Mr. De Quincey (being an uncommon name to remember, the servant associated it, on the Memoria Technica principle with a sore throat and always pronounced it Quinsy), and I have found him at home, quite at home, in the midst of a German Ocean of Literature, in a storm, flooding all the floor, the table and the chairs,-billows of books tossing, tumbling, surging open,-on such occasions I have willingly listened by the hour whilst the Philosopher, standing, with his eyes fixed on one side of the room, seemed to be less speaking than reading from a "handwriting on the wall." Now and then he would diverge, for a Scotch mile or two, to the right or left, till I was tempted to inquire with Peregrine in John Bull (Colman's not Hook's), "Do you never deviate?"-but he always came safely back to the point where he had left, not lost the scent, and thence hunted his topic to the end. But look!-we are in the small hours, and a change comes o'er the spirit of that "old familiar face." A faint hectic tint leaves the cheek, the eyes are a degree dimmer, and each is surrounded by a growing shadow-signs of the waning influence of that Potent Drug whose stupendous Pleasures and enormous Pains have been so eloquently described by the English Opium Eater. Marry, I have one of his Confessions with his own name and mark to it :-an apology for a certain stain on his MS., the said stain being a large purplish ring."Within that circle none durst drink but he,"-in fact the impression, coloured, of a tumbler of laudanum negus, warm, without sugar.* That smart active person opposite with a game-cock-looking head, and the hair combed smooth, fighter fashion, over his forehead-with one finger hooked round a glass of champaigne, not that he requires it to inspirit him, for his wit bubbles up of itself-is our Edward Herbert, the Author of that true piece of Biography, the Life of Peter Corcoran. He is "good with both hands," like that Nonpareil Randall, at a comic verse or a serious stanza-smart at a repartee-sharp at a retort, and not averse to a bit of mischief. 'Twas he who gave the runaway ring at Wordsworth's Peter Bell. Generally, his jests, set off by a happy manner, are only ticklesome, but now and then they are sharp-flavoured,—like the sharpness of the pine-apple. Would I could give a sample. Alas! What a pity it is that so many good things uttered by Poets, and Wits, and Humorists, at chance times -and they are always the best and brightest, like sparks struck out by Pegasus' own hoof, in a curvet amongst the flints-should be daily and hourly lost to the world for want of a recorder! But in this Century of Inventions, when a self-acting drawing-paper has been discovered for copying visible objects, who knows but that a future 66 * On a visit to Norfolk, I was much surprised to find that Opium, or Opie, as it was vulgarly called, was quite in common use in the form of pills amongst the lower classes, in the vicinity of the Fens. It is not probable that persons in such a rank of life had read the Confessions,-or, might not one suspect that as Dennis Brulgruddery was driven to drink by the stale flat and unprofitable prospects of Muckslush Heath, so the FenPeople in the dreary foggy cloggy boggy wastes of Cambridge and Lincolnshire, had flown to the Drug for the sake of the magnificent scenery that filled the splendid visions of its Historian? Niepce, or Daguerre, or Herschel, or Fox Talbot, may find out some sort of Boswellish writing-paper to repeat whatever it hears! There are other Contributors-poor Hazlitt for instance-whose shades rise up before me: but I never met with them at the Entertainments just described. Shall we ever meet anywhere again? Alas some are dead; and the rest dispersed; and the days of Social Clubs are over and gone, when the Professors and Patrons of Literature assembled round the same steaming bowl, and Johnson, always best out of print, exclaimed "Lads! who's for Poonch!" Amongst other notable men who came to Colebrooke Cottage, I had twice the good fortune of meeting with S. T. Coleridge. The first time he came from Highgate with Mrs. Gilman, to dine with "Charles and Mary." What a contrast to Lamb was the full-bodied Poet, with his waving white hair, and his face round, ruddy, and unfurrowed as a holy Friar's! Apropos to which face he gave us a humorous description of an unfinished portrait, that served him for a sort of barometer, to indicate the state of his popularity. So sure as his name made any temporary stir, out came the canvas on the easel, and a request from the artist for another sitting: down sank the Original in the public notice, and back went the copy into a corner, till some fresh publication or accident again brought forward the Poet; and then forth came the picture for a few more touches. I sincerely hope it has been finished! What a benign, smiling face it was! What a comfortable, respectable figure! What a model, methought, as I watched and