1776, and died 1798. The King's Boys are now called "Mathemats," i.e.,
Members of the Royal Mathematical Foundation for Sea Service. Leigh Hunt
says of William Wales in his _Autobiography_: "He was a good man, of
plain, simple manners, with a heavy large person and a benign
countenance. When he was at Otaheite, the natives played him a trick
while bathing, and stole his small-clothes; which we used to think a
liberty scarcely credible."
Page 172, line 5 from foot. _Processions ... at Easter._ The boys when
in London visited the Lord Mayor on Easter Tuesday.
Page 173, line 4. _St. Matthew's day._ September 21. Speech Day is now
at the end of the Summer Term.
Page 173, line 8. _Barnes ... Markland ... Camden._ Joshua Barnes
(1654-1712), Greek scholar and antiquary; Jeremiah Markland (1693-1776),
Greek scholar; and William Camden (1551-1623), the antiquary--all
Christ's Hospital boys.
Page 173, line 18. _The carol._ I cannot give the words of this
particular carol. Mr. E. H. Pearce, the latest historian of Christ's
Hospital, tells me that it was probably not a school carol peculiar to
Christ's Hospital, like the Easter anthems (which were composed
annually), but an ordinary Christmas hymn. "An old Crug," _i.e._, Old
Christ's Hospitaller, wrote to _Notes and Queries_, December 22, 1855,
asking if any reader could supply the missing stanzas of a Christmas
carol which the Blue Coat boys used to sing fifty years before. This was
one stanza (from memory):--
The wise men of the Eastern globe did spy
A blazing star in the bright glittering sky;
And well they knew it fully did portend,
Christ came to the earth for some great end.
* * * * *
Page 174. TABLE-TALK IN "THE EXAMINER."
In 1813 Leigh Hunt added to his paper, _The Examiner_, a more or less
regular collection of notes under the heading "Table-Talk." At first
they were unsigned, but on May 30 he announced that each contributor
would in future have his own mark. From unmistakable evidence--for
example, the similarity between the "Playhouse Memoranda" on page 184,
and the _Elia_ essay "My First Play"--we may confidently consider Lamb
to be the author of all those pieces signed, like that, ‡, seven of
which are here included. The first contribution thus signed was the note
on "Reynolds and Leonardo da Vinci," on page 174, usually printed in
editions of Lamb's works as "The Reynolds Gallery."
Lamb had other signatures in _The Examiner_. The Dramatic Criticisms and
Reviews of Books, pages 217 to 234, were signed with four stars; the
notice of "Don Giovanni in London" (see page 215) was signed †, and
"Valentine's Day" (in _Elia_) was signed * * *.
Page 174. I.--REYNOLDS AND LEONARDO DA VINCI.
_The Examiner_, June 6, 1813.
Lamb had very little admiration for Sir Joshua Reynolds. See also his
remarks in the essay on "Hogarth," page 88 for example.
Page 174, line 1 of essay. _The Reynolds' Gallery._ The exhibition of
142 of Sir Joshua Reynolds' works, held in 1813 at the Shakespeare
Gallery in Pall Mall, afterwards the British Institution. The
Marlborough Club now stands on its site. Reynolds had died in 1792.
Page 174, line 9 of essay. _Mrs. Anne Clark._ The notorious Mary Anne
Clarke (1776-1852), the mistress of Frederick, Duke of York. After
keeping London society in a state of ferment for some years, by reason
of her disclosures and claims, she was, in 1813, condemned to nine
months' imprisonment for libel. Lamb has a very humorous passage about
this lady in a letter to Manning on March 28, 1809. Reynolds, it need
hardly be said, did not paint her, since, when he died, she was but
sixteen and a nobody.--Kitty Fisher was Catherine Maria Fisher, who died
in 1767, and was painted by Sir Joshua several times. A very notorious
person in her early days; afterwards she married an M.P.
Page 174, line 7 from foot. _Mrs. Long._ Mrs. Long was Amelia Long,
wife of Charles Long, afterwards first Baron Farnborough.--Reynolds
painted a number of Infant Jupiters and Bacchuses. His "Infant Samuel"
is well known. Few pictures of that time have been more often
reproduced.
Page 176. II.--[THE NEW ACTING.]
_The Examiner_, July 18, 1813.
This note adds still another to Lamb's many remarks on the stage, and
stands as a kind of trial sketch for the papers on "The Old Actors,"
which Lamb contributed to the _London Magazine_ nine years later. "The
New Acting" is also noteworthy in containing Lamb's earliest praises of
Miss Kelly, the favourite actress of his later years, of whom he always
wrote so finely.
Page 176, line 4 of essay. _Parsons and Dodd._ William Parsons
(1736-1795), the comedian. Foresight in Congreve's "Love for Love" was
one of his best parts. James William Dodd (1740?-1796), famous for his
Aguecheek, in "Twelfth Night," which Lamb extols in "The Old Actors."
Page 176, line 10 of essay. _Bannister and Dowton._ Two actors of a
later generation. John Bannister (1760-1836), whom Lamb admired as
Walter in Morton's "Children in the Wood," left the stage in 1815;
William Dowton (1764-1851), famous as Falstaff, left the stage in 1836.
Page 176, line 6 from foot. _Russell's Jerry Sneak._ Samuel Thomas
Russell (1769?-1845), celebrated for his Jerry Sneak in Foote's "Mayor
of Garratt." Russell left the stage in 1842.
Page 177, line 8. _Liston's Lord Grizzle._ John Liston (1776?-1846), the
comedian, whose bogus biography by Lamb will be found at page 292 of
this volume. Lord Grizzle is a character in Fielding's "Tom Thumb."
Page 177, line 12. _Nicolaus Klimius._ Baron Holberg's _Nicolai Klimii
Iter Subterraneum_ was translated into English under the title _A
Journey to the World Underground_, 1742. It describes the surprising
subterranean adventures of a Norwegian divinity student.
Page 177, line 19. _Mrs. Mattocks, Miss Pope and Mrs. Jordan._ Isabella
Mattocks (1746-1826), comedienne, took leave of the stage in 1808; Jane
Pope (1742-1818), famous as Audrey in "As You Like It," retired in the
same year; and Dorothea Jordan (1762-1816), the greatest comedienne of
her time, left the London stage in 1814.
Page 177, line 24. _Mrs. Abingdon ... Mrs. Cibber, etc._ Frances
Abington (1737-1815) left the stage in 1799. Mrs. Susannah Maria Cibber
(1714-1766) and Anne (or Nance) Oldfield (1683-1730) were, of course,
before Lamb's time.
Page 177, line 25. _Whole artillery of charms._ Lamb is here recalling
Colley Cibber's account of Mrs. Bountiful's Melantha in _Marriage a la
Mode_ in his _Apology_.
Page 177, line 34. _Miss Kelly._ Lamb's friend, Frances Maria Kelly
(1790-1882), of whom he wrote so much (see pages 217 to 223 of the
present volume, and "Barbara S----" in _Elia_ essays. See also note to
"Miss Kelly at Bath," page 486).
Page 177, at foot. _The Glovers ... Johnstons ... St. Legers_. Mrs.
Julia Glover (1779-1850), the original Alhadra in Coleridge's "Remorse"
in 1813. Mrs. Johnstone, a well-known Elvira in "Pizarro." She made her
London début in 1797. Mrs. Saint Ledger (_née_ Williams) made her London
début in 1799, and began well, but declined into pantomime.
Page 178, line 1. _Miss Candour_. Probably a misprint for Mrs. Candour
in "The School for Scandal," a part created by Miss Pope.
Page 178. III.--[BOOKS WITH ONE IDEA IN THEM.]
_The Examiner_, July 18, 1813. Reprinted by Leigh Hunt in _The
Indicator_, December 13, 1820, under the title of Table Talk, together
with the notes on "Gray's _Bard_" and "Playhouse Memoranda," on pages
181 and 184 of the present volume. Leigh Hunt thus introduced these
reprints:--
It has been a great relief to us during our illness (from which, we
trust, we are now recovering) to find that the re-publication of
some former pieces from other periodical works has not been
disapproved. Being still compelled to make up our numbers in this
way, we have the pleasure of supplying the greater part of the
present one with some Table-Talk, with which a friend entertained
us on a similar occasion a few years ago in _The Examiner_. To the
reader who happens not to be acquainted with them they will be
acceptable for very obvious reasons: those who remember them, will
be glad to read them again; and as for ourselves, besides the other
reasons for being gratified, we feel particular satisfaction in
recalling to the author's memory as well as our own, some genuine
morsels of writing which he appears to have forgotten.
Page 178, line 11., _Patrick's "Pilgrim." The Parable of the Pilgrim_,
1664, by Simon Patrick, Bishop of Ely (1626-1707), which bears a curious
accidental likeness to Bunyan's _Pilgrim's Progress_. Writing to
Wordsworth, in 1815, Lamb says: "Did you ever read Charron on _Wisdom_
or Patrick's _Pilgrim_? If neither, you have two great pleasures to
come." The particular passage quoted from Patrick is in one of Lamb's
Commonplace Books.
Page 178, line 22. _Single-Speech Hamiltons_. William Gerard Hamilton
(1729-1796). He entered Parliament in 1754, and made his famous maiden
speech in 1755. It was not, however, by any means his only speech,
although his nickname still prevails.
Page 178, line 24. _Killigrew's play_. "The Parson's Wedding," a comedy,
by Thomas Killigrew (1612-1683). Lamb included this speech of the Fine
Lady under the heading Facetiæ in his extracts from the Garrick plays in
Hone's _Table Book_, 1827.
Page 178, line 32. _Charron on "Wisdom_." Two translations of the Sieur
de Charron, _De la Sagesse_, might have been read by Lamb: Dean
Stanhope's (1697) and Samson Lennard's (1612). Probably it was
Lennard's, since the passage may be found on page 129 of his 1670
edition, a quarto, and page 145 in the 1640 edition, whereas in Stanhope
it is page 371. Lennard's translation runs thus (Book I., Chap. 39):--
The action of planting and making man is shameful, and all the
parts thereof; the congredients, the preparations, the instruments,
and whatsoever serves thereunto is called and accounted shameful;
and there is nothing more unclean, in the whole Nature of man. The
action of destroying and killing him [is] honorable, and that which
serves thereunto glorious: we guild it, we enrich it, we adorn
ourselves with it, we carry it by our sides, in our hands, upon our
shoulders. We disdain to go to the birth of man; every man runs to
see him die, whether it be in his bed, or in some public place, or
in the field. When we go about to make a man, we hide ourselves, we
put out the candle, we do it by stealth. It is a glory and pomp to
unmake a man, to kill himself; we light the candles to see him die,
we execute him at high noon, we sound a trumpet, we enter the
combat, and we slaughter him when the sun is at highest. There is
but one way to beget, to make a man, a thousand and a thousand
means, inventions, arts to destroy him. There is no reward, honour
or recompense assigned to those that know how to encrease, to
preserve human nature; all honour, greatness, riches, dignities,
empires, triumphs, trophies are appointed for those that know how
to afflict, trouble, destroy it.
Page 178, last line. _What could Pope mean?_
What made (say Montaigne, or more sage Charron)
Otho a warrior, Cromwell a buffoon?
Pope's _Moral Essays_, Ep. I., 87-88.
It has been held that Pope called Charron more sage because he somewhat
mitigated the excessive fatalism (Pyrrhonism) of Montaigne.
Page 179. IV.--[A SYLVAN SURPRISE.]
_The Examiner_, September 12, 1813. Reprinted in _The Indicator_,
January 3, 1821. We know it to be Lamb's by the signature ‡; also from a
sentence in Leigh Hunt's essay on the "Suburbs of Genoa," in _The
Literary Examiner_, August 23, 1823, where, speaking of an expected
sight, he says: "C. L. could not have been more startled when he saw the
chimney-sweeper reclining in Richmond meadows."
Page 179. V.--[STREET CONVERSATION.]
_The Examiner_, September 12, 1813. Signed ‡.
Page 180. VI.--[A TOWN RESIDENCE.]
_The Examiner_, September 12, 1813. Signed ‡.
This note is another contribution to Lamb's many remarks on London.
Allsop, in his reminiscences of Lamb in his _Letters, Conversations and
Recollections of S. T. Coleridge_, 1836, remarks:--
Somerset House, Whitehall Chapel (the old Banqueting Hall), the
church at Limehouse and the new church at Chelsea, with the Bell
house at Chelsea College, which always reminded him of Trinity
College, Cambridge, were the objects most interesting to him [Lamb]
in London.
Page 181. VII.--[GRAY'S "BARD."]
_The Examiner_, September 12, 1813. Signed ‡. Reprinted by Leigh Hunt
under the above title in _The Indicator_, December 13, 1820. In the
Appendix (pages 425-6) will be found other critical comments upon Gray,
which I conjecture to be Lamb's.
