamin. Yes, I tell stories; I do know I like the last best; fourteen years behind in his knowledge of who has or has “N. B. — M., from his peregrinations, is twelve or not written good verse of late." and the 'Waggoner' altogether is a pleasanter | from bed. He came staggering under his remembrance to me than the Itinerant.' If double burthen, like trees in Java, bearing at it were not, the page before the first page would and ought to make it so. "Had I three inks, I would invoke him! Talfourd has written a most kind review of J. Woodvil, &c., in the Champion.' He is your most zealous admirer, in solitude and in crowds. H. Crabb Robinson gives me any dear prints that I happen to admire, and I love him for it and for other things. Alsager shall have his copy, but at present I have lent it for a day only, not choosing to part with my own. Mary's love. How do you all do, amanuenses both - marital and sororal? C. LAMB." poor once blossom, fruit, and falling fruit, as I have heard you or some other traveller tell, with his face literally as blue as the bluest firmament; some wretched calico that he had mopped his poor oozy front with had rendered up its native dye, and the devil a bit would he consent to wash it, but swore it was characteristic, for he was going to the sale of indigo, and set up a laugh which I did not think the lungs of mortal man were competent to. It was like a thousand people laughing, or the Goblin Page. He imagined afterwards that the whole office had been laughing at him, so strange did his own sounds strike upon his nonsensorium. But has laughed his last laugh, and awoke the next day to find himself reduced from an abused income of 6007. per annum to onesixth of the sum, after thirty-six years' tolerably good service. The quality of mercy was not strained in his behalf; the gentle dews dropt not on him from heaven. It just came across me that I was writing to Canton. Will you drop in to-morrow night? Fanny Kelly is coming, if she does not cheat us. Mrs. Gold is well, but proves 'uncoined,' as the lovers about Wheathamstead would say. "I have not had such a quiet half hour to sit down to a quiet letter for many years. I have not been interrupted above four times. I wrote a letter the other day, in alternate lines, black ink and red, and you cannot think how it chilled the flow of ideas. Next This is a fragment of a blank verse poem Monday is Whit-Monday. What a reflection! which I once meditated, but got no further. Twelve years ago, and I should have kept The E. I. II. has been thrown into a quan- that and the following holiday in the fields dary by the strange phenomenon of a Maying. All of those pretty pastoral whom I have known man and delights are over. This dead, everlasting mad-man twenty-seven years, he being elder dead desk, how it weighs the spirit of a here than myself by nine years and more. gentleman down! This dead wood of the He was always a pleasant, gossiping, half- desk, instead of your living trees! But then headed, muzzy, dozing, dreaming, walk-about, again, I hate the Joskins, a name for Hertinoffensive chap; a little too fond of the fordshire bumpkins. Each state of life has creature; who isn't at times? but its inconvenience; but then again, mine has had not brains to work off an over-night's surfeit by ten o'clock next morning, and unfortunately, in he wandered the other morning drunk with last night, and with a superfoetation of drink taken in since he set out * See "Mackery End, in Hertfordshire," Essays of Elia, p. 100,- for a charming account of a visit to their cousin in the country with Mr. Baron Field. I have more than one. Not that I repine, or "A red-haired man just interrupted me. C. LAMB." The following letter, dated 25th November, 1819, is addressed to Miss Wordsworth, on Wordsworth's youngest son visiting Lamb in London. TO MISS WORDSWORTH. to hear about you some days. Perhaps it exchange this transitory world for another, will go off before your reply comes. If it or none. But again, there was a golden don't, I assure you no letter was ever wel- eagle (I do not mean that of Charing) which comer from you, from Paris or Macao. did much arride and console him. William's genius, I take it, leans a little to the figurative; for, being at play at tricktrack (a kind of minor billiard-table which we keep for smaller wights, and sometimes refresh our own mature fatigues with taking a hand at), not being able to hit a ball he had iterate aimed at, he cried out, I cannot hit that beast.' Now the balls are usually called men, but he felicitously hit upon a middle term; a term of approximation and imaginative reconciliation; a something where the two ends of the brute matter (ivory), and their human and rather violent personification into men, might meet, as I take it: illustrative of that excellent remark, in a certain preface about imagination, explaining Like a sea-beast that had crawled forth to sun himself!' Not that I accuse William Minor of hereditary plagiary, or conceive the image to have come ex traduce. Rather he seemeth to keep aloof from any source of imitation, and purposely to remain ignorant of what mighty poets have done in this kind before him; for, being asked if his father had ever been on Westminster Bridge, he answered that he did not know! "Dear Miss Wordsworth, - You will think me negligent: but I wanted to see more of Willy before I ventured to express a prediction. Till yesterday I had barely seen him — Virgilium tantum vidi,—but yesterday he gave us his small company to a bullock's heart, and I can pronounce him a lad of promise. He is no pedant, nor bookworm; so far I can answer. Perhaps he has hitherto paid too little attention to other men's inventions, preferring, like Lord Foppington, the 'natural sprouts of his own.' But he has observation, and seems thoroughly awake. I am ill at remembering other people's bon mots, but the following are a few:- Being taken over Waterloo Bridge, he remarked, that if we had no mountains, we had a fine river at least; which was a touch of the comparative; but then he added, in a strain "It is hard to discern the oak in the acorn, which augured less for his future abilities as or a temple like St. Paul's in the first stone a political economist, that he supposed they which is laid; nor can I quite prefigure what must take at least a pound a week toll. destination the genius of William Minor hath Like a curious naturalist, he inquired if the to take. Some few hints I have set down, tide did not come up a little salty. This to guide my future observations. He hath being satisfactorily answered, he put another the power of calculation, in no ordinary question, as to the flux and reflux; which degree for a chit. He combineth figures, being rather cunningly evaded than artfully solved by that she-Aristotle, Mary, who muttered something about its getting up an hour sooner and sooner every day, - he sagely replied, Then it must come to the same thing at last;' which was a speech worthy of an infant Halley! The lion in the 'Change by no means came up to his ideal standard; so impossible is it for Nature, in any of her works, to come up to the standard of a child's imagination! The whelps (lionets) he was sorry to find were dead; and, on particular inquiry, his old friend the ourang outang had gone the way of all flesh also. The grand tiger was also so ensnaring and provoking a question. In sick, and expected in no short time to the contour of skull, certainly I discern after the first boggle, rapidly; as in the tricktrack board, where the hits are figured, at first he did not perceive that 15 and 7 made 22, but by a little use he could combine 8 with 25, and 33 again with 16, which approacheth something in kind (far let me be from flattering him by saying in degree) to that of the famous American boy. I am sometimes inclined to think I perceive the future satirist in him, for he hath a subsardonic smile which bursteth out upon occasion; as when he was asked if London were as big as Ambleside; and indeed no other answer was given, or proper to be given, to tears. He went home "a gayer and a wiser man;" returned again to the theatre, whenever the healing enjoyments could be renewed there; and sought the acquaintance of the actor who had broken the melancholy spell in which he was enthralled, and had restored the pulses of his nature to their healthful beatings. The year 1820 gave Lamb an interest in Macready beyond that which he had derived from the introduction of Lloyd, arising from the power with which he animated the first production of one of his oldest friends "Virginius." Knowles had been a friend and disciple of Hazlitt from a boy; and Lamb had liked and esteemed him as a hearty companion; but he had not guessed at the extraordinary dramatic power which LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH, COLERIDGE, FIELD, WILSON, lay ready for kindling in his brain, and still AND BARTON. THE widening circle of Lamb's literary friends now embraced additional authors and actors, famous or just bursting into fame. He welcomed in the author of the "Dramatic Scenes," who chose to appear in print as Barry Cornwall, a spirit most congenial with his own in its serious moods, one whose genius he had assisted to impel towards its kindred models, the great dramatists of Elizabeth's time, and in whose success he received the first and best reward of the efforts he had made to inspire a taste for these old masters of humanity. Mr. Macready, who had just emancipated himself from the drudgery of representing the villains of tragedy, by his splendid performance of Richard, was introduced to him by his old friend Charles Lloyd, who had visited London for change of scene, under great depression of spirits. Lloyd owed a debt of gratitude to Macready which exemplified the true uses of the acted drama with a force which it would take many sermons of its stoutest opponents to reason away. A deep gloom had gradually overcast his mind, and threatened wholly to encircle it, when he was induced to look in at Covent-Garden Theatre and witness the performance of Rob Roy. The picture which he then beheld of the generous outlaw, frank, gallant, noble bearing, the air and movements, as of one "free of mountain solitudes," the touches of manly pathos and irresistible cordiality, delighted and melted him, won him from his painful introspections, and brought to him the unwonted relief of the less at the delicacy of tact with which he had unveiled the sources of the most profound affections. Lamb had almost lost his taste for acted tragedy, as the sad realities of life had pressed more nearly on him; yet he made an exception in favour of the first and happiest part of "Virginius," those paternal scenes, which stand alone in the modern drama, and which Macready informed with the fulness of a father's affection. The establishment of the "London Magazine," under the