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old marble hall, and I too partake of their again, and therefore I do not solicit it as permanency. Eternity was, while I thought not of Time. But he thought of me, and they are toppled down, and corn covers the spot of the noble old dwelling and its princely gardens. I feel like a grasshopper that, chirping about the grounds, escaped the scythe only by my littleness. Even now he is whetting one of his smallest razors to clean wipe me out, perhaps. Well!"

The following is an acknowledgment of some verses which Lamb had begged for | Miss Isola's album.

"Aug. 28th, 1827.

"Dear B. B.,-I am thankful to you for your ready compliance with my wishes. Emma is delighted with your verses; I have sent them, with four album poems of my own, to a Mr. F, who is to be editor of a more superb pocket-book than has yet appeared, by far! the property of some wealthy booksellers; but whom, or what its name, I forgot to ask. It is actually to have in it schoolboy exercises by his present Majesty and the late Duke of York. Wordsworth is named as a contributor. F, whom I have slightly seen, is editor of a forthcome or coming review of foreign books, and is intimately connected with Lockhart, &c. So I take it that this is a concern of Murray's. Walter Scott also contributes mainly. I have stood off a long time from these annuals, which are ostentatious trumpery, but could not withstand the request of Jameson, a particular friend of mine and Coleridge.

"I shall hate myself in frippery, strutting along, and vying finery with beaux and belles, with 'future Lord Byrons and sweet L. E. Ls.' Your taste, I see, is less simple than mine, which the difference in our persuasions has doubtless effected. In fact, of late you have so Frenchified your style, larding it with hors de combats, and au desopoirs, that o' my conscience the Foxian blood is quite dried out of you, and the skipping Monsieur spirit has been infused.

from him. Yesterday I sent off my tragicomedy to Mr. Kemble. Wish it luck. I made it all ('tis blank verse, and I think of the true old dramatic cut) or most of it, in the green lanes about Enfield, where I am, and mean to remain, in spite of your peremptory doubts on that head. Your refusal to lend your poetical sanction to my 'Icon,' and your reasons to Evans, are most sensible. Maybe I may hit on a line or two of my own jocular; maybe not. Do you never Londonize again? I should like to taik over old poetry with you, of which I have much, and you, I think, little. Do your Drummonds allow no holydays? I would willingly come and work for you a three weeks or so, to let you loose. Would I could sell or give you some of my leisure! Positively, the best thing a man can have to do is nothing, and next to that perhaps-good works. I am but poorlyish, and feel myself writing a dull letter; poorlyish from company; not generally, for I never was better, nor took more walks, fourteen miles a day on an average, with a sporting dog, Dash. You would not know the plain poet, any more than he doth recognise James Naylor trick'd out au deser· poy (how do you spell it ?).

"C. LAMB."

The following was written to the friend to whom Lamb had intrusted Dash, a few days after the parting.

TO MR. PATMORE.

"Mrs. Leishman's, Chase, Enfield. "Dear P.,-Excuse my anxiety, but how is Dash? I should have asked if Mrs. Pe kept her rules, and was improving; but Dash came uppermost. The order of our thoughts should be the order of our writing. Goes he muzzled, or aperto ore? Are his intellects sound, or does he wander a little in his conversation? You cannot be too careful to watch the first symptoms of incoherence. The first illogical snarl he makes, to St. Luke's with him. All the dogs here are going mad, if you believe the over"If you have anything you'd like to send seers; but I protest they seem to me very further, I dare say an honourable place would rational and collected. But nothing is so be given to it; but I have not heard from deceitful as mad people, to those who are not F-since I sent mine, nor shall probably used to them. Try him with hot water if

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sane.

"Let us hear from you respecting Mrs. P's regimen. I send my love in a to Dash. "C. LAMB."

On the outside of the letter is written;

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Seriously, I wish you would call upon Hood when you are that way. He's a capital fellow. I've sent him two poems, one

ordered by his wife, and written to order; and 'tis a week since, and I've not heard from him. I fear something is the matter.

"Our kindest remembrance to Mrs. P."

