So Mr. Charles Lamb chooses to designate himself; and as his lucubrations
under this _nom de guerre_ have gained considerable notice from the
public, we shall here attempt to describe his style and manner, and to
point out his beauties and defects.
Mr. Lamb, though he has borrowed from previous sources, instead of
availing himself of the most popular and admired, has groped out his way,
and made his most successful researches among the more obscure and
intricate, though certainly not the least pithy or pleasant of our
writers. He has raked among the dust and cobwebs of a remote period, has
exhibited specimens of curious relics, and pored over moth-eaten, decayed
manuscripts, for the benefit of the more inquisitive and discerning part
of the public. Antiquity after a time has the grace of novelty, as old
fashions revived are mistaken for new ones; and a certain quaintness and
singularity of style is an agreeable relief to the smooth and insipid
monotony of modern composition. Mr. Lamb has succeeded not by conforming
to the _Spirit of the Age_, but in opposition to it. He does not march
boldly along with the crowd, but steals off the pavement to pick his way
in the contrary direction. He prefers _bye-ways_ to _highways_. When the
full tide of human life pours along to some festive show, to some pageant
of a day, Elia would stand on one side to look over an old book-stall, or
stroll down some deserted pathway in search of a pensive description over
a tottering door-way, or some quaint device in architecture, illustrative
of embryo art and ancient manners. Mr. Lamb has the very soul of an
antiquarian, as this implies a reflecting humanity; the film of the past
hovers for ever before him. He is shy, sensitive, the reverse of every
thing coarse, vulgar, obtrusive, and _common-place_. He would fain
"shuffle off this mortal coil," and his spirit clothes itself in the garb
of elder time, homelier, but more durable. He is borne along with no
pompous paradoxes, shines in no glittering tinsel of a fashionable
phraseology; is neither fop nor sophist. He has none of the turbulence or
froth of new-fangled opinions. His style runs pure and clear, though it
may often take an underground course, or be conveyed through old-fashioned
conduit-pipes. Mr. Lamb does not court popularity, nor strut in gaudy
plumes, but shrinks from every kind of ostentatious and obvious pretension
into the retirement of his own mind.
"The self-applauding bird, the peacock see:--
Mark what a sumptuous pharisee is he!
Meridian sun-beams tempt him to unfold
His radiant glories, azure, green, and gold:
He treads as if, some solemn music near,
His measured step were governed by his ear:
And seems to say--'Ye meaner fowl, give place,
I am all splendour, dignity, and grace!'
Not so the pheasant on his charms presumes,
Though he too has a glory in his plumes.
He, Christian-like, retreats with modest mien
To the close copse or far sequestered green,
And shines without desiring to be seen."
These lines well describe the modest and delicate beauties of Mr. Lamb's
writings, contrasted with the lofty and vainglorious pretensions of some
of his contemporaries. This gentleman is not one of those who pay all
their homage to the prevailing idol: he thinks that
"Newborn gauds are made and moulded of things past,"
nor does he
"Give to dust that is a little gilt
More laud than gilt o'er-dusted."
His convictions "do not in broad rumor lie," nor are they "set off to the
world in the glistering foil" of fashion; but "live and breathe aloft in
those pure eyes, and perfect judgment of all-seeing _time_." Mr. Lamb
rather affects and is tenacious of the obscure and remote: of that which
rests on its own intrinsic and silent merit; which scorns all alliance, or
even the suspicion of owing any thing to noisy clamour, to the glare of
circumstances. There is a fine tone of _chiaro-scuro_, a moral perspective
in his writings. He delights to dwell on that which is fresh to the eye of
memory; he yearns after and covets what soothes the frailty of human
nature. That touches him most nearly which is withdrawn to a certain
distance, which verges on the borders of oblivion:--that piques and
provokes his fancy most, which is hid from a superficial glance. That
which, though gone by, is still remembered, is in his view more genuine,
and has given more "vital signs that it will live," than a thing of
yesterday, that may be forgotten to-morrow. Death has in this sense the
spirit of life in it; and the shadowy has to our author something
substantial in it. Ideas savour most of reality in his mind; or rather his
imagination loiters on the edge of each, and a page of his writings
recalls to our fancy the _stranger_ on the grate, fluttering in its dusky
tenuity, with its idle superstition and hospitable welcome!
