ad verum? cum illi Consulari viro et mentem The publication of the second volume of irritabilem istum Julianum; et etiam astutias the "Anthology" gave occasion to the folfrigidulas quasdem Augusto propriores, lowing letter: TO MR. COLERIDGE. "In the next edition of the 'Anthology' (which Phoebus avert, and those nine other wandering maids also!) please to blot out nequaquam congruenter uno afflatu comparationis causâ insedisse affirmaveris: necnon nescio quid similitudinis etiam cum Tiberio tertio in loco solicite produxeris. Quid tibi | equidem cum uno vel altero Cæsare, cùm universi Duodecim ad comparationes tuas se gentle-hearted, and substitute drunken dog, altro tulerint? Præterea, vetustati adnutans, comparationes iniquas odi. "Istas Wordsworthianas nuptias (vel potius cujusdam Edmundii tui) te retulisse mirificum gaudeo. Valeas, Maria, fortunata nimium, et antiquæ illæ Mariæ Virgini (comparatione plusquam Cæsareanâ) forsitan comparanda, quoniam 'beata inter mulieres:' et etiam fortasse Wordsworthium ipsum tuum maritum Angelo Salutatori æquare fas erit, quoniam e Cœlo (ut ille) descendunt et Musæ et ipsæ Musicola: at Wordsworthium Musarum observantissimum semper novi. Necnon te quoque affinitate hâc novâ, Dorothea, gratulor: et tu certe alterum donum Dei. "Istum Ludum, quem tu, Coleridgi, Americanum garris, a Ludo (ut Ludi sunt) maximè abhorrentem prætereo: nempe quid ad Ludum attinet, totius illæ gentis Columbianæ, a nostrâ gente, eadem stirpe ortâ, ludi singuli causa voluntatem perperam alienare? Quæso ego materiam ludi: te Bella ingeris. “Denique valeas, et quid de Latinitate meâ putes, dicas: facias ut opossum illum nostrum volantem vel (ut tu malis) quendam Piscem errabundum, a me salvum et pulcherrimum esse jubeas. Valeant uxor tua cum Hartleiio nostro. Soror mea salva est et ego: vos et ipsa salvere jubet. Ulterius progrediri non liquet homo sum æratus. : ragged-head, seld-shaven, odd-eyed, stut- "P.S. Pene mihi exciderat, apud me esse Librorum a Johanno Miltono Latinè scriptorum volumina duo, quæ (Deo volente) cum cæteris tuis libris ocyùs citiùs per Maria ad te missura curabo; sed me in hoc tali genere rerum nullo modo festinantem novisti: habes confitentem reum. Hoc solum dici restat, prædicta volumina pulchra esse et omnia originality, but sadly wants finishing. It is, opera Latina J. M. in se continere. Circa defensionem istam Pro Pop'. Ango. acerrimam in præsens ipse præclaro gaudio moror. "Jussa tua Stuartina faciam ut diligenter colam. "Iterum iterumque valeas. "Et facias memor sis nostri." as it is, one of the very best in the book. Next to Lewti I like the Raven, which has a good deal of humour. I was pleased to see it again, for you once sent it me, and I have lost the letter which contained it. Now I am on the subject of Anthologies, I must say I am sorry the old pastoral way is fallen into F disrepute. sonnets are certainly the legitimate descendants of the ancient shepherds. The same simpering face of description, the old family face, is visibly continued in the line. Some of their ancestors' labours are yet to be found in Allan Ramsay's and Jacob Tonson's Miscellanies. But miscellanies decaying, and the old pastoral way dying of mere want, their successors (driven from their paternal acres) now-a-days settle and live upon Magazines and Anthologies. This race of men are uncommonly addicted to superstition. Some of them are idolators and worship the moon. assiduity. 'Bishop Hall's Characters' I Others deify qualities, as love, friendship, know nothing about, having never seen them. sensibility; or bare accidents, as Solitude. But I will reconsider your offer, which is Grief and Melancholy have their respective very plausible; for as to the drudgery of altars and temples among them, as the going every day to an editor with my scraps, heathens builded theirs to Mors, Febris, like a pedlar, for him to pick out and tumble Pallor, &c. They all agree in ascribing a about my ribbons and posies, and to wait in peculiar sanctity to the number fourteen. his lobby, &c., no money could make up for One of their own legislators affirmeth, that the degradation. You are in too high request whatever exceeds that number 'encroacheth with him to have anything unpleasant of that upon the province of the elegy '—vice versa, sort to submit to. whatever 'cometh short of that number abutteth upon the premises of the epigram.' I have been able to discover but few images in their temples, which, like the caves of Delphos