Dear Miss Betham,—That accursed word trill has vexed me excessively. I have referred to the MS. and certainly the printer is exonerated, it is much more like a tr than a k. But what shall I say of myself?
If you can trust me hereafter, I will be more careful. I will go thro' the Poem, unless you should feel more safe by doing it yourself. In fact a second person looking over a proof is liable to let pass anything that sounds plausible. The act of looking it over seeming to require only an attention to the words that they have the proper component letters, one scarce thinks then (or but half) of the sense.—You will find one line I have ventured to alter in 3'd sheet. You had made hope & yoke rhime, which is intolerable. Every body can see & carp at a bad rhime or no rhime. It strikes as slovenly, like bad spelling.
I found out another sung but I could not alter it, & I would not delay the time by writing to you. Besides it is not at all conspicuous—it comes in by the bye 'the strains I sung.' The other obnoxious word was in an eminent place, at the beginning of her Lay, when all ears are upon her.
I must conclude hastily,
dear M. B.
Yours
C. L.
[These letters refer to The Lay of Marie. In Mr. Ernest Betham's A House of Letters will be found six other letters (see pp. 161, 163, 164, 166, 232) all bearing upon Matilda Betham's poem.]
LETTER 225
CHARLES LAMB TO MATILDA BETHAM
Dr Miss Betham,—All this while I have been tormenting myself with the thought of having been ungracious to you, and you have been all the while accusing yourself. Let us absolve one another & be quits. My head is in such a state from incapacity for business that I certainly know it to be my duty not to undertake the veriest trifle in addition. I hardly know how I can go on. I have tried to get some redress by explaining my health, but with no great success. No one can tell how ill I am, because it does not come out to the exterior of my face, but lies in my scull deep & invisible. I wish I was leprous & black jaundiced skin-over, and [? or] that all was as well within as my cursed looks. You must not think me worse than I am. I am determined not to be overset, but to give up business rather and get 'em to allow me a trifle for services past. O that I had been a shoe-maker or a baker, or a man of large independ't fortune. O darling Laziness! heaven of Epicurus! Saints Everlasting Rest! that I could drink vast potations of thee thro' unmeasured Eternity. Otium cum vel sine dignitate. Scandalous, dishonorable, any-kind-of-repose. I stand not upon the dignified sort. Accursed damned desks, trade, commerce, business—Inventions of that old original busybody brainworking Satan, Sabbathless restless Satan—
A curse relieves. Do you ever try it?
A strange Letter this to write to a Lady, but mere honey'd sentences will not distill. I dare not ask who revises in my stead. I have drawn you into a scrape. I am ashamed, but I know no remedy. My unwellness must be my apology. God bless you (tho' he curse the India House & fire it to the ground) and may no unkind Error creep into Marie, may all its readers like it as well as I do & everybody about you like its kind author no worse. Why the devil am I never to have a chance of scribbling my own free thoughts, verse or prose, again? Why must I write of Tea & Drugs & Price Goods & bales of Indigo—farewell.