Jan. 25. St. Paul's conversion.
*30. King Charles's martyrdom.
Feb. 2. Candlemas Day.
24. St. Matthias.
Shrove Tuesday.
Ash Wednesday.
March 25. Lady Day.
April 23. St. George.
25. St. Mark.
May 1. St. Philip and St. James.
*29. Restoration of King
Charles II.
Ascension Day.
Whit Monday.
Whit Tuesday.
June 11. St. Barnabas.
24. St. John Baptist.
29. St. Peter.
July 25. St. James.
Thursday after St.
James. (Nurses' Holiday.)
Aug. 24. St. Bartholomew.
Sept. *2. London burnt.
*21. St. Matthew.
29. St. Michael.
Oct. 18. St. Luke.
*23. King Edward VI. born.
28. St. Simon and St. Jude.
Nov. 1. All Saints.
*5. Gunpowder Plot.
*9. Lord Mayor's Day.
*17. Queen Elizabeth's birthday.
30. St. Andrew.
Dec. 21. St. Thomas.
Also the birthdays of the King and Queen, and the Prince and Princess
of Wales: and the King's accession, proclamation, and coronation.
In addition to the generous allowance of holidays above given the boys
had every alternate Wednesday for a whole day; eleven days at Easter,
four weeks in the summer, and fifteen days at Christmas. In 1837 the
holiday system was remodelled. Compare Lamb's other remarks on his
whole-day rambles in "Recollections of Christ's Hospital" (Vol. I.)
and in the essays in the present volume entitled "Amicus Redivivus"
and "Newspapers."
Page 16, line 14. _The Tower_. Blue-coat boys still have this right
of free entrance to the Tower; but the lions are no more. They were
transferred to the Zoological Gardens in 1831.
Page 16, line 16. _L.'s governor_. Meaning Samuel Salt, M.P.; but it
was actually his friend Mr. Timothy Yeats who signed Lamb's paper.
More accurately, Lamb's father lived under Salt's roof.
Page 16, line 7 from foot. _H----_. According to Lamb's Key this was
Hodges; but in the British Museum copy of _Elia_, first edition, some
one has written Huggins. It is immaterial. Nevis and St. Kitt's (St.
Christopher's) are islands in the British West Indies. Tobin would
be James Webbe Tobin, of Nevis, who died in 1814, the brother of the
playwright John Tobin, author of "The Honeymoon."
Page 17, line 2. _A young ass_. The general opinion at Christ's
Hospital is that Lamb invented this incident; and yet it has the air
of being true.
Page 17, line 18. _L.'s admired Perry_. John Perry, steward from 1761
to 1785, mentioned in Lamb's earlier essay.
Page 17, foot. _Gags_. Still current slang.
Page 17, foot. ----. No name in the Key. The quotation is an
adaptation of:--
It is reported thou didst eat strange flesh
Which some did die to look on.
"Antony and Cleopatra," Act I., Scene 4, lines 67-68.
It is perhaps worth remarking that in _David Copperfield_ Dickens has
a school incident of a similar character.
Page 18, line 14 from foot. _Mr. Hathaway_. Matthias Hathaway, steward
from 1790 to 1813.
Page 19, line 8. _I was a hypochondriac lad_. Here Lamb drops the
Coleridge mask and speaks as himself.
Page 20, line 15. _Bamber Gascoigne, and Peter Aubert_. Bamber
Gascoigne, M.P. (1725-1791), of Bifrons, in Essex. Of Peter Aubert
I can find nothing, except that the assistant secretary of the East
India Company at the time Lamb wrote this essay was Peter Auber,
afterwards full secretary. His name here may be a joke.
Page 20, line 6 from foot. _Matthew Field_. The Rev. Matthew Feilde,
also vicar of Ugley and curate of Berden. For the Rev. James Boyer see
below.
Page 21, line 18. _"Peter Wilkins," etc. The Adventures of Peter
Wilkins_, by Robert Paltock, 1751, is still read; but _The Voyages and
Adventures of Captain Robert Boyle_, 1736, has had its day. It was a
blend of unconvincing travel and some rather free narrative: a piece
of sheer hackwork to meet a certain market. See Lamb's sonnet to
Stothard, Vol. IV. _The Fortunate Blue-Coat Boy_ I have not seen.
Canon Ainger describes it as a rather foolish romance, showing how a
Blue-coat boy marries a rich lady of rank. The sub-title is "Memoirs
of the Life and Happy Adventures of Mr. Benjamin Templeman; formerly a
Scholar in Christ's Hospital. By an Orphanotropian," 1770.
