The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Volume II Part 35

"ELIA TO HIS CORRESPONDENTS.--A Correspondent, who writes himself Peter Ball, or Bell,--for his hand-writing is as ragged as his manners--admonishes me of the old saying, that some people (under a courteous periphrasis I slur his less ceremonious epithet) had need have good memories. In my 'Old Benchers of the Inner Temple,'

I have delivered myself, and truly, a Templar born. Bell clamours upon this, and thinketh that he hath caught a fox. It seems that in a former paper, retorting upon a weekly scribbler who had called my good ident.i.ty in question, (see P.S. to my 'Chapter on Ears,') I profess myself a native of some spot near Cavendish Square, deducing my remoter origin from Italy. But who does not see, except this tinkling cymbal, that in that idle fiction of Genoese ancestry I was answering a fool according to his folly--that Elia there expresseth himself ironically, as to an approved slanderer, who hath no right to the truth, and can be no fit recipient of it? Such a one it is usual to leave to his delusions; or, leading him from error still to contradictory error, to plunge him (as we say) deeper in the mire, and give him line till he suspend himself. No understanding reader could be imposed upon by such obvious rhodomontade to suspect me for an alien, or believe me other than English.--To a second Correspondent, who signs himself 'a Wilts.h.i.+re man,' and claims me for a countryman upon the strength of an equivocal phrase in my 'Christ's Hospital,' a more mannerly reply is due. Pa.s.sing over the Genoese fable, which Bell makes such a ring about, he nicely detects a more subtle discrepancy, which Bell was too obtuse to strike upon. Referring to the pa.s.sage (in page 484 of our second volume[3]), I must confess, that the term 'native town,' applied to Calne, _prima facie_ seems to bear out the construction which my friendly Correspondent is willing to put upon it. The context too, I am afraid, a little favours it. But where the words of an author, taken literally, compared with some other pa.s.sage in his writings, admitted to be authentic, involve a palpable contradiction, it hath been the custom of the ingenuous commentator to smooth the difficulty by the supposition, that in the one case an allegorical or tropical sense was chiefly intended. So by the word 'native,' I may be supposed to mean a town where I might have been born; or where it might be desirable that I should have been born, as being situate in wholesome air, upon a dry chalky soil, in which I delight; or a town, with the inhabitants of which I pa.s.sed some weeks, a summer or two ago, so agreeably, that they and it became in a manner native to me.

Without some such lat.i.tude of interpretation in the present case, I see not how we can avoid falling into a gross error in physics, as to conceive that a gentleman may be born in two places, from which all modern and ancient testimony is alike abhorrent. Bacchus cometh the nearest to it, whom I remember Ovid to have honoured with the epithet 'Twice born.'[4] But not to mention that he is so called (we conceive) in reference to the places _whence_ rather than the places _where_ he was delivered,--for by either birth he may probably be challenged for a Theban--in a strict way of speaking, he was a _filius femoris_ by no means in the same sense as he had been before a _filius alvi_, for that latter was but a secondary and tralat.i.tious way of being born, and he but a denizen of the second house of his geniture. Thus much by way of explanation was thought due to the courteous 'Wilts.h.i.+re man.'--To 'Indagator,' 'Investigator,' 'Incertus,' and the rest of the pack, that are so importunate about the true localities of his birth--as if, forsooth, Elia were presently about to be pa.s.sed to his parish--to all such churchwarden critics he answereth, that, any explanation here given notwithstanding, he hath not so fixed his nativity (like a rusty vane) to one dull spot, but that, if he seeth occasion, or the argument shall demand it, he will be born again, in future papers, in whatever place, and at whatever period, shall seem good unto him.

"Mod me Thebis--mod Athenis.

"ELIA."

[Footnote 1: "Clearly a fict.i.tious appellation; for if we admit the latter of these names to be in a manner English, what is _Leigh_?

Christian nomenclature knows no such."]

[Footnote 2: "It is clearly of transatlantic origin."]