of old, are famous for giving echoes. They impute a religious importance to the letter O, whether because by its roundness it is thought to typify the moon, their principal goddess, or for its analogies to their own labours, all ending where they began, or for whatever other high and mystical reference, I have never been able to discover, but I observe they never begin their invocations to their gods without it, except indeed one insignificant sect among them, who use the Doric A, pronounced like Ah! broad, instead. These boast to have restored the old Dorian mood. C. L." The gentry which now indite do not think it a wise speculation, because the time it would take you to put them into prose would be nearly as great as if you versified them. Indeed I am sure you could do the one nearly as soon as the other; so that instead of a division of labour, it would be only a multiplication. But I will think of your offer in another light. I dare say I could find many things, of a light nature, to suit that paper, which you would not object to pass upon Stuart as your own, and I should come in for some light profits, and Stuart think the more highly of your [The letter refers to several articles and books which Lamb promised to send to Coleridge, and proceeds :-] "You must write me word whether the Miltons are worth paying carriage for. You have a Milton; but it is pleasanter to eat one's own peas out of one's own garden, than to buy them by the peck at Covent Garden ; and a book reads the better, which is our own, and has been so long known to us, that we know the topography of its blots, and dog's-ears, and can trace the dirt in it to having read it at tea with buttered muffins, or over a pipe, which I think is the maximum. But, Coleridge, you must accept these little things, and not think of returning money for them, for I do not set up for a factor or The following fragment of a letter about general agent. As for fantastic debts of 157., this time to Coleridge refers to an offer of I'll think you were dreaming, and not trouble Coleridge to supply Lamb with literal trans-myself seriously to attend to you. My bad lations from the German, which he might Latin you properly correct; but natales for versify for the "Morning Post," for the nates was an inadvertency: I knew better. increase of Lamb's slender income. TO MR. COLERIDGE. "Oct. 11th, 1802. "Dear Coleridge,-Your offer about the German poems is exceedingly kind; but I Progrediri, or progredi, I thought indifferent, my authority being Ainsworth. However, as I have got a fit of Latin, you will now and then indulge me with an epistola. I pay the postage of this, and propose doing it by turns. In that case I can now and then write to you without remorse; not that you would mind his dress. When men go off the stage so early, it scarce seems a noticeable thing in their epitaphs, whether they had been wise or silly in their lifetime. the money, but you have not always ready cash to answer small demands, the epistolarii nummi. : "Your 'Epigram on the Sun and Moon in Germany' is admirable. Take 'em all together, they are as good as Harrington's. I will muster up all the conceits I can, and you shall have a packet some day. You and I together can answer all demands surely you, mounted on a terrible charger, (like Homer, in the Battle of the Books,) at the head of the cavalry: I will lead the light horse. I have just heard from Stoddart. Allen and he intend taking Keswick in their way home. Allen wished particularly to have it a secret that he is in Scotland, and wrote to me accordingly very urgently. As luck was, I had told not above three or four; but Mary had told Mrs. Green of Christ's Hospital! For the present, farewell: never forgetting love to Pipos and his friends. "C. LAMB." The following letter embodies in strong language Lamb's disgust at the rational mode of educating children. While he gave utterance to a deep and hearted feeling of jealousy for the old delightful books of fancy, which were banished by the sense of Mrs. Barbauld, he cherished great respect for that lady's power as a true English prose writer; and spoke often of her "Essay on Inconsistent Expectations," as alike bold and original in thought and elegant in style. TO MR. COLERIDGE. "Oct. 23rd, 1802. was "I am glad the snuff and Pi-pos's * books please. 