Page 181, line 1 of essay. _The beard of Gray's bard._
Loose his beard, and hoary hair
Stream'd like a meteor, to the troubled air.
_The Bard._
Gray himself noted the Miltonic anticipation of this line (see Gosse's
edition, 1884). The lines Lamb quotes are from _Paradise Lost_, I.,
lines 536-537.
Page 181, line 6 of essay. _Heywood's old play._ "The Four 'Prentices of
London," by Thomas Heywood. The speech is that of Turnus respecting the
Persian Sophy. It is copied in one of Lamb's Commonplace Books.
Page 182. VIII.--[AN AMERICAN WAR FOR HELEN.]
_The Examiner_, September 26, 1813. Signed ‡. Reprinted under the above
title by Leigh Hunt in _The Indicator_, January 3, 1821.
Page 182, line 1 of essay. _A curious volume._ Hazlitt's _Handbook to
the Popular, Poetical and Dramatic Literature of Great Britain_, 1867,
gives the title as _Alexandri Fultoni Scoti Epigrammatum Libri Quimque_.
Perth, 1679. 8vo.
Page 182, line 9. "_The master of a seminary ... at Islington._" This
was the Rev. John Evans, a Baptist minister, whose school was in
Pullin's Row, Islington. Gray's _Elegy_ was published as Lamb indicates
in 1806. The headline covering the first three stanzas is "Interesting
Silence."
Page 183. IX.--[DRYDEN AND COLLIER.]
_The Examiner_, September 26, 1813. Signed ‡.
Page 183, line 3. _Jeremy Collier._ Jeremy Collier (1650-1726), the
nonjuror and controversialist. His _Essays upon Several Moral Subjects_,
Part II., were published in 1697. The passage quoted is from that "On
Musick," the second essay in Part II. I have restored his italics and
capitals.
Page 183, at foot. "_His genius...._" Collier's words are: "His genius
was jocular, but when disposed he could be very serious."
Page 184. X.--[PLAYHOUSE MEMORANDA.]
_The Examiner_, December 19, 1813. Signed ‡. Leigh Hunt reprinted it in
_The Indicator_, December 13, 1820.
The paper, towards the end, becomes a first sketch for the _Elia_ essay
"My First Play," 1821. As a whole it is hardly less charming than that
essay, while its analysis of the Theatre audience gives it an
independent interest and value.
Page 185, line 3. _They had come to see Mr. C----._ It was George
Frederick Cooke, of whom Lamb writes in the criticism on page 41, that
they had come to see. Possibly the Cooke they saw was T. P. Cooke
(1786-1864), afterwards famous for his sailor parts; but more probably
an obscure Cooke who never rose to fame. A Mr. Cook played a small part
in Lamb's "Mr. H." in 1806.
Page 186, line 6. _The system of Lucretius._ Lucretius, in _De Rerum
Natura_, imagined the gods to be above passion or emotion, heedless of
this world's concerns, figures of absolute peace.
Page 186, line 22. _It was "Artaxerxes."_ An opera by Thomas Augustine
Arne, produced in 1762, founded upon Metastasio's "Artaserse." From the
other particulars of Lamb's early play-going, given in the _Elia_ essay
"My First Play," we know the date of this performance to be December 1,
1780, that being the only occasion in that or the next season when
"Artaxerxes" was followed by "Harlequin's Invasion." But none of the
singers named by Lamb were in the caste on that occasion. "Who played,
or who sang in it, I know not," he says; merely setting down likely and
well-known names at random. As a matter of fact Artaxerxes was played by
Mrs. Baddeley, Arbaces by Miss Pruden, and Mandane by "a young lady."
Mr. Beard was John Beard (1716?-1791), the tenor. Leoni was the
discoverer and instructor of Braham. He made his début in "Artaxerxes"
in 1775. Mrs. Kennedy, formerly Mrs. Farrell, was a contralto. She died
in 1793.
Page 186, line 10 from foot. _I was, with Uriel._
Th' archangel Uriel, one of the sev'n
Who in God's presence, nearest to his throne,
Stand ready at command.
_Paradise Lost_, III., lines 648-650.
Uriel's station was the sun. See also _Paradise Lost_, III. 160, IV. 577
and 589, and IX. 60.
* * * * *
Page 187. WORDSWORTH'S "EXCURSION."
The _Quarterly Review_, October, 1814. Not reprinted by Lamb.
Wordsworth's _Excursion_ was published in 1814; and it seems to have
been upon his own suggestion, made, probably, to Southey, who was a
power in the _Quarterly_ office, that Lamb should review it. In his
letter to Wordsworth of August 29, 1814, Lamb expressed a not too ready
willingness. Writing again a little later, when the review was done, he
spoke of "the circumstances of haste and peculiar bad spirits" under
which it was written, viewing it without much confidence; and adding,
"But it must speak for itself, if Gifford and his crew do not put words
in its mouth, which I expect." As Lamb expected, so it happened. Lamb's
next letter, after the publication of the October _Quarterly_ (which
does not seem to have come out until very late in the year), ran thus:--
"DEAR WORDSWORTH,--I told you my Review was a very imperfect one. But
what you will see in the Quarterly is a spurious one which Mr. Baviad
Gifford has palm'd upon it for mine. I never felt more vexd in my life
than when I read it. I cannot give you an idea of what he has done to it
out of spite at me because he once sufferd me to be called a lunatic in
his Thing. The _language_ he has alterd throughout. Whatever
inadequateness it had to its subject, it was in point of composition the
prettiest piece of prose I ever writ, and so my sister (to whom alone I
read the MS.) said. That charm if it had any is all gone: more than a
third of the substance is cut away and that not all from one place, but
_passim_, so as to make utter nonsense. Every warm expression is changed
for a nasty cold one. I have not the cursed alteration by me, I shall
never look at it again, but for a specimen I remember--I had said the
Poet of the Excurs^n 'walks thro' common forests as thro' some Dodona or
enchanted wood and every casual bird that flits upon the boughs, like
that miraculous one in Tasso, but in language more piercing than any
articulate sounds, reveals to him far higher lovelays.' It is now
(besides half a dozen alterations in the same half dozen lines) 'but in
language more _intelligent_ reveals to him'--that is one I remember. But
that would have been little, putting his damnd Shoemaker phraseology
(for he was a shoemaker) in stead of mine which has been tinctured with
better authors than his ignorance can comprehend--for I reckon myself a
dab at _Prose_--verse I leave to my betters--God help them, if they are
to be so reviewed by friend and foe as you have been this quarter. I
have read 'It won't do.'[65] But worse than altering words, he has kept
a few members only of the part I had done best which was to explain all
I could of your 'scheme of harmonies' as I had ventured to call it
between the external universe and what within us answers to it. To do
this I had accumulated a good many short passages, rising in length to
the end, weaving in the Extracts as if they came in as a part of the
text, naturally, not obtruding them as specimens. Of this part a little
is left, but so as without conjuration no man could tell what I was
driving it [? at]. A proof of it you may see (tho' not judge of the
whole of the injustice) by these words--I had spoken something about
'natural methodism--' and after follows 'and therefore the tale of
Margaret sh^d have been postponed' (I forget my words, or his words):
now the reasons for postponing it are as deducible from what goes
before, as they are from the 104th psalm. The passage whence I deduced
it, has vanished, but clapping a colon before a _therefore_ is always
reason enough for Mr. Baviad Gifford to allow to a reviewer that is not
himself. I assure you my complaints are founded. I know how sore a word
alterd makes one, but indeed of this Review the whole complexion is
gone. I regret only that I did not keep a copy. I am sure you would have
been pleased with it, because I have been feeding my fancy for some
months with the notion of pleasing you. Its imperfection or
inadequateness in size and method I knew, but for the _writing part_ of
it, I was fully satisfied. I hoped it would make more than atonement.
Ten or twelve distinct passages come to my mind which are gone, and what
is left is of course the worse for their having been there, the eyes are
pulld out and the bleeding sockets are left. I read it at Arch's shop
with my face burning with vexation secretly, with just such a feeling as
if it had been a review written against myself, making false quotations
from me. But I am ashamd to say so much about a short piece. How are
_you_ served! and the labors of years turn'd into contempt by
scoundrels.
"But I could not but protest against your taking that thing as mine.
Every _pretty_ expression, (I know there were many) every warm
expression, there was nothing else, is vulgarised and frozen--but if
they catch me in their camps again let them spitchcock me. They had a
right to do it, as no name appears to it, and Mr. Shoemaker Gifford I
suppose never waved a right he had since he commencd author. God
confound him and all caitiffs.
"C. L."
[65] "This will never do"--the beginning of the review in the
_Edinburgh_.--ED.
The word "lunatic" refers to the _Quarterly's_ review in December, 1811,
of _The Dramatic Works of John Ford_, by Henry William Weber, Sir Walter
Scott's assistant, where, alluding to the comments on Ford in Lamb's
_Specimens_, quoted by Weber, the reviewer described them as "the
blasphemies of a maniac." See page 57 of this volume for Lamb's actual
remarks on Ford. Southey wrote Gifford a letter of remonstrance, and
Gifford explained that he had used the words without knowledge of Lamb's
history--knowing of him nothing but his name--and adding that he would
have lost his right arm sooner than have written what he did had he
known the circumstances. The late Mr. Dykes Campbell, whose opinion in
such matters was of the weightiest, declined to let Gifford escape with
this apology. Reviewing in _The Athenæum_ for August 25, 1894, a new
edition of Lamb's _Dramatic Specimens_, Mr. Campbell wrote thus:--
Had Gifford merely called Lamb a "fool" or a "madman," the epithet
would have been mere "common form" as addressed by the _Quarterly_
of those days to a wretch who was a friend of other wretches such
as Hunt and Hazlitt; but he went far beyond such common form and
used language of the utmost precision. Weber, wrote Gifford, "has
polluted his pages with the blasphemies of a poor maniac, who it
seems once published some detached scenes from the 'Broken Heart.'
For this unfortunate creature every feeling mind will find an
apology in his calamitous situation." This passage has no meaning
at all if it is not to be taken as a positive statement that Lamb
suffered from chronic mental derangement; yet Gifford when
challenged confessed that when he wrote it he had known absolutely
nothing of Lamb, except his name! It seems to have struck neither
Gifford nor Southey that this was no excuse at all, and something a
good deal worse than no excuse--that even as an explanation it was
not such as an honourable man would have cared to offer. Gifford
added a strongly-worded expression of his feeling of remorse on
learning that his blows had fallen with cruel effect on a sore
place. Both feeling and expression may have been sincere, for,
under the circumstances, only a fiend would be incapable of
remorse. But the excuse or explanation is open to much suspicion,
owing to the fact (revealed in the Murray "Memoirs") that Lamb's
friend Barron Field had been Gifford's collaborator in the
preparation of the article in which the offending passage occurs.
Field was well acquainted with Lamb's personal and family history,
and while the article was in progress the collaborators could
hardly have avoided some exchange of ideas on a subject which
stirred one of them so deeply. Gifford may have said honestly
enough, according to his lights, that only a maniac could have
written the note quoted by Weber, a remark which would naturally
draw from Field some confidences regarding Lamb's history. This is,
of course, pure assumption, but it is vastly more reasonable and
much more likely to be in substantial accordance with the facts
than Gifford's statement that when he called Lamb a poor maniac,
whose calamitous situation offered a sufficient apology for his
blasphemies, he was imaginatively describing a man of whom he knew
absolutely nothing, except that he was "a thoughtless scribbler."
If, as seems only too possible, Gifford deliberately poisoned his
darts, it is also probable that he did not realize what he was
doing. It would be unfair to accept Hazlitt's picture of him as a
true portrait; but Lamb's apology for Hazlitt himself applies with
at least equal force to the first editor of the _Quarterly_. "He
does bad actions without being a bad man." Perhaps it is too
lenient, for though Gifford's attack on Lamb was undoubtedly one of
the bad actions of his life, it was, after all, a matter of
conduct. The apology, whether truthful or the opposite, reveals
deep-seated corruption of principle if not of character.
Lamb's phrase, "Mr. Shoemaker Gifford," had reason for its existence.
William Gifford (1756-1826) was apprenticed to a shoemaker in 1772. Lamb
later repaid some of his debt in the sonnet "St. Crispin to Mr.
Gifford," which appeared in _The Examiner_, October 3, 1819, and was
reprinted in _The Poetical Recreations of "The Champion"_ in 1822.
Gifford, who was editor of the _Quarterly_ on its establishment in 1809,
held the post until his death, in 1826.
The original copy of Lamb's review of Wordsworth, Mr. John Murray
informs me, no longer exists. I have collated the extracts with the
first edition of the _Excursion_ and have also corrected the Tasso.
