_Specimen of Lamb's Humor.--Death of Mr. Norris.--Garrick Plays.--Letters
to Barton.--Opinions on Books.--Breakfast with Mr. N. P. Willis.--Moves to
Enfield.--Caricature of Lamb.--Albums and Acrostics.--Pains of Leisure.--
The Barton Correspondence.--Death of Hazlitt.--Munden's Acting and
Quitting the Stage.--Lamb becomes a Boarder.--Moves to Edmonton.--
Metropolitan Attachments.--Death of Coleridge.--Lamb's Fall and Death.--
Death of Mary Lamb.--POSTSCRIPT._
With the expiration of the "London Magazine," Lamb's literary career
terminated. A few trifling contributions to the "New Monthly," and other
periodicals, are scarcely sufficient to qualify this statement.
It may be convenient, in this place, to specify some of those examples of
humor and of jocose speech for which Charles Lamb in his lifetime was well
known. These (not his best thoughts) can be separated from the rest, and
may attract the notice of the reader, here and there, and relieve the
tameness of a not very eventful narrative.
It is possible to define wit (which, as Mr. Coleridge says, is
"impersonal"), and humor also; but it is not easy to distinguish the humor
of one man from that of all other humorists, so as to bring his special
quality clearly before the apprehension of the reader. Perhaps the best
(if not the most scientific) way might be to produce specimens of each. In
Charles Lamb's case, instances of his humor are to be found in his essays,
in his sayings (already partially reported), and throughout his letters,
where they are very frequent. They are often of the composite order, in
which humor, and wit, and (sometimes) pathos are intermingled. Sometimes
they merely exhibit the character of the man.
He once said of himself that his biography "would go into an epigram." His
sayings require greater space. Some of those which have been circulated
are apocryphal. The following are taken chiefly from his letters, and from
my own recollections.
In his exultation on being released from his thirty-four years of labor at
the India House, he says, "Had I a little son, I would christen him
'Nothing to do'" (This is in the "Superannuated Man.")
Speaking of Don Quixote, he calls him "the errant Star of Knighthood, made
more tender by eclipse."
On being asked by a schoolmistress for some sign indicative of her
calling, he recommended "The Murder of the Innocents."
I once said something in his presence which I thought possessed smartness.
He commended me with a stammer: "Very well, my dear boy, very well; Ben
(taking a pinch of snuff), Ben Jonson has said worse things than that-and
b-b-better." [1]
His young chimney-sweepers, "from their little pulpits (the tops of
chimneys) in the nipping air of a December morning, preach a lesson of
patience to mankind."
His saying to Martin Burney has been often repeated--"O Martin, if dirt
were trumps, what a hand you would hold!"
To Coleridge: "Bless you, old sophist, who next to human nature taught me
all the corruption I was capable of knowing."
To Mr. Gilman, a surgeon ("query Kill-man?"), he writes, "Coleridge is
very bad, but he wonderfully picks up, and his face, when he repeats his
verses, hath its ancient glory--an archangel a little damaged."
To Wordsworth (who was superfluously solemn) he writes, "Some d-d people
have come in, and I must finish abruptly. By d--d, I only mean deuced."
The second son of George the Second, it was said, had a very cold and
ungenial manner. Lamb stammered out in his defence that "this was very
natural in the Duke of Cu-Cum-ber-land."
To Bernard Barton, of a person of repute: "There must be something in him.
Such great names imply greatness. Which of us has seen Michael Angelo's
things? yet which of us disbelieves his greatness?"
To Mrs. H., of a person eccentric: "Why does not his guardian angel look
to him? He deserves one--may be he has tired him out."
"Charles," said Coleridge to Lamb, "I think you have heard me preach?" "I
n--n--never heard you do anything else," replied Lamb.
One evening Coleridge had consumed the whole time in talking of some
"regenerated" orthodoxy. Leigh Hunt, who was one of the listeners, on
leaving the house, expressed his surprise at the prodigality and intensity
of Coleridge's religious expressions. Lamb tranquillized him by "Ne-ne-
never mind what Coleridge says; he's full of fun."
There were, &c., &c., "and at the top of all, Hunger (eldest, strongest of
the Passions), predominant, breaking down the stony fences of shame."
The Bank, the India House, and other rich traders look insultingly on the
old deserted South Sea House, as on "their poor neighbor out of business."
To a Frenchman, setting up Voltaire's character in opposition to that of
Christ, Lamb asserted that "Voltaire was a very good Jesus Christ--_for
the French._"
Of a Scotchman: "His understanding is always at its meridian. Between the
affirmative and the negative there is no border land with him. You cannot
hover with him on the confines of truth."
On a book of Coleridge's nephew he writes, "I confess he has more of the
Sterne about him than the Sternhold. But he saddens into excellent sense
before the conclusion."
As to a monument being erected for Clarkson, in his lifetime, he opposes
it, and argues, "Goodness blows no trumpet, nor desires to have it blown.
We should be modest for a modest man."
"M. B. is on the top scale of my friendship's ladder, which an angel or
two is still climbing; and some, alas! descending."
A fine sonnet of his (The Gipsy's Malison) being refused publication, he
exclaimed, "Hang the age! I will write for Antiquity."
Once, whilst waiting in the Highgate stage, a woman came to the door, and
inquired in a stern voice, "Are you quite full inside?" "Yes, ma'am," said
Charles, in meek reply, "quite; that plateful of Mrs. Gilman's pudding has
quite filled us."
Mrs. K., after expressing her love for her young children, added,
tenderly, "And how do _you_ like babies, Mr. Lamb?" His answer, immediate,
almost precipitate, was "Boi-boi-boiled, ma'am."
Hood, tempting Lamb to dine with him, said, "We have a hare." "And many
friends?" inquired Lamb.
It being suggested that he would not sit down to a meal with the Italian
witnesses at the Queen's trial, Lamb rejected the imputation, asserting
that he would sit with anything except a hen or a tailor.
Of a man too prodigal of lampoons and verbal jokes, Lamb said,
threateningly, "I'll Lamb-pun him."
On two Prussians of the same name being accused of the same crime, it was
remarked as curious that they were not in any way related to each other.
"A mistake," said he; "they are cozens german."
An old lady, fond of her dissenting minister, wearied Lamb by the length
of her praises. "I speak, because I _know_ him well," said she.
"Well, I don't;" replied Lamb; "I don't; but d--n him, at a 'venture.'"
The Scotch, whom he did not like, ought, he said, to have double
punishment; and to have fire without brimstone.
Southey, in 1799, showed him a dull poem on a rose. Lamb's criticism was,
"Your rose is insipid: it has neither thorns nor sweetness."
A person sending an unnecessarily large sum with a lawyer's brief, Lamb
said "it was 'a fee simple.'"
Mr. H. C. Robinson, just called to the bar, tells him, exultingly, that he
is retained in a cause in the King's Bench. "Ah" (said Lamb), "the great
first cause, least understood."
Of a pun, Lamb says it is a "noble thing _per se_. It is entire. It fills
the mind; it is as perfect as a sonnet; better. It limps ashamed, in the
train and retinue of humor." [2]
Lamb's puns, as far as I recollect, were not frequent; and, except in the
case of a pun, it is difficult to divest a good saying of the facts
surrounding it without impoverishing the saying itself. Lamb's humor is
generally imbedded in the surrounding sense, and cannot often be
disentangled without injury.
I have said that the proprietorship of the "London Magazine," in the year
1821, became vested in Messrs. Taylor and Hessey, under whom it became a
social centre for the meeting of many literary men. The publication,
however, seems to have interfered with the ordinary calling of the
booksellers; and the sale was not therefore (I suppose) sufficiently
important to remunerate them for the disturbance of their general trade.
At all events, it was sold to Mr. Henry Southern, the editor of "The
Retrospective Review," at the expiration of 1825, after having been in
existence during five entire years. In Mr. Southern's hands, under a
different system of management, it speedily ceased.
In 1826 (January) Charles Lamb suffered great grief from the loss of a
very old friend, Mr. Norris. It may be remembered that he was one of the
two persons who went to comfort Lamb when his mother so suddenly died. Mr.
Norris had been one of the officers of the Inner Temple or Christ's
Hospital, and had been intimate with the Lambs for many years; and
Charles, when young, used always to spend his Christmases with him. "He
was my friend and my father's friend," Lamb writes, "all the life I can
remember. I seem to have made foolish friendships ever since. Old as I am,
in his eyes I was still the child he first knew me. To the last he called
me 'Charley.' I have none to call me Charley now. He was the last link
that bound me to the Temple."