'Goody Two Shoes' is almost out of print. Mrs. Barbauld's stuff has banished all the old classics of the nursery; and the shopman at Newberry's hardly deigned to reach them off an old exploded corner of a shelf, when Mary asked for them. Mrs. B.'s and Mrs. Trimmer's nonsense lay in piles about. Knowledge insignificant and vapid as Mrs. B.'s books convey, it seems, must come to a child in the shape of knowledge, and his empty noddle must be turned with conceit of his own powers when he has learnt, that a horse is an animal, and Billy is better than a horse, and such like; instead of that beautiful interest in wild tales, which made the child a man, while all the time he suspected himself to be no bigger than a child. Science has succeeded to poetry no less in the little walks of children than with men. Is there no possibility of averting this sore evil? Think what you would have been now, if instead of being fed with tales and old wives' fables in childhood, you had been crammed with geography and natural history! "Hang them!-I mean the cursed Barbauld crew, those blights and blasts of all that is human in inan and child. "As to the translations, let me do two or three hundred lines, and then do you try the nostrums upon Stuart in any way you please. If they go down, I will bray more. In fact, if I got or could but get 50l. a year only, in addition to what I have, I should live in affluence. "I read daily your political essays. I particularly pleased with 'Once a Jacobin: ' "Have you anticipated it, or could not you though the argument is obvious enough, the give a parallel of Bonaparte with Cromwell, style was less swelling than your things particularly as to the contrast in their deeds sometimes are, and it was plausible ad popu- affecting foreign states? Cromwell's interlum. A vessel has just arrived from Jamaica ference for the Albigenses, B.'s against the with the news of poor Sam Le Grice's death. Swiss. Then religion would come in; and He died at Jamaica of the yellow fever. His Milton and you could rant about our councourse was rapid and he had been very trymen of that period. This is a hasty foolish, but I believe there was more of suggestion, the more hasty because I want kindness and warmth in him than in almost my supper. I have just finished Chapman's any other of our schoolfellows. The annual meeting of the Blues is to-morrow, at the London Tavern, where poor Sammy dined with them two years ago, and attracted the notice of all by the singular foppishness of Homer. Did you ever read it?—it has most the continuous power of interesting you all along, like a rapid original, of any; and in * A nickname of endearment for little Hartley Coleridge. the uncommon excellence of the more finished you stand indebted to me 3s. 6d.; an odd parts goes beyond Fairfax or any of 'em. volume of Montaigne, being of no use to me, The metre is fourteen syllables, and capable I having the whole; certain books belonging of all sweetness and grandeur. Cowper's to Wordsworth, as do also the strange thickponderous blank verse detains you every hoofed shoes, which are very much admired step with some heavy Miltonism; Chapman at in London. All these sundries I commend gallops off with you his own free pace. Take to your most strenuous looking after. If you a simile for example. The council breaks find the Miltons in certain parts dirtied and upsoiled with a crumb of right Gloucester blacked in the candle, (my usual supper,) or 'Being abroad, the earth was overlaid With flockers to them, that came forth; as when of peradventure a stray ash of tobacco wafted frequent bees into the crevices, look to that passage more especially depend upon it, it contains good matter. I have got your little Milton, which, as it contains 'Salmasius'—and I make a rule of never hearing but one side of the question (why should I distract myself?) I shall return to you when I pick up the Latina opera. The first Defence is the greatest work among them, because it is uniformly great, and such as is befitting the very mouth of a great nation, speaking for itself. But the second Defence, which is but a succession of splendid episodes, slightly tied together, has one passage, which, if you have not read, I conjure you to lose no time, but read it; it is his consolations in his blindness, which had been made a reproach to him. It begins whimsically, with poetical flourishes about Tiresias and other blind worthies, (which still are mainly interesting as displaying his singular mind, and in what degree poetry entered into his daily soul, not by fits and impulses, but engrained and innate,) but the concluding page, i. e. of this