The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Part 60

Page 224, line 12. _"Amateurs and Actors" ... Mr. Peak._ A musical farce, by Richard Brinsley Peake (1792-1847), produced in 1818.

Page 224, last paragraph. _Last week's article._ That on "The Hypocrite," preceding this (see notes above). "A New Way to Pay Old Debts," published 1632, is a comedy by Ma.s.singer, in which Sir Giles Overreach is the leading character.

Page 225. FOUR REVIEWS.

These four reviews, together with that of Wordsworth's _Excursion_, written five years earlier (see page 187), and that of Hood and Reynolds' _Odes and Addresses_ (see page 335), make up the total number of reviews that Lamb is known positively to have written. We know from his _Letters_ that in 1803 he was trying to review G.o.dwin's _Chaucer_, and again in 1821 he writes to Taylor that he is busy on a review for a friend; but neither of these articles has come to light. The fact is that Lamb always reviewed with difficulty, and after his bitter experience with Gifford (see note on page 470) he was more than ever disinclined to attempt that form of writing.

Page 225. I.--"FALSTAFF'S LETTERS."

_Examiner_, September 5 and 6, 1819. Signed ****. Reprinted in _The Indicator_, January 24, 1821. Not reprinted by Lamb.

James White, born in the same year as Lamb, was nominally the author of this book, but there is strong reason to believe that Lamb had a big share in it. Jem White, who is now known solely by the pleasant figure that he cuts in the _Elia_ essay "The Praise of Chimney Sweepers," was at school with Lamb at Christ's Hospital, receiving his nomination from Thomas Coventry, Samuel Salt's friend and fellow Bencher. Lamb saw much of White for a few years after leaving school, finding him, on the merry side, as congenial a companion as he could wish.

It was Lamb who, probably in 1795, when they both were only twenty, induced White to study Shakespeare; and it is impossible to believe that a friend of Lamb's, whom he saw nearly every night, could have been composing a full-blooded Shakespearian joke, and Lamb have no hand in it. Southey, indeed, in a letter to Edward Moxon after Lamb's death, states the fact that Lamb and White were joint authors of _Falstaff's Letters_, as if there were no doubt about it.

My own impression is that Lamb's fingers certainly held the pen when the Dedication to Master Samuel Irelaunde was written.

And very characteristically Elian is the following explanation, in the preface, of certain gaps in the _Letters_:--

"Reader, whenever as journeying onward in thy epistolary progress, a chasm should occur to interrupt the chain of events, I beseech thee blame not me, but curse the rump of roast pig. This maiden-sister, conceive with what pathos I relate it, absolutely made use of several, no doubt invaluable letters, to shade the jutting protuberances of that animal from disproportionate excoriation in its circuitous approaches to the fire."

Either Lamb wrote that, or to James White's influence we owe some of the most cherished mannerisms of _Elia_. Be that as it may, it is probably true that White's zest in the making of this book helped towards Lamb's Elizabethanising.

Lamb admired _Falstaff's Letters_ more than it is possible quite to understand except on the supposition that he had a share in it; or, at any rate, that it brought back to him the memory of so many pleasant nights. He never, says Talfourd, omitted to buy a copy when he saw one in the sixpenny box of a bookstall, in order to give it with superlative recommendations to a friend. For example, after sending it to Manning, he asks: "I hope by this time you are prepared to say the _Falstaff Letters_ are a bundle of the sharpest, queerest, profoundest humours of any these juice-drained latter times have sp.a.w.ned?" The little volume is now very rare. A second edition was published in 1797 and reprints in 1877 and 1905. The full t.i.tle runs: _Original Letters, &c., of Sir John Falstaff and his friends; now first made public by a gentleman, a descendant of Dame Quickly, from genuine ma.n.u.scripts which have been in the possession of the Quickly Family near four hundred years_. 1796.

"White," said J. M. Gutch, another schoolfellow, "was known as Sir John among his friends." See the footnote to the _Elia_ essay on "The Old Actors".

Page 225, first line of essay. _The Roxburgh sale._ The library of the third Duke of Roxburgh was sold, in a forty-five days' sale, between May 18 and July 8, 1812.

Page 229. II.--CHARLES LLOYD'S POEMS.

_Examiner_, October 24 and 25, 1819. Signed ****. Not reprinted by Lamb.

Lamb and Lloyd had been intimate friends in 1797 and 1798, when they produced together _Blank Verse_, and when for a while Lloyd shared rooms with James White. But serious differences arose which need not be inquired into here, and after 1800 they drifted apart and were never really friendly again. Lloyd settled among the Lakes, where at frequent intervals for many years he became the prey of religious mania. In 1818, however, the clouds effectually dispersed for a while, and, returning to London, he resumed the poetical activity of his early life. The new pieces in _Nugae Canorae_, 1819, were the first-fruit of this period, which lasted until 1823. He then relapsed into his old state and died, lost to the world, in 1839. Writing to Lloyd concerning his later poetry Lamb said: "Your lines are not to be understood reading on one leg."

In Lloyd's poem, "Desultory Thoughts in London," 1821, are portraits of both Coleridge and Lamb. One stanza on Lamb has these lines:--

It is a dainty banquet, known to few, To thy mind's inner shrine to have access; While choicest stores of intellect endue That sanctuary, in marvellous excess.

Those lambent glories ever bright and new, Those, privileged to be its inmates, bless!

This shows that Lloyd retained his old affection and admiration for Lamb, just as Lamb's willingness to review Lloyd shows that he had forgotten the past. The quotations have been corrected from Lloyd's pages.

