CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS HOLCROFT, JR.

[No date. Autumn, 1819.]

Dear Tom, Do not come to us on Thursday, for we are moved into country lodgings, tho' I am still at the India house in the mornings. See Marshall and Captain Betham _as soon as ever you can_. I fear leave cannot be obtained at the India house for your going to India. If you go it must be as captain's clerk, if such a thing could be obtain'd.

For G.o.d's sake keep your present place and do not give it up, or neglect it; as you perhaps will not be able to go to India, and you see how difficult of attainment situations are.

Yours truly

C. LAMB.

[Thomas Holcroft was the son of Lamb's friend, the dramatist. Apparently he did not take Lamb's advice, for he lost his place, which was some small Parliamentary post under John Rickman, in November, 1819. Crabb Robinson, Anthony Robinson and Lamb took up the matter and subscribed money, and Holcroft went out to India.]

LETTER 254

CHARLES LAMB TO JOSEPH COTTLE

[Dated at end: Nov. 5, 1819.]

Dear Sir--It is so long since I have seen or heard from you, that I fear that you will consider a request I have to make as impertinent. About three years since, when I was one day at Bristol, I made an effort to see you, but you were from home. The request I have to make is, that you would very much oblige me, if you have any small portrait of yourself, by allowing me to have it copied, to accompany a selection of "Likenesses of Living Bards" which a most particular friend of mine is making. If you have no objections, and could oblige me by transmitting such portrait to me at No. 44 Russell Street, Covent Garden, I will answer for taking the greatest care of it, and returning it safely the instant the Copier has done with it. I hope you will pardon the liberty

From an old friend and well-wisher, CHARLES LAMB.

London 5th Nov. 1819.

[Lamb's visit to Bristol was made probably when he was staying at Calne with the Morgans in 1816. The present letter refers to an extra ill.u.s.trated copy of Byron's _English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_, which was being made by William Evans, of _The Pamphleteer_, and which is now in the British Museum. Owing to Cottle's hostility to Byron, and Byron's scorn of Cottle, Lamb could hardly explain the nature of the book more fully. See note to the following letter.]

LETTER 255

CHARLES LAMB TO JOSEPH COTTLE

[Not dated. ? Late 1819.]

Dear Sir--My friend whom you have obliged by the loan of your picture, having had it very exactly copied (and a very spirited Drawing it is, as every one thinks that has seen it--the copy is not much inferior, done by a daughter of Josephs, R.A.)--he purposes sending you back the original, which I must accompany with my warm thanks, both for that, and your better favor, the "Messiah," which, I a.s.sure you, I have read thro'

with great pleasure; the verses have great sweetness and a New Testament-plainness about them which affected me very much.

I could just wish that in page 63 you had omitted the lines 71 and '2, and had ended the period with

"The willowy brook was there, but that sweet sound-- _When_ to be heard again on Earthly ground?"--

two very sweet lines, and the sense perfect.

And in page 154, line 68, "I come _ordained a world to save_,"--these words are hardly borne out by the story, and seem scarce accordant with the modesty with which our Lord came to take his common portion among the Baptismal Candidates. They also antic.i.p.ate the beauty of John's recognition of the Messiah, and the subsequent confirmation from the voice and Dove.

You will excuse the remarks of an old brother bard, whose career, though long since pretty well stopt, was coeval in its beginning with your own, and who is sorry his lot has been always to be so distant from you. It is not likely that C.L. will ever see Bristol again; but, if J.C. should ever visit London, he will be a most welcome visitor to C.L.

My sister joins in cordial remembrances and I request the favor of knowing, at your earliest opportunity, whether the Portrait arrives safe, the gla.s.s unbroken &c. Your gla.s.s broke in its coming.

Morgan is a little better--can read a little, &c.; but cannot join Mrs.

M. till the Insolvent Act (or whatever it is called) takes place. Then, I hope, he will stand clear of all debts. Meantime, he has a most exemplary nurse and kind Companion in Miss Brent.

