1

sold for an old song, wanting the eloquent tongue that should have set them off! You have gratified me with liking my meeting with Dodd. For the Malvolio storythe thing is become in verity a sad task, and I eke it out with anything. If I could slip out of it I should be happy ; but our chief-reputed assistants have forsaken us. The Opium-Eater crossed us once with a dazzling path, and hath as suddenly left us darkling; and, in short, I shall go on from dull to worse, because I cannot resist the booksellers' importunity-the old plea, you know, of authors; but I believe on my part sincere. Hartley I do not so often see; but I never see him in unwelcome hour. I thoroughly love and honour him. I send you a frozen epistle; but it is winter and dead time of the year with me. May Heaven keep something like spring and summer up with you, strengthen your eyes, and make mine a little lighter to encounter with them, as I hope they shall yet and again, before all are closed!

"Yours, with every kind remembrance.

"C. L.

"I had almost forgot to say, I think you thoroughly right about presentation copies. I should like to see you print a book I should grudge to purchase for its size. Hang me, but I would have it, though!"

The business of Godwin in Skinner Street was, meanwhile, something like a failure, and the proprietor was in a serious financial dilemma. Immediate help was needed and obtained. The note, which I print here, is more eloquent, looking at the resources of the writer, than any criticism which could be offered upon it.

TO WILLIAM GODWIN.

"May 16th, 1822.

I

“Dear Godwin -I sincerely feel for all your trouble. Pray use the enclosed £50, and pay me when you can. shall make it my business to see you very shortly.

"Yours truly,

"C. LAMB."

See the account of the meeting between Dodd and Jem White, in Elia's Essay," On some of the Old Actors," in the "London Magazine" for February, 1822, or in "Elia," 1823, p. 302.

[Crabb Robinson, in his "Diary," has this entry :"June 17th [1822].—I went to call on the Lambs and take leave, they setting out for France next morning. I gave Miss Lamb a letter for Miss Williams, to whom I sent a copy of Mrs. Leicester's School.' The Lambs have a Frenchman as their companion, and Miss Lamb's nurse, in case she should be ill. Lamb was in high spirits; his sister rather nervous. Her courage in going is great.” The travellers proceeded by way of Calais and Amiens, where Miss Lamb was seized by one of her ordinary attacks, and where they providentially fell in with some friends, who procured help.2

Paris was at that moment full of English people of note. There were Moore, Horace Smith and his wife, Washington Irving, John Howard Payne, and Mrs. Shelley, and, at Versailles, the Kenneys. Lamb and his sister seem to have put up, if not at first, at all events after a while, at Kenney's. They saw a good deal of Paris, and met Talma. On the expiration of the month's holiday, Miss Lamb was not thought yet strong enough to venture on so long a journey, and remained behind with her nurse, Miss James, at the Kenneys', her brother returning alone; so that the trip proved in the long run uncomfortable enough. Before his departure, in anticipation of his sister's complete recovery, he left some written directions as to what she was to see before she came home.3 "Then you must walk," he says, "all along the Borough side of the Seine, facing the Tuileries. There is a mile and a half of printshops and bookstalls. If the latter were but English! Then there is a place where the Paris people put all the dead people, and bring them flowers and dolls, and gingerbread nuts, and sonnets, and such trifles; and that is all, I think, worth seeing as sights, except that the streets and shops of Paris are themselves the best sight."

4

It is to be inferred that Miss Lamb stayed some little

[Ed. 1869, ii., 233.]

2["Mary and Charles Lamb," 1874, p. 199.]

3 Robinson's "Diary," 1869, ii. 235.]

4 [How true to his associations as a Londoner, and to what he knew would be his sister's train of ideas, is this transfer of local topography to a foreign place somewhat analogously situated !]

time with the Kenneys, under the care of Miss James, with whom she returned to England. At Dieppe she found Mr. Kenney; for, in a letter to his wife, written after his return, she says: "When I met Mr. Kenney there, I sadly repented that I had not dragged you on to Dieppe with me. What a pleasant time we should have spent there!" A little before the conclusion of the same letter, Miss Lamb exclaims: "Oh, the dear, lonely, dreary Boulevards! How I do wish to be just now stepping out of a cuckoo into them!" It may be requisite to explain that a cou-cou was a small diligence, which used to ply in those days between the Champs Elysées and Saint Cloud or Versailles ; it took its name from the fact, probably, that it was only a summer service.

