it was no settled comparative estimate of Voltaire with any of his own tribe of buffoons--no injustice, even if you spoke it, for I dared say you never could relish Candide. I know I tried to get thro' it about a twelvemonth since, and couldn't for the Dullness. Now, I think I have a wider range in buffoonery than you. Too much toleration perhaps.

I finish this after a raw ill bakd dinner, fast gobbled up, to set me off to office again after working there till near four. O Christ! how I wish I were a rich man, even tho' I were squeezed camel-fashion at getting thro' that Needles eye that is spoken of in the Written Word. Apropos, are you a

Xtian? or is it the Pedlar and the Priest that are?

I find I miscalld that celestial splendor of the mist going off, a sunset. That only shews my inaccuracy of head.

Do pray indulge me by writing an answer to the point of time mentioned above, or let Southey. I am asham'd to go bargaining in this way, but indeed I have no time I can reckon on till the Ist week in Octor. God send I may not be disappointed in that!

Coleridge swore in letter to me he would review Exc". in the Quarterly. Therefore, tho' that shall not stop me, yet if I can do anything, when done, I must know of him if he has anything ready, or I shall fill the world with loud exclaims.

I keep writing on, knowing the Postage is no more for much writing, else so faggd & disjointed I am with damnd India house work, I scarce know what I do. My left arm reposes on "Excursion." I feel what it would be in quiet. It is now a sealed Book.

O happy Paris, seat of idleness and pleasure! From some return'd English I hear that not such a thing as a counting house is to be seen in her streets, scarce a desk-Earthquakes swallow up this mercantile city and its gripple merchants, as Drayton hath it, "born to be the curse of this brave isle." I invoke this not on account of any parsimonious habits the mercantile interest may have, but, to confess truth, because I am not fit for an office.

Farewell, in haste, from a head that is ill to methodize, a stomach to digest, and all out of Tune. Better harmonies await you. C. LAMB.

[Wordsworth had been appointed in 1813 Distributor of Stamps for the county of Westmoreland. Lamb is writing again about The Excursion, which at the instigation of Southey, to whom

1814

Hazlitt's Criticisms

469

Wordsworth had made the suggestion, he is to review for the Quarterly.

"Hazlitt and we having a misunderstanding." The precise cause of the trouble we do not know, but in Crabb Robinson's Diary, in 1811, it is said that a slight coolness had begun between the two men on account of money which Lamb did not feel justified in lending to Hazlitt. Between 1811 and 1814, however, they were friendly again. It was Hazlitt's hostile attitude to Wordsworth that brought about Robinson's split with him, although that also was mended: literary men are short haters. Hazlitt reviewed The Excursion-from Lamb's copy, which in itself was a cause of grievance-in The Examiner, in three numbers, August 21, 28 and October 2. Wordsworth had described Candide, in Book II., as the "dull product of a scoffer's pen." Hazlitt wrote thus:

We cannot however agree with Mr. Wordsworth that Candide is dull. It is, if our author pleases, "the production of a scoffer's pen," or it is any thing, but dull. Rasselas indeed is dull; but then it is privileged dulness. It may not be proper in a grave, discreet, orthodox, promising young divine, who studies his opinions in the contraction or distension of his patron's brow, to allow any merit to a work like Candide; but we conceive that it would have been more in character, that is, more manly, in Mr. Wordsworth, nor do we think it would have hurt the cause he espouses, if he had blotted out the epithet, after it had peevishly escaped him. Whatsoever savours of a little, narrow, inquisitorial spirit, does not sit well on a poet and a man of genius. The prejudices of a philosopher are not natural. . .

...

Lamb himself made the same criticism, three years later, at Haydon's dinner party.

Hazlitt had also said of The Excursion that—

Such is the severe simplicity of Mr. Wordsworth's taste, that we doubt whether he would not reject a druidical temple, or time-hallowed ruin, as too modern and artificial for his purpose. He only familiarises himself or his readers with a stone, covered with lichens, which has slept in the same spot of ground from the creation of the world, or with the rocky fissure between two mountains, caused by thunder, or with a cavern scooped out by the sea. His mind is, as it were, coeval with the primary forms of things, holds immediately from nature; and his imagination "owes no allegiance" but "to the elements."

"Are you a Xtian?"-referring to the sentiments of Wanderer and the Pastor-two characters of The Excursion.

"A sunset." See preceding letter to Wordsworth.

Here should come a letter from Lamb to Southey, dated October 20, 1814, stating that Lamb has deposited with Mr. Grosvenor

Bedford, Southey's friend and correspondent, his review of The Excursion. "Who can cram into a strait coop of a review any serious idea of such a vast and magnificent poem?"]

LETTER 209

MARY LAMB TO BARBARA BETHAM (Aged 14)

Novr. 2, 1814.

T is very long since I have met with such an agreeable surprise as the sight of your letter, my kind young friend, afforded me. Such a nice letter as it is too. And what a pretty hand you write. I congratulate you on this attainment with great pleasure, because I have so often felt the disadvantage of my own wretched handwriting.

