"The Dying Lover" in the Annual Anthology. That was not, however, done. "The Witch" was first printed in the Works, 1818. Here should come a letter from Lamb to Robert Lloyd, postmarked November 20, 1798, not available for this edition. In this letter Lamb sends Lloyd the extract from "The Witch" that was sent to Southey.] LETTER 40 CHARLES LAMB TO ROBERT SOUTHEY Nov. 28th, 1798. I CAN have no objection to your printing "Mystery of God" with my name and all due acknowledgments for the honour and favour of the communication; indeed, 'tis a poem that can dishonour no name. Now, that is in the true strain of modern modesto-vanitas. . . . But for the sonnet, I heartily wish it, as I thought it was, dead and forgotten. If the exact circumstances under which I wrote could be known or told, it would be an interesting sonnet; but to an indifferent and stranger reader it must appear a very bald thing, certainly inadmissible in a compilation. I wish you could affix a different name to the volume; there is a contemptible book, a wretched assortment of vapid feelings, entitled "Pratt's Gleanings," which hath damned and impropriated the title for ever. Pray think of some other. The gentleman is better known (better had he remained unknown) by an Ode to Benevolence, written and spoken for and at the annual dinner of the Humane Society, who walk in procession once a-year, with all the objects of their charity before them, to return God thanks for giving them such benevolent hearts. I like "Bishop Bruno;" but not so abundantly as your "Witch Ballad," which is an exquisite thing of its kind. I showed my "Witch" and "Dying Lover" to Dyer last night; but George could not comprehend how that could be poetry which did not go upon ten feet, as George and his predecessors had taught it to do; so George read me some lectures on the distinguishing qualities of the Ode, the Epigram, and the Epic, and went home to illustrate his doctrine by correcting a proof sheet of his own Lyrics. George writes odes where the rhymes, like fashionable man and wife, keep a comfortable distance of six or eight lines apart, and calls that "observing the laws of verse." George tells you, before he recites, that you must listen with great attention, 1798 LAMB'S TAILOR 135 or you'll miss the rhymes. I did so, and found them pretty exact. George, speaking of the dead Ossian, exclaimeth, “Dark are the poet's eyes." I humbly represented to him that his own eyes were dark [?light], and many a living bard's besides, and recommended "Clos❜d are the poet's eyes.' But that would not do. I found there was an antithesis between the darkness of his eyes and the splendour of his genius; and I acquiesced. Your recipe for a Turk's poison is invaluable and truly Marlowish. Lloyd objects to "shutting up the womb of his purse" in my Curse (which for a Christian witch in a Christian country is not too mild, I hope); do you object? I think there is a strangeness in the idea, as well as "shaking the poor like snakes from his door," which suits the speaker. Witches illustrate, as fine ladies do, from their own familiar objects, and snakes and the shutting of wombs are in their way. I don't know that this last charge has been before brought against 'em, nor either the sour milk or the mandrake babe; but I affirm these be things a witch would do if she could. up My Tragedy will be a medley (as [? and] I intend it to be a medley) of laughter and tears, prose and verse, and in some places rhyme, songs, wit, pathos, humour, and, if possible, sublimity; at least, it is not a fault in my intention, if it does not comprehend most of these discordant colours. Heaven send they dance not the "Dance of Death!" I hear that the Two Noble Englishmen have parted no sooner than they set foot on German earth, but I have not heard the reason-possibly, to give novelists an handle to exclaim, "Ah me! what things are perfect ?" I think I shall adopt your emendation in the "Dying Lover," though I do not myself feel the objection against "Silent Prayer." My tailor has brought me home a new coat lapelled, with a velvet collar. He assures me everybody wears velvet collars now. Some are born fashionable, some achieve fashion, and others, like your humble servant, have fashion thrust upon them. The rogue has been making inroads hitherto by modest degrees, foisting upon me an additional button, recommending gaiters; but to come upon me thus in a full tide of luxury, neither becomes him as a tailor nor the ninth of a man. My meek gentleman was robbed the other day, coming with his wife and family in a one-horse shay from Hampstead; the villains rifled him of four guineas, some shillings and half-pence, and a bundle of customers' measures, which they swore were bank-notes. They did not shoot him, and when they rode off he addrest them with profound gratitude, making a congee: "Gentlemen, I wish you good night, and we are very much obliged to you that you have not used us ill!" And this is the cuckoo that has had the audacity to foist upon me ten buttons on a side and a black velvet collar-A damn'd ninth of a scoundrel! When you write to Lloyd, he wishes his Jacobin correspondents to address him as Mr. Č. L. Love and respects to Edith. I hope she is well. Yours sincerely, NOTE C. LAMB. [The poem "Mystery of God" was, when printed in the Annual Anthology for 1799, entitled "Living without God in the World." Lamb never reprinted it. It is not clear to what sonnet Lamb refers, possibly that to his sister, printed on page 78, which he himself never reprinted. It was at that time intended to call Southey's collection Gleanings; Lamb refers to the Gleanings of Samuel Jackson Pratt (1749-1814), a very busy