CHAPTER LXXXIV.

BLACKWOOD'S

EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

NO. CCCCVI. AUGUST, 1849. VOL. LXVI.

CONTENTS.

CHARLES LAMB, 133

THE CAXTONS.--PART XV. 151

JONATHAN IN AFRICA, 172

THE GREEN HAND.--A "SHORT" YARN.--PART III. 183

FOR THE LAST PAGE OF "OUR ALBUM," 205

THE INSURRECTION IN BADEN, 206

LAMARTINE'S REVOLUTION OF 1848, 219

DIES BOREALES. NO. III. CHRISTOPHER UNDER CANVASS, 235

EDINBURGH:

WILLIAM BLACKWOOD & SONS, 45, GEORGE STREET;

AND 37, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON.

_To whom all communications (post paid) must be addressed._

SOLD BY ALL THE BOOKSELLERS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM.

PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH.

BLACKWOOD'S

EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

NO. CCCCVI. AUGUST, 1849. VOL. LXVI.

CHARLES LAMB.[1]

To Charles Lamb shall be allotted--general assent has already assigned

it to him, and we have no wish to dispute his claim--a quiet, quaint

niche, apart to himself, in some odd nook or corner in the great

temple of English literature. It shall be carved from the solid oak,

and decorated with Gothic tracery; but where Madonnas and angels

ordinarily appear, there shall be all manner of laughing cherubs--one

amongst them disguised as a chimney-_sweep_--with abundance of sly and

humorous devices. Some such niches or stalls may occasionally be seen

in old cathedrals, sharing the eternity of the structure, and drawing

the peculiar regard of the curious and loitering visitor. You are

startled to find a merry device, and a wit by no means too reverential,

side by side with the ideal forms of Catholic piety. You approach to

examine the solemn-looking carving, and find, perhaps, a fox clothed in

priestly raiment--teaching, in his own way, divers lessons of morality

to the bears and geese. Such venerable and Gothic drollery suspends for

a moment, but hardly mars, the serious and sedate feelings which the

rest of the structure, and the other sculptured figures of the place,

are designed to excite.

[1] _The Works of Charles Lamb._

_Final Memorials of Charles Lamb._ By THOMAS NOON TALFOURD.

Some such peculiar place amongst our literary worthies seems, as we

have said, to be assigned by general consent to Charles Lamb, nor

are we about to gainsay his right to this position. He has all the

genius that could comport with oddity, and all the oddity that could

amalgamate with genius. With a range of thought most singularly

contracted, considering the times in which he lived, and the men by

whom he was surrounded, he has contrived, by a charming subtlety of

observation, and a most felicitous humour, to make us in love even

with that contractedness itself, which in another would be despised,

as evidencing a sluggishness and obtuseness of mind. Perhaps there are

few writers who could be named, of these later days, on whose peculiar

merits there is so little difference of opinion. As a poet, he was,

at all events, inoffensive, and his mediocrity has been pardoned him

in favour of that genius he displayed as the humorous and critical

essayist. The publication of his letters, too, has materially added

to his reputation, and confirmed him as a favourite with all to whom

his lambent and playful wit had already made him known and esteemed.

We are not aware, therefore, that we have anything to dispute, or

essentially to modify, in the verdict passed by popular opinion on this

writer. Yet something may remain to be said to assist in appreciating

and discriminating his peculiar merits as a humorist--something to

point out where praise is due, and something to draw the limits of that

praise. Moreover, his biography, as presented to us by Mr Talfourd,

claims some notice; disclosing, as it does, one of the saddest

tragedies, and one of the noblest acts of heroism, which ever afflicted

and dignified the life of a man of letters. This biography is also

written by one who is himself distinguished in the literary world, who

was an intimate friend of Lamb, and personally acquainted with those

literary characters by whom Lamb had surrounded himself, and who are

here grouped around him. Upon the whole, therefore, the _Life and

Writings of Elia_, though a subject which no longer wears the gloss of

novelty, still invites and may repay attention.

We hardly know whether to regret it as a disadvantage to us, on the

present occasion, that we never enjoyed the slightest acquaintance with

Charles Lamb, or indeed with any of those literary friends amongst

whom he lived. We never saw this bland humorist; we never heard that

half-provoking, half-pleasing stutter, which awakened anticipation

whilst it delayed enjoyment, and added zest to the witticism which it

threatened to mar, and which it had held back, for a moment, only to

project with the happier impetus. We never had before us, in bodily

presence, that slight, black-coated figure, and those antique and

curiously-gaitered legs, which, we have also been assured, contributed

their part to the irresistible effect of his kindly humour. We never

even knew those who had seen and talked with him. To us he is a purely

historic figure. So, too, of his biographer--which argues ourselves

to be sadly unknown--we have no other knowledge than what runs about

bruited in the world; even his displays of eloquence, forensic or

parliamentary, we have never had an opportunity of hearing; we know him

only by his writings, and by that title we have often heard bestowed

on him, the amiable author of _Ion_;--to which amiability we refer,

because to this we must attribute, we suppose, a large portion of that

too laudatory criticism which, in these volumes, he bestows so lavishly

and diffusely. We cannot, therefore, bring to our subject any of those

vivid reminiscences, anecdotes, or details which personal acquaintance

supplies. But, on the other hand, we have no bias whatever to contend

against, whether of a friendly or hostile description, in respect of

any of the literary characters whom we may have occasion to speak of.

Had they all lived in the reign of good Queen Anne, they could not have

been more remote from our personal sympathies or antipathies.

It is probably known to most of our readers that when, shortly after

the decease of Charles Lamb, his letters were given to the world with

some biographical notices, there were circumstances which imposed

silence on certain passages of his life, and which obliged the editor

to withhold a certain portion of the letters. That sister, in fact, was

still alive whose lamentable history was so intimately blended with the

career of Lamb, and an allusion to her unfortunate tragedy would have

been cruel in any one, and in an intimate friend utterly impossible.

Serjeant Talfourd had no other course than to leave the gap or hiatus

in the biography, and cover it up and conceal it as well as might be,

from the eyes of such readers as were not better informed from other

sources. Upon the decease of that sister, there no longer existed any

motive for this silence; and, indeed, shortly after this event, the

whole narrative was revealed by a writer in the _British Quarterly

Review_, who had himself waited till then before he permitted himself

to disclose it, and by its disclosure do an act of justice to the moral

character of Lamb. Mr Talfourd was, therefore, called upon to complete

his biographical notice, and also the publication of the letters. This

he did in the two volumes entitled _Final Memorials_, &c.

As a separate and subsidiary publication became inevitable, and as

probably the exigencies of _the trade_ required that it should be of a

certain bulk and substance, we suppose we must rather commiserate Mr

Talfourd than cast any blame upon him for the manifest difficulty he

has had to fill these two volumes of _Final Memorials_. One of them

would have been sufficient for all that he had to communicate, or that

it was wise to add. Many of the letters of Lamb here printed are such

as he had very properly laid aside, in the first instance, not because

they trenched upon too delicate ground, but because they were wholly

uninteresting. He had very correctly said, in what, for distinction's

sake, we will call _The Life_--"I have thought it better to omit much

of this verbal criticism, which, not very interesting in itself, is

unintelligible without a contemporary reference to the poems which are

its subject."--(P. 12.) Now we cannot, of course, undertake to say that

the letters given us here are precisely those which he speaks of as

being wisely rejected on the former occasion, but we know that there

was the same good reason for this rejection, for they are occupied

with a verbal criticism utterly uninteresting. Surely, what neither

illustrates a man's life, nor adds a tittle to his literary reputation,

ought not to be allowed to encumber for ever, as with a dead weight,

the collected works of an author. The mischief is, that, if materials

of this kind are once published, every succeeding editor finds it

incumbent on him to reprint them, lest his edition should be thought

less perfect than others, and thus there is no getting rid of the

useless and burdensome increment. It is otherwise with another portion

of these two volumes, the sketches of the contemporaries and friends

of Lamb, which Mr Serjeant Talfourd, or any future editor, can either

retrench, omit, or enlarge, at his option.

