The Works of Thomas Hood; Vol. 02 (of 11) / Comic and Serious, in Prose and Verse, With All the Original Illustrations

by Thomas Hood

MY SON AND HEIR.

I.

MY mother bids me bind my heir,

But not the trade where I should bind;

To place a boy—the how and where—

It is the plague of parent-kind!

II.

She does not hint the slightest plan,

Nor what indentures to endorse;

Whether to bind him to a man,—

Or, like Mazeppa, to a horse.

SON AND HAIR.

III.

What line to choose of likely rise,

To something in the Stocks at last,—

“Fast bind, fast find,” the proverb cries,

I find I cannot bind so fast!

IV.

A Statesman James can never be;

A Tailor?—there I only learn

His chief concern is cloth, and he

Is always cutting his concern.

V.

A Seedsman?—I’d not have him so;

A Grocer’s plum might disappoint;

A Butcher?—no, not that—although

I hear “the times are out of joint!”

VI.

Too many of all trades there be,

Like Pedlars, each has such a pack,

A merchant selling coals?—we see

The buyer send to cellar back.

VII.

A Hardware dealer?—that might please,

But if his trade’s foundation leans

On spikes and nails, he won’t have ease

When he retires upon his means.

VIII.

A Soldier?—there he has not nerves

A Sailor seldom lays up pelf:

A Baker?—no, a baker serves

His customer before himself.

IX.

Dresser of hair?—that’s not the sort;

A joiner jars with his desire—

A Churchman?—James is very short,

And cannot to a church aspire.

X.

A Lawyer?—that’s a hardish term!

A Publisher might give him ease,

If he could into Longman’s firm

Just plunge at once “in medias Rees.”

XI.

A shop for pot, and pan, and cup,

Such brittle Stock I can’t advise;

A Builder running houses up,

Their gains are stories—may be lies!

XII.

A Coppersmith I can’t endure—

Nor petty Usher A, B, C-ing;

A Publican no father sure,

Would be the author of his being!

XIII.

A Paper-maker?—come he must

To rags before he sells a sheet—

A Miller?—all his toil is just

To make a meal—he does not eat.

XIV.

A Currier?—that by favour goes—

A Chandler gives me great misgiving—

An Undertaker?—one of those

That do not hope to get their living!

XV.

Three Golden Balls?—I like them not;

An Auctioneer I never did—

The victim of a slavish lot,

Obliged to do as he is bid!

XVI.

A Broker watching fall and rise

Of Stock?—I’d rather deal in stone,—

A Printer?—there his toils comprise

Another’s work beside his own.

XVII.

A Cooper?—neither I nor Jem

Have any taste or turn for that,—

A fish retailer?—but with him,

One part of trade is always flat.

THE FAMILY LIBRARY.

XVIII.

A Painter?—long he would not live,—

An Artist’s a precarious craft—

In trade Apothecaries give,

But very seldom take, a draught.

XIX.

A Glazier?—what if he should smash!

A Crispin he shall not be made—

A Grazier may be losing cash,

Although he drives “a roaring trade.”

XX.

Well, something must be done! to look

On all my little works around—

James is too big a boy, like book,

To leave upon the shelf unbound.

XXI.

But what to do?—my temples ache

From evening’s dew till morning’s pearl,

What course to take my boy to make—

Oh could I make my boy—a girl!

SON AND SHADE.

LITERARY REMINISCENCES.
No. IV.

“And are ye sure the news is true?

And are ye sure he’s weel?”—OLD SCOTCH SONG.

THE great Doctor Johnson—himself a sufferer—has pathetically described, in an essay on the miseries of an infirm constitution, the melancholy case of an Invalid, with a willing mind in a weak body. “The time of such a man,” he says, “is spent in forming schemes which a change of wind prevents him from executing; his powers fume away in projects and in hope, and the day of action never arrives. He lies down delighted with the thoughts of to-morrow; but in the night the skies are overcast; the temper of the air is changed; he wakes in languor, impatience, and distraction; and has no longer any wish but for ease, nor any attention but for misery.” In short the Rambler describes the whole race of Valetudinarians as a sort of great Bitumen Company, paving a certain nameless place, as some of the Asphalticals have paved Oxford Street, with not very durable good intentions. In a word, your Invalid promises like a Hogamy, and performs like a Pigamy.

To a hale hearty man, a perfect picture of health in an oaken frame, such abortions seem sufficiently unaccountable. A great hulking fellow, revelling as De Quincey used emphatically to say, “in rude BOVINE health,”—a voracious human animal, camel-stomached and iron-built, who could all but devour and digest himself like a Kilkenny cat,—can neither sympathise with nor understand those frequent failures and down-breakings which happen to beings not so fortunately gifted with indelicate constitutions. Such a half-horse half-alligator monster cannot judge, like a Puny Judge, of a case of feebleness. The broad-chested cannot allow for the narrow-breasted; the robust for the no-bust. Nevertheless, even the stalwart may sometimes fall egregiously short of their own designs—as witness a case in point.

Amongst my fellow passengers, on a late sea-voyage, there was one who attracted my especial attention. A glance at his face, another at his figure, a third at his costume, and a fourth at his paraphernalia, sufficed to detect his country: by his light hair, nubbly features, heavy frame, odd-coloured dressing-gown, and the national meerschaum and gaudy tobacco-bag, he was undeniably a German. But, besides the everlasting pipe, he was provided with a sketching apparatus, an ample note book, a gun, and a telescope; the whole being placed ready for immediate use. He had predetermined, no doubt, to record his German sentiments on first making acquaintance with the German Ocean; to sketch the picturesque craft he might encounter on its surface; to shoot his first sea-gull; and to catch a first glimpse of the shores of Albion, beyond the reach of the naked eye. But alas! all these intentions fell—if one may correctly say so with only sky and water—to the ground. He ate nothing—drank nothing—smoked nothing—drew nothing—wrote nothing—shot nothing—spied nothing—nay, he merely stared, but replied nothing to my friendly inquiry (I am ill at the German tongue and its pronunciation) “Wie befinden sea sick?”

Now, my own case, gentle reader, has been precisely akin to that of our unfortunate Cousin German. Like him I have promised much, projected still more, and done little. Like him, too, I have been a sick man, though not at sea, but on shore—and in excuse of all that has been left undone, or delayed, with other Performers, when they do not perform, I must proffer the old theatrical plea of indisposition. As the Rambler describes, I have erected schemes which have been blown down by an ill wind; I have formed plans, and been weather-beaten, like another Murphy, by a change in the weather. For instance, the Comic Annual for 1839 ought properly to have been published some forty days earlier; but was obliged, as it were, to perform quarantine, for want of a clean Bill of Health. Thus, too, the patron of the present Work who has taken the trouble to peruse certain chapters under the title of Literary Reminiscences, will doubtless have compared the tone of them with an Apology in Number Six, wherein, declining any attempt at an Auto-biography, a promise was made of giving such anecdotes as a bad memory and a bad hearing might have retained of my literary friends and acquaintance. Hitherto, however, the fragments in question have only presented desultory glimpses of a goose quill still in its green-gosling-hood, instead of any recollections of “celebrated pens.” The truth is that my malady forced me to temporise:—wherefore the kind reader will be pleased to consider the aforesaid chapters but as so many “false starts,” and that Memory has only now got away, to make play as well as she can.

Whilst I am thus closeted in the Confessional, it may be as well, as the Pelican said, to make a clean breast of it, and at once plead guilty to all those counts—and some from long-standing have become very Old Bailey counts—that haunt my conscience. The most numerous of these crimes relate to letters that would not, could not, or at least did not answer. Others refer to the receipt of books, and as an example of their heinousness it misgives me that I was favoured with a little volume by W. and M. Howitt, without ever telling them how-it pleased me. A few offences, concern engagements which it was impossible to fulfil, although doubly bound by principle and interest. Seriously I have perforce been guilty of many, many, and still many sins of omission: but Hope, reviving with my strength, promises, granting me life, to redeem all such pledges. In the mean time, in extenuation, I can only plead particularly that deprecation which is offered up, in behalf of all Christian defaulters every Sunday,—“We have left undone those things which we ought to have done,—And there is no HEALTH in us.”

