TO BERNARD BARTON. "February 10th, 1825. "Dear B. B.,-The 'Spirit of the Age' is Norwich boards, in the season of that year, being then in the 22nd year of his age. Having a natural bent to tragedy, he chose the part of 'Pyrrhus,' in the 'Distrest Mother,' to Sally Parker's 'Hermione.' We by Hazlitt, the characters of Coleridge, &c. find him afterwards as 'Barnwell,' 'Alta- he had done better in former publications, mont,' 'Chamont,' &c. ; but, as if nature had the praise and the abuse much stronger, &c., destined him to the sock, an unavoidable but the new ones are capitally done. Horne infirmity absolutely discapacitated him for Tooke is a matchless portrait. My advice is, tragedy. His person at this latter period of to borrow it rather than buy it. I have it. which I have been speaking, was graceful, He has laid too many colours on my likeand even commanding; his countenance set ness; but I have had so much injustice done to gravity; he had the power of arresting me in my own name, that I make a rule of the attention of an audience at first sight accepting as much over-measure to Elia as almost beyond any other tragic actor. But gentlemen think proper to bestow. Lay it he could not hold it. To understand this obstacle, we must go back a few years, to those appalling reveries at Charnwood. Those illusions, which had vanished before the dissipation of a less recluse life, and more free society, now in his solitary tragic studies, and amid the intense calls upon feeling incident to tragic acting, came back upon him with tenfold vividness. In the midst of some most pathetic passage-the parting of Jaffier with his dying friend, for instance-he would suddenly be surprised with a fit of violent horse laughter. While the spectators were all sobbing before him with emotion, suddenly one of those grotesque faces would peep out upon him, and he could not resist the impulse. A timely excuse once or twice served his purpose, but no audiences could be expected to bear repeatedly this violation of the continuity of feeling. He describes them (the illusions) as so many demons haunting him, and paralysing every effort. Even now, I am told, he cannot recite the "I have been harassed more than usually famous soliloquy in Hamlet, even in private, at office, which has stopt my correspondence without immoderate bursts of laughter. lately. I write with a confused aching head, However, what he had not force of reason and you must accept this apology for a letter. sufficient to overcome, he had good sense "I will do something soon, if I can, as a enough to turn to emolument, and determined peace-offering to the queen of the East to make a commodity of his distemper. He Angles-something she shan't scold about. prudently exchanged the buskin for the sock, For the present farewell. and the illusions instantly ceased, or, if they occurred for a short season, by their very co-operation, added a zest to his comic vein ; some of his most catching faces being (as he expresses it) little more than transcripts and copies of those extraordinary phantasmata." He completed his half century on the day when he addressed the following letter on and spare not. Your gentleman brother sets my mouth a-watering after liberty. Oh that I were kicked out of Leadenhall with every mark of indignity, and a competence in my fob. The birds of the air would not be so free as I should. How I would prance and curvet it, and pick up cowslips, and ramble about purposeless, as an idiot! The author-mometer is a good fancy. I have caused great speculation in the dramatic (not thy) world by a lying 'Life of Liston,' all pure invention. The town has swallowed it, and it is copied into newspapers, play-bills, &c., as authentic. You do not know the Droll, and possibly missed reading the article (in our first number, new series). A life more improbable for him to have lived would not be easily invented. But your rebuke, coupled with 'Dream on J. Bunyan,' checks me. rather do more in my favourite way, but feel dry. I must laugh sometimes. I am poor Hypochondriacus, and not Liston. "Thine, C. L." I'd "I am fifty years old this day. Drink my health." Freedom now gleamed on him, and he became restless with the approach of deliver ance. TO BERNARD BARTON. "March 23rd, 1825. TO MR. WORDSWORTH. "Colebrook Cottage, 6th April, 1825. "Dear Wordsworth,-I have been several times meditating a letter to you concerning letters contain his own expressions of delight on his deliverance, as conveyed to several of his dearest friends. In the first his happiness "Dear B. B.,—I have had no impulse to is a little checked by the death of Mr. Monkwrite, or attend to any single object but house, a relation of Mrs. Wordsworth, who myself for weeks past-my single self, I by had gradually won Lamb's affections, and myself-I. I am sick of hope deferred. The who nobly deserved them. grand wheel is in agitation, that is to turn up my fortune; but round it rolls, and will turn up nothing. I have a glimpse of freedom, of becoming a gentleman at large; but I am put off from day to day. I have offered my resignation, and it is neither accepted nor rejected. Eight