1816 HAZLITT AND COLERIDGE 493 article writes: "If he had had but common moral principle, that is, sincerity, he would have been a great man; nor hardly, as it is, appears to us 'Less than arch-angel ruined, and the excess Hazlitt may have heard Lambs' epithet, backed probably by the same passage from Paradise Lost. Crabb Robinson tells us, in his Diary, that Coleridge was less hurt by the article than he anticipated. "He denies H., however, originality, and ascribes to L. [Lamb] the best ideas in H.'s articles. He was not displeased to hear of his being knocked down by John Lamb lately." the Coleridge's new work was The Statesman's Manual; or, Bible the best Guide to Political Skill and Foresight: A Lay Sermon, 1816. It had been first announced as "A Lay Sermon on the Distresses of the Country, addressed to the Middle and Higher Orders," and Hazlitt's article had been in the nature of an anticipatory review. I do not find anywhere the "cut" at Lamb from Hazlitt's hand, or indeed any one's hand, to which Lamb refers. Hazlitt at this time was living at No. 19 York Street, Westminster, in Milton's old house. 66 Agni-nomen." From agnus, a lamb. "The fate of Cinna." Cinna the poet, mistaken for the oppressor, was torn to pieces by the populace. See "Julius Cæsar,” ÎÎI., 3. "After all, Mr. Wordsworth "-the Edinburgh Review article on The Excursion, in November, 1814, beginning, "This will never do," had at least two lapses into fairness: "But the truth is, that Mr. Wordsworth, with all his perversities, is a person of great powers"; and "Nobody can be more disposed to do justice to the great powers of Mr. Wordsworth than we are." "The rogue gives you Love Powders." See note on page 164. "The printing of your Letter." The Letter to a Friend of Burns (see above). 66 "2 vols. of Essays." These were printed with poems as The Works of Charles Lamb by the Olliers in 1818 (see page 515). Crispin "-Gifford (see note on page 453). 66 66 "Not on his soal [sole] but on his soul "_" Merchant of Venice," IV., 1, 123—" Not on thy sole, but on thy soul, harsh Jew." 66 "Southey." Hazlitt's attacks on the Laureate were continuous.] LETTER 221 MARY LAMB TO SARAH HUTCHINSON [No date. Middle of November, 1816.] Inner Temple. [Charles Lamb adds at the head :—] Mary has barely left me room to say How d'ye. I have received back the Examiner containing the infirm parts of S. T. C.'s character. of it? Farewell. My love to all. M delicate enquiry into certain What is the general opinion C. LAMB. Y dear friend, I have procured a frank for this day, and having been hindered all the morning have no time left to frame excuses for my long and inexcusable silence, and can only thank you for the very kind way in which you overlook it. overlook it. I should certainly have written on the receipt of yours but I had not a frank, and also I wished to date my letter from my own home where you expressed so cordial a wish to hear we had arrived. We have passed ten, I may call them very good weeks, at Dalston, for they completely answered the purpose for which we went. Reckoning our happy month at Calne, we have had quite a rural summer, and have obtained a very clear idea of the great benefit of quiet-of early hours and time intirely at one's own disposal, and no small advantages these things are; but the return to old friends-the sight of old familiar faces round me has almost reconciled me to occasional headachs and fits of peevish weariness-even London streets, which I sometimes used to think it hard to be eternally doomed to walk through before I could see a green field, seem quite delightful. Charles smoked but one pipe while we were at Dalston and he has not transgressed much since his return. I hope he will only smoke now with his fellow-smokers, which will give him five or six clear days in the week. Shame on me, I did not even write to thank you for the bacon, upon which, and some excellent eggs your sister added to her kind present, we had so many nice feasts. I have seen Henry Robinson, who speaks in raptures of the days he passed with you. He says he never saw a man so happy in three wives as Mr. Wordsworth is. I long to join you and make a fourth, and we cannot help talking of the possibility in some future fortunate summer of venturing to come so far, but we generally end in thinking the possibility impossible, for I dare not come but by post chaises, and the expence would be enormous, yet it was very pleasing to read 1816 A SUNDAY AT KEW 495 Mrs. Wordsworth's kind invitation and to feel a kind of latent hope of what might one day happen. You ask how Coleridge maintains himself. I know no more than you do. Strange to say, I have seen him but once since he has been at Highgate, and then I met him in the street. I have just been reading your kind letter over again and find you had some doubt whether we had left the Temple entirely. It was merely a lodging we took to recruit our health and spirits. From the time we left Calne Charles drooped sadly, company became quite irksome, and his anxious desire to leave off smoking, and his utter inability to perform his daily resolutions against it, became quite a torment to him, so I prevailed with him to try the experiment of change of scene, and set out in one of the short stage coaches from Bishopsgate Street, Miss Brent and I, and we looked over all the little places within three miles and fixed on one quite countrified and not two miles from Shoreditch Church, and entered upon it the next day. I thought if we stayed but a week it would be a little rest and respite from our troubles, and we made a ten weeks stay, and very comfortable we were, so much so that if ever Charles is superannuated on a small pension, which is the great object of his ambition, and we felt our income straitened, I do think I could live in the country entirely—at least I thought so while I was there but since I have been at home I wish to live and die in the Temple where I was born. We left the trees so green it looked like early autumn, and can see but one leaf "The last of its clan" on our poor old Hare Court trees. What a rainy summer!