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TO MR. WORDSWORTH.

"Friday, 19th Oct. 1810. E. I. Ho. "Dear W.,-Mary has been very ill, which you have heard, I suppose, from the Montagues. She is very weak and low spirited now. I was much pleased with your continuation of the Essay on Epitaphs. It is the only sensible thing which has been written on that subject, and it goes to the bottom. In particular I was pleased with your translation of that turgid epitaph into the plain feeling under it. It is perfectly a But what is the reason we have no

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good epitaphs after all?

"A very striking instance of your position

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WORDSWORTH'S POEMS.

[1815 to 1818.]

THE admirers of Wordsworth-few, but energetic and hopeful—were delighted, and his opponents excited to the expression of their utmost spleen, by the appearance, in 1814, of "The Excursion," (in the quarto form marked by the bitter flippancy of Lord Byron); and by the publication, in 1815, of two volumes of Poems, some of which only were new. The following letters are chiefly expressive of Lamb's feelings respecting these remarkable works, and the treatment which his own Review of the latter received from Mr. Gifford, then the Editor of the Quarterly Review, for which it was written. The following letter is in acknowledgment of an early copy of "The Excursion."

might be found in the churchyard of Ditton- LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH, ETC., CHIEFLY RESPECTING upon-Thames, if you know such a place. Ditton-upon-Thames has been blessed by the residence of a poet, who, for love or money, I do not well know which, has dignified every grave-stone, for the last few years, with bran-new verses, all different, and all ingenious, with the author's name at the bottom of each. This sweet Swan of Thames has artfully diversified his strains and his rhymes, that the same thought never occurs twice; more justly, perhaps, as no thought ever occurs at all, there was a physical impossibility that the same thought should recur. It is long since I saw and read these inscriptions, but I remember the impression was of a snug usher at his desk in the intervals of instruction, levelling his pen. of death, as it consists of dust and worms, and mourners and uncertainty, he had never thought; but the word 'death' he had often seen separate and conjunct with other words, till he had learned to speak of all its attributes as glibly as Unitarian Belsham will discuss you the attributes of the word 'God' in a pulpit; and will talk of infinity with a tongue that dangles from a skull that never reached in thought and thorough imagination two inches, or further than from his hand to his mouth, or from the vestry to the soundingboard of the pulpit.

TO MR. WORDSWORTH.

"1814.

"Dear Wordsworth,- I cannot tell you how pleased I was at the receipt of the great armful of poetry which you have sent me; and to get it before the rest of the world too! I have gone quite through with it, and was thinking to have accomplished that pleasure a second time before I wrote to thank you, but M. B. came in the night (while we were out) and made holy theft of it, but we expect "But the epitaphs were trim, and sprag, restitution in a day or two. It is the noblest and patent, and pleased the survivors of conversational poem I ever reada day in Thames Ditton above the old mumpsimus of Heaven. The part (or rather main body) 'Afflictions sore.' . . . . To do justice though, which has left the sweetest odour on my it must be owned that even the excellent memory (a bad term for the remains of an feeling which dictated this dirge when new, impression so recent) is the Tales of the must have suffered something in passing Church-yard; - the only girl among seven

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many more, for it will be a stock book with me while eyes or spectacles shall be lent me. There is a great deal of noble matter about mountain scenery, yet not so much as

or south-countryman entirely, though Mary seems to have felt it occasionally a little too powerfully, for it was her remark during reading it, that by your system it was doubtful whether a liver in towns had a soul to be saved. She almost trembled for that invisible part of us in her.

brethren, born out of due time, and not duly taken away again;- the deaf man and the blind man ; - the Jacobite and the Hanoverian, whom antipathies reconcile; the Scarron-entry of the rusticating parson to overpower and discountenance a poor upon his solitude; these were all new to Londoner me too. My having known the story of Margaret (at the beginning), a very old acquaintance, even as long back as when I saw you first at Stowey, did not make her reappearance less fresh. I don't know what to pick out of this best of books upon the best subjects for partial naming. That "Save for a late excursion to Harrow, and gorgeous sunset is famous ;* I think it must a day or two on the banks of the Thames have been the identical one we saw on Salis- this summer, rural images were fast fading bury Plain, five years ago, that drew P from my mind, and by the wise provision of from the card-table, where he had sat from the Regent, all that was country-fy'd in the rise of that luminary to its unequalled Parks is all but obliterated. The very colour setting; but neither he nor I had gifted eyes of green is vanished; the whole surface of to see those symbols of common things glo- Hyde Park is dry crumbling sand (Arabia rified, such as the prophets saw them in Arenosa), not a vestige or hint of grass ever that sunset the wheel, the potter's clay, having grown there; booths and drinkingthe washpot, the wine-press, the almond-places go all round it for a mile and half, I tree rod, the baskets of figs, the four-fold am confident- I might say two miles in visaged head, the throne, and Him that sat circuit - the stench of liquors, bad tobacco, thereon.† dirty people and provisions, conquers the air, and we are stifled and suffocated in Hyde Park."

