acquainted with the inside of the good Doctor's house, and what passes therein.

Was Coleridge often with you? or did your brother and Col. argue long arguements, till between the two great argueers there grew a little coolness?-or perchance the mighty friendship between Coleridge and your Sovereign Governor, Sir Alexander Ball, might create a kind of jealousy, for we fancy something of a coldness did exist, from the little mention ever made of C. in your brother's letters.

Write us, my good girl, a long, gossiping letter, answering all these foolish questions—and tell me any silly thing you can recollect—any, the least particular, will be interesting to us, and we will never tell tales out of school: but we used to wonder and wonder, how you all went on; and when you was coming home we said, "Now we shall hear all from Sarah." God bless you, my dear friend.

I am ever your affectionate

MARY LAMB.

If you have sent Charles any commissions he has not executed, write me word--he says he has lost or mislaid a letter desiring him to inquire about a wig.

Write two letters-one of business and pensions, and one all about Sarah Stoddart and Malta. Is Mr. Moncrief doing well there?

Wednesday morning.

We have got a picture of Charles; do you think your brother would like to have it? If you do, can you put us in a way how to send it?

[Mrs. Stoddart was the widow of a lieutenant in the Royal Navy. Mr. Wray and Mr. Pearce were presumably gentlemen connected with the Admiralty or in some way concerned with the pension. "William" is still the early William-not William Hazlitt, whom Sarah was destined to marry. Mr. Moncrieff was Mrs. John Stoddart's eldest brother, who was a King's Advocate in the Admiralty Court at Malta. The picture of Charles might be some kind of reproduction of Hazlitt's portrait of him, painted in the preceding year; but more probably, I think, a few copies of Hancock's drawing, made in 1798 for Cottle, had been struck off.]

1805

"Gum Boil and Tooth Ache"

329

LETTER 138

CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM AND DOROTHY
WORDSWORTH

[P.M. September 28, 1805.]

Y dear Wordsworth (or Dorothy rather, for to you

MY appertains the biggest part of this answer by right.)

-I will not again deserve reproach by so long a silence. I have kept deluding myself with the idea that Mary would write to you, but she is so lazy, or, I believe the true state of the case, so diffident, that it must revert to me as usual. Though she writes a pretty good style, and has some notion of the force of words, she is not always so certain of the true orthography of them, and that and a poor handwriting (in this age of female calligraphy) often deter her where no other reason does. We have neither of us been very well for some weeks past. I am very nervous, and she most so at those times when I am so that a merry friend, adverting to the noble consolation we were able to afford each other, denominated us not unaptly Gum Boil and Tooth Ache: for they use to say that a Gum Boil is a great relief to a Tooth Ache. We have been two tiny excursions this summer, for three or four days each: to a place near Harrow, and to Egham, where Cooper's Hill is: and that is the total history of our Rustications this year. Alas! how poor a sound to Skiddaw, and Helvellyn, and Borrodaile, and the magnificent sesquipedalia of the year 1802. Poor old Molly! to have lost her pride, that "last infirmity of Noble Mind," and her Cow-Providence need not have set her wits to such an old Molly. I am heartily sorry for her. Remember us lovingly to her. And in particular remember us to Mrs. Clarkson in the most kind manner. I hope by southwards you mean that she will be at or near London, for she is a great favorite of both of us, and we feel for her health as much as is possible for any one to do. She is one of the friendliest, comfortablest women we know, and made our little stay at your cottage one of the pleasantest times we ever past. We were quite strangers to her. Mr. C. is with you too?—our

kindest separate remembrances to him.

As to our special affairs, I am looking about me. I have done nothing since the beginning of last year, when I lost my newspaper job, and having had a long idleness, I must do something, or we shall get very poor. Sometimes I think of a farce-but hitherto all schemes have gone off,-an idle brag or two of an evening vaporing out of a pipe, and going off in the morning; but now I have bid farewell to my "Sweet Enemy" Tobacco, as you will see in my next page, I perhaps shall set soberly to work. Hang Work! I wish that all the year were holyday. I am sure that Indolence indefeazible Indolence is the true state of man, and business the invention of the Old Teazer who persuaded Adam's Master to give him an apron and set him a houghing. Pen and Ink, and Clerks, and desks, were the refinements of this old torturer a thousand years after, under pretence of Commerce allying distant shores, promoting and diffusing knowledge, good, &c.—

A FAREWELL TO TOBACCO

May the Babylonish curse

Strait confound my stammering verse,
If I can a passage see

In this word-perplexity,

Or a fit expression find,

Or a language to my mind,

(Still the phrase is wide an acre)
To take leave of thee, Tobacco;
Or in any terms relate

Half my Love, or half my Hate,
For I hate yet love thee so,
That, whichever Thing I shew,
The plain truth will seem to be
A constrain'd hyperbole,

And the passion to proceed

More from a Mistress than a Weed.