Mr. Lamb has a distaste to new faces, to new books, to new buildings, to
new customs. He is shy of all imposing appearances, of all assumptions of
self-importance, of all adventitious ornaments, of all mechanical
advantage, even to a nervous excess. It is not merely that he does not
rely upon or ordinarily avail himself of them; he holds them in
abhorrence, he utterly abjures and discards them, and places a great gulph
between him and them. He disdains all the vulgar artifices of authorship,
all the cant of criticism, and helps to notoriety. He has no grand
swelling theories to attract the visionary and the enthusiast, no passing
topics to allure the thoughtless and the vain. He evades the present, he
mocks the future. His affections revert to and settle on the past, but
then, even this must have something personal and local in it to interest
him deeply and thoroughly; he pitches his tent in the suburbs of existing
manners; brings down the account of character to the few straggling
remains of the last generation; seldom ventures beyond the bills of
mortality, and occupies that nice point between egotism and disinterested
humanity. No one makes the tour of our southern metropolis, or describes
the manners of the last age, so well as Mr. Lamb--with so fine, and yet so
formal an air--with such vivid obscurity, with such arch piquancy, such
picturesque quaintness, such smiling pathos. How admirably he has sketched
the former inmates of the South-Sea House: what "fine fretwork he makes of
their double and single entries!" With what a firm, yet subtle pencil he
has embodied _Mrs. Battle's Opinions on Whist_! How notably he embalms a
battered _beau_; how delightfully an amour, that was cold forty years ago,
revives in his pages! With what well-disguised humour, he introduces us to
his relations, and how freely he serves up his friends! Certainly, some of
his portraits are _fixtures_, and will do to hang up as lasting and lively
emblems of human infirmity. Then there is no one who has so sure an ear
for "the chimes at midnight," not even excepting Mr. Justice Shallow; nor
could Master Silence himself take his "cheese and pippins" with a more
significant and satisfactory air. With what a gusto Mr. Lamb describes the
inns and courts of law, the Temple and Gray's-Inn, as if he had been a
student there for the last two hundred years, and had been as well
acquainted with the person of Sir Francis Bacon as he is with his portrait
or writings! It is hard to say whether St. John's Gate is connected with
more intense and authentic associations in his mind, as a part of old
London Wall, or as the frontispiece (time out of mind) of the Gentleman's
Magazine. He haunts Watling-street like a gentle spirit; the avenues to
the play-houses are thick with panting recollections, and
Christ's-Hospital still breathes the balmy breath of infancy in his
description of it! Whittington and his Cat are a fine hallucination for
Mr. Lamb's historic Muse, and we believe he never heartily forgave a
certain writer who took the subject of Guy Faux out of his hands. The
streets of London are his fairy-land, teeming with wonder, with life and
interest to his retrospective glance, as it did to the eager eye of
childhood; he has contrived to weave its tritest traditions into a bright
and endless romance!
Mr. Lamb's taste in books is also fine, and it is peculiar. It is not the
worse for a little _idiosyncrasy_. He does not go deep into the Scotch
novels, but he is at home in Smollett or Fielding. He is little read in
Junius or Gibbon, but no man can give a better account of Burton's Anatomy
of Melancholy, or Sir Thomas Brown's Urn-Burial, or Fuller's Worthies, or
John Bunyan's Holy War. No one is more unimpressible to a specious
declamation: no one relishes a recondite beauty more. His admiration of
Shakspeare and Milton does not make him despise Pope; and he can read
Parnell with patience, and Gay with delight. His taste in French and
German literature is somewhat defective; nor has he made much progress in
the science of Political Economy or other abstruse studies, though he has
read vast folios of controversial divinity, merely for the sake of the
intricacy of style, and to save himself the pain of thinking. Mr. Lamb is
a good judge of prints and pictures. His admiration of Hogarth does credit
to both, particularly when it is considered that Leonardo da Vinci is his
next greatest favourite, and that his love of the _actual_ does not
proceed from a want of taste for the _ideal_. His worst fault is an
over-eagerness of enthusiasm, which occasionally makes him take a surfeit
of his highest favourites.--Mr. Lamb excels in familiar conversation
almost as much as in writing, when his modesty does not overpower his
self-possession. He is as little of a proser as possible, but he _blurts_
out the finest wit and sense in the world. He keeps a good deal in the
back-ground at first, till some excellent conceit pushes him forward, and
then he abounds in whim and pleasantry. There is a primitive simplicity
and self-denial about his manners; and a Quakerism in his personal
appearance, which is, however, relieved by a fine Titian head, full of
dumb eloquence! Mr. Lamb is a general favourite with those who know him.
His character is equally singular and amiable. He is endeared to his
friends not less by his foibles than his virtues; he ensures their esteem
by the one, and does not wound their self-love by the other. He gains
ground in the opinion of others, by making no advances in his own. We
easily admire genius where the diffidence of the possessor makes our
acknowledgment of merit seem like a sort of patronage, or act of
condescension, as we willingly extend our good offices where they are not
exacted as obligations, or repaid with sullen indifference.--The style of
the Essays of Elia is liable to the charge of a certain _mannerism_. His
sentences are cast in the mould of old authors; his expressions are
borrowed from them; but his feelings and observations are genuine and
original, taken from actual life, or from his own breast; and he may be
said (if any one can) "to have coined his heart for _jests_," and to have
split his brain for fine distinctions! Mr. Lamb, from the peculiarity of
his exterior and address as an author, would probably never have made his
way by detached and independent efforts; but, fortunately for himself and
others, he has taken advantage of the Periodical Press, where he has been
stuck into notice, and the texture of his compositions is assuredly fine
enough to bear the broadest glare of popularity that has hitherto shone
upon them. Mr. Lamb's literary efforts have procured him civic honours (a
thing unheard of in our times), and he has been invited, in his character
of ELIA, to dine at a select party with the Lord Mayor. We should prefer
this distinction to that of being poet-laureat. We would recommend to Mr.
Waithman's perusal (if Mr. Lamb has not anticipated us) the _Rosamond
Gray_ and the _John Woodvil_ of the same author, as an agreeable relief to
the noise of a City feast, and the heat of city elections. A friend, a
short time ago, quoted some lines[137] from the last-mentioned of these
works, which meeting Mr. Godwin's eye, he was so struck with the beauty of
the passage, and with a consciousness of having seen it before, that he
was uneasy till he could recollect where, and after hunting in vain for it
in Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, and other not unlikely places, sent
to Mr. Lamb to know if he could help him to the author!