auspices of Mr. John Scott, occasioned Lamb's introduction to the public by the name, under colour of which he acquired his most brilliant reputation — "Elia." The adoption of this signature was purely accidental. His first contribution to the magazine was a description of the Old South-Sea House, where Lamb had passed a few month's novitiate as a clerk, thirty years before, and of its inmates who had long passed away; and remembering the name of a gay, light-hearted foreigner, who fluttered there at that time, he subscribed his name to the essay. It was afterwards affixed to subsequent contributions; and Lamb used it until, in his "Last Essays of Elia," he bade it a sad farewell. The perpetual influx of visitors whom he could not repel; whom indeed he was always glad to welcome, but whose visits unstrung him, induced him to take lodgings at Dalston, to which he occasionally retired when he wished for repose. The deaths of some who were dear to him cast a melancholy tinge on his mind, as may be seen in the following: TO MR. WORDSWORTH. "March 20th, 1822. for a few years between the grave and the desk: they are the same, save that at the latter you are the outside machine. The "My dear Wordsworth, - A letter from foul enchanter -, ' letters four do form his you is very grateful; I have not seen a name '-Busirare is his name in hell—that Kendal postmark so long! We are pretty has curtailed you of some domestic comforts, well, save colds and rheumatics, and a certain hath laid a heavier hand on me, not in deadness to everything, which I think I may present infliction, but in the taking away the date from poor John's loss, and another hope of enfranchisement. I dare not whisper accident or two at the same time, that has to myself a pension on this side of absolute made me almost bury myself at Dalston, incapacitation and infirmity, till years have where yet I see more faces than I could wish. sucked me dry ;- Otium cum indignitate. I Deaths overset one, and put one out long had thought in a green old age (Oh green after the recent grief. Two or three have thought!) to have retired to Ponder's End, died within this last two twelvemonths, and emblematic name, how beautiful! in the so many parts of me have been numbed. Ware Road, there to have made up my One sees a picture, reads an anecdote, starts accounts with Heaven and the company, a casual fancy, and thinks to tell of it to this toddling about between it and Cheshunt, person in preference to every other: the anon stretching, on some fine Isaac Walton person is gone whom it would have peculiarly morning, to Hoddesdon or Amwell, careless suited. It won't do for another. Every as a beggar; but walking, walking ever till departure destroys a class of sympathies. I fairly walked myself off my legs, dying There's Cap. Burney gone! What fun has walking! The hope is gone. I sit like whist now? what matters it what you lead, Philomel all day (but not singing), with my if you can no longer fancy him looking over breast against this thorn of a desk, with the you? One never hears anything, but the only hope that some pulmonary affliction image of the particular person occurs with may relieve me. Vide Lord Palmerston's whom alone almost you would care to share report of the clerks in the War-office, the intelligence—thus one distributes oneself (Debates this morning's Times,') by which about — and now for so many parts of me I it appears in twenty years as many clerks have lost the market. Common natures do have been coughed and catarrhed out of it not suffice me. Good people, as they are into their freer graves. Thank you for called, won't serve. I want individuals. I asking about the pictures. Milton hangs am made up of queer points, and I want so over my fire-side in Covent Garden, (when many answering needles. The going away I am there,) the rest have been sold for an of friends does not make the remainder more old song, wanting the eloquent tongue that precious. It takes so much from them as should have set them off! You have gratified there was a common link. A. B. and C. me with liking my meeting with Dodd.* For make a party. A. dies. B. not only loses the Malvolio story-the thing is become in A.; but all A.'s part in C. C. loses A.'s part verity a sad task, and I eke it out with anyin B., and so the alphabet sickens by subtrac- thing. If I could slip out of it I should be tion of interchangeables. I express myself happy, but our chief-reputed assistants have muddily, capite dolente. I have a dulling cold. forsaken us. The Opium-Eater crossed us My theory is to enjoy life, but my practice once with a dazzling path, and hath as is against it. I grow ominously tired of suddenly left us darkling; and, in short, I official confinement. Thirty years have I shall go on from dull to worse, because I served the Philistines, and my neck is not cannot resist the booksellers' importunitysubdued to the yoke. You don't know how the old plea you know of authors, but I wearisome it is to breathe the air of four believe on my part sincere. Hartley I do pent walls, without relief, day after day, all not so often see; but I never see him in the golden hours of the day between ten and unwelcome hour. I thoroughly love and four, without ease or interposition. Tædet me harum quotidianarum formarum, these pestilential clerk-faces always in one's dish. Oh * See the account of the meeting between Dodd and Jem White, in Elia's Essay, "On some of the Old |