“MY DEARCHARLES,—This afternoon, a little, thin, mean-looking sort of a foolscap, sub-octavo of poems, printed on very dingy outsides, lay on the table, which the cover informed me was circulating in our book-club, so very Grub Streetish in all its appearance, internal as well as external, that I cannot explain by what accident of impulse (assuredly there was nomotivein play) I came to look into it. Least of all, the title, Odes and Addresses to Great Men, which connected itself in my head with Rejected Addresses, and all the Smith and Theodore Hook squad. But, my dear Charles, it was certainly written by you, or under you, oruna cumyou. I know none of your frequent visitors capacious and assimilative enough of your converse to have reproduced you so honestly, supposing you had left yourself in pledge in his lock-up house. Gillman, to whom I read the spirited parody on the introduction to Peter Bell, the Ode to the Great Unknown, and to Mrs. Fry; he speaks doubtfully of Reynolds and Hood. But here come Irving and Basil Montagu.“Thursday night, 10 o’clock.—No! Charles, it isyou. I have read them over again, and I understand why you haveanon’dthe book. The puns are nine in ten good—many excellent—theNewgatorytranscendent. And then theexemplum sine exemploof a volume of personalities and contemporaneities, without a single line that could inflict the infinitesimal of an unpleasance on any man in his senses; saving and except perhaps in the envy-addled brain of the despiser of yourLays. If not a triumph over him, it is at least anovation. Then, moreover, and besides, to speak with becoming modesty, excepting my own self, who is there but you who could write the musical lines and stanzas that are intermixed?“Here Gillman, come up to my garret, and driven back by the guardian spirits of four huge flower-holders of omnigenous roses and honeysuckles—(Lord have mercy on his hysterical olfactories! what will he do in Paradise? I must have a pair or two of nostril-plugs, or nose-goggles laid in his coffin)—stands at the door, reading that to M’Adam, and the washerwoman’s letter, and he admitsthe facts. You are foundin the manner, as the lawyers say! so, Mr. Charles! hang yourself up, and send me a line, by way of token and acknowledgment. My dear love to Mary. God bless you and your Unshamabramizer,“S. T. COLERIDGE.”
“MY DEARCHARLES,—This afternoon, a little, thin, mean-looking sort of a foolscap, sub-octavo of poems, printed on very dingy outsides, lay on the table, which the cover informed me was circulating in our book-club, so very Grub Streetish in all its appearance, internal as well as external, that I cannot explain by what accident of impulse (assuredly there was nomotivein play) I came to look into it. Least of all, the title, Odes and Addresses to Great Men, which connected itself in my head with Rejected Addresses, and all the Smith and Theodore Hook squad. But, my dear Charles, it was certainly written by you, or under you, oruna cumyou. I know none of your frequent visitors capacious and assimilative enough of your converse to have reproduced you so honestly, supposing you had left yourself in pledge in his lock-up house. Gillman, to whom I read the spirited parody on the introduction to Peter Bell, the Ode to the Great Unknown, and to Mrs. Fry; he speaks doubtfully of Reynolds and Hood. But here come Irving and Basil Montagu.
“Thursday night, 10 o’clock.—No! Charles, it isyou. I have read them over again, and I understand why you haveanon’dthe book. The puns are nine in ten good—many excellent—theNewgatorytranscendent. And then theexemplum sine exemploof a volume of personalities and contemporaneities, without a single line that could inflict the infinitesimal of an unpleasance on any man in his senses; saving and except perhaps in the envy-addled brain of the despiser of yourLays. If not a triumph over him, it is at least anovation. Then, moreover, and besides, to speak with becoming modesty, excepting my own self, who is there but you who could write the musical lines and stanzas that are intermixed?
“Here Gillman, come up to my garret, and driven back by the guardian spirits of four huge flower-holders of omnigenous roses and honeysuckles—(Lord have mercy on his hysterical olfactories! what will he do in Paradise? I must have a pair or two of nostril-plugs, or nose-goggles laid in his coffin)—stands at the door, reading that to M’Adam, and the washerwoman’s letter, and he admitsthe facts. You are foundin the manner, as the lawyers say! so, Mr. Charles! hang yourself up, and send me a line, by way of token and acknowledgment. My dear love to Mary. God bless you and your Unshamabramizer,
“S. T. COLERIDGE.”
