found them. O, you know not - may you never know! the miseries of subsisting by authorship. 'Tis a pretty appendage to a situation like yours or mine; but a slavery worse than all slavery to be a bookseller's dependent, to drudge your brains for pots of ale and breasts of mutton, to change your free thoughts and voluntary numbers for ungracious task-work. Those fellows hate us. The reason I take to be that, contrary to other trades, in which the master gets all the credit a jeweler or silversmith for instance and the journeyman, who really does the fine work, is in the background, in our work the world gives all the credit to us, whom they consider as their journeymen, and therefore do they hate us, and cheat us, and oppress us, and would wring the blood of us out, to put another sixpence in their mechanic pouches! I contend that a bookseller has a relative honesty towards authors, not like his honesty to the rest of the world.

Keep to your bank, and the bank will keep you. Trust not to the public; you may hang, starve, drown yourself, for anything that worthy personage cares. I bless every star that Providence, not seeing good to make me independent, has seen it next good to settle me upon the stable foundation of Leadenhall. Sit down, good B. B., in the banking-office; what is there not from six to eleven P.M. six days in the week, and is there not all Sunday? Fie, what a superfluity of man's time, if you could think so! Enough for relaxation, mirth, converse, poetry, good thoughts, quiet thoughts. O the corroding, torturing, tormenting thoughts that disturb the brain of the unlucky wight who must draw upon it for daily sustenance ! Henceforth I retract all my fond complaints of mercantile employment; look upon them as lovers' quarrels. I was but half in earnest. Welcome, dead timber of a desk, that makes me live. A little grumbling is a wholesome medicine for the spleen, but in my inner heart I do approve and

embrace this our close but unharassing way of life. I am quite serious. If you can send me Fox, I will not keep it six weeks, and will return it, with warm thanks to yourself and friend, without blot or dog's-ear. You will oblige me by this kindness. Yours truly,

XLVI

C. LAMB.

DEAR P.:

Charles Lamb to Mr. Patmore

Mrs. Leishman's, Chase, Enfield, Sept., 1827. Excuse my anxiety, but how is Dash? I should have asked if Mrs. Patmore kept her rules, and was improving; but Dash came uppermost. The order of our thoughts should be the order of our writing. Goes he muzzled, or aperto ore? Are his intellects sound, or does he wander a little in his conversation? You cannot be too careful to watch the first symptoms of incoherence. The first illogical snarl he makes, to St. Luke's with him. All the dogs here are going mad, if you believe the overseers; but I protest they seem to me very rational and collected. But nothing is so deceitful as mad people, to those who are not used to them. Try him with hot water if he won't lick it up it is a sign — he does not like it. Does his tail wag horizontally or perpendicularly? That has decided the fate of many dogs in Enfield. Is his general deportment cheerful? I mean when he is pleased for otherwise there is no judging. You can't be too careful. Has he bit any of the children yet? If he has, have them shot, and keep him for curiosity, to see if it was the hydrophobia. They say all our army in India had it at one time; but that was in Hyder Ally's time. Do you get paunch for him? Take care the sheep was sane. You might pull out his teeth-if he would let you — and then you need not mind if he were as mad

:

as a Bedlamite. It would be rather fun to see his odd ways; it might amuse Mrs. P. and the children. They'd have more sense than he. He'd be like a fool kept in a family, to keep the household in good humor with their own understanding. You might teach him the mad dance, set to the mad howl; 1 Madge Owlet would be nothing to him. 'My! how he capers!'