In the next edition that is published of the works of Lamb, we hope

the editor may be persuaded altogether to recast his materials. The

biography should be kept apart, and not interspersed piecemeal amongst

the letters. This is an arrangement, the most provoking and irritating

to the reader that could have been devised. Let us have all the

biography at once, and then sit down and enjoy the letters of Lamb. Why

be incessantly bandied from the one to the other? Few of the letters

need any explanation; if they do, the briefest note at the head or at

the foot would be sufficient. Not to add, that, if it is wished to

refer to any event in the biography, one does not know where to look

for it. And, _apropos_ of this matter of reference, it may be just

worth mentioning that the present volume is so divided into _Parts_,

and the parts so paged, that any reference to a passage by the number

of the page is almost useless. The numbers recommence some half-dozen

times in the course of the volume; so that if you are referred to page

50, you may find five of them--you may find page 50 five times over

before you come to the right one. For which reason we shall dispense

ourselves, in respect to this volume, with our usual punctuality of

reference, for the reference must be laboriously minute, and even

then will impose a troublesome search. In the mere and humble task of

editing, the Serjeant has been by no means fortunate.

Lying about in such confusion as the fractions of the biography do at

present, we shall perhaps be rendering a slight service if we bring

together from the two different publications the leading events of the

life of Lamb.

"Charles Lamb," says the first publication, "was born on the 18th

February 1775, in Crown-office Row, in the Inner Temple, where he

spent the first seven years of his life." At the age of seven he was

presented to the school of Christ's Hospital, and there remained till

his fifteenth year. His sweetness of disposition rendered him a general

favourite. From one of his schoolfellows we have the following account

of him:--"Lamb," says Mr Le Grice, "was an amiable, gentle boy, very

sensible, and keenly observing, indulged by his schoolfellows and by

his master, on account of his infirmity of speech. His countenance

was mild; his complexion clear brown, with an expression which might

lead you to think that he was of Jewish descent. His eyes were not

each of the same colour--one was hazel, the other had specks of gray

in the iris, mingled as we see red spots in the bloodstone. His step

was _plantigrade_, (Mr Le Grice must be a zoologist--Lamb would have

smiled to hear himself so scientifically described,) which made his

walk slow and peculiar, adding to the staid appearance of his figure.

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 manner excited that kindness." Mr Le Grice

adds that, in the sketch Lamb gave in his _Recollections of Christ's

Hospital_, he drew a faithful portrait of himself. "While others were

all fire and play, he stole along with all the self-concentration of a

young monk." He had, in fact, only passed from cloister to cloister,

and, during the holidays, it was in the Temple that he found his home

and his only place of recreation. This cloistering-in of his mind was

the early and constant peculiarity of his life. He would have made an

excellent monk; in those good old times, be it understood, when it

was thought no great scandal if there was a well-supplied cellarage

underneath the cloister.

After quitting Christ's Hospital, he was employed for some time in the

South Sea House, but on the 5th April 1792 obtained that appointment in

the accountant's office in the East India Company which was his stay

and support, in more senses than one, through life.

A little anecdote is here introduced, which strikes us as very

characteristic. It reveals the humorist, ready to appreciate and

promote a jest even at his own expense, and at the easy sacrifice of

his own dignity or self-respect: but it reveals something more and

sadder; it seems to betray a broken, melancholy spirit, that was no

longer disposed to contend for its claim to respect from others. "In

the first year of his clerkship," says Mr Le Grice, "Lamb spent the

evening of the 5th November with some of his former schoolfellows,

who, being amused with the particularly large and flapping brim of his

round hat, pinned it up on the sides in the form of a cocked hat. Lamb

made no alteration in it, but walked home in his usual sauntering gait

towards the Temple. As he was going down Ludgate Hill, some gay young

men, who seemed not to have passed the London Tavern without resting,

exclaimed, 'The veritable Guy!--no man of straw!' and with this

exclamation they took him up, making a chair with their arms, carried

him, seated him on a post in St Paul's Churchyard, and there left him.

This story Lamb told so seriously, that the truth of it was never

doubted. He wore his three-cornered hat many evenings, and retained the

name of Guy ever after. Like Nym, he quietly sympathised in the fun,

and seemed to say 'that was the humour of it.'" Some one may suggest

that probably Lamb was himself in the same condition, on this 5th

of November, as the young men "who had not passed the London Tavern

without resting," and that therefore all peculiar significance of the

anecdote, as it bears upon his character and disposition, is entirely

lost. But Lamb relates the story himself, and afterwards, and when

there is no question of sobriety, quietly acquiesces and participates

in the absurd joke played upon himself.

At this time his most constant companion was one _Jem_ White, who

wrote some imaginary "Letters of John Falstaff." These letters Lamb

went about all his life praising, and causing others to praise, but

seems never to have found any one to share his admiration. As even Mr

Talfourd has not a good word to throw away upon the literary merits of

Jem White, we may safely conclude that Lamb's friendship had in this

instance quite overruled his critical judgment.

But the associate and friend who really exercised a permanent and

formative influence upon his mind, was a man of a very different

stamp--Samuel Taylor Coleridge. They had been schoolfellows at Christ's

Hospital, and, though no particular intimacy existed at that time,

the circumstance formed a foundation for a future friendship. "While

Coleridge," writes Mr Talfourd, "remained at the university, they met

occasionally on his visits to London; and when he quitted it and came

to town, full of mantling hopes and glorious schemes, Lamb became his

admiring disciple. The scene of these happy meetings was a little

public-house, called the _Salutation and Cat_, in the neighbourhood

of Smithfield, where they used to sup, and remain long after they had

'heard the chimes at midnight.'"

These suppers at the Salutation and Cat, in Smithfield, seem to carry

back the imagination far beyond the period here alluded to; they

seem to transport us to the times of Oliver Goldsmith, or to take us

across the water into Germany, where poetry and philosophy may still

occasionally find refuge in the beer-shop. They were always remembered

by Lamb as the brightest spots of his life. "I think I hear you again,"

he says, writing to Coleridge. "I imagine to myself the little smoky

room at the Salutation and Cat, where we sat together through the

winter nights, beguiling the cares of life with poetry." And in another

place he alludes to "those old suppers at our old inn--when life was

fresh and topics exhaustless--and you first kindled in me, if not

the power, yet the love of poetry, and beauty, and kindliness." It

was in these interviews that the project was started, we believe, of

publishing a volume of poems, the joint production of the two friends.

But this pleasing project, and all the poetry of life, was for a time

to give place, in the history of Lamb, to a domestic tragedy of the

most afflicting nature. It is here that the Final Memorials take up

the thread of the biography. It was on the 22d September 1796, that

the terrible event took place which cast so perpetual a shade, and

reflected also so constant an honour, on the life of Lamb. He was

living at this time with his father, mother, and sister, in lodgings

in Little Queen Street, Holborn. After being engaged in his taskwork

at the India House, he returned in the evening to amuse his father by

playing cribbage. The old man had sunk into dotage and the miserable

selfishness that so often attends on old age. If his son wished to

discontinue for a time the game at cribbage, and turn to some other

avocation, or the writing of a letter, he would pettishly exclaim,--"If

you don't play cribbage, I don't see the use of your coming home at

all." The mother also was an invalid, and Miss Lamb, we are told,

was worn down to a state of extreme nervous misery, by attention to

needlework by day, and to her mother by night, until the insanity

which had been manifested more than once broke out into frenzy. "It

appeared," says the account extracted from the _Times_, (an account of

the inquest, in which the names of the parties are suppressed,) "that

while the family were preparing for dinner, the young lady seized

a case-knife lying on the table, and in a menacing manner pursued

a little girl, her apprentice, round the room. On the calls of her

infirm mother to forbear, she renounced her first object, and with

loud shrieks approached her parent. The child by her cries quickly

brought up the landlord of the house, but too late. The dreadful scene

presented to him the mother lifeless, pierced to the heart, on a chair,

her daughter yet wildly standing over her with the fatal knife, and

the old man, her father, weeping by her side, himself bleeding at the

forehead from the effects of a severe blow he received from one of the

forks she had been madly hurling about the room."

The following is the letter which Lamb wrote to Coleridge shortly after

the event. From this it appears that it was he, and not the landlord,

who took the knife from the hand of the lunatic.

"MY DEAREST FRIEND,--White, or some of my friends, or the public

papers, by _this_ time may have informed you of the terrible calamities

that have fallen on our family. I will only give you the outlines. My

poor, dear, dearest sister, in a fit of insanity, has been the death

of her own mother. I was at hand only time enough to snatch the knife

out of her grasp. She is at present in a madhouse, from whence I fear

she must be removed to an hospital. God has preserved to me my senses.

