The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Volume I Part 44

Canticulae interea narraverat argumentum Altera Sirenum, infidi perjuria nautae, Deceptamque dolo nympham; tum flebile carmen Flebilibus movit numeris, quos altera versu Alterno excepit: patulis stant rictibus omnes: Dextram ille acclinat, laevam ille attentius aurem, Promissum carmen captare paratus hiatu.

Longa referre mora est, animum qua vicerit arte Virgineum juvenis. Jam posc.u.n.t undique chartas Protensae emptorum dextrae, quas illa vel illa Distribuit, cantatque simul: neque ferreus iste Est usquam auditor, dulcis cui lene camaena Non adhibet tormentum, et furtivum elicit a.s.sem.

Stat medios inter baculoque innit.i.tur Irus; Nec tamen hic loculo parcit, sed prodigus aeris Emptor adest, solvit pretium, carmenque requirit.

Fors juxta adstabat vetula iracundior aequo; Quae loculo ex imo invitum, longumque latentem Depromens vix tandem obolum, Cedo, fmina, chartam, Inquit; ut aeternum monumentum in pariete figam, c.u.m laribus mansurum ipsis, quam credula nymphis Pectora sint; fraudis quam plena, et perfida nautis.

Where seven fair Streets to one tall Column[62] draw, Two Nymphs have ta'en their stand, in hats of straw; Their yellower necks huge beads of amber grace, And by their trade they're of the Sirens' race.

With cloak loose-pinn'd on each, that has been red, But long with dust and dirt discoloured Belies its hue; in mud behind, before, From heel to middle leg becrusted o'er.

One a small infant at the breast does bear; And one in her right hand her tuneful ware, Which she would vend. Their station scarce is taken, When youths and maids flock round. His stall forsaken, Forth comes a Son of Crispin, leathern-capt, Prepared to buy a ballad, if one apt To move his fancy offers. Crispin's sons Have, from uncounted time, with ale and buns Cherish'd the gift of _Song_, which sorrow quells; And, working single in their low-rooft cells, Oft at the tedium of a winter's night With anthems warbled in the Muses' spight.

Who now hath caught the alarm? The Servant Maid Hath heard a buzz at distance; and, afraid To miss a note, with elbows red comes out.

Leaving his forge to cool, Pyracmon stout Thrusts in his unwash'd visage. _He_ stands by, Who the hard trade of Porterage does ply With stooping shoulders. What cares he? he sees The a.s.sembled ring, nor heeds his tottering knees, But p.r.i.c.ks his ears up with the hopes of song.

So, while the Bard of Rhodope his wrong Bewail'd to Proserpine on Thracian strings, The tasks of gloomy Orcus lost their stings, And stone-vext Sysiphus forgets his load.

Hither and thither from the sevenfold road Some cart or wagon crosses, which divides The close-wedged audience; but, as when the tides To ploughing s.h.i.+ps give way, the s.h.i.+p being past, They re-unite, so these unite as fast.

The older Songstress. .h.i.therto has spent Her elocution in the argument Of their great Song in prose; to wit, the woes Which Maiden true to faithless Sailor owes-- Ah "_Wandering He!_"--which now in loftier verse Pathetic they alternately rehea.r.s.e.

All gaping wait the event. This Critic opes His right ear to the strain. The other hopes To catch it better with his left. Long trade It were to tell, how the deluded Maid A victim fell. And now right greedily All hands are stretching forth the songs to buy, That are so tragical; which She, and She, Deals out, and _sings the while_; nor can there be A breast so obdurate here, that will hold back His contribution from the gentle rack Of Music's pleasing torture. Irus' self, The staff-propt Beggar, his thin-gotten pelf Brings out from pouch, where squalid farthings rest, And boldly claims his ballad with the rest.

An old Dame only lingers. To her purse The penny sticks. At length, with harmless curse, "Give me," she cries--"I'll paste it on my wall, While the wall lasts, to show what ills befal Fond hearts, seduced from Innocency's way; How Maidens fall, and Mariners betray."

[62] Seven Dials.

In the same style of familiar painting, and replete with the same images of town life, picturesque as it was comparatively in the days of Gay, and of Hogarth, are the various Poematia--to the "Bellman"--"Billinsgate"--the "Law Courts"--the "Licensed Victualler"--the "Quack"--the "Quaker's Meeting" _c.u.m multis aliis_--of this most cla.s.sical of c.o.c.kney Poets. In a different strain is the following piece of tenderness:--

IN STATUAM SEPULCHRALEM INFANTIS DORMIENTIS

Infans venuste, qui sacros dulces agens In hoc sopores marmore, Placidissima quiete compostus jaces, Et inscius culpae et metus, Somno fruaris, docta quem dedit ma.n.u.s Sculptoris; et somno simul, Quem nescit artifex vel Ars effingere Fruaris Innocentiae.

Beautiful Infant, who dost keep Thy posture here, and sleep'st a marble sleep, May the repose unbroken be, Which the fine Artist's hand hath lent to thee!

While thou enjoy'st along with it That which no Art or Craft could ever hit, Or counterfeit to moral sense, The Heav'n-infused sleep of Innocence.

