something better.

I knew him, and that not long since, when
I am ashamed of the indifference

he had a most warm heart.
I have sometimes felt towards him. I think the devil is in
one's heart. I am under obligations to that man for the
warmest friendship and heartiest sympathy, even for an agony
of sympathy exprest both by word and deed, and tears for
me, when I was in my greatest distress. But I have forgot that !
as, I fear, he has nigh forgot the awful scenes which were be-
fore his eyes when he served the office of a comforter to me.
No service was too mean or troublesome for him to perform.
I can't think what but the devil, "that old spider," could
have suck'd my heart so dry of its sense of all gratitude. If
he does come in your way, Southey, fail not to tell him that
I retain a most affectionate remembrance of his old friendli-
ness, and an earnest wish to resume our intercourse. In this
I am serious. I cannot recommend him to your society,
because I am afraid whether he be quite worthy of it. But
I have no right to dismiss him from my regard. He was at
one time, and in the worst of times, my own familiar friend,
and great comfort to me then. I have known him to play at
cards with my father, meal-times excepted, literally all day
long, in long days too, to save me from being teased by the
old man, when I was not able to bear it.

God bless him for it, and God bless you, Southey.

C. L.

[Peter Pindar (Dr. John Wolcot) has an ode "To a Fly, taken out of a Bowl of Punch." He also wrote "The Lousiad."

"Poor earth-born companions." From Burns' "Lines to a Mouse," 2nd Stanza, line 5.

"Toads are made to fly." Filliping the toad was an old pastime. A toad was placed on one end of a piece of wood, laid crosswise over a stone. The other end was struck with a beetle (i.e., a mallet), and the toad flew into the air. Falstaff says: Fillip me with a three-man beetle." As to worms and fishermen, the late Mrs. Coe, who as a girl had known Lamb at Widford, told me that he could rarely, if ever, be tempted to join the anglers. Affixing the worm was too much for him. Barbarous, barbarous," he used to say.

66

Lamb's project for a series of animal poems has to some extent been carried out by a living poet, Mr. A. C. Benson. Neither Lamb nor Southey pursued it.

We met Sam Le Grice in the letter of October 3, 1796. To what escapade Lamb refers I do not know, but he was addicted to

folly. It was Sam Le Grice of whom Leigh Hunt in his Autobiography tells the excellent tale that he excused himself to his master for not having performed a task, by the remark that he had had a "lethargy."

In April of this year died John Lamb, the father. Charles Lamb probably at once moved from 45 Chapel Street to No. 36, where Mary Lamb joined him.

Between this and the next letter should probably come a letter from Lamb to Robert Lloyd, not available for this edition. It seems to follow upon Robert Lloyd's departure from Lamb's house, and remarks that Lamb knows but one being that he could ever consent to live perpetually with, and that is Robert-but Robert must go whither prudence and paternal regulations dictate. Lamb also refers to a poem of an intimate character by Charles Lloyd in the Annual Anthology ("Lines to a Brother and Sister"), remarking that, in his opinion, these domestic addresses should not always be made public. There is also a reference to Charles Lloyd's novel, which Lamb says he wants to read if he may be permitted a sight of it. This would be Isabel.]

LETTER 46

CHARLES LAMB TO ROBERT SOUTHEY

Oct. 31st, 1799.

DE

EAR Southey,—I have but just got your letter, being returned from Herts, where I have passed a few redletter days with much pleasure. I would describe the county to you, as you have done by Devonshire, but alas! I am a poor pen at that same. I could tell you of an old house with a tapestry bed-room, the "judgment of Solomon" composing one pannel, and "Actæon spying Diana naked" the other. I could tell of an old marble hall, with Hogarth's prints and the Roman Cæsars in marble hung round. I could tell of a wilderness, and of a village church, and where the bones of my honoured grandam lie; but there are feelings which refuse to be translated, sulky aborigines, which will not be naturalised in another soil. Of this nature are old family faces and scenes of infancy.

I have given your address, and the books you want, to the Arches; they will send them as soon as they can get them, but they do not seem quite familiar to [? with] their names. I have seen Gebor! Gebor aptly so denominated from

Geborish, quasi Gibberish. But Gebor hath some lucid intervals. I remember darkly one beautiful simile veiled in uncouth phrases about the youngest daughter of the Ark. I shall have nothing to communicate, I fear, to the Anthology. You shall have some fragments of my play, if you desire them, but I think I would rather print it whole. Have you seen it, or shall I lend you a copy? I want your opinion of it.

I must get to business, so farewell. My kind remembrances to Edith. C. LAMB.

[Lamb had probably been staying at Widford. Many years later he described his Hertfordshire days in more than one essay (see the Elia essays "Mackery End" and "Blakesmoor in Hshire" and "Dream-Children "). The old house was, of course, Blakesware. The wilderness, which lay at the back of the house, is, with Widford, mentioned in Rosamund Gray.

