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well known by the name of the man in the moon? Some scandalous old maids have set on foot a report, that it is Endymion.

"Did you never observe an appearance plays. Congreve, and the rest of King Charles's moralists, are cheap and accessible. The works on Ireland I will inquire after, but, I fear, Spenser's is not to be had apart "Your theory about the first awkward from his poems; I never saw it. But you step a man makes being the consequence may depend upon my sparing no pains to of learning to dance, is not universal. We furnish you as complete a library of old have known many youths bred up at Christ's, poets and dramatists as will be prudent to who never learned to dance, yet the world imputes to them no very graceful motions. I remember there was little Hudson, the immortal precentor of St. Paul's, to teach us our quavers; but, to the best of my recollection, there was no master of motions when we were at Christ's.

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buy; for, I suppose you do not include the
207. edition of Hamlet, single play, which
Kemble has. Marlowe's plays and poems
are totally vanished; only one edition of
Dodsley retains one, and the other two of
his plays: but John Ford is the man after
Shakspeare. Let me know your will and
pleasure soon, for I have observed, next to
the pleasure of buying a bargain for one's
self, is the pleasure of persuading a friend to
buy it. It tickles one with the image of an
imprudency, without the penalty usually
annexed.
"C. LAMB."

CHAPTER VI.
[1800.]

LETTERS TO MANNING, AFTER LAMB'S REMOVAL TO THE
TEMPLE.

"Oct. 13th, 1800. "Dear Wordsworth,-I have not forgot your commissions. But the truth is,—and why should I not confess it?—I am not plethorically abounding in cash at this present. Merit, God knows, is very little rewarded; but it does not become me to speak of myself. My motto is, 'contented with little, yet wishing for more.' Now, the books you wish for would require some pounds, which, I am sorry to say, I have not by me; so, I will say at once, if In the year 1800, Lamb carried into effect you his purpose will give me a draft upon your town banker of removing to Mitre-court for any sum you propose to lay out, I will Buildings, Temple. During this time he dispose of it to the very best of my skill in wrote only a few small poems, which he choice old books, such as my own soul loveth. transmitted to Manning. In his letters to In fact, I have been waiting for the liquida- Manning a vein of wild humour breaks out, of which there are but slight indications in tion of a debt to enable myself to set about the correspondence with his more sentimenyour commission handsomely; for it is a tal friends; as if the very opposition of scurvy thing to cry, 'Give me the money first,' and I am the first of the family of the Manning's more scientific power to his own Lambs that have done it for many centuries; the genial kindness of the mathematician force of sympathy provoked the sallies which but the debt remains as it was, and my old friend that I accommodated has generously of some of these letters forms a striking fostered. The prodigal and reckless humour forgot it! The books which you want, I calculate at about 87. Ben Jonson is a guinea book. Beaumont and Fletcher, in folio, the right folio not now to be met with; the octavos are about 31. As to any other dramatists, I do not know where to find them, except what are in Dodsley's Old Plays, which are about 37. also. Massinger I never saw but at one shop, but it is now gone; but one of the editions of Dodsley contains about a fourth (the best) of his

letters to Coleridge. His Essays of Elia' contrast to the deep feeling of the earlier

show the harmonious union of both. The

following letter contains Lamb's description

of his new abode.

TO MR. MANNING.

"I was not aware that you owed me anything beside that guinea; but I dare say you are right. I live at No. 16, Mitre-court

TO MR. MANNING.

"Oct. 16th, 1800. "Dear Manning,-Had you written one week before you did, I certainly should have obeyed your injunction; you should have seen me before my letter. I will explain to you my situation. There are six of us in one department. Two of us (within these four days) are confined with severe fevers; and two more, who belong to the Tower Militia, expect to have marching orders on Friday. Now six are absolutely necessary. I have already asked and obtained two young hands to supply the loss of the feverites. And, with the other prospect before me, you may believe

