The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Volume IV Part 71

KATHERINE But brief or long, I feel my fate hangs on it.

[_Aside_.]

SELBY "One morn the Caliph, in a covert hid, Close by an arbour where the two boys talk'd (As oft, we read, that Eastern sovereigns Would play the eaves-dropper, to learn the truth, Imperfectly received from mouths of slaves,) O'erheard their dialogue; and heard enough To judge aright the cause, and know his cue.

The following day a Cadi was dispatched To summon both before the judgment-seat: The lickerish culprit, almost dead with fear, And the informing friend, who readily, Fired with fair promises of large reward, And Caliph's love, the hateful truth disclosed."

MRS. FRAMPTON What did the Caliph to the offending boy, That had so grossly err'd?

SELBY His sceptred hand He forth in token of forgiveness stretch'd, And clapp'd his cheeks, and courted him with gifts, And he became once more his favourite page.

MRS. FRAMPTON But for that other--

SELBY He dismiss'd him straight, From dreams of grandeur and of Caliph's love, To the bare cottage on the withering moor, Where friends, turn'd fiends, and hollow confidants, And widows, hide, who, in a husband's ear, Pour baneful truths, but tell not all the truth; And told him not that Robert Halford died Some moons before _his_ marriage-bells were rung.

Too near dishonour hast thou trod, dear wife, And on a dangerous cast our fates were set; But Heav'n, that will'd our wedlock to be blest, Hath interposed to save it gracious too.

Your penance is--to dress your cheek in smiles, And to be once again my merry Kate.--

Sister, your hand.

Your wager won makes me a happy man, Though poorer, Heav'n knows, by a thousand pounds.

The sky clears up after a dubious day.

Widow, your hand. I read a penitence In this dejected brow; and in this shame Your fault is buried. You shall in with us, And, if it please you, taste our nuptial fare: For, till this moment, I can joyful say, Was never truly Selby's Wedding Day.

FINIS.

NOTES

Page 1. DEDICATION TO S.T. COLERIDGE, ESQ.

In 1818, when Lamb wrote these words, he was forty-three and Coleridge forty-six. The _Works_, in the first volume of which this dedication appeared, were divided into two volumes, the second, containing prose, being dedicated to Martin Burney, in the sonnet which I have placed on page 45. The publishers of the _Works_ were Charles and James Ollier, who, starting business about 1816, had already published for Leigh Hunt, Keats, and Sh.e.l.ley.

For the allusion to the threefold cord, in the second paragraph, see the note on page 313.

The ****** Inn was the Salutation and Cat, in Newgate Street, since rebuilt, where Coleridge used to stay on his London visits when he was at Cambridge, and where the landlord is said to have asked him to continue as a free guest--if only he would talk and talk. Writing to Coleridge in 1796 Lamb recalls "the little smoky room at the Salutation and Cat, where we have sat together through the winter nights, beguiling the cares of life with Poesy;" and again, "I have been drinking egg-hot and smoking Oronooko (a.s.sociated circ.u.mstances, which ever forcibly recall to my mind our evenings and nights at the Salutation)." Later he added to these concomitants of a Salutation evening, "Egg-hot, Welsh-rabbit, and metaphysics," and gave as his highest idea of heaven, listening to Coleridge "repeating one of Bowles's sweetest sonnets, in your sweet manner, while we two were indulging sympathy, a solitary luxury, by the fire side at the Salutation."

The line--

Of summer days and of delightful years

is from Bowles--"Sonnet written at Ostend."

Page 3. Lamb's Earliest Poem. _Mille Vice Mortis._

In a MS. book that had belonged to James Boyer of Christ's Hospital, in which his best scholars inscribed compositions, are these lines signed Charles Lamb, 1789. All Lamb's Grecians are there too. The book was described by the late d.y.k.es Campbell, Lamb's most accomplished and enthusiastic student, in the _Ill.u.s.trated London News_, December 26, 1891.

