don't borrow money, nor twist your kitten's which is not unpleasant-to me at least. neck off, or disturb a congregation, &c., your What is the reason we do not sympathise business is done. I know things (thoughts with pain, short of some terrible surgical or things, thoughts are things,) of myself, operation? Hazlitt, who boldly says all he which would make every friend I have fly feels, avows that not only he does not pity me as a plague patient. I once ***, and sick people, but he hates them. I obscurely set a dog upon a crab's leg that was shoved recognise his meaning. Pain is probably too out under a mass of sea-weeds,-a pretty selfish a consideration, too simply a conlittle feeler. Oh! pah! how sick I am of sideration of self-attention. We pity poverty, that; and a lie, a mean one, I once told. I loss of friends, &c.—more complex things, in stink in the midst of respect. I am much which the sufferer's feelings are associated hypt. The fact is, my head is heavy, but with others. This is a rough thought there is hope; or if not, I am better than a suggested by the presence of gout; I want poor shell-fish; not morally, when I set the head to extricate it and plane it. What is whelp upon it, but have more blood and all this to your letter? I felt it to be a good spirits. Things may turn up, and I may one, but my turn when I write at all, is creep again into a decent opinion of myself. perversely to travel out of the record, so that Vanity will return with sunshine. Till when, my letters are anything but answers. So pardon my neglects, and impute it to the you still want a motto? You must not take wintry solstice. C. LAMB." my ironical one, because your book, I take it, is too serious for it. Bickerstaff might have used it for his lucubrations. What do you think of (for a title) Religio Tremuli? and Laici. But perhaps the volume is not or Tremebundi? There is Religio-Medici quite Quakerish enough, or exclusively so, for it. Your own 'Vigils' is perhaps the best. While I have space, let me congratulate with you the return of spring, what a the dog and cray-fish melt before it. I am summery spring too! all those qualms about TO BERNARD BARTON. [No date.] “Dear B. B.,—I am sure I cannot fill a letter, though I should disfurnish my skull to fill it; but you expect something and shall have a notelet. Is Sunday, not divinely speaking, but humanly and holidaysically, a blessing? Without its institution, would our rugged taskmasters have given us a leisure day, so often, think you, as once in a month? or, if it had not been instituted, going to be happy and vain again. "A hasty farewell. "C. LAMB." TO BERNARD BARTON. might they not have given us every sixth day? Solve me this problem. If we are to go three times a-day to church, why has Sunday slipt into the notion of a holliday? "July 7th, 1824. A HOLY-day I grant it. The Puritans, I "Dear B. B.,-I have been suffering under have read in Southey's book, knew the distinction. They made people observe a severe inflammation of the eyes, notwithSunday rigorously, would not let a nursery- standing which I resolutely went through maid walk out in the fields with children for your very pretty volume at once, which I recreation on that day. But then they gave lucubrations. Abroad' and 'lord' are vile dare pronounce in no ways inferior to former the 'people a holliday from all sorts of work every second Tuesday. This was giving to rhymes notwithstanding, and if you count the two Caesars that which was his respective. you will wonder how many times you have Wise, beautiful, thoughtful, generous legis-repeated the word unearthly; thrice in one lators! Would Wilberforce give us poem. It is become a slang word with the Tuesdays? No!-he would turn the six bards; avoid it in future lustily. 'Time' is days into sevenths, "And those three smiling seasons of the year Into a Russian winter.'