reached in thought and thorough imagination two inches, or farther than from his hand to his mouth, or from the vestry to the sounding-board of the pulpit.

"But the epitaphs were trim, and sprag, and patent, and pleased the survivors of Thames Ditton above the old mumpsimus of' Afflictions Sore.' . . To do justice,

though, it must be owned that even the excellent feeling which dictated this dirge when new must have suffered something in passing through so many thousand applications, many of them no doubt quite misplaced, as I have seen in Islington church-yard (I think) an Epitaph to an infant, who died 'Etatis four months,' with this seasonable inscription appended, 'Honour thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long in the land,' &c. Sincerely wishing your children long life to honour, &c.,

Letters to Wordsworth, etc., chiefly respecting Wordsworth's Poems.[1815 to 1818.]

The admirers of Wordsworth-few, but energetic and hopeful-were delighted, and his opponents excited to the expression of their utmost spleen, by the appearance, in 1814, of "The Excursion" (in the quarto form marked by the bitter flippancy of Lord Byron); and by the publication, in 1815, of two volumes of Poems, some of which only were new. The following letters are chiefly expressive of Lamb's feelings respecting these remarkable works, and the treatment which his own Review of the latter received from Mr. Gifford, then the Editor of the Quarterly Review, for which it was written. The following letter is in acknowledgment of an early copy of "The Excursion."

TO MR. WORDSWORTH.

"1814.

"Dear Wordsworth, I cannot tell you how pleased I was at the receipt of the great armful of poetry which you have sent me; and to get it before the rest of the world too! I have gone quite through with it, and was thinking to have accomplished that pleasure a second time before I

wrote to thank you, but M. B. came in the night (while we were out) and made holy theft of it, but we expect restitution in a day or two. It is the noblest conversational poem I ever read-a day in Heaven. The part (or rather main body) which has left the sweetest odour on my memory (a bad term for the remains of an impression so recent) is the Tales of the Church-yard; the only girl among seven brethren, born out of due time, and not duly taken away again; the deaf man and the blind man; the Jacobite and the Hanoverian, whom antipathies reconcile; the Scarronentry of the rusticating parson upon his solitude: these were all new to me too. My having known the story of Margaret (at the beginning), a very old acquaintance, even as long back as when I saw you first at Stowey, did not make her reappearance less fresh. I don't know what to pick out of this best of books upon the best subjects for partial naming. That gorgeous sunset is famous ;* I think it must have been the identical one we saw on Salisbury Plain five years ago, that drew P from the card-table, where he had sat from rise of that luminary to its unequalled setting; but neither he nor I had gifted eyes to see those symbols of common things glorified, such as the prophets saw them in that sunset-the wheel, the potter's clay, the wash-pot, the wine-press, the almond-tree rod, the baskets of figs, the fourfold visaged head, the throne, and Him that sat thereon.f

"One feeling I was particularly struck with, as what I recognized so very lately at Harrow Church on entering in it after a hot and secular day's pleasure, the instantaneous coolness and calming, almost transforming properties of a country church just entered; a certain fragrance which it has, either from its holiness, or being kept shut all the week, or the air that is let in being pure country, exactly what you have reduced into words-but I am feeling that which I cannot express. The reading your lines about it fixed me for a time, a monument in Harrow Church; do you know it? with its fine long spire, white as washed

* The passage to which the allusion applies does not picture a sunset, but the effect of sunlight on a receding mist among the mountains, in the second book of " The Excursion."

marble, to be seen, by vantage of its high site, as far as Salisbury spire itself almost.

"I shall select a day or two, very shortly, when I am coolest in brain, to have a steady second reading, which I feel will lead to many more, for it will be a stock book with me while eyes or spectacles shall be lent me. There is a great deal of noble matter about mountain scenery, yet not so much as to overpower and discountenance a poor Londoner or south-countryman entirely, though Mary seems to have felt it occasionally a little too powerfully, for it was her remark during reading it, that by your system it was doubtful whether a liver in towns had a soul to be saved. She almost trembled for that invisible part of us in her.

"Save for a late excursion to Harrow, and a day or two on the banks of the Thames this summer, rural images were fast fading from my mind, and by the wise provision of the Regent, all that was country-fy'd in the Parks is all but obliterated. The very colour of green is vanished; the whole surface of Hyde Park is dry crumbling sand (Arabia Arenosa), not a vestige or hint of grass ever having grown there; booths and drinking-places go all round it for a mile and half, I am confident-I might say two miles in circuit -the stench of liquors, bad tobacco, dirty people and provisions, conquers the air, and we are stifled and suffocated in Hyde Park."

Lamb was delighted with the proposition, made through Southey, that he should review "The Excursion" in the Quarterly"-though he had never before attempted contemporaneous criticism, and cherished a dislike to it, which the event did not diminish. The ensuing letter was addressed while meditating on his office, and uneasy lest he should lose it for want of leisure.