Page 230, line 15. _Mary Wolstonecraft G.o.dwin._ Mary Wollstonecraft G.o.dwin (1759-1797), the first wife of William G.o.dwin, and the advocate of women's independence. Charles Lloyd had known her in his early London days.

Page 232. III.--BARRON FIELD'S POEMS.

_Examiner_, January 16 and 17, 1820. Signed ****. Not reprinted by Lamb.

Barron Field (1786-1846), son of Henry Field, apothecary to Christ's Hospital, was long one of Lamb's friends, possibly through his brother, a fellow clerk of Lamb's in the India House. See the _Elia_ essays on "Distant Correspondents" and "Mackery End," and notes. Field was in Australia from 1817 to 1824 as Judge of the Supreme Court of New South Wales. His _First-Fruits of Australian Poetry_ was printed privately in 1819 and afterwards added as an appendix to _Geographical Memoirs on New South Wales_, 1825.

Page 232. _Motto. "I first adventure...."_ An adaptation of the couplet in Hall's satires:--

I first adventure. Follow me who list, And be the second English satirist.

This couplet was placed by Field on the threshold of the poems in the _Geographical Memoirs_, borrowed, I imagine, from Lamb's review.

Page 232, line 11 from foot. _Thiefland._ Compare the _Elia_ essay "Distant Correspondents."

Page 232, line 8 from foot. _A merry Captain._ Captain (afterwards Rear-Admiral) James Burney (1750-1821), Lamb's friend, who sailed with Cook on two voyages. Lamb told Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley of the Captain's pun in much the same words; but the pun itself we do not know.

Page 233, line 16. _Jobson, etc._ These characters are in "The Devil to Pay," by Charles Coffey, 1731.

Page 233, line 26. _Braham or Stephens._ John Braham, the tenor; Miss Stephens made her first appearance at Drury Lane, as Polly in "The Beggar's Opera," in 1798.

Page 233, line 12 from foot. _The first...._ The first poem was ent.i.tled "Botany Bay Flowers."

Page 234. "_The Kangaroo._" Writing to Barron Field in 1820 Lamb says: "We received your 'Australian First-Fruits,' of which I shall say nothing here, but refer you to **** of 'The Examiner,' who speaks our mind on all public subjects. I can only a.s.sure you that both Coleridge and Wordsworth ... were hugely taken with your Kangaroo." The poem is here corrected from the author's text.

Page 235. IV.--KEATS' "LAMIA."

_The New Times_, July 19, 1820. This is the article referred to by Cowden Clarke in his _Recollections of Writers_, 1878: "Upon the publication of the last volume of poems [_Lamia_, etc.] Charles Lamb wrote one of his finely appreciative and cordial critiques in the _Morning Chronicle_." By a slip of memory Clarke gave the wrong paper.

Lamb wrote in the _Morning Chronicle_ occasionally (his sonnet to Sarah Burney appeared in it as near to the date in question as July 13, 1820), but it was in _The New Times_ that he reviewed Keats. _The New Times_ was founded by John (afterwards Sir John) Stoddart (1773-1856), Lamb and Coleridge's friend, and the brother-in-law of Hazlitt.

Two days after the appearance of Lamb's review--on July 21, 1820--_The New Times_ printed some further extracts from the book, which presumably had been crowded out of the article.

There is so little doubt in my own mind that this is Lamb's review that I have placed it in the body of this book and not in the Appendix. The internal evidence is very strong, particularly at the end, and in the use of such phrases as "joint strengths" and "younger impressibilities."

But there is external evidence too. Leigh Hunt, writing of Keats, in his _Lord Byron and his Contemporaries_, 1828, says:--

I remember Charles Lamb's delight and admiration on reading this work [_Lamia_]; how pleased he was with the designation of Mercury as the "star of Lethe" (rising, as it were, and glittering, as he came upon that pale region); with the fine daring antic.i.p.ation in that pa.s.sage of the second poem,--

"So the two brothers and their _murdered man_, Rode past fair Florence;"

and with the description, at once delicate and gorgeous, of Agnes [_i.e._, Madeline], praying beneath the painted window.

Lamb did not know Keats well. He had met him only a few times, the historic occasion being the dinner at Haydon's, in December, 1817, when the Comptroller of Stamps was present. But he admired his work (he told Crabb Robinson he considered it next to Wordsworth's), and he hated the treatment that Keats received from certain critics. Keats, by the way, mentions meeting Lamb at Novello's and having to endure some wretched puns.

Page 239. SIR THOMAS MORE.

_The Indicator_, December 20, 1820. Signed ****. Leigh Hunt introduced the article in these words:--

The author of the _Table-Talk_ in our last [see note on p. 466] has obliged us with the following pungent morsels of Sir Thomas More,--devils, we may call them. Brantome, noticing the oaths of some eminent Christian manslayers, and informing us that "the good man, Monsieur de la Roche du Maine, swore by 'G.o.d's head full of relics,'" adds in a parenthesis,--"Where the devil did he get that?"--"Ou diable avoit-il trouve celuy-la?" We may apply this vivacious mode of questioning, with a more critical propriety, to those eminent Christian opposers of reformation, past, present, and to come, and ask them, where the devil they get a notion that they are on the side of charity? It is possible to hate for the sake of a loving theory; but it is a dangerous piece of self-flattery, and more likely to spring up in hating than loving minds. If it partakes of the reverent privileges of sorrow in those who are unsuccessful or oppressed, it is odious in those who are flouris.h.i.+ng, and we are afraid is nothing but sheer dogmatism and tyranny even in men as great as Sir Thomas More.

Further proof of Lamb's authors.h.i.+p is contained in the circ.u.mstance that the pa.s.sages here quoted are copied in one of his Commonplace Books.