For tell me how should an apparition
List to your call,
Though you talk'd for ever,—
Ever so clever,
When his ear itself,
By which he must hear, or not hear at all,
Is laid on the shelf?
Or put the case
(For more grace)
It were a female spectre—
Now could you expect her
To take much gust
In long speeches,
With her tongue as dry as dust,
In a sandy place,
Where no peaches,
Nor lemons, nor limes, nor oranges hang,
To drop on the drought of an arid harangue,
Or quench,
With their sweet drench,
The fiery pangs which the worms inflict,
With their endless nibblings,
Like quibblings,
Which the corpse may dislike, but can ne'er contradict—
Hey, Mr. Ayrton?
With all your rare tone—
I am.
C. LAMB.
[The text is from Ayrton's transcript in a private volume lately in the possession of Mr. Edward Ayrton, lettered Lamb's Works, Vol. III., uniform with the 1818 edition.
William Ayrton (1777-1858), a friend and neighbour of the Burneys, and a member of Lamb's whist-playing set, was a musical critic, and at this time director of the King's Theatre in the Haymarket, where he had just produced Mozart's "Don Giovanni." His wife was Marianne Arnold, sister of Samuel James Arnold, manager of the Lyceum Theatre.
"You might pit me for height against Kean." This was so. Edmund Kean was small in stature, though not so "immaterially" built as Lamb is said to have been.
"Mr. Mellish." Possibly the Joseph Charles Mellish who translated
Schiller.
The Laureate, Southey, had first tried the lapidary style in "Gooseberry
Pie"; later, without rhymes, in "Thalaba."
Some time in the intervening three months before the next letter the
Lambs went to Brighton for their holiday.]
LETTER 236
CHARLES LAMB TO BARRON FIELD
Aug. 31st, 1817.
My dear Barren,—The bearer of this letter so far across the seas is Mr. Lawrey, who comes out to you as a missionary, and whom I have been strongly importuned to recommend to you as a most worthy creature by Mr. Fenwick, a very old, honest friend of mine, of whom, if my memory does not deceive me, you have had some knowledge heretofore as editor of the "Statesman"—a man of talent, and patriotic. If you can show him any facilities in his arduous undertaking, you will oblige us much. Well, and how does the land of thieves use you? and how do you pass your time in your extra-judicial intervals? Going about the streets with a lantern, like Diogenes, looking for an honest man? You may look long enough, I fancy. Do give me some notion of the manners of the inhabitants where you are. They don't thieve all day long, do they? No human property could stand such continuous battery. And what do they do when they an't stealing?