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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/11576-0.txt b/11576-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ce294ba --- /dev/null +++ b/11576-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,20800 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 11576 *** + + THE WORKS OF CHARLES AND MARY LAMB + + IV. POEMS AND PLAYS + + + [Illustration: Charles Lamb (aged 23) + From a drawing by Robert Hancock] + + + + + POEMS AND PLAYS + + BY + + CHARLES AND MARY LAMB + + + + + INTRODUCTION + +The earliest poem in this volume bears the date 1794, when Lamb was +nineteen, the latest 1834, the year of his death; so that it covers an +even longer period of his life than Vol. I.--the "Miscellaneous Prose." +The chronological order which was strictly observed in that volume has +been only partly observed in the following pages--since it seemed better +to keep the plays together and to make a separate section of Lamb's +epigrams. These, therefore, will be found to be outside the general +scheme. Such of Lamb's later poems as he did not himself collect in +volume form will also be found to be out of their chronological +position, partly because it has seemed to me best to give prominence to +those verses which Lamb himself reprinted, and partly because there is +often no indication of the year in which the poem was written. + +Another difficulty has been the frequency with which Lamb reprinted some +of his earlier poetry. The text of many of his earliest and best poems +was not fixed until 1818, twenty years or so after their composition. It +had to be decided whether to print these poems in their true order as +they were first published--in Coleridge's _Poems on Various Subjects_, +1796; in Charles Lloyd's _ems on the Death of Priscilla Farmer_, 1796; +in Coleridge's _Poems_, second edition, 1797; in _Blank Verse_ by +Charles Lloyd and Charles Lamb, 1798; and in John Woodvil, 1802--with +all their early readings; or whether to disregard chronological +sequence, and wait until the time of the _Works_--1818--had come, and +print them all together then. I decided, in the interests of their +biographical value, to print them in the order as they first appeared, +particularly as Crabb Robinson tells us that Lamb once said of the +arrangement of a poet's works: "There is only one good order--and that +is the order in which they were written--that is a history of the poet's +mind." It then had to be decided whether to print them in their first +shape, which, unless I repeated them later, would mean the relegation of +Lamb's final text to the Notes, or to print them, at the expense of a +slight infringement upon the chronological scheme, in their final 1818 +state, and relegate all earlier readings to the Notes. After much +deliberation I decided that to print them in their final 1818 state was +best, and this therefore I did in the large edition of 1903, to which +the student is referred for all variorum readings, fuller notes and many +illustrations, and have repeated here. In order, however, that the +scheme of Lamb's 1818 edition of his _Works_ might be preserved, I have +indicated in the text the position in the _Works_ occupied by all the +poems that in the present volume have been printed earlier. + +The chronological order, in so far as it has been followed, emphasises +the dividing line between Lamb's poetry and his verse. As he grew older +his poetry, for the most part, passed into his prose. His best and +truest poems, with few exceptions, belong to the years before, say, +1805, when he was thirty. After this, following a long interval of +silence, came the brief satirical outburst of 1812, in _The Examiner_, +and the longer one, in 1820, in _The Champion_; then, after another +interval, during which he was busy as Elia, came the period of album +verses, which lasted to the end. The impulse to write personal prose, +which was quickened in Lamb by the _London Magazine_ in 1820, seems to +have taken the place of his old ambition to be a poet. In his later and +more mechanical period there were, however, occasional inspirations, as +when he wrote the sonnet on "Work," in 1819; on "Leisure," in 1821; the +lines in his own Album, in 1827, and, pre-eminently, the poem "On an +Infant Dying as Soon as Born," in 1827. + +This volume contains, with the exception of the verse for children, +which will be found in Vol. III. of this edition, all the accessible +poetical work of Charles and Mary Lamb that is known to exist and +several poems not to be found in the large edition. There are probably +still many copies of album verses which have not yet seen the light. In +the _London Magazine_, April, 1824, is a story entitled "The Bride of +Modern Italy," which has for motto the following couplet:-- + + My heart is fixt: + This is the sixt.--_Elia_. + +but the rest of what seems to be a pleasant catalogue is missing. In a +letter to Coleridge, December 2, 1796, Lamb refers to a poem which has +apparently perished, beginning, "Laugh, all that weep." I have left in +the correspondence the rhyming letters to Ayrton and Dibdin, and an +epigram on "Coelebs in Search of a Wife." I have placed the dedication +to Coleridge at the beginning of this volume, although it belongs +properly only to those poems that are reprinted from the _Works_ of +1818, the prose of which Lamb offered to Martin Burney. But it is too +fine to be put among the Notes, and it may easily, by a pardonable +stretch, be made to refer to the whole body of Lamb's poetical and +dramatic work, although _Album Verses_, 1830, was dedicated separately +to Edward Moxon. + +In Mr. Bedford's design for the cover of this edition certain Elian +symbolism will be found. The upper coat of arms is that of Christ's +Hospital, where Lamb was at school; the lower is that of the Inner +Temple, where he was born and spent many years. The figures at the bells +are those which once stood out from the façade of St. Dunstan's Church +in Fleet Street, and are now in Lord Londesborough's garden in Regent's +Park. Lamb shed tears when they were removed. The tricksy sprite and the +candles (brought by Betty) need no explanatory words of mine. + +E.V.L. + + + + + CONTENTS TEXT NOTE + PAGE PAGE + + Dedication 1 307 + Lamb's earliest poem, "Mille viae mortis" 3 307 + Poems in Coleridge's _Poems on Various Subjects_, 1796:-- + "As when a child ..." 4 308 + "Was it some sweet device ..." 4 309 + "Methinks how dainty sweet ..." 5 311 + "Oh! I could laugh ..." 5 311 + From Charles Lloyd's _Poems on the Death of Priscilla + Farmer_, 1796;-- + The Grandame 6 312 + Poems from Coleridge's _Poems_, 1797:-- + "When last I roved ..." 8 315 + "A timid grace ..." 8 315 + "If from my lips ..." 9 315 + "We were two pretty babes ..." 9 315 + Childhood 9 315 + The Sabbath Bells 10 316 + Fancy Employed on Divine Subjects 10 316 + The Tomb of Douglas 11 316 + To Charles Lloyd 12 316 + A Vision of Repentance 13 317 + Poems Written in the Years 1795-98, and not Reprinted by + Lamb:-- + "The Lord of Life ..." 16 317 + To the Poet Cowper 16 317 + Lines addressed to Sara and S.T.C. 17 318 + Sonnet to a Friend 18 318 + To a Young Lady 18 319 + Living Without God in the World 19 319 + Poems from _Blank Verse_, by Charles Lloyd and Charles + Lamb, 1798:-- + To Charles Lloyd 21 320 + Written on the Day of My Aunt's Funeral 21 320 + Written a Year After the Events 22 321 + Written Soon After the Preceding Poem 24 322 + Written on Christmas Day, 1797 25 322 + The Old Familiar Faces 25 322 + Composed at Midnight 26 323 + Poems at the End of _John Woodvil_, 1802:-- + Helen. By Mary Lamb 28 323 + Ballad. From the German 29 324 + Hypochondriacus 29 324 + A Ballad Noting the Difference of Rich and Poor 30 324 + Poems in Charles Lamb's _Works_, 1818, not Previously + Printed in the Present Volume:-- + Hester 32 325 + Dialogue Between a Mother and Child. By Mary Lamb 33 325 + A Farewell to Tobacco 34 325 + To T.L.H. 38 326 + Salome. By Mary Lamb 39 --- + Lines Suggested by a Picture of Two Females by + Lionardo da Vinci. By Mary Lamb 41 327 + Lines on the Same Picture being Removed. By Mary Lamb 41 327 + Lines on the Celebrated Picture by Lionardo da Vinci, + called "The Virgin of the Rocks" 42 327 + On the Same. By Mary Lamb 42 327 + To Miss Kelly 43 328 + On the Sight of Swans in Kensington Garden 43 328 + The Family Name 44 328 + To John Lamb, Esq 44 329 + To Martin Charles Burney, Esq 45 329 + _Album Verses_, 1830:-- + Album Verses:-- + In the Album of a Clergyman's Lady 46 332 + In the Autograph Book of Mrs. Sergeant W---- 46 332 + In the Album of Lucy Barton 47 332 + In the Album of Miss ---- 48 332 + In the Album of a very Young Lady 48 332 + In the Album of a French Teacher 49 332 + In the Album of Miss Daubeny 49 333 + In the Album of Mrs. Jane Towers 50 333 + In My Own Album 50 333 + Miscellaneous:-- + Angel Help 51 333 + The Christening 52 333 + On an Infant Dying as Soon as Born 53 333 + To Bernard Barton 55 334 + The Young Catechist 56 334 + She is Going 57 335 + To a Young Friend 57 335 + To the Same 58 335 + Sonnets:-- + Harmony in Unlikeness 58 336 + Written at Cambridge 59 336 + To a Celebrated Female Performer in the "Blind Boy" 59 336 + Work 59 336 + Leisure 60 336 + To Samuel Rogers, Esq. 60 337 + The Gipsy's Malison 61 337 + Commendatory Verses:-- + To the Author of Poems Published under the Name + of Barry Cornwall 61 338 + To R.S. Knowles, Esq. 62 338 + To the Editor of the _Every-Day Book_ 63 338 + Acrostics:-- + To Caroline Maria Applebee 63 339 + To Cecilia Catherine Lawton 64 339 + Acrostic, to a Lady who Desired Me to Write Her + Epitaph 65 339 + Another, to Her Youngest Daughter 65 339 + Translations from the Latin of Vincent Bourne:-- + On a Sepulchral Statue of an Infant Sleeping 66 340 + The Rival Bells 66 340 + Epitaph on a Dog 67 340 + The Ballad Singers 67 340 + To David Cook 69 340 + On a Deaf and Dumb Artist 70 340 + Newton's Principia 71 340 + The House-keeper 71 340 + The Female Orators 72 340 + Pindaric Ode to the Tread Mill 72 341 + Going or Gone 75 341 + New Poems in _The Poetical Works of Charles Lamb_, 1836:-- + In the Album of Edith S---- 78 343 + To Dora W---- 78 343 + In the Album of Rotha Q---- 79 344 + In the Album of Catherine Orkney 79 --- + To T. Stothard, Esq. 80 344 + To a Friend on His Marriage 80 344 + The Self-Enchanted 81 344 + To Louisa M----, whom I used to call "Monkey" 82 344 + Cheap Gifts: a Sonnet 82 344 + Free Thoughts on Several Eminent Composers 83 344 + Miscellaneous Poems not collected by Lamb:-- + Dramatic Fragment 85 345 + Dick Strype; or, The Force of Habit 86 345 + Two Epitaphs on a Young Lady 88 346 + The Ape 89 346 + In tabulam eximii pictoris B. Haydoni 90 347 + Translation of Same 90 347 + Sonnet to Miss Burney 91 347 + To My Friend the Indicator 91 348 + On seeing Mrs. K---- B----, aged upwards of eighty, + nurse an infant 92 348 + To Emma, Learning Latin, and Desponding 93 349 + Lines Addressed to Lieut. R.W.H. Hardy, R.N. 93 349 + Lines for a Monument 94 349 + To C. Aders, Esq. 94 349 + Hercules Pacificatus 95 349 + The Parting Speech of the Celestial Messenger + to the Poet 98 349 + Existence, Considered in Itself, no Blessing 99 350 + To Samuel Rogers, Esq. 100 350 + To Clara N---- 101 350 + The Sisters 101 350 + Love Will Come 102 351 + To Margaret W---- 102 351 + Additional Album Verses and Acrostics:-- + What is an Album? 104 351 + The First Leaf of Spring 105 352 + To Mrs. F---- 105 352 + To M. L---- F---- 106 352 + To Esther Field 106 352 + To Mrs. Williams 107 352 + To the Book 107 353 + To S.F. 108 353 + To R.Q. 108 353 + To S.L. 109 353 + To M.L. 109 353 + An Acrostic Against Acrostics 109 353 + On Being Asked to Write in Miss Westwood's Album 110 353 + In Miss Westwood's Album. By Mary Lamb 110 353 + Un Solitaire. To Sarah Lachlan 111 353 + To S. T 111 354 + To Mrs. Sarah Robinson 111 354 + To Sarah 112 354 + To Joseph Vale Asbury 112 354 + To D.A. 113 354 + To Louisa Morgan 113 354 + To Sarah James of Beguildy 113 354 + To Emma Button 114 354 + Written upon the Cover of a Blotting Book 114 354 + Political and Other Epigrams:-- + To Sir James Mackintosh 115 357 + Twelfth Night Characters:-- + Mr. A---- 115 358 + Messrs. C----g and F----e 115 358 + Count Rumford 116 358 + On a Late Empiric of "Balmy" Memory 116 358 + Epigrams:-- + "Princeps his rent ..." 116 359 + "Ye Politicians, tell me, pray ..." 116 359 + The Triumph of the Whale 116 359 + Sonnet. St. Crispin to Mr. Gifford 118 360 + The Godlike 118 360 + The Three Graves 119 360 + Sonnet to Mathew Wood, Esq. 119 361 + On a Projected Journey 120 361 + Song for the C-----n 120 362 + The Unbeloved 120 362 + On the Arrival in England of Lord Byron's Remains 121 362 + Lines Suggested by a Sight of Waltham Cross 121 363 + For the _Table Book_ 122 363 + The Royal Wonders 122 363 + "Brevis Esse Laboro" 122 363 + Suum Cuique 123 363 + On the Literary Gazette 123 365 + On the Fast-Day 123 365 + Nonsense Verses 123 365 + On Wawd 124 366 + Six Epitaphs 124 366 + Time and Eternity 126 366 + From the Latin 126 366 + Satan in Search of a Wife 127 366 + Part 1 128 --- + Part II 133 --- + Prologues and Epilogues:-- + Epilogue to Godwin's Tragedy of "Antonio" 138 368 + Prologue to Godwin's Tragedy of "Faulkener" 140 369 + Epilogue to Henry Siddons' Farce, "Time's a Tell-Tale" 140 369 + Prologue to Coleridge's Tragedy of "Remorse" 142 369 + Epilogue to Kenney's Farce, "Debtor and Creditor" 143 371 + Epilogue to an Amateur Performance of "Richard II." 145 371 + Prologue to Sheridan Knowles' Comedy, "The Wife" 146 372 + Epilogue to Sheridan Knowles' Comedy, "The Wife" 147 372 + John Woodvil 149 372 + The Witch 199 392 + Mr. H------ 202 392 + The Pawnbroker's Daughter 238 397 + The Wife's Trial 273 --- + Poems in the Notes:-- + Lines to Dorothy Wordsworth. By Mary Lamb 328 + Lines on Lamb's Want of Ear. By Mary Lamb 345 + A Lady's Sapphic. By Mary Lamb (?) 356 + An English Sapphic. By Charles Lamb (?) 357 + Two Epigrams. By Charles Lamb (?) 359 + The Poetical Cask. By Charles Lamb (?) 363 + + NOTES 307 + + INDEX 399 + + INDEX OF FIRST LINES 409 + + + + + +FRONTISPIECE + +CHARLES LAMB (AGE 23) + +From the Drawing by Robert Hancock, now in the National Portrait +Gallery. + + + + +DEDICATION (1818) TO S.T. COLERIDGE, ESQ. + + +My Dear Coleridge, + +You will smile to see the slender labors of your friend designated by +the title of _Works_; but such was the wish of the gentlemen who have +kindly undertaken the trouble of collecting them, and from their +judgment could be no appeal. + +It would be a kind of disloyalty to offer to any one but yourself a +volume containing the _early pieces_, which were first published among +your poems, and were fairly derivatives from you and them. My friend +Lloyd and myself came into our first battle (authorship is a sort of +warfare) under cover of the greater Ajax. How this association, which +shall always be a dear and proud recollection to me, came to be broken, +--who snapped the three-fold cord,--whether yourself (but I know that +was not the case) grew ashamed of your former companions,--or whether +(which is by much the more probable) some ungracious bookseller was +author of the separation,--I cannot tell;--but wanting the support of +your friendly elm, (I speak for myself,) my vine has, since that time, +put forth few or no fruits; the sap (if ever it had any) has become, in +a manner, dried up and extinct; and you will find your old associate, in +his second volume, dwindled into prose and _criticism_. + +Am I right in assuming this as the cause? or is it that, as years come +upon us, (except with some more healthy-happy spirits,) Life itself +loses much of its Poetry for us? we transcribe but what we read in the +great volume of Nature; and, as the characters grow dim, we turn off, +and look another way. You yourself write no Christabels, nor Ancient +Mariners, now. + +Some of the Sonnets, which shall be carelessly turned over by the +general reader, may happily awaken in you remembrances, which I should +be sorry should be ever totally extinct--the memory + + Of summer days and of delightful years-- + +even so far back as to those old suppers at our old ****** Inn,--when life +was fresh, and topics exhaustless,--and you first kindled in me, if not +the power, yet the love of poetry, and beauty, and kindliness.-- + + What words have I heard + Spoke at the Mermaid! + +The world has given you many a shrewd nip and gird since that time, but +either my eyes are grown dimmer, or my old friend is the _same_, who +stood before me three and twenty years ago--his hair a little confessing +the hand of time, but still shrouding the same capacious brain,--his +heart not altered, scarcely where it "alteration finds." + +One piece, Coleridge, I have ventured to publish in its original form, +though I have heard you complain of a certain over-imitation of the +antique in the style. If I could see any way of getting rid of the +objection, without re-writing it entirely, I would make some sacrifices. +But when I wrote John Woodvil, I never proposed to myself any distinct +deviation from common English. I had been newly initiated in the +writings of our elder dramatists; Beaumont and Fletcher, and Massinger, +were then a _first love_; and from what I was so freshly conversant in, +what wonder if my language imperceptibly took a tinge? The very _time_, +which I have chosen for my story, that which immediately followed the +Restoration, seemed to require, in an English play, that the English +should be of rather an older cast, than that of the precise year in +which it happened to be written. I wish it had not some faults, which I +can less vindicate than the language. + +I remain, + My dear Coleridge, + Your's, + With unabated esteem, + C. LAMB. + + + + + LAMB'S EARLIEST POEM + + MILLE VIAE MORTIS + + (1789) + + + What time in bands of slumber all were laid, + To Death's dark court, methought I was convey'd; + In realms it lay far hid from mortal sight, + And gloomy tapers scarce kept out the night. + + On ebon throne the King of Terrors sate; + Around him stood the ministers of Fate; + On fell destruction bent, the murth'rous band + Waited attentively his high command. + + Here pallid Fear & dark Despair were seen. + And Fever here with looks forever lean, + Swoln Dropsy, halting Gout, profuse of woes, + And Madness fierce & hopeless of repose, + + Wide-wasting Plague; but chief in honour stood + More-wasting War, insatiable of blood; + With starting eye-balls, eager for the word; + Already brandish'd was the glitt'ring sword. + + Wonder and fear alike had fill'd my breast, + And thus the grisly Monarch I addrest-- + + "Of earth-born Heroes why should Poets sing, + And thee neglect, neglect the greatest King? + To thee ev'n Caesar's self was forc'd to yield + The glories of Pharsalia's well-fought field." + + When, with a frown, "Vile caitiff, come not here," + Abrupt cried Death; "shall flatt'ry soothe my ear?" + "Hence, or thou feel'st my dart!" the Monarch said. + Wild terror seiz'd me, & the vision fled. + + + + + POEMS IN COLERIDGE'S POEMS ON + VARIOUS SUBJECTS, 1796 + + + (_Written late in 1794. Text of 1797_) + + As when a child on some long winter's night + Affrighted clinging to its Grandam's knees + With eager wond'ring and perturb'd delight + Listens strange tales of fearful dark decrees + Mutter'd to wretch by necromantic spell; + Or of those hags, who at the witching time + Of murky midnight ride the air sublime, + And mingle foul embrace with fiends of Hell: + Cold Horror drinks its blood! Anon the tear + More gentle starts, to hear the Beldame tell + Of pretty babes, that lov'd each other dear, + Murder'd by cruel Uncle's mandate fell: + Ev'n such the shiv'ring joys thy tones impart, + Ev'n so thou, SIDDONS! meltest my sad heart! + + + (_Probably 1795. Text of 1818_) + + Was it some sweet device of Faery + That mocked my steps with many a lonely glade, + And fancied wanderings with a fair-hair'd maid? + Have these things been? or what rare witchery, + Impregning with delights the charmed air, + Enlighted up the semblance of a smile + In those fine eyes? methought they spake the while + Soft soothing things, which might enforce despair + To drop the murdering knife, and let go by + His foul resolve. And does the lonely glade + Still court the foot-steps of the fair-hair'd maid? + Still in her locks the gales of summer sigh? + While I forlorn do wander reckless where, + And 'mid my wanderings meet no Anna there. + + + (_Probably_ 1795. _Text of_ 1818) + + Methinks how dainty sweet it were, reclin'd + Beneath the vast out-stretching branches high + Of some old wood, in careless sort to lie, + Nor of the busier scenes we left behind + Aught envying. And, O Anna! mild-eyed maid! + Beloved! I were well content to play + With thy free tresses all a summer's day, + Losing the time beneath the greenwood shade. + Or we might sit and tell some tender tale + Of faithful vows repaid by cruel scorn, + A tale of true love, or of friend forgot; + And I would teach thee, lady, how to rail + In gentle sort, on those who practise not + Or love or pity, though of woman born. + + + (1794. _Text of_ 1818) + + O! I could laugh to hear the midnight wind, + That, rushing on its way with careless sweep, + Scatters the ocean waves. And I could weep + Like to a child. For now to my raised mind + On wings of winds comes wild-eyed Phantasy, + And her rude visions give severe delight. + O winged bark! how swift along the night + Pass'd thy proud keel! nor shall I let go by + Lightly of that drear hour the memory, + When wet and chilly on thy deck I stood, + Unbonnetted, and gazed upon the flood, + Even till it seemed a pleasant thing to die,-- + To be resolv'd into th' elemental wave, + Or take my portion with the winds that rave. + + + + +FROM CHARLES LLOYD'S POEMS ON THE DEATH OF PRISCILLA FARMER, 1796 + + + THE GRANDAME + + (Summer, 1796. Text of 1818) + + On the green hill top, + Hard by the house of prayer, a modest roof, + And not distinguish'd from its neighbour-barn, + Save by a slender-tapering length of spire, + The Grandame sleeps. A plain stone barely tells + The name and date to the chance passenger. + For lowly born was she, and long had eat, + Well-earned, the bread of service:--her's was else + A mounting spirit, one that entertained + Scorn of base action, deed dishonorable, + Or aught unseemly. I remember well + Her reverend image: I remember, too, + With what a zeal she served her master's house; + And how the prattling tongue of garrulous age + Delighted to recount the oft-told tale + Or anecdote domestic. Wise she was, + And wondrous skilled in genealogies, + And could in apt and voluble terms discourse + Of births, of titles, and alliances; + Of marriages, and intermarriages; + Relationship remote, or near of kin; + Of friends offended, family disgraced-- + Maiden high-born, but wayward, disobeying + Parental strict injunction, and regardless + Of unmixed blood, and ancestry remote, + Stooping to wed with one of low degree. + But these are not thy praises; and I wrong + Thy honor'd memory, recording chiefly + Things light or trivial. Better 'twere to tell, + How with a nobler zeal, and warmer love, + She served her _heavenly master_. I have seen + That reverend form bent down with age and pain + And rankling malady. Yet not for this + Ceased she to praise her maker, or withdrew + Her trust in him, her faith, and humble hope-- + So meekly had she learn'd to bear her cross-- + For she had studied patience in the school + Of Christ, much comfort she had thence derived, + And was a follower of the NAZARENE. + + + + + POEMS FROM COLERIDGE'S _POEMS_, 1797 + + + (_Summer_, 1795. _Text of_ 1818) + + When last I roved these winding wood-walks green, + Green winding walks, and shady pathways sweet, + Oft-times would Anna seek the silent scene, + Shrouding her beauties in the lone retreat. + No more I hear her footsteps in the shade: + Her image only in these pleasant ways + Meets me self-wandering, where in happier days + I held free converse with the fair-hair'd maid. + I passed the little cottage which she loved, + The cottage which did once my all contain; + It spake of days which ne'er must come again, + Spake to my heart, and much my heart was moved. + "Now fair befall thee, gentle maid!" said I, + And from the cottage turned me with a sigh. + + + (1795 _or_ 1796. _Text of_ 1818) + + A timid grace sits trembling in her eye, + As both to meet the rudeness of men's sight, + Yet shedding a delicious lunar light, + That steeps in kind oblivious ecstasy + The care-crazed mind, like some still melody: + Speaking most plain the thoughts which do possess + Her gentle sprite: peace, and meek quietness, + And innocent loves, and maiden purity: + A look whereof might heal the cruel smart + Of changed friends, or fortune's wrongs unkind; + Might to sweet deeds of mercy move the heart + Of him who hates his brethren of mankind. + Turned are those lights from me, who fondly yet + Past joys, vain loves, and buried hopes regret. + + + (_End of 1795. Text of 1818_) + + If from my lips some angry accents fell, + Peevish complaint, or harsh reproof unkind, + 'Twas but the error of a sickly mind + And troubled thoughts, clouding the purer well, + And waters clear, of Reason; and for me + Let this my verse the poor atonement be-- + My verse, which thou to praise wert ever inclined + Too highly, and with a partial eye to see + No blemish. Thou to me didst ever shew + Kindest affection; and would oft-times lend + An ear to the desponding love-sick lay, + Weeping my sorrows with me, who repay + But ill the mighty debt of love I owe, + Mary, to thee, my sister and my friend. + + + (_1795. Text of 1818_) + + We were two pretty babes, the youngest she, + The youngest, and the loveliest far, I ween, + And INNOCENCE her name. The time has been, + We two did love each other's company; + Time was, we two had wept to have been apart. + But when by show of seeming good beguil'd, + I left the garb and manners of a child, + And my first love for man's society, + Defiling with the world my virgin heart-- + My loved companion dropped a tear, and fled, + And hid in deepest shades her awful head. + Beloved, who shall tell me where thou art-- + In what delicious Eden to be found-- + That I may seek thee the wide world around? + + + + + CHILDHOOD + + (_Summer, 1796. Text of 1818_) + + In my poor mind it is most sweet to muse + Upon the days gone by; to act in thought + Past seasons o'er, and be again a child; + To sit in fancy on the turf-clad slope, + Down which the child would roll; to pluck gay flowers, + Make posies in the sun, which the child's hand, + (Childhood offended soon, soon reconciled,) + Would throw away, and strait take up again, + Then fling them to the winds, and o'er the lawn + Bound with so playful and so light a foot, + That the press'd daisy scarce declined her head. + + + + + THE SABBATH BELLS + + (_Summer, 1796. Text of 1818_) + + The cheerful sabbath bells, wherever heard, + Strike pleasant on the sense, most like the voice + Of one, who from the far-off hills proclaims + Tidings of good to Zion: chiefly when + Their piercing tones fall _sudden_ on the ear + Of the contemplant, solitary man, + Whom thoughts abstruse or high have chanced to lure + Forth from the walks of men, revolving oft, + And oft again, hard matter, which eludes + And baffles his pursuit--thought-sick and tired + Of controversy, where no end appears, + No clue to his research, the lonely man + Half wishes for society again. + Him, thus engaged, the sabbath bells salute + _Sudden!_ his heart awakes, his ears drink in + The cheering music; his relenting soul + Yearns after all the joys of social life, + And softens with the love of human kind. + + + + + FANCY EMPLOYED ON DIVINE SUBJECTS + + (_Summer, 1796. Text of 1818_) + + The truant Fancy was a wanderer ever, + A lone enthusiast maid. She loves to walk + In the bright visions of empyreal light, + By the green pastures, and the fragrant meads, + Where the perpetual flowers of Eden blow; + By chrystal streams, and by the living waters, + Along whose margin grows the wondrous tree + Whose leaves shall heal the nations; underneath + Whose holy shade a refuge shall be found + From pain and want, and all the ills that wait + On mortal life, from sin and death for ever. + + + + THE TOMB OF DOUGLAS + _See the Tragedy of that Name_ + + (1796) + + When her son, her Douglas died, + To the steep rock's fearful side + Fast the frantic Mother hied-- + + O'er her blooming warrior dead + Many a tear did Scotland shed, + And shrieks of long and loud lament + From her Grampian hills she sent. + + Like one awakening from a trance, + She met the shock of[1] Lochlin's lance; + On her rude invader foe + Return'd an hundred fold the blow, + Drove the taunting spoiler home; + Mournful thence she took her way + To do observance at the tomb + Where the son of Douglas lay. + + Round about the tomb did go + In solemn state and order slow, + Silent pace, and black attire, + Earl, or Knight, or good Esquire; + Whoe'er by deeds of valour done + In battle had high honours won; + Whoe'er in their pure veins could trace + The blood of Douglas' noble race. + + With them the flower of minstrels came, + And to their cunning harps did frame + In doleful numbers piercing rhymes, + Such strains as in the older times + Had sooth'd the spirit of Fingal, + Echoing thro' his father's hall. + + "Scottish maidens, drop a tear + O'er the beauteous Hero's bier! + Brave youth, and comely 'bove compare, + All golden shone his burnish'd hair; + Valour and smiling courtesy + Play'd in the sun-beams of his eye. + Clos'd are those eyes that shone so fair, + And stain'd with blood his yellow hair. + Scottish maidens, drop a tear + O'er the beauteous Hero's bier!" + + "Not a tear, I charge you, shed + For the false Glenalvon dead; + Unpitied let Glenalvon lie, + Foul stain to arms and chivalry!" + + "Behind his back the traitor came, + And Douglas died without his fame. + Young light of Scotland early spent, + Thy country thee shall long lament; + And oft to after-times shall tell, + In Hope's sweet prime my Hero fell." + + +[Footnote 1: Denmark.] + + + + + TO CHARLES LLOYD + + _An Unexpected Visitor_ + + (_January, 1797. Text of 1818_) + + + Alone, obscure, without a friend, + A cheerless, solitary thing, + Why seeks, my Lloyd, the stranger out? + What offering can the stranger bring + + Of social scenes, home-bred delights, + That him in aught compensate may + For Stowey's pleasant winter nights, + For loves and friendships far away? + + In brief oblivion to forego + Friends, such as thine, so justly dear, + And be awhile with me content + To stay, a kindly loiterer, here: + + For this a gleam of random joy + Hath flush'd my unaccustom'd cheek; + And, with an o'er-charg'd bursting heart, + I feel the thanks I cannot speak. + + Oh! sweet are all the Muses' lays, + And sweet the charm of matin bird; + 'Twas long since these estranged ears + The sweeter voice of friend had heard. + + The voice hath spoke: the pleasant sounds + In memory's ear in after time + Shall live, to sometimes rouse a tear, + And sometimes prompt an honest rhyme. + + For, when the transient charm is fled, + And when the little week is o'er, + To cheerless, friendless, solitude + When I return, as heretofore, + + Long, long, within my aching heart + The grateful sense shall cherish'd be; + I'll think less meanly of myself, + That Lloyd will sometimes think on me. + + + + + A VISION OF REPENTANCE + + (_1796? Text of 1818_) + + I saw a famous fountain, in my dream, + Where shady path-ways to a valley led; + A weeping willow lay upon that stream, + And all around the fountain brink were spread + Wide branching trees, with dark green leaf rich clad, + Forming a doubtful twilight-desolate and sad. + + The place was such, that whoso enter'd in + Disrobed was of every earthly thought, + And straight became as one that knew not sin, + Or to the world's first innocence was brought; + Enseem'd it now, he stood on holy ground, + In sweet and tender melancholy wrapt around. + + A most strange calm stole o'er my soothed sprite; + Long time I stood, and longer had I staid, + When, lo! I saw, saw by the sweet moon-light, + Which came in silence o'er that silent shade, + Where, near the fountain, SOMETHING like DESPAIR + Made, of that weeping willow, garlands for her hair. + + And eke with painful fingers she inwove + Many an uncouth stem of savage thorn-- + "The willow garland, _that_ was for her love, + And _these_ her bleeding temples would adorn." + With sighs her heart nigh burst, salt tears fast fell, + As mournfully she bended o'er that sacred well. + + To whom when I addrest myself to speak, + She lifted up her eyes, and nothing said; + The delicate red came mantling o'er her cheek, + And, gath'ring up her loose attire, she fled + To the dark covert of that woody shade, + And in her goings seem'd a timid gentle maid. + + Revolving in my mind what this should mean, + And why that lovely lady plained so; + Perplex'd in thought at that mysterious scene, + And doubting if 'twere best to stay or go, + I cast mine eyes in wistful gaze around, + When from the shades came slow a small and plaintive sound: + + "PSYCHE am I, who love to dwell + In these brown shades, this woody dell, + Where never busy mortal came, + Till now, to pry upon my shame. + + "At thy feet what thou dost see + The waters of repentance be, + Which, night and day, I must augment + With tears, like a true penitent, + + "If haply so my day of grace + Be not yet past; and this lone place, + O'er-shadowy, dark, excludeth hence + All thoughts but grief and penitence." + + _"Why dost thou weep, thou gentle maid! + And wherefore in this barren shade + Thy hidden thoughts with sorrow feed? + Can thing so fair repentance need?"_ + + "O! I have done a deed of shame, + And tainted is my virgin fame, + And stain'd the beauteous maiden white, + In which my bridal robes were dight." + + "_And who the promised spouse, declare: + And what those bridal garments were._" + + "Severe and saintly righteousness + Compos'd the clear white bridal dress; + JESUS, the son of Heaven's high king, + Bought with his blood the marriage ring. + + "A wretched sinful creature, I + Deem'd lightly of that sacred tie, + Gave to a treacherous WORLD my heart, + And play'd the foolish wanton's part. + + "Soon to these murky shades I came, + To hide from the sun's light my shame. + And still I haunt this woody dell, + And bathe me in that healing well, + Whose waters clear have influence + From sin's foul stains the soul to cleanse; + And, night and day, I them augment + With tears, like a true penitent, + Until, due expiation made, + And fit atonement fully paid, + The lord and bridegroom me present, + Where in sweet strains of high consent, + God's throne before, the Seraphim + Shall chaunt the extatic marriage hymn." + + "Now Christ restore thee soon "--I said, + And thenceforth all my dream was fled. + + + + + POEMS WRITTEN IN THE YEARS 1795-98, + AND NOT REPRINTED BY LAMB + + + + + SONNET + + _(Summer, 1795)_ + + + The Lord of Life shakes off his drowsihed, + And 'gins to sprinkle on the earth below + Those rays that from his shaken locks do flow; + Meantime, by truant love of rambling led, + I turn my back on thy detested walls, + Proud City! and thy sons I leave behind, + A sordid, selfish, money-getting kind; + Brute things, who shut their ears when Freedom calls. + + I pass not thee so lightly, well-known spire, + That minded me of many a pleasure gone, + Of merrier days, of love and Islington; + Kindling afresh the flames of past desire. + And I shall muse on thee, slow journeying on + To the green plains of pleasant Hertfordshire. + + 1795. + + + + + TO THE POET COWPER + + _On his Recovery from an Indisposition. + Written some Time Back + + (Summer, 1796)_ + + + Cowper, I thank my God, that thou art heal'd. + Thine was the sorest malady of all; + And I am sad to think that it should light + Upon the worthy head: but thou art heal'd, + And thou art yet, we trust, the destin'd man, + Born to re-animate the lyre, whose chords + Have slumber'd, and have idle lain so long; + To th' immortal sounding of whose strings + Did Milton frame the stately-paced verse; + Among whose wires with lighter finger playing + Our elder bard, Spencer, a gentler name, + The lady Muses' dearest darling child, + Enticed forth the deftest tunes yet heard + In hall or bower; taking the delicate ear + Of the brave Sidney, and the Maiden Queen. + Thou, then, take up the mighty epic strain, + Cowper, of England's bards the wisest and the best! + + _December 1, 1796._ + + + + + LINES + + _Addressed, from London, to Sara and S.T.C. at Bristol, + in the Summer of 1796._ + + + Was it so hard a thing? I did but ask + A fleeting holiday, a little week. + + What, if the jaded steer, who, all day long, + Had borne the heat and burthen of the plough, + When ev'ning came, and her sweet cooling hour, + Should seek to wander in a neighbour copse, + Where greener herbage wav'd, or clearer streams + Invited him to slake his burning thirst? + The man were crabbed who should say him nay; + The man were churlish who should drive him thence. + + A blessing light upon your worthy heads, + Ye hospitable pair! I may not come + To catch, on Clifden's heights, the summer gale; + I may not come to taste the Avon wave; + Or, with mine eye intent on Redcliffe tow'rs, + To muse in tears on that mysterious youth, + Cruelly slighted, who, in evil hour, + Shap'd his advent'rous course to London walls! + Complaint, be gone! and, ominous thoughts, away! + Take up, my Song, take up a merrier strain; + For yet again, and lo! from Avon's vales, + Another Minstrel[2] cometh. Youth endear'd, + God and good Angels guide thee on thy road, + And gentler fortunes 'wait the friends I love! + +[Footnote 2: "From vales where Avon winds, the Minstrel came." +COLERIDGE'S _Monody on Chatterton._] + + + + + SONNET TO A FRIEND + + _(End of 1796)_ + + + Friend of my earliest years and childish days, + My joys, my sorrows, thou with me hast shar'd + Companion dear, and we alike have far'd + (Poor pilgrims we) thro' life's unequal ways. + It were unwisely done, should we refuse + To cheer our path as featly as we may, + Our lonely path to cheer, as trav'llers use, + With merry song, quaint tale, or roundelay; + And we will sometimes talk past troubles o'er, + Of mercies shewn, and all our sickness heal'd, + And in his judgments God rememb'ring love; + And we will learn to praise God evermore, + For those glad tidings of great joy reveal'd + By that sooth Messenger sent from above. + + + + TO A YOUNG LADY + + _(Early, 1797)_ + + + Hard is the heart that does not melt with ruth, + When care sits, cloudy, on the brow of youth; + When bitter griefs the female bosom swell, + And Beauty meditates a fond farewell + To her lov'd native land, prepar'd to roam, + And seek in climes afar the peace denied at home. + The Muse, with glance prophetic, sees her stand + (Forsaken, silent lady) on the strand + Of farthest India, sick'ning at the roar + Of each dull wave, slow dash'd upon the shore; + Sending, at intervals, an aching eye + O'er the wide waters, vainly, to espy + The long-expected bark, in which to find + Some tidings of a world she left behind. + At such a time shall start the gushing tear, + For scenes her childhood lov'd, now doubly dear. + At such a time shall frantic mem'ry wake + Pangs of remorse, for slighted England's sake; + And for the sake of many a tender tie + Of love, or friendship, pass'd too lightly by. + Unwept, unhonour'd, 'midst an alien race, + And the _cold_ looks of many a _stranger_ face, + How will her poor heart bleed, and chide the day, + That from her country took her far away. + + + + + LIVING WITHOUT GOD IN THE WORLD + + _(? 1798)_ + + + Mystery of God! thou brave and beauteous world, + Made fair with light and shade and stars and flowers, + Made fearful and august with woods and rocks, + Jagg'd precipice, black mountain, sea in storms, + Sun, over all, that no co-rival owns, + But thro' Heaven's pavement rides as in despite + Or mockery of the littleness of man! + I see a mighty arm, by man unseen, + Resistless, not to be controul'd, that guides, + In solitude of unshared energies, + All these thy ceaseless miracles, O world! + Arm of the world, I view thee, and I muse + On Man, who, trusting in his mortal strength, + Leans on a shadowy staff, a staff of dreams. + We consecrate our total hopes and fears + To idols, flesh and blood, our love, (heaven's due) + Our praise and admiration; praise bestowed + By man on man, and acts of worship done + To a kindred nature, certes do reflect + Some portion of the glory and rays oblique + Upon the politic worshipper,--so man + Extracts a pride from his humility. + Some braver spirits of the modern stamp + Affect a Godhead nearer: these talk loud + Of mind, and independent intellect, + Of energies omnipotent in man, + And man of his own fate artificer; + Yea of his own life Lord, and of the days + Of his abode on earth, when time shall be, + That life immortal shall become an art, + Or Death, by chymic practices deceived, + Forego the scent, which for six thousand years + Like a good hound he has followed, or at length + More manners learning, and a decent sense + And reverence of a philosophic world, + Relent, and leave to prey on carcasses. + + But these are fancies of a few: the rest, + Atheists, or Deists only in the name, + By word or deed deny a God. They eat + Their daily bread, and draw the breath of heaven + Without or thought or thanks; heaven's roof to them + Is but a painted ceiling hung with lamps, + No more, that lights them to their purposes. + They wander "loose about," they nothing see, + Themselves except, and creatures like themselves, + Short-liv'd, short-sighted, impotent to save. + So on their dissolute spirits, soon or late, + Destruction cometh "like an armed man," + Or like a dream of murder in the night, + Withering their mortal faculties, and breaking + The bones of all their pride. + + + + + + POEMS FROM _BLANK VERSE_, BY + CHARLES LLOYD AND CHARLES LAMB, 1798 + + + TO CHARLES LLOYD + + A stranger, and alone, I past those scenes + We past so late together; and my heart + Felt something like desertion, when I look'd + Around me, and the well-known voice of friend + Was absent, and the cordial look was there + No more to smile on me. I thought on Lloyd; + All he had been to me. And now I go + Again to mingle with a world impure, + With men who make a mock of holy things + Mistaken, and of man's best hope think scorn. + The world does much to warp the heart of man, + And I may sometimes join its ideot laugh. + Of this I now complain not. Deal with me, + Omniscient Father! as thou judgest best, + And in thy season _tender_ thou my heart. + I pray not for myself; I pray for him + Whose soul is sore perplex'd: shine thou on him, + Father of Lights! and in the difficult paths + Make plain his way before him. His own thoughts + May he not think, his own ends not pursue; + So shall he best perform thy will on earth. + Greatest and Best, thy will be ever ours! + + _August_, 1797. + + + + + WRITTEN ON THE DAY OF MY AUNT'S FUNERAL + + + Thou too art dead, ----! very kind + Hast thou been to me in my childish days, + Thou best good creature. I have not forgot + How thou didst love thy Charles, when he was yet + A prating schoolboy: I have not forgot + The busy joy on that important day, + When, child-like, the poor wanderer was content + To leave the bosom of parental love, + His childhood's play-place, and his early home, + For the rude fosterings of a stranger's hand, + Hard uncouth tasks, and school-boy's scanty fare. + How did thine eye peruse him round and round, + And hardly know him in his yellow coats[3], + Red leathern belt, and gown of russet blue! + Farewell, good aunt! + Go thou, and occupy the same grave-bed + Where the dead mother lies. + Oh my dear mother, oh thou dear dead saint! + Where's now that placid face, where oft hath sat + A mother's smile, to think her son should thrive + In this bad world, when she was dead and gone; + And when a tear hath sat (take shame, O son!) + When that same child has prov'd himself unkind. + One parent yet is left--a wretched thing, + A sad survivor of his buried wife, + A palsy-smitten, childish, old, old man, + A semblance most forlorn of what he was, + A merry cheerful man. A merrier man, + A man more apt to frame matter for mirth, + Mad jokes, and anticks for a Christmas eve; + Making life social, and the laggard time + To move on nimbly, never yet did cheer + The little circle of domestic friends. + + _February_, 1797. + + +[Footnote 3: The dress of Christ's Hospital,] + + + + + WRITTEN A YEAR AFTER THE EVENTS + + Alas! how am I chang'd! Where be the tears, + The sobs, and forc'd suspensions of the breath, + And all the dull desertions of the heart, + With which I hung o'er my dead mother's corse? + Where be the blest subsidings of the storm + Within, the sweet resignedness of hope + Drawn heavenward, and strength of filial love + In which I bow'd me to my father's will? + + My God, and my Redeemer! keep not thou + My soul in brute and sensual thanklessness + Seal'd up; oblivious ever of that dear grace, + And health restor'd to my long-loved friend, + Long-lov'd, and worthy known. Thou didst not leave + Her soul in death! O leave not now, my Lord, + Thy servants in far worse, in spiritual death! + And darkness blacker than those feared shadows + Of the valley all must tread. Lend us thy balms, + Thou dear Physician of the sin-sick soul, + And heal our cleansed bosoms of the wounds + With which the world has pierc'd us thro' and thro'. + Give us new flesh, new birth. Elect of heav'n + May we become; in thine election sure + Contain'd, and to one purpose stedfast drawn, + Our soul's salvation! + + Thou, and I, dear friend, + With filial recognition sweet, shall know + One day the face of our dear mother in heaven; + And her remember'd looks of love shall greet + With looks of answering love; her placid smiles + Meet with a smile as placid, and her hand + With drops of fondness wet, nor fear repulse. + Be witness for me, Lord, I do not ask + Those days of vanity to return again + (Nor fitting me to ask, nor thee to give), + Vain loves and wanderings with a fair-hair'd maid, + Child of the dust as I am, who so long + My captive heart steep'd in idolatry + And creature-loves. Forgive me, O my Maker! + If in a mood of grief I sin almost + In sometimes brooding on the days long past, + And from the grave of time wishing them back, + Days of a mother's fondness to her child, + Her little one. + + O where be now those sports, + And infant play-games? where the joyous troops + Of children, and the haunts I did so love? + O my companions, O ye loved names + Of friend or playmate dear; gone are ye now; + Gone diverse ways; to honour and credit some, + And some, I fear, to ignominy and shame! + I only am left, with unavailing grief + To mourn one parent dead, and see one live + Of all life's joys bereft and desolate: + Am left with a few friends, and one, above + The rest, found faithful in a length of years, + Contented as I may, to bear me on + To the not unpeaceful evening of a day + Made black by morning storms! + + _September_, 1797. + + + + + WRITTEN SOON AFTER THE PRECEDING POEM + + Thou should'st have longer liv'd, and to the grave + Have peacefully gone down in full old age! + Thy children would have tended thy gray hairs. + We might have sat, as we have often done, + By our fireside, and talk'd whole nights away, + Old times, old friends, and old events recalling; + With many a circumstance, of trivial note, + To memory dear, and of importance grown. + How shall we tell them in a stranger's ear? + A wayward son ofttimes was I to thee; + And yet, in all our little bickerings, + Domestic jars, there was, I know not what, + Of tender feeling, that were ill exchang'd + For this world's chilling friendships, and their smiles + Familiar, whom the heart calls strangers still. + A heavy lot hath he, most wretched man! + Who lives the last of all his family. + He looks around him, and his eye discerns + The face of the stranger, and his heart is sick. + Man of the world, what canst thou do for him? + Wealth is a burden, which he could not bear; + Mirth a strange crime, the which he dares not act; + And wine no cordial, but a bitter cup. + For wounds like his Christ is the only cure, + And gospel promises are his by right, + For these were given to the poor in heart. + Go, preach thou to him of a world to come, + Where friends shall meet, and know each other's face. + Say less than this, and say it to the winds. + + _October_, 1797. + + + + + + WRITTEN ON CHRISTMAS DAY, 1797 + + I am a widow'd thing, now thou art gone! + Now thou art gone, my own familiar friend, + Companion, sister, help-mate, counsellor! + Alas! that honour'd mind, whose sweet reproof + And meekest wisdom in times past have smooth'd + The unfilial harshness of my foolish speech, + And made me loving to my parents old, + (Why is this so, ah God! why is this so?) + That honour'd mind become a fearful blank, + Her senses lock'd up, and herself kept out + From human sight or converse, while so many + Of the foolish sort are left to roam at large, + Doing all acts of folly, and sin, and shame? + Thy paths are mystery! + + Yet I will not think, + Sweet friend, but we shall one day meet, and live + In quietness, and die so, fearing God. + Or if _not_, and these false suggestions be + A fit of the weak nature, loth to part + With what it lov'd so long, and held so dear; + If thou art to be taken, and I left + (More sinning, yet unpunish'd, save in thee), + It is the will of God, and we are clay + In the potter's hands; and, at the worst, are made + From absolute nothing, vessels of disgrace, + Till, his most righteous purpose wrought in us, + Our purified spirits find their perfect rest. + + + + + THE OLD FAMILIAR FACES + + (_January_, 1798. _Text of_ 1818) + + I have had playmates, I have had companions, + In my days of childhood, in my joyful school-days, + All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. + + I have been laughing, I have been carousing, + Drinking late, sitting late, with my bosom cronies, + All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. + + I loved a love once, fairest among women; + Closed are her doors on me, I must not see her-- + All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. + + I have a friend, a kinder friend has no man; + Like an ingrate, I left my friend abruptly; + Left him, to muse on the old familiar faces. + + Ghost-like, I paced round the haunts of my childhood. + Earth seemed a desart I was bound to traverse, + Seeking to find the old familiar faces. + + Friend of my bosom, thou more than a brother, + Why wert not thou born in my father's dwelling? + So might we talk of the old familiar faces-- + + How some they have died, and some they have left me, + And some are taken from me; all are departed; + All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. + + + + + COMPOSED AT MIDNIGHT + + (1797? _Text of_ 1818) + + + From broken visions of perturbed rest + I wake, and start, and fear to sleep again. + How total a privation of all sounds, + Sights, and familiar objects, man, bird, beast, + Herb, tree, or flower, and prodigal light of heaven. + 'Twere some relief to catch the drowsy cry + Of the mechanic watchman, or the noise + Of revel reeling home from midnight cups. + Those are the moanings of the dying man, + Who lies in the upper chamber; restless moans, + And interrupted only by a cough + Consumptive, torturing the wasted lungs. + So in the bitterness of death he lies, + And waits in anguish for the morning's light. + What can that do for him, or what restore? + Short taste, faint sense, affecting notices, + And little images of pleasures past, + Of health, and active life--health not yet slain, + Nor the other grace of life, a good name, sold + For sin's black wages. On his tedious bed + He writhes, and turns him from the accusing light, + And finds no comfort in the sun, but says + "When night comes I shall get a little rest." + Some few groans more, death comes, and there an end. + 'Tis darkness and conjecture all beyond; + Weak Nature fears, though Charity must hope, + And Fancy, most licentious on such themes + Where decent reverence well had kept her mute, + Hath o'er-stock'd hell with devils, and brought down, + By her enormous fablings and mad lies, + Discredit on the gospel's serious truths + And salutary fears. The man of parts, + Poet, or prose declaimer, on his couch + Lolling, like one indifferent, fabricates + A heaven of gold, where he, and such as he, + Their heads encompassed with crowns, their heels + With fine wings garlanded, shall tread the stars + Beneath their feet, heaven's pavement, far removed + From damned spirits, and the torturing cries + Of men, his breth'ren, fashioned of the earth, + As he was, nourish'd with the self-same bread, + Belike his kindred or companions once-- + Through everlasting ages now divorced, + In chains and savage torments to repent + Short years of folly on earth. Their groans unheard + In heav'n, the saint nor pity feels, nor care, + For those thus sentenced--pity might disturb + The delicate sense and most divine repose + Of spirits angelical. Blessed be God, + The measure of his judgments is not fixed + By man's erroneous standard. He discerns + No such inordinate difference and vast + Betwixt the sinner and the saint, to doom + Such disproportion'd fates. Compared with him, + No man on earth is holy called: they best + Stand in his sight approved, who at his feet + Their little crowns of virtue cast, and yield + To him of his own works the praise, his due. + + + + + + Poems at the End of _John Woodvil_, + 1802 + + + + + HELEN + + _By Mary Lamb_ + + (_Summer_, 1800. _Text of_ 1818) + + + High-born Helen, round your dwelling + These twenty years I've paced in vain: + Haughty beauty, thy lover's duty + Hath been to glory in his pain. + + High-born Helen, plainly telling + Stories of thy cold disdain; + I starve, I die, now you comply, + And I no longer can complain. + + These twenty years I've lived on tears. + Dwelling for ever on a frown; + On sighs I've fed, your scorn my bread; + I perish now you kind are grown. + + Can I, who loved my beloved + But for the scorn "was in her eye," + Can I be moved for my beloved, + When she "returns me sigh for sigh?" + + In stately pride, by my bed-side, + High-born Helen's portrait's hung; + Deaf to my praise, my mournful lays + Are nightly to the portrait sung. + + To that I weep, nor ever sleep, + Complaining all night long to her-- + _Helen, grown old, no longer cold_, + _Said_, "you to all men I prefer." + + + + + BALLAD + + _From the German_ + + (_Spring, 1800. Text of 1818_) + + + The clouds are blackening, the storms threatening, + And ever the forest maketh a moan: + Billows are breaking, the damsel's heart aching, + Thus by herself she singeth alone, + Weeping right plenteously. + + "The world is empty, the heart is dead surely, + In this world plainly all seemeth amiss: + To thy breast, holy one, take now thy little one, + I have had earnest of all earth's bliss, + Living right lovingly." + + + + + HYPOCHONDRIACUS + + (_October, 1800. Text of 1818_) + + + By myself walking, + To myself talking, + When as I ruminate + On my untoward fate, + Scarcely seem I + Alone sufficiently, + Black thoughts continually + Crowding my privacy; + They come unbidden, + Like foes at a wedding, + Thrusting their faces + In better guests' places, + Peevish and malecontent, + Clownish, impertinent, + Dashing the merriment: + So in like fashions + Dim cogitations + Follow and haunt me, + Striving to daunt me. + In my heart festering, + In my ears whispering, + "Thy friends are treacherous, + Thy foes are dangerous, + Thy dreams ominous." + + Fierce Anthropophagi, + Spectra, Diaboli, + What scared St. Anthony, + Hobgoblins, Lemures, + Dreams of Antipodes, + Night-riding Incubi + Troubling the fantasy, + All dire illusions + Causing confusions; + Figments heretical, + Scruples fantastical, + Doubts diabolical, + Abaddon vexeth me, + Mahu perplexeth me, + Lucifer teareth me---- + +_Jesu! Maria! liberate nos ab his diris tentationibus Inimici_. + + + + + + A BALLAD: + + _Noting the Difference of Rich and Poor, in the Ways of a + Rich Noble's Palace and a Poor Workhouse_ + + _To the tune of the "Old and Young Courtier"_ + + (_August, 1800. Text of 1818_) + + + In a costly palace Youth goes clad in gold; + In a wretched workhouse Age's limbs are cold: + There they sit, the old men by a shivering fire, + Still close and closer cowering, warmth is their desire. + + In a costly palace, when the brave gallants dine, + They have store of good venison, with old canary wine, + With singing and music to heighten the cheer; + Coarse bits, with grudging, are the pauper's best fare. + + In a costly palace Youth is still carest + By a train of attendants which laugh at my young Lord's jest; + In a wretched workhouse the contrary prevails: + Does Age begin to prattle?--no man heark'neth to his tales. + + In a costly palace if the child with a pin + Do but chance to prick a finger, strait the doctor is called in; + In a wretched workhouse men are left to perish + For want of proper cordials, which their old age might cherish, + + In a costly palace Youth enjoys his lust; + In a wretched workhouse Age, in corners thrust, + Thinks upon the former days, when he was well to do, + Had children to stand by him, both friends and kinsmen too. + + In a costly palace Youth his temples hides + With a new devised peruke that reaches to his sides; + In a wretched workhouse Age's crown is bare, + With a few thin locks just to fence out the cold air. + + In peace, as in war, 'tis our young gallants' pride, + To walk, each one i' the streets, with a rapier by his side, + That none to do them injury may have pretence; + Wretched Age, in poverty, must brook offence. + + + + + POEMS IN CHARLES LAMB'S _WORKS_ 1818, + NOT PREVIOUSLY PRINTED IN THE PRESENT VOLUME; + TOGETHER WITH REFERENCES TO THOSE POEMS + THAT HAVE BEEN PREVIOUSLY PRINTED + + + + + HESTER + + (_February, 1803_) + + + When maidens such as Hester die, + Their place ye may not well supply, + Though ye among a thousand try, + With vain endeavour. + + A month or more hath she been dead, + Yet cannot I by force be led + To think upon the wormy bed, + And her together. + + A springy motion in her gait, + A rising step, did indicate + Of pride and joy no common rate, + That flush'd her spirit. + + I know not by what name beside + I shall it call:--if 'twas not pride, + It was a joy to that allied, + She did inherit. + + Her parents held the Quaker rule, + Which doth the human feeling cool, + But she was train'd in Nature's school, + Nature had blest her. + + A waking eye, a prying mind, + A heart that stirs, is hard to bind, + A hawk's keen sight ye cannot blind, + Ye could not Hester. + + My sprightly neighbour, gone before + To that unknown and silent shore, + Shall we not meet, as heretofore, + Some summer morning, + + When from thy cheerful eyes a ray + Hath struck a bliss upon the day, + A bliss that would not go away, + A sweet fore-warning? + + + * * * * * + + +_Here came "To Charles Lloyd" See page 12. + +Here came "The Three Friends" followed by "To a River in which a Child +was drowned," first printed in "Poetry for Children" 1809. See vol. iii. +of this edition, page 416. + +Here came "The Old Familiar Faces." See page 25. + +Here came "Helen" by Mary Lamb. See page 28. + +Here came "A Vision of Repentance." See page 13._ + + + * * * * * + + + + DIALOGUE BETWEEN A MOTHER AND CHILD + + (_By Mary Lamb. 1804_) + + + CHILD + "O Lady, lay your costly robes aside, + No longer may you glory in your pride." + + + MOTHER + "Wherefore to-day art singing in mine ear + Sad songs, were made so long ago, my dear; + This day I am to be a bride, you know, + Why sing sad songs, were made so long ago?" + + + CHILD + "O, mother, lay your costly robes aside, + For you may never be another's bride. + _That_ line I learn'd not in the old sad song." + + MOTHER + "I pray thee, pretty one, now hold thy tongue, + Play with the bride-maids, and be glad, my boy, + For thou shall be a second father's joy." + + CHILD + "One father fondled me upon his knee. + One father is enough, alone, for me." + + + + * * * * * + + + +_Here came "Queen Oriana's Dream" from "Poetry for Children" See vol. +iii. page 480. + +Here came "A Ballad Noting the Difference of Rich and Poor." See page +30. + +Here came "Hypochondriacus." See page 29._ + + + + * * * * * + + + + A FAREWELL TO TOBACCO + (1805) + + May the Babylonish curse + Strait confound my stammering verse, + If I can a passage see + In this word-perplexity, + Or a fit expression find, + Or a language to my mind, + (Still the phrase is wide or scant) + To take leave of thee, GREAT PLANT! + Or in any terms relate + Half my love, or half my hate: + For I hate, yet love, thee so, + That, whichever thing I shew, + The plain truth will seem to be + A constrain'd hyperbole, + And the passion to proceed + More from a mistress than a weed. + Sooty retainer to the vine, + Bacchus' black servant, negro fine; + Sorcerer, that mak'st us dote upon + Thy begrimed complexion, + And, for thy pernicious sake, + More and greater oaths to break + Than reclaimed lovers take + 'Gainst women: thou thy siege dost lay + Much too in the female way, + While thou suck'st the lab'ring breath + Faster than kisses or than death. + + Thou in such a cloud dost bind us, + That our worst foes cannot find us, + And ill fortune, that would thwart us, + Shoots at rovers, shooting at us; + While each man, thro' thy height'ning steam, + Does like a smoking Etna seem, + And all about us does express + (Fancy and wit in richest dress) + A Sicilian fruitfulness. + + Thou through such a mist dost shew us, + That our best friends do not know us, + And, for those allowed features, + Due to reasonable creatures, + Liken'st us to fell Chimeras, + Monsters that, who see us, fear us; + Worse than Cerberus or Geryon, + Or, who first lov'd a cloud, Ixion. + + Bacchus we know, and we allow + His tipsy rites. But what art thou, + That but by reflex can'st shew + What his deity can do, + As the false Egyptian spell + Aped the true Hebrew miracle? + Some few vapours thou may'st raise, + The weak brain may serve to amaze, + But to the reigns and nobler heart + Can'st nor life nor heat impart. + + Brother of Bacchus, later born, + The old world was sure forlorn, + Wanting thee, that aidest more + The god's victories than before + All his panthers, and the brawls + Of his piping Bacchanals. + These, as stale, we disallow, + Or judge of _thee_ meant; only thou + His true Indian conquest art; + And, for ivy round his dart, + The reformed god now weaves + A finer thyrsus of thy leaves. + + Scent to match thy rich perfume + Chemic art did ne'er presume + Through her quaint alembic strain, + None so sov'reign to the brain. + Nature, that did in thee excel, + Fram'd again no second smell. + Roses, violets, but toys + For the smaller sort of boys, + Or for greener damsels meant; + Thou art the only manly scent. + + Stinking'st of the stinking kind, + Filth of the mouth and fog of the mind, + Africa, that brags her foyson, + Breeds no such prodigious poison, + Henbane, nightshade, both together, + Hemlock, aconite------ + + Nay, rather, + Plant divine, of rarest virtue; + Blisters on the tongue would hurt you. + 'Twas but in a sort I blam'd thee; + None e'er prosper'd who defam'd thee; + Irony all, and feign'd abuse, + Such as perplext lovers use, + At a need, when, in despair + To paint forth their fairest fair, + Or in part but to express + That exceeding comeliness + Which their fancies doth so strike, + They borrow language of dislike; + And, instead of Dearest Miss, + Jewel, Honey, Sweetheart, Bliss, + And those forms of old admiring, + Call her Cockatrice and Siren, + Basilisk, and all that's evil, + Witch, Hyena, Mermaid, Devil, + + Ethiop, Wench, and Blackamoor, + Monkey, Ape, and twenty more; + Friendly Trait'ress, loving Foe,-- + Not that she is truly so, + But no other way they know + A contentment to express, + Borders so upon excess, + That they do not rightly wot + Whether it be pain or not. + + Or, as men, constrain'd to part + With what's nearest to their heart, + While their sorrow's at the height, + Lose discrimination quite, + And their hasty wrath let fall, + To appease their frantic gall, + On the darling thing whatever + Whence they feel it death to sever, + Though it be, as they, perforce, + Guiltless of the sad divorce. + + For I must (nor let it grieve thee, + Friendliest of plants, that I must) leave thee. + For thy sake, TOBACCO, I + Would do any thing but die, + And but seek to extend my days + Long enough to sing thy praise. + But, as she, who once hath been + A king's consort, is a queen + Ever after, nor will bate + Any tittle of her state, + Though a widow, or divorced, + So I, from thy converse forced, + The old name and style retain, + A right Katherine of Spain; + And a seat, too,'mongst the joys + Of the blest Tobacco Boys; + Where, though I, by sour physician, + Am debarr'd the full fruition + Of thy favours, I may catch + Some collateral sweets, and snatch + Sidelong odours, that give life + Like glances from a neighbour's wife; + And still live in the by-places + And the suburbs of thy graces; + And in thy borders take delight, + An unconquer'd Canaanite. + + + + + TO T.L.H. + + _A Child_ + + (1814) + + + Model of thy parent dear, + Serious infant worth a fear: + In thy unfaultering visage well + Picturing forth the son of TELL, + When on his forehead, firm and good, + Motionless mark, the apple stood; + Guileless traitor, rebel mild, + Convict unconscious, culprit-child! + Gates that close with iron roar + Have been to thee thy nursery door; + Chains that chink in cheerless cells + Have been thy rattles and thy bells; + Walls contrived for giant sin + Have hemmed thy faultless weakness in; + Near thy sinless bed black Guilt + Her discordant house hath built, + And filled it with her monstrous brood-- + Sights, by thee not understood-- + Sights of fear, and of distress, + That pass a harmless infant's guess! + + But the clouds, that overcast + Thy young morning, may not last. + Soon shall arrive the rescuing hour, + That yields thee up to Nature's power. + Nature, that so late doth greet thee, + Shall in o'er-flowing measure meet thee. + She shall recompense with cost + For every lesson thou hast lost. + Then wandering up thy sire's lov'd hill[4], + Thou shall take thy airy fill + Of health and pastime. _Birds shall sing + For thy delight each May morning._ + 'Mid new-yean'd lambkins thou shalt play, + Hardly less a lamb than they. + Then thy prison's lengthened bound + Shall be the horizon skirting round. + And, while thou fillest thy lap with flowers, + To make amends for wintery hours, + The breeze, the sunshine, and the place, + Shall from thy tender brow efface + Each vestige of untimely care, + That sour restraint had graven there; + And on thy every look impress + A more excelling childishness. + So shall be thy days beguil'd, + THORNTON HUNT, my favourite child. + + +[Footnote 4: Hampstead.] + + + + * * * * * + + + +_Here came "Ballad from the German." See page 29. + +Here came "David in the Cave of Aditllam" by Mary + +Lamb, from "Poetry for Children." See vol. iii. page 486._ + + + + * * * * * + + + + SALOME + + (_By Mary Lamb. Probably_ 1808 _or_ 1809) + + + Once on a charger there was laid, + And brought before a royal maid, + As price of attitude and grace, + A guiltless head, a holy face. + + It was on Herod's natal day, + Who, o'er Judea's land held sway. + He married his own brother's wife, + Wicked Herodias. She the life + Of John the Baptist long had sought, + Because he openly had taught + That she a life unlawful led, + Having her husband's brother wed. + + This was he, that saintly John, + Who in the wilderness alone + Abiding, did for clothing wear + A garment made of camel's hair; + + Honey and locusts were his food, + And he was most severely good. + He preached penitence and tears, + And waking first the sinner's fears, + Prepared a path, made smooth a way, + For his diviner master's day. + + Herod kept in princely state + His birth-day. On his throne he sate, + After the feast, beholding her + Who danced with grace peculiar; + Fair Salome, who did excel + All in that land for dancing well. + The feastful monarch's heart was fired, + And whatsoe'er thing she desired. + Though half his kingdom it should be, + He in his pleasure swore that he + Would give the graceful Salome. + The damsel was Herodias' daughter: + She to the queen hastes, and besought her + To teach her what great gift to name. + Instructed by Herodias, came + The damsel back; to Herod said, + "Give me John the Baptist's head; + And in a charger let it be + Hither straitway brought to me." + Herod her suit would fain deny, + But for his oath's sake must comply. + + When painters would by art express + Beauty in unloveliness, + Thee, Herodias' daughter, thee, + They fittest subject take to be. + They give thy form and features grace; + But ever in thy beauteous face + They shew a steadfast cruel gaze, + An eye unpitying; and amaze + In all beholders deep they mark, + That thou betrayest not one spark + Of feeling for the ruthless deed, + That did thy praiseful dance succeed + For on the head they make you look, + As if a sullen joy you took, + A cruel triumph, wicked pride, + That for your sport a saint had died. + + + + + LINES + + _Suggested by a Picture of Two Females by Lionardo da Vinci._ + + (_By Mary Lamb_. 1804) + + + The Lady Blanch, regardless of all her lovers' fears, + To the Urs'line convent hastens, and long the Abbess hears. + "O Blanch, my child, repent ye of the courtly life ye lead." + Blanch looked on a rose-bud and little seem'd to heed. + She looked on the rose-bud, she looked round, and thought + On all her heart had whisper'd, and all the Nun had taught. + "I am worshipped by lovers, and brightly shines my fame, + All Christendom resoundeth the noble Blanch's name. + Nor shall I quickly wither like the rose-bud from the tree, + My queen-like graces shining when my beauty's gone from me. + But when the sculptur'd marble is raised o'er my head, + And the matchless Blanch lies lifeless among the noble dead, + This saintly lady Abbess hath made me justly fear, + It nothing will avail me that I were worshipp'd here." + + + + + LINES + + _On the Same Picture being Removed to make + Place for a Portrait of a Lady by Titian._ + + (_By Mary Lamb_. 1805) + + + Who art thou, fair one, who usurp'st the place + Of Blanch, the lady of the matchless grace? + Come, fair and pretty, tell to me, + Who, in thy life-time, thou might'st be. + Thou pretty art and fair, + But with the lady Blanch thou never must compare. + No need for Blanch her history to tell; + Whoever saw her face, they there did read it well. + But when I look on thee, I only know + There lived a pretty maid some hundred years ago. + + + + + LINES + + _On the Celebrated Picture by Lionardo da Vinci, + called The Virgin of the Rocks._ + + (? 1805) + + + While young John runs to greet + The greater Infant's feet, + The Mother standing by, with trembling passion + Of devout admiration, + Beholds the engaging mystic play, and pretty adoration; + Nor knows as yet the full event + Of those so low beginnings, + From whence we date our winnings, + But wonders at the intent + Of those new rites, and what that strange child-worship meant. + But at her side + An angel doth abide, + With such a perfect joy + As no dim doubts alloy, + An intuition, + A glory, an amenity, + Passing the dark condition + Of blind humanity, + As if he surely knew + All the blest wonders should ensue, + Or he had lately left the upper sphere, + And had read all the sovran schemes and divine riddles there. + + + + + ON THE SAME + + (_By Mary Lamb_. 1805) + + + Maternal lady with the virgin grace, + Heaven-born thy Jesus seemeth sure, + And of a virgin pure. + Lady most perfect, when thy sinless face + Men look upon, they wish to be + A Catholic, Madonna fair, to worship thee. + + + + + SONNETS + + + TO MISS KELLY + + You are not, Kelly, of the common strain, + That stoop their pride and female honor down + To please that many-headed beast _the town_, + And vend their lavish smiles and tricks for gain; + By fortune thrown amid the actor's train, + You keep your native dignity of thought; + The plaudits that attend you come unsought, + As tributes due unto your natural vein. + Your tears have passion in them, and a grace + Of genuine freshness, which our hearts avow; + Your smiles are winds whose ways we cannot trace, + That vanish and return we know not how-- + And please the better from a pensive face, + And thoughtful eye, and a reflecting brow. + + + + + ON THE SIGHT OF SWANS IN KENSINGTON GARDEN + + Queen-bird that sittest on thy shining nest, + And thy young cygnets without sorrow hatchest, + And thou, thou other royal bird, that watchest + Lest the white mother wandering feet molest: + Shrined are your offspring in a chrystal cradle, + Brighter than Helen's ere she yet had burst + Her shelly prison. They shall be born at first + Strong, active, graceful, perfect, swan-like able + To tread the land or waters with security. + Unlike poor human births, conceived in sin, + In grief brought forth, both outwardly and in + Confessing weakness, error, and impurity. + Did heavenly creatures own succession's line, + The births of heaven like to your's would shine. + + + + * * * * * + + + +_Here came "Was it some sweet device." See page_ 4. + +_Here came "Methinks how dainty sweet." See page_ 5. + +_Here came "When last I roved." See page_ 8. + +_Here came "A timid grace" See page_ 8. + +_Here came "If from my lips." See page_ 9. + + + + * * * * * + + + + + THE FAMILY NAME + + What reason first imposed thee, gentle name, + Name that my father bore, and his sire's sire, + Without reproach? we trace our stream no higher; + And I, a childless man, may end the same. + Perchance some shepherd on Lincolnian plains, + In manners guileless as his own sweet flocks, + Received the first amid the merry mocks + And arch allusions of his fellow swains. + Perchance from Salem's holier fields returned, + With glory gotten on the heads abhorr'd + Of faithless Saracens, some martial lord + Took HIS meek title, in whose zeal he burn'd. + Whate'er the fount whence thy beginnings came, + No deed of mine shall shame thee, gentle name. + + + + + TO JOHN LAMB, ESQ. + + _Of the South-Sea House_ + + John, you were figuring in the gay career + Of blooming manhood with a young man's joy, + When I was yet a little peevish boy-- + Though time has made the difference disappear + Betwixt our ages, which _then_ seemed so great-- + And still by rightful custom you retain + Much of the old authoritative strain, + And keep the elder brother up in state. + O! you do well in this. 'Tis man's worst deed + To let the "things that have been" run to waste, + And in the unmeaning present sink the past: + In whose dim glass even now I faintly read + Old buried forms, and faces long ago, + Which you, and I, and one more, only know. + + + + * * * * * + + + +_Here came "O! I could laugh." See page_ 5. + +_Here came "We were two pretty babes." See page_ 9. + +_Here came, under the heading "Blank Verse," "Childhood," see page 9; +"The Grandame," see page 6; "The Sabbath Bells," see page 10, "Fancy +employed on Divine Subjects," see page 10; and "Composed at Midnight," +see page 26._ + + + + * * * * * + + + + + TO MARTIN CHARLES BURNEY, ESQ. + + +(The Dedication to Vol. II. of Lamb's _Works_, 1818) + + Forgive me, BURNEY, if to thee these late + And hasty products of a critic pen, + Thyself no common judge of books and men, + In feeling of thy worth I dedicate. + My _verse_ was offered to an older friend; + The humbler _prose_ has fallen to thy share: + Nor could I miss the occasion to declare, + What spoken in thy presence must offend-- + That, set aside some few caprices wild, + Those humorous clouds that flit o'er brightest days, + In all my threadings of this worldly maze, + (And I have watched thee almost from a child), + Free from self-seeking, envy, low design, + I have not found a whiter soul than thine. + + + + + ALBUM VERSES + + IN THE ALBUM OF A CLERGYMAN'S LADY + + (? 1830) + + An Album is a Garden, not for show + Planted, but use; where wholesome herbs should grow. + A Cabinet of curious porcelain, where + No fancy enters, but what's rich or rare. + A Chapel, where mere ornamental things + Are pure as crowns of saints, or angels' wings. + A List of living friends; a holier Room + For names of some since mouldering in the tomb, + Whose blooming memories life's cold laws survive; + And, dead elsewhere, they here yet speak, and live. + Such, and so tender, should an Album be; + And, Lady, such I wish this book to thee. + + + + + IN THE AUTOGRAPH BOOK OF MRS. SERGEANT W------ + + Had I a power, Lady, to my will, + You should not want Hand Writings. I would fill + Your leaves with Autographs--resplendent names + Of Knights and Squires of old, and courtly Dames, + Kings, Emperors, Popes. Next under these should stand + The hands of famous Lawyers--a grave band-- + Who in their Courts of Law or Equity + Have best upheld Freedom and Property. + These should moot cases in your book, and vie + To show their reading and their Serjeantry. + But I have none of these; nor can I send + The notes by Bullen to her Tyrant penn'd + In her authentic hand; nor in soft hours + Lines writ by Rosamund in Clifford's bowers. + The lack of curious Signatures I moan, + And want the courage to subscribe my own. + + + + + IN THE ALBUM OF LUCY BARTON + + (1824) + + + Little Book, surnamed of _white_, + Clean as yet, and fair to sight, + Keep thy attribution right. + + Never disproportion'd scrawl; + Ugly blot, that's worse than all; + On thy maiden clearness fall! + + In each letter, here design'd, + Let the reader emblem'd find + Neatness of the owner's mind. + + Gilded margins count a sin, + Let thy leaves attraction win + By the golden rules within; + + Sayings fetch'd from sages old; + Laws which Holy Writ unfold, + Worthy to be graved in gold: + + Lighter fancies not excluding; + Blameless wit, with nothing rude in, + Sometimes mildly interluding + + Amid strains of graver measure: + Virtue's self hath oft her pleasure + In sweet Muses' groves of leisure. + + Riddles dark, perplexing sense; + Darker meanings of offence; + What but _shades_--be banished hence. + + Whitest thoughts in whitest dress, + Candid meanings, best express + Mind of quiet Quakeress. + + + + + IN THE ALBUM OF MISS ------ + + I + + Such goodness in your face doth shine, + With modest look, without design, + That I despair, poor pen of mine + Can e'er express it. + To give it words I feebly try; + My spirits fail me to supply + Befitting language for't, and I + Can only bless it! + + + II + + But stop, rash verse! and don't abuse + A bashful Maiden's ear with news + Of her own virtues. She'll refuse + Praise sung so loudly. + Of that same goodness, you admire, + The best part is, she don't aspire + To praise--nor of herself desire + To think too proudly. + + + + + IN THE ALBUM OF A VERY YOUNG LADY + + (? 1830) + + Joy to unknown Josepha who, I hear, + Of all good gifts, to Music most is given; + Science divine, which through the enraptured ear + Enchants the Soul, and lifts it nearer Heaven. + Parental smiles approvingly attend + Her pliant conduct of the trembling keys, + And listening strangers their glad suffrage lend. + Most musical is Nature. Birds--and Bees + At their sweet labour--sing. The moaning winds + Rehearse a _lesson_ to attentive minds. + In louder tones "Deep unto Deep doth call;" + And there is Music in the Waterfall. + + + + + IN THE ALBUM OF A FRENCH TEACHER (? 1829) + + Implored for verse, I send you what I can; + But you are so exact a Frenchwoman, + As I am told, Jemima, that I fear + To wound with English your Parisian ear, + And think I do your choice collection wrong + With lines not written in the Frenchman's tongue. + Had I a knowledge equal to my will, + With airy _Chansons_ I your leaves would fill; + With _Fabliaux_, that should emulate the vein + Of sprightly Cresset, or of La Fontaine; + Or _Scenes Comiques_, that should approach the air + Of your own favourite--renowned Moliere. + But at my suit the Muse of France looks sour, + And strikes me dumb! Yet, what is in my power + To testify respect for you, I pray, + Take in plain English--our rough Enfield way. + + + + + IN THE ALBUM OF MISS DAUBENY + + I + + Some poets by poetic law + Have Beauties praised, they never saw; + And sung of Kittys, and of Nancys, + Whose charms but lived in their own fancies. + So I, to keep my Muse a going, + That willingly would still be doing, + A Canzonet or two must try + In praise of--_pretty_ Daubeny. + + + II + + But whether she indeed be comely, + Or only very good and homely, + Of my own eyes I cannot say; + I trust to Emma Isola. + But sure I think her voice is tuneful, + As smoothest birds that sing in June full; + For else would strangely disagree + The _flowing_ name of--Daubeny. + + + III + + I hear that she a Book hath got-- + As what young Damsel now hath not, + In which they scribble favorite fancies, + Copied from poems or romances? + And prettiest draughts, of her design, + About the curious Album shine; + And therefore she shall have for me + The style of--_tasteful_ Daubeny. + + + IV + + Thus far I have taken on believing; + But well I know without deceiving, + That in her heart she keeps alive still + Old school-day likings, which survive still + In spite of absence--worldly coldness-- + And thereon can my Muse take boldness + To crown her other praises three + With praise of--_friendly_ Daubeny. + + + + + IN THE ALBUM OF MRS. JANE TOWERS (1828) + + Lady Unknown, who crav'st from me Unknown + The trifle of a verse these leaves to grace, + How shall I find fit matter? with what face + Address a face that ne'er to me was shown? + Thy looks, tones, gesture, manners, and what not, + Conjecturing, I wander in the dark. + I know thee only Sister to Charles Clarke! + But at that name my cold Muse waxes hot, + And swears that thou art such a one as he, + Warm, laughter-loving, with a touch of madness, + Wild, glee-provoking, pouring oil of gladness + From frank heart without guile. And, if thou be + The pure reverse of this, and I mistake-- + Demure one, I will like thee for his sake. + + + + + IN MY OWN ALBUM (1827) + + Fresh clad from heaven in robes of white. + A young probationer of light, + Thou wert my soul, an Album bright, + + A spotless leaf; but thought, and care, + And friend and foe, in foul or fair, + Have "written strange defeatures" there; + + And Time with heaviest hand of all, + Like that fierce writing on the wall, + Hath stamp'd sad dates--he can't recal; + + And error gilding worst designs-- + Like speckled snake that strays and shines-- + Betrays his path by crooked lines; + + And vice hath left his ugly blot; + And good resolves, a moment hot, + Fairly began--but finish'd not; + + And fruitless, late remorse doth trace-- + Like Hebrew lore a backward pace-- + Her irrecoverable race. + + Disjointed numbers; sense unknit; + Huge reams of folly, shreds of wit; + Compose the mingled mass of it. + + My scalded eyes no longer brook + Upon this ink-blurr'd thing to look-- + Go, shut the leaves, and clasp the book. + + + + + MISCELLANEOUS + + + + ANGEL HELP[5] + + (1827) + + + This rare tablet doth include + Poverty with Sanctitude. + Past midnight this poor Maid hath spun, + And yet the work is not half done, + Which must supply from earning scant + A feeble bed-rid parent's want. + Her sleep-charged eyes exemption ask, + And Holy hands take up the task: + Unseen the rock and spindle ply, + And do her earthly drudgery. + Sleep, saintly poor one, sleep, sleep on; + And, waking, find thy labours done. + Perchance she knows it by her dreams; + Her eye hath caught the golden gleams, + Angelic presence testifying, + That round her every where are flying; + Ostents from which she may presume, + That much of Heaven is in the room. + Skirting her own bright hair they run, + And to the sunny add more sun: + Now on that aged face they fix, + Streaming from the Crucifix; + The flesh-clogg'd spirit disabusing, + Death-disarming sleeps infusing, + Prelibations, foretastes high, + And equal thoughts to live or die. + Gardener bright from Eden's bower, + Tend with care that lily flower; + To its leaves and root infuse + Heaven's sunshine, Heaven's dews. + 'Tis a type, and 'tis a pledge, + Of a crowning privilege. + Careful as that lily flower, + This Maid must keep her precious dower + Live a sainted Maid, or die + Martyr to virginity. + + +[Footnote 5: Suggested by a drawing in the possession of Charles Aders, +Esq., in which is represented the Legend of a poor female Saint; who, +having spun past midnight, to maintain a bed-rid mother, has fallen +asleep from fatigue, and Angels are finishing her work. In another part +of the chamber, an Angel is tending a lily, the emblem of purity.] + + + + + THE CHRISTENING + + (1829) + + Array'd--a half-angelic sight-- + In vests of pure Baptismal white, + The Mother to the Font doth bring + The little helpless nameless thing, + With hushes soft and mild caressing, + At once to get--a name and blessing. + Close by the Babe the Priest doth stand, + The Cleansing Water at his hand, + Which must assoil the soul within + From every stain of Adam's sin. + The Infant eyes the mystic scenes, + Nor knows what all this wonder means; + And now he smiles, as if to say + "I am a Christian made this day;" + Now frighted clings to Nurse's hold, + Shrinking from the water cold, + Whose virtues, rightly understood, + Are, as Bethesda's waters, good. + Strange words--The World, The Flesh, The Devil-- + Poor Babe, what can it know of Evil? + But we must silently adore + Mysterious truths, and not explore. + Enough for him, in after-times, + When he shall read these artless rhymes, + If, looking back upon this day, + With quiet conscience, he can say + "I have in part redeem'd the pledge + Of my Baptismal privilege; + And more and more will strive to flee + All which my Sponsors kind did then renounce for me." + + + + + ON AN INFANT DYING AS SOON AS BORN + + (1827) + + I saw where in the shroud did lurk + A curious frame of Nature's work. + A flow'ret crushed in the bud, + A nameless piece of Babyhood, + Was in a cradle-coffin lying; + Extinct, with scarce the sense of dying; + So soon to exchange the imprisoning womb + For darker closets of the tomb! + She did but ope an eye, and put + A clear beam forth, then strait up shut + For the long dark: ne'er more to see + Through glasses of mortality. + Riddle of destiny, who can show + What thy short visit meant, or know + What thy errand here below? + Shall we say, that Nature blind + Check'd her hand, and changed her mind, + Just when she had exactly wrought + A finish'd pattern without fault? + Could she flag, or could she tire, + Or lack'd she the Promethean fire + (With her nine moons' long workings sicken'd) + That should thy little limbs have quicken'd? + Limbs so firm, they seem'd to assure + Life of health, and days mature: + Woman's self in miniature! + Limbs so fair, they might supply + (Themselves now but cold imagery) + The sculptor to make Beauty by. + Or did the stern-eyed Fate descry, + That babe, or mother, one must die; + So in mercy left the stock, + And cut the branch; to save the shock + Of young years widow'd; and the pain, + When Single State comes back again + To the lone man who, 'reft of wife, + Thenceforward drags a maimed life? + The economy of Heaven is dark; + And wisest clerks have miss'd the mark, + Why Human Buds, like this, should fall, + More brief than fly ephemeral, + That has his day; while shrivel'd crones + Stiffen with age to stocks and stones; + And crabbed use the conscience sears + In sinners of an hundred years. + Mother's prattle, mother's kiss, + Baby fond, thou ne'er wilt miss. + Rites, which custom does impose, + Silver bells and baby clothes; + Coral redder than those lips, + Which pale death did late eclipse; + Music framed for infants' glee, + Whistle never tuned for thee; + Though thou want'st not, thou shall have them, + Loving hearts were they which gave them. + Let not one be missing; nurse, + See them laid upon the hearse + Of infant slain by doom perverse. + Why should kings and nobles have + Pictured trophies to their grave; + And we, churls, to thee deny + Thy pretty toys with thee to lie, + A more harmless vanity? + + + + + TO BERNARD BARTON + + _With a Coloured Print_[6] + + (1827) + + When last you left your Woodbridge pretty, + To stare at sights, and see the City, + If I your meaning understood, + You wish'd a Picture, cheap, but good; + The colouring? decent; clear, not muddy; + To suit a Poet's quiet study, + Where Books and Prints for delectation + Hang, rather than vain ostentation. + The subject? what I pleased, if comely; + But something scriptural and homely: + A sober Piece, not gay or wanton, + For winter fire-sides to descant on; + The theme so scrupulously handled, + A Quaker might look on unscandal'd; + Such as might satisfy Ann Knight, + And classic Mitford just not fright. + Just such a one I've found, and send it; + If liked, I give--if not, but lend it. + The moral? nothing can be sounder. + The fable? 'tis its own expounder-- + A Mother teaching to her Chit + Some good book, and explaining it. + He, silly urchin, tired of lesson, + His learning lays no mighty stress on, + But seems to hear not what he hears; + Thrusting his fingers in his ears, + Like Obstinate, that perverse funny one, + In honest parable of Bunyan. + His working Sister, more sedate, + Listens; but in a kind of state, + The painter meant for steadiness; + But has a tinge of sullenness; + And, at first sight, she seems to brook + As ill her needle, as he his book. + This is the Picture. For the Frame-- + 'Tis not ill-suited to the same; + Oak-carved, not gilt, for fear of falling; + Old-fashion'd; plain, yet not appalling; + And sober, as the Owner's Calling. + + +[Footnote 6: From the venerable and ancient Manufactory of Carrington +Bowles: some of my readers may recognise it.] + + + + + THE YOUNG CATECHIST[7] + + (1827) + + While this tawny Ethiop prayeth, + Painter, who is she that stayeth + By, with skin of whitest lustre, + Sunny locks, a shining cluster, + Saint-like seeming to direct him + To the Power that must protect him? + Is she of the Heaven-born Three, + Meek Hope, strong Faith, sweet Charity: + Or some Cherub?-- + They you mention + Far transcend my weak invention. + 'Tis a simple Christian child, + Missionary young and mild, + From her stock of Scriptural knowledge, + Bible-taught without a college, + Which by reading she could gather, + Teaches him to say OUR FATHER + To the common Parent, who + Colour not respects, nor hue. + White and black in him have part, + Who looks not to the skin, but heart. + + +[Footnote 7: A Picture by Henry Meyer, Esq.] + + + + SHE IS GOING + + For their elder Sister's hair + Martha does a wreath prepare + Of bridal rose, ornate and gay: + To-morrow is the wedding day: + She is going. + + Mary, youngest of the three, + Laughing idler, full of glee, + Arm in arm does fondly chain her, + Thinking, poor trifler, to detain her-- + But she's going. + + Vex not, maidens, nor regret + Thus to part with Margaret. + Charms like your's can never stay + Long within doors; and one day + You'll be going. + + + + + + TO A YOUNG FRIEND + + _On Her Twenty-First Birth-Day_ + + Crown me a cheerful goblet, while I pray + A blessing on thy years, young Isola; + Young, but no more a child. How swift have flown + To me thy girlish times, a woman grown + Beneath my heedless eyes! in vain I rack + My fancy to believe the almanac, + That speaks thee Twenty-One. Thou should'st have still + Remain'd a child, and at thy sovereign will + Gambol'd about our house, as in times past. + Ungrateful Emma, to grow up so fast, + Hastening to leave thy friends!--for which intent, + Fond Runagate, be this thy punishment. + After some thirty years, spent in such bliss + As this earth can afford, where still we miss + Something of joy entire, may'st thou grow old + As we whom thou hast left! That wish was cold. + O far more ag'd and wrinkled, till folks say, + Looking upon thee reverend in decay, + "This Dame for length of days, and virtues rare, + With her respected Grandsire may compare."-- + Grandchild of that respected Isola, + Thou should'st have had about thee on this day + Kind looks of Parents, to congratulate + Their Pride grown up to woman's grave estate. + But they have died, and left thee, to advance + Thy fortunes how thou may'st, and owe to chance + The friends which Nature grudg'd. And thou wilt find, + Or make such, Emma, if I am not blind + To thee and thy deservings. That last strain + Had too much sorrow in it. Fill again + Another cheerful goblet, while I say + "Health, and twice health, to our lost Isola." + + + + + TO THE SAME + + External gifts of fortune, or of face, + Maiden, in truth, thou hast not much to show; + Much fairer damsels have I known, and know, + And richer may be found in every place. + In thy _mind_ seek thy beauty, and thy wealth. + Sincereness lodgeth there, the soul's best health. + O guard that treasure above gold or pearl, + Laid up secure from moths and worldly stealth-- + And take my benison, plain-hearted girl. + + + * * * * * + + + SONNETS + + + HARMONY IN UNLIKENESS + + By Enfield lanes, and Winchmore's verdant hill, + Two lovely damsels cheer my lonely walk: + The fair Maria, as a vestal, still; + And Emma brown, exuberant in talk. + With soft and Lady speech the first applies + The mild correctives that to grace belong + To her redundant friend, who her defies + With jest, and mad discourse, and bursts of song. + O differing Pair, yet sweetly thus agreeing, + What music from your happy discord rises, + While your companion hearing each, and seeing, + Nor this, nor that, but both together, prizes; + This lesson teaching, which our souls may strike, + That harmonies may be in things unlike! + + + + + WRITTEN AT CAMBRIDGE + + (_August_ 15. 1819) + + I was not train'd in Academic bowers, + And to those learned streams I nothing owe + Which copious from those twin fair founts do flow; + Mine have been any thing but studious hours. + Yet can I fancy, wandering 'mid thy towers, + Myself a nursling, Granta, of thy lap; + My brow seems tightening with the Doctor's cap, + And I walk _gowned_; feel unusual powers. + Strange forms of logic clothe my admiring speech, + Old Ramus' ghost is busy at my brain; + And my scull teems with notions infinite. + Be still, ye reeds of Camus, while I teach + Truths, which transcend the searching Schoolmen's vein, + And half had stagger'd that stout Stagirite! + + + + + TO A CELEBRATED FEMALE PERFORMER IN THE "BLIND BOY" + + (1819) + + Rare artist! who with half thy tools, or none, + Canst execute with ease thy curious art, + And press thy powerful'st meanings on the heart, + Unaided by the eye, expression's throne! + While each blind sense, intelligential grown + Beyond its sphere, performs the effect of sight: + Those orbs alone, wanting their proper might, + All motionless and silent seem to moan + The unseemly negligence of nature's hand, + That left them so forlorn. What praise is thine, + O mistress of the passions; artist fine! + Who dost our souls against our sense command, + Plucking the horror from a sightless face, + Lending to blank deformity a grace. + + + + + WORK + + (1819) + + Who first invented work, and bound the free + And holyday-rejoicing spirit down + To the ever-haunting importunity + Of business in the green fields, and the town-- + To plough, loom, anvil, spade--and oh! most sad + To that dry drudgery at the desk's dead wood? + Who but the Being unblest, alien from good, + Sabbathless Satan! he who his unglad + Task ever plies 'mid rotatory burnings, + That round and round incalculably reel-- + For wrath divine hath made him like a wheel-- + In that red realm from which are no returnings; + Where toiling, and turmoiling, ever and aye + He, and his thoughts, keep pensive working-day. + + + + + LEISURE + + (1821) + + They talk of time, and of time's galling yoke, + That like a mill-stone on man's mind doth press, + Which only works and business can redress: + Of divine Leisure such foul lies are spoke, + Wounding her fair gifts with calumnious stroke. + But might I, fed with silent meditation, + Assoiled live from that fiend Occupation-- + _Improbus Labor_, which my spirits hath broke-- + I'd drink of time's rich cup, and never surfeit: + Fling in more days than went to make the gem, + That crown'd the white top of Methusalem: + Yea on my weak neck take, and never forfeit, + Like Atlas bearing up the dainty sky, + The heaven-sweet burthen of eternity. + + DEUS NOBIS HAEC OTIA FECIT. + + + + + TO SAMUEL ROGERS, ESQ. + + (1829) + + Rogers, of all the men that I have known + But slightly, who have died, your Brother's loss + Touch'd me most sensibly. There came across + My mind an image of the cordial tone + Of your fraternal meetings, where a guest + I more than once have sat; and grieve to think, + That of that threefold cord one precious link + By Death's rude hand is sever'd from the rest. + Of our old Gentry he appear'd a stem-- + A Magistrate who, while the evil-doer + He kept in terror, could respect the Poor, + And not for every trifle harass them, + As some, divine and laic, too oft do. + This man's a private loss, and public too. + + + + + THE GIPSY'S MALISON + + (1829) + + "Suck, baby, suck, mothers love grows by giving, + Drain the sweet founts that only thrive by wasting; + Black manhood comes, when riotous guilty living + Hands thee the cup that shall be death in tasting. + + "Kiss, baby, kiss, mother's lips shine by kisses, + Choke the warm breath that else would fall in blessings; + Black manhood comes, when turbulent guilty blisses + Tend thee the kiss that poisons 'mid caressings. + + "Hang, baby, hang, mother's love loves such forces, + Strain the fond neck that bends still to thy clinging; + Black manhood comes, when violent lawless courses + Leave thee a spectacle in rude air swinging." + + So sang a wither'd Beldam energetical, + And bann'd the ungiving door with lips prophetical. + + + + + COMMENDATORY VERSES + + TO THE AUTHOR OF POEMS, + + _Published under the name of Barry Cornwall_ + + (1820) + + + Let hate, or grosser heats, their foulness mask + Under the vizor of a borrowed name; + Let things eschew the light deserving blame: + No cause hast thou to blush for thy sweet task. + "Marcian Colonna" is a dainty book; + And thy "Sicilian Tale" may boldly pass; + Thy "Dream" 'bove all, in which, as in a glass, + On the great world's antique glories we may look. + No longer then, as "lowly substitute, + Factor, or PROCTOR, for another's gains," + Suffer the admiring world to be deceived; + Lest thou thyself, by self of fame bereaved, + Lament too late the lost prize of thy pains, + And heavenly tunes piped through an alien flute. + + + + + TO R.[J.]S. KNOWLES, ESQ. + + _On his Tragedy of Virginius_ + + (1820) + + Twelve years ago I knew thee, Knowles, and then + Esteemed you a perfect specimen + Of those fine spirits warm-soul'd Ireland sends, + To teach us colder English how a friend's + Quick pulse should beat. I knew you brave, and plain, + Strong-sensed, rough-witted above fear or gain; + But nothing further had the gift to espy. + Sudden you re-appear. With wonder I + Hear my old friend (turn'd Shakspeare) read a scene + Only to _his_ inferior in the clean + Passes of pathos: with such fence-like art-- + Ere we can see the steel, 'tis in our heart. + Almost without the aid language affords, + Your piece seems wrought. That huffing medium, _words_, + (Which in the modern Tamburlaines quite sway + Our shamed souls from their bias) in your play + We scarce attend to. Hastier passion draws + Our tears on credit: and we find the cause + Some two hours after, spelling o'er again + Those strange few words at ease, that wrought the pain. + Proceed, old friend; and, as the year returns, + Still snatch some new old story from the urns + Of long-dead virtue. We, that knew before + Your worth, may admire, we cannot love you more. + + + + + TO THE EDITOR OF THE "EVERY-DAY BOOK" + + (1825) + + I like you, and your book, ingenuous Hone! + In whose capacious all-embracing leaves + The very marrow of tradition's shown; + And all that history--much that fiction--weaves. + + By every sort of taste your work is graced. + Vast stores of modern anecdote we find, + With good old story quaintly interlaced-- + The theme as various as the reader's mind. + + Rome's life-fraught legends you so truly paint-- + Yet kindly,--that the half-turn'd Catholic + Scarcely forbears to smile at his own saint, + And cannot curse the candid heretic. + + Rags, relics, witches, ghosts, fiends, crowd your page; + Our fathers' mummeries we well-pleased behold, + And, proudly conscious of a purer age, + Forgive some fopperies in the times of old. + + Verse-honouring Phoebus, Father of bright _Days_, + Must needs bestow on you both good and many, + Who, building trophies of his Children's praise, + Run their rich Zodiac through, not missing any. + + Dan Phoebus loves your book--trust me, friend Hone-- + The title only errs, he bids me say: + For while such art, wit, reading, there are shown, + He swears,'tis not a work of _every day_. + + + + * * * * * + + + + ACROSTICS + + + TO CAROLINE MARIA APPLEBEE + + _An Acrostic_ + + Caroline glides smooth in verse, + And is easy to rehearse; + Runs just like some crystal river + O'er its pebbly bed for ever. + + Lines as harsh and quaint as mine + In their close at least will shine, + Nor from sweetness can decline, + Ending but with _Caroline_. + + _Maria_ asks a statelier pace-- + "_Ave Maria_, full of grace!" + Romish rites before me rise, + Image-worship, sacrifice, + And well-meant but mistaken pieties. + + _Apple_ with _Bee_ doth rougher run. + Paradise was lost by one; + Peace of mind would we regain, + Let us, like the other, strain + Every harmless faculty, + Bee-like at work in our degree, + Ever some sweet task designing, + Extracting still, and still refining. + + + + + TO CECILIA CATHERINE LAWTON + + _An Acrostic_ + + Choral service, solemn chanting, + Echoing round cathedrals holy-- + Can aught else on earth be wanting + In heav'n's bliss to plunge us wholly? + Let us great _Cecilia_ honour + In the praise we give unto them, + And the merit be upon her. + + Cold the heart that would undo them, + And the solemn organ banish + That this sainted Maid invented. + Holy thoughts too quickly vanish, + Ere the expression can be vented. + Raise the song to _Catherine_, + In her torments most divine! + Ne'er by Christians be forgot-- + Envied be--this Martyr's lot. + _Lawton_, who these _names_ combinest, + Aim to emulate their praises; + Women were they, yet divinest + Truths they taught; and story raises + O'er their mouldering bones a Tomb, + Not to die till Day of Doom. + + + + + ACROSTIC, + +TO A LADY WHO DESIRED ME TO WRITE HER EPITAPH + + (1830) + + Grace Joanna here doth lie: + Reader, wonder not that I + Ante-date her hour of rest. + Can I thwart her wish exprest, + Ev'n unseemly though the laugh + + Jesting with an Epitaph? + On her bones the turf lie lightly, + And her rise again be brightly! + No dark stain be found upon her-- + No, there will not, on mine honour-- + Answer that at least I can. + + Would that I, thrice happy man, + In as spotless garb might rise, + Light as she will climb the skies, + Leaving the dull earth behind, + In a car more swift than wind. + All her errors, all her failings, + (Many they were not) and ailings, + Sleep secure from Envy's railings. + + + + + ANOTHER, + + TO HER YOUNGEST DAUGHTER + (1830) + + Least Daughter, but not least beloved, of _Grace_! + O frown not on a stranger, who from place, + Unknown and distant these few lines hath penn'd. + I but report what thy Instructress Friend + So oft hath told us of thy gentle heart. + A pupil most affectionate thou art, + + Careful to learn what elder years impart. + _Louisa--Clare_--by which name shall I call thee? + A prettier pair of names sure ne'er was found, + Resembling thy own sweetness in sweet sound. + Ever calm peace and innocence befal thee! + + + + * * * * * + + + + TRANSLATIONS + + + _From the Latin of Vincent Bourne_ + + I + + ON A SEPULCHRAL STATUE OF AN INFANT SLEEPING + + 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 mortal sense, + The heaven-infused sleep of Innocence! + + + II + + THE RIVAL BELLS + + A tuneful challenge rings from either side + Of Thames' fair banks. Thy twice six Bells, Saint Bride + Peal swift and shrill; to which more slow reply + The deep-toned eight of Mary Overy. + Such harmony from the contention flows, + That the divided ear no preference knows; + Betwixt them both disparting Music's State, + While one exceeds in number, one in weight. + + + III + + EPITAPH ON A DOG + + (1820) + + Poor Irus' faithful wolf-dog here I lie, + That wont to tend my old blind master's steps, + His guide and guard; nor, while my service lasted, + Had he occasion for that staff, with which + He now goes picking out his path in fear + Over the highways and crossings, but would plant + Safe in the conduct of my friendly string, + A firm foot forward still, till he had reach'd + His poor seat on some stone, nigh where the tide + Of passers-by in thickest confluence flow'd: + To whom with loud and passionate laments + From morn to eve his dark estate he wail'd. + Nor wail'd to all in vain: some here and there, + The well disposed and good, their pennies gave. + I meantime at his feet obsequious slept; + Not all-asleep in sleep, but heart and ear + Prick'd up at his least motion, to receive + At his kind hand my customary crumbs, + And common portion in his feast of scraps; + Or when night warn'd us homeward, tired and spent + With our long day, and tedious beggary. + These were my manners, this my way of life, + Till age and slow disease me overtook, + And sever'd from my sightless master's side. + But lest the grace of so good deeds should die, + Through tract of years in mute oblivion lost, + This slender tomb of turf hath Irus rear'd, + Cheap monument of no ungrudging hand, + And with short verse inscribed it, to attest, + In long and lasting union to attest, + The virtues of the Beggar and his Dog. + + + IV + + THE BALLAD SINGERS + + Where seven fair Streets to one tall Column[8] 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 cheat 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 assembled ring, nor heeds his tottering knees, + But pricks 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 waggon crosses, which divides + The close-wedged audience; but, as when the tides + To ploughing ships give way, the ship being past, + They re-unite, so these unite as fast. + The older Songstress hitherto hath 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 rehearse. + 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 best. + 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." + + +[Footnote 8: Seven Dials.] + + + V. + + TO DAVID COOK, + + _Of the Parish of Saint Margaret's, Westminster, Watchman_ + + For much good-natured verse received from thee, + A loving verse take in return from me. + "Good morrow to my masters," is your cry; + And to our David "twice as good," say I. + Not Peter's monitor, shrill chanticleer, + Crows the approach of dawn in notes more clear, + Or tells the hours more faithfully. While night + Fills half the world with shadows of affright, + You with your lantern, partner of your round, + Traverse the paths of Margaret's hallow'd bound. + The tales of ghosts which old wives' ears drink up, + The drunkard reeling home from tavern cup, + Nor prowling robber, your firm soul appal; + Arm'd with thy faithful staff thou slight'st them all. + But if the market gard'ner chance to pass, + Bringing to town his fruit, or early grass, + The gentle salesman you with candour greet, + And with reit'rated "good mornings" meet. + Announcing your approach by formal bell, + Of nightly weather you the changes tell; + Whether the Moon shines, or her head doth steep + In rain-portending clouds. When mortals sleep + In downy rest, you brave the snows and sleet + Of winter; and in alley, or in street, + Relieve your midnight progress with a verse. + What though fastidious Phoebus frown averse + On your didactic strain--indulgent Night + With caution hath seal'd up both ears of Spite, + And critics sleep while you in staves do sound + The praise of long-dead Saints, whose Days abound + In wintry months; but Crispen chief proclaim: + Who stirs not at that Prince of Coblers' name? + Profuse in loyalty some couplets shine, + And wish long days to all the Brunswick line! + To youths and virgins they chaste lessons read; + Teach wives and husbands how their lives to lead; + Maids to be cleanly, footmen free from vice; + How death at last all ranks doth equalise; + And, in conclusion, pray good years befal, + With store of wealth, your "worthy masters all." + For this and other tokens of good will, + On boxing day may store of shillings fill + Your Christmas purse; no householder give less, + When at each door your blameless suit you press: + And what you wish to us (it is but reason) + Receive in turn--the compliments o' th' season! + + + VI + + ON A DEAF AND DUMB ARTIST[9] + + + And hath thy blameless life become + A prey to the devouring tomb? + A more mute silence hast thou known, + A deafness deeper than thine own, + While Time was? and no friendly Muse, + That mark'd thy life, and knows thy dues, + Repair with quickening verse the breach, + And write thee into light and speech? + The Power, that made the Tongue, restrain'd + Thy lips from lies, and speeches feign'd; + Who made the Hearing, without wrong + Did rescue thine from Siren's song. + He let thee _see_ the ways of men, + Which thou with pencil, not with pen, + Careful Beholder, down did'st note, + And all their motley actions quote, + Thyself unstain'd the while. From look + Or gesture reading, more than _book_, + In letter'd pride thou took'st no part, + Contented with the Silent Art, + Thyself as silent. Might I be + As speechless, deaf, and good, as He! + + +[Footnote 9: Benjamin Ferrers--died A.D. 1732.] + + + VII + + NEWTON'S PRINCIPIA + + Great Newton's self, to whom the world's in debt, + Owed to School Mistress sage his Alphabet; + But quickly wiser than his Teacher grown, + Discover'd properties to her unknown; + Of A _plus_ B, or _minus_, learn'd the use, + Known Quantities from unknown to educe; + And made--no doubt to that old dame's surprise-- + The Christ-Cross-Row his Ladder to the skies. + Yet, whatsoe'er Geometricians say, + Her Lessons were his true PRINCIPIA! + + + VIII + + THE HOUSE-KEEPER + + The frugal snail, with fore-cast of repose, + Carries his house with him, where'er he goes; + Peeps out--and if there comes a shower of rain, + Retreats to his small domicile amain. + Touch but a tip of him, a horn--'tis well-- + He curls up in his sanctuary shell. + He's his own landlord, his own tenant; stay + Long as he will, he dreads no Quarter Day. + Himself he boards and lodges; both invites, + And feasts, himself; sleeps with himself o' nights. + He spares the upholsterer trouble to procure + Chattles; himself is his own furniture, + And his sole riches. Wheresoe'er he roam-- + Knock when you will--he's sure to be at home. + + + IX + + THE FEMALE ORATORS + + Nigh London's famous Bridge, a Gate more famed + Stands, or once stood, from old Belinus named, + So judged Antiquity; and therein wrongs + A name, allusive strictly to _two Tongues_[10]. + Her School hard by the Goddess Rhetoric opes, + And _gratis_ deals to Oyster-wives her Tropes. + With Nereid green, green Nereid disputes, + Replies, rejoins, confutes, and still confutes. + One her coarse sense by metaphors expounds, + And one in literalities abounds; + In mood and figure these keep up the din: + Words multiply, and every word tells in. + Her hundred throats here bawling Slander strains; + And unclothed Venus to her tongue gives reins + In terms, which Demosthenic force outgo, + And baldest jests of foul-mouth'd Cicero. + Right in the midst great Ate keeps her stand, + And from her sovereign station taints the land. + Hence Pulpits rail; grave Senates learn to jar; + Quacks scold; and Billinsgate infects the Bar. + + +[Footnote 10: _Billingis_ in the Latin.] + + + + + PINDARIC ODE TO THE TREAD MILL + + (1825) + + I + + Inspire my spirit, Spirit of De Foe, + That sang the Pillory, + In loftier strains to show + A more sublime Machine + Than that, where them wert seen, + With neck out-stretcht and shoulders ill awry, + Courting coarse plaudits from vile crowds below-- + A most unseemly show! + + + II + + In such a place + Who could expose thy face, + Historiographer of deathless Crusoe! + That paint'st the strife + And all the naked ills of savage life, + Far above Rousseau? + Rather myself had stood + In that ignoble wood, + Bare to the mob, on holyday or high day. + If nought else could atone + For waggish libel, + I swear on bible, + I would have spared him for thy sake alone, + Man Friday! + + + III + + Our ancestors' were sour days, + Great Master of Romance! + A milder doom had fallen to thy chance + In our days: + Thy sole assignment + Some solitary confinement, + (Not worth thy care a carrot,) + Where in world-hidden cell + Thou thy own Crusoe might have acted well, + Only without the parrot; + By sure experience taught to know, + Whether the qualms thou mak'st him feel were truly such or no. + + + IV + + But stay! methinks in statelier measure-- + A more companionable pleasure-- + I see thy steps the mighty Tread Mill trace, + (The subject of my song + Delay'd however long,) + And some of thine own race, + To keep thee company, thou bring'st with thee along. + There with thee go, + Link'd in like sentence, + With regulated pace and footing slow, + Each old acquaintance, + Rogue--harlot--thief--that live to future ages; + Through many a labour'd tome, + Rankly embalm'd in thy too natural pages. + Faith, friend De Foe, thou art quite at home! + Not one of thy great offspring thou dost lack, + From pirate Singleton to pilfering Jack. + Here Flandrian Moll her brazen incest brags; + Vice-stript Roxana, penitent in rags, + There points to Amy, treading equal chimes, + The faithful handmaid to her faithless crimes. + + + V + + Incompetent my song to raise + To its just height thy praise, + Great Mill! + That by thy motion proper + (No thanks to wind, or sail, or working rill) + Grinding that stubborn corn, the Human will, + Turn'st out men's consciences, + That were begrimed before, as clean and sweet + As flower from purest wheat, + Into thy hopper. + All reformation short of thee but nonsense is, + Or human, or divine. + + + VI + + Compared with thee, + What are the labours of that Jumping Sect, + Which feeble laws connive at rather than respect? + Thou dost not bump, + Or jump, + But _walk_ men into virtue; betwixt crime + And slow repentance giving breathing time, + And leisure to be good; + Instructing with discretion demi-reps + How to direct their steps. + + + VII + + Thou best Philosopher made out of wood! + Not that which framed the tub, + Where sate the Cynic cub, + With nothing in his bosom sympathetic; + But from those groves derived, I deem, + Where Plato nursed his dream + Of immortality; + Seeing that clearly + Thy system all is merely + Peripatetic. + Thou to thy pupils dost such lessons give + Of how to live + With temperance, sobriety, morality, + (A new art,) + That from thy school, by force of virtuous deeds, + Each Tyro now proceeds + A "Walking Stewart!" + + + + + EPICEDIUM + + GOING OR GONE + + (1827) + + + I + + Fine merry franions, + Wanton companions, + My days are ev'n banyans + With thinking upon ye; + How Death, that last stinger, + Finis-writer, end-bringer, + Has laid his chill finger, + Or is laying on ye. + + + II + + There's rich Kitty Wheatley, + With footing it featly + That took me completely, + She sleeps in the Kirk House; + And poor Polly Perkin, + Whose Dad was still firking + The jolly ale firkin, + She's gone to the Work-house; + + + III + + Fine Gard'ner, Ben Carter + (In ten counties no smarter) + Has ta'en his departure + For Proserpine's orchards; + And Lily, postillion, + With cheeks of vermilion, + Is one of a million + That fill up the church-yards; + + + IV + + And, lusty as Dido, + Fat Clemitson's widow + Flits now a small shadow + By Stygian hid ford; + And good Master Clapton + Has thirty years nap't on + The ground he last hap't on, + Intomb'd by fair Widford; + + + V + + And gallant Tom Dockwra, + Of nature's finest crockery, + Now but thin air and mockery, + Lurks by Avernus, + Whose honest grasp of hand + Still, while his life did stand, + At friend's or foe's command, + Almost did burn us. + + + VI + + Roger de Coverley + Not more good man than he; + Yet has he equally + Push'd for Cocytus, + With drivelling Worral, + And wicked old Dorrell, + 'Gainst whom I've a quarrel, + Whose end might affright us!-- + + + VII + + Kindly hearts have I known; + Kindly hearts, they are flown; + Here and there if but one + Linger yet uneffaced, + Imbecile tottering elves, + Soon to be wreck'd on shelves, + These scarce are half themselves, + With age and care crazed. + + + VIII + + But this day Fanny Hutton + Her last dress has put on; + Her fine lessons forgotten, + She died, as the dunce died: + And prim Betsy Chambers, + Decay'd in her members, + No longer remembers + Things, as she once did; + + + IX + + And prudent Miss Wither + Not in jest now doth _wither_, + And soon must go--whither + Nor I well, nor you know; + And flaunting Miss Waller, + _That_ soon must befal her, + Whence none can recal her, + Though proud once as Juno![11] + + +[Footnote 11: Here came, in _Album Verses_, 1830, "The Wife's Trial," +for which see page 273, where it is placed with Lamb's other plays.] + + + + + NEW POEMS IN LAMB'S _POETICAL WORKS, 1836_ + + + IN THE ALBUM OF EDITH S[OUTHEY] (1833) + + In Christian world MARY the garland wears! + REBECCA sweetens on a Hebrew's ear; + Quakers for pure PRISCILLA are more clear; + And the light Gaul by amorous NINON swears. + Among the lesser lights how LUCY shines! + What air of fragrance ROSAMOND throws round! + How like a hymn doth sweet CECILIA sound! + Of MARTHAS, and of ABIGAILS, few lines + Have bragg'd in verse. Of coarsest household stuff + Should homely JOAN be fashioned. But can + You BARBARA resist, or MARIAN? + And is not CLARE for love excuse enough? + Yet, by my faith in numbers, I profess, + These all, than Saxon EDITH, please me less. + + + + + TO DORA W[ORDSWORTH], + + _On Being Asked by Her Father to Write in Her Album_ + + + An Album is a Banquet: from the store, + In his intelligential Orchard growing, + Your Sire might heap your board to overflowing; + One shaking of the Tree--'twould ask no more + To set a Salad forth, more rich than that + Which Evelyn[12] in his princely cookery fancied: + Or that more rare, by Eve's neat hands enhanced, + Where, a pleased guest, the angelic Virtue sat. + But like the all-grasping Founder of the Feast, + Whom Nathan to the sinning king did tax, + From his less wealthy neighbours he exacts; + Spares his own flocks, and takes the poor man's beast. + Obedient to his bidding, lo, I am, + A zealous, meek, _contributory_ + + LAMB. + + +[Footnote 12: Acetaria, a Discourse of Sallets, by J.E., 1706.] + + + + + IN THE ALBUM OF ROTHA Q[UILLINAN] + + A passing glance was all I caught of thee, + In my own Enfield haunts at random roving. + Old friends of ours were with thee, faces loving; + Time short: and salutations cursory, + Though deep, and hearty. The familiar Name + Of you, yet unfamiliar, raised in me + Thoughts--what the daughter of that Man should be, + Who call'd our Wordsworth friend. My thoughts did frame + A growing Maiden, who, from day to day + Advancing still in stature, and in grace, + Would all her lonely Father's griefs efface, + And his paternal cares with usury pay. + I still retain the phantom, as I can; + And call the gentle image--Quillinan. + + + + + IN THE ALBUM OF CATHERINE ORKNEY + + Canadia! boast no more the toils + Of hunters for the furry spoils; + Your whitest ermines are but foils + To brighter Catherine Orkney. + + That such a flower should ever burst + From climes with rigorous winter curst!-- + We bless you, that so kindly nurst + This flower, this Catherine Orkney. + + We envy not your proud display + Of lake--wood--vast Niagara: + Your greatest pride we've borne away. + How spared you Catherine Orkney? + + That Wolfe on Heights of Abraham fell, + To your reproach no more we tell: + Canadia, you repaid us well + With rearing Catherine Orkney. + + O Britain, guard with tenderest care + The charge allotted to your share: + You've scarce a native maid so fair, + So good, as Catherine Orkney. + + + + + TO T. STOTHARD, ESQ. + + _On His Illustrations of the Poems of Mr. Rogers_ + + (1833) + + Consummate Artist, whose undying name + With classic Rogers shall go down to fame, + Be this thy crowning work! In my young days + How often have I with a child's fond gaze + Pored on the pictured wonders[13] thou hadst done: + Clarissa mournful, and prim Grandison! + All Fielding's, Smollett's heroes, rose to view; + I saw, and I believed the phantoms true. + But, above all, that most romantic tale[14] + Did o'er my raw credulity prevail, + Where Glums and Gawries wear mysterious things, + That serve at once for jackets and for wings. + Age, that enfeebles other men's designs, + But heightens thine, and thy free draught refines. + In several ways distinct you make us feel-- + _Graceful_ as Raphael, as Watteau _genteel_. + Your lights and shades, as Titianesque, we praise; + And warmly wish you Titian's length of days. + + +[Footnote 13: Illustrations of the British Novelists.] + +[Footnote 14: Peter Wilkins.] + + + + + TO A FRIEND ON HIS MARRIAGE + + (1833) + + What makes a happy wedlock? What has fate + Not given to thee in thy well-chosen mate? + Good sense--good humour;--these are trivial things, + Dear M----, that each trite encomiast sings. + But she hath these, and more. A mind exempt + From every low-bred passion, where contempt, + Nor envy, nor detraction, ever found + A harbour yet; an understanding sound; + Just views of right and wrong; perception full + Of the deformed, and of the beautiful, + In life and manners; wit above her sex, + Which, as a gem, her sprightly converse decks; + Exuberant fancies, prodigal of mirth, + To gladden woodland walk, or winter hearth; + A noble nature, conqueror in the strife + Of conflict with a hard discouraging life, + Strengthening the veins of virtue, past the power + Of those whose days have been one silken hour, + Spoil'd fortune's pamper'd offspring; a keen sense + Alike of benefit, and of offence, + With reconcilement quick, that instant springs + From the charged heart with nimble angel wings; + While grateful feelings, like a signet sign'd + By a strong hand, seem burnt into her mind. + If these, dear friend, a dowry can confer + Richer than land, thou hast them all in her; + And beauty, which some hold the chiefest boon, + Is in thy bargain for a make-weight thrown. + + + + + THE SELF-ENCHANTED + + (1833) + + I had a sense in dreams of a beauty rare, + Whom Fate had spell-bound, and rooted there, + Stooping, like some enchanted theme, + Over the marge of that crystal stream, + Where the blooming Greek, to Echo blind, + With Self-love fond, had to waters pined. + Ages had waked, and ages slept, + And that bending posture still she kept: + For her eyes she may not turn away, + 'Till a fairer object shall pass that way-- + 'Till an image more beauteous this world can show, + Than her own which she sees in the mirror below. + Pore on, fair Creature! for ever pore, + Nor dream to be disenchanted more; + For vain is expectance, and wish is vain, + 'Till a new Narcissus can come again. + + + + + TO LOUISA M[ARTIN], WHOM I USED TO CALL "MONKEY" + + (1831) + + Louisa, serious grown and mild, + I knew you once a romping child, + Obstreperous much and very wild. + Then you would clamber up my knees, + And strive with every art to tease, + When every art of yours could please. + Those things would scarce be proper now. + But they are gone, I know not how, + And woman's written on your brow. + Time draws his finger o'er the scene; + But I cannot forget between + The Thing to me you once have been + Each sportive sally, wild escape,-- + The scoff, the banter, and the jape,-- + And antics of my gamesome Ape. + + + + + CHEAP GIFTS: A SONNET + + (1834) + +[In a leaf of a quarto edition of the 'Lives of the Saints, written in +Spanish by the learned and reverend father, Alfonso Villegas, Divine, of +the order of St. Dominick, set forth in English by John Heigham, Anno +1630,' bought at a Catholic book-shop in Duke Street, Lincoln's Inn +Fields, I found, carefully inserted, a painted flower, seemingly coeval +with the book itself; and did not, for some time, discover that it +opened in the middle, and was the cover to a very humble draught of a +St. Anne, with the Virgin and Child; doubtless the performance of some +poor but pious Catholic, whose meditations it assisted.] + + O lift with reverent hand that tarnish'd flower, + That 'shrines beneath her modest canopy + Memorials dear to Romish piety; + Dim specks, rude shapes, of Saints! in fervent hour + The work perchance of some meek devotee, + Who, poor in worldly treasures to set forth + The sanctities she worshipped to their worth, + In this imperfect tracery might see + Hints, that all Heaven did to her sense reveal. + Cheap gifts best fit poor givers. We are told + Of the lone mite, the cup of water cold, + That in their way approved the offerer's zeal. + True love shows costliest, where the means are scant; + And, in her reckoning, they _abound_, who _want_. + + + + + FREE THOUGHTS ON SEVERAL EMINENT COMPOSERS + + (1830) + + Some cry up Haydn, some Mozart, + Just as the whim bites; for my part, + I do not care a farthing candle + For either of them, or for Handel.-- + Cannot a man live free and easy, + Without admiring Pergolesi? + Or thro' the world with comfort go, + That never heard of Doctor Blow? + So help me heaven, I hardly have; + And yet I eat, and drink, and shave, + Like other people, if you watch it, + And know no more of stave or crotchet, + Than did the primitive Peruvians; + Or those old ante-queer-diluvians + That lived in the unwash'd world with Jubal, + Before that dirty blacksmith Tubal + By stroke on anvil, or by summ'at, + Found out, to his great surprise, the gamut. + I care no more for Cimarosa, + Than he did for Salvator Rosa, + Being no painter; and bad luck + Be mine, if I can bear that Gluck! + Old Tycho Brahe, and modern Herschel, + Had something in them; but who's Purcel? + The devil, with his foot so cloven, + For aught I care, may take Beethoven; + And, if the bargain does not suit, + I'll throw him Weber in to boot. + There's not the splitting of a splinter + To chuse 'twixt him last named, and Winter. + Of Doctor Pepusch old queen Dido + Knew just as much, God knows, as I do. + I would not go four miles to visit + Sebastian Bach (or Batch, which is it?); + No more I would for Bononcini. + As for Novello, or Rossini, + I shall not say a word to grieve 'em, + Because they're living; so I leave 'em. + + + + * * * * * + + + + MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, NOT COLLECTED BY LAMB + + + DRAMATIC FRAGMENT + + (1798) + + Fie upon't. + All men are false, I think. The date of love + Is out, expired, its stories all grown stale, + O'er past, forgotten, like an antique tale + Of Hero and Leander. + JOHN WOODVIL. + + All are not false. I knew a youth who died + For grief, because his Love proved so, + And married with another. + I saw him on the wedding-day, + For he was present in the church that day, + In festive bravery deck'd, + As one that came to grace the ceremony. + I mark'd him when the ring was given, + His countenance never changed; + And when the priest pronounced the marriage blessing, + He put a silent prayer up for the bride, + For so his moving lip interpreted. + He came invited to the marriage feast + With the bride's friends, + And was the merriest of them all that day: + But they, who knew him best, called it feign'd mirth; + And others said, + He wore a smile like death upon his face. + His presence dash'd all the beholders' mirth, + And he went away in tears. + + _What followed then?_ + + Oh! then + He did not, as neglected suitors use, + Affect a life of solitude in shades, + But lived, + In free discourse and sweet society, + Among his friends who knew his gentle nature best. + Yet ever when he smiled, + There was a mystery legible in his face, + That whoso saw him said he was a man + Not long for this world.---- + And true it was, for even then + The silent love was feeding at his heart + Of which he died: + Nor ever spake word of reproach, + Only, he wish'd in death that his remains + Might find a poor grave in some spot, not far + From his mistress' family vault, "being the place + Where one day Anna should herself be laid." + + + + + DICK STRYPE; OR, THE FORCE OF HABIT + + _A Tale--By Timothy Bramble_ + + (1801) + + Habits _are stubborn things:_ + And by the time a man is turn'd of _forty_, + His _ruling passion's_ grown so haughty + There is no clipping of its wings. + The amorous roots have taken earth, and fix + And never shall P--TT leave his juggling tricks, + Till H----Y quits his metre with his pride, + Till W----M learns to flatter regicide, + Till hypocrite-enthusiasts cease to vant + And _Mister_ W----E leaves off to cant. + The truth will best be shewn, + By a familiar instance of our own. + + Dick Strype + Was a dear friend and lover of the PIPE; + He us'd to say, _one pipe of Kirkman's best_ + Gave life a _zest_. + To him 'twas meat, and drink, and physic, + To see the friendly vapour + Curl round his midnight taper, + And the black fume + Clothe all the room, + In clouds as dark as _science metaphysic_. + So still he smok'd, and drank, and crack'd his joke; + And, had he _single_ tarried + He might have smok'd, and still grown old in smoke: + But RICHARD _married_. + His wife was one, who carried + The _cleanly virtues_ almost to a vice, + She was so _nice:_ + And thrice a week, above, below, + The house was scour'd from top to toe, + And all the floors were rubb'd so bright, + You dar'd not walk upright + For fear of sliding: + But that she took a pride in. + + Of all things else REBECCA STRYPE + Could least endure a _pipe_. + She rail'd upon the filthy herb tobacco, + Protested that the noisome vapour + Had spoilt the best chintz curtains and the paper + And cost her many a pound in stucco: + And then she quoted our _King James_, who saith + "Tobacco is the Devil's breath." + When wives _will_ govern, husbands _must_ obey; + For many a day + DICK mourn'd and miss'd his favourite tobacco, + And curs'd REBECCA. + + At length the day approach'd, his wife must die: + Imagine now the doleful cry + Of female friends, old aunts and cousins, + Who to the fun'ral came by dozens-- + The undertaker's men and mutes + Stood at the gate in sable suits + With doleful looks, + Just like so many melancholy _rooks_. + Now cakes and wine are handed round, + Folks sigh, and drink, and drink, and sigh, + For Grief makes people dry: + But DICK is _missing_, nowhere to be found + Above, below, about + They searched the house throughout, + Each hole and secret entry, + Quite from the garret to the pantry, + In every corner, cupboard, nook and shelf, + And all concluded he had _hang'd_ himself. + At last they found him--reader, guess you where-- + 'Twill make you stare-- + Perch'd on REBECCA'S _Coffin_, at his rest, + SMOKING A PIPE OF KIRKMAN'S BEST. + + + + + TWO EPITAPHS ON A YOUNG LADY WHO LIVED + NEGLECTED AND DIED OBSCURE + + (1801 _or_ 1802) + + I + + Under this cold marble stone + Lie the sad remains of one + Who, when alive, by few or none + Was lov'd, as lov'd she might have been, + If she prosp'rous days had seen, + Or had thriving been, I ween. + Only this cold funeral stone + Tells, she was beloved by one, + Who on the marble graves his moan. + + + II + + A Heart which felt unkindness, yet complained not, + A Tongue which spake the simple Truth, and feigned not: + A Soul as white as the pure marble skin + (The beauteous Mansion it was lodgèd in) + Which, unrespected, could itself respect, + On Earth was all the Portion of a Maid + Who in this common Sanctuary laid, + Sleeps unoffended by the World's neglect. + + + + + THE APE + + (1806) + + An Ape is but a trivial beast, + Men count it light and vain; + But I would let them have their thoughts, + To have my Ape again. + + To love a beast in any sort, + Is no great sign of grace; + But I have loved a flouting Ape's + 'Bove any lady's face. + + I have known the power of two fair eyes, + In smile, or else in glance, + And how (for I a lover was) + They make the spirits dance; + + But I would give two hundred smiles, + Of them that fairest be, + For one look of my staring Ape, + That used to stare on me. + + This beast, this Ape, it had a face-- + If face it might be styl'd-- + Sometimes it was a staring Ape, + Sometimes a beauteous child-- + + A Negro flat--a Pagod squat, + Cast in a Chinese mold-- + And then it was a Cherub's face, + Made of the beaten gold! + + But TIME, that's meddling, meddling still + And always altering things-- + And, what's already at the best, + To alteration brings-- + + That turns the sweetest buds to flowers, + And chops and changes toys-- + That breaks up dreams, and parts old friends, + And still commutes our joys-- + + Has changed away my Ape at last + And in its place convey'd, + Thinking therewith to cheat my sight, + A fresh and blooming maid! + + And fair to sight is she--and still + Each day doth sightlier grow, + Upon the ruins of the Ape, + My ancient play-fellow! + + The tale of Sphinx, and Theban jests, + I true in me perceive; + I suffer riddles; death from dark + Enigmas I receive: + + Whilst a hid being I pursue, + That lurks in a new shape, + My darling in herself I miss-- + And, in my Ape, THE APE. + + + + + +_In tabulam eximii pictoris_ B. HAYDONI, _in quâ Solymaei, adveniente +Domino, palmas in viâ, prosternentes mirâ arte depinguntur_ + + (1820) + + Quid vult iste equitans? et quid oclit ista virorum + Palmifera ingens turba, et vox tremebunda Hosanna, + Hosanna Christo semper semperque canamus. + + _Palma_ fuit _Senior_ pictor celeberrimus olim; + Sed palmam cedat, modò si foret ille superstes, + _Palma, Haydone_, tibi: tu palmas omnibus aufers. + + Palma negata macrum, donataque reddit opimum. + Si simul incipiat cum famâ increscere corpus, + Tu citò pinguesces, fies et, amicule, obesus. + + Affectat lauros pictores atque poetae + Sin laurum invideant (sed quis tibi?) laurigerentes, + Pro lauro palmâ viridante tempora cingas. + + + + + CARLAGNULUS. + + _Translation of the Latin Verses on Mr. Haydon's Picture_ + + What rider's that? and who those myriads bringing + Him on his way with palms, Hosannas singing? + _Hosanna to the Christ_, HEAVEN--EARTH--should still be ringing. + + In days of old, old Palma won renown: + But Palma's self must yield the painter's crown, + Haydon, to thee. Thy palm put every other down. + + If Flaccus' sentence with the truth agree, + That "palms awarded make men plump to be," + Friend Horace, Haydon soon in bulk shall match with thee. + + Painters with poets for the laurel vie: + But should the laureat band thy claims deny, + Wear thou thy own green palm, Haydon, triumphantly. + + + + + SONNET + + _To Miss Burney, on her Character of Blanch in "Country + Neighbours," a Tale_ + + (1820) + + Bright spirits have arisen to grace the BURNEY name, + And some in letters, some in tasteful arts, + In learning some have borne distinguished parts; + Or sought through science of sweet sounds their fame: + And foremost _she_, renowned for many a tale + Of faithful love perplexed, and of that good + Old man, who, as CAMILLA'S guardian, stood + In obstinate virtue clad like coat of mail. + Nor dost thou, SARAH, with unequal pace + Her steps pursue. The pure romantic vein + No gentler creature ever knew to feign + Than thy fine Blanch, young with an elder grace, + In all respects without rebuke or blame, + Answering the antique freshness of her name. + + + + + TO MY FRIEND THE INDICATOR + + (1820) + + Your easy Essays indicate a flow, + Dear Friend, of brain which we may elsewhere seek; + And to their pages I, and hundreds, owe, + That Wednesday is the sweetest of the week. + Such observation, wit, and sense, are shewn, + We think the days of Bickerstaff returned; + And that a portion of that oil you own, + In his undying midnight lamp which burned. + I would not lightly bruise old Priscian's head, + Or wrong the rules of grammar understood; + But, with the leave of Priscian be it said, + The _Indicative_ is your _Potential Mood._ + Wit, poet, prose-man, party-man, translator-- + H[unt], your best title yet is INDICATOR. + + + + + ON SEEING MRS. K---- B----, AGED UPWARDS + OF EIGHTY, NURSE AN INFANT + + A sight like this might find apology + In worlds unsway'd by our Chronology; + As Tully says, (the thought's in Plato)-- + "To die is but to go to Cato." + Of this world Time is of the essence,-- + A kind of universal presence; + And therefore poets should have made him + Not only old, as they've pourtray'd him, + But young, mature, and old--all three + In one--a sort of mystery-- + ('Tis hard to paint abstraction pure.) + Here young--there old--and now mature-- + Just as we see some old book-print, + Not to one scene its hero stint; + But, in the distance, take occasion + To draw him in some other station. + Here this prepost'rous union seems + A kind of meeting of extremes. + Ye may not live together. Mean ye + To pass that gulf that lies between ye + Of fourscore years, as we skip ages + In turning o'er historic pages? + Thou dost not to this age belong: + Thou art three generations wrong: + Old Time has miss'd thee: there he tarries! + Go on to thy contemporaries! + Give the child up. To see thee kiss him + Is a compleat anachronism. + Nay, keep him. It is good to see + Race link'd to race, in him and thee. + The child repelleth not at all + Her touch as uncongenial, + But loves the old Nurse like another-- + Its sister--or its natural mother; + And to the nurse a pride it gives + To think (though old) that still she lives + With one, who may not hope in vain + To live her years all o'er again! + + + + + TO EMMA, LEARNING LATIN, AND DESPONDING + + (_By Mary Lamb_. ? 1827) + + Droop not, dear Emma, dry those falling tears, + And call up smiles into thy pallid face, + Pallid and care-worn with thy arduous race: + In few brief months thou hast done the work of years. + To young beginnings natural are these fears. + A right good scholar shalt thou one day be, + And that no distant one; when even she, + Who now to thee a star far off appears, + That most rare Latinist, the Northern Maid-- + The language-loving Sarah[15] of the Lake-- + Shall hail thee Sister Linguist. This will make + Thy friends, who now afford thee careful aid, + A recompense most rich for all their pains, + Counting thy acquisitions their best gains. + + +[Footnote 15: Daughter of S.T. Coleridge, Esq.; an accomplished linguist +in the Greek and Latin tongues, and translatress of a History of the +Abipones. [Note in _Blackwood_.]] + + + + + LINES + +_Addressed to Lieut. R.W.H. Hardy, R.N., on the Perusal of his Volume of +Travels in the Interior of Mexico_ + + 'Tis pleasant, lolling in our elbow chair, + Secure at home, to read descriptions rare + Of venturous traveller in savage climes; + His hair-breadth 'scapes, toil, hunger--and sometimes + The merrier passages that, like a foil + To set off perils past, sweetened that toil, + And took the edge from danger; and I look + With such fear-mingled pleasure thro' thy book, + Adventurous Hardy! Thou a _diver_[16] art, + But of no common form; and for thy part + Of the adventure, hast brought home to the nation + _Pearls_ of discovery--_jewels_ of observation. + + ENFIELD, _January_, 1830. + + +[Footnote 16: Captain Hardy practised this art with considerable +success. [Note in _Athenaeum_.]] + + + + + LINES + + [_For a Monument Commemorating the Sudden Death by + Drowning of a Family, of Four Sons and Two Daughters_] + + (1831) + + Tears are for lighter griefs. Man weeps the doom, + That seals a single victim to the tomb. + But when Death riots--when, with whelming sway, + Destruction sweeps a family away; + When infancy and youth, a huddled mass, + All in an instant to oblivion pass, + And parents' hopes are crush'd; what lamentation + Can reach the depth of such a desolation? + Look upward, Feeble Ones! look up and trust, + That HE who lays their mortal frame in dust, + Still hath the immortal spirit in his keeping-- + In Jesus' sight they are not dead but sleeping. + + + + TO C. ADERS, ESQ. + +_On his Collection of Paintings by the old German Masters_ + + (1831) + + Friendliest of men, ADERS, I never come + Within the precincts of this sacred Room, + But I am struck with a religious fear, + Which says "Let no profane eye enter here." + With imagery from Heav'n the walls are clothed, + Making the things of Time seem vile and loathed. + Spare Saints, whose bodies seem sustain'd by Love, + With Martyrs old in meek procession move. + Here kneels a weeping Magdalen, less bright + To human sense for her blurr'd cheeks; in sight + Of eyes, new-touch'd by Heav'n, more winning fair + Than when her beauty was her only care. + A Hermit here strange mysteries doth unlock + In desart sole, his knees worn by the rock. + There Angel harps are sounding, while below + Palm-bearing Virgins in white order go. + Madonnas, varied with so chaste design, + While all are different, each seems genuine, + And hers the only Jesus: hard outline, + And rigid form, by DURER'S hand subdued + To matchless grace, and sacro-sanctitude; + DURER, who makes thy slighted Germany + Vie with the praise of paint-proud Italy. + + Whoever enter'st here, no more persume + To name a Parlour, or a Drawing Room; + But, bending lowly to each holy Story, + Make this thy Chapel, and thine Oratory. + + + + + HERCULES PACIFICATUS + + _A Tale from Suidas_ + + (1831) + + + In days of yore, ere early Greece + Had dream'd of patrols or police, + A crew of rake-hells _in terrorem_ + Spread wide, and carried all before 'em, + Rifled the poultry, and the women, + And held that all things were in common; + Till Jove's great Son the nuisance saw, + And did abate it by Club Law. + Yet not so clean he made his work, + But here and there a rogue would lurk + In caves and rocky fastnesses, + And shunn'd the strength of Hercules. + + Of these, more desperate than others, + A pair of ragamuffin brothers + In secret ambuscade join'd forces, + To carry on unlawful courses. + These Robbers' names, enough to shake us, + Where, Strymon one, the other Cacus. + And, more the neighbourhood to bother, + A wicked dam they had for mother, + Who knew their craft, but not forbid it, + And whatsoe'er they nymm'd, she hid it; + Received them with delight and wonder, + When they brought home some 'special plunder; + Call'd them her darlings, and her white boys, + Her ducks, her dildings--all was right boys-- + "Only," she said, "my lads, have care + Ye fall not into BLACK BACK'S snare; + For, if he catch, he'll maul your _corpus_, + And clapper-claw you to some purpose." + She was in truth a kind of witch, + Had grown by fortune-telling rich; + To spells and conjurings did tackle her, + And read folks' dooms by light oracular; + In which she saw, as clear as daylight, + What mischief on her bairns would a-light; + Therefore she had a special loathing + For all that own'd that sable clothing. + + Who can 'scape fate, when we're decreed to 't? + The graceless brethren paid small heed to 't. + A brace they were of sturdy fellows, + As we may say, that fear'd no colours, + And sneer'd with modern infidelity + At the old gipsy's fond credulity. + It proved all true tho', as she'd mumbled-- + For on a day the varlets stumbled + On a green spot--_sit linguae fides_-- + 'Tis Suidas tells it--where Alcides + Secure, as fearing no ill neighbour, + Lay fast asleep after a "Labour." + His trusty oaken plant was near-- + The prowling rogues look round, and leer, + And each his wicked wits 'gan rub, + How to bear off the famous Club; + Thinking that they _sans_ price or hire wou'd + Carry 't strait home, and chop for fire wood. + + 'Twould serve their old dame half a winter-- + You stare? but 'faith it was no splinter; + I would not for much money 'spy + Such beam in any neighbour's eye. + The villains, these exploits not dull in, + Incontinently fell a pulling. + They found it heavy--no slight matter-- + But tugg'd, and tugg'd it, till the clatter + 'Woke Hercules, who in a trice + Whipt up the knaves, and with a splice, + He kept on purpose--which before + Had served for giants many a score-- + To end of Club tied each rogue's head fast; + Strapping feet too, to keep them steadfast; + And pickaback them carries townwards, + Behind his brawny back head-downwards, + (So foolish calf--for rhyme I bless X-- + Comes _nolens volens_ out of Essex); + Thinking to brain them with his _dextra_, + Or string them up upon the next tree. + That Club--so equal fates condemn-- + They thought to catch, has now catch'd them. + + Now Hercules, we may suppose, + Was no great dandy in his clothes; + Was seldom, save on Sundays, seen + In calimanco, or nankeen; + On anniversaries would try on + A jerkin spick-span new from lion; + Went bare for the most part, to be cool, + And save the time of his Groom of the Stole; + Besides, the smoke he had been in + In Stygian gulf, had dyed his skin + To a natural sable--a right hell-fit-- + That seem'd to careless eyes black velvet. + + The brethren from their station scurvy, + Where they hung dangling topsy turvy, + With horror view the black costume, + And each persumes his hour is come! + Then softly to themselves 'gan mutter + The warning words their dame did utter; + Yet not so softly, but with ease + Were overheard by Hercules. + Quoth Cacus--"This is he she spoke of, + Which we so often made a joke of." + "I see," said the other, "thank our sin for't, + 'Tis BLACK BACK sure enough--we're in for 't." + + His Godship who, for all his brag + Of roughness, was at heart a wag, + At his new name was tickled finely, + And fell a laughing most divinely. + Quoth he, "I'll tell this jest in heaven-- + The musty rogues shall be forgiven." + So in a twinkling did uncase them, + On mother earth once more to place them-- + The varlets, glad to be unhamper'd, + Made each a leg--then fairly scamper'd. + + + + + THE PARTING SPEECH OF THE CELESTIAL MESSENGER TO THE POET + + _From the Latin of Palingenius, in the Zodiacus Vitae_ + + (1832) + + But now time warns (my mission at an end) + That to Jove's starry court I re-ascend; + From whose high battlements I take delight + To scan your earth, diminish'd to the sight, + Pendant, and round, and, as an apple, small; + Self-propt, self-balanced, and secure from fall + By her own weight: and how with liquid robe + Blue ocean girdles round her tiny globe, + While lesser Nereus, gliding like a snake, + Betwixt her hands his flexile course doth take, + Shrunk to a rivulet; and how the Po, + The mighty Ganges, Tanais, Ister, show + No bigger than a ditch which rains have swell'd. + Old Nilus' seven proud mouths I late beheld, + And mock'd the watery puddles. Hosts steel-clad + Ofttimes I thence behold; and how the sad + Peoples are punish'd by the fault of kings, + Which from the purple fiend Ambition springs. + Forgetful of mortality, they live + In hot strife for possessions fugitive, + At which the angels grieve. Sometimes I trace + Of fountains, rivers, seas, the change of place; + By ever shifting course, and Time's unrest, + The vale exalted, and the mount deprest + To an inglorious valley; plough-shares going + Where tall trees rear'd their tops; and fresh trees growing + In antique pastures. Cities lose their site. + Old things wax new. O what a rare delight + To him, who from this vantage can survey + At once stern Afric, and soft Asia, + With Europe's cultured plains; and in their turns + Their scatter'd tribes: those whom the hot Crab burns, + The tawny Ethiops; Orient Indians; + Getulians; ever-wandering Scythians; + Swift Tartar hordes; Cilicians rapacious, + And Parthians with back-bended bow pugnacious; + Sabeans incense-bringing, men of Thrace, + Italian, Spaniard, Gaul, and that rough race + Of Britons, rigid as their native colds; + With all the rest the circling sun beholds! + But clouds, and elemental mists, deny + These visions blest to any fleshly eye. + + + + + EXISTENCE, CONSIDERED IN ITSELF, NO BLESSING + + _From the Latin of Palingenius_ + + (1832) + +The Poet, after a seeming approval of suicide, from a consideration of +the cares and crimes of life, finally rejecting it, discusses the +negative importance of existence, contemplated in itself, without +reference to good or evil. + + Of these sad truths consideration had-- + Thou shalt not fear to quit this world so mad, + So wicked; but the tenet rather hold + Of wise Calanus, and his followers old, + Who with their own wills their own freedom wrought, + And by self-slaughter their dismissal sought + From this dark den of crime--this horrid lair + Of men, that savager than monsters are; + And scorning longer, in this tangled mesh + Of ills, to wait on perishable flesh, + Did with their desperate hands anticipate + The too, too slow relief of lingering fate. + And if religion did not stay thine hand, + And God, and Plato's wise behests, withstand, + I would in like case counsel thee to throw + This senseless burden off, of cares below. + Not wine, _as_ wine, men choose, but as it came + From such or such a vintage: 'tis the same + With life, which simply must be understood + A black negation, if it be not good. + But if 'tis wretched all--as men decline + And loath the sour lees of corrupted wine-- + 'Tis so to be contemn'd. Merely TO BE + Is not a boon to seek, nor ill to flee, + Seeing that every vilest little Thing + Has it in common, from a gnat's small wing, + A creeping worm, down to the moveless stone, + And crumbling bark from trees. Unless TO BE, + And TO BE BLEST, be one, I do not see + In bare existence, _as_ existence, aught + That's worthy to be loved, or to be sought. + + + + + TO SAMUEL ROGERS, ESQ. + + _On the New Edition of his "Pleasures of Memory"_ + + (1833) + + When thy gay book hath paid its proud devoirs, + Poetic friend, and fed with luxury + The eye of pampered aristocracy + In glittering drawing-rooms and gilt boudoirs, + O'erlaid with comments of pictorial art, + However rich and rare, yet nothing leaving + Of healthful action to the soul-conceiving + Of the true reader--yet a nobler part + Awaits thy work, already classic styled. + Cheap-clad, accessible, in homeliest show + The modest beauty through the land shall go + From year to year, and render life more mild; + Refinement to the poor man's hearth shall give, + And in the moral heart of England live. + + + + + TO CLARA N[OVELLO] + + (1834) + + The Gods have made me most unmusical, + With feelings that respond not to the call + Of stringed harp, or voice--obtuse and mute + To hautboy, sackbut, dulcimer, and flute; + King David's lyre, that made the madness flee + From Saul, had been but a jew's-harp to me: + Theorbos, violins, French horns, guitars, + Leave in my wounded ears inflicted scars; + I hate those trills, and shakes, and sounds that float + Upon the captive air; I know no note, + Nor ever shall, whatever folks may say, + Of the strange mysteries of _Sol_ and _Fa_; + I sit at oratorios like a fish, + Incapable of sound, and only wish + The thing was over. Yet do I admire, + O tuneful daughter of a tuneful sire, + Thy painful labours in a science, which + To your deserts I pray may make you rich + As much as you are loved, and add a grace + To the most musical Novello race. + Women lead men by the nose, some cynics say; + You draw them by the ear--a delicater way. + + + + + THE SISTERS + + On Emma's honest brow we read display'd + The constant virtues of the Nut Brown Maid; + Mellifluous sounds on Clara's tongue we hear, + Notes that once lured a Seraph from his sphere; + Cecilia's eyes such winning beauties crown + As without song might draw _her_ Angel down. + + + + + LOVE WILL COME + + Tune--_The Tartar Drum_ + + I + + Guard thy feelings, pretty Vestal, + From the smooth Intruder free; + Cage thy heart in bars of chrystal, + Lock it with a golden key: + Thro' the bars demurely stealing, + Noiseless footstep, accent dumb, + His approach to none revealing-- + Watch, or watch not, LOVE WILL COME. + + His approach to none revealing-- + Watch, or watch not, Love will come--Love, + Watch, or watch not, Love will come. + + + II + + Scornful Beauty may deny him-- + He hath spells to charm disdain; + Homely Features may defy him-- + Both at length must wear the chain. + Haughty Youth in Courts of Princes-- + Hermit poor with age o'er come-- + His soft plea at last convinces; + Sooner, later, LOVE WILL COME. + + His soft plea at length convinces; + Sooner, later, Love will come--Love, + Sooner, later, Love will come. + + + + + TO MARGARET W---- + + Margaret, in happy hour + Christen'd from that humble flower + Which we a daisy[17] call! + May thy pretty name-sake be + In all things a type of thee, + And image thee in all. + + +[Footnote 17: Marguerite, in French, signifies a daisy. [Note in +_Athenaeum_.]] + + + + To Margaret W---- + + + Like _it_ you show a modest face, + An unpretending native grace;-- + The tulip, and the pink, + The china and the damask rose, + And every flaunting flower that blows, + In the comparing shrink. + + Of lowly fields you think no scorn; + Yet gayest gardens would adorn, + And grace, wherever set. + Home-seated in your lonely bower, + Or wedded--a transplanted flower-- + I bless you, Margaret! + +EDMONTON, 8_th October_, 1834. + + + + * * * * * + + + + ADDITIONAL ALBUM VERSES AND ACROSTICS + + + WHAT IS AN ALBUM? + + 'Tis a Book kept by modern Young Ladies for show, + Of which their plain grandmothers nothing did know. + 'Tis a medley of scraps, fine verse, and fine prose, + And some things not very like either, God knows. + The soft First Effusions of Beaux and of Belles, + Of future LORD BYRONS, and sweet L.E.L.'s; + Where wise folk and simple both equally shine, + And you write your nonsense, that I may write mine. + Stick in a fine landscape, to make a display, + A flower-piece, a foreground, all tinted so gay, + As NATURE herself (could she see them) would strike + With envy, to think that she ne'er did the like: + And since some LAVATERS, with head-pieces comical, + Have pronounc'd people's hands to be physiognomical, + Be sure that you stuff it with AUTOGRAPHS plenty, + All framed to a pattern, so stiff, and so dainty. + They no more resemble folks' every-day writing, + Than lines penn'd with pains do extemp'rel enditing; + Or the natural countenance (pardon the stricture) + The faces we make when we sit for our picture. + + Thus you have, dearest EMMA, an ALBUM complete-- + Which may _you_ live to finish, and _I_ live to see it; + And since you began it for innocent ends, + May it swell, and grow bigger each day with new friends, + Who shall set down kind names, as a token and test, + As I my poor _autograph_ sign with the rest. + + + + + THE FIRST LEAF OF SPRING + + _Written on the First Leaf of a Lady's Album_ + + Thou fragile, filmy, gossamery thing, + First leaf of spring! + At every lightest breath that quakest, + And with a zephyr shakest; + Scarce stout enough to hold thy slender form together, + In calmest halcyon weather; + Next sister to the web that spiders weave, + Poor flutterers to deceive + Into their treacherous silken bed: + O! how art thou sustained, how nourishèd! + All trivial as thou art, + Without dispute, + Thou play'st a mighty part; + And art the herald to a throng + Of buds, blooms, fruit, + That shall thy cracking branches sway, + While birds on every spray + Shall pay the copious fruitage with a sylvan song. + So 'tis with thee, whoe'er on thee shall look, + First leaf of this beginning modest book. + Slender thou art, God knowest, + And little grace bestowest, + But in thy train shall follow after, + Wit, wisdom, seriousness, in hand with laughter; + Provoking jests, restraining soberness, + In their appropriate dress; + And I shall joy to be outdone + By those who brighter trophies won; + Without a grief, + That I thy slender promise have begun, + First leaf. + +1832. + + + + + + TO MRS. F[IELD] + + _On Her Return from Gibraltar_ + + Jane, you are welcome from the barren Rock, + And Calpe's sounding shores. Oh do not mock, + Now you have rais'd, our greetings; nor again + Ever revisit that dry nook of Spain. + + Friends have you here, and friendships to command, + In merry England. Love this hearty land. + Ease, comfort, competence--of these possess'd, + Let prodigal adventurers seek the rest: + Dear England is _as you_,--a _Field_ the Lord hath blest. + + + + + TO M[ARY] L[AETITIA] F[IELD] + + (_Expecting to See Her Again after a Long Interval_) + + How many wasting, many wasted years, + Have run their round, since I beheld your face! + In Memory's dim eye it yet appears + Crowned, as it _then_ seemed, with a chearful grace. + Young prattling Maiden, on the Thames' fair side, + Enlivening pleasant Sunbury with your smiles, + Time may have changed you: coy reserve, or pride, + To sullen looks reduced those mirthful wiles. + I will not 'bate one smile on that clear brow, + But take of Time a rigorous account, + When next I see you; and Maria now + Must _be_ the Thing she _was_. To what amount + These verses else?--all hollow and untrue-- + This was not writ, these lines not meant, for YOU. + + + + + TO ESTHER FIELD + + Esther, holy name and sweet, + Smoothly runs on even feet, + To the mild Acrostic bending; + Hebrew recollections blending. + Ever keep that Queen in view-- + Royal namesake--bold, and true! + + Firm she stood in evil times, + In the face of Haman's crimes.-- + Ev'n as She, do Thou possess + Loftiest virtue in the dress, + Dear F----, of native loveliness. + + + + + [TO MRS. WILLIAMS] + + (1830) + + Go little Poem, and present + Respectful terms of compliment; + A gentle lady bids thee speak! + Courteous is _she_, tho' thou be weak-- + Evoke from Heaven as thick as manna + + Joy after joy on Grace Joanna: + On Fornham's Glebe and Pasture land + A blessing pray. Long, long may stand, + Not touched by Time, the Rectory blithe; + No grudging churl dispute his Tithe; + At Easter be the offerings due + + With cheerful spirit paid; each pew + In decent order filled; no noise + Loud intervene to drown the voice, + Learning, or wisdom of the Teacher; + Impressive be the Sacred Preacher, + And strict his notes on holy page; + May young and old from age to age + Salute, and still point out, 'The good man's Parsonage!' + + + + + TO THE BOOK + + Little Casket! Storehouse rare + Of rich conceits, to please the Fair! + Happiest he of mortal men,-- + (I crown him monarch of the pen,)-- + To whom Sophia deigns to give + The flattering prerogative + To inscribe his name in chief, + On thy first and maiden Leaf. + When thy pages shall be full + Of what brighter wits can cull + Of the Tender or Romantic, + Creeping Prose or Verse Gigantic,-- + Which thy spaces so shall cram + That the Bee-like Epigram + (Which a two-fold tribute brings, + Honey gives at once, and stings,) + Hath not room left wherewithal + To infix its tiny scrawl; + Haply some more youthful swain, + Striving to describe his pain, + And the Damsel's ear to seize + With more expressive lays than these, + When he finds his own excluded + And these counterfeits intruded; + While, loitering in the Muse's bower, + He overstayed the eleventh hour, + Till the tables filled--shall fret, + Die, or sicken with regret + Or into a shadow pine: + While this triumphant verse of mine, + Like to some favoured stranger-guest, + Bidden to a good man's Feast + Shall sit--by merit less than fate-- + In the upper Seat in State. + + + + + TO S[OPHIA] F[REND] + + _Acrostic_ + + Solemn Legends we are told + Of bright female Names of old, + Phyllus fair, Laodameia, + Helen, but methinks Sophia + Is a name of better meaning + And a sort of Christian leaning. + + For it _Wisdom_ means, which passes + Rubies, pearls, or golden masses. + Ever try that Name to merit; + Never quit what you inherit, + Duly from your Father's spirit. + + + + + TO R[OTHA] Q[UILLINAN] + + _Acrostic_ + + ROTHA, how in numbers light, + Ought I to express thee? + Take my meaning in its flight-- + Haste imports not always slight-- + And believe, I bless thee. + + + + + TO S[ARAH] L[OCKE] + + _Acrostic_ + + Shall I praise a face unseen, + And extol a fancied mien, + Rave on visionary charm, + And from shadows take alarm? + Hatred hates _without a cause;_ + + Love may love, with more applause, + Or, without a reason given, + Charmed be with unknown Heaven. + Keep the secrets, though, unmocked, + Ever in your bosom _Locke'd_. + + + + + TO M[ARY] L[OCKE] + + _Acrostic_ + + Must I write with pen unwilling + And describe those graces killing + Rightly, which I never saw? + Yes--it is the Album's law. + + Let me then Invention strain + On your excelling charms to feign-- + Cold is Fiction? I _believe_ it + Kindly, as I did receive it, + Even as J.F.'s tongue did weave it. + + + + + AN ACROSTIC AGAINST ACROSTICS + + [_To Edward Hogg_] + + Envy not the wretched Poet + Doomed to pen these teasing strains, + Wit so cramped, ah, who can show it, + Are the trifles worth the pains. + Rhyme compared with this were easy, + Double Rhymes may not displease ye. + + Homer, Horace sly and caustic, + Owed no fame to vile acrostic. + G's, I am sure, the Readers choked with, + Good men's names must not be joked with. + + + + + ON BEING ASKED TO WRITE IN MISS WESTWOOD'S ALBUM + + My feeble Muse, that fain her best wou'd + Write, at command of Frances Westwood, + But feels her wits not in their best mood, + Fell lately on some idle fancies, + As she's much given to romances, + About this self-same style as Frances; + Which seems to be a name in common + Attributed to man or woman. + She thence contrived this flattering moral, + With which she hopes no soul will quarrel, + That she, whom this twin title decks, + Combines what's good in either sex; + Unites--how very rare the case is!-- + Masculine sense to female graces; + And, quitting not her proper rank, + Is both in one--Fanny, and frank. + + 12_th October_, 1827. + + + + + [IN MISS WESTWOOD'S ALBUM] + + _By Mary Lamb_ + + Small beauty to your Book my lines can lend, + Yet you shall have the best I can, sweet friend, + To serve for poor memorials 'gainst the day + That calls you from your Parent-roof away, + From the mild offices of Filial life + To the more serious duties of a Wife. + The World is opening to you--may you rest + With all your prospects realised, and blest!-- + I, with the Elder Couple left behind, + On evenings chatting, oft shall call to mind + Those spirits of Youth, which Age so ill can miss, + And, wanting you, half grudge your S--n's bliss; + Till mirthful malice tempts us to exclaim + 'Gainst the dear Thief, who robb'd you of your _Name_. + + ENFIELD CHASE, 17_th May_, 1828. + + + + + UN SOLITAIRE + + _A Drawing by E.I._ [_Emma Isola_] + + [_To Sarah Lachlan_] + + Solitary man, around thee + Are the mountains: Peace hath found thee + Resting by that rippling tide; + All vain toys of life expelling, + Hermit-like, thou find'st a dwelling, + Lost 'mid foliage stretching wide. + Angels here alone may find thee, + Contemplation fast may bind thee. + Holier spot, or more fantastic, + Livelier scene of deep seclusion, + Armed by Nature 'gainst intrusion, + Never graced a seat Monastic. + + + + + TO S[ARAH] T[HOMAS] + + _An Acrostic_ + + Sarah, blest wife of "Terah's faithful Son," + After a race of years with goodness run, + Regardless heard the promised miracle, + And mocked the blessing as impossible. + How weak is Faith!--even He, the most sincere, + + Thomas, to his meek Master not least dear, + Holy, and blameless, yet refused assent + Of full belief, until he could content + Mere human senses. In your piety, + As you are _one_ in _name_, industriously + So copy them: but _shun_ their weak part--_Incredulity_. + + + + + TO MRS. SARAH ROBINSON + + Soul-breathing verse, thy gentlest guise put on + And greet the honor'd name of Robinson. + Rome in her throng'd and stranger-crowded streets, + And palaces, where pilgrim _pilgrim_ meets, + Holds not, respected Sarah, one that can + Revered make the name of Englishman, + Or loved, more than thy Kinsman, dear to me + By many a friendly act. His heart I see + In thee with answering courtesy renew'd. + Nor shall to thee my debt of gratitude + Soon fade, that didst receive with open hand + One that was come a stranger to thy land-- + Now call[s] thee Friend. Her thanks, and mine, command. + + Enfield, 14_th March_, 1831. + + + + + TO SARAH [APSEY] + + _Acrostic_ + + Sarah,--your other name I know not, + And fine encomiums I bestow not, + Regard me as an utter stranger, + A hair-brain'd, hasty, album-ranger, + Heaven shield you, Girl, from every danger! + + + + + TO JOSEPH VALE ASBURY + + _Acrostic_ + + Judgements are about us thoroughly; + O'er all Enfield hangs the Cholera, + Savage monster, none like him + Ever rack'd a human limb. + Pest, nor plague, nor fever yellow, + Has made patients more to bellow. + + Vain his threatnings! Asbury comes, + And defiance beats by drums; + Label, bottle, box, pill, potion, + Each enlists in the commotion. + + And with Vials, like to those + Seen in Patmos[18], charged with woes, + Breathing Wrath, he falls pell-mell + Upon the Foe, and pays him well. + Revenge!--he has made the monster sick + Yea, Cholera vanish, choleric. + + +[Footnote 18: _Vide_ Revelations.] + + + + TO D[OROTHY] A[SBURY] + + _Acrostic_ + + Divided praise, Lady, to you we owe, + Of all the health your husband doth bestow, + Respected wife of skilful Asbury! + Oracular foresight named thee Dorothy; + Tis a Greek word, and signifies God's Gift; + (How Learning helps poor Poets at a shift!)-- + You are that gift. When, tired with human ails, + + And tedious listening to the sick man's tales, + Sore spent, and fretted, he comes home at eve, + By mild medicaments you his toils deceive. + Under your soothing treatment he revives; + (Restorative is the smile of gentle wives): + You lengthen _his_, who lengthens _all our lives._ + + + + + TO LOUISA MORGAN + + How blest is he who in his _age_, exempt + From fortune's frowns, and from the troublous strife + Of storms that harass still the private life, + "Below ambition, and above contempt," + Hath gain'd a quiet harbour, where he may + Look back on shipwrecks past, without a sigh + For busier scenes, and hope's gay dreams gone by! + And such a nook of blessedness, they say, + Your Sire at length has found; while you, best Child, + Content in _his_ contentment, acquiesce + In patient toils; and in a station less, + Than you might image, when your prospects smiled. + In your meek virtues there is found a calm, + That on his life's soft evening sheds a balm. + + + + + TO SARAH JAMES OF BEGUILDY + + _Acrostic_ + + Sleep hath treasures worth retracing: + Are you not in slumbers pacing + Round your native spot at times, + And seem to hear Beguildy's chimes? + Hold the airy vision fast; + Joy is but a dream at last: + And what was so fugitive, + Memory only makes to live. + Even from troubles past we borrow + Some thoughts that may lighten sorrow, + + Onwards as we pace through life, + Fainting under care or strife, + + By the magic of a thought + Every object back is brought + Gayer than it was when real, + Under influence ideal. + In remembrance as a glass, + Let your happy childhood pass; + Dreaming so in fancy's spells, + You still shall hear those old church bells. + + + + + TO EMMA BUTTON + + _Acrostic_ + + EMMA, eldest of your name, + Meekly trusting in her God + Midst the red-hot plough-shares trod, + And unscorch'd preserved her fame. + By that test if _you_ were tried, + Ugly flames might be defied; + Though devouring fire's a glutton, + Through the trial you might go + "On the light fantastic toe," + Nor for plough-shares care a BUTTON. + + + + + WRITTEN UPON THE COVER OF A BLOTTING BOOK + + Blank tho' I be, within you'll find + Relics of th' enraptured mind: + Where truth and fable, mirth and wit, + Are safely here deposited. + The placid, furious, envious, wise, + Impart to me their secresies; + Here hidden thoughts in blotted line + Nor sybil can the sense divine; + Lethe and I twin sisters be-- + Then, stranger, open me and see. + + + + + * * * * * + + + + POLITICAL AND OTHER EPIGRAMS + + + + TO SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH + + (1801) + + Though thou'rt like Judas, an apostate black, + In the resemblance one thing thou dost lack: + When he had gotten his ill-purchased pelf, + He went away, and wisely hanged himself. + This thou may'st do at last; yet much I doubt, + If thou hast any _bowels_ to gush out! + + + + * * * * * + + + + TWELFTH NIGHT + + _Characters That Might Have Been Drawn on the Above Evening_ + + (1802) + + MR. A[DDINGTON] + + I put my night-cap on my head, + And went, as usual, to my bed; + And, most surprising to relate, + I woke--a Minister of State! + + + MESSRS. C[ANNIN]G AND F[RER]E + + At Eton School brought up with dull boys, + We shone like _men_ among the _school-boys_; + But since we in the world have been, + We are but _school-boys_ among _men_. + + + COUNT RUMFORD + + I deal in aliments fictitious + And teaze the poor with soups nutritious. + Of bones and flesh I make dilution + And belong to the National Institution. + + + + + ON A LATE EMPIRIC OF "BALMY" MEMORY + + (1802. Not printed till 1820) + + His namesake, born of Jewish breeder, + Knew "from the Hyssop to the Cedar;" + But he, unlike the Jewish leader, + Scarce knew the Hyssop from the Cedar. + + + + * * * * * + + + + EPIGRAMS + + (1812) + + + I + + Princeps his rent from tinneries draws, + His best friends are refiners;-- + What wonder then his other friends + He leaves for under-_miners._ + + + II + + Ye Politicians, tell me, pray, + Why thus with woe and care rent? + This is the worst that you can say, + Some wind has blown the _wig_ away, + And left the _hair apparent._ + + + + * * * * * + + + + THE TRIUMPH OF THE WHALE + + (1812) + + + Io! Paean! Io! sing + To the funny people's King. + Not a mightier whale than this + In the vast Atlantic is; + Not a fatter fish than he + Flounders round the polar sea. + See his blubbers--at his gills + What a world of drink he swills, + From his trunk, as from a spout, + Which next moment he pours out. + Such his person--next declare, + Muse, who his companions are.-- + Every fish of generous kind + Scuds aside, or slinks behind; + But about his presence keep + All the Monsters of the Deep; + Mermaids, with their tails and singing + His delighted fancy stinging; + Crooked Dolphins, they surround him, + Dog-like Seals, they fawn around him. + Following hard, the progress mark + Of the intolerant salt sea shark. + For his solace and relief, + Flat fish are his courtiers chief. + Last and lowest in his train, + Ink-fish (libellers of the main) + Their black liquor shed in spite: + (Such on earth the things _that write_.) + In his stomach, some do say, + No good thing can ever stay. + Had it been the fortune of it + To have swallowed that old Prophet, + Three days there he'd not have dwell'd, + But in one have been expell'd. + Hapless mariners are they, + Who beguil'd (as seamen say), + Deeming him some rock or island, + Footing sure, safe spot, and dry land, + Anchor in his scaly rind; + Soon the difference they find; + Sudden plumb, he sinks beneath them; + Does to ruthless seas bequeath them. + + Name or title what has he? + Is he Regent of the Sea? + From this difficulty free us, + Buffon, Banks or sage Linnaeus. + With his wondrous attributes + Say what appellation suits. + By his bulk, and by his size, + By his oily qualities, + This (or else my eyesight fails), + This should be the PRINCE OF WHALES. + + + + + SONNET + + _St. Crispin to Mr. Gifford_ (1819) + + All unadvised, and in an evil hour, + Lured by aspiring thoughts, my son, you daft + The lowly labours of the Gentle Craft + For learned toils, which blood and spirits sour. + All things, dear pledge, are not in all men's power; + The wiser sort of shrub affects the ground; + And sweet content of mind is oftener found + In cobbler's parlour, than in critic's bower. + The sorest work is what doth cross the grain; + And better to this hour you had been plying + The obsequious awl with well-waxed finger flying, + Than ceaseless thus to till a thankless vein; + Still teazing Muses, which are still denying; + Making a stretching-leather of your brain. + + + + + THE GODLIKE + + (1820) + + In one great man we view with odds + A parallel to all the gods. + Great Jove, that shook heaven with his brow, + Could never match his princely bow. + In him a Bacchus we behold: + Like Bacchus, too, he ne'er grows old. + Like Phoebus next, a flaming lover; + And then he's Mercury--all over. + A Vulcan, for domestic strife, + He lamely lives without his wife. + And sure--unless our wits be dull-- + Minerva-like, when moon was full, + He issued from paternal skull. + + + + + THE THREE GRAVES + + (1820) + + Close by the ever-burning brimstone beds + Where Bedloe, Oates and Judas, hide their heads, + I saw great Satan like a Sexton stand + With his intolerable spade in hand, + Digging three graves. Of coffin shape they were, + For those who, coffinless, must enter there + With unblest rites. The shrouds were of that cloth + Which Clotho weaveth in her blackest wrath: + The dismal tinct oppress'd the eye, that dwelt + Upon it long, like darkness to be felt. + The pillows to these baleful beds were toads, + Large, living, livid, melancholy loads, + Whose softness shock'd. Worms of all monstrous size + Crawl'd round; and one, upcoil'd, which never dies. + A doleful bell, inculcating despair, + Was always ringing in the heavy air. + And all about the detestable pit + Strange headless ghosts, and quarter'd forms, did flit; + Rivers of blood, from living traitors spilt, + By treachery stung from poverty to guilt. + I ask'd the fiend, for whom these rites were meant? + "These graves," quoth he, "when life's brief oil is spent, + When the dark night comes, and they're sinking bedwards, + --I mean for Castles, Oliver, and Edwards." + + + + + SONNET TO MATHEW WOOD, ESQ. + + _Alderman and M.P._ + + (1820) + + Hold on thy course uncheck'd, heroic WOOD! + Regardless what the player's son may prate, + Saint Stephens' fool, the Zany of Debate-- + Who nothing generous ever understood. + London's twice Praetor! scorn the fool-born jest-- + The stage's scum, and refuse of the players-- + Stale topics against Magistrates and Mayors-- + City and Country both thy worth attest. + Bid him leave off his shallow Eton wit, + More fit to sooth the superficial ear + Of drunken PITT, and that pickpocket Peer, + When at their sottish orgies they did sit, + Hatching mad counsels from inflated vein, + Till England, and the nations, reeled with pain. + + + + + ON A PROJECTED JOURNEY + + (1820) + + To gratify his people's wish + See G[eorg]e at length prepare-- + He's setting out for Hanover-- + We've often wished him there. + + + SONG FOR THE C[ORONATIO]N + + _Tune, "Roy's Wife of Aldivalloch"_ + + (1820) + + _Roi's_ wife of Brunswick Oëls! + _Roi's_ wife of Brunswick Oëls! + Wot you how she came to him, + While he supinely dreamt of no ills? + Vow! but she is a canty Queen, + And well can she scare each royal orgie.-- + To us she ever must be dear, + Though she's for ever cut by Georgie.-- + _Roi's_ wife, etc. _Da capo._ + + + + + THE UNBELOVED + + (1820) + + Not a woman, child, or man in + All this isle, that loves thee, C[anni]ng. + Fools, whom gentle manners sway, + May incline to C[astlerea]gh, + Princes, who old ladies love, + Of the Doctor may approve, + Chancery lads do not abhor + Their chatty, childish Chancellor. + In Liverpool some virtues strike, + And little Van's beneath dislike. + Tho, if I were to be dead for't, + I could never love thee, H[eadfor]t: + (Every man must have his way) + Other grey adulterers may. + But thou unamiable object,-- + Dear to neither prince, nor subject;-- + Veriest, meanest scab, for pelf + Fastning on the skin of Guelph, + Thou, thou must, surely, _loathe thyself._ + + + + + ON THE ARRIVAL IN ENGLAND OF LORD BYRON'S REMAINS + + (1824) + + Manners, they say, by climate alter not: + Who goes a drunkard will return a sot. + So lordly Juan, damn'd to lasting fame, + Went out a pickle, and came back the same. + + + + + LINES + + _Suggested by a Sight of Waltham Cross_ + + (1827) + + Time-mouldering CROSSES, gemm'd with imagery + Of costliest work, and Gothic tracery, + Point still the spots, to hallow'd wedlock dear, + Where rested on its solemn way the bier, + That bore the bones of Edward's Elinor + To mix with Royal dust at Westminster.-- + Far different rites did thee to dust consign, + Duke Brunswick's daughter, Princely Caroline. + A hurrying funeral, and a banish'd grave, + High-minded Wife! were all that thou could'st have. + Grieve not, great Ghost, nor count in death thy losses; + Thou in thy life-time had'st thy share of _crosses._ + + + + + FOR THE "TABLE BOOK" + + (1827) + + Laura, too partial to her friends' enditing, + Requires from each a pattern of their _writing._ + A weightier trifle Laura might command; + For who to Laura would refuse his--_hand?_ + + + + + THE ROYAL WONDERS + + (1830) + + Two miracles at once! Compell'd by fate, + His tarnish'd throne the Bourbon doth vacate; + While English William,--a diviner thing,-- + Of his free pleasure hath put off _the king._ + The forms of distant old respect lets pass, + And melts his crown into the common mass. + Health to fair France, and fine regeneration! + But England's is the nobler abdication. + + + + + "BREVIS ESSE LABORO" + + "ONE DIP" + + (1830) + + Much speech obscures the sense; the soul of wit + Is brevity: our tale one proof of it. + Poor Balbulus, a stammering invalid, + Consults the doctors, and by them is bid + To try sea-bathing, with this special heed, + "One Dip was all his malady did need; + More than that one his certain death would be." + Now who so nervous or so shook as he, + For Balbulus had never dipped before? + Two well-known dippers at the Broadstairs' shore, + Stout, sturdy churls, have stript him to the skin, + And naked, cold, and shivering plunge him in. + Soon he emerges, with scarce breath to say, + "I'm to be dip--dip--dipt--." "We know it," they + Reply; expostulation seemed in vain, + And over ears they souse him in again, + And up again he rises, his words trip, + And falter as before. Still "dip--dip--dip"-- + And in again he goes with furious plunge, + Once more to rise; when, with a desperate lunge, + At length he bolts these words out, "Only once!" + The villains crave his pardon. Had the dunce + But aimed at these bare words the rogues had found him, + But striving to be prolix, they half drowned him. + + + + + SUUM CUIQUE + + (1830) + + Adsciscit sibi divitias et opes alienas + Fur, rapiens, spolians quod mihi, quodque tibi + Proprium erat, temnens haec verba, Meumque Tuumque; + Omne Suum est. Tandem cuique suum tribuit. + Dat laqueo collum: vestes, vah! carnifici dat: + Sese Diabolo; sic bene, Cuique Suum. + + + + + [ON THE _LITERARY GAZETTE_] + + (1830) + + In merry England I computed once + The number of the dunces--dunce for dunce; + There were _four hundred_, if I don't forget, + _All readers of the L------y G-----e;_ + But if the author to himself keep true, + In some short months they'll be reduced to _two_. + + + + + ON THE FAST-DAY + + To name a Day for general prayer and fast + Is surely worse than of no sort of use; + For you may see with grief, from first to last + On _fast_-days people of all ranks are _loose_. + + + + + NONSENSE VERSES + + Lazy-bones, lazy-bones, wake up, and peep! + The cat's in the cupboard, your mother's asleep. + There you sit snoring, forgetting her ills; + Who is to give her her Bolus and Pills? + Twenty fine Angels must come into town, + All for to help you to make your new gown: + Dainty AERIAL Spinsters, and Singers; + Aren't you ashamed to employ such white fingers? + Delicate hands, unaccustom'd to reels, + To set 'em a working a poor body's wheels? + Why they came down is to me all a riddle, + And left HALLELUJAH broke off in the middle: + Jove's Court, and the Presence angelical, cut-- + To eke out the work of a lazy young slut. + Angel-duck, Angel-duck, winged, and silly, + Pouring a watering-pot over a lily, + Gardener gratuitous, careless of pelf, + Leave her to water her lily herself, + Or to neglect it to death if she chuse it: + Remember the loss is her own, if she lose it. + + + ON WAWD + + _(Of the East India House)_ + + What Wawd knows, God knows; + But God knows _what_ Wawd knows. + + + + * * * * * + + + + SIX EPITAPHS ON ENSIGN PEACOCK + + (1799) + + + MARMOR LOQUITUR + + He lies a Volunteer so fine, + Who died of a decline, + As you or I, may do one day; + Reader, think of this, I pray; + And I humbly hope you'll drop a tear + For my poor Royal Volunteer. + He was as brave as brave could be, + Nobody was so brave as he; + He would have died in Honor's bed, + Only he died at home instead. + Well may the Royal Regiment swear, + They never had such a Volunteer. + But whatsoever they may say, + Death is a man that will have his way: + Tho' he was but an ensign in this world of pain; + In the next we hope he'll be a captain. + And without meaning to make any reflection on his mentals, + He begg'd to be buried in regimentals. + + + ON TIMOTHY WAGSTAFF + + Here lies the body of Timothy Wagstaff, + Who was once as tall and as straight as a flagstaff; + But now that he's gone to another world, + His staff is broken and his flag is furled. + + + ON CAPTAIN STURMS + + Here lieth the body of Captain Sturms, + Once "food for powder," now for worms, + At the battle of Meida he lost his legs, + And stumped about on wooden pegs. + Naught cares he now for such worthless things, + He was borne to Heaven on angels' wings. + + + ON MARGARET DIX + + _(Born on February 29)_ + + _Ci git_ the remains of Margaret Dix, + Who was young in old age I ween, + Though Envy with Malice cried "seventy-six," + The Graces declared her "nineteen." + + + ON ONESIMUS DRAKE + + To the memory of Dr. Onesimus Drake, + Who forced good people his drugs to take-- + No wonder his patients were oft on the rack + For this "duck of a man" was a terrible quack. + + + ON MATTHEW DAY + + Beneath this slab lies Matthew Day, + If his body had not been snatched away + To be by Science dissected; + Should it have gone, one thing is clear: + His soul the last trump is sure to hear, + And thus be resurrected. + + + + * * * * * + + + + TIME AND ETERNITY + + Where the soul drinks of misery's power, + Each moment seems a lengthened hour; + But when bright joy illumes the mind, + Time passes as the fleetest wind.-- + How to a wicked soul must be + Whole ages of eternity? + + + + + FROM THE LATIN + + As swallows shrink before the wintry blast, + And gladly seek a more congenial soil, + So flatterers halt when fortune's lure is past, + And basely court some richer lordling's smile. + + + + + SATAN IN SEARCH OF A WIFE + + _With the Whole Process of his Courtship + and Marriage, and who Danced at the Wedding + + By an Eye Witness_ + + (1831) + + DEDICATION + + To delicate bosoms, that have sighed over the _Loves of the Angels_, + this Poem is with tenderest regard consecrated. It can be no offence + to you, dear Ladies, that the author has endeavoured to extend the + dominion of your darling passion; to shew Love triumphant in places, + to which his advent has been never yet suspected. If one Cecilia + drew an Angel down, another may have leave to attract a Spirit + upwards; which, I am sure, was the most desperate adventure of the + two. Wonder not at the inferior condition of the agent; for, if King + Cophetua wooed a Beggar Maid, a greater king need not scorn to + confess the attractions of a fair Tailor's daughter. The more + disproportionate the rank, the more signal is the glory of your sex. + Like that of Hecate, a triple empire is now confessed your own. Nor + Heaven, nor Earth, nor deepest tracts of Erebus, as Milton hath it, + have power to resist your sway. I congratulate your last victory. + You have fairly made an Honest Man of the Old One; and, if your + conquest is late, the success must be salutary. The new Benedict has + employment enough on his hands to desist from dabbling with the + affairs of poor mortals; he may fairly leave human nature to + herself; and we may sleep for one while at least secure from the + attacks of this hitherto restless Old Bachelor. It remains to be + seen, whether the world will be much benefited by the change in his + condition. + + + + + PART THE FIRST + + I + + The Devil was sick and queasy of late, + And his sleep and his appetite fail'd him; + His ears they hung down, and his tail it was clapp'd + Between his poor hoofs, like a dog that's been rapp'd-- + None knew what the devil ail'd him. + + + II + + He tumbled and toss'd on his mattress o' nights, + That was fit for a fiend's disportal; + For 'twas made of the finest of thistles and thorn, + Which Alecto herself had gather'd in scorn + Of the best down beds that are mortal. + + + III + + His giantly chest in earthquakes heaved, + With groanings corresponding; + And mincing and few were the words he spoke, + While a sigh, like some delicate whirlwind, broke + From a heart that seem'd desponding. + + + IV + + Now the Devil an Old Wife had for his Dam, + I think none e'er was older: + Her years--old Parr's were nothing to them; + And a chicken to her was Methusalem, + You'd say, could you behold her. + + + V + + She remember'd Chaos a little child, + Strumming upon hand organs; + At the birth of Old Night a gossip she sat, + The ancientest there, and was godmother at + The christening of the Gorgons. + + + VI + + Her bones peep'd through a rhinoceros' skin, + Like a mummy's through its cerement; + But she had a mother's heart, and guess'd + What pinch'd her son; whom she thus address'd + In terms that bespoke endearment. + + + VII + + "What ails my Nicky, my darling Imp, + My Lucifer bright, my Beelze? + My Pig, my Pug-with-a-curly-tail, + You are not well. Can a mother fail + To see _that_ which all Hell see?" + + + VIII + + "O Mother dear, I am dying, I fear; + Prepare the yew, and the willow, + And the cypress black: for I get no ease + By day or by night for the cursed fleas, + That skip about my pillow." + + + IX + + "Your pillow is clean, and your pillow-beer, + For I wash'd 'em in Styx last night, son, + And your blankets both, and dried them upon + The brimstony banks of Acheron-- + It is not the _fleas_ that bite, son." + + + X + + "O I perish of cold these bitter sharp nights, + The damp like an ague ferrets; + The ice and the frost hath shot into the bone; + And I care not greatly to sleep alone + O! nights--for the fear of Spirits." + + + XI + + "The weather is warm, my own sweet boy, + And the nights are close and stifling; + And for fearing of Spirits, you cowardly Elf-- + Have you quite forgot you're a Spirit yourself? + Come, come, I see you are trifling. + + + XII + + "I wish my Nicky is not in love"-- + "O mother, you have nick't it"-- + And he turn'd his head aside with a blush-- + Not red hot pokers, or crimson plush, + Could half so deep have prick'd it. + + + XIII + + "These twenty thousand good years or more," + Quoth he, "on this burning shingle + I have led a lonesome Bachelor's life, + Nor known the comfort of babe or wife-- + 'Tis a long--time to live single." + + + XIV + + Quoth she, "If a wife is all you want, + I shall quickly dance at your wedding. + I am dry nurse, you know, to the Female Ghosts "-- + And she call'd up her charge, and they came in hosts + To do the old Beldam's bidding: + + + XV + + All who in their lives had been servants of sin-- + Adulteress, Wench, Virago-- + And Murd'resses old that had pointed the knife + Against a husband's or father's life, + Each one a She Iago. + + + XVI + + First Jezebel came--no need of paint, + Or dressing, to make her charming; + For the blood of the old prophetical race + Had heighten'd the natural flush of her face + To a pitch 'bove rouge or carmine. + + + XVII + + Semiramis there low tendered herself, + With all Babel for a dowry: + With Helen, the flower and the bane of Greece-- + And bloody Medea next offer'd her fleece, + That was of Hell the Houri. + + + XVIII + + Clytemnestra, with Joan of Naples, put in; + Cleopatra, by Anthony quicken'd; + Jocasta, that married where she should not, + Came hand in hand with the Daughters of Lot; + Till the Devil was fairly sicken'd. + + + XIX + + For the Devil himself, a dev'l as he is, + Disapproves unequal matches. + "O Mother," he cried, "dispatch them hence! + No Spirit--I speak it without offence-- + Shall have me in her hatches." + + + XX + + With a wave of her wand they all were gone! + And now came out the slaughter: + "'Tis none of these that can serve my turn; + For a wife of flesh and blood I burn-- + I'm in love with a Taylor's Daughter. + + + XXI + + "'Tis she must heal the wounds that she made, + 'Tis she must be my physician. + O parent mild, stand not my foe"-- + For his mother had whisper'd something low + About "matching beneath his condition."-- + + + XXII + + "And then we must get paternal consent, + Or an unblest match may vex ye"-- + "Her father is dead; I fetched him away. + In the midst of his goose, last Michaelmas day-- + He died of an apoplexy. + + + XXIII + + "His daughter is fair, and an only heir-- + With her I long to tether-- + He has left her his _hell_, and all that he had; + The estates are contiguous, and I shall be mad, + 'Till we lay our two Hells together." + + + XXIV + + "But how do you know the fair maid's mind?"-- + Quoth he, "Her loss was but recent; + And I could not speak _my_ mind you know, + Just when I was fetching her father below-- + It would have been hardly decent. + + + XXV + + "But a leer from her eye, where Cupids lie, + Of love gave proof apparent; + And, from something she dropp'd, I shrewdly ween'd, + In her heart she judged, that a _living Fiend_ + Was better than a _dead Parent_. + + + XXVI + + "But the time is short; and suitors may come, + While I stand here reporting; + Then make your son a bit of a Beau, + And give me your blessing, before I go + To the other world a courting." + + + XXVII + + "But what will you do with your horns, my son? + And that tail--fair maids will mock it--" + "My tail I will dock--and as for the horn, + Like husbands above I think no scorn + To carry it in my pocket." + + + XXVIII + + "But what will you do with your feet, my son?" + "Here are stockings fairly woven: + My hoofs I will hide in silken hose; + And cinnamon-sweet are my pettitoes-- + Because, you know, they are _cloven_." + + + XXIX + + "Then take a blessing, my darling Son," + Quoth she, and kiss'd him civil-- + Then his neckcloth she tied; and when he was drest + From top to toe in his Sunday's best, + He appear'd a comely devil. + + + XXX + + So his leave he took:--but how he fared + In his courtship--barring failures-- + In a Second Part you shall read it soon, + In a bran new song, to be sung to the tune + Of the "Devil among the Tailors." + + + + * * * * * + + + + THE SECOND PART + + _Containing the Courtship, and the Wedding_ + + + I + + Who is She that by night from her balcony looks + On a garden, where cabbage is springing? + 'Tis the Tailor's fair Lass, that we told of above; + She muses by moonlight on her True Love; + So sharp is Cupid's stinging. + + + II + + She has caught a glimpse of the Prince of the Air + In his Luciferian splendour, + And away with her coyness and maiden reserve!-- + For none but the Devil her turn will serve, + Her sorrows else will end her. + + + III + + She saw when he fetch'd her father away, + And the sight no whit did shake her; + For the Devil may sure with his own make free-- + And "it saves besides," quoth merrily she, + "The expence of an Undertaker.-- + + + IV + + "Then come, my Satan, my darling Sin, + Return to my arms, my Hell Beau; + My Prince of Darkness, my crow-black Dove"-- + And she scarce had spoke, when her own True Love + Was kneeling at her elbow! + + + V + + But she wist not at first that this was He, + That had raised such a boiling passion; + For his old costume he had laid aside, + And was come to court a mortal bride + In a coat-and-waistcoat fashion. + + + VI + + She miss'd his large horns, and she miss'd his fair tail, + That had hung so retrospective; + And his raven plumes, and some other marks + Regarding his feet, that had left their sparks + In a mind but too susceptive: + + + VII + + And she held in scorn that a mortal born + Should the Prince of Spirits rival, + To clamber at midnight her garden fence-- + For she knew not else by what pretence + To account for his arrival. + + + VIII + + "What thief art thou," quoth she, "in the dark + That stumblest here presumptuous? + Some Irish Adventurer I take you to be-- + A Foreigner, from your garb I see, + Which besides is not over sumptuous." + + + IX + + Then Satan, awhile dissembling his rank, + A piece of amorous fun tries: + Quoth he, "I'm a Netherlander born; + Fair Virgin, receive not my suit with scorn; + I'm a Prince in the Low Countries-- + + + X + + "Though I travel _incog_. From the Land of Fog + And Mist I am come to proffer + My crown and my sceptre to lay at your feet; + It is not every day in the week you may meet, + Fair Maid, with a Prince's offer." + + + XI + + "Your crown and your sceptre I like full well, + They tempt a poor maiden's pride, Sir; + But your lands and possessions--excuse if I'm rude-- + Are too far in a Northerly latitude + For me to become your Bride, Sir. + + + XII + + "In that aguish clime I should catch my death, + Being but a raw new comer"-- + Quoth he, "We have plenty of fuel stout; + And the fires, which I kindle, never go out + By winter, nor yet by summer. + + + XIII + + "I am Prince of Hell, and Lord Paramount + Over Monarchs there abiding. + My Groom of the Stables is Nimrod old; + And Nebuchadnazor my stirrups must hold, + When I go out a riding. + + + XIV + + "To spare your blushes, and maiden fears, + I resorted to these inventions-- + But, Imposture, begone; and avaunt, Disguise!" + And the Devil began to swell and rise + To his own diabolic dimensions. + + + XV + + Twin horns from his forehead shot up to the moon, + Like a branching stag in Arden; + Dusk wings through his shoulders with eagle's strength + Push'd out; and his train lay floundering in length + An acre beyond the garden.-- + + + XVI + + To tender hearts I have framed my lay-- + Judge ye, all love-sick Maidens, + When the virgin saw in the soft moonlight, + In his proper proportions, her own true knight, + If she needed long persuadings. + + + XVII + + Yet a maidenly modesty kept her back, + As her sex's art had taught her: + For "the biggest Fortunes," quoth she, "in the land-- + Are not worthy"--then blush'd--"of your Highness's hand-- + Much less a poor Taylor's daughter. + + + XVIII + + "There's the two Miss Crockfords are single still, + For whom great suitors hunger; + And their Father's hell is much larger than mine"-- + Quoth the Devil, "I've no such ambitious design, + For their Dad is an old Fishmonger; + + + XIX + + "And I cannot endure the smell of fish-- + I have taken an anti-bias + To their livers, especially since the day + That the Angel smoked my cousin away + From the chaste spouse of Tobias. + + + XX + + "Had my amorous kinsman much longer staid, + The perfume would have seal'd his obit; + For he had a nicer nose than the wench, + Who cared not a pin for the smother and stench, + In the arms of the Son of Tobit." + + + XXI + + "I have read it," quoth she, "in Apocryphal Writ"-- + And the Devil stoop'd down, and kiss'd her; + Not Jove himself, when he courted in flame, + On Semele's lips, the love-scorch'd Dame, + Impress'd such a burning blister. + + + XXII + + The fire through her bones and her vitals shot-- + "O, I yield, my winsome marrow-- + I am thine for life"--and black thunders roll'd-- + And she sank in his arms through the garden mould, + With the speed of a red-hot arrow. + + + XXIII + + Merrily, merrily, ring the bells + From each Pandemonian steeple; + For the Devil hath gotten his beautiful Bride, + And a Wedding Dinner he will provide, + To feast all kinds of people. + + + XXIV + + Fat bulls of Basan are roasted whole, + Of the breed that ran at David; + With the flesh of goats, on the sinister side, + That shall stand apart, when the world is tried; + Fit meat for souls unsaved! + + + XXV + + The fowl from the spit were the Harpies' brood, + Which the bard sang near Cremona, + With a garnish of bats in their leathern wings imp't; + And the fish was--two delicate slices crimp't, + Of the whale that swallow'd Jonah. + + + XXVI + + Then the goblets were crown'd, and a health went round + To the Bride, in a wine like scarlet; + No earthly vintage so deeply paints, + For 'twas dash'd with a tinge from the blood of the Saints + By the Babylonian Harlot. + + + XXVII + + No Hebe fair stood Cup Bearer there, + The guests were their own skinkers; + But Bishop Judas first blest the can, + Who is of all Hell Metropolitan, + And kiss'd it to all the drinkers. + + + XXVIII + + The feast being ended, to dancing they went, + To a music that did produce a + Most dissonant sound, while a hellish glee + Was sung in parts by the Furies Three; + And the Devil took out Medusa. + + + XXIX + + But the best of the sport was to hear his old Dam, + Set up her shrill forlorn pipe-- + How the wither'd Beldam hobbled about, + And put the rest of the company out-- + For she needs must try a horn-pipe. + + + XXX + + But the heat, and the press, and the noise, and the din, + Were so great, that, howe'er unwilling, + Our Reporter no longer was able to stay, + But came in his own defence away, + And left the Bride quadrilling. + + + + + PROLOGUES AND EPILOGUES + + + EPILOGUE TO GODWIN'S TRAGEDY OF "ANTONIO" + + (1800) + + Ladies, ye've seen how Guzman's consort died, + Poor victim of a Spaniard brother's pride, + When Spanish honour through the world was blown, + And Spanish beauty for the best was known[19]. + In that romantic, unenlighten'd time, + A _breach of promise_[20] was a sort of crime-- + Which of you handsome English ladies here, + But deem the penance bloody and severe? + A whimsical old Saragossa[21] fashion, + That a dead father's dying inclination, + Should _live_ to thwart a living daughter's passion[22], + Unjustly on the sex _we_[23] men exclaim, + Rail at _your_[24] vices,--and commit the same;-- + Man is a promise-breaker from the womb, + And goes a promise-breaker to the tomb-- + What need we instance here the lover's vow, + The sick man's purpose, or the great man's bow[25]? + The truth by few examples best is shown-- + Instead of many which are better known, + Take poor Jack Incident, that's dead and gone. + Jack, of dramatic genius justly vain, + Purchased a renter's share at Drury-lane; + A prudent man in every other matter, + Known at his club-room for an honest hatter; + Humane and courteous, led a civil life, + And has been seldom known to beat his wife; + But Jack is now grown quite another man, + Frequents the green-room, knows the plot and plan + Of each new piece, + And has been seen to talk with Sheridan! + In at the play-house just at six he pops, + And never quits it till the curtain drops, + Is never absent on the _author's night_, + Knows actresses and actors too--by sight; + So humble, that with Suett he'll confer, + Or take a pipe with plain Jack Bannister; + Nay, with an author has been known so free, + He once suggested a catastrophe-- + In short, John dabbled till his head was turn'd: + His wife remonstrated, his neighbours mourn'd, + His customers were dropping off apace, + And Jack's affairs began to wear a piteous face. + + One night his wife began a curtain lecture; + 'My dearest Johnny, husband, spouse, protector, + Take pity on your helpless babes and me, + Save us from ruin, you from bankruptcy-- + Look to your business, leave these cursed plays, + And try again your old industrious ways.' + + Jack, who was always scared at the Gazette, + And had some bits of scull uninjured yet, + Promised amendment, vow'd his wife spake reason, + 'He would not see another play that season--' + + Three stubborn fortnights Jack his promise kept, + Was late and early in his shop, eat, slept, + And walk'd and talk'd, like ordinary men; + No _wit_, but John the hatter once again-- + Visits his club: when lo! one _fatal night_ + His wife with horror view'd the well-known sight-- + John's _hat, wig, snuff-box_--well she knew his tricks-- + And Jack decamping at the hour of six. + Just at the counter's edge a playbill lay, + Announcing that 'Pizarro' was the play-- + 'O Johnny, Johnny, this is your old doing.' + Quoth Jack, 'Why what the devil storm's a-brewing? + About a harmless play why all this fright? + I'll go and see it, if it's but for spite-- + Zounds, woman! Nelson's[26] to be there to-night.' + + +[Footnote 19: Four _easy_ lines.] + +[Footnote 20: For which the _heroine died_.] + +[Footnote 21: In _Spain_!!] + +[Footnote 22: Two _neat_ lines.] + +[Footnote 23: Or _you_.] + +[Footnote 24: Or _our_, as _they_ have altered it.] + +[Footnote 25: Antithesis!!] + +[Footnote 26: "A good clap-trap. Nelson has exhibited two or three times +at both theatres--and advertised himself."] + + + + + PROLOGUE TO GODWIN'S TRAGEDY OF "FAULKENER" + + (1807) + + An author who has given you all delight, + Furnish'd the tale our stage presents to-night. + Some of our earliest tears He taught to steal + Down our young cheeks, and forc'd us first to feel. + To solitary shores whole years confin'd, + Who has not read how pensive _Crusoe_ pin'd? + Who, now grown old, that did not once admire + His goat, his parrot, his uncouth attire, + The stick, due-notch'd, that told each tedious day + That in the lonely island wore away? + Who has not shudder'd, where he stands aghast + At sight of human footsteps in the waste? + Or joy'd not, when his trembling hands unbind + Thee, _Friday_, gentlest of the savage kind? + The genius who conceiv'd that magic tale + Was skill'd by native pathos to prevail. + His stories, though rough-drawn, and fram'd in haste, + Had that which pleas'd our homely grandsires' taste. + His was a various pen, that freely rov'd + Into all subjects, was in most approv'd. + Whate'er the theme, his ready Muse obey'd-- + Love, courtship, politics, religion, trade-- + Gifted alike to shine in every sphere, + Nov'list, historian, poet, pamphleteer. + In some blest interval of party-strife, + He drew a striking sketch from private life, + Whose moving scenes of intricate distress + We try to-night in a dramatic dress: + A real story of domestic woe, + That asks no aid from music, verse, or show, + But trusts to truth, to nature, and _Defoe._ + + + + + EPILOGUE TO HENRY SIDDONS' FARCE, "TIME'S A TELL-TALE" + + (1807) + + + Bound for the port of matrimonial bliss, + Ere I hoist sail, I hold it not amiss, + (Since prosp'rous ends ask prudent introductions) + To take a slight peep at my written instructions. + There's nothing like determining in time + All questions marital or maritime. + + In all seas, straits, gulphs, ports, havens, lands, creeks. + Oh! Here it begins. + "Season, spring, wind standing at point Desire-- + The good ship Matrimony--Commander. Blanford, Esq. + + + Art. I. + + "The captain that has the command of her, + Or in his absence, the acting officer, + To see her planks are sound, her timbers tight."-- + That acting officer I don't relish quite, + No, as I hope to tack another verse on, + I'll do those duties in my proper person. + + + Art. II. + + "All mutinies to be suppress'd at first." + That's a good caution to prevent the worst. + + + Art. III. + + "That she be properly victual'd, mann'd and stor'd, + To see no foreigners are got aboard." + That's rather difficult. Do what we can, + A vessel sometimes may mistake her man. + The safest way in such a parlous doubt, + Is steady watch and keep a sharp look out. + + + Art. IV. + + "Whereas their Lords Commissioners (the church) + Do strictly authorise the right of search: + As always practis'd--you're to understand + By these what articles are contraband; + Guns, mortars, pistols, halberts, swords, pikes, lances, + Ball, powder, shot, and the appurtenances. + Videlicet--whatever can be sent + To give the enemy encouragement. + Ogles are small shot (so the instruction runs), + Touches hand grenades, and squeezes rifle guns." + + + Art. V. + + "That no free-bottom'd neutral waiting maid + Presume to exercise the carrying trade: + The prohibition here contained extends + To all commerce cover'd by the name of Friends. + Heaven speed the good ship well"--and so it ends. + Oh with such wholesome jealousies as these + May Albion cherish his old spouse the seas; + Keep over her a husband's firm command, + Not with too rigid nor too lax a hand. + Be gently patient to her swells and throws + When big with safeties to himself she goes; + Nor while she clips him in a fast embrace, + Stand for some female frowns upon her face. + But tell the rival world--and tell in Thunder, + Whom Nature joined, none ere shall put asunder. + + + + + PROLOGUE TO COLERIDGE'S TRAGEDY OF "REMORSE" + + (1813) + + + There are, I am told, who sharply criticise + Our modern theatres' unwieldy size. + We players shall scarce plead guilty to that charge, + Who think a house can never be too large: + Griev'd when a rant, that's worth a nation's ear, + Shakes some prescrib'd Lyceum's petty sphere; + And pleased to mark the grin from space to space + Spread epidemic o'er a town's broad face.-- + O might old Betterton or Booth return + To view our structures from their silent urn, + Could Quin come stalking from Elysian glades, + Or Garrick get a day-rule from the shades-- + Where now, perhaps, in mirth which Spirits approve, + He imitates the ways of men above, + And apes the actions of our upper coast, + As in his days of flesh he play'd the ghost:-- + How might they bless our ampler scope to please, + And hate their own old shrunk up audiences.-- + Their houses yet were palaces to those, + Which Ben and Fletcher for their triumphs chose. + Shakspeare, who wish'd a kingdom for a stage, } + Like giant pent in disproportion'd cage, } + Mourn'd his contracted strengths and crippled rage. } + He who could tame his vast ambition down + To please some scatter'd gleanings of a town, + And, if some hundred auditors supplied + Their meagre meed of claps, was satisfied, + How had he felt, when that dread curse of Lear's + Had burst tremendous on a thousand ears, + While deep-struck wonder from applauding bands + Return'd the tribute of as many hands! + Rude were his guests; he never made his bow + To such an audience as salutes us now. + He lack'd the balm of labor, female praise. + Few Ladies in his time frequented plays, + Or came to see a youth with aukward art + And shrill sharp pipe burlesque the woman's part. + The very use, since so essential grown, + Of painted scenes, was to his stage unknown. + The air-blest castle, round whose wholesome crest, + The martlet, guest of summer, chose her nest-- + The forest walks of Arden's fair domain, + Where Jaques fed his solitary vein. + No pencil's aid as yet had dared supply, + Seen only by the intellectual eye. + Those scenic helps, denied to Shakspeare's page, + Our Author owes to a more liberal age. + Nor pomp nor circumstance are wanting here; + 'Tis for himself alone that he must fear. + Yet shall remembrance cherish the just pride, + That (be the laurel granted or denied) + He first essay'd in this distinguish'd fane, + Severer muses and a tragic strain. + + + + + EPILOGUE TO KENNEY'S FARCE, "DEBTOR AND CREDITOR" + + (1814) + + + _Spoken by Mr. Liston and Mr. Emery in character_ + + + _Gosling._ False world---- + + _Sampson._ You're bit, Sir. + + + _Gosling_. Boor! what's that to you? + With Love's soft sorrows what hast thou to do? + 'Tis _here_ for consolation I must look. + (_Takes out his pocket book_). + + _Sampson_. Nay, Sir, don't put us down in your black book. + + _Gosling_. All Helicon is here. + + _Sampson_. All Hell. + + _Gosling_. You Clod! + Did'st never hear of the Pierian God, + And the Nine Virgins on the Sacred Hill? + + _Sampson_. Nine Virgins!--Sure! + + _Gosling_. I have them all at will. + + _Sampson_. If Miss fight shy, then-- + + _Gosling_. And my suit decline. + + _Sampson_. You'll make a dash at them. + + _Gosling_. I'll tip all nine. + + _Sampson_. What, wed 'em, Sir? + + _Gosling_. O, no--that thought I banish. + I woo--not wed; they never bring the Spanish. + Their favours I pursue, and court the bays. + + _Sampson_. Mayhap, you're one of them that write the plays? + + _Gosling_. Bumpkin! + + _Sampson_. I'm told the public's well-nigh crammed + With such like stuff. + + _Gosling_. The public may be damned. + + _Sampson_. They ha'nt damned you? (_inquisitively_). + + _Gosling_. This fellow's wond'rous shrewd! + I'd tell him if I thought he'd not be rude. + Once in my greener years, I wrote a piece. + + _Sampson_. Aye, so did I--at school like-- + + _Gosling_. Booby, cease! + I mean a Play. + + _Sampson_. Oh! + + _Gosling_. And to crown my joys, + 'Twas acted-- + + _Sampson_. Well, and how-- + + _Gosling_. It made a noise, + A kind of mingled--(_as if musing_). + + _Sampson_. Aye, describe it, try. + + _Gosling_. Like--Were you ever in the pillory? + + _Sampson_. No, Sir, I thank ye, no such kind of game. + + _Gosling_. Bate but the eggs, and it was much the same. + Shouts, clamours, laughs, and a peculiar sound, + 'Like, like-- + + _Sampson_. Like geese, I warrant, in a pound. + I like this mainly! + + _Gosling_. Some began to cough, + Some cried-- + + _Sampson_. Go on-- + + _Gosling_. A few--and some--"Go off!" + I can't suppress it. Gods! I hear it now; + It was in fact a most confounded row. + Dire was the din, as when some storm confounds + Earth, sea, and sky, with all terrific sounds. + Not hungry lions sent forth notes more strange, + Not bulls and bears, that have been hoaxed on 'Change. + + _Sampson_. Exeter 'Change you mean--I've seen they bears. + + _Gosling_. The beasts I mean are far less tame than theirs. + Change Alley Bruins, nattier though their dress, + Might at Polito's study politesse. + Brief let me be. My gentle Sampson, pray, + Fight Larry Whack, but never write a play. + + _Sampson_. I won't, Sir: and these christian souls petition, + To spare all wretched folks in such condition. + + + + + EPILOGUE TO AN AMATEUR PERFORMANCE OF "RICHARD II." + + (1824) + + Of all that act, the hardest task is theirs, + Who, bred no Players, play at being Players; + Copy the shrug--in Kemble once approved;-- + Mere mimics' mimics--nature twice removed. + Shades of a shadow! who but must have seen + The stage-struck hero, in some swelling scene + Aspiring to be Lear--stumble on Kean? + The admired actor's faults our steps betray,-- + No less his very beauties lead astray! + + In "sad civility" once Garrick sate + To see a Play, mangled in form and state; + Plebeian Shakspeare must the words supply,-- + The actors all were Fools--of Quality. + The scenes--the dresses--were above rebuke;-- + Scarce a Performer there below a Duke. + He sate, and mused how in his Shakspeare's mind + The idea of old Nobility enshrined + Should thence a grace and a refinement have + Which passed these living Nobles to conceive,-- + Who with such apish, base gesticulation, + Remnants of starts, and dregs of playhouse passion, + So foul belied their great forefathers' fashion! + He saw--and true Nobility confessed + Less in the high-born blood, than lowly poet's breast. + + If Lords enacting Lords sometimes may fail, + What gentle plea, Spectators, can avail + For wight of low degree who dares to stir + The long-raked ashes of old Lancaster, + And on his nothing-martial front to set + Of warlike Gaunt the lofty burgonet? + For who shall that Plantagenet display, + Majestical in sickness and decay? + Or paint the shower of passions fierce and thick + On Richard's head--that Royal Splenetic? + + Your pardon, not your plaudits, then we claim + If we've come short, where Garrick had been tame! + + + + + PROLOGUE TO SHERIDAN KNOWLES' COMEDY, "THE WIFE" + + (1833) + + _Untoward_ fate no luckless wight invades + More sorely than the Man who drives _two trades_; + Like Esop's bat, between two natures placed, + Scowl'd at by _mice_, among the _birds_ disgraced. + Our author thus, of two-fold fame exactor, + Is doubly scouted,--both as Bard, and Actor! + Wanting in haste a Prologue, he applied + To three poetic friends; was thrice denied. + Each glared on him with supercilious glance, + As on a Poor Relation met by chance; + And one was heard, with more repulsive air, + To mutter "Vagabond," "Rogue," "Strolling Player!" + A poet once, he found--and look'd aghast-- + By turning actor, he had lost his _caste_. + The verse patch'd up at length--with like ill fortune + His friends behind the scenes he did importune + To speak his lines. He found them all fight shy, + Nodding their heads in cool civility. + "There service in the Drama was enough, + The poet might recite the poet's stuff!" + The rogues--they like him hugely--but it stung 'em, + Somehow--to think a Bard had got among 'em. + Their mind made up--no earthly pleading shook it, + In pure compassion 'till I undertook it. + Disown'd by Poets, and by Actors too, + Dear Patrons of both arts, he turns to you! + If in your hearts some tender feelings dwell + From sweet Virginia, or heroic Tell: + If in the scenes which follow you can trace + What once has pleased you--an unbidden grace-- + A touch of nature's work--an awkward start + Or ebullition of an Irish heart-- + Cry, clap, commend it! If you like them not, + Your former favours cannot be forgot. + Condemn them--damn them--hiss them, if you will-- + Their author is your grateful servant still! + + + + + EPILOGUE TO SHERIDAN KNOWLES' COMEDY, "THE WIFE" + + (1833) + + + When first our Bard his simple will express'd, + That I should in his Heroine's robes be dress'd, + My fears were with my vanity at strife, + How I could act that untried part--a "Wife." + But Fancy to the Grison hills me drew, + Where Mariana like a wild flower grew, + Nursing her garden-kindred: so far I + Liked her condition, willing to comply + With that sweet single life: when, with a cranch, + Down came that thundering, crashing avalanche, + Startling my mountain-project! "Take this spade," + Said Fancy then; "dig low, adventurous Maid, + For hidden wealth." I did: and, Ladies, lo! } + Was e'er romantic female's fortune so, } + To dig a life-warm lover from the--snow? } + + A Wife and Princess see me next, beset + With subtle toils, in an Italian net; + While knavish Courtiers, stung with rage or fear, + Distill'd lip-poison in a husband's ear. + I ponder'd on the boiling Southern vein; + Racks, cords, stilettos, rush'd upon my brain! + By poor, good, weak Antonio, too disowned-- + I dream'd each night, I should be Desdemona'd: + And, being in Mantua, thought upon the shop, + Whence fair Verona's youth his breath did stop: + And what if Leonardo, in foul scorn, + Some lean Apothecary should suborn + To take my hated life? A "tortoise" hung + Before my eyes, and in my ears scaled "alligators" rung. + But _my_ Othello, to his vows more zealous-- + Twenty Iagos could not make _him_ jealous! + + New raised to reputation, and to life-- } + At your commands behold me, without strife, } + Well-pleased, and ready to repeat--"The Wife." } + + + + + * * * * * + + + + JOHN WOODVIL + + A TRAGEDY + + (1798-1802. _Text of_ 1818) + + + * * * * * + + + CHARACTERS + + SIR WALTER WOODVIL. + + JOHN. } + SIMON. } _his sons._ + + LOVEL. } + GRAY. } _Pretended friends of John._ + + SANDFORD. _Sir Walter's old steward._ + MARGARET. _Orphan ward of Sir Walter._ + FOUR GENTLEMEN. _John's riotous companions._ + SERVANTS. + + +SCENE--_for the most part at Sir Walter's mansion +in_ DEVONSHIRE; _at other times in the forest of_ +SHERWOOD. + +TIME--_soon after the_ RESTORATION. + + + * * * * * + + +ACT THE FIRST + + +SCENE.--_A Servants' Apartment in Woodvil Hall._ + + Servants drinking--_Time, the morning._ + + + * * * * * + + + A Song by DANIEL + + _"When the King enjoys his own again."_ + + +PETER +A delicate song. Where did'st learn it, fellow? + +DANIEL +Even there, where thou learnest thy oaths and thy politics--at our +master's table.--Where else should a serving-man pick up his poor +accomplishments? + + +MARTIN +Well spoken, Daniel. O rare Daniel!--his oaths and his politics! +excellent! + + +FRANCIS +And where did'st pick up thy knavery, Daniel? + + +PETER +That came to him by inheritance. His family have supplied the shire of +Devon, time out of mind, with good thieves and bad serving-men. All of +his race have come into the world without their conscience. + + +MARTIN +Good thieves, and bad serving-men! Better and better. I marvel what +Daniel hath got to say in reply. + + +DANIEL +I marvel more when thou wilt say any thing to the purpose, thou shallow +serving-man, whose swiftest conceit carries thee no higher than to +apprehend with difficulty the stale jests of us thy compeers. When was't +ever known to club thy own particular jest among us? + + +MARTIN +Most unkind Daniel, to speak such biting things of me! + + +FRANCIS +See--if he hath not brought tears into the poor fellow's eyes with the +saltness of his rebuke. + + +DANIEL +No offence, brother Martin--I meant none. 'Tis true, Heaven gives gifts, +and with-holds them. It has been pleased to bestow upon me a nimble +invention to the manufacture of a jest; and upon thee, Martin, an +indifferent bad capacity to understand my meaning. + + +MARTIN +Is that all? I am content. Here's my hand. + +FRANCIS +Well, I like a little innocent mirth myself, but never could endure +bawdry. + +DANIEL +_Quot homines tot sententiae._ + +MARTIN +And what is that? + +DANIEL +'Tis Greek, and argues difference of opinion. + +MARTIN +I hope there is none between us. + +DANIEL +Here's to thee, brother Martin. (_Drinks._) + +MARTIN +And to thee, Daniel. (_Drinks._) + +FRANCIS +And to thee, Peter. (_Drinks._) + +PETER +Thank you, Francis. And here's to thee. (_Drinks._) + +MARTIN +I shall be fuddled anon. + +DANIEL +And drunkenness I hold to be a very despicable vice. + +ALL +O! a shocking vice. (_They drink round._) + +PETER +In as much as it taketh away the understanding. + +DANIEL +And makes the eyes red. + +PETER +And the tongue to stammer. + +DANIEL +And to blab out secrets. + +(_During this conversation they continue drinking._) + +PETER +Some men do not know an enemy from a friend when they are drunk. + +DANIEL +Certainly sobriety is the health of the soul. + +MARTIN +Now I know I am going to be drunk. + +DANIEL +How can'st tell, dry-bones? + +MARTIN +Because I begin to be melancholy. That's always a sign. + +FRANCIS +Take care of Martin, he'll topple off his seat else. + +(_Martin drops asleep._) + +PETER +Times are greatly altered, since young master took upon himself the +government of this household. + +ALL +Greatly altered. + +FRANCIS +I think every thing be altered for the better since His Majesty's +blessed restoration. + +PETER +In Sir Walter's days there was no encouragement given to good +house-keeping. + +ALL +None. + +DANIEL + +For instance, no possibility of getting drunk before two in the +afternoon. + +PETER + +Every man his allowance of ale at breakfast--his quart! + +ALL +A quart!! (_in derision_.) + +DANIEL +Nothing left to our own sweet discretions. + +PETER +Whereby it may appear, we were treated more like beasts than what we +were--discreet and reasonable serving-men. + +ALL +Like beasts. + +MARTIN +(_Opening his eyes_.) Like beasts. + +DANIEL +To sleep, wag-tail! + +FRANCIS +I marvel all this while where the old gentleman has found means to +secrete himself. It seems no man has heard of him since the day of the +King's return. Can any tell why our young master, being favoured by the +court, should not have interest to procure his father's pardon? + +DANIEL +Marry, I think 'tis the obstinacy of the old Knight, that will not be +beholden to the court for his safety. + +MARTIN +Now that is wilful. + +FRANCIS +But can any tell me the place of his concealment? + +PETER +That cannot I; but I have my conjectures. + +DANIEL +Two hundred pounds, as I hear, to the man that shall apprehend him. + +FRANCIS +Well, I have my suspicions. + +PETER +And so have I. + +MARTIN +And I can keep a secret. + +FRANCIS +(_To Peter_.) Warwickshire you mean. (_Aside_.) + +PETER +Perhaps not. + +FRANCIS +Nearer perhaps. + +PETER +I say nothing. + +DANIEL +I hope there is none in this company would be mean enough to betray him. + +ALL +O Lord, surely not. (_They drink to Sir Walter's safety_.) + +FRANCIS +I have often wondered how our master came to be excepted by name in the +late Act of Oblivion. + +DANIEL +Shall I tell the reason? + +ALL +Aye, do. + +DANIEL +'Tis thought he is no great friend to the present happy establishment. + +ALL +O! monstrous! + +PETER +Fellow servants, a thought strikes me.