-and yet I have been so much out of town and have made so much use of every fine day that I can hardly help thinking it has been a fine summer. We calculated we walked three hundred and fifty miles while we were in our country lodging. One thing I must tell you, Charles came round every morning to a shop near the Temple to get shaved. Last Sunday we had such a pleasant day, I must tell you of it. went to Kew and saw the old Palace where the King was brought up, it was the pleasantest sight I ever saw, I can scarcely tell you why, but a charming old woman shewed it to us. She had lived twenty six years there and spoke with such a hearty love of our good old King, whom all the world seems to have forgotten, that it did me good to hear her. She was as proud in pointing out the plain furniture (and I am sure you are now sitting in a larger and better furnished room) of a small room in which the King always dined, nay more proud of the simplicity of her royal master's taste, than any shower of Carlton House can be in showing the fine things there, and so she was when she made us remark the smallness of one of the Princesses' bedrooms, and said she slept and also dressed in that little room. There are a great many good pictures but I was We most pleased with one of the King when he was about two years old, such a pretty little white-headed boy. I cannot express how much pleasure a letter from you gives us. If I could promise my self I should be always as well as I am now, I would say I will be a better correspondent in future. If Charles has time to add a line I shall be less ashamed to send this hasty scrawl. Love to all and every one. How much I should like once more to see Miss Wordsworth's handwriting, if she would but write a postscript to your next, which I look to receive in a few days. Yours affectionately For a Postscript, see the beginning. NOTE ["Miss Brent." Mrs. Morgan's sister. M. LAMB. Crabb Robinson had been in the Lake Country in September and October. "The last of its clan." From Coleridge's Christabel, line 49. "To a shop near the Temple." Possibly to Mr. A—— of Flowerde-Luce Court, mentioned by Lamb in the footnote to his essay "On the Melancholy of Tailors" (see Vol. I., page 174). "Our good old King "-George III., then in retirement. Carlton House was the home of the Regent, whom Lamb (and probably his sister) detested-as his "Triumph of the Whale" and other squibs (see Vol. V.) show. See Appendix II., page 973, for a letter to Rickman.] MY LETTER 222 MARY LAMB TO SARAH HUTCHINSON [No date. ? Late 1816.] One Y dear Miss Hutchinson, I had intended to write you a long letter, but as my frank is dated I must send it off with a bare acknowledgment of the receipt of your kind letter. question I must hastily ask you. Do you think Mr. Wordsworth would have any reluctance to write (strongly recommending to their patronage) to any of his rich friends in London to solicit employment for Miss Betham as a Miniature Painter? If you give me hopes that he will not be averse to do this, I will write to you more fully stating the infinite good he would do by performing so irksome a task as I know asking favours to be. In brief, she has contracted debts for printing her beautiful poem of "Marie," which like all things of original excellence does not sell at all. 1817 LEIGH HUNT'S PRISON FRUIT 497 These debts have led to little accidents unbecoming a woman and a poetess to suffer. Retirement with such should be voluntary. [Charles Lamb adds:-] The Bell rings. I just snatch the Pen out of my sister's hand to finish rapidly. Wordswth, may tell De Q that Miss B's price for a Virgin and Child is three guineas. NOTE Yours (all of you) ever C. L. ["De Q "-Thomas de Quincey (1785-1859), the "opium-eater," then living at Grasmere. Lamb and De Quincey had first met in 1804; but it was not until 1821 that they became really intimate, when Lamb introduced him to the London Magazine. Miss Betham painted miniature portraits, among others, of Mrs. S. T. Coleridge and Sara Coleridge. Here should come a note to William Ayrton dated April 18, 1817, not available for this edition, thanking him for much pleasure at "Don Giovanni" (see note to next letter). Somewhen in 1816 should come a letter from Lamb to Leigh Hunt on the publication of The Story of Rimini, mentioned in Leigh Hunt's Correspondence, of which this is the only sentence that is preserved: "The third Canto is in particular my favourite : we congratulate you most sincerely on the trait [? taste] of your prison fruit."] |