It may be mentioned here, that instead of feeling “the infinitesimal of an unpleasance” at being Addressed in the Odes, the once celebrated Mr. Hunt presented to the Authors a bottle of his best “Permanent Ink,” and the eccentric Doctor Kitchiner sent an invitation to dinner.
From Colebrooke, Lamb removed to Enfield Chase,—a painful operation at all times, for as he feelingly misapplied Wordsworth, “themovingaccident was not his trade.” As soon as he was settled, I called upon him, and found him in a bald-looking yellowish house, with a bit of a garden, and a wasp’s nest convanient, as the Irish say, for one stung my pony as he stood at the door. Lamb laughed at the fun; but, as the clown says, the whirligig of time brought round its revenges. He was one day bantering my wife on her dread of wasps, when all at once he uttered a horrible shout,—a wounded specimen of the species had slily crawled up the leg of the table, and stung him in the thumb. I told him it was a refutation well put in, like Smollett’s timely snowball. “Yes,” said he, “and a stinging commentary on Macbeth—
“By the pricking of my thumbs,Something wicked this way comes.”
“By the pricking of my thumbs,Something wicked this way comes.”
“By the pricking of my thumbs,Something wicked this way comes.”
“By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.”
There were no pastoral yearnings concerned in this Enfield removal. There is no doubt which of Captain Morris’s Town and Country Songs would have been most to Lamb’s taste. “The sweet shady side of Pall-Mall,” would have carried it hollow. In courtesy to a friend, he would select a green lane for a ramble, but left to himself, he took the turnpike road as often as otherwise. “Scott,” says Cunningham, “was a stout walker.” Lamb was aporterone. He calculated Distances, not by Long Measure, but by Ale and Beer Measure. “Now I have walked a pint.” Many a time I have accompanied him in these matches against Meux, not without sharing in the stake, and then, what cheerful and profitable talk! For instance, he once delivered to me orally the substance of the Essay on the Defect of Imagination in Modern Artists, subsequently printed in the Athenæum. But besides the criticism, there were snatches of old poems, golden lines and sentences culled from rare books, and anecdotes of men of note. Marry, it was like going a ramble with gentle Izaak Walton, minus the fishing.
To make these excursions more delightful to one of my temperament, Lamb never affected any spurious gravity. Neither did he ever act the GrandSenior. He did not exact that common copy-book respect, which some asinine persons would fair command on account of the mere length of their years. As if, forsooth, what is bad in itself, could be the better for keeping; as if intellects alreadymothery, got anything butgrandmotheryby lapse of time! In this particular, he was opposed to Southey, or rather (for Southey has been opposed to himself) to his Poem on the Holly Tree.
“So serious should my youth appear amongThe thoughtless throng;So would I seem among the young and gayMore grave than they.”
“So serious should my youth appear amongThe thoughtless throng;So would I seem among the young and gayMore grave than they.”
“So serious should my youth appear amongThe thoughtless throng;So would I seem among the young and gayMore grave than they.”
“So serious should my youth appear among
The thoughtless throng;
So would I seem among the young and gay
More grave than they.”
There was nothing of Sir Oracle about Lamb. On the contrary, at sight of a solemn visage that “creamed and mantled like the standing pool,” he was the first to pitch a mischievous stone to disturb the duck-weed. “He was a boy-man,” as he truly said of Elia; “and his manners lagged behind his years.” He liked to herd with people younger than himself. Perhaps, in his fine generalizing way, he thought that, in relation to Eternity, we are all contemporaries. However, without reckoning birthdays, it was always “Hail fellow, well met;” and although he was my elder by a quarter of a century, he never made me feel, in our excursions, that I was “taking a walk with the schoolmaster.” I remember, in one of our strolls, being called to account, very pompously, by the proprietor of an Enfield Villa, who asserted that my dog Dash, who never hunted anything in his dog-days, had chased the sheep; whereupon, Elia taking the dog’s part, said very emphatically, “HuntLambs, Sir? Why he has never huntedme!” But he was always ready for fun, intellectual or practical—now helping to pelt D*****, a modern Dennis, with puns; and then to persuade his sister, God bless her! by a vox et preterea nihil, that she was as deaf as an adder. In the same spirit, being requested by a young Schoolmaster to take charge of his flock for a day, “during the unavoidable absence of the Principal,” he willinglyundertook the charge, but made no other use of his brief authority than to give the boys a whole holiday.