--Do we, or do we not, come under +the penalties of the treason-act, by reason of our being privy to this +man's concealment. + +ALL +Truly a sad consideration. + +_To them enters Sandford suddenly._ + + SANDFORD + You well-fed and unprofitable grooms, + Maintained for state, not use; + You lazy feasters at another's cost, + That eat like maggots into an estate, + And do as little work, + Being indeed but foul excrescences, + And no just parts in a well-order'd family; + You base and rascal imitators, + Who act up to the height your master's vices, + But cannot read his virtues in your bond: + Which of you, as I enter'd, spake of betraying? + Was it you, or you, or, thin-face, was it you? + + MARTIN + Whom does he call thin-face? + + SANDFORD + No prating, loon, but tell me who he was, + That I may brain the villain with my staff, + That seeks Sir Walter's life? + You miserable men, + With minds more slavish than your slave's estate, + Have you that noble bounty so forgot, + Which took you from the looms, and from the ploughs, + Which better had ye follow'd, fed ye, cloth'd ye, + And entertain'd ye in a worthy service, + Where your best wages was the world's repute, + That thus ye seek his life, by whom ye live? + Have you forgot too, + How often in old times + Your drunken mirths have stunn'd day's sober ears, + Carousing full cups to Sir Walter's health?-- + Whom now ye would betray, but that he lies + Out of the reach of your poor treacheries. + This learn from me, + Our master's secret sleeps with trustier tongues, + Than will unlock themselves to carls like you. + Go, get you gone, you knaves. Who stirs? this staff + Shall teach you better manners else. + + ALL + Well, we are going. + + SANDFORD + And quickly too, ye had better, for I see + Young mistress Margaret coming this way. + (_Exeunt all but Sandford._) + + _Enter Margaret, as in a fright, pursued by a Gentleman, + who, seeing Sandford, retires muttering a curse. + Sandford, Margaret._ + + SANDFORD + Good-morrow to my fair mistress. 'Twas a chance + I saw you, lady, so intent was I + On chiding hence these graceless serving-men, + Who cannot break their fast at morning meals + Without debauch and mis-timed riotings. + This house hath been a scene of nothing else + But atheist riot and profane excess, + Since my old master quitted all his rights here. + + MARGARET + Each day I endure fresh insult from the scorn + Of Woodvil's friends, the uncivil jests, + And free discourses, of the dissolute men, + That haunt this mansion, making me their mirth. + + SANDFORD + Does my young master know of these affronts? + + MARGARET + I cannot tell. Perhaps he has not been told. + Perhaps he might have seen them if he would. + I have known him more quick-sighted. Let that pass. + All things seem chang'd, I think. I had a friend, + (I can't but weep to think him alter'd too,) + These things are best forgotten; but I knew + A man, a young man, young, and full of honor, + That would have pick'd a quarrel for a straw, + And fought it out to the extremity, + E'en with the dearest friend he had alive, + On but a bare surmise, a possibility, + That Margaret had suffer'd an affront. + Some are too tame, that were too splenetic once. + + SANDFORD + 'Twere best he should be _told_ of these affronts. + + MARGARET + I am the daughter of his father's friend, + Sir Walter's orphan-ward. + I am not his servant maid, that I should wait + The opportunity of a gracious hearing, + Enquire the times and seasons when to put + My peevish prayer up at young Woodvil's feet, + And sue to him for slow redress, who was + Himself a suitor late to Margaret. + I am somewhat proud: and Woodvil taught me pride. + I was his favourite once, his playfellow in infancy, + And joyful mistress of his youth. + None once so pleasant in his eyes as Margaret. + His conscience, his religion, Margaret was, + His dear heart's confessor, a heart within that heart, + And all dear things summ'd up in her alone. + As Margaret smil'd or frown'd John liv'd or died: + His dress, speech, gesture, studies, friendships, all + Being fashion'd to her liking. + His flatteries taught me first this self-esteem, + His flatteries and caresses, while he loved. + The world esteem'd her happy, who had won + His heart, who won all hearts; + And ladies envied me the love of Woodvil. + + SANDFORD + He doth affect the courtier's life too much, + Whose art is to forget, + And that has wrought this seeming change in him, + That was by nature noble. + 'Tis these court-plagues, that swarm about our house, + Have done the mischief, making his fancy giddy + With images of state, preferment, place, + Tainting his generous spirits with ambition. + + MARGARET + I know not how it is; + A cold protector is John grown to me. + The mistress, and presumptive wife, of Woodvil + Can never stoop so low to supplicate + A man, her equal, to redress those wrongs, + Which he was bound first to prevent; + But which his own neglects have sanction'd rather, + Both sanction'd and provok'd: a mark'd neglect, + And strangeness fast'ning bitter on his love, + His love which long has been upon the wane. + For me, I am determined what to do: + To leave this house this night, and lukewarm John, + And trust for food to the earth and Providence. + + SANDFORD + O lady, have a care + Of these indefinite and spleen-bred resolves. + You know not half the dangers that attend + Upon a life of wand'ring, which your thoughts now, + Feeling the swellings of a lofty anger, + To your abused fancy, as 'tis likely, + Portray without its terrors, painting _lies_ + And representments of fallacious liberty-- + You know not what it is to leave the roof that shelters you. + + MARGARET + I have thought on every possible event, + The dangers and discouragements you speak of, + Even till my woman's heart hath ceas'd to fear them, + And cowardice grows enamour'd of rare accidents. + Nor am I so unfurnish'd, as you think, + Of practicable schemes. + + SANDFORD + Now God forbid; think twice of this, dear lady. + + MARGARET + I pray you spare me, Mr. Sandford, + And once for all believe, nothing can shake my purpose. + + SANDFORD + But what course have you thought on? + + MARGARET + To seek Sir Walter in the forest of Sherwood. + I have letters from young Simon, + Acquainting me with all the circumstances + Of their concealment, place, and manner of life, + And the merry hours they spend in the green haunts + Of Sherwood, nigh which place they have ta'en a house + In the town of Nottingham, and pass for foreigners, + Wearing the dress of Frenchmen.-- + All which I have perus'd with so attent + And child-like longings, that to my doting ears + Two sounds now seem like one, + One meaning in two words, Sherwood and Liberty. + And, gentle Mr. Sandford, + 'Tis you that must provide now + The means of my departure, which for safety + Must be in boy's apparel. + + SANDFORD + Since you will have it so + (My careful age trembles at all may happen) + I will engage to furnish you. + I have the keys of the wardrobe, and can fit you + With garments to your size. + I know a suit + Of lively Lincoln Green, that shall much grace you + In the wear, being glossy fresh, and worn but seldom. + Young Stephen Woodvil wore them, while he lived. + I have the keys of all this house and passages, + And ere day-break will rise and let you forth. + What things soe'er you have need of I can furnish you; + And will provide a horse and trusty guide, + To bear you on your way to Nottingham. + + MARGARET + That once this day and night were fairly past! + For then I'll bid this house and love farewell; + Farewell, sweet Devon; farewell, lukewarm John; + For with the morning's light will Margaret be gone. + Thanks, courteous Mr. Sandford.-- + (_Exeunt divers ways._) + + + + +ACT THE SECOND + + +SCENE.--_An Apartment in Woodvil Hall._ + + +_John Woodvil--alone._ + +(_Reading Parts of a Letter._) + +"When Love grows cold, and indifference has usurped upon old Esteem, it +is no marvel if the world begin to account _that_ dependence, which +hitherto has been esteemed honorable shelter. The course I have taken +(in leaving this house, not easily wrought thereunto,) seemed to me best +for the once-for-all releasing of yourself (who in times past have +deserved well of me) from the now daily, and not-to-be-endured, tribute +of forced love, and ill-dissembled reluctance of affection. + + + "MARGARET." + + Gone! gone! my girl? so hasty, Margaret! + And never a kiss at parting? shallow loves, + And likings of a ten days' growth, use courtesies, + And shew red eyes at parting. Who bids "farewell" + In the same tone he cries "God speed you, Sir?" + Or tells of joyful victories at sea, + Where he hath ventures? does not rather muffle + His organs to emit a leaden sound, + To suit the melancholy dull "farewell," + Which they in Heaven not use?-- + So peevish, Margaret? + But 'tis the common error of your sex, + When our idolatry slackens, or grows less, + (As who of woman born can keep his faculty + Of Admiration, being a decaying faculty, + For ever strain'd to the pitch? or can at pleasure + Make it renewable, as some appetites are, + As, namely, Hunger, Thirst?--) this being the case, + They tax us with neglect, and love grown cold, + Coin plainings of the perfidy of men, + Which into maxims pass, and apothegms + To be retailed in ballads.-- + I know them all. + They are jealous, when our larger hearts receive + More guests than one. (Love in a woman's heart + Being all in one.) For me, I am sure I have room here + For more disturbers of my sleep than one. + Love shall have part, but Love shall not have all. + Ambition, Pleasure, Vanity, all by turns, + Shall lie in my bed, and keep me fresh and waking; + Yet Love not be excluded.--Foolish wench, + I could have lov'd her twenty years to come, + And still have kept my liking. But since 'tis so, + Why, fare thee well, old play-fellow! I'll try + To squeeze a tear for old acquaintance sake. + I shall not grudge so much.-- + + _To him enters Lovel_. + +LOVEL +Bless us, Woodvil! what is the matter? I protest, man, I thought you had +been weeping. + +WOODVIL +Nothing is the matter, only the wench has forced some water into my +eyes, which will quickly disband. + +LOVEL +I cannot conceive you. + +WOODVIL +Margaret is flown. + +LOVEL +Upon what pretence? + +WOODVIL +Neglect on my part: which it seems she has had the wit to discover, +maugre all my pains to conceal it. + +LOVEL +Then, you confess the charge? + +WOODVIL +To say the truth, my love for her has of late stopt short on this side +idolatry. + +LOVEL +As all good Christians' should, I think. + +WOODVIL +I am sure, I could have loved her still within the limits of warrantable +love. + +LOVEL +A kind of brotherly affection, I take it. + +WOODVIL +We should have made excellent man and wife in time. + +LOVEL +A good old couple, when the snows fell, to crowd about a sea-coal fire, +and talk over old matters. + +WOODVIL +While each should feel, what neither cared to acknowledge, that stories +oft repeated may, at last, come to lose some of their grace by the +repetition. + +LOVEL +Which both of you may yet live long enough to discover. For, take my +word for it, Margaret is a bird that will come back to you without a +lure. + +WOODVIL +Never, never, Lovel. Spite of my levity, with tears I confess it, she +was a lady of most confirmed honour, of an unmatchable spirit, and +determinate in all virtuous resolutions; not hasty to anticipate an +affront, nor slow to feel, where just provocation was given. + +LOVEL +What made you neglect her, then? + +WOODVIL +Mere levity and youthfulness of blood, a malady incident to young men, +physicians call it caprice. Nothing else. He, that slighted her, knew +her value: and 'tis odds, but, for thy sake, Margaret, John will yet go +to his grave a bachelor. (_A noise heard, as of one drunk and singing_.) + +LOVEL +Here comes one, that will quickly dissipate these humours. + +(_Enter one drunk_.) + +DRUNKEN MAN +Good-morrow to you, gentlemen. Mr. Lovel, I am your humble servant. +Honest Jack Woodvil, I will get drunk with you to-morrow. + +WOODVIL +And why to-morrow, honest Mr. Freeman? + +DRUNKEN MAN +I scent a traitor in that question. A beastly question. Is it not his +Majesty's birth-day? the day, of all days in the year, on which King +Charles the second was graciously pleased to be born. (_Sings_) "Great +pity 'tis such days as those should come but once a year." + +LOVEL +Drunk in a morning! foh! how he stinks! + +DRUNKEN MAN +And why not drunk in a morning? can'st tell, bully? + +WOODVIL +Because, being the sweet and tender infancy of the day, methinks, it +should ill endure such early blightings. + +DRUNKEN MAN +I grant you, 'tis in some sort the youth and tender nonage of the day. +Youth is bashful, and I give it a cup to encourage it. (_Sings_) "Ale +that will make Grimalkin prate."--At noon I drink for thirst, at night +for fellowship, but, above all, I love to usher in the bashful morning +under the auspices of a freshening stoop of liquor. (_Sings_) "Ale in a +Saxon rumkin then makes valour burgeon in tall men."--But, I crave +pardon. I fear I keep that gentleman from serious thoughts. There be +those that wait for me in the cellar. + +WOODVIL +Who are they? + +DRUNKEN MAN +Gentlemen, my good friends, Cleveland, Delaval, and Truby. I know by +this time they are all clamorous for me. (_Exit, singing._) + +WOODVIL +This keeping of open house acquaints a man with strange companions. + +(Enter, at another door, Three calling for Harry Freeman._) + + Harry Freeman, Harry Freeman. + He is not here. Let us go look for him. + Where is Freeman? + Where is Harry? + +(_Exeunt the Three, calling for Freeman._) + +WOODVIL +Did you ever see such gentry? (_laughing_). These are they that fatten +on ale and tobacco in a morning, drink burnt brandy at noon to promote +digestion, and piously conclude with quart bumpers after supper, to +prove their loyalty. + +LOVEL +Come, shall we adjourn to the Tennis Court? + +WOODVIL +No, you shall go with me into the gallery, where I will shew you the +_Vandyke_ I have purchased. "The late King taking leave of his +children." + +LOVEL +I will but adjust my dress, and attend you. (_Exit Lovel._) + + JOHN WOODVIL (_alone_) + Now Universal England getteth drunk + For joy that Charles, her monarch, is restored: + And she, that sometime wore a saintly mask, + The stale-grown vizor from her face doth pluck, + And weareth now a suit of morris bells, + With which she jingling goes through all her towns and villages. + The baffled factions in their houses sculk: + The common-wealthsman, and state machinist, + The cropt fanatic, and fifth-monarchy-man, + Who heareth of these visionaries now? + They and their dreams have ended. Fools do sing, + Where good men yield God thanks; but politic spirits, + Who live by observation, note these changes + Of the popular mind, and thereby serve their ends. + Then why not I? What's Charles to me, or Oliver, + But as my own advancement hangs on one of them? + I to myself am chief.--I know, + Some shallow mouths cry out, that I am smit + With the gauds and shew of state, the point of place, + And trick of precedence, the ducks, and nods, + Which weak minds pay to rank. 'Tis not to sit + In place of worship at the royal masques, + Their pastimes, plays, and Whitehall banquetings, + For none of these, + Nor yet to be seen whispering with some great one, + Do I affect the favours of the court. + I would be great, for greatness hath great _power_, + And that's the fruit I reach at.-- + Great spirits ask great play-room. Who could sit, + With these prophetic swellings in my breast, + That prick and goad me on, and never cease, + To the fortunes something tells me I was born to? + Who, with such monitors within to stir him, + Would sit him down, with lazy arms across, + A unit, a thing without a name in the state, + A something to be govern'd, not to govern, + A fishing, hawking, hunting, country gentleman? + (_Exit_.) + + + + +SCENE.--_Sherwood Forest_. + + +SIR WALTER WOODVIL. SIMON WOODVIL. +(_Disguised as Frenchmen_.) + + + SIR WALTER + How fares my boy, Simon, my youngest born, + My hope, my pride, young Woodvil, speak to me? + Some grief untold weighs heavy at thy heart: + I know it by thy alter'd cheer of late. + Thinkest, thy brother plays thy father false? + It is a mad and thriftless prodigal, + Grown proud upon the favours of the court; + Court manners, and court fashions, he affects, + And in the heat and uncheck'd blood of youth, + Harbours a company of riotous men, + All hot, and young, court-seekers, like himself, + Most skilful to devour a patrimony; + And these have eat into my old estates, + And these have drain'd thy father's cellars dry; + But these so common faults of youth not named, + (Things which themselves outgrow, left to themselves,) + I know no quality that stains his honor. + My life upon his faith and noble mind, + Son John could never play thy father false. + + SIMON + I never thought but nobly of my brother, + Touching his honor and fidelity. + Still I could wish him charier of his person, + And of his time more frugal, than to spend + In riotous living, graceless society, + And mirth unpalatable, hours better employ'd + (With those persuasive graces nature lent him) + In fervent pleadings for a father's life. + + SIR WALTER + I would not owe my life to a jealous court, + Whose shallow policy I know it is, + On some reluctant acts of prudent mercy, + (Not voluntary, but extorted by the times, + In the first tremblings of new-fixed power, + And recollection smarting from old wounds,) + On these to build a spurious popularity. + Unknowing what free grace or mercy mean, + They fear to punish, therefore do they pardon. + For this cause have I oft forbid my son, + By letters, overtures, open solicitings, + Or closet-tamperings, by gold or fee, + To beg or bargain with the court for my life. + + SIMON + And John has ta'en you, father, at your word, + True to the letter of his paternal charge. + + SIR WALTER + Well, my good cause, and my good conscience, boy, + Shall be for sons to me, if John prove false. + Men die but once, and the opportunity + Of a noble death is not an every-day fortune: + It is a gift which noble spirits pray for. + + SIMON + I would not wrong my brother by surmise; + I know him generous, full of gentle qualities, + Incapable of base compliances, + No prodigal in his nature, but affecting + This shew of bravery for ambitious ends. + He drinks, for 'tis the humour of the court, + And drink may one day wrest the secret from him, + And pluck you from your hiding place in the sequel. + + SIR WALTER + Fair death shall be my doom, and foul life his. + Till when, we'll live as free in this green forest + As yonder deer, who roam unfearing treason: + Who seem the Aborigines of this place, + Or Sherwood theirs by tenure. + + SIMON + 'Tis said, that Robert Earl of Huntingdon, + Men call'd him Robin Hood, an outlaw bold, + With a merry crew of hunters here did haunt, + Not sparing the king's venison. May one believe + The antique tale? + + SIR WALTER + + There is much likelihood, + Such bandits did in England erst abound, + When polity was young. I have read of the pranks + Of that mad archer, and of the tax he levied + On travellers, whatever their degree, + Baron, or knight, whoever pass'd these woods, + Layman, or priest, not sparing the bishop's mitre + For spiritual regards; nay, once, 'tis said, + He robb'd the king himself. + + SIMON + A perilous man. (_Smiling_.) + + SIR WALTER + How quietly we live here, + Unread in the world's business, + And take no note of all its slippery changes. + 'Twere best we make a world among ourselves, + A little world, + Without the ills and falsehoods of the greater: + We two being all the inhabitants of ours, + And kings and subjects both in one. + + SIMON + Only the dangerous errors, fond conceits, + Which make the business of that greater world, + Must have no place in ours: + As, namely, riches, honors, birth, place, courtesy, + Good fame and bad, rumours and popular noises, + Books, creeds, opinions, prejudices national, + Humours particular, + Soul-killing lies, and truths that work small good, + Feuds, factions, enmities, relationships, + Loves, hatreds, sympathies, antipathies, + And all the intricate stuff quarrels are made of. + + (_Margaret enters in boy's apparel_.) + + SIR WALTER + What pretty boy have we here? + + MARGARET + _Bon jour, messieurs_. Ye have handsome English faces, + I should have ta'en you else for other two, + I came to seek in the forest. + + SIR WALTER + Who are they? + + MARGARET + A gallant brace of Frenchmen, curled monsieurs, + That, men say, haunt these woods, affecting privacy, + More than the manner of their countrymen. + + SIMON + We have here a wonder. + The face is Margaret's face. + + SIR WALTER + The face is Margaret's, but the dress the same + My Stephen sometimes wore. + + (_To Margaret_) + + Suppose us them; whom do men say we are? + Or know you what you seek? + + MARGARET + A worthy pair of exiles, + Two whom the politics of state revenge, + In final issue of long civil broils, + Have houseless driven from your native France, + To wander idle in these English woods, + Where now ye live; most part + Thinking on home, and all the joys of France, + Where grows the purple vine. + + SIR WALTER + These woods, young stranger, + And grassy pastures, which the slim deer loves, + Are they less beauteous than the land of France, + Where grows the purple vine? + + MARGARET + I cannot tell. + To an indifferent eye both shew alike. + 'Tis not the scene, + But all familiar objects in the scene, + Which now ye miss, that constitute a difference. + Ye had a country, exiles, ye have none now; + Friends had ye, and much wealth, ye now have nothing; + Our manners, laws, our customs, all are foreign to you, + I know ye loathe them, cannot learn them readily; + And there is reason, exiles, ye should love + Our English earth less than your land of France, + Where grows the purple vine; where all delights grow, + Old custom has made pleasant. + + SIR WALTER + You, that are read + So deeply in our story, what are you? + + MARGARET + A bare adventurer; in brief a woman, + That put strange garments on, and came thus far + To seek an ancient friend: + And having spent her stock of idle words, + And feeling some tears coming, + Hastes now to clasp Sir Walter Woodvil's knees, + And beg a boon for Margaret, his poor ward. (_Kneeling_.) + + SIR WALTER + Not at my feet, Margaret, not at my feet. + + MARGARET + Yes, till her suit is answer'd. + + SIR WALTER + Name it. + + MARGARET + A little boon, and yet so great a grace, + She fears to ask it. + + SIR WALTER + Some riddle, Margaret? + + MARGARET + No riddle, but a plain request. + + SIR WALTER + Name it. + + MARGARET + Free liberty of Sherwood, + And leave to take her lot with you in the forest. + + SIR WALTER + A scant petition, Margaret, but take it, + Seal'd with an old man's tears.-- + Rise, daughter of Sir Rowland. + + (_Addresses them both._) + + O you most worthy, + You constant followers of a man proscribed, + Following poor misery in the throat of danger; + Fast servitors to craz'd and penniless poverty, + Serving poor poverty without hope of gain; + Kind children of a sire unfortunate; + Green clinging tendrils round a trunk decay'd, + Which needs must bring on you timeless decay; + Fair living forms to a dead carcase join'd;-- + What shall I say? + Better the dead were gather'd to the dead, + Than death and life in disproportion meet.-- + Go, seek your fortunes, children.-- + + SIMON + Why, whither should we go? + + SIR WALTER + _You_ to the Court, where now your brother John + Commits a rape on Fortune. + + SIMON + Luck to John! + A light-heel'd strumpet, when the sport is done. + + SIR WALTER + _You_ to the sweet society of your equals, + Where the world's fashion smiles on youth and beauty. + + MARGARET + Where young men's flatteries cozen young maids' beauty, + There pride oft gets the vantage hand of duty, + There sweet humility withers. + + SIMON + Mistress Margaret, + How fared my brother John, when you left Devon? + + MARGARET + John was well, Sir. + + SIMON + 'Tis now nine months almost, + Since I saw home. What new friends has John made? + Or keeps he his first love?--I did suspect + Some foul disloyalty. Now do I know, + John has prov'd false to her, for Margaret weeps. + It is a scurvy brother. + + SIR WALTER + Fie upon it. + All men are false, I think. The date of love + Is out, expired, its stories all grown stale, + O'erpast, forgotten, like an antique tale + Of Hero and Leander. + + +SIMON +I have known some men that are too general-contemplative for the narrow +passion. I am in some sort a _general_ lover. + +MARGARET +In the name of the boy God, who plays at hood-man-blind with the Muses, +and cares not whom he catches: what is it _you_ love? + + + SIMON + Simply, all things that live, + From the crook'd worm to man's imperial form, + And God-resembling likeness. The poor fly, + That makes short holyday in the sun beam, + And dies by some child's hand. The feeble bird + With little wings, yet greatly venturous + In the upper sky. The fish in th' other element, + That knows no touch of eloquence. What else? + Yon tall and elegant stag, + Who paints a dancing shadow of his horns + In the water, where he drinks. + + MARGARET + I myself love all these things, yet so as with a difference:-- + for example, some animals better than others, some men + rather than other men; the nightingale before the cuckoo, the + swift and graceful palfrey before the slow and asinine mule. + Your humour goes to confound all qualities. + What sports do you use in the forest?-- + + SIMON + Not many; some few, as thus:-- + To see the sun to bed, and to arise, + Like some hot amourist with glowing eyes, + Bursting the lazy bands of sleep that bound him, + With all his fires and travelling glories round him. + Sometimes the moon on soft night clouds to rest, + Like beauty nestling in a young man's breast, + And all the winking stars, her handmaids, keep + Admiring silence, while those lovers sleep. + Sometimes outstretcht, in very idleness, + Nought doing, saying little, thinking less, + To view the leaves, thin dancers upon air, + Go eddying round; and small birds, how they fare, + When mother Autumn fills their beaks with corn, + Filch'd from the careless Amalthea's horn; + And how the woods berries and worms provide + Without their pains, when earth has nought beside + To answer their small wants. + To view the graceful deer come tripping by, + Then stop, and gaze, then turn, they know not why, + Like bashful younkers in society. + To mark the structure of a plant or tree, + And all fair things of earth, how fair they be. + + MARGARET (_smiling_) + And, afterwards them paint in simile. + + SIR WALTER + Mistress Margaret will have need of some refreshment. + Please you, we have some poor viands within. + + MARGARET + Indeed I stand in need of them. + + SIR WALTER + Under the shade of a thick-spreading tree, + Upon the grass, no better carpeting, + We'll eat our noon-tide meal; and, dinner done, + One of us shall repair to Nottingham, + To seek some safe night-lodging in the town, + Where you may sleep, while here with us you dwell, + By day, in the forest, expecting better times, + And gentler habitations, noble Margaret. + + SIMON + _Allons_, young Frenchman-- + + MARGARET + _Allons_, Sir Englishman. The time has been, + I've studied love-lays in the English tongue, + And been enamour'd of rare poesy: + Which now I must unlearn. Henceforth, + Sweet mother-tongue, old English speech, adieu; + For Margaret has got new name and language new. + + (_Exeunt._) + + + +ACT THE THIRD + + +SCENE.--_An Apartment of State in Woodvil Hall--Cavaliers drinking._ + + +JOHN WOODVIL, LOVEL, GRAY, _and four more._ + + +JOHN +More mirth, I beseech you, gentlemen--Mr. Gray, you are not merry.-- + +GRAY +More wine, say I, and mirth shall ensue in course. What! we have not yet +above three half-pints a man to answer for. Brevity is the soul of +drinking, as of wit. Despatch, I say. More wine. (_Fills._) + +FIRST GENTLEMAN +I entreat you, let there be some order, some method, in our drinkings. I +love to lose my reason with my eyes open, to commit the deed of +drunkenness with forethought and deliberation. I love to feel the fumes +of the liquor gathering here, like clouds. + +SECOND GENTLEMAN +And I am for plunging into madness at once. Damn order, and method, and +steps, and degrees, that he speaks of. Let confusion have her legitimate +work. + +LOVEL +I marvel why the poets, who, of all men, methinks, should possess the +hottest livers, and most empyreal fancies, should affect to see such +virtues in cold water. + +GRAY +Virtue in cold water! ha! ha! ha!-- + +JOHN +Because your poet-born hath an internal wine, richer than lippara or +canaries, yet uncrushed from any grapes of earth, unpressed in mortal +wine-presses. + +THIRD GENTLEMAN +What may be the name of this wine? + +JOHN +It hath as many names as qualities. It is denominated indifferently, +wit, conceit, invention, inspiration, but its most royal and +comprehensive name is _fancy_. + +THIRD GENTLEMAN +And where keeps he this sovereign liquor? + +JOHN +Its cellars are in the brain, whence your true poet deriveth +intoxication at will; while his animal spirits, catching a pride from +the quality and neighbourhood of their noble relative, the brain, refuse +to be sustained by wines and fermentations of earth. + +THIRD GENTLEMAN +But is your poet-born alway tipsy with this liquor? + +JOHN +He hath his stoopings and reposes; but his proper element is the sky, +and in the suburbs of the empyrean. + +THIRD GENTLEMAN +Is your wine-intellectual so exquisite? henceforth, I, a man of plain +conceit, will, in all humility, content my mind with canaries. + +FOURTH GENTLEMAN +I am for a song or a catch. When will the catches come on, the sweet +wicked catches? + +JOHN +They cannot be introduced with propriety before midnight. Every man must +commit his twenty bumpers first. We are not yet well roused. Frank +Lovel, the glass stands with you. + +LOVEL +Gentlemen, the Duke. (_Fills_.) + +ALL +The Duke. (_They drink_.) + +GRAY +Can any tell, why his Grace, being a Papist-- + +JOHN +Pshaw! we will have no questions of state now. Is not this his Majesty's +birth-day? + +GRAY +What follows? + +JOHN +That every man should sing, and be joyful, and ask no questions. + +SECOND GENTLEMAN +Damn politics, they spoil drinking. + +THIRD GENTLEMAN +For certain,'tis a blessed monarchy. + +SECOND GENTLEMAN +The cursed fanatic days we have seen! The times have been when swearing +was out of fashion. + +THIRD GENTLEMAN +And drinking. + +FIRST GENTLEMAN +And wenching. + +GRAY +The cursed yeas and forsooths, which we have heard uttered, when a man +could not rap out an innocent oath, but strait the air was thought to be +infected. + + +LOVEL +'Twas a pleasant trick of the saint, which that trim puritan +_Swear-not-at-all Smooth-speech_ used, when his spouse chid him with an +oath for committing with his servant-maid, to cause his house to be +fumigated with burnt brandy, and ends of scripture, to disperse the +devil's breath, as he termed it. + +ALL +Ha! ha! ha! + +GRAY +But 'twas pleasanter, when the other saint _Resist-the-devil- +and-he-will-flee-from-thee Pure-man_ was overtaken in the act, to plead +an illusio visûs, and maintain his sanctity upon a supposed power in the +adversary to counterfeit the shapes of things. + +ALL +Ha! ha! ha! + +JOHN +Another round, and then let every man devise what trick he can in his +fancy, for the better manifesting our loyalty this day. + +GRAY +Shall we hang a puritan? + +JOHN +No, that has been done already in Coleman-Street. + +SECOND GENTLEMAN +Or fire a conventicle? + +JOHN +That is stale too. + +THIRD GENTLEMAN +Or burn the assembly's catechism? + +FOURTH GENTLEMAN +Or drink the king's health, every man standing upon his head naked? + +JOHN (_to Lovel_) +We have here some pleasant madness. + +THIRD GENTLEMAN +Who shall pledge me in a pint bumper, while we drink to the king upon +our knees? + +LOVEL +Why on our knees, Cavalier? + +JOHN (_smiling_) +For more devotion, to be sure. (_To a servant_.) Sirrah, fetch the gilt +goblets. + +(_The goblets are brought. They drink the king's health, kneeling. A +shout of general approbation following the first appearance of the +goblets_.) + +JOHN +We have here the unchecked virtues of the grape. How the vapours curl +upwards! It were a life of gods to dwell in such an element: to see, +and hear, and talk brave things. Now fie upon these casual potations. +That a man's most exalted reason should depend upon the ignoble +fermenting of a fruit, which sparrows pluck at as well as we! + +GRAY (_aside to Lovel_) +Observe how he is ravished. + +LOVEL +Vanity and gay thoughts of wine do meet in him and engender madness. + +(_While the rest are engaged in a wild kind of talk, John advances to +the front of the stage and soliloquises_.) + + JOHN + My spirits turn to fire, they mount so fast. + My joys are turbulent, my hopes shew like fruition. + These high and gusty relishes of life, sure, + Have no allayings of mortality in them. + I am too hot now and o'ercapable, + For the tedious processes, and creeping wisdom, + Of human acts, and enterprizes of a man. + I want some seasonings of adversity, + Some strokes of the old mortifier Calamity, + To take these swellings down, divines call vanity. + +FIRST GENTLEMAN +Mr. Woodvil, Mr. Woodvil. + +SECOND GENTLEMAN +Where is Woodvil? + +GRAY +Let him alone. I have seen him in these lunes before. His abstractions +must not taint the good mirth. + + JOHN (_continuing to soliloquize_) + O for some friend now, + To conceal nothing from, to have no secrets. + How fine and noble a thing is confidence, + How reasonable too, and almost godlike! + Fast cement of fast friends, band of society, + Old natural go-between in the world's business, + Where civil life and order, wanting this cement, + Would presently rush back + Into the pristine state of singularity, + And each man stand alone. + +(_A Servant enters._) +Gentlemen, the fire-works are ready. + +FIRST GENTLEMAN +What be they? + +LOVEL +The work of London artists, which our host has provided in honour of +this day. + +SECOND GENTLEMAN +'Sdeath, who would part with his wine for a rocket? + +LOVEL +Why truly, gentlemen, as our kind host has been at the pains to provide +this spectacle, we can do no less than be present at it. It will not +take up much time. Every man may return fresh and thirsting to his +liquor. + +THIRD GENTLEMAN +There is reason in what he says. + +SECOND GENTLEMAN +Charge on then, bottle in hand. There's husbandry in that. + +(_They go out, singing. Only Level remains, who observes Woodvil_.) + + JOHN (_still talking to himself_) + This Lovel here's of a tough honesty, + Would put the rack to the proof. He is not of that sort, + Which haunt my house, snorting the liquors, + And when their wisdoms are afloat with wine, + Spend vows as fast as vapours, which go off + Even with the fumes, their fathers. He is one, + Whose sober morning actions + Shame not his o'ernight's promises; + Talks little, flatters less, and makes no promises; + Why this is he, whom the dark-wisdom'd fate + Might trust her counsels of predestination with, + And the world be no loser. + Why should I fear this man? + (_Seeing Lovel_.) + Where is the company gone? + +LOVEL +To see the fire-works, where you will be expected to follow. But I +perceive you are better engaged. + + JOHN + I have been meditating this half-hour + On all the properties of a brave friendship, + The mysteries that are in it, the noble uses, + Its limits withal, and its nice boundaries. + _Exempli gratia_, how far a man + May lawfully forswear himself for his friend; + What quantity of lies, some of them brave ones, + He may lawfully incur in a friend's behalf; + What oaths, blood-crimes, hereditary quarrels, + Night brawls, fierce words, and duels in the morning, + He need not stick at, to maintain his friend's honor, or his cause. + + LOVEL + I think many men would die for their friends. + + JOHN + Death! why 'tis nothing. We go to it for sport, + To gain a name, or purse, or please a sullen humour, + When one has worn his fortune's livery threadbare, + Or his spleen'd mistress frowns. Husbands will venture on it, + To cure the hot fits and cold shakings of jealousy. + A friend, sir, must do more. + + LOVEL + Can he do more than die? + + JOHN + To serve a friend this he may do. Pray mark me. + Having a law within (great spirits feel one) + He cannot, ought not to be bound by any + Positive laws or ord'nances extern, + But may reject all these: by the law of friendship + He may do so much, be they, indifferently, + Penn'd statutes, or the land's unwritten usages, + As public fame, civil compliances, + Misnamed honor, trust in matter of secrets, + All vows and promises, the feeble mind's religion, + (Binding our morning knowledge to approve + What last night's ignorance spake); + The ties of blood withal, and prejudice of kin. + Sir, these weak terrors + Must never shake me. I know what belongs + To a worthy friendship. Come, you shall have my confidence. + + LOVEL + I hope you think me worthy. + + JOHN + You will smile to hear now-- + Sir Walter never has been out of the island. + + LOVEL + You amaze me. + + JOHN + That same report of his escape to France + Was a fine tale, forg'd by myself--Ha! ha! + I knew it would stagger him. + + LOVEL + Pray, give me leave. + Where has he dwelt, how liv'd, how lain conceal'd? + Sure I may ask so much. + + JOHN + From place to place, dwelling in no place long, + My brother Simon still hath borne him company, + ('Tis a brave youth, I envy him all his virtues.) + Disguis'd in foreign garb, they pass for Frenchmen, + Two Protestant exiles from the Limosin + Newly arriv'd. Their dwelling's now at Nottingham, + Where no soul knows them. + + +LOVEL +Can you assign any reason, why a gentleman of Sir Walter's known +prudence should expose his person so lightly? + + + JOHN + I believe, a certain fondness, + A child-like cleaving to the land that gave him birth, + Chains him like fate. + + LOVEL + I have known some exiles thus + To linger out the term of the law's indulgence, + To the hazard of being known. + + JOHN + You may suppose sometimes + They use the neighb'ring Sherwood for their sport, + Their exercise and freer recreation.-- + I see you smile. Pray now, be careful. + + LOVEL + I am no babbler, sir; you need not fear me. + + JOHN + But some men have been known to talk in their sleep, + And tell fine tales that way. + + LOVEL + I have heard so much. But, to say truth, I mostly sleep alone. + + JOHN + Or drink, sir? do you never drink too freely? + Some men will drink, and tell you all their secrets. + + LOVEL + Why do you question me, who know my habits? + + JOHN + I think you are no sot, + No tavern-troubler, worshipper of the grape; + But all men drink sometimes, + And veriest saints at festivals relax, + The marriage of a friend, or a wife's birth-day. + + LOVEL + How much, sir, may a man with safety drink? (_Smiling_.) + + JOHN + Sir, three half pints a day is reasonable; + I care not if you never exceed that quantity. + + LOVEL + I shall observe it; + On holidays two quarts. + + JOHN + Or stay; you keep no wench? + + LOVEL + Ha! + + JOHN + No painted mistress for your private hours? + You keep no whore, sir? + + LOVEL + What does he mean? + + JOHN + Who for a close embrace, a toy of sin, + And amorous praising of your worship's breath, + In rosy junction of four melting lips, + Can kiss out secrets from you? + + LOVEL + How strange this passionate behaviour shews in you! + Sure you think me some weak one. + + JOHN + Pray pardon me some fears. + You have now the pledge of a dear father's life. + I am a son--would fain be thought a loving one; + You may allow me some fears: do not despise me, + If, in a posture foreign to my spirit, + And by our well-knit friendship I conjure you, + Touch not Sir Walter's life. (_Kneels_.) + You see these tears. My father's an old man. + Pray let him live. + + LOVEL + I must be bold to tell you, these new freedoms + Shew most unhandsome in you. + + JOHN (_rising_) + Ha! do you say so? + Sure, you are not grown proud upon my secret! + Ah! now I see it plain. He would be babbling. + No doubt a garrulous and hard-fac'd traitor-- + But I'll not give you leave. (_Draws_.) + + LOVEL + What does this madman mean? + + JOHN + Come, sir; here is no subterfuge. + You must kill me, or I kill you. + + LOVEL (_drawing_) + Then self-defence plead my excuse. + Have at you, sir. (_They fight_.) + + JOHN + Stay, sir. + I hope you have made your will. + If not, 'tis no great matter. + A broken cavalier has seldom much + He can bequeath: an old worn peruke, + A snuff-box with a picture of Prince Rupert, + A rusty sword he'll swear was used at Naseby, + Though it ne'er came within ten miles of the place; + And, if he's very rich, + A cheap edition of the _Icon Basilike_, + Is mostly all the wealth he dies possest of. + You say few prayers, I fancy;-- + So to it again. (_They fight again. Lovel is disarmed_.) + + LOVEL + You had best now take my life. I guess you mean it. + + JOHN (_musing_) + No:--Men will say I fear'd him, if I kill'd him. + Live still, and be a traitor in thy wish, + But never act thy thought, being a coward. + That vengeance, which thy soul shall nightly thirst for, + And this disgrace I've done you cry aloud for, + Still have the will without the power to execute. + So now I leave you, + Feeling a sweet security. No doubt + My secret shall remain a virgin for you!-- + (_Goes out, smiling in scorn_.) + + LOVEL (_rising_) + For once you are mistaken in your man. + The deed you wot of shall forthwith be done. + A bird let loose, a secret out of hand, + Returns not back. Why, then 'tis baby policy + To menace him who hath it in his keeping. + I will go look for Gray; + Then, northward ho! such tricks as we shall play + Have not been seen, I think, in merry Sherwood, + Since the days of Robin Hood, that archer good. + + + + +ACT THE FOURTH + + +SCENE.--_An Apartment in Woodvil Hall_. + + + JOHN WOODVIL (_alone_) + A weight of wine lies heavy on my head, + The unconcocted follies of last night. + Now all those jovial fancies, and bright hopes, + Children of wine, go off like dreams. + This sick vertigo here + Preacheth of temperance, no sermon better. + These black thoughts, and dull melancholy, + That stick like burrs to the brain, will they ne'er leave me? + Some men are full of choler, when they are drunk; + Some brawl of matter foreign to themselves; + And some, the most resolved fools of all, + Have told their dearest secrets in their cups. + + + + +SCENE.--_The Forest_. + + +SIR WALTER. SIMON. LOVEL. GRAY. + + +LOVEL +Sir, we are sorry we cannot return your French salutation. + +GRAY +Nor otherwise consider this garb you trust to than as a poor disguise. + +LOVEL +Nor use much ceremony with a traitor. + +GRAY +Therefore, without much induction of superfluous words, I attach you, +Sir Walter Woodvil, of High Treason, in the King's name. + +LOVEL +And of taking part in the great Rebellion against our late lawful +Sovereign, Charles the First. + +SIMON +John has betrayed us, father. + +LOVEL +Come, Sir, you had best surrender fairly. We know you, Sir. + +SIMON +Hang ye, villains, ye are two better known than trusted. I have seen +those faces before. Are ye not two beggarly retainers, +trencher-parasites, to John? I think ye rank above his footmen. A sort +of bed and board worms--locusts that infest our house; a leprosy that +long has hung upon its walls and princely apartments, reaching to fill +all the corners of my brother's once noble heart. + +GRAY +We are his friends. + +SIMON +Fie, Sir, do not weep. How these rogues will triumph! Shall I whip off +their heads, father? (_Draws_.) + +LOVEL +Come, Sir, though this shew handsome in you, being his son, yet the law +must have its course. + +SIMON +And if I tell you the law shall not have its course, cannot ye be +content? Courage, father; shall such things as these apprehend a man? +Which of ye will venture upon me?--Will you, Mr. Constable self-elect? +or you, Sir, with a pimple on your nose, got at Oxford by hard drinking, +your only badge of loyalty? + +GRAY +'Tis a brave youth--I cannot strike at him. + +SIMON +Father, why do you cover your face with your hands? Why do you fetch +your breath so hard? See, villains, his heart is burst! O villains, he +cannot speak. One of you run for some water: quickly, ye knaves; will ye +have your throats cut? (_They both slink off_.) How is it with you, Sir +Walter? Look up, Sir, the villains are gone. He hears me not, and this +deep disgrace of treachery in his son hath touched him even to the +death. O most distuned, and distempered world, where sons talk their +aged fathers into their graves! Garrulous and diseased world, and still +empty, rotten and hollow _talking_ world, where good men decay, states +turn round in an endless mutability, and still for the worse, nothing is +at a stay, nothing abides but vanity, chaotic vanity.--Brother, adieu! + + There lies the parent stock which gave us life, + Which I will see consign'd with tears to earth. + Leave thou the solemn funeral rites to me, + Grief and a true remorse abide with thee. + +(_Bears in the body_.) + + + + +SCENE.--_Another Part of the Forest_. + + + MARGARET (_alone_) + It was an error merely, and no crime, + An unsuspecting openness in youth, + That from his lips the fatal secret drew, + Which should have slept like one of nature's mysteries, + Unveil'd by any man. + Well, he is dead! + And what should Margaret do in the forest? + O ill-starr'd John! + O Woodvil, man enfeoffed to despair! + Take thy farewell of peace. + O never look again to see good days, + Or close thy lids in comfortable nights, + Or ever think a happy thought again, + If what I have heard be true.-- + Forsaken of the world must Woodvil live, + If he did tell these men. + No tongue must speak to him, no tongue of man + Salute him, when he wakes up in a morning; + Or bid "good-night" to John. Who seeks to live + In amity with thee, must for thy sake + Abide the world's reproach. What then? + Shall Margaret join the clamours of the world + Against her friend? O undiscerning world, + That cannot from misfortune separate guilt, + No, not in thought! O never, never, John. + Prepar'd to share the fortunes of her friend + _For better or for worse_ thy Margaret comes, + To pour into thy wounds a healing love, + And wake the memory of an ancient friendship. + And pardon me, thou spirit of Sir Walter, + Who, in compassion to the wretched living, + Have but few tears to waste upon the dead. + + + + + +SCENE.--_Woodvil Hall_. + + +SANDFORD. MARGARET. + + +(_As from a Journey_.) + + +SANDFORD +The violence of the sudden mischance hath so wrought in him, who by +nature is allied to nothing less than a self-debasing humour of +dejection, that I have never seen any thing more changed and +spirit-broken. He hath, with a peremptory resolution, dismissed the +partners of his riots and late hours, denied his house and person to +their most earnest solicitings, and will be seen by none. He keeps ever +alone, and his grief (which is solitary) does not so much seem to +possess and govern in him, as it is by him, with a wilfulness of most +manifest affection, entertained and cherished. + +MARGARET +How bears he up against the common rumour? + +SANDFORD +With a strange indifference, which whosoever dives not into the niceness +of his sorrow might mistake for obdurate and insensate. Yet are the +wings of his pride for ever clipt; and yet a virtuous predominance of +filial grief is so ever uppermost, that you may discover his thoughts +less troubled with conjecturing what living opinions will say, and judge +of his deeds, than absorbed and buried with the dead, whom his +indiscretion made so. + +MARGARET +I knew a greatness ever to be resident in him, to which the admiring +eyes of men should look up even in the declining and bankrupt state of +his pride. Fain would I see him, fain talk with him; but that a sense of +respect, which is violated, when without deliberation we press into the +society of the unhappy, checks and holds me back. How, think you, he +would bear my presence? + +SANDFORD +As of an assured friend, whom in the forgetfulness of his fortunes he +past by. See him you must; but not to-night. The newness of the sight +shall move the bitterest compunction and the truest remorse; but +afterwards, trust me, dear lady, the happiest effects of a returning +peace, and a gracious comfort, to him, to you, and all of us. + +MARGARET +I think he would not deny me. He hath ere this received farewell letters +from his brother, who hath taken a resolution to estrange himself, for a +time, from country, friends, and kindred, and to seek occupation for his +sad thoughts in travelling in foreign places, where sights remote and +extern to himself may draw from him kindly and not painful ruminations. + +SANDFORD +I was present at the receipt of the letter. The contents seemed to +affect him, for a moment, with a more lively passion of grief than he +has at any time outwardly shewn. He wept with many tears (which I had +not before noted in him) and appeared to be touched with a sense as of +some unkindness; but the cause of their sad separation and divorce +quickly recurring, he presently returned to his former inwardness of +suffering. + +MARGARET +The reproach of his brother's presence at this hour should have been a +weight more than could be sustained by his already oppressed and sinking +spirit.--Meditating upon these intricate and wide-spread sorrows, hath +brought a heaviness upon me, as of sleep. How goes the night? + +SANDFORD +An hour past sun-set. You shall first refresh your limbs (tired with +travel) with meats and some cordial wine, and then betake your no less +wearied mind to repose. + +MARGARET +A good rest to us all. + +SANDFORD +Thanks, lady. + + + + +ACT THE FIFTH + + +JOHN WOODVIL (_dressing_). + + + JOHN + How beautiful, (_handling his mourning_) + And comely do these mourning garments shew! + Sure Grief hath set his sacred impress here, + To claim the world's respect! they note so feelingly + By outward types the serious man within.-- + Alas! what part or portion can I claim + In all the decencies of virtuous sorrow, + Which other mourners use? as namely, + This black attire, abstraction from society, + Good thoughts, and frequent sighs, and seldom smiles, + A cleaving sadness native to the brow, + All sweet condolements of like-grieved friends, + (That steal away the sense of loss almost) + Men's pity, and good offices + Which enemies themselves do for us then, + Putting their hostile disposition off, + As we put off our high thoughts and proud looks. + (_Pauses, and observes the pictures_.) + These pictures must be taken down: + The portraitures of our most antient family + For nigh three hundred years! How have I listen'd, + To hear Sir Walter, with an old man's pride, + Holding me in his arms, a prating boy, + And pointing to the pictures where they hung, + Repeat by course their worthy histories, + (As Hugh de Widville, Walter, first of the name, + And Ann the handsome, Stephen, and famous John: + Telling me, I must be his famous John.) + But that was in old times. + Now, no more + Must I grow proud upon our house's pride. + I rather, I, by most unheard of crimes, + Have backward tainted all their noble blood, + Rased out the memory of an ancient family, + And quite revers'd the honors of our house. + Who now shall sit and tell us anecdotes? + The secret history of his own times, + And fashions of the world when he was young: + How England slept out three and twenty years, + While Carr and Villiers rul'd the baby king: + The costly fancies of the pedant's reign, + Balls, feastings, huntings, shows in allegory, + And Beauties of the court of James the First. + + _Margaret enters._ + + JOHN + Comes Margaret here to witness my disgrace? + O, lady, I have suffer'd loss, + And diminution of my honor's brightness. + You bring some images of old times, Margaret, + That should be now forgotten. + + MARGARET + Old times should never be forgotten, John. + I came to talk about them with my friend. + + JOHN + I did refuse you, Margaret, in my pride. + + MARGARET + If John rejected Margaret in his pride, + (As who does not, being splenetic, refuse + Sometimes old play-fellows,) the spleen being gone, + The offence no longer lives. + O Woodvil, those were happy days, + When we two first began to love. When first, + Under pretence of visiting my father, + (Being then a stripling nigh upon my age) + You came a wooing to his daughter, John. + Do you remember, + With what a coy reserve and seldom speech, + (Young maidens must be chary of their speech,) + I kept the honors of my maiden pride? + I was your favourite then. + + JOHN + O Margaret, Margaret! + These your submissions to my low estate, + And cleavings to the fates of sunken Woodvil, + Write bitter things 'gainst my unworthiness. + Thou perfect pattern of thy slander'd sex, + Whom miseries of mine could never alienate, + Nor change of fortune shake; whom injuries, + And slights (the worst of injuries) which moved + Thy nature to return scorn with like scorn, + Then when you left in virtuous pride this house, + Could not so separate, but now in this + My day of shame, when all the world forsake me, + You only visit me, love, and forgive me. + + MARGARET + Dost yet remember the green arbour, John, + In the south gardens of my father's house, + Where we have seen the summer sun go down, + Exchanging true love's vows without restraint? + And that old wood, you call'd your wilderness, + And vow'd in sport to build a chapel in it, + There dwell + + "Like hermit poor + In pensive place obscure," + + And tell your Ave Maries by the curls + (Dropping like golden beads) of Margaret's hair; + And make confession seven times a day + Of every thought that stray'd from love and Margaret; + And I your saint the penance should appoint-- + Believe me, sir, I will not now be laid + Aside, like an old fashion. + + JOHN + O lady, poor and abject are my thoughts, + My pride is cured, my hopes are under clouds, + I have no part in any good man's love, + In all earth's pleasures portion have I none, + I fade and wither in my own esteem, + This earth holds not alive so poor a thing as I am. + I was not always thus. (_Weeps_.) + + MARGARET + Thou noble nature, + Which lion-like didst awe the inferior creatures, + Now trampled on by beasts of basest quality, + My dear heart's lord, life's pride, soul-honor'd John, + Upon her knees (regard her poor request) + Your favourite, once-beloved Margaret, kneels. + + JOHN + What would'st thou, lady, ever-honor'd Margaret? + + MARGARET + That John would think more nobly of himself, + More worthily of high heaven; + And not for one misfortune, child of chance, + No crime, but unforeseen, and sent to punish + The less offence with image of the greater, + Thereby to work the soul's humility, + (Which end hath happily not been frustrate quite,) + O not for one offence mistrust heaven's mercy, + Nor quit thy hope of happy days to come-- + John yet has many happy days to live; + To live and make atonement. + + JOHN + Excellent lady, + Whose suit hath drawn this softness from my eyes, + Not the world's scorn, nor falling off of friends + Could ever do. Will you go with me, Margaret? + + MARGARET (_rising_) + Go whither, John? + + JOHN + Go in with me, + And pray for the peace of our unquiet minds? + + MARGARET + That I will, John.-- + (_Exeunt_.) + + + + +SCENE.--_An inner Apartment_. + + +(_John is discovered kneeling.--Margaret standing over him_.) + + + JOHN (_rises_) + I cannot bear + To see you waste that youth and excellent beauty, + ('Tis now the golden time of the day with you,) + In tending such a broken wretch as I am. + + MARGARET + John will break Margaret's heart, if he speak so. + O sir, sir, sir, you are too melancholy, + And I must call it caprice. I am somewhat bold + Perhaps in this. But you are now my patient, + (You know you gave me leave to call you so,) + And I must chide these pestilent humours from you. + + JOHN + They are gone.-- + Mark, love, how cheerfully I speak! + I can smile too, and I almost begin + To understand what kind of creature Hope is. + + MARGARET + Now this is better, this mirth becomes you, John. + + JOHN + Yet tell me, if I over-act my mirth. + (Being but a novice, I may fall into that error,) + That were a sad indecency, you know. + + MARGARET + Nay, never fear. + I will be mistress of your humours, + And you shall frown or smile by the book. + And herein I shall be most peremptory, + Cry, "this shews well, but that inclines to levity, + This frown has too much of the Woodvil in it, + But that fine sunshine has redeem'd it quite." + + JOHN + How sweetly Margaret robs me of myself! + + MARGARET + To give you in your stead a better self! + Such as you were, when these eyes first beheld + You mounted on your sprightly steed, White Margery, + Sir Rowland my father's gift, + And all my maidens gave my heart for lost. + I was a young thing then, being newly come + Home from my convent education, where + Seven years I had wasted in the bosom of France: + Returning home true protestant, you call'd me + Your little heretic nun. How timid-bashful + Did John salute his love, being newly seen. + Sir Rowland term'd it a rare modesty, + And prais'd it in a youth. + + + JOHN + Now Margaret weeps herself. + (_A noise of bells heard_.) + + MARGARET + Hark the bells, John. + + JOHN + Those are the church bells of St. Mary Ottery. + + MARGARET + I know it. + + JOHN + Saint Mary Ottery, my native village + In the sweet shire of Devon. + Those are the bells. + +MARGARET +Wilt go to church, John? + +JOHN +I have been there already. + +MARGARET +How canst say thou hast been there already? The bells are only now +ringing for morning service, and hast thou been at church already? + + JOHN + I left my bed betimes, I could not sleep, + And when I rose, I look'd (as my custom is) + From my chamber window, where I can see the sun rise; + And the first object I discern'd + Was the glistering spire of St. Mary Ottery. + + MARGARET + Well, John. + + JOHN + Then I remember'd 'twas the sabbath-day. + Immediately a wish arose in my mind, + To go to church and pray with Christian people. + + And then I check'd myself, and said to myself, + "Thou hast been a heathen, John, these two years past, + (Not having been at church in all that time,) + And is it fit, that now for the first time + Thou should'st offend the eyes of Christian people + With a murderer's presence in the house of prayer? + Thou would'st but discompose their pious thoughts, + And do thyself no good: for how could'st thou pray, + With unwash'd hands, and lips unus'd to the offices?" + And then I at my own presumption smiled; + And then I wept that I should smile at all, + Having such cause of grief! I wept outright; + Tears like a river flooded all my face, + And I began to pray, and found I could pray; + And still I yearn'd to say my prayers in the church. + "Doubtless (said I) one might find comfort in it." + So stealing down the stairs, like one that fear'd detection, + Or was about to act unlawful business + At that dead time of dawn, + I flew to the church, and found the doors wide open, + (Whether by negligence I knew not, + Or some peculiar grace to me vouchsaf'd, + For all things felt like mystery). + + MARGARET + Yes. + + JOHN + So entering in, not without fear, + I past into the family pew, + And covering up my eyes for shame, + And deep perception of unworthiness, + Upon the little hassock knelt me down, + Where I so oft had kneel'd, + A docile infant by Sir Walter's side; + And, thinking so, I wept a second flood + More poignant than the first; + But afterwards was greatly comforted. + It seem'd, the guilt of blood was passing from me + Even in the act and agony of tears, + And all my sins forgiven. + + + + + + * * * * * + + + + THE WITCH + + A DRAMATIC SKETCH OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY (1798) + + + + * * * * * + + + CHARACTERS + +_Old Servant in the Family of Sir Francis Pairford. Stranger._ + + + * * * * * + + + + + SERVANT + One summer night Sir Francis, as it chanced, + Was pacing to and fro in the avenue + That westward fronts our house, + Among those aged oaks, said to have been planted + Three hundred years ago + By a neighb'ring prior of the Fairford name. + Being o'er-task'd in thought, he heeded not + The importunate suit of one who stood by the gate, + And begged an alms. + Some say he shoved her rudely from the gate + With angry chiding; but I can never think + (Our master's nature hath a sweetness in it) + That he could use a woman, an old woman, + With such discourtesy: but he refused her-- + And better had he met a lion in his path + Than that old woman that night; + For she was one who practised the black arts, + And served the devil, being since burnt for witchcraft. + She looked at him as one that meant to blast him, + And with a frightful noise, + ('Twas partly like a woman's voice, + And partly like the hissing of a snake,) + She nothing said but this:-- + (Sir Francis told the words) + + _A mischief, mischief, mischief, + And a nine-times-killing curse, + By day and by night, to the caitiff wight, + Who shakes the poor like snakes from his door, + And shuts up the womb of his purse_. + + And still she cried + + _A mischief, + And a nine-fold-withering curse: + For that shall come to thee that will undo thee, + Both all that thou fearest and worse_. + + So saying, she departed, + Leaving Sir Francis like a man, beneath + Whose feet a scaffolding was suddenly falling; + So he described it. + + STRANGER + A terrible curse! What followed? + + SERVANT + Nothing immediate, but some two months after + Young Philip Fairford suddenly fell sick, + And none could tell what ailed him; for he lay, + And pined, and pined, till all his hair fell off, + And he, that was full-fleshed, became as thin + As a two-months' babe that has been starved in the nursing. + And sure I think + He bore his death-wound like a little child; + With such rare sweetness of dumb melancholy + He strove to clothe his agony in smiles, + Which he would force up in his poor pale cheeks, + Like ill-timed guests that had no proper dwelling there; + And, when they asked him his complaint, he laid + His hand upon his heart to shew the place, + Where Susan came to him a-nights, he said, + And prick'd him with a pin.-- + And thereupon Sir Francis called to mind + The beggar-witch that stood by the gateway + And begged an alms. + + STRANGER + But did the witch confess? + + SERVANT + All this and more at her death. + + STRANGER + I do not love to credit tales of magic. + Heaven's music, which is Order, seems unstrung, + And this brave world + (The mystery of God) unbeautified, + Disorder'd, marr'd, where such strange things are acted. + + + + + * * * * * + + + + + Mr. H---- + + A FARCE IN TWO ACTS + +As it was performed at Drury Lane Theatre, _December, 1806_ + + +"Mr. H----, thou wert DAMNED. 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 +DAMNED! Hadst thou been anonymous, thou haply mightst have lived. But +thou didst come to an untimely end for thy tricks, and for want of a +better name to pass them off----." + +--_Theatrical Examiner._ + + + + * * * * * + + + CHARACTERS + + Mr. H---- _Mr. Elliston_. + BELVIL _Mr. Bartley_. + LANDLORD PRY _Mr. Wewitzer_. + MELESINDA _Miss Mellon_. + Maid to Melesinda. _Mrs. Harlowe_. + Gentlemen, Ladies, Waiters, Servants, &c. + + +SCENE.--_Bath_ + + + * * * * * + + +PROLOGUE + +_Spoken by Mr. Elliston_ + + + If we have sinn'd in paring down a name, + All civil well-bred authors do the same. + Survey the columns of our daily writers-- + You'll find that some Initials are great fighters. + How fierce the shock, how fatal is the jar, + When Ensign W. meets Lieutenant R. + With two stout seconds, just of their own gizard, + Cross Captain X. and rough old General Izzard! + Letter to Letter spreads the dire alarms, + Till half the Alphabet is up in arms. + Nor with less lustre have Initials shone, + To grace the gentler annals of Crim. Con. + Where the dispensers of the public lash + Soft penance give; a letter and a dash-- + Where vice reduced in size shrinks to a failing, + And loses half her grossness by curtailing. + Faux pas are told in such a modest way,-- + The affair of Colonel B---- with Mrs. A---- + You must forgive them--for what is there, say, + Which such a pliant Vowel must not grant + To such a very pressing Consonant? + Or who poetic justice dares dispute, + When, mildly melting at a lover's suit, + The wife's a Liquid, her good man a Mute? + Even in the homelier scenes of honest life, + The coarse-spun intercourse of man and wife, + Initials I am told have taken place + Of Deary, Spouse, and that old-fashioned race; + And Cabbage, ask'd by Brother Snip to tea, + Replies, "I'll come--but it don't rest with me-- + I always leaves them things to Mrs. C." + O should this mincing fashion ever spread + From names of living heroes to the dead, + How would Ambition sigh, and hang the head, + As each lov'd syllable should melt away-- + Her Alexander turned into Great A---- + A single C. her Caesar to express-- + Her Scipio shrunk into a Roman S---- + And nick'd and dock'd to these new modes of speech, + Great Hannibal himself a Mr. H----. + + + * * * * * + + +MR. H---- + + +A FARCE IN TWO ACTS + + + * * * * * + + +ACT I + + +SCENE.--_A Public Room in an Inn--Landlord, Waiters, Gentlemen, &c. + +Enter Mr. H._ + + +MR. H. +Landlord, has the man brought home my boots? + +LANDLORD +Yes, Sir. + +MR. H. +You have paid him? + +LANDLORD +There is the receipt, Sir, only not quite filled up, no name, only +blank--"Blank, Dr. to Zekiel Spanish for one pair of best hessians." +Now, Sir, he wishes to know what name he shall put in, who he shall say +"Dr." + +MR. H. +Why, Mr. H. to be sure. + +LANDLORD +So I told him, Sir; but Zekiel has some qualms about it. He says, he +thinks that Mr. H. only would not stand good in law. + +MR. H. +Rot his impertinence, bid him put in Nebuchadnezzar, and not trouble me +with his scruples. + +LANDLORD +I shall, Sir. [_Exit_.] + +_Enter a Waiter_. + +WAITER +Sir, Squire Level's man is below, with a hare and a brace of pheasants +for Mr. H. + +MR. H. +Give the man half-a-crown, and bid him return my best respects to his +master. Presents it seems will find me out, with any name, or no name. + +_Enter Second Waiter_. + +SECOND WAITER +Sir, the man that makes up the Directory is at the door. + +MR. H. +Give him a shilling, that is what these fellows come for. + +SECOND WAITER +He has sent up to know by what name your Honour will please to be +inserted. + +MR. H. +Zounds, fellow, I give him a shilling for leaving out my name, not for +putting it in. This is one of the plaguy comforts of going anonymous. + +[_Exit Second Waiter_.] + +_Enter Third Waiter_. + +THIRD WAITER +Two letters for Mr. H. [_Exit_.] + +MR. H. +From ladies (_opens them_). This from Melesinda, to remind me of the +morning call I promised; the pretty creature positively languishes to be +made Mrs. H. I believe I must indulge her (_affectedly_). This from her +cousin, to bespeak me to some party, I suppose (_opening it_)--Oh, "this +evening"--"Tea and cards"--(_surveying himself with complacency_). Dear +H., thou art certainly a pretty fellow. I wonder what makes thee such a +favourite among the ladies: I wish it may not be owing to the +concealment of thy unfortunate--pshaw! + +_Enter Fourth Waiter_. + +FOURTH WAITER +Sir, one Mr. Printagain is enquiring for you. + +MR. H. +Oh, I remember, the poet; he is publishing by subscription. Give him a +guinea, and tell him he may put me down. + +FOURTH WAITER +What name shall I tell him, Sir? + +MR. H. +Zounds, he is a poet; let him fancy a name. + +[_Exit Fourth Waiter_.] + +_Enter Fifth Waiter_. + +FIFTH WAITER +Sir, Bartlemy the lame beggar, that you sent a private donation to last +Monday, has by some accident discovered his benefactor, and is at the +door waiting to return thanks. + +MR. H. +Oh, poor fellow, who could put it into his head? Now I shall be teazed +by all his tribe, when once this is known. Well, tell him I am glad I +could be of any service to him, and send him away. + +FIFTH WAITER +I would have done so, Sir; but the object of his call now, he says, is +only to know who he is obliged to. + +MR. H. +Why, me. + +FIFTH WAITER +Yes, Sir. + +MR. H. +Me, me, me, who else, to be sure? + +FIFTH WAITER +Yes, Sir; but he is anxious to know the name of his benefactor. + +MR. H. +Here is a pampered rogue of a beggar, that cannot be obliged to a +gentleman in the way of his profession, but he must know the name, +birth, parentage, and education of his benefactor. I warrant you, next +he will require a certificate of one's good behaviour, and a +magistrate's licence in one's pocket, lawfully empowering so and so +to--give an alms. Any thing more? FIFTH WAITER + +Yes, Sir: here has been Mr. Patriot, with the county petition to sign; +and Mr. Failtime, that owes so much money, has sent to remind you of +your promise to bail him. + +MR. H. +Neither of which I can do, while I have no name. Here is more of the +plaguy comforts of going anonymous, that one can neither serve one's +friend nor one's country. Damn it, a man had better be without a nose, +than without a name. I will not live long in this mutilated, dismembered +state; I will to Melesinda this instant, and try to forget these +vexations. Melesinda! there is music in the name; but then, hang it, +there is none in mine to answer to it. [_Exit_.] + +(_While Mr. H. has been speaking, two Gentlemen have been observing him +curiously._) + +FIRST GENTLEMAN +Who the devil is this extraordinary personage? + +SECOND GENTLEMAN +Who? why 'tis Mr. H. + +FIRST GENTLEMAN +Has he no more name? + +SECOND GENTLEMAN +None that has yet transpired. No more! why that single letter has been +enough to inflame the imaginations of all the ladies in Bath. He has +been here but a fortnight, and is already received into all the first +families. + +FIRST GENTLEMAN +Wonderful! yet nobody knows who he is, or where he comes from! + +SECOND GENTLEMAN +He is vastly rich, gives away money as if he had infinity; dresses well, +as you see; and for address, the mothers are all dying for fear the +daughters should get him; and for the daughters, he may command them as +absolutely as--. Melesinda, the rich heiress, 'tis thought, will carry +him. + +FIRST GENTLEMAN +And is it possible that a mere anonymous-- + +SECOND GENTLEMAN +Phoo! that is the charm, Who is he? and What is he? and What is his +name?--The man with the great nose on his face never excited more of the +gaping passion of wonderment in the dames of Strasburg, than this +new-comer with the single letter to his name, has lighted up among the +wives and maids of Bath; his simply having lodgings here, draws more +visitors to the house than an election. Come with me to the parade, and +I will shew you more of him. [_Exeunt_.] + + + + +SCENE.--_In the Street_. + + +(MR. H. _walking_, BELVIL _meeting him_.) + + +BELVIL +My old Jamaica school-fellow, that I have not seen for so many years? it +must, it can be no other than Jack (_going up to him_). My dear Ho---- + +MR. H. (_Stopping his mouth._) +Ho----! the devil, hush. + +BELVIL +Why sure it is-- + +MR. H. +It is, it is your old friend Jack, that shall be nameless. + +BELVIL +My dear Ho---- + +MR. H. (_Stopping him_.) +Don't name it. + +BELVIL +Name what? + +MR. H. +My curst, unfortunate name. I have reasons to conceal it for a time. + +BELVIL +I understand you--Creditors, Jack? + +MR. H. +No, I assure you. + +BELVIL +Snapp'd up a ward, peradventure, and the whole Chancery at your heels? + +MR. H. +I don't use to travel with such cumbersome luggage. + +BELVIL +You ha'n't taken a purse? + +MR. H. +To relieve you at once from all disgraceful conjectures, you must know, +'tis nothing but the sound of my name. + +BELVIL +Ridiculous! 'tis true your's is none of the most romantic, but what can +that signify in a man? + +MR. H. +You must understand that I am in some credit with the ladies. + +BELVIL +With the ladies! + +MR. H. +And truly I think not without some pretensions. My fortune-- + +BELVIL +Sufficiently splendid, if I may judge from your appearance. + +MR. H. +My figure-- + +BELVIL +Airy, gay, and imposing. + +MR. H. +My parts-- + +BELVIL +Bright. + +MR. H. +My conversation-- + +BELVIL +Equally remote from flippancy and taciturnity. + +MR. H. +But then my name--damn my name. + +BELVIL +Childish! + +MR. H. +Not so. Oh, Belvil, you are blest with one which sighing virgins may +repeat without a blush, and for it change the paternal. But what virgin +of any delicacy (and I require some in a wife) would endure to be called +Mrs.----? + +BELVIL +Ha! ha! ha! most absurd. Did not Clementina Falconbridge, the romantic +Clementina Falconbridge, fancy Tommy Potts? and Rosabella Sweetlips +sacrifice her mellifluous appellative to Jack Deady? Matilda her cousin +married a Gubbins, and her sister Amelia a Clutterbuck. + +MR. H. +Potts is tolerable, Deady is sufferable, Gubbins is bearable, and +Clutterbuck is endurable, but Ho-- + +BELVIL +Hush, Jack, don't betray yourself. But you are really ashamed of the +family name? + +MR. H. +Aye, and of my father that begot me, and my father's father, and all +their forefathers that have borne it since the conquest. + +BELVIL +But how do you know the women are so squeamish? + +MR. H. +I have tried them. I tell you there is neither maiden of sixteen nor +widow of sixty but would turn up their noses at it. I have been refused +by nineteen virgins, twenty-nine relicts, and two old maids. + +BELVIL +That was hard indeed, Jack. + +MR. H. +Parsons have stuck at publishing the banns, because they averred it was +a heathenish name; parents have lingered their consent, because they +suspected it was a fictitious name; and rivals have declined my +challenges, because they pretended it was an ungentlemanly name. + +BELVIL +Ha, ha, ha, but what course do you mean to pursue? + +MR. H. +To engage the affections of some generous girl, who will be content to +take me as Mr. H. + +BELVIL +Mr. H.? + +MR. H. +Yes, that is the name I go by here; you know one likes to be as near the +truth as possible. + +BELVIL +Certainly. But what then? to get her to consent-- + +MR. H. +To accompany me to the altar without a name--in short to suspend her +curiosity (that is all) till the moment the priest shall pronounce the +irrevocable charm, which makes two names one. + +BELVIL +And that name--and then she must be pleased, ha, Jack? + +MR. H. +Exactly such a girl it has been my fortune to meet with, heark'e +(_whispers_)--(_musing_) yet hang it, 'tis cruel to betray her +confidence. + +BELVIL +But the family name, Jack? + +MR. H. +As you say, the family name must be perpetuated. + +BELVIL +Though it be but a homely one. + +MR. H. +True, but come, I will shew you the house where dwells this credulous +melting fair. + +BELVIL +Ha, ha, my old friend dwindled down to one letter. [_Exeunt_.] + + + + +SCENE.--_An Apartment in_ MELESINDA'S _House_. + + +MELESINDA _sola, as if musing_. + +MELESINDA +H.H.H. Sure it must be something precious by its being concealed. It +can't be Homer, that is a Heathen's name; nor Horatio, that is no +surname; what if it be Hamlet? the Lord Hamlet--pretty, and I his poor +distracted Ophelia! No, 'tis none of these; 'tis Harcourt or Hargrave, +or some such sounding name, or Howard, high born Howard, that would do; +may be it is Harley, methinks my H. resembles Harley, the feeling +Harley. But I hear him, and from his own lips I will once for ever be +resolved. + +_Enter_ MR. H. + +MR. H. +My dear Melesinda. + +MELESINDA +My dear H. that is all you give me power to swear allegiance to,--to be +enamoured of inarticulate sounds, and call with sighs upon an empty +letter. But I will know. + +MR. H. +My dear Melesinda, press me no more for the disclosure of that, which in +the face of day so soon must be revealed. Call it whim, humour, caprice, +in me. Suppose I have sworn an oath, never, till the ceremony of our +marriage is over, to disclose my true name. + +MELESINDA +Oh! H.H.H. I cherish here a fire of restless curiosity which consumes +me. 'Tis appetite, passion, call it whim, caprice, in me. Suppose I have +sworn I must and will know it this very night. + +MR. H. +Ungenerous Melesinda! I implore you to give me this one proof of your +confidence. The holy vow once past, your H. shall not have a secret to +withhold. + +MELESINDA +My H. has overcome: his Melesinda shall pine away and die, before she +dare express a saucy inclination; but what shall I call you till we are +married? + +MR. H. +Call me? call me any thing, call me Love, Love! aye, Love, Love will do +very well. + +MELESINDA +How many syllables is it, Love? + +MR. H. +How many? ud, that is coming to the question with a vengeance. One, two, +three, four,--what does it signify how many syllables? + +MELESINDA +How many syllables, Love? + +MR. H. + +My Melesinda's mind, I had hoped, was superior to this childish +curiosity. + +MELESINDA +How many letters are there in it? + +[_Exit_ MR. H. _followed by_ MELESINDA _repeating the question_.] + + + + +SCENE.--_A Room in the Inn. (Two Waiters disputing._) + + +FIRST WAITER +Sir Harbottle Hammond, you may depend upon it. + +SECOND WAITER +Sir Hardy Hardcastle, I tell you. + +FIRST WAITER +The Hammonds of Huntingdonshire. + +SECOND WAITER +The Hardcastles of Hertfordshire. + +FIRST WAITER +The Hammonds. + +SECOND WAITER +Don't tell me: does not Hardcastle begin with an H? + +FIRST WAITER +So does Hammond for that matter. + +SECOND WAITER +Faith, so it does if you go to spell it. I did not think of that. I +begin to be of your opinion; he is certainly a Hammond. + +FIRST WAITER +Here comes Susan Chambermaid, may be she can tell. + +_Enter Susan_. + +BOTH +Well, Susan, have you heard any thing who the strange gentleman is? + +SUSAN +Haven't you heard? it's all come out; Mrs. Guesswell, the parson's +widow, has been here about it. I overheard her talking in confidence to +Mrs. Setter and Mrs. Pointer, and she says, they were holding a sort of +_cummitty_ about it. + +BOTH +What? What? + +SUSAN +There can't be a doubt of it, she says, what from hisfigger and the +appearance he cuts, and his _sumpshous_ way of living, and above all +from the remarkable circumstance that his surname should begin with an +H., that he must be-- + +BOTH +Well, well-- + +SUSAN +Neither more nor less than the Prince. + +BOTH +Prince! + +SUSAN +The Prince of Hessy-Cassel in disguise. + +BOTH +Very likely, very likely. + +SUSAN +Oh, there can't be a doubt on it. Mrs. Guesswell says she knows it. + +FIRST WAITER +Now if we could be sure that the Prince of Hessy what-do-you-call-him +was in England on his travels. + +SECOND WAITER +Get a newspaper. Look in the newspapers. + +SUSAN +Fiddle of the newspapers, who else can it be? + +BOTH +That is very true (_gravely_). + +_Enter Landlord_. + +LANDLORD +Here, Susan, James, Philip, where are you all? The London coach is come +in, and there is Mr. Fillaside, the fat passenger, has been bawling for +somebody to help him off with his boots. (_The Chambermaid and Waiters +slip out_.) + +(_Solus_.) The house is turned upside down since the strange +gentleman came into it. Nothing but guessing and speculating, and +speculating and guessing; waiters and chambermaids getting into corners +and speculating, ostlers and stable-boys speculating in the yard, I +believe the very horses in the stable are speculating too, for there +they stand in a musing posture, nothing for them to eat, and not +seeming to care whether thay have any thing or no; and after all what +does it signify? I hate such curious--odso, I must take this box up into +his bed-room--he charged me to see to it myself--I hate such +inquisitive--I wonder what is in it, it feels heavy (_Reads_) "Leases, +title deeds, wills." Here now a man might satisfy his curiosity at once. +Deeds must have names to them, so must leases and wills. But I +wouldn't--no I wouldn't--it is a pretty box too--prettily dovetailed--I +admire the fashion of it much. But I'd cut my fingers off, before I'd do +such a dirty--what have I to do--curse the keys, how they rattle--rattle +in one's pockets--the keys and the halfpence (_takes out a bunch and +plays with them_). I wounder if any of these would fit; one might just +try them, but I wouldn't lift up the lid if they did. Oh no, what should +I be the richer for knowing? (_All this time he tries the keys one by +one_.) What's his name to me? a thousand names begin with an H. I hate +people that are always prying, poking and prying into things,--thrusting +their finger into one place--a mighty little hole this--and their keys +into another. Oh Lord! little rusty fits it! but what is that to me? I +wouldn't go to--no no--but it is odd little rusty should just happen. +(_While he is turning up the lid of the box_, MR. H. _enters behing him +unperceived_.) + +MR. H. +What are you about, you dog? + +LANDLORD +Oh Lord, Sir! pardon; no thief as I hope to be saved. Little Pry was +always honest. + +MR. H. +What else could move you to open that box! + +LANDLORD +Sir, don't kill me, and I will confess the whole truth. This box +happened to be lying--that is, I happened to be carrying this box, and I +happened to have my keys out, and so--little rusty happened to fit-- + +MR. H. +So little rusty happened to fit!--and would not a rope fit that rogue's +neck? I see the papers have not been moved: all is safe, but it was as +well to frighten him a little (_aside_). + +Come, Landlord, as I think you +honest, and suspect you only intended to gratify a little foolish +curiosity-- + +LANDLORD +That was all, Sir, upon my veracity. + +MR. H. +For this time I will pass it over. Your name is Pry, I think. + +LANDLORD +Yes, Sir, Jeremiah Pry, at your service. + +MR. H. +An apt name, you have a prying temper. I mean, some little curiosity, a +sort of inquisitiveness about you. + +LANDLORD +A natural thirst after knowledge you may call it, Sir. When a boy I was +never easy, but when I was thrusting up the lids of some of my +school-fellows' boxes,--not to steal any thing, upon my honour, +Sir,--only to see what was in them; have had pens stuck in my eyes for +peeping through key-holes after knowledge; could never see a cold pie +with the legs dangling out at top, but my fingers were for lifting up +the crust,--just to try if it were pigeon or partridge,--for no other +reason in the world. Surely I think my passion for nuts was owing to the +pleasure of cracking the shell to get at something concealed, more than +to any delight I took in eating the kernel. In short, Sir, this appetite +has grown with my growth. + +MR. H. +You will certainly be hanged some day for peeping into some bureau or +other, just to see what is in it. + +LANDLORD +That is my fear, Sir. The thumps and kicks I have had for peering into +parcels, and turning of letters inside out,--just for curiosity. The +blankets I have been made to dance in for searching parish-registers for +old ladies' ages,--just for curiosity! Once I was dragged through a +horse-pond, only for peeping into a closet that had glass doors to it, +while my Lady Bluegarters was undressing,--just for curiosity! + +MR. H. +A very harmless piece of curiosity, truly; and now, Mr. Pry, first have +the goodness to leave that box with me, and then do me the favour to +carry your curiosity so far, as to enquire if my servants are within. + +LANDLORD +I shall, Sir. Here, David, Jonathan,--I think I hear them coming,--shall +make bold to leave you, Sir. + +[_Exit._] + +MR. H. +Another tolerable specimen of the comforts of going anonymous! + +_Enter two Footmen._ + +FIRST FOOTMAN +You speak first. + +SECOND FOOTMAN +No, you had better speak. + +FIRST FOOTMAN +You promised to begin. + +MR. H. +They have something to say to me. The rascals want their wages raised, I +suppose; there is always a favour to be asked when they come smiling. +Well, poor rogues, service is but a hard bargain at the best. I think I +must not be close with them. Well, David--well, Jonathan. + +FIRST FOOTMAN +We have served your honour faithfully---- + +SECOND FOOTMAN +Hope your honour won't take offence---- + +MR. H. +The old story, I suppose--wages? + +FIRST FOOTMAN +That's not it, your honour. + +SECOND FOOTMAN +You speak. + +FIRST FOOTMAN +But if your honour would just be pleased to---- + +SECOND FOOTMAN +Only be pleased to---- + +MR. H. +Be quick with what you have to say, for I am in haste. + +FIRST FOOTMAN +Just to---- + +SECOND FOOTMAN +Let us know who it is---- + +FIRST FOOTMAN +Who it is we have the honour to serve. + +MR. H. +Why me, me, me; you serve me. + +SECOND FOOTMAN +Yes, Sir; but we do not know who you are. + +MR. H. +Childish curiosity! do not you serve a rich master, a gay master, an +indulgent master? + +FIRST FOOTMAN +Ah, Sir! the figure you make is to us, your poor servants, the principal +mortification. + +SECOND FOOTMAN +When we get over a pot at the public-house, or in a gentleman's kitchen, +or elsewhere, as poor servants must have their pleasures--when the +question goes round, who is your master? and who do you serve? and one +says, I serve Lord So-and-so, and another, I am Squire Such-a-one's +footman---- + +FIRST FOOTMAN +We have nothing to say for it, but that we serve Mr. H. + +SECOND FOOTMAN +Or Squire H. + +MR. H. +Really you are a couple of pretty modest, reasonable personages; but I +hope you will take it as no offence, gentlemen, if, upon a dispassionate +review of all that you have said, I think fit not to tell you any more +of my name, than I have chosen for especial purposes to communicate to +the rest of the world. + +FIRST FOOTMAN +Why then, Sir, you may suit yourself. + +SECOND FOOTMAN +We tell you plainly, we cannot stay. + +FIRST FOOTMAN +We don't chuse to serve Mr. H. + +SECOND FOOTMAN +Nor any Mr. or Squire in the alphabet---- + +FIRST FOOTMAN +That lives in Chris-cross Row. + +MR. H. +Go, for a couple of ungrateful, inquisitive, senseless rascals! Go hang, +starve, or drown!--Rogues, to speak thus irreverently of the alphabet--I +shall live to see you glad to serve old Q--to curl the wig of great +S--adjust the dot of little i--stand behind the chair of X, Y, Z--wear +the livery of Et-caetera--and ride behind the sulky of +And-by-itself-and! + +[_Exit in a rage_.] + + + + +ACT II + + +SCENE.--_A handsome Apartment well lighted, Tea, Cards, &c.--A large +party of Ladies and Gentlemen, among them_ MELESINDA. + + +FIRST LADY +I wonder when the charming man will be here. + +SECOND LADY +He is a delightful creature! Such a polish---- + +THIRD LADY +Such an air in all that he does or says---- + +FOURTH LADY +Yet gifted with a strong understanding---- + +FIFTH LADY +But has your ladyship the remotest idea of what his true name is? + +FIRST LADY +They say, his very servants do not know it. His French valet, that has +lived with him these two years---- + +SECOND LADY +There, Madam, I must beg leave to set you right: my coachman---- + +FIRST LADY +I have it from the very best authority: my footman---- + +SECOND LADY +Then, Madam, you have set your servants on---- + +FIRST LADY +No, Madam, I would scorn any such little mean ways of conning at a +secret. For my part, I don't think any secret of that consequence. + +SECOND LADY +That's just like me; I make a rule of troubling my head with nobody's +business but my own. + +MELESINDA +But then, she takes care to make everybody's business her own, and so to +justify herself that way----(_aside_). + +FIRST LADY +My dear Melesinda, you look thoughtful. + +MELESINDA +Nothing. SECOND LADY +Give it a name. + +MELESINDA +Perhaps it is nameless. + +FIRST LADY +As the object----Come, never blush, nor deny it, child. Bless me, what +great ugly thing is that, that dangles at your bosom? + +MELESINDA +This? it is a cross: how do you like it? + +SECOND LADY +A cross! Well, to me it looks for all the world like a great staring H. + +(_Here a general laugh_.) + +MELESINDA +Malicious creatures! Believe me it is a cross, and nothing but a cross. + +FIRST LADY +A cross, I believe, you would willingly hang at. + +MELESINDA +Intolerable spite! + +(MR. H. _is announced_.) + +(_Enter_ MR. H.) + +FIRST LADY +O, Mr. H. we are so glad---- + +SECOND LADY +We have been so dull---- + +THIRD LADY +So perfectly lifeless----You owe it to us, to be more than commonly +entertaining. + +MR. H. +Ladies, this is so obliging---- + +FOURTH LADY +O, Mr. H. those ranunculas you said were dying, pretty things, they have +got up---- + +FIFTH LADY +I have worked that sprig you commended--I want you to come---- + +MR. H. +Ladies---- + +SIXTH LADY +I have sent for that piece of music from London. + +MR. H. +The Mozart--(_seeing Melesinda_.)--Melesinda! + +SEVERAL LADIES AT ONCE +Nay positively, Melesinda, you shan't engross him all to yourself. + +(_While the Ladies are pressing about MR. H. the Gentlemen shew signs of +displeasure_.) + +FIRST GENTLEMAN +We shan't be able to edge in a word, now this coxcomb is come. + +SECOND GENTLEMAN +Damn him, I will affront him. + +FIRST GENTLEMAN +Sir, with your leave, I have a word to say to one of these ladies. + +SECOND GENTLEMAN +If we could be heard---- + +(_The ladies pay no attention but to_ MR. H.) + +MR. H. +You see, gentlemen, how the matter stands. (_Hums an air_.) I am not my +own master: positively I exist and breathe but to be agreeable to +these----Did you speak? + +FIRST GENTLEMAN +And affects absence of mind, Puppy! + +MR. H. +Who spoke of absence of mind, did you, Madam? How do you do, Lady +Wearwell--how do? I did not see your ladyship before--what was I about +to say--O--absence of mind. I am the most unhappy dog in that way, +sometimes spurt out the strangest things--the most mal-a-propos--without +meaning to give the least offence, upon my honour--sheer absence of +mind--things I would have given the world not to have said. + +FIRST GENTLEMAN +Do you hear the coxcomb? + +FIRST LADY +Great wits, they say---- + +SECOND LADY +Your fine geniuses are most given---- + +THIRD LADY +Men of bright parts are commonly too vivacious---- + +MR. H. +But you shall hear. I was to dine the other day at a great nabob's, that +must be nameless, who, between ourselves, is strongly suspected +of--being very rich, that's all. John, my valet, who knows my foible, +cautioned me, while he was dressing me, as he usually does where he +thinks there's a danger of my committing a _lapsus_, to take care in my +conversation how I made any allusion direct or indirect to presents +--you understand me? I set out double charged with my fellow's +consideration and my own, and, to do myself justice, behaved with +tolerable circumspection for the first half hour or so--till at last a +gentleman in company, who was indulging a free vein of raillery at the +expense of the ladies, stumbled upon that expression of the poet, which +calls them "fair defects." + +FIRST LADY +It is Pope, I believe, who says it. + +MR. H. +No, Madam; Milton. Where was I? O, "fair defects." This gave occasion to +a critic in company, to deliver his opinion on the phrase--that led to +an enumeration of all the various words which might have been used +instead of "defect," as want, absence, poverty, deficiency, lack. This +moment I, who had not been attending to the progress of the argument +(as the denouement will shew) starting suddenly up out of one of my +reveries, by some unfortunate connexion of ideas, which the last fatal +word had excited, the devil put it into my head to turn round to the +Nabob, who was sitting next me, and in a very marked manner (as it +seemed to the company) to put the question to him, Pray, Sir, what may +be the exact value of a lack of rupees? You may guess the confusion +which followed. + +FIRST LADY +What a distressing circumstance! + +SECOND LADY +To a delicate mind-- + +THIRD LADY +How embarrassing-- + +FOURTH LADY +I declare I quite pity you. + +FIRST GENTLEMAN +Puppy! + +MR. H. +A Baronet at the table, seeing my dilemma, jogged my elbow; and a +good-natured Duchess, who does every thing with a grace peculiar to +herself, trod on my toes at that instant: this brought me to myself, +and--covered with blushes, and pitied by all the ladies--I withdrew. + +FIRST LADY +How charmingly he tells a story. + +SECOND LADY +But how distressing! + +MR. H. +Lord Squandercounsel, who is my particular friend, was pleased to rally +me in his inimitable way upon it next day. I shall never forget a +sensible thing he said on the occasion--speaking of absence of mind, my +foible--says he, my dear Hogs-- + +SEVERAL LADIES +Hogs----what--ha-- + +MR. H. +My dear Hogsflesh--my name--(_here an universal scream_)--O my cursed +unfortunate tongue!--H, I mean--Where was I? + +FIRST LADY +Filthy--abominable! + +SECOND LADY +Unutterable! + +THIRD LADY +Hogs----foh! + +FOURTH LADY +Disgusting! + +FIFTH LADY +Vile! + +SIXTH LADY +Shocking! + +FIRST LADY +Odious! + +SECOND LADY +Hogs----pah! + +THIRD LADY +A smelling bottle--look to Miss Melesinda. Poor thing! it is no wonder. +You had better keep off from her, Mr. Hogsflesh, and not be pressing +about her in her circumstances. + +FIRST GENTLEMAN +Good time of day to you, Mr. Hogsflesh. + +SECOND GENTLEMAN +The compliments of the season to you, Mr. Hogsflesh. + +MR. H. +This is too much--flesh and blood cannot endure it. + +FIRST GENTLEMAN +What flesh?--hog's-flesh? + +SECOND GENTLEMAN +How he sets up his bristles! + +MR. H. +Bristles! + +FIRST GENTLEMAN +He looks as fierce as a hog in armour. + +MR. H. +A hog!----Madam!----(_here he severally accosts the ladies, who by +turns repel him_). + +FIRST LADY +Extremely obliged to you for your attentions; but don't want a partner. + +SECOND LADY +Greatly flattered by your preference; but believe I shall remain single. + +THIRD LADY +Shall always acknowledge your politeness; but have no thoughts of +altering my condition. + +FOURTH LADY +Always be happy to respect you as a friend; but you must not look for +any thing further. + +FIFTH LADY +No doubt of your ability to make any woman happy; but have no thoughts +of changing my name. + +SIXTH LADY +Must tell you, Sir, that if by your insinuations, you think to prevail +with me, you have got the wrong sow by the ear. Does he think any lady +would go to pig with him? + +OLD LADY +Must beg you to be less particular in your addresses to me. Does he take +me for a Jew, to long after forbidden meats? + +MR. H. +I shall go mad!--to be refused by old Mother Damnable--she that's so +old, nobody knows whether she was ever married or no, but passes for a +maid by courtesy; her juvenile exploits being beyond the farthest +stretch of tradition!--old Mother Damnable! + +[_Exeunt all, either pitying or seeming to avoid him._] + + + + +SCENE.--_The Street_. BELVIL _and another Gentleman_. + + +BELVIL +Poor Jack, I am really sorry for him. The account which you give me of +his mortifying change of reception at the assembly, would be highly +diverting, if it gave me less pain to hear it. With all his amusing +absurdities, and amongst them not the least, a predominant desire to be +thought well of by the fair sex, he has an abundant share of good +nature, and is a man of honour. Notwithstanding all that has happened, +Melesinda may do worse than take him yet. But did the women resent it so +deeply as you say? + +GENTLEMAN +O intolerably--they fled him as fearfully when 'twas once blown, as a +man would be avoided, who was suddenly discovered to have marks of the +plague, and as fast; when before they had been ready to devour the +foolishest thing he could say. + +BELVIL +Ha! ha! so frail is the tenure by which these women's favourites +commonly hold their envied pre-eminence. Well, I must go find him out +and comfort him. I suppose, I shall find him at the inn. + +GENTLEMAN +Either there or at Melesinda's.--Adieu. + +[_Exeunt_.] + + + + +SCENE.--MR. H----'S _Apartment_. + + +MR. H. (_solus_) +Was ever any thing so mortifying? to be refused by old Mother +Damnable!--with such parts and address,--and the little squeamish +devils, to dislike me for a name, a sound.--O my cursed name! that it +was something I could be revenged on! if it were alive, that I might +tread upon it, or crush it, or pummel it, or kick it, or spit it +out--for it sticks in my throat and will choak me. + +My plaguy ancestors! if they had left me but a Van or a Mac, or an Irish +O', it had been something to qualify it.--Mynheer Van Hogsflesh--or +Sawney Mac Hogsflesh,--or Sir Phelim O'Hogsflesh,--but downright +blunt------. If it had been any other name in the world, I could have +borne it. If it had been the name of a beast, as Bull, Fox, Kid, Lamb, +Wolf, Lion; or of a bird, as Sparrow, Hawk, Buzzard, Daw, Finch, +Nightingale; or of a fish, as Sprat, Herring, Salmon; or the name of a +thing, as Ginger, Hay, Wood; or of a colour, as Black, Grey, White, +Green; or of a sound, as Bray; or the name of a month, as March, May; or +of a place, as Barnet, Baldock, Hitchin; or the name of a coin, as +Farthing, Penny, Twopenny; or of a profession, as Butcher, Baker, +Carpenter, Piper, Fisher, Fletcher, Fowler, Glover; or a Jew's name, as +Solomons, Isaacs, Jacobs; or a personal name, as Foot, Leg, Crookshanks, +Heaviside, Sidebottom, Longbottom, Ramsbottom, Winterbottom; or a long +name, as Blanchenhagen, or Blanchenhausen; or a short name, as Crib, +Crisp, Crips, Tag, Trot, Tub, Phips, Padge, Papps, or Prig, or Wig, or +Pip, or Trip; Trip had been something, but Ho------. + +_(Walks about in great agitation,--recovering his calmness a little, +sits down.)_ + +Farewell the most distant thoughts of marriage; the finger-circling +ring, the purity-figuring glove, the envy-pining bride-maids, the +wishing parson, and the simpering clerk. Farewell, the ambiguous +blush-raising joke, the titter-provoking pun, the morning-stirring +drum.--No son of mine shall exist, to bear my ill-fated name. No nurse +come chuckling, to tell me it is a boy. No midwife, leering at me from +under the lids of professional gravity. I dreamed of caudle. _(Sings in +a melancholy tone)_ Lullaby, Lullaby,--hush-a-by-baby--how like its papa +it is!--_(makes motions as if he was nursing)_. And then, when grown up, +"Is this your son, Sir?" "Yes, Sir, a poor copy of me,--a sad young +dog,--just what his father was at his age,--I have four more at home." +Oh! oh! oh! + +_Enter Landlord._ + +MR. H. +Landlord, I must pack up to-night; you will see all my things got ready. + +LANDLORD +Hope your Honor does not intend to quit the Blue Boar,--sorry any thing +has happened. + +MR. H. +He has heard it all. + +LANDLORD +Your Honour has had some mortification, to be sure, as a man may say; +you have brought your pigs to a fine market. + +MR. H. +Pigs! + +LANDLORD +What then? take old Pry's advice, and never mind it. Don't scorch your +crackling for 'em, Sir. + +MR. H. +Scorch my crackling! a queer phrase; but I suppose he don't mean to +affront me. + +LANDLORD +What is done can't be undone; you can't make a silken purse out of a +sow's ear. + +MR. H. +As you say, Landlord, thinking of a thing does but augment it. + +LANDLORD +Does but _hogment_ it, indeed, Sir. + +MR. H. +_Hogment_ it! damn it, I said, augment it. + +LANDLORD Lord, Sir, 'tis not every body has such gift of fine phrases as +your Honour, that can lard his discourse. + +MR. H. +Lard! + +LANDLORD +Suppose they do smoke you-- + +MR. H. +Smoke me? + +LANDLORD +One of my phrases; never mind my words, Sir, my meaning is good. We all +mean the same thing, only you express yourself one way, and I another, +that's all. The meaning's the same; it is all pork. + +MR. H. +That's another of your phrases, I presume. _(Bell rings, and the +Landlord called for.)_ + +LANDLORD +Anon, anon. + +MR. H. +O, I wish I were anonymous. + +[_Exeunt several ways._] + + + + +SCENE.--_Melesinda's Apartment_. + +(_MELESINDA and Maid._) + + +MAID +Lord, Madam! before I'd take on as you do about a foolish--what +signifies a name? Hogs--Hogs--what is it--is just as good as any other +for what I see. + +MELESINDA +Ignorant creature! yet she is perhaps blest in the absence of those +ideas, which, while they add a zest to the few pleasures which fall to +the lot of superior natures to enjoy, doubly edge the-- + +MAID +Superior natures! a fig! If he's hog by name, he's not hog by nature, +that don't follow--his name don't make him any thing, does it? He don't +grunt the more for it, nor squeak, that ever I hear; he likes his +victuals out of a plate, as other Christians do, you never see him go to +the trough-- + +MELESINDA +Unfeeling wretch! yet possibly her intentions-- + +MAID +For instance, Madam, my name is Finch--Betty Finch. I don't whistle the +more for that, nor long after canary-seed while I can get good wholesome +mutton--no, nor you can't catch me by throwing salt on my tail. If you +come to that, hadn't I a young man used to come after me, they said +courted me--his name was Lion--Francis Lion, a tailor; but though he was +fond enough of me, for all that, he never offered to eat me. + +MELESINDA +How fortunate that the discovery has been made before it was too late. +Had I listened to his deceits, and, as the perfidious man had almost +persuaded me, precipitated myself into an inextricable engagement, +before-- + +MAID +No great harm, if you had. You'd only have bought a pig in a poke--and +what then? Oh, here he comes creeping-- + +_Enter_ MR. H. _abject_. + +Go to her, Mr. Hogs--Hogs--Hogsbristles--what's your name? Don't be +afraid, man--don't give it up--she's not crying--only _summat_ has made +her eyes red--she has got a sty in her eye, I believe--(_going_.) + +MELESINDA +You are not going, Betty? + +MAID +O, Madam, never mind me--I shall be back in the twinkling of a pig's +whisker, as they say. [_Exit_.] + +MR. H. +Melesinda, you behold before you a wretch who would have betrayed your +confidence, but it was love that prompted him; who would have tricked +you by an unworthy concealment into a participation of that disgrace +which a superficial world has agreed to attach to a name--but with it +you would have shared a fortune not contemptible, and a heart--but 'tis +over now. That name he is content to bear alone--to go where the +persecuted syllables shall be no more heard, or excite no meaning +--some spot where his native tongue has never penetrated, nor any of his +countrymen have landed, to plant their unfeeling satire, their brutal +wit, and national ill manners--where no Englishman--(_Here Melesinda, +who has been pouting during this speech, fetches a deep sigh_.) Some yet +undiscovered Otaheite, where witless, unapprehensive savages shall +innocently pronounce the ill-fated sounds, and think them not +inharmonious. + +MELESINDA +Oh! + +MR. H. +Who knows but among the female natives might be found-- + +MELESINDA +Sir! (_raising her head_). + +MR. H. +One who would be more kind than--some Oberea--Queen Oberea. + +MELESINDA +Oh! + +MR. H. +Or what if I were to seek for proofs of reciprocal esteem among +unprejudiced African maids, in Monomotopa. + +_Enter Servant_. + +SERVANT +Mr. Belvil. [_Exit_.] + +_Enter_ BELVIL. + +MR. H. +In Monornotopa (_musing_.) + +BELVIL +Heyday, Jack! what means this mortified face? nothing has happened, I +hope, between this lady and you? I beg pardon, Madam, but understanding +my friend was with you, I took the liberty of seeking him here. Some +little difference possibly which a third person can adjust--not a +word--will you, Madam, as this gentleman's friend, suffer me to be the +arbitrator--strange--hark'e, Jack, nothing has come out, has there? you +understand me. Oh I guess how it is--somebody has got at your secret, +you hav'n't blabbed it yourself, have you? ha! ha! ha! I could find in +my heart--Jack, what would you give me if I should relieve you-- + +MR. H. +No power of man can relieve me (_sighs_) but it must lie at the root, +gnawing at the root--here it will lie. + +BELVIL +No power of man? not a common man, I grant you; for instance, a +subject--it's out of the power of any subject. + +MR. H. +Gnawing at the root--there it will lie. + +BELVIL +Such a thing has been known as a name to be changed; but not by a +subject--(_shews a Gazette_). + +MR. H. +Gnawing at the root (_suddenly snatches the paper out of Belvil's +hand_); ha! pish! nonsense! give it me--what! (_reads_) promotions, +bankrupts--a great many bankrupts this week--there it will lie (_lays it +down, takes it up again, and reads_) "The King has been graciously +pleased"--gnawing at the root--"graciously pleased to grant unto John +Hogsflesh"--the devil--"Hogsflesh, Esq., of Sty Hall, in the county of +Hants, his royal licence and authority"--O Lord! O Lord!--"that he and +his issue"--me and my issue--"may take and use the surname and arms of +Bacon"--Bacon, the surname and arms of Bacon--"in pursuance of an +injunction contained in the last will and testament of Nicholas Bacon, +Esq. his late uncle, as well as out of grateful respect to his +memory:"--grateful respect! poor old soul----here's more--"and that +such arms may be first duly exemplified"--they shall, I will take care +of that--"according to the laws of arms, and recorded in the Herald's +Office." + +BELVIL +Come, Madam, give me leave to put my own interpretation upon your +silence, and to plead for my friend, that now that only obstacle which +seemed to stand in your way of your union is removed, you will suffer +me to complete the happiness which my news seems to have brought him, by +introducing him with a new claim to your favour, by the name of Mr. +Bacon. + +(_Takes their hands and joins them, which Melesinda seems to give +consent to with a smile_.) + +MR. H. +Generous Melesinda!--my dear friend--"he and his issue," me and my +issue--O Lord!-- + +BELVIL +I wish you joy, Jack, with all my heart. + +MR. H. +Bacon, Bacon, Bacon--how odd it sounds. I could never be tired of +hearing it. There was Lord Chancellor Bacon. Methinks I have some of the +Verulam blood in me already--methinks I could look through Nature--there +was Friar Bacon, a conjurer--I feel as if I could conjure too-- + +_Enter a Servant_. + +SERVANT +Two young ladies and an old lady are at the door, enquiring if you see +company, Madam. + +MR. H. +"Surname and arms"-- + +MELESINDA +Shew them up.--My dear Mr. Bacon, moderate your joy. + +_Enter three Ladies, being part of those who were at the Assembly._ + +FIRST LADY +My dear Melesinda, how do you do? + +SECOND LADY +How do you do? We have been so concerned for you-- + +OLD LADY + +We have been so concerned--(_seeing him_)--Mr. Hogsflesh-- + +MR. H. +There's no such person--nor there never was--nor 'tis not fit there +should be--"surname and arms"-- + +BELVIL +It is true what my friend would express; we have been all in a mistake, +ladies. Very true, the name of this gentleman was what you call it, but +it is so no longer. The succession to the long-contested Bacon estate is +at length decided, and with it my friend succeeds to the name of his +deceased relative. + +MR. H. +"His Majesty has been graciously pleased"-- + +FIRST LADY +I am sure we all join in hearty congratulation--(_sighs_). + +SECOND LADY +And wish you joy with all our hearts--(_heigh ho_!) + +OLD LADY +And hope you will enjoy the name and estate many years--(_cries_). + +BELVIL +Ha! ha! ha! mortify them a little, Jack. + +FIRST LADY +Hope you intend to stay-- + +SECOND LADY +With us some time-- + +OLD LADY +In these parts-- + +MR. H. +Ladies, for your congratulations I thank you; for the favours you have +lavished on me, and in particular for this lady's (_turning to the old +Lady_) good opinion, I rest your debtor. As to any future +favours--(_accosts them severally in the order in which he was reftised +by them at the assembly_)--Madam, shall always acknowledge your +politeness; but at present, you see, I am engaged with a partner. Always +be happy to respect you as a friend, but you must not look for any +thing further. Must beg of you to be less particular in your addresses +to me. Ladies all, with this piece of advice, of Bath and you + + Your ever grateful servant takes his leave. + Lay your plans surer when you plot to grieve; + See, while you kindly mean to mortify + Another, the wild arrow do not fly, + And gall yourself. For once you've been mistaken; + Your shafts have miss'd their aim--Hogsflesh has saved + his Bacon. + + + + * * * * * + + + + THE PAWNBROKER'S DAUGHTER + + A FARCE + + (1825) + + + * * * * * + + + CHARACTERS + + FLINT, _a Pawnbroker._ + DAVENPORT, _in love with Marian._ + PENDULOUS, _a Reprieved Gentleman._ + CUTLET, _a Sentimental Butcher._ + GOLDING, _a Magistrate._ + WILLIAM, _Apprentice to Flint._ + BEN, _Cutlet's Boy._ + MISS FLYN. + BETTY, _her Maid._ + MARIAN, _Daughter to Flint._ + LUCY, _her Maid._ + + + * * * * * + + + + +ACT I. + + +SCENE I.--_An Apartment at Flint's house._ + + +FLINT. WILLIAM. + + +FLINT +Carry those umbrellas, cottons, and wearing-apparel, up stairs. You may +send that chest of tools to Robins's. + +WILLIAM +That which you lent six pounds upon to the journeyman carpenter that had +the sick wife? + +FLINT +The same. + +WILLIAM +The man says, if you can give him till Thursday-- + +FLINT +Not a minute longer. His time was out yesterday. These improvident +fools! + +WILLIAM +The finical gentleman has been here about the seal that was his +grandfather's. + +FLINT +He cannot have it. Truly, our trade would be brought to a fine pass, if +we were bound to humour the fancies of our customers. This man would be +taking a liking to a snuff-box that he had inherited; and that +gentlewoman might conceit a favourite chemise that had descended to her. + +WILLIAM +The lady in the carriage has been here crying about those jewels. She +says, if you cannot let her have them at the advance she offers, her +husband will come to know that she has pledged them. + +FLINT +I have uses for those jewels. Send Marian to me. (_Exit William_.) I +know no other trade that is expected to depart from its fair advantages +but ours. I do not see the baker, the butcher, the shoemaker, or, to go +higher, the lawyer, the physician, the divine, give up any of their +legitimate gains, even when the pretences of their art had failed; yet +_we_ are to be branded with an odious name, stigmatized, discountenanced +even by the administrators of those laws which acknowledge us; scowled +at by the lower sort of people, whose needs we serve! + +_Enter Marian_. + +Come hither, Marian. Come, kiss your father. The report runs that he is +full of spotted crime. What is your belief, child? + +MARIAN +That never good report went with our calling, father. I have heard you +say, the poor look only to the advantages which we derive from them, and +overlook the accommodations which they receive from us. But the poor +_are_ the poor, father, and have little leisure to make distinctions. I +wish we could give up this business. + +FLINT +You have not seen that idle fellow, Davenport? + +MARIAN +No, indeed, father, since your injunction. + +FLINT +I take but my lawful profit. The law is not over favourable to us. + +MARIAN +Marian is no judge of these things. + +FLINT +They call me oppressive, grinding.--I know not what-- + +MARIAN +Alas! + +FLINT +Usurer, extortioner. Am I these things? + +MARIAN +You are Marian's kind and careful father. That is enough for a child to +know. + +FLINT +Here, girl, is a little box of jewels, which the necessities of a +foolish woman of quality have transferred into our true and lawful +possession. Go, place them with the trinkets that were your mother's. +They are all yours, Marian, if you do not cross me in your marriage. No +gentry shall match into this house, to flout their wife hereafter with +her parentage. I will hold this business with convulsive grasp to my +dying day. I will plague these _poor_, whom you speak so tenderly of. + +MARIAN +You frighten me, father. Do not frighten Marian. + +FLINT +I have heard them say, There goes Flint--Flint, the cruel pawnbroker! + +MARIAN +Stay at home with Marian. You shall hear no ugly words to vex you. + +FLINT +You shall ride in a gilded chariot upon the necks of these _poor_, +Marian. Their tears shall drop pearls for my girl. Their sighs shall be +good wind for us. They shall blow good for my girl. Put up the jewels, +Marian. [_Exit_.] + +_Enter Lucy_. + +LUCY +Miss, miss, your father has taken his hat, and is slept out, and Mr. +Davenport is on the stairs; and I came to tell you-- + +MARIAN +Alas! who let him in? + +_Enter Davenport_. + +DAVENPORT +My dearest girl-- + +MARIAN +My father will kill me, if he finds you have been here! + +DAVENPORT +There is no time for explanations. I have positive information that your +father means, in less than a week, to dispose of you to that ugly +Saunders. The wretch has bragged of it to his acquaintance, and already +calls you _his_. + +MARIAN +O heavens! + +DAVENPORT +Your resolution must be summary, as the time which calls for it. Mine or +his you must be, without delay. There is no safety for you under this +roof. + +MARIAN +My father-- + +DAVENPORT +Is no father, if he would sacrifice you. + +MARIAN +But he is unhappy. Do not speak hard words of my father. + +DAVENPORT +Marian must exert her good sense. + +LUCY +(_As if watching at the window._) O, miss, your father has suddenly +returned. I see him with Mr. Saunders, coming down the street. Mr. +Saunders, ma'am! + +MARIAN +Begone, begone, if you love me, Davenport. + +DAVENPORT +You must go with me then, else here I am fixed. + +LUCY +Aye, miss, you must go, as Mr. Davenport says. Here is your cloak, miss, +and your hat, and your gloves. Your father, ma'am-- + +MARIAN +O, where, where? Whither do you hurry me, Davenport? + +DAVENPORT +Quickly, quickly, Marian. At the back door.-- + +[_Exit Marian with Davenport, reluctantly; in her flight still holding +the jewels._] + +LUCY +Away--away. What a lucky thought of mine to say her father was coming! +he would never have got her off, else. Lord, Lord, I do love to help +lovers. + +[_Exit, following them._] + + + + +SCENE II.--_A Butcher's Shop._ + + +CUTLET. BEN. + + +CUTLET +Reach me down that book off the shelf, where the shoulder of veal hangs. + +BEN + +Is this it? + +CUTLET +No--this is "Flowers of Sentiment"--the other--aye, this is a good book. +"An Argument against the Use of Animal Food. By J.R." _That_ means +Joseph Ritson. I will open it anywhere, and read just as it happens. One +cannot dip amiss in such books as these. The motto, I see, is from Pope. +I dare say, very much to the purpose. (_Reads_.) + + "The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day, + Had he thy reason, would he sport and play? + Pleas'd to the last, he crops his flowery food, + And licks the hand"-- + +Bless us, is that saddle of mutton gone home to Mrs. Simpson's? It +should have gone an hour ago. + +BEN +I was just going with it. + +CUTLET +Well go. Where was I? Oh! + + "And licks the hand just raised to shed its blood." + +What an affecting picture! (_turns over the leaves, and reads_). + +"It is probable that the long lives which are recorded of the people before +the flood, were owing to their being confined to a vegetable diet." + +BEN +The young gentleman in Pullen's Row, Islington, that has got the +consumption, has sent to know if you can let him have a sweetbread. + +CUTLET +Take two,--take all that are in the shop. What a disagreeable +interruption! (_reads again_). "Those fierce and angry passions, which +impel man to wage destructive war with man, may be traced to the ferment +in the blood produced by an animal diet." + +BEN +The two pound of rump-steaks must go home to Mr. Molyneux's. He is in +training to fight Cribb. + +CUTLET +Well, take them; go along, and do not trouble me with your disgusting +details. + +[_Exit Ben._] + +CUTLET +(_Throwing down the book._) Why was I bred to this detestable business? +Was it not plain, that this trembling sensibility, which has marked my +character from earliest infancy, must for ever disqualify me for a +profession which--what do ye want? what do ye buy? O, it is only +somebody going past. I thought it had been a customer.--Why was not I +bred a glover, like my cousin Langston? to see him poke his two little +sticks into a delicate pair of real Woodstock--"A very little stretching +ma'am, and they will fit exactly"--Or a haberdasher, like my next-door +neighbour--"not a better bit of lace in all town, my lady--Mrs. +Breakstock took the last of it last Friday, all but this bit, which I +can afford to let your ladyship have a bargain--reach down that drawer +on your left hand, Miss Fisher." + +(_Enter in haste, Davenport, Marian, and Lucy._) + +LUCY +This is the house I saw a bill up at, ma'am; and a droll creature the +landlord is. + +DAVENPORT +We have no time for nicety. + +CUTLET +What do ye want? what do ye buy? O, it is only you, Mrs. Lucy. + +_Lucy whispers Cutlet._ + +CUTLET +I have a set of apartments at the end of my garden. They are quite +detached from the shop. A single lady at present occupies the ground +floor. + +MARIAN +Aye, aye, any where. + +DAVENPORT +In, in.-- + +CUTLET +Pretty lamb,--she seems agitated. _Davenport and Marian go in with +Cutlet._ + +LUCY +I am mistaken if my young lady does not find an agreeable companion in +these apartments. Almost a namesake. Only the difference of Flyn, and +Flint. I have some errands to do, or I would stop and have some fun with +this droll butcher. _Cutlet returns._ + +CUTLET +Why, how odd this is! _Your_ young lady knows _my_ young lady. They are +as thick as flies. + +LUCY +You may thank me for your new lodger, Mr. Cutlet.--But bless me, you do +not look well? + +CUTLET +To tell you the truth, I am rather heavy about the eyes. Want of sleep, +I believe. + +LUCY +Late hours, perhaps. Raking last night. + +CUTLET +No, that is not it, Mrs. Lucy. My repose was disturbed by a very +different cause from what you may imagine. It proceeded from too much +thinking. + +LUCY +The deuce it did! and what, if I may be so bold, might be the subject of +your Night Thoughts? + +CUTLET +The distresses of my fellow creatures. I never lay my head down on my +pillow, but I fall a thinking, how many at this very instant are +perishing. Some with cold-- + +LUCY +What, in the midst of summer? + +CUTLET +Aye. Not here, but in countries abroad, where the climate is different +from ours. Our summers are their winters, and _vice versâ_, you know. +Some with cold-- + +LUCY +What a canting rogue it is! I should like to trump up some fine story to +plague him. [_Aside._] + +CUTLET +Others with hunger--some a prey to the rage of wild beasts-- + +LUCY +He has got this by rote, out of some book. + +CUTLET +Some drowning, crossing crazy bridges in the dark--some by the violence +of the devouring flame-- + +LUCY +I have it.--For that matter, you need not send your humanity a +travelling, Mr. Cutlet. For instance, last night-- + +CUTLET +Some by fevers, some by gun-shot wounds-- + +LUCY +Only two streets off-- + +CUTLET +Some in drunken quarrels-- + +LUCY +(_Aloud._) The butcher's shop at the corner. + +CUTLET +What were you saying about poor Cleaver? + +LUCY +He has found his ears at last. (_Aside._) That he has had his house +burnt down. + +CUTLET +Bless me! + +LUCY +I saw four small children taken in at the green grocer's. + +CUTLET +Do you know if he is insured? + +LUCY +Some say he is, but not to the full amount. + +CUTLET +Not to the full amount--how shocking! He killed more meat than any of +the trade between here and Carnaby market--and the poor babes--four of +them you say--what a melting sight!--he served some good customers about +Marybone--I always think more of the children in these cases than of the +fathers and mothers--Lady Lovebrown liked his veal better than any man's +in the market--I wonder whether her ladyship is engaged--I must go and +comfort poor Cleaver, however.--[_Exit_.] + +LUCY +Now is this pretender to humanity gone to avail himself of a neighbour's +supposed ruin to inveigle his customers from him. Fine feelings!--pshaw! +[_Exit_.] + +(_Re-enter Cutlet_.) + +CUTLET +What a deceitful young hussey! there is not a word of truth in her. +There has been no fire. How can people play with one's feelings +so!--(_sings_)--"For tenderness formed"--No, I'll try the air I made +upon myself. The words may compose me--(_sings_). + + A weeping Londoner I am, + A washer-woman was my dam; + She bred me up in a cock-loft, + And fed my mind with sorrows soft: + + For when she wrung with elbows stout + From linen wet the water out,-- + The drops so like to tears did drip, + They gave my infant nerves the hyp. + + Scarce three clean muckingers a week + Would dry the brine that dew'd my cheek: + So, while I gave my sorrows scope, + I almost ruin'd her in soap. + + My parish learning I did win + In ward of Farringdon-Within; + Where, after school, I did pursue + My sports, as little boys will do. + + Cockchafers--none like me was found + To set them spinning round and round. + O, how my tender heart would melt, + To think what those poor varmin felt! + + I never tied tin-kettle, clog, + Or salt-box to the tail of dog, + Without a pang more keen at heart, + Than he felt at his outward part. + + And when the poor thing clattered off, + To all the unfeeling mob a scoff, + Thought I, "What that dumb creature feels, + With half the parish at his heels!" + + Arrived, you see, to man's estate, + The butcher's calling is my fate; + Yet still I keep my feeling ways. + And leave the town on slaughtering days. + + At Kentish Town, or Highgate Hill, + I sit, retired, beside some rill; + And tears bedew my glistening eye, + To think my playful lambs must die! + + But when they're dead I sell their meat, + On shambles kept both clean and neat; + Sweet-breads also I guard full well, + And keep them from the blue-bottle. + + Envy, with breath sharp as my steel, + Has ne'er yet blown upon my veal; + And mouths of dames, and daintiest fops, + Do water at my nice lamb-chops. + +[_Exit, half laughing, half crying._] + + + + +SCENE III.--A Street. + + +(Davenport, solus.) + + +DAVENPORT +Thus far have I secured my charming prize. I can appretiate, while I +lament, the delicacy which makes her refuse the protection of my +sister's roof. But who comes here? + +(_Enter Pendulous, agitated._) It must be he. That fretful animal +motion--that face working up and down with uneasy sensibility, like new +yeast. Jack--Jack Pendulous! + +PENDULOUS +It is your old friend, and very miserable. + +DAVENPORT +Vapours, Jack. I have not known you fifteen years to have to guess at +your complaint. Why, they troubled you at school. Do you remember when +you had to speak the speech of Buckingham, where he is going to +execution? + +PENDULOUS +Execution!--he has certainly heard it. (_Aside_.) + +DAVENPORT +What a pucker you were in overnight! + +PENDULOUS +May be so, may be so, Mr. Davenport. That was an imaginary scene. I have +had real troubles since. + +DAVENPORT +Pshaw! so you call every common accident. + +PENDULOUS +Do you call my case so common, then? + +DAVENPORT +What case? + +PENDULOUS +You have not heard, then? + +DAVENPORT +Positively not a word. + +PENDULOUS +You must know I have been--(_whispers_)--tried for a felony since then. + +DAVENPORT +Nonsense! + +PENDULOUS +No subject for mirth, Mr. Davenport. A confounded short-sighted fellow +swore that I stopt him, and robbed him, on the York race-ground at nine +on a fine moonlight evening, when I was two hundred miles off in +Dorsetshire. These hands have been held up at a common bar. + +DAVENPORT +Ridiculous! it could not have gone so far. + +PENDULOUS +A great deal farther, I assure you, Mr. Davenport. I am ashamed to say +how far it went. You must know, that in the first shock and surprise of +the accusation, shame--you know I was always susceptible--shame put me +upon disguising my _name_, that, at all events, it might bring no +disgrace upon my family. I called myself _James Thomson_. + +DAVENPORT +For heaven's sake, compose yourself. + +PENDULOUS +I will. An old family ours, Mr. Davenport--never had a blot upon it till +now--a family famous for the jealousy of its honour for many +generations--think of that, Mr. Davenport--that felt a stain like a +wound-- + +DAVENPORT +Be calm, my dear friend. + +PENDULOUS +This served the purpose of a temporary concealment well enough; but when +it came to the--_alibi_--I think they call it--excuse these technical +terms, they are hardly fit for the mouth of a gentleman, the +_witnesses_--that is another term--that I had sent for up from Melcombe +Regis, and relied upon for clearing up my character, by disclosing my +real name, _John Pendulous_--so discredited the cause which they came to +serve, that it had quite a contrary effect to what was intended. In +short, the usual forms passed, and you behold me here the miserablest of +mankind. + +DAVENPORT +(_Aside_). He must be light-headed. + +PENDULOUS +Not at all, Mr. Davenport. I hear what you say, though you speak it all +on one side, as they do at the playhouse. + +DAVENPORT +The sentence could never have been carried into--pshaw!--you are +joking--the truth must have come out at last. + +PENDULOUS +So it did, Mr. Davenport--just two minutes and a second too late by the +Sheriff's stop-watch. Time enough to save my life--my wretched life--but +an age too late for my honour. Pray, change the subject--the detail must +be as offensive to you. + +DAVENPORT +With all my heart, to a more pleasing theme. The lovely Maria Flyn--are +you friends in that quarter, still? Have the old folks relented? + +PENDULOUS +They are dead, and have left her mistress of her inclinations. But it +requires great strength of mind to-- + +DAVENPORT +To what? + +PENDULOUS +To stand up against the sneers of the world. It is not every young lady +that feels herself confident against the shafts of ridicule, though +aimed by the hand of prejudice. Not but in her heart, I believe, she +prefers me to all mankind. But think what the world would say, if, in +defiance of the opinions of mankind, she should take to her arms +a--reprieved man! + +DAVENPORT +Whims! You might turn the laugh of the world upon itself in a fortnight. +These things are but nine days' wonders. + +PENDULOUS +Do you think so, Mr. Davenport? + +DAVENPORT +Where does she live? + +PENDULOUS +She has lodgings in the next street, in a sort of garden-house, that +belongs to one Cutlet. I have not seen her since the affair. I was going +there at her request. + +DAVENPORT +Ha, ha, ha! + +PENDULOUS +Why do you laugh? + +DAVENPORT +The oddest fellow! I will tell you--But here he comes. + +_Enter Cutlet._ + +CUTLET +(_To Davenport._) Sir, the young lady at my house is desirous you should +return immediately. She has heard something from home. + +PENDULOUS +What do I hear? + +DAVENPORT +'Tis her fears, I daresay. My dear Pendulous, you will excuse me?--I +must not tell him our situation at present, though it cost him a fit of +jealousy. We shall have fifty opportunities for explanation. [_Exit._] + +PENDULOUS +Does that gentleman visit the lady at your lodgings? + +CUTLET +He is quite familiar there, I assure you. He is all in all with her, as +they say. + +PENDULOUS +It is but too plain. Fool that I have been, not to suspect that, while +she pretended scruples, some rival was at the root of her infidelity! + +CUTLET +You seem distressed, Sir. Bless me! + +PENDULOUS +I am, friend, above the reach of comfort. + +CUTLET +Consolation, then, can be to no purpose? + +PENDULOUS +None. + +CUTLET +I am so happy to have met with him! + +PENDULOUS +Wretch, wretch, wretch! + +CUTLET +There he goes! How he walks about biting his nails! I would not exchange +this luxury of unavailing pity for worlds. + +PENDULOUS +Stigmatized by the world-- + +CUTLET +My case exactly. Let us compare notes. + +PENDULOUS +For an accident which-- + +CUTLET +For a profession which-- + +PENDULOUS +In the eye of reason has nothing in it-- + +CUTLET +Absolutely nothing in it-- + +PENDULOUS +Brought up at a public bar-- + +CUTLET +Brought up to an odious trade-- + +PENDULOUS +With nerves like mine-- + +CUTLET +With nerves like mine-- + +PENDULOUS +Arraigned, condemned-- + +CUTLET +By a foolish world-- + +PENDULOUS +By a judge and jury-- + +CUTLET +By an invidious exclusion disqualified for sitting upon a jury at all-- + +PENDULOUS +Tried, cast, and-- + +CUTLET +What? + +PENDULOUS +HANGED, Sir, HANGED by the neck, till I was-- + +CUTLET +Bless me! + +PENDULOUS +Why should not I publish it to the whole world, since she, whose +prejudice alone I wished to overcome, deserts me? + +CUTLET +Lord have mercy upon us! not so bad as that comes to, I hope? + +PENDULOUS +When she joins in the judgment of an illiberal world against me-- + +CUTLET +You said HANGED, Sir--that is, I mean, perhaps I mistook you. How +ghastly he looks! + +PENDULOUS +Fear me not, my friend. I am no ghost--though I heartily wish I were +one. + +CUTLET +Why, then, ten to one you were-- + +PENDULOUS +_Cut down._ The odious word shall out, though it choak me. + +CUTLET +Your case must have some things in it very curious. I daresay you kept a +journal of your sensations. + +PENDULOUS +Sensations! + +CUTLET +Aye, while you were being--you know what I mean. They say persons in +your situation have lights dancing before their eyes--blueish. But then +the worst of all is coming to one's self again. + +PENDULOUS +Plagues, furies, tormentors! I shall go mad! [_Exit._] + +CUTLET +There, he says he shall go mad. Well, my head has not been very right of +late. It goes with a whirl and a buzz somehow. I believe I must not +think so deeply. Common people that don't reason know nothing of these +aberrations. + + Great wits go mad, and small ones only dull; + Distracting cares vex not the empty skull: + They seize on heads that think, and hearts that feel, + As flies attack the--better sort of veal. + +[_Exit._] + + + + +ACT II + + +SCENE.--At Flint's. + + +FLINT. WILLIAM. + + +FLINT +I have overwalked myself, and am quite exhausted. Tell Marian to come +and play to me. + +WILLIAM +I shall, Sir. [_Exit._] + +FLINT +I have been troubled with an evil spirit of late; I think an evil +spirit. It goes and comes, as my daughter is with or from me. It cannot +stand before her gentle look, when, to please her father, she takes down +her music-book. _Enter William._ + +WILLIAM +Miss Marian went out soon after you, and is not returned. + +FLINT +That is a pity--That is a pity. Where can the foolish girl be gadding? + +WILLIAM +The shopmen say she went out with Mr. Davenport. + +FLINT +Davenport? Impossible. + +WILLIAM +They say they are sure it was he, by the same token that they saw her +slip into his hand, when she was past the door, the casket which you +gave her. + +FLINT +Gave her, William! I only intrusted it to her. She has robbed me. Marian +is a thief. You must go to the Justice, William, and get out a warrant +against her immediately. Do you help them in the description. Put in +"Marian Flint," in plain words--no remonstrances, William--"daughter of +Reuben Flint,"--no remonstrances, but do it-- + +WILLIAM +Nay, sir-- + +FLINT +I am rock, absolute rock, to all that you can say--A piece of solid +rock.--What is it that makes my legs to fail, and my whole frame to +totter thus? It has been my over walking. I am very faint. Support me +in, William. [_Exeunt_] + + + + +SCENE.--_The Apartment of Miss Flyn._ + + +MISS FLYN. BETTY. + + +MISS FLYN +'Tis past eleven. Every minute I expect Mr. Pendulous here. What a +meeting do I anticipate! + +BETTY +Anticipate, truly! what other than a joyful meeting can it be between +two agreed lovers who have been parted these four months? + +MISS FLYN +But in that cruel space what accidents have happened!--(_aside_)--As +yet I perceive she is ignorant of this unfortunate affair. + +BETTY +Lord, madam, what accidents? He has not had a fall or a tumble, has he? +He is not coming upon crutches? + +MISS FLYN +Not exactly a fall--(_aside_)--I wish I had courage to admit her to my +confidence. + +BETTY +If his neck is whole, his heart is so too, I warrant it. + +MISS FLYN +His neck!--(_aside_)--She certainly mistrusts something. He writes me +word that this must be his last interview. + +BETTY +Then I guess the whole business. The wretch is unfaithful. Some creature +or other has got him into a noose. + +MISS FLYN +A noose! + +BETTY +And I shall never more see him hang---- + +MISS FLYN +Hang, did you say, Betty? + +BETTY +About that dear, fond neck, I was going to add, madam, but you +interrupted me. + +MISS FLYN +I can no longer labour with a secret which oppresses me thus. Can you be +trusty? + +BETTY +Who, I, madam?--(_aside_)--Lord, I am so glad. Now I shall know all. + +MISS FLYN +This letter discloses the reason of his unaccountable long absence from +me. Peruse it, and say if we have not reason to be unhappy. + +_(Betty retires to the window to read the letter, Mr. Pendulous +enters.)_ + +MISS FLYN +My dear Pendulous! + +PENDULOUS +Maria!--nay, shun the embraces of a disgraced man, who comes but to tell +you that you must renounce his society for ever. + +MISS FLYN +Nay, Pendulous, avoid me not. + +PENDULOUS +_(Aside.)_ That was tender. I may be mistaken. Whilst I stood on +honourable terms, Maria might have met my caresses without a blush. + +_(Betty, who has not attended to the entrance of Pendulous, through her +eagerness to read the letter, comes forward.)_ + +BETTY +Ha! ha! ha! What a funny story, madam; and is this all you make such a +fuss about? I should not care if twenty of my lovers had been---- +(_seeing Pendulous_)--Lord, Sir, I ask pardon. + +PENDULOUS +Are we not alone, then? + +MISS FLYN +'Tis only Betty--my old servant. You remember Betty? + +PENDULOUS +What letter is that? + +MISS FLYN +O! something from her sweetheart, I suppose. + +BETTY +Yes, ma'am, that is all. I shall die of laughing. + +PENDULOUS +You have not surely been shewing her---- + +MISS FLYN +I must be ingenuous. You must know, then, that I was just giving Betty a +hint--as you came in. + +PENDULOUS +A hint! + +MISS FLYN +Yes, of our unfortunate embarrassment. + +PENDULOUS +My letter! + +MISS FLYN +I thought it as well that she should know it at first. + +PENDULOUS +'Tis mighty well, madam. 'Tis as it should be. I was ordained to be a +wretched laughing-stock to all the world; and it is fit that our drabs +and our servant wenches should have their share of the amusement. + +BETTY +Marry come up! Drabs and servant wenches! and this from a person in his +circumstances! + +_(Betty flings herself out of the room, muttering.)_ + +MISS FLYN +I understand not this language. I was prepared to give my Pendulous a +tender meeting. To assure him, that however, in the eyes of the +superficial and the censorious, he may have incurred a partial +degradation, in the esteem of one, at least, he stood as high as ever. +That it was not in the power of a ridiculous _accident,_ involving no +guilt, no shadow of imputation, to separate two hearts, cemented by +holiest vows, as ours have been. This untimely repulse to my affections +may awaken scruples in me, which hitherto, in tenderness to you, I have +suppressed. + +PENDULOUS +I very well understand what you call tenderness, madam; but in some +situations, pity--pity--is the greatest insult. + +MISS FLYN +I can endure no longer. When you are in a calmer mood, you will be sorry +that you have wrung my heart so. _[Exit.]_ + +PENDULOUS +Maria! She is gone--in tears. Yet it seems she has had her scruples. She +said she had tried to smother them. Mermaid Betty intimated as much. + +_Re-enter Betty._ + +BETTY +Never mind Retty, sir; depend upon it she will never 'peach. + +PENDULOUS +'Peach! + +BETTY +Lord, sir, these scruples will blow over. Go to her again, when she is +in a better humour. You know we must stand off a little at first, to +save appearances. + +PENDULOUS +Appearances! _we!_ + +BETTY +It will be decent to let some time elapse. + +PENDULOUS +Time elapse! + + Lost, wretched Pendulous! to scorn betrayed, + The scoff alike of mistress and of maid! + What now remains for thee, forsaken man, + But to complete thy fate's abortive plan, + And finish what the feeble law began? + +[_Exeunt._] + +_Re-enter Miss Flyn, with Marian._ + +MISS FLYN +Now both our lovers are gone, I hope my friend will have less reserve. +You must consider this apartment as yours while you stay here. 'Tis +larger and more commodious than your own. + +MARIAN +You are kind, Maria. My sad story I have troubled you with. I have some +jewels here, which I unintentionally brought away. I have only to beg, +that you will take the trouble to restore them to my father; and, +without disclosing my present situation, to tell him, that my next +step--with or without the concurrence of Mr. Davenport--shall be to +throw myself at his feet, and beg to be forgiven. I dare not see him +till you have explored the way for me. I am convinced I was tricked into +this elopement. + +MISS FLYN +Your commands shall be obeyed implicitly. + +MARIAN +You are good (_agitated_). + +MISS FLYN +Moderate your apprehensions, my sweet friend. I too have known my +sorrows--(_smiling_).--You have heard of the ridiculous affair. + +MARIAN +Between Mr. Pendulous and you? Davenport informed me of it, and we both +took the liberty of blaming the over-niceness of your scruples. + +MISS FLYN +You mistake. The refinement is entirely on the part of my lover. He +thinks me not nice enough. I am obliged to feign a little reluctance, +that he may not take quite a distaste to me. Will you believe it, that +he turns my very constancy into a reproach, and declares, that a woman +must be devoid of all delicacy, that, after a thing of that sort, could +endure the sight of her husband in---- + +MARIAN +In what? + +MISS FLYN +The sight of a man at all in---- + +MARIAN +I comprehend you not. + +MISS FLYN +In--in a--_(whispers)_--night cap, my dear; and now the mischief is out. + +MARIAN +Is there no way to cure him? + +MISS FLYN +None, unless I were to try the experiment, by placing myself in the +hands of justice for a little while, how far an equality in misfortune +might breed a sympathy in sentiment. Our reputations would be both upon +a level, then, you know. What think you of a little innocent +shop-lifting, in sport? + +MARIAN +And by that contrivance to be taken before a magistrate? the project +sounds oddly. + +MISS FLYN +And yet I am more than half persuaded it is feasible. + +_Enter Betty._ + +BETTY +Mr. Davenport is below, ma'am, and desires to speak with you. + +MARIAN +You will excuse me--_(going--turning back.)_--You will remember the +casket? _[Exit.]_ + +MISS FLYN +Depend on me. + +BETTY +And a strange man desires to see you, ma'am. I do not half like his +looks. + +MISS FLYN +Shew him in. + +_(Exit Betty, and returns--with a Police Officer. Betty goes out.)_ + +OFFICER +Your servant, ma'am. Your name is---- + +MISS FLYN +Flyn, sir. Your business with me? + +OFFICER +_(Alternately surveying the lady and his paper of instructions.)_ Marian +Flint. + +MISS FLYN +Maria Flyn. + +OFFICER +Aye, aye, Flyn or Flint. 'Tis all one. Some write plain Mary, and some +put ann after it. I come about a casket. + +MISS FLYN +I guess the whole business. He takes me for my friend. Something may +come out of this. I will humour him. + +OFFICER +_(Aside)_--Answers the description to a tittle. "Soft, grey eyes, pale +complexion,"---- + +MISS FLYN +Yet I have been told by flatterers that my eyes were blue--_(takes out +a pocket-glass)_--I hope I look pretty tolerably to-day. + +OFFICER +Blue!--they are a sort of blueish-gray, now I look better; and as for +colour, that comes and goes. Blushing is often a sign of a hardened +offender. Do you know any thing of a casket? + +MISS FLYN +Here is one which a friend has just delivered to my keeping. + +OFFICER +And which I must beg leave to secure, together with your ladyship's +person. "Garnets, pearls, diamond-bracelet,"--here they are, sure +enough. + +MISS FLYN +Indeed, I am innocent. + +OFFICER +Every man is presumed so till he is found otherwise. + +MISS FLYN +Police wit! Have you a warrant? + +OFFICER +Tolerably cool that! Here it is, signed by Justice Golding, at the +requisition of Reuben Flint, who deposes that you have robbed him. + +MISS FLYN +How lucky this turns out! _(aside.)_--Can I be indulged with a coach? + +OFFICER +To Marlborough Street? certainly--an old offender--_(aside.)_ The thing +shall be conducted with as much delicacy as is consistent with security. + +MISS FLYN +Police manners! I will trust myself to your protection then. _[Exeunt.]_ + + + + +SCENE.--_Police-Office._ + + +JUSTICE, FLINT, OFFICERS, &c. + + +JUSTICE +Before we proceed to extremities, Mr. Flint, let me entreat you to +consider the consequences. What will the world say to your exposing your +own child? + +FLINT +The world is not my friend. I belong to a profession which has long +brought me acquainted with its injustice. I return scorn for scorn, and +desire its censure above its plaudits. + +JUSTICE +But in this case delicacy must make you pause. + +FLINT +Delicacy--ha! ha!--pawnbroker--how fitly these words suit. Delicate +pawnbroker--delicate devil--let the law take its course. + +JUSTICE +Consider, the jewels are found. + +FLINT +'Tis not the silly baubles I regard. Are you a man? are you a father? +and think you I could stoop so low, vile as I stand here, as to make +money--filthy money--of the stuff which a daughter's touch has +desecrated? Deep in some pit first I would bury them. + +JUSTICE +Yet pause a little. Consider. An only child. + +FLINT +Only, only,--there, it is that stings me, makes me mad. She was the only +thing I had to love me--to bear me up against the nipping injuries of +the world. I prate when I should act. Bring in your prisoner. + +_(The Justice makes signs to an Officer, who goes out, and returns with +Miss Flyn.)_ + +FLINT +What mockery of my sight is here? This is no daughter. + +OFFICER +Daughter, or no daughter, she has confessed to this casket. + +FLINT +_(Handling it.)_ The very same. Was it in the power of these pale +splendours to dazzle the sight of honesty--to put out the regardful eye +of piety and daughter-love? Why, a poor glow-worm shews more brightly. +Bear witness how I valued them--_(tramples on them)_.--Fair lady, know +you aught of my child? + +MISS FLYN +I shall here answer no questions. + +JUSTICE +You must explain how you came by the jewels, madam. + +MISS FLYN +_(Aside.)_ Now confidence assist me!----A gentleman in the +neighbourhood will answer for me---- + +JUSTICE +His name---- + +MISS FLYN +Pendulous---- + +JUSTICE +That lives in the next street? + +MISS FLYN +The same----now I have him sure. + +JUSTICE +Let him be sent for. I believe the gentleman to be respectable, and will +accept his security. + +FLINT +Why do I waste my time, where I have no business? None--I have none any +more in the world--none. + +_Enter Pendulous._ + +PENDULOUS +What is the meaning of this extraordinary summons?--Maria here? + +FLINT +Know you any thing of my daughter, Sir? + +PENDULOUS +Sir, I neither know her nor yourself, nor why I am brought hither; but +for this lady, if you have any thing against her, I will answer it with +my life and fortunes. + +JUSTICE +Make out the bail-bond. + +OFFICER +(_Surveying Pendulous_.) Please, your worship, before you take that +gentleman's bond, may I have leave to put in a word? + +PENDULOUS +(_Agitated._) I guess what is coming. + +OFFICER +I have seen that gentleman hold up his hand at a criminal bar. + +JUSTICE +Ha! + +MISS FLYN +(_Aside._) Better and better. + +OFFICER +My eyes cannot deceive me. His lips quivered about, while he was being +tried, just as they do now. His name is not Pendulous. + +MISS FLYN +Excellent! + +OFFICER +He pleaded to the name of Thomson at York assizes. + +JUSTICE +Can this be true? + +MISS FLYN +I could kiss the fellow! + +OFFICER +He was had up for a footpad. + +MISS FLYN +A dainty fellow! + +PENDULOUS +My iniquitous fate pursues me everywhere. + +JUSTICE +You confess, then. + +PENDULOUS +I am steeped in infamy. + +MISS FLYN +I am as deep in the mire as yourself. + +PENDULOUS +My reproach can never be washed out. + +MISS FLYN +Nor mine. + +PENDULOUS +I am doomed to everlasting shame. + +MISS FLYN +We are both in a predicament. + +JUSTICE +I am in a maze where all this will end. + +MISS FLYN +But here comes one who, if I mistake not, will guide us out of all our +difficulties. + +_Enter Marian and Davenport._ + +MARIAN +_(Kneeling.)_ My dear father! + +FLINT +Do I dream? + +MARIAN +I am your Marian. + +JUSTICE +Wonders thicken! + +FLINT +The casket-- + +MISS FLYN +Let me clear up the rest. + +FLINT +The casket-- + +MISS FLYN +Was inadvertently in your daughter's hand, when, by an artifice of her +maid Lucy,--set on, as she confesses, by this gentleman here,-- + +DAVENPORT +I plead guilty. + +MISS FLYN +She was persuaded, that you were in a hurry going to marry her to an +object of her dislike; nay, that he was actually in the house for the +purpose. The speed of her flight admitted not of her depositing the +jewels; but to me, who have been her inseparable companion since she +quitted your roof, she intrusted the return of them; which the +precipitate measures of this gentleman _(pointing to the Officer)_ alone +prevented. Mr. Cutlet, whom I see coming, can witness this to be true. + +_Enter Cutlet, in haste._ + +CUTLET +Aye, poor lamb! poor lamb! I can witness. I have run in such a haste, +hearing how affairs stood, that I have left my shambles without a +protector. If your worship had seen how she cried _(pointing to +Marian),_ and trembled, and insisted upon being brought to her father. +Mr. Davenport here could not stay her. + +FLINT +I can forbear no longer. Marian, will you play once again, to please +your old father? + +MARIAN +I have a good mind to make you buy me a new grand piano for your naughty +suspicions of me. + +DAVENPORT +What is to become of me? + +FLINT +I will do more than that. The poor lady shall have her jewels again. + +MARIAN +Shall she? + +FLINT +Upon reasonable terms _(smiling)._ And now, I suppose, the court may +adjourn. + +DAVENPORT +Marian! + +FLINT +I guess what is passing in your mind, Mr. Davenport; but you have +behaved upon the whole so like a man of honour, that it will give me +pleasure, if you will visit at my house for the future; but _(smiling)_ +not clandestinely, Marian. + +MARIAN +Hush, father. + +FLINT +I own I had prejudices against gentry. But I have met with so much +candour and kindness among my betters this day--from this gentleman in +particular--_(turning to the Justice)_--that I begin to think of +leaving off business, and setting up for a gentleman myself. + +JUSTICE +You have the feelings of one. + +FLINT +Marian will not object to it. + +JUSTICE +But _(turning to Miss Flyn)_ what motive could induce this lady to take +so much disgrace upon herself, when a word's explanation might have +relieved her? + +MISS FLYN +This gentleman _(turning to Pendulous)_ can explain. + +PENDULOUS +The devil! + +MISS FLYN +This gentleman, I repeat it, whose backwardness in concluding a long and +honourable suit from a mistaken delicacy-- + +PENDULOUS +How! + +MISS FLYN +Drove me upon the expedient of involving myself in the same disagreeable +embarrassments with himself, in the hope that a more perfect sympathy +might subsist between us for the future. + +PENDULOUS +I see it--I see it all. + +JUSTICE +(_To Pendulous._) You were then tried at York? + +PENDULOUS +I was--CAST-- + +JUSTICE +Condemned-- + +PENDULOUS +EXECUTED. + +JUSTICE +How? + +PENDULOUS +CUT DOWN and CAME TO LIFE AGAIN. False delicacy, adieu! The true sort, +which this lady has manifested--by an expedient which at first sight +might seem a little unpromising, has cured me of the other. We are now +on even terms. + +MISS FLYN +And may-- + +PENDULOUS +Marry,--I know it was your word. + +MISS FLYN +And make a very quiet-- + +PENDULOUS +Exemplary-- + +MISS FLYN +Agreeing pair of-- + +PENDULOUS +ACQUITTED FELONS. + +FLINT +And let the prejudiced against our profession acknowledge, that a +money-lender may have the heart of a father; and that in the casket, +whose loss grieved him so sorely, he valued nothing so dear as _(turning +to Marian)_ one poor domestic jewel. + + + + + * * * * * + + + + THE WIFE'S TRIAL; OR, THE INTRUDING WIDOW + + + A DRAMATIC POEM + + _Founded on Mr. Crabbe's Tale of "The Confidant."_ + + (1827) + + + * * * * * + + + CHARACTERS + + MR. SELBY,--a Wiltshire Gentleman_. + KATHERINE, _Wife to Selby_. + LUCY, _Sister to Selby_. + MRS. FRAMPTON, _a Widow_. + SERVANTS. + + SCENE.--_At Mr. Selby's house, or in the grounds adjacent_. + + + * * * * * + + +SCENE--_A Library_. + + +MR. SELBY, KATHERINE. + + + SELBY + Do not too far mistake me, gentlest wife; + I meant to chide your virtues, not yourself, + And those too with allowance. I have not + Been blest by thy fair side with five white years + Of smooth and even wedlock, now to touch + With any strain of harshness on a string + Hath yielded me such music. 'Twas the quality + Of a too grateful nature in my Katherine, + That to the lame performance of some vows, + And common courtesies of man to wife, + Attributing too much, hath sometimes seem'd + To esteem in favours, what in that blest union + Are but reciprocal and trivial dues, + As fairly yours as mine: 'twas this I thought + Gently to reprehend. + + KATHERINE + In friendship's barter + The riches we exchange should hold some level, + And corresponding worth. Jewels for toys + Demand some thanks thrown in. You took me, sir, + To that blest haven of my peace, your bosom, + An orphan founder'd in the world's black storm. + Poor, you have made me rich; from lonely maiden, + Your cherish'd and your full-accompanied wife. + + SELBY + But to divert the subject: Kate too fond, + I would not wrest your meanings; else that word + Accompanied, and full-accompanied too, + Might raise a doubt in some men, that their wives + Haply did think their company too long; + And over-company, we know by proof, + Is worse than no attendance. + + KATHERINE + I must guess, + You speak this of the Widow-- + + SELBY + 'Twas a bolt + At random shot; but if it hit, believe me, + I am most sorry to have wounded you + Through a friend's side. I know not how we have swerved + From our first talk. I was to caution you + Against this fault of a too grateful nature: + Which, for some girlish obligations past, + In that relenting season of the heart, + When slightest favours pass for benefits + Of endless binding, would entail upon you + An iron slavery of obsequious duty + To the proud will of an imperious woman. + + KATHERINE + The favours are not slight to her I owe. + + SELBY + Slight or not slight, the tribute she exacts + Cancels all dues--_[A voice within.]_ + even now I hear her call you + In such a tone, as lordliest mistresses + Expect a slave's attendance. Prithee, Kate, + Let her expect a brace of minutes or so. + Say, you are busy. Use her by degrees + To some less hard exactions. + + KATHERINE + I conjure you, + Detain me not. I will return-- + + SELBY + Sweet wife + Use thy own pleasure--_[Exit Katherine.]_ + but it troubles me. + A visit of three days, as was pretended, + Spun to ten tedious weeks, and no hint given + When she will go! I would this buxom Widow + Were a thought handsomer! I'd fairly try + My Katherine's constancy; make desperate love + In seeming earnest; and raise up such broils, + That she, not I, should be the first to warn + The insidious guest depart. + + _Re-enter Katherine._ + + So soon return'd! + What was our Widow's will? + + KATHERINE + A trifle, Sir. + + SELBY + Some toilet service-to adjust her head, + Or help to stick a pin in the right place-- + + KATHERINE + Indeed 'twas none of these. + + SELBY + or new vamp up + The tarnish'd cloak she came in. I have seen her + Demand such service from thee, as her maid, + Twice told to do it, would blush angry-red, + And pack her few clothes up. Poor fool! fond slave! + And yet my dearest Kate!--This day at least + (It is our wedding-day) we spend in freedom, + And will forget our Widow.--Philip, our coach-- + Why weeps my wife? You know, I promised you + An airing o'er the pleasant Hampshire downs + To the blest cottage on the green hill side, + Where first I told my love. I wonder much, + If the crimson parlour hath exchanged its hue + For colours not so welcome. Faded though it be, + It will not shew less lovely than the tinge + Of this faint red, contending with the pale, + Where once the full-flush'd health gave to this cheek + An apt resemblance to the fruit's warm side, + That bears my Katherine's name.-- + + Our carriage, Philip. + + _Enter a Servant_. + + Now, Robin, what make you here? + + SERVANT + May it please you, + The coachman has driven out with Mrs. Frampton. + + SELBY + He had no orders-- + + SERVANT + None, Sir, that I know of, + But from the lady, who expects some letter + At the next Post Town. + + SELBY + Go, Robin. + + [_Exit Servant_.] + + How is this? + + KATHERINE + I came to tell you so, but fear'd your anger-- + + SELBY + It was ill done though of this Mistress Frampton, + This forward Widow. But a ride's poor loss + Imports not much. In to your chamber, love, + Where you with music may beguile the hour, + While I am tossing over dusty tomes, + Till our most reasonable friend returns. + + + KATHERINE + I am all obedience. [_Exit Katherine_] + + SELBY + Too obedient, Kate, + And to too many masters. I can hardly + On such a day as this refrain to speak + My sense of this injurious friend, this pest, + This household evil, this close-clinging fiend, + In rough terms to my wife. 'Death! my own servants + Controll'd above me! orders countermanded!' + What next? _[Servant enters and announces the Sister] + + _Enter Lucy._ + + Sister! I know you are come to welcome + This day's return. 'Twas well done. + + LUCY + You seem ruffled. + In years gone by this day was used to be + The smoothest of the year. Your honey turn'd + So soon to gall? + + SELBY + Gall'd am I, and with cause, + And rid to death, yet cannot get a riddance, + Nay, scarce a ride, by this proud Widow's leave. + + LUCY + Something you wrote me of a Mistress Frampton. + + SELBY + She came at first a meek admitted guest, + Pretending a short stay; her whole deportment + Seem'd as of one obliged. A slender trunk, + The wardrobe of her scant and ancient clothing, + Bespoke no more. But in a few days her dress, + Her looks, were proudly changed. And now she flaunts it + In jewels stolen or borrow'd from my wife; + Who owes her some strange service, of what nature + I must be kept in ignorance. Katherine's meek + And gentle spirit cowers beneath her eye, + As spell-bound by some witch. + + LUCY + Some mystery hangs on it. + How bears she in her carriage towards yourself? + + SELBY + As one who fears, and yet not greatly cares + For my displeasure. Sometimes I have thought, + A secret glance would tell me she could love, + If I but gave encouragement. Before me + She keeps some moderation; but is never + Closeted with my wife, but in the end + I find my Katherine in briny tears. + From the small chamber, where she first was lodged, + The gradual fiend by specious wriggling arts + Has now ensconced herself in the best part + Of this large mansion; calls the left wing her own; + Commands my servants, equipage.--I hear + Her hated tread. What makes she back so soon? + + _Enter Mrs. Frampton._ + + MRS. FRAMPTON + O, I am jolter'd, bruised, and shook to death, + With your vile Wiltshire roads. The villain Philip + Chose, on my conscience, the perversest tracks, + And stoniest hard lanes in all the county, + Till I was fain get out, and so walk back, + My errand unperform'd at Andover. + + LUCY + And I shall love the knave for ever after. + [_Aside_.] + + MRS. FRAMPTON + A friend with you! + + SELBY + My eldest sister, Lucy, + Come to congratulate this returning morn.-- + Sister, my wife's friend, Mistress Frampton. + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Pray + Be seated. For your brother's sake, you are welcome. + I had thought this day to have spent in homely fashion + With the good couple, to whose hospitality + I stand so far indebted. But your coming + Makes it a feast. + + LUCY + + She does the honours naturally--[_Aside_.] + + SELBY + + As if she were the mistress of the house--[_Aside_.] + + MRS. FRAMPTON + I love to be at home with loving friends. + To stand on ceremony with obligations, + Is to restrain the obliger. That old coach, though, + Of yours jumbles one strangely. + + SELBY + I shall order + An equipage soon, more easy to you, madam-- + + LUCY + To drive her and her pride to Lucifer, + I hope he means. [_Aside_.] + + MRS. FRAMPTON + I must go trim myself; this humbled garb + Would shame a wedding feast. I have your leave + For a short absence?--and your Katherine-- + + SELBY + You'll find her in her closet-- + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Fare you well, then. [_Exit_.] + + SELBY + How like you her assurance? + + LUCY + Even so well, + That if this Widow were my guest, not yours, + She should have coach enough, and scope to ride. + My merry groom should in a trice convey her + To Sarum Plain, and set her down at Stonehenge, + To pick her path through those antiques at leisure; + She should take sample of our Wiltshire flints. + O, be not lightly jealous! nor surmise, + That to a wanton bold-faced thing like this + Your modest shrinking Katherine could impart + Secrets of any worth, especially + Secrets that touch'd your peace. If there be aught, + My life upon't, 'tis but some girlish story + Of a First Love; which even the boldest wife + Might modestly deny to a husband's ear, + Much more your timid and too sensitive Katherine. + + SELBY + I think it is no more; and will dismiss + My further fears, if ever I have had such. + + LUCY + Shall we go walk? I'd see your gardens, brother; + And how the new trees thrive, I recommended. + Your Katherine is engaged now-- + + SELBY + I'll attend you. [_Exeunt._] + + + + +SCENE.--Servants' Hall. + + + HOUSEKEEPER, PHILIP, _and_ OTHERS, _laughing_. + + + HOUSEKEEPER + Our Lady's guest, since her short ride, seems ruffled, + And somewhat in disorder. Philip, Philip, + I do suspect some roguery. Your mad tricks + Will some day cost you a good place, I warrant. + + PHILIP + Good Mistress Jane, our serious housekeeper, + And sage Duenna to the maids and scullions, + We must have leave to laugh; our brains are younger, + And undisturb'd with care of keys and pantries. + We are wild things. + + BUTLER + Good Philip, tell us all. + + ALL + Ay, as you live, tell, tell-- + + PHILIP + Mad fellows, you shall have it. + The Widow's bell rang lustily and loud-- + + BUTLER + I think that no one can mistake her ringing. + + WAITING-MAID + Our Lady's ring is soft sweet music to it, + More of entreaty hath it than command. + + PHILIP + I lose my story, if you interrupt me thus. + The bell, I say, rang fiercely; and a voice, + More shrill than bell, call'd out for "Coachman Philip." + I straight obey'd, as 'tis my name and office. + "Drive me," quoth she, "to the next market town, + Where I have hope of letters." I made haste. + Put to the horses, saw her safely coach'd, + And drove her-- + + WAITING-MAID + --By the straight high-road to Andover, + I guess-- + + PHILIP + Pray, warrant things within your knowledge, + Good Mistress Abigail; look to your dressings, + And leave the skill in horses to the coachman. + + BUTLER + He'll have his humour; best not interrupt him. + + PHILIP + 'Tis market-day, thought I; and the poor beasts, + Meeting such droves of cattle and of people, + May take a fright; so down the lane I trundled, + Where Goodman Dobson's crazy mare was founder'd, + And where the flints were biggest, and ruts widest, + By ups and downs, and such bone-cracking motions, + We flounder'd on a furlong, till my madam, + In policy, to save the few joints left her, + Betook her to her feet, and there we parted. + + ALL + Ha! ha! ha! + + BUTLER + Hang her! 'tis pity such as she should ride. + + WAITING-MAID + I think she is a witch; I have tired myself out + With sticking pins in her pillow; still she 'scapes them-- + + BUTLER + And I with helping her to mum for claret, + But never yet could cheat her dainty palate. + + HOUSEKEEPER + Well, well, she is the guest of our good Mistress, + And so should be respected. Though I think + Our Master cares not for her company, + He would ill brook we should express so much, + By rude discourtesies, and short attendance, + Being but servants. (_A bell rings furiously._) 'Tis her bell + speaks now; + Good, good, bestir yourselves: who knows who's wanted? + + BUTLER + But 'twas a merry trick of Philip coachman. [_Exeunt._] + + + + + +SCENE.--_Mrs. Selby's Chamber._ + + +MRS. FRAMPTON, KATHERINE, working. + + + MRS. FRAMPTON + I am thinking, child, how contrary our fates + Have traced our lots through life. Another needle, + This works untowardly. An heiress born + To splendid prospects, at our common school + I was as one above you all, not of you; + Had my distinct prerogatives; my freedoms, + Denied to you. Pray, listen-- + + KATHERINE + I must hear + What you are pleased to speak!--How my heart sinks here! + [_Aside._] + + MRS. FRAMPTON + My chamber to myself, my separate maid, + My coach, and so forth.--Not that needle, simple one, + With the great staring eye fit for a Cyclops! + Mine own are not so blinded with their griefs + But I could make a shift to thread a smaller. + A cable or a camel might go through this, + And never strain for the passage. + + KATHERINE + + I will fit you.-- + Intolerable tyranny! [_Aside._] + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Quick, quick; + You were not once so slack.--As I was saying, + Not a young thing among ye, but observed me + Above the mistress. Who but I was sought to + In all your dangers, all your little difficulties, + Your girlish scrapes? I was the scape-goat still, + To fetch you off; kept all your secrets, some, + Perhaps, since then-- + + KATHERINE + No more of that, for mercy, + If you'd not have me, sinking at your feet, + Cleave the cold earth for comfort. [_Kneels._] + + MRS. FRAMPTON + This to me? + This posture to your friend had better suited + The orphan Katherine in her humble school-days + To the _then_ rich heiress, than the wife of Selby, + Of wealthy Mr. Selby, + To the poor widow Frampton, sunk as she is. + Come, come, + 'Twas something, or 'twas nothing, that I said; + I did not mean to fright you, sweetest bed-fellow! + You once were so, but Selby now engrosses you. + I'll make him give you up a night or so; + In faith I will: that we may lie, and talk + Old tricks of school-days over. + + KATHERINE + Hear me, madam-- + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Not by that name. Your friend-- + + KATHERINE + My truest friend, + And saviour of my honour! + + MRS. FRAMPTON + This sounds better; + You still shall find me such. + + KATHERINE + That you have graced + Our poor house with your presence hitherto, + Has been my greatest comfort, the sole solace + Of my forlorn and hardly guess'd estate. + You have been pleased + To accept some trivial hospitalities, + In part of payment of a long arrear + I owe to you, no less than for my life. + + MRS. FRAMPTON + You speak my services too large. + + KATHERINE + Nay, less; + For what an abject thing were life to me + Without your silence on my dreadful secret! + And I would wish the league we have renew'd + Might be perpetual-- + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Have a care, fine madam! [_Aside._] + + KATHERINE + That one house still might hold us. But my husband + Has shown himself of late-- + + MRS. FRAMPTON + How Mistress Selby? + + KATHERINE + Not, not impatient. You misconstrue him. + He honours, and he loves, nay, he must love + The friend of his wife's youth. But there are moods + In which-- + + MRS. FRAMPTON + I understand you;--in which husbands, + And wives that love, may wish to be alone, + To nurse the tender fits of new-born dalliance, + After a five years' wedlock. + + KATHERINE + Was that well + Or charitably put? do these pale cheeks + Proclaim a wanton blood? this wasting form + Seem a fit theatre for Levity + To play his love-tricks on; and act such follies, + As even in Affection's first bland Moon + Have less of grace than pardon in best wedlocks? + I was about to say, that there are times, + When the most frank and sociable man + May surfeit on most loved society, + Preferring loneness rather-- + + MRS. FRAMPTON + To my company-- + + KATHERINE + Ay, your's, or mine, or any one's. Nay, take + Not this unto yourself. Even in the newness + Of our first married loves 'twas sometimes so. + For solitude, I have heard my Selby say, + Is to the mind as rest to the corporal functions; + And he would call it oft, the _day's soft sleep._ + + MRS. FRAMPTON + What is your drift? and whereto tends this speech, + Rhetorically labour'd? + + KATHERINE + That you would + Abstain but from our house a month, a week; + I make request but for a single day. + + MRS. FRAMPTON + A month, a week, a day! A single hour + In every week, and month, and the long year, + And all the years to come! My footing here, + Slipt once, recovers never. From the state + Of gilded roofs, attendance, luxuries, + Parks, gardens, sauntering walks, or wholesome rides, + To the bare cottage on the withering moor, + Where I myself am servant to myself, + Or only waited on by blackest thoughts-- + I sink, if this be so. No; here I sit. + + KATHERINE + Then I am lost for ever! + [_Sinks at her feet--curtain drops._] + + + + +SCENE.--_An Apartment, contiguous to the last_. + + +SELBY, _as if listening_. + + + SELBY + The sounds have died away. What am I changed to? + What do I here, list'ning like to an abject, + Or heartless wittol, that must hear no good, + If he hear aught? "This shall to the ear of your husband." + It was the Widow's word. I guess'd some mystery, + And the solution with a vengeance comes. + What can my wife have left untold to me, + That must be told by proxy? I begin + To call in doubt the course of her life past + Under my very eyes. She hath not been good, + Not virtuous, not discreet; she hath not outrun + My wishes still with prompt and meek observance. + Perhaps she is not fair, sweet-voiced; her eyes + Not like the dove's; all this as well may be, + As that she should entreasure up a secret + In the peculiar closet of her breast, + And grudge it to my ear. It is my right + To claim the halves in any truth she owns, + As much as in the babe I have by her; + Upon whose face henceforth I fear to look, + Lest I should fancy in its innocent brow + Some strange shame written. + + _Enter Lucy_. + + Sister, an anxious word with you. + From out the chamber, where my wife but now + Held talk with her encroaching friend, I heard + (Not of set purpose heark'ning, but by chance) + A voice of chiding, answer'd by a tone + Of replication, such as the meek dove + Makes, when the kite has clutch'd her. The high Widow + Was loud and stormy. I distinctly heard + One threat pronounced--"Your husband shall know all." + I am no listener, sister; and I hold + A secret, got by such unmanly shift, + The pitiful'st of thefts; but what mine ear, + I not intending it, receives perforce, + I count my lawful prize. Some subtle meaning + Lurks in this fiend's behaviour; which, by force, + Or fraud, I must make mine. + + LUCY + The gentlest means + Are still the wisest. What, if you should press + Your wife to a disclosure? + + SELBY + I have tried + All gentler means; thrown out low hints, which, though + Merely suggestions still, have never fail'd + To blanch her cheek with fears. Roughlier to insist, + Would be to kill, where I but meant to heal. + + LUCY + Your own description gave that Widow out + As one not much precise, nor over coy, + And nice to listen to a suit of love. + What if you feign'd a courtship, putting on, + (To work the secret from her easy faith,) + For honest ends, a most dishonest seeming? + + SELBY + I see your drift, and partly meet your counsel. + But must it not in me appear prodigious, + To say the least, unnatural, and suspicious, + To move hot love, where I have shewn cool scorn, + And undissembled looks of blank aversion? + + LUCY + Vain woman is the dupe of her own charms, + And easily credits the resistless power, + That in besieging Beauty lies, to cast down + The slight-built fortress of a casual hate. + + SELBY + I am resolved-- + + LUCY + Success attend your wooing! + + SELBY + And I'll about it roundly, my wise sister. [_Exeunt_.] + + + + +SCENE.--_The Library_. + + +MR. SELBY. MRS. FRAMPTON. + + + SELBY + A fortunate encounter, Mistress Frampton. + My purpose was, if you could spare so much + From your sweet leisure, a few words in private. + + MRS. FRAMPTON + What mean his alter'd tones? These looks to me, + Whose glances yet he has repell'd with coolness? + Is the wind changed? I'll veer about with it, + And meet him in all fashions. [_Aside._] + All my leisure, + Feebly bestow'd upon my kind friends here, + Would not express a tithe of the obligements + I every hour incur. + + SELBY + No more of that.-- + I know not why, my wife hath lost of late + Much of her cheerful spirits. + + MRS. FRAMPTON + It was my topic + To-day; and every day, and all day long, + I still am chiding with her. "Child," I said, + And said it pretty roundly--it may be + I was too peremptory--we elder school-fellows, + Presuming on the advantage of a year + Or two, which, in that tender time, seem'd much, + In after years, much like to elder sisters, + Are prone to keep the authoritative style, + When time has made the difference most ridiculous-- + + SELBY + The observation's shrewd. + + MRS. FRAMPTON + "Child," I was saying, + "If some wives had obtained a lot like yours," + And then perhaps I sigh'd, "they would not sit + In corners moping, like to sullen moppets + That want their will, but dry their eyes, and look + Their cheerful husbands in the face," perhaps + I said, their Selby's, "with proportion'd looks + Of honest joy." + + SELBY + You do suspect no jealousy? + + MRS. FRAMPTON + What is his import? Whereto tends his speech? [_Aside._] + Of whom, of what, should she be jealous, sir? + + SELBY + I do not know, but women have their fancies; + And underneath a cold indifference, + Or show of some distaste, husbands have mask'd + A growing fondness for a female friend, + Which the wife's eye was sharp enough to see + Before the friend had wit to find it out. + You do not quit us soon? + + MRS. FRAMPTON + 'Tis as I find + Your Katherine profits by my lessons, sir.-- + Means this man honest? Is there no deceit? [_Aside_.] + + SELBY + She cannot chuse.--Well, well, I have been thinking, + And if the matter were to do again-- + + MRS. FRAMPTON + What matter, sir? + + SELBY + This idle bond of wedlock; + These sour-sweet briars, fetters of harsh silk; + I might have made, I do not say a better, + But a more fit choice in a wife. + + MRS. FRAMPTON + The parch'd ground, + In hottest Julys, drinks not in the showers + More greedily than I his words! [_Aside_.] + + SELBY + My humour + Is to be frank and jovial; and that man + Affects me best, who most reflects me in + My most free temper. + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Were you free to chuse, + As jestingly I'll put the supposition, + Without a thought reflecting on your Katherine, + What sort of woman would you make your choice? + + SELBY + I like your humour, and will meet your jest. + She should be one about my Katherine's age; + But not so old, by some ten years, in gravity. + One that would meet my mirth, sometimes outrun it; + No puling, pining moppet, as you said, + Nor moping maid, that I must still be teaching + The freedoms of a wife all her life after: + But one, that, having worn the chain before, + (And worn it lightly, as report gave out,) + Enfranchised from it by her poor fool's death, + Took it not so to heart that I need dread + To die myself, for fear a second time + To wet a widow's eye. + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Some widows, sir, + Hearing you talk so wildly, would be apt + To put strange misconstruction on your words, + As aiming at a Turkish liberty, + Where the free husband hath his several mates, + His Penseroso, his Allegro wife, + To suit his sober, or his frolic fit. + + SELBY + How judge you of that latitude? + + MRS. FRAMPTON + As one, + In European customs bred, must judge. Had I + Been born a native of the liberal East, + I might have thought as they do. Yet I knew + A married man that took a second wife, + And (the man's circumstances duly weigh'd, + With all their bearings) the considerate world + Nor much approved, nor much condemn'd the deed. + + SELBY + You move my wonder strangely. Pray, proceed. + + MRS. FRAMPTON + An eye of wanton liking he had placed + Upon a Widow, who liked him again, + But stood on terms of honourable love, + And scrupled wronging his most virtuous wife--- + When to their ears a lucky rumour ran, + That this demure and saintly-seeming wife + Had a first husband living; with the which + Being question'd, she but faintly could deny. + "A priest indeed there was; some words had passed, + But scarce amounting to a marriage rite. + Her friend was absent; she supposed him dead; + And, seven years parted, both were free to chuse." + + SELBY + What did the indignant husband? Did he not + With violent handlings stigmatize the cheek + Of the deceiving wife, who had entail'd + Shame on their innocent babe? + + MRS. FRAMPTON + He neither tore + His wife's locks nor his own; but wisely weighing + His own offence with her's in equal poise, + And woman's weakness 'gainst the strength of man, + Came to a calm and witty compromise. + He coolly took his gay-faced widow home, + Made her his second wife; and still the first + Lost few or none of her prerogatives. + The servants call'd her mistress still; she kept + The keys, and had the total ordering + Of the house affairs; and, some slight toys excepted, + Was all a moderate wife would wish to be. + + SELBY + A tale full of dramatic incident!-- + And if a man should put it in a play, + How should he name the parties? + + MRS. FRAMPTON + The man's name + Through time I have forgot--the widow's too;-- + But his first wife's first name, her maiden one, + Was--not unlike to that your Katherine bore, + Before she took the honour'd style of Selby. + + + SELBY + A dangerous meaning in your riddle lurks. + One knot is yet unsolved; that told, this strange + And most mysterious drama ends. The name + Of that first husband--- + + _Enter Lucy._ + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Sir, your pardon-- + The allegory fits your private ear. + Some half hour hence, in the garden's secret walk, + We shall have leisure. [_Exit._] + + SELBY + Sister, whence come you? + + LUCY + From your poor Katherine's chamber, where she droops + In sad presageful thoughts, and sighs, and weeps, + And seems to pray by turns. At times she looks + As she would pour her secret in my bosom--- + Then starts, as I have seen her, at the mention + Of some immodest act. At her request + I left her on her knees. + + SELBY + The fittest posture; + For great has been her fault to Heaven and me. + She married me, with a first husband living, + Or not known not to be so, which, in the judgment + Of any but indifferent honesty, + Must be esteem'd the same. The shallow Widow, + Caught by my art, under a riddling veil + Too thin to hide her meaning, hath confess'd all. + Your coming in broke off the conference, + When she was ripe to tell the fatal _name_, + That seals my wedded doom. + + LUCY + Was she so forward + To pour her hateful meanings in your ear + At the first hint? + + + SELBY + Her newly flatter'd hopes + Array'd themselves at first in forms of doubt; + And with a female caution she stood off + Awhile, to read the meaning of my suit, + Which with such honest seeming I enforced, + That her cold scruples soon gave way; and now + She rests prepared, as mistress, or as wife, + To seize the place of her betrayed friend-- + My much offending, but more suffering, Katherine. + + LUCY + Into what labyrinth of fearful shapes + My simple project has conducted you-- + Were but my wit as skilful to invent + A clue to lead you forth!--I call to mind + A letter, which your wife received from the Cape, + Soon after you were married, with some circumstances + Of mystery too. + + SELBY + I well remember it. + That letter did confirm the truth (she said) + Of a friend's death, which she had long fear'd true, + But knew not for a fact. A youth of promise + She gave him out--a hot adventurous spirit-- + That had set sail in quest of golden dreams, + And cities in the heart of Central Afric; + But named no names, nor did I care to press + My question further, in the passionate grief + She shew'd at the receipt. Might this be he? + + LUCY + Tears were not all. When that first shower was past, + With clasped hands she raised her eyes to Heav'n, + As if in thankfulness for some escape, + Or strange deliverance, in the news implied, + Which sweeten'd that sad news. + + SELBY + Something of that + I noted also-- + + + LUCY + In her closet once, + Seeking some other trifle, I espied + A ring, in mournful characters deciphering + The death of "Robert Halford, aged two + And twenty." Brother, I am not given + To the confident use of wagers, which I hold + Unseemly in a woman's argument; + But I am strangely tempted now to risk + A thousand pounds out of my patrimony, + (And let my future husband look to it + If it be lost,) that this immodest Widow + Shall name the name that tallies with that ring. + + SELBY + That wager lost, I should be rich indeed-- + Rich in my rescued Kate--rich in my honour, + Which now was bankrupt. Sister, I accept + Your merry wager, with an aching heart + For very fear of winning. 'Tis the hour + That I should meet my Widow in the walk, + The south side of the garden. On some pretence + Lure forth my Wife that way, that she may witness + Our seeming courtship. Keep us still in sight, + Yourselves unseen; and by some sign I'll give, + (A finger held up, or a kerchief waved,) + You'll know your wager won--then break upon us, + As if by chance. + + LUCY + I apprehend your meaning-- + + SELBY + And may you prove a true Cassandra here, + Though my poor acres smart for't, wagering sister. + [_Exeunt._] + + + + +SCENE.-_Mrs. Selby's Chamber._ + + +MRS. FRAMPTON. KATHERINE. + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Did I express myself in terms so strong? + + + KATHERINE + As nothing could have more affrighted me. + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Think it a hurt friend's jest, in retribution + Of a suspected cooling hospitality. + And, for my staying here, or going hence, + (Now I remember something of our argument,) + Selby and I can settle that between us. + You look amazed. What if your husband, child, + Himself has courted me to stay? + + KATHERINE + You move + My wonder and my pleasure equally. + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Yes, courted me to stay, waiv'd all objections. + Made it a favour to yourselves; not me, + His troublesome guest, as you surmised. Child, child! + When I recall his flattering welcome, I + Begin to think the burden of my presence + Was-- + + KATHERINE + What, for Heaven-- + + MRS. FRAMPTON + A little, little spice + Of jealousy--that's all--an honest pretext, + No wife need blush for. Say that you should see + (As oftentimes we widows take such freedoms, + Yet still on this side virtue,) in a jest + Your husband pat me on the cheek, or steal + A kiss, while you were by,--not else, for virtue's sake. + + KATHERINE + I could endure all this, thinking my husband + Meant it in sport-- + + MRS. FRAMPTON + But if in downright earnest + (Putting myself out of the question here) + Your Selby, as I partly do suspect, + Own'd a divided heart-- + + + KATHERINE + My own would break-- + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Why, what a blind and witless fool it is, + That will not see its gains, its infinite gains-- + + KATHERINE + Gain in a loss, + Or mirth in utter desolation! + + MRS. FRAMPTON + He doting on a face--suppose it mine, + Or any other's tolerably fair-- + What need you care about a senseless secret? + + KATHERINE + Perplex'd and fearful woman! I in part + Fathom your dangerous meaning. You have broke + The worse than iron band, fretting the soul, + By which you held me captive. Whether my husband + _Is_ what you gave him out, or your fool'd fancy + But dreams he is so, either way I am free. + + MRS. FRAMPTON + It talks it bravely, blazons out its shame; + A very heroine while on its knees; + Rowe's Penitent, an absolute Calista! + + KATHERINE + Not to thy wretched self these tears are falling; + But to my husband, and offended heaven, + Some drops are due--and then I sleep in peace, + Reliev'd from frightful dreams, my dreams though sad. + [_Exit_.] + + MRS. FRAMPTON + I have gone too far. Who knows but in this mood + She may forestall my story, win on Selby + By a frank confession?--and the time draws on + For our appointed meeting. The game's desperate, + For which I play. A moment's difference + May make it hers or mine. I fly to meet him. + [_Exit._] + + + +SCENE.--_A Garden_. + + +MR. SELBY. MRS. FRAMPTON. + + + SELBY + I am not so ill a guesser, Mrs. Frampton, + Not to conjecture, that some passages + In your unfinished story, rightly interpreted, + Glanced at my bosom's peace; + You knew my wife? + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Even from her earliest school-days.--What of that? + Or how is she concerned in my fine riddles, + Framed for the hour's amusement? + + SELBY + By my _hopes_ + Of my new interest conceived in you, + And by the honest passion of my heart, + Which not obliquely I to you did hint; + Come from the clouds of misty allegory, + And in plain language let me hear the worst. + Stand I disgraced or no? + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Then, by _my_ hopes + Of my new interest conceiv'd in you, + And by the kindling passion in _my_ breast, + Which through my riddles you had almost read, + Adjured so strongly, I will tell you all. + In her school years, then bordering on fifteen, + Or haply not much past, she loved a youth-- + + SELBY + My most ingenuous Widow-- + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Met him oft + By stealth, where I still of the party was-- + + SELBY + Prime confidant to all the school, I warrant, + And general go-between-- + [_Aside_.] + + + MRS. FRAMPTON + One morn he came + In breathless haste. "The ship was under sail, + Or in few hours would be, that must convey + Him and his destinies to barbarous shores, + Where, should he perish by inglorious hands, + It would be consolation in his death + To have call'd his Katherine _his_." + + SELBY + Thus far the story + Tallies with what I hoped. + [_Aside_.] + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Wavering between + The doubt of doing wrong, and losing him; + And my dissuasions not o'er hotly urged, + Whom he had flatter'd with the bride-maid's part;-- + + SELBY + I owe my subtle Widow, then, for this. + [_Aside_.] + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Briefly, we went to church. The ceremony + Scarcely was huddled over, and the ring + Yet cold upon her finger, when they parted-- + He to his ship; and we to school got back, + Scarce miss'd, before the dinner-bell could ring. + + SELBY + And from that hour-- + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Nor sight, nor news of him, + For aught that I could hear, she e'er obtain'd. + + SELBY + Like to a man that hovers in suspense + Over a letter just receiv'd, on which + The black seal hath impress'd its ominous token, + Whether to open it or no, so I + Suspended stand, whether to press my fate + Further, or check ill curiosity + That tempts me to more loss.--The name, the name + Of this fine youth? + + MRS. FRAMPTON + What boots it, if 'twere told? + + SELBY + Now, by our loves, + And by my hopes of happier wedlocks, some day + To be accomplish'd, give me his name! + + MRS. FRAMPTON + 'Tis no such serious matter. It was--Huntingdon. + + SELBY + How have three little syllables pluck'd from me + A world of countless hopes!-- + [_Aside_.] + Evasive Widow. + + MRS. FRAMPTON + How, Sir! I like not this. + [_Aside_.] + + SELBY + No, no, I meant + Nothing but good to thee. That other woman, + How shall I call her but evasive, false, + And treacherous?--by the trust I place in thee, + Tell me, and tell me truly, was the name + As you pronounced it? + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Huntingdon--the name, + Which his paternal grandfather assumed, + Together with the estates, of a remote + Kinsman; but our high-spirited youth-- + + SELBY + Yes-- + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Disdaining + For sordid pelf to truck the family honours, + At risk of the lost estates, resumed the old style, + And answer'd only to the name of-- + + + SELBY + What? + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Of Halford-- + + SELBY + A Huntingdon to Halford changed so soon! + Why, then I see, a witch hath her good spells, + As well as bad, and can by a backward charm + Unruffle the foul storm she has just been raising. + [_Aside_.] + [_He makes the signal._] + + My frank, fair spoken Widow! let this kiss, + Which yet aspires no higher, speak my thanks, + Till I can think on greater. + + _Enter_ LUCY _and_ KATHERINE. + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Interrupted! + + SELBY + My sister here! and see, where with her comes + My serpent gliding in an angel's form, + To taint the new-born Eden of our joys. + Why should we fear them? We'll not stir a foot, + Nor coy it for their pleasures. + [_He courts the Widow_.] + + LUCY (_to Katherine_.) + + This your free, + And sweet ingenuous confession, binds me + For ever to you; and it shall go hard, + But it shall fetch you back your husband's heart, + That now seems blindly straying; or at worst, + In me you have still a sister.--Some wives, brother, + Would think it strange to catch their husbands thus + Alone with a trim widow; but your Katherine + Is arm'd, I think, with patience. + + KATHERINE + I am fortified + With knowledge of self-faults to endure worse wrongs, + If they be wrongs, than he can lay upon me; + Even to look on, and see him sue in earnest, + As now I think he does it but in seeming, + To that ill woman. + + SELBY + Good words, gentle Kate, + And not a thought irreverent of our Widow. + Why, 'twere unmannerly at any time, + But most uncourteous on our wedding day, + When we should shew most hospitable.--Some wine. + [_Wine is brought_.] + + I am for sports. And now I do remember, + The old Egyptians at their banquets placed + A charnel sight of dead men's skulls before them, + With images of cold mortality, + To temper their fierce joys when they grew rampant. + I like the custom well: and ere we crown + With freer mirth the day, I shall propose, + In calmest recollection of our spirits, + We drink the solemn "Memory of the dead." + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Or the supposed dead. + [_Aside to him_.] + + SELBY + Pledge me, good wife. + [_She fills_.] + Nay, higher yet, till the brimm'd cup swell o'er. + + KATHERINE + I catch the awful import of your words; + And, though I could accuse you of unkindness, + Yet as your lawful and obedient wife, + While that name lasts (as I perceive it fading, + Nor I much longer may have leave to use it) + I calmly take the office you impose; + And on my knees, imploring their forgiveness, + Whom I in heav'n or earth may have offended, + Exempt from starting tears, and woman's weakness, + I pledge you, Sir--the Memory of the Dead! + [_She drinks kneeling_.] + + SELBY + 'Tis gently and discreetly said, and like + My former loving Kate. + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Does he relent? + [_Aside_.] + + SELBY + That ceremony past, we give the day + To unabated sport. And, in requital + Of certain stories, and quaint allegories, + Which my rare Widow hath been telling to me + To raise my morning mirth, if she will lend + Her patient hearing, I will here recite + A Parable; and, the more to suit her taste, + The scene is laid in the East. + + MRS. FRAMPTON + I long to hear it. + Some tale, to fit his wife. + [_Aside_.] + + KATHERINE + Now, comes my TRIAL. + + LUCY + The hour of your deliverance is at hand, + If I presage right. Bear up, gentlest sister. + + SELBY + "The Sultan Haroun"--Stay--O now I have it-- + "The Caliph Haroun in his orchards had + A fruit-tree, bearing such delicious fruits, + That he reserved them for his proper gust; + And through the Palace it was Death proclaim'd + To any one that should purloin the same." + + MRS. FRAMPTON + A heavy penance for so light a fault-- + + SELBY + Pray you, be silent, else you put me out. + "A crafty page, that for advantage watch'd, + Detected in the act a brother page, + Of his own years, that was his bosom friend; + And thenceforth he became that other's lord, + And like a tyrant he demean'd himself, + Laid forced exactions on his fellow's purse; + And when that poor means fail'd, held o'er his head + Threats of impending death in hideous forms; + Till the small culprit on his nightly couch + Dream'd of strange pains, and felt his body writhe + In tortuous pangs around the impaling stake." + + MRS. FRAMPTON + I like not this beginning-- + + SELBY + Pray you, attend. + "The Secret, like a night-hag, rid his sleeps, + And took the youthful pleasures from his days, + And chased the youthful smoothness from his brow, + That from a rose-cheek'd boy he waned and waned + To a pale skeleton of what he was; + And would have died, but for one lucky chance." + + KATHERINE + Oh! + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Your wife--she faints--some cordial--smell to this. + + SELBY + Stand off. My sister best will do that office. + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Are all his tempting speeches come to this? + [_Aside_.] + + SELBY + What ail'd my wife? + + KATHERINE + A warning faintness, sir, + Seized on my spirits, when you came to where + You said "a lucky chance." I am better now, + Please you go on. + + SELBY + The sequel shall be brief. + + KATHERINE + But brief or long, I feel my fate hangs on it. + [_Aside_.] + + SELBY + "One morn the Caliph, in a covert hid, + Close by an arbour where the two boys talk'd + (As oft, we read, that Eastern sovereigns + Would play the eaves-dropper, to learn the truth, + Imperfectly received from mouths of slaves,) + O'erheard their dialogue; and heard enough + To judge aright the cause, and know his cue. + The following day a Cadi was dispatched + To summon both before the judgment-seat: + The lickerish culprit, almost dead with fear, + And the informing friend, who readily, + Fired with fair promises of large reward, + And Caliph's love, the hateful truth disclosed." + + MRS. FRAMPTON + What did the Caliph to the offending boy, + That had so grossly err'd? + + SELBY + His sceptred hand + He forth in token of forgiveness stretch'd, + And clapp'd his cheeks, and courted him with gifts, + And he became once more his favourite page. + + MRS. FRAMPTON + But for that other-- + + SELBY + He dismiss'd him straight, + From dreams of grandeur and of Caliph's love, + To the bare cottage on the withering moor, + Where friends, turn'd fiends, and hollow confidants, + And widows, hide, who, in a husband's ear, + Pour baneful truths, but tell not all the truth; + And told him not that Robert Halford died + Some moons before _his_ marriage-bells were rung. + Too near dishonour hast thou trod, dear wife, + And on a dangerous cast our fates were set; + But Heav'n, that will'd our wedlock to be blest, + Hath interposed to save it gracious too. + Your penance is--to dress your cheek in smiles, + And to be once again my merry Kate.-- + + Sister, your hand. + Your wager won makes me a happy man, + Though poorer, Heav'n knows, by a thousand pounds. + The sky clears up after a dubious day. + Widow, your hand. I read a penitence + In this dejected brow; and in this shame + Your fault is buried. You shall in with us, + And, if it please you, taste our nuptial fare: + For, till this moment, I can joyful say, + Was never truly Selby's Wedding Day. + + FINIS. + + + + + +NOTES + + +Page 1. DEDICATION TO S.T. COLERIDGE, ESQ. + +In 1818, when Lamb wrote these words, he was forty-three and Coleridge +forty-six. The _Works_, in the first volume of which this dedication +appeared, were divided into two volumes, the second, containing prose, +being dedicated to Martin Burney, in the sonnet which I have placed on +page 45. The publishers of the _Works_ were Charles and James Ollier, +who, starting business about 1816, had already published for Leigh Hunt, +Keats, and Shelley. + +For the allusion to the threefold cord, in the second paragraph, see the +note on page 313. + +The ****** Inn was the Salutation and Cat, in Newgate +Street, since rebuilt, where Coleridge used to stay on his London +visits when he was at Cambridge, and where the landlord is said +to have asked him to continue as a free guest--if only he would +talk and talk. Writing to Coleridge in 1796 Lamb recalls "the +little smoky room at the Salutation and Cat, where we have sat +together through the winter nights, beguiling the cares of life with +Poesy;" and again, "I have been drinking egg-hot and smoking +Oronooko (associated circumstances, which ever forcibly recall to +my mind our evenings and nights at the Salutation)." Later he +added to these concomitants of a Salutation evening, "Egg-hot, +Welsh-rabbit, and metaphysics," and gave as his highest idea of +heaven, listening to Coleridge "repeating one of Bowles's sweetest +sonnets, in your sweet manner, while we two were indulging +sympathy, a solitary luxury, by the fire side at the Salutation." + +The line-- + + Of summer days and of delightful years + +is from Bowles--"Sonnet written at Ostend." + + + * * * * * + + +Page 3. Lamb's Earliest Poem. _Mille Vice Mortis._ + +In a MS. book that had belonged to James Boyer of Christ's Hospital, in +which his best scholars inscribed compositions, are these lines signed +Charles Lamb, 1789. All Lamb's Grecians are there too. The book was +described by the late Dykes Campbell, Lamb's most accomplished and +enthusiastic student, in the _Illustrated London News_, December 26, +1891. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 4. POEMS IN COLERIDGE'S _POEMS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS_, 1796. + +This book was published by Cottle, of Bristol, in 1796. Lamb contributed +four poems, which were thus referred to by Coleridge in the Preface: +"The Effusions signed C.L. were written by Mr. CHARLES LAMB, of the +India House--independently of the signature their superior merit would +have sufficiently distinguished them." Lamb reprinted the first only +once, in 1797, in the second edition of Coleridge's _Poems_, the +remaining three again in his _Works_ in 1818. I have followed in the +body of this volume the text of these later appearances, the original +form of the sonnets being relegated to the notes. + + +Page 4. _As when a child on some long winter's night._ + +Some mystery attaches to the authorship of this sonnet. On December 1, +1794, Coleridge wrote to the editor of the _Morning Chronicle_ saying +that he proposed to send a series of sonnets ("as it is the fashion to +call them") addressed to eminent contemporaries; and he enclosed one to +Mr. Erskine. The editor, with almost Chinese politeness, inserted +beneath the sonnet this note: "Our elegant Correspondent will highly +gratify every reader of taste by the continuance of his exquisitely +beautiful productions." The series continued with Burke, Priestley, +Lafayette, Kosciusko, Chatham, Bowles, and, on December 29, 1794, Mrs. +Siddons--the sonnet here printed--all signed S.T.C. + +But the next appearance of the sonnet was as an effusion by Lamb in +Coleridge's _Poems on Various Subjects_, 1796, signed C.L.; and its next +in the _Poems_, 1797, among Lamb's contributions. In 1803, however, we +find it in Coleridge's _Poems_, third edition, with no reference to Lamb +whatever. This probably means that Lamb and Coleridge had written it +together, that Coleridge's original share had been the greater, and that +Lamb and he had come to an arrangement by which Coleridge was to be +considered the sole author; for Lamb did not reprint it in 1818 with his +other early verse. Writing in 1796 to Coleridge concerning his treatment +of other of Lamb's sonnets, Lamb says: "That to Mrs. Siddons, now, you +were welcome to improve, if it had been worth it; but I say unto you +again, Coleridge, spare my ewe lambs." Such a distinction drawn between +the sonnet to Mrs. Siddons and the others supports the belief that Lamb +had not for it a deeply parental feeling. + +This was not the only occasion on which Lamb and Coleridge wrote a +sonnet in partnership. Writing to Southey in December, 1794, Coleridge +says: "Of the following sonnet, the four _last_ lines were written by +Lamb, a man of uncommon genius...." + + SONNET + + O gentle look, that didst my soul beguile, + Why hast thou left me? Still in some fond dream + Revisit my sad heart, auspicious smile! + As falls on closing flowers the lunar beam; + What time in sickly mood, at parting day + I lay me down and think of happier years; + Of joys, that glimmered in Hope's twilight ray, + Then left me darkling in a vale of tears. + O pleasant days of Hope--for ever flown! + Could I recall one!--But that thought is vain, + Availeth not Persuasion's sweetest tone + To lure the fleet-winged travellers back again: + Anon, they haste to everlasting night, + Nor can a giant's arm arrest them in their flight. + +Subsequently Coleridge rewrote the final couplet. + +The same letter to Southey informs us that the sonnet to Mrs. Siddons +was not Lamb's earliest poem, although it stands first in his poetical +works; for Coleridge remarks: "Have you seen his [Lamb's] divine sonnet, +'O! I could laugh to hear the winter wind'?" (see page 5). + +Lamb printed the sonnet to Mrs. Siddons twice--in 1796 and 1797. + + +Page 4. _Was it some sweet device of Faery._ + +This sonnet passed through various vicissitudes. Lamb had sent it to +Coleridge for his _Poems on Various Subjects_ in 1796, and Coleridge +proceeded to re-model it more in accordance with his own views. The +following version, representing his modifications, was the one that +found its way into print as Lamb's:-- + + Was it some sweet device of faery land + That mock'd my steps with many a lonely glade, + And fancied wand'rings with a fair-hair'd maid? + Have these things been? Or did the wizard wand + Of Merlin wave, impregning vacant air, + And kindle up the vision of a smile + In those blue eyes, that seem'd to speak the while + Such tender things, as might enforce Despair + To drop the murth'ring knife, and let go by + His fell resolve? Ah me! the lonely glade + Still courts the footsteps of the fair-hair'd maid, + Among whose locks the west-winds love to sigh; + But I forlorn do wander, reckless where, + And mid my wand'rings find no ANNA there! + C.L. + + +Lamb naturally protested when the result came under his eyes. "I love my +own feelings: they are dear to memory," he says in a letter in 1796, +"though they now and then wake a sigh or a tear. 'Thinking on divers +things foredone,' I charge you, Coleridge, spare my ewe lambs." Later, +when Coleridge's second edition was in preparation, Lamb wrote again +(January 10, 1797): "I need not repeat my wishes to have my little +sonnets printed _verbatim_ my last way. In particular, I fear lest you +should prefer printing my first sonnet [this one] as you have done more +than once, 'Did the wand of Merlin wave?' It looks so like _Mr_. Merlin, +the ingenious successor of the immortal Merlin, now living in good +health and spirits, and flourishing in magical reputation in Oxford +Street." The phrase "more than once" in the foregoing passage needs +explanation. It refers to the little pamphlet of sonnets, entitled +_Sonnets from Various Authors_, which Coleridge issued privately in +1796, and of which only one copy is now known to exist--that preserved +in the Dyce and Forster collection at South Kensington. The little +pamphlet contains twenty-eight sonnets in all, of which three are by +Bowles, four by Southey, four by Charles Lloyd, four by Coleridge, four +by Lamb, and others by various writers: all of which were chosen for +their suitability to be bound up with the sonnets of Bowles. Lamb's +sonnets were: "We were two pretty babes" (see page 9), "Was it some +sweet device" (printed with Coleridge's alterations), "When last I +roved" (see page 8), and "O! I could laugh" (see page 5). + +The present sonnet belongs to the series of four love sonnets which is +completed by the one that follows, "Methinks, how dainty sweet it were," +and those on page 8 beginning, "When last I roved" and "A timid grace." +Anna is believed to have been Ann Simmons, who lived at Blenheims, a +group of cottages near Blakesware, the house where Mrs. Field, Lamb's +grandmother, was housekeeper. Mrs. Field died in 1792, after which time +Lamb's long visits to that part of the country probably ceased. He was +then seventeen. Nothing is known of Lamb's attachment beyond these +sonnets, the fact that when he lost his reason for a short time in +1795-1796 he attributed the cause to some person unmentioned who is +conjectured to have been Anna, and the occasional references in the Ella +essays to "Alice W----" and to his old passion for her (see "Dream +Children" in particular, in Vol. II). The death of Mrs. Lamb in +September, 1796, and the duty of caring for and nursing his sister Mary, +which then devolved upon Charles, put an end to any dreams of private +happiness that he may have been indulging; and his little romance was +over. How deep his passion was we are not likely ever to know; but Lamb +thenceforward made very light of it, except in the pensive recollections +in the essays twenty-five years later. In November, 1796, when sending +Coleridge poems for his second edition, he says: "Do not entitle any of +my _things_ Love Sonnets, as I told you to call 'em; 'twill only make me +look little in my own eyes; for it is a passion of which I retain +nothing.... Thank God, the folly has left me for ever. Not even a review +of my love verses renews one wayward wish in me...." Again, in November, +1796, in another letter to Coleridge, about his poems in the 1797 +edition, Lamb says: "Oh, my friend! I think sometimes, could I recall +the days that are past, which among them should I choose? not those +'merrier days,' not the 'pleasant days of hope,' not 'those wanderings +with a fair-hair'd maid,' which I have so often and so feelingly +regretted, but the days, Coleridge, of a _mother's_ fondness for her +_school-boy_." Lamb printed this sonnet three times--in 1796, 1797 and +1818. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 5. _Methinks how dainty sweet it were, reclin'd._ + +When this sonnet was printed by Coleridge in 1796 the sestet +was made to run thus:-- + + But ah! sweet scenes of fancied bliss, adieu! + On rose-leaf beds amid your faery bowers + I all too long have lost the dreamy hours! + Beseems it now the sterner Muse to woo, + If haply she her golden meed impart, + To realise the vision of the heart. + +Lamb remonstrated: "I had rather have seen what I wrote myself, though +they bear no comparison with your exquisite lines-- + +"On rose-leaf'd beds, amid your faery bowers, etc. + +I love my sonnets because they are the reflected images of my Own +feelings at different times." This sonnet was printed by Lamb three +times--in 1796, 1797 and 1798. + + +Page 5. _O! I could laugh to hear the midnight wind,_ + +This sonnet, written probably at Margate, was entitled, in 1796, +"Written at Midnight, by the Seaside, after a Voyage." The last +lines then ran:-- + + And almost wish'd it were no crime to die! + How Reason reel'd! What gloomy transports rose! + Till the rude dashings rock'd them to repose. + +The couplet was Coleridge's, and Lamb protested (June 10, 1796), +describing them as good lines, but adding that they "must spoil +the whole with me who know it is only a fiction of yours and that +the rude dashings did in fact not rock me to repose." + +When reprinted in 1797, the final couplet was omitted, asterisks +standing instead. The present sonnet was probably the earliest of Lamb's +printed poems. In the Elia essay "The Old Margate Hoy," Lamb states that +the first time he saw the sea was on a visit to Margate as a boy, by +water--probably the voyage that suggested this sonnet. Lamb printed the +sonnet three times--in 1796, 1797 and 1818. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 6. LLOYD'S _POEMS ON THE DEATH OF PRISCILLA FARMER_, 1796. + +Charles Lloyd (1775-1839), the son of Charles Lloyd, of Birmingham (a +cultured and philanthropical Quaker banker), joined Coleridge at Bristol +late in 1796 as his private pupil, and moved with the family to Nether +Stowey. Priscilla Farmer was Lloyd's maternal grandmother, to whom he +was much attached, and on her death he composed the sonnets that form +this costly quarto, published for Lloyd by Coleridge's friend, Joseph +Cottle, of Bristol, in the winter of 1796. + + +Page 6. _The Grandame._ + +Lamb sent these lines in their first state to Coleridge in June, 1796, +at, which time they were, I conjecture, part of a long blank-verse poem +which he was then meditating, and of which "Childhood," "Fancy Employed +on Divine Subjects," and "The Sabbath Bells" (see pages 9 and 10) were +probably other portions. The poem was never finished. On June 13, 1796, +he writes to Coleridge:-- + +"Of the blank verses I spoke of, the following lines are the only +tolerably complete ones I have writ out of not more than one hundred and +fifty. That I get on slowly you may fairly impute to want of practice in +composition, when I declare to you that (the few verses which you have +seen excepted) I have not writ fifty lines since I left school. It may +not be amiss to remark that my grandmother (on whom the verses are +written) lived housekeeper in a family the fifty or sixty last years of +her life--that she was a woman of exemplary piety and goodness--and for +many years before her death was terribly afflicted with a cancer in her +breast, which she bore with true Christian patience. You may think that +I have not kept enough apart the ideas of her heavenly and her earthly +master; but recollect I have designedly given into her own way of +feeling; and if she had a failing 'twas that she respected her master's +family too much, not reverenced her Maker too little. The lines begin +imperfectly, as I may probably connect 'em if I finish at all: and if I +do, Biggs shall print 'em (in a more economical way than you yours), +for, Sonnets and all, they won't make a thousand lines as I propose +completing 'em, and the substance must be wire-drawn." + +When Charles Lloyd joined Coleridge later in the year, and was preparing +his _Poems in Memory of Priscilla Farmer_, Coleridge obtained Lamb's +permission for "The Grandame" to be included with them. The lines were +introduced by Lloyd in these words: "The following beautiful fragment +was written by CHARLES LAMB, of the India-House.--Its subject being the +same with that of my Poems, I was solicitous to have it printed with +them: and I am indebted to a Friend of the Author's for the permission." + +The poem differed then very slightly from its present form. When the +book was sent to Lamb he remarked (in December, 1796) on "the odd +coincidence of two young men, in one age, carolling their +grandmothers.... I cannot but smile to see my Granny so gayly deck'd +forth [the book was expensively produced by Lloyd], tho', I think, +whoever altered 'thy' praises to 'her' praises--'thy' honoured memory to +'her' honoured memory [lines 27 and 28], did wrong--they best exprest my +feelings. There is a pensive state of recollection, in which the mind is +disposed to apostrophise the departed objects of its attachment; and, +breaking loose from grammatical precision, changes from the 1st to the +3rd, and from the 3rd to the 1st person, just as the random fancy or +feeling directs." + +Mrs. Mary Field, _née_ Bruton, Lamb's maternal grandmother, was +housekeeper at Blakesware house, near Widford, the seat of the Plumer +family for very many years, during the latter part of her life being +left in sole charge, for William Plumer had moved to his other seat, +Gilston, a few miles distant (see "Blakesmoor in H---- shire," and +notes, Vol. II). Lamb and his brother and sister visited their +grandmother at Blakesware as though in her own house. Mrs. Field died of +cancer in the breast, July 31, 1792, aged seventy-nine, and was buried +in Widford churchyard. + +Approached from the east the churchyard seems to be anything but on the +hilltop, for one descends to it; but it stands on a ridge, and seen from +the north, or, as at the old Blakesware house, from the west, it appears +to crown an eminence. The present spire, though slender and tapering, is +not that which Lamb used to see. Mrs. Field's plain stone, whose +legibility was not long since threatened by overhanging branches, has +now been saved from danger and may still be read. It merely records the +name "Mary Feild" (a mistake of the stone-cutter) and the bare dates. + +This poem was printed by Lamb three times--in 1796 (in Lloyd's book), in +1797 (with Coleridge) and in 1818. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 8. COLERIDGE'S _POEMS_, 1797. + +Coleridge's _Poems on Various Subjects_, 1796, went into a second +edition in 1797 under the title, _Poems by S.T. Coleridge, Second +Edition, to which are now added Poems by Charles Lamb and Charles +Lloyd_. Coleridge invented a motto from Groscollius for the title-page, +bearing upon this poetical partnership: "Duplex nobis vinculum, et +amicitiae et similium junctarumque Camoenarum; quod utinam neque mors +solvat, neque temporis longinquitas!" "Double is the bond which binds +us--friendship, and a kindred taste in poetry. Would that neither death +nor lapse of time could dissolve it!" + +Lamb's contributions were thus referred to by Coleridge in the Preface: +"There were inserted in my former Edition, a few Sonnets of my Friend +and old School-fellow, CHARLES LAMB. He has now communicated to me a +complete Collection of all his Poems; quae qui non prorsus amet, illum +omnes et Virtutes et Veneres odore." (Which things, whoever is not +unreservedly in love with, is detested by all the Virtues and the +Graces.) Lamb's poems came last in the book, an arrangement insisted +upon in a letter from him to Coleridge in November, 1796:--"Do you +publish with Lloyd, or without him? In either case my little portion may +come last; and after the fashion of orders to a country correspondent, I +will give directions how I should like to have 'em done. The title-page +to stand thus:-- + + + POEMS + + BY + + CHARLES LAMB, OF THE INDIA HOUSE + + +Under this leaf the following motto, which, for want of room, I put over +leaf, I desire you to insert, whether you like it or no. May not a +gentleman choose what arms, mottoes, or armorial bearings the Herald +will give him leave, without consulting his republican friend, who might +advise none? May not a publican put up the sign of the _Saracen's Head_, +even though his undiscerning neighbour should prefer, as more genteel, +the _Cat and Gridiron_? + + "[MOTTO] + + "This Beauty, in the blossom of my Youth, + When my first fire knew no adulterate incense, + Nor I no way to flatter but my fondness, + In the best language my true tongue could tell me, + And all the broken sighs my sick heart lend me, + I sued and served. Long did I love this Lady. + + "Massinger." + + "THE DEDICATION + _THE FEW FOLLOWING POEMS_, + CREATURES OF THE FANCY AND THE FEELING + IN LIFE'S MORE _VACANT_ HOURS, + PRODUCED, FOR THE MOST PART, BY + LOVE IN IDLENESS; + ARE, + WITH ALL A BROTHER'S FONDNESS, + INSCRIBED TO + MARY ANN LAMB, + THE AUTHOR'S BEST FRIEND AND SISTER" + +The dedication was printed as Lamb wished, in the form I have followed +above, and the book appeared. + + +Page 8. _When last I roved these winding wood-walks green,_ + +This was sent to Coleridge on June 1, 1796, in a letter containing also +the sonnets, "The Lord of Life," page 16; "A timid grace," page 8; and +"We were two pretty babes," page 9. It was written, said Lamb, "on +revisiting a spot, where the scene was laid of my 1st sonnet"--"Was it +some sweet device," page 4. Lamb printed this sonnet twice--in 1797 and +1818. Page 8. _A timid grace sits trembling in her eye._ + +This, the last of the four love sonnets (see note on page 310), seems to +be a survival of a discarded effort, for Lamb tells Coleridge, in the +letter referred to in the preceding note, that it "retains a few lines +from a sonnet of mine, which you once remarked had no 'body of thought' +in it." Lamb printed this sonnet twice--in 1797 and 1818. + + +Page 9. _If from my lips some angry accents fell,_ + +Lamb sent this sonnet, which is addressed to his sister, to Coleridge in +May, 1796. "The Sonnet I send you has small merit as poetry, but you +will be curious to read it when I tell you it was written in my +prison-house [an asylum] in one of my lucid Intervals." It is dated 1795 +in Coleridge's _Poems_. Lamb printed the sonnet twice--in 1797 and 1818. + + +Page 9. _We were two pretty babes, the youngest she._ + +First printed in the _Monthly Magazine_, July, 1796. "The next and last +[wrote Lamb in the letter to Coleridge referred to in the notes on page +310] I value most of all. 'Twas composed close upon the heels of the +last ['A timid grace,' page 8], in that very wood I had in mind when I +wrote 'Methinks how dainty sweet' [page 5]." It is dated 1795 in +Coleridge's _Poems_. In the same letter Lamb adds:--"Since writing it, I +have found in a poem by Hamilton of Bangour [William Hamilton, +1704-1754, the Scotch poet, of Bangour, Linlithgowshire] these 2 lines +to happiness:-- + + "Nun sober and devout, where art thou fled, + To hide in shades thy meek contented head. + +Lines eminently beautiful, but I do not remember having re'd 'em +previously, for the credit of my 10th and 11th lines. Parnell [Thomas +Parnell, 1679-1718] has 2 lines (which probably suggested the _above_) +to Contentment + + "Whither ah whither art Thou fled, + To hide thy meek contented head. + +"Cowley's exquisite Elegy on the death of his friend Harvey suggested +the phrase of 'we two' + + "Was there a tree [about] that did not know + The love betwixt us two?--" + +When Coleridge printed the sonnet in the pamphlet described on page 310, +he appended to the eleventh line the following note:-- + +Innocence, which, while we possess it, is playful as a babe, becomes +AWFUL when it has departed from us. This is the sentiment of the line +--a fine sentiment and nobly expressed. + +Lamb printed this sonnet twice--in 1797 and 1818. + + +Page 9. _Childhood._ + +See note to "The Grandame," page 312. The "turf-clad slope" in line 4 +was probably at Blakesware. It is difficult to re-create the scene, for +the new house stands a quarter of a mile west of the old one, the site +of which is hidden by grass and trees. Where once were gardens is now +meadow land. + +Lamb printed this poem twice--in 1797 and 1818. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 10. _The Sabbath Bells_. + +Lamb printed this poem twice--in 1797 and 1818. Church bells seem always +to have had charms for him (see the reference in _John Woodvil_, page +197, and in Susan Yates' story in _Mrs. Leicester's School_ in Vol. +III.). See note to "The Grandame." + + +Page 10. _Fancy Employed on Divine Subjects._ + +In the letter of December 5, 1796, quoted below, Lamb remarks concerning +this poem: "I beg you to alter the words 'pain and want,' to 'pain and +grief' (line 10), this last being a more familiar and ear-satisfying +combination. Do it, I beg of you." But the alteration either was not +made, or was cancelled later. The reference in lines 6, 7 and 8 is to +Revelation xxii. 1, 2. See note to "The Grandame." Lamb printed this +poem twice--in 1797 and 1818. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 11. _The Tomb of Douglas._ + +The play on which this poem was founded was the tragedy of "Douglas" by +John Home (1722-1808), produced in 1756. Young Norval, or Douglas, the +hero, after killing the false Glenalvon, is slain by his stepfather, +Lord Randolph, unknowing who he is. On hearing of Norval's death his +mother, Lady Randolph, throws herself from a precipice. In the letter to +Coleridge of December 5, 1796, quoted above, Lamb also copied out "The +Tomb of Douglas," prefixing these remarks:--"I would also wish to retain +the following if only to perpetuate the memory of so exquisite a +pleasure as I have often received at the performance of the tragedy of +Douglas, when Mrs. Siddons has been the Lady Randolph.... To understand +the following, if you are not acquainted with the play, you should know +that on the death of Douglas his mother threw herself down a rock; and +that at that time Scotland was busy in repelling the Danes." + +Coleridge told Southey that Lamb during his derangement at the end of +1795 and beginning of 1796 believed himself at one time to be Young +Norval. + +Lamb printed this poem, which differs curiously in character from all +his other poetical works, only once--in 1797. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 12. _To Charles Lloyd._ + +Lamb copied these lines in a letter to Coleridge on January 18, 1797, +remarking:--"You have learned by this time, with surprise, no doubt, +that Lloyd is with me in town. The emotions I felt on his coming so +unlooked for are not ill expressed in what follows, and what if you do +not object to them as too personal, and to the world obscure, or +otherwise wanting in worth I should wish to make a part of our little +volume." + +It must be remembered, in reading the poem, that Lamb was still in the +shadow of the tragedy in which he lost his mother, and, for a while, his +sister, and which had ruined his home. For other lines to Charles Lloyd +see page 21. This poem was printed by Lamb twice--in 1797 and 1818. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 13. _A Vision of Repentance_. + +Writing to Coleridge on June 13, 1797, Lamb says of this Spenserian +exercise:--"You speak slightingly. Surely the longer stanzas were pretty +tolerable; at least there was one good line in it [line 5]: + +"Thick-shaded trees, with dark green leaf rich clad. + +To adopt your own expression, I call this a 'rich' line, a fine full +line. And some others I thought even beautiful." Lamb printed the poem +twice--in 1797 and 1818. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 16. POEMS WRITTEN IN THE YEARS 1795-1798, AND NOT REPRINTED BY LAMB. + + +Page 16. _Sonnet: The Lord of Life shakes off his drowsihed_. + +The _Monthly Magazine_, December, 1797. Signed Charles Lamb. + +Lamb sent the first draft of this sonnet to Coleridge in 1796, saying +that it was composed "during a walk down into Hertfordshire early in +last Summer." "The last line," he adds, "is a copy of Bowles's 'to the +green hamlet in the peaceful plain.' Your ears are not so very +fastidious--many people would not like words so prosaic and familiar in +a sonnet as Islington and Hertfordshire." We must take Lamb's word for +it; but the late W.J. Craig found for the last line a nearer parallel +than Bowles'. In William Vallans' "Tale of the Two Swannes" (1590), +which is quoted in Leland's Itinerary, Hearne's edition, is the phrase: +"The fruitful fields of pleasant Hertfordshire." Lamb quotes his own +line in the _Elia_ essay "My Relations." + +This sonnet is perhaps the only occasion on which Lamb, even in play, +wrote anything against his beloved city. + +It may be noted here that this was Lamb's last contribution to the +_Monthly Magazine_, which had printed in the preceding number, November, +1797, Coleridge's satirical sonnets, signed Nehemiah Higginbottom, in +which Lamb and Lloyd were ridiculed, and which had perhaps some bearing +on the coolness that for a while was to subsist between Coleridge and +Lamb (see _Charles Lamb and the Lloyds_, 1898, pages 44-47). + + +Page 16. _To the Poet Cowper_. + +The _Monthly Magazine_, December, 1796. Signed C. Lamb. + +Lamb wrote these lines certainly as early as July, 1796, for he sends +them to Coleridge on the 6th of that month, adding:-- + +"I fear you will not accord entirely with my sentiments of Cowper, as +_exprest_ above, (perhaps scarcely just), but the poor Gentleman has +just recovered from his Lunacies, and that begets pity, and pity love, +and love admiration, and then it goes hard with People but they lie!" + +Lamb admired Cowper greatly in those days--particularly his "Crazy Kate" +("Task," Book I., 534-556). "I have been reading 'The Task' with fresh +delight," he says on December 5, 1796. "I am glad you love Cowper. I +could forgive a man for not enjoying Milton, but I would not call that +man my friend, who should be offended with the 'divine chit-chat of +Cowper.'" And again a little later, "I do so love him." + + +Page 17. _Lines addressed, from London, to Sara and S.T.C. at Bristol, +in the Summer of 1796._ + +_The Monthly Magazine,_ January, 1797. Signed Charles Lamb. + +Lamb sent the lines in their original state to Coleridge in the letter +of July 5, 1796, immediately before the words "_Let us prose,_" at the +head of that document as it is now preserved. + +"Another minstrel" was Coleridge. Chatterton was the mysterious youth of +line 16. Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770) was baptised at St. Mary +Redcliffe, Bristol; he was the nephew of the sexton; he brooded for many +hours a day in the church; he copied his antique writing from the +parchment in its muniment room; one of his later dreams was to be able +to build a new spire; and a cenotaph to his memory was erected by public +subscription in 1840 near the north-east angle of the churchyard. +Chatterton went to London on April 24, 1770, aged seventeen and a half, +and died there by his own hand on August 25 of the same year. + +The poem originated in an invitation to Lamb from the Coleridges at +Bristol, which he hoped to be able to accept; but to his request for the +necessary holiday from the India House came refusal. Lamb went to Nether +Stowey, however, in the following summer and met Wordsworth there. + +Lamb at one time wished these lines to be included among his poems in +the second edition of Coleridge's _Poems_, 1797. Writing on January 18, +1797, Lamb says: "I shall be sorry if that volume comes out, as it +necessarily must do, unless you print those very school boyish verses I +sent you on not getting leave to come down to Bristol last summer." At +the end of the letter he adds: "Yet I should feel ashamed that to you I +wrote nothing better. But they are too personal, almost trifling and +obscure withal." + + + * * * * * + + +Page 18. _Sonnet to a Friend._ + +The _Monthly Magazine,_ October, 1797. Signed Charles Lamb. + +Lamb sent this sonnet to Coleridge on January 2, 1797, remarking: "If +the fraternal sentiment conveyed in the following lines will atone for +the total want of any thing like merit or genius in it, I desire you +will print it next after my other Sonnet to my Sister." The other sonnet +was, "If from my lips some peevish accents fall," printed with +Coleridge's _Poems_ in 1797 (see page 9), concerning which book Lamb was +writing in the above letter. Coleridge apparently decided against the +present sonnet, for it was not printed in that book. + +Writing to Coleridge again a week later concerning the present poem, +Lamb said:-- + +"I am aware of the unpoetical caste of the 6 last lines of my last +sonnet, and think myself unwarranted in smuggling so tame a thing into +the book; only the sentiments of those 6 lines are thoroughly congenial +to me in my state of mind, and I wish to accumulate perpetuating tokens +of my affection to poor Mary." + +It has to be borne in mind that only three months had elapsed since the +death of Mrs. Lamb, and Mary was still in confinement. + + +Page 18. _To a Young Lady_. Signed C.L. + +_Monthly Magazine_, March, 1797, afterwards copied into the _Poetical +Register_ for 1803, signed C.L. in both cases. We know these to be +Lamb's from a letter to Coleridge of December 5, 1796. The identity of +the young lady is not now known. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 19. _Living without God in the World._ + +The _Annual Anthology,_ Vol. I., 1799. + +Vol. I. of the _Annual Anthology_, edited by Southey for Joseph Cottle, +was issued in September, 1799; and that was, I believe, this poem's +first appearance as a whole. Early in 1799, however, Charles Lloyd had +issued a pamphlet entitled _Lines suggested by the Fast appointed on +Wednesday, February 27, 1799_ (Birmingham, 1799), in which, in a note, +he quotes a passage from Lamb's poem, beginning, "some braver spirits" +(line 23), and ending, "prey on carcasses" (line 36), with the prefatory +remark: "I am happy in the opportunity afforded me of introducing the +following striking extract from some lines, intended as a satire on the +Godwinian jargon." + +Writing to Southey concerning this poem, Lamb says:-"I can have no +objection to you printing 'Mystery of God' [afterwards called 'Living +without God in the World'] with my name, and all due acknowledgments for +the honour and favour of the communication: indeed, 'tis a poem that can +dishonour no name. Now, that is in the true strain of modern modesto +vanitas." + + + * * * * * + + +Page 21. _BLANK VERSE_, BY CHARLES LLOYD AND CHARLES LAMB, 1798. + +Charles Lloyd left Coleridge early in 1797, and was in the winter +1797-1798 living in London, sharing lodgings with James White (Lamb's +friend and the author of _Original Letters, etc., of Sir John Falstaff_, +1796). It was then that the joint production of this volume was entered +upon. Of the seven poems contributed by Lamb only "The Old Familiar +Faces" (shorn of one stanza) and the lines "Composed at Midnight" were +reprinted by him: on account, it may be assumed, of his wish not to +revive in his sister, who would naturally read all that he published, +any painful recollections. Not that she refused in after years to speak +of her mother, but Lamb was, I think, sensitive for her and for himself +and the family too. As a matter of fact the circumstances of Mrs. Lamb's +death were known only to a very few of the Lambs' friends until after +Charles' death. It must be remembered that when _Blank Verse_ was +originally published, in 1798, Mary Lamb was still living apart, nor was +it known that she, would ever be herself again. + +It was this little volume which gave Gillray an opportunity for +introducing Lamb and Lloyd into his cartoon "The New Morality," +published in the first number of _The Anti-Jacobin Review and Magazine_ +(which succeeded Canning's _Anti-Jacobin_), August 1, 1798. Canning's +lines, "The New Morality," had been published in _The Anti-Jacobin_ on +July 9, 1798, containing the couplets:-- + + And ye five other wandering Bards that move + In sweet accord of harmony and love, + C----dge and S--th--y, L----d, and L----be and Co., + Tune all your mystic harps to praise Lepaux! + +In the picture Gillray introduced "Coleridge" as a donkey offering a +volume of "Dactylics," and Southey as another donkey, flourishing a +volume of "Saphics." Behind them, seated side by side, poring over a +manuscript entitled "Blank Verse, by Toad and Frog," are a toad and frog +which the Key states to be Lloyd and Lamb. It was in reference to this +picture that Godwin, on first meeting Lamb, asked him, "Pray, Mr. Lamb, +are you toad or frog?" + + +Page 21. _To Charles Lloyd._ + +_The Monthly Magazine_, October, 1797. Signed. + +Lamb sent these lines to Coleridge in September, 1797, remarking: "The +following I wrote when I had returned from Charles Lloyd, leaving him +behind at Burton, with Southey. To understand some of it you must +remember that at that time he was very much perplexed in mind." Lloyd +throughout his life was given to religious speculations which now and +then disturbed his mind to an alarming extent, affecting him not unlike +the gloomy forebodings and fears that beset Cowper. On this particular +occasion he was in difficulty also as to his engagement with Sophia +Pemberton, with whom he was meditating elopement and a Scotch marriage. + + +Page 21. _Written on the Day of my Aunt's Funeral._ + +"This afternoon," Lamb wrote to Coleridge on February 13, 1797, "I +attend the funeral of my poor old aunt, who died on Thursday. I own I am +thankful that the good creature has ended all her days of suffering and +infirmity. She was to me the 'cherisher of infancy.' ..." Lamb's Aunt +Hetty was his father's sister. Her real name was Sarah Lamb. All that we +know of her is found in this poem, in the _Letters_, in the passages in +"Christ's Hospital Five and Thirty Years Ago," and "My Relations;" in +the story of "The Witch Aunt," in _Mrs. Leicester's School_, and in a +reference in one of Mary Lamb's letters to Sarah Stoddart, where, +writing of her aunt and her mother,--"the best creatures in the +world,"--she speaks of Miss Lamb as being "as unlike a gentlewoman as +you can possibly imagine a good old woman to be;" contrasting her with +Mrs. Lamb, "a perfect gentlewoman." The description in "The Witch Aunt" +bears out Mary Lamb's letter. + +After the tragedy of September, 1796, Aunt Hetty was taken into the +house of a rich relative. This lady, however, seems to have been of too +selfish and jealous a disposition (see Lamb's letter to Coleridge, +December 9, 1796) to exert any real effort to make her guest comfortable +or happy. Hence Aunt Hetty returned to her nephew. + +"My poor old aunt [Lamb wrote to Coleridge on January 5, 1797], whom you +have seen, the kindest, goodest creature to me when I was at school; who +used to toddle there to bring me fag [food], when I, school-boy like, +only despised her for it, and used to be ashamed to see her come and sit +herself down on the old coal-hole steps as you went into the old +grammar-school, opend her apron, and bring out her bason with some nice +thing she had caused to be saved for me--the good old creature is now +lying on her death bed.... She says, poor thing, she is glad to come +home to die with me. I was always her favourite." + +Line 24. _One parent yet is left_. John Lamb, who is described as he was +in his prime, as Lovel, in the _Elia_ essay on _"The Old Benchers of the +Inner Temple,"_ died in 1799. + +Line 27. _A semblance most forlorn of what he was_. Lamb uses this line +as a quotation, slightly altered, in his account of Lovel. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 22. _Written a Year after the Events_. + +Lamb sent this poem to Coleridge in September, 1797, entitling it +"Written a Twelvemonth after the Events," and adding, "Friday next, +Coleridge, is the day on which my Mother died." Mrs. Lamb's death, at +the hands of her daughter in a moment of frenzy, occurred on September +22, 1796. Lamb added that he wrote the poem at the office with "unusual +celerity." "I expect you to like it better than anything of mine; Lloyd +does, and I do myself." The version sent to Coleridge differs only in +minor and unimportant points from that in _Blank Verse_. + +The second paragraph of the poem is very similar to a passage which Lamb +had written in a letter to Coleridge on November 14, 1796:-- + +"Oh, my friend! I think sometimes, could I recall the days that are +past, which among them should I choose? not those 'merrier days,' not +the 'pleasant days of hope,' not 'those wanderings with a fair-hair'd +maid,' which I have so often and so feelingly regretted, but the days, +Coleridge, of a _mother's_ fondness for her _school-boy_. What would I +give to call her back to earth for _one_ day!--on my knees to ask her +pardon for all those little asperities of temper which, from time to +time, have given her gentle spirit pain!--and the day, my friend, I +trust, will come. There will be 'time enough' for kind offices of love, +if 'Heaven's eternal year' be ours. Here-after, her meek spirit shall +not reproach me." + +In the last paragraph of the poem is a hint of "The Old Familiar Faces," +that was to follow it in the course of a few months. + +Lines 52, 53. _And one, above the rest_. Probably Coleridge is meant. + + +Page 24. _Written soon after the Preceding Poem_. + +The poem is addressed to Lamb's mother. Lamb seems to have sent a copy +to Southey, although the letter containing it has not been perserved, +for we find Southey passing it on to his friend C.W.W. Wynn on November +29, 1797, with a commendation: "I know that our tastes differ much in +poetry, and yet I think you must like these lines by Charles Lamb." + +The following passage in Rosamund Gray, which Lamb was writing at this +time, is curiously like these poems in tone. It occurs in one of the +letters from Elinor Clare to her friend--letters in which Lamb seems to +describe sometimes his own feelings, and sometimes those of his sister, +on their great sorrow:-- + +"Maria! shall not the meeting of blessed spirits, think you, be +something like this?--I think, I could even now behold my mother without +dread--I would ask pardon of her for all my past omissions of duty, for +all the little asperities in my temper, which have so often grieved her +gentle spirit when living. Maria! I think she would not turn away from +me. + +"Oftentimes a feeling, more vivid than memory, brings her before me--I +see her sit in her old elbow chair--her arms folded upon her lap--a tear +upon her cheek, that seems to upbraid her unkind daughter for some +inattention--I wipe it away and kiss her honored lips. + +"Maria! when I have been fancying all this, Allan will come in, with his +poor eyes red with weeping, and taking me by the hand, destroy the +vision in a moment. + +"I am prating to you, my sweet cousin, but it is the prattle of the +heart, which Maria loves. Besides, whom have I to talk to of these +things but you--you have been my counsellor in times past, my companion, +and sweet familiar friend. Bear with me a little--I mourn the +'cherishers of my infancy.'" + + + * * * * * + + +Page 25. _Written on Christmas Day, 1797_. + +Mary Lamb, to whom these lines were addressed, after seeming to be on +the road to perfect recovery, had suddenly had a relapse necessitating a +return to confinement from the lodging in which her brother had placed +her. + + +Page 25. _The Old Familiar Faces_. + +This, the best known of all Lamb's poems, was written in January, 1798, +following, it is suggested, upon a fit of resentment against Charles +Lloyd. Writing to Coleridge in that month Lamb tells of that little +difference, adding, "but he has forgiven me." Mr. J.A. Rutter, who, +through Canon Ainger, enunciated this theory, thinks that Lloyd may be +the "friend" of the fourth stanza, and Coleridge the "friend" of the +sixth. The old--but untenable--supposition was that it was Coleridge +whom Lamb had left abruptly. On the other hand it might possibly have +been James White, especially as he was of a resolutely high-spirited +disposition. + +In its 1798 form the poem began with this stanza:-- + + Where are they gone, the old familiar faces? + I had a mother, but she died, and left me, + Died prematurely in a day of horrors-- + All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. + +And the last stanza began with the word "For," and italicised the words + +_And some are taken from me_. + +I am inclined to think from this italicisation that it was Mary Lamb's +new seizure that was the real impulse of the poem. + +The poem was dated January, 1798. Lamb printed it twice--in 1798 and +1818. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 26. _Composed at Midnight_. + +On the appearance of Lamb's _Works_, 1818, Leigh Hunt printed in _The +Examiner_ (February 7 and 8, 1819) the passage beginning with line 32, +entitling it "A HINT to the GREATER CRIMINALS who are so fond of +declaiming against the crimes of the poor and uneducated, and in favour +of the torments of prisons and prison-ships in this world, and worse in +the next. Such a one, says the poet, + + 'on his couch + Lolling, &c.'" + + + * * * * * + + +Page 28. POEMS AT THE END OF JOHN WOODVIL, 1802. + +The volume containing _John Woodvil_, 1802, which is placed in the +present edition among Lamb's plays, on page 149, included also the +"Fragments of Burton" (see Vol. I.) and two lyrics. + + +Page 28. _Helen_. + +Lamb sent this poem to Coleridge on August 26, 1800, remarking:--"How do +you like this little epigram? It is not my writing, nor had I any finger +in it. If you concur with me in thinking it very elegant and very +original, I shall be tempted to name the author to you. I will just hint +that it is almost or quite a first attempt." + +The author was, of course, Mary Lamb. In his _Elia_ essay "Blakesmoor in +H----shire" in the _London Magazine_, September, 1824, Lamb quoted the +poem, stating that "Bridget took the hint" of her "pretty whimsical +lines" from a portrait of one of the Plumers' ancestors. The portrait +was the cool pastoral beauty with a lamb, and it was partly to make fun +of her brother's passion for the picture that Mary wrote the lines. + +The poem was reprinted in the _Works_, 1818. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 29. _Ballad from the German_. + +This poem was written for Coleridge's translation of "The Piccolimini," +the first part of Schiller's "Wallenstein," in 1800--Coleridge supplying +a prose paraphrase (for Lamb knew no German) for the purpose. The +original is Thekla's song in Act II., Scene 6:-- + + Der Eichwald brauset, die Wolken ziehn, + Das Mägdlein wandelt an Ufers Grün, + Es bricht sich die Welle mit Macht, mit Macht, + Und sie singt hinaus in die finstre Nacht, + Das Auge von Weinen getrübet. + Das Herz ist gestorben, die Welt ist leer, + Und welter giebt sie dem Wunsche nichts mehr. + Du Heilige, rufe dein Kind zurück, + Ich habe genossen das irdische Glück, + Ich habe gelebt und geliebet. + +Coleridge's own translation of Thekla's song, which was printed alone in +later editions of the play, ran thus:-- + + The cloud doth gather, the greenwood roar, + The damsel paces along the shore; + The billows they tumble with might, with might; + And she flings out her voice to the darksome night; + Her bosom is swelling with sorrow; + The world it is empty, the heart will die, + There's nothing to wish for beneath the sky: + Thou Holy One, call thy child away! + I've lived and loved, and that was to-day-- + Make ready my grave-clothes to-morrow. + +Barry Cornwall, in his memoir of Lamb, says: "Lamb used to boast that he +supplied one line to his friend in the fourth scene [Act IV., Scene i] +of that tragedy, where the description of the Pagan deities occurs. In +speaking of Saturn, he is figured as 'an old man melancholy.' 'That was +my line,' Lamb would say, exultingly." The line did not reach print in +this form. + +Lamb printed his translation twice--in 1802 and 1818. + + +Page 29. _Hypochondriacus_. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 30. _A Ballad Noting the Difference of Rich and Poor_. + +These two poems formed, in the _John Woodvil_ volume, 1802, portions of +the "Fragments of Burton," which will be found in Vol. I. Lamb +afterwards took out these poems and printed them separately in the +Works, 1818, in the form here given. Originally "Hypochondriacus" formed +Extract III. of the "Fragments," under the title "A Conceipt of +Diabolical Possession." The body of the verses differed very slightly +from the present state; but at the end the prayer ran: "_Jesu Mariae! +libera nos ab his tentationibus, oral, implorat, R.B. Peccator_"--R.B. +standing for Robert Burton, the anatomist of melancholy, the professed +author of the poem. + +"The Old and Young Courtier" may be found in the _Percy Reliques_. Lamb +copied it into one of his Commonplace Books. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 32. THE _WORKS_ OF CHARLES LAMB, 1818. + +This book, in two volumes, was published by C. & J. Ollier in 1818: the +first volume containing the dedication to Coleridge that is here printed +on page 1, all of Lamb's poetry that he then wished to preserve, "John +Woodvil," "The Witch," the "Fragments of Burton," "Rosamund Gray" and +"Recollections of Christ's Hospital;" the second volume, dedicated to +Martin Charles Burney in the sonnet on page 45, containing criticisms, +essays and "Mr. H." + +The scheme of the present volume makes it impossible to keep together +the poetical portion of Lamb's _Works_. In order, however, to present +clearly to the reader Lamb's mature selection, in 1818, of the poetry by +which he wished to be known, I have indicated the position in his +_Works_ of those poems that have already been printed on earlier pages. + + +Page 32. _Hester_. + +Lamb sent this poem to Manning in March, 1803--"I send you some verses I +have made on the death of a young Quaker you may have heard me speak of +as being in love with for some years while I lived at Pentonville, +though I had never spoken to her in my life. She died about a month +since." + +Hester Savory was the daughter of Joseph Savory, a goldsmith in the +Strand. She was born in 1777 and was thus by two years Lamb's junior. +She married, in July, 1802, Charles Stoke Dudley, a merchant, and she +died in February of the following year, and was buried at Bunhill +Fields. Lamb was living in Pentonville from the end of 1796 until 1799. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 33. _Dialogue between a Mother and Child._ By Mary Lamb. + +Charles Lamb, writing to Dorothy Wordsworth on June 2, 1804, says: "I +send you two little copies of verses by Mary L--b." Then follow this +"Dialogue" and the "Lady Blanch" verses on page 41. Lamb adds at the +end: "I wish they may please you: we in these parts are not a little +proud of them." + + + * * * * * + + +Page 34. _A Farewell to Tobacco._ + +First printed in _The Reflector_, No. IV., 1811. + +Lamb had begun to think poetically of tobacco as early as 1803. Writing +to Coleridge in April 13 of that year, he says:--"What do you think of +smoking? I want your sober, _average, noon opinion_ of it. I generally +am eating my dinner about the time I should determine it. Morning is a +girl, and can't smoke--she's no evidence one way or the other; and Night +is so [? evidently] _bought over_, that he can't be a very upright +judge. May be the truth is, that _one_ pipe is wholesome; _two_ pipes +toothsome; _three_ pipes noisome; _four_ pipes fulsome; _five_ pipes +quarrelsome; and that's the _sum_ on't. But that is deciding rather upon +rhyme than reason." + +Writing to William and Dorothy Wordsworth on September 28, 1805, Lamb +remarked regarding his literary plans:--"Sometimes I think of a +farce--but hitherto all schemes have gone off,--an idle brag or two of +an evening vaporing out of a pipe, and going off in the morning--but now +I have bid farewell to my 'Sweet Enemy' Tobacco, as you will see in my +next page, I perhaps shall set soberly to work. Hang work!" + +On the next page Lamb copied the "Farewell to Tobacco," adding:--"I wish +you may think this a handsome farewell to my 'Friendly Traitress.' +Tobacco has been my evening comfort and my morning curse for these five +years: and you know how difficult it is from refraining to pick one's +lips even when it has become a habit. This Poem is the only one which I +have finished since so long as when I wrote 'Hester Savory' [in March, +1803].... The 'Tobacco,' being a little in the way of Withers (whom +Southey so much likes), perhaps you will somehow convey it to him with +my kind remembrances." + +Mr. Bertram Dobell has a MS. copy of the poem, in Lamb's hand, inscribed +thus: "To his _quondam_ Brethren of the Pipe, Capt. B[urney], and J[ohn] +R[ickman], Esq., the Author dedicates this his last Farewell to +Tobacco." At the end is a rude drawing of a pipe broken--"My Emblem." + +It is perhaps hardly needful to say that Lamb's farewell was not final. +He did not give up smoking for many years. When asked (Talfourd's +version of the story says by Dr. Parr) how he was able to emit such +volumes of smoke, he replied, "I toiled after it, sir, as some men toil +after virtue;" and Macready records having heard Lamb express the wish +to draw his last breath through a pipe and exhale it in a pun. Talfourd +says that in late life Lamb ceased to smoke except very occasionally. +But the late Mrs. Coe, who knew Lamb at Widford when she was a child, +told me that she remembered Lamb's black pipe and his devotion to it, +about 1830. + +In his character sketch of the late Elia (see Vol. II.), written in +1822, Lamb describes the effect of tobacco upon himself. "He took it, he +would say, as a solvent of speech. Marry--as the friendly vapour +ascended, how his prattle would curl up sometimes with it! the +ligaments, which tongue-tied him, were loosened, and the stammerer +proceeded a statist!" + + + * * * * * + + +Page 38. _To T.L.H_. + +First printed in _The Examiner_, January 1, 1815. + +The lines are to Thornton Leigh Hunt, Leigh Hunt's little boy, who was +born in 1810, and, during his father's imprisonment for a libel on the +Regent from February, 1813, to February, 1815, was much in the Surrey +gaol. Lamb, who was among Hunt's constant visitors, probably first saw +him there. Lamb mentions him again in his _Elia_ essay "Witches and +other Night Fears." See also note to the "Letter to Southey," Vol. I. +Thornton Leigh Hunt became a journalist, and held an important post on +the _Daily Telegraph_. He died in 1873. + +When printed in Leigh Hunt's _Examiner_, signed C.L., the poem had +these prefatory words by the editor:-- + + The following piece perhaps we had some personal reasons for not + admitting, but we found more for the contrary; and could not resist + the pleasure of contemplating together the author and the object of his + address,--to one of whom the Editor is owing for some of the lightest + hours of his captivity, and to the other for a main part of its continual + solace. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 41. _Lines Suggested by a Picture of Two Females by Lionardo da +Vinci_. By Mary Lamb. + +This was the "Lady Blanch" poem which Lamb sent to Dorothy Wordsworth in +the letter of June 2, 1804 (see page 325). There it was entitled +"Suggested by a Print of 2 Females, after Lionardo da Vinci, called +Prudence and Beauty, which hangs up in our room." The usual title is +"Modesty and Vanity." + + +Page 41. _Lines on the Same Picture being Removed to make Place for a +Portrait of a Lady by Titian_. By Mary Lamb. + +Writing to Dorothy Wordsworth on June 14, 1805, Lamb says: "You had her +[Mary's] Lines about the 'Lady Blanch.' You have not had some which she +wrote upon a copy of a girl from Titian, which I had hung up where that +print of Blanch and the Abbess (as she beautifully interpreted two +female figures from L. da Vinci) had hung, in our room. 'Tis light and +pretty." + + + * * * * * + + +Page 42. _Lines on the Celebrated Picture by Lionardo da Vinci, called +The Virgin of the Rocks_. + +This was the picture, one version of which hangs in the National +Gallery, that was known to Lamb's friends as his "Beauty," and which led +to the Scotchman's mistake in the _Elia_ essay "Imperfect Sympathies." + + +Page 42. _On the Same_. By Mary Lamb. + +In the letter to Dorothy Wordsworth of June 14, 1805, quoted just above, +Lamb says: "I cannot resist transcribing three or four Lines which poor +Mary [she was at this time away from home in one of her enforced +absences] made upon a Picture (a Holy Family) which we saw at an Auction +only one week before she left home.... They are sweet Lines, and upon a +sweet Picture." + +Mary Lamb wrote little verse besides the _Poetry for Children_ (see +Vol. III. of this edition). To the pieces that are printed in the +present volume I would add the lines suggested by the death of Captain +John Wordsworth, the poet's brother, in the foundering of the +_Abergavenny_ in February, 1805, when Coleridge was in Malta, which were +sent by Mary Lamb to Dorothy Wordsworth, May 7, 1805:-- + + Why is he wandering on the sea? + Coleridge should now with Wordsworth be. + By slow degrees he'd steal away + Their woe, and gently bring a ray + (So happily he'd time relief) + Of comfort from their very grief. + He'd tell them that their brother dead, + When years have passed o'er their head, + Will be remember'd with such holy, + True, and perfect melancholy, + That ever this lost brother John + Will be their hearts' companion. + His voice they'll always hear, his face they'll always see; + There's nought in life so sweet as such a memory. + + + * * * * * + + +SONNETS + + +Page 43. _To Miss Kelly_. + +Frances Maria Kelly (1790-1882)--or Fanny Kelly, as she was usually +called--was Lamb's favourite actress of his middle and later life and a +personal friend of himself and his sister: so close that Lamb proposed +marriage to her. See Lamb's criticisms of Miss Kelly's acting in Vol. +I., and notes. Another sonnet addressed by Lamb to Miss Kelly will be +found on page 59 of the present volume. + + +Page 43. _On the Sight of Swans in Kensington Garden_. This is, I think, +Lamb's only poem the inspiration of which was drawn from nature. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 44. _The Family Name_. + +John Lamb, Charles's father, came from Lincoln. A recollection of his +boyhood there is given in the _Elia_ essay "Poor Relations." The +"stream" seems completely to have ended with Charles Lamb and his sister +Mary: at least, research has yielded no descendants. + +Crabb Robinson visited Goethe in the summer of 1829. The _Diary_ has +this entry: "I inquired whether he knew the name of Lamb. 'Oh, yes! Did +he not write a pretty sonnet on his own name?' Charles Lamb, though he +always affected contempt for Goethe, yet was manifestly pleased that his +name was known to him." + +In the little memoir of Lamb prefixed by M. Amédée Pichot to a French +edition of the _Tales from Shakespeare_ in 1842 the following +translation of this sonnet is given:-- + + MON NOM DE FAMILLE + + Dis-moi, d'où nous viens-tu, nom pacifique et doux, + Nom transmis sans reproche?... A qui te devons-nous, + Nom qui meurs avec moi? mon glason de poëte + A l'aïeul de mon père obscurément s'arrête. + --Peut-être nous viens-tu d'un timide pasteur, + Doux comme ses agneaux, raillé pour sa douceur. + Mais peut-être qu'aussi, moins commune origine, + Nous viens-tu d'un héros, d'un pieux paladin, + Qui croyant honorer ainsi l'Agneau divin, + Te prit en revenant des champs de Palestine. + Mais qu'importe après tout ... qu'il soit illustre ou non, + Je ne ferai jamais une tache à ce nom. + + +Page 44. _To John Lamb, Esq._ + +John Lamb, Charles's brother, was born in 1763 and was thus by twelve +years his senior. At the time this poem appeared, in 1818, he was +accountant of the South-Sea House. He died on October 26, 1821 (see the +_Elia_ essays "My Relations" and "Dream Children"). + + + * * * * * + + +Page 45. _To Martin Charles Burney, Esq._ + +Lamb prefixed this sonnet to Vol. II. of his _Works_, 1818. In Vol. I. +he had placed the dedication to Coleridge which we have already seen. +Martin Charles Burney was the son of Rear-Admiral James Burney, Lamb's +old friend, and nephew of Madame d'Arblay. He was a barrister by +profession; dabbled a little in authorship; was very quaint in some of +his ways and given to curiously intense and sudden enthusiasms; and was +devoted to Mary Lamb and her brother. When these two were at work on +their _Tales from Shakespear_ Martin Burney would sit with them and +attempt to write for children too. Lamb's letter of May 24, 1830, to +Sarah Hazlitt has some amusing stories of his friend, at whom (like +George Dyer) he could laugh as well as love. Lamb speaks of him on one +occasion as on the top round of his ladder of friendship. Writing to +Sarah Hazlitt, Lamb says:--"Martin Burney is as good, and as odd as +ever. We had a dispute about the word 'heir,' which I contended was +pronounced like 'air'; he said that might be in common parlance; or that +we might so use it, speaking of the 'Heir at Law,' a comedy; but that in +the law courts it was necessary to give it a full aspiration, and to say +_hayer_; he thought it might even vitiate a cause, if a counsel +pronounced it otherwise. In conclusion, he 'would consult Serjeant +Wilde,' who gave it against him. Sometimes he falleth into the water; +sometimes into the fire. He came down here, and insisted on reading +Virgil's 'Eneid' all through with me (which he did), because a Counsel +must know Latin. Another time he read out all the Gospel of St. John, +because Biblical quotations are very emphatic in a Court of Justice. A +third time, he would carve a fowl, which he did very ill-favouredly, +because 'we did not know how indispensable it was for a barrister to do +all those sort of things well? Those little things were of more +consequence than we supposed.' So he goes on, harassing about the way to +prosperity, and losing it. With a long head, but somewhat a wrong +one----harum-scarum. Why does not his guardian angel look to him? He +deserves one: may be, he has tired him out." + +Martin Burney, of whom another glimpse is caught in the _Elia_ essay +"Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading," died in 1860. At Mary Lamb's +funeral he was inconsolable. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 46. CHARLES LAMB'S _ALBUM VERSES_, 1830. + +The publication of this volume, in 1830, was due more to Lamb's kindness +of heart than to any desire to come before the world again as a poet. +But Edward Moxon, Lamb's young friend, was just starting his publishing +business, with Samuel Rogers as a financial patron; and Lamb, who had +long been his chief literary adviser, could not well refuse the request +to help him with a new book. _Album Verses_ became thus the first of the +many notable books of poetry which Moxon was to issue between 1830 and +1858, the year of his death. Among them Tennyson's _Poems_, 1833 and +1842; _The Princess_, 1847; _In Memoriam_, 1850; _Maud_, 1855; and +Browning's _Sordello_, 1840, and _Bells and Pomegranates_, 1843-1846. + +The dedication of _Album Verses_ tells the story of its being:-- + +"DEDICATION + +"TO THE PUBLISHER + +"DEAR MOXON, + +"I do not know to whom a Dedication of these Trifles is more properly +due than to yourself. You suggested the printing of them. You were +desirous of exhibiting a specimen of the _manner_ in which Publications, +entrusted to your future care, would appear. With more propriety, +perhaps, the 'Christmas,' or some other of your own simple, unpretending +Compositions, might have served this purpose. But I forget--you have bid +a long adieu to the Muses. I had on my hands sundry Copies of Verses +written for _Albums_-- + + "Those Books kept by modern young Ladies for show, + Of which their plain grandmothers nothing did know-- + +"or otherwise floating about in Periodicals; which you have chosen in +this manner to embody. I feel little interest in their publication. They +are simply--_Advertisement Verses_. + +"It is not for me, nor you, to allude in public to the kindness of our +honoured Friend, under whose auspices you are become a Bookseller. May +that fine-minded Veteran in Verse enjoy life long enough to see his +patronage justified! I venture to predict that your habits of industry, +and your cheerful spirit, will carry you through the world. + +"I am, Dear Moxon, + +"Your Friend and sincere Well-wisher, CHARLES LAMB. + +"ENFIELD, _1st June, 1830_." + +The reference to "Christmas" is to Moxon's poem of that name, published +in 1829, and dedicated to Lamb.--The couplet concerning Albums is from +one of Lamb's own pieces (see page 104).--The Veteran in Verse was +Samuel Rogers, who, then sixty-seven, lived yet another twenty-five +years. Moxon published the superb editions of his _Italy_ and his +_Poems_ illustrated by Turner and Stothard. + +Lamb's motives in issuing _Album Verses_ were cruelly misunderstood by +the _Literary Gazette_ (edited by William Jerdan). In the number for +July 10, 1830, was printed a contemptuous review beginning with this +passage:-- + + If any thing could prevent our laughing at the present collection of + absurdities, it would be a lamentable conviction of the blinding and + engrossing nature of vanity. We could forgive the folly of the original + composition, but cannot but marvel at the egotism which has preserved, + and the conceit which has published. + +Lamb himself probably was not much disturbed by Jerdan's venom, but +Southey took it much to heart, and a few weeks later sent to _The Times_ +(of August 6, 1830) the following lines in praise of his friend:-- + + TO CHARLES LAMB + + On the Reviewal of his _Album Verses_ in the _Literary Gazette_. + + Charles Lamb, to those who know thee justly dear, + For rarest genius, and for sterling worth, + Unchanging friendship, warmth of heart sincere, + And wit that never gave an ill thought birth, + Nor ever in its sport infix'd a sting; + To us who have admired and loved thee long, + It is a proud as well as pleasant thing + To hear thy good report, now borne along + Upon the honest breath of public praise: + We know that with the elder sons of song, + In honouring whom thou hast delighted still, + Thy name shall keep its course to after days. + The empty pertness, and the vulgar wrong, + The flippant folly, the malicious will, + Which have assailed thee, now, or heretofore, + Find, soon or late, their proper meed of shame; + The more thy triumph, and our pride the more, + When witling critics to the world proclaim, + In lead, their own dolt incapacity. + Matter it is of mirthful memory + To think, when thou wert early in the field, + How doughtily small Jeffrey ran at thee + A-tilt, and broke a bulrush on thy shield. + And now, a veteran in the lists of fame, + I ween, old Friend! thou art not worse bested + When with a maudlin eye and drunken aim, + Dulness hath thrown a _jerdan_ at thy head. + + SOUTHEY. + +This was, I think, Southey's first public utterance concerning Lamb +since Lamb's famous open letter to him of October, 1823 (see Vol. I.). + +Lamb wrote to Bernard Barton in the same month: "How noble ... in R.S. +to come forward for an old friend who had treated him so unworthily," +For the critics, Lamb said in the same letter, he did not care the "five +hundred thousandth part of a half-farthing;" and we can believe him. On +page 123 will be found, however, an epigram on the _Literary Gazette_. + + + * * * * * + + +ALBUM VERSES + + +Page 46. _In the Album of a Clergyman's Lady._ + +This lady was probably Mrs. Williams, of Fornham, in Suffolk, in whose +house Lamb's adopted daughter, Emma Isola, lived as a governess in +1829-1830. The epitaph on page 65 and the acrostic on page 107 were +written for the same lady. + + +Page 46. _In the Autograph Book of Mrs. Sergeant W----._ + +Mrs. Sergeant Wilde, _née_ Wileman, was the first wife of Thomas Wilde, +afterwards Lord Truro (1782-1855), for whose election at Newark in 1831 +Lamb is said to have written facetious verses (see my large edition). +The Wildes were Lamb's neighbours at Enfield. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 47. _In the Album of Lucy Barton._ + +These lines were sent by Lamb to Lucy Barton's father, Bernard Barton, +the Quaker poet, in the letter of September 30, 1824. Lucy Barton, who +afterwards became the wife of Edward FitzGerald, the translator of Omar +Khayyam, lived until November 27, 1898. She retained her faculties +almost to the end, and in 1892 kindly wrote out for me her memory of a +visit paid with her father to the Lambs at Colebrook Row about 1825--a +little reminiscence first printed in _Bernard Barton and His Friends,_ +1893. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 48. _In the Album of Miss----._ + +This poem was first printed in _Blackwood's Magazine_, May, 1829, +entitled "For a Young Lady's Album." The identity of the young lady is +not now discoverable: probably a school friend of Emma Isola's. + + +Page 48. _In the Album of a very young Lady._ + +Josepha was a daughter of Mrs. Williams, of Fornham. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 49. _In the Album of a French Teacher._ + +First printed in _Blackwood's Magazine,_ June, 1829, entitled "For the +Album of: Miss----, French Teacher at Mrs. Gisborn's School, Enfield." +Page 49. _In the Album of Miss Daubeny._ + +Miss Daubeny was a schoolfellow of Emma Isola's, at Dulwich. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 50. _In the Album of Mrs. Jane Towers._ + +Charles Clarke--in line 7--was Charles Cowden Clarke (1787-1877), a +friend of the Lambs not only for his own sake, but for that of his wife, +Mary Victoria Novello, whom he married in 1828 and who died as recently +as 1898. Their _Recollections of Writers,_ 1878, have many interesting +reminiscences of Charles and Mary Lamb. Writing to Cowden Clarke on +February 25, 1828, Lamb says:--"I had a pleasant letter from your +sister, greatly over acknowledging my poor sonnet.... Alas for +sonnetting,'tis as the nerves are; all the summer I was dawdling among +green lanes, and verses came as thick as fancies. I am sunk winterly +below prose and zero." + +Mrs. Towers lived at Standerwick, in Somersetshire, and was fairly well +known in her day as a writer of books for children, _The Children's +Fireside,_ etc. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 50. _In my own Album._ + +This poem was first printed in _The Bijou,_ 1828, edited by William +Fraser, under the title "Verses for an Album." + + + * * * * * + + +MISCELLANEOUS + + +Page 51. _Angel Help._ + +This poem was first printed in the _New Monthly Magazine,_ 1827, with +trifling differences, and the addition, at the end, of this couplet:-- + + Virtuous Poor Ones, sleep, sleep on, + And, waking, find your labours done. + +I am afraid that the "Nonsense Verses" on page 123 represent an attempt +to make fun of this beautiful poem. + +Aders' house in Euston Square was hung with engravings principally of +the German school (see the poem on page 94 addressed to him). + + + * * * * * + + +Page 52. _The Christening._ + +These lines were first printed in _Blackwood's Magazine,_ May, 1829. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 53. _On an Infant Dying as soon as Born._ + +This poem was first printed in _The Gem,_ 1829. _The Gem_ was then +edited by Thomas Hood, whose child--his firstborn--it was thatinspired +the poem. Lamb sent the verses to Hood in May, 1827. + +This is, I think, in many ways Lamb's most remarkable poem. + +Hood's own poem on the same event, printed in _Memorials of Thomas +Hood_, by his daughter, 1860, has some of the grace and tenderness of +the Greek Anthology:-- + + Little eyes that scarce did see, + Little lips that never smiled; + Alas! my little dear dead child, + Death is thy father, and not me, + I but embraced thee, soon as he! + + + * * * * * + + +Page 55. _To Bernard Barton._ + +These lines were sent to Barton in 1827, together with the picture. On +June 11, Lamb wrote again:-- + +"DEAR B.B., + +"One word more of the picture verses, and that for good and all; pray, +with a neat pen alter one line-- + + "His learning seems to lay small stress on-- + +"to + + "His learning lays no mighty stress on, + +"to avoid the unseemly recurrence (ungrammatical also) of 'seems' in the +next line, besides the nonsense of 'but' there, as it now stands. And I +request you, as a personal favor to me, to erase the last line of all, +which I should never have written from myself. The fact is, it was a +silly joke of Hood's, who gave me the frame, (you judg'd rightly it was +not its own,) with the remark that you would like it because it was +b-----d b-----d [the last line in question was 'And broad brimmed, as +the owner's calling'] and I lugg'd it in: but I shall be quite hurt if +it stands, because tho' you and yours have too good sense to object to +it, I would not have a sentence of mine seen that to any foolish ear +might sound unrespectful to thee. Let it end at 'appalling.'" + +Line 1. _Woodbridge_. Barton lived at Woodbridge, in Suffolk, where he +was a clerk in the old Quaker bank of Dykes & Alexander. + +Line 15. _Ann Knight_. Ann Knight was a Quaker lady, also resident at +Woodbridge, who kept a small school there, and who had visited the Lambs +in London and greatly charmed them. + +Line 16. _Classic Mitford_. The Rev. John Mitford (1781-1859) was rector +of Benhall, in Suffolk, near Woodbridge, and a friend of Barton's, +through whom Lamb's acquaintance with him was carried on. Mitford edited +many poets, among them Vincent Bourne. He was editor of the _Gentleman's +Magazine_ from 1834 to 1850. + +Footnote. _Carrington Bowles_. Carington Bowles, 69 St. Paul's +Churchyard, was the publisher of this print, which was the work of the +elder Morland, and was engraved by Philip Dawe, father of Lamb's George +Dawe (see the essay "Recollections of a late Royal Academician," Vol. +I.). + +Lines 26, 27, 28. _Obstinate ... Banyan_. It was not Obstinate, but +Christian, who put his fingers in his ears (see the first pages of _The +Pilgrim's Progress_). Lamb had the same slip of memory in his paper "On +the Custom of Hissing at the Theatre" (Vol. I.). + + + * * * * * + + +Page 56. _The Young Catechist_. Lamb sent this poem to Barton in a +letter in 1827, wherein he tells the story of its inception:--"An artist +who painted me lately, had painted a Blackamoor praying, and not filling +his canvas, stuff'd in his little girl aside of Blacky, gaping at him +unmeaningly; and then didn't know what to call it. Now for a picture to +be promoted to the Exhibition (Suffolk Street) as Historical, a subject +is requisite. What does me. I but christen it the 'Young Catechist,' and +furbishd it with Dialogue following, which dubb'd it an Historical +Painting. Nothing to a friend at need.... When I'd done it the Artist +(who had clapt in Miss merely as a fill-space) swore I exprest his full +meaning, and the damsel bridled up into a Missionary's vanity. I like +verses to explain Pictures: seldom Pictures to illustrate Poems." + +The artist was Henry Meyer (1782?-1847), one of the foundation members +of the Society of British Artists in Suffolk Street, to the exhibition +of which in 1826 he sent his portrait of Lamb, now in the India Office. +This picture was in a shop in the Charing Cross Road in 1910. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 57. _She is Going_. + +These lines were written for I know not what occasion, but the artist +Henry Meyer engraved a picture of G.J.L. Noble in 1837 and Lamb's lines +were placed below. + + +Page 57. _To a Young Friend_. + +The young friend was Emma Isola, who lived with the Lambs for some years +as their adopted daughter. Emma Isola was the daughter of Charles Isola, +Esquire Bedell of the University of Cambridge, who died in 1823, leaving +her unprovided for. His father, and Emma Isola's grandfather, was +Agostino Isola, who settled at Cambridge and taught Italian there. +Wordsworth was among his pupils. He edited a collection of _Pieces +selected from the Italian Poets_, 1778; also editions of _Gerusalemme +Liberata_ and _Orlando Furioso_, and a book of _Italian Dialogues_. Emma +Isola is first mentioned by Lamb in an unpublished letter written to her +aunt, Miss Humphreys, in January, 1821, arranging for the little girl's +return to Trumpington Street, Cambridge, from London, where she had been +spending her holidays with the Lambs. The Lambs had met her at Cambridge +in the summer of 1820. The exact date of her adoption by the Lambs +cannot be ascertained now. Emma Isola married Edward Moxon in 1833, and +lived until 1891. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 58. _To the Same_. + +Writing to Procter in January, 1829, Lamb calls Miss Isola "a silent +brown girl," and in his letter of November, 1833, to Mr. and Mrs. Moxon, +he says: "I hope you [Moxon] and Emma will have many a quarrel and many +a make-up (and she is beautiful in reconciliation!) ..." See the poem +"To a Friend on His Marriage," page 80, for a further description of +Emma Isola's character. + + + * * * * * + + +SONNETS + + +Page 58. _Harmony in Unlikeness_. + +The two lovely damsels were Emma Isola and her friend Maria. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 59. _Written at Cambridge_. + +This sonnet was first printed in _The Examiner_, August 29 and 30, 1819, +and was dated August 15. Lamb, we now know, from a letter recently +discovered, was in Cambridge in August, 1819, just after being refused +by Miss Kelly. Hazlitt in his essay "On the Conversation of Authors" in +the _London Magazine_ for September, 1820, referred to Lamb's visit to +him some years before, and his want of ease among rural surroundings, +adding: "But when we cross the country to Oxford, then he spoke a +little. He and the old collegers were hail-fellow-well-met: and in the +quadrangle he 'walked gowned.'" + + +Page 59. _To a Celebrated Female Performer in the "Blind Boy."_ + +First printed in the _Morning Chronicle_, 1819. "The Blind Boy," +"attributed," says Genest, "to Hewetson," was produced in 1807. It was +revived from time to time. Miss Kelly used to play Edmond, the title +_rôle_. + + +Page 59. _Work_. + +First printed in _The Examiner_, June 20 and 21, 1819, under the title +"Sonnet." + +Many years earlier we see the germ of this sonnet in Lamb's mind, as +indeed we see the germ of so many ideas that were not fully expressed +till later, for he always kept his thoughts at call. Writing to +Wordsworth in September, 1805, he says:--"Hang work! I wish that all the +year were holyday. I am sure that Indolence indefeasible Indolence is +the true state of man, and business the invention of the Old Teazer who +persuaded Adam's Master to give him an apron and set him a-houghing. Pen +and Ink and Clerks, and desks, were the refinements of this old torturer +a thousand years after...." + +Lamb probably was as fond of this sonnet as of anything he wrote in what +might be called his second poetical period. He copied it into his first +letter to Bernard Barton, in September, 1822, and he drew attention to +it in his _Elia_ essay "The Superannuated Man." + + + * * * * * + + +Page 60. _Leisure_. + +First printed in the _London Magazine_ for April, 1821, probably, I +think, as a protest against the objection taken by some persons to the +opinions expressed by Lamb in his essay on "New Year's Eve" in that +magazine for January (see Vol. II., and notes). Lamb had therein said, +speaking of death:--"I am not content to pass away 'like a weaver's +shuttle.' Those metaphors solace me not, nor sweeten the unpalatable +draught of mortality. I care not to be carried with the tide, that +smoothly bears human life to eternity; and reluct at the inevitable +course of destiny. I am in love with this green earth; the face of town +and country; the unspeakable rural solitudes, and the sweet security of +streets. I would set up my tabernacle here. I am content to stand still +at the age to which I am arrived; I, and my friends. To be no younger, +no richer, no handsomer. I do not want to be weaned by age; or drop, +like mellow fruit, as they say, into the grave." + +Such sentiments probably called forth some private as well as public +protests; and it was, as I imagine, in a whimsical wish to emphasise the +sincerity of his regard for life that Lamb reiterated that devotion in +the emphatic words of "Leisure" in the April number. This sonnet was a +special favourite with Edward FitzGerald. + +It is sad to think that Lamb, when his leisure came, had too much of it. +Writing to Barton on July 25, 1829, during one of his sister's +illnesses, he says: "I bragg'd formerly that I could not have too much +time. I have a surfeit.... I am a sanguinary murderer of time, that +would kill him inchmeal just now." + + +Page 60. _To Samuel Rogers, Esq_. + +Daniel Rogers, the poet's elder brother, died in 1829. In acknowledging +Lamb's sonnet, Samuel Rogers wrote the following letter, which Lamb +described to Barton (July 3, 1829) as the prettiest he ever read. + + Many, many thanks. The verses are beautiful. I need not say with + what feelings they were read. Pray accept the grateful + acknowledgements + of us all, and believe me when I say that nothing could have been + a greater cordial to us in our affliction than such a testimony from such + a quarter. He was--for none knew him so well--we were born within a + year or two of each other--a man of a very high mind, and with less + disguise than perhaps any that ever lived. Whatever he was, _that_ we + saw. He stood before his fellow beings (if I may be forgiven for saying + so) almost as before his Maker: and God grant that we may all bear + as severe an examination. He was an admirable scholar. His Dante + and his Homer were as familiar to him as his Alphabets: and he had + the tenderest heart. When a flock of turkies was stolen from his farm, + the indignation of the poor far and wide was great and loud. To me he + is the greatest loss, for we were nearly of an age; and there is now no + human being alive in whose eyes I have always been young. + + Yours most gratefully, + + SAMUEL ROGERS. + +Another sonnet to Rogers will be found on p. 100. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 61. _The Gipsy's Malison_. + +First printed in _Blackwood's Magazine_, January, 1829. Lamb had sent it +to _The Gem_, but, as he told Procter in a letter on January 22, 1829: +"The editors declined it, on the plea that it would _shock all mothers;_ +so they published the 'Widow' [Hood's parody of Lamb] instead. I am born +out of time. I have no conecture about what the present world calls +delicacy. I thought _Rosamund Gray_ was a pretty modest thing. Hessey +assures me that the world would not bear it. I have lived to grow into +an indecent character. When my sonnet was rejected, I exclaimed, +'Hang[27] the age, I will write for Antiquity!'" + +In another letter to Procter, Lamb tells the sonnet's history:-- + +"_January_ 29, 1829. + +"When Miss Ouldcroft (who is now Mrs. Beddam [Badams], and Bed-dam'd to +her!) was at Enfield, which she was in summer-time, and owed her health +to its suns and genial influences, she visited (with young lady-like +impertinence) a poor man's cottage that had a pretty baby (O the +yearnling!), gave it fine caps and sweetmeats. On a day, broke into the +parlour our two maids uproarious. 'O ma'am, who do you think Miss +Ouldcroft (they pronounce it Holcroft) has been working a cap for?' 'A +child," answered Mary, in true Shandean female simplicity.' 'Tis the +man's child as was taken up for sheep-stealing.' Miss Ouldcroft was +staggered, and would have cut the connection; but by main force I made +her go and take her leave of her protégée. I thought, if she went no +more, the Abactor or the Abactor's wife (_vide_ Ainsworth) would suppose +she had heard something; and I have delicacy for a sheep-stealer. The +overseers actually overhauled a mutton-pie at the baker's (his first, +last, and only hope of mutton pie), which he never came to eat, and +thence inferred his guilt. _Per occasionem cujus_, I framed the sonnet; +observe its elaborate construction. I was four days about it. [Here came +the sonnet.] Barry, study that sonnet. It is curiously and perversely +elaborate. 'Tis a choking subject, and therefore the reader is directed +to the structure of it. See you? and was this a fourteener to be +rejected by a trumpery annual? forsooth,'twould shock all mothers; and +may all mothers, who would so be shocked, be damned! as if mothers were +such sort of logicians as to infer the future hanging of _their_ child +from the theoretical hangibility (or capacity of being hanged, if the +judge pleases) of every infant born with a neck on. Oh B.C.! my whole +heart is faint, and my whole head is sick (how is it?) at this damned +canting unmasculine age!" + + +[Footnote 27: Talfourd. Canon Ainger gives "Damn"] + + + * * * * * + + +COMMENDATORY VERSES + + +Page 61. _To the Author of Poems, published under the name of Barry +Cornwall_. + +Printed in the _London Magazine_, September, 1820. + +Barry Cornwall was the pen-name of Bryan Waller Procter, 1787-1874, +whose impulse to write poetry came largely from Lamb himself. In his +_Dramatic Scenes_, 1819, was the beginning of a blank-verse treatment or +adaptation of Lamb's "Rosamund Gray." Procter addressed to Lamb some +excellent lines "Over a Flask of Sherris," which were printed in the +_London Magazine_, 1825, and again in _English Songs_, 1832. His +_Martian Colonna; an Italian Tale_, was published in 1820 and his +_Sicilian Story_ later in the same year. The "Dream" was printed in +_Dramatic Scenes_. Procter in his old age wrote a charming memoir of +Lamb. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 62. _To R.S. Knowles, Esq_. + +First printed in the _London Magazine_, September, 1820. By a curious +oversight the error in Knowles's initials was repeated in the _Album +Verses_, 1830, Knowles's first name being, of course, James. James +Sheridan Knowles (1784-1862) had been a doctor, a schoolmaster, an +actor, and a travelling elocutionist, before he took seriously to +writing for the stage. His first really successful play was "Virginius," +written for Edmund Kean, transferred to Macready, and produced in 1820. +His greatest triumph was "The Hunchback," 1832. Lamb, who met Knowles +through William Hazlitt, of Wem, the essayist's father, wrote both the +prologue and epilogue for Knowles's play "The Wife," 1833 (see pages +146-7). + + + * * * * * + + +Page 63. _Quatrains to the Editor of the "Every-Day Book_." + +First printed in the _London Magazine_, May, 1825, and copied by Hone +into the _Every-Day Book_ for July 9 of the same year. William Hone (see +Vol. I. notes), 1780-1842, was a bookseller, pamphleteer and antiquary, +who, before he took to editing his _Every-Day Book_ in 1825, had passed +through a stormy career on account of his critical outspokenness and +want of ordinary political caution; and Lamb did by no means a +fashionable thing when he commended Hone thus publicly. The _Every-Day +Book_, begun in 1825, was, when published in 1826, dedicated by Hone to +Charles Lamb and his sister. "Your daring to publish me your 'friend,' +with your 'proper name' annexed," Hone wrote, "I shall never forget." + + +Page 63. Acrostics. + +In his more leisurely years, at Islington and Enfield, Lamb wrote a +great number of acrostics--many more probably than have been +preserved--of which these, printed in _Album Verses_, are all that he +cared to see in print. Probably he found his chief impulse in Emma +Isola's schoolfellows and friends, who must have been very eager to +obtain in their albums a contribution from so distinguished a gentleman +as Elia, and who passed on their requests through his adopted daughter. +I have not been able to trace the identity of several of them. The lady +who desired her epitaph was Mrs. Williams in whose house Emma Isola was +governess. While there Emma was seriously ill, and Lamb travelled down +to Fornham, in Suffolk, in 1830, to bring her home. On returning he +wrote Mrs. Williams several letters, in one of which, dated Good Friday, +he said:--"I beg you to have inserted in your county paper something +like this advertisement; 'To the nobility, gentry, and others, about +Bury,--C. Lamb respectfully informs his friends and the public in +general, that he is leaving off business in the acrostic line, as he is +going into an entirely new line. Rebuses and Charades done as usual, and +upon the old terms. Also, Epitaphs to suit the memory of any person +deceased.'" + +Mrs. Williams probably then suggested that Lamb should write her +epitaph, for in his next letter he says:--"I have ventured upon some +lines, which combine my old acrostic talent (which you first found out) +with my new profession of epitaphmonger. As you did not please to say, +when you would die, I have left a blank space for the date. May kind +heaven be a long time in filling it up." + +On page 48 will be found some lines to one of Mrs. Williams' daughters. +The acrostic on page 65 is to another. These would both be Emma Isola's +pupils. + + + * * * * * + + +TRANSLATIONS + + +Page 66. _Translations from Vincent Bourne_. + +Vincent Bourne (1695-1747), the English Latin poet, entered Westminster +School on the foundation in 1710, and, on leaving Cambridge, returned to +Westminster as a master. He was so indolent a teacher and disciplinarian +that Cowper, one of his pupils, says: "He seemed determined, as he was +the best, so to be the last, Latin poet of the Westminster line." +Bourne's _Poemata_ appeared in 1734. It is mainly owing to Cowper's +translations (particularly "The Jackdaw") that he is known, except to +Latinists. Lamb first read Bourne in 1815. Writing to Wordsworth in +April of that year he says:--"Since I saw you I have had a treat in the +reading way which comes not every day. The Latin Poems of V. Bourne +which were quite new to me. What a heart that man had, all laid out upon +town and scenes, a proper counterpoise to _some people's_ rural +extravaganzas. Why I mention him is that your Power of Music reminded me +of his poem of the ballad singer in the Seven Dials. Do you remember his +epigram on the old woman who taught Newton the A B C, which after all he +says he hesitates not to call Newton's _Principia_? I was lately +fatiguing myself with going through a volume of fine words by L'd +Thurlow, excellent words, and if the heart could live by words alone, it +could desire no better regale, but what an aching vacuum of matter--I +don't stick at the madness of it, for that is only a consequence of +shutting his eyes and thinking he is in the age of the old Elisabeth +poets--from thence I turned to V. Bourne--what a sweet unpretending +pretty-mannered _matter-ful_ creature, sucking from every flower, making +a flower of every thing--his diction all Latin, and his thoughts all +English. Bless him, Latin wasn't good enough for him--why wasn't he +content with the language which Gay and Prior wrote in." + +On the publication of _Album Verses_, wherein these nine poems from +Vincent Bourne were printed, Lamb reviewed the book in Moxon's +_Englishman's Magazine_ for September, 1831, under the title "The Latin +Poems of Vincent Bourne" (see Vol. I.). There he quoted "The Ballad +Singers," and the "Epitaph on an Infant Sleeping"--remarking of +Bourne:--"He is 'so Latin,' and yet 'so English' all the while. In +diction worthy of the Augustan age, he presents us with no images that +are not familiar to his countrymen. His topics are even closelier drawn; +they are not so properly English, as _Londonish_. From the streets, and +from the alleys, of his beloved metropolis, he culled his objects, which +he has invested with an Hogarthian richness of colouring. No town +picture by that artist can go beyond his BALLAD-SINGERS; Gay's TRIVIA +alone, in verse, comes up to the life and humour of it." + + + * * * * * + + +Page 72. _Pindaric Ode to the Tread Mill_. + +First printed in _The New Times_, October 24, 1825. The version there +given differed considerably from that preserved by Lamb. It had no +divisions. At the end of what is now the first strophe qame these +lines:-- + + Now, by Saint Hilary, + (A Saint I love to swear by, + Though I should forfeit thereby + Five ill-spared shillings to your well-warm'd seat, + Worshipful Justices of Worship-street; + Or pay my crown + At great Sir Richard's still more awful mandate down:) + They raise my gorge-- + Those Ministers of Ann, or the First George, + (Which was it? + For history is silent, and my closet-- + Reading affords no clue; + I have the story, Pope, alone from you;) + In such a place, &c. + +Lamb offered the Ode to his friend Walter Wilson, for his work on Defoe, +to which Lamb contributed prose criticisms (see Vol. I.), but Wilson did +not use it. The letter making this offer, together with the poem, +differing very slightly in one or two places, is preserved in the +Bodleian. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 75. _Going or Gone_. + +First printed in Hone's _Table Book_, 1827, signed Elia, under the title +"Gone or Going." It was there longer, after stanza 6 coming the +following:-- + + Had he mended in right time, + He need not in night time, + (That black hour, and fright-time,) + Till sexton interr'd him, + Have groan'd in his coffin, + While demons stood scoffing-- + You'd ha' thought him a-coughing-- + My own father[28] heard him! + + Could gain so importune, + With occasion opportune, + That for a poor Fortune, + That should have been ours[29], + In soul he should venture + To pierce the dim center, + Where will-forgers enter Amid the dark Powers?-- + +And in the _Table Book_ the last stanza ended thus:-- + + And flaunting Miss Waller-- + _That_ soon must befal her, + Which makes folks seem taller[30],-- + Though proud, once, as Juno! + + +[Footnote 28: Who sat up with him.] + +[Footnote 29: I have this fact from Parental tradition only.] + +[Footnote 30: Death lengthens people to the eye.] + + +To annotate this curious tale of old friendships, dating back, as I +suppose, in some cases to Lamb's earliest memories, both of London and +Hertfordshire, is a task that is probably beyond completion. The day is +too distant. But a search in the Widford register and churchyard reveals +a little information and oral tradition a little more. + +Stanza 2. _Rich Kitty Wheatley_. The Rev. Joseph Whately, vicar of +Widford in the latter half of the eighteenth century, married Jane +Plumer, sister of William Plumer, of Blakesware, the employer of Mrs. +Field, Lamb's grandmother. Archbishop Whately was their son. Kitty +Wheatley may have been a relative. + +Stanza 2. _Polly Perkin_. On June 1, 1770, according to the Widford +register, Samuel Perkins married Mary Lanham. This may have been Polly. + +Stanza 3. _Carter ... Lily_. The late Mrs. Tween, a daughter of Randal +Norris, Lamb's friend, and a resident in Widford, told Canon Ainger that +Carter and Lily were servants at Blakesware. Lily had noticeably red +cheeks. Lamb would have seen them often when he stayed there as a boy. +In Cussan's _Hertfordshire_ is an entertaining account of William +Plumer's widow's adhesion to the old custom of taking the air. She rode +out always--from Gilston, only a few miles from Widford and +Blakesware--in the family chariot, with outriders and postilion (a +successor to Lily), and so vast was the equipage that "turn outs" had to +be cut in the hedges (visible to this day), like sidings on a +single-line railway, to permit others to pass. The Widford register +gives John Lilley, died October 18, 1812, aged 85, and Johanna Lilley, +died January 1, 1823, aged 90. It also gives Benjamin Carter's marriage, +in 1781, but not his death. + +Stanza 4. _Clemitson's widow_. Mrs. Tween told Canon Ainger that +Clemitson was the farmer of Blakesware farm. I do not find the name in +the Widford register. An Elizabeth Clemenson is there. + +Stanza 4. _Good Master Clapton_. There are several Claptons in Widford +churchyard. Thirty years from 1827, the date of the poem, takes us to +1797: the Clapton whose death occurred nearest that time is John Game +Clapton, May 5, 1802. + +Stanza 5. _Tom Dockwra_. I cannot find definite information either +concerning this Dockwra or the William Dockwray, of Ware, of whom Lamb +wrote in his "Table Talk" in _The Athenaeum_, 1834 (see Vol. I.). There +was, however, a Joseph Docwray, of Ware, a Quaker maltster; and the late +Mrs. Coe, _née_ Hunt, the daughter of the tenant of the water-mill at +Widford in Lamb's day, where Lamb often spent a night, told me that a +poor family named Docwray lived in the neighbourhood. + +Stanza 6. _Worral ... Dorrell_. I find neither Worral nor Dorrell in the +Widford archives, but Morrils and Morrells in plenty, and one Horrel. +Lamb alludes to old Dorrell again in the _Elia_ essay "New Year's Eve," +where he is accused of swindling the family out of money. Particulars of +his fraud have perished with him, but I have no doubt it is the same +William Dorrell who witnessed John Lamb's will in 1761. In the _Table +Book_ this stanza ended thus:-- + + With cuckoldy Worral, + And wicked old Dorrel, + 'Gainst whom I've a quarrel-- + His end might affright us. + +Stanzas 8 and 9. _Fanny Hutton ... Betsy Chambers ... Miss Wither ... +Miss Waller_. Fanny Hutton, Betsy Chambers, Miss Wither and Miss Waller +elude one altogether. Lamb's schoolmistress, Mrs. Reynolds, was a Miss +Chambers. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 78. NEW POEMS IN LAMB'S _POETICAL WORKS_, 1836. + +In 1836 Moxon issued a new edition of Lamb's poems, consisting of those +in the _Works_, 1818, and those in _Album Verses_--with a few +exceptions and several additions--under the embracive title _The +Poetical Works of Charles Lamb_. Whether Moxon himself made up this +volume, or whether Mary Lamb or Talfourd assisted, I do not know. The +dedication to Coleridge stood at the beginning, and that to Moxon half +way through. + + +Page 78. _In the Album of Edith S----_. + +First printed in _The Athenaeum_, March 9, 1833, under the title +"Christian Names of Women." Edith S---- was Edith May Southey, the +poet's daughter, who married the Rev. John Wood Warter. + + +Page 78. _To Dora W----_. + +Dora, _i.e._, Dorothy Wordsworth, the poet's daughter, who married +Edward Quillinan, and thus became stepmother of Rotha Q---- of the next +sonnet. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 79. _In the Album of Rotha Q----_. + +Rotha Quillinan, younger daughter of Edward Quillinan (1791-1851), +Wordsworth's friend and, afterwards, son-in-law. His first wife, a +daughter of Sir Samuel Egerton Brydges, was burned to death in 1822 +under the most distressing circumstances. Rotha Quillinan, who was +Wordsworth's god-daughter, was so called from the Rotha which flows +through Rydal, close to Quillinan's house. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 80. _To T. Stothard, Esq_. + +First printed in _The Athenaeum_, December 21, 1833. In a letter to +Rogers in December, 1833, Lamb alludes to his sonnet to the poet (see +page 100), adding that for fear it might not altogether please Stothard +he has "ventured at an antagonist copy of verses, in _The Athenaeum_, to +_him_, in which he is as every thing, and you [Rogers] as nothing." +Thomas Stothard (1755-1834) was at that time seventy-eight. He had long +been the friend of Rogers, having helped in the decoration of his house +in 1803 and illustrated the _Pleasures of Memory_ as far back as 1793. +Lamb's sonnet refers particularly to the edition of Rogers' _Poems_ that +is dated 1834, which Stothard and Turner embellished. Stothard +illustrated very many of the standard novels for Harrison's _Novelists' +Magazine_ towards the end of the eighteenth century, among these being +Richardson's, Fielding's, Smollett's and Sterne's. In Robert Paltock's +_Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins_, 1751, a flying people are +described, among whom the males were "Glums" and the females +"Gawries."--Titian lived to be ninety-nine. + + +Page 80. _To a Friend on His Marriage_. + +First printed in _The Athenaeum_, December 7, 1833. The friend was +Edward Moxon, whose marriage to Emma Isola, Lamb's adopted daughter, was +solemnised on July 30, 1833. Lamb mentions more than once the absence of +any dowry with Miss Isola. His own wedding present to them was the +portrait of Milton which his brother, John Lamb, had left to him. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 81. _The Self-Enchanted_. + +First printed in _The Athenaeum_, January 7, 1832. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 82. _To Louisa M---, whom I used to call "Monkey."_ + +First printed in Hone's _Year Book_ for December 30, 1831, under the +title "The Change." (See the verses "The Ape," on page 89, and note, the +forerunner of the present poem, addressed also to Louisa Martin.) + + +Page 82. _Cheap Gifts: a Sonnet_. + +First printed in _The Athenaeum_, February 15, 1834. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 83. _Free Thoughts on Several Eminent Composers_. Lamb was very +fond of these lines, which he sent to more than one of his friends. The +text varies in some of the copies, but I have not thought it necessary +to indicate the differences. Its inspiration was attributed by him both +to William Ayrton (1777-1858), the musical critic, and to Vincent +Novello (1781-1861), the organist, composer and close friend of Lamb. In +a letter to Sarah Hazlitt in 1830 Lamb copies the poem, +remarking--"Having read Hawkins and Burney recently, I was enabled to +talk [to Ayrton] of Names, and show more knowledge than he had suspected +I possessed; and in the end he begg'd me to shape my thoughts upon +paper, which I did after he was gone, and sent him." + +So Lamb wrote to Mrs. Hazlitt. But to Ayrton, when he sent the verses, +he said:--"[Novello] desiring me to give him my real opinion respecting +the distinct grades of excellence in all the eminent Composers of the +Italian, German and English schools, I have done it, rather to oblige +him than from any overweening opinion I have of my own judgment in that +science." + +Both these statements are manifestations of what Lamb called his +"matter-of-lie" disposition. To Mrs. Hazlitt he thought that Ayrton's +name would be more important; to Ayrton, Novello's. + +The verses, whatever their origin, were written by Lamb in Novello's +Album, with this postscript, signed by Mary Lamb, added:-- + + The reason why my brother's so severe, + Vincentio, is--my brother has no _ear_; + And Caradori, his mellifluous throat + Might stretch in vain to make him learn a note. + Of common tunes he knows not anything, + Nor "Rule Britannia" from "God save the King." + He rail at Handel! He the gamut quiz! + I'd lay my life he knows not what it is. + His spite at music is a pretty whim-- + He loves not it, because it loves not him. + + M. LAMB. + + + * * * * * + + +UNCOLLECTED PIECES + + +Page 85. _Dramatic Fragment_. + +_London Magazine_, January, 1822. An excerpt from Lamb's play, "Pride's +Cure" (_John Woodvil_). See note below. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 86. _Dick Strype_. + +Writing to John Rickman in January, 1802, Lamb says, "My editor [Dan +Stuart of the _Morning Post_] uniformly rejects all that I do, +considerable in length. I shall only do paragraphs with now and then a +slight poem, such as Dick Strype, if you read it, which was but a long +epigram." The verses, which appeared on January 6, 1802, may be compared +with the story of Ephraim Wagstaff, on page 432 of Vol. I., written +twenty-five years later. It has been pointed out that _Points of +Misery_, 1823, by Charles Molloy Westmacott (Bernard Blackmantle of the +_English Spy_), contains the poem with slight alterations. But +Westmacott reaped where he could, and his book is confessedly not wholly +original. Lamb seems to me to admit authorship by implication fairly +completely. Westmacott was only thirteen when it was first printed. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 88. _Two Epitaphs on a young Lady, etc_. + +_Morning Post_, February 7, 1804. Signed C.L. Lamb sends the poem both +to Wordsworth and Manning in 1803. He says to Manning:--"Did I send you +an epitaph I scribbled upon a poor girl who died at nineteen?--a good +girl, and a pretty girl, and a clever girl, but strangely neglected by +all her friends and kin.... Brief, and pretty, and tender, is it not? I +send you this, being the only piece of poetry I have _done_ since the +Muses all went with T.M. [Thomas Manning] to Paris." + +The young lady was Mary Druitt of Wimborne who died of consumption in +1801. The verses are not on her tombstone. A letter from Lamb to his +friend Rickman (see Canon Ainger's edition), shows that it was for +Rickman that the lines were written. Lamb did not know Mary Druitt. +Writing to Rickman in February, 1802, Lamb sends the second +epitaph:--"Your own prose, or nakedly the letter which you sent me, +which was in some sort an epitaph, would do better on her gravestone +than the cold lines of a stranger." + + + * * * * * + + +Page 89. _The Ape_. + +Printed in the _London Magazine_, October, 1820, where it was preceded +by these words:-- + +"To THE EDITOR + +"Mr. Editor,--The riddling lines which I send you, were written upon a +young lady, who, from her diverting sportiveness in childhood, was named +by her friends The Ape. When the verses were written, L.M. had outgrown +the title--but not the memory of it--being in her teens, and +consequently past child-tricks. They are an endeavour to express that +perplexity, which one feels at any alteration, even supposed for the +better, in a beloved object; with a little oblique grudging at Time, who +cannot bestow new graces without taking away some portion of the older +ones, which we can ill miss. + +"*****." + +L.M. was Louisa Martin, who is now and then referred to in Lamb's letter +as Monkey, and to whom he addressed the lines on page 82, which come as +a sequel to the present ones. In a letter to Wordsworth, many years +later, dated February 22, 1834, Lamb asks a favour for this lady:--"The +oldest and best friends I have left are in trouble. A branch of them +(and they of the best stock of God's creatures, I believe) is +establishing a school at Carlisle; Her name is Louisa Martin ... her +qualities ... are the most amiable, most upright. For thirty years she +has been tried by me, and on her behaviour I would stake my soul." + + + * * * * * + + +Page 90. _In Tabulam Eximii...._ + +These Latin verses were printed in _The Champion_, May 6 and 7, 1820, +signed Carlagnulus, accompanied by this notice: "We insert, with great +pleasure, the following beautiful Latin Verses on HAYDON'S fine Picture, +and shall be obliged to any of our correspondents for a spirited +translation for our next." The following week brought one +translation--Lamb's own--signed C.L. Both were reprinted in _The +Poetical Recreations of "The Champion"_ in 1822, and again in Tom +Taylor's _Life of Haydon_, 1853. + +Benjamin Robert Haydon (1786-1846) was for six years at work upon this +picture--"Christ's Entry into Jerusalem"--which was exhibited at the +Egyptian Hall in 1820. The story goes that Mrs. Siddons established the +picture's reputation in society. While the private-view company were +assembled in doubt the great actress entered and walked across the room. +"It is completely successful," she was heard to say to Sir George +Beaumont; and then, to Haydon, "The paleness of your Christ gives it a +supernatural look." A stream of 30,000 persons followed this verdict. +The picture is now in Philadelphia. + +Line 4. _Palma_. There were two Palmas, both painters of the Venetian +school. Giacomo Palma the Elder, who is referred to here, was born about +1480. Both painted many scenes in the life of Christ. + +Lines 7 and 8. _Flaccus' sentence_. + + Valeat res ludicra si me + Palma negata macrum, donata reducit opimum. + Horace, _Epist., II_., I, 180-181. + +(Farewell to performances, if the palm, denied, sends one home lean, +but, granted, flourishing.) + +Lamb has not quite represented the poet's meaning, which is a profession +of independence in regard to popular applause. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 91. _Sonnet to Miss Burney...._ + +First printed in the _Morning Chronicle_, July 13, 1820. The Burney +family began to be famous with Dr. Charles Burney (1726-1814), the +musician, the author of the _History of Music_, and the friend of Dr. +Johnson and Sir Joshua Reynolds. Among his children were the Rev. +Charles Burney (1757-1817), the classical scholar and owner of the +Burney Library, now in the British Museum; Rear-Admiral James Burney +(1750-1821), who sailed with Cook, wrote the _Chronological History of +the Discoveries in the South Sea or Pacific Ocean_, and became a friend +of Lamb; Frances Burney, afterwards Madame d'Arblay (1752-1840), the +novelist, author of _Evelina, Camilla_ and _Cecilia_; and Sarah Harriet +Burney (1770?-1844), a daughter of Dr. Burney's second wife, also a +novelist, and the author, among other stories, of _Geraldine +Fauconberg_. "Country Neighbours; or, The Secret," the tale that +inspired Lamb's sonnet, formed Vols. II. and III. of Sarah Burney's +_Tales of Fancy_. Blanch is the heroine. + +The good old man in Madame d'Arblay's _Camilla_ is Sir Hugh Tyrold, who +adopted the heroine. + + +Page 91. _To my Friend The Indicator_. + +Printed in _The Indicator_, September 27, 1820, signed ****, preceded by +these words by Leigh Hunt, the editor:-- + +Every pleasure we could experience in a friend's approbation, we have +felt in receiving the following verses. They are from a writer, who of +all other men, knows how to extricate a common thing from commonness, +and to give it an underlook of pleasant consciousness and wisdom. +...The receipt of these verses has set us upon thinking of the +good-natured countenance, which men of genius, in all ages, have for the +most part shewn to contemporary writers. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 92. _On seeing Mrs. K---- B----_. + +The late Mr. Dykes Campbell thought it very likely that these charming +verses were Lamb's. I think they may be, although it is odd that he +should not have reprinted anything so pretty. Mr. Thomas Hutchinson's +belief that they are Lamb's, added to that of their discoverer, leads me +to include them confidently here. Here and there it seems impossible +that the poem could come from any other hand: line 11 for example, and +the idea in lines 13 to 16, and the statement in lines 27 and 28. None +the less it must be borne in mind that one does but conjecture. The +lines are in _The Tickler Magazine_ for 1821. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 93. _To Emma, Learning Latin, and Desponding_. + +First printed in _Blackwood's Magazine_, June, 1829. + +Mary Lamb had other pupils in her time, among them Miss Kelly, the +actress, Mary Victoria Novello (afterwards Mrs. Cowden Clarke), and +William Hazlitt, the essayist's son. Emma was, of course, Emma Isola. +Sara Coleridge's translation of Martin Dobrizhoffer's _Historia de +Abiponibus_ under the title _Account of the Abipones_ was published in +1822, when she was only twenty. + +"To think [Lamb wrote to Barton, on February 17, 1823, of Sara +Coleridge] that she should have had to toil thro' five octavos of that +cursed (I forget I write to a Quaker) Abbey pony History, and then to +abridge them to 3, and all for £113. At her years, to be doing stupid +Jesuits' Latin into English, when she should be reading or writing +Romances." Sara Coleridge's romance-writing came later, in 1837, when +her fairy tale, _Phantasmion_, appeared. + +In its original form this sonnet in its fifth line ran thus:-- + + (In new tasks hardest still the first appears). + +Derwent Coleridge read the sonnet in 1853 in Mrs. Moxon's album, and +copying it out, sent it to his wife, saying that he wished Sissy (his +daughter Christabel) to get it by heart. He added this note: "Charles +Lamb having discovered that this Sonnet consisted but of thirteen lines, +Miss Lamb inserted the 5th, which interrupts the flow and repeats a +rhime." Derwent Coleridge goes on to suggest two alternative lines:-- + + And hope may surely chase desponding fears + +or + + Let hope encouraged chase desponding fears. + +Lamb, however, had already amended the fifth line (as in _Blackwood's +Magazine_) to-- + + To young beginnings natural are these fears. + + +Page 93. _Lines addressed to Lieut. R.W.H. Hardy, R.N._ + +First printed in _The Athenaeum_, January 10, 1846, contributed by an +anonymous correspondent (probably Thomas Westwood the Younger) who sent +also "The First Leaf of Spring" (page 105). _Travels in the Interior of +Mexico in_ 1825 ... 1828, by Robert William Hale Hardy, was published in +1829. Lamb made an exception in favour of Hardy's book. Writing to Dilke +for something to read from _The Athenaum_ office, in 1833, he +particularly desired that "no natural history or useful learning, such +as Pyramids, Catacombs, Giraffes, or Adventures in Southern Africa" +might be sent. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 94. _Lines for a Monument_.... + +First printed in _The Athenaeum_, November 5, 1831, and again in _The +Tatler_, Hunt's paper, December 31, 1831. In August, 1830, four sons and +two daughters of John and Ann Rigg, of York, were drowned in the Ouse. +Several literary persons were asked for inscriptions for the monument, +erected at York in 1831, and that by James Montgomery, of Sheffield, was +chosen. Lamb sent his verses to Vincent Novello, through whom he seems +to have been approached in the matter, on November 8, 1830, adding: +"Will these lines do? I despair of better. Poor Mary is in a deplorable +state here at Enfield." + + +Page 94. _To C. Aders, Esq_. + +First printed in Hone's _Year Book_ (March 19), 1831 (see note to "Angel +Help," above). + + + * * * * * + + +Page 95. _Hercules Pacificatus_. + +First printed in the _Englishman's Magazine_, August, 1831. Suidas is +supposed to have lived in the tenth or eleventh century, and to have +compiled a _Lexicon_--a blend of biographical dictionary. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 98. _The Parting Speech of the Celestial Messenger to the Poet_. + +First printed in _The Athenaeum_, February 25, 1832. + +Palingenius was an Italian poet of the sixteenth century, whose real +name was Pietro Angelo Mazolli, but who wrote in Latin under the name +of Marcellus Palingenius Stollatus. His _Zodiacus Vitae_, a +philosophical poem, was published in 1536. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 99. _Existence, considered in itself, no Blessing_. First printed +in _The Athenaeum_, July 7, 1832. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 100. _To Samuel Rogers, Esq., on the New Edition of his "Pleasures +of Memory."_ + +First printed in _The Times_, December 13, 1833. Signed C. Lamb. This is +the sonnet mentioned in the letter which is quoted on page 344, in the +note to the sonnet to Stothard. The new edition of _Pleasures of Memory_ +was published by Moxon in 1833, dated 1834. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 101. _To Clara N---- _. + +First printed in _The Athenaeum_, July 26, 1834. Clara N---- was, of +course, Clara Anastasia Novello, daughter of Lamb's friend, Vincent +Novello (1781-1861), the organist, and herself a fine soprano singer +(see also the poem "The Sisters," on the same page). Miss Novello, who +was born on June 10, 1818, became the Countess Gigliucci, and survived +until March 12, 1908. _Clara Novella's Reminiscences_, compiled by her +daughter, the Contessa Valeria Gigliucci, with a memoir by Arthur Duke +Coleridge, were published in 1910. In them is this charming passage:-- + + How I loved dear Charles Lamb! I once hid--to avoid the ignominy + of going to bed--in the upright (cabinet) pianoforte, which in its + lowest part had a sort of tiny cupboard. In this I fell asleep, awakening + only when the party was supping. My appearance from beneath the + pianoforte was hailed with surprise by all, and with anger from my + mother; but Charles Lamb not only took me under his protection, but + obtained that henceforth I should never again be sent to bed _when he + came_, but--glory and delight!--always sit up to supper. Later, in + Frith Street days, my Father made me sing to him one day; but [Lamb] + stopped me, saying, "Clara, don't make that d--d noise!" for which, + I think, I loved him as much as for all the rest. Some verses he sent + me were addressed to "St. Clara." + +In spite of Lamb's declaration about himself and want of musical sense, +both Crabb Robinson and Barron Field tell us that he was capable of +humming tunes. + + +Page 101. _The Sisters_. + +These verses, printed in Mr. W.C. Hazlitt's _Lamb and Hazlitt_, 1900, +were addressed:-- + + "_For_ SAINT CECILIA, + At Sign'r Vincenzo Novello's + Music Repository, + No. 67 Frith Street. + Soho." + +They were signed C. Lamb. One might imagine Emma, the nut-brown maid, to +be Emma Isola, as that was a phrase Lamb was fond of applying to +her--assuming the title "The Sisters" to be a pleasantry; but the late +Miss Mary Sabilia Novello assured me that the sisters were herself, +Emma Aloysia Novello and Clara Anastasia Novello (see above). + + + * * * * * + + +Page 102. _Love will Come_. + +"Love will Come" was included by Lamb in a letter to Miss Fryer, a +school-fellow of Emma Isola. Lamb writes:--"By desire of Emma I have +attempted new words to the old nonsense of Tartar Drum; but _with_ the +nonsense the sound and spirit of the tune are unaccountably gone, and +_we_ have agreed to discard the new version altogether. As _you_ may be +more fastidious in singing mere silliness, and a string of well-sounding +images without sense or coherence--Drums of Tartars, who use _none_, and +Tulip trees ten foot high, not to mention Spirits in Sunbeams, +&c.,--than _we_ are, so you are at liberty to sacrifice an enspiriting +movement to a little sense, tho' I like LITTLE SENSE less than his +vagarying younger sister NO SENSE--so I send them.--The 4th line of 1st +stanza is from an old Ballad." + +The old ballad is, I imagine, "Waly, Waly," of which Lamb was very fond. + + +Page 102. _To Margaret W----_. + +This poem, believed to be the last that Lamb wrote, was printed in _The +Athenaeum_ for March 14, 1835. I have not been able to ascertain who +Margaret W---- was. + + + * * * * * + + +ALBUM VERSES AND ACROSTICS + + +Page 104. _What is an Album?_ + +These lines were probably written for Emma Isola's Album, which must not +be confounded with her Extract Book. The Album was the volume for which +Lamb, in his letters, occasionally solicited contributions. It was sold +some years ago to Mr. Quaritch, and is now, I believe, in a private +collection, although in a mutilated state, several of the poems having +been cut out. These particular lines of Lamb's were probably written by +him also in other albums, for John Mathew Gutch, his old school-fellow, +discovered them on the fly-leaf of a copy of _John Woodvil_, and sent +them to _Notes and Queries_, Oct. 11, 1856. In that version the +twenty-first line ran:-- + + There you have, Madelina, an album complete. + +Lamb quoted from the lines in his review of his _Album Verses_, under +the title "The Latin Poems of Vincent Bourne," in the _Englishman's +Magazine_ (see Vol. I.). Two versions of the lines are copied by Lamb +into one of his Commonplace Books. + +Line 6. _Sweet L.E.L.'s_. L.E.L. was, of course, Letitia Elizabeth +Landon, afterwards Mrs. Maclean (1802-1838), famous as an Album-and +Annual-poetess. Lamb, if an entry in P.G. Patmore's diary is correct, +did not admire her, or indeed any female author. He said, "If she +belonged to me I would lock her up and feed her on bread and water till +she left off writing poetry." + + + * * * * * + + +Page 105. _The First Leaf of Spring_. + +Printed in _The Athenaeum_, January 10, 1846, contributed probably by +Thomas Westwood. In a note prefacing the three poems which he was +sending, this correspondent stated that "The First Leaf of Spring" had +been printed before, but very obscurely. I have not discovered where. + + +Page 105. _To Mrs. F---- on Her Return from Gibraltar_. + +This would probably be Mrs. Jane Field, _née_ Carncroft, the wife of +Lamb's friend, Barron Field, who inspired the _Elia_ essay on "Distant +Correspondents." Field held the Chief Justiceship of Gibraltar for some +years. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 106. _To M. L---- F----_. + +M.L. Field, the second daughter of Henry Field, and Barron Field's +sister. This lady, who lived to a great age, gave Canon Ainger the copy +of the prologue to "Richard II." written by Lamb for an amateur +performance at her home. + + +Page 106. _To Esther Field_. + +Another of Barron Field's sisters. + +The text of these three poems has been corrected by the Thomas +Hutchinson's Oxford edition. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 107. _To Mrs. Williams_. + +See note above. In writing to Mrs. Williams on April 2, 1830, to tell of +Emma Isola's safe journey after her illness, Lamb says:--"How I employed +myself between Epping and Enfield the poor verses in the front of my +paper may inform you, which you may please to christen an Acrostic in a +Cross Road." + +Mrs. Williams replied with the following acrostic upon Lamb's name, +which Mr. Cecil Turner, a descendant, has sent me and which I give +according to his copy:-- + + TO CHARLES LAMB + + _Answer to Acrostics on the Names of Two Friends._ + + Charmed with the lines thy hand has sent, + Honour I feel thy compliment, + Amongst thy products that have won the ear + Ranged in thy verse two friends most dear. + Lay not thy winning pen away, + Each line thou writest we bid thee stay. + Still ask to charm us with another lay. + + Long-linked, long-lived by public fame, + A friend to misery whate'er its claim, + Marvel I must if e'er we find + Bestowed by Heaven a kindlier mind. + +The two friends were Cecilia Catherine Lawton (see page 64) and Edward +Hogg (see page 109). In reply Lamb says (Good Friday, 1830):--"I do +assure you that your verses gratified me very much, and my sister is +quite _proud_ of them. For the first time in my life I congratulated +myself upon the shortness and meanness of my name. Had it been +Schwartzenberg or Esterhazy it would have put you to some puzzle." + +Later in the same letter, referring to the present acrostic, he said +speaking of Harriet Isola, Emma's sister, she "blames my last verses as +being more written on _Mr._ Williams than on yourself; but how should I +have parted whom a Superior Power has brought together?" + + +Page 107. _To the Book_. + +Written for the Album of Sophia Elizabeth Frend, afterwards the wife of +Augustus De Morgan, the mathematician (1806-1871), and mother of the +novelist Mr. William De Morgan. Her father was William Frend +(1757-1841), the reformer and a friend of Crabb Robinson and George +Dyer. The lines were printed in Mrs. De Morgan's _Three Score Years and +Ten_, as are also those that follow--"To S.F." + + + * * * * * + + +Page 108. _To R Q._ + +From the Album of Rotha Quillinan. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 109. _To S.L.... To M.L._ + +I have not been able to identify the Lockes. The J.F. of the last line +might be Jane Field. Copies of these poems are preserved at South +Kensington. + + +Page 109. _An Acrostic against Acrostics_. + +Edward Hogg was a friend of Mr. Williams (see above). These verses were +first printed in _The Lambs_ by Mr. W.C. Hazlitt. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 110. _On being Asked to Write in Miss Westwood's Album._ + +Frances Westwood was the daughter of the Westwoods, with whom the Lambs +were domiciled at Enfield Chase in 1829-1832. See letters to Gillman and +Wordsworth (November 30, 1829, and January 22, 1830) for description of +the Westwoods. The only son, Thomas Westwood, who died in 1888, and was +an authority on the literature of angling, contributed to _Notes and +Queries_ some very interesting reminiscences of the Lambs in those days. +This poem and that which follows it were sent to _Notes and Queries_ by +Thomas Westwood (June 4, 1870). + +It is concerning these lines that Lamb writes to Barton, in 1827:-- +"Adieu to Albums--for a great while--I said when I came here, and had +not been fixed two days, but my Landlord's daughter (not at the +Pot-house) requested me to write in her female friend's, and in her own. +If I go to ---- thou art there also, O all pervading Album! All over the +Leeward Islands, in Newfoundland, and the Back Settlements, I understand +there is no other reading. They haunt me. I die of Albo-phobia!" + + +Page 111. _Un Solitaire._ + +E.I., who made the drawing in question, would be Emma Isola. The verses +were copied by Lamb into his Album, which is now in the possession of +Mrs. Alfred Morrison. + + +Page 111. _To S[arah] T[homas]_. + +From Lamb's Album. I have not been able to trace this lady. + + +Page 111. _To Mrs. Sarah Robinson._ + +From the copy preserved among Henry Crabb Robinson's papers at Dr. +Williams' Library. Sarah Robinson was the niece of H.C.R., who was the +pilgrim in Rome. The stranger to thy land was Emma Isola, Fornham, in +Suffolk, where she was living, being near to Bury St. Edmunds, the home +of the Robinsons. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 112. _To Sarah._ + +From the Album of Sarah Apsey. Lamb seems to have known very many +Sarahs. + + +Page 112. _To Joseph Vale Asbury._ + +From Lamb's Album. Jacob (not Joseph, as Lamb supposed) Vale Asbury was +the Lambs' doctor at Enfield. There are extant two amusing letters from +Lamb to Asbury. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 113. _To D.A._ + +From Lamb's Album. Dorothy Asbury, the wife of the doctor. + + +Page 113. _To Louisa Morgan._ + +From Lamb's Album. Louisa Morgan was probably the daughter of +Coleridge's friend, John Morgan, of Calne, in Wiltshire, with whom the +Lambs stayed in 1817--the same Morgan--"Morgan demigorgon"--who ate +walnuts better than any man Lamb knew, and munched cos-lettuce like a +rabbit (see letters to Coleridge in August, 1814). Southey and Lamb each +allowed John Morgan £10 a year in his old age and adversity, beginning +with 1819. + + +Page 113. _To Sarah James of Beguildy._ + +Sarah James was Mary Lamb's nurse, and the sister of the Mrs. Parsons +with whom she lived during the last years of her life. Miss James was +the daughter of the rector of Beguildy, in Shropshire. The verses are +reprinted from _My Lifetime_ by the late John Hollingshead, who was the +great-nephew of Miss James and Mrs. Parsons. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 114. _To Emma Button._ + +Included in a letter from Lamb to John Aitken, editor of _The Cabinet_, +July 5, 1825. + + +Page 114. _Written upon the cover of a blotting book. The Mirror,_ May +7, 1836. + +Identified by Mr. Walter Jerrold. First collected by Mr. Thomas +Hutchinson. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 115. POLITICAL AND OTHER EPIGRAMS. + +Lamb was not a politician, but he had strong--almost +passionate--prejudices against certain statesmen and higher persons, +which impelled him now and then to sarcastic verse. The earliest +examples in this vein that can be identified are two quatrains from the +_Morning Post_ in January, 1802, printed on page 115, and the epigram +on Sir James Mackintosh in _The Albion_, printed on the same page, to +which Lamb refers in the _Elia_ essay on "Newspapers Thirty-five Years +Ago" (see Vol. II.). Until a file of _The Albion_ turns up we shall +never know how active Lamb's pen was at that time. The next belong to +the year 1812--in _The Examiner_ (see page 116)--and we then leap +another seven years or so until 1819-1820, Lamb's busiest period as a +caustic critic of affairs--in _The Examiner_, possibly the _Morning +Chronicle_, and principally in _The Champion_. After 1820, however, he +returned to this vein very seldom, and then with less bitterness and +depth of feeling. "The Royal Wonders," in _The Times_ for August 10, +1830 (see page 122), and "Lines Suggested by a Sight of Waltham Cross," +in the _Englishman's Magazine_, September, 1831 (written, however, some +years earlier), on page 121, being his latest efforts that we know of. +Of course there must be many other similar productions to which we have +no clue--the old _Morning Post_ days doubtless saw many an epigram that +cannot now be definitely claimed for Lamb--but those that are preserved +here sufficiently show how feelingly Lamb could hate and how trenchantly +he could chastise. Others that seem to me likely to be Lamb's I could +have included; but it is well to dispense as much as possible with the +problematic. For example, I suspect Lamb of the authorship of several of +the epigrams quoted in _The Examiner_ in 1819 and 1820 from the _Morning +Chronicle_. He used to send verses to the _Morning Chronicle_ at that +time, and Leigh Hunt, the editor of _The Examiner_, would naturally be +pleased to give anything of his friend's an additional publicity. + +The majority of the epigrams printed in this section might have remained +unidentified were it not that in 1822 John Thelwall, who owned and +edited _The Champion_ in 1818-1820, issued a little volume entitled _The +Poetical Recreations of "The Champion,"_ wherein Lamb's contributions +were signed R. et R. This signature being appended to certain poems of +which we know Lamb to have been the author--as "The Three Graves," which +he sent also to the _London Magazine_ (in 1825), and which he was in the +habit of reading or reciting to his friends--enables us to ascertain the +authorship of the others. A note placed by Thelwall above the index of +the book states, "it is much to be regretted that, by mere oversight, or +rather mistake, several of the printed epigrams of R. et R. have been +omitted;" but a search through the files of _The Champion_ has failed to +bring to light any others with Lamb's adopted signature. + +The origin of the signature R. et R. is unknown. Mr. Percy Fitzgerald +suggests that it might stand for Romulus and Remus, but offers no +supporting theory. He might have added that so unfamiliar a countenance +is in these epigrams shown by their author, that the suggestion of a +wolf rather than a Lamb might have been intended. Lamb's principal +political epigrams were drawn from him by his intense contempt for the +character of George IV., then Prince of Wales. His treatment of Caroline +of Brunswick, as we see, moved Lamb to utterances of almost sulphurous +indignation not only for the prince himself, but for all who were on his +side, particularly Canning. Lamb, we must suppose, was wholly on the +side of the queen, thus differing from Coleridge, who when asked how his +sympathies were placed would admit only to being anti-Prince. + +John Thelwall (1764-1834)--Citizen Thelwall--was one of the most popular +and uncompromising of the Radicals of the seventeen-nineties. He +belonged to the Society of the Friends of the People and other Jacobin +confederacies. In May, 1794, he was even sent to the Tower (with Home +Tooke and Thomas Hardy) for sedition; moved to Newgate in October; and +tried and acquitted in December. Lamb first met him, I fancy, in 1797, +when Thelwall was intimate with Coleridge. After 1798 Thelwall's +political activities were changed for those of a lecturer on more +pacific subjects, and later he opened an institution in London where he +taught elocution and corrected the effects of malformation of the organs +of speech. He bought _The Champion_ in 1818, and held it for two or +three years, but it did not succeed. Thelwall died in 1834. Among his +friends were Coleridge, Haydon, Hazlitt, Southey, Crabb Robinson and +Lamb, all of whom, although they laughed at his excesses and excitements +as a reformer, saw in him an invincible honesty and sincerity. + +Before leaving this subject I should like to quote the following +lines from _The Champion_ of November 4 and 5, 1820:-- + + A LADY'S SAPPHIC + + Now the calm evening hastily approaches, + Not a sound stirring thro' the gentle woodlands, + Save that soft Zephyr with his downy pinions + Scatters fresh fragrance. + + Now the pale sun-beams in the west declining + Gild the dew rising as the twilight deepens, + Beauty and splendour decorate the landscape; + Night is approaching. + + By the cool stream's side pensively and sadly + Sit I, while birds sing on the branches sweetly, + And my sad thoughts all with their carols soothing, + Lull to oblivion. + M.L. + +A correspondence on English sapphics was carried on in _The Champion_ +for some weeks at this time, various efforts being printed. On November +4 appeared the "Lady's Sapphic," just quoted, signed M.S. On the +following day--for _The Champion_, like _The Examiner_, had a Saturday +and Sunday edition--this signature was changed to M.L., and was thus +given when the verses were reprinted in _The Poetical Recreations_ of +_"The Champion"_ in 1822. There is no evidence that Mary Lamb wrote it; +but she played with verse, and presumably read _The Champion_, since her +brother was writing for it, and the poem might easily be hers. +Personally I like to think it is, and that Lamb, on seeing the mistake +in the initials in the Saturday edition, hurried down to the office to +have it put right in that of Sunday. The same number of _The Champion_ +(November 4 and 5, 1820) contains another poem in the same measure +signed C., which not improbably was Lamb's contribution to the pastime. +It runs as follows:-- + + DANAE EXPOSED WITH HER INFANT + + _An English Sapphic_ + + Dim were the stars, and clouded was the azure, Silence in darkness + brooded on the ocean, Save when the wave upon the pebbled sea-beach + Faintly resounded. + + Then, O forsaken daughter of Acrisius! Seiz'd in the hour of woe and + tribulation, Thou, with the guiltless victim of thy love, didst Rock on + the surges. + + Sad o'er the silent bosom of the billow, Borne on the breeze and + modulated sweetly, Plaintive as music, rose the mother's tones of + Comfortless anguish. + + "Sad is thy birth, and stormy is thy cradle, Offspring of sorrow! + nursling of the ocean! Waves rise around to pillow thee, and night winds + Lull thee to slumber!" + + +Page 115. _To Sir James Mackintosh._ + +In a letter to Manning in August, 1801, Lamb quotes this epigram as +having been printed in _The Albion_ and caused that paper's death the +previous week. In his _Elia_ essay on "Newspapers," written thirty years +later, he stated that the epigram was written at the time of +Mackintosh's departure for India to reap the fruits of his apostasy; but +here Lamb's memory deceived him, for Mackintosh was not appointed +Recorder of Bombay until 1803 and did not sail until 1804, whereas there +is reason to believe the date of Lamb's letter to Manning of August, +1801, to be accurate. The epigram must then have referred to a rumour of +some earlier appointment, for Mackintosh had been hoping for something +for several years. + +Sir James Mackintosh (1765-1832), the lawyer and philosopher, had in +1791 issued his _Vindicia Galliae_, a reply to Burke's _Reflections on +the French Revolution_. Later, however, he became one of Burke's friends +and an opponent of the Revolution, and in 1798 he issued his +Introductory Discourse to his lectures on "The Law of Nature and +Nations," in which the doctrines of his _Vindiciae Gallicae_ were +repudiated. Hence his "apostasy." Mackintosh applied unsuccessfully for +a judgeship in Trinidad, and for the post of Advocate-General in Bengal, +and Lord Wellesley had invited him to become the head of a college in +Calcutta. Rumour may have credited him with any of these posts and thus +have suggested Lamb's epigram. In 1803 he was appointed Recorder of +Bombay. Lamb's dislike of Mackintosh may have been due in some measure +to Coleridge, between whom and Mackintosh a mild feud subsisted. It had +been Mackintosh, however, brother-in-law of Daniel Stuart of the +_Morning Post_, who introduced Coleridge to that paper. (See notes to +Vol. II., where further particulars of _The Albion_, edited by Lamb's +friend, John Fenwick, will be found.) + +Lamb may or may not have invented the sarcasm in this epigram; but it +was not new. In Mrs. Montagu's letters, some years before, we find +something of the kind concerning Charles James Fox: "His rapid journeys +to England, on the news of the king's illness, have brought on him a +violent complaint in the bowels, which will, it is imagined, prove +mortal. However, if it should, it will vindicate his character from the +general report that he has no bowels, as has been most strenuously +asserted by his creditors." + + +Page 115. _Twelfth Night Characters_.... + +_Morning Post_, January 8, 1802. + +These epigrams were identified by the late Mr. Dykes Campbell from a +letter of Lamb's to John Rickman, dated Jan. 14, 1802, printed in +Ainger's edition. + +A---- is, of course, Henry Addington (1757-1844), afterwards Viscount +Sidmouth. After being Speaker for eleven years, he became suddenly Prime +Minister in 1801, at the wish of George III., who was rendered uneasy by +Pitt's project for Catholic relief. + +C---- and F---- were George Canning (1770-1827) and John Hookham Frere +(1769-1846) of _The Anti-Jacobin_, against whom Lamb had a grudge on +account of the _Anti-Jacobin's_ treatment of himself and Lloyd (see note +to _Blank Verse_, page 320). Lamb returned to the attack on Canning +again and again, as the epigrams that follow will show. + +The epigram on Count Rumford was not included. We know that it was sent, +from the Rickman letter. The same missive tells us that that on Dr. +Solomon was also written in 1802, but it was not printed till _The +Champion_ took it on July 15 and 16, 1820. Solomon was alive in 1802 and +was therefore a present Empiric. He was a notorious quack doctor, author +of the _Guide to Health_ and the purveyor of a nostrum called Balm of +Gilead. One of Southey's letters (October 14, 1801) contains a +diverting account of this Empiric. I copy one of Solomon's +advertisements from a provincial paper:-- + + DR. SOLOMON'S + CORDIAL BALM OF GILEAD + + To the young it will afford lasting health, strength and spirits, in + place of lassitude and debility; and to the aged and infirm it will + assuredly furnish great relief and comfort by gently and safely + invigorating the system; it will not give immortality; but if it be + in the power of medicine to gild the autumn of declining years, and + calmly and serenely protract the close of life beyond its narrow + span, this restorative is capable of effecting that grand + desideratum. + +The price was 10s. 6d. a bottle. + +Lamb's epigrams were only a few among many printed in the _Morning Post_ +for January 7 and 8, 1802. Whether he wrote also the following I do not +know, but these are not inconceivably from his hand:-- + + LORD NELSON + + Off with BRIAREUS, and his HUNDRED HANDS, + OUR NELSON, with _one arm_, unconquer'd stands! + + + MR. P[IT]T + + By crooked arts, and actions sinister, + I came at first to be a Minister; + And now I am no longer Minister, + I still retain my actions sinister. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 116. _Two Epigrams_. _The Examiner_, March 22, 1812. + +These epigrams have no signature, but the second of them was reprinted +in _The Poetical Recreations of "The Champion"_ (1822) with Lamb's +signature, R. et R., appended, and a note saying that it was written in +the last reign, together with an announcement that it had not appeared +in _The Champion_, but was inserted in that collection at the author's +request. By Princeps and the heir-apparent is meant, of course, the +Prince of Wales, afterwards George IV., who had just entered upon office +as Regent. The epigrams refer to his transfer of confidence, if so it +may be called, from the Whig party to the Marquis Wellesley, Perceval +and the Tory party. The circumstance that the Prince of Wales was also +Duke of Cornwall is referred to in the first epigram. The second of the +epigrams is copied into one of Lamb's Commonplace Books with the title +"On the Prince breaking with his Party." + + +Page 116. _The Triumph of the Whale_. + +_The Examiner_, March 15, 1812. Reprinted in _The Poetical Recreations +of "The Champion,"_ signed R. et R., with a note stating that it had not +appeared in _The Champion_, but was collected with the other pieces by +the author's request. + +The subject of the verses was, of course, the first gentleman in Europe. +_The Examiner_ was never over-nice in its treatment of the prince, and +it was in the same year, 1812, that Leigh Hunt, the editor, and his +brother, the printer, of the paper were prosecuted for the article +styling him a "libertine" and the "companion of gamblers and demireps" +(which appeared the week following Lamb's poem), and were condemned to +imprisonment for it. Lamb's lines came very little short of expressing +equally objectionable criticisms; but verse is often privileged. +Thelwall--and Lamb--showed some courage in reprinting the lines in 1822, +when the prince had become king. Talfourd relates that Lamb was in the +habit of checking harsh comments on the prince by others with the +smiling remark, "_I_ love my Regent." + +In Galignani's 1828 edition of Byron this piece was attributed to his +lordship. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 118. _St. Crispin to Mr. Gifford._ + +_The Examiner_, October 3 and 4, 1819. Reprinted in _The Poetical +Recreations of "The Champion,"_ 1822. + +William Gifford (1756-1826), editor of the _Quarterly Review_, had been +apprenticed to a cobbler. Lamb had an old score against him on account +of his editorial treatment of Lamb's review of Wordsworth's _Excursion_, +in 1814, and other matters (see note to "Letter to Southey," Vol. I.). +Writing to the Olliers, on the publication of his _Works_, June 18, +1818, Lamb says, in reference to this sonnet: "I meditate an attack upon +that Cobler Gifford, which shall appear immediately after any favourable +mention which S. [Southey] may make in the Quarterly. It can't in decent +_gratitude_ appear _before_." When the sonnet was printed in the +_Examiner_ it purported to have reference to the _Quarterly's_ treatment +of Shelley's _Revolt of Islam_, which treatment Leigh Hunt was then +exposing in a series of articles. + + +Page 118. _The Godlike._ + +_The Champion_, March 18 and 19, 1820. Reprinted in _The Poetical +Recreations of "The Champion,"_ 1822. + +Another contribution to the character of George IV., who had just +succeeded to the throne, and was at that moment engaged upon the task of +divorcing his wife, Caroline of Brunswick. The eighth line must be read +probably with a medical eye. The concluding three lines refer to George +III.'s insanity. As a political satirist Lamb disdained half measures. + + +Page 119. _The Three Graves._ + +_The Champion_, May 13 and 14, 1820. Signed Dante. Reprinted in _The +Poetical Recreations of "The Champion,"_ 1822, signed Dante and R. et R. +Reprinted in the _London Magazine_, May, 1825, unsigned, with the names +in the last line printed only with initials and dashes, and the +sub-title, "Written during the time, now happily almost forgotten, of +the spy system." + +Lamb probably found a certain mischievous pleasure in giving these lines +the title of one of Coleridge's early poems. + +The spy system was a protective movement undertaken by Lord Sidmouth +(1757-1844) as Home Secretary in 1817--after the Luddite riots, the +general disaffection in the country, Thistlewood's Spa Fields uprising +and the break-down of the prosecution. Curious reading on the subject is +to be found in the memoirs of Richmond the Spy, and Peter Mackenzie's +remarks on that book and its author, in _Tait's Magazine_. The spy +system culminated with the failure of the Cato Street Conspiracy in +1820, which cost Thistlewood his life. That plot to murder ministers was +revealed by George Edwards, one of the spies named by Lamb in the last +line of this poem. Castles and Oliver were other government spies +mentioned by Richmond. + +Line 2. _Bedloe, Oates_ ... William Bedloe (1650-1680) and Titus Oates +(1649-1705) were associated as lying informers of the proceedings of the +imaginary Popish Plot against Charles II. + + +Page 119. _Sonnet to Mathew Wood, Esq_. + +_The Champion_, May 13 and 14, 1820. Reprinted in _The Poetical +Recreations of "The Champion,"_ 1822. + +Matthew Wood, afterwards Sir Matthew (1768-1843), was twice Lord Mayor +of London, 1815-1817, and M.P. for the city. He was one of the principal +friends and advisers of Caroline of Brunswick, George IV.'s repudiated +wife. Hence his particular merit in Lamb's eyes. Later he administered +the affairs of the Duke of Kent, whose trustee he was, and his baronetcy +was the first bestowed by Queen Victoria. The sonnet contains another of +Lamb's attacks on Canning. This statesman's mother, after the death of +George Canning, her first husband, in 1771, took to the stage, where she +remained for thirty years. Canning was at school at Eton. The course on +which Wood was adjured to hold was the defence of Queen Caroline; but +Canning's opposition to her cause was not so absolute as Lamb seemed to +think. The ministry, of which Canning was a member, had prepared a bill +by which the queen was to receive £50,000 annually so long as she +remained abroad. The king insisted on divorce or nothing, and it was his +own repugnance to this measure that caused Canning to tender his +resignation. The king refused it, and Canning went abroad and did not +return until it was abandoned. + +Line 11. _Pickpocket Peer_. This would be Henry Dundas, Viscount +Melville (1742-1811), Pitt's lieutenant, who was impeached for +embezzling money as First Lord of the Admiralty. He was acquitted, but +that was a circumstance that would hardly concern Lamb when in this +mood. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 120. _On a Projected Journey_. + +_The Champion_, July 15 and 16, 1820. Reprinted in _The Poetical +Recreations of "The Champion,"_ 1822. George IV.'s visit to Hanover did +not, however, occur till October, 1821. This is entitled in Ayrton's MS. +book (see below) "Upon the King's embarcation at Ramsgate for Hanover, +1821." + + +Page 120. _Song for the C----n_. + +_The Champion_, July 15 and 16, 1820. Reprinted in _The Poetical +Recreations of "The Champion,"_ 1822. + +A song for the Coronation, which was fixed for 1821. Queen Caroline +returned to England in June, 1820, staying with Alderman Wood (see page +361) in order to be on the spot against that event. Meanwhile the +divorce proceedings began, but were eventually withdrawn. Caroline made +a forcible effort to be present at the Coronation, on July 29, 1821, but +was repulsed at the Abbey door. She was taken ill the next day and died +on August 7. "Roy's Wife of Aldivalloch" is the Scotch song by Anne +Grant. + + +Page 120. _The Unbeloved_. + +_The Champion_, September 23 and 24, 1820. Reprinted in _The Poetical +Recreations of "The Champion,"_ 1822. In _The Champion_ the last line +was preceded by + + Place-and-heiress-hunting elf, + +the reference to heiress-hunting touching upon Canning's marriage to +Miss Joan Scott, a sister of the Duchess of Portland, who brought him +£100,000. + +Line 4. _C----gh_. Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh and second +Marquis of Londonderry (1769-1822), Foreign Secretary from 1812 until +his death. He committed suicide in a state of unsound mind. + +Line 6. _The Doctor_. This was the nickname commonly given to Henry +Addington, Viscount Sidmouth. + +Line 8. _Their chatty, childish Chancellor_. John Scott, afterwards Earl +of Eldon (1751-1838), the Lord Chancellor. + +Line 9. _In Liverpool some virtues strike_. Robert Banks Jenkinson, Earl +of Liverpool (1770-1828), Prime Minister at the time, and therefore +principal scapegoat for the Divorce Bill. + +Line 10. _And little Van's beneath dislike_. Nicholas Vansittart, +afterwards Baron Bexley (1766-1851), Chancellor of the Exchequer. + +Line 12. _H----t_. Thomas Taylour, first Marquis of Headfort +(1757-1829), the principal figure in a crim. con. case in 1804 when he +was sued by a clergyman named Massey and had to pay £10,000 damages. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 121. _On the Arrival in England of Lord Byron's Remains_. + +From a MS. book of William Ayrton's. In _The New Times_, October 24, +1825, the verses followed the "Ode to the Treadmill." The epigram, which +was unsigned, then ran thus:-- + + THE POETICAL CASK + + With change of climate manners alter not: + Transport a drunkard--he'll return a sot. + So lordly Juan, d----d to endless fame, + Went out a _pickle_--and comes back the same. + +Lord Byron's body had been brought home from Greece, for burial at +Hucknall Torkard, in 1824, and the cause of the epigram was a paragraph +in _The New Times_ of October 19, 1825, stating that the tub in which +Byron's remains came home was exhibited by the captain of the _Rodney_ +for 2s. 6d. a head; afterwards sold to a cooper in Whitechapel; resold +to a museum; and finally sold again to a cooper in Middle New Street, +who was at that time using it as an advertisement. + +The third line recalls Pope's line-- + + See Cromwell damn'd to everlasting fame. + +_Essay on Man_, IV., 284. + + +Page 121. _Lines Suggested by a Sight of Waltham Cross._ + +First printed in the _Englishman's Magazine_, September, 1831. Lamb sent +the epigram to Barton in a letter in November, 1827. The body of +Caroline of Brunswick, the rejected wife of George IV., was conveyed +through London only by force--involving a fatal affray between the +people and the Life Guards at Hyde Park corner--on its way to burial at +Brunswick. + + +Page 122. _For the "Table Book."_ + +This epigram accompanies a note to William Hone. It was marked "For the +_Table Book_," but does not seem to have been printed there. + + +Page 122. _The Royal Wonders._ + +_The Times_, August 10, 1830. Signed Charles Lamb. The epigram refers to +the Paris insurrection of July 26, 1830, which cost Charles X. his +throne; and, at home, to William IV.'s extreme fraternal friendliness to +his subjects. + + +Page 122. _Brevis Esse Laboro._ "One Dip." + + + * * * * * + + +Page 123. _Suum Cuique._ + +These epigrams were written for the sons of James Augustus Hessey, the +publisher, two Merchant Taylor boys. In _The Taylorian_ for March, 1884, +the magazine of the Merchant Taylors' School, the late Archdeacon +Hessey, one of the boys in question, told the story of their authorship. +It was a custom many years ago for Election Day at Merchant Taylors' +School to be marked by the recitation of original epigrams in Greek, +Latin and English, which, although the boys themselves were usually the +authors, might also be the work of other hands. Archdeacon Hessey and +his brother, as the following passage explains, resorted to Charles Lamb +for assistance:-- + +The subjects for 1830 were _Suum Cuique_ and _Brevis esse latoro_. +After some three or four exercise nights I confess that I was literally +"at my wits' end." But a brilliant idea struck me. I had frequently, boy +as I was, seen Charles Lamb (Elia) at my father's house, and once, in +1825 or 1826, I had been taken to have tea with him and his sister, Mary +Lamb, at their little house, Colebrook Cottage, a whitish-brown +tenement, standing by itself, close to the New River, at Islington. He +was very kind, as he always was to young people, and very quaint. I told +him that I had devoured his "Roast Pig;" he congratulated me on +possessing a thorough schoolboy's appetite. And he was pleased when I +mentioned my having seen the boys at Christ's Hospital at their public +suppers, which then took place on the Sunday evenings in Lent. "Could +this good-natured and humorous old gentleman be prevailed upon to give +me an Epigram?" "I don't know," said my father, to whom I put the +question, "but I will ask him at any rate, and send him the mottoes." In +a day or two there arrived from Enfield, to which Lamb had removed some +time in 1827, not one, but two epigrams, one on each subject. That on +_Suum Cuique_ was in Latin, and was suggested by the grim satisfaction +which had recently been expressed by the public at the capture and +execution of some notorious highwayman. That on _Brevis esse laboro_ was +in English, and might have represented an adventure which had befallen +Lamb himself, for he stammered frequently, though he was not so grievous +a _Balbulus_ as his friend George Darley, whom I had also often seen. I +need scarcely say that the two Epigrams were highly appreciated, and +that my brother and myself, for I gave my brother one of them, were +objects of envy to our schoolfellows. + +The death of George IV., however, prevented their being recited on the +occasion for which they were written. + +"_Suum Cuique_," which was signed F. Hessey, was thus translated by its +presumptive author:-- + + A thief, on dreary Bagshot's heath well known, + Was fond of making others' goods his own; + _Meum_ was never thought of, nor was _Tuum_, + But everything with him was counted _Suum_. + At length each gets his own, and no one grieves; + The rope his neck, Jack Ketch his clothes receives: + His body to dissecting knife has gone; + Himself to Orcus: well--each gets his own. + +The English epigram, which was signed J.A. Hessey, was a rhyming version +of a story which Lamb was fond of telling. Three, at least, of his +friends relate the story in their recollections of him: Mrs. Mathews in +her life of her husband; Leigh Hunt in _The Companion_; and De Quincey +in _Fraser's Magazine_. The incident possibly occurred to Lamb when as a +boy--or little more--he stayed at Margate about 1790. Lamb must have +written Merchant Taylors' epigrams before, for in 1803, in a letter to +Godwin about writing to order, he speaks of having undertaken, three or +four times, a schoolboy copy of verses for Merchant Taylors' boys at a +guinea a copy, and refers to the trouble and vexation the work was to +him. + +Writing to Southey on May 10, 1830, Lamb said, at the end:--"Perhaps +an epigram (not a very happy-gram) I did for a school-boy yesterday may +amuse. I pray Jove he may not get a flogging for any false quantity; but +'tis, with one exception, the only Latin verses I have made for forty +years, and I did it 'to order.' + + "CUIQUE SUUM + + "Adsciscit sibi divitias et opes alienas + Fur, rapiens, spolians quod mihi, quod-que tibi, + Proprium erat, temnens haec verba, meum-que tuum-que + Omne suum est: tandem Cui-que Suum tribuit. + Dat resti collum; restes, vah! carnifici dat; + Sese Diabolo, sic bene; Cuique Suum." + + +Page 123. _On "The Literary Gazette"_. + +_The Examiner_, August 22, 1830. This epigram, consisting only of the +first four lines, slightly altered, and headed "Rejected Epigrams, +6"-evidently torn from a paper containing a number of verses (the figure +7 is just visible underneath it)--is in the British Museum among the +letters left by Vincent Novello. It is inscribed, "In handwriting of Mr. +Charles Lamb." The same collection contains a copy, in Mrs. Cowden +Clarke's handwriting, of the sonnet to Mrs. Jane Towers (see page 50). +_The Literary Gazette_ was William Jerdan's paper, a poor thing, which +Lamb had reason to dislike for the attack it made upon him when _Album +Verses_ was published (see note on page 331). + +_The Examiner_ began the attack on August 14, 1830. All the epigrams are +signed T.A. This means that if Lamb wrote the above, he wrote all; which +is not, I think, likely. I do not reproduce them, the humour of punning +upon the name of the editor of the _Literary Gazette_ being a little +outmoded. + +T.A. may, of course, have been Lamb's pseudonymous signature. If so, he +may have chosen it as a joke upon his friend Thomas Allsop. But since +one of the epigrams is addressed to himself I doubt if Lamb was the +author. + + +Page 123. _On the Fast-Day_. + +John Payne Collier, in his privately printed reminiscences, _An Old +Man's Diary_, quotes this epigram as being by Charles Lamb. It may have +been written for the Fast-Day on October 19, 1803, for that on May 25, +1804, or for a later one. Lamb tells Hazlitt in February, 1806, that he +meditates a stroll on the Fast-Day. + + +Page 123. _Nonsense Verses_. + +Mr. W. Carew Hazlitt, in _Mary and Charles Lamb_, 1874, says: "I found +these lines--a parody on the popular, or nursery, ditty, 'Lady-bird, +lady-bird, fly away home'--officiating as a wrapper to some of Mr. +Hazlitt's hair. There is no signature; but the handwriting is +unmistakably Lamb's; nor are the lines themselves the worst of his +playful effusions." The piece suggests that Lamb, in a wild mood, was +turning his own "Angel Help" (see page 51) into ridicule--possibly to +satisfy some one who dared him to do it, or vowed that such a feat could +not be accomplished. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 124. _On Wawd._ + +Wawd was a fellow-clerk. We have this _jeu d'esprit_ through Mr. Joseph +H. Twichell, an American who had it from a fellow-clerk of Lamb's named +Ogilvie. (See _Scribner's Magazine_, March, 1876.) + + +Page 124. _Six Epitaphs._ + +Writing to Southey on March 20, 1799, Lamb says:--"I the other day +threw off an extempore epitaph on Ensign Peacock of the 3rd Regt. of the +Royal East India Volunteers, who like other boys in this scarlet tainted +age was ambitious of playing at soldiers, but dying in the first flash +of his valour was at the particular instance of his relations buried +with military honours! like any veteran scarr'd or chopt from Blenheim +or Ramilies. (He was buried in sash and gorget.) Sed hae sunt +lamentabilis nugae--But'tis as good as some epitaphs you and I have read +together in Christ-Church-yard." + +The last five Epigrams were sent to the _New York Tribune_, Feb. 22, +1879, by the late J.H. Siddons. They were found on scraps of paper in +Lamb's desk in the India House. Wagstaff and Sturms were fellow-clerks. +Dr. Drake was the medical officer of the establishment. Captain Dey was +a putative son of George IV. The lines upon him were given to Siddons by +Kenney's son. + + +Page 126. _Time and Eternity_ and _From the Latin_. + +In _The Mirror_ for June 1, 1833, are the two poems, collected under the +general heading "The Gatherer," indexed "Lamb, C., lines by." Mr. Thomas +Hutchinson first printed the second poem; but I do not feel too happy +about it. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 127. SATAN IN SEARCH OF A WIFE, 1831. + +This ballad was published by Moxon, anonymously, in 1831, although the +authorship was no secret In its volume form it was illustrated by George +Cruikshank. Lamb probably did not value his ballad very highly. Writing +to Moxon in 1833 he says, "I wish you would omit 'by the Author of Elia' +now, in advertising that damn'd 'Devil's Wedding.'" + +There is a reference to the poem, in Lamb's letter to Moxon of +October 24, 1831, which needs explanation. Moxon's _Englishman's +Magazine_, after running under his control for three months, +was suddenly abandoned. Lamb, who seems to have been paid in +advance for his work, wrote to Moxon on the subject, approving him +for getting the weight off his mind and adding:--"I have one on +mine. The cash in hand which as ***** less truly says, +burns in my pocket. I feel queer at returning it (who does not?). +You feel awkward at re-taking it (who ought not?) is there no +middle way of adjusting this fine embarrassment. I think I +have hit upon a medium to skin the sore place over, if not quite +to heal it. You hinted that there might be something under £10 +by and by accruing to me _Devil's Money_. You are sanguine--say +£7 10s.--that I entirely renounce and abjure all future interest +in, I insist upon it, and 'by Him I will not name' I won't touch a +penny of it. That will split your loss one half--and leave me +conscientious possessor of what I hold. Less than your assent to +this, no proposal will I accept of." + +A few months later, writing again to Moxon, he says:--"I am heartily +sorry my Devil does not answer. We must try it a little longer; and, +after all, I think I must insist on taking a portion of its loss upon +myself. It is too much that you should lose by two adventures." + +According to some reminiscences of Lamb by Mr. J. Fuller Russell, +printed in _Notes and Queries_, April 1, 1882, Lamb suppressed "Satan in +Search of a Wife," for the reason that the Vicar of Enfield, Dr. +Cresswell, also had married a tailor's daughter, and might be hurt by +the ballad. The correspondence quoted above does not, I think, bear out +Mr. Russell's statement. If the book were still being advertised in +1833, we can hardly believe that any consideration for the Vicar of +Enfield would cause its suppression. This gentleman had been at Enfield +for several years, and Lamb would have either suppressed the book +immediately or not at all; but possibly his wish to disassociate the +name of Elia from the work was inspired by the coincidence. + +The ballad does not call for much annotation. The legend +mentioned in the dedication tells how Cecilia, by her music, drew +an angel from heaven, who brought her roses of Paradise. The +ballad of King Cophetua and the beggar maid may be read in the +_Percy Reliques_. Hecate is a triple deity, known as Luna in heaven, +Diana on earth, and Proserpine in hell. In the reference to Milton +I think Lamb must have been thinking of the lines, _Paradise Lost_, +I., 27-28:-- + + Say first, for Heav'n hides nothing from thy view, + Nor the deep tract of Hell.... + +or, _Paradise Lost_, V., 542:-- + + And so from Heav'n to deepest Hell. + +Alecto (Part I., Stanza II.) was one of the Furies.--Old Parr (Stanza +IV.) lived to be 152; he died in 1635.--Semiramis (Stanza XVII.) was +Queen of Assyria, under whom Babylon became the most wonderful city in +the world; Helen was Helen of Troy, the cause of the war between the +Greeks and Trojans; Medea was the cruel lover of Jason, who recovered +the Golden Fleece.--Clytemnestra (Stanza XVIII.) was the wife and +murderer of Agamemnon; Joan of Naples was Giovanna, the wife of Andrea +of Hungary, who was accused of assassinating him. Landor wrote a play, +"Giovanna of Naples," to "restore her fame" and "requite her wrongs;" +Cleopatra was the Queen of Egypt, and lover of Mark Antony; Jocasta +married her son Oedipus unknowing who he was.--A tailor's "goose" +(Stanza XXII.) is his smoothing-iron, and his "hell" (Stanza XXIII.) the +place where he throws his shreds and debris.--Lamb's own "Vision of +Horns" (see Vol. I.) serves as a commentary on Stanza XXVII.; and in his +essay "On the Melancholy of Tailors" (Vol. I.) are further remarks on +the connection between tailors and cabbage in Stanza I. of Part II.--The +two Miss Crockfords of Stanza XVIII. would be the daughters of William +Crockford, of Crockford's Club, who, after succeeding to his father's +business of fishmonger, opened the gaming-house which bore his name and +amassed a fortune of upwards of a million.--Semele (Stanza XXI.), whose +lightest wish Jupiter had sworn to grant, was treacherously induced to +express the desire that Jupiter would visit her with the divine pomp in +which he approached his lawful wife Juno. He did so, and she was +consumed by his lightning and thunderbolts.--The bard of Stanza XXV. is, +of course, Virgil. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 138. Prologues and Epilogues. + +Writing to Sarah Stoddart concerning Godwin's "Faulkener" Mary Lamb +remarked: "Prologues and Epilogues will be his [Charles's] death." + + +Page 138. _Epilogue to "Antonio."_ + +Had Lamb not sent this epilogue to Manning in the letter of December 13, +1800, we should have no copy of it; for Godwin, by Lamb's advice, did +not print it with the play. Writing to Godwin two days before, Lamb +remarked:-"I have been plotting how to abridge the Epilogue. But I +cannot see that any lines can be spared, retaining the connection, +except these two, which are better out: + + "Why should I instance, &c., + The sick man's purpose, &c., + +and then the following line must run thus, + + "The truth by an example best is shown." + +See lines 16, 17 and 18. + +Godwin's "Antonio," produced at Drury Lane on December 13, 1800, was a +failure. Many years afterwards Lamb told the story of the unlucky first +night (see "The Old Actors" in Appendix to Vol. II. of this edition). +Godwin, its author, was, of course, William Godwin, the philosopher +(1756-1836). Later Lamb wrote the prologue to another of his plays (see +page 140 and note). + +Lines 35 and 36. _Suett ... Bannister_. Richard Suett (1755-1805) and +Jack Bannister (1760-1836), two famous comedians of that day. Line 62. +"_Pizarro_." Sheridan's patriotic melodrama, produced May 24, 1799, at +Drury Lane. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 140. _Prologue to "Faulkener."_ + +William Godwin's tragedy "Faulkener" was produced at Drury Lane, +December 16, 1807, with some success. Lamb's letters to Godwin of +September 9 and 17, 1801, suggest that he had a share in the framing of +the plot. Later the play was taken in hand by Thomas Holcroft and made +more dramatic. + +According to Godwin's preface, 1807, the story was taken from the 1745 +edition of Defoe's _Roxana_, which contains the episode of Susannah +imagining herself to be Roxana's daughter and throwing herself in her +mother's way. Godwin transformed the daughter into a son. Lamb, however, +seems to have believed this episode to be in the first edition, 1724, +and afterwards to have been removed at the entreaty of Southerne, +Defoe's friend (see Lamb's letters to Walter Wilson, Defoe's biographer, +of December 16, 1822, and February 24, 1823). But it is in reality the +first edition which lacks the episode, and Mr. G.A. Aitken, Defoe's +latest editor, doubts Southerne's interference altogether and considers +Susannah's curiosity an alien interpolation. For Lamb's other remarks on +Defoe see also the "Ode to the Tread Mill," page 72 of this volume, and +"Estimate of Defoe's Secondary Novels" (Vol. I.). Writing to Walter +Wilson on November 15, 1829, on the receipt of his memoirs of Defoe, +Lamb exclaims: "De Foe was always my darling." + + +Page 140. _Epilogue to "Time's a Tell-Tale."_ + +A play by Henry Siddons (1774-1815), Mrs. Siddons' eldest son. It was +produced in 1807 at Drury Lane, with Lamb's prologue, which was, +however, received so badly that on the second night another was +substituted for it. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 142. _Prologue to "Remorse."_ + +Coleridge's tragedy "Remorse," a recasting of his "Osorio" (written at +Sheridan's instigation in 1797), was produced with success on January +23, 1813; and was printed, with the prologue, in the same year. Lamb's +prologue, "spoken by Mr. Carr," was (according to Mr. Dykes Campbell) a +recasting of some verses composed for the prize offered by the Drury +Lane Committee in the previous year, 1812, in response to their +advertisement for a suitable poem to be read at the reopening of the new +building after the fire of 1809. It was, of course, this competition +which brought forth the _Rejected Addresses_ (1812) of the brothers +James and Horace Smith. + +The prologue as printed is very different from that which was spoken at +the theatre by Mr. Carr. A writer in the _Theatrical Inquisitor_ for +February, 1813, in his contemptuous criticism, refers to several +passages that are no longer extant. I quote from an account of the +matter by the late Mr. Dykes Campbell in the _Illustrated London News_, +October 22, 1892:-- + +I am afraid the true text of Lamb's "Rejected Address," even as +modified for use as a prologue, has not come down to us. This is how the +severe and suspicious _Inquisitor_ describes it and its twin brother the +epilogue-- + +The Prologue and Epilogue were among the most stupid productions of the +modern muse; the former was, in all probability, a Rejected Address, for +it contained many eulogiums on the beauty and magnificence of the "dome" +of Drury; talked of the waves being not quite dry, and expressed the +happiness of the bard at being the first whose muse had soared within +its limits. More stupid than the doggerel of Twiss, and more affected +than the pretty verses of Miles Peter Andrews, the Epilogue proclaimed +its author and the writer of the Prologue to be par nobile fratrum, in +rival dulness both pre-eminent. + +The reader of Lamb's prologue will find little of all this in it, but +there is no reason for doubting the critic's account of what he heard at +the theatre. It is not at all unlikely that it was this paragraph which +suggested to Lamb the advisability of still further revising the +"Rejected Address." In the prologue there is a good deal about the size +of the theatre, as compared with "the Lyceum's petty sphere," and of how +pleased Shakspere would have been had he been able to hear-- + + When that dread curse of Lear's + Had burst tremendous on a thousand ears: + +rather an anti-climax, by the way, for it means an audience of but five +hundred, which would have been a beggarly account for the new Drury. +There is nothing either about its "dome," or about the scenery, except +commonplaces so flat that one doubts if it be quite fair to quote them-- + + The very use, since so essential grown, + Of painted scenes, was to his [Shakspere's] stage unknown. + +This is not an improvement on the "waves not yet quite dry," a Lamb-like +touch which could not have been invented by the critic, and may go far +to convince us of his veracity. + +Above all, there is no trace of that splendidly audacious suggestion +that Coleridge was the first "whose muse had soared" within the new +dome--unless we find a blind one in the closing lines, supposing them to +have been converted by the simple process of inversion. Instead of +Coleridge being the first whose muse had soared in the new Drury, Drury +was the first place in which his dramatic muse had soared. + +Lamb was not among the writers parodied by the "sneering brothers" (as +he called them later), but Coleridge was. Lamb's turn came in 1825, when +P.G. Patmore, afterwards his friend and the father of Coventry Patmore, +wrote _Rejected Articles_, in which was a very poor imitation of Elia. + +Line 9. _Betterton or Booth._ Thomas Betterton, born probably in 1635, +acted for the last time in 1710, the year in which he died. Barton Booth +(1681-1733) left the stage in 1728. Betterton was much at the Little +Theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields; also at Sir John Vanbrugh's theatre in +the Haymarket. + +Line 11. _Quin_. James Quin (1693-1766) of Drury Lane and Covent +Garden, Garrick's great rival, famous as Falstaff. His last appearance +was in 1753. + +Line 12. _Garrick._ Garrick's Drury Lane, in which Lamb saw his first +play, was that built by Sir Christopher Wren in 1674. It lasted, with +certain alterations, including a new face by the brothers Adam, nearly +120 years. The seating capacity of this theatre was modest. In 1794 a +new Drury Lane Theatre, the third, was opened--too large for comfortable +seeing or hearing. This was burned down in 1809; and the new one, the +fourth, and that in which "Remorse" was produced, was opened in 1812. +This is the building (with certain additions) that still stands. + +Lines 13-16. _Garrick in the shades._ Many years later Lamb used the +same idea in connection with Elliston (see "To the Shade of Elliston," +Vol. II.). + +Line 20. _Ben and Fletcher._ Ben Jonson (1573?-1637) and John Fletcher +(1579-1625), Beaumont's collaborator. Ben Jonson's "Every Man in His +Humour" was produced at the Globe in 1598, Shakspeare being in the +caste; but in the main he wrote for Henslowe, who was connected with the +Rose and the Swan, on Bankside, and with the theatre in Newington Butts, +and who built, with Alleyn, in 1600, the Fortune in Golden Lane, +Cripplegate Without. Beaumont and Fletcher's plays went for the most +part to Burbage, who owned the Globe at Southwark and the Blackfriars' +Theatre. Shakspeare also wrote for Burbage. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 143. _Epilogue to "Debtor and Creditor."_ + +"Debtor and Creditor" was a farce by James Kenney (1780-1849), Lamb's +friend, with whom he stayed at Versailles in 1822. The play was produced +April 20, 1814. Gosling's experiences as a dramatic author seem to have +been curiously like Lamb's own. See note to "Mr. H." on page 392. + +Line 12. _They never bring the Spanish._ Spanish, old slang for money. + +Line 40. _Polito's._ Polito at one time kept the menagerie in Exeter +Change. + +Line 42. _Larry Whack._ Larry Whack is referred to in the play. Says +Sampson, on one occasion: "Who be I? Come, that be capital! Why, ben't I +Sampson Miller? Didn't I bang the Darby Corps at York Races ... and +durst Sir Harry Slang bring me up to town to fight Larry Whack, the +Irish ruffian?..." + + + * * * * * + + +Page 145. _Epilogue to an Amateur Performance of "Richard II."_ + +This epilogue, says Canon Ainger, who first printed it, was written for +a performance given by the family of Barren Field in 1824. The family of +Henry Field, Barron's father, would perhaps be more accurate; for Barron +Field was childless. The verses, which I print by permission of Miss +Kendall, Miss Field's residuary legatee, were given to Canon Ainger by +the late Miss M.L. Field, of Hastings. In his interesting note he adds +of this lady (to whom Lamb addressed the verses on page 106), "she told +me that she (then a girl of 19) sat by the side of Lamb during the +performance. She remembered well, she said, that in course of the play a +looking glass was broken, and that Lamb turned to her and whispered +'Sixpence!' She added that before the play began, while the guests were +assembling, the butler announced 'Mr. Negus!'--upon which Lamb +exclaimed, 'Hand him round!'" + +Lamb refers in the opening lines to Edmund Kean and John Philip Kemble. + +In this connection it may be interesting to state that Lamb told Patmore +that he considered John of Gaunt, time-honoured Lancaster, the grandest +name in the world. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 146. _Prologue to "The Wife."_ + +The original form of the prologue to James Sheridan Knowles' comedy, not +hitherto collected in any edition of Lamb's writings, is preserved in +the Forster collection in the South Kensington Museum. It was sent to +Moxon, for Knowles, in April, 1833, and differs considerably. See the +large edition of this work. It is curious that the prologue was not +attributed to Lamb when the play was printed. Knowles wrote in the +preface: "To my early, my trusty and honoured friend, Charles Lamb, I +owe my thanks for a delightful Epilogue, composed almost as soon as it +was requested. To an equally dear friend, I am equally indebted for my +Prologue." + + + * * * * * + + +Page 147. _Epilogue to "The Wife."_ + +This epilogue was spoken by Miss Ellen Tree. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 149. JOHN WOODVIL. + +First published in 1802 in a slender volume entitled _John Woodvil: a +Tragedy. By C. Lamb. To which are added Fragments of Burton, the author +of the Anatomy of Melancholy._ The full contents of the book were:-- + +John Woodvil; Ballad, From the German (see page 29); Helen (see page +28); Curious Fragments, I., II., III., IV.; The Argument; The +Consequence (see Vol. I., page 29, and note; also pages 30 and 35 of the +present volume and notes). + +_John Woodvil_ was reprinted by Lamb in the _Works_, 1818, the text of +which is followed here. + +If Mr. Fuller Russell was right in his statement in _Notes and Queries_, +April 1, 1882, that Lamb told him he "had lost £25 by his best effort, +_John Woodvil_," we must suppose that the book was published wholly or +partially at his own cost. + +The history of the poem which follows is, with an omission and addition +here and there, that compiled by the late Mr. Dykes Campbell and +contributed by him to _The Athenaeum_, October 31 and November 14, 1891. +Mr. Campbell had the opportunity of collating the edition of 1802 with a +manuscript copy made by Lamb and his sister for Manning. With that +patient thoroughness and discrimination which made his work as an +editor so valuable, Mr. Campbell minutely examined this copy and put the +results on record; and they are now for the first time, by permission of +Mrs. Dykes Campbell and the Editor of _The Athenaum_, incorporated in an +edition of Lamb's writings. The copy itself, I may add, when it came +into the market, was secured by an American collector. Mr. Campbell's +words follow, my own interpolations being within square brackets. + +Lamb's first allusion to the future _John Woodvil_ occurs in a letter to +Southey (October 29, 1798), at a time when the two young men were +exchanging a good many copies of verses for mutual criticism. "Not +having anything of my own," writes Lamb, "to send you in return (though, +to tell the truth, I am at work upon something which if I were to cut +away and garble, perhaps I might send you an extract or two that might +not displease you: but I will not do that; and whether it will come to +anything I know not, for I am as slow as a Fleming painter, when I +compose anything) I will crave leave to put down a few lines of old +Christopher Marlowe's." Lamb must soon have got rid of his objections to +cutting away and garbling, for before a month had elapsed he had sent +Southey two extracts, first the "Dying Lover" [see "Dramatic Fragment," +page 85], and next (November 28) "The Witch" [see page 199], both of +which passages were excluded from the printed play. [The letter, which +is wrongly dated April 20, 1799, in some editions, concludes (of "The +Witch"): "This is the extract I bragged of as superior to that I sent +you from Marlowe: perhaps you will smile."] + +Charles Lloyd shared with Southey the pains and pleasures of criticising +Lamb's verses, for Lamb asks the latter if he agrees with Lloyd in +disliking something in "The Witch." + +[Thus: "Lloyd objects to 'shutting up the womb of his purse' in my curse +(which, for a Christian witch in a Christian country, is not too mild, I +hope). Do you object? I think there is a strangeness in the idea, as +well as 'shaking the poor little snakes from his door,' which suits the +speaker. Witches illustrate, as fine ladies do, from their own familiar +objects, and snakes and the shutting up of wombs are in their way. I +don't know that this last charge has been before brought against 'em nor +either the sour milk or the mandrake babe; but I affirm these be things +a witch would do if she could."] + +Lamb proposes also to adopt an emendation of Southey's in the "Dying +Lover"--"though I do not feel the objection against 'Silent Prayer,'" +and in the event he did very sensibly stick to his own opinion, for in +the _London Magazine_ the line runs, as first written:-- + + He put a silent prayer up for the bride. + +One wonders what harm Southey can have seen in it. At this time Southey +was collecting verses for the first volume of his _Annual Anthology_ +(provisionally called the _Kalendar_), and inviting contributions from +Lamb. In writing before November 28, 1798, "This ['The Witch'] and the +'Dying Lover' I gave you are the only extracts I can give without +mutilation," Lamb may have meant that Southey was at liberty to print +them in the _Anthology_. A year later, October 31, 1799, when the second +volume was in preparation, Lamb wrote:--"I shall have nothing to +communicate, I fear, to the _Anthology_. You shall have some fragments +of my play if you desire them; but I think I would rather print it +whole." + +As a matter of fact, Lamb contributed nothing to the collection except +the lines "Living without God in the World," printed in the first volume +[see page 19. To _Recreations in Agriculture, Natural History,_ etc., +1801, edited by Dr. James Anderson, a friend of George Dyer, Lamb, +however, sent "Description of a Forest Life," "The General Lover" (What +is it you love?) and the "Dying Lover," called "Fragment in Dialogue." +There are slight differences in the text, the chief alteration being in +line 3 of the "Description of a Forest Life":-- + + Bursting the lubbar bonds of sleep that bound him.] + +Reverting to the letter of November 28, one learns Lamb's intentions as +to the play:--"My Tragedy will be a medley (as I intend it to be a +medley) of laughter and tears, prose and verse, and in some places +rhyme, songs, wit, pathos, humour, and, if possible, sublimity; at least +it is not a fault in my intention if it does not comprehend most of +these discordant atoms. Heaven send they dance not the 'Dance of +Death'!" + +The composition went on slowly and in a very casual way, for on January +21, 1799, he writes again to Southey:--"I have only one slight passage +to send you, scarce worth the sending, which I want to edge in somewhere +into my play, which, by the way, hath not received the addition often +lines, besides, since I saw you." The "slight passage" is one which, it +will be seen, was "edged in" near the end of the second act, but taken +out again--that beginning:-- + + I saw him [John Woodvil] in the day of Worcester fight, + Whither he came at twice seven years, + Under the discipline of the Lord Falkland + (His uncle by the mother's side), etc. + +Lamb naïvely asks Southey, "But did Falkland die before the Worcester +fight? In that case I must make bold to unclify some other nobleman." I +suppose Southey must have answered that Falkland had been killed at +Newbury eight years before Worcester fight, for when the passage had +been edged into the play, _Naseby_ and _Ashley_ were substituted for +"Worcester" and "Falkland" respectively. This was as bad a shot as the +first, for Sir Anthony Cooper, whether at Naseby or no, did not become +Lord Ashley until sixteen years after that fight[31]. Had the passage +escaped the pruning knife, Lamb's historical research would no doubt +have provided a proper battle and a proper uncle for his hero. Again +Lloyd appears as a critic, and this time he is obeyed, probably because +his objection to "portrayed in his face" was backed by Southey. "I like +the line," says Lamb, but he altered it to + + Of Valour's beauty in his youthful face + +in the Manning MS. Four months later, on May 20, Lamb sends Southey the +charming passage about forest-life on page 173, and defends his blank +verse against Southey's censure of the pauses at the end of the lines; +he does it on the model of Shakespeare, he says, in his "endeavour after +a colloquial ease and spirit." Talfourd printed the passage in full, but +some later editors have cut down the twenty-four lines to the six +opening ones, to the loss of a point in the letter. Lamb says he "loves +to anticipate charges of unoriginality," adding--"the first line is +almost Shakespeare's:-- + + "To have my love to bed and to arise. + "'Midsummer-Night's Dream.' + +I think there is a sweetness in the versification not unlike some rhymes +in that exquisite play, and the last line but three is yours." This line +describes how the deer, as they came tripping by, + + Then stop and gaze, then turn, they know not why. + +Lamb thus gives the line and his reference:-- + + ----An eye + That met the gaze, or turn'd it knew not why. + "Rosamund's Epistle." + +But, of course, he misquotes both line and title--though Southey would +feel flattered in finding that his friend's memory had done so well. As +the editors have not annotated the passage, I will say here that Lamb +should have quoted + + The modest eye + That met the glance, or turn'd, it knew not why. + "Rosamund to Henry." + +The poem is one of those in the now scarce volume which Southey and +Lovel published jointly at Bath in 1795, _Poems: containing "The +Retrospect."_ [It was this forest passage which, as Hazlitt tells us in +his _Spirit of the Age_, so puzzled Godwin. After looking in vain +through the old dramatists for it, he applied to Lamb himself.] + + +[Footnote 31: Sir Jacob Astley(?), but he too was ennobled _after_ +Naseby.] + + +By the end of October the play had evidently been completed (though not +yet named), for on the 31st Southey was asked, "Have you seen it, or +shall I lend you a copy? I want your opinion of it." None is recorded +here, but more than two years later, when Southey was in London, he gave +it to Danvers (_Letters of R.S._, II., 184): "Lamb and his sister see us +often: he is printing his play, which will please you by the exquisite +beauty of its poetry, and provoke you by the exquisite silliness of its +story." + +The play must have been baptised as "Pride's Cure" soon after +Hallowe'en, for at Christmas it was submitted under that title to +Kemble, and about the same time (December 28, 1799) we find Lamb +defending the title (with the vehemence and subtlety of a doubter, as I +read) against the adverse criticism of Manning and Mrs. Charles Lloyd. +Lamb had lately been on a visit to these friends at Cambridge, and had +doubtless taken a copy of his play with him and received their +objections there and then--for his defence does not seem to have been +provoked by a letter. [In a letter to Charles Lloyd that has come to +light since Mr. Dykes Campbell wrote, belonging to middle December, +1799, Lamb asks for his play to be returned to him, suggesting that Mrs. +Lloyd shall despatch it. It was probably in the letter that accompanied +the parcel that the criticism of the title was found. Lamb thus defended +it:--"By-the-bye, I think you and Sophia both incorrect with regard to +the _title_ of the _play_. Allowing your objection (which is not +necessary, as pride may be, and is in real life often, cured by +misfortunes not directly originating from its own acts, as Jeremy Taylor +will tell you a naughty desire is sometimes sent to cure it; I know you +read these _practical divines_)--but allowing your objection, does not +the betraying of his father's secret directly spring from pride?--from +the pride of wine, and a full heart, and a proud over-stepping of the +ordinary rules of morality, and contempt of the prejudices of mankind, +which are not to bind superior souls--'as _trust_ in _the matter of +secrets_ all _ties_ of _blood_, etc., etc., keeping of _promises_, the +feeble mind's religion, binding our _morning knowledge_ to the +performance of what _last night's ignorance spake_'--does he not prate, +that '_Great Spirits_' must do more than die for their friend? Does not +the pride of wine incite him to display some evidence of friendship, +which its own irregularity shall make great? This I know, that I meant +his punishment not alone to be a cure for his daily and habitual +_pride_, but the direct consequence and appropriate punishment of a +particular act of pride. + +"If you do not understand it so, it is my fault in not explaining my +meaning."] + +Manning seems to have begged for a copy--or reconsideration, +perhaps--for Lamb, on February 13, 1800, promised him a copy "of my play +and the _Falstaff Letters_ in a day or two." There is no trace of the +former having been sent, but the latter certainly was, for on March 1 he +presses Manning for his opinion of it--hopes he is "prepared to call it +a bundle of the sharpest, queerest, profoundest humours," etc., as he +was accustomed to hope when that book was in question. The next mention +of the play occurs in an undated letter to Coleridge [accompanying a MS. +copy of the play for the Wordsworths], dated by Talfourd and other +editors "end of 1800," which must have been written in March or April, +1800 [since Coleridge was then staying with Wordsworth, engaged in +completing the translation of _Wallenstein,_ the last of the MS. being +sent to the printer in April]. Talfourd's mistake in dating it perhaps +led him to suppose that the copy sent through Coleridge to Wordsworth +was a printed copy, and that Lamb had printed _John Woodvil_ a year +before he published it. If any other proof were needed that Talfourd +guessed wrongly, it is supplied by this sentence in the letter to +Manning of February 15, 1801:--"I lately received from Wordsworth a copy +of the second volume [of the _Lyrical Ballads_] accompanied by an +acknowledgment of having received from me _many months since_ a copy of +a certain Tragedy, with excuses for not having made any acknowledgment +sooner." + +Lamb's reply to Wordsworth (January 30, 1801) is so very dry--"Thank you +for Liking my Play!!"--that we may suppose that Wordsworth's expression +of "liking" was not very enthusiastic. + +Things become clearer when we reach November 3, 1800, on which day Lamb +thus addressed Manning (I quote verbatim from the original letter):--"At +last I have written to Kemble to know the event of my play, which was +presented last Christmas. As I suspected, came an answer back that the +copy was lost ... with a courteous (reasonable!) request of another copy +(if I had one by me), and a promise of a definite answer in a week. I +could not resist so facile and moderate demand: so scribbled out +another, omitting sundry things, such as the witch story, about half the +forest scene (which is too leisurely for _story_), and transposing that +damn'd soliloquy about England getting drunk, which like its reciter +stupidly stood alone nothing prevenient, or antevenient, and cleared +away a good deal besides ... I sent it last night, and am in weekly +expectation of the Tolling Bell and death warrant." + +It will be observed that that second copy sent to Kemble must have +differed essentially from the one sent to Manning, for the latter +includes the witch story, and retains in its original place the +soliloquy about England getting drunk. + +To this copy sent to Manning we now come in chronological order, but the +exact date of its despatch must remain uncertain. Clearly it was +subsequent, but probably not long subsequent, to Kemble's rejection of +the play, which took place soon after All Souls' Day, for Kemble must +have made up his mind within half an hour of taking up the manuscript. I +venture to assume that the argosy which bore all the treasures recounted +in the following bill of lading sailed about Christmas, 1800. It is sad +to think that the bill of lading itself and the MS. of "Pride's Cure" +are the only salvage. + +"I send you all of Coleridge's letters to me which I have preserved; +some of them are upon the subject of my play. I also send you Kemble's +two letters, and the prompter's courteous epistle, with a curious +critique on 'Pride's Cure' by a young Physician from EDINBORO', who +modestly suggests quite another kind of plot. These are monuments of my +disappointments which I like to preserve ...You will carefully keep all +(except the Scotch Doctor's, _which burn_) _in statu quo_ till I come to +claim mine own." + +On the reverse of the half-sheet is written: "For Mister Manning | +Teacher of the Mathematics | and the Black Arts, | There is another +letter in the inside cover of the book opposite the blank leaf that +_was_." + +[This is the other letter, written inside the board cover of the copy of +the play, in Charles Lamb's hand:-- + +"Mind this goes for a letter. (Acknowledge it directly, if only in ten +words.) + +"DEAR MANNING: + +"(I shall want to hear this comes safe.) + +"I have scratched out a good deal, as you will see. Generally, what I +have rejected was either _false_ in _feeling_, or a violation of +character, mostly of the first sort. I will here just instance in the +concluding few lines of the dying Lover's story, which completely +contradicted his character of _violent_ and _unreproachful_. I hesitated +a good while what copy to send you, and at last resolved to send the +_worst_, because you are familiar with it and can make it out; a +stranger would find so much difficulty in doing it, that it would give +him more pain than pleasure. This is compounded precisely of the two +persons' hands you requested it should be. + +"Yours sincerely, + +"C. LAMB." + +The two persons were undoubtedly Charles Lamb and his sister.] + +Before proceeding to the MS. itself, it will be desirable to refer to +Lamb's letter to Manning of February 15, 1802, in which he defends +himself against Manning's animadversions on the changes found in the +printed _John Woodvil_. This letter is addressed to "Mr. Thomas Manning, +Maison Magnan, No. 342 Boulevard Italien, Paris." ....The italics are in +the original:--"_Apropos_, I think you wrong about _my_ play. All the +omissions are _right_. And the supplementary scene, in which Sandford +_narrates_ the manner in which his master is affected, is the best in +the book. It stands where a hodge-podge of German puerilities used to +stand. I insist upon it that you like that scene." ... + +There is one thing more to add. Its excuse is the best in the world--it +is quite new. In that precious letter of February 15, 1801, is a passage +[printed in Canon Ainger's _édition de luxe_] which shows that Lamb +(probably) tried George Colman the younger with "Pride's Cure." The +potentate of the Haymarket was probably less sublimely courteous in his +rejection than Kemble. + +"Now to my own affairs. I have not taken that thing to Colman, but I +have proceeded one step in the business. I have inquired his address and +am promised it in a few days." + +[The Manning copy of _John Woodvil_ is thus described by Mr. Dykes +Campbell]:--It is composed of foolscap sheets stitched into a limp +wrapper of marbled paper. The writing is chiefly Mary Lamb's; her +brother's portion seems to have been done at various times, for the ink +varies in shade, and the handwriting in style. + +On the inside of the first cover, as before noted, is written the letter +quoted above. Then comes a page with:-- + + Begun August, 1798, finished May, 1799. + This comes in beginng 2d act. + (Letter) + of Marg. to John + +[this being Margaret's "Letter" (page 160 of the present volume).] + +On the reverse, Mary has written out the "Characters in 'Pride's Cure,' +a Tragedy." In this list Lovel and Gray are described as "two Court +spies." + +On the next page the play opens, but on the top margin is written:-- + + "Turn a leaf back for _my_ Letter to Manning. + + "C. LAMB." + +The point of the underlining of "my" is to distinguish Lamb's letter +from Margaret's, which chance to face one another in the MS. + +Then comes:-- + + Pride's Cure. + A Tragedy. + Act the First. Scene the First. + A Servants' apartment in Wodvil [_sic_] Hall. + Servants drinking. + A Song by Daniel. + "When the King enjoys his own again." + _Peter_. A delicate song upon my verity. + Where didst learn it, fellow? + +And so on for some leaves without material difference from print. + +After the speech [page 155] "_All_. Truly a sad consideration" comes +this continuation of the dialogue:-- + +_Daniel_. You know what he said to you one day in confidence. + +_Peter_. I have reason to remember the words--"'Tis a pity (said he) a +traitor should go unpunished." + +_Francis_. Did he say so much? _Peter_. As true as I sit here. I told +Daniel of it the same day. Did I not, Daniel? + +_Daniel_. Well, I do not know but it may be merrier times with us +servants if Sir Walter never comes back. + +_Francis_. But then again, who of us can think of betraying him? + +_Peter_. His son, John Woodvil, is the prince of good masters. + +_Daniel_. Here is his health, and the King's. (_They all drink_.) Well, +I cannot see why one of us should not deserve the reward as well as +another man. + +_Martin_. Indeed there is something in that. + +_Sandford enters suddenly_. + +_Sandford_. You well-fed and unprofitable grooms. + +And so on as printed, until we come to Margaret's reply to Sandford's +speech ending [page 156]:-- + +Since my ["our"] old master quitted all his rights here. + +_Margaret_. Alas! I am sure I find it so. + Ah! Mr. Sandford, + This is no dwelling now for me, + As in Sir Walter's days it was. + I can remember when this house hath been + A sanctuary to a poor orphan girl + From evil tongues and injuries of the world. + Now every day + I must endure fresh insult from the scorn + Of Woodvil's friends, the uncivil jests + And free discourses of the dissolute men + That haunt this mansion, making me their mirth. + +Further on in the same dialogue comes the following, after the line in +Margaret's speech [page 158, line 18], + + His love, which ["that"] long has been upon the wane. + + And therefore 'tis men seeing this + Have ta'en their cue and think it now their time + To slur me with their coward disrespects, + Unworthy usages, who, while John lov'd + And while one breath'd + That thought not much to take the orphan's part, + And durst as soon + Hold dalliance with the chafed lion's paw, + Or play with fire, or utter blasphemy, + As think a disrespectful thought of Margaret. + +_Sandford_. I am too mean a man, + Being but a servant in the family, + To be the avenger of a Lady's wrongs, + And such a Lady! but I verily think + That I should cleave the rudesby to the earth + With my good oaken staff, and think no harm, + That offer'd you an insult, I being by. + I warrant you, young Master would forgive, + And thank me for the deed, + Tho' he I struck were one of his dearest friends. + +_Margaret_. O Mr. Sandford, you must think it, + I know, as sad undecency in me + To trouble thus your friendly hearing + With my complaints. + But I have now no female friend + In all this house, adviser none, or friend + To council with, and when I view your face, + I call to mind old times, + And how these things were different once + When your old friend and master rul'd this house. + Nay, never weep; why, man, I trust that yet + Sir Walter shall return one day + And thank you for these tears, + And loving services to his poor orphan. + For me, I am determined what to do. + +And so on as printed down to Margaret's line [page 158, line 3 from +foot]:-- + + And cowardice grows enamour'd of rare accidents. + +The three lines which follow in print [pages 158-9] are not in the MS. +Margaret continues thus:-- + + But we must part now. + I see one coming, that will also observe us. + Before night comes we will contrive to meet, + And then I will tell you further. Till when, farewell. +_Sandford_. My prayers go with you, Lady, and your counsels, + And heaven so prosper them, as I wish you well. + [_They part several ways_.] + +Here follows:-- + +Scene the Second. A Library in Woodvil Hall; John Woodvil alone. + +_John Woodvil (alone)_. Now universal England getteth drunk. + +And so on as printed in Act II. [on page 165]. After the last printed +line, + + A fishing, hawking, hunting country gentleman, + +the MS. has these five lines, but Lamb drew his pen through them:-- + + Great spirits ask great play-room; I would be + The Phaeton, should put the world to a hazard, + E'er I'd forego the horses of the sun, + And giddy lustre of my travels' glory + For tedious common paces. [_Exit_.] + +Next comes:-- + +Scene the Third. An apartment in Woodvil Hall; Margaret. Sandford. + +_Margaret_. I pray you spare me, Mr. Sandford. + +And so on as printed as the continuation of the former scene [page 159] +to the end of that and of the first act. But in the middle of Sandford's +speech comes in the "Witch" story, thus introduced:-- + +[_Sandford_.] I know a suit + Of lovely Lincoln-green, that much shall grace you + In the wear, being glossy, fresh and worn but seld, + Young Stephen Woodvil's they were, Sir Walter's eldest son, + Who died long since in early youth. +_Margaret_. I have somewhere heard his story. I remember + Sir Walter Rowland would rebuke me, being a girl, + When I have asked the manner of his death. + But I forget it. +_Sandford_. One summer night, Sir Francis, as it chanc'd, + Was pacing to and fro in the avenue + That westward fronts our house,-- +_Margaret_. Methinks I should learn something of his story + Whose garments I am to wear. +_Sandford_. Among those aged oaks, etc. + +And so the witch story goes on, not quite as printed as a separate poem +in the _Works_ of 1818 [see page 199], but not differing very +materially.... + +Then comes "Act the Second. John Woodvil alone. Reading a letter (which +stands at the beginning of the book)." The letter is longer in MS. than +in print [see page 160], the words in italics having been withdrawn from +the middle of the second sentence:-- + +"The course I have taken ... seemed to [me] best _both for the warding +off of calumny from myself (which should bring dishonor upon the memory +of Sir Rowland my father, if a daughter of his could be thought to +prefer doubtful ease before virtuous sufferance, softness before +reputation), and_ for the once-for-all releasing of yourself...." + +No notable alteration occurs until we come to the second scene, which in +the MS. (owing to the transposition of Woodvil's soliloquy) followed +immediately on Lovel's reply to Woodvil's speech-- + + No, you shall go with me into the gallery-- + +printed on page 164. + +Scene the Second. Sherwood Forest. Sir Walter Woodvil, Simon, drest as +Frenchmen. + +Sir Walter's opening speech is long in print [page 166]--in MS. it is +but this:-- + +_Sir Walter_. How fares my boy, Simon, my youngest born, + My hope, my pride, young Woodvil, speak to me; + Thinkest thy brother plays thy father false? + My life upon his faith and noble heart; + Son John could never play thy father false. + +There is no further material change to note until we come to the point +in the conversation between Sir Walter, Simon and Margaret [page 172], +where Simon calls John "a scurvy brother," to whom Margaret responds:-- + +_Margaret_. I speak no slander, Simon, of your brother, + He is still the first of men. + +_Simon_. I would fain learn that, if you please. + +_Margaret_. Had'st rather hear his praises in the mass + Or parcel'd out in each particular? + +_Simon_. So please you, in the detail: general praise + We'll leave to his Epitaph-maker. + +_Margaret_. I will begin then-- + His face is Fancy's tablet, where the witch + Paints, in her fine caprice, ever new forms, + Making it apt all workings of the soul, + All passions and their changes to display; + His eye, attention's magnet, draws all hearts. + +_Simon_. Is this all about your son, Sir? + +_Margaret_. Pray let me proceed. His tongue.... + +_Simon_. Well skill'd in lying, no doubt-- + +_Sir Walter_. Ungracious boy! will you not hear her out? + +_Margaret_. His tongue well skill'd in sweetness to discuss-- + (False tongue that seem'd for love-vows only fram'd)-- + +_Simon_. Did I not say so? + +_Margaret_. All knowledge and all topics of converse, + Ev'n all the infinite stuff of men's debate + From matter of fact, to the heights of metaphysick, + How could she think that noble mind + So furnish'd, so innate in all perfections, + The manners and the worth + That go to the making up of a complete Gentleman, + Could from his proper nature so decline + And from that starry height of place he mov'd in + To link his fortune to a lowly Lady + Who nothing with her brought but her plain heart, + And truth of love that never swerv'd from Woodvil. + +_Simon_. Wilt please you hear some vices of this brother, + This all-accomplish'd John? + +_Margaret_. There is no need--I grant him all you say and more, + Vain, ambitious, large of purpose, + Fantastic, fiery, swift and confident, + A wayward child of vanity and spleen, + A hair-brain'd mad-cap, dreamer of gold dreams, + A daily feaster on high self-conceit, + With many glorious faults beside, + Weak minds mistake for virtues. + +_Simon_. Add to these, + That having gain'd a virtuous maiden's love, + One fairly priz'd at twenty times his worth, + He let her wander houseless from his door + To seek new friends and find elsewhere a home. + +_Sir Walter_. Fie upon't-- + All men are false, I think, etc. + +And here we arrive at the "Dying Lover," which was printed anonymously in the +_London Magazine_ for January, 1822. But before passing from the long +passage transcribed above I am bound to say that Lamb drew his pen +through it all, marking some bits "bad" and others "very bad." I venture +to think that in this he did himself some injustice. + +To Sir Walter's sweeping indictment Margaret replies as follows. I keep +to the text of the MS., noting some trifling changes made for the +_London Magazine_ [see page 85]:-- + +_Margaret_. All are not false. I knew a youth who died + For grief, because his Love proved so, + And married to[32] another. + I saw him on the wedding day, + For he was present in the church that day, + And in his best apparel too[33], + As one that came to grace the ceremony. + I mark'd him when the ring was given, + His countenance never changed; + And when the priest pronounced the marriage blessing, + He put a silent prayer up for the bride, + [For they stood near who saw his lips move.][34] + He came invited to the marriage-feast + With the bride's friends, + And was the merriest of them all that day; + But they, who knew him best, call'd it feign'd mirth; + And others said, + He wore a smile like death's[35] upon his face. + His presence dash'd all the beholders' mirth, + And he went away in tears. + +_Simon_. What followed then? + +_Margaret_. Oh! then + He did not as neglected suitors use + Affect a life of solitude in shades, + But lived, + In free discourse and sweet society, + Among his friends who knew his gentle nature best. + Yet ever when he smiled, + There was a mystery legible in his face, + That whoso saw him said he was a man + Not long for this world.---- + And true it was, for even then + The silent love was feeding at his heart + Of which he died: + Nor ever spake word of reproach, + Only he wish'd in death that his remains[36] + Might find a poor grave in some spot, not far + From his mistress' family vault, "being the place + Where one day Anna should herself be laid." + + (So far in the _Magazine_.) + + +[Footnote 32: "With" (_London Magazine_).] + +[Footnote 33: "In festive bravery deck'd" (_London Magazine_).] + +[Footnote 34: This line erased in MS. and nothing substituted. In the +_London Magazine_ this took its place:--"For so his moving lip +interpreted."] + +[Footnote 35: "Death" (_London Magazine_).] + +[Footnote 36: Lamb drew his pen through the four concluding lines, and +wrote in the margin "_very_ bad."] + + +_Simon_. A melancholy catastrophe. For my part I shall never die for +love, being as I am, too general-contemplative for the narrow passion. I +am in some sort a general lover. + +_Margaret_. In the name of the Boy-god who plays at blind man's buff +with the Muses, and cares not whom he catches; what is it you love? + +And so on until the end of Simon's famous description of the delights of +forest life [page 173]. To this + +_Margaret_ (_smiling_). And afterwards them paint in simile. + +(_To Sir Walter._) I had some foolish questions to put concerning your +son, Sir.--Was John so early valiant as hath been reported? I have heard +some legends of him. + +_Sir Walter_. You shall not call them so. Report, in most things +superfluous, in many things altogether an inventress, hath been but too +modest in the delivery of John's true stories. + +_Margaret_. Proceed, Sir. + +_Sir Walter_. I saw him on the day of Naseby Fight-- + To which he came at twice seven years, + Under the discipline of the Lord Ashley, + His uncle by the mother's side, + Who gave his early principles a bent + Quite from the politics of his father's house. + +_Margaret_. I have heard so much. + +_Sir Walter_. There did I see this valiant Lamb of Mars, + This sprig of honour, this unbearded John, + This veteran in green years, this sprout, this Woodvil, + With dreadless ease, guiding a fire-hot steed + Which seem'd to scorn the manage of a boy, + Prick forth with such an ease into the field + To mingle rivalship and deeds of wrath + Even with the sinewy masters of the art[37]! + The rough fanatic and blood-practis'd soldiery + Seeing such hope and virtue in the boy, + Disclosed their ranks to let him pass unhurt, + Checking their swords' uncivil injuries + As both to mar that curious workmanship + Of valour's beauty in his youthful face. + +_Simon_. Mistress Margaret will have need of some refreshment, etc. + +Lamb has drawn his pen through this passage, and marked it "bad or +dubious." + + +[Footnote 37: Some lines intervene here in the letter to Southey of +January 21, 1799, which are not in the MS.] + + At the beginning of the fourth act John Woodvil's soliloquy is broken +in upon by Sandford. He has just told himself [page 186] that + + Some, the most resolved fools of all, + Have told their dearest secrets in their cups, + +when + +_Enter Sandford in haste._ + +_Sandford_. O Sir, you have not told them anything? + +_John_. Told whom, Sandford? + +_Sandford_. Mr. Lovel or Mr. Gray, anything concerning your father? + +_John_. Are they not my friends, Sandford? + +_Sandford_. Your friends! Lord help you, they your friends! They were no +better than two Court spies set on to get the secret out of you. I have +just discovered in time all their practices. + +_John_. But I have told one of them. + +_Sandford_. God forbid, God forbid! + +_John_. How do you know them to be what you said they were? + +_Sandford_. Good God! + +_John_. Tell me, Sandford, my good Sandford, your master begs it of you. + +_Sandford_. I cannot speak to you. [_Goes out, John following him._] + +Scene the Second. The forest. + +This forest scene has been greatly altered. When Gray has said [page +188], "'Tis a brave youth," etc., there follows:-- + +_Sir Walter_. Why should I live any longer? There is my sword +(_surrendering_). Son John, 'tis thou hast brought this disgrace upon us +all. + +_Simon_. Father, why do you cover your face with your hands? Why do you +draw your breath so hard? See, villains, his heart is burst! O villains, +he cannot speak! One of you run for some water; quick, ye musty rogues: +will ye have your throats cut? [_They both slink off._] How is it with +you, father? Look up, Sir Walter, the villains are gone. + +"He hears" [page 188], down to "_Bears in the body_" [page 188], of the +print is not in the MS., which goes on thus:-- + +_Sir Walter_. Barely a minute's breath is left me now, + Which must be spent in charity by me, + And, Simon, as you prize my dying words, + I charge you with your brother live in peace + And be my messenger, + To bear my message to the unhappy boy, + For certain his intent was short of my death. + +_Simon_. I hope as much, father. + +_Sir Walter_. Tell him I send it with my parting prayer, + And you must fall upon his neck and weep, + And teach him pray, and love your brother John, + For you two now are left in the wide world + The sole survivors of the Woodvil name. + Bless you, my sons-- [_Dies._] + +_Simon._ My father's soul is fled. + And now, my trusty servant, my sword, + One labour yet, my sword, then sleep for ever. + Drink up the poor dregs left of Woodvil's name + And fill the measure of our house's crimes. + How nature sickens, + To view her customary bands so snapt + When Love's sweet fires go out in blood of kin, + And natural regards have left the earth. + +Scene changes to another part of the forest. + +_Margaret (alone)._ + They are gone to bear the body to the town, + It was an error merely and no crime. + +And so to the end of her long speech as printed [page 189]. + +At this point in the MS. comes in "the hodge-podge of German +puerilities" (see the letter to Manning, February 15, 1802), the +sacrifice of which so discontented Manning, who evidently considered the +"supplementary scene" (closing the fourth act, [pages 189 to 191]), as +Lamb called it, a poor substitute. + +Scene changes to Woodvil Hall. + +_John reading a letter by scraps--A Servant attending._ + +"An event beyond the possible reach of foresight. 'Tis thought the +deep disgrace of supposed treachery in you o'ercame him. His heart +brake. You will acquit yourself of worse crimes than indiscretion. +My remorse must end with life. + +"Your quondam companion and penitent for the wrong he has done ye. + +"GRAY. + +"_Postscript._--The old man being unhappily removed, the young man's +advancement henceforth will find no impediment." + +_John._ Impediment indeed there now is none: + For all has happened that my soul presag'd. + What hinders, but I enter in forthwith + And take possession of my crowned state? + For thy advancement, Woodvil, is no less; + To be a King, a King. + I hear the shoutings of the under-world, + I hear the unlawful accents of their mirth, + The fiends do shout and clap their hands for joy, + That Woodvil is proclaim'd the Prince of Hell. + They place a burning crown upon my head, + I hear it hissing now, [_Puts his hand to his forehead._] + And feel the snakes about my mortal brain. + [_Sinks in a swoon, is caught in the arms of a servant._] + +Scene. A Courtyard before Woodvil Hall. + +Sandford. Margaret (as just arrived from a journey). + +_Margaret._ Can I see him to-night? + +_Sandford._ I think ye had better stay till the morning: + he will be more calm. + +_Margaret._ You say he gets no sleep? + +_Sandford._ He hath not slept since Sir Walter died. I have sat up with +him these two nights. Francis takes my place to-night--O! Mistress +Margaret, are not the witch's words come true--"All that we feared and +worse"? Go in and change your garments, you have travelled hard and want +rest. + +_Margaret._ I will go to bed. You will promise I shall see him in the +morning. + +_Sandford._ You will sleep in your old chamber? + +_Margaret._ The Tapestry room: yes. Pray get me a light. A good night to +us all. + +_Sandford._ Amen, say I. [_They go in._] + +Scene. The Servants' Hall. + +Daniel, Peter and Robert. + +_Daniel._ Are we all of one mind, fellows? He that lov'd his old master, +speak. Shall we quit his son's service for a better? Is it aye, or no? + +_Peter._ For my part, I am afraid to go to bed to-night. + +_Robert._ For certain, young Master's indiscretion was that which broke +his heart. + +_Peter._ Who sits up with him to-night? + +_Robert._ Francis. + +_Peter._ Lord! what a conscience he must have, that he cannot sleep +alone. + +_Robert._ They say he is troubled with the Night-mare. + +_Daniel._ Here he comes, let us go away as fast as we can. + +_Enter John Woodvil and Francis._ [_They run out._] + +_John._ I lay me down to get a little sleep, + And just when I began to close my eyes, + My eyes heavy to sleep, it comes. + +_Francis._ What comes? + +_John._ I can remember when a child the maids[38] + Would place me on their lap, as they undrest me, + As silly women use, and tell me stories + Of Witches--Make me read "Glanvil on Witchcraft," + And in conclusion show me in the Bible, + The old Family-Bible with the pictures in it, + The 'graving of the Witch raising up Samuel, + Which so possest my fancy, being a child, + That nightly in my dreams an old Hag came + And sat upon my pillow. + I am relapsing into infancy,-- + And shortly I shall dote--for would you think it? + The Hag has come again. Spite of my manhood, + The Witch is strong upon me every night. + [_Walks to and fro, then as if recollecting something._] + What said'st thou, Francis, as I stood in the passage? + Something of a Father: + The word is ringing in my ears now-- + +[Footnote 38: +Twice afterwards Lamb returned to this episode--in "The Witch +Aunt" in story _Mrs. Leicester's School_ (see Vol. III.), and in "Witches +and other Night Fears," in _Elia_ (see Vol. II. 9).] + +_Francis_. I remember, one of the servants, Sir, would pass a few +days with his father at Leicester. The poor old man lies on his deathbed, +and has exprest a desire to see his son before he dies. But none +cared to break the matter to you. + +_John_. Send the man here. [_Francis goes out_.] + My very servants shun my company. + I held my purse to a beggar yesterday + Who lay and bask'd his sores in the hot sun, + And the gaunt pauper did refuse my alms. + +_Francis returns with Robert_. + +_John_. Come hither, Robert. What is the poor man ailing? + +_Robert_. Please your honour, I fear he has partly perish'd for want of +physic. His means are small, and he kept his illness a secret to me not +to put me to expenses. + +_John_. Good son, he weeps for his father. + Go take the swiftest horse in my stables, + Take Lightfoot or Eclipse--no, Eclipse is lame, + Take Lightfoot then, or Princess[39], + Ride hard all night to Leicester. + And give him money, money, Francis-- + The old man must have medicines, cordials, + And broth to keep him warm, and careful nurses. + He must not die for lack of tendance, Robert. + +[Footnote 39: Lamb puts his pen through these two lines, and writes across +them "miserable bad."] + +_Robert_. God bless your honour for your kindness to my poor father. + +_John_. Pray, now make haste. You may chance to come in time. + +[_Robert goes out_.] + +_John_. Go get some firewood, Francis, + And get my supper ready. [_Francis goes out_.] + The night is bitter cold. + They in their graves feel nothing of the cold, + Or if they do, how dull a cold-- + All clayey, clayey. Ah God! who waits below? + Come up, come quick. I saw a fearful sight. + +_Francis returns in haste with wood_. + +_John_. There are such things as spirits, deny it who may. + Is it you, Francis? Heap the wood on thick, + We two shall sup together, sup all night, + Carouse, drink drunk, and tell the merriest tales-- + Tell for a wager, who tells merriest-- + But I am very weak. O tears, tears, tears, + I feel your just rebuke. [_Goes out_.] + +Scene changes to a bed-room. John sitting alone: a lamp burning by him. + +"Infinite torments for finite offences." I will never believe it. How +divines can reconcile this monstrous tenet with the spirit of their +Theology! They have palpably failed in the proof, for to put the +question thus:--If he being infinite--have a care, Woodvil, the latitude +of doubting suits not with the humility of thy condition. What good men +have believed, may be true, and what they profess to find set down +clearly in their scriptures, must have probability in its defence[40]. +Touching that other question the Casuists with one consent have +pronounced the sober man accountable for the deeds by him in a state of +drunkenness committed, because tho' the action indeed be such as he, +sober, would never have committed, yet the drunkenness being an act of +the will, by a moral fiction, the issues are accounted voluntary also. I +lose my sleep in attending to these intricacies of the schoolmen. I lay +till daybreak the other morning endeavouring to draw a line of +distinction between sin of direct malice and sin of malice indirect, or +imputable only by the sequence. My brain is overwrought by these +labours, and my faculties will shortly decline into impotence. [_Throws +himself on a bed_.] + +End of the Fourth Act. + + +[Footnote 40: Lamb had crossed out this passage from "Infinite +torments," and written at "touching" "begin here."] + + +In the fifth act of the printed play [page 192] we have simply "Margaret +enters." In the MS. Sandford prepares his master for her advent, and +announces her thus:-- + +_Sandford_. Wilt please you to see company to-day, Sir? + +_John_. Who thinks me worth the visiting? + +_Sandford_. One that traveled hard last night to see you, +She waits to know your pleasure. + +_John_. A lady too! pray send her to me-- +Some curiosity, I suppose. + +[_Sandford goes out and returns with Margaret_.] + +_Margaret_. Woodvil![41] + + +[Footnote 41: "Woodvil!" and some illegible words struck out, and nothing +substituted.] + + +_John_. Comes Margaret here, etc. + +When, a page further on [page 194], John has declared to Margaret that + + This earth holds not alive so poor a thing as I am-- + I was not always thus, + +the MS. went on (but the passage is struck out as "bad"):-- + + You must bear with me, Margaret, as a child, + For I am weak as tender Infancy + And cannot bear rebuke-- + Would'st think it, Love! + They hoot and spit upon me as I pass + In the public streets: one shows me to his neighbour, + Who shakes his head and turns away with horror-- + I was not always thus-- + +_Margaret_. Thou noble nature, etc. + +The next scene--the last [page l95]--is much cut about. The long speech +of Margaret beginning, + + To give you in your stead a better self, + +and John's reply [both printed at pages 196-7], are struck out, and +"Nimis" written by Lamb's pen in large characters in the margin; +but after that all goes on in harmony with the print, to the end:-- + + It seem'd the guilt of blood was passing from me + Even in the act and agony of tears + And all my sins forgiven. +At this point in the MS. Simon arrives:-- + + [_A noise is heard as of one without, clamorous to come in_.] + +_Margaret_. 'Tis your brother Simon, John. + +_Enter Simon, with his sword in a menacing posture, John staggers +towards him and falls at his feet, Margaret standing over him._ + +_Simon_. Is this the man I came so far to see-- + The perfect Cavalier, the finish'd courtier + Whom Ladies lov'd, the gallant curled Woodvil, + Whom brave men fear'd, the valiant, fighting Woodvil, + The haughty high-ambitioned Parricide-- + The same that sold his father's secret in his cups, + And held it but an after-dinner's trick?-- + So humble and in tears, a crestfallen penitent, + And crawling at a younger brother's feet! + The sinews of my [_stiff_] revenge grow slack. + My brother, speak to me, my brother John. + (_Aside_) Now this is better than the beastly deed + Which I did meditate. + +_John (rising and resuming his old dignity)_. You come to take my life, + I know it well. + You come to fight with me--[_Laying his hand upon his sword_.] + This arm was busy on the day of Naseby: + 'Tis paralytic now, and knows no use of weapons. + The luck is yours, Sir. [_Surrenders his sword_.] + +_Simon_. My errand is of peace: + A dying father's blessing and lost prayers + For his misguided son. + Sir Walter sends it with his parting breath. + He bade me with my brother live in peace, + He bade me fall upon his neck and weep, + (As I now do) and love my brother John; + For we are only left in the wide world + The poor survivors of the Woodvil name. [_They embrace_.] + +_Simon_. And Margaret here shall witness our atonement-- + (For Margaret still hath followed all your fortunes). + And she shall dry thy tears and teach thee pray. + So we'll together seek some foreign land, + Where our sad story, John, shall never reach. + +_End of "Pride's Cure" and Charles Lamb's Dramatic Works!!_ + + +After all this [Mr. Campbell adds finally] is the reader prepared to +think Manning altogether wrong and Lamb altogether right as to what was +done in the process of transforming Pride's Cure into _John Woodvil_? + +The version of 1818 here printed differs practically only in +minor matters of typography and punctuation from that of 1802. +There are, however, a few alterations which should be noted. On +page 176, in John's first speech, "fermentations" was, in 1802, +"stimuli." On page 178, in the speech of the Third Gentleman, +there is a change. In 1802 he said "(_dashing his glass down_) +Pshaw, damn these acorn cups, they would not drench a fairy. +Who shall pledge," &c. And at the end of Act III, one line is +omitted. In 1802 John was made to say, after disarming Lovel +(page 186):-- + + Still have the will without the power to execute, + As unfear'd Eunuchs meditate a rape. + +This simile, which one reviewer fell upon with some violence, was +not reprinted. + +Mr. Thomas Hutchinson, writing in The Athenceum, December 28, 1901, +remarks: "The truth is that in Lamb's imitations of the elder writers +'anachronistic improprieties' (as Thomas Warton would say) are +exceedingly rare. In _John Woodvil_ it would not, I think, be easy to +discover more than two: _caprice_, which, in the sense of 'a capricious +disposition,' seems to belong to the eighteenth century, and _anecdotes_ +(i.e., 'secret Court history'), which, in its English form at least, +probably does not occur much before 1686." + +This note is already too long, or I should like to say something of the +reception of _John Woodvil_, which was not cordial. The _Annual Review_ +was particularly severe, and the _Edinburgh_ caustic. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 109. "THE WITCH." + +In the _Works_, 1818, this dramatic sketch followed _John Woodvil_. + +Lamb sent "The Witch" to Robert Lloyd in November, 1798 (see _Charles +Lamb and the Lloyds_, page 91), in a version differing widely from that +of the _Works_ here given. The speakers are Sir Walter Woodvil's steward +and Margaret. The principal variation is this, after the curse:-- + +_Margaret_. A terrible curse! + +_Old Steward_. O Lady! such bad things are said of that old woman, + You would be loth to hear them! + Namely, that the milk she gave was sour, + And the babe, who suck'd her, shrivell'd like a mandrake, + And things besides, with a bigger horror in them, + Almost, I think, unlawful to be told! + +In the penultimate line "The mystery of God" was "Creation's beauteous +workmanship." + + + * * * * * + + +Page 202. "MR. H----." + +Lamb composed this farce in the winter 1805-1806. Writing to Hazlitt on +February 19, 1806, he says: "Have taken a room at 3s. a week to be in +between 5 and 8 at night, to avoid my _nocturnal_ alias _knock-eternal_ +visitors. The first-fruits of my retirement has been a farce which goes +to manager tomorrow." Mary Lamb, writing to Sarah Stoddart at about the +same time, says: "Charles is gone [to the lodging] to finish the farce, +and I am to hear it read this night. I am so uneasy between my hopes and +fears of how I shall like it, that I do not know what I am doing." The +next day or so, February 21, she says that she liked the farce "very +much, and cannot help having great hopes of its success"--stating that +she has carried it to Mr. Wroughton at Drury Lane. + +The reply came on June n, 1806, saying that the farce was accepted, +subject to a few alterations, and would be produced in due course (see +Lamb's letter to Wordsworth, written in "wantonness of triumph," of June +26). Mary Lamb, writing to Sarah Stoddart, probably in October, 1806, +says that + + Charles took an emendated copy of his farce to Mr. Wroughton, the + Manager, yesterday. Mr. Wroughton was very friendly to him, and + expressed high approbation of the farce; but there are two, he tells + him, to come out before it.... We are pretty well, and in fresh + hopes about this farce. + +Lamb tells Manning about it, on December 5, adding after an outline of +the plot:--"That's the idea--how flat it is here--but how whimsical in +the farce!" Later he says: "I shall get £200 from the theatre if 'Mr. +H----' has a good run, and, I hope, £100 for the copyright. Nothing if +it fails; and there never was a more ticklish thing. The whole depends +on the manner in which the name is brought out, which I value myself on, +as a _chef-d'oeuvre_." And a little later still: "N.B. If my little +thing don't succeed, I shall easily survive." + +"Mr. H----" was produced on December 10, 1806. The play-bill for the +night ran thus:-- + + Theatre Royal, Drury-Lane + This present Wednesday, December 10, 1806 + Their Majesties Servants will act the Operatic Drama of + The Travellers; + Or, Music's Fascination + [&c. &c.] + After which will be produced (Never Acted) a new Farce, in Two acts, + called, + Mr. H---- + The Characters by + Mr. Elliston + Mr. Wewitzer, Mr. Hartley, Mr. Penley, Mr. Purser + Mr. Carles, Mr. Cooke, Mr. Fisher, Mr. Placide, Mr. Webb + Miss Mellon, Mrs. Sparks + Miss Tidswell, Mrs. Harlowe + Mrs. Scott, Mrs. Maddocks, Miss Sanders + The Prologue to be spoken by Mr. Elliston + [&c., &c.] + +According to Mrs. Baron-Wilson's _Memoirs of (Miss Mellon) +Harriet, Duchess of St. Albans_, Lamb was allowed to cast "Mr. +H----" himself. Miss Mellon played the heroine. + +The Lambs sat near the orchestra with Hazlitt and Crabb Robinson, and +the house was well salted with friendly clerks from the East India House +and the South-Sea House. The prologue went capitally; and all was well +with the play until the name of Hogsflesh was pronounced. Then +disapproval set in in a storm of hisses, in which, Crabb Robinson tells +us, Lamb joined heartily, standing on his seat to do so. + +In a report of the first night of "Mr. H----" in _Monthly Literary +Recreations_ for December, 1806, we read that on the secret of the name +being made public "all interest vanished, the audience were disgusted, +and the farce went on to its very conclusion almost unheard, amidst the +contending clamours of 'Silence,' 'Hear! hear!' and 'Off! off! off!'" + +Writing to Wordsworth on the next day Lamb told the story:--"Mr. H---- +came out last night and failed. I had many fears; the subject was not +substantial enough. John Bull must have solider fare than a _Letter_. We +are pretty stout about it, have had plenty of condoling friends, but +after all, we had rather it should have succeeded. You will see the +Prologue in most of the Morning Papers. It was received with such shouts +as I never witness'd to a Prologue. It was attempted to be encored. How +hard! a thing I did merely as a task, because it was wanted--and set no +great store by; and Mr. H.!! The quantity of friends we had in the house +my brother and I being in Public Offices &c. was astonishing--but they +yielded at length to a few hisses--"a hundred hisses--damn the word, I +write it like kisses--how different--a hundred hisses outweigh 1000 +claps. The former come more directly from the Heart. Well, 'tis +withdrawn and there is an end. Better Luck to us." + +Writing to Sarah Stoddart, Lamb put the case thus:--"Mary is a little +cut at the ill success of 'Mr. H.,' which came out last night, and +_failed_. I know you'll be sorry, but never mind. We are determined not +to be cast down. I am going to leave off tobacco, and then we must +thrive. A smoking man must write smoky farces." Thereafter Lamb's +attitude to "Mr. H----" was always one of humorous resignation. + +Lamb should have chosen a better, by which I mean a worse, +name than Hogsflesh. As a matter of fact a great number of +persons had become quite accustomed to the asperities of Hogsflesh, +not only from the famous cricketer of that name, one of the pioneers +of the game, but also from the innkeeper at Worthing. Indeed an +old rhyme current at the end of the eighteenth century anticipated +some of Lamb's humour, for the two principal landlords of Worthing, +which was just then beginning to be a fashionable resort, were +named Hogsflesh and Bacon, leading to the quatrain:-- + + Brighton is a pretty street, + Worthing is much taken; + If you can't get any other meat + There's Hogsflesh and Bacon. + +The Drury Lane authorities do not seem to have considered the failure as +absolute as did Lamb, for on the next day--December 11--the bills +announced:-- + + *** The New Farce of Mr. H----, performed for the first time last + night, was received by an overflowing audience with universal applause, + and will be repeated for the second time to-morrow. + +But the next evening's bill--December 12, 1806--stated that "The New +Farce of Mr. H---- is withdrawn at the request of the author." + +"Mr. H----" did not then disappear altogether from the stage. A +correspondent of _Notes and Queries_, May 26, 1855, remembered seeing it +at Philadelphia when he was a boy. The last scene, he says, particularly +amused the audience. And in William B. Wood's _Personal Recollections of +the Stage_, 1855, it is recorded of the Philadelphia Theatre, of which +he was manager, that in 1812, "Charles Lamb's excellent farce of 'Mr. +H----' met with extraordinary success, and was played an unusual number +of nights." Lamb, however, did not profit thereby. + +The little play was published in Philadelphia in 1813 under the title +_Mr. H----, or Beware a Bad Name. A farce in two acts, as performed at +the Philadelphia Theatre_--Lamb's name not figuring in any way in +connection with it. + +In England "Mr. H----" was not revived until 1885, when, as a curiosity, +it was played by the Dramatic Students' Society. The performance was +held at the Gaiety on October 27, 1885, the prologue being spoken by a +gentleman made up to resemble Lamb. At the Cheadle Town Hall on October +19 and 20, 1910, "Mr. H----" was given again, with the difference that +the secret of the name was disclosed from the start. + +In _Notes and Queries_, August 3, 1889, the following amusing play-bill +was printed, contributed by Mr. Bertram Dobell:-- + + Theatre Royal, English Opera House, Strand. + Particularly Private. + This present FRIDAY, April 26, 1822, + Will be presented a FARCE called + Mr. H.... + (_N.B. This piece was damned at Drury Lane Theatre._) + [Caste follows.] + Previous to which a PROLOGUE will be spoken by Mrs. EDWIN. +After the Farce (for the first Time in this country, and now performing + with immense success in Paris) + A French _Petite Comedie_, called + Le Comedien D'Etampes. + (N.B. _This piece was never acted in London, and may very probably + be damned HERE_.) + [Caste follows.] + Immediately after which + A LOVER'S CONFESSION, in the shape of a SONG, + by M. EMILE + (From the Theatre de la Poste St. Martin, at Paris.) + To conclude with a _Pathetic Drama_, in + One Act, called + The Sorrows of Werther. + (N.B. This Piece was damned at Covent Garden Theatre.) + [Caste follows.] + Brothers and Sisters of Charlotte, by six Cherubims + got for the occasion. + Orchestra. + Leader of the Band, Mr. Knight, Conductor, Mr. E. Knight. + Piano Forte, Mr. Knight, Jun. Harpsichord, Master Knight (that was). + Clavecin, by the Father of the Knights, to come. + Vivat Rex! No Money returned (because none will be taken). + _On account of the above surprising Novelty, not an_ ORDER _can + possibly be admitted:_-- +_But it is requested, that if such a thing finds its way into the front + of the house_, IT WILL BE KEPT. + Doors open at Half past Six, begin at Half past Seven precisely. + The Entrance for all parts of the House at the Private Box Door in + Exeter Street. + Lowndes, Printer, Marquis Court, Drury Lane, London. + +Mr. Dobell wonders if Lamb had any knowledge of this performance, and he +suggests that possibly he had a hand in the bill. Certainly the +interpolations concerning damnation are in his manner. + +I add a few notes:-- + +Page 208. _The man with the great nose_. See Slawkenbergius's tale in +_Tristram Shandy_, Vol. IV. + +Page 212. _The feeling Hurley_. Harley was the hero of Henry Mackenzie's +novel, _The Man of Feeling_. + +Page 217. _Jeremiah Pry_. John Poole may have taken a hint here for his +farce "Paul Pry," produced in September, 1825. Lamb and he knew each +other slightly. Lamb analysed the prying nature again in _The New Times_ +early in 1825, in two papers on "Tom Pry" and "Tom Pry's Wife" which +will be found in Vol. I. of this edition. + +Page 220. _Old Q----_. William Douglas, fourth Duke of Queensberry +(1724-1810), the most notorious libertine of his later days. + +Page 224. _John, my valet_. This is a very similar incident to that +described in the _Elia_ essay on the "Old Benchers," where Lovel (John +Lamb) warns Samuel Salt, when dressing him, not to allude, at the party +to which he is going, to the unfortunate Miss Blandy. + +Page 228, line 1. _Mother Damnable_. There was at Kentish Town a +notorious old shrew who bore this nickname in the 17th century. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 238. "THE PAWNBROKER'S DAUGHTER." + +Printed in _Blackwood_, January, 1830, and not reprinted by Lamb. + +This little play was never acted. Lamb refers to it in a letter to +Bernard Barton--in July, 1829--as "an old rejected farce"; and Canon +Ainger mentions a note of Lamb's to Charles Mathews, in October, 1828, +offering the farce for production at the Adelphi. The theme is one that +seems always to have interested Lamb (see his essay on the +"Inconveniences of Being Hanged," Vol. I.). + + +Page 243, line 3. "_An Argument against the Use of Animal Food._" Joseph +Ritson, 1752-1803, the antiquarian, was converted to vegetarianism by +Mandeville's _Fable of the Bees_. The work from which Cutlet quotes was +published in 1802. Pope's motto is from the _Essay on Man_, I., lines +81-84. + + +Page 243, last line. _Mr. Molyneux ... in training to fight Cribb_. +Cutlet's rump steak did not avail in either of the great struggles +between Tom Cribb and Tom Molineaux. At their first meeting, on December +18, 1810, Molineaux went under at the thirty-third round; and in the +return match, on September 28, 1811, Molineaux's jaw was broken at the +ninth and he gave in at the eleventh, to the great disappointment of the +20,000 spectators. Mr. Molineaux was a negro. + + + + + +END OF VOL. IV. + + + + + +INDEX + + +A + +Acrostics: + +"In the Album of a very Young Lady" + "To Caroline Maria Applebee" + "To Cecilia Catherine Lawton" + "To a Lady who Desired me to Write Her Epitaph" + "To Her youngest Daughter" + "To Mrs. F----, on Her Return from Gibraltar" + "To Esther Field" + "To Mrs. Williams" + "To S.F." + "To R.Q." + "To S.L." + "To M.L." + "An Acrostic against Acrostics" + "Un Solitaire" + "To S.T." + "To Mrs. Sarah Robinson" + "To Sarah" + "Acrostic" (Joseph Vale Asbury) + "To D.A." + "To Sarah James of Beguildy" + "To Emma Button" + +Addington, Henry, Lamb's epigram on + +Aders, Charles, Lamb's poem to + +_Albion, The,_ and Lamb + +"ALBUM VERSES" + "In the Album of a Clergyman's Lady" + "In the Autograph Book of Mrs. Sergeant W----" + "In the Album of Lucy Barton" + "In the Album of Miss ----" + "In the Album of a very Young Lady" + "In the Album of a French Teacher" + "In the Album of Miss Daubeny" + "In the Album of Mrs. Jane Towers" + "In My Own Album" + "In the Album of Edith S----" + "To Dora W----" + "In the Album of Rotha Q----" + "In the Album of Catherine Orkney" + "What is an Album" + "The First Leaf of Spring" + "To M.L.F." + "To the Book" + "On Being Asked to Write in Miss Westwood's Album" + "In Miss Westwood's Album" + "The Sisters" (See also under the heading of ACROSTICS.) + +"Angel Help" + +Ann Simmons (Lamb's "Anna") + +_Annual Anthology_, Lamb's contribution to + +_Anti-Jacobin, The,_ and Lamb + +"ANTONIO" by Godwin + +"Ape, The" + +_Athenaeum, The_, Lamb's contributions to + + +B + +"Ballad Noting the Difference of Rich and Poor" + "from the German" + "Singers, The" + +"Barton, Bernard, To" + Lucy, Lamb's verses to + +Beaumont, Francis, quoted + +_Bijou, The_, Lamb's contribution to + +_Blackwood's Magazine_, the Lambs' contributions to + +Blakesware and Widford + +"BLANK VERSE," by Lloyd and Lamb + +Bourne, Vincent + Lamb's translations + +Burney, Martin, Lamb's sonnet to + Sarah, Lamb's poem to + +Burton, Lamb's imitation of + +Byron, Lord, Lamb's epigram on + + +C + +Campbell, J. Dykes, on JOHN WOODVIL + +Canning, George, Lamb's epigrams on + +Caroline of Brunswick, Lamb's championship of + +Carter, Ben, of Blakesware + +"Catechist, The Young" + +_Champion, The_, Lamb's contributions to + +"Change, The" + +Chatterton, Thomas + +"Cheap Gifts" + +"Childhood" + +"Christening, The" + +Clarkes, the Cowden + +Coleridge, S.T., Lamb's dedication to + his "POEMS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS" + his "POEMS" + and Sara, Lamb's lines to + his "REMORSE" + his alteration of Lamb's sonnets + on Lamb's sonnet "We were two pretty babes" + in Gillray's cartoon + and "The Old Familiar Faces" + his translation of "Thekla's Song" + Sara, her Latinity + +"Composed at Midnight" + +"Confidant, The," by Crabbe, adapted by Lamb + +"Cook, To David" + +Cornwall, Barry. See PROCTER, B.W. + +Cowley, Abraham, quoted + +"Cowper, To the Poet" + +Crabbe, George, Lamb's adaptation of + + +D + +Da Vinci, Leonardo, poems upon + +Day, Matthew, Lamb's epigram on + +Dedication of Lamb's "WORKS" to Coleridge + of Lamb's "POEMS," 1797, to his sister + +Dedication of Lamb's "ALBUM VERSES" to Moxon + +Defoe, Daniel + +"Dialogue between a Mother and Child" + +"Dick Strype" + +"Divine Subjects, Fancy Employed on" + +Dix, Margaret, Lamb's epitaph on + +Dockwra, Tom, of Widford + +Dorrell, William, the swindler + +"Douglas, The Tomb of" + +Drake, Onesimus, of the East India House + +"Dramatic Fragment" + +Druitt, Mary, Lamb's epitaph upon + +"Dying Lover" + + +E + +East India House epigrams + +_Englishman's Magazine_, Lamb's contributions to + +Epigrams possibly by Lamb + +Epilogue to Godwin's "ANTONIO" + to Siddons' "TIME'S A TELL-TALE" + to Kenney's "DEBTOR AND CREDITOR" + to an amateur performance of "RICHARD II" + to Knowles' "THE WIFE" + +"Epitaph on a Dog" + "on a Young Lady" + +_Examiner_, The, Lamb's contributions to + +"Existence, Considered in Itself, no Blessing" + + +F + +"Faces, The Old Familiar" + +"Family Name, The" + +"Fancy Employed on Divine Subjects" + +"Farewell to Tobacco, A" + +"FARMER, PRISCILLA, POEMS ON THE DEATH OF" + +Fast Day, Lamb's epigram on + +"FAULKENER," by Godwin + +"Female Orators, The" + +Fenwick, John, editor of _The Albion_ + +Field, family, the poems to + Mrs., Lamb's grandmother + +"Free Thoughts on Several Eminent Composers" + +Frend, Sophia, Lamb's poems to, + +Frere, John Hookham, Lamb's epigram on + +"Friend, To a" + +"From the Latin" + +Fryer, Miss, Lamb's poem for + + +G + +George IV., Lamb's epigrams on + +Gifford, William, Lamb's sonnet upon + +Gillray, James, his cartoons + +"Gipsy's Malison, The" + +Godwin, William, his "ANTONI" + his "FAULKENER" + +Goethe on Lamb's "Family Name" + +"Going or Gone" + +"Grandame, The" + +GRAY, ROSAMUND, quoted + + +H + +Hamilton of Bangor quoted + +Hardy, Lieutenant, Lamb's poem to + +"Harmony in Unlikeness" + +Haydon, B.R., Lamb's verses to + +Hazlitt, William, on Lamb in the country + +"Helen" + +"Hercules Pacificatus" + +Hessey, Archdeacon, his memories of Lamb + +"Hester" + +Hogsflesh, a well-known name + +Hone, William, Lamb's poem to + his publications, Lamb's contributions to + +Hood, Thomas, his child's death + +"House-keeper, The" + +Hunt, Leigh, Lamb's poem to + on "Composed at Midnight" + and Lamb's poem, "To T.L.H." + Thornton, Lamb's poem to + +Hutchinson, Mr. Thomas, on JOHN WOODVIL + +"Hypochondriacus" + + +I + +"In Tabulam Eximii...." + +_Indicator, The_, Lamb's contributions to + +Isola, Agostino + Emma, Lamb's poems to + + +J + +Jerdan, William, Lamb's epigram on + +JOHN WOODVIL + volume, 1802, poems in + + +K + +Kelly, Frances Maria (Fanny), and Lamb + +"Kelly, To Miss" + +Kenney, James, his "DEBTOR AND CREDITOR" + +Knight, Ann. + +Knowles, James Sheridan. + his comedy "THE WIFE" + + +L + +"Lady's Sapphic, A" + +Lamb, Charles, dedicates his "WORKS" to Coleridge + at the Salutation Inn + his Earliest Poem, "Mille viae mortis" + his contributions to Coleridge's "POEMS" + his praise of Mrs. Siddons + his partnership with Coleridge + his love poems + verses on his grandmother + his contributions to Coleridge's "POEMS," 1797 + his poems to his sister + his verses to Charles Lloyd + his verses to Cowper + his Bristol holiday refused + his contributions to "BLANK VERSE," 1798 + his lines on his aunt + his lines on his father + his grief for his mother's death + his "Old Familiar Faces" + Mary Lamb laughs at him in "Helen" + his translation from the German + his imitations of Burton + his "WORKS" + his lines on Hester Savory + his "Farewell to Tobacco" + his lines to Thornton Leigh Hunt + his sonnets to Miss Kelly + his sonnet on his name + his sonnet to his brother + his sonnet to Martin Burney + his "ALBUM VERSES" + his poem on Hood's child + his verses to Bernard Barton + his verses on Emma Isola + his sonnets on "Work" and "Leisure" + his sonnets to Samuel Rogers + his sonnet on the sheep stealer + his sonnet to Barry Cornwall + his lines to Sheridan Knowles + his quatrains to Hone + his skill in acrostics + his translations from Bourne + his "Ode to the Treadmill" + his poem on old Widford friends + his "POETICAL WORKS," 1836 + his sonnet to Stothard + his lines to Moxon on his marriage + his poems on Louisa Martin + his "Free Thoughts on Composers" + his epitaph on Mary Druitt + his verses to Haydon + his sonnet to Sarah Burney + his sonnet to Leigh Hunt + his lines to Charles Aders + his translations from Palingenius + his lines to Clara Novello + ALBUM VERSES AND ACROSTICS + his political and other epigrams + and Sir James Mackintosh + his attacks on Canning + his contempt for George IV. + his attack on Gifford + on the spy system + his defence of Caroline of Brunswick + epigram on Lord Byron + writes for Merchant Taylors' boys + burlesque of "Angel Help" + his "Satan in Search of a Wife" + as a writer of prologues and epilogues + as a playwright + +Lamb, Charles, and Coleridge's pamphlet of sonnets + his dedication of his verses to Mary Lamb + and _The Anti-Jacobin_ + and Coleridge's "Wallenstein" + and Dr. Parr + his dedication to Moxon + attacked by _Literary Gazette_ + defended by Southey in _The Times_ + frames a picture with Hood + and Henry Meyer + and the thought of death + his letter from Samuel Rogers + on "The Gipsy's Malison" + Mary Lamb's poem on him + his farewell to albums + Archdeacon Hessey's memories of him + his epigrams on India House clerks + his generosity to Moxon + his history of JOHN WOODVIL + on the title of "Pride's Cure" + sends JOHN WOODVIL to Manning + on the plot of "MR. H." + hisses his own play + Elizabeth, Lamb's mother + John, Lamb's father + Lamb's brother, sonnet to + Mary, poems by + Lamb's poems + dedication to + on the death of John Wordsworth + her Latin pupils + Sarah (Hetty), Lamb's aunt + +Landon, L.E., Lamb + +Latin epigram by Lamb + verses to Haydon + +"Leisure" + +Lilley, John, of Blakesware + +"Lines Addressed ... to Sara and S.T.C." + "Suggested by a Picture of Two Females" + "on the Same Picture being Removed to Make Place for the + Portrait of a Lady by Titian" + "on Da Vinci's 'Virgin of the Rocks'" (two poems) + "Addressed to Lieutenant Hardy" + "for a Monument" + +_Literary Gazette_, Lamb's epigram on + and "ALBUM VERSES" + +"Living without God in the World" + +Lloyd, Charles, "POEMS ON THE DEATH OF PRISCILLA FARMER" + Lamb's poems to + his "BLANK VERSE" + his "Lines on the Fast" + and Sophia Pemberton + and JOHN WOODVIL + +_London Magazine_, Lamb's contributions to + +"Love will Come" + + +M + +Mackintosh, Sir James, Lamb's verses to + +Manning, Thomas, and JOHN WOODVIL + +Martin, Louisa, Lamb's poems on + +Massinger, Philip, quoted + +Merchant Taylors' School, epigrams by Lamb + +Meyer, Henry + +"Mille Viae Mortis" + +Mitford, John + +Molineaux the pugilist + +_Monthly Magazine, The_, Lamb's contributions to + +_Morning Chronicle_, Lamb's contributions to + _Post_, Lamb's contributions to + +Moxon, Edward, Lamb's poem to + his career + Lamb's dedication to + +"MR. H----" + in America + +Music, Lamb and + + +N + +Nelson, epigram on + +_New Monthly Magazine_, Lamb's contribution to + + _Times_, Lamb's contribution to + +Newton's _Principia_ + +"Nonsense Verses" + +Novello, Clara, Lamb's poems to + the three sisters + + +O + +"Old Familiar Faces, The" + +"On a Deaf and Dumb Artist" + +"On a Sepulchral Statue of an Infant Sleeping" + +"On an Infant Dying as soon as Born" + +"On seeing Mrs. K---- B----, aged upwards of eighty, nurse an Infant" + +"On the Sight of Swans in Kensington Garden" + +Orkney, Catherine, Lamb's poem to + + +P + +Palingenius, Lamb's translations of + +Parr, Dr., and Lamb + +"Parting Speech of the Celestial Messenger" + +"Pawnbroker's Daughter, The" + +Pemberton, Sophia, and Charles Lloyd + +Pichot, Amédée, his translation of "The Family Name" + +"Pindaric Ode to the Tread Mill" + +Pitt, William, epigram on + +Plumer, Mrs., of Gilston + +"POEMS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS," Lamb's contributions to + +_Poetical Recreations of "The Champion"_ + +"POETICAL WORKS OF CHARLES LAMB" + +"Pride's Cure," first name for JOHN WOODVIL + +Procter, B.W. (Barry Cornwall) + +Prologue to Godwin's "FAULKENER" + Coleridge's "REMORSE" + Knowles' "THE WIFE" + + +Q + +"Quatrains to the Editor of the _Every-Day Book_" + +Quillinan, Rotha, Lamb's poems to. + + +R + +_Reflector, The_, Lamb's contribution to + +"Repentance, A Vision of" + +"RICHARD II.," Lamb's epilogue for + +Rigg family, the, tragedy of + +"Rival Bells, The" + +Rogers, Daniel, Lamb's sonnet on + Samuel, on his brother's death + "To Samuel" (two poems) + +ROSAMUND GRAY quoted + +Rutter, Mr. J.A., and "The Old Familiar Faces" + + +S + +"Sabbath Bells, The" + +"St. Crispin to Mr. Gifford" + +"Salome" + +Salutation Inn + +"SATAN IN SEARCH OF A WIFE" + +Schiller translated by Lamb + +"Self-Enchanted, The" + +"She is Going" + +Siddons, Mrs., Lamb's sonnet to + Henry, his "TIME'S A TELL-TALE" + +Simmons, Ann (Lamb's "Anna") + +Smoking, Lamb on + +Solomon, Dr., of the Balm of Gilead + +Sonnet: "As when a child" + "Was it some sweet device" + "Methinks how dainty sweet" + "O! I could laugh" + "When last I roved" + "A timid grace" + "If from my lips" + "We were two pretty" + "The Lord of Life" + "To a Friend" + "To Miss Kelly" + "On the Sight of Swans in Kensington Garden" + "The Family Name" + "To John Lamb, Esq." + "To Martin Charles Burney, Esq." + "Harmony in Unlikeness" + "Written at Cambridge" + "To a Celebrated Female Performer in the 'Blind Boy'" + "Work" + "Leisure" + "To Samuel Rogers, Esq." + "The Gipsy's Malison" + "To the Author of Poems Published under the Name of Barry Cornwall," + "In the Album of Edith S----" + "To Dora W----" + "In the Album of Rotha Q----" + "To T. Stothard, Esq." + "O lift with reverent hand" + "To Miss Burney" + "To Samuel Rogers, Esq., on the New Edition of his _Pleasures of Memory_" + "To Louisa Morgan" + "St. Crispin to Mr. Gifford" + "To Mathew Wood, Esq." + "O gentle look," by Coleridge and Lamb + +Southey, Edith, Lamb's poem to + Robert, in Gillray's cartoon + his defence of Lamb + and JOHN WOODVIL + +Spy system, Lamb's verses on + +Stothard, Thomas, Lamb's poem to + +Sturms, Captain, of the East India House + +Suidas, Lamb's adaptation of + + +T + +"Thekla's Song," by Schiller + +Thelwall, John, and _The Champion_ + +"Three Graves, The" + +"Time and Eternity" + +_Times, The_, Lamb's contributions to + +"To a Young Friend" (two poems) + +"To a Young Lady" + +"To Bernard Barton" + +"To C. Aders, Esq." + +"To Charles Lloyd" + (second poem) + +"To Clara N----" + +"To David Cook" + +"To Emma Learning Latin" + +"To John Lamb, Esq." + +"To Margaret W----" + +"To Martin Charles Burney, Esq." + +"To Miss Burney" + +"To My Friend _The Indicator_" + +"To R.S. Knowles, Esq." + +"To Samuel Rogers, Esq." (two poems). + +"To Sir James Mackintosh" + +"To T.L.H." + +"To the Author of Poems Published under the Name of Barry Cornwall" + +"To the Poet Cowper" + +"To T. Stotbard, Esq." + +"To a Friend on his Marriage" + +"To Louisa M----" + +"Tobacco, A Farewell to" + +"Tomb of Douglas, The" + +Towers, Mrs. Jane, Lamb's verses to. + +Treadmill, the, Lamb's ode to. + +"Triumph of the Whale, The" + +Tween, Mrs., on Lamb. + +"Twelfth Night Characters" + + +V + +"Vision of Repentance, A" + + +W + +Wagstaff, Timothy, of the East India House + +"Wallenstein," ballad from + +Wawd (or Wodd) of the East India House + +Westwood, Frances, the Lambs' poems to + +"Whale, The Triumph of the" + +"What is an Album?" + +Wheatley, Kitty + +Widford and Blakesware + +"Wife's Trial, The" + +Wilde, Sergeant, Mrs., Lamb's verses to + +William IV., Lamb's epigram on + +Williams, Mrs., of Fornham, and family + +"Witch, The" + +Wood, Matthew, Lamb's sonnet to + +WOODVIL, JOHN, poems in + +Wordsworth, Dora, Lamb's poem to + John, lines on his death + +"Work" + +"WORKS," 1818, dedication of + poems in + +"Written a Year after the Events" + +"Written at Cambridge" + +"Written on Christmas Day" + +"Written on the Day of my Aunt's Funeral" + +"Written soon after the Preceding Poem" + +"Written upon the Cover of a Blotting Book" + + +Y + +"Young Catechist, The" + +"Young Friend, To a" (two poems) + +"Young Lady, To a" + + + + +INDEX OF FIRST LINES + +A Heart which felt unkindness, yet complained not, 88. +A passing glance was all I caught of thee, 79. +A sight like this might find apology, 92. +A stranger, and alone, I past those scenes, 21. +A thief, on dreary Bagshot's heath well known, 364. +A timid grace sits trembling in her eye, 8. +A tuneful challenge rings from either side, 66. +A weeping Londoner I am, 247. +Adsciscit sibi divitias et opes alienas, 123. +Alas! how am I chang'd! Where be the tears, 22. +All are not false. I knew a youth who died, 85. +All unadvised, and in an evil hour, 118. +Alone, obscure, without a friend, 12. +An Album is a Banquet: from the store, 78. +An Album is a Garden, not for show, 46. +An Ape is but a trivial beast, 89. +An author who has given you all delight, 140. +And hath thy blameless life become, 70. +Array'd--a half-angelic sight, 52. +As swallows shrink before the wintry blast, 126. +As when a child on some long winter's night, 4. +At Eton School brought up with dull boys, 115. + +Beautiful Infant, thou dost keep, 66. +Beneath this slab lies Matthew Day, 126. +Blank tho' I be, within you'll find, 114. +Bound for the port of matrimonial bliss, 140. +Bright spirits have arisen to grace the Burney name, 91. +But now time warns (my mission at an end), 98. +By crooked arts, and actions sinister, 359. +By Enfield lanes, and Winchmore's verdant hill, 58. +By myself walking, 29. + +Canadia! boast no more the toils, 79. +Caroline glides smooth in verse, 63. +Charles Lamb, to those who know thee justly dear, 331. +Charmed with the lines thy hand has sent, 352. +Choral service, solemn chanting, 64. +_Ci git_ the remains of Margaret Dix, 125. +Close by the ever-burning brimstone beds, 119. +Consummate Artist, whose undying name, 80. +Cowper, I thank my God, that thou art heal'd, 16. +Crown me a cheerful goblet, while I pray, 57. + +Dim were the stars, and clouded was the azure, 357. +Divided praise, Lady, to you we owe, 113. +Droop not, dear Emma, dry those falling tears, 93. + +Emma, eldest of your name, 114. +Envy not the wretched Poet, 109. +Esther, holy name and sweet, 106. +External gifts of fortune, or of face, 58. + +False world, 143. +Fine merry franions, 75. +For much good-natured verse received from thee, 69. +For their elder Sister's hair, 57. +Forgive me, Burney, if to thee these late, 45. +Fresh clad from heaven in robes of white, 50. +Friend of my earliest years and childish days, 18. +Friendliest of men, Aders, I never come, 94. +From broken visions of perturbed rest, 26. + +Go little Poem, and present, 107. +Grace Joanna here doth lie, 65. +Great Newton's self, to whom the world's in debt, 71. +Guard thy feelings pretty Vestal, 102. + +Habits are stubborn things, 86. +Had he mended in right time, 341. +Had I a power, Lady, to my will, 46. +Hard is the heart that does not melt with ruth, 18. +He lies a Volunteer so fine, 124. +Here lies the body of Timothy Wagstaff, 125. +Here lieth the body of Captain Sturms, 125. +High-born Helen, round your dwelling, 28. +His namesake, born of Jewish breeder, 116. +Hold on thy course uncheck'd, heroic Wood! 119. +How blest is he who in his age, exempt, 113. +How many wasting, many wasted years, 106. + +I am a widow'd thing, now thou art gone, 25. +I deal in aliments fictitious, 116. +I had a sense in dreams of a beauty rare, 81. +I have had playmates, I have had companions, 25, 323. +I like you, and your book, ingenuous Hone! 63. +I put my night-cap on my head, 115. +I saw a famous fountain, in my dream, 13. +I saw where in the shroud did lurk, 53. +I was not train'd in Academic bowers, 59. +If from my lips some angry accents fell, 9. +If we have sinn'd in paring down a name, 202. +Implored for verse, I send you what I can, 49. +In a costly palace Youth goes clad in gold, 30. +In Christian world Mary the garland wears, 78. +In days of yore, ere early Greece, 95. +In merry England I computed once, 123. +In my poor mind it is most sweet to muse, 9. +In one great man we view with odds, 118. +Inspire thy spirit, Spirit of De Foe, 72. +Io! Paean! Io! sing, 116. + +Jane, you are welcome from the barren Rock, 105. +John, you were figuring in the gay career, 44. +Joy to unknown Josepha who, I hear, 48. +Judgements are about us thoroughly, 112. + +Ladies, ye've seen how Guzman's consort died, 138. +Lady Unknown, who crav'st from me Unknown, 50. +Laura, too partial to her friends' enditing, 122. +Lazy-bones, lazy-bones, wake up, and peep! 123. +Least Daughter, but not least beloved, of Grace, 65. +Let hate, or grosser heats, their foulness mask, 61. +Little Book, surnamed of _white_, 47. +Little Casket! Storehouse rare, 107. +Louisa, serious grown and mild, 82. + +Manners, they say, by climate alter not, 121. +Margaret, in happy hour, 102. +Maternal lady with the virgin grace, 42. +May the Babylonish curse, 34. +Methinks how dainty sweet it were, reclin'd, 5, 311. +Model of thy parent dear, 38. +Much speech obscures the sense; the soul of wit, 122. +Must I write with pen unwilling, 109. +My feeble Muse, that fain her best wou'd, 110. +Mystery of God! thou brave and beauteous world, 19. + +Nigh London's famous Bridge, a Gate more famed, 72. +Not a woman, child, or man in, 120. +Now, by Saint Hilary, 341. +Now the calm evening hastily approaches, 356. + +O gentle look, that didst my look beguile, 308. +O! I could laugh to hear the midnight wind, 5, 311. +O Lady, lay your costly robes aside, 33. +O lift with reverent hand that tarnish'd flower, 82. +Of all that act, the hardest task is theirs, 145. +Of these sad truths consideration had, 99. +Off with Briareus, and his hundred hands, 359. +On Emma's honest brow we read display'd, 101. +On the green hill top, 6. +Once on a charger there was laid, 39. +One summer night Sir Francis, as it chanced, 199. + +Poor Iras' faithful wolf-dog here I lie, 67. +Princeps his rent from tinneries draws, 116. + +Queen-bird that sittest on thy shining nest, 43. +Quid vult iste equitans? et quid oclit ista virorum, 90. + +Rare artist! who with half thy tools, or none, 59. +Rogers, of all the men that I have known, 60. +Roi's wife of Brunswick Oëls! 120. +Rotha, how in numbers light, 108. + +Sarah, blest wife of "Terah's faithful Son," 111. +Sarah,--your other name I know not, 112. +Shall I praise a face unseen, 109. +Sleep hath treasures worth retracing, 113. +Small beauty to your Book my lines can lend, 110. +Solemn Legends we are told, 108. +Solitary man, around thee, 111. +Some cry up Haydn, some Mozart, 83. +Some poets by poetic law, 49. +Soul-breathing verse, thy gentlest guise put on, 111. +Such goodness in your face doth shine, 48. +Suck, baby, suck, mother's love grows by giving, 61. + +Tears are for lighter griefs. Man weeps the doom, 94. +The cheerful sabbath bells, wherever heard, 10. +The cloud doth gather, the greenwood roar, 324. +The clouds are blackening, the storms threatening, 29. +The Devil was sick and queasy of late, 128. +The frugal snail, with fore-cast of repose, 71. +The Gods have made me most unmusical, 101. +The Lady Blanch, regardless of all her lovers' fears, 41. +The Lord of Life shakes off his drowsihed, 16. +The reason why my brother's so severe, 345. +The truant Fancy was a wanderer ever, 10. +There are, I am told, who sharply criticise, 142. +They talk of time, and of time's galling yoke, 60. +This rare tablet doth include, 51. +Thou fragile, filmy, gossamery thing, 105. +Thou should'st have longer liv'd, and to the grave, 24. +Thou too art dead,...! very kind, 21. +Though thou'rt like Judas, an apostate black, 115. +Time-mouldering crosses, gemm'd with imagery, 121. +'Tis a Book kept by modern Young Ladies for show, 104. +'Tis pleasant, lolling in our elbow chair, 93. +To gratify his people's wish, 120. +To name a Day for general prayer and fast, 123. +To the memory, of Dr. Onesimus Drake, 125. +Twelve years ago I knew thee, Knowles, and then, 62. +Two miracles at once! Compell'd by fate, 122. + +Under this cold marble stone, 88. +Untoward fate no luckless wight invades, 146. + +Was it so hard a thing? I did but ask, 17. +Was it some sweet device of Faery, 4, 309. +We were two pretty babes, the youngest she, 9. +What makes a happy wedlock? What has fate, 80. +What reason first imposed thee, gentle name, 44. +What rider's that? and who those myriads bringing, 90. +What time in bands of slumber all were laid, 3. +What Wawd knows, God knows, 124. +When first our Bard his simple will express'd, 147. +When her son, her Douglas died, 11. +When last I roved these winding woodwalks green, 8. +When last you left your Woodbridge pretty, 55. +When maidens such as Hester die, 32. +When thy gay book hath paid its proud devoirs, 100. +Where seven fair Streets to one tall Column draw, 67. +Where the soul drinks of misery's power, 126. +While this tawny Ethiop prayeth, 56. +While young John runs to greet, 42. +Who art thou, fair one, who usurp'st the place, 41. +Who first invented work, and bound the free, 59. +Why is he wandering on the sea? 328. +With change of climate manners alter not, 363. + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV +by Charles and Mary Lamb + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 11576 *** diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..87cb73f --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #11576 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11576) diff --git a/old/11576-8.txt b/old/11576-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..df23baf --- /dev/null +++ b/old/11576-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,21225 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV +by Charles and Mary Lamb + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV + Poems and Plays + +Author: Charles and Mary Lamb + +Release Date: March 14, 2004 [EBook #11576] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHARLES AND MARY LAMB IV *** + + + + +Produced by Keren Vergon, Virginia Paque and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team. + + + + + + + THE WORKS OF CHARLES AND MARY LAMB + + IV. POEMS AND PLAYS + + + [Illustration: Charles Lamb (aged 23) + From a drawing by Robert Hancock] + + + + + POEMS AND PLAYS + + BY + + CHARLES AND MARY LAMB + + + + + INTRODUCTION + +The earliest poem in this volume bears the date 1794, when Lamb was +nineteen, the latest 1834, the year of his death; so that it covers an +even longer period of his life than Vol. I.