Page 22, footnote. I have not discovered a copy of Matthew Feilde's
play.
Page 23, line 17 from foot. _Squinting W----_. Not identifiable.
Page 23, line 7 from foot. _Coleridge, in his literary life_.
Coleridge speaks in the _Biographia Literaria_ of having had the
"inestimable advantage of a very sensible, though at the same time a
very severe master, the Reverend James Bowyer [Boyer]," and goes on to
attribute to that master's discrimination and thoroughness much of his
own classical knowledge and early interest in poetry and criticism.
Coleridge gives this example of Boyer's impatient humour:--
In our own English compositions (at least for the last three years
of our school education), he showed no mercy to phrase, metaphor,
or image, unsupported by a sound sense, or where the same sense
might have been conveyed with equal force and dignity in plainer
words. _Lute, harp_ and _lyre, Muse, Muses_ and _inspirations,
Pegasus, Parnassus_ and _Hippocrene_, were all an abomination to
him. In fancy I can almost hear him now exclaiming, "Harp? Harp?
Lyre? Pen and ink, boy, you mean! Muse, boy, muse? Your nurse's
daughter, you mean! Pierian spring? Oh, aye! the cloister pump, I
suppose!"
Touching Boyer's cruelty, Coleridge adds that his "severities, even
now, not seldom furnish the dreams by which the blind fancy would fain
interpret to the mind the painful sensations of distempered sleep."
In _Table Talk_ Coleridge tells another story of Boyer. "The
discipline at Christ's Hospital in my time," he says, "was
ultra-Spartan; all domestic ties were to be put aside. 'Boy!' I
remember Bowyer saying to me once when I was crying the first day of
my return after the holidays, 'Boy! the school is your father! Boy!
the school is your mother! Boy! the school is your brother! the school
is your sister! the school is your first cousin, and your second
cousin, and all the rest of your relations! Let's have no more
crying!'"
Leigh Hunt in his autobiography also has reminiscences of Boyer and
Feilde.
James Boyer or Bowyer was born in 1736, was admitted to the school in
1744, and passed to Balliol. He resigned his Upper Grammar Mastership
in 1799, and probably retired to the rectory of Gainscolne to which
he had been appointed by the school committee six years earlier. They
also gave him £500 and a staff.
Page 23, line 6 from foot. _Author of the Country Spectator_. Thomas
Fanshaw Middleton (1769-1822), afterwards Bishop of Calcutta, who was
at school with Lamb and Coleridge. In the little statuette group which
is called the Coleridge Memorial, subscribed for in 1872, on the
centenary of Coleridge's birth, and held in rotation by the ward in
which most prizes have been gained in the year, Middleton is the
tallest figure. It is reproduced in my large edition. The story which
it celebrates is to the effect that Middleton found Coleridge reading
Virgil in the playground and asked him if he were learning a lesson.
Coleridge replied that he was "reading for pleasure," an answer which
Middleton reported to Boyer, and which led to Boyer taking special
notice of him. The _Country Spectator_ was a magazine conducted by
Middleton in 1792-1793.
Page 23, line 3 from foot. _C----_. Coleridge again.
Page 24, line 4. _Lancelot Pepys Stevens_. Rightly spelled Stephens,
afterwards Under Grammar Master at the school.
Page 24, line 6. _Dr. T----e_. Arthur William Trollope (1768-1827),
who succeeded Boyer as Upper Grammar Master. He resigned in 1826.
Page 24, line 21. _Th----_. Sir Edward Thornton (1766-1852),
diplomatist, who was sent as Envoy Extraordinary and Minister
Plenipotentiary to Lower Saxony, to Sweden, to Denmark and other
courts, afterwards becoming minister to Portugal.
Page 24, line 23. _Middleton_. See note above. The treatise was _The
Doctrine of the Greek Article as applied to the Criticism and the
Illustration of the New Testament_, 1808. It was directed chiefly
against Granville Sharpe. Middleton was the first Bishop of Calcutta.
Page 24, line 8 from foot. _Richards_. This was George Richards
(1767-1837). His poem on "Aboriginal Britons," which won a prize
given in 1791 by Earl Harcourt, is mentioned favourably in Byron's
_English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_. Richards became vicar of St.
Martin's-in-the-Fields and a Governor of Christ's Hospital. He founded
a gold medal for Latin hexameters.
Page 24, foot. _S---- ... M----_. According to the Key "Scott, died in
Bedlam," and "Maunde, dismiss'd school."