1

What I scratch out is a German quotation from Lessing, on the bite of rabid animals; but I remember you don't read German. But Mrs. P. may, so I wish I had let it stand. The meaning in English is: Avoid to approach an animal suspected of madness, as you would avoid fire or a precipice,' which I think is a sensible observation. The Germans are certainly profounder than we. If the slightest suspicion arises in your breast that all is not right with him, muzzle him and lead him in a string (common packthread will do — he don't care for twist) to Mr. Hood's, his quondam master, and he'll take him in at any time. You may mention your suspicion or not, as you like, or as you think it may wound or not Mr H.'s feelings. Hood, I know, will wink at a few follies in Dash, in consideration of his former sense. Besides, Hood is deaf, and, if you hinted anything, ten to one he would not hear you. Besides, you will have discharged your conscience, and laid the child at the right door, as they say.

We are dawdling our time away very idly and pleasantly at a Mrs. Leishman's, Chase, Enfield, where, if you come a-hunting, we can give you cold meat and a tankard. Her husband is a tailor; but that, you know, does not make her one. I knew a jailer - which rimes but his wife was a fine lady.

Let us hear from you respecting Mrs. P.'s regimen. I send my love in a

to Dash.

1 Supposed to be said by one of the children. - Eds.

C. LAMB.

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XLVII

Arthur Hallam to Emily Tennyson

Nonnenwerth, July 16, 1832.

I expect, as far as I can calculate - - but a traveler's calculations are always liable to be deranged by unforeseen changes to be in England by the end of this month, and then I shall go straight to Somersby. I had better tell you something of what Alfred and I have been doing. My last letter, I think, was from Rotterdam.

We resumed our steamboat last Wednesday morning, and came on slowly up the Rhine, the banks of which are more uniformly ugly and flat as far as Cologne than any country I ever saw of so great an extent. Really, until yesterday, we had seen nothing in the way of scenery that deserved going a mile to see. Cologne is the paradise of painted glass; the splendor of the windows in the churches would have greatly delighted you. The Cathedral is unfinished, and if completed on the original plan, would be the most stupendous and magnificent in the world. The part completed is very beautiful Gothic. Alfred was in great raptures, only complaining he had so little time to study the place. There is a gallery of pictures quite after my own heart, rich, glorious old German pictures, which Alfred accuses me of preferring to Titian and Raffaelle. In the Cathedral we saw the tomb and relics of the three kings, Gaspar, Melchior, and Balthazar, the patrons of Cologne, and very miraculous persons in their day, according to sundry legends. The tomb is nearly all of pure massy gold, studded with rich precious stones.

From Cologne we came on to Bonn, which really bears a sort of family likeness to Cambridge. Here the Rhine begins to be beautiful; and yesterday we took a luxurious climb up the Drachenfels, looked around at the mild vine-spread hillock,

and 'river-sundered champaign clothed with corn,'1ate cherries under the old castle-wall at the top of the crag, then descended to a village below, and were carried over in a boat to the place from which I am writing. And what is that? Ten years ago it was a large convent of Benedictine nuns; now it is a large and comfortable hotel, still retaining the form of the convent, the cloisters, cell-like rooms, etc. It stands on an island in the middle of the river; you will understand the size of the isle when I tell you it is rather larger, according to Alfred, than that of the Lady of Shalott, and the stream is rather more rapid than our old acquaintance that ran down to Camelot. The prospect from the window and gardens is most beautiful, the mountains, as they are called — Drachenfels being one, on one bank of the river, and Rolandseck towering up to the other with the hills about Bingen glooming in the distance.

XLVIII

Charles Lamb to Mr. Moxon

July 24, 1833.

Give Emma no more watches; one has turned her head. She is arrogant and insulting. She said something very unpleasant to our old clock in the passage, as if he did not keep time, and yet he had made her no appointment. She takes it out every instant to look at the moment-hand. She lugs us out into the fields, because there the bird-boys ask you, 'Pray, sir, can you tell us what's o'clock?' — and she answers them punctually. She loses all her time looking to see what the time is.' I overheard her whispering, 'Just so many hours, minutes, etc., to Tuesday; I think St. George's goes too slow !' This little present of Time! why, 'tis Eternity to her! What can make her so fond of a gingerbread watch? She has spoiled

Tennyson, Oenone 112. — EDS.