Moore had taken offence because Lamb did not call upon him while he was in Paris. In a letter to Kenney, written after his return, he explains the matter. Moore and Lamb subsequently met each other at dinner.]

CHAPTER II.

KNOWLES AND MACREADY-GODWIN'S

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DIFFICULTIES AGAIN—

LAMB AND SIR WALTER SCOTT-LETTERS ΤΟ CLARE AND HAYDON, MISS WORDSWORTH AND ALLSOP-FORMATION OF AN ACQUAINTANCE WITH BERNARD BARTON-LETTERS TO HIM AND HOWARD PAYNE.

[1822.]

THE widening circle of Lamb's literary friends now embraced additional authors and actors,-famous, or just bursting into fame. He welcomed in the author of the "Dramatic Scenes," who chose to appear in print as Barry Cornwall, a spirit most congenial with his own in its serious moods,-one whose genius he had assisted to impel towards its kindred models, the great dramatists of Elizabeth's time, and in whose success he received the first and best reward of the efforts he had made to inspire a taste for these old masters of humanity. Mr. Macready, who had just emancipated himself from the drudgery of representing the villains of tragedy by his splendid performance of Richard," was introduced to him by his old friend Charles Lloyd, who had visited London for change of scene, under great depression of spirits. Lloyd owed a debt of gratitude to Macready, which exemplified the true uses of the acted drama with a force which it would take many sermons of its stoutest opponents to reason away. A deep gloom had gradually overcast his mind, and threatened wholly to encircle it, when he was induced to look in at Covent-Garden Theatre, and witness the performance of "Rob Roy." The picture which he then beheld of the generous outlaw, the frank, gallant, noble bearing,—the air and movements, as of one free of mountain solitudes," -the touches of manly pathos and irresistible cordiality, delighted and melted him, won him from his painful introspections, and brought to him the unwonted relief of tears. He went home "a gayer and a wiser man," returned again

66

to the theatre, whenever the healing enjoyments could be renewed there, and sought the acquaintance of the actor who had broken the melancholy spell in which he was enthralled, and had restored the pulses of his nature to their healthful beatings. The year 1820 gave Lamb an interest in Macready beyond that which he had derived from the introduction of Lloyd, arising from the power with which he animated the first production of one of his oldest friends—“Virginius." Knowles had been a friend and disciple of Hazlitt from a boy; and Lamb had liked and esteemed him as a hearty companion; but he had not guessed at the extraordinary dramatic power which lay ready for kindling in his brain, and still less at the delicacy of tact with which he had unveiled the sources of the most profound affections. Lamb had almost lost his taste for acted tragedy, as the sad realities of life had pressed more nearly on him; yet he made an exception in favour of the first and happiest part of "Virginius "-those paternal scenes, which stand alone in the modern drama, and which Macready informed with the fulness of a father's affection.

A gift from Mr. John Clare, the Northamptonshire peasant poet, of whom such singular anecdotes used to be told, of his little volume of verses, containing the "Village Minstrel and other Poems," 1821, was promptly and kindly acknowledged.

TO JOHN CLARE.1

"India House, 31st Aug. 1822. "Dear Clare,-I thank you heartily for your present. I am an inveterate old Londoner, but while I am among your choice collections I seem to be native to them and free of the country. The quality of your observation has astonished What have most pleased me have been 'Recollections after a Ramble,' and those 'Grengar Hill' kind of pieces in eight syllable lines, my favourite measure, such as 'Cowper Hill' and Solitude.' In some of your storytelling Ballads the provincial phrases sometimes startle me.

me.

6

1 [Egerton MS. B. M. 2246, fol. 99, orig. In 1823, Mr. Allen printed "Four Letters on Clare's Poems." See for some account of this correspondent, Procter's "Life of Lamb,” 1866, p. 160.]