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　　LETTER 449

　　CHARLES LAMB TO CHARLES COWDEN CLARKE

　　Enfield, 25 Feb. [1828].

　　My dear Clarke,—You have been accumulating on me such a heap of pleasant obligations that I feel uneasy in writing as to a Benefactor. Your smaller contributions, the little weekly rills, are refreshments in the Desart, but your large books were feasts. I hope Mrs. Hazlitt, to whom I encharged it, has taken Hunt's Lord B. to the Novellos. His picture of Literary Lordship is as pleasant as a disagreeable subject can be made, his own poor man's Education at dear Christ's is as good and hearty as the subject. Hazlitt's speculative episodes are capital; I skip the Battles. But how did I deserve to have the Book? The Companion has too much of Madam Pasta. Theatricals have ceased to be popular attractions. His walk home after the Play is as good as the best of the old Indicators. The watchmen are emboxed in a niche of fame, save the skaiting one that must be still fugitive. I wish I could send a scrap for good will. But I have been most seriously unwell and nervous a long long time. I have scarce mustered courage to begin this short note, but conscience duns me.

　　I had a pleasant letter from your sister, greatly over-acknowledging my poor sonnet. I think I should have replied to it, but tell her I think so. Alas for sonnetting, 'tis as the nerves are; all the summer I was dawdling among green lanes, and verses came as thick as fancies. I am sunk winterly below prose and zero.

　　But I trust the vital principle is only as under snow. That I shall yet laugh again.

　　I suppose the great change of place affects me, but I could not have lived in Town, I could not bear company.

　　I see Novello flourishes in the Del Capo line, and dedications are not forgotten. I read the Atlas. When I pitched on the Ded'n I looked for the Broom of "Cowden knows" to be harmonized, but 'twas summat of Rossini's.

　　I want to hear about Hone, does he stand above water, how is his son? I have delay'd writing to him, till it seems impossible. Break the ice for me.

　　The wet ground here is intolerable, the sky above clear and delusive, but under foot quagmires from night showers, and I am cold-footed and moisture-abhorring as a cat; nevertheless I yesterday tramped to Waltham Cross; perhaps the poor bit of exertion necessary to scribble this was owing to that unusual bracing.

　　If I get out, I shall get stout, and then something will out —I mean for the Companion—you see I rhyme insensibly.

　　Traditions are rife here of one Clarke a schoolmaster, and a runaway pickle named Holmes, but much obscurity hangs over it. Is it possible they can be any relations?

　　'Tis worth the research, when you can find a sunny day, with ground firm, &c. Master Sexton is intelligent, and for half-a-crown he'll pick you up a Father.

　　In truth we shall be most glad to see any of the Novellian circle, middle of the week such as can come, or Sunday, as can't. But Spring will burgeon out quickly, and then, we'll talk more.

　　You'd like to see the improvements on the Chase, the new Cross in the market-place, the Chandler's shop from whence the rods were fetch'd. They are raised a farthing since the spread of Education. But perhaps you don't care to be reminded of the Holofernes' days, and nothing remains of the old laudable profession, but the clear, firm, impossible-to-be-mistaken schoolmaster text hand with which is subscribed the ever-welcome name of Chas. Cowden C. Let me crowd in both our loves to all. C.L.

　　Let me never be forgotten to include in my rememb'ces my good friend and whilom correspondent Master Stephen.

　　How, especially, is Victoria?

　　I try to remember all I used to meet at Shacklewell. The little household, cake-producing, wine-bringing out Emma—the old servant, that didn't stay, and ought to have staid, and was always very dirty and friendly, and Miss H., the counter-tenor with a fine voice, whose sister married Thurtell. They all live in my mind's eye, and Mr. N.'s and Holmes's walks with us half back after supper. Troja fuit!

　　["The Companion." Leigh Hunt's paper lasted only for seven months. Madame Pasta, of whom too much was written, was Giudetta Pasta (1798-1865), a singer of unusual compass, for whom Bellini wrote "La Somnambula."

　　The following is the account of the Sliding Watchman in the essay, "Walks Home by Night in Bad Weather. Watchmen":—

　　But the oddest of all was the Sliding Watchman. Think of walking up a street in the depth of a frosty winter, with long ice in the gutters, and sleet over head, and then figure to yourself a sort of bale of a man in white, coming towards you with a lantern in one hand, and an umbrella over his head. It was the oddest mixture of luxury and hardship, of juvenility and old age! But this looked agreeable. Animal spirits carry everything before them; and our invincible friend seemed a watchman for Rabelais. Time was run at and butted by him like a goat. The slide seemed to bear him half through the night at once; he slipped from out of his box and his common-places at one rush of a merry thought, and seemed to say, "Everything's in imagination;—here goes the whole weight of my office."

　　"Your sister"—Mrs. Isabella Jane Towers, author of The Children's Fireside, 1828, and other books for children, to whom Lamb had sent a sonnet (see Vol. IV.).

　　"Novello… dedications… I read the Atlas." In The Atlas for February 17 was reviewed Select Airs from Spohr's celebrated Opera of Faust, arranged as duetts for the Pianoforte and inscribed to his friend Charles Cowden Clarke by Vincent Novello. Holmes was musical critic for The Atlas.

　　"One Clarke a schoolmaster." See note to the letter to Clarke in the summer of 1821.

　　"Holofernes' days"—Holofernes, the schoolmaster, in "Love's Labour's Lost." Cowden Clarke had assisted his father.

　　"Master Stephen." I do not identify Stephen.

　　"Victoria"—Mary Victoria Novello, afterwards Mrs. Charles Cowden Clarke.

　　"At Shacklewell"—the Novellos' old home. They now lived in Bedford Street, Covent Garden.

　　"Whose sister married Thurtell." Thurtell, the murderer of Mr. Weare, I suppose.

　　In the Boston Bibliophile edition there is also a brief note to Clarke.] The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 6