Page 4. POEMS IN COLERIDGE'S _POEMS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS_, 1796.

This book was published by Cottle, of Bristol, in 1796. Lamb contributed four poems, which were thus referred to by Coleridge in the Preface: "The Effusions signed C.L. were written by Mr. CHARLES LAMB, of the India House--independently of the signature their superior merit would have sufficiently distinguished them." Lamb reprinted the first only once, in 1797, in the second edition of Coleridge's _Poems_, the remaining three again in his _Works_ in 1818. I have followed in the body of this volume the text of these later appearances, the original form of the sonnets being relegated to the notes.

Page 4. _As when a child on some long winter's night._

Some mystery attaches to the authors.h.i.+p of this sonnet. On December 1, 1794, Coleridge wrote to the editor of the _Morning Chronicle_ saying that he proposed to send a series of sonnets ("as it is the fas.h.i.+on to call them") addressed to eminent contemporaries; and he enclosed one to Mr. Erskine. The editor, with almost Chinese politeness, inserted beneath the sonnet this note: "Our elegant Correspondent will highly gratify every reader of taste by the continuance of his exquisitely beautiful productions." The series continued with Burke, Priestley, Lafayette, Kosciusko, Chatham, Bowles, and, on December 29, 1794, Mrs.

Siddons--the sonnet here printed--all signed S.T.C.

But the next appearance of the sonnet was as an effusion by Lamb in Coleridge's _Poems on Various Subjects_, 1796, signed C.L.; and its next in the _Poems_, 1797, among Lamb's contributions. In 1803, however, we find it in Coleridge's _Poems_, third edition, with no reference to Lamb whatever. This probably means that Lamb and Coleridge had written it together, that Coleridge's original share had been the greater, and that Lamb and he had come to an arrangement by which Coleridge was to be considered the sole author; for Lamb did not reprint it in 1818 with his other early verse. Writing in 1796 to Coleridge concerning his treatment of other of Lamb's sonnets, Lamb says: "That to Mrs. Siddons, now, you were welcome to improve, if it had been worth it; but I say unto you again, Coleridge, spare my ewe lambs." Such a distinction drawn between the sonnet to Mrs. Siddons and the others supports the belief that Lamb had not for it a deeply parental feeling.

This was not the only occasion on which Lamb and Coleridge wrote a sonnet in partners.h.i.+p. Writing to Southey in December, 1794, Coleridge says: "Of the following sonnet, the four _last_ lines were written by Lamb, a man of uncommon genius...."

SONNET

O gentle look, that didst my soul beguile, Why hast thou left me? Still in some fond dream Revisit my sad heart, auspicious smile!

As falls on closing flowers the lunar beam; What time in sickly mood, at parting day I lay me down and think of happier years; Of joys, that glimmered in Hope's twilight ray, Then left me darkling in a vale of tears.

O pleasant days of Hope--for ever flown!

Could I recall one!--But that thought is vain, Availeth not Persuasion's sweetest tone To lure the fleet-winged travellers back again: Anon, they haste to everlasting night, Nor can a giant's arm arrest them in their flight.

Subsequently Coleridge rewrote the final couplet.

The same letter to Southey informs us that the sonnet to Mrs. Siddons was not Lamb's earliest poem, although it stands first in his poetical works; for Coleridge remarks: "Have you seen his [Lamb's] divine sonnet, 'O! I could laugh to hear the winter wind'?" (see page 5).

Lamb printed the sonnet to Mrs. Siddons twice--in 1796 and 1797.

Page 4. _Was it some sweet device of Faery._

This sonnet pa.s.sed through various vicissitudes. Lamb had sent it to Coleridge for his _Poems on Various Subjects_ in 1796, and Coleridge proceeded to re-model it more in accordance with his own views. The following version, representing his modifications, was the one that found its way into print as Lamb's:--

Was it some sweet device of faery land That mock'd my steps with many a lonely glade, And fancied wand'rings with a fair-hair'd maid?

