"I have not had such a quiet half hour to sit down to a quiet letter for many years. I have not been interrupted above four times. I wrote a letter the other day in alternate lines, black ink and red, and you cannot think how it chilled the flow of ideas.1 Next Monday is Whit-Monday. What a reflection! Twelve years ago, and I should have kept that and the following holiday in the fields a Maying. All of those pretty pastoral delights are over. This dead, everlasting dead desk-how it weighs the spirit of a gentleman down! This dead wood of the desk instead of your living trees! But then, again, I hate the Joskins, a name for Hertfordshire bumpkins. Each state of life has its inconvenience; but then, again, mine has more than one. Not that I repine, or grudge, or murmur at my destiny. I have meat and drink, and decent apparel; I shall, at least, when I get a new hat.

"A red-haired man just interrupted me. He has broke the current of my thoughts. I haven't a word to add. I don't know why I send this letter, but I have had a hankering to hear about you some days. Perhaps it will go off, before your reply comes. If it don't, I assure you no letter was ever welcomer from you, from Paris or Macao. "C. LAMB."2

1 [The letter to Wordsworth which has just been given.]

2 [With one exception, this closes the correspondence with Mr. Manning. The only other surviving letter is of the year 1825, and will be found in its proper sequence.]

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE LONDON MAGAZINE -CHARACTER AND FATE OF MR. JOHN SCOTT, ITS EDITOR-GLIMPSE OF MR. THOMAS GRIFFITHS WAINEWRIGHT, ONE OF ITS CONTRIBUTORS-MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS OF LAMB TO WORDSWORTH, COLERIDGE, AND OTHERS.

[1818-19.]

LAMB'S association with Hazlitt in the year 1820 introduced him to the "London Magazine," which supplied the finest stimulus his intellect had ever received, and induced the composition of the Essays fondly and familiarly known under the fantastic title of "Elia." Never was a periodical work commenced with happier auspices, numbering a list of contributors more original in thought, more fresh in spirit, more sportive in fancy, or directed by an editor better qualified by nature and study to preside, than this "London." There was Lamb, with humanity ripened among town-bred experiences, and pathos matured by sorrow, at his wisest, sagest, airiest, indiscreetest best; Barry Cornwall, in the first bloom of his modest. and enduring fame, streaking the darkest passion with beauty; John Hamilton Reynolds, lighting up the wildest eccentricities and most striking features of many-coloured life with vivid fancy; and, with others of less note,2 Hazlitt,

1 [See, as to this appellation, the letter to Mr. John Taylor, of Dec. 7, 1822, post.]

2 [I must be permitted to take the opportunity of expressing my surprise and even regret that no mention of KEATS occurs anywhere in Lamb's published correspondence; yet we see from Leigh Hunt's “Autobiography" (1860, p. 269) that he warmly appreciated that unhappy and accomplished writer, whom he had met at Haydon's in the winter of 1817. Speaking of his "Lamia," and other poems printed together in 1820, Hunt says: "I remember Lamb's delight and admiration on reading this book; how pleased he was with the description of Mercury as the star of Lethe' (rising, as it were, and

1

whose pen, unloosed from the chain which earnest thought
and metaphysical dreamings had woven, gave radiant ex-
pression to the results of the solitary musings of many
years.
Over these contributors John Scott presided, him-
self a critic of remarkable candour, eloquence, and discri-
mination, unfettered by the dogmas of contending schools
of poetry and art, apt to discern the good and beautiful
in all; and having, as editor, that which Kent recognized
in Lear, which subjects revere in kings and boys admire
in schoolmasters, and contributors should welcome in
editors-authority ;-not manifested in a worrying, teasing,
intolerable interference in small matters, but in a judicious
and steady superintendence of the whole, with a wise
allowance of the occasional excesses of wit and genius. In
this respect, Mr. Scott differed entirely from a celebrated
poet, who was induced, just a year after, to undertake the
Editorship of the "New Monthly Magazine," an office for
which it may be said, with all veneration for his poetic
genius, he was the most unfit person who could be found
in the wide world of letters-who regarded a magazine as
if it were a long affidavit or a short answer in Chancery,
in which the absolute truth of every sentiment and the
propriety of every jest were verified by the editor's oath or
solemn affirmation; who stopped the press for a week at a
comma, balanced contending epithets for a fortnight; and
at last grew rash in despair, and tossed the nearest and
often the worst article, "unwhipped of justice," to the im-
patient printer. Mr. Scott, indeed, was more fit to preside
over a little commonwealth of authors than to hold a des-
potic rule over subject contributors; he had not the airy
grace of Jeffrey by which he might give a certain familiar
liveliness to the most laborious disquisitions, and shed the
glancing light of fancy among party manifestoes, nor the
boisterous vigour of Wilson, riotous in power, reckless in
glittering as he came upon that pale region), and the fine, daring antici-
pation in that passage of the second poem (Isabella)—

'So the two brothers and their murdered man
Rode past fair Florence

So also the description, at once delicate and gorgeous, of Agnes praying beneath the painted window."]