maker of books, published in 1795-1799. His Triumph of Benevolence was published in 1786. Southey's witch ballad was "The Old Woman of Berkeley." George Dyer's principal works in verse are contained in his Poems, 1802, and Poetics, 1812. He retained the epithet "dark" for Ossian's eyes. Southey's recipe for a Turk's poison I do not find. It may have existed only in a letter. A reference to the poem on page 132 will explain the remarks about witches' curses. The Two Noble Englishmen (a sarcastic reference drawn, I imagine, from Palamon and Arcite) were Coleridge and Wordsworth, then in Germany. Nothing definite is known, but they seem quite amicably to have decided to take independent courses. "Some are born fashionable." After Malvolio ("Twelfth Night," II., 5, 157, etc.). "Lloyd's Jacobin correspondents." This is Lamb's only allusion to the attack which had been made by The Anti-Jacobin upon himself, Lloyd and their friends, particularly Coleridge and Southey. In "The New Morality," in the last number of Canning's paper, they had been thus grouped : And ye five other wandering Bards that move When -Lepaux being the high-priest of Theophilanthropy. "The New Morality" was reprinted in The Beauties of "The AntiJacobin" in 1799, a savage footnote on Coleridge was appended, accusing him of hypocrisy and the desertion of his wife and 1798 THE "ANTI-JACOBIN'S" ATTACK 137 children, and adding "Ex uno disce his associates Southey and Lamb." Again, in the first number of the Anti-Jacobin Review and Magazine, August, 1798, was a picture by Gilray, representing the worshippers of Lepaux, wherein Lloyd and Lamb appeared as a toad and a frog reading their own Blank Verse, and Coleridge and Southey, as donkeys, flourish "Dactylics" and "Saphics." In September the federated poets were again touched upon in a parody of the "Ode to the Passions" : See! faithful to their mighty dam, And tyrant kings, and knavish priests, Swift through the land the tuneful mischief floats. And now to softer strains they struck the lyre, The dying kid, or ass's foal, By cruel man permitted to expire. Lloyd took the caricature and the verses with his customary seriousness, going so far as to indite a "Letter to The AntiJacobin Reviewers," which was printed in Birmingham in 1799. Therein he defended Lamb with some vigour: "The person you have thus leagued in a partnership of infamy with me is Mr. Charles Lamb, a man who, so far from being a democrat, would be the first person to assent to the opinions contained in the foregoing pages he is a man too much occupied with real and painful duties duties of high personal self-denial-to trouble himself about speculative matters."] LETTER 41 CHARLES LAMB TO ROBERT SOUTHEY Dec. 27, 1798. EAR Southey,-Your friend John May has formerly made interest of his friend Sir Francis Baring-It is not likely that I shall ever put his goodness to the test on my own account, for my prospects are very comfortable. But I know a man, a young man, whom he could serve thro' the same channel, and I think would be disposed to serve if he were acquainted with his case. This poor fellow (whom I know just enough of to vouch for his strict integrity & worth) has lost two or three employments from illness, which he cannot regain; he was once insane, & from the distressful uncertainty of his livelihood has reason to apprehend a return of that malady-He has been for some time dependant on a woman whose lodger he formerly was, but who can ill afford to maintain him, and I know that on Christmas night last he actually walk'd about the streets all night, rather than accept of her Bed, which she offer'd him, and offer'd herself to sleep in the kitchen, and that in consequence of that severe cold he is labouring under a bilious disorder, besides a depression of spirits, which incapacitates him from exertion when he most needs it-For God's sake, Southey, if it does not go against you to ask favors, do it now-ask it as for mebut do not do a violence to your feelings, because he does not know of this application, and will suffer no disappointment—What I meant to say was this-there are in the India house what are called Extra Clerks, not on the Establishment, like me, but employed in Extra business, by-jobs-these get about £50 a year, or rather more, but never rise-a Director can put in at any time a young man in this office, and it is by no means consider'd so great a favor as making an establish'd Clerk. He would think himself as rich as an Emperor if he could get such a certain situation, and be relieved from those disquietudes which I do fear may one day bring back his distemper You know John May better than I do, but I know enough to believe that he is a good man-he did make me that offer I have mention'd, but you will perceive that such an offer cannot authorize me in applying for another Person. But I cannot help writing to you on the subject, for the young man is perpetually before my eyes, and I should feel it a crime not to strain all my petty interest to do him service, tho' I put my own delicacy to the question by so doing-I have made one other unsuccessful attempt already At all events I will thank you to write, for I am tormented with anxiety I suppose you have somewhere heard that poor Mary Dollin has poisoned herself, after some interviews with John Reid, the ci-devant Alphonso of her days of hope. How is Edith ? NOTE C. LAMB. [John May was a friend and correspondent of Southey whom he had met at Lisbon: not to be confounded with Coleridge's inn-keeping May. Sir Francis Baring was a director of the East India Company. I have no knowledge as to who the young man was; nor have I any regarding Mary Dollin and John Reid.] |