of a philosopher anxious to promote knowledge as leading to happiness—but his systems and his theories are ten feet deep in Cripplegate mould. Coleridge is just dead, having lived just long enough to close the eyes of Wordsworth, who paid the debt to nature but a week or two before-poor Col., but two days before he died, he wrote to a bookseller proposing an epic poem on the 'Wanderings of Cain' in twenty-four books. It is said he has left behind him more than forty thousand treatises in criticism, metaphysics, and divinity, but few of them in a state of completion. They are now destined, perhaps, to wrap up spices. You see what mutations the busy hand of Time has produced, while you have consumed in foolish voluntary exile that time which might have gladdened your friends-benefited your country; but reproaches are useless. Gather up the wretched reliques, my friend, as fast as you can, and come to your old home. I will rub my eyes and try to recognise you. We will shake withered hands together, and talk of old things of St. Mary's Church and the barber's opposite, where the young students in mathematics used to assemble. Poor Crips, that kept it afterwards, set up a fruiterer's shop in Trumpington Street, and for aught I know resides there still, for I saw the name up in the last journey I took there with my sister just before she died. I suppose you heard that I had left the India House, and gone into the Fishmongers' Almshouses over the bridge. I have a little cabin there, small and homely, but you shall be welcome to it. You like oysters, and to open them yourself; I'll get you some if you come in oyster time. Marshall, Godwin's old friend, is still alive, and talks of the faces you used to make.

Come as soon as you can.

CCLXVII.

C. LAMB.

One of the last letters written by Charles Lamb before his fatal illness in 1834 was in reply to one enclosing a list of candidates for a widows' fund society, and requesting his votes. The list chanced to be headed by a Mrs. Southey.

Charles Lamb to Mr. Cary.

Dear Sir,―The unbounded range of munificence presented to my choice, staggers me. What can twenty votes do for one hun

dred and two widows? I cast my eyes hopeless among the viduage. N.B. Southey might be ashamed of himself to let his aged mother stand at the top of the list, with his 1007. a year and butt of sack. Sometimes I sigh over No. 12, Mrs. Carve-ill, some poor relation of mine, no doubt. No. 15 has my wishes, but then she is a Welsh one. I have Ruth upon No. 21. I'd tug hard for No. 24. No. 25 is an anomaly; there can be no Mrs. Hog. No. 34 insnares me. No. 73 should not have met so foolish a person. No. 92 may bob it as she likes, but she catches no cherry of me. have even fixed at hap-hazard, as you'll see.

Yours, every third Wednesday,

So I

C. L.

CCLXVIII.

The loss of his eldest son and the intolerable vexation caused by the republication of his seditious drama of Wat Tyler,' had driven Southey in 1816 into a condition of melancholy that prevented him from writing to his friends. Landor, ignorant of the causes of his silence, addressed him this eloquent appeal.

Walter Savage Landor to Robert Southey.

1817.

I have written many letters to you since I received one from you. Can anything occur that ought to interrupt our friendship? Believe me, Southey-and of all men living I will be the very last to deceive or to flatter you-I have never one moment ceased to love and revere you as the most amiable and best of mortals, and your fame has always been as precious to me as it could ever be to yourself. If you believe me capable, as you must, of doing anything to displease you, tell it me frankly and fully. Should my reply be unsatisfactory, it will not be too late nor too soon to shake me off from all pretensions to your friendship. Tell it me rather while your resentment is warm than afterwards; for in the midst of resentment the heart is open to generous and tender sentiments; it closes afterwards. I heard with inexpressible grief of your most severe and irreparable loss, long indeed ago; but even if I had been with you at the time, I should have been silent. If your feelings are like mine, of all cruelties those are the most intolerable that come under the name of condolence and consolation. Surely to be told that we ought not to grieve is among the worst bitter

nesses of grief. The best of fathers and of husbands is not always to derive perfect happiness from being so; and genius and wisdom, instead of exempting a man from all human sufferings, leave him exposed to all of them, and add many of their own. Whatever

creature told me that his reason had subdued his feelings, to him I should only reply that mine had subdued my regard for him. But occupations and duties fill up the tempestuous vacancy of the soul; affliction is converted to sorrow, and sorrow to tenderness: at last the revolution is completed, and love returns in its pristine but incorruptible form. More blessings are still remaining to you than to any man living. In that which is the most delightful of all literary occupations, at how immense a distance are you from every rival or competitor! In history, what information are you capable of giving to those even who are esteemed the most learned! And those who consult your criticisms do not consult them to find, as in others, with what feathers the most barbarous ignorance tricks out its nakedness, or with what gypsy shuffling and arrant slang detected impostures are defended. On this sad occasion I have no reluctance to remind you of your eminent gifts. In return I ask from you a more perfect knowledge of myself than I yet possess. Conscious that I have done nothing very wrong, I almost hope that I have done something not quite right, that may never think you have been unjust towards me.

