moderate self enjoymt. of the rest mankind. A flying tailor, I venture to say, is no more in rerum naturâ than a flying horse or a Gryphon. His wheeling his airy flight from the precipice you mention had a parallel in the melancholy Jew who toppled from the monument. Were his limbs ever found? Then, the man who cures diseases by words is evidently an inspired tailor. Burton never affirmed that the act of sewing disqualified the practiser of it from being a fit organ for supernatural revelation. He never enters into such subjects. "Tis the common uninspired tailor which he speaks of. Again the person who makes his smiles to be heard, is evidently a man under possession; a demoniac taylor. A greater hell than his own must have a hand in this. I am not certain that the cause which you advocate has much reason for triumph. You seem to me to substitute light headedness for light heartedness by a trick, or not to know the difference. I confess, a grinning tailor would shock me.-Enough of tailors.—

The "scapes" of the great god Pan who appeared among your mountains some dozen years since, and his narrow chance of being submerged by the swains, afforded me much pleasure. I can conceive the water nymphs pulling for him. He would have been another Hylas. W. Hylas. In a mad letter which Capel Loft wrote to M. M. Phillips (now Sr. Richd.) I remember his noticing a metaphysical article by Pan, signed H. and adding "I take your correspondent to be the same with Hylas." Hylas has [? had] put forth a pastoral just before. How near the unfounded conjecture of the certainly inspired Loft (unfounded as we thought it) was to being realized! I can conceive him being "good to all that wander in that perilous flood." One J. Scott (I know no more) is edit. of Champn.

Where is Coleridge?

That Review you speak of, I am only sorry it did not appear last month. The circumstances of haste and peculiar bad spirits under which it was written, would have excused its slightness and inadequacy, the full load of which I shall suffer from its lying by so long as it will seem to have done from its postponement. I write with great difficulty and can scarce command my own resolution to sit at writing an hour together. I am a poor creature, but I am leaving off Gin. I hope you will see good will in the thing. I had a difficulty to perform not to make it all Panegyrick; I have attempted to personate a mere stranger to you; perhaps with too much strangeness. But you must bear that in mind when you read it, and not think that I am in mind distant from you or your Poem, but that both are close to me among the nearest of persons and things. I do but act the stranger in the Review. Then, I was puzzled about extracts and determined upon

1814

THE REVIEW FINISHED

451

not giving one that had been in the Examiner, for Extracts repeated give an idea that there is a meagre allowce. of good things. By this way, I deprived myself of Sr. W. Irthing and the reflections that conclude his story, which are the flower of the Poem. H. had given the reflections before me. Then it is the first Review I ever did, and I did not know how long I might make it. But it must speak for itself, if Giffard and his crew do not put words in its mouth, which I expect. Farewell. Love to all. Mary keeps very bad. C. LAMB.

NOTE

[Lamb seems to have sent Wordsworth a copy of The Champion containing his essay, signed Burton, Junior, "On the Melancholy of Tailors." Wordsworth's letter of reply, containing the examples of other tailors, is no longer in existence. "A greater hell" is a pun: the receptacle into which tailors throw scraps is called a hell. See Lamb's "Satan in Search of a Wife" and notes (Vol. V., pages 110 and 344) for more on this topic.

"W. H."-Hazlitt: referring again to his review of The Excursion in The Examiner.

"The melancholy Jew "-Mr. Lyon Levy, a diamond merchant, who jumped off the Monument commemorating the Fire of London, on January 18, 1810. "Wheeling his airy flight" is an adaptation of Gray's beetle which "wheels its droning flight" in the "Elegy."

"The "scapes' of the great god Pan." A reference to Hazlitt's flirtation with a farmer's daughter in the Lake country, ending almost in immersion (see page 376). Hylas, seeking for water with a pitcher, so enraptured the nymphs of the river with his beauty that they drew him in.

Capell Lofft (1751-1824) was a lawyer and philanthropist of independent means who threw himself into many popular discussions and knew many literary men. He was the patron of Robert Bloomfield. Lamb was amused by him, but annoyed that his initials were also C. L. "M. M. Phillips "-for Monthly Magazine, which Phillips published.

"Good to all that wander in that perilous flood." See Lycidas, 184, 185.

"One J. Scott." See note on page 434.

"Where is Coleridge?" Coleridge was now at Calne, in Wiltshire, with the Morgans. He was being treated for the drug habit by a Dr. Page.

"That Review." Lamb's review of The Excursion, which, although the Quarterly that contains it is dated October, 1814, must have been delayed until the end of the year. The episode

of Sir W. Irthing (really Sir Alfred Irthing) is in Book VII. Lamb's foreboding as to Gifford's action was only too well justified, as we shall see. Lamb's statement that it is his first review is interesting in connection with Letters 111 and 112.

"Mary keeps very bad." Mary Lamb, we learn from Crabb Robinson's Diary, had been taken ill some time between December 11 and December 24, having tired herself by writing an article on needlework for the British Lady's Magazine (see Vol. I. of this edition, page 176). She did not recover until February, 1815.]

D

LETTER 203

CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

[P.M. illegible. ? Early Jan., 1815.]

