The Collected Works of Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb. Charles Lamb
had written to him on the matter, he admitted (see below).
Lamb's own remark concerning the "Letter to Southey," there expressed—"My guardian angel was absent at that time"—is perhaps right, although the passage in the article in defence of his friends could be ill spared. As for Southey, while one can see his point of view and respect his honesty, one is glad that so poor a piece of literary criticism and so unlovely a display of self-righteousness should be chastised; without, however, too greatly admiring the chastisement.
Lamb's first idea was to let the review pass without notice, as we see from the following remark to Bernard Barton in July, 1823:—
"Southey has attacked 'Elia' on the score of infidelity in the Quarterly article, 'Progress of Infidelity.' I had not, nor have seen the Monthly. He might have spared an old friend such a construction of a few careless flights, that meant no harm to religion. If all his unguarded expressions were to be collected—! But I love and respect Southey, and will not retort. I hate his review, and his being a reviewer. The hint he has dropped will knock the sale of the book on the head, which was almost at a stop before. Let it stop, there is corn in Egypt, while there is cash at Leadenhall. You and I are something besides being writers, thank God!"
But Lamb thought better, or worse, of his first intention, and wrote the "Letter."
It appeared in October, 1823, and caused some talk among literary people. Southey had many enemies who were glad to see him trounced. The Times, for example, of October 2, said:—
The number just published of the London Magazine contains a curious letter from Elia (Charles Lamb) to Mr. Southey. It treats the laureat with that contempt which his always uncandid and frequently malignant spirit deserves. When it is considered that Mr. Lamb has been the fast friend of Southey, and is besides of a particularly kind and peaceable nature, it is evident that nothing but gross provocation could have roused him to this public declaration of his disgust.
On the other hand, Christopher North (John Wilson), of Blackwood, made the letter the text of a homily to literary men, in Blackwood, for October, 1823, under the heading of "A Manifesto." After some general remarks on the tendency of authors to take themselves, or at any rate their position in the public eye, too seriously, he continued:—
Our dearly-beloved friend, Charles Lamb, (we would fain call him Elia; but that, as he himself says, "would be as good as naming him,") what is this you are doing? Mr. Southey, having read your Essays, wished to pay you a compliment, and called them, in the "Quarterly," "a book which wants only a sounder religious feeling, to be as delightful as it is original!" And with this eulogy you are not only dissatisfied, but so irate at the Laureate, that nothing will relieve your bile, but a Letter to the Doctor of seven good pages in "The London." Prodigious! Nothing would content your highness (not serene) of the India-House, but such a sentence as would sell your lucubrations as a puff; and because Taylor and Hessey cannot send this to the newspapers, you wax sour, sulky, and vituperative of your old crony, and twit him with his "old familiar faces." This is, our dear Charles, most unreasonable—most unworthy of you; and we know not how to punish you with sufficient severity, now that Hodge of Tortola[69] is no more; but the inflexible Higgins of Nevis still survives, and we must import him to flog you in the market-place.
[69] See note to "Christ's Hospital" essay, in Vol. II.—Ed.
Are you, or are you not, a friend to the liberty of the press? of human thought? feeling? opinion? Is it, Charles, enormous wickedness in Southey thus to characterize your Essays? If so, what do you think of the invasion of Spain, the murder of the Franks family, Pygmalion's amour with the tailor's daughter, the military execution of the Duc d'Enghien, Palm's death, the massacre at Scio, Z.'s Letters on the Cockney-School, Don Juan, John Knox, Calvin, Cock-fighting, the French Revolution, the Reduction of the Five Per Cents Navy, Godwin's Political Justice, the Tread-Mill, the Crusades, Gas fighting booty, D'Israeli's Quarrels of Authors, Byron's conduct to the Hunts, and the doctrine of the universal depravity of the human race?
Is there a sound religious feeling in your Essays, or is there not? And what is a sound religious feeling? You declare yourself a Unitarian; but, as a set-off to that heterodoxy, you vaunt your bosom-friendship with T. N. T., "a little tainted with Socinianism," and "——, a sturdy old Athanasian." With this vaunting anomaly you make the Laureate blush, till his face tinges Derwent-water with a ruddy lustre as of the setting sun. O Charles, Charles——if we could but "see ourselves as others see us!" Would that we ourselves could do so! But how would that benefit you? You are too amiable to wish to see Christopher North humiliated in his own estimation, and startled at the sight of Public Derision, like yourself! Yes——even Cockneys blush for you; and the many clerks of the India-House hang down their heads and are ashamed.
You present the Public with a list of your friends. "W., the light, and warm—as light-hearted Janus of the London!" Who the devil is he? Let him cover both his faces with a handkerchief. "H. C. R., unwearied in the offices of a friend;" the correspondent and caricaturist of Wordsworth, the very identical "W——th," who "estated" you in so many "possessions," and made you proud of your "rent-roll." "W. A., the last and steadiest of that little knot of whist-players." Ah! lack-a-day, Charles, what are trumps? And "M., the noble-minded kinsman by wedlock" of the same eternal "W——th." Pray, what is his wife's name? and were the banns published in St. Pancras Church?——All this is very vain and very virulent; and you indeed give us portraits of your friends, each in the clare-obscure.
We were in the number of your earliest, sincerest, best, and most powerful friends, Charles; and yet, alas! for the ingratitude of the human heart, you have never so much as fortified yourself with the initials of our formidable name——"C. N. the Editor of Blackwood." Oh, that would have been worth P——r, A—— P——, G——n, and "the rest," all in a lump; better than the "Four-and-twenty Fiddlers all in a row." Or had you had the courage and the conscience to print, at full length, "Christopher North," why, these sixteen magical letters would have opened every door for you, like Sesame in the Arabian Tales. These four magical syllables, triumphant over the Laureate's "ugly characters, standing in the very front of his notice, like some bug-bear, to frighten all good Christians from purchasing," would have been a passport for Elia throughout all the kingdoms of Christianity, and billetted you, a true soldier of the Faith, in any serious family you chose, with morning and evening prayers; a hot, heavy supper every night; a pan of hot-coals ere you were sheeted; and a good motherly body, with six unmarried daughters, to tap at your bed-room door at day-light, and summon you down stairs from a state of "otium cum dignitate" to one of "gaiety and innocence," among damsels with scriptural names, short petticoats, and a zealous attachment to religious establishments.
We may set off against this the comment of Crabb Robinson:—
Nothing that Lamb has ever written has impressed me more strongly with the sweetness of his disposition and the strength of his affections.
Coleridge and Hazlitt also both commended the "Letter." Southey displayed a fine temper. He wrote to Lamb on November 19, 1823:—
My Dear Lamb—On Monday I saw your letter in the London Magazine, which I had not before had an opportunity of seeing, and I now take the first interval of leisure for replying to it.
Nothing could be further from my mind than any intention or apprehension of any way offending or injuring a man concerning whom I have never spoken, thought, or felt otherwise than with affection, esteem, and admiration.
If you had let me know in any private or friendly manner that you felt wounded by a sentence in which nothing but kindness was intended—or that you found it might injure the sale of your book—I would most readily and gladly have inserted a note in the next Review to qualify and explain what had hurt you.
You have made this impossible, and I am sorry for it. But I will not engage in controversy with you to make sport for the Philistines.
The provocation must be strong indeed that can rouse me to do this, even with an enemy. And if you can forgive