-OLD PLAY. our "I am sitting opposite a person who is making strange distortions with the gout, fine, but there are better a good deal, I think. The volume does not lie by me; and, after a long day's smarting fatigue, which has almost put out my eyes (not blind however to your merits), I dare not trust myself with long writing. The verses to Bloomfield are the sweetest in the collection. Religion is some- next number, 'wrung from me with slow times lugged in, as if it did not come naturally. pain.' The fact is, my head is seldom cool I will go over carefully when I get my seeing, and exemplify. You have also too much of singing metre, such as requires no deep ear to make; lilting measure, in which you have done Woolman injustice. Strike at less superficial melodies. The piece on Nayler is more to my fancy. "My eye runs waters. But I will give you a fuller account some day. The book is a very pretty one in more than one sense. The decorative harp, perhaps, too ostentatious; a simple pipe preferable. "Farewell, and many thanks. "C. LAMB." TO BERNARD BARTON. "August, 1824. "Dear B. B.,-I congratulate you on getting a house over your head. I find the comfort of it I am sure. The 'Prometheus,' unbound, is a capital story. The literal rogue! What if you had ordered' Elfrida,' in sheets! she'd have been sent up, I warrant you. Or bid him clasp his Bible (i. e. to his bosom), he 'd have clapt on a brass clasp, no doubt. "I can no more understand Shelley than you can. His poetry is 'thin sown with profit or delight.' Yet I must point to your notice, a sonnet conceived and expressed with a witty delicacy. It is that addressed to one who hated him, but who could not persuade him to hate him again. His coyness to the other's passion-(for hate demands a return as much as love, and starves without it) is most arch and pleasant. Pray, like it very much. For his theories and nostrums, they are oracular enough, but I either comprehend 'em not, or there is 'miching malice' and mischief in 'em, but, for the most part, ringing with their own emptiness. Hazlitt said well of 'em-'Many are the wiser and better for reading Shakspeare, but nobody was ever wiser or better for reading Shelley.' I wonder you will sow your correspondence on so barren a ground as I am, that make such poor returns. But my head aches at the bare thought of letter-writing. I wish all the ink in the ocean dried up, and would listen to the quills shivering up in the candle flame, like parching martyrs. The same indisposition to write it is has stopt my 'Elias,' but you will see a futile effort in the enough. I am dreadfully indolent. To have Mr. Barton, having requested of Lamb some verses for his daughter's album, received the following with the accompanying letter beneath, on 30th September in this year. Surely the neat loveliness of female Quakerism never received before so delicate a compliment ! "THE ALBUM OF LUCY BARTON. Little book, surnamed of white, Gilded margins count a sin; Sayings fetch'd from sages old; Lighter fancies; not excluding Amid strains of graver measure : Riddles dark, perplexing sense; TO BERNARD BARTON. "Dear B. B.,-'I am ill at these numbers;' but if the above be not too mean to have a place in thy daughter's sanctum, take them with pleasure. "I began on another sheet of paper, and just as I had penned the second line of stanza two, an ugly blot fell, to illustrate my counsel. I am sadly given to blot, and modern blotting-paper gives no redress; it only smears, and makes it worse. The only remedy is scratching out, which gives it a clerkish look. The most innocent blots are made with red ink, and are rather ornamental. Marry, they are not always to be distinguished from the effusions of a cut finger. Well, I hope and trust thy tick doleru, or, however you spell it, is vanished, for I have frightful impressions of that tick, and do altogether hate it, as an unpaid score, or the tick of a death-watch. I take it to be a species of Vitus's dance (I omit the sanctity, writing to 'one of the men called friends'). I knew a young lady who could dance no other; she danced it through life, and very queer and fantastic were her steps. "Heaven bless thee from such measures, and keep thee from the foul fiend, who delights to lead after false fires in the night, Flibbertigibbet, that gives the web, and I forget what else. “From my den, as Bunyan has it, 30th. Sep. 1824. C. L." Here is a humorous expostulation with Coleridge for carrying away a book from the cottage, in the absence of its inmates. away. TO MR. COLERIDGE. [No date.] ing to him the estimate of it; but was "Dear C.,-Why will you make your visits, which should give pleasure, matter of regret to your friends? you never come but you take away some folio, that is part of my existence. With a great deal of difficulty I was made to comprehend the extent of my loss. My maid, Becky, brought me a dirty bit of paper, which contained her description of some book which Mr. Coleridge had taken It was 'Luster's Tables,' which, for some time, I could not make out. What! has he carried away any of the tables, Becky?' 