Page 24, foot. "_Finding some of Edward's race._" From Prior's Carmen
Seculare for 1700:--
Finding some of Stuart's race
Unhappy, pass their annals by.
Lamb alters Stuart to Edward because Edward VI. founded Christ's
Hospital.
Page 25, line 12. _C.V. Le G----_. Charles Valentine Le Grice
(1773-1858), whom we meet also in the essay on "Grace Before Meat."
Le Grice, in his description of Lamb as a schoolboy in Talfourd's
_Memorials_, remarked: "I never heard his name mentioned without
the addition of Charles, although, as there was no other boy of the
name of Lamb, the addition was unnecessary; but there was an implied
kindness in it, and it was a proof that his gentle manners excited
that kindness."
Page 25, line 20. _Allen_. Robert Allen, whom we meet again in the
essay on "Newspapers." After a varied and not fortunate career he died
of apoplexy in 1805.
Page 25, line 8 from foot. _The junior Le G----_. Samuel Le Grice
became a soldier and died in the West Indies. Lamb wrote of him to
Coleridge in 1796, after the tragedy at his home, at a time when
friends were badly needed, "Sam Le Grice who was then in town was with
me the first 3 or 4 days, and was as a brother to me, gave up every
hour of his time to the very hurting of his health and spirits, in
constant attendance and humouring my poor father."
Page 25, line 8 from foot. _F----_. Joseph Favell, afterwards Captain,
who had a commission from the Duke of York--as had Sam Le Grice--and
was killed in the Peninsula, at Salamanca, 1812. Lamb states in the
essay on "Poor Relations," where Favell figures as "W.," that he met
his death at St. Sebastian. Both Sam Le Grice and Favell were to have
accompanied Coleridge and Southey to the Susquehanna as Pantisocrats.
Page 26, line 1. _Fr----_. Frederick William Franklin, master of the
Hertford branch of the school from 1801 to 1827. He died in 1836.
Page 26, line 2. _Marmaduke T----_. Marmaduke Thompson, to whom Lamb
dedicated _Rosamund Gray_ in 1798.
Page 26, line 3. _Catalogue of Grecians_. Lamb was at Christ's
Hospital from 1782 to 1789, and his list is not quite complete.
He himself never was a Grecian; that is to say, one of the picked
scholars on the grammar side of the school, two of whom were sent
up to Cambridge with a hospital exhibition every year, on the
understanding that they should take orders. Lamb was one of the
Deputy-Grecians from whom the Grecians were chosen, but his stammer
standing in his way and a Church career being out of the question, he
never became a full Grecian. Writing to George Dyer, who had been a
Grecian, in 1831, Lamb says: "I don't know how it is, but I keep my
rank in fancy still since school days. I can never forget I was a
deputy Grecian!... Alas! what am I now? What is a Leadenhall clerk, or
India pensioner, to a deputy Grecian? How art thou fallen, O Lucifer!"
Lamb's memory is preserved at Christ's Hospital by a medal which is
given for the best English essays. It was first struck in 1875, the
centenary of his birth.
* * * * *
Page 26. THE TWO RACES OF MEN.
_London Magazine_, December, 1820.
Writing to Wordsworth in April of 1816, Lamb says:--"I have not bound
the poems yet. I wait till people have done borrowing them. I think
I shall get a chain and chain them to my shelves, _more Bodleiano_,
and people may come and read them at chain's length. For of those who
borrow, some read slow; some mean to read but don't read; and some
neither read nor meant to read, but borrow to leave you an opinion of
their sagacity. I must do my money-borrowing friends the justice to
say that there is nothing of this caprice or wantonness of alienation
in them. When they borrow my money they never fail to make use of it."
Probably the germ of the essay is to be found in this passage, as Lamb
never forgot his thoughts.
Page 26, line 17 of essay. _Brinsley_. Richard Brinsley Sheridan, the
dramatist and a great spendthrift. He died in 1816. Lamb knew him
slightly.
Page 26, line 9 from foot. _Beyond Tooke_. That is, beyond the
philological theories of _The Diversions of Purley_ by John Home Tooke
(1736-1812).
Page 27, line 22. _Ralph Bigod_. John Fenwick, an unlucky friend of
the Lambs, an anticipatory Micawber, of whom we know too little,
and seem likely to find out little more. Lamb mentions him again in
the essay on "Chimney Sweepers," and in that on "Newspapers," in
his capacity as editor of _The Albion_, for which Lamb wrote its
extinguishing epigram in the summer of 1801. There are references to
the Fenwicks in Mary Lamb's letters to Sarah Stoddart and in Lamb's
letters; but nothing very informing. After financial embarrassments in
England they emigrated to America.
