"P.S.--A writer, whose real name, it seems, is _Boldero_, but who
has been entertaining the town for the last twelve months, with
some very pleasant lucubrations, under the assumed signature of
_Leigh Hunt_[1], in his Indicator, of the 31st January last, has
thought fit to insinuate, that I _Elia_ do not write the little
sketches which bear my signature, in this Magazine; but that the
true author of them is a Mr. L----b. Observe the critical period
at which he has chosen to impute the calumny!--on the very
eve of the publication of our last number--affording no scope
for explanation for a full month--during which time, I must
needs lie writhing and tossing, under the cruel imputation of
nonentity.--Good heavens! that a plain man must not be allowed
_to be_--
"They call this an age of personality: but surely this spirit of
anti-personality (if I may so express it) is something worse.
"Take away my moral reputation: I may live to discredit that
calumny.
"Injure my literary fame,--I may write that up again--
"But when a gentleman is robbed of his identity, where is he?
"Other murderers stab but at our existence, a frail and perishing
trifle at the best. But here is an assassin who aims at our very
essence; who not only forbids us _to be_ any longer, but _to have
been_ at all. Let our ancestors look to it--
"Is the parish register nothing? Is the house in Princes-street,
Cavendish-square, where we saw the light six-and-forty years
ago, nothing? Were our progenitors from stately Genoa, where we
flourished four centuries back, before the barbarous name of
Boldero[2] was known to a European mouth, nothing? Was the goodly
scion of our name, transplanted into England, in the reign of the
seventh Henry, nothing? Are the archives of the steel yard, in
succeeding reigns (if haply they survive the fury of our envious
enemies) showing that we flourished in prime repute, as merchants,
down to the period of the commonwealth, nothing?
"Why then the world, and all that's in't is nothing--
The covering sky is nothing, Bohemia is nothing.--
"I am ashamed that this trifling writer should have power to move
me so."
Leigh Hunt, in _The Indicator_, January 31 and February 7, 1821, had
reprinted from _The Examiner_ a review of Lamb's _Works_, with a few
prefatory remarks in which it was stated: "We believe we are taking no
greater liberty with him [Charles Lamb] than our motives will warrant,
when we add that he sometimes writes in the _London Magazine_ under
the signature of Elia."
In _The Indicator_ of March 7, 1821, Leigh Hunt replied to Elia. Leigh
Hunt was no match for Lamb in this kind of raillery, and the first
portion of the reply is rather cumbersome. At the end, however, he
says: "There _was_, by the bye, a family of the name of Elia who came
from Italy,--Jews; which may account for this boast about Genoa. See
also in his last article in the London Magazine [the essay on "Ears"]
some remarkable fancies of conscience in reference to the Papal
religion. They further corroborate what we have heard; _viz._ that the
family were obliged to fly from Genoa for saying that the Pope was
the author of Rabelais; and that Elia is not an anagram, as some have
thought it, but the Judaico-Christian name of the writer before us,
whose surname, we find, is not Lamb, but Lomb;--Elia Lomb! What a
name! He told a friend of ours so in company, and would have palmed
himself upon him for a Scotchman, but that his countenance betrayed
him."
It is amusing to note that Maginn, writing the text to accompany the
Maclise portrait of Lamb in _Fraser's Magazine_ in 1835, gravely
states that Lamb's name was really Lomb, and that he was of Jewish
extraction.
