He scanned with curious and prophetic eye
Whate'er of lore tradition could supply
From Gothic tale, or song or fable old--
Roused him still keen to listen and to pry.
_The Minstrel_.
You judge the English character with too much favor Lionel, said Col.
R----. The Englishman is not free! Though vain, arrogant, and
imperious, there is not a more abject slave on earth. His boasting
spirit, his full-mouthed independence and his lordly step quail to
rank, {353} and he is ever crawling amid the purlieus or over the
threshold of that fantastic temple of fashion called "Society." It is
an endless contest between those who are initiated into its mysteries
and those who crowd its avenues. Wealth batters down the door--assumes
a proud niche in the chilling fane, and uniting itself to that silent
yet powerful aristocracy which wields the oracles of the god, its
breath can create you an _exclusive_, or its frown can degrade you to
the vulgar herd. Rank, which is the idol of an Englishman's sleepless
devotion, wealth because it is curiously akin to the former, and some
indistinct conception of the difference between a people and the mob,
render him, in his own conceit, a gentleman and a politician. His
first thought if cast on a desert island would be his rank, and if he
had companions in misfortune, he would ere night arrange the dignity
and etiquette of intercourse. Literature seeks the same degrading
arena, and alas! how few are there who do not deck the golden calf
with the laurels won in the conflicts of genius, and who, stimulated
solely by lucre, shed their momentary light athwart the horizon, even
as the meteor whose radiance is exhaled from the corruption of a fœtid
marsh. But there is a class who, ennobled by letters, are always
independent; and though they be of the race of authors whom Sir Horace
Walpole calls "a troublesome, conceited set of fellows," you will find
them too proud and too honest to palter away the prerogatives of their
station.
But we are now at the door of Elia; come, let me introduce you to one
of his simple and unaffected suppers!
I cheerfully assented to this invitation, and following my conductor
up a flight of crooked and dark steps, we entered into a room, over a
brazier's shop. A dull light trembled through the small and narrow
apartment where, shrouded in a close volume of tobacco smoke, sat in
pensive gentility--the kind--the generous--the infant-hearted Charles
Lamb; the man whose elastic genius dwelled among the mouldering ruins
of by-gone days, until it became steeped in beauty and expanded with
philosophy--the wit--the poet--the lingering halo of the sunshine of
antiquity--the phœnix of the mighty past. He was of delicate and
attenuated stature, and as fragilely moulded as a winter's flower,
with a quick and volatile eye, a mind-worn forehead and a countenance
eloquent with thought. Around a small table well covered with glasses
and a capacious bowl, were gathered a laughing group, eyeing the
battalia of the coming supper. Godwin's heavy form and intellectual
face, with the swimming eye of (ες τε σε S. T. C. How quaint was his
fancy!) Coleridge, flanked the margin of the mirth-inspiring bowl.
Col. R----'s introduction made me at home, and ere my hand had dropped
from the friendly grasp of our host, he exclaimed--And you are truly
from the land of the _great plant_? You have seen the sole cosmopolite
spring from the earth. It is the denizen of the whole world, the
tireless friend of the wretched, the bliss of the happy. You need no
record of the empire of the red man. He has written his fadeless
history on a tobacco leaf.
At this time Lamb was a clerk in the "India House," a melancholy and
gloomy mansion, with grave courts, heavy pillars, dim cloisters,
stately porticoes, imposing staircases and all the solemn pomp of
elder days. Here for many years he drove the busy quill, and whiled
away his tranquil evenings, in the dalliance of literature. He was an
author belonging to his own exclusive school--a school of simplicity,
grace and beauty. He neither skewered his pen into precise paragraphs,
nor rioted in the verbose rotundity of the day. He picked up the rare
and unpolished jewels which spangled the courts of Elizabeth and
Charles, and they lost beneath his polishing hand neither their lustre
nor value. He was a passionate and single hearted antiquary, ever
laboring to prop up with a puny arm, the column on which was inscribed
the literary glory of his country. He was familiar with the grace of
Heywood, the harmony of Fletcher, the ease of Sir Philip Sydney, the
delicacy and fire of Spenser, the sweetness of Carew, the power and
depth of Marlow, the mighty verse of Shakspeare, the affected fustian
of Euphues (Lilly) "which ran into a vast excess of allusion," and
with the deep and sparkling philosophy of Burton. With all of them he
held a "dulcified" converse, while his memory preserved from utter
forgetfulness, many of those authors who to the eye of the world, had
glittered like the flying fish a moment above the surface, only to
sink deeper in the sea of oblivion.
Lamb possessed in an eminent degree, what Dryden called a beautiful
turn of words and thoughts in poetry, and the easy swell of cadence
and harmony which characterised his brief writings declared the
generosity of his heart, and the fertility of his genius. He could
sympathise with childhood's frolic, and his heart was full of boyish
dreams, when he gazed on the play-ground of Eton, and exclaimed "what
a pity to think that these fine ingenuous lads in a few years will be
changed into frivolous members of parliament!" He had the rough
magnanimity of the old English vein, mellowed into tenderness and
dashed with a flexible and spinous humor. He was contented to worship
poesy in its classic and antique drapery. With him the fountain of
Hypocrene still gushed up its inspiring wave; and Apollo, attended by
the Muses, the daughters of Memory, and escorted by the Graces, still
haunted the mountains of Helicon, lingered among the hills of Phocis,
or, mounted upon Pegasus, winged his radiant flight to the abode
itself of heaven-born Poesy. These were the fixed principles of his
taste, and he credulously smiled (for contempt found no place in his
bosom) upon the sickly illustrations and naked imagery of modern song.
