suggest themselves to me at the first blush of the subject, but he will probably consult his own taste after all. y py The last pattern is obviously fitted for ranunculuses only. The two former may indifferently hold daisies, marjoram, sweet williams, and that sort. My friend in Canton is Inspector of Teas, his name is Ball; and I can think of no better tunnel. I shall expect Mr. M.'s decision. "Taylor and Hessey finding their magazine goes off very heavily at 2s. 6d. are prudently going to raise their price another shilling; and having already more authors than they want, intend to increase the number of them. If they set up against the New Monthly, they must change their present hands. It is not tying the dead carcase of a Review to a half-dead Magazine will do their business. It is like G. D. multiplying his volumes to make 'em sell better. When he finds one will not go off, he publishes two; two stick, he tries three; three hang fire, he is confident that four will have a better chance. C. L." The following letter to Miss Hutchinson, at Torquay, refers to some of Lamb's later articles, published in the "London Magazine," which, in extending its size and pretensions to a three-and-sixpenny miscellany, had lost much of its spirit. He exults, however, in his veracious "Memoir of Liston!" TO MISS HUTCHINSON. "The brevity of this is owing to scratching it off at my desk amid expected interruptions. By habit, I can write letters only at office. 66 January 20th, 1825. "Dear Miss H.,-Thank you for a noble goose, which wanted only the massive incrustation that we used to pick-axe open, about this season, in old Gloster Place. When shall we eat another goose pie together? The pheasant, too, must not be forgotten; twice as big, and half as good as a partridge. You ask about the editor of the 'London ;' I know of none. This first specimen is flat and pert enough to justify subscribers who grudge t'other shilling. De Quincy's 'Parody' was submitted to him before printed, and had his Probatum.* The 'Horns' is in a poor taste, resembling the most laboured papers in the 'Spectator.' I had signed it 'Jack Horner'; but Taylor and Hessey said it would be thought an offensive article, unless I put my known signature to it, and wrung from me my slow consent. But did you read the 'Memoir of Liston'?—and did you guess whose it was? Of all the lies I ever put off, I value this most. It is from top to toe, every paragraph, pure invention, and has passed for gospel; has been republished in newspapers, and in the penny playbills of the night, as an authentic account. I shall certainly go to the naughty man some day for my fibbings. In the next number I figure as a theologian! and have attacked my late brethren, the Unitarians. What Jack Pudding tricks I shall play next, I know not; I am almost at the end of my tether. Coleridge is quite blooming, but his book has not budded yet. I hope I have spelt Torquay right now, and that this will find you all mending, and looking forward to a London flight with the Spring. Winter, we have had none, but plenty of foul weather. I have lately picked up an epigram which pleased me "Two noble earls, whom if I quote, The plan was good, as some will say, "I have made the lame one still lamer by imperfect memory; but spite of bald diction, a little done to it might improve it into a good one. You have nothing else to do at Torquay. Suppose you try it. Well, God bless you all, as wishes Mary most sincerely, with many thanks for letter, &c. ELIA." Mr. de Quincy had commenced a series of letters in education has been neglected," as a vehicle for conveying the "London Magazine," "To a Young Man whose miscellaneous information in his admirable style. Upon this hint Lamb, with the assent which Mr. de Quincy scheme, in "A Letter to an Old Gentleman whose education has been neglected." could well afford to give, contributed a parody on the "Dear W.-I write post-haste to ensure a frank. Thanks for your hearty congratulations! I may now date from the sixth week of my 'Hegira, or Flight from Leadenhall.' I have lived so much in it, that a summer seems already past; and 'tis but early May yet with you and other people. How I look down on the slaves and drudges of the world! Its inhabitants are a vast cotton-web of spin-spin-spinners! O the carking cares! O the money-grubbers! Sempiternal muckworms! "Your Virgil I have lost sight of, but suspect it is in the hands of Sir G. Beaumont; I think that circumstance made me shy of procuring it before. Will you write to him about it?-and your commands shall be obeyed to a tittle. Essay, by which, if it get the prize, he'll touch an additional 100%. I fancy. His book, too, ('Commentary on Bishop Leighton,') is quite finished, and penes Taylor and Hessey. "In the 'London' which is just out (1st May,) are two papers entitled the 'Superannuated Man,' which I wish you to see; and also, 1st April, a little thing called 'Barbara S―,' a story gleaned from Miss Kelly. The L. M., if you can get it, will save my enlargement upon the topic of my manumission. "I must scribble to make up my hiatus crumena; for there are so many ways, pious and profligate, of getting rid of money in this vast city and suburbs, that I shall miss my THIRDS. But couragio! I despair not. Your kind hint of the cottage was well thrown out; an anchorage for age and school of economy, when necessity comes; but without this latter, I have an unconquerable terror of changing place. It does not agree with us. I say it from conviction; else I do sometimes ruralise in fancy. "Some d-d people are come in, and I must finish abruptly. By d-d, I only mean deuced. 