LETTER 248

CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

[P.M. June 7, 1819.]

My dear Wordsworth, you cannot imagine how proud we are here of the DEDICATION. We read it twice for once that we do the poem--I mean all through--yet Benjamin is no common favorite--there is a spirit of beautiful tolerance in it--it is as good as it was in 1806--and will be as good in 1829 if our dim eyes shall be awake to peruse it.

Methinks there is a kind of shadowing affinity between the subject of the narrative and the subject of the dedication--but I will not enter into personal themes--else, subst.i.tuting ******* **** for Ben, and the Honble United Company of Merch'ts trading to the East Indies for the Master of the misused Team, it might seem by no far fetched a.n.a.logy to point its dim warnings. .h.i.therward--but I reject the omen--especially as its import seems to have been diverted to another victim.

Poor Tommy Bye, whom I have known (as I express'd it in a letter to Manning), man and mad man 27 years--he was my gossip in Leadenhall St.--but too much addicted to turn in at a red lattice--came wandering into his and my common scene of business--you have seen the orderly place--reeling drunk at nine o Clock-with his face of a deep blue, contracted by a filthy dowlas muckinger which had given up its dye to his poor oozy visnomy--and short to tell, after playing various pranks, laughing loud laughters three mad explosions they were--in the following morning the "tear stood in his eye"--for he found his abused income of clear 600 inexorably reduced to 100--he was my dear gossip--alas!

Benjamin!...

I will never write another letter with alternate inks. You cannot imagine how it cramps the flow of the style. I can conceive Pindar (I do not mean to compare myself [to] _him_) by the command of Hiero, the Sicilian tyrant (was not he the tyrant of some place? fie on my neglect of history--) conceive him by command of Hiero, or Perillus, set down to pen an a Isthmian or Nemean Panegyre in lines alternate red and black. I maintain he couldn't have done it--it would have been a strait laced torture to his muse, he would have call'd for the Bull for a relief.

Neither could Lycidas, or the Chorics (how do you like the word?) of Samson Agonistes, have been written with two inks. Your couplets with points, Epilogues to Mr. H.'s, &c. might be even benefited by the twyfount. Where one line (the second) is for point, and the first for rhime, I think the alternation would a.s.sist, like a mould. I maintain it, you could not have written your stanzas on pre existence with 2 inks. Try another, and Rogers the Banker, with his silver standish having one ink only, I will bet my Ode on Tobacco, against the Pleasures of Memory--and Hope too--shall put more fervor of enthusiasm into the same subject than you can with your two--he shall do it stans pede in uno as it were.

The Waggoner is very ill put up in boards, at least it seems to me always to open at the dedication--but that is a mechanical fault.

I re-read the White Doe of Rylston--the t.i.tle should be always written at length--as Mary Sabilla Novello, a very nice woman of our acquaintance, always signs hers at the bottom of the shortest note. Mary told her, if her name had been Mary Ann, she would have signed M.A.

Novello, or M. only, dropping the A--which makes me think, with some other triflings, that she understands something of human nature. My pen goes galloping on most rhapsodically, glad to have escaped the bondage of Two Inks.

Manning had just sent it home and it came as fresh to me as the immortal creature it speaks of. M. sent it home with a note, having this pa.s.sage in it, "I cannot help writing to you while I am reading Wordsw'ths poem.

I am got into the 3rd Canto, and say that it raises my opinion of him very much indeed.[*] 'Tis broad; n.o.ble; poetical; with a masterly scanning of human actions, absolutely above common readers. What a manly (implied) interpretation of (bad) party-actions, as trampling the bible, &c."--and so he goes on.

[Footnote *: N.B. M---- from his peregrinations is 12 or 14 years _behind_ in his knowledge of who has or has not written good verse of late.]

I do not know which I like best, the prologue (the latter part specially) to P. Bell, or the Epilogue to Benjamin. Yes, I tell stories, I do know. I like the last best, and the Waggoner altogether as a pleasanter remembrance to me than the Itinerant. If it were not, the page before the first page would and ought to make it so.

The sonnets are not all new to me. Of what are, the 9th I like best.

Thank you for that to Walton. I take it as a favor done to me, that, being so old a darling of mine, you should bear testimony to his worth in a book containing a DEDI----

I cannot write the vain word at full length any longer.

If as you say, the Waggoner in some sort came at my call, O for a potent voice to call forth the Recluse from his profound Dormitory, where he sleeps forgetful of his foolish charge The World.

Had I three inks I would invoke him!

Talfourd has written a most kind Review of J. Woodvil, &c., in the Champion. He is your most zealous admirer, in solitude and in crowds. H.

