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　　LETTER 182

　　CHARLES LAMB TO S.T. COLERIDGE

　　June 7th, 1809.

　　Dear Coleridge,—I congratulate you on the appearance of "The Friend." Your first number promises well, and I have no doubt the succeeding numbers will fulfil the promise. I had a kind letter from you some time since, which I have left unanswered. I am also obliged to you, I believe, for a review in the "Annual," am I not? The "Monthly Review" sneers at me, and asks "if 'Comus' is not good enough for Mr. Lamb?" because I have said no good serious dramas have been written since the death of Charles the First, except "Samson Agonistes"; so because they do not know, or won't remember, that "Comus" was written long before, I am to be set down as an undervaluer of Milton! O Coleridge, do kill those reviews, or they will kill us—kill all we like! Be a friend to all else, but their foe. I have been turned out of my chambers in the Temple by a landlord who wanted them for himself; but I have got other at No. 4, Inner Temple Lane, far more commodious and roomy. I have two rooms on third floor and five rooms above, with an inner staircase to myself, and all new painted, &c., and all for £30 a year! I came into them on Saturday week; and on Monday following, Mary was taken ill with fatigue of moving, and affected, I believe, by the novelty of the home; she could not sleep, and I am left alone with a maid quite a stranger to me, and she has a month or two's sad distraction to go through. What sad large pieces it cuts out of life—out of her life, who is getting rather old; and we may not have many years to live together! I am weaker, and bear it worse than I ever did. But I hope we shall be comfortable by and bye. The rooms are delicious, and the best look backwards into Hare Court, where there is a pump always going. Just now it is dry. Hare Court trees come in at the window, so that it's like living in a garden. I try to persuade myself it is much pleasanter than Mitre Court; but, alas! the household gods are slow to come in a new mansion. They are in their infancy to me; I do not feel them yet; no hearth has blazed to them yet. How I hate and dread new places!

　　I was very glad to see Wordsworth's book advertised; I am to have it to-morrow lent me, and if Wordsworth don't send me an order for one upon Longman, I will buy it. It is greatly extolled and liked by all who have seen it. Let me hear from some of you, for I am desolate. I shall have to send you, in a week or two, two volumes of Juvenile Poetry, done by Mary and me within the last six months, and that tale in prose which Wordsworth so much liked, which was published at Christmas, with nine others, by us, and has reached a second edition. There's for you! We have almost worked ourselves out of child's work, and I don't know what to do. Sometimes I think of a drama, but I have no head for play-making; I can do the dialogue, and that's all. I am quite aground for a plan, and I must do something for money. Not that I have immediate wants, but I have prospective ones. O money, money, how blindly thou hast been worshipped, and how stupidly abused! Thou art health, and liberty, and strength; and he that has thee may rattle his pockets at the foul fiend!

　　Nevertheless, do not understand by this that I have not quite enough for my occasions for a year or two to come. While I think on it, Coleridge, I fetch'd away my books which you had at the "Courier" Office, and found all but a third volume of the old plays, containing "The White Devil," "Green's Tu Quoque," and the "Honest Whore,"—perhaps the most valuable volume of them all—that I could not find. Pray, if you can, remember what you did with it, or where you took it out with you a walking perhaps; send me word; for, to use the old plea, it spoils a set. I found two other volumes (you had three), the "Arcadia," and "Daniel," enriched with manuscript notes. I wish every book I have were so noted. They have thoroughly converted me to relish Daniel, or to say I relish him, for, after all, I believe I did relish him. You well call him sober-minded. Your notes are excellent. Perhaps you've forgot them. I have read a review in the "Quarterly," by Southey, on the Missionaries, which is most masterly. I only grudge it being there. It is quite beautiful. Do remember my Dodsley; and pray do write; or let some of you write. Clarkson tells me you are in a smoky house. Have you cured it? It is hard to cure anything of smoking. Our little poems are but humble, but they have no name. You must read them, remembering they were task-work; and perhaps you will admire the number of subjects, all of children, picked out by an old Bachelor and an old Maid. Many parents would not have found so many. Have you read "Coelebs?" It has reached eight editions in so many weeks; yet literally it is one of the very poorest sort of common novels, with the draw-back of dull religion in it. Had the religion been high and flavoured, it would have been something. I borrowed this "Coelebs in Search of a Wife" of a very careful, neat lady, and returned it with this stuff written in the beginning:—

　　"If ever I marry a wife

　　I'd marry a landlord's daughter,

　　For then I may sit in the bar,

　　And drink cold brandy-and-water."