Page 187, line 3 of essay. _To be called the Recluse._ Wordsworth never
completed this scheme. A fragment called _The Recluse_, Book I., was
published in 1888.
Page 188, line 7. _Which Thomson so feelingly describes._ This is the
passage, from Thomson's _Seasons_, "Winter," 799-809:--
There, through the prison of unbounded wilds,
Barr'd by the hand of Nature from escape,
Wide roams the Russian exile. Nought around
Strikes his sad eye, but deserts lost in snow;
And heavy-loaded groves; and solid floods,
That stretch'd, athwart the solitary vast,
Their icy horrors to the frozen main;
And cheerless towns far-distant, never bless'd,
Save when its annual course the caravan
Bends to the golden coast of rich Cathay,
With news of human-kind.
* * * * *
Page 200. ON THE MELANCHOLY OF TAILORS.
_The Champion_, December 4, 1814. _Works_, 1818.
The editor of _The Champion_ was then John Scott, afterwards editor of
the _London Magazine_, which printed Lamb's best work. From a letter
written by Lamb to Scott in 1814 (in the late Dr. Birkbeck Hill's _Talks
about Autographs_, 1896) it seems that he was to contribute more or less
regularly to _The Champion_. Lamb wrote:--
"SIR,--Your explanation is perfectly pleasant to me, and I accede
to your proposal most willingly.
"As I began with the beginning of this month, I will if you please
call upon you for _your part of the engagement_ (supposing I shall
have performed mine) on the 1st of March next, and thence forward
if it suit you quarterly--you will occasionally wink at BRISKETS
and VEINY PIECES.
"Your Obt. Svt.,
"C. LAMB."
This essay on "Tailors" is, however, the only piece by Lamb that can be
identified, although probably many of the passages from old authors
quoted in _The Champion_ in Scott's time were contributed by Lamb. These
might be the briskets and veiny pieces he refers to. On January 23,
1814, is "A Challenge" of the Learned Dog at Drury Lane which he might
have written; but it is not interesting now. Later, after John Thelwall
took over _The Champion_ in 1818, Lamb contributed various epigrams,
which will be found in Vol. IV. of the present edition.
Lamb seems to have sent the present essay to Wordsworth, whose reply we
may imagine took the form of an account of certain tailors within his
own experience that did not comply with Lamb's scription; since Lamb's
answer to that letter is the one dated beginning, "Your experience
about tailors seems to be in point blank opposition to Burton [Lamb's
essay is signed 'Burton, Junior']" and so forth.
When preparing this essay for the _Works_, 1818, Lamb omitted certain
portions. The footnote on page 202 originally continued thus:--
"But commend me above all to a shop opposite Middle Row, in
Holborn, where, by the ingenious contrivance of the master taking
in three partners, there is a physical impossibility of the
conversation ever flagging, while 'the four' alternately toss it
from one to the other, and at whatever time you drop in, you are
sure of a discussion: an expedient which Mr. A----m would do well
to think on, for with all the alacrity with which he and his
excellent family are so dexterous to furnish their successive
contributions, I have sometimes known the continuity of the
dialogue broken into, and silence for a few seconds to intervene."
In connection with Mr. A----m there is a passage in a letter from Mary
Lamb to Miss Hutchinson in 1818, wherein she says that when the Lambs,
finding London insupportable after a long visit to Calne, in Wiltshire
(at the Morgans'), had taken lodgings in Dalston, Charles was so much
the creature of habit, or the slave of his barber, that he went to the
Temple every morning to be shaved, on a roundabout way to the India
House. This would very likely be Mr. A----m, Flower de Luce Court being
just opposite the Temple, off Fetter Lane. The London directories in
those days ignored barbers; hence his name must remain in disguise.
In _The Champion_, also, the paragraph on page 203, beginning, "I
think," etc., ran thus:--
"I think, then, that they [the causes of tailors' melancholy] may
be reduced to three, omitting some subordinate ones; viz.
"The sedentary habits of the tailor.--
Something peculiar in his diet.--
Mental perturbation from a sense of reproach, &c.--"
And at the end of the article, as it now stands, came the following
exposition of the third theory:--
"Thirdly, and lastly, _mental perturbation, arising from a sense of
shame_; in other words, _that painful consciousness which he always
carries about with him, of lying under a sort of disrepute in
popular estimation_. It is easy to talk of despising public
opinion, of its being unworthy the attention of a wise man &c. The
theory is excellent; but, somehow, in practice
"still the world prevails and its dread laugh.
"Tailors are men (it is well if so much be allowed them,) and as
such, it is not in human nature not to feel sore at being
misprized, undervalued, and made a word of scorn.[66] I have often
racked my brains to discover the grounds of this unaccountable
prejudice, which is known to exist against a useful and industrious
body of men. I confess I can discover none, except in the sedentary
posture, before touched upon, which from long experience has been
found by these artists to be the one most convenient for the
exercise of their vocation. But I would beg the more stirring and
locomotive part of the community, to whom the quiescent state of
the tailor furnishes a perpetual fund of rudeness, to consider,
that in the mere action of _sitting_ (which they make so merry
with) there is nothing necessarily ridiculous. That, in particular,
it is the posture best suited to contemplation. That it is that, in
which the hen (a creature of all others best fitted to be a pattern
of careful provision for a family) performs the most beautiful part
of her maternal office. That it is that, in which judges
deliberate, and senators take counsel. That a Speaker of the House
of Commons at a debate, or a Lord Chancellor over a suit, will
oftentimes _sit_ as long as many tailors. Lastly, let these
scoffers take heed, lest themselves, while they mock at others, be
found 'sitting in the seat of the scornful.'"
[66] "It is notorious that to call a man a _tailor_, is to heap the
utmost contempt upon him which the language of the streets can
convey. _Barber's clerk_ is an appellative less galling than this.
But there is a word, which, though apparently divested of all ill
meaning, has for some people a far deeper sting than either. It is
the insulting appellation of _governor_, with which a black-guard,
not in anger, but in perfect good will, salutes your second-rate
gentry, persons a little above his own cut. He rarely bestows it
upon the topping gentry of all, but reserves it for those of a rank
or two above his own, or whose garb is rather below their rank. It
is a word of approximation. A friend of mine will be melancholy a
great while after, from being saluted with it. I confess I have not
altogether been unhonoured with it myself."
It is told of Lamb that he once said he would sit with anything but a
hen or a tailor.
Page 200. _Motto._ From Virgil's _Æneid_, Book VI., lines 617, 618.
"There luckless Theseus sits, and shall sit for ever."
Page 201, line 25. _Beautiful motto._ Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk,
who married Mary Tudor, sister of Henry VIII., appeared at a tournament
with a saddle-cloth made half of frieze and half of cloth of gold. Each
side had a symbolical motto. One ran:--
Cloth of frize, be not too bold,
Though thou art match'd with cloth of gold.
The other:--
Cloth of gold do not despise,
Though thou art match'd with cloth of frize.
Page 201, line 3 from foot. _Eliot's famous troop._ General George
Augustus Eliott (afterwards Lord Heathfield), the defender of Gibraltar
and the founder of the 15th or King's Own Royal Light Dragoons, now the
15th Hussars, whose first action was at Emsdorf. At the time that
regiment was being collected, there was a strike of tailors, many of
whom joined it. Eliott, one version of the incident says, wished to get
men who never having ridden had not to unlearn any bad methods of
riding. Later they were engaged against the Spaniards in Cuba in
1762-1763.
Page 202, line 6. _Speculative politicians._ Lamb was probably referring
to Francis Place (1771-1854), the tailor-reformer, among whose friends
were certain of Lamb's own--William Frend, for example.
Page 202. _Footnote._ "_Gladden life._" From Johnson's _Life of Edmund
Smith_--"one who has gladdened life"; or possibly from Coombe's "Peasant
of Auburn":--
And whilst thy breast matures each patriot plan
That gladdens life and man endears to man.
Page 203, line 22. _Dr. Norris's famous narrative._ _The Narrative of
Dr. Robert Norris concerning the strange and deplorable Frenzy of Mr.
John Dennis_ was a satirical squib by Pope against the critic John
Dennis (1657-1734). The passage referred to by Lamb runs:--
_Doct._ Pray, Sir, how did you contract the Swelling?
_Denn._ By a Criticism.
_Doct._ A Criticism! that's a Distemper I never read of in _Galen_.
_Denn._ S' Death, Sir, a Distemper! It is no Distemper, but a Noble
Art. I have sat fourteen Hours a Day at it; and are you a Doctor,
and don't know there's a Communication between the Legs and the
Brain?
_Doct._ What made you sit so many Hours, Sir?
_Denn._ _Cato_, Sir.
_Doct._ Sir, I speak of your Distemper, what gave you this Tumour?
_Denn._ _Cato, Cato, Cato._
Page 204, line 2. _Envious Junos._ Lucina, at Juno's bidding, sat
cross-legged before Alcmena to prolong her travail. Sir Thomas Browne in
his _Pseudodoxia Epidemica; or, Enquiry into Vulgar Errors_, Book V.,
speaks of the posture as "veneficious," and cites Juno's case.
Page 204, at the end. _Well known that this last-named vegetable._ This
is the old joke about tailors "cabbaging," that is to say, stealing
cloth. The term is thus explained in Phillips' _History of Cultivated
Vegetables_:--
The word cabbage ... means the firm head or ball that is formed by
the leaves turning close over each other.... From thence arose the
cant word applied to tailors, who formerly worked at the private
houses of their customers, where they were often accused of
cabbaging: which means the rolling up of pieces of cloth instead of
the list and shreds, which they claim as their due.
Lamb returned to this jest against tailors in his verses "Satan in
Search of a Wife," in 1831.
In _The Champion_ for December 11, 1814, was printed a letter defending
tailors against Lamb.
* * * * *
Page 204. ON NEEDLE-WORK.
_The British Lady's Magazine and Monthly Miscellany_, April 1, 1815. By
Mary Lamb.
The authority for attributing this paper to Mary Lamb is Crabb Robinson.
In his Diary for December 11, 1814, he writes: "I called on Miss Lamb,
and chatted with her. She was not unwell, but she had undergone great
fatigue from writing an article about needle-work for the new _Ladies'
British Magazine_. She spoke of writing as a most painful occupation,
which only necessity could make her attempt."
We know that Mary Lamb's needle was required to help keep the Lamb
family, not only after Samuel Salt's death in 1792, when they had to
move from the Temple, but very likely while they were there also. In one
of the newspaper accounts of the tragedy of September, 1796, she is
described as "a mantua-maker." Possibly she continued to sew for a while
after she joined her brother, in 1799, but she would hardly call that
"early life," being thirty-five in that year.
* * * * *
Page 210. ON THE POETICAL WORKS OF GEORGE WITHER.
This is the one prose article that, to the best of our knowledge, made
its first and only appearance in the _Works_ (1818). It was inspired by
John Mathew Gutch (1776-1861), Lamb's schoolfellow at Christ's Hospital,
with whom he shared rooms in Southampton Buildings in 1800. Later, when
Gutch had become proprietor, at Bristol, of _Felix Farley's Bristol
Journal_ (in which many of Chatterton's poems had appeared), he took
advantage of his press to set up a private edition of selections from
Wither, a poet then little known and not easily accessible, an
interleaved copy of which, in two volumes, was sent to Lamb in 1809 or
1810. Gutch told the story in an Appendix to his _Lytell Geste of Robin
Hoode_ (1847), wherein he printed a letter from Lamb dated April 9,
1810, concerning the edition, in the course of which Lamb remarks: "I
never saw _Philarete_ before--judge of my pleasure. I could not forbear
scribbling certain critiques in pencil on the blank leaves.... Perhaps I
could digest the few critiques prefixed to the 'Satires,' 'Shepherd's
Hunting,' etc., into a short abstract of Wither's character and
works...."
Lamb returned the book with this letter; and Gutch seems to have then
sent it to Dr. John Nott (1751-1825), of the Hot Wells, Bristol, a
medical man with literary tastes, and the author of a number of
translations, medical treatises, and subsequently of an edition of
Herrick; who added comments of his own both upon Wither and upon Lamb.
Lamb, Gutch tells us, subsequently asked for the book again, with the
intention of preparing from it the present essay on Wither, and coming
then upon Nott's criticisms of himself, superimposed sarcastic
criticisms of Nott. Thus the volumes contain first Wither, then Gutch
and Lamb on Wither, then Nott on Wither and Lamb, and then Lamb on Nott
again and incidentally on Wither again, too, for some of his earlier
opinions were slightly modified.
Lamb gave the volume to his friend John Brook Pulham of the East India
House, and the treasure passed to the fitting possession of the late Mr.
