Puslapio vaizdai
PDF
„ePub“

1810

WITH THE HAZLITTS AGAIN

415

D

LETTER 182

CHARLES LAMB TO BASIL MONTAGU

Mr. Hazlitt's: Winterslow, near Sarum,

12th July, 1810.

EAR [Montagu], I have turned and twisted the MSS. in my head, and can make nothing of them. I knew when I took them that I could not; but I do not like to do an act of ungracious necessity at once; so I am ever committing myself by half engagements and total failures. I cannot make any body understand why I can't do such things. It is a defect in my occiput. I cannot put other people's thoughts together; I forget every paragraph as fast as I read it; and my head has received such a shock by an all-night journey on the top of the coach, that I shall have enough to do to nurse it into its natural pace before I go home. I must devote myself to imbecility. I must be gloriously useless while I stay here. How is Mrs. [M.]? will she pardon my inefficiency? The city of Salisbury is full of weeping and wailing. The Bank has stopt payment; and every body in the town kept money at it, or has got some of its notes. Some have lost all they had in the world. It is the next thing to seeing a city with a plague within its walls. The Wilton people are all undone. All the manufacturers there kept cash at the Salisbury bank; and I do suppose it to be the unhappiest county in England this, where I am making holiday.

We purpose setting out for Oxford Tuesday fortnight, and coming thereby home. But no more night travelling. My head is sore (understand it of the inside) with that deduction of my natural rest which I suffered coming down. Neither Mary nor I can spare a morsel of our rest. It is incumbent on us to be misers of it. Travelling is not good for us-we travel so seldom. If the Sun be Hell, it is not for the fire, but for the sempiternal motion of that miserable Body of Light. How much more dignified leisure hath a mussel glued to his unpassable rocky limit, two inch square! He hears the tide roll over him, backwards and forwards twice a-day (as the d-d Salisbury Long Coach goes and returns in eight and forty hours), but knows better than to take an outside night-place a top on't. He is the Owl of the Sea. Minerva's fish. The fish of Wisdom.

Our kindest remembrances to Mrs. [M.].

Yours truly,

C. LAMB.

NOTE

[If the date is correct we must suppose that the Lambs had made a second visit to the Hazlitts and were intending to return by way of Oxford (see next Letter).

Basil Montagu was a barrister and humanitarian, a friend of Wordsworth and Coleridge, and afterwards step-father-in-law of Procter. He was born in 1770 and lived until 1851. Lamb probably addressed to him many other letters, also to his third wife, Carlyle's "noble lady." But the correspondence was destroyed by Mrs.

Procter.

The MSS. referred to cannot now be identified.]

LETTER 183.

CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM HAZLITT

August 9th, 1810.

D

EAR H.,-Epistemon is not well.
has ended sadly for one of us.

Our pleasant excursion You will guess I mean

my sister. She got home very well (I was very ill on the journey) and continued so till Monday night, when her complaint came on, and she is now absent from home.

I am glad to hear you are all well. I think I shall be mad if I take any more journeys with two experiences against it. I find all well here. Kind remembrances to Sarah-have just got her letter.

H. Robinson has been to Blenheim. He says you will be sorry to hear that we should have asked for the Titian Gallery there. One of his friends knew of it, and asked to see it. It is never shown but to those who inquire for it.

The pictures are all Titians, Jupiter and Ledas, Mars and Venuses, &c., all naked pictures, which may be a reason they don't show it to females. But he says they are very fine; and perhaps it is shown separately to put another fee into the shower's pocket. Well, I shall never see it.

I have lost all wish for sights. God bless you. I shall be glad to see you in London.

Yours truly,

Thursday.

C. LAMB.

1810

EPITAPHS

NOTE

417

[Hazlitt subsequently saw the Blenheim Titians and wrote of them with gusto in his description of the Picture Galleries of England.

Next should come a letter from Lamb to Mrs. Thomas Clarkson, dated September 18, 1810, not available for this edition; relating to the illness of Mary Lamb and stating that she is "quite restored and will be with me in little more than a week."]

DR

LETTER 184

CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

Friday, 19 Oct., 1810. E. I. Ho.

R W.-I forwarded the Letter which you sent to me, without opening it, to your Sister at Binfield. She has returned it to me, and begs me to tell you that she intends returning from B. on Monday or Tuesday next, when Priscilla leaves it, and that it was her earnest wish to spend another week with us in London, but she awaits another Letter from home to determine her. I can only say that she appeared so much pleased with London, and that she is so little likely to see it again for a long time, that if you can spare her, it will be almost a pity not. But doubtless she will have heard again from you, before I can get a reply to this Letter & what she next hears she says will be decisive. If wanted, she will set out immediately from London. Mary has been very ill which you have heard I suppose from the Montagues. She is very weak and low spirited now. I was much pleased with your continuation of the Essay on Epitaphs. It is the only sensible thing which has been written on that subject & it goes to the Bottom. In particular I was pleased with your Translation of that Turgid Epitaph into the plain feeling under it. It is perfectly a Test. But what is the reason we have so few good Epitaphs after all?