It is pleasant after a match at Chess, particularly if we have won, to try back, and reconsider those important moves which have had a decisive influence on the result. It is still more interesting, in the game of Life, to recall the critical positions which have occurred during its progress, and review the false or judicious steps that have led to our subsequent good or ill fortune. There is, however, this difference, that chess is a matter of pure skill and calculation, whereas, the chequered board of human life is subject to the caprice of Chance—the event being sometimes determined by combinations which never entered into the mind of the player[4]. To such an accident it is perhaps attributable that the hand now tracing these reminiscences is holding a pen instead of an etching-point; jotting down these prose pleasures of memory, in lieu of furnishing articles “plated-on-steel,” for the pictorial periodicals.

It will be remembered that my mental constitution, however weak my physical one, was proof against that type-us fever which parches most scribblers till they are set up, done up, and may-be, cut-up, in print and boards. Perhaps I had read, and trembled at the melancholy annals of those unfortunates who, rashly undertaking to write for bread, had poisoned themselves, like Chatterton, for want of it, or choked themselves, like Otway, on obtaining it. Possibly, having learned to think humbly of myself—there is nothing like early sickness and sorrow for “taking the conceit” out of one—my vanity did not presume to think, with certain juvenile Tracticians, that I “had a call” to hold forth in print for the edification of mankind. Perchance, the very deep reverence my reading had led me to entertain for our Bards and Sages, deterred me from thrusting myself into the fellowship of Beings that seemed only a little lower than the angels. However, in spite of that very common excuse for publication, “the advice of a friend,” who seriously recommended the submitting of my MSS. to a literary authority, with a view to his imprimatur, my slight acquaintance with the press was pushed no farther. On the contrary, I had selected a branch of the Fine Arts for my serious pursuit. Prudence, the daughter of Wisdom, whispering perhaps, that the engraver, Pye, had a better chance of a beefsteak inside, than Pye the Laureate; not that the verse-spinning was quite given up. Though working in aqua fortis, I still played with Castaly, now writing—all monkeys are imitators, and all young authors are monkeys—now writing a Bandit, to match the Corsair, and anon, hatching a Lalla Crow, by way of companion to Lalla Rookh. Moreover, about this time, I became a member of a private select Literary Society (alluded to at page 97 of the present work) that “waited on Ladies and Gentlemen at their own houses.” Our Minerva, allegorically speaking, was a motley personage, in blue stockings, a flounced gown, Quaker cap, and kerchief, French flowers, and a man’s hat. She held a fan in one hand, and a blowpipe in the other. Her votaries were of both sexes, old and young, married and single, assenters, dissenters, High Church, Low Church, No Church; Doctors in Physics, and Apothecaries in Metaphysics; dabblers in Logic, Chemistry, Casuistry, Sophistry, Natural and unnatural History, Phrenology, Geology, Conchology, Demonology; in short, all kinds of Colledgy-Knowledgy-Ology, including “Cakeology,” and tea and coffee. Like other Societies, we had our President—a sort of Speaker who never spoke; at least within my experience he never unbosomed himself of anything but a portentous shirt frill. According to the usual order of the entertainment, there was—first, Tea and Small Talk; secondly, an original Essay, which should have been followed, thirdly, by a Discussion, or Great Talk; but nine times in ten, it chanced, or rather mumchanced, that, between those who did not know what to think, and others, who did not know how to deliver what they thought, there ensued a dead silence, so “very dead indeed,” as Apollo Belvi says, that it seemed buried into the bargain. To make this awkward pause more awkward, some misgiving voice, between a whisper and a croak, would stammer out some allusion to a Quaker’s Meeting, answered from right to left by a running titter, the speaker having innocently, or perhaps wilfully forgotten, that one or two friends in drab coats, and as many in slate-coloured gowns, were sitting, thumb-twiddling, in the circle. Not that the Friends contented themselves with playing dumby at our discussions. They often spoke, and very characteristically, to the matter in hand. For instance, their favourite doctrine of non-resistance was once pushed—if Quakers ever push—a little “beyond beyond.” By way of clencher, one fair, meek, sleek Quakeress, in dove colour, gravely told a melodramatical story of a conscientious Friend, who rather than lift even his little finger against a Foe, passively, yea, lamblike, suffered himself to be butchered in bed by an assassin, and died consistently, as he thought, with Fox principles, very like a Goose. As regards my own share in the Essays and Arguments, it misgives me that they no more satisfied our decidedly serious members, than they now propitiate Mr. Rae Wilson. At least, one Society night, in escorting a female Fellow towards her home, she suddenly stopped me, taking advantage perhaps of the awful locality, and its associations, just in front of our chief criminal prison, and looking earnestly in my face, by the light of a Newgate lamp, inquired somewhat abruptly, “Mr. Hood! are you not an Infidel[5]?”

In the mean time, whilst thus playing at Literature, an event was ripening which was to introduce me to Authorship in earnest, and make the Muse, with whom I had only flirted, my companion for life. It had often occurred to me that a striking, romantical, necromantical, metaphysical, melodramatical, Germanish story, might be composed, the interest of which should turn on the mysterious influence of the fate of A over the destiny of B, the said parties having no more natural or apparent connexion with each other than Tenterden Steeple and the Goodwin Sands. An instance of this occult contingency occurred in my own case; for I did not even know by sight the unfortunate gentleman on whose untimely exit depended my entrance on the literary stage. In the beginning of the year 1821, a memorable duel, originating in a pen-and-ink quarrel, took place at Chalk Farm, and terminated in the death of Mr. John Scott, the able Editor of the London Magazine. The melancholy result excited great interest, in which I fully participated, little dreaming that his catastrophe involved any consequences of importance to myself. But on the loss of its conductor, the Periodical passed into other hands. The new Proprietors were my friends; they sent for me, and after some preliminaries, I was duly installed as a sort of sub-Editor of the London Magazine.

It would be affectation to say, that engraving was resigned with regret. There is always something mechanical about the art—moreover it is as unwholesome as wearisome to sit copper-fastened to a board, with a cantle scooped out to accommodate your stomach, if you have one, painfully ruling, ruling, and still ruling lines straight or crooked, by the long hundred to the square inch, at the doubly hazardous risk which Wordsworth so deprecates, of “growing double.” So farewell Woollett! Strange! Bartolozzi! I have said, my vanity did not rashly plunge me into authorship; but no sooner was there a legitimate opening than I jumped at it, à la Grimaldi, head foremost, and was speedily behind the scenes.

To judge by my zeal and delight in my new pursuit, the bowl had at last found its natural bias[6]. Not content with taking articles, like candidates for holy orders—with rejecting articles like the Belgians—I dreamt articles, thought articles, wrote articles, which were all inserted by the editor, of course, with the concurrence of his deputy. The more irksome parts of authorship, such as the correction of the press, were to me labours of love. I received a revise from Mr. Baldwin’s Mr. Parker, as if it had been a proof of his regard; forgave him all his slips, and really thought that printers’ devils were not so black as they are painted. But my top-gallant glory was in “our Contributors!” How I used to look forward to Elia! and backward for Hazlitt, and all round for Edward Herbert, and how I used to look up to Allan Cunningham! for at that time the London had a goodly list of writers—a rare company. It is now defunct, and perhaps no ex-periodical might so appropriately be apostrophized with the Irish funereal question—“Arrah, honey, why did you die?” Had you not an editor, and elegant prose writers, and beautiful poets, and broths of boys for criticism and classics, and wits and humorists.—Elia, Cary, Procter, Cunningham, Bowring, Barton, Hazlitt, Elton, Hartley Coleridge, Talfourd, Soane, Horace Smith, Reynolds, Poole, Clare, and Thomas Benyon, with a power besides. Hadn’t you Lions’ Heads with Traditional Tales? Hadn’t you an Opium Eater, and a Dwarf, and a Giant, and a Learned Lamb, and a Green Man? Had not you a regular Drama, and a Musical Report, and a Report of Agriculture, and an Obituary, and a Price Current, and a current price, of only half-a-crown? Arrah, why did you die? Why, somehow the contributors fell away—the concern went into other hands—worst of all, a new editor tried to put the Belles Lettres in Utilitarian envelopes; whereupon, the circulation of the Miscellany, like that of poor Le Fevre, got slower, slower, slower,—and slower still—and then stopped for ever! It was a sorry scattering of those old Londoners! Some went out of the country: one (Clare) went into it. Lamb retreated to Colebrooke. Mr. Cary presented himself to the British Museum. Reynolds and Barry took to engrossing when they should pen a stanza, and Thomas Benyon gave up literature.

