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　　LETTER 290

　　CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON

　　India House, 11 Sept. 1822.

　　Dear Sir—You have misapprehended me sadly, if you suppose that I meant to impute any inconsistency (in your writing poetry) with your religious profession. I do not remember what I said, but it was spoken sportively, I am sure. One of my levities, which you are not so used to as my older friends. I probably was thinking of the light in which your so indulging yourself would appear to Quakers, and put their objection in my own foolish mouth. I would eat my words (provided they should be written on not very coarse paper) rather than I would throw cold water upon your, and my once, harmless occupation. I have read Napoleon and the rest with delight. I like them for what they are, and for what they are not. I have sickened on the modern rhodomontade & Byronism, and your plain Quakerish Beauty has captivated me. It is all wholesome cates, aye, and toothsome too, and withal Quakerish. If I were George Fox, and George Fox Licenser of the Press, they should have my absolute IMPRIMATUR. I hope I have removed the impression.

　　I am, like you, a prisoner to the desk. I have been chained to that gally thirty years, a long shot. I have almost grown to the wood. If no imaginative poet, I am sure I am a figurative one. Do "Friends" allow puns? verbal equivocations?—they are unjustly accused of it, and I did my little best in the "imperfect Sympathies" to vindicate them.

　　I am very tired of clerking it, but have no remedy. Did you see a sonnet to this purpose in the Examiner?—

　　"Who first invented Work—and tied the free

　　And holy-day rejoycing spirit down

　　To the ever-haunting importunity

　　Of business, in the green fields, and the town—

　　To plough—loom—anvil—spade—&, oh, most sad,

　　To this dry drudgery of the desk's dead wood?

　　Who but the Being Unblest, alien from good,

　　Sabbathless Satan! he who his unglad

　　Task ever plies 'mid rotatory burnings,

　　That round and round incalculably reel—

　　For wrath Divine hath made him like a wheel—

　　In that red realm from whence are no returnings;

　　Where toiling and turmoiling ever and aye

　　He, and his Thoughts, keep pensive worky-day."

　　C.L.

　　I fancy the sentiment exprest above will be nearly your own, the expression of it probably would not so well suit with a follower of John Woolman. But I do not know whether diabolism is a part of your creed, or where indeed to find an exposition of your creed at all. In feelings and matters not dogmatical, I hope I am half a Quaker. Believe me, with great respect, yours

　　C. LAMB.

　　I shall always be happy to see, or hear from you.—

　　[This is the first of the letters to Bernard Barton (1784-1849), a clerk in a bank at Woodbridge, in Suffolk, who was known as the Quaker poet. Lamb had met him at a London Magazine dinner at 13 Waterloo Place, and had apparently said something about Quakers and poetry which Barton, on thinking it over, had taken too seriously. Bernard Barton was already the author of four volumes of poetry, of which Napoleon and other Poems was the latest, published in 1822. Lamb's essay on "Imperfect Sympathies" had been printed in the London Magazine for August, 1821. For John Woolman, see note on page 93. The sonnet "Work" had been printed in the Examiner, August 29, 1819.] The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 6