to a sound belief are various and inscrutable been disappointed (he will bear with my as the heart of man. Some believe upon saying so) at the discovery of my error. weak principles. Others cannot feel the L. H. is unfortunate in holding some loose efficacy of the strongest. One of the most and not very definite speculations (for at candid, most upright, and single-meaning times I think he hardly knows whither his men, I ever knew, was the late Thomas premises would carry him) on marriage-the Holcroft. I believe he never said one thing tenets, I conceive, of the 'Political Justice' and meant another, in his life; and, as near carried a little further. as I can guess, he never acted otherwise could discover in his practice, they have For anything I than with the most scrupulous attention to reference, like those, to some future possible conscience. Ought we to wish the character condition of society, and not to the present false, for the sake of a hollow compliment to times. But neither for these obliquities of Christianity? are as distant as the poles asunder) — nor for thinking (upon which my own conclusions his political asperities and petulancies, which are wearing out with the heats and vanities of youth-did I select him for a friend; but for qualities which fitted him for that relation. I do not know whether I flatter myself with being the occasion, but certain it is, that, touched with some misgivings for sundry harsh things which he had written aforetime against our friend C., left this country he sought a reconciliation with that gentleman (himself being his own introducer), and found it. 44 Accident introduced me to the acquaintance of Mr. L. H.. and the experience of his many friendly qualities confirmed a friendship between us. You, who have been misrepresented yourself, I should hope, have not lent an idle ear to the calumnies which have been spread abroad respecting this gentleman. I was admitted to his household for some years, and do most solemnly aver that I believe him to be in his domestic relations as correct as any man. He chose an illjudged subject for a poem; the peccant humours of which have been visited on him tenfold by the artful use, which his adversaries have made, of an equivocal term. The subject itself was started by Dante, but better because brieflier treated of. But the crime of the lovers, in the Italian and the English poet, with its aggravated enormity of circumstance, is not of a kind (as the critics of the latter well knew) with those conjunctions, for which Nature herself has provided no excuse, because no temptation. - It has nothing in common with the black horrors, sung by Ford and Massinger. The familiarising of it in tale and fable may be for that reason incidentally more contagious. In spite of Rimini, I must look upon its author as a man of taste, and a poet. He is better than so; he is one of the most cordialminded men I ever knew, and matchless as a fire-side companion. I mean not to affront or wound your feelings when I say that, in his more genial moods, he has often reminded me of you. There is the same air of mild dogmatism the same condescending to a boyish sportiveness—in both your conversations. His handwriting is so much the same with your own, that I have opened more than one letter of his, hoping, nay, not doubting, but it was from you, and have before he which land with much regret I took my that same T. H. 'six years old, during a 6 Sleep breaks at last from out thee, (they are to be found in the 47th page of Foliage') — and ask yourself how far they are out of the spirit of Christianity. I have a letter from Italy, received but the other day, into which L. II. has put as much heart, and as many friendly yearnings after old associates, and native country, as, I think, paper can well hold. It would do you no hurt to give that the perusal also. expect nor desire (as he is well assured) any From the other gentleman I neither I un sensible sermon of an argumentative turn, delivered with great propriety, by one of your bishops. The place was Westminster Abbey. As such religion, as I have, has always acted on me more by way of sentiment than argumentative process, I was not unwilling, after sermon ended, by no becoming transition, to pass over to some serious feelings, impossible to be disconnected from the sight of those old tombs, &c. But, by whose order I know not, I was debarred that privilege even for so short a space as a few minutes; and turned, like a dog or some profane person, out into the common street; with feelings, which I could not help, but not very congenial to the day or the discourse. I do not know that I shall ever venture myself again into one of your churches. such concessions as L. H. made to C. What | (fearing that all was not well with you), 1 bath soured him, and made him to suspect were gravely to invite you (for a remedy) to his friends of infidelity towards him, when attend with me a course of Mr. Belsham's there was no such