included ironically, on account of his hostility to Priestley.]




LETTER 51


CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING

[P.M. March 1, 1800.]

I hope by this time you are prepared to say the "Falstaf's letters" are
a bundle of the sharpest, queerest, profoundest humours, of any these
juice-drained latter times have spawned. I should have advertised you,
that the meaning is frequently hard to be got at; and so are the future
guineas, that now lie ripening and aurifying in the womb of some
undiscovered Potosi; but dig, dig, dig, dig, Manning! I set to with an
unconquerable propulsion to write, with a lamentable want of what to
write. My private goings on are orderly as the movements of the spheres,
and stale as their music to angels' ears. Public affairs--except as they
touch upon me, and so turn into private, I cannot whip up my mind to
feel any interest in. I grieve, indeed, that War and Nature, and Mr.
Pitt, that hangs up in Lloyd's best parlour, should have conspired to
call up three necessaries, simple commoners as our fathers knew them,
into the upper house of Luxuries; Bread, and Beer, and Coals, Manning.
But as to France and Frenchmen, and the Abbe Sieyes and his
constitutions, I cannot make these present times present to me. I read
histories of the past, and I live in them; although, to abstract senses,
they are far less momentous than the noises which keep Europe awake. I