used to be very much dissatisfied that I preferred his _Letters_ to
his _Sermons_. The last were forced and dry; the first came naturally
from him. For ease, half-plays on words, and a supine, monkish,
indolent pleasantry, I have never seen them equalled.
[2] He complained in particular of the presumption of his attempting
to establish the future immortality of man, 'without' (as he said)
'knowing what Death was or what Life was'--and the tone in which he
pronounced these two words seemed to convey a complete image of both.
[3] He had no idea of pictures, of Claude or Raphael, and at this time
I had as little as he. He sometimes gives a striking account at
present of the Cartoons at Pisa by Buffamalco and others; of one in
particular, where Death is seen in the air brandishing his scythe, and
the great and mighty of the earth shudder at his approach, while the
beggars and the wretched kneel to him as their deliverer. He would, of
course, understand so broad and fine a moral as this at any time.
ESSAY II
OF PERSONS ONE WOULD WISH TO HAVE SEEN
'Come like shadows--so depart.'
Lamb it was, I think, who suggested this subject, as well as the
defence of Guy Faux, which I urged him to execute. As, however, he
would undertake neither, I suppose I must do both, a task for which he
would have been much fitter, no less from the temerity than the
felicity of his pen--
'Never so sure our rapture to create
As when it touch'd the brink of all we hate.'
Compared with him, I shall, I fear, make but a commonplace piece of
business of it; but I should be loth the idea was entirely lost, and
besides I may avail myself of some hints of his in the progress of it.
I am sometimes, I suspect, a better reporter of the ideas of other
people than expounder of my own. I pursue the one too far into paradox
or mysticism; the others I am not bound to follow farther than I like,
or than seems fair and reasonable.
On the question being started, Ayrton said, 'I suppose the two first
persons you would choose to see would be the two greatest names in
English literature, Sir Isaac Newton and Mr. Locke?' In this Ayrton,
as usual, reckoned without his host. Every one burst out a laughing at
the expression of Lamb's face, in which impatience was restrained by
courtesy. 'Yes, the greatest names,' he stammered out hastily, 'but
they were not persons--not persons.'--'Not persons?' said Ayrton,
looking wise and foolish at the same time, afraid his triumph might be
premature. 'That is,' rejoined Lamb, 'not characters, you know. By Mr.
Locke and Sir Isaac Newton, you mean the _Essay on the Human
Understanding_, and the _Principia_, which we have to this day. Beyond
their contents there is nothing personally interesting in the men. But
what we want to see any one _bodily_ for, is when there is something
peculiar, striking in the individuals, more than we can learn from
their writings, and yet are curious to know. I dare say Locke and
Newton were very like Kneller's portraits of them. But who could paint
Shakspeare?'--'Ay,' retorted Ayrton, 'there it is; then I suppose you
would prefer seeing him and Milton instead?'--'No,' said Lamb,
'neither. I have seen so much of Shakspeare on the stage and on
bookstalls, in frontispieces and on mantel-pieces, that I am quite
tired of the everlasting repetition: and as to Milton's face, the
impressions that have come down to us of it I do not like; it is too
starched and puritanical; and I should be afraid of losing some of the
manna of his poetry in the leaven of his countenance and the
precisian's band and gown.'--'I shall guess no more,' said Ayrton.
'Who is it, then, you would like to see "in his habit as he lived," if
you had your choice of the whole range of English literature?' Lamb
then named Sir Thomas Browne and Fulke Greville, the friend of Sir
Philip Sidney, as the two worthies whom he should feel the greatest
pleasure to encounter on the floor of his apartment in their nightgown
and slippers, and to exchange friendly greeting with them. At this
Ayrton laughed outright, and conceived Lamb was jesting with him; but
as no one followed his example, he thought there might be something in
it, and waited for an explanation in a state of whimsical suspense.
Lamb then (as well as I can remember a conversation that passed twenty
years ago--how time slips!) went on as follows. 'The reason why I
pitch upon these two authors is, that their writings are riddles, and
they themselves the most mysterious of personages. They resemble the
soothsayers of old, who dealt in dark hints and doubtful oracles; and
I should like to ask them the meaning of what no mortal but
themselves, I should suppose, can fathom. There is Dr. Johnson: I have
no curiosity, no strange uncertainty about him; he and Boswell
together have pretty well let me into the secret of what passed
through his mind. He and other writers like him are sufficiently
explicit: my friends whose repose I should be tempted to disturb (were
it in my power), are implicit, inextricable, inscrutable.