I eat, and drink, and sleep, and have my judgment, I believe, very

sound. My poor father was slightly wounded, and I am left to take care

of him and my aunt. Mr Norris of the Blue-coat School has been very

kind to us, and we have no other friend; but, thank God, I am very calm

and composed, and able to do the best that remains to do. Write as

religious a letter as possible, but no mention of what is gone and done

with. With me 'the former things are passed away,' and I have something

more to do than to feel.

"God Almighty have us all in his keeping!--C. LAMB.

"Mention nothing of poetry; I have destroyed every vestige of past

vanities of that kind. Do as you please; but if you publish, publish

mine (I give free leave) without name or initial, and never send me a

book, I charge you.

"Your own judgment will convince you not to take any notice of this yet

to your dear wife. You look after your family--I have my reason and

strength left to take care of mine. I charge you, don't think of coming

to see me--write. I will not see you if you come. God Almighty love

you, and all of us."--C. LAMB.

Miss Lamb was of course placed in an asylum, where, however, she was in

a short time restored to reason. And now occurred the act of life-long

heroism on the part of the brother. As soon as she was recovered,

he petitioned the authorities to resign her to his care; he pledged

himself to be her guardian, her provider, her _keeper_, for all her

days to come. He was at that time paying his addresses to a young lady,

with what hopes, or with what degree of ardour, we are not informed.

But marriage with her, or with any other, was now to be entirely

renounced. He devoted his life, and all his love, to his unhappy

sister, and to the last he fulfilled the obligation he had taken upon

himself without a murmur, and without the least diminution of affection

towards the object of it.

We have called it an act of heroism; we applaud it, and rejoice that it

stands upon record a complete and accomplished act. There it stands,

not only to relieve the character of Lamb from such littleness as it

may have contracted from certain habits of intemperance, (of which

perhaps more has been said than was necessary;) but it remains there

as an enduring memorial, prompting, to all time, to the like acts

of self-denying kindness, and unshaken generosity of purpose. But,

admiring the act as we do, we must still be permitted to observe, that

there was a degree of imprudence in it which fully justified other

members of the family in their endeavours to dissuade Lamb from his

resolution, and which would have justified the authorities (whoever

they were--and about this matter there seems a singular obscurity, and

a suspicion is created that even in proceedings of this nature much is

done carelessly, informally, uncertainly) in refusing to accede to his

request. Miss Lamb had several relapses into temporary derangement;

and, although she never committed, as far as we are informed, any acts

of violence, this calmness of behaviour, in her seasons of mental

aberration, could not have been calculated on. We confess we should

have shrunk from the responsibility of advising the generous but

perilous course which was adopted with so fortunate a result.

How sad and fearful a charge Lamb had entailed upon himself, let the

following extract suffice to show. The subject is too painful to be

longer dwelt upon than is necessary. "The constant impendency of

this great sorrow saddened to 'the Lambs' even their holidays, as

the journey which they both regarded as the relief and charm of the

year was frequently followed by a seizure; and, _when they ventured

to take it, a strait-waistcoat, carefully packed up by Miss Lamb

herself, was their constant companion_. Sad experience at last induced

the abandonment of the annual excursion, and Lamb was contented with

walks in and near London during the interval of labour. Miss Lamb

experienced, and full well understood, premonitory symptoms of the

attack, in restlessness, low fever, and the inability to sleep; and,

as gently as possible, prepared her brother for the duty he must soon

perform; and thus, unless he could stave off the terrible separation

till Sunday, obliged him to ask leave of absence from the office as

if for a day's pleasure--a bitter mockery! On one occasion Mr Charles

Lloyd met them slowly pacing together a little footpath in Haxton

Fields, _both weeping bitterly, and found, on joining them, that they

were taking their solemn way to the accustomed asylum_!"[2]

[2] _Final Memorials_, vol. ii., p. 212.

It seems that a tendency to lunacy was hereditary in the family, and

Charles Lamb himself had been for a short period deprived of his

reason.

On this subject Mr Talfourd makes the following excellent remark:--"The

wonder is, that, amidst all the difficulties, the sorrows, and the

excitements of his succeeding forty years, the malady never recurred.

Perhaps the true cause of this remarkable exemption--an exemption the

more remarkable when his afflictions are considered in association with

one single frailty--will be found in the sudden claim made on his moral

and intellectual nature by a terrible exigency, and by his generous

answer to that claim; _so that a life of self-sacrifice was rewarded by

the preservation of unclouded reason_."

We will not weaken so admirable a remark by repeating it in a worse

phraseology of our own. We wish the Serjeant always wrote in the same

clear, forcible, and unaffected manner. With respect to this seizure

which Lamb, in an early part of his life, had experienced, there is a

reference in one of his letters too curious to pass unnoticed. Writing

to Coleridge, he says--"At some future time I will amuse you with an

account, as full as my memory will permit, of the strange turns my

frenzy took. I look back upon it at times with a gloomy kind of envy,

for, while it lasted, I had many, many hours of pure happiness. Dream

not, Coleridge, of having tasted all the grandeur and wildness of fancy

till you have gone mad! All now seems to me vapid, or comparatively so."

The residue of Lamb's life is uneventful. The publication of a book--a

journey into Cumberland--his final liberation from office, are the

chief incidents. These it is not necessary to arrange in chronological

order: they can be alluded to as occasion requires. But we will pursue

a little further our notice of Mr Talfourd's biographical labours, that

we may clear our way as we proceed.

We have seen that Lamb, in the first agony of his grief, rudely

threw aside his poetry, and his scheme of publishing conjointly with

Coleridge. Poetry and schemes of publication are not, however, so

easily dismissed. As his mind subsided into a calmer state, they were

naturally resumed. The literary partnership was extended, and Lloyd

was admitted to associate his labours in the forthcoming volume. "At

length," says Mr Talfourd, "the small volume containing the poems of

Coleridge, Lloyd, and Lamb, was published by Mr Cottle at Bristol.

It excited little attention." We do not wonder at this, if the

lucubrations of Mr Lloyd had any conspicuous place in the volume. How

the other two poets--how Coleridge especially, could have consented

to this literary partnership, with so singularly inept and absurd a

writer, would be past explaining, if it were not for some hint that we

receive that Charles Lloyd was the son of a wealthy banker, and might,

therefore, be the fittest person to transact that part of the business

which occurs between the author and the publisher. Here we have a

striking instance of Mr Talfourd's misplaced amiability of criticism.

"Lloyd," he says, "wrote _pleasing_ verses, and with great facility--a

facility fatal to excellence; but his mind was chiefly remarkable

for _the fine power of analysis which distinguishes his 'London,'_

and other of his later compositions. In this power of discriminating

and distinguishing--carried to a pitch almost of painfulness--Lloyd

has scarcely been equalled; and his poems, though rugged in point of

versification, will be found, by those who will read them with the calm

attention they require, replete with critical and moral suggestions

of the highest value." Very grateful to Mr Serjeant Talfourd will any

reader feel who shall be induced, by his recommendation, to peruse, or

attempt to peruse, Mr Lloyd's poem of "London!" We were. "Fine power of

analysis!" Why, it is one stream of mud--of theologic mud. "Rugged in

point of versification!" There is no trace of verse, and the style is

an outlandish garb, such as no man has ever seen elsewhere, either in

prose or verse. Poor Lloyd was a lunatic patient!--on him no one would

be severe; but why should an intelligent Serjeant, unless prompted by

a sly malice against all mankind, persuade us to read his execrable

stuff? The following is a fair specimen of the drug, and is, indeed,

taken as the book opened. We add the two last lines of the preceding

stanza, to give all possible help to the elucidation of the one we

quote. The italics are all Mr Lloyd's:--

"If you affirm _grace irresistible_,

You must deny all liberty of will.

142.

"But you reply, grace irresistible

Our creed admits not. I am sorry for't.

Enough, or not enough, to bind the free will,

Grace must be. Not enough? The dose falls short.

This is of _cause_ the prime condition still

That it be _operative_. Yet divines exhort

Us to deem grace _sole source_ of all salvation,

And if we're damned, blame _but its application_."

But divinity of this kind, it may be said, though well calculated to

display "the power of discriminating and distinguishing, carried to

a pitch almost of painfulness," is not exactly favourable to flowing

verse. Here is a specimen where a lady is the subject, and the verse

should be smooth then, if ever.