It is with mingled feelings of pride, pleasure, and pain, that I revert to those old times, when the writers I had long known and admired in spirit were present to me in the flesh—when I had the delight of listening to their wit and wisdom from their own lips, of gazing on their faces, and grasping their right hands. Familiar figures rise before me, familiar voices ring in my ears, and alas! amongst them are shapes that I must never see, sounds that I can never hear, again. Before my departure from England, I was one of the few who saw the grave close over the remains of one whom to know as a friend was to love as a relation. Never did a better soul go to a better world! Never perhaps (giving the lie direct to the common imputation of envy, malice, and hatred, amongst the brotherhood), never did an author descend—to quote his favourite Sir T. Browne—into “the land of the mole and the pismire” so hung with golden opinions, and honoured and regretted with such sincere eulogies and elegies, by his contemporaries. To HIM, the first of these, my reminiscences, is eminently due, for I lost in him not only a dear and kind friend, but an invaluable critic; one whom, were such literary adoptions in modern use, I might well name, as Cotton called Walton, my “father.” To borrow the earnest language of old Jean Bertaut, as Englished by Mr. Cary—

“Thou, chiefly, noble spirit, for whose loss

Just grief and mourning all our hearts engross,

Who seeing me devoted to the Nine,

Didst hope some fruitage from those buds of mine;

Thou didst excite me after thee t’ascend

The Muses’ sacred hill; nor only lend

Example, but inspirit me to reach

The far-off summit by thy friendly speech.

*****

May gracious Heaven, O honour of our age!

Make the conclusion answer thy presage,

Nor let it only for vain fortune stand,

That I have seen thy visage—touch’d thy hand!”

I was sitting one morning beside our Editor, busily correcting proofs, when a visitor was announced, whose name, grumbled by a low ventriloquial voice, like Tom Pipes calling from the hold through the hatchway, did not resound distinctly on my tympanum. However, the door opened, and in came a stranger,—a figure remarkable at a glance, with a fine head, on a small spare body, supported by two almost immaterial legs. He was clothed in sables, of a bygone fashion, but there was something wanting, or something present about him, that certified he was neither a divine, nor a physician, nor a schoolmaster: from a certain neatness and sobriety in his dress, coupled with his sedate bearing, he might have been taken, but that such a costume would be anomalous, for a Quaker in black. He looked still more like (what he really was) a literary Modern Antique, a New-Old Author, a living Anachronism, contemporary at once with Burton the Elder, and Colman the Younger. Meanwhile he advanced with rather a peculiar gait, his walk was plantigrade, and with a cheerful “How d’ye,” and one of the blandest, sweetest smiles that ever brightened a manly countenance, held out two fingers to the Editor. The two gentlemen in black soon fell into discourse; and whilst they conferred, the Lavater principle within me, set to work upon the interesting specimen thus presented to its speculations. It was a striking intellectual face, full of wiry lines, physiognomical quips and cranks, that gave it great character. There was much earnestness about the brows, and a deal of speculation in the eyes, which were brown and bright, and “quick in turning;” the nose, a decided one, though of no established order; and there was a handsome smartness about the mouth. Altogether it was no common face—none of those willow-pattern ones, which Nature turns out by thousands at her potteries;—but more like a chance specimen of the Chinese ware, one to the set—unique, antique, quaint. No one who had once seen it, could pretend not to know it again. It was no face to lend its countenance to any confusion of persons in a Comedy of Errors. You might have sworn to it piecemeal,—a separate affidavit for every feature. In short his face was as original as his figure; his figure as his character; his character as his writings; his writings the most original of the age. After the literary business had been settled, the Editor invited his contributor to dinner, adding “we shall have a hare—”

“And—and—and—and many Friends!”

The hesitation in the speech, and the readiness of the illusion, were alike characteristic of the individual, whom his familiars will perchance have recognised already as the delightful Essayist, the capital Critic, the pleasant Wit and Humorist, the delicate-minded and large-hearted Charles Lamb! He was shy like myself with strangers, so that, despite my yearnings, our first meeting scarcely amounted to an introduction. We were both at dinner, amongst the hare’s many friends, but our acquaintance got no farther, in spite of a desperate attempt on my part to attract his notice. His complaint of the Decay of Beggars presented another chance: I wrote on coarse paper, and in ragged English, a letter of thanks to him as if from one of his mendicant clients, but it produced no effect. I had given up all hope, when one night, sitting sick and sad, in my bed-room, racked with the rheumatism, the door was suddenly opened, the well-known quaint figure in black walked in without any formality, and with a cheerful “Well, boy, how are you?” and the bland sweet smile, extended the two fingers. They were eagerly clutched of course, and from that hour we were firm friends.

Thus characteristically commenced my intimacy with C. Lamb. He had recently become my neighbour, and in a few days called again, to ask me to tea, “to meet Wordsworth.” In spite of any idle jests to the contrary, the name had a spell in it that drew me to Colebrooke Cottage[7] with more alacrity[8] than consisted with prudence, stiff joints and a North wind. But I was willing to run, at least hobble, some risk, to be of a party in a parlour with the Author of Laodamia and Hartleap Well. As for his Betty Foy-bles, he is not the first man by many, who has met with a simple fracture through riding his theory-hack so far and so fast, that it broke down with him. If he has now and then put on a nightcap, so have his own next-door mountains. If he has babbled, sometimes, like an infant of two years old, he has also thought, and felt, and spoken, the beautiful fancies and tender affections, and artless language, of the children who can say “We are seven.” Along with food for babes, he has furnished strong meat for men. So I put on my great coat and in a few minutes found myself, for the first time at a door, that opened to me as frankly as its master’s heart; for, without any preliminaries of hall, passage, or parlour, one single step across the threshold brought me into the sitting-room, and in sight of the domestic hearth. The room looked brown with “old bokes,” and beside the fire sate Wordsworth, and his sister, the hospitable Elia, and the excellent Bridget. As for the bard of Rydal, his outward man did not, perhaps, disappoint one; but the palaver, as the Indians say, fell short of my anticipations. Perhaps my memory is in fault; ’twas many years ago, and, unlike the biographer of Johnson, I have never made Bozziness my business. However, excepting a discussion on the value of the promissory notes issued by our younger poets, wherein Wordsworth named Shelley, and Lamb took John Keats for choice, there was nothing of literary interest brought upon the carpet. But a book man cannot always be bookish. A poet, even a Rydal one, must be glad at times to descend from Saddleback, and feel his legs. He cannot, like the Girl in the Fairy Tale, be always talking diamonds and pearls. It is a “Vulgar Errour” to suppose that an author must be always authoring, even with his feet on the fender. Nevertheless, it is not an uncommon impression, that a writer sonnetises his wife, sings odes to his children, talks essays and epigrams to his friends, and reviews his servants. It was in something of this spirit that an official gentleman to whom I mentioned the pleasant literary meetings at Lamb’s, associated them instantly with his parochial mutual instruction evening schools, and remarked, “Yes, yes, all very proper and praiseworthy—of course, you go there to improve your minds.”