Sooty retainer to the vine,

Bacchus' black servant, negro fine,

Sorcerer that mak'st us doat upon

Thy begrim'd complexion,

And, for thy pernicious sake

More and greater oaths to break

Than reclaimed Lovers take

'Gainst women: Thou thy siege dost lay

Much too in the female way,

While thou suck'st the labouring breath

Faster than kisses; or than Death.

1805

Farewell to Tobacco

Thou in such a cloud dost bind us,
That our worst foes cannot find us,
And Ill Fortune (that would thwart us)
Shoots at rovers, shooting at us;

While each man thro' thy heightening steam,
Does like a smoking Etna seem,
And all about us does express
(Fancy and Wit in richest dress)
A Sicilian Fruitfulness.

Thou through such a mist does shew us,
That our best friends do not know us;
And, for those allowed features,
Due to reasonable creatures,
Liken'st us to fell Chimeras,
Monsters, that, who see us, fear us,
Worse than Cerberus, or Geryon,
Or, who first loved a cloud, Ixion.

Bacchus we know, and we allow
His tipsy rites. But what art thou?
That but by reflex canst shew
What his deity can do,

As the false Egyptian spell
Aped the true Hebrew miracle-

Some few vapours thou may'st raise,
The weak brain may serve to amaze,
But to the reins and nobler heart
Canst nor life nor heat impart.

Brother of Bacchus, later born,
The old world was sure forlorn,
Wanting thee; that aidest more
The God's victories than before
All his panthers, and the brawls
Of his piping Bacchanals;
These, as stale, we disallow,
Or judge of thee meant: only thou
His true Indian Conquest art;
And, for Ivy round his dart,
The reformed God now weaves
A finer Thyrsus of thy leaves.

Scent to match thy rich perfume
Chymic art did ne'er presume
Through her quaint alembic strain;
None so sovran to the brain.
Nature, that did in thee excell,
Framed again no second smell.
Roses, violets, but toys
For the smaller sort of boys,
Or for greener damsels meant ;
Thou'rt the only manly scent.

331

Stinking'st of the stinking kind,
Filth of the mouth and fog of the mind,
Africa that brags her foyson,
Breeds no such prodigious poison,
Henbane, nightshade, both together,
Hemlock, aconite-

Nay rather,

Plant divine, of rarest virtue,

Blisters on the tongue would hurt you;
'Twas but in a sort I blamed thee,
None e'er prosper'd who defamed thee:
Irony all, and feign'd abuse,

Such as perplext Lovers use
At a need, when in despair
To paint forth their fairest fair,
Or in part but to express
That exceeding comeliness
Which their fancies does so strike,
They borrow language of Dislike,
And instead of Dearest Miss,
Honey, Jewel, Sweetheart, Bliss,
And, those forms of old admiring,
Call her Cockatrice and Syren,
Basilisk and all that's evil,
Witch, Hyena, Mermaid, Devil,
Ethiop wench, and Blackamoor,
Monkey, Ape, and twenty more,
Friendly Traitress, Loving Foe:
Not that she is truly so,

But no other way they know
A contentment to express,
Borders so upon excess,
That they do not rightly wot,
Whether it be pain or not.

Or, as men, constrain'd to part
With what's nearest to their heart,
While their sorrow's at the height,
Lose discrimination quite,
And their hasty wrath let fall,
To appease their frantic gall,
On the darling thing whatever,
Whence they feel it death to sever,
Though it be, as they, perforce,
Guiltless of the sad divorce.

For I must (nor let it grieve thee, Friendliest of plants, that I must) leave theeFor thy sake, TOBACCO, I

Would do anything but die;

And but seek to extend my days

Long enough to sing thy praise.