Buildings, a pistol-shot off Baron Maseres'. You must introduce me to the Baron. I think we should suit one another mainly. He lives on the ground floor, for convenience of the gout; I prefer the attic story, for the air! He keeps three footmen and two maids; I have neither maid nor laundress, not caring to be troubled with them! His forte, I understand, is the higher mathematics; my turn, I confess, is more to poetry and the belles lettres. The very antithesis of our characters would make up a harmony. You must bring the baron and me together. -N.B. when you come to see me, mount up to the top of the stairs-I hope you are not asthmatical-and come in flannel, for it's pure airy up there. And bring your glass, and II cannot decently ask leave of absence for will show you the Surrey Hills. My bed faces the river, so as by perking up upon my haunches, and supporting my carcase with my elbows, without much wrying my neck, I can see the white sails glide by the bottom of the King's Bench walks as I lie in my bed. An excellent tiptoe prospect in the best room :-casement windows, with small panes, to look more like a cottage. Mind, I have got no bed for you, that's flat; sold it to pay expenses of moving. The very bed on which Manning lay; the friendly, the mathematical Manning! How forcibly does it remind me of the interesting Otway! The very bed which on thy marriage night gave thee into the arms of Belvidera, by the coarse | hands of ruffians—' (upholsterers' men,) &c. My tears will not give me leave to go on. But a bed I will get you, Manning, on condition you will be my day-guest.

"I have been ill more than a month, with a bad cold, which comes upon me (like a murderer's conscience) about midnight, and vexes me for many hours. I have successively been drugged with Spanish licorice, opium, ipecacuanha, paregoric, and tincture of foxglove (tinctura purpuræ digitalis of the ancients). I am afraid I must leave off drinking."

Lamb then gives an account of his visit to an exhibition of snakes-of a frightful vividness and interesting-as all details of these fascinating reptiles are, whom we at once loathe and long to look upon, as the old enemies and tempters of our race.

myself. All I can promise (and I do promise, with the sincerity of Saint Peter, and the contrition of sinner Peter if I fail) that I will come the very first spare week, and go nowhere till I have been at Cambridge. No matter if you are in a state of pupilage when I come; for I can employ myself in Cambridge very pleasantly in the mornings. Are there not libraries, halls, colleges, books, pictures, statues? I wish you had made London in your way. There is an exhibition quite uncommon in Europe, which could not have escaped your genius,—a live rattlesnake, ten feet in length, and the thickness of a big leg. I went to see it last night by candlelight. We were ushered into a room very little bigger than ours at Pentonville. A man and woman and four boys live in this room, joint tenants with nine snakes, most of them such as no remedy has been discovered for their bite. We walked into the middle, which is formed by a half-moon of wired boxes, all mansions of snakes,-whip-snakes, thundersnakes, pig-nose-snakes, American vipers, and this monster. He lies curled up in folds; and immediately a stranger enters (for he is used to the family, and sees them play at cards,) he set up a rattle like a watchman's in London, or near as loud, and reared up a head, from the midst of these folds, like a toad, and shook his head, and showed every sign a snake can show of irritation. I had the foolish curiosity to strike the wires with my finger, and the devil flew at me with his toad-mouth wide open: the inside of his mouth is quite white. I had got my finger away, nor could he well have bit me with his

big mouth, which would have been certain young philosopher at Keswick, with the

Wordsworths. They have contrived to spawn a new volume of lyrical ballads, which is to see the light in about a month, and causes no little excitement in the literary world. George Dyer too, that good-natured heathen, is more than nine months gone with his twin volumes of ode, pastoral, sonnet, elegy, Spenserian,

death in five minutes. But it frightened me so much, that I did not recover my voice for a minute's space. I forgot, in my fear, that he was secured. You would have forgot too, for 'tis incredible how such a monster can be confined in small gauzy-looking wires. I dreamed of snakes in the night. I wish to heaven you could see it. He absolutely Horatian, Akensidish, and Masonic verseswelled with passion to the bigness of a large thigh. I could not retreat without infringing on another box, and just behind, a little devil not an inch from my back, had got his nose out, with some difficulty and pain, quite through the bars! He was soon taught better manners. All the snakes were curious, and objects of terror: but this monster, like Aaron's serpent, swallowed up the impression of the rest. He opened his cursed mouth, when he made at me, as wide as his head was broad. I hallooed out quite loud, and felt pains all over my body with the fright.

"I have had the felicity of hearing George Dyer read out one book of 'The Farmer's Boy.' I thought it rather childish. No doubt, there is originality in it, (which, in your self-taught geniuses, is a most rare quality, they generally getting hold of some bad models, in a scarcity of books, and forming their taste on them,) but no selection. All is described.

"Mind, I have only heard read one book.
"Yours sincerely,
"Philo-Snake,

"C. L."

The following are fragments from a letter chiefly on personal matters, the interest of which is gone by :—

TO MR. MANNING.

Clio prosper the birth! it will be twelve shillings out of somebody's pocket. I find he means to exclude 'personal satire,' so it appears by his truly original advertisement. Well, God put it into the hearts of the English gentry to come in shoals and subscribe to his poems, for He never put a kinder heart into flesh of man than George Dyer's!

"Now farewell, for dinner is at hand.

