LETTER 526

CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON

[No date. ? Dec., 1830.]

Dear M. Something like this was what I meant. But on reading it over, I see no great fun or use in it. It will only stuff up and encroach upon the sheet you propose. Do as, and _what_, you please. Send Proof, or not, as you like. If you send, send me a copy or 2 of the Alb.u.m Verses, and the Juvenile Poetry if _bound_.

I am happy to say Mary is mending, but not enough to give me hopes of being able to leave her. I sadly regret that I shall possibly not see Southey or Wordsworth, but I dare not invite either of them here, for fear of exciting my sister, whose only chance is quiet. You don't know in what a sad state we have been.

I think the Devil may come out without prefaces, but use your discretion.

Make my kindest remembces to Southey, with my heart's thanks for his kind intent. I am a little easier about my Will, and as Ryle is Executor, and will do all a friend can do at the Office, and what little I leave will buy an annuity to piece out tolerably, I am much easier.

Yours ever

C.L.

To 64 New Bond St.

[I cannot say to what the opening sentences refer: probably an advertis.e.m.e.nt for _Satan in Search of a Wife_ ("the Devil"), which Lamb had just written and Moxon was publishing.

The reference to the Juvenile Poetry suggests that Moxon had procured some of the sheets of the _Poetry for Children_ which G.o.dwin brought out in 1809, and was binding up a few. This theory is borne out by the statement in the letter to Mrs. Norris, later, that the book was not to be had for love or money, and the circ.u.mstance that in 1833 Lamb seems to send her a copy. Ryle was Charles Ryle. an India House clerk, and Lamb's executor with Talfourd.]

LETTER 527

CHARLES LAMB TO GEORGE DYER

Dec. 20, 1830.

Dear Dyer,--I would have written before to thank you for your kind letter, written with your own hand. It glads us to see your writing. It will give you pleasure to hear that, after so much illness, we are in tolerable health and spirits once more. Miss Isola intended to call upon you after her night's lodging at Miss Buffam's, but found she was too late for the stage. If she comes to town before she goes home, she will not miss paying her respects to Mrs. Dyer and you, to whom she desires best love. Poor Enfield, that has been so peaceable hitherto, has caught the inflammatory fever, the tokens are upon her! and a great fire was blazing last night in the barns and haystacks of a farmer, about half a mile from us. Where will these things end? There is no doubt of its being the work of some ill-disposed rustic; but how is he to be discovered? They go to work in the dark with strange chemical preparations unknown to our forefathers. There is not even a dark lantern to have a chance of detecting these Guy Fauxes. We are past the iron age, and are got into the fiery age, undream'd of by Ovid. You are lucky in Clifford's Inn where, I think, you have few ricks or stacks worth the burning. Pray keep as little corn by you as you can, for fear of the worst.

It was never good times in England since the poor began to speculate upon their condition. Formerly, they jogged on with as little reflection as horses: the whistling ploughman went cheek by jowl with his brother that neighed. Now the biped carries a box of phosphorus in his leather-breeches; and in the dead of night the half-illuminated beast steals his magic potion into a cleft in a barn, and half a country is grinning with new fires. Farmer Graystock said something to the touchy rustic that he did not relish, and he writes his distaste in flames.

What a power to intoxicate his crude brains, just muddlingly awake, to perceive that something is wrong in the social system!-what a h.e.l.lish faculty above gunpowder!

Now the rich and poor are fairly pitted; we shall see who can hang or burn fastest. It is not always revenge that stimulates these kindlings.

There is a love of exerting mischief. Think of a disrespected clod that was trod into earth, that was nothing, on a sudden by d.a.m.ned arts refined into an exterminating angel, devouring the fruits of the earth and their growers in a ma.s.s of fire! What a new existence!--what a temptation above Lucifer's! Would clod be any thing but a clod, if he could resist it? Why, here was a spectacle last night for a whole country!--a Bonfire visible to London, alarming her guilty towers, and shaking the Monument with an ague fit--all done by a little vial of phosphor in a Clown's fob! How he must grin, and shake his empty noddle in clouds, the Vulcanian Epicure! Can we ring the bells backward? Can we unlearn the arts that pretend to civilize, and then burn the world?