As Elia supplied the place of the Pedagogue, so once I was substitute for Lamb himself. A prose article in the Gem, was not from his hand, though it bore his name. He had promised a contribution, but being unwell, his sister suggested that I should write something for him, and the result was the “Widow” in imitation of his manner. It will be seen that the forgery was taken in good part.
“DEARLAMB,—You are an impudent varlet, but I will keep your secret. We dine at Ayrton’s on Thursday, and shall try to find Sarah and her two spare beds for that night only. Miss M. and her tragedy may be d—— d, so maynotyou and your rib. Health attend you.Yours,T. HOOD, Esq.“Enfield.“Miss Bridget Hood sends love.”
“DEARLAMB,—You are an impudent varlet, but I will keep your secret. We dine at Ayrton’s on Thursday, and shall try to find Sarah and her two spare beds for that night only. Miss M. and her tragedy may be d—— d, so maynotyou and your rib. Health attend you.
Yours,T. HOOD, Esq.“Enfield.
“Miss Bridget Hood sends love.”
How many of such pleasant reminiscences revive in my memory, whilst thinking of him, like secret writing brought out by the kindly warmth of the fire! But they must be deferred to leave me time and space for other attributes—for example, his charity, in its widest sense, the moderation in judgment which, as Miller says, is “the Silken String running through the Pearl Chain of all Virtues.” If he was intolerant of anything, it was of Intolerance. He would have been (if the foundation had existed, save in the fiction of Rabelais,) of the Utopian order of Thelemites, where each man under scriptural warrant did what seemed good in his own eyes. He hated evil speaking, carping, and petty scandal. On one occasion having slipped out an anecdote, to the discredit of a literary man, during a very confidential conversation, the next moment, with an expression of remorse, for having impaired even my opinion of the party, he bound me solemnly to bury the story in my own bosom. Inanother case he characteristically rebuked the backbiting spirit of a censorious neighbour. Some Mrs. Candour telling him, in expectation of an ill-natured comment, that Miss ***, the teacher at the Ladies’ School, had married a publican, “Has she so?” said Lamb, “then I’ll have my beer there!”
As to his liberality in a pecuniary sense, he passed (says Lamb of Elia) with some people, through having a settled but moderate income, for a great miser. And in truth he knew the value of money, its power, its usefulness. One January night he told me with great glee that at the end of the late year he had been able to lay by—and thence proceeded to read me a serio-comic lecture on the text, of “Keep your hand out of your Pocket.” The truth is, Lamb, like Shakspeare in the universality of his sympathies, could feel, pro tempore, what belonged to the character of a Gripe-all. The reader will remember his capital Note in the “Dramatic Specimens,” on “the decline of Misers, in consequence of thePlatonicnature of an affection for Money,” since Money was represented by “flimsies,” instead of substantial coin, the good old solid sonorous dollars and doubloons, and pieces of eight, that might be handled, and hugged, and rattled, and perhaps kissed. But to this passion for hoarding he one day attributed a new origin. “A Miser,” he said, “is sometimes a grand personification of Fear. He has a fine horror of Poverty. And he is not content to keep Want from the door, or at arm’s length,—but he places it, by heaping wealth upon wealth,at a sublime distance!” Such was his theory: now for his practice. Amongst his other guests, you occasionally saw an elderly lady, formal, fair, and flaxen-wigged, looking remarkably like an animated wax doll,—and she did visit some friends or relations, at a toyshop near St. Dunstan’s. When she spoke, it was as if by an artificial apparatus, through some defect in her palate, and she had a slight limp and a twist in her figure, occasioned—what would Hannah More have said!—by runningdown Greenwich Hill! This antiquated personage had been Lamb’s Schoolmistress—and on this retrospective consideration, though she could hardly have taught him more than to read his native tongue—he allowed her in her decline, a yearly sum, equal to—what shall I say?—to the stipend which some persons of fortune deem sufficient for the active services of an all-accomplished gentlewoman in the education of their children. Say, thirty pounds per annum.
