1819 BYRON ON LAMB AND LLOYD 533 You will excuse the remarks of an old brother bard, whose career, though long since pretty well stopt, was coeval in its beginning with your own, and who is sorry his lot has been always to be so distant from you. It is not likely that C. L. will ever see Bristol again; but, if J. C. should ever visit London, he will be a most welcome visitor to C. L. My sister joins in cordial remembrances and I request the favor of knowing, at your earliest opportunity, whether the Portrait arrives safe, the glass unbroken &c. Your glass broke in its coming. Morgan is a little better-can read a little, &c.; but cannot join Mrs. M. till the Insolvent Act (or whatever it is called) takes place. Then, I hope, he will stand clear of all debts. Meantime, he has a most exemplary nurse and kind Companion in Miss Brent. Once more, Dr Sir, NOTE Yours truly C. LAMB. [Cottle sent Lamb a miniature of himself by Branwhite, which had been copied in monochrome for Mr. Evans' book. G. J. Joseph, A.R.A., made a coloured drawing of Lamb for the same work. It serves as frontispiece to Vol. I. of the present edition. Byron's lines refer as a matter of fact not to Joseph but to Amos Cottle : O, Amos Cottle !-Phœbus! what a name. and so forth. Mr. Evans, however, dispensed with Amos. Another grangerised edition of the same satire, also in the British Museum, compiled by W. M. Tartt, has an engraving of Amos Cottle and two portraits of Lamb-the Hancock drawing, and the Brook Pulham caricature. Byron's lines touching Lamb ran thus :— Yet let them not to vulgar Wordsworth stoop, A footnote states that Lamb and Lloyd are the most ignoble followers of Southey & Co. Cottle's Messiah, of which the earlier portion had been published long since, was completed in 1815. Canon Ainger says that lines 71 and 72 in Lamb's copy (not that of 1815), following upon the couplet quoted, were: (While sorrow gave th' involuntary tear) Had ceased to vibrate on our listening ear. Coleridge's friend Morgan had just come upon evil times. Subsequently Lamb and Southey united in helping him to the extent of £10 a year each.] LETTER 242 CHARLES LAMB TO DOROTHY WORDSWORTH DEA [P.M. 25 Nov., 1819.] EAR Miss Wordsworth, You will think me negligent, but I wanted to see more of Willy, before I ventured to express a prediction. Till yesterday I had barely seen him-Virgilium Tantum Vidi-but yesterday he gave us his small company to a bullock's heart-and I can pronounce him a lad of promise. He is no pedant nor bookworm, so far I can answer. Perhaps he has hitherto paid too little attention to other men's inventions, preferring, like Lord Foppington, the "natural sprouts of his own." But he has observation, and seems thoroughly awake. I am ill at remembering other people's bon mots, but the following are a few. Being taken over Waterloo Bridge, he remarked that if we had no mountains, we had a fine river at least, which was a Touch of the Comparative, but then he added, in a strain which augured less for his future abilities as a Political Economist, that he supposed they must take at least a pound a week Toll. Like a curious naturalist he inquired if the tide did not come up a little salty. This being satisfactorily answered, he put another question as to the flux and reflux, which being rather cunningly evaded than artfully solved by that sheAristotle Mary, who muttered something about its getting up an hour sooner and sooner every day, he sagely replied, "Then it must come to the same thing at last" which was a speech worthy of an infant Halley! The Lion in the 'Change by no means came up to his ideal standard. So impossible it is for Nature in any of her works to come up to the standard of a child's imagination. The whelps (Lionets) he was sorry to find were dead, and on particular enquiry his old friend the Ouran Outang had gone the way of all flesh also. The grand Tiger was also sick, and expected in no short time to exchange this transitory world for another-or none. But again, there was a Golden Eagle (I do not mean that of Charing) which did much arride and console him. William's genius, I take it, leans a little to the figurative, for being at play at Tricktrack (a kind of minor Billiard-table which we keep for smaller wights, and sometimes refresh our own mature fatigues with taking a hand at), not being able to hit a ball he had iterate aimed at, he cried out, "I cannot hit that beast". Now the balls are usually called men, but he felicitously hit upon a middle term, a term of approximation and imaginative reconciliation, a something where the two ends, of the brute matter (ivory) and their human and rather violent 1819 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, JR. 535 personification into men, might meet, as I take it, illustrative of that Excellent remark in a certain Preface about Imagination, explaining "like a sea-beast that had crawled forth to sun himself.” Not that I accuse William Minor of hereditary plagiary, or conceive the image to have come ex traduce. Rather he seemeth to keep aloof from any source of imitation, and purposely to remain ignorant of what mighty poets have done in this kind before him. For being asked if his father had ever been on Westminster Bridge, he answer'd that he did not know. Some few It is hard to discern the Oak in the Acorn, or a Temple like St. Paul's in the first stone which is laid, nor can I quite prefigure what destination the genius of William Minor hath to take. hints I have set down, to guide my future observations. He hath the power of calculation in no ordinary degree for a chit. He combineth