The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Volume II Part 45

Page 197, line 20. _Sydney, Bishop Taylor, Milton_... I cannot say where are Lamb's copies of Sidney and Fuller; but the British Museum has his Milton, rich in MS. notes, a two-volume edition, 1751. The Taylor, which Lamb acquired in 1798, is the 1678 folio _Sermons_. I cannot say where it now is.

Page 197, line 26. _Shakspeare_. Lamb's Shakespeare was not sold at the sale of his library; only a copy of the _Poems_, 12mo, 1714.

His annotated copy of the _Poems_, 1640, is in America. There is a reference to one of Rowe's plates in the essay "My First Play." The Shakespeare gallery engravings were the costly series of ill.u.s.trations to Shakespeare commissioned by John Boydell (1719-1804), Lord Mayor of London in 1790. The pictures were exhibited in the Shakespeare Gallery in Pall Mall, and the engravings were published in 1802.

After the word "Shakespeare," in the _London Magazine_, came the sentence: "You cannot make a _pet_ book of an author whom everybody reads."

In a letter to Wordsworth, February 1, 1806, Lamb says: "Shakespear is one of the last books one should like to give up, perhaps the one just before the Dying Service in a large Prayer book." In the same letter he says of binding: "The Law Robe I have ever thought as comely and gentlemanly a garb as a Book would wish to wear."

Page 197, line 7 from foot. _Beaumont and Fletcher._ See note to "The Two Races of Men" for an account of Lamb's copy, now in the British Museum.

Page 197, line 5 from foot. _No sympathy with them._ After these words, in the _London Magazine_, came, "nor with Mr. Gifford's Ben Jonson." This edition by Lamb's old enemy, William Gifford, editor of the _Quarterly_, was published in 1816. Lamb's copy of Ben Jonson was dated 1692, folio. It is now in America, I believe.

Page 197, foot. _The reprint of the Anatomy of Melancholy_. This reprint was, I think, published in 1800, in two volumes, marked ninth edition. Lamb's copy was dated 1621, quarto. I do not know where it now is.

Page 198, line 4. _Malone_. This was Edmund Malone (1741-1812), the critic and editor of Shakespeare, who in 1793 persuaded the Vicar of Stratford-on-Avon to whitewash the coloured bust of the poet in the chancel. A _Gentleman's Magazine_ epigrammatist, sharing Lamb's view, wrote:--

Stranger, to whom this monument is shown, Invoke the poet's curse upon Malone; Whose meddling zeal his barbarous taste betrays, And daubs his tombstone, as he mars his plays.

Lamb has been less than fair to Malone. To defend his action in the matter of the bust of Shakespeare is impossible, except by saying that he acted in good faith and according to the fas.h.i.+on of his time. But he did great service to the fame of Shakespeare and thus to English literature, and was fearless and shrewd in his denunciation of the impostor Ireland.

Page 198, line 26. _The Fairy Queen_. Lamb's copy was a folio, 1617, 12, 17, 13. Against Canto XI., Stanza 32, he has written: "Dear Venom, this is the stave I wot of. I will maintain it against any in the book."

Page 199, line 14. _Nando's_. A coffee-house in Fleet Street, at the east corner of Inner Temple Lane, and thus at one time close to Lamb's rooms.

Page 199, line 16. "_The Chronicle is in hand, Sir._" In the _London Magazine_ the following paragraph was here inserted:--

"As in these little Diurnals I generally skip the Foreign News, the Debates--and the Politics--I find the Morning Herald by far the most entertaining of them. It is an agreeable miscellany, rather than a newspaper."

The _Morning Herald_, under Alexander Chalmers, had given more attention to social gossip than to affairs of State; but under Thomas Wright it suddenly, about the time of Lamb's essay, became politically serious and left aristocratic matters to the _Morning Post_.

Page 199, line 20. _Town and Country Magazine_. This magazine flourished between 1769 and 1792.