And very pleasant and improving, though not of set purpose, to both mind and heart, were those extempore assemblies at Colebrooke Cottage. It was wholesome for the soul but to breathe its atmosphere. It was a House of Call for All Denominations. Sides were lost in that circle, Men of all parties postponed their partisanship, and met as on a neutral ground. There were but two persons, whom L. avowedly did not wish to encounter beneath his roof, and those two, merely on account of private and family differences. For the rest, they left all their hostilities at the door, with their sticks. This forbearance was due to the truly tolerant spirit of the Host, which influenced all within its sphere. Lamb, whilst he willingly lent a crutch to halting Humility, took delight in tripping up the stilts of Pretension. Anybody might trot out his Hobby; but he allowed nobody to ride the High Horse. If it was a High German, one like those ridden by the Devil and Doctor Faustus, he would chaunt

“Gëuty Gëuty

Is a great Beauty,”

till the rider moderated his gallop. He hated anything like Cock-of-the-Walk-ism; and set his face and his wit against all Ultraism, Transcendentalism, Sentimentalism, Conventional Mannerism, and above all, Separatism. In opposition to the Exclusives, he was emphatically an Inclusive.

As he once owned to me, he was fond of antagonising. Indeed in the sketch of himself, prefacing the Last Essays of Elia—a sketch for its truth to have delighted Mason the Self-Knowledge man—he says, “with the Religionist I pass for a Free-thinker, while the other faction set me down for a Bigot.” In fact, no politician ever laboured more to preserve the Balance of Power in Europe, than he did to correct any temporary preponderances. He was always trimming in the nautical, not in the political, sense. Thus in his “magnanimous letter,” as Hazlitt called it, to High Church Southey, he professed himself a Unitarian[9]. With a Catholic he would probably have called himself a Jew; as amongst Quakers, by way of a set-off against their own formality, he would indulge in a little extra levity. I well remember his chuckling at having spirited on his correspondent Bernard Barton, to commit some little enormities, such as addressing him as C. Lamb, Esquire.

My visits at Lamb’s were shortly interrupted by a sojourn to unrheumatize myself at Hastings; but in default of other intercourse I received a letter in a well-known hand, quaint as the sentences it conveyed.

“And what dost thou at the Priory? Cucullus non facit Monachum. English me that, and challenge old Lignum Janua to make a better.

“My old New River has presented no extraordinary novelties lately. But there hope sits day after day speculating upon traditionary gudgeons. I think she has taken the fisheries. I now know the reason why our forefathers were denominated East and West Angles. Yet is there no lack of spawn, for I wash my hands in fishets that come through the pump every morning, thick as motelings—little things that perish untimely, and never taste the brook. You do not tell me of those romantic Land Bays that be as thou goest to Lovers’ Seat, neither of that little Churchling in the midst of a wood (in the opposite direction nine furlongs from the town), that seems dropt by the Angel that was tired of carrying two packages; marry, with the other he made shift to pick his flight to Loretto. Inquire out and see my little Protestant Loretto. It stands apart from trace of human habitation, yet hath it pulpit, reading-desk, and trim front of massiest marble, as if Robinson Crusoe had reared it to soothe himself with old church-going images. I forget its Xtian name, and what She Saint was its gossip.

“You should also go to No. 13, Standgate Street, a Baker, who has the finest collection of marine monsters in ten sea counties; sea-dragons, polypi, mer-people, most fantastic. You have only to name the old Gentleman in black (not the Devil), that lodged with him a week (he’ll remember) last July, and he will show courtesy. He is by far the foremost of the Savans. His wife is the funniest thwarting little animal! They are decidedly the Lions of green Hastings. Well, I have made an end of my say;—my epistolary time is gone by when I could have scribbled as long (I will not say as agreeable) as thine was to both of us. I am dwindled to notes and letterets. But in good earnest I shall be most happy to hail thy return to the waters of old Sir Hugh. There is nothing like inland murmurs, fresh ripples, and our native minnows.

“He sang in meads how sweet the brooklets ran,

To the rough ocean and red restless sands.

I design to give up smoking; but I have not yet fixed upon the equivalent vice. I must have quid pro quo, or quo pro quid, as Tom Woodgate would correct me. My service to him.

“C. L.”

The letter came to hand too late for me to hunt the “Lions;” but on a subsequent visit to the same Cinque Port with my wife, though we verified the little Loretto, we could not find the Baker, or even his man, howbeit we tried at every shop that had the least sign of bakery or cakery in its window. The whole was a batch of fancy bread; one of those fictions which the writer was apt to pass off upon his friends.

The evening meetings at Colebrooke Cottage—where somebody, who was somebody, or a literary friend, was sure to drop in—were the more grateful to me, as the London Magazine was now in a rapid decline; some of its crack contributors had left it off, and the gatherings of the clan to eat, drink, and be merry, were few and far between. There was indeed one Venison Feast whereat, I have heard, the scent lay more than breast high, and the sport was of as rich a quality; but it was my chance to be absent from the pack. At former dinners, however, I had been a guest, and a sketch of one of them may serve to introduce some of the principal characters of our “London in the Olden Time.”

On the right hand then of the Editor sits Elia, of the pleasant smile, and the quick eyes—Procter said of them that “they looked as if they could pick up pins and needles”—and a wit as quick as his eyes, and sure, as Hazlitt described, to stammer out the best pun and the best remark in the course of the evening. Next to him, shining verdantly out from the grave-coloured suits of the literati, like a patch of turnips amidst stubble and fallow, behold our Jack i’ the Green—John Clare! In his bright, grass-coloured coat, and yellow waistcoat (there are greenish stalks too, under the table), he looks a very Cowslip, and blooms amongst us as Goldsmith must have done in his peach-blossom. No wonder the door-keeper of the Soho Bazaar, seeing that very countrified suit, linked arm-in-arm with the Editorial sables, made a boggle at admitting them into his repository, having seen, perchance, such a made-up Peasant “playing at playing” at thimble-rig about the Square. No wonder the gentleman’s gentleman, in the drab-coat and sealing-wax smalls, at W—— ’s, was for cutting off our Green Man, who was modestly the last in ascending the stairs as an interloper, though he made amends afterwards by waiting almost exclusively on the Peasant, perfectly convinced that he was some eccentric Notable of the Corinthian order, disguised in Rustic. Little wonder either, that in wending homewards on the same occasion through the Strand, the Peasant and Elia, Sylvanus et Urban, linked comfortably together; there arose the frequent cry of “Look at Tom and Jerry—there goes Tom and Jerry!” for truly, Clare in his square-cut green coat, and Lamb in his black, were not a little suggestive of Hawthorn and Logic, in the plates to “Life in London.”

But to return to the table. Elia—much more of House Lamb than of Grass Lamb—avowedly caring little or nothing for Pastoral; cottons, nevertheless, very kindly to the Northamptonshire Poet, and still more to his ale, pledging him again and again as “Clarissimus,” and “Princely Clare,” and sometimes so lustily, as to make the latter cast an anxious glance into his tankard. By his bright happy look, the Helpstone Visitor is inwardly contrasting the unlettered country company of Clod, and Hodge and Podge, with the delights of “London” society Elia, and Barry, and Herbert, and Mr. Table Talk, cum multis—aliis—i.e. a multiplicity of all. But besides the tankard, the two “drouthie neebors” discuss Poetry in general[10], and Montgomery’s “Common Lot” in particular, Lamb insisting on the beauty of the tangental sharp turn at “O! she was fair!” thinking, mayhap, of his own Alice W——, and Clare swearing “Dal” (a clarified d—n) “Dal! if it isn’t like a Dead Man preaching out of his coffin!” Anon, the Humorist begins to banter the Peasant on certain “Clare-obscurities” in his own verses, originating in a contempt for the rules of Priscian, whereupon the accused, thinking with Burns,

“What ser’es their grammars?

They’d better ta’en up spades and shools,

Or knappin hammers,”

vehemently denounces all Philology as nothing but a sort of man-trap for authors, and heartily dals Lindley Murray for “inventing it!”

It must have been at such a time, that Hilton conceived his clever portrait of C——, when he was “C in alt.” He was hardy, rough, and clumsy enough to look truly rustic—like an Ingram’s rustic chair. There was a slightness about his frame, with a delicacy of features and complexion, that associated him more with the Garden than with the Field, and made him look the Peasant of a Ferme Ornée. In this respect he was as much beneath the genuine stalwart bronzed Plough-Poet, Burns, as above the Farmer’s Boy, whom I remember to have seen in my childhood, when he lived in a miniature house, near the Shepherd and Shepherdess, now the Eagle tavern, in the City Road, and manufactured Æolian harps, and kept ducks. The Suffolk Giles had very little of the agricultural in his appearance; he looked infinitely more like a handicraftsman, town-made.

