The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Volume II Part 40

Page 123, last paragraph. _Sally W----r_. Lamb's Key gives "Sally Winter;" but as to who she was we have no knowledge.

Page 123, end. _J.W._ James White. See next essay.

Page 124. THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS.

_London Magazine_, May, 1822, where it has a sub-t.i.tle, "A May-Day Effusion."

This was not Lamb's only literary a.s.sociation with chimney-sweepers.

In Vol. I. of this edition will be found the description of a sweep in the country which there is good reason to believe is Lamb's work.

Again, in 1824, James Montgomery, the poet, edited a book--_The Chimney-Sweepers' Friend and Climbing Boys' Alb.u.m_--with the benevolent purpose of interesting people in the hards.h.i.+ps of the climbing boys' life and producing legislation to alleviate it. The first half of the book is practical: reports of committees, and so forth; the second is sentimental; verses by Bernard Barton, William Lisle Bowles, and many others; short stories of kidnapped children forced to the horrid business; and kindred themes. Among the "favourite poets of the day" to whom Montgomery applied were Scott, Wordsworth, Rogers, Moore, Joanna Baillie and Lamb. Lamb replied by copying out (with the alteration of Toddy for Dacre) "The Chimney-Sweeper" from Blake's _Songs of Innocence_, described by Montgomery as "a very rare and curious little work." In that poem it will be remembered the little sweep cries "weep, weep, weep." Lamb compares the cry more prettily to the "peep, peep" of the sparrow.

Page 125, line 6. _Shop ..._ Mr. Thomas Read's Saloop Coffee House was at No. 102 Fleet Street. The following lines were painted on a board in Read's establishment:--

Come, all degrees now pa.s.sing by, My charming liquor taste and try; To Lockyer come, and drink your fill; Mount Pleasant has no kind of ill.

The fumes of wine, punch, drams and beer, It will expell; your spirits cheer; From drowsiness your spirits free.

Sweet as a rose your breath will be, Come taste and try, and speak your mind; Such rare ingredients here are joined, Mount Pleasant pleases all mankind.

Page 127, line 12 from foot. _The young Montagu_. Edward Wortley Montagu (1713-1776), the traveller, ran away from Westminster School more than once, becoming, among other things, a chimney-sweeper.

Page 127, line 9 from foot. _Arundel Castle_. The Suss.e.x seat of the Dukes of Norfolk. The "late duke" was Charles Howard, eleventh duke, who died in 1815, and who spent enormous sums of money on curiosities.

I can find no record of the story of the sweep. Perhaps Lamb invented it, or applied it to Arundel.

Page 128, line 14 from foot. _Jem White_. James White (1775-1820), who was at Christ's Hospital with Lamb, and who wrote _Falstaff's Letters_, 1796, in his company (see Vol. I.). "There never was his like," Lamb told another old schoolfellow, Valentine Le Grice, in 1833; "we shall never see such days as those in which he flourished."

See the essay "On Some of the Old Actors," for an anecdote of White.

Page 128, line 8 from foot. _The fair of St. Bartholomew_. Held on September 3 at Smithfield, until 1855. George Daniel, in his recollections of Lamb, records a visit they paid together to the Fair.

Lamb took Wordsworth through its noisy mazes in 1802.

Page 129, line 14. _BiG.o.d_. John Fenwick (see note to "The Two Races of Men").

Leigh Hunt, in _The Examiner_ for May 5, 1822, quoted some of the best sentences of this essay. On May 12 a correspondent (L.E.) wrote a very agreeable letter supporting Lamb's plea for generosity to sweeps and remarking thus upon Lamb himself:--

I read the modic.u.m on "Chimney-Sweepers," which your last paper contained, with pleasure. It appears to be the production of that sort of mind which you justly denominate "gifted;" but which is greatly undervalued by the majority of men, because they have no sympathies in common with it. Many who might partially appreciate such a spirit, do nevertheless object to it, from the snap-dragon nature of its coruscations, which s.h.i.+ne themselves, but shew every thing around them to disadvantage. Your deep philosophers also, and all the laborious professors of the art of sinking, may elevate their nasal projections, and demand "cui bono"? For my part I prefer a little enjoyment to a great deal of philosophy. It is these gifted minds that enliven our habitations, and contribute so largely to those _every-day_ delights, which const.i.tute, after all, the chief part of mortal happiness. Such minds are ever active--their light, like the vestal lamp, is ever burning--and in my opinion the man who refines the common intercourse of life, and wreaths the altars of our household G.o.ds with flowers, is more deserving of respect and grat.i.tude than all the sages who waste their lives in elaborate speculations, which tend to nothing, and which _we_ cannot comprehend--nor they neither.

On June 2, however, "J.C.H." intervened to correct what he considered the "dangerous spirit" of Lamb's essay, which said so little of the hards.h.i.+ps of the sweeps, but rather suggested that they were a happy cla.s.s. J.C.H. then put the case of the unhappy sweep with some eloquence, urging upon all householders the claims of the mechanical sweeping machine.

Page 130. A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS IN THE METROPOLIS.

_London Magazine_, June, 1822.

The origin of this essay was the activity at that time of the Society for the Suppression of Mendicity, founded in 1818, of which a Mr. W.H.

Bodkin was the Hon. Secretary. The Society's motto was "Benefacta male collocata, malefacta existima;" and it attempted much the same work now performed by the Charity Organisation Society. Perhaps the delight expressed in its annual reports in the exposure of impostors was a shade too hearty--at any rate one can see therein cause sufficient for Lamb's counter-blast. Lamb was not the only critic of Mr. Bodkin's zeal. Hood, in the _Odes and Addresses_, published in 1825, included a remonstrance to Mr. Bodkin.