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"One feeling I was particularly struck with, as what I recognized so very lately at Harrow Church on entering in it after a hot and secular day's pleasure, the instantaneous coolness and calming, almost transforming properties of a country church just entered; a certain fragrance which it has, either from its holiness, or being kept shut all the week, or the air that is let in being pure country, exactly what you have reduced into words but I am feeling that which I cannot express. The reading your lines about it fixed me for a time, a monument in Harrow Church; do you know it? with its fine long spire, white as washed marble, to be seen, by vantage of its high site, as far as Salisbury spire itself almost.

"I shall select a day or two, very shortly, when I am coolest in brain, to have a steady second reading, which I feel will lead to

*The passage to which the allusion applies does not picture a sunset, but the effect of sunlight on a receding mist among the mountains, in the second book of "The

Excursion."

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Lamb was delighted with the proposition, made through Southey, that he should review "The Excursion" in the "Quarterly"

though he had never before attempted contemporaneous criticism, and cherished a dislike to it, which the event did not diminish. The ensuing letter was addressed while meditating on his office, and uneasy lest he should lose it for want of leisure.

TO MR. WORDSWORTH.

"1814.

"My dear W.-I have scarce time or quiet to explain my present situation, how unquiet and distracted it is, owing to the absence of some of my compeers, and to the deficient state of payments at E. I. H., owing to bad peace speculations in the calico market. (I write this to W. W., Esq., Collector of Stamp Duties for the conjoint Northern Counties, not to W. W., Poet.) I go back, and have for these many days past, to evening work, generally at the rate of nine hours a day. The nature of my work, too, puzzling and

its being a characteristic speech.* That it was no settled comparative estimate of Voltaire with any of his own tribe of buffoons no injustice, even if you spoke it, for I dared say you never could relish 'Candide.' I know I tried to get through it about a twelvemonth since, and couldn't for the dulness. Now I think I have a wider range in buffoonery than you. Too much toleration, perhaps.

"I finish this after a raw, ill-baked dinner, fast gobbled up to set me off to office again, after working there till near four. O! how I wish I were a rich man, even though I were squeezed camel-fashion at getting through that needle's eye that is spoken of in the Written Word. Apropos; is the Poet of The Excursion' a Christian? or is it the Pedlar and the Priest that are?

"I find I miscalled that celestial splendour of the mist going off, a sunset. That only shows my inaccuracy of head.

hurrying, has so shaken my spirits, that my sleep is nothing but a succession of dreams of business I cannot do, of assistants that give me no assistance, of terrible responsibilities. I reclaimed your book, which Hazlitt has uncivilly kept, only two days ago, and have made shift to read it again with shattered brain. It does not lose -rather some parts have come out with a prominence I did not perceive before - but such was my aching head yesterday (Sunday) that the book was like a mountain landscape to one that should walk on the edge of a precipice; I perceived beauty dizzily. Now, what I would say is, that I see no prospect of a quiet half-day, or hour even, till this week and the next are past. I then hope to get four weeks' absence, and if then is time enough to begin, I will most gladly do what is required, though I feel my inability, for my brain is always desultory, and snatches off hints from things, but can seldom follow a 'work' methodically. But that shall be no excuse. What I beg you to do is, to let me know from Southey if that will be time enough for the Quarterly,' i. e., suppose it done in three weeks from this date (19th Sept.); if not, it is my bounden duty to express my regret, and decline it. Mary thanks you, and feels highly grateful for your Patent of Nobility,' and acknowledges the author of The Excursion' as the legitimate Fountain of Honour. We both agree, that, to our feeling, Ellen is best as she is. To us there would have been something repugnant in her challenging her Penance as a Dowry; the fact is explicable, but how few are those to whom it would have been rendered explicit. The unlucky reason of the detention of 'The Excursion' was Hazlitt, for whom M. Burney borrowed it, and, after reiterated messages, I only got it on Friday. His remarks had some vigour in them; * particularly something about an old ruin being too modern for your Primeval Nature, and about a lichen. I forget the passage, but the whole wore an air of despatch. That objection which M. Burney had imbibed The passage in which the copy of "Candide," found from him about Voltaire, I explained to in the apartment of the Recluse, is described as "the M. B. (or tried) exactly on your principle of