It was after his death that Lamb once more resorted to the British Museum,
which he had been in the habit of frequenting formerly, when his first
"Dramatic Specimens" were published. Now he went there to make other
extracts from the old plays. These were entitled "The Garrick Plays," and
were bestowed upon Mr. Hone, who was poor, and were by him published in
his "Every Day Book." Subsequently they were collected by Charles himself,
and formed a supplement to the earlier "Specimens." Lamb's labors in this
task were by no means trivial. "I am now going through a course of
reading" (of old plays), he writes; "I have two thousand to go through."
Lamb's correspondence with his Quaker friend, Bernard Barton ("the busy
B," as Hood called him), whose knowledge of the English drama was confined
to Shakespeare and Miss Baillie, went on constantly. His letters to this
gentleman comprised a variety of subjects, on most of which Charles offers
him good advice. Sometimes they are less personal, as where he tells him
that "six hundred have been sold of Hood's book, while Sion's songs do not
disperse so quickly;" and where he enters (very ably) into the defects and
merits of Martin's pictures, Belshazzar and Joshua, and ventures an
opinion as to what Art should and should not be. He is strenuous in
advising him not to forsake the Bank (where he is a clerk), and throw
himself on what the chance of employ by booksellers would afford. "Throw
yourself, rather, from the steep Tarpeian rock, headlong upon the iron
spikes. Keep to your bank, and your bank will keep you. Trust not to the
Public," he says. Then, referring to his own previous complaints of
official toil, he adds, "I retract all my fond complaints. Look on them as
lovers' quarrels. I was but half in earnest. Welcome, dead timber of a
desk that gives me life. A little grumbling is wholesome for the spleen;
but in my inner heart I do approve and embrace this our close but
unharassing way of life."
Lamb's opinions on books, as well as on conduct, making some deduction for
his preference of old writers, is almost always sound. When he is writing
to Mr. Walter Wilson, who is editing De Foe, he says of the famous author
of "Robinson Crusoe,"--
"In appearance of _truth_ his works exceed any works of fiction that I am
acquainted with. It is perfect illusion. It is like reading evidence in a
court of justice. There is all the minute detail of a log-book in it.
Facts are repeated in varying phrases till you cannot choose but believe
them." His liking for books (rather than his criticism on them) is shown
frequently in his letters. "O! to forget Fielding, Steele, &c., and to
read 'em _new_," he says. Of De Foe, "His style is everywhere beautiful,
but plain and homely." Again, he speaks of "Fielding, Smollett, Sterne,--
great Nature's stereotypes." "Milton," he says, "almost requires a solemn
service of music to be played before you enter upon him." Of Shenstone he
speaks as "the dear author of the Schoolmistress;" and so on from time to
time, as occasion prompts, of Bunyan, Isaac Walton, and Jeremy Taylor, and
Fuller, and Sir Philip Sidney, and others, in affectionate terms. These
always relate to English authors. Lamb, although a good Latinist, had not
much of that which ordinarily passes under the name of Learning. He had
little knowledge of languages, living or dead. Of French, German, Italian,
&c., he knew nothing; and in Greek his acquirements were very moderate.
These children of the tongues were never adopted by him; but in his own
Saxon English he was a competent scholar, a lover, nice, discriminative,
and critical.
The most graphic account of Lamb at a somewhat later period of his life
appears in Mr. N. P. Willis's "Pencillings by the Way." He had been
invited by a gentleman in the Temple, Mr. R---- (Robinson?), to meet
Charles Lamb and his sister at breakfast. The Lambs lived at that time "a
little way out of London, and were not quite punctual. At last they enter
--"the gentleman in black small-clothes and gaiters, short and very slight
in person, his head set on his shoulders with a thoughtful forward bent,
his hair just sprinkled with gray, a beautiful deep-set eye, an aquiline
nose, and a very indescribable mouth. Whether it expressed most humor or
feeling, good nature or a kind of whimsical peevishness, or twenty other
things which passed over it by turns, I cannot in the least be certain."
This is Mr. Willis's excellent picture of Lamb at that period. The guest
places a large arm-chair for Mary Lamb; Charles pulls it away, saying
gravely, "Mary, don't take it; it looks as if you were going to have a
tooth drawn." Miss Lamb was at that time very hard of hearing, and Charles
took advantage of her temporary deafness to impute various improbabilities
to her, which, however, were so obvious as to render any denial or
explanation unnecessary. Willis told Charles that he had bought a copy of
the "Elia" in America, in order to give to a friend. "What did you give
for it?" asked Lamb. "About seven and sixpence." "Permit me to pay you
that," said Lamb, counting out the money with earnestness on the table; "I
never yet wrote anything that could sell. I am the publisher's ruin. My
last poem won't sell,--not a copy. Have you seen it?" No; Willis had not.
"It's only eighteenpence, and I'll give you sixpence towards it," said
Lamb; and he described where Willis would find it, "sticking up in a shop
window in the Strand." Lamb ate nothing, but inquired anxiously for some
potted fish, which Mr. R---- used to procure for him. There was none in
the house; he therefore asked to see the cover of the pot which had
contained it; he thought it would do him good. It was brought, and on it
was a picture of the fish. Lamb kissed it, and then left the table, and
began to wander about the room, with an uncertain step, &c.
This visit must have taken place, I suppose, at or after the time when
Lamb was living at Colebrook Cottage; and the breakfast took place
probably in Mr. Henry Crabbe Robinson's chambers in the Temple, where I
first met Wordsworth.
In the year 1827 Lamb moved into a small house at Enfield, a "gamboge-
colored house," he calls it, where I and other friends went to dine with
him; but it was too far from London, except for rare visits.--It was
rather before that time that a very clever caricature of him had been
designed and engraved ("scratched on copper," as the artist termed it) by
Mr. Brook Pulham. It is still extant; and although somewhat ludicrous and
hyperbolical in the countenance and outline, it certainly renders a
likeness of Charles Lamb. The nose is monstrous, and the limbs are dwarfed
and attenuated. Lamb himself, in a letter to Bernard Barton (10th August,
1827), adverts to it in these terms: "'Tis a little sixpenny thing--too
like by half--in which the draughtsman has done his best to avoid
flattery." Charles's hatred for annuals and albums was continually
breaking out: "I die of albophobia." "I detest to appear in an annual," he
writes; "I hate the paper, the type, the gloss, the dandy plates."
"Coleridge is too deep," again he says, "among the prophets, the gentleman
annuals." "If I take the wings of the morning, and fly to the uttermost
parts of the earth, there will albums be." To Southey he writes about this
time, "I have gone lately into the acrostic line. I find genius declines
with me; but I get clever." The reader readily appreciates the distinction
which the humorist thus cleverly (more than cleverly) makes. In proof of
his subdued quality, however, under the acrostical tyranny, I quote two
little unpublished specimens addressed to the Misses Locke, whom he had
never seen.
To M. L. [Mary Locke.]
Must I write with pen unwilling,
And describe those graces killing,
Rightly, which I never saw?
Yes--it is the album's law.
Let me then invention strain,
On your excelling grace to feign.
Cold is fiction. I believe it
Kindly as I did receive it;
Even as I. F.'s tongue did weave it.
To S. L. [Sarah Locke.]
Shall I praise a face unseen,
And extol a fancied mien,
Rave on visionary charm,
And from shadows take alarm?
Hatred hates without a cause,
Love may love without applause,
Or, without a reason given,
Charmed be with unknown heaven.
Keep the secret, though unmocked,
Ever in your bosom Locked.
After the transfer to Mr. Southern of the "London Magazine," Lamb was
prevailed upon to allow some short papers to be published in the "New
Monthly Magazine."
They were entitled "Popular Fallacies," and were subsequently published
conjointly with the "Elia Essays." He also sent brief contributions to the
"Athenaeum" and the "Englishman," and wrote some election squibs for
Serjeant Wilde, during his then contest for "Newark." But his animal
spirits were not so elastic as formerly, when his time was divided between
official work and companionable leisure; the latter acting as a wholesome
relief to his mind when wearied by labor.
On this subject hear him speaking to Bernard Barton, to whom, as to
others, he had formerly complained of his harassing duties at the India
House, and of his delightful prospect of leisure. Now he writes, "Deadly
long are the days, with but half an hour's candle-light and no fire-light.
The streets, the shops remain, but old friends are gone." "I assure you"
(he goes on) "_no_ work is worse than overwork. The mind preys on itself--
the most unwholesome food. I have ceased to care almost for anybody." To
remedy this tedium, he tries visiting; for the houses of his old friends
were always open to him, and he had a welcome everywhere. But this
visiting will not revive him. His spirits descended to zero--below it. He
is convinced that happiness is not to be found abroad. It is better to go
"to my hole at Enfield, and hide like a sick cat in my corner." Again he
says, "Home, I have none. Never did the waters of heaven pour down on a
forlornes head. What I can do, and overdo, is to walk. I am a sanguinary
murderer of time. But the snake is vital. Your forlorn--C. L."