--the "Miscellaneous Prose." +The chronological order which was strictly observed in that volume has +been only partly observed in the following pages--since it seemed better +to keep the plays together and to make a separate section of Lamb's +epigrams. These, therefore, will be found to be outside the general +scheme. Such of Lamb's later poems as he did not himself collect in +volume form will also be found to be out of their chronological +position, partly because it has seemed to me best to give prominence to +those verses which Lamb himself reprinted, and partly because there is +often no indication of the year in which the poem was written. + +Another difficulty has been the frequency with which Lamb reprinted some +of his earlier poetry. The text of many of his earliest and best poems +was not fixed until 1818, twenty years or so after their composition. It +had to be decided whether to print these poems in their true order as +they were first published--in Coleridge's _Poems on Various Subjects_, +1796; in Charles Lloyd's _ems on the Death of Priscilla Farmer_, 1796; +in Coleridge's _Poems_, second edition, 1797; in _Blank Verse_ by +Charles Lloyd and Charles Lamb, 1798; and in John Woodvil, 1802--with +all their early readings; or whether to disregard chronological +sequence, and wait until the time of the _Works_--1818--had come, and +print them all together then. I decided, in the interests of their +biographical value, to print them in the order as they first appeared, +particularly as Crabb Robinson tells us that Lamb once said of the +arrangement of a poet's works: "There is only one good order--and that +is the order in which they were written--that is a history of the poet's +mind." It then had to be decided whether to print them in their first +shape, which, unless I repeated them later, would mean the relegation of +Lamb's final text to the Notes, or to print them, at the expense of a +slight infringement upon the chronological scheme, in their final 1818 +state, and relegate all earlier readings to the Notes. After much +deliberation I decided that to print them in their final 1818 state was +best, and this therefore I did in the large edition of 1903, to which +the student is referred for all variorum readings, fuller notes and many +illustrations, and have repeated here. In order, however, that the +scheme of Lamb's 1818 edition of his _Works_ might be preserved, I have +indicated in the text the position in the _Works_ occupied by all the +poems that in the present volume have been printed earlier. + +The chronological order, in so far as it has been followed, emphasises +the dividing line between Lamb's poetry and his verse. As he grew older +his poetry, for the most part, passed into his prose. His best and +truest poems, with few exceptions, belong to the years before, say, +1805, when he was thirty. After this, following a long interval of +silence, came the brief satirical outburst of 1812, in _The Examiner_, +and the longer one, in 1820, in _The Champion_; then, after another +interval, during which he was busy as Elia, came the period of album +verses, which lasted to the end. The impulse to write personal prose, +which was quickened in Lamb by the _London Magazine_ in 1820, seems to +have taken the place of his old ambition to be a poet. In his later and +more mechanical period there were, however, occasional inspirations, as +when he wrote the sonnet on "Work," in 1819; on "Leisure," in 1821; the +lines in his own Album, in 1827, and, pre-eminently, the poem "On an +Infant Dying as Soon as Born," in 1827. + +This volume contains, with the exception of the verse for children, +which will be found in Vol. III. of this edition, all the accessible +poetical work of Charles and Mary Lamb that is known to exist and +several poems not to be found in the large edition. There are probably +still many copies of album verses which have not yet seen the light. In +the _London Magazine_, April, 1824, is a story entitled "The Bride of +Modern Italy," which has for motto the following couplet:-- + + My heart is fixt: + This is the sixt.--_Elia_. + +but the rest of what seems to be a pleasant catalogue is missing. In a +letter to Coleridge, December 2, 1796, Lamb refers to a poem which has +apparently perished, beginning, "Laugh, all that weep." I have left in +the correspondence the rhyming letters to Ayrton and Dibdin, and an +epigram on "Coelebs in Search of a Wife." I have placed the dedication +to Coleridge at the beginning of this volume, although it belongs +properly only to those poems that are reprinted from the _Works_ of +1818, the prose of which Lamb offered to Martin Burney. But it is too +fine to be put among the Notes, and it may easily, by a pardonable +stretch, be made to refer to the whole body of Lamb's poetical and +dramatic work, although _Album Verses_, 1830, was dedicated separately +to Edward Moxon. + +In Mr. Bedford's design for the cover of this edition certain Elian +symbolism will be found. The upper coat of arms is that of Christ's +Hospital, where Lamb was at school; the lower is that of the Inner +Temple, where he was born and spent many years. The figures at the bells +are those which once stood out from the façade of St. Dunstan's Church +in Fleet Street, and are now in Lord Londesborough's garden in Regent's +Park. Lamb shed tears when they were removed. The tricksy sprite and the +candles (brought by Betty) need no explanatory words of mine. + +E.V.L. + + + + + CONTENTS TEXT NOTE + PAGE PAGE + + Dedication 1 307 + Lamb's earliest poem, "Mille viae mortis" 3 307 + Poems in Coleridge's _Poems on Various Subjects_, 1796:-- + "As when a child ..." 4 308 + "Was it some sweet device ..." 4 309 + "Methinks how dainty sweet ..." 5 311 + "Oh! I could laugh ..." 5 311 + From Charles Lloyd's _Poems on the Death of Priscilla + Farmer_, 1796;-- + The Grandame 6 312 + Poems from Coleridge's _Poems_, 1797:-- + "When last I roved ..." 8 315 + "A timid grace ..." 8 315 + "If from my lips ..." 9 315 + "We were two pretty babes ..." 9 315 + Childhood 9 315 + The Sabbath Bells 10 316 + Fancy Employed on Divine Subjects 10 316 + The Tomb of Douglas 11 316 + To Charles Lloyd 12 316 + A Vision of Repentance 13 317 + Poems Written in the Years 1795-98, and not Reprinted by + Lamb:-- + "The Lord of Life ..." 16 317 + To the Poet Cowper 16 317 + Lines addressed to Sara and S.T.C. 17 318 + Sonnet to a Friend 18 318 + To a Young Lady 18 319 + Living Without God in the World 19 319 + Poems from _Blank Verse_, by Charles Lloyd and Charles + Lamb, 1798:-- + To Charles Lloyd 21 320 + Written on the Day of My Aunt's Funeral 21 320 + Written a Year After the Events 22 321 + Written Soon After the Preceding Poem 24 322 + Written on Christmas Day, 1797 25 322 + The Old Familiar Faces 25 322 + Composed at Midnight 26 323 + Poems at the End of _John Woodvil_, 1802:-- + Helen. By Mary Lamb 28 323 + Ballad. From the German 29 324 + Hypochondriacus 29 324 + A Ballad Noting the Difference of Rich and Poor 30 324 + Poems in Charles Lamb's _Works_, 1818, not Previously + Printed in the Present Volume:-- + Hester 32 325 + Dialogue Between a Mother and Child. By Mary Lamb 33 325 + A Farewell to Tobacco 34 325 + To T.L.H. 38 326 + Salome. By Mary Lamb 39 --- + Lines Suggested by a Picture of Two Females by + Lionardo da Vinci. By Mary Lamb 41 327 + Lines on the Same Picture being Removed. By Mary Lamb 41 327 + Lines on the Celebrated Picture by Lionardo da Vinci, + called "The Virgin of the Rocks" 42 327 + On the Same. By Mary Lamb 42 327 + To Miss Kelly 43 328 + On the Sight of Swans in Kensington Garden 43 328 + The Family Name 44 328 + To John Lamb, Esq 44 329 + To Martin Charles Burney, Esq 45 329 + _Album Verses_, 1830:-- + Album Verses:-- + In the Album of a Clergyman's Lady 46 332 + In the Autograph Book of Mrs. Sergeant W---- 46 332 + In the Album of Lucy Barton 47 332 + In the Album of Miss ---- 48 332 + In the Album of a very Young Lady 48 332 + In the Album of a French Teacher 49 332 + In the Album of Miss Daubeny 49 333 + In the Album of Mrs. Jane Towers 50 333 + In My Own Album 50 333 + Miscellaneous:-- + Angel Help 51 333 + The Christening 52 333 + On an Infant Dying as Soon as Born 53 333 + To Bernard Barton 55 334 + The Young Catechist 56 334 + She is Going 57 335 + To a Young Friend 57 335 + To the Same 58 335 + Sonnets:-- + Harmony in Unlikeness 58 336 + Written at Cambridge 59 336 + To a Celebrated Female Performer in the "Blind Boy" 59 336 + Work 59 336 + Leisure 60 336 + To Samuel Rogers, Esq. 60 337 + The Gipsy's Malison 61 337 + Commendatory Verses:-- + To the Author of Poems Published under the Name + of Barry Cornwall 61 338 + To R.S. Knowles, Esq. 62 338 + To the Editor of the _Every-Day Book_ 63 338 + Acrostics:-- + To Caroline Maria Applebee 63 339 + To Cecilia Catherine Lawton 64 339 + Acrostic, to a Lady who Desired Me to Write Her + Epitaph 65 339 + Another, to Her Youngest Daughter 65 339 + Translations from the Latin of Vincent Bourne:-- + On a Sepulchral Statue of an Infant Sleeping 66 340 + The Rival Bells 66 340 + Epitaph on a Dog 67 340 + The Ballad Singers 67 340 + To David Cook 69 340 + On a Deaf and Dumb Artist 70 340 + Newton's Principia 71 340 + The House-keeper 71 340 + The Female Orators 72 340 + Pindaric Ode to the Tread Mill 72 341 + Going or Gone 75 341 + New Poems in _The Poetical Works of Charles Lamb_, 1836:-- + In the Album of Edith S---- 78 343 + To Dora W---- 78 343 + In the Album of Rotha Q---- 79 344 + In the Album of Catherine Orkney 79 --- + To T. Stothard, Esq. 80 344 + To a Friend on His Marriage 80 344 + The Self-Enchanted 81 344 + To Louisa M----, whom I used to call "Monkey" 82 344 + Cheap Gifts: a Sonnet 82 344 + Free Thoughts on Several Eminent Composers 83 344 + Miscellaneous Poems not collected by Lamb:-- + Dramatic Fragment 85 345 + Dick Strype; or, The Force of Habit 86 345 + Two Epitaphs on a Young Lady 88 346 + The Ape 89 346 + In tabulam eximii pictoris B. Haydoni 90 347 + Translation of Same 90 347 + Sonnet to Miss Burney 91 347 + To My Friend the Indicator 91 348 + On seeing Mrs. K---- B----, aged upwards of eighty, + nurse an infant 92 348 + To Emma, Learning Latin, and Desponding 93 349 + Lines Addressed to Lieut. R.W.H. Hardy, R.N. 93 349 + Lines for a Monument 94 349 + To C. Aders, Esq. 94 349 + Hercules Pacificatus 95 349 + The Parting Speech of the Celestial Messenger + to the Poet 98 349 + Existence, Considered in Itself, no Blessing 99 350 + To Samuel Rogers, Esq. 100 350 + To Clara N---- 101 350 + The Sisters 101 350 + Love Will Come 102 351 + To Margaret W---- 102 351 + Additional Album Verses and Acrostics:-- + What is an Album? 104 351 + The First Leaf of Spring 105 352 + To Mrs. F---- 105 352 + To M. L---- F---- 106 352 + To Esther Field 106 352 + To Mrs. Williams 107 352 + To the Book 107 353 + To S.F. 108 353 + To R.Q. 108 353 + To S.L. 109 353 + To M.L. 109 353 + An Acrostic Against Acrostics 109 353 + On Being Asked to Write in Miss Westwood's Album 110 353 + In Miss Westwood's Album. By Mary Lamb 110 353 + Un Solitaire. To Sarah Lachlan 111 353 + To S. T 111 354 + To Mrs. Sarah Robinson 111 354 + To Sarah 112 354 + To Joseph Vale Asbury 112 354 + To D.A. 113 354 + To Louisa Morgan 113 354 + To Sarah James of Beguildy 113 354 + To Emma Button 114 354 + Written upon the Cover of a Blotting Book 114 354 + Political and Other Epigrams:-- + To Sir James Mackintosh 115 357 + Twelfth Night Characters:-- + Mr. A---- 115 358 + Messrs. C----g and F----e 115 358 + Count Rumford 116 358 + On a Late Empiric of "Balmy" Memory 116 358 + Epigrams:-- + "Princeps his rent ..." 116 359 + "Ye Politicians, tell me, pray ..." 116 359 + The Triumph of the Whale 116 359 + Sonnet. St. Crispin to Mr. Gifford 118 360 + The Godlike 118 360 + The Three Graves 119 360 + Sonnet to Mathew Wood, Esq. 119 361 + On a Projected Journey 120 361 + Song for the C-----n 120 362 + The Unbeloved 120 362 + On the Arrival in England of Lord Byron's Remains 121 362 + Lines Suggested by a Sight of Waltham Cross 121 363 + For the _Table Book_ 122 363 + The Royal Wonders 122 363 + "Brevis Esse Laboro" 122 363 + Suum Cuique 123 363 + On the Literary Gazette 123 365 + On the Fast-Day 123 365 + Nonsense Verses 123 365 + On Wawd 124 366 + Six Epitaphs 124 366 + Time and Eternity 126 366 + From the Latin 126 366 + Satan in Search of a Wife 127 366 + Part 1 128 --- + Part II 133 --- + Prologues and Epilogues:-- + Epilogue to Godwin's Tragedy of "Antonio" 138 368 + Prologue to Godwin's Tragedy of "Faulkener" 140 369 + Epilogue to Henry Siddons' Farce, "Time's a Tell-Tale" 140 369 + Prologue to Coleridge's Tragedy of "Remorse" 142 369 + Epilogue to Kenney's Farce, "Debtor and Creditor" 143 371 + Epilogue to an Amateur Performance of "Richard II." 145 371 + Prologue to Sheridan Knowles' Comedy, "The Wife" 146 372 + Epilogue to Sheridan Knowles' Comedy, "The Wife" 147 372 + John Woodvil 149 372 + The Witch 199 392 + Mr. H------ 202 392 + The Pawnbroker's Daughter 238 397 + The Wife's Trial 273 --- + Poems in the Notes:-- + Lines to Dorothy Wordsworth. By Mary Lamb 328 + Lines on Lamb's Want of Ear. By Mary Lamb 345 + A Lady's Sapphic. By Mary Lamb (?) 356 + An English Sapphic. By Charles Lamb (?) 357 + Two Epigrams. By Charles Lamb (?) 359 + The Poetical Cask. By Charles Lamb (?) 363 + + NOTES 307 + + INDEX 399 + + INDEX OF FIRST LINES 409 + + + + + +FRONTISPIECE + +CHARLES LAMB (AGE 23) + +From the Drawing by Robert Hancock, now in the National Portrait +Gallery. + + + + +DEDICATION (1818) TO S.T. COLERIDGE, ESQ. + + +My Dear Coleridge, + +You will smile to see the slender labors of your friend designated by +the title of _Works_; but such was the wish of the gentlemen who have +kindly undertaken the trouble of collecting them, and from their +judgment could be no appeal. + +It would be a kind of disloyalty to offer to any one but yourself a +volume containing the _early pieces_, which were first published among +your poems, and were fairly derivatives from you and them. My friend +Lloyd and myself came into our first battle (authorship is a sort of +warfare) under cover of the greater Ajax. How this association, which +shall always be a dear and proud recollection to me, came to be broken, +--who snapped the three-fold cord,--whether yourself (but I know that +was not the case) grew ashamed of your former companions,--or whether +(which is by much the more probable) some ungracious bookseller was +author of the separation,--I cannot tell;--but wanting the support of +your friendly elm, (I speak for myself,) my vine has, since that time, +put forth few or no fruits; the sap (if ever it had any) has become, in +a manner, dried up and extinct; and you will find your old associate, in +his second volume, dwindled into prose and _criticism_. + +Am I right in assuming this as the cause? or is it that, as years come +upon us, (except with some more healthy-happy spirits,) Life itself +loses much of its Poetry for us? we transcribe but what we read in the +great volume of Nature; and, as the characters grow dim, we turn off, +and look another way. You yourself write no Christabels, nor Ancient +Mariners, now. + +Some of the Sonnets, which shall be carelessly turned over by the +general reader, may happily awaken in you remembrances, which I should +be sorry should be ever totally extinct--the memory + + Of summer days and of delightful years-- + +even so far back as to those old suppers at our old ****** Inn,--when life +was fresh, and topics exhaustless,--and you first kindled in me, if not +the power, yet the love of poetry, and beauty, and kindliness.-- + + What words have I heard + Spoke at the Mermaid! + +The world has given you many a shrewd nip and gird since that time, but +either my eyes are grown dimmer, or my old friend is the _same_, who +stood before me three and twenty years ago--his hair a little confessing +the hand of time, but still shrouding the same capacious brain,--his +heart not altered, scarcely where it "alteration finds." + +One piece, Coleridge, I have ventured to publish in its original form, +though I have heard you complain of a certain over-imitation of the +antique in the style. If I could see any way of getting rid of the +objection, without re-writing it entirely, I would make some sacrifices. +But when I wrote John Woodvil, I never proposed to myself any distinct +deviation from common English. I had been newly initiated in the +writings of our elder dramatists; Beaumont and Fletcher, and Massinger, +were then a _first love_; and from what I was so freshly conversant in, +what wonder if my language imperceptibly took a tinge? The very _time_, +which I have chosen for my story, that which immediately followed the +Restoration, seemed to require, in an English play, that the English +should be of rather an older cast, than that of the precise year in +which it happened to be written. I wish it had not some faults, which I +can less vindicate than the language. + +I remain, + My dear Coleridge, + Your's, + With unabated esteem, + C. LAMB. + + + + + LAMB'S EARLIEST POEM + + MILLE VIAE MORTIS + + (1789) + + + What time in bands of slumber all were laid, + To Death's dark court, methought I was convey'd; + In realms it lay far hid from mortal sight, + And gloomy tapers scarce kept out the night. + + On ebon throne the King of Terrors sate; + Around him stood the ministers of Fate; + On fell destruction bent, the murth'rous band + Waited attentively his high command. + + Here pallid Fear & dark Despair were seen. + And Fever here with looks forever lean, + Swoln Dropsy, halting Gout, profuse of woes, + And Madness fierce & hopeless of repose, + + Wide-wasting Plague; but chief in honour stood + More-wasting War, insatiable of blood; + With starting eye-balls, eager for the word; + Already brandish'd was the glitt'ring sword. + + Wonder and fear alike had fill'd my breast, + And thus the grisly Monarch I addrest-- + + "Of earth-born Heroes why should Poets sing, + And thee neglect, neglect the greatest King? + To thee ev'n Caesar's self was forc'd to yield + The glories of Pharsalia's well-fought field." + + When, with a frown, "Vile caitiff, come not here," + Abrupt cried Death; "shall flatt'ry soothe my ear?" + "Hence, or thou feel'st my dart!" the Monarch said. + Wild terror seiz'd me, & the vision fled. + + + + + POEMS IN COLERIDGE'S POEMS ON + VARIOUS SUBJECTS, 1796 + + + (_Written late in 1794. Text of 1797_) + + As when a child on some long winter's night + Affrighted clinging to its Grandam's knees + With eager wond'ring and perturb'd delight + Listens strange tales of fearful dark decrees + Mutter'd to wretch by necromantic spell; + Or of those hags, who at the witching time + Of murky midnight ride the air sublime, + And mingle foul embrace with fiends of Hell: + Cold Horror drinks its blood! Anon the tear + More gentle starts, to hear the Beldame tell + Of pretty babes, that lov'd each other dear, + Murder'd by cruel Uncle's mandate fell: + Ev'n such the shiv'ring joys thy tones impart, + Ev'n so thou, SIDDONS! meltest my sad heart! + + + (_Probably 1795. Text of 1818_) + + Was it some sweet device of Faery + That mocked my steps with many a lonely glade, + And fancied wanderings with a fair-hair'd maid? + Have these things been? or what rare witchery, + Impregning with delights the charmed air, + Enlighted up the semblance of a smile + In those fine eyes? methought they spake the while + Soft soothing things, which might enforce despair + To drop the murdering knife, and let go by + His foul resolve. And does the lonely glade + Still court the foot-steps of the fair-hair'd maid? + Still in her locks the gales of summer sigh? + While I forlorn do wander reckless where, + And 'mid my wanderings meet no Anna there. + + + (_Probably_ 1795. _Text of_ 1818) + + Methinks how dainty sweet it were, reclin'd + Beneath the vast out-stretching branches high + Of some old wood, in careless sort to lie, + Nor of the busier scenes we left behind + Aught envying. And, O Anna! mild-eyed maid! + Beloved! I were well content to play + With thy free tresses all a summer's day, + Losing the time beneath the greenwood shade. + Or we might sit and tell some tender tale + Of faithful vows repaid by cruel scorn, + A tale of true love, or of friend forgot; + And I would teach thee, lady, how to rail + In gentle sort, on those who practise not + Or love or pity, though of woman born. + + + (1794. _Text of_ 1818) + + O! I could laugh to hear the midnight wind, + That, rushing on its way with careless sweep, + Scatters the ocean waves. And I could weep + Like to a child. For now to my raised mind + On wings of winds comes wild-eyed Phantasy, + And her rude visions give severe delight. + O winged bark! how swift along the night + Pass'd thy proud keel! nor shall I let go by + Lightly of that drear hour the memory, + When wet and chilly on thy deck I stood, + Unbonnetted, and gazed upon the flood, + Even till it seemed a pleasant thing to die,-- + To be resolv'd into th' elemental wave, + Or take my portion with the winds that rave. + + + + +FROM CHARLES LLOYD'S POEMS ON THE DEATH OF PRISCILLA FARMER, 1796 + + + THE GRANDAME + + (Summer, 1796. Text of 1818) + + On the green hill top, + Hard by the house of prayer, a modest roof, + And not distinguish'd from its neighbour-barn, + Save by a slender-tapering length of spire, + The Grandame sleeps. A plain stone barely tells + The name and date to the chance passenger. + For lowly born was she, and long had eat, + Well-earned, the bread of service:--her's was else + A mounting spirit, one that entertained + Scorn of base action, deed dishonorable, + Or aught unseemly. I remember well + Her reverend image: I remember, too, + With what a zeal she served her master's house; + And how the prattling tongue of garrulous age + Delighted to recount the oft-told tale + Or anecdote domestic. Wise she was, + And wondrous skilled in genealogies, + And could in apt and voluble terms discourse + Of births, of titles, and alliances; + Of marriages, and intermarriages; + Relationship remote, or near of kin; + Of friends offended, family disgraced-- + Maiden high-born, but wayward, disobeying + Parental strict injunction, and regardless + Of unmixed blood, and ancestry remote, + Stooping to wed with one of low degree. + But these are not thy praises; and I wrong + Thy honor'd memory, recording chiefly + Things light or trivial. Better 'twere to tell, + How with a nobler zeal, and warmer love, + She served her _heavenly master_. I have seen + That reverend form bent down with age and pain + And rankling malady. Yet not for this + Ceased she to praise her maker, or withdrew + Her trust in him, her faith, and humble hope-- + So meekly had she learn'd to bear her cross-- + For she had studied patience in the school + Of Christ, much comfort she had thence derived, + And was a follower of the NAZARENE. + + + + + POEMS FROM COLERIDGE'S _POEMS_, 1797 + + + (_Summer_, 1795. _Text of_ 1818) + + When last I roved these winding wood-walks green, + Green winding walks, and shady pathways sweet, + Oft-times would Anna seek the silent scene, + Shrouding her beauties in the lone retreat. + No more I hear her footsteps in the shade: + Her image only in these pleasant ways + Meets me self-wandering, where in happier days + I held free converse with the fair-hair'd maid. + I passed the little cottage which she loved, + The cottage which did once my all contain; + It spake of days which ne'er must come again, + Spake to my heart, and much my heart was moved. + "Now fair befall thee, gentle maid!" said I, + And from the cottage turned me with a sigh. + + + (1795 _or_ 1796. _Text of_ 1818) + + A timid grace sits trembling in her eye, + As both to meet the rudeness of men's sight, + Yet shedding a delicious lunar light, + That steeps in kind oblivious ecstasy + The care-crazed mind, like some still melody: + Speaking most plain the thoughts which do possess + Her gentle sprite: peace, and meek quietness, + And innocent loves, and maiden purity: + A look whereof might heal the cruel smart + Of changed friends, or fortune's wrongs unkind; + Might to sweet deeds of mercy move the heart + Of him who hates his brethren of mankind. + Turned are those lights from me, who fondly yet + Past joys, vain loves, and buried hopes regret. + + + (_End of 1795. Text of 1818_) + + If from my lips some angry accents fell, + Peevish complaint, or harsh reproof unkind, + 'Twas but the error of a sickly mind + And troubled thoughts, clouding the purer well, + And waters clear, of Reason; and for me + Let this my verse the poor atonement be-- + My verse, which thou to praise wert ever inclined + Too highly, and with a partial eye to see + No blemish. Thou to me didst ever shew + Kindest affection; and would oft-times lend + An ear to the desponding love-sick lay, + Weeping my sorrows with me, who repay + But ill the mighty debt of love I owe, + Mary, to thee, my sister and my friend. + + + (_1795. Text of 1818_) + + We were two pretty babes, the youngest she, + The youngest, and the loveliest far, I ween, + And INNOCENCE her name. The time has been, + We two did love each other's company; + Time was, we two had wept to have been apart. + But when by show of seeming good beguil'd, + I left the garb and manners of a child, + And my first love for man's society, + Defiling with the world my virgin heart-- + My loved companion dropped a tear, and fled, + And hid in deepest shades her awful head. + Beloved, who shall tell me where thou art-- + In what delicious Eden to be found-- + That I may seek thee the wide world around? + + + + + CHILDHOOD + + (_Summer, 1796. Text of 1818_) + + In my poor mind it is most sweet to muse + Upon the days gone by; to act in thought + Past seasons o'er, and be again a child; + To sit in fancy on the turf-clad slope, + Down which the child would roll; to pluck gay flowers, + Make posies in the sun, which the child's hand, + (Childhood offended soon, soon reconciled,) + Would throw away, and strait take up again, + Then fling them to the winds, and o'er the lawn + Bound with so playful and so light a foot, + That the press'd daisy scarce declined her head. + + + + + THE SABBATH BELLS + + (_Summer, 1796. Text of 1818_) + + The cheerful sabbath bells, wherever heard, + Strike pleasant on the sense, most like the voice + Of one, who from the far-off hills proclaims + Tidings of good to Zion: chiefly when + Their piercing tones fall _sudden_ on the ear + Of the contemplant, solitary man, + Whom thoughts abstruse or high have chanced to lure + Forth from the walks of men, revolving oft, + And oft again, hard matter, which eludes + And baffles his pursuit--thought-sick and tired + Of controversy, where no end appears, + No clue to his research, the lonely man + Half wishes for society again. + Him, thus engaged, the sabbath bells salute + _Sudden!_ his heart awakes, his ears drink in + The cheering music; his relenting soul + Yearns after all the joys of social life, + And softens with the love of human kind. + + + + + FANCY EMPLOYED ON DIVINE SUBJECTS + + (_Summer, 1796. Text of 1818_) + + The truant Fancy was a wanderer ever, + A lone enthusiast maid. She loves to walk + In the bright visions of empyreal light, + By the green pastures, and the fragrant meads, + Where the perpetual flowers of Eden blow; + By chrystal streams, and by the living waters, + Along whose margin grows the wondrous tree + Whose leaves shall heal the nations; underneath + Whose holy shade a refuge shall be found + From pain and want, and all the ills that wait + On mortal life, from sin and death for ever. + + + + THE TOMB OF DOUGLAS + _See the Tragedy of that Name_ + + (1796) + + When her son, her Douglas died, + To the steep rock's fearful side + Fast the frantic Mother hied-- + + O'er her blooming warrior dead + Many a tear did Scotland shed, + And shrieks of long and loud lament + From her Grampian hills she sent. + + Like one awakening from a trance, + She met the shock of[1] Lochlin's lance; + On her rude invader foe + Return'd an hundred fold the blow, + Drove the taunting spoiler home; + Mournful thence she took her way + To do observance at the tomb + Where the son of Douglas lay. + + Round about the tomb did go + In solemn state and order slow, + Silent pace, and black attire, + Earl, or Knight, or good Esquire; + Whoe'er by deeds of valour done + In battle had high honours won; + Whoe'er in their pure veins could trace + The blood of Douglas' noble race. + + With them the flower of minstrels came, + And to their cunning harps did frame + In doleful numbers piercing rhymes, + Such strains as in the older times + Had sooth'd the spirit of Fingal, + Echoing thro' his father's hall. + + "Scottish maidens, drop a tear + O'er the beauteous Hero's bier! + Brave youth, and comely 'bove compare, + All golden shone his burnish'd hair; + Valour and smiling courtesy + Play'd in the sun-beams of his eye. + Clos'd are those eyes that shone so fair, + And stain'd with blood his yellow hair. + Scottish maidens, drop a tear + O'er the beauteous Hero's bier!" + + "Not a tear, I charge you, shed + For the false Glenalvon dead; + Unpitied let Glenalvon lie, + Foul stain to arms and chivalry!" + + "Behind his back the traitor came, + And Douglas died without his fame. + Young light of Scotland early spent, + Thy country thee shall long lament; + And oft to after-times shall tell, + In Hope's sweet prime my Hero fell." + + +[Footnote 1: Denmark.] + + + + + TO CHARLES LLOYD + + _An Unexpected Visitor_ + + (_January, 1797. Text of 1818_) + + + Alone, obscure, without a friend, + A cheerless, solitary thing, + Why seeks, my Lloyd, the stranger out? + What offering can the stranger bring + + Of social scenes, home-bred delights, + That him in aught compensate may + For Stowey's pleasant winter nights, + For loves and friendships far away? + + In brief oblivion to forego + Friends, such as thine, so justly dear, + And be awhile with me content + To stay, a kindly loiterer, here: + + For this a gleam of random joy + Hath flush'd my unaccustom'd cheek; + And, with an o'er-charg'd bursting heart, + I feel the thanks I cannot speak. + + Oh! sweet are all the Muses' lays, + And sweet the charm of matin bird; + 'Twas long since these estranged ears + The sweeter voice of friend had heard. + + The voice hath spoke: the pleasant sounds + In memory's ear in after time + Shall live, to sometimes rouse a tear, + And sometimes prompt an honest rhyme. + + For, when the transient charm is fled, + And when the little week is o'er, + To cheerless, friendless, solitude + When I return, as heretofore, + + Long, long, within my aching heart + The grateful sense shall cherish'd be; + I'll think less meanly of myself, + That Lloyd will sometimes think on me. + + + + + A VISION OF REPENTANCE + + (_1796? Text of 1818_) + + I saw a famous fountain, in my dream, + Where shady path-ways to a valley led; + A weeping willow lay upon that stream, + And all around the fountain brink were spread + Wide branching trees, with dark green leaf rich clad, + Forming a doubtful twilight-desolate and sad. + + The place was such, that whoso enter'd in + Disrobed was of every earthly thought, + And straight became as one that knew not sin, + Or to the world's first innocence was brought; + Enseem'd it now, he stood on holy ground, + In sweet and tender melancholy wrapt around. + + A most strange calm stole o'er my soothed sprite; + Long time I stood, and longer had I staid, + When, lo! I saw, saw by the sweet moon-light, + Which came in silence o'er that silent shade, + Where, near the fountain, SOMETHING like DESPAIR + Made, of that weeping willow, garlands for her hair. + + And eke with painful fingers she inwove + Many an uncouth stem of savage thorn-- + "The willow garland, _that_ was for her love, + And _these_ her bleeding temples would adorn." + With sighs her heart nigh burst, salt tears fast fell, + As mournfully she bended o'er that sacred well. + + To whom when I addrest myself to speak, + She lifted up her eyes, and nothing said; + The delicate red came mantling o'er her cheek, + And, gath'ring up her loose attire, she fled + To the dark covert of that woody shade, + And in her goings seem'd a timid gentle maid. + + Revolving in my mind what this should mean, + And why that lovely lady plained so; + Perplex'd in thought at that mysterious scene, + And doubting if 'twere best to stay or go, + I cast mine eyes in wistful gaze around, + When from the shades came slow a small and plaintive sound: + + "PSYCHE am I, who love to dwell + In these brown shades, this woody dell, + Where never busy mortal came, + Till now, to pry upon my shame. + + "At thy feet what thou dost see + The waters of repentance be, + Which, night and day, I must augment + With tears, like a true penitent, + + "If haply so my day of grace + Be not yet past; and this lone place, + O'er-shadowy, dark, excludeth hence + All thoughts but grief and penitence." + + _"Why dost thou weep, thou gentle maid! + And wherefore in this barren shade + Thy hidden thoughts with sorrow feed? + Can thing so fair repentance need?"_ + + "O! I have done a deed of shame, + And tainted is my virgin fame, + And stain'd the beauteous maiden white, + In which my bridal robes were dight." + + "_And who the promised spouse, declare: + And what those bridal garments were._" + + "Severe and saintly righteousness + Compos'd the clear white bridal dress; + JESUS, the son of Heaven's high king, + Bought with his blood the marriage ring. + + "A wretched sinful creature, I + Deem'd lightly of that sacred tie, + Gave to a treacherous WORLD my heart, + And play'd the foolish wanton's part. + + "Soon to these murky shades I came, + To hide from the sun's light my shame. + And still I haunt this woody dell, + And bathe me in that healing well, + Whose waters clear have influence + From sin's foul stains the soul to cleanse; + And, night and day, I them augment + With tears, like a true penitent, + Until, due expiation made, + And fit atonement fully paid, + The lord and bridegroom me present, + Where in sweet strains of high consent, + God's throne before, the Seraphim + Shall chaunt the extatic marriage hymn." + + "Now Christ restore thee soon "--I said, + And thenceforth all my dream was fled. + + + + + POEMS WRITTEN IN THE YEARS 1795-98, + AND NOT REPRINTED BY LAMB + + + + + SONNET + + _(Summer, 1795)_ + + + The Lord of Life shakes off his drowsihed, + And 'gins to sprinkle on the earth below + Those rays that from his shaken locks do flow; + Meantime, by truant love of rambling led, + I turn my back on thy detested walls, + Proud City! and thy sons I leave behind, + A sordid, selfish, money-getting kind; + Brute things, who shut their ears when Freedom calls. + + I pass not thee so lightly, well-known spire, + That minded me of many a pleasure gone, + Of merrier days, of love and Islington; + Kindling afresh the flames of past desire. + And I shall muse on thee, slow journeying on + To the green plains of pleasant Hertfordshire. + + 1795. + + + + + TO THE POET COWPER + + _On his Recovery from an Indisposition. + Written some Time Back + + (Summer, 1796)_ + + + Cowper, I thank my God, that thou art heal'd. + Thine was the sorest malady of all; + And I am sad to think that it should light + Upon the worthy head: but thou art heal'd, + And thou art yet, we trust, the destin'd man, + Born to re-animate the lyre, whose chords + Have slumber'd, and have idle lain so long; + To th' immortal sounding of whose strings + Did Milton frame the stately-paced verse; + Among whose wires with lighter finger playing + Our elder bard, Spencer, a gentler name, + The lady Muses' dearest darling child, + Enticed forth the deftest tunes yet heard + In hall or bower; taking the delicate ear + Of the brave Sidney, and the Maiden Queen. + Thou, then, take up the mighty epic strain, + Cowper, of England's bards the wisest and the best! + + _December 1, 1796._ + + + + + LINES + + _Addressed, from London, to Sara and S.T.C. at Bristol, + in the Summer of 1796._ + + + Was it so hard a thing? I did but ask + A fleeting holiday, a little week. + + What, if the jaded steer, who, all day long, + Had borne the heat and burthen of the plough, + When ev'ning came, and her sweet cooling hour, + Should seek to wander in a neighbour copse, + Where greener herbage wav'd, or clearer streams + Invited him to slake his burning thirst? + The man were crabbed who should say him nay; + The man were churlish who should drive him thence. + + A blessing light upon your worthy heads, + Ye hospitable pair! I may not come + To catch, on Clifden's heights, the summer gale; + I may not come to taste the Avon wave; + Or, with mine eye intent on Redcliffe tow'rs, + To muse in tears on that mysterious youth, + Cruelly slighted, who, in evil hour, + Shap'd his advent'rous course to London walls! + Complaint, be gone! and, ominous thoughts, away! + Take up, my Song, take up a merrier strain; + For yet again, and lo! from Avon's vales, + Another Minstrel[2] cometh. Youth endear'd, + God and good Angels guide thee on thy road, + And gentler fortunes 'wait the friends I love! + +[Footnote 2: "From vales where Avon winds, the Minstrel came." +COLERIDGE'S _Monody on Chatterton._] + + + + + SONNET TO A FRIEND + + _(End of 1796)_ + + + Friend of my earliest years and childish days, + My joys, my sorrows, thou with me hast shar'd + Companion dear, and we alike have far'd + (Poor pilgrims we) thro' life's unequal ways. + It were unwisely done, should we refuse + To cheer our path as featly as we may, + Our lonely path to cheer, as trav'llers use, + With merry song, quaint tale, or roundelay; + And we will sometimes talk past troubles o'er, + Of mercies shewn, and all our sickness heal'd, + And in his judgments God rememb'ring love; + And we will learn to praise God evermore, + For those glad tidings of great joy reveal'd + By that sooth Messenger sent from above. + + + + TO A YOUNG LADY + + _(Early, 1797)_ + + + Hard is the heart that does not melt with ruth, + When care sits, cloudy, on the brow of youth; + When bitter griefs the female bosom swell, + And Beauty meditates a fond farewell + To her lov'd native land, prepar'd to roam, + And seek in climes afar the peace denied at home. + The Muse, with glance prophetic, sees her stand + (Forsaken, silent lady) on the strand + Of farthest India, sick'ning at the roar + Of each dull wave, slow dash'd upon the shore; + Sending, at intervals, an aching eye + O'er the wide waters, vainly, to espy + The long-expected bark, in which to find + Some tidings of a world she left behind. + At such a time shall start the gushing tear, + For scenes her childhood lov'd, now doubly dear. + At such a time shall frantic mem'ry wake + Pangs of remorse, for slighted England's sake; + And for the sake of many a tender tie + Of love, or friendship, pass'd too lightly by. + Unwept, unhonour'd, 'midst an alien race, + And the _cold_ looks of many a _stranger_ face, + How will her poor heart bleed, and chide the day, + That from her country took her far away. + + + + + LIVING WITHOUT GOD IN THE WORLD + + _(? 1798)_ + + + Mystery of God! thou brave and beauteous world, + Made fair with light and shade and stars and flowers, + Made fearful and august with woods and rocks, + Jagg'd precipice, black mountain, sea in storms, + Sun, over all, that no co-rival owns, + But thro' Heaven's pavement rides as in despite + Or mockery of the littleness of man! + I see a mighty arm, by man unseen, + Resistless, not to be controul'd, that guides, + In solitude of unshared energies, + All these thy ceaseless miracles, O world! + Arm of the world, I view thee, and I muse + On Man, who, trusting in his mortal strength, + Leans on a shadowy staff, a staff of dreams. + We consecrate our total hopes and fears + To idols, flesh and blood, our love, (heaven's due) + Our praise and admiration; praise bestowed + By man on man, and acts of worship done + To a kindred nature, certes do reflect + Some portion of the glory and rays oblique + Upon the politic worshipper,--so man + Extracts a pride from his humility. + Some braver spirits of the modern stamp + Affect a Godhead nearer: these talk loud + Of mind, and independent intellect, + Of energies omnipotent in man, + And man of his own fate artificer; + Yea of his own life Lord, and of the days + Of his abode on earth, when time shall be, + That life immortal shall become an art, + Or Death, by chymic practices deceived, + Forego the scent, which for six thousand years + Like a good hound he has followed, or at length + More manners learning, and a decent sense + And reverence of a philosophic world, + Relent, and leave to prey on carcasses. + + But these are fancies of a few: the rest, + Atheists, or Deists only in the name, + By word or deed deny a God. They eat + Their daily bread, and draw the breath of heaven + Without or thought or thanks; heaven's roof to them + Is but a painted ceiling hung with lamps, + No more, that lights them to their purposes. + They wander "loose about," they nothing see, + Themselves except, and creatures like themselves, + Short-liv'd, short-sighted, impotent to save. + So on their dissolute spirits, soon or late, + Destruction cometh "like an armed man," + Or like a dream of murder in the night, + Withering their mortal faculties, and breaking + The bones of all their pride. + + + + + + POEMS FROM _BLANK VERSE_, BY + CHARLES LLOYD AND CHARLES LAMB, 1798 + + + TO CHARLES LLOYD + + A stranger, and alone, I past those scenes + We past so late together; and my heart + Felt something like desertion, when I look'd + Around me, and the well-known voice of friend + Was absent, and the cordial look was there + No more to smile on me. I thought on Lloyd; + All he had been to me. And now I go + Again to mingle with a world impure, + With men who make a mock of holy things + Mistaken, and of man's best hope think scorn. + The world does much to warp the heart of man, + And I may sometimes join its ideot laugh. + Of this I now complain not. Deal with me, + Omniscient Father! as thou judgest best, + And in thy season _tender_ thou my heart. + I pray not for myself; I pray for him + Whose soul is sore perplex'd: shine thou on him, + Father of Lights! and in the difficult paths + Make plain his way before him. His own thoughts + May he not think, his own ends not pursue; + So shall he best perform thy will on earth. + Greatest and Best, thy will be ever ours! + + _August_, 1797. + + + + + WRITTEN ON THE DAY OF MY AUNT'S FUNERAL + + + Thou too art dead, ----! very kind + Hast thou been to me in my childish days, + Thou best good creature. I have not forgot + How thou didst love thy Charles, when he was yet + A prating schoolboy: I have not forgot + The busy joy on that important day, + When, child-like, the poor wanderer was content + To leave the bosom of parental love, + His childhood's play-place, and his early home, + For the rude fosterings of a stranger's hand, + Hard uncouth tasks, and school-boy's scanty fare. + How did thine eye peruse him round and round, + And hardly know him in his yellow coats[3], + Red leathern belt, and gown of russet blue! + Farewell, good aunt! + Go thou, and occupy the same grave-bed + Where the dead mother lies. + Oh my dear mother, oh thou dear dead saint! + Where's now that placid face, where oft hath sat + A mother's smile, to think her son should thrive + In this bad world, when she was dead and gone; + And when a tear hath sat (take shame, O son!) + When that same child has prov'd himself unkind. + One parent yet is left--a wretched thing, + A sad survivor of his buried wife, + A palsy-smitten, childish, old, old man, + A semblance most forlorn of what he was, + A merry cheerful man. A merrier man, + A man more apt to frame matter for mirth, + Mad jokes, and anticks for a Christmas eve; + Making life social, and the laggard time + To move on nimbly, never yet did cheer + The little circle of domestic friends. + + _February_, 1797. + + +[Footnote 3: The dress of Christ's Hospital,] + + + + + WRITTEN A YEAR AFTER THE EVENTS + + Alas! how am I chang'd! Where be the tears, + The sobs, and forc'd suspensions of the breath, + And all the dull desertions of the heart, + With which I hung o'er my dead mother's corse? + Where be the blest subsidings of the storm + Within, the sweet resignedness of hope + Drawn heavenward, and strength of filial love + In which I bow'd me to my father's will? + + My God, and my Redeemer! keep not thou + My soul in brute and sensual thanklessness + Seal'd up; oblivious ever of that dear grace, + And health restor'd to my long-loved friend, + Long-lov'd, and worthy known. Thou didst not leave + Her soul in death! O leave not now, my Lord, + Thy servants in far worse, in spiritual death! + And darkness blacker than those feared shadows + Of the valley all must tread. Lend us thy balms, + Thou dear Physician of the sin-sick soul, + And heal our cleansed bosoms of the wounds + With which the world has pierc'd us thro' and thro'. + Give us new flesh, new birth. Elect of heav'n + May we become; in thine election sure + Contain'd, and to one purpose stedfast drawn, + Our soul's salvation! + + Thou, and I, dear friend, + With filial recognition sweet, shall know + One day the face of our dear mother in heaven; + And her remember'd looks of love shall greet + With looks of answering love; her placid smiles + Meet with a smile as placid, and her hand + With drops of fondness wet, nor fear repulse. + Be witness for me, Lord, I do not ask + Those days of vanity to return again + (Nor fitting me to ask, nor thee to give), + Vain loves and wanderings with a fair-hair'd maid, + Child of the dust as I am, who so long + My captive heart steep'd in idolatry + And creature-loves. Forgive me, O my Maker! + If in a mood of grief I sin almost + In sometimes brooding on the days long past, + And from the grave of time wishing them back, + Days of a mother's fondness to her child, + Her little one. + + O where be now those sports, + And infant play-games? where the joyous troops + Of children, and the haunts I did so love? + O my companions, O ye loved names + Of friend or playmate dear; gone are ye now; + Gone diverse ways; to honour and credit some, + And some, I fear, to ignominy and shame! + I only am left, with unavailing grief + To mourn one parent dead, and see one live + Of all life's joys bereft and desolate: + Am left with a few friends, and one, above + The rest, found faithful in a length of years, + Contented as I may, to bear me on + To the not unpeaceful evening of a day + Made black by morning storms! + + _September_, 1797. + + + + + WRITTEN SOON AFTER THE PRECEDING POEM + + Thou should'st have longer liv'd, and to the grave + Have peacefully gone down in full old age! + Thy children would have tended thy gray hairs. + We might have sat, as we have often done, + By our fireside, and talk'd whole nights away, + Old times, old friends, and old events recalling; + With many a circumstance, of trivial note, + To memory dear, and of importance grown. + How shall we tell them in a stranger's ear? + A wayward son ofttimes was I to thee; + And yet, in all our little bickerings, + Domestic jars, there was, I know not what, + Of tender feeling, that were ill exchang'd + For this world's chilling friendships, and their smiles + Familiar, whom the heart calls strangers still. + A heavy lot hath he, most wretched man! + Who lives the last of all his family. + He looks around him, and his eye discerns + The face of the stranger, and his heart is sick. + Man of the world, what canst thou do for him? + Wealth is a burden, which he could not bear; + Mirth a strange crime, the which he dares not act; + And wine no cordial, but a bitter cup. + For wounds like his Christ is the only cure, + And gospel promises are his by right, + For these were given to the poor in heart. + Go, preach thou to him of a world to come, + Where friends shall meet, and know each other's face. + Say less than this, and say it to the winds. + + _October_, 1797. + + + + + + WRITTEN ON CHRISTMAS DAY, 1797 + + I am a widow'd thing, now thou art gone! + Now thou art gone, my own familiar friend, + Companion, sister, help-mate, counsellor! + Alas! that honour'd mind, whose sweet reproof + And meekest wisdom in times past have smooth'd + The unfilial harshness of my foolish speech, + And made me loving to my parents old, + (Why is this so, ah God! why is this so?) + That honour'd mind become a fearful blank, + Her senses lock'd up, and herself kept out + From human sight or converse, while so many + Of the foolish sort are left to roam at large, + Doing all acts of folly, and sin, and shame? + Thy paths are mystery! + + Yet I will not think, + Sweet friend, but we shall one day meet, and live + In quietness, and die so, fearing God. + Or if _not_, and these false suggestions be + A fit of the weak nature, loth to part + With what it lov'd so long, and held so dear; + If thou art to be taken, and I left + (More sinning, yet unpunish'd, save in thee), + It is the will of God, and we are clay + In the potter's hands; and, at the worst, are made + From absolute nothing, vessels of disgrace, + Till, his most righteous purpose wrought in us, + Our purified spirits find their perfect rest. + + + + + THE OLD FAMILIAR FACES + + (_January_, 1798. _Text of_ 1818) + + I have had playmates, I have had companions, + In my days of childhood, in my joyful school-days, + All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. + + I have been laughing, I have been carousing, + Drinking late, sitting late, with my bosom cronies, + All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. + + I loved a love once, fairest among women; + Closed are her doors on me, I must not see her-- + All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. + + I have a friend, a kinder friend has no man; + Like an ingrate, I left my friend abruptly; + Left him, to muse on the old familiar faces. + + Ghost-like, I paced round the haunts of my childhood. + Earth seemed a desart I was bound to traverse, + Seeking to find the old familiar faces. + + Friend of my bosom, thou more than a brother, + Why wert not thou born in my father's dwelling? + So might we talk of the old familiar faces-- + + How some they have died, and some they have left me, + And some are taken from me; all are departed; + All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. + + + + + COMPOSED AT MIDNIGHT + + (1797? _Text of_ 1818) + + + From broken visions of perturbed rest + I wake, and start, and fear to sleep again. + How total a privation of all sounds, + Sights, and familiar objects, man, bird, beast, + Herb, tree, or flower, and prodigal light of heaven. + 'Twere some relief to catch the drowsy cry + Of the mechanic watchman, or the noise + Of revel reeling home from midnight cups. + Those are the moanings of the dying man, + Who lies in the upper chamber; restless moans, + And interrupted only by a cough + Consumptive, torturing the wasted lungs. + So in the bitterness of death he lies, + And waits in anguish for the morning's light. + What can that do for him, or what restore? + Short taste, faint sense, affecting notices, + And little images of pleasures past, + Of health, and active life--health not yet slain, + Nor the other grace of life, a good name, sold + For sin's black wages. On his tedious bed + He writhes, and turns him from the accusing light, + And finds no comfort in the sun, but says + "When night comes I shall get a little rest." + Some few groans more, death comes, and there an end. + 'Tis darkness and conjecture all beyond; + Weak Nature fears, though Charity must hope, + And Fancy, most licentious on such themes + Where decent reverence well had kept her mute, + Hath o'er-stock'd hell with devils, and brought down, + By her enormous fablings and mad lies, + Discredit on the gospel's serious truths + And salutary fears. The man of parts, + Poet, or prose declaimer, on his couch + Lolling, like one indifferent, fabricates + A heaven of gold, where he, and such as he, + Their heads encompassed with crowns, their heels + With fine wings garlanded, shall tread the stars + Beneath their feet, heaven's pavement, far removed + From damned spirits, and the torturing cries + Of men, his breth'ren, fashioned of the earth, + As he was, nourish'd with the self-same bread, + Belike his kindred or companions once-- + Through everlasting ages now divorced, + In chains and savage torments to repent + Short years of folly on earth. Their groans unheard + In heav'n, the saint nor pity feels, nor care, + For those thus sentenced--pity might disturb + The delicate sense and most divine repose + Of spirits angelical. Blessed be God, + The measure of his judgments is not fixed + By man's erroneous standard. He discerns + No such inordinate difference and vast + Betwixt the sinner and the saint, to doom + Such disproportion'd fates. Compared with him, + No man on earth is holy called: they best + Stand in his sight approved, who at his feet + Their little crowns of virtue cast, and yield + To him of his own works the praise, his due. + + + + + + Poems at the End of _John Woodvil_, + 1802 + + + + + HELEN + + _By Mary Lamb_ + + (_Summer_, 1800. _Text of_ 1818) + + + High-born Helen, round your dwelling + These twenty years I've paced in vain: + Haughty beauty, thy lover's duty + Hath been to glory in his pain. + + High-born Helen, plainly telling + Stories of thy cold disdain; + I starve, I die, now you comply, + And I no longer can complain. + + These twenty years I've lived on tears. + Dwelling for ever on a frown; + On sighs I've fed, your scorn my bread; + I perish now you kind are grown. + + Can I, who loved my beloved + But for the scorn "was in her eye," + Can I be moved for my beloved, + When she "returns me sigh for sigh?" + + In stately pride, by my bed-side, + High-born Helen's portrait's hung; + Deaf to my praise, my mournful lays + Are nightly to the portrait sung. + + To that I weep, nor ever sleep, + Complaining all night long to her-- + _Helen, grown old, no longer cold_, + _Said_, "you to all men I prefer." + + + + + BALLAD + + _From the German_ + + (_Spring, 1800. Text of 1818_) + + + The clouds are blackening, the storms threatening, + And ever the forest maketh a moan: + Billows are breaking, the damsel's heart aching, + Thus by herself she singeth alone, + Weeping right plenteously. + + "The world is empty, the heart is dead surely, + In this world plainly all seemeth amiss: + To thy breast, holy one, take now thy little one, + I have had earnest of all earth's bliss, + Living right lovingly." + + + + + HYPOCHONDRIACUS + + (_October, 1800. Text of 1818_) + + + By myself walking, + To myself talking, + When as I ruminate + On my untoward fate, + Scarcely seem I + Alone sufficiently, + Black thoughts continually + Crowding my privacy; + They come unbidden, + Like foes at a wedding, + Thrusting their faces + In better guests' places, + Peevish and malecontent, + Clownish, impertinent, + Dashing the merriment: + So in like fashions + Dim cogitations + Follow and haunt me, + Striving to daunt me. + In my heart festering, + In my ears whispering, + "Thy friends are treacherous, + Thy foes are dangerous, + Thy dreams ominous." + + Fierce Anthropophagi, + Spectra, Diaboli, + What scared St. Anthony, + Hobgoblins, Lemures, + Dreams of Antipodes, + Night-riding Incubi + Troubling the fantasy, + All dire illusions + Causing confusions; + Figments heretical, + Scruples fantastical, + Doubts diabolical, + Abaddon vexeth me, + Mahu perplexeth me, + Lucifer teareth me---- + +_Jesu! Maria! liberate nos ab his diris tentationibus Inimici_. + + + + + + A BALLAD: + + _Noting the Difference of Rich and Poor, in the Ways of a + Rich Noble's Palace and a Poor Workhouse_ + + _To the tune of the "Old and Young Courtier"_ + + (_August, 1800. Text of 1818_) + + + In a costly palace Youth goes clad in gold; + In a wretched workhouse Age's limbs are cold: + There they sit, the old men by a shivering fire, + Still close and closer cowering, warmth is their desire. + + In a costly palace, when the brave gallants dine, + They have store of good venison, with old canary wine, + With singing and music to heighten the cheer; + Coarse bits, with grudging, are the pauper's best fare. + + In a costly palace Youth is still carest + By a train of attendants which laugh at my young Lord's jest; + In a wretched workhouse the contrary prevails: + Does Age begin to prattle?--no man heark'neth to his tales. + + In a costly palace if the child with a pin + Do but chance to prick a finger, strait the doctor is called in; + In a wretched workhouse men are left to perish + For want of proper cordials, which their old age might cherish, + + In a costly palace Youth enjoys his lust; + In a wretched workhouse Age, in corners thrust, + Thinks upon the former days, when he was well to do, + Had children to stand by him, both friends and kinsmen too. + + In a costly palace Youth his temples hides + With a new devised peruke that reaches to his sides; + In a wretched workhouse Age's crown is bare, + With a few thin locks just to fence out the cold air. + + In peace, as in war, 'tis our young gallants' pride, + To walk, each one i' the streets, with a rapier by his side, + That none to do them injury may have pretence; + Wretched Age, in poverty, must brook offence. + + + + + POEMS IN CHARLES LAMB'S _WORKS_ 1818, + NOT PREVIOUSLY PRINTED IN THE PRESENT VOLUME; + TOGETHER WITH REFERENCES TO THOSE POEMS + THAT HAVE BEEN PREVIOUSLY PRINTED + + + + + HESTER + + (_February, 1803_) + + + When maidens such as Hester die, + Their place ye may not well supply, + Though ye among a thousand try, + With vain endeavour. + + A month or more hath she been dead, + Yet cannot I by force be led + To think upon the wormy bed, + And her together. + + A springy motion in her gait, + A rising step, did indicate + Of pride and joy no common rate, + That flush'd her spirit. + + I know not by what name beside + I shall it call:--if 'twas not pride, + It was a joy to that allied, + She did inherit. + + Her parents held the Quaker rule, + Which doth the human feeling cool, + But she was train'd in Nature's school, + Nature had blest her. + + A waking eye, a prying mind, + A heart that stirs, is hard to bind, + A hawk's keen sight ye cannot blind, + Ye could not Hester. + + My sprightly neighbour, gone before + To that unknown and silent shore, + Shall we not meet, as heretofore, + Some summer morning, + + When from thy cheerful eyes a ray + Hath struck a bliss upon the day, + A bliss that would not go away, + A sweet fore-warning? + + + * * * * * + + +_Here came "To Charles Lloyd" See page 12. + +Here came "The Three Friends" followed by "To a River in which a Child +was drowned," first printed in "Poetry for Children" 1809. See vol. iii. +of this edition, page 416. + +Here came "The Old Familiar Faces." See page 25. + +Here came "Helen" by Mary Lamb. See page 28. + +Here came "A Vision of Repentance." See page 13._ + + + * * * * * + + + + DIALOGUE BETWEEN A MOTHER AND CHILD + + (_By Mary Lamb. 1804_) + + + CHILD + "O Lady, lay your costly robes aside, + No longer may you glory in your pride." + + + MOTHER + "Wherefore to-day art singing in mine ear + Sad songs, were made so long ago, my dear; + This day I am to be a bride, you know, + Why sing sad songs, were made so long ago?" + + + CHILD + "O, mother, lay your costly robes aside, + For you may never be another's bride. + _That_ line I learn'd not in the old sad song." + + MOTHER + "I pray thee, pretty one, now hold thy tongue, + Play with the bride-maids, and be glad, my boy, + For thou shall be a second father's joy." + + CHILD + "One father fondled me upon his knee. + One father is enough, alone, for me." + + + + * * * * * + + + +_Here came "Queen Oriana's Dream" from "Poetry for Children" See vol. +iii. page 480. + +Here came "A Ballad Noting the Difference of Rich and Poor." See page +30. + +Here came "Hypochondriacus." See page 29._ + + + + * * * * * + + + + A FAREWELL TO TOBACCO + (1805) + + May the Babylonish curse + Strait confound my stammering verse, + If I can a passage see + In this word-perplexity, + Or a fit expression find, + Or a language to my mind, + (Still the phrase is wide or scant) + To take leave of thee, GREAT PLANT! + Or in any terms relate + Half my love, or half my hate: + For I hate, yet love, thee so, + That, whichever thing I shew, + The plain truth will seem to be + A constrain'd hyperbole, + And the passion to proceed + More from a mistress than a weed. + Sooty retainer to the vine, + Bacchus' black servant, negro fine; + Sorcerer, that mak'st us dote upon + Thy begrimed complexion, + And, for thy pernicious sake, + More and greater oaths to break + Than reclaimed lovers take + 'Gainst women: thou thy siege dost lay + Much too in the female way, + While thou suck'st the lab'ring breath + Faster than kisses or than death. + + Thou in such a cloud dost bind us, + That our worst foes cannot find us, + And ill fortune, that would thwart us, + Shoots at rovers, shooting at us; + While each man, thro' thy height'ning steam, + Does like a smoking Etna seem, + And all about us does express + (Fancy and wit in richest dress) + A Sicilian fruitfulness. + + Thou through such a mist dost shew us, + That our best friends do not know us, + And, for those allowed features, + Due to reasonable creatures, + Liken'st us to fell Chimeras, + Monsters that, who see us, fear us; + Worse than Cerberus or Geryon, + Or, who first lov'd a cloud, Ixion. + + Bacchus we know, and we allow + His tipsy rites. But what art thou, + That but by reflex can'st shew + What his deity can do, + As the false Egyptian spell + Aped the true Hebrew miracle? + Some few vapours thou may'st raise, + The weak brain may serve to amaze, + But to the reigns and nobler heart + Can'st nor life nor heat impart. + + Brother of Bacchus, later born, + The old world was sure forlorn, + Wanting thee, that aidest more + The god's victories than before + All his panthers, and the brawls + Of his piping Bacchanals. + These, as stale, we disallow, + Or judge of _thee_ meant; only thou + His true Indian conquest art; + And, for ivy round his dart, + The reformed god now weaves + A finer thyrsus of thy leaves. + + Scent to match thy rich perfume + Chemic art did ne'er presume + Through her quaint alembic strain, + None so sov'reign to the brain. + Nature, that did in thee excel, + Fram'd again no second smell. + Roses, violets, but toys + For the smaller sort of boys, + Or for greener damsels meant; + Thou art the only manly scent. + + Stinking'st of the stinking kind, + Filth of the mouth and fog of the mind, + Africa, that brags her foyson, + Breeds no such prodigious poison, + Henbane, nightshade, both together, + Hemlock, aconite------ + + Nay, rather, + Plant divine, of rarest virtue; + Blisters on the tongue would hurt you. + 'Twas but in a sort I blam'd thee; + None e'er prosper'd who defam'd thee; + Irony all, and feign'd abuse, + Such as perplext lovers use, + At a need, when, in despair + To paint forth their fairest fair, + Or in part but to express + That exceeding comeliness + Which their fancies doth so strike, + They borrow language of dislike; + And, instead of Dearest Miss, + Jewel, Honey, Sweetheart, Bliss, + And those forms of old admiring, + Call her Cockatrice and Siren, + Basilisk, and all that's evil, + Witch, Hyena, Mermaid, Devil, + + Ethiop, Wench, and Blackamoor, + Monkey, Ape, and twenty more; + Friendly Trait'ress, loving Foe,-- + Not that she is truly so, + But no other way they know + A contentment to express, + Borders so upon excess, + That they do not rightly wot + Whether it be pain or not. + + Or, as men, constrain'd to part + With what's nearest to their heart, + While their sorrow's at the height, + Lose discrimination quite, + And their hasty wrath let fall, + To appease their frantic gall, + On the darling thing whatever + Whence they feel it death to sever, + Though it be, as they, perforce, + Guiltless of the sad divorce. + + For I must (nor let it grieve thee, + Friendliest of plants, that I must) leave thee. + For thy sake, TOBACCO, I + Would do any thing but die, + And but seek to extend my days + Long enough to sing thy praise. + But, as she, who once hath been + A king's consort, is a queen + Ever after, nor will bate + Any tittle of her state, + Though a widow, or divorced, + So I, from thy converse forced, + The old name and style retain, + A right Katherine of Spain; + And a seat, too,'mongst the joys + Of the blest Tobacco Boys; + Where, though I, by sour physician, + Am debarr'd the full fruition + Of thy favours, I may catch + Some collateral sweets, and snatch + Sidelong odours, that give life + Like glances from a neighbour's wife; + And still live in the by-places + And the suburbs of thy graces; + And in thy borders take delight, + An unconquer'd Canaanite. + + + + + TO T.L.H. + + _A Child_ + + (1814) + + + Model of thy parent dear, + Serious infant worth a fear: + In thy unfaultering visage well + Picturing forth the son of TELL, + When on his forehead, firm and good, + Motionless mark, the apple stood; + Guileless traitor, rebel mild, + Convict unconscious, culprit-child! + Gates that close with iron roar + Have been to thee thy nursery door; + Chains that chink in cheerless cells + Have been thy rattles and thy bells; + Walls contrived for giant sin + Have hemmed thy faultless weakness in; + Near thy sinless bed black Guilt + Her discordant house hath built, + And filled it with her monstrous brood-- + Sights, by thee not understood-- + Sights of fear, and of distress, + That pass a harmless infant's guess! + + But the clouds, that overcast + Thy young morning, may not last. + Soon shall arrive the rescuing hour, + That yields thee up to Nature's power. + Nature, that so late doth greet thee, + Shall in o'er-flowing measure meet thee. + She shall recompense with cost + For every lesson thou hast lost. + Then wandering up thy sire's lov'd hill[4], + Thou shall take thy airy fill + Of health and pastime. _Birds shall sing + For thy delight each May morning._ + 'Mid new-yean'd lambkins thou shalt play, + Hardly less a lamb than they. + Then thy prison's lengthened bound + Shall be the horizon skirting round. + And, while thou fillest thy lap with flowers, + To make amends for wintery hours, + The breeze, the sunshine, and the place, + Shall from thy tender brow efface + Each vestige of untimely care, + That sour restraint had graven there; + And on thy every look impress + A more excelling childishness. + So shall be thy days beguil'd, + THORNTON HUNT, my favourite child. + + +[Footnote 4: Hampstead.] + + + + * * * * * + + + +_Here came "Ballad from the German." See page 29. + +Here came "David in the Cave of Aditllam" by Mary + +Lamb, from "Poetry for Children." See vol. iii. page 486._ + + + + * * * * * + + + + SALOME + + (_By Mary Lamb. Probably_ 1808 _or_ 1809) + + + Once on a charger there was laid, + And brought before a royal maid, + As price of attitude and grace, + A guiltless head, a holy face. + + It was on Herod's natal day, + Who, o'er Judea's land held sway. + He married his own brother's wife, + Wicked Herodias. She the life + Of John the Baptist long had sought, + Because he openly had taught + That she a life unlawful led, + Having her husband's brother wed. + + This was he, that saintly John, + Who in the wilderness alone + Abiding, did for clothing wear + A garment made of camel's hair; + + Honey and locusts were his food, + And he was most severely good. + He preached penitence and tears, + And waking first the sinner's fears, + Prepared a path, made smooth a way, + For his diviner master's day. + + Herod kept in princely state + His birth-day. On his throne he sate, + After the feast, beholding her + Who danced with grace peculiar; + Fair Salome, who did excel + All in that land for dancing well. + The feastful monarch's heart was fired, + And whatsoe'er thing she desired. + Though half his kingdom it should be, + He in his pleasure swore that he + Would give the graceful Salome. + The damsel was Herodias' daughter: + She to the queen hastes, and besought her + To teach her what great gift to name. + Instructed by Herodias, came + The damsel back; to Herod said, + "Give me John the Baptist's head; + And in a charger let it be + Hither straitway brought to me." + Herod her suit would fain deny, + But for his oath's sake must comply. + + When painters would by art express + Beauty in unloveliness, + Thee, Herodias' daughter, thee, + They fittest subject take to be. + They give thy form and features grace; + But ever in thy beauteous face + They shew a steadfast cruel gaze, + An eye unpitying; and amaze + In all beholders deep they mark, + That thou betrayest not one spark + Of feeling for the ruthless deed, + That did thy praiseful dance succeed + For on the head they make you look, + As if a sullen joy you took, + A cruel triumph, wicked pride, + That for your sport a saint had died. + + + + + LINES + + _Suggested by a Picture of Two Females by Lionardo da Vinci._ + + (_By Mary Lamb_. 1804) + + + The Lady Blanch, regardless of all her lovers' fears, + To the Urs'line convent hastens, and long the Abbess hears. + "O Blanch, my child, repent ye of the courtly life ye lead." + Blanch looked on a rose-bud and little seem'd to heed. + She looked on the rose-bud, she looked round, and thought + On all her heart had whisper'd, and all the Nun had taught. + "I am worshipped by lovers, and brightly shines my fame, + All Christendom resoundeth the noble Blanch's name. + Nor shall I quickly wither like the rose-bud from the tree, + My queen-like graces shining when my beauty's gone from me. + But when the sculptur'd marble is raised o'er my head, + And the matchless Blanch lies lifeless among the noble dead, + This saintly lady Abbess hath made me justly fear, + It nothing will avail me that I were worshipp'd here." + + + + + LINES + + _On the Same Picture being Removed to make + Place for a Portrait of a Lady by Titian._ + + (_By Mary Lamb_. 1805) + + + Who art thou, fair one, who usurp'st the place + Of Blanch, the lady of the matchless grace? + Come, fair and pretty, tell to me, + Who, in thy life-time, thou might'st be. + Thou pretty art and fair, + But with the lady Blanch thou never must compare. + No need for Blanch her history to tell; + Whoever saw her face, they there did read it well. + But when I look on thee, I only know + There lived a pretty maid some hundred years ago. + + + + + LINES + + _On the Celebrated Picture by Lionardo da Vinci, + called The Virgin of the Rocks._ + + (? 1805) + + + While young John runs to greet + The greater Infant's feet, + The Mother standing by, with trembling passion + Of devout admiration, + Beholds the engaging mystic play, and pretty adoration; + Nor knows as yet the full event + Of those so low beginnings, + From whence we date our winnings, + But wonders at the intent + Of those new rites, and what that strange child-worship meant. + But at her side + An angel doth abide, + With such a perfect joy + As no dim doubts alloy, + An intuition, + A glory, an amenity, + Passing the dark condition + Of blind humanity, + As if he surely knew + All the blest wonders should ensue, + Or he had lately left the upper sphere, + And had read all the sovran schemes and divine riddles there. + + + + + ON THE SAME + + (_By Mary Lamb_. 1805) + + + Maternal lady with the virgin grace, + Heaven-born thy Jesus seemeth sure, + And of a virgin pure. + Lady most perfect, when thy sinless face + Men look upon, they wish to be + A Catholic, Madonna fair, to worship thee. + + + + + SONNETS + + + TO MISS KELLY + + You are not, Kelly, of the common strain, + That stoop their pride and female honor down + To please that many-headed beast _the town_, + And vend their lavish smiles and tricks for gain; + By fortune thrown amid the actor's train, + You keep your native dignity of thought; + The plaudits that attend you come unsought, + As tributes due unto your natural vein. + Your tears have passion in them, and a grace + Of genuine freshness, which our hearts avow; + Your smiles are winds whose ways we cannot trace, + That vanish and return we know not how-- + And please the better from a pensive face, + And thoughtful eye, and a reflecting brow. + + + + + ON THE SIGHT OF SWANS IN KENSINGTON GARDEN + + Queen-bird that sittest on thy shining nest, + And thy young cygnets without sorrow hatchest, + And thou, thou other royal bird, that watchest + Lest the white mother wandering feet molest: + Shrined are your offspring in a chrystal cradle, + Brighter than Helen's ere she yet had burst + Her shelly prison. They shall be born at first + Strong, active, graceful, perfect, swan-like able + To tread the land or waters with security. + Unlike poor human births, conceived in sin, + In grief brought forth, both outwardly and in + Confessing weakness, error, and impurity. + Did heavenly creatures own succession's line, + The births of heaven like to your's would shine. + + + + * * * * * + + + +_Here came "Was it some sweet device." See page_ 4. + +_Here came "Methinks how dainty sweet." See page_ 5. + +_Here came "When last I roved." See page_ 8. + +_Here came "A timid grace" See page_ 8. + +_Here came "If from my lips." See page_ 9. + + + + * * * * * + + + + + THE FAMILY NAME + + What reason first imposed thee, gentle name, + Name that my father bore, and his sire's sire, + Without reproach? we trace our stream no higher; + And I, a childless man, may end the same. + Perchance some shepherd on Lincolnian plains, + In manners guileless as his own sweet flocks, + Received the first amid the merry mocks + And arch allusions of his fellow swains. + Perchance from Salem's holier fields returned, + With glory gotten on the heads abhorr'd + Of faithless Saracens, some martial lord + Took HIS meek title, in whose zeal he burn'd. + Whate'er the fount whence thy beginnings came, + No deed of mine shall shame thee, gentle name. + + + + + TO JOHN LAMB, ESQ. + + _Of the South-Sea House_ + + John, you were figuring in the gay career + Of blooming manhood with a young man's joy, + When I was yet a little peevish boy-- + Though time has made the difference disappear + Betwixt our ages, which _then_ seemed so great-- + And still by rightful custom you retain + Much of the old authoritative strain, + And keep the elder brother up in state. + O! you do well in this. 'Tis man's worst deed + To let the "things that have been" run to waste, + And in the unmeaning present sink the past: + In whose dim glass even now I faintly read + Old buried forms, and faces long ago, + Which you, and I, and one more, only know. + + + + * * * * * + + + +_Here came "O! I could laugh." See page_ 5. + +_Here came "We were two pretty babes." See page_ 9. + +_Here came, under the heading "Blank Verse," "Childhood," see page 9; +"The Grandame," see page 6; "The Sabbath Bells," see page 10, "Fancy +employed on Divine Subjects," see page 10; and "Composed at Midnight," +see page 26._ + + + + * * * * * + + + + + TO MARTIN CHARLES BURNEY, ESQ. + + +(The Dedication to Vol. II. of Lamb's _Works_, 1818) + + Forgive me, BURNEY, if to thee these late + And hasty products of a critic pen, + Thyself no common judge of books and men, + In feeling of thy worth I dedicate. + My _verse_ was offered to an older friend; + The humbler _prose_ has fallen to thy share: + Nor could I miss the occasion to declare, + What spoken in thy presence must offend-- + That, set aside some few caprices wild, + Those humorous clouds that flit o'er brightest days, + In all my threadings of this worldly maze, + (And I have watched thee almost from a child), + Free from self-seeking, envy, low design, + I have not found a whiter soul than thine. + + + + + ALBUM VERSES + + IN THE ALBUM OF A CLERGYMAN'S LADY + + (? 1830) + + An Album is a Garden, not for show + Planted, but use; where wholesome herbs should grow. + A Cabinet of curious porcelain, where + No fancy enters, but what's rich or rare. + A Chapel, where mere ornamental things + Are pure as crowns of saints, or angels' wings. + A List of living friends; a holier Room + For names of some since mouldering in the tomb, + Whose blooming memories life's cold laws survive; + And, dead elsewhere, they here yet speak, and live. + Such, and so tender, should an Album be; + And, Lady, such I wish this book to thee. + + + + + IN THE AUTOGRAPH BOOK OF MRS. SERGEANT W------ + + Had I a power, Lady, to my will, + You should not want Hand Writings. I would fill + Your leaves with Autographs--resplendent names + Of Knights and Squires of old, and courtly Dames, + Kings, Emperors, Popes. Next under these should stand + The hands of famous Lawyers--a grave band-- + Who in their Courts of Law or Equity + Have best upheld Freedom and Property. + These should moot cases in your book, and vie + To show their reading and their Serjeantry. + But I have none of these; nor can I send + The notes by Bullen to her Tyrant penn'd + In her authentic hand; nor in soft hours + Lines writ by Rosamund in Clifford's bowers. + The lack of curious Signatures I moan, + And want the courage to subscribe my own. + + + + + IN THE ALBUM OF LUCY BARTON + + (1824) + + + Little Book, surnamed of _white_, + Clean as yet, and fair to sight, + Keep thy attribution right. + + Never disproportion'd scrawl; + Ugly blot, that's worse than all; + On thy maiden clearness fall! + + In each letter, here design'd, + Let the reader emblem'd find + Neatness of the owner's mind. + + Gilded margins count a sin, + Let thy leaves attraction win + By the golden rules within; + + Sayings fetch'd from sages old; + Laws which Holy Writ unfold, + Worthy to be graved in gold: + + Lighter fancies not excluding; + Blameless wit, with nothing rude in, + Sometimes mildly interluding + + Amid strains of graver measure: + Virtue's self hath oft her pleasure + In sweet Muses' groves of leisure. + + Riddles dark, perplexing sense; + Darker meanings of offence; + What but _shades_--be banished hence. + + Whitest thoughts in whitest dress, + Candid meanings, best express + Mind of quiet Quakeress. + + + + + IN THE ALBUM OF MISS ------ + + I + + Such goodness in your face doth shine, + With modest look, without design, + That I despair, poor pen of mine + Can e'er express it. + To give it words I feebly try; + My spirits fail me to supply + Befitting language for't, and I + Can only bless it! + + + II + + But stop, rash verse! and don't abuse + A bashful Maiden's ear with news + Of her own virtues. She'll refuse + Praise sung so loudly. + Of that same goodness, you admire, + The best part is, she don't aspire + To praise--nor of herself desire + To think too proudly. + + + + + IN THE ALBUM OF A VERY YOUNG LADY + + (? 1830) + + Joy to unknown Josepha who, I hear, + Of all good gifts, to Music most is given; + Science divine, which through the enraptured ear + Enchants the Soul, and lifts it nearer Heaven. + Parental smiles approvingly attend + Her pliant conduct of the trembling keys, + And listening strangers their glad suffrage lend. + Most musical is Nature. Birds--and Bees + At their sweet labour--sing. The moaning winds + Rehearse a _lesson_ to attentive minds. + In louder tones "Deep unto Deep doth call;" + And there is Music in the Waterfall. + + + + + IN THE ALBUM OF A FRENCH TEACHER (? 1829) + + Implored for verse, I send you what I can; + But you are so exact a Frenchwoman, + As I am told, Jemima, that I fear + To wound with English your Parisian ear, + And think I do your choice collection wrong + With lines not written in the Frenchman's tongue. + Had I a knowledge equal to my will, + With airy _Chansons_ I your leaves would fill; + With _Fabliaux_, that should emulate the vein + Of sprightly Cresset, or of La Fontaine; + Or _Scenes Comiques_, that should approach the air + Of your own favourite--renowned Moliere. + But at my suit the Muse of France looks sour, + And strikes me dumb! Yet, what is in my power + To testify respect for you, I pray, + Take in plain English--our rough Enfield way. + + + + + IN THE ALBUM OF MISS DAUBENY + + I + + Some poets by poetic law + Have Beauties praised, they never saw; + And sung of Kittys, and of Nancys, + Whose charms but lived in their own fancies. + So I, to keep my Muse a going, + That willingly would still be doing, + A Canzonet or two must try + In praise of--_pretty_ Daubeny. + + + II + + But whether she indeed be comely, + Or only very good and homely, + Of my own eyes I cannot say; + I trust to Emma Isola. + But sure I think her voice is tuneful, + As smoothest birds that sing in June full; + For else would strangely disagree + The _flowing_ name of--Daubeny. + + + III + + I hear that she a Book hath got-- + As what young Damsel now hath not, + In which they scribble favorite fancies, + Copied from poems or romances? + And prettiest draughts, of her design, + About the curious Album shine; + And therefore she shall have for me + The style of--_tasteful_ Daubeny. + + + IV + + Thus far I have taken on believing; + But well I know without deceiving, + That in her heart she keeps alive still + Old school-day likings, which survive still + In spite of absence--worldly coldness-- + And thereon can my Muse take boldness + To crown her other praises three + With praise of--_friendly_ Daubeny. + + + + + IN THE ALBUM OF MRS. JANE TOWERS (1828) + + Lady Unknown, who crav'st from me Unknown + The trifle of a verse these leaves to grace, + How shall I find fit matter? with what face + Address a face that ne'er to me was shown? + Thy looks, tones, gesture, manners, and what not, + Conjecturing, I wander in the dark. + I know thee only Sister to Charles Clarke! + But at that name my cold Muse waxes hot, + And swears that thou art such a one as he, + Warm, laughter-loving, with a touch of madness, + Wild, glee-provoking, pouring oil of gladness + From frank heart without guile. And, if thou be + The pure reverse of this, and I mistake-- + Demure one, I will like thee for his sake. + + + + + IN MY OWN ALBUM (1827) + + Fresh clad from heaven in robes of white. + A young probationer of light, + Thou wert my soul, an Album bright, + + A spotless leaf; but thought, and care, + And friend and foe, in foul or fair, + Have "written strange defeatures" there; + + And Time with heaviest hand of all, + Like that fierce writing on the wall, + Hath stamp'd sad dates--he can't recal; + + And error gilding worst designs-- + Like speckled snake that strays and shines-- + Betrays his path by crooked lines; + + And vice hath left his ugly blot; + And good resolves, a moment hot, + Fairly began--but finish'd not; + + And fruitless, late remorse doth trace-- + Like Hebrew lore a backward pace-- + Her irrecoverable race. + + Disjointed numbers; sense unknit; + Huge reams of folly, shreds of wit; + Compose the mingled mass of it. + + My scalded eyes no longer brook + Upon this ink-blurr'd thing to look-- + Go, shut the leaves, and clasp the book. + + + + + MISCELLANEOUS + + + + ANGEL HELP[5] + + (1827) + + + This rare tablet doth include + Poverty with Sanctitude. + Past midnight this poor Maid hath spun, + And yet the work is not half done, + Which must supply from earning scant + A feeble bed-rid parent's want. + Her sleep-charged eyes exemption ask, + And Holy hands take up the task: + Unseen the rock and spindle ply, + And do her earthly drudgery. + Sleep, saintly poor one, sleep, sleep on; + And, waking, find thy labours done. + Perchance she knows it by her dreams; + Her eye hath caught the golden gleams, + Angelic presence testifying, + That round her every where are flying; + Ostents from which she may presume, + That much of Heaven is in the room. + Skirting her own bright hair they run, + And to the sunny add more sun: + Now on that aged face they fix, + Streaming from the Crucifix; + The flesh-clogg'd spirit disabusing, + Death-disarming sleeps infusing, + Prelibations, foretastes high, + And equal thoughts to live or die. + Gardener bright from Eden's bower, + Tend with care that lily flower; + To its leaves and root infuse + Heaven's sunshine, Heaven's dews. + 'Tis a type, and 'tis a pledge, + Of a crowning privilege. + Careful as that lily flower, + This Maid must keep her precious dower + Live a sainted Maid, or die + Martyr to virginity. + + +[Footnote 5: Suggested by a drawing in the possession of Charles Aders, +Esq., in which is represented the Legend of a poor female Saint; who, +having spun past midnight, to maintain a bed-rid mother, has fallen +asleep from fatigue, and Angels are finishing her work. In another part +of the chamber, an Angel is tending a lily, the emblem of purity.] + + + + + THE CHRISTENING + + (1829) + + Array'd--a half-angelic sight-- + In vests of pure Baptismal white, + The Mother to the Font doth bring + The little helpless nameless thing, + With hushes soft and mild caressing, + At once to get--a name and blessing. + Close by the Babe the Priest doth stand, + The Cleansing Water at his hand, + Which must assoil the soul within + From every stain of Adam's sin. + The Infant eyes the mystic scenes, + Nor knows what all this wonder means; + And now he smiles, as if to say + "I am a Christian made this day;" + Now frighted clings to Nurse's hold, + Shrinking from the water cold, + Whose virtues, rightly understood, + Are, as Bethesda's waters, good. + Strange words--The World, The Flesh, The Devil-- + Poor Babe, what can it know of Evil? + But we must silently adore + Mysterious truths, and not explore. + Enough for him, in after-times, + When he shall read these artless rhymes, + If, looking back upon this day, + With quiet conscience, he can say + "I have in part redeem'd the pledge + Of my Baptismal privilege; + And more and more will strive to flee + All which my Sponsors kind did then renounce for me." + + + + + ON AN INFANT DYING AS SOON AS BORN + + (1827) + + I saw where in the shroud did lurk + A curious frame of Nature's work. + A flow'ret crushed in the bud, + A nameless piece of Babyhood, + Was in a cradle-coffin lying; + Extinct, with scarce the sense of dying; + So soon to exchange the imprisoning womb + For darker closets of the tomb! + She did but ope an eye, and put + A clear beam forth, then strait up shut + For the long dark: ne'er more to see + Through glasses of mortality. + Riddle of destiny, who can show + What thy short visit meant, or know + What thy errand here below? + Shall we say, that Nature blind + Check'd her hand, and changed her mind, + Just when she had exactly wrought + A finish'd pattern without fault? + Could she flag, or could she tire, + Or lack'd she the Promethean fire + (With her nine moons' long workings sicken'd) + That should thy little limbs have quicken'd? + Limbs so firm, they seem'd to assure + Life of health, and days mature: + Woman's self in miniature! + Limbs so fair, they might supply + (Themselves now but cold imagery) + The sculptor to make Beauty by. + Or did the stern-eyed Fate descry, + That babe, or mother, one must die; + So in mercy left the stock, + And cut the branch; to save the shock + Of young years widow'd; and the pain, + When Single State comes back again + To the lone man who, 'reft of wife, + Thenceforward drags a maimed life? + The economy of Heaven is dark; + And wisest clerks have miss'd the mark, + Why Human Buds, like this, should fall, + More brief than fly ephemeral, + That has his day; while shrivel'd crones + Stiffen with age to stocks and stones; + And crabbed use the conscience sears + In sinners of an hundred years. + Mother's prattle, mother's kiss, + Baby fond, thou ne'er wilt miss. + Rites, which custom does impose, + Silver bells and baby clothes; + Coral redder than those lips, + Which pale death did late eclipse; + Music framed for infants' glee, + Whistle never tuned for thee; + Though thou want'st not, thou shall have them, + Loving hearts were they which gave them. + Let not one be missing; nurse, + See them laid upon the hearse + Of infant slain by doom perverse. + Why should kings and nobles have + Pictured trophies to their grave; + And we, churls, to thee deny + Thy pretty toys with thee to lie, + A more harmless vanity? + + + + + TO BERNARD BARTON + + _With a Coloured Print_[6] + + (1827) + + When last you left your Woodbridge pretty, + To stare at sights, and see the City, + If I your meaning understood, + You wish'd a Picture, cheap, but good; + The colouring? decent; clear, not muddy; + To suit a Poet's quiet study, + Where Books and Prints for delectation + Hang, rather than vain ostentation. + The subject? what I pleased, if comely; + But something scriptural and homely: + A sober Piece, not gay or wanton, + For winter fire-sides to descant on; + The theme so scrupulously handled, + A Quaker might look on unscandal'd; + Such as might satisfy Ann Knight, + And classic Mitford just not fright. + Just such a one I've found, and send it; + If liked, I give--if not, but lend it. + The moral? nothing can be sounder. + The fable? 'tis its own expounder-- + A Mother teaching to her Chit + Some good book, and explaining it. + He, silly urchin, tired of lesson, + His learning lays no mighty stress on, + But seems to hear not what he hears; + Thrusting his fingers in his ears, + Like Obstinate, that perverse funny one, + In honest parable of Bunyan. + His working Sister, more sedate, + Listens; but in a kind of state, + The painter meant for steadiness; + But has a tinge of sullenness; + And, at first sight, she seems to brook + As ill her needle, as he his book. + This is the Picture. For the Frame-- + 'Tis not ill-suited to the same; + Oak-carved, not gilt, for fear of falling; + Old-fashion'd; plain, yet not appalling; + And sober, as the Owner's Calling. + + +[Footnote 6: From the venerable and ancient Manufactory of Carrington +Bowles: some of my readers may recognise it.] + + + + + THE YOUNG CATECHIST[7] + + (1827) + + While this tawny Ethiop prayeth, + Painter, who is she that stayeth + By, with skin of whitest lustre, + Sunny locks, a shining cluster, + Saint-like seeming to direct him + To the Power that must protect him? + Is she of the Heaven-born Three, + Meek Hope, strong Faith, sweet Charity: + Or some Cherub?-- + They you mention + Far transcend my weak invention. + 'Tis a simple Christian child, + Missionary young and mild, + From her stock of Scriptural knowledge, + Bible-taught without a college, + Which by reading she could gather, + Teaches him to say OUR FATHER + To the common Parent, who + Colour not respects, nor hue. + White and black in him have part, + Who looks not to the skin, but heart. + + +[Footnote 7: A Picture by Henry Meyer, Esq.] + + + + SHE IS GOING + + For their elder Sister's hair + Martha does a wreath prepare + Of bridal rose, ornate and gay: + To-morrow is the wedding day: + She is going. + + Mary, youngest of the three, + Laughing idler, full of glee, + Arm in arm does fondly chain her, + Thinking, poor trifler, to detain her-- + But she's going. + + Vex not, maidens, nor regret + Thus to part with Margaret. + Charms like your's can never stay + Long within doors; and one day + You'll be going. + + + + + + TO A YOUNG FRIEND + + _On Her Twenty-First Birth-Day_ + + Crown me a cheerful goblet, while I pray + A blessing on thy years, young Isola; + Young, but no more a child. How swift have flown + To me thy girlish times, a woman grown + Beneath my heedless eyes! in vain I rack + My fancy to believe the almanac, + That speaks thee Twenty-One. Thou should'st have still + Remain'd a child, and at thy sovereign will + Gambol'd about our house, as in times past. + Ungrateful Emma, to grow up so fast, + Hastening to leave thy friends!--for which intent, + Fond Runagate, be this thy punishment. + After some thirty years, spent in such bliss + As this earth can afford, where still we miss + Something of joy entire, may'st thou grow old + As we whom thou hast left! That wish was cold. + O far more ag'd and wrinkled, till folks say, + Looking upon thee reverend in decay, + "This Dame for length of days, and virtues rare, + With her respected Grandsire may compare."-- + Grandchild of that respected Isola, + Thou should'st have had about thee on this day + Kind looks of Parents, to congratulate + Their Pride grown up to woman's grave estate. + But they have died, and left thee, to advance + Thy fortunes how thou may'st, and owe to chance + The friends which Nature grudg'd. And thou wilt find, + Or make such, Emma, if I am not blind + To thee and thy deservings. That last strain + Had too much sorrow in it. Fill again + Another cheerful goblet, while I say + "Health, and twice health, to our lost Isola." + + + + + TO THE SAME + + External gifts of fortune, or of face, + Maiden, in truth, thou hast not much to show; + Much fairer damsels have I known, and know, + And richer may be found in every place. + In thy _mind_ seek thy beauty, and thy wealth. + Sincereness lodgeth there, the soul's best health. + O guard that treasure above gold or pearl, + Laid up secure from moths and worldly stealth-- + And take my benison, plain-hearted girl. + + + * * * * * + + + SONNETS + + + HARMONY IN UNLIKENESS + + By Enfield lanes, and Winchmore's verdant hill, + Two lovely damsels cheer my lonely walk: + The fair Maria, as a vestal, still; + And Emma brown, exuberant in talk. + With soft and Lady speech the first applies + The mild correctives that to grace belong + To her redundant friend, who her defies + With jest, and mad discourse, and bursts of song. + O differing Pair, yet sweetly thus agreeing, + What music from your happy discord rises, + While your companion hearing each, and seeing, + Nor this, nor that, but both together, prizes; + This lesson teaching, which our souls may strike, + That harmonies may be in things unlike! + + + + + WRITTEN AT CAMBRIDGE + + (_August_ 15. 1819) + + I was not train'd in Academic bowers, + And to those learned streams I nothing owe + Which copious from those twin fair founts do flow; + Mine have been any thing but studious hours. + Yet can I fancy, wandering 'mid thy towers, + Myself a nursling, Granta, of thy lap; + My brow seems tightening with the Doctor's cap, + And I walk _gowned_; feel unusual powers. + Strange forms of logic clothe my admiring speech, + Old Ramus' ghost is busy at my brain; + And my scull teems with notions infinite. + Be still, ye reeds of Camus, while I teach + Truths, which transcend the searching Schoolmen's vein, + And half had stagger'd that stout Stagirite! + + + + + TO A CELEBRATED FEMALE PERFORMER IN THE "BLIND BOY" + + (1819) + + Rare artist! who with half thy tools, or none, + Canst execute with ease thy curious art, + And press thy powerful'st meanings on the heart, + Unaided by the eye, expression's throne! + While each blind sense, intelligential grown + Beyond its sphere, performs the effect of sight: + Those orbs alone, wanting their proper might, + All motionless and silent seem to moan + The unseemly negligence of nature's hand, + That left them so forlorn. What praise is thine, + O mistress of the passions; artist fine! + Who dost our souls against our sense command, + Plucking the horror from a sightless face, + Lending to blank deformity a grace. + + + + + WORK + + (1819) + + Who first invented work, and bound the free + And holyday-rejoicing spirit down + To the ever-haunting importunity + Of business in the green fields, and the town-- + To plough, loom, anvil, spade--and oh! most sad + To that dry drudgery at the desk's dead wood? + Who but the Being unblest, alien from good, + Sabbathless Satan! he who his unglad + Task ever plies 'mid rotatory burnings, + That round and round incalculably reel-- + For wrath divine hath made him like a wheel-- + In that red realm from which are no returnings; + Where toiling, and turmoiling, ever and aye + He, and his thoughts, keep pensive working-day. + + + + + LEISURE + + (1821) + + They talk of time, and of time's galling yoke, + That like a mill-stone on man's mind doth press, + Which only works and business can redress: + Of divine Leisure such foul lies are spoke, + Wounding her fair gifts with calumnious stroke. + But might I, fed with silent meditation, + Assoiled live from that fiend Occupation-- + _Improbus Labor_, which my spirits hath broke-- + I'd drink of time's rich cup, and never surfeit: + Fling in more days than went to make the gem, + That crown'd the white top of Methusalem: + Yea on my weak neck take, and never forfeit, + Like Atlas bearing up the dainty sky, + The heaven-sweet burthen of eternity. + + DEUS NOBIS HAEC OTIA FECIT. + + + + + TO SAMUEL ROGERS, ESQ. + + (1829) + + Rogers, of all the men that I have known + But slightly, who have died, your Brother's loss + Touch'd me most sensibly. There came across + My mind an image of the cordial tone + Of your fraternal meetings, where a guest + I more than once have sat; and grieve to think, + That of that threefold cord one precious link + By Death's rude hand is sever'd from the rest. + Of our old Gentry he appear'd a stem-- + A Magistrate who, while the evil-doer + He kept in terror, could respect the Poor, + And not for every trifle harass them, + As some, divine and laic, too oft do. + This man's a private loss, and public too. + + + + + THE GIPSY'S MALISON + + (1829) + + "Suck, baby, suck, mothers love grows by giving, + Drain the sweet founts that only thrive by wasting; + Black manhood comes, when riotous guilty living + Hands thee the cup that shall be death in tasting. + + "Kiss, baby, kiss, mother's lips shine by kisses, + Choke the warm breath that else would fall in blessings; + Black manhood comes, when turbulent guilty blisses + Tend thee the kiss that poisons 'mid caressings. + + "Hang, baby, hang, mother's love loves such forces, + Strain the fond neck that bends still to thy clinging; + Black manhood comes, when violent lawless courses + Leave thee a spectacle in rude air swinging." + + So sang a wither'd Beldam energetical, + And bann'd the ungiving door with lips prophetical. + + + + + COMMENDATORY VERSES + + TO THE AUTHOR OF POEMS, + + _Published under the name of Barry Cornwall_ + + (1820) + + + Let hate, or grosser heats, their foulness mask + Under the vizor of a borrowed name; + Let things eschew the light deserving blame: + No cause hast thou to blush for thy sweet task. + "Marcian Colonna" is a dainty book; + And thy "Sicilian Tale" may boldly pass; + Thy "Dream" 'bove all, in which, as in a glass, + On the great world's antique glories we may look. + No longer then, as "lowly substitute, + Factor, or PROCTOR, for another's gains," + Suffer the admiring world to be deceived; + Lest thou thyself, by self of fame bereaved, + Lament too late the lost prize of thy pains, + And heavenly tunes piped through an alien flute. + + + + + TO R.[J.]S. KNOWLES, ESQ. + + _On his Tragedy of Virginius_ + + (1820) + + Twelve years ago I knew thee, Knowles, and then + Esteemed you a perfect specimen + Of those fine spirits warm-soul'd Ireland sends, + To teach us colder English how a friend's + Quick pulse should beat. I knew you brave, and plain, + Strong-sensed, rough-witted above fear or gain; + But nothing further had the gift to espy. + Sudden you re-appear. With wonder I + Hear my old friend (turn'd Shakspeare) read a scene + Only to _his_ inferior in the clean + Passes of pathos: with such fence-like art-- + Ere we can see the steel, 'tis in our heart. + Almost without the aid language affords, + Your piece seems wrought. That huffing medium, _words_, + (Which in the modern Tamburlaines quite sway + Our shamed souls from their bias) in your play + We scarce attend to. Hastier passion draws + Our tears on credit: and we find the cause + Some two hours after, spelling o'er again + Those strange few words at ease, that wrought the pain. + Proceed, old friend; and, as the year returns, + Still snatch some new old story from the urns + Of long-dead virtue. We, that knew before + Your worth, may admire, we cannot love you more. + + + + + TO THE EDITOR OF THE "EVERY-DAY BOOK" + + (1825) + + I like you, and your book, ingenuous Hone! + In whose capacious all-embracing leaves + The very marrow of tradition's shown; + And all that history--much that fiction--weaves. + + By every sort of taste your work is graced. + Vast stores of modern anecdote we find, + With good old story quaintly interlaced-- + The theme as various as the reader's mind. + + Rome's life-fraught legends you so truly paint-- + Yet kindly,--that the half-turn'd Catholic + Scarcely forbears to smile at his own saint, + And cannot curse the candid heretic. + + Rags, relics, witches, ghosts, fiends, crowd your page; + Our fathers' mummeries we well-pleased behold, + And, proudly conscious of a purer age, + Forgive some fopperies in the times of old. + + Verse-honouring Phoebus, Father of bright _Days_, + Must needs bestow on you both good and many, + Who, building trophies of his Children's praise, + Run their rich Zodiac through, not missing any. + + Dan Phoebus loves your book--trust me, friend Hone-- + The title only errs, he bids me say: + For while such art, wit, reading, there are shown, + He swears,'tis not a work of _every day_. + + + + * * * * * + + + + ACROSTICS + + + TO CAROLINE MARIA APPLEBEE + + _An Acrostic_ + + Caroline glides smooth in verse, + And is easy to rehearse; + Runs just like some crystal river + O'er its pebbly bed for ever. + + Lines as harsh and quaint as mine + In their close at least will shine, + Nor from sweetness can decline, + Ending but with _Caroline_. + + _Maria_ asks a statelier pace-- + "_Ave Maria_, full of grace!" + Romish rites before me rise, + Image-worship, sacrifice, + And well-meant but mistaken pieties. + + _Apple_ with _Bee_ doth rougher run. + Paradise was lost by one; + Peace of mind would we regain, + Let us, like the other, strain + Every harmless faculty, + Bee-like at work in our degree, + Ever some sweet task designing, + Extracting still, and still refining. + + + + + TO CECILIA CATHERINE LAWTON + + _An Acrostic_ + + Choral service, solemn chanting, + Echoing round cathedrals holy-- + Can aught else on earth be wanting + In heav'n's bliss to plunge us wholly? + Let us great _Cecilia_ honour + In the praise we give unto them, + And the merit be upon her. + + Cold the heart that would undo them, + And the solemn organ banish + That this sainted Maid invented. + Holy thoughts too quickly vanish, + Ere the expression can be vented. + Raise the song to _Catherine_, + In her torments most divine! + Ne'er by Christians be forgot-- + Envied be--this Martyr's lot. + _Lawton_, who these _names_ combinest, + Aim to emulate their praises; + Women were they, yet divinest + Truths they taught; and story raises + O'er their mouldering bones a Tomb, + Not to die till Day of Doom. + + + + + ACROSTIC, + +TO A LADY WHO DESIRED ME TO WRITE HER EPITAPH + + (1830) + + Grace Joanna here doth lie: + Reader, wonder not that I + Ante-date her hour of rest. + Can I thwart her wish exprest, + Ev'n unseemly though the laugh + + Jesting with an Epitaph? + On her bones the turf lie lightly, + And her rise again be brightly! + No dark stain be found upon her-- + No, there will not, on mine honour-- + Answer that at least I can. + + Would that I, thrice happy man, + In as spotless garb might rise, + Light as she will climb the skies, + Leaving the dull earth behind, + In a car more swift than wind. + All her errors, all her failings, + (Many they were not) and ailings, + Sleep secure from Envy's railings. + + + + + ANOTHER, + + TO HER YOUNGEST DAUGHTER + (1830) + + Least Daughter, but not least beloved, of _Grace_! + O frown not on a stranger, who from place, + Unknown and distant these few lines hath penn'd. + I but report what thy Instructress Friend + So oft hath told us of thy gentle heart. + A pupil most affectionate thou art, + + Careful to learn what elder years impart. + _Louisa--Clare_--by which name shall I call thee? + A prettier pair of names sure ne'er was found, + Resembling thy own sweetness in sweet sound. + Ever calm peace and innocence befal thee! + + + + * * * * * + + + + TRANSLATIONS + + + _From the Latin of Vincent Bourne_ + + I + + ON A SEPULCHRAL STATUE OF AN INFANT SLEEPING + + 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 mortal sense, + The heaven-infused sleep of Innocence! + + + II + + THE RIVAL BELLS + + A tuneful challenge rings from either side + Of Thames' fair banks. Thy twice six Bells, Saint Bride + Peal swift and shrill; to which more slow reply + The deep-toned eight of Mary Overy. + Such harmony from the contention flows, + That the divided ear no preference knows; + Betwixt them both disparting Music's State, + While one exceeds in number, one in weight. + + + III + + EPITAPH ON A DOG + + (1820) + + Poor Irus' faithful wolf-dog here I lie, + That wont to tend my old blind master's steps, + His guide and guard; nor, while my service lasted, + Had he occasion for that staff, with which + He now goes picking out his path in fear + Over the highways and crossings, but would plant + Safe in the conduct of my friendly string, + A firm foot forward still, till he had reach'd + His poor seat on some stone, nigh where the tide + Of passers-by in thickest confluence flow'd: + To whom with loud and passionate laments + From morn to eve his dark estate he wail'd. + Nor wail'd to all in vain: some here and there, + The well disposed and good, their pennies gave. + I meantime at his feet obsequious slept; + Not all-asleep in sleep, but heart and ear + Prick'd up at his least motion, to receive + At his kind hand my customary crumbs, + And common portion in his feast of scraps; + Or when night warn'd us homeward, tired and spent + With our long day, and tedious beggary. + These were my manners, this my way of life, + Till age and slow disease me overtook, + And sever'd from my sightless master's side. + But lest the grace of so good deeds should die, + Through tract of years in mute oblivion lost, + This slender tomb of turf hath Irus rear'd, + Cheap monument of no ungrudging hand, + And with short verse inscribed it, to attest, + In long and lasting union to attest, + The virtues of the Beggar and his Dog. + + + IV + + THE BALLAD SINGERS + + Where seven fair Streets to one tall Column[8] 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 cheat 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 assembled ring, nor heeds his tottering knees, + But pricks 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 waggon crosses, which divides + The close-wedged audience; but, as when the tides + To ploughing ships give way, the ship being past, + They re-unite, so these unite as fast. + The older Songstress hitherto hath 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 rehearse. + 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 best. + 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." + + +[Footnote 8: Seven Dials.] + + + V. + + TO DAVID COOK, + + _Of the Parish of Saint Margaret's, Westminster, Watchman_ + + For much good-natured verse received from thee, + A loving verse take in return from me. + "Good morrow to my masters," is your cry; + And to our David "twice as good," say I. + Not Peter's monitor, shrill chanticleer, + Crows the approach of dawn in notes more clear, + Or tells the hours more faithfully. While night + Fills half the world with shadows of affright, + You with your lantern, partner of your round, + Traverse the paths of Margaret's hallow'd bound. + The tales of ghosts which old wives' ears drink up, + The drunkard reeling home from tavern cup, + Nor prowling robber, your firm soul appal; + Arm'd with thy faithful staff thou slight'st them all. + But if the market gard'ner chance to pass, + Bringing to town his fruit, or early grass, + The gentle salesman you with candour greet, + And with reit'rated "good mornings" meet. + Announcing your approach by formal bell, + Of nightly weather you the changes tell; + Whether the Moon shines, or her head doth steep + In rain-portending clouds. When mortals sleep + In downy rest, you brave the snows and sleet + Of winter; and in alley, or in street, + Relieve your midnight progress with a verse. + What though fastidious Phoebus frown averse + On your didactic strain--indulgent Night + With caution hath seal'd up both ears of Spite, + And critics sleep while you in staves do sound + The praise of long-dead Saints, whose Days abound + In wintry months; but Crispen chief proclaim: + Who stirs not at that Prince of Coblers' name? + Profuse in loyalty some couplets shine, + And wish long days to all the Brunswick line! + To youths and virgins they chaste lessons read; + Teach wives and husbands how their lives to lead; + Maids to be cleanly, footmen free from vice; + How death at last all ranks doth equalise; + And, in conclusion, pray good years befal, + With store of wealth, your "worthy masters all." + For this and other tokens of good will, + On boxing day may store of shillings fill + Your Christmas purse; no householder give less, + When at each door your blameless suit you press: + And what you wish to us (it is but reason) + Receive in turn--the compliments o' th' season! + + + VI + + ON A DEAF AND DUMB ARTIST[9] + + + And hath thy blameless life become + A prey to the devouring tomb? + A more mute silence hast thou known, + A deafness deeper than thine own, + While Time was? and no friendly Muse, + That mark'd thy life, and knows thy dues, + Repair with quickening verse the breach, + And write thee into light and speech? + The Power, that made the Tongue, restrain'd + Thy lips from lies, and speeches feign'd; + Who made the Hearing, without wrong + Did rescue thine from Siren's song. + He let thee _see_ the ways of men, + Which thou with pencil, not with pen, + Careful Beholder, down did'st note, + And all their motley actions quote, + Thyself unstain'd the while. From look + Or gesture reading, more than _book_, + In letter'd pride thou took'st no part, + Contented with the Silent Art, + Thyself as silent. Might I be + As speechless, deaf, and good, as He! + + +[Footnote 9: Benjamin Ferrers--died A.D. 1732.] + + + VII + + NEWTON'S PRINCIPIA + + Great Newton's self, to whom the world's in debt, + Owed to School Mistress sage his Alphabet; + But quickly wiser than his Teacher grown, + Discover'd properties to her unknown; + Of A _plus_ B, or _minus_, learn'd the use, + Known Quantities from unknown to educe; + And made--no doubt to that old dame's surprise-- + The Christ-Cross-Row his Ladder to the skies. + Yet, whatsoe'er Geometricians say, + Her Lessons were his true PRINCIPIA! + + + VIII + + THE HOUSE-KEEPER + + The frugal snail, with fore-cast of repose, + Carries his house with him, where'er he goes; + Peeps out--and if there comes a shower of rain, + Retreats to his small domicile amain. + Touch but a tip of him, a horn--'tis well-- + He curls up in his sanctuary shell. + He's his own landlord, his own tenant; stay + Long as he will, he dreads no Quarter Day. + Himself he boards and lodges; both invites, + And feasts, himself; sleeps with himself o' nights. + He spares the upholsterer trouble to procure + Chattles; himself is his own furniture, + And his sole riches. Wheresoe'er he roam-- + Knock when you will--he's sure to be at home. + + + IX + + THE FEMALE ORATORS + + Nigh London's famous Bridge, a Gate more famed + Stands, or once stood, from old Belinus named, + So judged Antiquity; and therein wrongs + A name, allusive strictly to _two Tongues_[10]. + Her School hard by the Goddess Rhetoric opes, + And _gratis_ deals to Oyster-wives her Tropes. + With Nereid green, green Nereid disputes, + Replies, rejoins, confutes, and still confutes. + One her coarse sense by metaphors expounds, + And one in literalities abounds; + In mood and figure these keep up the din: + Words multiply, and every word tells in. + Her hundred throats here bawling Slander strains; + And unclothed Venus to her tongue gives reins + In terms, which Demosthenic force outgo, + And baldest jests of foul-mouth'd Cicero. + Right in the midst great Ate keeps her stand, + And from her sovereign station taints the land. + Hence Pulpits rail; grave Senates learn to jar; + Quacks scold; and Billinsgate infects the Bar. + + +[Footnote 10: _Billingis_ in the Latin.] + + + + + PINDARIC ODE TO THE TREAD MILL + + (1825) + + I + + Inspire my spirit, Spirit of De Foe, + That sang the Pillory, + In loftier strains to show + A more sublime Machine + Than that, where them wert seen, + With neck out-stretcht and shoulders ill awry, + Courting coarse plaudits from vile crowds below-- + A most unseemly show! + + + II + + In such a place + Who could expose thy face, + Historiographer of deathless Crusoe! + That paint'st the strife + And all the naked ills of savage life, + Far above Rousseau? + Rather myself had stood + In that ignoble wood, + Bare to the mob, on holyday or high day. + If nought else could atone + For waggish libel, + I swear on bible, + I would have spared him for thy sake alone, + Man Friday! + + + III + + Our ancestors' were sour days, + Great Master of Romance! + A milder doom had fallen to thy chance + In our days: + Thy sole assignment + Some solitary confinement, + (Not worth thy care a carrot,) + Where in world-hidden cell + Thou thy own Crusoe might have acted well, + Only without the parrot; + By sure experience taught to know, + Whether the qualms thou mak'st him feel were truly such or no. + + + IV + + But stay! methinks in statelier measure-- + A more companionable pleasure-- + I see thy steps the mighty Tread Mill trace, + (The subject of my song + Delay'd however long,) + And some of thine own race, + To keep thee company, thou bring'st with thee along. + There with thee go, + Link'd in like sentence, + With regulated pace and footing slow, + Each old acquaintance, + Rogue--harlot--thief--that live to future ages; + Through many a labour'd tome, + Rankly embalm'd in thy too natural pages. + Faith, friend De Foe, thou art quite at home! + Not one of thy great offspring thou dost lack, + From pirate Singleton to pilfering Jack. + Here Flandrian Moll her brazen incest brags; + Vice-stript Roxana, penitent in rags, + There points to Amy, treading equal chimes, + The faithful handmaid to her faithless crimes. + + + V + + Incompetent my song to raise + To its just height thy praise, + Great Mill! + That by thy motion proper + (No thanks to wind, or sail, or working rill) + Grinding that stubborn corn, the Human will, + Turn'st out men's consciences, + That were begrimed before, as clean and sweet + As flower from purest wheat, + Into thy hopper. + All reformation short of thee but nonsense is, + Or human, or divine. + + + VI + + Compared with thee, + What are the labours of that Jumping Sect, + Which feeble laws connive at rather than respect? + Thou dost not bump, + Or jump, + But _walk_ men into virtue; betwixt crime + And slow repentance giving breathing time, + And leisure to be good; + Instructing with discretion demi-reps + How to direct their steps. + + + VII + + Thou best Philosopher made out of wood! + Not that which framed the tub, + Where sate the Cynic cub, + With nothing in his bosom sympathetic; + But from those groves derived, I deem, + Where Plato nursed his dream + Of immortality; + Seeing that clearly + Thy system all is merely + Peripatetic. + Thou to thy pupils dost such lessons give + Of how to live + With temperance, sobriety, morality, + (A new art,) + That from thy school, by force of virtuous deeds, + Each Tyro now proceeds + A "Walking Stewart!" + + + + + EPICEDIUM + + GOING OR GONE + + (1827) + + + I + + Fine merry franions, + Wanton companions, + My days are ev'n banyans + With thinking upon ye; + How Death, that last stinger, + Finis-writer, end-bringer, + Has laid his chill finger, + Or is laying on ye. + + + II + + There's rich Kitty Wheatley, + With footing it featly + That took me completely, + She sleeps in the Kirk House; + And poor Polly Perkin, + Whose Dad was still firking + The jolly ale firkin, + She's gone to the Work-house; + + + III + + Fine Gard'ner, Ben Carter + (In ten counties no smarter) + Has ta'en his departure + For Proserpine's orchards; + And Lily, postillion, + With cheeks of vermilion, + Is one of a million + That fill up the church-yards; + + + IV + + And, lusty as Dido, + Fat Clemitson's widow + Flits now a small shadow + By Stygian hid ford; + And good Master Clapton + Has thirty years nap't on + The ground he last hap't on, + Intomb'd by fair Widford; + + + V + + And gallant Tom Dockwra, + Of nature's finest crockery, + Now but thin air and mockery, + Lurks by Avernus, + Whose honest grasp of hand + Still, while his life did stand, + At friend's or foe's command, + Almost did burn us. + + + VI + + Roger de Coverley + Not more good man than he; + Yet has he equally + Push'd for Cocytus, + With drivelling Worral, + And wicked old Dorrell, + 'Gainst whom I've a quarrel, + Whose end might affright us!-- + + + VII + + Kindly hearts have I known; + Kindly hearts, they are flown; + Here and there if but one + Linger yet uneffaced, + Imbecile tottering elves, + Soon to be wreck'd on shelves, + These scarce are half themselves, + With age and care crazed. + + + VIII + + But this day Fanny Hutton + Her last dress has put on; + Her fine lessons forgotten, + She died, as the dunce died: + And prim Betsy Chambers, + Decay'd in her members, + No longer remembers + Things, as she once did; + + + IX + + And prudent Miss Wither + Not in jest now doth _wither_, + And soon must go--whither + Nor I well, nor you know; + And flaunting Miss Waller, + _That_ soon must befal her, + Whence none can recal her, + Though proud once as Juno![11] + + +[Footnote 11: Here came, in _Album Verses_, 1830, "The Wife's Trial," +for which see page 273, where it is placed with Lamb's other plays.] + + + + + NEW POEMS IN LAMB'S _POETICAL WORKS, 1836_ + + + IN THE ALBUM OF EDITH S[OUTHEY] (1833) + + In Christian world MARY the garland wears! + REBECCA sweetens on a Hebrew's ear; + Quakers for pure PRISCILLA are more clear; + And the light Gaul by amorous NINON swears. + Among the lesser lights how LUCY shines! + What air of fragrance ROSAMOND throws round! + How like a hymn doth sweet CECILIA sound! + Of MARTHAS, and of ABIGAILS, few lines + Have bragg'd in verse. Of coarsest household stuff + Should homely JOAN be fashioned. But can + You BARBARA resist, or MARIAN? + And is not CLARE for love excuse enough? + Yet, by my faith in numbers, I profess, + These all, than Saxon EDITH, please me less. + + + + + TO DORA W[ORDSWORTH], + + _On Being Asked by Her Father to Write in Her Album_ + + + An Album is a Banquet: from the store, + In his intelligential Orchard growing, + Your Sire might heap your board to overflowing; + One shaking of the Tree--'twould ask no more + To set a Salad forth, more rich than that + Which Evelyn[12] in his princely cookery fancied: + Or that more rare, by Eve's neat hands enhanced, + Where, a pleased guest, the angelic Virtue sat. + But like the all-grasping Founder of the Feast, + Whom Nathan to the sinning king did tax, + From his less wealthy neighbours he exacts; + Spares his own flocks, and takes the poor man's beast. + Obedient to his bidding, lo, I am, + A zealous, meek, _contributory_ + + LAMB. + + +[Footnote 12: Acetaria, a Discourse of Sallets, by J.E., 1706.] + + + + + IN THE ALBUM OF ROTHA Q[UILLINAN] + + A passing glance was all I caught of thee, + In my own Enfield haunts at random roving. + Old friends of ours were with thee, faces loving; + Time short: and salutations cursory, + Though deep, and hearty. The familiar Name + Of you, yet unfamiliar, raised in me + Thoughts--what the daughter of that Man should be, + Who call'd our Wordsworth friend. My thoughts did frame + A growing Maiden, who, from day to day + Advancing still in stature, and in grace, + Would all her lonely Father's griefs efface, + And his paternal cares with usury pay. + I still retain the phantom, as I can; + And call the gentle image--Quillinan. + + + + + IN THE ALBUM OF CATHERINE ORKNEY + + Canadia! boast no more the toils + Of hunters for the furry spoils; + Your whitest ermines are but foils + To brighter Catherine Orkney. + + That such a flower should ever burst + From climes with rigorous winter curst!-- + We bless you, that so kindly nurst + This flower, this Catherine Orkney. + + We envy not your proud display + Of lake--wood--vast Niagara: + Your greatest pride we've borne away. + How spared you Catherine Orkney? + + That Wolfe on Heights of Abraham fell, + To your reproach no more we tell: + Canadia, you repaid us well + With rearing Catherine Orkney. + + O Britain, guard with tenderest care + The charge allotted to your share: + You've scarce a native maid so fair, + So good, as Catherine Orkney. + + + + + TO T. STOTHARD, ESQ. + + _On His Illustrations of the Poems of Mr. Rogers_ + + (1833) + + Consummate Artist, whose undying name + With classic Rogers shall go down to fame, + Be this thy crowning work! In my young days + How often have I with a child's fond gaze + Pored on the pictured wonders[13] thou hadst done: + Clarissa mournful, and prim Grandison! + All Fielding's, Smollett's heroes, rose to view; + I saw, and I believed the phantoms true. + But, above all, that most romantic tale[14] + Did o'er my raw credulity prevail, + Where Glums and Gawries wear mysterious things, + That serve at once for jackets and for wings. + Age, that enfeebles other men's designs, + But heightens thine, and thy free draught refines. + In several ways distinct you make us feel-- + _Graceful_ as Raphael, as Watteau _genteel_. + Your lights and shades, as Titianesque, we praise; + And warmly wish you Titian's length of days. + + +[Footnote 13: Illustrations of the British Novelists.] + +[Footnote 14: Peter Wilkins.] + + + + + TO A FRIEND ON HIS MARRIAGE + + (1833) + + What makes a happy wedlock? What has fate + Not given to thee in thy well-chosen mate? + Good sense--good humour;--these are trivial things, + Dear M----, that each trite encomiast sings. + But she hath these, and more. A mind exempt + From every low-bred passion, where contempt, + Nor envy, nor detraction, ever found + A harbour yet; an understanding sound; + Just views of right and wrong; perception full + Of the deformed, and of the beautiful, + In life and manners; wit above her sex, + Which, as a gem, her sprightly converse decks; + Exuberant fancies, prodigal of mirth, + To gladden woodland walk, or winter hearth; + A noble nature, conqueror in the strife + Of conflict with a hard discouraging life, + Strengthening the veins of virtue, past the power + Of those whose days have been one silken hour, + Spoil'd fortune's pamper'd offspring; a keen sense + Alike of benefit, and of offence, + With reconcilement quick, that instant springs + From the charged heart with nimble angel wings; + While grateful feelings, like a signet sign'd + By a strong hand, seem burnt into her mind. + If these, dear friend, a dowry can confer + Richer than land, thou hast them all in her; + And beauty, which some hold the chiefest boon, + Is in thy bargain for a make-weight thrown. + + + + + THE SELF-ENCHANTED + + (1833) + + I had a sense in dreams of a beauty rare, + Whom Fate had spell-bound, and rooted there, + Stooping, like some enchanted theme, + Over the marge of that crystal stream, + Where the blooming Greek, to Echo blind, + With Self-love fond, had to waters pined. + Ages had waked, and ages slept, + And that bending posture still she kept: + For her eyes she may not turn away, + 'Till a fairer object shall pass that way-- + 'Till an image more beauteous this world can show, + Than her own which she sees in the mirror below. + Pore on, fair Creature! for ever pore, + Nor dream to be disenchanted more; + For vain is expectance, and wish is vain, + 'Till a new Narcissus can come again. + + + + + TO LOUISA M[ARTIN], WHOM I USED TO CALL "MONKEY" + + (1831) + + Louisa, serious grown and mild, + I knew you once a romping child, + Obstreperous much and very wild. + Then you would clamber up my knees, + And strive with every art to tease, + When every art of yours could please. + Those things would scarce be proper now. + But they are gone, I know not how, + And woman's written on your brow. + Time draws his finger o'er the scene; + But I cannot forget between + The Thing to me you once have been + Each sportive sally, wild escape,-- + The scoff, the banter, and the jape,-- + And antics of my gamesome Ape. + + + + + CHEAP GIFTS: A SONNET + + (1834) + +[In a leaf of a quarto edition of the 'Lives of the Saints, written in +Spanish by the learned and reverend father, Alfonso Villegas, Divine, of +the order of St. Dominick, set forth in English by John Heigham, Anno +1630,' bought at a Catholic book-shop in Duke Street, Lincoln's Inn +Fields, I found, carefully inserted, a painted flower, seemingly coeval +with the book itself; and did not, for some time, discover that it +opened in the middle, and was the cover to a very humble draught of a +St. Anne, with the Virgin and Child; doubtless the performance of some +poor but pious Catholic, whose meditations it assisted.] + + O lift with reverent hand that tarnish'd flower, + That 'shrines beneath her modest canopy + Memorials dear to Romish piety; + Dim specks, rude shapes, of Saints! in fervent hour + The work perchance of some meek devotee, + Who, poor in worldly treasures to set forth + The sanctities she worshipped to their worth, + In this imperfect tracery might see + Hints, that all Heaven did to her sense reveal. + Cheap gifts best fit poor givers. We are told + Of the lone mite, the cup of water cold, + That in their way approved the offerer's zeal. + True love shows costliest, where the means are scant; + And, in her reckoning, they _abound_, who _want_. + + + + + FREE THOUGHTS ON SEVERAL EMINENT COMPOSERS + + (1830) + + Some cry up Haydn, some Mozart, + Just as the whim bites; for my part, + I do not care a farthing candle + For either of them, or for Handel.-- + Cannot a man live free and easy, + Without admiring Pergolesi? + Or thro' the world with comfort go, + That never heard of Doctor Blow? + So help me heaven, I hardly have; + And yet I eat, and drink, and shave, + Like other people, if you watch it, + And know no more of stave or crotchet, + Than did the primitive Peruvians; + Or those old ante-queer-diluvians + That lived in the unwash'd world with Jubal, + Before that dirty blacksmith Tubal + By stroke on anvil, or by summ'at, + Found out, to his great surprise, the gamut. + I care no more for Cimarosa, + Than he did for Salvator Rosa, + Being no painter; and bad luck + Be mine, if I can bear that Gluck! + Old Tycho Brahe, and modern Herschel, + Had something in them; but who's Purcel? + The devil, with his foot so cloven, + For aught I care, may take Beethoven; + And, if the bargain does not suit, + I'll throw him Weber in to boot. + There's not the splitting of a splinter + To chuse 'twixt him last named, and Winter. + Of Doctor Pepusch old queen Dido + Knew just as much, God knows, as I do. + I would not go four miles to visit + Sebastian Bach (or Batch, which is it?); + No more I would for Bononcini. + As for Novello, or Rossini, + I shall not say a word to grieve 'em, + Because they're living; so I leave 'em. + + + + * * * * * + + + + MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, NOT COLLECTED BY LAMB + + + DRAMATIC FRAGMENT + + (1798) + + Fie upon't. + All men are false, I think. The date of love + Is out, expired, its stories all grown stale, + O'er past, forgotten, like an antique tale + Of Hero and Leander. + JOHN WOODVIL. + + All are not false. I knew a youth who died + For grief, because his Love proved so, + And married with another. + I saw him on the wedding-day, + For he was present in the church that day, + In festive bravery deck'd, + As one that came to grace the ceremony. + I mark'd him when the ring was given, + His countenance never changed; + And when the priest pronounced the marriage blessing, + He put a silent prayer up for the bride, + For so his moving lip interpreted. + He came invited to the marriage feast + With the bride's friends, + And was the merriest of them all that day: + But they, who knew him best, called it feign'd mirth; + And others said, + He wore a smile like death upon his face. + His presence dash'd all the beholders' mirth, + And he went away in tears. + + _What followed then?_ + + Oh! then + He did not, as neglected suitors use, + Affect a life of solitude in shades, + But lived, + In free discourse and sweet society, + Among his friends who knew his gentle nature best. + Yet ever when he smiled, + There was a mystery legible in his face, + That whoso saw him said he was a man + Not long for this world.---- + And true it was, for even then + The silent love was feeding at his heart + Of which he died: + Nor ever spake word of reproach, + Only, he wish'd in death that his remains + Might find a poor grave in some spot, not far + From his mistress' family vault, "being the place + Where one day Anna should herself be laid." + + + + + DICK STRYPE; OR, THE FORCE OF HABIT + + _A Tale--By Timothy Bramble_ + + (1801) + + Habits _are stubborn things:_ + And by the time a man is turn'd of _forty_, + His _ruling passion's_ grown so haughty + There is no clipping of its wings. + The amorous roots have taken earth, and fix + And never shall P--TT leave his juggling tricks, + Till H----Y quits his metre with his pride, + Till W----M learns to flatter regicide, + Till hypocrite-enthusiasts cease to vant + And _Mister_ W----E leaves off to cant. + The truth will best be shewn, + By a familiar instance of our own. + + Dick Strype + Was a dear friend and lover of the PIPE; + He us'd to say, _one pipe of Kirkman's best_ + Gave life a _zest_. + To him 'twas meat, and drink, and physic, + To see the friendly vapour + Curl round his midnight taper, + And the black fume + Clothe all the room, + In clouds as dark as _science metaphysic_. + So still he smok'd, and drank, and crack'd his joke; + And, had he _single_ tarried + He might have smok'd, and still grown old in smoke: + But RICHARD _married_. + His wife was one, who carried + The _cleanly virtues_ almost to a vice, + She was so _nice:_ + And thrice a week, above, below, + The house was scour'd from top to toe, + And all the floors were rubb'd so bright, + You dar'd not walk upright + For fear of sliding: + But that she took a pride in. + + Of all things else REBECCA STRYPE + Could least endure a _pipe_. + She rail'd upon the filthy herb tobacco, + Protested that the noisome vapour + Had spoilt the best chintz curtains and the paper + And cost her many a pound in stucco: + And then she quoted our _King James_, who saith + "Tobacco is the Devil's breath." + When wives _will_ govern, husbands _must_ obey; + For many a day + DICK mourn'd and miss'd his favourite tobacco, + And curs'd REBECCA. + + At length the day approach'd, his wife must die: + Imagine now the doleful cry + Of female friends, old aunts and cousins, + Who to the fun'ral came by dozens-- + The undertaker's men and mutes + Stood at the gate in sable suits + With doleful looks, + Just like so many melancholy _rooks_. + Now cakes and wine are handed round, + Folks sigh, and drink, and drink, and sigh, + For Grief makes people dry: + But DICK is _missing_, nowhere to be found + Above, below, about + They searched the house throughout, + Each hole and secret entry, + Quite from the garret to the pantry, + In every corner, cupboard, nook and shelf, + And all concluded he had _hang'd_ himself. + At last they found him--reader, guess you where-- + 'Twill make you stare-- + Perch'd on REBECCA'S _Coffin_, at his rest, + SMOKING A PIPE OF KIRKMAN'S BEST. + + + + + TWO EPITAPHS ON A YOUNG LADY WHO LIVED + NEGLECTED AND DIED OBSCURE + + (1801 _or_ 1802) + + I + + Under this cold marble stone + Lie the sad remains of one + Who, when alive, by few or none + Was lov'd, as lov'd she might have been, + If she prosp'rous days had seen, + Or had thriving been, I ween. + Only this cold funeral stone + Tells, she was beloved by one, + Who on the marble graves his moan. + + + II + + A Heart which felt unkindness, yet complained not, + A Tongue which spake the simple Truth, and feigned not: + A Soul as white as the pure marble skin + (The beauteous Mansion it was lodgèd in) + Which, unrespected, could itself respect, + On Earth was all the Portion of a Maid + Who in this common Sanctuary laid, + Sleeps unoffended by the World's neglect. + + + + + THE APE + + (1806) + + An Ape is but a trivial beast, + Men count it light and vain; + But I would let them have their thoughts, + To have my Ape again. + + To love a beast in any sort, + Is no great sign of grace; + But I have loved a flouting Ape's + 'Bove any lady's face. + + I have known the power of two fair eyes, + In smile, or else in glance, + And how (for I a lover was) + They make the spirits dance; + + But I would give two hundred smiles, + Of them that fairest be, + For one look of my staring Ape, + That used to stare on me. + + This beast, this Ape, it had a face-- + If face it might be styl'd-- + Sometimes it was a staring Ape, + Sometimes a beauteous child-- + + A Negro flat--a Pagod squat, + Cast in a Chinese mold-- + And then it was a Cherub's face, + Made of the beaten gold! + + But TIME, that's meddling, meddling still + And always altering things-- + And, what's already at the best, + To alteration brings-- + + That turns the sweetest buds to flowers, + And chops and changes toys-- + That breaks up dreams, and parts old friends, + And still commutes our joys-- + + Has changed away my Ape at last + And in its place convey'd, + Thinking therewith to cheat my sight, + A fresh and blooming maid! + + And fair to sight is she--and still + Each day doth sightlier grow, + Upon the ruins of the Ape, + My ancient play-fellow! + + The tale of Sphinx, and Theban jests, + I true in me perceive; + I suffer riddles; death from dark + Enigmas I receive: + + Whilst a hid being I pursue, + That lurks in a new shape, + My darling in herself I miss-- + And, in my Ape, THE APE. + + + + + +_In tabulam eximii pictoris_ B. HAYDONI, _in quâ Solymaei, adveniente +Domino, palmas in viâ, prosternentes mirâ arte depinguntur_ + + (1820) + + Quid vult iste equitans? et quid oclit ista virorum + Palmifera ingens turba, et vox tremebunda Hosanna, + Hosanna Christo semper semperque canamus. + + _Palma_ fuit _Senior_ pictor celeberrimus olim; + Sed palmam cedat, modò si foret ille superstes, + _Palma, Haydone_, tibi: tu palmas omnibus aufers. + + Palma negata macrum, donataque reddit opimum. + Si simul incipiat cum famâ increscere corpus, + Tu citò pinguesces, fies et, amicule, obesus. + + Affectat lauros pictores atque poetae + Sin laurum invideant (sed quis tibi?) laurigerentes, + Pro lauro palmâ viridante tempora cingas. + + + + + CARLAGNULUS. + + _Translation of the Latin Verses on Mr. Haydon's Picture_ + + What rider's that? and who those myriads bringing + Him on his way with palms, Hosannas singing? + _Hosanna to the Christ_, HEAVEN--EARTH--should still be ringing. + + In days of old, old Palma won renown: + But Palma's self must yield the painter's crown, + Haydon, to thee. Thy palm put every other down. + + If Flaccus' sentence with the truth agree, + That "palms awarded make men plump to be," + Friend Horace, Haydon soon in bulk shall match with thee. + + Painters with poets for the laurel vie: + But should the laureat band thy claims deny, + Wear thou thy own green palm, Haydon, triumphantly. + + + + + SONNET + + _To Miss Burney, on her Character of Blanch in "Country + Neighbours," a Tale_ + + (1820) + + Bright spirits have arisen to grace the BURNEY name, + And some in letters, some in tasteful arts, + In learning some have borne distinguished parts; + Or sought through science of sweet sounds their fame: + And foremost _she_, renowned for many a tale + Of faithful love perplexed, and of that good + Old man, who, as CAMILLA'S guardian, stood + In obstinate virtue clad like coat of mail. + Nor dost thou, SARAH, with unequal pace + Her steps pursue. The pure romantic vein + No gentler creature ever knew to feign + Than thy fine Blanch, young with an elder grace, + In all respects without rebuke or blame, + Answering the antique freshness of her name. + + + + + TO MY FRIEND THE INDICATOR + + (1820) + + Your easy Essays indicate a flow, + Dear Friend, of brain which we may elsewhere seek; + And to their pages I, and hundreds, owe, + That Wednesday is the sweetest of the week. + Such observation, wit, and sense, are shewn, + We think the days of Bickerstaff returned; + And that a portion of that oil you own, + In his undying midnight lamp which burned. + I would not lightly bruise old Priscian's head, + Or wrong the rules of grammar understood; + But, with the leave of Priscian be it said, + The _Indicative_ is your _Potential Mood._ + Wit, poet, prose-man, party-man, translator-- + H[unt], your best title yet is INDICATOR. + + + + + ON SEEING MRS. K---- B----, AGED UPWARDS + OF EIGHTY, NURSE AN INFANT + + A sight like this might find apology + In worlds unsway'd by our Chronology; + As Tully says, (the thought's in Plato)-- + "To die is but to go to Cato." + Of this world Time is of the essence,-- + A kind of universal presence; + And therefore poets should have made him + Not only old, as they've pourtray'd him, + But young, mature, and old--all three + In one--a sort of mystery-- + ('Tis hard to paint abstraction pure.) + Here young--there old--and now mature-- + Just as we see some old book-print, + Not to one scene its hero stint; + But, in the distance, take occasion + To draw him in some other station. + Here this prepost'rous union seems + A kind of meeting of extremes. + Ye may not live together. Mean ye + To pass that gulf that lies between ye + Of fourscore years, as we skip ages + In turning o'er historic pages? + Thou dost not to this age belong: + Thou art three generations wrong: + Old Time has miss'd thee: there he tarries! + Go on to thy contemporaries! + Give the child up. To see thee kiss him + Is a compleat anachronism. + Nay, keep him. It is good to see + Race link'd to race, in him and thee. + The child repelleth not at all + Her touch as uncongenial, + But loves the old Nurse like another-- + Its sister--or its natural mother; + And to the nurse a pride it gives + To think (though old) that still she lives + With one, who may not hope in vain + To live her years all o'er again! + + + + + TO EMMA, LEARNING LATIN, AND DESPONDING + + (_By Mary Lamb_. ? 1827) + + Droop not, dear Emma, dry those falling tears, + And call up smiles into thy pallid face, + Pallid and care-worn with thy arduous race: + In few brief months thou hast done the work of years. + To young beginnings natural are these fears. + A right good scholar shalt thou one day be, + And that no distant one; when even she, + Who now to thee a star far off appears, + That most rare Latinist, the Northern Maid-- + The language-loving Sarah[15] of the Lake-- + Shall hail thee Sister Linguist. This will make + Thy friends, who now afford thee careful aid, + A recompense most rich for all their pains, + Counting thy acquisitions their best gains. + + +[Footnote 15: Daughter of S.T. Coleridge, Esq.; an accomplished linguist +in the Greek and Latin tongues, and translatress of a History of the +Abipones. [Note in _Blackwood_.]] + + + + + LINES + +_Addressed to Lieut. R.W.H. Hardy, R.N., on the Perusal of his Volume of +Travels in the Interior of Mexico_ + + 'Tis pleasant, lolling in our elbow chair, + Secure at home, to read descriptions rare + Of venturous traveller in savage climes; + His hair-breadth 'scapes, toil, hunger--and sometimes + The merrier passages that, like a foil + To set off perils past, sweetened that toil, + And took the edge from danger; and I look + With such fear-mingled pleasure thro' thy book, + Adventurous Hardy! Thou a _diver_[16] art, + But of no common form; and for thy part + Of the adventure, hast brought home to the nation + _Pearls_ of discovery--_jewels_ of observation. + + ENFIELD, _January_, 1830. + + +[Footnote 16: Captain Hardy practised this art with considerable +success. [Note in _Athenaeum_.]] + + + + + LINES + + [_For a Monument Commemorating the Sudden Death by + Drowning of a Family, of Four Sons and Two Daughters_] + + (1831) + + Tears are for lighter griefs. Man weeps the doom, + That seals a single victim to the tomb. + But when Death riots--when, with whelming sway, + Destruction sweeps a family away; + When infancy and youth, a huddled mass, + All in an instant to oblivion pass, + And parents' hopes are crush'd; what lamentation + Can reach the depth of such a desolation? + Look upward, Feeble Ones! look up and trust, + That HE who lays their mortal frame in dust, + Still hath the immortal spirit in his keeping-- + In Jesus' sight they are not dead but sleeping. + + + + TO C. ADERS, ESQ. + +_On his Collection of Paintings by the old German Masters_ + + (1831) + + Friendliest of men, ADERS, I never come + Within the precincts of this sacred Room, + But I am struck with a religious fear, + Which says "Let no profane eye enter here." + With imagery from Heav'n the walls are clothed, + Making the things of Time seem vile and loathed. + Spare Saints, whose bodies seem sustain'd by Love, + With Martyrs old in meek procession move. + Here kneels a weeping Magdalen, less bright + To human sense for her blurr'd cheeks; in sight + Of eyes, new-touch'd by Heav'n, more winning fair + Than when her beauty was her only care. + A Hermit here strange mysteries doth unlock + In desart sole, his knees worn by the rock. + There Angel harps are sounding, while below + Palm-bearing Virgins in white order go. + Madonnas, varied with so chaste design, + While all are different, each seems genuine, + And hers the only Jesus: hard outline, + And rigid form, by DURER'S hand subdued + To matchless grace, and sacro-sanctitude; + DURER, who makes thy slighted Germany + Vie with the praise of paint-proud Italy. + + Whoever enter'st here, no more persume + To name a Parlour, or a Drawing Room; + But, bending lowly to each holy Story, + Make this thy Chapel, and thine Oratory. + + + + + HERCULES PACIFICATUS + + _A Tale from Suidas_ + + (1831) + + + In days of yore, ere early Greece + Had dream'd of patrols or police, + A crew of rake-hells _in terrorem_ + Spread wide, and carried all before 'em, + Rifled the poultry, and the women, + And held that all things were in common; + Till Jove's great Son the nuisance saw, + And did abate it by Club Law. + Yet not so clean he made his work, + But here and there a rogue would lurk + In caves and rocky fastnesses, + And shunn'd the strength of Hercules. + + Of these, more desperate than others, + A pair of ragamuffin brothers + In secret ambuscade join'd forces, + To carry on unlawful courses. + These Robbers' names, enough to shake us, + Where, Strymon one, the other Cacus. + And, more the neighbourhood to bother, + A wicked dam they had for mother, + Who knew their craft, but not forbid it, + And whatsoe'er they nymm'd, she hid it; + Received them with delight and wonder, + When they brought home some 'special plunder; + Call'd them her darlings, and her white boys, + Her ducks, her dildings--all was right boys-- + "Only," she said, "my lads, have care + Ye fall not into BLACK BACK'S snare; + For, if he catch, he'll maul your _corpus_, + And clapper-claw you to some purpose." + She was in truth a kind of witch, + Had grown by fortune-telling rich; + To spells and conjurings did tackle her, + And read folks' dooms by light oracular; + In which she saw, as clear as daylight, + What mischief on her bairns would a-light; + Therefore she had a special loathing + For all that own'd that sable clothing. + + Who can 'scape fate, when we're decreed to 't? + The graceless brethren paid small heed to 't. + A brace they were of sturdy fellows, + As we may say, that fear'd no colours, + And sneer'd with modern infidelity + At the old gipsy's fond credulity. + It proved all true tho', as she'd mumbled-- + For on a day the varlets stumbled + On a green spot--_sit linguae fides_-- + 'Tis Suidas tells it--where Alcides + Secure, as fearing no ill neighbour, + Lay fast asleep after a "Labour." + His trusty oaken plant was near-- + The prowling rogues look round, and leer, + And each his wicked wits 'gan rub, + How to bear off the famous Club; + Thinking that they _sans_ price or hire wou'd + Carry 't strait home, and chop for fire wood. + + 'Twould serve their old dame half a winter-- + You stare? but 'faith it was no splinter; + I would not for much money 'spy + Such beam in any neighbour's eye. + The villains, these exploits not dull in, + Incontinently fell a pulling. + They found it heavy--no slight matter-- + But tugg'd, and tugg'd it, till the clatter + 'Woke Hercules, who in a trice + Whipt up the knaves, and with a splice, + He kept on purpose--which before + Had served for giants many a score-- + To end of Club tied each rogue's head fast; + Strapping feet too, to keep them steadfast; + And pickaback them carries townwards, + Behind his brawny back head-downwards, + (So foolish calf--for rhyme I bless X-- + Comes _nolens volens_ out of Essex); + Thinking to brain them with his _dextra_, + Or string them up upon the next tree. + That Club--so equal fates condemn-- + They thought to catch, has now catch'd them. + + Now Hercules, we may suppose, + Was no great dandy in his clothes; + Was seldom, save on Sundays, seen + In calimanco, or nankeen; + On anniversaries would try on + A jerkin spick-span new from lion; + Went bare for the most part, to be cool, + And save the time of his Groom of the Stole; + Besides, the smoke he had been in + In Stygian gulf, had dyed his skin + To a natural sable--a right hell-fit-- + That seem'd to careless eyes black velvet. + + The brethren from their station scurvy, + Where they hung dangling topsy turvy, + With horror view the black costume, + And each persumes his hour is come! + Then softly to themselves 'gan mutter + The warning words their dame did utter; + Yet not so softly, but with ease + Were overheard by Hercules. + Quoth Cacus--"This is he she spoke of, + Which we so often made a joke of." + "I see," said the other, "thank our sin for't, + 'Tis BLACK BACK sure enough--we're in for 't." + + His Godship who, for all his brag + Of roughness, was at heart a wag, + At his new name was tickled finely, + And fell a laughing most divinely. + Quoth he, "I'll tell this jest in heaven-- + The musty rogues shall be forgiven." + So in a twinkling did uncase them, + On mother earth once more to place them-- + The varlets, glad to be unhamper'd, + Made each a leg--then fairly scamper'd. + + + + + THE PARTING SPEECH OF THE CELESTIAL MESSENGER TO THE POET + + _From the Latin of Palingenius, in the Zodiacus Vitae_ + + (1832) + + But now time warns (my mission at an end) + That to Jove's starry court I re-ascend; + From whose high battlements I take delight + To scan your earth, diminish'd to the sight, + Pendant, and round, and, as an apple, small; + Self-propt, self-balanced, and secure from fall + By her own weight: and how with liquid robe + Blue ocean girdles round her tiny globe, + While lesser Nereus, gliding like a snake, + Betwixt her hands his flexile course doth take, + Shrunk to a rivulet; and how the Po, + The mighty Ganges, Tanais, Ister, show + No bigger than a ditch which rains have swell'd. + Old Nilus' seven proud mouths I late beheld, + And mock'd the watery puddles. Hosts steel-clad + Ofttimes I thence behold; and how the sad + Peoples are punish'd by the fault of kings, + Which from the purple fiend Ambition springs. + Forgetful of mortality, they live + In hot strife for possessions fugitive, + At which the angels grieve. Sometimes I trace + Of fountains, rivers, seas, the change of place; + By ever shifting course, and Time's unrest, + The vale exalted, and the mount deprest + To an inglorious valley; plough-shares going + Where tall trees rear'd their tops; and fresh trees growing + In antique pastures. Cities lose their site. + Old things wax new. O what a rare delight + To him, who from this vantage can survey + At once stern Afric, and soft Asia, + With Europe's cultured plains; and in their turns + Their scatter'd tribes: those whom the hot Crab burns, + The tawny Ethiops; Orient Indians; + Getulians; ever-wandering Scythians; + Swift Tartar hordes; Cilicians rapacious, + And Parthians with back-bended bow pugnacious; + Sabeans incense-bringing, men of Thrace, + Italian, Spaniard, Gaul, and that rough race + Of Britons, rigid as their native colds; + With all the rest the circling sun beholds! + But clouds, and elemental mists, deny + These visions blest to any fleshly eye. + + + + + EXISTENCE, CONSIDERED IN ITSELF, NO BLESSING + + _From the Latin of Palingenius_ + + (1832) + +The Poet, after a seeming approval of suicide, from a consideration of +the cares and crimes of life, finally rejecting it, discusses the +negative importance of existence, contemplated in itself, without +reference to good or evil. + + Of these sad truths consideration had-- + Thou shalt not fear to quit this world so mad, + So wicked; but the tenet rather hold + Of wise Calanus, and his followers old, + Who with their own wills their own freedom wrought, + And by self-slaughter their dismissal sought + From this dark den of crime--this horrid lair + Of men, that savager than monsters are; + And scorning longer, in this tangled mesh + Of ills, to wait on perishable flesh, + Did with their desperate hands anticipate + The too, too slow relief of lingering fate. + And if religion did not stay thine hand, + And God, and Plato's wise behests, withstand, + I would in like case counsel thee to throw + This senseless burden off, of cares below. + Not wine, _as_ wine, men choose, but as it came + From such or such a vintage: 'tis the same + With life, which simply must be understood + A black negation, if it be not good. + But if 'tis wretched all--as men decline + And loath the sour lees of corrupted wine-- + 'Tis so to be contemn'd. Merely TO BE + Is not a boon to seek, nor ill to flee, + Seeing that every vilest little Thing + Has it in common, from a gnat's small wing, + A creeping worm, down to the moveless stone, + And crumbling bark from trees. Unless TO BE, + And TO BE BLEST, be one, I do not see + In bare existence, _as_ existence, aught + That's worthy to be loved, or to be sought. + + + + + TO SAMUEL ROGERS, ESQ. + + _On the New Edition of his "Pleasures of Memory"_ + + (1833) + + When thy gay book hath paid its proud devoirs, + Poetic friend, and fed with luxury + The eye of pampered aristocracy + In glittering drawing-rooms and gilt boudoirs, + O'erlaid with comments of pictorial art, + However rich and rare, yet nothing leaving + Of healthful action to the soul-conceiving + Of the true reader--yet a nobler part + Awaits thy work, already classic styled. + Cheap-clad, accessible, in homeliest show + The modest beauty through the land shall go + From year to year, and render life more mild; + Refinement to the poor man's hearth shall give, + And in the moral heart of England live. + + + + + TO CLARA N[OVELLO] + + (1834) + + The Gods have made me most unmusical, + With feelings that respond not to the call + Of stringed harp, or voice--obtuse and mute + To hautboy, sackbut, dulcimer, and flute; + King David's lyre, that made the madness flee + From Saul, had been but a jew's-harp to me: + Theorbos, violins, French horns, guitars, + Leave in my wounded ears inflicted scars; + I hate those trills, and shakes, and sounds that float + Upon the captive air; I know no note, + Nor ever shall, whatever folks may say, + Of the strange mysteries of _Sol_ and _Fa_; + I sit at oratorios like a fish, + Incapable of sound, and only wish + The thing was over. Yet do I admire, + O tuneful daughter of a tuneful sire, + Thy painful labours in a science, which + To your deserts I pray may make you rich + As much as you are loved, and add a grace + To the most musical Novello race. + Women lead men by the nose, some cynics say; + You draw them by the ear--a delicater way. + + + + + THE SISTERS + + On Emma's honest brow we read display'd + The constant virtues of the Nut Brown Maid; + Mellifluous sounds on Clara's tongue we hear, + Notes that once lured a Seraph from his sphere; + Cecilia's eyes such winning beauties crown + As without song might draw _her_ Angel down. + + + + + LOVE WILL COME + + Tune--_The Tartar Drum_ + + I + + Guard thy feelings, pretty Vestal, + From the smooth Intruder free; + Cage thy heart in bars of chrystal, + Lock it with a golden key: + Thro' the bars demurely stealing, + Noiseless footstep, accent dumb, + His approach to none revealing-- + Watch, or watch not, LOVE WILL COME. + + His approach to none revealing-- + Watch, or watch not, Love will come--Love, + Watch, or watch not, Love will come. + + + II + + Scornful Beauty may deny him-- + He hath spells to charm disdain; + Homely Features may defy him-- + Both at length must wear the chain. + Haughty Youth in Courts of Princes-- + Hermit poor with age o'er come-- + His soft plea at last convinces; + Sooner, later, LOVE WILL COME. + + His soft plea at length convinces; + Sooner, later, Love will come--Love, + Sooner, later, Love will come. + + + + + TO MARGARET W---- + + Margaret, in happy hour + Christen'd from that humble flower + Which we a daisy[17] call! + May thy pretty name-sake be + In all things a type of thee, + And image thee in all. + + +[Footnote 17: Marguerite, in French, signifies a daisy. [Note in +_Athenaeum_.]] + + + + To Margaret W---- + + + Like _it_ you show a modest face, + An unpretending native grace;-- + The tulip, and the pink, + The china and the damask rose, + And every flaunting flower that blows, + In the comparing shrink. + + Of lowly fields you think no scorn; + Yet gayest gardens would adorn, + And grace, wherever set. + Home-seated in your lonely bower, + Or wedded--a transplanted flower-- + I bless you, Margaret! + +EDMONTON, 8_th October_, 1834. + + + + * * * * * + + + + ADDITIONAL ALBUM VERSES AND ACROSTICS + + + WHAT IS AN ALBUM? + + 'Tis a Book kept by modern Young Ladies for show, + Of which their plain grandmothers nothing did know. + 'Tis a medley of scraps, fine verse, and fine prose, + And some things not very like either, God knows. + The soft First Effusions of Beaux and of Belles, + Of future LORD BYRONS, and sweet L.E.L.'s; + Where wise folk and simple both equally shine, + And you write your nonsense, that I may write mine. + Stick in a fine landscape, to make a display, + A flower-piece, a foreground, all tinted so gay, + As NATURE herself (could she see them) would strike + With envy, to think that she ne'er did the like: + And since some LAVATERS, with head-pieces comical, + Have pronounc'd people's hands to be physiognomical, + Be sure that you stuff it with AUTOGRAPHS plenty, + All framed to a pattern, so stiff, and so dainty. + They no more resemble folks' every-day writing, + Than lines penn'd with pains do extemp'rel enditing; + Or the natural countenance (pardon the stricture) + The faces we make when we sit for our picture. + + Thus you have, dearest EMMA, an ALBUM complete-- + Which may _you_ live to finish, and _I_ live to see it; + And since you began it for innocent ends, + May it swell, and grow bigger each day with new friends, + Who shall set down kind names, as a token and test, + As I my poor _autograph_ sign with the rest. + + + + + THE FIRST LEAF OF SPRING + + _Written on the First Leaf of a Lady's Album_ + + Thou fragile, filmy, gossamery thing, + First leaf of spring! + At every lightest breath that quakest, + And with a zephyr shakest; + Scarce stout enough to hold thy slender form together, + In calmest halcyon weather; + Next sister to the web that spiders weave, + Poor flutterers to deceive + Into their treacherous silken bed: + O! how art thou sustained, how nourishèd! + All trivial as thou art, + Without dispute, + Thou play'st a mighty part; + And art the herald to a throng + Of buds, blooms, fruit, + That shall thy cracking branches sway, + While birds on every spray + Shall pay the copious fruitage with a sylvan song. + So 'tis with thee, whoe'er on thee shall look, + First leaf of this beginning modest book. + Slender thou art, God knowest, + And little grace bestowest, + But in thy train shall follow after, + Wit, wisdom, seriousness, in hand with laughter; + Provoking jests, restraining soberness, + In their appropriate dress; + And I shall joy to be outdone + By those who brighter trophies won; + Without a grief, + That I thy slender promise have begun, + First leaf. + +1832. + + + + + + TO MRS. F[IELD] + + _On Her Return from Gibraltar_ + + Jane, you are welcome from the barren Rock, + And Calpe's sounding shores. Oh do not mock, + Now you have rais'd, our greetings; nor again + Ever revisit that dry nook of Spain. + + Friends have you here, and friendships to command, + In merry England. Love this hearty land. + Ease, comfort, competence--of these possess'd, + Let prodigal adventurers seek the rest: + Dear England is _as you_,--a _Field_ the Lord hath blest. + + + + + TO M[ARY] L[AETITIA] F[IELD] + + (_Expecting to See Her Again after a Long Interval_) + + How many wasting, many wasted years, + Have run their round, since I beheld your face! + In Memory's dim eye it yet appears + Crowned, as it _then_ seemed, with a chearful grace. + Young prattling Maiden, on the Thames' fair side, + Enlivening pleasant Sunbury with your smiles, + Time may have changed you: coy reserve, or pride, + To sullen looks reduced those mirthful wiles. + I will not 'bate one smile on that clear brow, + But take of Time a rigorous account, + When next I see you; and Maria now + Must _be_ the Thing she _was_. To what amount + These verses else?--all hollow and untrue-- + This was not writ, these lines not meant, for YOU. + + + + + TO ESTHER FIELD + + Esther, holy name and sweet, + Smoothly runs on even feet, + To the mild Acrostic bending; + Hebrew recollections blending. + Ever keep that Queen in view-- + Royal namesake--bold, and true! + + Firm she stood in evil times, + In the face of Haman's crimes.-- + Ev'n as She, do Thou possess + Loftiest virtue in the dress, + Dear F----, of native loveliness. + + + + + [TO MRS. WILLIAMS] + + (1830) + + Go little Poem, and present + Respectful terms of compliment; + A gentle lady bids thee speak! + Courteous is _she_, tho' thou be weak-- + Evoke from Heaven as thick as manna + + Joy after joy on Grace Joanna: + On Fornham's Glebe and Pasture land + A blessing pray. Long, long may stand, + Not touched by Time, the Rectory blithe; + No grudging churl dispute his Tithe; + At Easter be the offerings due + + With cheerful spirit paid; each pew + In decent order filled; no noise + Loud intervene to drown the voice, + Learning, or wisdom of the Teacher; + Impressive be the Sacred Preacher, + And strict his notes on holy page; + May young and old from age to age + Salute, and still point out, 'The good man's Parsonage!' + + + + + TO THE BOOK + + Little Casket! Storehouse rare + Of rich conceits, to please the Fair! + Happiest he of mortal men,-- + (I crown him monarch of the pen,)-- + To whom Sophia deigns to give + The flattering prerogative + To inscribe his name in chief, + On thy first and maiden Leaf. + When thy pages shall be full + Of what brighter wits can cull + Of the Tender or Romantic, + Creeping Prose or Verse Gigantic,-- + Which thy spaces so shall cram + That the Bee-like Epigram + (Which a two-fold tribute brings, + Honey gives at once, and stings,) + Hath not room left wherewithal + To infix its tiny scrawl; + Haply some more youthful swain, + Striving to describe his pain, + And the Damsel's ear to seize + With more expressive lays than these, + When he finds his own excluded + And these counterfeits intruded; + While, loitering in the Muse's bower, + He overstayed the eleventh hour, + Till the tables filled--shall fret, + Die, or sicken with regret + Or into a shadow pine: + While this triumphant verse of mine, + Like to some favoured stranger-guest, + Bidden to a good man's Feast + Shall sit--by merit less than fate-- + In the upper Seat in State. + + + + + TO S[OPHIA] F[REND] + + _Acrostic_ + + Solemn Legends we are told + Of bright female Names of old, + Phyllus fair, Laodameia, + Helen, but methinks Sophia + Is a name of better meaning + And a sort of Christian leaning. + + For it _Wisdom_ means, which passes + Rubies, pearls, or golden masses. + Ever try that Name to merit; + Never quit what you inherit, + Duly from your Father's spirit. + + + + + TO R[OTHA] Q[UILLINAN] + + _Acrostic_ + + ROTHA, how in numbers light, + Ought I to express thee? + Take my meaning in its flight-- + Haste imports not always slight-- + And believe, I bless thee. + + + + + TO S[ARAH] L[OCKE] + + _Acrostic_ + + Shall I praise a face unseen, + And extol a fancied mien, + Rave on visionary charm, + And from shadows take alarm? + Hatred hates _without a cause;_ + + Love may love, with more applause, + Or, without a reason given, + Charmed be with unknown Heaven. + Keep the secrets, though, unmocked, + Ever in your bosom _Locke'd_. + + + + + TO M[ARY] L[OCKE] + + _Acrostic_ + + Must I write with pen unwilling + And describe those graces killing + Rightly, which I never saw? + Yes--it is the Album's law. + + Let me then Invention strain + On your excelling charms to feign-- + Cold is Fiction? I _believe_ it + Kindly, as I did receive it, + Even as J.F.'s tongue did weave it. + + + + + AN ACROSTIC AGAINST ACROSTICS + + [_To Edward Hogg_] + + Envy not the wretched Poet + Doomed to pen these teasing strains, + Wit so cramped, ah, who can show it, + Are the trifles worth the pains. + Rhyme compared with this were easy, + Double Rhymes may not displease ye. + + Homer, Horace sly and caustic, + Owed no fame to vile acrostic. + G's, I am sure, the Readers choked with, + Good men's names must not be joked with. + + + + + ON BEING ASKED TO WRITE IN MISS WESTWOOD'S ALBUM + + My feeble Muse, that fain her best wou'd + Write, at command of Frances Westwood, + But feels her wits not in their best mood, + Fell lately on some idle fancies, + As she's much given to romances, + About this self-same style as Frances; + Which seems to be a name in common + Attributed to man or woman. + She thence contrived this flattering moral, + With which she hopes no soul will quarrel, + That she, whom this twin title decks, + Combines what's good in either sex; + Unites--how very rare the case is!-- + Masculine sense to female graces; + And, quitting not her proper rank, + Is both in one--Fanny, and frank. + + 12_th October_, 1827. + + + + + [IN MISS WESTWOOD'S ALBUM] + + _By Mary Lamb_ + + Small beauty to your Book my lines can lend, + Yet you shall have the best I can, sweet friend, + To serve for poor memorials 'gainst the day + That calls you from your Parent-roof away, + From the mild offices of Filial life + To the more serious duties of a Wife. + The World is opening to you--may you rest + With all your prospects realised, and blest!-- + I, with the Elder Couple left behind, + On evenings chatting, oft shall call to mind + Those spirits of Youth, which Age so ill can miss, + And, wanting you, half grudge your S--n's bliss; + Till mirthful malice tempts us to exclaim + 'Gainst the dear Thief, who robb'd you of your _Name_. + + ENFIELD CHASE, 17_th May_, 1828. + + + + + UN SOLITAIRE + + _A Drawing by E.I._ [_Emma Isola_] + + [_To Sarah Lachlan_] + + Solitary man, around thee + Are the mountains: Peace hath found thee + Resting by that rippling tide; + All vain toys of life expelling, + Hermit-like, thou find'st a dwelling, + Lost 'mid foliage stretching wide. + Angels here alone may find thee, + Contemplation fast may bind thee. + Holier spot, or more fantastic, + Livelier scene of deep seclusion, + Armed by Nature 'gainst intrusion, + Never graced a seat Monastic. + + + + + TO S[ARAH] T[HOMAS] + + _An Acrostic_ + + Sarah, blest wife of "Terah's faithful Son," + After a race of years with goodness run, + Regardless heard the promised miracle, + And mocked the blessing as impossible. + How weak is Faith!--even He, the most sincere, + + Thomas, to his meek Master not least dear, + Holy, and blameless, yet refused assent + Of full belief, until he could content + Mere human senses. In your piety, + As you are _one_ in _name_, industriously + So copy them: but _shun_ their weak part--_Incredulity_. + + + + + TO MRS. SARAH ROBINSON + + Soul-breathing verse, thy gentlest guise put on + And greet the honor'd name of Robinson. + Rome in her throng'd and stranger-crowded streets, + And palaces, where pilgrim _pilgrim_ meets, + Holds not, respected Sarah, one that can + Revered make the name of Englishman, + Or loved, more than thy Kinsman, dear to me + By many a friendly act. His heart I see + In thee with answering courtesy renew'd. + Nor shall to thee my debt of gratitude + Soon fade, that didst receive with open hand + One that was come a stranger to thy land-- + Now call[s] thee Friend. Her thanks, and mine, command. + + Enfield, 14_th March_, 1831. + + + + + TO SARAH [APSEY] + + _Acrostic_ + + Sarah,--your other name I know not, + And fine encomiums I bestow not, + Regard me as an utter stranger, + A hair-brain'd, hasty, album-ranger, + Heaven shield you, Girl, from every danger! + + + + + TO JOSEPH VALE ASBURY + + _Acrostic_ + + Judgements are about us thoroughly; + O'er all Enfield hangs the Cholera, + Savage monster, none like him + Ever rack'd a human limb. + Pest, nor plague, nor fever yellow, + Has made patients more to bellow. + + Vain his threatnings! Asbury comes, + And defiance beats by drums; + Label, bottle, box, pill, potion, + Each enlists in the commotion. + + And with Vials, like to those + Seen in Patmos[18], charged with woes, + Breathing Wrath, he falls pell-mell + Upon the Foe, and pays him well. + Revenge!--he has made the monster sick + Yea, Cholera vanish, choleric. + + +[Footnote 18: _Vide_ Revelations.] + + + + TO D[OROTHY] A[SBURY] + + _Acrostic_ + + Divided praise, Lady, to you we owe, + Of all the health your husband doth bestow, + Respected wife of skilful Asbury! + Oracular foresight named thee Dorothy; + Tis a Greek word, and signifies God's Gift; + (How Learning helps poor Poets at a shift!)-- + You are that gift. When, tired with human ails, + + And tedious listening to the sick man's tales, + Sore spent, and fretted, he comes home at eve, + By mild medicaments you his toils deceive. + Under your soothing treatment he revives; + (Restorative is the smile of gentle wives): + You lengthen _his_, who lengthens _all our lives._ + + + + + TO LOUISA MORGAN + + How blest is he who in his _age_, exempt + From fortune's frowns, and from the troublous strife + Of storms that harass still the private life, + "Below ambition, and above contempt," + Hath gain'd a quiet harbour, where he may + Look back on shipwrecks past, without a sigh + For busier scenes, and hope's gay dreams gone by! + And such a nook of blessedness, they say, + Your Sire at length has found; while you, best Child, + Content in _his_ contentment, acquiesce + In patient toils; and in a station less, + Than you might image, when your prospects smiled. + In your meek virtues there is found a calm, + That on his life's soft evening sheds a balm. + + + + + TO SARAH JAMES OF BEGUILDY + + _Acrostic_ + + Sleep hath treasures worth retracing: + Are you not in slumbers pacing + Round your native spot at times, + And seem to hear Beguildy's chimes? + Hold the airy vision fast; + Joy is but a dream at last: + And what was so fugitive, + Memory only makes to live. + Even from troubles past we borrow + Some thoughts that may lighten sorrow, + + Onwards as we pace through life, + Fainting under care or strife, + + By the magic of a thought + Every object back is brought + Gayer than it was when real, + Under influence ideal. + In remembrance as a glass, + Let your happy childhood pass; + Dreaming so in fancy's spells, + You still shall hear those old church bells. + + + + + TO EMMA BUTTON + + _Acrostic_ + + EMMA, eldest of your name, + Meekly trusting in her God + Midst the red-hot plough-shares trod, + And unscorch'd preserved her fame. + By that test if _you_ were tried, + Ugly flames might be defied; + Though devouring fire's a glutton, + Through the trial you might go + "On the light fantastic toe," + Nor for plough-shares care a BUTTON. + + + + + WRITTEN UPON THE COVER OF A BLOTTING BOOK + + Blank tho' I be, within you'll find + Relics of th' enraptured mind: + Where truth and fable, mirth and wit, + Are safely here deposited. + The placid, furious, envious, wise, + Impart to me their secresies; + Here hidden thoughts in blotted line + Nor sybil can the sense divine; + Lethe and I twin sisters be-- + Then, stranger, open me and see. + + + + + * * * * * + + + + POLITICAL AND OTHER EPIGRAMS + + + + TO SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH + + (1801) + + Though thou'rt like Judas, an apostate black, + In the resemblance one thing thou dost lack: + When he had gotten his ill-purchased pelf, + He went away, and wisely hanged himself. + This thou may'st do at last; yet much I doubt, + If thou hast any _bowels_ to gush out! + + + + * * * * * + + + + TWELFTH NIGHT + + _Characters That Might Have Been Drawn on the Above Evening_ + + (1802) + + MR. A[DDINGTON] + + I put my night-cap on my head, + And went, as usual, to my bed; + And, most surprising to relate, + I woke--a Minister of State! + + + MESSRS. C[ANNIN]G AND F[RER]E + + At Eton School brought up with dull boys, + We shone like _men_ among the _school-boys_; + But since we in the world have been, + We are but _school-boys_ among _men_. + + + COUNT RUMFORD + + I deal in aliments fictitious + And teaze the poor with soups nutritious. + Of bones and flesh I make dilution + And belong to the National Institution. + + + + + ON A LATE EMPIRIC OF "BALMY" MEMORY + + (1802. Not printed till 1820) + + His namesake, born of Jewish breeder, + Knew "from the Hyssop to the Cedar;" + But he, unlike the Jewish leader, + Scarce knew the Hyssop from the Cedar. + + + + * * * * * + + + + EPIGRAMS + + (1812) + + + I + + Princeps his rent from tinneries draws, + His best friends are refiners;-- + What wonder then his other friends + He leaves for under-_miners._ + + + II + + Ye Politicians, tell me, pray, + Why thus with woe and care rent? + This is the worst that you can say, + Some wind has blown the _wig_ away, + And left the _hair apparent._ + + + + * * * * * + + + + THE TRIUMPH OF THE WHALE + + (1812) + + + Io! Paean! Io! sing + To the funny people's King. + Not a mightier whale than this + In the vast Atlantic is; + Not a fatter fish than he + Flounders round the polar sea. + See his blubbers--at his gills + What a world of drink he swills, + From his trunk, as from a spout, + Which next moment he pours out. + Such his person--next declare, + Muse, who his companions are.-- + Every fish of generous kind + Scuds aside, or slinks behind; + But about his presence keep + All the Monsters of the Deep; + Mermaids, with their tails and singing + His delighted fancy stinging; + Crooked Dolphins, they surround him, + Dog-like Seals, they fawn around him. + Following hard, the progress mark + Of the intolerant salt sea shark. + For his solace and relief, + Flat fish are his courtiers chief. + Last and lowest in his train, + Ink-fish (libellers of the main) + Their black liquor shed in spite: + (Such on earth the things _that write_.) + In his stomach, some do say, + No good thing can ever stay. + Had it been the fortune of it + To have swallowed that old Prophet, + Three days there he'd not have dwell'd, + But in one have been expell'd. + Hapless mariners are they, + Who beguil'd (as seamen say), + Deeming him some rock or island, + Footing sure, safe spot, and dry land, + Anchor in his scaly rind; + Soon the difference they find; + Sudden plumb, he sinks beneath them; + Does to ruthless seas bequeath them. + + Name or title what has he? + Is he Regent of the Sea? + From this difficulty free us, + Buffon, Banks or sage Linnaeus. + With his wondrous attributes + Say what appellation suits. + By his bulk, and by his size, + By his oily qualities, + This (or else my eyesight fails), + This should be the PRINCE OF WHALES. + + + + + SONNET + + _St. Crispin to Mr. Gifford_ (1819) + + All unadvised, and in an evil hour, + Lured by aspiring thoughts, my son, you daft + The lowly labours of the Gentle Craft + For learned toils, which blood and spirits sour. + All things, dear pledge, are not in all men's power; + The wiser sort of shrub affects the ground; + And sweet content of mind is oftener found + In cobbler's parlour, than in critic's bower. + The sorest work is what doth cross the grain; + And better to this hour you had been plying + The obsequious awl with well-waxed finger flying, + Than ceaseless thus to till a thankless vein; + Still teazing Muses, which are still denying; + Making a stretching-leather of your brain. + + + + + THE GODLIKE + + (1820) + + In one great man we view with odds + A parallel to all the gods. + Great Jove, that shook heaven with his brow, + Could never match his princely bow. + In him a Bacchus we behold: + Like Bacchus, too, he ne'er grows old. + Like Phoebus next, a flaming lover; + And then he's Mercury--all over. + A Vulcan, for domestic strife, + He lamely lives without his wife. + And sure--unless our wits be dull-- + Minerva-like, when moon was full, + He issued from paternal skull. + + + + + THE THREE GRAVES + + (1820) + + Close by the ever-burning brimstone beds + Where Bedloe, Oates and Judas, hide their heads, + I saw great Satan like a Sexton stand + With his intolerable spade in hand, + Digging three graves. Of coffin shape they were, + For those who, coffinless, must enter there + With unblest rites. The shrouds were of that cloth + Which Clotho weaveth in her blackest wrath: + The dismal tinct oppress'd the eye, that dwelt + Upon it long, like darkness to be felt. + The pillows to these baleful beds were toads, + Large, living, livid, melancholy loads, + Whose softness shock'd. Worms of all monstrous size + Crawl'd round; and one, upcoil'd, which never dies. + A doleful bell, inculcating despair, + Was always ringing in the heavy air. + And all about the detestable pit + Strange headless ghosts, and quarter'd forms, did flit; + Rivers of blood, from living traitors spilt, + By treachery stung from poverty to guilt. + I ask'd the fiend, for whom these rites were meant? + "These graves," quoth he, "when life's brief oil is spent, + When the dark night comes, and they're sinking bedwards, + --I mean for Castles, Oliver, and Edwards." + + + + + SONNET TO MATHEW WOOD, ESQ. + + _Alderman and M.P._ + + (1820) + + Hold on thy course uncheck'd, heroic WOOD! + Regardless what the player's son may prate, + Saint Stephens' fool, the Zany of Debate-- + Who nothing generous ever understood. + London's twice Praetor! scorn the fool-born jest-- + The stage's scum, and refuse of the players-- + Stale topics against Magistrates and Mayors-- + City and Country both thy worth attest. + Bid him leave off his shallow Eton wit, + More fit to sooth the superficial ear + Of drunken PITT, and that pickpocket Peer, + When at their sottish orgies they did sit, + Hatching mad counsels from inflated vein, + Till England, and the nations, reeled with pain. + + + + + ON A PROJECTED JOURNEY + + (1820) + + To gratify his people's wish + See G[eorg]e at length prepare-- + He's setting out for Hanover-- + We've often wished him there. + + + SONG FOR THE C[ORONATIO]N + + _Tune, "Roy's Wife of Aldivalloch"_ + + (1820) + + _Roi's_ wife of Brunswick Oëls! + _Roi's_ wife of Brunswick Oëls! + Wot you how she came to him, + While he supinely dreamt of no ills? + Vow! but she is a canty Queen, + And well can she scare each royal orgie.-- + To us she ever must be dear, + Though she's for ever cut by Georgie.-- + _Roi's_ wife, etc. _Da capo._ + + + + + THE UNBELOVED + + (1820) + + Not a woman, child, or man in + All this isle, that loves thee, C[anni]ng. + Fools, whom gentle manners sway, + May incline to C[astlerea]gh, + Princes, who old ladies love, + Of the Doctor may approve, + Chancery lads do not abhor + Their chatty, childish Chancellor. + In Liverpool some virtues strike, + And little Van's beneath dislike. + Tho, if I were to be dead for't, + I could never love thee, H[eadfor]t: + (Every man must have his way) + Other grey adulterers may. + But thou unamiable object,-- + Dear to neither prince, nor subject;-- + Veriest, meanest scab, for pelf + Fastning on the skin of Guelph, + Thou, thou must, surely, _loathe thyself._ + + + + + ON THE ARRIVAL IN ENGLAND OF LORD BYRON'S REMAINS + + (1824) + + Manners, they say, by climate alter not: + Who goes a drunkard will return a sot. + So lordly Juan, damn'd to lasting fame, + Went out a pickle, and came back the same. + + + + + LINES + + _Suggested by a Sight of Waltham Cross_ + + (1827) + + Time-mouldering CROSSES, gemm'd with imagery + Of costliest work, and Gothic tracery, + Point still the spots, to hallow'd wedlock dear, + Where rested on its solemn way the bier, + That bore the bones of Edward's Elinor + To mix with Royal dust at Westminster.-- + Far different rites did thee to dust consign, + Duke Brunswick's daughter, Princely Caroline. + A hurrying funeral, and a banish'd grave, + High-minded Wife! were all that thou could'st have. + Grieve not, great Ghost, nor count in death thy losses; + Thou in thy life-time had'st thy share of _crosses._ + + + + + FOR THE "TABLE BOOK" + + (1827) + + Laura, too partial to her friends' enditing, + Requires from each a pattern of their _writing._ + A weightier trifle Laura might command; + For who to Laura would refuse his--_hand?_ + + + + + THE ROYAL WONDERS + + (1830) + + Two miracles at once! Compell'd by fate, + His tarnish'd throne the Bourbon doth vacate; + While English William,--a diviner thing,-- + Of his free pleasure hath put off _the king._ + The forms of distant old respect lets pass, + And melts his crown into the common mass. + Health to fair France, and fine regeneration! + But England's is the nobler abdication. + + + + + "BREVIS ESSE LABORO" + + "ONE DIP" + + (1830) + + Much speech obscures the sense; the soul of wit + Is brevity: our tale one proof of it. + Poor Balbulus, a stammering invalid, + Consults the doctors, and by them is bid + To try sea-bathing, with this special heed, + "One Dip was all his malady did need; + More than that one his certain death would be." + Now who so nervous or so shook as he, + For Balbulus had never dipped before? + Two well-known dippers at the Broadstairs' shore, + Stout, sturdy churls, have stript him to the skin, + And naked, cold, and shivering plunge him in. + Soon he emerges, with scarce breath to say, + "I'm to be dip--dip--dipt--." "We know it," they + Reply; expostulation seemed in vain, + And over ears they souse him in again, + And up again he rises, his words trip, + And falter as before. Still "dip--dip--dip"-- + And in again he goes with furious plunge, + Once more to rise; when, with a desperate lunge, + At length he bolts these words out, "Only once!" + The villains crave his pardon. Had the dunce + But aimed at these bare words the rogues had found him, + But striving to be prolix, they half drowned him. + + + + + SUUM CUIQUE + + (1830) + + Adsciscit sibi divitias et opes alienas + Fur, rapiens, spolians quod mihi, quodque tibi + Proprium erat, temnens haec verba, Meumque Tuumque; + Omne Suum est. Tandem cuique suum tribuit. + Dat laqueo collum: vestes, vah! carnifici dat: + Sese Diabolo; sic bene, Cuique Suum. + + + + + [ON THE _LITERARY GAZETTE_] + + (1830) + + In merry England I computed once + The number of the dunces--dunce for dunce; + There were _four hundred_, if I don't forget, + _All readers of the L------y G-----e;_ + But if the author to himself keep true, + In some short months they'll be reduced to _two_. + + + + + ON THE FAST-DAY + + To name a Day for general prayer and fast + Is surely worse than of no sort of use; + For you may see with grief, from first to last + On _fast_-days people of all ranks are _loose_. + + + + + NONSENSE VERSES + + Lazy-bones, lazy-bones, wake up, and peep! + The cat's in the cupboard, your mother's asleep. + There you sit snoring, forgetting her ills; + Who is to give her her Bolus and Pills? + Twenty fine Angels must come into town, + All for to help you to make your new gown: + Dainty AERIAL Spinsters, and Singers; + Aren't you ashamed to employ such white fingers? + Delicate hands, unaccustom'd to reels, + To set 'em a working a poor body's wheels? + Why they came down is to me all a riddle, + And left HALLELUJAH broke off in the middle: + Jove's Court, and the Presence angelical, cut-- + To eke out the work of a lazy young slut. + Angel-duck, Angel-duck, winged, and silly, + Pouring a watering-pot over a lily, + Gardener gratuitous, careless of pelf, + Leave her to water her lily herself, + Or to neglect it to death if she chuse it: + Remember the loss is her own, if she lose it. + + + ON WAWD + + _(Of the East India House)_ + + What Wawd knows, God knows; + But God knows _what_ Wawd knows. + + + + * * * * * + + + + SIX EPITAPHS ON ENSIGN PEACOCK + + (1799) + + + MARMOR LOQUITUR + + He lies a Volunteer so fine, + Who died of a decline, + As you or I, may do one day; + Reader, think of this, I pray; + And I humbly hope you'll drop a tear + For my poor Royal Volunteer. + He was as brave as brave could be, + Nobody was so brave as he; + He would have died in Honor's bed, + Only he died at home instead. + Well may the Royal Regiment swear, + They never had such a Volunteer. + But whatsoever they may say, + Death is a man that will have his way: + Tho' he was but an ensign in this world of pain; + In the next we hope he'll be a captain. + And without meaning to make any reflection on his mentals, + He begg'd to be buried in regimentals. + + + ON TIMOTHY WAGSTAFF + + Here lies the body of Timothy Wagstaff, + Who was once as tall and as straight as a flagstaff; + But now that he's gone to another world, + His staff is broken and his flag is furled. + + + ON CAPTAIN STURMS + + Here lieth the body of Captain Sturms, + Once "food for powder," now for worms, + At the battle of Meida he lost his legs, + And stumped about on wooden pegs. + Naught cares he now for such worthless things, + He was borne to Heaven on angels' wings. + + + ON MARGARET DIX + + _(Born on February 29)_ + + _Ci git_ the remains of Margaret Dix, + Who was young in old age I ween, + Though Envy with Malice cried "seventy-six," + The Graces declared her "nineteen." + + + ON ONESIMUS DRAKE + + To the memory of Dr. Onesimus Drake, + Who forced good people his drugs to take-- + No wonder his patients were oft on the rack + For this "duck of a man" was a terrible quack. + + + ON MATTHEW DAY + + Beneath this slab lies Matthew Day, + If his body had not been snatched away + To be by Science dissected; + Should it have gone, one thing is clear: + His soul the last trump is sure to hear, + And thus be resurrected. + + + + * * * * * + + + + TIME AND ETERNITY + + Where the soul drinks of misery's power, + Each moment seems a lengthened hour; + But when bright joy illumes the mind, + Time passes as the fleetest wind.-- + How to a wicked soul must be + Whole ages of eternity? + + + + + FROM THE LATIN + + As swallows shrink before the wintry blast, + And gladly seek a more congenial soil, + So flatterers halt when fortune's lure is past, + And basely court some richer lordling's smile. + + + + + SATAN IN SEARCH OF A WIFE + + _With the Whole Process of his Courtship + and Marriage, and who Danced at the Wedding + + By an Eye Witness_ + + (1831) + + DEDICATION + + To delicate bosoms, that have sighed over the _Loves of the Angels_, + this Poem is with tenderest regard consecrated. It can be no offence + to you, dear Ladies, that the author has endeavoured to extend the + dominion of your darling passion; to shew Love triumphant in places, + to which his advent has been never yet suspected. If one Cecilia + drew an Angel down, another may have leave to attract a Spirit + upwards; which, I am sure, was the most desperate adventure of the + two. Wonder not at the inferior condition of the agent; for, if King + Cophetua wooed a Beggar Maid, a greater king need not scorn to + confess the attractions of a fair Tailor's daughter. The more + disproportionate the rank, the more signal is the glory of your sex. + Like that of Hecate, a triple empire is now confessed your own. Nor + Heaven, nor Earth, nor deepest tracts of Erebus, as Milton hath it, + have power to resist your sway. I congratulate your last victory. + You have fairly made an Honest Man of the Old One; and, if your + conquest is late, the success must be salutary. The new Benedict has + employment enough on his hands to desist from dabbling with the + affairs of poor mortals; he may fairly leave human nature to + herself; and we may sleep for one while at least secure from the + attacks of this hitherto restless Old Bachelor. It remains to be + seen, whether the world will be much benefited by the change in his + condition. + + + + + PART THE FIRST + + I + + The Devil was sick and queasy of late, + And his sleep and his appetite fail'd him; + His ears they hung down, and his tail it was clapp'd + Between his poor hoofs, like a dog that's been rapp'd-- + None knew what the devil ail'd him. + + + II + + He tumbled and toss'd on his mattress o' nights, + That was fit for a fiend's disportal; + For 'twas made of the finest of thistles and thorn, + Which Alecto herself had gather'd in scorn + Of the best down beds that are mortal. + + + III + + His giantly chest in earthquakes heaved, + With groanings corresponding; + And mincing and few were the words he spoke, + While a sigh, like some delicate whirlwind, broke + From a heart that seem'd desponding. + + + IV + + Now the Devil an Old Wife had for his Dam, + I think none e'er was older: + Her years--old Parr's were nothing to them; + And a chicken to her was Methusalem, + You'd say, could you behold her. + + + V + + She remember'd Chaos a little child, + Strumming upon hand organs; + At the birth of Old Night a gossip she sat, + The ancientest there, and was godmother at + The christening of the Gorgons. + + + VI + + Her bones peep'd through a rhinoceros' skin, + Like a mummy's through its cerement; + But she had a mother's heart, and guess'd + What pinch'd her son; whom she thus address'd + In terms that bespoke endearment. + + + VII + + "What ails my Nicky, my darling Imp, + My Lucifer bright, my Beelze? + My Pig, my Pug-with-a-curly-tail, + You are not well. Can a mother fail + To see _that_ which all Hell see?" + + + VIII + + "O Mother dear, I am dying, I fear; + Prepare the yew, and the willow, + And the cypress black: for I get no ease + By day or by night for the cursed fleas, + That skip about my pillow." + + + IX + + "Your pillow is clean, and your pillow-beer, + For I wash'd 'em in Styx last night, son, + And your blankets both, and dried them upon + The brimstony banks of Acheron-- + It is not the _fleas_ that bite, son." + + + X + + "O I perish of cold these bitter sharp nights, + The damp like an ague ferrets; + The ice and the frost hath shot into the bone; + And I care not greatly to sleep alone + O! nights--for the fear of Spirits." + + + XI + + "The weather is warm, my own sweet boy, + And the nights are close and stifling; + And for fearing of Spirits, you cowardly Elf-- + Have you quite forgot you're a Spirit yourself? + Come, come, I see you are trifling. + + + XII + + "I wish my Nicky is not in love"-- + "O mother, you have nick't it"-- + And he turn'd his head aside with a blush-- + Not red hot pokers, or crimson plush, + Could half so deep have prick'd it. + + + XIII + + "These twenty thousand good years or more," + Quoth he, "on this burning shingle + I have led a lonesome Bachelor's life, + Nor known the comfort of babe or wife-- + 'Tis a long--time to live single." + + + XIV + + Quoth she, "If a wife is all you want, + I shall quickly dance at your wedding. + I am dry nurse, you know, to the Female Ghosts "-- + And she call'd up her charge, and they came in hosts + To do the old Beldam's bidding: + + + XV + + All who in their lives had been servants of sin-- + Adulteress, Wench, Virago-- + And Murd'resses old that had pointed the knife + Against a husband's or father's life, + Each one a She Iago. + + + XVI + + First Jezebel came--no need of paint, + Or dressing, to make her charming; + For the blood of the old prophetical race + Had heighten'd the natural flush of her face + To a pitch 'bove rouge or carmine. + + + XVII + + Semiramis there low tendered herself, + With all Babel for a dowry: + With Helen, the flower and the bane of Greece-- + And bloody Medea next offer'd her fleece, + That was of Hell the Houri. + + + XVIII + + Clytemnestra, with Joan of Naples, put in; + Cleopatra, by Anthony quicken'd; + Jocasta, that married where she should not, + Came hand in hand with the Daughters of Lot; + Till the Devil was fairly sicken'd. + + + XIX + + For the Devil himself, a dev'l as he is, + Disapproves unequal matches. + "O Mother," he cried, "dispatch them hence! + No Spirit--I speak it without offence-- + Shall have me in her hatches." + + + XX + + With a wave of her wand they all were gone! + And now came out the slaughter: + "'Tis none of these that can serve my turn; + For a wife of flesh and blood I burn-- + I'm in love with a Taylor's Daughter. + + + XXI + + "'Tis she must heal the wounds that she made, + 'Tis she must be my physician. + O parent mild, stand not my foe"-- + For his mother had whisper'd something low + About "matching beneath his condition."-- + + + XXII + + "And then we must get paternal consent, + Or an unblest match may vex ye"-- + "Her father is dead; I fetched him away. + In the midst of his goose, last Michaelmas day-- + He died of an apoplexy. + + + XXIII + + "His daughter is fair, and an only heir-- + With her I long to tether-- + He has left her his _hell_, and all that he had; + The estates are contiguous, and I shall be mad, + 'Till we lay our two Hells together." + + + XXIV + + "But how do you know the fair maid's mind?"-- + Quoth he, "Her loss was but recent; + And I could not speak _my_ mind you know, + Just when I was fetching her father below-- + It would have been hardly decent. + + + XXV + + "But a leer from her eye, where Cupids lie, + Of love gave proof apparent; + And, from something she dropp'd, I shrewdly ween'd, + In her heart she judged, that a _living Fiend_ + Was better than a _dead Parent_. + + + XXVI + + "But the time is short; and suitors may come, + While I stand here reporting; + Then make your son a bit of a Beau, + And give me your blessing, before I go + To the other world a courting." + + + XXVII + + "But what will you do with your horns, my son? + And that tail--fair maids will mock it--" + "My tail I will dock--and as for the horn, + Like husbands above I think no scorn + To carry it in my pocket." + + + XXVIII + + "But what will you do with your feet, my son?" + "Here are stockings fairly woven: + My hoofs I will hide in silken hose; + And cinnamon-sweet are my pettitoes-- + Because, you know, they are _cloven_." + + + XXIX + + "Then take a blessing, my darling Son," + Quoth she, and kiss'd him civil-- + Then his neckcloth she tied; and when he was drest + From top to toe in his Sunday's best, + He appear'd a comely devil. + + + XXX + + So his leave he took:--but how he fared + In his courtship--barring failures-- + In a Second Part you shall read it soon, + In a bran new song, to be sung to the tune + Of the "Devil among the Tailors." + + + + * * * * * + + + + THE SECOND PART + + _Containing the Courtship, and the Wedding_ + + + I + + Who is She that by night from her balcony looks + On a garden, where cabbage is springing? + 'Tis the Tailor's fair Lass, that we told of above; + She muses by moonlight on her True Love; + So sharp is Cupid's stinging. + + + II + + She has caught a glimpse of the Prince of the Air + In his Luciferian splendour, + And away with her coyness and maiden reserve!-- + For none but the Devil her turn will serve, + Her sorrows else will end her. + + + III + + She saw when he fetch'd her father away, + And the sight no whit did shake her; + For the Devil may sure with his own make free-- + And "it saves besides," quoth merrily she, + "The expence of an Undertaker.-- + + + IV + + "Then come, my Satan, my darling Sin, + Return to my arms, my Hell Beau; + My Prince of Darkness, my crow-black Dove"-- + And she scarce had spoke, when her own True Love + Was kneeling at her elbow! + + + V + + But she wist not at first that this was He, + That had raised such a boiling passion; + For his old costume he had laid aside, + And was come to court a mortal bride + In a coat-and-waistcoat fashion. + + + VI + + She miss'd his large horns, and she miss'd his fair tail, + That had hung so retrospective; + And his raven plumes, and some other marks + Regarding his feet, that had left their sparks + In a mind but too susceptive: + + + VII + + And she held in scorn that a mortal born + Should the Prince of Spirits rival, + To clamber at midnight her garden fence-- + For she knew not else by what pretence + To account for his arrival. + + + VIII + + "What thief art thou," quoth she, "in the dark + That stumblest here presumptuous? + Some Irish Adventurer I take you to be-- + A Foreigner, from your garb I see, + Which besides is not over sumptuous." + + + IX + + Then Satan, awhile dissembling his rank, + A piece of amorous fun tries: + Quoth he, "I'm a Netherlander born; + Fair Virgin, receive not my suit with scorn; + I'm a Prince in the Low Countries-- + + + X + + "Though I travel _incog_. From the Land of Fog + And Mist I am come to proffer + My crown and my sceptre to lay at your feet; + It is not every day in the week you may meet, + Fair Maid, with a Prince's offer." + + + XI + + "Your crown and your sceptre I like full well, + They tempt a poor maiden's pride, Sir; + But your lands and possessions--excuse if I'm rude-- + Are too far in a Northerly latitude + For me to become your Bride, Sir. + + + XII + + "In that aguish clime I should catch my death, + Being but a raw new comer"-- + Quoth he, "We have plenty of fuel stout; + And the fires, which I kindle, never go out + By winter, nor yet by summer. + + + XIII + + "I am Prince of Hell, and Lord Paramount + Over Monarchs there abiding. + My Groom of the Stables is Nimrod old; + And Nebuchadnazor my stirrups must hold, + When I go out a riding. + + + XIV + + "To spare your blushes, and maiden fears, + I resorted to these inventions-- + But, Imposture, begone; and avaunt, Disguise!" + And the Devil began to swell and rise + To his own diabolic dimensions. + + + XV + + Twin horns from his forehead shot up to the moon, + Like a branching stag in Arden; + Dusk wings through his shoulders with eagle's strength + Push'd out; and his train lay floundering in length + An acre beyond the garden.-- + + + XVI + + To tender hearts I have framed my lay-- + Judge ye, all love-sick Maidens, + When the virgin saw in the soft moonlight, + In his proper proportions, her own true knight, + If she needed long persuadings. + + + XVII + + Yet a maidenly modesty kept her back, + As her sex's art had taught her: + For "the biggest Fortunes," quoth she, "in the land-- + Are not worthy"--then blush'd--"of your Highness's hand-- + Much less a poor Taylor's daughter. + + + XVIII + + "There's the two Miss Crockfords are single still, + For whom great suitors hunger; + And their Father's hell is much larger than mine"-- + Quoth the Devil, "I've no such ambitious design, + For their Dad is an old Fishmonger; + + + XIX + + "And I cannot endure the smell of fish-- + I have taken an anti-bias + To their livers, especially since the day + That the Angel smoked my cousin away + From the chaste spouse of Tobias. + + + XX + + "Had my amorous kinsman much longer staid, + The perfume would have seal'd his obit; + For he had a nicer nose than the wench, + Who cared not a pin for the smother and stench, + In the arms of the Son of Tobit." + + + XXI + + "I have read it," quoth she, "in Apocryphal Writ"-- + And the Devil stoop'd down, and kiss'd her; + Not Jove himself, when he courted in flame, + On Semele's lips, the love-scorch'd Dame, + Impress'd such a burning blister. + + + XXII + + The fire through her bones and her vitals shot-- + "O, I yield, my winsome marrow-- + I am thine for life"--and black thunders roll'd-- + And she sank in his arms through the garden mould, + With the speed of a red-hot arrow. + + + XXIII + + Merrily, merrily, ring the bells + From each Pandemonian steeple; + For the Devil hath gotten his beautiful Bride, + And a Wedding Dinner he will provide, + To feast all kinds of people. + + + XXIV + + Fat bulls of Basan are roasted whole, + Of the breed that ran at David; + With the flesh of goats, on the sinister side, + That shall stand apart, when the world is tried; + Fit meat for souls unsaved! + + + XXV + + The fowl from the spit were the Harpies' brood, + Which the bard sang near Cremona, + With a garnish of bats in their leathern wings imp't; + And the fish was--two delicate slices crimp't, + Of the whale that swallow'd Jonah. + + + XXVI + + Then the goblets were crown'd, and a health went round + To the Bride, in a wine like scarlet; + No earthly vintage so deeply paints, + For 'twas dash'd with a tinge from the blood of the Saints + By the Babylonian Harlot. + + + XXVII + + No Hebe fair stood Cup Bearer there, + The guests were their own skinkers; + But Bishop Judas first blest the can, + Who is of all Hell Metropolitan, + And kiss'd it to all the drinkers. + + + XXVIII + + The feast being ended, to dancing they went, + To a music that did produce a + Most dissonant sound, while a hellish glee + Was sung in parts by the Furies Three; + And the Devil took out Medusa. + + + XXIX + + But the best of the sport was to hear his old Dam, + Set up her shrill forlorn pipe-- + How the wither'd Beldam hobbled about, + And put the rest of the company out-- + For she needs must try a horn-pipe. + + + XXX + + But the heat, and the press, and the noise, and the din, + Were so great, that, howe'er unwilling, + Our Reporter no longer was able to stay, + But came in his own defence away, + And left the Bride quadrilling. + + + + + PROLOGUES AND EPILOGUES + + + EPILOGUE TO GODWIN'S TRAGEDY OF "ANTONIO" + + (1800) + + Ladies, ye've seen how Guzman's consort died, + Poor victim of a Spaniard brother's pride, + When Spanish honour through the world was blown, + And Spanish beauty for the best was known[19]. + In that romantic, unenlighten'd time, + A _breach of promise_[20] was a sort of crime-- + Which of you handsome English ladies here, + But deem the penance bloody and severe? + A whimsical old Saragossa[21] fashion, + That a dead father's dying inclination, + Should _live_ to thwart a living daughter's passion[22], + Unjustly on the sex _we_[23] men exclaim, + Rail at _your_[24] vices,--and commit the same;-- + Man is a promise-breaker from the womb, + And goes a promise-breaker to the tomb-- + What need we instance here the lover's vow, + The sick man's purpose, or the great man's bow[25]? + The truth by few examples best is shown-- + Instead of many which are better known, + Take poor Jack Incident, that's dead and gone. + Jack, of dramatic genius justly vain, + Purchased a renter's share at Drury-lane; + A prudent man in every other matter, + Known at his club-room for an honest hatter; + Humane and courteous, led a civil life, + And has been seldom known to beat his wife; + But Jack is now grown quite another man, + Frequents the green-room, knows the plot and plan + Of each new piece, + And has been seen to talk with Sheridan! + In at the play-house just at six he pops, + And never quits it till the curtain drops, + Is never absent on the _author's night_, + Knows actresses and actors too--by sight; + So humble, that with Suett he'll confer, + Or take a pipe with plain Jack Bannister; + Nay, with an author has been known so free, + He once suggested a catastrophe-- + In short, John dabbled till his head was turn'd: + His wife remonstrated, his neighbours mourn'd, + His customers were dropping off apace, + And Jack's affairs began to wear a piteous face. + + One night his wife began a curtain lecture; + 'My dearest Johnny, husband, spouse, protector, + Take pity on your helpless babes and me, + Save us from ruin, you from bankruptcy-- + Look to your business, leave these cursed plays, + And try again your old industrious ways.' + + Jack, who was always scared at the Gazette, + And had some bits of scull uninjured yet, + Promised amendment, vow'd his wife spake reason, + 'He would not see another play that season--' + + Three stubborn fortnights Jack his promise kept, + Was late and early in his shop, eat, slept, + And walk'd and talk'd, like ordinary men; + No _wit_, but John the hatter once again-- + Visits his club: when lo! one _fatal night_ + His wife with horror view'd the well-known sight-- + John's _hat, wig, snuff-box_--well she knew his tricks-- + And Jack decamping at the hour of six. + Just at the counter's edge a playbill lay, + Announcing that 'Pizarro' was the play-- + 'O Johnny, Johnny, this is your old doing.' + Quoth Jack, 'Why what the devil storm's a-brewing? + About a harmless play why all this fright? + I'll go and see it, if it's but for spite-- + Zounds, woman! Nelson's[26] to be there to-night.' + + +[Footnote 19: Four _easy_ lines.] + +[Footnote 20: For which the _heroine died_.] + +[Footnote 21: In _Spain_!!] + +[Footnote 22: Two _neat_ lines.] + +[Footnote 23: Or _you_.] + +[Footnote 24: Or _our_, as _they_ have altered it.] + +[Footnote 25: Antithesis!!] + +[Footnote 26: "A good clap-trap. Nelson has exhibited two or three times +at both theatres--and advertised himself."] + + + + + PROLOGUE TO GODWIN'S TRAGEDY OF "FAULKENER" + + (1807) + + An author who has given you all delight, + Furnish'd the tale our stage presents to-night. + Some of our earliest tears He taught to steal + Down our young cheeks, and forc'd us first to feel. + To solitary shores whole years confin'd, + Who has not read how pensive _Crusoe_ pin'd? + Who, now grown old, that did not once admire + His goat, his parrot, his uncouth attire, + The stick, due-notch'd, that told each tedious day + That in the lonely island wore away? + Who has not shudder'd, where he stands aghast + At sight of human footsteps in the waste? + Or joy'd not, when his trembling hands unbind + Thee, _Friday_, gentlest of the savage kind? + The genius who conceiv'd that magic tale + Was skill'd by native pathos to prevail. + His stories, though rough-drawn, and fram'd in haste, + Had that which pleas'd our homely grandsires' taste. + His was a various pen, that freely rov'd + Into all subjects, was in most approv'd. + Whate'er the theme, his ready Muse obey'd-- + Love, courtship, politics, religion, trade-- + Gifted alike to shine in every sphere, + Nov'list, historian, poet, pamphleteer. + In some blest interval of party-strife, + He drew a striking sketch from private life, + Whose moving scenes of intricate distress + We try to-night in a dramatic dress: + A real story of domestic woe, + That asks no aid from music, verse, or show, + But trusts to truth, to nature, and _Defoe._ + + + + + EPILOGUE TO HENRY SIDDONS' FARCE, "TIME'S A TELL-TALE" + + (1807) + + + Bound for the port of matrimonial bliss, + Ere I hoist sail, I hold it not amiss, + (Since prosp'rous ends ask prudent introductions) + To take a slight peep at my written instructions. + There's nothing like determining in time + All questions marital or maritime. + + In all seas, straits, gulphs, ports, havens, lands, creeks. + Oh! Here it begins. + "Season, spring, wind standing at point Desire-- + The good ship Matrimony--Commander. Blanford, Esq. + + + Art. I. + + "The captain that has the command of her, + Or in his absence, the acting officer, + To see her planks are sound, her timbers tight."-- + That acting officer I don't relish quite, + No, as I hope to tack another verse on, + I'll do those duties in my proper person. + + + Art. II. + + "All mutinies to be suppress'd at first." + That's a good caution to prevent the worst. + + + Art. III. + + "That she be properly victual'd, mann'd and stor'd, + To see no foreigners are got aboard." + That's rather difficult. Do what we can, + A vessel sometimes may mistake her man. + The safest way in such a parlous doubt, + Is steady watch and keep a sharp look out. + + + Art. IV. + + "Whereas their Lords Commissioners (the church) + Do strictly authorise the right of search: + As always practis'd--you're to understand + By these what articles are contraband; + Guns, mortars, pistols, halberts, swords, pikes, lances, + Ball, powder, shot, and the appurtenances. + Videlicet--whatever can be sent + To give the enemy encouragement. + Ogles are small shot (so the instruction runs), + Touches hand grenades, and squeezes rifle guns." + + + Art. V. + + "That no free-bottom'd neutral waiting maid + Presume to exercise the carrying trade: + The prohibition here contained extends + To all commerce cover'd by the name of Friends. + Heaven speed the good ship well"--and so it ends. + Oh with such wholesome jealousies as these + May Albion cherish his old spouse the seas; + Keep over her a husband's firm command, + Not with too rigid nor too lax a hand. + Be gently patient to her swells and throws + When big with safeties to himself she goes; + Nor while she clips him in a fast embrace, + Stand for some female frowns upon her face. + But tell the rival world--and tell in Thunder, + Whom Nature joined, none ere shall put asunder. + + + + + PROLOGUE TO COLERIDGE'S TRAGEDY OF "REMORSE" + + (1813) + + + There are, I am told, who sharply criticise + Our modern theatres' unwieldy size. + We players shall scarce plead guilty to that charge, + Who think a house can never be too large: + Griev'd when a rant, that's worth a nation's ear, + Shakes some prescrib'd Lyceum's petty sphere; + And pleased to mark the grin from space to space + Spread epidemic o'er a town's broad face.-- + O might old Betterton or Booth return + To view our structures from their silent urn, + Could Quin come stalking from Elysian glades, + Or Garrick get a day-rule from the shades-- + Where now, perhaps, in mirth which Spirits approve, + He imitates the ways of men above, + And apes the actions of our upper coast, + As in his days of flesh he play'd the ghost:-- + How might they bless our ampler scope to please, + And hate their own old shrunk up audiences.-- + Their houses yet were palaces to those, + Which Ben and Fletcher for their triumphs chose. + Shakspeare, who wish'd a kingdom for a stage, } + Like giant pent in disproportion'd cage, } + Mourn'd his contracted strengths and crippled rage. } + He who could tame his vast ambition down + To please some scatter'd gleanings of a town, + And, if some hundred auditors supplied + Their meagre meed of claps, was satisfied, + How had he felt, when that dread curse of Lear's + Had burst tremendous on a thousand ears, + While deep-struck wonder from applauding bands + Return'd the tribute of as many hands! + Rude were his guests; he never made his bow + To such an audience as salutes us now. + He lack'd the balm of labor, female praise. + Few Ladies in his time frequented plays, + Or came to see a youth with aukward art + And shrill sharp pipe burlesque the woman's part. + The very use, since so essential grown, + Of painted scenes, was to his stage unknown. + The air-blest castle, round whose wholesome crest, + The martlet, guest of summer, chose her nest-- + The forest walks of Arden's fair domain, + Where Jaques fed his solitary vein. + No pencil's aid as yet had dared supply, + Seen only by the intellectual eye. + Those scenic helps, denied to Shakspeare's page, + Our Author owes to a more liberal age. + Nor pomp nor circumstance are wanting here; + 'Tis for himself alone that he must fear. + Yet shall remembrance cherish the just pride, + That (be the laurel granted or denied) + He first essay'd in this distinguish'd fane, + Severer muses and a tragic strain. + + + + + EPILOGUE TO KENNEY'S FARCE, "DEBTOR AND CREDITOR" + + (1814) + + + _Spoken by Mr. Liston and Mr. Emery in character_ + + + _Gosling._ False world---- + + _Sampson._ You're bit, Sir. + + + _Gosling_. Boor! what's that to you? + With Love's soft sorrows what hast thou to do? + 'Tis _here_ for consolation I must look. + (_Takes out his pocket book_). + + _Sampson_. Nay, Sir, don't put us down in your black book. + + _Gosling_. All Helicon is here. + + _Sampson_. All Hell. + + _Gosling_. You Clod! + Did'st never hear of the Pierian God, + And the Nine Virgins on the Sacred Hill? + + _Sampson_. Nine Virgins!