The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey
Robert Southey to Edward Moxon, 3 February 1836
“Keswick, Feb. 3. 1836.
“My dear Sir,
“I have been too closely engaged in clearing off the
second volume of Cowper
to reply to your inquiries concerning poor Lamb sooner. His acquaintance with Coleridge began at Christ’s Hospital;
Lamb was some two years, I thinks his junior. Whether
he was ever one of the Grecians there, might be ascertained, I suppose, by
inquiring. My own impression is, that he was not.
Coleridge introduced me to him in the winter of
1794-5, and to George Dyer also, from
whom, if his memory has not failed, you might probably learn more of
Lamb’s early history than from any other person.
Lloyd, Wordsworth, and Hazlitt
became known to him through their connection with Coleridge.
“When I saw the family (one evening only, and at that
time), they were lodging somewhere near Lincoln’s Inn, on the western
side (I forget the street), and were evidently in uncomfortable circumstances.
The father and mother were both living; and I have some dim recollection of
the latter’s invalid appearance. The father’s senses had failed him
before that time. He published some poems in quarto. Lamb showed me once an imperfect copy: the Sparrow’s
Wedding was the title of the longest piece, and this was the author’s
favourite; he liked, in his dotage, to hear Charles read
it.
“His most familiar friend, when I first saw him. ![]()
| Ætat. 60. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 287 |
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was White, who
held some office at Christ’s Hospital, and continued intimate with him as
long as he lived. You know what Elia says of him. He and
Lamb were joint authors of the Original Letters of
Falstaff. Lamb, I believe, first appeared as an
author in the second edition of Coleridge’s Poems (Bristol, 1797), and, secondly, in
the little volume of blank
verse with Lloyd (1798).
Lamb, Lloyd, and
White were inseparable in 1798; the two latter at one
time lodged together, though no two men could be imagined more unlike each
other. Lloyd had no drollery in his nature;
White seemed to have nothing else. You will easily
understand how Lamb could sympathise with both.
“Lloyd, who
used to form sudden friendships, was all but a stranger to me, when
unexpectedly he brought Lamb down to
visit me at a little village (Burton) near Christ Church, in Hampshire, where I
was lodging in a very humble cottage. This was in the summer of 1797, and then,
or in the following year, my correspondence with Lamb
began. I saw more of him in 1802 than at any other time, for I was then six
months resident in London. His visit to this county was before I came to it; it
must have been either in that or the following year: it was to
Lloyd and to Coleridge.
“I had forgotten one of his school-fellows, who is
still living—C. V. Le Grice, a
clergyman at or near Penzance. From him you might learn something of his
boyhood.
“Cottle has a
good likeness of Lamb, in chalk, taken by
an artist named Robert Hancock, about
the ![]()
| 288 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 60. |
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year 1798. It looks older than
Lamb was at that time; but he was old-looking.
“Coleridge
introduced him to Godwin, shortly after
the first number of the Anti-Jacobin
Magazine and Review was published, with a caricature of Gillray, in which Coleridge and I were introduced with asses’ heads, and
Lloyd and Lamb
as toad and frog. Lamb got warmed with whatever was on the
table, became disputatious, and said things to Godwin
which made him quietly say, ‘Pray, Mr. Lamb, are
you toad or frog?’ Mrs.
Coleridge will remember the scene, which was to her sufficiently
uncomfortable. But the next morning S. T. C. called on
Lamb, and found Godwin
breakfasting with him, from which time their intimacy began.
“His angry letter to me in the Magazine arose out of a notion that an expression of
mine in the Quarterly Review would
hurt the sale of Elia: some
one, no doubt, had said that it would. I meant to serve the book, and very well
remember how the offence happened. I had written that it wanted nothing to
render it altogether delightful but a saner religious
feeling. This would have been the proper word if any
other person had written the book. Feeling its extreme unfitness as soon as it
was written, I altered it immediately for the first word which came into my
head, intending to re-model the sentence when it should come to me in the
proof; and that proof never came. There can be no objection to your printing
all that passed upon the occasion, beginning with the passage in the Quarterly Review, and giving his letter.