Page 199, line 26. _Poor Tobin_. Possibly John Tobin (1770-1804), the playwright, though I think not. More probably the Tobin mentioned in Lamb's letter to Wordsworth about "Mr. H." in June, 1806 (two years after John Tobin's death), to whom Lamb read the manager's letter concerning the farce. This would be James, John Tobin's brother.

Page 200, line 13. _The five points_. After these words came, in the _London Magazine_, the following paragraph:--

"I was once amused--there is a pleasure in _affecting_ affectation--at the indignation of a crowd that was justling in with me at the pit-door of Covent Garden theatre, to have a sight of Master Betty--then at once in his dawn and his meridian--in Hamlet. I had been invited quite unexpectedly to join a party, whom I met near the door of the playhouse, and I happened to have in my hand a large octavo of Johnson and Steevens's Shakspeare, which, the time not admitting of my carrying it home, of course went with me to the theatre. Just in the very heat and pressure of the doors opening--the _rush_, as they term it--I deliberately held the volume over my head, open at the scene in which the young Roscius had been most cried up, and quietly read by the lamplight.

The clamour became universal. 'The affectation of the fellow,'

cried one. 'Look at that gentleman _reading_, papa,' squeaked a young lady, who in her admiration of the novelty almost forgot her fears. I read on. 'He ought to have his book knocked out of his hand,' exclaimed a pursy cit, whose arms were too fast pinioned to his side to suffer him to execute his kind intention. Still I read on--and, till the time came to pay my money, kept as unmoved, as Saint Antony at his Holy Offices, with the satyrs, apes, and hobgoblins, mopping, and making mouths at him, in the picture, while the good man sits undisturbed at the sight, as if he were sole tenant of the desart.--The individual rabble (I recognised more than one of their ugly faces) had d.a.m.ned a slight piece of mine but a few nights before, and I was determined the culprits should not a second time put me out of countenance."

Master Betty was William Henry West Betty (1791-1874), known as the "Young Roscius," whose Hamlet and Douglas sent playgoers wild in 1804-5-6. Pitt, indeed, once adjourned the House in order that his Hamlet might be witnessed. His most cried-up scenes in "Hamlet" were the "To be or not to be" soliloquy, and the fencing scene before the king and his mother. The piece of Lamb's own which had been hissed was, of course, "Mr. H.," produced on December 10, 1806; but very likely he added this reference as a symmetrical afterthought, for he would probably have visited Master Betty much earlier in his career, that phenomenon's first appearance at Covent Garden being two years before the advent of the ill-fated Hogsflesh.

Page 200, line 22. _Martin B----_. Martin Charles Burney, son of Admiral Burney, and a lifelong friend of the Lambs--to whom Lamb dedicated the prose part of his _Works_ in 1818 (see Vol. IV.).

Page 200, line 28. _A quaint poetess_. Mary Lamb. The poem is in _Poetry for Children_, 1809 (see Vol. III. of this edition). In line 17 the word "then" has been inserted by Lamb. The punctuation also differs from that of the _Poetry for Children_.

Page 201. THE OLD _MARGATE HOY_.

_London Magazine_, July, 1823. This, like others of Lamb's essays, was translated into French and published in the _Revue Britannique_ in 1833. It was prefaced by the remark: "L'auteur de cette delicieuse esquisse est Charles Lamb, connu sous le nom d'Eliah."

Page 201, beginning. _I have said so before._ See "Oxford in the Vacation."

Page 201, line 5 of essay. _My beloved Thames._ Lamb describes a riparian holiday at and about Richmond in a letter to Robert Lloyd in 1804.