Such was Charles Lamb. To sum up his character, on his own principle of antagonism, he was, in his views of human nature, the opposite of Crabbe; in Criticism, of Gifford; in Poetry, of Lord Byron; in Prose, of the last new Novelist; in Philosophy, of Kant; and in Religion, of Sir Andrew Agnew. Of his wit I have endeavoured to give such samples as occurred to me; but the spirit of his sayings was too subtle and too much married to the circumstances of the time to survive the occasion. They had the brevity without the levity of wit—some of his puns contained the germs of whole essays. Moreover, like Falstaff, he seemed not only witty himself but the occasion of it by example in others. “There is M******” said he, “who goes about dropping his good things as an Ostrich lays her eggs, without caring what becomes of them.” It was once my good fortune to pick up one of Mr. M.’s foundlings, and it struck me as particularly in Lamb’s own style, containing at once a pun and a criticism. “What do you think,” asked somebody, “of the book called ‘A Day in Stowe Gardens?’” Answer: “A Day ill-bestowed.”
It is now some years ago, since I stood with other mourners in Edmonton Church Yard, beside a grave in which all that was mortal of Elia was deposited. It may be a dangerous confession to make, but I shed no tear; and scarcely did a sigh escape from my bosom. There were many sources of comfort. He had not died young. He had happily gone before thatnoble sister, who not in selfishness, but the devotion of a unique affection, would have prayed to survive him but for a day, lest he should miss that tender care which had watched over him upwards from a little child. Finally he had left behind him his works, a rare legacy! and above all, however much of him had departed, there was still more of him that could not die—for as long as Humanity endures and man owns fellowship with man, the spirit of Charles Lamb will still be extant!
******
On the publication of the Odes and Addresses, presentation copies were sent at the suggestion of a friend, to Mr. Canning and Sir Walter Scott. The minister took no notice of the little volume; but the novelist did, in his usual kind manner. An eccentric friend in writing to me, once made a number of colons, semicolons, &c., at the bottom of the paper, adding
“And these are my points that I place at the foot,That you may put stops that I can’t stop to put.”
“And these are my points that I place at the foot,That you may put stops that I can’t stop to put.”
“And these are my points that I place at the foot,That you may put stops that I can’t stop to put.”
“And these are my points that I place at the foot,
That you may put stops that I can’t stop to put.”
It will surprise no one, to observe that the author of Waverley had as little leisure for punctuation.
“SIRWALTERSCOTThas to make thankful acknowledgments for the copy of the Odes to Great People with which he was favoured and more particularly for the amusement he has received from the perusal. He wishes the unknown author good health good fortune and whatever other good things can best support and encourage his lively vein of inoffensive and humorous satire.Abbotsford Melrose 4th May”
“SIRWALTERSCOTThas to make thankful acknowledgments for the copy of the Odes to Great People with which he was favoured and more particularly for the amusement he has received from the perusal. He wishes the unknown author good health good fortune and whatever other good things can best support and encourage his lively vein of inoffensive and humorous satire.
Abbotsford Melrose 4th May”
The first time I ever saw the Great Unknown, was at the private view of Martin’s Picture of “Nineveh,” when by a striking coincidence, one of our most celebrated women, and one of ourgreatest men, Mrs. Siddons and Sir Walter Scott, walked simultaneously up opposite sides of the room, and met and shook hands in front of the painting. As Editor of the Gem, I had afterwards occasion to write to Sir Walter, from whom I received the following letter, which contains an allusion to some of his characteristic partialities:—
“MY DEARMR. HOOD,—It was very ungracious in me to leave you in a day’s doubt whether I was gratified or otherwise with the honour you did me to inscribe your Whims and Oddities to me I received with great pleasure this new mark of your kindness and it was only my leaving your volume and letter in the country which delayed my answer as I forgot the address.I was favoured with Mr. Cooper’s beautiful sketch of the heart-piercing incident of the dead greyhound which is executed with a force and fancy which I flatter myself that I who was in my younger days and in part still am a great lover of dogs and horses and an accurate observer of their habits can appreciate, I intend the instant our term ends to send a few verses if I can make any at my years in acknowledgment. I will get a day’s leisure for this purpose next week when I expect to be in the country. Pray inform Mr. Cooper of my intention though I fear I will be unable to do anything deserving of the subject.I am very truly your obliged humble servant,WALTERSCOTT.”Edinburgh 4 March.
“MY DEARMR. HOOD,—It was very ungracious in me to leave you in a day’s doubt whether I was gratified or otherwise with the honour you did me to inscribe your Whims and Oddities to me I received with great pleasure this new mark of your kindness and it was only my leaving your volume and letter in the country which delayed my answer as I forgot the address.
