LETTER 289

CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN CLARE

India House, 31 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 quant.i.ty of your observation has astonished me. What have most pleased me have been Recollections after a Ramble, and those Grongar Hill kind of pieces in eight syllable lines, my favourite measure, such as Cowper Hill and Solitude. In some of your story-telling Ballads the provincial phrases sometimes startle me. I think you are too profuse with them. In poetry _slang_ of every kind is to be avoided. There is a rustick c.o.c.kneyism, as little pleasing as ours of London. Transplant Arcadia to Helpstone.

The true rustic style, the Arcadian English, I think is to be found in Shenstone. Would his Schoolmistress, the prettiest of poems, have been better, if he had used quite the Goody's own language? Now and then a home rusticism is fresh and startling, but where nothing is gained in expression, it is out of tenor. It may make folks smile and stare, but the ungenial coalition of barbarous with refined phrases will prevent you in the end from being so generally tasted, as you deserve to be.

Excuse my freedom, and take the same liberty with my _puns_.

I send you two little volumes of my spare hours. They are of all sorts, there is a methodist hymn for Sundays, and a farce for Sat.u.r.day night.

Pray give them a place on your shelf. Pray accept a little volume, of which I have [a] duplicate, that I may return in equal number to your welcome presents.

I think I am indebted to you for a sonnet in the London for August.

Since I saw you I have been in France, and have eaten frogs. The nicest little rabbity things you ever tasted. Do look about for them. Make Mrs.

Clare pick off the hind quarters, boil them plain, with parsley and b.u.t.ter. The fore quarters are not so good. She may let them hop off by themselves.

Yours sincerely,

CHAS. LAMB.

[John Clare (1793-1864) was the Northamptonshire poet whom the _London Magazine_ had introduced to fame. Octavius Gilchrist had played to him the same part that Capell Lofft had to Bloomfield. His first volume, _Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery_, was published in January, 1820; his next, _The Village Minstrel_, in September of the next year.

These he had probably sent to Lamb. Helpstone was Clare's birthplace.

Lamb's two little return volumes were his _Works_. The sonnet in the August _London Magazine_ was not signed by Clare. It runs thus:--

TO ELlA

ELIA, thy reveries and vision'd themes To Care's lorn heart a luscious pleasure prove; Wild as the mystery of delightful dreams, Soft as the anguish of remember'd love: Like records of past days their memory dances Mid the cool feelings Manhood's reason brings, As the unearthly visions of romances Peopled with sweet and uncreated things;-- And yet thy themes thy gentle worth enhances!

Then wake again thy wild harp's tenderest strings, Sing on, sweet Bard, let fairy loves again Smile in thy dreams, with angel ecstacies; Bright o'er our souls will break the heavenly strain Through the dull gloom of earth's realities.

Clare addressed to Lamb a sonnet on his _Dramatic Specimens_ which was printed in Hone's _Year Book_ in 1831.

Here should come a letter from Lamb to Ayrton dated Sept. 5, 1822, referring to the writer's "drunken caput" and loss of memory.

Here should come a letter from Lamb to Mrs. James Kenney, dated Sept.

11, 1822, in which Lamb says that Mary Lamb had reached home safely from France, and that she failed to smuggle Crabb Robinson's waistcoat. He adds that the Custom House people could not comprehend how a waistcoat, marked Henry Robinson, could be a part of Miss Lamb's wearing apparel.

At the end of the letter is a charming note to Mrs. Kenney's little girl, Sophy, whom Lamb calls his dear wife. He a.s.sures her that the few short days of connubial felicity which he pa.s.sed with her among the pears and apricots of Versailles were some of the happiest of his life.]

LETTER 290

CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON

India House, 11 Sept. 1822.

Dear Sir--You have misapprehended me sadly, if you suppose that I meant to impute any inconsistency (in your writing poetry) with your religious profession. I do not remember what I said, but it was spoken sportively, I am sure. One of my levities, which you are not so used to as my older friends. I probably was thinking of the light in which your so indulging yourself would appear to _Quakers_, and put their objection in my own foolish mouth. I would eat my words (provided they should be written on not very coa.r.s.e paper) rather than I would throw cold water upon your, and my once, harmless occupation. I have read Napoleon and the rest with delight. I like them for what they are, and for what they are not. I have sickened on the modern rhodomontade & Byronism, and your plain Quakerish Beauty has captivated me. It is all wholesome cates, aye, and toothsome too, and withal Quakerish. If I were George Fox, and George Fox Licenser of the Press, they should have my absolute IMPRIMATUR. I hope I have removed the impression.