TO MR. WORDSWORTH..

"1814.

"My dear W.,-I have scarce time or quiet to explain my present situation, how unquiet and distracted it is, owing to the absence of some of my compeers, and to the deficient state of payments at E. I. H., owing to bad peace speculations in the calico market. (I write this to W. W., Esq., Collector of Stamp Duties for the conjoint Northern Counties, not to W. W., Poet.) I go back, and have for these many days past, to evening work, generally at the

rate of nine hours a day. The nature of my work, too, puzzling and hurrying, has so shaken my spirits, that my sleep is nothing but a succession of dreams of business I cannot do, of assistants that give me no assistance, of terrible responsibilities. I reclaimed your book, which Hazlitt has uncivilly kept, only two days ago, and have made shift to read it again with shattered brain. It does not lose-rather some parts have come out with a prominence I did not perceive before-but such was my aching head yesterday (Sunday), that the book was like a mountain landscape to one that should walk on the edge of a precipice; I perceived beauty dizzily. Now, what I would say is, that I see no prospect of a quiet half day, or hour even, till this week and the next are past. I then hope to get four weeks' absence, and if then is time enough to begin, I will most gladly do what is required, though I feel my inability, for my brain is always desultory, and snatches off hints from things, but can seldom follow a 'work' methodically. But that shall be no excuse. What I beg you to do is, to let me know from Southey if that will be time enough for the Quarterly,' i. e., suppose it done in three weeks from this date (19th Sept); if not, it is my bounden duty to express my regret, and decline it. Mary thanks you, and feels highly grateful for your 'Patent of Nobility,' and acknowledges the author of The Excursion' as the legitimate Fountain of Honour. We both agree that, to our feeling, Ellen is best as she is. To us there would have been something repugnant in her challenging her Penance as a Dowry; the fact is explicable, but how few are those to whom it would have been rendered explicit. The unlucky reason of the detention of The Excursion' was Hazlitt, for whom M. Burney borrowed it, and, after reiterated messages, I only got it on Friday. His remarks had some vigour in them ;* particularly something about an old ruin being too modern for your Primeval Nature, and about a lichen. I forget the passage, but the whole wore an air of dispatch. That objection which M. Burney had imbibed from him about Voltaire I explained to M. B. (or tried) exactly on your principle of its being a characteristic speech.†

* This refers to an article of Hazlitt on "The Excursion" in the "Examiner," very fine in passages, but more characteristic of the critic than descriptive of the poem.

The passage in which the copy of "Candide," found in the apartment of the Recluse, is described as "the dull production of a scoffer's brain,' which had excited Hazlitt to energetic vindication of Voltaire from the charge of dulness. Whether the work, written in mockery of human hopes,

That it was no settled comparative estimate of Voltaire with any of his own tribe of buffoons-no injustice, even if you spoke it, for I dared say you never could relish 'Candide.' I know I tried to get through it about a twelvemonth since, and couldn't for the dulness. Now I think I have a wider range in buffoonery than you. Too much toleration, perhaps..

"I finish this after a raw, ill-baked dinner, fast gobbled up to set me off to office again, after working there till near four. O how I wish I were a rich man, even though I were squeezed camel-fashion at getting through that needle's eye that is spoken of in the Written Word. Apropos; is the Poet of the 'Excursion' a Christian? or is it the Peddler and the Priest that are ?

go

"I find I miscalled that celestial splendour of the mist ing off a sunset. That only shows my inaccuracy of head. Do, pray, indulge me by writing an answer to the point of time I mentioned above, or let Southey. I am ashamed to go bargaining in this way, but indeed I have no time I can reckon on till the first week in October. God send I may not be disappointed in that! Coleridge swore, in a letter to me, he would review The Excursion' in the Quarterly.' Therefore, though that shall not stop me, yet if I can do any thing, when done, I must know of him if he has anything ready, or I shall fill the world with loud exclaims.

"I keep writing on, knowing the postage is no more for much writing, else so fagged and dispirited I am with cursed India House work, I scarce know what I do. My left arm reposes on 'The Excursion.' I feel what it would be in quiet. It is now a sealed book."

The next letter was written after the fatal critique was dispatched to the editor, and before its appearance.

TO MR. WORDSWORTH.

"1814.

"Dear W.,--Your experience about tailors seems to be in point blank opposition to Burton, as much as the author of The Excursion' does, toto cælo, differ in his notion of a country life, from the picture which W. H. has exhibited of But, with a little explanation, you and B. may

the same.

be dull, I will not venture to determine; but I do not hesitate, at any risk, to avow a conviction that no book in the world is more adapted to make a good man wretched.