fancies. I have lived to a time of life to have outlived the good hours, the nine o'clock suppers, with a bright hour or two to clear up in afterward. Now you cannot get tea before that hour, and then sit gaping, music-bothered, perhaps, till half past twelve brings up the tray; and what you steal of convivial enjoyment after is heavily paid for in the disquiet of to-morrow's head.

"I am pleased with your liking John Woodvil,' and amused with your knowledge of our drama being confined to Shakspeare and Miss Baillie. What a world of fine territory between Land's End and Johnny Groat's have you missed traversing! I could almost envy you to have so much to read. I feel as if I had read all the books I want to read. Oh! to forget Fielding, Steele, &c., &c., and read 'em new!

"Can you tell me a likely place where I could pick up, cheap, Fox's Journal? There are no Quaker circulating libraries! Elwood, too, I must have. I rather grudge that S has taken up the history of your people; I am afraid he will put in some levity. I am afraid I am not quite exempt from that fault in certain magazine articles, where I have introduced mention of them. Were they to do again, I would reform them. Why should not you write a poetical account of your old worthies, deducing them from Fox to Woolman? but I remember you did talk of something of that kind, as a counterpart to the Ecclesiastical Sketches.' But would not a poem be more consecutive than a string of sonnets? You have no martyrs quite to the fire, I think, among you; but plenty of heroic confessors, spirit-martyrs, lamb-lions.__ Think of it; it would be better than a series of sonnets on Eminent Bankers.' I like a hit at our way of life, though it does well for me, better than anything short of all one's time to one's self; for which alone I rankle with envy at the rich. Books are good, and pictures are good, and money to buy them therefore good, but to buy time! in other words, life!

6

"The Compliments of the Time' to you should end my letter; to a Friend, I suppose I must say the 'Sincerity of the Season:' I hope they both mean the same. With excuses for this hastily-penned note, believe me, with great respect, "C. LAMB."

In this winter Mr. Walter Wilson, one of the friends of Lamb's youth, applied to him for information respecting De Foe, whose life he was about to write. The renewal of the acquaintance was very pleasant to Lamb, who many years before used to take daily walks with Wilson, and to call him "brother." The following is Lamb's reply.

་

TO MR. WALTER WILSON.

"E. I. H., 16th December, 1822. "Dear Wilson-Lightning I was going to call you. You must have thought me negligent in not answering your letter sooner. But I have a habit of never writing letters but at the office; 'tis so much time cribbed out of the Company; and I am but just got out of the thick of a tea-sale, in which most of the entry of notes, deposites, &c., usually falls to my share. "I have nothing of De Foe's but two or three novels, and the Plague History.' I can give you no information about him. As a slight general character of what I remember of them (for I have not looked into them latterly), I would say that, in the appearance of truth, in all the incidents and conversations that occur in them, they exceed any works of fiction I am acquainted with. It is perfect illusion. The author never appears in these self-narratives (for so they ought to be called, or rather autobiographies), but the narrator chains us down to an implicit belief in everything he says. There is all the minute detail of a logbook in it. Dates are painfully pressed upon the memory. Facts are repeated over and over in varying phrases, till you cannot choose but believe them. It is like reading evidence in a court of justice. So anxious the story-teller seems that the truth should be clearly comprehended, that when he has told us a matter-of-fact or a motive, in a line or two farther down he repeats it, with his favourite figure of speech, 'I say,' so and so, though he had made it abundantly plain before. This is in imitation of the common people's way of speaking, or rather of the way in which they are addressed by a master or mistress, who wishes to impress something upon their memories, and has a wonderful effect upon matter-of-fact readers. Indeed, it is to such principally that he writes. His style is everywhere beautiful, but plain and homely. Robinson Crusoe is delightful to all ranks and classes, but it is easy to see that it is written in phraseology peculiarly adapted to the lower conditions of readers; hence it is an especial favourite with seafaring men, poor boys, servant-maids, &c. His novels are capital kitchen-reading, while they are worthy, from their deep interest, to find a shelf in the libraries of the wealthiest and the most learned. His passion for matter-of-fact narrative sometimes betrayed him into a long relation of common incidents, which might happen to any man, and have no interest but the intense appearance of truth in them to recommend them. The whole latter half or two thirds of Colonel Jack' is of this description. The beginning of 'Colonel Jack' is the most affecting natural picture of a young thief that was ever drawn. His

losing the stolen money in the hollow of a tree, and finding it again when he was in despair, and then being in equal distress at not knowing how to dispose of it, and several similar touches in the early history of the colonel, evince a deep knowledge of human nature; and, putting out of question the superior romantic interest of the latter, in my mind, very much exceed Crusoe. Roxana' (first edition) is the next in interest, though he left out the best part of it in subsequent editions from a foolish hypercriticism of his friend Southerne. But 'Moll Flanders,' the Account of the Plague,' &c., are all of one family, and have the same stamp of character. Believe me, with friendly recollections, Brother (as I used to call you),

"Yours,

"C. LAMB."