'No, it wasn't any tables, but it was a book that he called Luster's Tables.' I was obliged to search personally among my shelves, and a huge fissure suddenly disclosed to me the true nature of the damage I had sustained. The following preface to a letter, addressed That book, C., you should not have taken to Miss Hutchinson, Mrs. Wordsworth's away, for it is not mine, it is the property of sister, playing on the pretended defects of a friend, who does not know its value, nor Miss Lamb's handwriting, is one of those indeed have I been very sedulous in explain- artifices of affection which, not finding scope "Your wronged friend, "C. LAMB." TO MISS HUTCHINSON. What a strange mingling of humour and solemn truth is there in the following reflection on Fauntleroy's fate, in a letter addressed to Bernard Barton ? TO BERNARD BARTON. "Dec. 1st, 1824. in eulogistic epithets, take refuge in apparent abuse. Lamb himself, at this time, wrote a singularly neat hand, having greatly improved in the India House, where he also learned to flourish, a facility he took a pride in, and sometimes indulged; but his flourishes (wherefore it would be too curious to inquire) almost always shaped themselves into a "And now, my dear sir, trifling apart, the visionary corkscrew, "never made to draw." gloomy catastrophe of yesterday morning prompts a sadder vein. The fate of the unfortunate Fauntleroy makes me, whether I will or no, to cast reflecting eyes around on "Dear Miss H.,-Mary has such an invin- such of my friends as, by a parity of situacible reluctance to any epistolary exertion, tion, are exposed to a similarity of temptathat I am sparing her a mortification by tion. My very style seems to myself to taking the pen from her. The plain truth become more impressive than usual, with the is, she writes such a pimping, mean, detestable change of theme. Who that standeth, hand, that she is ashamed of the formation knoweth but he may yet fall? Your hands of her letters. There is an essential poverty as yet, I am most willing to believe, have and abjectness in the frame of them. They never deviated into other's property. You look like begging letters. And then she is think it impossible that you could ever sure to omit a most substantial word in the commit so heinous an offence; but so thought second draught (for she never ventures an Fauntleroy once; so have thought many epistle without a foul copy first), which is besides him, who at last have expiated as he obliged to be interlined; which spoils the hath done. You are as yet upright; but you neatest epistle, you know. Her figures, are a banker, at least the next thing to it. 1, 2, 3, 4, &c., where she has occasion to I feel the delicacy of the subject; but cash express numerals, as in the date (25th April, must pass through your hands, sometimes to 1823), are not figures, but figurantes; and a great amount. If in an unguarded hour the combined posse go staggering up and -but I will hope better. Consider the down shameless, as drunkards in the day- scandal it will bring upon those of your time. It is no better when she rules her persuasion. Thousands would go to see a paper. Her Lines are not less erring' than Quaker hanged, that would be indifferent to her words. A sort of unnatural parallel the fate of a Presbyterian or an Anabaptist. lines, that are perpetually threatening to Think of the effect it would have on the sale meet; which, you know, is quite contrary to of your poems alone, not to mention higher Euclid. Her very blots are not bold like considerations! I tremble, I am sure, at this [here a large blot is inserted, but poor myself, when I think that so many poor smears, half left in and half scratched out, victims of the law, at one time of their life, with another smear left in their place. I made as sure of never being hanged, as I in like a clear letter. A bold free hand, and a my presumption am too ready to do myself. fearless flourish. Then she has always to go What are we better than they? Do we through them (a second operation) to dot her come into the world with different necks? i's, and cross her t's. I don't think she can Is there any distinctive mark under our left make a corkscrew if she tried, which has ears? Are we unstrangulable, I ask you? such a fine effect at the end or middle of an Think of these things. I am shocked someepistle, and fills up. times at the shape of my own fingers, not for their resemblance to the ape tribe (which is something), but for the exquisite adaptation of them to the purposes of picking, fingering, &c. No one that is so framed, I maintain it, but should