The subject of Lamb's birth reopened a little while later. In
the "Lion's Head," which was the title of the pages given to
correspondence in the _London Magazine_, in the number for November,
1821, was the following short article from Lamb's pen:--
"ELIA TO HIS CORRESPONDENTS.--A Correspondent, who writes himself
Peter Ball, or Bell,--for his hand-writing is as ragged as his
manners--admonishes me of the old saying, that some people (under
a courteous periphrasis I slur his less ceremonious epithet) had
need have good memories. In my 'Old Benchers of the Inner Temple,'
I have delivered myself, and truly, a Templar born. Bell clamours
upon this, and thinketh that he hath caught a fox. It seems that
in a former paper, retorting upon a weekly scribbler who had
called my good identity in question, (see P.S. to my 'Chapter on
Ears,') I profess myself a native of some spot near Cavendish
Square, deducing my remoter origin from Italy. But who does not
see, except this tinkling cymbal, that in that idle fiction
of Genoese ancestry I was answering a fool according to his
folly--that Elia there expresseth himself ironically, as to an
approved slanderer, who hath no right to the truth, and can be
no fit recipient of it? Such a one it is usual to leave to his
delusions; or, leading him from error still to contradictory
error, to plunge him (as we say) deeper in the mire, and give
him line till he suspend himself. No understanding reader could
be imposed upon by such obvious rhodomontade to suspect me
for an alien, or believe me other than English.--To a second
Correspondent, who signs himself 'a Wiltshire man,' and claims me
for a countryman upon the strength of an equivocal phrase in my
'Christ's Hospital,' a more mannerly reply is due. Passing over
the Genoese fable, which Bell makes such a ring about, he nicely
detects a more subtle discrepancy, which Bell was too obtuse to
strike upon. Referring to the passage (in page 484 of our second
volume[3]), I must confess, that the term 'native town,' applied
to Calne, _primâ facie_ seems to bear out the construction which
my friendly Correspondent is willing to put upon it. The context
too, I am afraid, a little favours it. But where the words of
an author, taken literally, compared with some other passage
in his writings, admitted to be authentic, involve a palpable
contradiction, it hath been the custom of the ingenuous
commentator to smooth the difficulty by the supposition, that
in the one case an allegorical or tropical sense was chiefly
intended. So by the word 'native,' I may be supposed to mean a
town where I might have been born; or where it might be desirable
that I should have been born, as being situate in wholesome air,
upon a dry chalky soil, in which I delight; or a town, with the
inhabitants of which I passed some weeks, a summer or two ago,
so agreeably, that they and it became in a manner native to me.
Without some such latitude of interpretation in the present case,
I see not how we can avoid falling into a gross error in physics,
as to conceive that a gentleman may be born in two places, from
which all modern and ancient testimony is alike abhorrent. Bacchus
cometh the nearest to it, whom I remember Ovid to have honoured
with the epithet 'Twice born.'[4] But not to mention that he is so
called (we conceive) in reference to the places _whence_ rather
than the places _where_ he was delivered,--for by either birth
he may probably be challenged for a Theban--in a strict way of
speaking, he was a _filius femoris_ by no means in the same sense
as he had been before a _filius alvi_, for that latter was but
a secondary and tralatitious way of being born, and he but a
denizen of the second house of his geniture. Thus much by way of
explanation was thought due to the courteous 'Wiltshire man.'--To
'Indagator,' 'Investigator,' 'Incertus,' and the rest of the pack,
that are so importunate about the true localities of his birth--as
if, forsooth, Elia were presently about to be passed to his
parish--to all such churchwarden critics he answereth, that, any
explanation here given notwithstanding, he hath not so fixed his
nativity (like a rusty vane) to one dull spot, but that, if he
seeth occasion, or the argument shall demand it, he will be born
again, in future papers, in whatever place, and at whatever
period, shall seem good unto him.
"Modò me Thebis--modò Athenis.
"ELIA."
[Footnote 1: "Clearly a fictitious appellation; for if we admit the
latter of these names to be in a manner English, what is _Leigh_?
Christian nomenclature knows no such."]
[Footnote 2: "It is clearly of transatlantic origin."]
[Footnote 3: See page 15 of this volume.]
[Footnote 4:
"Imperfectus adhuc infans genetricis ab alvo
Eripitur, patrioque tener (si credere dignum est)
Insuitur femori--
Tutaque bis geniti sunt incunabula Bacchi.
"_Metamorph._ lib. iii., 310."]
* * * * *
Page 48. ALL FOOLS' DAY.
_London Magazine_, April, 1821.
Page 49, line 1. _Empedocles_. Lamb appended this footnote in the
_London Magazine_:--
He who, to be deem'd
A god, leap'd fondly into Etna's flames.
_Paradise Lost_, III., lines 470-471 [should be 469-470].