THE BEST LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB ***
Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Keren Vergon, Sjaani, Tom Allen and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
LAUREL-CROWNED LETTERS
CHARLES LAMB
It may well be that the "Essays of Elia" will be found to have kept their perfume, and the LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB to retain their old sweet savor, when "Sartor Resartus" has about as many readers as Bulwer's "Artificial Changeling," and nine tenths even of "Don Juan" lie darkening under the same deep dust that covers the rarely troubled pages of the "Secchia Rapita."
A.C. SWINBURNE
No assemblage of letters, parallel or kindred to that in the hands of the reader, if we consider its width of range, the fruitful period over which it stretches, and its typical character, has ever been produced.
W.C. HAZLITT ON LAMB'S LETTERS.
THE BEST LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB
Edited with an Introduction
BY EDWARD GILPIN JOHNSON
A.D. 1892.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
LETTER I. To Samuel Taylor Coleridge II. To Coleridge III. To Coleridge IV. To Coleridge V. To Coleridge VI. To Coleridge VII. To Coleridge VIII. To Coleridge IX. To Coleridge X. To Coleridge XI. To Coleridge XII. To Coleridge XIII. To Coleridge XIV. To Coleridge XV. To Robert Southey XVI. To Southey XVII. To Southey XVIII. To Southey XIX. To Thomas Manning XX. To Coleridge XXI. To Manning XXII. To Coleridge XXIII. To Manning XXIV. To Manning XXV. To Coleridge XXVI. To Manning XXVII. To Coleridge XXVIII. To Coleridge XXIX. To Manning XXX. To Manning XXXI. To Manning XXXII. To Manning XXXIII. To Coleridge XXXIV. To Wordsworth XXXV. To Wordsworth XXXVI. To Manning XXXVII. To Manning XXXVIII. To Manning XXXIX. To Coleridge XL. To Manning XLI. To Manning XLII. To Manning XLIII. To William Godwin XLIV. To Manning XLV. To Miss Wordsworth XLVI. To Manning XLVII. To Wordsworth XLVIII. To Manning XLIX. To Wordsworth L. To Manning LI. To Miss Wordsworth LII. To Wordsworth LIII. To Wordsworth LIV. To Wordsworth LV. To Wordsworth LVI. To Southey LVII. To Miss Hutchinson LVIII. To Manning LIX. To Manning LX. To Wordsworth LXI. To Wordsworth LXII. To H. Dodwell LXIII. To Mrs. Wordsworth LXIV. To Wordsworth LXV. To Manning LXVI. To Miss Wordsworth LXVII. To Coleridge LXVIII. To Wordsworth LXIX. To John Clarke LXX. To Mr. Barren Field LXXI. To Walter Wilson LXXII. To Bernard Barton LXXIII. To Miss Wordsworth LXXIV. To Mr. and Mrs. Bruton LXXV. To Bernard Barton LXXVI. To Miss Hutchinson LXXVII. To Bernard Barton LXXVIII. To Mrs. Hazlitt LXXIX. To Bernard Barton LXXX. To Bernard Barton LXXXI. To Bernard Barton LXXXII. To Bernard Barton LXXXIII. To Bernard Barton LXXXIV. To Bernard Barton LXXXV. To Bernard Barton LXXXVI. To Wordsworth LXXXVII. To Bernard Barton LXXXVIII. To Bernard Barton LXXXIX. To Bernard Barton XC. To Southey XCI. To Bernard Barton XCII. To J.B. Dibdin XCIII. To Henry Crabb Robinson XCIV. To Peter George Patmore XCV. To Bernard Barton XCVI. To Thomas Hood XCVII. To P.G. Patmore XCVIII. To Bernard Barton XCIX. To Procter C. To Bernard Barton CI. To Mr. Gilman CII. To Wordsworth CIII. To Mrs. Hazlitt CIV. To George Dyer CV. To Dyer CVI. To Mr. Moxon CVII. To Mr. Moxon
INTRODUCTION.
No writer, perhaps, since the days of Dr. Johnson has been oftener brought before us in biographies, essays, letters, etc., than Charles Lamb. His stammering speech, his gaiter-clad legs,--"almost immaterial legs," Hood called them,--his frail wisp of a body, topped by a head "worthy of Aristotle," his love of punning, of the Indian weed, and, alas! of the kindly production of the juniper-berry (he was not, he owned, "constellated under Aquarius"), his antiquarianism of taste, and relish of the crotchets and whimsies of authorship, are as familiar to us almost as they were to the group he gathered round him Wednesdays at No. 4, Inner Temple Lane, where "a clear fire, a clean hearth, and the rigor of the game" awaited them. Talfourd has unctuously celebrated Lamb's "Wednesday Nights." He has kindly left ajar a door through which posterity peeps in upon the company,--Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt, "Barry Cornwall," Godwin, Martin Burney, Crabb Robinson (a ubiquitous shade, dimly suggestive of that figment, "Mrs. Harris"), Charles Kemble, Fanny Kelly ("Barbara S."), on red-letter occasions Coleridge and Wordsworth,--and sees them discharging the severer offices of the whist-table ("cards were cards" then), and, later, unbending their minds over poetry, criticism, and metaphysics. Elia was no Barmecide host, and the serjeant dwells not without regret upon the solider business of the evening,--"the cold roast lamb or boiled beef, the heaps of smoking roasted potatoes, and the vast jug of porter, often replenished from the foaming pots which the best tap of Fleet Street supplied," hospitably presided over by "the most quiet, sensible, and kind of women," Mary Lamb.
