The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Part 37

Bless us, what a company is a.s.sembled in honour of me! How grand I stand here! I never felt so sensibly before the effect of solitude in a crowd.

I muse in solemn silence upon that vast miscellaneous rabble in the pit there. From my private box I contemplate with mingled pity and wonder the gaping curiosity of those underlings. There are my Whitechapel supporters. Rosemary Lane has emptied herself of the very flower of her citizens to grace my show. Duke's place sits desolate. What is there in my face, that strangers should come so far from the east to gaze upon it? [_Here an egg narrowly misses him._] That offering was well meant, but not so cleanly executed. By the tricklings, it should not be either myrrh or frankincence. Spare your presents, my friends; I am no-ways mercenary. I desire no missive tokens of your approbation. I am past those valentines. Bestow these coffins of untimely chickens upon mouths that water for them. Comfort your addle spouses with them at home, and stop the mouths of your brawling brats with such Olla Podridas; they have need of them. [_A brick is let fly._] Discase not, I pray you, nor dismantle your rent and ragged tenements, to furnish me with architectural decorations, which I can excuse. This fragment might have stopped a flaw against snow comes. [_A coal flies._] Cinders are dear, gentlemen. This nubbling might have helped the pot boil, when your dirty cuttings from the shambles at three ha'-pence a pound shall stand at a cold simmer. Now, south about, Ketch. I would enjoy australian popularity.

What my friends from over the water! Old benchers--flies of a day--ephemeral Romans--welcome! Doth the sight of me draw souls from limbo? Can it dispeople purgatory--ha!

What am I, or what was my father's house, that I should thus be set up a spectacle to gentlemen and others? Why are all faces, like Persians at the sun-rise, bent singly on mine alone? It was wont to be esteemed an ordinary visnomy, a quotidian merely. Doubtless, these a.s.sembled myriads discern some traits of n.o.bleness, gentility, breeding, which hitherto have escaped the common observation--some intimations, as it were, of wisdom, valour, piety, and so forth. My sight dazzles; and, if I am not deceived by the too familiar pressure of this strange neckcloth that envelopes it, my countenance gives out lambent glories. For some painter now to take me in the lucky point of expression!--the posture so convenient--the head never s.h.i.+fting, but standing quiescent in a sort of natural frame. But these artizans require a westerly aspect. Ketch, turn me.

Something of St. James's air in these my new friends. How my prospects s.h.i.+ft, and brighten! Now if Sir Thomas Lawrence be any where in that group, his fortune is made for ever. I think I see some one taking out a crayon. I will compose my whole face to a smile, which yet shall not so predominate, but that gravity and gaiety shall contend as it were--you understand me? I will work up my thoughts to some mild rapture--a gentle enthusiasmus--which the artist may transfer in a manner warm to the canva.s.s. I will inwardly apostrophize my tabernacle.

Delectable mansion, hail! House, not made of every wood! Lodging, that pays no rent; airy and commodious; which, owing no window tax, art yet all cas.e.m.e.nt, out of which men have such pleasure in peering and overlooking, that they will sometimes stand an hour together to enjoy thy prospects! Cell, recluse from the vulgar! Quiet retirement from the great Babel, yet affording sufficient glimpses into it! Pulpit, that instructs without note or sermon-book, into which the preacher is inducted without tenth or first fruit! Throne, unshared and single, that disdainest a Brentford compet.i.tor! Honour without co-rival! Or hearest thou rather, magnificent theatre in which the spectator comes to see and to be seen? From thy giddy heights I look down upon the common herd, who stand with eyes upturned as if a winged messenger hovered over them; and mouths open, as if they expected manna. I feel, I feel, the true Episcopal yearnings. Behold in me, my flock, your true overseer! What though I cannot lay hands, because my own are laid, yet I can mutter benedictions. True _otium c.u.m dignitate_! Proud Pisgah eminence!

Pinnacle sublime! O Pillory, 'tis thee I sing! Thou younger brother to the gallows, without his rough and Esau palms; that with ineffable contempt surveyest beneath thee the grovelling stocks, which claims presumptuously to be of thy great race. Let that low wood know, that thou art far higher born! Let that domicile for groundling rogues and base earth-kissing varlets envy thy preferment, not seldom fated to be the wanton baiting-house, the temporary retreat, of poet and of patriot.

Shades of Bastwick and of Prynne hover over thee--Defoe is there, and more greatly daring Shebbeare--from their (little more elevated) stations they look down with recognitions. Ketch, turn me.

