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MY dear friend,
Before I end,—
Have you any
More orders for Don
Giovanni
To give
Him that doth live
Your faithful Zany?
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| 498 | LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB | May |
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Without raillery
I mean Gallery
Ones:
For I am a person that shuns
All ostentation
And being at the top of the fashion;
And seldom go to operas
But in formâ pauperis.
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I go to the play
In a very economical sort of a way,
Rather to see
Than be seen.
Though I’m no ill sight
Neither,
By candle-light,
And in some kinds of weather.
You might pit me
For height
Against Kean;
But in a grand tragic scene
I’m nothing:—
It would create a kind of loathing
To see me act Hamlet;
There’d be many a damn let
Fly
At my presumption
If I should try,
Being a fellow of no gumption.
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By the way, tell me candidly how you relish
This, which they call
The lapidary style?
Opinions vary.
The late Mr.
Mellish
Could never abide it.
He thought it vile,
And coxcombical.
My friend the Poet
Laureat,
Who is a great lawyer at
Anything comical,
Was the first who tried it;
But Mellish could never abide it.
But it signifies very little what Mellish said,
Because he is dead.
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| 1817 | A RHYMED LETTER | 499 |
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For who can confute
A body that’s mute?—
Or who would fight
With a senseless sprite?—
Or think of troubling
An impenetrable old goblin
That’s dead and gone,
And stiff as stone,
To convince him with arguments pro and con,
As if some live logician,
Bred up at Merton,
Or Mr. Hazlitt,
the Metaphysician—
Hey, Mr Ayrton!
With all your rare tone.
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For tell me how should an apparition
List to your call,
Though you talk’d for ever,—
Ever so clever,
When his ear itself,
By which he must hear, or not hear at all,
Is laid on the shelf?
Or put the case
(For more grace)
It were a female spectre—
Now could you expect her
To take much gust
In long speeches,
With her tongue as dry as dust,
In a sandy place,
Where no peaches,
Nor lemons, nor limes, nor oranges hang,
To drop on the drougth of an arid harangue,
Or quench,
With their sweet drench,
The fiery pangs which the worms inflict,
With their endless nibblings,
Like quibblings,
Which the corpse may dislike, but can ne’er contradict—
Hey, Mr. Ayrton?
With all your rare tone—
I am.
C. Lamb.
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