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| Ætat. 60. |
OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. |
289 |
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“I have heard Coleridge say that, in a fit of derangement, Lamb fancied himself to be young Norval. He told me this in relation to one of his
poems.
“If you print my lines to him upon his Album Verses, I will send you a
corrected copy. You received his letters, I trust, which Cuthbert took with him to town in October. I
wish they had been more, and wish, also, that I had more to tell you concerning
him, and what I have told were of more value. But it is from such fragments of
recollection, and such imperfect notices, that the materials for biography
must, for the most part, be collected.
Yours very truly,
Robert Southey.”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)
English poet and philosopher who projected
Lyrical Ballads (1798)
with William Wordsworth; author of
Biographia Literaria (1817),
On the Constitution of the Church and State (1829) and other
works.
Joseph Cottle (1770-1853)
Bristol bookseller and poet; he published the
Lyrical Ballads,
several heroic poems that attracted Byron's derision, and
Early
Recollections, chiefly relating to the late Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 2 vols
(1837).
George Dyer (1755-1841)
English poet, antiquary, and friend of Charles Lamb; author of
Poems
and Critical Essays (1802),
Poetics: or a Series of Poems and
Disquisitions on Poetry, 2 vols (1812),
History of the
University and Colleges of Cambridge, 2 vols (1814) and other works.
James Gillray (1756-1815)
The most notable English caricaturist of his day, whose prints were sold at the shop of
Miss Hannah Humphrey.
William Godwin (1756-1836)
English novelist and political philosopher; author of
An Inquiry
concerning the Principles of Political Justice (1793) and
Caleb
Williams (1794); in 1797 he married Mary Wollstonecraft.
Robert Hancock (1793-1858)
English engraver and portraitist; he illustrated books and while working in Bristol made
drawings of Coleridge, Southey, and Lamb.
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).
Charles Lamb [Elia] (1775-1834)
English essayist and boyhood friend of Coleridge at Christ's Hospital; author of
Essays of Elia published in the
London
Magazine (collected 1823, 1833) and other works.
Elizabeth Lamb [née Field] (1732 c.-1796)
The wife of John Lamb, whom she married in 1761, and mother of Charles and Mary Lamb. She
was killed by her daughter Mary in a fit of insanity.
John Lamb (1725 c.-1799)
The father of Charles Lamb; he was a servant to Samuel Salt of the Inner Temple and
author of
Poetical Pieces on Several Occasions.
Charles Valentine Le Grice (1773-1858)
The friend of Lamb and Coleridge at Christ's Hospital where he was Senior Grecian; after
attending Trinity College, Cambridge he became a clergyman in Penzance, 1806-31. He wrote
for the
Gentleman's Magazine and
Critical
Review.
Charles Lloyd (1775-1839)
Quaker poet; a disciple of Coleridge and friend of Charles Lamb, he published
Poetical Essays on the Character of Pope (1821) and other
volumes.
Charles Cuthbert Southey (1819-1888)
Son of Robert Southey whose
Life and Correspondence (1849-1850) he
edited. Educated at Queen's College, Oxford, he was curate of Plumbland in Cumberland,
vicar of Kingsbury Episcopi, Somerset (1855-79) and Askham, near Penrith (1885).
James White (1775-1820)
Educated at Christ's Hospital, where he was for many years a clerk in the treasurer's
office. He founded an advertising agency which operated in Fleet Street.
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.
The Anti-Jacobin. (1797-1798). A weekly magazine edited by William Gifford with contributions by George Canning, John
Hookham Frere, and George Ellis. It was the model for many later satirical
periodicals.
The London Magazine. (1820-1829). Founded by John Scott as a monthly rival to
Blackwood's, the
London Magazine included among its contributors Charles Lamb, John Clare, Allan Cunningham,
Thomas De Quincey, and Thomas Hood.
The Quarterly Review. (1809-1967). Published by John Murray, the
Quarterly was instigated by Walter
Scott as a Tory rival to the
Edinburgh Review. It was edited by
William Gifford to 1824, and by John Gibson Lockhart from 1826 to 1853.