admired the "Old Man eloquent," for a Christian bishop! But he was, perhaps, scarcely orthodox enough to be trusted with a mitre. At least, some of his voluntaries would have frightened a common everyday congregation from their propriety. Amongst other matters of discourse, he came to speak of the strange notions some literal-minded persons form of the joys of Heaven; joys they associated with mere temporal things, in which, for his own part, finding no delight in this world, he could find no bliss hereafter, without a change in his nature, tantamount to the loss of his personal identity. For instance, he said, there are persons who place the whole angelical beatitude in the possession of a pair of wings to flap about with, like "a sort of celestial poultry." After dinner he got up, and began pacing to and fro, with his hands behind his back, talking and walking, as Lamb laughingly hinted, as if qualifying for an itinerant preacher; now fetching a simile from Loddiges' garden, at Hackney; and then flying off for an illustration to the sugar-making in Jamaica. With his fine, flowing voice, it was glorious music, of the "never-ending, still-beginning" kind; and you did not wish it to end. It was rare flying, as in the Nassau Balloon; you knew not whither, nor did you care. Like his own bright-eyed Marinere, he had a spell in his voice that would not let you go. To attempt to describe my own feeling afterward, I had been carried, spiralling, up to heaven by a whirlwind intertwisted with sunbeams, giddy and dazzled, but not displeased, and had then been rained down again with a shower of mundane stocks and stones that battered out of me all recollection of what I had heard, and what I had seen! On the second occasion, the author of Christabel was accompanied by one of his sons. The Poet, talking and walking as usual, chanced to pursue some argument, which drew from the son, who had not been introduced to me, the remark, "Ah, that's just like your crying up those foolish Odes and Addresses!" Coleridge was highly amused with this mal-àpropos, and, without explaining, looked slily round at me, with the sort of suppressed laugh, one may suppose to belong to the Bey of Tittery. The truth was, he felt naturally partial to a' book he had attributed in the first instance to the dearest of his friends. "MY DEAR CHARLES,-This afternoon, a little, thin, mean-looking sort of a foolscap, sub-octavo of poems, printed on very dingy outsides, lay on the table, which the cover informed me was circulating in our book-club, so very Grub Streetish in all its appearance, internal as well as external, that I cannot explain by what accident of impulse (assuredly there was no motive in play) I came to look into it. Least of all, the title, Odes and Addresses to Great Men, which connected itself in my head with Rejected Addresses, and all the Smith and Theodore Hook squad. But, my dear Charles, it was certainly written by you, or under you, or una cum you. I know none of your frequent visitors capacious and assimilative enough of your converse to have reproduced you so honestly, supposing you had left yourself in pledge in his lock-up house. Gillman, to whom I read the spirited parody on the introduction to Peter Bell, the Ode to the Great Unknown, and to Mrs. Fry; he speaks doubtfully of Reynolds and Hood. But here come Irving and Basil Montagu. Thursday night, 10 o'clock.-No! Charles, it is you. I have read them over again, and I understand why you have anon'd the book. The puns are nine in ten good--many excellent-the Newgatory transcendent. And then the exemplum sine exemplo of a volume of personalities and contemporaneities, without a single line that could inflict the infinitesimal of an unpleasance on any man in his senses; saving and except perhaps in the envy-addled brain of the despiser of your Lays. If not a triumph over him, it is at least an ovation. Then, moreover, and besides, to speak with becoming modesty, excepting my own self, who is there but you who could write the musical lines and stanzas that are intermixed? Here Gillman, come up to my garret, and driven back by the guardian spirits of four huge flower-holders of omnigenous roses and honeysuckles (Lord have mercy on his hysterical olfactories! what will he do in Paradise? I must have a pair or two of nostril-plugs, or nose-goggles, laid in his coffin)-stands at the door, reading that to M'Adam, and the washerwoman's letter, and he admits the facts. You are found in the manner, as the lawyers say! so, Mr. Charles! hang yourself up, and send me a line, by way of token and acknowledgment. My dear love to Mary. God bless you and your Unshamabramizer, S. T. COLERIDGE.” It may be mentioned here, that instead of feeling “the infinitesimal of an unpleasance" at being Addressed in the Odes, the once celebrated Mr. Hunt presented to the Authors, a bottle of his best "Permanent Ink," and the eccentric Doctor Kitchiner sent an invitation to