maturgic attributes.

He learned Chinese, later, and made a journey to Thibet, which, to be sure, is the very geographical expression of mystery. He was a friend of the Lloyds, and it was while on a visit to Charles Lloyd at Cambridge that Lamb made his acquaintance-in December 1799. He ranks among the select band of very interesting men who have written very uninteresting letters.

Sophia is Sophia Pemberton, whom Charles Lloyd married while still at Cambridge. The Play is, of course, "John Woodvil"; and its first title was "Pride's Cure.

seen.

LETTERS LIII.-LVI. (pp. 135-138).-The late Mr Dykes Campbell has pointed out that the true date of the first letter must be rather January 23-27. Coleridge had come to London again, and was writing political leaders for the Morning Post. Olivia was another member of the innumerable Lloyd family, a younger sister (see p. 139) of Charles. Mary Hayes was a literary woman, at once sentimental and "advanced." Writing to Southey on January 25th of this year, Coleridge says: "Miss Hayes I have Charles Lloyd's conduct has been atrocious beyond what you stated. Lamb himself confessed to me that during the time in which he kept up his ranting, sentimental correspondence with Miss Hayes, he frequently read her letters. in company, as a subject for laughter, and then sate down and answered them quite à la Rousseau.” The exclamation at P. 139, "Huzza boys! and down with the Atheists!" seems to indicate that Manning had expostulated with Lamb on account of the passage on p. 136, which, rollickingly humorous and impudent as it was meant to be, might have got Manning into difficulties in those days of reaction, repression, and espionage. So this "Huzza!" etc., was intended for the letter-openers.

LETTERS LVII.-LIX. (pp. 139-145).-The first of these explains the kind of troubles which convulsed the Lloyd household. This letter is placed third in the Lloyd series by Mr Lucas, and therefore, inferentially, at the beginning of November 1798. But every word of it presupposes a longer acquaintance than that date would allow for; the reference to the fact of Lamb's parents both being dead brings

...

us to the early summer of 1799 at least; and the postmark seems to give the year as 1800. The month and the day are legible enough. Hetty (p. 141) was the old maidservant of the Lambs. "I send you .. my Play”—i.e. “John Woodvil" in MS. Coleridge was at this time at Grasmere with the Wordsworths. The Miss Benje or Benjay who is so misnamed on p. 143 was a Miss Benger, author of a Life of Tobin, the dramatist. Of the Miss Porters, one was named Jane, and wrote "The Scottish Chiefs,” "Thaddeus of Warsaw," and other books that have counted their readers by the million.

LETTERS LXIII.-LXXII. (pp. 149-170).-Gutch had been a Christ's Hospital boy. Godwin's visit was to Curran, not to Grattan. The imitation of "the Old and Young Courtier" was the Ballad of Rich and Poor. The occasion of the spree commemorated on 14th August is not known. As to the alleged affair of the Angel and the Duchess, the allusion is to a certain verse in Coleridge's Ode to Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. The lines entitled Helen are by Mary Lamb.

Amos

A Conceit of Diabolical Possession was finally entitled Hypochondriacus. Priscilla was Robert Lloyd's sister, another revoltée. She married Bishop Wordsworth, and became the mother and grandmother of bishops. Cottle is even less remembered than his younger brother Joseph, but he was an esteemed author and, still more, an esteemed man in his day. Phillips's Monthly Obituary would be the Obituary in the "Monthly Magazine," of which Phillips was the proprietor and, apparently, editor. "Some Greta news. Coleridge was at this time at Greta Hall, where Southey in 1803 took up his abode for life.

LETTERS LXXV.-LXXXIII. (pp. 174-186).-"The Farmer's Boy" was by Robert Bloomfield, and had a great popularity. The "pleasant hand, one Rickman" arrived, as we shall see, at the very pleasant position of being Clerk to the House of Commons, and he has his share in the Dictionary of National Biography. But he only lives in Lamb's letters. "I have written to Kemble": the play in question was "John Woodvil." "After the heels of Cooper":

this was evidently the Godwins' maid. quested were for "Antonio," first night.

The tickets re

P. 81 refers to

a revision of the MS. with a view to the publication as a book of what had been damned a few nights before as a play. For the story of this catastrophe, see "Critical Essays."

LETTERS LXXXIV.-XCIV. (pp. 190-208).-The true meaning of the first of these letters is to be found in the words at the end "Thank you for liking my play." Wordsworth did not think such a wonderful deal of the play after all; so Charles Lamb, in no small dudgeon, tells him what he thinks of his (Wordsworth's) heaven and earth and sea and sky and rivers and mountains and suns and stars, and such small paraphernalia of the Nature-Poet. There are traces of this mood in the succeeding letter: a constraint in the praise, a certain vicious doggedness in the criticism, and a marked and determined laudation of the work of the other Lyrical Balladist! The criticism on

Cooke's Richard the Third should be compared with the paper on that subject in "Critical Essays." People talk of the finest letter, the noblest letter, etc., that Lamb ever wrote. My own favourite among the whole five hundred is No. XCIII. The Albion was edited by John Fenwick, the Ralph Bigod of the essay on the Two Races of Men. Of Fenwick, and other more domestic friends of the Lambs about this time, we hear more in Mary Lamb's letters than in her brother's.