'When I look at that obscure but gorgeous prose composition the
_Urn-burial_, I seem to myself to look into a deep abyss, at the
bottom of which are hid pearls and rich treasure; or it is like a
stately labyrinth of doubt and withering speculation, and I would
invoke the spirit of the author to lead me through it. Besides, who
would not be curious to see the lineaments of a man who, having
himself been twice married, wished that mankind were propagated like
trees! As to Fulke Greville, he is like nothing but one of his own
"Prologues spoken by the ghost of an old king of Ormus," a truly
formidable and inviting personage: his style is apocalyptical,
cabalistical, a knot worthy of such an apparition to untie; and for
the unravelling a passage or two, I would stand the brunt of an
encounter with so portentous a commentator!'--'I am afraid, in that
case,' said Ayrton, 'that if the mystery were once cleared up, the
merit might be lost'; and turning to me, whispered a friendly
apprehension, that while Lamb continued to admire these old crabbed
authors, he would never become a popular writer. Dr. Donne was
mentioned as a writer of the same period, with a very interesting
countenance, whose history was singular, and whose meaning was often
quite as _uncomeatable_, without a personal citation from the dead, as
that of any of his contemporaries. The volume was produced; and while
some one was expatiating on the exquisite simplicity and beauty of the
portrait prefixed to the old edition, Ayrton got hold of the poetry,
and exclaiming 'What have we here?' read the following:
'Here lies a She-Sun and a He-Moon there--
She gives the best light to his sphear,
Or each is both, and all, and so
They unto one another nothing owe.'
There was no resisting this, till Lamb, seizing the volume, turned to
the beautiful _Lines to his Mistress_, dissuading her from
accompanying him abroad, and read them with suffused features and a
faltering tongue:
'By our first strange and fatal interview,
By all desires which thereof did ensue,
By our long starving hopes, by that remorse
Which my words' masculine perswasive force
Begot in thee, and by the memory
Of hurts, which spies and rivals threatned me,
I calmely beg. But by thy father's wrath,
By all paines which want and divorcement hath,
I conjure thee; and all the oathes which I
And thou have sworne to seale joynt constancy
Here I unsweare, and overswear them thus--
Thou shalt not love by wayes so dangerous.
Temper, O fair love! love's impetuous rage,
Be my true mistris still, not my faign'd Page;
I'll goe, and, by thy kinde leave, leave behinde
Thee! onely worthy to nurse in my minde.
Thirst to come backe; O, if thou die before,
My soule, from other lands to thee shall soare.
Thy (else almighty) beauty cannot move
Rage from the seas, nor thy love teach them love.
Nor tame wild Boreas' harshnesse; thou hast reade
How roughly hee in pieces shivered
Fair Orithea, whom he swore he lov'd.
Fall ill or good, 'tis madnesse to have prov'd
Dangers unurg'd: Feed on this flattery,
That absent lovers one in th' other be.
Dissemble nothing, not a boy; nor change
Thy bodie's habite, nor minde; be not strange
To thyeselfe onely. All will spie in thy face
A blushing, womanly, discovering grace.
Richly-cloath'd apes are call'd apes, and as soone
Eclips'd as bright, we call the moone the moon.
Men of France, changeable camelions,
Spittles of diseases, shops of fashions,
Love's fuellers, and the rightest company
Of players, which upon the world's stage be,
Will quickly know thee ...
O stay here! for for thee
England is onely a worthy gallerie,
To walke in expectation; till from thence
Our greatest King call thee to his presence.
When I am gone, dreame me some happinesse,
Nor let thy lookes our long-hid love confesse,
Nor praise, nor dispraise me; nor blesse, nor curse
Openly love's force, nor in bed fright thy nurse
With midnight's startings, crying out, Oh, oh,
Nurse, oh, my love is slaine, I saw him goe
O'er the white Alpes alone; I saw him, I,
Assail'd, fight, taken, stabb'd, bleed, fall, and die.