How bitterly Lamb felt his East India bondage has abundantly appeared from his letters during many years. Yet there never was wanting a secret consciousness of the benefits which it ensured for him, the precious independence which he won by his hours of toil, and the freedom of his mind, to work only at its own sweet will," which his confinement to the desk obtained. This sense of the blessings which a fixed income, derived from ascertained duties, confers, broke out on the wish of his fellow-labourer, Bernard Barton, to cast off the trammels of the banking-house, and rely on literature for subsistence; and in the generous dissuasion of his friend from an act of folly, which he had perhaps been tempted to contemplate by Lamb's own complainings, made a noble amends to his leger for all his unjust reproaches. The references to the booksellers have the colouring of fantastical exaggeration, by which he delighted to give effect to the immediate feeling; but, making allowance for this mere play of fancy, how just is the following advice-how wholesome for every youth who hesitates whether he shall abandon the certain reward of plodding industry for the splendid miseries of authorship!*

It is singular that, some years before, Mr. Barton had received similar advice from a very different poet-Lord Byron. As the letter has never been published, and it may be interesting to compare the expressions of two men so different on the same subject, I subjoin it here :

"TO BERNARD barton, esq.

"St. James's-street, June 1, 1812. "Sir-The most satisfactory answer to the concluding part of your letter is, that Mr. Murray will republish your volume if you still retain your incli nation for the experiment, which, I trust, will be successful. Some weeks ago my friend Mr. Rogers showed me some of the stanzas in MS., and I then expressed my opinion of their merit, which a further perusal of the printed

TO BERNARD BARTON.

"9th January, 1823. "Throw yourself on the world without any rational plan of suppor: beyond what the chance employ of booksellers would afford you!

"Throw yourself rather, my dear sir, from the steep Tarpeian rock, slap-dash headlong upon iron spikes. If you have but five consolatory minutes between the desk and the bed, make much of them, and live a century in them rather than turn slave to the booksellers. They are Turks and Tartars when they have poor authors at their beck. Hitherto you have been at arm's length from them. Come not within their grasp. I have known many authors want for bread, some repining, others enjoying the blessed security of a spunging-house, all agreeing they had rather have been tailors, weavers-what not? rather than the things they were. I have known some starved, some to go mad, one dear friend literally dying in a workhouse. You know not what a rapacious set these booksellers are. Ask even Southey, who (a single case almost) has made a fortune by book-drudgery, what he has found them. Oh, you know not, may you never know, the miseries of subsisting by authorship! "Tis a pretty appendage to a

volume has given me no reason to revoke. I mention this, as it may not be disagreeable to you to learn that I entertained a very favourable opinion of your powers before I was aware that such sentiments were reciprocal. Waving your obliging expressions as to my own productions, for which I thank you very sincerely, and assure you that I think not lightly of the praise of one whose approbation is valuable, will you allow me to talk to you candidly, not critically, on the subject of yours? You will not suspect me of a wish to discourage, since I pointed out to the publisher the propriety of complying with your wishes. I think more highly of your poetical talents than it would perhaps gratify you to have expressed; for I believe, from what I observe of your mind, that you are above flattery. To come to the point, you deserve success; but we knew before Addison wrote his Cato that desert does not always command it. But suppose it attained,

"You know what ills the author's life assail,
Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail.'

Do not renounce writing, but never trust entirely to authorship. If you have a profession, retain it; it will be like Prior's fellowship, a last and sure resource. Compare Mr. Rogers with other authors of the day; assuredly he is among the first of living poets, but is it to that he owes his station in society, and his intimacy in the best circles?-no, it is to his prudence and respectability. The world (a bad one, I own) courts him because he has no occasion to court it. He is a poet, nor is he less so because he is something more. I am not sorry to hear that you were not tempted by the vicinity of Capel Lofft, Esq.though, if he had done for you what he has for the Bloomfields, I should never have laughed at his rage for patronising. But a truly well constituted mind will ever be independent. That you may be so is my sincere wish; and if others think as well of your poetry as I do, you will have no cause to complain of your readers. Believe me,

"Your obliged and obedient servant.

"BYRON."

situation like yours or mine; but a slavery, worse than all slavery, to be a bookseller's dependant, to drudge your brains for pots of ale and breasts of mutton, to change your FREE THOUGHTS and VOLUNTARY NUMBERS for ungracious TASKWORK. The booksellers hate us. The reason I take to be, that contrary to other trades, in which the master gets all the credit (a jeweller 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!

'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? Fy, what a superfluity of man's time, if you could think so! Enough for relaxation, mirth, converse, poetry, good thoughts, quiet thoughts. Oh 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 lover's quarrels. I was but half in earnest. Welcome dead timber of the desk, that gives me life. A little grumbling is a wholesome medicine for the spleen, but in my inner heart do I 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 much oblige me by this kindness. “Yours truly,

"C. LAMB."

Lamb thus communicated to Mr. Barton his prosecution of his researches into Primitive Quakerism.

TO BERNARD BARTON.

February, 1823. "My dear Sir-I have read quite through the ponderous folio of George Fox. Pray how may I return it to Mr. Skewell, at Ipswich? I fear to send such a treasure by a stagecoach; not that I am afraid of the coachman or the guard