dinner. From Colebrooke, Lamb removed to Enfield Chase, a painful operation at all times, for as he feelingly misapplied Wordsworth, "the moving accident was not his trade.” As soon as he was settled, I called upon him, and found him in a bald-looking yellowish house, with a bit of a garden, and a wasp's nest convanient, as the Irish say, for one stung my pony he stood at the door. Lamb laughed at the fun; but, as the clown says, the whirligig of time brought round its revenges. He was one day bantering my wife on her dread of wasps, when all at once he uttered a horrible shout,—a wounded specimen of the species had slily crawled up the leg of the table, and stung him in the thumb. I told him it was a refutation well put in, like Smollett's timely snowball. "Yes," said he, "and a stinging commentary on Macbeth— 66 "By the pricking of my thumbs, There were no pastoral yearnings concerned in this Enfield removal. There is no doubt which of Captain Morris's Town and Country Songs, would have been most to Lamb's taste. "The sweet shady side of Pall-Mall," would have carried it hollow. In courtesy to a friend, he would select a green lane for a ramble, but left to himself, he took the turnpike road as often as otherwise. "Scott," says Cunningham, was a stout walker." Lamb was a porter one. He calculated Distances, not by Long Measure, but by Ale and Beer Measure. "Now I have walked a pint." Many a time I have accompanied him in these matches against Meux, not without sharing in the stake, and then, what cheerful and profitable talk! For instance, he once delivered to me orally the substance of the Essay on the Defect of Imagination in Modern Artists, subsequently printed in the Athenæum. But besides the criticism, there were snatches of old poems, golden lines and sentences culled from rare books, and anecdotes of men of note. Marry, it was like going a ramble with gentle Izaak Walton, minus the fishing. To make these excursions more delightful to one of my temperament, Lamb never affected any spurious gravity. Neither did he ever act the Grand Senior. He did not exact that common copy-book respect, which some asinine persons would fain command on account of the mere length of their years. As if, forsooth, what is bad in itself, could be the better for keeping; as if intellects already mothery, got anything but grandmothery by lapse of time! In this particular, he was opposed to Southey, or rather (for Southey has been opposed to himself), to his Poem on the Holly Tree. So serious should my youth appear among The thoughtless throng; So would I seem among the young and gay There was nothing of Sir Oracle about Lamb. On the contrary, at sight of a solemn visage that "creamed and mantled like the standing pool," he was the first to pitch a mischievous stone to disturb the duck-weed. "He was a boy-man," as he truly said of Elia; "and his manners lagged behind his years." He liked to herd with people younger than himself. Perhaps, in his fine generalizing way, he thought that, in relation to Eternity, we are all contemporaries. However, without reckoning birthdays, it was always "Hail fellow, well met ;" and although he was my elder by a quarter of a century, he never made me feel, in our excursions, that I was "taking a walk with the schoolmaster." I remember, in one of our strolls, being called to account, very pompously, by the proprietor of an Enfield Villa, who asserted that my dog Dash, who never hunted anything in his dog-days, had chased the sheep; whereupon, Elia taking the dog's part, said very emphatically, "Hunt Lambs, sir? Why he has never hunted me!" But he was always ready for fun, intellectual or practical-now helping to pelt D * * ***, modern Dennis, with puns; and then to persuade his sister, God bless her! by a vox et preterea nihil, that she was as deaf as an adder. In the same spirit, being requested by a young Schoolmaster to take charge of his flock for a day, "during the unavoidable absence of the Principal," he willingly undertook the charge, but made no other use of his "brief authority" than to give the boys a whole holiday. a As Elia supplied the place of the Pedagogue, so once I was substitute for Lamb himself. A prose article, in the Gem, was not from his hand, though it bore his name. He had promised a contribution, but being unwell, his sister suggested that I should write something for him, and the result was the "Widow" in imitation of his manner. It will be seen that the forgery was taken in good part. "DEAR LAMB,-You are an impudent varlet, but I will keep your secret. We dine at Ayrton's on Thursday, and shall try to find Sarah and her two spare beds for that night only. Miss M. and her Tragedy may be d-d, so may not you and your rib. Health attend you. Yours, Enfield. Miss Bridget Hood sends love." T. HOOD, ESQ. How many of such pleasant reminiscences revive in my memory, whilst thinking of him, like secret writing brought out by the kindly |