a Lady may not read aloud without indecorum, which is more than can be said of Shakspeare. What a nut this last sentence would be for Blackwood ! You will find I availed myself of your suggestion, in curtailing the dissertation on Malvolio. I have been on the Continent since I saw you. I have eaten frogs. I saw Monkhouse tother day, and Mrs. M. being too poorly to admit of company, the annual goosepye was sent to Russell Street, and with its capacity has fed "A hundred head" (not of Aristotle's) but "of Elia's friends." Mrs. Monkhouse is sadly confined, but chearful.— This packet is going off, and I have neither time, place nor solitude for a longer Letter. Will you do me the favor to forward the other volume to Southey? Mary is perfectly well, and joins me in kindest remembces to you all. [Signature cut away.] ["What a nut for Blackwood." To help on Maga's great cause against Cockney arrogance. In Elia the essays on the Old Actors were much changed and rearranged (see Appendix to Vol. II. in this edition).] LETTER 306 CHARLES LAMB TO MR. AND MRS. J. D. COLLIER Twelfth Day [January 6], 1823. HE pig was above my feeble praise. It was a dear pigmy. ears, but in spite of his obstinacy (deaf as these little creatures are to advice) I contrived to get at one of them. It came in boots too, which I took as a favor. Generally those petty toes, pretty toes! are missing. But I suppose he wore them, to look taller. He must have been the least of his race. His little foots would have gone into the silver slipper. I take him to have been Chinese, and a female.- If Evelyn could have seen him, he would never have farrowed two such prodigious volumes, seeing how much good can be contained in-how small a compass ! 1823 Praise of Pig He crackled delicately. 639 John Collier Junt has sent me a Poem which (without the smallest bias from the aforesaid present, believe me) I pronounce sterling. I set about Evelyn, and finished the first volume in the course of a natural day. To-day I attack the second.-Parts are very interesting. I left a blank at top of my letter, not being determined which to address it to, so Farmer and Farmer's wife will please to divide our thanks. May your granaries be full, and your rats empty, and your chickens plump, and your envious neighbors lean, and your labourers busy, and you as idle and as happy as the day is long! VIVE L' AGRICULTURE! Frank Field's marriage of course you have seen in the papers, and that his brother Barron is expected home. How do you make your pigs so little? Now I am a disagreeable old hog A middle-aged-gentleman-and-a-half. My faculties, thank God, are not much impaired. I have my sight, hearing, taste, pretty perfect; and can read the Lord's Prayer in the common type, by the help of a candle, without making many mistakes. Believe me, while my faculties last, a proper appreciator of your many kindnesses in this way; and that the last lingering relish of past flavors upon my dying memory will be the smack of that little Ear. It was the left ear, which is lucky. Many happy returns (not of the Pig) but of the New Year to both.Mary for her share of the Pig and the memoirs desires to send the same Dr. Mr. C. and Mrs. C. Yours truly C. LAMB. [This letter is usually supposed to have been addressed by Lamb to Mr. and Mrs. Bruton of Mackery End. The address is, however, Mrs. Collier, Smallfield Place, East Grinstead, Sussex. "If Evelyn could have seen him." John Evelyn's Diary had recently been published, in 1818 and 1819, in two large quarto volumes.] LETTER 307 CHARLES LAMB TO CHARLES ADERS [Jan. 8, 1823.] DEARS. Aders on her Birthday You will perceive how EAR Sir-We shall have great pleasure in surprising cunningly I have contrived the direction of this note, to evade postage. Yours truly 8 Jan. '23. C. LAMB. [This note is sent to me by Mr. G. Dunlop of Kilmarnock. It is the only note to Aders, a friend of Crabb Robinson, to whose house Lamb often went for talk and whist. Aders had a fine collection of German pictures. See the verses to him in Vol. IV. The cunning in the address consisted apparently in obtaining the signature of an India House colleague to certify that it was "official."] LETTER 308 CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON 9 Jan., 1823. "TH `HROW yourself on the world without any rational plan of support, beyond what the chance employ of Booksellers would afford you " !!! Throw yourself rather, my dear Sir, from the steep Tarpeian rock, slap-dash headlong upon iron spikes. If you had but five consolatory minutes between the desk and the bed, make much of them, and live a century in them, rather than turn slave to the Booksellers. They are Turks and Tartars, when they have poor Authors at their beck. Hitherto you have been at arm's length from them. Come not within their grasp. I have known many authors for bread, some repining, others envying the blessed security of a Counting House, all agreeing they had rather have been Taylors, Weavers, what not? rather than the things they were. I have known some starved, some to go mad, one dear friend literally dying in a workhouse. You know not what a rapacious, dishonest set those booksellers Ask even Southey, who (a single case almost) has made a fortune by book drudgery, what he has found them. O you know not, may you never know! the miseries of subsisting by are. 1823 The Best Advice 641 authorship. 