Poor Clare!—It would greatly please me to hear that he was happy and well, and thriving; but the transplanting of Peasants and Farmers’ Boys from the natural into an artificial soil, does not always conduce to their happiness, or health, or ultimate well doing. I trust the true Friends, who, with a natural hankering after poetry, because it is forbidden them, have ventured to pluck and eat of the pastoral sorts, as most dallying with the innocence of nature,—and who on that account patronised Capel Lofft’s protégé—I do trust and hope they took off whole editions of the Northamptonshire Bard. There was much about Clare for a Quaker to like; he was tender-hearted, and averse to violence. How he recoiled once, bodily-taking his chair along with him,—from a young surgeon, or surgeon’s friend, who let drop, somewhat abruptly, that he was just come “from seeing a child skinned!”—Clare, from his look of horror, evidently thought that the poor infant, like Marsyas, had been flayed alive! He was both gentle and simple. I have heard that on his first visit to London, his publishers considerately sent their porter to meet him at the inn; but when Thomas necessarily inquired of the gentleman in green, “Are you Mr. Clare?” the latter, willing to foil the traditionary tricks of London sharpers, replied to the suspicious query with “a positive negative.”[11]

The Brobdignagian next to Clare, overtopping him by the whole head and shoulders—a physical “Colossus of Literature,” the grenadier of our corps—is Allan, not Allan Ramsay, “no, nor Barbara Allan neither,” but Allan Cunningham,—“a credit,” quoth Sir Walter Scott (he might have said a long credit) “to Caledonia.” He is often called “honest Allan,” to distinguish him, perhaps, from one Allan-a-Dale, who was apt to mistake his neighbours’ goods for his own—sometimes, between ourselves, yelept the “C. of Solway,” in allusion to that favourite “Allan Water,” the Solway Sea. There is something of the true moody poetical weather observable in the barometer of his face, alternating from Variable to Showery, from Stormy to Set Fair. At times he looks gloomy and earnest and traditional—a little like a Covenanter—but he suddenly clears up and laughs a hearty laugh that lifts him an inch or two from his chair, for he rises at a joke when he sees one, like a trout at a fly, and finishes with a smart rubbing of his ample palms. He has store, too, of broad Scotch stories, and shrewd sayings; and he writes—no, he wrote rare old-new or new-old ballads. Why not now? Has his Pegasus, as he once related of his pony, run from under him? Has the Mermaid of Galloway left no little ones? Is Bonnie Lady Ann married, or May Morison dead? Thou vast formed for a poet, Allan, by nature, and by stature too, according to Pope—

“To snatch a grace beyond the reach of Art.”

And are there not Longman, or Tallboys, for thy Publishers? But alas! we are fallen on evil days for Bards and Barding, and nine tailors do more for a man than the Nine Muses. The only Lay likely to answer now-a-days would be an Ode (with the proper testimonials) to the Literary Fund!

The Reverend personage on the Editor’s right, with the studious brow, deep-set eyes, and bald crown, is the mild and modest Cary—the same who turned Dante into Miltonic English blank verse. He is sending his plate towards the partridges, which he will relish and digest as though they were the Birds of Aristophanes. He has his eye, too, on the French made-dishes[12]. Pity, shame and pity, such a Translator found no better translation in the Church! Is it possible that, in some no-popery panic, it was thought by merely being Dragoman to Purgatory he had Romed from the true faith?

A very pleasant day we “Londoners” once spent at a Chiswick parsonage, formerly tenanted by Hogarth, along with the hospitable Cary, and, as Elia called them, his Caryatides![13] The last time my eyes rested on the Interpreter (of the House Beautiful as well as of the Inferno), he was on the Library steps of the British Museum. Ere this, I trust he hath reached the tiptop—nay, hath perhaps attained, being a Literary Worthy, even unto a Trusteeship, and had to buy, at Ellis’s, a few yards of the Blue Ribbon of Literature!

Procter,—alias Barry Cornwall, formerly of the Marcian Colonnade, now of some prosaical Inn of Court—the kindly Procter, one of the foremost to welcome me into the Brotherhood, with a too-flattering Dedication (another instance against the jealousy of authors), is my own left-hand file. But what he says shall be kept as strictly confidential; for he is whispering it into my Martineau ear. On my other side, when I turn that way, I see a profile, a shadow of which ever confronts me on opening my writing-desk,—a sketch taken from memory, the day after seeing the original[14]. In opposition to the “extra man’s size” of Cunningham, the party in question looks almost boyish, partly from being in bulk somewhat beneath Monsieur Quetelet’s “Average Man,” but still more so from a peculiar delicacy of complexion and smallness of features, which look all the smaller from his wearing, in compliment, probably, to the Samsons of Teutonic Literature, his locks unshorn. Nevertheless whoever looks again,

Sees more than marks the crowd of common men.

There is speculation in the eyes, a curl of the lip, and a general character in the outline, that reminds one of some portraits of Voltaire. And a Philosopher he is every inch. He looks, thinks, writes, talks and walks, eats and drinks, and no doubt sleeps philosophically—i.e. deliberately. There is nothing abrupt about his motions,—he goes and comes calmly and quietly—like the phantom in Hamlet, he is here—he is there—he is gone! So it is with his discourse. He speaks slowly, clearly, and with very marked emphasis—the tide of talk flows like Denham’s river, “strong without rage, without overflowing, full.” When it was my frequent and agreeable duty to call on Mr. De Quincey (being an uncommon name to remember, the servant associated it, on the Memoria Technica principle, with a sore throat and always pronounced it Quinsy), and I have found him at home, quite at home, in the midst of a German Ocean of Literature, in a storm,—flooding all the floor, the table and the chairs,—billows of books tossing, tumbling, surging open,—on such occasions I have willingly listened by the hour whilst the Philosopher, standing, with his eyes fixed on one side of the room, seemed to be less speaking than reading from a “handwriting on the wall.” Now and then he would diverge, for a Scotch mile or two, to the right or left, till I was tempted to inquire with Peregrine in John Bull (Colman’s not Hook’s), “Do you never deviate?”—but he always came safely back to the point where he had left, not lost the scent, and thence hunted his topic to the end. But look!—we are in the small hours, and a change comes o’er the spirit of that “old familiar face.” A faint hectic tint leaves the cheek, the eyes are a degree dimmer, and each is surrounded by a growing shadow—signs of the waning influence of that Potent Drug whose stupendous Pleasures and enormous Pains have been so eloquently described by the English Opium Eater. Marry, I have one of his Confessions with his own name and mark to it:—an apology for a certain stain on his MS., the said stain being a large purplish ring,—“Within that circle none durst drink but he,”—in fact the impression, coloured, of “a tumbler of laudanum negus, warm, without sugar.”[15]

That smart active person opposite with a game-cock-looking head, and the hair combed smooth, fighter fashion, over his forehead—with one finger hooked round a glass of champagne, not that he requires it to inspirit him, for his wit bubbles up of itself—is our Edward Herbert, the Author of that true piece of Biography, the Life of Peter Corcoran. He is “good with both hands,” like that Nonpareil Randall, at a comic verse or a serious stanza—smart at a repartee—sharp at a retort, and not averse to a bit of mischief. ’Twas he who gave the runaway ring at Wordsworth’s Peter Bell. Generally, his jests, set off by a happy manner, are only ticklesome, but now and then they are sharp-flavoured,—like the sharpness of the pine-apple. Would I could give a sample. Alas! What a pity it is that so many good things uttered by Poets, and Wits, and Humorists, at chance times—and they are always the best and brightest, like sparks struck out by Pegasus’ own hoof, in a curvet amongst the flints—should be daily and hourly lost to the world for want of a recorder! But in this Century of Inventions, when a self-acting drawing-paper has been discovered for copying visible objects, who knows but that a future Niepce, or Daguerre, or Herschel, or Fox Talbot, may find out some sort of Boswellish writing-paper to repeat whatever it hears!