This refers to an article of Hazlitt on "The Excursion," in the "Examiner," very fine in passages, but more characteristic of the critic than descriptive of the

poem

"Do, pray, indulge me by writing an answer to the point of time mentioned above, or let Southey. I am ashamed to go bargaining in this way, but indeed I have no time I can reckon on till the first week in October. God send I may not be disappointed in that! Coleridge swore in a letter to me he would review The Excursion' in the Quarterly.' Therefore, though that shall not stop me, yet if I can do anything, when done, I must know of him if he has anything ready, or I shall fill the world with loud exclaims.

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"I keep writing on, knowing the postage is no more for much writing, else so fagged and dispirited I am with cursed India House work, I scarce know what I do. My left arm reposes on 'The Excursion.' I feel what it would be in quiet. It is now a sealed book."

The next letter was written after the fatal critique was despatched to the Editor, and before its appearance.

dull production of a scoffer's brain," which had excited

Hazlitt to energetic vindication of Voltaire from the charge of dulness. Whether the work, written in mockery of human hopes, be dull, I will not venture to determine; but I do not hesitate, at any risk, to avow a conviction that no book in the world is more adapted to make a good man wretched

TO MR. WORDSWORTH.

"1814.

"Dear W.-Your experience about tailors seems to be in point blank opposition to Burton, as much as the author of The Excursion' does, toto cælo, differ in his notion of a country life, from the picture which W. H. has exhibited of the same. But, with a little explanation, you and B. may be reconciled. It is evident that he confined his observations to the genuine native London Tailor. What freaks tailor-nature may take in the country, is not for him to give account of. And certainly some of the freaks recorded do give an idea of the persons in question being beside themselves, rather than in harmony with the common, moderate, selfenjoyment of the rest of mankind. A flyingtailor, I venture to say, is no more in rerum natura than a flying-horse or a Gryphon. His wheeling his airy-flight from the precipice you mention, had a parallel in the melancholy Jew who toppled from the monument. Were his limbs ever found? Then, the man who cures diseases by words, is evidently an inspired tailor. Burton never affirmed that the art of sewing disqualified the practiser of it from being a fit organ for supernatural revelation. He never enters into such subjects. 'Tis the common, uninspired tailor which he speaks of. Again, the person who makes his smiles to be heard, is evidently a man under possession; a demoniac tailor. A greater hell than his own must have a hand in this. I am not certain that the cause which you advocate has much reason for triumph. You seem to me to substitute light-headedness for light-heartedness by a trick, or not to know the difference. I confess, a grinning tailor would shock me. Enough of tailors!

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"The 'scapes' of the Great God Pan, who appeared among your mountains some dozen years since, and his narrow chance of being submerged by the swains, afforded me much pleasure. I can conceive the waternymphs pulling for him. He would have been another Hylas-W. Hylas. In a mad letter which Capel Lofft wrote to M. M.* Phillips (now Sir Richard), I remember his noticing a metaphysical article of Pan,

*Monthly Magazine.

signed H., and adding, "I take your correspondent to be the same with Hylas.' Hylas had put forth a pastoral just before. How near the unfounded conjecture of the certainly inspired Lofft (unfounded as we thought it,) was to being realized! I can conceive him being good to all that wander in that perilous flood.' One J. Scott* (I know no more) is editor of 'The Champion.' Where is Coleridge?