"I well remember her years, five-and-twenty,

(Ah! now my muse is got into a gallop,)

Longer perhaps! But time sufficient, plenty

Of treasured offices of love to call up.

She was then, as I recollect, quite dainty,

And delicate, and seemed a fair envelope

Of virgin sweetness and angelic goodness;

That fate should treat her with such reckless rudeness!"

The poor man seems to have had not the least appreciation of the

power of language, so as to distinguish between the ludicrous and

the pathetic. He must have read "Hudibras" with tears, _not_ of

laughter, in his eyes, and hence drawn his notion of tenderness of

diction as well as harmony of verse. The most surprising thing about

Lloyd is, that such a man should have chosen for his literary task to

translate--Alfieri! And although he has performed the task very far

from well, he has accomplished it in a manner that could not have been

anticipated from his original compositions.

After this specimen of Mr Talfourd's laudatory criticism, we need not

be astonished at any amount of eulogy he bestows on such names as

Hazlitt and others, which really have a certain claim on the respect

of all men. And yet, even after this, we felt some slight surprise at

hearing Mr Talfourd speak of "the splendid reputation" of Mr Harrison

Ainsworth! Would Mr Talfourd _have_ such a reputation, if it were

offered him? Would he not rather have remained in complete obscurity

than be distinguished by such "splendours" as the authorship of _Jack

Sheppard_ would have invested him with? Why should he throw about

this indiscriminate praise, and make his good word of no possible

value? Splendid reputation! Can trash be anything but trash, because

a multitude of the idle and the ignorant, whom it exactly suits, read

and admire? By-and-by they grow ashamed of their idol, when they find

they have him all to themselves, and that sensible people are smiling

at their enthusiasm; they then discard him for some new, untried, and

_unconvicted_ favourite. Such is the natural history of these splendid

reputations.

The second volume of the "Final Memorials" is in great part occupied

with sketches of the literary friends and companions of Lamb. These Mr

Talfourd introduces by a somewhat bold parallel between the banquets

at the lordly halls of Holland House and the suppers in the dark and

elevated chambers in the Inner Temple, whither Lamb had removed. We are

by no means scandalised at such a comparison. Wit may flow, and wisdom

too, as freely in the garret as in the saloon. To eat off plate, to be

served assiduously by liveried attendants, may not give any more real

zest to colloquial pleasure, to good hearty talking, than to attack

without ceremony "the cold beef flanked with heaps of smoking potatoes,

which Becky has just brought in." Nor do we know that claret in the

flagon of beautifully cut glass, may be a more potent inspiration

of wit than "the foaming pots of porter from the best tap in Fleet

Street." We are not at all astonished that such a parallel should be

drawn; what surprises us is, that, being in the humour to draw such

comparisons, the Sergeant could find only _one_ place in all London

which could be brought into this species of contrast, and of rivalry,

with Holland House. "Two circles of rare social enjoyment, differing as

widely as possible in all external circumstances--_but each superior

in its kind to all others_, were at the same time generously opened to

men of letters." We, who have been admitted to neither, have perhaps

no right to an opinion; but, judging by the bill of fare presented to

us, we shrewdly suspect there were very many circles where we should

have preferred the intellectual repast to that set out in Inner Temple

Lane. We doubt not the Serjeant himself has assembled round his own

table a society that we should greatly more have coveted the pleasure

of joining. We have the name of Godwin, it is true, but Godwin never

opened his mouth;--played whist all the evening. Had he not written

his book? why should he talk? We have Hazlitt,--but by all accounts he

was rarely in a tolerable humour, perpetually raving, with admirable

consistency, in praise of republics and Bonaparte. Coleridge was too

rarely a visitor to be counted in the list; and certain we are that

we should have no delight in hearing Charles Lloyd "reason of fate,

free-will, foreknowledge absolute," to Leigh Hunt. Some actors are

named, of whose conversational powers we know nothing, and presume

nothing very extraordinary. Lamb's "burly jovial brother, the Ajax

Telamon of clerks," and a Captain Burney, of whom we are elsewhere

told that he liked Shakspeare "because he was so much of a gentleman,"

promise little on the score of intellectual conversation; neither

should we be particularly anxious to sit opposite a certain M. B., of

whom Lamb said, "M., if dirt were trumps, what hands you would hold!"

After this singular parallel, we are shown round a gallery of

portraits. First we have George Dyer, who appears to be the counterpart

of our old friend Dominie Sampson. But, indeed, we hold George Dyer

to be a sort of myth, a fabulous person, the creation of Charles

Lamb's imagination, and imposed as a reality on his friends. Such an

absurdity as he is here represented to be could not have been bred,

could not have existed, in these times, and in London. If we are to

credit the stories told of him, his walking in broad day into the canal

at Islington was one of the wisest things he did, or could possibly

have done. Lamb tells him, in the strictest confidence, that the

"Waverley Novels" are the works of Lord Castlereagh, just returned from

the Congress of Sovereigns at Vienna! Off he runs, nor stops till he

reaches Maida Hill, where he deposits his news in the ears of Leigh

Hunt, who, "as a public man," he thinks ought to be possessed of the

great fact. At another time Lamb gravely inquires of him, "Whether it

was true, as was commonly reported, that he was to be made a lord?" "Oh

dear, no! Mr Lamb," he responds with great earnestness, "I could not

think of such a thing: it is not true, I assure you." "I thought not,"

replies the wit, "and I contradict it wherever I go; but the government

will not ask your consent--they may raise you to the peerage without

your even knowing it." "I hope not, Mr Lamb; indeed, indeed, I hope

not; it would not suit me at all," repeats our modern Dominie, and goes

away musing on the possibility of strange honours descending, whether

he will or not, upon his brow. It goes to our heart to disturb a good

story, but such a man as the George Dyer here represented never could

have existed.

We have rather a long account of Godwin, with some remarks not very

satisfactory upon his intellectual character. That Mr Godwin was

taciturn, that he conversed, when he did talk, upon trivial subjects,

and in a small precise manner, and that he was especially fond of

sleeping after dinner--all this we can easily understand. Mr Godwin's

mental activity was absorbed in his authorship, and he was a very

voluminous author. But we cannot so easily understand Mr Talfourd's

explanations, nor why these habits should have any peculiar connexion

with the intellectual qualities of the author of _Caleb Williams_, and

a host of novels, as well as of the _Political Justice_, of the _Life

of Chaucer_, and the _History of the Commonwealth_. Such habits are

rather the result of a man's temperament, and the manner of life which

circumstances have thrown him into, than of his intellectual powers.

Profound metaphysicians have been very vivacious talkers, and light and

humorous writers very taciturn men. Mr Talfourd finds that Godwin had

no imagination, was all abstract reason, and thus accounts for his

having no desire to address his fellowmen but through the press. The

passage is too long to quote, and would be very tedious. We must leave

him in quiet possession of his own theory of the matter.

It was new to us, and may be to our readers, to hear that Godwin

supported himself "by a shop in Skinner Street, where, under the

auspices of 'Mr J. Godwin & Co.,' the prettiest and wisest books

for children issued, which old-fashioned parents presented to their

children, without suspecting that the graceful lessons of piety and

goodness which charmed away the selfishness of infancy, were published,

and sometimes revised, and now and then written, by a philosopher

whom they would scarcely venture to name!" We admire the good sense

which induced him to adhere to so humble an occupation, if he found it

needful for his support. But what follows is not quite so admirable.

He was a great borrower; or, in the phrase of Mr Talfourd, "he met

the exigencies of business with the trusting simplicity which marked

his course; he asked his friends for aid without scruple, considering

that their means were justly the due of one who toiled in thought for

their inward life, and had little time to provide for his own outward

existence, and took their excuses when offered without doubt or

offence." And then the Serjeant proceeds to relate, in a tone of the

most touching simplicity, his own personal experience upon this matter.

