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at all like ****'s. I do not think many "P.S.-I do not think your hand-writing 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 upon me. I have been fighting against a 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, congratulated 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 fiction; not to know whereabouts the gall Edith with you. That will be a second grows; to account the circulation of the mortification. She will hate to see us, but blood an idle whimsey of Harvey's; to come and heap embers. We deserve it, I acknowledge no mechanism not visible. For, for what I've done, and she for being my once fix the seat of your disorder, and your sister. 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. part; one takes the lungs, another the "I am at Colebrook-cottage, Colebrook- aforesaid liver, and refer to that, whatever row, Islington. A detached whitish house, in the animal economy is amiss. Above all,

use exercise, take a little more spirituous in view. This good old man numbered liquors, learn to smoke, continue to keep a among his pupils, Gray the poet, Mr. Pitt, good conscience, and avoid tampering with and, in his old age, Wordsworth, whom he hard terms of art-viscosity, scirrhosity, and instructed in the Italian language. His little those bugbears by which simple patients are grand-daughter, at the time when she had scared into their graves. Believe the general the good fortune to win the regard of Mr. sense of the mercantile world, which holds Lamb, had lost both her parents, and was that desks are not deadly. It is the mind, spending her holidays with an aunt, who good B. B., and not the limbs, that taints by lived with a sister of Mr. Ayrton, at whose long sitting. Think of the patience of house Lamb generally played his evening tailors, think how long the Lord Chancellor rubber during his stay at Cambridge. The sits, think of the brooding hen! I protest liking which both Lamb and his sister took I cannot answer thy sister's kind inquiry; for the little orphan, led to their begging her but I judge, I shall put forth no second volume. More praise than buy; and T. and H. are not particularly disposed for martyrs. Thou wilt see a funny passage, and yet a true history, of George Dyer's aquatic incursion in the next 'London.' Beware his fate, when thou comest to see me at my Colebrook-cottage. I have filled my little space with my little thoughts. I wish thee ease on thy sofa; but not too much indulgence on it. From my poor desk, thy fellowsufferer, this bright November,

"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.

[1823 to 1825.]

LETTERS TO AINSWORTH, BARTON, AND COLERIDge.

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.

LAMB was fond of visiting the Universities in the summer vacation, and repeatedly spent his holiday month at Cambridge with his TO MR. AINSWORTH. sister. On one of these occasions they met "India-House, 9th Dec. 1823. with a little girl, who being in a manner "Dear Sir,-I should have thanked you alone in the world, engaged their sympathy, for your books and compliments sooner, but and soon riveted their affections. Emma have been waiting for a revise to be sent, 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

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

fine simile or picture of Semiramis arming to repel a siege. I do not mean to keep the book, for I suspect you are forming a curious collection, and I do not pretend to anything of the kind. I have not a black-letter book among mine, old Chaucer excepted, and am not bibliomanist enough to like black-letter. It is painful to read; therefore I must insist on returning it at opportunity, not from contumacy and reluctance to be obliged, but because it must suit you better than me. The loss of a present from should never exceed the gain of a present to. I hold this maxim infallible in the accepting line.-I read your magazines with satisfaction. I thoroughly agree with you as to 'The German Faust,' as far as I can do justice to it from an English translation. 'Tis a disagreeable canting tale of seduction, which has nothing to do with the spirit of Faustus -Curiosity. Was the dark secret to be explored, to end in the seducing of a weak girl, which might have been accomplished by earthly agency? When Marlow gives his Faustus a mistress, he flies him at Helen, flower of Greece, to be sure, and not at Miss Betsy, or Miss Sally Thoughtless.

Cut is the branch that bore the goodly fruit,
And wither'd is Apollo's laurel tree :
Faustus is dead.'

"What a noble natural transition from metaphor to plain speaking! as if the figurative had flagged in description of such a loss, and was reduced to tell the fact simply.

"I must now thank you for your very kind invitation. It is not out of prospect that I may see Manchester some day, and then I will avail myself of your kindness. But holidays are scarce things with me, and the laws of attendance are getting stronger and stronger at Leadenhall. But I shall bear it in mind. Meantime, something may (more probably) bring you to town, where I shall be happy to see you. I am always to be found (alas!) at my desk in the fore part of the day.

see by the scrawl that I only snatch a few minutes from intermitting business.

"Your obliged servant, C. LAMB."

"(If I had time I would go over this letter again, and dot all my is.)"

To Ainsworth, still pressing him to visit Manchester, he sent the following reply.