There are other Contributors—poor Hazlitt for instance—whose shades rise up before me: but I never met with them at the Entertainments just described. Shall we ever meet anywhere again? Alas! some are dead; and the rest dispersed; and the days of Social Clubs are over and gone, when the Professors and Patrons of Literature assembled round the same steaming bowl, and Johnson, always best out of print, exclaimed, “Lads! who’s for Poonch!”

******

Amongst other notable men who came to Colebrooke Cottage, I had twice the good fortune of meeting with S. T. Coleridge. The first time he came from Highgate with Mrs. Gilman, to dine with “Charles and Mary.” What a contrast to Lamb was the full-bodied Poet, with his waving white hair, and his face round, ruddy, and unfurrowed as a holy Friar’s! Apropos to which face he gave us a humorous description of an unfinished portrait, that served him for a sort of barometer, to indicate the state of his popularity. So sure as his name made any temporary stir, out came the canvas on the easel, and a request from the artist for another sitting: down sank the Original in the public notice, and back went the copy into a corner, till some fresh publication or accident again brought forward the Poet; and then forth came the picture for a few more touches. I sincerely hope it has been finished! What a benign, smiling face it was! What a comfortable, respectable figure! What a model, methought, as I watched and admired the “Old Man eloquent,” for a Christian bishop! But he was, perhaps, scarcely orthodox enough to be trusted with a mitre. At least, some of his voluntaries would have frightened a common everyday congregation from their propriety. Amongst other matters of discourse, he came to speak of the strange notions some literal-minded persons form of the joys of Heaven; joys they associated with mere temporal things, in which, for his own part, finding no delight in this world, he could find no bliss hereafter, without a change in his nature, tantamount to the loss of his personal identity. For instance, he said, there are persons who place the whole angelical beatitude in the possession of a pair of wings to flap about with, like “a sort of celestial poultry.” After dinner he got up, and began pacing to and fro, with his hands behind his back, talking and walking, as Lamb laughingly hinted, as if qualifying for an itinerant preacher; now fetching a simile from Loddiges’ garden, at Hackney; and then flying off for an illustration to the sugar-making in Jamaica. With his fine, flowing voice, it was glorious music, of the “never-ending, still-beginning” kind; and you did not wish it to end. It was rare flying, as in the Nassau Balloon; you knew not whither, nor did you care. Like his own bright-eyed Marinere, he had a spell in his voice that would not let you go. To attempt to describe my own feeling afterward, I had been carried, spiralling, up to heaven by a whirlwind intertwisted with sunbeams, giddy and dazzled, but not displeased, and had then been rained down again with a shower of mundane stocks and stones that battered out of me all recollection of what I had heard, and what I had seen!

On the second occasion, the author of Christabel was accompanied by one of his sons. The Poet, talking and walking as usual, chanced to pursue some argument, which drew from the son, who had not been introduced to me, the remark, “Ah, that’s just like your crying up those foolish Odes and Addresses!” Coleridge was highly amused with this mal-àpropos, and, without explaining, looked slily round at me, with the sort of suppressed laugh one may suppose to belong to the Bey of Tittery. The truth was, he felt naturally partial to a book he had attributed in the first instance to the dearest of his friends.

“MY DEAR CHARLES,—This afternoon, a little, thin, mean-looking sort of a foolscap, sub-octavo of poems, printed on very dingy outsides, lay on the table, which the cover informed me was circulating in our book-club, so very Grub Streetish in all its appearance, internal as well as external, that I cannot explain by what accident of impulse (assuredly there was no motive in play) I came to look into it. Least of all, the title, Odes and Addresses to Great Men, which connected itself in my head with Rejected Addresses, and all the Smith and Theodore Hook squad. But, my dear Charles, it was certainly written by you, or under you, or una cum you. I know none of your frequent visitors capacious and assimilative enough of your converse to have reproduced you so honestly, supposing you had left yourself in pledge in his lock-up house. Gillman, to whom I read the spirited parody on the introduction to Peter Bell, the Ode to the Great Unknown, and to Mrs. Fry; he speaks doubtfully of Reynolds and Hood. But here come Irving and Basil Montagu.

“Thursday night, 10 o’clock.—No! Charles, it is you. I have read them over again, and I understand why you have anon’d the book. The puns are nine in ten good—many excellent—the Newgatory transcendent. And then the exemplum sine exemplo of a volume of personalities and contemporaneities, without a single line that could inflict the infinitesimal of an unpleasance on any man in his senses; saving and except perhaps in the envy-addled brain of the despiser of your Lays. If not a triumph over him, it is at least an ovation. Then, moreover, and besides, to speak with becoming modesty, excepting my own self, who is there but you who could write the musical lines and stanzas that are intermixed?

“Here Gillman, come up to my garret, and driven back by the guardian spirits of four huge flower-holders of omnigenous roses and honeysuckles—(Lord have mercy on his hysterical olfactories! what will he do in Paradise? I must have a pair or two of nostril-plugs, or nose-goggles laid in his coffin)—stands at the door, reading that to M’Adam, and the washerwoman’s letter, and he admits the facts. You are found in the manner, as the lawyers say! so, Mr. Charles! hang yourself up, and send me a line, by way of token and acknowledgment. My dear love to Mary. God bless you and your Unshamabramizer,

“S. T. COLERIDGE.”

It may be mentioned here, that instead of feeling “the infinitesimal of an unpleasance” at being Addressed in the Odes, the once celebrated Mr. Hunt presented to the Authors a bottle of his best “Permanent Ink,” and the eccentric Doctor Kitchiner sent an invitation to dinner.

From Colebrooke, Lamb removed to Enfield Chase,—a painful operation at all times, for as he feelingly misapplied Wordsworth, “the moving accident was not his trade.” As soon as he was settled, I called upon him, and found him in a bald-looking yellowish house, with a bit of a garden, and a wasp’s nest convanient, as the Irish say, for one stung my pony as he stood at the door. Lamb laughed at the fun; but, as the clown says, the whirligig of time brought round its revenges. He was one day bantering my wife on her dread of wasps, when all at once he uttered a horrible shout,—a wounded specimen of the species had slily crawled up the leg of the table, and stung him in the thumb. I told him it was a refutation well put in, like Smollett’s timely snowball. “Yes,” said he, “and a stinging commentary on Macbeth—

“By the pricking of my thumbs,

Something wicked this way comes.”

There were no pastoral yearnings concerned in this Enfield removal. There is no doubt which of Captain Morris’s Town and Country Songs would have been most to Lamb’s taste. “The sweet shady side of Pall-Mall,” would have carried it hollow. In courtesy to a friend, he would select a green lane for a ramble, but left to himself, he took the turnpike road as often as otherwise. “Scott,” says Cunningham, “was a stout walker.” Lamb was a porter one. He calculated Distances, not by Long Measure, but by Ale and Beer Measure. “Now I have walked a pint.” Many a time I have accompanied him in these matches against Meux, not without sharing in the stake, and then, what cheerful and profitable talk! For instance, he once delivered to me orally the substance of the Essay on the Defect of Imagination in Modern Artists, subsequently printed in the Athenæum. But besides the criticism, there were snatches of old poems, golden lines and sentences culled from rare books, and anecdotes of men of note. Marry, it was like going a ramble with gentle Izaak Walton, minus the fishing.

To make these excursions more delightful to one of my temperament, Lamb never affected any spurious gravity. Neither did he ever act the Grand Senior. He did not exact that common copy-book respect, which some asinine persons would fair command on account of the mere length of their years. As if, forsooth, what is bad in itself, could be the better for keeping; as if intellects already mothery, got anything but grandmothery by lapse of time! In this particular, he was opposed to Southey, or rather (for Southey has been opposed to himself) to his Poem on the Holly Tree.

“So serious should my youth appear among

The thoughtless throng;

So would I seem among the young and gay

More grave than they.”