We have selected these two versions from a little volume lately published by Mr. Lamb, to which he has strangely given the misnomer of "Alb.u.m Verses."

ALb.u.m VERSES! why, in the whole collection there are not twenty pages out of one hundred and fifty (and cast the acrostics in, to swell the amount) that have the smallest t.i.tle to come under this denomination.

There is a Tragic Drama, filling up more than a third of the book. The rest is composed of--Translations from V. Bourne, nine in number--just so many Verses, and no more, expressly written for Alb.u.ms--and the rest might have been written any where. But Mr. L. will be wiser another time, than to stand G.o.dfather to his own poetry. A sensible Publisher is always the best names-man on these occasions.

But if to write in Alb.u.ms be a sin, Lord help Wordsworth--Coleridge--Southey--Sir Walter himself--who have not been always able to resist the solicitations of the fair owners of these modern nuisances. Southey has owned to some score, and Mr. L.'s offences in this kind, we have said, do not exceed the number of the Muses. This may be said even of them, that they are not vague verses--to the Moon, or to the Nightingale--that will fit any place--but strictly appropriate to the person that they were intended to gratify; or to the species of chronicle which they were destined to be recorded in. The Verses to a "Clergyman's Lady"--to the "Wife of a learned Serjeant"--to a "Young Quaker"--could have appeared only in an Alb.u.m, and only in that particular person's Alb.u.m they were composed for.

We are no friend to Alb.u.ms. We early set our face against them in a short copy of verses, which we publish only for our own justification.

To the question:--

WHAT IS AN ALb.u.m?

'Tis a Book kept by modern young Ladies for show, Of which their plain Grandmothers nothing did know; A Medley of Sc.r.a.ps, half verse, and half prose, And some things not very like either, G.o.d knows; Where wise folk and simple alike do combine, And you write _your_ nonsense, that I may write _mine_.

Throw in a fine Landscape, to make it complete-- A Flower-piece--a Foreground--all tinted so neat, As Nature herself, could she see it, would strike With envy to think that she ne'er did the like.

Next forget not to stuff it with Autographs plenty, All writ in a style so genteel, and so dainty, They no more resemble folk's ord'nary writing, Than lines, penn'd with pains, do extemp'ral enditing; Or our every day countenance (pardon the stricture) The faces we make when we sit for our picture.

Thus you have, dearest--, an Alb.u.m complete--

We forget the rest--but seriously we deprecate with all our powers the unfeminine practice of this novel species of importunity. We have known Young Ladies--ay, and of those who have been modest and retiring enough upon other occasions--in quest of these delicacies, to besiege, and storm by violence, the closets and privatest retirements of a literary man, to whom they have had an imperfect, or, perhaps, no introduction at all. But the disease has gone forth. Like the daughters of the horseleech in the Proverbs, the requisition of every female now is, _Contribute, Contribute_. "From the Land's End to the Farthest Thule the cry has gone out, and who shall resist it? a.s.suming then, that Alb.u.m Verses _will_ be written, where was the harm, if Mr. L. first taught us how they might be best, and most characteristically written?"

Amid the vague, dreamy, wordy, _matterless_ Poetry of this empty age, the verses of such a writer as Bourne (who was a Latin _Prior_) are invaluable. They fix upon _something_; they ally themselves to common life and objects; their good nature is a Catholicon, sanative of c.o.xcombry, of heartlessness, and of fastidiousness. _Vale, Lepidissimum Caput._ [63]

[63] Of this writer we only know, that he was an usher some seventy years since at Westminster School; and that Dr. Johnson (who knew him) speaks of him always affectionately as "poor Vinny Bourne."

THE DEATH OF MUNDEN

(1832)

_To the Editor of The Athenaeum_

Dear Sir,--Your communication to me of the death of Munden made me weep.

Now, Sir, I am not of the melting mood. But, in these serious times, the loss of half the world's fun is no trivial deprivation. It was my loss (or _gain_ shall I call it?) in the early time of my play-going, to have missed all Munden's acting. There was only he, and Lewis at Covent Garden, while Drury Lane was exuberant with Parsons, Dodd, &c., such a comic company as, I suppose, the stage never showed. Thence, in the evening of my life, I had Munden all to myself, more mellowed, richer perhaps than ever. I cannot say what his change of faces produced in me.

It was not acting. He was not one of my "old actors." It might be [he was] better. His power was extravagant. I saw him one evening in three drunken characters. Three Farces were played. One part was _Dosey_--I forget the rest:--but they were so discriminated, that a stranger might have seen them all, and not have dreamed that he was seeing the same actor. I am jealous for the actors who pleased my youth. He was not a Parsons or a Dodd, but he was more wonderful. He seemed as if he could _do_ anything. He was not an actor, but something _better_, if you please. Shall I instance _Old Foresight_, in "Love for Love," in which Parsons was at once the old man, the astrologer, &c. Munden dropped the old man, the doater--which makes the character--but he subst.i.tuted for it a moon-struck character, a perfect abstraction from this earth, that looked as if he had newly come down from the planets. Now, _that_ is not what I call _acting_. It might be better. He was imaginative; he could impress upon an audience an _idea_--the low one perhaps of a leg of mutton and turnips; but such was the grandeur and singleness of his expressions, that that single expression would convey to all his auditory a notion of all the pleasures they had all received from all the legs of mutton _and turnips_ they had ever eaten in their lives.