　　I don't expect you can find time from your "Friend" to write to me much, but write something, for there has been a long silence. You know Holcroft is dead. Godwin is well. He has written a very pretty, absurd book about sepulchres. He was affronted because I told him it was better than Hervey, but not so good as Sir T. Browne. This letter is all about books; but my head aches, and I hardly know what I write; but I could not let "The Friend" pass without a congratulatory epistle. I won't criticise till it comes to a volume. Tell me how I shall send my packet to you?—by what conveyance?—by Longman, Short-man, or how? Give my kindest remembrances to Wordsworth. Tell him he must give me a book. My kind love to Mrs. W. and to Dorothy separately and conjointly. I wish you could all come and see me in my new rooms. God bless you all.

　　C. L.

　　[The first number of The Friend was dated June 1, 1809.

　　Lamb's Dramatic Specimens had been reviewed in the Annual Review for 1808, with discrimination and approval (see Vol. IV. of my large edition), but whether or not by Coleridge I do not know.

　　Wordsworth's book was his pamphlet on the "Convention of Cintra."

　　The Juvenile Poetry was Poetry for Children. Entirely Original. By the

　　author of Mrs. Leicester's School. In two volumes, 1809. Mrs.

　　Leicester's School, 1809, had been published a little before.

　　Wordsworth's favourite tale was Arabella Hardy's "The Sea Voyage."

　　I know nothing of the annotated copy of Sidney's Arcadia. Daniel's

　　Poetical Works, 12mo, 1718, two volumes, with marginalia by Lamb and

　　Coleridge, is still preserved. The copy of Hannah More's Coelebs in

　　Search of a Wife, 1809, with Lamb's verses, is not, I think, now known.

　　Southey's missionary article was in the first number of the Quarterly,

　　February, 1809.

　　Hervey wrote Meditations among the Tombs; Sir Thomas Browne, Urn

　　Burial.

　　Here should come four letters from Lamb to Charles Lloyd, Senior. They are all printed in Charles Lamb and the Lloyds. The first, dated June 13, 1809, contains an interesting criticism of a translation of the twenty-fourth book of the Iliad, which Charles Lloyd, the father of Robert Lloyd, had made. Lamb says that what he misses, and misses also in Pope, is a savage-like plainness of speaking.

　　"The heroes in Homer are not half civilized—they utter all the cruel, all the selfish, all the mean thoughts even of their nature, which it is the fashion of our great men to keep in."

　　Mr. Lloyd had translated [Greek: aoidous] (line 720) "minstrels." Lamb says "minstrels I suspect to be a word bringing merely English or English ballad feelings to the Mind. It expresses the thing and something more, as to say Sarpedon was a Gentleman, or as somebody translated Paul's address, 'Ye men of Athens,' 'Gentlemen of Athens.'"

　　The second letter, dated June 19, 1809, continues the subject. Lamb writes: "I am glad to see you venture made and maid for rhymes. 'Tis true their sound is the same. But the mind occupied in revolving the different meaning of two words so literally the same, is diverted from the objection which the mere Ear would make, and to the mind it is rhyme enough."

　　In the third letter, dated July 31, 1809, Lamb remarks of translators of

　　Homer, that Cowper delays one as much, walking over a Bowling Green, as

　　Milton does, travelling over steep Alpine heights.

　　The fourth letter, undated, accompanies criticisms of Mr. Lloyd's translation of the Odyssey, Books 1 and 2, Mr. Lloyd had translated [Greek: Bous Helioio] (Book I, line 8) "Bullocks of the Sun." Lamb wrote: "OXEN of the Sun, I conjure. Bullocks is too Smithfield and sublunary a Word. Oxen of the Sun, or of Apollo, but in any case not Bullocks."

　　With a letter to Robert Lloyd, belonging to this year, Lamb sends Poetry for Children, and states that the poem "The Beggar Man" is by his brother, John Lamb.] The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 5