A very striking instance of your position might be found in the Church yard of Ditton upon Thames, if you know such a place. Ditton upon Thames has been blessed by the residence of a Poet, who for Love or Money, I do not well know which, has dignified every grave stone for the last few years with bran new verses, all different, and all ingenious, with the Author's name at the Bottom of each. The sweet Swan of Thames has artfully diversified his strains & his rhymes, that the same thought never occurs twice. More justly perhaps, as no thought ever occurs at all, there was a VOL. VI.-27

physical impossibility that the same thought should recur. It is long since I saw and read these inscriptions, but I remember the impression was of a smug Usher at his desk, in the intervals of instruction levelling his pen. Of Death as it consists of dust and worms and mourners and uncertainty he had never thought, but the word death he had often seen separate & conjunct with other words, till he had learned to skill of all its attributes as glibly as Unitarian Belsham will discuss you the attributes of the word God, in a Pulpit, and will talk of infinity with a tongue that dangles from a scull that never reached in thought and thorough imagination two inches, or further than from his hand to his mouth, or from the vestry to the Sounding Board. [But the] epitaphs were trim and sprag & patent, & pleased the survivors of Thames Ditton above the old mumpsimus of Afflictions Sore.

To do justice though, it must be owned that even the excellent Feeling which dictated this Dirge when new, must have suffered something in passing thro' so many thousand applications, many of them no doubt quite misplaced, as I have seen in Islington Churchy'd (I think) an Epitaph to an Infant who died Ætatis 4 months, with this seasonable inscription appended, Honor thy Fath'. and Moth'. that thy days may be long in the Land &c.-Sincerely wishing your children better [words cut out with signature].

NOTE

[Binfield, near Windsor, was the home of Dorothy Wordsworth's uncle, Dr. Cookson, Canon of Windsor.

Priscilla, née Lloyd, a sister of Charles Lloyd, had married Christopher Wordsworth, afterwards Master of Trinity, in 1804. Wordsworth's "Essay on Epitaphs" was printed in part in The Friend, February 22, 1810. For the remainder see Wordsworth's Works. Part II. began with a reference to Rosamund Gray. I quote the passage containing the turgid example.

Let us return to an instance of common life. I quote it with reluctance, not so much for its absurdity as that the expression in one place will strike at first sight as little less than impious; and it is indeed, though unintentionally so, most irreverent. But I know no other example that will so forcibly illustrate the important truth I wish to establish. The following epitaph is to be found in a church-yard in Westmoreland; which the present Writer has reason to think of with interest as it contains the remains of some of his ancestors and kindred. The date is 1673.

"Under this Stone, Reader, inter'd doth lye,

Beauty and Virtue's true epitomy.

At her appearance the noone-son

Blush'd and shrunk in 'cause quite outdon.

In her concentered did all graces dwell:

God pluck'd my rose that He might take a smel.

I'll say no more: but weeping wish I may

Soone with thy dear chaste ashes com to lay.

Sic efflevit Maritus."

1810

THE BAD PEOPLE'S GRAVES

419

Can anything go beyond this in extravagance? yet, if the fundamental thoughts be translated into a natural style, they will be found reasonable and affecting "The woman who lies here interred, was in my eyes a perfect image of beauty and virtue; she was to me a brighter object than the sun in heaven: God took her, who was my delight, from this earth to bring her nearer to Himself. Nothing further is worthy to be said than that weeping I wish soon to lie by thy dear chaste ashes. Thus did the husband pour out his tears."

Wordsworth wrote an epitaph on Lamb, but it was too long to be used. A few lines are now on the tablet in Edmonton Church.

The text of "Afflictions Sore" will be found on page 63. Lamb had begun his criticisms of churchyard epitaphs very early: Talfourd tells that, when quite a little boy, after reading a number of flattering inscriptions, he asked Mary Lamb where all the bad people were buried.]

LETTER 185

MARY AND CHARLES LAMB TO MISS WORDSWORTH

MY

[P.M. November 13, 1810.]

dear friend-My brother's letter, which I did not see, I am sure has distressed you sadly. I was then so ill as to alarm him exceedingly, and he thought me quite incapable of any kind of business. It is a great mortification to me to be such an useless creature, and I feel myself greatly indebted to you for the very kind manner in which you take this ungracious matter: but I will say no more on this unpleasant subject. I am at present under the care of Dr. Tuthill. I think I have derived great benefit from his medicines. He has also made a water drinker of me, which, contrary to my expectations, seems to agree with me very well.

I very much regret that you were so untimely snatched away; the lively recollection you seem to retain of London scenes will I hope induce you to return, in happier times, for I must still hope for better days.

We have had many pleasant hours with Coleridge,—if I had not known how ill he is I should have had no idea of it, for he has been very chearful. But yet I have no good news to send you of him, for two days ago, when I saw him last, he had not begun his course of medicine & regimen under Carlisle. I have had a very chearful letter from Mrs. Clarkson. She complained a little your friend Tom, but she says she means to devote the winter to the task of new molding him, I am afraid she will find it no easy task.

of

« AnkstesnisTęsti »