Now, this is not _acting_, nor do I set down Munden amongst my old actors. He was only a wonderful man, exerting his vivid impressions through the agency of the stage. In one only thing did I see him _act_--that is, support a character; it was in a wretched farce, called "Johnny Gilpin," for Dowton's benefit, in which he did a c.o.c.kney; the thing ran but one night; but when I say that Liston's _Lubin Log_ was nothing to it, I say little; it was transcendant. And here, let me say of actors--_envious_ actors--that of _Munden_, Liston was used to speak, almost with the enthusiasm due to the dead, in terms of such allowed superiority to every actor on the stage, and this at a time when Munden was gone by in the world's estimation, that it convinced me that _artists_ (in which term I include poets, painters, &c.), are not so envious as the world think. I have little time, and therefore enclose a criticism on Munden's _Old Dosey_ and his general acting, by a gentleman, who attends less to these things than formerly, but whose criticism I think masterly.

C. LAMB.

THOUGHTS ON PRESENTS OF GAME, &c.

(1833)

"We love to have our friend in the country sitting thus at our table _by proxy_; to apprehend his presence (though a hundred miles may be between us) by a turkey, whose goodly aspect reflects to us his 'plump corpusculum;' to taste him in grouse or woodc.o.c.k; to feel him gliding down in the toast peculiar to the latter; to concorporate him in a slice of Canterbury brawn. This is indeed to have him within ourselves; to know him intimately; such partic.i.p.ation is methinks _unitive_, as the old theologians phrase it."--LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA.

Elia presents his acknowledgments to his "Correspondent unknown," for a basket of prodigiously fine game. He takes for granted that so amiable a character must be a reader of the _Athenaeum_. Else he had meditated a notice in _The Times_. Now if this friend had consulted the Delphic oracle for a present suited to the palate of Elia, he could not have hit upon a morsel so acceptable. The birds he is barely thankful for; pheasants are poor _fowls_ disguised in fine feathers. But a hare roasted hard and brown--with gravy and melted b.u.t.ter!--old Mr.

Chambers, the sensible clergyman in Warwicks.h.i.+re, whose son's acquaintance has made many hours happy in the life of Elia, used to allow a pound of Epping to every hare. Perhaps that was over-doing it.

But, in spite of the note of Philomel, who, like some fine poets, that think no scorn to adopt plagiarisms from a humble brother, reiterates every spring her cuckoo cry of "Jug, Jug, Jug," Elia p.r.o.nounces that a hare, to be truly palated, must be roasted. Jugging sophisticates her.

In _our_ way it eats so "crips," as Mrs. Minikin says. Time was, when Elia was not arrived at his taste, that he preferred to all luxuries a roasted Pig. But he disclaims all such green-sickness appet.i.tes in future, though he hath to acknowledge the receipt of many a delicacy in that kind from correspondents--good, but mistaken men--in consequence of their erroneous supposition, that he had carried up into mature life the prepossessions of childhood. From the worthy Vicar of Enfield he acknowledges a t.i.the contribution of extraordinary sapor. The ancients must have loved hares. Else why adopt the word _lepores_ (obviously from _lepus_) but for some subtle a.n.a.logy between the delicate flavour of the latter, and the finer relishes of wit in what we most poorly translate _pleasantries_. The fine madnesses of the poet are the very decoction of his diet. Thence is he hare-brained. Harum-scarum is a libellous unfounded phrase of modern usage. 'Tis true the hare is the most circ.u.mspect of animals, sleeping with her eye open. Her ears, ever erect, keep them in that wholesome exercise, which conduces them to form the very t.i.t-bit of the admirers of this n.o.ble animal. n.o.ble will I call her, in spite of her detractors, who from occasional demonstrations of the principle of self-preservation (common to all animals) infer in her a defect of heroism. Half a hundred hors.e.m.e.n with thrice the number of dogs, scour the country in pursuit of puss across three countries; and because the well-flavoured beast, weighing the odds, is willing to evade the hue and cry, with her delicate ears shrinking perchance from discord--comes the grave Naturalist, Linnaeus perchance or Buffon, and gravely sets down the Hare as a--timid animal. Why, Achilles or Bully Dawson, would have declined the preposterous combat.

In fact, how light of digestion we feel after a hare! How tender its processes after swallowing! What chyle it promotes! How etherial! as if its living celerity were a type of its nimble coursing through the animal juices. The notice might be longer. It is intended less as a Natural History of the Hare, than a cursory thanks to the country "good Unknown." The hare has many friends, but none sincerer than

ELIA.

TABLE-TALK BY THE LATE ELIA

(1833 and 1834)

The greatest pleasure I know, is to do a good action by stealth, and to have it found out by accident.