thinking to traverse Wardour-street, &c., when, diabolically, I was interrupted by Heigh-ho! Little Barrow! Emma knows him—and prevailed on to spend the day at his sister's, where was an album, and (0, march of intellect!) plenty of literary conversation, and more acquaintance with the state of modern poetry than I could keep up with. I was positively distanced. Knowles' play, which, epilogued by me, lay on the PIANO, alone made me hold up my head. When I came home, I read your letter, and glimpsed at your beautiful sonnet, 'Fair art thou as the morning, my young bride,' and dwelt upon it in a confused brain, but TO MR. ROGERS. "Dec. 1833. "My dear Sir,-Your book, by the unremitting punctuality of your publisher, has it, nor will till to-morrow, when I promise reached me thus early. I have not opened myself a thorough reading of it. The 'Pleasures of Memory' was the first schoolpresent I made to Mrs. Moxon; it has those nice wood-cuts, and I believe she keeps it still. Believe me, that all the kindness you have shown to the husband of that excellent person seems done unto myself. I have tried my hand at a sonnet in the 'Times.' But the turn I gave it, though I hoped it would not displease you, I thought might not be equally agreeable to your artist. I met that dear old man at poor Henry's, with you, and again at Cary's, and it was sublime to see him sit, deaf, and enjoy all that was going on in mirth with the company. He reposed upon the many graceful, many fantastic images he had created; with them he dined, and took wine. I have ventured at an antagonist copy of verses, in the 'Athenæum,' to him, in which he is as everything, and you as nothing. He is no lawyer who cannot take two sides. But I am jealous of the combination of the sister arts. Let them sparkle apart. What injury (short of the theatres) did not Boydell's Shakspeare Gallery do me with Shakspeare? to have Opie's Shakspeare, Northcote's Shakspeare, light-headed Fuseli's Shakspeare, heavy-headed Romney's Shakspeare, wooden-headed West's Shakspeare (though he did the best in Lear), deaf-headed Reynolds's Shakspeare, instead of my, and everybody's Shakspeare; to be tied down to an authentic face of Juliet! to have Imogen's portrait! to confine the illimitable! I like you and Stothard (you best), but 'out upon this half-faced fellowship!' Sir, when I have read the book, I may trouble you, The following is Lamb's letter of acknow-through Moxon, with some faint criticisms. ledgment to the author of the "Pleasures of It is not the flatteringest compliment in a Memory," for an early copy of his "Illus- letter to an author to say, you have not read trated Poems," of a share in the publication his book yet. But the devil of a reader he of which, Mr. Moxon was "justly vain." The must be, who prances through it in five artistical allusions are to Stothard; the allusions to the poet's own kindnesses need no explanation to those who have been enabled by circumstances, which now and then transpire, to guess at the generous course of his life. And fortune, Frances, WHITEN with your name!' Not bad as a pun. I will expect you before two on Tuesday. I am well and happy, tell E." minutes; and no longer have I received the parcel. It was a little tantalising to me to receive a letter from Landor, Gebir Landor, from Florence, to say he was just sitting down to read my 'Elia,' just received; but the letter was to go out before the reading. of names and things that never would have There are calamities in authorship which dawned upon me again, and thousands from only authors know. I am going to call on the ten years she lived before me. What Moxon on Monday, if the throng of carriages took place from early girlhood to her coming in Dover-street, on the morn of publication, of age principally, lives again (every important do not barricade me out. thing, and every trifle) in her brain, with the "With many thanks, and most respectful vividness of real presence. For twelve hours remembrances to your sister, incessantly she will pour out without intermission, all her past life, forgetting nothing, pouring out name after name to the Waldens, as a dream; sense and nonsense; truths and errors huddled together; a medley between inspiration and possession. What things we are! I know you will bear with me, talking of these things. It seems to ease me, for I have nobody to tell these things to now. "My sister is papering up the book-care- Emma, I see, has got a harp! and is learning ful soul!" Lamb and his sister were now, for the last year of their united lives, always together. What his feelings were in this companionship, when his beloved associate was deprived of reason, will be seen in the following most affecting letter, to an old schoolfellow and very dear friend of Mrs. Moxon's-since dead-who took an earnest interest in their welfare. TO MISS FRYER. "Feb. 14, 1834. to play. She has framed her three Walton pictures, and pretty they look. That is a