These are his meditations in 1829, four years only after he had rushed
abroad, full of exaltation and delight, from the prison of a "work-a-day"
life, into the happy gardens of boundless leisure. Time, which was once
his friend, had become his enemy. His letters, which were always full of
goodness, generally full of cheerful humor, sink into discontent. "I have
killed an hour or two with this poor scrawl," he writes. It is unnecessary
to inflict upon the reader all the points of the obvious moral that
obtrudes itself at this period of Charles Lamb's history. It is clear that
the Otiosa Eternitas was pressing upon his days, and he did not know how
to find relief. Although a good Latin scholar,--indeed, fond of writing
letters in Latin,--he did not at this period resort to classical
literature. I heard him indeed once (and once only) quote the well-known
Latin verse from the Georgics, "O Fortunatos," &c., but generally he
showed himself careless about Greeks and Romans; and when (as Mr. Moxon
states) "a traveller brought him some acorns from an ilex that grew over
the tomb of Virgil, he valued them so little that he threw them at the
hackney coachmen as they passed by his window."
I have been much impressed by Lamb's letters to Bernard Barton, which are
numerous, and which, taken altogether, are equal to any which he has
written. The letters to Coleridge do not exhibit so much care or thought;
nor those to Wordsworth or Manning, nor to any others of his intellectual
equals. These correspondents could think and speculate for themselves, and
they were accordingly left to their own resources. "The Volsces have much
corn." But Bernard Barton was in a different condition; he was poor. His
education had been inferior, his range of reading and thinking had been
very confined, his knowledge of the English drama being limited to
Shakespeare and Miss Baillie. He seems, however, to have been an amiable
man, desirous of cultivating the power, such as it was, which he
possessed; and Lamb therefore lavished upon him--the poor Quaker clerk of
a Suffolk banker--all that his wants or ambition required; excellent
worldly counsel, sound thoughts upon literature and art, critical advice
on his own verses, letters which in their actual value surpass the wealth
of many more celebrated collections. Lamb's correspondence with Barton,
whom he had first known in 1822, continued until his death.
In 1830 (September 18th) Hazlitt died. It is unnecessary to enter into any
enumeration of his remarkable qualities. They were known to all his
friends, and to some of his enemies. In Sir Edward Lytton's words, "He
went down to the dust without having won the crown for which he so bravely
struggled. He who had done so much for the propagation of thought, left no
stir upon the surface when he sank." I will not in this place attempt to
weave the moral which nevertheless lies hid in his unrequited life. At
that time the number of Lamb's old intimates was gradually diminished. The
eternally recurring madness of his sister was more frequent. The
hopelessness of it--if hope indeed ever existed--was more palpable, more
depressing. His own spring of mind was fast losing its power of rebound.
He felt the decay of the active principle, and now confined his efforts to
morsels of criticism, to verses for albums, and small contributions to
periodicals, which (excepting only the "Popular Fallacies") it has not
been thought important enough to reprint. To the editor of the
"Athenaeum," indeed, he laments sincerely over the death of Munden. This
was in February, 1832, and was a matter that touched his affections. "He
was not an actor" (he writes), "but something better." To a reader of the
present day--even to a contemporary of Lamb himself--there was something
almost amounting to extravagance in the terms of his admiration. Yet
Munden was, in his way, a remarkable man; and although he was an actor in
farce, he often stood aloof and beyond the farce itself. The play was a
thing merely on which to hang his own conceptions. These did not arise
from the drama, but were elsewhere cogitated, and were interleaved, as it
were, with the farce or comedy which served as an excuse for their
display. The actor was to all intents and purposes _sui generis_.
To speak of my own impressions, Munden did not affect me much in some of
his earlier performances; for then he depended on the play. Afterwards,
when he took the matter into his own hands, and created personages who
owed little or nothing to the playwright, then he became an inventor. He
rose with the occasion. _Sic ivit ad astra_. In the drama of "Modern
Antiques," especially, space was allowed him for his movements. The words
were nothing. The prosperity of the piece depended exclusively on the
genius of the actor. Munden enacted the part of an old man credulous
beyond ordinary credulity; and when he came upon the stage there was in
him an almost sublime look of wonder, passing over the scene and people
around him, and settling apparently somewhere beyond the moon. What he
believed in, improbable as it was to mere terrestrial visions, you at once
conceived to be quite possible,--to be true. The sceptical idiots of the
play pretend to give him a phial nearly full of water. He is assured that
this contains Cleopatra's tear. Well; who can disprove it? Munden
evidently recognized it. "What a large tear!" he exclaimed, Then they
place in his hands a druidical harp, which to vulgar eyes might resemble a
modern gridiron. He touches the chords gently; "pipes to the spirit
ditties of no tone;" and you imagine Aeolian strains. At last William
Tell's cap is produced. The people who affect to cheat him, apparently cut
the rim from a modern hat, and place the skull-cap in his hands; and then
begins the almost finest piece of acting that I ever witnessed. Munden
accepts the accredited cap of Tell with confusion and reverence. He places
it slowly and solemnly on his head, growing taller in the act of crowning
himself. Soon he swells into the heroic size,--a great archer,--and enters
upon his dreadful task. He weighs the arrow carefully; he tries the
tension of the bow, the elasticity of the string; and finally, after a
most deliberate aim, he permits the arrow to fly, and looks forward at the
same time with intense anxiety. You hear the twang, you see the hero's
knitted forehead, his eagerness; you tremble: at last you mark his calmer
brow, his relaxing smile, and are satisfied that the son is saved! It is
difficult to paint in words this extraordinary performance, which I have
several times seen; but you feel that it is transcendent. You think of
Sagittarius, in the broad circle of the Zodiac; you recollect that archery
is as old as Genesis; you are reminded that Ishmael, the son of Hagar,
wandered about the Judaean deserts, and became an archer.
The old actor is now dead; but on his last performance, when he was to act
Sir Robert Bramble, on the night of his taking final leave of the stage,
Lamb greatly desired to be present. He had always loved the actors,
especially the old actors, from his youth; and this was the last of the
Romans. Accordingly Lamb and his sister went to the Drury Lane; but there
being no room in the ordinary parts of the house (boxes or pit), Munden
obtained places for his two visitors in the orchestra, close to the stage.
He saw them carefully ushered in, and well posted; then acted with his
usual vigor, and no doubt enjoyed the plaudits wrung from a thousand
hands. Afterwards, in the interval between the comedy and the farce, he
was seen to appear cautiously, diffidently, at the low door of the
orchestra (where the musicians enter), and beckon to his friends, who then
perceived that he was armed with a mighty pot of porter, for their
refreshment. Lamb, grateful for the generous liquid, drank heartily, but
not ostentatiously, and returned the pot of beer to Munden, who had waited
to remove it from fastidious eyes. He then retreated into the farce; and
then he retired--forever.
After Munden's retirement Lamb almost entirely forsook the theatre; and
his habits became more solitary. He had not relinquished society, nor
professedly narrowed the circle of his friends. But insensibly his
visitors became fewer in number, and came less frequently. Some had died;
some had grown old; some had increased occupation to care for. His old
Wednesday evenings had ceased, and he had placed several miles of road
between London (the residence of their families) and his own home. The
weight of years, indeed, had its effect in pressing down his strength and
buoyancy; his spirit no longer possessed its old power of rebound. Even
the care of housekeeping (not very onerous, one would suppose) troubled
Charles and his sister so much, that they determined to abandon it. This
occurred in 1829. Then they became boarders and lodgers, with an old
person (T. W.), who was their next-door neighbor at Enfield; and of him
Lamb has given an elaborate description. T. W., his new landlord or
housekeeper, he says, is seventy years old; "he has something, under a
competence;" he has one joke, and forty pounds a year, upon which he
retires in a green old age: he laughs when he hears a joke, and when
(which is much oftener) he hears it not. Having served the greater parish
offices, Lamb and his sister become greater, being _his_ lodgers, than
they were when substantial householders. The children of the village
venerate him for his gentility, but wonder also at him for a gentle
indorsation of the person, not amounting to a hump, or, if one, then like
that of the buffalo, and coronative of as mild qualities.