Swinburne, who described it in a paper in the _Nineteenth Century_ for
January, 1885, afterwards republished in his _Miscellanies_, 1886. Mr.
Swinburne permitted me to quote from his very entertaining analysis:--
The second fly-leaf of the first volume bears the inscription, "Jas
Pulham Esqr. from Charles Lamb." A proof impression of the
well-known profile sketch of Lamb by Pulham has been inserted
between this and the preceding fly-leaf. The same place is occupied
in the second volume by the original pencil drawing, to which is
attached an engraving of it "Scratched on Copper by his Friend
Brook Pulham;" and on the fly-leaf following is a second
inscription--"James Pulham Esq. from his friend Chas Lamb." On the
reverse of the leaf inscribed with these names in the first volume
begins the commentary afterwards republished, with slight
alterations and transpositions, as an essay "on the poetical works
of George Wither...."
After the quotation from Drayton, with which the printed essay
concludes, the manuscript proceeds thus:--
"The whole poem, for the delicacy of the thoughts, and height of
the passion, is equal to the best of Spenser's, Daniel's or
Drayton's love verses; with the advantage of comprising in a whole
all the fine things which lie scatter'd in their works, in sonnets,
and smaller addresses--The happy chearful spirit of the author goes
with it all the way; that _sanguine temperament_, which gives to
all Wither's lines (in his most loved metre especially, where
chiefly he is a Poet) an elasticity, like a dancing measure; it
[is] as full of joy, and confidence, and high and happy thoughts,
as if it were his own Epithalamium which, like Spenser, he were
singing, and not a piece of perambulary, probationary
flattery...."[67]
[67] Lamb subsequently altered the conclusion of this paragraph to:
"as if, like Spenser, he were singing his own Epithalamium, and not
a strain of probationary courtship."
On page 70 Lamb has proposed a new reading which speaks for
itself--"Jove's endeared Ganimed," for the meaningless "endured" of
the text before him. Against a couplet now made famous by his
enthusiastic citation of it--
"Thoughts too deep to be expressed
And too strong to be suppressed--"
he has written--"Two eminently beautiful lines." Opposite the
couplet in which Wither mentions the poets
"whose verse set forth
Rosalind and Stella's worth"
Gutch (as I suppose) has written the names of Lodge and Sidney;
under which Lamb has pencilled the words "Qu. Spenser and Sidney;"
perhaps the more plausible conjecture, as the date of Lodge's
popularity was out, or nearly so, before Wither began to write.
The next verses [_The Shepherd's Hunting_] are worth transcription
on their own account no less than on account of Lamb's annotation.
"It is known what thou canst do,
For it is not long ago
When that Cuddy, thou, and I,
Each the other's skill to try,
At St. Dunstan's charmèd well,
(As some present there can tell)
Sang upon a sudden theme,
Sitting by the crimson stream;
Where if thou didst well or no
Yet remains the song to show."
To the fifth of these verses the following note is appended:--
"The Devil Tavern, Fleet Street, where Child's Place now stands,
and where a sign hung in my memory within 18" (substituted for 16)
"years, of the Devil and St. Dunstan--Ben Jonson made this a famous
place of resort for poets by drawing up a set of Leges Convivales
which were engraven in marble on the chimney piece in the room
called Apollo. One of Drayton's poems is called The Sacrifice to
Apollo; it is addrest to the priests or Wits of Apollo, and is a
kind of poetical paraphrase upon the Leges Convivales--This tavern
to the very last kept up a room with that name. C. L."--who might
have added point and freshness to this brief account by citing the
splendid description of a revel held there under the jovial old
Master's auspices, given by Careless to Aurelia [Carlesse to
Æmilia] in Shakerley Marmion's admirable comedy, _A Fine
Companion_. But it is remarkable that Lamb--if I mistake not--has
never quoted or mentioned that brilliant young dramatist and poet
who divided with Randolph the best part of Jonson's mantle....
At the close of Wither's high-spirited and manly postscript to the
poem on which, as he tells us, his publisher had bestowed the name
of _The Shepherd's Hunting_, a passage occurs which has provoked
one of the most characteristic outbreaks of wrath and mirth to be
found among all Lamb's notes on Nott's notes on Lamb's notes on the
text of Wither. "Neither am I so _cynical_ but that I think a
modest expression of such amorous conceits as suit with reason,
will yet very well become my years; in which not to have feeling of
the power of _love_, were as great an argument of much stupidity,
as an over-sottish affection were of extreme folly." In
illustration of this simple and dignified sentence Lamb cites the
following most apt and admirable parallel.
"'Nor blame it, readers, in those years to propose to themselves
such a reward, as the noblest dispositions above other things in
this life have sometimes preferred; whereof not to be sensible,
when good and fair in one person meet, argues both a gross and
shallow judgment, and withall an ungentle and swainish breast.'
"_Milton_--Apology for Smectymn[u]us."
"Why is this quoted?" demands the too inquisitive Nott; "I see
little similarity." "It was quoted for those who _can_ see,"
rejoins Lamb, with three thick strokes of his contemptuous pencil
under the luckless Doctor's poor personal pronoun; on which this
special note of indignation is added beneath.
"I. I. I. I. I. in Capitals!--
for shame, write _your_ Ego thus
little i with a dot
stupid Nott!"
At the opening of the second we find the notes on _Abuses stript
and whipt_ which in their revised condition as part of the essay on
Wither are familiar to all lovers of English letters. They begin
with the second paragraph of that essay, in which sundry slight and
delicate touches of improvement have fortified or simplified the
original form of expression. After the sentence which describes the
vehemence of Wither's love for goodness and hatred of baseness, the
manuscript proceeds thus: "His moral feeling is work'd up into a
sort of passion, something as Milton describes himself at a like
early age, that night and day he laboured to attain to a certain
idea which he had of perfection." Another cancelled passage is one
which originally followed on the reflection that "perhaps his
premature defiance often exposed him" (altered in the published
essay to "sometimes made him obnoxious") "to censures, which he
would otherwise have slipped by." The manuscript continues: "But in
this he is as faulty as some of the primitive Christians are
described to have been, who were ever ready to outrun the
executioner...."
This not immoderate satire on clerical ambition seems to have
ruffled the spiritual plumage of Dr. Nott, who brands it as a "very
dull essay indeed." To whom, in place of exculpation or apology,
Lamb returns this question by way of answer:--"Why double-dull it
with thy dull commentary? have you nothing to cry out but 'very
dull,' 'a little better,' 'this has some spirit,' 'this is
prosaic,' foh!
"If the sun of Wither withdraw a while, Clamour not for joy, Owl,
it will out again, and blear thy envious Eyes!..."
The commentary on 'Wither's Motto' will be remembered by all
students of the most exquisite critical essays in any language.
They will not be surprised to learn that neither the style nor the
matter of it found any favour in the judicial eye of Nott. "There
is some tautology in this, and some of the sentences are
harsh--These repetitions are very awkward; but the whole sentence
is obscure and far-fetched in sentiment;" such is the fashion in
which this unlucky particle of a pedant has bescribbled the margin
of Lamb's beautiful manuscript. But those for whom alone I write
will share my pleasure in reading the original paragraph as it came
fresh from the spontaneous hand of the writer, not as yet adapted
or accommodated by any process of revision to the eye of the
general reader.
"Wither's Motto.
"The poem which Wither calls his _Motto_ is a continued
self-eulogy" (originally written "self-eulogium") "of two thousand
lines: yet one reads it to the end without feeling any distaste, or
being hardly conscious of having listen'd so long to a man praising
himself. There are none of the cold particles of vanity in it; no
hardness or self-ends" (altered to "no want of feeling, no
selfishness;" but restored in the published text), "which are the
qualities that make Egotism hateful--The writer's mind was
continually glowing with images of virtue, and a noble scorn of
vice: what it felt, it honestly believed it possessed, and as
honestly avowed it; yet so little is this consciousness mixed up
with any alloy of selfishness, that the writer seems to be praising
qualities in another person rather than in himself; or, to speak
more properly, we feel that it was indifferent to him, where he
found the virtues; but that being best acquainted with himself, he
chose to celebrate himself as their best known receptacle. We feel
that he would give to goodness its praise, wherever found; that it
is not a quality which he loves for his own low self which
possesses it; but himself that he respects for the qualities which
he imagines he finds in himself. With these feelings, and without
them, it is impossible to read it, it is as beautiful a piece of
_self_-confession as the _Religio Medici_ of Browne.
"It will lose nothing also if we contrast it" (or, as previously
written, "It may be worth while also to contrast it") "with the
Confessions of Rousseau." ("How is Rousseau analogous?" queries the
interrogatory Nott: on whom Lamb retorts--"analogous?!! why, this
note was written to show the _difference_ not the _analogy_ between
them. C. L.") "In every page of the latter we are disgusted with
the vanity, which brings forth faults, and begs us to take them (or
at least the acknowledgment of them) for virtue. But in Wither we
listen to a downright confession of unambiguous virtues; and love
the heart which has the confidence to pour itself out." Here, at a
later period, Lamb has written--"C. L. thus far." On the phrase
"confession of unambiguous virtues" Dr. Nott has obliged us with
the remark--"this seems an odd association:" and has received this
answer:--"It was _meant_ to be an odd one, to puzzle a certain sort
of people. C. L."--whose words should be borne in mind by every
reader of his essays or letters who may chance to take exception to
some passing turn of speech intended, or at least not wholly
undesigned, to give occasion for that same "certain sort of people"
to stumble or to trip.
So far Mr. Swinburne. After his death the Wither was sold to America by
Mr. Watts-Dunton and is now in the library of Mr. John A. Spoor of
Chicago. Mr. Swinburne's description was supplemented by the American
bibliophile Mr. Luther S. Livingston in the _New York Evening Post_,
April 30, 1910.
Gutch, it seems, was sufficiently interested in Wither to undertake a
really representative edition, the editorship of which was entrusted to
Nott. The work was issued in 1820, without either date or publisher's
name. There is a copy in the British Museum which is in four volumes,
the fourth incomplete. On the fly-leaf is written: "This selection of
the Poems of Wither was printed by Gutch, of Bristol, about twenty years
since, and was edited by Dr. Nott. The work remained unfinished, and was
sold for waste-paper; a few copies only were preserved. 1839."
Mr. Livingston says that there is another copy of this work, in New
York. "It is in four volumes, with the title, 'Selections from the
Juvenilia and Other Poems of George Wither, with a prefatory Essay by
John Matthew Gutch, F.S.A., and His Life, by Robert Aris Wilmott, Esq.,
Vol. I. [etc.] Typ. Felix Farley: Bristol.' In addition, the first
volume has another title-page, 'Poems by George Wither, in four volumes.
Vol. I. London: 1839.' On the verso of this is the following Preface:--
"These Poems were many years ago edited and printed at Bristol by
Mr. Gutch: Proof sheets being submitted to Dr. Nott, and the
celebrated Charles Lamb, who wrote some very pithy comments on the
Notes of the Doctor, which have not been printed. The work was
never completed, and the whole impression was consigned to the
'Tomb of the Capulets' and supposed to be effectually destroyed.
Now, however, by the resuscitating powers of sundry Bristol Book
Chapmen, 'Monsieur Tonson's come again!' etc.
Signed 'J. R. S.' and dated 'London, 1839'."
Gutch himself prepared a life of Wither, but it was not printed in this
edition and is still unpublished. The amusing feature of the edition is
that Nott, sometimes with slight and deteriorating changes, and
sometimes without alteration, uses, in addition to his own comments,
many of Lamb's notes also as his own; which, if 1820 is really the date,
is the more curious, since a comparison with Lamb's essay in the
_Works_, 1818, would expose the conveyance. Probably the edition was in
type some time before it was issued. We know at any rate that it was
prepared before 1818, because Lamb had his notes back again in time to
use them in writing his essay published early in that year, and finished
probably some time earlier. If Lamb ever saw Nott's edition--which is
more than probable--it is a pity that in his correspondence is preserved
no letter containing his opinion on the matter.
Nott, for example, lifted the whole of the passage in praise of "Fair
Virtue or the Mistress of Philarete," beginning "There is a singular
beauty," and ending with "probationary courtship," as described above by
Mr. Swinburne, and signed it "Editor." He also annexed the reminiscence
of the Devil Tavern, making it "within the memory of the Editor," and
adapted the criticisms beginning "Wither's prison notes" (fifth
paragraph of the present essay) and "Wither's motto" (first paragraph)
to his own uses. As a specimen of Nott's treatment of his predecessor's
notes we may take that on long lines, which stands as a note at the end
of the essay. This is Nott's version:--
_If thy verse do bravely tower._ A _long_ line is a line _we are
long in repeating_. Mark the time which it takes to repeat these
lines properly! What slow movements could Alexandrines express more
than these? "_As she makes wing, she gets power._" One makes a foot
of every syllable. Wither was certainly a perfect master of this
species of verse.