matter, I know not. Lectures at Hackney. Perhaps I have stood well with him for fifteen years (the scruples to some of your forms and doctrines. proudest of my life), and have ever spoken But if I come, am I secure of civil treatmy full mind of him to some, to whom his ment? The last time I was in any of your panegyric must naturally be least tasteful. places of worship was on Easter Sunday last. I never in thought swerved from him, II had the satisfaction of listening to a very never betrayed him, I never slackened in my admiration of him; I was the same to him (neither better nor worse), though he could not see it, as in the days when he thought fit to trust me. At this instant, he may be preparing for me some compliment, above my deserts, as he has sprinkled many such among his admirable books, for which I rest his debtor; or, for anything I know, or can guess to the contrary, he may be about to read a lecture on my weaknesses. He is welcome to them (as he was to my humble hearth), if they can divert a spleen, or ventilate a fit of sullenness. I wish he would not quarrel with the world at the rate he does; but the reconciliation must be effected by himself, and I despair of living to see that day. But, protesting against much that he has written, and some things which he chooses to do; judging him by his 'You had your education at Westminster; conversation which I enjoyed so long, and and, doubtless, among those dim aisles and relished so deeply; or by his books, in those cloisters, you must have gathered much of places where no clouding passion intervenes that devotional feeling in those young years, -I should belie my own conscience, if I said on which your purest mind feeds still — and less, than that I think W. H. to be, in his may it feed! The antiquarian spirit, strong natural and healthy state, one of the wisest in you, and gracefully blending ever with and finest spirits breathing. So far from the religious, may have been sown in you being ashamed of that intimacy, which was among those wrecks of splendid mortality. betwixt us, it is my boast that I was able You owe it to the place of your education; for so many years to have preserved it you owe it to your learned fondness for the entire; and I think I shall go to my grave architecture of your ancestors; you owe it without finding, or expecting to find, such to the venerableness of your ecclesiastical another companion. But I forget my man- establishment, which is daily lessened and ners you will pardon me, sir-I return to called in question through these practices — the correspondence. to speak aloud your sense of them; never to desist raising your voice against them, till they be totally done away with and abolished; till the doors of Westminster Abbey be no longer closed against the decent, though lowin-purse, enthusiast, or blameless devotee, who must commit an injury against his family economy, if he would be indulged with a bare admission within its walls. You owe it to the decencies, which you wish to see maintained in its impressive services, 66 'Sir, you were pleased (you know where) to invite me to a compliance with the wholesome forms and doctrines of the Church of England. I take your advice with as much kindness as it was meant. But I must think the invitation rather more kind than seasonable. I am a Dissenter. The last sect, with which you can remember me to have made common profession, were the Unitarians. You would think it not very pertinent, if 66 to their sight, may be to their humbler brethren. Shame these sellers out of the Temple! Show the poor, that you can sometimes think of them in some other light than as mutineers and mal-contents. Conciliate them by such kind methods to their superiors, civil and ecclesiastical. Stop the friends, upon the old terms, again to honour and admire you. Stifle not the suggestions of your better nature with the stale evasion, that an indiscriminate admission would expose the tombs to violation. Remember your boy-days. Did you ever see, or hear of a mob in the Abbey, while it was free to all? Do the rabble come there, or trouble their heads about such speculations? It is all that you can do to drive them into your churches; they do not voluntarily offer for antiquities; for tomb of king or prelate, sage or poet. If they had, they would no longer be the rabble. that our Cathedral be no longer an object of inspection to the poor at those times only, in which they must rob from their attendance on the worship every minute which they can bestow upon the fabric. In vain the public prints have taken up this subject, in vain such poor nameless writers as myself express their indignation. A word from you, sir mouths of the railers; and suffer your old a hint in your journal - would be sufficient to fling open the doors of the beautiful temple again, as we can remember them when we were boys. At that time of life, what would the imaginative faculty (such as it is) in both of us, have suffered, if the entrance to so much reflection had been obstructed by the demand of so much silver!