Writing to Wordsworth (and speaking as a great landed proprietor), he
says, "We have ridded ourselves of the dirty acres; settled down into poor
boarders and lodgers; confiding ravens." The distasteful country, however,
still remains, and the clouds still hang over it. "Let not the lying poets
be believed, who entice men from the cheerful streets," he writes. The
country, he thinks, does well enough when he is amongst his books, by the
fire and with candle-light; but day and the green fields return and
restore his natural antipathies; then he says, "In a calenture I plunge
into St. Giles's." So Lamb and his sister leave their comfortable little
house, and subside into the rooms of the Humpback. Their chairs, and
tables, and beds also retreat; all except the ancient bookcase, full of
his "ragged veterans." This I saw, years after Charles Lamb's death, in
the possession of his sister, Mary. "All our furniture has faded," he
writes, "under the auctioneer's hammer; going for nothing, like the
tarnished frippery of the prodigal." Four years afterwards (in 1833) Lamb
moves to his last home, in Church Street, Edmonton, where he is somewhat
nearer to his London friends.
Very curious was the antipathy of Charles to objects that are generally so
pleasant to other men. It was not a passing humor, but a life-long
dislike. He admired the trees, and the meadows, and murmuring streams in
poetry. I have heard him repeat some of Keats's beautiful lines in the Ode
to the Nightingale, about the "pastoral eglantine," with great delight.
But that was another thing: that was an object in its proper place: that
was a piece of art. Long ago he had admitted that the mountains of
Cumberland were grand objects "to look at;" but (as he said) "the houses
in streets were the places to live in." I imagine that he would no more
have received the former as an equivalent for his own modest home, than he
would have accepted a portrait as a substitute for a friend. He was,
beyond all other men whom I have met, essentially metropolitan. He loved
"the sweet security of streets," as he says: "I would set up my tabernacle
there."
In the spring of 1834, Coleridge's health began to decline. Charles had
written to him (in reply) on the 14th April, at which time his friend had
been evidently unwell; for Lamb says that he is glad to see that he could
write so long a letter. He was indeed very ill; and no further personal
intercourse (I believe) took place between Charles and his old
schoolfellow. Coleridge lay ill for months; but his faculties seem to have
survived his bodily decay. He died on the 25th July, 1834; yet on the 5th
of that month he was able to discourse with his nephew on Dryden and
Barrow, on Lord Brook, and Fielding, and Richardson, without any apparent
diminution of judgment. Even on the 10th (a fortnight only before his
death) there was no symptom of speedy dissolution: he then said, "The
scenes of my early life have stolen into my mind like breezes blown from
the Spice Islands." Charles's sorrow was unceasing. "He was my fifty
years' old friend" (he says) "without a dissension. I cannot think without
an ineffectual reference to him." Lamb's frequent exclamations, "Coleridge
is dead! Coleridge is dead!" have been already noticed.
And now the figures of other old friends of Charles Lamb, gradually (one
by one), slip out of sight. Still, in his later letters are to be found
glimpses of Wordsworth and Southey, of Rogers and Hood, of Cary (with whom
his intimacy increases); especially may be noted Miss Isola, whom he
tenderly regarded, and after whose marriage (then left more alone) he
retreats to his last retreat, in Church Street, Edmonton.
From details let us escape into a more general narrative. The latest facts
need not be painfully enumerated. There is little left, indeed, to
particularize. Mary's health fluctuates, perhaps, more frequently than
heretofore. At one time she is well and happy; at another her mind becomes
turbid, and she is then sheltered, as usual, under her brother's care. The
last Essays of Elia are published;--friends visit him;--and he
occasionally visits them in London. He dines with Talfourd and Cary. The
sparks which are brought out are as bright as ever, although the splendor
is not so frequent. Apparently the bodily strength, never great, but
sufficient to move him pleasantly throughout life, seemed to flag a
little. Yet he walks as usual. He and his sister "scramble through the
Inferno:" (as he says to Gary), "Mary's chief pride in it was, that she
should some day brag of it to you." Then he and Mary became very poorly.
He writes, "We have had a sick child, sleeping, or not sleeping, next to
me, with a pasteboard partition between, who killed my sleep. My
bedfellows are Cough and Cramp: we sleep three in a bed. Don't come yet to
this house of pest and age." This is in 1833. At the end of that year (in
December) he writes (once more humorously) to Rogers, expressing, amongst
other things, his love for that fine artist, Stothard: "I met the dear old
man, and it was sublime to see him sit, deaf, and enjoy all that was going
on mirthful with the company. He reposed upon the many graceful and many
fantastic images he had created." His last letter, written to Mrs. Dyer on
the day after his fall, was an effort to recover a book of Mr. Cary, which
had been mislaid or lost, so anxious was he always that every man should
have his own.
In December, 1834, the history of Charles Lamb comes suddenly to a close.
He had all along had a troubled day: now came the night. His spirits had
previously been tolerably cheerful; reading and conversing, as heretofore,
with his friends, on subjects that were familiar to him. There was little
manifest alteration or falling off in his condition of mind or body. He
took his morning walks as usual. One day he stumbled against a stone, and
fell. His face was slightly wounded; but no fatal (or even alarming)
consequence was foreboded. Erysipelas, however, followed the wound, and
his strength (never robust) was not sufficient to enable him to combat
successfully that inflammatory and exhausting disease. He suffered no pain
(I believe); and when the presence of a clergyman was suggested to him, he
made no remark, but understood that his life was in danger; he was quite
calm and collected, quite resigned. At last his voice began to fail, his
perceptions became confused, and he sank gradually, very gradually, until
the 27th of December, 1834; and then--he died! It was the fading away or
disappearance of life, rather than a violent transit into another world.
He died at Edmonton; not, as has been supposed, at Enfield, to which place
he never returned as to a place of residence, after he had once quitted
it.
It is not true that he was ever deranged, or subjected to any restraint,
shortly before his death. There never was the least symptom of mental
disturbance in him after the time (1795-6) when he was placed for a few
weeks in Hoxton Asylum, to allay a little nervous irritation. If it were
necessary to confirm this assertion, which is known to me from personal
observation and other incontrovertible evidence, I would adduce ten of his
published letters (in 1833) and several in 1834; one of them bearing date
only four days before his death. All these documents afford ample
testimony of his clear good sense and kind heart, some of them, indeed,
being tinged with his usual humor.
Charles Lamb was fifty-nine years old at his death; of the same age as
Cromwell, between whom and himself there was of course no other
similitude. A few years before, when he was about to be released from his
wearisome toil at the India House, he said exultingly, that he was passing
out of Time into Eternity. But now came the true Eternity; the old
Eternity,--without change or limit; in which all men surrender their
leisure, as well as their labor; when their sensations and infirmities
(sometimes harassing enough) cease and are at rest. No more anxiety for
the debtor; no more toil for the worker. The rich man's ambition, the poor
man's pains, at last are over. _Hic Jacet_. That "forlorn" inscription is
the universal epitaph. What a world of moral, what speculations, what
pathetic wishes, and what terrible dreams, lie enshrouded in that one
final issue, which we call--DEATH.
To him who never gave pain to a human being, whose genius yielded nothing
but instruction and delight, was awarded a calm and easy death. No man, it
is my belief, was ever loved or lamented more sincerely than Charles Lamb.
His sister (his elder by a decade) survived him for the space of thirteen
years.
By strict economy, without meanness; with much unpretending hospitality;
with frequent gifts and lendings, and without any borrowing,--he
accumulated, during his thirty-three years of constant labor, the moderate
sum of two thousand pounds. No more. That was the sum, I believe, which
was eventually shared amongst his legatees. His other riches were gathered
together and deposited elsewhere; in the memory of those who loved him,--
and there were many of them,--or amongst others of our Anglo-Saxon race,
whose minds he has helped to enrich and soften.
The property of Charles Lamb, or so much as might be wanted for the
purpose, was by his will directed to be applied towards the maintenance
and comfort of his sister; and, subject to this primary object, it was
vested in trustees for the benefit of Miss Isola--Mrs. Moxon.
Mary Lamb's comforts were supplied, with anxiety and tenderness,
throughout the thirteen years during which she survived her brother. I
went to see her, after her brother's death; but her frequent illnesses did
not render visits at all times welcome or feasible. She then resided in
Alpha Road, Saint John's Wood, under the care of an experienced nurse.
There was a twilight of consciousness in her,--scarcely more,--at times;
so that perhaps the mercy of God saved her from full knowledge of her
great loss. Charles, who had given up all his days for her protection and
benefit,--who had fought the great battle of life so nobly,--left her "for
that unknown and silent shore," where, it is hoped, the brother and sister
will renew the love which once united them on earth, and made their lives
holy. Mary Lamb died on the 2Oth May, 1847; and the brother and sister now
lie near each other (in the same grave) in the churchyard of Edmonton, in
Middlesex.