Crabbe Robinson gives me any dear Prints that I happen to admire, and I love him for it and for other things. Alsager shall have his copy, but at present I have lent it _for a day only_, not chusing to part with my own. Mary's love. How do you all do, amanuenses both--marital and sororal?

C. LAMB.

[Wordsworth had just put forth _The Waggoner_, which was dedicated to Lamb in the following terms:--

My dear friend--When I sent you, a few weeks ago, "The Tale of Peter Bell," you asked "Why 'The Waggoner' was not added?" To say the truth, from the higher tone of imagination, and the deeper touches of pa.s.sion aimed at in the former, I apprehended this little piece could not accompany it without disadvantage. In the year 1806, if I am not mistaken, "The Waggoner" was read to you in ma.n.u.script, and as you have remembered it for so long a time, I am the more encouraged to hope that, since the localities on which the poem partly depends did not prevent its being interesting to you, it may prove acceptable to others. Being, therefore, in some measure the cause of its present appearance, you must allow me the gratification of inscribing it to you, in acknowledgment of the pleasure I have derived from your writings, and of the high esteem with which

I am very truly yours,

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

The poem, which had been written many years before, tells the story of Benjamin, a waggoner in the Lake county, who one stormy night, succ.u.mbing to the temptations of the Cherry Tree Inn, fell from good estate. Lamb's asterisks stand, of course, for Charles Lamb.

"Your stanzas on pre existence"--the "Ode on Intimations of Immortality."

_The Pleasures of Hope_ was Campbell's poem.

Mary Sabilla Novello was the wife of Vincent Novello, the organist, and Lamb's friend.

_The White Doe of Rylstone_ had been published in 1815.

The 9th sonnet. Certain sonnets had been published with _The Waggoner_.

The 9th was that beginning:--

Grief, thou hast lost an ever ready Friend.

Wordsworth's sonnet upon Walton begins:--

While flowing rivers yield a blameless sport.

_The Recluse_ was not published until 1888, and then only Book I.

_The Champion_, in which Talfourd reviewed Lamb's _Works_, had now become the property of John Thelwall.]

LETTER 249

CHARLES LAMB TO f.a.n.n.y KELLY

20 July, 1819.

Dear Miss Kelly,--We had the pleasure, _pain_ I might better call it, of seeing you last night in the new Play. It was a most consummate piece of Acting, but what a task for you to undergo! at a time when your heart is sore from real sorrow! it has given rise to a train of thinking, which I cannot suppress.

Would to G.o.d you were released from this way of life; that you could bring your mind to consent to take your lot with us, and throw off for ever the whole burden of your Profession. I neither expect or wish you to take notice of this which I am writing, in your present over occupied & hurried state.--But to think of it at your leisure. I have quite income enough, if that were all, to justify for me making such a proposal, with what I may call even a handsome provision for my survivor. What you possess of your own would naturally be appropriated to those, for whose sakes chiefly you have made so many hard sacrifices.

I am not so foolish as not to know that I am a most unworthy match for such a one as you, but you have for years been a princ.i.p.al object in my mind. In many a sweet a.s.sumed character I have learned to love you, but simply as F.M. Kelly I love you better than them all. Can you quit these shadows of existence, & come & be a reality to us? can you leave off hara.s.sing yourself to please a thankless mult.i.tude, who know nothing of you, & begin at last to live to yourself & your friends?

As plainly & frankly as I have seen you give or refuse a.s.sent in some feigned scene, so frankly do me the justice to answer me. It is impossible I should feel injured or aggrieved by your telling me at once, that the proposal does not suit you. It is impossible that I should ever think of molesting you with idle importunity and persecution after your mind [was] once firmly spoken--but happier, far happier, could I have leave to hope a time might come, when our friends might be your friends; our interests yours; our book-knowledge, if in that inconsiderable particular we have any little advantage, might impart something to you, which you would every day have it in your power ten thousand fold to repay by the added cheerfulness and joy which you could not fail to bring as a dowry into whatever family should have the honor and happiness of receiving _you_, the most welcome accession that could be made to it.

In haste, but with entire respect & deepest affection, I subscribe myself

C. LAMB.

[It was known, on the authority of the late Mr. Charles Kent, that f.a.n.n.y Kelly, the actress, had received an offer of marriage from Lamb; but my own impression was that it was made much later in life than this letter, first printed in 1903 by Mr. John Hollingshead, indicates. Miss Kelly, who at this time was engaged at the Lyceum, would be twenty-nine on October 15; Lamb was forty-four in February. His salary was now 600 a year.

Lamb had long admired Miss Kelly as an actress. In his _Works_, published in 1818, was this sonnet:--