What can be hop'd from Priests who, 'gainst the Poor,
For lack of two-pence, shut the church's door;
Who, true successors of the ancient leaven,
Erect a turnpike on the road to Heaven?
"Knock, and it shall be open'd," saith our LORD;
"Knock, and pay two-pence," say the Chapter Board:
The Showman of the booth the fee receives,
And God's house is again a "den of thieves."
* * * * *
Page 237. AMICUS REDIVIVUS.
_London Magazine_, December, 1823.
A preliminary sketch of the first portion of this essay will be
found in the letter from Lamb to Sarah Hazlitt, written probably in
November, 1823. In Barry Cornwall's _Memoir_ of Lamb, Chapter VI.,
there is also an account of the accident to Dyer--Procter (Barry
Cornwall) having chanced to visit the Lambs just after the event. For
an account of George Dyer see notes to the essay on "Oxford in the
Vacation". In 1823 he was sixty-eight; later he became quite blind.
We have another glimpse of G.D. on that fatal day, in the
reminiscences of Mr. Ogilvie, an India House clerk with Lamb,
as communicated to the Rev. Joseph H. Twichell (see _Scribner's
Magazine_, March, 1876):--
At the time George Dyer was fished out of New River in front of
Lamb's house at Islington, after he was resuscitated, Mary brought
him a suit of Charles's clothes to put on while his own were
drying. Inasmuch as he was a giant of a man, and Lamb undersized;
inasmuch, moreover, as Lamb's wardrobe afforded only knee breeches
for the nether limbs (Dyer's were colossal), the spectacle he
presented when the clothes were on--or as much on as they could
be--was vastly ludicrous.
Allsop, in a letter to Mr. Percy Fitzgerald, remarked, of Dyer's
immersion, that Lamb had said to him: "If he had been drowned it would
have made me famous. Think of having a Crowner's quest, and all the
questions and dark suspicions of murder. People would haunt the spot
and say, 'Here died the poet of Grongar Hill.'" The poet of "Grongar
Hill" was, of course, John Dyer--another of Lamb's instances of the
ambiguities arising from proper names.
Page 238, line 19. _The rescue_. At these words, in the _London
Magazine_, Lamb put this footnote:--
"The topography of my cottage, and its relation to the river,
will explain this; as I have been at some cost to have the whole
engraved (in time, I hope, for our next number), as well for
the satisfaction of the reader, as to commemorate so signal a
deliverance."
The cottage at Colebrooke Row, it should be said, stands to this day
(1911); but the New River has been covered in. There is, however, no
difficulty in reproducing the situation. One descends from the front
door by a curved flight of steps, a little path from which, parallel
with the New River, takes one out into Colebrooke Row (or rather
Duncan Terrace, as this part of the Row is now called). Under the
front door-steps is another door from which Dyer may possibly have
emerged; if so it would be the simplest thing for him to walk straight
ahead, and find himself in the river.
Page 240, line 22. _That Abyssinian traveller_. James Bruce
(1730-1794), the explorer of the sources of the Nile, was famous many
years before his _Travels_ appeared, in 1790, the year after which
Lamb left school. The New River, made in 1609-1613, has its source
in the Chadwell and Amwell springs. It was peculiarly Lamb's river:
Amwell is close to Blakesware and Widford; Lamb explored it as a boy;
at Islington he lived opposite it, and rescued George Dyer from its
depths; and he retained its company both at Enfield and Edmonton.
In the essay on "Newspapers" is a passage very similar to this.
Page 240, line 32. _Eternal novity_. Writing to Hood in 1824 Lamb
speaks of the New River as "rather elderly by this time." Dyer, it
should be remembered, was of Emmanuel College, and the historian of
Cambridge University.
Page 241, last paragraph. George Dyer contributed "all that was
original" to Valpy's edition of the classics--141 volumes. He also
wrote the _History of The University and Colleges of Cambridge,
including notices relating to the Founders and Eminent Men_. Among
the eminent men of Cambridge are Jeremiah Markland (1693-1776), of
Christ's Hospital and St. Peter's, the classical commentator; and
Thomas Gray, the poet, the sweet lyrist of Peterhouse, who died
in 1771, when Dyer was sixteen. Tyrwhitt would probably be Thomas
Tyrwhitt (1730-1786), of Queen's College, Oxford, the editor of
Chaucer; but Robert Tyrwhitt (1735-1817), his brother, the Unitarian,
might be expected to take interest in Dyer also, for G.D. was, in
Lamb's phrase, a "One-Goddite" too. The mild Askew was Anthony Askew
(1722-1772), doctor and classical scholar, who, being physician to
Christ's Hospital when Dyer was there, lent the boy books, and was
very kind to him.
* * * * *
Page 242. SOME SONNETS OF SIR PHILIP SYDNEY.
_London Magazine_, September, 1823, where it was entitled "Nugæ
Criticæ. By the Author of Elia. No. 1. Defence of the Sonnets of Sir
Philip Sidney." Signed "L." The second and last of the "Nugæ Criticæ"
series was the note on "The Tempest" (see Vol. I.).
It may be interesting here to relate that Henry Francis Gary, the
translator of Dante, and Lamb's friend, had, says his son in his
memoir, lent Lamb Edward Phillips's _Theatrum Poetarum Anglicanorum_,
which was returned after Lamb's death by Edward Moxon, with the leaf
folded down at the account of Sir Philip Sidney. Mr. Gary thereupon
wrote his "Lines to the memory of Charles Lamb," which begin:--
So should it be, my gentle friend;
Thy leaf last closed at Sidney's end.
Thou, too, like Sidney, wouldst have given
The water, thirsting and near heaven.
Lamb has some interesting references to Sidney in the note to Beaumont
and Fletcher's "Maid's Tragedy" in the _Dramatic Specimens_.
Page 243, line 5. _Tibullus, or the ... Author of the Schoolmistress_.
In the _London Magazine_ Lamb wrote "Catullus." Tibullus was one of
the tenderest of Latin poets. William Shenstone (1714-1763) wrote "The
Schoolmistress," a favourite poem with Lamb. The "prettiest of poems"
he called it in a letter to John Clare.
Page 243, line 9. _Ad Leonoram_. The following translation of Milton's
sonnet was made by Leigh Hunt:--