TO MR. AINSWORTH.

"I. H., Dec. 29th, 1823. "My dear sir,-You talk of months at a time, and I know not what inducements to visit Manchester, Heaven knows how gratifying! but I have had my little month of 1823 already. It is all over, and without incurring a disagreeable favour, I cannot so much as get a single holiday till the season returns with the next year. Even our halfhour's absences from office are set down in a book! Next year, if I can spare a day or two of it, I will come to Manchester, but I have reasons at home against longer absences.

"I am so ill just at present-(an illness of my own procuring last night; who is perfect?)—that nothing but your very great kindness could make me write. I will bear in mind the letter to W. W., and you shall have it quite in time, before the 12th.

"My aching and confused head warns me to leave off. With a muddled sense of gratefulness, which I shall apprehend more clearly to-morrow, I remain, your friend unseen,

"C. L."

"Will your occasions or inclination bring you to London! It will give me great pleasure to show you everything that Islington can boast, if you know the meaning of that very Cockney sound. We have the New River! I am ashamed of this scrawl, but I beg you to accept it for the present. I am full of qualms.

'A fool at fifty is a fool indeed." "

Bernard Barton still frequently wrote to him: and he did not withhold the wished-for reply even when letter-writing was a burthen. The following gives a ludicrous account of

"I wonder why they do not send the revise. I leave late at office, and my abode lies out of the way, or I should have seen about it. If you are impatient, perhaps a line to the printer, directing him to send it me, at Accountant's Office, may answer. You will his indisposition :—

TO BERNARD BARTON.

"Jan. 9th, 1824.

organs; pain is life-the sharper, the more evidence of life; but this apathy, this death! Did you ever have an obstinate cold,-a six or seven weeks' unintermitting chill and suspension of hope, fear, conscience, and everything? Yet do I try all I can to cure it; I try wine, and spirits, and smoking, and snuff in unsparing quantities, but they all only seem to make me worse, instead of better. I sleep in a damp room, but it does me no good; I come home late o' nights, but do not find any visible amendment! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?

"It is just fifteen minutes after twelve; Thurtell is by this time a good way on his journey, baiting at Scorpion perhaps ; Ketch is bargaining for his cast coat and waistcoat; the Jew demurs at first at three half-crowns, but, on consideration that he may get somewhat by showing 'em in the town, finally closes. C. L."

Barton took this letter rather seriously, and Lamb thus sought to remove his friendly

anxieties.

Dear B. B.,-Do you know what it is to succumb under an insurmountable day-mare, -'a whoreson lethargy,' Falstaff calls it, an indisposition to do anything, or to be anything, a total deadness and distaste,-a suspension of vitality,—an indifference to locality, - a numb, soporifical, good-fornothingness,—an ossification all over,-an oyster-like insensibility to the passing events, -a mind-stupor,—a brawny defiance to the needles of a thrusting-in conscience. Did you ever have a very bad cold, with a total irresolution to submit to water-gruel processes? This has been for many weeks my lot, and my excuse; my fingers drag heavily over this paper, and to my thinking it is three-and-twenty furlongs from here to the end of this demi-sheet. I have not a thing to say; nothing is of more importance than another; I am flatter than a denial or a pancake; emptier than Judge -'s wig when the head is in it; duller than a country stage when the actors are off it; a cipher, an 0! I acknowledge life at all, only by an occasional convulsional cough, and a permanent phlegmatic pain in the chest. I am weary of the world; life is weary of me. My day is gone into twilight, and I don't "My dear sir,-That peevish letter of think it worth the expense of candles. My mine, which was meant to convey an apology wick hath a thief in it, but I can't muster for my incapacity to write, seems to have courage to snuff it. I inhale suffocation; I been taken by you in too serious a light; it can't distinguish veal from mutton; nothing was only my way of telling you I had a interests me. 'Tis twelve o'clock, and severe cold. The fact is, I have been Thurtell is just now coming out upon the insuperably dull and lethargic for many New Drop, Jack Ketch alertly tucking up weeks, and cannot rise to the vigour of a his greasy sleeves to do the last office of mortality, yet cannot I elicit a groan or a moral reflection. If you told me the world will be at an end to-morrow, I should just say, 'Will it?' I have not volition enough left to dot my 's, much less to comb my eyebrows; my eyes are set in my head; my brains are gone out to see a poor relation in Moorfields, and they did not say when they'd come back again; my skull is a Grub-street attic, to let—not so much as a joint-stool or a crack'd jordan left in it; my hand writes, not I, from habit, as chickens run about a upon me some little, when their heads are off. O for a amiable man. vigorous fit of gout, cholic, toothache,-an fine. His book I 'like;' it is only too earwig in my auditory, a fly in my visual stuffed with scripture, too parsonish. The

TO BERNARD BARTON.

