Beschreibung:

LAMB, Charles (1775-1834). Affectionate autograph letter signed ('Charles Lamb') to the poet George Dyer, [Enfield Chase?], 2 February 1831 , writing to re-assure Dyer about his oncoming blindness, also telling him that Rogers is not offended by anything he wrote years ago, 'To imagine that at this time of day, Rogers broods over a fantastic expression of more than thirty years' standing, would be to suppose him indulging his pleasures of memory with a vengeance ... You mistake your heart if you think you can write a lampoon. Your whips are rods of roses', then encourages Dyer about his deteriorating handwriting, telling him that he writes hieroglyphically , ending by discussing his own script at length, 4 pages, folio (325 x 200mm) , address panel in the centre of last leaf (marginal damage from removal of seal not affecting letters). Lamb was clearly very fond of Dyer, whom he regarded as a gentle and kindly excentric, 'I maintain, and will to the last hour, that I never writ of you but con amore ... Did I not, in your person, make the handsomest apology for absent-of-mind people that was ever made? If these things be not so, I never knew what I wrote, or meant by my writing, and I have been punning libels all my life without being aware of it'. Talking about his blindness, he writes 'you have vision enough to discern Mrs Dyer from the other comely Gentlewoman who live up at staitcase no.5; or if you should make a blunder in the twilight, Mrs Dyer has too much good sense to be jealous for a mere effect of imperfect optics', and ending, 'By the length of this scrawl you will think I have a design upon your optics; but I have writ as large as I could, out of respect to them, too large indeed for beauty. Mine is a sort of deputy Grecians hand, a little better, and more of a worldly hand than a Grecian's, but still remote from the mercantile ... and writing to you, or to Coleridge, besides affection, I feel a reverential deference as to Grecians still ... Alas what am I now? what is a Leadenhall clerk or India pensioner, to a deputy Grecian? How art thou fallen, O Lucifer!'. The letter is indeed written larger than Lamb's characteristic hand. Published in Letters of Charles and Mary Lamb ed. E.V.Lucas, vol.III pp 303-306 (there misdated 22 February).