READ on and you’ll come to the Pens. My head is playing all the tunes in the world, ringing such peals. It has just finished the “Merry Christ Church Bells,” and absolutely is beginning “Turn again, Whittington.” Buz, buz, buz: bum, bum, bum: wheeze, wheeze, wheeze: feu, feu, feu: tinky, tinky, tinky: craunch. I shall certainly come to be damned at last. I have been getting drunk for two days running. I find my moral sense in the last stage of a consumption, and my religion burning as blue and faint as the tops of burning bricks. Hell gapes and the Devil’s great guts cry cupboard for me. In the midst of this infernal torture, Conscience (and be damn’d to her), is barking and yelping as loud as any of them. I have sat down to read over again, and I think I do begin to spy out something with beauty and design in it. I perfectly accede to all your alterations, and only desire that you had cut deeper, when your hand was in.
In the next edition of the “Anthology” (which Phœbus avert and those nine other wandering maids also!) please
to blot out gentle-hearted, and substitute drunken: dog, ragged-head,
seld-shaven, odd-eyed, stuttering, or any other epithet which truly and
properly belongs to the gentleman in question. And for
Charles read Tom, or
Bob, or Richard for more
delicacy. Damn you, I was beginning to forgive you and believe in earnest that
the lugging in of my proper name was purely unintentional on your part, when
looking back for further conviction, stares me in the face Charles Lamb of the India House. Now I am
convinced it was all done in malice, heaped sack-upon-sack, congregated,
studied malice. You Dog! your 141st page shall not save you. I own I was just
ready
178 | LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB | August |
1800 | GEORGE DYER’S PROJECT | 179 |
Now I am on the subject of poetry, I must announce to you,
who, doubtless, in your remote part of the Island, have not heard tidings of so
great a blessing, that George
Dyer hath prepared two ponderous volumes full of Poetry and Criticism.
They impend over the town, and are threatened to fall in the winter. The first
volume contains every sort of poetry except personal satire, which
George, in his truly original prospectus, renounceth
for ever, whimsically foisting the intention in between the price of his book
and the proposed number of subscribers. (If I can, I will get you a copy of his
handbill.) He has tried his vein in every species
besides—the Spenserian, Thomsonian, Masonic and Akensidish
more especially. The second volume is all criticism; wherein he demonstrates to
the entire satisfaction of the literary world, in a way that must silence all
reply for ever, that the pastoral was introduced by Theocritus and polished by Virgil and Pope—that
Gray and Mason
(who always hunt in couples in George’s brain) have
a good deal of poetical fire and true lyric genius—that Cowley was ruined by excess of wit (a warning
to all moderns)—that Charles Lloyd,
Charles Lamb, and William Wordsworth, in later days, have struck
the true chords of poesy. O, George,
George, with a head uniformly wrong and a heart
uniformly right, that I had power and might equal to my wishes!—then I would
call the Gentry of thy native Island, and they should come in troops, flocking
at the sound of thy Prospectus Trumpet, and crowding who shall be first to
stand in thy List of Subscribers. I can only put twelve shillings into thy
pocket (which, I will answer for them, will not stick there long), out of a
pocket almost as bare as thine. [Lamb
here erases six lines.] Is it not a pity so much fine writing should
be erased? But, to tell the truth, I began to scent that I was getting into
that sort of style which Longinus and
Dionysius Halicarnassus aptly call
“the affected.” But I am suffering from the combined effect of two
days’ drunkenness, and at such times it is not very easy to think or
express in a natural series. The Only useful Object of this Letter is to
apprize you that on Saturday I shall transmit the Pens by the same coach I sent
the Parcel. So enquire them out. You had better write to Godwin here, directing your letter to be
forwarded to him. I
180 | LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB | August |