Page 201, line 8 of essay. _Worthing_... There is no record of the Lambs' sojourn at Worthing or Eastbourne. They were at Brighton in 1817, and Mary Lamb at any rate enjoyed walking on the Downs there; in a letter to Miss Wordsworth of November 21, 1817, she described them as little mountains, _almost as good as_ Westmoreland scenery. They were at Hastings--at 13 Standgate Street--in 1823 (see Lamb's letters to Bernard Barton, July 10, 1823, to Hood, August 10, 1824, and to Dibdin, June, 1826). The only evidence that we have of Lamb knowing Worthing is his "Mr. H.". That play turns upon the name Hogsflesh, afterwards changed to Bacon. The two chief innkeepers at Worthing at the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of its prosperity were named Hogsflesh and Bacon, and there was a rhyme concerning them which was well known (see notes to "Mr. H." in Vol. IV.).

Page 201, line 11 of essay. _Many years ago_. A little later Lamb says he was then fifteen. This would make the year 1790. It was probably on this visit to Margate that Lamb conceived the idea of his sonnet, "O, I could laugh," which Coleridge admired so much (see Vol. IV.).

Page 201, line 17 of essay. _Thou old Margate Hoy_. This old sailing-boat gave way to a steam-boat, the _Thames_, some time after 1815. The _Thames_, launched in 1815, was the first true steam-boat the river had seen. The old hoy, or lighter, was probably sloop rigged.

Page 202, foot. _Our enemies_. Lamb refers here to the attacks of _Blackwood's Magazine_ on the c.o.c.kneys, among whom he himself had been included. In the _London Magazine_ he had written "unfledged" for "unseasoned."

Page 206, line 14. _Gebir_. _Gebir_, by Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864), who was a fortnight older than Lamb, and who afterwards came to know him personally, was published in 1798.

Page 206, line 16. _This detestable Cinque Port_. A letter from Mary Lamb to Randal Norris, concerning this, or another, visit to Hastings, says: "We eat turbot, and we drink smuggled Hollands, and we walk up hill and down hill all day long." Lamb, in a letter to Barton, admitted a benefit: "I abused Hastings, but learned its value."

Page 208, line 5. _Lothbury_. Probably in recollection of Wordsworth's "Reverie of Poor Susan," which Lamb greatly liked.

Page 208. THE CONVALESCENT.

_London Magazine_, July, 1825.

We learn from the _Letters_ that Lamb had a severe nervous breakdown in the early summer of 1825 after liberation from the India House.

Indeed, his health was never sound for long together after he became a free man.

Page 212. SANITY OF TRUE GENIUS.

_New Monthly Magazine_, May, 1826, where it appeared as one of the Popular Fallacies under the t.i.tle, "That great Wit is allied to Madness;" beginning: "So far from this being true, the greatest wits will ever be found to be the sanest writers..." and so forth. Compare the essay "On the Tragedies of Shakespeare," Vol. I. Lamb's thesis is borrowed from Dryden's couplet (in _Absalom and Achitophel_, Part I., lines 163, 164):--

Great wits are sure to madness near allied, And thin part.i.tions do their bounds divide.

Page 213, line 14. _Kent ... Flavius_. Lamb was always greatly impressed by the character of Kent (see his essay on "Hogarth," Vol.

I.; his "Table Talk," Vol. I.; and his versions, in the _Tales from Shakespear_, of "King Lear" and "Timon," Vol. III.).

Page 215. CAPTAIN JACKSON.

_London Magazine_, November, 1824.

No one has yet been able to identify Captain Jackson. The suggestion has been made that Randal Norris sat for the picture; but the circ.u.mstance that Lamb, in the first edition of the _Last Essays_, included "A Death-Bed," with a differing portrait of Randal Norris therein, is, I think, good evidence against this theory. Perhaps the captain was one of the imaginary characters which Lamb sent out every now and then, as he told Bernard Barton (in the letter of March 20, 1826), "to exercise the ingenuity of his friends;" although his reality seems overpowering.

Apart from his own interest, the captain is noteworthy in const.i.tuting, with Ralph BiG.o.d (see page 27), a sketch (possibly unknown to d.i.c.kens) for Wilkins Micawber.