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 "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 outwinters 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. The true heroine of this beautiful story is still "Farewell! and end at last, long selfish make a severer quaker than B. B. feel "that there is living, though she has left the stage. It is enough to letter! C. LAMB." some soul of goodness" in players. of intimation that a resignation might be alas! is the first. Our kindest remembrances well accepted from me. This was a kind to Mrs. Monkhouse, “And believe us yours most truly, TO MR. SOUTHEY. "C. LAMB" 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 you- In this summer Lamb and his sister paid and for nine weeks I was kept in a fright. a long visit to Enfield, which induced their I had gone too far to recede, and they might removing thither some time afterwards. take advantage, and dismiss me with a much The following letter is addressed thence, 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. "You will ask how I bear my freedom? Faith, for some days I was staggered; could not comprehend the magnitude of my deliverance; was 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. "I go about quiet, and have none of that restless hunting after recreation, which made holydays formerly uneasy joys. All being holydays, I feel as if I had none, as they do in heaven, where 'tis all red-letter days. I have a kind letter from the Wordsworths, congratulatory not a little. It is a damp, I do assure you, amid all my prospects, that I can receive none from a quarter upon which I had calculated, almost more than from any, upon receiving congratulations. I had grown to like poor Monkhouse more and more. I do not esteem a soul living or not living more warmly than I had grown to esteem and value him. But words are vain. We have none of us to count upon many years. That is the only cure for sad thoughts. If only 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 answerng a load of letters to this morning, and this "August 19th, 1823. "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 humour to touch these matters. May all our churches flourish! Two things staggered me in the poem, (and one of them staggered both of us), I cannot away with a beautiful series of verses, as I protest they are, commencing 'Jenner.' 'Tis like a choice banquet opened with a pill or an electuary-physic stuff. T'other is, we cannot make out how Edith should be no more than ten years old. By'r Lady, we had taken her to be some sixteen or upwards. We suppose you have only chosen the round number for the metre. Or poem and dedication may be both older than they pretend to; but then some hint might have been given; for, as it stands, it may only serve some day to puzzle the parish reckoning. But without inquiring further, (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." "Coleridge is better (was, at least, a few weeks since) than he has been for years. His accomplishing his book at last has been a source of vigour to him. We are on a half visit to his friend Allsop, at a Mrs. Leishman's, cottage in a week or so, where, or anywhere, "The compliment to the translatress is daintily conceived. Nothing is choicer in that sort of writing than to bring in some remote, impossible parallel,-as between a great empress and the inobtrusive quiet soul who digged her noiseless way so perseveringly through that rugged Paraguay mine. How she Dobrizhoffered it all out, it puzzles my Enfield, but expect to be at Colebrookslender Latinity to conjecture. Why do you seem to sanction Landor's unfeeling allegorising away of honest Quixote! He may as well say Strap is meant to symbolise the Scottish nation before the Union, and Random since that act of dubious issue; or that Partridge means the Mystical Man, and Lady Bellaston typifies the Woman upon Many Waters. Gebir, indeed, may mean the state of the hop markets last month, for anything I know to the contrary. That all Spain overflowed with romancical books (as Madge Newcastle calls them) was no reason that Cervantes should not smile at the matter of them; nor even a reason that, in another mood, he might not multiply them, deeply as 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. "C. LAMB." The farce referred to in this letter was founded on Lamb's essay "On the Inconvenience of being Hanged." It was, perhaps, too slight for the stage, and never was honoured by a trial; but was ultimately published in "Blackwood's Magazine." CHAPTER XVI. LETTERS TO ROBINSON, CARY, COLERIDGE, PATMORE, "We got your little book but last night, WHEN the first enjoyment of freedom was being at Enfield, to which place we came over, it may be doubted whether Lamb was about a month since, and are having quiet happier for the change. He lost a grievance holydays. Mary walks her twelve miles a on which he could lavish all the fantastical day some days, and I my twenty on others. exaggeration of a sufferer without wounding "It is a sort of office work to me," says Lamb, in a letter to Barton; "hours ten to four, the same. It does me good. Man must have regular occupation that has been used The Christmas of 1825 was a melancholy season for Lamb. He had always from a boy spent Christmas in the Temple with Mr. Norris, an officer of the Inner Temple, and this Christmas was made wretched by the last illness of his oldest friend. Anxious to excite the sympathy of the Benchers of the Inn for the survivors, Lamb addressed the following letter to a friend as zealous as himself in all generous offices, in order that he might show it to some of the Benchers. the feelings of any individual, and perhaps the loss was scarcely compensated by the listless leisure which it brought him. Whenever the facile kindness of his disposition permitted, he fled from those temptations of to it." society, which he could only avoid by flight; | and his evening hours of solitude were hardly so sweet as when they were the reliefs and resting-places of his mind,-" glimpses which might make him less forlorn" of the world of poetry and romance. His mornings were chiefly occupied in long walks, sometimes extending to ten or twelve miles, in which at this time he was accompanied by a noble dog, the property of Mr. Hood, to whose humours Lamb became almost a slave,* and who, at last, acquired so portentous an ascendancy that Lamb requested his friend