1798 "JOHN WOODVIL' 139 I LETTER 42 CHARLES LAMB TO ROBERT SOUTHEY Jan. 21st, 1799. AM requested by Lloyd to excuse his not replying to a kind letter received from you. He is at present situated in most distressful family perplexities, which I am not at liberty to explain; but they are such as to demand all the strength of his mind, and quite exclude any attention to foreign objects. His brother Robert (the flower of his family) hath eloped from the persecutions of his father, and has taken shelter with me. What the issue of his adventure will be, I know not. He hath the sweetness of an angel in his heart, combined with admirable firmness of purpose: an uncultivated, but very original, and, I think, superior genius. But this step of his is but a small part of their family troubles. I am to blame for not writing to you before on my own account; but I know you can dispense with the expressions of gratitude, or I should have thanked you before for all May's kindness. He has liberally supplied the person I spoke to you of with money, and had procured him a situation just after himself had lighted upon a similar one and engaged too far to recede. But May's kindness was the same, and my thanks to you and him are the same. May went about on this business as if it had been his own. But you knew John May before this: so I will be silent. I shall be very glad to hear from you when convenient. I do not know how your Calendar and other affairs thrive; but, above all, I have not heard a great while of your "Madoc "-the opus magnum. I would willingly send you something to give a value to this letter; but I have only one slight passage to send you, scarce worth the sending, which I want to edge in somewhere into my play, which, by the way, hath not received the addition of ten lines, besides, since I saw you. A father, old Walter Woodvil, (the witch's PROTÉGÉ) relates this of his son John, who "fought in adverse armies," being a royalist, and his father a parliamentary man: "I saw him in the day of Worcester fight, Who gave his youthful politics a bent Quite from the principles of his father's house ;) There did I see this valiant Lamb of Mars, This sprig of honour, this unbearded John, This veteran in green years, this sprout, this Woodvil, Which seem'd to scorn the manage of a boy), Even with the sinewy masters of the art, You would have thought the work of blood had been Lloyd objects to "pourtrayed in his face,”—do you? I like the line. I shall clap this in somewhere. I think there is a spirit through the lines; perhaps the 7th, 8th, and 9th owe their origin to Shakspeare, though no image is borrowed. He says in "Henry the Fourth "— "This infant Hotspur, Mars in swathing clothes." [See Pt. I., III., 2, 111, 112.] But pray did Lord Falkland die before Worcester fight? In that case I must make bold to unclify some other nobleman. Kind love and respects to Edith. NOTE C. LAMB. [Charles Lloyd's perplexities turned probably once again on the question of his marriage. How long Robert Lloyd was with Lamb we do not know; nor of what nature were the "persecutions" to which he was subjected. According to the evidence at our disposal, Charles Lloyd, sen., was a good father. Southey's Madoc was not published until 1805. The passage from the play was not printed in John Woodvil. This, together with "The Dying Lover" on page 131, are to be found only in the discarded version, printed in the Notes to Poems and Plays, Vol. V. of the present edition of Lamb's works. Lord Falkland had been killed at Newbury eight years before Worcester fight. Lamb altered the names to Ashley and Naseby, although Sir Anthony Cooper was not made Lord Ashley until sixteen years after Naseby was fought.] DR Southey, Lloyd will now be able to give you an account of himself, so to him I leave you for satisfaction. Great part of his troubles are lightened by the partial recovery of his sister, who had been alarmingly ill with similar diseases to his own. The other part of the family troubles sleeps for the present, but I fear will awake at some future time to confound and disunite. will probably tell you all about it. Robert still continues here with me, his father has proposed nothing, but would willingly lure him back with fair professions. But Robert is endowed with a wise fortitude, and in this business has acted quite from himself, and wisely acted. His parents must come forward in the End. I like reducing parents to a sense of undutifulness. I like confounding the relations of life. Pray let me see you when you come to town, and contrive to give me some of your company. I thank you heartily for your intended presents, but do by no means see the necessity you are under of burthening yourself thereby. You have read old Wither's Supersedeas to small purpose. You object to my pauses