There is a march of Science; but who shall beat the drums for its retreat? Who shall persuade the boor that phosphor will not ignite?

Seven goodly stacks of hay, with corn-barns proportionable, lie smoking ashes and chaff, which man and beast would sputter out and reject like those apples of Asphaltes and bitumen. The food for the inhabitants of earth will quickly disappear. Hot rolls may say: "Fuimus panes, fuit quartern-loaf, et ingens gloria Apple-pasty-orum." That the good old munching system may last thy time and mine, good un-incendiary George, is the devout prayer of thine,

To the last crust,

CH. LAMB.

[Incendiarism, the result of agricultural distress and in opposition to the compet.i.tion of the new machinery, was rife in the country at this time.]

LETTER 528

CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON

[No date. ? Christmas, 1830.]

Dear M. A thousand thanks for your punctualities. What a cheap Book is the last Hogarth you sent me! I am pleased now that Hunt _diddled_ me out of the old one. Speaking of this, only think of the new farmer with his 30 acres. There is a portion of land in Lambeth parish called Knaves Acre. I wonder he overlook'd it. Don't show this to the firm of Dilk & C'o. I next want one copy of Leicester School, and wish you to pay Leishman, Taylor, 2 Blandford Place, Pall Mall, opposite the British Inst.i.tution, 6. 10. for coat waistcoat &c. And I vehemently thirst for the 4th No. of Nichols's Hogarth, to bind 'em up (the 2 books) as "Hogarth, and Supplement." But as you know the price, don't stay for its appearance; but come as soon as ever you can with your bill of all demands in full, and, as I have none but 5 notes, bring with you sufficient change. Weather is beautiful. I grieve sadly for Miss Wordsworth. We are all well again. Emma is with us, and we all shall be glad of a sight of you. COME ON Sunday, if you _can_; better, if you come before. Perhaps Rogers would smile at this.--A pert half chemist half apothecary, in our town, who smatters of literature and is immeasurable unletterd, said to me "Pray, Sir, may not Hood (he of the acres) be reckon'd the Prince of wits in the present day?" to which I a.s.senting, he adds "I had always thought that Rogers had been reckon'd the Prince of Wits, but I suppose that now Mr. Hood has the better t.i.tle to that appellation." To which I replied that Mr. R. had wit with much better qualities, but did not aspire to the princ.i.p.ality. He had taken all the puns manufactured in John Bull for our friend, in sad and stupid earnest. One more Alb.u.m verses, please.

Adieu.

C.L.

["Hunt." This would, I think, be not Leigh Hunt but his nephew, Hunt of Hunt & Clarke. The diddling I cannot explain. Leishman was the husband of Mrs. Leishman, the Lambs' old landlady at Enfield.

"Miss Wordsworth"--Dorothy Wordsworth, who was ill.

"Perhaps Rogers would smile at this." I take the following pa.s.sage from the _Maclise Portrait Gallery:_--

In the early days of the _John Bull_ it was the fashion to lay every foundling witticism at the door of Sam Rogers; and thus the refined poet and man of letters became known as a sorry jester.

_John Bull_ was Theodore Hook's paper. Maginn wrote in _Fraser's Magazine:_--

Joe Miller vails his bonnet to Sam Rogers; in all the newspapers, not only of the kingdom but its dependencies,--Hindostan, Canada, the West Indies, the Cape, from the tropics,--nay, from the Antipodes to the Orkneys, Sam is G.o.dfather-- general to all the bad jokes in existence. The Yankees have caught the fancy, and from New Orleans to New York it is the same,--Rogers is synonymous with a pun. All British-born or descended people,--yea the very negro and the Hindoo--father their calembourgs on Rogers. Quashee, or Ramee-Samee, who knows nothing of Sir Isaac Newton, John Milton, or _Fraser's Magazine_, grins from ear to ear at the name of the ill.u.s.trious banker, and with gratified voice exclaims, "Him dam funny, dat Sam!"]