There is, however, enough genuine un-negatived Lamb (as he would say)
remaining to make this edition of Wither a very desirable possession of
all collectors of Lamb.
What is even more surprising than Lamb's silence on the subject--which
may easily be accounted for by the incomplete state of his
correspondence--is the silence of Gutch himself. In 1847, when he told
the story of Wither, he made no reference whatever to any use of Lamb's
notes beyond Lamb's own, nor even mentioned the fact that a fuller
edition of Wither was published by himself, although he refers his
readers to two other editions, one earlier and one later, and remarks on
the poet's growing popularity. He quotes, however, a long passage from
Lamb's 1818 essay, remarking that it was based upon the notes made in
the original copy of Wither.
Gutch was wrong in stating that it was through him that Lamb became
acquainted with Wither. It was only to _Philarete_ that Gutch introduced
him. Lamb was first drawn to Wither by Coleridge, as he admits in the
letter of July 1, 1796. In 1798 he wrote to Southey on the subject:
"Quarles is a wittier writer, but Wither lays more hold of the heart....
I always love Wither ... the extract from _Shepherd's Hunting_ places
him in a starry height far above Quarles."
This note is already so long that I hesitate to add to it by quoting
from Wither the passages referred to by Lamb. They are, moreover, easily
identifiable.
George Wither, or Withers, was born in 1588. His _Abuses Stript and
Whipt_ was published in 1613; his _Shepherd's Hunting_, written in part
while its author was in the Marshalsea prison for his plain speaking in
_Abuses_, was published in 1615; Wither's _Motto_ in 1621, and _Fair
Virtue, the Mistress of Philarete_, in 1622, but it may have been
composed long before. Wither died in 1667. His light remained under a
bushel for many years. The _Percy Reliques_, 1765, began the revival of
Wither's fame; George Ellis's _Specimens_, 1805, continued it; and then
came Lamb, and Gutch, and Southey, and it was assured.
Page 211, line 10. _No Shaftesbury, no Villiers, no Wharton._ Referring
to the victims of Dryden and Pope's satires--the first Earl of
Shaftesbury in Dryden's "Absalom and Achitophel," "Albion and Albanius"
and "The Medal;" Villiers, second Duke of Buckingham, in "Absalom and
Achitophel" and in Pope's third "Moral Essay;" Philip, Duke of Wharton
in Pope's "Epistle to Sir Richard Temple."
Page 211, line 23. _Where Faithful is arraigned._ Faithful was accused
of railing also upon Lord Desire of Vain Glory, my old Lord Lechery and
Sir Having Greedy.
* * * * *
Page 215. FIVE DRAMATIC CRITICISMS.
None of these were reprinted by Lamb.
During the year 1819 Leigh Hunt's _Examiner_ gave Lamb his first
encouragement to indulge in those raptures upon comedians which no one
has expressed so well as he. The notices that follow preceded his _Elia_
essays on the "Old Actors" by some three years, although, as is pointed
out in the notes to that work, the essay on the "Acting of Munden" first
saw the light in _The Examiner_ of November 7 and 8, 1819, as one of the
present series. The central figure, however, of the five pieces here
collected together is Miss Kelly, Lamb's friend and favourite actress of
his middle and later life, whom he began to praise in 1813 (see "The New
Acting," page 177), and in praising whom he never tired.
Lamb's sweet allusion to Miss Kelly's "divine plain face" is well known.
It may be interesting, to add Oxberry's description: "Her face is round
and pleasing, though not handsome; her eyes are light blue; her forehead
is peculiarly low ... her smile is peculiarly beautiful and may be said
to completely _sun_ her countenance."
In _The Examiner_ for December 20, 1818, after Leigh Hunt's criticism of
Kenney's comedy "A Word for the Ladies" is the following paragraph.
Leigh Hunt's criticism is signed: this is not, nor is it joined to the
article. There is, I think, good reason to believe it to be Lamb's:--
"It was not without a feeling of pain, that we observed Miss KELLY among
the _spectators_ on the first night of the new comedy. What does she do
before the curtain? She should have been on the stage. With such youth,
such talents,--
Those powers of pleasing, with that will to please,
it is too much that she should be forgotten, discarded, laid aside like
an old fashion. It really is not yet the season for her 'among the
wastes of time to go.' Is it Mr. STEPHEN KEMBLE, or the Sub-Committee;
or what _heavy body_ is it, which interposes itself between us and this
light of the stage?"
With these Eulogies of Miss Kelly is associated one of the most
interesting days in Lamb's life, as the note on page 487 tells.
Page 215. I.--MRS. GOULD (MISS BURRELL) IN "DON GIOVANNI IN LONDON."
_The Examiner_, November 22, 1818. Signed †.
This criticism we know to be Lamb's upon Talfourd's testimony. He
writes:--
Miss Burrell, a lady of more limited powers, but with a frank and
noble style, was discovered by Lamb on one of the visits which he
paid, on the invitation of his old friend Elliston, to the Olympic,
where the lady performed the hero of that happy parody of
Moncrieff's, "Giovanni in London." To her Lamb devoted a little
article, which he sent to _The Examiner_ [a portion of the article
is quoted]. Miss Burrell soon married a person named Gold, and
disappeared from the stage.
Lamb pasted the article in his Album or Commonplace Book accompanied by
a portrait of the actress. Writing to Mrs. Wordsworth in February, 1818,
he speaks of his power, during business, of reserving "in some corner of
my mind 'some darling thoughts, all my own,'--faint memory of some
passage in a book, or the tone of an absent friend's voice--a snatch of
Miss Burrell's singing, or a gleam of Fanny Kelly's divine plain face."
Page 215, line 2 of essay. _A burletta founded, etc._ This was
"Rochester; or, King Charles the Second's Merry Days," by William Thomas
Moncrieff (1794-1857).
Page 215, line 8 of essay. _Elliston and Mrs. Edwin._ Robert William
Elliston (1774-1831), a famous comedian, and the lessee of the Olympic
at that date, of whom Lamb wrote with enthusiasm in his _Elia_ essays,
"To the Shade of Elliston," and "Ellistoniana." Elizabeth Rebecca Edwin
(1771?-1854) was the wife of John Edwin the younger, a favourite actress
in Mrs. Jordan's parts.
Page 215, line 11 of essay. "_Don Giovanni._" "Giovanni in London; or,
The Libertine Reclaimed," 1817, also by Moncrieff--the play in which
Madame Vestris made so great a hit a year or so later.
Page 216, line 14 from foot. _We have seen Mrs. Jordan._ Mrs. Jordan had
left the London stage in 1815.
Page 216, line 10 from foot. _Great house in the Haymarket._ This was
the King's Theatre (afterwards His Majesty's) where Mozart's "Don
Giovanni" was produced in 1817, with Ambrogetti, the buffo, in the
caste. Lamb's friend, William Ayrton, was the moving spirit in this
representation.
* * * * *
Page 217. II.--MISS KELLY AT BATH.
_Felix Farley's Bristol Journal_, January 30, 1819. The present article
has been set up from that paper. Usually, however, it has been set up
from Leigh Hunt's copy in _The Examiner_, February 7 and 8, 1819, where
it was quoted with the following introduction:--
The Reader, we are sure, will thank us for extracting the following
observations on a favourite Actress, from a Provincial Paper, the
_Bristol Journal_. We should have guessed the masterly and cordial
hand that wrote them had we met with it in the East Indies. There
is but one praise belonging to Miss KELLY which it has omitted, and
which it could not supply;--and that is, that she has had finer
criticism written upon her, than any performer that ever trod the
stage.
The letter was written to John Mathew Gutch (see notes to Lamb's essay
on "George Wither"), who in 1803 became proprietor of _Felix Farley's
Bristol Journal_. Miss Kelly was at Bath in 1819 at the end of January
and first half of February.
Page 217, first line of essay. _Our old play-going days._ The Lambs
lodged with Gutch, who was then a law-stationer, at 34 Southampton
Buildings, in 1800. Lamb was there alone for some time, during his
sister's illness, and it is probably to this period that he refers.
Page 217, second line. _Mrs. Jordan._ See note above. Miss Kelly played
many of Mrs. Jordan's parts.
Page 217, third line. _Dodd and Parsons._ See note to "The New Acting,"
page 465.
Page 217, fourth line. _Smith or Jack Palmer._ William Smith
(1730?-1819), known as Gentleman Smith. Lamb perhaps saw him on the
night of May 18, 1798, his sole appearance for ten years; otherwise his
knowledge of his acting could be but small. On that occasion Smith
played Charles Surface in "The School for Scandal," Joseph Surface being
Jack Palmer's great part (see the _Elia_ essay on "The Artificial
Comedy," for an analysis of Palmer's acting).
Page 217, sixth line. _Miss Kelly._ See note to "The New Acting," page
466. Frances Maria Kelly (1790-1882) made her début at the age of seven
in "Bluebeard" (the music by her uncle, Michael Kelly), at Drury Lane,
in 1798. She was enrolled as a chorister of Drury Lane in 1799. She made
her farewell appearance at Drury Lane in 1835.
Page 218, line 20. _Yarico._ In "Inkle and Yarico," 1787, by George
Colman the younger (1762-1836).
Page 218, line 11 from foot. _A Phœbe or a Dinah Cropley._ Phœbe, in
"Rosina," by Mrs. Frances Brooke (1724-1789). I do not find a Dinah
Cropley among Miss Kelly's parts. She played Dinah Primrose in
O'Keeffe's "Young Quaker"--Lamb may have been thinking of that.
Page 218, line 5 from foot. "_The Merry Mourners._" "Modern Antiques;
or, The Merry Mourners," 1791, by John O'Keeffe. It was while playing in
this farce on February 17, 1816, that Miss Kelly was fired at by a
lunatic in the pit. Some of the shot is said to have fallen into the lap
of Mary Lamb, who was present with her brother.
Page 218, foot. _Inebriation in Nell._ Nell, in "The Devil to Pay,"
1731, originally by Charles Coffey (d. 1745), but much adapted. Nell was
one of Mrs. Jordan's great parts.
Page 219, line 2. _Our friend C._ Coleridge, who was also at Christ's
Hospital with Gutch. He says, in _Biographia Literaria_: "Men of Letters
and literary genius are too often what is styled in trivial irony 'fine
gentlemen spoilt in the making.' They care not for show and grandeur in
what surrounds them, having enough within ... but they are fine
gentlemen in all that concerns ease and pleasurable, or at least
comfortable, sensation." In one of his lectures on "Poetry, the Drama
and Shakespeare" in 1818, Coleridge says: "As it must not, so genius can
not, be lawless;" which is the reverse of Lamb's recollection.
Page 219. III.--RICHARD BROME'S "JOVIAL CREW."
_Examiner_, July 4 and 5, 1819. Signed ****. Richard Brome's "Jovial
Crew; or, The Merry Beggars," was first acted in 1641, and continually
revived since then, although it is now no longer seen. Indeed our
opportunities are few to-day of seeing most of the plays that Lamb
praised. The revival criticised by Lamb began at the English Opera House
(the Lyceum) on June 29, 1819.
Page 219, line 7 from foot. _Lovegrove._ William Lovegrove (1778-1816),
a famous character actor. He ceased to be seen at except rare intervals
after 1814.
Page 219, line 5 from foot. _Dowton._ See note to "The New Acting," page
465.
Page 220, line 3. _Wrench._ Benjamin Wrench (1778-1843), a comedian of
the school of Elliston.
Page 220, line 6. _Miss Stevenson._ This actress afterwards became Mrs.
Wiepperts.
Page 220, line 12. _She that played Rachel._ Miss Kelly. Lamb returned
to his praise of this piece and of Miss Kelly in it in a note to the
"Garrick Plays," but he there credited her with playing Meriel.
Page 220, line 15 from foot. "_Pretty Bessy._" In the old ballad "The
Beggar's Daughter of Bednall Green," Bessie was the daughter of Henry,
son of Simon de Montfort.
Page 220, line 6 from foot. _Society for the Suppression of Mendicity._
Lamb returned to the attack upon this body in his _Elia_ essay "On the
Decay of Beggars," in 1822.
It has recently come to light that Charles Lamb proposed marriage to
Miss Kelly on July 20, 1819, and was refused; and this proposal is so
intimately associated with two of the _Examiner_ articles that I place
the story of it here.
