But don't go and lay this to your eyes. You always wrote hieroglyphically, yet not to come up to the mystical notations and conjuring characters of Dr. Parr. You never wrote what I call a schoolmaster's hand, like Mrs. Clarke; nor a woman's hand, like Southey; nor a missal hand, like Porson; nor an all-on-the-wrong-side sloping hand, like Miss Hayes; nor a dogmatic, Mede-and-Persian, peremptory tory hand, like Rickman: but you wrote what I call a Grecian's hand,—what the Grecians write (or wrote) at Christ's Hospital; such as Whalley would have admired, and Boyer [2] have applauded, but Smith or Atwood [writing-masters] would have horsed you for. Your boy-of-genius hand and your mercantile hand are various. By your flourishes, I should think you never learned to make eagles or cork-screws, or flourish the governor's names in the writing-school; and by the tenor and cut of your letters, I suspect you were never in it at all. By the length of this scrawl you will think I have a design upon your optics; but I have writ as large as I could, out of respect to them,—too large, indeed, for beauty. Mine is a sort of Deputy-Grecian's hand,—a little better, and more of a worldly hand, than a Grecian's, but still remote from the mercantile. I don't know how it is, but I keep my rank in fancy still since school-days; I can never forget I was a Deputy-Grecian. And writing to you, or to Coleridge, besides affection, I feel a reverential deference as to Grecians still [3]. I keep my soaring way above the Great Erasmians, yet far beneath the other. Alas! what am I now? What is a Leadenhall clerk or India pensioner to a Deputy-Grecian? How art thou fallen, O Lucifer! Just room for our loves to Mrs. D., etc.
C. LAMB.
[1] Talfourd relates an amusing instance of the universal charity of the kindly Dyer. Lamb once suddenly asked him what he thought of the murderer Williams,—a wretch who had destroyed two families in Ratcliff Highway, and then cheated the gallows by committing suicide. "The desperate attempt," says Talfourd, "to compel the gentle optimist to speak ill of a mortal creature produced no happier success than the answer, 'Why, I should think, Mr. Lamb, he must have been rather an eccentric character.'"
[2] Whalley and Boyer were masters at Christ's Hospital.
[3] "Deputy-Grecian," "Grecian," etc., were of course forms, or grades, at Christ's Hospital.
CVI.
TO MR. MOXON [1].
February, 1832.
Dear Moxon,—The snows are ankle-deep, slush, and mire, that 't is hard to get to the post-office, and cruel to send the maid out. 'Tis a slough of despair, or I should sooner have thanked you for your offer of the "Life," which we shall very much like to have, and will return duly. I do not know when I shall be in town, but in a week or two at farthest, when I will come as far as you, if I can. We are moped to death with confinement within doors, I send you a curiosity of G. Dyer's tender conscience. Between thirty and forty years since, George published the "Poet's Fate," in which were two very harmless lines about Mr. Rogers; but Mr. R. not quite approving of them, they were left out in a subsequent edition, 1801. But George has been worrying about them ever since; if I have heard him once, I have heard him a hundred times express a remorse proportioned to a consciousness of having been guilty of an atrocious libel. As the devil would have it, a fool they call Barker, in his "Parriana" has quoted the identical two lines as they stood in some obscure edition anterior to 1801, and the withers of poor George are again wrung, His letter is a gem: with his poor blind eyes it has been labored out at six sittings. The history of the couplet is in page 3 of this irregular production, in which every variety of shape and size that letters can be twisted into is to be found. Do show his part of it to Mr. Rogers some day. If he has bowels, they must melt at the contrition so queerly charactered of a contrite sinner. G. was born, I verily think, without original sin, but chooses to have a conscience, as every Christian gentleman should have; his dear old face is insusceptible of the twist they call a sneer, yet he is apprehensive of being suspected of that ugly appearance. When he makes a compliment, he thinks he has given an affront,—a name is personality. But show (no hurry) this unique recantation to Mr. Rogers: 't is like a dirty pocket-handerchief mucked with tears of some indigent Magdalen. There is the impress of sincerity in every pot-hook and hanger; and then the gilt frame to such a pauper picture! It should go into the Museum.
[1] Lamb's future publisher. He afterwards became the husband of Lamb's protégée, Emma Isola.