Poor Sarah! That "want of a certain dignity of action," nay, of a due "respect for herself," which Mary lamented in her, had been discovered but too quickly by her lover and reflected back, as it was sure to be, in his attitude towards her.
Charles, also, as an interested and amused spectator of the unique love-affair, reports progress to Manning in a letter of Feb. 26th, 1808:—
"Mary is very thankful for your remembrance of her; and with the least suspicion of mercenariness, as the silk, the symbolum materiale of your friendship, has not yet appeared. I think Horace says somewhere nox longa. I would not impute negligence or unhandsome delays to a person whom you have honoured with your confidence; but I have not heard of the silk or of Mr. Knox save by your letter. May be he expects the first advances! or it may be that he has not succeeded in getting the article on shore, for it is among the res prohibitæ et non nisi smuggle-ationis viâ fruendæ. But so it is, in the friendships between wicked men the very expressions of their good-will cannot but be sinful. A treaty of marriage is on foot between William Hazlitt and Miss Stoddart. Something about settlements only retards it. She has somewhere about £80 a year, to be £120 when her mother dies. He has no settlement except what he can claim from the parish. Pauper est tamen, sed amat. The thing is therefore in abeyance. But there is love a-both sides."
In the same month Mary wrote Sarah a letter showing she was alive to the fact that a courtship which appeared to on-lookers, if not to the lover himself, much in the light of a good joke, was not altogether a re-assuring commencement of so serious an affair as marriage. She had her misgivings, and no wonder, as to how far the easy-going, comfort-loving, matter-of-fact Sarah, was fit for the difficult happiness of life-long companionship with a man of ardent genius and morbid, splenetic temperament, to whom ideas were meat drink and clothing, while the tangible entities bearing those names were likely to be precariously supplied. Still Mary liked both the lovers so well she could not choose but that hope should preponderate over fear. Meeting as they did by the Lambs' fireside, each saw the other to the best advantage. For, in the glow of Mary's sympathy and faith and the fine stimulating atmosphere of Charles' genius, Hazlitt's shyness had first melted away; his thoughts had broken the spell of self-distrust that kept them pent in uneasy silence and had learned to flow forth in a strong and brilliant current, whilst the lowering frown which so often clouded his handsome, eager face was wont to clear off. There, too, Sarah's unaffected good sense and hearty, friendly nature had free play, and perhaps Mary's friendship even reflected on her a tinge of the ideal to veil the coarser side of her character:—
"I have sent your letter and drawing" [of Middleton Cottage, Winterslow, where Sarah was living], Mary writes, "off to Wem [Hazlitt's father's in Shropshire], where I conjecture Hazlitt is. He left town on Saturday afternoon without telling us where he was going. He seemed very impatient at not hearing from you. He was very ill, and I suppose is gone home to his father's to be nursed. I find Hazlitt has mentioned to you the intention which we had of asking you up to town, which we were bent on doing; but, having named it since to your brother, the doctor expressed a strong desire that you should not come to town to be at any other house but his own, for he said it would have a very strange appearance. His wife's father is coming to be with them till near the end of April, after which time he shall have full room for you. And if you are to be married he wishes that you should be married with all the proper decorums from his house. Now though we should be most willing to run any hazards of disobliging him if there were no other means of your and Hazlitt's meeting, yet as he seems so friendly to the match it would not be worth while to alienate him from you and ourselves too, for the slight accommodation which the difference of a few weeks would make; provided always, and be it understood, that if you and H. make up your minds to be married before the time in which you can be at your brother's, our house stands open and most ready at a moment's notice to receive you. Only we would not quarrel unnecessarily with your brother. Let there be a clear necessity shown and we will quarrel with anybody's brother.
"Now, though I have written to the above effect, I hope you will not conceive but that both my brother and I had looked forward to your coming with unmixed pleasure, and are really disappointed at your brother's declaration; for, next to the pleasure of being married, is the pleasure of making or helping marriages forward.
"We wish to hear from you that you do not take our seeming change of purpose in ill part, for it is but seeming on our part, for it was my brother's suggestion, by him first mentioned to Hazlitt, and cordially approved by me; but your brother has set his face against it, and it is better to take him along with us in our plans, if he will good-naturedly go along with us, than not.
"The reason I have not written lately has been that I thought it better to leave you all to the workings of your own minds in this momentous affair, in which the inclinations of a bystander have a right to form a wish, but not to give a vote.
"Being, with the help of wide lines, at the end of my last page, I conclude with our kind wishes and prayers for the best."