1

[Campbell.]

:

wisdom fusing the production of various intellects into one brilliant reflection of his own master-mind-and it was well that he wanted these weapons of a tyranny which his chief contributors were too original and too sturdy to endure. He heartily enjoyed his position, duly appreciated his contributors and himself; and when he gave audience to some young aspirant for periodical honours at a late breakfast, amidst the luxurious confusion of newspapers, reviews and uncut novels, lying about in fascinating litter, and carelessly enunciated schemes for bright successions of essays, he seemed destined for many years of that happy excitement in which thought perpetually glows into unruffled but energetic language, and is assured by the echoes of the world.

Alas! a few days after he thus appeared the object of admiration and envy to a young visitor in his rooms in York-street, he was stretched on a bed of mental agonythe foolish victim of the guilty custom of a world which would have laughed at him for regarding himself as within the sphere of its opinion, if he had not died to shame it! In a luckless hour, instead of seeking to oppose the bitter personalities of "Blackwood " by the exhibition of a serener power, he rushed with spurious chivalry into a personal contest, caught up the weapons which he had himself denounced, and sought to unmask his opponents and draw them beyond the pale of literary courtesy; placed himself thus in a doubtful position in which he could neither consistently reject an appeal to the conventional arbitrament of violence nor embrace it; lost his most legitimate opportunity of daring the unhallowed strife, found another with an antagonist connected with the quarrel only by too zealous a friendship; and, at last, met his death almost by lamentable accident, in the uncertain glimmer of moonlight, from the hand of one who went out resolved not to harm him! Such was the melancholy result-first of a controversy too envenomed-and afterwards of enthralment in usages, absurd in all, but most absurd when applied by a literary man to a literary quarrel. Apart from higher considerations, it may befit a life destined for the listless excesses of gaiety to be cast on an idle brawl;—“ a youth of folly, an old age of cards " may be no great sacrifice to

preserve the hollow truce of fashionable society; but for men of thought-whose minds are their possession, and who seek to live in the minds of others by sympathy with their thoughts—for them to hazard a thoughtful being because they dare not own that they prefer life to deathcontemplation to the grave-the preparation for eternity to the unbidden entrance on its terrors, would be ridiculous, if it did not become tragical. "Sir, I am a metaphysician!" said Hazlitt once, when in a fierce dispute respecting the colours of Holbein and Vandyke, words almost became things; and nothing makes an impression upon me but abstract ideas;" and woeful, indeed, is the mockery when thinkers condescend to be duellists!

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The Magazine did not perish with its editor; though its unity of purpose was lost, it was still rich in essays of surpassing individual merit; among which the masterly vindication of the true dramatic style by Darley: the articles of Cary, the admirable translator of Dante; and the "Confessions of an English Opium Eater," held a distinguished place. Mr. De Quincey, whose youth had been inspired by enthusiastic admiration of Coleridge, shown in contributions to "The Friend" not unworthy of his master, and substantial contributions of the blessings of fortune, came up to London, and found an admiring welcome from Messrs. Taylor and Hessey, the publishers into whose hands the "London Magazine" had passed. After the good old fashion of the GREAT TRADE, these genial booksellers used to assemble their contributors round their hospitable table in Fleet Street, where Mr. De Quincey was introduced to his new allies. Among the contributors who partook of their professional festivities, was a gentleman whose subsequent career has invested the recollection of his appearances in the familiarity of social life with fearful interest-Mr. Thomas Griffiths Wainewright.' He was then a young

1

[A much fuller account of Wainewright, both personal and literary, is given in the little volume, in which I collected his "Essays and Criticisms," with a biographical narrative prefixed, 12mo, 1880. In 1825, appeared a small octavo, a copy of which is in the British Museum, entitled, "Some Passages in the Life of Egomet Bonmot, Esquire," edited by Mr. Mwanghmein. Now first published by Me. I was not aware of this publication till my attention was recently drawn to