Page 29, line 12. _Comberbatch_. Coleridge, who had enlisted as a
young man in the 15th Light Dragoons as Silas Titus Comberback.
Page 29, line 16. _Bloomsbury_. Lamb was then in rooms at 20 Great
Russell Street (now Russell Street), Covent Garden, which is not in
Bloomsbury.
Page 29, line 27. _Should he go on acting_. The _Letters_ contain
references to this habit of Coleridge's. Writing to him in 1809 Lamb
says, referring among other loans to the volume of Dodsley with
Vittoria Corombona ("The White Devil," by John Webster) in it:--"While
I think on it, Coleridge, I fetch'd away my books which you had at the
_Courier_ Office, and found all but a third volume of the old plays,
containing the 'White Devil, 'Green's 'Tu Quoque,' and the 'Honest
Whore,' perhaps the most valuable volume of them all--_that_ I could
not find. Pray, if you can, remember what you did with it, or where
you took it out with you a walking perhaps; send me word, for, to use
the old plea, it spoils a set. I found two other volumes (you had
three), the _Arcadia_ and _Daniel_, enriched with manuscript notes. I
wish every book I have were so noted. They have thoroughly converted
me to relish _Daniel_, or to say I relish him, for after all, I
believe I did relish him."
And several years later (probably in 1820) we find him addressing
Coleridge with reference to Luther's _Table Talk:_--"Why will you make
your visits, which should give pleasure, matter of regret to your
friends? You never come but you take away some folio, that is part of
my existence. With a great deal of difficulty I was made to comprehend
the extent of my loss. My maid, Becky, brought me a dirty bit of
paper, which contained her description of some book which Mr.
Coleridge had taken away. It was _Luster's Tables_, which, for some
time, I could not make out. 'What! has he carried away any of the
_tables_, Becky?' 'No, it wasn't any tables, but it was a book that he
called _Luster's Tables_.' I was obliged to search personally among my
shelves, and a huge fissure suddenly disclosed to me the true nature
of the damage I had sustained."
Allsop tells us that Lamb once said of Coleridge: "He sets his mark
upon whatever he reads; it is henceforth sacred. His spirit seems to
have breathed upon it; and, if not for its author, yet for his sake,
we admire it."
Page 30, line 1. _John Buncle_. Most of Lamb's books are in America;
Lamb's copy of _John Buncle_, with an introductory note written in by
Coleridge, was sold, with other books from his library, in New York
in 1848. _The Life of John Buncle, Esq_., a book highly praised by
Hazlitt, was by Thomas Amory (1691?-1788), published, Part I. in 1756
and Part II. in 1766. A condensed reprint was issued in 1823 entitled
_The Spirit of Buncle_, in which, Mr. W.C. Hazlitt suggests, Lamb may
have had a hand with William Hazlitt.
Page 30, line 19. _Spiteful K._ James Kenney (1780-1849), the
dramatist, then resident at Versailles, where Lamb and his sister
visited him in 1822. He married Louisa Mercier, daughter of Louis
Sebastian Mercier, the French critic, and widow of Lamb's earlier
friend, Thomas Holcroft. One of their two sons was named Charles Lamb
Kenney (1821-1881). Lamb recovered Margaret of Newcastle's _Letters_
(folio, 1664), which is among the books in America, as is also the
Fulke Greville (small folio, 1633).
Page 31, line 4. _S.T.C.... annotations_. Lamb's copy of Daniel's
_Poetical Works_, two volumes, 1718, and of Browne's _Enquiries
into Vulgar and Common Errors_, folio, 1658, both with marginalia
by himself and Coleridge, are in existence, but I cannot say where:
probably in America. Lamb's copy of Beaumont and Fletcher, with
Coleridge's notes (see "Old China"), is, however, safe in the British
Museum. His Fulke Greville, as I have said, is in America, but I
fancy it has nothing of Coleridge in it, nor has his Burton--quarto,
1621--which still exists.
Coleridge's notes in the Beaumont and Fletcher folio are not numerous,
but usually ample and seriously critical. At the foot of a page of the
"Siege of Corinth," on which he had written two notes (one, "O flat!
flat! flat! Sole! Flounder! Place! all stinking! stinkingly flat!"),
he added:--
_N.B._--I shall not be long here, Charles!--I gone, you will not
mind my having spoiled a book in order to leave a Relic.