I was favoured with Mr. Cooper’s beautiful sketch of the heart-piercing incident of the dead greyhound which is executed with a force and fancy which I flatter myself that I who was in my younger days and in part still am a great lover of dogs and horses and an accurate observer of their habits can appreciate, I intend the instant our term ends to send a few verses if I can make any at my years in acknowledgment. I will get a day’s leisure for this purpose next week when I expect to be in the country. Pray inform Mr. Cooper of my intention though I fear I will be unable to do anything deserving of the subject.
I am very truly your obliged humble servant,WALTERSCOTT.”Edinburgh 4 March.
At last, during one of his visits to London, I had the honour of a personal interview with Sir Walter Scott at Mr. Lockhart’s in Sussex Place. The number of the house had escaped my memory; but seeing a fine dog down an area, I knocked without hesitation at the door. It happened however to be the wrong one. I afterwards mentioned the circumstance to Sir Walter. It was not a bad point, he said, for he was very fond of dogs; but he did not care to have his own animals with him,about London, “for fear he should be taken for Bill Gibbons.” I then told him I had lately been reading the Fair Maid of Perth, which had reminded me of a very pleasant day spent many years before, beside the Linn of Campsie, the scene of Conachar’s catastrophe. Perhaps he divined what had really occurred to me,—that the Linn, as a cataract, had greatly disappointed me; for he smiled, and shook his head archly, and said he had since seen it himself, and was rather ashamed of it. “But I fear, Mr. Hood, I have done worse than that before now, in finding a Monastery where there was none to be found; though there was plenty (here he smiled again) of Carduus Benedictus, or Holy Thistle.”
In the meantime he was finishing his toilet, in order to dine at the Duchess of Kent’s; and before he put on his cravat I had an opportunity of noticing the fine massive proportions of his bust. It served to confirm me in my theory that such mighty men are, and must be, physically, as well as intellectually, gifted beyond ordinary mortals; that their strong minds must be backed by strong bodies. Remembering all that Sir Walter Scott had done, and all that he had suffered, methought he had been in more than one sense “a Giant in the Land.” After some more conversation, in the course of which he asked me if I ever came to Scotland, and kindly said he should be glad to see me at Abbotsford, I took my leave, with flattering dreams in my head that never were, and now, alas! never can be, realised!
******
And now, not to conclude in too melancholy a tone, allow me, gentle reader, to present to you the following genuine letter, the names, merely, for obvious reasons, being disguised.
To T. Hood, Esq.“Thou’rt a comical chap—so am I; but thou possessest brains competent to write what I mean;—I don’t—therefore, Brother Comic, wilt thou oblige me (if ’twas in my power I would you)—I’ll tell you just what I want, and no more. Of late, Lord *** has been endeavouring to raise a body of yeomanry in this county. Now there’s a man at Bedfont—a compounder of nauseous drugs—and against whom I owe a grudge, who wishes to enter, but who’s no more fit for a fighter than I for a punster. Now if you will just give him a palpable hit or two in verse, and transmit them to me by post, directed to A. B., Post Office, Bedfont, your kindness shall ever be remembered with feelings of the deepest sincerity and gratitude. His name is ‘JAMESBOOKER, CHEMIST,’ Bedfontof course. If you disapprove of the above, I trust you will not abuse the confidence placed in you, by ‘SPLITTING.’ You’ll say, how can I?—by showing this letter to him. He knows the handwriting full well—but you’ll not do so, I hope. Perhaps, if you feel a disposition to oblige me, you will do so at your first convenience, ere the matter will be getting stale.“Yours truly,“A. B.“Perhaps you will be kind enough to let me have an answer from you, even if you willNOTcondescend to accede to my wish.“Perhaps you’ve not sufficient particulars. He’s a little fellow, flushed face, long nose, precious ugly, housekeeper as ugly, lives between the two Peacock Inns, is a single man, very anxious to get possession of Miss Boltbee, a ward in Chancery with something like £9000 (WISHhe may get it), is famous for his Gout Medicine, sells jalap (should like to make him swallow an ounce), always knows other people’s business better than hisown, used to go to church, now goes to chapel, and in the whole, is a great rascal.“Bedfont is thirteen miles from London.”
To T. Hood, Esq.