I

W. L.

CCLXIX.

Reference is made on another page to Dr. Samuel Parr's great conversational powers, second only to those of Dr. Johnson. Landor had not made Parr converse in any of the 'Imagi nary Conversations,' though he intended to dedicate a volume to him. Parr was on his death-bed when this letter arrived.

Walter Savage Landor to Dr. Samuel Parr.

Florence February 5, 1825.

My dear Sir,-It has appeared, and might well do so, an extraordinary thing, that I should have omitted your name in my 'Conversations.' You will perceive at the close of this paper, that, if I did not venture to deliver your opinions, at least I had not forgotten the man by whom mine could have been best corrected.

Had I completed my undertaking I should have prefixed to the last volume a dedication to my venerable friend, Dr. Samuel Parr, and it would have been with more propriety inscribed to him than any of the former, as containing less of levity and of passion, and greatly more, if I had done justice to the interlocutors, of argument and of eloquence. My first exercises in these were under his eye and guidance, corrected by his admonition, and animated by his applause. His house, his library, his heart, were always open to me; and among my few friendships, of which indeed, partly by fortune, partly by choice, I have certainly had fewer than any man, I shall remember his to the last hour of my existence with tender gratitude.

My admiration of some others I have expressed in the few words preceding each volume; my esteem and love of him I have expressed in still fewer; but with such feelings as that man's are who has shaken hands with the friends that followed him to the shore, and who sees from the vessel one separate from the rest, one whom he can never meet again. May you enjoy, my dear Sir, all that can be enjoyed of life! I am heartily sated of it, and have abandoned all thoughts of completing my design. The third volume will, however, come out in the beginning of March, and I hope there are some things in it which will not displease you.

I request you to present my most respectful compliments to Mrs. Parr, and to believe me, dear Sir, yours ever most faithfully, W. S. LANDor.

CCLXX.

We have seen Landor in his best mood of tenderness and Spartan dignity, we are now introduced to him during one of those paroxysms of vehemence which were so habitual to him. The letter refers to some slight misdemeanour on the part of the publisher of Landor's Imaginary Conversations.'

Walter Savage Landor to Robert Southey.

Florence: April 11, 1825.

Taylor's first villany in making me disappoint the person with whom I had agreed for the pictures instigated me to throw my fourth volume, in its imperfect state, into the fire, and has cost me nine-tenths of my fame as a writer. His next villany will entail perhaps a chancery-suit on my children,-for at its commencement

6

I blow my brains out. Mr. Hazlitt, Mr. Leigh Hunt, Lord Dillon, Mr. Brown, and some other authors of various kinds, have been made acquainted, one from another, with this whole affair, and they speak of it as a thing unprecedented. It is well that I rewrote the Tiberius and Vipsania' before Taylor gave me a fresh proof of his intolerable roguery. This cures me for ever, if I live, of writing what could be published; and I will take good care that my son shall not suffer in the same way. Not a line of any kind will I leave behind me. My children shall be carefully warned against literature. To fence, to swim, to speak French, are the most they shall learn.

W. S. L.

CCLXXI.

Very few public entertainers have worked harder than Mr. Charles Mathews (the elder) did to sustain a great reputation and keep a purse well filled. He seemed to flit about the provinces with extraordinary rapidity, and this, too, in the coaching days. Mathews was a most energetic and constant correspondent, and seems never to have missed a reasonable opportunity of writing to Mrs. Mathews when absent from home on a series of provincial engagements. In this letter he writes of his success at Edinburgh.

Charles Mathews to Mrs. Mathews.

Edinburgh: February 9, 1822.

I know too many people here to study undisturbed; therefore am obliged to hide myself in the private walks, when the weather will permit. Yesterday was lovely, and I had a good spell; to-day boisterous and wet. Terry declared that he was blown off the pavement into the middle of the street, from the violence of a squall, and must have fallen, if he had not made a snatch at a man who returned his hug, like two people on the ice. I have had two nights, the first 80£., for they would not be persuaded that I was myself, in consequence of the disturbance Irish Mathews occasioned here. But believing from ocular demonstration that I was I, my second amounted to 132£., which, to appreciate, you must be acquainted with circumstances too tedious, &c. When I tell you that the boxes will only hold 55£., you may suppose what it Sir Walter, the magician of the North, and all his family, They huzzaed when he came in, and I never played

was.

were there.