The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Best Letters of Charles Lamb Edited by Edward Gilpin Johnson

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Title: The Best Letters of Charles Lamb

Author: Charles Lamb

Editor: Edward Gilpin Johnson

Release Date: November 18, 2003 [EBook #10125]

Language: English

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BEST LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB ***

Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Keren Vergon, Sjaani, Tom Allen and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.

LAUREL-CROWNED LETTERS

CHARLES LAMB

It may well be that the "Essays of Elia" will be found to have kept their perfume, and the LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB to retain their old sweet savor, when "Sartor Resartus" has about as many readers as Bulwer's "Artificial Changeling," and nine tenths even of "Don Juan" lie darkening under the same deep dust that covers the rarely troubled pages of the "Secchia Rapita."

A.C. SWINBURNE

No assemblage of letters, parallel or kindred to that in the hands of the reader, if we consider its width of range, the fruitful period over which it stretches, and its typical character, has ever been produced.

W.C. HAZLITT ON LAMB'S LETTERS.

THE BEST LETTERS OF CHARLES LAMB

Edited with an Introduction

BY EDWARD GILPIN JOHNSON

A.D. 1892.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

LETTER
         I. To Samuel Taylor Coleridge
        II. To Coleridge
       III. To Coleridge
        IV. To Coleridge
         V. To Coleridge
        VI. To Coleridge
       VII. To Coleridge
      VIII. To Coleridge
        IX. To Coleridge
         X. To Coleridge
        XI. To Coleridge
       XII. To Coleridge
      XIII. To Coleridge
       XIV. To Coleridge
        XV. To Robert Southey
       XVI. To Southey
      XVII. To Southey
     XVIII. To Southey
       XIX. To Thomas Manning
        XX. To Coleridge
       XXI. To Manning
      XXII. To Coleridge
     XXIII. To Manning
      XXIV. To Manning
       XXV. To Coleridge
      XXVI. To Manning
     XXVII. To Coleridge
    XXVIII. To Coleridge
      XXIX. To Manning
       XXX. To Manning
      XXXI. To Manning
     XXXII. To Manning
    XXXIII. To Coleridge
     XXXIV. To Wordsworth
      XXXV. To Wordsworth
     XXXVI. To Manning
    XXXVII. To Manning
   XXXVIII. To Manning
     XXXIX. To Coleridge
        XL. To Manning
       XLI. To Manning
      XLII. To Manning
     XLIII. To William Godwin
      XLIV. To Manning
       XLV. To Miss Wordsworth
      XLVI. To Manning
     XLVII. To Wordsworth
    XLVIII. To Manning
      XLIX. To Wordsworth
         L. To Manning
        LI. To Miss Wordsworth
       LII. To Wordsworth
      LIII. To Wordsworth
       LIV. To Wordsworth
        LV. To Wordsworth
       LVI. To Southey
      LVII. To Miss Hutchinson
     LVIII. To Manning
       LIX. To Manning
        LX. To Wordsworth
       LXI. To Wordsworth
      LXII. To H. Dodwell
     LXIII. To Mrs. Wordsworth
      LXIV. To Wordsworth
       LXV. To Manning
      LXVI. To Miss Wordsworth
     LXVII. To Coleridge
    LXVIII. To Wordsworth
      LXIX. To John Clarke
       LXX. To Mr. Barren Field
      LXXI. To Walter Wilson
     LXXII. To Bernard Barton
    LXXIII. To Miss Wordsworth
     LXXIV. To Mr. and Mrs. Bruton
      LXXV. To Bernard Barton
     LXXVI. To Miss Hutchinson
    LXXVII. To Bernard Barton
   LXXVIII. To Mrs. Hazlitt
     LXXIX. To Bernard Barton
      LXXX. To Bernard Barton
     LXXXI. To Bernard Barton
    LXXXII. To Bernard Barton
   LXXXIII. To Bernard Barton
    LXXXIV. To Bernard Barton
     LXXXV. To Bernard Barton
    LXXXVI. To Wordsworth
   LXXXVII. To Bernard Barton
  LXXXVIII. To Bernard Barton
    LXXXIX. To Bernard Barton
        XC. To Southey
       XCI. To Bernard Barton
      XCII. To J.B. Dibdin
     XCIII. To Henry Crabb Robinson
      XCIV. To Peter George Patmore
       XCV. To Bernard Barton
      XCVI. To Thomas Hood
     XCVII. To P.G. Patmore
    XCVIII. To Bernard Barton
      XCIX. To Procter
         C. To Bernard Barton
        CI. To Mr. Gilman
       CII. To Wordsworth
      CIII. To Mrs. Hazlitt
       CIV. To George Dyer
        CV. To Dyer
       CVI. To Mr. Moxon
      CVII. To Mr. Moxon

INTRODUCTION.

No writer, perhaps, since the days of Dr. Johnson has been oftener brought before us in biographies, essays, letters, etc., than Charles Lamb. His stammering speech, his gaiter-clad legs,—"almost immaterial legs," Hood called them,—his frail wisp of a body, topped by a head "worthy of Aristotle," his love of punning, of the Indian weed, and, alas! of the kindly production of the juniper-berry (he was not, he owned, "constellated under Aquarius"), his antiquarianism of taste, and relish of the crotchets and whimsies of authorship, are as familiar to us almost as they were to the group he gathered round him Wednesdays at No. 4, Inner Temple Lane, where "a clear fire, a clean hearth, and the rigor of the game" awaited them. Talfourd has unctuously celebrated Lamb's "Wednesday Nights." He has kindly left ajar a door through which posterity peeps in upon the company,—Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt, "Barry Cornwall," Godwin, Martin Burney, Crabb Robinson (a ubiquitous shade, dimly suggestive of that figment, "Mrs. Harris"), Charles Kemble, Fanny Kelly ("Barbara S."), on red-letter occasions Coleridge and Wordsworth,—and sees them discharging the severer offices of the whist-table ("cards were cards" then), and, later, unbending their minds over poetry, criticism, and metaphysics. Elia was no Barmecide host, and the serjeant dwells not without regret upon the solider business of the evening,—"the cold roast lamb or boiled beef, the heaps of smoking roasted potatoes, and the vast jug of porter, often replenished from the foaming pots which the best tap of Fleet Street supplied," hospitably presided over by "the most quiet, sensible, and kind of women," Mary Lamb.

The terati Talfourd's day were clearly hardier of digestion than their descendants are. Roast lamb, boiled beef, "heaps of