"The very next day after I had been honoured and delighted by an

introduction to him at Lamb's chambers, I was made still more proud and

happy by his appearance at my own on such an errand, which my poverty,

not my will, rendered abortive. After some pleasant chat on indifferent

matters, he carelessly observed that he had a little bill for £150

falling due on the morrow, _which he had forgotten till that morning_,

and desired the loan of the necessary amount for a few weeks. At first,

in eager hopes of being able thus to oblige one whom I regarded with

admiration akin to awe, I began to consider whether it was possible

for me to raise such a sum; but, alas! a moment's reflection sufficed

to convince me that the hope was vain, and I was obliged, with much

confusion, to assure my distinguished visitor how glad I should have

been to serve him, but that I was only just starting as a special

pleader, was obliged to write for magazines to help me on, and had not

such a sum in the world. 'Oh dear!' said the philosopher, 'I thought

you were a young gentleman of fortune--don't mention it, don't mention

it--I shall do very well elsewhere!' And then, in the most gracious

manner, reverted to our former topics, and sat in my small room for

half-an-hour, as if to convince me that my want of fortune made no

difference in his esteem." How very gracious! The most shameless

borrower coming to raise money from a young gentleman of fortune, to

meet "a little bill which he had forgotten till that morning," would

hardly, on finding his mistake, have made an abrupt departure. He would

have coolly beat a retreat, as the philosopher did. We never hear, by

the way, that he returned "to my small room" at any other time, for

half-an-hour's chat. But how very interesting it is to see the learned

Serjeant, whose briefs have made him acquainted with every trick and

turn of commercial craft, retaining this sweet and pristine simplicity!

The Serjeant, however, has a style of narrative which, though on the

surface it displays the most good-natured simplicity, slyly insinuates

to the more intelligent reader that he sees quite as far as another,

and is by no means the dupe of his own amiability. Thus, in his

description of Coleridge, (which would be too long a subject to enter

into minutely,) he has the following passage, (perhaps the best in the

description,) which, while it seems to echo to the full the unstinted

applause so common with the admirers of that singular man, gives a

quiet intimation to the reader that he was not altogether so blind as

some of those admirers. "If his entranced hearers often were unable

to perceive the bearings of his argument--too mighty for any grasp

but his own--and sometimes reaching beyond his own--they understood

'a _beauty_ in the words, if not the words;' and a wisdom and a piety

in the illustrations, even when unable to connect them with the idea

which he desired to illustrate." Mr Talfourd reveals here, we suspect,

the true secret of the charm which Coleridge exercised in conversation.

His hearers never seemed to have carried away anything distinct or

serviceable from his long discourses. They understood "a beauty in the

words, if not the words;" they felt a charm like that of listening to

music, and, when the voice ceased, there was perhaps as little distinct

impression left, as if it had really been a beautiful symphony they had

heard.

There is only one more in this gallery of portraits before which we

shall pause, and that only for a moment, to present a last specimen

of the critical manner of Mr Talfourd. We are sorry the last should

not be the best; and yet, as this sketch is a reprint, in an abridged

form, of an essay affixed to the _Literary Remains of Hazlitt_, it

may be considered as having received a more than usual share of the

author's attention. It is thus that he analyses the mental constitution

of one whom he appears to have studied and greatly admired--William

Hazlitt. "He had as unquenchable a desire for truth as others have

for wealth, or power, or fame: he pursued it with sturdy singleness

of purpose, and enunciated it without favour or fear. But besides

that love of truth, that sincerity in pursuing it, and that boldness

in telling it, he had also a fervent aspiration after the beautiful,

a vivid sense of pleasure, and an _intense consciousness of his own

individual being_, which sometimes produced obstacles to the current

of speculation, by which it was broken into dazzling eddies, or urged

into devious windings. Acute, fervid, vigorous as his mind was, it

wanted _the one great central power of imagination, which brings all

the other faculties into harmonious action, multiplies them into each

other, makes truth visible in the forms of beauty, and substitutes

intellectual vision for proof_. Thus in him truth and beauty held

divided empire. In him the spirit was willing but the flesh was

_strong_, and when these contend it is not difficult to anticipate the

result; 'for the power of beauty shall sooner transform honesty from

what it is into a bawd, than the person of honesty shall transform

beauty into its likeness.' This 'sometime paradox' was vividly

exemplified in Hazlitt's personal history, his conversation, and his

writings."[3]

[3] Vol. ii., p. 157.

Are we to gather from this most singular combination of words, that

Hazlitt had a grain too much of sensuality in his composition, which

diverted him from the search after truth? The expression, "the flesh

was strong," and the quotation so curiously introduced from Shakspeare,

seem to point this way. And then, again, are we to understand that

this too much of sensuality was owing to a want of imagination?--that

central power of imagination which is here described in a manner that

no system of metaphysics we have studied enables us in the least to

comprehend. We know something of Schelling's "intellectual intuition"

transcending the ordinary scope of reason. Is this "intellectual

vision, which the imagination substitutes for proof," of the same

family? But indeed it would be idle insincerity to ask such questions.

Sergeant Talfourd knows no more than we do what it means. The simple

truth is, that here, as too frequently elsewhere, he aims at a

certain subtlety of thought, and falls unfortunately upon no thought

whatever--upon mere confusion of thought, which he attempts to hide by

a quantity of somewhat faded phrase and rhetorical diction.

If we refer to the original essay itself, we shall not be aiding

ourselves or Mr Talfourd. The statement is fuller, and the confusion

greater. In one point it relieves us--it relieves us entirely from

the necessity of too deeply pondering the philosophic import of any

phraseology our critic may adopt, for the phrase is changed merely to

please the ear; and what at first has the air of definition proves

to be merely a poetic colouring. He thus commences his essay: "As an

author, Mr Hazlitt may be contemplated principally in three aspects--as

a moral and political reasoner, as an observer of character and

manners, and as a critic in literature and painting. It is in the

first character only that he should be followed with caution." In the

two others he is, of course, to be followed implicitly. Why he was

not equally perfect as a moral and political reasoner, Mr Talfourd

proceeds to explain. Mr Hazlitt had "a passionate desire for truth,"

and also "earnest aspirations for the beautiful." Now, continues our

critic, "the vivid sense of beauty may, indeed, have fit home in the

breast of the searcher after truth, but then he must also be endowed

with the highest of all human faculties--the great mediatory and

interfusing power of imagination, which presides supreme over the

mind, brings all its powers and impulses into harmonious action, and

becomes itself the single organ of all. At its touch, truth becomes

visible in the shape of beauty; the fairest of material things become

the living symbols of airy thought, and the mind apprehends _the finest

affinities of the world of sense and spirit 'in clear dream and solemn

vision.'_" This last expression conveys, we presume, all the meaning,

or no-meaning, of the phrase afterwards adopted--the "intellectual

vision which it substitutes for truth." Both are mere jingle. The rest

of the passage is much the same as it stands in the _Final Memorials_.

Somehow or other Mr Hazlitt is proved to have been defective as a

reasoner, because he wanted imagination!--and imagination was wanted,

not to enlarge his experience of mental phenomena, but to step between

his love of truth and his sense of beauty. Did he ever divulge this

discovery to his friend Hazlitt?--and how did the metaphysician receive

it?

To one so generous towards others, it would be ungracious to use hard

words. Indeed, to leave before an intelligent reader these specimens of

"fine analysis," and "powers of discriminating and distinguishing," is

quite severe enough punishment. We wish we could expunge them, with a

host of similar ones, not only from our record, but from the works of

the author himself.[4]

[4] The author of _Ion_ ought not to be held in remembrance for any of

these prosaic blunders he may have committed.

It is time that we turn from the biography to the writings of

Charles Lamb--to Elia, the gentle humorist. Not that Charles Lamb is

exclusively the humorist: far from it. His verse is, at all events,

sufficient to demonstrate a poetic sensibility, and his prose writings

display a subtlety of analysis and a delicacy of perception which were

not always enlisted in the service of mirth, but which were often

displayed in some refined criticism, or keen observation upon men

and manners. Still it is as a humorist that he has chiefly attracted

the attention of the reading public, and obtained his popularity and

literary _status_. But the coarser lineaments of the humorist are not

to be found in him. His is a gentle, refined, and refining humour,

which never trespasses upon delicacy; which does not excite that common

and almost brutal laughter, so easily raised at what are called the

comic miseries of life--often no comedy to those who have to endure

them. It is a humour which generally attains its end by investing what

is lowly with an unexpected interest, not by degrading what is noble

by allying it with mean and grotesque circumstance, (the miserable art

of parody;) it is a humour, in short, which excites our laughter, not

by stifling all reflection, but by awakening the mind to new trains of

thought, and prompting to odd but kindly sympathies. It is a humour

which a poet might indulge in, which a very nun might smile at, which

a Fenelon would at times prepare himself mildly to admonish, but, on

seeing from how clear a spirit it emanated, would, relaxing his brows

again, let pass unreproved.

