Works of Charles and Mary Lamb. VI-VII. Letters
Charles Lamb to William Hazlitt, 15 January 1806
Thursday, 15th Jan., 1806.
DEAR Hazlitt,—Godwin went to
Johnson’s yesterday about your
business. Johnson would not come down, or give any answer,
but has promised to open the manuscript, and to give you an answer in one
month. Godwin will punctually go again ![]()
| 330 | LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB | Jan. |
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(Wednesday is Johnson’s open day)
yesterday four weeks next: i.e. in one lunar month from
this time. Till when Johnson positively declines giving
any answer. I wish you joy on ending your Search. Mrs. H.
was naming something about a Life of Fawcett, to be by you undertaken: the great
Fawcett, as she explain’d to Manning, when he ask’d, What
Fawcett? He innocently thought Fawcett the player. But
Fawcett the Divine is known to many people, albeit
unknown to the Chinese Enquirer. I should think, if you liked it, and
Johnson declined it, that Phillips is the man. He is perpetually bringing out
Biographies, Richardson, Wilkes, , Lee Lewis, without
number: little trim things in two easy volumes price 12s. the two, made up of
letters to and from, scraps, posthumous trifles, anecdotes, and about forty
pages of hard biography. You might dish up a Fawcettiad in 3 months, and ask 60
or 80 Pounds for it. I should dare say that Phillips would
catch at it—I wrote to you the other day in a great hurry. Did you get it? This
is merely a Letter of business at Godwin’s request.
Lord Nelson is quiet at last. His ghost only
keeps a slight fluttering in odes and elegies in newspapers, and impromptus,
which could not be got ready before the funeral.
As for news—We have Miss
Stoddart in our house, she has been with us a fortnight and will
stay a week or so longer. She is one of the few people who are not in the way
when they are with you. No tidings of Coleridge. Fenwick is
coming to town on Monday (it no kind angel intervene) to surrender himself to
prison. He hopes to get the Rules of the Fleet. On the same, or nearly the
same, day, Fell, my other quondam
co-friend and drinker, will go to Newgate, and his wife and 4 children, I
suppose, to the Parish. Plenty of reflection and motives of gratitude to the
wise disposer of all things in us, whose prudent conduct has hitherto ensured
us a warm fire and snug roof over our heads. Nullum
numen abest si sit Prudentia.
Alas! Prudentia is in the last quarter of her tutelary
shining over me. A little time and I ——
But may be I may, at last, hit upon some mode of collecting
some of the vast superfluities of this money-voiding town. Much is to be got,
and I don’t want much. All I ask is time and leisure; and I am cruelly
off for them.
When you have the inclination, I shall be very glad to have
a letter from you.—Your brother and
Mrs. H., I am afraid, think hardly of us for not
coming oftener to see them, but we are distracted beyond what they can conceive
with visitors and visitings. I never have an hour for my head to work quietly
its own workings; which you know is as necessary to the human system as sleep.
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| 1806 |
HAZLITT’S AFFAIRS |
331 |
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Sleep, too, I can’t get for these damn’d winds
of a night: and without sleep and rest what should ensue? Lunacy. But I trust
it won’t.
Yours, dear H., mad or sober,
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)
English poet and philosopher who projected
Lyrical Ballads (1798)
with William Wordsworth; author of
Biographia Literaria (1817),
On the Constitution of the Church and State (1829) and other
works.
John Fawcett (1769-1837)
English actor and composer of pantomimes and melodramas, among them
Obi, or, Three-Fingered Jack (1800).
Joseph Fawcett (1758 c.-1804)
Presbyterian preacher at the Old Jewry meeting-house in London (1785-95) before taking up
farming and succumbing to drink; he wrote poetry and was a radical friend of Godwin and
Hazlitt.
Ralph Fell (d. 1814)
Improvident writer and friend of William Godwin and Charles Lamb; a native of Yorkshire,
he published
Memoirs of the Public Life of the late Right Honourable
Charles James Fox (1808).
John Fenwick (d. 1823)
Radical author, improvident newspaper editor, and close friend of William Godwin. His
The Indian: A Farce (1800) was produced at Drury Lane.
William Godwin (1756-1836)
English novelist and political philosopher; author of
An Inquiry
concerning the Principles of Political Justice (1793) and
Caleb
Williams (1794); in 1797 he married Mary Wollstonecraft.
John Hazlitt (1767-1837)
Miniaturist and portrait painter who studied under Joshua Reynolds, the elder brother of
the essayist. A radical and alcoholic, the
Gentleman's Magazine
reported that he “was, like his brother, of an irritable temperament.”
Sarah Hazlitt [née Stoddart] (1774-1840)
The daughter of John Stoddart (1742-1803), lieutenant in the Royal Navy; she married
William Hazlitt in 1808 and was divorced in 1822.
William Hazlitt (1778-1830)
English essayist and literary critic; author of
Characters of
Shakespeare's Plays (1817),
Lectures on the English Poets
(1818), and
The Spirit of the Age (1825).
Joseph Johnson (1738-1809)
London bookseller at St. Paul's Churchyard; he published Erasmus Darwin, Mary
Wollstonecraft, Joseph Priestly, and William Wordsworth.
Charles Lee Lewes (1817-1878)
English actor and writer who performed at Covent Garden and Drury Lane; he was the
grandfather of the critic George Henry Lewes.
Thomas Manning (1772-1840)
Educated at Caius College, Cambridge, he traveled in China and Tibet, and was a life-long
friend of Charles Lamb.
Horatio Nelson, viscount Nelson (1758-1805)
Britain's naval hero who destroyed the French fleet in the Battle of the Nile (1798) and
defeated the combined French and Spanish fleets at Trafalgar (1805) in which action he was
killed.
Sir Richard Phillips (1767-1840)
London bookseller, vegetarian, and political reformer; he published
The
Monthly Magazine, originally edited by John Aikin (1747-1822). John Wolcot was a
friend and neighbor.
Samuel Richardson (1689-1761)
English printer and novelist; author of
Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded
(1739) and
Clarissa, or the History of a Young Lady
(1747-48).
John Wilkes (1725-1797)
English political reformer and foe of George III who was twice elected to Parliament
while imprisoned; he was the author of attacks on the Scots and the libertine
Essay on Woman.
