DEAR Godwin,—You never made a more unlucky and perverse mistake than to
suppose that the reason of my not writing that cursed thing was to be found in
your book. I assure you most sincerely that I have been greatly delighted with
Chaucer. I may be
wrong, but I think there is one considerable error runs through it, which is a
conjecturing spirit, a fondness for filling out the picture by supposing what
Chaucer did and how he felt, where
the materials are scanty. So far from meaning to withhold from you (out of
mistaken tenderness) this opinion of mine, I plainly told Mrs. Godwin that I did find a fault, which I should reserve naming until I should see
you and talk it over. This she may very well remember, and also that I declined
naming this fault until she drew it from me by asking me if there was not too
much fancy in the work. I then confessed generally what I felt, but refused to
go into particulars until I had seen you. I am never very fond of saying things
before third persons, because in the relation (such is
| 282 | LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB | Nov. |
I certainly ought to make great allowances for your
misunderstanding me. You, by long habits of composition and a greater command
gained over your own powers, cannot conceive of the desultory and uncertain way
in which I (an author by fits) sometimes cannot put the thoughts of a common
letter into sane prose. Any work which I take upon myself as an engagement will
act upon me to torment, e.g., when I have undertaken, as
three or four times I have, a school-boy copy of verses for Merchant
Taylors’ boys, at a guinea a copy, I have fretted over them, in perfect
inability to do them, and have made my sister wretched with my wretchedness for
a week together. The same, till by habit I have acquired a mechanical command,
I have felt in making paragraphs. As to reviewing, in particular, my head is so
whimsical a head, that I cannot, after reading another man’s book, let it
have been never so pleasing, give any account of it in any methodical way. I
cannot follow his train. Something like this you must have perceived of me in
conversation. Ten thousand times I have confessed to you, talking of my
talents, my utter inability to remember in any comprehensive way what I read. I
can vehemently applaud, or perversely stickle, at parts;
but I cannot grasp at a whole. This infirmity (which is nothing to brag of) may
be seen in my two little compositions, the tale and my play, in both which no
reader, however partial, can find any story. I wrote such stuff about Chaucer, and got into such digressions, quite
irreducible into 1⅕ column of a paper, that I was perfectly ashamed to show it
you. However, it is become a serious matter that I should convince you I
neither slunk from the task through a wilful deserting neglect, or through any
(most imaginary on your part) distaste of Chaucer; and I
will try my hand again, I hope with better luck. My health is bad and my time
taken up, but all I can spare between this and
| 1803 | GODWIN’S PALATE | 283 |