Augure me better chance, except dread Jove
Thinke it enough for me to have had thy love.'
Some one then inquired of Lamb if we could not see from the window the
Temple walk in which Chaucer used to take his exercise; and on his
name being put to the vote, I was pleased to find that there was a
general sensation in his favour in all but Ayrton, who said something
about the ruggedness of the metre, and even objected to the quaintness
of the orthography. I was vexed at this superficial gloss,
pertinaciously reducing everything to its own trite level, and asked
'if he did not think it would be worth while to scan the eye that had
first greeted the Muse in that dim twilight and early dawn of English
literature; to see the head round which the visions of fancy must have
played like gleams of inspiration or a sudden glory; to watch those
lips that "lisped in numbers, for the numbers came"--as by a miracle,
or as if the dumb should speak? Nor was it alone that he had been the
first to tune his native tongue (however imperfectly to modern ears);
but he was himself a noble, manly character, standing before his age
and striving to advance it; a pleasant humourist withal, who has not
only handed down to us the living manners of his time, but had, no
doubt, store of curious and quaint devices, and would make as hearty a
companion as mine Host of the Tabard. His interview with Petrarch is
fraught with interest. Yet I would rather have seen Chaucer in company
with the author of the _Decameron_, and have heard them exchange their
best stories together--the _Squire's Tale_ against the Story of the
_Falcon_, the _Wife of Bath's Prologue_ against the _Adventures of
Friar Albert_. How fine to see the high mysterious brow which learning
then wore, relieved by the gay, familiar tone of men of the world, and
by the courtesies of genius! Surely, the thoughts and feelings which
passed through the minds of these great revivers of learning, these
Cadmuses who sowed the teeth of letters, must have stamped an
expression on their features as different from the moderns as their
books, and well worth the perusal. Dante,' I continued, 'is as
interesting a person as his own Ugolino, one whose lineaments
curiosity would as eagerly devour in order to penetrate his spirit,
and the only one of the Italian poets I should care much to see. There
is a fine portrait of Ariosto by no less a hand than Titian's; light,
Moorish, spirited, but not answering our idea. The same artist's large
colossal profile of Peter Aretine is the only likeness of the kind
that has the effect of conversing with "the mighty dead"; and this is
truly spectral, ghastly, necromantic.' Lamb put it to me if I should
like to see Spenser as well as Chaucer; and I answered, without
hesitation, 'No; for that his beauties were ideal, visionary, not
palpable or personal, and therefore connected with less curiosity
about the man. His poetry was the essence of romance, a very halo
round the bright orb of fancy; and the bringing in the individual
might dissolve the charm. No tones of voice could come up to the
mellifluous cadence of his verse; no form but of a winged angel could
vie with the airy shapes he has described. He was (to my apprehension)
rather a "creature of the element, that lived in the rainbow and
played in the plighted clouds," than an ordinary mortal. Or if he did
appear, I should wish it to be as a mere vision, like one of his own
pageants, and that he should pass by unquestioned like a dream or
sound--
----"_That_ was Arion crown'd:
So went he playing on the wat'ry plain."'
Captain Burney muttered something about Columbus, and Martin Burney
hinted at the Wandering Jew; but the last was set aside as spurious,
and the first made over to the New World.
'I should like,' said Mrs. Reynolds, 'to have seen Pope talk with
Patty Blount; and I _have_ seen Goldsmith.' Every one turned round to
look at Mrs. Reynolds, as if by so doing they could get a sight at
Goldsmith.
'Where,' asked a harsh, croaking voice, 'was Dr. Johnson in the years
1745-6? He did not write anything that we know of, nor is there any
account of him in Boswell during those two years. Was he in Scotland
with the Pretender? He seems to have passed through the scenes in the
Highlands in company with Boswell, many years after, "with lack-lustre
eye," yet as if they were familiar to him, or associated in his mind
with interests that he durst not explain. If so, it would be an
additional reason for my liking him; and I would give something to
have seen him seated in the tent with the youthful Majesty of Britain,
and penning the Proclamation to all true subjects and adherents of the
legitimate Government.'