You wish for London news. I rely upon your sister Ann for gratifying you in this respect, yet I have been endeavouring to recollect whom you might have seen here, and what may have happened to them since, and this effort has only brought the image of little Barbara Betham, unconnected with any other person, so strongly before my eyes that I seem as if I had no other subject to write upon. Now I think I see you with your feet propped upon the fender, your two hands spread out upon your knees-an attitude you always chose when we were in familiar confidential conversation together—telling me long stories of your own home, where now you say you are "Moping on with the same thing every day," and which then presented nothing but pleasant recollections to your mind. How well I remember your quiet steady face bent over your book. One day, conscience struck at having wasted so much of your precious time in reading, and feeling yourself, as you prettily said, "quite useless to me," you went to my drawers and hunted out some unhemmed pocket-handkerchiefs, and by no means could I prevail upon you to resume your story books till you had hemmed them all. I remember, too, your teaching my little maid to read-your sitting with her a whole evening to console her for the death of her sister; and that she in her turn endeavoured to become a comforter to you, the next evening, when you wept at the sight of Mrs. Holcroft, from whose school you had recently eloped because you were not partial to sitting in the stocks. Those tears, and a few you once dropped when my brother teased you about your supposed fondness for an apple dumpling, were the only in

1814

A Discovery

47I terruptions to the calm contentedness of your unclouded brow. We still remain the same as you left us, neither taller nor wiser, or perceptibly older, but three years must have made a great alteration in you. How very much, dear Barbara, I should like to see you!

We still live in Temple Lane, but I am now sitting in a room you never saw. Soon after you left us we we[re] distressed by the cries of a cat, which seemed to proceed from the garrets adjoining to ours, and only separated from ours by a locked door on the farther side of my brother's bedroom, which you know was the little room at the top of the kitchen stairs. We had the lock forced and let poor puss out from behind a pannel of the wainscot, and she lived with us from that time, for we were in gratitude bound to keep her, as she had introduced us to four untenanted, unowned rooms, and by degrees we have taken possession of these unclaimed apartments-First putting up lines to dry our clothes, then moving my brother's bed into one of these, more commodious than his own room. And last winter, my brother being unable to pursue a work he had begun, owing to the kind interruptions of friends who were more at leisure than himself, I persuaded him that he might write at his ease in one of these rooms, as he could not then hear the door knock, or hear himself denied to be at home, which was sure to make him call out and convict the poor maid in a fib. Here, I said, he might be almost really not at home. So I put in an old grate, and made him a fire in the largest of these garrets, and carried in one table, and one chair, and bid him write away, and consider himself as much alone as if he were in a new lodging in the midst of Salisbury Plain, or any other wide unfrequented place where he could expect few visitors to break in upon his solitude. I left him quite delighted with his new acquisition, but in a few hours he came down again with a sadly dismal face. He could do nothing, he said, with those bare whitewashed walls before his eyes. He could not write in that dull unfurnished prison.

The next day, before he came home from his office, I had gathered up various bits of old carpetting to cover the floor; and, to a little break the blank look of the bare walls, I hung up a few old prints that used to ornament the kitchen, and after dinner, with great boast of what an improvement I had made, I took Charles once more into his new study. A week of busy

labours followed, in which I think you would not have disliked to have been our assistant. My brother and I almost covered the wall with prints, for which purpose he cut out every print from every book in his old library, coming in every now and then to ask my leave to strip a fresh poor author-which he might not do, you know, without my permission, as I am elder sister. There was such pasting, such consultation where their portraits, and where the series of pictures from Ovid, Milton, and Shakespear would show to most advantage, and in what obscure corner authors of humbler note might be allowed to tell their stories. All the books gave up their stores but one, a translation from Ariosto, a delicious set of four and twenty prints, and for which I had marked out a conspicuous place ; when lo! we found at the moment the scissars were going to work that a part of the poem was printed at the back of every picture. What a cruel disappointment! To conclude this long story about nothing, the poor despised garret is now called the print room, and is become our most favorite sitting

room.

Your sister Ann will tell you that your friend Louisa is going to France. Miss Skepper is out of town, Mrs. Reynolds desires to be remembered to you, and so does my neighbour Mrs. Norris, who was your doctress when you were unwell, her three little children are grown three big children. The Lions still live in Exeter Change. Returning home through the Strand, I often hear them roar about twelve oclock at night. I never hear them without thinking of you, because you seemed so pleased with the sight of them, and said your young companions would stare when you told them you had seen a Lion.

And now my dear Barbara fare well, I have not written such a long letter a long time, but I am very sorry I had nothing amusing to write about. Wishing you may pass happily through the rest of your school days, and every future day of your life.

I remain, your affectionate Friend,

M. LAMB.

He joins

My brother sends his love to you, with the kind remembrance your letter shewed you have of us as I was. with me in respects to your good father and mother, your brother John, who, if I do not mistake his name,

and to is your