*

*It is singular that, some years before. Mr. Barton had received similar advice from a very different poetLord Byron. As the letter has never been published, and it may be interesting to compare the expressions of two men so different on the same subject, I subjoin it here

"TO BERNARD BARTON ESQ.

the lower conditions of readers; hence it is to make a generous amends to his ledger for an especial favourite with seafaring men, all his unjust reproaches. The references to poor boys, servant-maids, &c. His novels the booksellers have the colouring of fantasare capital kitchen-reading, while they are tical exaggeration, by which he delighted to worthy, from their deep interest, to find a give effect to the immediate feeling; but shelf in the libraries of the wealthiest, and making allowance for this mere play of the most learned. His passion for matter-of-fancy, how just is the following advice — how fact narrative sometimes betrayed him into wholesome for every youth who hesitates a long relation of common incidents, which whether he shall abandon the certain reward might happen to any man, and have no of plodding industry for the splendid miseries interest but the intense appearance of truth of authorship! in them, to recommend them. The whole latter half or two-thirds of Colonel Jack' is of this description. The beginning of 'Colonel Jack' is the most affecting natural picture of a young thief that was ever drawn. His losing the stolen money in the hollow of a tree, and finding it again when he was in despair, and then being in equal distress at not knowing how to dispose of it, and several similar touches in the early history of the Colonel, evince a deep knowledge of human nature; and putting out of question the superior romantic interest of the latter, in my mind very much exceed Crusoe. 'Roxana' (first edition) is the next in interest, though he left out the best part of it in subsequent editions from a foolish hypercriticism of his friend Southerne. But Moll Flanders,' the Account of the Plague,' &c., are all of one family, and have the same stamp of character. Believe me, with friendly recollections, Brother (as I used to call you),

"6 Yours,

C. LAMB."

"St. James' Street, June 1, 1812. "Sir,- The most satisfactory answer to the concluding part of your letter is, that Mr. Murray will republish your volume, if you still retain your inclination for the experiment, which I trust will be successful. Some weeks ago my friend Mr. Rogers showed me some of the stanzas in MS., and I then expressed my opinion of their has given me no reason to revoke. I mention this, as it may not be disagreeable to you to learn, that I enter tained a very favourable opinion of your powers before I was aware that such sentiments were reciprocal. waving your obliging expressions as to my own productions, for which I thank you very sincerely, and assure you that I think not lightly of the praise of one whose approbation is valuable; will you allow me to talk to you candidly, not critically, on the subject of yours? You will not suspect me of a wish to discourage, since I pointed cut to the publisher the propriety of complying with your wishes. I think more highly of your portical

merit, which a further perusal of the printed volume

talents than it would perhaps gratify you to hear expressed, for I believe, from what I observe of your mind, that you are above flattery. To come to the point, you deserve success; but we knew before Addison

How bitterly Lamb felt his East-India wrote his Cato, that desert does not always command it.

bondage, has abundantly appeared from his letters during many years. Yet there never was wanting a secret consciousness of the benefits which it ensured for him, the precious independence which he won by his hours of toil, and the freedom of his mind, to work only "at its own sweet will," which his confinement to the desk obtained. This sense of the blessings which a fixed income, derived from ascertained duties, confers, was nobly expressed in reference to a casual fancy in one of the letters of his fellow in clerkly as well as in poetical labours, Bernard Barton- -a fancy as alien to the habitual thoughts of his friend, as to his own-for no one has pursued a steadier course on the weary way of duty than the poet whose brief dream of literary engrossment incited Lamb

But

suppose it attained.

'You know what ills the author's life assail.

Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail.' Do not renounce writing, but never trust entirely to authorship. If you have a profession, retain it; it will be like Prior's fellowship, a last and sure resourse. Compare Mr. Rogers with other authors of the day; assuredly he is among the first of living poets, but is it to that he owes his station in society, and his intimacy in the best circles?-no, it is to his prudence and respect ability. The world (a bad one, I own) courts him because he has no occasion to court it. He is a poet. nor

is he less so because he is something more. I am not sorry to hear that you were not tempted by the vicinity of Capel Loft, Esq.-though, if he had done for you what he has for the Bloomfields, I should never have laughed at his rage for patronizing. But a truly well

constituted mind will ever be independent. That you may be so is my sincere wish; and if others think as well of your poetry as I do, you will have no cause to complain of your readers.

Believe me. "Your obliged and obedient servant. "BYRON."

some gentle remonstrance on the part of Barton's sister, to which Lamb thus replied.

TO BERNARD BARTON.

