The trouble to you will be small, and the benefit to us very great! A pretty antithesis! A figure in speech I much applaud. Was Godwin has called upon us. He spent one evening here. very friendly. Kept us up till midnight. Drank punch, and talked about you. He seems, above all men, mortified at your going away. Suppose you were to write to that good-natured heathen-" or is he a shadow?" If I do not write, impute it to the long postage, of which you have so much cause to complain. I have scribbled over a queer letter, as I find by perusal; but it means no mischief. I am, and will be, yours ever, in sober sadness, C. L. Write your German as plain as sunshine, for that must correct itself. You know I am homo unius linguæ: in English, illiterate, a dunce, a ninny. NOTE [Having left Lamb Coleridge went to Grasmere, where he stayed at Dove Cottage with Wordsworth and finished his translation, which was ready for the printer on April 22. To what Lamb alludes in his reference to the homily on "Realities" I cannot say, but presumably Coleridge had written a metaphysical letter on this subject. Lamb returns to the matter at the end of the first part of his reply. Miss Wesley was Sarah Wesley (1760-1828), the daughter of Charles Wesley and, therefore, niece of the great John and Samuel. She moved much in literary society. Miss Benjay, or Benjé, was in reality Elizabeth Ogilvy Benger (1778-1827), a friend of Mrs. Inchbald, Mrs. Barbauld and the Aikins, and other literary people. Madame de Stael called her the most interesting woman she had met in England. She wrote novels and poems and biographies. In those days there were two East Streets, one leading from Red Lion Square to Lamb's Conduit Street, and one in the neighbourhood of Clare Market. "The rogue has given me potions . . ." Falstaff. "If the rascal have not given me medicines to make me love him, I'll be hanged" (1 "Henry IV.," II., 2, 18, etc.). D'Israeli was Isaac Disraeli, the author of The Curiosities of Literature and other books about books and authors; Miss 1800 LAMB'S LANGUAGES 165 More was Hannah More, and her book, Strictures on the Modern System of Female Education, 1799; Dr. Gregory I have not traced; Miss Seward was Anna Seward, the Swan of Lichfield; and the Miss Porters were Jane and Anna Maria, authors (later) respectively of The Scottish Chiefs and Thaddeus of Warsaw, and The Hungarian Brothers. The proof-sheets were those of Wallenstein. Henry Sampson Woodfall was the famous printer of the Letters of Junius. Christabel, Coleridge's poem, had been begun in 1797; it was finished, in so far as it was finished, later in the year 1800. It was published first in 1816. "Homo unius linguæ." Lamb exaggerated here. He had much Latin, a little Greek and apparently (see page 29) a little French (see, however, also page 243). The sentence is in the manner of Burton, whom Lamb had been imitating.] LETTER 55 CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE [? Spring, 1800.] Y some fatality, unusual with me, I have mislaid the list of Β supply me with another? I confess to Statius, and I detained him wilfully, out of a reverent regard to your style. Statius, they tell me, is turgid. As to that other Latin book, since you know neither its name nor subject, your wants (I crave leave to apprehend) cannot be very urgent. Meanwhile, dream that it is one of the lost Decades of Livy. Your partiality to me has led you to form an erroneous opinion as to the measure of delight you suppose me to take in obliging. Pray, be careful that it spread no further. "Tis one of those heresies that is very pregnant. Pray, rest more satisfied with the portion of learning which you have got, and disturb my peaceful ignorance as little as possible with such sort of commissions. Did you never observe an appearance well known by the name of the man in the moon? Some scandalous old maids have set on foot a report that it is Endymion. Dr. Stoddart talks of going out King's Advocate to Malta. He has studied the Civil and Canon Law just three canon months, to my knowledge. Fiat justitia, ruat cœlum. Your theory about the first awkward step a man makes being the consequence of learning to dance, is not universal. We have known many youths bred up at Christ's, who never learned to dance, yet the world imputes to them no very graceful motions. I remember there was little Hudson, the immortal precentor of St. Paul's, to teach us our quavers: but, to the best of my recollection, there was no master of motions when we were at Christ's. Farewell, in haste. NOTE C. L. [Talfourd does not date this letter, merely remarking that it belongs to the present period. Canon Ainger dated it June 22, 1800; but this I think cannot be right when we take into consideration Letter 60 and what it says about Lamb's last letter to Coleridge (clearly that of May 12), and the time that has since elapsed. The birth of Charles Lloyd's first child, July 31, gives us the latest date to which Letter 60 could belong. Statius, the Latin poet, was the author of the Thebais and Sylva. Livy's works have been divided in fourteen decades, of which many are lost. “Fiat justitia.” Let justice be done though the heavens fall. "Your theory This may have been contained in one of Coleridge's letters, now lost; I do not find it in any of the known Morning Post articles.] LETTER 56 CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE Monday, May 12th, 