The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Volume I Part 65

Page 310. UNITARIAN PROTESTS.

_London Magazine_, February, 1825. Not reprinted by Lamb.

The marriages of Unitarian and other Dissenters had to be solemnised in English established churches until the end of 1836. Lord Hardwicke's Act of 1753, in force, with certain modifications, at the time of Lamb's essay, provided that all marriages not performed in church, with due publication of banns and licence duly granted, were null and void. It was customary, after the ceremony in an established church, to lodge a protest against the terms of the service. Hence Lamb's scathing strictures. Lamb was himself nominally a Unitarian, as were many of his friends. In 1796, as he told Coleridge, he adored Priestley almost to the point of sin. But in later life Lamb dropped away from all sects, although he says, in a late letter, that he is as old a "one-G.o.ddite" as George Dyer himself. Hood, who knew Lamb well, and wrote of him as lovingly as any one, remarked in his "Literary Reminiscences" in _Hood's Own_, probably with truth:--

As regards his Unitarianism, it strikes me as more probable that he was what the unco' guid people call "Nothing at all," which means that he was every thing but a Bigot. As he was in spirit an Old Author, so was he in faith an Ancient Christian, too ancient to belong to any of the modern sub-hubbub divisions of--Ists,--Arians, and--Inians.

And it is told of Lamb that he once complained that the Unitarians had robbed him of two-thirds of his G.o.d.

I do not identify M----, the friend to whom this letter was written.

Page 314. AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MR. MUNDEN.

_London Magazine_, February, 1825. Not reprinted by Lamb.

This skit followed "The Biography of Mr. Liston" (page 292) which was printed in the preceding month's issue. Leigh Hunt, referring in his own _Autobiography_ to this exercise of invention, says: "Munden he [Lamb]

made born at 'Stoke Pogis;' the very sound of which was like the actor speaking and digging his words."

To come to fact, Joseph Shepherd Munden (b. 1758) was the son of a poulterer in Leather Lane, Holborn, where he was born. At the age of twelve he was errand boy to an apothecary and afterwards was apprenticed to a law stationer. More than once--incited by admiration of Garrick--he ran away to join strolling companies, and at last he took to the stage altogether. Of his powers as an actor Lamb's other descriptions of him (see page 397 of this volume and the famous Elia essay) say enough.

Munden's last appearance was on May 31, 1824. He died in 1832. His son was Thomas Shepherd Munden, who died, aged fifty, in 1850. He wrote his father's life.

In Raymond's _Memoirs of Elliston_ is an account of an excursion which Lamb once made with Elliston and Munden. I quote it in the notes in Vol.

II.

Page 317. THE "LEPUS" PAPERS.

These papers appeared in _The New Times_ at various dates in 1825. We know them to be Lamb's from internal evidence and from the following allusion in Crabb Robinson's MS. Diary preserved at Dr. Williams'

Library:--

"January 7, 1825. Called on Lamb and chatted. He has written in _The New Times_ an article against visitors. He means to express his feelings towards young G.o.dwin, for it is chiefly against the children of old friends that he humorously vents his spleen." The article in question, No. I. of the series, is No. X. of a series called Variorum. Lamb's signature, Lepus (a hare), is appended to all that are here included.

The Variorum series lasted flaggingly until April, one of the last articles in it being Lamb's review of the _Odes and Addresses_ (see page 335), which, however, was not signed Lepus. It then died. In August a new series, ent.i.tled "Sketches Original and Select," was begun, with an article--"A Character"--by Lepus, but this also soon flagged. Lamb does not seem to have contributed to it again.

Page 317. I.--MANY FRIENDS.

_The New Times_, January 8, 1825. Signed "Lepus."

Another proof of Lamb's authors.h.i.+p of this essay will be found in a letter from him to Walter Savage Landor on October 9, 1832, where he writes:--

"Next, I forgot to tell you I knew all your Welsh annoyancers, the measureless B.'s. I knew a quarter of a mile of them. Seventeen brothers and sixteen sisters, as they appear to me in memory. There was one of them that used to fix his long legs on my fender, and tell a tale of a shark every night, endless, immortal. How have I grudged the salt-sea ravener not having had his gorge of him! The shortest of the daughters measured five foot eleven without her shoes. Well, some day we may confer about them. But they were tall. Truly, I have discover'd the longitude."

Lamb also returned to the charge a little later in the Popular Fallacy "That Home is Home." The first idea for both this essay and the Fallacy we find in the letter to Mrs. Wordsworth dated February 18, 1818. Lamb also utilised a portion of this essay in his Popular Fallacy "That You must Love Me, and Love My Dog," published in February, 1826.