“Thou’rt a comical chap—so am I; but thou possessest brains competent to write what I mean;—I don’t—therefore, Brother Comic, wilt thou oblige me (if ’twas in my power I would you)—I’ll tell you just what I want, and no more. Of late, Lord *** has been endeavouring to raise a body of yeomanry in this county. Now there’s a man at Bedfont—a compounder of nauseous drugs—and against whom I owe a grudge, who wishes to enter, but who’s no more fit for a fighter than I for a punster. Now if you will just give him a palpable hit or two in verse, and transmit them to me by post, directed to A. B., Post Office, Bedfont, your kindness shall ever be remembered with feelings of the deepest sincerity and gratitude. His name is ‘JAMESBOOKER, CHEMIST,’ Bedfontof course. If you disapprove of the above, I trust you will not abuse the confidence placed in you, by ‘SPLITTING.’ You’ll say, how can I?—by showing this letter to him. He knows the handwriting full well—but you’ll not do so, I hope. Perhaps, if you feel a disposition to oblige me, you will do so at your first convenience, ere the matter will be getting stale.
“Yours truly,“A. B.
“Perhaps you will be kind enough to let me have an answer from you, even if you willNOTcondescend to accede to my wish.
“Perhaps you’ve not sufficient particulars. He’s a little fellow, flushed face, long nose, precious ugly, housekeeper as ugly, lives between the two Peacock Inns, is a single man, very anxious to get possession of Miss Boltbee, a ward in Chancery with something like £9000 (WISHhe may get it), is famous for his Gout Medicine, sells jalap (should like to make him swallow an ounce), always knows other people’s business better than hisown, used to go to church, now goes to chapel, and in the whole, is a great rascal.
“Bedfont is thirteen miles from London.”
PRESERVED IN SPIRITS.
PRESERVED IN SPIRITS.
[4]To borrow an example from fiction, there is that slave of circumstances, Oliver Twist. There are few authors whom one would care to see running two heats with the same horse. It is intended therefore as a compliment, that I wish Boz would re-write the history in question from page 122, supposing his heroNOTto have met with the Artful Dodger on his road to seek his fortune.[5]In justice to the Society, it ought to be recorded, that two of its members have since distinguished themselves in print: the authoress of “London in the Olden Time,” and the author of a “History of Moral Science.”[6]There was a dash of ink in my blood. My father wrote two novels, and my brother was decidedly of a literary turn, to the great disquietude for a time of an anxious parent. She suspected him, on the strength of several amatory poems of a very desponding cast, of being the victim of a hopeless attachment; so he was caught, closeted, and catechised, and after a deal of delicate and tender sounding, he confessed, not with the anticipated sighs and tears, but a very unexpected burst of laughter, that he had been guilty of translating some fragments of Petrarch.[7]A cottage of Ungentility, for it had neither double coach-house nor wings. Like its tenant, it stood alone. He said, glancing at the Paternoster one, that he did not like “the Row.” There was a bit of a garden, in which, being, as he professed, “more fond of Men Sects than of Insects,” he made probably his first and last observation in Entomology. He had been watching a spider on a gooseberry bush, entrapping a fly. “Good God,” he said, “I never saw such a thing! Directly he was caught, in her fatal spinning, she darted down upon him, and in a minute turned him out, completely lapped in a shroud! It reminded me of the Fatal Sisters in Gray.”[8]A sort of rheumatic celerity, of which Sir W. Scott’s favourite dramatiser seemed to have a very accurate notion. Those who remember “poor Terry’s” deliberate delivery, will be able to account, for the shout of laughter which once rang throughout the Adelphi green-room, at his emphatic manner of giving, from a manuscript-play, the stage direction of “Enter——, with—a—lack—ri—ty!”[9]As regards his Unitarianism, it strikes me as more probable that he was what the unco guid people call “Nothing at all.” which means that he was every thing but a Bigot. As he was in spirit an Old Author, so was he in faith an Ancient Christian, too ancient to belong to any of the modern sub-hubbub-divisions of—Ists,—Arians, and—Inians.[10]Talking of Poetry, Lamb told me one day that he had just met with the most vigorous line he had ever read. “Where?” “Out of the Camden’s Head, all in one line—“ToOne Hundred Pots of Porter£2 1 8”[11]Somebody happened to say that the Peasant ought to figure in the Percy Anecdotes, as an example of uncultivated genius. “And where will they stick me?” asked Clare, “will they stick me in the instinct?”[12]I once cut out from a country newspaper what seemed to me a very good old English poem. It proved to be anaturalization, by Cary, of a French Song to April, by Remy Belleau.[13]The father expressing an uncertainty to what profession he should devote a younger Cary, Lamb said, “Make him an Apothe-Cary.”[14]Unable to make any thing “like a likeness” of a sitter for the purpose, I have a sort of Irish faculty for taking faces behind their backs. But my pencil has not been guilty of half the personalities attributed to it; amongst others “a formidable likeness of a Lombard Street Banker.” Besides that one would rather draw on a Banker than at him, I have never seen the Gentleman alluded to, or even a portrait of him in my life.[15]On a visit to Norfolk, I was much surprised to find that Opium, or Opie, as it was vulgarly called, was quite in common use in the form of pills amongst the lower classes,in the vicinity of the Fens. It is not probable that persons in such a rank of life had read the Confessions,—or, might not one suspect that as Dennis Brulgruddery was driven to drink by the stale, flat and unprofitable prospects of Muckslush Heath, so the Fen-People in the dreary foggy cloggy boggy wastes of Cambridge and Lincolnshire, had flown to the Drug for the sake of the magnificentscenerythat filled the splendid visions of its Historian?