There is a great rage at present for the comic; and, to do justice

to our own times, we think it may be said that wit was never more

abundant--and certainly the pencil was never used with more genuine

humour. But we cannot sympathise with, or much admire, that class of

writers who seem to make the comic their exclusive study, who peer into

everything merely to find matter of jest in it. Everything is no more

comic than everything is solemn, in this mingled world of ours. These

men, reversing the puritanical extravagance, would _improve_ every

incident into the occasion of a laugh. At length one extreme becomes

as tedious as the other. We have, if we may trust to advertisements,

for we never saw the production itself, a _Comic History of

England!_ and, amongst other editions of the learned commentator,

_A Comic Blackstone!_ We shall be threatened some day with a _Comic

Encyclopædia_; or we shall have these comic gentry following the track

round the whole world which Mrs Sommerville has lately taken, in her

charming book on Physical Geography. They will go hopping and grinning

after her, peeping down volcanoes, and punning upon coral reefs, and

finding laughter in all things in this circumnavigable globe. Well, let

them go grinning from pole to pole, and all along the tropics. We can

wish them no worse punishment.

This exclusive cultivation of the comic must sadly depress the organ of

veneration, and not at all foster any refined feelings of humanity. To

him who is habitually in the mocking vein, it matters little what the

subject, or who the sufferer, so that he has his jest. It is marvellous

the utter recklessness to human feeling these light laughers attain to.

Their seemingly sportive weapon, the "satiric thong" they so gaily use,

is in harder hands than could be found anywhere else out of Smithfield.

Nor is it quite idle to notice in what a direct barefaced manner these

jesters appeal to the coarse untutored malice of our nature. If we

were to analyse the jest, we should sometimes find that we had been

laughing just as wisely as the little untaught urchin, who cannot hold

his sides for "fun," if some infirm old woman, slipping upon the slide

he has made, falls down upon the pavement. The jest only lasts while

reflection is laid asleep.

In this, as we have already intimated, lies the difference between

the crowd of jesters and Charles Lamb. We quit their uproarious

laughter for his more quiet and pensive humour with somewhat the same

feeling that we leave the noisy, though amusing, highway, for the cool

landscape and the soft greensward. We reflect as we smile; the malice

of our nature is rather laid to rest than called forth; a kindly and

forgiving temper is excited. We rise from his works, if not with any

general truth more vividly impressed, yet prepared, by gentle and

almost imperceptible touches, to be more social in our companionships,

and warmer in our friendships.

Whether from mental indolence, or from that strong partiality he

contracted towards familiar things, he lived, for a man of education

and intelligence, in a singularly limited circle of thought. In the

stirring times of the first French Revolution, we find him abstracting

himself from the great drama before him, to bury himself in the gossip

of _Burnet's History_. He writes to Manning--"I am reading _Burnet's

own Times_. Quite the prattle of age, and outlived importance....

Burnet's good old prattle I can bring present to my mind; I can make

the Revolution present to me--the French Revolution, by a converse

perversity in my nature, I fling as far _from_ me." Science appears

never to have interested him, and such topics as political economy

may well be supposed to have been quite foreign to his nature. But

even as a reader of poetry, his taste, or his partialities in his

range of thought, limited him within a narrow circuit. He could make

nothing of Goethe's _Faust_; Shelley was an unknown region to him,

and the best of his productions never excited his attention. To Byron

he was almost equally indifferent. From these he could turn to study

George Withers! and find matter for applause in lines which needed,

indeed, the recommendation of age to give them the least interest. His

personal friendship for Wordsworth and Coleridge led him here out of

that circle of old writers he delighted to dwell amongst; otherwise, we

verily believe, he would have deserted them for Daniell and Quarles.

But perhaps, to one of his mental constitution, it required a certain

concentration to bring his powers into play; and we may owe to this

exclusiveness of taste the admirable fragments of criticism he has

given us on Shakspeare and the elder dramatists.

In forming our opinion, however, of the tastes and acquirements of

Lamb, we must not forget that we are dealing with a humorist, and that

his testimony against himself cannot be always taken literally. On

some occasions we shall find that he amused himself and his friends

by a merry vein of self-disparagement; he would delight to exaggerate

some deficiency, or perhaps some Cockney taste, in which, perhaps, he

differed from others only in his boldness of avowal. He had not, by all

accounts, what is called an ear for music; but we are not to put faith

in certain witty descriptions he has given of his own obtuseness to

all melodious sounds. We find him, in some of his letters, speaking of

Braham with all the enthusiasm of a young haunter of operas. "I follow

him about," he says, "like a dog." Nothing has given more scandal to

some of the gentle admirers of Lamb, than to find him boldly avowing

his preference of Fleet Street to the mountains of Cumberland. He

claimed no love for the picturesque. Shops, and the throng of men, were

not to be deserted for lakes and waterfalls. It was his to live in

London, and, as a place to _live in_, there was no peculiarity of taste

in preferring it to Cumberland; but when he really paid his visit to

Coleridge at Keswick, he felt the charm fully as much as tourists who

are accustomed to dwell, rather too loudly, upon their raptures. The

letters he wrote, after this visit, from some of which we will quote,

if our space permits us, describe very naturally, unaffectedly, and

vividly, the impressions which are produced on a first acquaintance

with mountainous scenery.

Indeed we may remark, that no man can properly enter into the character

or the writings of a humorist, who is not prepared both to permit and

to understand certain little departures from truth. We mean, that

playing with the subject where our _convictions_ are not intended to

be seriously affected. Those who must see everything as true or false,

and immediately approve or reject accordingly, who know nothing of that

_punctum indifferens_ on which the humorist, for a moment, takes his

stand, had better leave him and his writings entirely alone. "I like a

smuggler," says Charles Lamb, in one of his essays. Do you, thereupon,

gravely object that a smuggler, living in constant violation of the

laws of the land, ought by no means to be an object of partiality

with any respectable order-loving gentleman? Or do you nod assent and

acquiesce in this approbation of the smuggler? You do neither one nor

the other. You smile and read on. You know very well that Lamb has no

design upon your serious convictions, has no wish whatever that _you_

should like a smuggler; he merely gives expression to a partiality of

his own, unreasonable if you will, but arising from certain elements in

the smuggler's character, which just then are uppermost in his mind.

A great deal of the art and tact of the humorist lies in bringing out

little truths, and making them stand in the foreground, where greater

truths usually take up their position. Thus, in one of Lamb's papers,

he would prove that a convalescent was in a less enviable condition

than a man downright ill. This is done by heightening the effect of a

subordinate set of circumstances, and losing sight of facts of greater

importance. No error of judgment can really be introduced by this

sportive ratiocination, this mock logic, while it perhaps may be the

means of disclosing many ingenious and subtle observations, to which,

afterwards, you may, if you will, assign their just relative importance.

It would be a work of supererogation, even if space allowed us, to go

critically over the whole writings of Lamb--his poems, his essays,

and his letters. It is the last alone that we shall venture to pause

upon, or from which we may hope to make any extract not already

familiar to the reader. His poetry, indeed, cannot claim much critical

attention. It is possible, here and there, to find an elegant verse,

or a beautiful expression; there is a gentle, amiable, pleasing tone

throughout it; but, upon the whole, it is without force, has nothing to

recommend it of deep thought or strong passion. His tragedy of _John

Woodville_ is a tame imitation of the manner of the old dramatists--of

their manner when engaged in their subordinate and preparatory scenes.

For there is no attempt at tragic passion. We read the piece asking

ourselves when the play is to begin, and while still asking the

question, find ourselves brought to its conclusion. If the poems are

read by few, the _Essays of Elia_ have been perused by all. Who is not

familiar with what is now a historic fact--the discovery of roast pig

in China? This, and many other touches of humour, it would be useless

here to repeat. His letters, as being latest published, seem alone to

call for any especial observations, and from these we shall cull a few

extracts to enliven our own critical labours.

