of all our red-letter days, they had done promise pressed hard upon him, and he protheir worst, but I was deceived in the length cured the requisite quantity of verse from to which heads of officers, those true liberty- a very inferior hand. Kenney, who had haters, can go. They are the tyrants, not married Holcroft's widow, had more than Ferdinand, nor Nero- by a decree passed succeeded to him in Lamb's regards. Holcroft this week, they have abridged us of the had considerable dramatic skill; great force immemorially-observed custom of going at and earnestness of style, and noble sincerity one o'clock of a Saturday, the little shadow and uprightness of disposition; but he was of a holiday left us. Dear W. W. be thank- an austere observer of morals and manners; ful for liberty." and even his grotesque characters were hardly and painfully sculptured; while Kenney, with as fine a perception of the ludicrous and the peculiar, was more airy, more indulgent, more graceful, and exhibited more frequent glimpses of "the gayest, happiest attitude of things." The comedy met with less success than the reputation of the author and his brilliant experience of the past had rendered probable, and Lamb had to perform the office of comforter, as he had done on the more unlucky event to Godwin. To this play Lamb refers in the following note to Coleridge, who was contemplating a course of lectures on Shakspeare, and who sent Lamb a ticket, with sad forebodings that the course would be his last.

Among Lamb's new acquaintances was Mr. Charles Ollier, a young bookseller of considerable literary talent, which he has since exhibited in the original and beautiful tale of "Inesilla," who proposed to him the publication of his scattered writings in a collected form. Lamb acceded; and nearly all he had then written in prose and verse, were published this year by Mr. Ollier and his brother, in two small and elegant volumes. Early copies were despatched to Southey and Wordsworth; the acknowledgements of the former of whom produced a reply, from which the following is an extract:

66

TO MR. SOUTHEY.

"Monday, Oct. 26th, 1818. 'Dear Southey, I am pleased with your friendly remembrances of my little things. I do not know whether I have done a silly thing or a wise one, but it is of no great consequence. I run no risk, and care for no censures. My bread and cheese is stable as the foundations of Leadenhall-street, and if it hold out as long as the foundations of our empire in the East,' I shall do pretty well. You and W. W. should have had your presentation copies more ceremoniously sent, but I had no copies when I was leaving town for my holidays, and rather than delay, commissioned my bookseller to send them thus nakedly. By not hearing from W. W. or you, I began to be afraid Murray had not sent them. I do not see S. T. C. so often as I could wish. I am better than I deserve to be. The hot weather has been such a treat! Mary joins in this little corner in kindest remembrances to you all. C. L."

Lamb's interest was strongly excited for Mr. Kenney, on the production of his comedy entitled "A Word to the Ladies." Lamb had engaged to contribute the prologue; but the

TO MR. COLERIDGE.

"Dec. 24th, 1818.

"My dear Coleridge, I have been in a state of incessant hurry ever since the receipt of your ticket. It found me incapable of attending you, it being the night of Kenney's new comedy. You know my local aptitudes at such a time; I have been a thorough rendezvous for all consultations; my head begins to clear up a little, but it has had bells in it. Thank you kindly for your ticket, though the mournful prognostic which accompanies it certainly renders its permanent pretensions less marketable; But I trust to hear many a course yet. You excepted Christmas week, by which I understood next week; I thought Christmas week was that which Christmas Sunday ushered in. We are sorry it never lies in your way to come to us; but, dear Mahomet, we will come to you. Will it be convenient to all the good people at Highgate, if we take a stage up, not next Sunday, but the following, viz., 3rd January, 1819 — shall we be too late to catch a skirt of the old out-goer? how the years crumble from under us! We shall hope to see you before then; but, if not, let us know

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. I 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,'

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 enthusiasm into the same subject than you Wordsworth had read to him in MS. thirteen can with your two; he shall do it stans pede years before. On receipt of the little volume, in uno, as it were. 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;

"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.

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 once blossom, fruit, and falling fruit, as I 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."

'Hail, Mackery End'

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 600l. per annum to one-
sixth 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. H. has been thrown into a quan- that and the following holiday in the fields dary by the strange phenomenon of poor 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 had its inconvenience; but then again, mine has not brains to work off an over-night's surfeit more than one. Not that I repine, or by ten o'clock next morning, and unfortu- grudge, or murmur at my destiny. I have nately, in he wandered the other morning meat and drink, and decent apparel; I shall, drunk with last night, and with a super- at least, when I get a new hat. fcetation of drink taken in since he set out A red-haired man just interrupted me. He has broke the current of my thoughts. I haven't a word to add. I don't know why I send this letter, but I have had a hankering

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.

to hear about you some days. Perhaps it will go off before your reply comes. If it don't, I assure you no letter was ever welcomer from you, from Paris or Macao.

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.

exchange this transitory world for another, or none. But again, there was a golden eagle (I do not mean that of Charing) which 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 after the first boggle, rapidly; as in the solved by that she-Aristotle, Mary, who tricktrack board, where the hits are figured, muttered something about its getting up an at first he did not perceive that 15 and 7 hour sooner and sooner every day, he made 22, but by a little use he could comsagely replied, 'Then it must come to the bine 8 with 25, and 33 again with 16, which same thing at last;' which was a speech approacheth something in kind (far let me 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 sick, and expected in no short time to

-

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 sub-
sardonic smile which bursteth out upon occa-
sion; 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
so ensnaring and provoking a question.
the contour of skull, certainly I discern

In

LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH, COLERIDGE, FIELD, WILSON, lay ready for kindling in his brain, and still