'I thought,' said Ayrton, turning short round upon Lamb, 'that you of
the Lake School did not like Pope?'--'Not like Pope! My dear sir, you
must be under a mistake--I can read him over and over for
ever!'--'Why, certainly, the _Essay on Man_ must be allowed to be a
masterpiece.'--'It may be so, but I seldom look into it.'--'Oh! then
it's his Satires you admire?'--'No, not his Satires, but his friendly
Epistles and his compliments.'--'Compliments! I did not know he ever
made any.'--'The finest,' said Lamb, 'that were ever paid by the wit
of man. Each of them is worth an estate for life--nay, is an
immortality. There is that superb one to Lord Cornbury:
"Despise low joys, low gains;
Disdain whatever Cornbury disdains;
Be virtuous, and be happy for your pains."
Was there ever more artful insinuation of idolatrous praise? And then
that noble apotheosis of his friend Lord Mansfield (however little
deserved), when, speaking of the House of Lords, he adds:
"Conspicuous scene! another yet is nigh,
(More silent far) where kings and poets lie;
Where Murray (long enough his country's pride)
Shall be no more than Tully or than Hyde."
And with what a fine turn of indignant flattery he addresses Lord
Bolingbroke:
"Why rail they then, if but one wreath of mine,
Oh! all accomplish'd St. John, deck thy shrine?"
Or turn,' continued Lamb, with a slight hectic on his cheek and his
eye glistening, 'to his list of early friends:
"But why then publish? Granville the polite,
And knowing Walsh, would tell me I could write;
Well-natured Garth inflamed with early praise,
And Congreve loved, and Swift endured my lays;
The courtly Talbot, Somers, Sheffield read,
Ev'n mitred Rochester would nod the head;
And St. John's self (great Dryden's friend before)
Received with open arms one poet more.
Happy my studies, if by these approved!
Happier their author, if by these beloved!
From these the world will judge of men and books,
Not from the Burnets, Oldmixons, and Cooks."'
Here his voice totally failed him, and throwing down the book, he
said, 'Do you think I would not wish to have been friends with such a
man as this?'
'What say you to Dryden?'--'He rather made a show of himself, and
courted popularity in that lowest temple of fame, a coffee-shop, so as
in some measure to vulgarise one's idea of him. Pope, on the
contrary, reached the very _beau ideal_ of what a poet's life should
be; and his fame while living seemed to be an emanation from that
which was to circle his name after death. He was so far enviable (and
one would feel proud to have witnessed the rare spectacle in him) that
he was almost the only poet and man of genius who met with his reward
on this side of the tomb, who realised in friends, fortune, the esteem
of the world, the most sanguine hopes of a youthful ambition, and who
found that sort of patronage from the great during his lifetime which
they would be thought anxious to bestow upon him after his death. Read
Gay's verses to him on his supposed return from Greece, after his
translation of Homer was finished, and say if you would not gladly
join the bright procession that welcomed him home, or see it once more
land at Whitehall stairs.'--'Still,' said Mrs. Reynolds, 'I would
rather have seen him talking with Patty Blount, or riding by in a
coronet-coach with Lady Mary Wortley Montagu!'
Erasmus Phillips, who was deep in a game of piquet at the other end of
the room, whispered to Martin Burney to ask if Junius would not be a
fit person to invoke from the dead. 'Yes,' said Lamb, 'provided he
would agree to lay aside his mask.'
We were now at a stand for a short time, when Fielding was mentioned
as a candidate; only one, however, seconded the proposition.
'Richardson?'--'By all means, but only to look at him through the
glass door of his back shop, hard at work upon one of his novels (the
most extraordinary contrast that ever was presented between an author
and his works); not to let him come behind his counter, lest he should
want you to turn customer, or to go upstairs with him, lest he should
offer to read the first manuscript of Sir Charles Grandison, which was
originally written in eight-and-twenty volumes octavo, or get out the
letters of his female correspondents, to prove that Joseph Andrews was
low.'
There was but one statesman in the whole of English history that any
one expressed the least desire to see--Oliver Cromwell, with his fine,
frank, rough, pimply face, and wily policy; and one enthusiast, John
Bunyan, the immortal author of the _Pilgrim's Progress_. It seemed
that if he came into the room, dreams would follow him, and that each
person would nod under his golden cloud, 'nigh-sphered in heaven,' a
canopy as strange and stately as any in Homer.