[1] This, with a small variation, is given in Mr. Thomas Moore's
autobiography. I suppose I must have repeated it to him, and that he
forgot the precise words.
[2] I fear that I have not, in all the foregoing instances, set forth with
sufficient precision the grounds or premises upon which the jests were
founded. There were, moreover, various other sayings of Lamb, which do not
come into the above catalogue; as where--when enjoying a pipe with Dr.
Parr, that Divine inquired how he came to acquire the love of smoking so
much, he replied, "I toiled after it as some people do after virtue."--
When Godwin was expatiating on the benefit of unlimited freedom of
thought, especially in matters of religion, Lamb, who did not like this,
interrupted him by humming the little child's song of "Old Father Longlegs
won't say his prayers," adding, violently, "_Throw him down stairs!_"--He
consoles Mr. Crabbe Robinson, suffering under tedious rheumatism, by
writing, "Your doctor seems to keep you under the long cure."--To
Wordsworth, in order to explain that his friend A was in good health, he
writes, "A is well; he is proof against weather, ingratitude, meat
underdone, and every weapon of fate." The story of Lamb replying to some
one, who insisted very strenuously on some uninteresting circumstances
being "a matter of fact," by saying that _he_ was "a matter of lie" man,
is like Leigh Hunt, who, in opposing the frequent confessions of "I'm in
love," asserted, in a series of verses, that he was "In hate."--Charles
hated noise, and fuss, and fine words, but never hated any person. Once,
when he had said, "I hate Z," some one present remonstrated with him:
"Why, you have never seen him." "No," replied Lamb, "certainly not; I
never could hate any man that I have once seen."--Being asked how he felt
when amongst the lakes and mountains of Cumberland, he replied that he was
obliged to think of the Ham and Beef shop near Saint Martin's Lane; this
was in order to bring down his thoughts from their almost too painful
elevation to the sober regions of every-day life.
In the foregoing little history, I have set forth such facts as tend, in
my opinion, to illustrate my friend's character. One anecdote I have
omitted, and it should not be forgotten. Lamb, one day, encountered a
small urchin loaded with a too heavy package of grocery. It caused him to
tremble and stop. Charles inquired where he was going, took (although
weak) the load upon his own shoulder, and managed to carry it to
Islington, the place of destination. Finding that the purchaser of the
grocery was a female, he went with the urchin before her, and expressed a
hope that she would intercede with the poor boy's master, in order to
prevent his being overweighted in future. "Sir," said the dame, after the
manner of Tisiphone, frowning upon him, "I buy my sugar, and have nothing
to do with the man's manner of sending it." Lamb at once perceived the
character of the purchaser, and taking off his hat, said, humbly, "Then I
hope, ma'am, you'll give me a drink of small beer." This was of course
refused. He afterwards called upon the grocer, on the boy's behalf--with
what effect I do not know.
POSTSCRIPT.
I have thus told, as far as my ability permits, the story of the life of
Charles Lamb.
I have not ventured to deduce any formidable moral from it. Like Lamb
himself, I have great dislike to ostentatious precepts and impertinent
lessons. Facts themselves should disclose their own virtues. A man who is
able to benefit by a lesson will, no doubt, discover it, under any husk or
disguise, before it is stripped and laid bare--to the kernel.
Besides, too much teaching may disagree with the reader. It is apt to
harden the heart, wearying the attention, and mortifying the self-love.
Such disturbances of the system interfere with the digestion of a truth.
Even Gulliver is sometimes too manifestly didactic. His adventures, simply
told, would have emitted spontaneously a luminous atmosphere, and need not
have been distilled into brilliant or pungent drops.
No history is barren of good. Even from the foregoing narrative some
benefit may be gleaned, some sympathy may be excited, which naturally
forms itself into a lesson.
Let us look at it cursorily.
Charles Lamb was born almost in penury, and he was taught by charity. Even
when a boy he was forced to labor for his bread. In the first opening of
manhood a terrible calamity fell upon him, in magnitude fit to form the
mystery or centre of an antique drama. He had to dwell, all his days, with
a person incurably mad. From poverty he passed at once to unpleasant toil
and perpetual fear. These were the sole changes in his fortune. Yet he
gained friends, respect, a position, and great sympathy from all; showing
what one poor man of genius, under grievous misfortune, may do, if he be
courageous and faithful to the end.
Charles Lamb never preached nor prescribed, but let his own actions tell
their tale and produce their natural effects; neither did he deal out
little apothegms or scraps of wisdom, derived from other minds. But he
succeeded; and in every success there must be a mainstay of right or truth
to support it; otherwise it will eventually fail.
It is true that in his essays and numerous letters many of his sincere
thoughts and opinions are written down. These, however, are written down
simply, and just as they occur, without any special design. Some persons
exhibit only their ingenuity, or learning. It is not every one who is
able, like the licentiate Pedro Garcias, to deposit his wealth of soul by
the road-side.
Like all persons of great intellectual sensibility, Lamb responded to all
impressions. To sympathize with Tragedy or Comedy only, argues a limited
capacity. The mind thus constructed is partially lame or torpid. One
hemisphere has never been reached.
It should not be forgotten that Lamb possessed one great advantage. He
lived and died amongst _his equals_. This was what enabled him to exercise
his natural strength, as neither a parasite nor a patron can. It is
marvellous how freedom of thought operates; what strength it gives to the
system; with what lightness and freshness it endues the spirit. Then, he
was made stronger by trouble; made wiser by grief.
I have not attempted to fix the precise spot in which Charles Lamb is to
shine hereafter in the firmament of letters. I am not of sufficient
magnitude to determine his astral elevation--where he is to dwell--between
the sun Shakespeare and the twinkling Zoilus. That must be left to time.
Even the fixed stars at first waver and coruscate, and require long
seasons for their consummation and final settlement.
Whenever he differs with us in opinion (as he does occasionally), let us
not hastily pronounce him to be wrong. It is wise, as well as modest, not
to show too much eagerness to adjust the ideas of all other thinkers to
the (sometimes low) level of our own.
APPENDIX.
In the following pages will be found the opinions of several distinguished
authors on the subject of Charles Lamb's genius and character, and also a
contribution (by himself) to the _Athenaeum_, made in January, 1835. All
the writers were contemporary with Lamb, and were personally intimate with
him. The extracts may be accepted as corroborative, in some degree, of the
opinions set forth in the foregoing Memoir.
HAZLITT.
[_From Hazlitt's "Spirit of the Age." Title, "Elia."_]
Mr. Lamb has the very soul of an antiquarian, as this implies a reflecting
humanity. The film of the past hovers forever before him. He is shy,
sensitive, the reverse of everything coarse, vulgar, obtrusive, and
commonplace. His spirit clothes itself in the garb of elder time;
homelier, but more durable. He is borne along with no pompous paradoxes,
shines in no glittering tinsel of a fashionable phraseology, is neither
fop nor sophist. He has none of the turbulence or froth of new-fangled
opinions. His style runs pure and clear, though it may often take an
underground course, or be conveyed through old-fashioned conduits....
There is a fine tone of chiaro-scuro, a moral perspective in his writings.
He delights to dwell on that which is fresh to the eye of memory; he
yearns after and covets what soothes the frailty of human nature. That
touches him most nearly which is withdrawn to a certain distance, which
verges on the borders of oblivion; that piques and provokes his fancy most
which is hid from a superficial glance. That which, though gone by, is
still remembered, is in his view more genuine, and has given more signs
that it will live, than a thing of yesterday, which may be forgotten to-
morrow. Death has in this sense the spirit of life in it; and the shadowy
has to our author something substantial.
Mr. Lamb has a distaste to new faces, to new books, to new buildings, to
new customs. He is shy of all imposing appearances, of all assumptions of
self-importance, of all adventitious ornaments, of all mechanical
advantages, even to a nervous excess. It is not merely that he does not
rely upon, or ordinarily avail himself of them; he holds them in
abhorrence: he utterly abjures and discards them. He disdains all the
vulgar artifices of authorship, all the cant of criticism and helps of
notoriety.
His affections revert to and settle on the past; but then even this must
have something personal and local in it to interest him deeply and
thoroughly. He pitches his tent in the suburbs of existing manners, and
brings down his account of character to the few straggling remains of the
last generation. No one makes the tour of our southern metropolis, or
describes the manners of the last age, so well as Mr. Lamb,--with so fine,
and yet so formal an air. How admirably he has sketched the former inmates
of the South Sea House; what "fine fretwork he makes of their double and
single entries!"