-If we had scraped it up to gain an occasional admission (as we certainly should have done) would the sight of those old tombs have been as impressive to us (while we had been weighing themselves. They have, alas! no passion auxiously prudence against sentiment) as when the gates stood open, as those of the adjacent Park; when we could walk in at any time, as the mood brought us, for a shorter or longer time as that lasted? Is the being shown over a place the same as silently for ourselves detecting the genius of it? In no part of our beloved Abbey now can a person find entrance (out of servicetime) under the sum of two shillings. The rich and the great will smile at the anticlimax, presumed to lie in these two short words. But you can tell them, sir, how much quiet worth, how much capacity for enlarged feeling, how much taste and genius, may coexist, especially in youth, with a purse incompetent to this demand.-A respected friend of ours, during his late visit to the metropolis, presented himself for admission to St. Paul's. At the same time a decentlyclothed man with as decent a wife, and child, were bargaining for the same indulgence. The price was only two-pence each person. The poor but decent man hesitated, desirous to go in: but there were three of them, and he turned away reluctantly. Perhaps he wished to have seen the tomb of Nelson. Perhaps the interior of the cathedral was his object. But in the state of his finances, even sixpence might reasonably seem too much. Tell the aristocracy of the country (no man can do it more impressively); instruct them of what value these insignificant pieces of money, these minims For forty years that I have known the fabric, the only well-attested charge of violation adduced, has been a ridiculous dismemberment committed upon the effigy of that amiable spy, Major André. And is it for this the wanton mischief of some school-boy, fired perhaps with raw notions of transatlantic freedom or the remote possibility of such a mischief occurring again, so easily to be prevented by stationing a constable within the walls, if the vergers are incompetent to the duty is it upon such wretched pretences, that the people of England are made to pay a new Peter's pence, so long abrogated; or must content themselves with contemplating the ragged exterior of their Cathedral? The mischief was done about the time that you were a scholar there. Do you know anything about the unfortunate relic?—can you help us in this emergency to find the nose?—or can you give Chantrey a notion (from memory) of its pristine life and vigour? I am willing for peace' sake to subscribe my guinea towards a restoration of the lamented feature. "I am, sir, your humble servant, The feeling with which this letter was received by Southey may be best described 66 "P.S.—I do not think your hand-writing at all like ****'s. I do not think many things I did think." in his own words in a letter to the publisher. close to the New River, end of Colebrook "On my part there was not even a momentary Terrace, left hand from Sadler's Wells. feeling of anger; I was very much surprised "Will you let me know the day before? and grieved, because I knew how much he Your penitent, C. LAMB. would condemn himself. And yet no resentful letter was ever written less offensively: his gentle nature may be seen in it throughout." Southey was right in his belief in the revulsion Lamb's feelings would undergo, when the excitement under which he had written subsided; for although he would retract nothing he had ever said or written in defence of his friends, he was ready at once to surrender every resentment of his own. Southey came to London in the following month, and wrote proposing to call at Islington; and 21st of November Lamb thus replied: TO MR. SOUTHEY. "E. I. H., 21st November, 1823. "Dear Southey,- The kindness of your note has melted away the mist which was I have been fighting against a upon me. shadow. That accursed Q. R. had vexed me by a gratuitous speaking, of its own knowledge, that the "Confessions of a D-d' was a genuine description of the state of the writer. Little things, that are not ill meant, may produce much ill. That might have injured me alive and dead. I am in a public office, and my life is insured. I was prepared for anger, and I thought I saw, in a few obnoxious words, a hard case of repetition directed against me. I wish both magazine and review at the bottom of the sea. I shall be ashamed to see you, and my sister (though innocent) will be still more so; for the folly was done without her knowledge, and has made her uneasy ever since. My guardian angel was absent at that time. In the following letter, of the same date, Lamb anticipates the meeting. TO BERNARD BARTON. "Dear B. B.,- I am ashamed at not acknowledging your kind, little poem, which I must needs like much; but I protest I thought I had done it at the moment. Is it possible a letter has miscarried? Did you get one in which I sent you an extract from the poems of Lord Sterling? I should wonder if you did, for I sent you none such. There was an incipient lie strangled in the birth. Some people's conscience is so tender! But, in plain truth, I thank you very much for the verses. I have a very kind letter from the Laureat, with a self-invitation to come and shake hands with me. This is truly handsome and noble. 