EAR Wordsworth, I told you my Review was a very imperfect one. But what you will see in the Quarterly is a spurious one which Mr. Baviad Gifford has palm'd upon it for mine. I never felt more vexd in my life than when I read it. I cannot give you an idea of what he has done to it out of spite at me because he once sufferd me to be called a lunatic in his Thing. The language he has alterd throughout. Whatever inadequateness it had to its subject, it was in point of composition the prettiest piece of prose I ever writ, and so my sister (to whom alone I read the MS.) said. That charm if it had any is all gone: more than a third of the substance is cut away, and that not all from one place, but passim, so as to make utter nonsense. Every warm expression is changed for a nasty cold one. I have not the cursed alteration by me, I shall never look at it again, but for a specimen I remember I had said the Poet of the Excurs". "walks thro' common forests as thro' some Dodona or enchanted wood, and every casual bird that flits upon the boughs, like that miraculous one in Tasso, but in language more piercing than any articulate sounds, reveals to him far higher lovelays." It is now (besides half a dozen alterations in the same half dozen lines) "but in language more intelligent reveals to him "that is one I remember. But that would have been little, putting his damnd Shoemaker phraseology (for he was a shoemaker) in stead of mine, which has been tinctured with better authors than his ignorance can comprehend-for I reckon myself a dab at Prose-verse I leave to my betters-God help them, if they are to be so reviewed by friend and foe as you have been this quarter. I have read "It won't do." But worse than altering words, he has kept a few members only of the part I had done best, which was to explain all I could of your "scheme

1815

THE MUTILATING GIFFORD

453

of harmonies," as I had ventured to call it, between the external universe and what within us answers to it. To do this I had accumulated a good many short passages, rising in length to the end, weaving in the Extracts as if they came in as a part of the text, naturally, not obtruding them as specimens. Of this part a little is left, but so as without conjuration no man could tell what I was driving it [? at]. A proof of it you may see (tho' not judge of the whole of the injustice) by these words: I had spoken something about "natural methodism-" and after follows" and therefore the tale of Margaret shd. have been postponed" (I forget my words, or his words): now the reasons for postponing it are as deducible from what goes before, as they are from the 104th psalm. The passage whence I deduced it has vanished, but clapping a colon before a therefore is always reason enough for Mr. Baviad Gifford to allow to a reviewer that is not himself. I assure you my complaints are founded. I know how sore a word alterd makes one, but indeed of this Review the whole complexion is gone. I regret only that I did not keep a copy. I am sure you would have been pleased with it, because I have been feeding my fancy for some months with the notion of pleasing you. Its imperfection or inadequateness in size and method I knew, but for the writing part of it, I was fully satisfied. I hoped it would make more than atonement. Ten or twelve distinct passages come to my mind, which are gone, and what is left is of course the worse for their having been there, the eyes are pulld out and the bleeding sockets are left. I read it at Arch's shop with my face burning with vexation secretly, with just such a feeling as if it had been a review written against myself, making false quotations from me. But I am ashamd to say so much about a short piece. How are you served! and the labors of years turn'd into contempt by scoundrels.

But I could not but protest against your taking that thing as mine. Every pretty expression, (I know there were many) every warm expression, there was nothing else, is vulgarised and frozenbut if they catch me in their camps again let them spitchcock me. They had a right to do it, as no name appears to it, and Mr. Shoemaker Gifford I suppose never wa[i]ved a right he had since he commened author. God confound him and all caitiffs. C. L.

NOTE

[For the full understanding of this letter it is necessary to read Lamb's review (see Vol. I. of this edition, page 160).

William Gifford (1756-1826), editor of the Quarterly, had been a shoemaker's apprentice. Lamb calls him Mr. Baviad Gifford on account of his satires, The Maviad and The Baviad, against the

Della Cruscan school of poetry, of which Robert Merry had been the principal member. Some of Lamb's grudge against Gifford, which was of old standing (see notes to Lamb's review, Vol. I., page 446), was repaid in his sonnet "St. Crispin to Mr. Gifford " (see Vol. V. of this edition, page 104). Gifford's connection with Canning, in the Anti-Jacobin, could not have improved his position with Lamb.

"I have read 'It won't do." A reference to the review of The Excursion in the Edinburgh for November, by Jeffrey, beginning "This will never do."]

LETTER 204

CHARLES LAMB TO MR. SARGUS

[Dated at end: Feb. 23, 1815.]

DR

R Sargus-This is to give you notice that I have parted with the Cottage to Mr. Grig Jun'. to whom you will pay rent from Michaelmas last. The rent that was due at Michaelmas I do not wish you to pay me. I forgive it you as you may have been at some expences in repairs.

Yours

CH. LAMB.

[In 1812 Lamb inherited, through his godfather, Francis Fielde, who is mentioned in the Elia essay "My First Play," a property called Button Snap, near Puckeridge, in Hertfordshire, consisting of a small cottage and about an acre of ground. In 1815 he sold it for £50, and the foregoing letter is an intimation of the transaction to his tenant. The purchaser, however, was not a Mr. Grig, but a Mr. Greg (see notes to "My First Play" in Vol. II. of this edition, page 372). I give there also a picture of the cottage.

I append here an undated letter to Joseph Hume which belongs to a time posterior to the sale of the cottage. It refers to Tuthill's candidature for the post of physician to St. Luke's Hospital.

The letter is printed in Mr. Kegan Paul's William Godwin: His Friends and Acquaintances, as though it were written to Godwin, and all Lamb's editors follow in assuming the Philosopher to be the recipient, but internal evidence practically proves that Hume was addressed; for there is the reference to Mrs. Hume and her daughters, and Godwin lived not in Kensington but in Skinner Street.]