1811 William Hazlitt, Father 453 Green Peas or any such expensive luxuries. A plate of plain Turtle, another of Turbot, with good roast Beef in the rear, and, as Alderman Curtis says, whoever can't make a dinner of that ought to be damn'd. C. LAMB. Friday night, 8 Mar., 1811. [This is Lamb's only existing letter to Coleridge's friend, John Morgan. Coleridge had not found a lodging and was still with the Morgans at 7 Portland Place, Hammersmith. Alderman Sir William Curtis, M.P., afterwards Lord Mayor of London, was the subject of much ridicule by the Whigs and Radicals, and the hero of Peter Pindar's satire "The Fat Knight and the Petition." It was he who first gave the toast of the three R.'s -"reading, riting and rithmetic."] LETTER 200 MARY LAMB TO SARAH HAZLITT 2 Oct., 1811. Temple. MY Y dear Sarah,-I have been a long time anxiously expecting the happy news that I have just received. I address you because, as the letter has been lying some days at the India House, I hope you are able to sit up and read my congratulations on the little live boy you have been so many years wishing for. As we old women say, 'May he live to be a great comfort to you!' I never knew an event of the kind that gave me so much pleasure as the little long-looked-forcome-at-last's arrival; and I rejoiced to hear his honour has begun to suck-the word was not distinctly written and I was a long time making out the solemn fact. I hope to hear from you soon, for I am desirous to know if your nursing labours are attended with any difficulties. I wish you a happy getting-up, and a merry christening. Charles sends his love, perhaps though he will write a scrap to Hazlitt at the end. He is now looking over me, he is always in my way, for he has had a month's holydays at home, but I am happy to say they end on Monday-when mine begin, for I am going to pass a week at Richmond with Mrs. Burney. She has been dying, but she went to the Isle of Wight and recovered once more, and she is finishing her recovery at Richmond. When there I intend to read Novels and play at Piquet all day long. Yours truly, M. LAMB. LETTER 201 CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM HAZLITT Hazlitt, (Added to same letter) DEAR Hali help accompanying my sister's congratulations to Sarah with some of my own to you on this happy occasion of a man child being born Delighted Fancy already sees him some future rich alderman or opulent merchant; painting perhaps a little in his leisure hours for amusement like the late H. Bunbury, Esq. Pray, are the Winterslow Estates entailed? I am afraid lest the young dog when he grows up should cut down the woods, and leave no groves for widows to take their lonesome solace in. The Wem Estate of course can only devolve on him, in case of your brother leaving no male issue. Well, my blessing and heaven's be upon him, and make him like his father, with something a better temper and a smoother head of hair, and then all the men and women must love him. Martin and the Card-boys join in congratulations. Love to Sarah. Sorry we are not within Caudle-shot. C. LAMB. If the widow be assistant on this notable occasion, give our due respects and kind remembrances to her. [William Hazlitt's son, William Hazlitt, afterwards the Registrar, was born on September 26, 1811. He had been preceded by another boy, in 1809, who lived, however, only a few months. "H. Bunbury." Henry William Bunbury, the caricaturist and painter, and the husband of Goldsmith's friend, Catherine Horneck, the "Jessamy Bride." He died in 1811. The Card-boys would be Lamb's Wednesday visitors. Here should come a letter from Lamb to Charles Lloyd, Senior, dated September 8, 1812. It is printed in Charles Lamb and the Lloyds a letter of criticism of Mr. Lloyd's translation of the Epistles of Horace. A letter from Lamb to Charles Lloyd, Junior, belonging to this period, is now no more, in common with all but two of his letters, the remainder of which were destroyed by Lloyd's son, Charles Grosvenor Lloyd. Writing to Daniel Stuart on October 13, 1812, 1811 A Favour for Hazlitt 455 Wordsworth says, "Lamb writes to Lloyd that C.'s play [Coleridge's "Remorse"] is accepted." We now come to a period of three years in Lamb's life which is represented in the correspondence by only two or three letters. Not until August 9, 1814, does he return to his old manner. During this time Lamb is known to have written his first essay on Christ's Hospital, his "Confessions of a Drunkard," the little but excellent series of Table-Talk in The Examiner and some verses in the same paper. Possibly he wrote many letters too, but they have disappeared. We know from Crabb Robinson's Diary that it was a social period with the Lambs; the India House work also becoming more exacting than before.] DEA LETTER 202 CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN DYER COLLIER [No date. Probably 1812.] EAR Sir-Mrs. Collier has been kind enough to say that you would endeavour to procure a reporter's situation for W. Hazlitt. I went to consult him upon it last night, and he acceded