London were as big as Ambleside; and, indeed, no other answer was given or proper to be given to so ensnaring and provoking a question. In the contour of scull, certainly, I discern something paternal. But whether in all respects the future man shall transcend his father's fame, Time, the trier of Geniuses, must decide. Be it pronounced peremptorily at present that William is a well-mannered child, and, though no great student, Lath yet a lively eye for things that lie before him.

* Given in haste from my desk at Leadenhall.

Yours, and yours most sincerely,

"C. LAMB."

CHAPTER XII.

[1820 to 1823.]

Letters to Wordsworth, Coleridge, Field, Wilson, and Barton.

THE widening circle of Lamb's literary friends now em braced additional authors and actors-famous, or just bursting into fame. He welcomed in the author of the "Dramatic Scenes," who chose to appear in print as Barry Cornwall, a spirit most congenial with his own in its serious moods—one whose genius he had assisted to impel towards its kindred models, the great dramatists of Elizabeth's time, and in whose success he received the first and best reward of the efforts he had made to inspire a taste for these old masters of humanity. Mr. Macready, who had just emancipated himself from the drudgery of representing the villains of tragedy, by his splendid performance of Richard, was introduced to him by his old friend Charles Lloyd, who had visited London for change of scene, under great depression of spirits. Lloyd owed a debt of gratitude to Macready, which exemplified the true uses of the acted drama with a force which it would take many sermons of its stoutest opponents to reason away. A deep gloom had gradually overcast his mind, and threatened wholly to encircle it, when he was induced to look in at Covent Garden Theatre, and see the performance of Rob Roy The picture which he then beheld of the generous outlaw— the frank, gallant, noble bearing-the air and movements, as of one "free of mountain solitudes"-the touches of manly pathos and irresistible cordiality, delighted and melted him won him from his painful introspections, and brought to him

the unwonted relief of tears. He went home" a gayer and a wiser man;" returned again to the theatre whenever the healing enjoyments could be renewed there; and sought the acquaintance of the actor who had broken the melancholy spell in which he was enthralled, and had restored the pulses of his nature to their healthful beatings. The year 1820 gave Lamb an interest in Macready beyond that which he had derived from the introduction of Lloyd, arising from the power with which he animated the first production of one of his oldest friends-" Virginius." Knowles had been a friend and disciple of Hazlitt from a boy; and Lamb had liked and esteemed him as a hearty companion; but he had not guessed at the extraordinary dramatic power which lay ready for kindling in his brain, and still less at the delicacy of tact with which he had unveiled the sources of the most profound affections. Lamb had almost lost his taste for acted tragedy, as the sad realities of life had pressed more nearly on him; yet he made an exception in favour of the first and happiest part of “ Virginius," those paternal scenes which stand alone in the modern drama, and which Macready informed with the fulness of a father's affection.

The establishment of the "London Magazine,” under the auspices of Mr. John Scott, occasioned Lamb's introduction to the public by the name, under colour of which he acquired his most brilliant reputation-" Elia." The adoption of this signature was purely accidental. His first contribution to the magazine was a description of the Old South Sea House, where Lamb had passed a few months' novitiate as a clerk thirty years before, and of its inmates who had long passed away; and remembering the name of a gay, light-hearted foreigner, who fluttered there at that time, he subscribed his name to the essay. It was afterward affixed to subsequent contributions and Lamb used it until, in his "Last Essays of Elia," he bade it a sad farewell.

The perpetual influx of visiters whom he could not repel, whom, indeed, he was always glad to welcome, but whose visits unstrung him, induced him to take lodgings at Dalston, to which he occasionally retired when he wished for repose. The deaths of some who were dear to him cast a melancholy tinge on his mind, as may be seen in the following:

TO MR. WORDsworth.

“20th March, 1822.

My dear Wordsworth-A letter from you is very grateful; I have not seen a Kendal postmark so long! We are pretty well, save colds and rheumatics, and a certain deadness to every

thing, which, I think, I may date from poor John's loss and another accident or two at the same time, that has made me almost bury myself at Dalston, where yet I see more faces than I could wish. Deaths overset one, and put one out long after the recent grief. Two or three have died within this last two twelvemonths, and so many parts of me have been numbed, One sees a picture, reads an anecdote, starts a casual fancy, and thinks to tell of it to this person in preference to every other: the person is gone whom it would have peculiarly suited. It won't do for another. Every departure destroys a class of sympathies. There's Captain Burney gone! What fun has whist now? what matters it what you lead, if you can no longer fancy him looking over you? One never hears anything, but the image of the particular person occurs with whom alone almost you would care to share the intelligence-thus one distributes one's self about-and now for so many parts of me I have lost the market. Common natures do not suffice me. Good people, as they are called, won't serve. I want individuals. I am made up of queer points, and I want so many answering needles. The going away of friends does not make the remainder more precious. It takes so much from them as there was a common link. A. B. and C. make a party. A. dies. B. not only loses A., but all A.'s part in C. C. loses A.'s part in B., and so the alphabet sickens by subtraction of interchangeables. I express myself muddily, capite dolente. I have a dulling cold. My theory is to enjoy life, but my practice is against it. I grow ominously tired of official confinement. Thirty years have I served the Philistines, and my neck is not subdued to the yoke. You don't know how wearisome it is to breathe the air of four pent walls, without relief, day after day, all the golden hours of the day between ten and four, without ease or interposition. Tædet me harum quotidianarum formarum, these pestilential clerk-faces always in one's dish. Oh for a few years between the grave and the desk! they are the same, save that at the latter you are the outside machine. The foul enchanter 'letters four do form his name’-Busirare is his name in hell-that has curtailed you of some domestic comforts, hath laid a heavier hand on me, not in present infliction, but in the taking away the hope of enfranchise ment. I dare not whisper to myself a pension on this side of absolute incapacitation and infirmity, till years have sucked me dry; Otium cum indignitate. I had thought, in a green old age (oh green thought!), to have retired to Ponder's End, emblematic name, how beautiful! in the Ware road, there to have made up my accounts with Heaven and the company, toddling about between it and Cheshunt, anon stretching on some fine

