by Charles Lamb
We have spent two very pleasant Evenings lately with Mr Monkhouse.
38. To Dorothy Wordsworth
[P.M. 25 November 1819]
Dear Miss Wordsworth,
You will think me negligent, but I wanted to see more of Willy,1 before I ventured to express a prediction. Till yesterday I had barely seen him – Virgilium Tantum Vidi2 – 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,3 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 question as to the flux and reflux, which being rather cunningly evaded than artfully solved by that she-Aristotle Mary, who muttered something about its getting up an hour sooner and sooner every day, he sagely replied, ‘Then it must come to the same thing at last,’ which was a speech worthy of an infant Halley!4 The Lion in the ’Change by no means came up to his ideal standard. So impossible it is 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 enquiry his old friend the Ouran Outang had gone the way of all flesh also. The grand Tiger was also sick, and expected in no short time to 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 Preface5 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.6 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 answer’d that he did not know.
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 the power of calculation in no ordinary degree for a chit. He combineth figures, after the first boggle, rapidly. As in the Tricktrack board, where the hits are figured, at first he did not perceive that 15 and 7 made 22, but by a little use he could combine 8 with 25 – and 33 again with 16, which approacheth something in kind (far let me be from flattering him by saying in degree) to that of the famous American boy.7 I am sometimes inclined to think I perceive the future satirist in him, for he hath a sub-sardonic smile which bursteth out upon occasion, 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. In the contour of scull certainly I discern something paternal. But whether in all respects the future man shall transcend his father’s fame, Time the trier of geniuses must decide. Be it pronounced peremptorily at present that Willy is a well-mannerd child, and though no great student, hath yet a lively eye for things that lie before him. Given in haste from my desk at Leadenhall. Your’s and yours’ most sincerely
C. LAMB
39. To Joseph Cottle
May 26, 1820
My dear Sir,
I am quite ashamed of not having acknowledg’d your second kind present1 earlier. But that unknown something, which was never yet discover’d, though so often speculated upon, which stands in the way of Lazy folks’ answering letters, has presented its usual obstacle. It is not forgetfulness, nor disrespect, nor incivility, but terribly like all these bad things –
I have been in my time a great Epistolary Scribbler but the passion (& with it the facility) at length wears out, & it must be pumped up again by the heavy machinery of Duty, or Gratitude, when it should run free –
I have read your Poems with as much pleasure (I cannot say more) as I did the first Messiah, first I mean in order of reading, though the larger book was not quite unknown to me, having read portions of it at a friend’s house –
Your Cambrian Poem is what I shall be tempted to repeat oftenest, as Human Poems take me in a mood more frequently congenial, than Divine. The Character of Llewellyn pleased me more than any thing else perhaps, & then some of the Lyrical Pieces, which are fine varieties –
It was quite a mistake that I could dislike anything you should write against Ld Byron, for I have a thorough aversion to his character, and a very moderate admiration of his genius – he is great in so little a way – To be a Poet is to be The Man, the whole Man – not a petty portion of occasional low passion worked up into a permanent form of Humanity. Shakspeare has thrust such rubbishly feelings into a corner, the dark dusty heart of Don John in the much Ado. The fact is I have not yet seen your poem to him. It did not come with the rest, nor was I aware till your question, that it was out – I shall enquire & get it forth with –
Southey is in Town, whom I have seen slightly, Wordswth, expected, whom I hope to see much of –
Your neighbor Michl Castles, Morgan’s friend, is also in Town, whom I shall trouble with this, if I do not get a Frank – I write with accelerated motion, for I have two or three bothering Clerks & Brokers about me, who always press in proportion as you seem to be doing something that is not business. I could exclaim a little profanely – but I think you do not like swearing – I conclude begging you to consider that I feel myself much obliged by your repeated kindness, & shall be most happy at any & all times to hear from you, Dear Sir. Yours truly
C. LAMB.
40. To Samuel Taylor Coleridge
March 9th, 1822.
Dear C.,
It gives me great satisfaction to hear that the pig turned out so well – they are interesting creatures at a certain age – what a pity such buds should blow out into the maturity of rank bacon! You had all some of the crackling – and brain sauce – did you remember to rub it with butter, and gently dredge it a little, just before the crisis? Did the eyes come away kindly with no Œdipean avulsion? Was the crackling the colour of the ripe pomegranate? Had you no complement of boiled neck of mutton before it, to blunt the edge of delicate desire? Did you flesh maiden teeth in it? Not that I sent the pig, or can form the remotest guess what part Owen1 could play in the business. I never knew him give anything away in my life. He would not begin with strangers. I suspect the pig, after all, was meant for me; but at the unlucky juncture of time being absent, the present somehow went round to Highgate. To confess an honest truth, a pig is one of those things I could never think of sending away. Teals, wigeons, snipes, barn-door fowl, ducks, geese – your tame villatic things – Welsh mutton, collars of brawn, sturgeon, fresh or pickled, your potted char, Swiss cheeses, French pies, early grapes, muscadines, I impart as freely unto my friends as to myself. They are but self-extended; but pardon me if I stop somewhere – where the fine feeling of benevolence giveth a higher smack than the sensual rarity – there my frien
ds (or any good man) may command me; but pigs are pigs, and I myself therein am nearest to myself. Nay, I should think it an affront, an undervaluing done to Nature who bestowed such a boon upon me, if in a churlish mood I parted with the precious gift. One of the bitterest pangs of remorse I ever felt was when a child – when my kind old aunt had strained her pocket-strings to bestow a sixpenny whole plum-cake upon me. In my way home through the Borough, I met a venerable old man not a mendicant, but thereabouts – a look-beggar, not a verbal petitionist; and in the coxcombry of taught-charity I gave away the cake to him. I walked on a little in all the pride of an Evangelical peacock, when of a sudden my old aunt’s kindness crossed me – the sum it was to her – the pleasure she had a right to expect that I – not the old impostor – should take in eating her cake – the cursed ingratitude by which, under the colour of a Christian virtue, I had frustrated her cherished purpose. I sobbed, wept, and took it to heart so grievously, that I think I never suffered the like – and I was right. It was a piece of unfeeling hypocrisy, and proved a lesson to me ever after. The cake has long been masticated, consigned to the dunghill with the ashes of that unseasonable pauper.