The

"That Review you speak of, I am only sorry it did not appear last month. circumstances of haste and peculiar bad spirits under which it was written, would have excused its slightness and inadequacy, the full load of which I shall suffer from its lying by so long, as it will seem to have done, from its postponement. I write with great difficulty, and can scarce command my own resolution to sit at writing an hour together. I am a poor creature, but I am leaving off gin. I hope you will see goodwill in the thing. I had a difficulty to perform not to make it all panegyric; I have attempted to personate a mere stranger to you; perhaps with too much strangeness. But you must bear that in mind when you read it, and not think that I am, in mind, distant from you or your poem, but that both are close to me, among the nearest of persons and things. I do but act the stranger in the Review. Then, I was puzzled about extracts, and determined upon not giving one that had been in the Examiner ;' for extracts repeated give an idea that there is a meagre allowance of good things. By this way, I deprived myself of Sir Alfred Irthing,' and the reflections that conclude his story, which are the flower of the poem. Hazlitt had given the reflections before me. Then it is the first review I ever did, and I did not know how long I might make it. But it must speak for itself, if Gifford and his crew do not put words in its mouth, which I expect. Farewell. Love to all. Mary keeps very bad.

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C. LAMB."

The apprehension expressed at the close of the last letter was dismally verified. The following contains Lamb's first burst of an

* Afterwards the distinguished and unfortunate editor of the London Magazine.

indignation which lasted amidst all his gen- | But worse than altering words; he has kept tleness and tolerance unquenched through a few members only of the part I had done

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"Dear Wordsworth, I told you my Review was a very imperfect one. But what you will see in the 'Quarterly' is a spurious one, which Mr. Baviad Gifford has palmed upon it for mine. I never felt more vexed in my life than when I read it. I cannot give you an idea of what he has done to it, out of spite at me, because he once suffered me to be called a lunatic in his Review.* The language he has altered throughout. Whatever inadequateness it had to its subject, it was, in point of composition, the prettiest piece of prose I ever writ; and so my sister (to whom alone I read the MS.) said. That charm, if it had any, is all gone: more than a third of the substance is cut away, and that not all from one place, but passim, so as to make utter nonsense. Every warm expression is changed for a nasty cold

one.

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"I have not the cursed alteration by me; I shall never look at it again; but for a specimen, I remember I had said the poet of The Excursion' walks through common forests as though some Dodona or enchanted wood, and every casual bird that flits upon the boughs, like that miraculous one in Tasso, but in language more piercing than any articulate sounds, reveals to him far higher love lays.' It is now (besides half-adozen alterations in the same half-dozen lines) but in language more intelligent reveals to him ;' — that is one I remember.

"But that would have been little, putting his shoemaker phraseology (for he was a shoemaker) instead of mine, which has been tinctured with better authors than his ignorance can comprehend; for I reckon myself a dab at prose ; - verse I leave to my betters: God help them, if they are to be so reviewed by friend and foe as you have been this quarter! I have read 'It won't do.'t

In alluding to Lamb's note on the great scene of "The Broken Heart," where Calantha dances on, after hearing at every pause of some terrible calamity, a writer in the "Quarterly" had affected to excuse the writer as amaniae;" a suggestion which circumstances rendered most cruel.

best, which was to explain all I could of your 'Scheme of Harmonies,' as I had ventured to call it, between the external universe and what within us answers to it. To do this I had accumulated a good many short passages, rising in length to the end, weaving in the extracts as if they came in as a part of the text naturally, not obtruding them as specimens. Of this part a little is left, but so as, without conjuration, no man could tell what I was driving at. A proof of it you may see (though not judge of the whole of the injustice) by these words. I had spoken something about 'natural methodism ;' and after follows, and therefore the tale of Margaret should have been postponed' (I forget my words, or his words); now the reasons for postponimg it are as deducible from what goes before, as they are from the 104th Psalm. The passage whence I deduced it, has vanished, but clapping a colon before a therefore is always reason enough for Mr. Baviad Gifford to allow to a reviewer that is not himself. I assure you my complaints are founded. I know how sore a word altered makes one; but, indeed, of this review the whole complexion is gone. I regret only that I did not keep a copy. I am sure you would have been pleased with it, because I have been feeding my fancy for some months with the notion of pleasing you. Its imperfection or inadequateness in size and method I knew; but for the writingpart of it I was fully satisfied; I hoped it would make more than atonement. Ten or twelve distinct passages come to my mind, which are gone, and what is left is, of course, the worse for their having been there; the eyes are pulled out, and the bleeding sockets are left.

"I read it at Arch's shop with my face burning with vexation secretly, with just such a feeling as if it had been a review written against myself, making false quotations from me. But I am ashamed to say so much about a short piece. How are you served! and the labours of years turned into contempt by scoundrels!

"But I could not but protest against your

"Edinburgh Review" commenced "This will never do!" it contained ample illustrations of the author's genius, Though the article on "The Excursion," in the and helped the world to disprove its oracular beginning.

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