book you should read; such sweet religion in it, next to Woolman's! though the subject be baits, and hooks, and worms, and fishes. She has my copy at present, to do two more from. "Very, very tired! I began this epistle, having been epistolizing all the morning, and very kindly would I end it, could I find adequate expressions to your kindness. We did set our minds on seeing you in spring. One of us will indubitably. But I am not skilled in almanac learning, to know when spring precisely begins and ends. Pardon my blots; I am glad you like your book. I wish it had been half as worthy of your acceptance as John Woolman. But 'tis a good-natured book." A few days afterwards Lamb's passionate desire to serve a most deserving friend broke out in the following earnest little letter: "Dear Miss Fryer, -Your letter found me just returned from keeping my birthday (pretty innocent!) at Dover-street. I see them pretty often. I have since had letters of business to write, or should have replied earlier. In one word, be less uneasy about me; I bear my privations very well; I am not in the depths of desolation, as heretofore. Your admonitions are not lost upon me. Your kindness has sunk into my heart. Have faith in me! It is no new thing for me to be left to my sister. When she is not violent, her rambling chat is better to me than the sense and sanity of this world. Her heart is obscured, not buried; it breaks "Dear Wordsworth,-I write from a house out occasionally; and one can discern a of mourning. The oldest and best friends I strong mind struggling with the billows that have left are in trouble. A branch of them have gone over it. I could be nowhere hap- (and they of the best stock of God's creatures, pier than under the same roof with her. I believe) is establishing a school at Carlisle ; Her memory is unnaturally strong; and her name is L M—; her address, 75, from ages past, if we may so call the earliest Castle-street, Carlisle; her qualities (and records of our poor life, she fetches thousands her motives for this exertion) are the most TO MR. WORDSWORTH. "Church-street, Edmonton, amiable, most upright. For thirty years she has been tried by me, and on her behaviour I would stake my soul. O, if you can recommend her, how would I love you - if I could love you better! Pray, pray, recommend her. She is as good a human creature, next to my sister, perhaps, the most exemplary female I ever knew. Moxon tells me you would like a letter from me; you shall have one. This I cannot mingle up with any nonsense which you usually olerate from C. Lamb. Need he add loves to wife, sister, and all? Poor Mary is ill again, after a short lucid interval of four or five months. In short, I may call her half dead to me. How good you are to me! Yours with fervour of friendship, for ever, C. L. "If you want references, the Bishop of Carlisle may be one. L's sister (as good as she, she cannot be better though she tries) educated the daughters of the late Earl of Carnarvon, and he settled a handsome annuity on her for life. In short, all the family are a sound rock." A quiet dinner at the British Museum with Mr. Cary once a month, to which Lamb looked forward with almost boyish eagerness, was now almost his only festival. In a little note to his host about this time, he hints at one of his few physical tastes.-"We are thinking," he says, "of roast shoulder of mutton with onion sauce, but I scorn to "Dear Mrs. Dyer,—I am very uneasy about a Book which I either have lost or left at your house on Thursday. It was the book I went out to fetch from Miss Buffam's, while the tripe was frying. It is called 'Phillip's Theatrum Poetarum,' but it is an English book. I think I left it in the parlour. It is Mr. Cary's book, and I would not lose it for the world. Pray, if you find it, book it at the Swan, Snow Hill, by an Edmonton stage immediately, directed to Mr. Lamb, Church-street, Edmonton, or write to say you cannot find it. I am quite anxious about it. If it is lost, I shall never like tripe again. "With kindest love to Mr. Dyer and all, "Yours truly, C. LAMB." CHAPTER THE LAST. prescribe to the hospitalities of mine host." LAMB'S WEDNESDAY NIGHTS COMPARED WITH THE The following, after these festivities had been interrupted by Mr. Cary's visit to the Continent, is their last memorial: TO MR. CARY. "Sept. 12, 1834. "By Cot's plessing we will not be absence at the grace." "Dear C.,- We long to see you, and hear account of your peregrinations, of the Tun at Heidelburg, the Clock at Strasburg, the statue at Rotterdam, the dainty Rhenish, and poignant Moselle wines, Westphalian hams, and Botargoes of Altona. But perhaps you have seen, not tasted any of these things. "Yours, very glad to chain you back again to your proper centre, books and Bibliothecæ, "C. and M. LAMB. EVENINGS OF HOLLAND HOUSE-HIS DEAD COMPANIONS, DYER, GODWIN, THELWALL, HAZLITT, BARNES, HAYDON, COLERIDGE, AND OTHERSLAST GLIMPSES OF CHARLES AND MARY LAMB. "Gone; all