for the use of the two and twenty readers of Assembly, or else in Appeal to the old 'The Albion,' (this calculation includes a printer, four pressmen, and a devil); but becoming of no use, when 'The Albion' stopped, I got it translated into Usbeck Tartar by my good friend Tibet Kulm, who is come to London with a civil invitation from the Cham to the English nation to go over to the worship of the Lama.

"I ought before this to have replied to your very kind invitation into Cumberland. With you and your sister I could gang any"Imagine that what is here erased, was an where; but I am afraid whether I shall apology and explanation, perfectly satisfac- ever be able to afford so desperate a tory you may be sure! for rating this man journey. Separate from the pleasure of your so highly at the expense of- and -, company, I don't much care if I never see a

• Lamb afterwards, in some melancholy mood, dewhat he had done, that he never preserved any letters in his letter to a Member of the National which he received afterwards.

this phenomenon of our nature very prettily stroyed all Coleridge's Letters, and was so vexed with

him any longer a pleasure. So fading upon me, from disuse, have been the beauties of Nature, as they have been confidently called ; so ever fresh, and green, and warm are all the inventions of men, and assemblies of men in this great city. I should certainly have laughed with dear Joanna.*

mountain in my life. I have passed all my days in London, until I have formed as many and intense local attachments, as any of you mountaineers can have done with dead nature. The lighted shops of the Strand and Fleet-street; the innumerable trades, tradesmen, and customers, coaches, waggons, playhouses; all the bustle and wickedness round about Covent Garden; the very women of the Town; the watchmen, drunken scenes, rattles-life awake, if you awake, at all hours of the night; the impossibility of being dull in Fleet-street; the crowds, the very dirt and mud, the sun shining upon houses and pavements, the print-shops, the Manning when on a tour upon the Conti

old-book stalls, parsons cheapening books,
coffee-houses, steams of soups from kitchens,
the pantomimes-London itself a pantomime
and a masquerade-all these things work
themselves into my mind, and feed me with-
out a power of satiating me. The wonder
of these sights impels me into night-walks
about her crowded streets, and I often shed
tears in the motley Strand from fulness of
joy at so much life. All these emotions must
be strange to you; so are your rural emo-
tions to me.
But consider, what must I have
been doing all my life, not to have lent great
portions of my heart with usury to such
scenes?

"My attachments are all local, purely local -I have no passion (or have had none since I was in love, and then it was the spurious engendering of poetry and books,) to groves and valleys. The rooms where I was born, the furniture which has been before my eyes all my life, a book-case which has followed me about like a faithful dog, (only exceeding him in knowledge,) wherever I have moved, old chairs, old tables, streets, squares, where I have sunned myself, my old school,-these are my mistresses have I not enough, without your mountains? I do not envy you. I should pity you, did I not know that the mind will make friends with anything. Your sun, and moon, and skies, and hills, and lakes, affect me no more, or scarcely come to me in more venerable characters, than as a gilded room with tapestry and tapers, where I might live with handsome visible objects. I consider the clouds above me but as a roof beautifully painted, but unable to satisfy the mind and at last, like the pictures of the apartment of a connoisseur, unable to afford

"Give my kindest love, and my sister's to D. and yourself. And a kiss from me to little Barbara Lewthwaite. Thank you for liking my play! "C. L."

The next two letters were written to

nent.

TO MR. MANNING.

"Feb. 15th, 1802.

"Apropos, I think you wrong about my play. All the omissions are right. And the supplementary scene, in which Sandford narrates the manner in which his master is affected, is the best in the book. It stands where a hodge-podge of German puerilities used to stand. I insist upon it that you like that scene. Love me, love that scene. I will now transcribe the 'Londoner' (No. 1), and wind up all with affection and humble servant at the end."