'Tis a pretty appendage to a situation like yours or mine, but a slavery worse than all slavery to be a bookseller's dependent, to drudge your brains for pots of ale and breasts of mutton, to change your free thoughts and voluntary numbers for ungracious TASK-Work. Those fellows hate us. The reason I take to be, that, contrary to other trades, in which the Master gets all the credit (a Jeweller or Silversmith for instance), and the Journeyman, who really does the fine work, is in the background, in our work the world gives all the credit to Us, whom they consider as their Journeymen, and therefore do they hate us, and cheat us, and oppress us, and would wring the blood of us out, to put another sixpence in their mechanic pouches. I contend, that a Bookseller has a relative honesty towards Authors, not like his honesty to the rest of the world. B[aldwin], who first engag'd me as Elia, has not paid me up yet (nor any of us without repeated mortifying applials), yet how the Knave fawned while I was of service to him! Yet I dare say the fellow is punctual in settling his milk-score, &c. Keep to your Bank, and the Bank will keep you. Trust not to the Public, you may hang, starve, drown yourself, for anything that worthy Personage cares. I bless every star that Providence, not seeing good to make me independent, has seen it next good to settle me upon the stable foundation of Leadenhall. Sit down, good B. B., in the Banking Office; what, is there not from six to Eleven P.M. 6 days in the week, and is there not all Sunday? Fie, what a superfluity of man's time,--if you could think so! Enough for relaxation, mirth, converse, poetry, good thoughts, quiet thoughts. O the corroding torturing tormenting thoughts, that disturb the Brain of the unlucky wight, who must draw upon it for daily sustenance. Henceforth I retract all my fond complaints of mercantile employment, look upon them as Lovers' quarrels. I was but half in earnest. Welcome, dead timber of a desk, that makes me live. A little grumbling is a wholesome medicine for the spleen; but in my inner heart do I approve and embrace this our close but unharassing way of life. I am quite serious. If you can send me Fox, I will not keep it six weeks, and will return it, with warm thanks to yourself and friend, without blot or dog's ear. You much oblige me by this kindness. Yours truly, C. LAMB. Please to direct to me at India Ho. in future. [? I am] not always at Russell St. [Barton had long been meditating the advisability of giving up his place in the bank at Woodbridge and depending upon his pen. Lamb's letter of dissuasion is not the only one which he received. Byron had written to him in 1812: "You deserve success; but we knew, before Addison wrote his Cato, that desert does not always command it. But suppose it attained 'You know what ills the author's life assail- Do not renounce writing, but never trust entirely to authorship. If you have a profession, retain it; it will be like Prior's fellowship, a last and sure resource." Barton had now broken again into dissatisfaction with his life. He did not, however, leave the bank. Southey made no "fortune" by his pen. He almost always had to forestall his new works.] D LETTER 309 CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN HOWARD PAYNE 23 January, '23. EAR Payne-I have no mornings (my day begins at 5 P.M.) to transact business in, or talents for it, so I employ Mary, who has seen Robertson, who says that the Piece which is to be Operafied was sent to you six weeks since by a Mr. Hunter, whose journey has been delayed, but he supposes you have it by this time. On receiving it back properly done, the rest of your dues will be forthcoming. You have received £30 from Harwood, I hope? Bishop was at the theatre when Mary called, and he has put your other piece into C. Kemble's hands (the piece you talk of offering Elliston) and C. K. sent down word that he had not yet had time to read it. So stand your affairs at present. Glossop has got the Murderer. Will you address him on the subject, or shall I—that is, Mary? She says you must write more showable letters about these matters, for, with all our trouble of crossing out this word, and giving a cleaner turn to th' other, and folding down at this part, and squeezing an obnoxious epithet into a corner, she can hardly communicate their contents without offence. What, man, put less gall in your ink, or write me a biting tragedy ! C. LAMB. [Here should come a letter from Lamb to Ayrton asking him to meet the Burneys and Paynes on Wednesday at half-past four.] |