very eagerly to the proposal, and requests me to say how very much obliged he feels to your kindness, and how glad he should be for its success. He is, indeed, at his wits' end for a livelihood; and, I should think, especially qualified for such an employment, from his singular facility in retaining all conversations at which he has been ever present. I think you may recommend him with confidence. I am sure I shall myself be obliged to you for your exertions, having a great regard for him. Sunday morning. Yours truly, C. LAMB. [John Payne Collier, who prints this in his Old Man's Diary, adds: "The result was that my father procured for Hazlitt the situation of a parliamentary reporter on the Morning Chronicle; but he did not retain it long, and as his talents were undoubted, Mr. Perry transferred to him the office of theatrical critic, a position which was subsequently held for several years by a person of much inferior talents." Crabb Robinson mentions in his Diary under the date December 24, 1812, that Hazlitt is in high spirits from his engagement with Perry as parliamentary reporter at four guineas a week. I place here, not having any definite date, a letter on a kindred subject from Mary Lamb:-] DE LETTER 203 MARY LAMB TO MRS. JOHN DYER COLLIER [No date.] EAR Mrs. C.-This note will be given to you by a young friend of mine, whom I wish you would employ: she has commenced business as a mantua-maker, and, if you and my girls would try her, I think she could fit you all three, and it will be doing her an essential service. She is, I think, very deserving, and if you procure work for her among your friends and acquaintances, so much the better. My best love to you and my girls. We are both well. Yours affectionately, MARY LAMB. [John Payne Collier remarks: "Southey and Coleridge, as is well known, married two sisters of the name of Fricker. I never saw either of them, but a third sister settled as a mantua-maker in London, and for some years she worked for my mother and her daughters. She was an intelligent woman, but by no means above her business, though she was fond of talking of her two poetmarried relations. She was introduced to my mother by the following note from Mary Lamb, who always spoke of my sisters as her girls." Mary Lamb had herself worked as a mantua-maker for some years previous to the autumn of 1796.] LETTER 204 CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN SCOTT [P.M. (? Feb.), 1814.] SIR-Your proposal most willingly. IR-Your explanation is perfectly pleasant to me, and I As I began with the beginning of this month, I will if you please call upon you for your part of the engagement (supposing I shall have performed mine) on the 1st of March next, and thence forward if it suit you quarterly.-You will occasionally wink at BRISKETS & VEINY PIECES. Your hble. Svt. C. LAMB. Saturday. 1814 The Excursion 457 [John Scott (1783-1821) we shall meet later, in 1820, in connection with the London Magazine, which he edited until the fatal termination of his quarrel with Blackwood's. Scott had just become editor of The Champion. Lamb's only contribution to The Champion under Scott, which can be identified, is the essay " On the Melancholy of Tailors," but there is little doubt that he supplied many of the extracts from old authors which were printed from time to time, and possibly one or two comic letters also. See the letter of Dec. 12, 1814.] LETTER 205 CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH DEAR [Dated at end: August 9, 1814.] EAR Wordsworth, I cannot tell you how pleased I was at the receit of the great Armful of Poetry which you have sent me, and to get it before the rest of the world too! I have gone quite through with it, and was thinking to have accomplishd that pleasure a second time before I wrote to thank you, but M. Burney came in the night (while we were out) and made holy theft of it, but we expect restitution in a day or two. It is the noblest conversational poem I ever read. A day in heaven. The part (or rather main body) which has left the sweetest odour on my memory (a bad term for the remains of an impression so recent) is the Tales of the Church yard. The only girl among seven brethren, born out of due time and not duly taken away again—the deaf man and the blind man—the Jacobite and the Hanoverian whom antipathies reconcile-the Scarron-entry of the rusticating parson upon his solitude-these were all new to me too. My having known the story of Margaret (at the beginning), a very old acquaintance, even as long back as I saw you first at Stowey, did not make her reappearance less fresh. I don't know what to pick out of this Best of Books upon the best subjects for partial naming. That gorgeous Sunset is famous, I think it must have been the identical one we saw on Salisbury plain five years ago, that drew Phillips from the card table where he had sat from rise of that luminary to its unequall'd set, but neither he nor I had gifted eyes to see those symbols of common things glorified such as the prophets saw them, in that sunset-the |