[Here was transcribed the essay called "The Londoner," which was published some years afterwards in "The Reflector," and which forms part of Lamb's collected works.] He then proceeds :

:

"What is all this about!' said Mrs. Shandy. A story of a cock and a bull,' said Yorick and so it is; but Manning will take good-naturedly what God will send him across the water: only I hope he won't shut his eyes, and open his mouth, as the children say, for that is the way to gape, and not to read. Manning, continue your laudible purpose of making me your register. I will render back all your remarks; and I, not you, shall have received usury by having read them. In the mean time, may the great Spirit have you in his keeping, and preserve

In the summer of 1802, Lamb, in company with his sister, visited the Lakes, and spent

our Englishman from the inoculation of frivolity and sin upon French earth. "Allons-or what is it you say, instead of three weeks with Coleridge at Keswick. good-bye? "Mary sends her kind remembrance, and the slave-trade, Thomas Clarkson, who was covets the remarks equally with me.

TO MR. MANNING.

'C. LAMB."

"My dear Manning, I must positively write, or I shall miss you at Toulouse. I sit here like a decayed minute-hand (I lie; that does not sit,) and being myself the exponent of no time, take no heed how the clocks about me are going. You possibly by this time may have explored all Italy, and toppled, unawares, into Etna, while you went too near those rotten-jawed, gap-toothed, old worn-out chaps of hell,-while I am meditating a quiescent letter to the honest postmaster of Toulouse. But in case you should not have been felo de se, this is to tell you, that your letter was quite to my palate-in particular your just remarks upon Industry, cursed Industry, (though indeed you left me to explore the reason,) were highly relishing. I have often wished I lived in the golden age, when shepherds lay stretched upon flowers, the genius there is in a man's natural idle face, that has not learned his multiplication table! before doubt, and propositions, and corollaries, got into the world!

There he also met the true annihilator of

then enjoying a necessary respite from his stupendous labours, in a cottage on the borders of Ulswater. Lamb had no taste for oratorical philanthropy; but he felt the grandeur and simplicity of Clarkson's character, and appreciated the unexampled self-denial with which he steeled his heart, trembling with nervous sensibility, to endure intimate acquaintance with the foulest details of guilt and wickedness which he lived, and could have died, to abolish. Wordsworth was not in the Lake-country during Lamb's visit; but he made amends by spending some time in town after Lamb's return, and then quitted it for Yorkshire to be married. Lamb's following letters show that he made some advances towards fellowship with the hills which at a distance he had treated so cavalierly; but his feelings never heartily associated with "the bare earth, and mountains bare," which sufficed Wordsworth; he rather loved to cleave to the little hints and suggestions of nature in the midst of crowded cities. In his latter years I have heard him, when longing after London among the pleasant fields of Enfield, declare that his love of natural scenery would be abundantly satisfied by the patches of long waving grass, and the stunted trees, that blacken in the old-church-yard nooks which you may yet find bordering on Thames-street.

"Apropos if you should go to Florence or to Rome, inquire what works are extant in gold, silver, bronze, or marble, of Benvenuto Cellini, a Florentine artist, whose Life, doubtless, you have read; or, if not, without controversy, you must read, so hark ye, send for it immediately from Lane's circulating library. It is always put among the romances, very properly; but you have read it, I suppose. In particular, inquire at Florence to a tittle. for his colossal bronze statue (in the grand square, or somewhere) of Perseus. You may read the story in 'Tooke's Pantheon.' Nothing material has transpired in these parts. Coleridge has indited a violent philippic against Mr. Fox in the 'Morning Post,' which is a compound of expressions of humility, gentlemen-ushering-in most arrogant charges. It will do Mr. Fox no real injury among those that know him."

TO MR. COLERIDGE.

Sept. 8th, 1802.

"Dear Coleridge,-I thought of not writing till we had performed some of our commissions; but we have been hindered from setting about them, which yet shall be done We got home very pleasantly on Sunday. Mary is a good deal fatigued, and finds the difference of going to a place, and coming from it. I feel that I shall remember your mountains to the last day I live. They haunt me perpetually. I am like a man who has been falling in love unknown to himself, which he finds out when he leaves the lady. I do not remember any very strong impression while they were present; but, being gone, their mementos are shelved in my brain.