His learning retained a hue of softness from the gentleness of his
character, for he had gathered the blossoms untouched by the
bitterness of the sciential apple. He extracted like the bee his
honied stores from the wild and neglected flowers which bloomed among
forgotten ruins, yet he was no plagiarist, no imitator, for he had
invaded and lingered amid the dim sepulchres of the shadowy past,
until he became its friend and cotemporary!
How has he obtained those curiously bound books, I whispered to
Coleridge, as my eye fell on a column of shelves groaning under a mass
of tattered volumes which would have fairly crazed my poor uncle?
Tell him Lamb! said Coleridge repeating my inquiry, give him the rank
and file of your ragged regiment.
Slowly, and painfully as a neophyte, did I build the pile, replied
Lamb. Its corner stone was that fine old folio of Beaumont and
Fletcher, which, for a long year had peeped out from a bookseller's
stall directly in my {354} daily path to the India House. It bore the
great price of sixteen shillings, and to me, who had no unsunned heap
of silver, I gazed on it until I had almost violated the decalogue.
Poetry made me an economist, and at the end of two months my garnered
mites amounted to the requisite sum. Vain as a girl with her first
lover, I bore it home in triumph, and that night my sister Bridget
read "The Laws of Candy" while I listened with rapture to that deep
and gurgling torrent of old English, which dashed its music from this
broken cistern. To her is the honor due, her taste has called all
these obsolete wits to my library, for she keenly relished their
fantasies, and smiled at their gauderies. In early life she had been
tumbled into a spacious closet of good old English reading, without
much selection or prohibition and browsed at will upon that fair and
wholesome pasturage. Had I twenty girls they should be brought up in
this fashion. I know not whether their chance in wedlock might not be
diminished by it, but I can answer for it that (if the worst comes to
the worst) it makes most incomparable old maids.
But there are some fearful gaps in my shelves, Mr. Granby! See! there
a stately and reverend folio, like a huge eye-tooth, was rudely
knocked out by a bold _borrower of books_, one of your smiling
pirates, mutilator of collections, a spoiler of the symmetry of
shelves, and a creator of odd volumes.
The conversation now became general, and many a little skiff was
launched on the great ocean of commonplace. Lamb most cordially hated
politics which he called "a splutter of hot rhetoric;" and he only
remembered its battles and revolutions when connected with letters. He
had heard of Pharsalia, but it was Lucan's and not Cæsar's; the battle
of Lepanto was cornered in his memory because Cervantes had there lost
an arm. The glorious days of the "Commonwealth" were hallowed by
Milton and Waller, and he always turned with much address from the
angry debates about the execution of Charles I. to the simple inquiry
whether he or Doctor Ganden wrote the "Icon Basilike."
Godwin in vain essayed to introduce the "conduct of the ministry," and
being repeatedly baffled, he said pettishly to Lamb, And what benefit
is your freehold, if you do not feel interested in government?
Ah! I had a freehold it is true, the gift of my generous and solemn
god-father, the oil-man in Holborn; I went down and took possession of
my testamentary allotment of three quarters of an acre, and strode
over it with the feeling of an English freeholder, that all betwixt
sky and earth was my own. Alas! it has passed into more prudent hands,
and nothing but an Agrarian can restore it!
The bowl now danced from hand to hand, and I did not observe its
operation until Lamb and Coleridge commenced an affectionate talk
about Christ's Hospital, the blue coat boys, and all the treasured
anecdotes of school-day friendship. This is the first and happiest
stage of incipient intoxication, and the "willie-draughts" which are
pledged to the memory of boyhood, ever inspire brighter and nobler
sympathies, than are found in the raciest toasts to beauty, or the
deepest libations to our country.
Do you not remember, said Lamb, poor Allan! whose beautiful
countenance disarmed the wrath of a town-damsel whom he had secretly
pinched, and whose half-formed execration was exchanged, when she,
tigress-like turned round and gave the terrible _bl----_ for a gentler
meaning, _bless thy handsome face!_ And do you not remember when you
used to tug over Homer, discourse Metaphysics, chaunt Anacreon, and
play at foils with the sharp-edged wit of Sir Thomas Browne, how your
eye glistened when you doffed the grotesque blue coat, and the
inspired charity boy (this was uttered in an under tone) walked forth
humanized by a christian garment. Spenser knew the nobility of heart
which a new coat gives when he dressed his butterfly.
The velvet nap which on his wings doth lie
The silken down with which his back is dight
His broad outstretched horns, his hairy thighs
His glorious colors, and his glistening eyes.
Col. R. now motioned to me to retire, and I bid a reluctant goodnight
to the joyous scene, the exclamation "do you not remember!" from
Coleridge, and the cheerful laugh ringing through the whole house and
its dying echo following us to the street.
Gentle reader! the critics have called Lamb a trifler, the scholars
have called him a twaddler! Read _Elia_, and let your heart answer for
him.