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1820 "ON CONVERSATION OF AUTHORS" 543

Wordsworth, and also C. Lloyd, who has lately reappeared in the poetical horizon, were hugely taken with your Kangaroo.

When do you come back full of riches and renown, with the regret of all the honest, and all the other part of the colony? Mary swears she shall live to see it.

Pray are you King's or Queen's men in Sidney? Or have thieves no politics? Man, don't let this lie about your room for your bed sweeper or Major Domo to see, he mayn't like the last paragraph.

This is a dull and lifeless scroll. You shall have soon a tissue of truth and fiction impossible to be extricated, the interleavings shall be so delicate, the partitions perfectly invisible, it shall puzzle you till you return, & [then] I will not explain it. Till then a adieu, with kind rembrces, of me both to you & [Signature and a few words torn off.]

NOTE

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[Barron Field, who was still in New South Wales, had published his poems under the title First-Fruits of Australian Poetry, and Lamb had reviewed them in The Examiner for January 16, 1820, over his usual signature in that paper, "The Kangaroo is quoted in that review (see Vol. I. of the present edition, page 199).

*

Captain Ogilvie was the brother of a clerk at the India House, who gave Mr. Joseph H. Twichell some reminiscences of Lamb, which were printed in Scribner's Magazine.

"King's or Queen's men "-supporters of George IV. or Caroline of Brunswick. Lamb was very strongly in favour of the Queen, as his Champion epigrams show (see Vol. V.).

"You shall soon see." Lamb's first reference to the Elia essays, alluding here to "The South-Sea House."

Here should come a letter from Lamb to Hazlitt, not available for this edition, printed by Mr. Hazlitt in his edition of the letters in Bohn's library. Lamb says that his sister is ill again and that the last thing she read was Hazlitt's "Thursday Nights" which gave her unmixed delight-the reference being to the second part of the essay "On the Conversation of Authors," which was printed in the London Magazine for September, 1820, describing Lamb's evenings. Stoddart, Hazlitt's brother-in-law, Lamb adds, says it is better than Hogarth's "Modern Midnight Conversation."]

DEA

LETTER 248

CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE

[No date. ? Autumn, 1820.]

EAR C.,-Why will you make your visits, which should give pleasure, matter of regret to your friends? You never come but you take away some folio that is part of my existence. With a great deal of difficulty I was made to comprehend the extent of my loss. My maid Becky brought me a dirty bit of paper, which contained her description of some book which Mr. Coleridge had taken away. It was "Luster's Tables," which, for some time, I could not make out. "What! has he carried away any of the tables, Becky?" "No, it wasn't any tables, but it was a book that he called Luster's Tables." I was obliged to search personally among my shelves, and a huge fissure suddenly disclosed to me the true nature of the damage I had sustained. That book, C., you should not have taken away, for it is not mine; it is the property of a friend, who does not know its value, nor indeed have I been very sedulous in explaining to him the estimate of it; but was rather contented in giving a sort of corroboration to a hint that he let fall, as to its being suspected to be not genuine, so that in all probability it would have fallen to me as a deodand; not but I am as sure it is Luther's as I am sure that Jack Bunyan wrote the "Pilgrim's Progress;" but it was not for me to pronounce upon the validity of testimony that had been disputed by learneder clerks than I. So I quietly let it occupy the place it had usurped upon my shelves, and should never have thought of issuing an ejectment against it; for why should I be so bigoted as to allow rites of hospitality to none but my own books, children, &c. ?—a species of egotism I abhor from my heart. No; let 'em all snug together, Hebrews and Proselytes of the gate; no selfish partiality of mine shall make distinction between them; I charge no warehouse-room for my friends' commodities; they are welcome to come and stay as long as they like, without paying rent. I have several such strangers that I treat with more than Arabian courtesy; there's a copy of More's fine poem, which is none of mine; but I cherish it as my own; I am none of those churlish landlords that advertise the goods to be taken away in ten days' time, or then to be sold to pay expenses. So you see I had no right to lend you that book; I may lend you my own books, because it is at my own hazard, but it is not honest to hazard a friend's property; I always make that distinction. I hope you will bring it with you, or send it by

1820

COLERIDGE'S BORROWINGS

545

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Hartley; or he can bring that, and you the "Polemical Discourses, and come and eat some atoning mutton with us one of these days shortly. We are engaged two or three Sundays deep, but always dine at home on week-days at half-past four. So come all fourmen and books I mean-my third shelf (northern compartment) from the top has two devilish gaps, where you have knocked out its two eye-teeth.

Your wronged friend, C. LAMB.

NOTE

[This letter is usually dated 1824, but I think it was written earlier. For one reason, Hartley Coleridge was not in London in that year, and for another, there are several phrases in the Elia essay "Two Races of Men" (printed in the London Magazine, December, 1820) that are so similar to some in this letter that I imagine the letter to have suggested the subject of the essay, the composition of which immediately followed it. Thus, in the essay we read :

"That foul gap in the bottom shelf facing you, like a great eyetooth knocked out (you are now with me in my little back study in Bloomsbury, reader!)with the huge Switzer-like tomes on each side (like the Guildhall giants, in their reformed posture, guardant of nothing) once held the tallest of my folios, Opera Bonaventura, choice and massy divinity, to which its two supporters (school divinity also, but of a lesser calibre,-Bellarmine, and Holy Thomas), showed but as dwarfs,-itself an Ascapart!-that Comberbatch abstracted upon the faith of a theory he holds, which is more easy, I confess, for me to suffer by than to refute, namely, that 'the title to property in a book (my Bonaventure, for instance) is in exact ratio to the claimant's powers of understanding and appreciating the same.' Should he go on acting upon this theory, which of our shelves is safe?"

