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one series, embracing general history and literature, consisted of fourteen lectures, and the other, on Shakespear, of six, were to be delivered at the "Crown and Anchor,' in the Strand, or, as it was eventually arranged, at the rooms of the Philosophical Society, Fleur-de-Luce Court, Fleet Street; and they covered the period between December 7th, 1818, and the following Mondays and Thursdays, Christmas week excepted. But in consequence of the Queen's death, the courses were postponed from the 7th and 10th to the 14th and 17th respectively, as appears from a MS. memorandum in my copy of the original Prospectus, or rather one of them, for I possess two, exhibiting considerable differences.]

TO J. PAYNE COLLIER.1

"The Garden of England, Dec. 10. [1817.] "Dear J. P. C.,-I know how zealously you feel for our friend S. T. Coleridge; and I know that you and your family attended his lectures four or five years ago. He is in bad health and worse mind: and unless something is done to lighten his mind he will soon be reduced to his extremities; and even these are not in the best condition. I am sure that you will do for him what you can; but at present he seems in a mood to do for himself. He projects a new course, not of physic, nor of metaphysic, nor a new course of life, but a new course of lectures on Shakespear and Poetry. There is no man better qualified (always excepting number one); but I am pre-engaged for a series of dissertations on Indian and India-pendence, to be completed at the expense of the Company, in I know not (yet) how many volumes foolscap folio. I am busy getting up my Hindoo mythology; and for the purpose I am once more enduring Southey's Curse. To be serious, Coleridge's

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[Coleridge's "Lectures on Shakespear and Milton,” ed. 1883, p. 170; Babson's "Eliana," 1866, p. 181. They had been already published by Collier in 1856. Their genuineness was on certain accounts suspected at first; but I think that it has now been placed beyond a doubt.]

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[In 1811.]

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[A jocular allusion to the "Curse of Kehama."]

state and affairs make me so; and there are particular reasons just now, and have been any time for the last twenty years, why he should succeed. He will do so with a little encouragement. I have not seen him lately; and he does not know that I am writing. "Yours (for Coleridge's sake) in haste,

"C. LAMB."

CHAPTER XVII.

LETTERS TO THE WORDSWORTHS, SOUTHEY, COLERIDGE, THE OLLIERS, COTTLE, AND MANNING.

[1818-19.]

LAMB, now in the immediate neighbourhood of the theatres, renewed the dramatic associations of his youth, which the failure of one experiment had not chilled. Although he rather loved to dwell on the recollections of the actors who had passed from the stage, than to mingle with the happy crowds who hailed the successive triumphs of Mr. Edmund Kean, he formed some new and steady theatrical attachments. His chief favourites of this time were Miss Kelly, Miss Burrell of the Olympic, and Munden. The first, then the sole support of the English Opera, became a frequent guest in Russell Street, and charmed the circle there by the heartiness of her manners, the delicacy and gentleness of her remarks, and her unaffected sensibility, as much as she had done on the stage. Miss Burrell, a lady of more limited powers, but with a frank and noble style, was discovered by Lamb on one of the visits which he paid, on the invitation of his old friend Elliston, to the Olympic, where the lady performed the hero of that happy parody of Moncrieff's "Giovanni in London." To her Lamb devoted a little article, which he sent to the Examiner," in which he thus addresses her :- "But Giovanni, free, fine, frank-spirited, single-hearted creature, turning all the mischief into fun as harmless as toys, or children's make believe, what praise can we repay to you adequate to the pleasure which you have given us? We had better be silent, for you have no name, and our mention will but be thought fantastical. You have taken out the sting from the evil thing, by what magic we know not, for there are actresses of greater merit and likelihood than you. With you and your Giovanni our spirits will hold

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communion, whenever sorrow or suffering shall be our lot. We have seen you triumph over the infernal powers; and pain and Erebus, and the powers of darkness, are shapes of a dream." Miss Burrell soon married a person named Gold, and disappeared from the stage. To Munden in prose, and Miss Kelly in verse, Lamb has done ample justice.

