The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Volume IV Part 86

From the copy preserved among Henry Crabb Robinson's papers at Dr.

Williams' Library. Sarah Robinson was the niece of H.C.R., who was the pilgrim in Rome. The stranger to thy land was Emma Isola, Fornham, in Suffolk, where she was living, being near to Bury St. Edmunds, the home of the Robinsons.

Page 112. _To Sarah._

From the Alb.u.m of Sarah Apsey. Lamb seems to have known very many Sarahs.

Page 112. _To Joseph Vale Asbury._

From Lamb's Alb.u.m. Jacob (not Joseph, as Lamb supposed) Vale Asbury was the Lambs' doctor at Enfield. There are extant two amusing letters from Lamb to Asbury.

Page 113. _To D.A._

From Lamb's Alb.u.m. Dorothy Asbury, the wife of the doctor.

Page 113. _To Louisa Morgan._

From Lamb's Alb.u.m. Louisa Morgan was probably the daughter of Coleridge's friend, John Morgan, of Calne, in Wilts.h.i.+re, with whom the Lambs stayed in 1817--the same Morgan--"Morgan demigorgon"--who ate walnuts better than any man Lamb knew, and munched cos-lettuce like a rabbit (see letters to Coleridge in August, 1814). Southey and Lamb each allowed John Morgan 10 a year in his old age and adversity, beginning with 1819.

Page 113. _To Sarah James of Beguildy._

Sarah James was Mary Lamb's nurse, and the sister of the Mrs. Parsons with whom she lived during the last years of her life. Miss James was the daughter of the rector of Beguildy, in Shrops.h.i.+re. The verses are reprinted from _My Lifetime_ by the late John Hollingshead, who was the great-nephew of Miss James and Mrs. Parsons.

Page 114. _To Emma b.u.t.ton._

Included in a letter from Lamb to John Aitken, editor of _The Cabinet_, July 5, 1825.

Page 114. _Written upon the cover of a blotting book. The Mirror,_ May 7, 1836.

Identified by Mr. Walter Jerrold. First collected by Mr. Thomas Hutchinson.

Page 115. POLITICAL AND OTHER EPIGRAMS.

Lamb was not a politician, but he had strong--almost pa.s.sionate--prejudices against certain statesmen and higher persons, which impelled him now and then to sarcastic verse. The earliest examples in this vein that can be identified are two quatrains from the _Morning Post_ in January, 1802, printed on page 115, and the epigram on Sir James Mackintosh in _The Albion_, printed on the same page, to which Lamb refers in the _Elia_ essay on "Newspapers Thirty-five Years Ago" (see Vol. II.). Until a file of _The Albion_ turns up we shall never know how active Lamb's pen was at that time. The next belong to the year 1812--in _The Examiner_ (see page 116)--and we then leap another seven years or so until 1819-1820, Lamb's busiest period as a caustic critic of affairs--in _The Examiner_, possibly the _Morning Chronicle_, and princ.i.p.ally in _The Champion_. After 1820, however, he returned to this vein very seldom, and then with less bitterness and depth of feeling. "The Royal Wonders," in _The Times_ for August 10, 1830 (see page 122), and "Lines Suggested by a Sight of Waltham Cross,"

in the _Englishman's Magazine_, September, 1831 (written, however, some years earlier), on page 121, being his latest efforts that we know of.

Of course there must be many other similar productions to which we have no clue--the old _Morning Post_ days doubtless saw many an epigram that cannot now be definitely claimed for Lamb--but those that are preserved here sufficiently show how feelingly Lamb could hate and how trenchantly he could chastise. Others that seem to me likely to be Lamb's I could have included; but it is well to dispense as much as possible with the problematic. For example, I suspect Lamb of the authors.h.i.+p of several of the epigrams quoted in _The Examiner_ in 1819 and 1820 from the _Morning Chronicle_. He used to send verses to the _Morning Chronicle_ at that time, and Leigh Hunt, the editor of _The Examiner_, would naturally be pleased to give anything of his friend's an additional publicity.

The majority of the epigrams printed in this section might have remained unidentified were it not that in 1822 John Thelwall, who owned and edited _The Champion_ in 1818-1820, issued a little volume ent.i.tled _The Poetical Recreations of "The Champion,"_ wherein Lamb's contributions were signed R. et R. This signature being appended to certain poems of which we know Lamb to have been the author--as "The Three Graves," which he sent also to the _London Magazine_ (in 1825), and which he was in the habit of reading or reciting to his friends--enables us to ascertain the authors.h.i.+p of the others. A note placed by Thelwall above the index of the book states, "it is much to be regretted that, by mere oversight, or rather mistake, several of the printed epigrams of R. et R. have been omitted;" but a search through the files of _The Champion_ has failed to bring to light any others with Lamb's adopted signature.

The origin of the signature R. et R. is unknown. Mr. Percy Fitzgerald suggests that it might stand for Romulus and Remus, but offers no supporting theory. He might have added that so unfamiliar a countenance is in these epigrams shown by their author, that the suggestion of a wolf rather than a Lamb might have been intended. Lamb's princ.i.p.al political epigrams were drawn from him by his intense contempt for the character of George IV., then Prince of Wales. His treatment of Caroline of Brunswick, as we see, moved Lamb to utterances of almost sulphurous indignation not only for the prince himself, but for all who were on his side, particularly Canning. Lamb, we must suppose, was wholly on the side of the queen, thus differing from Coleridge, who when asked how his sympathies were placed would admit only to being anti-Prince.