"C. L."

Lamb had engaged to spend a few days when he could obtain leave, with Manning at Cambridge, and, just as he hoped to accomplish his wish, received an invitation from Lloyd to give his holiday to the poets assembled at the Lakes. In the joyous excitement of spirits which the anticipated visit to Manning produced, he thus plays off Manning's proposal on his friend, abuses mountains and luxuriates in his love of London:*

TO MR. MANNING.

"Dear Manning, I have received a very kind invitation from Lloyd and Sophia, to go and spend a month with them at the Lakes. Now it fortunately happens, (which is so seldom the case!) that I have spare cash by me, enough to answer the expenses of so long a journey; and I am determined to get away from the office by some means. The purpose of this letter is to request of you (my dear friend), that you will not take it unkind, if I decline my proposed visit to Cambridge for the present. Perhaps I shall be able to take Cambridge in my way, going or coming. I need not describe to you the expectations which such an one as myself, pent up all my life in a dirty city, have formed of a tour to the Lakes. Consider Grasmere! Ambleside! Wordsworth! Coleridge! Hills, woods,

"And now, when shall I catch a glimpse of your honest face-to-face countenance again? Your fine dogmatical sceptical face by punchlight? O one glimpse of the human face, and shake of the human hand, is better than whole reams of this cold, thin correspondence; yea, of more worth than all the letters that have sweated the fingers of sensibility, from Madame Sévigné and Balzac to Sterne and Shenstone. "Coleridge is settled with his wife and the lakes, and mountains, to the eternal devil.

I will eat snipes with thee, Thomas Manning. of his manuscripts, and the delay of his hopes; Only confess, confess, a bite. which, according to the old theatrical usage, he was destined to endure.

"P. S. I think you named the 16th; but was it not modest of Lloyd to send such an invitation! It shows his knowledge of money and time. I would be loth to think, he meant

'Ironic satire sidelong sklented

On my poor pursie.' BURNS.

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TO MR. MANNING.

"Nov. 3rd, 1800. 'Ecquid meditatur Archimedes? What is Euclid doing? What hath happened to learned Trismegist ?-doth he take it in ill part, that his humble friend did not comply For my part, with reference to my friends with his courteous invitation? Let it suffice, northward, I must confess that I am not I could not come-are impossibilities nothing? romance-bit about Nature. The earth, and be they abstractions of the intellect?—or sea, and sky (when all is said,) is but as a not (rather) most sharp and mortifying house to dwell in. If the inmates be courteous, realities? nuts in the Will's mouth too hard and good liquors flow like the conduits at an for her to crack? brick and stone walls in old coronation, if they can talk sensibly, and her way, which she can by no means eat feel properly, I have no need to stand staring through? sore lets, impedimenta viarum, no upon the gilded looking-glass (that strained thoroughfares? racemi nimium alte pendentes? my friend's purse-strings in the purchase) Is the phrase classic? I allude to the grapes nor his five-shilling print over the mantel- in Æsop, which cost the fox a strain, and piece of old Nabbs the carrier (which only betrays his false taste). Just as important to me (in a sense) is all the furniture of my world; eye-pampering, but satisfies no heart. Streets, streets, streets, markets, theatres, churches, Covent Gardens, shops sparkling with pretty faces of industrious milliners, neat sempstresses, ladies cheapening, gentlemen behind counters lying, authors in the street with spectacles, George Dyers, (you may know them by their gait,) lamps lit at night, pastry-cooks' and silver-smiths' shops, beautiful Quakers of Pentonville, noise of coaches, drowsy cry of mechanic watchmen at night, with bucks reeling home drunk; if you happen to wake at midnight, cries of Fire and Stop thief; inns of court, with their learned air, and halls, and butteries, just like Cambridge colleges; old book-stalls, 'Jeremy Taylors,' 'Burtons on Melancholy,' and 'Religio Medicis,' on every stall. These are thy pleasures, O London! with-the-manysins. O, city, abounding in for these may Keswick and her giant brood go hang! "C. L."