"March 11th, 1823.

completed till Woolman. A pretty little other, without paying anything,* had excited manual of Quaker language (with an endeavour to explain them) might be gathered out of his book. Could not you do it? I have read through G. F. without finding any explanation of the term first volume in the title-page. It takes in all, both his life and his death. Are there more last words of him? Pray how may I return it to Mr. Shewell at Ipswich? I fear to send such a treasure by a stage-coach; not that I am afraid of the coachman or the guard reading it; but it might be lost. Can you put me in a way of sending it in safety? The kindhearted owner trusted it to me for six months; I think I was about as many days in getting through it, and I do not think that I skipt a word of it. I have quoted G. F. in my Quakers' Meeting,' as having said he was lifted up in spirit,' (which I felt at the time to be not a Quaker phrase,) and the judge and jury were as dead men under his feet.' I find no such words in his journal, and I did not get them from Sewell, and the latter sentence I am sure I did not mean to invent: I must have put some other Quaker's words into his mouth. Is it a fatality in me, that everything I touch turns into a lie?' I once quoted two lines from a translation of Dante, which Hazlitt very greatly admired, and quoted in a book as proof of the stupendous power of that poet, but no such lines are to be found in the translation, which has been searched for the purpose. I must have dreamed them, for I am quite certain I did not forge them knowingly. What a misfortune to have a lying memory! Your description of Mr. Mitford's place makes me long for a pippin and some caraways, and a cup of sack in his orchard, when the sweets of the night come in.

"Dear Sir,- The approbation of my little book by your sister is very pleasing to me. The Quaker incident did not happen to me, but to Carlisle the surgeon, from whose mouth I have twice heard it, at an interval of ten or twelve years, with little or no variation, and have given it as exactly as I could remember it. The gloss which your sister or you have put upon it, does not strike me as correct. Carlisle drew no inference from it against the honesty of the Quakers, but only in favour of their surpassing coolness; that they should be capable of committing a good joke, with an utter insensibility to its being any jest at all. I have reason to believe in the truth of it, because, as I have said, I heard him repeat it without variation at such an interval. The story loses sadly in print, for Carlisle is the best story-teller I ever heard. The idea of the discovery of roasting pigs I also borrowed from my friend Manning, and am willing to confess both my plagiarisms. Should fate ever so order it that you shall ever be in town with your sister, mine bids me say, that she shall have great pleasure in being introduced to her. Your endeavour at explaining Fox's insight into the natures of animals must fail, as I shall transcribe the passage. It appears to me that he stopt short in time, and was on the brink of falling with his friend Naylor, my favourite. The book shall be forthcoming whenever your friend can make convenient to call for it.

"They have dragged me again into the Magazine, but I feel the spirit of the thing in my own mind quite gone. 'Some brains' (I think Ben Johnson says it) will endure but one skimming.' We are about to have an inundation of poetry from the Lakes Wordsworth and Southey are coming up strong from the north. How did you like Hartley's sonnets? The first, at least, is vastly fine. I am ashamed of the shabby letters I send, but I am by nature anything but neat. Therein my mother bore me no Quaker. I never could seal a letter without

* See "Imperfect Sympathies."— Essays of Elia, p. 74.

wanting, of the causes of the backwardness with which persons after a certain time of life set about writing a letter. I always feel as if I had nothing to say, and the performance generally justifies the presentiment.

dropping the wax on one side, besides scalding | the vein lately. A philosophical treatise is my fingers. I never had a seal, too, of my own. Writing to a great man lately, who is, moreover, very heraldic, I borrowed a seal of a friend, who by the female side quarters the Protectoral arms of Cromwell. How they must have puzzled my correspondent! My letters are generally charged as double at the Post-office, from their inveterate clumsiness of foldure; so you must not take it disrespectful to yourself, if I send you such ungainly scraps. I think I lose 1007. a-year at the India House, owing solely to my want of neatness in making up accounts. How I puzzle 'em out at last is the wonder. I have to do with millions!!

"I do not exactly see why the goose and little goslings should emblematise a Quaker poet that has no children. But after all perhaps it is a pelican. The Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin' around it I cannot decipher. The songster of the night pouring out her effusions amid a silent meeting of madge-owlets, would be at least intelligible. A full pause here comes upon me as if I had not a word more left. I will shake my brain, Once! Twice!-nothing comes up. George Fox recommends waiting on these occasions. C. LAMB." I wait. Nothing comes. G. Fox-that sets me off again. I have finished the 'Journal,' Lamb thus records a meeting with the and 400 more pages of the Doctrinals,' poets. which I picked up for 7s. 6d. If I get on at this rate, the society will be in danger of having two Quaker poets-to patronise. "Believe me cordially yours,

"It is time to have done my incoherences. "Believe me, yours truly,

TO BERNARD BARTON.