'Tis these suitors of Penelope that make it necessary to authorise a little for gin and mutton, and such trifles. 66 Excuse my abortive scribble. "C. L. "Love and recollects to all the Wms., Doras, Maries round your Wrekin. "Mary is capitally well. Do write to Sir G. B., for I am shyish of applying to him." CHAPTER VIII. LETTERS OF LAMB'S LAST YEARS. [1825 to 1834.] How imperfectly the emancipation, so rapturously hailed, fulfilled its promises; how Lamb left Islington for Enfield, and there, after a while, subsided into a lodger; and how, at last, he settled at Edmonton to die, sufficiently appear in the former series of his letters. Those which occupy this chapter, "Coleridge has just finished his prize scattered through nine years, have either been subsequently communicated by the kindness of the possessors, or were omitted for some personal reason which has lost its force in time. The following, addressed in 1829 to the Editor, on occasion of his giving to a child the name of "Charles Lamb," though withheld from an indisposition to intrude matters so personal to himself on the reader, may now, on his taking farewell of the subject, find its place. TO MR. TALFOURD. The following eight Letters, evoked by Lamb's excellent and indefatigable correspondent, Barton, speak for themselves:— TO BERNARD BARTON. "July 2nd, 1825. "My dear B. B.,-My nervous attack has so unfitted me that I have not courage to sit down to a letter. My poor pittance in the 'London' you will see is drawn from my sickness. Your book is very acceptable to me, because most of it is new to me; but your book itself we cannot thank you for more sincerely than for the introduction you cannot I write Mrs. Anne Knight for the favoured us with to Anne Knight. Now life of me. "Dear Talfourd,-You could not have told me of a more friendly thing than you have been doing. I am proud of my namesake. I shall take care never to do any won't write all we have said of her so often She is a very pleas— but I dirty action, pick pockets, or anyhow get to ourselves, because I suspect you would myself hanged, for fear of reflecting ignominy read it to her. Only give my sister's and upon your young Chrisom. I have now a motive to be good. I shall not omnis my kindest remembrances to her, and how moriar;-my name borne down the black gulf of oblivion. "I shall survive in eleven letters, five more than Cæsar. Possibly I shall come to be knighted, or more! Sir C. L. Talfourd, Bart.! "Yet hath it an authorish twang with it, which will wear out with my name for poetry. Give him a smile from me till I see him. If you do not drop down before, some day in the week after next I will come and take one night's lodging with you, if convenient, before you go hence. You shall name it. We are in town to-morrow speciali gratia, but by no arrangement can get up near you. "Believe us both, with greatest regards, yours and Mrs. Talfourd's. "CHARLES LAMB-PHILO-TALFOURD. The child who bore the name so honoured by his parents, survived his god-father only a year-dying at Brighton, whither he had been taken in the vain hope of restoration, on the 3rd December, 1835. Will the reader forgive the weakness which prompts the desire, in this place, to link their memories together, by inserting a few verses which, having been only published at the end of the last small edition of the Editor's dramas, may have missed some of the friendly eyes for which they were written? Our gentle Charles has pass'd away From earth's short bondage free, And left to us its leaden day And mist-enshrouded sea. Here, by the ocean's terraced side, Sweet hours of hope were known, That eager joy the sea-breeze gave, Beyond the reach of prayer. The sun-blink that through drizzling mist, Yet not in vain with radiance weak The heavenly stranger gleams— But that from whence it streams. That world our patient sufferer sought, As if his mounting spirit caught With boundless love it look'd abroad A year made slow by care and toil Still 'twas a mournful joy to think With name that cannot die. And though such fancy gleam no more Truth's nobler torch unveils the shore Which lends to both its light. S glad we are we can say that word. If ever she come to Southwark again, I count upon another pleasant Bridge walk with her. Tell her, I got home, time for a rubber; but poor Tryphena will not understand that phrase of the worldlings. "I am hardly able to appreciate your volume now; but I liked the dedication much, and the apology for your bald burying grounds. To Shelley, but that is not new. To the young vesper-singer, Great Bealings, Playford, and what not? "If there be a cavil, it is that the topics of religious consolation, however beautiful, are repeated till a sort of triteness attends them. It seems as if you were for ever losing friends' children by death, and reminding their parents of the Resurrection. Do children die so often, and so good in your parts? The topic taken from the consideration that they are snatched away from possible vanities, seems hardly sound; for to an Omniscient eye their conditional failings must be one with their actual; but I am too unwell for theology. "Such as I am, "I am yours and A. K.'s truly, "C. LAMB." TO BERNARD BARTON. "August 10th, 1825. "We shall be soon again at Colebrook. 