Charles Lamb - The Collected Works of Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb

——a beauteous wreath with melancholy eyes—

her dialogue with Hermes, the Star of Lethe , as he is called by one of these prodigal phrases which Mr. Keats abounds in, which are each a poem in a word, and which in this instance lays open to us at once, like a picture, all the dim regions and their inhabitants, and the sudden coming of a celestial among them; the charming of her into woman's shape again by the God; her marriage with the beautiful Lycius; her magic palace, which those who knew the street, and remembered it complete from childhood, never remembered to have seen before; the few Persian mutes, her attendants,

——who that same year

Were seen about the markets: none knew where

They could inhabit;——

the high-wrought splendours of the nuptial bower, with the fading of the whole pageantry, Lamia, and all, away, before the glance of Apollonius—are all that fairy land can do for us. They are for younger impressibilities. To us an ounce of feeling is worth a pound of fancy; and therefore we recur again, with a warmer gratitude, to the story of Isabella and the pot of basil, and those never-cloying stanzas which we have cited, and which we think should disarm criticism, if it be not in its nature cruel; if it would not deny to honey its sweetness, nor to roses redness, nor light to the stars in Heaven; if it would not bay the moon out of the skies, rather than acknowledge she is fair.

Table of Contents

(1820)

Of the writings of this distinguished character little is remembered at present beyond his Utopia , and some Epigrams. But there is extant a massive folio of his Theological Works in English, partly Practical Divinity, but for the greater part Polemic, against the grand Lutheran Heresy, just then beginning to flower. From these I many years ago made some extracts, rejecting only the antiquated orthography, (they being intended only for my own amusement) except in some instances of proper names, &c. I send them you as I find them, thinking that some of your readers may consider them as curious. The first is from a Tract against Tyndale, called the Confutation of Tyndale's Answer . [40]The author of Religio Medici somewhere says, "his conscience would give him the lye, if she should say that he absolutely detested or hated any essence but the Devil ." Whether Browne was not out in his metaphysics, when he supposed himself capable of hating, that is, entertaining a personal aversion to , a being so abstracted, or such a Concrete of all irreconcileable abstractions rather, as usually passes for the meaning of that name, I contend not; but that the same hatred in kind, which he professed against our great spiritual enemy, was in downright earnest cultivated and defended by More against that portentous phenomenon in those times, a Heretic , from his speeches against Luther and Tyndale cannot for a moment be doubted. His account of poor Hytton which follows (a reformado priest of the day) is penned with a wit and malice hyper-satanic. It is infinitely diverting in the midst of its diabolism, if it be not rather, what Coleridge calls,

Too wicked for a smile, too foolish for a tear.

[40]To some foregone Tract of More's, of which I have lost the title.

——"now to the intent that ye may somewhat see what good Christian faith Sir Thomas Hytton was of, this new saint of Tindale's canonization, in whose burning Tindale so gaily glorieth, and which hath his holiday so now appointed to him, that St. Polycarpus must give him place in the Calendar, I shall somewhat show you what wholesome heresies this holy martyr held. First ye shall understand, that he was a priest, and falling to Luther's sect, and after that to the sect of Friar Huskin and Zwinglius, cast off matins and mass, and all divine service, and so became an apostle, sent to and fro, between our English heretics beyond the sea, and such as were here at home. Now happed it so, that after he had visited here his holy congregations in divers corners and luskes lanes, and comforted them in the Lord to stand stiff with the devil in their errors and heresies, as he was going back again at Gravesend, God considering the great labour that he had taken already, and determining to bring his business to his well-deserved end, gave him suddenly such a favour and so great a grace in the visage, that every man that beheld him took him for a thief . For whereas there had been certain linen clothes pilfered away that were hanging on an hedge, and Sir Thomas Hytton was walking not far off suspiciously in the meditation of his heresies : the people doubting that the beggarly knave had stolen the clouts, fell in question with him and searched him, and so found they certain letters secretly conveyed in his coat, written from evangelical brethren here unto the evangelical heretics beyond the sea. And upon those letters founden, he was with his letters brought before the most Rev. Father in God the Archbishop of Canterbury, and afterward as well by his Lordship as by the Rev. Father the Bishop of Rochester examined, and after for his abominable heresies delivered to the secular hands and burned."

What follows (from the same Tract) is mildened a little by the introduction of the name of Erasmus, More's intimate friend; though by the sting in the rear of it, it is easy to see, that it was to a little temporising only, and to some thin politic partitions from these Reformers, that Erasmus owed his exemption from the bitter anathemas More had in store for them. The love almost make the hate more shocking by the contrast!

——"Then he (Tyndale) asketh me why I have not contended with Erasmus, whom he calleth my darling, of all this long while, for translating of this word ecclesia into this word congregatio . And then he cometh forth with his feat proper taunt, that I favour him of likelihood for making of his Book of MORIA in my house. There had he hit me, lo! save for lack of a little salt. I have not contended with Erasmus my darling, because I found no such malicious intent with Erasmus my darling, as I find with Tyndale. For had I found with Erasmus my darling the shrewd intent and purpose, that I find in Tyndale, Erasmus my darling should be no more my darling. But I find in Erasmus my darling, that he detesteth and abhorreth the errors and heresies, that Tyndale plainly teacheth and abideth by, and therefore Erasmus my darling shall be my dear darling still. And surely if Tyndale had either never taught them, or yet had the grace to revoke them, then should Tyndale be my dear darling too. But while he holdeth such heresies still, I cannot take for my darling him that the devil taketh for his darling."

The next extract is from a "Dialogue concerning Heresies," and has always struck me as a master-piece of eloquent logic, and something in the manner of Burke, when he is stripping a sophism sophistically ; as he treats Paine, and others passim .

——"And not to be of the foolish mind that Luther is, which wished in a sermon of his, that he had in his hand all the pieces of the holy cross, and saith that, if he so had, he would throw them there as never sun should shine on them. And for what worshipful reason would the wretch do such villainy to the cross of Christ? because, as he saith, that there is so much gold now bestowed about the garnishing of the pieces of the cross, that there is none left for poor folk. Is not this an high reason? as though all the gold, that is now bestowed about the pieces of the holy cross, would not have failed to have been given to poor men, if they had not been bestowed about the garnishing of the cross. And as though there were nothing lost, but that is bestowed about Christ's cross. Take all the gold, that is spent about all the pieces of Christ's cross through Christendom (albeit many a good Christen prince, and other goodly people, hath honourably garnished many pieces thereof), yet, if all the gold were gathered together, it would appear a poor portion, in comparison of the gold that is bestowed upon cups. What speak we of cups? in which the gold, albeit that it be not given to poor men, yet is it saved, and may be given in alms when men will, which they never will ; how small a portion, ween we, were the gold about all the pieces of Christ's cross, if it were compared with the gold that is quite cast away about the gilting of knives, swords, spurs, arras, and painted clothes: and (as though these things could not consume gold fast enough) the gilting of posts, and whole roofs, not only in palaces of princes and great prelates, but also many right mean men's houses. And yet, among all these things, could Luther spy no gold that grievously glittered in his bleared eyes , but only about the cross of Christ.—For that gold, if it were thence, the wise man weeneth, it would be straight given to poor men, and that where he daily see'th, that such as have their purse full of gold, give to the poor not one piece thereof; but, if they give ought, they ransack the bottom among all the gold, to seek out here an halfpenny, or in his country a brass penny whereof four make a farthing: such goodly causes find they, that pretend holiness for the colour of their cloaked heresies ." [Book I., Chapter 2.]