The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 2: Elia and The Last Essays of EliaLamb, Charles
General
The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 2: Elia and The Last Essays of Elia
Lamb, Charles
English essays
A fortnight has passed since the date of my first communication. At
that period I was approaching to tranquillity, but had not reached it.
I boasted of a calm indeed, but it was comparative only. Something of
the first flutter was left; an unsettling sense of novelty; the dazzle
to weak eyes of unaccustomed light. I missed my old chains, forsooth,
as if they had been some necessary part of my apparel. I was a
poor Carthusian, from strict cellular discipline suddenly by some
revolution returned upon the world. I am now as if I had never been
other than my own master. It is natural to me to go where I please,
to do what I please. I find myself at eleven o'clock in the day in
Bond-street, and it seems to me that I have been sauntering there
at that very hour for years past. I digress into Soho, to explore a
book-stall. Methinks I have been thirty years a collector. There is
nothing strange nor new in it. I find myself before a fine picture
in a morning. Was it ever otherwise? What is become of Fish-street
Hill? Where is Fenchurch-street? Stones of old Mincing-lane, which I
have worn with my daily pilgrimage for six and thirty years, to the
footsteps of what toil-worn clerk are your everlasting flints now
vocal? I indent the gayer flags of Pall Mall. It is Change time, and
I am strangely among the Elgin marbles. It was no hyperbole when I
ventured to compare the change in my condition to a passing into
another world. Time stands still in a manner to me. I have lost all
distinction of season. I do not know the day of the week, or of the
month. Each day used to be individually felt by me in its reference
to the foreign post days; in its distance from, or propinquity to,
the next Sunday. I had my Wednesday feelings, my Saturday nights'
sensations. The genius of each day was upon me distinctly during the
whole of it, affecting my appetite, spirits, &c. The phantom of the
next day, with the dreary five to follow, sate as a load upon my poor
Sabbath recreations. What charm has washed that Ethiop white? What
is gone of Black Monday? All days are the same. Sunday itself--that
unfortunate failure of a holyday as it too often proved, what with my
sense of its fugitiveness, and over-care to get the greatest quantity
of pleasure out of it--is melted down into a week day. I can spare
to go to church now, without grudging the huge cantle which it used
to seem to cut out of the holyday. I have Time for everything. I
can visit a sick friend. I can interrupt the man of much occupation
when he is busiest. I can insult over him with an invitation to take
a day's pleasure with me to Windsor this fine May-morning. It is
Lucretian pleasure to behold the poor drudges, whom I have left behind
in the world, carking and caring; like horses in a mill, drudging on
in the same eternal round--and what is it all for? A man can never
have too much Time to himself, nor too little to do. Had I a little
son, I would christen him NOTHING-TO-DO; he should do nothing. Man, I
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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