Charles Lamb letter to George Dyer

Item Information

Title:
Charles Lamb letter to George Dyer
Description:
On the Swing Riots in Enfield: "Poor Enfield, that has been so peaceable hitherto, has caught the inflammatory fever; the tokens are upon her; and a great fire was blazing last night in the barns and haystacks of a farmer, about half a mile from us. Where will these things end? There is no doubt if its being the work of some ill-disposed rustic, but how is he to be discovered? They go to work in the dark with strange chemical preparations unknown to our forefathers. There is not even a dark lantern to have a chance of detecting thes Guy Fauxes. We are past the iron age, and are got into the fiery age, undream'd of by Ovid. You are lucky in Clifford's Inn, where I think you have few ricks or stacks worth the burning. Pray, keep as little corn by you as you can, for fear of the worst. It was never good times in England, since the poor began to speculate upon their condition. Formerly they jogged on with as little reflection as horses. The whistling plowman went cheek by jowl with his brother that neighed. Now the Biped carries a box of phosphorus in his leather breeches, and in the dead of night that half-illuminated Beast steals his magic potion into a cleft in a barn, and half a county is grinning with new fires. Farmer Greystock said something to the touchy rustic, that he did not relish, and he writes his distaste in flames. What a power to intoxicate his crude brains, just muddlingly awake to perceive that something is wrong in the social system. What a hellish faculty above gunpowder! Now the rich and poor a fairly fitted -- we shall see who can hang, or burn, fastest. It is not always revenge that stimulates these kindlings. There is a love of exerting mischief! Think of a disrespected clod, that was trod into earth, that was nothing, on a sudden by damned Arts, refined into an exterminating angle, devouring the fruits of the earth, and their growers, in a mass of fire. What a new existence! What a temptation above Lucifer's. Would clod be any thing but a clod, if he could resist it? Why, here was a spectacle last night for a whole country, a Bonfire visible to London, alarming her guilty towers, and shaking the monument with an ague fit, all done by a little vial of phosphor in a clown's fob. How he must grin, and shake his empty noodle in clouds! The Vulcanian Epicure. Can we ring the bells backward? Can we unlearn the arts that pretend to civilise, and then burn, the world? There is a march of Science; but who shall beat the drums for its retreat? Who shall persuade the Boor, that phosphor will not ignite? Seven goodly stacks of hay, with corn-barns proportionable, lie smoking ashes and chaff, which man & beast would sputter out and reject like those apples of asphaltes and bitumen. The food for the inhabitants of earth will quickly disappear. Hot rolls may say, Fuimus Panes, fuit quartern-Loaf, et ingens gloria Apple-pastry-orum. That the good old munching system may last thy time and mine, good un-incendiary George!, is the devout prayer of thine, to the last crust. . ."
Creator:
Lamb, Charles, 1775-1834
Addressee:
Dyer, George, 1755-1841
Date:
December 20, 1830
Format:
Letters/Correspondence
Location:
Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries
Collection (local):
Rocco and Barbara Verrilli Collection of Charles Lamb
Subjects:
Swing Riots, England, 1830-1831
Extent:
3 p.
Link to Item:
http://credo.library.umass.edu/view/full/mums939-f16-i001
Terms of Use:
Requests to publish, redistribute, or replicate this material should be addressed to Special Collections and University Archives, UMass Amherst Libraries.
Contact host institution for more information.
Place of origin:
Enfield (Eng.)
Identifier:
mums939-f16-i001