CHAPTER XVI. LETTERS TO BARTON, GILMAN, AYRTON, SOUTHEY, NOVELLO, MRS. HAZLITT-LAMB'S ALBUM VERSES-DEATH OF HAZLITT. [1830.] HERE is a brief reply to the questioning of Lamb's true-hearted correspondent Barton, who doubted of the personal verity of Lamb's "Joseph Paice," the most polite of merchants. This friend's personal acquaintance with Lamb had not been frequent enough to teach him that, if Lamb could innocently "lie like truth," he made up for this freedom by sometimes making truth look like a lie. His account of Mr. Paice's politeness could at this time be attested to the letter by living witnesses. TO BERNARD BARTON. "25th Feb., 1830. "Dear B. B.,-To reply to you by return of post, I must gobble up my dinner, and despatch this in propriá persona to the office, to be in time. So take it from me hastily, that you are perfectly welcome to furnish Allan Cunningham with the scrap, which I had almost forgotten writing. The more my character comes to be known, the less my veracity will come to be suspected. Time every day clears up some suspected narrative of Herodotus, Bruce, and others of us great travellers. Why, that Joseph Paice was as real a person as Joseph Hume, and a great deal pleasanter. A careful observer of life, Bernard, has no need to invent. Nature romances it for him. Dinner plates rattle, and I positively shall incur indigestion by carrying it half concocted to the post-house. Let me congratulate you on the spring coming in, and do turn condole with me on the winter going out. you in reWhen the old one goes, seldom comes a better. I dread the prospect of summer with his all-day-long days. No need of his assistance to make country places dull. With fire and candle-light I can dream myself in Holborn. With lightsome skies shining in to bed-time I cannot. This Mesheck and these tents of Kedar-I would dwell in the skirts of Jericho rather, and think every blast of the coming in mail a ram's horn. Give me old London at fire and plague times, rather than these tepid gales, healthy country air, and purposeless exercise. 66 Leg of mutton absolutely on the table. "Take our hasty loves and short farewell. "C. L." The next letter to Coleridge's excellent host is a reply to a request from an importunate friend of his correspondent, that he would write something on behalf of the Spitalfields' weavers. Alien as such a task would have been to his habits of thought or composition, if Lamb had been acquainted with that singular race, living in their high, narrow, over-peopled houses in the thickest part of London, yet almost apart from the great throng of its dwellers indulging their straitened sympathies in the fostering of the more tender animals, as rabbits and pigeons nurtured in their garrets or cellars, or cultivating some stunted plants with an intuitive love of nature, unfed by any knowledge of verdure beyond Hoxton-their painful industry, their uneducated morals, their eager snatches of pleasure from the only quickening of their intellect, by liquors which make glad the heart of man-he would scarcely have refused the offered retainer for them. TO MR. GILMAN. "March 8th, 1830. 'My dear G.,-Your friend Battin (for I knew him immediately by the smooth satinity of his style) must excuse me for advocating the cause of his friends in Spitalfields. The fact is, I am retained by the Norwich people, and have already appeared in their paper under the signatures of 'Lucius Sergius,' 'Bluff,' 'Broad-Cloth,' 'NoTrade-to-the-Woollen-Trade,' Anti-plush,' &c., in defence of druggets and long camblets. And without this preengagement, I feel I should naturally have chosen a side opposite to for in the silken seemingness of his nature there is that which offends me. My flesh tingles at such caterpillars. He shall not crawl me over. and his workmen sing the old burthen, Heigh ho, ye weavers!' Let him I was for any aid I shall offer them in this emergency. over Saint Luke's the other day with my friend Tuthill, and mightily pleased with one of his contrivances for the comfort and amelioration of the students. They have double cells, in which a pair may lie feet to feet horizontally, and chat the time away as rationally as they can. It must certainly be more sociable for them these warm raving nights. The right-hand truckle in one of these friendly recesses, at present vacant, was preparing, I understood, for Mr. Irving. Poor fellow! it is time he removed from Pentonville. I followed him as far as to Highbury the other day, with a mob at his heels, calling out upon Ermigiddon [Armigeddon], who I suppose is some Scotch moderator. He squinted out his favourite eye last Friday, in the fury of possession, upon a poor woman's shoulders that was crying matches, and has not missed it. The companion truck, as far as I could measure it with my eye, would conveniently fit a person about the length of Coleridge, allowing for a reasonable drawing