Selected Prose

by Charles Lamb

  Tiger, Tiger, burning bright,

  Thro’ the desarts of the night,

  which is glorious, but, alas! I have not the book; for the man is flown, wither I know not – to Hades or a Mad House. But I must look on him as one of the most extraordinary persons of the age. Montgomery’s book1 I have not much hope from. The Society, with the affected name,2 has been labouring at it for these 20 years, and made few converts. I think it was injudicious to mix stories avowedly colour’d by fiction with the sad true statements from the parliamentary records, etc., but I wish the little Negroes all the good that can come from it. I batter’d my brains (not butter’d them – but it is a bad a) for a few verses for them, but I could make nothing of it. You have been luckier. But Blake’s are the flower of the set, you will, I am sure, agree, tho’ some of Montgomery’s at the end are pretty; but the Dream awkwardly paraphras’d from B.3

  With the exception of an Epilogue for a Private Theatrical, I have written nothing now for near 6 months. It is in vain to spur me on. I must wait. I cannot write without a genial impulse, and I have none. ’Tis barren all and dearth. No matter; life is something without scribbling. I have got rid of my bad spirits, and hold up pretty well this rain-damn’d May.

  So we have lost another Poet.4 I never much relished his Lordship’s mind, and shall be sorry if the Greeks have cause to miss him. He was to me offensive, and I never can make out his great power, which his admirers talk of. Why, a line of Wordsworth’s is a lever to lift the immortal spirit! Byron can only move the Spleen. He was at best a Satyrist, – in any other way he was mean enough. I dare say I do him injustice; but I cannot love him, nor squeeze a tear to his memory. He did not like the world, and he has left it, as Alderman Curtis advised the Radicals, ‘If they don’t like their country, damn ’em, let ’em leave it,’ they possessing no rood of ground in England, and he 10,000 acres. Byron was better than many Curtises.

  Farewell, and accept this apology for a letter from one who owes you so much in that kind.

  Yours ever truly,

  C. L.

  50. To Thomas Manning

  [Not dated: ? 26 January 1825]

  My dear M.,

  You might have come inopportunely a week since, when we had an inmate. At present and for as long as ever you like, our castle is at your service. I saw Tuthill1 yesternight, who has done for me what may

  To all my nights and days to come,

  Give solely sovran sway and masterdom.2

  But I dare not hope, for fear of disappointment. I cannot be more explicit at present. But I have it under his own hand, that I am non-capacitated (I cannot write it in-) for business. O joyous imbecility! Not a susurration of this to anybody!

  Mary’s love.

  C. LAMB.

  51. To William Wordsworth

  Colebrook Cottage,

  6 April, 1825.

  Dear Wordsworth,

  I have been several times meditating a letter to you concerning the good thing which has befallen me, but the thought of poor Monkhouse1 came across me. He was one that I had exulted in the prospect of congratulating me. He and you were to have been the first participators, for indeed it has been ten weeks since the first motion of it.

  Here I am then after 33 years slavery, sitting in my own room at 11 o’Clock this finest of all April mornings a freed man, with £441 a year for the remainder of my life, live I as long as John Dennis, who outlived his annuity and starved at ninety. £441, i.e. £450, with a deduction of £9 for a provision secured to my sister, she being survivor, the Pension guaranteed by Act Georgii Tertii, &c.

  I came home for ever on Tuesday in last week. The incomprehensibleness of my condition overwhelm’d me. It was like passing from life into Eternity. Every year to be as long as three, i.e. to have three times as much real time, time that is my own, in it! I wandered about thinking I was happy, but feeling I was not. But that tumultuousness is passing off, and I begin to understand the nature of the gift. Holydays, even the annual month, were always uneasy joys: their conscious fugitiveness – the craving after making the most of them. Now, when all is holyday, they are no holydays. I can sit at home in rain or shine without a restless impulse for walkings. I am daily steadying, and shall soon find it as natural to me to be my own master, as it has been irksome to have had a master. Mary wakes every morning with an obscure feeling that some good has happened to us.

  Leigh Hunt and Montgomery2 after their releasements describe the shock of their emancipation much as I feel mine. But it hurt their frames. I eat, drink, and sleep sound as ever. I lay no anxious schemes for going hither and thither, but take things as they occur. Yesterday I excursioned 20 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.

  At the foot of such a call upon you for gratulation, I am ashamd 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 absorpt all interests. 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. Tuthill and Gilman gave me my certificates. I laughed at the friendly lie implied in them, but my sister shook her head and said it was all true. Indeed this last winter I was jaded out, winters were always worse than other parts of the year, because the spirits are worse, and I had no daylight. 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 7 years with Jacob – and lo! the Rachel which I coveted is brot. to me –

  Have you read the noble dedication of Irving’s3 ‘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, videlicet4 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 Ded. 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 I do not wish to explain, but having no reference to himself, prevented at the time. Assure him of my deep respect and friendliest feelings.

  Divide the same, or rather each take the whole to you, I mean you and all yours. To Miss Hutchinson I must write separ-ate. What’s her address? I want to know about Mrs M.

  Farewell! and end at last, long selfish Letter!

