down to it; and I felt in your debt, and sat down waywardly to pay you in bad money. Never mind my dulness; I am used to long intervals of it. The heavens seem brass to me; then again comes the refreshing shower— 'I have been merry twice and once ere now.' "You said something about Mr. Mitford in a late letter, which I believe I did not advert to. I shall be happy to show him my Milton (it is all the show things I have) at any time he will take the trouble of a jaunt to Islington. I do also hope to see Mr. Tayler there some day. Pray say so to both. Coleridge's book is in good part printed, but sticks a little for more copy. It bears an unsaleable title, 'Extracts from Bishop Leighton,' but I am confident there will be plenty of good notes in it1-more of Bishop Coleridge than Leighton in it, I hope; for what is Leighton? Do you trouble yourself about libel cases? The decision against Hunt for the 'Vision of Judgment' made me sick. What is to become of the good old talk about our good old king-his personal virtues saving us from a Revolution, &c., &c.! Why, none that think can utter it now. It must stink. And the 'Vision' is as to himward such a tolerant good-humoured thing! What a wretched thing a Lord Chief Justice is, always was, and will be ! Keep your good spirits up, dear B. B., mine will return; they are at present in abeyance; but I am rather lethargic 1 [Nothing immediate seems to have come of this. In a letter to Wordsworth of April, 1825, it is quoted by Lamb as a Commentary on Leighton, and as being in the hands of Taylor and Hessey for consideration. I do not know it as a book; but it may have partly found its way into the "Notes on English Divines," 1853.] 2 [It seems a curious coincidence that we have on the Bench at present two namesakes of great men, Coleridge and Bacon. From what Lamb says of Ellenborough, he would not probably have entertained a very high opinion of either. We have been very unfortunate of late in our Lord Chief Justices; the ranks of the vocation are so poorly recruited, that you are to have a mediocre lawyer, if a good man, or if a strong lawyer, a disreputable fellow. The Bar is of course the nursery from which judges have to be drawn, and while stuff and silk gowns remain what they are, we must not expect much improvement in the intellectual calibre of the higher and highest grades of the profession. But indifferent as our judicial staff is, the magistracy, paid or unpaid, is still worse -Shallow cut into slices.] than miserable. I don't know but a good horsewhip would be more beneficial to me than physic. My head, without aching, will teach yours to ache. It is well I am getting to the conclusion. I will send a better letter when I am a better man. Let me thank you for your kind concern for me, (which I trust will have reason soon to be dissipated,) and assure you that it gives me pleasure to hear from you. "Yours truly, "C. L." We have not heard of any presentation copies of late; but Mr. Ollier now sent a copy of a little volume of Tales from his own pen,' and was requited with a note of thanks and approbation. This gentleman, after the retirement of his brother James and himself from business, obtained employment as a reader at Mr. Colburn's. TO CHARLES OLLIER. [January 27th, 1824.] "Dear Ollier,—Many thanks from both of us for 'Inesilla.' I wished myself younger, that I might have more enjoyed the terror of that desolate city and the damned palace. I think it as fine as any thing in its way, and wish you joy of success, &c. "With better weather, I shall hope to see you at IslingMeantime, believe me, yours truly, ton. 1 66 "Scribbled midst official flurry." [On back :] “Mr. Ollier, 5, Maida Hill West, Paddington.” "C. LAMB. ["Inesilla; or, The Tempter. A Romance; with other Tales." 12mo., 1824.] LETTERS CHAPTER VII. TO BARTON-IMPORTANT CRITICAL DECLARATION ON WILLIAM BLAKE VIEWS ON BYRON AND SHELLEY-LETTERS TO CARY, MRS. COLLIER, PROCTER-DEATH OF MUNDEN. [1824.] THE HE following sufficiently indicate the circumstances under which they were written : 66 TO BERNARD BARTON. "February 25th, 1824. My dear sir,-Your title of Poetic Vigils' arrides me much more than a volume of verse which has no meaning. The motto says nothing; but I cannot suggest a better. I do not like mottoes but where they are singularly felicitous; there is foppery in them; they are un-plain, unQuakerish; they are good only where they flow from the title, and are a kind of justification of it. There is nothing about watchings or lucubrations in the one you suggest, no commentary on vigils. By the way, a wag would recommend you to the line of Pope, Sleepless himself—to give his readers sleep.' I by no means wish it; but it may explain what I meanthat a neat motto is child of the title. I think' Poetic Vigils' as short and sweet as can be desired; only have an eye on the proof, that the printer do not substitute Virgils, which would ill accord with your modesty or meaning. Your suggested motto is antique enough in spelling, and modern enough in phrase, a good modern antique; but the matter of it is germain to the purpose only supposing the title proposed a vindication of yourself from the presumption of authorship. The first title was liable to this objection—that if you were disposed to enlarge it, and the bookseller insisted on its appearance in two tomes, how oddly it would sound, 'A Volume of Verse in two Volumes, Second Edition,' &c.! You see thro' my wicked intention of curtailing this epistolet by the above device of large margin. But in truth the idea of letterising has been oppressive to me of late above your candour to give me credit for. There is Southey, whom I ought to have thanked a fortnight ago for a present of the Church Book:' I have never had courage to buckle myself in earnest even to acknowledge it by six words; and yet I am accounted by some people a good man. How cheap that character is acquired! Pay your debts, don't borrow money, nor twist your kitten's neck off, or disturb a congregation, &c., your business is done. I know things (thoughts or thingsthoughts are things) of myself which would make every friend I have fly me as a plague patient. I once ***, and set a dog upon a crab's leg that was shoved out under a mass of sea-weeds,-a pretty little feeler. Oh! pah! how sick I am of that; and a lie, a mean one, I once told. I stink in the midst of respect. I am much hypt. is, my head is heavy, but there is hope; or if not, I am better than a poor shell-fish-not morally, when I set the whelp upon it, but have more blood and spirits. Things may turn up, and I may creep again into a decent opinion of myself. Vanity will return with sunshine. Till when, pardon my neglects, and impute it to the wintry solstice. "C. LAMB." 66 TO BERNARD BARTON. The fact [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, 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? A HOLY-day, I grant it. The Puritans, I have read in Southey's book, knew the distinction. They made people observe Sunday rigorously, would not let a nursery-maid walk out in the fields with children for recreation on that day. But then they gave the people a holliday from all sorts of work every second Tuesday. This was giving to the two Cæsars that which was his respective. Wise, beautiful, thoughtful, generous legislators! Would Wilberforce give us our Tuesdays? No!-he would turn the six days into sevenths, And those three smiling seasons of the year "I am sitting opposite a person who is making strange distortions with the gout, which is not unpleasant to me at least. What is the reason we do not sympathise with pain, short of some terrible surgical operation? Hazlitt, who boldly says all he feels, avows that not only he does not pity sick people, but he hates them. I obscurely recognise his meaning. Pain is probably too selfish a consideration, too simply a consideration of self-attention. We pity poverty, loss of friends, &c.—more complex things, in which the sufferer's feelings are associated with others. This is a rough thought suggested by the presence of gout; I want head to extricate it and plane it. What is all this to your letter? I felt it to be a good one, but my turn, when I write at all, is perversely to travel out of the record, so that my letters are anything but answers. So you still want a motto? You must not take 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? or Tremebundi? There is Religio Medici and Laici. But perhaps the volume is not 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 summery spring too! all those qualms about the dog and cray-fish 1 melt before it. I am going to be happy and vain again. "A hasty farewell, "C. LAMB." 1 [See the preceding letter.] |