I now veer to the north. Open your widest gates, thou proud Exchange of London, that I may look in as proudly! Gresham's wonder, hail! I stand upon a level with all your kings. They, and I, from equal heights, with equal superciliousness, o'er-look the plodding, money-hunting tribe below; who, busied in their sordid speculations, scarce elevate their eyes to notice your ancient, or my recent, grandeur. The second Charles smiles on me from three pedestals?[50] He closed the Exchequer: I cheated the Excise. Equal our darings, equal be our lot.

[50] A statue of Charles II. by the elder Cibber, adorns the front of the Exchange. He stands also on high, in the train of his crowned ancestors, in his proper order, _within_ that building. But the merchants of London, in a superftation of loyalty, have, within a few years, caused to be erected another effigy of him on the ground in the centre of the interior. We do not hear that a fourth is in contemplation.--_Editor_.

Are those the quarters? 'tis their fatal chime. That the ever-winged hours would but stand still! but I must descend, descend from this dream of greatness. Stay, stay, a little while, importunate hour hand! A moment or two, and I shall walk on foot with the undistinguished many.

The clock speaks one. I return to common life. Ketch, let me out.

THE LAST PEACH

(1825)

I am the miserablest man living. Give me counsel, dear Editor. I was bred up in the strictest principles of honesty, and have pa.s.sed my life in punctual adherence to them. Integrity might be said to be ingrained in our family. Yet I live in constant fear of one day coming to the gallows.

Till the latter end of last autumn I never experienced these feelings of self-mistrust which ever since have embittered my existence. From the apprehension of that unfortunate man whose story began to make so great an impression upon the public about that time, I date my horrors. I never can get it out of my head that I shall some time or other commit a forgery, or do some equally vile thing. To make matters worse I am in a banking-house. I sit surrounded with a cl.u.s.ter of bank-notes. These were formerly no more to me than meat to a butcher's dog. They are now as toads and aspics. I feel all day like one situated amidst gins and pit-falls. Sovereigns, which I once took such pleasure in counting out, and sc.r.a.ping up with my little thin tin shovel (at which I was the most expert in the banking-house), now scald my hands. When I go to sign my name I set down that of another person, or write my own in a counterfeit character. I am beset with temptations without motive. I want no more wealth than I possess. A more contented being than myself, as to money matters, exists not. What should I fear?

When a child I was once let loose, by favour of a n.o.bleman's gardener, into his Lords.h.i.+p's magnificent fruit garden, with free leave to pull the currants and the gooseberries; only I was interdicted from touching the wall fruit. Indeed, at that season (it was the end of Autumn) there was little left. Only on the South wall (can I forget the hot feel of the brickwork?) lingered the one last peach. Now peaches are a fruit I always had, and still have, an almost utter aversion to. There is something to my palate singularly harsh and repulsive in the flavour of them. I know not by what demon of contradiction inspired, but I was haunted by an irresistible desire to pluck it. Tear myself as often as I would from the spot, I found myself still recurring to it, till, maddening with desire (desire I cannot call it), with wilfulness rather--without appet.i.te--against appet.i.te, I may call it--in an evil hour I reached out my hand, and plucked it. Some few rain drops just then fell; the sky (from a bright day) became overcast; and I was a type of our first parents, after the eating of that fatal fruit. I felt myself naked and ashamed; stripped of my virtue, spiritless. The downy fruit, whose sight rather than savour had tempted me, dropt from my hand, never to be tasted. All the commentators in the world cannot persuade me but that the Hebrew word in the second chapter of Genesis, translated apple, should be rendered peach. Only this way can I reconcile that mysterious story.

Just such a child at thirty am I among the cash and valuables, longing to pluck, without an idea of enjoyment further. I cannot reason myself out of these fears: I dare not laugh at them. I was tenderly and lovingly brought up. What then? Who that in life's entrance had seen the babe F----, from the lap stretching out his little fond mouth to catch the maternal kiss, could have predicted, or as much as imagined, that life's very different exit? The sight of my own fingers torments me; they seem so admirably constructed for ---- pilfering. Then that jugular vein, which I have in common----; in an emphatic sense may I say with David, I am "fearfully made." All my mirth is poisoned by these unhappy suggestions. If, to dissipate reflection, I hum a tune, it changes to the "Lamentations of a Sinner." My very dreams are tainted. I awake with a shocking feeling of my hand in some pocket.