  C. LAMB.

  52. To Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  [P.M. 2 July 1825]

  Dear C.,

  We are going off to Enfield, to Allsop’s,1 for a day or 2, with some intention of succeeding them in their lodging for a time, for this damn’d nervous Fever (vide Lond. Mag. for July)2 indisposes me for seeing any friends, and never any poor devil was so befriended as I am. Do you know any poor solitary human that wants that cordial to life – a true friend? I can spare him twenty, he shall have ’em good cheap. I have gallipots of ’em – genuine balm of cares – a going – a going – a going. Little plagues plague me a 1,000 times more than ever. I am like a disembodied soul – in this my eternity. I feel every thing entirely, all in all and all in etc. This price I pay for liberty, but am richly content to pay it. The Odes are 4–5ths done by Hood,3 a silentish young man you met at Islinton one day, an invalid. The rest are Reynolds’s, whose sister H. has recently married. I have not had a broken finger in them.

  They are hearty good-natured things, and I would put my name to ’em chearfully, if I could as honestly. I complimented them in a Newspaper, with an abatement for those puns you laud so
. They are generally an excess. A Pun is a thing of too much consequence to be thrown in as a makeweight. You shall read one of the addresses over, and miss the puns, and it shall be quite as good and better than when you discover ’em. A Pun is a Noble Thing per se: O never lug it in as an accessory. A Pun is a sole object for reflection (vide my aids to that recessment from a savage state) – it is entire, it fills the mind: it is perfect as a Sonnet, better. It limps asham’d in the train and retinue of Humour: it knows it should have an establishment of its own. The one, for instance, I made the other day, I forget what it was.

  Hood will be gratify’d, as much as I am, by your mistake. I liked ‘Grimaldi’ the best; it is true painting, of abstract Clownery, and that precious concrete of a Clown; and the rich succession of images, and words almost such, in the first half of the Mag. Ignotum.4 Your picture of the Camel, that would not or could not thread your nice needle-eye of Subtilisms, was confirm’d by Elton, who perfectly appreciated his abrupt departure. Elton borrowed the ‘Aids’ from Hessey (by the way what is your Enigma about Cupid?5 I am Cytherea’s son, if I understand a tittle of it), and returned it next day saying that 20 years ago, when he was pure, he thought as you do now, but that he now thinks as you did 20 years ago. But E. seems a very honest fellow. Hood has just come in; his sick eyes sparkled into health when he read your approbation. They had meditated a copy for you, but postponed it till a neater 2d Edition, which is at hand.

  Have you heard the Creature at the Opera House – Signor Non-virsed VELUTI Vir?6

  Like Orpheus, he is said to draw stocks &c. after him. A picked raisin for a sweet banquet of sounds; but I affect not these exotics. Nos DURUM genus,7 as mellifluous Ovid hath it.

  Fanny Holcroft is just come in, with her paternal severity of aspect. She has frozen a bright thought which should have follow’d. She makes us marble, with too little conceiving. ’Twas respecting the Signor, whom I honour on this side idolatry. Well, more of this anon.

  We are setting out to walk to Enfield after our Beans and Bacon, which are just smoking.

  Kindest remembrances to the G.’s ever.

  From Islinton,

  2d day, 3d month of my Hegira

  or Flight from Leadenhall.

  C. L. Olim Clericus.8

  53. To Bernard Barton

  [P.M. 10 August 1825]

  Dear B. B.,

  You must excuse my not writing before, when I tell you we are on a visit at Enfield, where I do not feel it natural to sit down to a Letter. It is at all times an exertion. I had rather talk with you, and Ann Knight,1 quietly at Colebrook Lodge, over the matter of your last. You mistake me when you express misgivings about my relishing a series of scriptural poems. I wrote confusedly. What I meant to say was, that one or two consolatory poems on deaths would have had a more condensed effect than many. Scriptural – devotional topics – admit of infinite variety. So far from poetry tiring me because religious, I can read, and I say it seriously, the homely old version of the Psalms in our Prayer-books for an hour or two together sometimes without sense of weariness.

