The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Part 51

_Abhor._ Is the axe upon the block, sirrah?

_Pom._ Very ready, sir.

Act IV., Scene 3, lines 23-40.

Page 73, line 3. _The Angel in Milton._

Made so adorn for they delight the more, So awful, that with honour thou may'st love Thy mate, who sees when thou art seen least wise.

_Paradise Lost_, VIII., 576-578.

Page 73, line 10. _An ancestor_. This punctilious hero may have been an ancestor of the Plumers, of Blakesware. See the _Elia_ essay on "Blakesmoor, in H----s.h.i.+re."

Page 73, line 7 from foot. _A waistcoat that had been mine_. The clothes of his clients became the hangman's perquisites. In Lamb's letter to Bernard Barton concerning Thurtell (January 9, 1824) this subject is again played with.

The present essay led to some amusing speculation in the next number of _The Reflector_, signed M., as to the origin of Jack Ketch. Some of the questions propounded to Pensilis are almost in Lamb's own manner:--

Supposing the race of Ketches to be extinct, what _cross_ does Pensilis think necessary to re-produce the breed? I have a very pretty knack myself at guessing what mixtures of different bloods will generate the ordinary professions of life; as a judge, an alderman, a bishop, &c., &c. but shall be happy to defer to his superior knowledge in this particular experiment of the art. Your correspondent, no doubt, is aware, how many generations it will frequently take a family, who value themselves upon their exterior, to wear out any little deformity; as, for instance, a snub nose, or a long chin. I could mention one n.o.ble family, whom it has cost a dozen intermarriages with the yeomanry, to introduce a stouter pair of legs among them; and another, which has been obliged to go through a course of milk-maids, to throw a little colour into their cheeks. Has your correspondent ever considered in what term of years a spirit of Ketchicism may be introduced into a family; and conversely, in how many generations the milk of human kindness may be instilled into, what Burke would call, a pure, unsophisticated dephlegmated, defecated _Ketch_?

Page 74. ON THE DANGER OF CONFOUNDING MORAL WITH PERSONAL DEFORMITY.

_The Reflector_, No. II. Reprinted in the _Works_, 1818.

Page 79, line 16. _The tales of our nursery_. In his _Elia_ essay "Dream Children" Lamb recalls his grandmother's narration of the old story of the "Children in the Wood."

Page 79, lines 20-21. _Mrs. Radcliffe ... Mr. Monk Lewis._ The popularity of Mrs. Ann Radcliffe (1764-1823), whose _Mysteries of Udolpho_ appeared in 1794, and of Matthew Gregory Lewis (1775-1818), whose rival exercise in grisly romance, _The Monk_, was published in 1795, was then (1811) still considerable, although on the wane.

Page 80. ON THE AMBIGUITIES ARISING FROM PROPER NAMES.

_The Reflector_, No. II., 1811. Not reprinted by Lamb.

This paper is known to be Lamb's because he tells the story, in much the same words, in a letter to Wordsworth dated February 1, 1806. The young man who made the mistake of confusing Spencer and Spenser was a brother of Coleridge's Mary Evans. The Hon. William Robert Spencer (1769-1834), the second son of the third Duke of Marlborough, was a Society poet well enough known in his day--the first decade of the last century. His only poem that has survived is "Beth Gelert," a ballad often included in children's poetry books.

In Lamb's _Letters_ the poet Spenser is usually spelt Spencer.

Page 81. ON THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF HOGARTH.

_The Reflector_, No. III., 1811. The t.i.tle there ran: "On the Genius and Character of Hogarth; with some Remarks on a Pa.s.sage in the Writings of the late Mr. Barry." The article was signed L. It was reprinted in the _Works_, 1818.

Many of Hogarth's pictures, framed in black, hung round Lamb's sitting-room in his various homes. In 1817 Mary Lamb, writing to Dorothy Wordsworth, says that the Hogarths have been taken down from the walls and pasted into a book, but there is proof that some at any rate were framed both at Islington and Enfield.

Hazlitt in his _Sketches of the Princ.i.p.al Picture-galleries in England_, 1824, wrote, "Of the pictures in the _Rake's Progress_ we shall not here say anything ... because they have already been criticised by a writer, to whom we could add nothing, in a paper which ought to be read by every lover of Hogarth and of English genius." The reference was to Lamb's essay.

Page 82, line 1. _Old-fas.h.i.+oned house in ----s.h.i.+re_. Lamb refers again to Blakesware, in Hertfords.h.i.+re. In a letter to Southey, Oct. 31, 1799, Lamb mentions the Blakesware Hogarths. This would suggest that Hogarth was the first artist that he knew, so many of his recollections dating from the old Hertfords.h.i.+re days.

Page 84, line 1. _Kent, or Caius_. See "Table Talk," pages 401-2 of the present volume, for an amplification of this pa.s.sage many years later.

Lamb's version of "Lear" in _Tales from Shakespear_, 1807, has similar praise of Kent.