1800. My the Y dear Coleridge-I don't know why I write, except from the propensity misery has to tell her griefs. Hetty died on Friday night, about eleven o'clock, after eight days' illness; Mary, in consequence of fatigue and anxiety, is fallen ill again, and I was obliged to remove her yesterday. I am left alone in a house with nothing but Hetty's dead body to keep me company. To-morrow I bury her, and then I shall be quite alone, with nothing but a cat to remind me that the house has been full of living beings like myself. My heart is quite sunk, and I don't know where to look for relief. Mary will get better again; but her constantly being liable to such relapses is dreadful; nor is it the least of our evils that her case and all our story is so well known around us. We are in a manner marked. Excuse my troubling you; but I have nobody by me to speak to me. I slept out last night, not being able to endure the change and the stillness. But I did not sleep well, and I must come back to my own bed. I am going to try and get a friend to come and be with me to-morrow. I 1800 CHAPEL STREET ABANDONED 167 am completely shipwrecked. My head is quite bad. My head is quite bad. I almost wish that Mary were dead.-God bless you! Love to Sara and Hartley. NOTE [Hetty was the Lambs' aged servant. C. LAMB. Here should come a letter from Lamb to Thomas Manning clearly written on May 12, 1800, the same day as that to Coleridge, stating that Lamb has given up his house, and is looking for lodgings,-White (with whom he had stayed) having “all kindness but not sympathy".] LETTER 57 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING [P.M. May 20, 1800.] D' EAR Manning, I feel myself unable to thank you sufficiently for your kind letter. It was doubly acceptable to me, both for the choice poetry and the kind honest prose which it contained. It was just such a letter as I should have expected from Manning. I am in much better spirits than when I wrote last. I have had a very eligible offer to lodge with a friend in town. He will have rooms to let at midsummer, by which time I hope my sister will be well enough to join me. It is a great object to me to live in town, where we shall be much more private, and to quit a house and neighbourhood where poor Mary's disorder, so frequently recurring, has made us a sort of marked people. We can be nowhere private except in the midst of London. We shall be in a family where we visit very frequently; only my landlord and I have not yet come to a conclusion. He has a partner to consult. I am still on the tremble, for I do not know where we could go into lodgings that would not be, in many respects, highly exceptionable. Only God send Mary well again, and I hope all will be well! The prospect, such as it is, has made me quite happy. I have just time to tell you of it, as I know it will give you pleasure.-Farewell. NOTE C. LAMB. [Manning's letter containing the choice poetry has not been preserved. The friend in town was John Mathew Gutch (1776-1861), with whom Lamb had been at school at Christ's Hospital, who was now a law stationer, in partnership with one Anderson, at 27 Southampton Buildings, Chancery Lane, since demolished.] D1 LETTER 58 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING [No date.? May 25, 1800.] EAR Manning, I am a letter in your debt, but I am scarcely rich enough (in spirits) to pay you.-I am writing at an inn on the Ware road, in the neighbourhood of which I am going to pass two days, being Whitsuntide.-Excuse the pen, tis the best I can get.-Poor Mary is very bad yet. I went yesterday hoping I should see her getting well, then I might have come into the country more chearful, but I could not get to see her. This has been a sad damp. Indeed I never in my life have been more wretched than I was all day yesterday. I am glad I am going away from business for a little while, for my head has been hot and ill. I shall be very much alone where I am going, which always revives me. I hope you will accept of this worthless memento, which I merely send as a token that I am in your debt. I will write upon my return, on Thursday at farthest. I return on Wednesday. God bless you. I was afraid you would think me forgetful, and that made me scribble this jumble. Sunday. NOTE [Here probably also should come an unpublished letter (in the possession of Mr. Dobell) from Lamb to Manning, in which Lamb remarks that his goddess is Pecunia. Mr. Dobell also has another letter to Manning belonging to the same period, in which Lamb returns to the subject of poverty: : "You dropt a word whether in jest or earnest, as if you would join me in some work, such as a review or series of papers, essays, or anything.-Were you serious? I want home occupation, & I more want money. Had you any scheme, or was it, as G. Dyer says, en passant? If I don't have a Legacy left me shortly I must get into pay with some newspaper for small gains. Mutton is twelvepence a pound." Here should come a letter from Lamb to Robert Lloyd, in which he describes a visit to Gutch's family at Oxford, and mentions his admiration for a fine head of Bishop Taylor in All Souls' Library, which was an inducement to the Oxford visit. He refers to Charles Lloyd's settlement in the Lakes, and suggests that it may be the means of again uniting him and Coleridge; adding that such men as Coleridge and Wordsworth would exclude solitude in the Hebrides or Thule. |