Have these things been? Or did the wizard wand Of Merlin wave, impregning vacant air, And kindle up the vision of a smile In those blue eyes, that seem'd to speak the while Such tender things, as might enforce Despair To drop the murth'ring knife, and let go by His fell resolve? Ah me! the lonely glade Still courts the footsteps of the fair-hair'd maid, Among whose locks the west-winds love to sigh; But I forlorn do wander, reckless where, And mid my wand'rings find no ANNA there!

C.L.

Lamb naturally protested when the result came under his eyes. "I love my own feelings: they are dear to memory," he says in a letter in 1796, "though they now and then wake a sigh or a tear. 'Thinking on divers things foredone,' I charge you, Coleridge, spare my ewe lambs." Later, when Coleridge's second edition was in preparation, Lamb wrote again (January 10, 1797): "I need not repeat my wishes to have my little sonnets printed _verbatim_ my last way. In particular, I fear lest you should prefer printing my first sonnet [this one] as you have done more than once, 'Did the wand of Merlin wave?' It looks so like _Mr_. Merlin, the ingenious successor of the immortal Merlin, now living in good health and spirits, and flouris.h.i.+ng in magical reputation in Oxford Street." The phrase "more than once" in the foregoing pa.s.sage needs explanation. It refers to the little pamphlet of sonnets, ent.i.tled _Sonnets from Various Authors_, which Coleridge issued privately in 1796, and of which only one copy is now known to exist--that preserved in the Dyce and Forster collection at South Kensington. The little pamphlet contains twenty-eight sonnets in all, of which three are by Bowles, four by Southey, four by Charles Lloyd, four by Coleridge, four by Lamb, and others by various writers: all of which were chosen for their suitability to be bound up with the sonnets of Bowles. Lamb's sonnets were: "We were two pretty babes" (see page 9), "Was it some sweet device" (printed with Coleridge's alterations), "When last I roved" (see page 8), and "O! I could laugh" (see page 5).

The present sonnet belongs to the series of four love sonnets which is completed by the one that follows, "Methinks, how dainty sweet it were,"

and those on page 8 beginning, "When last I roved" and "A timid grace."

Anna is believed to have been Ann Simmons, who lived at Blenheims, a group of cottages near Blakesware, the house where Mrs. Field, Lamb's grandmother, was housekeeper. Mrs. Field died in 1792, after which time Lamb's long visits to that part of the country probably ceased. He was then seventeen. Nothing is known of Lamb's attachment beyond these sonnets, the fact that when he lost his reason for a short time in 1795-1796 he attributed the cause to some person unmentioned who is conjectured to have been Anna, and the occasional references in the Ella essays to "Alice W----" and to his old pa.s.sion for her (see "Dream Children" in particular, in Vol. II). The death of Mrs. Lamb in September, 1796, and the duty of caring for and nursing his sister Mary, which then devolved upon Charles, put an end to any dreams of private happiness that he may have been indulging; and his little romance was over. How deep his pa.s.sion was we are not likely ever to know; but Lamb thenceforward made very light of it, except in the pensive recollections in the essays twenty-five years later. In November, 1796, when sending Coleridge poems for his second edition, he says: "Do not ent.i.tle any of my _things_ Love Sonnets, as I told you to call 'em; 'twill only make me look little in my own eyes; for it is a pa.s.sion of which I retain nothing.... Thank G.o.d, the folly has left me for ever. Not even a review of my love verses renews one wayward wish in me...." Again, in November, 1796, in another letter to Coleridge, about his poems in the 1797 edition, Lamb says: "Oh, my friend! I think sometimes, could I recall the days that are past, which among them should I choose? not those 'merrier days,' not the 'pleasant days of hope,' not 'those wanderings with a fair-hair'd maid,' which I have so often and so feelingly regretted, but the days, Coleridge, of a _mother's_ fondness for her _school-boy_." Lamb printed this sonnet three times--in 1796, 1797 and 1818.