Works of Charles and Mary Lamb. VI-VII. Letters
Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth [13 October 1804]
(Turn over leaf for more letters.)
DEAR Wordsworth—I have not forgot your commissions. But the truth
is, and why should I not confess it? I am not plethorically abounding in Cash
at this present. Merit, God knows, is very little rewarded; but it does not
become me to speak of myself. ![]()
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My
motto is “Contented with little, yet wishing for more.” Now
the books you wish for would require some pounds, which I am sorry to say I
have not by me: so I will say at once, if you will give me a draft upon your
town-banker for any sum you propose to lay out, I will dispose of [it] to the
very best of my skill in choice old books, such as my own soul loveth. In fact,
I have been waiting for the liquidation of a debt to enable myself to set about
your commission handsomely, for it is a scurvy thing to cry Give me the money
first, and I am the first of the family of the Lambs that
have done it for many centuries: but the debt remains as it was, and my old
friend that I accommodated has generously forgot it!
The books which you want I calculate at about £8.
Ben Jonson is a Guinea Book. Beaumont & Fletcher in folio, the right folio, not now to be met with; the
octavos are about £3. As to any other old dramatists, I do not know where to
find them except what are in Dodsley’s old plays, which are about £3 also: Massinger I never saw but at one shop, but it
is now gone, but one of the editions of Dodsley contains about a fourth (the best) of his plays.
Congreve and the rest of King Charles’s moralists are cheap and
accessible. The works on
Ireland I will enquire after, but I fear, Spenser’s is not to be had apart from
his poems; I never saw it. But you may depend upon my sparing no pains to
furnish you as complete a library of old Poets & Dramatists as will be
prudent to buy; for I suppose you do not include the £20 edition of Hamlet, single play, which
Kemble has. Marlow’s plays and poems are totally
vanished; only one edition of Dodsley retains one, and the
other two, of his plays: but John Ford is
the man after Shakespear. Let me know your will and
pleasure soon: for I have observed, next to the pleasure of buying a bargain
for one’s self is the pleasure of persuading a friend to buy it. It
tickles one with the image of an imprudency without the penalty usually
annex’d.
Francis Beaumont (1585-1616)
English playwright, often in collaboration with John Fletcher; author of
The Knight of the Burning Pestle (1607).
William Congreve (1670-1729)
English comic dramatist; author of, among others,
The Double
Dealer (1694),
Love for Love (1695), and
The Way of the World (1700).
Robert Dodsley (1704-1764)
English bookseller, poet, and miscellaneous writer; originally a footman, he was started
in his literary career by Alexander Pope.
John Fletcher (1579-1625)
English playwright, author of
The Faithful Shepherdess (1610) and
of some fifteen plays in collaboration with Francis Beaumont.
John Ford (1586-1639 c.)
Jacobean playwright who collaborated with Thomas Dekker and others; the author of
'Tis Pity She's a Whore (1633). His works were edited by William
Gifford.
Ben Jonson (1572-1637)
English dramatist, critic, and epigrammatist, friend of William Shakespeare and John
Donne.
John Philip Kemble (1757-1823)
English actor renowned for his Shakespearean roles; he was manager of Drury Lane
(1783-1802) and Covent Garden (1803-1808).
Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593)
Elizabethan poet and dramatist, author of
The Jew of Malta and
Dr. Faustus.
Philip Massinger (1583-1649)
Jacobean playwright; author of
A New Way to Pay Old Debts (1625);
his works were edited by William Gifford (1805, 1813).
Edmund Spenser (1552 c.-1599)
English poet, author of
The Shepheards Calender (1579) and
The Faerie Queene (1590, 1596).
William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
With Coleridge, author of
Lyrical Ballads (1798), Wordsworth
survived his early unpopularity to succeed Robert Southey as poet laureate in 1843.
