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　　LETTER 235

　　CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM AYRTON EPISTLE TO WILL'M. AYRTON ESQ'RE.

　　Temple, May 12, 1817.

　　My dear friend,

　　Before I end,—

　　Have you any

　　More orders for Don Giovanni

　　To give

　　Him that doth live

　　Your faithful Zany?

　　Without raillery

　　I mean Gallery

　　Ones:

　　For I am a person that shuns

　　All ostentation

　　And being at the top of the fashion;

　　And seldom go to operas

　　But in formâ pauperis.

　　I go to the play

　　In a very economical sort of a way,

　　Rather to see

　　Than be seen.

　　Though I'm no ill sight

　　Neither,

　　By candle-light,

　　And in some kinds of weather.

　　You might pit me

　　For height

　　Against Kean;

　　But in a grand tragic scene

　　I'm nothing:—

　　It would create a kind of loathing

　　To see me act Hamlet;

　　There'd be many a damn let

　　Fly

　　At my presumption

　　If I should try,

　　Being a fellow of no gumption.

　　By the way, tell me candidly how you relish

　　This, which they call

　　The lapidary style?

　　Opinions vary.

　　The late Mr. Mellish

　　Could never abide it.

　　He thought it vile,

　　And coxcombical.

　　My friend the Poet Laureat,

　　Who is a great lawyer at

　　Anything comical,

　　Was the first who tried it;

　　But Mellish could never abide it.

　　But it signifies very little what Mellish said,

　　Because he is dead.

　　For who can confute

　　A body that's mute?—

　　Or who would fight

　　With a senseless sprite?—

　　Or think of troubling

　　An impenetrable old goblin

　　That's dead and gone,

　　And stiff as stone,

　　To convince him with arguments pro and con,

　　As if some live logician,

　　Bred up at Merton,

　　Or Mr. Hazlitt, the Metaphysician—

　　Hey, Mr. Ayrton!

　　With all your rare tone.

　　For tell me how should an apparition

　　List to your call,

　　Though you talk'd for ever,—

　　Ever so clever,

　　When his ear itself,

　　By which he must hear, or not hear at all,

　　Is laid on the shelf?

　　Or put the case

　　(For more grace)

　　It were a female spectre—

　　Now could you expect her

　　To take much gust

　　In long speeches,

　　With her tongue as dry as dust,

　　In a sandy place,

　　Where no peaches,

　　Nor lemons, nor limes, nor oranges hang,

　　To drop on the drought of an arid harangue,

　　Or quench,

　　With their sweet drench,

　　The fiery pangs which the worms inflict,

　　With their endless nibblings,

　　Like quibblings,

　　Which the corpse may dislike, but can ne'er contradict—

　　Hey, Mr. Ayrton?

　　With all your rare tone—

　　I am.

　　C. LAMB.

　　[The text is from Ayrton's transcript in a private volume lately in the possession of Mr. Edward Ayrton, lettered Lamb's Works, Vol. III., uniform with the 1818 edition.

　　William Ayrton (1777-1858), a friend and neighbour of the Burneys, and a member of Lamb's whist-playing set, was a musical critic, and at this time director of the King's Theatre in the Haymarket, where he had just produced Mozart's "Don Giovanni." His wife was Marianne Arnold, sister of Samuel James Arnold, manager of the Lyceum Theatre.

　　"You might pit me for height against Kean." This was so. Edmund Kean was small in stature, though not so "immaterially" built as Lamb is said to have been.

　　"Mr. Mellish." Possibly the Joseph Charles Mellish who translated

　　Schiller.

　　The Laureate, Southey, had first tried the lapidary style in "Gooseberry

　　Pie"; later, without rhymes, in "Thalaba."

　　Some time in the intervening three months before the next letter the

　　Lambs went to Brighton for their holiday.] The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 5