Advise with me, dear Editor, on this painful heart-malady. Tell me, do you feel any thing allied to it in yourself? do you never feel an itching, as it were--a _dactylomania_--or am I alone? You have my honest confession. My next may appear from Bow-street.

SUSPENSURUS.

"ODES AND ADDRESSES TO GREAT PEOPLE"

(1825)

The Odes and Addresses are Thirteen in number. The metre is happily varied from the familiar epistolary verse to the Eton College stanza, and loftier parodies of Gray, &c. Among the Great People addressed are--Graham the Aeronaut, Mr. McAdam, Mrs. Fry, Martin of Galway, R. W.

Elliston, Esq., &c. &c. from which the reader may gather that the Addresses are not mere unqualified or fulsome dedications. They have, in fact, a fund of fun. They remind us of Peter Pindar, and sometimes of Colman; they have almost as much humour, and they have rather more wit.

A too great aim at brilliancy is their excess. We do not think that in any work there can be too much brilliancy _of the same kind_. We are not of opinion with those critics who condemn Cowley for excess of wit. We could have borne with a double portion of it, and have never cried "Hold." What we allude to is a mixture of _incompatible_ kinds; the perpetual recurrence of _puns_ in these little effusions of humour; puns uncalled for, and perfectly gratuitous, a sort of make-weight; puns, which, if _missed_, leave the sense and the drollery full and perfect without them. You may read any one of the addresses, and not catch a quibble in it, and it shall be just as good, nay better; for the addition of said quibble only serves to puzzle with an unnecessary double meaning. A pun is good when it can rely on its single self; but, called in as an accessory, it weakens--unless it _makes_ the humour, it _enfeebles_ it. All this critical prosing is not quite a fair introduction to the pleasant specimen we subjoin, from the pleasantest _morceau_ in the volume, which we throw upon the taste of our pantomime-going readers, with a hearty confidence in their sympathies.

The subject is no less a one than their and our Joe--the immortal Grimaldi.

Joseph! they say thou'st left the stage.

To toddle down the hill of life, And taste the flannell'd ease of age, Apart from pantomimic strife--

Ah, where is now thy rolling head!

Thy winking, reeling, _drunken_ eyes, (As old Catullus would have said,) Thy oven-mouth, that swallow'd pies-- Enormous hunger--monstrous drowth!-- Thy pockets greedy as thy mouth!

Ah, where thy ears, so often cuff'd!-- Thy funny, flapping, filching hands!-- Thy partridge body, always stuff'd With waifs, and strays, and contrabands!-- Thy _foot_--like Berkeley's _Foote_--for why?

'Twas often made to _wipe an eye_! =X=

Ah, where thy legs--that witty pair!

For "great wits jump"--and so did they!

Lord! how they leap'd in lamp-light air!

Caper'd--and bounc'd--and strode away!-- That years should tame the legs--alack!

I've seen spring thro' an Almanack!

But bounds will have their bound =X=--the shocks Of Time will cramp the nimblest toes: And those that frisk'd in silken clocks May look to limp in fleecy hose--

And gout, that owns no odds between The toe of Czar and toe of Clown, Will visit--but I did not mean To moralize, though I am grown Thus sad.--Thy going seem'd to beat A m.u.f.fled drum for Fun's retreat!

Oh, how will thy departure cloud The lamp-light of the little breast!

The Christmas child will grieve aloud To miss his broadest friend and best,--

For who like thee could ever stride!

Some dozen paces to the mile!-- The motley, medley _coach_ provide-- Or like Joe Frankenstein compile The _vegetable man_ complete!-- A proper _Covent Garden_ feat!

Or, who like thee could ever drink, Or eat,--swill, swallow--bolt--and choke!

Nod, weep, and hiccup--sneeze and wink?-- Thy very yawn was quite a joke!

Tho' Joseph, Junior, acts not ill, "There's no Fool like the old Fool" still!

All that is descriptive here is excellent. It seems to us next in merit to some of Cibber's dramatic comic portraitures, Joe, the absolute Joe, lives again in every line. We have just set our mark X against two puns to exemplify our foregoing remarks. The first of them is a positive stop to the current of our joyous feelings. What possible a.n.a.logy, or contrast even, can there be between a comic gesture of Grimaldi, and the serious misfortunes of the lady, except in verbal sound purely? The sound is good, because the humour lies in the pun, and moreover has reference to Milton's

----at one bound High over leaps all bounds.

A pun is a humble companion to wit, but disdains to be a train-bearer merely. But these poems are rich in fancies, which, in truth, needed not such aid.