LETTER 529

CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON

[P.M. February 3, 1831.]

Dear Moxon, The snows are ancle deep slush and mire, that 'tis hard to get to the post office, and cruel to send the maid out. 'Tis a slough of despair, or I should sooner have thankd you for your offer of the _Life_, which we shall very much like to have, and will return duly. I do not know when I shall be in town, but in a week or two at farthest, when I will come as far as you if I can. We are moped to death with confinement within doors. I send you a curiosity of G. Dyer's tender-conscience. Between 30 and 40 years since, G. published the Poet's Fate, in which were two very harmless lines about Mr. Rogers, but Mr. R. not quite approving of them, they were left out in a subsequent edition 1801. But G. has been worryting about them ever since; if I have heard him once, I have heard him a hundred times express a remorse proportiond to a consciousness of having been guilty of an atrocious libel. As the devil would have it, a fool they call _Barker_, in his Parriana has quoted the identical two lines as they stood in some obscure edition anterior to 1801, and the withers of poor G. are again wrung. His letter is a gem--with his poor blind eyes it has been laboured out at six sittings. The history of the couplet is in page 3 of this irregular production, in which every variety of shape and size that Letters can be twisted into, is to be found. Do _shew_ his part of it to Mr. R. some day. If he has bowels, they must melt at the contrition so queerly character'd of a contrite sinner. G. was born I verily think without original sin, but chuses to have a conscience, as every Christian Gentleman should have. His dear old face is insusceptible of the twist they call a sneer, yet he is apprehensive of being suspected of that ugly appearance. When he makes a compliment, he thinks he has given an affront. A name is personality. But shew (no hurry) this unique recantation to Mr. R. 'Tis like a dirty pocket handkerchief muck'd with tears of some indigent Magdalen. There is the impress of sincerity in every pot-hook and hanger. And then the gilt frame to such a pauper picture! It should go into the Museum. I am heartily sorry my Devil does not answer. We must try it a little longer, and after all I think I must insist on taking a portion of the loss upon myself. It is too much you should lose by two adventures. You do not say how your general business goes on, and I should very much like to talk over it with you here. Come when the weather will possibly let you. I want to see the Wordsworths, but I do not much like to be all night away. It is dull enough to be here together, but it is duller to leave Mary; in short it is painful, and in a flying visit I should hardly catch them. I have no beds for them, if they came down, and but a sort of a house to receive them in, yet I shall regret their departure unseen. I feel cramped and straiten'd every way. Where are they?

We have heard from Emma but once, and that a month ago, and are very anxious for another letter.

You say we have forgot your powers of being serviceable to us. _That_ we never shall. I do not know what I should do without you when I want a little commission. Now then. There are left at Miss Buffam's, the Tales of the Castle, and certain vols. Retrospective Review. The first should be conveyd to Novello's, and the Reviews should be taken to Talfourd's office, ground floor, East side, Elm Court, Middle Temple, to whom I should have written, but my spirits are wretched. It is quite an effort to write this. So, with the _Life_, I have cut you out 3 Pieces of service. What can I do for you here, but hope to see you very soon, and think of you with most kindness. I fear tomorrow, between rains and snows, it would be impossible to expect you, but do not let a practicable Sunday pa.s.s. We are always at home!

Mary joins in remembrances to your sister, whom we hope to see in any fine-ish weather, when she'll venture.

Remember us to Allsop, and all the dead people--to whom, and to London, we seem dead.

["The _Life_." The Life which every one was then reading was Moore's _Life of Byron_.

"George Dyer's." The explanation is that years before, in his _Poems_, 1801, Dyer had written in a piece called "The Poet's Fate"--