up of the feet, not at all painful. Does he talk of moving this quarter? You and I have too much sense to trouble ourselves with revelations; marry, to the same in Greek you may have something professionally to say. Tell C. that he was to come and see us some fine day. Let it be before he moves, for in his new quarters he will necessarily be confined in his conversation to his brother prophet.1 Conceive the two Rabbis foot to foot, for there are no Gamaliels there to affect a humbler posture! All are masters in that Patmos, where the law is perfect equality-Latmos, I should rather say, for they will be Luna's twin darlings; her affection will be ever at 1 [A jocular allusion to the contingency of Coleridge joining Irving at St. Luke's.] the full. Well; keep your brains moist with gooseberry this mad March, for the devil of exposition seeketh dry places. "C. L." In the spring of the year, Mr. Murray, the publisher, through one of Lamb's oldest and most cherished friends, Mr. Ayrton, proposed that he should undertake a continuation of his Specimens of the Old English Dramatists. The proposal was communicated by Mr. Ayrton to Lamb, then at Enfield, and then too painfully anxious for the recovery of Miss Isola, who was dangerously ill in Suffolk, to make the arrangement desired. The following is the reply: TO MR. AYRTON. "Mr. Westwood's, Chase Side, Enfield. "14th March, 1830. “My dear Ayrton,-Your letter, which was only not so pleasant as your appearance would have been, has revived some old images; Phillips,' (not the Colonel), with his few hairs bristling up at the charge of a revoke, which he declares impossible; the old Captain's significant nod over the right shoulder (was it not?); Mrs. Battle's determined questioning of the score, after the game was absolutely gone to the devil, the plain but hospitable cold boiledbeef suppers at sideboard; all which fancies, redolent of middle age and strengthful spirits, come across us ever and anon in this vale of deliberate senectitude, ycleped Enfield. 1 Edward Phillips, Esq., Secretary to the Right Hon. Charles Abbott, Speaker of the House of Commons. The "Colonel" alluded to was the Lieutenant of Marines who accompanied Capt. Cook in his last voyage, and on shore with that great man when he fell a victim to his humanity. On the death of his commander, Lieutenant Phillips, himself wounded, swam off to the boats; but seeing one of his marines struggling in the water to escape the natives who were pursuing him, gallantly swam back, protected his man at the peril of his own life, and both reached their boat in safety. He afterwards married that accomplished and amiable daughter of Dr. Burney, whose name so frequently occurs in the Diary and Correspondence of her sister, Madame D'Arblay. 2 Captain (afterwards Admiral) James Burney. "You imagine a deep gulf between you and us; and there is a pitiable hiatus in kind between St. James's Park and this extremity of Middlesex. But the mere distance in turnpike roads is a trifle. The roof of a coach swings you down in an hour or two. We have a sure hot joint on a Sunday, and when had we better? I suppose you know that ill health has obliged us to give up housekeeping; but we have an asylum at the very next door-only twentyfour inches further from town, which is not material in a country expedition-where a table d'hôte is kept for us, without trouble on our parts, and we adjourn after dinner, when one of the old world (old friends) drops casually down among us. Come and find us out, and seal our judicious change with your approbation, whenever the whim bites, or the sun prompts. No need of announcement, for we are sure to be at home. I keep putting off the subject of my answer. In truth I am not in spirits at present to see Mr. Murray on such a business; but pray offer him my acknowledgments and an assurance that I should like at least one of his propositions, as I have so much additional matter for the SPECIMENS, as might make two volumes in all, or ONE (new edition) omitting such better known authors as Beaumont and Fletcher, Jonson, &c. 66 But we are both in trouble at present. A very dear young friend of ours, who passed her Christmas holidays here, has been taken dangerously ill with a fever, from which she is very precariously recovering, and I expect a summons to fetch her when she is well enough to bear the journey from Bury. It is Emma Isola, with whom we got acquainted at our first visit to your sister at Cambridge, and she has been an occasional inmate with us-and of late years much more frequently-ever since. While she is in this danger, and till she is out of it, and here in a probable way to recovery, I feel that I have no spirits for an engagement of any kind. It has been a terrible shock to us; therefore I beg that you will make my handsomest excuses to Mr. Murray. 66 Our very A.'s. kindest loves to Mrs. A. and the younger |