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 Anne Knight, quietly at Colebrook Lodge, over the matter of your last. You mistake The nursling there that hand may take, Though, 'twixt the child and child-like bard They now may trace, in Heaven's regard, Within the infant's ample brow Blythe fancies lay unfurl'd, Which all uncrush'd may open now To charm a sinless world. Though the soft spirit of those eyes 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 doctrine 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 favour. 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. The nurseling's unforgotten look In thought profound, in wildest glee, From traits of each our love receives While light which child-like genius leaves And in that hope with sweetness fraught For I just make ends meet. We will wait the arrival of the trinkets, and to ascertain their full expense, and then bring in the bill. which I have formed my specimens. I have two thousand to go thro'; and in a few weeks have despatched the tythe of 'em. It is a sort of office to me; hours, ten to four, the same. It does me good. Man must have regular occupation, that has been used to it. let me Methinks we might be condemned 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 "Colburn had something of mine in last vice (no great compliment to it, by the by) month, which he has had in hand these seven let us take it. And as to where an untried months, and had lost, or couldn't find room child goes, whether to join the assembly of for: I was used to different treatment in the its elders who have borne the heat of the day' London,' and have forsworn periodicals. I -fire-purified martyrs, and torment-sifted am going thro' a course of reading at the confessors-what know we? We promise Museum: the Garrick plays, out of part of 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, twopence 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 flounder. Finally, write what your own conscience, which to you is the unerring judge, deems 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.' 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 Christian with light and merry shoulders. It had got silly, indecorous, pert, and everything that is bad. Both our kind remembrances to Mrs. K. and yourself, and strangers'-greeting to Lucy-is it Lucy or Ruth-that gathers wise sayings in a Book. C. LAMB." TO BERNARD BARTON. "1826. 'Will you pardon my neglect? Mind, again I say, don't show this to M.; wait a little longer to know the event of his luxuries. Heaven send him his jars uncrack'd, and me my "Yours, with kindest wishes to your daughter and friend, in which Mary joins, TO BERNARD BARTON. "C. L." "1826. "Dear B. B.,-The Busy Bee, as Hood after Dr. Watts apostrophises thee, and well dost thou deserve it for thy labours in the Muses' gardens, wandering over parterres of Thinkon-mes and Forget-me-nots, to a total impossibility of forgetting thee,-thy letter was acceptable, thy scruples may be dismissed, thou art rectus in curiâ, not a word more to be said, verbum sapienti, and so forth, the matter is decided with a white stone, classically, mark me, and the apparitions "Dear B. B.,-I don't know why I have vanish'd which haunted me, only the cramp, delay'd so long writing. 'Twas a fault. The Caliban's distemper, clawing me in the under current of excuse to my mind was that calvish part of my nature, makes me ever I had heard of the vessel in which Mitford's and anon roar bullishly, squeak cowardishly, jars were to come; that it had been obliged and limp cripple-ishly. Do I write quakerly to put into Batavia to refit (which accounts and simply, 'tis my most Master Mathews' for its delay), but was daily expected. Days like intention to do it. See Ben Jonson.—I are past, and it comes not, and the mermaids think you told me your acquaintance with may be drinking their tea out of his china the Drama was confin'd to Shakspeare and for aught I know; but let's hope not. In Miss Baillie: some read only Milton and the meantime I have paid 281., &c. for the Croly. The gap is as from an ananas to a freight and prime cost. But do not mention turnip. I have fighting in my head the plots, it. I was enabled to do it by a receipt of characters, situations, and sentiments of 400 30%. from Colburn, with whom, however, I old plays (bran new to me) which I have have done. I should else have run short. been digesting at the Museum, and my |