are gone, the old familiar faces!" - Two circles of rare social enjoyment - differing as widely as possible in all external circumstances but each superior in its kind to all others, during the same period frankly opened to men of letters — now existing only in the memories of those who are fast departing from us-may, without offence, be placed side by side in grateful recollection; they are the dinners at Holland House and the suppers of "the Lambs" at the Temple, Great Russell-street, and Islington. Strange, at first, as this juxta-position may seem, a little reflection will convince the few sur- the branches, still, or lightly waving in the vivors who have enjoyed both, that it in- evening light, and on the scene within, the volves no injustice to either; while with harmony of all sensations becomes more perthose who are too young to have been admitted to these rare festivities, we may exercise the privilege of age by boasting what good fellowship was once enjoyed, and what "good talk" there was once in the world! But let us call to mind the aspect of each scene, before we attempt to tell of the conversation, which will be harder to recall and impossible to characterise. And first, let us invite the reader to assist at a dinner at Holland House in the height of the London and Parliamentary season, say a Saturday in June. It is scarcely seven-for the luxuries of the house are enhanced by a punctuality in the main object of the day, which yields to no dilatory guest of whatever pretension and you are seated in an oblong room, rich in old gilding, opposite a deep recess, pierced by large old windows through which the rich branches of trees bathed in golden light, just admit the faint outline of the Surrey Hills. Among the guests are some perhaps of the highest rank, always some of high political importance, about whom the interest of busy life gathers, intermixed with others eminent already in literature or art, or of that dawning promise which the hostess delights to discover and the host to smile on. All are assembled for the purpose of enjoyment; the anxieties of the minister, the feverish struggles of the partisan, the silent toils of the artist or critic, are finished for the week; professional and literary jealousies are hushed; sickness, decrepitude, and death are silently voted shadows; and the brilliant assemblage is prepared to exercise to the highest degree the extraordinary privilege of mortals to live in the knowledge of mortality without its consciousness, and to people the present hour with delights, as if a man lived and laughed and enjoyed in this world for ever. Every appliance of physical luxury which the most delicate art can supply, attends on each; every faint wish which luxury creates is anticipated; the noblest and most gracious countenance in the world smiles over the happiness it is diffusing, and redoubles it by cordial invitations and encouraging words, which set the humblest stranger guest at perfect ease. As the dinner merges into the dessert, and the sunset casts a richer glow on fect; a delighted and delighting chuckle invites attention to some joyous sally of the richest intellectual wit reflected in the faces of all, even to the favourite page in green, who attends his mistress with duty like that of the antique world; the choicest wines are enhanced in their liberal but temperate use by the vista opened in Lord Holland's tales of bacchanalian evenings at Brookes's, with Fox and Sheridan, when potations deeper and more serious rewarded the statesman's toils and shortened his days; until at length the serener pleasure of conversation, of the now carelessly scattered groups, is enjoyed in that old, long, unrivalled library in which Addison mused, and wrote, and drank; where every living grace attends; "and more than echoes talk along the walls." One happy peculiarity of these assemblies was, the number of persons in different stations and of various celebrity, who were gratified by seeing, still more, in hearing and knowing each other; the statesman was relieved from care by association with the poet of whom he had heard and partially read; and the poet was elevated by the courtesy which "bared the great heart" which "beats beneath a star;" and each felt, not rarely, the true dignity of the other, modestly expanding under the most genial auspices. Now turn to No. 4, Inner Temple Lane, at ten o'clock, when the sedater part of the company are assembled, and the happier stragglers are dropping in from the play. Let it be any autumn or winter month, when the fire is blazing steadily, and the cleanswept hearth and whist-tables speak of the spirit of Mrs. Battle, and serious looks require “the rigour of the game." The furniture is old-fashioned and worn; the ceiling low, and not wholly unstained by traces of “the great plant," though now virtuously forborne: but the Hogarths, in narrow black frames, abounding in infinite thought, humour and pathos, enrich