TO MR. MANNING.

We passed a very pleasant little time with nor do I suppose that I can ever again. the Clarksons. The Wordsworths are at Glorious creatures, fine old fellows, Skiddaw, Montague's rooms, near neighbours to us.' .* &c. I never shall forget ye, how ye lay about They dined with us yesterday, and I was that night, like an intrenchment; gone to their guide to Bartlemy Fair!" bed, as it seemed for the night, but promising that ye were to be seen in the morning. Coleridge had got a blazing fire in his study; which is a large, antique, ill-shaped room, "24th Sept. 1802, London. with an old-fashioned organ, never played "My dear Manning,-Since the date of upon, big enough for a church, shelves of my last letter, I have been a traveller. A scattered folios, an Æolian harp, and an old strong desire seized me of visiting remote sofa, half bed, &c. And all looking out upon regions. My first impulse was to go and see the last fading view of Skiddaw, and his Paris. It was a trivial objection to my broad-breasted brethren: what a night! aspiring mind, that I did not understand a Here we stayed three full weeks, in which word of the language, since I certainly intend time I visited Wordsworth's cottage, where some time in my life to see Paris, and equally we stayed a day or two with the Clarksons certainly intend never to learn the language; (good people, and most hospitable, at whose therefore that could be no objection. How-house we tarried one day and night,) and saw ever, I am very glad I did not go, because Lloyd. The Wordsworths were gone to you had left Paris (I see) before I could have set out. I believe, Stoddart promising to go with me another year, prevented that plan. My next scheme, (for to my restless, ambitious mind London was become a bed of thorns) was to visit the far-famed peak in Derbyshire, where the Devil sits, they say, without breeches. This my purer mind rejected as indelicate. And my final resolve was, a tour to the Lakes. I set out with Mary to Keswick, without giving Coleridge any notice, for, my time being precious, did not admit of it. He received us with all the hospitality in the world, and gave up his time to show us all the wonders of the country. He dwells upon a small hill by the side of Keswick, in a comfortable house, quite enveloped on all sides by a net of mountains: great floundering bears and monsters they seemed, all couchant and asleep. We got in in the evening, travelling in a post-chaise from Penrith, in the midst of a gorgeous sunshine, which transmuted all the mountains into colours, purple, &c. &c. We thought we had got into fairy-land. But that went off (as it never came again, while we stayed we had no more fine sunsets); and we entered Coleridge's comfortable study just in the dusk, when the mountains were all dark with clouds upon their heads. Such an impression I never received from objects of sight before,

Calais. They have since been in London, and past much time with us: he is now gone into Yorkshire to be married. So we have seen Keswick, Grasmere, Ambleside. Ulswater (where the Clarksons live), and a place at the other end of Ulswater: I forget the name ;* to which we travelled on a very sultry day, over the middle of Helvellyn. We have clambered up to the top of Skiddaw, and I have waded up the bed of Lodore. In fine, I have satisfied myself, that there is such a thing as that which tourists call romantic, which I very much suspected before : they make such a spluttering about it, and toss their splendid epithets around them, till they give as dim a light as at four o'clock next morning the lamps do after an illumination. Mary was excessively tired, when she got about half-way up Skiddaw, but we came to a cold rill (than which nothing can be imagined more cold, running over cold stones), and with the reinforcement of a draught of cold water she surmounted it most manfully. Oh, its fine black head, and the bleak air atop of it, with a prospect of mountains all about and about, making you giddy; and then Scotland afar off, and the border countries so famous in song and ballad! It was a day that will stand out, like a mountain, I am sure, in my life. But I am returned (I have now been come home near three weeks-I * Mr. Basil Montague and his lady, who were, during was a month out), and you cannot conceive Lamb's life, among his most cordial and most honoured the degradation I felt at first, from being

friends.

* Patterdale.

"C. LAMB."