On July 4th appeared Lamb's article on "The Jovial Crew" with Miss Kelly
as Rachel. To read this article in ignorance of the critic's innermost
feelings for the actress is to experience no more than the customary
intellectual titillation that is imparted by a piece of rich
appreciation from such a pen; but to read it knowing what was in his
mind at the time is a totally different thing. What before was mere
inspired dramatic criticism becomes a revelation charged with human
interest. Read again the passage from "But the _Princess of Mumpers_,
and _Lady Paramount_, of beggarly counterfeit accents, was _she_ that
played _Rachel_," down to "'What a lass that were,' said a stranger who
sate beside us, speaking of Miss Kelly in _Rachel_, 'to go a gypseying
through the world with.'" Knowing what we do of Charles Lamb's little
ways, we can be in no doubt as to the identity of the stranger who was
fabled to have sate beside him.
Miss Kelly would of course read the criticism, and being a woman, and a
woman of genius, would probably be not wholly unaware of the
significance of a portion of it; and therefore perhaps she was not
wholly unprepared for Lamb's letter of proposal, which he wrote a
fortnight later.
"20 July, 1819.
"DEAR MISS KELLY,--We had the pleasure, _pain_ I might better call
it, of seeing you last night in the new Play. It was a most
consummate piece of Acting, but what a task for you to undergo! at
a time when your heart is sore from real sorrow! it has given rise
to a train of thinking, which I cannot suppress.
"Would to God you were released from this way of life; that you
could bring your mind to consent to take your lot with us, and
throw off for ever the whole burden of your Profession. I neither
expect or wish you to take notice of this which I am writing, in
your present over occupied & hurried state.--But to think of it at
your leisure. I have quite income enough, if that were all, to
justify for me making such a proposal, with what I may call even a
handsome provision for my survivor. What you possess of your own
would naturally be appropriated to those, for whose sakes chiefly
you have made so many hard sacrifices. I am not so foolish as not
to know that I am a most unworthy match for such a one as you, but
you have for years been a principal object in my mind. In many a
sweet assumed character I have learned to love you, but simply as
F. M. Kelly I love you better than them all. Can you quit these
shadows of existence, & come & be a reality to us? can you leave
off harrassing yourself to please a thankless multitude, who know
nothing of you, & begin at last to live to yourself & your friends?
"As plainly & frankly as I have seen you give or refuse assent in
some feigned scene, so frankly do me the justice to answer me. It
is impossible I should feel injured or aggrieved by your telling me
at once, that the proposal does not suit you. It is impossible that
I should ever think of molesting you with idle importunity and
persecution after your mind once firmly spoken--but happier, far
happier, could I have leave to hope a time might come, when our
friends might be your friends; our interests yours; our
book-knowledge, if in that inconsiderable particular we have any
little advantage, might impart something to you, which you would
every day have it in your power ten thousand fold to repay by the
added cheerfulness and joy which you could not fail to bring as a
dowry into whatever family should have the honor and happiness of
receiving _you_, the most welcome accession that could be made to
it.
"In haste, but with entire respect & deepest affection, I subscribe
myself
C. LAMB."
This was Miss Kelly's reply to Lamb's letter, returned by hand--the way,
I imagine, in which his proposal had reached her:--
"Henrietta Street, July 20th, 1819.
"An early & deeply rooted attachment has fixed my heart on one from
whom no worldly prospect can well induce me to withdraw it, but
while I thus _frankly_ & decidedly decline your proposal, believe
me, I am not insensible to the high honour which the preference of
such a mind as yours confers upon me--let me, however, hope that
all thought upon this subject will end with this letter, & that you
will henceforth encourage no other sentiment towards me than esteem
in my private character and a continuance of that approbation of my
humble talents which you have already expressed so much & so often
to my advantage and gratification.
"Believe me I feel proud to acknowledge myself
"Your obliged friend
"F. M. KELLY."
Lamb also replied at once, and his little romance was over, July 20th,
1819, seeing the whole drama played.
"July 20th, 1819.
"DEAR MISS KELLY,--_Your injunctions shall be obeyed to a tittle._
I feel myself in a lackadaisacal no-how-ish kind of a humour. I
believe it is the rain, or something. I had thought to have written
seriously, but I fancy I succeed best in epistles of mere fun; puns
& _that_ nonsense. You will be good friends with us, will you not?
let what has past 'break no bones' between us. You will not refuse
us them next time we send for them?[68]
"Yours very truly,
"C. L.
"Do you observe the delicacy of not signing my full name? N.B. Do
not paste that last letter of mine into your Book."
[68] By "bones" Lamb here means also the little ivory discs which
were given by the management to friends, entitling them to free
admission to the theatre.
I have said that the drama was played to the end on July 20th; but it
had a little epilogue. In _The Examiner_ for August 1st Lamb wrote of
the Lyceum again. The play was "The Hypocrite," and this is how he spoke
of Miss Kelly: "She is in truth not framed to tease or torment even in
jest, but to utter a hearty _Yes_ or _No_; to yield or refuse assent
with a noble sincerity. We have not the pleasure of being acquainted
with her, but we have been told that she carries the same cordial
manners into private life."
That Lamb's wishes with regard to the old footing were realised we may
feel sure, for she continued to visit her friends, both in London and at
Enfield, and in later years was taught Latin by Mary Lamb. Miss Kelly
died unmarried at the age of ninety-two; Charles Lamb died unmarried at
the age of fifty-nine.
Page 221. IV.--ISAAC BICKERSTAFF'S "HYPOCRITE."
_Examiner_, August 1 and 2, 1819. Signed ****. This play was produced,
in its operatic form, at the English Opera House on July 27, 1819. It
was announced as from "Tartuffe," by Molière, with alterations by
Cibber, Bickerstaff and others. The music was arranged by Mr. Jolly.
Miss Kelly played Charlotte.
Page 221, line 4. _Dowton in Dr. Cantwell._ For Dowton see note to "The
New Acting," page 465. Dr. Cantwell was the chief character in "The
Hypocrite."
Page 221, line 5. _Mr. Arnold._ Samuel James Arnold (1774-1852),
dramatist and manager of the Lyceum. Lamb's friend, William Ayrton,
married Arnold's sister.
Page 221, line 6. _Mathews._ The great Charles Mathews (1776-1835), whom
Lamb afterwards came to know personally, whose special gift was the
rapid impersonation of differing types.
Page 221, line 9. _Our favourite theatre._ The English Opera House--the
Lyceum--rebuilt 1816.
Page 221, line 10 from foot. _Mr. Kean._ Edmund Kean (1787-1833).
Page 221, line 9 from foot. "_The City Madam._" A play by Philip
Massinger, licensed 1632, in which Luke Frugal is the leading character.
Page 222, lines 3-5. _Whitfield ... Lady Huntingdon._ George Whitefield
(1714-1770), the great Methodist preacher, and chaplain to the Countess
of Huntingdon. Whitefield was actually put on the stage, in "The
Mirror," by Foote, in 1760, as Dr. Squintum.
Page 222, line 13. _Mr. Pearman._ William Pearman, the tenor, a popular
singer, second only to Braham in sea songs.
* * * * *
Page 222. V.--NEW PIECES AT THE LYCEUM.
_Examiner_, August 8 and 9, 1819. Signed ****. This criticism was
introduced by the following note by Leigh Hunt:--
We must make the public acquainted with a hard case of ours.--Here
had we been writing a long elaborate, critical, and analytical
account of the new pieces at the Lyceum, poring over the desk for
two hours in the morning after a late night, and melting away what
little had been left of our brains and nerves from the usual
distillation of the week, when an impudent rogue of a friend, whose
most daring tricks and pretences carry as good a countenance with
them as virtues in any other man, and who has the face, above all,
to be a better critic than ourselves, sends us the following
remarks of his own on those two very pieces. What do we do? The
self-love of your inferior critic must vent itself somehow; and so
we take this opportunity of showing our virtue at the expense of
our talents, and fairly making way for the interloper.
Dear, nine closely-written octavo pages! you were very good after
all, between you and me; and should have given way to nobody else.
If there is room left, a piece of you shall be got in at the end;
for virtue is undoubtedly its own reward, but not quite.
Page 222, foot. "_Belles without Beaux._" This was probably, says
Genest, another version of the French piece from which "Ladies at Home;
or, Gentlemen, we can do without You" (by J. G. Millingen, and produced
also in 1819) was taken. The date of production was August 6, 1819.
Page 223, lines 2-7. _There is Miss Carew, etc._ The seven ladies in the
play were: Miss Kelly, who played Mrs. Dashington; Mrs. W. S. Chatterly,
_née_ Louisa Simeon (b. 1797), wife of William Simmonds Chatterly, the
actor (1787-1822): she was said to be the best representative of a
Frenchwoman on the English stage; Miss Carew (b. 1799), a comic opera
prima donna, at first the understudy of Miss Stephens, and a special
favourite with Barry Cornwall, who says in his _Sicilian Story_, "Give
me (but p'r'aps I'm partial) Miss Carew;" Mrs. Grove, probably the wife
of Grove, an excellent impersonator of whimsical old men and scheming
servants; Miss Love (b. 1801), excellent in chambermaids, to whom
Colonel Berkeley turned (see note on page 521) after leaving Miss Foote;
Miss Stevenson (see note above); and Mrs. Richardson, who was probably
the wife of Richardson, a member of the Covent Garden Company.
Page 223, line 15. _Holcroft's last Comedy._ "The Vindictive Man" (see
note "On the Custom of Hissing," page 450).
Page 223, line 19. _Mrs. Harlow._ Sarah Harlowe (1765-1852), a
low-comedy actress, who played many of Mrs. Jordan's parts. She left the
stage in 1826.
Page 224, line 5. _Wilkinson ... in a "Walk for a Wager."_ In "Walk for
a Wager; or, A Bailiff's Bet," a musical farce, the hero, Hookey Walker,
was impersonated by John Penbury Wilkinson, and Miss Kelly played Emma.
Page 224, line 12. _"Amateurs and Actors" ... Mr. Peak._ A musical
farce, by Richard Brinsley Peake (1792-1847), produced in 1818.
Page 224, last paragraph. _Last week's article._ That on "The
Hypocrite," preceding this (see notes above). "A New Way to Pay Old
Debts," published 1632, is a comedy by Massinger, in which Sir Giles
Overreach is the leading character.
* * * * *
Page 225. FOUR REVIEWS.
These four reviews, together with that of Wordsworth's _Excursion_,
written five years earlier (see page 187), and that of Hood and
Reynolds' _Odes and Addresses_ (see page 335), make up the total number
of reviews that Lamb is known positively to have written. We know from
his _Letters_ that in 1803 he was trying to review Godwin's _Chaucer_,
and again in 1821 he writes to Taylor that he is busy on a review for a
friend; but neither of these articles has come to light. The fact is
that Lamb always reviewed with difficulty, and after his bitter
experience with Gifford (see note on page 470) he was more than ever
disinclined to attempt that form of writing.
Page 225. I.--"FALSTAFF'S LETTERS."
_Examiner_, September 5 and 6, 1819. Signed ****. Reprinted in _The
Indicator_, January 24, 1821. Not reprinted by Lamb.
James White, born in the same year as Lamb, was nominally the author of
this book, but there is strong reason to believe that Lamb had a big
share in it. Jem White, who is now known solely by the pleasant figure
that he cuts in the _Elia_ essay "The Praise of Chimney Sweepers," was
at school with Lamb at Christ's Hospital, receiving his nomination from
Thomas Coventry, Samuel Salt's friend and fellow Bencher. Lamb saw much
of White for a few years after leaving school, finding him, on the merry
side, as congenial a companion as he could wish.
It was Lamb who, probably in 1795, when they both were only twenty,
induced White to study Shakespeare; and it is impossible to believe that
a friend of Lamb's, whom he saw nearly every night, could have been
composing a full-blooded Shakespearian joke, and Lamb have no hand in
it. Southey, indeed, in a letter to Edward Moxon after Lamb's death,
states the fact that Lamb and White were joint authors of _Falstaff's
Letters_, as if there were no doubt about it.
My own impression is that Lamb's fingers certainly held the pen when the
Dedication to Master Samuel Irelaunde was written.
And very characteristically Elian is the following explanation, in the
preface, of certain gaps in the _Letters_:--
"Reader, whenever as journeying onward in thy epistolary progress, a
chasm should occur to interrupt the chain of events, I beseech thee
blame not me, but curse the rump of roast pig. This maiden-sister,
conceive with what pathos I relate it, absolutely made use of several,
no doubt invaluable letters, to shade the jutting protuberances of that
animal from disproportionate excoriation in its circuitous approaches to
the fire."
Either Lamb wrote that, or to James White's influence we owe some of the
most cherished mannerisms of _Elia_. Be that as it may, it is probably
true that White's zest in the making of this book helped towards Lamb's
Elizabethanising.
