and this is "Rose Aylmer";—
Ah what avails the sceptred race!
Ah what the form divine!
What every virtue, every grace!
Rose Aylmer, all were thine.
Rose Aylmer, whom these wakeful eyes
May weep, but never see,
A night of memories and of sighs
I consecrate to thee.
Of the measureless Bethams Lamb wrote in similar terms, but more fully, in an article in the New Times in 1825, entitled "Many Friends" (see Vol. I.).
On April 9, 1834, Landor wrote to Lady Blessington:—
I do not think that you ever knew Charles Lamb, who is lately dead.
Robinson took me to see him.
"Once, and once only, have I seen thy face,
Elia! once only has thy tripping tongue
Run o'er my heart, yet never has been left
Impression on it stronger or more sweet.
Cordial old man! what youth was in thy years,
What wisdom in thy levity, what soul
In every utterance of thy purest breast!
Of all that ever wore man's form,'tis thee
I first would spring to at the gate of Heaven."
I say tripping tongue, for Charles Lamb stammered and spoke hurriedly. He did not think it worth while to put on a fine new coat to come down and see me in, as poor Coleridge did, but met me as if I had been a friend of twenty years' standing; indeed, he told me I had been so, and shewed me some things I had written much longer ago, and had utterly forgotten. The world will never see again two such delightful volumes as "The Essays of Elia;" no man living is capable of writing the worst twenty pages of them. The Continent has Zadig and Gil Bias, we have Elia and Sir Roger de Coverly.
Mrs. Fields, writing in the Atlantic Monthly for April, 1866, on Landor, says that Landor told her of his visit to Lamb and said that Lamb read to him some poetry and asked his opinion of it. Landor said it was very good, whereupon Lamb laughed and called Landor the vainest of men, for it was his own.
In a letter to Southey the lines differed, ending thus:
Few are the spirits of the glorified
I'd spring to earlier at the gate of Heaven.]