the walls; and all things wear an air of comfort and hearty English welcome. Lamb himself, yet unrelaxed by the glass, is sitting with a sort of Quaker primness at the whist-table, the gentleness of his melancholy smile half lost in his intentness on the game; his partner, the author of "Politicial Justice," (the majestic expression of his large head not disturbed by disproportion of his comparatively diminutive stature,) is regarding his hand with a philosophic but not a careless eye; Captain Burney, only not venerable because so young in spirit, sits between them; and H. C. R., who alone now and then breaks the proper silence, to welcome some incoming guest, is his happy partner-true winner in the game of life, whose leisure achieved early, is devoted to his friends! At another table, just beyond the circle which extends from the fire, sit another four. The broad, burly, jovial bulk of John Lamb, the Ajax Telamon of the slender clerks of the old South Sea House, whom he sometimes introduces to the rooms of his younger brother, surprised to learn from them that he is growing famous, confronts the stately but courteous Alsager; while P., "his few hairs bristling" at gentle objurgation, watches his partner M. B., dealing, with "soul more white"* than the hands of which Lamb once said, “M., if dirt was trumps, what hands you would hold!" In one corner of the room, you may see the pale earnest countenance of Charles Lloyd, who is discoursing "of fate, free-will, fore-knowledge absolute," with Leigh Hunt; and, if you choose to listen, you will scarcely know which most to admire the severe logic of the melancholy reasoner, or its graceful evasion by the tricksome fantasy of the joyous poet. Basil Montague, gentle enthusiast in the cause of humanity, which he has lived to see triumphant, is pouring into the outstretched ear of George Dyer some tale of legalised injustice, which the recipient is vainly endeavoring to comprehend. Soon the room fills; in slouches Hazlitt from the theatre, where his stubborn anger for Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo has been softened by Miss Stephens's angelic notes, which might "chase anger, and grief, and fear, and sorrow, and pain from mortal or immortal minds;" Kenney, with a tremulous pleasure, announces that there is a crowded house to the ninth representation of his new comedy, of which Lamb lays down his cards to inquire; or Ayrton, mildly radiant, whispers the con Lamb's Sonnet, dedicatory of his first volume of prose to this cherished friend, thus concludes: "Free from self seeking, envy, low design, I have not found a whiter soul than thine." tinual triumph of "Don Giovanni," for which Lamb, incapable of opera, is happy to take his word. Now and then an actor glances on us from "the rich Cathay" of the world behind the scenes, with news of its brighter human-kind, and with looks reflecting the public favour - Liston, grave beneath the weight of the town's regards—or Miss Kelly, unexhausted in spirit by alternating the drolleries of high farce with the terrible pathos of melodrama,-or Charles Kemble mirrors the chivalry of thought, and ennobles the party by bending on them looks beaming with the aristocracy of nature. Meanwhile Becky lays the cloth on the side-table, under the direction of the most quiet, sensible, and kind of women-who soon compels the younger and more hungry of the guests to partake largely of the cold roast lamb or boiled beef, the heaps of smoking roasted potatoes, and the vast jug of porter, often replenished from the foaming pots, which the best tap of Fleet-street supplies. Perfect freedom prevails, save when the hospitable pressure of the mistress excuses excess; and perhaps, the physical enjoyment of the playgoer exhausted with pleasure, or of the author jaded with the labour of the brain, is not less than that of the guests at the most charming of aristocratic banquets. As the hot water and its accompaniments appear, and the severities of whist relax, the light of conversation thickens: Hazlitt, catching the influence of the spirit from which he has lately begun to abstain, utters some fine criticism with struggling emphasis; Lamb stammers out puns suggestive of wisdom, for happy Barron Field to admire and echo; the various driblets of talk combine into a stream, while Miss Lamb moves gently about to see that each modest stranger is duly served; turning, now and then, an anxious loving eye on Charles, which is softened into a half humorous expression of resignation to inevitable fate, as he mixes his second tumbler! This is on ordinary nights, when the accustomed Wednesday-men assemble; but there is a difference on great extra nights, gladdened by "the bright visitations" of Wordsworth or Coleridge: - the cordiality of the welcome is the same, but a sedater wisdom prevails. Happy hours were they for the young disciple of the then desperate, now triumphant cause of Wordsworth's genius, to be admitted to |