figures, after the first boggle, rapidly. As in the Tricktrack board, where the hits are figured, at first he did not perceive that 15 and 7 made 22, but by a little use he could combine 8 with 25-and 33 again with 16, which approacheth something in kind (far let me be from flattering him by saying in degree) to that of the famous American boy. I am sometimes inclined to think I perceive the future satirist in him, for he hath a sub-sardonic smile which bursteth out upon occasion, as when he was asked if London were as big as Ambleside, and indeed no other answer was given, or proper to be given, to so ensnaring and provoking a question. In the contour of scull certainly I discern something paternal. But whether in all respects the future man shall transcend his father's fame, Time the trier of geniuses must decide. Be it pronounced peremptorily at present, that Willy is a well-mannerd' child, and though no great student, hath yet a lively eye for things that lie before him. Given in haste from my desk at Leadenhall. Your's and yours' most sincerely C. LAMB. NOTE [This letter, which refers to a visit paid to the Lambs in Great Russell Street by Wordsworth's son, William, then nine years old, is remarkable, apart from its charm and humour, for containing more of the absolute method of certain of Lamb's Elia passages than anything he had yet written. "Virgilium tantum vidi" (Ovid, Trist., IV., 10, 51) "Virgil I saw and no more." The same quotation is in the Elia essay "Amicus Redivivus." "Lord Foppington "-in Vanbrugh's "Relapse." Lamb used this speech as the motto of his Elia essay "Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading." 66 Halley " "-Edmund Halley (1656-1742), the astronomer. "The Lion in the 'Change"-Exeter Change. "Arride." A favourite old word with Lamb. To gratify, to delight. From ar ad, to; and ridere to laugh. = "Like a sea-beast." Lamb alludes to the preface to the edition of 1815 of Wordsworth's poems, where he quotes illustratively from his "Resolution and Independence": Like a sea-beast crawled forth, that on a shelf Of rock or sand reposeth, there to sun itself. "If his father had ever been on Westminster Bridge." An allusion to Wordsworth's sonnet Composed on Westminster Bridge" : Earth has not anything to show more fair. "The American boy." This was Zerah Colburn, the mathematical prodigy, born in Vermont State in 1804 and exhibited in America and Europe by his father.] LETTER 243 CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE Jan. 10th, 1820. DE EAR Coleridge,-A Letter written in the blood of your poor friend would indeed be of a nature to startle you; but this is nought but harmless red ink, or, as the witty mercantile phrase hath it, Clerk's Blood. Damn 'em! my brain, guts, skin, flesh, bone, carcase, soul, TIME, is all theirs. The Royal Exchange, Gresham's Folly, hath me body and spirit. I admire some of Lloyd's lines on you, and I admire your postponing reading them. He is a sad Tattler, but this is under the rose. Twenty years ago he estranged one friend from me quite, whom I have been regretting, but never could regain since; he almost alienated you (also) from me, or me from you, I don't know which. But that breach is closed. The dreary sea is filled up. He has lately been at work "telling again," as they call it, a most gratuitous piece of mischief, and has caused a coolness betwixt me and (not a friend exactly, but) [an] intimate acquaintance. I suspect, also, he saps Manning's faith in me, who am to Manning more than an acquaintance. Still I like his writing verses about you. Will your kind host and hostess give us a dinner next Sunday, and better still, not expect us if the weather is very bad. Why you should refuse twenty guineas per sheet for Blackwood's or any other magazine passes my poor comprehension. But, as Strap says, you know best. I have no 1820 LLOYD ON COLERIDGE 537 quarrel with you about præprandial avocations-so don't imagine one. That Manchester sonnet I think very likely is Capel Lofft's. Another sonnet appeared with the same initials in the same paper, which turned out to be Procter's. What do the rascals mean? Am I to have the fathering of what idle rhymes every beggarly Poetaster pours forth! Who put your marine sonnet and about Browne into "Blackwood"? I did not. So no more, till we meet. Ever yours, NOTE C. L. [Charles Lloyd, returned to health, had written Desultory Thoughts in London, in which both Coleridge and Lamb appeared, Coleridge as *** and Lamb as **. The poem was published in 1821. Lloyd probably had sent it in manuscript or proof to Lamb and Coleridge. Some of Lloyd's lines on Coleridge run thus: : How shall I fitly speak on such a theme? He is a treasure by the world neglected, Might tell, what mighty powers the age rejected, No! with magnanimous self-sacrifice, He felt there is a bliss in being wise, Quite independent of the wise man's name. It ne'er had known, but for that spirit brave, Sometimes I think that I'm a blossom blighted; If I am not inexorably spited Of all that dignifies mankind below; By him I speak of, I was so excited, While reason's scale was poising to and fro, "To the better cause;" that him I have to bless For that which it is comfort to possess. No! Those who most have seen me, since the hour Frank converse held, though many an adverse power Sole remnant of vast castle, still betrays Haply its former splendour) to have prov'd Thy love, than by fresh friends to have been lov'd. The story of one of Lloyd's former indiscretions is told in the earlier letters of this collection. I cannot say what friend he quite |