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　　LETTER 311

　　CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON

　　[P.M. February 17, 1823.]

　　My dear Sir—I have read quite through the ponderous folio of G.F. I think Sewell has been judicious in omitting certain parts, as for instance where G.F. has revealed to him the natures of all the creatures in their names, as Adam had. He luckily turns aside from that compendious study of natural history, which might have superseded Buffon, to his proper spiritual pursuits, only just hinting what a philosopher he might have been. The ominous passage is near the beginning of the Book. It is clear he means a physical knowledge, without trope or figure. Also, pretences to miraculous healing and the like are more frequent than I should have suspected from the epitome in Sewell. He is nevertheless a great spiritual man, and I feel very much obliged by your procuring me the Loan of it. How I like the Quaker phrases—though I think they were hardly completed till Woolman. A pretty little manual of Quaker language (with an endeavour to explain them) might be gathered out of his Book. Could not you do it? I have read through G.F. without finding any explanation of the term first volume in the title page. It takes in all, both his life and his death. Are there more Last words of him? Pray, how may I venture to return it to Mr. Shewell at Ipswich? I fear to send such a Treasure by a Stage Coach. Not that I am afraid of the Coachman or the Guard reading it. But it might be lost. Can you put me in a way of sending it in safety? The kind hearted owner trusted it to me for six months. I think I was about as many days in getting through it, and I do not think that I skipt a word of it. I have "ed G.F. in my Quaker's meeting, as having said he was "lifted up in spirit" (which I felt at the time to be not a Quaker phrase), "and the Judge and Jury were as dead men under his feet." I find no such words in his Journal, and I did not get them from Sewell, and the latter sentence I am sure I did not mean to invent. I must have put some other Quaker's words into his mouth. Is it a fatality in me, that every thing I touch turns into a Lye? I once "ed two Lines from a translation of Dante, which Hazlitt very greatly admired, and "ed in a Book as proof of the stupendous power of that poet, but no such lines are to be found in the translation, which has been searched for the purpose. I must have dreamed them, for I am quite certain I did not forge them knowingly. What a misfortune to have a Lying memory.—Yes, I have seen Miss Coleridge, and wish I had just such a—daughter. God love her—to think that she should have had to toil thro' five octavos of that cursed (I forget I write to a Quaker) Abbeypony History, and then to abridge them to 3, and all for £113. At her years, to be doing stupid Jesuits' Latin into English, when she should be reading or writing Romances. Heaven send her Uncle do not breed her up a Quarterly Reviewer!—which reminds me, that he has spoken very respectfully of you in the last number, which is the next thing to having a Review all to one's self. Your description of Mr. Mitford's place makes me long for a pippin and some carraways and a cup of sack in his orchard, when the sweets of the night come in.

　　Farewell.

　　C. LAMB.

　　[In the 1694 folio of George Fox's Journal the revelation of the names of creatures occurs twice, once under Notts in 1647 and again under Mansfield in 1648.

　　"Sewell." The History of the Rise, Increase and Progress of the Christian People called Quakers, 1722. By William Sewell (1654-1720).

　　"In my Quaker's meeting"—the Elia essay (see Vol. II.).

　　"I once "ed two Lines." Possibly, Mr. A.R. Waller suggests to me, the lines:—

　　Because on earth their names

　　In Fame's eternal volume shine for aye,

　　"ed by Hazlitt in his Round Table essay "On Posthumous Fame," and again in one of his Edinburgh Review articles. They are presumably based upon the Inferno, Canto IV. (see Haselfoot's translation, second edition, 1899, page 21, lines 74-78). But the "manufacturer" of them must have had Spenser's line in his mind, "On Fame's eternall bead-roll worthie to be fyled" (Faerie Queene, Bk. IV., Canto II., Stanza 32). They have not yet been found in any translation of Dante. This explanation would satisfy Lamb's words ""ed in a book," i.e., The Round Table, published in 1817.

　　"Miss Coleridge"—Coleridge's daughter Sara, born in 1802, who had been brought up by her uncle, Southey. She had translated Martin Dobrizhoffer's Latin history of the Abipones in order to gain funds for her brother Derwent's college expenses. Her father considered the translation "unsurpassed for pure mother English by anything I have read for a long time." Sara Coleridge married her cousin, Henry Nelson Coleridge, in 1829. She edited her father's works and died in 1852. At the present time she and her mother were visiting the Gillmans.

　　Mr. Mitford was John Mitford (1781-1859), rector of Benhall, in Suffolk, and editor of old poets. Later he became editor of the Gentleman's Magazine. He was a cousin of Mary Russell Mitford. In the Gentleman's Magazine for May, 1838, is a review of Talfourd's edition of Lamb's Letters, probably from his pen, in which he records a visit to the Lambs in 1827.] The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 6