There was nothing of Sir Oracle about Lamb. On the contrary, at sight of a solemn visage that “creamed and mantled like the standing pool,” he was the first to pitch a mischievous stone to disturb the duck-weed. “He was a boy-man,” as he truly said of Elia; “and his manners lagged behind his years.” He liked to herd with people younger than himself. Perhaps, in his fine generalizing way, he thought that, in relation to Eternity, we are all contemporaries. However, without reckoning birthdays, it was always “Hail fellow, well met;” and although he was my elder by a quarter of a century, he never made me feel, in our excursions, that I was “taking a walk with the schoolmaster.” I remember, in one of our strolls, being called to account, very pompously, by the proprietor of an Enfield Villa, who asserted that my dog Dash, who never hunted anything in his dog-days, had chased the sheep; whereupon, Elia taking the dog’s part, said very emphatically, “Hunt Lambs, Sir? Why he has never hunted me!” But he was always ready for fun, intellectual or practical—now helping to pelt D*****, a modern Dennis, with puns; and then to persuade his sister, God bless her! by a vox et preterea nihil, that she was as deaf as an adder. In the same spirit, being requested by a young Schoolmaster to take charge of his flock for a day, “during the unavoidable absence of the Principal,” he willingly undertook the charge, but made no other use of his brief authority than to give the boys a whole holiday.

As Elia supplied the place of the Pedagogue, so once I was substitute for Lamb himself. A prose article in the Gem, was not from his hand, though it bore his name. He had promised a contribution, but being unwell, his sister suggested that I should write something for him, and the result was the “Widow” in imitation of his manner. It will be seen that the forgery was taken in good part.

“DEAR LAMB,—You are an impudent varlet, but I will keep your secret. We dine at Ayrton’s on Thursday, and shall try to find Sarah and her two spare beds for that night only. Miss M. and her tragedy may be d—— d, so may not you and your rib. Health attend you.

Yours,
T. HOOD, Esq.
“Enfield.

“Miss Bridget Hood sends love.”

How many of such pleasant reminiscences revive in my memory, whilst thinking of him, like secret writing brought out by the kindly warmth of the fire! But they must be deferred to leave me time and space for other attributes—for example, his charity, in its widest sense, the moderation in judgment which, as Miller says, is “the Silken String running through the Pearl Chain of all Virtues.” If he was intolerant of anything, it was of Intolerance. He would have been (if the foundation had existed, save in the fiction of Rabelais,) of the Utopian order of Thelemites, where each man under scriptural warrant did what seemed good in his own eyes. He hated evil speaking, carping, and petty scandal. On one occasion having slipped out an anecdote, to the discredit of a literary man, during a very confidential conversation, the next moment, with an expression of remorse, for having impaired even my opinion of the party, he bound me solemnly to bury the story in my own bosom. In another case he characteristically rebuked the backbiting spirit of a censorious neighbour. Some Mrs. Candour telling him, in expectation of an ill-natured comment, that Miss ***, the teacher at the Ladies’ School, had married a publican, “Has she so?” said Lamb, “then I’ll have my beer there!”

As to his liberality in a pecuniary sense, he passed (says Lamb of Elia) with some people, through having a settled but moderate income, for a great miser. And in truth he knew the value of money, its power, its usefulness. One January night he told me with great glee that at the end of the late year he had been able to lay by—and thence proceeded to read me a serio-comic lecture on the text, of “Keep your hand out of your Pocket.” The truth is, Lamb, like Shakspeare in the universality of his sympathies, could feel, pro tempore, what belonged to the character of a Gripe-all. The reader will remember his capital Note in the “Dramatic Specimens,” on “the decline of Misers, in consequence of the Platonic nature of an affection for Money,” since Money was represented by “flimsies,” instead of substantial coin, the good old solid sonorous dollars and doubloons, and pieces of eight, that might be handled, and hugged, and rattled, and perhaps kissed. But to this passion for hoarding he one day attributed a new origin. “A Miser,” he said, “is sometimes a grand personification of Fear. He has a fine horror of Poverty. And he is not content to keep Want from the door, or at arm’s length,—but he places it, by heaping wealth upon wealth, at a sublime distance!” Such was his theory: now for his practice. Amongst his other guests, you occasionally saw an elderly lady, formal, fair, and flaxen-wigged, looking remarkably like an animated wax doll,—and she did visit some friends or relations, at a toyshop near St. Dunstan’s. When she spoke, it was as if by an artificial apparatus, through some defect in her palate, and she had a slight limp and a twist in her figure, occasioned—what would Hannah More have said!—by running down Greenwich Hill! This antiquated personage had been Lamb’s Schoolmistress—and on this retrospective consideration, though she could hardly have taught him more than to read his native tongue—he allowed her in her decline, a yearly sum, equal to—what shall I say?—to the stipend which some persons of fortune deem sufficient for the active services of an all-accomplished gentlewoman in the education of their children. Say, thirty pounds per annum.

Such was Charles Lamb. To sum up his character, on his own principle of antagonism, he was, in his views of human nature, the opposite of Crabbe; in Criticism, of Gifford; in Poetry, of Lord Byron; in Prose, of the last new Novelist; in Philosophy, of Kant; and in Religion, of Sir Andrew Agnew. Of his wit I have endeavoured to give such samples as occurred to me; but the spirit of his sayings was too subtle and too much married to the circumstances of the time to survive the occasion. They had the brevity without the levity of wit—some of his puns contained the germs of whole essays. Moreover, like Falstaff, he seemed not only witty himself but the occasion of it by example in others. “There is M******” said he, “who goes about dropping his good things as an Ostrich lays her eggs, without caring what becomes of them.” It was once my good fortune to pick up one of Mr. M.’s foundlings, and it struck me as particularly in Lamb’s own style, containing at once a pun and a criticism. “What do you think,” asked somebody, “of the book called ‘A Day in Stowe Gardens?’” Answer: “A Day ill-bestowed.”

It is now some years ago, since I stood with other mourners in Edmonton Church Yard, beside a grave in which all that was mortal of Elia was deposited. It may be a dangerous confession to make, but I shed no tear; and scarcely did a sigh escape from my bosom. There were many sources of comfort. He had not died young. He had happily gone before that noble sister, who not in selfishness, but the devotion of a unique affection, would have prayed to survive him but for a day, lest he should miss that tender care which had watched over him upwards from a little child. Finally he had left behind him his works, a rare legacy! and above all, however much of him had departed, there was still more of him that could not die—for as long as Humanity endures and man owns fellowship with man, the spirit of Charles Lamb will still be extant!

******

On the publication of the Odes and Addresses, presentation copies were sent at the suggestion of a friend, to Mr. Canning and Sir Walter Scott. The minister took no notice of the little volume; but the novelist did, in his usual kind manner. An eccentric friend in writing to me, once made a number of colons, semicolons, &c., at the bottom of the paper, adding

“And these are my points that I place at the foot,

That you may put stops that I can’t stop to put.”

It will surprise no one, to observe that the author of Waverley had as little leisure for punctuation.

“SIR WALTER SCOTT has to make thankful acknowledgments for the copy of the Odes to Great People with which he was favoured and more particularly for the amusement he has received from the perusal. He wishes the unknown author good health good fortune and whatever other good things can best support and encourage his lively vein of inoffensive and humorous satire.

Abbotsford Melrose 4th May”

The first time I ever saw the Great Unknown, was at the private view of Martin’s Picture of “Nineveh,” when by a striking coincidence, one of our most celebrated women, and one of our greatest men, Mrs. Siddons and Sir Walter Scott, walked simultaneously up opposite sides of the room, and met and shook hands in front of the painting. As Editor of the Gem, I had afterwards occasion to write to Sir Walter, from whom I received the following letter, which contains an allusion to some of his characteristic partialities:—

“MY DEAR MR. HOOD,—It was very ungracious in me to leave you in a day’s doubt whether I was gratified or otherwise with the honour you did me to inscribe your Whims and Oddities to me I received with great pleasure this new mark of your kindness and it was only my leaving your volume and letter in the country which delayed my answer as I forgot the address.