[4]To borrow an example from fiction, there is that slave of circumstances, Oliver Twist. There are few authors whom one would care to see running two heats with the same horse. It is intended therefore as a compliment, that I wish Boz would re-write the history in question from page 122, supposing his heroNOTto have met with the Artful Dodger on his road to seek his fortune.
[4]To borrow an example from fiction, there is that slave of circumstances, Oliver Twist. There are few authors whom one would care to see running two heats with the same horse. It is intended therefore as a compliment, that I wish Boz would re-write the history in question from page 122, supposing his heroNOTto have met with the Artful Dodger on his road to seek his fortune.
[5]In justice to the Society, it ought to be recorded, that two of its members have since distinguished themselves in print: the authoress of “London in the Olden Time,” and the author of a “History of Moral Science.”
[5]In justice to the Society, it ought to be recorded, that two of its members have since distinguished themselves in print: the authoress of “London in the Olden Time,” and the author of a “History of Moral Science.”
[6]There was a dash of ink in my blood. My father wrote two novels, and my brother was decidedly of a literary turn, to the great disquietude for a time of an anxious parent. She suspected him, on the strength of several amatory poems of a very desponding cast, of being the victim of a hopeless attachment; so he was caught, closeted, and catechised, and after a deal of delicate and tender sounding, he confessed, not with the anticipated sighs and tears, but a very unexpected burst of laughter, that he had been guilty of translating some fragments of Petrarch.
[6]There was a dash of ink in my blood. My father wrote two novels, and my brother was decidedly of a literary turn, to the great disquietude for a time of an anxious parent. She suspected him, on the strength of several amatory poems of a very desponding cast, of being the victim of a hopeless attachment; so he was caught, closeted, and catechised, and after a deal of delicate and tender sounding, he confessed, not with the anticipated sighs and tears, but a very unexpected burst of laughter, that he had been guilty of translating some fragments of Petrarch.
[7]A cottage of Ungentility, for it had neither double coach-house nor wings. Like its tenant, it stood alone. He said, glancing at the Paternoster one, that he did not like “the Row.” There was a bit of a garden, in which, being, as he professed, “more fond of Men Sects than of Insects,” he made probably his first and last observation in Entomology. He had been watching a spider on a gooseberry bush, entrapping a fly. “Good God,” he said, “I never saw such a thing! Directly he was caught, in her fatal spinning, she darted down upon him, and in a minute turned him out, completely lapped in a shroud! It reminded me of the Fatal Sisters in Gray.”
[7]A cottage of Ungentility, for it had neither double coach-house nor wings. Like its tenant, it stood alone. He said, glancing at the Paternoster one, that he did not like “the Row.” There was a bit of a garden, in which, being, as he professed, “more fond of Men Sects than of Insects,” he made probably his first and last observation in Entomology. He had been watching a spider on a gooseberry bush, entrapping a fly. “Good God,” he said, “I never saw such a thing! Directly he was caught, in her fatal spinning, she darted down upon him, and in a minute turned him out, completely lapped in a shroud! It reminded me of the Fatal Sisters in Gray.”
[8]A sort of rheumatic celerity, of which Sir W. Scott’s favourite dramatiser seemed to have a very accurate notion. Those who remember “poor Terry’s” deliberate delivery, will be able to account, for the shout of laughter which once rang throughout the Adelphi green-room, at his emphatic manner of giving, from a manuscript-play, the stage direction of “Enter——, with—a—lack—ri—ty!”
