The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 | Page 5

place, if you please, a little on
this side of the heroic. Nature certainly had been pleased to endow John
Tipp with a sufficient measure of the principle of self-preservation.
There is a cowardice which we do not despise, because it has nothing
base or treacherous in its elements; it betrays itself, not you: it is mere
temperament; the absence of the romantic and the enterprising; it sees a
lion in the way, and will not, with Fortinbras, "greatly find quarrel in a
straw," when some supposed honour is at stake. Tipp never mounted
the box of a stage-coach in his life; or leaned against the rails of a
balcony; or walked upon the ridge of a parapet; or looked down a
precipice; or let off a gun; or went upon a water-party; or would
willingly let you go if he could have helped it: neither was it recorded
of him, that for lucre, or for intimidation, he ever forsook friend or
principle.

Whom next shall we summon from the dusty dead, in whom common
qualities become uncommon? Can I forget thee, Henry Man, the wit,
the polished man of letters, the author, of the South-Sea House? who
never enteredst thy office in a morning, or quittedst it in
mid-day--(what didst thou in an office?)--without some quirk that left a
sting! Thy gibes and thy jokes are now extinct, or survive but in two
forgotten volumes, which I had the good fortune to rescue from a stall
in Barbican, not three days ago, and found thee terse, fresh,
epigrammatic, as alive. Thy wit is a little gone by in these fastidious
days--thy topics are staled by the "new-born gauds" of the time:--but
great thou used to be in Public Ledgers, and in Chronicles, upon
Chatham, and Shelburne, and Rockingham, and Howe, and Burgoyne,
and Clinton, and the war which ended in the tearing from Great Britain
her rebellious colonies,--and Keppel, and Wilkes, and Sawbridge, and
Bull, and Dunning, and Pratt, and Richmond,--and such small
politics.--
A little less facetious, and a great deal more obstreperous, was fine
rattling, rattleheaded Plumer. He was descended,--not in a right line,
reader, (for his lineal pretensions, like his personal, favoured a little of
the sinister bend) from the Plumers of Hertfordshire. So tradition gave
him out; and certain family features not a little sanctioned the opinion.
Certainly old Walter Plumer (his reputed author) had been a rake in his
days, and visited much in Italy, and had seen the world. He was uncle,
bachelor-uncle, to the fine old whig still living, who has represented the
county in so many successive parliaments, and has a fine old mansion
near Ware. Walter flourished in George the Second's days, and was the
same who was summoned before the House of Commons about a
business of franks, with the old Duchess of Marlborough. You may
read of it in Johnson's Life of Cave. Cave came off cleverly in that
business. It is certain our Plumer did nothing to discountenance the
rumour. He rather seemed pleased whenever it was, with all gentleness,
insinuated. But, besides his family pretensions, Plumer was an
engaging fellow, and sang gloriously.--
Not so sweetly sang Plumer as thou sangest, mild, child-like, pastoral
M----; a flute's breathing less divinely whispering than thy Arcadian
melodies, when, in tones worthy of Arden, thou didst chant that song
sung by Amiens to the banished Duke, which proclaims the winter

wind more lenient than for a man to be ungrateful. Thy sire was old
surly M----, the unapproachable church-warden of Bishopsgate. He
knew not what he did, when he begat thee, like spring, gentle offspring
of blustering winter:--only unfortunate in thy ending, which should
have been mild, conciliatory, swan-like.--
Much remains to sing. Many fantastic shapes rise up, but they must be
mine in private:--already I have fooled the reader to the top of his
bent;--else could I omit that strange creature Woollett, who existed in
trying the question, and _bought litigations_?--and still stranger,
inimitable, solemn Hepworth, from whose gravity Newton might have
deduced the law of gravitation. How profoundly would he nib a
pen--with what deliberation would he wet a wafer!--
But it is time to close--night's wheels are rattling fast over me--it is
proper to have done with this solemn mockery.
Reader, what if I have been playing with thee all this
while--peradventure the very names, which I have summoned up before
thee, are fantastic--insubstantial--like Henry Pimpernel, and old John
Naps of Greece:--
Be satisfied that something answering to them has had a being. Their
importance is from the past.
[Footnote 1: I passed by the walls of Balclutha, and they were
desolate.--Ossian.]

OXFORD IN THE VACATION
Casting a preparatory glance at the bottom of this article--as the wary
connoisseur in prints, with cursory eye (which, while it