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ing the miracle, a sweeter spot is not in ten counties round; you are knee-deep in clover, that is to say, if you are not above a middling man's height; from this paradise, making a day of it, you go to see the ruins of an old convent at March Hall, where some of the painted glass is yet whole and fresh.

"If you do not know this, you do not know the capabilities of this country, you may be said to be a stranger to Enfield. I found it out one morning in October, and so delighted was I that I did not get home before dark, well a-paid.

"I shall long to show you the Clump Meadows, as they are called-we might do that without reaching March Hall; when the days are longer we might take both, and come home by Forest Cross, so skirt over Pennington and the cheerful little village of Churchley to Forty Hill.

"But these are dreams till summer; meanwhile we should be most glad to see you for a lesser excursion-say Sunday next, you and another, or if more, best on a week-day with a notice, but o' Sundays, as far as a leg of mutton goes, most welcome.

"We can squeeze out a bed. Edmonton coaches run every hour, and my pen has run out its quarter. Heartily farewell."

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 lady1 who had announced it to him :

[TO MRS. MONTAGU.]

[Enfield, 1828.] I

"Dear Madam,-I return your list with my name. should be sorry that any respect should be going on towards Clarkson, and I be left out of the conspiracy. Other

1 [Doubtless Mrs. Basil Montagu. This letter was originally printed in the "Athenæum" for 1835, p. 106, by Mr. Procter.]

wise 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 there to love. As I can't well put my own name, I shall put about a subscription:

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'I scribble in haste from here, where we shall be some time. Pray request Mr. [Montagu] to advance the guinea for me, which shall faithfully be forthcoming, and pardon me that I don't see the proposal in quite the light that he may. The kindness of his motives, and his power of appreciating the noble passage, I thoroughly agree in.

"With most kind regards to him, I conclude "Dear madam, yours truly,

"From Mrs. Leishman's, Chase, Enfield."

"C. LAMB.

CHAPTER XIII.

LETTERS TO BLANCHARD, BARTON, AND ALLSOP.

ACQUAINTANCE

WITH PROCTER AND CORRESPONDENCE WITH HIM.

[1828-9.]

A

PRESENT from a stranger evoked a courteous and cordial recognition.

TO LAMAN BLANCHARD.1

"Enfield, November 9th, 1828.

"Sir, I beg to return my acknowledgments for the present of your elegant volume, which I should have esteemed without the bribe of the name prefixed to it. I have been much pleased with it throughout, but am most taken with the peculiar delicacy of some of the sonnets. I shall put them up among my poetical treasures.

"Your obliged Servant,

The letters to Barton recommence.

"CH. LAMB.”

1 [Blanchard's "Poems," edited by Blanchard Jerrold, 1876, p. 5. This letter refers to Blanchard's "Lyric Offerings," 12mo, 1828, with a short dedication to Lamb. On the title-page of my copy occurs in the author's hand :

"My dear friend,-Accept this with the serious regrets as an author, and the sincere regards as a fellow-admirer of poetry of

“Thine,

"L. B."

Blanchard, whom I well remember, and whom I often visited with my father at Union Place, Lambeth, had begun early to write verse. took some of his boyish efforts to Mr. John Hunt, who received him He with much kindness. He was editor of the "Courier" during its short Liberal career, and subsequently sub-editor of the "Examiner." But both Douglas Jerrold and he were originally apprenticed to Mr. Sydney, a printer in Northumberland Street, Strand.]

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"A splendid edition of Bunyan's Pilgrim !1 Why, the thought is enough to turn one's moral stomach. His cocklehat 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. ut 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. Heman's 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

1 [It is curious that Barton should not have mentioned to Lamb that the edition was under the auspices of a common friend-Southey. But it did not appear till 1830.]

1

me tell you, that the sight of your hand gladdened me. I have been daily trying to write to you, but [have been] 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 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.

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"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 copy, I only expect it from Hood's being my friend. Coleridge has lately been here. He too is deep among the prophets, the year-servers,—the mob of gentlemen annuals. But they'll cheat him, I know. And now, dear B. B., the sun shining

1 [The set of this publication in the British Museum, according to the Catalogue, consists of four volumes only, beginning with 1822. The series was intended to give, in a handy form, "Select and entertaining Tales from recent works of merit."]

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