What first strikes a reader, on the perusal of the letters, is their

remarkable similarity in style to the essays. Some of them, indeed,

were afterwards converted into essays, and that more by adding to

them than altering their structure. That style, which at first seems

extremely artificial, was, in fact, natural in Lamb. He had formed for

himself a manner, chiefly by the study of our classical essayists,

and of still older writers, from which it would have been an effort

in him to depart. With whatever ease, therefore, or rapidity, he may

have written his letters, it was impossible that they should bear

the impress of freedom. His style was essentially a lettered style,

partaking little of the conversational tone of his own day. They could

obtain the case of finished compositions, not of genuine letters. For

this, if for no other reason, they can never be brought into comparison

with those charming spontaneous effusions of humour which flowed from

Cowper, in his letters to his old friend Hill, and his cousin, Lady

Hesketh. They are charming productions, however, and the best of his

letters will take rank, we think, with the best of his essays, in the

public estimation.

We must first quote from a letter to Manning, after his visits to

the lakes, to rescue his character in the eyes of the lovers of the

picturesque from the imputation of being utterly indifferent to the

higher beauties of nature.

"Coleridge received us with all the hospitality in the world. He

dwells upon a small hill by the side of Keswick, in a comfortable

house, quite enveloped on all sides by a net of mountains: great

floundering bears and monsters they seemed, all couchant and

asleep. We got in in the evening, travelling in a post-chaise from

Penrith, in the midst of a gorgeous sunshine, which transmuted all

the mountains into colours, purple, &c., &c. We thought we had

got into fairyland. But that went off (and it never came again;

while we stayed we had no more fine sunsets), and we entered

Coleridge's comfortable study just in the dusk, when the mountains

were all dark with clouds on their heads. Such an impression I

never received from objects of sight before, nor do I suppose that

I can ever again. Glorious creatures, fine old fellows--Skiddaw,

&c.--I never shall forget ye, how ye lay about that night like

an entrenchment--gone to bed, as it seemed for the night, but

promising that ye were to be seen in the morning.... We have

clambered up to the top of Skiddaw; and I have waded up the bed

of Lodore. In fine, I have satisfied myself that there is such a

thing as tourists call _romantic_, which I very much suspected

before; they make such a sputtering about it.... Oh! its fine

black head, and the bleak air atop of it, with the prospects of

mountains about and about, making you giddy. It was a day that

will stand out like a mountain, I am sure, in my life."

Of Mr Manning we are told little or nothing, though he seems to have

been one of the very dearest friends of Lamb. His best letters are

written to Manning--the drollest, and some of the most affecting. The

following was written to dissuade him from some scheme of oriental

travel. Manning was, at the time, at Paris:--

"_Feb. 19, 1803._

"MY DEAR MANNING,--The general scope of your letter afforded no

indications of insanity; but some particular points raised a

scruple. For God's sake, don't think any more of 'Independent

Tartary.' What are you to do among such Ethiopians? Read Sir John

Mandeville's travels to cure you, or come over to England. There

is a Tartar-man now exhibiting at Exeter Change. Come and talk

with him, and hear what he says first. Indeed, he is no favourable

specimen of his countrymen! Some say they are cannibals; and then

conceive a Tartar fellow _eating_ my friend, and adding the _cool

malignity_ of mustard and vinegar! I am afraid 'tis the reading

of Chaucer has misled you; his foolish stories about Cambuscan,

and the ring and the horse of brass. Believe me, there are no such

things. These are all tales--a horse of brass never flew, and a

king's daughter never talked with birds. The Tartars really are

a cold, insipid, smoutchy set. You'll be sadly moped (if you

are not eaten) amongst them. Pray try and cure yourself. Shave

yourself oftener. Eat no saffron; for saffron eaters contract a

terrible Tartar-like yellow. Shave _the upper lip_. Go about like

a European. Read no books of voyages, (they are nothing but lies;)

only now and then a romance, to keep the fancy _under_. Above

all, don't go to any sights of _wild beasts_. _That has been your

ruin._"

And when Manning really departed on his voyage to China, he writes to

him in the following mingled strains of humour and of feeling. Being

obliged to omit a great deal, it would only be unsightly to mark every

instance where a sentence has been dropt. The italics, we must remark,

are not ours. If Lamb's, they show how naturally, even in writing to

his most intimate friend, he fell into the feelings of the author:--

"_May 10, 1806._

"... Be sure, if you see any of those people whose heads do

grow beneath their shoulders, that you make a draught of them.

It will be very curious. Oh! Manning, I am serious to sinking

almost, when I think that all those evenings which you have made

so pleasant are gone, perhaps for ever. Four years, you talk of,

may be ten--and you may come back and find such alterations! Some

circumstance may grow up to you or to me, that may be a bar to the

return of any such intimacy. I dare say all this is hum! and that

all will come back; but, indeed, we die many deaths before we die,

and I am almost sick to think that such a hold I had of you is

gone."

"_Dec. 5, 1806._

"Manning, your letter dated Hottentots, August the--what was it?

came to hand. I can scarce hope that mine will have the same

luck. China--Canton--bless us! how it strains the imagination,

and makes it ache. It will be a point of conscience to send you

none but bran-new news (the latest edition), which will but grow

the better, like oranges, for a sea voyage. Oh that you should be

so many hemispheres off--if I speak incorrectly you can correct

me--why, the simplest death or marriage that takes place here must

be important to you as news in the old Bastile."

He then tells him of the acceptance of his farce--_Mr H._; which farce,

by the way, was produced, and failed, Lamb turning against his own

production, and joining the audience in hissing it off the stage. It

certainly deserved its fate.

"Now, you'd like to know the subject. The title is, 'Mr H.'

No more; how simple, how taking! A great H sprawling over the

play-bill, and attracting eyes at every corner. The story is, a

coxcomb appearing at Bath, vastly rich--all the ladies dying for

him--all bursting to know who he is; but he goes by no other name

than Mr H.--a curiosity like that of the dames of Strasburg about

the man with the great nose. But I won't tell you any more about

it. Yes, I will; but I can't give you any idea how I have done it.

I'll just tell you that, after much vehement admiration, when his

true name comes out, 'Hogsflesh,' all the women shun him, avoid

him, and not one can be found to change her name for him; that's

the idea--how flat it is here--but how whimsical in the farce! And

only think how hard upon me it is, that the ship is despatched

to-morrow, and my triumph cannot be ascertained till the Wednesday

after. But all China will ring of it by-and-by. Do you find, in

all this stuff I have written, anything like those feelings which

one should send my old adventuring friend that is gone to wander

among Tartars, and may never come again? I don't; but your going

away, and all about you, is a threadbare topic. I have worn it

out with thinking. It has come to me when I have been dull with

anything, till my sadness has seemed more to have come from it

than to have introduced it. I want you, you don't know how much;

but if I had you here, in my European garret, we should but talk

over such stuff as I have written.

"Good Heavens! what a bit only I've got left! How shall I squeeze

all I know into this morsel! Coleridge is come home, and is going

to turn lecturer on taste at the Royal Institution. How the paper

grows less and less! In less than two minutes I shall cease to

talk to you, and you may rave to the great Wall of China.--N.B. Is

there such a wall? Is it as big as Old London Wall by Bedlam? Have

you met with a friend of mine, named Ball, at Canton? If you are

acquainted, remember me kindly to him."

But we should be driven into as hard straits as Lamb, at the close of

his epistle, if we, should attempt, in the small space that remains to

us, to give any fair idea of the various "humours" and interests, of

many kinds, of these letters. We pass at once to those that illustrate

the last important incident of his life, his retirement from office. It

is thus he describes his manumission, and the sort of troubled delight

it brought with it, to Wordsworth:--

"_6th April, 1825._

"Here am I then, after thirty-three years' slavery, sitting in my

own room, at eleven o'clock this finest of all April mornings, a

freed man, with £441 a-year for the remainder of my life, live I

as long as John Dennis, who outlived his annuity and starved at

ninety.

"I came home FOR EVER on Tuesday of last week. The

incomprehensibleness of my condition overwhelmed me. It was

like passing from life into eternity. Every year to be as long

as three; _i. e._, to have three times as much real time--time

that is my own in it! I wandered about thinking I was happy, but

feeling I was not. But that tumultuousness is passing off, and I

begin to understand the nature of the gift."

And to Bernard Barton he writes:

"My spirits are so tumultuary with the novelty of my recent

emancipation, that I have scarce steadiness of hand, much more of

mind, to compose a letter. I am free, Bernard Barton--free as air!

'The little bird, that wings the sky,

Knows no such liberty.'

I was set free on Tuesday in last week at four o'clock. I came

home for ever!