Page 318, last line. _Captain Beacham._ From the letter to Landor we know this name to have disguised that of a brother of the Lambs' friend, Matilda Betham, the author of _The Lay of Marie_.

Page 319. II.--READERS AGAINST THE GRAIN.

_The New Times_, January 13, 1825. Signed "Lepus."

Page 322. III.--MORTIFICATIONS OF AN AUTHOR.

_The New Times_, January 31, 1825. Signed "Lepus."

Page 322, line 7 from foot. _A----n C----m_. Allan Cunningham.

Page 324. IV.--TOM PRY.

_The New Times_, February 8, 1825. Signed "Lepus."

The original of this character sketch was probably Thomas Hill, the drysalter, whom Lamb knew well. S. C. Hall's _Book of Memories_, p. 157, says: "His peculiar faculty was to find out what everybody did, from a minister of state to a stable-boy," etc. etc. John Poole's famous play "Paul Pry," in which Liston played so admirably, was not produced until September of this year, 1825. Lamb and Poole had a slight acquaintance through the _London Magazine_, to which Poole contributed dramatic burlesques. Lamb had given to the landlord in "Mr. H.," in 1806, the name and character of Pry.

Page 324, line 5 of essay. _Like the man in the play._ Chremes, in the opening scene of the _Heauton Timoroumenos_ by Terence (line 77), says: "h.o.m.o sum: humani nihil a me alienum puto". I am a man and to nothing that concerns mankind am I indifferent.

Page 325, line 8. "_Usque recurrit._" Horace's _Epist._, L, x., lines 24-25:--

Naturam expelles furca, tamen usque recurret, Et mala perrumpet furtim fastidia victrix.

(You may drive Nature out with a pitchfork, yet she will persistently return, and will stealthily break through depraved fancies, and be winner.)

Page 326. V.--TOM PRY'S WIFE.

_The New Times_, February 28, 1825. Signed "Lepus."

In a letter from Lamb to the Kenneys, of which the date is uncertain, we get an inkling as to the ident.i.ty of Mrs. Pry:--

"I suppose you know we've left the Temple pro tempore. By the way, this conduct has caused many strange surmises in a good lady of our acquaintance. She lately sent for a young gentleman of the India House, who lives opposite her at Monroe's the flute shop in Skinner Street, Snowhill,--I mention no names. You shall never get out of me what lady I mean,--on purpose to ask all he knew about us. I had previously introduced him to her whist table. Her inquiries embraced every possible thing that could be known of me--how I stood in the India House, what was the amount of my salary, what it was likely to be hereafter, whether I was thought clever in business, why I had taken country lodgings, why at Kingsland in particular, had I friends in that road, was anybody expected to visit me, did I wish for visitors, would an unexpected call be gratifying or not, would it be better that she sent beforehand, did any body come to see me, was not there a gentleman of the name of Morgan, did he know him, didn't he come to see me, did he know how Mr. Morgan lived, she could never make out how they were maintained, was it true he lived out of the profits of a linen draper's shop in Bishopsgate Street?"

Mrs. G.o.dwin's address was 41 Skinner Street.

Again, Mary Lamb tells Sarah Hazlitt on November 7, 1809: "Charles told Mrs. G.o.dwin Hazlitt had found a well in his garden which, water being scarce in your country, would bring him in two hundred a year; and she came in great haste the next morning to ask me if it were true."

Page 327. VI.--A CHARACTER.

_The New Times_, August 25, 1825. Signed "Lepus."

This differed from the five papers that have preceded it in inaugurating a new series ent.i.tled "Sketches Original and Select." Lepus, however, contributed no more. I have no idea who the original Egomet was, possibly an India House clerk. Thomas Griffiths Wainewright, the Ja.n.u.s Weatherc.o.c.k of the _London Magazine_, had occasionally used the pseudonym Egomet Bonmot, and Lamb may have borrowed it.

Page 328, line 26. "_There is no reciprocity._" Lamb may have been remembering a story in Joe Miller about the reciprocity being "all on one side."

Page 328, line 6 from foot. "_Nimium vicini._" In allusion to Virgil's (_Ecl._, IX., 28) "Mantua vae miserae nimium vicina Cremonae"--"Mantua alas, too near ill-starred Cremona" (for it shared the fate of Cremona, which had rebelled against Augustus and suffered confiscation). Lamb comments in his "Popular Fallacies" upon Swift's punning use of the phrase.