have is part late hours at work the two preceding nights, and part later hours over a consoling pipe afterwards. But I find stupid acquiescence coming over me. I bend to the yoke, and it is almost with me and my household as with the man and his consort "To them each evening had its glittering star, to such straits am I driven for the life of life, Time! O that from that superfluity of holiday leisure my youth wasted, "Age might but take some hours youth wanted not! N.B.-I have left off spirituous liquors for four or more months, with a moral certainty of its lasting. Farewell, dear Wordsworth! O happy Paris, seat of idleness and pleasure! from some returned English I hear that not such a thing as a counting-house is to be seen in her streets,— scarce a desk. Earthquakes swallow up this mercantile city and its "gripple merchants,' as Drayton hath it" born to be the curse of this brave isle!" I invoke this, not on account of any parsimonious habits the mercantile interest may have, but to confess truth, because I am not fit for an office. Farewell, in haste, from a head that is too ill to methodize, a stomach too weak to digest, and all out of tune. Better harmonies await you! C. LAMB. Excuse this maddish letter: I am too tired to write in formâ. CLXVI. TO ROBERT SOUTHEY London, 6th May, 1815. Dear Southey, I have received from Longman a copy of Roderick, with the Author's Compliments, for which I much thank you. I don't know where I shall put all the noble presents I have lately received in that way the Excursion, Wordsworth's two last vols., and now Roderick, have come pouring in upon me like some irruption from Helicon. The story of the brave Maccabee was already, you may be sure, familiar to me in all its parts. I have, since the receipt of your present, read it quite through again, and with no diminished pleasure. I don't know whether I ought to say that it has given me more pleasure than any of your long poems. Kehama is doubtless more powerful, but I don't feel that firm footing in it that I do in Roderick my imagination goes sinking and floundering in the vast spaces of unopened-before systems and faiths; I am put out of the pale of my old sympathies; my moral sense is almost outraged; I can't believe, or with horror am made to believe, such desperate chances against Omnipotence, such disturbances of faith to the centre; the more potent the more painful the spell. Jove, and his brotherhood of Gods, tottering with the giant assailings, I can bear, for the soul's hopes are not struck at in such contests; but your Oriental almighties are too much types of the intangible prototype to be meddled with without shuddering. One never connects what are called the attributes of Jupiter.-I mention only what diminishes my delight at the wonder-workings of Kehama, not what impeaches its power, which I confess with trembling; but Roderick is a comfortable poem. It reminds me of the delight I took in the first reading of the Joan of Arc. It is maturer and better than that, though not better to me now than that was then. It suits me better than Madoc. I am at home in Spain and Christendom. I have a timid imagination, I am afraid. I do not willingly admit of strange beliefs, or out-of-the-way creeds or places. I never read books of travels, at least not farther than Paris or Rome. I can just endure Moors, because of their connection as foes with Christians; but Abyssinians, Ethiops, Esquimaux, Dervises, and all that tribe, Í A hate. I believe I fear them in some manner. Mahometan turban on the stage, though enveloping some well-known face (Mr Cook or Mr Maddox, whom I see another day good Christian and English waiters, innkeepers, &c.), does not give me pleasure unalloyed. I am a Christian, Englishman, Londoner, Templar. God help me when I come to put off these snug relations, and to get abroad into the world to come ! I shall be like the crow on the sand, as Wordsworth has it; but I won't think on it: no need, I hope, yet. The parts I have been most pleased with, both on first and second readings, perhaps, are Florinda's palliation of Roderick's crime, confessed to him in his disguise the retreat of the Palayos family first discovered his being made king-"For acclamation one form must serve more solemn for the breach of old observances." Roderick's vow is extremely fine, and his blessing on the vow of Alphonso: "Towards the troop he spread his arms, It struck me forcibly that the feeling of these last lines might have been suggested to you by the Cartoon of Paul at Athens. Certain it is that a better motto or guide to that famous attitude can nowhere be found. I shall adopt it as explanatory of that violent but dignified motion. I must read again Landor's Julian. I have not read it some time. I think he must have failed in Roderick, for I remember nothing of him, nor of any distinct character as a character-only fine-sounding passages. I remember thinking also he had chosen a point of time after the event, as it were, for Roderick survives to no use; but my memory is weak, and I will not wrong a fine poem by trusting to it. The notes to your poem I have not read again : but it will be a take-downable book on my shelf, and they will serve sometimes at breakfast, or times too light for the text to be duly appreciated. Though some of 'em—one of the serpent penance—is serious enough, now I think on't. Of Coleridge I hear nothing, nor of the Morgans. I hope to have him like a re-appearing star, standing up before me some time when least expected in London, as has been the case whilere. I am doing nothing (as the phrase is) but reading presents, and walk away what of the day hours I can get from hard occupation. Pray accept once more my hearty thanks, and expression of pleasure for your remembrance of me. My sister desires her kind respects to Mrs S. and to all at Keswick. Yours truly, C. LAMB. The next present I look for is the White Doe. Have you seen Mat. Betham's Lay of Marie? I think it very delicately pretty as to sentiment, &c. R. Southey, Esq., Keswick, near Penrith, Cumberland. CLXVII. TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 1815. you make my one short I refer me, Dear Wordsworth,-The more I read of your last two volumes, the more I feel it necessary to acknowledgments for them in more than letter. The "Night Piece," to which meant fully to have noticed; but, the fact is, I come so fluttering and languid from business, tired with thoughts of it, frightened with the fears of it, that when I get a few minutes to sit down to scribble (an action of the hand now seldom natural to me I mean voluntary pen-work) I lose all presential memory of what I had intended to say, and say what I can, talk about Vincent Bourne, or any casual image, instead of that which I had meditated, (by the way, I must look out V. B. for you). So I meant to mention "Yarrow Visited," with that stanza, "But thou that didst appear so fair"; than which I think no lovelier stanza can be found in the wide world of poetry ;yet the poem, on the whole, seems condemned to leave behind it a melancholy of imperfect satisfaction, as if you had wronged the feeling with which, in what preceded it, you had resolved never to visit it, and as if the Muse had determined, in the most delicate and scarce manner, to make you, make you, feel it. Else, it is far superior to the other, which has but one exquisite verse in it, the last but one, or the last two: this is all fine, except perhaps that that of "studious ease and generous cares" has a little tinge of the less romantic about it. "The Farmer of Tilsbury Vale" is a charming counterpart to "Poor Susan," with the addition of that delicacy towards aberrations from the strict path, which is so fine in the "Old Thief and the Boy by his side," which always brings water into my eyes. Perhaps it is the worse for being a repetition; "Susan" stood for the representative of poor Rus in Urbe. There was quite enough to stamp the moral of the thing never to be forgotten; "bright volumes of vapour, &c. The last verse of Susan was to be got rid of, at all events. It threw a kind of dubiety upon Susan's moral conduct. Susan is a servant maid. I see her trundling her mop, and contemplating the whirling phenomenon through blurred optics; but to term her a poor outcast seems as much as to say that poor Susan was no better than she should be, which I trust was not what you meant to express. Robin Goodfellow supports himself without that stick of a moral which you have thrown away; but how I can be |