"Luster's Tables "—Luther's Table Talk.

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Hebrews and Proselytes of the gate." The proselyte of the gate that is the stranger-was only partly admitted to Judaism. The proselyte of righteousness, that is to say, of conviction rather than convenience, was a true Hebrew.

"More's fine poem." The Psychozoia Platonica, 1642, of Henry More, the Platonist. Lamb seems to have returned the book, for it was not among his books that he left. Luther's Table Talk seems also to have been given up.

"The Polemical Discourses"-by Jeremy Taylor.]

VOL. VI.-35

LETTER 249

CHARLES LAMB TO DOROTHY WORDSWORTH

[P.M. January 8, 1821.]

Mary perfectly approves of the appropriatn of the feathers, and wishes them Peacocks for your fair niece's sake!

DE

EAR Miss Wordsworth, I had just written the above endearing words when Monkhouse tapped me on the shoulder with an invitation to cold goose pye, which I was not Bird of that sort enough to decline. Mrs. M. I am most happy to say is better. Mary has been tormented with a Rheumatism, which is leaving her. I am suffering from the festivities of the season. I wonder how my misused carcase holds it out. I have play'd the experimental philosopher on it, that's certain. Willy shall be welcome to a mince pye, and a bout at Commerce, whenever he comes. He was in our eye. I am glad you liked my new year's speculations. Everybody likes them, except the Author of the Pleasures of Hope. Disappointment attend him! How I like to be liked, and what I do to be liked! They flatter me in magazines, newspapers, and all the minor reviews. The Quarterlies hold aloof. But they must come into it in time, or their leaves be waste paper. Salute Trinity Library in my name. Two special things are worth seeing at Cambridge, a portrait of Cromwell at Sidney, and a better of Dr. Harvey (who found out that blood was red) at Dr. Davy's. You should see them.

Coleridge is pretty well, I have not seen him, but hear often of him from Alsop, who sends me hares and pheasants twice a week. I can hardly take so fast as he gives. I have almost forgotten Butcher's meat, as Plebeian. Are you not glad the Cold is gone? I find winters not so agreeable as they used to be, when "winter bleak had charms for me." I cannot conjure up a kind similitude for those snowy flakes-Let them keep to Twelfth Cakes.

Mrs. Paris, our Cambridge friend, has been in Town. You do not know the Watfords? in Trumpington Street-they are capital people.

Ask any body you meet, who is the biggest woman in Cambridge --and I'll hold you a wager they'll say Mrs. Smith.

She broke down two benches in Trinity Gardens, one on the confines of St. John's, which occasioned a litigation between the societies as to repairing it. In warm weather she retires into an ice-cellar (literally !) and dates the returns of the years from a hot Thursday some 20 years back. She sits in a room with opposite

1821

MRS. SMITH OF CAMBRIDGE

547

doors and windows, to let in a thorough draught, which gives her slenderer friends toothaches. She is to be seen in the market every morning at 10, cheapening fowls, which I observe the Cambridge Poulterers are not sufficiently careful to stump.

Having now answered most of the points containd in your Letter, let me end with assuring you of our very best kindness, and excuse Mary from not handling the Pen on this occasion, especially as it has fallen into so much better hands! Will Dr. W. accept of my respects at the end of a foolish Letter. C. L.

NOTE

[Miss Wordsworth was visiting her brother, Christopher Wordsworth, the Master of Trinity.

Willy was William Wordsworth, junr.

Lamb's New Year speculations were contained in his Elia essay "New Year's Eve," in the London Magazine for January, 1821. There is no evidence that Campbell disapproved of the essay. Canon Ainger suggests that Lamb may have thus alluded playfully to the pessimism of his remarks, so opposed to the pleasures of hope. When the Quarterly did "come in,” in 1823, it was with cold words, as we shall see.

"Salute Trinity Library." It is here that are preserved those MSS. of Milton, which Lamb regretted to have seen in his essay "Oxford in the Vacation," in the London Magazine for October, 1820.

"Cromwell at Sidney." See Letter 211.

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66 Harvey .. at Dr. Davy's "-Dr. Martin Davy, Master of Caius.

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Alsop." This is the first mention of Thomas Allsop (17951880), Coleridge's friend and disciple, who, meeting Coleridge in 1818, had just come into Lamb's circle. We shall meet him frequently. Allsop's Letters, Conversations and Recollections of Samuel Taylor Coleridge contain much matter concerning Lamb. "Winter bleak had charms for me." I have not found this. Thomson's Seasons ("Autumn") has

E'en winter wild to him is full of bliss.

Mrs. Paris was a sister of William Ayrton and the mother of John Ayrton Paris, the physician. It was at her house at Cambridge that the Lambs met Emma Isola, whom we are soon to meet (see Letter 253).

"Mrs. Smith." Lamb worked up this portion of his letter into the little humorous sketch "The Gentle Giantess," printed in the London Magazine for December, 1822 (see Vol. I. of the present

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