[Footnote 3: See page 15 of this volume.]

[Footnote 4: "Imperfectus adhuc infans genetricis ab alvo Eripitur, patrioque tener (si credere dignum est) Insuitur femori-- Tutaque bis geniti sunt incunabula Bacchi.

"_Metamorph._ lib. iii., 310."]

Page 48. ALL FOOLS' DAY.

_London Magazine_, April, 1821.

Page 49, line 1. _Empedocles_. Lamb appended this footnote in the _London Magazine_:--

He who, to be deem'd A G.o.d, leap'd fondly into Etna's flames.

_Paradise Lost_, III., lines 470-471 [should be 469-470].

Page 49, line 5. _Cleombrotus_. Lamb's _London Magazine_ footnote:--

He who, to enjoy Plato's Elysium, leap'd into the sea.

_Paradise Lost_, III., lines 471-472.

Page 49, line 8. _Plasterers at Babel_. Lamb's _London Magazine_ note:--

The builders next of Babel on the plain Of Sennaar.

_Paradise Lost_, III., lines 466-467.

Page 49, line 10. _My right hand_. Lamb, it is probably unnecessary to remind the reader, stammered too.

Page 49, line 13 from foot. _Duns_, Duns Scotus (1265?-1308?), metaphysician, author of _De modis significandi sive Grammatica Speculativa_ and other philosophic works. Known as Doctor Subtilis.

There was nothing of Duns in the _London Magazine_; the sentence ran: "Mr. Hazlitt, I cannot indulge you in your definitions." This was at a time when Lamb and Hazlitt were not on good terms.

Page 49, last line. _Honest R----_. Lamb's Key gives "Ramsay, London Library, Ludgate Street; now extinct." I have tried in vain to find out more about Ramsay. The London Library was established at 5 Ludgate Street in 1785. Later, the books were lodged at Charles Taylor's house in Hatton Garden, and were finally removed to the present London Inst.i.tute in Finsbury Circus.

Page 50, line 6. _Good Granville S----_. Lamb's Key gives Granville Sharp. This was the eccentric Granville Sharp, the Quaker abolitionist (1735-1813).

Page 51. A QUAKER'S MEETING.

_London Magazine_, April, 1821.

Lamb's connection with Quakers was somewhat intimate throughout his life. In early days he was friendly with the Birmingham Lloyds--Charles, Robert and Priscilla, of the younger generation, and their father, Charles Lloyd, the banker and translator of Horace and Homer (see _Charles Lamb and the Lloyds_, 1898); and later with Bernard Barton, the Quaker poet of Woodbridge. Also he had loved from afar Hester Savory, the subject of his poem "Hester" (see Vol. IV.). A pa.s.sage from a letter written in February, 1797, to Coleridge, bears upon this essay:--"Tell Lloyd I have had thoughts of turning Quaker, and have been reading, or am rather just beginning to read, a most capital book, good thoughts in good language, William Penn's 'No Cross, No Crown,' I like it immensely. Unluckily I went to one of his meetings, tell him, in St. John Street [Clerkenwell] yesterday, and saw a man under all the agitations and workings of a fanatic, who believed himself under the influence of some 'inevitable presence.'

This cured me of Quakerism; I love it in the books of Penn and Woolman, but I detest the vanity of a man thinking he speaks by the Spirit...."

Both Forster and Hood tell us that Lamb in outward appearance resembled a Quaker.

Page 52, line 13. _The uncommunicating muteness of fishes_. Lamb had in mind this thought on the silence of fishes when he was at work on _John Woodvil_. Simon remarks, in the exquisite pa.s.sage (Vol. IV.) in reply to the question, "What is it you love?"

The fish in th' other element That knows no touch of eloquence.

Page 53, second quotation. "_How reverend ..._" An adaptation of Congreve's description of York Minster in "The Mourning Bride" (Mary Lamb's "first play"), Act I., Scene 1:--

How reverend is the face of this tall pile ...

Looking tranquillity!