He thus, in December, expresses his misery

TO BERNARD BARTON.

he won't lick it up it is a sign-he does not Chase, Enfield, where, if you come a-hunting, like it. Does his tail wag horizontally, or we can give you cold meat and a tankard. perpendicularly? That has decided the fate Her husband is a tailor; but that, you know, of many dogs in Enfield. Is his general does not make her one. I knew a jailor deportment cheerful? I mean when he is (which rhymes), but his wife was a fine pleased-for otherwise there is no judging. lady. You can't be too careful. Has he bit any of the children yet? If he has, have them shot, and keep him for curiosity, to see if it was the hydrophobia. They say all our army in India had it at one time; but that was in Hyder-Ally's time. Do you get paunch for him? Take care the sheep was You might pull out his teeth (if he would let you), and then you need not mind if he were as mad as a Bedlamite. It would be rather fun to see his odd ways. It might amuse Mrs. P— and the children. They'd have more sense than he. He'd be like a fool kept in a family, to keep the household in good humour with their own understanding. You might teach him the mad dance, set to the mad howl. Madge Owlet would be nothing to him. 'My! how he capers!' [In the margin is written, 'One of the children speaks in a letter. this.""] What I scratch out is a German quotation, from Lessing, on the bite of rabid animals; but I remember you don't read German. But Mrs. P-may, so I wish I had let it stand. The meaning in English is 'Avoid to approach an animal suspected of madness, as you would avoid fire or a precipice,' which I think is a sensible observation. The Germans are certainly profounder than we. If the slightest suspicion arises in your breast that all is not right with him, muzzle him and lead him in a string (common pack-thread will do-he don't care for twist) to Mr. Hood's, his quondam master, and he'll take him in at any time. You may mention your suspicion, or not, as you like, or as you think it may wound or not Mr. H.'s feelings. Hood, I know, will wink at a few follies in Dash, in "I have not had a Bijoux, nor the slightest consideration of his former sense. Besides, notice from about omitting four out of Hood is deaf, and, if you hinted anything, five of my things. The best thing is never ten to one he would not hear you. Besides to hear of such a thing as a bookseller again, you will have discharged your conscience, or to think there are publishers. Secondand laid the child at the right door, as they hand stationers and old book-stalls for me. Authorship should be an idea of the past. Old kings, old bishops, are venerable; all present is hollow. I cannot make a letter. I have no straw, not a pennyworth of chaff, only this may stop your kind importunity to

say.

"We are dawdling our time away very idly and pleasantly at a Mrs. Leishman's,

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"Dec. 4th, 1827. "My dear B. B.,-I have scarce spirits to write, yet am harassed with not writing. Nine weeks are completed, and Mary does not get any better. It is perfectly exhausting. Enfield, and everything, is very gloomy. But for long experience I should fear her ever getting well. I feel most thankful for the spinsterly attentions of your sister. Thank the kind 'knitter in the sun!' What nonsense seems verse, when one is seriously out of hope and spirits! I mean, that at this time I have some nonsense to write, under pain of incivility. Would to the fifth heaven no coxcombess had invented Albums.

know about us. Here is a comfortable house, there to love. As I can't well put my own but no tenants. One does not make a house- name, I shall put about a subscription: hold. Do not think I am quite in despair; but, in addition to hope protracted, I have a stupifying cold and obstructing headache, and the sun is dead.

"I will not fail to apprise you of the revival of a beam. Meantime accept this, rather than think I have forgotten you all. Best remembrances.

"Yours and theirs truly,

"C. LAMB."

A proposal to erect a memorial to Clarkson, upon the spot by the way-side where he stopped when on a journey from Cambridge to London, and formed the great resolution of devoting his life to the abolition of the slave-trade, produced from Lamb the following letter to the lady who had announced it to him :

"Dear Madam,-I return your list with my name. I should be sorry that any respect should be going on towards Clarkson, and I be left out of the conspiracy. Otherwise I frankly own that to pillarise a man's good feelings in his lifetime is not to my taste. Monuments to goodness, even after death, are equivocal. I turn away from Howard's, I scarce know why. Goodness blows no trumpet, nor desires to have it blown. We should be modest for a modest man-as he is for himself. The vanities of life—art, poetry, skill military-are subjects for trophies; not the silent thoughts arising in a good man's mind in lonely places. Was I Clarkson, I should never be able to walk or ride near the spot again. Instead of bread, we are giving him a stone. Instead of the locality recalling the noblest moment of his existence, it is a place at which his friends (that is, himself) blow to the world, 'What a good man is he!' I sat down upon a hillock at Forty Hill yesternight,—a fine contemplative evening, with a thousand good speculations about mankind. How I yearned with cheap benevolence! I shall go and inquire of the stone-cutter, that cuts the tombstones here, what a stone with a short inscription will cost; just to say, 'Here C. Lamb loved his brethren of mankind.' Everybody will come

Mrs. Procter. G. Dyer

Mr. Godwin

Mrs. Godwin Mr. Irving

Mr.