being at the end of my lines. I do not know any great difficulty I should find in diversifying or changing my blank verse; but I go upon the model of Shakspere in my Play, and endeavour after a colloquial ease and spirit, something like him. I could so easily imitate Milton's versification; but my ear & feeling would reject it, or any approaches to it, in the drama. I do not know whether to be glad or sorry that witches have been detected aforetimes in shutting up of wombs. I certainly invented that conceit, and its coincidence with fact is incidental [? accidental], for I never heard it. I have not seen those verses on Col. Despard-I do not read any newspapers. Are they short, to copy without much trouble? I should like to see them. I just send you a few rhymes from my play, the only rhymes in it-a forest-liver giving an account of his amusements : What sports have you in the forest? To see the sun to bed, and see him rise, Bursting the lazy bands of sleep that bound him: And all the winking stars, her handmaids, keep To view the graceful deer come trooping by, Then pause, and gaze, then turn they know not why, To mark the structure of a plant or tree; And all fair things of earth, how fair they be! &c. &c. I love to anticipate charges of unoriginality: the first line is almost Shakspere's : "To have my love to bed & to arise." Midsummer Night's Dream [III., 1, 174]. I think there is a sweetness in the versification not unlike some rhymes in that exquisite play, and the last line but three is yours: "An eye That met the gaze, or turn'd it knew not why." Rosamund's Epistle. I shall anticipate all my play, and have nothing to shew you. Commentators on Job have been puzzled to find out a meaning for Leviathan,-'tis a whale, say some; a crocodile, say others. In my simple conjecture, Leviathan is neither more nor less than the Lord Mayor of London for the time being. "Rosamund" sells well in London, maugre the non-reviewal of it. I sincerely wish you better health, & better health to Edith. Kind remembrances to her. C. LAMB. If you come to town by Ash Wensday [February 6], you will certainly see Lloyd here—I expect him by that time. My sister Mary was never in better health or spirits than now. NOTE [Writing in June, 1799, to Robert Lloyd, Priscilla, his sister, says: "Lamb would not I think by any means be a person to take up your abode with. He is too much like yourself—he would encourage those feelings which it certainly is your duty to suppress. Your station in life-the duties which are pointed out by that 1799 SOUTHEY'S ECLOGUES 143 rank in society which you are destined to fill-differ widely from his." When next we hear of Robert Lloyd he has returned to Birmingham, where his father soon afterwards bought him a partnership in a bookselling and printing business. "Col. Despard." I have not found the verses. Colonel Edward Marcus Despard, after a career that began brilliantly, was imprisoned in the spring of 1798 and executed for High Treason in 1803. The rhymed passage from John Woodvil is that which is best known. Hazlitt relates that Godwin was so taken with it when he first read it that he asked every one he met to tell him the author and play, and at last applied to Lamb himself. The quotation from Southey ("Rosamund to Henry ") is not correctly given. It should run (lines 67, 68): The modest eye That met the glance, or turn'd, it knew not why.] LETTER 44 CHARLES LAMB TO ROBERT SOUTHEY March 15th, 1799. DEA EAR Southey, I have received your little volume, for which I thank you, though I do not entirely approve of this sort of intercourse, where the presents are all one side. I have read the last Eclogue again with great pleasure. It hath gained considerably by abridgment, and now I think it wants nothing but enlargement. You will call this one of tyrant Procrustes' criticisms, to cut and pull so to his own standard; but the old lady is so great a favourite with me, I want to hear more of her; and of "Joanna" you have given us still less. But the picture of the rustics leaning over the bridge, and the old lady travelling abroad on a summer evening to see her garden watered, are images so new and true, that Ï decidedly prefer this "Ruin'd Cottage" to any poem in the book. Indeed I think it the only one that will bear comparison with your "Hymn to the Penates" in a former volume. I compare dissimilar things, as one would a rose and a star for the pleasure they give us, or as a child soon learns to choose between a cake and a rattle; for dissimilars have mostly some points of comparison. The next best poem, I think, is the First Eclogue; 'tis very complete, and abounding in little pictures and realities. The remainder Eclogues, excepting only the "Funeral," I do not greatly admire. I miss one, which had at least as good a title to |