Of all persons near our own time, Garrick's name was received with the
greatest enthusiasm, who was proposed by Barron Field. He presently
superseded both Hogarth and Handel, who had been talked of, but then
it was on condition that he should act in tragedy and comedy, in the
play and the farce, _Lear_ and _Wildair_ and _Abel Drugger_. What a
_sight for sore eyes_ that would be! Who would not part with a year's
income at least, almost with a year of his natural life, to be present
at it? Besides, as he could not act alone, and recitations are
unsatisfactory things, what a troop he must bring with him--the
silver-tongued Barry, and Quin, and Shuter and Weston, and Mrs. Clive
and Mrs. Pritchard, of whom I have heard my father speak as so great a
favourite when he was young. This would indeed be a revival of the
dead, the restoring of art; and so much the more desirable, as such is
the lurking scepticism mingled with our overstrained admiration of
past excellence, that though we have the speeches of Burke, the
portraits of Reynolds, the writings of Goldsmith, and the conversation
of Johnson, to show what people could do at that period, and to
confirm the universal testimony to the merits of Garrick; yet, as it
was before our time, we have our misgivings, as if he was probably,
after all, little better than a Bartlemy-fair actor, dressed out to
play _Macbeth_ in a scarlet coat and laced cocked-hat. For one, I
should like to have seen and heard with my own eyes and ears.
Certainly, by all accounts, if any one was ever moved by the true
histrionic _aestus_, it was Garrick. When he followed the Ghost in
_Hamlet_, he did not drop the sword, as most actors do, behind the
scenes, but kept the point raised the whole way round, so fully was he
possessed with the idea, or so anxious not to lose sight of his part
for a moment. Once at a splendid dinner-party at Lord ----'s, they
suddenly missed Garrick, and could not imagine what was become of him,
till they were drawn to the window by the convulsive screams and peals
of laughter of a young negro boy, who was rolling on the ground in an
ecstasy of delight to see Garrick mimicking a turkey-cock in the
court-yard, with his coat-tail stuck out behind, and in a seeming
flutter of feathered rage and pride. Of our party only two persons
present had seen the British Roscius; and they seemed as willing as
the rest to renew their acquaintance with their old favourite.
We were interrupted in the hey-day and mid-career of this fanciful
speculation, by a grumbler in a corner, who declared it was a shame to
make all this rout about a mere player and farce-writer, to the
neglect and exclusion of the fine old dramatists, the contemporaries
and rivals of Shakspeare. Lamb said he had anticipated this objection
when he had named the author of _Mustapha_ and _Alaham_; and, out of
caprice, insisted upon keeping him to represent the set, in preference
to the wild, hare-brained enthusiast, Kit Marlowe; to the sexton of
St. Ann's, Webster, with his melancholy yew-trees and death's-heads;
to Decker, who was but a garrulous proser; to the voluminous Heywood;
and even to Beaumont and Fletcher, whom we might offend by
complimenting the wrong author on their joint productions. Lord
Brooke, on the contrary, stood quite by himself, or, in Cowley's
words, was 'a vast species alone.' Some one hinted at the circumstance
of his being a lord, which rather startled Lamb, but he said a _ghost_
would perhaps dispense with strict etiquette, on being regularly
addressed by his title. Ben Jonson divided our suffrages pretty
equally. Some were afraid he would begin to traduce Shakspeare, who
was not present to defend himself. 'If he grows disagreeable,' it was
whispered aloud, 'there is Godwin can match him.' At length, his
romantic visit to Drummond of Hawthornden was mentioned, and turned
the scale in his favour.
Lamb inquired if there was any one that was hanged that I would choose
to mention? And I answered, Eugene Aram. The name of the 'Admirable
Chrichton' was suddenly started as a splendid example of _waste_
talents, so different from the generality of his countrymen. This
choice was mightily approved by a North-Briton present, who declared
himself descended from that prodigy of learning and accomplishment,
and said he had family plate in his possession as vouchers for the
fact, with the initials A. C.--_Admirable Chrichton!_ Hunt laughed, or
rather roared, as heartily at this as I should think he has done for
many years.