Many years earlier we see the germ of this sonnet in Lamb's mind, as indeed we see the germ of so many ideas that were not fully expressed till later, for he always kept his thoughts at call. Writing to Wordsworth in September, 1805, he says:—"Hang work! I wish that all the year were holyday. I am sure that Indolence indefeasible Indolence is the true state of man, and business the invention of the Old Teazer who persuaded Adam's Master to give him an apron and set him a-houghing. Pen and Ink and Clerks, and desks, were the refinements of this old torturer a thousand years after…."
Lamb probably was as fond of this sonnet as of anything he wrote in what might be called his second poetical period. He copied it into his first letter to Bernard Barton, in September, 1822, and he drew attention to it in his Elia essay "The Superannuated Man."
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Page 60. Leisure.
First printed in the London Magazine for April, 1821, probably, I think, as a protest against the objection taken by some persons to the opinions expressed by Lamb in his essay on "New Year's Eve" in that magazine for January (see Vol. II., and notes). Lamb had therein said, speaking of death:—"I am not content to pass away 'like a weaver's shuttle.' Those metaphors solace me not, nor sweeten the unpalatable draught of mortality. I care not to be carried with the tide, that smoothly bears human life to eternity; and reluct at the inevitable course of destiny. I am in love with this green earth; the face of town and country; the unspeakable rural solitudes, and the sweet security of streets. I would set up my tabernacle here. I am content to stand still at the age to which I am arrived; I, and my friends. To be no younger, no richer, no handsomer. I do not want to be weaned by age; or drop, like mellow fruit, as they say, into the grave."
Such sentiments probably called forth some private as well as public protests; and it was, as I imagine, in a whimsical wish to emphasise the sincerity of his regard for life that Lamb reiterated that devotion in the emphatic words of "Leisure" in the April number. This sonnet was a special favourite with Edward FitzGerald.
It is sad to think that Lamb, when his leisure came, had too much of it. Writing to Barton on July 25, 1829, during one of his sister's illnesses, he says: "I bragg'd formerly that I could not have too much time. I have a surfeit…. I am a sanguinary murderer of time, that would kill him inchmeal just now."
Page 60. To Samuel Rogers, Esq.
Daniel Rogers, the poet's elder brother, died in 1829. In acknowledging Lamb's sonnet, Samuel Rogers wrote the following letter, which Lamb described to Barton (July 3, 1829) as the prettiest he ever read.
Many, many thanks. The verses are beautiful. I need not say with
what feelings they were read. Pray accept the grateful
acknowledgements
of us all, and believe me when I say that nothing could have been
a greater cordial to us in our affliction than such a testimony from such
a quarter. He was—for none knew him so well—we were born within a
year or two of each other—a man of a very high mind, and with less
disguise than perhaps any that ever lived. Whatever he was, that we
saw. He stood before his fellow beings (if I may be forgiven for saying
so) almost as before his Maker: and God grant that we may all bear
as severe an examination. He was an admirable scholar. His Dante
and his Homer were as familiar to him as his Alphabets: and he had
the tenderest heart. When a flock of turkies was stolen from his farm,
the indignation of the poor far and wide was great and loud. To me he
is the greatest loss, for we were nearly of an age; and there is now no
human being alive in whose eyes I have always been young.