--Sure! + + _Gosling_. I have them all at will. + + _Sampson_. If Miss fight shy, then-- + + _Gosling_. And my suit decline. + + _Sampson_. You'll make a dash at them. + + _Gosling_. I'll tip all nine. + + _Sampson_. What, wed 'em, Sir? + + _Gosling_. O, no--that thought I banish. + I woo--not wed; they never bring the Spanish. + Their favours I pursue, and court the bays. + + _Sampson_. Mayhap, you're one of them that write the plays? + + _Gosling_. Bumpkin! + + _Sampson_. I'm told the public's well-nigh crammed + With such like stuff. + + _Gosling_. The public may be damned. + + _Sampson_. They ha'nt damned you? (_inquisitively_). + + _Gosling_. This fellow's wond'rous shrewd! + I'd tell him if I thought he'd not be rude. + Once in my greener years, I wrote a piece. + + _Sampson_. Aye, so did I--at school like-- + + _Gosling_. Booby, cease! + I mean a Play. + + _Sampson_. Oh! + + _Gosling_. And to crown my joys, + 'Twas acted-- + + _Sampson_. Well, and how-- + + _Gosling_. It made a noise, + A kind of mingled--(_as if musing_). + + _Sampson_. Aye, describe it, try. + + _Gosling_. Like--Were you ever in the pillory? + + _Sampson_. No, Sir, I thank ye, no such kind of game. + + _Gosling_. Bate but the eggs, and it was much the same. + Shouts, clamours, laughs, and a peculiar sound, + 'Like, like-- + + _Sampson_. Like geese, I warrant, in a pound. + I like this mainly! + + _Gosling_. Some began to cough, + Some cried-- + + _Sampson_. Go on-- + + _Gosling_. A few--and some--"Go off!" + I can't suppress it. Gods! I hear it now; + It was in fact a most confounded row. + Dire was the din, as when some storm confounds + Earth, sea, and sky, with all terrific sounds. + Not hungry lions sent forth notes more strange, + Not bulls and bears, that have been hoaxed on 'Change. + + _Sampson_. Exeter 'Change you mean--I've seen they bears. + + _Gosling_. The beasts I mean are far less tame than theirs. + Change Alley Bruins, nattier though their dress, + Might at Polito's study politesse. + Brief let me be. My gentle Sampson, pray, + Fight Larry Whack, but never write a play. + + _Sampson_. I won't, Sir: and these christian souls petition, + To spare all wretched folks in such condition. + + + + + EPILOGUE TO AN AMATEUR PERFORMANCE OF "RICHARD II." + + (1824) + + Of all that act, the hardest task is theirs, + Who, bred no Players, play at being Players; + Copy the shrug--in Kemble once approved;-- + Mere mimics' mimics--nature twice removed. + Shades of a shadow! who but must have seen + The stage-struck hero, in some swelling scene + Aspiring to be Lear--stumble on Kean? + The admired actor's faults our steps betray,-- + No less his very beauties lead astray! + + In "sad civility" once Garrick sate + To see a Play, mangled in form and state; + Plebeian Shakspeare must the words supply,-- + The actors all were Fools--of Quality. + The scenes--the dresses--were above rebuke;-- + Scarce a Performer there below a Duke. + He sate, and mused how in his Shakspeare's mind + The idea of old Nobility enshrined + Should thence a grace and a refinement have + Which passed these living Nobles to conceive,-- + Who with such apish, base gesticulation, + Remnants of starts, and dregs of playhouse passion, + So foul belied their great forefathers' fashion! + He saw--and true Nobility confessed + Less in the high-born blood, than lowly poet's breast. + + If Lords enacting Lords sometimes may fail, + What gentle plea, Spectators, can avail + For wight of low degree who dares to stir + The long-raked ashes of old Lancaster, + And on his nothing-martial front to set + Of warlike Gaunt the lofty burgonet? + For who shall that Plantagenet display, + Majestical in sickness and decay? + Or paint the shower of passions fierce and thick + On Richard's head--that Royal Splenetic? + + Your pardon, not your plaudits, then we claim + If we've come short, where Garrick had been tame! + + + + + PROLOGUE TO SHERIDAN KNOWLES' COMEDY, "THE WIFE" + + (1833) + + _Untoward_ fate no luckless wight invades + More sorely than the Man who drives _two trades_; + Like Esop's bat, between two natures placed, + Scowl'd at by _mice_, among the _birds_ disgraced. + Our author thus, of two-fold fame exactor, + Is doubly scouted,--both as Bard, and Actor! + Wanting in haste a Prologue, he applied + To three poetic friends; was thrice denied. + Each glared on him with supercilious glance, + As on a Poor Relation met by chance; + And one was heard, with more repulsive air, + To mutter "Vagabond," "Rogue," "Strolling Player!" + A poet once, he found--and look'd aghast-- + By turning actor, he had lost his _caste_. + The verse patch'd up at length--with like ill fortune + His friends behind the scenes he did importune + To speak his lines. He found them all fight shy, + Nodding their heads in cool civility. + "There service in the Drama was enough, + The poet might recite the poet's stuff!" + The rogues--they like him hugely--but it stung 'em, + Somehow--to think a Bard had got among 'em. + Their mind made up--no earthly pleading shook it, + In pure compassion 'till I undertook it. + Disown'd by Poets, and by Actors too, + Dear Patrons of both arts, he turns to you! + If in your hearts some tender feelings dwell + From sweet Virginia, or heroic Tell: + If in the scenes which follow you can trace + What once has pleased you--an unbidden grace-- + A touch of nature's work--an awkward start + Or ebullition of an Irish heart-- + Cry, clap, commend it! If you like them not, + Your former favours cannot be forgot. + Condemn them--damn them--hiss them, if you will-- + Their author is your grateful servant still! + + + + + EPILOGUE TO SHERIDAN KNOWLES' COMEDY, "THE WIFE" + + (1833) + + + When first our Bard his simple will express'd, + That I should in his Heroine's robes be dress'd, + My fears were with my vanity at strife, + How I could act that untried part--a "Wife." + But Fancy to the Grison hills me drew, + Where Mariana like a wild flower grew, + Nursing her garden-kindred: so far I + Liked her condition, willing to comply + With that sweet single life: when, with a cranch, + Down came that thundering, crashing avalanche, + Startling my mountain-project! "Take this spade," + Said Fancy then; "dig low, adventurous Maid, + For hidden wealth." I did: and, Ladies, lo! } + Was e'er romantic female's fortune so, } + To dig a life-warm lover from the--snow? } + + A Wife and Princess see me next, beset + With subtle toils, in an Italian net; + While knavish Courtiers, stung with rage or fear, + Distill'd lip-poison in a husband's ear. + I ponder'd on the boiling Southern vein; + Racks, cords, stilettos, rush'd upon my brain! + By poor, good, weak Antonio, too disowned-- + I dream'd each night, I should be Desdemona'd: + And, being in Mantua, thought upon the shop, + Whence fair Verona's youth his breath did stop: + And what if Leonardo, in foul scorn, + Some lean Apothecary should suborn + To take my hated life? A "tortoise" hung + Before my eyes, and in my ears scaled "alligators" rung. + But _my_ Othello, to his vows more zealous-- + Twenty Iagos could not make _him_ jealous! + + New raised to reputation, and to life-- } + At your commands behold me, without strife, } + Well-pleased, and ready to repeat--"The Wife." } + + + + + * * * * * + + + + JOHN WOODVIL + + A TRAGEDY + + (1798-1802. _Text of_ 1818) + + + * * * * * + + + CHARACTERS + + SIR WALTER WOODVIL. + + JOHN. } + SIMON. } _his sons._ + + LOVEL. } + GRAY. } _Pretended friends of John._ + + SANDFORD. _Sir Walter's old steward._ + MARGARET. _Orphan ward of Sir Walter._ + FOUR GENTLEMEN. _John's riotous companions._ + SERVANTS. + + +SCENE--_for the most part at Sir Walter's mansion +in_ DEVONSHIRE; _at other times in the forest of_ +SHERWOOD. + +TIME--_soon after the_ RESTORATION. + + + * * * * * + + +ACT THE FIRST + + +SCENE.--_A Servants' Apartment in Woodvil Hall._ + + Servants drinking--_Time, the morning._ + + + * * * * * + + + A Song by DANIEL + + _"When the King enjoys his own again."_ + + +PETER +A delicate song. Where did'st learn it, fellow? + +DANIEL +Even there, where thou learnest thy oaths and thy politics--at our +master's table.--Where else should a serving-man pick up his poor +accomplishments? + + +MARTIN +Well spoken, Daniel. O rare Daniel!--his oaths and his politics! +excellent! + + +FRANCIS +And where did'st pick up thy knavery, Daniel? + + +PETER +That came to him by inheritance. His family have supplied the shire of +Devon, time out of mind, with good thieves and bad serving-men. All of +his race have come into the world without their conscience. + + +MARTIN +Good thieves, and bad serving-men! Better and better. I marvel what +Daniel hath got to say in reply. + + +DANIEL +I marvel more when thou wilt say any thing to the purpose, thou shallow +serving-man, whose swiftest conceit carries thee no higher than to +apprehend with difficulty the stale jests of us thy compeers. When was't +ever known to club thy own particular jest among us? + + +MARTIN +Most unkind Daniel, to speak such biting things of me! + + +FRANCIS +See--if he hath not brought tears into the poor fellow's eyes with the +saltness of his rebuke. + + +DANIEL +No offence, brother Martin--I meant none. 'Tis true, Heaven gives gifts, +and with-holds them. It has been pleased to bestow upon me a nimble +invention to the manufacture of a jest; and upon thee, Martin, an +indifferent bad capacity to understand my meaning. + + +MARTIN +Is that all? I am content. Here's my hand. + +FRANCIS +Well, I like a little innocent mirth myself, but never could endure +bawdry. + +DANIEL +_Quot homines tot sententiae._ + +MARTIN +And what is that? + +DANIEL +'Tis Greek, and argues difference of opinion. + +MARTIN +I hope there is none between us. + +DANIEL +Here's to thee, brother Martin. (_Drinks._) + +MARTIN +And to thee, Daniel. (_Drinks._) + +FRANCIS +And to thee, Peter. (_Drinks._) + +PETER +Thank you, Francis. And here's to thee. (_Drinks._) + +MARTIN +I shall be fuddled anon. + +DANIEL +And drunkenness I hold to be a very despicable vice. + +ALL +O! a shocking vice. (_They drink round._) + +PETER +In as much as it taketh away the understanding. + +DANIEL +And makes the eyes red. + +PETER +And the tongue to stammer. + +DANIEL +And to blab out secrets. + +(_During this conversation they continue drinking._) + +PETER +Some men do not know an enemy from a friend when they are drunk. + +DANIEL +Certainly sobriety is the health of the soul. + +MARTIN +Now I know I am going to be drunk. + +DANIEL +How can'st tell, dry-bones? + +MARTIN +Because I begin to be melancholy. That's always a sign. + +FRANCIS +Take care of Martin, he'll topple off his seat else. + +(_Martin drops asleep._) + +PETER +Times are greatly altered, since young master took upon himself the +government of this household. + +ALL +Greatly altered. + +FRANCIS +I think every thing be altered for the better since His Majesty's +blessed restoration. + +PETER +In Sir Walter's days there was no encouragement given to good +house-keeping. + +ALL +None. + +DANIEL + +For instance, no possibility of getting drunk before two in the +afternoon. + +PETER + +Every man his allowance of ale at breakfast--his quart! + +ALL +A quart!! (_in derision_.) + +DANIEL +Nothing left to our own sweet discretions. + +PETER +Whereby it may appear, we were treated more like beasts than what we +were--discreet and reasonable serving-men. + +ALL +Like beasts. + +MARTIN +(_Opening his eyes_.) Like beasts. + +DANIEL +To sleep, wag-tail! + +FRANCIS +I marvel all this while where the old gentleman has found means to +secrete himself. It seems no man has heard of him since the day of the +King's return. Can any tell why our young master, being favoured by the +court, should not have interest to procure his father's pardon? + +DANIEL +Marry, I think 'tis the obstinacy of the old Knight, that will not be +beholden to the court for his safety. + +MARTIN +Now that is wilful. + +FRANCIS +But can any tell me the place of his concealment? + +PETER +That cannot I; but I have my conjectures. + +DANIEL +Two hundred pounds, as I hear, to the man that shall apprehend him. + +FRANCIS +Well, I have my suspicions. + +PETER +And so have I. + +MARTIN +And I can keep a secret. + +FRANCIS +(_To Peter_.) Warwickshire you mean. (_Aside_.) + +PETER +Perhaps not. + +FRANCIS +Nearer perhaps. + +PETER +I say nothing. + +DANIEL +I hope there is none in this company would be mean enough to betray him. + +ALL +O Lord, surely not. (_They drink to Sir Walter's safety_.) + +FRANCIS +I have often wondered how our master came to be excepted by name in the +late Act of Oblivion. + +DANIEL +Shall I tell the reason? + +ALL +Aye, do. + +DANIEL +'Tis thought he is no great friend to the present happy establishment. + +ALL +O! monstrous! + +PETER +Fellow servants, a thought strikes me.--Do we, or do we not, come under +the penalties of the treason-act, by reason of our being privy to this +man's concealment. + +ALL +Truly a sad consideration. + +_To them enters Sandford suddenly._ + + SANDFORD + You well-fed and unprofitable grooms, + Maintained for state, not use; + You lazy feasters at another's cost, + That eat like maggots into an estate, + And do as little work, + Being indeed but foul excrescences, + And no just parts in a well-order'd family; + You base and rascal imitators, + Who act up to the height your master's vices, + But cannot read his virtues in your bond: + Which of you, as I enter'd, spake of betraying? + Was it you, or you, or, thin-face, was it you? + + MARTIN + Whom does he call thin-face? + + SANDFORD + No prating, loon, but tell me who he was, + That I may brain the villain with my staff, + That seeks Sir Walter's life? + You miserable men, + With minds more slavish than your slave's estate, + Have you that noble bounty so forgot, + Which took you from the looms, and from the ploughs, + Which better had ye follow'd, fed ye, cloth'd ye, + And entertain'd ye in a worthy service, + Where your best wages was the world's repute, + That thus ye seek his life, by whom ye live? + Have you forgot too, + How often in old times + Your drunken mirths have stunn'd day's sober ears, + Carousing full cups to Sir Walter's health?-- + Whom now ye would betray, but that he lies + Out of the reach of your poor treacheries. + This learn from me, + Our master's secret sleeps with trustier tongues, + Than will unlock themselves to carls like you. + Go, get you gone, you knaves. Who stirs? this staff + Shall teach you better manners else. + + ALL + Well, we are going. + + SANDFORD + And quickly too, ye had better, for I see + Young mistress Margaret coming this way. + (_Exeunt all but Sandford._) + + _Enter Margaret, as in a fright, pursued by a Gentleman, + who, seeing Sandford, retires muttering a curse. + Sandford, Margaret._ + + SANDFORD + Good-morrow to my fair mistress. 'Twas a chance + I saw you, lady, so intent was I + On chiding hence these graceless serving-men, + Who cannot break their fast at morning meals + Without debauch and mis-timed riotings. + This house hath been a scene of nothing else + But atheist riot and profane excess, + Since my old master quitted all his rights here. + + MARGARET + Each day I endure fresh insult from the scorn + Of Woodvil's friends, the uncivil jests, + And free discourses, of the dissolute men, + That haunt this mansion, making me their mirth. + + SANDFORD + Does my young master know of these affronts? + + MARGARET + I cannot tell. Perhaps he has not been told. + Perhaps he might have seen them if he would. + I have known him more quick-sighted. Let that pass. + All things seem chang'd, I think. I had a friend, + (I can't but weep to think him alter'd too,) + These things are best forgotten; but I knew + A man, a young man, young, and full of honor, + That would have pick'd a quarrel for a straw, + And fought it out to the extremity, + E'en with the dearest friend he had alive, + On but a bare surmise, a possibility, + That Margaret had suffer'd an affront. + Some are too tame, that were too splenetic once. + + SANDFORD + 'Twere best he should be _told_ of these affronts. + + MARGARET + I am the daughter of his father's friend, + Sir Walter's orphan-ward. + I am not his servant maid, that I should wait + The opportunity of a gracious hearing, + Enquire the times and seasons when to put + My peevish prayer up at young Woodvil's feet, + And sue to him for slow redress, who was + Himself a suitor late to Margaret. + I am somewhat proud: and Woodvil taught me pride. + I was his favourite once, his playfellow in infancy, + And joyful mistress of his youth. + None once so pleasant in his eyes as Margaret. + His conscience, his religion, Margaret was, + His dear heart's confessor, a heart within that heart, + And all dear things summ'd up in her alone. + As Margaret smil'd or frown'd John liv'd or died: + His dress, speech, gesture, studies, friendships, all + Being fashion'd to her liking. + His flatteries taught me first this self-esteem, + His flatteries and caresses, while he loved. + The world esteem'd her happy, who had won + His heart, who won all hearts; + And ladies envied me the love of Woodvil. + + SANDFORD + He doth affect the courtier's life too much, + Whose art is to forget, + And that has wrought this seeming change in him, + That was by nature noble. + 'Tis these court-plagues, that swarm about our house, + Have done the mischief, making his fancy giddy + With images of state, preferment, place, + Tainting his generous spirits with ambition. + + MARGARET + I know not how it is; + A cold protector is John grown to me. + The mistress, and presumptive wife, of Woodvil + Can never stoop so low to supplicate + A man, her equal, to redress those wrongs, + Which he was bound first to prevent; + But which his own neglects have sanction'd rather, + Both sanction'd and provok'd: a mark'd neglect, + And strangeness fast'ning bitter on his love, + His love which long has been upon the wane. + For me, I am determined what to do: + To leave this house this night, and lukewarm John, + And trust for food to the earth and Providence. + + SANDFORD + O lady, have a care + Of these indefinite and spleen-bred resolves. + You know not half the dangers that attend + Upon a life of wand'ring, which your thoughts now, + Feeling the swellings of a lofty anger, + To your abused fancy, as 'tis likely, + Portray without its terrors, painting _lies_ + And representments of fallacious liberty-- + You know not what it is to leave the roof that shelters you. + + MARGARET + I have thought on every possible event, + The dangers and discouragements you speak of, + Even till my woman's heart hath ceas'd to fear them, + And cowardice grows enamour'd of rare accidents. + Nor am I so unfurnish'd, as you think, + Of practicable schemes. + + SANDFORD + Now God forbid; think twice of this, dear lady. + + MARGARET + I pray you spare me, Mr. Sandford, + And once for all believe, nothing can shake my purpose. + + SANDFORD + But what course have you thought on? + + MARGARET + To seek Sir Walter in the forest of Sherwood. + I have letters from young Simon, + Acquainting me with all the circumstances + Of their concealment, place, and manner of life, + And the merry hours they spend in the green haunts + Of Sherwood, nigh which place they have ta'en a house + In the town of Nottingham, and pass for foreigners, + Wearing the dress of Frenchmen.-- + All which I have perus'd with so attent + And child-like longings, that to my doting ears + Two sounds now seem like one, + One meaning in two words, Sherwood and Liberty. + And, gentle Mr. Sandford, + 'Tis you that must provide now + The means of my departure, which for safety + Must be in boy's apparel. + + SANDFORD + Since you will have it so + (My careful age trembles at all may happen) + I will engage to furnish you. + I have the keys of the wardrobe, and can fit you + With garments to your size. + I know a suit + Of lively Lincoln Green, that shall much grace you + In the wear, being glossy fresh, and worn but seldom. + Young Stephen Woodvil wore them, while he lived. + I have the keys of all this house and passages, + And ere day-break will rise and let you forth. + What things soe'er you have need of I can furnish you; + And will provide a horse and trusty guide, + To bear you on your way to Nottingham. + + MARGARET + That once this day and night were fairly past! + For then I'll bid this house and love farewell; + Farewell, sweet Devon; farewell, lukewarm John; + For with the morning's light will Margaret be gone. + Thanks, courteous Mr. Sandford.-- + (_Exeunt divers ways._) + + + + +ACT THE SECOND + + +SCENE.--_An Apartment in Woodvil Hall._ + + +_John Woodvil--alone._ + +(_Reading Parts of a Letter._) + +"When Love grows cold, and indifference has usurped upon old Esteem, it +is no marvel if the world begin to account _that_ dependence, which +hitherto has been esteemed honorable shelter. The course I have taken +(in leaving this house, not easily wrought thereunto,) seemed to me best +for the once-for-all releasing of yourself (who in times past have +deserved well of me) from the now daily, and not-to-be-endured, tribute +of forced love, and ill-dissembled reluctance of affection. + + + "MARGARET." + + Gone! gone! my girl? so hasty, Margaret! + And never a kiss at parting? shallow loves, + And likings of a ten days' growth, use courtesies, + And shew red eyes at parting. Who bids "farewell" + In the same tone he cries "God speed you, Sir?" + Or tells of joyful victories at sea, + Where he hath ventures? does not rather muffle + His organs to emit a leaden sound, + To suit the melancholy dull "farewell," + Which they in Heaven not use?-- + So peevish, Margaret? + But 'tis the common error of your sex, + When our idolatry slackens, or grows less, + (As who of woman born can keep his faculty + Of Admiration, being a decaying faculty, + For ever strain'd to the pitch? or can at pleasure + Make it renewable, as some appetites are, + As, namely, Hunger, Thirst?--) this being the case, + They tax us with neglect, and love grown cold, + Coin plainings of the perfidy of men, + Which into maxims pass, and apothegms + To be retailed in ballads.-- + I know them all. + They are jealous, when our larger hearts receive + More guests than one. (Love in a woman's heart + Being all in one.) For me, I am sure I have room here + For more disturbers of my sleep than one. + Love shall have part, but Love shall not have all. + Ambition, Pleasure, Vanity, all by turns, + Shall lie in my bed, and keep me fresh and waking; + Yet Love not be excluded.--Foolish wench, + I could have lov'd her twenty years to come, + And still have kept my liking. But since 'tis so, + Why, fare thee well, old play-fellow! I'll try + To squeeze a tear for old acquaintance sake. + I shall not grudge so much.-- + + _To him enters Lovel_. + +LOVEL +Bless us, Woodvil! what is the matter? I protest, man, I thought you had +been weeping. + +WOODVIL +Nothing is the matter, only the wench has forced some water into my +eyes, which will quickly disband. + +LOVEL +I cannot conceive you. + +WOODVIL +Margaret is flown. + +LOVEL +Upon what pretence? + +WOODVIL +Neglect on my part: which it seems she has had the wit to discover, +maugre all my pains to conceal it. + +LOVEL +Then, you confess the charge? + +WOODVIL +To say the truth, my love for her has of late stopt short on this side +idolatry. + +LOVEL +As all good Christians' should, I think. + +WOODVIL +I am sure, I could have loved her still within the limits of warrantable +love. + +LOVEL +A kind of brotherly affection, I take it. + +WOODVIL +We should have made excellent man and wife in time. + +LOVEL +A good old couple, when the snows fell, to crowd about a sea-coal fire, +and talk over old matters. + +WOODVIL +While each should feel, what neither cared to acknowledge, that stories +oft repeated may, at last, come to lose some of their grace by the +repetition. + +LOVEL +Which both of you may yet live long enough to discover. For, take my +word for it, Margaret is a bird that will come back to you without a +lure. + +WOODVIL +Never, never, Lovel. Spite of my levity, with tears I confess it, she +was a lady of most confirmed honour, of an unmatchable spirit, and +determinate in all virtuous resolutions; not hasty to anticipate an +affront, nor slow to feel, where just provocation was given. + +LOVEL +What made you neglect her, then? + +WOODVIL +Mere levity and youthfulness of blood, a malady incident to young men, +physicians call it caprice. Nothing else. He, that slighted her, knew +her value: and 'tis odds, but, for thy sake, Margaret, John will yet go +to his grave a bachelor. (_A noise heard, as of one drunk and singing_.) + +LOVEL +Here comes one, that will quickly dissipate these humours. + +(_Enter one drunk_.) + +DRUNKEN MAN +Good-morrow to you, gentlemen. Mr. Lovel, I am your humble servant. +Honest Jack Woodvil, I will get drunk with you to-morrow. + +WOODVIL +And why to-morrow, honest Mr. Freeman? + +DRUNKEN MAN +I scent a traitor in that question. A beastly question. Is it not his +Majesty's birth-day? the day, of all days in the year, on which King +Charles the second was graciously pleased to be born. (_Sings_) "Great +pity 'tis such days as those should come but once a year." + +LOVEL +Drunk in a morning! foh! how he stinks! + +DRUNKEN MAN +And why not drunk in a morning? can'st tell, bully? + +WOODVIL +Because, being the sweet and tender infancy of the day, methinks, it +should ill endure such early blightings. + +DRUNKEN MAN +I grant you, 'tis in some sort the youth and tender nonage of the day. +Youth is bashful, and I give it a cup to encourage it. (_Sings_) "Ale +that will make Grimalkin prate."--At noon I drink for thirst, at night +for fellowship, but, above all, I love to usher in the bashful morning +under the auspices of a freshening stoop of liquor. (_Sings_) "Ale in a +Saxon rumkin then makes valour burgeon in tall men."--But, I crave +pardon. I fear I keep that gentleman from serious thoughts. There be +those that wait for me in the cellar. + +WOODVIL +Who are they? + +DRUNKEN MAN +Gentlemen, my good friends, Cleveland, Delaval, and Truby. I know by +this time they are all clamorous for me. (_Exit, singing._) + +WOODVIL +This keeping of open house acquaints a man with strange companions. + +(Enter, at another door, Three calling for Harry Freeman._) + + Harry Freeman, Harry Freeman. + He is not here. Let us go look for him. + Where is Freeman? + Where is Harry? + +(_Exeunt the Three, calling for Freeman._) + +WOODVIL +Did you ever see such gentry? (_laughing_). These are they that fatten +on ale and tobacco in a morning, drink burnt brandy at noon to promote +digestion, and piously conclude with quart bumpers after supper, to +prove their loyalty. + +LOVEL +Come, shall we adjourn to the Tennis Court? + +WOODVIL +No, you shall go with me into the gallery, where I will shew you the +_Vandyke_ I have purchased. "The late King taking leave of his +children." + +LOVEL +I will but adjust my dress, and attend you. (_Exit Lovel._) + + JOHN WOODVIL (_alone_) + Now Universal England getteth drunk + For joy that Charles, her monarch, is restored: + And she, that sometime wore a saintly mask, + The stale-grown vizor from her face doth pluck, + And weareth now a suit of morris bells, + With which she jingling goes through all her towns and villages. + The baffled factions in their houses sculk: + The common-wealthsman, and state machinist, + The cropt fanatic, and fifth-monarchy-man, + Who heareth of these visionaries now? + They and their dreams have ended. Fools do sing, + Where good men yield God thanks; but politic spirits, + Who live by observation, note these changes + Of the popular mind, and thereby serve their ends. + Then why not I? What's Charles to me, or Oliver, + But as my own advancement hangs on one of them? + I to myself am chief.--I know, + Some shallow mouths cry out, that I am smit + With the gauds and shew of state, the point of place, + And trick of precedence, the ducks, and nods, + Which weak minds pay to rank. 'Tis not to sit + In place of worship at the royal masques, + Their pastimes, plays, and Whitehall banquetings, + For none of these, + Nor yet to be seen whispering with some great one, + Do I affect the favours of the court. + I would be great, for greatness hath great _power_, + And that's the fruit I reach at.-- + Great spirits ask great play-room. Who could sit, + With these prophetic swellings in my breast, + That prick and goad me on, and never cease, + To the fortunes something tells me I was born to? + Who, with such monitors within to stir him, + Would sit him down, with lazy arms across, + A unit, a thing without a name in the state, + A something to be govern'd, not to govern, + A fishing, hawking, hunting, country gentleman? + (_Exit_.) + + + + +SCENE.--_Sherwood Forest_. + + +SIR WALTER WOODVIL. SIMON WOODVIL. +(_Disguised as Frenchmen_.) + + + SIR WALTER + How fares my boy, Simon, my youngest born, + My hope, my pride, young Woodvil, speak to me? + Some grief untold weighs heavy at thy heart: + I know it by thy alter'd cheer of late. + Thinkest, thy brother plays thy father false? + It is a mad and thriftless prodigal, + Grown proud upon the favours of the court; + Court manners, and court fashions, he affects, + And in the heat and uncheck'd blood of youth, + Harbours a company of riotous men, + All hot, and young, court-seekers, like himself, + Most skilful to devour a patrimony; + And these have eat into my old estates, + And these have drain'd thy father's cellars dry; + But these so common faults of youth not named, + (Things which themselves outgrow, left to themselves,) + I know no quality that stains his honor. + My life upon his faith and noble mind, + Son John could never play thy father false. + + SIMON + I never thought but nobly of my brother, + Touching his honor and fidelity. + Still I could wish him charier of his person, + And of his time more frugal, than to spend + In riotous living, graceless society, + And mirth unpalatable, hours better employ'd + (With those persuasive graces nature lent him) + In fervent pleadings for a father's life. + + SIR WALTER + I would not owe my life to a jealous court, + Whose shallow policy I know it is, + On some reluctant acts of prudent mercy, + (Not voluntary, but extorted by the times, + In the first tremblings of new-fixed power, + And recollection smarting from old wounds,) + On these to build a spurious popularity. + Unknowing what free grace or mercy mean, + They fear to punish, therefore do they pardon. + For this cause have I oft forbid my son, + By letters, overtures, open solicitings, + Or closet-tamperings, by gold or fee, + To beg or bargain with the court for my life. + + SIMON + And John has ta'en you, father, at your word, + True to the letter of his paternal charge. + + SIR WALTER + Well, my good cause, and my good conscience, boy, + Shall be for sons to me, if John prove false. + Men die but once, and the opportunity + Of a noble death is not an every-day fortune: + It is a gift which noble spirits pray for. + + SIMON + I would not wrong my brother by surmise; + I know him generous, full of gentle qualities, + Incapable of base compliances, + No prodigal in his nature, but affecting + This shew of bravery for ambitious ends. + He drinks, for 'tis the humour of the court, + And drink may one day wrest the secret from him, + And pluck you from your hiding place in the sequel. + + SIR WALTER + Fair death shall be my doom, and foul life his. + Till when, we'll live as free in this green forest + As yonder deer, who roam unfearing treason: + Who seem the Aborigines of this place, + Or Sherwood theirs by tenure. + + SIMON + 'Tis said, that Robert Earl of Huntingdon, + Men call'd him Robin Hood, an outlaw bold, + With a merry crew of hunters here did haunt, + Not sparing the king's venison. May one believe + The antique tale? + + SIR WALTER + + There is much likelihood, + Such bandits did in England erst abound, + When polity was young. I have read of the pranks + Of that mad archer, and of the tax he levied + On travellers, whatever their degree, + Baron, or knight, whoever pass'd these woods, + Layman, or priest, not sparing the bishop's mitre + For spiritual regards; nay, once, 'tis said, + He robb'd the king himself. + + SIMON + A perilous man. (_Smiling_.) + + SIR WALTER + How quietly we live here, + Unread in the world's business, + And take no note of all its slippery changes. + 'Twere best we make a world among ourselves, + A little world, + Without the ills and falsehoods of the greater: + We two being all the inhabitants of ours, + And kings and subjects both in one. + + SIMON + Only the dangerous errors, fond conceits, + Which make the business of that greater world, + Must have no place in ours: + As, namely, riches, honors, birth, place, courtesy, + Good fame and bad, rumours and popular noises, + Books, creeds, opinions, prejudices national, + Humours particular, + Soul-killing lies, and truths that work small good, + Feuds, factions, enmities, relationships, + Loves, hatreds, sympathies, antipathies, + And all the intricate stuff quarrels are made of. + + (_Margaret enters in boy's apparel_.) + + SIR WALTER + What pretty boy have we here? + + MARGARET + _Bon jour, messieurs_. Ye have handsome English faces, + I should have ta'en you else for other two, + I came to seek in the forest. + + SIR WALTER + Who are they? + + MARGARET + A gallant brace of Frenchmen, curled monsieurs, + That, men say, haunt these woods, affecting privacy, + More than the manner of their countrymen. + + SIMON + We have here a wonder. + The face is Margaret's face. + + SIR WALTER + The face is Margaret's, but the dress the same + My Stephen sometimes wore. + + (_To Margaret_) + + Suppose us them; whom do men say we are? + Or know you what you seek? + + MARGARET + A worthy pair of exiles, + Two whom the politics of state revenge, + In final issue of long civil broils, + Have houseless driven from your native France, + To wander idle in these English woods, + Where now ye live; most part + Thinking on home, and all the joys of France, + Where grows the purple vine. + + SIR WALTER + These woods, young stranger, + And grassy pastures, which the slim deer loves, + Are they less beauteous than the land of France, + Where grows the purple vine? + + MARGARET + I cannot tell. + To an indifferent eye both shew alike. + 'Tis not the scene, + But all familiar objects in the scene, + Which now ye miss, that constitute a difference. + Ye had a country, exiles, ye have none now; + Friends had ye, and much wealth, ye now have nothing; + Our manners, laws, our customs, all are foreign to you, + I know ye loathe them, cannot learn them readily; + And there is reason, exiles, ye should love + Our English earth less than your land of France, + Where grows the purple vine; where all delights grow, + Old custom has made pleasant. + + SIR WALTER + You, that are read + So deeply in our story, what are you? + + MARGARET + A bare adventurer; in brief a woman, + That put strange garments on, and came thus far + To seek an ancient friend: + And having spent her stock of idle words, + And feeling some tears coming, + Hastes now to clasp Sir Walter Woodvil's knees, + And beg a boon for Margaret, his poor ward. (_Kneeling_.) + + SIR WALTER + Not at my feet, Margaret, not at my feet. + + MARGARET + Yes, till her suit is answer'd. + + SIR WALTER + Name it. + + MARGARET + A little boon, and yet so great a grace, + She fears to ask it. + + SIR WALTER + Some riddle, Margaret? + + MARGARET + No riddle, but a plain request. + + SIR WALTER + Name it. + + MARGARET + Free liberty of Sherwood, + And leave to take her lot with you in the forest. + + SIR WALTER + A scant petition, Margaret, but take it, + Seal'd with an old man's tears.-- + Rise, daughter of Sir Rowland. + + (_Addresses them both._) + + O you most worthy, + You constant followers of a man proscribed, + Following poor misery in the throat of danger; + Fast servitors to craz'd and penniless poverty, + Serving poor poverty without hope of gain; + Kind children of a sire unfortunate; + Green clinging tendrils round a trunk decay'd, + Which needs must bring on you timeless decay; + Fair living forms to a dead carcase join'd;-- + What shall I say? + Better the dead were gather'd to the dead, + Than death and life in disproportion meet.-- + Go, seek your fortunes, children.-- + + SIMON + Why, whither should we go? + + SIR WALTER + _You_ to the Court, where now your brother John + Commits a rape on Fortune. + + SIMON + Luck to John! + A light-heel'd strumpet, when the sport is done. + + SIR WALTER + _You_ to the sweet society of your equals, + Where the world's fashion smiles on youth and beauty. + + MARGARET + Where young men's flatteries cozen young maids' beauty, + There pride oft gets the vantage hand of duty, + There sweet humility withers. + + SIMON + Mistress Margaret, + How fared my brother John, when you left Devon? + + MARGARET + John was well, Sir. + + SIMON + 'Tis now nine months almost, + Since I saw home. What new friends has John made? + Or keeps he his first love?--I did suspect + Some foul disloyalty. Now do I know, + John has prov'd false to her, for Margaret weeps. + It is a scurvy brother. + + SIR WALTER + Fie upon it. + All men are false, I think. The date of love + Is out, expired, its stories all grown stale, + O'erpast, forgotten, like an antique tale + Of Hero and Leander. + + +SIMON +I have known some men that are too general-contemplative for the narrow +passion. I am in some sort a _general_ lover. + +MARGARET +In the name of the boy God, who plays at hood-man-blind with the Muses, +and cares not whom he catches: what is it _you_ love? + + + SIMON + Simply, all things that live, + From the crook'd worm to man's imperial form, + And God-resembling likeness. The poor fly, + That makes short holyday in the sun beam, + And dies by some child's hand. The feeble bird + With little wings, yet greatly venturous + In the upper sky. The fish in th' other element, + That knows no touch of eloquence. What else? + Yon tall and elegant stag, + Who paints a dancing shadow of his horns + In the water, where he drinks. + + MARGARET + I myself love all these things, yet so as with a difference:-- + for example, some animals better than others, some men + rather than other men; the nightingale before the cuckoo, the + swift and graceful palfrey before the slow and asinine mule. + Your humour goes to confound all qualities. + What sports do you use in the forest?-- + + SIMON + Not many; some few, as thus:-- + To see the sun to bed, and to arise, + Like some hot amourist with glowing eyes, + Bursting the lazy bands of sleep that bound him, + With all his fires and travelling glories round him. + Sometimes the moon on soft night clouds to rest, + Like beauty nestling in a young man's breast, + And all the winking stars, her handmaids, keep + Admiring silence, while those lovers sleep. + Sometimes outstretcht, in very idleness, + Nought doing, saying little, thinking less, + To view the leaves, thin dancers upon air, + Go eddying round; and small birds, how they fare, + When mother Autumn fills their beaks with corn, + Filch'd from the careless Amalthea's horn; + And how the woods berries and worms provide + Without their pains, when earth has nought beside + To answer their small wants. + To view the graceful deer come tripping by, + Then stop, and gaze, then turn, they know not why, + Like bashful younkers in society. + To mark the structure of a plant or tree, + And all fair things of earth, how fair they be. + + MARGARET (_smiling_) + And, afterwards them paint in simile. + + SIR WALTER + Mistress Margaret will have need of some refreshment. + Please you, we have some poor viands within. + + MARGARET + Indeed I stand in need of them. + + SIR WALTER + Under the shade of a thick-spreading tree, + Upon the grass, no better carpeting, + We'll eat our noon-tide meal; and, dinner done, + One of us shall repair to Nottingham, + To seek some safe night-lodging in the town, + Where you may sleep, while here with us you dwell, + By day, in the forest, expecting better times, + And gentler habitations, noble Margaret. + + SIMON + _Allons_, young Frenchman-- + + MARGARET + _Allons_, Sir Englishman. The time has been, + I've studied love-lays in the English tongue, + And been enamour'd of rare poesy: + Which now I must unlearn. Henceforth, + Sweet mother-tongue, old English speech, adieu; + For Margaret has got new name and language new. + + (_Exeunt._) + + + +ACT THE THIRD + + +SCENE.--_An Apartment of State in Woodvil Hall--Cavaliers drinking._ + + +JOHN WOODVIL, LOVEL, GRAY, _and four more._ + + +JOHN +More mirth, I beseech you, gentlemen--Mr. Gray, you are not merry.-- + +GRAY +More wine, say I, and mirth shall ensue in course. What! we have not yet +above three half-pints a man to answer for. Brevity is the soul of +drinking, as of wit. Despatch, I say. More wine. (_Fills._) + +FIRST GENTLEMAN +I entreat you, let there be some order, some method, in our drinkings. I +love to lose my reason with my eyes open, to commit the deed of +drunkenness with forethought and deliberation. I love to feel the fumes +of the liquor gathering here, like clouds. + +SECOND GENTLEMAN +And I am for plunging into madness at once. Damn order, and method, and +steps, and degrees, that he speaks of. Let confusion have her legitimate +work. + +LOVEL +I marvel why the poets, who, of all men, methinks, should possess the +hottest livers, and most empyreal fancies, should affect to see such +virtues in cold water. + +GRAY +Virtue in cold water! ha! ha! ha!-- + +JOHN +Because your poet-born hath an internal wine, richer than lippara or +canaries, yet uncrushed from any grapes of earth, unpressed in mortal +wine-presses. + +THIRD GENTLEMAN +What may be the name of this wine? + +JOHN +It hath as many names as qualities. It is denominated indifferently, +wit, conceit, invention, inspiration, but its most royal and +comprehensive name is _fancy_. + +THIRD GENTLEMAN +And where keeps he this sovereign liquor? + +JOHN +Its cellars are in the brain, whence your true poet deriveth +intoxication at will; while his animal spirits, catching a pride from +the quality and neighbourhood of their noble relative, the brain, refuse +to be sustained by wines and fermentations of earth. + +THIRD GENTLEMAN +But is your poet-born alway tipsy with this liquor? + +JOHN +He hath his stoopings and reposes; but his proper element is the sky, +and in the suburbs of the empyrean. + +THIRD GENTLEMAN +Is your wine-intellectual so exquisite? henceforth, I, a man of plain +conceit, will, in all humility, content my mind with canaries. + +FOURTH GENTLEMAN +I am for a song or a catch. When will the catches come on, the sweet +wicked catches? + +JOHN +They cannot be introduced with propriety before midnight. Every man must +commit his twenty bumpers first. We are not yet well roused. Frank +Lovel, the glass stands with you. + +LOVEL +Gentlemen, the Duke. (_Fills_.) + +ALL +The Duke. (_They drink_.) + +GRAY +Can any tell, why his Grace, being a Papist-- + +JOHN +Pshaw! we will have no questions of state now. Is not this his Majesty's +birth-day? + +GRAY +What follows? + +JOHN +That every man should sing, and be joyful, and ask no questions. + +SECOND GENTLEMAN +Damn politics, they spoil drinking. + +THIRD GENTLEMAN +For certain,'tis a blessed monarchy. + +SECOND GENTLEMAN +The cursed fanatic days we have seen! The times have been when swearing +was out of fashion. + +THIRD GENTLEMAN +And drinking. + +FIRST GENTLEMAN +And wenching. + +GRAY +The cursed yeas and forsooths, which we have heard uttered, when a man +could not rap out an innocent oath, but strait the air was thought to be +infected. + + +LOVEL +'Twas a pleasant trick of the saint, which that trim puritan +_Swear-not-at-all Smooth-speech_ used, when his spouse chid him with an +oath for committing with his servant-maid, to cause his house to be +fumigated with burnt brandy, and ends of scripture, to disperse the +devil's breath, as he termed it. + +ALL +Ha! ha! ha! + +GRAY +But 'twas pleasanter, when the other saint _Resist-the-devil- +and-he-will-flee-from-thee Pure-man_ was overtaken in the act, to plead +an illusio visûs, and maintain his sanctity upon a supposed power in the +adversary to counterfeit the shapes of things. + +ALL +Ha! ha! ha! + +JOHN +Another round, and then let every man devise what trick he can in his +fancy, for the better manifesting our loyalty this day. + +GRAY +Shall we hang a puritan? + +JOHN +No, that has been done already in Coleman-Street. + +SECOND GENTLEMAN +Or fire a conventicle? + +JOHN +That is stale too. + +THIRD GENTLEMAN +Or burn the assembly's catechism? + +FOURTH GENTLEMAN +Or drink the king's health, every man standing upon his head naked? + +JOHN (_to Lovel_) +We have here some pleasant madness. + +THIRD GENTLEMAN +Who shall pledge me in a pint bumper, while we drink to the king upon +our knees? + +LOVEL +Why on our knees, Cavalier? + +JOHN (_smiling_) +For more devotion, to be sure. (_To a servant_.) Sirrah, fetch the gilt +goblets. + +(_The goblets are brought. They drink the king's health, kneeling. A +shout of general approbation following the first appearance of the +goblets_.) + +JOHN +We have here the unchecked virtues of the grape. How the vapours curl +upwards! It were a life of gods to dwell in such an element: to see, +and hear, and talk brave things. Now fie upon these casual potations. +That a man's most exalted reason should depend upon the ignoble +fermenting of a fruit, which sparrows pluck at as well as we! + +GRAY (_aside to Lovel_) +Observe how he is ravished. + +LOVEL +Vanity and gay thoughts of wine do meet in him and engender madness. + +(_While the rest are engaged in a wild kind of talk, John advances to +the front of the stage and soliloquises_.) + + JOHN + My spirits turn to fire, they mount so fast. + My joys are turbulent, my hopes shew like fruition. + These high and gusty relishes of life, sure, + Have no allayings of mortality in them. + I am too hot now and o'ercapable, + For the tedious processes, and creeping wisdom, + Of human acts, and enterprizes of a man. + I want some seasonings of adversity, + Some strokes of the old mortifier Calamity, + To take these swellings down, divines call vanity. + +FIRST GENTLEMAN +Mr. Woodvil, Mr. Woodvil. + +SECOND GENTLEMAN +Where is Woodvil? + +GRAY +Let him alone. I have seen him in these lunes before. His abstractions +must not taint the good mirth. + + JOHN (_continuing to soliloquize_) + O for some friend now, + To conceal nothing from, to have no secrets. + How fine and noble a thing is confidence, + How reasonable too, and almost godlike! + Fast cement of fast friends, band of society, + Old natural go-between in the world's business, + Where civil life and order, wanting this cement, + Would presently rush back + Into the pristine state of singularity, + And each man stand alone. + +(_A Servant enters._) +Gentlemen, the fire-works are ready. + +FIRST GENTLEMAN +What be they? + +LOVEL +The work of London artists, which our host has provided in honour of +this day. + +SECOND GENTLEMAN +'Sdeath, who would part with his wine for a rocket? + +LOVEL +Why truly, gentlemen, as our kind host has been at the pains to provide +this spectacle, we can do no less than be present at it. It will not +take up much time. Every man may return fresh and thirsting to his +liquor. + +THIRD GENTLEMAN +There is reason in what he says. + +SECOND GENTLEMAN +Charge on then, bottle in hand. There's husbandry in that. + +(_They go out, singing. Only Level remains, who observes Woodvil_.) + + JOHN (_still talking to himself_) + This Lovel here's of a tough honesty, + Would put the rack to the proof. He is not of that sort, + Which haunt my house, snorting the liquors, + And when their wisdoms are afloat with wine, + Spend vows as fast as vapours, which go off + Even with the fumes, their fathers. He is one, + Whose sober morning actions + Shame not his o'ernight's promises; + Talks little, flatters less, and makes no promises; + Why this is he, whom the dark-wisdom'd fate + Might trust her counsels of predestination with, + And the world be no loser. + Why should I fear this man? + (_Seeing Lovel_.) + Where is the company gone? + +LOVEL +To see the fire-works, where you will be expected to follow. But I +perceive you are better engaged. + + JOHN + I have been meditating this half-hour + On all the properties of a brave friendship, + The mysteries that are in it, the noble uses, + Its limits withal, and its nice boundaries. + _Exempli gratia_, how far a man + May lawfully forswear himself for his friend; + What quantity of lies, some of them brave ones, + He may lawfully incur in a friend's behalf; + What oaths, blood-crimes, hereditary quarrels, + Night brawls, fierce words, and duels in the morning, + He need not stick at, to maintain his friend's honor, or his cause. + + LOVEL + I think many men would die for their friends. + + JOHN + Death! why 'tis nothing. We go to it for sport, + To gain a name, or purse, or please a sullen humour, + When one has worn his fortune's livery threadbare, + Or his spleen'd mistress frowns. Husbands will venture on it, + To cure the hot fits and cold shakings of jealousy. + A friend, sir, must do more. + + LOVEL + Can he do more than die? + + JOHN + To serve a friend this he may do. Pray mark me. + Having a law within (great spirits feel one) + He cannot, ought not to be bound by any + Positive laws or ord'nances extern, + But may reject all these: by the law of friendship + He may do so much, be they, indifferently, + Penn'd statutes, or the land's unwritten usages, + As public fame, civil compliances, + Misnamed honor, trust in matter of secrets, + All vows and promises, the feeble mind's religion, + (Binding our morning knowledge to approve + What last night's ignorance spake); + The ties of blood withal, and prejudice of kin. + Sir, these weak terrors + Must never shake me. I know what belongs + To a worthy friendship. Come, you shall have my confidence. + + LOVEL + I hope you think me worthy. + + JOHN + You will smile to hear now-- + Sir Walter never has been out of the island. + + LOVEL + You amaze me. + + JOHN + That same report of his escape to France + Was a fine tale, forg'd by myself--Ha! ha! + I knew it would stagger him. + + LOVEL + Pray, give me leave. + Where has he dwelt, how liv'd, how lain conceal'd? + Sure I may ask so much. + + JOHN + From place to place, dwelling in no place long, + My brother Simon still hath borne him company, + ('Tis a brave youth, I envy him all his virtues.) + Disguis'd in foreign garb, they pass for Frenchmen, + Two Protestant exiles from the Limosin + Newly arriv'd. Their dwelling's now at Nottingham, + Where no soul knows them. + + +LOVEL +Can you assign any reason, why a gentleman of Sir Walter's known +prudence should expose his person so lightly? + + + JOHN + I believe, a certain fondness, + A child-like cleaving to the land that gave him birth, + Chains him like fate. + + LOVEL + I have known some exiles thus + To linger out the term of the law's indulgence, + To the hazard of being known. + + JOHN + You may suppose sometimes + They use the neighb'ring Sherwood for their sport, + Their exercise and freer recreation.-- + I see you smile. Pray now, be careful. + + LOVEL + I am no babbler, sir; you need not fear me. + + JOHN + But some men have been known to talk in their sleep, + And tell fine tales that way. + + LOVEL + I have heard so much. But, to say truth, I mostly sleep alone. + + JOHN + Or drink, sir? do you never drink too freely? + Some men will drink, and tell you all their secrets. + + LOVEL + Why do you question me, who know my habits? + + JOHN + I think you are no sot, + No tavern-troubler, worshipper of the grape; + But all men drink sometimes, + And veriest saints at festivals relax, + The marriage of a friend, or a wife's birth-day. + + LOVEL + How much, sir, may a man with safety drink? (_Smiling_.) + + JOHN + Sir, three half pints a day is reasonable; + I care not if you never exceed that quantity. + + LOVEL + I shall observe it; + On holidays two quarts. + + JOHN + Or stay; you keep no wench? + + LOVEL + Ha! + + JOHN + No painted mistress for your private hours? + You keep no whore, sir? + + LOVEL + What does he mean? + + JOHN + Who for a close embrace, a toy of sin, + And amorous praising of your worship's breath, + In rosy junction of four melting lips, + Can kiss out secrets from you? + + LOVEL + How strange this passionate behaviour shews in you! + Sure you think me some weak one. + + JOHN + Pray pardon me some fears. + You have now the pledge of a dear father's life. + I am a son--would fain be thought a loving one; + You may allow me some fears: do not despise me, + If, in a posture foreign to my spirit, + And by our well-knit friendship I conjure you, + Touch not Sir Walter's life. (_Kneels_.) + You see these tears. My father's an old man. + Pray let him live. + + LOVEL + I must be bold to tell you, these new freedoms + Shew most unhandsome in you. + + JOHN (_rising_) + Ha! do you say so? + Sure, you are not grown proud upon my secret! + Ah! now I see it plain. He would be babbling. + No doubt a garrulous and hard-fac'd traitor-- + But I'll not give you leave. (_Draws_.) + + LOVEL + What does this madman mean? + + JOHN + Come, sir; here is no subterfuge. + You must kill me, or I kill you. + + LOVEL (_drawing_) + Then self-defence plead my excuse. + Have at you, sir. (_They fight_.) + + JOHN + Stay, sir. + I hope you have made your will. + If not, 'tis no great matter. + A broken cavalier has seldom much + He can bequeath: an old worn peruke, + A snuff-box with a picture of Prince Rupert, + A rusty sword he'll swear was used at Naseby, + Though it ne'er came within ten miles of the place; + And, if he's very rich, + A cheap edition of the _Icon Basilike_, + Is mostly all the wealth he dies possest of. + You say few prayers, I fancy;-- + So to it again. (_They fight again. Lovel is disarmed_.) + + LOVEL + You had best now take my life. I guess you mean it. + + JOHN (_musing_) + No:--Men will say I fear'd him, if I kill'd him. + Live still, and be a traitor in thy wish, + But never act thy thought, being a coward. + That vengeance, which thy soul shall nightly thirst for, + And this disgrace I've done you cry aloud for, + Still have the will without the power to execute. + So now I leave you, + Feeling a sweet security. No doubt + My secret shall remain a virgin for you!-- + (_Goes out, smiling in scorn_.) + + LOVEL (_rising_) + For once you are mistaken in your man. + The deed you wot of shall forthwith be done. + A bird let loose, a secret out of hand, + Returns not back. Why, then 'tis baby policy + To menace him who hath it in his keeping. + I will go look for Gray; + Then, northward ho! such tricks as we shall play + Have not been seen, I think, in merry Sherwood, + Since the days of Robin Hood, that archer good. + + + + +ACT THE FOURTH + + +SCENE.--_An Apartment in Woodvil Hall_. + + + JOHN WOODVIL (_alone_) + A weight of wine lies heavy on my head, + The unconcocted follies of last night. + Now all those jovial fancies, and bright hopes, + Children of wine, go off like dreams. + This sick vertigo here + Preacheth of temperance, no sermon better. + These black thoughts, and dull melancholy, + That stick like burrs to the brain, will they ne'er leave me? + Some men are full of choler, when they are drunk; + Some brawl of matter foreign to themselves; + And some, the most resolved fools of all, + Have told their dearest secrets in their cups. + + + + +SCENE.--_The Forest_. + + +SIR WALTER. SIMON. LOVEL. GRAY. + + +LOVEL +Sir, we are sorry we cannot return your French salutation. + +GRAY +Nor otherwise consider this garb you trust to than as a poor disguise. + +LOVEL +Nor use much ceremony with a traitor. + +GRAY +Therefore, without much induction of superfluous words, I attach you, +Sir Walter Woodvil, of High Treason, in the King's name. + +LOVEL +And of taking part in the great Rebellion against our late lawful +Sovereign, Charles the First. + +SIMON +John has betrayed us, father. + +LOVEL +Come, Sir, you had best surrender fairly. We know you, Sir. + +SIMON +Hang ye, villains, ye are two better known than trusted. I have seen +those faces before. Are ye not two beggarly retainers, +trencher-parasites, to John? I think ye rank above his footmen. A sort +of bed and board worms--locusts that infest our house; a leprosy that +long has hung upon its walls and princely apartments, reaching to fill +all the corners of my brother's once noble heart. + +GRAY +We are his friends. + +SIMON +Fie, Sir, do not weep. How these rogues will triumph! Shall I whip off +their heads, father? (_Draws_.) + +LOVEL +Come, Sir, though this shew handsome in you, being his son, yet the law +must have its course. + +SIMON +And if I tell you the law shall not have its course, cannot ye be +content? Courage, father; shall such things as these apprehend a man? +Which of ye will venture upon me?--Will you, Mr. Constable self-elect? +or you, Sir, with a pimple on your nose, got at Oxford by hard drinking, +your only badge of loyalty? + +GRAY +'Tis a brave youth--I cannot strike at him. + +SIMON +Father, why do you cover your face with your hands? Why do you fetch +your breath so hard? See, villains, his heart is burst! O villains, he +cannot speak. One of you run for some water: quickly, ye knaves; will ye +have your throats cut? (_They both slink off_.) How is it with you, Sir +Walter? Look up, Sir, the villains are gone. He hears me not, and this +deep disgrace of treachery in his son hath touched him even to the +death. O most distuned, and distempered world, where sons talk their +aged fathers into their graves! Garrulous and diseased world, and still +empty, rotten and hollow _talking_ world, where good men decay, states +turn round in an endless mutability, and still for the worse, nothing is +at a stay, nothing abides but vanity, chaotic vanity.--Brother, adieu! + + There lies the parent stock which gave us life, + Which I will see consign'd with tears to earth. + Leave thou the solemn funeral rites to me, + Grief and a true remorse abide with thee. + +(_Bears in the body_.) + + + + +SCENE.--_Another Part of the Forest_. + + + MARGARET (_alone_) + It was an error merely, and no crime, + An unsuspecting openness in youth, + That from his lips the fatal secret drew, + Which should have slept like one of nature's mysteries, + Unveil'd by any man. + Well, he is dead! + And what should Margaret do in the forest? + O ill-starr'd John! + O Woodvil, man enfeoffed to despair! + Take thy farewell of peace. + O never look again to see good days, + Or close thy lids in comfortable nights, + Or ever think a happy thought again, + If what I have heard be true.-- + Forsaken of the world must Woodvil live, + If he did tell these men. + No tongue must speak to him, no tongue of man + Salute him, when he wakes up in a morning; + Or bid "good-night" to John. Who seeks to live + In amity with thee, must for thy sake + Abide the world's reproach. What then? + Shall Margaret join the clamours of the world + Against her friend? O undiscerning world, + That cannot from misfortune separate guilt, + No, not in thought! O never, never, John. + Prepar'd to share the fortunes of her friend + _For better or for worse_ thy Margaret comes, + To pour into thy wounds a healing love, + And wake the memory of an ancient friendship. + And pardon me, thou spirit of Sir Walter, + Who, in compassion to the wretched living, + Have but few tears to waste upon the dead. + + + + + +SCENE.--_Woodvil Hall_. + + +SANDFORD. MARGARET. + + +(_As from a Journey_.) + + +SANDFORD +The violence of the sudden mischance hath so wrought in him, who by +nature is allied to nothing less than a self-debasing humour of +dejection, that I have never seen any thing more changed and +spirit-broken. He hath, with a peremptory resolution, dismissed the +partners of his riots and late hours, denied his house and person to +their most earnest solicitings, and will be seen by none. He keeps ever +alone, and his grief (which is solitary) does not so much seem to +possess and govern in him, as it is by him, with a wilfulness of most +manifest affection, entertained and cherished. + +MARGARET +How bears he up against the common rumour? + +SANDFORD +With a strange indifference, which whosoever dives not into the niceness +of his sorrow might mistake for obdurate and insensate. Yet are the +wings of his pride for ever clipt; and yet a virtuous predominance of +filial grief is so ever uppermost, that you may discover his thoughts +less troubled with conjecturing what living opinions will say, and judge +of his deeds, than absorbed and buried with the dead, whom his +indiscretion made so. + +MARGARET +I knew a greatness ever to be resident in him, to which the admiring +eyes of men should look up even in the declining and bankrupt state of +his pride. Fain would I see him, fain talk with him; but that a sense of +respect, which is violated, when without deliberation we press into the +society of the unhappy, checks and holds me back. How, think you, he +would bear my presence? + +SANDFORD +As of an assured friend, whom in the forgetfulness of his fortunes he +past by. See him you must; but not to-night. The newness of the sight +shall move the bitterest compunction and the truest remorse; but +afterwards, trust me, dear lady, the happiest effects of a returning +peace, and a gracious comfort, to him, to you, and all of us. + +MARGARET +I think he would not deny me. He hath ere this received farewell letters +from his brother, who hath taken a resolution to estrange himself, for a +time, from country, friends, and kindred, and to seek occupation for his +sad thoughts in travelling in foreign places, where sights remote and +extern to himself may draw from him kindly and not painful ruminations. + +SANDFORD +I was present at the receipt of the letter. The contents seemed to +affect him, for a moment, with a more lively passion of grief than he +has at any time outwardly shewn. He wept with many tears (which I had +not before noted in him) and appeared to be touched with a sense as of +some unkindness; but the cause of their sad separation and divorce +quickly recurring, he presently returned to his former inwardness of +suffering. + +MARGARET +The reproach of his brother's presence at this hour should have been a +weight more than could be sustained by his already oppressed and sinking +spirit.--Meditating upon these intricate and wide-spread sorrows, hath +brought a heaviness upon me, as of sleep. How goes the night? + +SANDFORD +An hour past sun-set. You shall first refresh your limbs (tired with +travel) with meats and some cordial wine, and then betake your no less +wearied mind to repose. + +MARGARET +A good rest to us all. + +SANDFORD +Thanks, lady. + + + + +ACT THE FIFTH + + +JOHN WOODVIL (_dressing_). + + + JOHN + How beautiful, (_handling his mourning_) + And comely do these mourning garments shew! + Sure Grief hath set his sacred impress here, + To claim the world's respect! they note so feelingly + By outward types the serious man within.-- + Alas! what part or portion can I claim + In all the decencies of virtuous sorrow, + Which other mourners use? as namely, + This black attire, abstraction from society, + Good thoughts, and frequent sighs, and seldom smiles, + A cleaving sadness native to the brow, + All sweet condolements of like-grieved friends, + (That steal away the sense of loss almost) + Men's pity, and good offices + Which enemies themselves do for us then, + Putting their hostile disposition off, + As we put off our high thoughts and proud looks. + (_Pauses, and observes the pictures_.) + These pictures must be taken down: + The portraitures of our most antient family + For nigh three hundred years! How have I listen'd, + To hear Sir Walter, with an old man's pride, + Holding me in his arms, a prating boy, + And pointing to the pictures where they hung, + Repeat by course their worthy histories, + (As Hugh de Widville, Walter, first of the name, + And Ann the handsome, Stephen, and famous John: + Telling me, I must be his famous John.) + But that was in old times. + Now, no more + Must I grow proud upon our house's pride. + I rather, I, by most unheard of crimes, + Have backward tainted all their noble blood, + Rased out the memory of an ancient family, + And quite revers'd the honors of our house. + Who now shall sit and tell us anecdotes? + The secret history of his own times, + And fashions of the world when he was young: + How England slept out three and twenty years, + While Carr and Villiers rul'd the baby king: + The costly fancies of the pedant's reign, + Balls, feastings, huntings, shows in allegory, + And Beauties of the court of James the First. + + _Margaret enters._ + + JOHN + Comes Margaret here to witness my disgrace? + O, lady, I have suffer'd loss, + And diminution of my honor's brightness. + You bring some images of old times, Margaret, + That should be now forgotten. + + MARGARET + Old times should never be forgotten, John. + I came to talk about them with my friend. + + JOHN + I did refuse you, Margaret, in my pride. + + MARGARET + If John rejected Margaret in his pride, + (As who does not, being splenetic, refuse + Sometimes old play-fellows,) the spleen being gone, + The offence no longer lives. + O Woodvil, those were happy days, + When we two first began to love. When first, + Under pretence of visiting my father, + (Being then a stripling nigh upon my age) + You came a wooing to his daughter, John. + Do you remember, + With what a coy reserve and seldom speech, + (Young maidens must be chary of their speech,) + I kept the honors of my maiden pride? + I was your favourite then. + + JOHN + O Margaret, Margaret! + These your submissions to my low estate, + And cleavings to the fates of sunken Woodvil, + Write bitter things 'gainst my unworthiness. + Thou perfect pattern of thy slander'd sex, + Whom miseries of mine could never alienate, + Nor change of fortune shake; whom injuries, + And slights (the worst of injuries) which moved + Thy nature to return scorn with like scorn, + Then when you left in virtuous pride this house, + Could not so separate, but now in this + My day of shame, when all the world forsake me, + You only visit me, love, and forgive me. + + MARGARET + Dost yet remember the green arbour, John, + In the south gardens of my father's house, + Where we have seen the summer sun go down, + Exchanging true love's vows without restraint? + And that old wood, you call'd your wilderness, + And vow'd in sport to build a chapel in it, + There dwell + + "Like hermit poor + In pensive place obscure," + + And tell your Ave Maries by the curls + (Dropping like golden beads) of Margaret's hair; + And make confession seven times a day + Of every thought that stray'd from love and Margaret; + And I your saint the penance should appoint-- + Believe me, sir, I will not now be laid + Aside, like an old fashion. + + JOHN + O lady, poor and abject are my thoughts, + My pride is cured, my hopes are under clouds, + I have no part in any good man's love, + In all earth's pleasures portion have I none, + I fade and wither in my own esteem, + This earth holds not alive so poor a thing as I am. + I was not always thus. (_Weeps_.) + + MARGARET + Thou noble nature, + Which lion-like didst awe the inferior creatures, + Now trampled on by beasts of basest quality, + My dear heart's lord, life's pride, soul-honor'd John, + Upon her knees (regard her poor request) + Your favourite, once-beloved Margaret, kneels. + + JOHN + What would'st thou, lady, ever-honor'd Margaret? + + MARGARET + That John would think more nobly of himself, + More worthily of high heaven; + And not for one misfortune, child of chance, + No crime, but unforeseen, and sent to punish + The less offence with image of the greater, + Thereby to work the soul's humility, + (Which end hath happily not been frustrate quite,) + O not for one offence mistrust heaven's mercy, + Nor quit thy hope of happy days to come-- + John yet has many happy days to live; + To live and make atonement. + + JOHN + Excellent lady, + Whose suit hath drawn this softness from my eyes, + Not the world's scorn, nor falling off of friends + Could ever do. Will you go with me, Margaret? + + MARGARET (_rising_) + Go whither, John? + + JOHN + Go in with me, + And pray for the peace of our unquiet minds? + + MARGARET + That I will, John.-- + (_Exeunt_.) + + + + +SCENE.--_An inner Apartment_. + + +(_John is discovered kneeling.--Margaret standing over him_.) + + + JOHN (_rises_) + I cannot bear + To see you waste that youth and excellent beauty, + ('Tis now the golden time of the day with you,) + In tending such a broken wretch as I am. + + MARGARET + John will break Margaret's heart, if he speak so. + O sir, sir, sir, you are too melancholy, + And I must call it caprice. I am somewhat bold + Perhaps in this. But you are now my patient, + (You know you gave me leave to call you so,) + And I must chide these pestilent humours from you. + + JOHN + They are gone.-- + Mark, love, how cheerfully I speak! + I can smile too, and I almost begin + To understand what kind of creature Hope is. + + MARGARET + Now this is better, this mirth becomes you, John. + + JOHN + Yet tell me, if I over-act my mirth. + (Being but a novice, I may fall into that error,) + That were a sad indecency, you know. + + MARGARET + Nay, never fear. + I will be mistress of your humours, + And you shall frown or smile by the book. + And herein I shall be most peremptory, + Cry, "this shews well, but that inclines to levity, + This frown has too much of the Woodvil in it, + But that fine sunshine has redeem'd it quite." + + JOHN + How sweetly Margaret robs me of myself! + + MARGARET + To give you in your stead a better self! + Such as you were, when these eyes first beheld + You mounted on your sprightly steed, White Margery, + Sir Rowland my father's gift, + And all my maidens gave my heart for lost. + I was a young thing then, being newly come + Home from my convent education, where + Seven years I had wasted in the bosom of France: + Returning home true protestant, you call'd me + Your little heretic nun. How timid-bashful + Did John salute his love, being newly seen. + Sir Rowland term'd it a rare modesty, + And prais'd it in a youth. + + + JOHN + Now Margaret weeps herself. + (_A noise of bells heard_.) + + MARGARET + Hark the bells, John. + + JOHN + Those are the church bells of St. Mary Ottery. + + MARGARET + I know it. + + JOHN + Saint Mary Ottery, my native village + In the sweet shire of Devon. + Those are the bells. + +MARGARET +Wilt go to church, John? + +JOHN +I have been there already. + +MARGARET +How canst say thou hast been there already? The bells are only now +ringing for morning service, and hast thou been at church already? + + JOHN + I left my bed betimes, I could not sleep, + And when I rose, I look'd (as my custom is) + From my chamber window, where I can see the sun rise; + And the first object I discern'd + Was the glistering spire of St. Mary Ottery. + + MARGARET + Well, John. + + JOHN + Then I remember'd 'twas the sabbath-day. + Immediately a wish arose in my mind, + To go to church and pray with Christian people. + + And then I check'd myself, and said to myself, + "Thou hast been a heathen, John, these two years past, + (Not having been at church in all that time,) + And is it fit, that now for the first time + Thou should'st offend the eyes of Christian people + With a murderer's presence in the house of prayer? + Thou would'st but discompose their pious thoughts, + And do thyself no good: for how could'st thou pray, + With unwash'd hands, and lips unus'd to the offices?" + And then I at my own presumption smiled; + And then I wept that I should smile at all, + Having such cause of grief! I wept outright; + Tears like a river flooded all my face, + And I began to pray, and found I could pray; + And still I yearn'd to say my prayers in the church. + "Doubtless (said I) one might find comfort in it." + So stealing down the stairs, like one that fear'd detection, + Or was about to act unlawful business + At that dead time of dawn, + I flew to the church, and found the doors wide open, + (Whether by negligence I knew not, + Or some peculiar grace to me vouchsaf'd, + For all things felt like mystery). + + MARGARET + Yes. + + JOHN + So entering in, not without fear, + I past into the family pew, + And covering up my eyes for shame, + And deep perception of unworthiness, + Upon the little hassock knelt me down, + Where I so oft had kneel'd, + A docile infant by Sir Walter's side; + And, thinking so, I wept a second flood + More poignant than the first; + But afterwards was greatly comforted. + It seem'd, the guilt of blood was passing from me + Even in the act and agony of tears, + And all my sins forgiven. + + + + + + * * * * * + + + + THE WITCH + + A DRAMATIC SKETCH OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY (1798) + + + + * * * * * + + + CHARACTERS + +_Old Servant in the Family of Sir Francis Pairford. Stranger._ + + + * * * * * + + + + + SERVANT + One summer night Sir Francis, as it chanced, + Was pacing to and fro in the avenue + That westward fronts our house, + Among those aged oaks, said to have been planted + Three hundred years ago + By a neighb'ring prior of the Fairford name. + Being o'er-task'd in thought, he heeded not + The importunate suit of one who stood by the gate, + And begged an alms. + Some say he shoved her rudely from the gate + With angry chiding; but I can never think + (Our master's nature hath a sweetness in it) + That he could use a woman, an old woman, + With such discourtesy: but he refused her-- + And better had he met a lion in his path + Than that old woman that night; + For she was one who practised the black arts, + And served the devil, being since burnt for witchcraft. + She looked at him as one that meant to blast him, + And with a frightful noise, + ('Twas partly like a woman's voice, + And partly like the hissing of a snake,) + She nothing said but this:-- + (Sir Francis told the words) + + _A mischief, mischief, mischief, + And a nine-times-killing curse, + By day and by night, to the caitiff wight, + Who shakes the poor like snakes from his door, + And shuts up the womb of his purse_. + + And still she cried + + _A mischief, + And a nine-fold-withering curse: + For that shall come to thee that will undo thee, + Both all that thou fearest and worse_. + + So saying, she departed, + Leaving Sir Francis like a man, beneath + Whose feet a scaffolding was suddenly falling; + So he described it. + + STRANGER + A terrible curse! What followed? + + SERVANT + Nothing immediate, but some two months after + Young Philip Fairford suddenly fell sick, + And none could tell what ailed him; for he lay, + And pined, and pined, till all his hair fell off, + And he, that was full-fleshed, became as thin + As a two-months' babe that has been starved in the nursing. + And sure I think + He bore his death-wound like a little child; + With such rare sweetness of dumb melancholy + He strove to clothe his agony in smiles, + Which he would force up in his poor pale cheeks, + Like ill-timed guests that had no proper dwelling there; + And, when they asked him his complaint, he laid + His hand upon his heart to shew the place, + Where Susan came to him a-nights, he said, + And prick'd him with a pin.-- + And thereupon Sir Francis called to mind + The beggar-witch that stood by the gateway + And begged an alms. + + STRANGER + But did the witch confess? + + SERVANT + All this and more at her death. + + STRANGER + I do not love to credit tales of magic. + Heaven's music, which is Order, seems unstrung, + And this brave world + (The mystery of God) unbeautified, + Disorder'd, marr'd, where such strange things are acted. + + + + + * * * * * + + + + + Mr. H---- + + A FARCE IN TWO ACTS + +As it was performed at Drury Lane Theatre, _December, 1806_ + + +"Mr. H----, thou wert DAMNED. 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 +DAMNED! Hadst thou been anonymous, thou haply mightst have lived. But +thou didst come to an untimely end for thy tricks, and for want of a +better name to pass them off----." + +--_Theatrical Examiner._ + + + + * * * * * + + + CHARACTERS + + Mr. H---- _Mr. Elliston_. + BELVIL _Mr. Bartley_. + LANDLORD PRY _Mr. Wewitzer_. + MELESINDA _Miss Mellon_. + Maid to Melesinda. _Mrs. Harlowe_. + Gentlemen, Ladies, Waiters, Servants, &c. + + +SCENE.--_Bath_ + + + * * * * * + + +PROLOGUE + +_Spoken by Mr. Elliston_ + + + If we have sinn'd in paring down a name, + All civil well-bred authors do the same. + Survey the columns of our daily writers-- + You'll find that some Initials are great fighters. + How fierce the shock, how fatal is the jar, + When Ensign W. meets Lieutenant R. + With two stout seconds, just of their own gizard, + Cross Captain X. and rough old General Izzard! + Letter to Letter spreads the dire alarms, + Till half the Alphabet is up in arms. + Nor with less lustre have Initials shone, + To grace the gentler annals of Crim. Con. + Where the dispensers of the public lash + Soft penance give; a letter and a dash-- + Where vice reduced in size shrinks to a failing, + And loses half her grossness by curtailing. + Faux pas are told in such a modest way,-- + The affair of Colonel B---- with Mrs. A---- + You must forgive them--for what is there, say, + Which such a pliant Vowel must not grant + To such a very pressing Consonant? + Or who poetic justice dares dispute, + When, mildly melting at a lover's suit, + The wife's a Liquid, her good man a Mute? + Even in the homelier scenes of honest life, + The coarse-spun intercourse of man and wife, + Initials I am told have taken place + Of Deary, Spouse, and that old-fashioned race; + And Cabbage, ask'd by Brother Snip to tea, + Replies, "I'll come--but it don't rest with me-- + I always leaves them things to Mrs. C." + O should this mincing fashion ever spread + From names of living heroes to the dead, + How would Ambition sigh, and hang the head, + As each lov'd syllable should melt away-- + Her Alexander turned into Great A---- + A single C. her Caesar to express-- + Her Scipio shrunk into a Roman S---- + And nick'd and dock'd to these new modes of speech, + Great Hannibal himself a Mr. H----. + + + * * * * * + + +MR. H---- + + +A FARCE IN TWO ACTS + + + * * * * * + + +ACT I + + +SCENE.--_A Public Room in an Inn--Landlord, Waiters, Gentlemen, &c. + +Enter Mr. H._ + + +MR. H. +Landlord, has the man brought home my boots? + +LANDLORD +Yes, Sir. + +MR. H. +You have paid him? + +LANDLORD +There is the receipt, Sir, only not quite filled up, no name, only +blank--"Blank, Dr. to Zekiel Spanish for one pair of best hessians." +Now, Sir, he wishes to know what name he shall put in, who he shall say +"Dr." + +MR. H. +Why, Mr. H. to be sure. + +LANDLORD +So I told him, Sir; but Zekiel has some qualms about it. He says, he +thinks that Mr. H. only would not stand good in law. + +MR. H. +Rot his impertinence, bid him put in Nebuchadnezzar, and not trouble me +with his scruples. + +LANDLORD +I shall, Sir. [_Exit_.] + +_Enter a Waiter_. + +WAITER +Sir, Squire Level's man is below, with a hare and a brace of pheasants +for Mr. H. + +MR. H. +Give the man half-a-crown, and bid him return my best respects to his +master. Presents it seems will find me out, with any name, or no name. + +_Enter Second Waiter_. + +SECOND WAITER +Sir, the man that makes up the Directory is at the door. + +MR. H. +Give him a shilling, that is what these fellows come for. + +SECOND WAITER +He has sent up to know by what name your Honour will please to be +inserted. + +MR. H. +Zounds, fellow, I give him a shilling for leaving out my name, not for +putting it in. This is one of the plaguy comforts of going anonymous. + +[_Exit Second Waiter_.] + +_Enter Third Waiter_. + +THIRD WAITER +Two letters for Mr. H. [_Exit_.] + +MR. H. +From ladies (_opens them_). This from Melesinda, to remind me of the +morning call I promised; the pretty creature positively languishes to be +made Mrs. H. I believe I must indulge her (_affectedly_). This from her +cousin, to bespeak me to some party, I suppose (_opening it_)--Oh, "this +evening"--"Tea and cards"--(_surveying himself with complacency_). Dear +H., thou art certainly a pretty fellow. I wonder what makes thee such a +favourite among the ladies: I wish it may not be owing to the +concealment of thy unfortunate--pshaw! + +_Enter Fourth Waiter_. + +FOURTH WAITER +Sir, one Mr. Printagain is enquiring for you. + +MR. H. +Oh, I remember, the poet; he is publishing by subscription. Give him a +guinea, and tell him he may put me down. + +FOURTH WAITER +What name shall I tell him, Sir? + +MR. H. +Zounds, he is a poet; let him fancy a name. + +[_Exit Fourth Waiter_.] + +_Enter Fifth Waiter_. + +FIFTH WAITER +Sir, Bartlemy the lame beggar, that you sent a private donation to last +Monday, has by some accident discovered his benefactor, and is at the +door waiting to return thanks. + +MR. H. +Oh, poor fellow, who could put it into his head? Now I shall be teazed +by all his tribe, when once this is known. Well, tell him I am glad I +could be of any service to him, and send him away. + +FIFTH WAITER +I would have done so, Sir; but the object of his call now, he says, is +only to know who he is obliged to. + +MR. H. +Why, me. + +FIFTH WAITER +Yes, Sir. + +MR. H. +Me, me, me, who else, to be sure? + +FIFTH WAITER +Yes, Sir; but he is anxious to know the name of his benefactor. + +MR. H. +Here is a pampered rogue of a beggar, that cannot be obliged to a +gentleman in the way of his profession, but he must know the name, +birth, parentage, and education of his benefactor. I warrant you, next +he will require a certificate of one's good behaviour, and a +magistrate's licence in one's pocket, lawfully empowering so and so +to--give an alms. Any thing more? FIFTH WAITER + +Yes, Sir: here has been Mr. Patriot, with the county petition to sign; +and Mr. Failtime, that owes so much money, has sent to remind you of +your promise to bail him. + +MR. H. +Neither of which I can do, while I have no name. Here is more of the +plaguy comforts of going anonymous, that one can neither serve one's +friend nor one's country. Damn it, a man had better be without a nose, +than without a name. I will not live long in this mutilated, dismembered +state; I will to Melesinda this instant, and try to forget these +vexations. Melesinda! there is music in the name; but then, hang it, +there is none in mine to answer to it. [_Exit_.] + +(_While Mr. H. has been speaking, two Gentlemen have been observing him +curiously._) + +FIRST GENTLEMAN +Who the devil is this extraordinary personage? + +SECOND GENTLEMAN +Who? why 'tis Mr. H. + +FIRST GENTLEMAN +Has he no more name? + +SECOND GENTLEMAN +None that has yet transpired. No more! why that single letter has been +enough to inflame the imaginations of all the ladies in Bath. He has +been here but a fortnight, and is already received into all the first +families. + +FIRST GENTLEMAN +Wonderful! yet nobody knows who he is, or where he comes from! + +SECOND GENTLEMAN +He is vastly rich, gives away money as if he had infinity; dresses well, +as you see; and for address, the mothers are all dying for fear the +daughters should get him; and for the daughters, he may command them as +absolutely as--. Melesinda, the rich heiress, 'tis thought, will carry +him. + +FIRST GENTLEMAN +And is it possible that a mere anonymous-- + +SECOND GENTLEMAN +Phoo! that is the charm, Who is he? and What is he? and What is his +name?--The man with the great nose on his face never excited more of the +gaping passion of wonderment in the dames of Strasburg, than this +new-comer with the single letter to his name, has lighted up among the +wives and maids of Bath; his simply having lodgings here, draws more +visitors to the house than an election. Come with me to the parade, and +I will shew you more of him. [_Exeunt_.] + + + + +SCENE.--_In the Street_. + + +(MR. H. _walking_, BELVIL _meeting him_.) + + +BELVIL +My old Jamaica school-fellow, that I have not seen for so many years? it +must, it can be no other than Jack (_going up to him_). My dear Ho---- + +MR. H. (_Stopping his mouth._) +Ho----! the devil, hush. + +BELVIL +Why sure it is-- + +MR. H. +It is, it is your old friend Jack, that shall be nameless. + +BELVIL +My dear Ho---- + +MR. H. (_Stopping him_.) +Don't name it. + +BELVIL +Name what? + +MR. H. +My curst, unfortunate name. I have reasons to conceal it for a time. + +BELVIL +I understand you--Creditors, Jack? + +MR. H. +No, I assure you. + +BELVIL +Snapp'd up a ward, peradventure, and the whole Chancery at your heels? + +MR. H. +I don't use to travel with such cumbersome luggage. + +BELVIL +You ha'n't taken a purse? + +MR. H. +To relieve you at once from all disgraceful conjectures, you must know, +'tis nothing but the sound of my name. + +BELVIL +Ridiculous! 'tis true your's is none of the most romantic, but what can +that signify in a man? + +MR. H. +You must understand that I am in some credit with the ladies. + +BELVIL +With the ladies! + +MR. H. +And truly I think not without some pretensions. My fortune-- + +BELVIL +Sufficiently splendid, if I may judge from your appearance. + +MR. H. +My figure-- + +BELVIL +Airy, gay, and imposing. + +MR. H. +My parts-- + +BELVIL +Bright. + +MR. H. +My conversation-- + +BELVIL +Equally remote from flippancy and taciturnity. + +MR. H. +But then my name--damn my name. + +BELVIL +Childish! + +MR. H. +Not so. Oh, Belvil, you are blest with one which sighing virgins may +repeat without a blush, and for it change the paternal. But what virgin +of any delicacy (and I require some in a wife) would endure to be called +Mrs.----? + +BELVIL +Ha! ha! ha! most absurd. Did not Clementina Falconbridge, the romantic +Clementina Falconbridge, fancy Tommy Potts? and Rosabella Sweetlips +sacrifice her mellifluous appellative to Jack Deady? Matilda her cousin +married a Gubbins, and her sister Amelia a Clutterbuck. + +MR. H. +Potts is tolerable, Deady is sufferable, Gubbins is bearable, and +Clutterbuck is endurable, but Ho-- + +BELVIL +Hush, Jack, don't betray yourself. But you are really ashamed of the +family name? + +MR. H. +Aye, and of my father that begot me, and my father's father, and all +their forefathers that have borne it since the conquest. + +BELVIL +But how do you know the women are so squeamish? + +MR. H. +I have tried them. I tell you there is neither maiden of sixteen nor +widow of sixty but would turn up their noses at it. I have been refused +by nineteen virgins, twenty-nine relicts, and two old maids. + +BELVIL +That was hard indeed, Jack. + +MR. H. +Parsons have stuck at publishing the banns, because they averred it was +a heathenish name; parents have lingered their consent, because they +suspected it was a fictitious name; and rivals have declined my +challenges, because they pretended it was an ungentlemanly name. + +BELVIL +Ha, ha, ha, but what course do you mean to pursue? + +MR. H. +To engage the affections of some generous girl, who will be content to +take me as Mr. H. + +BELVIL +Mr. H.? + +MR. H. +Yes, that is the name I go by here; you know one likes to be as near the +truth as possible. + +BELVIL +Certainly. But what then? to get her to consent-- + +MR. H. +To accompany me to the altar without a name--in short to suspend her +curiosity (that is all) till the moment the priest shall pronounce the +irrevocable charm, which makes two names one. + +BELVIL +And that name--and then she must be pleased, ha, Jack? + +MR. H. +Exactly such a girl it has been my fortune to meet with, heark'e +(_whispers_)--(_musing_) yet hang it, 'tis cruel to betray her +confidence. + +BELVIL +But the family name, Jack? + +MR. H. +As you say, the family name must be perpetuated. + +BELVIL +Though it be but a homely one. + +MR. H. +True, but come, I will shew you the house where dwells this credulous +melting fair. + +BELVIL +Ha, ha, my old friend dwindled down to one letter. [_Exeunt_.] + + + + +SCENE.--_An Apartment in_ MELESINDA'S _House_. + + +MELESINDA _sola, as if musing_. + +MELESINDA +H.H.H. Sure it must be something precious by its being concealed. It +can't be Homer, that is a Heathen's name; nor Horatio, that is no +surname; what if it be Hamlet? the Lord Hamlet--pretty, and I his poor +distracted Ophelia! No, 'tis none of these; 'tis Harcourt or Hargrave, +or some such sounding name, or Howard, high born Howard, that would do; +may be it is Harley, methinks my H. resembles Harley, the feeling +Harley. But I hear him, and from his own lips I will once for ever be +resolved. + +_Enter_ MR. H. + +MR. H. +My dear Melesinda. + +MELESINDA +My dear H. that is all you give me power to swear allegiance to,--to be +enamoured of inarticulate sounds, and call with sighs upon an empty +letter. But I will know. + +MR. H. +My dear Melesinda, press me no more for the disclosure of that, which in +the face of day so soon must be revealed. Call it whim, humour, caprice, +in me. Suppose I have sworn an oath, never, till the ceremony of our +marriage is over, to disclose my true name. + +MELESINDA +Oh! H.H.H. I cherish here a fire of restless curiosity which consumes +me. 'Tis appetite, passion, call it whim, caprice, in me. Suppose I have +sworn I must and will know it this very night. + +MR. H. +Ungenerous Melesinda! I implore you to give me this one proof of your +confidence. The holy vow once past, your H. shall not have a secret to +withhold. + +MELESINDA +My H. has overcome: his Melesinda shall pine away and die, before she +dare express a saucy inclination; but what shall I call you till we are +married? + +MR. H. +Call me? call me any thing, call me Love, Love! aye, Love, Love will do +very well. + +MELESINDA +How many syllables is it, Love? + +MR. H. +How many? ud, that is coming to the question with a vengeance. One, two, +three, four,--what does it signify how many syllables? + +MELESINDA +How many syllables, Love? + +MR. H. + +My Melesinda's mind, I had hoped, was superior to this childish +curiosity. + +MELESINDA +How many letters are there in it? + +[_Exit_ MR. H. _followed by_ MELESINDA _repeating the question_.] + + + + +SCENE.--_A Room in the Inn. (Two Waiters disputing._) + + +FIRST WAITER +Sir Harbottle Hammond, you may depend upon it. + +SECOND WAITER +Sir Hardy Hardcastle, I tell you. + +FIRST WAITER +The Hammonds of Huntingdonshire. + +SECOND WAITER +The Hardcastles of Hertfordshire. + +FIRST WAITER +The Hammonds. + +SECOND WAITER +Don't tell me: does not Hardcastle begin with an H? + +FIRST WAITER +So does Hammond for that matter. + +SECOND WAITER +Faith, so it does if you go to spell it. I did not think of that. I +begin to be of your opinion; he is certainly a Hammond. + +FIRST WAITER +Here comes Susan Chambermaid, may be she can tell. + +_Enter Susan_. + +BOTH +Well, Susan, have you heard any thing who the strange gentleman is? + +SUSAN +Haven't you heard? it's all come out; Mrs. Guesswell, the parson's +widow, has been here about it. I overheard her talking in confidence to +Mrs. Setter and Mrs. Pointer, and she says, they were holding a sort of +_cummitty_ about it. + +BOTH +What? What? + +SUSAN +There can't be a doubt of it, she says, what from hisfigger and the +appearance he cuts, and his _sumpshous_ way of living, and above all +from the remarkable circumstance that his surname should begin with an +H., that he must be-- + +BOTH +Well, well-- + +SUSAN +Neither more nor less than the Prince. + +BOTH +Prince! + +SUSAN +The Prince of Hessy-Cassel in disguise. + +BOTH +Very likely, very likely. + +SUSAN +Oh, there can't be a doubt on it. Mrs. Guesswell says she knows it. + +FIRST WAITER +Now if we could be sure that the Prince of Hessy what-do-you-call-him +was in England on his travels. + +SECOND WAITER +Get a newspaper. Look in the newspapers. + +SUSAN +Fiddle of the newspapers, who else can it be? + +BOTH +That is very true (_gravely_). + +_Enter Landlord_. + +LANDLORD +Here, Susan, James, Philip, where are you all? The London coach is come +in, and there is Mr. Fillaside, the fat passenger, has been bawling for +somebody to help him off with his boots. (_The Chambermaid and Waiters +slip out_.) + +(_Solus_.) The house is turned upside down since the strange +gentleman came into it. Nothing but guessing and speculating, and +speculating and guessing; waiters and chambermaids getting into corners +and speculating, ostlers and stable-boys speculating in the yard, I +believe the very horses in the stable are speculating too, for there +they stand in a musing posture, nothing for them to eat, and not +seeming to care whether thay have any thing or no; and after all what +does it signify? I hate such curious--odso, I must take this box up into +his bed-room--he charged me to see to it myself--I hate such +inquisitive--I wonder what is in it, it feels heavy (_Reads_) "Leases, +title deeds, wills." Here now a man might satisfy his curiosity at once. +Deeds must have names to them, so must leases and wills. But I +wouldn't--no I wouldn't--it is a pretty box too--prettily dovetailed--I +admire the fashion of it much. But I'd cut my fingers off, before I'd do +such a dirty--what have I to do--curse the keys, how they rattle--rattle +in one's pockets--the keys and the halfpence (_takes out a bunch and +plays with them_). I wounder if any of these would fit; one might just +try them, but I wouldn't lift up the lid if they did. Oh no, what should +I be the richer for knowing? (_All this time he tries the keys one by +one_.) What's his name to me? a thousand names begin with an H. I hate +people that are always prying, poking and prying into things,--thrusting +their finger into one place--a mighty little hole this--and their keys +into another. Oh Lord! little rusty fits it! but what is that to me? I +wouldn't go to--no no--but it is odd little rusty should just happen. +(_While he is turning up the lid of the box_, MR. H. _enters behing him +unperceived_.) + +MR. H. +What are you about, you dog? + +LANDLORD +Oh Lord, Sir! pardon; no thief as I hope to be saved. Little Pry was +always honest. + +MR. H. +What else could move you to open that box! + +LANDLORD +Sir, don't kill me, and I will confess the whole truth. This box +happened to be lying--that is, I happened to be carrying this box, and I +happened to have my keys out, and so--little rusty happened to fit-- + +MR. H. +So little rusty happened to fit!--and would not a rope fit that rogue's +neck? I see the papers have not been moved: all is safe, but it was as +well to frighten him a little (_aside_). + +Come, Landlord, as I think you +honest, and suspect you only intended to gratify a little foolish +curiosity-- + +LANDLORD +That was all, Sir, upon my veracity. + +MR. H. +For this time I will pass it over. Your name is Pry, I think. + +LANDLORD +Yes, Sir, Jeremiah Pry, at your service. + +MR. H. +An apt name, you have a prying temper. I mean, some little curiosity, a +sort of inquisitiveness about you. + +LANDLORD +A natural thirst after knowledge you may call it, Sir. When a boy I was +never easy, but when I was thrusting up the lids of some of my +school-fellows' boxes,--not to steal any thing, upon my honour, +Sir,--only to see what was in them; have had pens stuck in my eyes for +peeping through key-holes after knowledge; could never see a cold pie +with the legs dangling out at top, but my fingers were for lifting up +the crust,--just to try if it were pigeon or partridge,--for no other +reason in the world. Surely I think my passion for nuts was owing to the +pleasure of cracking the shell to get at something concealed, more than +to any delight I took in eating the kernel. In short, Sir, this appetite +has grown with my growth. + +MR. H. +You will certainly be hanged some day for peeping into some bureau or +other, just to see what is in it. + +LANDLORD +That is my fear, Sir. The thumps and kicks I have had for peering into +parcels, and turning of letters inside out,--just for curiosity. The +blankets I have been made to dance in for searching parish-registers for +old ladies' ages,--just for curiosity! Once I was dragged through a +horse-pond, only for peeping into a closet that had glass doors to it, +while my Lady Bluegarters was undressing,--just for curiosity! + +MR. H. +A very harmless piece of curiosity, truly; and now, Mr. Pry, first have +the goodness to leave that box with me, and then do me the favour to +carry your curiosity so far, as to enquire if my servants are within. + +LANDLORD +I shall, Sir. Here, David, Jonathan,--I think I hear them coming,--shall +make bold to leave you, Sir. + +[_Exit._] + +MR. H. +Another tolerable specimen of the comforts of going anonymous! + +_Enter two Footmen._ + +FIRST FOOTMAN +You speak first. + +SECOND FOOTMAN +No, you had better speak. + +FIRST FOOTMAN +You promised to begin. + +MR. H. +They have something to say to me. The rascals want their wages raised, I +suppose; there is always a favour to be asked when they come smiling. +Well, poor rogues, service is but a hard bargain at the best. I think I +must not be close with them. Well, David--well, Jonathan. + +FIRST FOOTMAN +We have served your honour faithfully---- + +SECOND FOOTMAN +Hope your honour won't take offence---- + +MR. H. +The old story, I suppose--wages? + +FIRST FOOTMAN +That's not it, your honour. + +SECOND FOOTMAN +You speak. + +FIRST FOOTMAN +But if your honour would just be pleased to---- + +SECOND FOOTMAN +Only be pleased to---- + +MR. H. +Be quick with what you have to say, for I am in haste. + +FIRST FOOTMAN +Just to---- + +SECOND FOOTMAN +Let us know who it is---- + +FIRST FOOTMAN +Who it is we have the honour to serve. + +MR. H. +Why me, me, me; you serve me. + +SECOND FOOTMAN +Yes, Sir; but we do not know who you are. + +MR. H. +Childish curiosity! do not you serve a rich master, a gay master, an +indulgent master? + +FIRST FOOTMAN +Ah, Sir! the figure you make is to us, your poor servants, the principal +mortification. + +SECOND FOOTMAN +When we get over a pot at the public-house, or in a gentleman's kitchen, +or elsewhere, as poor servants must have their pleasures--when the +question goes round, who is your master? and who do you serve? and one +says, I serve Lord So-and-so, and another, I am Squire Such-a-one's +footman---- + +FIRST FOOTMAN +We have nothing to say for it, but that we serve Mr. H. + +SECOND FOOTMAN +Or Squire H. + +MR. H. +Really you are a couple of pretty modest, reasonable personages; but I +hope you will take it as no offence, gentlemen, if, upon a dispassionate +review of all that you have said, I think fit not to tell you any more +of my name, than I have chosen for especial purposes to communicate to +the rest of the world. + +FIRST FOOTMAN +Why then, Sir, you may suit yourself. + +SECOND FOOTMAN +We tell you plainly, we cannot stay. + +FIRST FOOTMAN +We don't chuse to serve Mr. H. + +SECOND FOOTMAN +Nor any Mr. or Squire in the alphabet---- + +FIRST FOOTMAN +That lives in Chris-cross Row. + +MR. H. +Go, for a couple of ungrateful, inquisitive, senseless rascals! Go hang, +starve, or drown!--Rogues, to speak thus irreverently of the alphabet--I +shall live to see you glad to serve old Q--to curl the wig of great +S--adjust the dot of little i--stand behind the chair of X, Y, Z--wear +the livery of Et-caetera--and ride behind the sulky of +And-by-itself-and! + +[_Exit in a rage_.] + + + + +ACT II + + +SCENE.--_A handsome Apartment well lighted, Tea, Cards, &c.--A large +party of Ladies and Gentlemen, among them_ MELESINDA. + + +FIRST LADY +I wonder when the charming man will be here. + +SECOND LADY +He is a delightful creature! Such a polish---- + +THIRD LADY +Such an air in all that he does or says---- + +FOURTH LADY +Yet gifted with a strong understanding---- + +FIFTH LADY +But has your ladyship the remotest idea of what his true name is? + +FIRST LADY +They say, his very servants do not know it. His French valet, that has +lived with him these two years---- + +SECOND LADY +There, Madam, I must beg leave to set you right: my coachman---- + +FIRST LADY +I have it from the very best authority: my footman---- + +SECOND LADY +Then, Madam, you have set your servants on---- + +FIRST LADY +No, Madam, I would scorn any such little mean ways of conning at a +secret. For my part, I don't think any secret of that consequence. + +SECOND LADY +That's just like me; I make a rule of troubling my head with nobody's +business but my own. + +MELESINDA +But then, she takes care to make everybody's business her own, and so to +justify herself that way----(_aside_). + +FIRST LADY +My dear Melesinda, you look thoughtful. + +MELESINDA +Nothing. SECOND LADY +Give it a name. + +MELESINDA +Perhaps it is nameless. + +FIRST LADY +As the object----Come, never blush, nor deny it, child. Bless me, what +great ugly thing is that, that dangles at your bosom? + +MELESINDA +This? it is a cross: how do you like it? + +SECOND LADY +A cross! Well, to me it looks for all the world like a great staring H. + +(_Here a general laugh_.) + +MELESINDA +Malicious creatures! Believe me it is a cross, and nothing but a cross. + +FIRST LADY +A cross, I believe, you would willingly hang at. + +MELESINDA +Intolerable spite! + +(MR. H. _is announced_.) + +(_Enter_ MR. H.) + +FIRST LADY +O, Mr. H. we are so glad---- + +SECOND LADY +We have been so dull---- + +THIRD LADY +So perfectly lifeless----You owe it to us, to be more than commonly +entertaining. + +MR. H. +Ladies, this is so obliging---- + +FOURTH LADY +O, Mr. H. those ranunculas you said were dying, pretty things, they have +got up---- + +FIFTH LADY +I have worked that sprig you commended--I want you to come---- + +MR. H. +Ladies---- + +SIXTH LADY +I have sent for that piece of music from London. + +MR. H. +The Mozart--(_seeing Melesinda_.)--Melesinda! + +SEVERAL LADIES AT ONCE +Nay positively, Melesinda, you shan't engross him all to yourself. + +(_While the Ladies are pressing about MR. H. the Gentlemen shew signs of +displeasure_.) + +FIRST GENTLEMAN +We shan't be able to edge in a word, now this coxcomb is come. + +SECOND GENTLEMAN +Damn him, I will affront him. + +FIRST GENTLEMAN +Sir, with your leave, I have a word to say to one of these ladies. + +SECOND GENTLEMAN +If we could be heard---- + +(_The ladies pay no attention but to_ MR. H.) + +MR. H. +You see, gentlemen, how the matter stands. (_Hums an air_.) I am not my +own master: positively I exist and breathe but to be agreeable to +these----Did you speak? + +FIRST GENTLEMAN +And affects absence of mind, Puppy! + +MR. H. +Who spoke of absence of mind, did you, Madam? How do you do, Lady +Wearwell--how do? I did not see your ladyship before--what was I about +to say--O--absence of mind. I am the most unhappy dog in that way, +sometimes spurt out the strangest things--the most mal-a-propos--without +meaning to give the least offence, upon my honour--sheer absence of +mind--things I would have given the world not to have said. + +FIRST GENTLEMAN +Do you hear the coxcomb? + +FIRST LADY +Great wits, they say---- + +SECOND LADY +Your fine geniuses are most given---- + +THIRD LADY +Men of bright parts are commonly too vivacious---- + +MR. H. +But you shall hear. I was to dine the other day at a great nabob's, that +must be nameless, who, between ourselves, is strongly suspected +of--being very rich, that's all. John, my valet, who knows my foible, +cautioned me, while he was dressing me, as he usually does where he +thinks there's a danger of my committing a _lapsus_, to take care in my +conversation how I made any allusion direct or indirect to presents +--you understand me? I set out double charged with my fellow's +consideration and my own, and, to do myself justice, behaved with +tolerable circumspection for the first half hour or so--till at last a +gentleman in company, who was indulging a free vein of raillery at the +expense of the ladies, stumbled upon that expression of the poet, which +calls them "fair defects." + +FIRST LADY +It is Pope, I believe, who says it. + +MR. H. +No, Madam; Milton. Where was I? O, "fair defects." This gave occasion to +a critic in company, to deliver his opinion on the phrase--that led to +an enumeration of all the various words which might have been used +instead of "defect," as want, absence, poverty, deficiency, lack. This +moment I, who had not been attending to the progress of the argument +(as the denouement will shew) starting suddenly up out of one of my +reveries, by some unfortunate connexion of ideas, which the last fatal +word had excited, the devil put it into my head to turn round to the +Nabob, who was sitting next me, and in a very marked manner (as it +seemed to the company) to put the question to him, Pray, Sir, what may +be the exact value of a lack of rupees? You may guess the confusion +which followed. + +FIRST LADY +What a distressing circumstance! + +SECOND LADY +To a delicate mind-- + +THIRD LADY +How embarrassing-- + +FOURTH LADY +I declare I quite pity you. + +FIRST GENTLEMAN +Puppy! + +MR. H. +A Baronet at the table, seeing my dilemma, jogged my elbow; and a +good-natured Duchess, who does every thing with a grace peculiar to +herself, trod on my toes at that instant: this brought me to myself, +and--covered with blushes, and pitied by all the ladies--I withdrew. + +FIRST LADY +How charmingly he tells a story. + +SECOND LADY +But how distressing! + +MR. H. +Lord Squandercounsel, who is my particular friend, was pleased to rally +me in his inimitable way upon it next day. I shall never forget a +sensible thing he said on the occasion--speaking of absence of mind, my +foible--says he, my dear Hogs-- + +SEVERAL LADIES +Hogs----what--ha-- + +MR. H. +My dear Hogsflesh--my name--(_here an universal scream_)--O my cursed +unfortunate tongue!--H, I mean--Where was I? + +FIRST LADY +Filthy--abominable! + +SECOND LADY +Unutterable! + +THIRD LADY +Hogs----foh! + +FOURTH LADY +Disgusting! + +FIFTH LADY +Vile! + +SIXTH LADY +Shocking! + +FIRST LADY +Odious! + +SECOND LADY +Hogs----pah! + +THIRD LADY +A smelling bottle--look to Miss Melesinda. Poor thing! it is no wonder. +You had better keep off from her, Mr. Hogsflesh, and not be pressing +about her in her circumstances. + +FIRST GENTLEMAN +Good time of day to you, Mr. Hogsflesh. + +SECOND GENTLEMAN +The compliments of the season to you, Mr. Hogsflesh. + +MR. H. +This is too much--flesh and blood cannot endure it. + +FIRST GENTLEMAN +What flesh?--hog's-flesh? + +SECOND GENTLEMAN +How he sets up his bristles! + +MR. H. +Bristles! + +FIRST GENTLEMAN +He looks as fierce as a hog in armour. + +MR. H. +A hog!----Madam!----(_here he severally accosts the ladies, who by +turns repel him_). + +FIRST LADY +Extremely obliged to you for your attentions; but don't want a partner. + +SECOND LADY +Greatly flattered by your preference; but believe I shall remain single. + +THIRD LADY +Shall always acknowledge your politeness; but have no thoughts of +altering my condition. + +FOURTH LADY +Always be happy to respect you as a friend; but you must not look for +any thing further. + +FIFTH LADY +No doubt of your ability to make any woman happy; but have no thoughts +of changing my name. + +SIXTH LADY +Must tell you, Sir, that if by your insinuations, you think to prevail +with me, you have got the wrong sow by the ear. Does he think any lady +would go to pig with him? + +OLD LADY +Must beg you to be less particular in your addresses to me. Does he take +me for a Jew, to long after forbidden meats? + +MR. H. +I shall go mad!--to be refused by old Mother Damnable--she that's so +old, nobody knows whether she was ever married or no, but passes for a +maid by courtesy; her juvenile exploits being beyond the farthest +stretch of tradition!--old Mother Damnable! + +[_Exeunt all, either pitying or seeming to avoid him._] + + + + +SCENE.--_The Street_. BELVIL _and another Gentleman_. + + +BELVIL +Poor Jack, I am really sorry for him. The account which you give me of +his mortifying change of reception at the assembly, would be highly +diverting, if it gave me less pain to hear it. With all his amusing +absurdities, and amongst them not the least, a predominant desire to be +thought well of by the fair sex, he has an abundant share of good +nature, and is a man of honour. Notwithstanding all that has happened, +Melesinda may do worse than take him yet. But did the women resent it so +deeply as you say? + +GENTLEMAN +O intolerably--they fled him as fearfully when 'twas once blown, as a +man would be avoided, who was suddenly discovered to have marks of the +plague, and as fast; when before they had been ready to devour the +foolishest thing he could say. + +BELVIL +Ha! ha! so frail is the tenure by which these women's favourites +commonly hold their envied pre-eminence. Well, I must go find him out +and comfort him. I suppose, I shall find him at the inn. + +GENTLEMAN +Either there or at Melesinda's.--Adieu. + +[_Exeunt_.] + + + + +SCENE.--MR. H----'S _Apartment_. + + +MR. H. (_solus_) +Was ever any thing so mortifying? to be refused by old Mother +Damnable!--with such parts and address,--and the little squeamish +devils, to dislike me for a name, a sound.--O my cursed name! that it +was something I could be revenged on! if it were alive, that I might +tread upon it, or crush it, or pummel it, or kick it, or spit it +out--for it sticks in my throat and will choak me. + +My plaguy ancestors! if they had left me but a Van or a Mac, or an Irish +O', it had been something to qualify it.--Mynheer Van Hogsflesh--or +Sawney Mac Hogsflesh,--or Sir Phelim O'Hogsflesh,--but downright +blunt------. If it had been any other name in the world, I could have +borne it. If it had been the name of a beast, as Bull, Fox, Kid, Lamb, +Wolf, Lion; or of a bird, as Sparrow, Hawk, Buzzard, Daw, Finch, +Nightingale; or of a fish, as Sprat, Herring, Salmon; or the name of a +thing, as Ginger, Hay, Wood; or of a colour, as Black, Grey, White, +Green; or of a sound, as Bray; or the name of a month, as March, May; or +of a place, as Barnet, Baldock, Hitchin; or the name of a coin, as +Farthing, Penny, Twopenny; or of a profession, as Butcher, Baker, +Carpenter, Piper, Fisher, Fletcher, Fowler, Glover; or a Jew's name, as +Solomons, Isaacs, Jacobs; or a personal name, as Foot, Leg, Crookshanks, +Heaviside, Sidebottom, Longbottom, Ramsbottom, Winterbottom; or a long +name, as Blanchenhagen, or Blanchenhausen; or a short name, as Crib, +Crisp, Crips, Tag, Trot, Tub, Phips, Padge, Papps, or Prig, or Wig, or +Pip, or Trip; Trip had been something, but Ho------. + +_(Walks about in great agitation,--recovering his calmness a little, +sits down.)_ + +Farewell the most distant thoughts of marriage; the finger-circling +ring, the purity-figuring glove, the envy-pining bride-maids, the +wishing parson, and the simpering clerk. Farewell, the ambiguous +blush-raising joke, the titter-provoking pun, the morning-stirring +drum.--No son of mine shall exist, to bear my ill-fated name. No nurse +come chuckling, to tell me it is a boy. No midwife, leering at me from +under the lids of professional gravity. I dreamed of caudle. _(Sings in +a melancholy tone)_ Lullaby, Lullaby,--hush-a-by-baby--how like its papa +it is!--_(makes motions as if he was nursing)_. And then, when grown up, +"Is this your son, Sir?" "Yes, Sir, a poor copy of me,--a sad young +dog,--just what his father was at his age,--I have four more at home." +Oh! oh! oh! + +_Enter Landlord._ + +MR. H. +Landlord, I must pack up to-night; you will see all my things got ready. + +LANDLORD +Hope your Honor does not intend to quit the Blue Boar,--sorry any thing +has happened. + +MR. H. +He has heard it all. + +LANDLORD +Your Honour has had some mortification, to be sure, as a man may say; +you have brought your pigs to a fine market. + +MR. H. +Pigs! + +LANDLORD +What then? take old Pry's advice, and never mind it. Don't scorch your +crackling for 'em, Sir. + +MR. H. +Scorch my crackling! a queer phrase; but I suppose he don't mean to +affront me. + +LANDLORD +What is done can't be undone; you can't make a silken purse out of a +sow's ear. + +MR. H. +As you say, Landlord, thinking of a thing does but augment it. + +LANDLORD +Does but _hogment_ it, indeed, Sir. + +MR. H. +_Hogment_ it! damn it, I said, augment it. + +LANDLORD Lord, Sir, 'tis not every body has such gift of fine phrases as +your Honour, that can lard his discourse. + +MR. H. +Lard! + +LANDLORD +Suppose they do smoke you-- + +MR. H. +Smoke me? + +LANDLORD +One of my phrases; never mind my words, Sir, my meaning is good. We all +mean the same thing, only you express yourself one way, and I another, +that's all. The meaning's the same; it is all pork. + +MR. H. +That's another of your phrases, I presume. _(Bell rings, and the +Landlord called for.)_ + +LANDLORD +Anon, anon. + +MR. H. +O, I wish I were anonymous. + +[_Exeunt several ways._] + + + + +SCENE.--_Melesinda's Apartment_. + +(_MELESINDA and Maid._) + + +MAID +Lord, Madam! before I'd take on as you do about a foolish--what +signifies a name? Hogs--Hogs--what is it--is just as good as any other +for what I see. + +MELESINDA +Ignorant creature! yet she is perhaps blest in the absence of those +ideas, which, while they add a zest to the few pleasures which fall to +the lot of superior natures to enjoy, doubly edge the-- + +MAID +Superior natures! a fig! If he's hog by name, he's not hog by nature, +that don't follow--his name don't make him any thing, does it? He don't +grunt the more for it, nor squeak, that ever I hear; he likes his +victuals out of a plate, as other Christians do, you never see him go to +the trough-- + +MELESINDA +Unfeeling wretch! yet possibly her intentions-- + +MAID +For instance, Madam, my name is Finch--Betty Finch. I don't whistle the +more for that, nor long after canary-seed while I can get good wholesome +mutton--no, nor you can't catch me by throwing salt on my tail. If you +come to that, hadn't I a young man used to come after me, they said +courted me--his name was Lion--Francis Lion, a tailor; but though he was +fond enough of me, for all that, he never offered to eat me. + +MELESINDA +How fortunate that the discovery has been made before it was too late. +Had I listened to his deceits, and, as the perfidious man had almost +persuaded me, precipitated myself into an inextricable engagement, +before-- + +MAID +No great harm, if you had. You'd only have bought a pig in a poke--and +what then? Oh, here he comes creeping-- + +_Enter_ MR. H. _abject_. + +Go to her, Mr. Hogs--Hogs--Hogsbristles--what's your name? Don't be +afraid, man--don't give it up--she's not crying--only _summat_ has made +her eyes red--she has got a sty in her eye, I believe--(_going_.) + +MELESINDA +You are not going, Betty? + +MAID +O, Madam, never mind me--I shall be back in the twinkling of a pig's +whisker, as they say. [_Exit_.] + +MR. H. +Melesinda, you behold before you a wretch who would have betrayed your +confidence, but it was love that prompted him; who would have tricked +you by an unworthy concealment into a participation of that disgrace +which a superficial world has agreed to attach to a name--but with it +you would have shared a fortune not contemptible, and a heart--but 'tis +over now. That name he is content to bear alone--to go where the +persecuted syllables shall be no more heard, or excite no meaning +--some spot where his native tongue has never penetrated, nor any of his +countrymen have landed, to plant their unfeeling satire, their brutal +wit, and national ill manners--where no Englishman--(_Here Melesinda, +who has been pouting during this speech, fetches a deep sigh_.) Some yet +undiscovered Otaheite, where witless, unapprehensive savages shall +innocently pronounce the ill-fated sounds, and think them not +inharmonious. + +MELESINDA +Oh! + +MR. H. +Who knows but among the female natives might be found-- + +MELESINDA +Sir! (_raising her head_). + +MR. H. +One who would be more kind than--some Oberea--Queen Oberea. + +MELESINDA +Oh! + +MR. H. +Or what if I were to seek for proofs of reciprocal esteem among +unprejudiced African maids, in Monomotopa. + +_Enter Servant_. + +SERVANT +Mr. Belvil. [_Exit_.] + +_Enter_ BELVIL. + +MR. H. +In Monornotopa (_musing_.) + +BELVIL +Heyday, Jack! what means this mortified face? nothing has happened, I +hope, between this lady and you? I beg pardon, Madam, but understanding +my friend was with you, I took the liberty of seeking him here. Some +little difference possibly which a third person can adjust--not a +word--will you, Madam, as this gentleman's friend, suffer me to be the +arbitrator--strange--hark'e, Jack, nothing has come out, has there? you +understand me. Oh I guess how it is--somebody has got at your secret, +you hav'n't blabbed it yourself, have you? ha! ha! ha! I could find in +my heart--Jack, what would you give me if I should relieve you-- + +MR. H. +No power of man can relieve me (_sighs_) but it must lie at the root, +gnawing at the root--here it will lie. + +BELVIL +No power of man? not a common man, I grant you; for instance, a +subject--it's out of the power of any subject. + +MR. H. +Gnawing at the root--there it will lie. + +BELVIL +Such a thing has been known as a name to be changed; but not by a +subject--(_shews a Gazette_). + +MR. H. +Gnawing at the root (_suddenly snatches the paper out of Belvil's +hand_); ha! pish! nonsense! give it me--what! (_reads_) promotions, +bankrupts--a great many bankrupts this week--there it will lie (_lays it +down, takes it up again, and reads_) "The King has been graciously +pleased"--gnawing at the root--"graciously pleased to grant unto John +Hogsflesh"--the devil--"Hogsflesh, Esq., of Sty Hall, in the county of +Hants, his royal licence and authority"--O Lord! O Lord!--"that he and +his issue"--me and my issue--"may take and use the surname and arms of +Bacon"--Bacon, the surname and arms of Bacon--"in pursuance of an +injunction contained in the last will and testament of Nicholas Bacon, +Esq. his late uncle, as well as out of grateful respect to his +memory:"--grateful respect! poor old soul----here's more--"and that +such arms may be first duly exemplified"--they shall, I will take care +of that--"according to the laws of arms, and recorded in the Herald's +Office." + +BELVIL +Come, Madam, give me leave to put my own interpretation upon your +silence, and to plead for my friend, that now that only obstacle which +seemed to stand in your way of your union is removed, you will suffer +me to complete the happiness which my news seems to have brought him, by +introducing him with a new claim to your favour, by the name of Mr. +Bacon. + +(_Takes their hands and joins them, which Melesinda seems to give +consent to with a smile_.) + +MR. H. +Generous Melesinda!--my dear friend--"he and his issue," me and my +issue--O Lord!-- + +BELVIL +I wish you joy, Jack, with all my heart. + +MR. H. +Bacon, Bacon, Bacon--how odd it sounds. I could never be tired of +hearing it. There was Lord Chancellor Bacon. Methinks I have some of the +Verulam blood in me already--methinks I could look through Nature--there +was Friar Bacon, a conjurer--I feel as if I could conjure too-- + +_Enter a Servant_. + +SERVANT +Two young ladies and an old lady are at the door, enquiring if you see +company, Madam. + +MR. H. +"Surname and arms"-- + +MELESINDA +Shew them up.--My dear Mr. Bacon, moderate your joy. + +_Enter three Ladies, being part of those who were at the Assembly._ + +FIRST LADY +My dear Melesinda, how do you do? + +SECOND LADY +How do you do? We have been so concerned for you-- + +OLD LADY + +We have been so concerned--(_seeing him_)--Mr. Hogsflesh-- + +MR. H. +There's no such person--nor there never was--nor 'tis not fit there +should be--"surname and arms"-- + +BELVIL +It is true what my friend would express; we have been all in a mistake, +ladies. Very true, the name of this gentleman was what you call it, but +it is so no longer. The succession to the long-contested Bacon estate is +at length decided, and with it my friend succeeds to the name of his +deceased relative. + +MR. H. +"His Majesty has been graciously pleased"-- + +FIRST LADY +I am sure we all join in hearty congratulation--(_sighs_). + +SECOND LADY +And wish you joy with all our hearts--(_heigh ho_!) + +OLD LADY +And hope you will enjoy the name and estate many years--(_cries_). + +BELVIL +Ha! ha! ha! mortify them a little, Jack. + +FIRST LADY +Hope you intend to stay-- + +SECOND LADY +With us some time-- + +OLD LADY +In these parts-- + +MR. H. +Ladies, for your congratulations I thank you; for the favours you have +lavished on me, and in particular for this lady's (_turning to the old +Lady_) good opinion, I rest your debtor. As to any future +favours--(_accosts them severally in the order in which he was reftised +by them at the assembly_)--Madam, shall always acknowledge your +politeness; but at present, you see, I am engaged with a partner. Always +be happy to respect you as a friend, but you must not look for any +thing further. Must beg of you to be less particular in your addresses +to me. Ladies all, with this piece of advice, of Bath and you + + Your ever grateful servant takes his leave. + Lay your plans surer when you plot to grieve; + See, while you kindly mean to mortify + Another, the wild arrow do not fly, + And gall yourself. For once you've been mistaken; + Your shafts have miss'd their aim--Hogsflesh has saved + his Bacon. + + + + * * * * * + + + + THE PAWNBROKER'S DAUGHTER + + A FARCE + + (1825) + + + * * * * * + + + CHARACTERS + + FLINT, _a Pawnbroker._ + DAVENPORT, _in love with Marian._ + PENDULOUS, _a Reprieved Gentleman._ + CUTLET, _a Sentimental Butcher._ + GOLDING, _a Magistrate._ + WILLIAM, _Apprentice to Flint._ + BEN, _Cutlet's Boy._ + MISS FLYN. + BETTY, _her Maid._ + MARIAN, _Daughter to Flint._ + LUCY, _her Maid._ + + + * * * * * + + + + +ACT I. + + +SCENE I.--_An Apartment at Flint's house._ + + +FLINT. WILLIAM. + + +FLINT +Carry those umbrellas, cottons, and wearing-apparel, up stairs. You may +send that chest of tools to Robins's. + +WILLIAM +That which you lent six pounds upon to the journeyman carpenter that had +the sick wife? + +FLINT +The same. + +WILLIAM +The man says, if you can give him till Thursday-- + +FLINT +Not a minute longer. His time was out yesterday. These improvident +fools! + +WILLIAM +The finical gentleman has been here about the seal that was his +grandfather's. + +FLINT +He cannot have it. Truly, our trade would be brought to a fine pass, if +we were bound to humour the fancies of our customers. This man would be +taking a liking to a snuff-box that he had inherited; and that +gentlewoman might conceit a favourite chemise that had descended to her. + +WILLIAM +The lady in the carriage has been here crying about those jewels. She +says, if you cannot let her have them at the advance she offers, her +husband will come to know that she has pledged them. + +FLINT +I have uses for those jewels. Send Marian to me. (_Exit William_.) I +know no other trade that is expected to depart from its fair advantages +but ours. I do not see the baker, the butcher, the shoemaker, or, to go +higher, the lawyer, the physician, the divine, give up any of their +legitimate gains, even when the pretences of their art had failed; yet +_we_ are to be branded with an odious name, stigmatized, discountenanced +even by the administrators of those laws which acknowledge us; scowled +at by the lower sort of people, whose needs we serve! + +_Enter Marian_. + +Come hither, Marian. Come, kiss your father. The report runs that he is +full of spotted crime. What is your belief, child? + +MARIAN +That never good report went with our calling, father. I have heard you +say, the poor look only to the advantages which we derive from them, and +overlook the accommodations which they receive from us. But the poor +_are_ the poor, father, and have little leisure to make distinctions. I +wish we could give up this business. + +FLINT +You have not seen that idle fellow, Davenport? + +MARIAN +No, indeed, father, since your injunction. + +FLINT +I take but my lawful profit. The law is not over favourable to us. + +MARIAN +Marian is no judge of these things. + +FLINT +They call me oppressive, grinding.--I know not what-- + +MARIAN +Alas! + +FLINT +Usurer, extortioner. Am I these things? + +MARIAN +You are Marian's kind and careful father. That is enough for a child to +know. + +FLINT +Here, girl, is a little box of jewels, which the necessities of a +foolish woman of quality have transferred into our true and lawful +possession. Go, place them with the trinkets that were your mother's. +They are all yours, Marian, if you do not cross me in your marriage. No +gentry shall match into this house, to flout their wife hereafter with +her parentage. I will hold this business with convulsive grasp to my +dying day. I will plague these _poor_, whom you speak so tenderly of. + +MARIAN +You frighten me, father. Do not frighten Marian. + +FLINT +I have heard them say, There goes Flint--Flint, the cruel pawnbroker! + +MARIAN +Stay at home with Marian. You shall hear no ugly words to vex you. + +FLINT +You shall ride in a gilded chariot upon the necks of these _poor_, +Marian. Their tears shall drop pearls for my girl. Their sighs shall be +good wind for us. They shall blow good for my girl. Put up the jewels, +Marian. [_Exit_.] + +_Enter Lucy_. + +LUCY +Miss, miss, your father has taken his hat, and is slept out, and Mr. +Davenport is on the stairs; and I came to tell you-- + +MARIAN +Alas! who let him in? + +_Enter Davenport_. + +DAVENPORT +My dearest girl-- + +MARIAN +My father will kill me, if he finds you have been here! + +DAVENPORT +There is no time for explanations. I have positive information that your +father means, in less than a week, to dispose of you to that ugly +Saunders. The wretch has bragged of it to his acquaintance, and already +calls you _his_. + +MARIAN +O heavens! + +DAVENPORT +Your resolution must be summary, as the time which calls for it. Mine or +his you must be, without delay. There is no safety for you under this +roof. + +MARIAN +My father-- + +DAVENPORT +Is no father, if he would sacrifice you. + +MARIAN +But he is unhappy. Do not speak hard words of my father. + +DAVENPORT +Marian must exert her good sense. + +LUCY +(_As if watching at the window._) O, miss, your father has suddenly +returned. I see him with Mr. Saunders, coming down the street. Mr. +Saunders, ma'am! + +MARIAN +Begone, begone, if you love me, Davenport. + +DAVENPORT +You must go with me then, else here I am fixed. + +LUCY +Aye, miss, you must go, as Mr. Davenport says. Here is your cloak, miss, +and your hat, and your gloves. Your father, ma'am-- + +MARIAN +O, where, where? Whither do you hurry me, Davenport? + +DAVENPORT +Quickly, quickly, Marian. At the back door.-- + +[_Exit Marian with Davenport, reluctantly; in her flight still holding +the jewels._] + +LUCY +Away--away. What a lucky thought of mine to say her father was coming! +he would never have got her off, else. Lord, Lord, I do love to help +lovers. + +[_Exit, following them._] + + + + +SCENE II.--_A Butcher's Shop._ + + +CUTLET. BEN. + + +CUTLET +Reach me down that book off the shelf, where the shoulder of veal hangs. + +BEN + +Is this it? + +CUTLET +No--this is "Flowers of Sentiment"--the other--aye, this is a good book. +"An Argument against the Use of Animal Food. By J.R." _That_ means +Joseph Ritson. I will open it anywhere, and read just as it happens. One +cannot dip amiss in such books as these. The motto, I see, is from Pope. +I dare say, very much to the purpose. (_Reads_.) + + "The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day, + Had he thy reason, would he sport and play? + Pleas'd to the last, he crops his flowery food, + And licks the hand"-- + +Bless us, is that saddle of mutton gone home to Mrs. Simpson's? It +should have gone an hour ago. + +BEN +I was just going with it. + +CUTLET +Well go. Where was I? Oh! + + "And licks the hand just raised to shed its blood." + +What an affecting picture! (_turns over the leaves, and reads_). + +"It is probable that the long lives which are recorded of the people before +the flood, were owing to their being confined to a vegetable diet." + +BEN +The young gentleman in Pullen's Row, Islington, that has got the +consumption, has sent to know if you can let him have a sweetbread. + +CUTLET +Take two,--take all that are in the shop. What a disagreeable +interruption! (_reads again_). "Those fierce and angry passions, which +impel man to wage destructive war with man, may be traced to the ferment +in the blood produced by an animal diet." + +BEN +The two pound of rump-steaks must go home to Mr. Molyneux's. He is in +training to fight Cribb. + +CUTLET +Well, take them; go along, and do not trouble me with your disgusting +details. + +[_Exit Ben._] + +CUTLET +(_Throwing down the book._) Why was I bred to this detestable business? +Was it not plain, that this trembling sensibility, which has marked my +character from earliest infancy, must for ever disqualify me for a +profession which--what do ye want? what do ye buy? O, it is only +somebody going past. I thought it had been a customer.--Why was not I +bred a glover, like my cousin Langston? to see him poke his two little +sticks into a delicate pair of real Woodstock--"A very little stretching +ma'am, and they will fit exactly"--Or a haberdasher, like my next-door +neighbour--"not a better bit of lace in all town, my lady--Mrs. +Breakstock took the last of it last Friday, all but this bit, which I +can afford to let your ladyship have a bargain--reach down that drawer +on your left hand, Miss Fisher." + +(_Enter in haste, Davenport, Marian, and Lucy._) + +LUCY +This is the house I saw a bill up at, ma'am; and a droll creature the +landlord is. + +DAVENPORT +We have no time for nicety. + +CUTLET +What do ye want? what do ye buy? O, it is only you, Mrs. Lucy. + +_Lucy whispers Cutlet._ + +CUTLET +I have a set of apartments at the end of my garden. They are quite +detached from the shop. A single lady at present occupies the ground +floor. + +MARIAN +Aye, aye, any where. + +DAVENPORT +In, in.-- + +CUTLET +Pretty lamb,--she seems agitated. _Davenport and Marian go in with +Cutlet._ + +LUCY +I am mistaken if my young lady does not find an agreeable companion in +these apartments. Almost a namesake. Only the difference of Flyn, and +Flint. I have some errands to do, or I would stop and have some fun with +this droll butcher. _Cutlet returns._ + +CUTLET +Why, how odd this is! _Your_ young lady knows _my_ young lady. They are +as thick as flies. + +LUCY +You may thank me for your new lodger, Mr. Cutlet.--But bless me, you do +not look well? + +CUTLET +To tell you the truth, I am rather heavy about the eyes. Want of sleep, +I believe. + +LUCY +Late hours, perhaps. Raking last night. + +CUTLET +No, that is not it, Mrs. Lucy. My repose was disturbed by a very +different cause from what you may imagine. It proceeded from too much +thinking. + +LUCY +The deuce it did! and what, if I may be so bold, might be the subject of +your Night Thoughts? + +CUTLET +The distresses of my fellow creatures. I never lay my head down on my +pillow, but I fall a thinking, how many at this very instant are +perishing. Some with cold-- + +LUCY +What, in the midst of summer? + +CUTLET +Aye. Not here, but in countries abroad, where the climate is different +from ours. Our summers are their winters, and _vice versâ_, you know. +Some with cold-- + +LUCY +What a canting rogue it is! I should like to trump up some fine story to +plague him. [_Aside._] + +CUTLET +Others with hunger--some a prey to the rage of wild beasts-- + +LUCY +He has got this by rote, out of some book. + +CUTLET +Some drowning, crossing crazy bridges in the dark--some by the violence +of the devouring flame-- + +LUCY +I have it.--For that matter, you need not send your humanity a +travelling, Mr. Cutlet. For instance, last night-- + +CUTLET +Some by fevers, some by gun-shot wounds-- + +LUCY +Only two streets off-- + +CUTLET +Some in drunken quarrels-- + +LUCY +(_Aloud._) The butcher's shop at the corner. + +CUTLET +What were you saying about poor Cleaver? + +LUCY +He has found his ears at last. (_Aside._) That he has had his house +burnt down. + +CUTLET +Bless me! + +LUCY +I saw four small children taken in at the green grocer's. + +CUTLET +Do you know if he is insured? + +LUCY +Some say he is, but not to the full amount. + +CUTLET +Not to the full amount--how shocking! He killed more meat than any of +the trade between here and Carnaby market--and the poor babes--four of +them you say--what a melting sight!--he served some good customers about +Marybone--I always think more of the children in these cases than of the +fathers and mothers--Lady Lovebrown liked his veal better than any man's +in the market--I wonder whether her ladyship is engaged--I must go and +comfort poor Cleaver, however.--[_Exit_.] + +LUCY +Now is this pretender to humanity gone to avail himself of a neighbour's +supposed ruin to inveigle his customers from him. Fine feelings!--pshaw! +[_Exit_.] + +(_Re-enter Cutlet_.) + +CUTLET +What a deceitful young hussey! there is not a word of truth in her. +There has been no fire. How can people play with one's feelings +so!--(_sings_)--"For tenderness formed"--No, I'll try the air I made +upon myself. The words may compose me--(_sings_). + + A weeping Londoner I am, + A washer-woman was my dam; + She bred me up in a cock-loft, + And fed my mind with sorrows soft: + + For when she wrung with elbows stout + From linen wet the water out,-- + The drops so like to tears did drip, + They gave my infant nerves the hyp. + + Scarce three clean muckingers a week + Would dry the brine that dew'd my cheek: + So, while I gave my sorrows scope, + I almost ruin'd her in soap. + + My parish learning I did win + In ward of Farringdon-Within; + Where, after school, I did pursue + My sports, as little boys will do. + + Cockchafers--none like me was found + To set them spinning round and round. + O, how my tender heart would melt, + To think what those poor varmin felt! + + I never tied tin-kettle, clog, + Or salt-box to the tail of dog, + Without a pang more keen at heart, + Than he felt at his outward part. + + And when the poor thing clattered off, + To all the unfeeling mob a scoff, + Thought I, "What that dumb creature feels, + With half the parish at his heels!" + + Arrived, you see, to man's estate, + The butcher's calling is my fate; + Yet still I keep my feeling ways. + And leave the town on slaughtering days. + + At Kentish Town, or Highgate Hill, + I sit, retired, beside some rill; + And tears bedew my glistening eye, + To think my playful lambs must die! + + But when they're dead I sell their meat, + On shambles kept both clean and neat; + Sweet-breads also I guard full well, + And keep them from the blue-bottle. + + Envy, with breath sharp as my steel, + Has ne'er yet blown upon my veal; + And mouths of dames, and daintiest fops, + Do water at my nice lamb-chops. + +[_Exit, half laughing, half crying._] + + + + +SCENE III.--A Street. + + +(Davenport, solus.) + + +DAVENPORT +Thus far have I secured my charming prize. I can appretiate, while I +lament, the delicacy which makes her refuse the protection of my +sister's roof. But who comes here? + +(_Enter Pendulous, agitated._) It must be he. That fretful animal +motion--that face working up and down with uneasy sensibility, like new +yeast. Jack--Jack Pendulous! + +PENDULOUS +It is your old friend, and very miserable. + +DAVENPORT +Vapours, Jack. I have not known you fifteen years to have to guess at +your complaint. Why, they troubled you at school. Do you remember when +you had to speak the speech of Buckingham, where he is going to +execution? + +PENDULOUS +Execution!--he has certainly heard it. (_Aside_.) + +DAVENPORT +What a pucker you were in overnight! + +PENDULOUS +May be so, may be so, Mr. Davenport. That was an imaginary scene. I have +had real troubles since. + +DAVENPORT +Pshaw! so you call every common accident. + +PENDULOUS +Do you call my case so common, then? + +DAVENPORT +What case? + +PENDULOUS +You have not heard, then? + +DAVENPORT +Positively not a word. + +PENDULOUS +You must know I have been--(_whispers_)--tried for a felony since then. + +DAVENPORT +Nonsense! + +PENDULOUS +No subject for mirth, Mr. Davenport. A confounded short-sighted fellow +swore that I stopt him, and robbed him, on the York race-ground at nine +on a fine moonlight evening, when I was two hundred miles off in +Dorsetshire. These hands have been held up at a common bar. + +DAVENPORT +Ridiculous! it could not have gone so far. + +PENDULOUS +A great deal farther, I assure you, Mr. Davenport. I am ashamed to say +how far it went. You must know, that in the first shock and surprise of +the accusation, shame--you know I was always susceptible--shame put me +upon disguising my _name_, that, at all events, it might bring no +disgrace upon my family. I called myself _James Thomson_. + +DAVENPORT +For heaven's sake, compose yourself. + +PENDULOUS +I will. An old family ours, Mr. Davenport--never had a blot upon it till +now--a family famous for the jealousy of its honour for many +generations--think of that, Mr. Davenport--that felt a stain like a +wound-- + +DAVENPORT +Be calm, my dear friend. + +PENDULOUS +This served the purpose of a temporary concealment well enough; but when +it came to the--_alibi_--I think they call it--excuse these technical +terms, they are hardly fit for the mouth of a gentleman, the +_witnesses_--that is another term--that I had sent for up from Melcombe +Regis, and relied upon for clearing up my character, by disclosing my +real name, _John Pendulous_--so discredited the cause which they came to +serve, that it had quite a contrary effect to what was intended. In +short, the usual forms passed, and you behold me here the miserablest of +mankind. + +DAVENPORT +(_Aside_). He must be light-headed. + +PENDULOUS +Not at all, Mr. Davenport. I hear what you say, though you speak it all +on one side, as they do at the playhouse. + +DAVENPORT +The sentence could never have been carried into--pshaw!--you are +joking--the truth must have come out at last. + +PENDULOUS +So it did, Mr. Davenport--just two minutes and a second too late by the +Sheriff's stop-watch. Time enough to save my life--my wretched life--but +an age too late for my honour. Pray, change the subject--the detail must +be as offensive to you. + +DAVENPORT +With all my heart, to a more pleasing theme. The lovely Maria Flyn--are +you friends in that quarter, still? Have the old folks relented? + +PENDULOUS +They are dead, and have left her mistress of her inclinations. But it +requires great strength of mind to-- + +DAVENPORT +To what? + +PENDULOUS +To stand up against the sneers of the world. It is not every young lady +that feels herself confident against the shafts of ridicule, though +aimed by the hand of prejudice. Not but in her heart, I believe, she +prefers me to all mankind. But think what the world would say, if, in +defiance of the opinions of mankind, she should take to her arms +a--reprieved man! + +DAVENPORT +Whims! You might turn the laugh of the world upon itself in a fortnight. +These things are but nine days' wonders. + +PENDULOUS +Do you think so, Mr. Davenport? + +DAVENPORT +Where does she live? + +PENDULOUS +She has lodgings in the next street, in a sort of garden-house, that +belongs to one Cutlet. I have not seen her since the affair. I was going +there at her request. + +DAVENPORT +Ha, ha, ha! + +PENDULOUS +Why do you laugh? + +DAVENPORT +The oddest fellow! I will tell you--But here he comes. + +_Enter Cutlet._ + +CUTLET +(_To Davenport._) Sir, the young lady at my house is desirous you should +return immediately. She has heard something from home. + +PENDULOUS +What do I hear? + +DAVENPORT +'Tis her fears, I daresay. My dear Pendulous, you will excuse me?--I +must not tell him our situation at present, though it cost him a fit of +jealousy. We shall have fifty opportunities for explanation. [_Exit._] + +PENDULOUS +Does that gentleman visit the lady at your lodgings? + +CUTLET +He is quite familiar there, I assure you. He is all in all with her, as +they say. + +PENDULOUS +It is but too plain. Fool that I have been, not to suspect that, while +she pretended scruples, some rival was at the root of her infidelity! + +CUTLET +You seem distressed, Sir. Bless me! + +PENDULOUS +I am, friend, above the reach of comfort. + +CUTLET +Consolation, then, can be to no purpose? + +PENDULOUS +None. + +CUTLET +I am so happy to have met with him! + +PENDULOUS +Wretch, wretch, wretch! + +CUTLET +There he goes! How he walks about biting his nails! I would not exchange +this luxury of unavailing pity for worlds. + +PENDULOUS +Stigmatized by the world-- + +CUTLET +My case exactly. Let us compare notes. + +PENDULOUS +For an accident which-- + +CUTLET +For a profession which-- + +PENDULOUS +In the eye of reason has nothing in it-- + +CUTLET +Absolutely nothing in it-- + +PENDULOUS +Brought up at a public bar-- + +CUTLET +Brought up to an odious trade-- + +PENDULOUS +With nerves like mine-- + +CUTLET +With nerves like mine-- + +PENDULOUS +Arraigned, condemned-- + +CUTLET +By a foolish world-- + +PENDULOUS +By a judge and jury-- + +CUTLET +By an invidious exclusion disqualified for sitting upon a jury at all-- + +PENDULOUS +Tried, cast, and-- + +CUTLET +What? + +PENDULOUS +HANGED, Sir, HANGED by the neck, till I was-- + +CUTLET +Bless me! + +PENDULOUS +Why should not I publish it to the whole world, since she, whose +prejudice alone I wished to overcome, deserts me? + +CUTLET +Lord have mercy upon us! not so bad as that comes to, I hope? + +PENDULOUS +When she joins in the judgment of an illiberal world against me-- + +CUTLET +You said HANGED, Sir--that is, I mean, perhaps I mistook you. How +ghastly he looks! + +PENDULOUS +Fear me not, my friend. I am no ghost--though I heartily wish I were +one. + +CUTLET +Why, then, ten to one you were-- + +PENDULOUS +_Cut down._ The odious word shall out, though it choak me. + +CUTLET +Your case must have some things in it very curious. I daresay you kept a +journal of your sensations. + +PENDULOUS +Sensations! + +CUTLET +Aye, while you were being--you know what I mean. They say persons in +your situation have lights dancing before their eyes--blueish. But then +the worst of all is coming to one's self again. + +PENDULOUS +Plagues, furies, tormentors! I shall go mad! [_Exit._] + +CUTLET +There, he says he shall go mad. Well, my head has not been very right of +late. It goes with a whirl and a buzz somehow. I believe I must not +think so deeply. Common people that don't reason know nothing of these +aberrations. + + Great wits go mad, and small ones only dull; + Distracting cares vex not the empty skull: + They seize on heads that think, and hearts that feel, + As flies attack the--better sort of veal. + +[_Exit._] + + + + +ACT II + + +SCENE.--At Flint's. + + +FLINT. WILLIAM. + + +FLINT +I have overwalked myself, and am quite exhausted. Tell Marian to come +and play to me. + +WILLIAM +I shall, Sir. [_Exit._] + +FLINT +I have been troubled with an evil spirit of late; I think an evil +spirit. It goes and comes, as my daughter is with or from me. It cannot +stand before her gentle look, when, to please her father, she takes down +her music-book. _Enter William._ + +WILLIAM +Miss Marian went out soon after you, and is not returned. + +FLINT +That is a pity--That is a pity. Where can the foolish girl be gadding? + +WILLIAM +The shopmen say she went out with Mr. Davenport. + +FLINT +Davenport? Impossible. + +WILLIAM +They say they are sure it was he, by the same token that they saw her +slip into his hand, when she was past the door, the casket which you +gave her. + +FLINT +Gave her, William! I only intrusted it to her. She has robbed me. Marian +is a thief. You must go to the Justice, William, and get out a warrant +against her immediately. Do you help them in the description. Put in +"Marian Flint," in plain words--no remonstrances, William--"daughter of +Reuben Flint,"--no remonstrances, but do it-- + +WILLIAM +Nay, sir-- + +FLINT +I am rock, absolute rock, to all that you can say--A piece of solid +rock.--What is it that makes my legs to fail, and my whole frame to +totter thus? It has been my over walking. I am very faint. Support me +in, William. [_Exeunt_] + + + + +SCENE.--_The Apartment of Miss Flyn._ + + +MISS FLYN. BETTY. + + +MISS FLYN +'Tis past eleven. Every minute I expect Mr. Pendulous here. What a +meeting do I anticipate! + +BETTY +Anticipate, truly! what other than a joyful meeting can it be between +two agreed lovers who have been parted these four months? + +MISS FLYN +But in that cruel space what accidents have happened!--(_aside_)--As +yet I perceive she is ignorant of this unfortunate affair. + +BETTY +Lord, madam, what accidents? He has not had a fall or a tumble, has he? +He is not coming upon crutches? + +MISS FLYN +Not exactly a fall--(_aside_)--I wish I had courage to admit her to my +confidence. + +BETTY +If his neck is whole, his heart is so too, I warrant it. + +MISS FLYN +His neck!--(_aside_)--She certainly mistrusts something. He writes me +word that this must be his last interview. + +BETTY +Then I guess the whole business. The wretch is unfaithful. Some creature +or other has got him into a noose. + +MISS FLYN +A noose! + +BETTY +And I shall never more see him hang---- + +MISS FLYN +Hang, did you say, Betty? + +BETTY +About that dear, fond neck, I was going to add, madam, but you +interrupted me. + +MISS FLYN +I can no longer labour with a secret which oppresses me thus. Can you be +trusty? + +BETTY +Who, I, madam?--(_aside_)--Lord, I am so glad. Now I shall know all. + +MISS FLYN +This letter discloses the reason of his unaccountable long absence from +me. Peruse it, and say if we have not reason to be unhappy. + +_(Betty retires to the window to read the letter, Mr. Pendulous +enters.)_ + +MISS FLYN +My dear Pendulous! + +PENDULOUS +Maria!--nay, shun the embraces of a disgraced man, who comes but to tell +you that you must renounce his society for ever. + +MISS FLYN +Nay, Pendulous, avoid me not. + +PENDULOUS +_(Aside.)_ That was tender. I may be mistaken. Whilst I stood on +honourable terms, Maria might have met my caresses without a blush. + +_(Betty, who has not attended to the entrance of Pendulous, through her +eagerness to read the letter, comes forward.)_ + +BETTY +Ha! ha! ha! What a funny story, madam; and is this all you make such a +fuss about? I should not care if twenty of my lovers had been---- +(_seeing Pendulous_)--Lord, Sir, I ask pardon. + +PENDULOUS +Are we not alone, then? + +MISS FLYN +'Tis only Betty--my old servant. You remember Betty? + +PENDULOUS +What letter is that? + +MISS FLYN +O! something from her sweetheart, I suppose. + +BETTY +Yes, ma'am, that is all. I shall die of laughing. + +PENDULOUS +You have not surely been shewing her---- + +MISS FLYN +I must be ingenuous. You must know, then, that I was just giving Betty a +hint--as you came in. + +PENDULOUS +A hint! + +MISS FLYN +Yes, of our unfortunate embarrassment. + +PENDULOUS +My letter! + +MISS FLYN +I thought it as well that she should know it at first. + +PENDULOUS +'Tis mighty well, madam. 'Tis as it should be. I was ordained to be a +wretched laughing-stock to all the world; and it is fit that our drabs +and our servant wenches should have their share of the amusement. + +BETTY +Marry come up! Drabs and servant wenches! and this from a person in his +circumstances! + +_(Betty flings herself out of the room, muttering.)_ + +MISS FLYN +I understand not this language. I was prepared to give my Pendulous a +tender meeting. To assure him, that however, in the eyes of the +superficial and the censorious, he may have incurred a partial +degradation, in the esteem of one, at least, he stood as high as ever. +That it was not in the power of a ridiculous _accident,_ involving no +guilt, no shadow of imputation, to separate two hearts, cemented by +holiest vows, as ours have been. This untimely repulse to my affections +may awaken scruples in me, which hitherto, in tenderness to you, I have +suppressed. + +PENDULOUS +I very well understand what you call tenderness, madam; but in some +situations, pity--pity--is the greatest insult. + +MISS FLYN +I can endure no longer. When you are in a calmer mood, you will be sorry +that you have wrung my heart so. _[Exit.]_ + +PENDULOUS +Maria! She is gone--in tears. Yet it seems she has had her scruples. She +said she had tried to smother them. Mermaid Betty intimated as much. + +_Re-enter Betty._ + +BETTY +Never mind Retty, sir; depend upon it she will never 'peach. + +PENDULOUS +'Peach! + +BETTY +Lord, sir, these scruples will blow over. Go to her again, when she is +in a better humour. You know we must stand off a little at first, to +save appearances. + +PENDULOUS +Appearances! _we!_ + +BETTY +It will be decent to let some time elapse. + +PENDULOUS +Time elapse! + + Lost, wretched Pendulous! to scorn betrayed, + The scoff alike of mistress and of maid! + What now remains for thee, forsaken man, + But to complete thy fate's abortive plan, + And finish what the feeble law began? + +[_Exeunt._] + +_Re-enter Miss Flyn, with Marian._ + +MISS FLYN +Now both our lovers are gone, I hope my friend will have less reserve. +You must consider this apartment as yours while you stay here. 'Tis +larger and more commodious than your own. + +MARIAN +You are kind, Maria. My sad story I have troubled you with. I have some +jewels here, which I unintentionally brought away. I have only to beg, +that you will take the trouble to restore them to my father; and, +without disclosing my present situation, to tell him, that my next +step--with or without the concurrence of Mr. Davenport--shall be to +throw myself at his feet, and beg to be forgiven. I dare not see him +till you have explored the way for me. I am convinced I was tricked into +this elopement. + +MISS FLYN +Your commands shall be obeyed implicitly. + +MARIAN +You are good (_agitated_). + +MISS FLYN +Moderate your apprehensions, my sweet friend. I too have known my +sorrows--(_smiling_).--You have heard of the ridiculous affair. + +MARIAN +Between Mr. Pendulous and you? Davenport informed me of it, and we both +took the liberty of blaming the over-niceness of your scruples. + +MISS FLYN +You mistake. The refinement is entirely on the part of my lover. He +thinks me not nice enough. I am obliged to feign a little reluctance, +that he may not take quite a distaste to me. Will you believe it, that +he turns my very constancy into a reproach, and declares, that a woman +must be devoid of all delicacy, that, after a thing of that sort, could +endure the sight of her husband in---- + +MARIAN +In what? + +MISS FLYN +The sight of a man at all in---- + +MARIAN +I comprehend you not. + +MISS FLYN +In--in a--_(whispers)_--night cap, my dear; and now the mischief is out. + +MARIAN +Is there no way to cure him? + +MISS FLYN +None, unless I were to try the experiment, by placing myself in the +hands of justice for a little while, how far an equality in misfortune +might breed a sympathy in sentiment. Our reputations would be both upon +a level, then, you know. What think you of a little innocent +shop-lifting, in sport? + +MARIAN +And by that contrivance to be taken before a magistrate? the project +sounds oddly. + +MISS FLYN +And yet I am more than half persuaded it is feasible. + +_Enter Betty._ + +BETTY +Mr. Davenport is below, ma'am, and desires to speak with you. + +MARIAN +You will excuse me--_(going--turning back.)_--You will remember the +casket? _[Exit.]_ + +MISS FLYN +Depend on me. + +BETTY +And a strange man desires to see you, ma'am. I do not half like his +looks. + +MISS FLYN +Shew him in. + +_(Exit Betty, and returns--with a Police Officer. Betty goes out.)_ + +OFFICER +Your servant, ma'am. Your name is---- + +MISS FLYN +Flyn, sir. Your business with me? + +OFFICER +_(Alternately surveying the lady and his paper of instructions.)_ Marian +Flint. + +MISS FLYN +Maria Flyn. + +OFFICER +Aye, aye, Flyn or Flint. 'Tis all one. Some write plain Mary, and some +put ann after it. I come about a casket. + +MISS FLYN +I guess the whole business. He takes me for my friend. Something may +come out of this. I will humour him. + +OFFICER +_(Aside)_--Answers the description to a tittle. "Soft, grey eyes, pale +complexion,"---- + +MISS FLYN +Yet I have been told by flatterers that my eyes were blue--_(takes out +a pocket-glass)_--I hope I look pretty tolerably to-day. + +OFFICER +Blue!--they are a sort of blueish-gray, now I look better; and as for +colour, that comes and goes. Blushing is often a sign of a hardened +offender. Do you know any thing of a casket? + +MISS FLYN +Here is one which a friend has just delivered to my keeping. + +OFFICER +And which I must beg leave to secure, together with your ladyship's +person. "Garnets, pearls, diamond-bracelet,"--here they are, sure +enough. + +MISS FLYN +Indeed, I am innocent. + +OFFICER +Every man is presumed so till he is found otherwise. + +MISS FLYN +Police wit! Have you a warrant? + +OFFICER +Tolerably cool that! Here it is, signed by Justice Golding, at the +requisition of Reuben Flint, who deposes that you have robbed him. + +MISS FLYN +How lucky this turns out! _(aside.)_--Can I be indulged with a coach? + +OFFICER +To Marlborough Street? certainly--an old offender--_(aside.)_ The thing +shall be conducted with as much delicacy as is consistent with security. + +MISS FLYN +Police manners! I will trust myself to your protection then. _[Exeunt.]_ + + + + +SCENE.--_Police-Office._ + + +JUSTICE, FLINT, OFFICERS, &c. + + +JUSTICE +Before we proceed to extremities, Mr. Flint, let me entreat you to +consider the consequences. What will the world say to your exposing your +own child? + +FLINT +The world is not my friend. I belong to a profession which has long +brought me acquainted with its injustice. I return scorn for scorn, and +desire its censure above its plaudits. + +JUSTICE +But in this case delicacy must make you pause. + +FLINT +Delicacy--ha! ha!--pawnbroker--how fitly these words suit. Delicate +pawnbroker--delicate devil--let the law take its course. + +JUSTICE +Consider, the jewels are found. + +FLINT +'Tis not the silly baubles I regard. Are you a man? are you a father? +and think you I could stoop so low, vile as I stand here, as to make +money--filthy money--of the stuff which a daughter's touch has +desecrated? Deep in some pit first I would bury them. + +JUSTICE +Yet pause a little. Consider. An only child. + +FLINT +Only, only,--there, it is that stings me, makes me mad. She was the only +thing I had to love me--to bear me up against the nipping injuries of +the world. I prate when I should act. Bring in your prisoner. + +_(The Justice makes signs to an Officer, who goes out, and returns with +Miss Flyn.)_ + +FLINT +What mockery of my sight is here? This is no daughter. + +OFFICER +Daughter, or no daughter, she has confessed to this casket. + +FLINT +_(Handling it.)_ The very same. Was it in the power of these pale +splendours to dazzle the sight of honesty--to put out the regardful eye +of piety and daughter-love? Why, a poor glow-worm shews more brightly. +Bear witness how I valued them--_(tramples on them)_.--Fair lady, know +you aught of my child? + +MISS FLYN +I shall here answer no questions. + +JUSTICE +You must explain how you came by the jewels, madam. + +MISS FLYN +_(Aside.)_ Now confidence assist me!----A gentleman in the +neighbourhood will answer for me---- + +JUSTICE +His name---- + +MISS FLYN +Pendulous---- + +JUSTICE +That lives in the next street? + +MISS FLYN +The same----now I have him sure. + +JUSTICE +Let him be sent for. I believe the gentleman to be respectable, and will +accept his security. + +FLINT +Why do I waste my time, where I have no business? None--I have none any +more in the world--none. + +_Enter Pendulous._ + +PENDULOUS +What is the meaning of this extraordinary summons?--Maria here? + +FLINT +Know you any thing of my daughter, Sir? + +PENDULOUS +Sir, I neither know her nor yourself, nor why I am brought hither; but +for this lady, if you have any thing against her, I will answer it with +my life and fortunes. + +JUSTICE +Make out the bail-bond. + +OFFICER +(_Surveying Pendulous_.) Please, your worship, before you take that +gentleman's bond, may I have leave to put in a word? + +PENDULOUS +(_Agitated._) I guess what is coming. + +OFFICER +I have seen that gentleman hold up his hand at a criminal bar. + +JUSTICE +Ha! + +MISS FLYN +(_Aside._) Better and better. + +OFFICER +My eyes cannot deceive me. His lips quivered about, while he was being +tried, just as they do now. His name is not Pendulous. + +MISS FLYN +Excellent! + +OFFICER +He pleaded to the name of Thomson at York assizes. + +JUSTICE +Can this be true? + +MISS FLYN +I could kiss the fellow! + +OFFICER +He was had up for a footpad. + +MISS FLYN +A dainty fellow! + +PENDULOUS +My iniquitous fate pursues me everywhere. + +JUSTICE +You confess, then. + +PENDULOUS +I am steeped in infamy. + +MISS FLYN +I am as deep in the mire as yourself. + +PENDULOUS +My reproach can never be washed out. + +MISS FLYN +Nor mine. + +PENDULOUS +I am doomed to everlasting shame. + +MISS FLYN +We are both in a predicament. + +JUSTICE +I am in a maze where all this will end. + +MISS FLYN +But here comes one who, if I mistake not, will guide us out of all our +difficulties. + +_Enter Marian and Davenport._ + +MARIAN +_(Kneeling.)_ My dear father! + +FLINT +Do I dream? + +MARIAN +I am your Marian. + +JUSTICE +Wonders thicken! + +FLINT +The casket-- + +MISS FLYN +Let me clear up the rest. + +FLINT +The casket-- + +MISS FLYN +Was inadvertently in your daughter's hand, when, by an artifice of her +maid Lucy,--set on, as she confesses, by this gentleman here,-- + +DAVENPORT +I plead guilty. + +MISS FLYN +She was persuaded, that you were in a hurry going to marry her to an +object of her dislike; nay, that he was actually in the house for the +purpose. The speed of her flight admitted not of her depositing the +jewels; but to me, who have been her inseparable companion since she +quitted your roof, she intrusted the return of them; which the +precipitate measures of this gentleman _(pointing to the Officer)_ alone +prevented. Mr. Cutlet, whom I see coming, can witness this to be true. + +_Enter Cutlet, in haste._ + +CUTLET +Aye, poor lamb! poor lamb! I can witness. I have run in such a haste, +hearing how affairs stood, that I have left my shambles without a +protector. If your worship had seen how she cried _(pointing to +Marian),_ and trembled, and insisted upon being brought to her father. +Mr. Davenport here could not stay her. + +FLINT +I can forbear no longer. Marian, will you play once again, to please +your old father? + +MARIAN +I have a good mind to make you buy me a new grand piano for your naughty +suspicions of me. + +DAVENPORT +What is to become of me? + +FLINT +I will do more than that. The poor lady shall have her jewels again. + +MARIAN +Shall she? + +FLINT +Upon reasonable terms _(smiling)._ And now, I suppose, the court may +adjourn. + +DAVENPORT +Marian! + +FLINT +I guess what is passing in your mind, Mr. Davenport; but you have +behaved upon the whole so like a man of honour, that it will give me +pleasure, if you will visit at my house for the future; but _(smiling)_ +not clandestinely, Marian. + +MARIAN +Hush, father. + +FLINT +I own I had prejudices against gentry. But I have met with so much +candour and kindness among my betters this day--from this gentleman in +particular--_(turning to the Justice)_--that I begin to think of +leaving off business, and setting up for a gentleman myself. + +JUSTICE +You have the feelings of one. + +FLINT +Marian will not object to it. + +JUSTICE +But _(turning to Miss Flyn)_ what motive could induce this lady to take +so much disgrace upon herself, when a word's explanation might have +relieved her? + +MISS FLYN +This gentleman _(turning to Pendulous)_ can explain. + +PENDULOUS +The devil! + +MISS FLYN +This gentleman, I repeat it, whose backwardness in concluding a long and +honourable suit from a mistaken delicacy-- + +PENDULOUS +How! + +MISS FLYN +Drove me upon the expedient of involving myself in the same disagreeable +embarrassments with himself, in the hope that a more perfect sympathy +might subsist between us for the future. + +PENDULOUS +I see it--I see it all. + +JUSTICE +(_To Pendulous._) You were then tried at York? + +PENDULOUS +I was--CAST-- + +JUSTICE +Condemned-- + +PENDULOUS +EXECUTED. + +JUSTICE +How? + +PENDULOUS +CUT DOWN and CAME TO LIFE AGAIN. False delicacy, adieu! The true sort, +which this lady has manifested--by an expedient which at first sight +might seem a little unpromising, has cured me of the other. We are now +on even terms. + +MISS FLYN +And may-- + +PENDULOUS +Marry,--I know it was your word. + +MISS FLYN +And make a very quiet-- + +PENDULOUS +Exemplary-- + +MISS FLYN +Agreeing pair of-- + +PENDULOUS +ACQUITTED FELONS. + +FLINT +And let the prejudiced against our profession acknowledge, that a +money-lender may have the heart of a father; and that in the casket, +whose loss grieved him so sorely, he valued nothing so dear as _(turning +to Marian)_ one poor domestic jewel. + + + + + * * * * * + + + + THE WIFE'S TRIAL; OR, THE INTRUDING WIDOW + + + A DRAMATIC POEM + + _Founded on Mr. Crabbe's Tale of "The Confidant."_ + + (1827) + + + * * * * * + + + CHARACTERS + + MR. SELBY,--a Wiltshire Gentleman_. + KATHERINE, _Wife to Selby_. + LUCY, _Sister to Selby_. + MRS. FRAMPTON, _a Widow_. + SERVANTS. + + SCENE.--_At Mr. Selby's house, or in the grounds adjacent_. + + + * * * * * + + +SCENE--_A Library_. + + +MR. SELBY, KATHERINE. + + + SELBY + Do not too far mistake me, gentlest wife; + I meant to chide your virtues, not yourself, + And those too with allowance. I have not + Been blest by thy fair side with five white years + Of smooth and even wedlock, now to touch + With any strain of harshness on a string + Hath yielded me such music. 'Twas the quality + Of a too grateful nature in my Katherine, + That to the lame performance of some vows, + And common courtesies of man to wife, + Attributing too much, hath sometimes seem'd + To esteem in favours, what in that blest union + Are but reciprocal and trivial dues, + As fairly yours as mine: 'twas this I thought + Gently to reprehend. + + KATHERINE + In friendship's barter + The riches we exchange should hold some level, + And corresponding worth. Jewels for toys + Demand some thanks thrown in. You took me, sir, + To that blest haven of my peace, your bosom, + An orphan founder'd in the world's black storm. + Poor, you have made me rich; from lonely maiden, + Your cherish'd and your full-accompanied wife. + + SELBY + But to divert the subject: Kate too fond, + I would not wrest your meanings; else that word + Accompanied, and full-accompanied too, + Might raise a doubt in some men, that their wives + Haply did think their company too long; + And over-company, we know by proof, + Is worse than no attendance. + + KATHERINE + I must guess, + You speak this of the Widow-- + + SELBY + 'Twas a bolt + At random shot; but if it hit, believe me, + I am most sorry to have wounded you + Through a friend's side. I know not how we have swerved + From our first talk. I was to caution you + Against this fault of a too grateful nature: + Which, for some girlish obligations past, + In that relenting season of the heart, + When slightest favours pass for benefits + Of endless binding, would entail upon you + An iron slavery of obsequious duty + To the proud will of an imperious woman. + + KATHERINE + The favours are not slight to her I owe. + + SELBY + Slight or not slight, the tribute she exacts + Cancels all dues--_[A voice within.]_ + even now I hear her call you + In such a tone, as lordliest mistresses + Expect a slave's attendance. Prithee, Kate, + Let her expect a brace of minutes or so. + Say, you are busy. Use her by degrees + To some less hard exactions. + + KATHERINE + I conjure you, + Detain me not. I will return-- + + SELBY + Sweet wife + Use thy own pleasure--_[Exit Katherine.]_ + but it troubles me. + A visit of three days, as was pretended, + Spun to ten tedious weeks, and no hint given + When she will go! I would this buxom Widow + Were a thought handsomer! I'd fairly try + My Katherine's constancy; make desperate love + In seeming earnest; and raise up such broils, + That she, not I, should be the first to warn + The insidious guest depart. + + _Re-enter Katherine._ + + So soon return'd! + What was our Widow's will? + + KATHERINE + A trifle, Sir. + + SELBY + Some toilet service-to adjust her head, + Or help to stick a pin in the right place-- + + KATHERINE + Indeed 'twas none of these. + + SELBY + or new vamp up + The tarnish'd cloak she came in. I have seen her + Demand such service from thee, as her maid, + Twice told to do it, would blush angry-red, + And pack her few clothes up. Poor fool! fond slave! + And yet my dearest Kate!--This day at least + (It is our wedding-day) we spend in freedom, + And will forget our Widow.--Philip, our coach-- + Why weeps my wife? You know, I promised you + An airing o'er the pleasant Hampshire downs + To the blest cottage on the green hill side, + Where first I told my love. I wonder much, + If the crimson parlour hath exchanged its hue + For colours not so welcome. Faded though it be, + It will not shew less lovely than the tinge + Of this faint red, contending with the pale, + Where once the full-flush'd health gave to this cheek + An apt resemblance to the fruit's warm side, + That bears my Katherine's name.-- + + Our carriage, Philip. + + _Enter a Servant_. + + Now, Robin, what make you here? + + SERVANT + May it please you, + The coachman has driven out with Mrs. Frampton. + + SELBY + He had no orders-- + + SERVANT + None, Sir, that I know of, + But from the lady, who expects some letter + At the next Post Town. + + SELBY + Go, Robin. + + [_Exit Servant_.] + + How is this? + + KATHERINE + I came to tell you so, but fear'd your anger-- + + SELBY + It was ill done though of this Mistress Frampton, + This forward Widow. But a ride's poor loss + Imports not much. In to your chamber, love, + Where you with music may beguile the hour, + While I am tossing over dusty tomes, + Till our most reasonable friend returns. + + + KATHERINE + I am all obedience. [_Exit Katherine_] + + SELBY + Too obedient, Kate, + And to too many masters. I can hardly + On such a day as this refrain to speak + My sense of this injurious friend, this pest, + This household evil, this close-clinging fiend, + In rough terms to my wife. 'Death! my own servants + Controll'd above me! orders countermanded!' + What next? _[Servant enters and announces the Sister] + + _Enter Lucy._ + + Sister! I know you are come to welcome + This day's return. 'Twas well done. + + LUCY + You seem ruffled. + In years gone by this day was used to be + The smoothest of the year. Your honey turn'd + So soon to gall? + + SELBY + Gall'd am I, and with cause, + And rid to death, yet cannot get a riddance, + Nay, scarce a ride, by this proud Widow's leave. + + LUCY + Something you wrote me of a Mistress Frampton. + + SELBY + She came at first a meek admitted guest, + Pretending a short stay; her whole deportment + Seem'd as of one obliged. A slender trunk, + The wardrobe of her scant and ancient clothing, + Bespoke no more. But in a few days her dress, + Her looks, were proudly changed. And now she flaunts it + In jewels stolen or borrow'd from my wife; + Who owes her some strange service, of what nature + I must be kept in ignorance. Katherine's meek + And gentle spirit cowers beneath her eye, + As spell-bound by some witch. + + LUCY + Some mystery hangs on it. + How bears she in her carriage towards yourself? + + SELBY + As one who fears, and yet not greatly cares + For my displeasure. Sometimes I have thought, + A secret glance would tell me she could love, + If I but gave encouragement. Before me + She keeps some moderation; but is never + Closeted with my wife, but in the end + I find my Katherine in briny tears. + From the small chamber, where she first was lodged, + The gradual fiend by specious wriggling arts + Has now ensconced herself in the best part + Of this large mansion; calls the left wing her own; + Commands my servants, equipage.--I hear + Her hated tread. What makes she back so soon? + + _Enter Mrs. Frampton._ + + MRS. FRAMPTON + O, I am jolter'd, bruised, and shook to death, + With your vile Wiltshire roads. The villain Philip + Chose, on my conscience, the perversest tracks, + And stoniest hard lanes in all the county, + Till I was fain get out, and so walk back, + My errand unperform'd at Andover. + + LUCY + And I shall love the knave for ever after. + [_Aside_.] + + MRS. FRAMPTON + A friend with you! + + SELBY + My eldest sister, Lucy, + Come to congratulate this returning morn.-- + Sister, my wife's friend, Mistress Frampton. + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Pray + Be seated. For your brother's sake, you are welcome. + I had thought this day to have spent in homely fashion + With the good couple, to whose hospitality + I stand so far indebted. But your coming + Makes it a feast. + + LUCY + + She does the honours naturally--[_Aside_.] + + SELBY + + As if she were the mistress of the house--[_Aside_.] + + MRS. FRAMPTON + I love to be at home with loving friends. + To stand on ceremony with obligations, + Is to restrain the obliger. That old coach, though, + Of yours jumbles one strangely. + + SELBY + I shall order + An equipage soon, more easy to you, madam-- + + LUCY + To drive her and her pride to Lucifer, + I hope he means. [_Aside_.] + + MRS. FRAMPTON + I must go trim myself; this humbled garb + Would shame a wedding feast. I have your leave + For a short absence?--and your Katherine-- + + SELBY + You'll find her in her closet-- + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Fare you well, then. [_Exit_.] + + SELBY + How like you her assurance? + + LUCY + Even so well, + That if this Widow were my guest, not yours, + She should have coach enough, and scope to ride. + My merry groom should in a trice convey her + To Sarum Plain, and set her down at Stonehenge, + To pick her path through those antiques at leisure; + She should take sample of our Wiltshire flints. + O, be not lightly jealous! nor surmise, + That to a wanton bold-faced thing like this + Your modest shrinking Katherine could impart + Secrets of any worth, especially + Secrets that touch'd your peace. If there be aught, + My life upon't, 'tis but some girlish story + Of a First Love; which even the boldest wife + Might modestly deny to a husband's ear, + Much more your timid and too sensitive Katherine. + + SELBY + I think it is no more; and will dismiss + My further fears, if ever I have had such. + + LUCY + Shall we go walk? I'd see your gardens, brother; + And how the new trees thrive, I recommended. + Your Katherine is engaged now-- + + SELBY + I'll attend you. [_Exeunt._] + + + + +SCENE.--Servants' Hall. + + + HOUSEKEEPER, PHILIP, _and_ OTHERS, _laughing_. + + + HOUSEKEEPER + Our Lady's guest, since her short ride, seems ruffled, + And somewhat in disorder. Philip, Philip, + I do suspect some roguery. Your mad tricks + Will some day cost you a good place, I warrant. + + PHILIP + Good Mistress Jane, our serious housekeeper, + And sage Duenna to the maids and scullions, + We must have leave to laugh; our brains are younger, + And undisturb'd with care of keys and pantries. + We are wild things. + + BUTLER + Good Philip, tell us all. + + ALL + Ay, as you live, tell, tell-- + + PHILIP + Mad fellows, you shall have it. + The Widow's bell rang lustily and loud-- + + BUTLER + I think that no one can mistake her ringing. + + WAITING-MAID + Our Lady's ring is soft sweet music to it, + More of entreaty hath it than command. + + PHILIP + I lose my story, if you interrupt me thus. + The bell, I say, rang fiercely; and a voice, + More shrill than bell, call'd out for "Coachman Philip." + I straight obey'd, as 'tis my name and office. + "Drive me," quoth she, "to the next market town, + Where I have hope of letters." I made haste. + Put to the horses, saw her safely coach'd, + And drove her-- + + WAITING-MAID + --By the straight high-road to Andover, + I guess-- + + PHILIP + Pray, warrant things within your knowledge, + Good Mistress Abigail; look to your dressings, + And leave the skill in horses to the coachman. + + BUTLER + He'll have his humour; best not interrupt him. + + PHILIP + 'Tis market-day, thought I; and the poor beasts, + Meeting such droves of cattle and of people, + May take a fright; so down the lane I trundled, + Where Goodman Dobson's crazy mare was founder'd, + And where the flints were biggest, and ruts widest, + By ups and downs, and such bone-cracking motions, + We flounder'd on a furlong, till my madam, + In policy, to save the few joints left her, + Betook her to her feet, and there we parted. + + ALL + Ha! ha! ha! + + BUTLER + Hang her! 'tis pity such as she should ride. + + WAITING-MAID + I think she is a witch; I have tired myself out + With sticking pins in her pillow; still she 'scapes them-- + + BUTLER + And I with helping her to mum for claret, + But never yet could cheat her dainty palate. + + HOUSEKEEPER + Well, well, she is the guest of our good Mistress, + And so should be respected. Though I think + Our Master cares not for her company, + He would ill brook we should express so much, + By rude discourtesies, and short attendance, + Being but servants. (_A bell rings furiously._) 'Tis her bell + speaks now; + Good, good, bestir yourselves: who knows who's wanted? + + BUTLER + But 'twas a merry trick of Philip coachman. [_Exeunt._] + + + + + +SCENE.--_Mrs. Selby's Chamber._ + + +MRS. FRAMPTON, KATHERINE, working. + + + MRS. FRAMPTON + I am thinking, child, how contrary our fates + Have traced our lots through life. Another needle, + This works untowardly. An heiress born + To splendid prospects, at our common school + I was as one above you all, not of you; + Had my distinct prerogatives; my freedoms, + Denied to you. Pray, listen-- + + KATHERINE + I must hear + What you are pleased to speak!--How my heart sinks here! + [_Aside._] + + MRS. FRAMPTON + My chamber to myself, my separate maid, + My coach, and so forth.--Not that needle, simple one, + With the great staring eye fit for a Cyclops! + Mine own are not so blinded with their griefs + But I could make a shift to thread a smaller. + A cable or a camel might go through this, + And never strain for the passage. + + KATHERINE + + I will fit you.-- + Intolerable tyranny! [_Aside._] + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Quick, quick; + You were not once so slack.--As I was saying, + Not a young thing among ye, but observed me + Above the mistress. Who but I was sought to + In all your dangers, all your little difficulties, + Your girlish scrapes? I was the scape-goat still, + To fetch you off; kept all your secrets, some, + Perhaps, since then-- + + KATHERINE + No more of that, for mercy, + If you'd not have me, sinking at your feet, + Cleave the cold earth for comfort. [_Kneels._] + + MRS. FRAMPTON + This to me? + This posture to your friend had better suited + The orphan Katherine in her humble school-days + To the _then_ rich heiress, than the wife of Selby, + Of wealthy Mr. Selby, + To the poor widow Frampton, sunk as she is. + Come, come, + 'Twas something, or 'twas nothing, that I said; + I did not mean to fright you, sweetest bed-fellow! + You once were so, but Selby now engrosses you. + I'll make him give you up a night or so; + In faith I will: that we may lie, and talk + Old tricks of school-days over. + + KATHERINE + Hear me, madam-- + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Not by that name. Your friend-- + + KATHERINE + My truest friend, + And saviour of my honour! + + MRS. FRAMPTON + This sounds better; + You still shall find me such. + + KATHERINE + That you have graced + Our poor house with your presence hitherto, + Has been my greatest comfort, the sole solace + Of my forlorn and hardly guess'd estate. + You have been pleased + To accept some trivial hospitalities, + In part of payment of a long arrear + I owe to you, no less than for my life. + + MRS. FRAMPTON + You speak my services too large. + + KATHERINE + Nay, less; + For what an abject thing were life to me + Without your silence on my dreadful secret! + And I would wish the league we have renew'd + Might be perpetual-- + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Have a care, fine madam! [_Aside._] + + KATHERINE + That one house still might hold us. But my husband + Has shown himself of late-- + + MRS. FRAMPTON + How Mistress Selby? + + KATHERINE + Not, not impatient. You misconstrue him. + He honours, and he loves, nay, he must love + The friend of his wife's youth. But there are moods + In which-- + + MRS. FRAMPTON + I understand you;--in which husbands, + And wives that love, may wish to be alone, + To nurse the tender fits of new-born dalliance, + After a five years' wedlock. + + KATHERINE + Was that well + Or charitably put? do these pale cheeks + Proclaim a wanton blood? this wasting form + Seem a fit theatre for Levity + To play his love-tricks on; and act such follies, + As even in Affection's first bland Moon + Have less of grace than pardon in best wedlocks? + I was about to say, that there are times, + When the most frank and sociable man + May surfeit on most loved society, + Preferring loneness rather-- + + MRS. FRAMPTON + To my company-- + + KATHERINE + Ay, your's, or mine, or any one's. Nay, take + Not this unto yourself. Even in the newness + Of our first married loves 'twas sometimes so. + For solitude, I have heard my Selby say, + Is to the mind as rest to the corporal functions; + And he would call it oft, the _day's soft sleep._ + + MRS. FRAMPTON + What is your drift? and whereto tends this speech, + Rhetorically labour'd? + + KATHERINE + That you would + Abstain but from our house a month, a week; + I make request but for a single day. + + MRS. FRAMPTON + A month, a week, a day! A single hour + In every week, and month, and the long year, + And all the years to come! My footing here, + Slipt once, recovers never. From the state + Of gilded roofs, attendance, luxuries, + Parks, gardens, sauntering walks, or wholesome rides, + To the bare cottage on the withering moor, + Where I myself am servant to myself, + Or only waited on by blackest thoughts-- + I sink, if this be so. No; here I sit. + + KATHERINE + Then I am lost for ever! + [_Sinks at her feet--curtain drops._] + + + + +SCENE.--_An Apartment, contiguous to the last_. + + +SELBY, _as if listening_. + + + SELBY + The sounds have died away. What am I changed to? + What do I here, list'ning like to an abject, + Or heartless wittol, that must hear no good, + If he hear aught? "This shall to the ear of your husband." + It was the Widow's word. I guess'd some mystery, + And the solution with a vengeance comes. + What can my wife have left untold to me, + That must be told by proxy? I begin + To call in doubt the course of her life past + Under my very eyes. She hath not been good, + Not virtuous, not discreet; she hath not outrun + My wishes still with prompt and meek observance. + Perhaps she is not fair, sweet-voiced; her eyes + Not like the dove's; all this as well may be, + As that she should entreasure up a secret + In the peculiar closet of her breast, + And grudge it to my ear. It is my right + To claim the halves in any truth she owns, + As much as in the babe I have by her; + Upon whose face henceforth I fear to look, + Lest I should fancy in its innocent brow + Some strange shame written. + + _Enter Lucy_. + + Sister, an anxious word with you. + From out the chamber, where my wife but now + Held talk with her encroaching friend, I heard + (Not of set purpose heark'ning, but by chance) + A voice of chiding, answer'd by a tone + Of replication, such as the meek dove + Makes, when the kite has clutch'd her. The high Widow + Was loud and stormy. I distinctly heard + One threat pronounced--"Your husband shall know all." + I am no listener, sister; and I hold + A secret, got by such unmanly shift, + The pitiful'st of thefts; but what mine ear, + I not intending it, receives perforce, + I count my lawful prize. Some subtle meaning + Lurks in this fiend's behaviour; which, by force, + Or fraud, I must make mine. + + LUCY + The gentlest means + Are still the wisest. What, if you should press + Your wife to a disclosure? + + SELBY + I have tried + All gentler means; thrown out low hints, which, though + Merely suggestions still, have never fail'd + To blanch her cheek with fears. Roughlier to insist, + Would be to kill, where I but meant to heal. + + LUCY + Your own description gave that Widow out + As one not much precise, nor over coy, + And nice to listen to a suit of love. + What if you feign'd a courtship, putting on, + (To work the secret from her easy faith,) + For honest ends, a most dishonest seeming? + + SELBY + I see your drift, and partly meet your counsel. + But must it not in me appear prodigious, + To say the least, unnatural, and suspicious, + To move hot love, where I have shewn cool scorn, + And undissembled looks of blank aversion? + + LUCY + Vain woman is the dupe of her own charms, + And easily credits the resistless power, + That in besieging Beauty lies, to cast down + The slight-built fortress of a casual hate. + + SELBY + I am resolved-- + + LUCY + Success attend your wooing! + + SELBY + And I'll about it roundly, my wise sister. [_Exeunt_.] + + + + +SCENE.--_The Library_. + + +MR. SELBY. MRS. FRAMPTON. + + + SELBY + A fortunate encounter, Mistress Frampton. + My purpose was, if you could spare so much + From your sweet leisure, a few words in private. + + MRS. FRAMPTON + What mean his alter'd tones? These looks to me, + Whose glances yet he has repell'd with coolness? + Is the wind changed? I'll veer about with it, + And meet him in all fashions. [_Aside._] + All my leisure, + Feebly bestow'd upon my kind friends here, + Would not express a tithe of the obligements + I every hour incur. + + SELBY + No more of that.-- + I know not why, my wife hath lost of late + Much of her cheerful spirits. + + MRS. FRAMPTON + It was my topic + To-day; and every day, and all day long, + I still am chiding with her. "Child," I said, + And said it pretty roundly--it may be + I was too peremptory--we elder school-fellows, + Presuming on the advantage of a year + Or two, which, in that tender time, seem'd much, + In after years, much like to elder sisters, + Are prone to keep the authoritative style, + When time has made the difference most ridiculous-- + + SELBY + The observation's shrewd. + + MRS. FRAMPTON + "Child," I was saying, + "If some wives had obtained a lot like yours," + And then perhaps I sigh'd, "they would not sit + In corners moping, like to sullen moppets + That want their will, but dry their eyes, and look + Their cheerful husbands in the face," perhaps + I said, their Selby's, "with proportion'd looks + Of honest joy." + + SELBY + You do suspect no jealousy? + + MRS. FRAMPTON + What is his import? Whereto tends his speech? [_Aside._] + Of whom, of what, should she be jealous, sir? + + SELBY + I do not know, but women have their fancies; + And underneath a cold indifference, + Or show of some distaste, husbands have mask'd + A growing fondness for a female friend, + Which the wife's eye was sharp enough to see + Before the friend had wit to find it out. + You do not quit us soon? + + MRS. FRAMPTON + 'Tis as I find + Your Katherine profits by my lessons, sir.-- + Means this man honest? Is there no deceit? [_Aside_.] + + SELBY + She cannot chuse.--Well, well, I have been thinking, + And if the matter were to do again-- + + MRS. FRAMPTON + What matter, sir? + + SELBY + This idle bond of wedlock; + These sour-sweet briars, fetters of harsh silk; + I might have made, I do not say a better, + But a more fit choice in a wife. + + MRS. FRAMPTON + The parch'd ground, + In hottest Julys, drinks not in the showers + More greedily than I his words! [_Aside_.] + + SELBY + My humour + Is to be frank and jovial; and that man + Affects me best, who most reflects me in + My most free temper. + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Were you free to chuse, + As jestingly I'll put the supposition, + Without a thought reflecting on your Katherine, + What sort of woman would you make your choice? + + SELBY + I like your humour, and will meet your jest. + She should be one about my Katherine's age; + But not so old, by some ten years, in gravity. + One that would meet my mirth, sometimes outrun it; + No puling, pining moppet, as you said, + Nor moping maid, that I must still be teaching + The freedoms of a wife all her life after: + But one, that, having worn the chain before, + (And worn it lightly, as report gave out,) + Enfranchised from it by her poor fool's death, + Took it not so to heart that I need dread + To die myself, for fear a second time + To wet a widow's eye. + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Some widows, sir, + Hearing you talk so wildly, would be apt + To put strange misconstruction on your words, + As aiming at a Turkish liberty, + Where the free husband hath his several mates, + His Penseroso, his Allegro wife, + To suit his sober, or his frolic fit. + + SELBY + How judge you of that latitude? + + MRS. FRAMPTON + As one, + In European customs bred, must judge. Had I + Been born a native of the liberal East, + I might have thought as they do. Yet I knew + A married man that took a second wife, + And (the man's circumstances duly weigh'd, + With all their bearings) the considerate world + Nor much approved, nor much condemn'd the deed. + + SELBY + You move my wonder strangely. Pray, proceed. + + MRS. FRAMPTON + An eye of wanton liking he had placed + Upon a Widow, who liked him again, + But stood on terms of honourable love, + And scrupled wronging his most virtuous wife--- + When to their ears a lucky rumour ran, + That this demure and saintly-seeming wife + Had a first husband living; with the which + Being question'd, she but faintly could deny. + "A priest indeed there was; some words had passed, + But scarce amounting to a marriage rite. + Her friend was absent; she supposed him dead; + And, seven years parted, both were free to chuse." + + SELBY + What did the indignant husband? Did he not + With violent handlings stigmatize the cheek + Of the deceiving wife, who had entail'd + Shame on their innocent babe? + + MRS. FRAMPTON + He neither tore + His wife's locks nor his own; but wisely weighing + His own offence with her's in equal poise, + And woman's weakness 'gainst the strength of man, + Came to a calm and witty compromise. + He coolly took his gay-faced widow home, + Made her his second wife; and still the first + Lost few or none of her prerogatives. + The servants call'd her mistress still; she kept + The keys, and had the total ordering + Of the house affairs; and, some slight toys excepted, + Was all a moderate wife would wish to be. + + SELBY + A tale full of dramatic incident!-- + And if a man should put it in a play, + How should he name the parties? + + MRS. FRAMPTON + The man's name + Through time I have forgot--the widow's too;-- + But his first wife's first name, her maiden one, + Was--not unlike to that your Katherine bore, + Before she took the honour'd style of Selby. + + + SELBY + A dangerous meaning in your riddle lurks. + One knot is yet unsolved; that told, this strange + And most mysterious drama ends. The name + Of that first husband--- + + _Enter Lucy._ + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Sir, your pardon-- + The allegory fits your private ear. + Some half hour hence, in the garden's secret walk, + We shall have leisure. [_Exit._] + + SELBY + Sister, whence come you? + + LUCY + From your poor Katherine's chamber, where she droops + In sad presageful thoughts, and sighs, and weeps, + And seems to pray by turns. At times she looks + As she would pour her secret in my bosom--- + Then starts, as I have seen her, at the mention + Of some immodest act. At her request + I left her on her knees. + + SELBY + The fittest posture; + For great has been her fault to Heaven and me. + She married me, with a first husband living, + Or not known not to be so, which, in the judgment + Of any but indifferent honesty, + Must be esteem'd the same. The shallow Widow, + Caught by my art, under a riddling veil + Too thin to hide her meaning, hath confess'd all. + Your coming in broke off the conference, + When she was ripe to tell the fatal _name_, + That seals my wedded doom. + + LUCY + Was she so forward + To pour her hateful meanings in your ear + At the first hint? + + + SELBY + Her newly flatter'd hopes + Array'd themselves at first in forms of doubt; + And with a female caution she stood off + Awhile, to read the meaning of my suit, + Which with such honest seeming I enforced, + That her cold scruples soon gave way; and now + She rests prepared, as mistress, or as wife, + To seize the place of her betrayed friend-- + My much offending, but more suffering, Katherine. + + LUCY + Into what labyrinth of fearful shapes + My simple project has conducted you-- + Were but my wit as skilful to invent + A clue to lead you forth!--I call to mind + A letter, which your wife received from the Cape, + Soon after you were married, with some circumstances + Of mystery too. + + SELBY + I well remember it. + That letter did confirm the truth (she said) + Of a friend's death, which she had long fear'd true, + But knew not for a fact. A youth of promise + She gave him out--a hot adventurous spirit-- + That had set sail in quest of golden dreams, + And cities in the heart of Central Afric; + But named no names, nor did I care to press + My question further, in the passionate grief + She shew'd at the receipt. Might this be he? + + LUCY + Tears were not all. When that first shower was past, + With clasped hands she raised her eyes to Heav'n, + As if in thankfulness for some escape, + Or strange deliverance, in the news implied, + Which sweeten'd that sad news. + + SELBY + Something of that + I noted also-- + + + LUCY + In her closet once, + Seeking some other trifle, I espied + A ring, in mournful characters deciphering + The death of "Robert Halford, aged two + And twenty." Brother, I am not given + To the confident use of wagers, which I hold + Unseemly in a woman's argument; + But I am strangely tempted now to risk + A thousand pounds out of my patrimony, + (And let my future husband look to it + If it be lost,) that this immodest Widow + Shall name the name that tallies with that ring. + + SELBY + That wager lost, I should be rich indeed-- + Rich in my rescued Kate--rich in my honour, + Which now was bankrupt. Sister, I accept + Your merry wager, with an aching heart + For very fear of winning. 'Tis the hour + That I should meet my Widow in the walk, + The south side of the garden. On some pretence + Lure forth my Wife that way, that she may witness + Our seeming courtship. Keep us still in sight, + Yourselves unseen; and by some sign I'll give, + (A finger held up, or a kerchief waved,) + You'll know your wager won--then break upon us, + As if by chance. + + LUCY + I apprehend your meaning-- + + SELBY + And may you prove a true Cassandra here, + Though my poor acres smart for't, wagering sister. + [_Exeunt._] + + + + +SCENE.-_Mrs. Selby's Chamber._ + + +MRS. FRAMPTON. KATHERINE. + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Did I express myself in terms so strong? + + + KATHERINE + As nothing could have more affrighted me. + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Think it a hurt friend's jest, in retribution + Of a suspected cooling hospitality. + And, for my staying here, or going hence, + (Now I remember something of our argument,) + Selby and I can settle that between us. + You look amazed. What if your husband, child, + Himself has courted me to stay? + + KATHERINE + You move + My wonder and my pleasure equally. + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Yes, courted me to stay, waiv'd all objections. + Made it a favour to yourselves; not me, + His troublesome guest, as you surmised. Child, child! + When I recall his flattering welcome, I + Begin to think the burden of my presence + Was-- + + KATHERINE + What, for Heaven-- + + MRS. FRAMPTON + A little, little spice + Of jealousy--that's all--an honest pretext, + No wife need blush for. Say that you should see + (As oftentimes we widows take such freedoms, + Yet still on this side virtue,) in a jest + Your husband pat me on the cheek, or steal + A kiss, while you were by,--not else, for virtue's sake. + + KATHERINE + I could endure all this, thinking my husband + Meant it in sport-- + + MRS. FRAMPTON + But if in downright earnest + (Putting myself out of the question here) + Your Selby, as I partly do suspect, + Own'd a divided heart-- + + + KATHERINE + My own would break-- + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Why, what a blind and witless fool it is, + That will not see its gains, its infinite gains-- + + KATHERINE + Gain in a loss, + Or mirth in utter desolation! + + MRS. FRAMPTON + He doting on a face--suppose it mine, + Or any other's tolerably fair-- + What need you care about a senseless secret? + + KATHERINE + Perplex'd and fearful woman! I in part + Fathom your dangerous meaning. You have broke + The worse than iron band, fretting the soul, + By which you held me captive. Whether my husband + _Is_ what you gave him out, or your fool'd fancy + But dreams he is so, either way I am free. + + MRS. FRAMPTON + It talks it bravely, blazons out its shame; + A very heroine while on its knees; + Rowe's Penitent, an absolute Calista! + + KATHERINE + Not to thy wretched self these tears are falling; + But to my husband, and offended heaven, + Some drops are due--and then I sleep in peace, + Reliev'd from frightful dreams, my dreams though sad. + [_Exit_.] + + MRS. FRAMPTON + I have gone too far. Who knows but in this mood + She may forestall my story, win on Selby + By a frank confession?--and the time draws on + For our appointed meeting. The game's desperate, + For which I play. A moment's difference + May make it hers or mine. I fly to meet him. + [_Exit._] + + + +SCENE.--_A Garden_. + + +MR. SELBY. MRS. FRAMPTON. + + + SELBY + I am not so ill a guesser, Mrs. Frampton, + Not to conjecture, that some passages + In your unfinished story, rightly interpreted, + Glanced at my bosom's peace; + You knew my wife? + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Even from her earliest school-days.--What of that? + Or how is she concerned in my fine riddles, + Framed for the hour's amusement? + + SELBY + By my _hopes_ + Of my new interest conceived in you, + And by the honest passion of my heart, + Which not obliquely I to you did hint; + Come from the clouds of misty allegory, + And in plain language let me hear the worst. + Stand I disgraced or no? + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Then, by _my_ hopes + Of my new interest conceiv'd in you, + And by the kindling passion in _my_ breast, + Which through my riddles you had almost read, + Adjured so strongly, I will tell you all. + In her school years, then bordering on fifteen, + Or haply not much past, she loved a youth-- + + SELBY + My most ingenuous Widow-- + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Met him oft + By stealth, where I still of the party was-- + + SELBY + Prime confidant to all the school, I warrant, + And general go-between-- + [_Aside_.] + + + MRS. FRAMPTON + One morn he came + In breathless haste. "The ship was under sail, + Or in few hours would be, that must convey + Him and his destinies to barbarous shores, + Where, should he perish by inglorious hands, + It would be consolation in his death + To have call'd his Katherine _his_." + + SELBY + Thus far the story + Tallies with what I hoped. + [_Aside_.] + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Wavering between + The doubt of doing wrong, and losing him; + And my dissuasions not o'er hotly urged, + Whom he had flatter'd with the bride-maid's part;-- + + SELBY + I owe my subtle Widow, then, for this. + [_Aside_.] + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Briefly, we went to church. The ceremony + Scarcely was huddled over, and the ring + Yet cold upon her finger, when they parted-- + He to his ship; and we to school got back, + Scarce miss'd, before the dinner-bell could ring. + + SELBY + And from that hour-- + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Nor sight, nor news of him, + For aught that I could hear, she e'er obtain'd. + + SELBY + Like to a man that hovers in suspense + Over a letter just receiv'd, on which + The black seal hath impress'd its ominous token, + Whether to open it or no, so I + Suspended stand, whether to press my fate + Further, or check ill curiosity + That tempts me to more loss.--The name, the name + Of this fine youth? + + MRS. FRAMPTON + What boots it, if 'twere told? + + SELBY + Now, by our loves, + And by my hopes of happier wedlocks, some day + To be accomplish'd, give me his name! + + MRS. FRAMPTON + 'Tis no such serious matter. It was--Huntingdon. + + SELBY + How have three little syllables pluck'd from me + A world of countless hopes!-- + [_Aside_.] + Evasive Widow. + + MRS. FRAMPTON + How, Sir! I like not this. + [_Aside_.] + + SELBY + No, no, I meant + Nothing but good to thee. That other woman, + How shall I call her but evasive, false, + And treacherous?--by the trust I place in thee, + Tell me, and tell me truly, was the name + As you pronounced it? + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Huntingdon--the name, + Which his paternal grandfather assumed, + Together with the estates, of a remote + Kinsman; but our high-spirited youth-- + + SELBY + Yes-- + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Disdaining + For sordid pelf to truck the family honours, + At risk of the lost estates, resumed the old style, + And answer'd only to the name of-- + + + SELBY + What? + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Of Halford-- + + SELBY + A Huntingdon to Halford changed so soon! + Why, then I see, a witch hath her good spells, + As well as bad, and can by a backward charm + Unruffle the foul storm she has just been raising. + [_Aside_.] + [_He makes the signal._] + + My frank, fair spoken Widow! let this kiss, + Which yet aspires no higher, speak my thanks, + Till I can think on greater. + + _Enter_ LUCY _and_ KATHERINE. + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Interrupted! + + SELBY + My sister here! and see, where with her comes + My serpent gliding in an angel's form, + To taint the new-born Eden of our joys. + Why should we fear them? We'll not stir a foot, + Nor coy it for their pleasures. + [_He courts the Widow_.] + + LUCY (_to Katherine_.) + + This your free, + And sweet ingenuous confession, binds me + For ever to you; and it shall go hard, + But it shall fetch you back your husband's heart, + That now seems blindly straying; or at worst, + In me you have still a sister.--Some wives, brother, + Would think it strange to catch their husbands thus + Alone with a trim widow; but your Katherine + Is arm'd, I think, with patience. + + KATHERINE + I am fortified + With knowledge of self-faults to endure worse wrongs, + If they be wrongs, than he can lay upon me; + Even to look on, and see him sue in earnest, + As now I think he does it but in seeming, + To that ill woman. + + SELBY + Good words, gentle Kate, + And not a thought irreverent of our Widow. + Why, 'twere unmannerly at any time, + But most uncourteous on our wedding day, + When we should shew most hospitable.--Some wine. + [_Wine is brought_.] + + I am for sports. And now I do remember, + The old Egyptians at their banquets placed + A charnel sight of dead men's skulls before them, + With images of cold mortality, + To temper their fierce joys when they grew rampant. + I like the custom well: and ere we crown + With freer mirth the day, I shall propose, + In calmest recollection of our spirits, + We drink the solemn "Memory of the dead." + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Or the supposed dead. + [_Aside to him_.] + + SELBY + Pledge me, good wife. + [_She fills_.] + Nay, higher yet, till the brimm'd cup swell o'er. + + KATHERINE + I catch the awful import of your words; + And, though I could accuse you of unkindness, + Yet as your lawful and obedient wife, + While that name lasts (as I perceive it fading, + Nor I much longer may have leave to use it) + I calmly take the office you impose; + And on my knees, imploring their forgiveness, + Whom I in heav'n or earth may have offended, + Exempt from starting tears, and woman's weakness, + I pledge you, Sir--the Memory of the Dead! + [_She drinks kneeling_.] + + SELBY + 'Tis gently and discreetly said, and like + My former loving Kate. + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Does he relent? + [_Aside_.] + + SELBY + That ceremony past, we give the day + To unabated sport. And, in requital + Of certain stories, and quaint allegories, + Which my rare Widow hath been telling to me + To raise my morning mirth, if she will lend + Her patient hearing, I will here recite + A Parable; and, the more to suit her taste, + The scene is laid in the East. + + MRS. FRAMPTON + I long to hear it. + Some tale, to fit his wife. + [_Aside_.] + + KATHERINE + Now, comes my TRIAL. + + LUCY + The hour of your deliverance is at hand, + If I presage right. Bear up, gentlest sister. + + SELBY + "The Sultan Haroun"--Stay--O now I have it-- + "The Caliph Haroun in his orchards had + A fruit-tree, bearing such delicious fruits, + That he reserved them for his proper gust; + And through the Palace it was Death proclaim'd + To any one that should purloin the same." + + MRS. FRAMPTON + A heavy penance for so light a fault-- + + SELBY + Pray you, be silent, else you put me out. + "A crafty page, that for advantage watch'd, + Detected in the act a brother page, + Of his own years, that was his bosom friend; + And thenceforth he became that other's lord, + And like a tyrant he demean'd himself, + Laid forced exactions on his fellow's purse; + And when that poor means fail'd, held o'er his head + Threats of impending death in hideous forms; + Till the small culprit on his nightly couch + Dream'd of strange pains, and felt his body writhe + In tortuous pangs around the impaling stake." + + MRS. FRAMPTON + I like not this beginning-- + + SELBY + Pray you, attend. + "The Secret, like a night-hag, rid his sleeps, + And took the youthful pleasures from his days, + And chased the youthful smoothness from his brow, + That from a rose-cheek'd boy he waned and waned + To a pale skeleton of what he was; + And would have died, but for one lucky chance." + + KATHERINE + Oh! + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Your wife--she faints--some cordial--smell to this. + + SELBY + Stand off. My sister best will do that office. + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Are all his tempting speeches come to this? + [_Aside_.] + + SELBY + What ail'd my wife? + + KATHERINE + A warning faintness, sir, + Seized on my spirits, when you came to where + You said "a lucky chance." I am better now, + Please you go on. + + SELBY + The sequel shall be brief. + + KATHERINE + But brief or long, I feel my fate hangs on it. + [_Aside_.] + + SELBY + "One morn the Caliph, in a covert hid, + Close by an arbour where the two boys talk'd + (As oft, we read, that Eastern sovereigns + Would play the eaves-dropper, to learn the truth, + Imperfectly received from mouths of slaves,) + O'erheard their dialogue; and heard enough + To judge aright the cause, and know his cue. + The following day a Cadi was dispatched + To summon both before the judgment-seat: + The lickerish culprit, almost dead with fear, + And the informing friend, who readily, + Fired with fair promises of large reward, + And Caliph's love, the hateful truth disclosed." + + MRS. FRAMPTON + What did the Caliph to the offending boy, + That had so grossly err'd? + + SELBY + His sceptred hand + He forth in token of forgiveness stretch'd, + And clapp'd his cheeks, and courted him with gifts, + And he became once more his favourite page. + + MRS. FRAMPTON + But for that other-- + + SELBY + He dismiss'd him straight, + From dreams of grandeur and of Caliph's love, + To the bare cottage on the withering moor, + Where friends, turn'd fiends, and hollow confidants, + And widows, hide, who, in a husband's ear, + Pour baneful truths, but tell not all the truth; + And told him not that Robert Halford died + Some moons before _his_ marriage-bells were rung. + Too near dishonour hast thou trod, dear wife, + And on a dangerous cast our fates were set; + But Heav'n, that will'd our wedlock to be blest, + Hath interposed to save it gracious too. + Your penance is--to dress your cheek in smiles, + And to be once again my merry Kate.-- + + Sister, your hand. + Your wager won makes me a happy man, + Though poorer, Heav'n knows, by a thousand pounds. + The sky clears up after a dubious day. + Widow, your hand. I read a penitence + In this dejected brow; and in this shame + Your fault is buried. You shall in with us, + And, if it please you, taste our nuptial fare: + For, till this moment, I can joyful say, + Was never truly Selby's Wedding Day. + + FINIS. + + + + + +NOTES + + +Page 1. DEDICATION TO S.T. COLERIDGE, ESQ. + +In 1818, when Lamb wrote these words, he was forty-three and Coleridge +forty-six. The _Works_, in the first volume of which this dedication +appeared, were divided into two volumes, the second, containing prose, +being dedicated to Martin Burney, in the sonnet which I have placed on +page 45. The publishers of the _Works_ were Charles and James Ollier, +who, starting business about 1816, had already published for Leigh Hunt, +Keats, and Shelley. + +For the allusion to the threefold cord, in the second paragraph, see the +note on page 313. + +The ****** Inn was the Salutation and Cat, in Newgate +Street, since rebuilt, where Coleridge used to stay on his London +visits when he was at Cambridge, and where the landlord is said +to have asked him to continue as a free guest--if only he would +talk and talk. Writing to Coleridge in 1796 Lamb recalls "the +little smoky room at the Salutation and Cat, where we have sat +together through the winter nights, beguiling the cares of life with +Poesy;" and again, "I have been drinking egg-hot and smoking +Oronooko (associated circumstances, which ever forcibly recall to +my mind our evenings and nights at the Salutation)." Later he +added to these concomitants of a Salutation evening, "Egg-hot, +Welsh-rabbit, and metaphysics," and gave as his highest idea of +heaven, listening to Coleridge "repeating one of Bowles's sweetest +sonnets, in your sweet manner, while we two were indulging +sympathy, a solitary luxury, by the fire side at the Salutation." + +The line-- + + Of summer days and of delightful years + +is from Bowles--"Sonnet written at Ostend." + + + * * * * * + + +Page 3. Lamb's Earliest Poem. _Mille Vice Mortis._ + +In a MS. book that had belonged to James Boyer of Christ's Hospital, in +which his best scholars inscribed compositions, are these lines signed +Charles Lamb, 1789. All Lamb's Grecians are there too. The book was +described by the late Dykes Campbell, Lamb's most accomplished and +enthusiastic student, in the _Illustrated London News_, December 26, +1891. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 4. POEMS IN COLERIDGE'S _POEMS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS_, 1796. + +This book was published by Cottle, of Bristol, in 1796. Lamb contributed +four poems, which were thus referred to by Coleridge in the Preface: +"The Effusions signed C.L. were written by Mr. CHARLES LAMB, of the +India House--independently of the signature their superior merit would +have sufficiently distinguished them." Lamb reprinted the first only +once, in 1797, in the second edition of Coleridge's _Poems_, the +remaining three again in his _Works_ in 1818. I have followed in the +body of this volume the text of these later appearances, the original +form of the sonnets being relegated to the notes. + + +Page 4. _As when a child on some long winter's night._ + +Some mystery attaches to the authorship of this sonnet. On December 1, +1794, Coleridge wrote to the editor of the _Morning Chronicle_ saying +that he proposed to send a series of sonnets ("as it is the fashion to +call them") addressed to eminent contemporaries; and he enclosed one to +Mr. Erskine. The editor, with almost Chinese politeness, inserted +beneath the sonnet this note: "Our elegant Correspondent will highly +gratify every reader of taste by the continuance of his exquisitely +beautiful productions." The series continued with Burke, Priestley, +Lafayette, Kosciusko, Chatham, Bowles, and, on December 29, 1794, Mrs. +Siddons--the sonnet here printed--all signed S.T.C. + +But the next appearance of the sonnet was as an effusion by Lamb in +Coleridge's _Poems on Various Subjects_, 1796, signed C.L.; and its next +in the _Poems_, 1797, among Lamb's contributions. In 1803, however, we +find it in Coleridge's _Poems_, third edition, with no reference to Lamb +whatever. This probably means that Lamb and Coleridge had written it +together, that Coleridge's original share had been the greater, and that +Lamb and he had come to an arrangement by which Coleridge was to be +considered the sole author; for Lamb did not reprint it in 1818 with his +other early verse. Writing in 1796 to Coleridge concerning his treatment +of other of Lamb's sonnets, Lamb says: "That to Mrs. Siddons, now, you +were welcome to improve, if it had been worth it; but I say unto you +again, Coleridge, spare my ewe lambs." Such a distinction drawn between +the sonnet to Mrs. Siddons and the others supports the belief that Lamb +had not for it a deeply parental feeling. + +This was not the only occasion on which Lamb and Coleridge wrote a +sonnet in partnership. Writing to Southey in December, 1794, Coleridge +says: "Of the following sonnet, the four _last_ lines were written by +Lamb, a man of uncommon genius...." + + SONNET + + O gentle look, that didst my soul beguile, + Why hast thou left me? Still in some fond dream + Revisit my sad heart, auspicious smile! + As falls on closing flowers the lunar beam; + What time in sickly mood, at parting day + I lay me down and think of happier years; + Of joys, that glimmered in Hope's twilight ray, + Then left me darkling in a vale of tears. + O pleasant days of Hope--for ever flown! + Could I recall one!--But that thought is vain, + Availeth not Persuasion's sweetest tone + To lure the fleet-winged travellers back again: + Anon, they haste to everlasting night, + Nor can a giant's arm arrest them in their flight. + +Subsequently Coleridge rewrote the final couplet. + +The same letter to Southey informs us that the sonnet to Mrs. Siddons +was not Lamb's earliest poem, although it stands first in his poetical +works; for Coleridge remarks: "Have you seen his [Lamb's] divine sonnet, +'O! I could laugh to hear the winter wind'?" (see page 5). + +Lamb printed the sonnet to Mrs. Siddons twice--in 1796 and 1797. + + +Page 4. _Was it some sweet device of Faery._ + +This sonnet passed through various vicissitudes. Lamb had sent it to +Coleridge for his _Poems on Various Subjects_ in 1796, and Coleridge +proceeded to re-model it more in accordance with his own views. The +following version, representing his modifications, was the one that +found its way into print as Lamb's:-- + + Was it some sweet device of faery land + That mock'd my steps with many a lonely glade, + And fancied wand'rings with a fair-hair'd maid? + Have these things been? Or did the wizard wand + Of Merlin wave, impregning vacant air, + And kindle up the vision of a smile + In those blue eyes, that seem'd to speak the while + Such tender things, as might enforce Despair + To drop the murth'ring knife, and let go by + His fell resolve? Ah me! the lonely glade + Still courts the footsteps of the fair-hair'd maid, + Among whose locks the west-winds love to sigh; + But I forlorn do wander, reckless where, + And mid my wand'rings find no ANNA there! + C.L. + + +Lamb naturally protested when the result came under his eyes. "I love my +own feelings: they are dear to memory," he says in a letter in 1796, +"though they now and then wake a sigh or a tear. 'Thinking on divers +things foredone,' I charge you, Coleridge, spare my ewe lambs." Later, +when Coleridge's second edition was in preparation, Lamb wrote again +(January 10, 1797): "I need not repeat my wishes to have my little +sonnets printed _verbatim_ my last way. In particular, I fear lest you +should prefer printing my first sonnet [this one] as you have done more +than once, 'Did the wand of Merlin wave?' It looks so like _Mr_. Merlin, +the ingenious successor of the immortal Merlin, now living in good +health and spirits, and flourishing in magical reputation in Oxford +Street." The phrase "more than once" in the foregoing passage needs +explanation. It refers to the little pamphlet of sonnets, entitled +_Sonnets from Various Authors_, which Coleridge issued privately in +1796, and of which only one copy is now known to exist--that preserved +in the Dyce and Forster collection at South Kensington. The little +pamphlet contains twenty-eight sonnets in all, of which three are by +Bowles, four by Southey, four by Charles Lloyd, four by Coleridge, four +by Lamb, and others by various writers: all of which were chosen for +their suitability to be bound up with the sonnets of Bowles. Lamb's +sonnets were: "We were two pretty babes" (see page 9), "Was it some +sweet device" (printed with Coleridge's alterations), "When last I +roved" (see page 8), and "O! I could laugh" (see page 5). + +The present sonnet belongs to the series of four love sonnets which is +completed by the one that follows, "Methinks, how dainty sweet it were," +and those on page 8 beginning, "When last I roved" and "A timid grace." +Anna is believed to have been Ann Simmons, who lived at Blenheims, a +group of cottages near Blakesware, the house where Mrs. Field, Lamb's +grandmother, was housekeeper. Mrs. Field died in 1792, after which time +Lamb's long visits to that part of the country probably ceased. He was +then seventeen. Nothing is known of Lamb's attachment beyond these +sonnets, the fact that when he lost his reason for a short time in +1795-1796 he attributed the cause to some person unmentioned who is +conjectured to have been Anna, and the occasional references in the Ella +essays to "Alice W----" and to his old passion for her (see "Dream +Children" in particular, in Vol. II). The death of Mrs. Lamb in +September, 1796, and the duty of caring for and nursing his sister Mary, +which then devolved upon Charles, put an end to any dreams of private +happiness that he may have been indulging; and his little romance was +over. How deep his passion was we are not likely ever to know; but Lamb +thenceforward made very light of it, except in the pensive recollections +in the essays twenty-five years later. In November, 1796, when sending +Coleridge poems for his second edition, he says: "Do not entitle any of +my _things_ Love Sonnets, as I told you to call 'em; 'twill only make me +look little in my own eyes; for it is a passion of which I retain +nothing.... Thank God, the folly has left me for ever. Not even a review +of my love verses renews one wayward wish in me...." Again, in November, +1796, in another letter to Coleridge, about his poems in the 1797 +edition, Lamb says: "Oh, my friend! I think sometimes, could I recall +the days that are past, which among them should I choose? not those +'merrier days,' not the 'pleasant days of hope,' not 'those wanderings +with a fair-hair'd maid,' which I have so often and so feelingly +regretted, but the days, Coleridge, of a _mother's_ fondness for her +_school-boy_." Lamb printed this sonnet three times--in 1796, 1797 and +1818. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 5. _Methinks how dainty sweet it were, reclin'd._ + +When this sonnet was printed by Coleridge in 1796 the sestet +was made to run thus:-- + + But ah! sweet scenes of fancied bliss, adieu! + On rose-leaf beds amid your faery bowers + I all too long have lost the dreamy hours! + Beseems it now the sterner Muse to woo, + If haply she her golden meed impart, + To realise the vision of the heart. + +Lamb remonstrated: "I had rather have seen what I wrote myself, though +they bear no comparison with your exquisite lines-- + +"On rose-leaf'd beds, amid your faery bowers, etc. + +I love my sonnets because they are the reflected images of my Own +feelings at different times." This sonnet was printed by Lamb three +times--in 1796, 1797 and 1798. + + +Page 5. _O! I could laugh to hear the midnight wind,_ + +This sonnet, written probably at Margate, was entitled, in 1796, +"Written at Midnight, by the Seaside, after a Voyage." The last +lines then ran:-- + + And almost wish'd it were no crime to die! + How Reason reel'd! What gloomy transports rose! + Till the rude dashings rock'd them to repose. + +The couplet was Coleridge's, and Lamb protested (June 10, 1796), +describing them as good lines, but adding that they "must spoil +the whole with me who know it is only a fiction of yours and that +the rude dashings did in fact not rock me to repose." + +When reprinted in 1797, the final couplet was omitted, asterisks +standing instead. The present sonnet was probably the earliest of Lamb's +printed poems. In the Elia essay "The Old Margate Hoy," Lamb states that +the first time he saw the sea was on a visit to Margate as a boy, by +water--probably the voyage that suggested this sonnet. Lamb printed the +sonnet three times--in 1796, 1797 and 1818. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 6. LLOYD'S _POEMS ON THE DEATH OF PRISCILLA FARMER_, 1796. + +Charles Lloyd (1775-1839), the son of Charles Lloyd, of Birmingham (a +cultured and philanthropical Quaker banker), joined Coleridge at Bristol +late in 1796 as his private pupil, and moved with the family to Nether +Stowey. Priscilla Farmer was Lloyd's maternal grandmother, to whom he +was much attached, and on her death he composed the sonnets that form +this costly quarto, published for Lloyd by Coleridge's friend, Joseph +Cottle, of Bristol, in the winter of 1796. + + +Page 6. _The Grandame._ + +Lamb sent these lines in their first state to Coleridge in June, 1796, +at, which time they were, I conjecture, part of a long blank-verse poem +which he was then meditating, and of which "Childhood," "Fancy Employed +on Divine Subjects," and "The Sabbath Bells" (see pages 9 and 10) were +probably other portions. The poem was never finished. On June 13, 1796, +he writes to Coleridge:-- + +"Of the blank verses I spoke of, the following lines are the only +tolerably complete ones I have writ out of not more than one hundred and +fifty. That I get on slowly you may fairly impute to want of practice in +composition, when I declare to you that (the few verses which you have +seen excepted) I have not writ fifty lines since I left school. It may +not be amiss to remark that my grandmother (on whom the verses are +written) lived housekeeper in a family the fifty or sixty last years of +her life--that she was a woman of exemplary piety and goodness--and for +many years before her death was terribly afflicted with a cancer in her +breast, which she bore with true Christian patience. You may think that +I have not kept enough apart the ideas of her heavenly and her earthly +master; but recollect I have designedly given into her own way of +feeling; and if she had a failing 'twas that she respected her master's +family too much, not reverenced her Maker too little. The lines begin +imperfectly, as I may probably connect 'em if I finish at all: and if I +do, Biggs shall print 'em (in a more economical way than you yours), +for, Sonnets and all, they won't make a thousand lines as I propose +completing 'em, and the substance must be wire-drawn." + +When Charles Lloyd joined Coleridge later in the year, and was preparing +his _Poems in Memory of Priscilla Farmer_, Coleridge obtained Lamb's +permission for "The Grandame" to be included with them. The lines were +introduced by Lloyd in these words: "The following beautiful fragment +was written by CHARLES LAMB, of the India-House.--Its subject being the +same with that of my Poems, I was solicitous to have it printed with +them: and I am indebted to a Friend of the Author's for the permission." + +The poem differed then very slightly from its present form. When the +book was sent to Lamb he remarked (in December, 1796) on "the odd +coincidence of two young men, in one age, carolling their +grandmothers.... I cannot but smile to see my Granny so gayly deck'd +forth [the book was expensively produced by Lloyd], tho', I think, +whoever altered 'thy' praises to 'her' praises--'thy' honoured memory to +'her' honoured memory [lines 27 and 28], did wrong--they best exprest my +feelings. There is a pensive state of recollection, in which the mind is +disposed to apostrophise the departed objects of its attachment; and, +breaking loose from grammatical precision, changes from the 1st to the +3rd, and from the 3rd to the 1st person, just as the random fancy or +feeling directs." + +Mrs. Mary Field, _née_ Bruton, Lamb's maternal grandmother, was +housekeeper at Blakesware house, near Widford, the seat of the Plumer +family for very many years, during the latter part of her life being +left in sole charge, for William Plumer had moved to his other seat, +Gilston, a few miles distant (see "Blakesmoor in H---- shire," and +notes, Vol. II). Lamb and his brother and sister visited their +grandmother at Blakesware as though in her own house. Mrs. Field died of +cancer in the breast, July 31, 1792, aged seventy-nine, and was buried +in Widford churchyard. + +Approached from the east the churchyard seems to be anything but on the +hilltop, for one descends to it; but it stands on a ridge, and seen from +the north, or, as at the old Blakesware house, from the west, it appears +to crown an eminence. The present spire, though slender and tapering, is +not that which Lamb used to see. Mrs. Field's plain stone, whose +legibility was not long since threatened by overhanging branches, has +now been saved from danger and may still be read. It merely records the +name "Mary Feild" (a mistake of the stone-cutter) and the bare dates. + +This poem was printed by Lamb three times--in 1796 (in Lloyd's book), in +1797 (with Coleridge) and in 1818. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 8. COLERIDGE'S _POEMS_, 1797. + +Coleridge's _Poems on Various Subjects_, 1796, went into a second +edition in 1797 under the title, _Poems by S.T. Coleridge, Second +Edition, to which are now added Poems by Charles Lamb and Charles +Lloyd_. Coleridge invented a motto from Groscollius for the title-page, +bearing upon this poetical partnership: "Duplex nobis vinculum, et +amicitiae et similium junctarumque Camoenarum; quod utinam neque mors +solvat, neque temporis longinquitas!" "Double is the bond which binds +us--friendship, and a kindred taste in poetry. Would that neither death +nor lapse of time could dissolve it!" + +Lamb's contributions were thus referred to by Coleridge in the Preface: +"There were inserted in my former Edition, a few Sonnets of my Friend +and old School-fellow, CHARLES LAMB. He has now communicated to me a +complete Collection of all his Poems; quae qui non prorsus amet, illum +omnes et Virtutes et Veneres odore." (Which things, whoever is not +unreservedly in love with, is detested by all the Virtues and the +Graces.) Lamb's poems came last in the book, an arrangement insisted +upon in a letter from him to Coleridge in November, 1796:--"Do you +publish with Lloyd, or without him? In either case my little portion may +come last; and after the fashion of orders to a country correspondent, I +will give directions how I should like to have 'em done. The title-page +to stand thus:-- + + + POEMS + + BY + + CHARLES LAMB, OF THE INDIA HOUSE + + +Under this leaf the following motto, which, for want of room, I put over +leaf, I desire you to insert, whether you like it or no. May not a +gentleman choose what arms, mottoes, or armorial bearings the Herald +will give him leave, without consulting his republican friend, who might +advise none? May not a publican put up the sign of the _Saracen's Head_, +even though his undiscerning neighbour should prefer, as more genteel, +the _Cat and Gridiron_? + + "[MOTTO] + + "This Beauty, in the blossom of my Youth, + When my first fire knew no adulterate incense, + Nor I no way to flatter but my fondness, + In the best language my true tongue could tell me, + And all the broken sighs my sick heart lend me, + I sued and served. Long did I love this Lady. + + "Massinger." + + "THE DEDICATION + _THE FEW FOLLOWING POEMS_, + CREATURES OF THE FANCY AND THE FEELING + IN LIFE'S MORE _VACANT_ HOURS, + PRODUCED, FOR THE MOST PART, BY + LOVE IN IDLENESS; + ARE, + WITH ALL A BROTHER'S FONDNESS, + INSCRIBED TO + MARY ANN LAMB, + THE AUTHOR'S BEST FRIEND AND SISTER" + +The dedication was printed as Lamb wished, in the form I have followed +above, and the book appeared. + + +Page 8. _When last I roved these winding wood-walks green,_ + +This was sent to Coleridge on June 1, 1796, in a letter containing also +the sonnets, "The Lord of Life," page 16; "A timid grace," page 8; and +"We were two pretty babes," page 9. It was written, said Lamb, "on +revisiting a spot, where the scene was laid of my 1st sonnet"--"Was it +some sweet device," page 4. Lamb printed this sonnet twice--in 1797 and +1818. Page 8. _A timid grace sits trembling in her eye._ + +This, the last of the four love sonnets (see note on page 310), seems to +be a survival of a discarded effort, for Lamb tells Coleridge, in the +letter referred to in the preceding note, that it "retains a few lines +from a sonnet of mine, which you once remarked had no 'body of thought' +in it." Lamb printed this sonnet twice--in 1797 and 1818. + + +Page 9. _If from my lips some angry accents fell,_ + +Lamb sent this sonnet, which is addressed to his sister, to Coleridge in +May, 1796. "The Sonnet I send you has small merit as poetry, but you +will be curious to read it when I tell you it was written in my +prison-house [an asylum] in one of my lucid Intervals." It is dated 1795 +in Coleridge's _Poems_. Lamb printed the sonnet twice--in 1797 and 1818. + + +Page 9. _We were two pretty babes, the youngest she._ + +First printed in the _Monthly Magazine_, July, 1796. "The next and last +[wrote Lamb in the letter to Coleridge referred to in the notes on page +310] I value most of all. 'Twas composed close upon the heels of the +last ['A timid grace,' page 8], in that very wood I had in mind when I +wrote 'Methinks how dainty sweet' [page 5]." It is dated 1795 in +Coleridge's _Poems_. In the same letter Lamb adds:--"Since writing it, I +have found in a poem by Hamilton of Bangour [William Hamilton, +1704-1754, the Scotch poet, of Bangour, Linlithgowshire] these 2 lines +to happiness:-- + + "Nun sober and devout, where art thou fled, + To hide in shades thy meek contented head. + +Lines eminently beautiful, but I do not remember having re'd 'em +previously, for the credit of my 10th and 11th lines. Parnell [Thomas +Parnell, 1679-1718] has 2 lines (which probably suggested the _above_) +to Contentment + + "Whither ah whither art Thou fled, + To hide thy meek contented head. + +"Cowley's exquisite Elegy on the death of his friend Harvey suggested +the phrase of 'we two' + + "Was there a tree [about] that did not know + The love betwixt us two?--" + +When Coleridge printed the sonnet in the pamphlet described on page 310, +he appended to the eleventh line the following note:-- + +Innocence, which, while we possess it, is playful as a babe, becomes +AWFUL when it has departed from us. This is the sentiment of the line +--a fine sentiment and nobly expressed. + +Lamb printed this sonnet twice--in 1797 and 1818. + + +Page 9. _Childhood._ + +See note to "The Grandame," page 312. The "turf-clad slope" in line 4 +was probably at Blakesware. It is difficult to re-create the scene, for +the new house stands a quarter of a mile west of the old one, the site +of which is hidden by grass and trees. Where once were gardens is now +meadow land. + +Lamb printed this poem twice--in 1797 and 1818. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 10. _The Sabbath Bells_. + +Lamb printed this poem twice--in 1797 and 1818. Church bells seem always +to have had charms for him (see the reference in _John Woodvil_, page +197, and in Susan Yates' story in _Mrs. Leicester's School_ in Vol. +III.). See note to "The Grandame." + + +Page 10. _Fancy Employed on Divine Subjects._ + +In the letter of December 5, 1796, quoted below, Lamb remarks concerning +this poem: "I beg you to alter the words 'pain and want,' to 'pain and +grief' (line 10), this last being a more familiar and ear-satisfying +combination. Do it, I beg of you." But the alteration either was not +made, or was cancelled later. The reference in lines 6, 7 and 8 is to +Revelation xxii. 1, 2. See note to "The Grandame." Lamb printed this +poem twice--in 1797 and 1818. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 11. _The Tomb of Douglas._ + +The play on which this poem was founded was the tragedy of "Douglas" by +John Home (1722-1808), produced in 1756. Young Norval, or Douglas, the +hero, after killing the false Glenalvon, is slain by his stepfather, +Lord Randolph, unknowing who he is. On hearing of Norval's death his +mother, Lady Randolph, throws herself from a precipice. In the letter to +Coleridge of December 5, 1796, quoted above, Lamb also copied out "The +Tomb of Douglas," prefixing these remarks:--"I would also wish to retain +the following if only to perpetuate the memory of so exquisite a +pleasure as I have often received at the performance of the tragedy of +Douglas, when Mrs. Siddons has been the Lady Randolph.... To understand +the following, if you are not acquainted with the play, you should know +that on the death of Douglas his mother threw herself down a rock; and +that at that time Scotland was busy in repelling the Danes." + +Coleridge told Southey that Lamb during his derangement at the end of +1795 and beginning of 1796 believed himself at one time to be Young +Norval. + +Lamb printed this poem, which differs curiously in character from all +his other poetical works, only once--in 1797. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 12. _To Charles Lloyd._ + +Lamb copied these lines in a letter to Coleridge on January 18, 1797, +remarking:--"You have learned by this time, with surprise, no doubt, +that Lloyd is with me in town. The emotions I felt on his coming so +unlooked for are not ill expressed in what follows, and what if you do +not object to them as too personal, and to the world obscure, or +otherwise wanting in worth I should wish to make a part of our little +volume." + +It must be remembered, in reading the poem, that Lamb was still in the +shadow of the tragedy in which he lost his mother, and, for a while, his +sister, and which had ruined his home. For other lines to Charles Lloyd +see page 21. This poem was printed by Lamb twice--in 1797 and 1818. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 13. _A Vision of Repentance_. + +Writing to Coleridge on June 13, 1797, Lamb says of this Spenserian +exercise:--"You speak slightingly. Surely the longer stanzas were pretty +tolerable; at least there was one good line in it [line 5]: + +"Thick-shaded trees, with dark green leaf rich clad. + +To adopt your own expression, I call this a 'rich' line, a fine full +line. And some others I thought even beautiful." Lamb printed the poem +twice--in 1797 and 1818. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 16. POEMS WRITTEN IN THE YEARS 1795-1798, AND NOT REPRINTED BY LAMB. + + +Page 16. _Sonnet: The Lord of Life shakes off his drowsihed_. + +The _Monthly Magazine_, December, 1797. Signed Charles Lamb. + +Lamb sent the first draft of this sonnet to Coleridge in 1796, saying +that it was composed "during a walk down into Hertfordshire early in +last Summer." "The last line," he adds, "is a copy of Bowles's 'to the +green hamlet in the peaceful plain.' Your ears are not so very +fastidious--many people would not like words so prosaic and familiar in +a sonnet as Islington and Hertfordshire." We must take Lamb's word for +it; but the late W.J. Craig found for the last line a nearer parallel +than Bowles'. In William Vallans' "Tale of the Two Swannes" (1590), +which is quoted in Leland's Itinerary, Hearne's edition, is the phrase: +"The fruitful fields of pleasant Hertfordshire." Lamb quotes his own +line in the _Elia_ essay "My Relations." + +This sonnet is perhaps the only occasion on which Lamb, even in play, +wrote anything against his beloved city. + +It may be noted here that this was Lamb's last contribution to the +_Monthly Magazine_, which had printed in the preceding number, November, +1797, Coleridge's satirical sonnets, signed Nehemiah Higginbottom, in +which Lamb and Lloyd were ridiculed, and which had perhaps some bearing +on the coolness that for a while was to subsist between Coleridge and +Lamb (see _Charles Lamb and the Lloyds_, 1898, pages 44-47). + + +Page 16. _To the Poet Cowper_. + +The _Monthly Magazine_, December, 1796. Signed C. Lamb. + +Lamb wrote these lines certainly as early as July, 1796, for he sends +them to Coleridge on the 6th of that month, adding:-- + +"I fear you will not accord entirely with my sentiments of Cowper, as +_exprest_ above, (perhaps scarcely just), but the poor Gentleman has +just recovered from his Lunacies, and that begets pity, and pity love, +and love admiration, and then it goes hard with People but they lie!" + +Lamb admired Cowper greatly in those days--particularly his "Crazy Kate" +("Task," Book I., 534-556). "I have been reading 'The Task' with fresh +delight," he says on December 5, 1796. "I am glad you love Cowper. I +could forgive a man for not enjoying Milton, but I would not call that +man my friend, who should be offended with the 'divine chit-chat of +Cowper.'" And again a little later, "I do so love him." + + +Page 17. _Lines addressed, from London, to Sara and S.T.C. at Bristol, +in the Summer of 1796._ + +_The Monthly Magazine,_ January, 1797. Signed Charles Lamb. + +Lamb sent the lines in their original state to Coleridge in the letter +of July 5, 1796, immediately before the words "_Let us prose,_" at the +head of that document as it is now preserved. + +"Another minstrel" was Coleridge. Chatterton was the mysterious youth of +line 16. Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770) was baptised at St. Mary +Redcliffe, Bristol; he was the nephew of the sexton; he brooded for many +hours a day in the church; he copied his antique writing from the +parchment in its muniment room; one of his later dreams was to be able +to build a new spire; and a cenotaph to his memory was erected by public +subscription in 1840 near the north-east angle of the churchyard. +Chatterton went to London on April 24, 1770, aged seventeen and a half, +and died there by his own hand on August 25 of the same year. + +The poem originated in an invitation to Lamb from the Coleridges at +Bristol, which he hoped to be able to accept; but to his request for the +necessary holiday from the India House came refusal. Lamb went to Nether +Stowey, however, in the following summer and met Wordsworth there. + +Lamb at one time wished these lines to be included among his poems in +the second edition of Coleridge's _Poems_, 1797. Writing on January 18, +1797, Lamb says: "I shall be sorry if that volume comes out, as it +necessarily must do, unless you print those very school boyish verses I +sent you on not getting leave to come down to Bristol last summer." At +the end of the letter he adds: "Yet I should feel ashamed that to you I +wrote nothing better. But they are too personal, almost trifling and +obscure withal." + + + * * * * * + + +Page 18. _Sonnet to a Friend._ + +The _Monthly Magazine,_ October, 1797. Signed Charles Lamb. + +Lamb sent this sonnet to Coleridge on January 2, 1797, remarking: "If +the fraternal sentiment conveyed in the following lines will atone for +the total want of any thing like merit or genius in it, I desire you +will print it next after my other Sonnet to my Sister." The other sonnet +was, "If from my lips some peevish accents fall," printed with +Coleridge's _Poems_ in 1797 (see page 9), concerning which book Lamb was +writing in the above letter. Coleridge apparently decided against the +present sonnet, for it was not printed in that book. + +Writing to Coleridge again a week later concerning the present poem, +Lamb said:-- + +"I am aware of the unpoetical caste of the 6 last lines of my last +sonnet, and think myself unwarranted in smuggling so tame a thing into +the book; only the sentiments of those 6 lines are thoroughly congenial +to me in my state of mind, and I wish to accumulate perpetuating tokens +of my affection to poor Mary." + +It has to be borne in mind that only three months had elapsed since the +death of Mrs. Lamb, and Mary was still in confinement. + + +Page 18. _To a Young Lady_. Signed C.L. + +_Monthly Magazine_, March, 1797, afterwards copied into the _Poetical +Register_ for 1803, signed C.L. in both cases. We know these to be +Lamb's from a letter to Coleridge of December 5, 1796. The identity of +the young lady is not now known. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 19. _Living without God in the World._ + +The _Annual Anthology,_ Vol. I., 1799. + +Vol. I. of the _Annual Anthology_, edited by Southey for Joseph Cottle, +was issued in September, 1799; and that was, I believe, this poem's +first appearance as a whole. Early in 1799, however, Charles Lloyd had +issued a pamphlet entitled _Lines suggested by the Fast appointed on +Wednesday, February 27, 1799_ (Birmingham, 1799), in which, in a note, +he quotes a passage from Lamb's poem, beginning, "some braver spirits" +(line 23), and ending, "prey on carcasses" (line 36), with the prefatory +remark: "I am happy in the opportunity afforded me of introducing the +following striking extract from some lines, intended as a satire on the +Godwinian jargon." + +Writing to Southey concerning this poem, Lamb says:-"I can have no +objection to you printing 'Mystery of God' [afterwards called 'Living +without God in the World'] with my name, and all due acknowledgments for +the honour and favour of the communication: indeed, 'tis a poem that can +dishonour no name. Now, that is in the true strain of modern modesto +vanitas." + + + * * * * * + + +Page 21. _BLANK VERSE_, BY CHARLES LLOYD AND CHARLES LAMB, 1798. + +Charles Lloyd left Coleridge early in 1797, and was in the winter +1797-1798 living in London, sharing lodgings with James White (Lamb's +friend and the author of _Original Letters, etc., of Sir John Falstaff_, +1796). It was then that the joint production of this volume was entered +upon. Of the seven poems contributed by Lamb only "The Old Familiar +Faces" (shorn of one stanza) and the lines "Composed at Midnight" were +reprinted by him: on account, it may be assumed, of his wish not to +revive in his sister, who would naturally read all that he published, +any painful recollections. Not that she refused in after years to speak +of her mother, but Lamb was, I think, sensitive for her and for himself +and the family too. As a matter of fact the circumstances of Mrs. Lamb's +death were known only to a very few of the Lambs' friends until after +Charles' death. It must be remembered that when _Blank Verse_ was +originally published, in 1798, Mary Lamb was still living apart, nor was +it known that she, would ever be herself again. + +It was this little volume which gave Gillray an opportunity for +introducing Lamb and Lloyd into his cartoon "The New Morality," +published in the first number of _The Anti-Jacobin Review and Magazine_ +(which succeeded Canning's _Anti-Jacobin_), August 1, 1798. Canning's +lines, "The New Morality," had been published in _The Anti-Jacobin_ on +July 9, 1798, containing the couplets:-- + + And ye five other wandering Bards that move + In sweet accord of harmony and love, + C----dge and S--th--y, L----d, and L----be and Co., + Tune all your mystic harps to praise Lepaux! + +In the picture Gillray introduced "Coleridge" as a donkey offering a +volume of "Dactylics," and Southey as another donkey, flourishing a +volume of "Saphics." Behind them, seated side by side, poring over a +manuscript entitled "Blank Verse, by Toad and Frog," are a toad and frog +which the Key states to be Lloyd and Lamb. It was in reference to this +picture that Godwin, on first meeting Lamb, asked him, "Pray, Mr. Lamb, +are you toad or frog?" + + +Page 21. _To Charles Lloyd._ + +_The Monthly Magazine_, October, 1797. Signed. + +Lamb sent these lines to Coleridge in September, 1797, remarking: "The +following I wrote when I had returned from Charles Lloyd, leaving him +behind at Burton, with Southey. To understand some of it you must +remember that at that time he was very much perplexed in mind." Lloyd +throughout his life was given to religious speculations which now and +then disturbed his mind to an alarming extent, affecting him not unlike +the gloomy forebodings and fears that beset Cowper. On this particular +occasion he was in difficulty also as to his engagement with Sophia +Pemberton, with whom he was meditating elopement and a Scotch marriage. + + +Page 21. _Written on the Day of my Aunt's Funeral._ + +"This afternoon," Lamb wrote to Coleridge on February 13, 1797, "I +attend the funeral of my poor old aunt, who died on Thursday. I own I am +thankful that the good creature has ended all her days of suffering and +infirmity. She was to me the 'cherisher of infancy.' ..." Lamb's Aunt +Hetty was his father's sister. Her real name was Sarah Lamb. All that we +know of her is found in this poem, in the _Letters_, in the passages in +"Christ's Hospital Five and Thirty Years Ago," and "My Relations;" in +the story of "The Witch Aunt," in _Mrs. Leicester's School_, and in a +reference in one of Mary Lamb's letters to Sarah Stoddart, where, +writing of her aunt and her mother,--"the best creatures in the +world,"--she speaks of Miss Lamb as being "as unlike a gentlewoman as +you can possibly imagine a good old woman to be;" contrasting her with +Mrs. Lamb, "a perfect gentlewoman." The description in "The Witch Aunt" +bears out Mary Lamb's letter. + +After the tragedy of September, 1796, Aunt Hetty was taken into the +house of a rich relative. This lady, however, seems to have been of too +selfish and jealous a disposition (see Lamb's letter to Coleridge, +December 9, 1796) to exert any real effort to make her guest comfortable +or happy. Hence Aunt Hetty returned to her nephew. + +"My poor old aunt [Lamb wrote to Coleridge on January 5, 1797], whom you +have seen, the kindest, goodest creature to me when I was at school; who +used to toddle there to bring me fag [food], when I, school-boy like, +only despised her for it, and used to be ashamed to see her come and sit +herself down on the old coal-hole steps as you went into the old +grammar-school, opend her apron, and bring out her bason with some nice +thing she had caused to be saved for me--the good old creature is now +lying on her death bed.... She says, poor thing, she is glad to come +home to die with me. I was always her favourite." + +Line 24. _One parent yet is left_. John Lamb, who is described as he was +in his prime, as Lovel, in the _Elia_ essay on _"The Old Benchers of the +Inner Temple,"_ died in 1799. + +Line 27. _A semblance most forlorn of what he was_. Lamb uses this line +as a quotation, slightly altered, in his account of Lovel. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 22. _Written a Year after the Events_. + +Lamb sent this poem to Coleridge in September, 1797, entitling it +"Written a Twelvemonth after the Events," and adding, "Friday next, +Coleridge, is the day on which my Mother died." Mrs. Lamb's death, at +the hands of her daughter in a moment of frenzy, occurred on September +22, 1796. Lamb added that he wrote the poem at the office with "unusual +celerity." "I expect you to like it better than anything of mine; Lloyd +does, and I do myself." The version sent to Coleridge differs only in +minor and unimportant points from that in _Blank Verse_. + +The second paragraph of the poem is very similar to a passage which Lamb +had written in a letter to Coleridge on November 14, 1796:-- + +"Oh, my friend! I think sometimes, could I recall the days that are +past, which among them should I choose? not those 'merrier days,' not +the 'pleasant days of hope,' not 'those wanderings with a fair-hair'd +maid,' which I have so often and so feelingly regretted, but the days, +Coleridge, of a _mother's_ fondness for her _school-boy_. What would I +give to call her back to earth for _one_ day!--on my knees to ask her +pardon for all those little asperities of temper which, from time to +time, have given her gentle spirit pain!--and the day, my friend, I +trust, will come. There will be 'time enough' for kind offices of love, +if 'Heaven's eternal year' be ours. Here-after, her meek spirit shall +not reproach me." + +In the last paragraph of the poem is a hint of "The Old Familiar Faces," +that was to follow it in the course of a few months. + +Lines 52, 53. _And one, above the rest_. Probably Coleridge is meant. + + +Page 24. _Written soon after the Preceding Poem_. + +The poem is addressed to Lamb's mother. Lamb seems to have sent a copy +to Southey, although the letter containing it has not been perserved, +for we find Southey passing it on to his friend C.W.W. Wynn on November +29, 1797, with a commendation: "I know that our tastes differ much in +poetry, and yet I think you must like these lines by Charles Lamb." + +The following passage in Rosamund Gray, which Lamb was writing at this +time, is curiously like these poems in tone. It occurs in one of the +letters from Elinor Clare to her friend--letters in which Lamb seems to +describe sometimes his own feelings, and sometimes those of his sister, +on their great sorrow:-- + +"Maria! shall not the meeting of blessed spirits, think you, be +something like this?--I think, I could even now behold my mother without +dread--I would ask pardon of her for all my past omissions of duty, for +all the little asperities in my temper, which have so often grieved her +gentle spirit when living. Maria! I think she would not turn away from +me. + +"Oftentimes a feeling, more vivid than memory, brings her before me--I +see her sit in her old elbow chair--her arms folded upon her lap--a tear +upon her cheek, that seems to upbraid her unkind daughter for some +inattention--I wipe it away and kiss her honored lips. + +"Maria! when I have been fancying all this, Allan will come in, with his +poor eyes red with weeping, and taking me by the hand, destroy the +vision in a moment. + +"I am prating to you, my sweet cousin, but it is the prattle of the +heart, which Maria loves. Besides, whom have I to talk to of these +things but you--you have been my counsellor in times past, my companion, +and sweet familiar friend. Bear with me a little--I mourn the +'cherishers of my infancy.'" + + + * * * * * + + +Page 25. _Written on Christmas Day, 1797_. + +Mary Lamb, to whom these lines were addressed, after seeming to be on +the road to perfect recovery, had suddenly had a relapse necessitating a +return to confinement from the lodging in which her brother had placed +her. + + +Page 25. _The Old Familiar Faces_. + +This, the best known of all Lamb's poems, was written in January, 1798, +following, it is suggested, upon a fit of resentment against Charles +Lloyd. Writing to Coleridge in that month Lamb tells of that little +difference, adding, "but he has forgiven me." Mr. J.A. Rutter, who, +through Canon Ainger, enunciated this theory, thinks that Lloyd may be +the "friend" of the fourth stanza, and Coleridge the "friend" of the +sixth. The old--but untenable--supposition was that it was Coleridge +whom Lamb had left abruptly. On the other hand it might possibly have +been James White, especially as he was of a resolutely high-spirited +disposition. + +In its 1798 form the poem began with this stanza:-- + + Where are they gone, the old familiar faces? + I had a mother, but she died, and left me, + Died prematurely in a day of horrors-- + All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. + +And the last stanza began with the word "For," and italicised the words + +_And some are taken from me_. + +I am inclined to think from this italicisation that it was Mary Lamb's +new seizure that was the real impulse of the poem. + +The poem was dated January, 1798. Lamb printed it twice--in 1798 and +1818. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 26. _Composed at Midnight_. + +On the appearance of Lamb's _Works_, 1818, Leigh Hunt printed in _The +Examiner_ (February 7 and 8, 1819) the passage beginning with line 32, +entitling it "A HINT to the GREATER CRIMINALS who are so fond of +declaiming against the crimes of the poor and uneducated, and in favour +of the torments of prisons and prison-ships in this world, and worse in +the next. Such a one, says the poet, + + 'on his couch + Lolling, &c.'" + + + * * * * * + + +Page 28. POEMS AT THE END OF JOHN WOODVIL, 1802. + +The volume containing _John Woodvil_, 1802, which is placed in the +present edition among Lamb's plays, on page 149, included also the +"Fragments of Burton" (see Vol. I.) and two lyrics. + + +Page 28. _Helen_. + +Lamb sent this poem to Coleridge on August 26, 1800, remarking:--"How do +you like this little epigram? It is not my writing, nor had I any finger +in it. If you concur with me in thinking it very elegant and very +original, I shall be tempted to name the author to you. I will just hint +that it is almost or quite a first attempt." + +The author was, of course, Mary Lamb. In his _Elia_ essay "Blakesmoor in +H----shire" in the _London Magazine_, September, 1824, Lamb quoted the +poem, stating that "Bridget took the hint" of her "pretty whimsical +lines" from a portrait of one of the Plumers' ancestors. The portrait +was the cool pastoral beauty with a lamb, and it was partly to make fun +of her brother's passion for the picture that Mary wrote the lines. + +The poem was reprinted in the _Works_, 1818. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 29. _Ballad from the German_. + +This poem was written for Coleridge's translation of "The Piccolimini," +the first part of Schiller's "Wallenstein," in 1800--Coleridge supplying +a prose paraphrase (for Lamb knew no German) for the purpose. The +original is Thekla's song in Act II., Scene 6:-- + + Der Eichwald brauset, die Wolken ziehn, + Das Mägdlein wandelt an Ufers Grün, + Es bricht sich die Welle mit Macht, mit Macht, + Und sie singt hinaus in die finstre Nacht, + Das Auge von Weinen getrübet. + Das Herz ist gestorben, die Welt ist leer, + Und welter giebt sie dem Wunsche nichts mehr. + Du Heilige, rufe dein Kind zurück, + Ich habe genossen das irdische Glück, + Ich habe gelebt und geliebet. + +Coleridge's own translation of Thekla's song, which was printed alone in +later editions of the play, ran thus:-- + + The cloud doth gather, the greenwood roar, + The damsel paces along the shore; + The billows they tumble with might, with might; + And she flings out her voice to the darksome night; + Her bosom is swelling with sorrow; + The world it is empty, the heart will die, + There's nothing to wish for beneath the sky: + Thou Holy One, call thy child away! + I've lived and loved, and that was to-day-- + Make ready my grave-clothes to-morrow. + +Barry Cornwall, in his memoir of Lamb, says: "Lamb used to boast that he +supplied one line to his friend in the fourth scene [Act IV., Scene i] +of that tragedy, where the description of the Pagan deities occurs. In +speaking of Saturn, he is figured as 'an old man melancholy.' 'That was +my line,' Lamb would say, exultingly." The line did not reach print in +this form. + +Lamb printed his translation twice--in 1802 and 1818. + + +Page 29. _Hypochondriacus_. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 30. _A Ballad Noting the Difference of Rich and Poor_. + +These two poems formed, in the _John Woodvil_ volume, 1802, portions of +the "Fragments of Burton," which will be found in Vol. I. Lamb +afterwards took out these poems and printed them separately in the +Works, 1818, in the form here given. Originally "Hypochondriacus" formed +Extract III. of the "Fragments," under the title "A Conceipt of +Diabolical Possession." The body of the verses differed very slightly +from the present state; but at the end the prayer ran: "_Jesu Mariae! +libera nos ab his tentationibus, oral, implorat, R.B. Peccator_"--R.B. +standing for Robert Burton, the anatomist of melancholy, the professed +author of the poem. + +"The Old and Young Courtier" may be found in the _Percy Reliques_. Lamb +copied it into one of his Commonplace Books. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 32. THE _WORKS_ OF CHARLES LAMB, 1818. + +This book, in two volumes, was published by C. & J. Ollier in 1818: the +first volume containing the dedication to Coleridge that is here printed +on page 1, all of Lamb's poetry that he then wished to preserve, "John +Woodvil," "The Witch," the "Fragments of Burton," "Rosamund Gray" and +"Recollections of Christ's Hospital;" the second volume, dedicated to +Martin Charles Burney in the sonnet on page 45, containing criticisms, +essays and "Mr. H." + +The scheme of the present volume makes it impossible to keep together +the poetical portion of Lamb's _Works_. In order, however, to present +clearly to the reader Lamb's mature selection, in 1818, of the poetry by +which he wished to be known, I have indicated the position in his +_Works_ of those poems that have already been printed on earlier pages. + + +Page 32. _Hester_. + +Lamb sent this poem to Manning in March, 1803--"I send you some verses I +have made on the death of a young Quaker you may have heard me speak of +as being in love with for some years while I lived at Pentonville, +though I had never spoken to her in my life. She died about a month +since." + +Hester Savory was the daughter of Joseph Savory, a goldsmith in the +Strand. She was born in 1777 and was thus by two years Lamb's junior. +She married, in July, 1802, Charles Stoke Dudley, a merchant, and she +died in February of the following year, and was buried at Bunhill +Fields. Lamb was living in Pentonville from the end of 1796 until 1799. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 33. _Dialogue between a Mother and Child._ By Mary Lamb. + +Charles Lamb, writing to Dorothy Wordsworth on June 2, 1804, says: "I +send you two little copies of verses by Mary L--b." Then follow this +"Dialogue" and the "Lady Blanch" verses on page 41. Lamb adds at the +end: "I wish they may please you: we in these parts are not a little +proud of them." + + + * * * * * + + +Page 34. _A Farewell to Tobacco._ + +First printed in _The Reflector_, No. IV., 1811. + +Lamb had begun to think poetically of tobacco as early as 1803. Writing +to Coleridge in April 13 of that year, he says:--"What do you think of +smoking? I want your sober, _average, noon opinion_ of it. I generally +am eating my dinner about the time I should determine it. Morning is a +girl, and can't smoke--she's no evidence one way or the other; and Night +is so [? evidently] _bought over_, that he can't be a very upright +judge. May be the truth is, that _one_ pipe is wholesome; _two_ pipes +toothsome; _three_ pipes noisome; _four_ pipes fulsome; _five_ pipes +quarrelsome; and that's the _sum_ on't. But that is deciding rather upon +rhyme than reason." + +Writing to William and Dorothy Wordsworth on September 28, 1805, Lamb +remarked regarding his literary plans:--"Sometimes I think of a +farce--but hitherto all schemes have gone off,--an idle brag or two of +an evening vaporing out of a pipe, and going off in the morning--but now +I have bid farewell to my 'Sweet Enemy' Tobacco, as you will see in my +next page, I perhaps shall set soberly to work. Hang work!" + +On the next page Lamb copied the "Farewell to Tobacco," adding:--"I wish +you may think this a handsome farewell to my 'Friendly Traitress.' +Tobacco has been my evening comfort and my morning curse for these five +years: and you know how difficult it is from refraining to pick one's +lips even when it has become a habit. This Poem is the only one which I +have finished since so long as when I wrote 'Hester Savory' [in March, +1803].... The 'Tobacco,' being a little in the way of Withers (whom +Southey so much likes), perhaps you will somehow convey it to him with +my kind remembrances." + +Mr. Bertram Dobell has a MS. copy of the poem, in Lamb's hand, inscribed +thus: "To his _quondam_ Brethren of the Pipe, Capt. B[urney], and J[ohn] +R[ickman], Esq., the Author dedicates this his last Farewell to +Tobacco." At the end is a rude drawing of a pipe broken--"My Emblem." + +It is perhaps hardly needful to say that Lamb's farewell was not final. +He did not give up smoking for many years. When asked (Talfourd's +version of the story says by Dr. Parr) how he was able to emit such +volumes of smoke, he replied, "I toiled after it, sir, as some men toil +after virtue;" and Macready records having heard Lamb express the wish +to draw his last breath through a pipe and exhale it in a pun. Talfourd +says that in late life Lamb ceased to smoke except very occasionally. +But the late Mrs. Coe, who knew Lamb at Widford when she was a child, +told me that she remembered Lamb's black pipe and his devotion to it, +about 1830. + +In his character sketch of the late Elia (see Vol. II.), written in +1822, Lamb describes the effect of tobacco upon himself. "He took it, he +would say, as a solvent of speech. Marry--as the friendly vapour +ascended, how his prattle would curl up sometimes with it! the +ligaments, which tongue-tied him, were loosened, and the stammerer +proceeded a statist!" + + + * * * * * + + +Page 38. _To T.L.H_. + +First printed in _The Examiner_, January 1, 1815. + +The lines are to Thornton Leigh Hunt, Leigh Hunt's little boy, who was +born in 1810, and, during his father's imprisonment for a libel on the +Regent from February, 1813, to February, 1815, was much in the Surrey +gaol. Lamb, who was among Hunt's constant visitors, probably first saw +him there. Lamb mentions him again in his _Elia_ essay "Witches and +other Night Fears." See also note to the "Letter to Southey," Vol. I. +Thornton Leigh Hunt became a journalist, and held an important post on +the _Daily Telegraph_. He died in 1873. + +When printed in Leigh Hunt's _Examiner_, signed C.L., the poem had +these prefatory words by the editor:-- + + The following piece perhaps we had some personal reasons for not + admitting, but we found more for the contrary; and could not resist + the pleasure of contemplating together the author and the object of his + address,--to one of whom the Editor is owing for some of the lightest + hours of his captivity, and to the other for a main part of its continual + solace. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 41. _Lines Suggested by a Picture of Two Females by Lionardo da +Vinci_. By Mary Lamb. + +This was the "Lady Blanch" poem which Lamb sent to Dorothy Wordsworth in +the letter of June 2, 1804 (see page 325). There it was entitled +"Suggested by a Print of 2 Females, after Lionardo da Vinci, called +Prudence and Beauty, which hangs up in our room." The usual title is +"Modesty and Vanity." + + +Page 41. _Lines on the Same Picture being Removed to make Place for a +Portrait of a Lady by Titian_. By Mary Lamb. + +Writing to Dorothy Wordsworth on June 14, 1805, Lamb says: "You had her +[Mary's] Lines about the 'Lady Blanch.' You have not had some which she +wrote upon a copy of a girl from Titian, which I had hung up where that +print of Blanch and the Abbess (as she beautifully interpreted two +female figures from L. da Vinci) had hung, in our room. 'Tis light and +pretty." + + + * * * * * + + +Page 42. _Lines on the Celebrated Picture by Lionardo da Vinci, called +The Virgin of the Rocks_. + +This was the picture, one version of which hangs in the National +Gallery, that was known to Lamb's friends as his "Beauty," and which led +to the Scotchman's mistake in the _Elia_ essay "Imperfect Sympathies." + + +Page 42. _On the Same_. By Mary Lamb. + +In the letter to Dorothy Wordsworth of June 14, 1805, quoted just above, +Lamb says: "I cannot resist transcribing three or four Lines which poor +Mary [she was at this time away from home in one of her enforced +absences] made upon a Picture (a Holy Family) which we saw at an Auction +only one week before she left home.... They are sweet Lines, and upon a +sweet Picture." + +Mary Lamb wrote little verse besides the _Poetry for Children_ (see +Vol. III. of this edition). To the pieces that are printed in the +present volume I would add the lines suggested by the death of Captain +John Wordsworth, the poet's brother, in the foundering of the +_Abergavenny_ in February, 1805, when Coleridge was in Malta, which were +sent by Mary Lamb to Dorothy Wordsworth, May 7, 1805:-- + + Why is he wandering on the sea? + Coleridge should now with Wordsworth be. + By slow degrees he'd steal away + Their woe, and gently bring a ray + (So happily he'd time relief) + Of comfort from their very grief. + He'd tell them that their brother dead, + When years have passed o'er their head, + Will be remember'd with such holy, + True, and perfect melancholy, + That ever this lost brother John + Will be their hearts' companion. + His voice they'll always hear, his face they'll always see; + There's nought in life so sweet as such a memory. + + + * * * * * + + +SONNETS + + +Page 43. _To Miss Kelly_. + +Frances Maria Kelly (1790-1882)--or Fanny Kelly, as she was usually +called--was Lamb's favourite actress of his middle and later life and a +personal friend of himself and his sister: so close that Lamb proposed +marriage to her. See Lamb's criticisms of Miss Kelly's acting in Vol. +I., and notes. Another sonnet addressed by Lamb to Miss Kelly will be +found on page 59 of the present volume. + + +Page 43. _On the Sight of Swans in Kensington Garden_. This is, I think, +Lamb's only poem the inspiration of which was drawn from nature. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 44. _The Family Name_. + +John Lamb, Charles's father, came from Lincoln. A recollection of his +boyhood there is given in the _Elia_ essay "Poor Relations." The +"stream" seems completely to have ended with Charles Lamb and his sister +Mary: at least, research has yielded no descendants. + +Crabb Robinson visited Goethe in the summer of 1829. The _Diary_ has +this entry: "I inquired whether he knew the name of Lamb. 'Oh, yes! Did +he not write a pretty sonnet on his own name?' Charles Lamb, though he +always affected contempt for Goethe, yet was manifestly pleased that his +name was known to him." + +In the little memoir of Lamb prefixed by M. Amédée Pichot to a French +edition of the _Tales from Shakespeare_ in 1842 the following +translation of this sonnet is given:-- + + MON NOM DE FAMILLE + + Dis-moi, d'où nous viens-tu, nom pacifique et doux, + Nom transmis sans reproche?... A qui te devons-nous, + Nom qui meurs avec moi? mon glason de poëte + A l'aïeul de mon père obscurément s'arrête. + --Peut-être nous viens-tu d'un timide pasteur, + Doux comme ses agneaux, raillé pour sa douceur. + Mais peut-être qu'aussi, moins commune origine, + Nous viens-tu d'un héros, d'un pieux paladin, + Qui croyant honorer ainsi l'Agneau divin, + Te prit en revenant des champs de Palestine. + Mais qu'importe après tout ... qu'il soit illustre ou non, + Je ne ferai jamais une tache à ce nom. + + +Page 44. _To John Lamb, Esq._ + +John Lamb, Charles's brother, was born in 1763 and was thus by twelve +years his senior. At the time this poem appeared, in 1818, he was +accountant of the South-Sea House. He died on October 26, 1821 (see the +_Elia_ essays "My Relations" and "Dream Children"). + + + * * * * * + + +Page 45. _To Martin Charles Burney, Esq._ + +Lamb prefixed this sonnet to Vol. II. of his _Works_, 1818. In Vol. I. +he had placed the dedication to Coleridge which we have already seen. +Martin Charles Burney was the son of Rear-Admiral James Burney, Lamb's +old friend, and nephew of Madame d'Arblay. He was a barrister by +profession; dabbled a little in authorship; was very quaint in some of +his ways and given to curiously intense and sudden enthusiasms; and was +devoted to Mary Lamb and her brother. When these two were at work on +their _Tales from Shakespear_ Martin Burney would sit with them and +attempt to write for children too. Lamb's letter of May 24, 1830, to +Sarah Hazlitt has some amusing stories of his friend, at whom (like +George Dyer) he could laugh as well as love. Lamb speaks of him on one +occasion as on the top round of his ladder of friendship. Writing to +Sarah Hazlitt, Lamb says:--"Martin Burney is as good, and as odd as +ever. We had a dispute about the word 'heir,' which I contended was +pronounced like 'air'; he said that might be in common parlance; or that +we might so use it, speaking of the 'Heir at Law,' a comedy; but that in +the law courts it was necessary to give it a full aspiration, and to say +_hayer_; he thought it might even vitiate a cause, if a counsel +pronounced it otherwise. In conclusion, he 'would consult Serjeant +Wilde,' who gave it against him. Sometimes he falleth into the water; +sometimes into the fire. He came down here, and insisted on reading +Virgil's 'Eneid' all through with me (which he did), because a Counsel +must know Latin. Another time he read out all the Gospel of St. John, +because Biblical quotations are very emphatic in a Court of Justice. A +third time, he would carve a fowl, which he did very ill-favouredly, +because 'we did not know how indispensable it was for a barrister to do +all those sort of things well? Those little things were of more +consequence than we supposed.' So he goes on, harassing about the way to +prosperity, and losing it. With a long head, but somewhat a wrong +one----harum-scarum. Why does not his guardian angel look to him? He +deserves one: may be, he has tired him out." + +Martin Burney, of whom another glimpse is caught in the _Elia_ essay +"Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading," died in 1860. At Mary Lamb's +funeral he was inconsolable. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 46. CHARLES LAMB'S _ALBUM VERSES_, 1830. + +The publication of this volume, in 1830, was due more to Lamb's kindness +of heart than to any desire to come before the world again as a poet. +But Edward Moxon, Lamb's young friend, was just starting his publishing +business, with Samuel Rogers as a financial patron; and Lamb, who had +long been his chief literary adviser, could not well refuse the request +to help him with a new book. _Album Verses_ became thus the first of the +many notable books of poetry which Moxon was to issue between 1830 and +1858, the year of his death. Among them Tennyson's _Poems_, 1833 and +1842; _The Princess_, 1847; _In Memoriam_, 1850; _Maud_, 1855; and +Browning's _Sordello_, 1840, and _Bells and Pomegranates_, 1843-1846. + +The dedication of _Album Verses_ tells the story of its being:-- + +"DEDICATION + +"TO THE PUBLISHER + +"DEAR MOXON, + +"I do not know to whom a Dedication of these Trifles is more properly +due than to yourself. You suggested the printing of them. You were +desirous of exhibiting a specimen of the _manner_ in which Publications, +entrusted to your future care, would appear. With more propriety, +perhaps, the 'Christmas,' or some other of your own simple, unpretending +Compositions, might have served this purpose. But I forget--you have bid +a long adieu to the Muses. I had on my hands sundry Copies of Verses +written for _Albums_-- + + "Those Books kept by modern young Ladies for show, + Of which their plain grandmothers nothing did know-- + +"or otherwise floating about in Periodicals; which you have chosen in +this manner to embody. I feel little interest in their publication. They +are simply--_Advertisement Verses_. + +"It is not for me, nor you, to allude in public to the kindness of our +honoured Friend, under whose auspices you are become a Bookseller. May +that fine-minded Veteran in Verse enjoy life long enough to see his +patronage justified! I venture to predict that your habits of industry, +and your cheerful spirit, will carry you through the world. + +"I am, Dear Moxon, + +"Your Friend and sincere Well-wisher, CHARLES LAMB. + +"ENFIELD, _1st June, 1830_." + +The reference to "Christmas" is to Moxon's poem of that name, published +in 1829, and dedicated to Lamb.--The couplet concerning Albums is from +one of Lamb's own pieces (see page 104).--The Veteran in Verse was +Samuel Rogers, who, then sixty-seven, lived yet another twenty-five +years. Moxon published the superb editions of his _Italy_ and his +_Poems_ illustrated by Turner and Stothard. + +Lamb's motives in issuing _Album Verses_ were cruelly misunderstood by +the _Literary Gazette_ (edited by William Jerdan). In the number for +July 10, 1830, was printed a contemptuous review beginning with this +passage:-- + + If any thing could prevent our laughing at the present collection of + absurdities, it would be a lamentable conviction of the blinding and + engrossing nature of vanity. We could forgive the folly of the original + composition, but cannot but marvel at the egotism which has preserved, + and the conceit which has published. + +Lamb himself probably was not much disturbed by Jerdan's venom, but +Southey took it much to heart, and a few weeks later sent to _The Times_ +(of August 6, 1830) the following lines in praise of his friend:-- + + TO CHARLES LAMB + + On the Reviewal of his _Album Verses_ in the _Literary Gazette_. + + Charles Lamb, to those who know thee justly dear, + For rarest genius, and for sterling worth, + Unchanging friendship, warmth of heart sincere, + And wit that never gave an ill thought birth, + Nor ever in its sport infix'd a sting; + To us who have admired and loved thee long, + It is a proud as well as pleasant thing + To hear thy good report, now borne along + Upon the honest breath of public praise: + We know that with the elder sons of song, + In honouring whom thou hast delighted still, + Thy name shall keep its course to after days. + The empty pertness, and the vulgar wrong, + The flippant folly, the malicious will, + Which have assailed thee, now, or heretofore, + Find, soon or late, their proper meed of shame; + The more thy triumph, and our pride the more, + When witling critics to the world proclaim, + In lead, their own dolt incapacity. + Matter it is of mirthful memory + To think, when thou wert early in the field, + How doughtily small Jeffrey ran at thee + A-tilt, and broke a bulrush on thy shield. + And now, a veteran in the lists of fame, + I ween, old Friend! thou art not worse bested + When with a maudlin eye and drunken aim, + Dulness hath thrown a _jerdan_ at thy head. + + SOUTHEY. + +This was, I think, Southey's first public utterance concerning Lamb +since Lamb's famous open letter to him of October, 1823 (see Vol. I.). + +Lamb wrote to Bernard Barton in the same month: "How noble ... in R.S. +to come forward for an old friend who had treated him so unworthily," +For the critics, Lamb said in the same letter, he did not care the "five +hundred thousandth part of a half-farthing;" and we can believe him. On +page 123 will be found, however, an epigram on the _Literary Gazette_. + + + * * * * * + + +ALBUM VERSES + + +Page 46. _In the Album of a Clergyman's Lady._ + +This lady was probably Mrs. Williams, of Fornham, in Suffolk, in whose +house Lamb's adopted daughter, Emma Isola, lived as a governess in +1829-1830. The epitaph on page 65 and the acrostic on page 107 were +written for the same lady. + + +Page 46. _In the Autograph Book of Mrs. Sergeant W----._ + +Mrs. Sergeant Wilde, _née_ Wileman, was the first wife of Thomas Wilde, +afterwards Lord Truro (1782-1855), for whose election at Newark in 1831 +Lamb is said to have written facetious verses (see my large edition). +The Wildes were Lamb's neighbours at Enfield. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 47. _In the Album of Lucy Barton._ + +These lines were sent by Lamb to Lucy Barton's father, Bernard Barton, +the Quaker poet, in the letter of September 30, 1824. Lucy Barton, who +afterwards became the wife of Edward FitzGerald, the translator of Omar +Khayyam, lived until November 27, 1898. She retained her faculties +almost to the end, and in 1892 kindly wrote out for me her memory of a +visit paid with her father to the Lambs at Colebrook Row about 1825--a +little reminiscence first printed in _Bernard Barton and His Friends,_ +1893. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 48. _In the Album of Miss----._ + +This poem was first printed in _Blackwood's Magazine_, May, 1829, +entitled "For a Young Lady's Album." The identity of the young lady is +not now discoverable: probably a school friend of Emma Isola's. + + +Page 48. _In the Album of a very young Lady._ + +Josepha was a daughter of Mrs. Williams, of Fornham. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 49. _In the Album of a French Teacher._ + +First printed in _Blackwood's Magazine,_ June, 1829, entitled "For the +Album of: Miss----, French Teacher at Mrs. Gisborn's School, Enfield." +Page 49. _In the Album of Miss Daubeny._ + +Miss Daubeny was a schoolfellow of Emma Isola's, at Dulwich. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 50. _In the Album of Mrs. Jane Towers._ + +Charles Clarke--in line 7--was Charles Cowden Clarke (1787-1877), a +friend of the Lambs not only for his own sake, but for that of his wife, +Mary Victoria Novello, whom he married in 1828 and who died as recently +as 1898. Their _Recollections of Writers,_ 1878, have many interesting +reminiscences of Charles and Mary Lamb. Writing to Cowden Clarke on +February 25, 1828, Lamb says:--"I had a pleasant letter from your +sister, greatly over acknowledging my poor sonnet.... Alas for +sonnetting,'tis as the nerves are; all the summer I was dawdling among +green lanes, and verses came as thick as fancies. I am sunk winterly +below prose and zero." + +Mrs. Towers lived at Standerwick, in Somersetshire, and was fairly well +known in her day as a writer of books for children, _The Children's +Fireside,_ etc. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 50. _In my own Album._ + +This poem was first printed in _The Bijou,_ 1828, edited by William +Fraser, under the title "Verses for an Album." + + + * * * * * + + +MISCELLANEOUS + + +Page 51. _Angel Help._ + +This poem was first printed in the _New Monthly Magazine,_ 1827, with +trifling differences, and the addition, at the end, of this couplet:-- + + Virtuous Poor Ones, sleep, sleep on, + And, waking, find your labours done. + +I am afraid that the "Nonsense Verses" on page 123 represent an attempt +to make fun of this beautiful poem. + +Aders' house in Euston Square was hung with engravings principally of +the German school (see the poem on page 94 addressed to him). + + + * * * * * + + +Page 52. _The Christening._ + +These lines were first printed in _Blackwood's Magazine,_ May, 1829. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 53. _On an Infant Dying as soon as Born._ + +This poem was first printed in _The Gem,_ 1829. _The Gem_ was then +edited by Thomas Hood, whose child--his firstborn--it was thatinspired +the poem. Lamb sent the verses to Hood in May, 1827. + +This is, I think, in many ways Lamb's most remarkable poem. + +Hood's own poem on the same event, printed in _Memorials of Thomas +Hood_, by his daughter, 1860, has some of the grace and tenderness of +the Greek Anthology:-- + + Little eyes that scarce did see, + Little lips that never smiled; + Alas! my little dear dead child, + Death is thy father, and not me, + I but embraced thee, soon as he! + + + * * * * * + + +Page 55. _To Bernard Barton._ + +These lines were sent to Barton in 1827, together with the picture. On +June 11, Lamb wrote again:-- + +"DEAR B.B., + +"One word more of the picture verses, and that for good and all; pray, +with a neat pen alter one line-- + + "His learning seems to lay small stress on-- + +"to + + "His learning lays no mighty stress on, + +"to avoid the unseemly recurrence (ungrammatical also) of 'seems' in the +next line, besides the nonsense of 'but' there, as it now stands. And I +request you, as a personal favor to me, to erase the last line of all, +which I should never have written from myself. The fact is, it was a +silly joke of Hood's, who gave me the frame, (you judg'd rightly it was +not its own,) with the remark that you would like it because it was +b-----d b-----d [the last line in question was 'And broad brimmed, as +the owner's calling'] and I lugg'd it in: but I shall be quite hurt if +it stands, because tho' you and yours have too good sense to object to +it, I would not have a sentence of mine seen that to any foolish ear +might sound unrespectful to thee. Let it end at 'appalling.'" + +Line 1. _Woodbridge_. Barton lived at Woodbridge, in Suffolk, where he +was a clerk in the old Quaker bank of Dykes & Alexander. + +Line 15. _Ann Knight_. Ann Knight was a Quaker lady, also resident at +Woodbridge, who kept a small school there, and who had visited the Lambs +in London and greatly charmed them. + +Line 16. _Classic Mitford_. The Rev. John Mitford (1781-1859) was rector +of Benhall, in Suffolk, near Woodbridge, and a friend of Barton's, +through whom Lamb's acquaintance with him was carried on. Mitford edited +many poets, among them Vincent Bourne. He was editor of the _Gentleman's +Magazine_ from 1834 to 1850. + +Footnote. _Carrington Bowles_. Carington Bowles, 69 St. Paul's +Churchyard, was the publisher of this print, which was the work of the +elder Morland, and was engraved by Philip Dawe, father of Lamb's George +Dawe (see the essay "Recollections of a late Royal Academician," Vol. +I.). + +Lines 26, 27, 28. _Obstinate ... Banyan_. It was not Obstinate, but +Christian, who put his fingers in his ears (see the first pages of _The +Pilgrim's Progress_). Lamb had the same slip of memory in his paper "On +the Custom of Hissing at the Theatre" (Vol. I.). + + + * * * * * + + +Page 56. _The Young Catechist_. Lamb sent this poem to Barton in a +letter in 1827, wherein he tells the story of its inception:--"An artist +who painted me lately, had painted a Blackamoor praying, and not filling +his canvas, stuff'd in his little girl aside of Blacky, gaping at him +unmeaningly; and then didn't know what to call it. Now for a picture to +be promoted to the Exhibition (Suffolk Street) as Historical, a subject +is requisite. What does me. I but christen it the 'Young Catechist,' and +furbishd it with Dialogue following, which dubb'd it an Historical +Painting. Nothing to a friend at need.... When I'd done it the Artist +(who had clapt in Miss merely as a fill-space) swore I exprest his full +meaning, and the damsel bridled up into a Missionary's vanity. I like +verses to explain Pictures: seldom Pictures to illustrate Poems." + +The artist was Henry Meyer (1782?-1847), one of the foundation members +of the Society of British Artists in Suffolk Street, to the exhibition +of which in 1826 he sent his portrait of Lamb, now in the India Office. +This picture was in a shop in the Charing Cross Road in 1910. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 57. _She is Going_. + +These lines were written for I know not what occasion, but the artist +Henry Meyer engraved a picture of G.J.L. Noble in 1837 and Lamb's lines +were placed below. + + +Page 57. _To a Young Friend_. + +The young friend was Emma Isola, who lived with the Lambs for some years +as their adopted daughter. Emma Isola was the daughter of Charles Isola, +Esquire Bedell of the University of Cambridge, who died in 1823, leaving +her unprovided for. His father, and Emma Isola's grandfather, was +Agostino Isola, who settled at Cambridge and taught Italian there. +Wordsworth was among his pupils. He edited a collection of _Pieces +selected from the Italian Poets_, 1778; also editions of _Gerusalemme +Liberata_ and _Orlando Furioso_, and a book of _Italian Dialogues_. Emma +Isola is first mentioned by Lamb in an unpublished letter written to her +aunt, Miss Humphreys, in January, 1821, arranging for the little girl's +return to Trumpington Street, Cambridge, from London, where she had been +spending her holidays with the Lambs. The Lambs had met her at Cambridge +in the summer of 1820. The exact date of her adoption by the Lambs +cannot be ascertained now. Emma Isola married Edward Moxon in 1833, and +lived until 1891. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 58. _To the Same_. + +Writing to Procter in January, 1829, Lamb calls Miss Isola "a silent +brown girl," and in his letter of November, 1833, to Mr. and Mrs. Moxon, +he says: "I hope you [Moxon] and Emma will have many a quarrel and many +a make-up (and she is beautiful in reconciliation!) ..." See the poem +"To a Friend on His Marriage," page 80, for a further description of +Emma Isola's character. + + + * * * * * + + +SONNETS + + +Page 58. _Harmony in Unlikeness_. + +The two lovely damsels were Emma Isola and her friend Maria. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 59. _Written at Cambridge_. + +This sonnet was first printed in _The Examiner_, August 29 and 30, 1819, +and was dated August 15. Lamb, we now know, from a letter recently +discovered, was in Cambridge in August, 1819, just after being refused +by Miss Kelly. Hazlitt in his essay "On the Conversation of Authors" in +the _London Magazine_ for September, 1820, referred to Lamb's visit to +him some years before, and his want of ease among rural surroundings, +adding: "But when we cross the country to Oxford, then he spoke a +little. He and the old collegers were hail-fellow-well-met: and in the +quadrangle he 'walked gowned.'" + + +Page 59. _To a Celebrated Female Performer in the "Blind Boy."_ + +First printed in the _Morning Chronicle_, 1819. "The Blind Boy," +"attributed," says Genest, "to Hewetson," was produced in 1807. It was +revived from time to time. Miss Kelly used to play Edmond, the title +_rôle_. + + +Page 59. _Work_. + +First printed in _The Examiner_, June 20 and 21, 1819, under the title +"Sonnet." + +Many years earlier we see the germ of this sonnet in Lamb's mind, as +indeed we see the germ of so many ideas that were not fully expressed +till later, for he always kept his thoughts at call. Writing to +Wordsworth in September, 1805, he says:--"Hang work! I wish that all the +year were holyday. I am sure that Indolence indefeasible Indolence is +the true state of man, and business the invention of the Old Teazer who +persuaded Adam's Master to give him an apron and set him a-houghing. Pen +and Ink and Clerks, and desks, were the refinements of this old torturer +a thousand years after...." + +Lamb probably was as fond of this sonnet as of anything he wrote in what +might be called his second poetical period. He copied it into his first +letter to Bernard Barton, in September, 1822, and he drew attention to +it in his _Elia_ essay "The Superannuated Man." + + + * * * * * + + +Page 60. _Leisure_. + +First printed in the _London Magazine_ for April, 1821, probably, I +think, as a protest against the objection taken by some persons to the +opinions expressed by Lamb in his essay on "New Year's Eve" in that +magazine for January (see Vol. II., and notes). Lamb had therein said, +speaking of death:--"I am not content to pass away 'like a weaver's +shuttle.' Those metaphors solace me not, nor sweeten the unpalatable +draught of mortality. I care not to be carried with the tide, that +smoothly bears human life to eternity; and reluct at the inevitable +course of destiny. I am in love with this green earth; the face of town +and country; the unspeakable rural solitudes, and the sweet security of +streets. I would set up my tabernacle here. I am content to stand still +at the age to which I am arrived; I, and my friends. To be no younger, +no richer, no handsomer. I do not want to be weaned by age; or drop, +like mellow fruit, as they say, into the grave." + +Such sentiments probably called forth some private as well as public +protests; and it was, as I imagine, in a whimsical wish to emphasise the +sincerity of his regard for life that Lamb reiterated that devotion in +the emphatic words of "Leisure" in the April number. This sonnet was a +special favourite with Edward FitzGerald. + +It is sad to think that Lamb, when his leisure came, had too much of it. +Writing to Barton on July 25, 1829, during one of his sister's +illnesses, he says: "I bragg'd formerly that I could not have too much +time. I have a surfeit.... I am a sanguinary murderer of time, that +would kill him inchmeal just now." + + +Page 60. _To Samuel Rogers, Esq_. + +Daniel Rogers, the poet's elder brother, died in 1829. In acknowledging +Lamb's sonnet, Samuel Rogers wrote the following letter, which Lamb +described to Barton (July 3, 1829) as the prettiest he ever read. + + Many, many thanks. The verses are beautiful. I need not say with + what feelings they were read. Pray accept the grateful + acknowledgements + of us all, and believe me when I say that nothing could have been + a greater cordial to us in our affliction than such a testimony from such + a quarter. He was--for none knew him so well--we were born within a + year or two of each other--a man of a very high mind, and with less + disguise than perhaps any that ever lived. Whatever he was, _that_ we + saw. He stood before his fellow beings (if I may be forgiven for saying + so) almost as before his Maker: and God grant that we may all bear + as severe an examination. He was an admirable scholar. His Dante + and his Homer were as familiar to him as his Alphabets: and he had + the tenderest heart. When a flock of turkies was stolen from his farm, + the indignation of the poor far and wide was great and loud. To me he + is the greatest loss, for we were nearly of an age; and there is now no + human being alive in whose eyes I have always been young. + + Yours most gratefully, + + SAMUEL ROGERS. + +Another sonnet to Rogers will be found on p. 100. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 61. _The Gipsy's Malison_. + +First printed in _Blackwood's Magazine_, January, 1829. Lamb had sent it +to _The Gem_, but, as he told Procter in a letter on January 22, 1829: +"The editors declined it, on the plea that it would _shock all mothers;_ +so they published the 'Widow' [Hood's parody of Lamb] instead. I am born +out of time. I have no conecture about what the present world calls +delicacy. I thought _Rosamund Gray_ was a pretty modest thing. Hessey +assures me that the world would not bear it. I have lived to grow into +an indecent character. When my sonnet was rejected, I exclaimed, +'Hang[27] the age, I will write for Antiquity!'" + +In another letter to Procter, Lamb tells the sonnet's history:-- + +"_January_ 29, 1829. + +"When Miss Ouldcroft (who is now Mrs. Beddam [Badams], and Bed-dam'd to +her!) was at Enfield, which she was in summer-time, and owed her health +to its suns and genial influences, she visited (with young lady-like +impertinence) a poor man's cottage that had a pretty baby (O the +yearnling!), gave it fine caps and sweetmeats. On a day, broke into the +parlour our two maids uproarious. 'O ma'am, who do you think Miss +Ouldcroft (they pronounce it Holcroft) has been working a cap for?' 'A +child," answered Mary, in true Shandean female simplicity.' 'Tis the +man's child as was taken up for sheep-stealing.' Miss Ouldcroft was +staggered, and would have cut the connection; but by main force I made +her go and take her leave of her protégée. I thought, if she went no +more, the Abactor or the Abactor's wife (_vide_ Ainsworth) would suppose +she had heard something; and I have delicacy for a sheep-stealer. The +overseers actually overhauled a mutton-pie at the baker's (his first, +last, and only hope of mutton pie), which he never came to eat, and +thence inferred his guilt. _Per occasionem cujus_, I framed the sonnet; +observe its elaborate construction. I was four days about it. [Here came +the sonnet.] Barry, study that sonnet. It is curiously and perversely +elaborate. 'Tis a choking subject, and therefore the reader is directed +to the structure of it. See you? and was this a fourteener to be +rejected by a trumpery annual? forsooth,'twould shock all mothers; and +may all mothers, who would so be shocked, be damned! as if mothers were +such sort of logicians as to infer the future hanging of _their_ child +from the theoretical hangibility (or capacity of being hanged, if the +judge pleases) of every infant born with a neck on. Oh B.C.! my whole +heart is faint, and my whole head is sick (how is it?) at this damned +canting unmasculine age!" + + +[Footnote 27: Talfourd. Canon Ainger gives "Damn"] + + + * * * * * + + +COMMENDATORY VERSES + + +Page 61. _To the Author of Poems, published under the name of Barry +Cornwall_. + +Printed in the _London Magazine_, September, 1820. + +Barry Cornwall was the pen-name of Bryan Waller Procter, 1787-1874, +whose impulse to write poetry came largely from Lamb himself. In his +_Dramatic Scenes_, 1819, was the beginning of a blank-verse treatment or +adaptation of Lamb's "Rosamund Gray." Procter addressed to Lamb some +excellent lines "Over a Flask of Sherris," which were printed in the +_London Magazine_, 1825, and again in _English Songs_, 1832. His +_Martian Colonna; an Italian Tale_, was published in 1820 and his +_Sicilian Story_ later in the same year. The "Dream" was printed in +_Dramatic Scenes_. Procter in his old age wrote a charming memoir of +Lamb. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 62. _To R.S. Knowles, Esq_. + +First printed in the _London Magazine_, September, 1820. By a curious +oversight the error in Knowles's initials was repeated in the _Album +Verses_, 1830, Knowles's first name being, of course, James. James +Sheridan Knowles (1784-1862) had been a doctor, a schoolmaster, an +actor, and a travelling elocutionist, before he took seriously to +writing for the stage. His first really successful play was "Virginius," +written for Edmund Kean, transferred to Macready, and produced in 1820. +His greatest triumph was "The Hunchback," 1832. Lamb, who met Knowles +through William Hazlitt, of Wem, the essayist's father, wrote both the +prologue and epilogue for Knowles's play "The Wife," 1833 (see pages +146-7). + + + * * * * * + + +Page 63. _Quatrains to the Editor of the "Every-Day Book_." + +First printed in the _London Magazine_, May, 1825, and copied by Hone +into the _Every-Day Book_ for July 9 of the same year. William Hone (see +Vol. I. notes), 1780-1842, was a bookseller, pamphleteer and antiquary, +who, before he took to editing his _Every-Day Book_ in 1825, had passed +through a stormy career on account of his critical outspokenness and +want of ordinary political caution; and Lamb did by no means a +fashionable thing when he commended Hone thus publicly. The _Every-Day +Book_, begun in 1825, was, when published in 1826, dedicated by Hone to +Charles Lamb and his sister. "Your daring to publish me your 'friend,' +with your 'proper name' annexed," Hone wrote, "I shall never forget." + + +Page 63. Acrostics. + +In his more leisurely years, at Islington and Enfield, Lamb wrote a +great number of acrostics--many more probably than have been +preserved--of which these, printed in _Album Verses_, are all that he +cared to see in print. Probably he found his chief impulse in Emma +Isola's schoolfellows and friends, who must have been very eager to +obtain in their albums a contribution from so distinguished a gentleman +as Elia, and who passed on their requests through his adopted daughter. +I have not been able to trace the identity of several of them. The lady +who desired her epitaph was Mrs. Williams in whose house Emma Isola was +governess. While there Emma was seriously ill, and Lamb travelled down +to Fornham, in Suffolk, in 1830, to bring her home. On returning he +wrote Mrs. Williams several letters, in one of which, dated Good Friday, +he said:--"I beg you to have inserted in your county paper something +like this advertisement; 'To the nobility, gentry, and others, about +Bury,--C. Lamb respectfully informs his friends and the public in +general, that he is leaving off business in the acrostic line, as he is +going into an entirely new line. Rebuses and Charades done as usual, and +upon the old terms. Also, Epitaphs to suit the memory of any person +deceased.'" + +Mrs. Williams probably then suggested that Lamb should write her +epitaph, for in his next letter he says:--"I have ventured upon some +lines, which combine my old acrostic talent (which you first found out) +with my new profession of epitaphmonger. As you did not please to say, +when you would die, I have left a blank space for the date. May kind +heaven be a long time in filling it up." + +On page 48 will be found some lines to one of Mrs. Williams' daughters. +The acrostic on page 65 is to another. These would both be Emma Isola's +pupils. + + + * * * * * + + +TRANSLATIONS + + +Page 66. _Translations from Vincent Bourne_. + +Vincent Bourne (1695-1747), the English Latin poet, entered Westminster +School on the foundation in 1710, and, on leaving Cambridge, returned to +Westminster as a master. He was so indolent a teacher and disciplinarian +that Cowper, one of his pupils, says: "He seemed determined, as he was +the best, so to be the last, Latin poet of the Westminster line." +Bourne's _Poemata_ appeared in 1734. It is mainly owing to Cowper's +translations (particularly "The Jackdaw") that he is known, except to +Latinists. Lamb first read Bourne in 1815. Writing to Wordsworth in +April of that year he says:--"Since I saw you I have had a treat in the +reading way which comes not every day. The Latin Poems of V. Bourne +which were quite new to me. What a heart that man had, all laid out upon +town and scenes, a proper counterpoise to _some people's_ rural +extravaganzas. Why I mention him is that your Power of Music reminded me +of his poem of the ballad singer in the Seven Dials. Do you remember his +epigram on the old woman who taught Newton the A B C, which after all he +says he hesitates not to call Newton's _Principia_? I was lately +fatiguing myself with going through a volume of fine words by L'd +Thurlow, excellent words, and if the heart could live by words alone, it +could desire no better regale, but what an aching vacuum of matter--I +don't stick at the madness of it, for that is only a consequence of +shutting his eyes and thinking he is in the age of the old Elisabeth +poets--from thence I turned to V. Bourne--what a sweet unpretending +pretty-mannered _matter-ful_ creature, sucking from every flower, making +a flower of every thing--his diction all Latin, and his thoughts all +English. Bless him, Latin wasn't good enough for him--why wasn't he +content with the language which Gay and Prior wrote in." + +On the publication of _Album Verses_, wherein these nine poems from +Vincent Bourne were printed, Lamb reviewed the book in Moxon's +_Englishman's Magazine_ for September, 1831, under the title "The Latin +Poems of Vincent Bourne" (see Vol. I.). There he quoted "The Ballad +Singers," and the "Epitaph on an Infant Sleeping"--remarking of +Bourne:--"He is 'so Latin,' and yet 'so English' all the while. In +diction worthy of the Augustan age, he presents us with no images that +are not familiar to his countrymen. His topics are even closelier drawn; +they are not so properly English, as _Londonish_. From the streets, and +from the alleys, of his beloved metropolis, he culled his objects, which +he has invested with an Hogarthian richness of colouring. No town +picture by that artist can go beyond his BALLAD-SINGERS; Gay's TRIVIA +alone, in verse, comes up to the life and humour of it." + + + * * * * * + + +Page 72. _Pindaric Ode to the Tread Mill_. + +First printed in _The New Times_, October 24, 1825. The version there +given differed considerably from that preserved by Lamb. It had no +divisions. At the end of what is now the first strophe qame these +lines:-- + + Now, by Saint Hilary, + (A Saint I love to swear by, + Though I should forfeit thereby + Five ill-spared shillings to your well-warm'd seat, + Worshipful Justices of Worship-street; + Or pay my crown + At great Sir Richard's still more awful mandate down:) + They raise my gorge-- + Those Ministers of Ann, or the First George, + (Which was it? + For history is silent, and my closet-- + Reading affords no clue; + I have the story, Pope, alone from you;) + In such a place, &c. + +Lamb offered the Ode to his friend Walter Wilson, for his work on Defoe, +to which Lamb contributed prose criticisms (see Vol. I.), but Wilson did +not use it. The letter making this offer, together with the poem, +differing very slightly in one or two places, is preserved in the +Bodleian. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 75. _Going or Gone_. + +First printed in Hone's _Table Book_, 1827, signed Elia, under the title +"Gone or Going." It was there longer, after stanza 6 coming the +following:-- + + Had he mended in right time, + He need not in night time, + (That black hour, and fright-time,) + Till sexton interr'd him, + Have groan'd in his coffin, + While demons stood scoffing-- + You'd ha' thought him a-coughing-- + My own father[28] heard him! + + Could gain so importune, + With occasion opportune, + That for a poor Fortune, + That should have been ours[29], + In soul he should venture + To pierce the dim center, + Where will-forgers enter Amid the dark Powers?-- + +And in the _Table Book_ the last stanza ended thus:-- + + And flaunting Miss Waller-- + _That_ soon must befal her, + Which makes folks seem taller[30],-- + Though proud, once, as Juno! + + +[Footnote 28: Who sat up with him.] + +[Footnote 29: I have this fact from Parental tradition only.] + +[Footnote 30: Death lengthens people to the eye.] + + +To annotate this curious tale of old friendships, dating back, as I +suppose, in some cases to Lamb's earliest memories, both of London and +Hertfordshire, is a task that is probably beyond completion. The day is +too distant. But a search in the Widford register and churchyard reveals +a little information and oral tradition a little more. + +Stanza 2. _Rich Kitty Wheatley_. The Rev. Joseph Whately, vicar of +Widford in the latter half of the eighteenth century, married Jane +Plumer, sister of William Plumer, of Blakesware, the employer of Mrs. +Field, Lamb's grandmother. Archbishop Whately was their son. Kitty +Wheatley may have been a relative. + +Stanza 2. _Polly Perkin_. On June 1, 1770, according to the Widford +register, Samuel Perkins married Mary Lanham. This may have been Polly. + +Stanza 3. _Carter ... Lily_. The late Mrs. Tween, a daughter of Randal +Norris, Lamb's friend, and a resident in Widford, told Canon Ainger that +Carter and Lily were servants at Blakesware. Lily had noticeably red +cheeks. Lamb would have seen them often when he stayed there as a boy. +In Cussan's _Hertfordshire_ is an entertaining account of William +Plumer's widow's adhesion to the old custom of taking the air. She rode +out always--from Gilston, only a few miles from Widford and +Blakesware--in the family chariot, with outriders and postilion (a +successor to Lily), and so vast was the equipage that "turn outs" had to +be cut in the hedges (visible to this day), like sidings on a +single-line railway, to permit others to pass. The Widford register +gives John Lilley, died October 18, 1812, aged 85, and Johanna Lilley, +died January 1, 1823, aged 90. It also gives Benjamin Carter's marriage, +in 1781, but not his death. + +Stanza 4. _Clemitson's widow_. Mrs. Tween told Canon Ainger that +Clemitson was the farmer of Blakesware farm. I do not find the name in +the Widford register. An Elizabeth Clemenson is there. + +Stanza 4. _Good Master Clapton_. There are several Claptons in Widford +churchyard. Thirty years from 1827, the date of the poem, takes us to +1797: the Clapton whose death occurred nearest that time is John Game +Clapton, May 5, 1802. + +Stanza 5. _Tom Dockwra_. I cannot find definite information either +concerning this Dockwra or the William Dockwray, of Ware, of whom Lamb +wrote in his "Table Talk" in _The Athenaeum_, 1834 (see Vol. I.). There +was, however, a Joseph Docwray, of Ware, a Quaker maltster; and the late +Mrs. Coe, _née_ Hunt, the daughter of the tenant of the water-mill at +Widford in Lamb's day, where Lamb often spent a night, told me that a +poor family named Docwray lived in the neighbourhood. + +Stanza 6. _Worral ... Dorrell_. I find neither Worral nor Dorrell in the +Widford archives, but Morrils and Morrells in plenty, and one Horrel. +Lamb alludes to old Dorrell again in the _Elia_ essay "New Year's Eve," +where he is accused of swindling the family out of money. Particulars of +his fraud have perished with him, but I have no doubt it is the same +William Dorrell who witnessed John Lamb's will in 1761. In the _Table +Book_ this stanza ended thus:-- + + With cuckoldy Worral, + And wicked old Dorrel, + 'Gainst whom I've a quarrel-- + His end might affright us. + +Stanzas 8 and 9. _Fanny Hutton ... Betsy Chambers ... Miss Wither ... +Miss Waller_. Fanny Hutton, Betsy Chambers, Miss Wither and Miss Waller +elude one altogether. Lamb's schoolmistress, Mrs. Reynolds, was a Miss +Chambers. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 78. NEW POEMS IN LAMB'S _POETICAL WORKS_, 1836. + +In 1836 Moxon issued a new edition of Lamb's poems, consisting of those +in the _Works_, 1818, and those in _Album Verses_--with a few +exceptions and several additions--under the embracive title _The +Poetical Works of Charles Lamb_. Whether Moxon himself made up this +volume, or whether Mary Lamb or Talfourd assisted, I do not know. The +dedication to Coleridge stood at the beginning, and that to Moxon half +way through. + + +Page 78. _In the Album of Edith S----_. + +First printed in _The Athenaeum_, March 9, 1833, under the title +"Christian Names of Women." Edith S---- was Edith May Southey, the +poet's daughter, who married the Rev. John Wood Warter. + + +Page 78. _To Dora W----_. + +Dora, _i.e._, Dorothy Wordsworth, the poet's daughter, who married +Edward Quillinan, and thus became stepmother of Rotha Q---- of the next +sonnet. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 79. _In the Album of Rotha Q----_. + +Rotha Quillinan, younger daughter of Edward Quillinan (1791-1851), +Wordsworth's friend and, afterwards, son-in-law. His first wife, a +daughter of Sir Samuel Egerton Brydges, was burned to death in 1822 +under the most distressing circumstances. Rotha Quillinan, who was +Wordsworth's god-daughter, was so called from the Rotha which flows +through Rydal, close to Quillinan's house. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 80. _To T. Stothard, Esq_. + +First printed in _The Athenaeum_, December 21, 1833. In a letter to +Rogers in December, 1833, Lamb alludes to his sonnet to the poet (see +page 100), adding that for fear it might not altogether please Stothard +he has "ventured at an antagonist copy of verses, in _The Athenaeum_, to +_him_, in which he is as every thing, and you [Rogers] as nothing." +Thomas Stothard (1755-1834) was at that time seventy-eight. He had long +been the friend of Rogers, having helped in the decoration of his house +in 1803 and illustrated the _Pleasures of Memory_ as far back as 1793. +Lamb's sonnet refers particularly to the edition of Rogers' _Poems_ that +is dated 1834, which Stothard and Turner embellished. Stothard +illustrated very many of the standard novels for Harrison's _Novelists' +Magazine_ towards the end of the eighteenth century, among these being +Richardson's, Fielding's, Smollett's and Sterne's. In Robert Paltock's +_Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins_, 1751, a flying people are +described, among whom the males were "Glums" and the females +"Gawries."--Titian lived to be ninety-nine. + + +Page 80. _To a Friend on His Marriage_. + +First printed in _The Athenaeum_, December 7, 1833. The friend was +Edward Moxon, whose marriage to Emma Isola, Lamb's adopted daughter, was +solemnised on July 30, 1833. Lamb mentions more than once the absence of +any dowry with Miss Isola. His own wedding present to them was the +portrait of Milton which his brother, John Lamb, had left to him. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 81. _The Self-Enchanted_. + +First printed in _The Athenaeum_, January 7, 1832. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 82. _To Louisa M---, whom I used to call "Monkey."_ + +First printed in Hone's _Year Book_ for December 30, 1831, under the +title "The Change." (See the verses "The Ape," on page 89, and note, the +forerunner of the present poem, addressed also to Louisa Martin.) + + +Page 82. _Cheap Gifts: a Sonnet_. + +First printed in _The Athenaeum_, February 15, 1834. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 83. _Free Thoughts on Several Eminent Composers_. Lamb was very +fond of these lines, which he sent to more than one of his friends. The +text varies in some of the copies, but I have not thought it necessary +to indicate the differences. Its inspiration was attributed by him both +to William Ayrton (1777-1858), the musical critic, and to Vincent +Novello (1781-1861), the organist, composer and close friend of Lamb. In +a letter to Sarah Hazlitt in 1830 Lamb copies the poem, +remarking--"Having read Hawkins and Burney recently, I was enabled to +talk [to Ayrton] of Names, and show more knowledge than he had suspected +I possessed; and in the end he begg'd me to shape my thoughts upon +paper, which I did after he was gone, and sent him." + +So Lamb wrote to Mrs. Hazlitt. But to Ayrton, when he sent the verses, +he said:--"[Novello] desiring me to give him my real opinion respecting +the distinct grades of excellence in all the eminent Composers of the +Italian, German and English schools, I have done it, rather to oblige +him than from any overweening opinion I have of my own judgment in that +science." + +Both these statements are manifestations of what Lamb called his +"matter-of-lie" disposition. To Mrs. Hazlitt he thought that Ayrton's +name would be more important; to Ayrton, Novello's. + +The verses, whatever their origin, were written by Lamb in Novello's +Album, with this postscript, signed by Mary Lamb, added:-- + + The reason why my brother's so severe, + Vincentio, is--my brother has no _ear_; + And Caradori, his mellifluous throat + Might stretch in vain to make him learn a note. + Of common tunes he knows not anything, + Nor "Rule Britannia" from "God save the King." + He rail at Handel! He the gamut quiz! + I'd lay my life he knows not what it is. + His spite at music is a pretty whim-- + He loves not it, because it loves not him. + + M. LAMB. + + + * * * * * + + +UNCOLLECTED PIECES + + +Page 85. _Dramatic Fragment_. + +_London Magazine_, January, 1822. An excerpt from Lamb's play, "Pride's +Cure" (_John Woodvil_). See note below. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 86. _Dick Strype_. + +Writing to John Rickman in January, 1802, Lamb says, "My editor [Dan +Stuart of the _Morning Post_] uniformly rejects all that I do, +considerable in length. I shall only do paragraphs with now and then a +slight poem, such as Dick Strype, if you read it, which was but a long +epigram." The verses, which appeared on January 6, 1802, may be compared +with the story of Ephraim Wagstaff, on page 432 of Vol. I., written +twenty-five years later. It has been pointed out that _Points of +Misery_, 1823, by Charles Molloy Westmacott (Bernard Blackmantle of the +_English Spy_), contains the poem with slight alterations. But +Westmacott reaped where he could, and his book is confessedly not wholly +original. Lamb seems to me to admit authorship by implication fairly +completely. Westmacott was only thirteen when it was first printed. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 88. _Two Epitaphs on a young Lady, etc_. + +_Morning Post_, February 7, 1804. Signed C.L. Lamb sends the poem both +to Wordsworth and Manning in 1803. He says to Manning:--"Did I send you +an epitaph I scribbled upon a poor girl who died at nineteen?--a good +girl, and a pretty girl, and a clever girl, but strangely neglected by +all her friends and kin.... Brief, and pretty, and tender, is it not? I +send you this, being the only piece of poetry I have _done_ since the +Muses all went with T.M. [Thomas Manning] to Paris." + +The young lady was Mary Druitt of Wimborne who died of consumption in +1801. The verses are not on her tombstone. A letter from Lamb to his +friend Rickman (see Canon Ainger's edition), shows that it was for +Rickman that the lines were written. Lamb did not know Mary Druitt. +Writing to Rickman in February, 1802, Lamb sends the second +epitaph:--"Your own prose, or nakedly the letter which you sent me, +which was in some sort an epitaph, would do better on her gravestone +than the cold lines of a stranger." + + + * * * * * + + +Page 89. _The Ape_. + +Printed in the _London Magazine_, October, 1820, where it was preceded +by these words:-- + +"To THE EDITOR + +"Mr. Editor,--The riddling lines which I send you, were written upon a +young lady, who, from her diverting sportiveness in childhood, was named +by her friends The Ape. When the verses were written, L.M. had outgrown +the title--but not the memory of it--being in her teens, and +consequently past child-tricks. They are an endeavour to express that +perplexity, which one feels at any alteration, even supposed for the +better, in a beloved object; with a little oblique grudging at Time, who +cannot bestow new graces without taking away some portion of the older +ones, which we can ill miss. + +"*****." + +L.M. was Louisa Martin, who is now and then referred to in Lamb's letter +as Monkey, and to whom he addressed the lines on page 82, which come as +a sequel to the present ones. In a letter to Wordsworth, many years +later, dated February 22, 1834, Lamb asks a favour for this lady:--"The +oldest and best friends I have left are in trouble. A branch of them +(and they of the best stock of God's creatures, I believe) is +establishing a school at Carlisle; Her name is Louisa Martin ... her +qualities ... are the most amiable, most upright. For thirty years she +has been tried by me, and on her behaviour I would stake my soul." + + + * * * * * + + +Page 90. _In Tabulam Eximii...._ + +These Latin verses were printed in _The Champion_, May 6 and 7, 1820, +signed Carlagnulus, accompanied by this notice: "We insert, with great +pleasure, the following beautiful Latin Verses on HAYDON'S fine Picture, +and shall be obliged to any of our correspondents for a spirited +translation for our next." The following week brought one +translation--Lamb's own--signed C.L. Both were reprinted in _The +Poetical Recreations of "The Champion"_ in 1822, and again in Tom +Taylor's _Life of Haydon_, 1853. + +Benjamin Robert Haydon (1786-1846) was for six years at work upon this +picture--"Christ's Entry into Jerusalem"--which was exhibited at the +Egyptian Hall in 1820. The story goes that Mrs. Siddons established the +picture's reputation in society. While the private-view company were +assembled in doubt the great actress entered and walked across the room. +"It is completely successful," she was heard to say to Sir George +Beaumont; and then, to Haydon, "The paleness of your Christ gives it a +supernatural look." A stream of 30,000 persons followed this verdict. +The picture is now in Philadelphia. + +Line 4. _Palma_. There were two Palmas, both painters of the Venetian +school. Giacomo Palma the Elder, who is referred to here, was born about +1480. Both painted many scenes in the life of Christ. + +Lines 7 and 8. _Flaccus' sentence_. + + Valeat res ludicra si me + Palma negata macrum, donata reducit opimum. + Horace, _Epist., II_., I, 180-181. + +(Farewell to performances, if the palm, denied, sends one home lean, +but, granted, flourishing.) + +Lamb has not quite represented the poet's meaning, which is a profession +of independence in regard to popular applause. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 91. _Sonnet to Miss Burney...._ + +First printed in the _Morning Chronicle_, July 13, 1820. The Burney +family began to be famous with Dr. Charles Burney (1726-1814), the +musician, the author of the _History of Music_, and the friend of Dr. +Johnson and Sir Joshua Reynolds. Among his children were the Rev. +Charles Burney (1757-1817), the classical scholar and owner of the +Burney Library, now in the British Museum; Rear-Admiral James Burney +(1750-1821), who sailed with Cook, wrote the _Chronological History of +the Discoveries in the South Sea or Pacific Ocean_, and became a friend +of Lamb; Frances Burney, afterwards Madame d'Arblay (1752-1840), the +novelist, author of _Evelina, Camilla_ and _Cecilia_; and Sarah Harriet +Burney (1770?-1844), a daughter of Dr. Burney's second wife, also a +novelist, and the author, among other stories, of _Geraldine +Fauconberg_. "Country Neighbours; or, The Secret," the tale that +inspired Lamb's sonnet, formed Vols. II. and III. of Sarah Burney's +_Tales of Fancy_. Blanch is the heroine. + +The good old man in Madame d'Arblay's _Camilla_ is Sir Hugh Tyrold, who +adopted the heroine. + + +Page 91. _To my Friend The Indicator_. + +Printed in _The Indicator_, September 27, 1820, signed ****, preceded by +these words by Leigh Hunt, the editor:-- + +Every pleasure we could experience in a friend's approbation, we have +felt in receiving the following verses. They are from a writer, who of +all other men, knows how to extricate a common thing from commonness, +and to give it an underlook of pleasant consciousness and wisdom. +...The receipt of these verses has set us upon thinking of the +good-natured countenance, which men of genius, in all ages, have for the +most part shewn to contemporary writers. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 92. _On seeing Mrs. K---- B----_. + +The late Mr. Dykes Campbell thought it very likely that these charming +verses were Lamb's. I think they may be, although it is odd that he +should not have reprinted anything so pretty. Mr. Thomas Hutchinson's +belief that they are Lamb's, added to that of their discoverer, leads me +to include them confidently here. Here and there it seems impossible +that the poem could come from any other hand: line 11 for example, and +the idea in lines 13 to 16, and the statement in lines 27 and 28. None +the less it must be borne in mind that one does but conjecture. The +lines are in _The Tickler Magazine_ for 1821. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 93. _To Emma, Learning Latin, and Desponding_. + +First printed in _Blackwood's Magazine_, June, 1829. + +Mary Lamb had other pupils in her time, among them Miss Kelly, the +actress, Mary Victoria Novello (afterwards Mrs. Cowden Clarke), and +William Hazlitt, the essayist's son. Emma was, of course, Emma Isola. +Sara Coleridge's translation of Martin Dobrizhoffer's _Historia de +Abiponibus_ under the title _Account of the Abipones_ was published in +1822, when she was only twenty. + +"To think [Lamb wrote to Barton, on February 17, 1823, of Sara +Coleridge] that she should have had to toil thro' five octavos of that +cursed (I forget I write to a Quaker) Abbey pony History, and then to +abridge them to 3, and all for £113. At her years, to be doing stupid +Jesuits' Latin into English, when she should be reading or writing +Romances." Sara Coleridge's romance-writing came later, in 1837, when +her fairy tale, _Phantasmion_, appeared. + +In its original form this sonnet in its fifth line ran thus:-- + + (In new tasks hardest still the first appears). + +Derwent Coleridge read the sonnet in 1853 in Mrs. Moxon's album, and +copying it out, sent it to his wife, saying that he wished Sissy (his +daughter Christabel) to get it by heart. He added this note: "Charles +Lamb having discovered that this Sonnet consisted but of thirteen lines, +Miss Lamb inserted the 5th, which interrupts the flow and repeats a +rhime." Derwent Coleridge goes on to suggest two alternative lines:-- + + And hope may surely chase desponding fears + +or + + Let hope encouraged chase desponding fears. + +Lamb, however, had already amended the fifth line (as in _Blackwood's +Magazine_) to-- + + To young beginnings natural are these fears. + + +Page 93. _Lines addressed to Lieut. R.W.H. Hardy, R.N._ + +First printed in _The Athenaeum_, January 10, 1846, contributed by an +anonymous correspondent (probably Thomas Westwood the Younger) who sent +also "The First Leaf of Spring" (page 105). _Travels in the Interior of +Mexico in_ 1825 ... 1828, by Robert William Hale Hardy, was published in +1829. Lamb made an exception in favour of Hardy's book. Writing to Dilke +for something to read from _The Athenaum_ office, in 1833, he +particularly desired that "no natural history or useful learning, such +as Pyramids, Catacombs, Giraffes, or Adventures in Southern Africa" +might be sent. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 94. _Lines for a Monument_.... + +First printed in _The Athenaeum_, November 5, 1831, and again in _The +Tatler_, Hunt's paper, December 31, 1831. In August, 1830, four sons and +two daughters of John and Ann Rigg, of York, were drowned in the Ouse. +Several literary persons were asked for inscriptions for the monument, +erected at York in 1831, and that by James Montgomery, of Sheffield, was +chosen. Lamb sent his verses to Vincent Novello, through whom he seems +to have been approached in the matter, on November 8, 1830, adding: +"Will these lines do? I despair of better. Poor Mary is in a deplorable +state here at Enfield." + + +Page 94. _To C. Aders, Esq_. + +First printed in Hone's _Year Book_ (March 19), 1831 (see note to "Angel +Help," above). + + + * * * * * + + +Page 95. _Hercules Pacificatus_. + +First printed in the _Englishman's Magazine_, August, 1831. Suidas is +supposed to have lived in the tenth or eleventh century, and to have +compiled a _Lexicon_--a blend of biographical dictionary. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 98. _The Parting Speech of the Celestial Messenger to the Poet_. + +First printed in _The Athenaeum_, February 25, 1832. + +Palingenius was an Italian poet of the sixteenth century, whose real +name was Pietro Angelo Mazolli, but who wrote in Latin under the name +of Marcellus Palingenius Stollatus. His _Zodiacus Vitae_, a +philosophical poem, was published in 1536. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 99. _Existence, considered in itself, no Blessing_. First printed +in _The Athenaeum_, July 7, 1832. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 100. _To Samuel Rogers, Esq., on the New Edition of his "Pleasures +of Memory."_ + +First printed in _The Times_, December 13, 1833. Signed C. Lamb. This is +the sonnet mentioned in the letter which is quoted on page 344, in the +note to the sonnet to Stothard. The new edition of _Pleasures of Memory_ +was published by Moxon in 1833, dated 1834. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 101. _To Clara N---- _. + +First printed in _The Athenaeum_, July 26, 1834. Clara N---- was, of +course, Clara Anastasia Novello, daughter of Lamb's friend, Vincent +Novello (1781-1861), the organist, and herself a fine soprano singer +(see also the poem "The Sisters," on the same page). Miss Novello, who +was born on June 10, 1818, became the Countess Gigliucci, and survived +until March 12, 1908. _Clara Novella's Reminiscences_, compiled by her +daughter, the Contessa Valeria Gigliucci, with a memoir by Arthur Duke +Coleridge, were published in 1910. In them is this charming passage:-- + + How I loved dear Charles Lamb! I once hid--to avoid the ignominy + of going to bed--in the upright (cabinet) pianoforte, which in its + lowest part had a sort of tiny cupboard. In this I fell asleep, awakening + only when the party was supping. My appearance from beneath the + pianoforte was hailed with surprise by all, and with anger from my + mother; but Charles Lamb not only took me under his protection, but + obtained that henceforth I should never again be sent to bed _when he + came_, but--glory and delight!--always sit up to supper. Later, in + Frith Street days, my Father made me sing to him one day; but [Lamb] + stopped me, saying, "Clara, don't make that d--d noise!" for which, + I think, I loved him as much as for all the rest. Some verses he sent + me were addressed to "St. Clara." + +In spite of Lamb's declaration about himself and want of musical sense, +both Crabb Robinson and Barron Field tell us that he was capable of +humming tunes. + + +Page 101. _The Sisters_. + +These verses, printed in Mr. W.C. Hazlitt's _Lamb and Hazlitt_, 1900, +were addressed:-- + + "_For_ SAINT CECILIA, + At Sign'r Vincenzo Novello's + Music Repository, + No. 67 Frith Street. + Soho." + +They were signed C. Lamb. One might imagine Emma, the nut-brown maid, to +be Emma Isola, as that was a phrase Lamb was fond of applying to +her--assuming the title "The Sisters" to be a pleasantry; but the late +Miss Mary Sabilia Novello assured me that the sisters were herself, +Emma Aloysia Novello and Clara Anastasia Novello (see above). + + + * * * * * + + +Page 102. _Love will Come_. + +"Love will Come" was included by Lamb in a letter to Miss Fryer, a +school-fellow of Emma Isola. Lamb writes:--"By desire of Emma I have +attempted new words to the old nonsense of Tartar Drum; but _with_ the +nonsense the sound and spirit of the tune are unaccountably gone, and +_we_ have agreed to discard the new version altogether. As _you_ may be +more fastidious in singing mere silliness, and a string of well-sounding +images without sense or coherence--Drums of Tartars, who use _none_, and +Tulip trees ten foot high, not to mention Spirits in Sunbeams, +&c.,--than _we_ are, so you are at liberty to sacrifice an enspiriting +movement to a little sense, tho' I like LITTLE SENSE less than his +vagarying younger sister NO SENSE--so I send them.--The 4th line of 1st +stanza is from an old Ballad." + +The old ballad is, I imagine, "Waly, Waly," of which Lamb was very fond. + + +Page 102. _To Margaret W----_. + +This poem, believed to be the last that Lamb wrote, was printed in _The +Athenaeum_ for March 14, 1835. I have not been able to ascertain who +Margaret W---- was. + + + * * * * * + + +ALBUM VERSES AND ACROSTICS + + +Page 104. _What is an Album?_ + +These lines were probably written for Emma Isola's Album, which must not +be confounded with her Extract Book. The Album was the volume for which +Lamb, in his letters, occasionally solicited contributions. It was sold +some years ago to Mr. Quaritch, and is now, I believe, in a private +collection, although in a mutilated state, several of the poems having +been cut out. These particular lines of Lamb's were probably written by +him also in other albums, for John Mathew Gutch, his old school-fellow, +discovered them on the fly-leaf of a copy of _John Woodvil_, and sent +them to _Notes and Queries_, Oct. 11, 1856. In that version the +twenty-first line ran:-- + + There you have, Madelina, an album complete. + +Lamb quoted from the lines in his review of his _Album Verses_, under +the title "The Latin Poems of Vincent Bourne," in the _Englishman's +Magazine_ (see Vol. I.). Two versions of the lines are copied by Lamb +into one of his Commonplace Books. + +Line 6. _Sweet L.E.L.'s_. L.E.L. was, of course, Letitia Elizabeth +Landon, afterwards Mrs. Maclean (1802-1838), famous as an Album-and +Annual-poetess. Lamb, if an entry in P.G. Patmore's diary is correct, +did not admire her, or indeed any female author. He said, "If she +belonged to me I would lock her up and feed her on bread and water till +she left off writing poetry." + + + * * * * * + + +Page 105. _The First Leaf of Spring_. + +Printed in _The Athenaeum_, January 10, 1846, contributed probably by +Thomas Westwood. In a note prefacing the three poems which he was +sending, this correspondent stated that "The First Leaf of Spring" had +been printed before, but very obscurely. I have not discovered where. + + +Page 105. _To Mrs. F---- on Her Return from Gibraltar_. + +This would probably be Mrs. Jane Field, _née_ Carncroft, the wife of +Lamb's friend, Barron Field, who inspired the _Elia_ essay on "Distant +Correspondents." Field held the Chief Justiceship of Gibraltar for some +years. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 106. _To M. L---- F----_. + +M.L. Field, the second daughter of Henry Field, and Barron Field's +sister. This lady, who lived to a great age, gave Canon Ainger the copy +of the prologue to "Richard II." written by Lamb for an amateur +performance at her home. + + +Page 106. _To Esther Field_. + +Another of Barron Field's sisters. + +The text of these three poems has been corrected by the Thomas +Hutchinson's Oxford edition. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 107. _To Mrs. Williams_. + +See note above. In writing to Mrs. Williams on April 2, 1830, to tell of +Emma Isola's safe journey after her illness, Lamb says:--"How I employed +myself between Epping and Enfield the poor verses in the front of my +paper may inform you, which you may please to christen an Acrostic in a +Cross Road." + +Mrs. Williams replied with the following acrostic upon Lamb's name, +which Mr. Cecil Turner, a descendant, has sent me and which I give +according to his copy:-- + + TO CHARLES LAMB + + _Answer to Acrostics on the Names of Two Friends._ + + Charmed with the lines thy hand has sent, + Honour I feel thy compliment, + Amongst thy products that have won the ear + Ranged in thy verse two friends most dear. + Lay not thy winning pen away, + Each line thou writest we bid thee stay. + Still ask to charm us with another lay. + + Long-linked, long-lived by public fame, + A friend to misery whate'er its claim, + Marvel I must if e'er we find + Bestowed by Heaven a kindlier mind. + +The two friends were Cecilia Catherine Lawton (see page 64) and Edward +Hogg (see page 109). In reply Lamb says (Good Friday, 1830):--"I do +assure you that your verses gratified me very much, and my sister is +quite _proud_ of them. For the first time in my life I congratulated +myself upon the shortness and meanness of my name. Had it been +Schwartzenberg or Esterhazy it would have put you to some puzzle." + +Later in the same letter, referring to the present acrostic, he said +speaking of Harriet Isola, Emma's sister, she "blames my last verses as +being more written on _Mr._ Williams than on yourself; but how should I +have parted whom a Superior Power has brought together?" + + +Page 107. _To the Book_. + +Written for the Album of Sophia Elizabeth Frend, afterwards the wife of +Augustus De Morgan, the mathematician (1806-1871), and mother of the +novelist Mr. William De Morgan. Her father was William Frend +(1757-1841), the reformer and a friend of Crabb Robinson and George +Dyer. The lines were printed in Mrs. De Morgan's _Three Score Years and +Ten_, as are also those that follow--"To S.F." + + + * * * * * + + +Page 108. _To R Q._ + +From the Album of Rotha Quillinan. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 109. _To S.L.... To M.L._ + +I have not been able to identify the Lockes. The J.F. of the last line +might be Jane Field. Copies of these poems are preserved at South +Kensington. + + +Page 109. _An Acrostic against Acrostics_. + +Edward Hogg was a friend of Mr. Williams (see above). These verses were +first printed in _The Lambs_ by Mr. W.C. Hazlitt. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 110. _On being Asked to Write in Miss Westwood's Album._ + +Frances Westwood was the daughter of the Westwoods, with whom the Lambs +were domiciled at Enfield Chase in 1829-1832. See letters to Gillman and +Wordsworth (November 30, 1829, and January 22, 1830) for description of +the Westwoods. The only son, Thomas Westwood, who died in 1888, and was +an authority on the literature of angling, contributed to _Notes and +Queries_ some very interesting reminiscences of the Lambs in those days. +This poem and that which follows it were sent to _Notes and Queries_ by +Thomas Westwood (June 4, 1870). + +It is concerning these lines that Lamb writes to Barton, in 1827:-- +"Adieu to Albums--for a great while--I said when I came here, and had +not been fixed two days, but my Landlord's daughter (not at the +Pot-house) requested me to write in her female friend's, and in her own. +If I go to ---- thou art there also, O all pervading Album! All over the +Leeward Islands, in Newfoundland, and the Back Settlements, I understand +there is no other reading. They haunt me. I die of Albo-phobia!" + + +Page 111. _Un Solitaire._ + +E.I., who made the drawing in question, would be Emma Isola. The verses +were copied by Lamb into his Album, which is now in the possession of +Mrs. Alfred Morrison. + + +Page 111. _To S[arah] T[homas]_. + +From Lamb's Album. I have not been able to trace this lady. + + +Page 111. _To Mrs. Sarah Robinson._ + +From the copy preserved among Henry Crabb Robinson's papers at Dr. +Williams' Library. Sarah Robinson was the niece of H.C.R., who was the +pilgrim in Rome. The stranger to thy land was Emma Isola, Fornham, in +Suffolk, where she was living, being near to Bury St. Edmunds, the home +of the Robinsons. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 112. _To Sarah._ + +From the Album of Sarah Apsey. Lamb seems to have known very many +Sarahs. + + +Page 112. _To Joseph Vale Asbury._ + +From Lamb's Album. Jacob (not Joseph, as Lamb supposed) Vale Asbury was +the Lambs' doctor at Enfield. There are extant two amusing letters from +Lamb to Asbury. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 113. _To D.A._ + +From Lamb's Album. Dorothy Asbury, the wife of the doctor. + + +Page 113. _To Louisa Morgan._ + +From Lamb's Album. Louisa Morgan was probably the daughter of +Coleridge's friend, John Morgan, of Calne, in Wiltshire, with whom the +Lambs stayed in 1817--the same Morgan--"Morgan demigorgon"--who ate +walnuts better than any man Lamb knew, and munched cos-lettuce like a +rabbit (see letters to Coleridge in August, 1814). Southey and Lamb each +allowed John Morgan £10 a year in his old age and adversity, beginning +with 1819. + + +Page 113. _To Sarah James of Beguildy._ + +Sarah James was Mary Lamb's nurse, and the sister of the Mrs. Parsons +with whom she lived during the last years of her life. Miss James was +the daughter of the rector of Beguildy, in Shropshire. The verses are +reprinted from _My Lifetime_ by the late John Hollingshead, who was the +great-nephew of Miss James and Mrs. Parsons. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 114. _To Emma Button._ + +Included in a letter from Lamb to John Aitken, editor of _The Cabinet_, +July 5, 1825. + + +Page 114. _Written upon the cover of a blotting book. The Mirror,_ May +7, 1836. + +Identified by Mr. Walter Jerrold. First collected by Mr. Thomas +Hutchinson. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 115. POLITICAL AND OTHER EPIGRAMS. + +Lamb was not a politician, but he had strong--almost +passionate--prejudices against certain statesmen and higher persons, +which impelled him now and then to sarcastic verse. The earliest +examples in this vein that can be identified are two quatrains from the +_Morning Post_ in January, 1802, printed on page 115, and the epigram +on Sir James Mackintosh in _The Albion_, printed on the same page, to +which Lamb refers in the _Elia_ essay on "Newspapers Thirty-five Years +Ago" (see Vol. II.). Until a file of _The Albion_ turns up we shall +never know how active Lamb's pen was at that time. The next belong to +the year 1812--in _The Examiner_ (see page 116)--and we then leap +another seven years or so until 1819-1820, Lamb's busiest period as a +caustic critic of affairs--in _The Examiner_, possibly the _Morning +Chronicle_, and principally in _The Champion_. After 1820, however, he +returned to this vein very seldom, and then with less bitterness and +depth of feeling. "The Royal Wonders," in _The Times_ for August 10, +1830 (see page 122), and "Lines Suggested by a Sight of Waltham Cross," +in the _Englishman's Magazine_, September, 1831 (written, however, some +years earlier), on page 121, being his latest efforts that we know of. +Of course there must be many other similar productions to which we have +no clue--the old _Morning Post_ days doubtless saw many an epigram that +cannot now be definitely claimed for Lamb--but those that are preserved +here sufficiently show how feelingly Lamb could hate and how trenchantly +he could chastise. Others that seem to me likely to be Lamb's I could +have included; but it is well to dispense as much as possible with the +problematic. For example, I suspect Lamb of the authorship of several of +the epigrams quoted in _The Examiner_ in 1819 and 1820 from the _Morning +Chronicle_. He used to send verses to the _Morning Chronicle_ at that +time, and Leigh Hunt, the editor of _The Examiner_, would naturally be +pleased to give anything of his friend's an additional publicity. + +The majority of the epigrams printed in this section might have remained +unidentified were it not that in 1822 John Thelwall, who owned and +edited _The Champion_ in 1818-1820, issued a little volume entitled _The +Poetical Recreations of "The Champion,"_ wherein Lamb's contributions +were signed R. et R. This signature being appended to certain poems of +which we know Lamb to have been the author--as "The Three Graves," which +he sent also to the _London Magazine_ (in 1825), and which he was in the +habit of reading or reciting to his friends--enables us to ascertain the +authorship of the others. A note placed by Thelwall above the index of +the book states, "it is much to be regretted that, by mere oversight, or +rather mistake, several of the printed epigrams of R. et R. have been +omitted;" but a search through the files of _The Champion_ has failed to +bring to light any others with Lamb's adopted signature. + +The origin of the signature R. et R. is unknown. Mr. Percy Fitzgerald +suggests that it might stand for Romulus and Remus, but offers no +supporting theory. He might have added that so unfamiliar a countenance +is in these epigrams shown by their author, that the suggestion of a +wolf rather than a Lamb might have been intended. Lamb's principal +political epigrams were drawn from him by his intense contempt for the +character of George IV., then Prince of Wales. His treatment of Caroline +of Brunswick, as we see, moved Lamb to utterances of almost sulphurous +indignation not only for the prince himself, but for all who were on his +side, particularly Canning. Lamb, we must suppose, was wholly on the +side of the queen, thus differing from Coleridge, who when asked how his +sympathies were placed would admit only to being anti-Prince. + +John Thelwall (1764-1834)--Citizen Thelwall--was one of the most popular +and uncompromising of the Radicals of the seventeen-nineties. He +belonged to the Society of the Friends of the People and other Jacobin +confederacies. In May, 1794, he was even sent to the Tower (with Home +Tooke and Thomas Hardy) for sedition; moved to Newgate in October; and +tried and acquitted in December. Lamb first met him, I fancy, in 1797, +when Thelwall was intimate with Coleridge. After 1798 Thelwall's +political activities were changed for those of a lecturer on more +pacific subjects, and later he opened an institution in London where he +taught elocution and corrected the effects of malformation of the organs +of speech. He bought _The Champion_ in 1818, and held it for two or +three years, but it did not succeed. Thelwall died in 1834. Among his +friends were Coleridge, Haydon, Hazlitt, Southey, Crabb Robinson and +Lamb, all of whom, although they laughed at his excesses and excitements +as a reformer, saw in him an invincible honesty and sincerity. + +Before leaving this subject I should like to quote the following +lines from _The Champion_ of November 4 and 5, 1820:-- + + A LADY'S SAPPHIC + + Now the calm evening hastily approaches, + Not a sound stirring thro' the gentle woodlands, + Save that soft Zephyr with his downy pinions + Scatters fresh fragrance. + + Now the pale sun-beams in the west declining + Gild the dew rising as the twilight deepens, + Beauty and splendour decorate the landscape; + Night is approaching. + + By the cool stream's side pensively and sadly + Sit I, while birds sing on the branches sweetly, + And my sad thoughts all with their carols soothing, + Lull to oblivion. + M.L. + +A correspondence on English sapphics was carried on in _The Champion_ +for some weeks at this time, various efforts being printed. On November +4 appeared the "Lady's Sapphic," just quoted, signed M.S. On the +following day--for _The Champion_, like _The Examiner_, had a Saturday +and Sunday edition--this signature was changed to M.L., and was thus +given when the verses were reprinted in _The Poetical Recreations_ of +_"The Champion"_ in 1822. There is no evidence that Mary Lamb wrote it; +but she played with verse, and presumably read _The Champion_, since her +brother was writing for it, and the poem might easily be hers. +Personally I like to think it is, and that Lamb, on seeing the mistake +in the initials in the Saturday edition, hurried down to the office to +have it put right in that of Sunday. The same number of _The Champion_ +(November 4 and 5, 1820) contains another poem in the same measure +signed C., which not improbably was Lamb's contribution to the pastime. +It runs as follows:-- + + DANAE EXPOSED WITH HER INFANT + + _An English Sapphic_ + + Dim were the stars, and clouded was the azure, Silence in darkness + brooded on the ocean, Save when the wave upon the pebbled sea-beach + Faintly resounded. + + Then, O forsaken daughter of Acrisius! Seiz'd in the hour of woe and + tribulation, Thou, with the guiltless victim of thy love, didst Rock on + the surges. + + Sad o'er the silent bosom of the billow, Borne on the breeze and + modulated sweetly, Plaintive as music, rose the mother's tones of + Comfortless anguish. + + "Sad is thy birth, and stormy is thy cradle, Offspring of sorrow! + nursling of the ocean! Waves rise around to pillow thee, and night winds + Lull thee to slumber!" + + +Page 115. _To Sir James Mackintosh._ + +In a letter to Manning in August, 1801, Lamb quotes this epigram as +having been printed in _The Albion_ and caused that paper's death the +previous week. In his _Elia_ essay on "Newspapers," written thirty years +later, he stated that the epigram was written at the time of +Mackintosh's departure for India to reap the fruits of his apostasy; but +here Lamb's memory deceived him, for Mackintosh was not appointed +Recorder of Bombay until 1803 and did not sail until 1804, whereas there +is reason to believe the date of Lamb's letter to Manning of August, +1801, to be accurate. The epigram must then have referred to a rumour of +some earlier appointment, for Mackintosh had been hoping for something +for several years. + +Sir James Mackintosh (1765-1832), the lawyer and philosopher, had in +1791 issued his _Vindicia Galliae_, a reply to Burke's _Reflections on +the French Revolution_. Later, however, he became one of Burke's friends +and an opponent of the Revolution, and in 1798 he issued his +Introductory Discourse to his lectures on "The Law of Nature and +Nations," in which the doctrines of his _Vindiciae Gallicae_ were +repudiated. Hence his "apostasy." Mackintosh applied unsuccessfully for +a judgeship in Trinidad, and for the post of Advocate-General in Bengal, +and Lord Wellesley had invited him to become the head of a college in +Calcutta. Rumour may have credited him with any of these posts and thus +have suggested Lamb's epigram. In 1803 he was appointed Recorder of +Bombay. Lamb's dislike of Mackintosh may have been due in some measure +to Coleridge, between whom and Mackintosh a mild feud subsisted. It had +been Mackintosh, however, brother-in-law of Daniel Stuart of the +_Morning Post_, who introduced Coleridge to that paper. (See notes to +Vol. II., where further particulars of _The Albion_, edited by Lamb's +friend, John Fenwick, will be found.) + +Lamb may or may not have invented the sarcasm in this epigram; but it +was not new. In Mrs. Montagu's letters, some years before, we find +something of the kind concerning Charles James Fox: "His rapid journeys +to England, on the news of the king's illness, have brought on him a +violent complaint in the bowels, which will, it is imagined, prove +mortal. However, if it should, it will vindicate his character from the +general report that he has no bowels, as has been most strenuously +asserted by his creditors." + + +Page 115. _Twelfth Night Characters_.... + +_Morning Post_, January 8, 1802. + +These epigrams were identified by the late Mr. Dykes Campbell from a +letter of Lamb's to John Rickman, dated Jan. 14, 1802, printed in +Ainger's edition. + +A---- is, of course, Henry Addington (1757-1844), afterwards Viscount +Sidmouth. After being Speaker for eleven years, he became suddenly Prime +Minister in 1801, at the wish of George III., who was rendered uneasy by +Pitt's project for Catholic relief. + +C---- and F---- were George Canning (1770-1827) and John Hookham Frere +(1769-1846) of _The Anti-Jacobin_, against whom Lamb had a grudge on +account of the _Anti-Jacobin's_ treatment of himself and Lloyd (see note +to _Blank Verse_, page 320). Lamb returned to the attack on Canning +again and again, as the epigrams that follow will show. + +The epigram on Count Rumford was not included. We know that it was sent, +from the Rickman letter. The same missive tells us that that on Dr. +Solomon was also written in 1802, but it was not printed till _The +Champion_ took it on July 15 and 16, 1820. Solomon was alive in 1802 and +was therefore a present Empiric. He was a notorious quack doctor, author +of the _Guide to Health_ and the purveyor of a nostrum called Balm of +Gilead. One of Southey's letters (October 14, 1801) contains a +diverting account of this Empiric. I copy one of Solomon's +advertisements from a provincial paper:-- + + DR. SOLOMON'S + CORDIAL BALM OF GILEAD + + To the young it will afford lasting health, strength and spirits, in + place of lassitude and debility; and to the aged and infirm it will + assuredly furnish great relief and comfort by gently and safely + invigorating the system; it will not give immortality; but if it be + in the power of medicine to gild the autumn of declining years, and + calmly and serenely protract the close of life beyond its narrow + span, this restorative is capable of effecting that grand + desideratum. + +The price was 10s. 6d. a bottle. + +Lamb's epigrams were only a few among many printed in the _Morning Post_ +for January 7 and 8, 1802. Whether he wrote also the following I do not +know, but these are not inconceivably from his hand:-- + + LORD NELSON + + Off with BRIAREUS, and his HUNDRED HANDS, + OUR NELSON, with _one arm_, unconquer'd stands! + + + MR. P[IT]T + + By crooked arts, and actions sinister, + I came at first to be a Minister; + And now I am no longer Minister, + I still retain my actions sinister. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 116. _Two Epigrams_. _The Examiner_, March 22, 1812. + +These epigrams have no signature, but the second of them was reprinted +in _The Poetical Recreations of "The Champion"_ (1822) with Lamb's +signature, R. et R., appended, and a note saying that it was written in +the last reign, together with an announcement that it had not appeared +in _The Champion_, but was inserted in that collection at the author's +request. By Princeps and the heir-apparent is meant, of course, the +Prince of Wales, afterwards George IV., who had just entered upon office +as Regent. The epigrams refer to his transfer of confidence, if so it +may be called, from the Whig party to the Marquis Wellesley, Perceval +and the Tory party. The circumstance that the Prince of Wales was also +Duke of Cornwall is referred to in the first epigram. The second of the +epigrams is copied into one of Lamb's Commonplace Books with the title +"On the Prince breaking with his Party." + + +Page 116. _The Triumph of the Whale_. + +_The Examiner_, March 15, 1812. Reprinted in _The Poetical Recreations +of "The Champion,"_ signed R. et R., with a note stating that it had not +appeared in _The Champion_, but was collected with the other pieces by +the author's request. + +The subject of the verses was, of course, the first gentleman in Europe. +_The Examiner_ was never over-nice in its treatment of the prince, and +it was in the same year, 1812, that Leigh Hunt, the editor, and his +brother, the printer, of the paper were prosecuted for the article +styling him a "libertine" and the "companion of gamblers and demireps" +(which appeared the week following Lamb's poem), and were condemned to +imprisonment for it. Lamb's lines came very little short of expressing +equally objectionable criticisms; but verse is often privileged. +Thelwall--and Lamb--showed some courage in reprinting the lines in 1822, +when the prince had become king. Talfourd relates that Lamb was in the +habit of checking harsh comments on the prince by others with the +smiling remark, "_I_ love my Regent." + +In Galignani's 1828 edition of Byron this piece was attributed to his +lordship. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 118. _St. Crispin to Mr. Gifford._ + +_The Examiner_, October 3 and 4, 1819. Reprinted in _The Poetical +Recreations of "The Champion,"_ 1822. + +William Gifford (1756-1826), editor of the _Quarterly Review_, had been +apprenticed to a cobbler. Lamb had an old score against him on account +of his editorial treatment of Lamb's review of Wordsworth's _Excursion_, +in 1814, and other matters (see note to "Letter to Southey," Vol. I.). +Writing to the Olliers, on the publication of his _Works_, June 18, +1818, Lamb says, in reference to this sonnet: "I meditate an attack upon +that Cobler Gifford, which shall appear immediately after any favourable +mention which S. [Southey] may make in the Quarterly. It can't in decent +_gratitude_ appear _before_." When the sonnet was printed in the +_Examiner_ it purported to have reference to the _Quarterly's_ treatment +of Shelley's _Revolt of Islam_, which treatment Leigh Hunt was then +exposing in a series of articles. + + +Page 118. _The Godlike._ + +_The Champion_, March 18 and 19, 1820. Reprinted in _The Poetical +Recreations of "The Champion,"_ 1822. + +Another contribution to the character of George IV., who had just +succeeded to the throne, and was at that moment engaged upon the task of +divorcing his wife, Caroline of Brunswick. The eighth line must be read +probably with a medical eye. The concluding three lines refer to George +III.'s insanity. As a political satirist Lamb disdained half measures. + + +Page 119. _The Three Graves._ + +_The Champion_, May 13 and 14, 1820. Signed Dante. Reprinted in _The +Poetical Recreations of "The Champion,"_ 1822, signed Dante and R. et R. +Reprinted in the _London Magazine_, May, 1825, unsigned, with the names +in the last line printed only with initials and dashes, and the +sub-title, "Written during the time, now happily almost forgotten, of +the spy system." + +Lamb probably found a certain mischievous pleasure in giving these lines +the title of one of Coleridge's early poems. + +The spy system was a protective movement undertaken by Lord Sidmouth +(1757-1844) as Home Secretary in 1817--after the Luddite riots, the +general disaffection in the country, Thistlewood's Spa Fields uprising +and the break-down of the prosecution. Curious reading on the subject is +to be found in the memoirs of Richmond the Spy, and Peter Mackenzie's +remarks on that book and its author, in _Tait's Magazine_. The spy +system culminated with the failure of the Cato Street Conspiracy in +1820, which cost Thistlewood his life. That plot to murder ministers was +revealed by George Edwards, one of the spies named by Lamb in the last +line of this poem. Castles and Oliver were other government spies +mentioned by Richmond. + +Line 2. _Bedloe, Oates_ ... William Bedloe (1650-1680) and Titus Oates +(1649-1705) were associated as lying informers of the proceedings of the +imaginary Popish Plot against Charles II. + + +Page 119. _Sonnet to Mathew Wood, Esq_. + +_The Champion_, May 13 and 14, 1820. Reprinted in _The Poetical +Recreations of "The Champion,"_ 1822. + +Matthew Wood, afterwards Sir Matthew (1768-1843), was twice Lord Mayor +of London, 1815-1817, and M.P. for the city. He was one of the principal +friends and advisers of Caroline of Brunswick, George IV.'s repudiated +wife. Hence his particular merit in Lamb's eyes. Later he administered +the affairs of the Duke of Kent, whose trustee he was, and his baronetcy +was the first bestowed by Queen Victoria. The sonnet contains another of +Lamb's attacks on Canning. This statesman's mother, after the death of +George Canning, her first husband, in 1771, took to the stage, where she +remained for thirty years. Canning was at school at Eton. The course on +which Wood was adjured to hold was the defence of Queen Caroline; but +Canning's opposition to her cause was not so absolute as Lamb seemed to +think. The ministry, of which Canning was a member, had prepared a bill +by which the queen was to receive £50,000 annually so long as she +remained abroad. The king insisted on divorce or nothing, and it was his +own repugnance to this measure that caused Canning to tender his +resignation. The king refused it, and Canning went abroad and did not +return until it was abandoned. + +Line 11. _Pickpocket Peer_. This would be Henry Dundas, Viscount +Melville (1742-1811), Pitt's lieutenant, who was impeached for +embezzling money as First Lord of the Admiralty. He was acquitted, but +that was a circumstance that would hardly concern Lamb when in this +mood. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 120. _On a Projected Journey_. + +_The Champion_, July 15 and 16, 1820. Reprinted in _The Poetical +Recreations of "The Champion,"_ 1822. George IV.'s visit to Hanover did +not, however, occur till October, 1821. This is entitled in Ayrton's MS. +book (see below) "Upon the King's embarcation at Ramsgate for Hanover, +1821." + + +Page 120. _Song for the C----n_. + +_The Champion_, July 15 and 16, 1820. Reprinted in _The Poetical +Recreations of "The Champion,"_ 1822. + +A song for the Coronation, which was fixed for 1821. Queen Caroline +returned to England in June, 1820, staying with Alderman Wood (see page +361) in order to be on the spot against that event. Meanwhile the +divorce proceedings began, but were eventually withdrawn. Caroline made +a forcible effort to be present at the Coronation, on July 29, 1821, but +was repulsed at the Abbey door. She was taken ill the next day and died +on August 7. "Roy's Wife of Aldivalloch" is the Scotch song by Anne +Grant. + + +Page 120. _The Unbeloved_. + +_The Champion_, September 23 and 24, 1820. Reprinted in _The Poetical +Recreations of "The Champion,"_ 1822. In _The Champion_ the last line +was preceded by + + Place-and-heiress-hunting elf, + +the reference to heiress-hunting touching upon Canning's marriage to +Miss Joan Scott, a sister of the Duchess of Portland, who brought him +£100,000. + +Line 4. _C----gh_. Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh and second +Marquis of Londonderry (1769-1822), Foreign Secretary from 1812 until +his death. He committed suicide in a state of unsound mind. + +Line 6. _The Doctor_. This was the nickname commonly given to Henry +Addington, Viscount Sidmouth. + +Line 8. _Their chatty, childish Chancellor_. John Scott, afterwards Earl +of Eldon (1751-1838), the Lord Chancellor. + +Line 9. _In Liverpool some virtues strike_. Robert Banks Jenkinson, Earl +of Liverpool (1770-1828), Prime Minister at the time, and therefore +principal scapegoat for the Divorce Bill. + +Line 10. _And little Van's beneath dislike_. Nicholas Vansittart, +afterwards Baron Bexley (1766-1851), Chancellor of the Exchequer. + +Line 12. _H----t_. Thomas Taylour, first Marquis of Headfort +(1757-1829), the principal figure in a crim. con. case in 1804 when he +was sued by a clergyman named Massey and had to pay £10,000 damages. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 121. _On the Arrival in England of Lord Byron's Remains_. + +From a MS. book of William Ayrton's. In _The New Times_, October 24, +1825, the verses followed the "Ode to the Treadmill." The epigram, which +was unsigned, then ran thus:-- + + THE POETICAL CASK + + With change of climate manners alter not: + Transport a drunkard--he'll return a sot. + So lordly Juan, d----d to endless fame, + Went out a _pickle_--and comes back the same. + +Lord Byron's body had been brought home from Greece, for burial at +Hucknall Torkard, in 1824, and the cause of the epigram was a paragraph +in _The New Times_ of October 19, 1825, stating that the tub in which +Byron's remains came home was exhibited by the captain of the _Rodney_ +for 2s. 6d. a head; afterwards sold to a cooper in Whitechapel; resold +to a museum; and finally sold again to a cooper in Middle New Street, +who was at that time using it as an advertisement. + +The third line recalls Pope's line-- + + See Cromwell damn'd to everlasting fame. + +_Essay on Man_, IV., 284. + + +Page 121. _Lines Suggested by a Sight of Waltham Cross._ + +First printed in the _Englishman's Magazine_, September, 1831. Lamb sent +the epigram to Barton in a letter in November, 1827. The body of +Caroline of Brunswick, the rejected wife of George IV., was conveyed +through London only by force--involving a fatal affray between the +people and the Life Guards at Hyde Park corner--on its way to burial at +Brunswick. + + +Page 122. _For the "Table Book."_ + +This epigram accompanies a note to William Hone. It was marked "For the +_Table Book_," but does not seem to have been printed there. + + +Page 122. _The Royal Wonders._ + +_The Times_, August 10, 1830. Signed Charles Lamb. The epigram refers to +the Paris insurrection of July 26, 1830, which cost Charles X. his +throne; and, at home, to William IV.'s extreme fraternal friendliness to +his subjects. + + +Page 122. _Brevis Esse Laboro._ "One Dip." + + + * * * * * + + +Page 123. _Suum Cuique._ + +These epigrams were written for the sons of James Augustus Hessey, the +publisher, two Merchant Taylor boys. In _The Taylorian_ for March, 1884, +the magazine of the Merchant Taylors' School, the late Archdeacon +Hessey, one of the boys in question, told the story of their authorship. +It was a custom many years ago for Election Day at Merchant Taylors' +School to be marked by the recitation of original epigrams in Greek, +Latin and English, which, although the boys themselves were usually the +authors, might also be the work of other hands. Archdeacon Hessey and +his brother, as the following passage explains, resorted to Charles Lamb +for assistance:-- + +The subjects for 1830 were _Suum Cuique_ and _Brevis esse latoro_. +After some three or four exercise nights I confess that I was literally +"at my wits' end." But a brilliant idea struck me. I had frequently, boy +as I was, seen Charles Lamb (Elia) at my father's house, and once, in +1825 or 1826, I had been taken to have tea with him and his sister, Mary +Lamb, at their little house, Colebrook Cottage, a whitish-brown +tenement, standing by itself, close to the New River, at Islington. He +was very kind, as he always was to young people, and very quaint. I told +him that I had devoured his "Roast Pig;" he congratulated me on +possessing a thorough schoolboy's appetite. And he was pleased when I +mentioned my having seen the boys at Christ's Hospital at their public +suppers, which then took place on the Sunday evenings in Lent. "Could +this good-natured and humorous old gentleman be prevailed upon to give +me an Epigram?" "I don't know," said my father, to whom I put the +question, "but I will ask him at any rate, and send him the mottoes." In +a day or two there arrived from Enfield, to which Lamb had removed some +time in 1827, not one, but two epigrams, one on each subject. That on +_Suum Cuique_ was in Latin, and was suggested by the grim satisfaction +which had recently been expressed by the public at the capture and +execution of some notorious highwayman. That on _Brevis esse laboro_ was +in English, and might have represented an adventure which had befallen +Lamb himself, for he stammered frequently, though he was not so grievous +a _Balbulus_ as his friend George Darley, whom I had also often seen. I +need scarcely say that the two Epigrams were highly appreciated, and +that my brother and myself, for I gave my brother one of them, were +objects of envy to our schoolfellows. + +The death of George IV., however, prevented their being recited on the +occasion for which they were written. + +"_Suum Cuique_," which was signed F. Hessey, was thus translated by its +presumptive author:-- + + A thief, on dreary Bagshot's heath well known, + Was fond of making others' goods his own; + _Meum_ was never thought of, nor was _Tuum_, + But everything with him was counted _Suum_. + At length each gets his own, and no one grieves; + The rope his neck, Jack Ketch his clothes receives: + His body to dissecting knife has gone; + Himself to Orcus: well--each gets his own. + +The English epigram, which was signed J.A. Hessey, was a rhyming version +of a story which Lamb was fond of telling. Three, at least, of his +friends relate the story in their recollections of him: Mrs. Mathews in +her life of her husband; Leigh Hunt in _The Companion_; and De Quincey +in _Fraser's Magazine_. The incident possibly occurred to Lamb when as a +boy--or little more--he stayed at Margate about 1790. Lamb must have +written Merchant Taylors' epigrams before, for in 1803, in a letter to +Godwin about writing to order, he speaks of having undertaken, three or +four times, a schoolboy copy of verses for Merchant Taylors' boys at a +guinea a copy, and refers to the trouble and vexation the work was to +him. + +Writing to Southey on May 10, 1830, Lamb said, at the end:--"Perhaps +an epigram (not a very happy-gram) I did for a school-boy yesterday may +amuse. I pray Jove he may not get a flogging for any false quantity; but +'tis, with one exception, the only Latin verses I have made for forty +years, and I did it 'to order.' + + "CUIQUE SUUM + + "Adsciscit sibi divitias et opes alienas + Fur, rapiens, spolians quod mihi, quod-que tibi, + Proprium erat, temnens haec verba, meum-que tuum-que + Omne suum est: tandem Cui-que Suum tribuit. + Dat resti collum; restes, vah! carnifici dat; + Sese Diabolo, sic bene; Cuique Suum." + + +Page 123. _On "The Literary Gazette"_. + +_The Examiner_, August 22, 1830. This epigram, consisting only of the +first four lines, slightly altered, and headed "Rejected Epigrams, +6"-evidently torn from a paper containing a number of verses (the figure +7 is just visible underneath it)--is in the British Museum among the +letters left by Vincent Novello. It is inscribed, "In handwriting of Mr. +Charles Lamb." The same collection contains a copy, in Mrs. Cowden +Clarke's handwriting, of the sonnet to Mrs. Jane Towers (see page 50). +_The Literary Gazette_ was William Jerdan's paper, a poor thing, which +Lamb had reason to dislike for the attack it made upon him when _Album +Verses_ was published (see note on page 331). + +_The Examiner_ began the attack on August 14, 1830. All the epigrams are +signed T.A. This means that if Lamb wrote the above, he wrote all; which +is not, I think, likely. I do not reproduce them, the humour of punning +upon the name of the editor of the _Literary Gazette_ being a little +outmoded. + +T.A. may, of course, have been Lamb's pseudonymous signature. If so, he +may have chosen it as a joke upon his friend Thomas Allsop. But since +one of the epigrams is addressed to himself I doubt if Lamb was the +author. + + +Page 123. _On the Fast-Day_. + +John Payne Collier, in his privately printed reminiscences, _An Old +Man's Diary_, quotes this epigram as being by Charles Lamb. It may have +been written for the Fast-Day on October 19, 1803, for that on May 25, +1804, or for a later one. Lamb tells Hazlitt in February, 1806, that he +meditates a stroll on the Fast-Day. + + +Page 123. _Nonsense Verses_. + +Mr. W. Carew Hazlitt, in _Mary and Charles Lamb_, 1874, says: "I found +these lines--a parody on the popular, or nursery, ditty, 'Lady-bird, +lady-bird, fly away home'--officiating as a wrapper to some of Mr. +Hazlitt's hair. There is no signature; but the handwriting is +unmistakably Lamb's; nor are the lines themselves the worst of his +playful effusions." The piece suggests that Lamb, in a wild mood, was +turning his own "Angel Help" (see page 51) into ridicule--possibly to +satisfy some one who dared him to do it, or vowed that such a feat could +not be accomplished. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 124. _On Wawd._ + +Wawd was a fellow-clerk. We have this _jeu d'esprit_ through Mr. Joseph +H. Twichell, an American who had it from a fellow-clerk of Lamb's named +Ogilvie. (See _Scribner's Magazine_, March, 1876.) + + +Page 124. _Six Epitaphs._ + +Writing to Southey on March 20, 1799, Lamb says:--"I the other day +threw off an extempore epitaph on Ensign Peacock of the 3rd Regt. of the +Royal East India Volunteers, who like other boys in this scarlet tainted +age was ambitious of playing at soldiers, but dying in the first flash +of his valour was at the particular instance of his relations buried +with military honours! like any veteran scarr'd or chopt from Blenheim +or Ramilies. (He was buried in sash and gorget.) Sed hae sunt +lamentabilis nugae--But'tis as good as some epitaphs you and I have read +together in Christ-Church-yard." + +The last five Epigrams were sent to the _New York Tribune_, Feb. 22, +1879, by the late J.H. Siddons. They were found on scraps of paper in +Lamb's desk in the India House. Wagstaff and Sturms were fellow-clerks. +Dr. Drake was the medical officer of the establishment. Captain Dey was +a putative son of George IV. The lines upon him were given to Siddons by +Kenney's son. + + +Page 126. _Time and Eternity_ and _From the Latin_. + +In _The Mirror_ for June 1, 1833, are the two poems, collected under the +general heading "The Gatherer," indexed "Lamb, C., lines by." Mr. Thomas +Hutchinson first printed the second poem; but I do not feel too happy +about it. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 127. SATAN IN SEARCH OF A WIFE, 1831. + +This ballad was published by Moxon, anonymously, in 1831, although the +authorship was no secret In its volume form it was illustrated by George +Cruikshank. Lamb probably did not value his ballad very highly. Writing +to Moxon in 1833 he says, "I wish you would omit 'by the Author of Elia' +now, in advertising that damn'd 'Devil's Wedding.'" + +There is a reference to the poem, in Lamb's letter to Moxon of +October 24, 1831, which needs explanation. Moxon's _Englishman's +Magazine_, after running under his control for three months, +was suddenly abandoned. Lamb, who seems to have been paid in +advance for his work, wrote to Moxon on the subject, approving him +for getting the weight off his mind and adding:--"I have one on +mine. The cash in hand which as ***** less truly says, +burns in my pocket. I feel queer at returning it (who does not?). +You feel awkward at re-taking it (who ought not?) is there no +middle way of adjusting this fine embarrassment. I think I +have hit upon a medium to skin the sore place over, if not quite +to heal it. You hinted that there might be something under £10 +by and by accruing to me _Devil's Money_. You are sanguine--say +£7 10s.--that I entirely renounce and abjure all future interest +in, I insist upon it, and 'by Him I will not name' I won't touch a +penny of it. That will split your loss one half--and leave me +conscientious possessor of what I hold. Less than your assent to +this, no proposal will I accept of." + +A few months later, writing again to Moxon, he says:--"I am heartily +sorry my Devil does not answer. We must try it a little longer; and, +after all, I think I must insist on taking a portion of its loss upon +myself. It is too much that you should lose by two adventures." + +According to some reminiscences of Lamb by Mr. J. Fuller Russell, +printed in _Notes and Queries_, April 1, 1882, Lamb suppressed "Satan in +Search of a Wife," for the reason that the Vicar of Enfield, Dr. +Cresswell, also had married a tailor's daughter, and might be hurt by +the ballad. The correspondence quoted above does not, I think, bear out +Mr. Russell's statement. If the book were still being advertised in +1833, we can hardly believe that any consideration for the Vicar of +Enfield would cause its suppression. This gentleman had been at Enfield +for several years, and Lamb would have either suppressed the book +immediately or not at all; but possibly his wish to disassociate the +name of Elia from the work was inspired by the coincidence. + +The ballad does not call for much annotation. The legend +mentioned in the dedication tells how Cecilia, by her music, drew +an angel from heaven, who brought her roses of Paradise. The +ballad of King Cophetua and the beggar maid may be read in the +_Percy Reliques_. Hecate is a triple deity, known as Luna in heaven, +Diana on earth, and Proserpine in hell. In the reference to Milton +I think Lamb must have been thinking of the lines, _Paradise Lost_, +I., 27-28:-- + + Say first, for Heav'n hides nothing from thy view, + Nor the deep tract of Hell.... + +or, _Paradise Lost_, V., 542:-- + + And so from Heav'n to deepest Hell. + +Alecto (Part I., Stanza II.) was one of the Furies.--Old Parr (Stanza +IV.) lived to be 152; he died in 1635.--Semiramis (Stanza XVII.) was +Queen of Assyria, under whom Babylon became the most wonderful city in +the world; Helen was Helen of Troy, the cause of the war between the +Greeks and Trojans; Medea was the cruel lover of Jason, who recovered +the Golden Fleece.--Clytemnestra (Stanza XVIII.) was the wife and +murderer of Agamemnon; Joan of Naples was Giovanna, the wife of Andrea +of Hungary, who was accused of assassinating him. Landor wrote a play, +"Giovanna of Naples," to "restore her fame" and "requite her wrongs;" +Cleopatra was the Queen of Egypt, and lover of Mark Antony; Jocasta +married her son Oedipus unknowing who he was.--A tailor's "goose" +(Stanza XXII.) is his smoothing-iron, and his "hell" (Stanza XXIII.) the +place where he throws his shreds and debris.--Lamb's own "Vision of +Horns" (see Vol. I.) serves as a commentary on Stanza XXVII.; and in his +essay "On the Melancholy of Tailors" (Vol. I.) are further remarks on +the connection between tailors and cabbage in Stanza I. of Part II.--The +two Miss Crockfords of Stanza XVIII. would be the daughters of William +Crockford, of Crockford's Club, who, after succeeding to his father's +business of fishmonger, opened the gaming-house which bore his name and +amassed a fortune of upwards of a million.--Semele (Stanza XXI.), whose +lightest wish Jupiter had sworn to grant, was treacherously induced to +express the desire that Jupiter would visit her with the divine pomp in +which he approached his lawful wife Juno. He did so, and she was +consumed by his lightning and thunderbolts.--The bard of Stanza XXV. is, +of course, Virgil. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 138. Prologues and Epilogues. + +Writing to Sarah Stoddart concerning Godwin's "Faulkener" Mary Lamb +remarked: "Prologues and Epilogues will be his [Charles's] death." + + +Page 138. _Epilogue to "Antonio."_ + +Had Lamb not sent this epilogue to Manning in the letter of December 13, +1800, we should have no copy of it; for Godwin, by Lamb's advice, did +not print it with the play. Writing to Godwin two days before, Lamb +remarked:-"I have been plotting how to abridge the Epilogue. But I +cannot see that any lines can be spared, retaining the connection, +except these two, which are better out: + + "Why should I instance, &c., + The sick man's purpose, &c., + +and then the following line must run thus, + + "The truth by an example best is shown." + +See lines 16, 17 and 18. + +Godwin's "Antonio," produced at Drury Lane on December 13, 1800, was a +failure. Many years afterwards Lamb told the story of the unlucky first +night (see "The Old Actors" in Appendix to Vol. II. of this edition). +Godwin, its author, was, of course, William Godwin, the philosopher +(1756-1836). Later Lamb wrote the prologue to another of his plays (see +page 140 and note). + +Lines 35 and 36. _Suett ... Bannister_. Richard Suett (1755-1805) and +Jack Bannister (1760-1836), two famous comedians of that day. Line 62. +"_Pizarro_." Sheridan's patriotic melodrama, produced May 24, 1799, at +Drury Lane. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 140. _Prologue to "Faulkener."_ + +William Godwin's tragedy "Faulkener" was produced at Drury Lane, +December 16, 1807, with some success. Lamb's letters to Godwin of +September 9 and 17, 1801, suggest that he had a share in the framing of +the plot. Later the play was taken in hand by Thomas Holcroft and made +more dramatic. + +According to Godwin's preface, 1807, the story was taken from the 1745 +edition of Defoe's _Roxana_, which contains the episode of Susannah +imagining herself to be Roxana's daughter and throwing herself in her +mother's way. Godwin transformed the daughter into a son. Lamb, however, +seems to have believed this episode to be in the first edition, 1724, +and afterwards to have been removed at the entreaty of Southerne, +Defoe's friend (see Lamb's letters to Walter Wilson, Defoe's biographer, +of December 16, 1822, and February 24, 1823). But it is in reality the +first edition which lacks the episode, and Mr. G.A. Aitken, Defoe's +latest editor, doubts Southerne's interference altogether and considers +Susannah's curiosity an alien interpolation. For Lamb's other remarks on +Defoe see also the "Ode to the Tread Mill," page 72 of this volume, and +"Estimate of Defoe's Secondary Novels" (Vol. I.). Writing to Walter +Wilson on November 15, 1829, on the receipt of his memoirs of Defoe, +Lamb exclaims: "De Foe was always my darling." + + +Page 140. _Epilogue to "Time's a Tell-Tale."_ + +A play by Henry Siddons (1774-1815), Mrs. Siddons' eldest son. It was +produced in 1807 at Drury Lane, with Lamb's prologue, which was, +however, received so badly that on the second night another was +substituted for it. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 142. _Prologue to "Remorse."_ + +Coleridge's tragedy "Remorse," a recasting of his "Osorio" (written at +Sheridan's instigation in 1797), was produced with success on January +23, 1813; and was printed, with the prologue, in the same year. Lamb's +prologue, "spoken by Mr. Carr," was (according to Mr. Dykes Campbell) a +recasting of some verses composed for the prize offered by the Drury +Lane Committee in the previous year, 1812, in response to their +advertisement for a suitable poem to be read at the reopening of the new +building after the fire of 1809. It was, of course, this competition +which brought forth the _Rejected Addresses_ (1812) of the brothers +James and Horace Smith. + +The prologue as printed is very different from that which was spoken at +the theatre by Mr. Carr. A writer in the _Theatrical Inquisitor_ for +February, 1813, in his contemptuous criticism, refers to several +passages that are no longer extant. I quote from an account of the +matter by the late Mr. Dykes Campbell in the _Illustrated London News_, +October 22, 1892:-- + +I am afraid the true text of Lamb's "Rejected Address," even as +modified for use as a prologue, has not come down to us. This is how the +severe and suspicious _Inquisitor_ describes it and its twin brother the +epilogue-- + +The Prologue and Epilogue were among the most stupid productions of the +modern muse; the former was, in all probability, a Rejected Address, for +it contained many eulogiums on the beauty and magnificence of the "dome" +of Drury; talked of the waves being not quite dry, and expressed the +happiness of the bard at being the first whose muse had soared within +its limits. More stupid than the doggerel of Twiss, and more affected +than the pretty verses of Miles Peter Andrews, the Epilogue proclaimed +its author and the writer of the Prologue to be par nobile fratrum, in +rival dulness both pre-eminent. + +The reader of Lamb's prologue will find little of all this in it, but +there is no reason for doubting the critic's account of what he heard at +the theatre. It is not at all unlikely that it was this paragraph which +suggested to Lamb the advisability of still further revising the +"Rejected Address." In the prologue there is a good deal about the size +of the theatre, as compared with "the Lyceum's petty sphere," and of how +pleased Shakspere would have been had he been able to hear-- + + When that dread curse of Lear's + Had burst tremendous on a thousand ears: + +rather an anti-climax, by the way, for it means an audience of but five +hundred, which would have been a beggarly account for the new Drury. +There is nothing either about its "dome," or about the scenery, except +commonplaces so flat that one doubts if it be quite fair to quote them-- + + The very use, since so essential grown, + Of painted scenes, was to his [Shakspere's] stage unknown. + +This is not an improvement on the "waves not yet quite dry," a Lamb-like +touch which could not have been invented by the critic, and may go far +to convince us of his veracity. + +Above all, there is no trace of that splendidly audacious suggestion +that Coleridge was the first "whose muse had soared" within the new +dome--unless we find a blind one in the closing lines, supposing them to +have been converted by the simple process of inversion. Instead of +Coleridge being the first whose muse had soared in the new Drury, Drury +was the first place in which his dramatic muse had soared. + +Lamb was not among the writers parodied by the "sneering brothers" (as +he called them later), but Coleridge was. Lamb's turn came in 1825, when +P.G. Patmore, afterwards his friend and the father of Coventry Patmore, +wrote _Rejected Articles_, in which was a very poor imitation of Elia. + +Line 9. _Betterton or Booth._ Thomas Betterton, born probably in 1635, +acted for the last time in 1710, the year in which he died. Barton Booth +(1681-1733) left the stage in 1728. Betterton was much at the Little +Theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields; also at Sir John Vanbrugh's theatre in +the Haymarket. + +Line 11. _Quin_. James Quin (1693-1766) of Drury Lane and Covent +Garden, Garrick's great rival, famous as Falstaff. His last appearance +was in 1753. + +Line 12. _Garrick._ Garrick's Drury Lane, in which Lamb saw his first +play, was that built by Sir Christopher Wren in 1674. It lasted, with +certain alterations, including a new face by the brothers Adam, nearly +120 years. The seating capacity of this theatre was modest. In 1794 a +new Drury Lane Theatre, the third, was opened--too large for comfortable +seeing or hearing. This was burned down in 1809; and the new one, the +fourth, and that in which "Remorse" was produced, was opened in 1812. +This is the building (with certain additions) that still stands. + +Lines 13-16. _Garrick in the shades._ Many years later Lamb used the +same idea in connection with Elliston (see "To the Shade of Elliston," +Vol. II.). + +Line 20. _Ben and Fletcher._ Ben Jonson (1573?-1637) and John Fletcher +(1579-1625), Beaumont's collaborator. Ben Jonson's "Every Man in His +Humour" was produced at the Globe in 1598, Shakspeare being in the +caste; but in the main he wrote for Henslowe, who was connected with the +Rose and the Swan, on Bankside, and with the theatre in Newington Butts, +and who built, with Alleyn, in 1600, the Fortune in Golden Lane, +Cripplegate Without. Beaumont and Fletcher's plays went for the most +part to Burbage, who owned the Globe at Southwark and the Blackfriars' +Theatre. Shakspeare also wrote for Burbage. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 143. _Epilogue to "Debtor and Creditor."_ + +"Debtor and Creditor" was a farce by James Kenney (1780-1849), Lamb's +friend, with whom he stayed at Versailles in 1822. The play was produced +April 20, 1814. Gosling's experiences as a dramatic author seem to have +been curiously like Lamb's own. See note to "Mr. H." on page 392. + +Line 12. _They never bring the Spanish._ Spanish, old slang for money. + +Line 40. _Polito's._ Polito at one time kept the menagerie in Exeter +Change. + +Line 42. _Larry Whack._ Larry Whack is referred to in the play. Says +Sampson, on one occasion: "Who be I? Come, that be capital! Why, ben't I +Sampson Miller? Didn't I bang the Darby Corps at York Races ... and +durst Sir Harry Slang bring me up to town to fight Larry Whack, the +Irish ruffian?..." + + + * * * * * + + +Page 145. _Epilogue to an Amateur Performance of "Richard II."_ + +This epilogue, says Canon Ainger, who first printed it, was written for +a performance given by the family of Barren Field in 1824. The family of +Henry Field, Barron's father, would perhaps be more accurate; for Barron +Field was childless. The verses, which I print by permission of Miss +Kendall, Miss Field's residuary legatee, were given to Canon Ainger by +the late Miss M.L. Field, of Hastings. In his interesting note he adds +of this lady (to whom Lamb addressed the verses on page 106), "she told +me that she (then a girl of 19) sat by the side of Lamb during the +performance. She remembered well, she said, that in course of the play a +looking glass was broken, and that Lamb turned to her and whispered +'Sixpence!' She added that before the play began, while the guests were +assembling, the butler announced 'Mr. Negus!'--upon which Lamb +exclaimed, 'Hand him round!'" + +Lamb refers in the opening lines to Edmund Kean and John Philip Kemble. + +In this connection it may be interesting to state that Lamb told Patmore +that he considered John of Gaunt, time-honoured Lancaster, the grandest +name in the world. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 146. _Prologue to "The Wife."_ + +The original form of the prologue to James Sheridan Knowles' comedy, not +hitherto collected in any edition of Lamb's writings, is preserved in +the Forster collection in the South Kensington Museum. It was sent to +Moxon, for Knowles, in April, 1833, and differs considerably. See the +large edition of this work. It is curious that the prologue was not +attributed to Lamb when the play was printed. Knowles wrote in the +preface: "To my early, my trusty and honoured friend, Charles Lamb, I +owe my thanks for a delightful Epilogue, composed almost as soon as it +was requested. To an equally dear friend, I am equally indebted for my +Prologue." + + + * * * * * + + +Page 147. _Epilogue to "The Wife."_ + +This epilogue was spoken by Miss Ellen Tree. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 149. JOHN WOODVIL. + +First published in 1802 in a slender volume entitled _John Woodvil: a +Tragedy. By C. Lamb. To which are added Fragments of Burton, the author +of the Anatomy of Melancholy._ The full contents of the book were:-- + +John Woodvil; Ballad, From the German (see page 29); Helen (see page +28); Curious Fragments, I., II., III., IV.; The Argument; The +Consequence (see Vol. I., page 29, and note; also pages 30 and 35 of the +present volume and notes). + +_John Woodvil_ was reprinted by Lamb in the _Works_, 1818, the text of +which is followed here. + +If Mr. Fuller Russell was right in his statement in _Notes and Queries_, +April 1, 1882, that Lamb told him he "had lost £25 by his best effort, +_John Woodvil_," we must suppose that the book was published wholly or +partially at his own cost. + +The history of the poem which follows is, with an omission and addition +here and there, that compiled by the late Mr. Dykes Campbell and +contributed by him to _The Athenaeum_, October 31 and November 14, 1891. +Mr. Campbell had the opportunity of collating the edition of 1802 with a +manuscript copy made by Lamb and his sister for Manning. With that +patient thoroughness and discrimination which made his work as an +editor so valuable, Mr. Campbell minutely examined this copy and put the +results on record; and they are now for the first time, by permission of +Mrs. Dykes Campbell and the Editor of _The Athenaum_, incorporated in an +edition of Lamb's writings. The copy itself, I may add, when it came +into the market, was secured by an American collector. Mr. Campbell's +words follow, my own interpolations being within square brackets. + +Lamb's first allusion to the future _John Woodvil_ occurs in a letter to +Southey (October 29, 1798), at a time when the two young men were +exchanging a good many copies of verses for mutual criticism. "Not +having anything of my own," writes Lamb, "to send you in return (though, +to tell the truth, I am at work upon something which if I were to cut +away and garble, perhaps I might send you an extract or two that might +not displease you: but I will not do that; and whether it will come to +anything I know not, for I am as slow as a Fleming painter, when I +compose anything) I will crave leave to put down a few lines of old +Christopher Marlowe's." Lamb must soon have got rid of his objections to +cutting away and garbling, for before a month had elapsed he had sent +Southey two extracts, first the "Dying Lover" [see "Dramatic Fragment," +page 85], and next (November 28) "The Witch" [see page 199], both of +which passages were excluded from the printed play. [The letter, which +is wrongly dated April 20, 1799, in some editions, concludes (of "The +Witch"): "This is the extract I bragged of as superior to that I sent +you from Marlowe: perhaps you will smile."] + +Charles Lloyd shared with Southey the pains and pleasures of criticising +Lamb's verses, for Lamb asks the latter if he agrees with Lloyd in +disliking something in "The Witch." + +[Thus: "Lloyd objects to 'shutting up the womb of his purse' in my curse +(which, for a Christian witch in a Christian country, is not too mild, I +hope). Do you object? I think there is a strangeness in the idea, as +well as 'shaking the poor little snakes from his door,' which suits the +speaker. Witches illustrate, as fine ladies do, from their own familiar +objects, and snakes and the shutting up of wombs are in their way. I +don't know that this last charge has been before brought against 'em nor +either the sour milk or the mandrake babe; but I affirm these be things +a witch would do if she could."] + +Lamb proposes also to adopt an emendation of Southey's in the "Dying +Lover"--"though I do not feel the objection against 'Silent Prayer,'" +and in the event he did very sensibly stick to his own opinion, for in +the _London Magazine_ the line runs, as first written:-- + + He put a silent prayer up for the bride. + +One wonders what harm Southey can have seen in it. At this time Southey +was collecting verses for the first volume of his _Annual Anthology_ +(provisionally called the _Kalendar_), and inviting contributions from +Lamb. In writing before November 28, 1798, "This ['The Witch'] and the +'Dying Lover' I gave you are the only extracts I can give without +mutilation," Lamb may have meant that Southey was at liberty to print +them in the _Anthology_. A year later, October 31, 1799, when the second +volume was in preparation, Lamb wrote:--"I shall have nothing to +communicate, I fear, to the _Anthology_. You shall have some fragments +of my play if you desire them; but I think I would rather print it +whole." + +As a matter of fact, Lamb contributed nothing to the collection except +the lines "Living without God in the World," printed in the first volume +[see page 19. To _Recreations in Agriculture, Natural History,_ etc., +1801, edited by Dr. James Anderson, a friend of George Dyer, Lamb, +however, sent "Description of a Forest Life," "The General Lover" (What +is it you love?) and the "Dying Lover," called "Fragment in Dialogue." +There are slight differences in the text, the chief alteration being in +line 3 of the "Description of a Forest Life":-- + + Bursting the lubbar bonds of sleep that bound him.] + +Reverting to the letter of November 28, one learns Lamb's intentions as +to the play:--"My Tragedy will be a medley (as I intend it to be a +medley) of laughter and tears, prose and verse, and in some places +rhyme, songs, wit, pathos, humour, and, if possible, sublimity; at least +it is not a fault in my intention if it does not comprehend most of +these discordant atoms. Heaven send they dance not the 'Dance of +Death'!" + +The composition went on slowly and in a very casual way, for on January +21, 1799, he writes again to Southey:--"I have only one slight passage +to send you, scarce worth the sending, which I want to edge in somewhere +into my play, which, by the way, hath not received the addition often +lines, besides, since I saw you." The "slight passage" is one which, it +will be seen, was "edged in" near the end of the second act, but taken +out again--that beginning:-- + + I saw him [John Woodvil] in the day of Worcester fight, + Whither he came at twice seven years, + Under the discipline of the Lord Falkland + (His uncle by the mother's side), etc. + +Lamb naïvely asks Southey, "But did Falkland die before the Worcester +fight? In that case I must make bold to unclify some other nobleman." I +suppose Southey must have answered that Falkland had been killed at +Newbury eight years before Worcester fight, for when the passage had +been edged into the play, _Naseby_ and _Ashley_ were substituted for +"Worcester" and "Falkland" respectively. This was as bad a shot as the +first, for Sir Anthony Cooper, whether at Naseby or no, did not become +Lord Ashley until sixteen years after that fight[31]. Had the passage +escaped the pruning knife, Lamb's historical research would no doubt +have provided a proper battle and a proper uncle for his hero. Again +Lloyd appears as a critic, and this time he is obeyed, probably because +his objection to "portrayed in his face" was backed by Southey. "I like +the line," says Lamb, but he altered it to + + Of Valour's beauty in his youthful face + +in the Manning MS. Four months later, on May 20, Lamb sends Southey the +charming passage about forest-life on page 173, and defends his blank +verse against Southey's censure of the pauses at the end of the lines; +he does it on the model of Shakespeare, he says, in his "endeavour after +a colloquial ease and spirit." Talfourd printed the passage in full, but +some later editors have cut down the twenty-four lines to the six +opening ones, to the loss of a point in the letter. Lamb says he "loves +to anticipate charges of unoriginality," adding--"the first line is +almost Shakespeare's:-- + + "To have my love to bed and to arise. + "'Midsummer-Night's Dream.' + +I think there is a sweetness in the versification not unlike some rhymes +in that exquisite play, and the last line but three is yours." This line +describes how the deer, as they came tripping by, + + Then stop and gaze, then turn, they know not why. + +Lamb thus gives the line and his reference:-- + + ----An eye + That met the gaze, or turn'd it knew not why. + "Rosamund's Epistle." + +But, of course, he misquotes both line and title--though Southey would +feel flattered in finding that his friend's memory had done so well. As +the editors have not annotated the passage, I will say here that Lamb +should have quoted + + The modest eye + That met the glance, or turn'd, it knew not why. + "Rosamund to Henry." + +The poem is one of those in the now scarce volume which Southey and +Lovel published jointly at Bath in 1795, _Poems: containing "The +Retrospect."_ [It was this forest passage which, as Hazlitt tells us in +his _Spirit of the Age_, so puzzled Godwin. After looking in vain +through the old dramatists for it, he applied to Lamb himself.] + + +[Footnote 31: Sir Jacob Astley(?), but he too was ennobled _after_ +Naseby.] + + +By the end of October the play had evidently been completed (though not +yet named), for on the 31st Southey was asked, "Have you seen it, or +shall I lend you a copy? I want your opinion of it." None is recorded +here, but more than two years later, when Southey was in London, he gave +it to Danvers (_Letters of R.S._, II., 184): "Lamb and his sister see us +often: he is printing his play, which will please you by the exquisite +beauty of its poetry, and provoke you by the exquisite silliness of its +story." + +The play must have been baptised as "Pride's Cure" soon after +Hallowe'en, for at Christmas it was submitted under that title to +Kemble, and about the same time (December 28, 1799) we find Lamb +defending the title (with the vehemence and subtlety of a doubter, as I +read) against the adverse criticism of Manning and Mrs. Charles Lloyd. +Lamb had lately been on a visit to these friends at Cambridge, and had +doubtless taken a copy of his play with him and received their +objections there and then--for his defence does not seem to have been +provoked by a letter. [In a letter to Charles Lloyd that has come to +light since Mr. Dykes Campbell wrote, belonging to middle December, +1799, Lamb asks for his play to be returned to him, suggesting that Mrs. +Lloyd shall despatch it. It was probably in the letter that accompanied +the parcel that the criticism of the title was found. Lamb thus defended +it:--"By-the-bye, I think you and Sophia both incorrect with regard to +the _title_ of the _play_. Allowing your objection (which is not +necessary, as pride may be, and is in real life often, cured by +misfortunes not directly originating from its own acts, as Jeremy Taylor +will tell you a naughty desire is sometimes sent to cure it; I know you +read these _practical divines_)--but allowing your objection, does not +the betraying of his father's secret directly spring from pride?--from +the pride of wine, and a full heart, and a proud over-stepping of the +ordinary rules of morality, and contempt of the prejudices of mankind, +which are not to bind superior souls--'as _trust_ in _the matter of +secrets_ all _ties_ of _blood_, etc., etc., keeping of _promises_, the +feeble mind's religion, binding our _morning knowledge_ to the +performance of what _last night's ignorance spake_'--does he not prate, +that '_Great Spirits_' must do more than die for their friend? Does not +the pride of wine incite him to display some evidence of friendship, +which its own irregularity shall make great? This I know, that I meant +his punishment not alone to be a cure for his daily and habitual +_pride_, but the direct consequence and appropriate punishment of a +particular act of pride. + +"If you do not understand it so, it is my fault in not explaining my +meaning."] + +Manning seems to have begged for a copy--or reconsideration, +perhaps--for Lamb, on February 13, 1800, promised him a copy "of my play +and the _Falstaff Letters_ in a day or two." There is no trace of the +former having been sent, but the latter certainly was, for on March 1 he +presses Manning for his opinion of it--hopes he is "prepared to call it +a bundle of the sharpest, queerest, profoundest humours," etc., as he +was accustomed to hope when that book was in question. The next mention +of the play occurs in an undated letter to Coleridge [accompanying a MS. +copy of the play for the Wordsworths], dated by Talfourd and other +editors "end of 1800," which must have been written in March or April, +1800 [since Coleridge was then staying with Wordsworth, engaged in +completing the translation of _Wallenstein,_ the last of the MS. being +sent to the printer in April]. Talfourd's mistake in dating it perhaps +led him to suppose that the copy sent through Coleridge to Wordsworth +was a printed copy, and that Lamb had printed _John Woodvil_ a year +before he published it. If any other proof were needed that Talfourd +guessed wrongly, it is supplied by this sentence in the letter to +Manning of February 15, 1801:--"I lately received from Wordsworth a copy +of the second volume [of the _Lyrical Ballads_] accompanied by an +acknowledgment of having received from me _many months since_ a copy of +a certain Tragedy, with excuses for not having made any acknowledgment +sooner." + +Lamb's reply to Wordsworth (January 30, 1801) is so very dry--"Thank you +for Liking my Play!!"--that we may suppose that Wordsworth's expression +of "liking" was not very enthusiastic. + +Things become clearer when we reach November 3, 1800, on which day Lamb +thus addressed Manning (I quote verbatim from the original letter):--"At +last I have written to Kemble to know the event of my play, which was +presented last Christmas. As I suspected, came an answer back that the +copy was lost ... with a courteous (reasonable!) request of another copy +(if I had one by me), and a promise of a definite answer in a week. I +could not resist so facile and moderate demand: so scribbled out +another, omitting sundry things, such as the witch story, about half the +forest scene (which is too leisurely for _story_), and transposing that +damn'd soliloquy about England getting drunk, which like its reciter +stupidly stood alone nothing prevenient, or antevenient, and cleared +away a good deal besides ... I sent it last night, and am in weekly +expectation of the Tolling Bell and death warrant." + +It will be observed that that second copy sent to Kemble must have +differed essentially from the one sent to Manning, for the latter +includes the witch story, and retains in its original place the +soliloquy about England getting drunk. + +To this copy sent to Manning we now come in chronological order, but the +exact date of its despatch must remain uncertain. Clearly it was +subsequent, but probably not long subsequent, to Kemble's rejection of +the play, which took place soon after All Souls' Day, for Kemble must +have made up his mind within half an hour of taking up the manuscript. I +venture to assume that the argosy which bore all the treasures recounted +in the following bill of lading sailed about Christmas, 1800. It is sad +to think that the bill of lading itself and the MS. of "Pride's Cure" +are the only salvage. + +"I send you all of Coleridge's letters to me which I have preserved; +some of them are upon the subject of my play. I also send you Kemble's +two letters, and the prompter's courteous epistle, with a curious +critique on 'Pride's Cure' by a young Physician from EDINBORO', who +modestly suggests quite another kind of plot. These are monuments of my +disappointments which I like to preserve ...You will carefully keep all +(except the Scotch Doctor's, _which burn_) _in statu quo_ till I come to +claim mine own." + +On the reverse of the half-sheet is written: "For Mister Manning | +Teacher of the Mathematics | and the Black Arts, | There is another +letter in the inside cover of the book opposite the blank leaf that +_was_." + +[This is the other letter, written inside the board cover of the copy of +the play, in Charles Lamb's hand:-- + +"Mind this goes for a letter. (Acknowledge it directly, if only in ten +words.) + +"DEAR MANNING: + +"(I shall want to hear this comes safe.) + +"I have scratched out a good deal, as you will see. Generally, what I +have rejected was either _false_ in _feeling_, or a violation of +character, mostly of the first sort. I will here just instance in the +concluding few lines of the dying Lover's story, which completely +contradicted his character of _violent_ and _unreproachful_. I hesitated +a good while what copy to send you, and at last resolved to send the +_worst_, because you are familiar with it and can make it out; a +stranger would find so much difficulty in doing it, that it would give +him more pain than pleasure. This is compounded precisely of the two +persons' hands you requested it should be. + +"Yours sincerely, + +"C. LAMB." + +The two persons were undoubtedly Charles Lamb and his sister.] + +Before proceeding to the MS. itself, it will be desirable to refer to +Lamb's letter to Manning of February 15, 1802, in which he defends +himself against Manning's animadversions on the changes found in the +printed _John Woodvil_. This letter is addressed to "Mr. Thomas Manning, +Maison Magnan, No. 342 Boulevard Italien, Paris." ....The italics are in +the original:--"_Apropos_, I think you wrong about _my_ play. All the +omissions are _right_. And the supplementary scene, in which Sandford +_narrates_ the manner in which his master is affected, is the best in +the book. It stands where a hodge-podge of German puerilities used to +stand. I insist upon it that you like that scene." ... + +There is one thing more to add. Its excuse is the best in the world--it +is quite new. In that precious letter of February 15, 1801, is a passage +[printed in Canon Ainger's _édition de luxe_] which shows that Lamb +(probably) tried George Colman the younger with "Pride's Cure." The +potentate of the Haymarket was probably less sublimely courteous in his +rejection than Kemble. + +"Now to my own affairs. I have not taken that thing to Colman, but I +have proceeded one step in the business. I have inquired his address and +am promised it in a few days." + +[The Manning copy of _John Woodvil_ is thus described by Mr. Dykes +Campbell]:--It is composed of foolscap sheets stitched into a limp +wrapper of marbled paper. The writing is chiefly Mary Lamb's; her +brother's portion seems to have been done at various times, for the ink +varies in shade, and the handwriting in style. + +On the inside of the first cover, as before noted, is written the letter +quoted above. Then comes a page with:-- + + Begun August, 1798, finished May, 1799. + This comes in beginng 2d act. + (Letter) + of Marg. to John + +[this being Margaret's "Letter" (page 160 of the present volume).] + +On the reverse, Mary has written out the "Characters in 'Pride's Cure,' +a Tragedy." In this list Lovel and Gray are described as "two Court +spies." + +On the next page the play opens, but on the top margin is written:-- + + "Turn a leaf back for _my_ Letter to Manning. + + "C. LAMB." + +The point of the underlining of "my" is to distinguish Lamb's letter +from Margaret's, which chance to face one another in the MS. + +Then comes:-- + + Pride's Cure. + A Tragedy. + Act the First. Scene the First. + A Servants' apartment in Wodvil [_sic_] Hall. + Servants drinking. + A Song by Daniel. + "When the King enjoys his own again." + _Peter_. A delicate song upon my verity. + Where didst learn it, fellow? + +And so on for some leaves without material difference from print. + +After the speech [page 155] "_All_. Truly a sad consideration" comes +this continuation of the dialogue:-- + +_Daniel_. You know what he said to you one day in confidence. + +_Peter_. I have reason to remember the words--"'Tis a pity (said he) a +traitor should go unpunished." + +_Francis_. Did he say so much? _Peter_. As true as I sit here. I told +Daniel of it the same day. Did I not, Daniel? + +_Daniel_. Well, I do not know but it may be merrier times with us +servants if Sir Walter never comes back. + +_Francis_. But then again, who of us can think of betraying him? + +_Peter_. His son, John Woodvil, is the prince of good masters. + +_Daniel_. Here is his health, and the King's. (_They all drink_.) Well, +I cannot see why one of us should not deserve the reward as well as +another man. + +_Martin_. Indeed there is something in that. + +_Sandford enters suddenly_. + +_Sandford_. You well-fed and unprofitable grooms. + +And so on as printed, until we come to Margaret's reply to Sandford's +speech ending [page 156]:-- + +Since my ["our"] old master quitted all his rights here. + +_Margaret_. Alas! I am sure I find it so. + Ah! Mr. Sandford, + This is no dwelling now for me, + As in Sir Walter's days it was. + I can remember when this house hath been + A sanctuary to a poor orphan girl + From evil tongues and injuries of the world. + Now every day + I must endure fresh insult from the scorn + Of Woodvil's friends, the uncivil jests + And free discourses of the dissolute men + That haunt this mansion, making me their mirth. + +Further on in the same dialogue comes the following, after the line in +Margaret's speech [page 158, line 18], + + His love, which ["that"] long has been upon the wane. + + And therefore 'tis men seeing this + Have ta'en their cue and think it now their time + To slur me with their coward disrespects, + Unworthy usages, who, while John lov'd + And while one breath'd + That thought not much to take the orphan's part, + And durst as soon + Hold dalliance with the chafed lion's paw, + Or play with fire, or utter blasphemy, + As think a disrespectful thought of Margaret. + +_Sandford_. I am too mean a man, + Being but a servant in the family, + To be the avenger of a Lady's wrongs, + And such a Lady! but I verily think + That I should cleave the rudesby to the earth + With my good oaken staff, and think no harm, + That offer'd you an insult, I being by. + I warrant you, young Master would forgive, + And thank me for the deed, + Tho' he I struck were one of his dearest friends. + +_Margaret_. O Mr. Sandford, you must think it, + I know, as sad undecency in me + To trouble thus your friendly hearing + With my complaints. + But I have now no female friend + In all this house, adviser none, or friend + To council with, and when I view your face, + I call to mind old times, + And how these things were different once + When your old friend and master rul'd this house. + Nay, never weep; why, man, I trust that yet + Sir Walter shall return one day + And thank you for these tears, + And loving services to his poor orphan. + For me, I am determined what to do. + +And so on as printed down to Margaret's line [page 158, line 3 from +foot]:-- + + And cowardice grows enamour'd of rare accidents. + +The three lines which follow in print [pages 158-9] are not in the MS. +Margaret continues thus:-- + + But we must part now. + I see one coming, that will also observe us. + Before night comes we will contrive to meet, + And then I will tell you further. Till when, farewell. +_Sandford_. My prayers go with you, Lady, and your counsels, + And heaven so prosper them, as I wish you well. + [_They part several ways_.] + +Here follows:-- + +Scene the Second. A Library in Woodvil Hall; John Woodvil alone. + +_John Woodvil (alone)_. Now universal England getteth drunk. + +And so on as printed in Act II. [on page 165]. After the last printed +line, + + A fishing, hawking, hunting country gentleman, + +the MS. has these five lines, but Lamb drew his pen through them:-- + + Great spirits ask great play-room; I would be + The Phaeton, should put the world to a hazard, + E'er I'd forego the horses of the sun, + And giddy lustre of my travels' glory + For tedious common paces. [_Exit_.] + +Next comes:-- + +Scene the Third. An apartment in Woodvil Hall; Margaret. Sandford. + +_Margaret_. I pray you spare me, Mr. Sandford. + +And so on as printed as the continuation of the former scene [page 159] +to the end of that and of the first act. But in the middle of Sandford's +speech comes in the "Witch" story, thus introduced:-- + +[_Sandford_.] I know a suit + Of lovely Lincoln-green, that much shall grace you + In the wear, being glossy, fresh and worn but seld, + Young Stephen Woodvil's they were, Sir Walter's eldest son, + Who died long since in early youth. +_Margaret_. I have somewhere heard his story. I remember + Sir Walter Rowland would rebuke me, being a girl, + When I have asked the manner of his death. + But I forget it. +_Sandford_. One summer night, Sir Francis, as it chanc'd, + Was pacing to and fro in the avenue + That westward fronts our house,-- +_Margaret_. Methinks I should learn something of his story + Whose garments I am to wear. +_Sandford_. Among those aged oaks, etc. + +And so the witch story goes on, not quite as printed as a separate poem +in the _Works_ of 1818 [see page 199], but not differing very +materially.... + +Then comes "Act the Second. John Woodvil alone. Reading a letter (which +stands at the beginning of the book)." The letter is longer in MS. than +in print [see page 160], the words in italics having been withdrawn from +the middle of the second sentence:-- + +"The course I have taken ... seemed to [me] best _both for the warding +off of calumny from myself (which should bring dishonor upon the memory +of Sir Rowland my father, if a daughter of his could be thought to +prefer doubtful ease before virtuous sufferance, softness before +reputation), and_ for the once-for-all releasing of yourself...." + +No notable alteration occurs until we come to the second scene, which in +the MS. (owing to the transposition of Woodvil's soliloquy) followed +immediately on Lovel's reply to Woodvil's speech-- + + No, you shall go with me into the gallery-- + +printed on page 164. + +Scene the Second. Sherwood Forest. Sir Walter Woodvil, Simon, drest as +Frenchmen. + +Sir Walter's opening speech is long in print [page 166]--in MS. it is +but this:-- + +_Sir Walter_. How fares my boy, Simon, my youngest born, + My hope, my pride, young Woodvil, speak to me; + Thinkest thy brother plays thy father false? + My life upon his faith and noble heart; + Son John could never play thy father false. + +There is no further material change to note until we come to the point +in the conversation between Sir Walter, Simon and Margaret [page 172], +where Simon calls John "a scurvy brother," to whom Margaret responds:-- + +_Margaret_. I speak no slander, Simon, of your brother, + He is still the first of men. + +_Simon_. I would fain learn that, if you please. + +_Margaret_. Had'st rather hear his praises in the mass + Or parcel'd out in each particular? + +_Simon_. So please you, in the detail: general praise + We'll leave to his Epitaph-maker. + +_Margaret_. I will begin then-- + His face is Fancy's tablet, where the witch + Paints, in her fine caprice, ever new forms, + Making it apt all workings of the soul, + All passions and their changes to display; + His eye, attention's magnet, draws all hearts. + +_Simon_. Is this all about your son, Sir? + +_Margaret_. Pray let me proceed. His tongue.... + +_Simon_. Well skill'd in lying, no doubt-- + +_Sir Walter_. Ungracious boy! will you not hear her out? + +_Margaret_. His tongue well skill'd in sweetness to discuss-- + (False tongue that seem'd for love-vows only fram'd)-- + +_Simon_. Did I not say so? + +_Margaret_. All knowledge and all topics of converse, + Ev'n all the infinite stuff of men's debate + From matter of fact, to the heights of metaphysick, + How could she think that noble mind + So furnish'd, so innate in all perfections, + The manners and the worth + That go to the making up of a complete Gentleman, + Could from his proper nature so decline + And from that starry height of place he mov'd in + To link his fortune to a lowly Lady + Who nothing with her brought but her plain heart, + And truth of love that never swerv'd from Woodvil. + +_Simon_. Wilt please you hear some vices of this brother, + This all-accomplish'd John? + +_Margaret_. There is no need--I grant him all you say and more, + Vain, ambitious, large of purpose, + Fantastic, fiery, swift and confident, + A wayward child of vanity and spleen, + A hair-brain'd mad-cap, dreamer of gold dreams, + A daily feaster on high self-conceit, + With many glorious faults beside, + Weak minds mistake for virtues. + +_Simon_. Add to these, + That having gain'd a virtuous maiden's love, + One fairly priz'd at twenty times his worth, + He let her wander houseless from his door + To seek new friends and find elsewhere a home. + +_Sir Walter_. Fie upon't-- + All men are false, I think, etc. + +And here we arrive at the "Dying Lover," which was printed anonymously in the +_London Magazine_ for January, 1822. But before passing from the long +passage transcribed above I am bound to say that Lamb drew his pen +through it all, marking some bits "bad" and others "very bad." I venture +to think that in this he did himself some injustice. + +To Sir Walter's sweeping indictment Margaret replies as follows. I keep +to the text of the MS., noting some trifling changes made for the +_London Magazine_ [see page 85]:-- + +_Margaret_. All are not false. I knew a youth who died + For grief, because his Love proved so, + And married to[32] another. + I saw him on the wedding day, + For he was present in the church that day, + And in his best apparel too[33], + As one that came to grace the ceremony. + I mark'd him when the ring was given, + His countenance never changed; + And when the priest pronounced the marriage blessing, + He put a silent prayer up for the bride, + [For they stood near who saw his lips move.][34] + He came invited to the marriage-feast + With the bride's friends, + And was the merriest of them all that day; + But they, who knew him best, call'd it feign'd mirth; + And others said, + He wore a smile like death's[35] upon his face. + His presence dash'd all the beholders' mirth, + And he went away in tears. + +_Simon_. What followed then? + +_Margaret_. Oh! then + He did not as neglected suitors use + Affect a life of solitude in shades, + But lived, + In free discourse and sweet society, + Among his friends who knew his gentle nature best. + Yet ever when he smiled, + There was a mystery legible in his face, + That whoso saw him said he was a man + Not long for this world.---- + And true it was, for even then + The silent love was feeding at his heart + Of which he died: + Nor ever spake word of reproach, + Only he wish'd in death that his remains[36] + Might find a poor grave in some spot, not far + From his mistress' family vault, "being the place + Where one day Anna should herself be laid." + + (So far in the _Magazine_.) + + +[Footnote 32: "With" (_London Magazine_).] + +[Footnote 33: "In festive bravery deck'd" (_London Magazine_).] + +[Footnote 34: This line erased in MS. and nothing substituted. In the +_London Magazine_ this took its place:--"For so his moving lip +interpreted."] + +[Footnote 35: "Death" (_London Magazine_).] + +[Footnote 36: Lamb drew his pen through the four concluding lines, and +wrote in the margin "_very_ bad."] + + +_Simon_. A melancholy catastrophe. For my part I shall never die for +love, being as I am, too general-contemplative for the narrow passion. I +am in some sort a general lover. + +_Margaret_. In the name of the Boy-god who plays at blind man's buff +with the Muses, and cares not whom he catches; what is it you love? + +And so on until the end of Simon's famous description of the delights of +forest life [page 173]. To this + +_Margaret_ (_smiling_). And afterwards them paint in simile. + +(_To Sir Walter._) I had some foolish questions to put concerning your +son, Sir.--Was John so early valiant as hath been reported? I have heard +some legends of him. + +_Sir Walter_. You shall not call them so. Report, in most things +superfluous, in many things altogether an inventress, hath been but too +modest in the delivery of John's true stories. + +_Margaret_. Proceed, Sir. + +_Sir Walter_. I saw him on the day of Naseby Fight-- + To which he came at twice seven years, + Under the discipline of the Lord Ashley, + His uncle by the mother's side, + Who gave his early principles a bent + Quite from the politics of his father's house. + +_Margaret_. I have heard so much. + +_Sir Walter_. There did I see this valiant Lamb of Mars, + This sprig of honour, this unbearded John, + This veteran in green years, this sprout, this Woodvil, + With dreadless ease, guiding a fire-hot steed + Which seem'd to scorn the manage of a boy, + Prick forth with such an ease into the field + To mingle rivalship and deeds of wrath + Even with the sinewy masters of the art[37]! + The rough fanatic and blood-practis'd soldiery + Seeing such hope and virtue in the boy, + Disclosed their ranks to let him pass unhurt, + Checking their swords' uncivil injuries + As both to mar that curious workmanship + Of valour's beauty in his youthful face. + +_Simon_. Mistress Margaret will have need of some refreshment, etc. + +Lamb has drawn his pen through this passage, and marked it "bad or +dubious." + + +[Footnote 37: Some lines intervene here in the letter to Southey of +January 21, 1799, which are not in the MS.] + + At the beginning of the fourth act John Woodvil's soliloquy is broken +in upon by Sandford. He has just told himself [page 186] that + + Some, the most resolved fools of all, + Have told their dearest secrets in their cups, + +when + +_Enter Sandford in haste._ + +_Sandford_. O Sir, you have not told them anything? + +_John_. Told whom, Sandford? + +_Sandford_. Mr. Lovel or Mr. Gray, anything concerning your father? + +_John_. Are they not my friends, Sandford? + +_Sandford_. Your friends! Lord help you, they your friends! They were no +better than two Court spies set on to get the secret out of you. I have +just discovered in time all their practices. + +_John_. But I have told one of them. + +_Sandford_. God forbid, God forbid! + +_John_. How do you know them to be what you said they were? + +_Sandford_. Good God! + +_John_. Tell me, Sandford, my good Sandford, your master begs it of you. + +_Sandford_. I cannot speak to you. [_Goes out, John following him._] + +Scene the Second. The forest. + +This forest scene has been greatly altered. When Gray has said [page +188], "'Tis a brave youth," etc., there follows:-- + +_Sir Walter_. Why should I live any longer? There is my sword +(_surrendering_). Son John, 'tis thou hast brought this disgrace upon us +all. + +_Simon_. Father, why do you cover your face with your hands? Why do you +draw your breath so hard? See, villains, his heart is burst! O villains, +he cannot speak! One of you run for some water; quick, ye musty rogues: +will ye have your throats cut? [_They both slink off._] How is it with +you, father? Look up, Sir Walter, the villains are gone. + +"He hears" [page 188], down to "_Bears in the body_" [page 188], of the +print is not in the MS., which goes on thus:-- + +_Sir Walter_. Barely a minute's breath is left me now, + Which must be spent in charity by me, + And, Simon, as you prize my dying words, + I charge you with your brother live in peace + And be my messenger, + To bear my message to the unhappy boy, + For certain his intent was short of my death. + +_Simon_. I hope as much, father. + +_Sir Walter_. Tell him I send it with my parting prayer, + And you must fall upon his neck and weep, + And teach him pray, and love your brother John, + For you two now are left in the wide world + The sole survivors of the Woodvil name. + Bless you, my sons-- [_Dies._] + +_Simon._ My father's soul is fled. + And now, my trusty servant, my sword, + One labour yet, my sword, then sleep for ever. + Drink up the poor dregs left of Woodvil's name + And fill the measure of our house's crimes. + How nature sickens, + To view her customary bands so snapt + When Love's sweet fires go out in blood of kin, + And natural regards have left the earth. + +Scene changes to another part of the forest. + +_Margaret (alone)._ + They are gone to bear the body to the town, + It was an error merely and no crime. + +And so to the end of her long speech as printed [page 189]. + +At this point in the MS. comes in "the hodge-podge of German +puerilities" (see the letter to Manning, February 15, 1802), the +sacrifice of which so discontented Manning, who evidently considered the +"supplementary scene" (closing the fourth act, [pages 189 to 191]), as +Lamb called it, a poor substitute. + +Scene changes to Woodvil Hall. + +_John reading a letter by scraps--A Servant attending._ + +"An event beyond the possible reach of foresight. 'Tis thought the +deep disgrace of supposed treachery in you o'ercame him. His heart +brake. You will acquit yourself of worse crimes than indiscretion. +My remorse must end with life. + +"Your quondam companion and penitent for the wrong he has done ye. + +"GRAY. + +"_Postscript._--The old man being unhappily removed, the young man's +advancement henceforth will find no impediment." + +_John._ Impediment indeed there now is none: + For all has happened that my soul presag'd. + What hinders, but I enter in forthwith + And take possession of my crowned state? + For thy advancement, Woodvil, is no less; + To be a King, a King. + I hear the shoutings of the under-world, + I hear the unlawful accents of their mirth, + The fiends do shout and clap their hands for joy, + That Woodvil is proclaim'd the Prince of Hell. + They place a burning crown upon my head, + I hear it hissing now, [_Puts his hand to his forehead._] + And feel the snakes about my mortal brain. + [_Sinks in a swoon, is caught in the arms of a servant._] + +Scene. A Courtyard before Woodvil Hall. + +Sandford. Margaret (as just arrived from a journey). + +_Margaret._ Can I see him to-night? + +_Sandford._ I think ye had better stay till the morning: + he will be more calm. + +_Margaret._ You say he gets no sleep? + +_Sandford._ He hath not slept since Sir Walter died. I have sat up with +him these two nights. Francis takes my place to-night--O! Mistress +Margaret, are not the witch's words come true--"All that we feared and +worse"? Go in and change your garments, you have travelled hard and want +rest. + +_Margaret._ I will go to bed. You will promise I shall see him in the +morning. + +_Sandford._ You will sleep in your old chamber? + +_Margaret._ The Tapestry room: yes. Pray get me a light. A good night to +us all. + +_Sandford._ Amen, say I. [_They go in._] + +Scene. The Servants' Hall. + +Daniel, Peter and Robert. + +_Daniel._ Are we all of one mind, fellows? He that lov'd his old master, +speak. Shall we quit his son's service for a better? Is it aye, or no? + +_Peter._ For my part, I am afraid to go to bed to-night. + +_Robert._ For certain, young Master's indiscretion was that which broke +his heart. + +_Peter._ Who sits up with him to-night? + +_Robert._ Francis. + +_Peter._ Lord! what a conscience he must have, that he cannot sleep +alone. + +_Robert._ They say he is troubled with the Night-mare. + +_Daniel._ Here he comes, let us go away as fast as we can. + +_Enter John Woodvil and Francis._ [_They run out._] + +_John._ I lay me down to get a little sleep, + And just when I began to close my eyes, + My eyes heavy to sleep, it comes. + +_Francis._ What comes? + +_John._ I can remember when a child the maids[38] + Would place me on their lap, as they undrest me, + As silly women use, and tell me stories + Of Witches--Make me read "Glanvil on Witchcraft," + And in conclusion show me in the Bible, + The old Family-Bible with the pictures in it, + The 'graving of the Witch raising up Samuel, + Which so possest my fancy, being a child, + That nightly in my dreams an old Hag came + And sat upon my pillow. + I am relapsing into infancy,-- + And shortly I shall dote--for would you think it? + The Hag has come again. Spite of my manhood, + The Witch is strong upon me every night. + [_Walks to and fro, then as if recollecting something._] + What said'st thou, Francis, as I stood in the passage? + Something of a Father: + The word is ringing in my ears now-- + +[Footnote 38: +Twice afterwards Lamb returned to this episode--in "The Witch +Aunt" in story _Mrs. Leicester's School_ (see Vol. III.), and in "Witches +and other Night Fears," in _Elia_ (see Vol. II. 9).] + +_Francis_. I remember, one of the servants, Sir, would pass a few +days with his father at Leicester. The poor old man lies on his deathbed, +and has exprest a desire to see his son before he dies. But none +cared to break the matter to you. + +_John_. Send the man here. [_Francis goes out_.] + My very servants shun my company. + I held my purse to a beggar yesterday + Who lay and bask'd his sores in the hot sun, + And the gaunt pauper did refuse my alms. + +_Francis returns with Robert_. + +_John_. Come hither, Robert. What is the poor man ailing? + +_Robert_. Please your honour, I fear he has partly perish'd for want of +physic. His means are small, and he kept his illness a secret to me not +to put me to expenses. + +_John_. Good son, he weeps for his father. + Go take the swiftest horse in my stables, + Take Lightfoot or Eclipse--no, Eclipse is lame, + Take Lightfoot then, or Princess[39], + Ride hard all night to Leicester. + And give him money, money, Francis-- + The old man must have medicines, cordials, + And broth to keep him warm, and careful nurses. + He must not die for lack of tendance, Robert. + +[Footnote 39: Lamb puts his pen through these two lines, and writes across +them "miserable bad."] + +_Robert_. God bless your honour for your kindness to my poor father. + +_John_. Pray, now make haste. You may chance to come in time. + +[_Robert goes out_.] + +_John_. Go get some firewood, Francis, + And get my supper ready. [_Francis goes out_.] + The night is bitter cold. + They in their graves feel nothing of the cold, + Or if they do, how dull a cold-- + All clayey, clayey. Ah God! who waits below? + Come up, come quick. I saw a fearful sight. + +_Francis returns in haste with wood_. + +_John_. There are such things as spirits, deny it who may. + Is it you, Francis? Heap the wood on thick, + We two shall sup together, sup all night, + Carouse, drink drunk, and tell the merriest tales-- + Tell for a wager, who tells merriest-- + But I am very weak. O tears, tears, tears, + I feel your just rebuke. [_Goes out_.] + +Scene changes to a bed-room. John sitting alone: a lamp burning by him. + +"Infinite torments for finite offences." I will never believe it. How +divines can reconcile this monstrous tenet with the spirit of their +Theology! They have palpably failed in the proof, for to put the +question thus:--If he being infinite--have a care, Woodvil, the latitude +of doubting suits not with the humility of thy condition. What good men +have believed, may be true, and what they profess to find set down +clearly in their scriptures, must have probability in its defence[40]. +Touching that other question the Casuists with one consent have +pronounced the sober man accountable for the deeds by him in a state of +drunkenness committed, because tho' the action indeed be such as he, +sober, would never have committed, yet the drunkenness being an act of +the will, by a moral fiction, the issues are accounted voluntary also. I +lose my sleep in attending to these intricacies of the schoolmen. I lay +till daybreak the other morning endeavouring to draw a line of +distinction between sin of direct malice and sin of malice indirect, or +imputable only by the sequence. My brain is overwrought by these +labours, and my faculties will shortly decline into impotence. [_Throws +himself on a bed_.] + +End of the Fourth Act. + + +[Footnote 40: Lamb had crossed out this passage from "Infinite +torments," and written at "touching" "begin here."] + + +In the fifth act of the printed play [page 192] we have simply "Margaret +enters." In the MS. Sandford prepares his master for her advent, and +announces her thus:-- + +_Sandford_. Wilt please you to see company to-day, Sir? + +_John_. Who thinks me worth the visiting? + +_Sandford_. One that traveled hard last night to see you, +She waits to know your pleasure. + +_John_. A lady too! pray send her to me-- +Some curiosity, I suppose. + +[_Sandford goes out and returns with Margaret_.] + +_Margaret_. Woodvil![41] + + +[Footnote 41: "Woodvil!" and some illegible words struck out, and nothing +substituted.] + + +_John_. Comes Margaret here, etc. + +When, a page further on [page 194], John has declared to Margaret that + + This earth holds not alive so poor a thing as I am-- + I was not always thus, + +the MS. went on (but the passage is struck out as "bad"):-- + + You must bear with me, Margaret, as a child, + For I am weak as tender Infancy + And cannot bear rebuke-- + Would'st think it, Love! + They hoot and spit upon me as I pass + In the public streets: one shows me to his neighbour, + Who shakes his head and turns away with horror-- + I was not always thus-- + +_Margaret_. Thou noble nature, etc. + +The next scene--the last [page l95]--is much cut about. The long speech +of Margaret beginning, + + To give you in your stead a better self, + +and John's reply [both printed at pages 196-7], are struck out, and +"Nimis" written by Lamb's pen in large characters in the margin; +but after that all goes on in harmony with the print, to the end:-- + + It seem'd the guilt of blood was passing from me + Even in the act and agony of tears + And all my sins forgiven. +At this point in the MS. Simon arrives:-- + + [_A noise is heard as of one without, clamorous to come in_.] + +_Margaret_. 'Tis your brother Simon, John. + +_Enter Simon, with his sword in a menacing posture, John staggers +towards him and falls at his feet, Margaret standing over him._ + +_Simon_. Is this the man I came so far to see-- + The perfect Cavalier, the finish'd courtier + Whom Ladies lov'd, the gallant curled Woodvil, + Whom brave men fear'd, the valiant, fighting Woodvil, + The haughty high-ambitioned Parricide-- + The same that sold his father's secret in his cups, + And held it but an after-dinner's trick?-- + So humble and in tears, a crestfallen penitent, + And crawling at a younger brother's feet! + The sinews of my [_stiff_] revenge grow slack. + My brother, speak to me, my brother John. + (_Aside_) Now this is better than the beastly deed + Which I did meditate. + +_John (rising and resuming his old dignity)_. You come to take my life, + I know it well. + You come to fight with me--[_Laying his hand upon his sword_.] + This arm was busy on the day of Naseby: + 'Tis paralytic now, and knows no use of weapons. + The luck is yours, Sir. [_Surrenders his sword_.] + +_Simon_. My errand is of peace: + A dying father's blessing and lost prayers + For his misguided son. + Sir Walter sends it with his parting breath. + He bade me with my brother live in peace, + He bade me fall upon his neck and weep, + (As I now do) and love my brother John; + For we are only left in the wide world + The poor survivors of the Woodvil name. [_They embrace_.] + +_Simon_. And Margaret here shall witness our atonement-- + (For Margaret still hath followed all your fortunes). + And she shall dry thy tears and teach thee pray. + So we'll together seek some foreign land, + Where our sad story, John, shall never reach. + +_End of "Pride's Cure" and Charles Lamb's Dramatic Works!!_ + + +After all this [Mr. Campbell adds finally] is the reader prepared to +think Manning altogether wrong and Lamb altogether right as to what was +done in the process of transforming Pride's Cure into _John Woodvil_? + +The version of 1818 here printed differs practically only in +minor matters of typography and punctuation from that of 1802. +There are, however, a few alterations which should be noted. On +page 176, in John's first speech, "fermentations" was, in 1802, +"stimuli." On page 178, in the speech of the Third Gentleman, +there is a change. In 1802 he said "(_dashing his glass down_) +Pshaw, damn these acorn cups, they would not drench a fairy. +Who shall pledge," &c. And at the end of Act III, one line is +omitted. In 1802 John was made to say, after disarming Lovel +(page 186):-- + + Still have the will without the power to execute, + As unfear'd Eunuchs meditate a rape. + +This simile, which one reviewer fell upon with some violence, was +not reprinted. + +Mr. Thomas Hutchinson, writing in The Athenceum, December 28, 1901, +remarks: "The truth is that in Lamb's imitations of the elder writers +'anachronistic improprieties' (as Thomas Warton would say) are +exceedingly rare. In _John Woodvil_ it would not, I think, be easy to +discover more than two: _caprice_, which, in the sense of 'a capricious +disposition,' seems to belong to the eighteenth century, and _anecdotes_ +(i.e., 'secret Court history'), which, in its English form at least, +probably does not occur much before 1686." + +This note is already too long, or I should like to say something of the +reception of _John Woodvil_, which was not cordial. The _Annual Review_ +was particularly severe, and the _Edinburgh_ caustic. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 109. "THE WITCH." + +In the _Works_, 1818, this dramatic sketch followed _John Woodvil_. + +Lamb sent "The Witch" to Robert Lloyd in November, 1798 (see _Charles +Lamb and the Lloyds_, page 91), in a version differing widely from that +of the _Works_ here given. The speakers are Sir Walter Woodvil's steward +and Margaret. The principal variation is this, after the curse:-- + +_Margaret_. A terrible curse! + +_Old Steward_. O Lady! such bad things are said of that old woman, + You would be loth to hear them! + Namely, that the milk she gave was sour, + And the babe, who suck'd her, shrivell'd like a mandrake, + And things besides, with a bigger horror in them, + Almost, I think, unlawful to be told! + +In the penultimate line "The mystery of God" was "Creation's beauteous +workmanship." + + + * * * * * + + +Page 202. "MR. H----." + +Lamb composed this farce in the winter 1805-1806. Writing to Hazlitt on +February 19, 1806, he says: "Have taken a room at 3s. a week to be in +between 5 and 8 at night, to avoid my _nocturnal_ alias _knock-eternal_ +visitors. The first-fruits of my retirement has been a farce which goes +to manager tomorrow." Mary Lamb, writing to Sarah Stoddart at about the +same time, says: "Charles is gone [to the lodging] to finish the farce, +and I am to hear it read this night. I am so uneasy between my hopes and +fears of how I shall like it, that I do not know what I am doing." The +next day or so, February 21, she says that she liked the farce "very +much, and cannot help having great hopes of its success"--stating that +she has carried it to Mr. Wroughton at Drury Lane. + +The reply came on June n, 1806, saying that the farce was accepted, +subject to a few alterations, and would be produced in due course (see +Lamb's letter to Wordsworth, written in "wantonness of triumph," of June +26). Mary Lamb, writing to Sarah Stoddart, probably in October, 1806, +says that + + Charles took an emendated copy of his farce to Mr. Wroughton, the + Manager, yesterday. Mr. Wroughton was very friendly to him, and + expressed high approbation of the farce; but there are two, he tells + him, to come out before it.... We are pretty well, and in fresh + hopes about this farce. + +Lamb tells Manning about it, on December 5, adding after an outline of +the plot:--"That's the idea--how flat it is here--but how whimsical in +the farce!" Later he says: "I shall get £200 from the theatre if 'Mr. +H----' has a good run, and, I hope, £100 for the copyright. Nothing if +it fails; and there never was a more ticklish thing. The whole depends +on the manner in which the name is brought out, which I value myself on, +as a _chef-d'oeuvre_." And a little later still: "N.B. If my little +thing don't succeed, I shall easily survive." + +"Mr. H----" was produced on December 10, 1806. The play-bill for the +night ran thus:-- + + Theatre Royal, Drury-Lane + This present Wednesday, December 10, 1806 + Their Majesties Servants will act the Operatic Drama of + The Travellers; + Or, Music's Fascination + [&c. &c.] + After which will be produced (Never Acted) a new Farce, in Two acts, + called, + Mr. H---- + The Characters by + Mr. Elliston + Mr. Wewitzer, Mr. Hartley, Mr. Penley, Mr. Purser + Mr. Carles, Mr. Cooke, Mr. Fisher, Mr. Placide, Mr. Webb + Miss Mellon, Mrs. Sparks + Miss Tidswell, Mrs. Harlowe + Mrs. Scott, Mrs. Maddocks, Miss Sanders + The Prologue to be spoken by Mr. Elliston + [&c., &c.] + +According to Mrs. Baron-Wilson's _Memoirs of (Miss Mellon) +Harriet, Duchess of St. Albans_, Lamb was allowed to cast "Mr. +H----" himself. Miss Mellon played the heroine. + +The Lambs sat near the orchestra with Hazlitt and Crabb Robinson, and +the house was well salted with friendly clerks from the East India House +and the South-Sea House. The prologue went capitally; and all was well +with the play until the name of Hogsflesh was pronounced. Then +disapproval set in in a storm of hisses, in which, Crabb Robinson tells +us, Lamb joined heartily, standing on his seat to do so. + +In a report of the first night of "Mr. H----" in _Monthly Literary +Recreations_ for December, 1806, we read that on the secret of the name +being made public "all interest vanished, the audience were disgusted, +and the farce went on to its very conclusion almost unheard, amidst the +contending clamours of 'Silence,' 'Hear! hear!' and 'Off! off! off!'" + +Writing to Wordsworth on the next day Lamb told the story:--"Mr. H---- +came out last night and failed. I had many fears; the subject was not +substantial enough. John Bull must have solider fare than a _Letter_. We +are pretty stout about it, have had plenty of condoling friends, but +after all, we had rather it should have succeeded. You will see the +Prologue in most of the Morning Papers. It was received with such shouts +as I never witness'd to a Prologue. It was attempted to be encored. How +hard! a thing I did merely as a task, because it was wanted--and set no +great store by; and Mr. H.!! The quantity of friends we had in the house +my brother and I being in Public Offices &c. was astonishing--but they +yielded at length to a few hisses--"a hundred hisses--damn the word, I +write it like kisses--how different--a hundred hisses outweigh 1000 +claps. The former come more directly from the Heart. Well, 'tis +withdrawn and there is an end. Better Luck to us." + +Writing to Sarah Stoddart, Lamb put the case thus:--"Mary is a little +cut at the ill success of 'Mr. H.,' which came out last night, and +_failed_. I know you'll be sorry, but never mind. We are determined not +to be cast down. I am going to leave off tobacco, and then we must +thrive. A smoking man must write smoky farces." Thereafter Lamb's +attitude to "Mr. H----" was always one of humorous resignation. + +Lamb should have chosen a better, by which I mean a worse, +name than Hogsflesh. As a matter of fact a great number of +persons had become quite accustomed to the asperities of Hogsflesh, +not only from the famous cricketer of that name, one of the pioneers +of the game, but also from the innkeeper at Worthing. Indeed an +old rhyme current at the end of the eighteenth century anticipated +some of Lamb's humour, for the two principal landlords of Worthing, +which was just then beginning to be a fashionable resort, were +named Hogsflesh and Bacon, leading to the quatrain:-- + + Brighton is a pretty street, + Worthing is much taken; + If you can't get any other meat + There's Hogsflesh and Bacon. + +The Drury Lane authorities do not seem to have considered the failure as +absolute as did Lamb, for on the next day--December 11--the bills +announced:-- + + *** The New Farce of Mr. H----, performed for the first time last + night, was received by an overflowing audience with universal applause, + and will be repeated for the second time to-morrow. + +But the next evening's bill--December 12, 1806--stated that "The New +Farce of Mr. H---- is withdrawn at the request of the author." + +"Mr. H----" did not then disappear altogether from the stage. A +correspondent of _Notes and Queries_, May 26, 1855, remembered seeing it +at Philadelphia when he was a boy. The last scene, he says, particularly +amused the audience. And in William B. Wood's _Personal Recollections of +the Stage_, 1855, it is recorded of the Philadelphia Theatre, of which +he was manager, that in 1812, "Charles Lamb's excellent farce of 'Mr. +H----' met with extraordinary success, and was played an unusual number +of nights." Lamb, however, did not profit thereby. + +The little play was published in Philadelphia in 1813 under the title +_Mr. H----, or Beware a Bad Name. A farce in two acts, as performed at +the Philadelphia Theatre_--Lamb's name not figuring in any way in +connection with it. + +In England "Mr. H----" was not revived until 1885, when, as a curiosity, +it was played by the Dramatic Students' Society. The performance was +held at the Gaiety on October 27, 1885, the prologue being spoken by a +gentleman made up to resemble Lamb. At the Cheadle Town Hall on October +19 and 20, 1910, "Mr. H----" was given again, with the difference that +the secret of the name was disclosed from the start. + +In _Notes and Queries_, August 3, 1889, the following amusing play-bill +was printed, contributed by Mr. Bertram Dobell:-- + + Theatre Royal, English Opera House, Strand. + Particularly Private. + This present FRIDAY, April 26, 1822, + Will be presented a FARCE called + Mr. H.... + (_N.B. This piece was damned at Drury Lane Theatre._) + [Caste follows.] + Previous to which a PROLOGUE will be spoken by Mrs. EDWIN. +After the Farce (for the first Time in this country, and now performing + with immense success in Paris) + A French _Petite Comedie_, called + Le Comedien D'Etampes. + (N.B. _This piece was never acted in London, and may very probably + be damned HERE_.) + [Caste follows.] + Immediately after which + A LOVER'S CONFESSION, in the shape of a SONG, + by M. EMILE + (From the Theatre de la Poste St. Martin, at Paris.) + To conclude with a _Pathetic Drama_, in + One Act, called + The Sorrows of Werther. + (N.B. This Piece was damned at Covent Garden Theatre.) + [Caste follows.] + Brothers and Sisters of Charlotte, by six Cherubims + got for the occasion. + Orchestra. + Leader of the Band, Mr. Knight, Conductor, Mr. E. Knight. + Piano Forte, Mr. Knight, Jun. Harpsichord, Master Knight (that was). + Clavecin, by the Father of the Knights, to come. + Vivat Rex! No Money returned (because none will be taken). + _On account of the above surprising Novelty, not an_ ORDER _can + possibly be admitted:_-- +_But it is requested, that if such a thing finds its way into the front + of the house_, IT WILL BE KEPT. + Doors open at Half past Six, begin at Half past Seven precisely. + The Entrance for all parts of the House at the Private Box Door in + Exeter Street. + Lowndes, Printer, Marquis Court, Drury Lane, London. + +Mr. Dobell wonders if Lamb had any knowledge of this performance, and he +suggests that possibly he had a hand in the bill. Certainly the +interpolations concerning damnation are in his manner. + +I add a few notes:-- + +Page 208. _The man with the great nose_. See Slawkenbergius's tale in +_Tristram Shandy_, Vol. IV. + +Page 212. _The feeling Hurley_. Harley was the hero of Henry Mackenzie's +novel, _The Man of Feeling_. + +Page 217. _Jeremiah Pry_. John Poole may have taken a hint here for his +farce "Paul Pry," produced in September, 1825. Lamb and he knew each +other slightly. Lamb analysed the prying nature again in _The New Times_ +early in 1825, in two papers on "Tom Pry" and "Tom Pry's Wife" which +will be found in Vol. I. of this edition. + +Page 220. _Old Q----_. William Douglas, fourth Duke of Queensberry +(1724-1810), the most notorious libertine of his later days. + +Page 224. _John, my valet_. This is a very similar incident to that +described in the _Elia_ essay on the "Old Benchers," where Lovel (John +Lamb) warns Samuel Salt, when dressing him, not to allude, at the party +to which he is going, to the unfortunate Miss Blandy. + +Page 228, line 1. _Mother Damnable_. There was at Kentish Town a +notorious old shrew who bore this nickname in the 17th century. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 238. "THE PAWNBROKER'S DAUGHTER." + +Printed in _Blackwood_, January, 1830, and not reprinted by Lamb. + +This little play was never acted. Lamb refers to it in a letter to +Bernard Barton--in July, 1829--as "an old rejected farce"; and Canon +Ainger mentions a note of Lamb's to Charles Mathews, in October, 1828, +offering the farce for production at the Adelphi. The theme is one that +seems always to have interested Lamb (see his essay on the +"Inconveniences of Being Hanged," Vol. I.). + + +Page 243, line 3. "_An Argument against the Use of Animal Food._" Joseph +Ritson, 1752-1803, the antiquarian, was converted to vegetarianism by +Mandeville's _Fable of the Bees_. The work from which Cutlet quotes was +published in 1802. Pope's motto is from the _Essay on Man_, I., lines +81-84. + + +Page 243, last line. _Mr. Molyneux ... in training to fight Cribb_. +Cutlet's rump steak did not avail in either of the great struggles +between Tom Cribb and Tom Molineaux. At their first meeting, on December +18, 1810, Molineaux went under at the thirty-third round; and in the +return match, on September 28, 1811, Molineaux's jaw was broken at the +ninth and he gave in at the eleventh, to the great disappointment of the +20,000 spectators. Mr. Molineaux was a negro. + + + + + +END OF VOL. IV. + + + + + +INDEX + + +A + +Acrostics: + +"In the Album of a very Young Lady" + "To Caroline Maria Applebee" + "To Cecilia Catherine Lawton" + "To a Lady who Desired me to Write Her Epitaph" + "To Her youngest Daughter" + "To Mrs. F----, on Her Return from Gibraltar" + "To Esther Field" + "To Mrs. Williams" + "To S.F." + "To R.Q." + "To S.L." + "To M.L." + "An Acrostic against Acrostics" + "Un Solitaire" + "To S.T." + "To Mrs. Sarah Robinson" + "To Sarah" + "Acrostic" (Joseph Vale Asbury) + "To D.A." + "To Sarah James of Beguildy" + "To Emma Button" + +Addington, Henry, Lamb's epigram on + +Aders, Charles, Lamb's poem to + +_Albion, The,_ and Lamb + +"ALBUM VERSES" + "In the Album of a Clergyman's Lady" + "In the Autograph Book of Mrs. Sergeant W----" + "In the Album of Lucy Barton" + "In the Album of Miss ----" + "In the Album of a very Young Lady" + "In the Album of a French Teacher" + "In the Album of Miss Daubeny" + "In the Album of Mrs. Jane Towers" + "In My Own Album" + "In the Album of Edith S----" + "To Dora W----" + "In the Album of Rotha Q----" + "In the Album of Catherine Orkney" + "What is an Album" + "The First Leaf of Spring" + "To M.L.F." + "To the Book" + "On Being Asked to Write in Miss Westwood's Album" + "In Miss Westwood's Album" + "The Sisters" (See also under the heading of ACROSTICS.) + +"Angel Help" + +Ann Simmons (Lamb's "Anna") + +_Annual Anthology_, Lamb's contribution to + +_Anti-Jacobin, The,_ and Lamb + +"ANTONIO" by Godwin + +"Ape, The" + +_Athenaeum, The_, Lamb's contributions to + + +B + +"Ballad Noting the Difference of Rich and Poor" + "from the German" + "Singers, The" + +"Barton, Bernard, To" + Lucy, Lamb's verses to + +Beaumont, Francis, quoted + +_Bijou, The_, Lamb's contribution to + +_Blackwood's Magazine_, the Lambs' contributions to + +Blakesware and Widford + +"BLANK VERSE," by Lloyd and Lamb + +Bourne, Vincent + Lamb's translations + +Burney, Martin, Lamb's sonnet to + Sarah, Lamb's poem to + +Burton, Lamb's imitation of + +Byron, Lord, Lamb's epigram on + + +C + +Campbell, J. Dykes, on JOHN WOODVIL + +Canning, George, Lamb's epigrams on + +Caroline of Brunswick, Lamb's championship of + +Carter, Ben, of Blakesware + +"Catechist, The Young" + +_Champion, The_, Lamb's contributions to + +"Change, The" + +Chatterton, Thomas + +"Cheap Gifts" + +"Childhood" + +"Christening, The" + +Clarkes, the Cowden + +Coleridge, S.T., Lamb's dedication to + his "POEMS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS" + his "POEMS" + and Sara, Lamb's lines to + his "REMORSE" + his alteration of Lamb's sonnets + on Lamb's sonnet "We were two pretty babes" + in Gillray's cartoon + and "The Old Familiar Faces" + his translation of "Thekla's Song" + Sara, her Latinity + +"Composed at Midnight" + +"Confidant, The," by Crabbe, adapted by Lamb + +"Cook, To David" + +Cornwall, Barry. See PROCTER, B.W. + +Cowley, Abraham, quoted + +"Cowper, To the Poet" + +Crabbe, George, Lamb's adaptation of + + +D + +Da Vinci, Leonardo, poems upon + +Day, Matthew, Lamb's epigram on + +Dedication of Lamb's "WORKS" to Coleridge + of Lamb's "POEMS," 1797, to his sister + +Dedication of Lamb's "ALBUM VERSES" to Moxon + +Defoe, Daniel + +"Dialogue between a Mother and Child" + +"Dick Strype" + +"Divine Subjects, Fancy Employed on" + +Dix, Margaret, Lamb's epitaph on + +Dockwra, Tom, of Widford + +Dorrell, William, the swindler + +"Douglas, The Tomb of" + +Drake, Onesimus, of the East India House + +"Dramatic Fragment" + +Druitt, Mary, Lamb's epitaph upon + +"Dying Lover" + + +E + +East India House epigrams + +_Englishman's Magazine_, Lamb's contributions to + +Epigrams possibly by Lamb + +Epilogue to Godwin's "ANTONIO" + to Siddons' "TIME'S A TELL-TALE" + to Kenney's "DEBTOR AND CREDITOR" + to an amateur performance of "RICHARD II" + to Knowles' "THE WIFE" + +"Epitaph on a Dog" + "on a Young Lady" + +_Examiner_, The, Lamb's contributions to + +"Existence, Considered in Itself, no Blessing" + + +F + +"Faces, The Old Familiar" + +"Family Name, The" + +"Fancy Employed on Divine Subjects" + +"Farewell to Tobacco, A" + +"FARMER, PRISCILLA, POEMS ON THE DEATH OF" + +Fast Day, Lamb's epigram on + +"FAULKENER," by Godwin + +"Female Orators, The" + +Fenwick, John, editor of _The Albion_ + +Field, family, the poems to + Mrs., Lamb's grandmother + +"Free Thoughts on Several Eminent Composers" + +Frend, Sophia, Lamb's poems to, + +Frere, John Hookham, Lamb's epigram on + +"Friend, To a" + +"From the Latin" + +Fryer, Miss, Lamb's poem for + + +G + +George IV., Lamb's epigrams on + +Gifford, William, Lamb's sonnet upon + +Gillray, James, his cartoons + +"Gipsy's Malison, The" + +Godwin, William, his "ANTONI" + his "FAULKENER" + +Goethe on Lamb's "Family Name" + +"Going or Gone" + +"Grandame, The" + +GRAY, ROSAMUND, quoted + + +H + +Hamilton of Bangor quoted + +Hardy, Lieutenant, Lamb's poem to + +"Harmony in Unlikeness" + +Haydon, B.R., Lamb's verses to + +Hazlitt, William, on Lamb in the country + +"Helen" + +"Hercules Pacificatus" + +Hessey, Archdeacon, his memories of Lamb + +"Hester" + +Hogsflesh, a well-known name + +Hone, William, Lamb's poem to + his publications, Lamb's contributions to + +Hood, Thomas, his child's death + +"House-keeper, The" + +Hunt, Leigh, Lamb's poem to + on "Composed at Midnight" + and Lamb's poem, "To T.L.H." + Thornton, Lamb's poem to + +Hutchinson, Mr. Thomas, on JOHN WOODVIL + +"Hypochondriacus" + + +I + +"In Tabulam Eximii...." + +_Indicator, The_, Lamb's contributions to + +Isola, Agostino + Emma, Lamb's poems to + + +J + +Jerdan, William, Lamb's epigram on + +JOHN WOODVIL + volume, 1802, poems in + + +K + +Kelly, Frances Maria (Fanny), and Lamb + +"Kelly, To Miss" + +Kenney, James, his "DEBTOR AND CREDITOR" + +Knight, Ann. + +Knowles, James Sheridan. + his comedy "THE WIFE" + + +L + +"Lady's Sapphic, A" + +Lamb, Charles, dedicates his "WORKS" to Coleridge + at the Salutation Inn + his Earliest Poem, "Mille viae mortis" + his contributions to Coleridge's "POEMS" + his praise of Mrs. Siddons + his partnership with Coleridge + his love poems + verses on his grandmother + his contributions to Coleridge's "POEMS," 1797 + his poems to his sister + his verses to Charles Lloyd + his verses to Cowper + his Bristol holiday refused + his contributions to "BLANK VERSE," 1798 + his lines on his aunt + his lines on his father + his grief for his mother's death + his "Old Familiar Faces" + Mary Lamb laughs at him in "Helen" + his translation from the German + his imitations of Burton + his "WORKS" + his lines on Hester Savory + his "Farewell to Tobacco" + his lines to Thornton Leigh Hunt + his sonnets to Miss Kelly + his sonnet on his name + his sonnet to his brother + his sonnet to Martin Burney + his "ALBUM VERSES" + his poem on Hood's child + his verses to Bernard Barton + his verses on Emma Isola + his sonnets on "Work" and "Leisure" + his sonnets to Samuel Rogers + his sonnet on the sheep stealer + his sonnet to Barry Cornwall + his lines to Sheridan Knowles + his quatrains to Hone + his skill in acrostics + his translations from Bourne + his "Ode to the Treadmill" + his poem on old Widford friends + his "POETICAL WORKS," 1836 + his sonnet to Stothard + his lines to Moxon on his marriage + his poems on Louisa Martin + his "Free Thoughts on Composers" + his epitaph on Mary Druitt + his verses to Haydon + his sonnet to Sarah Burney + his sonnet to Leigh Hunt + his lines to Charles Aders + his translations from Palingenius + his lines to Clara Novello + ALBUM VERSES AND ACROSTICS + his political and other epigrams + and Sir James Mackintosh + his attacks on Canning + his contempt for George IV. + his attack on Gifford + on the spy system + his defence of Caroline of Brunswick + epigram on Lord Byron + writes for Merchant Taylors' boys + burlesque of "Angel Help" + his "Satan in Search of a Wife" + as a writer of prologues and epilogues + as a playwright + +Lamb, Charles, and Coleridge's pamphlet of sonnets + his dedication of his verses to Mary Lamb + and _The Anti-Jacobin_ + and Coleridge's "Wallenstein" + and Dr. Parr + his dedication to Moxon + attacked by _Literary Gazette_ + defended by Southey in _The Times_ + frames a picture with Hood + and Henry Meyer + and the thought of death + his letter from Samuel Rogers + on "The Gipsy's Malison" + Mary Lamb's poem on him + his farewell to albums + Archdeacon Hessey's memories of him + his epigrams on India House clerks + his generosity to Moxon + his history of JOHN WOODVIL + on the title of "Pride's Cure" + sends JOHN WOODVIL to Manning + on the plot of "MR. H." + hisses his own play + Elizabeth, Lamb's mother + John, Lamb's father + Lamb's brother, sonnet to + Mary, poems by + Lamb's poems + dedication to + on the death of John Wordsworth + her Latin pupils + Sarah (Hetty), Lamb's aunt + +Landon, L.E., Lamb + +Latin epigram by Lamb + verses to Haydon + +"Leisure" + +Lilley, John, of Blakesware + +"Lines Addressed ... to Sara and S.T.C." + "Suggested by a Picture of Two Females" + "on the Same Picture being Removed to Make Place for the + Portrait of a Lady by Titian" + "on Da Vinci's 'Virgin of the Rocks'" (two poems) + "Addressed to Lieutenant Hardy" + "for a Monument" + +_Literary Gazette_, Lamb's epigram on + and "ALBUM VERSES" + +"Living without God in the World" + +Lloyd, Charles, "POEMS ON THE DEATH OF PRISCILLA FARMER" + Lamb's poems to + his "BLANK VERSE" + his "Lines on the Fast" + and Sophia Pemberton + and JOHN WOODVIL + +_London Magazine_, Lamb's contributions to + +"Love will Come" + + +M + +Mackintosh, Sir James, Lamb's verses to + +Manning, Thomas, and JOHN WOODVIL + +Martin, Louisa, Lamb's poems on + +Massinger, Philip, quoted + +Merchant Taylors' School, epigrams by Lamb + +Meyer, Henry + +"Mille Viae Mortis" + +Mitford, John + +Molineaux the pugilist + +_Monthly Magazine, The_, Lamb's contributions to + +_Morning Chronicle_, Lamb's contributions to + _Post_, Lamb's contributions to + +Moxon, Edward, Lamb's poem to + his career + Lamb's dedication to + +"MR. H----" + in America + +Music, Lamb and + + +N + +Nelson, epigram on + +_New Monthly Magazine_, Lamb's contribution to + + _Times_, Lamb's contribution to + +Newton's _Principia_ + +"Nonsense Verses" + +Novello, Clara, Lamb's poems to + the three sisters + + +O + +"Old Familiar Faces, The" + +"On a Deaf and Dumb Artist" + +"On a Sepulchral Statue of an Infant Sleeping" + +"On an Infant Dying as soon as Born" + +"On seeing Mrs. K---- B----, aged upwards of eighty, nurse an Infant" + +"On the Sight of Swans in Kensington Garden" + +Orkney, Catherine, Lamb's poem to + + +P + +Palingenius, Lamb's translations of + +Parr, Dr., and Lamb + +"Parting Speech of the Celestial Messenger" + +"Pawnbroker's Daughter, The" + +Pemberton, Sophia, and Charles Lloyd + +Pichot, Amédée, his translation of "The Family Name" + +"Pindaric Ode to the Tread Mill" + +Pitt, William, epigram on + +Plumer, Mrs., of Gilston + +"POEMS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS," Lamb's contributions to + +_Poetical Recreations of "The Champion"_ + +"POETICAL WORKS OF CHARLES LAMB" + +"Pride's Cure," first name for JOHN WOODVIL + +Procter, B.W. (Barry Cornwall) + +Prologue to Godwin's "FAULKENER" + Coleridge's "REMORSE" + Knowles' "THE WIFE" + + +Q + +"Quatrains to the Editor of the _Every-Day Book_" + +Quillinan, Rotha, Lamb's poems to. + + +R + +_Reflector, The_, Lamb's contribution to + +"Repentance, A Vision of" + +"RICHARD II.," Lamb's epilogue for + +Rigg family, the, tragedy of + +"Rival Bells, The" + +Rogers, Daniel, Lamb's sonnet on + Samuel, on his brother's death + "To Samuel" (two poems) + +ROSAMUND GRAY quoted + +Rutter, Mr. J.A., and "The Old Familiar Faces" + + +S + +"Sabbath Bells, The" + +"St. Crispin to Mr. Gifford" + +"Salome" + +Salutation Inn + +"SATAN IN SEARCH OF A WIFE" + +Schiller translated by Lamb + +"Self-Enchanted, The" + +"She is Going" + +Siddons, Mrs., Lamb's sonnet to + Henry, his "TIME'S A TELL-TALE" + +Simmons, Ann (Lamb's "Anna") + +Smoking, Lamb on + +Solomon, Dr., of the Balm of Gilead + +Sonnet: "As when a child" + "Was it some sweet device" + "Methinks how dainty sweet" + "O! I could laugh" + "When last I roved" + "A timid grace" + "If from my lips" + "We were two pretty" + "The Lord of Life" + "To a Friend" + "To Miss Kelly" + "On the Sight of Swans in Kensington Garden" + "The Family Name" + "To John Lamb, Esq." + "To Martin Charles Burney, Esq." + "Harmony in Unlikeness" + "Written at Cambridge" + "To a Celebrated Female Performer in the 'Blind Boy'" + "Work" + "Leisure" + "To Samuel Rogers, Esq." + "The Gipsy's Malison" + "To the Author of Poems Published under the Name of Barry Cornwall," + "In the Album of Edith S----" + "To Dora W----" + "In the Album of Rotha Q----" + "To T. Stothard, Esq." + "O lift with reverent hand" + "To Miss Burney" + "To Samuel Rogers, Esq., on the New Edition of his _Pleasures of Memory_" + "To Louisa Morgan" + "St. Crispin to Mr. Gifford" + "To Mathew Wood, Esq." + "O gentle look," by Coleridge and Lamb + +Southey, Edith, Lamb's poem to + Robert, in Gillray's cartoon + his defence of Lamb + and JOHN WOODVIL + +Spy system, Lamb's verses on + +Stothard, Thomas, Lamb's poem to + +Sturms, Captain, of the East India House + +Suidas, Lamb's adaptation of + + +T + +"Thekla's Song," by Schiller + +Thelwall, John, and _The Champion_ + +"Three Graves, The" + +"Time and Eternity" + +_Times, The_, Lamb's contributions to + +"To a Young Friend" (two poems) + +"To a Young Lady" + +"To Bernard Barton" + +"To C. Aders, Esq." + +"To Charles Lloyd" + (second poem) + +"To Clara N----" + +"To David Cook" + +"To Emma Learning Latin" + +"To John Lamb, Esq." + +"To Margaret W----" + +"To Martin Charles Burney, Esq." + +"To Miss Burney" + +"To My Friend _The Indicator_" + +"To R.S. Knowles, Esq." + +"To Samuel Rogers, Esq." (two poems). + +"To Sir James Mackintosh" + +"To T.L.H." + +"To the Author of Poems Published under the Name of Barry Cornwall" + +"To the Poet Cowper" + +"To T. Stotbard, Esq." + +"To a Friend on his Marriage" + +"To Louisa M----" + +"Tobacco, A Farewell to" + +"Tomb of Douglas, The" + +Towers, Mrs. Jane, Lamb's verses to. + +Treadmill, the, Lamb's ode to. + +"Triumph of the Whale, The" + +Tween, Mrs., on Lamb. + +"Twelfth Night Characters" + + +V + +"Vision of Repentance, A" + + +W + +Wagstaff, Timothy, of the East India House + +"Wallenstein," ballad from + +Wawd (or Wodd) of the East India House + +Westwood, Frances, the Lambs' poems to + +"Whale, The Triumph of the" + +"What is an Album?" + +Wheatley, Kitty + +Widford and Blakesware + +"Wife's Trial, The" + +Wilde, Sergeant, Mrs., Lamb's verses to + +William IV., Lamb's epigram on + +Williams, Mrs., of Fornham, and family + +"Witch, The" + +Wood, Matthew, Lamb's sonnet to + +WOODVIL, JOHN, poems in + +Wordsworth, Dora, Lamb's poem to + John, lines on his death + +"Work" + +"WORKS," 1818, dedication of + poems in + +"Written a Year after the Events" + +"Written at Cambridge" + +"Written on Christmas Day" + +"Written on the Day of my Aunt's Funeral" + +"Written soon after the Preceding Poem" + +"Written upon the Cover of a Blotting Book" + + +Y + +"Young Catechist, The" + +"Young Friend, To a" (two poems) + +"Young Lady, To a" + + + + +INDEX OF FIRST LINES + +A Heart which felt unkindness, yet complained not, 88. +A passing glance was all I caught of thee, 79. +A sight like this might find apology, 92. +A stranger, and alone, I past those scenes, 21. +A thief, on dreary Bagshot's heath well known, 364. +A timid grace sits trembling in her eye, 8. +A tuneful challenge rings from either side, 66. +A weeping Londoner I am, 247. +Adsciscit sibi divitias et opes alienas, 123. +Alas! how am I chang'd! Where be the tears, 22. +All are not false. I knew a youth who died, 85. +All unadvised, and in an evil hour, 118. +Alone, obscure, without a friend, 12. +An Album is a Banquet: from the store, 78. +An Album is a Garden, not for show, 46. +An Ape is but a trivial beast, 89. +An author who has given you all delight, 140. +And hath thy blameless life become, 70. +Array'd--a half-angelic sight, 52. +As swallows shrink before the wintry blast, 126. +As when a child on some long winter's night, 4. +At Eton School brought up with dull boys, 115. + +Beautiful Infant, thou dost keep, 66. +Beneath this slab lies Matthew Day, 126. +Blank tho' I be, within you'll find, 114. +Bound for the port of matrimonial bliss, 140. +Bright spirits have arisen to grace the Burney name, 91. +But now time warns (my mission at an end), 98. +By crooked arts, and actions sinister, 359. +By Enfield lanes, and Winchmore's verdant hill, 58. +By myself walking, 29. + +Canadia! boast no more the toils, 79. +Caroline glides smooth in verse, 63. +Charles Lamb, to those who know thee justly dear, 331. +Charmed with the lines thy hand has sent, 352. +Choral service, solemn chanting, 64. +_Ci git_ the remains of Margaret Dix, 125. +Close by the ever-burning brimstone beds, 119. +Consummate Artist, whose undying name, 80. +Cowper, I thank my God, that thou art heal'd, 16. +Crown me a cheerful goblet, while I pray, 57. + +Dim were the stars, and clouded was the azure, 357. +Divided praise, Lady, to you we owe, 113. +Droop not, dear Emma, dry those falling tears, 93. + +Emma, eldest of your name, 114. +Envy not the wretched Poet, 109. +Esther, holy name and sweet, 106. +External gifts of fortune, or of face, 58. + +False world, 143. +Fine merry franions, 75. +For much good-natured verse received from thee, 69. +For their elder Sister's hair, 57. +Forgive me, Burney, if to thee these late, 45. +Fresh clad from heaven in robes of white, 50. +Friend of my earliest years and childish days, 18. +Friendliest of men, Aders, I never come, 94. +From broken visions of perturbed rest, 26. + +Go little Poem, and present, 107. +Grace Joanna here doth lie, 65. +Great Newton's self, to whom the world's in debt, 71. +Guard thy feelings pretty Vestal, 102. + +Habits are stubborn things, 86. +Had he mended in right time, 341. +Had I a power, Lady, to my will, 46. +Hard is the heart that does not melt with ruth, 18. +He lies a Volunteer so fine, 124. +Here lies the body of Timothy Wagstaff, 125. +Here lieth the body of Captain Sturms, 125. +High-born Helen, round your dwelling, 28. +His namesake, born of Jewish breeder, 116. +Hold on thy course uncheck'd, heroic Wood! 119. +How blest is he who in his age, exempt, 113. +How many wasting, many wasted years, 106. + +I am a widow'd thing, now thou art gone, 25. +I deal in aliments fictitious, 116. +I had a sense in dreams of a beauty rare, 81. +I have had playmates, I have had companions, 25, 323. +I like you, and your book, ingenuous Hone! 63. +I put my night-cap on my head, 115. +I saw a famous fountain, in my dream, 13. +I saw where in the shroud did lurk, 53. +I was not train'd in Academic bowers, 59. +If from my lips some angry accents fell, 9. +If we have sinn'd in paring down a name, 202. +Implored for verse, I send you what I can, 49. +In a costly palace Youth goes clad in gold, 30. +In Christian world Mary the garland wears, 78. +In days of yore, ere early Greece, 95. +In merry England I computed once, 123. +In my poor mind it is most sweet to muse, 9. +In one great man we view with odds, 118. +Inspire thy spirit, Spirit of De Foe, 72. +Io! Paean! Io! sing, 116. + +Jane, you are welcome from the barren Rock, 105. +John, you were figuring in the gay career, 44. +Joy to unknown Josepha who, I hear, 48. +Judgements are about us thoroughly, 112. + +Ladies, ye've seen how Guzman's consort died, 138. +Lady Unknown, who crav'st from me Unknown, 50. +Laura, too partial to her friends' enditing, 122. +Lazy-bones, lazy-bones, wake up, and peep! 123. +Least Daughter, but not least beloved, of Grace, 65. +Let hate, or grosser heats, their foulness mask, 61. +Little Book, surnamed of _white_, 47. +Little Casket! Storehouse rare, 107. +Louisa, serious grown and mild, 82. + +Manners, they say, by climate alter not, 121. +Margaret, in happy hour, 102. +Maternal lady with the virgin grace, 42. +May the Babylonish curse, 34. +Methinks how dainty sweet it were, reclin'd, 5, 311. +Model of thy parent dear, 38. +Much speech obscures the sense; the soul of wit, 122. +Must I write with pen unwilling, 109. +My feeble Muse, that fain her best wou'd, 110. +Mystery of God! thou brave and beauteous world, 19. + +Nigh London's famous Bridge, a Gate more famed, 72. +Not a woman, child, or man in, 120. +Now, by Saint Hilary, 341. +Now the calm evening hastily approaches, 356. + +O gentle look, that didst my look beguile, 308. +O! I could laugh to hear the midnight wind, 5, 311. +O Lady, lay your costly robes aside, 33. +O lift with reverent hand that tarnish'd flower, 82. +Of all that act, the hardest task is theirs, 145. +Of these sad truths consideration had, 99. +Off with Briareus, and his hundred hands, 359. +On Emma's honest brow we read display'd, 101. +On the green hill top, 6. +Once on a charger there was laid, 39. +One summer night Sir Francis, as it chanced, 199. + +Poor Iras' faithful wolf-dog here I lie, 67. +Princeps his rent from tinneries draws, 116. + +Queen-bird that sittest on thy shining nest, 43. +Quid vult iste equitans? et quid oclit ista virorum, 90. + +Rare artist! who with half thy tools, or none, 59. +Rogers, of all the men that I have known, 60. +Roi's wife of Brunswick Oëls! 120. +Rotha, how in numbers light, 108. + +Sarah, blest wife of "Terah's faithful Son," 111. +Sarah,--your other name I know not, 112. +Shall I praise a face unseen, 109. +Sleep hath treasures worth retracing, 113. +Small beauty to your Book my lines can lend, 110. +Solemn Legends we are told, 108. +Solitary man, around thee, 111. +Some cry up Haydn, some Mozart, 83. +Some poets by poetic law, 49. +Soul-breathing verse, thy gentlest guise put on, 111. +Such goodness in your face doth shine, 48. +Suck, baby, suck, mother's love grows by giving, 61. + +Tears are for lighter griefs. Man weeps the doom, 94. +The cheerful sabbath bells, wherever heard, 10. +The cloud doth gather, the greenwood roar, 324. +The clouds are blackening, the storms threatening, 29. +The Devil was sick and queasy of late, 128. +The frugal snail, with fore-cast of repose, 71. +The Gods have made me most unmusical, 101. +The Lady Blanch, regardless of all her lovers' fears, 41. +The Lord of Life shakes off his drowsihed, 16. +The reason why my brother's so severe, 345. +The truant Fancy was a wanderer ever, 10. +There are, I am told, who sharply criticise, 142. +They talk of time, and of time's galling yoke, 60. +This rare tablet doth include, 51. +Thou fragile, filmy, gossamery thing, 105. +Thou should'st have longer liv'd, and to the grave, 24. +Thou too art dead,...! very kind, 21. +Though thou'rt like Judas, an apostate black, 115. +Time-mouldering crosses, gemm'd with imagery, 121. +'Tis a Book kept by modern Young Ladies for show, 104. +'Tis pleasant, lolling in our elbow chair, 93. +To gratify his people's wish, 120. +To name a Day for general prayer and fast, 123. +To the memory, of Dr. Onesimus Drake, 125. +Twelve years ago I knew thee, Knowles, and then, 62. +Two miracles at once! Compell'd by fate, 122. + +Under this cold marble stone, 88. +Untoward fate no luckless wight invades, 146. + +Was it so hard a thing? I did but ask, 17. +Was it some sweet device of Faery, 4, 309. +We were two pretty babes, the youngest she, 9. +What makes a happy wedlock? What has fate, 80. +What reason first imposed thee, gentle name, 44. +What rider's that? and who those myriads bringing, 90. +What time in bands of slumber all were laid, 3. +What Wawd knows, God knows, 124. +When first our Bard his simple will express'd, 147. +When her son, her Douglas died, 11. +When last I roved these winding woodwalks green, 8. +When last you left your Woodbridge pretty, 55. +When maidens such as Hester die, 32. +When thy gay book hath paid its proud devoirs, 100. +Where seven fair Streets to one tall Column draw, 67. +Where the soul drinks of misery's power, 126. +While this tawny Ethiop prayeth, 56. +While young John runs to greet, 42. +Who art thou, fair one, who usurp'st the place, 41. +Who first invented work, and bound the free, 59. +Why is he wandering on the sea? 328. +With change of climate manners alter not, 363. + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV +by Charles and Mary Lamb + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHARLES AND MARY LAMB IV *** + +***** This file should be named 11576-8.txt or 11576-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/1/5/7/11576/ + +Produced by Keren Vergon, Virginia Paque and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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For +example an eBook of filename 10234 would be found at: + + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/0/2/3/10234 + +or filename 24689 would be found at: + https://www.gutenberg.org/2/4/6/8/24689 + +An alternative method of locating eBooks: + https://www.gutenberg.org/GUTINDEX.ALL + + diff --git a/old/11576-8.zip b/old/11576-8.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..0340efe --- /dev/null +++ b/old/11576-8.zip diff --git a/old/11576.txt b/old/11576.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..31f522c --- /dev/null +++ b/old/11576.txt @@ -0,0 +1,21225 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV +by Charles and Mary Lamb + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV + Poems and Plays + +Author: Charles and Mary Lamb + +Release Date: March 14, 2004 [EBook #11576] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHARLES AND MARY LAMB IV *** + + + + +Produced by Keren Vergon, Virginia Paque and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team. + + + + + + + THE WORKS OF CHARLES AND MARY LAMB + + IV. POEMS AND PLAYS + + + [Illustration: Charles Lamb (aged 23) + From a drawing by Robert Hancock] + + + + + POEMS AND PLAYS + + BY + + CHARLES AND MARY LAMB + + + + + INTRODUCTION + +The earliest poem in this volume bears the date 1794, when Lamb was +nineteen, the latest 1834, the year of his death; so that it covers an +even longer period of his life than Vol. I.--the "Miscellaneous Prose." +The chronological order which was strictly observed in that volume has +been only partly observed in the following pages--since it seemed better +to keep the plays together and to make a separate section of Lamb's +epigrams. These, therefore, will be found to be outside the general +scheme. Such of Lamb's later poems as he did not himself collect in +volume form will also be found to be out of their chronological +position, partly because it has seemed to me best to give prominence to +those verses which Lamb himself reprinted, and partly because there is +often no indication of the year in which the poem was written. + +Another difficulty has been the frequency with which Lamb reprinted some +of his earlier poetry. The text of many of his earliest and best poems +was not fixed until 1818, twenty years or so after their composition. It +had to be decided whether to print these poems in their true order as +they were first published--in Coleridge's _Poems on Various Subjects_, +1796; in Charles Lloyd's _ems on the Death of Priscilla Farmer_, 1796; +in Coleridge's _Poems_, second edition, 1797; in _Blank Verse_ by +Charles Lloyd and Charles Lamb, 1798; and in John Woodvil, 1802--with +all their early readings; or whether to disregard chronological +sequence, and wait until the time of the _Works_--1818--had come, and +print them all together then. I decided, in the interests of their +biographical value, to print them in the order as they first appeared, +particularly as Crabb Robinson tells us that Lamb once said of the +arrangement of a poet's works: "There is only one good order--and that +is the order in which they were written--that is a history of the poet's +mind." It then had to be decided whether to print them in their first +shape, which, unless I repeated them later, would mean the relegation of +Lamb's final text to the Notes, or to print them, at the expense of a +slight infringement upon the chronological scheme, in their final 1818 +state, and relegate all earlier readings to the Notes. After much +deliberation I decided that to print them in their final 1818 state was +best, and this therefore I did in the large edition of 1903, to which +the student is referred for all variorum readings, fuller notes and many +illustrations, and have repeated here. In order, however, that the +scheme of Lamb's 1818 edition of his _Works_ might be preserved, I have +indicated in the text the position in the _Works_ occupied by all the +poems that in the present volume have been printed earlier. + +The chronological order, in so far as it has been followed, emphasises +the dividing line between Lamb's poetry and his verse. As he grew older +his poetry, for the most part, passed into his prose. His best and +truest poems, with few exceptions, belong to the years before, say, +1805, when he was thirty. After this, following a long interval of +silence, came the brief satirical outburst of 1812, in _The Examiner_, +and the longer one, in 1820, in _The Champion_; then, after another +interval, during which he was busy as Elia, came the period of album +verses, which lasted to the end. The impulse to write personal prose, +which was quickened in Lamb by the _London Magazine_ in 1820, seems to +have taken the place of his old ambition to be a poet. In his later and +more mechanical period there were, however, occasional inspirations, as +when he wrote the sonnet on "Work," in 1819; on "Leisure," in 1821; the +lines in his own Album, in 1827, and, pre-eminently, the poem "On an +Infant Dying as Soon as Born," in 1827. + +This volume contains, with the exception of the verse for children, +which will be found in Vol. III. of this edition, all the accessible +poetical work of Charles and Mary Lamb that is known to exist and +several poems not to be found in the large edition. There are probably +still many copies of album verses which have not yet seen the light. In +the _London Magazine_, April, 1824, is a story entitled "The Bride of +Modern Italy," which has for motto the following couplet:-- + + My heart is fixt: + This is the sixt.--_Elia_. + +but the rest of what seems to be a pleasant catalogue is missing. In a +letter to Coleridge, December 2, 1796, Lamb refers to a poem which has +apparently perished, beginning, "Laugh, all that weep." I have left in +the correspondence the rhyming letters to Ayrton and Dibdin, and an +epigram on "Coelebs in Search of a Wife." I have placed the dedication +to Coleridge at the beginning of this volume, although it belongs +properly only to those poems that are reprinted from the _Works_ of +1818, the prose of which Lamb offered to Martin Burney. But it is too +fine to be put among the Notes, and it may easily, by a pardonable +stretch, be made to refer to the whole body of Lamb's poetical and +dramatic work, although _Album Verses_, 1830, was dedicated separately +to Edward Moxon. + +In Mr. Bedford's design for the cover of this edition certain Elian +symbolism will be found. The upper coat of arms is that of Christ's +Hospital, where Lamb was at school; the lower is that of the Inner +Temple, where he was born and spent many years. The figures at the bells +are those which once stood out from the facade of St. Dunstan's Church +in Fleet Street, and are now in Lord Londesborough's garden in Regent's +Park. Lamb shed tears when they were removed. The tricksy sprite and the +candles (brought by Betty) need no explanatory words of mine. + +E.V.L. + + + + + CONTENTS TEXT NOTE + PAGE PAGE + + Dedication 1 307 + Lamb's earliest poem, "Mille viae mortis" 3 307 + Poems in Coleridge's _Poems on Various Subjects_, 1796:-- + "As when a child ..." 4 308 + "Was it some sweet device ..." 4 309 + "Methinks how dainty sweet ..." 5 311 + "Oh! I could laugh ..." 5 311 + From Charles Lloyd's _Poems on the Death of Priscilla + Farmer_, 1796;-- + The Grandame 6 312 + Poems from Coleridge's _Poems_, 1797:-- + "When last I roved ..." 8 315 + "A timid grace ..." 8 315 + "If from my lips ..." 9 315 + "We were two pretty babes ..." 9 315 + Childhood 9 315 + The Sabbath Bells 10 316 + Fancy Employed on Divine Subjects 10 316 + The Tomb of Douglas 11 316 + To Charles Lloyd 12 316 + A Vision of Repentance 13 317 + Poems Written in the Years 1795-98, and not Reprinted by + Lamb:-- + "The Lord of Life ..." 16 317 + To the Poet Cowper 16 317 + Lines addressed to Sara and S.T.C. 17 318 + Sonnet to a Friend 18 318 + To a Young Lady 18 319 + Living Without God in the World 19 319 + Poems from _Blank Verse_, by Charles Lloyd and Charles + Lamb, 1798:-- + To Charles Lloyd 21 320 + Written on the Day of My Aunt's Funeral 21 320 + Written a Year After the Events 22 321 + Written Soon After the Preceding Poem 24 322 + Written on Christmas Day, 1797 25 322 + The Old Familiar Faces 25 322 + Composed at Midnight 26 323 + Poems at the End of _John Woodvil_, 1802:-- + Helen. By Mary Lamb 28 323 + Ballad. From the German 29 324 + Hypochondriacus 29 324 + A Ballad Noting the Difference of Rich and Poor 30 324 + Poems in Charles Lamb's _Works_, 1818, not Previously + Printed in the Present Volume:-- + Hester 32 325 + Dialogue Between a Mother and Child. By Mary Lamb 33 325 + A Farewell to Tobacco 34 325 + To T.L.H. 38 326 + Salome. By Mary Lamb 39 --- + Lines Suggested by a Picture of Two Females by + Lionardo da Vinci. By Mary Lamb 41 327 + Lines on the Same Picture being Removed. By Mary Lamb 41 327 + Lines on the Celebrated Picture by Lionardo da Vinci, + called "The Virgin of the Rocks" 42 327 + On the Same. By Mary Lamb 42 327 + To Miss Kelly 43 328 + On the Sight of Swans in Kensington Garden 43 328 + The Family Name 44 328 + To John Lamb, Esq 44 329 + To Martin Charles Burney, Esq 45 329 + _Album Verses_, 1830:-- + Album Verses:-- + In the Album of a Clergyman's Lady 46 332 + In the Autograph Book of Mrs. Sergeant W---- 46 332 + In the Album of Lucy Barton 47 332 + In the Album of Miss ---- 48 332 + In the Album of a very Young Lady 48 332 + In the Album of a French Teacher 49 332 + In the Album of Miss Daubeny 49 333 + In the Album of Mrs. Jane Towers 50 333 + In My Own Album 50 333 + Miscellaneous:-- + Angel Help 51 333 + The Christening 52 333 + On an Infant Dying as Soon as Born 53 333 + To Bernard Barton 55 334 + The Young Catechist 56 334 + She is Going 57 335 + To a Young Friend 57 335 + To the Same 58 335 + Sonnets:-- + Harmony in Unlikeness 58 336 + Written at Cambridge 59 336 + To a Celebrated Female Performer in the "Blind Boy" 59 336 + Work 59 336 + Leisure 60 336 + To Samuel Rogers, Esq. 60 337 + The Gipsy's Malison 61 337 + Commendatory Verses:-- + To the Author of Poems Published under the Name + of Barry Cornwall 61 338 + To R.S. Knowles, Esq. 62 338 + To the Editor of the _Every-Day Book_ 63 338 + Acrostics:-- + To Caroline Maria Applebee 63 339 + To Cecilia Catherine Lawton 64 339 + Acrostic, to a Lady who Desired Me to Write Her + Epitaph 65 339 + Another, to Her Youngest Daughter 65 339 + Translations from the Latin of Vincent Bourne:-- + On a Sepulchral Statue of an Infant Sleeping 66 340 + The Rival Bells 66 340 + Epitaph on a Dog 67 340 + The Ballad Singers 67 340 + To David Cook 69 340 + On a Deaf and Dumb Artist 70 340 + Newton's Principia 71 340 + The House-keeper 71 340 + The Female Orators 72 340 + Pindaric Ode to the Tread Mill 72 341 + Going or Gone 75 341 + New Poems in _The Poetical Works of Charles Lamb_, 1836:-- + In the Album of Edith S---- 78 343 + To Dora W---- 78 343 + In the Album of Rotha Q---- 79 344 + In the Album of Catherine Orkney 79 --- + To T. Stothard, Esq. 80 344 + To a Friend on His Marriage 80 344 + The Self-Enchanted 81 344 + To Louisa M----, whom I used to call "Monkey" 82 344 + Cheap Gifts: a Sonnet 82 344 + Free Thoughts on Several Eminent Composers 83 344 + Miscellaneous Poems not collected by Lamb:-- + Dramatic Fragment 85 345 + Dick Strype; or, The Force of Habit 86 345 + Two Epitaphs on a Young Lady 88 346 + The Ape 89 346 + In tabulam eximii pictoris B. Haydoni 90 347 + Translation of Same 90 347 + Sonnet to Miss Burney 91 347 + To My Friend the Indicator 91 348 + On seeing Mrs. K---- B----, aged upwards of eighty, + nurse an infant 92 348 + To Emma, Learning Latin, and Desponding 93 349 + Lines Addressed to Lieut. R.W.H. Hardy, R.N. 93 349 + Lines for a Monument 94 349 + To C. Aders, Esq. 94 349 + Hercules Pacificatus 95 349 + The Parting Speech of the Celestial Messenger + to the Poet 98 349 + Existence, Considered in Itself, no Blessing 99 350 + To Samuel Rogers, Esq. 100 350 + To Clara N---- 101 350 + The Sisters 101 350 + Love Will Come 102 351 + To Margaret W---- 102 351 + Additional Album Verses and Acrostics:-- + What is an Album? 104 351 + The First Leaf of Spring 105 352 + To Mrs. F---- 105 352 + To M. L---- F---- 106 352 + To Esther Field 106 352 + To Mrs. Williams 107 352 + To the Book 107 353 + To S.F. 108 353 + To R.Q. 108 353 + To S.L. 109 353 + To M.L. 109 353 + An Acrostic Against Acrostics 109 353 + On Being Asked to Write in Miss Westwood's Album 110 353 + In Miss Westwood's Album. By Mary Lamb 110 353 + Un Solitaire. To Sarah Lachlan 111 353 + To S. T 111 354 + To Mrs. Sarah Robinson 111 354 + To Sarah 112 354 + To Joseph Vale Asbury 112 354 + To D.A. 113 354 + To Louisa Morgan 113 354 + To Sarah James of Beguildy 113 354 + To Emma Button 114 354 + Written upon the Cover of a Blotting Book 114 354 + Political and Other Epigrams:-- + To Sir James Mackintosh 115 357 + Twelfth Night Characters:-- + Mr. A---- 115 358 + Messrs. C----g and F----e 115 358 + Count Rumford 116 358 + On a Late Empiric of "Balmy" Memory 116 358 + Epigrams:-- + "Princeps his rent ..." 116 359 + "Ye Politicians, tell me, pray ..." 116 359 + The Triumph of the Whale 116 359 + Sonnet. St. Crispin to Mr. Gifford 118 360 + The Godlike 118 360 + The Three Graves 119 360 + Sonnet to Mathew Wood, Esq. 119 361 + On a Projected Journey 120 361 + Song for the C-----n 120 362 + The Unbeloved 120 362 + On the Arrival in England of Lord Byron's Remains 121 362 + Lines Suggested by a Sight of Waltham Cross 121 363 + For the _Table Book_ 122 363 + The Royal Wonders 122 363 + "Brevis Esse Laboro" 122 363 + Suum Cuique 123 363 + On the Literary Gazette 123 365 + On the Fast-Day 123 365 + Nonsense Verses 123 365 + On Wawd 124 366 + Six Epitaphs 124 366 + Time and Eternity 126 366 + From the Latin 126 366 + Satan in Search of a Wife 127 366 + Part 1 128 --- + Part II 133 --- + Prologues and Epilogues:-- + Epilogue to Godwin's Tragedy of "Antonio" 138 368 + Prologue to Godwin's Tragedy of "Faulkener" 140 369 + Epilogue to Henry Siddons' Farce, "Time's a Tell-Tale" 140 369 + Prologue to Coleridge's Tragedy of "Remorse" 142 369 + Epilogue to Kenney's Farce, "Debtor and Creditor" 143 371 + Epilogue to an Amateur Performance of "Richard II." 145 371 + Prologue to Sheridan Knowles' Comedy, "The Wife" 146 372 + Epilogue to Sheridan Knowles' Comedy, "The Wife" 147 372 + John Woodvil 149 372 + The Witch 199 392 + Mr. H------ 202 392 + The Pawnbroker's Daughter 238 397 + The Wife's Trial 273 --- + Poems in the Notes:-- + Lines to Dorothy Wordsworth. By Mary Lamb 328 + Lines on Lamb's Want of Ear. By Mary Lamb 345 + A Lady's Sapphic. By Mary Lamb (?) 356 + An English Sapphic. By Charles Lamb (?) 357 + Two Epigrams. By Charles Lamb (?) 359 + The Poetical Cask. By Charles Lamb (?) 363 + + NOTES 307 + + INDEX 399 + + INDEX OF FIRST LINES 409 + + + + + +FRONTISPIECE + +CHARLES LAMB (AGE 23) + +From the Drawing by Robert Hancock, now in the National Portrait +Gallery. + + + + +DEDICATION (1818) TO S.T. COLERIDGE, ESQ. + + +My Dear Coleridge, + +You will smile to see the slender labors of your friend designated by +the title of _Works_; but such was the wish of the gentlemen who have +kindly undertaken the trouble of collecting them, and from their +judgment could be no appeal. + +It would be a kind of disloyalty to offer to any one but yourself a +volume containing the _early pieces_, which were first published among +your poems, and were fairly derivatives from you and them. My friend +Lloyd and myself came into our first battle (authorship is a sort of +warfare) under cover of the greater Ajax. How this association, which +shall always be a dear and proud recollection to me, came to be broken, +--who snapped the three-fold cord,--whether yourself (but I know that +was not the case) grew ashamed of your former companions,--or whether +(which is by much the more probable) some ungracious bookseller was +author of the separation,--I cannot tell;--but wanting the support of +your friendly elm, (I speak for myself,) my vine has, since that time, +put forth few or no fruits; the sap (if ever it had any) has become, in +a manner, dried up and extinct; and you will find your old associate, in +his second volume, dwindled into prose and _criticism_. + +Am I right in assuming this as the cause? or is it that, as years come +upon us, (except with some more healthy-happy spirits,) Life itself +loses much of its Poetry for us? we transcribe but what we read in the +great volume of Nature; and, as the characters grow dim, we turn off, +and look another way. You yourself write no Christabels, nor Ancient +Mariners, now. + +Some of the Sonnets, which shall be carelessly turned over by the +general reader, may happily awaken in you remembrances, which I should +be sorry should be ever totally extinct--the memory + + Of summer days and of delightful years-- + +even so far back as to those old suppers at our old ****** Inn,--when life +was fresh, and topics exhaustless,--and you first kindled in me, if not +the power, yet the love of poetry, and beauty, and kindliness.-- + + What words have I heard + Spoke at the Mermaid! + +The world has given you many a shrewd nip and gird since that time, but +either my eyes are grown dimmer, or my old friend is the _same_, who +stood before me three and twenty years ago--his hair a little confessing +the hand of time, but still shrouding the same capacious brain,--his +heart not altered, scarcely where it "alteration finds." + +One piece, Coleridge, I have ventured to publish in its original form, +though I have heard you complain of a certain over-imitation of the +antique in the style. If I could see any way of getting rid of the +objection, without re-writing it entirely, I would make some sacrifices. +But when I wrote John Woodvil, I never proposed to myself any distinct +deviation from common English. I had been newly initiated in the +writings of our elder dramatists; Beaumont and Fletcher, and Massinger, +were then a _first love_; and from what I was so freshly conversant in, +what wonder if my language imperceptibly took a tinge? The very _time_, +which I have chosen for my story, that which immediately followed the +Restoration, seemed to require, in an English play, that the English +should be of rather an older cast, than that of the precise year in +which it happened to be written. I wish it had not some faults, which I +can less vindicate than the language. + +I remain, + My dear Coleridge, + Your's, + With unabated esteem, + C. LAMB. + + + + + LAMB'S EARLIEST POEM + + MILLE VIAE MORTIS + + (1789) + + + What time in bands of slumber all were laid, + To Death's dark court, methought I was convey'd; + In realms it lay far hid from mortal sight, + And gloomy tapers scarce kept out the night. + + On ebon throne the King of Terrors sate; + Around him stood the ministers of Fate; + On fell destruction bent, the murth'rous band + Waited attentively his high command. + + Here pallid Fear & dark Despair were seen. + And Fever here with looks forever lean, + Swoln Dropsy, halting Gout, profuse of woes, + And Madness fierce & hopeless of repose, + + Wide-wasting Plague; but chief in honour stood + More-wasting War, insatiable of blood; + With starting eye-balls, eager for the word; + Already brandish'd was the glitt'ring sword. + + Wonder and fear alike had fill'd my breast, + And thus the grisly Monarch I addrest-- + + "Of earth-born Heroes why should Poets sing, + And thee neglect, neglect the greatest King? + To thee ev'n Caesar's self was forc'd to yield + The glories of Pharsalia's well-fought field." + + When, with a frown, "Vile caitiff, come not here," + Abrupt cried Death; "shall flatt'ry soothe my ear?" + "Hence, or thou feel'st my dart!" the Monarch said. + Wild terror seiz'd me, & the vision fled. + + + + + POEMS IN COLERIDGE'S POEMS ON + VARIOUS SUBJECTS, 1796 + + + (_Written late in 1794. Text of 1797_) + + As when a child on some long winter's night + Affrighted clinging to its Grandam's knees + With eager wond'ring and perturb'd delight + Listens strange tales of fearful dark decrees + Mutter'd to wretch by necromantic spell; + Or of those hags, who at the witching time + Of murky midnight ride the air sublime, + And mingle foul embrace with fiends of Hell: + Cold Horror drinks its blood! Anon the tear + More gentle starts, to hear the Beldame tell + Of pretty babes, that lov'd each other dear, + Murder'd by cruel Uncle's mandate fell: + Ev'n such the shiv'ring joys thy tones impart, + Ev'n so thou, SIDDONS! meltest my sad heart! + + + (_Probably 1795. Text of 1818_) + + Was it some sweet device of Faery + That mocked my steps with many a lonely glade, + And fancied wanderings with a fair-hair'd maid? + Have these things been? or what rare witchery, + Impregning with delights the charmed air, + Enlighted up the semblance of a smile + In those fine eyes? methought they spake the while + Soft soothing things, which might enforce despair + To drop the murdering knife, and let go by + His foul resolve. And does the lonely glade + Still court the foot-steps of the fair-hair'd maid? + Still in her locks the gales of summer sigh? + While I forlorn do wander reckless where, + And 'mid my wanderings meet no Anna there. + + + (_Probably_ 1795. _Text of_ 1818) + + Methinks how dainty sweet it were, reclin'd + Beneath the vast out-stretching branches high + Of some old wood, in careless sort to lie, + Nor of the busier scenes we left behind + Aught envying. And, O Anna! mild-eyed maid! + Beloved! I were well content to play + With thy free tresses all a summer's day, + Losing the time beneath the greenwood shade. + Or we might sit and tell some tender tale + Of faithful vows repaid by cruel scorn, + A tale of true love, or of friend forgot; + And I would teach thee, lady, how to rail + In gentle sort, on those who practise not + Or love or pity, though of woman born. + + + (1794. _Text of_ 1818) + + O! I could laugh to hear the midnight wind, + That, rushing on its way with careless sweep, + Scatters the ocean waves. And I could weep + Like to a child. For now to my raised mind + On wings of winds comes wild-eyed Phantasy, + And her rude visions give severe delight. + O winged bark! how swift along the night + Pass'd thy proud keel! nor shall I let go by + Lightly of that drear hour the memory, + When wet and chilly on thy deck I stood, + Unbonnetted, and gazed upon the flood, + Even till it seemed a pleasant thing to die,-- + To be resolv'd into th' elemental wave, + Or take my portion with the winds that rave. + + + + +FROM CHARLES LLOYD'S POEMS ON THE DEATH OF PRISCILLA FARMER, 1796 + + + THE GRANDAME + + (Summer, 1796. Text of 1818) + + On the green hill top, + Hard by the house of prayer, a modest roof, + And not distinguish'd from its neighbour-barn, + Save by a slender-tapering length of spire, + The Grandame sleeps. A plain stone barely tells + The name and date to the chance passenger. + For lowly born was she, and long had eat, + Well-earned, the bread of service:--her's was else + A mounting spirit, one that entertained + Scorn of base action, deed dishonorable, + Or aught unseemly. I remember well + Her reverend image: I remember, too, + With what a zeal she served her master's house; + And how the prattling tongue of garrulous age + Delighted to recount the oft-told tale + Or anecdote domestic. Wise she was, + And wondrous skilled in genealogies, + And could in apt and voluble terms discourse + Of births, of titles, and alliances; + Of marriages, and intermarriages; + Relationship remote, or near of kin; + Of friends offended, family disgraced-- + Maiden high-born, but wayward, disobeying + Parental strict injunction, and regardless + Of unmixed blood, and ancestry remote, + Stooping to wed with one of low degree. + But these are not thy praises; and I wrong + Thy honor'd memory, recording chiefly + Things light or trivial. Better 'twere to tell, + How with a nobler zeal, and warmer love, + She served her _heavenly master_. I have seen + That reverend form bent down with age and pain + And rankling malady. Yet not for this + Ceased she to praise her maker, or withdrew + Her trust in him, her faith, and humble hope-- + So meekly had she learn'd to bear her cross-- + For she had studied patience in the school + Of Christ, much comfort she had thence derived, + And was a follower of the NAZARENE. + + + + + POEMS FROM COLERIDGE'S _POEMS_, 1797 + + + (_Summer_, 1795. _Text of_ 1818) + + When last I roved these winding wood-walks green, + Green winding walks, and shady pathways sweet, + Oft-times would Anna seek the silent scene, + Shrouding her beauties in the lone retreat. + No more I hear her footsteps in the shade: + Her image only in these pleasant ways + Meets me self-wandering, where in happier days + I held free converse with the fair-hair'd maid. + I passed the little cottage which she loved, + The cottage which did once my all contain; + It spake of days which ne'er must come again, + Spake to my heart, and much my heart was moved. + "Now fair befall thee, gentle maid!" said I, + And from the cottage turned me with a sigh. + + + (1795 _or_ 1796. _Text of_ 1818) + + A timid grace sits trembling in her eye, + As both to meet the rudeness of men's sight, + Yet shedding a delicious lunar light, + That steeps in kind oblivious ecstasy + The care-crazed mind, like some still melody: + Speaking most plain the thoughts which do possess + Her gentle sprite: peace, and meek quietness, + And innocent loves, and maiden purity: + A look whereof might heal the cruel smart + Of changed friends, or fortune's wrongs unkind; + Might to sweet deeds of mercy move the heart + Of him who hates his brethren of mankind. + Turned are those lights from me, who fondly yet + Past joys, vain loves, and buried hopes regret. + + + (_End of 1795. Text of 1818_) + + If from my lips some angry accents fell, + Peevish complaint, or harsh reproof unkind, + 'Twas but the error of a sickly mind + And troubled thoughts, clouding the purer well, + And waters clear, of Reason; and for me + Let this my verse the poor atonement be-- + My verse, which thou to praise wert ever inclined + Too highly, and with a partial eye to see + No blemish. Thou to me didst ever shew + Kindest affection; and would oft-times lend + An ear to the desponding love-sick lay, + Weeping my sorrows with me, who repay + But ill the mighty debt of love I owe, + Mary, to thee, my sister and my friend. + + + (_1795. Text of 1818_) + + We were two pretty babes, the youngest she, + The youngest, and the loveliest far, I ween, + And INNOCENCE her name. The time has been, + We two did love each other's company; + Time was, we two had wept to have been apart. + But when by show of seeming good beguil'd, + I left the garb and manners of a child, + And my first love for man's society, + Defiling with the world my virgin heart-- + My loved companion dropped a tear, and fled, + And hid in deepest shades her awful head. + Beloved, who shall tell me where thou art-- + In what delicious Eden to be found-- + That I may seek thee the wide world around? + + + + + CHILDHOOD + + (_Summer, 1796. Text of 1818_) + + In my poor mind it is most sweet to muse + Upon the days gone by; to act in thought + Past seasons o'er, and be again a child; + To sit in fancy on the turf-clad slope, + Down which the child would roll; to pluck gay flowers, + Make posies in the sun, which the child's hand, + (Childhood offended soon, soon reconciled,) + Would throw away, and strait take up again, + Then fling them to the winds, and o'er the lawn + Bound with so playful and so light a foot, + That the press'd daisy scarce declined her head. + + + + + THE SABBATH BELLS + + (_Summer, 1796. Text of 1818_) + + The cheerful sabbath bells, wherever heard, + Strike pleasant on the sense, most like the voice + Of one, who from the far-off hills proclaims + Tidings of good to Zion: chiefly when + Their piercing tones fall _sudden_ on the ear + Of the contemplant, solitary man, + Whom thoughts abstruse or high have chanced to lure + Forth from the walks of men, revolving oft, + And oft again, hard matter, which eludes + And baffles his pursuit--thought-sick and tired + Of controversy, where no end appears, + No clue to his research, the lonely man + Half wishes for society again. + Him, thus engaged, the sabbath bells salute + _Sudden!_ his heart awakes, his ears drink in + The cheering music; his relenting soul + Yearns after all the joys of social life, + And softens with the love of human kind. + + + + + FANCY EMPLOYED ON DIVINE SUBJECTS + + (_Summer, 1796. Text of 1818_) + + The truant Fancy was a wanderer ever, + A lone enthusiast maid. She loves to walk + In the bright visions of empyreal light, + By the green pastures, and the fragrant meads, + Where the perpetual flowers of Eden blow; + By chrystal streams, and by the living waters, + Along whose margin grows the wondrous tree + Whose leaves shall heal the nations; underneath + Whose holy shade a refuge shall be found + From pain and want, and all the ills that wait + On mortal life, from sin and death for ever. + + + + THE TOMB OF DOUGLAS + _See the Tragedy of that Name_ + + (1796) + + When her son, her Douglas died, + To the steep rock's fearful side + Fast the frantic Mother hied-- + + O'er her blooming warrior dead + Many a tear did Scotland shed, + And shrieks of long and loud lament + From her Grampian hills she sent. + + Like one awakening from a trance, + She met the shock of[1] Lochlin's lance; + On her rude invader foe + Return'd an hundred fold the blow, + Drove the taunting spoiler home; + Mournful thence she took her way + To do observance at the tomb + Where the son of Douglas lay. + + Round about the tomb did go + In solemn state and order slow, + Silent pace, and black attire, + Earl, or Knight, or good Esquire; + Whoe'er by deeds of valour done + In battle had high honours won; + Whoe'er in their pure veins could trace + The blood of Douglas' noble race. + + With them the flower of minstrels came, + And to their cunning harps did frame + In doleful numbers piercing rhymes, + Such strains as in the older times + Had sooth'd the spirit of Fingal, + Echoing thro' his father's hall. + + "Scottish maidens, drop a tear + O'er the beauteous Hero's bier! + Brave youth, and comely 'bove compare, + All golden shone his burnish'd hair; + Valour and smiling courtesy + Play'd in the sun-beams of his eye. + Clos'd are those eyes that shone so fair, + And stain'd with blood his yellow hair. + Scottish maidens, drop a tear + O'er the beauteous Hero's bier!" + + "Not a tear, I charge you, shed + For the false Glenalvon dead; + Unpitied let Glenalvon lie, + Foul stain to arms and chivalry!" + + "Behind his back the traitor came, + And Douglas died without his fame. + Young light of Scotland early spent, + Thy country thee shall long lament; + And oft to after-times shall tell, + In Hope's sweet prime my Hero fell." + + +[Footnote 1: Denmark.] + + + + + TO CHARLES LLOYD + + _An Unexpected Visitor_ + + (_January, 1797. Text of 1818_) + + + Alone, obscure, without a friend, + A cheerless, solitary thing, + Why seeks, my Lloyd, the stranger out? + What offering can the stranger bring + + Of social scenes, home-bred delights, + That him in aught compensate may + For Stowey's pleasant winter nights, + For loves and friendships far away? + + In brief oblivion to forego + Friends, such as thine, so justly dear, + And be awhile with me content + To stay, a kindly loiterer, here: + + For this a gleam of random joy + Hath flush'd my unaccustom'd cheek; + And, with an o'er-charg'd bursting heart, + I feel the thanks I cannot speak. + + Oh! sweet are all the Muses' lays, + And sweet the charm of matin bird; + 'Twas long since these estranged ears + The sweeter voice of friend had heard. + + The voice hath spoke: the pleasant sounds + In memory's ear in after time + Shall live, to sometimes rouse a tear, + And sometimes prompt an honest rhyme. + + For, when the transient charm is fled, + And when the little week is o'er, + To cheerless, friendless, solitude + When I return, as heretofore, + + Long, long, within my aching heart + The grateful sense shall cherish'd be; + I'll think less meanly of myself, + That Lloyd will sometimes think on me. + + + + + A VISION OF REPENTANCE + + (_1796? Text of 1818_) + + I saw a famous fountain, in my dream, + Where shady path-ways to a valley led; + A weeping willow lay upon that stream, + And all around the fountain brink were spread + Wide branching trees, with dark green leaf rich clad, + Forming a doubtful twilight-desolate and sad. + + The place was such, that whoso enter'd in + Disrobed was of every earthly thought, + And straight became as one that knew not sin, + Or to the world's first innocence was brought; + Enseem'd it now, he stood on holy ground, + In sweet and tender melancholy wrapt around. + + A most strange calm stole o'er my soothed sprite; + Long time I stood, and longer had I staid, + When, lo! I saw, saw by the sweet moon-light, + Which came in silence o'er that silent shade, + Where, near the fountain, SOMETHING like DESPAIR + Made, of that weeping willow, garlands for her hair. + + And eke with painful fingers she inwove + Many an uncouth stem of savage thorn-- + "The willow garland, _that_ was for her love, + And _these_ her bleeding temples would adorn." + With sighs her heart nigh burst, salt tears fast fell, + As mournfully she bended o'er that sacred well. + + To whom when I addrest myself to speak, + She lifted up her eyes, and nothing said; + The delicate red came mantling o'er her cheek, + And, gath'ring up her loose attire, she fled + To the dark covert of that woody shade, + And in her goings seem'd a timid gentle maid. + + Revolving in my mind what this should mean, + And why that lovely lady plained so; + Perplex'd in thought at that mysterious scene, + And doubting if 'twere best to stay or go, + I cast mine eyes in wistful gaze around, + When from the shades came slow a small and plaintive sound: + + "PSYCHE am I, who love to dwell + In these brown shades, this woody dell, + Where never busy mortal came, + Till now, to pry upon my shame. + + "At thy feet what thou dost see + The waters of repentance be, + Which, night and day, I must augment + With tears, like a true penitent, + + "If haply so my day of grace + Be not yet past; and this lone place, + O'er-shadowy, dark, excludeth hence + All thoughts but grief and penitence." + + _"Why dost thou weep, thou gentle maid! + And wherefore in this barren shade + Thy hidden thoughts with sorrow feed? + Can thing so fair repentance need?"_ + + "O! I have done a deed of shame, + And tainted is my virgin fame, + And stain'd the beauteous maiden white, + In which my bridal robes were dight." + + "_And who the promised spouse, declare: + And what those bridal garments were._" + + "Severe and saintly righteousness + Compos'd the clear white bridal dress; + JESUS, the son of Heaven's high king, + Bought with his blood the marriage ring. + + "A wretched sinful creature, I + Deem'd lightly of that sacred tie, + Gave to a treacherous WORLD my heart, + And play'd the foolish wanton's part. + + "Soon to these murky shades I came, + To hide from the sun's light my shame. + And still I haunt this woody dell, + And bathe me in that healing well, + Whose waters clear have influence + From sin's foul stains the soul to cleanse; + And, night and day, I them augment + With tears, like a true penitent, + Until, due expiation made, + And fit atonement fully paid, + The lord and bridegroom me present, + Where in sweet strains of high consent, + God's throne before, the Seraphim + Shall chaunt the extatic marriage hymn." + + "Now Christ restore thee soon "--I said, + And thenceforth all my dream was fled. + + + + + POEMS WRITTEN IN THE YEARS 1795-98, + AND NOT REPRINTED BY LAMB + + + + + SONNET + + _(Summer, 1795)_ + + + The Lord of Life shakes off his drowsihed, + And 'gins to sprinkle on the earth below + Those rays that from his shaken locks do flow; + Meantime, by truant love of rambling led, + I turn my back on thy detested walls, + Proud City! and thy sons I leave behind, + A sordid, selfish, money-getting kind; + Brute things, who shut their ears when Freedom calls. + + I pass not thee so lightly, well-known spire, + That minded me of many a pleasure gone, + Of merrier days, of love and Islington; + Kindling afresh the flames of past desire. + And I shall muse on thee, slow journeying on + To the green plains of pleasant Hertfordshire. + + 1795. + + + + + TO THE POET COWPER + + _On his Recovery from an Indisposition. + Written some Time Back + + (Summer, 1796)_ + + + Cowper, I thank my God, that thou art heal'd. + Thine was the sorest malady of all; + And I am sad to think that it should light + Upon the worthy head: but thou art heal'd, + And thou art yet, we trust, the destin'd man, + Born to re-animate the lyre, whose chords + Have slumber'd, and have idle lain so long; + To th' immortal sounding of whose strings + Did Milton frame the stately-paced verse; + Among whose wires with lighter finger playing + Our elder bard, Spencer, a gentler name, + The lady Muses' dearest darling child, + Enticed forth the deftest tunes yet heard + In hall or bower; taking the delicate ear + Of the brave Sidney, and the Maiden Queen. + Thou, then, take up the mighty epic strain, + Cowper, of England's bards the wisest and the best! + + _December 1, 1796._ + + + + + LINES + + _Addressed, from London, to Sara and S.T.C. at Bristol, + in the Summer of 1796._ + + + Was it so hard a thing? I did but ask + A fleeting holiday, a little week. + + What, if the jaded steer, who, all day long, + Had borne the heat and burthen of the plough, + When ev'ning came, and her sweet cooling hour, + Should seek to wander in a neighbour copse, + Where greener herbage wav'd, or clearer streams + Invited him to slake his burning thirst? + The man were crabbed who should say him nay; + The man were churlish who should drive him thence. + + A blessing light upon your worthy heads, + Ye hospitable pair! I may not come + To catch, on Clifden's heights, the summer gale; + I may not come to taste the Avon wave; + Or, with mine eye intent on Redcliffe tow'rs, + To muse in tears on that mysterious youth, + Cruelly slighted, who, in evil hour, + Shap'd his advent'rous course to London walls! + Complaint, be gone! and, ominous thoughts, away! + Take up, my Song, take up a merrier strain; + For yet again, and lo! from Avon's vales, + Another Minstrel[2] cometh. Youth endear'd, + God and good Angels guide thee on thy road, + And gentler fortunes 'wait the friends I love! + +[Footnote 2: "From vales where Avon winds, the Minstrel came." +COLERIDGE'S _Monody on Chatterton._] + + + + + SONNET TO A FRIEND + + _(End of 1796)_ + + + Friend of my earliest years and childish days, + My joys, my sorrows, thou with me hast shar'd + Companion dear, and we alike have far'd + (Poor pilgrims we) thro' life's unequal ways. + It were unwisely done, should we refuse + To cheer our path as featly as we may, + Our lonely path to cheer, as trav'llers use, + With merry song, quaint tale, or roundelay; + And we will sometimes talk past troubles o'er, + Of mercies shewn, and all our sickness heal'd, + And in his judgments God rememb'ring love; + And we will learn to praise God evermore, + For those glad tidings of great joy reveal'd + By that sooth Messenger sent from above. + + + + TO A YOUNG LADY + + _(Early, 1797)_ + + + Hard is the heart that does not melt with ruth, + When care sits, cloudy, on the brow of youth; + When bitter griefs the female bosom swell, + And Beauty meditates a fond farewell + To her lov'd native land, prepar'd to roam, + And seek in climes afar the peace denied at home. + The Muse, with glance prophetic, sees her stand + (Forsaken, silent lady) on the strand + Of farthest India, sick'ning at the roar + Of each dull wave, slow dash'd upon the shore; + Sending, at intervals, an aching eye + O'er the wide waters, vainly, to espy + The long-expected bark, in which to find + Some tidings of a world she left behind. + At such a time shall start the gushing tear, + For scenes her childhood lov'd, now doubly dear. + At such a time shall frantic mem'ry wake + Pangs of remorse, for slighted England's sake; + And for the sake of many a tender tie + Of love, or friendship, pass'd too lightly by. + Unwept, unhonour'd, 'midst an alien race, + And the _cold_ looks of many a _stranger_ face, + How will her poor heart bleed, and chide the day, + That from her country took her far away. + + + + + LIVING WITHOUT GOD IN THE WORLD + + _(? 1798)_ + + + Mystery of God! thou brave and beauteous world, + Made fair with light and shade and stars and flowers, + Made fearful and august with woods and rocks, + Jagg'd precipice, black mountain, sea in storms, + Sun, over all, that no co-rival owns, + But thro' Heaven's pavement rides as in despite + Or mockery of the littleness of man! + I see a mighty arm, by man unseen, + Resistless, not to be controul'd, that guides, + In solitude of unshared energies, + All these thy ceaseless miracles, O world! + Arm of the world, I view thee, and I muse + On Man, who, trusting in his mortal strength, + Leans on a shadowy staff, a staff of dreams. + We consecrate our total hopes and fears + To idols, flesh and blood, our love, (heaven's due) + Our praise and admiration; praise bestowed + By man on man, and acts of worship done + To a kindred nature, certes do reflect + Some portion of the glory and rays oblique + Upon the politic worshipper,--so man + Extracts a pride from his humility. + Some braver spirits of the modern stamp + Affect a Godhead nearer: these talk loud + Of mind, and independent intellect, + Of energies omnipotent in man, + And man of his own fate artificer; + Yea of his own life Lord, and of the days + Of his abode on earth, when time shall be, + That life immortal shall become an art, + Or Death, by chymic practices deceived, + Forego the scent, which for six thousand years + Like a good hound he has followed, or at length + More manners learning, and a decent sense + And reverence of a philosophic world, + Relent, and leave to prey on carcasses. + + But these are fancies of a few: the rest, + Atheists, or Deists only in the name, + By word or deed deny a God. They eat + Their daily bread, and draw the breath of heaven + Without or thought or thanks; heaven's roof to them + Is but a painted ceiling hung with lamps, + No more, that lights them to their purposes. + They wander "loose about," they nothing see, + Themselves except, and creatures like themselves, + Short-liv'd, short-sighted, impotent to save. + So on their dissolute spirits, soon or late, + Destruction cometh "like an armed man," + Or like a dream of murder in the night, + Withering their mortal faculties, and breaking + The bones of all their pride. + + + + + + POEMS FROM _BLANK VERSE_, BY + CHARLES LLOYD AND CHARLES LAMB, 1798 + + + TO CHARLES LLOYD + + A stranger, and alone, I past those scenes + We past so late together; and my heart + Felt something like desertion, when I look'd + Around me, and the well-known voice of friend + Was absent, and the cordial look was there + No more to smile on me. I thought on Lloyd; + All he had been to me. And now I go + Again to mingle with a world impure, + With men who make a mock of holy things + Mistaken, and of man's best hope think scorn. + The world does much to warp the heart of man, + And I may sometimes join its ideot laugh. + Of this I now complain not. Deal with me, + Omniscient Father! as thou judgest best, + And in thy season _tender_ thou my heart. + I pray not for myself; I pray for him + Whose soul is sore perplex'd: shine thou on him, + Father of Lights! and in the difficult paths + Make plain his way before him. His own thoughts + May he not think, his own ends not pursue; + So shall he best perform thy will on earth. + Greatest and Best, thy will be ever ours! + + _August_, 1797. + + + + + WRITTEN ON THE DAY OF MY AUNT'S FUNERAL + + + Thou too art dead, ----! very kind + Hast thou been to me in my childish days, + Thou best good creature. I have not forgot + How thou didst love thy Charles, when he was yet + A prating schoolboy: I have not forgot + The busy joy on that important day, + When, child-like, the poor wanderer was content + To leave the bosom of parental love, + His childhood's play-place, and his early home, + For the rude fosterings of a stranger's hand, + Hard uncouth tasks, and school-boy's scanty fare. + How did thine eye peruse him round and round, + And hardly know him in his yellow coats[3], + Red leathern belt, and gown of russet blue! + Farewell, good aunt! + Go thou, and occupy the same grave-bed + Where the dead mother lies. + Oh my dear mother, oh thou dear dead saint! + Where's now that placid face, where oft hath sat + A mother's smile, to think her son should thrive + In this bad world, when she was dead and gone; + And when a tear hath sat (take shame, O son!) + When that same child has prov'd himself unkind. + One parent yet is left--a wretched thing, + A sad survivor of his buried wife, + A palsy-smitten, childish, old, old man, + A semblance most forlorn of what he was, + A merry cheerful man. A merrier man, + A man more apt to frame matter for mirth, + Mad jokes, and anticks for a Christmas eve; + Making life social, and the laggard time + To move on nimbly, never yet did cheer + The little circle of domestic friends. + + _February_, 1797. + + +[Footnote 3: The dress of Christ's Hospital,] + + + + + WRITTEN A YEAR AFTER THE EVENTS + + Alas! how am I chang'd! Where be the tears, + The sobs, and forc'd suspensions of the breath, + And all the dull desertions of the heart, + With which I hung o'er my dead mother's corse? + Where be the blest subsidings of the storm + Within, the sweet resignedness of hope + Drawn heavenward, and strength of filial love + In which I bow'd me to my father's will? + + My God, and my Redeemer! keep not thou + My soul in brute and sensual thanklessness + Seal'd up; oblivious ever of that dear grace, + And health restor'd to my long-loved friend, + Long-lov'd, and worthy known. Thou didst not leave + Her soul in death! O leave not now, my Lord, + Thy servants in far worse, in spiritual death! + And darkness blacker than those feared shadows + Of the valley all must tread. Lend us thy balms, + Thou dear Physician of the sin-sick soul, + And heal our cleansed bosoms of the wounds + With which the world has pierc'd us thro' and thro'. + Give us new flesh, new birth. Elect of heav'n + May we become; in thine election sure + Contain'd, and to one purpose stedfast drawn, + Our soul's salvation! + + Thou, and I, dear friend, + With filial recognition sweet, shall know + One day the face of our dear mother in heaven; + And her remember'd looks of love shall greet + With looks of answering love; her placid smiles + Meet with a smile as placid, and her hand + With drops of fondness wet, nor fear repulse. + Be witness for me, Lord, I do not ask + Those days of vanity to return again + (Nor fitting me to ask, nor thee to give), + Vain loves and wanderings with a fair-hair'd maid, + Child of the dust as I am, who so long + My captive heart steep'd in idolatry + And creature-loves. Forgive me, O my Maker! + If in a mood of grief I sin almost + In sometimes brooding on the days long past, + And from the grave of time wishing them back, + Days of a mother's fondness to her child, + Her little one. + + O where be now those sports, + And infant play-games? where the joyous troops + Of children, and the haunts I did so love? + O my companions, O ye loved names + Of friend or playmate dear; gone are ye now; + Gone diverse ways; to honour and credit some, + And some, I fear, to ignominy and shame! + I only am left, with unavailing grief + To mourn one parent dead, and see one live + Of all life's joys bereft and desolate: + Am left with a few friends, and one, above + The rest, found faithful in a length of years, + Contented as I may, to bear me on + To the not unpeaceful evening of a day + Made black by morning storms! + + _September_, 1797. + + + + + WRITTEN SOON AFTER THE PRECEDING POEM + + Thou should'st have longer liv'd, and to the grave + Have peacefully gone down in full old age! + Thy children would have tended thy gray hairs. + We might have sat, as we have often done, + By our fireside, and talk'd whole nights away, + Old times, old friends, and old events recalling; + With many a circumstance, of trivial note, + To memory dear, and of importance grown. + How shall we tell them in a stranger's ear? + A wayward son ofttimes was I to thee; + And yet, in all our little bickerings, + Domestic jars, there was, I know not what, + Of tender feeling, that were ill exchang'd + For this world's chilling friendships, and their smiles + Familiar, whom the heart calls strangers still. + A heavy lot hath he, most wretched man! + Who lives the last of all his family. + He looks around him, and his eye discerns + The face of the stranger, and his heart is sick. + Man of the world, what canst thou do for him? + Wealth is a burden, which he could not bear; + Mirth a strange crime, the which he dares not act; + And wine no cordial, but a bitter cup. + For wounds like his Christ is the only cure, + And gospel promises are his by right, + For these were given to the poor in heart. + Go, preach thou to him of a world to come, + Where friends shall meet, and know each other's face. + Say less than this, and say it to the winds. + + _October_, 1797. + + + + + + WRITTEN ON CHRISTMAS DAY, 1797 + + I am a widow'd thing, now thou art gone! + Now thou art gone, my own familiar friend, + Companion, sister, help-mate, counsellor! + Alas! that honour'd mind, whose sweet reproof + And meekest wisdom in times past have smooth'd + The unfilial harshness of my foolish speech, + And made me loving to my parents old, + (Why is this so, ah God! why is this so?) + That honour'd mind become a fearful blank, + Her senses lock'd up, and herself kept out + From human sight or converse, while so many + Of the foolish sort are left to roam at large, + Doing all acts of folly, and sin, and shame? + Thy paths are mystery! + + Yet I will not think, + Sweet friend, but we shall one day meet, and live + In quietness, and die so, fearing God. + Or if _not_, and these false suggestions be + A fit of the weak nature, loth to part + With what it lov'd so long, and held so dear; + If thou art to be taken, and I left + (More sinning, yet unpunish'd, save in thee), + It is the will of God, and we are clay + In the potter's hands; and, at the worst, are made + From absolute nothing, vessels of disgrace, + Till, his most righteous purpose wrought in us, + Our purified spirits find their perfect rest. + + + + + THE OLD FAMILIAR FACES + + (_January_, 1798. _Text of_ 1818) + + I have had playmates, I have had companions, + In my days of childhood, in my joyful school-days, + All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. + + I have been laughing, I have been carousing, + Drinking late, sitting late, with my bosom cronies, + All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. + + I loved a love once, fairest among women; + Closed are her doors on me, I must not see her-- + All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. + + I have a friend, a kinder friend has no man; + Like an ingrate, I left my friend abruptly; + Left him, to muse on the old familiar faces. + + Ghost-like, I paced round the haunts of my childhood. + Earth seemed a desart I was bound to traverse, + Seeking to find the old familiar faces. + + Friend of my bosom, thou more than a brother, + Why wert not thou born in my father's dwelling? + So might we talk of the old familiar faces-- + + How some they have died, and some they have left me, + And some are taken from me; all are departed; + All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. + + + + + COMPOSED AT MIDNIGHT + + (1797? _Text of_ 1818) + + + From broken visions of perturbed rest + I wake, and start, and fear to sleep again. + How total a privation of all sounds, + Sights, and familiar objects, man, bird, beast, + Herb, tree, or flower, and prodigal light of heaven. + 'Twere some relief to catch the drowsy cry + Of the mechanic watchman, or the noise + Of revel reeling home from midnight cups. + Those are the moanings of the dying man, + Who lies in the upper chamber; restless moans, + And interrupted only by a cough + Consumptive, torturing the wasted lungs. + So in the bitterness of death he lies, + And waits in anguish for the morning's light. + What can that do for him, or what restore? + Short taste, faint sense, affecting notices, + And little images of pleasures past, + Of health, and active life--health not yet slain, + Nor the other grace of life, a good name, sold + For sin's black wages. On his tedious bed + He writhes, and turns him from the accusing light, + And finds no comfort in the sun, but says + "When night comes I shall get a little rest." + Some few groans more, death comes, and there an end. + 'Tis darkness and conjecture all beyond; + Weak Nature fears, though Charity must hope, + And Fancy, most licentious on such themes + Where decent reverence well had kept her mute, + Hath o'er-stock'd hell with devils, and brought down, + By her enormous fablings and mad lies, + Discredit on the gospel's serious truths + And salutary fears. The man of parts, + Poet, or prose declaimer, on his couch + Lolling, like one indifferent, fabricates + A heaven of gold, where he, and such as he, + Their heads encompassed with crowns, their heels + With fine wings garlanded, shall tread the stars + Beneath their feet, heaven's pavement, far removed + From damned spirits, and the torturing cries + Of men, his breth'ren, fashioned of the earth, + As he was, nourish'd with the self-same bread, + Belike his kindred or companions once-- + Through everlasting ages now divorced, + In chains and savage torments to repent + Short years of folly on earth. Their groans unheard + In heav'n, the saint nor pity feels, nor care, + For those thus sentenced--pity might disturb + The delicate sense and most divine repose + Of spirits angelical. Blessed be God, + The measure of his judgments is not fixed + By man's erroneous standard. He discerns + No such inordinate difference and vast + Betwixt the sinner and the saint, to doom + Such disproportion'd fates. Compared with him, + No man on earth is holy called: they best + Stand in his sight approved, who at his feet + Their little crowns of virtue cast, and yield + To him of his own works the praise, his due. + + + + + + Poems at the End of _John Woodvil_, + 1802 + + + + + HELEN + + _By Mary Lamb_ + + (_Summer_, 1800. _Text of_ 1818) + + + High-born Helen, round your dwelling + These twenty years I've paced in vain: + Haughty beauty, thy lover's duty + Hath been to glory in his pain. + + High-born Helen, plainly telling + Stories of thy cold disdain; + I starve, I die, now you comply, + And I no longer can complain. + + These twenty years I've lived on tears. + Dwelling for ever on a frown; + On sighs I've fed, your scorn my bread; + I perish now you kind are grown. + + Can I, who loved my beloved + But for the scorn "was in her eye," + Can I be moved for my beloved, + When she "returns me sigh for sigh?" + + In stately pride, by my bed-side, + High-born Helen's portrait's hung; + Deaf to my praise, my mournful lays + Are nightly to the portrait sung. + + To that I weep, nor ever sleep, + Complaining all night long to her-- + _Helen, grown old, no longer cold_, + _Said_, "you to all men I prefer." + + + + + BALLAD + + _From the German_ + + (_Spring, 1800. Text of 1818_) + + + The clouds are blackening, the storms threatening, + And ever the forest maketh a moan: + Billows are breaking, the damsel's heart aching, + Thus by herself she singeth alone, + Weeping right plenteously. + + "The world is empty, the heart is dead surely, + In this world plainly all seemeth amiss: + To thy breast, holy one, take now thy little one, + I have had earnest of all earth's bliss, + Living right lovingly." + + + + + HYPOCHONDRIACUS + + (_October, 1800. Text of 1818_) + + + By myself walking, + To myself talking, + When as I ruminate + On my untoward fate, + Scarcely seem I + Alone sufficiently, + Black thoughts continually + Crowding my privacy; + They come unbidden, + Like foes at a wedding, + Thrusting their faces + In better guests' places, + Peevish and malecontent, + Clownish, impertinent, + Dashing the merriment: + So in like fashions + Dim cogitations + Follow and haunt me, + Striving to daunt me. + In my heart festering, + In my ears whispering, + "Thy friends are treacherous, + Thy foes are dangerous, + Thy dreams ominous." + + Fierce Anthropophagi, + Spectra, Diaboli, + What scared St. Anthony, + Hobgoblins, Lemures, + Dreams of Antipodes, + Night-riding Incubi + Troubling the fantasy, + All dire illusions + Causing confusions; + Figments heretical, + Scruples fantastical, + Doubts diabolical, + Abaddon vexeth me, + Mahu perplexeth me, + Lucifer teareth me---- + +_Jesu! Maria! liberate nos ab his diris tentationibus Inimici_. + + + + + + A BALLAD: + + _Noting the Difference of Rich and Poor, in the Ways of a + Rich Noble's Palace and a Poor Workhouse_ + + _To the tune of the "Old and Young Courtier"_ + + (_August, 1800. Text of 1818_) + + + In a costly palace Youth goes clad in gold; + In a wretched workhouse Age's limbs are cold: + There they sit, the old men by a shivering fire, + Still close and closer cowering, warmth is their desire. + + In a costly palace, when the brave gallants dine, + They have store of good venison, with old canary wine, + With singing and music to heighten the cheer; + Coarse bits, with grudging, are the pauper's best fare. + + In a costly palace Youth is still carest + By a train of attendants which laugh at my young Lord's jest; + In a wretched workhouse the contrary prevails: + Does Age begin to prattle?--no man heark'neth to his tales. + + In a costly palace if the child with a pin + Do but chance to prick a finger, strait the doctor is called in; + In a wretched workhouse men are left to perish + For want of proper cordials, which their old age might cherish, + + In a costly palace Youth enjoys his lust; + In a wretched workhouse Age, in corners thrust, + Thinks upon the former days, when he was well to do, + Had children to stand by him, both friends and kinsmen too. + + In a costly palace Youth his temples hides + With a new devised peruke that reaches to his sides; + In a wretched workhouse Age's crown is bare, + With a few thin locks just to fence out the cold air. + + In peace, as in war, 'tis our young gallants' pride, + To walk, each one i' the streets, with a rapier by his side, + That none to do them injury may have pretence; + Wretched Age, in poverty, must brook offence. + + + + + POEMS IN CHARLES LAMB'S _WORKS_ 1818, + NOT PREVIOUSLY PRINTED IN THE PRESENT VOLUME; + TOGETHER WITH REFERENCES TO THOSE POEMS + THAT HAVE BEEN PREVIOUSLY PRINTED + + + + + HESTER + + (_February, 1803_) + + + When maidens such as Hester die, + Their place ye may not well supply, + Though ye among a thousand try, + With vain endeavour. + + A month or more hath she been dead, + Yet cannot I by force be led + To think upon the wormy bed, + And her together. + + A springy motion in her gait, + A rising step, did indicate + Of pride and joy no common rate, + That flush'd her spirit. + + I know not by what name beside + I shall it call:--if 'twas not pride, + It was a joy to that allied, + She did inherit. + + Her parents held the Quaker rule, + Which doth the human feeling cool, + But she was train'd in Nature's school, + Nature had blest her. + + A waking eye, a prying mind, + A heart that stirs, is hard to bind, + A hawk's keen sight ye cannot blind, + Ye could not Hester. + + My sprightly neighbour, gone before + To that unknown and silent shore, + Shall we not meet, as heretofore, + Some summer morning, + + When from thy cheerful eyes a ray + Hath struck a bliss upon the day, + A bliss that would not go away, + A sweet fore-warning? + + + * * * * * + + +_Here came "To Charles Lloyd" See page 12. + +Here came "The Three Friends" followed by "To a River in which a Child +was drowned," first printed in "Poetry for Children" 1809. See vol. iii. +of this edition, page 416. + +Here came "The Old Familiar Faces." See page 25. + +Here came "Helen" by Mary Lamb. See page 28. + +Here came "A Vision of Repentance." See page 13._ + + + * * * * * + + + + DIALOGUE BETWEEN A MOTHER AND CHILD + + (_By Mary Lamb. 1804_) + + + CHILD + "O Lady, lay your costly robes aside, + No longer may you glory in your pride." + + + MOTHER + "Wherefore to-day art singing in mine ear + Sad songs, were made so long ago, my dear; + This day I am to be a bride, you know, + Why sing sad songs, were made so long ago?" + + + CHILD + "O, mother, lay your costly robes aside, + For you may never be another's bride. + _That_ line I learn'd not in the old sad song." + + MOTHER + "I pray thee, pretty one, now hold thy tongue, + Play with the bride-maids, and be glad, my boy, + For thou shall be a second father's joy." + + CHILD + "One father fondled me upon his knee. + One father is enough, alone, for me." + + + + * * * * * + + + +_Here came "Queen Oriana's Dream" from "Poetry for Children" See vol. +iii. page 480. + +Here came "A Ballad Noting the Difference of Rich and Poor." See page +30. + +Here came "Hypochondriacus." See page 29._ + + + + * * * * * + + + + A FAREWELL TO TOBACCO + (1805) + + May the Babylonish curse + Strait confound my stammering verse, + If I can a passage see + In this word-perplexity, + Or a fit expression find, + Or a language to my mind, + (Still the phrase is wide or scant) + To take leave of thee, GREAT PLANT! + Or in any terms relate + Half my love, or half my hate: + For I hate, yet love, thee so, + That, whichever thing I shew, + The plain truth will seem to be + A constrain'd hyperbole, + And the passion to proceed + More from a mistress than a weed. + Sooty retainer to the vine, + Bacchus' black servant, negro fine; + Sorcerer, that mak'st us dote upon + Thy begrimed complexion, + And, for thy pernicious sake, + More and greater oaths to break + Than reclaimed lovers take + 'Gainst women: thou thy siege dost lay + Much too in the female way, + While thou suck'st the lab'ring breath + Faster than kisses or than death. + + Thou in such a cloud dost bind us, + That our worst foes cannot find us, + And ill fortune, that would thwart us, + Shoots at rovers, shooting at us; + While each man, thro' thy height'ning steam, + Does like a smoking Etna seem, + And all about us does express + (Fancy and wit in richest dress) + A Sicilian fruitfulness. + + Thou through such a mist dost shew us, + That our best friends do not know us, + And, for those allowed features, + Due to reasonable creatures, + Liken'st us to fell Chimeras, + Monsters that, who see us, fear us; + Worse than Cerberus or Geryon, + Or, who first lov'd a cloud, Ixion. + + Bacchus we know, and we allow + His tipsy rites. But what art thou, + That but by reflex can'st shew + What his deity can do, + As the false Egyptian spell + Aped the true Hebrew miracle? + Some few vapours thou may'st raise, + The weak brain may serve to amaze, + But to the reigns and nobler heart + Can'st nor life nor heat impart. + + Brother of Bacchus, later born, + The old world was sure forlorn, + Wanting thee, that aidest more + The god's victories than before + All his panthers, and the brawls + Of his piping Bacchanals. + These, as stale, we disallow, + Or judge of _thee_ meant; only thou + His true Indian conquest art; + And, for ivy round his dart, + The reformed god now weaves + A finer thyrsus of thy leaves. + + Scent to match thy rich perfume + Chemic art did ne'er presume + Through her quaint alembic strain, + None so sov'reign to the brain. + Nature, that did in thee excel, + Fram'd again no second smell. + Roses, violets, but toys + For the smaller sort of boys, + Or for greener damsels meant; + Thou art the only manly scent. + + Stinking'st of the stinking kind, + Filth of the mouth and fog of the mind, + Africa, that brags her foyson, + Breeds no such prodigious poison, + Henbane, nightshade, both together, + Hemlock, aconite------ + + Nay, rather, + Plant divine, of rarest virtue; + Blisters on the tongue would hurt you. + 'Twas but in a sort I blam'd thee; + None e'er prosper'd who defam'd thee; + Irony all, and feign'd abuse, + Such as perplext lovers use, + At a need, when, in despair + To paint forth their fairest fair, + Or in part but to express + That exceeding comeliness + Which their fancies doth so strike, + They borrow language of dislike; + And, instead of Dearest Miss, + Jewel, Honey, Sweetheart, Bliss, + And those forms of old admiring, + Call her Cockatrice and Siren, + Basilisk, and all that's evil, + Witch, Hyena, Mermaid, Devil, + + Ethiop, Wench, and Blackamoor, + Monkey, Ape, and twenty more; + Friendly Trait'ress, loving Foe,-- + Not that she is truly so, + But no other way they know + A contentment to express, + Borders so upon excess, + That they do not rightly wot + Whether it be pain or not. + + Or, as men, constrain'd to part + With what's nearest to their heart, + While their sorrow's at the height, + Lose discrimination quite, + And their hasty wrath let fall, + To appease their frantic gall, + On the darling thing whatever + Whence they feel it death to sever, + Though it be, as they, perforce, + Guiltless of the sad divorce. + + For I must (nor let it grieve thee, + Friendliest of plants, that I must) leave thee. + For thy sake, TOBACCO, I + Would do any thing but die, + And but seek to extend my days + Long enough to sing thy praise. + But, as she, who once hath been + A king's consort, is a queen + Ever after, nor will bate + Any tittle of her state, + Though a widow, or divorced, + So I, from thy converse forced, + The old name and style retain, + A right Katherine of Spain; + And a seat, too,'mongst the joys + Of the blest Tobacco Boys; + Where, though I, by sour physician, + Am debarr'd the full fruition + Of thy favours, I may catch + Some collateral sweets, and snatch + Sidelong odours, that give life + Like glances from a neighbour's wife; + And still live in the by-places + And the suburbs of thy graces; + And in thy borders take delight, + An unconquer'd Canaanite. + + + + + TO T.L.H. + + _A Child_ + + (1814) + + + Model of thy parent dear, + Serious infant worth a fear: + In thy unfaultering visage well + Picturing forth the son of TELL, + When on his forehead, firm and good, + Motionless mark, the apple stood; + Guileless traitor, rebel mild, + Convict unconscious, culprit-child! + Gates that close with iron roar + Have been to thee thy nursery door; + Chains that chink in cheerless cells + Have been thy rattles and thy bells; + Walls contrived for giant sin + Have hemmed thy faultless weakness in; + Near thy sinless bed black Guilt + Her discordant house hath built, + And filled it with her monstrous brood-- + Sights, by thee not understood-- + Sights of fear, and of distress, + That pass a harmless infant's guess! + + But the clouds, that overcast + Thy young morning, may not last. + Soon shall arrive the rescuing hour, + That yields thee up to Nature's power. + Nature, that so late doth greet thee, + Shall in o'er-flowing measure meet thee. + She shall recompense with cost + For every lesson thou hast lost. + Then wandering up thy sire's lov'd hill[4], + Thou shall take thy airy fill + Of health and pastime. _Birds shall sing + For thy delight each May morning._ + 'Mid new-yean'd lambkins thou shalt play, + Hardly less a lamb than they. + Then thy prison's lengthened bound + Shall be the horizon skirting round. + And, while thou fillest thy lap with flowers, + To make amends for wintery hours, + The breeze, the sunshine, and the place, + Shall from thy tender brow efface + Each vestige of untimely care, + That sour restraint had graven there; + And on thy every look impress + A more excelling childishness. + So shall be thy days beguil'd, + THORNTON HUNT, my favourite child. + + +[Footnote 4: Hampstead.] + + + + * * * * * + + + +_Here came "Ballad from the German." See page 29. + +Here came "David in the Cave of Aditllam" by Mary + +Lamb, from "Poetry for Children." See vol. iii. page 486._ + + + + * * * * * + + + + SALOME + + (_By Mary Lamb. Probably_ 1808 _or_ 1809) + + + Once on a charger there was laid, + And brought before a royal maid, + As price of attitude and grace, + A guiltless head, a holy face. + + It was on Herod's natal day, + Who, o'er Judea's land held sway. + He married his own brother's wife, + Wicked Herodias. She the life + Of John the Baptist long had sought, + Because he openly had taught + That she a life unlawful led, + Having her husband's brother wed. + + This was he, that saintly John, + Who in the wilderness alone + Abiding, did for clothing wear + A garment made of camel's hair; + + Honey and locusts were his food, + And he was most severely good. + He preached penitence and tears, + And waking first the sinner's fears, + Prepared a path, made smooth a way, + For his diviner master's day. + + Herod kept in princely state + His birth-day. On his throne he sate, + After the feast, beholding her + Who danced with grace peculiar; + Fair Salome, who did excel + All in that land for dancing well. + The feastful monarch's heart was fired, + And whatsoe'er thing she desired. + Though half his kingdom it should be, + He in his pleasure swore that he + Would give the graceful Salome. + The damsel was Herodias' daughter: + She to the queen hastes, and besought her + To teach her what great gift to name. + Instructed by Herodias, came + The damsel back; to Herod said, + "Give me John the Baptist's head; + And in a charger let it be + Hither straitway brought to me." + Herod her suit would fain deny, + But for his oath's sake must comply. + + When painters would by art express + Beauty in unloveliness, + Thee, Herodias' daughter, thee, + They fittest subject take to be. + They give thy form and features grace; + But ever in thy beauteous face + They shew a steadfast cruel gaze, + An eye unpitying; and amaze + In all beholders deep they mark, + That thou betrayest not one spark + Of feeling for the ruthless deed, + That did thy praiseful dance succeed + For on the head they make you look, + As if a sullen joy you took, + A cruel triumph, wicked pride, + That for your sport a saint had died. + + + + + LINES + + _Suggested by a Picture of Two Females by Lionardo da Vinci._ + + (_By Mary Lamb_. 1804) + + + The Lady Blanch, regardless of all her lovers' fears, + To the Urs'line convent hastens, and long the Abbess hears. + "O Blanch, my child, repent ye of the courtly life ye lead." + Blanch looked on a rose-bud and little seem'd to heed. + She looked on the rose-bud, she looked round, and thought + On all her heart had whisper'd, and all the Nun had taught. + "I am worshipped by lovers, and brightly shines my fame, + All Christendom resoundeth the noble Blanch's name. + Nor shall I quickly wither like the rose-bud from the tree, + My queen-like graces shining when my beauty's gone from me. + But when the sculptur'd marble is raised o'er my head, + And the matchless Blanch lies lifeless among the noble dead, + This saintly lady Abbess hath made me justly fear, + It nothing will avail me that I were worshipp'd here." + + + + + LINES + + _On the Same Picture being Removed to make + Place for a Portrait of a Lady by Titian._ + + (_By Mary Lamb_. 1805) + + + Who art thou, fair one, who usurp'st the place + Of Blanch, the lady of the matchless grace? + Come, fair and pretty, tell to me, + Who, in thy life-time, thou might'st be. + Thou pretty art and fair, + But with the lady Blanch thou never must compare. + No need for Blanch her history to tell; + Whoever saw her face, they there did read it well. + But when I look on thee, I only know + There lived a pretty maid some hundred years ago. + + + + + LINES + + _On the Celebrated Picture by Lionardo da Vinci, + called The Virgin of the Rocks._ + + (? 1805) + + + While young John runs to greet + The greater Infant's feet, + The Mother standing by, with trembling passion + Of devout admiration, + Beholds the engaging mystic play, and pretty adoration; + Nor knows as yet the full event + Of those so low beginnings, + From whence we date our winnings, + But wonders at the intent + Of those new rites, and what that strange child-worship meant. + But at her side + An angel doth abide, + With such a perfect joy + As no dim doubts alloy, + An intuition, + A glory, an amenity, + Passing the dark condition + Of blind humanity, + As if he surely knew + All the blest wonders should ensue, + Or he had lately left the upper sphere, + And had read all the sovran schemes and divine riddles there. + + + + + ON THE SAME + + (_By Mary Lamb_. 1805) + + + Maternal lady with the virgin grace, + Heaven-born thy Jesus seemeth sure, + And of a virgin pure. + Lady most perfect, when thy sinless face + Men look upon, they wish to be + A Catholic, Madonna fair, to worship thee. + + + + + SONNETS + + + TO MISS KELLY + + You are not, Kelly, of the common strain, + That stoop their pride and female honor down + To please that many-headed beast _the town_, + And vend their lavish smiles and tricks for gain; + By fortune thrown amid the actor's train, + You keep your native dignity of thought; + The plaudits that attend you come unsought, + As tributes due unto your natural vein. + Your tears have passion in them, and a grace + Of genuine freshness, which our hearts avow; + Your smiles are winds whose ways we cannot trace, + That vanish and return we know not how-- + And please the better from a pensive face, + And thoughtful eye, and a reflecting brow. + + + + + ON THE SIGHT OF SWANS IN KENSINGTON GARDEN + + Queen-bird that sittest on thy shining nest, + And thy young cygnets without sorrow hatchest, + And thou, thou other royal bird, that watchest + Lest the white mother wandering feet molest: + Shrined are your offspring in a chrystal cradle, + Brighter than Helen's ere she yet had burst + Her shelly prison. They shall be born at first + Strong, active, graceful, perfect, swan-like able + To tread the land or waters with security. + Unlike poor human births, conceived in sin, + In grief brought forth, both outwardly and in + Confessing weakness, error, and impurity. + Did heavenly creatures own succession's line, + The births of heaven like to your's would shine. + + + + * * * * * + + + +_Here came "Was it some sweet device." See page_ 4. + +_Here came "Methinks how dainty sweet." See page_ 5. + +_Here came "When last I roved." See page_ 8. + +_Here came "A timid grace" See page_ 8. + +_Here came "If from my lips." See page_ 9. + + + + * * * * * + + + + + THE FAMILY NAME + + What reason first imposed thee, gentle name, + Name that my father bore, and his sire's sire, + Without reproach? we trace our stream no higher; + And I, a childless man, may end the same. + Perchance some shepherd on Lincolnian plains, + In manners guileless as his own sweet flocks, + Received the first amid the merry mocks + And arch allusions of his fellow swains. + Perchance from Salem's holier fields returned, + With glory gotten on the heads abhorr'd + Of faithless Saracens, some martial lord + Took HIS meek title, in whose zeal he burn'd. + Whate'er the fount whence thy beginnings came, + No deed of mine shall shame thee, gentle name. + + + + + TO JOHN LAMB, ESQ. + + _Of the South-Sea House_ + + John, you were figuring in the gay career + Of blooming manhood with a young man's joy, + When I was yet a little peevish boy-- + Though time has made the difference disappear + Betwixt our ages, which _then_ seemed so great-- + And still by rightful custom you retain + Much of the old authoritative strain, + And keep the elder brother up in state. + O! you do well in this. 'Tis man's worst deed + To let the "things that have been" run to waste, + And in the unmeaning present sink the past: + In whose dim glass even now I faintly read + Old buried forms, and faces long ago, + Which you, and I, and one more, only know. + + + + * * * * * + + + +_Here came "O! I could laugh." See page_ 5. + +_Here came "We were two pretty babes." See page_ 9. + +_Here came, under the heading "Blank Verse," "Childhood," see page 9; +"The Grandame," see page 6; "The Sabbath Bells," see page 10, "Fancy +employed on Divine Subjects," see page 10; and "Composed at Midnight," +see page 26._ + + + + * * * * * + + + + + TO MARTIN CHARLES BURNEY, ESQ. + + +(The Dedication to Vol. II. of Lamb's _Works_, 1818) + + Forgive me, BURNEY, if to thee these late + And hasty products of a critic pen, + Thyself no common judge of books and men, + In feeling of thy worth I dedicate. + My _verse_ was offered to an older friend; + The humbler _prose_ has fallen to thy share: + Nor could I miss the occasion to declare, + What spoken in thy presence must offend-- + That, set aside some few caprices wild, + Those humorous clouds that flit o'er brightest days, + In all my threadings of this worldly maze, + (And I have watched thee almost from a child), + Free from self-seeking, envy, low design, + I have not found a whiter soul than thine. + + + + + ALBUM VERSES + + IN THE ALBUM OF A CLERGYMAN'S LADY + + (? 1830) + + An Album is a Garden, not for show + Planted, but use; where wholesome herbs should grow. + A Cabinet of curious porcelain, where + No fancy enters, but what's rich or rare. + A Chapel, where mere ornamental things + Are pure as crowns of saints, or angels' wings. + A List of living friends; a holier Room + For names of some since mouldering in the tomb, + Whose blooming memories life's cold laws survive; + And, dead elsewhere, they here yet speak, and live. + Such, and so tender, should an Album be; + And, Lady, such I wish this book to thee. + + + + + IN THE AUTOGRAPH BOOK OF MRS. SERGEANT W------ + + Had I a power, Lady, to my will, + You should not want Hand Writings. I would fill + Your leaves with Autographs--resplendent names + Of Knights and Squires of old, and courtly Dames, + Kings, Emperors, Popes. Next under these should stand + The hands of famous Lawyers--a grave band-- + Who in their Courts of Law or Equity + Have best upheld Freedom and Property. + These should moot cases in your book, and vie + To show their reading and their Serjeantry. + But I have none of these; nor can I send + The notes by Bullen to her Tyrant penn'd + In her authentic hand; nor in soft hours + Lines writ by Rosamund in Clifford's bowers. + The lack of curious Signatures I moan, + And want the courage to subscribe my own. + + + + + IN THE ALBUM OF LUCY BARTON + + (1824) + + + Little Book, surnamed of _white_, + Clean as yet, and fair to sight, + Keep thy attribution right. + + Never disproportion'd scrawl; + Ugly blot, that's worse than all; + On thy maiden clearness fall! + + In each letter, here design'd, + Let the reader emblem'd find + Neatness of the owner's mind. + + Gilded margins count a sin, + Let thy leaves attraction win + By the golden rules within; + + Sayings fetch'd from sages old; + Laws which Holy Writ unfold, + Worthy to be graved in gold: + + Lighter fancies not excluding; + Blameless wit, with nothing rude in, + Sometimes mildly interluding + + Amid strains of graver measure: + Virtue's self hath oft her pleasure + In sweet Muses' groves of leisure. + + Riddles dark, perplexing sense; + Darker meanings of offence; + What but _shades_--be banished hence. + + Whitest thoughts in whitest dress, + Candid meanings, best express + Mind of quiet Quakeress. + + + + + IN THE ALBUM OF MISS ------ + + I + + Such goodness in your face doth shine, + With modest look, without design, + That I despair, poor pen of mine + Can e'er express it. + To give it words I feebly try; + My spirits fail me to supply + Befitting language for't, and I + Can only bless it! + + + II + + But stop, rash verse! and don't abuse + A bashful Maiden's ear with news + Of her own virtues. She'll refuse + Praise sung so loudly. + Of that same goodness, you admire, + The best part is, she don't aspire + To praise--nor of herself desire + To think too proudly. + + + + + IN THE ALBUM OF A VERY YOUNG LADY + + (? 1830) + + Joy to unknown Josepha who, I hear, + Of all good gifts, to Music most is given; + Science divine, which through the enraptured ear + Enchants the Soul, and lifts it nearer Heaven. + Parental smiles approvingly attend + Her pliant conduct of the trembling keys, + And listening strangers their glad suffrage lend. + Most musical is Nature. Birds--and Bees + At their sweet labour--sing. The moaning winds + Rehearse a _lesson_ to attentive minds. + In louder tones "Deep unto Deep doth call;" + And there is Music in the Waterfall. + + + + + IN THE ALBUM OF A FRENCH TEACHER (? 1829) + + Implored for verse, I send you what I can; + But you are so exact a Frenchwoman, + As I am told, Jemima, that I fear + To wound with English your Parisian ear, + And think I do your choice collection wrong + With lines not written in the Frenchman's tongue. + Had I a knowledge equal to my will, + With airy _Chansons_ I your leaves would fill; + With _Fabliaux_, that should emulate the vein + Of sprightly Cresset, or of La Fontaine; + Or _Scenes Comiques_, that should approach the air + Of your own favourite--renowned Moliere. + But at my suit the Muse of France looks sour, + And strikes me dumb! Yet, what is in my power + To testify respect for you, I pray, + Take in plain English--our rough Enfield way. + + + + + IN THE ALBUM OF MISS DAUBENY + + I + + Some poets by poetic law + Have Beauties praised, they never saw; + And sung of Kittys, and of Nancys, + Whose charms but lived in their own fancies. + So I, to keep my Muse a going, + That willingly would still be doing, + A Canzonet or two must try + In praise of--_pretty_ Daubeny. + + + II + + But whether she indeed be comely, + Or only very good and homely, + Of my own eyes I cannot say; + I trust to Emma Isola. + But sure I think her voice is tuneful, + As smoothest birds that sing in June full; + For else would strangely disagree + The _flowing_ name of--Daubeny. + + + III + + I hear that she a Book hath got-- + As what young Damsel now hath not, + In which they scribble favorite fancies, + Copied from poems or romances? + And prettiest draughts, of her design, + About the curious Album shine; + And therefore she shall have for me + The style of--_tasteful_ Daubeny. + + + IV + + Thus far I have taken on believing; + But well I know without deceiving, + That in her heart she keeps alive still + Old school-day likings, which survive still + In spite of absence--worldly coldness-- + And thereon can my Muse take boldness + To crown her other praises three + With praise of--_friendly_ Daubeny. + + + + + IN THE ALBUM OF MRS. JANE TOWERS (1828) + + Lady Unknown, who crav'st from me Unknown + The trifle of a verse these leaves to grace, + How shall I find fit matter? with what face + Address a face that ne'er to me was shown? + Thy looks, tones, gesture, manners, and what not, + Conjecturing, I wander in the dark. + I know thee only Sister to Charles Clarke! + But at that name my cold Muse waxes hot, + And swears that thou art such a one as he, + Warm, laughter-loving, with a touch of madness, + Wild, glee-provoking, pouring oil of gladness + From frank heart without guile. And, if thou be + The pure reverse of this, and I mistake-- + Demure one, I will like thee for his sake. + + + + + IN MY OWN ALBUM (1827) + + Fresh clad from heaven in robes of white. + A young probationer of light, + Thou wert my soul, an Album bright, + + A spotless leaf; but thought, and care, + And friend and foe, in foul or fair, + Have "written strange defeatures" there; + + And Time with heaviest hand of all, + Like that fierce writing on the wall, + Hath stamp'd sad dates--he can't recal; + + And error gilding worst designs-- + Like speckled snake that strays and shines-- + Betrays his path by crooked lines; + + And vice hath left his ugly blot; + And good resolves, a moment hot, + Fairly began--but finish'd not; + + And fruitless, late remorse doth trace-- + Like Hebrew lore a backward pace-- + Her irrecoverable race. + + Disjointed numbers; sense unknit; + Huge reams of folly, shreds of wit; + Compose the mingled mass of it. + + My scalded eyes no longer brook + Upon this ink-blurr'd thing to look-- + Go, shut the leaves, and clasp the book. + + + + + MISCELLANEOUS + + + + ANGEL HELP[5] + + (1827) + + + This rare tablet doth include + Poverty with Sanctitude. + Past midnight this poor Maid hath spun, + And yet the work is not half done, + Which must supply from earning scant + A feeble bed-rid parent's want. + Her sleep-charged eyes exemption ask, + And Holy hands take up the task: + Unseen the rock and spindle ply, + And do her earthly drudgery. + Sleep, saintly poor one, sleep, sleep on; + And, waking, find thy labours done. + Perchance she knows it by her dreams; + Her eye hath caught the golden gleams, + Angelic presence testifying, + That round her every where are flying; + Ostents from which she may presume, + That much of Heaven is in the room. + Skirting her own bright hair they run, + And to the sunny add more sun: + Now on that aged face they fix, + Streaming from the Crucifix; + The flesh-clogg'd spirit disabusing, + Death-disarming sleeps infusing, + Prelibations, foretastes high, + And equal thoughts to live or die. + Gardener bright from Eden's bower, + Tend with care that lily flower; + To its leaves and root infuse + Heaven's sunshine, Heaven's dews. + 'Tis a type, and 'tis a pledge, + Of a crowning privilege. + Careful as that lily flower, + This Maid must keep her precious dower + Live a sainted Maid, or die + Martyr to virginity. + + +[Footnote 5: Suggested by a drawing in the possession of Charles Aders, +Esq., in which is represented the Legend of a poor female Saint; who, +having spun past midnight, to maintain a bed-rid mother, has fallen +asleep from fatigue, and Angels are finishing her work. In another part +of the chamber, an Angel is tending a lily, the emblem of purity.] + + + + + THE CHRISTENING + + (1829) + + Array'd--a half-angelic sight-- + In vests of pure Baptismal white, + The Mother to the Font doth bring + The little helpless nameless thing, + With hushes soft and mild caressing, + At once to get--a name and blessing. + Close by the Babe the Priest doth stand, + The Cleansing Water at his hand, + Which must assoil the soul within + From every stain of Adam's sin. + The Infant eyes the mystic scenes, + Nor knows what all this wonder means; + And now he smiles, as if to say + "I am a Christian made this day;" + Now frighted clings to Nurse's hold, + Shrinking from the water cold, + Whose virtues, rightly understood, + Are, as Bethesda's waters, good. + Strange words--The World, The Flesh, The Devil-- + Poor Babe, what can it know of Evil? + But we must silently adore + Mysterious truths, and not explore. + Enough for him, in after-times, + When he shall read these artless rhymes, + If, looking back upon this day, + With quiet conscience, he can say + "I have in part redeem'd the pledge + Of my Baptismal privilege; + And more and more will strive to flee + All which my Sponsors kind did then renounce for me." + + + + + ON AN INFANT DYING AS SOON AS BORN + + (1827) + + I saw where in the shroud did lurk + A curious frame of Nature's work. + A flow'ret crushed in the bud, + A nameless piece of Babyhood, + Was in a cradle-coffin lying; + Extinct, with scarce the sense of dying; + So soon to exchange the imprisoning womb + For darker closets of the tomb! + She did but ope an eye, and put + A clear beam forth, then strait up shut + For the long dark: ne'er more to see + Through glasses of mortality. + Riddle of destiny, who can show + What thy short visit meant, or know + What thy errand here below? + Shall we say, that Nature blind + Check'd her hand, and changed her mind, + Just when she had exactly wrought + A finish'd pattern without fault? + Could she flag, or could she tire, + Or lack'd she the Promethean fire + (With her nine moons' long workings sicken'd) + That should thy little limbs have quicken'd? + Limbs so firm, they seem'd to assure + Life of health, and days mature: + Woman's self in miniature! + Limbs so fair, they might supply + (Themselves now but cold imagery) + The sculptor to make Beauty by. + Or did the stern-eyed Fate descry, + That babe, or mother, one must die; + So in mercy left the stock, + And cut the branch; to save the shock + Of young years widow'd; and the pain, + When Single State comes back again + To the lone man who, 'reft of wife, + Thenceforward drags a maimed life? + The economy of Heaven is dark; + And wisest clerks have miss'd the mark, + Why Human Buds, like this, should fall, + More brief than fly ephemeral, + That has his day; while shrivel'd crones + Stiffen with age to stocks and stones; + And crabbed use the conscience sears + In sinners of an hundred years. + Mother's prattle, mother's kiss, + Baby fond, thou ne'er wilt miss. + Rites, which custom does impose, + Silver bells and baby clothes; + Coral redder than those lips, + Which pale death did late eclipse; + Music framed for infants' glee, + Whistle never tuned for thee; + Though thou want'st not, thou shall have them, + Loving hearts were they which gave them. + Let not one be missing; nurse, + See them laid upon the hearse + Of infant slain by doom perverse. + Why should kings and nobles have + Pictured trophies to their grave; + And we, churls, to thee deny + Thy pretty toys with thee to lie, + A more harmless vanity? + + + + + TO BERNARD BARTON + + _With a Coloured Print_[6] + + (1827) + + When last you left your Woodbridge pretty, + To stare at sights, and see the City, + If I your meaning understood, + You wish'd a Picture, cheap, but good; + The colouring? decent; clear, not muddy; + To suit a Poet's quiet study, + Where Books and Prints for delectation + Hang, rather than vain ostentation. + The subject? what I pleased, if comely; + But something scriptural and homely: + A sober Piece, not gay or wanton, + For winter fire-sides to descant on; + The theme so scrupulously handled, + A Quaker might look on unscandal'd; + Such as might satisfy Ann Knight, + And classic Mitford just not fright. + Just such a one I've found, and send it; + If liked, I give--if not, but lend it. + The moral? nothing can be sounder. + The fable? 'tis its own expounder-- + A Mother teaching to her Chit + Some good book, and explaining it. + He, silly urchin, tired of lesson, + His learning lays no mighty stress on, + But seems to hear not what he hears; + Thrusting his fingers in his ears, + Like Obstinate, that perverse funny one, + In honest parable of Bunyan. + His working Sister, more sedate, + Listens; but in a kind of state, + The painter meant for steadiness; + But has a tinge of sullenness; + And, at first sight, she seems to brook + As ill her needle, as he his book. + This is the Picture. For the Frame-- + 'Tis not ill-suited to the same; + Oak-carved, not gilt, for fear of falling; + Old-fashion'd; plain, yet not appalling; + And sober, as the Owner's Calling. + + +[Footnote 6: From the venerable and ancient Manufactory of Carrington +Bowles: some of my readers may recognise it.] + + + + + THE YOUNG CATECHIST[7] + + (1827) + + While this tawny Ethiop prayeth, + Painter, who is she that stayeth + By, with skin of whitest lustre, + Sunny locks, a shining cluster, + Saint-like seeming to direct him + To the Power that must protect him? + Is she of the Heaven-born Three, + Meek Hope, strong Faith, sweet Charity: + Or some Cherub?-- + They you mention + Far transcend my weak invention. + 'Tis a simple Christian child, + Missionary young and mild, + From her stock of Scriptural knowledge, + Bible-taught without a college, + Which by reading she could gather, + Teaches him to say OUR FATHER + To the common Parent, who + Colour not respects, nor hue. + White and black in him have part, + Who looks not to the skin, but heart. + + +[Footnote 7: A Picture by Henry Meyer, Esq.] + + + + SHE IS GOING + + For their elder Sister's hair + Martha does a wreath prepare + Of bridal rose, ornate and gay: + To-morrow is the wedding day: + She is going. + + Mary, youngest of the three, + Laughing idler, full of glee, + Arm in arm does fondly chain her, + Thinking, poor trifler, to detain her-- + But she's going. + + Vex not, maidens, nor regret + Thus to part with Margaret. + Charms like your's can never stay + Long within doors; and one day + You'll be going. + + + + + + TO A YOUNG FRIEND + + _On Her Twenty-First Birth-Day_ + + Crown me a cheerful goblet, while I pray + A blessing on thy years, young Isola; + Young, but no more a child. How swift have flown + To me thy girlish times, a woman grown + Beneath my heedless eyes! in vain I rack + My fancy to believe the almanac, + That speaks thee Twenty-One. Thou should'st have still + Remain'd a child, and at thy sovereign will + Gambol'd about our house, as in times past. + Ungrateful Emma, to grow up so fast, + Hastening to leave thy friends!--for which intent, + Fond Runagate, be this thy punishment. + After some thirty years, spent in such bliss + As this earth can afford, where still we miss + Something of joy entire, may'st thou grow old + As we whom thou hast left! That wish was cold. + O far more ag'd and wrinkled, till folks say, + Looking upon thee reverend in decay, + "This Dame for length of days, and virtues rare, + With her respected Grandsire may compare."-- + Grandchild of that respected Isola, + Thou should'st have had about thee on this day + Kind looks of Parents, to congratulate + Their Pride grown up to woman's grave estate. + But they have died, and left thee, to advance + Thy fortunes how thou may'st, and owe to chance + The friends which Nature grudg'd. And thou wilt find, + Or make such, Emma, if I am not blind + To thee and thy deservings. That last strain + Had too much sorrow in it. Fill again + Another cheerful goblet, while I say + "Health, and twice health, to our lost Isola." + + + + + TO THE SAME + + External gifts of fortune, or of face, + Maiden, in truth, thou hast not much to show; + Much fairer damsels have I known, and know, + And richer may be found in every place. + In thy _mind_ seek thy beauty, and thy wealth. + Sincereness lodgeth there, the soul's best health. + O guard that treasure above gold or pearl, + Laid up secure from moths and worldly stealth-- + And take my benison, plain-hearted girl. + + + * * * * * + + + SONNETS + + + HARMONY IN UNLIKENESS + + By Enfield lanes, and Winchmore's verdant hill, + Two lovely damsels cheer my lonely walk: + The fair Maria, as a vestal, still; + And Emma brown, exuberant in talk. + With soft and Lady speech the first applies + The mild correctives that to grace belong + To her redundant friend, who her defies + With jest, and mad discourse, and bursts of song. + O differing Pair, yet sweetly thus agreeing, + What music from your happy discord rises, + While your companion hearing each, and seeing, + Nor this, nor that, but both together, prizes; + This lesson teaching, which our souls may strike, + That harmonies may be in things unlike! + + + + + WRITTEN AT CAMBRIDGE + + (_August_ 15. 1819) + + I was not train'd in Academic bowers, + And to those learned streams I nothing owe + Which copious from those twin fair founts do flow; + Mine have been any thing but studious hours. + Yet can I fancy, wandering 'mid thy towers, + Myself a nursling, Granta, of thy lap; + My brow seems tightening with the Doctor's cap, + And I walk _gowned_; feel unusual powers. + Strange forms of logic clothe my admiring speech, + Old Ramus' ghost is busy at my brain; + And my scull teems with notions infinite. + Be still, ye reeds of Camus, while I teach + Truths, which transcend the searching Schoolmen's vein, + And half had stagger'd that stout Stagirite! + + + + + TO A CELEBRATED FEMALE PERFORMER IN THE "BLIND BOY" + + (1819) + + Rare artist! who with half thy tools, or none, + Canst execute with ease thy curious art, + And press thy powerful'st meanings on the heart, + Unaided by the eye, expression's throne! + While each blind sense, intelligential grown + Beyond its sphere, performs the effect of sight: + Those orbs alone, wanting their proper might, + All motionless and silent seem to moan + The unseemly negligence of nature's hand, + That left them so forlorn. What praise is thine, + O mistress of the passions; artist fine! + Who dost our souls against our sense command, + Plucking the horror from a sightless face, + Lending to blank deformity a grace. + + + + + WORK + + (1819) + + Who first invented work, and bound the free + And holyday-rejoicing spirit down + To the ever-haunting importunity + Of business in the green fields, and the town-- + To plough, loom, anvil, spade--and oh! most sad + To that dry drudgery at the desk's dead wood? + Who but the Being unblest, alien from good, + Sabbathless Satan! he who his unglad + Task ever plies 'mid rotatory burnings, + That round and round incalculably reel-- + For wrath divine hath made him like a wheel-- + In that red realm from which are no returnings; + Where toiling, and turmoiling, ever and aye + He, and his thoughts, keep pensive working-day. + + + + + LEISURE + + (1821) + + They talk of time, and of time's galling yoke, + That like a mill-stone on man's mind doth press, + Which only works and business can redress: + Of divine Leisure such foul lies are spoke, + Wounding her fair gifts with calumnious stroke. + But might I, fed with silent meditation, + Assoiled live from that fiend Occupation-- + _Improbus Labor_, which my spirits hath broke-- + I'd drink of time's rich cup, and never surfeit: + Fling in more days than went to make the gem, + That crown'd the white top of Methusalem: + Yea on my weak neck take, and never forfeit, + Like Atlas bearing up the dainty sky, + The heaven-sweet burthen of eternity. + + DEUS NOBIS HAEC OTIA FECIT. + + + + + TO SAMUEL ROGERS, ESQ. + + (1829) + + Rogers, of all the men that I have known + But slightly, who have died, your Brother's loss + Touch'd me most sensibly. There came across + My mind an image of the cordial tone + Of your fraternal meetings, where a guest + I more than once have sat; and grieve to think, + That of that threefold cord one precious link + By Death's rude hand is sever'd from the rest. + Of our old Gentry he appear'd a stem-- + A Magistrate who, while the evil-doer + He kept in terror, could respect the Poor, + And not for every trifle harass them, + As some, divine and laic, too oft do. + This man's a private loss, and public too. + + + + + THE GIPSY'S MALISON + + (1829) + + "Suck, baby, suck, mothers love grows by giving, + Drain the sweet founts that only thrive by wasting; + Black manhood comes, when riotous guilty living + Hands thee the cup that shall be death in tasting. + + "Kiss, baby, kiss, mother's lips shine by kisses, + Choke the warm breath that else would fall in blessings; + Black manhood comes, when turbulent guilty blisses + Tend thee the kiss that poisons 'mid caressings. + + "Hang, baby, hang, mother's love loves such forces, + Strain the fond neck that bends still to thy clinging; + Black manhood comes, when violent lawless courses + Leave thee a spectacle in rude air swinging." + + So sang a wither'd Beldam energetical, + And bann'd the ungiving door with lips prophetical. + + + + + COMMENDATORY VERSES + + TO THE AUTHOR OF POEMS, + + _Published under the name of Barry Cornwall_ + + (1820) + + + Let hate, or grosser heats, their foulness mask + Under the vizor of a borrowed name; + Let things eschew the light deserving blame: + No cause hast thou to blush for thy sweet task. + "Marcian Colonna" is a dainty book; + And thy "Sicilian Tale" may boldly pass; + Thy "Dream" 'bove all, in which, as in a glass, + On the great world's antique glories we may look. + No longer then, as "lowly substitute, + Factor, or PROCTOR, for another's gains," + Suffer the admiring world to be deceived; + Lest thou thyself, by self of fame bereaved, + Lament too late the lost prize of thy pains, + And heavenly tunes piped through an alien flute. + + + + + TO R.[J.]S. KNOWLES, ESQ. + + _On his Tragedy of Virginius_ + + (1820) + + Twelve years ago I knew thee, Knowles, and then + Esteemed you a perfect specimen + Of those fine spirits warm-soul'd Ireland sends, + To teach us colder English how a friend's + Quick pulse should beat. I knew you brave, and plain, + Strong-sensed, rough-witted above fear or gain; + But nothing further had the gift to espy. + Sudden you re-appear. With wonder I + Hear my old friend (turn'd Shakspeare) read a scene + Only to _his_ inferior in the clean + Passes of pathos: with such fence-like art-- + Ere we can see the steel, 'tis in our heart. + Almost without the aid language affords, + Your piece seems wrought. That huffing medium, _words_, + (Which in the modern Tamburlaines quite sway + Our shamed souls from their bias) in your play + We scarce attend to. Hastier passion draws + Our tears on credit: and we find the cause + Some two hours after, spelling o'er again + Those strange few words at ease, that wrought the pain. + Proceed, old friend; and, as the year returns, + Still snatch some new old story from the urns + Of long-dead virtue. We, that knew before + Your worth, may admire, we cannot love you more. + + + + + TO THE EDITOR OF THE "EVERY-DAY BOOK" + + (1825) + + I like you, and your book, ingenuous Hone! + In whose capacious all-embracing leaves + The very marrow of tradition's shown; + And all that history--much that fiction--weaves. + + By every sort of taste your work is graced. + Vast stores of modern anecdote we find, + With good old story quaintly interlaced-- + The theme as various as the reader's mind. + + Rome's life-fraught legends you so truly paint-- + Yet kindly,--that the half-turn'd Catholic + Scarcely forbears to smile at his own saint, + And cannot curse the candid heretic. + + Rags, relics, witches, ghosts, fiends, crowd your page; + Our fathers' mummeries we well-pleased behold, + And, proudly conscious of a purer age, + Forgive some fopperies in the times of old. + + Verse-honouring Phoebus, Father of bright _Days_, + Must needs bestow on you both good and many, + Who, building trophies of his Children's praise, + Run their rich Zodiac through, not missing any. + + Dan Phoebus loves your book--trust me, friend Hone-- + The title only errs, he bids me say: + For while such art, wit, reading, there are shown, + He swears,'tis not a work of _every day_. + + + + * * * * * + + + + ACROSTICS + + + TO CAROLINE MARIA APPLEBEE + + _An Acrostic_ + + Caroline glides smooth in verse, + And is easy to rehearse; + Runs just like some crystal river + O'er its pebbly bed for ever. + + Lines as harsh and quaint as mine + In their close at least will shine, + Nor from sweetness can decline, + Ending but with _Caroline_. + + _Maria_ asks a statelier pace-- + "_Ave Maria_, full of grace!" + Romish rites before me rise, + Image-worship, sacrifice, + And well-meant but mistaken pieties. + + _Apple_ with _Bee_ doth rougher run. + Paradise was lost by one; + Peace of mind would we regain, + Let us, like the other, strain + Every harmless faculty, + Bee-like at work in our degree, + Ever some sweet task designing, + Extracting still, and still refining. + + + + + TO CECILIA CATHERINE LAWTON + + _An Acrostic_ + + Choral service, solemn chanting, + Echoing round cathedrals holy-- + Can aught else on earth be wanting + In heav'n's bliss to plunge us wholly? + Let us great _Cecilia_ honour + In the praise we give unto them, + And the merit be upon her. + + Cold the heart that would undo them, + And the solemn organ banish + That this sainted Maid invented. + Holy thoughts too quickly vanish, + Ere the expression can be vented. + Raise the song to _Catherine_, + In her torments most divine! + Ne'er by Christians be forgot-- + Envied be--this Martyr's lot. + _Lawton_, who these _names_ combinest, + Aim to emulate their praises; + Women were they, yet divinest + Truths they taught; and story raises + O'er their mouldering bones a Tomb, + Not to die till Day of Doom. + + + + + ACROSTIC, + +TO A LADY WHO DESIRED ME TO WRITE HER EPITAPH + + (1830) + + Grace Joanna here doth lie: + Reader, wonder not that I + Ante-date her hour of rest. + Can I thwart her wish exprest, + Ev'n unseemly though the laugh + + Jesting with an Epitaph? + On her bones the turf lie lightly, + And her rise again be brightly! + No dark stain be found upon her-- + No, there will not, on mine honour-- + Answer that at least I can. + + Would that I, thrice happy man, + In as spotless garb might rise, + Light as she will climb the skies, + Leaving the dull earth behind, + In a car more swift than wind. + All her errors, all her failings, + (Many they were not) and ailings, + Sleep secure from Envy's railings. + + + + + ANOTHER, + + TO HER YOUNGEST DAUGHTER + (1830) + + Least Daughter, but not least beloved, of _Grace_! + O frown not on a stranger, who from place, + Unknown and distant these few lines hath penn'd. + I but report what thy Instructress Friend + So oft hath told us of thy gentle heart. + A pupil most affectionate thou art, + + Careful to learn what elder years impart. + _Louisa--Clare_--by which name shall I call thee? + A prettier pair of names sure ne'er was found, + Resembling thy own sweetness in sweet sound. + Ever calm peace and innocence befal thee! + + + + * * * * * + + + + TRANSLATIONS + + + _From the Latin of Vincent Bourne_ + + I + + ON A SEPULCHRAL STATUE OF AN INFANT SLEEPING + + 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 mortal sense, + The heaven-infused sleep of Innocence! + + + II + + THE RIVAL BELLS + + A tuneful challenge rings from either side + Of Thames' fair banks. Thy twice six Bells, Saint Bride + Peal swift and shrill; to which more slow reply + The deep-toned eight of Mary Overy. + Such harmony from the contention flows, + That the divided ear no preference knows; + Betwixt them both disparting Music's State, + While one exceeds in number, one in weight. + + + III + + EPITAPH ON A DOG + + (1820) + + Poor Irus' faithful wolf-dog here I lie, + That wont to tend my old blind master's steps, + His guide and guard; nor, while my service lasted, + Had he occasion for that staff, with which + He now goes picking out his path in fear + Over the highways and crossings, but would plant + Safe in the conduct of my friendly string, + A firm foot forward still, till he had reach'd + His poor seat on some stone, nigh where the tide + Of passers-by in thickest confluence flow'd: + To whom with loud and passionate laments + From morn to eve his dark estate he wail'd. + Nor wail'd to all in vain: some here and there, + The well disposed and good, their pennies gave. + I meantime at his feet obsequious slept; + Not all-asleep in sleep, but heart and ear + Prick'd up at his least motion, to receive + At his kind hand my customary crumbs, + And common portion in his feast of scraps; + Or when night warn'd us homeward, tired and spent + With our long day, and tedious beggary. + These were my manners, this my way of life, + Till age and slow disease me overtook, + And sever'd from my sightless master's side. + But lest the grace of so good deeds should die, + Through tract of years in mute oblivion lost, + This slender tomb of turf hath Irus rear'd, + Cheap monument of no ungrudging hand, + And with short verse inscribed it, to attest, + In long and lasting union to attest, + The virtues of the Beggar and his Dog. + + + IV + + THE BALLAD SINGERS + + Where seven fair Streets to one tall Column[8] 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 cheat 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 assembled ring, nor heeds his tottering knees, + But pricks 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 waggon crosses, which divides + The close-wedged audience; but, as when the tides + To ploughing ships give way, the ship being past, + They re-unite, so these unite as fast. + The older Songstress hitherto hath 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 rehearse. + 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 best. + 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." + + +[Footnote 8: Seven Dials.] + + + V. + + TO DAVID COOK, + + _Of the Parish of Saint Margaret's, Westminster, Watchman_ + + For much good-natured verse received from thee, + A loving verse take in return from me. + "Good morrow to my masters," is your cry; + And to our David "twice as good," say I. + Not Peter's monitor, shrill chanticleer, + Crows the approach of dawn in notes more clear, + Or tells the hours more faithfully. While night + Fills half the world with shadows of affright, + You with your lantern, partner of your round, + Traverse the paths of Margaret's hallow'd bound. + The tales of ghosts which old wives' ears drink up, + The drunkard reeling home from tavern cup, + Nor prowling robber, your firm soul appal; + Arm'd with thy faithful staff thou slight'st them all. + But if the market gard'ner chance to pass, + Bringing to town his fruit, or early grass, + The gentle salesman you with candour greet, + And with reit'rated "good mornings" meet. + Announcing your approach by formal bell, + Of nightly weather you the changes tell; + Whether the Moon shines, or her head doth steep + In rain-portending clouds. When mortals sleep + In downy rest, you brave the snows and sleet + Of winter; and in alley, or in street, + Relieve your midnight progress with a verse. + What though fastidious Phoebus frown averse + On your didactic strain--indulgent Night + With caution hath seal'd up both ears of Spite, + And critics sleep while you in staves do sound + The praise of long-dead Saints, whose Days abound + In wintry months; but Crispen chief proclaim: + Who stirs not at that Prince of Coblers' name? + Profuse in loyalty some couplets shine, + And wish long days to all the Brunswick line! + To youths and virgins they chaste lessons read; + Teach wives and husbands how their lives to lead; + Maids to be cleanly, footmen free from vice; + How death at last all ranks doth equalise; + And, in conclusion, pray good years befal, + With store of wealth, your "worthy masters all." + For this and other tokens of good will, + On boxing day may store of shillings fill + Your Christmas purse; no householder give less, + When at each door your blameless suit you press: + And what you wish to us (it is but reason) + Receive in turn--the compliments o' th' season! + + + VI + + ON A DEAF AND DUMB ARTIST[9] + + + And hath thy blameless life become + A prey to the devouring tomb? + A more mute silence hast thou known, + A deafness deeper than thine own, + While Time was? and no friendly Muse, + That mark'd thy life, and knows thy dues, + Repair with quickening verse the breach, + And write thee into light and speech? + The Power, that made the Tongue, restrain'd + Thy lips from lies, and speeches feign'd; + Who made the Hearing, without wrong + Did rescue thine from Siren's song. + He let thee _see_ the ways of men, + Which thou with pencil, not with pen, + Careful Beholder, down did'st note, + And all their motley actions quote, + Thyself unstain'd the while. From look + Or gesture reading, more than _book_, + In letter'd pride thou took'st no part, + Contented with the Silent Art, + Thyself as silent. Might I be + As speechless, deaf, and good, as He! + + +[Footnote 9: Benjamin Ferrers--died A.D. 1732.] + + + VII + + NEWTON'S PRINCIPIA + + Great Newton's self, to whom the world's in debt, + Owed to School Mistress sage his Alphabet; + But quickly wiser than his Teacher grown, + Discover'd properties to her unknown; + Of A _plus_ B, or _minus_, learn'd the use, + Known Quantities from unknown to educe; + And made--no doubt to that old dame's surprise-- + The Christ-Cross-Row his Ladder to the skies. + Yet, whatsoe'er Geometricians say, + Her Lessons were his true PRINCIPIA! + + + VIII + + THE HOUSE-KEEPER + + The frugal snail, with fore-cast of repose, + Carries his house with him, where'er he goes; + Peeps out--and if there comes a shower of rain, + Retreats to his small domicile amain. + Touch but a tip of him, a horn--'tis well-- + He curls up in his sanctuary shell. + He's his own landlord, his own tenant; stay + Long as he will, he dreads no Quarter Day. + Himself he boards and lodges; both invites, + And feasts, himself; sleeps with himself o' nights. + He spares the upholsterer trouble to procure + Chattles; himself is his own furniture, + And his sole riches. Wheresoe'er he roam-- + Knock when you will--he's sure to be at home. + + + IX + + THE FEMALE ORATORS + + Nigh London's famous Bridge, a Gate more famed + Stands, or once stood, from old Belinus named, + So judged Antiquity; and therein wrongs + A name, allusive strictly to _two Tongues_[10]. + Her School hard by the Goddess Rhetoric opes, + And _gratis_ deals to Oyster-wives her Tropes. + With Nereid green, green Nereid disputes, + Replies, rejoins, confutes, and still confutes. + One her coarse sense by metaphors expounds, + And one in literalities abounds; + In mood and figure these keep up the din: + Words multiply, and every word tells in. + Her hundred throats here bawling Slander strains; + And unclothed Venus to her tongue gives reins + In terms, which Demosthenic force outgo, + And baldest jests of foul-mouth'd Cicero. + Right in the midst great Ate keeps her stand, + And from her sovereign station taints the land. + Hence Pulpits rail; grave Senates learn to jar; + Quacks scold; and Billinsgate infects the Bar. + + +[Footnote 10: _Billingis_ in the Latin.] + + + + + PINDARIC ODE TO THE TREAD MILL + + (1825) + + I + + Inspire my spirit, Spirit of De Foe, + That sang the Pillory, + In loftier strains to show + A more sublime Machine + Than that, where them wert seen, + With neck out-stretcht and shoulders ill awry, + Courting coarse plaudits from vile crowds below-- + A most unseemly show! + + + II + + In such a place + Who could expose thy face, + Historiographer of deathless Crusoe! + That paint'st the strife + And all the naked ills of savage life, + Far above Rousseau? + Rather myself had stood + In that ignoble wood, + Bare to the mob, on holyday or high day. + If nought else could atone + For waggish libel, + I swear on bible, + I would have spared him for thy sake alone, + Man Friday! + + + III + + Our ancestors' were sour days, + Great Master of Romance! + A milder doom had fallen to thy chance + In our days: + Thy sole assignment + Some solitary confinement, + (Not worth thy care a carrot,) + Where in world-hidden cell + Thou thy own Crusoe might have acted well, + Only without the parrot; + By sure experience taught to know, + Whether the qualms thou mak'st him feel were truly such or no. + + + IV + + But stay! methinks in statelier measure-- + A more companionable pleasure-- + I see thy steps the mighty Tread Mill trace, + (The subject of my song + Delay'd however long,) + And some of thine own race, + To keep thee company, thou bring'st with thee along. + There with thee go, + Link'd in like sentence, + With regulated pace and footing slow, + Each old acquaintance, + Rogue--harlot--thief--that live to future ages; + Through many a labour'd tome, + Rankly embalm'd in thy too natural pages. + Faith, friend De Foe, thou art quite at home! + Not one of thy great offspring thou dost lack, + From pirate Singleton to pilfering Jack. + Here Flandrian Moll her brazen incest brags; + Vice-stript Roxana, penitent in rags, + There points to Amy, treading equal chimes, + The faithful handmaid to her faithless crimes. + + + V + + Incompetent my song to raise + To its just height thy praise, + Great Mill! + That by thy motion proper + (No thanks to wind, or sail, or working rill) + Grinding that stubborn corn, the Human will, + Turn'st out men's consciences, + That were begrimed before, as clean and sweet + As flower from purest wheat, + Into thy hopper. + All reformation short of thee but nonsense is, + Or human, or divine. + + + VI + + Compared with thee, + What are the labours of that Jumping Sect, + Which feeble laws connive at rather than respect? + Thou dost not bump, + Or jump, + But _walk_ men into virtue; betwixt crime + And slow repentance giving breathing time, + And leisure to be good; + Instructing with discretion demi-reps + How to direct their steps. + + + VII + + Thou best Philosopher made out of wood! + Not that which framed the tub, + Where sate the Cynic cub, + With nothing in his bosom sympathetic; + But from those groves derived, I deem, + Where Plato nursed his dream + Of immortality; + Seeing that clearly + Thy system all is merely + Peripatetic. + Thou to thy pupils dost such lessons give + Of how to live + With temperance, sobriety, morality, + (A new art,) + That from thy school, by force of virtuous deeds, + Each Tyro now proceeds + A "Walking Stewart!" + + + + + EPICEDIUM + + GOING OR GONE + + (1827) + + + I + + Fine merry franions, + Wanton companions, + My days are ev'n banyans + With thinking upon ye; + How Death, that last stinger, + Finis-writer, end-bringer, + Has laid his chill finger, + Or is laying on ye. + + + II + + There's rich Kitty Wheatley, + With footing it featly + That took me completely, + She sleeps in the Kirk House; + And poor Polly Perkin, + Whose Dad was still firking + The jolly ale firkin, + She's gone to the Work-house; + + + III + + Fine Gard'ner, Ben Carter + (In ten counties no smarter) + Has ta'en his departure + For Proserpine's orchards; + And Lily, postillion, + With cheeks of vermilion, + Is one of a million + That fill up the church-yards; + + + IV + + And, lusty as Dido, + Fat Clemitson's widow + Flits now a small shadow + By Stygian hid ford; + And good Master Clapton + Has thirty years nap't on + The ground he last hap't on, + Intomb'd by fair Widford; + + + V + + And gallant Tom Dockwra, + Of nature's finest crockery, + Now but thin air and mockery, + Lurks by Avernus, + Whose honest grasp of hand + Still, while his life did stand, + At friend's or foe's command, + Almost did burn us. + + + VI + + Roger de Coverley + Not more good man than he; + Yet has he equally + Push'd for Cocytus, + With drivelling Worral, + And wicked old Dorrell, + 'Gainst whom I've a quarrel, + Whose end might affright us!-- + + + VII + + Kindly hearts have I known; + Kindly hearts, they are flown; + Here and there if but one + Linger yet uneffaced, + Imbecile tottering elves, + Soon to be wreck'd on shelves, + These scarce are half themselves, + With age and care crazed. + + + VIII + + But this day Fanny Hutton + Her last dress has put on; + Her fine lessons forgotten, + She died, as the dunce died: + And prim Betsy Chambers, + Decay'd in her members, + No longer remembers + Things, as she once did; + + + IX + + And prudent Miss Wither + Not in jest now doth _wither_, + And soon must go--whither + Nor I well, nor you know; + And flaunting Miss Waller, + _That_ soon must befal her, + Whence none can recal her, + Though proud once as Juno![11] + + +[Footnote 11: Here came, in _Album Verses_, 1830, "The Wife's Trial," +for which see page 273, where it is placed with Lamb's other plays.] + + + + + NEW POEMS IN LAMB'S _POETICAL WORKS, 1836_ + + + IN THE ALBUM OF EDITH S[OUTHEY] (1833) + + In Christian world MARY the garland wears! + REBECCA sweetens on a Hebrew's ear; + Quakers for pure PRISCILLA are more clear; + And the light Gaul by amorous NINON swears. + Among the lesser lights how LUCY shines! + What air of fragrance ROSAMOND throws round! + How like a hymn doth sweet CECILIA sound! + Of MARTHAS, and of ABIGAILS, few lines + Have bragg'd in verse. Of coarsest household stuff + Should homely JOAN be fashioned. But can + You BARBARA resist, or MARIAN? + And is not CLARE for love excuse enough? + Yet, by my faith in numbers, I profess, + These all, than Saxon EDITH, please me less. + + + + + TO DORA W[ORDSWORTH], + + _On Being Asked by Her Father to Write in Her Album_ + + + An Album is a Banquet: from the store, + In his intelligential Orchard growing, + Your Sire might heap your board to overflowing; + One shaking of the Tree--'twould ask no more + To set a Salad forth, more rich than that + Which Evelyn[12] in his princely cookery fancied: + Or that more rare, by Eve's neat hands enhanced, + Where, a pleased guest, the angelic Virtue sat. + But like the all-grasping Founder of the Feast, + Whom Nathan to the sinning king did tax, + From his less wealthy neighbours he exacts; + Spares his own flocks, and takes the poor man's beast. + Obedient to his bidding, lo, I am, + A zealous, meek, _contributory_ + + LAMB. + + +[Footnote 12: Acetaria, a Discourse of Sallets, by J.E., 1706.] + + + + + IN THE ALBUM OF ROTHA Q[UILLINAN] + + A passing glance was all I caught of thee, + In my own Enfield haunts at random roving. + Old friends of ours were with thee, faces loving; + Time short: and salutations cursory, + Though deep, and hearty. The familiar Name + Of you, yet unfamiliar, raised in me + Thoughts--what the daughter of that Man should be, + Who call'd our Wordsworth friend. My thoughts did frame + A growing Maiden, who, from day to day + Advancing still in stature, and in grace, + Would all her lonely Father's griefs efface, + And his paternal cares with usury pay. + I still retain the phantom, as I can; + And call the gentle image--Quillinan. + + + + + IN THE ALBUM OF CATHERINE ORKNEY + + Canadia! boast no more the toils + Of hunters for the furry spoils; + Your whitest ermines are but foils + To brighter Catherine Orkney. + + That such a flower should ever burst + From climes with rigorous winter curst!-- + We bless you, that so kindly nurst + This flower, this Catherine Orkney. + + We envy not your proud display + Of lake--wood--vast Niagara: + Your greatest pride we've borne away. + How spared you Catherine Orkney? + + That Wolfe on Heights of Abraham fell, + To your reproach no more we tell: + Canadia, you repaid us well + With rearing Catherine Orkney. + + O Britain, guard with tenderest care + The charge allotted to your share: + You've scarce a native maid so fair, + So good, as Catherine Orkney. + + + + + TO T. STOTHARD, ESQ. + + _On His Illustrations of the Poems of Mr. Rogers_ + + (1833) + + Consummate Artist, whose undying name + With classic Rogers shall go down to fame, + Be this thy crowning work! In my young days + How often have I with a child's fond gaze + Pored on the pictured wonders[13] thou hadst done: + Clarissa mournful, and prim Grandison! + All Fielding's, Smollett's heroes, rose to view; + I saw, and I believed the phantoms true. + But, above all, that most romantic tale[14] + Did o'er my raw credulity prevail, + Where Glums and Gawries wear mysterious things, + That serve at once for jackets and for wings. + Age, that enfeebles other men's designs, + But heightens thine, and thy free draught refines. + In several ways distinct you make us feel-- + _Graceful_ as Raphael, as Watteau _genteel_. + Your lights and shades, as Titianesque, we praise; + And warmly wish you Titian's length of days. + + +[Footnote 13: Illustrations of the British Novelists.] + +[Footnote 14: Peter Wilkins.] + + + + + TO A FRIEND ON HIS MARRIAGE + + (1833) + + What makes a happy wedlock? What has fate + Not given to thee in thy well-chosen mate? + Good sense--good humour;--these are trivial things, + Dear M----, that each trite encomiast sings. + But she hath these, and more. A mind exempt + From every low-bred passion, where contempt, + Nor envy, nor detraction, ever found + A harbour yet; an understanding sound; + Just views of right and wrong; perception full + Of the deformed, and of the beautiful, + In life and manners; wit above her sex, + Which, as a gem, her sprightly converse decks; + Exuberant fancies, prodigal of mirth, + To gladden woodland walk, or winter hearth; + A noble nature, conqueror in the strife + Of conflict with a hard discouraging life, + Strengthening the veins of virtue, past the power + Of those whose days have been one silken hour, + Spoil'd fortune's pamper'd offspring; a keen sense + Alike of benefit, and of offence, + With reconcilement quick, that instant springs + From the charged heart with nimble angel wings; + While grateful feelings, like a signet sign'd + By a strong hand, seem burnt into her mind. + If these, dear friend, a dowry can confer + Richer than land, thou hast them all in her; + And beauty, which some hold the chiefest boon, + Is in thy bargain for a make-weight thrown. + + + + + THE SELF-ENCHANTED + + (1833) + + I had a sense in dreams of a beauty rare, + Whom Fate had spell-bound, and rooted there, + Stooping, like some enchanted theme, + Over the marge of that crystal stream, + Where the blooming Greek, to Echo blind, + With Self-love fond, had to waters pined. + Ages had waked, and ages slept, + And that bending posture still she kept: + For her eyes she may not turn away, + 'Till a fairer object shall pass that way-- + 'Till an image more beauteous this world can show, + Than her own which she sees in the mirror below. + Pore on, fair Creature! for ever pore, + Nor dream to be disenchanted more; + For vain is expectance, and wish is vain, + 'Till a new Narcissus can come again. + + + + + TO LOUISA M[ARTIN], WHOM I USED TO CALL "MONKEY" + + (1831) + + Louisa, serious grown and mild, + I knew you once a romping child, + Obstreperous much and very wild. + Then you would clamber up my knees, + And strive with every art to tease, + When every art of yours could please. + Those things would scarce be proper now. + But they are gone, I know not how, + And woman's written on your brow. + Time draws his finger o'er the scene; + But I cannot forget between + The Thing to me you once have been + Each sportive sally, wild escape,-- + The scoff, the banter, and the jape,-- + And antics of my gamesome Ape. + + + + + CHEAP GIFTS: A SONNET + + (1834) + +[In a leaf of a quarto edition of the 'Lives of the Saints, written in +Spanish by the learned and reverend father, Alfonso Villegas, Divine, of +the order of St. Dominick, set forth in English by John Heigham, Anno +1630,' bought at a Catholic book-shop in Duke Street, Lincoln's Inn +Fields, I found, carefully inserted, a painted flower, seemingly coeval +with the book itself; and did not, for some time, discover that it +opened in the middle, and was the cover to a very humble draught of a +St. Anne, with the Virgin and Child; doubtless the performance of some +poor but pious Catholic, whose meditations it assisted.] + + O lift with reverent hand that tarnish'd flower, + That 'shrines beneath her modest canopy + Memorials dear to Romish piety; + Dim specks, rude shapes, of Saints! in fervent hour + The work perchance of some meek devotee, + Who, poor in worldly treasures to set forth + The sanctities she worshipped to their worth, + In this imperfect tracery might see + Hints, that all Heaven did to her sense reveal. + Cheap gifts best fit poor givers. We are told + Of the lone mite, the cup of water cold, + That in their way approved the offerer's zeal. + True love shows costliest, where the means are scant; + And, in her reckoning, they _abound_, who _want_. + + + + + FREE THOUGHTS ON SEVERAL EMINENT COMPOSERS + + (1830) + + Some cry up Haydn, some Mozart, + Just as the whim bites; for my part, + I do not care a farthing candle + For either of them, or for Handel.-- + Cannot a man live free and easy, + Without admiring Pergolesi? + Or thro' the world with comfort go, + That never heard of Doctor Blow? + So help me heaven, I hardly have; + And yet I eat, and drink, and shave, + Like other people, if you watch it, + And know no more of stave or crotchet, + Than did the primitive Peruvians; + Or those old ante-queer-diluvians + That lived in the unwash'd world with Jubal, + Before that dirty blacksmith Tubal + By stroke on anvil, or by summ'at, + Found out, to his great surprise, the gamut. + I care no more for Cimarosa, + Than he did for Salvator Rosa, + Being no painter; and bad luck + Be mine, if I can bear that Gluck! + Old Tycho Brahe, and modern Herschel, + Had something in them; but who's Purcel? + The devil, with his foot so cloven, + For aught I care, may take Beethoven; + And, if the bargain does not suit, + I'll throw him Weber in to boot. + There's not the splitting of a splinter + To chuse 'twixt him last named, and Winter. + Of Doctor Pepusch old queen Dido + Knew just as much, God knows, as I do. + I would not go four miles to visit + Sebastian Bach (or Batch, which is it?); + No more I would for Bononcini. + As for Novello, or Rossini, + I shall not say a word to grieve 'em, + Because they're living; so I leave 'em. + + + + * * * * * + + + + MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, NOT COLLECTED BY LAMB + + + DRAMATIC FRAGMENT + + (1798) + + Fie upon't. + All men are false, I think. The date of love + Is out, expired, its stories all grown stale, + O'er past, forgotten, like an antique tale + Of Hero and Leander. + JOHN WOODVIL. + + All are not false. I knew a youth who died + For grief, because his Love proved so, + And married with another. + I saw him on the wedding-day, + For he was present in the church that day, + In festive bravery deck'd, + As one that came to grace the ceremony. + I mark'd him when the ring was given, + His countenance never changed; + And when the priest pronounced the marriage blessing, + He put a silent prayer up for the bride, + For so his moving lip interpreted. + He came invited to the marriage feast + With the bride's friends, + And was the merriest of them all that day: + But they, who knew him best, called it feign'd mirth; + And others said, + He wore a smile like death upon his face. + His presence dash'd all the beholders' mirth, + And he went away in tears. + + _What followed then?_ + + Oh! then + He did not, as neglected suitors use, + Affect a life of solitude in shades, + But lived, + In free discourse and sweet society, + Among his friends who knew his gentle nature best. + Yet ever when he smiled, + There was a mystery legible in his face, + That whoso saw him said he was a man + Not long for this world.---- + And true it was, for even then + The silent love was feeding at his heart + Of which he died: + Nor ever spake word of reproach, + Only, he wish'd in death that his remains + Might find a poor grave in some spot, not far + From his mistress' family vault, "being the place + Where one day Anna should herself be laid." + + + + + DICK STRYPE; OR, THE FORCE OF HABIT + + _A Tale--By Timothy Bramble_ + + (1801) + + Habits _are stubborn things:_ + And by the time a man is turn'd of _forty_, + His _ruling passion's_ grown so haughty + There is no clipping of its wings. + The amorous roots have taken earth, and fix + And never shall P--TT leave his juggling tricks, + Till H----Y quits his metre with his pride, + Till W----M learns to flatter regicide, + Till hypocrite-enthusiasts cease to vant + And _Mister_ W----E leaves off to cant. + The truth will best be shewn, + By a familiar instance of our own. + + Dick Strype + Was a dear friend and lover of the PIPE; + He us'd to say, _one pipe of Kirkman's best_ + Gave life a _zest_. + To him 'twas meat, and drink, and physic, + To see the friendly vapour + Curl round his midnight taper, + And the black fume + Clothe all the room, + In clouds as dark as _science metaphysic_. + So still he smok'd, and drank, and crack'd his joke; + And, had he _single_ tarried + He might have smok'd, and still grown old in smoke: + But RICHARD _married_. + His wife was one, who carried + The _cleanly virtues_ almost to a vice, + She was so _nice:_ + And thrice a week, above, below, + The house was scour'd from top to toe, + And all the floors were rubb'd so bright, + You dar'd not walk upright + For fear of sliding: + But that she took a pride in. + + Of all things else REBECCA STRYPE + Could least endure a _pipe_. + She rail'd upon the filthy herb tobacco, + Protested that the noisome vapour + Had spoilt the best chintz curtains and the paper + And cost her many a pound in stucco: + And then she quoted our _King James_, who saith + "Tobacco is the Devil's breath." + When wives _will_ govern, husbands _must_ obey; + For many a day + DICK mourn'd and miss'd his favourite tobacco, + And curs'd REBECCA. + + At length the day approach'd, his wife must die: + Imagine now the doleful cry + Of female friends, old aunts and cousins, + Who to the fun'ral came by dozens-- + The undertaker's men and mutes + Stood at the gate in sable suits + With doleful looks, + Just like so many melancholy _rooks_. + Now cakes and wine are handed round, + Folks sigh, and drink, and drink, and sigh, + For Grief makes people dry: + But DICK is _missing_, nowhere to be found + Above, below, about + They searched the house throughout, + Each hole and secret entry, + Quite from the garret to the pantry, + In every corner, cupboard, nook and shelf, + And all concluded he had _hang'd_ himself. + At last they found him--reader, guess you where-- + 'Twill make you stare-- + Perch'd on REBECCA'S _Coffin_, at his rest, + SMOKING A PIPE OF KIRKMAN'S BEST. + + + + + TWO EPITAPHS ON A YOUNG LADY WHO LIVED + NEGLECTED AND DIED OBSCURE + + (1801 _or_ 1802) + + I + + Under this cold marble stone + Lie the sad remains of one + Who, when alive, by few or none + Was lov'd, as lov'd she might have been, + If she prosp'rous days had seen, + Or had thriving been, I ween. + Only this cold funeral stone + Tells, she was beloved by one, + Who on the marble graves his moan. + + + II + + A Heart which felt unkindness, yet complained not, + A Tongue which spake the simple Truth, and feigned not: + A Soul as white as the pure marble skin + (The beauteous Mansion it was lodged in) + Which, unrespected, could itself respect, + On Earth was all the Portion of a Maid + Who in this common Sanctuary laid, + Sleeps unoffended by the World's neglect. + + + + + THE APE + + (1806) + + An Ape is but a trivial beast, + Men count it light and vain; + But I would let them have their thoughts, + To have my Ape again. + + To love a beast in any sort, + Is no great sign of grace; + But I have loved a flouting Ape's + 'Bove any lady's face. + + I have known the power of two fair eyes, + In smile, or else in glance, + And how (for I a lover was) + They make the spirits dance; + + But I would give two hundred smiles, + Of them that fairest be, + For one look of my staring Ape, + That used to stare on me. + + This beast, this Ape, it had a face-- + If face it might be styl'd-- + Sometimes it was a staring Ape, + Sometimes a beauteous child-- + + A Negro flat--a Pagod squat, + Cast in a Chinese mold-- + And then it was a Cherub's face, + Made of the beaten gold! + + But TIME, that's meddling, meddling still + And always altering things-- + And, what's already at the best, + To alteration brings-- + + That turns the sweetest buds to flowers, + And chops and changes toys-- + That breaks up dreams, and parts old friends, + And still commutes our joys-- + + Has changed away my Ape at last + And in its place convey'd, + Thinking therewith to cheat my sight, + A fresh and blooming maid! + + And fair to sight is she--and still + Each day doth sightlier grow, + Upon the ruins of the Ape, + My ancient play-fellow! + + The tale of Sphinx, and Theban jests, + I true in me perceive; + I suffer riddles; death from dark + Enigmas I receive: + + Whilst a hid being I pursue, + That lurks in a new shape, + My darling in herself I miss-- + And, in my Ape, THE APE. + + + + + +_In tabulam eximii pictoris_ B. HAYDONI, _in qua Solymaei, adveniente +Domino, palmas in via, prosternentes mira arte depinguntur_ + + (1820) + + Quid vult iste equitans? et quid oclit ista virorum + Palmifera ingens turba, et vox tremebunda Hosanna, + Hosanna Christo semper semperque canamus. + + _Palma_ fuit _Senior_ pictor celeberrimus olim; + Sed palmam cedat, modo si foret ille superstes, + _Palma, Haydone_, tibi: tu palmas omnibus aufers. + + Palma negata macrum, donataque reddit opimum. + Si simul incipiat cum fama increscere corpus, + Tu cito pinguesces, fies et, amicule, obesus. + + Affectat lauros pictores atque poetae + Sin laurum invideant (sed quis tibi?) laurigerentes, + Pro lauro palma viridante tempora cingas. + + + + + CARLAGNULUS. + + _Translation of the Latin Verses on Mr. Haydon's Picture_ + + What rider's that? and who those myriads bringing + Him on his way with palms, Hosannas singing? + _Hosanna to the Christ_, HEAVEN--EARTH--should still be ringing. + + In days of old, old Palma won renown: + But Palma's self must yield the painter's crown, + Haydon, to thee. Thy palm put every other down. + + If Flaccus' sentence with the truth agree, + That "palms awarded make men plump to be," + Friend Horace, Haydon soon in bulk shall match with thee. + + Painters with poets for the laurel vie: + But should the laureat band thy claims deny, + Wear thou thy own green palm, Haydon, triumphantly. + + + + + SONNET + + _To Miss Burney, on her Character of Blanch in "Country + Neighbours," a Tale_ + + (1820) + + Bright spirits have arisen to grace the BURNEY name, + And some in letters, some in tasteful arts, + In learning some have borne distinguished parts; + Or sought through science of sweet sounds their fame: + And foremost _she_, renowned for many a tale + Of faithful love perplexed, and of that good + Old man, who, as CAMILLA'S guardian, stood + In obstinate virtue clad like coat of mail. + Nor dost thou, SARAH, with unequal pace + Her steps pursue. The pure romantic vein + No gentler creature ever knew to feign + Than thy fine Blanch, young with an elder grace, + In all respects without rebuke or blame, + Answering the antique freshness of her name. + + + + + TO MY FRIEND THE INDICATOR + + (1820) + + Your easy Essays indicate a flow, + Dear Friend, of brain which we may elsewhere seek; + And to their pages I, and hundreds, owe, + That Wednesday is the sweetest of the week. + Such observation, wit, and sense, are shewn, + We think the days of Bickerstaff returned; + And that a portion of that oil you own, + In his undying midnight lamp which burned. + I would not lightly bruise old Priscian's head, + Or wrong the rules of grammar understood; + But, with the leave of Priscian be it said, + The _Indicative_ is your _Potential Mood._ + Wit, poet, prose-man, party-man, translator-- + H[unt], your best title yet is INDICATOR. + + + + + ON SEEING MRS. K---- B----, AGED UPWARDS + OF EIGHTY, NURSE AN INFANT + + A sight like this might find apology + In worlds unsway'd by our Chronology; + As Tully says, (the thought's in Plato)-- + "To die is but to go to Cato." + Of this world Time is of the essence,-- + A kind of universal presence; + And therefore poets should have made him + Not only old, as they've pourtray'd him, + But young, mature, and old--all three + In one--a sort of mystery-- + ('Tis hard to paint abstraction pure.) + Here young--there old--and now mature-- + Just as we see some old book-print, + Not to one scene its hero stint; + But, in the distance, take occasion + To draw him in some other station. + Here this prepost'rous union seems + A kind of meeting of extremes. + Ye may not live together. Mean ye + To pass that gulf that lies between ye + Of fourscore years, as we skip ages + In turning o'er historic pages? + Thou dost not to this age belong: + Thou art three generations wrong: + Old Time has miss'd thee: there he tarries! + Go on to thy contemporaries! + Give the child up. To see thee kiss him + Is a compleat anachronism. + Nay, keep him. It is good to see + Race link'd to race, in him and thee. + The child repelleth not at all + Her touch as uncongenial, + But loves the old Nurse like another-- + Its sister--or its natural mother; + And to the nurse a pride it gives + To think (though old) that still she lives + With one, who may not hope in vain + To live her years all o'er again! + + + + + TO EMMA, LEARNING LATIN, AND DESPONDING + + (_By Mary Lamb_. ? 1827) + + Droop not, dear Emma, dry those falling tears, + And call up smiles into thy pallid face, + Pallid and care-worn with thy arduous race: + In few brief months thou hast done the work of years. + To young beginnings natural are these fears. + A right good scholar shalt thou one day be, + And that no distant one; when even she, + Who now to thee a star far off appears, + That most rare Latinist, the Northern Maid-- + The language-loving Sarah[15] of the Lake-- + Shall hail thee Sister Linguist. This will make + Thy friends, who now afford thee careful aid, + A recompense most rich for all their pains, + Counting thy acquisitions their best gains. + + +[Footnote 15: Daughter of S.T. Coleridge, Esq.; an accomplished linguist +in the Greek and Latin tongues, and translatress of a History of the +Abipones. [Note in _Blackwood_.]] + + + + + LINES + +_Addressed to Lieut. R.W.H. Hardy, R.N., on the Perusal of his Volume of +Travels in the Interior of Mexico_ + + 'Tis pleasant, lolling in our elbow chair, + Secure at home, to read descriptions rare + Of venturous traveller in savage climes; + His hair-breadth 'scapes, toil, hunger--and sometimes + The merrier passages that, like a foil + To set off perils past, sweetened that toil, + And took the edge from danger; and I look + With such fear-mingled pleasure thro' thy book, + Adventurous Hardy! Thou a _diver_[16] art, + But of no common form; and for thy part + Of the adventure, hast brought home to the nation + _Pearls_ of discovery--_jewels_ of observation. + + ENFIELD, _January_, 1830. + + +[Footnote 16: Captain Hardy practised this art with considerable +success. [Note in _Athenaeum_.]] + + + + + LINES + + [_For a Monument Commemorating the Sudden Death by + Drowning of a Family, of Four Sons and Two Daughters_] + + (1831) + + Tears are for lighter griefs. Man weeps the doom, + That seals a single victim to the tomb. + But when Death riots--when, with whelming sway, + Destruction sweeps a family away; + When infancy and youth, a huddled mass, + All in an instant to oblivion pass, + And parents' hopes are crush'd; what lamentation + Can reach the depth of such a desolation? + Look upward, Feeble Ones! look up and trust, + That HE who lays their mortal frame in dust, + Still hath the immortal spirit in his keeping-- + In Jesus' sight they are not dead but sleeping. + + + + TO C. ADERS, ESQ. + +_On his Collection of Paintings by the old German Masters_ + + (1831) + + Friendliest of men, ADERS, I never come + Within the precincts of this sacred Room, + But I am struck with a religious fear, + Which says "Let no profane eye enter here." + With imagery from Heav'n the walls are clothed, + Making the things of Time seem vile and loathed. + Spare Saints, whose bodies seem sustain'd by Love, + With Martyrs old in meek procession move. + Here kneels a weeping Magdalen, less bright + To human sense for her blurr'd cheeks; in sight + Of eyes, new-touch'd by Heav'n, more winning fair + Than when her beauty was her only care. + A Hermit here strange mysteries doth unlock + In desart sole, his knees worn by the rock. + There Angel harps are sounding, while below + Palm-bearing Virgins in white order go. + Madonnas, varied with so chaste design, + While all are different, each seems genuine, + And hers the only Jesus: hard outline, + And rigid form, by DURER'S hand subdued + To matchless grace, and sacro-sanctitude; + DURER, who makes thy slighted Germany + Vie with the praise of paint-proud Italy. + + Whoever enter'st here, no more persume + To name a Parlour, or a Drawing Room; + But, bending lowly to each holy Story, + Make this thy Chapel, and thine Oratory. + + + + + HERCULES PACIFICATUS + + _A Tale from Suidas_ + + (1831) + + + In days of yore, ere early Greece + Had dream'd of patrols or police, + A crew of rake-hells _in terrorem_ + Spread wide, and carried all before 'em, + Rifled the poultry, and the women, + And held that all things were in common; + Till Jove's great Son the nuisance saw, + And did abate it by Club Law. + Yet not so clean he made his work, + But here and there a rogue would lurk + In caves and rocky fastnesses, + And shunn'd the strength of Hercules. + + Of these, more desperate than others, + A pair of ragamuffin brothers + In secret ambuscade join'd forces, + To carry on unlawful courses. + These Robbers' names, enough to shake us, + Where, Strymon one, the other Cacus. + And, more the neighbourhood to bother, + A wicked dam they had for mother, + Who knew their craft, but not forbid it, + And whatsoe'er they nymm'd, she hid it; + Received them with delight and wonder, + When they brought home some 'special plunder; + Call'd them her darlings, and her white boys, + Her ducks, her dildings--all was right boys-- + "Only," she said, "my lads, have care + Ye fall not into BLACK BACK'S snare; + For, if he catch, he'll maul your _corpus_, + And clapper-claw you to some purpose." + She was in truth a kind of witch, + Had grown by fortune-telling rich; + To spells and conjurings did tackle her, + And read folks' dooms by light oracular; + In which she saw, as clear as daylight, + What mischief on her bairns would a-light; + Therefore she had a special loathing + For all that own'd that sable clothing. + + Who can 'scape fate, when we're decreed to 't? + The graceless brethren paid small heed to 't. + A brace they were of sturdy fellows, + As we may say, that fear'd no colours, + And sneer'd with modern infidelity + At the old gipsy's fond credulity. + It proved all true tho', as she'd mumbled-- + For on a day the varlets stumbled + On a green spot--_sit linguae fides_-- + 'Tis Suidas tells it--where Alcides + Secure, as fearing no ill neighbour, + Lay fast asleep after a "Labour." + His trusty oaken plant was near-- + The prowling rogues look round, and leer, + And each his wicked wits 'gan rub, + How to bear off the famous Club; + Thinking that they _sans_ price or hire wou'd + Carry 't strait home, and chop for fire wood. + + 'Twould serve their old dame half a winter-- + You stare? but 'faith it was no splinter; + I would not for much money 'spy + Such beam in any neighbour's eye. + The villains, these exploits not dull in, + Incontinently fell a pulling. + They found it heavy--no slight matter-- + But tugg'd, and tugg'd it, till the clatter + 'Woke Hercules, who in a trice + Whipt up the knaves, and with a splice, + He kept on purpose--which before + Had served for giants many a score-- + To end of Club tied each rogue's head fast; + Strapping feet too, to keep them steadfast; + And pickaback them carries townwards, + Behind his brawny back head-downwards, + (So foolish calf--for rhyme I bless X-- + Comes _nolens volens_ out of Essex); + Thinking to brain them with his _dextra_, + Or string them up upon the next tree. + That Club--so equal fates condemn-- + They thought to catch, has now catch'd them. + + Now Hercules, we may suppose, + Was no great dandy in his clothes; + Was seldom, save on Sundays, seen + In calimanco, or nankeen; + On anniversaries would try on + A jerkin spick-span new from lion; + Went bare for the most part, to be cool, + And save the time of his Groom of the Stole; + Besides, the smoke he had been in + In Stygian gulf, had dyed his skin + To a natural sable--a right hell-fit-- + That seem'd to careless eyes black velvet. + + The brethren from their station scurvy, + Where they hung dangling topsy turvy, + With horror view the black costume, + And each persumes his hour is come! + Then softly to themselves 'gan mutter + The warning words their dame did utter; + Yet not so softly, but with ease + Were overheard by Hercules. + Quoth Cacus--"This is he she spoke of, + Which we so often made a joke of." + "I see," said the other, "thank our sin for't, + 'Tis BLACK BACK sure enough--we're in for 't." + + His Godship who, for all his brag + Of roughness, was at heart a wag, + At his new name was tickled finely, + And fell a laughing most divinely. + Quoth he, "I'll tell this jest in heaven-- + The musty rogues shall be forgiven." + So in a twinkling did uncase them, + On mother earth once more to place them-- + The varlets, glad to be unhamper'd, + Made each a leg--then fairly scamper'd. + + + + + THE PARTING SPEECH OF THE CELESTIAL MESSENGER TO THE POET + + _From the Latin of Palingenius, in the Zodiacus Vitae_ + + (1832) + + But now time warns (my mission at an end) + That to Jove's starry court I re-ascend; + From whose high battlements I take delight + To scan your earth, diminish'd to the sight, + Pendant, and round, and, as an apple, small; + Self-propt, self-balanced, and secure from fall + By her own weight: and how with liquid robe + Blue ocean girdles round her tiny globe, + While lesser Nereus, gliding like a snake, + Betwixt her hands his flexile course doth take, + Shrunk to a rivulet; and how the Po, + The mighty Ganges, Tanais, Ister, show + No bigger than a ditch which rains have swell'd. + Old Nilus' seven proud mouths I late beheld, + And mock'd the watery puddles. Hosts steel-clad + Ofttimes I thence behold; and how the sad + Peoples are punish'd by the fault of kings, + Which from the purple fiend Ambition springs. + Forgetful of mortality, they live + In hot strife for possessions fugitive, + At which the angels grieve. Sometimes I trace + Of fountains, rivers, seas, the change of place; + By ever shifting course, and Time's unrest, + The vale exalted, and the mount deprest + To an inglorious valley; plough-shares going + Where tall trees rear'd their tops; and fresh trees growing + In antique pastures. Cities lose their site. + Old things wax new. O what a rare delight + To him, who from this vantage can survey + At once stern Afric, and soft Asia, + With Europe's cultured plains; and in their turns + Their scatter'd tribes: those whom the hot Crab burns, + The tawny Ethiops; Orient Indians; + Getulians; ever-wandering Scythians; + Swift Tartar hordes; Cilicians rapacious, + And Parthians with back-bended bow pugnacious; + Sabeans incense-bringing, men of Thrace, + Italian, Spaniard, Gaul, and that rough race + Of Britons, rigid as their native colds; + With all the rest the circling sun beholds! + But clouds, and elemental mists, deny + These visions blest to any fleshly eye. + + + + + EXISTENCE, CONSIDERED IN ITSELF, NO BLESSING + + _From the Latin of Palingenius_ + + (1832) + +The Poet, after a seeming approval of suicide, from a consideration of +the cares and crimes of life, finally rejecting it, discusses the +negative importance of existence, contemplated in itself, without +reference to good or evil. + + Of these sad truths consideration had-- + Thou shalt not fear to quit this world so mad, + So wicked; but the tenet rather hold + Of wise Calanus, and his followers old, + Who with their own wills their own freedom wrought, + And by self-slaughter their dismissal sought + From this dark den of crime--this horrid lair + Of men, that savager than monsters are; + And scorning longer, in this tangled mesh + Of ills, to wait on perishable flesh, + Did with their desperate hands anticipate + The too, too slow relief of lingering fate. + And if religion did not stay thine hand, + And God, and Plato's wise behests, withstand, + I would in like case counsel thee to throw + This senseless burden off, of cares below. + Not wine, _as_ wine, men choose, but as it came + From such or such a vintage: 'tis the same + With life, which simply must be understood + A black negation, if it be not good. + But if 'tis wretched all--as men decline + And loath the sour lees of corrupted wine-- + 'Tis so to be contemn'd. Merely TO BE + Is not a boon to seek, nor ill to flee, + Seeing that every vilest little Thing + Has it in common, from a gnat's small wing, + A creeping worm, down to the moveless stone, + And crumbling bark from trees. Unless TO BE, + And TO BE BLEST, be one, I do not see + In bare existence, _as_ existence, aught + That's worthy to be loved, or to be sought. + + + + + TO SAMUEL ROGERS, ESQ. + + _On the New Edition of his "Pleasures of Memory"_ + + (1833) + + When thy gay book hath paid its proud devoirs, + Poetic friend, and fed with luxury + The eye of pampered aristocracy + In glittering drawing-rooms and gilt boudoirs, + O'erlaid with comments of pictorial art, + However rich and rare, yet nothing leaving + Of healthful action to the soul-conceiving + Of the true reader--yet a nobler part + Awaits thy work, already classic styled. + Cheap-clad, accessible, in homeliest show + The modest beauty through the land shall go + From year to year, and render life more mild; + Refinement to the poor man's hearth shall give, + And in the moral heart of England live. + + + + + TO CLARA N[OVELLO] + + (1834) + + The Gods have made me most unmusical, + With feelings that respond not to the call + Of stringed harp, or voice--obtuse and mute + To hautboy, sackbut, dulcimer, and flute; + King David's lyre, that made the madness flee + From Saul, had been but a jew's-harp to me: + Theorbos, violins, French horns, guitars, + Leave in my wounded ears inflicted scars; + I hate those trills, and shakes, and sounds that float + Upon the captive air; I know no note, + Nor ever shall, whatever folks may say, + Of the strange mysteries of _Sol_ and _Fa_; + I sit at oratorios like a fish, + Incapable of sound, and only wish + The thing was over. Yet do I admire, + O tuneful daughter of a tuneful sire, + Thy painful labours in a science, which + To your deserts I pray may make you rich + As much as you are loved, and add a grace + To the most musical Novello race. + Women lead men by the nose, some cynics say; + You draw them by the ear--a delicater way. + + + + + THE SISTERS + + On Emma's honest brow we read display'd + The constant virtues of the Nut Brown Maid; + Mellifluous sounds on Clara's tongue we hear, + Notes that once lured a Seraph from his sphere; + Cecilia's eyes such winning beauties crown + As without song might draw _her_ Angel down. + + + + + LOVE WILL COME + + Tune--_The Tartar Drum_ + + I + + Guard thy feelings, pretty Vestal, + From the smooth Intruder free; + Cage thy heart in bars of chrystal, + Lock it with a golden key: + Thro' the bars demurely stealing, + Noiseless footstep, accent dumb, + His approach to none revealing-- + Watch, or watch not, LOVE WILL COME. + + His approach to none revealing-- + Watch, or watch not, Love will come--Love, + Watch, or watch not, Love will come. + + + II + + Scornful Beauty may deny him-- + He hath spells to charm disdain; + Homely Features may defy him-- + Both at length must wear the chain. + Haughty Youth in Courts of Princes-- + Hermit poor with age o'er come-- + His soft plea at last convinces; + Sooner, later, LOVE WILL COME. + + His soft plea at length convinces; + Sooner, later, Love will come--Love, + Sooner, later, Love will come. + + + + + TO MARGARET W---- + + Margaret, in happy hour + Christen'd from that humble flower + Which we a daisy[17] call! + May thy pretty name-sake be + In all things a type of thee, + And image thee in all. + + +[Footnote 17: Marguerite, in French, signifies a daisy. [Note in +_Athenaeum_.]] + + + + To Margaret W---- + + + Like _it_ you show a modest face, + An unpretending native grace;-- + The tulip, and the pink, + The china and the damask rose, + And every flaunting flower that blows, + In the comparing shrink. + + Of lowly fields you think no scorn; + Yet gayest gardens would adorn, + And grace, wherever set. + Home-seated in your lonely bower, + Or wedded--a transplanted flower-- + I bless you, Margaret! + +EDMONTON, 8_th October_, 1834. + + + + * * * * * + + + + ADDITIONAL ALBUM VERSES AND ACROSTICS + + + WHAT IS AN ALBUM? + + 'Tis a Book kept by modern Young Ladies for show, + Of which their plain grandmothers nothing did know. + 'Tis a medley of scraps, fine verse, and fine prose, + And some things not very like either, God knows. + The soft First Effusions of Beaux and of Belles, + Of future LORD BYRONS, and sweet L.E.L.'s; + Where wise folk and simple both equally shine, + And you write your nonsense, that I may write mine. + Stick in a fine landscape, to make a display, + A flower-piece, a foreground, all tinted so gay, + As NATURE herself (could she see them) would strike + With envy, to think that she ne'er did the like: + And since some LAVATERS, with head-pieces comical, + Have pronounc'd people's hands to be physiognomical, + Be sure that you stuff it with AUTOGRAPHS plenty, + All framed to a pattern, so stiff, and so dainty. + They no more resemble folks' every-day writing, + Than lines penn'd with pains do extemp'rel enditing; + Or the natural countenance (pardon the stricture) + The faces we make when we sit for our picture. + + Thus you have, dearest EMMA, an ALBUM complete-- + Which may _you_ live to finish, and _I_ live to see it; + And since you began it for innocent ends, + May it swell, and grow bigger each day with new friends, + Who shall set down kind names, as a token and test, + As I my poor _autograph_ sign with the rest. + + + + + THE FIRST LEAF OF SPRING + + _Written on the First Leaf of a Lady's Album_ + + Thou fragile, filmy, gossamery thing, + First leaf of spring! + At every lightest breath that quakest, + And with a zephyr shakest; + Scarce stout enough to hold thy slender form together, + In calmest halcyon weather; + Next sister to the web that spiders weave, + Poor flutterers to deceive + Into their treacherous silken bed: + O! how art thou sustained, how nourished! + All trivial as thou art, + Without dispute, + Thou play'st a mighty part; + And art the herald to a throng + Of buds, blooms, fruit, + That shall thy cracking branches sway, + While birds on every spray + Shall pay the copious fruitage with a sylvan song. + So 'tis with thee, whoe'er on thee shall look, + First leaf of this beginning modest book. + Slender thou art, God knowest, + And little grace bestowest, + But in thy train shall follow after, + Wit, wisdom, seriousness, in hand with laughter; + Provoking jests, restraining soberness, + In their appropriate dress; + And I shall joy to be outdone + By those who brighter trophies won; + Without a grief, + That I thy slender promise have begun, + First leaf. + +1832. + + + + + + TO MRS. F[IELD] + + _On Her Return from Gibraltar_ + + Jane, you are welcome from the barren Rock, + And Calpe's sounding shores. Oh do not mock, + Now you have rais'd, our greetings; nor again + Ever revisit that dry nook of Spain. + + Friends have you here, and friendships to command, + In merry England. Love this hearty land. + Ease, comfort, competence--of these possess'd, + Let prodigal adventurers seek the rest: + Dear England is _as you_,--a _Field_ the Lord hath blest. + + + + + TO M[ARY] L[AETITIA] F[IELD] + + (_Expecting to See Her Again after a Long Interval_) + + How many wasting, many wasted years, + Have run their round, since I beheld your face! + In Memory's dim eye it yet appears + Crowned, as it _then_ seemed, with a chearful grace. + Young prattling Maiden, on the Thames' fair side, + Enlivening pleasant Sunbury with your smiles, + Time may have changed you: coy reserve, or pride, + To sullen looks reduced those mirthful wiles. + I will not 'bate one smile on that clear brow, + But take of Time a rigorous account, + When next I see you; and Maria now + Must _be_ the Thing she _was_. To what amount + These verses else?--all hollow and untrue-- + This was not writ, these lines not meant, for YOU. + + + + + TO ESTHER FIELD + + Esther, holy name and sweet, + Smoothly runs on even feet, + To the mild Acrostic bending; + Hebrew recollections blending. + Ever keep that Queen in view-- + Royal namesake--bold, and true! + + Firm she stood in evil times, + In the face of Haman's crimes.-- + Ev'n as She, do Thou possess + Loftiest virtue in the dress, + Dear F----, of native loveliness. + + + + + [TO MRS. WILLIAMS] + + (1830) + + Go little Poem, and present + Respectful terms of compliment; + A gentle lady bids thee speak! + Courteous is _she_, tho' thou be weak-- + Evoke from Heaven as thick as manna + + Joy after joy on Grace Joanna: + On Fornham's Glebe and Pasture land + A blessing pray. Long, long may stand, + Not touched by Time, the Rectory blithe; + No grudging churl dispute his Tithe; + At Easter be the offerings due + + With cheerful spirit paid; each pew + In decent order filled; no noise + Loud intervene to drown the voice, + Learning, or wisdom of the Teacher; + Impressive be the Sacred Preacher, + And strict his notes on holy page; + May young and old from age to age + Salute, and still point out, 'The good man's Parsonage!' + + + + + TO THE BOOK + + Little Casket! Storehouse rare + Of rich conceits, to please the Fair! + Happiest he of mortal men,-- + (I crown him monarch of the pen,)-- + To whom Sophia deigns to give + The flattering prerogative + To inscribe his name in chief, + On thy first and maiden Leaf. + When thy pages shall be full + Of what brighter wits can cull + Of the Tender or Romantic, + Creeping Prose or Verse Gigantic,-- + Which thy spaces so shall cram + That the Bee-like Epigram + (Which a two-fold tribute brings, + Honey gives at once, and stings,) + Hath not room left wherewithal + To infix its tiny scrawl; + Haply some more youthful swain, + Striving to describe his pain, + And the Damsel's ear to seize + With more expressive lays than these, + When he finds his own excluded + And these counterfeits intruded; + While, loitering in the Muse's bower, + He overstayed the eleventh hour, + Till the tables filled--shall fret, + Die, or sicken with regret + Or into a shadow pine: + While this triumphant verse of mine, + Like to some favoured stranger-guest, + Bidden to a good man's Feast + Shall sit--by merit less than fate-- + In the upper Seat in State. + + + + + TO S[OPHIA] F[REND] + + _Acrostic_ + + Solemn Legends we are told + Of bright female Names of old, + Phyllus fair, Laodameia, + Helen, but methinks Sophia + Is a name of better meaning + And a sort of Christian leaning. + + For it _Wisdom_ means, which passes + Rubies, pearls, or golden masses. + Ever try that Name to merit; + Never quit what you inherit, + Duly from your Father's spirit. + + + + + TO R[OTHA] Q[UILLINAN] + + _Acrostic_ + + ROTHA, how in numbers light, + Ought I to express thee? + Take my meaning in its flight-- + Haste imports not always slight-- + And believe, I bless thee. + + + + + TO S[ARAH] L[OCKE] + + _Acrostic_ + + Shall I praise a face unseen, + And extol a fancied mien, + Rave on visionary charm, + And from shadows take alarm? + Hatred hates _without a cause;_ + + Love may love, with more applause, + Or, without a reason given, + Charmed be with unknown Heaven. + Keep the secrets, though, unmocked, + Ever in your bosom _Locke'd_. + + + + + TO M[ARY] L[OCKE] + + _Acrostic_ + + Must I write with pen unwilling + And describe those graces killing + Rightly, which I never saw? + Yes--it is the Album's law. + + Let me then Invention strain + On your excelling charms to feign-- + Cold is Fiction? I _believe_ it + Kindly, as I did receive it, + Even as J.F.'s tongue did weave it. + + + + + AN ACROSTIC AGAINST ACROSTICS + + [_To Edward Hogg_] + + Envy not the wretched Poet + Doomed to pen these teasing strains, + Wit so cramped, ah, who can show it, + Are the trifles worth the pains. + Rhyme compared with this were easy, + Double Rhymes may not displease ye. + + Homer, Horace sly and caustic, + Owed no fame to vile acrostic. + G's, I am sure, the Readers choked with, + Good men's names must not be joked with. + + + + + ON BEING ASKED TO WRITE IN MISS WESTWOOD'S ALBUM + + My feeble Muse, that fain her best wou'd + Write, at command of Frances Westwood, + But feels her wits not in their best mood, + Fell lately on some idle fancies, + As she's much given to romances, + About this self-same style as Frances; + Which seems to be a name in common + Attributed to man or woman. + She thence contrived this flattering moral, + With which she hopes no soul will quarrel, + That she, whom this twin title decks, + Combines what's good in either sex; + Unites--how very rare the case is!-- + Masculine sense to female graces; + And, quitting not her proper rank, + Is both in one--Fanny, and frank. + + 12_th October_, 1827. + + + + + [IN MISS WESTWOOD'S ALBUM] + + _By Mary Lamb_ + + Small beauty to your Book my lines can lend, + Yet you shall have the best I can, sweet friend, + To serve for poor memorials 'gainst the day + That calls you from your Parent-roof away, + From the mild offices of Filial life + To the more serious duties of a Wife. + The World is opening to you--may you rest + With all your prospects realised, and blest!-- + I, with the Elder Couple left behind, + On evenings chatting, oft shall call to mind + Those spirits of Youth, which Age so ill can miss, + And, wanting you, half grudge your S--n's bliss; + Till mirthful malice tempts us to exclaim + 'Gainst the dear Thief, who robb'd you of your _Name_. + + ENFIELD CHASE, 17_th May_, 1828. + + + + + UN SOLITAIRE + + _A Drawing by E.I._ [_Emma Isola_] + + [_To Sarah Lachlan_] + + Solitary man, around thee + Are the mountains: Peace hath found thee + Resting by that rippling tide; + All vain toys of life expelling, + Hermit-like, thou find'st a dwelling, + Lost 'mid foliage stretching wide. + Angels here alone may find thee, + Contemplation fast may bind thee. + Holier spot, or more fantastic, + Livelier scene of deep seclusion, + Armed by Nature 'gainst intrusion, + Never graced a seat Monastic. + + + + + TO S[ARAH] T[HOMAS] + + _An Acrostic_ + + Sarah, blest wife of "Terah's faithful Son," + After a race of years with goodness run, + Regardless heard the promised miracle, + And mocked the blessing as impossible. + How weak is Faith!--even He, the most sincere, + + Thomas, to his meek Master not least dear, + Holy, and blameless, yet refused assent + Of full belief, until he could content + Mere human senses. In your piety, + As you are _one_ in _name_, industriously + So copy them: but _shun_ their weak part--_Incredulity_. + + + + + TO MRS. SARAH ROBINSON + + Soul-breathing verse, thy gentlest guise put on + And greet the honor'd name of Robinson. + Rome in her throng'd and stranger-crowded streets, + And palaces, where pilgrim _pilgrim_ meets, + Holds not, respected Sarah, one that can + Revered make the name of Englishman, + Or loved, more than thy Kinsman, dear to me + By many a friendly act. His heart I see + In thee with answering courtesy renew'd. + Nor shall to thee my debt of gratitude + Soon fade, that didst receive with open hand + One that was come a stranger to thy land-- + Now call[s] thee Friend. Her thanks, and mine, command. + + Enfield, 14_th March_, 1831. + + + + + TO SARAH [APSEY] + + _Acrostic_ + + Sarah,--your other name I know not, + And fine encomiums I bestow not, + Regard me as an utter stranger, + A hair-brain'd, hasty, album-ranger, + Heaven shield you, Girl, from every danger! + + + + + TO JOSEPH VALE ASBURY + + _Acrostic_ + + Judgements are about us thoroughly; + O'er all Enfield hangs the Cholera, + Savage monster, none like him + Ever rack'd a human limb. + Pest, nor plague, nor fever yellow, + Has made patients more to bellow. + + Vain his threatnings! Asbury comes, + And defiance beats by drums; + Label, bottle, box, pill, potion, + Each enlists in the commotion. + + And with Vials, like to those + Seen in Patmos[18], charged with woes, + Breathing Wrath, he falls pell-mell + Upon the Foe, and pays him well. + Revenge!--he has made the monster sick + Yea, Cholera vanish, choleric. + + +[Footnote 18: _Vide_ Revelations.] + + + + TO D[OROTHY] A[SBURY] + + _Acrostic_ + + Divided praise, Lady, to you we owe, + Of all the health your husband doth bestow, + Respected wife of skilful Asbury! + Oracular foresight named thee Dorothy; + Tis a Greek word, and signifies God's Gift; + (How Learning helps poor Poets at a shift!)-- + You are that gift. When, tired with human ails, + + And tedious listening to the sick man's tales, + Sore spent, and fretted, he comes home at eve, + By mild medicaments you his toils deceive. + Under your soothing treatment he revives; + (Restorative is the smile of gentle wives): + You lengthen _his_, who lengthens _all our lives._ + + + + + TO LOUISA MORGAN + + How blest is he who in his _age_, exempt + From fortune's frowns, and from the troublous strife + Of storms that harass still the private life, + "Below ambition, and above contempt," + Hath gain'd a quiet harbour, where he may + Look back on shipwrecks past, without a sigh + For busier scenes, and hope's gay dreams gone by! + And such a nook of blessedness, they say, + Your Sire at length has found; while you, best Child, + Content in _his_ contentment, acquiesce + In patient toils; and in a station less, + Than you might image, when your prospects smiled. + In your meek virtues there is found a calm, + That on his life's soft evening sheds a balm. + + + + + TO SARAH JAMES OF BEGUILDY + + _Acrostic_ + + Sleep hath treasures worth retracing: + Are you not in slumbers pacing + Round your native spot at times, + And seem to hear Beguildy's chimes? + Hold the airy vision fast; + Joy is but a dream at last: + And what was so fugitive, + Memory only makes to live. + Even from troubles past we borrow + Some thoughts that may lighten sorrow, + + Onwards as we pace through life, + Fainting under care or strife, + + By the magic of a thought + Every object back is brought + Gayer than it was when real, + Under influence ideal. + In remembrance as a glass, + Let your happy childhood pass; + Dreaming so in fancy's spells, + You still shall hear those old church bells. + + + + + TO EMMA BUTTON + + _Acrostic_ + + EMMA, eldest of your name, + Meekly trusting in her God + Midst the red-hot plough-shares trod, + And unscorch'd preserved her fame. + By that test if _you_ were tried, + Ugly flames might be defied; + Though devouring fire's a glutton, + Through the trial you might go + "On the light fantastic toe," + Nor for plough-shares care a BUTTON. + + + + + WRITTEN UPON THE COVER OF A BLOTTING BOOK + + Blank tho' I be, within you'll find + Relics of th' enraptured mind: + Where truth and fable, mirth and wit, + Are safely here deposited. + The placid, furious, envious, wise, + Impart to me their secresies; + Here hidden thoughts in blotted line + Nor sybil can the sense divine; + Lethe and I twin sisters be-- + Then, stranger, open me and see. + + + + + * * * * * + + + + POLITICAL AND OTHER EPIGRAMS + + + + TO SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH + + (1801) + + Though thou'rt like Judas, an apostate black, + In the resemblance one thing thou dost lack: + When he had gotten his ill-purchased pelf, + He went away, and wisely hanged himself. + This thou may'st do at last; yet much I doubt, + If thou hast any _bowels_ to gush out! + + + + * * * * * + + + + TWELFTH NIGHT + + _Characters That Might Have Been Drawn on the Above Evening_ + + (1802) + + MR. A[DDINGTON] + + I put my night-cap on my head, + And went, as usual, to my bed; + And, most surprising to relate, + I woke--a Minister of State! + + + MESSRS. C[ANNIN]G AND F[RER]E + + At Eton School brought up with dull boys, + We shone like _men_ among the _school-boys_; + But since we in the world have been, + We are but _school-boys_ among _men_. + + + COUNT RUMFORD + + I deal in aliments fictitious + And teaze the poor with soups nutritious. + Of bones and flesh I make dilution + And belong to the National Institution. + + + + + ON A LATE EMPIRIC OF "BALMY" MEMORY + + (1802. Not printed till 1820) + + His namesake, born of Jewish breeder, + Knew "from the Hyssop to the Cedar;" + But he, unlike the Jewish leader, + Scarce knew the Hyssop from the Cedar. + + + + * * * * * + + + + EPIGRAMS + + (1812) + + + I + + Princeps his rent from tinneries draws, + His best friends are refiners;-- + What wonder then his other friends + He leaves for under-_miners._ + + + II + + Ye Politicians, tell me, pray, + Why thus with woe and care rent? + This is the worst that you can say, + Some wind has blown the _wig_ away, + And left the _hair apparent._ + + + + * * * * * + + + + THE TRIUMPH OF THE WHALE + + (1812) + + + Io! Paean! Io! sing + To the funny people's King. + Not a mightier whale than this + In the vast Atlantic is; + Not a fatter fish than he + Flounders round the polar sea. + See his blubbers--at his gills + What a world of drink he swills, + From his trunk, as from a spout, + Which next moment he pours out. + Such his person--next declare, + Muse, who his companions are.-- + Every fish of generous kind + Scuds aside, or slinks behind; + But about his presence keep + All the Monsters of the Deep; + Mermaids, with their tails and singing + His delighted fancy stinging; + Crooked Dolphins, they surround him, + Dog-like Seals, they fawn around him. + Following hard, the progress mark + Of the intolerant salt sea shark. + For his solace and relief, + Flat fish are his courtiers chief. + Last and lowest in his train, + Ink-fish (libellers of the main) + Their black liquor shed in spite: + (Such on earth the things _that write_.) + In his stomach, some do say, + No good thing can ever stay. + Had it been the fortune of it + To have swallowed that old Prophet, + Three days there he'd not have dwell'd, + But in one have been expell'd. + Hapless mariners are they, + Who beguil'd (as seamen say), + Deeming him some rock or island, + Footing sure, safe spot, and dry land, + Anchor in his scaly rind; + Soon the difference they find; + Sudden plumb, he sinks beneath them; + Does to ruthless seas bequeath them. + + Name or title what has he? + Is he Regent of the Sea? + From this difficulty free us, + Buffon, Banks or sage Linnaeus. + With his wondrous attributes + Say what appellation suits. + By his bulk, and by his size, + By his oily qualities, + This (or else my eyesight fails), + This should be the PRINCE OF WHALES. + + + + + SONNET + + _St. Crispin to Mr. Gifford_ (1819) + + All unadvised, and in an evil hour, + Lured by aspiring thoughts, my son, you daft + The lowly labours of the Gentle Craft + For learned toils, which blood and spirits sour. + All things, dear pledge, are not in all men's power; + The wiser sort of shrub affects the ground; + And sweet content of mind is oftener found + In cobbler's parlour, than in critic's bower. + The sorest work is what doth cross the grain; + And better to this hour you had been plying + The obsequious awl with well-waxed finger flying, + Than ceaseless thus to till a thankless vein; + Still teazing Muses, which are still denying; + Making a stretching-leather of your brain. + + + + + THE GODLIKE + + (1820) + + In one great man we view with odds + A parallel to all the gods. + Great Jove, that shook heaven with his brow, + Could never match his princely bow. + In him a Bacchus we behold: + Like Bacchus, too, he ne'er grows old. + Like Phoebus next, a flaming lover; + And then he's Mercury--all over. + A Vulcan, for domestic strife, + He lamely lives without his wife. + And sure--unless our wits be dull-- + Minerva-like, when moon was full, + He issued from paternal skull. + + + + + THE THREE GRAVES + + (1820) + + Close by the ever-burning brimstone beds + Where Bedloe, Oates and Judas, hide their heads, + I saw great Satan like a Sexton stand + With his intolerable spade in hand, + Digging three graves. Of coffin shape they were, + For those who, coffinless, must enter there + With unblest rites. The shrouds were of that cloth + Which Clotho weaveth in her blackest wrath: + The dismal tinct oppress'd the eye, that dwelt + Upon it long, like darkness to be felt. + The pillows to these baleful beds were toads, + Large, living, livid, melancholy loads, + Whose softness shock'd. Worms of all monstrous size + Crawl'd round; and one, upcoil'd, which never dies. + A doleful bell, inculcating despair, + Was always ringing in the heavy air. + And all about the detestable pit + Strange headless ghosts, and quarter'd forms, did flit; + Rivers of blood, from living traitors spilt, + By treachery stung from poverty to guilt. + I ask'd the fiend, for whom these rites were meant? + "These graves," quoth he, "when life's brief oil is spent, + When the dark night comes, and they're sinking bedwards, + --I mean for Castles, Oliver, and Edwards." + + + + + SONNET TO MATHEW WOOD, ESQ. + + _Alderman and M.P._ + + (1820) + + Hold on thy course uncheck'd, heroic WOOD! + Regardless what the player's son may prate, + Saint Stephens' fool, the Zany of Debate-- + Who nothing generous ever understood. + London's twice Praetor! scorn the fool-born jest-- + The stage's scum, and refuse of the players-- + Stale topics against Magistrates and Mayors-- + City and Country both thy worth attest. + Bid him leave off his shallow Eton wit, + More fit to sooth the superficial ear + Of drunken PITT, and that pickpocket Peer, + When at their sottish orgies they did sit, + Hatching mad counsels from inflated vein, + Till England, and the nations, reeled with pain. + + + + + ON A PROJECTED JOURNEY + + (1820) + + To gratify his people's wish + See G[eorg]e at length prepare-- + He's setting out for Hanover-- + We've often wished him there. + + + SONG FOR THE C[ORONATIO]N + + _Tune, "Roy's Wife of Aldivalloch"_ + + (1820) + + _Roi's_ wife of Brunswick Oels! + _Roi's_ wife of Brunswick Oels! + Wot you how she came to him, + While he supinely dreamt of no ills? + Vow! but she is a canty Queen, + And well can she scare each royal orgie.-- + To us she ever must be dear, + Though she's for ever cut by Georgie.-- + _Roi's_ wife, etc. _Da capo._ + + + + + THE UNBELOVED + + (1820) + + Not a woman, child, or man in + All this isle, that loves thee, C[anni]ng. + Fools, whom gentle manners sway, + May incline to C[astlerea]gh, + Princes, who old ladies love, + Of the Doctor may approve, + Chancery lads do not abhor + Their chatty, childish Chancellor. + In Liverpool some virtues strike, + And little Van's beneath dislike. + Tho, if I were to be dead for't, + I could never love thee, H[eadfor]t: + (Every man must have his way) + Other grey adulterers may. + But thou unamiable object,-- + Dear to neither prince, nor subject;-- + Veriest, meanest scab, for pelf + Fastning on the skin of Guelph, + Thou, thou must, surely, _loathe thyself._ + + + + + ON THE ARRIVAL IN ENGLAND OF LORD BYRON'S REMAINS + + (1824) + + Manners, they say, by climate alter not: + Who goes a drunkard will return a sot. + So lordly Juan, damn'd to lasting fame, + Went out a pickle, and came back the same. + + + + + LINES + + _Suggested by a Sight of Waltham Cross_ + + (1827) + + Time-mouldering CROSSES, gemm'd with imagery + Of costliest work, and Gothic tracery, + Point still the spots, to hallow'd wedlock dear, + Where rested on its solemn way the bier, + That bore the bones of Edward's Elinor + To mix with Royal dust at Westminster.-- + Far different rites did thee to dust consign, + Duke Brunswick's daughter, Princely Caroline. + A hurrying funeral, and a banish'd grave, + High-minded Wife! were all that thou could'st have. + Grieve not, great Ghost, nor count in death thy losses; + Thou in thy life-time had'st thy share of _crosses._ + + + + + FOR THE "TABLE BOOK" + + (1827) + + Laura, too partial to her friends' enditing, + Requires from each a pattern of their _writing._ + A weightier trifle Laura might command; + For who to Laura would refuse his--_hand?_ + + + + + THE ROYAL WONDERS + + (1830) + + Two miracles at once! Compell'd by fate, + His tarnish'd throne the Bourbon doth vacate; + While English William,--a diviner thing,-- + Of his free pleasure hath put off _the king._ + The forms of distant old respect lets pass, + And melts his crown into the common mass. + Health to fair France, and fine regeneration! + But England's is the nobler abdication. + + + + + "BREVIS ESSE LABORO" + + "ONE DIP" + + (1830) + + Much speech obscures the sense; the soul of wit + Is brevity: our tale one proof of it. + Poor Balbulus, a stammering invalid, + Consults the doctors, and by them is bid + To try sea-bathing, with this special heed, + "One Dip was all his malady did need; + More than that one his certain death would be." + Now who so nervous or so shook as he, + For Balbulus had never dipped before? + Two well-known dippers at the Broadstairs' shore, + Stout, sturdy churls, have stript him to the skin, + And naked, cold, and shivering plunge him in. + Soon he emerges, with scarce breath to say, + "I'm to be dip--dip--dipt--." "We know it," they + Reply; expostulation seemed in vain, + And over ears they souse him in again, + And up again he rises, his words trip, + And falter as before. Still "dip--dip--dip"-- + And in again he goes with furious plunge, + Once more to rise; when, with a desperate lunge, + At length he bolts these words out, "Only once!" + The villains crave his pardon. Had the dunce + But aimed at these bare words the rogues had found him, + But striving to be prolix, they half drowned him. + + + + + SUUM CUIQUE + + (1830) + + Adsciscit sibi divitias et opes alienas + Fur, rapiens, spolians quod mihi, quodque tibi + Proprium erat, temnens haec verba, Meumque Tuumque; + Omne Suum est. Tandem cuique suum tribuit. + Dat laqueo collum: vestes, vah! carnifici dat: + Sese Diabolo; sic bene, Cuique Suum. + + + + + [ON THE _LITERARY GAZETTE_] + + (1830) + + In merry England I computed once + The number of the dunces--dunce for dunce; + There were _four hundred_, if I don't forget, + _All readers of the L------y G-----e;_ + But if the author to himself keep true, + In some short months they'll be reduced to _two_. + + + + + ON THE FAST-DAY + + To name a Day for general prayer and fast + Is surely worse than of no sort of use; + For you may see with grief, from first to last + On _fast_-days people of all ranks are _loose_. + + + + + NONSENSE VERSES + + Lazy-bones, lazy-bones, wake up, and peep! + The cat's in the cupboard, your mother's asleep. + There you sit snoring, forgetting her ills; + Who is to give her her Bolus and Pills? + Twenty fine Angels must come into town, + All for to help you to make your new gown: + Dainty AERIAL Spinsters, and Singers; + Aren't you ashamed to employ such white fingers? + Delicate hands, unaccustom'd to reels, + To set 'em a working a poor body's wheels? + Why they came down is to me all a riddle, + And left HALLELUJAH broke off in the middle: + Jove's Court, and the Presence angelical, cut-- + To eke out the work of a lazy young slut. + Angel-duck, Angel-duck, winged, and silly, + Pouring a watering-pot over a lily, + Gardener gratuitous, careless of pelf, + Leave her to water her lily herself, + Or to neglect it to death if she chuse it: + Remember the loss is her own, if she lose it. + + + ON WAWD + + _(Of the East India House)_ + + What Wawd knows, God knows; + But God knows _what_ Wawd knows. + + + + * * * * * + + + + SIX EPITAPHS ON ENSIGN PEACOCK + + (1799) + + + MARMOR LOQUITUR + + He lies a Volunteer so fine, + Who died of a decline, + As you or I, may do one day; + Reader, think of this, I pray; + And I humbly hope you'll drop a tear + For my poor Royal Volunteer. + He was as brave as brave could be, + Nobody was so brave as he; + He would have died in Honor's bed, + Only he died at home instead. + Well may the Royal Regiment swear, + They never had such a Volunteer. + But whatsoever they may say, + Death is a man that will have his way: + Tho' he was but an ensign in this world of pain; + In the next we hope he'll be a captain. + And without meaning to make any reflection on his mentals, + He begg'd to be buried in regimentals. + + + ON TIMOTHY WAGSTAFF + + Here lies the body of Timothy Wagstaff, + Who was once as tall and as straight as a flagstaff; + But now that he's gone to another world, + His staff is broken and his flag is furled. + + + ON CAPTAIN STURMS + + Here lieth the body of Captain Sturms, + Once "food for powder," now for worms, + At the battle of Meida he lost his legs, + And stumped about on wooden pegs. + Naught cares he now for such worthless things, + He was borne to Heaven on angels' wings. + + + ON MARGARET DIX + + _(Born on February 29)_ + + _Ci git_ the remains of Margaret Dix, + Who was young in old age I ween, + Though Envy with Malice cried "seventy-six," + The Graces declared her "nineteen." + + + ON ONESIMUS DRAKE + + To the memory of Dr. Onesimus Drake, + Who forced good people his drugs to take-- + No wonder his patients were oft on the rack + For this "duck of a man" was a terrible quack. + + + ON MATTHEW DAY + + Beneath this slab lies Matthew Day, + If his body had not been snatched away + To be by Science dissected; + Should it have gone, one thing is clear: + His soul the last trump is sure to hear, + And thus be resurrected. + + + + * * * * * + + + + TIME AND ETERNITY + + Where the soul drinks of misery's power, + Each moment seems a lengthened hour; + But when bright joy illumes the mind, + Time passes as the fleetest wind.-- + How to a wicked soul must be + Whole ages of eternity? + + + + + FROM THE LATIN + + As swallows shrink before the wintry blast, + And gladly seek a more congenial soil, + So flatterers halt when fortune's lure is past, + And basely court some richer lordling's smile. + + + + + SATAN IN SEARCH OF A WIFE + + _With the Whole Process of his Courtship + and Marriage, and who Danced at the Wedding + + By an Eye Witness_ + + (1831) + + DEDICATION + + To delicate bosoms, that have sighed over the _Loves of the Angels_, + this Poem is with tenderest regard consecrated. It can be no offence + to you, dear Ladies, that the author has endeavoured to extend the + dominion of your darling passion; to shew Love triumphant in places, + to which his advent has been never yet suspected. If one Cecilia + drew an Angel down, another may have leave to attract a Spirit + upwards; which, I am sure, was the most desperate adventure of the + two. Wonder not at the inferior condition of the agent; for, if King + Cophetua wooed a Beggar Maid, a greater king need not scorn to + confess the attractions of a fair Tailor's daughter. The more + disproportionate the rank, the more signal is the glory of your sex. + Like that of Hecate, a triple empire is now confessed your own. Nor + Heaven, nor Earth, nor deepest tracts of Erebus, as Milton hath it, + have power to resist your sway. I congratulate your last victory. + You have fairly made an Honest Man of the Old One; and, if your + conquest is late, the success must be salutary. The new Benedict has + employment enough on his hands to desist from dabbling with the + affairs of poor mortals; he may fairly leave human nature to + herself; and we may sleep for one while at least secure from the + attacks of this hitherto restless Old Bachelor. It remains to be + seen, whether the world will be much benefited by the change in his + condition. + + + + + PART THE FIRST + + I + + The Devil was sick and queasy of late, + And his sleep and his appetite fail'd him; + His ears they hung down, and his tail it was clapp'd + Between his poor hoofs, like a dog that's been rapp'd-- + None knew what the devil ail'd him. + + + II + + He tumbled and toss'd on his mattress o' nights, + That was fit for a fiend's disportal; + For 'twas made of the finest of thistles and thorn, + Which Alecto herself had gather'd in scorn + Of the best down beds that are mortal. + + + III + + His giantly chest in earthquakes heaved, + With groanings corresponding; + And mincing and few were the words he spoke, + While a sigh, like some delicate whirlwind, broke + From a heart that seem'd desponding. + + + IV + + Now the Devil an Old Wife had for his Dam, + I think none e'er was older: + Her years--old Parr's were nothing to them; + And a chicken to her was Methusalem, + You'd say, could you behold her. + + + V + + She remember'd Chaos a little child, + Strumming upon hand organs; + At the birth of Old Night a gossip she sat, + The ancientest there, and was godmother at + The christening of the Gorgons. + + + VI + + Her bones peep'd through a rhinoceros' skin, + Like a mummy's through its cerement; + But she had a mother's heart, and guess'd + What pinch'd her son; whom she thus address'd + In terms that bespoke endearment. + + + VII + + "What ails my Nicky, my darling Imp, + My Lucifer bright, my Beelze? + My Pig, my Pug-with-a-curly-tail, + You are not well. Can a mother fail + To see _that_ which all Hell see?" + + + VIII + + "O Mother dear, I am dying, I fear; + Prepare the yew, and the willow, + And the cypress black: for I get no ease + By day or by night for the cursed fleas, + That skip about my pillow." + + + IX + + "Your pillow is clean, and your pillow-beer, + For I wash'd 'em in Styx last night, son, + And your blankets both, and dried them upon + The brimstony banks of Acheron-- + It is not the _fleas_ that bite, son." + + + X + + "O I perish of cold these bitter sharp nights, + The damp like an ague ferrets; + The ice and the frost hath shot into the bone; + And I care not greatly to sleep alone + O! nights--for the fear of Spirits." + + + XI + + "The weather is warm, my own sweet boy, + And the nights are close and stifling; + And for fearing of Spirits, you cowardly Elf-- + Have you quite forgot you're a Spirit yourself? + Come, come, I see you are trifling. + + + XII + + "I wish my Nicky is not in love"-- + "O mother, you have nick't it"-- + And he turn'd his head aside with a blush-- + Not red hot pokers, or crimson plush, + Could half so deep have prick'd it. + + + XIII + + "These twenty thousand good years or more," + Quoth he, "on this burning shingle + I have led a lonesome Bachelor's life, + Nor known the comfort of babe or wife-- + 'Tis a long--time to live single." + + + XIV + + Quoth she, "If a wife is all you want, + I shall quickly dance at your wedding. + I am dry nurse, you know, to the Female Ghosts "-- + And she call'd up her charge, and they came in hosts + To do the old Beldam's bidding: + + + XV + + All who in their lives had been servants of sin-- + Adulteress, Wench, Virago-- + And Murd'resses old that had pointed the knife + Against a husband's or father's life, + Each one a She Iago. + + + XVI + + First Jezebel came--no need of paint, + Or dressing, to make her charming; + For the blood of the old prophetical race + Had heighten'd the natural flush of her face + To a pitch 'bove rouge or carmine. + + + XVII + + Semiramis there low tendered herself, + With all Babel for a dowry: + With Helen, the flower and the bane of Greece-- + And bloody Medea next offer'd her fleece, + That was of Hell the Houri. + + + XVIII + + Clytemnestra, with Joan of Naples, put in; + Cleopatra, by Anthony quicken'd; + Jocasta, that married where she should not, + Came hand in hand with the Daughters of Lot; + Till the Devil was fairly sicken'd. + + + XIX + + For the Devil himself, a dev'l as he is, + Disapproves unequal matches. + "O Mother," he cried, "dispatch them hence! + No Spirit--I speak it without offence-- + Shall have me in her hatches." + + + XX + + With a wave of her wand they all were gone! + And now came out the slaughter: + "'Tis none of these that can serve my turn; + For a wife of flesh and blood I burn-- + I'm in love with a Taylor's Daughter. + + + XXI + + "'Tis she must heal the wounds that she made, + 'Tis she must be my physician. + O parent mild, stand not my foe"-- + For his mother had whisper'd something low + About "matching beneath his condition."-- + + + XXII + + "And then we must get paternal consent, + Or an unblest match may vex ye"-- + "Her father is dead; I fetched him away. + In the midst of his goose, last Michaelmas day-- + He died of an apoplexy. + + + XXIII + + "His daughter is fair, and an only heir-- + With her I long to tether-- + He has left her his _hell_, and all that he had; + The estates are contiguous, and I shall be mad, + 'Till we lay our two Hells together." + + + XXIV + + "But how do you know the fair maid's mind?"-- + Quoth he, "Her loss was but recent; + And I could not speak _my_ mind you know, + Just when I was fetching her father below-- + It would have been hardly decent. + + + XXV + + "But a leer from her eye, where Cupids lie, + Of love gave proof apparent; + And, from something she dropp'd, I shrewdly ween'd, + In her heart she judged, that a _living Fiend_ + Was better than a _dead Parent_. + + + XXVI + + "But the time is short; and suitors may come, + While I stand here reporting; + Then make your son a bit of a Beau, + And give me your blessing, before I go + To the other world a courting." + + + XXVII + + "But what will you do with your horns, my son? + And that tail--fair maids will mock it--" + "My tail I will dock--and as for the horn, + Like husbands above I think no scorn + To carry it in my pocket." + + + XXVIII + + "But what will you do with your feet, my son?" + "Here are stockings fairly woven: + My hoofs I will hide in silken hose; + And cinnamon-sweet are my pettitoes-- + Because, you know, they are _cloven_." + + + XXIX + + "Then take a blessing, my darling Son," + Quoth she, and kiss'd him civil-- + Then his neckcloth she tied; and when he was drest + From top to toe in his Sunday's best, + He appear'd a comely devil. + + + XXX + + So his leave he took:--but how he fared + In his courtship--barring failures-- + In a Second Part you shall read it soon, + In a bran new song, to be sung to the tune + Of the "Devil among the Tailors." + + + + * * * * * + + + + THE SECOND PART + + _Containing the Courtship, and the Wedding_ + + + I + + Who is She that by night from her balcony looks + On a garden, where cabbage is springing? + 'Tis the Tailor's fair Lass, that we told of above; + She muses by moonlight on her True Love; + So sharp is Cupid's stinging. + + + II + + She has caught a glimpse of the Prince of the Air + In his Luciferian splendour, + And away with her coyness and maiden reserve!-- + For none but the Devil her turn will serve, + Her sorrows else will end her. + + + III + + She saw when he fetch'd her father away, + And the sight no whit did shake her; + For the Devil may sure with his own make free-- + And "it saves besides," quoth merrily she, + "The expence of an Undertaker.-- + + + IV + + "Then come, my Satan, my darling Sin, + Return to my arms, my Hell Beau; + My Prince of Darkness, my crow-black Dove"-- + And she scarce had spoke, when her own True Love + Was kneeling at her elbow! + + + V + + But she wist not at first that this was He, + That had raised such a boiling passion; + For his old costume he had laid aside, + And was come to court a mortal bride + In a coat-and-waistcoat fashion. + + + VI + + She miss'd his large horns, and she miss'd his fair tail, + That had hung so retrospective; + And his raven plumes, and some other marks + Regarding his feet, that had left their sparks + In a mind but too susceptive: + + + VII + + And she held in scorn that a mortal born + Should the Prince of Spirits rival, + To clamber at midnight her garden fence-- + For she knew not else by what pretence + To account for his arrival. + + + VIII + + "What thief art thou," quoth she, "in the dark + That stumblest here presumptuous? + Some Irish Adventurer I take you to be-- + A Foreigner, from your garb I see, + Which besides is not over sumptuous." + + + IX + + Then Satan, awhile dissembling his rank, + A piece of amorous fun tries: + Quoth he, "I'm a Netherlander born; + Fair Virgin, receive not my suit with scorn; + I'm a Prince in the Low Countries-- + + + X + + "Though I travel _incog_. From the Land of Fog + And Mist I am come to proffer + My crown and my sceptre to lay at your feet; + It is not every day in the week you may meet, + Fair Maid, with a Prince's offer." + + + XI + + "Your crown and your sceptre I like full well, + They tempt a poor maiden's pride, Sir; + But your lands and possessions--excuse if I'm rude-- + Are too far in a Northerly latitude + For me to become your Bride, Sir. + + + XII + + "In that aguish clime I should catch my death, + Being but a raw new comer"-- + Quoth he, "We have plenty of fuel stout; + And the fires, which I kindle, never go out + By winter, nor yet by summer. + + + XIII + + "I am Prince of Hell, and Lord Paramount + Over Monarchs there abiding. + My Groom of the Stables is Nimrod old; + And Nebuchadnazor my stirrups must hold, + When I go out a riding. + + + XIV + + "To spare your blushes, and maiden fears, + I resorted to these inventions-- + But, Imposture, begone; and avaunt, Disguise!" + And the Devil began to swell and rise + To his own diabolic dimensions. + + + XV + + Twin horns from his forehead shot up to the moon, + Like a branching stag in Arden; + Dusk wings through his shoulders with eagle's strength + Push'd out; and his train lay floundering in length + An acre beyond the garden.