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 In the next year [1819] Lamb was greatly Tobacco,' against the 'Pleasures of Memory,' 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. : "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 "June 7th, 1819. fault. I re-read the 'White Doe of Ryl"My dear Wordsworth, -You cannot stone;' the title should be always written imagine how proud we are here of the at length, as Mary Sabilla N, a very dedication. We read it twice for once that nice woman of our acquaintance, always we do the poem. I mean all through; yet signs hers at the bottom of the shortest note. 'Benjamin' is no common favourite; there Mary told her, if her name had been Mary is a spirit of beautiful tolerance in it; it is Ann, she would have signed M. A. N—————, or as good as it was in 1806; and it will be as M. only, dropping the A.; which makes me good in 1829, if our dim eyes shall be awake think, with some other trifles, that she unto peruse it. Methinks there is a kind of derstands something of human nature. My shadowing affinity between the subject of pen goes galloping on most rhapsodically, the narrative and the subject of the dedica- glad to have escaped the bondage of two tion;-but I will not enter into personal inks. 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; "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. "I do not know which I like best,-the prologue (the latter part especially) to P. Bell, or the epilogue to Benjamin. Yes, 1 tell stories; I do know I like the last best; fourteen years behind in his knowledge of who has or has not written good verse of late.” "N.B.-M., from his peregrinations, is twelve or 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 would and ought to make it so. "If, as you say, the 'Waggoner,' in some sort, came at my call, oh for a potent voice to call forth the 'Recluse' from his profound dormitory, where he sleeps forgetful of his foolish charge the world. "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." The next letter which remains is addressed to Manning (returned to England, and domiciled in Hertfordshire), in the spring of 1819. TO MR. MANNING. “My dear M.,—I want to know how your brother is, if you have heard lately. I want to know about you. I wish you were nearer. How are my cousins, the Gladmans of Wheathamstead, and farmer Bruton? Mrs. Bruton is a glorious woman. 'Hail, Mackery End' This is a fragment of a blank verse poem which I once meditated, but got no further.* The E. I. H. has been thrown into a quandary by the strange phenomenon of poor whom I have known man and mad-man twenty-seven years, he being elder here than myself by nine years and more. He was always a pleasant, gossiping, halfheaded, muzzy, dozing, dreaming, walk-about, inoffensive chap; a little too fond of the creature; who isn't at times? but had not brains to work off an over-night's surfeit by ten o'clock next morning, and unfortunately, in he wandered the other morning drunk with last night, and with a superfœtation of drink taken in since he set out • 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. Barron Field. once blossom, fruit, and falling fruit, as I 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 onesixth 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 Monday is Whit-Monday. What a reflection! Twelve years ago, and I should have kept that and the following holiday in the fields a Maying. All of those pretty pastoral delights are over. This dead, everlasting dead desk,-how it weighs the spirit of a gentleman down! This dead wood of the desk, instead of your living trees! But then again, I hate the Joskins, a name for Hertfordshire bumpkins. Each state of life has its inconvenience; but then again, mine has more than one. Not that I repine, or grudge, or murmur at my destiny. I have meat and drink, and decent apparel; I shall, at least, when I get a new hat. "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 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, "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 which augured less for his future abilities as a political economist, that he supposed they must take at least a pound a week toll. Like a curious naturalist, he inquired if the tide did not come up a little salty. This 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 be from flattering him by saying in degree) the 'Change by no means came up to his to that of the famous American boy. I am ideal standard; so impossible is it for sometimes inclined to think I perceive the Nature, in any of her works, to come up to future satirist in him, for he hath a subthe standard of a child's imagination! The sardonic smile which bursteth out upon occawhelps (lionets) he was sorry to find were sion; as when he was asked if London were dead; and, on particular inquiry, his old as big as Ambleside; and indeed no other friend the ourang outang had gone the way answer was given, or proper to be given, to of all flesh also. The grand tiger was also so ensnaring and provoking a question. In sick, and expected in no short time to the contour of skull, certainly I discern "It is hard to discern the oak in the acorn, or a temple like St. Paul's in the first stone which is laid; nor can I quite prefigure what destination the genius of William Minor hath to take. Some few hints I have set down, to guide my future observations. He hath something paternal. But whether in all "Yours, and yours most sincerely, CHAPTER XIL [1820 to 1823.] LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH, COLERIDGE, FIELD, WILSON, AND BARTON. THE widening circle of Lamb's literary friends now embraced additional authors and actors, famous, or just bursting into fame. He welcomed in the author of the "Dramatic Scenes," who chose to appear in print as Barry Cornwall, a spirit most congenial with his own in its serious moods,-one whose genius he had assisted to impel towards its kindred models, the great dramatists of Elizabeth's time, and in whose success he received the first and best reward of the efforts he had made to inspire a taste for these old masters of humanity. Mr. Macready, who had just emancipated himself from the drudgery of representing the villains of tragedy, by his splendid performance of Richard, was introduced to him by his old friend Charles Lloyd, who had visited London for change of scene, under great depression of spirits. Lloyd owed a debt of gratitude to Macready which exemplified the true uses of the acted drama with a force which it would take many sermons of its stoutest opponents to reason away. A deep gloom had gradually overcast his mind, and threatened wholly to encircle it, when he was induced to look in at Covent-Garden Theatre and witness the performance of Rob Roy. The picture which he then beheld of the generous outlaw,-the frank, gallant, noble bearing, the air and movements, as