Works of Charles and Mary Lamb. VI-VII. Letters
Charles Lamb to Robert Southey, [9 August 1815]
DEAR Southey,—Robinson is not
on the circuit, as I erroneously stated in a letter to W. W., which travels with this, but is gone to
Brussels, Ostend, Ghent, &c. But his friends the Colliers, whom I consulted respecting your
friend’s fate, remember to have heard him say, that Father Pardo had effected his escape (the
cunning greasy rogue), and to the best of their belief is at present in Paris.
To my thinking, it is a small matter whether there be one fat friar more or
less in the world. I have rather a taste for clerical executions, imbibed from
early recollections of the fate of the excellent Dodd. I hear Buonaparte
has sued his habeas corpus, and the twelve judges are now sitting upon it at
the Rolls.
Your boute-feu (bonfire) must be excellent of its kind.
Poet Settle presided at the last
great thing of the kind in London, when the pope was burnt in form. Do you
provide any verses ![]()
| 468 | LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB | August |
![]()
on this occasion? Your fear
for Hartley’s intellectuals is
just and rational. Could not the Chancellor
be petitioned to remove him? His lordship took Mr.
Betty from under the paternal wing. I think at least he should
go through a course of matter-of-fact with some sober man after the mysteries.
Could not he spend a week at Poole’s before he goes back to Oxford? Tobin is dead. But there is a man in my
office, a Mr. Hedges, who proses it away
from morning to night, and never gets beyond corporal and material verities.
He’d get these crack-brain metaphysics out of the young gentleman’s
head as soon as any one I know. When I can’t sleep o’ nights, I
imagine a dialogue with Mr. H. upon any given subject, and
go prosing on in fancy with him, till I either laugh or fall asleep. I have
literally found it answer. I am going to stand godfather; I don’t like
the business; I cannot muster up decorum for these occasions; I shall certainly
disgrace the font. I was at Hazlitt’s marriage, and had like to have been turned out
several times during the ceremony. Any thing awful makes me laugh. I misbehaved
once at a funeral. Yet I can read about these ceremonies with pious and proper
feelings. The realities of life only seem the mockeries. I fear I must get
cured along with Hartley, if not too inveterate.
Don’t you think Louis the Desirable is
in a sort of quandary?
After all, Bonaparte is
a fine fellow, as my barber says, and I should not mind standing bareheaded at
his table to do him service in his fall. They should have given him Hampton
Court or Kensington, with a tether extending forty miles round London. Qu.
Would not the people have ejected the Brunswicks some day in his favour? Well,
we shall see.
Hartley Coleridge [Old Bachelor] (1796-1849)
The eldest son of the poet; he was educated at Merton College, Oxford, contributed essays
in the
London Magazine and
Blackwood's, and
published
Lives of Distinguished Northerns (1832).
John Dyer Collier (1762-1825)
The father of John Payne Collier. Originally a wool merchant, he edited the
Monthly Register (1802-3), was a reporter for the
Times and
Morning Chronicle (1808-15), and edited the
Critical
Review in its final year.
William Dodd (1729-1777)
English clergyman and poet educated at Clare College, Cambridge; he was a notable
preacher at the Magdalen Hospital but still more notable for being hung as a forger.
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).
Henry Hedges (1765 c.-1849)
He was a clerk in the East India House, 1781-1817.
Louis XVIII, king of France (1755-1824)
Brother of the executed Louis XVI; he was placed on the French throne in 1814 following
the abdication of Napoleon.
Emperor Napoleon I (1769-1821)
Military leader, First Consul (1799), and Emperor of the French (1804), after his
abdication he was exiled to Elba (1814); after his defeat at Waterloo he was exiled to St.
Helena (1815).
Manuel Pardo de Andrade (1760-1832)
Spanish ex-priest, liberal journalist, and poet who spent much of his later life in
England.
Thomas Poole (1766-1837)
Of Nether Stowey; he was a farmer, tanner, and the early friend of Samuel Taylor
Coleridge.
Henry Crabb Robinson (1775-1867)
Attorney, diarist, and journalist for
The Times; he was a founder
of the Athenaeum Club.
John Scott, first earl of Eldon (1751-1838)
Lord chancellor (1801-27); he was legal counsel to the Prince of Wales and an active
opponent of the Reform Bill.
Elkanah Settle (1648-1724)
English playwright, author of the
Empress of Morocco (1673); his
strident whiggery made him a target of attacks by Dryden and Pope.
Robert Southey (1774-1843)
Poet laureate and man of letters whose contemporary reputation depended upon his prose
works, among them the
Life of Nelson, 2 vols (1813),
History of the Peninsular War, 3 vols (1823-32) and
The Doctor, 7 vols (1834-47).
James Webbe Tobin [blind Tobin] (1767-1814)
The son of a plantation-owner, he was an abolitionist, follower of Godwin, friend of
Coleridge, and contributor to Southey's
Annual Anthology. He was the
brother of the dramatist John Tobin.
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.