weeks am I kept in this the good thing which has befallen me, but fearful suspense. Guess what an absorbing the thought of poor Monkhouse came across stake I feel it. I am not conscious of the me. He was one that I had exulted in the existence of friends present or absent. The prospect of congratulating me. He and you East India Directors alone can be that thing were to have been the first participators, for to me or not. I have just learned that indeed it has been ten weeks since the first nothing will be decided this week. Why motion of it. Here am I then, after thirtythe next? Why any week? It has fretted three years' slavery, sitting in my own room me into an itch of the fingers; I rub 'em at eleven o'clock this finest of all April against paper, and write to you, rather than mornings, a freed man, with 4417. a year for not allay this scorbuta. the remainder of my life, live I as long as John Dennis, who outlived his annuity and starved at ninety: 441., i. e., 450l., with a deduction of 97. for a provision secured to my sister, she being survivor, the pension guaranteed by Act Georgii Tertii, &c. "While I can write, let me abjure you to have no doubts of IRVING. Let Mr. Mdrop his disrespect. Irving has prefixed a dedication (of a missionary subject, first part) to Coleridge, the most beautiful, cordial, and sincere. He there acknowledges his obligation to S. T. C. for his knowledge of Gospel truths, the nature of a Christian Church, &c., to the talk of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (at whose Gamaliel feet he sits weekly), rather than to that of all the men living. This from him, the great dandled and petted sectarian -to a religious character so equivocal in the world's eye as that of S. T. C., so foreign to the Kirk's estimate-can this man be a quack? The language is as affecting as the spirit of the dedication. Some friend told him, 'This dedication will do you no good,' i.e., not in the world's repute, or with your own people. That is a reason for doing it,' quoth Irving. He "I am thoroughly pleased with him. is firm, out-speaking, intrepid, and docile as a pupil of Pythagoras. You must like him. "Yours, in tremors of painful hope, "C. LAMB." "I came home FOR EVER on Tuesday in last week. The incomprehensibleness of my condition overwhelmed me. It was like passing from life into eternity. Every year to be as long as three, i. e., to have three times as much real time-time that is my own, in it! I wandered about thinking I was happy, but feeling I was not. But that tumultuousness is passing off, and I begin to understand the nature of the gift. Holydays, even the annual month, were always uneasy joys; their conscious fugitiveness; the craving after making the most of them. Now, when all is holyday, there are no holydays. I can sit at home, in rain or shine, without a restless impulse for walkings. I am daily steadying, and shall soon find it as natural to me to be my own master, as it has been irksome to have had a master. Mary wakes every morning with an obscure feeling that some good has happened to us. 66 and after their releasements, describe the shock of their emancipation much These tremors of painful hope were soon as I feel mine. But it hurt their frames. I changed into certain joy. The following eat, drink, and sleep sound as ever. I lay no anxious schemes for going hither and thither, but take things as they occur. Yesterday I excursioned twenty miles; to-day I write a few letters. Pleasuring was for fugitive play-days, mine are fugitive only in the sense that life is fugitive. Freedom and life co-existent ! TO BERNARD BARTON. "April, 1825. "The little bird that wings the sky I was set free on Tuesday in last week at four o'clock. I came home for ever! "I have been describing my feelings as well as I can to Wordsworth in a long letter, and don't care to repeat. Take it briefly, that for a few days I was painfully oppressed by so mighty a change, but it is becoming daily more natural to me. I went and sat among 'em all at my old thirty-three-years' desk yester morning; and, deuce take me, if I had not yearnings at leaving all my old "At the foot of such a call upon you for gratulation, I am ashamed to advert to that melancholy event. Monkhouse was a character I learned to love slowly, but it grew upon me, yearly, monthly, daily. What a chasm has it made in our pleasant parties! His noble friendly face was always coming before me, till this hurrying event in my life came, and for the time has absorbed all interest; in fact it has shaken me a little. My old desk companions, with whom I have had such merry hours, seem to reproach me for removing my lot from among them. They were pleasant creatures; but to the anxieties of business, and a weight of possible worse ever impending, I was not equal. pen-and-ink fellows, merry, sociable lads, at Indeed this last winter I was jaded out winters were always worse than other parts of the year, because the spirits are worse, and I had no day-light. In summer I had daylight evenings. The relief was hinted to me from a superior power when I, poor slave, had not a hope but that I must wait