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"A splendid edition of 'Bunyan's Pilgrim !' Why, the thought is enough to turn one's moral stomach. His cockle-hat and staff transformed to a smart cock'd beaver, and a jemmy cane; his amice grey, to the last Regent-street cut: and his painful palmer's pace to the modern swagger. Stop thy friend's sacrilegious hand. Nothing can be done for B. but to reprint the old cuts in as homely but good a style as possible. The Vanity Fair, and the Pilgrims there—the Silly-soothness in his setting-out countenance

the Christian Idiocy (in a good sense), of his admiration of the shepherds on the Delectable mountains; the lions, so truly allegorical, and remote from any similitude to Pidcock's; the great head (the author's), capacious of dreams and similitudes, dreaming in the dungeon. Perhaps you don't know my edition, what I had when a child. If you do, can you bear new designs from Martin, enamelled into copper or silver plate by Heath, accompanied with verses from Mrs. Hemans' pen. O how unlike his own!

Wouldst thou divert thyself from melancholy?
Wouldst thou be pleasant, yet be far from folly?
Wouldst thou read riddles, and their explanation ?
Or else be drowned in thy contemplation ?

Dost thou love picking meat? or wouldst thou see
A man i' the clouds, and hear him speak to thee?
Wouldst thou be in a dream, and yet not sleep?
Or wouldst thou in a moment laugh and weep?
Or wouldst thou lose thyself, and catch no harm,
And find thyself again without a charm?
Wouldst read thyself, and read thou knowest not what,
And yet know whether thou art blest or not
By reading the same lines? O then come hither,
And lay my book, thy head, and heart together.

JOHN BUNYAN.

Show me any such poetry in any one of the fifteen forthcoming combinations of show and emptiness, yclept 'Annuals.' So there's verses for thy verses; and now let me tell you, that the sight of your hand gladdened me. I have been daily trying to write to you, but paralysed. You have spurred me on this tiny effort, and at intervals I hope to hear from and talk to you. But my spirits have been in an opprest way for a long long time, and they are things which must be to you of faith, for who can explain depression? Yes, I am hooked into the 'Gem,' but only for some lines written on a dead infant of the Editor's, which being, as it were, his property, I could not refuse their appearing; but I hate the paper, the type, the gloss, the dandy plates, the names of contributors poked up into your eyes in first page, and whisked through all the covers of magazines, the barefaced sort of emulation, the immodest candidateship. Brought into so little space -in those old Londons,' a signature was lost in the wood of matter, the paper coarse (till latterly, which spoiled them); in short, I detest to appear in an Annual. What a fertile genius (and a quiet good soul withal) is Hood! He has fifty things in hand; farces to supply the Adelphi for the season; a comedy for one of the great theatres, just ready; a whole entertainment, by himself, for Mathews and Yates to figure in; a meditated Comic Annual for next year, to be nearly done by himself. You'd like him very much.

"Wordsworth, I see, has a good many pieces announced in one of 'em, not our Gem. W. Scott has distributed himself like a bribe haunch among 'em. Of all the poets, Cary has had the good sense to keep quite clear of 'em, with clergy-gentle-manly right notions. Don't think I set up for being

proud on this point; I like a bit of flattery, tickling my vanity, as well as any one.

But

these pompous masquerades without masks (naked names or faces) I hate. So there's a bit of my mind. Besides, they infallibly cheat you; I mean the booksellers. If I get but a сору, I only expect it from Hood's being my friend. Coleridge has lately been here. He too is deep among the prophets, the yearservers, the mob of gentlemen annuals. But they'll cheat him, I know. And now, dear B. B., the sun shining out merrily, and the dirty clouds we had yesterday having washed their own faces clean with their own rain, tempts me to wander up Winchmore Hill, or into some of the delightful vicinages of Enfield, which I hope to show you at some time when you can get a few days up to the great town. Believe me, it would give both of us great pleasure to show you our pleasant farms and villages.

"We both join in kindest loves to you and yours. C. LAMB, redivivus."

The following is of December, and closes the letters which remain of this year.

TO BERNARD BARTON.