[This seems a fit place for a tolerably life-like description of Lamb, as he appeared to an intelligent Frenchman in 1818. In the summer of that year, Philarète Chasles met him casually at the printing office of James Valpy; and, in a paper given in 1842 to the "Revue des Deux Mondes, under the title of "Le dernier Humoriste Anglais," has bequeathed to us a portraiture, which it seems better to convey in his own words :

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"J'etais donc chez James Valpy un soir de Juin, 1818, dans son cabinet, ou il fallait allumer de la bougie à midi et du feu en Juin, lorsqu'un petit et vieux bonhomme noir y entra; ou ne voyait de lui qu'une tête, puis de larges épaules, puis un torse delicat, et enfin deux jambes fantastiquement deliées, et presque impercevables. Il avait un parapluie vert sous le bras et un très vieux chapeau sur les yeux.

"L'esprit, la douceur, la melancolie, et la gaiété jaillissaient par torrens de cette physionomie extraordinaire. Dès que vous l'aviez vue, vous ne regardiez plus ce corps ridicule; il vous semblait que quelque chose de parement intellectuel etait devant vous, dépassant la matière, brulant à travers la forme, s'entravasant comme la lumière et débordant de toutes parts. Il n'y avait ni santé, ni force, à peine une realité anatomique suffisante, dans ces pauvres petits fuseaux entourés de bas de filoselle chinée, et terminés par des pieds inouis chaussés de larges souliers, lesquels posés a plat s'avançaient lentement sur le sol à la façon des palmipedes. Mais on ne voyait rien de ces singularités; on ne faisait attention qu'à un front magnifiquement développé, sur lequel se bouchaient naturellement des cheveux d'un noir lustré à des grands yeux tristes, à l'expression d'une large prunelle brunâtre et liquide, à l'excessive finesse des narines, sculptés d'une delicatesse dont je n'ai pas vu d'autre exemple, à la courbe d'un nez

très semblable à celui de Jean-Jacques dans ses portraits. Tout cela, l'ovale noblement allongé du visage, les contours exquis de la bouche, et la belle position de la tête, pretaient de la dignité, et la plus haute de toutes, la dignité intellectuelle, à cette organisation débile et disproportionnée.

"Le bon Lamb-une sorte de Labruyère, d'Addison et de Sterne, . . . Charles Lamb, Carlagnulus, comme l'appelaient les savans; Elia, comme disaient les gens à la mode (il avait trente petits surnoms d'amitie que lui donnaient les diverses classes, et je n'ai jamais entendu personne le traiter de Monsieur Lamb solennellement et serieusement)-le bon Lamb donc venait savoir des nouvelles d'un de ses amis, Hugues Boyce, jeune homme pauvre et poitrinaire. . . ."]

Lamb's increasing celebrity and universal kindness rapidly increased the number of his visitors. He thus complained, in a wayward mood, of them to Mrs. Wordsworth :

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TO MRS. WORDSWORTH.

"East-India House, 18th Feb., 1818.

"My dear Mrs. Wordsworth,-I have repeatedly taken pen in hand to answer your kind letter. My sister should more properly have done it; but she having failed, I consider myself answerable for her debts. I am now trying to do it in the midst of commercial noises, and with a quill which seems more ready to glide into arithmetical figures and names of gourds, cassia, cardemoms, aloes, ginger, or tea, than into kindly responses and friendly recollections. The reason why I cannot write letters at home, is that I am never alone. Plato's-(I write to W. W. now)Plato's double-animal parted never longed more to be reciprocally re-united in the system of its first creation, than I sometimes do to be but for a moment single and separate. Except my morning's walk to the office, which is like treading on sands of gold for that reason, I am never so. I cannot walk home from office, but some officious friend offers his unwelcome courtesies to accompany me. All the morning I am pestered. I could sit and gravely cast up sums in

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