1820 The Thursday Nights 573 Pray are you King's or Queen's men in Sidney? Or have thieves no politics? Man, don't let this lie about your room for your bed sweeper or Major Domo to see, he mayn't like the last paragraph. This is a dull and lifeless scroll. You shall have soon a tissue of truth and fiction impossible to be extricated, the interleavings shall be so delicate, the partitions perfectly invisible, it shall puzzle you till you return, & [then] I will not explain it. Till then a adieu, with kind rembrces, of me both to you & . . . [Signature and a few words torn off.] [Barron Field, who was still in New South Wales, had published his poems under the title First-Fruits of Australian Poetry, and Lamb had reviewed them in The Examiner for January 16, 1820, over his usual signature in that paper, "The Kangaroo is quoted in that review (see Vol. I. of the present edition). Captain Ogilvie was the brother of a clerk at the India House, who gave Mr. Joseph H. Twichell some reminiscences of Lamb, which were printed in Scribner's Magazine. 66 King's or Queen's men "-supporters of George IV. or Caroline of Brunswick. Lamb was very strongly in favour of the Queen, as his Champion epigrams show (see Vol. IV.). "You shall soon see." Lamb's first reference to the Elia essays, alluding here to "The South-Sea House." Here should come a letter from Lamb to Hazlitt. Lamb says that his sister is ill again and that the last thing she read was Hazlitt's "Thursday Nights" which gave her unmixed delightthe reference being to the second part of the essay "On the Conversation of Authors," which was printed in the London Magazine for September, 1820, describing Lamb's evenings. Stoddart, Hazlitt's brother-in-law, Lamb adds, says it is better than Hogarth's "Modern Midnight Conversation." Here should come a business note to John Scott, editor of the London Magazine, dated August 24, 1820, given in the Boston Bibliophile edition.] LETTER 263A CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE [No date. ? Autumn, 1820.] DEA EAR C.,-Why will you make your visits, which should give pleasure, matter of regret to your friends? You never come but you take away some folio that is part of my existence. With a great deal of difficulty I was made to comprehend the extent of my loss. My maid Becky brought me a dirty bit of paper, which contained her description of some book which Mr. Coleridge had taken away. It was "Luster's Tables," which, for some time, I could not make out. "What! has he carried away any of the tables, Becky?" 'No, it wasn't any tables, but it was a book that he called Luster's Tables." I was obliged to search personally among my shelves, and a huge fissure suddenly disclosed to me the true nature of the damage I had sustained. That book, C., you should not have taken away, for it is not mine; it is the property of a friend, who does not know its value, nor indeed have I been very sedulous in explaining to him the estimate of it; but was rather contented in giving a sort of corroboration to a hint that he let fall, as to its being suspected to be not genuine, so that in all probability it would have fallen to me as a deodand; not but I am as sure it is Luther's as I am sure that Jack Bunyan wrote the "Pilgrim's Progress; " but it was not for me to pronounce upon the validity of testimony that had been disputed by learneder clerks than I. So I quietly let it occupy the place it had usurped upon my shelves, and should never have thought of issuing an ejectment against it; for why should I be so bigoted as to allow rites of hospitality to none but my own books, children, &c. ?—a species of egotism I abhor from my heart. No; let 'em all snug together, Hebrews and Proselytes of the gate; no selfish partiality of mine shall make distinction between them; I charge no warehouse-room for my friends' commodities; they are welcome to come and stay as long as they like, without paying rent. I have several such strangers that I treat with more than Arabian courtesy; there's a copy of More's fine poem, which is none of mine; but I cherish it as my own; I am none of those churlish landlords that advertise the goods to be taken away in ten days' time, or then to be sold to pay expenses. So you see I had no right to lend you that book; I may lend you my own books, because it is at my own hazard, but it is not honest to hazard a friend's property; I always make that distinction. I hope you will bring it with you, or send it by Hartley; or he can bring that, and you the "Polemical Discourses," and come and eat some atoning mutton with us one of these days shortly. We are engaged two or three Sundays deep, but always dine at home on week-days at half-past four. So come 1820 S. T. C. as Book-borrower 575 all four-men and books I mean-my third shelf (northern compartment) from the top has two devilish gaps, where you have knocked out its two eye-teeth. [This letter is usually dated 1824, but I think it was written earlier. For one reason, Hartley Coleridge was not in London in that year, and for another, there are several phrases in the Elia essay "Two Races of Men" (printed in the London Magazine, December, 1820) that are so similar to some in this letter that I imagine the letter to have suggested the subject of the essay, the composition of which immediately followed it. Thus, in the essay we read : "That foul gap in the bottom shelf facing you, like a great eye-tooth knocked out-(you are now with me in my little back study in Bloomsbury, reader !)--with the huge Switzer-like tomes on each side (like the Guildhall giants, in their reformed posture, guardant of nothing) once held the tallest of my folios, Opera Bonaventura, choice and massy divinity, to which its two supporters (school divinity also, but of a lesser calibre,Bellarmine, and Holy Thomas), showed but as dwarfs,-itself an Ascapart!-that Comberbatch abstracted upon the faith of a theory he holds, which is more easy, I confess, for me to suffer by than to refute, namely, that the title to property in a book (my Bonaventure, for instance) is in exact ratio to the claimant's powers of understanding and appreciating the same.' Should he go on acting upon this theory, which of our shelves is safe?" "Luster's Tables "-Luther's Table Talk. "More's fine poem." The Psychozoia Platonica, 1642, of Henry More, the Platonist. Lamb seems to have returned the book, for it was not among his books that he left. Luther's Table Talk seems also to have been given up.] APPENDIX CONSISTING OF THE LONGER PASSAGES FROM BOOKS REFERRED TO BY LAMB IN HIS LETTERS COLERIDGE'S "ODE ON THE DEPARTING YEAR' TEXT OF THE QUARTO, 1796 (See Letter 19, page 75) STROPHE I SPIRIT, who sweepest the wild Harp of Time, is most hard with an untroubled Ear Thy dark inwoven Harmonies to hear! Yet, mine eye fixt on Heaven's unchanged clime, Ere yet the entered cloud forbade my sight, |