Lamb was fond of Latin composition when

at school, and was then praised for it. He was always fond of reading Latin verse, and late in life taught his sister to read it. About this time, he hazarded the following Latin letter to Coleridge, of whose classical acquirements he stood in awe.

CAROLUS AGNUS COLERIDGIO SUO S.

accustomed to wander free as air among with wandering. I shall never be the same mountains, and bathe in rivers without being acquiescent being. Farewell; write again controlled by any one, to come home and quickly, for I shall not like to hazard a work. I felt very little. I had been dream-letter, not knowing where the fates have ing I was a very great man. But that is carried you. Farewell, my dear fellow. going off, and I find I shall conform in time to that state of life to which it has pleased God to call me. Besides, after all, Fleetstreet and the Strand are better places to live in for good and all than amidst Skiddaw. Still, I turn back to those great places where 1 wandered about, participating in their greatness. After all, I could not live in Skiddaw. I could spend a year, two, three years among them, but I must have a prospect of seeing Fleet-street at the end of that time, or I should mope and pine away, I know. Still, Skiddaw is a fine creature. My habits are changing, I think, i. e. from drunk to sober. Whether I shall be happier or not, remains to be proved. I shall certainly be more happy in a morning; but whether I shall not sacrifice the fat, and the marrow, and the kidneys, i. e. the night, glorious care-drowning night, that heals all our wrongs, pours wine into our mortifications, changes the scene from indifferent and flat to bright and brilliant ?-O Manning, if I should have formed a diabolical resolution, by the time you come to England, of not admitting any spirituous liquors into my house, will you be my guest on such shameworthy terms? Is life, with such limitations, worth trying? The truth is, that my liquors bring a nest of friendly harpies about my house, who consume me. This is a pitiful tale to be read at St. Gothard, but it is just now nearest my heart. F- is a ruined He is hiding himself from his creditors, and has sent his wife and children into the country. my other drunken companion (that has been: nam hic cæstus artemque repono), is turned editor of a Naval Chronicle. Godwin continues a steady friend, though the same facility does not remain of visiting him often. Holcroft is not yet come to town. I expect to see him, and will deliver your message. Things come crowding in to say, and no room for 'em. Some things are too little to be told, i. e. to have a preference; some are too big and circumstantial. Thanks for yours, which was most delicious. Would I had been with you, benighted, &c. I fear my head is turned

man.

"Carissime, Scribis, ut nummos scilicet epistolarios solvam et postremo in Tartara abeam: immo tu potius Tartaricum (ut aiunt) deprehendisti, qui me vernaculâ meâ linguâ pro scribâ conductitio per tot annos satis eleganter usum ad Latinè impure et canino fere ore latrandum per tuasmet epistolas benè compositas et concinnatas percellire studueris. Conabor tamen: Attamen vereor, ut des istas nostri Christi, inter quas tantâ diligentiâ magistri improbâ bonis literulis, quasi per clysterem quendam injectis, infrà supràque olim penitùs imbutus fui, Barnesii et Marklandii doctissimorum virorum nominibus adhuc gaudentes, barbarismis meis peregrinis et aliunde quæsitis valde dehonestavero. Sed pergere quocunque placet. Adeste igitur, quotquot estis, conjugationum declinationumve turmæ, terribilia spectra, et tu imprimis ades, Umbra et Imago maxima obsoleta (Diis gratiæ) Virgæ, quâ novissime in mentem receptâ, horrescunt subito natales, et parum deest quo minùs braccas meas ultro usque ad crura demittam, et ipse puer pueriliter ejulem.

"Ista tua Carmina Chamouniana satis grandia esse mihi constat ; sed hoc mihi nonnihil displicet, quòd in iis illæ montium Grisosonum inter se responsiones totidem reboant anglicè, God, God, haud aliter atque temet audivi tuas montes Cumbrianas resonare docentes, Tod, Tod, nempe Doctorem infelicem: vocem certe haud Deum Sonantem. Pro cæteris plaudo.

"Itidem comparationes istas tuas satis callidas et lepidas certè novi: sed quid hoc