The Arches were the brothers Arch, the booksellers of Ludgate Hill.

Gebor stands for Gebir, Landor's poem, published in 1798. The simile in question would be this: from Book VII., lines 248-251 :—

Never so eager, when the world was waves,
Stood the less daughter of the ark, and tried
(Innocent this temptation) to recall

With folded vest and casting arm the dove.

The reference to Southey's Anthology is to Vol. II., then in preparation. The play was now finished: it circulated in manuscript before being published in 1802.

In a letter to Robert Lloyd, dated December 17, 1799, Lamb thanks him for a present of porter, adding that wine makes him hot, and brandy drunk, but porter warms without intoxication.

Here should come an unpublished letter from Lamb to Charles Lloyd at Cambridge, asking for the return of his play. Kemble, he says, had offered to put it in the hands of the proprietor of Drury Lane, and therefore Lamb wishes to have a second copy in the house. Kemble, as it turned out, returned no answer for a year, and then he stated that he had lost the copy.

Lamb mentions Coleridge's settlement with his family in lodgings in the Adelphi. Coleridge, having returned from Germany and undertaken work for the Morning Post, took lodgings at 21 Buckingham Street, Strand, close to the Adelphi, in November, 1799.

The letter is interesting in containing the first mention of Manning, whom we are now to meet.]

1799

DEAR

Enter Manning

LETTER 47

CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING

151

Dec., 1799.

EAR Manning,—The particular kindness, even up to a degree of attachment, which I have experienced from you, seems to claim some distinct acknowledgment on my part. I could not content myself with a bare remembrance to you, conveyed in some letter to Lloyd.

Will it be agreeable to you, if I occasionally recruit your memory of me, which must else soon fade, if you consider the brief intercourse we have had. I am not likely to prove a troublesome correspondent. My scribbling days are past. I shall have no sentiments to communicate, but as they spring up from some living and worthy occasion.

I look forward with great pleasure to the performance of your promise, that we should meet in London early in the ensuing year. The century must needs commence auspiciously for me, that brings with it Manning's friendship as an earnest of its after gifts.

I should have written before, but for a troublesome inflammation in one of my eyes, brought on by night travelling with the coach windows sometimes up.

What more I have to say shall be reserved for a letter to Lloyd. I must not prove tedious to you in my first outset, lest I should affright you by my ill-judged loquacity.

I am, yours most sincerely,

C. LAMB.

[This is the first letter that has been preserved in the correspondence between Lamb and Manning. Lamb first met Manning at Cambridge, in the autumn of 1799, when on a visit to Charles Lloyd. Much of Manning's history will be unfolded as the letters proceed, but here it should be stated that he was born on November 8, 1772, and was thus a little more than two years older than Lamb. He was at this time acting as private tutor in mathematics at Cambridge, among his pupils being Charles Lloyd, of Caius, Manning's own college. Manning, however, did not take his degree, owing to an objection to oaths and tests.

Lamb's reference to the beginning of the century shows that he shared with many other non-mathematically-minded persons the belief that the century begins with the hundredth, and not the hundred and first, year. He says of Manning, in the Elia essay “The Old and the New Schoolmaster": "My friend M., with great

painstaking, got me to think I understood the first proposition in Euclid, but gave me over in despair at the second."]

DE

LETTER 48

CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING

Dec. 28th, 1799.

EAR Manning,-Having suspended my correspondence a decent interval, as knowing that even good things may be taken to satiety, a wish cannot but recur to learn whether you be still well and happy. Do all things continue in the state I left them in Cambridge?

Do your night parties still flourish? and do you continue to bewilder your company with your thousand faces running down through all the keys of idiotism (like Lloyd over his perpetual harpsicord), from the smile and the glimmer of half-sense and quarter-sense to the grin and hanging lip of Betty Foy's own Johnny? And does the face-dissolving curfew sound at twelve? How unlike the great originals were your petty terrors in the postscript, not fearful enough to make a fairy shudder, or a Lilliputian fine lady, eight months full of child, miscarry. Yet one of them, which had more beast than the rest, I thought faintly resembled one of your brutifications. But, seriously, I long to see your own honest Manning-face again. I did not mean a pun,-your man's face, you will be apt to say, I know your wicked will to pun. I cannot now write to Lloyd and you too, so you must convey as much interesting intelligence as this may contain, or be thought to contain, to him and Sophia, with my dearest love and remembrances.

By the by, I think you and Sophia both incorrect with regard to the title of the play. Allowing your objection (which is not necessary, as pride may be, and is in real life often, cured by misfortunes not directly originating from its own acts, as Jeremy Taylor will tell you a naughty desire is sometimes sent to cure it-I know you read these practical divines). But allowing your objection, does not the betraying of his father's secret directly spring from pride?—from the pride of wine and a full heart, and a proud over-stepping of the ordinary rules of morality, and contempt of the prejudices of mankind, which are not to bind superior souls--"as trust in the