of one "free of mountain solitudes," the touches of manly pathos and irresistible cordiality, delighted and melted him, won him from his painful introspections, and brought to him the unwonted relief of tears. He went home "a gayer and a wiser man ;" returned again to the theatre, whenever the healing enjoyments could be renewed there; and sought the acquaintance of the actor who had broken the melancholy spell in which he was enthralled, and had restored the pulses of his nature to their healthful beatings. The year 1820 gave Lamb an interest in Macready beyond that which he had derived from the introduction of Lloyd, arising from the power with which he animated the first production of one of his oldest friends-"Virginius." Knowles had been a friend and disciple of Hazlitt from a boy; and Lamb had liked and esteemed him as a hearty companion; but he had not guessed at the extraordinary dramatic power which lay ready for kindling in his brain, and still less at the delicacy of tact with which he had unveiled the sources of the most profound affections. Lamb had almost lost his taste for acted tragedy, as the sad realities of life had pressed more nearly on him; yet he made an exception in favour of the first and happiest part of "Virginius," those paternal scenes, which stand alone in the modern drama, and which Macready informed with the fulness of a father's affection. The establishment of the "London Magazine," under the auspices of Mr. John Scott, occasioned Lamb's introduction to the public by the name, under colour of which he acquired his most brilliant reputation— "Elia." The adoption of this signature was purely accidental. His first contribution to the magazine was a description of the Old South-Sea House, where Lamb had passed a few months' noviciate as a clerk, thirty years before, and of its inmates who had long passed away; and remembering the name of a gay, light-hearted foreigner, who fluttered there at that time, he subscribed his name to the essay. It was afterwards affixed to subsequent contributions; and Lamb used it until, in his "Last Essays of Elia," he bade it a sad farewell. The perpetual influx of visitors whom he could not repel; whom indeed he was always glad to welcome, but whose visits unstrung him, induced him to take lodgings at Dalston, to which he occasionally retired when he wished for repose. The deaths of some who were dear to him cast a melancholy tinge on his mind, as may be seen in the following: TO MR. WORDSWORTH. "March 20th, 1822. "My dear Wordsworth,-A letter from you is very grateful; I have not seen a Kendal postmark so long! We are pretty well, save colds and rheumatics, and a certain deadness to everything, which I think I may date from poor John's loss, and another accident or two at the same time, that has made me almost bury myself at Dalston, where yet I see more faces than I could wish. Deaths overset one, and put one out long after the recent grief. Two or three have died within this last two twelvemonths, and so many parts of me have been numbed. One sees a picture, reads an anecdote, starts a casual fancy, and thinks to tell of it to this person in preference to every other: the person is gone whom it would have peculiarly suited. It won't do for another. Every departure destroys a class of sympathies. There's Capt. Burney gone! What fun has whist now? what matters it what you lead, if you can no longer fancy him looking over you? One never hears anything, but the image of the particular person occurs with whom alone almost you would care to share the intelligence-thus one distributes oneself about-and now for so many parts of me I have lost the market. Common natures do not suffice me. Good people, as they are called, won't serve. I want individuals. I am made up of queer points, and I want so many answering needles. The going away of friends does not make the remainder more precious. It takes so much from them as there was a common link. A. B. and C. make a party. A. dies. B. not only loses A.; but all A.'s part in C. C. loses A.'s part in B., and so the alphabet sickens by subtraction of interchangeables. I express myself muddily, capite dolente. I have a dulling cold. My theory is to enjoy life, but my practice is against it. I grow ominously tired of official confinement. Thirty years have I served the Philistines, and my neck is not subdued to the yoke. You don't know how wearisome it is to breathe the air of four pent walls, without relief, day after day, all the golden hours of the day between ten and four, without ease or interposition. Tædet me harum quotidianarum formarum, these pestilential clerk-faces always in one's dish. Oh for a few years between the grave and the desk they are the same, save that at the latter you are the outside machine. The foul enchanter 'letters four do form his name '-Busirare is his name in hell-that has curtailed you of some domestic comforts, hath laid a heavier hand on me, not in present infliction, but in the taking away the hope of enfranchisement. I dare not whisper to myself a pension on this side of absolute incapacitation and infirmity, till years have sucked me dry ;—Otium cum indignitate. I had thought in a green old age (Oh green thought!) to have retired to Ponder's End, emblematic name, how beautiful! in the Ware Road, there to have made up my accounts with Heaven and the company, toddling about between it and Cheshunt, anon stretching, on some fine Isaac Walton morning, to Hoddesdon or Amwell, careless as a beggar; but walking, walking ever till I fairly walked myself off my legs, dying walking! The hope is gone. I sit like Philomel all day (but not singing), with my breast against this thorn of a desk, with the only hope that some pulmonary affliction may relieve me. Vide Lord Palmerston's report of the clerks in the War-office, (Debates this morning's 'Times,') by which it appears, in twenty years as many clerks have been coughed and catarrhed out of it into their freer graves. Thank you for asking about the pictures. Milton hangs over my fire-side in Covent Garden, (when I am there,) the rest have been sold for an old song, wanting the eloquent tongue that should have set them off! You have gratified me with liking my meeting with Dodd.* For the Malvolio story-the thing is become in verity a sad task, and I eke it out with anything. If I could slip out of it I should be happy, but our chief-reputed assistants have forsaken us. The Opium-Eater crossed us once with a dazzling path, and hath as suddenly left us darkling; and, in short, I shall go on from dull to worse, because I cannot resist the booksellers' importunity— the old plea you know of authors, but I believe on my part sincere. Hartley I do not so often see; but I never see him in unwelcome hour. I thoroughly love and Jem White, in Elia's Essay, "On some of the Old Actors." See the account of the meeting between Dodd and |