Various - Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 66 No.406, August 1849

We must first quote from a letter to Manning, after his visits to the lakes, to rescue his character in the eyes of the lovers of the picturesque from the imputation of being utterly indifferent to the higher beauties of nature.

"Coleridge received us with all the hospitality in the world. He dwells upon a small hill by the side of Keswick, in a comfortable house, quite enveloped on all sides by a net of mountains: great floundering bears and monsters they seemed, all couchant and asleep. We got in in the evening, travelling in a post-chaise from Penrith, in the midst of a gorgeous sunshine, which transmuted all the mountains into colours, purple, &c., &c. We thought we had got into fairyland. But that went off (and it never came again; while we stayed we had no more fine sunsets), and we entered Coleridge's comfortable study just in the dusk, when the mountains were all dark with clouds on their heads. Such an impression I never received from objects of sight before, nor do I suppose that I can ever again. Glorious creatures, fine old fellows – Skiddaw, &c. – I never shall forget ye, how ye lay about that night like an entrenchment – gone to bed, as it seemed for the night, but promising that ye were to be seen in the morning… We have clambered up to the top of Skiddaw; and I have waded up the bed of Lodore. In fine, I have satisfied myself that there is such a thing as tourists call romantic , which I very much suspected before; they make such a sputtering about it… Oh! its fine black head, and the bleak air atop of it, with the prospects of mountains about and about, making you giddy. It was a day that will stand out like a mountain, I am sure, in my life."

Of Mr Manning we are told little or nothing, though he seems to have been one of the very dearest friends of Lamb. His best letters are written to Manning – the drollest, and some of the most affecting. The following was written to dissuade him from some scheme of oriental travel. Manning was, at the time, at Paris: —

" Feb. 19, 1803.

"My Dear Manning, – The general scope of your letter afforded no indications of insanity; but some particular points raised a scruple. For God's sake, don't think any more of 'Independent Tartary.' What are you to do among such Ethiopians? Read Sir John Mandeville's travels to cure you, or come over to England. There is a Tartar-man now exhibiting at Exeter Change. Come and talk with him, and hear what he says first. Indeed, he is no favourable specimen of his countrymen! Some say they are cannibals; and then conceive a Tartar fellow eating my friend, and adding the cool malignity of mustard and vinegar! I am afraid 'tis the reading of Chaucer has misled you; his foolish stories about Cambuscan, and the ring and the horse of brass. Believe me, there are no such things. These are all tales – a horse of brass never flew, and a king's daughter never talked with birds. The Tartars really are a cold, insipid, smoutchy set. You'll be sadly moped (if you are not eaten) amongst them. Pray try and cure yourself. Shave yourself oftener. Eat no saffron; for saffron eaters contract a terrible Tartar-like yellow. Shave the upper lip . Go about like a European. Read no books of voyages, (they are nothing but lies;) only now and then a romance, to keep the fancy under . Above all, don't go to any sights of wild beasts . That has been your ruin. "

And when Manning really departed on his voyage to China, he writes to him in the following mingled strains of humour and of feeling. Being obliged to omit a great deal, it would only be unsightly to mark every instance where a sentence has been dropt. The italics, we must remark, are not ours. If Lamb's, they show how naturally, even in writing to his most intimate friend, he fell into the feelings of the author: —

" May 10, 1806.

"… Be sure, if you see any of those people whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders, that you make a draught of them. It will be very curious. Oh! Manning, I am serious to sinking almost, when I think that all those evenings which you have made so pleasant are gone, perhaps for ever. Four years, you talk of, may be ten – and you may come back and find such alterations! Some circumstance may grow up to you or to me, that may be a bar to the return of any such intimacy. I dare say all this is hum! and that all will come back; but, indeed, we die many deaths before we die, and I am almost sick to think that such a hold I had of you is gone."

" Dec. 5, 1806.

"Manning, your letter dated Hottentots, August the – what was it? came to hand. I can scarce hope that mine will have the same luck. China – Canton – bless us! how it strains the imagination, and makes it ache. It will be a point of conscience to send you none but bran-new news (the latest edition), which will but grow the better, like oranges, for a sea voyage. Oh that you should be so many hemispheres off – if I speak incorrectly you can correct me – why, the simplest death or marriage that takes place here must be important to you as news in the old Bastile."

He then tells him of the acceptance of his farce — Mr H. ; which farce, by the way, was produced, and failed, Lamb turning against his own production, and joining the audience in hissing it off the stage. It certainly deserved its fate.

"Now, you'd like to know the subject. The title is, 'Mr H.' No more; how simple, how taking! A great H sprawling over the play-bill, and attracting eyes at every corner. The story is, a coxcomb appearing at Bath, vastly rich – all the ladies dying for him – all bursting to know who he is; but he goes by no other name than Mr H. – a curiosity like that of the dames of Strasburg about the man with the great nose. But I won't tell you any more about it. Yes, I will; but I can't give you any idea how I have done it. I'll just tell you that, after much vehement admiration, when his true name comes out, 'Hogsflesh,' all the women shun him, avoid him, and not one can be found to change her name for him; that's the idea – how flat it is here – but how whimsical in the farce! And only think how hard upon me it is, that the ship is despatched to-morrow, and my triumph cannot be ascertained till the Wednesday after. But all China will ring of it by-and-by. Do you find, in all this stuff I have written, anything like those feelings which one should send my old adventuring friend that is gone to wander among Tartars, and may never come again? I don't; but your going away, and all about you, is a threadbare topic. I have worn it out with thinking. It has come to me when I have been dull with anything, till my sadness has seemed more to have come from it than to have introduced it. I want you, you don't know how much; but if I had you here, in my European garret, we should but talk over such stuff as I have written.

"Good Heavens! what a bit only I've got left! How shall I squeeze all I know into this morsel! Coleridge is come home, and is going to turn lecturer on taste at the Royal Institution. How the paper grows less and less! In less than two minutes I shall cease to talk to you, and you may rave to the great Wall of China. – N.B. Is there such a wall? Is it as big as Old London Wall by Bedlam? Have you met with a friend of mine, named Ball, at Canton? If you are acquainted, remember me kindly to him."

But we should be driven into as hard straits as Lamb, at the close of his epistle, if we, should attempt, in the small space that remains to us, to give any fair idea of the various "humours" and interests, of many kinds, of these letters. We pass at once to those that illustrate the last important incident of his life, his retirement from office. It is thus he describes his manumission, and the sort of troubled delight it brought with it, to Wordsworth: —