With what a firm yet subtle pencil he has embodied Mrs. Battle's opinions
on Whist! With what well-disguised humor he introduces us to his
relations, and how freely he serves up his friends!
The streets of London are his fairy-land, teeming with wonder, with life
and interest to his retrospective glance, as it did to the eager eye of
childhood: he has contrived to weave its tritest traditions into a bright
and endless romance.
[_From Hazlitt's "Table Talk,"_ Vol. II.]
Mr. Lamb is the only imitator of old English style I can read with
pleasure; and he is so thoroughly imbued with the spirit of his authors,
that the idea of imitation is almost done away. There is an inward
unction, a marrowy vein both in the thought and feeling, an intuition,
deep and lively, of his subject, that carries off any quaintness or
awkwardness arising from an antiquated style and dress. The matter is
completely his own, though the manner is assumed. Perhaps his ideas are
altogether so marked and individual, as to require their point and
pungency to be neutralized by the affectation of a singular but
traditional form of conveyance. Tricked out in the prevailing costume,
they would probably seem more startling and out of the way. The old
English authors, Burton, Fuller, Coryate, Sir Thomas Browne, are a kind of
mediators between us and the more eccentric and whimsical modern,
reconciling us to his peculiarities. I must confess that what I like best
of his papers under the signature of Elia (still I do not presume, amidst
such excellence, to decide what is most excellent) is the account of Mrs.
Battle's "Opinions on Whist," which is also the most free from obsolete
allusions and turns of expression,--
"A well of native English undefiled."
To those acquainted with his admired prototypes, these Essays of the
ingenious and highly gifted author have the same sort of charm and relish
that Erasmus's "Colloquies," or a fine piece of modern Latin, have to the
classical scholar.--"_On Familiar Style_."
[_Hazlitt's "Plain Speaker,"_ Vol. I. p. 62.]
At Lamb's we used to have lively skirmishes at their Thursday evening
parties. I doubt whether the Small Coal-man's musical parties could exceed
them. O for the pen of John Buncle to consecrate a _petit souvenir_ to
their memory! There was Lamb himself, the most delightful, the most
provoking, the most witty and sensible of men. He always made the best pun
and the best remark in the course of the evening. His serious
conversation, like his serious writing, is his best. No one ever stammered
out such fine, piquant, deep, eloquent things, in half a dozen sentences,
as he does. His jests scald like tears, and he probes a question with a
play upon words. What a keen, laughing, hair-brained vein of homefelt
truth! What choice venom! How often did we cut into the haunch of letters!
How we skimmed the cream of criticism! How we picked out the marrow of
authors! Need I go over the names? They were but the old, everlasting set
--Milton and Shakespeare, Pope and Dryden, Steele and Addison, Swift and
Gay, Fielding, Smollett, Sterne, Richardson, Hogarth's prints, Claude's
landscapes, the Cartoons at Hampton Court, and all those things that,
having once been, must ever be. The Scotch Novels had not then been heard
of: so we said nothing about them. In general we were hard upon the
moderns. The author of the "Rambler" was only tolerated in Boswell's Life
of him; and it was as much as any one could do to edge in a word for
Junius. Lamb could not bear _Gil Blas_: this was a fault. I remember the
greatest triumph I ever had was in persuading him, after some years'
difficulty, that Fielding was better than Smollett. On one occasion he was
for making out a list of persons famous in history that one would wish to
see again, at the head of whom were Pontius Pilate, Sir Thomas Browne, and
Dr. Faustus; but we black-balled most of his list! But with what a gusto
would he describe his favorite authors, Donne or Sir Philip Sidney, and
call their most crabbed passages _delicious_! He tried them on his palate,
as epicures taste olives, and his observations had a smack in them, like a
roughness on the tongue. With what discrimination he hinted a defect in
what he admired most,--as in saying the display of the sumptuous banquet,
in "Paradise Regained," was not in true keeping, as the simplest fare was
all that was necessary to tempt the extremity of hunger; and stating that
Adam and Eve in "Paradise Lost" were too much like married people. He has
furnished many a text for Coleridge to preach upon. There was no fuss or
cant about him; nor were his sweets or sours ever diluted with one
particle of affectation.--_"On the Conversation of Authors."_
[_From "Autobiography of Leigh Hunt,"_ pp. 250-253.]
Let me take this opportunity of recording my recollections in general of
my friend Lamb; of all the world's friend, particularly of his oldest
friends, Coleridge and Southey; for I think he never modified or withheld
any opinion (in private or bookwards) except in consideration of what he
thought they might not like.
Charles Lamb had a head worthy of Aristotle, with as fine a heart as ever
beat in human bosom, and limbs very fragile to sustain it. There was a
caricature of him sold in the shops, which pretended to be a likeness.
Procter went into the shop in a passion, and asked the man what he meant
by putting forth such a libel. The man apologized, and said that the
artist meant no offence. There never was a true portrait of Lamb. His
features were strongly yet delicately cut; he had a fine eye as well as
forehead; and no face carried in it greater marks of thought and feeling.
It resembled that of Bacon, with less worldly vigor and more sensibility.
As his frame, so was his genius. It was as fit for thought as could be,
and equally as unfit for action; and this rendered him melancholy,
apprehensive, humorous, and willing to make the best of everything as it
was, both from tenderness of heart and abhorrence of alteration. His
understanding was too great to admit an absurdity; his frame was not
strong enough to deliver it from a fear. His sensibility to strong
contrasts was the foundation of his humor, which was that of a wit at once
melancholy and willing to be pleased.... His puns were admirable, and
often contained as deep things as the wisdom of some who have greater
names; such a man, for instance, as Nicole, the Frenchman, who was a baby
to him. Lamb would have cracked a score of jokes at Nicole, worth his
whole book of sentences; pelted his head with pearls. Nicole would not
have understood him, but Rochefou-cault would, and Pascal too; and some of
our old Englishmen would have understood him still better. He would have
been worthy of hearing Shakespeare read one of his scenes to him, hot from
the brain. Commonplace found a great comforter in him, as long as it was
good-natured; it was to the ill-natured or the dictatorial only that he
was startling. Willing to see society go on as it did, because he
despaired of seeing it otherwise, but not at all agreeing in his interior
with the common notions of crime and punishment, he "_dumfounded_" a long
tirade against vice one evening, by taking the pipe out of his mouth, and
asking the speaker, "Whether he meant to say that a thief was not a good
man?" To a person abusing Voltaire, and indiscreetly opposing his
character to that of Jesus Christ, he said admirably well (though he by no
means overrated Voltaire, nor wanted reverence in the other quarter), that
"Voltaire was a very good Jesus Christ _for the French_." He liked to see
the church-goers continue to go to church, and wrote a tale in his
sister's admirable little book (_Mrs. Leicester's School_) to encourage
the rising generation to do so; but to a conscientious deist he had
nothing to object; and if an atheist had found every other door shut
against him, he would assuredly not have found his. I believe he would
have had the world remain precisely as it was, provided it innovated no
further; but this spirit in him was anything but a worldly one, or for his
own interest. He hardly contemplated with patience the new buildings in
the Regent's Park; and, privately speaking, he had a grudge against
_official_ heaven-expounders, or clergymen. He would rather, however, have
been with a crowd that he disliked, than felt himself alone. He said to me
one day, with a face of great solemnity, "What must have been that man's
feelings, who thought himself _the first deist?_" ... He knew how many
false conclusions and pretensions are made by men who profess to be guided
by facts only, as if facts could not be misconceived, or figments taken
for them; and therefore, one day, when somebody was speaking of a person
who valued himself on being a matter-of-fact man, "Now," said he, "I value
myself on being a matter-of-lie man." This did not hinder his being a man
of the greatest veracity, in the ordinary sense of the word; but "truth,"
he said, "was precious, and not to be wasted on everybody." Those who wish
to have a genuine taste of him, and an insight into his modes of life,
should read his essays on _Hogarth_ and _King Lear_, his _Letters_, his
article on the _London Streets_, on _Whist-Playing_, which he loves, and
on _Saying Grace before Meat_, which he thinks a strange moment to select
for being grateful. He said once to a brother whist-player, whose hand was
more clever than clean, and who had enough in him to afford the joke, "M.,
if dirt were trumps, what hands you would hold!"
* * * * *
FORSTER.
[_From Mr. John Forsters Contribution to the New Monthly Magazine,_ 1835.
_Title, "Charles Lamb."_]
Charles Lamb's first appearance in literature was by the side of Samuel
Taylor Coleridge. He came into his first battle, as he tells us
(literature is a sort of warfare), under cover of that greater Ajax.
