LETTER 372
CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
[No date. May, 1825.]
Dear W. I write post-hoste to ensure a frank. Thanks for your hearty congratulations. I may now date from the 6th week of my Hegira or Flight from Leadenhall. I have lived so much in it, that a Summer seems already past, and 'tis but early May yet with you and other people. How I look down on the Slaves and drudges of the world! its inhabitants are a vast cotton-web of spin spin spinners. O the carking cares! O the money-grubbers-sempiternal muckworms!
Your Virgil I have lost sight of, but suspect it is in the hands of Sir G. Beaumont. I think that circumstances made me shy of procuring it before. Will you write to him about it? and your commands shall be obeyed to a tittle.
Coleridge has just finishd his prize Essay, which if it get the Prize he'll touch an additional £100 I fancy. His Book too (commentary on Bishop Leighton) is quite finished and penes Taylor and Hessey.
In the London which is just out (1st May) are 2 papers entitled the Superannuated Man, which I wish you to see, and also 1st Apr. a little thing called Barbara S——— a story gleaned from Miss Kelly. The L.M. if you can get it will save my enlargement upon the topic of my manumission.
I must scribble to make up my hiatus crumenae, for there are so many ways, pious and profligate, of getting rid of money in this vast city and suburbs that I shall miss my third: but couragio. I despair not. Your kind hint of the Cottage was well thrown out. An anchorage for age and school of economy when necessity comes. But without this latter I have an unconquerable terror of changing Place. It does not agree with us. I say it from conviction. Else—I do sometimes ruralize in fancy.
Some d———d people are come in and I must finish abruptly. By d———d, I only mean deuced. 'Tis these suitors of Penelope that make it necessary to authorise a little for gin and mutton and such trifles.
Excuse my abortive scribble.