"I have been describing my feelings, as well as I can, to

Wordsworth, and care not to repeat. Take it briefly, that for a

few days I was painfully oppressed by so mighty a change, but it

is becoming daily more natural to me. I went and sat among them

all, at my old thirty-three years' desk yester morning; and deuce

take me, if I had not yearnings at leaving all my old pen-and-ink

fellows, merry sociable lads, at leaving them in the lurch--fag,

fag, fag! The comparison of my own superior felicity gave me

anything but pleasure.

"B. B., I would not serve another seven years for seven hundred

thousand pounds! I have got £440 net for life, with a provision

for Mary if she survives me. I will live another fifty years."

But to live without any steady compulsory occupation requires an

apprenticeship as much as any other mode of life. An idle man ought

to be born and bred to the profession. With Lamb, literature could be

nothing but an amusement, and for a mere amusement literature is far

too laborious. It cannot, indeed, serve long as an amusement except

when it is adopted also as a labour. He was destined, therefore, to

make the humiliating discovery, which so many have made before him,

that one may have too much time, as well as too little, at one's own

disposal. Writing to the same Bernard Barton, a year or two afterwards,

he says:--

"What I can do, and over-do, is to walk; but deadly long are

the days, these summer all-day days, with but a half-hour's

candle-light and no fire-light. I do not write, tell your kind

inquisitive Eliza, and can hardly read. 'Tis cold work authorship,

without something to puff one into fashion.... I assure you _no

work_ is worse than _over-work_. The mind preys on itself, the

most unwholesome food. I bragged, formerly, that I could not have

too much time. I have a surfeit; with few years to come, the days

are wearisome. But weariness is not eternal. Something will shine

out to take the load off that crushes me, which is at present

intolerable. I have killed an hour or two in this poor scrawl.

Well; I shall write merrier anon. 'Tis the present copy of my

countenance I send, and to complain is a little to alleviate."

He had taken a house at Enfield, but the cares of housekeeping were

found to be burdensome to Miss Lamb, and they took up their abode as

boarders in the house of a neighbour. To this circumstance he alludes

in the following extract from a letter to Wordsworth, which is the last

we shall make, and with which we shall bid farewell to our subject.

It will be found to be not the least remarkable amongst the letters

of Lamb, and contains one passage, we think, the boldest piece of

extravagance that ever humorist ventured upon with success. It just

escapes!--and, indeed, it rather takes away our breath at its boldness

than prompts to merriment.

"_January 2, 1831._

"And is it a year since we parted from you at the steps of

Edmonton stage? There are not now the years that there used to

be. The tale of the dwindled age of men, reported of successional

mankind, is true of the same man only. We do not live a year

in a year now. 'Tis a _punctum stans_. The seasons pass with

indifference. Spring cheers not, nor winter heightens our gloom;

autumn hath foregone its moralities. Let the sullen nothing

pass. Suffice it, that after sad spirits, prolonged through many

of its months, we have cast our skins; have taken a farewell of

the pompous, troublesome trifle, called housekeeping, and are

settled down into poor boarders and lodgers at next door, the

Baucis and Baucida of dull Enfield. Here we have nothing to do

with our victuals but to eat them; with the garden but to see it

grow; with the tax-gatherer but to hear him knock; with the maid

but to hear her scolded. Scot and lot, butcher, baker, are things

unknown to us, save as spectators of the pageant. We are fed we

know not how; quieted--confiding ravens. Yet in the self-condemned

obliviousness, in the stagnation, some molesting yearnings of

life, not quite killed, rise, prompting me that there was a

London, and that I was of that old Jerusalem. In dreams I am in

Fleet Market, but I wake and cry to sleep again. I die hard, a

stubborn Eloisa in this detestable Paraclete. What have I gained

by health? Intolerable dulness. What by early hours and moderate

meals? A total blank. Oh! let no native Londoner imagine that

health, and rest, and innocent occupation, interchange of converse

sweet, and recreative study, can make the country anything better

than altogether odious and detestable. _A garden was the primitive

prison, till man, with Promethean felicity and boldness, luckily

sinned himself out of it._"

Any further summary than what we have already given, of the literary

character of Lamb, would be only tedious. He is one who will be

generally _liked_, who with a smaller class will be greatly admired,

and who will never excite hostile criticism, unless his injudicious

friends shall elevate him to a higher pedestal than is due to him, or

than he is manifestly fit to occupy. Such is the cold and calm verdict

with which criticism must dismiss him. But those who have thoroughly

enjoyed the essays of Elia and the letters of Lamb, will feel a warmer,

a more partial affection than Criticism knows well how to express:

she becomes somewhat impatient of her own enforced gravity; she would

willingly throw away those scales with which, like Justice, we suppose,

she is symbolically supplied, and, embracing the man as he is, laugh

and be pleased with the rest of the world, without further thought of

the matter.

THE CAXTONS.--PART XV.

CHAPTER LXXXIV.

"Please, sir, be this note for you?" asked the waiter.

"For me--yes; it is my name."

I did not recognise the handwriting, and yet the note was from one

whose writing I had often seen. But formerly the writing was cramped,

stiff, perpendicular, (a feigned hand, though I guessed not it was

feigned;) now it was hasty, irregular, impatient--scarce a letter

formed, scarce a word that seemed finished--and yet strangely legible

withal, as the handwriting of a bold man almost always is. I opened the

note listlessly, and read--

"I have watched for you all the morning. I saw her go. Well!--I did

not throw myself under the hoofs of the horses. I write this in a

public-house, not far. Will you follow the bearer, and see once again

the outcast whom all the rest of the world will shun?"

Though I did not recognise the hand, there could be no doubt who was

the writer.

"The boy wants to know if there's an answer," said the waiter.

I nodded, took up my hat, and left the room. A ragged boy was standing

in the yard, and scarcely six words passed between us, before I was

following him through a narrow lane that faced the inn, and terminated

in a turnstile. Here the boy paused, and, making me a sign to go on,

went back his way whistling. I passed the turnstile, and found myself

in a green field, with a row of stunted willows hanging over a narrow

rill. I looked round, and saw Vivian (as I intend still to call him)

half kneeling, and seemingly intent upon some object in the grass.

My eye followed his mechanically. A young unfledged bird, that had

left the nest too soon, stood, all still and alone, on the bare short

sward--its beak open as for food, its gaze fixed on us with a wistful

stare. Methought there was something in the forlorn bird that softened

me more to the forlorner youth, of whom it seemed a type.

"Now," said Vivian, speaking half to himself, half to me, "did the bird

fall from the nest, or leave the nest at its own wild whim? The parent

does not protect it. Mind, I say not it is the parent's fault--perhaps

the fault is all with the wanderer. But, look you, though the parent is

not here, the foe is!--yonder, see!"

And the young man pointed to a large brindled cat, that, kept back from

its prey by our unwelcome neighbourhood, still remained watchful, a few

paces off, stirring its tail gently backwards and forwards, and with

that stealthy look in its round eyes, dulled by the sun--half fierce,

half frightened--which belongs to its tribe, when man comes between the

devourer and the victim.

"I do see," said I, "but a passing footstep has saved the bird!"

"Stop!" said Vivian, laying my hand on his own, and with his old bitter

smile on his lip--"stop! do you think it mercy to save the bird? What

from? and what for? From a natural enemy--from a short pang and a quick

death? Fie!--is not that better than slow starvation? or, if you take

more heed of it, than the prison-bars of a cage? You cannot restore the

nest, you cannot recall the parent. Be wiser in your mercy: leave the

bird to its gentlest fate!"

I looked hard on Vivian; the lip had lost the bitter smile. He rose and

turned away. I sought to take up the poor bird, but it did not know its

friends, and ran from me, chirping piteously--ran towards the very jaws

of the grim enemy. I was only just in time to scare away the beast,

which sprang up a tree, and glared down through the hanging boughs.

Then I followed the bird, and, as I followed, I heard, not knowing, at

first whence the sound came, a short, quick, tremulous note. Was it

near? was it far?--from the earth? in the sky? Poor parent-bird!--like

parent-love, it seemed now far and now near; now on earth, now in sky!

And at last, quick and sudden, as if born of the space, lo! the little

wings hovered over me!

The young bird halted, and I also. "Come," said I, "ye have found each

other at last--settle it between you!"

I went back to the outcast.