Quarles with attention. I have picked up, too, another copy of Quarles for ninepence!!! O tempora! O lectores! so that if you have lost or parted with your own copy, say so, and I can furnish you, for you prize these things more than I do. You will be amused, I think, with honest Wither's "Supersedeas to all them whose custom it is, without any deserving, to importune authors to give unto them their books." I am sorry 'tis imperfect, as the lottery board annexed to it also is. Methinks you might modernise and elegantise this Supersedeas, and place it in front of your Joan of Arc, as a gentle hint to Messrs Parke, &c. One of the happiest emblems, and comicalest cuts, is the owl and little chirpers, page 63.

Wishing you all amusement, which your true emblem-fancier can scarce fail to find in even bad emblems, I remain your caterer to command,

C. LAMB.

Love and respects to Edith. I hope she is well. How does your Calendar prosper ?

XXXIV.

TO THE SAME

October 29, 1798.

Dear Southey,-I thank you heartily for the Eclogue; it pleases me mightily, being so full of picture work and circumstances. I find no fault in it, unless perhaps that Joanna's ruin is a catastrophe too trite; and this is not the first or second time you have clothed your indignation, in verse, in a tale of ruined innocence. The old lady, spinning in the sun, I hope would not disdain to claim some kindred with old Margaret. I could almost wish you to vary some circumstances in the conclusion. A gentleman seducer has so often been described in prose and verse. What if you had accomplished Joanna's ruin by the

clumsy arts and rustic gifts of some country-fellow? I am thinking, I believe, of the song

"An old woman clothed in gray,

Whose daughter was charming and young,
And she was deluded away

By Roger's false flattering tongue."

A Roger-Lothario would be a novel character; I think you might paint him very well. You may think this a very silly suggestion, and so indeed it is; but, in good truth, nothing else but the first words of that foolish ballad put me upon scribbling my Rosamund. But I thank you heartily for the poem. Not having any thing of my own to send you in return, (though, to tell truth, I am at work upon something, which, if I were to cut away and garble, perhaps I might send you an extract or two that might not displease you; but I will not do that; and whether it will come to any thing I know not, for I am as slow as a Fleming painter, when I compose anything,) I will crave leave to put down a few lines of old Christopher Marlow's ; I take them from his tragedy, Jew of Malta. The Jew is a famous character, quite out of nature; but, when we consider the terrible idea our simple ancestors had of a Jew, not more to be discommended for a certain discolouring (I think Addison calls it) than the witches and fairies of Marlow's mighty successor. The scene is betwixt Barabbas, the Jew, and Ithamore, a Turkish captive, exposed to sale for a slave.

BARABBAS

(A precious rascal)

"As for myself, I walk abroad a-nights,
And kill sick people groaning under walls.
Sometimes I go about, and poison wells;
And now and then to cherish Christian thieves,
I am content to lose some of my crowns.
That I may, walking in my gallery,
See 'm go pinion'd along by my door.

Being young, I studied physic, and began
To practise first upon the Italian :
There I enrich'd the priests with burials,
And always kept the sexton's arms in use

With digging graves, and ringing dead men's knells:
And after that was I an engineer,

And in the wars 'twixt France and Germany,
Under pretence of serving Charles the Fifth,
Slew friends and enemy with my stratagems,
Then after that I was an usurer,

And with extorting, cozening, forfeiting,
And tricks belonging unto brokery,

I fill'd the jails with bankrupts in a year,
And with young orphans planted hospitals,
And every moon made some or other mad,
And now and then one hang himself for grief,
Pinning upon his breast a long great scroll,
How I with interest had tormented him."

(Now hear Ithamore, the other gentle nature.)

ITHAMORE

(A comical dog)

"Faith, master, and I have spent my time
In setting Christian villages on fire,
Chaining of eunuchs, binding galley slaves.
One time I was an hostler at an inn,

And in the night time secretly would I steal

To travellers' chambers and there cut their throats.
Once at Jerusalem, where the pilgrims kneel'd,
I strew'd powder on the marble stones,
And therewithal their knees would rankle so,
That I have laugh'd a good to see the cripples
Go limping home to Christendom on stilts."

BARABBAS

"Why, this is something."

There is a mixture of the ludicrous and the terrible in these lines, brimful of genius and antique invention, that at first reminded me of your old description of cruelty in hell, which was in the true Hogarthian style. I need not tell you that Marlow was author of that pretty madrigal, "Come live with me and be my Love," and of the tragedy of Edward II., in which

are certain lines unequalled in our English tongue. Honest Walton mentions the said madrigal under the denomination of "certain smooth verses made long since by Kit Marlow."

I am glad you have put me on the scent after old Quarles. If I do not put up those eclogues, and that shortly, say I am no true-nosed hound. I have had a letter from Lloyd; the young metaphysician of Caius is well, and is busy recanting the new heresy, metaphysics, for the old dogma, Greek. My sister, I thank you, is quite well. She had a slight attack the other day, which frightened me a good deal, but it went of unaccountably. Love and respects to Edith.

Yours sincerely,

C. LAMB.

XXXV.

TO THE SAME

Nov. 3, 1798.

I have read your Eclogue repeatedly, and cannot call it bald, or without interest; the cast of it and the design are completely original, and may set people upon thinking. It is as poetical as the subject requires, which asks no poetry; but it is defective in pathos. The woman's own story is the tamest part of it; I should like you to remould that it too much resembles the young maid's history; both had been in service. Even the omission would not injure the poem after the words "growing wants," you might, not unconnectedly, introduce "look at that little chub down to "welcome one." And, decidedly, I would have you end it somehow thus,

"Give them at least this evening good meal.

[Gives her money.

Now, fare thee well; hereafter you have taught me
To give sad meaning to the village bells," &c.

which would leave a stronger impression (as well as more pleasingly recall the beginning of the Eclogue)

than the present commonplace reference to a better world, which the woman "must have heard at church.” I should like you too a good deal to enlarge the most striking part, as it might have been, of the poem"Is it idleness?" &c.: that affords a good field for dwelling on sickness, and inabilities, and old age. And you might also a good deal enrich the piece with a picture of a country wedding. The woman might very well, in a transient fit of oblivion, dwell upon the ceremony and circumstances of her own nuptials six years ago, the snugness of the bridegroom, the feastings, the cheap merriment, the welcomings, and the secret envyings of the maidens; then dropping all this, recur to her present lot. I do not know that I can suggest any thing else, or that I have suggested any thing new or material. I do not much prefer this Eclogue to the last. Both are inferior to the

former.

"And when he came to shake me by the hand,

And spake as kindly to me as he used,

I hardly knew his voice-"

is the only passage that affected me.

When servants

speak their language ought to be plain, and not much raised above the common else I should find fault with the bathos of this passage,

"And when I heard the bell strike out,

I thought (what ?) that I had never heard it toll

So dismally before."

I like the destruction of the martens' old nests hugely, having just such a circumstance in my memory. I shall be very glad to see your remaining Ecologue, if not too much trouble, as you give me reason to expect it will be the second best. I shall be very glad to see some more poetry, though, I fear, your trouble in transcribing will be greater than the service my remarks may do them.

Yours affectionately,

C. LAMB.