  I did not express myself clearly about what I think a false topic insisted on so frequently in consolatory addresses on the death of Infants. I know something like it is in Scripture, but I think humanly spoken. It is a natural thought, a sweet fallacy to the Survivors – but still a fallacy. If it stands on the doctrines of this being a probationary state, it is liable to this dilemma. Omniscience, to whom possibility must be clear as act, must know of the child, what it would hereafter turn out: if good, then the topic is false to say it is secured from falling into future wilfulness, vice, &c. If bad, I do not see how its exemption from certain future overt acts by being snatched away at all tells in its favor. You stop the arm of a murderer, or arrest the finger of a pickpurse, but is not the guilt incurred as much by the intent as if never so much acted? Why children are hurried off, and old reprobates of a hundred left, whose trial humanly we may think was complete at fifty, is among the obscurities of providence. The very notion of a state of probation has darkness in it. The all-knower has no need of satisfying his eyes by seeing what we will do, when he knows before what we will do. Methinks we might be condemn’d before commission. In these things we grope and flounder, and if we can pick up a little human comfort that the child taken is snatch’d from vice (no great compliment to it, by the bye), let us take it. And as to where an untried child goes, whether to join the assembly of its elders who have borne the heat of the day – fire-purified martyrs, and torment-sifted confessors – what know we? We promise heaven methinks too cheaply, and assign large revenues to minors, incompetent to manage them. Epitaphs run upon this topic of consolation, till the very frequency induces a cheapness. Tickets for admission into Paradise are sculptured out at a penny a letter, two-pence a syllable, &c. It is all a mystery; and the more I try to express my meaning (having none that is clear) the more I founder. Finally, write what your own conscience, which to you is the unerring judge, seems best, and be careless about the whimsies of such a half-baked notionist as I am. We are here in a most pleasant country, full of walks, and idle to our hearts’ desire. Taylor has dropt the London.2 It was indeed a dead weight. It has got in the Slough of Despond. I shuffle off my part of the pack, and stand like Xtian with light and merry shoulders. It had got silly, indecorous, pert, and every thing that is bad. Both our kind remembces to Mrs K. and yourself, and stranger’s-greeting to Lucy3 – is it Lucy or Ruth? – that gathers wise sayings in a Book.

  C. LAMB.

  54. To Bernard Barton

  [P.M. 16 May 1826]

  Dear B. B.,

  I have had no spirits lately to begin a letter to you, though I am under obligations to you (how many!) for your neat little poem. ’Tis just what it professes to be, a simple tribute in chaste verse, serious and sincere. I do not know how Friends will relish it, but we out-lyers, Honorary Friends, like it very well. I have had my head and ears stuff’d up with the East winds. A continual ringing in my brain of bells jangled, or The Spheres touchd by some raw Angel. It is not George 3 trying the 100th psalm?1 I get my music for nothing. But the weather seems to be softening, and will thaw my stunnings. Coleridge writing to me a week or two since begins his note – ‘Summer has set in with its usual Severity.’ A cold Summer is all I know of disagreeable in cold. I do not mind the utmost rigour of real Winter, but these smiling hypocrites of Mays wither me to death. My head has been a ringing Chaos, like the day the winds were made, before they submitted to the discipline of a weathercock, before the Quarters were made. In the street, with the blended noises of life about me, I hear, and my head is lightened, but in a room the hubbub comes back, and I am deaf as a Sinner. Did I tell you of a pleasant sketch Hood has done, which he calls Very Deaf Indeed? It is of a good naturd stupid looking old gentleman, whom a footpad has stopt, but for his extreme deafness cannot make him understand what he wants; the unconscious old gentleman is extending his ear-trumpet very complacently, and the fellow is firing pistol into it to make him hear, but the ball will pierce his skull sooner than the report reach his sensorium. I chuse a very little bit of paper, for my ear hisses when I bend down to write. I can hardly read a book, for I miss that small soft voice which the idea of articulated words raises (almost imperceptibly to you) in a silent reader. I seem too deaf to see what I read. But with a touch or two of returning Zephyr my head will melt. What Lyes you Poets tell about the May! It is the most ungenial part of the Year, cold crocuses, cold primroses, you take your blossoms in Ice, a painted Sun –

  Unmeaning joy around appears,

  And Nature smiles as if she sneers.

  It is ill with me when I begin to look which way the wind sits. Ten years ago I literally did not know the point from the broad end of the Vane, which it was the [? that] indicated the Quarter. I hope these ill winds have blowd over you, as they do thro’ me. Kindest remembces to you and yours.

  C. L.

  55. To John Bates Dibdin

  Friday, some day in Jun
e, 1826.

  [P.M. 30 June 1826]

  Dear D.,1

  My first impulse upon opening your letter was pleasure at seeing your old neat hand, nine parts gentlemanly, with a modest dash of the clerical: my second a Thought, natural enough this hot weather, Am I to answer all this? why ’tis as long as those to the Ephesians and Galatians put together – I have counted the words for curiosity. But then Paul has nothing like the fun which is ebullient over yours. I don’t remember a good thing (good like yours) from the 1st Romans to the last of the Hebrews. I remember but one Pun in all the Evangely, and that was made by his and our master: thou art Peter (that is Doctor Rock) and upon this rock will I build &c.; which sanctifies Punning with me against all gainsayers. I never knew an enemy to puns, who was not an ill-natured man. Your fair critic in the coach reminds me of a Scotchman who assured me that he did not see much in Shakspeare. I replied, I dare say not. He felt the equivoke, lookd awkward, and reddish, but soon returnd to the attack, by saying that he thought Burns was as good as Shakspeare: I said that I had no doubt he was – to a Scotchman. We exchangd no more words that day. – Your account of the fierce faces in the Hanging, with the presumed interlocution of the Eagle and the Tyger, amused us greatly. You cannot be so very bad, while you can pick mirth off from rotten walls. But let me hear you have escaped out of your oven. May the Form of the Fourth Person who clapt invisible wet blankets about the shoulders of Shadrach Meshach and Abednego, be with you in the fiery Trial. But get out of the frying pan. Your business, I take it, is bathing, not baking.