"Dec. 5th, 1828. "Dear B. B.,—I am ashamed to receive so many nice books from you, and to have none to send you in return. You are always sending me some fruits or wholesome potherbs, and mine is the garden of the Sluggard, nothing but weeds, or scarce they. Nevertheless, if I knew how to transmit it, I would send you Blackwood's of this month, which contains a little drama, to have your opinion of it, and how far I have improved, or otherwise, upon its prototype. Thank you for your kind sonnet. It does me good to see the Dedication to a Christian Bishop. I am for a comprehension, as divines call it; but so as that the Church shall go a good deal more than half way over to the silent Meeting-house. I have ever said that the Quakers are the only professors of Christianity, as I read it in the Evangiles; I say professors-marry, as to practice, with their gaudy hot types and poetical vanities, they are much as one with the sinful. Martin's Frontispiece is a very fine thing, let C. L. say what he please to the contrary. Of the Poems,

I like them as a volume, better than any one of the preceding; particularly, 'Power and Gentleness'-'The Present'-'Lady Russell;' with the exception that I do not like the noble act of Curtius, true or false-one of the grand foundations of the old Roman patriotism-to be sacrificed to Lady R.'s taking notes on her husband's trial. If a thing is good, why invidiously bring it into light with something better? There are too few heroic things in this world, to admit of our marshalling them in anxious etiquettes of precedence. Would you make a poem on the story of Ruth, (pretty story!) and then say Ay, but how much better is the story of Joseph and his brethren! To go on, the stanzas to 'Chalon' want the name of Clarkson in the body of them; it is left to inference. The 'Battle of Gibeon' is spirited, again; but you sacrifice it in last stanza to the song at Bethlehem. Is it quite orthodox to do so? The first was good, you suppose, for that dispensation. Why set the word against the word? It puzzles a weak Christian. So Watts' Psalms are an implied censure on David's. But as long as the Bible is supposed to be an equally divine emanation with the Testament, so long it will stagger weaklings to have them set in opposition. 'Godiva' is delicately touched. I have always thought it a beautiful story, characteristic of the old English times. But I could not help amusing myself with the thought-if Martin had chosen this subject for a frontispiece-there would have been in some dark corner a white lady, white as the walker on the waves, riding upon some mystical quadruped; and high above would have risen 'tower above tower a massy structure high '-the Tenterden steeples of Coventry, till the poor cross would scarce have known itself among the clouds; and far above them all the distant Clint hills peering over chimney-pots, piled up, Ossa-on-Olympus fashion, till the admiring spectator (admirer of a noble deed) might have gone look for the lady, as you must hunt for the other in the lobster. But M. should be made royal architect. What palaces he would pile! But then, what parliamentary grants to make them good! Nevertheless, I like the frontispiece. The Elephant' is pleasant; and I am glad you are getting into a wider scope of subjects.

There may be too much, not religion, but too many good words in a book, till it becomes a rhapsody of words. I will just name, that you have brought in the 'Song to the Shepherds' in four or five, if not six places. Now this is not good economy. The 'Enoch' is fine; and here I can sacrifice 'Elijah' to it, because 'tis illustrative only, and not disparaging of the latter prophet's departure. I like this best in the book. Lastly, I much like the 'Heron;' 'tis exquisite. Know you Lord Thurlow's Sonnet to a bird of that sort on Lacken water? If not, 'tis indispensable I send it you, with my Black wood. 'Fludyer' is pleasant,—you are getting gay and Hoodish. What is the enigma? Money? If not, I fairly confess I am foiled, and sphynx must .... eat me. Four times I've tried to write-eat me, and the blotting pen turns it into-cat me. And now I will take my leave with saying, I esteem thy verses, like thy present, honour thy frontispicer, and right reverence thy patron and dedicatee, and am, dear B. B.,

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LETTERS TO ROBINSON, PROCTER, BARTON, WILSON, GILMAN, WORDSWORTH, AND DYER.

HAVING decided on residing entirely at Enfield, Lamb gave up Colebrooke-cottage, and took what he described in a notelet to me as 66 an odd-looking gambogish-coloured house," at Chase-side, Enfield. The situation was far from picturesque, for the opposite side of the road only presented some middling tenements, two dissenting-chapels, and a public house decorated with a swinging sign of a Rising Sun; but the neighbouring fieldwalks were pleasant, and the country, as he liked to say, quite as good as Westmoreland.

He continued occasional contributions to the New Monthly, especially the series of "Popular Fallacies;" wrote short articles in the Athenæum; and a great many acrostics on the names of his friends. He had now a neighbour in Mr. Serjeant Wilde, to whom he was introduced by Mr. Burney, and whom

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