Lamb admired _Falstaff's Letters_ more than it is possible quite to
understand except on the supposition that he had a share in it; or, at
any rate, that it brought back to him the memory of so many pleasant
nights. He never, says Talfourd, omitted to buy a copy when he saw one
in the sixpenny box of a bookstall, in order to give it with superlative
recommendations to a friend. For example, after sending it to Manning,
he asks: "I hope by this time you are prepared to say the _Falstaff
Letters_ are a bundle of the sharpest, queerest, profoundest humours of
any these juice-drained latter times have spawned?" The little volume is
now very rare. A second edition was published in 1797 and reprints in
1877 and 1905. The full title runs: _Original Letters, &c., of Sir John
Falstaff and his friends; now first made public by a gentleman, a
descendant of Dame Quickly, from genuine manuscripts which have been in
the possession of the Quickly Family near four hundred years_. 1796.
"White," said J. M. Gutch, another schoolfellow, "was known as Sir John
among his friends." See the footnote to the _Elia_ essay on "The Old
Actors".
Page 225, first line of essay. _The Roxburgh sale._ The library of the
third Duke of Roxburgh was sold, in a forty-five days' sale, between May
18 and July 8, 1812.
Page 229. II.--CHARLES LLOYD'S POEMS.
_Examiner_, October 24 and 25, 1819. Signed ****. Not reprinted by Lamb.
Lamb and Lloyd had been intimate friends in 1797 and 1798, when they
produced together _Blank Verse_, and when for a while Lloyd shared rooms
with James White. But serious differences arose which need not be
inquired into here, and after 1800 they drifted apart and were never
really friendly again. Lloyd settled among the Lakes, where at frequent
intervals for many years he became the prey of religious mania. In 1818,
however, the clouds effectually dispersed for a while, and, returning to
London, he resumed the poetical activity of his early life. The new
pieces in _Nugæ Canoræ_, 1819, were the first-fruit of this period,
which lasted until 1823. He then relapsed into his old state and died,
lost to the world, in 1839. Writing to Lloyd concerning his later poetry
Lamb said: "Your lines are not to be understood reading on one leg."
In Lloyd's poem, "Desultory Thoughts in London," 1821, are portraits of
both Coleridge and Lamb. One stanza on Lamb has these lines:--
It is a dainty banquet, known to few,
To thy mind's inner shrine to have access;
While choicest stores of intellect endue
That sanctuary, in marvellous excess.
Those lambent glories ever bright and new,
Those, privileged to be its inmates, bless!
This shows that Lloyd retained his old affection and admiration for
Lamb, just as Lamb's willingness to review Lloyd shows that he had
forgotten the past. The quotations have been corrected from Lloyd's
pages.
Page 230, line 15. _Mary Wolstonecraft Godwin._ Mary Wollstonecraft
Godwin (1759-1797), the first wife of William Godwin, and the advocate
of women's independence. Charles Lloyd had known her in his early London
days.
Page 232. III.--BARRON FIELD'S POEMS.
_Examiner_, January 16 and 17, 1820. Signed ****. Not reprinted by Lamb.
Barron Field (1786-1846), son of Henry Field, apothecary to Christ's
Hospital, was long one of Lamb's friends, possibly through his brother,
a fellow clerk of Lamb's in the India House. See the _Elia_ essays on
"Distant Correspondents" and "Mackery End," and notes. Field was in
Australia from 1817 to 1824 as Judge of the Supreme Court of New South
Wales. His _First-Fruits of Australian Poetry_ was printed privately in
1819 and afterwards added as an appendix to _Geographical Memoirs on
New South Wales_, 1825.
Page 232. _Motto. "I first adventure...."_ An adaptation of the couplet
in Hall's satires:--
I first adventure. Follow me who list,
And be the second English satirist.
This couplet was placed by Field on the threshold of the poems in the
_Geographical Memoirs_, borrowed, I imagine, from Lamb's review.
Page 232, line 11 from foot. _Thiefland._ Compare the _Elia_ essay
"Distant Correspondents."
Page 232, line 8 from foot. _A merry Captain._ Captain (afterwards
Rear-Admiral) James Burney (1750-1821), Lamb's friend, who sailed with
Cook on two voyages. Lamb told Mrs. Shelley of the Captain's pun in much
the same words; but the pun itself we do not know.
Page 233, line 16. _Jobson, etc._ These characters are in "The Devil to
Pay," by Charles Coffey, 1731.
Page 233, line 26. _Braham or Stephens._ John Braham, the tenor; Miss
Stephens made her first appearance at Drury Lane, as Polly in "The
Beggar's Opera," in 1798.
Page 233, line 12 from foot. _The first...._ The first poem was entitled
"Botany Bay Flowers."
Page 234. "_The Kangaroo._" Writing to Barron Field in 1820 Lamb says:
"We received your 'Australian First-Fruits,' of which I shall say
nothing here, but refer you to **** of 'The Examiner,' who speaks our
mind on all public subjects. I can only assure you that both Coleridge
and Wordsworth ... were hugely taken with your Kangaroo." The poem is
here corrected from the author's text.
Page 235. IV.--KEATS' "LAMIA."
_The New Times_, July 19, 1820. This is the article referred to by
Cowden Clarke in his _Recollections of Writers_, 1878: "Upon the
publication of the last volume of poems [_Lamia_, etc.] Charles Lamb
wrote one of his finely appreciative and cordial critiques in the
_Morning Chronicle_." By a slip of memory Clarke gave the wrong paper.
Lamb wrote in the _Morning Chronicle_ occasionally (his sonnet to Sarah
Burney appeared in it as near to the date in question as July 13, 1820),
but it was in _The New Times_ that he reviewed Keats. _The New Times_
was founded by John (afterwards Sir John) Stoddart (1773-1856), Lamb and
Coleridge's friend, and the brother-in-law of Hazlitt.
Two days after the appearance of Lamb's review--on July 21, 1820--_The
New Times_ printed some further extracts from the book, which presumably
had been crowded out of the article.
There is so little doubt in my own mind that this is Lamb's review that
I have placed it in the body of this book and not in the Appendix. The
internal evidence is very strong, particularly at the end, and in the
use of such phrases as "joint strengths" and "younger impressibilities."
But there is external evidence too. Leigh Hunt, writing of Keats, in his
_Lord Byron and his Contemporaries_, 1828, says:--
I remember Charles Lamb's delight and admiration on reading this
work [_Lamia_]; how pleased he was with the designation of Mercury
as the "star of Lethe" (rising, as it were, and glittering, as he
came upon that pale region); with the fine daring anticipation in
that passage of the second poem,--
"So the two brothers and their _murdered man_,
Rode past fair Florence;"
and with the description, at once delicate and gorgeous, of Agnes
[_i.e._, Madeline], praying beneath the painted window.
Lamb did not know Keats well. He had met him only a few times, the
historic occasion being the dinner at Haydon's, in December, 1817, when
the Comptroller of Stamps was present. But he admired his work (he told
Crabb Robinson he considered it next to Wordsworth's), and he hated the
treatment that Keats received from certain critics. Keats, by the way,
mentions meeting Lamb at Novello's and having to endure some wretched
puns.
* * * * *
Page 239. SIR THOMAS MORE.
_The Indicator_, December 20, 1820. Signed ****. Leigh Hunt introduced
the article in these words:--
The author of the _Table-Talk_ in our last [see note on p. 466] has
obliged us with the following pungent morsels of Sir Thomas
More,--devils, we may call them. Brantome, noticing the oaths of
some eminent Christian manslayers, and informing us that "the good
man, Monsieur de la Roche du Maine, swore by 'God's head full of
relics,'" adds in a parenthesis,--"Where the devil did he get
that?"--"Ou diable avoit-il trouvè celuy-la?" We may apply this
vivacious mode of questioning, with a more critical propriety, to
those eminent Christian opposers of reformation, past, present, and
to come, and ask them, where the devil they get a notion that they
are on the side of charity? It is possible to hate for the sake of
a loving theory; but it is a dangerous piece of self-flattery, and
more likely to spring up in hating than loving minds. If it
partakes of the reverent privileges of sorrow in those who are
unsuccessful or oppressed, it is odious in those who are
flourishing, and we are afraid is nothing but sheer dogmatism and
tyranny even in men as great as Sir Thomas More.
Further proof of Lamb's authorship is contained in the circumstance that
the passages here quoted are copied in one of his Commonplace Books.
* * * * *
Page 246. THE CONFESSIONS OF H. F. V. H. DELAMORE, ESQ.
_London Magazine_, April, 1821. First reprinted in Mr. Dobell's
_Sidelights on Charles Lamb_, 1903.
Lamb's "Chapter on Ears" had appeared in the March number, containing
the sentence, "I was never, I thank my stars, in the pillory; nor, if I
read them aright, is it within the compass of my destiny, that I ever
should be." The main confession aroused by this statement, although it
is hedged about by a host of inventions, seems to be perfectly true:
Lamb did on one occasion sit in the stocks. Our evidence, which,
fortified by this little article (a discovery of Mr. Bertram Dobell's),
is very strong, is to be found on the fly-leaf of the annotated copy of
Wither described above. On this fly-leaf Pulham has recorded that during
a country walk on a certain Sunday Lamb was set in the stocks for
brawling while service was in progress. According to Mr. Delamore, the
indignity was suffered at Barnet, and it was probably, if what he says
about the short duration of the punishment be true, nearly as much a
joke on the part of the authorities as on the part of Lamb. I cannot
find any record of the incident in the Barnet archives, but the stocks
are still standing, on the outskirts of Barnet, on Hadley Green.
Additional proof that Lamb wrote these "Confessions" is to be found in
the little note inserted in the following (May) number of the _London
Magazine_, under the "Lion's Head":--
"_Spes_ may be assured, that the fact related in the paper in our last
Number, signed 'Delamore,' and dated 'Sackville Street,' is genuine,
with the exception of the name and date. It is the writer's own story.
"----quæque ipse mìserrima vidi,
Et quorum pars magna fui.
"* * * *."
Four stars was, of course, one of Lamb's commonest non-_Elia_ signatures
(see note on page 464). The quotation is from _Aeneid_, II., 5. "The
most unhappy scenes which I beheld, and in which I played a leading
part."
Page 247, line 15. * * * * * * * * * * *. In the stocks.
Page 247, line 19. _O Clarencieux! O Norroy!_ The two provincial
kings-at-arms, Clarencieux, after the Duke of Clarence, son of Edward
III., whose office is south of the Trent, and Norroy (North-roy), whose
office is north of the Trent.
Page 248, line 4. _Barnet ... Red Rose._ Referring to the battle of
Barnet on April 14, 1471, when Edward IV. defeated and slew the Earl of
Warwick, and practically destroyed the Lancastrian, or Red Rose, cause,
finally doing so at the battle of Tewkesbury a little later.
* * * * *
Page 248. THE GENTLE GIANTESS.
_London Magazine_, December, 1822. Not reprinted by Lamb.
We find the germ of this essay in a letter from Lamb to Dorothy
Wordsworth, in 1821, when she was staying with her uncle, Christopher
Wordsworth, the Master of Trinity:--
"Ask any body you meet, who is the biggest woman in Cambridge, and I'll
hold you a wager they'll say Mrs. Smith. She broke down two benches in
Trinity Gardens, one on the confines of St. John's, which occasioned a
litigation between the societies as to repairing it. In warm weather she
retires into an ice-cellar (literally!), and dates the returns of the
years from a hot Thursday some 20 years back. She sits in a room with
opposite doors and windows, to let in a thorough draft, which gives her
slenderer friends toothaches. She is to be seen in the market every
morning, at 10 cheapening fowls, which I observe the Cambridge
Poulterers are not sufficiently careful to stump."
It was characteristic of Lamb that finding the widow at Cambridge he
should have set her in the essay at Oxford. He did the same thing in his
Elia essay "On Oxford in the Vacation," which he conceived at the sister
university.
Page 248, line 4 of essay. _The maid's aunt of Brainford._ The maid's
aunt of Brentford; otherwise Sir John Falstaff in petticoats (see "The
Merry Wives of Windsor," Act IV., Scene 2).
* * * * *
Page 251. LETTER TO AN OLD GENTLEMAN WHOSE EDUCATION HAS BEEN NEGLECTED.
_London Magazine_, January, 1825. Not reprinted by Lamb.
De Quincey's "Letters to a Young Man whose Education has been Neglected"
began in the _London Magazine_ in January, 1823. There were five
altogether, ending in July of the same year. From the date at the end of
Lamb's "Letter," and from a passage in a Letter to Barton of March 5,
1823, we may suppose him to have meant his parody to appear at the same
time. "Your poem," he says, "found me engaged about a humorous Paper for
the _London_, which I had called 'A Letter to an _Old Gentleman_ whose
Education had been Neglected'--and when it was done Taylor & Hessey
would not print it, and it discouraged me from doing anything else."
