A LETTER from G.
Dyer will probably accompany this. I wish I could convey to you
any notion of the whimsical scenes I have been witness to in this fortnight
past. ’Twas on Tuesday week the poor heathen scrambled up to my door
about breakfast time. He came thro’ a violent rain with no neckcloth on,
and a beard that made him a spectacle to men and angels, and tap’d at the
door. Mary open’d it, and he stood
stark still and held a paper in his hand importing that he had been ill with a
fever. He either wouldn’t or couldn’t speak except by signs. When
you went to comfort him he put his hand upon his heart and shook is head and
told us his complaint lay where no medicines could reach it. I was
dispatch’d for Dr. Dale, Mr. Phillips of St Paul’s Church yard,
and Mr. Frend, who is to be his
executor. George solemnly delivered into Mr.
Frend’s hands and mine an old burnt preface that had been
in the fire, with injunctions which we solemnly vow’d to obey that it
should be printed after his death with his last corrections, and that some
account should be given to the world why he had not fulfill’d his
engagement with subscribers. Having done this and borrowed two guineas of his
bookseller (to whom he imparted in confidence that he should leave a great many
loose papers behind him which would only want methodizing and arranging to
prove very lucrative to any bookseller after his death), he laid himself down
on my bed in a mood of complacent resignation. By the aid of meat and drink put
into him (for I all along suspected a vacuum) he was enabled to sit up in the
evening, but he had not got the better of his intolerable fear of dying; he
expressed such philosophic indifference in his speech and such frightened
apprehensions in his physiognomy that if he had truly been dying, and I had
known it, I could not have kept my countenance. In particular, when the doctor
came and ordered him to take little white powders (I suppose of chalk or alum,
to humour him), he ey’d him with a suspicion which
I could not account for; he has since explain’d that he took it for
granted Dr. Dale knew his situation and had ordered him
these powders to hasten his departure that he might suffer as little pain as
possible. Think what an aspect the heathen put on with these fears upon a dirty
face.
| 1801 | GEORGE DYER IN EXTREMIS | 231 |
I promised Burnet to
write when his parcel went. He wants me to certify that he is more awake than
you think him. I believe he may be by this time, but he is so full of
self-opinion that I fear whether he and Phillips will ever do together. What he is to do for
Phillips he whimsically seems to consider more as a
favor done to P. than a job from P. He still persists to
call employ-
| 232 | LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB | Nov. |
I hope to see Southey soon, so I need only send my remembrance to him now. Doubtless I need not tell him that Burnett is not to be foster’d in self-opinion. His eyes want opening, to see himself a man of middling stature. I am not oculist enough to do this. The booksellers may one day remove the film. I am all this time on the most cordial supping terms of amity with G. Burnett and really love him at times: but I must speak freely of people behind their backs and not think it back-biting. It is better than Godwin’s way of telling a man he is a fool to his face.
I think if you could do any thing for George in the way of an office (God knows whether you can in any haste [?case], but you did talk of it) it is my firm belief that it would be his only chance of settlement; he will never live by his literary exertions, as he calls them—he is too proud to go the usual way to work and he has no talents to make that way unnecessary. I know he talks big in his letter to Southey that his mind is undergoing an alteration and that the die is now casting that shall consign him to honor or dishonour, but these expressions are the convulsions of a fever, not the sober workings of health. Translated into plain English, he now and then perceives he must work or starve, and then he thinks he’ll work; but when he goes about it there’s a lion in the way. He came dawdling to me for an Encyclopædia yesterday. I recommended him to Norris’ library and he said if he could not get it there; Phillips was bound to furnish him with one; it was Phillips’ interest to do so, and all that. This was true with some restrictions—but as to Phillips’ interests to oblige G. B.! Lord help his simple head! P. could by a whistle call together a host of such authors as G. B. like Robin Hood’s merry men in green. P. has regular regiments in pay. Poor writers are his crab-lice and suck at him for nutriment. His round pudding chops are their idea of plenty when in their idle fancies they aspire to be rich.
What do you think of a life of G. Dyer? I can scarcely conceive a more amusing novel. He has
been connected with all sects
| 1801 | GEORGE DYER IN A NOVEL | 233 |