tremble. C. L." "There is a corkscrew! One of the best I ever drew. By the way, what incomparable whisky that was of M.'s! But if I am to write a letter, let me begin, and not stand flourishing, like a fencer at a fair. "It gives me great pleasure, &c. &c. &c. [The letter now begins.] In the year 1824, one of Lamb's last ties CHAPTER XV. LAMB'S EMANCIPATION FROM THE INDIA HOUse. THE year 1825 is marked by one of the principal events in Lamb's uneventful life— his retirement from the drudgery of the desk, with a pension equal to two-thirds of his now liberal salary. The following letters vividly exhibit his hopes and his apprehensions before he received this noble boon from the East India Company, and his bewilderment of pleasure when he found himself in reality free. He has recorded his feelings in one of the most beautiful of his "Last Essays of Elia," entitled "The Superannuated Man;" but it will be interesting to contemplate them, "living as they rose," in the unstudied letters to which this chapter is devoted. to the theatre, as a scene of present enjoy- business scene; for though he went now and ment, was severed. Munden, the rich then to the theatre to gratify Miss Isola, or peculiarities of whose acting he has embalmed to please an author who was his friend, his in one of the choicest "Essays of Elia," real stage henceforth only spread itself out quitted the stage in the mellowness of his in the selectest chambers of his memory. powers. His relish for Munden's acting was almost a new sense; he did not compare him with the old comedians, as having common qualities with them, but regarded him as altogether of a different and original style. On the last night of his appearance, Lamb was very desirous to attend, but every place in the boxes had long been secured; and Lamb was not strong enough to stand the tremendous rush, by enduring which, alone, he could hope to obtain a place in the pit; when Munden's gratitude for his exquisite praise anticipated his wish, by providing for him and Miss Lamb places in a corner of the orchestra, close to the stage. The play of the "Poor Gentleman," in which Munden played "Sir Robert Bramble," had concluded, and the audience were impatiently waiting for the farce, in which the great comedian was to delight them for the last time, when my attention was suddenly called to Lamb by Miss Kelly, who sat with my party far withdrawn into the obscurity of one of the upper boxes, but overlooking the radiant hollow which waved below us, to our friend. In his hand, directly beneath the line of stagelights, glistened a huge porter-pot, which he was draining; while the broad face of old Munden was seen thrust out from the door by which the musicians enter, watching the close of the draught, when he might receive and hide the portentous beaker from the gaze of the admiring neighbours. Some unknown benefactor had sent four pots of stout to keep up the veteran's heart during his last trial; and, not able to drink them all, he bethought him of Lamb, and without considering the wonder which would be excited in the brilliant crowd who surrounded him, conveyed himself the cordial chalice to Lamb's parched lips. At the end of the same farce, Munden found himself unable to deliver from memory a short and elegant address which one of his sons had written for him; but, provided against accidents, took it from his pocket, wiped his eyes, put on his spectacles, read it, and made his last bow. This was, perhaps, the last night when Lamb took a hearty interest in the present A New Series of the London Magazine was commenced with this year, in an increased size and price; but the spirit of the work had evaporated, as often happens to periodical works, as the store of rich fancies with which its contributors had begun, was in a measure exhausted. Lamb contributed a "Memoir of Liston," who occasionally enlivened Lamb's evening parties with his society; and who, besides the interest which he derived from his theatrical fame, was recommended to Lamb by the cordial admiration he expressed for Munden, whom he used to imitate in a style delightfully blending his own humour with that of his sometime rival. The "Memoir" is altogether a fiction of which, as Lamb did not think it worthy of republication, I will only give a specimen. After a ludicrously improbable account of his hero's pedigree, birth, and early habits, Lamb thus represents his entrance on the life of an actor. "We accordingly find him shortly after making his début, as it is called, upon the |