[8]A sort of rheumatic celerity, of which Sir W. Scott’s favourite dramatiser seemed to have a very accurate notion. Those who remember “poor Terry’s” deliberate delivery, will be able to account, for the shout of laughter which once rang throughout the Adelphi green-room, at his emphatic manner of giving, from a manuscript-play, the stage direction of “Enter——, with—a—lack—ri—ty!”
[9]As regards his Unitarianism, it strikes me as more probable that he was what the unco guid people call “Nothing at all.” which means that he was every thing but a Bigot. As he was in spirit an Old Author, so was he in faith an Ancient Christian, too ancient to belong to any of the modern sub-hubbub-divisions of—Ists,—Arians, and—Inians.
[9]As regards his Unitarianism, it strikes me as more probable that he was what the unco guid people call “Nothing at all.” which means that he was every thing but a Bigot. As he was in spirit an Old Author, so was he in faith an Ancient Christian, too ancient to belong to any of the modern sub-hubbub-divisions of—Ists,—Arians, and—Inians.
[10]Talking of Poetry, Lamb told me one day that he had just met with the most vigorous line he had ever read. “Where?” “Out of the Camden’s Head, all in one line—“ToOne Hundred Pots of Porter£2 1 8”
[10]Talking of Poetry, Lamb told me one day that he had just met with the most vigorous line he had ever read. “Where?” “Out of the Camden’s Head, all in one line—
“ToOne Hundred Pots of Porter£2 1 8”
[11]Somebody happened to say that the Peasant ought to figure in the Percy Anecdotes, as an example of uncultivated genius. “And where will they stick me?” asked Clare, “will they stick me in the instinct?”
[11]Somebody happened to say that the Peasant ought to figure in the Percy Anecdotes, as an example of uncultivated genius. “And where will they stick me?” asked Clare, “will they stick me in the instinct?”
[12]I once cut out from a country newspaper what seemed to me a very good old English poem. It proved to be anaturalization, by Cary, of a French Song to April, by Remy Belleau.
[12]I once cut out from a country newspaper what seemed to me a very good old English poem. It proved to be anaturalization, by Cary, of a French Song to April, by Remy Belleau.
[13]The father expressing an uncertainty to what profession he should devote a younger Cary, Lamb said, “Make him an Apothe-Cary.”
[13]The father expressing an uncertainty to what profession he should devote a younger Cary, Lamb said, “Make him an Apothe-Cary.”
[14]Unable to make any thing “like a likeness” of a sitter for the purpose, I have a sort of Irish faculty for taking faces behind their backs. But my pencil has not been guilty of half the personalities attributed to it; amongst others “a formidable likeness of a Lombard Street Banker.” Besides that one would rather draw on a Banker than at him, I have never seen the Gentleman alluded to, or even a portrait of him in my life.
[14]Unable to make any thing “like a likeness” of a sitter for the purpose, I have a sort of Irish faculty for taking faces behind their backs. But my pencil has not been guilty of half the personalities attributed to it; amongst others “a formidable likeness of a Lombard Street Banker.” Besides that one would rather draw on a Banker than at him, I have never seen the Gentleman alluded to, or even a portrait of him in my life.
[15]On a visit to Norfolk, I was much surprised to find that Opium, or Opie, as it was vulgarly called, was quite in common use in the form of pills amongst the lower classes,in the vicinity of the Fens. It is not probable that persons in such a rank of life had read the Confessions,—or, might not one suspect that as Dennis Brulgruddery was driven to drink by the stale, flat and unprofitable prospects of Muckslush Heath, so the Fen-People in the dreary foggy cloggy boggy wastes of Cambridge and Lincolnshire, had flown to the Drug for the sake of the magnificentscenerythat filled the splendid visions of its Historian?
[15]On a visit to Norfolk, I was much surprised to find that Opium, or Opie, as it was vulgarly called, was quite in common use in the form of pills amongst the lower classes,in the vicinity of the Fens. It is not probable that persons in such a rank of life had read the Confessions,—or, might not one suspect that as Dennis Brulgruddery was driven to drink by the stale, flat and unprofitable prospects of Muckslush Heath, so the Fen-People in the dreary foggy cloggy boggy wastes of Cambridge and Lincolnshire, had flown to the Drug for the sake of the magnificentscenerythat filled the splendid visions of its Historian?