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　　LETTER 593

　　CHARLES LAMB TO SAMUEL ROGERS

　　[No date. Probably Saturday, December 21, 1833.]

　　My dear Sir,—Your book, by the unremitting punctuality of your publisher, has reached me thus early. I have not opened it, nor will till to-morrow, when I promise myself a thorough reading of it. "The Pleasures of Memory" was the first school present I made to Mrs. Moxon, it had those nice wood-cuts; and I believe she keeps it still. Believe me, that all the kindness you have shown to the husband of that excellent person seems done unto myself. I have tried my hand at a sonnet in "The Times." But the turn I gave it, though I hoped it would not displease you, I thought might not be equally agreeable to your artist. I met that dear old man at poor Henry's—with you—and again at Cary's—and it was sublime to see him sit deaf and enjoy all that was going on in mirth with the company. He reposed upon the many graceful, many fantastic images he had created; with them he dined and took wine.

　　I have ventured at an antagonist copy of verses in "The Athenaeum" to him, in which he is as everything and you as nothing. He is no lawyer who cannot take two sides. But I am jealous of the combination of the sister arts. Let them sparkle apart. What injury (short of the theatres) did not Boydell's "Shakespeare Gallery" do me with Shakespeare?—to have Opie's Shakespeare, Northcote's Shakespeare, light-headed Fuseli's Shakespeare, heavy-headed Romney's Shakespeare, wooden-headed West's Shakespeare (though he did the best in "Lear"), deaf-headed Reynolds's Shakespeare, instead of my, and everybody's Shakespeare. To be tied down to an authentic face of Juliet! To have Imogen's portrait! To confine the illimitable! I like you and Stothard (you best), but "out upon this half-faced fellowship." Sir, when I have read the book I may trouble you, through Moxon, with some faint criticisms. It is not the flatteringest compliment, in a letter to an author, to say you have not read his book yet. But the devil of a reader he must be who prances through it in five minutes, and no longer have I received the parcel. It was a little tantalizing to me to receive a letter from Landor, Gebir Landor, from Florence, to say he was just sitting down to read my "Elia," just received, but the letter was to go out before the reading. There are calamities in authorship which only authors know. I am going to call on Moxon on Monday, if the throng of carriages in Dover Street on the morn of publication do not barricade me out.

　　With many thanks, and most respectful remembrances to your sister,

　　Yours,

　　C. LAMB.

　　Have you seen Coleridge's happy exemplification in English of the Ovidian elegiac metre?—

　　In the Hexameter rises the fountain's silvery current,

　　In the Pentameter aye falling in melody down.

　　My sister is papering up the book—careful soul!

　　[Moxon published a superb edition of Rogers' Poems illustrated by Turner and Stothard. Lamb had received an advance copy. The sonnet to Rogers in The Times was printed on December 13, 1833. It ran thus:—

　　TO SAMUEL ROGERS, ESQ., ON THE NEW EDITION OF HIS "PLEASURES OF MEMORY"

　　When thy gay book hath paid its proud devoirs,

　　Poetic friend, and fed with luxury

　　The eye of pampered aristocracy

　　In glittering drawing-rooms and gilt boudoirs,

　　O'erlaid with comments of pictorial art,

　　However rich and rare, yet nothing leaving

　　Of healthful action to the soul-conceiving

　　Of the true reader—yet a nobler part

　　Awaits thy work, already classic styled.

　　Cheap-clad, accessible, in homeliest show

　　The modest beauty through the land shall go

　　From year to year, and render life more mild;

　　Refinement to the poor man's hearth shall give,

　　And in the moral heart of England live.

　　C. LAMB.

　　Thomas Stothard, then in his seventy-ninth year, Lamb had met at Henry Rogers', who had died at Christmas, 1832. The following was the copy of verses printed in The Athenaeum, December 21, 1833 ("that most romantic tale" was Peter Wilkins):—

　　TO T. STOTHARD, ESQ.

　　On his Illustrations of the Poems of Mr. Rogers

　　Consummate Artist, whose undying name

　　With classic Rogers shall go down to fame,

　　Be this thy crowning work! In my young days

　　How often have I with a child's fond gaze

　　Pored on the pictured wonders thou hadst done:

　　Clarissa mournful, and prim Grandison!

　　All Fielding's, Smollett's heroes, rose to view;

　　I saw, and I believed the phantoms true.

　　But, above all, that most romantic tale

　　Did o'er my raw credulity prevail,

　　Where Glums and Gawries wear mysterious things,

　　That serve at once for jackets and for wings.

　　Age, that enfeebles other men's designs,

　　But heightens thine, and thy free draught refines.

　　In several ways distinct you make us feel—

　　Graceful as Raphael, as Watteau genteel.

　　Your lights and shades, as Titianesque, we praise;

　　And warmly wish you Titian's length of days.

　　"Short of the theatres." The injury done by the theatres is of course the subject of Lamb's Reflector essay on Shakespeare's Tragedies (see Vol. I.).

　　"Boydell's 'Shakespeare Gallery'"—the series of 170 illustrations to Shakespeare by leading artists of the day projected by Alderman Boydell in 1786.

　　"Coleridge's… exemplification." Lamb "ed incorrectly. The lines had just appeared in Friendship's Offering for 1834:—

　　In the hexameter rises the fountain's silvery column;

　　In the pentameter aye falling in melody back.

　　Coleridge took the lines from Schiller.

　　At Dr. Williams' Library is a note from Thos. Robinson to Crabb Robinson, dated December 22, 1833, concerning Lamb's Christmas turkey, which went first to Crabb Robinson at the Temple and was then sent on to Lamb, presumably with the note in the hamper. Lamb adds at the foot of the note:—

　　"The parcel coming thro' you, I open'd this note, but find no treason in it.

　　With thanks

　　C. LAMB."

　　I give here three other notes to Dilke, belonging probably to the early days of 1834. The first refers to the proof of one of Lamb's contributions to The Athenaeum.] The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 6