I was favoured with Mr. Cooper’s beautiful sketch of the heart-piercing incident of the dead greyhound which is executed with a force and fancy which I flatter myself that I who was in my younger days and in part still am a great lover of dogs and horses and an accurate observer of their habits can appreciate, I intend the instant our term ends to send a few verses if I can make any at my years in acknowledgment. I will get a day’s leisure for this purpose next week when I expect to be in the country. Pray inform Mr. Cooper of my intention though I fear I will be unable to do anything deserving of the subject.

I am very truly your obliged humble servant,
WALTER SCOTT.”
Edinburgh 4 March.

At last, during one of his visits to London, I had the honour of a personal interview with Sir Walter Scott at Mr. Lockhart’s in Sussex Place. The number of the house had escaped my memory; but seeing a fine dog down an area, I knocked without hesitation at the door. It happened however to be the wrong one. I afterwards mentioned the circumstance to Sir Walter. It was not a bad point, he said, for he was very fond of dogs; but he did not care to have his own animals with him, about London, “for fear he should be taken for Bill Gibbons.” I then told him I had lately been reading the Fair Maid of Perth, which had reminded me of a very pleasant day spent many years before, beside the Linn of Campsie, the scene of Conachar’s catastrophe. Perhaps he divined what had really occurred to me,—that the Linn, as a cataract, had greatly disappointed me; for he smiled, and shook his head archly, and said he had since seen it himself, and was rather ashamed of it. “But I fear, Mr. Hood, I have done worse than that before now, in finding a Monastery where there was none to be found; though there was plenty (here he smiled again) of Carduus Benedictus, or Holy Thistle.”

In the meantime he was finishing his toilet, in order to dine at the Duchess of Kent’s; and before he put on his cravat I had an opportunity of noticing the fine massive proportions of his bust. It served to confirm me in my theory that such mighty men are, and must be, physically, as well as intellectually, gifted beyond ordinary mortals; that their strong minds must be backed by strong bodies. Remembering all that Sir Walter Scott had done, and all that he had suffered, methought he had been in more than one sense “a Giant in the Land.” After some more conversation, in the course of which he asked me if I ever came to Scotland, and kindly said he should be glad to see me at Abbotsford, I took my leave, with flattering dreams in my head that never were, and now, alas! never can be, realised!

******

And now, not to conclude in too melancholy a tone, allow me, gentle reader, to present to you the following genuine letter, the names, merely, for obvious reasons, being disguised.

To T. Hood, Esq.

“Thou’rt a comical chap—so am I; but thou possessest brains competent to write what I mean;—I don’t—therefore, Brother Comic, wilt thou oblige me (if ’twas in my power I would you)—I’ll tell you just what I want, and no more. Of late, Lord *** has been endeavouring to raise a body of yeomanry in this county. Now there’s a man at Bedfont—a compounder of nauseous drugs—and against whom I owe a grudge, who wishes to enter, but who’s no more fit for a fighter than I for a punster. Now if you will just give him a palpable hit or two in verse, and transmit them to me by post, directed to A. B., Post Office, Bedfont, your kindness shall ever be remembered with feelings of the deepest sincerity and gratitude. His name is ‘JAMES BOOKER, CHEMIST,’ Bedfont of course. If you disapprove of the above, I trust you will not abuse the confidence placed in you, by ‘SPLITTING.’ You’ll say, how can I?—by showing this letter to him. He knows the handwriting full well—but you’ll not do so, I hope. Perhaps, if you feel a disposition to oblige me, you will do so at your first convenience, ere the matter will be getting stale.

“Yours truly,
“A. B.

“Perhaps you will be kind enough to let me have an answer from you, even if you will NOT condescend to accede to my wish.

“Perhaps you’ve not sufficient particulars. He’s a little fellow, flushed face, long nose, precious ugly, housekeeper as ugly, lives between the two Peacock Inns, is a single man, very anxious to get possession of Miss Boltbee, a ward in Chancery with something like £9000 (WISH he may get it), is famous for his Gout Medicine, sells jalap (should like to make him swallow an ounce), always knows other people’s business better than his own, used to go to church, now goes to chapel, and in the whole, is a great rascal.

“Bedfont is thirteen miles from London.”

PRESERVED IN SPIRITS.

[4] To borrow an example from fiction, there is that slave of circumstances, Oliver Twist. There are few authors whom one would care to see running two heats with the same horse. It is intended therefore as a compliment, that I wish Boz would re-write the history in question from page 122, supposing his hero NOT to have met with the Artful Dodger on his road to seek his fortune.

[5] In justice to the Society, it ought to be recorded, that two of its members have since distinguished themselves in print: the authoress of “London in the Olden Time,” and the author of a “History of Moral Science.”

[6] There was a dash of ink in my blood. My father wrote two novels, and my brother was decidedly of a literary turn, to the great disquietude for a time of an anxious parent. She suspected him, on the strength of several amatory poems of a very desponding cast, of being the victim of a hopeless attachment; so he was caught, closeted, and catechised, and after a deal of delicate and tender sounding, he confessed, not with the anticipated sighs and tears, but a very unexpected burst of laughter, that he had been guilty of translating some fragments of Petrarch.

[7] A cottage of Ungentility, for it had neither double coach-house nor wings. Like its tenant, it stood alone. He said, glancing at the Paternoster one, that he did not like “the Row.” There was a bit of a garden, in which, being, as he professed, “more fond of Men Sects than of Insects,” he made probably his first and last observation in Entomology. He had been watching a spider on a gooseberry bush, entrapping a fly. “Good God,” he said, “I never saw such a thing! Directly he was caught, in her fatal spinning, she darted down upon him, and in a minute turned him out, completely lapped in a shroud! It reminded me of the Fatal Sisters in Gray.”

[8] A sort of rheumatic celerity, of which Sir W. Scott’s favourite dramatiser seemed to have a very accurate notion. Those who remember “poor Terry’s” deliberate delivery, will be able to account, for the shout of laughter which once rang throughout the Adelphi green-room, at his emphatic manner of giving, from a manuscript-play, the stage direction of “Enter——, with—a—lack—ri—ty!”

[9] As regards his Unitarianism, it strikes me as more probable that he was what the unco guid people call “Nothing at all.” which means that he was every thing but a Bigot. As he was in spirit an Old Author, so was he in faith an Ancient Christian, too ancient to belong to any of the modern sub-hubbub-divisions of—Ists,—Arians, and—Inians.

[10] Talking of Poetry, Lamb told me one day that he had just met with the most vigorous line he had ever read. “Where?” “Out of the Camden’s Head, all in one line—

“To One Hundred Pots of Porter £2 1 8”

[11] Somebody happened to say that the Peasant ought to figure in the Percy Anecdotes, as an example of uncultivated genius. “And where will they stick me?” asked Clare, “will they stick me in the instinct?”

[12] I once cut out from a country newspaper what seemed to me a very good old English poem. It proved to be a naturalization, by Cary, of a French Song to April, by Remy Belleau.

[13] The father expressing an uncertainty to what profession he should devote a younger Cary, Lamb said, “Make him an Apothe-Cary.”

[14] Unable to make any thing “like a likeness” of a sitter for the purpose, I have a sort of Irish faculty for taking faces behind their backs. But my pencil has not been guilty of half the personalities attributed to it; amongst others “a formidable likeness of a Lombard Street Banker.” Besides that one would rather draw on a Banker than at him, I have never seen the Gentleman alluded to, or even a portrait of him in my life.

[15] On a visit to Norfolk, I was much surprised to find that Opium, or Opie, as it was vulgarly called, was quite in common use in the form of pills amongst the lower classes, in the vicinity of the Fens. It is not probable that persons in such a rank of life had read the Confessions,—or, might not one suspect that as Dennis Brulgruddery was driven to drink by the stale, flat and unprofitable prospects of Muckslush Heath, so the Fen-People in the dreary foggy cloggy boggy wastes of Cambridge and Lincolnshire, had flown to the Drug for the sake of the magnificent scenery that filled the splendid visions of its Historian?

A LEADING ARTICLE.