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　　LETTER 45

　　CHARLES LAMB TO ROBERT SOUTHEY

　　March 2Oth, 1799.

　　I am hugely pleased with your "Spider," "your old freemason," as you call him. The three first stanzas are delicious; they seem to me a compound of Burns and Old Quarles, those kind of home-strokes, where more is felt than strikes the ear; a terseness, a jocular pathos, which makes one feel in laughter. The measure, too, is novel and pleasing. I could almost wonder Rob. Burns in his lifetime never stumbled upon it. The fourth stanza is less striking, as being less original. The fifth falls off. It has no felicity of phrase, no old-fashioned phrase or feeling.

　　"Young hopes, and love's delightful dreams,"

　　savour neither of Burns nor Quarles; they seem more like shreds of many a modern sentimental sonnet. The last stanza hath nothing striking in it, if I except the two concluding lines, which are Burns all over. I wish, if you concur with me, these things could be looked to. I am sure this is a kind of writing, which comes tenfold better recommended to the heart, comes there more like a neighbour or familiar, than thousands of Hamuels and Zillahs and Madelons. I beg you will send me the "Holly-tree," if it at all resemble this, for it must please me. I have never seen it. I love this sort of poems, that open a new intercourse with the most despised of the animal and insect race. I think this vein may be further opened; Peter Pindar hath very prettily 'trophised a fly; Burns hath his mouse and his louse; Coleridge, less successfully, hath made overtures of intimacy to a jackass, therein only following at unresembling distance Sterne and greater Cervantes. Besides these, I know of no other examples of breaking down the partition between us and our "poor earth-born companions." It is sometimes revolting to be put in a track of feeling by other people, not one's own immediate thoughts, else I would persuade you, if I could (I am in earnest), to commence a series of these animal poems, which might have a tendency to rescue some poor creatures from the antipathy of mankind. Some thoughts come across me;—for instance—to a rat, to a toad, to a cockchafer, to a mole—People bake moles alive by a slow oven-fire to cure consumption. Rats are, indeed, the most despised and contemptible parts of God's earth. I killed a rat the other day by punching him to pieces, and feel a weight of blood upon me to this hour. Toads you know are made to fly, and tumble down and crush all to pieces. Cockchafers are old sport; then again to a worm, with an 'trophe to anglers, those patient tyrants, meek inflictors of pangs intolerable, cool devils; to an owl; to all snakes, with an apology for their poison; to a cat in boots or bladders. Your own fancy, if it takes a fancy to these hints, will suggest many more. A series of such poems, suppose them accompanied with plates descriptive of animal torments, cooks roasting lobsters, fishmongers crimping skates, &c., &c., would take excessively. I will willingly enter into a partnership in the plan with you: I think my heart and soul would go with it too—at least, give it a thought. My plan is but this minute come into my head; but it strikes me instantaneously as something new, good and useful, full of pleasure and full of moral. If old Quarles and Wither could live again, we would invite them into our firm. Burns hath done his part. I the other day threw off an extempore epitaph on Ensign Peacock of the 3rd Regt. of the Royal East India Volunteers, who like other boys in this scarlet tainted age was ambitious of playing at soldiers, but dying in the first flash of his valour was at the particular instance of his relations buried with military honours! like any veteran scarr'd or chopt from Blenheim or Ramilies. (He was buried in sash and gorget.)

　　MARMOR LOQUITUR

　　He lies a Volunteer so fine,

　　Who died of a decline,

　　As you or I, may do one day;

　　Reader, think of this, I pray;

　　And I numbly hope you'll drop a tear

　　For my poor Royal Volunteer.

　　He was as brave as brave could be,

　　Nobody was so brave as he;

　　He would have died in Honor's bed,

　　Only he died at home instead.

　　Well may the Royal Regiment swear,

　　They never had such a Volunteer.

　　But whatsoever they may say,

　　Death is a man that will have his way:

　　Tho' he was but an ensign in this world of pain;

　　In the next we hope he'll be a captain.

　　And without meaning to make any reflection on his mentals,

　　He begg'd to be buried in regimentals.

　　Sed hæ sunt lamentabilis nugæ—But 'tis as good as some epitaphs you and

　　I have read together in Christ-Church-yard.

　　Poor Sam. Le Grice! I am afraid the world, and the camp, and the university, have spoilt him among them. 'Tis certain he had at one time a strong capacity of turning out something better. I knew him, and that not long since, when he had a most warm heart. I am ashamed of the indifference I have sometimes felt towards him. I think the devil is in one's heart. I am under obligations to that man for the warmest friendship and heartiest sympathy, even for an agony of sympathy exprest both by word and deed, and tears for me, when I was in my greatest distress. But I have forgot that! as, I fear, he has nigh forgot the awful scenes which were before his eyes when he served the office of a comforter to me. No service was too mean or troublesome for him to perform. I can't think what but the devil, "that old spider," could have suck'd my heart so dry of its sense of all gratitude. If he does come in your way, Southey, fail not to tell him that I retain a most affectionate remembrance of his old friendliness, and an earnest wish to resume our intercourse. In this I am serious. I cannot recommend him to your society, because I am afraid whether he be quite worthy of it. But I have no right to dismiss him from my regard. He was at one time, and in the worst of times, my own familiar friend, and great comfort to me then. I have known him to play at cards with my father, meal-times excepted, literally all day long, in long days too, to save me from being teased by the old man, when I was not able to bear it.

　　God bless him for it, and God bless you, Southey.

　　C. L.

　　[Peter Pindar (Dr. John Wolcot) has an ode "To a Fly, taken out of a

　　Bowl of Punch." He also wrote "The Lousiad."

　　"Poor earth-born companions." From Burns' "Lines to a Mouse," 2nd

　　Stanza, line 5.

　　"Toads are made to fly." Filliping the toad was an old pastime. A toad was placed on one end of a piece of wood, laid crosswise over a stone. The other end was struck with a beetle (i.e., a mallet), and the toad flew into the air. Falstaff says: "Fillip me with a three-man beetle." As to worms and fishermen, the late Mrs. Coe, who as a girl had known Lamb at Widford, told me that he could rarely, if ever, be tempted to join the anglers. Affixing the worm was too much for him. "Barbarous, barbarous," he used to say.

　　Lamb's project for a series of animal poems has to some extent been carried out by a living poet, Mr. A. C. Benson. Neither Lamb nor Southey pursued it.

　　We met Sam Le Grice in the letter of October 3, 1796. To what escapade Lamb refers I do not know, but he was addicted to folly. It was Sam Le Grice of whom Leigh Hunt in his Autobiography tells the excellent tale that he excused himself to his master for not having performed a task, by the remark that he had had a "lethargy."

　　In April of this year died John Lamb, the father. Charles Lamb probably at once moved from 45 Chapel Street to No. 36, where Mary Lamb joined him.

　　Between this and the next letter should probably come a letter from Lamb to Robert Lloyd, not available for this edition. It seems to follow upon Robert Lloyd's departure from Lamb's house, and remarks that Lamb knows but one being that he could ever consent to live perpetually with, and that is Robert—but Robert must go whither prudence and paternal regulations dictate. Lamb also refers to a poem of an intimate character by Charles Lloyd in the Annual Anthology ("Lines to a Brother and Sister"), remarking that, in his opinion, these domestic addresses should not always be made public. There is also a reference to Charles Lloyd's novel, which Lamb says he wants to read if he may be permitted a sight of it. This would be Isabel.] The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 5