Page 84, last line. _Ferdinand Count Fathom_. See Chapter XXVII. of Smollett's _Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom_, 1754:--

When he beheld the white cliffs of Albion, his heart throbbed with all the joy of a beloved son, who, after a tedious and fatiguing voyage, reviews the chimnies of his father's house: he surveyed the neighbouring coast of England with fond and longing eyes, like another Moses reconnoitring the land of Canaan from the top of mount Pisgah; and to such a degree of impatience was he inflamed by the sight, that instead of proceeding to Calais, he resolved to take his pa.s.sage directly from Boulogne, even if he should hire a vessel for the purpose.

Page 88. _Footnote_. _Somewhere in his [Reynolds'] lectures_. The pa.s.sage is in the fourteenth of the _Discourses on Painting_--on Gainsborough:--

After this admirable artist [Hogarth] had spent the greater part of his life in an active, busy, and, we may add, successful attention to the ridicule of life; after he had invented a new species of dramatic painting, in which probably he will never be equalled, and had stored his mind with infinite materials to explain and ill.u.s.trate the domestic and familiar scenes of common life, which were generally, and ought to have been always, the subject of his pencil; he very imprudently, or rather presumptuously, attempted the great historical style, for which his previous habits had by no means prepared him: he was indeed so entirely unacquainted with the principles of this style, that he was not even aware that any artificial preparation was at all necessary. It is to be regretted, that any part of the life of such a genius should be fruitlessly employed. Let his failure teach us not to indulge ourselves in the vain imagination, that by a momentary resolution we can give either dexterity to the hand, or a new habit to the mind.

Page 95, line 10. _Children's books_. _The Reflector_ version added, "or the tale of Carlo the Dog."

Page 97, line 8 from foot. _With Dr. Swift_. The page opposite the t.i.tle of the _Tale of a Tub_ contains a (fict.i.tious) list of "Treatises writ by the same author." The fifth of these is "A Panegyric upon the World."

It is probable that Lamb had this in mind.

Page 101. ON THE CUSTOM OF HISSING AT THE THEATRES.

_The Reflector_, No. III., 1811. Not reprinted by Lamb.

Lamb omits to say that he joined in the hissing of his farce, "Mr. H.,"

on the unhappy night of December 10, 1806. In its ill fortune he seems always to have taken a kind of humorous sympathetic pride. When he printed the play at the end of his _Works_, 1818, he prefixed a quotation from Hazlitt's essay on "Great and Little Things," of which this is a portion:--

Mr. H.---- thou wert d.a.m.nED. Bright shone the morning on the play-bills that announced thy appearance, and the streets were filled with the buzz of persons asking one another if they would go to see Mr. H.----, and answering that they would certainly; but before night the gaiety, not of the author, but of his friends, and the town, was eclipsed, for thou wert d.a.m.nED!

Writing to Manning concerning the play's failure, Lamb said:--"d.a.m.n 'em, how they hissed! It was not a hiss neither, but a sort of a frantic yell, like a congregation of mad geese, with roaring sometimes, like bears, mows and mops like apes, sometimes snakes, that hiss'd me into madness. 'Twas like St. Anthony's temptations. Mercy on us, that G.o.d should give his favourite children, men, mouths to speak with, to discourse rationally, to promise smoothly, to flatter agreeably, to encourage warmly, to counsel wisely, to sing with, to drink with, and to kiss with, and that they should turn them into mouths of adders, bears, wolves, hyenas, and whistle like tempests, and emit breath through them like distillations of aspic poison, to asperse and vilify the innocent labours of their fellow-creatures who are desirous to please them!"

Page 101, line 3 of essay. _That memorable season_, 1806-1807. Lamb here exaggerates. It is true that ten new pieces were tried at Drury Lane in the season mentioned; but five were successful, and Monk Lewis's "Adelgitha," the only tragedy, could hardly be called a failure. Of the remaining four plays which failed, Holcroft's "Vindictive Man" was the most notable.

Page 101, line 9 of essay. _The Clerk of Chatham_.

_Cade._ Dost thou use to write thy name? or hast thou a mark to thyself, like an honest plain-dealing man?

_Clerk of Chatham._ Sir, I thank G.o.d, I have been so well brought up that I can write my name.

_All._ He hath confessed: away with him! he's a villain and a traitor.

_Cade._ Away with him, I say! hang him with his pen and ink-horn about his neck.

"II. Henry VI.," Act IV., Scene 2, lines 109-117.

Page 101, line 7 from foot. "_The Vindictive Man_." This was the comedy by Thomas Holcroft, Lamb's friend, the failure of which occurred a few nights before that of "Mr. H." Lamb describes the luckless performance in a letter to Manning dated December 5, 1806.

Page 102, line 5. "_Our nonsense did not ... suit their nonsense_." From Burnet's _History of His Own Times_, Vol. II.: "He [Charles II.] told me he had a chaplain that was a very honest man, but a very great blockhead, to whom he had given a living in Suffolk, that was full of that sort of people: he had gone about among them from house to house, though he could not imagine what he could say to them, for, he said, he was a very silly fellow, but that he believed his nonsense suited their nonsense; yet he had brought them all to church: and, in reward of his diligence, he had given him a bishopric in Ireland." (A note by Swift states the cleric to be Bishop Woolly of Clonfert.)

Page 102, line 25. _A Syren Catalani._ Angelica Catalani (1779-1849), one of the most beautiful of all singers.