How I employed myself between Epping and Enfield, the poor verses in the front of my paper may inform you, which you may please to christen an Acrostic in a Cross Road," and which I wish were worthier of the lady they refer to; but I trust you will plead my pardon to her on a subject so delicate as a lady's good name. Your candour must acknowledge that they are written straight. And now, dear Madam, I have left myself hardly space to express my sense of the friendly reception I found at Fornham. Mr. Williams will tell you that we had the pleasure of a slight meeting with him on the road, where I could almost have told him, but that it seemed ungracious, that such had been your hospitality, that I scarcely missed the good master of the family at Fornham, though heartily I should have rejoiced to have made a little longer acquaintance with him. I will say nothing of our deeper obligations to both of you, because I think we agreed at Fornham that gratitude may be overexacted on the part of the obliging, and over-expressed on the part of the obliged person. My sister and Miss Isola join in respects to Mr. Williams and yourself. Miss Isola will have the pleasure of writing to you next week, and we shall hope at your leisure to hear of your own health, etc. I am, dear Madam, with great respect, your obliged CHARLES LAMB. LETTER CCCLXVI.] Enfield, Good Friday, 1830. Dear Madam-I do assure you that your verses gratified me very much, and my sister is quite proud of them. For the first time in my life I congratulated myself upon the shortness and meanness of my name. Had it been Schwartzenberg or Esterhazy, it would have put you to some puzzle. I am afraid I shall sicken you of acrostics, but this last was written to order. I beg you to have inserted in your county paper something like this advertisement: "To the nobility, gentry, and others, about Bury.-C. Lamb respectfully informs his friends and the public in general, that he is leaving off business in the acrostic line, as he is going into an entirely new line. Rebuses and Charades done as usual, and upon the old terms. Also, Epitaphs to suit the memory of any person deceased." I thought I had adroitly escaped the rather unpliable name of " Williams," curtailing your poor daughters to their proper surnames; but it seems you would not let me off so easily. If these trifles amuse you, I am paid. Though really 'tis an operation too much like-" A, applepie; B, bit it.” To make amends, I request leave to lend you the "Excursion," and to recommend, in particular, the "Churchyard Stories," in the seventh book, I think. They will strengthen the tone of your mind after its weak diet on acrostics. Miss Isola is writing, and will tell you that we are going on very comfortably. Her sister is just come. She blames my last verses, as being more written on Mr. Williams than on yourself; but how should I have parted whom a Superior Power has brought together? I beg you will jointly accept of our best respects, and pardon your obsequious if not troublesome correspondent, C. L. P.S.-I am the worst folder-up of a letter in the world, except certain Hottentots, in the land of Caffre, who never fold up their letters at all, writing very badly upon skins, etc. TO ROBERT SOUTHEY. LETTER CCCLXVII.] May 10, 1830. Dear Southey-My friend Hone, whom you would like for a friend, I found deeply impressed with your generous notice of him in your beautiful Life of Bunyan, which I am just now full of. He has written to you for leave to publish a certain good-natured letter. I write not this to enforce his request, for we are fully aware that the refusal of such publication would be quite consistent with all that is good in your character. Neither he nor I expect it from you, nor exact it; but if you would consent to it, you would oblige me by it, as well as him. He is just now in a critical situation : kind friends have opened a coffee-house for him in the City, but their means have not extended to the purchase of coffee-pots, credit for Reviews, newspapers, and other paraphernalia. So I am sitting in the skeleton of a possible divan. What right I have to interfere, you best know. Look on me as a dog who went once temporarily insane, and bit you, and now begs for a crust. Will you set your wits to a dog? Our object is to open a subscription, which my friends of the Times are most willing to forward for him, but think that a leave from you to publish would aid it. But not an atom of respect or kindness will or shall it abate in either of us if you decline it. Have this strongly in your mind. Those Every-Day and Table Books will be a treasure a hundred years hence, but they have failed to make Hone's fortune. Here his wife and all his children are about me, gaping for coffee customers; but how should they come in, seeing no pot boiling! Enough of Hone. I saw Coleridge a day or two since. He has had some severe attack, not paralytic; but if I had not heard of it I should not have found it out. He looks, and especially speaks, strong. How are all the Wordsworths and all the Southeys? whom I am obliged to you if you have not brought up haters of the name of C. LAMB. P.S.-I have gone lately into the acrostic line. I find genius (such as I had) declines with me, but I get clever. Do you know anybody that wants charades, or such things, for Albums? I do 'em at so much a sheet. Perhaps an epigram (not a very happy-gram) I did for a school-boy yesterday may amuse. I pray Jove he may not get a flogging for any false quantity; but 'tis, with one exception, the only Latin verses I have made for forty years; and I did it "to order." CUIQUE SUUM. Adsciscit sibi divitias et opes alienas Fur, rapiens, spolians quod mihi, quodque tibi, Dat resti collum; vestes, vah! carnifici dat; I write from Hone's; therefore Mary cannot send her love to Mrs. Southey, but I do. Yours ever, C. L. To MR. MOXON. LETTER CCCLXVIII.] May 12, 1830. Dear M.-I dined with your and my Rogers, at Mr. Cary's, yesterday. Cary consulted me on the proper bookseller to offer a lady's MS. novel to. I said I would write to you. But I wish you would call on the translator of Dante, at the British Museum, and talk with him. He is the pleasantest of clergymen. I told him of all Rogers's handsome behaviour to you, and you are already no stranger. Go! I made Rogers laugh about your Nightingale Sonnet, not having heard one. 'Tis a good sonnet, notwithstanding. You shall have the books shortly. C. L. To DR. ASBURY. LETTER CCCLXIX.] [May 1830.] Dear Sir-Some draughts and boluses have been brought here which we conjecture were meant for the young lady whom you saw this morning, though they are labelled for MISS ISOLA LAMB. No such person is known on the Chase Side, and she is fearful of taking medicines which may have been made up for another patient. She begs me to say that she was born an Isola and christened Emma. Moreover that she is Italian by birth, and that her ancestors were from Isola Bella (Fair Island) in the kingdom of Naples. She has never changed her name and rather mournfully adds that she has no prospect at present of doing so. She is literally I. SOLA, or single, at present. Therefore she begs that the obnoxious monosyllable may be omitted on future Phials, -an innocent syllable enough, you'll say, but she has no claim to it. It is the bitterest pill of the seven you have sent her. When a lady loses her good name, what is to become of her? Well she must swallow it as well as she can, but begs the dose may not be repeated. Yours faithfully, CHARLES LAMB (not Isola). To MR. NOVELLO. LETTER CCCLXX.] Friday, May 14, 1830. Dear Novello-Mary hopes you have not forgot you are to spend a day with us on Wednesday. That it may be a long one, cannot you secure places now for Mrs. Novello, yourself, and the Clarkes? We have just tableroom for four. Five make my good landlady fidgetty; six, to begin to fret; seven, to approximate to fever-point. But, seriously, we shall prefer four to two or three. We shall have from half-past ten to six, when the coach goes off, to scent the country. And pray write now, to say you do so come, for dear Mrs. Westwood else will be on the tenters of incertitude. C. L. Vincent Novello, Esq., 66, Great Queen Street, Lincoln's-Inn Fields. |