But when Providence, who is better to us all than our aunts, gives me a pig, remembering my temptation and my fall, I shall endeavour to act towards it more in the spirit of the donor’s purpose.
Yours (short of pig) to command in everything.
C. L.
41. To William Wordsworth
20th March, 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 every thing, which I think I may date from poor John’s Loss,1 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 over-set one and put one out long after the recent grief. Two or three have died within this last two twelvemths., 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 any thing, 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.2 I have a dulling cold. My theory is to enjoy life, but the 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,3 these pestilential clerk faces always in one’s dish. O for a few years between the grave and the desk! they are the same, save that at the latter you are outside the machine. The foul enchanter – letters four do form his name – Busirane 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 taking away the hope of enfranchisement.4 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.5 I had thought in a green old age (O 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 Izaac Walton morning to Hoddesdon or Amwell, careless as a Beggar, but walking, walking ever, till I fairly walkd 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 20 years, as many Clerks have been coughd and catarrhd out of it into their freer graves.6
Thank you for asking about the Pictures. Milton hangs over my fire side in Covt. Gard. (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 gratifyd me with liking my meeting with Dodd. For the Malvolio story7 – the thing is become in verity a sad task and I eke it out with any thing. If I could slip out of it I shd 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 Bookseller’s importunity – the old plea you know of authors, but I believe on my part sincere.
Hartley8 I do not so often see, but I never see him in unwelcome hour. I thoroughly love and honor him.
I send you a frozen Epistle, but it is winter and dead time of the year with me. May heaven keep something like spring and summer up with you, strengthen your eyes and make mine a little lighter to encounter with them, as I hope they shall yet and again, before all are closed.
Yours, with every kind rembe.
C. L.
I had almost forgot to say, I think you thoroughly right about presentation copies. I should like to see you print a book I should grudge to purchase for its size. D—n me, but I would have it though!
42. To John Clare
India House, 31 Aug., 1822.
Dear Clare,
I thank you heartily for your present.1 I am an inveterate old Londoner, but while I am among your choice collections, I seem to be native to them, and free of the country. The quantity of your observation has astonished me. What have most pleased me have been Recollections after a Ramble, and those Grongar Hill kind of pieces in eight syllable lines, my favourite measure, such as Cowper Hill and Solitude. In some of your story-telling Ballads the provincial phrases sometimes startle me. I think you are too profuse with them. In poetry slang of every kind is to be avoided. There is a rustick Cockneyism, as little pleasing as ours of London. Transplant Arcadia to Helpstone. The true rustic style, the Arcadian English, I think is to be found in Shenstone.2 Would his Schoolmistress, the prettiest of poems, have been better, if he had used quite the Goody’s own language? Now and then a home rusticism is fresh and startling, but where nothing is gained in expression, it is out of tenor. It may make folks smile and stare, but the ungenial coalition of barbarous with refined phrases will prevent you in the end from being so generally tasted, as you deserve to be. Excuse my freedom, and take the same liberty with my puns.
I send you two little volumes of my spare hours. They are of all sorts, there is a methodist hymn for Sundays, and a farce for Saturday night. Pray give them a place on your shelf. Pray accept a little volume,3 of which I have [a] duplicate, that I may return in equal number to your welcome presents.
I think I am indebted to you for a sonnet in the London for August.
Since I saw you I have been in France,4 and have eaten frogs. The nicest little rabbity things you ever tasted. Do look about for them. Make Mrs Clare pick off the hind quarters, boil them plain, with parsley and butter. The fore quarters are not so good. She may let them hop off by themselves.
Yours sincerely,
CHAS. LAMB.
43. To Walter Wilson
E. I. H. 16 dec. 22.
Dear Wil
son
Lightening I was going to call you –
You must have thought me negligent in not answering your letter sooner. But I have a habit of never writing letters, but at the office –’tis so much time cribbed out of the Company – and I am but just got out of the thick of a Tea Sale, in which most of the Entry of Notes, deposits &c. usually falls to my share. Dodwell is willing, but alas! slow. To compare a pile of my notes with his little hillock (which has been as long a building), what is it but to compare Olympus with a mole-hill. Then Wadd1 is a sad shuffler. –