Once more, Dear Sir,

Yours truly

C. LAMB.

[Cottle sent Lamb a miniature of himself by Branwhite, which had been copied in monochrome for Mr. Evans' book. G.J. Joseph, A.R.A., made a coloured drawing of Lamb for the same work. It serves as frontispiece to Vol. I. of the present edition. Byron's lines refer as a matter of fact not to Joseph but to Amos Cottle:--

O, Amos Cottle!--Phoebus! what a name.

and so forth. Mr. Evans, however, dispensed with Amos. Another grangerised edition of the same satire, also in the British Museum, compiled by W.M. Tartt, has an engraving of Amos Cottle and two portraits of Lamb--the Hanc.o.c.k drawing, and the Brook Pulham caricature.

Byron's lines touching Lamb ran thus:--

Yet let them not to vulgar Wordsworth stoop, The meanest object of the lowly group, Whose verse, of all but childish prattle void, Seems blessed harmony to Lambe and Lloyd.

A footnote states that Lamb and Lloyd are the most ign.o.ble followers of Southey & Co.

Cottle's _Messiah_, of which the earlier portion had been published long since, was completed in 1815. Canon Ainger says that lines 71 and 72 in Lamb's copy (not that of 1815), following upon the couplet quoted, were:--

(While sorrow gave th' involuntary tear) Had ceased to vibrate on our listening ear.

Coleridge's friend Morgan had just come upon evil times. Subsequently Lamb and Southey united in helping him to the extent of 10 a year each.]

LETTER 256

CHARLES LAMB TO DOROTHY WORDSWORTH

[P.M. 25 Nov., 1819.]

Dear Miss Wordsworth, you will think me negligent, but I wanted to see more of w.i.l.l.y, before I ventured to express a prediction. Till yesterday I had barely seen him--Virgilium Tantum Vidi--but yesterday he gave us his small company to a bullock's heart--and I can p.r.o.nounce him a lad of promise. He is no pedant nor bookworm, so far I can answer. Perhaps he has. .h.i.therto paid too little attention to other men's inventions, preferring, like Lord Foppington, the "natural sprouts of his own." But he has observation, and seems thoroughly awake. I am ill at remembering other people's bon mots, but the following are a few. Being taken over Waterloo Bridge, he remarked that if we had no mountains, we had a fine river at least, which was a Touch of the Comparative, but then he added, in a strain which augured less for his future abilities as a Political Economist, that he supposed they must take at least a pound a week Toll.

Like a curious naturalist he inquired if the tide did not come up a little salty. This being satisfactorily answered, he put another question as to the flux and reflux, which being rather cunningly evaded than artfully solved by that she-Aristotle Mary, who muttered something about its getting up an hour sooner and sooner every day, he sagely replied, "Then it must come to the same thing at last" which was a speech worthy of an infant Halley! The Lion in the 'Change by no means came up to his ideal standard. So impossible it is for Nature in any of her works to come up to the standard of a child's imagination. The whelps (Lionets) he was sorry to find were dead, and on particular enquiry his old friend the Ouran Outang had gone the way of all flesh also. The grand Tiger was also sick, and expected in no short time to exchange this transitory world for another--or none. But again, there was a Golden Eagle (I do not mean that of Charing) which did much ARRIDE and console him. William's genius, I take it, leans a little to the figurative, for being at play at Tricktrack (a kind of minor Billiard-table which we keep for smaller wights, and sometimes refresh our own mature fatigues with taking a hand at), not being able to hit a ball he had iterate aimed at, he cried out, "I cannot hit that beast."

Now the b.a.l.l.s are usually called men, but he felicitously hit upon a middle term, a term of approximation and imaginative reconciliation, a something where the two ends, of the brute matter (ivory) and their human and rather violent personification into _men_, might meet, as I take it, ill.u.s.trative of that Excellent remark in a certain Preface about Imagination, explaining "like a sea-beast that had crawled forth to sun himself." Not that I accuse William Minor of hereditary plagiary, or conceive the image to have come ex traduce. Rather he seemeth to keep aloof from any source of imitation, and purposely to remain ignorant of what mighty poets have done in this kind before him. For being asked if his father had ever been on Westminster Bridge, he answer'd that he did not know.

It is hard to discern the Oak in the Acorn, or a Temple like St. Paul's in the first stone which is laid, nor can I quite prefigure what destination the genius of William Minor hath to take. Some few hints I have set down, to 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 was asked 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.