The problem of De Quincey's "Young Man" was contained in this sentence
in the first letter: "To your first question,--whether to you, with your
purposes and at your age of thirty-two, a residence at either of our
English universities--or at any foreign university, can be of much
service."--Writing to Miss Hutchinson in January, 1825, Lamb says: "De
Quincey's Parody was submitted to him before printed, and had his
Probatum."
I have not been able to discover whether or no any special significance
attaches to the name of Grierson; or whether Lamb took the name at
random.
Page 255, line 25. _Mr. Hartlib._ Milton's friend, Samuel Hartlib (died
about 1670), to whom the _Tractate on Education_, which Lamb slyly plays
upon in this paragraph, was addressed by Milton in 1644. Hartlib is said
to have brought himself to poverty by his generosity to poor scholars.
* * * * *
Page 257. RITSON _VERSUS_ JOHN SCOTT THE QUAKER.
_London Magazine_, April, 1823. Not reprinted by Lamb.
This was a hoax, as Lamb explained in a letter to Bernard Barton (March
5, 1823): "I took up Scott, where I had scribbled some petulant remarks,
and for a make-shift father'd them on Ritson." Scott was John Scott, the
Quaker, better known as Scott of Amwell (1730-1783), whose _Critical
Essays_, 1785, do actually contain the passages quoted by Lamb, with
slight errors of transcription. Joseph Ritson (1752-1803), antiquary and
critic, might easily have commented as Lamb has done, but with more
savagery. Ritson's library was sold in December, 1803.
* * * * *
Page 265. LETTER OF ELIA TO ROBERT SOUTHEY.
_London Magazine_, October, 1823. Not reprinted by Lamb, except in part.
See below.
It was Lamb's fate to be misunderstood by the _Quarterly Review_; and in
that misunderstanding lay the real origin of the "Letter to Southey." On
at least four occasions Lamb was unfairly treated by this powerful
organ: in December, 1811, when, in a review of Weber's edition of Ford's
works, Lamb was called a poor maniac (see note on page 471); in October,
1814, when his review of Wordsworth's _Excursion_ was hacked to pieces
(see same note); in April, 1822, when a reviewer of Reid's
_Hypochondriasis_ (believed to be Dr. Robert Gooch, a friend of Southey)
stated that he knew for a fact that Lamb's "Confessions of a Drunkard"
were autobiographical (see note on page 458); and lastly, in January,
1823, when Southey, in an article on "Theo-philanthropism in France and
the Spread of Infidelity," remarked, incidentally and quite needlessly,
of _Elia_, then just published, that it wanted a sounder religious
feeling, and went on to rebuke Lamb's friend, Leigh Hunt, for his lack
of Christian faith. It was this accumulation of affront that stirred
Lamb to his remonstrance, far more than anger with Southey--although
anger he naturally had. Lamb's real opponent was Gifford; as in a
private letter to Southey, after the publication of the article and
after Southey had written to him on the matter, he admitted (see below).
Lamb's own remark concerning the "Letter to Southey," there
expressed--"My guardian angel was absent at that time"--is perhaps
right, although the passage in the article in defence of his friends
could be ill spared. As for Southey, while one can see his point of view
and respect his honesty, one is glad that so poor a piece of literary
criticism and so unlovely a display of self-righteousness should be
chastised; without, however, too greatly admiring the chastisement.
Lamb's first idea was to let the review pass without notice, as we see
from the following remark to Bernard Barton in July, 1823:--
"Southey has attacked 'Elia' on the score of infidelity in the
_Quarterly_ article, 'Progress of Infidelity.' I had not, nor have
seen the _Monthly_. He might have spared an old friend such a
construction of a few careless flights, that meant no harm to
religion. If all his unguarded expressions were to be collected--!
But I love and respect Southey, and will not retort. I hate his
review, and his being a reviewer. The hint he has dropped will knock
the sale of the book on the head, which was almost at a stop before.
Let it stop, there is corn in Egypt, while there is cash at
Leadenhall. You and I are something besides being writers, thank
God!"
But Lamb thought better, or worse, of his first intention, and wrote the
"Letter."
It appeared in October, 1823, and caused some talk among literary
people. Southey had many enemies who were glad to see him trounced. _The
Times_, for example, of October 2, said:--
The number just published of the _London Magazine_ contains a
curious letter from Elia (Charles Lamb) to Mr. Southey. It treats
the laureat with that contempt which his always uncandid and
frequently malignant spirit deserves. When it is considered that
Mr. Lamb has been the fast friend of Southey, and is besides of a
particularly kind and peaceable nature, it is evident that nothing
but gross provocation could have roused him to this public
declaration of his disgust.
On the other hand, Christopher North (John Wilson), of _Blackwood_, made
the letter the text of a homily to literary men, in _Blackwood_, for
October, 1823, under the heading of "A Manifesto." After some general
remarks on the tendency of authors to take themselves, or at any rate
their position in the public eye, too seriously, he continued:--
Our dearly-beloved friend, Charles Lamb, (we would fain call him
ELIA; but that, as he himself says, "would be as good as naming
him,") what is this you are doing? Mr. Southey, having read your
Essays, wished to pay you a compliment, and called them, in the
"Quarterly," "a book which wants only a sounder religious feeling,
to be as delightful as it is original!" And with this eulogy you
are not only dissatisfied, but so irate at the Laureate, that
nothing will relieve your bile, but a Letter to the Doctor of seven
good pages in "The London." Prodigious! Nothing would content your
highness (not serene) of the India-House, but such a sentence as
would sell your lucubrations as a puff; and because Taylor and
Hessey cannot send this to the newspapers, you wax sour, sulky, and
vituperative of your old crony, and twit him with his "old familiar
faces." This is, our dear Charles, most unreasonable--most unworthy
of you; and we know not how to punish you with sufficient severity,
now that Hodge of Tortola[69] is no more; but the inflexible
Higgins of Nevis still survives, and we must import him to flog you
in the market-place.
[69] See note to "Christ's Hospital" essay, in Vol. II.--ED.
Are you, or are you not, a friend to the liberty of the press? of
human thought? feeling? opinion? Is it, Charles, enormous
wickedness in Southey thus to characterize your Essays? If so, what
do you think of the invasion of Spain, the murder of the Franks
family, Pygmalion's amour with the tailor's daughter, the military
execution of the Duc d'Enghien, Palm's death, the massacre at Scio,
Z.'s Letters on the Cockney-School, Don Juan, John Knox, Calvin,
Cock-fighting, the French Revolution, the Reduction of the Five Per
Cents Navy, Godwin's Political Justice, the Tread-Mill, the
Crusades, Gas fighting booty, D'Israeli's Quarrels of Authors,
Byron's conduct to the Hunts, and the doctrine of the universal
depravity of the human race?
Is there a sound religious feeling in your Essays, or is there not?
And what is a sound religious feeling? You declare yourself a
Unitarian; but, as a set-off to that heterodoxy, you vaunt your
bosom-friendship with T. N. T., "a little tainted with
Socinianism," and "----, a sturdy old Athanasian." With this
vaunting anomaly you make the Laureate blush, till his face tinges
Derwent-water with a ruddy lustre as of the setting sun. O Charles,
Charles----if we could but "see ourselves as others see us!" Would
that we ourselves could do so! But how would that benefit you? You
are too amiable to wish to see Christopher North humiliated in his
own estimation, and startled at the sight of _Public Derision_,
like yourself! Yes----even Cockneys blush for you; and the many
clerks of the India-House hang down their heads and are ashamed.
You present THE PUBLIC with a list of your friends. "W., the light,
and warm--as light-hearted Janus of the London!" Who the devil is
he? Let him cover both his faces with a handkerchief. "H. C. R.,
unwearied in the offices of a friend;" the correspondent and
caricaturist of Wordsworth, the very identical "W----th," who
"estated" you in so many "possessions," and made you proud of your
"rent-roll." "W. A., the last and steadiest of that little knot of
whist-players." Ah! lack-a-day, Charles, what are trumps? And "M.,
the noble-minded kinsman by wedlock" of the same eternal "W----th."
Pray, what is his wife's name? and were the banns published in St.
Pancras Church?----All this is very vain and very virulent; and you
indeed give us portraits of your friends, each in the
clare-obscure.
We were in the number of your earliest, sincerest, best, and most
powerful friends, Charles; and yet, alas! for the ingratitude of
the human heart, you have never so much as fortified yourself with
the initials of our formidable name----"C. N. the Editor of
Blackwood." Oh, that would have been worth P----r, A---- P----,
G----n, and "the rest," all in a lump; better than the
"Four-and-twenty Fiddlers all in a row." Or had you had the
courage and the conscience to print, at full length, "CHRISTOPHER
NORTH," why, these sixteen magical letters would have opened every
door for you, like Sesame in the Arabian Tales. These four magical
syllables, triumphant over the Laureate's "ugly characters,
standing in the very front of his notice, like some bug-bear, to
frighten all good Christians from purchasing," would have been a
passport for Elia throughout all the kingdoms of Christianity, and
billetted you, a true soldier of the Faith, in any serious family
you chose, with morning and evening prayers; a hot, heavy supper
every night; a pan of hot-coals ere you were sheeted; and a good
motherly body, with six unmarried daughters, to tap at your
bed-room door at day-light, and summon you down stairs from a state
of "_otium cum dignitate_" to one of "gaiety and innocence," among
damsels with scriptural names, short petticoats, and a zealous
attachment to religious establishments.
We may set off against this the comment of Crabb Robinson:--
Nothing that Lamb has ever written has impressed me more strongly
with the sweetness of his disposition and the strength of his
affections.
Coleridge and Hazlitt also both commended the "Letter." Southey
displayed a fine temper. He wrote to Lamb on November 19, 1823:--
MY DEAR LAMB--On Monday I saw your letter in the _London Magazine_,
which I had not before had an opportunity of seeing, and I now take
the first interval of leisure for replying to it.
Nothing could be further from my mind than any intention or
apprehension of any way offending or injuring a man concerning whom
I have never spoken, thought, or felt otherwise than with
affection, esteem, and admiration.
If you had let me know in any private or friendly manner that you
felt wounded by a sentence in which nothing but kindness was
intended--or that you found it might injure the sale of your
book--I would most readily and gladly have inserted a note in the
next Review to qualify and explain what had hurt you.
You have made this impossible, and I am sorry for it. But I will
not engage in controversy with you to make sport for the
Philistines.
The provocation must be strong indeed that can rouse me to do this,
even with an enemy. And if you can forgive an unintended offence as
heartily as I do the way in which you have resented it, there will
be nothing to prevent our meeting as we have heretofore done, and
feeling towards each other as we have always been wont to do.
Only signify a correspondent willingness on your part, and send me
your address, and my first business next week shall be to reach
your door, and shake hands with you and your sister. Remember me to
her most kindly and believe me--Yours, with unabated esteem and
regards,
ROBERT SOUTHEY.
Lamb replied at once--November 21, 1823:--
DEAR SOUTHEY--The kindness of your note has melted away the mist
which was upon me. I have been fighting against a shadow. That
accursed Q. R. had vexed me by a gratuitous speaking, of its own
knowledge, that the _Confessions of a D----d_ was a genuine
description of the state of the writer. Little things, that are not
ill meant, may produce much ill. _That_ might have injured me alive
and dead. I am in a public office, and my life is insured. I was
prepared for anger, and I thought I saw, in a few obnoxious words,
a hard case of repetition directed against me. I wished both
magazine and review at the bottom of the sea. I shall be ashamed to
see you, and my sister (though innocent) will be still more so; for
the folly was done without her knowledge, and has made her uneasy
ever since. My guardian angel was absent at that time.
I will muster up courage to see you, however, any day next week
(Wednesday excepted). We shall hope that you will bring Edith with
you. That will be a second mortification. She will hate to see us;
but come and heap embers. We deserve it; I for what I've done, and
she for being my sister.
Do come early in the day, by sun-light, that you may see my
_Milton_.
I am at Colebrook Cottage, Colebrook Row, Islington: a detached
whitish house, close to the New River end of Colebrook Terrace,
left hand from Sadler's Wells.
Will you let me know the day before?
Your penitent,
C. LAMB.
_P.S._--I do not think your handwriting at all like ****'s. I do
not think many things I did think.
There the matter ended. Seven years later, however, when _The Literary
Gazette_ fell upon Lamb's _Album Verses_, in a paltry attack, Southey
sent to _The Times_ a poem in defence and praise of his friend,
beginning:--
Charles Lamb, to those who know thee justly dear,
For rarest genius, and for sterling worth,
Unchanging friendship, warmth of heart sincere,
And wit that never gave an ill thought birth ...
Page 265, line 4 of essay. _A recent paper on "Infidelity."_ The passage
relating to Lamb and Thornton Hunt ran as follows:--