another seven years with Jacob-and lo! the Rachel which I coveted is brought to me. "Have you read the noble dedication of Irving's 'Missionary Orations' to S. T. C. Who shall call this man a quack hereafter? What the Kirk will think of it neither I nor Irving care. When somebody suggested to him that it would not be likely to do him good, videlicet, among his own people, 'That is a reason for doing it,' was his noble answer. That Irving thinks he has profited mainly by S. T. C., I have no doubt. The very style of the Dedication shows it. "Communicate my news to Southey, and beg his pardon for my being so long acknowledging his kind present of the Church,' which circumstances, having no reference to himself, prevented at the time. Assure him of my deep respect and friendliest feelings. leaving them in the lurch, fag, fag, fag!— The comparison of my own superior felicity gave me anything but pleasure. "B. B., I would not serve another seven years for seven hundred thousand pounds! I have got 4417. net for life, sanctioned by act of parliament, with a provision for Mary if she survives me. I will live another fifty years; or, if I live but ten, they will be thirty, reckoning the quantity of real time in them, i.e. the time that is a man's own. Tell me how you like 'Barbara S.*;' will it be received in atonement for the foolish 'Vision -I mean by the lady? A-propos, I never saw Mrs. Crawford in my life; nevertheless it's all true of somebody. "Address me, in future, Colebrookcottage, Islington. I am really nervous (but that will wear off), so take this brief "April 18th, 1825. "Dear Miss Hutchinson,-You want to know all about my gaol delivery. Take it then. About twelve weeks since I had a sort "Divide the same, or rather each take the whole to you-I mean you and all yours. To Miss Hutchinson I must write separate. "Farewell! and end at last, long selfish living, though she has left the stage. It is enough to letter! C. LAMB." The true heroine of this beautiful story is still make a severer quaker than B. B. feel "that there is some soul of goodness" in players. of intimation that a resignation might be well accepted from me. This was a kind bird's whisper. On that hint I spake. G and T- furnished me with certificates of wasted health and sore spirits-not much more than the truth, I promise youand for nine weeks I was kept in a fright. I had gone too far to recede, and they might take advantage, and dismiss me with a much less sum than I had reckoned on. However, liberty came at last, with a liberal provision. I have given up what I could have lived on in the country; but have enough to live here, by management and scribbling occasionally. I would not go back to my prison for seven years longer for 10,000l. a yearseven years after one is fifty, is no trifle to give up. Still I am a young pensioner, and have served but thirty-three years; very few, I assure you, retire before forty, fortyfive, or fifty years' service. erance; "You will ask how I bear my freedom? Faith, for some days I was staggered; could not comprehend the magnitude of my delivwas confused, giddy; knew not whether I was on my head or my heel, as they say. But those giddy feelings have gone away, and my weather-glass stands at a degree or two above CONTENT. alas! is the first. Our kindest remembrances to Mrs. Monkhouse, "And believe us yours most truly, "C. LAMB." In this summer Lamb and his sister paid a long visit to Enfield, which induced their removing thither some time afterwards. The following letter is addressed thence, TO MR. SOUTHEY. "August 19th, 1825. "Dear Southey,-You'll know who this letter comes from by opening slap-dash upon the text, as in the good old times. I never could come into the custom of envelopes; 'tis a modern foppery; the Plinian correspondence gives no hint of such. In singleness of sheet and meaning, then, I thank you for your little book. I am ashamed to add a codicil of thanks for your 'Book of the Church.' I scarce feel competent to give an opinion of the latter; I have not reading enough of that kind to venture at it. I can only say the fact, that I have read it with attention and interest. Being, as you know, not quite a Churchman, I felt a jealousy at the Church taking to herself the whole deserts of Christianity, Catholic and Protestant, from Druid extirpation downwards. I call all good Christians the Church, Capillarians and all. But I am in too light a "I go about quiet, and have none of that humour to touch these matters. May all restless hunting after recreation, which made our churches flourish! Two things staggered holydays formerly uneasy joys. All being me in the poem, (and one of them staggered holydays, I feel as if I had none, as they do both of us), I cannot away with a beautiful in heaven, where 'tis all red-letter days. I series of verses, as I protest they are, comhave a kind letter from the Wordsworths, mencing 'Jenner.' 