John Thelwall (1764-1834)--Citizen Thelwall--was one of the most popular and uncompromising of the Radicals of the seventeen-nineties. He belonged to the Society of the Friends of the People and other Jacobin confederacies. In May, 1794, he was even sent to the Tower (with Home Tooke and Thomas Hardy) for sedition; moved to Newgate in October; and tried and acquitted in December. Lamb first met him, I fancy, in 1797, when Thelwall was intimate with Coleridge. After 1798 Thelwall's political activities were changed for those of a lecturer on more pacific subjects, and later he opened an inst.i.tution in London where he taught elocution and corrected the effects of malformation of the organs of speech. He bought _The Champion_ in 1818, and held it for two or three years, but it did not succeed. Thelwall died in 1834. Among his friends were Coleridge, Haydon, Hazlitt, Southey, Crabb Robinson and Lamb, all of whom, although they laughed at his excesses and excitements as a reformer, saw in him an invincible honesty and sincerity.

Before leaving this subject I should like to quote the following lines from _The Champion_ of November 4 and 5, 1820:--

A LADY'S SAPPHIC

Now the calm evening hastily approaches, Not a sound stirring thro' the gentle woodlands, Save that soft Zephyr with his downy pinions Scatters fresh fragrance.

Now the pale sun-beams in the west declining Gild the dew rising as the twilight deepens, Beauty and splendour decorate the landscape; Night is approaching.

By the cool stream's side pensively and sadly Sit I, while birds sing on the branches sweetly, And my sad thoughts all with their carols soothing, Lull to oblivion.

M.L.

A correspondence on English sapphics was carried on in _The Champion_ for some weeks at this time, various efforts being printed. On November 4 appeared the "Lady's Sapphic," just quoted, signed M.S. On the following day--for _The Champion_, like _The Examiner_, had a Sat.u.r.day and Sunday edition--this signature was changed to M.L., and was thus given when the verses were reprinted in _The Poetical Recreations_ of _"The Champion"_ in 1822. There is no evidence that Mary Lamb wrote it; but she played with verse, and presumably read _The Champion_, since her brother was writing for it, and the poem might easily be hers.

Personally I like to think it is, and that Lamb, on seeing the mistake in the initials in the Sat.u.r.day edition, hurried down to the office to have it put right in that of Sunday. The same number of _The Champion_ (November 4 and 5, 1820) contains another poem in the same measure signed C., which not improbably was Lamb's contribution to the pastime.

It runs as follows:--

DANAE EXPOSED WITH HER INFANT

_An English Sapphic_

Dim were the stars, and clouded was the azure, Silence in darkness brooded on the ocean, Save when the wave upon the pebbled sea-beach Faintly resounded.

Then, O forsaken daughter of Acrisius! Seiz'd in the hour of woe and tribulation, Thou, with the guiltless victim of thy love, didst Rock on the surges.

Sad o'er the silent bosom of the billow, Borne on the breeze and modulated sweetly, Plaintive as music, rose the mother's tones of Comfortless anguish.

"Sad is thy birth, and stormy is thy cradle, Offspring of sorrow!

nursling of the ocean! Waves rise around to pillow thee, and night winds Lull thee to slumber!"

Page 115. _To Sir James Mackintosh._

In a letter to Manning in August, 1801, Lamb quotes this epigram as having been printed in _The Albion_ and caused that paper's death the previous week. In his _Elia_ essay on "Newspapers," written thirty years later, he stated that the epigram was written at the time of Mackintosh's departure for India to reap the fruits of his apostasy; but here Lamb's memory deceived him, for Mackintosh was not appointed Recorder of Bombay until 1803 and did not sail until 1804, whereas there is reason to believe the date of Lamb's letter to Manning of August, 1801, to be accurate. The epigram must then have referred to a rumour of some earlier appointment, for Mackintosh had been hoping for something for several years.

Sir James Mackintosh (1765-1832), the lawyer and philosopher, had in 1791 issued his _Vindicia Galliae_, a reply to Burke's _Reflections on the French Revolution_. Later, however, he became one of Burke's friends and an opponent of the Revolution, and in 1798 he issued his Introductory Discourse to his lectures on "The Law of Nature and Nations," in which the doctrines of his _Vindiciae Gallicae_ were repudiated. Hence his "apostasy." Mackintosh applied unsuccessfully for a judges.h.i.+p in Trinidad, and for the post of Advocate-General in Bengal, and Lord Wellesley had invited him to become the head of a college in Calcutta. Rumour may have credited him with any of these posts and thus have suggested Lamb's epigram. In 1803 he was appointed Recorder of Bombay. Lamb's dislike of Mackintosh may have been due in some measure to Coleridge, between whom and Mackintosh a mild feud subsisted. It had been Mackintosh, however, brother-in-law of Daniel Stuart of the _Morning Post_, who introduced Coleridge to that paper. (See notes to Vol. II., where further particulars of _The Albion_, edited by Lamb's friend, John Fenwick, will be found.)

Lamb may or may not have invented the sarcasm in this epigram; but it was not new. In Mrs. Montagu's letters, some years before, we find something of the kind concerning Charles James Fox: "His rapid journeys to England, on the news of the king's illness, have brought on him a violent complaint in the bowels, which will, it is imagined, prove mortal. However, if it should, it will vindicate his character from the general report that he has no bowels, as has been most strenuously a.s.serted by his creditors."