passage, (not of the Defensio,) which you will easily find, divested of all brags and flourishes, gives so rational, so true an enumeration of his comforts, so human, that it cannot be read without the deepest interest. Take one touch of the religious part:- Et sane haud ultima Dei cura cæci-(we blind folks, I understand it ; not nos for ego)—sumus; qui nos, quominus quicquam aliud præter ipsum cernere valemus, eo clementius atque benignius respicere dignatur. Væ qui illudit nos, væ qui lædit, execratione publica devovendo ; nos ab injuriis hominum non modo incolumes, sed pene sacros divina lex reddidit, divinus favor: nec tam oculorum hebetudine quam cœlestium alarum umbrá has nobis fecisse tenebras videtur, factas illustrare rursus interiore ac longe præstabiliore lumine haud raro solet. Huc refero, quod et amici officio sius nunc etiam quam solebant, colunt, observant, adsunt; quod et nonnulli sunt, quibuscum Pyladeas atque Theseas alternare voces verorum amicorum liceat, "Vade gubernaculum mei pedis. Da manum ministro amico. Da collo manum tuam, ductor autem viæ ero tibi ego.' TO MR. MANNING. "Feb. 19th, 1803. "My dear Manning,―The general scope of your letter afforded no indications of insanity, but some particular points raised a scruple. "For God's sake don't think any more of 'Independent Tartary.' What are you to do among such Ethiopians? Is there no lineal descendant of Prester John? Is the chair empty? Is the sword unswayed ?— depend upon it they'll never make you their king, as long as any branch of that great stock is remaining. I tremble for your Christianity. They will certainly circumcise All this, and much more, is highly pleasing C. LAMB." "To-morrow I expect with anxiety S. T. C.'s you. Read Sir John Mandeville's travels to letter to Mr. Fox." The year 1803 passed without any event to disturb the dull current of Lamb's toilsome life. He wrote nothing this year, except some newspaper squibs, and the delightful little poem on the death of Hester Savory. This he sent to Manning at Paris, with the following account of its subject : “Dear Manning, I send you some verses I have made on the death of a young Quaker you may have heard me speak of as being in love with for some years while I lived at Pentonville, though I had never spoken to her in my life. She died about a month since. If you have interest with the Abbé de Lisle, you may get 'em translated: he has done as much for the Georgics." The verses must have been written in the very happiest of Lamb's serious mood. I cannot refrain from the luxury of quoting the conclusion, though many readers have it by heart. "My sprightly neighbour, gone before To that unknown and silent shore ! Shall we not meet as heretofore, Some summer morning. When from thy cheerful eyes a ray The following letters were written to Manning, at Paris, while still haunted with the idea of oriental adventure. cure you, or come over to England. There is a Tartar-man now exhibiting at Exeter Change. Come and talk with him, and hear what he says first. Indeed, he is no very favourable specimen of his countrymen! But perhaps the best thing you can do, is to try to get the idea out of your head. For this purpose repeat to yourself every night, after you have said your prayers, the words Independent Tartary, Independent Tartary, two or three times, and associate with them the idea of oblivion, ('tis Hartley's method with obstinate memories,) or say, Independent, Independent, have I not already got an independence? That was a clever way of the old puritans, pundivinity. My dear friend, think what a sad pity it would be to bury such parts in heathen countries, among nasty, unconversable, horse-belching, Tartar-people! Some say, they are Cannibals; and then, conceive a Tartar-fellow eating my friend, and adding the cool malignity of mustard and vinegar! I am afraid 'tis the reading of Chaucer has misled you; his foolish stories about Cambuscan, and the ring, and the horse of brass. Believe me, there are no such things, 'tis all the poet's invention; but if there were such darling things as old Chaucer sings, I would up behind you on the horse of brass, and frisk off for Prester John's country. But these are all tales; a horse of brass never flew, and a king's daughter never talked with birds! The Tartars, really, are a cold, insipid, smouchy set. You'll be sadly moped (if you are not eaten) among them. Pray try and cure yourself. Take hellebore (the counsel is Horace's, 'twas none of my thought |