Mr. Patmore to take him under his care. At length the desire of assisting Mr. Hone, in his struggle to support his family by antiquarian research and modern pleasantry, renewed to him the blessing of regular morning, and found that you were gone to labour; he began the task of reading through the glorious heap of dramas collected at the British Museum under the title of the "Garrick Plays," to glean scenes of interest and beauty for the work of his friend; and the work of kindness brought with it its own reward. • The following allusion to Lamb's subservience to Dash is extracted from one of a series of papers, written in a most cordial spirit, and with great characteristic power, by the friend to whom Dash was assigned, which appeared in the "Court Magazine." "During these interminable rambles-heretofore pleasant in virtue of their profound loneliness and freedom from restraint, Lamb made himself a perfect slave to the dog-whose habits were of the most extravagantly errant nature, for, generally speaking, the creature was half a mile off from his companion either before or behind, scouring the fields or roads in all directions, scampering up or down all manner of streets,' and leaving Lamb in a perfect fever of irritation and annoyance; for he was afraid of losing the dog when it was out of sight, and yet could not persuade himself to keep it in sight for a moment, by curbing its roving spirit. Dash knew Lamb's weakness in these particulars as well as he did himself, and took a dog-like advantage of it. In the Regent's Park, in particular, Dash had his master completely at his mercy; for the moment they got into the ring, he used to get through the paling on to the green sward, and disappear for a quarter or half an hour together, knowing perfectly well that Lamb did not dare move from the spot where he (Dash) had disappeared, till euch time as he thought proper to show himself again. And they used to take this particular walk much oftener than they otherwise would, precisely because Dash liked it and Lamb did not."-Under his second master, we learn from the same source, that Dash "subsided into the best bred and best behaved of his species." 1 TO MR. H. C. ROBINSON. "Saturday, 20th Jan. 1826. visit a dying friend. I had been upon a like Το L amongst books (he was librarian), and from pletely succeeded in what you intended to some scraps of doubtful Latin which he had do. What is poetry may be disputed. These picked up in his office of entering students, are poetry to me at least. They are concise, that gave him very diverting airs of pedantry. pithy, and moving. Uniform as they are, ar-i Can I forget the erudite look with which, untristorify'd, I read them through at two when he had been in vain trying to make out sittings, without one sensation approaching a black-letter text of Chaucer in the Temple to tedium. I do not know that among your Library, he laid it down and told me that many kind presents of this nature, this is not 'in those old books, Charley, there is some- my favourite volume. The language is never times a deal of very indifferent spelling;' lax, and there is a unity of design and feeling. and seemed to console himself in the reflec- You wrote them with love-to avoid the tion! His jokes, for he had his jokes, are coxcombical phrase, con amore. I am parnow ended; but they were old trusty peren- ticularly pleased with the 'Spiritual Law,” nials, staples that pleased after decies repetita, pages 34 and 35. It reminded me of Quaries, and were always as good as new. One song and 'holy Mr. Herbert,' as Izaak Walton he had, which was reserved for the night of calls him; the two best, if not only, of our Christmas-day, which we always spent in the devotional poets, though some prefer Watts, Temple. It was an old thing, and spoke of and some Tom Moore. I am far from well, or the flat bottoms of our foes, and the possi- in my right spirits, and shudder at pen-andbility of their coming over in darkness, and ink work. I poke out a monthly crudity for alluded to threats of an invasion many years Colburn in his magazine, which I call 'Papas blown over; and when he came to the part lar Fallacies,' and periodically crush a proverb or two, setting up my folly against the wisdom of nations. Do you see the 'New Monthly?' 'We'll still make 'em run, and we'll still make 'em In spite of the devil, and Brussels Gazette !' his eyes would sparkle as with the freshness of an impending event. And what is the Brussels Gazette now? I cry while I enumerate these trifles. 'How shall we tell them in a stranger's ear?' "My first motive in writing, and, indeed, in calling on you, was to ask if you were enough acquainted with any of the Benchers, to lay a plain statement before them of the circumstances of the family. I almost fear not, for you are of another hall. But if you can oblige me and my poor friend, who is now insensible to any favours, pray exert yourself. You cannot say too much good of poor Norris and his poor wife. "Yours ever, CHARLES LAMB." "One word I must object to in your little book, and it recurs more than once-fadeless is no genuine compound; loveless is, because love is a noun as well as verb; but what is a fade? And I do not quite like whipping the Greek drama upon the back of 'Genesis' page 8. I do not like praise handed in by disparagement; as I objected to a side cen sure on Byron, &c. in the Lines on Bloomfield.' With these poor cavils excepted, your verses are without a flaw. "C. LAMB." TO BERNARD BARTON. "March 20th, 1826. "Dear B. B.,-You may know my letters by the paper and the folding. For the former, I live on scraps obtained in charity from an old friend, whose stationery is a permanent In the spring of 1826, the following letters perquisite; for folding, I shall do it neatly to Bernard Barton were written. TO BERNARD BARTON. "Feb. 7th, 1826. "Dear B. B.,—I got your book not more than five days ago, so am not so negligent as I must have appeared to you with a fortnight's sin upon my shoulders. I tell you with sincerity, that I think you have com when I learn to tie my neckcloths. I surprise most of my friends, by writing to them on ruled paper, as if I had not got past pothooks and hangers. Sealing-wax, I have none on my establishment; wafers of the coarsest bran supply its place. When my epistles come to be weighed with Plinys, however superior to the Roman in delicate irony, judicious reflections, &c, his gilt post |