Page 53, middle. _Fox and Dewesbury_. George Fox (1624-1691) founded the Society of Friends. William Dewesbury was one of Fox's first colleagues, and a famous preacher. William Penn (1644-1718), the founder of Pennsylvania, was the most ill.u.s.trious of the early converts to Quakerism. Lamb refers to him again, before his judges, in the essay on "Imperfect Sympathies," page 73. George Fox's _Journal_ was lent to Lamb by a friend of Bernard Barton's in 1823. On returning it, Lamb remarked (February 17, 1823):--"I have quoted G.F. in my 'Quaker's Meeting' as having said he was 'lifted up in spirit' (which I felt at the time to be not a Quaker phrase),' and the Judge and Jury were as dead men under his feet.' I find no such words in his Journal, and I did not get them from Sewell, and the latter sentence I am sure I did not mean to invent. I must have put some other Quaker's words into his mouth."

Sewel was a Dutchman--William Sewel (1654-1720). His t.i.tle runs: _History of the Rise, Increase and Progress of the Christian People called Quakers, written originally in Low Dutch by W. Sewel, and by himself translated into English_, 1722. James Naylor (1617-1660) was one of the early Quaker martyrs--"my favourite" Lamb calls him in a letter. John Woolman (1720-1772) was an American Friend. His princ.i.p.al writings are to be found in _A Journal of the Life, Gospel Labours, and Christian Experiences of that faithful minister of Jesus Christ, John Woolman, late of Mount Holly in the Province of Jersey, North America_, 1795. Modern editions are obtainable.

Page 56. THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER.

_London Magazine_, May, 1821.

Page 56, line 9. _Ortelius ... Arrowsmith_. Abraham Ortellius (1527-1598), the Dutch geographer and the author of _Theatrum Orbis Terrae_, 1570. Aaron Arrowsmith (1750-1823) was a well-known cartographer at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Lamb would perhaps have known something of his _Atlas of Southern India_, a very useful work at the East India House.

Page 56, line 13. _A very dear friend_. Barren Field (see the essay on "Distant Correspondents").

Page 56, line 10 from foot. _My friend M_. Thomas Manning (1772-1840), the mathematician and traveller, and Lamb's correspondent.

Page 56, last line. "_On Devon's leafy sh.o.r.es_." From Wordsworth's _Excursion_, III.

Page 57, line 16. _Daily jaunts_. Though Lamb was then (1821) living at 20 Great Russell Street, Covent Garden, he rented rooms at 14 Kingsland Row, Dalston, in which to take holidays and do his literary work undisturbed. At that time Dalston, which adjoins Shackleton, was the country and Kingsland Green an open s.p.a.ce opposite Lamb's lodging.

Page 58, line 23. _The North Pole Expedition_. This would probably be Sir John Franklin's expedition which set out in 1819 and ended in disaster, the subject of Franklin's book, _Narrative of a Journey to the Sh.o.r.es of the Polar Sea in the years 1819, 20, 21, 22_ (1823). Sir John Ross made an expedition in 1818, and Sir William Edward Parry in 1819, and again in 1821-1823 with Lyon. The panorama was possibly at Burford's Panorama in the Strand, afterwards moved to Leicester Square.

Page 60, line 17. _Tractate on Education_. Milton's _Tractate on Education_, addressed to his friend, Samuel Hartlib, was published in 1644. The quotation above is from that work. This paragraph of Lamb's essay was afterwards humorously expanded in his "Letter to an Old Gentleman whose Education has been Neglected" (see Vol. I.).

Page 60, last line. _Mr. Bartley's Orrery._ George Bartley (1782?-1858), the comedian, lectured on astronomy and poetry at the Lyceum during Lent at this time. An orrery is a working model of the solar system. The Panopticon was, I a.s.sume, a forerunner of the famous Panopticon in Leicester Square.

Page 61, line 8. "_Plaything for an hour_." A quotation, from Charles and Mary Lamb's _Poetry for Children_--"Parental Recollections":--