I must take leave, having put off answering a load of letters to this morning; and this, alas! is the first. Our kindest remembrances to Mrs. Monkhouse, And believe us yours most truly, C. LAMB. To VINCENT NOVELLO. LETTER CCLXIII.] Colebrook, Tuesday, Dear Novello-My sister's cold is as obstinate as an old Handelian, whom a modern amateur is trying to convert to Mozart-ism. As company must, and always does, injure it, Emma and I propose to come to you in the evening of to-morrow, instead of meeting here. An early bread-and-cheese supper at half-past eight will oblige us. Loves to the bearer of many children. C. LAMB. I sign with a black seal, that you may [begin] to think her cold has killed Mary; which will be an agreeable unsurprise when you read the note. V. Novello, Esq., Green, Shacklewell. TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. LETTER CCLXIV.] 66 [Middle of May, 1825.] Dear W.-I write post-hoste to ensure a frank. Thanks for your hearty congratulations. I may now date from the sixth week of my Hegira, or Flight from Leadenhall.” I have lived so much in it, that a Summer seems already past; and 'tis but early May yet with you and other people. How I look down on the slaves and drudges of the world! Its inhabitants are a vast cottonweb of spin-spin-spinners! O the carking cares! money-grubbers! Sempiternal muckworms! O the Your Virgil I have lost sight of, but suspect it is in the hands of Sir G. Beaumont; I think that circumstances made me shy of procuring it before. Will you write to him about it?—and your commands shall be obeyed to a tittle. Coleridge has just finished his prize Essay by which, if it get the prize, he'll touch an additional £100 I fancy. His book, too ("Commentary on Bishop Leighton"), is quite finished, and penes Taylor and Hessey. In the London Magazine, which is just out (1st of May), are two papers entitled the "Superannuated Man," which I wish you to see; and also, 1st of April, a little thing called "Barbara S- ," a story gleaned from Miss Kelly. The London Magazine, if you can get it, will save my enlargement upon the topic of my manumission. I must scribble to make up my hiatus crumena; for there are so many ways, pious and profligate, of getting rid of money in this vast city and suburbs, that I shall miss my THIRDS. But couragio! I despair not. Your kind hint of the cottage was well thrown out; an anchorage for age and school of economy, when necessity comes; but without this latter, I have an unconquerable terror of changing place. It does not agree with us. I say it from conviction; else I do sometimes ruralise in fancy. Some d-d people are come in, and I must finish abruptly. By d-d, I only mean deuced. 'Tis these suitors of Penelope that makes it necessary to authorise a little for gin and mutton, and such trifles. Excuse my abortive scribble. Yours, not in more haste than heart, C. L. Love and recollects to all the Wms., Doras, Marys round your Wrekin. Mary is capitally well. Do write to Sir G. B. for I am shyish of applying to him. TO BERNARD BARTON. LETTER CCLXV.] July 2, 1825. My dear B. B.-My nervous attack has so unfitted me that I have not courage to sit down to a letter. My poor pittance in the London you will see is drawn from my sickness. Your book is very acceptable to me, because most of it is new to me; but your book itself we cannot thank you for more sincerely than for the introduction you favoured us with to Anne Knight. Now cannot I write Mrs. Anne Knight for the life of me. She is a very pleas――, but I won't write all we have said of her so often to ourselves, because I suspect you would read it to her. Only give my sister's and my kindest remembrances to her, and how glad we are we can say that word. If ever she come to Southwark again, I count upon another pleasant Bridge walk with her. Tell her, I got home, time for a rubber; but poor Tryphena will not understand that phrase of the worldling. I am hardly able to appreciate your volume now: but I liked the dedication much, and the apology for your bald burying grounds. To Shelley; but that is not new. To the young Vesper-singer, Great Bealings, Playford, and what not. If there be a cavil, it is that the topics of religious consolation, however beautiful, are repeated till a sort of triteness attends them. It seems as if you were for ever losing friends' children by death, and reminding their parents of the Resurrection. Do children die so often, and so good, in your parts? The topic taken from the consideration that they are snatched away from possible vanities, seems hardly sound; for to an Omniscient eye their conditional failings must be one with their actual; but I am too unwell for theology. Such as I am, I am yours and A[nne] K[night's] truly, C. LAMB. LETTER CCLXVI.] We shall be soon again at Colebrook. August 10, 1825. Dear B. B.-You must excuse my not writing before, when I tell you we are on a visit at Enfield, where I do not feel it natural to sit down to a letter. It is at all times an exertion. I would rather talk with you and Anne Knight quietly at Colebrook Lodge, over the matter of your last. You mistake me when you express misgivings about my relishing a series of scriptural poems. I wrote confusedly. What I meant to say was, that one or two consolatory poems on deaths would have had a more condensed effect than many. Scriptural, devotional topics admit of infinite variety. So far from poetry tiring me because religious, I can read, and I say it seriously, the homely old version of the Psalms in our Prayer Books for an hour or two together sometimes without sense of weariness. I did not express myself clearly about what I think a false topic insisted on so frequently in consolatory addresses on the death of infants. I know something like it is in Scripture, but I think humanly spoken. It is a natural thought, a sweet fallacy to the survivors, but still a fallacy. If it stands on the doctrine of this being a probationary state, it is liable to this dilemma. Omniscience, to whom possibility must be clear as act, must know of the child, what it would hereafter turn out if good, then the topic is false to say it is secured from falling into future wilfulness, vice, etc. If bad, I do not see how its exemption from certain future overt acts, by being snatched away, at all tells in its favour. You stop the arm of a murderer, or arrest the finger of a pickpurse; but is not the guilt incurred as much by the intent as if never so much acted? Why children are hurried off, and old reprobates of a hundred left, whose trial humanly we may think was complete at fifty, is among the obscurities of Providence. The very notion of a state of probation has darkness in it. The All knower has no need of satisfying His eyes by seeing what we will do, when He knows before what we will do. Methinks we might be condemned before commission. In these things we grope and flounder, and if we can pick up a little human comfort that the child taken is snatched from vice (no great compliment to it, by the by), let us take it. And as to where an untried child goes, whether to join the assembly of its elders who have borne the heat of the day-fire-purified martyrs, and torment-sifted confessors-what know we! We promise heaven, methinks, too cheaply and assign large revenues to minors, incompetent to manage them. Epitaphs run upon this topic of consolation, till the very frequency induces a cheapness. Tickets for admission into Paradise are sculptured out at a penny a letter, twopence a syllable, etc. It is all a mystery; and the more I try to express my meaning (having none that is clear), the more I flounder. Finally, write what your own conscience, which to you is the unerring judge, seems best, and be careless about the whimsies of such a half-baked notionist as I am. We are here in a most pleasant country, full of walks, and idle to our hearts' desire. Taylor has dropt the London. It was indeed a dead weight. It has got in the Slough of Despond. I shuffle off my part of the pack, and stand like Christian with light and merry shoulders. It had got silly, indecorous, pert, and everything that is bad. Both our kind remembrances to Mrs. K. and yourself, and strangers'-greeting to Lucy (is it Lucy or Ruth?) that gathers wise sayings in a Book. C. LAMB. To ROBERT SOUTHEY. LETTER CCLXVII.] August 19, 1825. Dear Southey-You'll know who this letter comes from by opening slap-dash upon the text, as in the good |