The Society's activity led to a special commission of the House of Commons in 1821 to inquire into the laws relating to vagrants, concerning which Lamb speaks, the clergyman alluded to being Dr.

Henry b.u.t.ts Owen, of Highgate. The result of the commission was an additional stringency, brought about by Mr. George Chetwynd's bill.

It was this essay, says Hood, which led to his acquaintance with Charles Lamb. After its appearance in the _London Magazine_, of which Hood was then sub-editor, he wrote Lamb a letter on coa.r.s.e paper purporting to come from a grateful beggar; Lamb did not admit the discovery of the perpetrator of the joke, but soon afterwards Lamb called on Hood when he was ill, and a friends.h.i.+p followed to which we owe Hood's charming recollections of Lamb--among the best that were written of him by any one.

Page 131, line 14. _The Blind Beggar_. The reference is to the ballad of "The Beggar's Daughter of Bednall Green." The version in the _Percy Reliques_ relates the adventures of Henry, Earl of Leicester, the son of Simon de Montfort, who was blinded at the battle of Evesham and left for dead, and thereafter begged his way with his pretty Bessee.

In the _London Magazine_ Lamb had written "Earl of Flanders," which he altered to "Earl of Cornwall" in _Elia_. The ballad says Earl of Leicester.

Page 131, line 28. _Dear Margaret Newcastle_. One of Lamb's recurring themes of praise (see "The Two Races of Men," "Mackery End in Hertfords.h.i.+re," and "Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading").

"Romancical," according to the _New English Dictionary_, is Lamb's own word. This is the only reference given for it.

Page 133, line 7. _Spital sermons_. On Monday of Easter week it was the custom for the Christ's Hospital boys to walk in procession to the Royal Exchange, and on Tuesday to the Mansion House; on each occasion returning with the Lord Mayor to hear a special sermon--a spital sermon, as it was called--and an anthem. The sermon is now preached only on Easter Tuesday.

Page 133, line 24. _Overseers of St. L----_. Lamb's Key states that both the overseers and the mild rector were inventions. In the _London Magazine_ the rector's parish is "P----."

Page 133, line 27. _Vincent Bourne_. See Lamb's essay on Vincent Bourne, Vol. I. This poem was translated by Lamb himself, and was first published in _The Indicator_ for May 3, 1820. See Vol. IV. for Lamb's other translations from Bourne.

Page 135, line 2. _A well-known figure_. This beggar I take to be Samuel Horsey. He is stated to have been known as the King of the Beggars, and a very prominent figure in London. His mutilation is ascribed to the falling of a piece of timber in Bow Lane, Cheapside, some nineteen years before; but it may have been, as Lamb says, in the Gordon Riots of 1780.

There is the figure of Horsey on his little carriage, with several other of the more notable beggars of the day plying their calling, in an etching of old houses at the corner of Chancery Lane and Fleet Street, made by J.T. Smith in 1789 for his _Ancient Topography of London_, 1815. I give it in my large edition.

Page 137, end of essay. _Feigned or not._ In the _London Magazine_ the essay did not end here. It continued thus:--

"'Pray G.o.d your honour relieve me,' said a poor beadswoman to my friend L---- one day; 'I have seen better days.' 'So have I, my good woman,' retorted he, looking up at the welkin which was just then threatening a storm--and the jest (he will have it) was as good to the beggar as a tester.

"It was at all events kinder than consigning her to the stocks, or the parish beadle--

"But L. has a way of viewing things in rather a paradoxical light on some occasions.

"ELIA.

"P.S.--My friend Hume (not MP.) has a curious ma.n.u.script in his possession, the original draught of the celebrated 'Beggar's Pet.i.tion' (who cannot say by heart the 'Beggar's Pet.i.tion?') as it was written by some school usher (as I remember) with corrections interlined from the pen of Oliver Goldsmith. As a specimen of the doctor's improvement, I recollect one most judicious alteration--

"_A pamper'd menial drove me from the door._

"It stood originally--

"_A livery servant drove me, &c._

"Here is an instance of poetical or artificial language properly subst.i.tuted for the phrase of common conversation; against Wordsworth.

"I think I must get H. to send it to the LONDON, as a corollary to the foregoing."

The foregoing pa.s.sage needs some commentary. Lamb's friend L---- was Lamb himself. He tells the story to Manning in the letter of January 2,1810.--Lamb's friend Hume was Joseph Hume of the victualling office, Somerset House, to whom letters from Lamb will be found in Mr. W.C.

Hazlitt's _Lamb and Hazlitt_, 1900. Hume translated _The Inferno_ of Dante into blank verse, 1812.--The "Beggar's Pet.i.tion," a stock piece for infant recitation a hundred years ago, was a poem beginning thus:--

Pity the sorrows of a poor old man Whose trembling limbs have borne him to your door, Whose days are dwindled to the shortest span; Oh give relief, and Heaven will bless your store.

In the reference to Wordsworth Lamb pokes fun at the statement, in his friend's preface to the second edition of _Lyrical Ballads_, that the purpose of that book was to relate or describe incidents and situations from common life as far as possible in a selection of language really used by men.

Lamb's _P.S._ concerning the "Beggar's Pet.i.tion" was followed in the _London Magazine_ by this _N.B._:--