'Tis like a choice banquet congratulatory not a little. It is a damp, I opened with a pill or an electuary-physic do assure you, amid all my prospects, that I stuff. T'other is, we cannot make out how can receive none from a quarter upon which Edith should be no more than ten years old. I had calculated, almost more than from any, By'r Lady, we had taken her to be some upon receiving congratulations. I had grown sixteen or upwards. We suppose you have to like poor Monkhouse more and more. I only chosen the round number for the metre. do not esteem a soul living or not living more Or poem and dedication may be both older warmly than I had grown to esteem and than they pretend to; but then some hint value him. But words are vain. We have might have been given; for, as it stands, it none of us to count upon many years. That may only serve some day to puzzle the parish is the only cure for sad thoughts. If only reckoning. But without inquiring further, some died, and the rest were permanent on earth, what a thing a friend's death would be then! "I must take leave, having put off answering a load of letters to this morning, and this (for 'tis ungracious to look into a lady's years,) the dedication is evidently pleasing and tender, and we wish Edith May Southey joy of it. Something, too, struck us as if we had heard of the death of John May. A John May's death was a few years since in the papers. We think the tale one of the quietest, prettiest things we have seen. You have been temperate in the use of localities, which generally spoil poems laid in exotic regions. You mostly cannot stir out (in such things) for humming-birds and fire-flies. A tree is a Magnolia, &c.-Can I but like the truly Catholic spirit? 'Blame as thou mayest the Papist's erring creed '—which, and other passages, brought me back to the old Anthology days, and the admonitory lesson to 'Dear George' on 'The Vesper Bell,' a little poem which retains its first hold upon me strangely. 'Tis all holiday with me now, you know. The change works admirably. "For literary news, in my poor way, I have a one-act farce going to be acted at Haymarket; but when? is the question. 'Tis an extravaganza, and like enough to follow Mr. H. 'The London Magazine' has shifted its publishers once more, and I shall shift myself out of it. It is fallen. My ambition is not at present higher than to write nonsense for the playhouses, to eke out a something contracted income. Tempus erat. There was a time, my dear Cornwallis, when the Muse, &c. But I am now in Mac Fleckno's predicament, 'Promised a play, and dwindled to a farce.' "The compliment to the translatress is daintily conceived. Nothing is choicer in that sort of writing than to bring in some "Coleridge is better (was, at least, a few remote, impossible parallel,—as between a weeks since) than he has been for years. His great empress and the inobtrusive quiet soul accomplishing his book at last has been a who digged her noiseless way so perseveringly source of vigour to him. We are on a half through that rugged Paraguay mine. How visit to his friend Allsop, at a Mrs. Leishman's, she Dobrizhoffered it all out, it puzzles my Enfield, but expect to be at Colebrookslender Latinity to conjecture. Why do you cottage in a week or so, where, or anywhere, seem to sanction Landor's unfeeling allegor- I shall be always most happy to receive ising away of honest Quixote! He may as tidings from you. G. Dyer is in the height well say Strap is meant to symbolise the of an uxorious paradise. His honeymoon Scottish nation before the Union, and Random will not wane till he wax cold. Never was since that act of dubious issue; or that a more happy pair, since Acme and Septimius, Partridge means the Mystical Man, and Lady and longer. Farewell, with many thanks, Our loves to all round your Bellaston typifies the Woman upon Many dear S. Your old friend, Waters. Gebir, indeed, may mean the state of the hop markets last month, for anything I know to the contrary. That all Spain The farce referred to in this letter was overflowed with romancical books (as Madge Newcastle calls them) was no reason that founded on Lamb's essay "On the InconveniCervantes should not smile at the matter of ence of being Hanged." It was, perhaps, too them; nor even a reason that, in another slight for the stage, and never was honoured mood, he might not multiply them, deeply as by a trial; but was ultimately published in "Blackwood's Magazine." he was tinctured with the essence of them. Quixote is the father of gentle ridicule, and at the same time the very depository and treasury of chivalry and highest notions. Marry, when somebody persuaded Cervantes that he meant only fun, and put him upon writing that unfortunate Second Part with the confederacies of that unworthy duke and most contemptible duchess, Cervantes sacrificed his instinct to his understanding. "We got your little book but last night, being at Enfield, to which place we came about a month since, and are having quiet holydays. Mary walks her twelve miles a day some days, and I my twenty on others. Wrekin. "C. LAMB." CHAPTER XVI. LETTERS TO ROBINSON, CARY, COLERIDGE, PATMORE, WHEN the first enjoyment of freedom was over, it may be doubted whether Lamb was happier for the change. He lost a grievance on which he could lavish all the fantastical exaggeration of a sufferer without wounding |