We should like to see this remarkable friendship (remarkable in all
respects and in all its circumstances) between two of the most original
geniuses in an age of no common genius, worthily recorded. It would
outvalue, in the view of posterity, many centuries of literary quarrels.
Lamb never fairly recovered the death of Coleridge. He thought of little
else (his sister was but another portion of himself) until his own great
spirit joined his friend's. He had a habit of venting his melancholy in a
sort of mirth. He would, with nothing graver than a pun, "cleanse his
bosom of the perilous stuff that weighed" upon it. In a jest, or a few
light phrases, he would lay open the recesses of his heart. So in respect
of the death of Coleridge. Some old friends of his saw him two or three
weeks ago, and remarked the constant turning and reference of his mind. He
interrupted himself and them almost every instant with some play of
affected wonder or humorous melancholy on the words "_Coleridge is dead_."
Nothing could divert him from that, for the thought of it never left him.
About the same time, we had written to him to request a few lines for the
literary album of a gentleman who entertained a fitting admiration of his
genius. It was the last request we were to make, and the last kindness we
were to receive. He wrote in Mr. ----'s volume, and wrote of Coleridge.
This, we believe, was the last production of his pen. A strange and not
unenviable chance, which saw him at the end of his literary pilgrimage, as
he had been at the beginning,--in that immortal company. We are indebted,
with the reader, to the kindness of our friend for permission to print the
whole of what was written. It would be impertinence to offer a remark on
it. Once read, its noble and affectionate tenderness will be remembered
forever.
"When I heard of the death of Coleridge, it was without grief. It seemed
to me that he long had been on the confines of the next world,--that he
had a hunger for eternity. I grieved then that I could not grieve. But
since, I feel how great a part he was of me. His great and dear spirit
haunts me. I cannot think a thought, I cannot make a criticism on men or
books, without an ineffectual turning and reference to him. He was the
proof and touchstone of all my cogitations. He was a Grecian (or in the
first form) at Christ's Hospital, where I was deputy Grecian; and the same
subordination and deference to him I have preserved through a life-long
acquaintance. Great in his writings, he was greatest in his conversation.
In him was disproved that old maxim, that we should allow every one his
share of talk. He would talk from morn to dewy eve, nor cease till far
midnight; yet who ever would interrupt him,--who would obstruct that
continuous flow of converse, fetched from Helicon or Zion? He had the tact
of making the unintelligible seem plain. Many who read the abstruser parts
of his "Friend" would complain that his works did not answer to his spoken
wisdom. They were identical. But he had a tone in oral delivery, which
seemed to convey sense to those who were otherwise imperfect recipients.
He was my fifty years old friend without a dissension. Never saw I his
likeness, nor probably the world can see again. I seem to love the house
he died at more passionately than when he lived. I love the faithful
Gilmans more than while they exercised their virtues towards him living.
What was his mansion is consecrated to me a chapel.
"CHAS. LAMB.
"EDMONTON, November 21, 1834."
Within five weeks of this date Charles Lamb died. A slight accident
brought on an attack of erysipelas, which proved fatal; his system was not
strong enough for resistance. It is some consolation to add, that, during
his illness, which lasted four days, he suffered no pain, and that his
faculties remained with him to the last. A few words spoken by him the day
before he died showed with what quiet collectedness he was prepared to
meet death.
As an Essayist, Charles Lamb will be remembered, in years to come, with
Rabelais and Montaigne, with Sir Thomas Browne, with Steele, and with
Addison. He unites many of the finest characteristics of these several
writers. He has wisdom and wit of the highest order, exquisite humor, a
genuine and cordial vein of pleasantry, and the most heart-touching
pathos. In the largest acceptation of the word he is a humanist. No one of
the great family of authors past or present has shown in matters the most
important or the most trivial so delicate and extreme a sense of all that
is human. It is the prevalence of this characteristic in his writings
which has subjected him to occasional charges of want of imagination.
This, however, is but half-criticism; for the matter of reproach may in
fact be said to be his triumph. It was with a deep relish of Mr. Lamb's
faculty that a friend of his once said, "He makes the majesties of
imagination seem familiar." It is precisely thus with his own imagination.
It eludes the observation of the ordinary reader in the modesty of its
truth, in its social and familiar air. His fancy as an Essayist is
distinguished by singular delicacy and tenderness; and even his conceits
will generally be found to be, as those of his favorite Fuller often are,
steeped in human feeling and passion. The fondness he entertained for
Fuller, for the author of the "Anatomy of Melancholy," and for other
writers of that class, was a pure matter of temperament. His thoughts were
always his own. Even when his words seem cast in the very mould of others,
the perfect originality of his thinking is felt and acknowledged; we may
add, in its superior wisdom, manliness, and unaffected sweetness. Every
sentence in those Essays may be proved to be crammed full of thinking. The
two volumes will be multiplied, we have no doubt, in the course of a few
years, into as many hundreds; for they contain a stock of matter which
must be ever suggestive to more active minds, and will surely revisit the
world in new shapes--an everlasting succession and variety of ideas. The
past to him was not mere dry antiquity; it involved a most extensive and
touching association of feelings and thoughts, reminding him of what we
have been and may be, and seeming to afford a surer ground for resting on
than the things which are here to-day and may be gone to-morrow. We know
of no inquisition more curious, no speculation more lofty, than may be
found in the Essays of Charles Lamb. We know no place where conventional
absurdities receive so little quarter; where stale evasions are so plainly
exposed; where the barriers between names and things are at times so
completely flung down. And how, indeed, could it be otherwise? For it is
truth that plays upon his writings like a genial and divine atmosphere. No
need for them to prove what they would be at by any formal or logical
analysis; no need for him to tell the world that this institution is wrong
and that doctrine right; the world may gather from those writings their
surest guide to judgment in these and all other cases--a general and
honest appreciation of the humane and true.
Mr. Lamb's personal appearance was remarkable. It quite realized the
expectations of those who think that an author and a wit should have a
distinct air, a separate costume, a particular cloth, something positive
and singular about him. Such unquestionably had Mr. Lamb. Once he rejoiced
in snuff-color, but latterly his costume was inveterately black--with
gaiters which seemed longing for something more substantial to close in.
His legs were remarkably slight; so indeed was his whole body, which was
of short stature, but surmounted by a head of amazing fineness. His face
was deeply marked and full of noble lines--traces of sensibility,
imagination, suffering, and much thought. His wit was in his eye,
luminous, quick, and restless. The smile that played about his mouth was
ever cordial and good-humored; and the most cordial and delightful of its
smiles were those with which he accompanied his affectionate talk with his
sister, or his jokes against her.
* * * * *
TALFOURD.
[_From Talfourd's "Memorials of C. Lamb,"_ pp. 337-8, 342-3.]
Except to the few who were acquainted with the tragical occurrences of
Lamb's early life, some of his peculiarities seemed strange,--to be
forgiven, indeed, to the excellences of his nature and the delicacy of his
genius,--but still, in themselves, as much to be wondered at as deplored.
The sweetness of his character, breathed through his writings, was felt
even by strangers; but its heroic aspect was unguessed even by many of his
friends. Let them now consider it, and ask if the annals of self-sacrifice
can show anything in human action and endurance more lovely than its self-
devotion exhibits! It was not merely that he saw through the ensanguined
cloud of misfortune which had fallen upon his family, the unstained
excellence of his sister, whose madness had caused it; that he was ready
to take her to his own home with reverential affection, and cherish her
through life; that he gave up, for her sake, all meaner and more selfish
love, and all the hopes which youth blends with the passion which disturbs
and ennobles it; not even that he did all this cheerfully, and without
pluming himself upon his brotherly nobleness as a virtue, or seeking to
repay himself (as some uneasy martyrs do) by small instalments of long
repining,--but that he carried the spirit of the hour in which he first
knew and took his course, to his last. So far from thinking that his
sacrifice of youth and love to his sister gave him a license to follow his
own caprice at the expense of her feelings, even in the lightest matters,
he always wrote and spoke of her as his wiser self, his generous
benefactress, of whose protecting care he was scarcely worthy. How his pen
almost grew wanton in her praise, even when she was a prisoner in the
Asylum after the fatal attack of lunacy, his letters of the time to
Coleridge show; but that might have been a mere temporary exaltation--the
attendant fervor of a great exigency and a great resolution. It was not
so.