'Tis worthy of my old idea of Southey. Shall not I, think you, be covered with a red suffusion? "You are too much apprehensive of your complaint: I know many that are always ailing of it, and live on to a good old age. I know a merry fellow (you partly know him) who, when his medical adviser told him he had drunk away all that part, congratu lated himself (now his liver was gone) that he should be the longest liver of the two. "The best way in these cases is to keep yourself as ignorant as you can, as ignorant as the world was before Galen, of the entire inner construction of the animal man; not "I will muster up courage to see you, how-to be conscious of a midriff; to hold kidneys ever, any day next week (Wednesday ex- (save a sheep and swine) to be an agreeable cepted). We shall hope that you will bring Edith with you. That will be a second mortification. She will hate to see us, but come and heap embers. We deserve it, I for what I've done, and she for being my sister. fiction; not to know whereabouts the gall grows; to account the circulation of the blood an idle whimsey of Harvey's; to acknowledge no mechanism not visible. For, once fix the seat of your disorder, and your fancies flux into it like bad humours. Those "Do come early in the day, by sun-light, medical gentries choose each his favourite that you may see my Milton. "I am at Colebrook-cottage, Colebrookrow, Islington. A detached whitish house, part; one takes the lungs, another the aforesaid liver, and refer to that, whatever in the animal economy is amiss. Above all, use exercise, take a little more spirituous | in view. "C. L." Southey went to Colebrook-cottage, as proposed; the awkwardness of meeting went off in a moment; and the affectionate intimacy, which had lasted for almost twenty years, was renewed, to be interrupted only by death. CHAPTER XIV. LETTERS TO AINSWORTH, BARTON, AND COLERIDGE. LAMB was fond of visiting the Universities in the summer vacation, and repeatedly spent his holiday month at Cambridge with his sister. On one of these occasions they met with a little girl, who being in a manner alone in the world, engaged their sympathy, and soon riveted their affections. Emma Isola was the daughter of Mr. Charles Isola, who had been one of the esquire bedells of the University; her grandfather, Agostino Isola, had been compelled to fly from Milan, because a friend took up an English book in his apartment, which he had carelessly left The This good old man numbered among his pupils, Gray the poet, Mr. Pitt and, in his old age, Wordsworth, whom he instructed in the Italian language. His little grand-daughter, at the time when she had the good fortune to win the regard of Mr. Lamb, had lost both her parents, and was spending her holidays with an aunt, who lived with a sister of Mr. Ayrton, at whose house Lamb generally played his evening rubber during his stay at Cambridge. liking which both Lamb and his sister took for the little orphan, led to their begging her of her aunt for the next holidays; their regard for her increased; she regularly spent the holidays with them till she left school, and afterwards was adopted as a daughter, and lived generally with them until 1833, when she married Mr. Moxon. Lamb was fond of taking long walks in the country, and as Miss Lamb's strength was not always equal to these pedestrian excursions, she became his constant companion in walks which even extended "to the green fields of pleasant Hertfordshire." About this time, Lamb added to his list of friends, Mr. Hood, the delightful humourist; Hone, lifted for a short time into political fame by the prosecution of his Parodies, and the signal energy and success of his defence, but now striving by unwearied researches, which were guided by a pure taste and an honest heart, to support a numerous family; and Ainsworth, then a youth, who has since acquired so splendid a reputation as the author of "Rookwood" and "Crichton." Mr. Ainsworth, then resident at Manchester, excited by an enthusiastic admiration of Elia, had sent him some books, for which he thus conveyed his thanks to his unseen friend. TO MR. AINSWORTH. "India House, 9th Dec. 1823. "Dear Sir, I should have thanked you for your books and compliments sooner, but have been waiting for a revise to be sent, which does not come, though I returned the proof on the receipt of your letter. I have read Warner with great pleasure. What an elaborate piece of alliteration and antithesis! why it must have been a labour far above the most difficult versification. There is a |