Against Kean; But in a grand tragic scene It would create a kind of loathing There'd be many a damn let At my presumption If I should try, Being a fellow of no gumption. By the way, tell me candidly how you relish This, which they call The lapidary style? The late Mr. Mellish He thought it vile, And coxcombical. My friend the Poet Laureat, Anything comical, Was the first who tried it; But Mellish could never abide it. But it signifies very little what Mellish said, Because he is dead. 1817 A RHYMED LETTER For who can confute And stiff as stone, To convince him with arguments pro and con, Or Mr. Hazlitt, the Metaphysician- With all your rare tone. Or put the case It were a female spectre- Where no peaches, Nor lemons, nor limes, nor oranges hang, With their sweet drench, The fiery pangs which the worms inflict, Which the corpse may dislike, but can ne'er contradict— With all your rare tone— I am. C. LAMB. 499 NOTE [The text is from Ayrton's transcript in a private volume lately in the possession of Mr. Edward Ayrton, lettered, Lamb's Works, Vol. III., uniform with the 1818 edition. William Ayrton (1777-1858), a friend and neighbour of the Burneys, and a member of Lamb's whist-playing set, was a musical critic, and at this time director of the King's Theatre in the Haymarket, where he had just produced Mozart's "Don Giovanni.” His wife was Marianne Arnold, sister of Samuel James Arnold, manager of the Lyceum Theatre. "You might pit me for height against Kean." This was so. Edmund Kean was small in stature, though not so "immaterially" built as Lamb is said to have been. "Mr. Mellish." Possibly the Joseph Charles Mellish who translated Schiller. The Laureate, Southey, had first tried the lapidary style in "Gooseberry Pie"; later, without rhymes, in "Thalaba." Some time in the intervening three months before the next letter the Lambs went to Brighton for their holiday.] LETTER 224 CHARLES LAMB TO BARRON FIELD Aug. 31st, 1817. MY Y dear Barron,-The bearer of this letter so far across the seas is Mr. Lawrey, who comes out to you as a missionary, and whom I have been strongly importuned to recommend to you as a most worthy creature by Mr. Fenwick, a very old, honest friend of mine, of whom, if my memory does not deceive me, you have had some knowledge heretofore as editor of the "Statesman"-a man of talent, and patriotic. If you can show him any facilities in his arduous undertaking, you will oblige us much. Well, and how does the land of thieves use you? and how do you pass your time in your extra-judicial intervals? Going about the streets with a lantern, like Diogenes, looking for an honest man? may look long enough, I fancy. Do give me some notion of the manners of the inhabitants where you are. They don't thieve all day long, do they? No human property could stand such continuous battery. And what do they do when they an't stealing? You 1817 LETTERS TO ANTIPODEANS 501 Have you got a theatre? What pieces are performed? Shakespear's, I suppose-not so much for the poetry, as for his having once been in danger of leaving his country on account of certain "small deer." Have you poets among you? Cursed plagiarists, I fancy, if you have any. I would not trust an idea or a pocket-handkerchief of mine among 'em. You are almost competent to answer Lord Bacon's problem, whether a nation of atheists can subsist together. You are practically in one : "So thievish 'tis, that the eighth commandment itself Our old honest world goes on with little perceptible variation. Of course you have heard of poor Mitchell's death, and that G. Dyer is one of Lord Stanhope's residuaries. I am afraid he has not touched much of the residue yet. He is positively as lean as Cassius. Barnes is going to Demerara or Essequibo, I am not quite certain which. A[lsager] is turned actor. He came out in genteel comedy at Cheltenham this season, and has hopes of a London engagement. For my own history, I am just in the same spot, doing the same thing (videlicet, little or nothing,) as when you left me; only I have positive hopes that I shall be able to conquer that inveterate habit of smoking which you may remember I indulged in. I think of making a beginning this evening, viz., Sunday 31st August, 1817, not Wednesday, 2nd Feb., 1818, as it will be perhaps when you read this for the first time. There is the difficulty of writing from one end of the globe (hemispheres I call 'em) to another! Why, half the truths I have sent you in this letter will become lies before they reach you, and some of the lies (which I have mixed for variety's sake, and to exercise your judgment in the finding of them out) may be turned into sad realities before you shall be called upon to detect them. Such are the defects of going by different chronologies. Your now is not my now; and again, your then is not my then; but my now may be your then, and vice versa. Whose head is competent to these things? How does Mrs. Field get on in her geography? Does she know where she is by this time? I am not sure sometimes you are not in another planet; but then I don't like to ask Capt. Burney, or any of those that know anything about it, for fear of exposing my ignorance. Our kindest remembrances, however, to Mrs. F., if she will accept of reminiscences from another planet, or at least another hemisphere. C. L.. NOTE [This is Lamb's first letter that has been preserved to Barron Field. Barron Field (1786-1846) was a lawyer, a son of Henry Field, apothecary to Christ's Hospital, and brother of a fellow clerk of Lamb's in the India House. He had also been a contributor to Leigh Hunt's Reflector in 1810-1812. Field was appointed Judge of the Supreme Court of New South Wales, whither he sailed in 1816, reaching Sydney in February, 1817. His wife was a Miss Jane Carncroft. This letter forms the groundwork of Lamb's Elia essay on "Distant Correspondents" (see Vol. II., page 104), which may be read with it as an example of the difference in richness between Lamb's epistolary and finished literary style. "Small deer""Mice and rats, and such small deer" ("King Lear," III., 4, 144)-an allusion to Shakespeare's deer-stealing episode. "Lord Bacon's problem." Bacon discusses Atheists in more than one place; but I do not find this problem stated. "So thievish 'tis . . ." The Ancient Mariner : A perversion of Coleridge's lines, in So lonely 'twas, that God himself "Poor Mitchell's death." This may have been one of the lies referred to a little lower. If so, Thomas Mitchell (1783-1845) was probably intended, as he had been at Christ's Hospital, and was a friend of Leigh Hunt's, and might thus have known Lamb and Field. He translated Aristophanes. The only Mitchell of any importance who died in 1817 was Colonel Mitchell, who commanded a brigade at Waterloo; but Lamb would hardly know anything of him. George Dyer, who had been tutor in the family of the third Earl of Stanhope (Citizen Stanhope), was one of the ten executors to whom that peer's estate was left, after paying a few legacies. Among them was another of Lamb's acquaintances, Joseph Jekyll, mentioned in the Elia essay on the Old Benchers. Dyer repudiated the office, but the heir persuaded him to accept an annuity. Cassius (see "Julius Cæsar," I., 2, 194) had “a lean and hungry look." Thomas Barnes (1785-1841), another old Christ's Hospitaller, and a contributor to The Reflector, became editor of The Times in 1817. His projected journey was one of the "lies"; nor did Alsager, another Times man, whom we have already met, turn actor.] |