I am, like you, a prisoner to the desk. I have been chained to that gally thirty years, a long shot. I have almost grown to the wood. If no imaginative poet, I am sure I am a figurative one. Do "Friends" allow puns? _verbal_ equivocations?--they are unjustly accused of it, and I did my little best in the "imperfect Sympathies" to vindicate them.

I am very tired of clerking it, but have no remedy. Did you see a sonnet to this purpose in the Examiner?--

"Who first invented Work--and tied the free And holy-day rejoycing spirit down To the ever-haunting importunity Of business, in the green fields, and the town-- To plough--loom--anvil--spade--&, oh, most sad, To this dry drudgery of the desk's dead wood?

Who but the Being Unblest, alien from good, Sabbathless Satan! he who his unglad Task ever plies 'mid rotatory burnings, That round and round incalculably reel-- For wrath Divine hath made him like a wheel-- In that red realm from whence are no returnings; Where toiling and turmoiling ever and aye He, and his Thoughts, keep pensive worky-day."

C.L.

I fancy the sentiment exprest above will be nearly your own, the expression of it probably would not so well suit with a follower of John Woolman. But I do not know whether diabolism is a part of your creed, or where indeed to find an exposition of your creed at all. In feelings and matters not dogmatical, I hope I am half a Quaker. Believe me, with great respect, yours

C. LAMB.

I shall always be happy to see, or hear from you.--

[This is the first of the letters to Bernard Barton (1784-1849), a clerk in a bank at Woodbridge, in Suffolk, who was known as the Quaker poet.

Lamb had met him at a _London Magazine_ dinner at 13 Waterloo Place, and had apparently said something about Quakers and poetry which Barton, on thinking it over, had taken too seriously. Bernard Barton was already the author of four volumes of poetry, of which _Napoleon and other Poems_ was the latest, published in 1822. Lamb's essay on "Imperfect Sympathies" had been printed in the _London Magazine_ for August, 1821.

For John Woolman, see note on page 93. The sonnet "Work" had been printed in the _Examiner_, August 29, 1819.]

LETTER 291

CHARLES LAMB TO BARRON FIELD

Sept. 22, 1822.

My dear F.,--I scribble hastily at office. Frank wants my letter presently. I & sister are just returned from Paris!! We have eaten frogs. It has been such a treat! You know our monotonous general Tenor.

Frogs are the nicest little delicate things--rabbity-flavoured. Imagine a Lilliputian rabbit! They frica.s.see them; but in my mind, drest seethed, plain, with parsley and b.u.t.ter, would have been the decision of Apicius. Sh.e.l.ley the great Atheist has gone down by water to eternal fire! Hunt and his young fry are left stranded at Pisa, to be adopted by the remaining duumvir, Lord Byron--his wife and 6 children & their maid.

What a cargo of Jonases, if they had foundered too! The only use I can find of friends, is that they do to borrow money of you. Henceforth I will consort with none but rich rogues. Paris is a glorious picturesque old City. London looks mean and New to it, as the town of Washington would, seen after _it_. But they have no St. Paul's or Westminster Abbey. The Seine, so much despised by c.o.c.kneys, is exactly the size to run thro' a magnificent street; palaces a mile long on one side, lofty Edinbro' stone (O the glorious antiques!): houses on the other. The Thames disunites London & Southwark. I had Talma to supper with me. He has picked up, as I believe, an authentic portrait of Shakspere. He paid a broker about 40 English for it. It is painted on the one half of a pair of bellows--a lovely picture, corresponding with the Folio head.

The bellows has old carved wings round it, and round the visnomy is inscribed, near as I remember, not divided into rhyme--I found out the rhyme--

"Whom have we here, Stuck on this bellows, But the Prince of good fellows, w.i.l.l.y Shakspere?"

At top--

"O base and coward luck!

To be here stuck.--POINS."

At bottom--

"Nay! rather a glorious lot is to him a.s.sign'd, Who, like the Almighty, rides upon the wind.--PISTOL."

This is all in old carved wooden letters. The countenance smiling, sweet, and intellectual beyond measure, even as He was immeasurable. It may be a forgery. They laugh at me and tell me Ireland is in Paris, and has been putting off a portrait of the Black Prince. How far old wood may be imitated I cannot say. Ireland was not found out by his parchments, but by his poetry. I am confident no painter on either side the Channel could have painted any thing near like the face I saw.

Again, would such a painter and forger have expected 40 for a thing, if authentic, worth 4000? Talma is not in the secret, for he had not even found out the rhymes in the first inscription. He is coming over with it, and, my life to Southey's Thalaba, it will gain universal faith.

The letter is wanted, and I am wanted. Imagine the blank filled up with all kind things.