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　　LETTER 220

　　CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

　　[P.M. August 9, 1815.] 9th Aug. 1815.

　　Dear Wordsworth, We acknowlege with pride the receit of both your hand writings, and desire to be ever had in kindly remembrance by you both and by Dorothy. Miss Hutchinson has just transmitted us a letter containing, among other chearful matter, the annunciation of a child born. Nothing of consequence has turned up in our parts since your departure. Mary and I felt quite queer after your taking leave (you W. W.) of us in St. Giles's. We wishd we had seen more of you, but felt we had scarce been sufficiently acknowleging for the share we had enjoyed of your company. We felt as if we had been not enough expressive of our pleasure. But our manners both are a little too much on this side of too-much-cordiality. We want presence of mind and presence of heart. What we feel comes too late, like an after thought impromptu. But perhaps you observed nothing of that which we have been painfully conscious of, and are, every day, in our intercourse with those we stand affected to through all the degrees of love. Robinson is on the Circuit. Our Panegyrist I thought had forgotten one of the objects of his youthful admiration, but I was agreeably removed from that scruple by the laundress knocking at my door this morning almost before I was up, with a present of fruit from my young friend, &c.—There is something inexpressibly pleasant to me in these presents. Be it fruit, or fowl, or brawn, or what not. Books are a legitimate cause of acceptance. If presents be not the soul of friendship, undoubtedly they are the most spiritual part of the body of that intercourse. There is too much narrowness of thinking in this point. The punctilio of acceptance methinks is too confined and straitlaced. I could be content to receive money, or clothes, or a joint of meat from a friend; why should he not send me a dinner as well as a dessert? I would taste him in the beasts of the field, and thro' all creation. Therefore did the basket of fruit of the juvenile Talfourd not displease me. Not that I have any thoughts of bartering or reciprocating these things. To send him any thing in return would be to reflect suspicion of mercenariness upon what I know he meant a freewill offering. Let him overcome me in bounty. In this strife a generous nature loves to be overcome. Alsager (whom you call Alsinger—and indeed he is rather singer than sager, no reflection upon his naturals neither) is well and in harmony with himself and the world. I don't know how he and those of his constitution keep their nerves so nicely balanced as they do. Or have they any? or are they made of packthread? He is proof against weather, ingratitude, meat under done, every weapon of fate. I have just now a jagged end of a tooth pricking against my tongue, which meets it half way in a wantonness of provocation, and there they go at it, the tongue pricking itself like the viper against the file, and the tooth galling all the gum inside and out to torture, tongue and tooth, tooth and tongue, hard at it, and I to pay the reckoning, till all my mouth is as hot as brimstone, and I'd venture the roof of my mouth that at this moment, at which I conjecture my full-happinessed friend is picking his crackers, not one of the double rows of ivory in his privileged mouth has as much as a flaw in it, but all perform their functions, and having performed it, expect to be picked (luxurious steeds!) and rubbed down. I don't think he could be robbed, or could have his house set on fire, or ever want money. I have heard him express a similar opinion of his own impassibility. I keep acting here Heautontimorumenos. M. Burney has been to Calais and has come home a travelld Monsieur. He speaks nothing but the Gallic Idiom. Field is on circuit. So now I believe I have given account of most that you saw at our Cabin. Have you seen a curious letter in Morn. Chron., by C. Ll., the genius of absurdity, respecting Bonaparte's suing out his Habeas Corpus. That man is his own moon.

　　He has no need of ascending into that gentle planet for mild influences. You wish me some of your leisure. I have a glimmering aspect, a chink-light of liberty before me, which I pray God may prove not fallacious. My remonstrances have stirred up others to remonstrate, and altogether, there is a plan for separating certain parts of business from our department, which if it take place will produce me more time, i.e. my evenings free. It may be a means of placing me in a more conspicuous situation which will knock at my nerves another way, but I wait the issue in submission. If I can but begin my own day at 4 o Clock in the afternoon, I shall think myself to have Eden days of peace and liberty to what I have had. As you say, how a man can fill 3 volumes up with an Essay on the Drama is wonderful. I am sure a very few sheets would hold all I had to say on the subject, and yet I dare say —— as Von Slagel. Did you ever read Charron on Wisdom? or Patrick's Pilgrim? if neither, you have two great pleasures to come. I mean some day to attack Caryl on Job, six Folios. What any man can write, surely I may read. If I do but get rid of auditing Warehousekeepers Acc'ts. and get no worse-harassing task in the place of it, what a Lord of Liberty I shall be. I shall dance and skip and make mouths at the invisible event, and pick the thorns out of my pillow and throw 'em at rich men's night caps, and talk blank verse, hoity toity, and sing "A Clerk I was in London Gay," ban, ban, CaCaliban, like the emancipated monster, and go where I like, up this street or down that ally. Adieu, and pray that it may be my luck. Good be to you all.

　　C. LAMB.

　　["A child born." This was George Hutchinson, Mrs. Wordsworth's nephew.

　　"Our Panegyrist"—Thomas Noon Talfourd. This is Lamb's first mention of his future biographer. Talfourd was then just twenty, had published some poems, and was reading law with Chitty, the special pleader. He had met Lamb at the beginning of 1815 through William Evans, owner of The Pamphleteer, had scoured London for a copy of Rosamund Gray, and had written of Lamb in The Pamphleteer as one of the chief of living poets. He then became an ardent supporter of Wordsworth, his principal criticism of whom was written later for the New Monthly Magazine.

　　"If presents be not the soul of friendship." Lamb's "Thoughts on Presents of Game," written many years later for The Athenaeum, carries on this theme (see Vol. I.).

　　"Alsager." Thomas Massa Alsager, a friend of Crabb Robinson, and through him of Lamb, was a strange blend of the financial and the musical critic. He controlled the departments of Money and Music for The Times for many years.

　　"Field"—Barron Field (see note later).

　　"C. Ll."—Capell Lofft (see note on page 475). He wrote to the Morning Chronicle for August 2 and 3, 1815, as Lamb says. The gist of his argument was in this sentence:—

　　[7th para.] Bonaparte with the concurrence of the Admiralty, is within the limits of British local allegiance. He is a temporary, considered as private, though not a natural born subject, and as such within the limits of 31 Car. II. the Habeas Corpus Act, [etc.].

　　On August 10 he wrote again, "ing the lines from "The Tempest":—

　　The nobler action is,

　　In virtue than in vengeance:—He being here

　　The sole drift of our purpose, wrath here ends;

　　Not a frown further.

　　"An Essay on the Drama." This cryptic passage refers, I imagine, to a

　　translation by John Black, afterwards the editor of the Morning

　　Chronicle, of August Von Schlegel's Lectures on Dramatic Art and

　　Literature, 2 vols., 1815. Does Lamb mean

　　"And yet, I dare say, I know as much as Von Slagel did"?

　　"Charron on Wisdom" and "Patrick's Pilgrim." Pierre Charron's De la Sagesse, and Bishop Patrick's Parable of the Pilgrim, 1664, a curious independent anticipation of Bunyan. Lamb had written of both these books in a little essay contributed in 1813 to The Examiner, entitled "Books with One Idea in them" (see Vol. I.).

　　"A Clerk I was in London Gay." A song sung in Colman's "Inkle and

　　Yarico," which Lamb actually did use as a motto for his Elia essay

　　"The Superannuated Man," dealing with his emancipation, ten years

　　later.] The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 5