guide my future observations. He hath the power of calculation in no ordinary degree for a chit. He combineth figures, after the first boggle, rapidly; as in the tricktrack board, where the hits are figured, at first he did not perceive that 15 and 7 made 22, but by a little use he could combine 8 with 25 and 33 again with 16, which approacheth something in kind (far let me be from flattering him by saying in degree) to that of the famous American boy. I am sometimes inclined to think I perceive the future satirist in him, for he hath a sub-sardonic smile which bursteth out upon occasion; as when he would ask if London were as big as Ambleside; and indeed no other answer was given, or proper to be given, to so ensnaring and provoking a question. In the contour of skull certainly I discern something paternal. But whether in all respects the future man shall transcend his father's fame, Time, the trier of Geniuses, must decide. Be it pronounced peremptorily at present, that Willy is a well-mannered child, and though no great student, hath yet a lively eye for things that lie before him. "Given in haste from my desk at Leadenhall. "Yours, and yours most sincerely, "C. LAMB." CHAPTER XIX. ACQUAINTANCE WITH THOMAS ALLSOP-LETTERS TO HIM [THE AND COLERIDGE. [1819-20.] HE name of Thomas Allsop now first springs into prominence as the recipient of letters and notes from Lamb; but at what precise time the latter made his acquaintance is uncertain, though that he made it through Coleridge is undoubted. In his "Recollections of Coleridge," Allsop observes :-"Well do I remember the first time I met this most delightful couple, and the kindness with which I was received and greeted by this twin union in partition : no man that I have ever known was so well fitted to attract and engage the sympathies, the love, the affectionate regards, and the respect of ingenuous natures." But no date is given; and, again, "The first night I ever spent with Lamb was after a day with Coleridge, when we returned by the same stage, and from something I had said or done of an unusual kind, I was called to pass the night with him and his sister. He asked me what I thought of Coleridge. I spoke as I thought. "You should have seen him twenty years ago," said he, with one of his sweet smiles, "when he was with me at the 'Cat and Salutation' ... in Newgate Market. Those were days and nights! but they were marked with a white stone. Such were his extraordinary powers that, when it was time for him to go and be married, the landlord entreated his stay, and offered him free quarters if he would only talk." The first letter from Coleridge to Allsop is of January 28th, 1818, and appears to have arisen out of Coleridge's lectures then in course of delivery; the earliest from Lamb, as we see, is of November, 1819; and the probability seems to be, that he and Allsop did not meet or correspond till this time, about two years after Allsop's self-introduction to Coleridge. Allsop at one period of his life appears to have kept a lace-shop somewhere between Oxford Street and Great Castle Street; but he afterwards joined the Stock Exchange, where he was, on the whole, successful; though at one period, as we know from contemporary allusions in the Coleridge and Lamb correspondence, some great calamity overtook him. He continued to have friendly relations with the Lambs to the last; but the correspondence is, in a literary sense, of little or no importance, and many of the communications, as in other cases to be noticed, are mere scraps. The earliest to which we have had access is of 1819, and thanks Allsop for some service which he had promised to perform.] "Dear Sir,-Many thanks for your offer. I have desired the youth to wait upon you, if you will give him leave, that he may give his own answer to your kind proposal of trying to find something for him. My sister begs you will accept her thanks with mine. We shall be at home at all times, most happy to see you when you are in town. We are mostly to be found in an evening. "Your obliged, "C. LAMB." The following letter to an older correspondent is entirely in red ink, a new experiment : TO MR. COLERIDGE. "Jan. 10th, 1820. "Dear Coleridge,—A letter written in the blood of your poor friend would indeed be of a nature to startle you; but this is nought but harmless red ink, or, as the witty mercantile phrase hath it, clerk's blood. Hang 'em! my brain, skin, flesh, bone, carcase, soul, time is all theirs. The Royal Exchange, Gresham's Folly, hath me body and spirit. I admire some of Lloyd's lines on you, and I ad He is a sad tattler, mire your postponing reading them. but this is under the rose. Twenty years ago he estranged one friend from me quite, whom I have been regretting, but never could regain since; he almost alienated you also from me, or me from you, I don't know which.' But that breach is closed. The dreary sea is filled up. He has lately been at work 'telling again,' as they call it, a most gratuitous piece of mischief, and has caused a coolness betwixt me and a (not friend exactly, but) intimate acquaintance. I suspect, also, he saps Manning's faith in me, who am to Manning more than an acquaintance. Still I like his writing verses about you. Will your kind host and hostess give us a dinner next Sunday, and better still, not expect us if the weather is very bad. Why you should refuse twenty guineas per sheet for Blackwood's or any other magazine passes my poor comprehension. But, as Strap says, 'you know best." I have no quarrel with you about præprandial avocations-so don't imagine one." That Manchester sonnet 3 I think very likely is Capel Lofft's. Another sonnet appeared with the same initials in the same paper, which turned out to be Procter's. What do the rascals mean? Am I to have the fathering of what idle rhymes every beggarly poetaster pours forth! Who put your marine sonnet about Browne into 'Blackwood'? I did not. So no more, till we meet. After this date, the letters to Coleridge become very few and far between. But it is gatherable from a letter of Coleridge to Allsop of March 20th this year, that the Lambs had dined with Coleridge the preceding Sunday (as they [The estrangement between Lamb and Coleridge through Lloyd is explained by Allsop to have arisen from Lloyd having shown Lamb a letter, in which Coleridge had drawn a somewhat invidious distinction between Lamb's genius and his own. A reconciliation took place, and Lamb wrote the verses "On the Old Familiar Faces."] 2 [But Lamb more than once complains of Coleridge coming down to see them only when the meal at Gilman's was on the table-even in a recent letter to Wordsworth; and indeed the expression of Coleridge, quoted just beneath, of "half-an-hour's interesting conversation," seems to lend some force to Lamb's discontent.] 3 A sonnet in "Blackwood," dated Manchester, and signed C. L. rather frequently did about this time), and the writer adds :—“ When I next see you, that excellent brother and sister will supply me with half-an-hour's interesting conversation. When you know the whole of him, you will love him in spite of all his oddities and even faults-nay, I had almost said, for them; at least, admire that under his visitations they were so few and of so little importance. Thank God! his circumstances are comfortable; and so they ought, for he has been in the India House since his fourteenth year." It was while Lamb was at No. 20, Russell Street, and during 1820 and 1821, that a succession of notes to Allsop was written, principally acknowledgments of game, or invitations to come, or both. The latest finds the brother and sister preparing to start for Cambridge, where they had arranged to spend the vacation this year. It seemed better to print the series consecutively. In his invaluable Diary,1 Crabb Robinson writes : July 20th [1820].—I had nothing to do to-day, and therefore had leisure to accompany Lamb and his sister on a walk behind the colleges. All Lamb's enjoyments are so pure and so hearty, that it is an enjoyment to see him enjoy. We walked about the exquisite chapel and the gardens of Trinity." "Dear Sir,-We are most sorry to have missed you twice. We are at home to-night, to-morrow, & Thursday, & should be happy to see you any of these nights. Thanks for the shining bird. "Yours truly, "C. L." "Dear Sir,-The hairs of our head are numbered; but those which emanate from your heart defy arithmetic. I would send longer thanks; but your young man is blowing his fingers in the Passage. "Yours gratefully, "C. L." "Dear Sir,-Your hare arrived in excellent order Last night, and I hope will prove the precursor of yourself on Sunday. 1 [Ed. 1869, ii. 165.] |