LETTERS XCVI.-XCVII. (pp. 211-216) contain criticisms and suggestions for Godwin's tragedy of "Faulkener," for which Lamb wrote a Prologue.

LETTERS XCVIII-CII. (pp. 216-221).--Plumstead was another of the innumerable Lloyds. He seems also to have been the "benevolent, loud-talking, Shakspere-loving Brewer who is also referred to as "a Lover of Willy -SC. of William Shakespeare-at p. 201. Mr Lucas has been misled by the majuscule, and says he doesn't know who Brewer was. The letter to Rickman refers to I know not what. It may conceivably have some connection with the subject of the short note of 16th July 1803, but I hope not.

The next letter was written upon returning from a visit (on which he was accompanied by Mary) to the Coleridges at Keswick. For the impressions thereof, see letter to Manning, which follows. On p. 224 the unseemly array of five ambiguous dots really stands, I take it, for what Lamb on another occasion called she-dog. I have in most cases to take the text of Lamb's letters as I find it, or to take it as it is given me, else there would be no such stupidities as the above about this book. "Marshall "—whose name is variously spelt-has been mentioned already and is spoken of in the article on John Kemble and "Antonio" in "Critical Essays." For Mrs Godwin, see this vol., p. 238.

LETTERS CIV-CXII (pp. 225-243).—This Latin letter seems to have been written in answer to a challenge from Coleridge. The Latin style is of the worst, the most school-boyish, but the Latinity-meaning by that merely the grammar—is neither so bad in its original state nor so corrupted by misprints as report would lead folk to believe. Of Coleridge's scheme for getting Lamb to write translations of German poems, he, Coleridge, first supplying him with a prose version, nothing came, that we know of, except the rendering of Thekla's song, to be found in "Poems and Plays." The Merry natural Captain" (p. 240) was Captain Burney. The lines sent to Manning" On the Death of a young Quaker are those entitled Hester in the "Poems" and in every good English anthology. As to the topics of CXII., Lamb was arranging and seeing about the publication of Coleridge's "Poems," third edition, in which at last the greater Ajax stood alone.

The allusion at the end of No. CX. ("To sit at table— the reverse of fishes in Holland-not as a guest but as a meat") has puzzled Editors and been wrongly explained. The origin of it is a passage in the ludicrous "Character of Holland" to be found among the political poems of Andrew Marvell, where we read that in that debateable patch of pseudo-land stolen from the sea

"Yet still his claim the injured ocean layed,
And oft at leap-frog o'er their steeples played
The fish oft-times the burgher dispossessed
And sat, not as a meat, but as a guest."

This again may have owed something to a "Description of Holland" by Samuel Butler, describing the Dutch as a folk

"That feed, like cannibals, on other fishes,

And serve their cousin-germans up in dishes,"

Both of these productions are extensively quoted in an "Indicator article (Nov. 24, 1819) for which it is possible that Lamb may have supplied the material.

"

LETTERS CXIII.-CXXIII (pp. 245-57).—Stoddart, who has been mentioned earlier in the letters, was the brother of Mary's friend, Sarah Stoddart, afterwards Mrs Hazlitt. To her was written the postscript which is here numbered CXX., what time she had gone to join her brother at Malta, rather ostensibly in search of a husband. The "letter from the shades" (p. 249) is construed to refer to An appeal from the Shades, for which see "Essays and Sketches (vol. iv. of this edition). I have placed the two letters to Godwin at this point, faut de mieux. The first bears no date, and is placed by some editors as late as 1809 or 1812, which is absurd; the second is dated 1806, which may be an error. Probably, if I had placed them both earlier still, I should not have been going wrong. They seem at any rate to have some relation to one another, and they have no known relation to anything else. In deciding to place them at the end of 1804 I had not the succeeding letter to Manning in view; but it certainly goes to support the decision.

LETTERS CXXIX.-CXXXV. (pp. 266-274).-Monkey is Louisa Martin, the " gamesome ape " of the Poems. For George Dawe, see Recollections of a late Royal Academician in "Critical Essays." Ned Search: Hazlitt was engaged upon an abridgment of Tucker's "Light of Nature Pursued,' which work had been published under the pseudonym of Edward Search. The New Art of Colouring was the title of a book, afterwards mentioned, by Tingry. Hazlitt was still, at this time, by profession a painter, and had evidently lent this book to Lamb. George Burnett was one of the original Pantisocrats, who were all original. The Spencer (or Spenser) story (p. 273) became a Reflector contribution.