Izaac Walton morning to Hoddesdon or Amwell, careless as a beggar; but walking, walking ever till I fairly walked myself off my legs, dying walking! The hope is gone. I sit like Philomel all day (but not singing), with my breast against this thorn of a desk, with the only hope that some pulmonary affliction may relieve me. Vide Lord Palmerston's report of the clerks in the war-office (Debates this morning's 'Times'), by which it appears, in twenty years as many clerks have been coughed and catarrhed out of it into their freer graves. Thank you for asking about the pictures. Milton hangs over my fireside in Covent Garden (when I am there), the rest have been sold for an old song, wanting the eloquent tongue that should have set them off! You have gratified me with liking my meeting with Dodd.* For the Malvolio story, the thing is become in verity a sad task, and I eke it out with anything. If I could slip out of it I should be happy, but our chief reputed assistants have forsaken us. The Opium-eater crossed us once with a dazzling path, and hath as suddenly left us darkling; and, in short, I shall go on from dull to worse, because I cannot resist the booksellers' importunity-the old plea, you know, of authors; but, I believe, on my part, sincere. Hartley I do not so often see, but I never see him in unwelcome hour. I thoroughly love and honour him. I send you a frozen epistle, but it is winter and dead time of the year with me. May Heaven keep something like spring and summer up with you, strengthen your eyes, and make mine a little lighter to encounter with them, as I hope they shall yet and again before all are closed.

"Yours, with every kind remembrance,

“C. L.

"I had almost forgot to say I think you thoroughly right about presentation copies. I should like to see you print a book I should grudge to purchase for its size. Hang me, but I would have it, though !"

The following letter, containing the germe of the well-known "Dissertation on Roast Pig," was addressed to Coleridge, who had received a pig as a present, and attributed it erroneously to Lamb.

TO MR. COLERIDGE.

"Dear C.-It gives me great satisfaction to hear that the pig turned out so well-they are interesting creatures at a

* See the account of the meeting between Dodd and Jem White, in Elia Essay "On some of the Old Actors," vol. ii.. r. 151.

certain age-what a pity such buds should blow out into the maturity of rank bacon! You had all some of the crackling— and brain sauce-did you remember to rub it with butter, and gently dredge it a little, just before the crisis? Did the eyes come away kindly, with no Edipean avulsion? Was the crackling the colour of the ripe pomegranate? Had you no cursed compliment of boiled neck of mutton before it, to blunt the edge of delicate desire? Did you flesh maiden teeth in it? Not that I sent the pig, nor can form the remotest guess what part O could play in the business. I never knew him give anything away in my life. He would not begin with strangers. I suspect the pig, after all, was meant for me; but, at the unlucky juncture of time being absent, the present somehow went round to Highgate. To confess an honest truth, a pig is one of those things I could never think of sending away. Teals, widgeons, snipes, barn-door fowl, ducks, geese-your tame villalio things-Welsh mutton, collars of brawn, sturgeon, fresh or pickled, your potted char, Swiss cheeses, French pies, early grapes, muscadines, I impart as freely unto my friends as to myself. They are but selfextended; but pardon me if I stop somewhere-where the ine feeling of benevolence giveth a higher smack than the ensual rarity, there my friends (or any good man) may command me; but pigs are pigs, and I myself therein am nearest to myself. Nay, I should think it an affront, an undervaluing done to Nature who bestowed such a boon upon me, if, in a churlish mood, I parted with the precious gift. One of the bitterest pangs I ever felt of remorse was when a child-my kind old aunt had strained her pocket-strings to bestow a sixpenny whole plumcake upon me. In my way home through the borough I met a venerable old man, not a mendicant, but thereabout; a look-beggar, not a verbal petitionist; and in the coxcombry of taught-charity I gave away the cake to him. I walked on a little in all the pride of an evangelical peacock, when, of a sudden, my old aunt's kindness crossed me; the sum it was to her; the pleasure she had a right to expect that I, not the old impostor, should take in eating her cake; the cursed ingratitude by which, under the colour of a Christian virtue, I had frustrated her cherished purpose. I sobbed, wept, and took it to heart so grievously, that I think I never suffered the like-and I was right. It was a piece of unfeeling hypocrisy, and proved a lesson to me ever after. The cake has long been masticated, consigned to dunghill with the ashes of that unseasonable pauper.

"But when Providence, who is better to us all than out aunts, gives me a pig, remembering my temptation and my