"Jan. 23rd, 1824.

letter, much less an essay. The 'London' must do without me for a time, for I have lost all interest about it; and whether I shall recover it again I know not. I will bridle my pen another time, and not teaze and puzzle you with my aridities. I shall begin to feel a little more alive with the spring. Winter is to me (mild or harsh) always a great trial of the spirits. I am ashamed not to have noticed your tribute to Woolman, whom we love so much. It is done in your good manner. Your friend Tayler called time since, and seems a very His last story is painfully

best thing in it is the boy's own story. assure you that it gives me pleasure to hear When I say it is too full of scripture, I mean from you. Yours truly.

C. L."

The following sufficiently indicate the circumstances under which they were written :

TO BERNARD BARTON.

it is too full of direct quotations; no book can have too much of silent scripture in it; but the natural power of a story is diminished when the uppermost purpose in the writer seems to be to recommend something else, viz., Religion. You know what Horace says of the Deus intersit? I am not able to "February 25th, 1824. explain myself, you must do it for me. My "My dear sir,-Your title of 'Poetic sister's part in the 'Leicester School' (about Vigils' arrides me much more than a volume two-thirds) was purely her own; as it was of verse, which has no meaning. The motto (to the same quantity) in the 'Shakspeare says nothing, but I cannot suggest a better. Tales' which bear my name. I wrote only I do not like mottoes, but where they are the Witch Aunt;' the 'First Going to singularly felicitous; there is foppery in Church;' and the final story, about 'A little Indian girl,' in a ship. Your account of my black-balling amused me. I think, as Quakers they did right. There are some things hard to be understood. The more I think, the more I am vexed at having puzzled you with that letter; but I have been so out of letterwriting of late years, that it is a sore effort to sit down to it; and I felt in your debt,

them; they are un-plain, un-Quakerish ; they are good only where they flow from the title, and are a kind of justification of it. There is nothing about watchings or lucubrations in the one you suggest, no commentary on vigils. By the way, a wag would recommend you to the line of Pope,

'Sleepless himself—to give his readers sleep.'

and sat down waywardly to pay you in bad I by no means wish it; but it may explain money. Never mind my dulness;

I am used to long intervals of it. The heavens seem brass to me; then again comes the refreshing shower

'I have been merry once or twice ere now.' "You said something about Mr. Mitford in a late letter, which I believe I did not advert to. I shall be happy to show him my Milton (it is all the show things I have) at any time he will take the trouble of a jaunt to Islington. I do also hope to see Mr. Tayler there some day. Pray say so to both. Coleridge's book is in good part printed, but sticks a little for more copy. It bears an unsaleable title, ' Extracts from Bishop Leighton,' but I am confident there will be plenty of good notes in it.

"Keep your good spirits up dear B. B., mine will return; they are at present in abeyance; but I am rather lethargic than miserable. I don't know but a good horsewhip would be more beneficial to me than physic. My head, without aching, will teach yours to ache. It is well I am getting to the conclusion. I will send a better letter when I am a better man. Let me thank you for your kind concern for me, (which I trust will have reason soon to be dissipated,) and

what I mean,-that a neat motto is child of
the title. I think 'Poetic Vigils' as short
and sweet as can be desired; only have an
eye on the proof, that the printer do not
substitute virgils, which would ill accord
with your modesty or meaning. Your
suggested motto is antique enough in spelling,
and modern enough in phrases,—a good
modern antique; but the matter of it is
germain to the purpose, only supposing the
title proposed a vindication of yourself from
the presumption of authorship. The first
title was liable to this objection-that if you
were disposed to enlarge it, and the book-
seller insisted on its appearance in two tomes,
how oddly it would sound, 'A Volume of
Verse in two Volumes, Second Edition,' &c.
You see thro' my wicked intention of cur-
tailing this epistolet by the above device of
large margin. But in truth the idea of
letterising has been oppressive to me of late
above your candour to give me credit for.
There is Southey, whom I ought to have
thanked a fortnight ago for a present of the
Church Book:' I have never had courage
to buckle myself in earnest even to acknow-
ledge it by six words; and yet I am accounted
by some people a good man.
How cheap
that character is acquired! Pay your debts,

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