1798 "ROSAMUND GRAY" 125 Love and respects to Edith. I hope she is well. How does your Calendar prosper? NOTE [This letter contains Lamb's first reference to Rosamund Gray, his only novel, which had been published a little earlier in the year. "Wither's Emblems, an old book and quaint,'" was one of the few volumes belonging to old Margaret, Rosamund's grandmother (Chapter I.). See next letter and note. Wither's Emblems was published in 1635; Quarles' in the same year. Wither's "Supersedeas" will be found in the Appendix, page 950. I reproduce the owl and little chirpers from the edition of 1635.] LETTER 36 CHARLES LAMB TO ROBERT SOUTHEY [October 29, 1798.] EAR 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 countryfellow ? I am thinking, I believe, of the song, "An old woman clothed in grey, Whose daughter was charming and young, 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 anything 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 anything, 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, “The 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 Barabas, the Jew, and Ithamore, a Turkish captive exposed to sale for a slave. BARABAS (A precious rascal.) "As for myself, I walk abroad a-nights, There I enriched the priests with burials, And always kept the sexton's arms in ure 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 [helping] Charles the Fifth, Then after that was I an usurer, And with extorting, cozening, forfeiting, I fill'd the jails with bankrupts in a year, And with young orphans planted hospitals, And now and then one hang'd himself for grief, Pinning upon his breast a long great scroll, Now hear Ithamore, the other gentle nature, explain how he spent his time : ITHAMORE (A comical dog.) "Faith, master, in setting Christian villages on fire, One time I was an hostler at [in] an inn, And in the night-time secretly would I steal To travellers' chambers, and there cut their throats. I strowed powder on the marble stones, 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 off unaccountably. Love and respects to Edith. Yours sincerely, NOTE C. LAMB. [The eclogue was "The Ruined Cottage," in which Joanna and her widowed mother are at first as happy as Rosamund Gray and old blind Margaret. As in Lamb's story so in Southey's poem, this state of felicity is overturned by a seducer. "An old woman clothed in gray." This ballad still eludes research. Lamb says that the first line put him upon writing Rosamund Gray, but he is generally supposed to have taken his heroine's name from a song by Charles Lloyd, entitled "Rosamund Gray," published among his Poems in 1795. At the end of the novel Matravis, the seducer, in his ravings, sings the ballad. The "something" upon which Lamb was then at work was his play "John Woodvil," in those early days known as "Pride's Cure." The passage from Marlowe's "The Rich Jew of Malta" is in Act II. Lamb included other passages in his Dramatic Specimens, 1808, and also passages from "Edward II." Walton quotes the madrigal in The Complete Angler. "Your old description of cruelty in hell." In "Joan of Arc." See Letter 3, page 14. "If I do not put up those eclogues." Lamb does not return to this subject. Lloyd had just gone to Cambridge, to Caius College.] I LETTER 37 CHARLES LAMB TO ROBERT SOUTHEY Nov. 3, 1798. HAVE read your Eclogue ["The Wedding"] 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 a good meal. [Gives her money. Now, fare thee well; hereafter you have taught me To give sad meaning to the village-bells," &c., the which would leave a stronger impression (as well as more pleasingly recall the beginning of the Eclogue), than the present common-place 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: woman might very well, in a transient fit of oblivion, dwell upon the ceremony and circumstances of her own nuptials six years ago, the smugness of the bridegroom, the feastings, the cheap merriment, the welcomings, and the secret envyings of the maidensthen dropping all this, recur to her present lot. I do not know that I can suggest anything else, or that I have suggested anything new or material. 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 do them. may Yours affectionately, C. LAMB. I cut my letter short because I am called off to business. |