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　　LETTER 605

　　CHARLES LAMB TO J. FULLER RUSSELL

　　[Summer, 1834.]

　　M'r Lamb's compt's and shall be happy to look over the lines as soon as ever Mr. Russell shall send them. He is at Mr. Walden's, Church, not Bury—St, Edm'd.

　　Line 10. "Ween," and "wist," and "wot," and "eke" are antiquated frippery, and unmodernize a poem rather than give it an antique air, as some strong old words may do. "I guess," "I know," "I knew," are quite as significant.

　　31. Why "ee"—barbarous Scoticism!—when "eye" is much better and chimes to "cavalry"? A sprinkling of dis-used words where all the style else is after the approved recent fashion teases and puzzles.

　　37. [Anon the storm begins to slake, The sullen clouds to melt away, The moon becalmed in a blue lake Looks down with melancholy ray.]

　　The moon becalmed in a blue lake would be more apt to look up. I see my error—the sky is the lake—and beg you to laugh at it.

　　59. What is a maiden's "een," south of the Tweed? You may as well call her prettily turned ears her "lugs."

　　"On the maiden's lugs they fall" (verse 79).

　　144. "A coy young Miss" will never do. For though you are presumed to be a modern, writing only of days of old, yet you should not write a word purely unintelligible to your heroine. Some understanding should be kept up between you. "Miss" is a nickname not two centuries old; came in at about the Restoration. The "King's Misses" is the oldest use of it I can remember. It is Mistress Anne Page, not Miss Page. Modern names and usages should be kept out of sight in an old subject. W. Scott was sadly faulty in this respect.

　　208. [Tear of sympathy.] Pity's sacred dew. Sympathy is a young lady's word, rife in modern novels, and is almost always wrongly applied. To sympathize is to feel—with, not simply for another. I write verses and sympathize with you. You have the tooth ache, I have not; I feel for you, I cannot sympathize.

　　243. What is "sheen"? Has it more significance than "bright"? Richmond in its old name was Shene. Would you call an omnibus to take you to Shene? How the "all's right" man would stare!

　　363. [The violet nestled in the shade,

　　Which fills with perfume all the glade,

　　Yet bashful as a timid maid

　　Thinks to elude the searching eye

　　Of every stranger passing by,

　　Might well compare with Emily.]

　　A strangely involved simile. The maiden is likend [sic] to a violet which has been just before likened to a maid. Yet it reads prettily, and I would not have it alter'd.

　　420. "Een" come again? In line 407 you speak it out "eye," bravely like an Englishman.

　　468. Sorceresses do not entice by wrinkles, but, being essentially aged, appear in assumed beauty.

　　[This communication and that which follows (with trifling omissions) were sent to Notes and Queries by the late Mr. J. Fuller Russell, F.S.A., with this explanation: "I was residing at Enfield in the Cambridge Long Vacation, 1834, and—perhaps to the neglect of more improving pursuits—composed a metrical novel, named 'Emily de Wilton,' in three parts. When the first of them was completed, I ventured to introduce myself to Charles Lamb (who was living at Edmonton at the time), and telling him what I had done, and that I had 'scarcely heart to proceed until I had obtained the opinion of a competent judge respecting my verses,' I asked him to 'while away an idle hour in their perusal,' adding, 'I fear you will think me very rude and very intrusive, but I am one of the most nervous souls in Christendom.' Moved, possibly, by this diffident (not to say unusual) confession, Elia speedily gave his consent."

　　The poem was never printed. Lamb's pains in this matter serve to show how kindly disposed he was in these later years to all young men; and how exact a sense of words he had.

　　In the British Museum is preserved a sheet of similar comments made by Lamb upon a manuscript of P.G. Patmore's, from which I have "ed a few passages above. In Charles Lamb and the Lloyds will also be found a number of interesting criticisms on a translation of Homer.] The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 6