Nervous, tremulous, as he seemed--so light of frame that he looked only
fit for the most placid fortune--when the dismal emergencies which
checkered his life arose, he acted with as much promptitude and vigor as
if he had never penned a stanza nor taken a glass too much, or was strung
with herculean sinews. None of those temptations, in which misery is the
most potent, to hazard a lavish expenditure for an enjoyment to be secured
against fate and fortune, ever tempted him to exceed his income, when
scantiest, by a shilling. He had always a reserve for poor Mary's periods
of seclusion, and something in hand besides for a friend in need; and on
his retirement from the India House, he had amassed, by annual savings, a
sufficient sum (invested, after the prudent and classical taste of Lord
Stowell, in "the elegant simplicity of the Three per Cents.") to secure
comfort to Miss Lamb, when his pension should cease with him, even if the
India Company, his great employers, had not acted nobly by the memory of
their inspired clerk--as they did--and gave her the annuity to which a
wife would have been entitled--but of which he could not feel assured.
Living among literary men, some less distinguished and less discreet than
those whom we have mentioned, he was constantly importuned to relieve
distresses which an improvident speculation in literature produces, and
which the recklessness attendant on the empty vanity of self-exaggerated
talent renders desperate and merciless--and to the importunities of such
hopeless petitioners he gave too largely--though he used sometimes to
express a painful sense that he was diminishing his own store without
conferring any real benefit. "Heaven," he used to say, "does not owe me
sixpence for all I have given, or lent (as they call it) to such
importunity; I only gave it because I could not bear to refuse it; and I
have done good by my weakness."
* * * * *
[_B. W. P. "Athenaeum," January 24, 1835_.]
I was acquainted with Mr. Lamb for about seventeen or eighteen years. I
saw him first (I _think_, for my recollection is here imperfect) at one of
Hazlitt's lectures, or at one of Coleridge's dissertations on Shakespeare,
where the metaphysician sucked oranges and said a hundred wonderful
things. They were all three extraordinary men. Hazlitt had more of the
speculative and philosophical faculty, and more observation
(_circum_spection) than Lamb; whilst Coleridge was more subtle and
ingenious than either. Lamb's qualities were a sincere, generous, and
tender nature, wit (at command), humor, fancy, and--if the creation of
character be a test of imagination, as I apprehend it is--imagination
also. Some of his phantasms--the people of the South Sea House, Mrs.
Battle, the Benchers of the Middle Temple, &c. (all of them ideal), might
be grouped into comedies. His sketches are always (to quote his own eulogy
on Marvell) full of "a witty delicacy," and, if properly brought out and
marshalled, would do honor to the stage.
When I first became acquainted with Mr. Lamb, he lived, I think, in the
Temple; but I did not visit him then, and could scarcely, therefore, be
said to _know_ him, until he took up his residence in Russell Street,
Covent Garden. He had a first floor there, over a brazier's shop,--since
converted into a bookseller's,--wherein he frequently entertained his
friends. On certain evenings (Thursdays) one might reckon upon
encountering at his rooms from six to a dozen unaffected people, including
two or three men of letters. A game at whist and a cold supper, followed
by a cheerful glass (glasses!) and "good talk," were the standing dishes
upon those occasions. If you came late, you encountered a perfume of the
"GREAT PLANT." The pipe, hid in smoke (the violet amongst its leaves),--a
squadron of tumblers, fuming with various odors, and a score of quick
intelligent glances, saluted you. There you might see Godwin, Hazlitt,
Leigh Hunt, Coleridge (though rarely), Mr. Robinson, Serjeant Talfourd,
Mr. Ayrton, Mr. Alsager, Mr. Manning,--sometimes Miss Kelly, or Liston,--
Admiral Burney, Charles Lloyd, Mr. Alsop, and various others; and if
Wordsworth was in town, you might stumble upon him also. Our friend's
brother, John Lamb, was occasionally there; and his sister (his excellent
sister) invariably presided.
The room in which he lived was plainly and almost carelessly furnished.
Let us enter it for a moment. Its ornaments, you see, are principally
several long shelves of ancient books; (those are his "ragged veterans.")
Some of Hogarth's prints, two after Leonardo da Vinci and Titian, and a
portrait of Pope, enrich the walls. At the table sits an elderly lady (in
spectacles) reading; whilst from an old-fashioned chair by the fire
springs up a little spare man in black, with a countenance pregnant with
expression, deep lines in his forehead, quick, luminous, restless eyes,
and a smile as sweet as ever threw sunshine upon the human face. You see
that you are welcome. He speaks: "Well, boys, how are you? What's the news
with you? What will you take?" You are comfortable in a moment. Reader! it
is Charles Lamb who is before you--the critic, the essayist, the poet, the
wit, the large-minded _human_ being, whose apprehension could grasp,
without effort, the loftiest subject, and descend in gentleness upon the
humblest; who sympathized with all classes and conditions of men, as
readily with the sufferings of the tattered beggar and the poor chimney-
sweeper's boy as with the starry contemplations of Hamlet "the Dane," or
the eagle-flighted madness of Lear.
The books that I have adverted to, as filling his shelves, were mainly
English books--the poets, dramatists, divines, essayists, &c.,--ranging
from the commencement of the Elizabeth period down to the time of Addison
and Steele. Besides these, of the earliest writers, Chaucer was there;
and, amongst the moderns, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and a few others, whom he
loved.
He had more real knowledge of old English literature than any man whom I
ever knew. He was not an antiquarian. He neither hunted after commas, nor
scribbled notes which confounded his text. The _Spirit_ of the author
descended upon him; and he felt it! With Burton and Fuller, Jeremy Taylor
and Sir Thomas Browne, he was an intimate. The ancient poets--chiefly the
dramatic poets--were his especial friends. He knew every point and turn of
their wit, all the beauty of their characters; loving each for some one
distinguishing particular, and despising none. For absolute contempt is a
quality of youth and ignorance--a foppery which a wise man rejects, and
_he_ rejected it accordingly. If he contemned anything, it was contempt
itself. He saw that every one bore some sign or mark (God's gift) for
which he ought to be valued by his fellows, and esteemed a man. He could
pick out a merit from each author in his turn. He liked Heywood for his
simplicity and pathos; Webster for his deep insight into the heart; Ben
Jonson for his humor; Marlow for his "mighty line;" Fletcher for his wit
and flowing sweetness; and Shakespeare for his combination of wonders. He
loved Donne too, and Quarles, and Marvell, and Sir Philip Sidney, and a
long list besides.
No one will love the old English writers again as _he_ did. Others may
have a leaning towards them--a respect--an admiration--a sort of _young_
man's love: but the true relishing is over; the close familiar friendship
is dissolved. He who went back into dim antiquity, and sought them out,
and proclaimed their worth to the world--abandoning the gaudy rhetoric of
popular authors for their sake, is now translated into the shadowy regions
of the friends he worshipped. He who was once separated from them by a
hundred lustres, hath surmounted that great interval of time and space,
and is now, in a manner, THEIR CONTEMPORARY!
* * * * *
The wit of Mr. Lamb was known to most persons conversant with existing
literature. It was said that his friends bestowed more than due praise
upon it. It is clear that his enemies did it injustice. Such as it was, it
was at all events _his own_. He did not "get up" his conversations, nor
explore the hoards of other wits, nor rake up the ashes of former fires.
Right or wrong, he set to work unassisted; and by dint of his own strong
capacity and fine apprehension, he struck out as many substantially new
ideas as any man of his time. The quality of his humor was essentially
different from that of other men. It was not simply a tissue of jests or
conceits, broad, far-fetched, or elaborate; but it was a combination of
humor with pathos--a sweet stream of thought, bubbling and sparkling with
witty fancies; such as I do not remember to have elsewhere met with,
except in Shakespeare. There is occasionally a mingling of the serious and
the comic in "Don Juan," and in other writers; but they differ, after all,
materially from Lamb in humor:--whether they are better or worse, is
unimportant. His delicate and irritable genius, influenced by his early
studies, and fettered by old associations, moved within a limited circle.
Yet this was not without its advantages; for, whilst it stopped him from
many bold (and many idle) speculations and theories, it gave to his
writings their peculiar charm, their individuality, their sincerity, their
pure, gentle original character. Wit, which is "impersonal," and, for that
very reason perhaps, is nine times out of ten a mere heartless matter, in
him assumed a new shape and texture. It was no longer simply malicious,
but was colored by a hundred gentle feelings. It bore the rose as well as
the thorn. His heart warmed the jests and conceits with which his brain
was busy, and turned them into flowers.
Every one who knew Mr. Lamb, knew that his humor was not affected. It was
a style--a habit; generated by reading and loving the ancient writers, but
adopted in perfect sincerity, and used towards all persons and upon all
occasions. He was the same in 1810 as in 1834--when he died. A man cannot
go on "affecting" for five and twenty years. He must be sometimes sincere.
Now, Lamb was always the same. I never knew a man upon whom Time wrought
so little.