gained the world an aphorism. Observe the superscription of this letter. In adapting the size of the letters, which constitute your name and Mr. Crisp's name respectively, I had an eye to your different stations in life. "Tis truly curious, and must be soothing to an aristocrat. I wonder it has never been hit on before my time. I have made an acquisition latterly of a pleasant hand, one Rickman, to whom I was introduced by George Dyer, not the most flattering auspices under which one man can be introduced to another— George brings all sorts of people together, setting up a sort of agrarian law, or common property, in matter of society; but for once he has done me a great pleasure, while he was only pursuing a principle, as ignes fatui may light you home. This Rickman lives in our Buildings, immediately opposite our house; the finest fellow to drop in a' nights, about nine or ten o'clock-cold bread-andcheese time-just in the wishing time of the night, when you wish for somebody to come in, without a distinct idea of a probable anybody. Just in the nick, neither too early to be tedious, nor too late to sit a reasonable time. He is a most pleasant hand; a fine On this occasion Lamb was disappointed; rattling fellow, has gone through life laughing but he was consoled by the acquisition of a at solemn apes;-himself hugely literate, new friend, in Mr. Rickman of the House of oppressively full of information in all stuff of Commons, and exults in a strain which he conversation, from matter of fact to Xenophon never had reason to regret. This piece of and Plato-can talk Greek with Porson, rare felicity enabled him even to bear the loss politics with Thelwall, conjecture with George

town, sending members to Parliament, never
entered into his definition-it was and is,
simply, the banks of the Cam, or the fair
Cam; as Oxford is the banks of the Isis, or
the fair Isis. Yours in all humility, most
illustrious Trismegist,
"C. LAMB.

Dyer, nonsense with me, and anything with delight to speak, especially George Dyer, who anybody; a great farmer, somewhat con- has no other name, nor idea, nor definition of cerned in an agricultural magazine-reads no Cambridge,-namely, its being a marketpoetry but Shakspeare, very intimate with Southey, but never reads his poetry, relishes George Dyer, thoroughly penetrates into the ridiculous wherever found, understands the first time (a great desideratum in common minds)-you need never twice speak to him; does not want explanations, translations, limitations, as Professor Godwin does when you make an assertion; up to anything; down to everything; whatever sapit hominem. A perfect man. All this farrago, which must perplex you to read, and has put me to a little trouble to select! only proves how impossible it is to describe a pleasant hand. You must see Rickman to know him, for he is a species in one. A new class. An exotic, any slip of which I am proud to put in my garden-pot. The clearest headed fellow. Fullest of matter, with least verbosity. If there be any alloy in my fortune to have met with such a man, Constant to the fame of Jem White, Lamb it is that he commonly divides his time did not fail to enlist Manning among the between town and country, having some foolish family ties at Christchurch, by which means he can only gladden our London hemisphere with returns of light. He is now going for six weeks."

"At last I have written to Kemble, to know the event of my play, which was presented last Christmas. As I suspected, came an answer back that the copy was lost, and could not be found-no hint that anybody had to this day ever looked into it-with a courteous (reasonable!) request of another copy (if I had one by me,) and a promise of a definitive answer in a week. I could not resist so facile and moderate demand, so scribbled out another, omitting sundry things, such as the witch story, about half of the forest scene (which is too leisurely for story), and transposing that soliloquy about England getting drunk, which, like its reciter, stupidly stood alone, nothing prevenient or antevenient -and cleared away a good deal besides, and sent this copy, written all out (with alterations, &c. requiring judgment) in one day and a half! I sent it last night, and am in weekly expectation of the tolling-bell, and death-warrant.

"This is all my London news. Send me some from the banks of Cam, as the poets

"(Read on, there's more at the bottom.) "You ask me about the 'Farmer's Boy,'don't you think the fellow who wrote it (who is a shoemaker) has a poor mind? Don't you find he is always silly about poor Giles, and those abject kind of phrases, which mark a man that looks up to wealth? None of Burns's poet dignity. What do you think? I have just opened him; but he makes me sick."

admirers of the "Falstaff's Letters." The next letter, referring to them is, however, more interesting for the light which it casts on Lamb's indifference to the politics of the time, and fond devotion to the past.

66

TO MR. MANNING.

I hope by this time you are prepared to say, the 'Falstaff's letters' are a bundle of the sharpest, queerest, profoundest humours, of any these juice-drained latter times have spawned. I should have advertised you, that the meaning is frequently hard to be got at; and so are the future guineas, that now lie ripening and aurifying in the womb of some undiscovered Potosi; but dig, dig, dig, dig, Manning! I set to, with an unconquerable propulsion to write, with a lamentable want of what to write. My private goings on are orderly as the movements of the spheres, and stale as their music to angels' ears. Public affairs-except as they touch upon me, and so turn into private,-I cannot whip up my mind to feel any interest in. I grieve, indeed, that War, and Nature, and Mr. Pitt, that hangs up in Lloyd's best parlour, should have conspired to call up three necessaries, simple commoners as our fathers knew them, into the upper house of luxuries; bread, and beer, and coals, Manning. But as to France and

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