"April 5th, 1823. "Dear Sir, I wished for you yesterday. I dined in Parnassus, with Wordsworth, Coleridge, Rogers, and Tom Moore,- half the poetry of England constellated and clustered in Gloucester Place! It was a delightful evening! Coleridge was in his finest vein of talk had all the talk; and let 'em talk as evilly as they do of the envy of poets, I am sure not one there but was content to be nothing but a listener. The Muses were dumb, while Apollo lectured, on his and their fine art. It is a lie that poets are envious I have known the best of them, and can speak to it, that they give each other their merits, and are the kindest critics as well as best authors. I am scribbling a muddy epistle with an aching head, for we did not quaff Hippocrene last night; marry, it was hippocrass rather. Pray accept this as a letter in the mean time, C. L."

C. LAMB."

The following letter was addressed to Mr. Procter, in acknowledgment of a miniature of Pope which he had presented to Lamb.

TO MR. PROCTER.

"April 13th, 1823. "Dear Lad,-You must think me a brute beast, a rhinoceros, never to have acknowledged the receipt of your precious present. But indeed I am none of those shocking things, but have arrived at that indisposition to letter-writing, which would make it a hard exertion to write three lines to a king to spare a friend's life. Whether it is that the Magazine paying me so much a page, I am loath to throw away composition-how much a sheet do you give your correspondents? I have hung up Pope, and a gem it is, in my town room; I hope for your approval. Though it accompanies the Essay on Man,' I think that was not the poem he is here meditating. He would have looked up, somehow affectedly, if he were just conceiving Awake, my St. John.' Neither is he in the Rape of the Lock' mood exactly. I think he has just

made out the last lines of the Epistle to enlisted on behalf of Hazlitt and Hunt, who Jervis,' between gay and tender,

'And other beauties envy Worsley's eyes.' "I'll be hanged if that is n't the line. He is brooding over it, with a dreamy phantom of Lady Mary floating before him. He is thinking which is the earliest possible day and hour that she will first see it. What a miniature piece of gentility it is! Why did you give it me? I do not like you enough to give you anything so good.

had been attacked in this work in a manner which he regarded as unfair; for the critics had not been content with descanting on the peculiarities in the style and taste of the one, or reprobating the political or personal vehemence of the other, which were fair subjects of controversy, but spoke of them with a contempt which every man of letters had a right to resent, as unjust. He had been much annoyed by an allusion to himself in an article on "Hazlitt's Political Essays,"

"I have dined with T. Moore and break-which appeared in the Review for November, fasted with Rogers, since I saw you; have 1819, as "one whom we should wish to see much to say about them when we meet, which I trust will be in a week or two. I have been over-watched and over-poeted since Wordsworth has been in town. I was obliged for health sake to wish him gone, but now he is gone I feel a great loss. I am going to Dalston to recruit, and have serious thoughts of altering my condition, that is, of taking to sobriety. What do you advise me?

Rogers spake very kindly of you, as every body does, and none with so much C. L."

reason as your

CHAPTER XIII.
[1823.]

in more respectable company;" for he felt a compliment paid him at the expense of a friend, as a grievance far beyond any direct attack on himself. He was also exceedingly hurt by a reference made in an article on Dr. Reid's work "On Nervous Affections," which appeared in July, 1822, to an essay which he had contributed some years before to a collection of tracts published by his friend, Mr. Basil Montague, on the effect of spirituous liquors, entitled "The Confessions of a Drunkard." The contribution of this paper is a striking proof of the prevalence of Lamb's personal regards over all selfish feelings and tastes; for no one was less disposed than he to Montague's theory or practice of abstinence; yet he was willing to gratify his friend by this terrible picture of the extreme effects of intemperance, of which his own occasional deviations from the right line of sobriety had given him hints and In the year 1823, Lamb appeared, for the glimpses. The reviewer of Dr. Reid, adfirst and only time of his life, before the verting to this essay, speaks of it as "a fearful public, as an assailant: and the object of his picture of the consequences of intemperance, attack was one of his oldest and fastest which we happen to know is a true tale." friends, Mr. Southey. It might, indeed, have | How far it was from actual truth the "Essays been predicted of Lamb, that if ever he did of Elia," the production of a later day, in enter the arena of personal controversy, it which the maturity of his feeling, humour, would be with one who had obtained a place and reason is exhibited, may sufficiently in his affection; for no motive less powerful witness. These articles were not written by than the resentment of friendship which Mr. Southey; but they prepared Lamb to deemed itself wounded, could place him in feel acutely any attack from the Review; a situation so abhorrent to his habitual thoughts. Lamb had, up to this time, little reason to love reviews or reviewers; and the connexion of Southey with "The Quarterly Review," while he felt that it raised, and softened, and refined the tone of that powerful organ of a great party, sometimes vexed him for his friend. His indignation also had been

LAMB'S CONTROVERSY WITH SOUTHEY.

and a paragraph in an article in the number for July, 1823, entitled "Progress of Infidelity," in which he recognised the hand of his old friend, gave poignancy to all the painful associations which had arisen from the same work, and concentrated them in one bitter feeling. After recording some of the confessions of unbelievers of the wretchedness