-- + + + XVI + + To tender hearts I have framed my lay-- + Judge ye, all love-sick Maidens, + When the virgin saw in the soft moonlight, + In his proper proportions, her own true knight, + If she needed long persuadings. + + + XVII + + Yet a maidenly modesty kept her back, + As her sex's art had taught her: + For "the biggest Fortunes," quoth she, "in the land-- + Are not worthy"--then blush'd--"of your Highness's hand-- + Much less a poor Taylor's daughter. + + + XVIII + + "There's the two Miss Crockfords are single still, + For whom great suitors hunger; + And their Father's hell is much larger than mine"-- + Quoth the Devil, "I've no such ambitious design, + For their Dad is an old Fishmonger; + + + XIX + + "And I cannot endure the smell of fish-- + I have taken an anti-bias + To their livers, especially since the day + That the Angel smoked my cousin away + From the chaste spouse of Tobias. + + + XX + + "Had my amorous kinsman much longer staid, + The perfume would have seal'd his obit; + For he had a nicer nose than the wench, + Who cared not a pin for the smother and stench, + In the arms of the Son of Tobit." + + + XXI + + "I have read it," quoth she, "in Apocryphal Writ"-- + And the Devil stoop'd down, and kiss'd her; + Not Jove himself, when he courted in flame, + On Semele's lips, the love-scorch'd Dame, + Impress'd such a burning blister. + + + XXII + + The fire through her bones and her vitals shot-- + "O, I yield, my winsome marrow-- + I am thine for life"--and black thunders roll'd-- + And she sank in his arms through the garden mould, + With the speed of a red-hot arrow. + + + XXIII + + Merrily, merrily, ring the bells + From each Pandemonian steeple; + For the Devil hath gotten his beautiful Bride, + And a Wedding Dinner he will provide, + To feast all kinds of people. + + + XXIV + + Fat bulls of Basan are roasted whole, + Of the breed that ran at David; + With the flesh of goats, on the sinister side, + That shall stand apart, when the world is tried; + Fit meat for souls unsaved! + + + XXV + + The fowl from the spit were the Harpies' brood, + Which the bard sang near Cremona, + With a garnish of bats in their leathern wings imp't; + And the fish was--two delicate slices crimp't, + Of the whale that swallow'd Jonah. + + + XXVI + + Then the goblets were crown'd, and a health went round + To the Bride, in a wine like scarlet; + No earthly vintage so deeply paints, + For 'twas dash'd with a tinge from the blood of the Saints + By the Babylonian Harlot. + + + XXVII + + No Hebe fair stood Cup Bearer there, + The guests were their own skinkers; + But Bishop Judas first blest the can, + Who is of all Hell Metropolitan, + And kiss'd it to all the drinkers. + + + XXVIII + + The feast being ended, to dancing they went, + To a music that did produce a + Most dissonant sound, while a hellish glee + Was sung in parts by the Furies Three; + And the Devil took out Medusa. + + + XXIX + + But the best of the sport was to hear his old Dam, + Set up her shrill forlorn pipe-- + How the wither'd Beldam hobbled about, + And put the rest of the company out-- + For she needs must try a horn-pipe. + + + XXX + + But the heat, and the press, and the noise, and the din, + Were so great, that, howe'er unwilling, + Our Reporter no longer was able to stay, + But came in his own defence away, + And left the Bride quadrilling. + + + + + PROLOGUES AND EPILOGUES + + + EPILOGUE TO GODWIN'S TRAGEDY OF "ANTONIO" + + (1800) + + Ladies, ye've seen how Guzman's consort died, + Poor victim of a Spaniard brother's pride, + When Spanish honour through the world was blown, + And Spanish beauty for the best was known[19]. + In that romantic, unenlighten'd time, + A _breach of promise_[20] was a sort of crime-- + Which of you handsome English ladies here, + But deem the penance bloody and severe? + A whimsical old Saragossa[21] fashion, + That a dead father's dying inclination, + Should _live_ to thwart a living daughter's passion[22], + Unjustly on the sex _we_[23] men exclaim, + Rail at _your_[24] vices,--and commit the same;-- + Man is a promise-breaker from the womb, + And goes a promise-breaker to the tomb-- + What need we instance here the lover's vow, + The sick man's purpose, or the great man's bow[25]? + The truth by few examples best is shown-- + Instead of many which are better known, + Take poor Jack Incident, that's dead and gone. + Jack, of dramatic genius justly vain, + Purchased a renter's share at Drury-lane; + A prudent man in every other matter, + Known at his club-room for an honest hatter; + Humane and courteous, led a civil life, + And has been seldom known to beat his wife; + But Jack is now grown quite another man, + Frequents the green-room, knows the plot and plan + Of each new piece, + And has been seen to talk with Sheridan! + In at the play-house just at six he pops, + And never quits it till the curtain drops, + Is never absent on the _author's night_, + Knows actresses and actors too--by sight; + So humble, that with Suett he'll confer, + Or take a pipe with plain Jack Bannister; + Nay, with an author has been known so free, + He once suggested a catastrophe-- + In short, John dabbled till his head was turn'd: + His wife remonstrated, his neighbours mourn'd, + His customers were dropping off apace, + And Jack's affairs began to wear a piteous face. + + One night his wife began a curtain lecture; + 'My dearest Johnny, husband, spouse, protector, + Take pity on your helpless babes and me, + Save us from ruin, you from bankruptcy-- + Look to your business, leave these cursed plays, + And try again your old industrious ways.' + + Jack, who was always scared at the Gazette, + And had some bits of scull uninjured yet, + Promised amendment, vow'd his wife spake reason, + 'He would not see another play that season--' + + Three stubborn fortnights Jack his promise kept, + Was late and early in his shop, eat, slept, + And walk'd and talk'd, like ordinary men; + No _wit_, but John the hatter once again-- + Visits his club: when lo! one _fatal night_ + His wife with horror view'd the well-known sight-- + John's _hat, wig, snuff-box_--well she knew his tricks-- + And Jack decamping at the hour of six. + Just at the counter's edge a playbill lay, + Announcing that 'Pizarro' was the play-- + 'O Johnny, Johnny, this is your old doing.' + Quoth Jack, 'Why what the devil storm's a-brewing? + About a harmless play why all this fright? + I'll go and see it, if it's but for spite-- + Zounds, woman! Nelson's[26] to be there to-night.' + + +[Footnote 19: Four _easy_ lines.] + +[Footnote 20: For which the _heroine died_.] + +[Footnote 21: In _Spain_!!] + +[Footnote 22: Two _neat_ lines.] + +[Footnote 23: Or _you_.] + +[Footnote 24: Or _our_, as _they_ have altered it.] + +[Footnote 25: Antithesis!!] + +[Footnote 26: "A good clap-trap. Nelson has exhibited two or three times +at both theatres--and advertised himself."] + + + + + PROLOGUE TO GODWIN'S TRAGEDY OF "FAULKENER" + + (1807) + + An author who has given you all delight, + Furnish'd the tale our stage presents to-night. + Some of our earliest tears He taught to steal + Down our young cheeks, and forc'd us first to feel. + To solitary shores whole years confin'd, + Who has not read how pensive _Crusoe_ pin'd? + Who, now grown old, that did not once admire + His goat, his parrot, his uncouth attire, + The stick, due-notch'd, that told each tedious day + That in the lonely island wore away? + Who has not shudder'd, where he stands aghast + At sight of human footsteps in the waste? + Or joy'd not, when his trembling hands unbind + Thee, _Friday_, gentlest of the savage kind? + The genius who conceiv'd that magic tale + Was skill'd by native pathos to prevail. + His stories, though rough-drawn, and fram'd in haste, + Had that which pleas'd our homely grandsires' taste. + His was a various pen, that freely rov'd + Into all subjects, was in most approv'd. + Whate'er the theme, his ready Muse obey'd-- + Love, courtship, politics, religion, trade-- + Gifted alike to shine in every sphere, + Nov'list, historian, poet, pamphleteer. + In some blest interval of party-strife, + He drew a striking sketch from private life, + Whose moving scenes of intricate distress + We try to-night in a dramatic dress: + A real story of domestic woe, + That asks no aid from music, verse, or show, + But trusts to truth, to nature, and _Defoe._ + + + + + EPILOGUE TO HENRY SIDDONS' FARCE, "TIME'S A TELL-TALE" + + (1807) + + + Bound for the port of matrimonial bliss, + Ere I hoist sail, I hold it not amiss, + (Since prosp'rous ends ask prudent introductions) + To take a slight peep at my written instructions. + There's nothing like determining in time + All questions marital or maritime. + + In all seas, straits, gulphs, ports, havens, lands, creeks. + Oh! Here it begins. + "Season, spring, wind standing at point Desire-- + The good ship Matrimony--Commander. Blanford, Esq. + + + Art. I. + + "The captain that has the command of her, + Or in his absence, the acting officer, + To see her planks are sound, her timbers tight."-- + That acting officer I don't relish quite, + No, as I hope to tack another verse on, + I'll do those duties in my proper person. + + + Art. II. + + "All mutinies to be suppress'd at first." + That's a good caution to prevent the worst. + + + Art. III. + + "That she be properly victual'd, mann'd and stor'd, + To see no foreigners are got aboard." + That's rather difficult. Do what we can, + A vessel sometimes may mistake her man. + The safest way in such a parlous doubt, + Is steady watch and keep a sharp look out. + + + Art. IV. + + "Whereas their Lords Commissioners (the church) + Do strictly authorise the right of search: + As always practis'd--you're to understand + By these what articles are contraband; + Guns, mortars, pistols, halberts, swords, pikes, lances, + Ball, powder, shot, and the appurtenances. + Videlicet--whatever can be sent + To give the enemy encouragement. + Ogles are small shot (so the instruction runs), + Touches hand grenades, and squeezes rifle guns." + + + Art. V. + + "That no free-bottom'd neutral waiting maid + Presume to exercise the carrying trade: + The prohibition here contained extends + To all commerce cover'd by the name of Friends. + Heaven speed the good ship well"--and so it ends. + Oh with such wholesome jealousies as these + May Albion cherish his old spouse the seas; + Keep over her a husband's firm command, + Not with too rigid nor too lax a hand. + Be gently patient to her swells and throws + When big with safeties to himself she goes; + Nor while she clips him in a fast embrace, + Stand for some female frowns upon her face. + But tell the rival world--and tell in Thunder, + Whom Nature joined, none ere shall put asunder. + + + + + PROLOGUE TO COLERIDGE'S TRAGEDY OF "REMORSE" + + (1813) + + + There are, I am told, who sharply criticise + Our modern theatres' unwieldy size. + We players shall scarce plead guilty to that charge, + Who think a house can never be too large: + Griev'd when a rant, that's worth a nation's ear, + Shakes some prescrib'd Lyceum's petty sphere; + And pleased to mark the grin from space to space + Spread epidemic o'er a town's broad face.-- + O might old Betterton or Booth return + To view our structures from their silent urn, + Could Quin come stalking from Elysian glades, + Or Garrick get a day-rule from the shades-- + Where now, perhaps, in mirth which Spirits approve, + He imitates the ways of men above, + And apes the actions of our upper coast, + As in his days of flesh he play'd the ghost:-- + How might they bless our ampler scope to please, + And hate their own old shrunk up audiences.-- + Their houses yet were palaces to those, + Which Ben and Fletcher for their triumphs chose. + Shakspeare, who wish'd a kingdom for a stage, } + Like giant pent in disproportion'd cage, } + Mourn'd his contracted strengths and crippled rage. } + He who could tame his vast ambition down + To please some scatter'd gleanings of a town, + And, if some hundred auditors supplied + Their meagre meed of claps, was satisfied, + How had he felt, when that dread curse of Lear's + Had burst tremendous on a thousand ears, + While deep-struck wonder from applauding bands + Return'd the tribute of as many hands! + Rude were his guests; he never made his bow + To such an audience as salutes us now. + He lack'd the balm of labor, female praise. + Few Ladies in his time frequented plays, + Or came to see a youth with aukward art + And shrill sharp pipe burlesque the woman's part. + The very use, since so essential grown, + Of painted scenes, was to his stage unknown. + The air-blest castle, round whose wholesome crest, + The martlet, guest of summer, chose her nest-- + The forest walks of Arden's fair domain, + Where Jaques fed his solitary vein. + No pencil's aid as yet had dared supply, + Seen only by the intellectual eye. + Those scenic helps, denied to Shakspeare's page, + Our Author owes to a more liberal age. + Nor pomp nor circumstance are wanting here; + 'Tis for himself alone that he must fear. + Yet shall remembrance cherish the just pride, + That (be the laurel granted or denied) + He first essay'd in this distinguish'd fane, + Severer muses and a tragic strain. + + + + + EPILOGUE TO KENNEY'S FARCE, "DEBTOR AND CREDITOR" + + (1814) + + + _Spoken by Mr. Liston and Mr. Emery in character_ + + + _Gosling._ False world---- + + _Sampson._ You're bit, Sir. + + + _Gosling_. Boor! what's that to you? + With Love's soft sorrows what hast thou to do? + 'Tis _here_ for consolation I must look. + (_Takes out his pocket book_). + + _Sampson_. Nay, Sir, don't put us down in your black book. + + _Gosling_. All Helicon is here. + + _Sampson_. All Hell. + + _Gosling_. You Clod! + Did'st never hear of the Pierian God, + And the Nine Virgins on the Sacred Hill? + + _Sampson_. Nine Virgins!--Sure! + + _Gosling_. I have them all at will. + + _Sampson_. If Miss fight shy, then-- + + _Gosling_. And my suit decline. + + _Sampson_. You'll make a dash at them. + + _Gosling_. I'll tip all nine. + + _Sampson_. What, wed 'em, Sir? + + _Gosling_. O, no--that thought I banish. + I woo--not wed; they never bring the Spanish. + Their favours I pursue, and court the bays. + + _Sampson_. Mayhap, you're one of them that write the plays? + + _Gosling_. Bumpkin! + + _Sampson_. I'm told the public's well-nigh crammed + With such like stuff. + + _Gosling_. The public may be damned. + + _Sampson_. They ha'nt damned you? (_inquisitively_). + + _Gosling_. This fellow's wond'rous shrewd! + I'd tell him if I thought he'd not be rude. + Once in my greener years, I wrote a piece. + + _Sampson_. Aye, so did I--at school like-- + + _Gosling_. Booby, cease! + I mean a Play. + + _Sampson_. Oh! + + _Gosling_. And to crown my joys, + 'Twas acted-- + + _Sampson_. Well, and how-- + + _Gosling_. It made a noise, + A kind of mingled--(_as if musing_). + + _Sampson_. Aye, describe it, try. + + _Gosling_. Like--Were you ever in the pillory? + + _Sampson_. No, Sir, I thank ye, no such kind of game. + + _Gosling_. Bate but the eggs, and it was much the same. + Shouts, clamours, laughs, and a peculiar sound, + 'Like, like-- + + _Sampson_. Like geese, I warrant, in a pound. + I like this mainly! + + _Gosling_. Some began to cough, + Some cried-- + + _Sampson_. Go on-- + + _Gosling_. A few--and some--"Go off!" + I can't suppress it. Gods! I hear it now; + It was in fact a most confounded row. + Dire was the din, as when some storm confounds + Earth, sea, and sky, with all terrific sounds. + Not hungry lions sent forth notes more strange, + Not bulls and bears, that have been hoaxed on 'Change. + + _Sampson_. Exeter 'Change you mean--I've seen they bears. + + _Gosling_. The beasts I mean are far less tame than theirs. + Change Alley Bruins, nattier though their dress, + Might at Polito's study politesse. + Brief let me be. My gentle Sampson, pray, + Fight Larry Whack, but never write a play. + + _Sampson_. I won't, Sir: and these christian souls petition, + To spare all wretched folks in such condition. + + + + + EPILOGUE TO AN AMATEUR PERFORMANCE OF "RICHARD II." + + (1824) + + Of all that act, the hardest task is theirs, + Who, bred no Players, play at being Players; + Copy the shrug--in Kemble once approved;-- + Mere mimics' mimics--nature twice removed. + Shades of a shadow! who but must have seen + The stage-struck hero, in some swelling scene + Aspiring to be Lear--stumble on Kean? + The admired actor's faults our steps betray,-- + No less his very beauties lead astray! + + In "sad civility" once Garrick sate + To see a Play, mangled in form and state; + Plebeian Shakspeare must the words supply,-- + The actors all were Fools--of Quality. + The scenes--the dresses--were above rebuke;-- + Scarce a Performer there below a Duke. + He sate, and mused how in his Shakspeare's mind + The idea of old Nobility enshrined + Should thence a grace and a refinement have + Which passed these living Nobles to conceive,-- + Who with such apish, base gesticulation, + Remnants of starts, and dregs of playhouse passion, + So foul belied their great forefathers' fashion! + He saw--and true Nobility confessed + Less in the high-born blood, than lowly poet's breast. + + If Lords enacting Lords sometimes may fail, + What gentle plea, Spectators, can avail + For wight of low degree who dares to stir + The long-raked ashes of old Lancaster, + And on his nothing-martial front to set + Of warlike Gaunt the lofty burgonet? + For who shall that Plantagenet display, + Majestical in sickness and decay? + Or paint the shower of passions fierce and thick + On Richard's head--that Royal Splenetic? + + Your pardon, not your plaudits, then we claim + If we've come short, where Garrick had been tame! + + + + + PROLOGUE TO SHERIDAN KNOWLES' COMEDY, "THE WIFE" + + (1833) + + _Untoward_ fate no luckless wight invades + More sorely than the Man who drives _two trades_; + Like Esop's bat, between two natures placed, + Scowl'd at by _mice_, among the _birds_ disgraced. + Our author thus, of two-fold fame exactor, + Is doubly scouted,--both as Bard, and Actor! + Wanting in haste a Prologue, he applied + To three poetic friends; was thrice denied. + Each glared on him with supercilious glance, + As on a Poor Relation met by chance; + And one was heard, with more repulsive air, + To mutter "Vagabond," "Rogue," "Strolling Player!" + A poet once, he found--and look'd aghast-- + By turning actor, he had lost his _caste_. + The verse patch'd up at length--with like ill fortune + His friends behind the scenes he did importune + To speak his lines. He found them all fight shy, + Nodding their heads in cool civility. + "There service in the Drama was enough, + The poet might recite the poet's stuff!" + The rogues--they like him hugely--but it stung 'em, + Somehow--to think a Bard had got among 'em. + Their mind made up--no earthly pleading shook it, + In pure compassion 'till I undertook it. + Disown'd by Poets, and by Actors too, + Dear Patrons of both arts, he turns to you! + If in your hearts some tender feelings dwell + From sweet Virginia, or heroic Tell: + If in the scenes which follow you can trace + What once has pleased you--an unbidden grace-- + A touch of nature's work--an awkward start + Or ebullition of an Irish heart-- + Cry, clap, commend it! If you like them not, + Your former favours cannot be forgot. + Condemn them--damn them--hiss them, if you will-- + Their author is your grateful servant still! + + + + + EPILOGUE TO SHERIDAN KNOWLES' COMEDY, "THE WIFE" + + (1833) + + + When first our Bard his simple will express'd, + That I should in his Heroine's robes be dress'd, + My fears were with my vanity at strife, + How I could act that untried part--a "Wife." + But Fancy to the Grison hills me drew, + Where Mariana like a wild flower grew, + Nursing her garden-kindred: so far I + Liked her condition, willing to comply + With that sweet single life: when, with a cranch, + Down came that thundering, crashing avalanche, + Startling my mountain-project! "Take this spade," + Said Fancy then; "dig low, adventurous Maid, + For hidden wealth." I did: and, Ladies, lo! } + Was e'er romantic female's fortune so, } + To dig a life-warm lover from the--snow? } + + A Wife and Princess see me next, beset + With subtle toils, in an Italian net; + While knavish Courtiers, stung with rage or fear, + Distill'd lip-poison in a husband's ear. + I ponder'd on the boiling Southern vein; + Racks, cords, stilettos, rush'd upon my brain! + By poor, good, weak Antonio, too disowned-- + I dream'd each night, I should be Desdemona'd: + And, being in Mantua, thought upon the shop, + Whence fair Verona's youth his breath did stop: + And what if Leonardo, in foul scorn, + Some lean Apothecary should suborn + To take my hated life? A "tortoise" hung + Before my eyes, and in my ears scaled "alligators" rung. + But _my_ Othello, to his vows more zealous-- + Twenty Iagos could not make _him_ jealous! + + New raised to reputation, and to life-- } + At your commands behold me, without strife, } + Well-pleased, and ready to repeat--"The Wife." } + + + + + * * * * * + + + + JOHN WOODVIL + + A TRAGEDY + + (1798-1802. _Text of_ 1818) + + + * * * * * + + + CHARACTERS + + SIR WALTER WOODVIL. + + JOHN. } + SIMON. } _his sons._ + + LOVEL. } + GRAY. } _Pretended friends of John._ + + SANDFORD. _Sir Walter's old steward._ + MARGARET. _Orphan ward of Sir Walter._ + FOUR GENTLEMEN. _John's riotous companions._ + SERVANTS. + + +SCENE--_for the most part at Sir Walter's mansion +in_ DEVONSHIRE; _at other times in the forest of_ +SHERWOOD. + +TIME--_soon after the_ RESTORATION. + + + * * * * * + + +ACT THE FIRST + + +SCENE.--_A Servants' Apartment in Woodvil Hall._ + + Servants drinking--_Time, the morning._ + + + * * * * * + + + A Song by DANIEL + + _"When the King enjoys his own again."_ + + +PETER +A delicate song. Where did'st learn it, fellow? + +DANIEL +Even there, where thou learnest thy oaths and thy politics--at our +master's table.--Where else should a serving-man pick up his poor +accomplishments? + + +MARTIN +Well spoken, Daniel. O rare Daniel!--his oaths and his politics! +excellent! + + +FRANCIS +And where did'st pick up thy knavery, Daniel? + + +PETER +That came to him by inheritance. His family have supplied the shire of +Devon, time out of mind, with good thieves and bad serving-men. All of +his race have come into the world without their conscience. + + +MARTIN +Good thieves, and bad serving-men! Better and better. I marvel what +Daniel hath got to say in reply. + + +DANIEL +I marvel more when thou wilt say any thing to the purpose, thou shallow +serving-man, whose swiftest conceit carries thee no higher than to +apprehend with difficulty the stale jests of us thy compeers. When was't +ever known to club thy own particular jest among us? + + +MARTIN +Most unkind Daniel, to speak such biting things of me! + + +FRANCIS +See--if he hath not brought tears into the poor fellow's eyes with the +saltness of his rebuke. + + +DANIEL +No offence, brother Martin--I meant none. 'Tis true, Heaven gives gifts, +and with-holds them. It has been pleased to bestow upon me a nimble +invention to the manufacture of a jest; and upon thee, Martin, an +indifferent bad capacity to understand my meaning. + + +MARTIN +Is that all? I am content. Here's my hand. + +FRANCIS +Well, I like a little innocent mirth myself, but never could endure +bawdry. + +DANIEL +_Quot homines tot sententiae._ + +MARTIN +And what is that? + +DANIEL +'Tis Greek, and argues difference of opinion. + +MARTIN +I hope there is none between us. + +DANIEL +Here's to thee, brother Martin. (_Drinks._) + +MARTIN +And to thee, Daniel. (_Drinks._) + +FRANCIS +And to thee, Peter. (_Drinks._) + +PETER +Thank you, Francis. And here's to thee. (_Drinks._) + +MARTIN +I shall be fuddled anon. + +DANIEL +And drunkenness I hold to be a very despicable vice. + +ALL +O! a shocking vice. (_They drink round._) + +PETER +In as much as it taketh away the understanding. + +DANIEL +And makes the eyes red. + +PETER +And the tongue to stammer. + +DANIEL +And to blab out secrets. + +(_During this conversation they continue drinking._) + +PETER +Some men do not know an enemy from a friend when they are drunk. + +DANIEL +Certainly sobriety is the health of the soul. + +MARTIN +Now I know I am going to be drunk. + +DANIEL +How can'st tell, dry-bones? + +MARTIN +Because I begin to be melancholy. That's always a sign. + +FRANCIS +Take care of Martin, he'll topple off his seat else. + +(_Martin drops asleep._) + +PETER +Times are greatly altered, since young master took upon himself the +government of this household. + +ALL +Greatly altered. + +FRANCIS +I think every thing be altered for the better since His Majesty's +blessed restoration. + +PETER +In Sir Walter's days there was no encouragement given to good +house-keeping. + +ALL +None. + +DANIEL + +For instance, no possibility of getting drunk before two in the +afternoon. + +PETER + +Every man his allowance of ale at breakfast--his quart! + +ALL +A quart!! (_in derision_.) + +DANIEL +Nothing left to our own sweet discretions. + +PETER +Whereby it may appear, we were treated more like beasts than what we +were--discreet and reasonable serving-men. + +ALL +Like beasts. + +MARTIN +(_Opening his eyes_.) Like beasts. + +DANIEL +To sleep, wag-tail! + +FRANCIS +I marvel all this while where the old gentleman has found means to +secrete himself. It seems no man has heard of him since the day of the +King's return. Can any tell why our young master, being favoured by the +court, should not have interest to procure his father's pardon? + +DANIEL +Marry, I think 'tis the obstinacy of the old Knight, that will not be +beholden to the court for his safety. + +MARTIN +Now that is wilful. + +FRANCIS +But can any tell me the place of his concealment? + +PETER +That cannot I; but I have my conjectures. + +DANIEL +Two hundred pounds, as I hear, to the man that shall apprehend him. + +FRANCIS +Well, I have my suspicions. + +PETER +And so have I. + +MARTIN +And I can keep a secret. + +FRANCIS +(_To Peter_.) Warwickshire you mean. (_Aside_.) + +PETER +Perhaps not. + +FRANCIS +Nearer perhaps. + +PETER +I say nothing. + +DANIEL +I hope there is none in this company would be mean enough to betray him. + +ALL +O Lord, surely not. (_They drink to Sir Walter's safety_.) + +FRANCIS +I have often wondered how our master came to be excepted by name in the +late Act of Oblivion. + +DANIEL +Shall I tell the reason? + +ALL +Aye, do. + +DANIEL +'Tis thought he is no great friend to the present happy establishment. + +ALL +O! monstrous! + +PETER +Fellow servants, a thought strikes me.--Do we, or do we not, come under +the penalties of the treason-act, by reason of our being privy to this +man's concealment. + +ALL +Truly a sad consideration. + +_To them enters Sandford suddenly._ + + SANDFORD + You well-fed and unprofitable grooms, + Maintained for state, not use; + You lazy feasters at another's cost, + That eat like maggots into an estate, + And do as little work, + Being indeed but foul excrescences, + And no just parts in a well-order'd family; + You base and rascal imitators, + Who act up to the height your master's vices, + But cannot read his virtues in your bond: + Which of you, as I enter'd, spake of betraying? + Was it you, or you, or, thin-face, was it you? + + MARTIN + Whom does he call thin-face? + + SANDFORD + No prating, loon, but tell me who he was, + That I may brain the villain with my staff, + That seeks Sir Walter's life? + You miserable men, + With minds more slavish than your slave's estate, + Have you that noble bounty so forgot, + Which took you from the looms, and from the ploughs, + Which better had ye follow'd, fed ye, cloth'd ye, + And entertain'd ye in a worthy service, + Where your best wages was the world's repute, + That thus ye seek his life, by whom ye live? + Have you forgot too, + How often in old times + Your drunken mirths have stunn'd day's sober ears, + Carousing full cups to Sir Walter's health?-- + Whom now ye would betray, but that he lies + Out of the reach of your poor treacheries. + This learn from me, + Our master's secret sleeps with trustier tongues, + Than will unlock themselves to carls like you. + Go, get you gone, you knaves. Who stirs? this staff + Shall teach you better manners else. + + ALL + Well, we are going. + + SANDFORD + And quickly too, ye had better, for I see + Young mistress Margaret coming this way. + (_Exeunt all but Sandford._) + + _Enter Margaret, as in a fright, pursued by a Gentleman, + who, seeing Sandford, retires muttering a curse. + Sandford, Margaret._ + + SANDFORD + Good-morrow to my fair mistress. 'Twas a chance + I saw you, lady, so intent was I + On chiding hence these graceless serving-men, + Who cannot break their fast at morning meals + Without debauch and mis-timed riotings. + This house hath been a scene of nothing else + But atheist riot and profane excess, + Since my old master quitted all his rights here. + + MARGARET + Each day I endure fresh insult from the scorn + Of Woodvil's friends, the uncivil jests, + And free discourses, of the dissolute men, + That haunt this mansion, making me their mirth. + + SANDFORD + Does my young master know of these affronts? + + MARGARET + I cannot tell. Perhaps he has not been told. + Perhaps he might have seen them if he would. + I have known him more quick-sighted. Let that pass. + All things seem chang'd, I think. I had a friend, + (I can't but weep to think him alter'd too,) + These things are best forgotten; but I knew + A man, a young man, young, and full of honor, + That would have pick'd a quarrel for a straw, + And fought it out to the extremity, + E'en with the dearest friend he had alive, + On but a bare surmise, a possibility, + That Margaret had suffer'd an affront. + Some are too tame, that were too splenetic once. + + SANDFORD + 'Twere best he should be _told_ of these affronts. + + MARGARET + I am the daughter of his father's friend, + Sir Walter's orphan-ward. + I am not his servant maid, that I should wait + The opportunity of a gracious hearing, + Enquire the times and seasons when to put + My peevish prayer up at young Woodvil's feet, + And sue to him for slow redress, who was + Himself a suitor late to Margaret. + I am somewhat proud: and Woodvil taught me pride. + I was his favourite once, his playfellow in infancy, + And joyful mistress of his youth. + None once so pleasant in his eyes as Margaret. + His conscience, his religion, Margaret was, + His dear heart's confessor, a heart within that heart, + And all dear things summ'd up in her alone. + As Margaret smil'd or frown'd John liv'd or died: + His dress, speech, gesture, studies, friendships, all + Being fashion'd to her liking. + His flatteries taught me first this self-esteem, + His flatteries and caresses, while he loved. + The world esteem'd her happy, who had won + His heart, who won all hearts; + And ladies envied me the love of Woodvil. + + SANDFORD + He doth affect the courtier's life too much, + Whose art is to forget, + And that has wrought this seeming change in him, + That was by nature noble. + 'Tis these court-plagues, that swarm about our house, + Have done the mischief, making his fancy giddy + With images of state, preferment, place, + Tainting his generous spirits with ambition. + + MARGARET + I know not how it is; + A cold protector is John grown to me. + The mistress, and presumptive wife, of Woodvil + Can never stoop so low to supplicate + A man, her equal, to redress those wrongs, + Which he was bound first to prevent; + But which his own neglects have sanction'd rather, + Both sanction'd and provok'd: a mark'd neglect, + And strangeness fast'ning bitter on his love, + His love which long has been upon the wane. + For me, I am determined what to do: + To leave this house this night, and lukewarm John, + And trust for food to the earth and Providence. + + SANDFORD + O lady, have a care + Of these indefinite and spleen-bred resolves. + You know not half the dangers that attend + Upon a life of wand'ring, which your thoughts now, + Feeling the swellings of a lofty anger, + To your abused fancy, as 'tis likely, + Portray without its terrors, painting _lies_ + And representments of fallacious liberty-- + You know not what it is to leave the roof that shelters you. + + MARGARET + I have thought on every possible event, + The dangers and discouragements you speak of, + Even till my woman's heart hath ceas'd to fear them, + And cowardice grows enamour'd of rare accidents. + Nor am I so unfurnish'd, as you think, + Of practicable schemes. + + SANDFORD + Now God forbid; think twice of this, dear lady. + + MARGARET + I pray you spare me, Mr. Sandford, + And once for all believe, nothing can shake my purpose. + + SANDFORD + But what course have you thought on? + + MARGARET + To seek Sir Walter in the forest of Sherwood. + I have letters from young Simon, + Acquainting me with all the circumstances + Of their concealment, place, and manner of life, + And the merry hours they spend in the green haunts + Of Sherwood, nigh which place they have ta'en a house + In the town of Nottingham, and pass for foreigners, + Wearing the dress of Frenchmen.-- + All which I have perus'd with so attent + And child-like longings, that to my doting ears + Two sounds now seem like one, + One meaning in two words, Sherwood and Liberty. + And, gentle Mr. Sandford, + 'Tis you that must provide now + The means of my departure, which for safety + Must be in boy's apparel. + + SANDFORD + Since you will have it so + (My careful age trembles at all may happen) + I will engage to furnish you. + I have the keys of the wardrobe, and can fit you + With garments to your size. + I know a suit + Of lively Lincoln Green, that shall much grace you + In the wear, being glossy fresh, and worn but seldom. + Young Stephen Woodvil wore them, while he lived. + I have the keys of all this house and passages, + And ere day-break will rise and let you forth. + What things soe'er you have need of I can furnish you; + And will provide a horse and trusty guide, + To bear you on your way to Nottingham. + + MARGARET + That once this day and night were fairly past! + For then I'll bid this house and love farewell; + Farewell, sweet Devon; farewell, lukewarm John; + For with the morning's light will Margaret be gone. + Thanks, courteous Mr. Sandford.-- + (_Exeunt divers ways._) + + + + +ACT THE SECOND + + +SCENE.--_An Apartment in Woodvil Hall._ + + +_John Woodvil--alone._ + +(_Reading Parts of a Letter._) + +"When Love grows cold, and indifference has usurped upon old Esteem, it +is no marvel if the world begin to account _that_ dependence, which +hitherto has been esteemed honorable shelter. The course I have taken +(in leaving this house, not easily wrought thereunto,) seemed to me best +for the once-for-all releasing of yourself (who in times past have +deserved well of me) from the now daily, and not-to-be-endured, tribute +of forced love, and ill-dissembled reluctance of affection. + + + "MARGARET." + + Gone! gone! my girl? so hasty, Margaret! + And never a kiss at parting? shallow loves, + And likings of a ten days' growth, use courtesies, + And shew red eyes at parting. Who bids "farewell" + In the same tone he cries "God speed you, Sir?" + Or tells of joyful victories at sea, + Where he hath ventures? does not rather muffle + His organs to emit a leaden sound, + To suit the melancholy dull "farewell," + Which they in Heaven not use?-- + So peevish, Margaret? + But 'tis the common error of your sex, + When our idolatry slackens, or grows less, + (As who of woman born can keep his faculty + Of Admiration, being a decaying faculty, + For ever strain'd to the pitch? or can at pleasure + Make it renewable, as some appetites are, + As, namely, Hunger, Thirst?--) this being the case, + They tax us with neglect, and love grown cold, + Coin plainings of the perfidy of men, + Which into maxims pass, and apothegms + To be retailed in ballads.-- + I know them all. + They are jealous, when our larger hearts receive + More guests than one. (Love in a woman's heart + Being all in one.) For me, I am sure I have room here + For more disturbers of my sleep than one. + Love shall have part, but Love shall not have all. + Ambition, Pleasure, Vanity, all by turns, + Shall lie in my bed, and keep me fresh and waking; + Yet Love not be excluded.--Foolish wench, + I could have lov'd her twenty years to come, + And still have kept my liking. But since 'tis so, + Why, fare thee well, old play-fellow! I'll try + To squeeze a tear for old acquaintance sake. + I shall not grudge so much.-- + + _To him enters Lovel_. + +LOVEL +Bless us, Woodvil! what is the matter? I protest, man, I thought you had +been weeping. + +WOODVIL +Nothing is the matter, only the wench has forced some water into my +eyes, which will quickly disband. + +LOVEL +I cannot conceive you. + +WOODVIL +Margaret is flown. + +LOVEL +Upon what pretence? + +WOODVIL +Neglect on my part: which it seems she has had the wit to discover, +maugre all my pains to conceal it. + +LOVEL +Then, you confess the charge? + +WOODVIL +To say the truth, my love for her has of late stopt short on this side +idolatry. + +LOVEL +As all good Christians' should, I think. + +WOODVIL +I am sure, I could have loved her still within the limits of warrantable +love. + +LOVEL +A kind of brotherly affection, I take it. + +WOODVIL +We should have made excellent man and wife in time. + +LOVEL +A good old couple, when the snows fell, to crowd about a sea-coal fire, +and talk over old matters. + +WOODVIL +While each should feel, what neither cared to acknowledge, that stories +oft repeated may, at last, come to lose some of their grace by the +repetition. + +LOVEL +Which both of you may yet live long enough to discover. For, take my +word for it, Margaret is a bird that will come back to you without a +lure. + +WOODVIL +Never, never, Lovel. Spite of my levity, with tears I confess it, she +was a lady of most confirmed honour, of an unmatchable spirit, and +determinate in all virtuous resolutions; not hasty to anticipate an +affront, nor slow to feel, where just provocation was given. + +LOVEL +What made you neglect her, then? + +WOODVIL +Mere levity and youthfulness of blood, a malady incident to young men, +physicians call it caprice. Nothing else. He, that slighted her, knew +her value: and 'tis odds, but, for thy sake, Margaret, John will yet go +to his grave a bachelor. (_A noise heard, as of one drunk and singing_.) + +LOVEL +Here comes one, that will quickly dissipate these humours. + +(_Enter one drunk_.) + +DRUNKEN MAN +Good-morrow to you, gentlemen. Mr. Lovel, I am your humble servant. +Honest Jack Woodvil, I will get drunk with you to-morrow. + +WOODVIL +And why to-morrow, honest Mr. Freeman? + +DRUNKEN MAN +I scent a traitor in that question. A beastly question. Is it not his +Majesty's birth-day? the day, of all days in the year, on which King +Charles the second was graciously pleased to be born. (_Sings_) "Great +pity 'tis such days as those should come but once a year." + +LOVEL +Drunk in a morning! foh! how he stinks! + +DRUNKEN MAN +And why not drunk in a morning? can'st tell, bully? + +WOODVIL +Because, being the sweet and tender infancy of the day, methinks, it +should ill endure such early blightings. + +DRUNKEN MAN +I grant you, 'tis in some sort the youth and tender nonage of the day. +Youth is bashful, and I give it a cup to encourage it. (_Sings_) "Ale +that will make Grimalkin prate."--At noon I drink for thirst, at night +for fellowship, but, above all, I love to usher in the bashful morning +under the auspices of a freshening stoop of liquor. (_Sings_) "Ale in a +Saxon rumkin then makes valour burgeon in tall men."--But, I crave +pardon. I fear I keep that gentleman from serious thoughts. There be +those that wait for me in the cellar. + +WOODVIL +Who are they? + +DRUNKEN MAN +Gentlemen, my good friends, Cleveland, Delaval, and Truby. I know by +this time they are all clamorous for me. (_Exit, singing._) + +WOODVIL +This keeping of open house acquaints a man with strange companions. + +(Enter, at another door, Three calling for Harry Freeman._) + + Harry Freeman, Harry Freeman. + He is not here. Let us go look for him. + Where is Freeman? + Where is Harry? + +(_Exeunt the Three, calling for Freeman._) + +WOODVIL +Did you ever see such gentry? (_laughing_). These are they that fatten +on ale and tobacco in a morning, drink burnt brandy at noon to promote +digestion, and piously conclude with quart bumpers after supper, to +prove their loyalty. + +LOVEL +Come, shall we adjourn to the Tennis Court? + +WOODVIL +No, you shall go with me into the gallery, where I will shew you the +_Vandyke_ I have purchased. "The late King taking leave of his +children." + +LOVEL +I will but adjust my dress, and attend you. (_Exit Lovel._) + + JOHN WOODVIL (_alone_) + Now Universal England getteth drunk + For joy that Charles, her monarch, is restored: + And she, that sometime wore a saintly mask, + The stale-grown vizor from her face doth pluck, + And weareth now a suit of morris bells, + With which she jingling goes through all her towns and villages. + The baffled factions in their houses sculk: + The common-wealthsman, and state machinist, + The cropt fanatic, and fifth-monarchy-man, + Who heareth of these visionaries now? + They and their dreams have ended. Fools do sing, + Where good men yield God thanks; but politic spirits, + Who live by observation, note these changes + Of the popular mind, and thereby serve their ends. + Then why not I? What's Charles to me, or Oliver, + But as my own advancement hangs on one of them? + I to myself am chief.--I know, + Some shallow mouths cry out, that I am smit + With the gauds and shew of state, the point of place, + And trick of precedence, the ducks, and nods, + Which weak minds pay to rank. 'Tis not to sit + In place of worship at the royal masques, + Their pastimes, plays, and Whitehall banquetings, + For none of these, + Nor yet to be seen whispering with some great one, + Do I affect the favours of the court. + I would be great, for greatness hath great _power_, + And that's the fruit I reach at.-- + Great spirits ask great play-room. Who could sit, + With these prophetic swellings in my breast, + That prick and goad me on, and never cease, + To the fortunes something tells me I was born to? + Who, with such monitors within to stir him, + Would sit him down, with lazy arms across, + A unit, a thing without a name in the state, + A something to be govern'd, not to govern, + A fishing, hawking, hunting, country gentleman? + (_Exit_.) + + + + +SCENE.--_Sherwood Forest_. + + +SIR WALTER WOODVIL. SIMON WOODVIL. +(_Disguised as Frenchmen_.) + + + SIR WALTER + How fares my boy, Simon, my youngest born, + My hope, my pride, young Woodvil, speak to me? + Some grief untold weighs heavy at thy heart: + I know it by thy alter'd cheer of late. + Thinkest, thy brother plays thy father false? + It is a mad and thriftless prodigal, + Grown proud upon the favours of the court; + Court manners, and court fashions, he affects, + And in the heat and uncheck'd blood of youth, + Harbours a company of riotous men, + All hot, and young, court-seekers, like himself, + Most skilful to devour a patrimony; + And these have eat into my old estates, + And these have drain'd thy father's cellars dry; + But these so common faults of youth not named, + (Things which themselves outgrow, left to themselves,) + I know no quality that stains his honor. + My life upon his faith and noble mind, + Son John could never play thy father false. + + SIMON + I never thought but nobly of my brother, + Touching his honor and fidelity. + Still I could wish him charier of his person, + And of his time more frugal, than to spend + In riotous living, graceless society, + And mirth unpalatable, hours better employ'd + (With those persuasive graces nature lent him) + In fervent pleadings for a father's life. + + SIR WALTER + I would not owe my life to a jealous court, + Whose shallow policy I know it is, + On some reluctant acts of prudent mercy, + (Not voluntary, but extorted by the times, + In the first tremblings of new-fixed power, + And recollection smarting from old wounds,) + On these to build a spurious popularity. + Unknowing what free grace or mercy mean, + They fear to punish, therefore do they pardon. + For this cause have I oft forbid my son, + By letters, overtures, open solicitings, + Or closet-tamperings, by gold or fee, + To beg or bargain with the court for my life. + + SIMON + And John has ta'en you, father, at your word, + True to the letter of his paternal charge. + + SIR WALTER + Well, my good cause, and my good conscience, boy, + Shall be for sons to me, if John prove false. + Men die but once, and the opportunity + Of a noble death is not an every-day fortune: + It is a gift which noble spirits pray for. + + SIMON + I would not wrong my brother by surmise; + I know him generous, full of gentle qualities, + Incapable of base compliances, + No prodigal in his nature, but affecting + This shew of bravery for ambitious ends. + He drinks, for 'tis the humour of the court, + And drink may one day wrest the secret from him, + And pluck you from your hiding place in the sequel. + + SIR WALTER + Fair death shall be my doom, and foul life his. + Till when, we'll live as free in this green forest + As yonder deer, who roam unfearing treason: + Who seem the Aborigines of this place, + Or Sherwood theirs by tenure. + + SIMON + 'Tis said, that Robert Earl of Huntingdon, + Men call'd him Robin Hood, an outlaw bold, + With a merry crew of hunters here did haunt, + Not sparing the king's venison. May one believe + The antique tale? + + SIR WALTER + + There is much likelihood, + Such bandits did in England erst abound, + When polity was young. I have read of the pranks + Of that mad archer, and of the tax he levied + On travellers, whatever their degree, + Baron, or knight, whoever pass'd these woods, + Layman, or priest, not sparing the bishop's mitre + For spiritual regards; nay, once, 'tis said, + He robb'd the king himself. + + SIMON + A perilous man. (_Smiling_.) + + SIR WALTER + How quietly we live here, + Unread in the world's business, + And take no note of all its slippery changes. + 'Twere best we make a world among ourselves, + A little world, + Without the ills and falsehoods of the greater: + We two being all the inhabitants of ours, + And kings and subjects both in one. + + SIMON + Only the dangerous errors, fond conceits, + Which make the business of that greater world, + Must have no place in ours: + As, namely, riches, honors, birth, place, courtesy, + Good fame and bad, rumours and popular noises, + Books, creeds, opinions, prejudices national, + Humours particular, + Soul-killing lies, and truths that work small good, + Feuds, factions, enmities, relationships, + Loves, hatreds, sympathies, antipathies, + And all the intricate stuff quarrels are made of. + + (_Margaret enters in boy's apparel_.) + + SIR WALTER + What pretty boy have we here? + + MARGARET + _Bon jour, messieurs_. Ye have handsome English faces, + I should have ta'en you else for other two, + I came to seek in the forest. + + SIR WALTER + Who are they? + + MARGARET + A gallant brace of Frenchmen, curled monsieurs, + That, men say, haunt these woods, affecting privacy, + More than the manner of their countrymen. + + SIMON + We have here a wonder. + The face is Margaret's face. + + SIR WALTER + The face is Margaret's, but the dress the same + My Stephen sometimes wore. + + (_To Margaret_) + + Suppose us them; whom do men say we are? + Or know you what you seek? + + MARGARET + A worthy pair of exiles, + Two whom the politics of state revenge, + In final issue of long civil broils, + Have houseless driven from your native France, + To wander idle in these English woods, + Where now ye live; most part + Thinking on home, and all the joys of France, + Where grows the purple vine. + + SIR WALTER + These woods, young stranger, + And grassy pastures, which the slim deer loves, + Are they less beauteous than the land of France, + Where grows the purple vine? + + MARGARET + I cannot tell. + To an indifferent eye both shew alike. + 'Tis not the scene, + But all familiar objects in the scene, + Which now ye miss, that constitute a difference. + Ye had a country, exiles, ye have none now; + Friends had ye, and much wealth, ye now have nothing; + Our manners, laws, our customs, all are foreign to you, + I know ye loathe them, cannot learn them readily; + And there is reason, exiles, ye should love + Our English earth less than your land of France, + Where grows the purple vine; where all delights grow, + Old custom has made pleasant. + + SIR WALTER + You, that are read + So deeply in our story, what are you? + + MARGARET + A bare adventurer; in brief a woman, + That put strange garments on, and came thus far + To seek an ancient friend: + And having spent her stock of idle words, + And feeling some tears coming, + Hastes now to clasp Sir Walter Woodvil's knees, + And beg a boon for Margaret, his poor ward. (_Kneeling_.) + + SIR WALTER + Not at my feet, Margaret, not at my feet. + + MARGARET + Yes, till her suit is answer'd. + + SIR WALTER + Name it. + + MARGARET + A little boon, and yet so great a grace, + She fears to ask it. + + SIR WALTER + Some riddle, Margaret? + + MARGARET + No riddle, but a plain request. + + SIR WALTER + Name it. + + MARGARET + Free liberty of Sherwood, + And leave to take her lot with you in the forest. + + SIR WALTER + A scant petition, Margaret, but take it, + Seal'd with an old man's tears.-- + Rise, daughter of Sir Rowland. + + (_Addresses them both._) + + O you most worthy, + You constant followers of a man proscribed, + Following poor misery in the throat of danger; + Fast servitors to craz'd and penniless poverty, + Serving poor poverty without hope of gain; + Kind children of a sire unfortunate; + Green clinging tendrils round a trunk decay'd, + Which needs must bring on you timeless decay; + Fair living forms to a dead carcase join'd;-- + What shall I say? + Better the dead were gather'd to the dead, + Than death and life in disproportion meet.-- + Go, seek your fortunes, children.-- + + SIMON + Why, whither should we go? + + SIR WALTER + _You_ to the Court, where now your brother John + Commits a rape on Fortune. + + SIMON + Luck to John! + A light-heel'd strumpet, when the sport is done. + + SIR WALTER + _You_ to the sweet society of your equals, + Where the world's fashion smiles on youth and beauty. + + MARGARET + Where young men's flatteries cozen young maids' beauty, + There pride oft gets the vantage hand of duty, + There sweet humility withers. + + SIMON + Mistress Margaret, + How fared my brother John, when you left Devon? + + MARGARET + John was well, Sir. + + SIMON + 'Tis now nine months almost, + Since I saw home. What new friends has John made? + Or keeps he his first love?--I did suspect + Some foul disloyalty. Now do I know, + John has prov'd false to her, for Margaret weeps. + It is a scurvy brother. + + SIR WALTER + Fie upon it. + All men are false, I think. The date of love + Is out, expired, its stories all grown stale, + O'erpast, forgotten, like an antique tale + Of Hero and Leander. + + +SIMON +I have known some men that are too general-contemplative for the narrow +passion. I am in some sort a _general_ lover. + +MARGARET +In the name of the boy God, who plays at hood-man-blind with the Muses, +and cares not whom he catches: what is it _you_ love? + + + SIMON + Simply, all things that live, + From the crook'd worm to man's imperial form, + And God-resembling likeness. The poor fly, + That makes short holyday in the sun beam, + And dies by some child's hand. The feeble bird + With little wings, yet greatly venturous + In the upper sky. The fish in th' other element, + That knows no touch of eloquence. What else? + Yon tall and elegant stag, + Who paints a dancing shadow of his horns + In the water, where he drinks. + + MARGARET + I myself love all these things, yet so as with a difference:-- + for example, some animals better than others, some men + rather than other men; the nightingale before the cuckoo, the + swift and graceful palfrey before the slow and asinine mule. + Your humour goes to confound all qualities. + What sports do you use in the forest?-- + + SIMON + Not many; some few, as thus:-- + To see the sun to bed, and to arise, + Like some hot amourist with glowing eyes, + Bursting the lazy bands of sleep that bound him, + With all his fires and travelling glories round him. + Sometimes the moon on soft night clouds to rest, + Like beauty nestling in a young man's breast, + And all the winking stars, her handmaids, keep + Admiring silence, while those lovers sleep. + Sometimes outstretcht, in very idleness, + Nought doing, saying little, thinking less, + To view the leaves, thin dancers upon air, + Go eddying round; and small birds, how they fare, + When mother Autumn fills their beaks with corn, + Filch'd from the careless Amalthea's horn; + And how the woods berries and worms provide + Without their pains, when earth has nought beside + To answer their small wants. + To view the graceful deer come tripping by, + Then stop, and gaze, then turn, they know not why, + Like bashful younkers in society. + To mark the structure of a plant or tree, + And all fair things of earth, how fair they be. + + MARGARET (_smiling_) + And, afterwards them paint in simile. + + SIR WALTER + Mistress Margaret will have need of some refreshment. + Please you, we have some poor viands within. + + MARGARET + Indeed I stand in need of them. + + SIR WALTER + Under the shade of a thick-spreading tree, + Upon the grass, no better carpeting, + We'll eat our noon-tide meal; and, dinner done, + One of us shall repair to Nottingham, + To seek some safe night-lodging in the town, + Where you may sleep, while here with us you dwell, + By day, in the forest, expecting better times, + And gentler habitations, noble Margaret. + + SIMON + _Allons_, young Frenchman-- + + MARGARET + _Allons_, Sir Englishman. The time has been, + I've studied love-lays in the English tongue, + And been enamour'd of rare poesy: + Which now I must unlearn. Henceforth, + Sweet mother-tongue, old English speech, adieu; + For Margaret has got new name and language new. + + (_Exeunt._) + + + +ACT THE THIRD + + +SCENE.--_An Apartment of State in Woodvil Hall--Cavaliers drinking._ + + +JOHN WOODVIL, LOVEL, GRAY, _and four more._ + + +JOHN +More mirth, I beseech you, gentlemen--Mr. Gray, you are not merry.-- + +GRAY +More wine, say I, and mirth shall ensue in course. What! we have not yet +above three half-pints a man to answer for. Brevity is the soul of +drinking, as of wit. Despatch, I say. More wine. (_Fills._) + +FIRST GENTLEMAN +I entreat you, let there be some order, some method, in our drinkings. I +love to lose my reason with my eyes open, to commit the deed of +drunkenness with forethought and deliberation. I love to feel the fumes +of the liquor gathering here, like clouds. + +SECOND GENTLEMAN +And I am for plunging into madness at once. Damn order, and method, and +steps, and degrees, that he speaks of. Let confusion have her legitimate +work. + +LOVEL +I marvel why the poets, who, of all men, methinks, should possess the +hottest livers, and most empyreal fancies, should affect to see such +virtues in cold water. + +GRAY +Virtue in cold water! ha! ha! ha!-- + +JOHN +Because your poet-born hath an internal wine, richer than lippara or +canaries, yet uncrushed from any grapes of earth, unpressed in mortal +wine-presses. + +THIRD GENTLEMAN +What may be the name of this wine? + +JOHN +It hath as many names as qualities. It is denominated indifferently, +wit, conceit, invention, inspiration, but its most royal and +comprehensive name is _fancy_. + +THIRD GENTLEMAN +And where keeps he this sovereign liquor? + +JOHN +Its cellars are in the brain, whence your true poet deriveth +intoxication at will; while his animal spirits, catching a pride from +the quality and neighbourhood of their noble relative, the brain, refuse +to be sustained by wines and fermentations of earth. + +THIRD GENTLEMAN +But is your poet-born alway tipsy with this liquor? + +JOHN +He hath his stoopings and reposes; but his proper element is the sky, +and in the suburbs of the empyrean. + +THIRD GENTLEMAN +Is your wine-intellectual so exquisite? henceforth, I, a man of plain +conceit, will, in all humility, content my mind with canaries. + +FOURTH GENTLEMAN +I am for a song or a catch. When will the catches come on, the sweet +wicked catches? + +JOHN +They cannot be introduced with propriety before midnight. Every man must +commit his twenty bumpers first. We are not yet well roused. Frank +Lovel, the glass stands with you. + +LOVEL +Gentlemen, the Duke. (_Fills_.) + +ALL +The Duke. (_They drink_.) + +GRAY +Can any tell, why his Grace, being a Papist-- + +JOHN +Pshaw! we will have no questions of state now. Is not this his Majesty's +birth-day? + +GRAY +What follows? + +JOHN +That every man should sing, and be joyful, and ask no questions. + +SECOND GENTLEMAN +Damn politics, they spoil drinking. + +THIRD GENTLEMAN +For certain,'tis a blessed monarchy. + +SECOND GENTLEMAN +The cursed fanatic days we have seen! The times have been when swearing +was out of fashion. + +THIRD GENTLEMAN +And drinking. + +FIRST GENTLEMAN +And wenching. + +GRAY +The cursed yeas and forsooths, which we have heard uttered, when a man +could not rap out an innocent oath, but strait the air was thought to be +infected. + + +LOVEL +'Twas a pleasant trick of the saint, which that trim puritan +_Swear-not-at-all Smooth-speech_ used, when his spouse chid him with an +oath for committing with his servant-maid, to cause his house to be +fumigated with burnt brandy, and ends of scripture, to disperse the +devil's breath, as he termed it. + +ALL +Ha! ha! ha! + +GRAY +But 'twas pleasanter, when the other saint _Resist-the-devil- +and-he-will-flee-from-thee Pure-man_ was overtaken in the act, to plead +an illusio visus, and maintain his sanctity upon a supposed power in the +adversary to counterfeit the shapes of things. + +ALL +Ha! ha! ha! + +JOHN +Another round, and then let every man devise what trick he can in his +fancy, for the better manifesting our loyalty this day. + +GRAY +Shall we hang a puritan? + +JOHN +No, that has been done already in Coleman-Street. + +SECOND GENTLEMAN +Or fire a conventicle? + +JOHN +That is stale too. + +THIRD GENTLEMAN +Or burn the assembly's catechism? + +FOURTH GENTLEMAN +Or drink the king's health, every man standing upon his head naked? + +JOHN (_to Lovel_) +We have here some pleasant madness. + +THIRD GENTLEMAN +Who shall pledge me in a pint bumper, while we drink to the king upon +our knees? + +LOVEL +Why on our knees, Cavalier? + +JOHN (_smiling_) +For more devotion, to be sure. (_To a servant_.) Sirrah, fetch the gilt +goblets. + +(_The goblets are brought. They drink the king's health, kneeling. A +shout of general approbation following the first appearance of the +goblets_.) + +JOHN +We have here the unchecked virtues of the grape. How the vapours curl +upwards! It were a life of gods to dwell in such an element: to see, +and hear, and talk brave things. Now fie upon these casual potations. +That a man's most exalted reason should depend upon the ignoble +fermenting of a fruit, which sparrows pluck at as well as we! + +GRAY (_aside to Lovel_) +Observe how he is ravished. + +LOVEL +Vanity and gay thoughts of wine do meet in him and engender madness. + +(_While the rest are engaged in a wild kind of talk, John advances to +the front of the stage and soliloquises_.) + + JOHN + My spirits turn to fire, they mount so fast. + My joys are turbulent, my hopes shew like fruition. + These high and gusty relishes of life, sure, + Have no allayings of mortality in them. + I am too hot now and o'ercapable, + For the tedious processes, and creeping wisdom, + Of human acts, and enterprizes of a man. + I want some seasonings of adversity, + Some strokes of the old mortifier Calamity, + To take these swellings down, divines call vanity. + +FIRST GENTLEMAN +Mr. Woodvil, Mr. Woodvil. + +SECOND GENTLEMAN +Where is Woodvil? + +GRAY +Let him alone. I have seen him in these lunes before. His abstractions +must not taint the good mirth. + + JOHN (_continuing to soliloquize_) + O for some friend now, + To conceal nothing from, to have no secrets. + How fine and noble a thing is confidence, + How reasonable too, and almost godlike! + Fast cement of fast friends, band of society, + Old natural go-between in the world's business, + Where civil life and order, wanting this cement, + Would presently rush back + Into the pristine state of singularity, + And each man stand alone. + +(_A Servant enters._) +Gentlemen, the fire-works are ready. + +FIRST GENTLEMAN +What be they? + +LOVEL +The work of London artists, which our host has provided in honour of +this day. + +SECOND GENTLEMAN +'Sdeath, who would part with his wine for a rocket? + +LOVEL +Why truly, gentlemen, as our kind host has been at the pains to provide +this spectacle, we can do no less than be present at it. It will not +take up much time. Every man may return fresh and thirsting to his +liquor. + +THIRD GENTLEMAN +There is reason in what he says. + +SECOND GENTLEMAN +Charge on then, bottle in hand. There's husbandry in that. + +(_They go out, singing. Only Level remains, who observes Woodvil_.) + + JOHN (_still talking to himself_) + This Lovel here's of a tough honesty, + Would put the rack to the proof. He is not of that sort, + Which haunt my house, snorting the liquors, + And when their wisdoms are afloat with wine, + Spend vows as fast as vapours, which go off + Even with the fumes, their fathers. He is one, + Whose sober morning actions + Shame not his o'ernight's promises; + Talks little, flatters less, and makes no promises; + Why this is he, whom the dark-wisdom'd fate + Might trust her counsels of predestination with, + And the world be no loser. + Why should I fear this man? + (_Seeing Lovel_.) + Where is the company gone? + +LOVEL +To see the fire-works, where you will be expected to follow. But I +perceive you are better engaged. + + JOHN + I have been meditating this half-hour + On all the properties of a brave friendship, + The mysteries that are in it, the noble uses, + Its limits withal, and its nice boundaries. + _Exempli gratia_, how far a man + May lawfully forswear himself for his friend; + What quantity of lies, some of them brave ones, + He may lawfully incur in a friend's behalf; + What oaths, blood-crimes, hereditary quarrels, + Night brawls, fierce words, and duels in the morning, + He need not stick at, to maintain his friend's honor, or his cause. + + LOVEL + I think many men would die for their friends. + + JOHN + Death! why 'tis nothing. We go to it for sport, + To gain a name, or purse, or please a sullen humour, + When one has worn his fortune's livery threadbare, + Or his spleen'd mistress frowns. Husbands will venture on it, + To cure the hot fits and cold shakings of jealousy. + A friend, sir, must do more. + + LOVEL + Can he do more than die? + + JOHN + To serve a friend this he may do. Pray mark me. + Having a law within (great spirits feel one) + He cannot, ought not to be bound by any + Positive laws or ord'nances extern, + But may reject all these: by the law of friendship + He may do so much, be they, indifferently, + Penn'd statutes, or the land's unwritten usages, + As public fame, civil compliances, + Misnamed honor, trust in matter of secrets, + All vows and promises, the feeble mind's religion, + (Binding our morning knowledge to approve + What last night's ignorance spake); + The ties of blood withal, and prejudice of kin. + Sir, these weak terrors + Must never shake me. I know what belongs + To a worthy friendship. Come, you shall have my confidence. + + LOVEL + I hope you think me worthy. + + JOHN + You will smile to hear now-- + Sir Walter never has been out of the island. + + LOVEL + You amaze me. + + JOHN + That same report of his escape to France + Was a fine tale, forg'd by myself--Ha! ha! + I knew it would stagger him. + + LOVEL + Pray, give me leave. + Where has he dwelt, how liv'd, how lain conceal'd? + Sure I may ask so much. + + JOHN + From place to place, dwelling in no place long, + My brother Simon still hath borne him company, + ('Tis a brave youth, I envy him all his virtues.) + Disguis'd in foreign garb, they pass for Frenchmen, + Two Protestant exiles from the Limosin + Newly arriv'd. Their dwelling's now at Nottingham, + Where no soul knows them. + + +LOVEL +Can you assign any reason, why a gentleman of Sir Walter's known +prudence should expose his person so lightly? + + + JOHN + I believe, a certain fondness, + A child-like cleaving to the land that gave him birth, + Chains him like fate. + + LOVEL + I have known some exiles thus + To linger out the term of the law's indulgence, + To the hazard of being known. + + JOHN + You may suppose sometimes + They use the neighb'ring Sherwood for their sport, + Their exercise and freer recreation.-- + I see you smile. Pray now, be careful. + + LOVEL + I am no babbler, sir; you need not fear me. + + JOHN + But some men have been known to talk in their sleep, + And tell fine tales that way. + + LOVEL + I have heard so much. But, to say truth, I mostly sleep alone. + + JOHN + Or drink, sir? do you never drink too freely? + Some men will drink, and tell you all their secrets. + + LOVEL + Why do you question me, who know my habits? + + JOHN + I think you are no sot, + No tavern-troubler, worshipper of the grape; + But all men drink sometimes, + And veriest saints at festivals relax, + The marriage of a friend, or a wife's birth-day. + + LOVEL + How much, sir, may a man with safety drink? (_Smiling_.) + + JOHN + Sir, three half pints a day is reasonable; + I care not if you never exceed that quantity. + + LOVEL + I shall observe it; + On holidays two quarts. + + JOHN + Or stay; you keep no wench? + + LOVEL + Ha! + + JOHN + No painted mistress for your private hours? + You keep no whore, sir? + + LOVEL + What does he mean? + + JOHN + Who for a close embrace, a toy of sin, + And amorous praising of your worship's breath, + In rosy junction of four melting lips, + Can kiss out secrets from you? + + LOVEL + How strange this passionate behaviour shews in you! + Sure you think me some weak one. + + JOHN + Pray pardon me some fears. + You have now the pledge of a dear father's life. + I am a son--would fain be thought a loving one; + You may allow me some fears: do not despise me, + If, in a posture foreign to my spirit, + And by our well-knit friendship I conjure you, + Touch not Sir Walter's life. (_Kneels_.) + You see these tears. My father's an old man. + Pray let him live. + + LOVEL + I must be bold to tell you, these new freedoms + Shew most unhandsome in you. + + JOHN (_rising_) + Ha! do you say so? + Sure, you are not grown proud upon my secret! + Ah! now I see it plain. He would be babbling. + No doubt a garrulous and hard-fac'd traitor-- + But I'll not give you leave. (_Draws_.) + + LOVEL + What does this madman mean? + + JOHN + Come, sir; here is no subterfuge. + You must kill me, or I kill you. + + LOVEL (_drawing_) + Then self-defence plead my excuse. + Have at you, sir. (_They fight_.) + + JOHN + Stay, sir. + I hope you have made your will. + If not, 'tis no great matter. + A broken cavalier has seldom much + He can bequeath: an old worn peruke, + A snuff-box with a picture of Prince Rupert, + A rusty sword he'll swear was used at Naseby, + Though it ne'er came within ten miles of the place; + And, if he's very rich, + A cheap edition of the _Icon Basilike_, + Is mostly all the wealth he dies possest of. + You say few prayers, I fancy;-- + So to it again. (_They fight again. Lovel is disarmed_.) + + LOVEL + You had best now take my life. I guess you mean it. + + JOHN (_musing_) + No:--Men will say I fear'd him, if I kill'd him. + Live still, and be a traitor in thy wish, + But never act thy thought, being a coward. + That vengeance, which thy soul shall nightly thirst for, + And this disgrace I've done you cry aloud for, + Still have the will without the power to execute. + So now I leave you, + Feeling a sweet security. No doubt + My secret shall remain a virgin for you!-- + (_Goes out, smiling in scorn_.) + + LOVEL (_rising_) + For once you are mistaken in your man. + The deed you wot of shall forthwith be done. + A bird let loose, a secret out of hand, + Returns not back. Why, then 'tis baby policy + To menace him who hath it in his keeping. + I will go look for Gray; + Then, northward ho! such tricks as we shall play + Have not been seen, I think, in merry Sherwood, + Since the days of Robin Hood, that archer good. + + + + +ACT THE FOURTH + + +SCENE.--_An Apartment in Woodvil Hall_. + + + JOHN WOODVIL (_alone_) + A weight of wine lies heavy on my head, + The unconcocted follies of last night. + Now all those jovial fancies, and bright hopes, + Children of wine, go off like dreams. + This sick vertigo here + Preacheth of temperance, no sermon better. + These black thoughts, and dull melancholy, + That stick like burrs to the brain, will they ne'er leave me? + Some men are full of choler, when they are drunk; + Some brawl of matter foreign to themselves; + And some, the most resolved fools of all, + Have told their dearest secrets in their cups. + + + + +SCENE.--_The Forest_. + + +SIR WALTER. SIMON. LOVEL. GRAY. + + +LOVEL +Sir, we are sorry we cannot return your French salutation. + +GRAY +Nor otherwise consider this garb you trust to than as a poor disguise. + +LOVEL +Nor use much ceremony with a traitor. + +GRAY +Therefore, without much induction of superfluous words, I attach you, +Sir Walter Woodvil, of High Treason, in the King's name. + +LOVEL +And of taking part in the great Rebellion against our late lawful +Sovereign, Charles the First. + +SIMON +John has betrayed us, father. + +LOVEL +Come, Sir, you had best surrender fairly. We know you, Sir. + +SIMON +Hang ye, villains, ye are two better known than trusted. I have seen +those faces before. Are ye not two beggarly retainers, +trencher-parasites, to John? I think ye rank above his footmen. A sort +of bed and board worms--locusts that infest our house; a leprosy that +long has hung upon its walls and princely apartments, reaching to fill +all the corners of my brother's once noble heart. + +GRAY +We are his friends. + +SIMON +Fie, Sir, do not weep. How these rogues will triumph! Shall I whip off +their heads, father? (_Draws_.) + +LOVEL +Come, Sir, though this shew handsome in you, being his son, yet the law +must have its course. + +SIMON +And if I tell you the law shall not have its course, cannot ye be +content? Courage, father; shall such things as these apprehend a man? +Which of ye will venture upon me?--Will you, Mr. Constable self-elect? +or you, Sir, with a pimple on your nose, got at Oxford by hard drinking, +your only badge of loyalty? + +GRAY +'Tis a brave youth--I cannot strike at him. + +SIMON +Father, why do you cover your face with your hands? Why do you fetch +your breath so hard? See, villains, his heart is burst! O villains, he +cannot speak. One of you run for some water: quickly, ye knaves; will ye +have your throats cut? (_They both slink off_.) How is it with you, Sir +Walter? Look up, Sir, the villains are gone. He hears me not, and this +deep disgrace of treachery in his son hath touched him even to the +death. O most distuned, and distempered world, where sons talk their +aged fathers into their graves! Garrulous and diseased world, and still +empty, rotten and hollow _talking_ world, where good men decay, states +turn round in an endless mutability, and still for the worse, nothing is +at a stay, nothing abides but vanity, chaotic vanity.--Brother, adieu! + + There lies the parent stock which gave us life, + Which I will see consign'd with tears to earth. + Leave thou the solemn funeral rites to me, + Grief and a true remorse abide with thee. + +(_Bears in the body_.) + + + + +SCENE.--_Another Part of the Forest_. + + + MARGARET (_alone_) + It was an error merely, and no crime, + An unsuspecting openness in youth, + That from his lips the fatal secret drew, + Which should have slept like one of nature's mysteries, + Unveil'd by any man. + Well, he is dead! + And what should Margaret do in the forest? + O ill-starr'd John! + O Woodvil, man enfeoffed to despair! + Take thy farewell of peace. + O never look again to see good days, + Or close thy lids in comfortable nights, + Or ever think a happy thought again, + If what I have heard be true.-- + Forsaken of the world must Woodvil live, + If he did tell these men. + No tongue must speak to him, no tongue of man + Salute him, when he wakes up in a morning; + Or bid "good-night" to John. Who seeks to live + In amity with thee, must for thy sake + Abide the world's reproach. What then? + Shall Margaret join the clamours of the world + Against her friend? O undiscerning world, + That cannot from misfortune separate guilt, + No, not in thought! O never, never, John. + Prepar'd to share the fortunes of her friend + _For better or for worse_ thy Margaret comes, + To pour into thy wounds a healing love, + And wake the memory of an ancient friendship. + And pardon me, thou spirit of Sir Walter, + Who, in compassion to the wretched living, + Have but few tears to waste upon the dead. + + + + + +SCENE.--_Woodvil Hall_. + + +SANDFORD. MARGARET. + + +(_As from a Journey_.) + + +SANDFORD +The violence of the sudden mischance hath so wrought in him, who by +nature is allied to nothing less than a self-debasing humour of +dejection, that I have never seen any thing more changed and +spirit-broken. He hath, with a peremptory resolution, dismissed the +partners of his riots and late hours, denied his house and person to +their most earnest solicitings, and will be seen by none. He keeps ever +alone, and his grief (which is solitary) does not so much seem to +possess and govern in him, as it is by him, with a wilfulness of most +manifest affection, entertained and cherished. + +MARGARET +How bears he up against the common rumour? + +SANDFORD +With a strange indifference, which whosoever dives not into the niceness +of his sorrow might mistake for obdurate and insensate. Yet are the +wings of his pride for ever clipt; and yet a virtuous predominance of +filial grief is so ever uppermost, that you may discover his thoughts +less troubled with conjecturing what living opinions will say, and judge +of his deeds, than absorbed and buried with the dead, whom his +indiscretion made so. + +MARGARET +I knew a greatness ever to be resident in him, to which the admiring +eyes of men should look up even in the declining and bankrupt state of +his pride. Fain would I see him, fain talk with him; but that a sense of +respect, which is violated, when without deliberation we press into the +society of the unhappy, checks and holds me back. How, think you, he +would bear my presence? + +SANDFORD +As of an assured friend, whom in the forgetfulness of his fortunes he +past by. See him you must; but not to-night. The newness of the sight +shall move the bitterest compunction and the truest remorse; but +afterwards, trust me, dear lady, the happiest effects of a returning +peace, and a gracious comfort, to him, to you, and all of us. + +MARGARET +I think he would not deny me. He hath ere this received farewell letters +from his brother, who hath taken a resolution to estrange himself, for a +time, from country, friends, and kindred, and to seek occupation for his +sad thoughts in travelling in foreign places, where sights remote and +extern to himself may draw from him kindly and not painful ruminations. + +SANDFORD +I was present at the receipt of the letter. The contents seemed to +affect him, for a moment, with a more lively passion of grief than he +has at any time outwardly shewn. He wept with many tears (which I had +not before noted in him) and appeared to be touched with a sense as of +some unkindness; but the cause of their sad separation and divorce +quickly recurring, he presently returned to his former inwardness of +suffering. + +MARGARET +The reproach of his brother's presence at this hour should have been a +weight more than could be sustained by his already oppressed and sinking +spirit.--Meditating upon these intricate and wide-spread sorrows, hath +brought a heaviness upon me, as of sleep. How goes the night? + +SANDFORD +An hour past sun-set. You shall first refresh your limbs (tired with +travel) with meats and some cordial wine, and then betake your no less +wearied mind to repose. + +MARGARET +A good rest to us all. + +SANDFORD +Thanks, lady. + + + + +ACT THE FIFTH + + +JOHN WOODVIL (_dressing_). + + + JOHN + How beautiful, (_handling his mourning_) + And comely do these mourning garments shew! + Sure Grief hath set his sacred impress here, + To claim the world's respect! they note so feelingly + By outward types the serious man within.-- + Alas! what part or portion can I claim + In all the decencies of virtuous sorrow, + Which other mourners use? as namely, + This black attire, abstraction from society, + Good thoughts, and frequent sighs, and seldom smiles, + A cleaving sadness native to the brow, + All sweet condolements of like-grieved friends, + (That steal away the sense of loss almost) + Men's pity, and good offices + Which enemies themselves do for us then, + Putting their hostile disposition off, + As we put off our high thoughts and proud looks. + (_Pauses, and observes the pictures_.) + These pictures must be taken down: + The portraitures of our most antient family + For nigh three hundred years! How have I listen'd, + To hear Sir Walter, with an old man's pride, + Holding me in his arms, a prating boy, + And pointing to the pictures where they hung, + Repeat by course their worthy histories, + (As Hugh de Widville, Walter, first of the name, + And Ann the handsome, Stephen, and famous John: + Telling me, I must be his famous John.) + But that was in old times. + Now, no more + Must I grow proud upon our house's pride. + I rather, I, by most unheard of crimes, + Have backward tainted all their noble blood, + Rased out the memory of an ancient family, + And quite revers'd the honors of our house. + Who now shall sit and tell us anecdotes? + The secret history of his own times, + And fashions of the world when he was young: + How England slept out three and twenty years, + While Carr and Villiers rul'd the baby king: + The costly fancies of the pedant's reign, + Balls, feastings, huntings, shows in allegory, + And Beauties of the court of James the First. + + _Margaret enters._ + + JOHN + Comes Margaret here to witness my disgrace? + O, lady, I have suffer'd loss, + And diminution of my honor's brightness. + You bring some images of old times, Margaret, + That should be now forgotten. + + MARGARET + Old times should never be forgotten, John. + I came to talk about them with my friend. + + JOHN + I did refuse you, Margaret, in my pride. + + MARGARET + If John rejected Margaret in his pride, + (As who does not, being splenetic, refuse + Sometimes old play-fellows,) the spleen being gone, + The offence no longer lives. + O Woodvil, those were happy days, + When we two first began to love. When first, + Under pretence of visiting my father, + (Being then a stripling nigh upon my age) + You came a wooing to his daughter, John. + Do you remember, + With what a coy reserve and seldom speech, + (Young maidens must be chary of their speech,) + I kept the honors of my maiden pride? + I was your favourite then. + + JOHN + O Margaret, Margaret! + These your submissions to my low estate, + And cleavings to the fates of sunken Woodvil, + Write bitter things 'gainst my unworthiness. + Thou perfect pattern of thy slander'd sex, + Whom miseries of mine could never alienate, + Nor change of fortune shake; whom injuries, + And slights (the worst of injuries) which moved + Thy nature to return scorn with like scorn, + Then when you left in virtuous pride this house, + Could not so separate, but now in this + My day of shame, when all the world forsake me, + You only visit me, love, and forgive me. + + MARGARET + Dost yet remember the green arbour, John, + In the south gardens of my father's house, + Where we have seen the summer sun go down, + Exchanging true love's vows without restraint? + And that old wood, you call'd your wilderness, + And vow'd in sport to build a chapel in it, + There dwell + + "Like hermit poor + In pensive place obscure," + + And tell your Ave Maries by the curls + (Dropping like golden beads) of Margaret's hair; + And make confession seven times a day + Of every thought that stray'd from love and Margaret; + And I your saint the penance should appoint-- + Believe me, sir, I will not now be laid + Aside, like an old fashion. + + JOHN + O lady, poor and abject are my thoughts, + My pride is cured, my hopes are under clouds, + I have no part in any good man's love, + In all earth's pleasures portion have I none, + I fade and wither in my own esteem, + This earth holds not alive so poor a thing as I am. + I was not always thus. (_Weeps_.) + + MARGARET + Thou noble nature, + Which lion-like didst awe the inferior creatures, + Now trampled on by beasts of basest quality, + My dear heart's lord, life's pride, soul-honor'd John, + Upon her knees (regard her poor request) + Your favourite, once-beloved Margaret, kneels. + + JOHN + What would'st thou, lady, ever-honor'd Margaret? + + MARGARET + That John would think more nobly of himself, + More worthily of high heaven; + And not for one misfortune, child of chance, + No crime, but unforeseen, and sent to punish + The less offence with image of the greater, + Thereby to work the soul's humility, + (Which end hath happily not been frustrate quite,) + O not for one offence mistrust heaven's mercy, + Nor quit thy hope of happy days to come-- + John yet has many happy days to live; + To live and make atonement. + + JOHN + Excellent lady, + Whose suit hath drawn this softness from my eyes, + Not the world's scorn, nor falling off of friends + Could ever do. Will you go with me, Margaret? + + MARGARET (_rising_) + Go whither, John? + + JOHN + Go in with me, + And pray for the peace of our unquiet minds? + + MARGARET + That I will, John.-- + (_Exeunt_.) + + + + +SCENE.--_An inner Apartment_. + + +(_John is discovered kneeling.--Margaret standing over him_.) + + + JOHN (_rises_) + I cannot bear + To see you waste that youth and excellent beauty, + ('Tis now the golden time of the day with you,) + In tending such a broken wretch as I am. + + MARGARET + John will break Margaret's heart, if he speak so. + O sir, sir, sir, you are too melancholy, + And I must call it caprice. I am somewhat bold + Perhaps in this. But you are now my patient, + (You know you gave me leave to call you so,) + And I must chide these pestilent humours from you. + + JOHN + They are gone.-- + Mark, love, how cheerfully I speak! + I can smile too, and I almost begin + To understand what kind of creature Hope is. + + MARGARET + Now this is better, this mirth becomes you, John. + + JOHN + Yet tell me, if I over-act my mirth. + (Being but a novice, I may fall into that error,) + That were a sad indecency, you know. + + MARGARET + Nay, never fear. + I will be mistress of your humours, + And you shall frown or smile by the book. + And herein I shall be most peremptory, + Cry, "this shews well, but that inclines to levity, + This frown has too much of the Woodvil in it, + But that fine sunshine has redeem'd it quite." + + JOHN + How sweetly Margaret robs me of myself! + + MARGARET + To give you in your stead a better self! + Such as you were, when these eyes first beheld + You mounted on your sprightly steed, White Margery, + Sir Rowland my father's gift, + And all my maidens gave my heart for lost. + I was a young thing then, being newly come + Home from my convent education, where + Seven years I had wasted in the bosom of France: + Returning home true protestant, you call'd me + Your little heretic nun. How timid-bashful + Did John salute his love, being newly seen. + Sir Rowland term'd it a rare modesty, + And prais'd it in a youth. + + + JOHN + Now Margaret weeps herself. + (_A noise of bells heard_.) + + MARGARET + Hark the bells, John. + + JOHN + Those are the church bells of St. Mary Ottery. + + MARGARET + I know it. + + JOHN + Saint Mary Ottery, my native village + In the sweet shire of Devon. + Those are the bells. + +MARGARET +Wilt go to church, John? + +JOHN +I have been there already. + +MARGARET +How canst say thou hast been there already? The bells are only now +ringing for morning service, and hast thou been at church already? + + JOHN + I left my bed betimes, I could not sleep, + And when I rose, I look'd (as my custom is) + From my chamber window, where I can see the sun rise; + And the first object I discern'd + Was the glistering spire of St. Mary Ottery. + + MARGARET + Well, John. + + JOHN + Then I remember'd 'twas the sabbath-day. + Immediately a wish arose in my mind, + To go to church and pray with Christian people. + + And then I check'd myself, and said to myself, + "Thou hast been a heathen, John, these two years past, + (Not having been at church in all that time,) + And is it fit, that now for the first time + Thou should'st offend the eyes of Christian people + With a murderer's presence in the house of prayer? + Thou would'st but discompose their pious thoughts, + And do thyself no good: for how could'st thou pray, + With unwash'd hands, and lips unus'd to the offices?" + And then I at my own presumption smiled; + And then I wept that I should smile at all, + Having such cause of grief! I wept outright; + Tears like a river flooded all my face, + And I began to pray, and found I could pray; + And still I yearn'd to say my prayers in the church. + "Doubtless (said I) one might find comfort in it." + So stealing down the stairs, like one that fear'd detection, + Or was about to act unlawful business + At that dead time of dawn, + I flew to the church, and found the doors wide open, + (Whether by negligence I knew not, + Or some peculiar grace to me vouchsaf'd, + For all things felt like mystery). + + MARGARET + Yes. + + JOHN + So entering in, not without fear, + I past into the family pew, + And covering up my eyes for shame, + And deep perception of unworthiness, + Upon the little hassock knelt me down, + Where I so oft had kneel'd, + A docile infant by Sir Walter's side; + And, thinking so, I wept a second flood + More poignant than the first; + But afterwards was greatly comforted. + It seem'd, the guilt of blood was passing from me + Even in the act and agony of tears, + And all my sins forgiven. + + + + + + * * * * * + + + + THE WITCH + + A DRAMATIC SKETCH OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY (1798) + + + + * * * * * + + + CHARACTERS + +_Old Servant in the Family of Sir Francis Pairford. Stranger._ + + + * * * * * + + + + + SERVANT + One summer night Sir Francis, as it chanced, + Was pacing to and fro in the avenue + That westward fronts our house, + Among those aged oaks, said to have been planted + Three hundred years ago + By a neighb'ring prior of the Fairford name. + Being o'er-task'd in thought, he heeded not + The importunate suit of one who stood by the gate, + And begged an alms. + Some say he shoved her rudely from the gate + With angry chiding; but I can never think + (Our master's nature hath a sweetness in it) + That he could use a woman, an old woman, + With such discourtesy: but he refused her-- + And better had he met a lion in his path + Than that old woman that night; + For she was one who practised the black arts, + And served the devil, being since burnt for witchcraft. + She looked at him as one that meant to blast him, + And with a frightful noise, + ('Twas partly like a woman's voice, + And partly like the hissing of a snake,) + She nothing said but this:-- + (Sir Francis told the words) + + _A mischief, mischief, mischief, + And a nine-times-killing curse, + By day and by night, to the caitiff wight, + Who shakes the poor like snakes from his door, + And shuts up the womb of his purse_. + + And still she cried + + _A mischief, + And a nine-fold-withering curse: + For that shall come to thee that will undo thee, + Both all that thou fearest and worse_. + + So saying, she departed, + Leaving Sir Francis like a man, beneath + Whose feet a scaffolding was suddenly falling; + So he described it. + + STRANGER + A terrible curse! What followed? + + SERVANT + Nothing immediate, but some two months after + Young Philip Fairford suddenly fell sick, + And none could tell what ailed him; for he lay, + And pined, and pined, till all his hair fell off, + And he, that was full-fleshed, became as thin + As a two-months' babe that has been starved in the nursing. + And sure I think + He bore his death-wound like a little child; + With such rare sweetness of dumb melancholy + He strove to clothe his agony in smiles, + Which he would force up in his poor pale cheeks, + Like ill-timed guests that had no proper dwelling there; + And, when they asked him his complaint, he laid + His hand upon his heart to shew the place, + Where Susan came to him a-nights, he said, + And prick'd him with a pin.-- + And thereupon Sir Francis called to mind + The beggar-witch that stood by the gateway + And begged an alms. + + STRANGER + But did the witch confess? + + SERVANT + All this and more at her death. + + STRANGER + I do not love to credit tales of magic. + Heaven's music, which is Order, seems unstrung, + And this brave world + (The mystery of God) unbeautified, + Disorder'd, marr'd, where such strange things are acted. + + + + + * * * * * + + + + + Mr. H---- + + A FARCE IN TWO ACTS + +As it was performed at Drury Lane Theatre, _December, 1806_ + + +"Mr. H----, thou wert DAMNED. 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 +DAMNED! Hadst thou been anonymous, thou haply mightst have lived. But +thou didst come to an untimely end for thy tricks, and for want of a +better name to pass them off----." + +--_Theatrical Examiner._ + + + + * * * * * + + + CHARACTERS + + Mr. H---- _Mr. Elliston_. + BELVIL _Mr. Bartley_. + LANDLORD PRY _Mr. Wewitzer_. + MELESINDA _Miss Mellon_. + Maid to Melesinda. _Mrs. Harlowe_. + Gentlemen, Ladies, Waiters, Servants, &c. + + +SCENE.--_Bath_ + + + * * * * * + + +PROLOGUE + +_Spoken by Mr. Elliston_ + + + If we have sinn'd in paring down a name, + All civil well-bred authors do the same. + Survey the columns of our daily writers-- + You'll find that some Initials are great fighters. + How fierce the shock, how fatal is the jar, + When Ensign W. meets Lieutenant R. + With two stout seconds, just of their own gizard, + Cross Captain X. and rough old General Izzard! + Letter to Letter spreads the dire alarms, + Till half the Alphabet is up in arms. + Nor with less lustre have Initials shone, + To grace the gentler annals of Crim. Con. + Where the dispensers of the public lash + Soft penance give; a letter and a dash-- + Where vice reduced in size shrinks to a failing, + And loses half her grossness by curtailing. + Faux pas are told in such a modest way,-- + The affair of Colonel B---- with Mrs. A---- + You must forgive them--for what is there, say, + Which such a pliant Vowel must not grant + To such a very pressing Consonant? + Or who poetic justice dares dispute, + When, mildly melting at a lover's suit, + The wife's a Liquid, her good man a Mute? + Even in the homelier scenes of honest life, + The coarse-spun intercourse of man and wife, + Initials I am told have taken place + Of Deary, Spouse, and that old-fashioned race; + And Cabbage, ask'd by Brother Snip to tea, + Replies, "I'll come--but it don't rest with me-- + I always leaves them things to Mrs. C." + O should this mincing fashion ever spread + From names of living heroes to the dead, + How would Ambition sigh, and hang the head, + As each lov'd syllable should melt away-- + Her Alexander turned into Great A---- + A single C. her Caesar to express-- + Her Scipio shrunk into a Roman S---- + And nick'd and dock'd to these new modes of speech, + Great Hannibal himself a Mr. H----. + + + * * * * * + + +MR. H---- + + +A FARCE IN TWO ACTS + + + * * * * * + + +ACT I + + +SCENE.--_A Public Room in an Inn--Landlord, Waiters, Gentlemen, &c. + +Enter Mr. H._ + + +MR. H. +Landlord, has the man brought home my boots? + +LANDLORD +Yes, Sir. + +MR. H. +You have paid him? + +LANDLORD +There is the receipt, Sir, only not quite filled up, no name, only +blank--"Blank, Dr. to Zekiel Spanish for one pair of best hessians." +Now, Sir, he wishes to know what name he shall put in, who he shall say +"Dr." + +MR. H. +Why, Mr. H. to be sure. + +LANDLORD +So I told him, Sir; but Zekiel has some qualms about it. He says, he +thinks that Mr. H. only would not stand good in law. + +MR. H. +Rot his impertinence, bid him put in Nebuchadnezzar, and not trouble me +with his scruples. + +LANDLORD +I shall, Sir. [_Exit_.] + +_Enter a Waiter_. + +WAITER +Sir, Squire Level's man is below, with a hare and a brace of pheasants +for Mr. H. + +MR. H. +Give the man half-a-crown, and bid him return my best respects to his +master. Presents it seems will find me out, with any name, or no name. + +_Enter Second Waiter_. + +SECOND WAITER +Sir, the man that makes up the Directory is at the door. + +MR. H. +Give him a shilling, that is what these fellows come for. + +SECOND WAITER +He has sent up to know by what name your Honour will please to be +inserted. + +MR. H. +Zounds, fellow, I give him a shilling for leaving out my name, not for +putting it in. This is one of the plaguy comforts of going anonymous. + +[_Exit Second Waiter_.] + +_Enter Third Waiter_. + +THIRD WAITER +Two letters for Mr. H. [_Exit_.] + +MR. H. +From ladies (_opens them_). This from Melesinda, to remind me of the +morning call I promised; the pretty creature positively languishes to be +made Mrs. H. I believe I must indulge her (_affectedly_). This from her +cousin, to bespeak me to some party, I suppose (_opening it_)--Oh, "this +evening"--"Tea and cards"--(_surveying himself with complacency_). Dear +H., thou art certainly a pretty fellow. I wonder what makes thee such a +favourite among the ladies: I wish it may not be owing to the +concealment of thy unfortunate--pshaw! + +_Enter Fourth Waiter_. + +FOURTH WAITER +Sir, one Mr. Printagain is enquiring for you. + +MR. H. +Oh, I remember, the poet; he is publishing by subscription. Give him a +guinea, and tell him he may put me down. + +FOURTH WAITER +What name shall I tell him, Sir? + +MR. H. +Zounds, he is a poet; let him fancy a name. + +[_Exit Fourth Waiter_.] + +_Enter Fifth Waiter_. + +FIFTH WAITER +Sir, Bartlemy the lame beggar, that you sent a private donation to last +Monday, has by some accident discovered his benefactor, and is at the +door waiting to return thanks. + +MR. H. +Oh, poor fellow, who could put it into his head? Now I shall be teazed +by all his tribe, when once this is known. Well, tell him I am glad I +could be of any service to him, and send him away. + +FIFTH WAITER +I would have done so, Sir; but the object of his call now, he says, is +only to know who he is obliged to. + +MR. H. +Why, me. + +FIFTH WAITER +Yes, Sir. + +MR. H. +Me, me, me, who else, to be sure? + +FIFTH WAITER +Yes, Sir; but he is anxious to know the name of his benefactor. + +MR. H. +Here is a pampered rogue of a beggar, that cannot be obliged to a +gentleman in the way of his profession, but he must know the name, +birth, parentage, and education of his benefactor. I warrant you, next +he will require a certificate of one's good behaviour, and a +magistrate's licence in one's pocket, lawfully empowering so and so +to--give an alms. Any thing more? FIFTH WAITER + +Yes, Sir: here has been Mr. Patriot, with the county petition to sign; +and Mr. Failtime, that owes so much money, has sent to remind you of +your promise to bail him. + +MR. H. +Neither of which I can do, while I have no name. Here is more of the +plaguy comforts of going anonymous, that one can neither serve one's +friend nor one's country. Damn it, a man had better be without a nose, +than without a name. I will not live long in this mutilated, dismembered +state; I will to Melesinda this instant, and try to forget these +vexations. Melesinda! there is music in the name; but then, hang it, +there is none in mine to answer to it. [_Exit_.] + +(_While Mr. H. has been speaking, two Gentlemen have been observing him +curiously._) + +FIRST GENTLEMAN +Who the devil is this extraordinary personage? + +SECOND GENTLEMAN +Who? why 'tis Mr. H. + +FIRST GENTLEMAN +Has he no more name? + +SECOND GENTLEMAN +None that has yet transpired. No more! why that single letter has been +enough to inflame the imaginations of all the ladies in Bath. He has +been here but a fortnight, and is already received into all the first +families. + +FIRST GENTLEMAN +Wonderful! yet nobody knows who he is, or where he comes from! + +SECOND GENTLEMAN +He is vastly rich, gives away money as if he had infinity; dresses well, +as you see; and for address, the mothers are all dying for fear the +daughters should get him; and for the daughters, he may command them as +absolutely as--. Melesinda, the rich heiress, 'tis thought, will carry +him. + +FIRST GENTLEMAN +And is it possible that a mere anonymous-- + +SECOND GENTLEMAN +Phoo! that is the charm, Who is he? and What is he? and What is his +name?--The man with the great nose on his face never excited more of the +gaping passion of wonderment in the dames of Strasburg, than this +new-comer with the single letter to his name, has lighted up among the +wives and maids of Bath; his simply having lodgings here, draws more +visitors to the house than an election. Come with me to the parade, and +I will shew you more of him. [_Exeunt_.] + + + + +SCENE.--_In the Street_. + + +(MR. H. _walking_, BELVIL _meeting him_.) + + +BELVIL +My old Jamaica school-fellow, that I have not seen for so many years? it +must, it can be no other than Jack (_going up to him_). My dear Ho---- + +MR. H. (_Stopping his mouth._) +Ho----! the devil, hush. + +BELVIL +Why sure it is-- + +MR. H. +It is, it is your old friend Jack, that shall be nameless. + +BELVIL +My dear Ho---- + +MR. H. (_Stopping him_.) +Don't name it. + +BELVIL +Name what? + +MR. H. +My curst, unfortunate name. I have reasons to conceal it for a time. + +BELVIL +I understand you--Creditors, Jack? + +MR. H. +No, I assure you. + +BELVIL +Snapp'd up a ward, peradventure, and the whole Chancery at your heels? + +MR. H. +I don't use to travel with such cumbersome luggage. + +BELVIL +You ha'n't taken a purse? + +MR. H. +To relieve you at once from all disgraceful conjectures, you must know, +'tis nothing but the sound of my name. + +BELVIL +Ridiculous! 'tis true your's is none of the most romantic, but what can +that signify in a man? + +MR. H. +You must understand that I am in some credit with the ladies. + +BELVIL +With the ladies! + +MR. H. +And truly I think not without some pretensions. My fortune-- + +BELVIL +Sufficiently splendid, if I may judge from your appearance. + +MR. H. +My figure-- + +BELVIL +Airy, gay, and imposing. + +MR. H. +My parts-- + +BELVIL +Bright. + +MR. H. +My conversation-- + +BELVIL +Equally remote from flippancy and taciturnity. + +MR. H. +But then my name--damn my name. + +BELVIL +Childish! + +MR. H. +Not so. Oh, Belvil, you are blest with one which sighing virgins may +repeat without a blush, and for it change the paternal. But what virgin +of any delicacy (and I require some in a wife) would endure to be called +Mrs.----? + +BELVIL +Ha! ha! ha! most absurd. Did not Clementina Falconbridge, the romantic +Clementina Falconbridge, fancy Tommy Potts? and Rosabella Sweetlips +sacrifice her mellifluous appellative to Jack Deady? Matilda her cousin +married a Gubbins, and her sister Amelia a Clutterbuck. + +MR. H. +Potts is tolerable, Deady is sufferable, Gubbins is bearable, and +Clutterbuck is endurable, but Ho-- + +BELVIL +Hush, Jack, don't betray yourself. But you are really ashamed of the +family name? + +MR. H. +Aye, and of my father that begot me, and my father's father, and all +their forefathers that have borne it since the conquest. + +BELVIL +But how do you know the women are so squeamish? + +MR. H. +I have tried them. I tell you there is neither maiden of sixteen nor +widow of sixty but would turn up their noses at it. I have been refused +by nineteen virgins, twenty-nine relicts, and two old maids. + +BELVIL +That was hard indeed, Jack. + +MR. H. +Parsons have stuck at publishing the banns, because they averred it was +a heathenish name; parents have lingered their consent, because they +suspected it was a fictitious name; and rivals have declined my +challenges, because they pretended it was an ungentlemanly name. + +BELVIL +Ha, ha, ha, but what course do you mean to pursue? + +MR. H. +To engage the affections of some generous girl, who will be content to +take me as Mr. H. + +BELVIL +Mr. H.? + +MR. H. +Yes, that is the name I go by here; you know one likes to be as near the +truth as possible. + +BELVIL +Certainly. But what then? to get her to consent-- + +MR. H. +To accompany me to the altar without a name--in short to suspend her +curiosity (that is all) till the moment the priest shall pronounce the +irrevocable charm, which makes two names one. + +BELVIL +And that name--and then she must be pleased, ha, Jack? + +MR. H. +Exactly such a girl it has been my fortune to meet with, heark'e +(_whispers_)--(_musing_) yet hang it, 'tis cruel to betray her +confidence. + +BELVIL +But the family name, Jack? + +MR. H. +As you say, the family name must be perpetuated. + +BELVIL +Though it be but a homely one. + +MR. H. +True, but come, I will shew you the house where dwells this credulous +melting fair. + +BELVIL +Ha, ha, my old friend dwindled down to one letter. [_Exeunt_.] + + + + +SCENE.--_An Apartment in_ MELESINDA'S _House_. + + +MELESINDA _sola, as if musing_. + +MELESINDA +H.H.H. Sure it must be something precious by its being concealed. It +can't be Homer, that is a Heathen's name; nor Horatio, that is no +surname; what if it be Hamlet? the Lord Hamlet--pretty, and I his poor +distracted Ophelia! No, 'tis none of these; 'tis Harcourt or Hargrave, +or some such sounding name, or Howard, high born Howard, that would do; +may be it is Harley, methinks my H. resembles Harley, the feeling +Harley. But I hear him, and from his own lips I will once for ever be +resolved. + +_Enter_ MR. H. + +MR. H. +My dear Melesinda. + +MELESINDA +My dear H. that is all you give me power to swear allegiance to,--to be +enamoured of inarticulate sounds, and call with sighs upon an empty +letter. But I will know. + +MR. H. +My dear Melesinda, press me no more for the disclosure of that, which in +the face of day so soon must be revealed. Call it whim, humour, caprice, +in me. Suppose I have sworn an oath, never, till the ceremony of our +marriage is over, to disclose my true name. + +MELESINDA +Oh! H.H.H. I cherish here a fire of restless curiosity which consumes +me. 'Tis appetite, passion, call it whim, caprice, in me. Suppose I have +sworn I must and will know it this very night. + +MR. H. +Ungenerous Melesinda! I implore you to give me this one proof of your +confidence. The holy vow once past, your H. shall not have a secret to +withhold. + +MELESINDA +My H. has overcome: his Melesinda shall pine away and die, before she +dare express a saucy inclination; but what shall I call you till we are +married? + +MR. H. +Call me? call me any thing, call me Love, Love! aye, Love, Love will do +very well. + +MELESINDA +How many syllables is it, Love? + +MR. H. +How many? ud, that is coming to the question with a vengeance. One, two, +three, four,--what does it signify how many syllables? + +MELESINDA +How many syllables, Love? + +MR. H. + +My Melesinda's mind, I had hoped, was superior to this childish +curiosity. + +MELESINDA +How many letters are there in it? + +[_Exit_ MR. H. _followed by_ MELESINDA _repeating the question_.] + + + + +SCENE.--_A Room in the Inn. (Two Waiters disputing._) + + +FIRST WAITER +Sir Harbottle Hammond, you may depend upon it. + +SECOND WAITER +Sir Hardy Hardcastle, I tell you. + +FIRST WAITER +The Hammonds of Huntingdonshire. + +SECOND WAITER +The Hardcastles of Hertfordshire. + +FIRST WAITER +The Hammonds. + +SECOND WAITER +Don't tell me: does not Hardcastle begin with an H? + +FIRST WAITER +So does Hammond for that matter. + +SECOND WAITER +Faith, so it does if you go to spell it. I did not think of that. I +begin to be of your opinion; he is certainly a Hammond. + +FIRST WAITER +Here comes Susan Chambermaid, may be she can tell. + +_Enter Susan_. + +BOTH +Well, Susan, have you heard any thing who the strange gentleman is? + +SUSAN +Haven't you heard? it's all come out; Mrs. Guesswell, the parson's +widow, has been here about it. I overheard her talking in confidence to +Mrs. Setter and Mrs. Pointer, and she says, they were holding a sort of +_cummitty_ about it. + +BOTH +What? What? + +SUSAN +There can't be a doubt of it, she says, what from hisfigger and the +appearance he cuts, and his _sumpshous_ way of living, and above all +from the remarkable circumstance that his surname should begin with an +H., that he must be-- + +BOTH +Well, well-- + +SUSAN +Neither more nor less than the Prince. + +BOTH +Prince! + +SUSAN +The Prince of Hessy-Cassel in disguise. + +BOTH +Very likely, very likely. + +SUSAN +Oh, there can't be a doubt on it. Mrs. Guesswell says she knows it. + +FIRST WAITER +Now if we could be sure that the Prince of Hessy what-do-you-call-him +was in England on his travels. + +SECOND WAITER +Get a newspaper. Look in the newspapers. + +SUSAN +Fiddle of the newspapers, who else can it be? + +BOTH +That is very true (_gravely_). + +_Enter Landlord_. + +LANDLORD +Here, Susan, James, Philip, where are you all? The London coach is come +in, and there is Mr. Fillaside, the fat passenger, has been bawling for +somebody to help him off with his boots. (_The Chambermaid and Waiters +slip out_.) + +(_Solus_.) The house is turned upside down since the strange +gentleman came into it. Nothing but guessing and speculating, and +speculating and guessing; waiters and chambermaids getting into corners +and speculating, ostlers and stable-boys speculating in the yard, I +believe the very horses in the stable are speculating too, for there +they stand in a musing posture, nothing for them to eat, and not +seeming to care whether thay have any thing or no; and after all what +does it signify? I hate such curious--odso, I must take this box up into +his bed-room--he charged me to see to it myself--I hate such +inquisitive--I wonder what is in it, it feels heavy (_Reads_) "Leases, +title deeds, wills." Here now a man might satisfy his curiosity at once. +Deeds must have names to them, so must leases and wills. But I +wouldn't--no I wouldn't--it is a pretty box too--prettily dovetailed--I +admire the fashion of it much. But I'd cut my fingers off, before I'd do +such a dirty--what have I to do--curse the keys, how they rattle--rattle +in one's pockets--the keys and the halfpence (_takes out a bunch and +plays with them_). I wounder if any of these would fit; one might just +try them, but I wouldn't lift up the lid if they did. Oh no, what should +I be the richer for knowing? (_All this time he tries the keys one by +one_.) What's his name to me? a thousand names begin with an H. I hate +people that are always prying, poking and prying into things,--thrusting +their finger into one place--a mighty little hole this--and their keys +into another. Oh Lord! little rusty fits it! but what is that to me? I +wouldn't go to--no no--but it is odd little rusty should just happen. +(_While he is turning up the lid of the box_, MR. H. _enters behing him +unperceived_.) + +MR. H. +What are you about, you dog? + +LANDLORD +Oh Lord, Sir! pardon; no thief as I hope to be saved. Little Pry was +always honest. + +MR. H. +What else could move you to open that box! + +LANDLORD +Sir, don't kill me, and I will confess the whole truth. This box +happened to be lying--that is, I happened to be carrying this box, and I +happened to have my keys out, and so--little rusty happened to fit-- + +MR. H. +So little rusty happened to fit!--and would not a rope fit that rogue's +neck? I see the papers have not been moved: all is safe, but it was as +well to frighten him a little (_aside_). + +Come, Landlord, as I think you +honest, and suspect you only intended to gratify a little foolish +curiosity-- + +LANDLORD +That was all, Sir, upon my veracity. + +MR. H. +For this time I will pass it over. Your name is Pry, I think. + +LANDLORD +Yes, Sir, Jeremiah Pry, at your service. + +MR. H. +An apt name, you have a prying temper. I mean, some little curiosity, a +sort of inquisitiveness about you. + +LANDLORD +A natural thirst after knowledge you may call it, Sir. When a boy I was +never easy, but when I was thrusting up the lids of some of my +school-fellows' boxes,--not to steal any thing, upon my honour, +Sir,--only to see what was in them; have had pens stuck in my eyes for +peeping through key-holes after knowledge; could never see a cold pie +with the legs dangling out at top, but my fingers were for lifting up +the crust,--just to try if it were pigeon or partridge,--for no other +reason in the world. Surely I think my passion for nuts was owing to the +pleasure of cracking the shell to get at something concealed, more than +to any delight I took in eating the kernel. In short, Sir, this appetite +has grown with my growth. + +MR. H. +You will certainly be hanged some day for peeping into some bureau or +other, just to see what is in it. + +LANDLORD +That is my fear, Sir. The thumps and kicks I have had for peering into +parcels, and turning of letters inside out,--just for curiosity. The +blankets I have been made to dance in for searching parish-registers for +old ladies' ages,--just for curiosity! Once I was dragged through a +horse-pond, only for peeping into a closet that had glass doors to it, +while my Lady Bluegarters was undressing,--just for curiosity! + +MR. H. +A very harmless piece of curiosity, truly; and now, Mr. Pry, first have +the goodness to leave that box with me, and then do me the favour to +carry your curiosity so far, as to enquire if my servants are within. + +LANDLORD +I shall, Sir. Here, David, Jonathan,--I think I hear them coming,--shall +make bold to leave you, Sir. + +[_Exit._] + +MR. H. +Another tolerable specimen of the comforts of going anonymous! + +_Enter two Footmen._ + +FIRST FOOTMAN +You speak first. + +SECOND FOOTMAN +No, you had better speak. + +FIRST FOOTMAN +You promised to begin. + +MR. H. +They have something to say to me. The rascals want their wages raised, I +suppose; there is always a favour to be asked when they come smiling. +Well, poor rogues, service is but a hard bargain at the best. I think I +must not be close with them. Well, David--well, Jonathan. + +FIRST FOOTMAN +We have served your honour faithfully---- + +SECOND FOOTMAN +Hope your honour won't take offence---- + +MR. H. +The old story, I suppose--wages? + +FIRST FOOTMAN +That's not it, your honour. + +SECOND FOOTMAN +You speak. + +FIRST FOOTMAN +But if your honour would just be pleased to---- + +SECOND FOOTMAN +Only be pleased to---- + +MR. H. +Be quick with what you have to say, for I am in haste. + +FIRST FOOTMAN +Just to---- + +SECOND FOOTMAN +Let us know who it is---- + +FIRST FOOTMAN +Who it is we have the honour to serve. + +MR. H. +Why me, me, me; you serve me. + +SECOND FOOTMAN +Yes, Sir; but we do not know who you are. + +MR. H. +Childish curiosity! do not you serve a rich master, a gay master, an +indulgent master? + +FIRST FOOTMAN +Ah, Sir! the figure you make is to us, your poor servants, the principal +mortification. + +SECOND FOOTMAN +When we get over a pot at the public-house, or in a gentleman's kitchen, +or elsewhere, as poor servants must have their pleasures--when the +question goes round, who is your master? and who do you serve? and one +says, I serve Lord So-and-so, and another, I am Squire Such-a-one's +footman---- + +FIRST FOOTMAN +We have nothing to say for it, but that we serve Mr. H. + +SECOND FOOTMAN +Or Squire H. + +MR. H. +Really you are a couple of pretty modest, reasonable personages; but I +hope you will take it as no offence, gentlemen, if, upon a dispassionate +review of all that you have said, I think fit not to tell you any more +of my name, than I have chosen for especial purposes to communicate to +the rest of the world. + +FIRST FOOTMAN +Why then, Sir, you may suit yourself. + +SECOND FOOTMAN +We tell you plainly, we cannot stay. + +FIRST FOOTMAN +We don't chuse to serve Mr. H. + +SECOND FOOTMAN +Nor any Mr. or Squire in the alphabet---- + +FIRST FOOTMAN +That lives in Chris-cross Row. + +MR. H. +Go, for a couple of ungrateful, inquisitive, senseless rascals! Go hang, +starve, or drown!--Rogues, to speak thus irreverently of the alphabet--I +shall live to see you glad to serve old Q--to curl the wig of great +S--adjust the dot of little i--stand behind the chair of X, Y, Z--wear +the livery of Et-caetera--and ride behind the sulky of +And-by-itself-and! + +[_Exit in a rage_.] + + + + +ACT II + + +SCENE.--_A handsome Apartment well lighted, Tea, Cards, &c.--A large +party of Ladies and Gentlemen, among them_ MELESINDA. + + +FIRST LADY +I wonder when the charming man will be here. + +SECOND LADY +He is a delightful creature! Such a polish---- + +THIRD LADY +Such an air in all that he does or says---- + +FOURTH LADY +Yet gifted with a strong understanding---- + +FIFTH LADY +But has your ladyship the remotest idea of what his true name is? + +FIRST LADY +They say, his very servants do not know it. His French valet, that has +lived with him these two years---- + +SECOND LADY +There, Madam, I must beg leave to set you right: my coachman---- + +FIRST LADY +I have it from the very best authority: my footman---- + +SECOND LADY +Then, Madam, you have set your servants on---- + +FIRST LADY +No, Madam, I would scorn any such little mean ways of conning at a +secret. For my part, I don't think any secret of that consequence. + +SECOND LADY +That's just like me; I make a rule of troubling my head with nobody's +business but my own. + +MELESINDA +But then, she takes care to make everybody's business her own, and so to +justify herself that way----(_aside_). + +FIRST LADY +My dear Melesinda, you look thoughtful. + +MELESINDA +Nothing. SECOND LADY +Give it a name. + +MELESINDA +Perhaps it is nameless. + +FIRST LADY +As the object----Come, never blush, nor deny it, child. Bless me, what +great ugly thing is that, that dangles at your bosom? + +MELESINDA +This? it is a cross: how do you like it? + +SECOND LADY +A cross! Well, to me it looks for all the world like a great staring H. + +(_Here a general laugh_.) + +MELESINDA +Malicious creatures! Believe me it is a cross, and nothing but a cross. + +FIRST LADY +A cross, I believe, you would willingly hang at. + +MELESINDA +Intolerable spite! + +(MR. H. _is announced_.) + +(_Enter_ MR. H.) + +FIRST LADY +O, Mr. H. we are so glad---- + +SECOND LADY +We have been so dull---- + +THIRD LADY +So perfectly lifeless----You owe it to us, to be more than commonly +entertaining. + +MR. H. +Ladies, this is so obliging---- + +FOURTH LADY +O, Mr. H. those ranunculas you said were dying, pretty things, they have +got up---- + +FIFTH LADY +I have worked that sprig you commended--I want you to come---- + +MR. H. +Ladies---- + +SIXTH LADY +I have sent for that piece of music from London. + +MR. H. +The Mozart--(_seeing Melesinda_.)--Melesinda! + +SEVERAL LADIES AT ONCE +Nay positively, Melesinda, you shan't engross him all to yourself. + +(_While the Ladies are pressing about MR. H. the Gentlemen shew signs of +displeasure_.) + +FIRST GENTLEMAN +We shan't be able to edge in a word, now this coxcomb is come. + +SECOND GENTLEMAN +Damn him, I will affront him. + +FIRST GENTLEMAN +Sir, with your leave, I have a word to say to one of these ladies. + +SECOND GENTLEMAN +If we could be heard---- + +(_The ladies pay no attention but to_ MR. H.) + +MR. H. +You see, gentlemen, how the matter stands. (_Hums an air_.) I am not my +own master: positively I exist and breathe but to be agreeable to +these----Did you speak? + +FIRST GENTLEMAN +And affects absence of mind, Puppy! + +MR. H. +Who spoke of absence of mind, did you, Madam? How do you do, Lady +Wearwell--how do? I did not see your ladyship before--what was I about +to say--O--absence of mind. I am the most unhappy dog in that way, +sometimes spurt out the strangest things--the most mal-a-propos--without +meaning to give the least offence, upon my honour--sheer absence of +mind--things I would have given the world not to have said. + +FIRST GENTLEMAN +Do you hear the coxcomb? + +FIRST LADY +Great wits, they say---- + +SECOND LADY +Your fine geniuses are most given---- + +THIRD LADY +Men of bright parts are commonly too vivacious---- + +MR. H. +But you shall hear. I was to dine the other day at a great nabob's, that +must be nameless, who, between ourselves, is strongly suspected +of--being very rich, that's all. John, my valet, who knows my foible, +cautioned me, while he was dressing me, as he usually does where he +thinks there's a danger of my committing a _lapsus_, to take care in my +conversation how I made any allusion direct or indirect to presents +--you understand me? I set out double charged with my fellow's +consideration and my own, and, to do myself justice, behaved with +tolerable circumspection for the first half hour or so--till at last a +gentleman in company, who was indulging a free vein of raillery at the +expense of the ladies, stumbled upon that expression of the poet, which +calls them "fair defects." + +FIRST LADY +It is Pope, I believe, who says it. + +MR. H. +No, Madam; Milton. Where was I? O, "fair defects." This gave occasion to +a critic in company, to deliver his opinion on the phrase--that led to +an enumeration of all the various words which might have been used +instead of "defect," as want, absence, poverty, deficiency, lack. This +moment I, who had not been attending to the progress of the argument +(as the denouement will shew) starting suddenly up out of one of my +reveries, by some unfortunate connexion of ideas, which the last fatal +word had excited, the devil put it into my head to turn round to the +Nabob, who was sitting next me, and in a very marked manner (as it +seemed to the company) to put the question to him, Pray, Sir, what may +be the exact value of a lack of rupees? You may guess the confusion +which followed. + +FIRST LADY +What a distressing circumstance! + +SECOND LADY +To a delicate mind-- + +THIRD LADY +How embarrassing-- + +FOURTH LADY +I declare I quite pity you. + +FIRST GENTLEMAN +Puppy! + +MR. H. +A Baronet at the table, seeing my dilemma, jogged my elbow; and a +good-natured Duchess, who does every thing with a grace peculiar to +herself, trod on my toes at that instant: this brought me to myself, +and--covered with blushes, and pitied by all the ladies--I withdrew. + +FIRST LADY +How charmingly he tells a story. + +SECOND LADY +But how distressing! + +MR. H. +Lord Squandercounsel, who is my particular friend, was pleased to rally +me in his inimitable way upon it next day. I shall never forget a +sensible thing he said on the occasion--speaking of absence of mind, my +foible--says he, my dear Hogs-- + +SEVERAL LADIES +Hogs----what--ha-- + +MR. H. +My dear Hogsflesh--my name--(_here an universal scream_)--O my cursed +unfortunate tongue!--H, I mean--Where was I? + +FIRST LADY +Filthy--abominable! + +SECOND LADY +Unutterable! + +THIRD LADY +Hogs----foh! + +FOURTH LADY +Disgusting! + +FIFTH LADY +Vile! + +SIXTH LADY +Shocking! + +FIRST LADY +Odious! + +SECOND LADY +Hogs----pah! + +THIRD LADY +A smelling bottle--look to Miss Melesinda. Poor thing! it is no wonder. +You had better keep off from her, Mr. Hogsflesh, and not be pressing +about her in her circumstances. + +FIRST GENTLEMAN +Good time of day to you, Mr. Hogsflesh. + +SECOND GENTLEMAN +The compliments of the season to you, Mr. Hogsflesh. + +MR. H. +This is too much--flesh and blood cannot endure it. + +FIRST GENTLEMAN +What flesh?--hog's-flesh? + +SECOND GENTLEMAN +How he sets up his bristles! + +MR. H. +Bristles! + +FIRST GENTLEMAN +He looks as fierce as a hog in armour. + +MR. H. +A hog!----Madam!----(_here he severally accosts the ladies, who by +turns repel him_). + +FIRST LADY +Extremely obliged to you for your attentions; but don't want a partner. + +SECOND LADY +Greatly flattered by your preference; but believe I shall remain single. + +THIRD LADY +Shall always acknowledge your politeness; but have no thoughts of +altering my condition. + +FOURTH LADY +Always be happy to respect you as a friend; but you must not look for +any thing further. + +FIFTH LADY +No doubt of your ability to make any woman happy; but have no thoughts +of changing my name. + +SIXTH LADY +Must tell you, Sir, that if by your insinuations, you think to prevail +with me, you have got the wrong sow by the ear. Does he think any lady +would go to pig with him? + +OLD LADY +Must beg you to be less particular in your addresses to me. Does he take +me for a Jew, to long after forbidden meats? + +MR. H. +I shall go mad!--to be refused by old Mother Damnable--she that's so +old, nobody knows whether she was ever married or no, but passes for a +maid by courtesy; her juvenile exploits being beyond the farthest +stretch of tradition!--old Mother Damnable! + +[_Exeunt all, either pitying or seeming to avoid him._] + + + + +SCENE.--_The Street_. BELVIL _and another Gentleman_. + + +BELVIL +Poor Jack, I am really sorry for him. The account which you give me of +his mortifying change of reception at the assembly, would be highly +diverting, if it gave me less pain to hear it. With all his amusing +absurdities, and amongst them not the least, a predominant desire to be +thought well of by the fair sex, he has an abundant share of good +nature, and is a man of honour. Notwithstanding all that has happened, +Melesinda may do worse than take him yet. But did the women resent it so +deeply as you say? + +GENTLEMAN +O intolerably--they fled him as fearfully when 'twas once blown, as a +man would be avoided, who was suddenly discovered to have marks of the +plague, and as fast; when before they had been ready to devour the +foolishest thing he could say. + +BELVIL +Ha! ha! so frail is the tenure by which these women's favourites +commonly hold their envied pre-eminence. Well, I must go find him out +and comfort him. I suppose, I shall find him at the inn. + +GENTLEMAN +Either there or at Melesinda's.--Adieu. + +[_Exeunt_.] + + + + +SCENE.--MR. H----'S _Apartment_. + + +MR. H. (_solus_) +Was ever any thing so mortifying? to be refused by old Mother +Damnable!--with such parts and address,--and the little squeamish +devils, to dislike me for a name, a sound.--O my cursed name! that it +was something I could be revenged on! if it were alive, that I might +tread upon it, or crush it, or pummel it, or kick it, or spit it +out--for it sticks in my throat and will choak me. + +My plaguy ancestors! if they had left me but a Van or a Mac, or an Irish +O', it had been something to qualify it.--Mynheer Van Hogsflesh--or +Sawney Mac Hogsflesh,--or Sir Phelim O'Hogsflesh,--but downright +blunt------. If it had been any other name in the world, I could have +borne it. If it had been the name of a beast, as Bull, Fox, Kid, Lamb, +Wolf, Lion; or of a bird, as Sparrow, Hawk, Buzzard, Daw, Finch, +Nightingale; or of a fish, as Sprat, Herring, Salmon; or the name of a +thing, as Ginger, Hay, Wood; or of a colour, as Black, Grey, White, +Green; or of a sound, as Bray; or the name of a month, as March, May; or +of a place, as Barnet, Baldock, Hitchin; or the name of a coin, as +Farthing, Penny, Twopenny; or of a profession, as Butcher, Baker, +Carpenter, Piper, Fisher, Fletcher, Fowler, Glover; or a Jew's name, as +Solomons, Isaacs, Jacobs; or a personal name, as Foot, Leg, Crookshanks, +Heaviside, Sidebottom, Longbottom, Ramsbottom, Winterbottom; or a long +name, as Blanchenhagen, or Blanchenhausen; or a short name, as Crib, +Crisp, Crips, Tag, Trot, Tub, Phips, Padge, Papps, or Prig, or Wig, or +Pip, or Trip; Trip had been something, but Ho------. + +_(Walks about in great agitation,--recovering his calmness a little, +sits down.)_ + +Farewell the most distant thoughts of marriage; the finger-circling +ring, the purity-figuring glove, the envy-pining bride-maids, the +wishing parson, and the simpering clerk. Farewell, the ambiguous +blush-raising joke, the titter-provoking pun, the morning-stirring +drum.--No son of mine shall exist, to bear my ill-fated name. No nurse +come chuckling, to tell me it is a boy. No midwife, leering at me from +under the lids of professional gravity. I dreamed of caudle. _(Sings in +a melancholy tone)_ Lullaby, Lullaby,--hush-a-by-baby--how like its papa +it is!--_(makes motions as if he was nursing)_. And then, when grown up, +"Is this your son, Sir?" "Yes, Sir, a poor copy of me,--a sad young +dog,--just what his father was at his age,--I have four more at home." +Oh! oh! oh! + +_Enter Landlord._ + +MR. H. +Landlord, I must pack up to-night; you will see all my things got ready. + +LANDLORD +Hope your Honor does not intend to quit the Blue Boar,--sorry any thing +has happened. + +MR. H. +He has heard it all. + +LANDLORD +Your Honour has had some mortification, to be sure, as a man may say; +you have brought your pigs to a fine market. + +MR. H. +Pigs! + +LANDLORD +What then? take old Pry's advice, and never mind it. Don't scorch your +crackling for 'em, Sir. + +MR. H. +Scorch my crackling! a queer phrase; but I suppose he don't mean to +affront me. + +LANDLORD +What is done can't be undone; you can't make a silken purse out of a +sow's ear. + +MR. H. +As you say, Landlord, thinking of a thing does but augment it. + +LANDLORD +Does but _hogment_ it, indeed, Sir. + +MR. H. +_Hogment_ it! damn it, I said, augment it. + +LANDLORD Lord, Sir, 'tis not every body has such gift of fine phrases as +your Honour, that can lard his discourse. + +MR. H. +Lard! + +LANDLORD +Suppose they do smoke you-- + +MR. H. +Smoke me? + +LANDLORD +One of my phrases; never mind my words, Sir, my meaning is good. We all +mean the same thing, only you express yourself one way, and I another, +that's all. The meaning's the same; it is all pork. + +MR. H. +That's another of your phrases, I presume. _(Bell rings, and the +Landlord called for.)_ + +LANDLORD +Anon, anon. + +MR. H. +O, I wish I were anonymous. + +[_Exeunt several ways._] + + + + +SCENE.--_Melesinda's Apartment_. + +(_MELESINDA and Maid._) + + +MAID +Lord, Madam! before I'd take on as you do about a foolish--what +signifies a name? Hogs--Hogs--what is it--is just as good as any other +for what I see. + +MELESINDA +Ignorant creature! yet she is perhaps blest in the absence of those +ideas, which, while they add a zest to the few pleasures which fall to +the lot of superior natures to enjoy, doubly edge the-- + +MAID +Superior natures! a fig! If he's hog by name, he's not hog by nature, +that don't follow--his name don't make him any thing, does it? He don't +grunt the more for it, nor squeak, that ever I hear; he likes his +victuals out of a plate, as other Christians do, you never see him go to +the trough-- + +MELESINDA +Unfeeling wretch! yet possibly her intentions-- + +MAID +For instance, Madam, my name is Finch--Betty Finch. I don't whistle the +more for that, nor long after canary-seed while I can get good wholesome +mutton--no, nor you can't catch me by throwing salt on my tail. If you +come to that, hadn't I a young man used to come after me, they said +courted me--his name was Lion--Francis Lion, a tailor; but though he was +fond enough of me, for all that, he never offered to eat me. + +MELESINDA +How fortunate that the discovery has been made before it was too late. +Had I listened to his deceits, and, as the perfidious man had almost +persuaded me, precipitated myself into an inextricable engagement, +before-- + +MAID +No great harm, if you had. You'd only have bought a pig in a poke--and +what then? Oh, here he comes creeping-- + +_Enter_ MR. H. _abject_. + +Go to her, Mr. Hogs--Hogs--Hogsbristles--what's your name? Don't be +afraid, man--don't give it up--she's not crying--only _summat_ has made +her eyes red--she has got a sty in her eye, I believe--(_going_.) + +MELESINDA +You are not going, Betty? + +MAID +O, Madam, never mind me--I shall be back in the twinkling of a pig's +whisker, as they say. [_Exit_.] + +MR. H. +Melesinda, you behold before you a wretch who would have betrayed your +confidence, but it was love that prompted him; who would have tricked +you by an unworthy concealment into a participation of that disgrace +which a superficial world has agreed to attach to a name--but with it +you would have shared a fortune not contemptible, and a heart--but 'tis +over now. That name he is content to bear alone--to go where the +persecuted syllables shall be no more heard, or excite no meaning +--some spot where his native tongue has never penetrated, nor any of his +countrymen have landed, to plant their unfeeling satire, their brutal +wit, and national ill manners--where no Englishman--(_Here Melesinda, +who has been pouting during this speech, fetches a deep sigh_.) Some yet +undiscovered Otaheite, where witless, unapprehensive savages shall +innocently pronounce the ill-fated sounds, and think them not +inharmonious. + +MELESINDA +Oh! + +MR. H. +Who knows but among the female natives might be found-- + +MELESINDA +Sir! (_raising her head_). + +MR. H. +One who would be more kind than--some Oberea--Queen Oberea. + +MELESINDA +Oh! + +MR. H. +Or what if I were to seek for proofs of reciprocal esteem among +unprejudiced African maids, in Monomotopa. + +_Enter Servant_. + +SERVANT +Mr. Belvil. [_Exit_.] + +_Enter_ BELVIL. + +MR. H. +In Monornotopa (_musing_.) + +BELVIL +Heyday, Jack! what means this mortified face? nothing has happened, I +hope, between this lady and you? I beg pardon, Madam, but understanding +my friend was with you, I took the liberty of seeking him here. Some +little difference possibly which a third person can adjust--not a +word--will you, Madam, as this gentleman's friend, suffer me to be the +arbitrator--strange--hark'e, Jack, nothing has come out, has there? you +understand me. Oh I guess how it is--somebody has got at your secret, +you hav'n't blabbed it yourself, have you? ha! ha! ha! I could find in +my heart--Jack, what would you give me if I should relieve you-- + +MR. H. +No power of man can relieve me (_sighs_) but it must lie at the root, +gnawing at the root--here it will lie. + +BELVIL +No power of man? not a common man, I grant you; for instance, a +subject--it's out of the power of any subject. + +MR. H. +Gnawing at the root--there it will lie. + +BELVIL +Such a thing has been known as a name to be changed; but not by a +subject--(_shews a Gazette_). + +MR. H. +Gnawing at the root (_suddenly snatches the paper out of Belvil's +hand_); ha! pish! nonsense! give it me--what! (_reads_) promotions, +bankrupts--a great many bankrupts this week--there it will lie (_lays it +down, takes it up again, and reads_) "The King has been graciously +pleased"--gnawing at the root--"graciously pleased to grant unto John +Hogsflesh"--the devil--"Hogsflesh, Esq., of Sty Hall, in the county of +Hants, his royal licence and authority"--O Lord! O Lord!--"that he and +his issue"--me and my issue--"may take and use the surname and arms of +Bacon"--Bacon, the surname and arms of Bacon--"in pursuance of an +injunction contained in the last will and testament of Nicholas Bacon, +Esq. his late uncle, as well as out of grateful respect to his +memory:"--grateful respect! poor old soul----here's more--"and that +such arms may be first duly exemplified"--they shall, I will take care +of that--"according to the laws of arms, and recorded in the Herald's +Office." + +BELVIL +Come, Madam, give me leave to put my own interpretation upon your +silence, and to plead for my friend, that now that only obstacle which +seemed to stand in your way of your union is removed, you will suffer +me to complete the happiness which my news seems to have brought him, by +introducing him with a new claim to your favour, by the name of Mr. +Bacon. + +(_Takes their hands and joins them, which Melesinda seems to give +consent to with a smile_.) + +MR. H. +Generous Melesinda!--my dear friend--"he and his issue," me and my +issue--O Lord!-- + +BELVIL +I wish you joy, Jack, with all my heart. + +MR. H. +Bacon, Bacon, Bacon--how odd it sounds. I could never be tired of +hearing it. There was Lord Chancellor Bacon. Methinks I have some of the +Verulam blood in me already--methinks I could look through Nature--there +was Friar Bacon, a conjurer--I feel as if I could conjure too-- + +_Enter a Servant_. + +SERVANT +Two young ladies and an old lady are at the door, enquiring if you see +company, Madam. + +MR. H. +"Surname and arms"-- + +MELESINDA +Shew them up.--My dear Mr. Bacon, moderate your joy. + +_Enter three Ladies, being part of those who were at the Assembly._ + +FIRST LADY +My dear Melesinda, how do you do? + +SECOND LADY +How do you do? We have been so concerned for you-- + +OLD LADY + +We have been so concerned--(_seeing him_)--Mr. Hogsflesh-- + +MR. H. +There's no such person--nor there never was--nor 'tis not fit there +should be--"surname and arms"-- + +BELVIL +It is true what my friend would express; we have been all in a mistake, +ladies. Very true, the name of this gentleman was what you call it, but +it is so no longer. The succession to the long-contested Bacon estate is +at length decided, and with it my friend succeeds to the name of his +deceased relative. + +MR. H. +"His Majesty has been graciously pleased"-- + +FIRST LADY +I am sure we all join in hearty congratulation--(_sighs_). + +SECOND LADY +And wish you joy with all our hearts--(_heigh ho_!) + +OLD LADY +And hope you will enjoy the name and estate many years--(_cries_). + +BELVIL +Ha! ha! ha! mortify them a little, Jack. + +FIRST LADY +Hope you intend to stay-- + +SECOND LADY +With us some time-- + +OLD LADY +In these parts-- + +MR. H. +Ladies, for your congratulations I thank you; for the favours you have +lavished on me, and in particular for this lady's (_turning to the old +Lady_) good opinion, I rest your debtor. As to any future +favours--(_accosts them severally in the order in which he was reftised +by them at the assembly_)--Madam, shall always acknowledge your +politeness; but at present, you see, I am engaged with a partner. Always +be happy to respect you as a friend, but you must not look for any +thing further. Must beg of you to be less particular in your addresses +to me. Ladies all, with this piece of advice, of Bath and you + + Your ever grateful servant takes his leave. + Lay your plans surer when you plot to grieve; + See, while you kindly mean to mortify + Another, the wild arrow do not fly, + And gall yourself. For once you've been mistaken; + Your shafts have miss'd their aim--Hogsflesh has saved + his Bacon. + + + + * * * * * + + + + THE PAWNBROKER'S DAUGHTER + + A FARCE + + (1825) + + + * * * * * + + + CHARACTERS + + FLINT, _a Pawnbroker._ + DAVENPORT, _in love with Marian._ + PENDULOUS, _a Reprieved Gentleman._ + CUTLET, _a Sentimental Butcher._ + GOLDING, _a Magistrate._ + WILLIAM, _Apprentice to Flint._ + BEN, _Cutlet's Boy._ + MISS FLYN. + BETTY, _her Maid._ + MARIAN, _Daughter to Flint._ + LUCY, _her Maid._ + + + * * * * * + + + + +ACT I. + + +SCENE I.--_An Apartment at Flint's house._ + + +FLINT. WILLIAM. + + +FLINT +Carry those umbrellas, cottons, and wearing-apparel, up stairs. You may +send that chest of tools to Robins's. + +WILLIAM +That which you lent six pounds upon to the journeyman carpenter that had +the sick wife? + +FLINT +The same. + +WILLIAM +The man says, if you can give him till Thursday-- + +FLINT +Not a minute longer. His time was out yesterday. These improvident +fools! + +WILLIAM +The finical gentleman has been here about the seal that was his +grandfather's. + +FLINT +He cannot have it. Truly, our trade would be brought to a fine pass, if +we were bound to humour the fancies of our customers. This man would be +taking a liking to a snuff-box that he had inherited; and that +gentlewoman might conceit a favourite chemise that had descended to her. + +WILLIAM +The lady in the carriage has been here crying about those jewels. She +says, if you cannot let her have them at the advance she offers, her +husband will come to know that she has pledged them. + +FLINT +I have uses for those jewels. Send Marian to me. (_Exit William_.) I +know no other trade that is expected to depart from its fair advantages +but ours. I do not see the baker, the butcher, the shoemaker, or, to go +higher, the lawyer, the physician, the divine, give up any of their +legitimate gains, even when the pretences of their art had failed; yet +_we_ are to be branded with an odious name, stigmatized, discountenanced +even by the administrators of those laws which acknowledge us; scowled +at by the lower sort of people, whose needs we serve! + +_Enter Marian_. + +Come hither, Marian. Come, kiss your father. The report runs that he is +full of spotted crime. What is your belief, child? + +MARIAN +That never good report went with our calling, father. I have heard you +say, the poor look only to the advantages which we derive from them, and +overlook the accommodations which they receive from us. But the poor +_are_ the poor, father, and have little leisure to make distinctions. I +wish we could give up this business. + +FLINT +You have not seen that idle fellow, Davenport? + +MARIAN +No, indeed, father, since your injunction. + +FLINT +I take but my lawful profit. The law is not over favourable to us. + +MARIAN +Marian is no judge of these things. + +FLINT +They call me oppressive, grinding.--I know not what-- + +MARIAN +Alas! + +FLINT +Usurer, extortioner. Am I these things? + +MARIAN +You are Marian's kind and careful father. That is enough for a child to +know. + +FLINT +Here, girl, is a little box of jewels, which the necessities of a +foolish woman of quality have transferred into our true and lawful +possession. Go, place them with the trinkets that were your mother's. +They are all yours, Marian, if you do not cross me in your marriage. No +gentry shall match into this house, to flout their wife hereafter with +her parentage. I will hold this business with convulsive grasp to my +dying day. I will plague these _poor_, whom you speak so tenderly of. + +MARIAN +You frighten me, father. Do not frighten Marian. + +FLINT +I have heard them say, There goes Flint--Flint, the cruel pawnbroker! + +MARIAN +Stay at home with Marian. You shall hear no ugly words to vex you. + +FLINT +You shall ride in a gilded chariot upon the necks of these _poor_, +Marian. Their tears shall drop pearls for my girl. Their sighs shall be +good wind for us. They shall blow good for my girl. Put up the jewels, +Marian. [_Exit_.] + +_Enter Lucy_. + +LUCY +Miss, miss, your father has taken his hat, and is slept out, and Mr. +Davenport is on the stairs; and I came to tell you-- + +MARIAN +Alas! who let him in? + +_Enter Davenport_. + +DAVENPORT +My dearest girl-- + +MARIAN +My father will kill me, if he finds you have been here! + +DAVENPORT +There is no time for explanations. I have positive information that your +father means, in less than a week, to dispose of you to that ugly +Saunders. The wretch has bragged of it to his acquaintance, and already +calls you _his_. + +MARIAN +O heavens! + +DAVENPORT +Your resolution must be summary, as the time which calls for it. Mine or +his you must be, without delay. There is no safety for you under this +roof. + +MARIAN +My father-- + +DAVENPORT +Is no father, if he would sacrifice you. + +MARIAN +But he is unhappy. Do not speak hard words of my father. + +DAVENPORT +Marian must exert her good sense. + +LUCY +(_As if watching at the window._) O, miss, your father has suddenly +returned. I see him with Mr. Saunders, coming down the street. Mr. +Saunders, ma'am! + +MARIAN +Begone, begone, if you love me, Davenport. + +DAVENPORT +You must go with me then, else here I am fixed. + +LUCY +Aye, miss, you must go, as Mr. Davenport says. Here is your cloak, miss, +and your hat, and your gloves. Your father, ma'am-- + +MARIAN +O, where, where? Whither do you hurry me, Davenport? + +DAVENPORT +Quickly, quickly, Marian. At the back door.-- + +[_Exit Marian with Davenport, reluctantly; in her flight still holding +the jewels._] + +LUCY +Away--away. What a lucky thought of mine to say her father was coming! +he would never have got her off, else. Lord, Lord, I do love to help +lovers. + +[_Exit, following them._] + + + + +SCENE II.--_A Butcher's Shop._ + + +CUTLET. BEN. + + +CUTLET +Reach me down that book off the shelf, where the shoulder of veal hangs. + +BEN + +Is this it? + +CUTLET +No--this is "Flowers of Sentiment"--the other--aye, this is a good book. +"An Argument against the Use of Animal Food. By J.R." _That_ means +Joseph Ritson. I will open it anywhere, and read just as it happens. One +cannot dip amiss in such books as these. The motto, I see, is from Pope. +I dare say, very much to the purpose. (_Reads_.) + + "The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day, + Had he thy reason, would he sport and play? + Pleas'd to the last, he crops his flowery food, + And licks the hand"-- + +Bless us, is that saddle of mutton gone home to Mrs. Simpson's? It +should have gone an hour ago. + +BEN +I was just going with it. + +CUTLET +Well go. Where was I? Oh! + + "And licks the hand just raised to shed its blood." + +What an affecting picture! (_turns over the leaves, and reads_). + +"It is probable that the long lives which are recorded of the people before +the flood, were owing to their being confined to a vegetable diet." + +BEN +The young gentleman in Pullen's Row, Islington, that has got the +consumption, has sent to know if you can let him have a sweetbread. + +CUTLET +Take two,--take all that are in the shop. What a disagreeable +interruption! (_reads again_). "Those fierce and angry passions, which +impel man to wage destructive war with man, may be traced to the ferment +in the blood produced by an animal diet." + +BEN +The two pound of rump-steaks must go home to Mr. Molyneux's. He is in +training to fight Cribb. + +CUTLET +Well, take them; go along, and do not trouble me with your disgusting +details. + +[_Exit Ben._] + +CUTLET +(_Throwing down the book._) Why was I bred to this detestable business? +Was it not plain, that this trembling sensibility, which has marked my +character from earliest infancy, must for ever disqualify me for a +profession which--what do ye want? what do ye buy? O, it is only +somebody going past. I thought it had been a customer.--Why was not I +bred a glover, like my cousin Langston? to see him poke his two little +sticks into a delicate pair of real Woodstock--"A very little stretching +ma'am, and they will fit exactly"--Or a haberdasher, like my next-door +neighbour--"not a better bit of lace in all town, my lady--Mrs. +Breakstock took the last of it last Friday, all but this bit, which I +can afford to let your ladyship have a bargain--reach down that drawer +on your left hand, Miss Fisher." + +(_Enter in haste, Davenport, Marian, and Lucy._) + +LUCY +This is the house I saw a bill up at, ma'am; and a droll creature the +landlord is. + +DAVENPORT +We have no time for nicety. + +CUTLET +What do ye want? what do ye buy? O, it is only you, Mrs. Lucy. + +_Lucy whispers Cutlet._ + +CUTLET +I have a set of apartments at the end of my garden. They are quite +detached from the shop. A single lady at present occupies the ground +floor. + +MARIAN +Aye, aye, any where. + +DAVENPORT +In, in.-- + +CUTLET +Pretty lamb,--she seems agitated. _Davenport and Marian go in with +Cutlet._ + +LUCY +I am mistaken if my young lady does not find an agreeable companion in +these apartments. Almost a namesake. Only the difference of Flyn, and +Flint. I have some errands to do, or I would stop and have some fun with +this droll butcher. _Cutlet returns._ + +CUTLET +Why, how odd this is! _Your_ young lady knows _my_ young lady. They are +as thick as flies. + +LUCY +You may thank me for your new lodger, Mr. Cutlet.--But bless me, you do +not look well? + +CUTLET +To tell you the truth, I am rather heavy about the eyes. Want of sleep, +I believe. + +LUCY +Late hours, perhaps. Raking last night. + +CUTLET +No, that is not it, Mrs. Lucy. My repose was disturbed by a very +different cause from what you may imagine. It proceeded from too much +thinking. + +LUCY +The deuce it did! and what, if I may be so bold, might be the subject of +your Night Thoughts? + +CUTLET +The distresses of my fellow creatures. I never lay my head down on my +pillow, but I fall a thinking, how many at this very instant are +perishing. Some with cold-- + +LUCY +What, in the midst of summer? + +CUTLET +Aye. Not here, but in countries abroad, where the climate is different +from ours. Our summers are their winters, and _vice versa_, you know. +Some with cold-- + +LUCY +What a canting rogue it is! I should like to trump up some fine story to +plague him. [_Aside._] + +CUTLET +Others with hunger--some a prey to the rage of wild beasts-- + +LUCY +He has got this by rote, out of some book. + +CUTLET +Some drowning, crossing crazy bridges in the dark--some by the violence +of the devouring flame-- + +LUCY +I have it.--For that matter, you need not send your humanity a +travelling, Mr. Cutlet. For instance, last night-- + +CUTLET +Some by fevers, some by gun-shot wounds-- + +LUCY +Only two streets off-- + +CUTLET +Some in drunken quarrels-- + +LUCY +(_Aloud._) The butcher's shop at the corner. + +CUTLET +What were you saying about poor Cleaver? + +LUCY +He has found his ears at last. (_Aside._) That he has had his house +burnt down. + +CUTLET +Bless me! + +LUCY +I saw four small children taken in at the green grocer's. + +CUTLET +Do you know if he is insured? + +LUCY +Some say he is, but not to the full amount. + +CUTLET +Not to the full amount--how shocking! He killed more meat than any of +the trade between here and Carnaby market--and the poor babes--four of +them you say--what a melting sight!--he served some good customers about +Marybone--I always think more of the children in these cases than of the +fathers and mothers--Lady Lovebrown liked his veal better than any man's +in the market--I wonder whether her ladyship is engaged--I must go and +comfort poor Cleaver, however.--[_Exit_.] + +LUCY +Now is this pretender to humanity gone to avail himself of a neighbour's +supposed ruin to inveigle his customers from him. Fine feelings!--pshaw! +[_Exit_.] + +(_Re-enter Cutlet_.) + +CUTLET +What a deceitful young hussey! there is not a word of truth in her. +There has been no fire. How can people play with one's feelings +so!--(_sings_)--"For tenderness formed"--No, I'll try the air I made +upon myself. The words may compose me--(_sings_). + + A weeping Londoner I am, + A washer-woman was my dam; + She bred me up in a cock-loft, + And fed my mind with sorrows soft: + + For when she wrung with elbows stout + From linen wet the water out,-- + The drops so like to tears did drip, + They gave my infant nerves the hyp. + + Scarce three clean muckingers a week + Would dry the brine that dew'd my cheek: + So, while I gave my sorrows scope, + I almost ruin'd her in soap. + + My parish learning I did win + In ward of Farringdon-Within; + Where, after school, I did pursue + My sports, as little boys will do. + + Cockchafers--none like me was found + To set them spinning round and round. + O, how my tender heart would melt, + To think what those poor varmin felt! + + I never tied tin-kettle, clog, + Or salt-box to the tail of dog, + Without a pang more keen at heart, + Than he felt at his outward part. + + And when the poor thing clattered off, + To all the unfeeling mob a scoff, + Thought I, "What that dumb creature feels, + With half the parish at his heels!" + + Arrived, you see, to man's estate, + The butcher's calling is my fate; + Yet still I keep my feeling ways. + And leave the town on slaughtering days. + + At Kentish Town, or Highgate Hill, + I sit, retired, beside some rill; + And tears bedew my glistening eye, + To think my playful lambs must die! + + But when they're dead I sell their meat, + On shambles kept both clean and neat; + Sweet-breads also I guard full well, + And keep them from the blue-bottle. + + Envy, with breath sharp as my steel, + Has ne'er yet blown upon my veal; + And mouths of dames, and daintiest fops, + Do water at my nice lamb-chops. + +[_Exit, half laughing, half crying._] + + + + +SCENE III.--A Street. + + +(Davenport, solus.) + + +DAVENPORT +Thus far have I secured my charming prize. I can appretiate, while I +lament, the delicacy which makes her refuse the protection of my +sister's roof. But who comes here? + +(_Enter Pendulous, agitated._) It must be he. That fretful animal +motion--that face working up and down with uneasy sensibility, like new +yeast. Jack--Jack Pendulous! + +PENDULOUS +It is your old friend, and very miserable. + +DAVENPORT +Vapours, Jack. I have not known you fifteen years to have to guess at +your complaint. Why, they troubled you at school. Do you remember when +you had to speak the speech of Buckingham, where he is going to +execution? + +PENDULOUS +Execution!--he has certainly heard it. (_Aside_.) + +DAVENPORT +What a pucker you were in overnight! + +PENDULOUS +May be so, may be so, Mr. Davenport. That was an imaginary scene. I have +had real troubles since. + +DAVENPORT +Pshaw! so you call every common accident. + +PENDULOUS +Do you call my case so common, then? + +DAVENPORT +What case? + +PENDULOUS +You have not heard, then? + +DAVENPORT +Positively not a word. + +PENDULOUS +You must know I have been--(_whispers_)--tried for a felony since then. + +DAVENPORT +Nonsense! + +PENDULOUS +No subject for mirth, Mr. Davenport. A confounded short-sighted fellow +swore that I stopt him, and robbed him, on the York race-ground at nine +on a fine moonlight evening, when I was two hundred miles off in +Dorsetshire. These hands have been held up at a common bar. + +DAVENPORT +Ridiculous! it could not have gone so far. + +PENDULOUS +A great deal farther, I assure you, Mr. Davenport. I am ashamed to say +how far it went. You must know, that in the first shock and surprise of +the accusation, shame--you know I was always susceptible--shame put me +upon disguising my _name_, that, at all events, it might bring no +disgrace upon my family. I called myself _James Thomson_. + +DAVENPORT +For heaven's sake, compose yourself. + +PENDULOUS +I will. An old family ours, Mr. Davenport--never had a blot upon it till +now--a family famous for the jealousy of its honour for many +generations--think of that, Mr. Davenport--that felt a stain like a +wound-- + +DAVENPORT +Be calm, my dear friend. + +PENDULOUS +This served the purpose of a temporary concealment well enough; but when +it came to the--_alibi_--I think they call it--excuse these technical +terms, they are hardly fit for the mouth of a gentleman, the +_witnesses_--that is another term--that I had sent for up from Melcombe +Regis, and relied upon for clearing up my character, by disclosing my +real name, _John Pendulous_--so discredited the cause which they came to +serve, that it had quite a contrary effect to what was intended. In +short, the usual forms passed, and you behold me here the miserablest of +mankind. + +DAVENPORT +(_Aside_). He must be light-headed. + +PENDULOUS +Not at all, Mr. Davenport. I hear what you say, though you speak it all +on one side, as they do at the playhouse. + +DAVENPORT +The sentence could never have been carried into--pshaw!--you are +joking--the truth must have come out at last. + +PENDULOUS +So it did, Mr. Davenport--just two minutes and a second too late by the +Sheriff's stop-watch. Time enough to save my life--my wretched life--but +an age too late for my honour. Pray, change the subject--the detail must +be as offensive to you. + +DAVENPORT +With all my heart, to a more pleasing theme. The lovely Maria Flyn--are +you friends in that quarter, still? Have the old folks relented? + +PENDULOUS +They are dead, and have left her mistress of her inclinations. But it +requires great strength of mind to-- + +DAVENPORT +To what? + +PENDULOUS +To stand up against the sneers of the world. It is not every young lady +that feels herself confident against the shafts of ridicule, though +aimed by the hand of prejudice. Not but in her heart, I believe, she +prefers me to all mankind. But think what the world would say, if, in +defiance of the opinions of mankind, she should take to her arms +a--reprieved man! + +DAVENPORT +Whims! You might turn the laugh of the world upon itself in a fortnight. +These things are but nine days' wonders. + +PENDULOUS +Do you think so, Mr. Davenport? + +DAVENPORT +Where does she live? + +PENDULOUS +She has lodgings in the next street, in a sort of garden-house, that +belongs to one Cutlet. I have not seen her since the affair. I was going +there at her request. + +DAVENPORT +Ha, ha, ha! + +PENDULOUS +Why do you laugh? + +DAVENPORT +The oddest fellow! I will tell you--But here he comes. + +_Enter Cutlet._ + +CUTLET +(_To Davenport._) Sir, the young lady at my house is desirous you should +return immediately. She has heard something from home. + +PENDULOUS +What do I hear? + +DAVENPORT +'Tis her fears, I daresay. My dear Pendulous, you will excuse me?--I +must not tell him our situation at present, though it cost him a fit of +jealousy. We shall have fifty opportunities for explanation. [_Exit._] + +PENDULOUS +Does that gentleman visit the lady at your lodgings? + +CUTLET +He is quite familiar there, I assure you. He is all in all with her, as +they say. + +PENDULOUS +It is but too plain. Fool that I have been, not to suspect that, while +she pretended scruples, some rival was at the root of her infidelity! + +CUTLET +You seem distressed, Sir. Bless me! + +PENDULOUS +I am, friend, above the reach of comfort. + +CUTLET +Consolation, then, can be to no purpose? + +PENDULOUS +None. + +CUTLET +I am so happy to have met with him! + +PENDULOUS +Wretch, wretch, wretch! + +CUTLET +There he goes! How he walks about biting his nails! I would not exchange +this luxury of unavailing pity for worlds. + +PENDULOUS +Stigmatized by the world-- + +CUTLET +My case exactly. Let us compare notes. + +PENDULOUS +For an accident which-- + +CUTLET +For a profession which-- + +PENDULOUS +In the eye of reason has nothing in it-- + +CUTLET +Absolutely nothing in it-- + +PENDULOUS +Brought up at a public bar-- + +CUTLET +Brought up to an odious trade-- + +PENDULOUS +With nerves like mine-- + +CUTLET +With nerves like mine-- + +PENDULOUS +Arraigned, condemned-- + +CUTLET +By a foolish world-- + +PENDULOUS +By a judge and jury-- + +CUTLET +By an invidious exclusion disqualified for sitting upon a jury at all-- + +PENDULOUS +Tried, cast, and-- + +CUTLET +What? + +PENDULOUS +HANGED, Sir, HANGED by the neck, till I was-- + +CUTLET +Bless me! + +PENDULOUS +Why should not I publish it to the whole world, since she, whose +prejudice alone I wished to overcome, deserts me? + +CUTLET +Lord have mercy upon us! not so bad as that comes to, I hope? + +PENDULOUS +When she joins in the judgment of an illiberal world against me-- + +CUTLET +You said HANGED, Sir--that is, I mean, perhaps I mistook you. How +ghastly he looks! + +PENDULOUS +Fear me not, my friend. I am no ghost--though I heartily wish I were +one. + +CUTLET +Why, then, ten to one you were-- + +PENDULOUS +_Cut down._ The odious word shall out, though it choak me. + +CUTLET +Your case must have some things in it very curious. I daresay you kept a +journal of your sensations. + +PENDULOUS +Sensations! + +CUTLET +Aye, while you were being--you know what I mean. They say persons in +your situation have lights dancing before their eyes--blueish. But then +the worst of all is coming to one's self again. + +PENDULOUS +Plagues, furies, tormentors! I shall go mad! [_Exit._] + +CUTLET +There, he says he shall go mad. Well, my head has not been very right of +late. It goes with a whirl and a buzz somehow. I believe I must not +think so deeply. Common people that don't reason know nothing of these +aberrations. + + Great wits go mad, and small ones only dull; + Distracting cares vex not the empty skull: + They seize on heads that think, and hearts that feel, + As flies attack the--better sort of veal. + +[_Exit._] + + + + +ACT II + + +SCENE.--At Flint's. + + +FLINT. WILLIAM. + + +FLINT +I have overwalked myself, and am quite exhausted. Tell Marian to come +and play to me. + +WILLIAM +I shall, Sir. [_Exit._] + +FLINT +I have been troubled with an evil spirit of late; I think an evil +spirit. It goes and comes, as my daughter is with or from me. It cannot +stand before her gentle look, when, to please her father, she takes down +her music-book. _Enter William._ + +WILLIAM +Miss Marian went out soon after you, and is not returned. + +FLINT +That is a pity--That is a pity. Where can the foolish girl be gadding? + +WILLIAM +The shopmen say she went out with Mr. Davenport. + +FLINT +Davenport? Impossible. + +WILLIAM +They say they are sure it was he, by the same token that they saw her +slip into his hand, when she was past the door, the casket which you +gave her. + +FLINT +Gave her, William! I only intrusted it to her. She has robbed me. Marian +is a thief. You must go to the Justice, William, and get out a warrant +against her immediately. Do you help them in the description. Put in +"Marian Flint," in plain words--no remonstrances, William--"daughter of +Reuben Flint,"--no remonstrances, but do it-- + +WILLIAM +Nay, sir-- + +FLINT +I am rock, absolute rock, to all that you can say--A piece of solid +rock.--What is it that makes my legs to fail, and my whole frame to +totter thus? It has been my over walking. I am very faint. Support me +in, William. [_Exeunt_] + + + + +SCENE.--_The Apartment of Miss Flyn._ + + +MISS FLYN. BETTY. + + +MISS FLYN +'Tis past eleven. Every minute I expect Mr. Pendulous here. What a +meeting do I anticipate! + +BETTY +Anticipate, truly! what other than a joyful meeting can it be between +two agreed lovers who have been parted these four months? + +MISS FLYN +But in that cruel space what accidents have happened!--(_aside_)--As +yet I perceive she is ignorant of this unfortunate affair. + +BETTY +Lord, madam, what accidents? He has not had a fall or a tumble, has he? +He is not coming upon crutches? + +MISS FLYN +Not exactly a fall--(_aside_)--I wish I had courage to admit her to my +confidence. + +BETTY +If his neck is whole, his heart is so too, I warrant it. + +MISS FLYN +His neck!--(_aside_)--She certainly mistrusts something. He writes me +word that this must be his last interview. + +BETTY +Then I guess the whole business. The wretch is unfaithful. Some creature +or other has got him into a noose. + +MISS FLYN +A noose! + +BETTY +And I shall never more see him hang---- + +MISS FLYN +Hang, did you say, Betty? + +BETTY +About that dear, fond neck, I was going to add, madam, but you +interrupted me. + +MISS FLYN +I can no longer labour with a secret which oppresses me thus. Can you be +trusty? + +BETTY +Who, I, madam?--(_aside_)--Lord, I am so glad. Now I shall know all. + +MISS FLYN +This letter discloses the reason of his unaccountable long absence from +me. Peruse it, and say if we have not reason to be unhappy. + +_(Betty retires to the window to read the letter, Mr. Pendulous +enters.)_ + +MISS FLYN +My dear Pendulous! + +PENDULOUS +Maria!--nay, shun the embraces of a disgraced man, who comes but to tell +you that you must renounce his society for ever. + +MISS FLYN +Nay, Pendulous, avoid me not. + +PENDULOUS +_(Aside.)_ That was tender. I may be mistaken. Whilst I stood on +honourable terms, Maria might have met my caresses without a blush. + +_(Betty, who has not attended to the entrance of Pendulous, through her +eagerness to read the letter, comes forward.)_ + +BETTY +Ha! ha! ha! What a funny story, madam; and is this all you make such a +fuss about? I should not care if twenty of my lovers had been---- +(_seeing Pendulous_)--Lord, Sir, I ask pardon. + +PENDULOUS +Are we not alone, then? + +MISS FLYN +'Tis only Betty--my old servant. You remember Betty? + +PENDULOUS +What letter is that? + +MISS FLYN +O! something from her sweetheart, I suppose. + +BETTY +Yes, ma'am, that is all. I shall die of laughing. + +PENDULOUS +You have not surely been shewing her---- + +MISS FLYN +I must be ingenuous. You must know, then, that I was just giving Betty a +hint--as you came in. + +PENDULOUS +A hint! + +MISS FLYN +Yes, of our unfortunate embarrassment. + +PENDULOUS +My letter! + +MISS FLYN +I thought it as well that she should know it at first. + +PENDULOUS +'Tis mighty well, madam. 'Tis as it should be. I was ordained to be a +wretched laughing-stock to all the world; and it is fit that our drabs +and our servant wenches should have their share of the amusement. + +BETTY +Marry come up! Drabs and servant wenches! and this from a person in his +circumstances! + +_(Betty flings herself out of the room, muttering.)_ + +MISS FLYN +I understand not this language. I was prepared to give my Pendulous a +tender meeting. To assure him, that however, in the eyes of the +superficial and the censorious, he may have incurred a partial +degradation, in the esteem of one, at least, he stood as high as ever. +That it was not in the power of a ridiculous _accident,_ involving no +guilt, no shadow of imputation, to separate two hearts, cemented by +holiest vows, as ours have been. This untimely repulse to my affections +may awaken scruples in me, which hitherto, in tenderness to you, I have +suppressed. + +PENDULOUS +I very well understand what you call tenderness, madam; but in some +situations, pity--pity--is the greatest insult. + +MISS FLYN +I can endure no longer. When you are in a calmer mood, you will be sorry +that you have wrung my heart so. _[Exit.]_ + +PENDULOUS +Maria! She is gone--in tears. Yet it seems she has had her scruples. She +said she had tried to smother them. Mermaid Betty intimated as much. + +_Re-enter Betty._ + +BETTY +Never mind Retty, sir; depend upon it she will never 'peach. + +PENDULOUS +'Peach! + +BETTY +Lord, sir, these scruples will blow over. Go to her again, when she is +in a better humour. You know we must stand off a little at first, to +save appearances. + +PENDULOUS +Appearances! _we!_ + +BETTY +It will be decent to let some time elapse. + +PENDULOUS +Time elapse! + + Lost, wretched Pendulous! to scorn betrayed, + The scoff alike of mistress and of maid! + What now remains for thee, forsaken man, + But to complete thy fate's abortive plan, + And finish what the feeble law began? + +[_Exeunt._] + +_Re-enter Miss Flyn, with Marian._ + +MISS FLYN +Now both our lovers are gone, I hope my friend will have less reserve. +You must consider this apartment as yours while you stay here. 'Tis +larger and more commodious than your own. + +MARIAN +You are kind, Maria. My sad story I have troubled you with. I have some +jewels here, which I unintentionally brought away. I have only to beg, +that you will take the trouble to restore them to my father; and, +without disclosing my present situation, to tell him, that my next +step--with or without the concurrence of Mr. Davenport--shall be to +throw myself at his feet, and beg to be forgiven. I dare not see him +till you have explored the way for me. I am convinced I was tricked into +this elopement. + +MISS FLYN +Your commands shall be obeyed implicitly. + +MARIAN +You are good (_agitated_). + +MISS FLYN +Moderate your apprehensions, my sweet friend. I too have known my +sorrows--(_smiling_).--You have heard of the ridiculous affair. + +MARIAN +Between Mr. Pendulous and you? Davenport informed me of it, and we both +took the liberty of blaming the over-niceness of your scruples. + +MISS FLYN +You mistake. The refinement is entirely on the part of my lover. He +thinks me not nice enough. I am obliged to feign a little reluctance, +that he may not take quite a distaste to me. Will you believe it, that +he turns my very constancy into a reproach, and declares, that a woman +must be devoid of all delicacy, that, after a thing of that sort, could +endure the sight of her husband in---- + +MARIAN +In what? + +MISS FLYN +The sight of a man at all in---- + +MARIAN +I comprehend you not. + +MISS FLYN +In--in a--_(whispers)_--night cap, my dear; and now the mischief is out. + +MARIAN +Is there no way to cure him? + +MISS FLYN +None, unless I were to try the experiment, by placing myself in the +hands of justice for a little while, how far an equality in misfortune +might breed a sympathy in sentiment. Our reputations would be both upon +a level, then, you know. What think you of a little innocent +shop-lifting, in sport? + +MARIAN +And by that contrivance to be taken before a magistrate? the project +sounds oddly. + +MISS FLYN +And yet I am more than half persuaded it is feasible. + +_Enter Betty._ + +BETTY +Mr. Davenport is below, ma'am, and desires to speak with you. + +MARIAN +You will excuse me--_(going--turning back.)_--You will remember the +casket? _[Exit.]_ + +MISS FLYN +Depend on me. + +BETTY +And a strange man desires to see you, ma'am. I do not half like his +looks. + +MISS FLYN +Shew him in. + +_(Exit Betty, and returns--with a Police Officer. Betty goes out.)_ + +OFFICER +Your servant, ma'am. Your name is---- + +MISS FLYN +Flyn, sir. Your business with me? + +OFFICER +_(Alternately surveying the lady and his paper of instructions.)_ Marian +Flint. + +MISS FLYN +Maria Flyn. + +OFFICER +Aye, aye, Flyn or Flint. 'Tis all one. Some write plain Mary, and some +put ann after it. I come about a casket. + +MISS FLYN +I guess the whole business. He takes me for my friend. Something may +come out of this. I will humour him. + +OFFICER +_(Aside)_--Answers the description to a tittle. "Soft, grey eyes, pale +complexion,"---- + +MISS FLYN +Yet I have been told by flatterers that my eyes were blue--_(takes out +a pocket-glass)_--I hope I look pretty tolerably to-day. + +OFFICER +Blue!--they are a sort of blueish-gray, now I look better; and as for +colour, that comes and goes. Blushing is often a sign of a hardened +offender. Do you know any thing of a casket? + +MISS FLYN +Here is one which a friend has just delivered to my keeping. + +OFFICER +And which I must beg leave to secure, together with your ladyship's +person. "Garnets, pearls, diamond-bracelet,"--here they are, sure +enough. + +MISS FLYN +Indeed, I am innocent. + +OFFICER +Every man is presumed so till he is found otherwise. + +MISS FLYN +Police wit! Have you a warrant? + +OFFICER +Tolerably cool that! Here it is, signed by Justice Golding, at the +requisition of Reuben Flint, who deposes that you have robbed him. + +MISS FLYN +How lucky this turns out! _(aside.)_--Can I be indulged with a coach? + +OFFICER +To Marlborough Street? certainly--an old offender--_(aside.)_ The thing +shall be conducted with as much delicacy as is consistent with security. + +MISS FLYN +Police manners! I will trust myself to your protection then. _[Exeunt.]_ + + + + +SCENE.--_Police-Office._ + + +JUSTICE, FLINT, OFFICERS, &c. + + +JUSTICE +Before we proceed to extremities, Mr. Flint, let me entreat you to +consider the consequences. What will the world say to your exposing your +own child? + +FLINT +The world is not my friend. I belong to a profession which has long +brought me acquainted with its injustice. I return scorn for scorn, and +desire its censure above its plaudits. + +JUSTICE +But in this case delicacy must make you pause. + +FLINT +Delicacy--ha! ha!--pawnbroker--how fitly these words suit. Delicate +pawnbroker--delicate devil--let the law take its course. + +JUSTICE +Consider, the jewels are found. + +FLINT +'Tis not the silly baubles I regard. Are you a man? are you a father? +and think you I could stoop so low, vile as I stand here, as to make +money--filthy money--of the stuff which a daughter's touch has +desecrated? Deep in some pit first I would bury them. + +JUSTICE +Yet pause a little. Consider. An only child. + +FLINT +Only, only,--there, it is that stings me, makes me mad. She was the only +thing I had to love me--to bear me up against the nipping injuries of +the world. I prate when I should act. Bring in your prisoner. + +_(The Justice makes signs to an Officer, who goes out, and returns with +Miss Flyn.)_ + +FLINT +What mockery of my sight is here? This is no daughter. + +OFFICER +Daughter, or no daughter, she has confessed to this casket. + +FLINT +_(Handling it.)_ The very same. Was it in the power of these pale +splendours to dazzle the sight of honesty--to put out the regardful eye +of piety and daughter-love? Why, a poor glow-worm shews more brightly. +Bear witness how I valued them--_(tramples on them)_.--Fair lady, know +you aught of my child? + +MISS FLYN +I shall here answer no questions. + +JUSTICE +You must explain how you came by the jewels, madam. + +MISS FLYN +_(Aside.)_ Now confidence assist me!----A gentleman in the +neighbourhood will answer for me---- + +JUSTICE +His name---- + +MISS FLYN +Pendulous---- + +JUSTICE +That lives in the next street? + +MISS FLYN +The same----now I have him sure. + +JUSTICE +Let him be sent for. I believe the gentleman to be respectable, and will +accept his security. + +FLINT +Why do I waste my time, where I have no business? None--I have none any +more in the world--none. + +_Enter Pendulous._ + +PENDULOUS +What is the meaning of this extraordinary summons?--Maria here? + +FLINT +Know you any thing of my daughter, Sir? + +PENDULOUS +Sir, I neither know her nor yourself, nor why I am brought hither; but +for this lady, if you have any thing against her, I will answer it with +my life and fortunes. + +JUSTICE +Make out the bail-bond. + +OFFICER +(_Surveying Pendulous_.) Please, your worship, before you take that +gentleman's bond, may I have leave to put in a word? + +PENDULOUS +(_Agitated._) I guess what is coming. + +OFFICER +I have seen that gentleman hold up his hand at a criminal bar. + +JUSTICE +Ha! + +MISS FLYN +(_Aside._) Better and better. + +OFFICER +My eyes cannot deceive me. His lips quivered about, while he was being +tried, just as they do now. His name is not Pendulous. + +MISS FLYN +Excellent! + +OFFICER +He pleaded to the name of Thomson at York assizes. + +JUSTICE +Can this be true? + +MISS FLYN +I could kiss the fellow! + +OFFICER +He was had up for a footpad. + +MISS FLYN +A dainty fellow! + +PENDULOUS +My iniquitous fate pursues me everywhere. + +JUSTICE +You confess, then. + +PENDULOUS +I am steeped in infamy. + +MISS FLYN +I am as deep in the mire as yourself. + +PENDULOUS +My reproach can never be washed out. + +MISS FLYN +Nor mine. + +PENDULOUS +I am doomed to everlasting shame. + +MISS FLYN +We are both in a predicament. + +JUSTICE +I am in a maze where all this will end. + +MISS FLYN +But here comes one who, if I mistake not, will guide us out of all our +difficulties. + +_Enter Marian and Davenport._ + +MARIAN +_(Kneeling.)_ My dear father! + +FLINT +Do I dream? + +MARIAN +I am your Marian. + +JUSTICE +Wonders thicken! + +FLINT +The casket-- + +MISS FLYN +Let me clear up the rest. + +FLINT +The casket-- + +MISS FLYN +Was inadvertently in your daughter's hand, when, by an artifice of her +maid Lucy,--set on, as she confesses, by this gentleman here,-- + +DAVENPORT +I plead guilty. + +MISS FLYN +She was persuaded, that you were in a hurry going to marry her to an +object of her dislike; nay, that he was actually in the house for the +purpose. The speed of her flight admitted not of her depositing the +jewels; but to me, who have been her inseparable companion since she +quitted your roof, she intrusted the return of them; which the +precipitate measures of this gentleman _(pointing to the Officer)_ alone +prevented. Mr. Cutlet, whom I see coming, can witness this to be true. + +_Enter Cutlet, in haste._ + +CUTLET +Aye, poor lamb! poor lamb! I can witness. I have run in such a haste, +hearing how affairs stood, that I have left my shambles without a +protector. If your worship had seen how she cried _(pointing to +Marian),_ and trembled, and insisted upon being brought to her father. +Mr. Davenport here could not stay her. + +FLINT +I can forbear no longer. Marian, will you play once again, to please +your old father? + +MARIAN +I have a good mind to make you buy me a new grand piano for your naughty +suspicions of me. + +DAVENPORT +What is to become of me? + +FLINT +I will do more than that. The poor lady shall have her jewels again. + +MARIAN +Shall she? + +FLINT +Upon reasonable terms _(smiling)._ And now, I suppose, the court may +adjourn. + +DAVENPORT +Marian! + +FLINT +I guess what is passing in your mind, Mr. Davenport; but you have +behaved upon the whole so like a man of honour, that it will give me +pleasure, if you will visit at my house for the future; but _(smiling)_ +not clandestinely, Marian. + +MARIAN +Hush, father. + +FLINT +I own I had prejudices against gentry. But I have met with so much +candour and kindness among my betters this day--from this gentleman in +particular--_(turning to the Justice)_--that I begin to think of +leaving off business, and setting up for a gentleman myself. + +JUSTICE +You have the feelings of one. + +FLINT +Marian will not object to it. + +JUSTICE +But _(turning to Miss Flyn)_ what motive could induce this lady to take +so much disgrace upon herself, when a word's explanation might have +relieved her? + +MISS FLYN +This gentleman _(turning to Pendulous)_ can explain. + +PENDULOUS +The devil! + +MISS FLYN +This gentleman, I repeat it, whose backwardness in concluding a long and +honourable suit from a mistaken delicacy-- + +PENDULOUS +How! + +MISS FLYN +Drove me upon the expedient of involving myself in the same disagreeable +embarrassments with himself, in the hope that a more perfect sympathy +might subsist between us for the future. + +PENDULOUS +I see it--I see it all. + +JUSTICE +(_To Pendulous._) You were then tried at York? + +PENDULOUS +I was--CAST-- + +JUSTICE +Condemned-- + +PENDULOUS +EXECUTED. + +JUSTICE +How? + +PENDULOUS +CUT DOWN and CAME TO LIFE AGAIN. False delicacy, adieu! The true sort, +which this lady has manifested--by an expedient which at first sight +might seem a little unpromising, has cured me of the other. We are now +on even terms. + +MISS FLYN +And may-- + +PENDULOUS +Marry,--I know it was your word. + +MISS FLYN +And make a very quiet-- + +PENDULOUS +Exemplary-- + +MISS FLYN +Agreeing pair of-- + +PENDULOUS +ACQUITTED FELONS. + +FLINT +And let the prejudiced against our profession acknowledge, that a +money-lender may have the heart of a father; and that in the casket, +whose loss grieved him so sorely, he valued nothing so dear as _(turning +to Marian)_ one poor domestic jewel. + + + + + * * * * * + + + + THE WIFE'S TRIAL; OR, THE INTRUDING WIDOW + + + A DRAMATIC POEM + + _Founded on Mr. Crabbe's Tale of "The Confidant."_ + + (1827) + + + * * * * * + + + CHARACTERS + + MR. SELBY,--a Wiltshire Gentleman_. + KATHERINE, _Wife to Selby_. + LUCY, _Sister to Selby_. + MRS. FRAMPTON, _a Widow_. + SERVANTS. + + SCENE.--_At Mr. Selby's house, or in the grounds adjacent_. + + + * * * * * + + +SCENE--_A Library_. + + +MR. SELBY, KATHERINE. + + + SELBY + Do not too far mistake me, gentlest wife; + I meant to chide your virtues, not yourself, + And those too with allowance. I have not + Been blest by thy fair side with five white years + Of smooth and even wedlock, now to touch + With any strain of harshness on a string + Hath yielded me such music. 'Twas the quality + Of a too grateful nature in my Katherine, + That to the lame performance of some vows, + And common courtesies of man to wife, + Attributing too much, hath sometimes seem'd + To esteem in favours, what in that blest union + Are but reciprocal and trivial dues, + As fairly yours as mine: 'twas this I thought + Gently to reprehend. + + KATHERINE + In friendship's barter + The riches we exchange should hold some level, + And corresponding worth. Jewels for toys + Demand some thanks thrown in. You took me, sir, + To that blest haven of my peace, your bosom, + An orphan founder'd in the world's black storm. + Poor, you have made me rich; from lonely maiden, + Your cherish'd and your full-accompanied wife. + + SELBY + But to divert the subject: Kate too fond, + I would not wrest your meanings; else that word + Accompanied, and full-accompanied too, + Might raise a doubt in some men, that their wives + Haply did think their company too long; + And over-company, we know by proof, + Is worse than no attendance. + + KATHERINE + I must guess, + You speak this of the Widow-- + + SELBY + 'Twas a bolt + At random shot; but if it hit, believe me, + I am most sorry to have wounded you + Through a friend's side. I know not how we have swerved + From our first talk. I was to caution you + Against this fault of a too grateful nature: + Which, for some girlish obligations past, + In that relenting season of the heart, + When slightest favours pass for benefits + Of endless binding, would entail upon you + An iron slavery of obsequious duty + To the proud will of an imperious woman. + + KATHERINE + The favours are not slight to her I owe. + + SELBY + Slight or not slight, the tribute she exacts + Cancels all dues--_[A voice within.]_ + even now I hear her call you + In such a tone, as lordliest mistresses + Expect a slave's attendance. Prithee, Kate, + Let her expect a brace of minutes or so. + Say, you are busy. Use her by degrees + To some less hard exactions. + + KATHERINE + I conjure you, + Detain me not. I will return-- + + SELBY + Sweet wife + Use thy own pleasure--_[Exit Katherine.]_ + but it troubles me. + A visit of three days, as was pretended, + Spun to ten tedious weeks, and no hint given + When she will go! I would this buxom Widow + Were a thought handsomer! I'd fairly try + My Katherine's constancy; make desperate love + In seeming earnest; and raise up such broils, + That she, not I, should be the first to warn + The insidious guest depart. + + _Re-enter Katherine._ + + So soon return'd! + What was our Widow's will? + + KATHERINE + A trifle, Sir. + + SELBY + Some toilet service-to adjust her head, + Or help to stick a pin in the right place-- + + KATHERINE + Indeed 'twas none of these. + + SELBY + or new vamp up + The tarnish'd cloak she came in. I have seen her + Demand such service from thee, as her maid, + Twice told to do it, would blush angry-red, + And pack her few clothes up. Poor fool! fond slave! + And yet my dearest Kate!--This day at least + (It is our wedding-day) we spend in freedom, + And will forget our Widow.--Philip, our coach-- + Why weeps my wife? You know, I promised you + An airing o'er the pleasant Hampshire downs + To the blest cottage on the green hill side, + Where first I told my love. I wonder much, + If the crimson parlour hath exchanged its hue + For colours not so welcome. Faded though it be, + It will not shew less lovely than the tinge + Of this faint red, contending with the pale, + Where once the full-flush'd health gave to this cheek + An apt resemblance to the fruit's warm side, + That bears my Katherine's name.-- + + Our carriage, Philip. + + _Enter a Servant_. + + Now, Robin, what make you here? + + SERVANT + May it please you, + The coachman has driven out with Mrs. Frampton. + + SELBY + He had no orders-- + + SERVANT + None, Sir, that I know of, + But from the lady, who expects some letter + At the next Post Town. + + SELBY + Go, Robin. + + [_Exit Servant_.] + + How is this? + + KATHERINE + I came to tell you so, but fear'd your anger-- + + SELBY + It was ill done though of this Mistress Frampton, + This forward Widow. But a ride's poor loss + Imports not much. In to your chamber, love, + Where you with music may beguile the hour, + While I am tossing over dusty tomes, + Till our most reasonable friend returns. + + + KATHERINE + I am all obedience. [_Exit Katherine_] + + SELBY + Too obedient, Kate, + And to too many masters. I can hardly + On such a day as this refrain to speak + My sense of this injurious friend, this pest, + This household evil, this close-clinging fiend, + In rough terms to my wife. 'Death! my own servants + Controll'd above me! orders countermanded!' + What next? _[Servant enters and announces the Sister] + + _Enter Lucy._ + + Sister! I know you are come to welcome + This day's return. 'Twas well done. + + LUCY + You seem ruffled. + In years gone by this day was used to be + The smoothest of the year. Your honey turn'd + So soon to gall? + + SELBY + Gall'd am I, and with cause, + And rid to death, yet cannot get a riddance, + Nay, scarce a ride, by this proud Widow's leave. + + LUCY + Something you wrote me of a Mistress Frampton. + + SELBY + She came at first a meek admitted guest, + Pretending a short stay; her whole deportment + Seem'd as of one obliged. A slender trunk, + The wardrobe of her scant and ancient clothing, + Bespoke no more. But in a few days her dress, + Her looks, were proudly changed. And now she flaunts it + In jewels stolen or borrow'd from my wife; + Who owes her some strange service, of what nature + I must be kept in ignorance. Katherine's meek + And gentle spirit cowers beneath her eye, + As spell-bound by some witch. + + LUCY + Some mystery hangs on it. + How bears she in her carriage towards yourself? + + SELBY + As one who fears, and yet not greatly cares + For my displeasure. Sometimes I have thought, + A secret glance would tell me she could love, + If I but gave encouragement. Before me + She keeps some moderation; but is never + Closeted with my wife, but in the end + I find my Katherine in briny tears. + From the small chamber, where she first was lodged, + The gradual fiend by specious wriggling arts + Has now ensconced herself in the best part + Of this large mansion; calls the left wing her own; + Commands my servants, equipage.--I hear + Her hated tread. What makes she back so soon? + + _Enter Mrs. Frampton._ + + MRS. FRAMPTON + O, I am jolter'd, bruised, and shook to death, + With your vile Wiltshire roads. The villain Philip + Chose, on my conscience, the perversest tracks, + And stoniest hard lanes in all the county, + Till I was fain get out, and so walk back, + My errand unperform'd at Andover. + + LUCY + And I shall love the knave for ever after. + [_Aside_.] + + MRS. FRAMPTON + A friend with you! + + SELBY + My eldest sister, Lucy, + Come to congratulate this returning morn.-- + Sister, my wife's friend, Mistress Frampton. + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Pray + Be seated. For your brother's sake, you are welcome. + I had thought this day to have spent in homely fashion + With the good couple, to whose hospitality + I stand so far indebted. But your coming + Makes it a feast. + + LUCY + + She does the honours naturally--[_Aside_.] + + SELBY + + As if she were the mistress of the house--[_Aside_.] + + MRS. FRAMPTON + I love to be at home with loving friends. + To stand on ceremony with obligations, + Is to restrain the obliger. That old coach, though, + Of yours jumbles one strangely. + + SELBY + I shall order + An equipage soon, more easy to you, madam-- + + LUCY + To drive her and her pride to Lucifer, + I hope he means. [_Aside_.] + + MRS. FRAMPTON + I must go trim myself; this humbled garb + Would shame a wedding feast. I have your leave + For a short absence?--and your Katherine-- + + SELBY + You'll find her in her closet-- + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Fare you well, then. [_Exit_.] + + SELBY + How like you her assurance? + + LUCY + Even so well, + That if this Widow were my guest, not yours, + She should have coach enough, and scope to ride. + My merry groom should in a trice convey her + To Sarum Plain, and set her down at Stonehenge, + To pick her path through those antiques at leisure; + She should take sample of our Wiltshire flints. + O, be not lightly jealous! nor surmise, + That to a wanton bold-faced thing like this + Your modest shrinking Katherine could impart + Secrets of any worth, especially + Secrets that touch'd your peace. If there be aught, + My life upon't, 'tis but some girlish story + Of a First Love; which even the boldest wife + Might modestly deny to a husband's ear, + Much more your timid and too sensitive Katherine. + + SELBY + I think it is no more; and will dismiss + My further fears, if ever I have had such. + + LUCY + Shall we go walk? I'd see your gardens, brother; + And how the new trees thrive, I recommended. + Your Katherine is engaged now-- + + SELBY + I'll attend you. [_Exeunt._] + + + + +SCENE.--Servants' Hall. + + + HOUSEKEEPER, PHILIP, _and_ OTHERS, _laughing_. + + + HOUSEKEEPER + Our Lady's guest, since her short ride, seems ruffled, + And somewhat in disorder. Philip, Philip, + I do suspect some roguery. Your mad tricks + Will some day cost you a good place, I warrant. + + PHILIP + Good Mistress Jane, our serious housekeeper, + And sage Duenna to the maids and scullions, + We must have leave to laugh; our brains are younger, + And undisturb'd with care of keys and pantries. + We are wild things. + + BUTLER + Good Philip, tell us all. + + ALL + Ay, as you live, tell, tell-- + + PHILIP + Mad fellows, you shall have it. + The Widow's bell rang lustily and loud-- + + BUTLER + I think that no one can mistake her ringing. + + WAITING-MAID + Our Lady's ring is soft sweet music to it, + More of entreaty hath it than command. + + PHILIP + I lose my story, if you interrupt me thus. + The bell, I say, rang fiercely; and a voice, + More shrill than bell, call'd out for "Coachman Philip." + I straight obey'd, as 'tis my name and office. + "Drive me," quoth she, "to the next market town, + Where I have hope of letters." I made haste. + Put to the horses, saw her safely coach'd, + And drove her-- + + WAITING-MAID + --By the straight high-road to Andover, + I guess-- + + PHILIP + Pray, warrant things within your knowledge, + Good Mistress Abigail; look to your dressings, + And leave the skill in horses to the coachman. + + BUTLER + He'll have his humour; best not interrupt him. + + PHILIP + 'Tis market-day, thought I; and the poor beasts, + Meeting such droves of cattle and of people, + May take a fright; so down the lane I trundled, + Where Goodman Dobson's crazy mare was founder'd, + And where the flints were biggest, and ruts widest, + By ups and downs, and such bone-cracking motions, + We flounder'd on a furlong, till my madam, + In policy, to save the few joints left her, + Betook her to her feet, and there we parted. + + ALL + Ha! ha! ha! + + BUTLER + Hang her! 'tis pity such as she should ride. + + WAITING-MAID + I think she is a witch; I have tired myself out + With sticking pins in her pillow; still she 'scapes them-- + + BUTLER + And I with helping her to mum for claret, + But never yet could cheat her dainty palate. + + HOUSEKEEPER + Well, well, she is the guest of our good Mistress, + And so should be respected. Though I think + Our Master cares not for her company, + He would ill brook we should express so much, + By rude discourtesies, and short attendance, + Being but servants. (_A bell rings furiously._) 'Tis her bell + speaks now; + Good, good, bestir yourselves: who knows who's wanted? + + BUTLER + But 'twas a merry trick of Philip coachman. [_Exeunt._] + + + + + +SCENE.--_Mrs. Selby's Chamber._ + + +MRS. FRAMPTON, KATHERINE, working. + + + MRS. FRAMPTON + I am thinking, child, how contrary our fates + Have traced our lots through life. Another needle, + This works untowardly. An heiress born + To splendid prospects, at our common school + I was as one above you all, not of you; + Had my distinct prerogatives; my freedoms, + Denied to you. Pray, listen-- + + KATHERINE + I must hear + What you are pleased to speak!--How my heart sinks here! + [_Aside._] + + MRS. FRAMPTON + My chamber to myself, my separate maid, + My coach, and so forth.--Not that needle, simple one, + With the great staring eye fit for a Cyclops! + Mine own are not so blinded with their griefs + But I could make a shift to thread a smaller. + A cable or a camel might go through this, + And never strain for the passage. + + KATHERINE + + I will fit you.-- + Intolerable tyranny! [_Aside._] + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Quick, quick; + You were not once so slack.--As I was saying, + Not a young thing among ye, but observed me + Above the mistress. Who but I was sought to + In all your dangers, all your little difficulties, + Your girlish scrapes? I was the scape-goat still, + To fetch you off; kept all your secrets, some, + Perhaps, since then-- + + KATHERINE + No more of that, for mercy, + If you'd not have me, sinking at your feet, + Cleave the cold earth for comfort. [_Kneels._] + + MRS. FRAMPTON + This to me? + This posture to your friend had better suited + The orphan Katherine in her humble school-days + To the _then_ rich heiress, than the wife of Selby, + Of wealthy Mr. Selby, + To the poor widow Frampton, sunk as she is. + Come, come, + 'Twas something, or 'twas nothing, that I said; + I did not mean to fright you, sweetest bed-fellow! + You once were so, but Selby now engrosses you. + I'll make him give you up a night or so; + In faith I will: that we may lie, and talk + Old tricks of school-days over. + + KATHERINE + Hear me, madam-- + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Not by that name. Your friend-- + + KATHERINE + My truest friend, + And saviour of my honour! + + MRS. FRAMPTON + This sounds better; + You still shall find me such. + + KATHERINE + That you have graced + Our poor house with your presence hitherto, + Has been my greatest comfort, the sole solace + Of my forlorn and hardly guess'd estate. + You have been pleased + To accept some trivial hospitalities, + In part of payment of a long arrear + I owe to you, no less than for my life. + + MRS. FRAMPTON + You speak my services too large. + + KATHERINE + Nay, less; + For what an abject thing were life to me + Without your silence on my dreadful secret! + And I would wish the league we have renew'd + Might be perpetual-- + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Have a care, fine madam! [_Aside._] + + KATHERINE + That one house still might hold us. But my husband + Has shown himself of late-- + + MRS. FRAMPTON + How Mistress Selby? + + KATHERINE + Not, not impatient. You misconstrue him. + He honours, and he loves, nay, he must love + The friend of his wife's youth. But there are moods + In which-- + + MRS. FRAMPTON + I understand you;--in which husbands, + And wives that love, may wish to be alone, + To nurse the tender fits of new-born dalliance, + After a five years' wedlock. + + KATHERINE + Was that well + Or charitably put? do these pale cheeks + Proclaim a wanton blood? this wasting form + Seem a fit theatre for Levity + To play his love-tricks on; and act such follies, + As even in Affection's first bland Moon + Have less of grace than pardon in best wedlocks? + I was about to say, that there are times, + When the most frank and sociable man + May surfeit on most loved society, + Preferring loneness rather-- + + MRS. FRAMPTON + To my company-- + + KATHERINE + Ay, your's, or mine, or any one's. Nay, take + Not this unto yourself. Even in the newness + Of our first married loves 'twas sometimes so. + For solitude, I have heard my Selby say, + Is to the mind as rest to the corporal functions; + And he would call it oft, the _day's soft sleep._ + + MRS. FRAMPTON + What is your drift? and whereto tends this speech, + Rhetorically labour'd? + + KATHERINE + That you would + Abstain but from our house a month, a week; + I make request but for a single day. + + MRS. FRAMPTON + A month, a week, a day! A single hour + In every week, and month, and the long year, + And all the years to come! My footing here, + Slipt once, recovers never. From the state + Of gilded roofs, attendance, luxuries, + Parks, gardens, sauntering walks, or wholesome rides, + To the bare cottage on the withering moor, + Where I myself am servant to myself, + Or only waited on by blackest thoughts-- + I sink, if this be so. No; here I sit. + + KATHERINE + Then I am lost for ever! + [_Sinks at her feet--curtain drops._] + + + + +SCENE.--_An Apartment, contiguous to the last_. + + +SELBY, _as if listening_. + + + SELBY + The sounds have died away. What am I changed to? + What do I here, list'ning like to an abject, + Or heartless wittol, that must hear no good, + If he hear aught? "This shall to the ear of your husband." + It was the Widow's word. I guess'd some mystery, + And the solution with a vengeance comes. + What can my wife have left untold to me, + That must be told by proxy? I begin + To call in doubt the course of her life past + Under my very eyes. She hath not been good, + Not virtuous, not discreet; she hath not outrun + My wishes still with prompt and meek observance. + Perhaps she is not fair, sweet-voiced; her eyes + Not like the dove's; all this as well may be, + As that she should entreasure up a secret + In the peculiar closet of her breast, + And grudge it to my ear. It is my right + To claim the halves in any truth she owns, + As much as in the babe I have by her; + Upon whose face henceforth I fear to look, + Lest I should fancy in its innocent brow + Some strange shame written. + + _Enter Lucy_. + + Sister, an anxious word with you. + From out the chamber, where my wife but now + Held talk with her encroaching friend, I heard + (Not of set purpose heark'ning, but by chance) + A voice of chiding, answer'd by a tone + Of replication, such as the meek dove + Makes, when the kite has clutch'd her. The high Widow + Was loud and stormy. I distinctly heard + One threat pronounced--"Your husband shall know all." + I am no listener, sister; and I hold + A secret, got by such unmanly shift, + The pitiful'st of thefts; but what mine ear, + I not intending it, receives perforce, + I count my lawful prize. Some subtle meaning + Lurks in this fiend's behaviour; which, by force, + Or fraud, I must make mine. + + LUCY + The gentlest means + Are still the wisest. What, if you should press + Your wife to a disclosure? + + SELBY + I have tried + All gentler means; thrown out low hints, which, though + Merely suggestions still, have never fail'd + To blanch her cheek with fears. Roughlier to insist, + Would be to kill, where I but meant to heal. + + LUCY + Your own description gave that Widow out + As one not much precise, nor over coy, + And nice to listen to a suit of love. + What if you feign'd a courtship, putting on, + (To work the secret from her easy faith,) + For honest ends, a most dishonest seeming? + + SELBY + I see your drift, and partly meet your counsel. + But must it not in me appear prodigious, + To say the least, unnatural, and suspicious, + To move hot love, where I have shewn cool scorn, + And undissembled looks of blank aversion? + + LUCY + Vain woman is the dupe of her own charms, + And easily credits the resistless power, + That in besieging Beauty lies, to cast down + The slight-built fortress of a casual hate. + + SELBY + I am resolved-- + + LUCY + Success attend your wooing! + + SELBY + And I'll about it roundly, my wise sister. [_Exeunt_.] + + + + +SCENE.--_The Library_. + + +MR. SELBY. MRS. FRAMPTON. + + + SELBY + A fortunate encounter, Mistress Frampton. + My purpose was, if you could spare so much + From your sweet leisure, a few words in private. + + MRS. FRAMPTON + What mean his alter'd tones? These looks to me, + Whose glances yet he has repell'd with coolness? + Is the wind changed? I'll veer about with it, + And meet him in all fashions. [_Aside._] + All my leisure, + Feebly bestow'd upon my kind friends here, + Would not express a tithe of the obligements + I every hour incur. + + SELBY + No more of that.-- + I know not why, my wife hath lost of late + Much of her cheerful spirits. + + MRS. FRAMPTON + It was my topic + To-day; and every day, and all day long, + I still am chiding with her. "Child," I said, + And said it pretty roundly--it may be + I was too peremptory--we elder school-fellows, + Presuming on the advantage of a year + Or two, which, in that tender time, seem'd much, + In after years, much like to elder sisters, + Are prone to keep the authoritative style, + When time has made the difference most ridiculous-- + + SELBY + The observation's shrewd. + + MRS. FRAMPTON + "Child," I was saying, + "If some wives had obtained a lot like yours," + And then perhaps I sigh'd, "they would not sit + In corners moping, like to sullen moppets + That want their will, but dry their eyes, and look + Their cheerful husbands in the face," perhaps + I said, their Selby's, "with proportion'd looks + Of honest joy." + + SELBY + You do suspect no jealousy? + + MRS. FRAMPTON + What is his import? Whereto tends his speech? [_Aside._] + Of whom, of what, should she be jealous, sir? + + SELBY + I do not know, but women have their fancies; + And underneath a cold indifference, + Or show of some distaste, husbands have mask'd + A growing fondness for a female friend, + Which the wife's eye was sharp enough to see + Before the friend had wit to find it out. + You do not quit us soon? + + MRS. FRAMPTON + 'Tis as I find + Your Katherine profits by my lessons, sir.-- + Means this man honest? Is there no deceit? [_Aside_.] + + SELBY + She cannot chuse.--Well, well, I have been thinking, + And if the matter were to do again-- + + MRS. FRAMPTON + What matter, sir? + + SELBY + This idle bond of wedlock; + These sour-sweet briars, fetters of harsh silk; + I might have made, I do not say a better, + But a more fit choice in a wife. + + MRS. FRAMPTON + The parch'd ground, + In hottest Julys, drinks not in the showers + More greedily than I his words! [_Aside_.] + + SELBY + My humour + Is to be frank and jovial; and that man + Affects me best, who most reflects me in + My most free temper. + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Were you free to chuse, + As jestingly I'll put the supposition, + Without a thought reflecting on your Katherine, + What sort of woman would you make your choice? + + SELBY + I like your humour, and will meet your jest. + She should be one about my Katherine's age; + But not so old, by some ten years, in gravity. + One that would meet my mirth, sometimes outrun it; + No puling, pining moppet, as you said, + Nor moping maid, that I must still be teaching + The freedoms of a wife all her life after: + But one, that, having worn the chain before, + (And worn it lightly, as report gave out,) + Enfranchised from it by her poor fool's death, + Took it not so to heart that I need dread + To die myself, for fear a second time + To wet a widow's eye. + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Some widows, sir, + Hearing you talk so wildly, would be apt + To put strange misconstruction on your words, + As aiming at a Turkish liberty, + Where the free husband hath his several mates, + His Penseroso, his Allegro wife, + To suit his sober, or his frolic fit. + + SELBY + How judge you of that latitude? + + MRS. FRAMPTON + As one, + In European customs bred, must judge. Had I + Been born a native of the liberal East, + I might have thought as they do. Yet I knew + A married man that took a second wife, + And (the man's circumstances duly weigh'd, + With all their bearings) the considerate world + Nor much approved, nor much condemn'd the deed. + + SELBY + You move my wonder strangely. Pray, proceed. + + MRS. FRAMPTON + An eye of wanton liking he had placed + Upon a Widow, who liked him again, + But stood on terms of honourable love, + And scrupled wronging his most virtuous wife--- + When to their ears a lucky rumour ran, + That this demure and saintly-seeming wife + Had a first husband living; with the which + Being question'd, she but faintly could deny. + "A priest indeed there was; some words had passed, + But scarce amounting to a marriage rite. + Her friend was absent; she supposed him dead; + And, seven years parted, both were free to chuse." + + SELBY + What did the indignant husband? Did he not + With violent handlings stigmatize the cheek + Of the deceiving wife, who had entail'd + Shame on their innocent babe? + + MRS. FRAMPTON + He neither tore + His wife's locks nor his own; but wisely weighing + His own offence with her's in equal poise, + And woman's weakness 'gainst the strength of man, + Came to a calm and witty compromise. + He coolly took his gay-faced widow home, + Made her his second wife; and still the first + Lost few or none of her prerogatives. + The servants call'd her mistress still; she kept + The keys, and had the total ordering + Of the house affairs; and, some slight toys excepted, + Was all a moderate wife would wish to be. + + SELBY + A tale full of dramatic incident!-- + And if a man should put it in a play, + How should he name the parties? + + MRS. FRAMPTON + The man's name + Through time I have forgot--the widow's too;-- + But his first wife's first name, her maiden one, + Was--not unlike to that your Katherine bore, + Before she took the honour'd style of Selby. + + + SELBY + A dangerous meaning in your riddle lurks. + One knot is yet unsolved; that told, this strange + And most mysterious drama ends. The name + Of that first husband--- + + _Enter Lucy._ + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Sir, your pardon-- + The allegory fits your private ear. + Some half hour hence, in the garden's secret walk, + We shall have leisure. [_Exit._] + + SELBY + Sister, whence come you? + + LUCY + From your poor Katherine's chamber, where she droops + In sad presageful thoughts, and sighs, and weeps, + And seems to pray by turns. At times she looks + As she would pour her secret in my bosom--- + Then starts, as I have seen her, at the mention + Of some immodest act. At her request + I left her on her knees. + + SELBY + The fittest posture; + For great has been her fault to Heaven and me. + She married me, with a first husband living, + Or not known not to be so, which, in the judgment + Of any but indifferent honesty, + Must be esteem'd the same. The shallow Widow, + Caught by my art, under a riddling veil + Too thin to hide her meaning, hath confess'd all. + Your coming in broke off the conference, + When she was ripe to tell the fatal _name_, + That seals my wedded doom. + + LUCY + Was she so forward + To pour her hateful meanings in your ear + At the first hint? + + + SELBY + Her newly flatter'd hopes + Array'd themselves at first in forms of doubt; + And with a female caution she stood off + Awhile, to read the meaning of my suit, + Which with such honest seeming I enforced, + That her cold scruples soon gave way; and now + She rests prepared, as mistress, or as wife, + To seize the place of her betrayed friend-- + My much offending, but more suffering, Katherine. + + LUCY + Into what labyrinth of fearful shapes + My simple project has conducted you-- + Were but my wit as skilful to invent + A clue to lead you forth!--I call to mind + A letter, which your wife received from the Cape, + Soon after you were married, with some circumstances + Of mystery too. + + SELBY + I well remember it. + That letter did confirm the truth (she said) + Of a friend's death, which she had long fear'd true, + But knew not for a fact. A youth of promise + She gave him out--a hot adventurous spirit-- + That had set sail in quest of golden dreams, + And cities in the heart of Central Afric; + But named no names, nor did I care to press + My question further, in the passionate grief + She shew'd at the receipt. Might this be he? + + LUCY + Tears were not all. When that first shower was past, + With clasped hands she raised her eyes to Heav'n, + As if in thankfulness for some escape, + Or strange deliverance, in the news implied, + Which sweeten'd that sad news. + + SELBY + Something of that + I noted also-- + + + LUCY + In her closet once, + Seeking some other trifle, I espied + A ring, in mournful characters deciphering + The death of "Robert Halford, aged two + And twenty." Brother, I am not given + To the confident use of wagers, which I hold + Unseemly in a woman's argument; + But I am strangely tempted now to risk + A thousand pounds out of my patrimony, + (And let my future husband look to it + If it be lost,) that this immodest Widow + Shall name the name that tallies with that ring. + + SELBY + That wager lost, I should be rich indeed-- + Rich in my rescued Kate--rich in my honour, + Which now was bankrupt. Sister, I accept + Your merry wager, with an aching heart + For very fear of winning. 'Tis the hour + That I should meet my Widow in the walk, + The south side of the garden. On some pretence + Lure forth my Wife that way, that she may witness + Our seeming courtship. Keep us still in sight, + Yourselves unseen; and by some sign I'll give, + (A finger held up, or a kerchief waved,) + You'll know your wager won--then break upon us, + As if by chance. + + LUCY + I apprehend your meaning-- + + SELBY + And may you prove a true Cassandra here, + Though my poor acres smart for't, wagering sister. + [_Exeunt._] + + + + +SCENE.-_Mrs. Selby's Chamber._ + + +MRS. FRAMPTON. KATHERINE. + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Did I express myself in terms so strong? + + + KATHERINE + As nothing could have more affrighted me. + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Think it a hurt friend's jest, in retribution + Of a suspected cooling hospitality. + And, for my staying here, or going hence, + (Now I remember something of our argument,) + Selby and I can settle that between us. + You look amazed. What if your husband, child, + Himself has courted me to stay? + + KATHERINE + You move + My wonder and my pleasure equally. + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Yes, courted me to stay, waiv'd all objections. + Made it a favour to yourselves; not me, + His troublesome guest, as you surmised. Child, child! + When I recall his flattering welcome, I + Begin to think the burden of my presence + Was-- + + KATHERINE + What, for Heaven-- + + MRS. FRAMPTON + A little, little spice + Of jealousy--that's all--an honest pretext, + No wife need blush for. Say that you should see + (As oftentimes we widows take such freedoms, + Yet still on this side virtue,) in a jest + Your husband pat me on the cheek, or steal + A kiss, while you were by,--not else, for virtue's sake. + + KATHERINE + I could endure all this, thinking my husband + Meant it in sport-- + + MRS. FRAMPTON + But if in downright earnest + (Putting myself out of the question here) + Your Selby, as I partly do suspect, + Own'd a divided heart-- + + + KATHERINE + My own would break-- + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Why, what a blind and witless fool it is, + That will not see its gains, its infinite gains-- + + KATHERINE + Gain in a loss, + Or mirth in utter desolation! + + MRS. FRAMPTON + He doting on a face--suppose it mine, + Or any other's tolerably fair-- + What need you care about a senseless secret? + + KATHERINE + Perplex'd and fearful woman! I in part + Fathom your dangerous meaning. You have broke + The worse than iron band, fretting the soul, + By which you held me captive. Whether my husband + _Is_ what you gave him out, or your fool'd fancy + But dreams he is so, either way I am free. + + MRS. FRAMPTON + It talks it bravely, blazons out its shame; + A very heroine while on its knees; + Rowe's Penitent, an absolute Calista! + + KATHERINE + Not to thy wretched self these tears are falling; + But to my husband, and offended heaven, + Some drops are due--and then I sleep in peace, + Reliev'd from frightful dreams, my dreams though sad. + [_Exit_.] + + MRS. FRAMPTON + I have gone too far. Who knows but in this mood + She may forestall my story, win on Selby + By a frank confession?--and the time draws on + For our appointed meeting. The game's desperate, + For which I play. A moment's difference + May make it hers or mine. I fly to meet him. + [_Exit._] + + + +SCENE.--_A Garden_. + + +MR. SELBY. MRS. FRAMPTON. + + + SELBY + I am not so ill a guesser, Mrs. Frampton, + Not to conjecture, that some passages + In your unfinished story, rightly interpreted, + Glanced at my bosom's peace; + You knew my wife? + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Even from her earliest school-days.--What of that? + Or how is she concerned in my fine riddles, + Framed for the hour's amusement? + + SELBY + By my _hopes_ + Of my new interest conceived in you, + And by the honest passion of my heart, + Which not obliquely I to you did hint; + Come from the clouds of misty allegory, + And in plain language let me hear the worst. + Stand I disgraced or no? + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Then, by _my_ hopes + Of my new interest conceiv'd in you, + And by the kindling passion in _my_ breast, + Which through my riddles you had almost read, + Adjured so strongly, I will tell you all. + In her school years, then bordering on fifteen, + Or haply not much past, she loved a youth-- + + SELBY + My most ingenuous Widow-- + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Met him oft + By stealth, where I still of the party was-- + + SELBY + Prime confidant to all the school, I warrant, + And general go-between-- + [_Aside_.] + + + MRS. FRAMPTON + One morn he came + In breathless haste. "The ship was under sail, + Or in few hours would be, that must convey + Him and his destinies to barbarous shores, + Where, should he perish by inglorious hands, + It would be consolation in his death + To have call'd his Katherine _his_." + + SELBY + Thus far the story + Tallies with what I hoped. + [_Aside_.] + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Wavering between + The doubt of doing wrong, and losing him; + And my dissuasions not o'er hotly urged, + Whom he had flatter'd with the bride-maid's part;-- + + SELBY + I owe my subtle Widow, then, for this. + [_Aside_.] + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Briefly, we went to church. The ceremony + Scarcely was huddled over, and the ring + Yet cold upon her finger, when they parted-- + He to his ship; and we to school got back, + Scarce miss'd, before the dinner-bell could ring. + + SELBY + And from that hour-- + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Nor sight, nor news of him, + For aught that I could hear, she e'er obtain'd. + + SELBY + Like to a man that hovers in suspense + Over a letter just receiv'd, on which + The black seal hath impress'd its ominous token, + Whether to open it or no, so I + Suspended stand, whether to press my fate + Further, or check ill curiosity + That tempts me to more loss.--The name, the name + Of this fine youth? + + MRS. FRAMPTON + What boots it, if 'twere told? + + SELBY + Now, by our loves, + And by my hopes of happier wedlocks, some day + To be accomplish'd, give me his name! + + MRS. FRAMPTON + 'Tis no such serious matter. It was--Huntingdon. + + SELBY + How have three little syllables pluck'd from me + A world of countless hopes!-- + [_Aside_.] + Evasive Widow. + + MRS. FRAMPTON + How, Sir! I like not this. + [_Aside_.] + + SELBY + No, no, I meant + Nothing but good to thee. That other woman, + How shall I call her but evasive, false, + And treacherous?--by the trust I place in thee, + Tell me, and tell me truly, was the name + As you pronounced it? + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Huntingdon--the name, + Which his paternal grandfather assumed, + Together with the estates, of a remote + Kinsman; but our high-spirited youth-- + + SELBY + Yes-- + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Disdaining + For sordid pelf to truck the family honours, + At risk of the lost estates, resumed the old style, + And answer'd only to the name of-- + + + SELBY + What? + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Of Halford-- + + SELBY + A Huntingdon to Halford changed so soon! + Why, then I see, a witch hath her good spells, + As well as bad, and can by a backward charm + Unruffle the foul storm she has just been raising. + [_Aside_.] + [_He makes the signal._] + + My frank, fair spoken Widow! let this kiss, + Which yet aspires no higher, speak my thanks, + Till I can think on greater. + + _Enter_ LUCY _and_ KATHERINE. + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Interrupted! + + SELBY + My sister here! and see, where with her comes + My serpent gliding in an angel's form, + To taint the new-born Eden of our joys. + Why should we fear them? We'll not stir a foot, + Nor coy it for their pleasures. + [_He courts the Widow_.] + + LUCY (_to Katherine_.) + + This your free, + And sweet ingenuous confession, binds me + For ever to you; and it shall go hard, + But it shall fetch you back your husband's heart, + That now seems blindly straying; or at worst, + In me you have still a sister.--Some wives, brother, + Would think it strange to catch their husbands thus + Alone with a trim widow; but your Katherine + Is arm'd, I think, with patience. + + KATHERINE + I am fortified + With knowledge of self-faults to endure worse wrongs, + If they be wrongs, than he can lay upon me; + Even to look on, and see him sue in earnest, + As now I think he does it but in seeming, + To that ill woman. + + SELBY + Good words, gentle Kate, + And not a thought irreverent of our Widow. + Why, 'twere unmannerly at any time, + But most uncourteous on our wedding day, + When we should shew most hospitable.--Some wine. + [_Wine is brought_.] + + I am for sports. And now I do remember, + The old Egyptians at their banquets placed + A charnel sight of dead men's skulls before them, + With images of cold mortality, + To temper their fierce joys when they grew rampant. + I like the custom well: and ere we crown + With freer mirth the day, I shall propose, + In calmest recollection of our spirits, + We drink the solemn "Memory of the dead." + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Or the supposed dead. + [_Aside to him_.] + + SELBY + Pledge me, good wife. + [_She fills_.] + Nay, higher yet, till the brimm'd cup swell o'er. + + KATHERINE + I catch the awful import of your words; + And, though I could accuse you of unkindness, + Yet as your lawful and obedient wife, + While that name lasts (as I perceive it fading, + Nor I much longer may have leave to use it) + I calmly take the office you impose; + And on my knees, imploring their forgiveness, + Whom I in heav'n or earth may have offended, + Exempt from starting tears, and woman's weakness, + I pledge you, Sir--the Memory of the Dead! + [_She drinks kneeling_.] + + SELBY + 'Tis gently and discreetly said, and like + My former loving Kate. + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Does he relent? + [_Aside_.] + + SELBY + That ceremony past, we give the day + To unabated sport. And, in requital + Of certain stories, and quaint allegories, + Which my rare Widow hath been telling to me + To raise my morning mirth, if she will lend + Her patient hearing, I will here recite + A Parable; and, the more to suit her taste, + The scene is laid in the East. + + MRS. FRAMPTON + I long to hear it. + Some tale, to fit his wife. + [_Aside_.] + + KATHERINE + Now, comes my TRIAL. + + LUCY + The hour of your deliverance is at hand, + If I presage right. Bear up, gentlest sister. + + SELBY + "The Sultan Haroun"--Stay--O now I have it-- + "The Caliph Haroun in his orchards had + A fruit-tree, bearing such delicious fruits, + That he reserved them for his proper gust; + And through the Palace it was Death proclaim'd + To any one that should purloin the same." + + MRS. FRAMPTON + A heavy penance for so light a fault-- + + SELBY + Pray you, be silent, else you put me out. + "A crafty page, that for advantage watch'd, + Detected in the act a brother page, + Of his own years, that was his bosom friend; + And thenceforth he became that other's lord, + And like a tyrant he demean'd himself, + Laid forced exactions on his fellow's purse; + And when that poor means fail'd, held o'er his head + Threats of impending death in hideous forms; + Till the small culprit on his nightly couch + Dream'd of strange pains, and felt his body writhe + In tortuous pangs around the impaling stake." + + MRS. FRAMPTON + I like not this beginning-- + + SELBY + Pray you, attend. + "The Secret, like a night-hag, rid his sleeps, + And took the youthful pleasures from his days, + And chased the youthful smoothness from his brow, + That from a rose-cheek'd boy he waned and waned + To a pale skeleton of what he was; + And would have died, but for one lucky chance." + + KATHERINE + Oh! + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Your wife--she faints--some cordial--smell to this. + + SELBY + Stand off. My sister best will do that office. + + MRS. FRAMPTON + Are all his tempting speeches come to this? + [_Aside_.] + + SELBY + What ail'd my wife? + + KATHERINE + A warning faintness, sir, + Seized on my spirits, when you came to where + You said "a lucky chance." I am better now, + Please you go on. + + SELBY + The sequel shall be brief. + + KATHERINE + But brief or long, I feel my fate hangs on it. + [_Aside_.] + + SELBY + "One morn the Caliph, in a covert hid, + Close by an arbour where the two boys talk'd + (As oft, we read, that Eastern sovereigns + Would play the eaves-dropper, to learn the truth, + Imperfectly received from mouths of slaves,) + O'erheard their dialogue; and heard enough + To judge aright the cause, and know his cue. + The following day a Cadi was dispatched + To summon both before the judgment-seat: + The lickerish culprit, almost dead with fear, + And the informing friend, who readily, + Fired with fair promises of large reward, + And Caliph's love, the hateful truth disclosed." + + MRS. FRAMPTON + What did the Caliph to the offending boy, + That had so grossly err'd? + + SELBY + His sceptred hand + He forth in token of forgiveness stretch'd, + And clapp'd his cheeks, and courted him with gifts, + And he became once more his favourite page. + + MRS. FRAMPTON + But for that other-- + + SELBY + He dismiss'd him straight, + From dreams of grandeur and of Caliph's love, + To the bare cottage on the withering moor, + Where friends, turn'd fiends, and hollow confidants, + And widows, hide, who, in a husband's ear, + Pour baneful truths, but tell not all the truth; + And told him not that Robert Halford died + Some moons before _his_ marriage-bells were rung. + Too near dishonour hast thou trod, dear wife, + And on a dangerous cast our fates were set; + But Heav'n, that will'd our wedlock to be blest, + Hath interposed to save it gracious too. + Your penance is--to dress your cheek in smiles, + And to be once again my merry Kate.-- + + Sister, your hand. + Your wager won makes me a happy man, + Though poorer, Heav'n knows, by a thousand pounds. + The sky clears up after a dubious day. + Widow, your hand. I read a penitence + In this dejected brow; and in this shame + Your fault is buried. You shall in with us, + And, if it please you, taste our nuptial fare: + For, till this moment, I can joyful say, + Was never truly Selby's Wedding Day. + + FINIS. + + + + + +NOTES + + +Page 1. DEDICATION TO S.T. COLERIDGE, ESQ. + +In 1818, when Lamb wrote these words, he was forty-three and Coleridge +forty-six. The _Works_, in the first volume of which this dedication +appeared, were divided into two volumes, the second, containing prose, +being dedicated to Martin Burney, in the sonnet which I have placed on +page 45. The publishers of the _Works_ were Charles and James Ollier, +who, starting business about 1816, had already published for Leigh Hunt, +Keats, and Shelley. + +For the allusion to the threefold cord, in the second paragraph, see the +note on page 313. + +The ****** Inn was the Salutation and Cat, in Newgate +Street, since rebuilt, where Coleridge used to stay on his London +visits when he was at Cambridge, and where the landlord is said +to have asked him to continue as a free guest--if only he would +talk and talk. Writing to Coleridge in 1796 Lamb recalls "the +little smoky room at the Salutation and Cat, where we have sat +together through the winter nights, beguiling the cares of life with +Poesy;" and again, "I have been drinking egg-hot and smoking +Oronooko (associated circumstances, which ever forcibly recall to +my mind our evenings and nights at the Salutation)." Later he +added to these concomitants of a Salutation evening, "Egg-hot, +Welsh-rabbit, and metaphysics," and gave as his highest idea of +heaven, listening to Coleridge "repeating one of Bowles's sweetest +sonnets, in your sweet manner, while we two were indulging +sympathy, a solitary luxury, by the fire side at the Salutation." + +The line-- + + Of summer days and of delightful years + +is from Bowles--"Sonnet written at Ostend." + + + * * * * * + + +Page 3. Lamb's Earliest Poem. _Mille Vice Mortis._ + +In a MS. book that had belonged to James Boyer of Christ's Hospital, in +which his best scholars inscribed compositions, are these lines signed +Charles Lamb, 1789. All Lamb's Grecians are there too. The book was +described by the late Dykes Campbell, Lamb's most accomplished and +enthusiastic student, in the _Illustrated London News_, December 26, +1891. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 4. POEMS IN COLERIDGE'S _POEMS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS_, 1796. + +This book was published by Cottle, of Bristol, in 1796. Lamb contributed +four poems, which were thus referred to by Coleridge in the Preface: +"The Effusions signed C.L. were written by Mr. CHARLES LAMB, of the +India House--independently of the signature their superior merit would +have sufficiently distinguished them." Lamb reprinted the first only +once, in 1797, in the second edition of Coleridge's _Poems_, the +remaining three again in his _Works_ in 1818. I have followed in the +body of this volume the text of these later appearances, the original +form of the sonnets being relegated to the notes. + + +Page 4. _As when a child on some long winter's night._ + +Some mystery attaches to the authorship of this sonnet. On December 1, +1794, Coleridge wrote to the editor of the _Morning Chronicle_ saying +that he proposed to send a series of sonnets ("as it is the fashion to +call them") addressed to eminent contemporaries; and he enclosed one to +Mr. Erskine. The editor, with almost Chinese politeness, inserted +beneath the sonnet this note: "Our elegant Correspondent will highly +gratify every reader of taste by the continuance of his exquisitely +beautiful productions." The series continued with Burke, Priestley, +Lafayette, Kosciusko, Chatham, Bowles, and, on December 29, 1794, Mrs. +Siddons--the sonnet here printed--all signed S.T.C. + +But the next appearance of the sonnet was as an effusion by Lamb in +Coleridge's _Poems on Various Subjects_, 1796, signed C.L.; and its next +in the _Poems_, 1797, among Lamb's contributions. In 1803, however, we +find it in Coleridge's _Poems_, third edition, with no reference to Lamb +whatever. This probably means that Lamb and Coleridge had written it +together, that Coleridge's original share had been the greater, and that +Lamb and he had come to an arrangement by which Coleridge was to be +considered the sole author; for Lamb did not reprint it in 1818 with his +other early verse. Writing in 1796 to Coleridge concerning his treatment +of other of Lamb's sonnets, Lamb says: "That to Mrs. Siddons, now, you +were welcome to improve, if it had been worth it; but I say unto you +again, Coleridge, spare my ewe lambs." Such a distinction drawn between +the sonnet to Mrs. Siddons and the others supports the belief that Lamb +had not for it a deeply parental feeling. + +This was not the only occasion on which Lamb and Coleridge wrote a +sonnet in partnership. Writing to Southey in December, 1794, Coleridge +says: "Of the following sonnet, the four _last_ lines were written by +Lamb, a man of uncommon genius...." + + SONNET + + O gentle look, that didst my soul beguile, + Why hast thou left me? Still in some fond dream + Revisit my sad heart, auspicious smile! + As falls on closing flowers the lunar beam; + What time in sickly mood, at parting day + I lay me down and think of happier years; + Of joys, that glimmered in Hope's twilight ray, + Then left me darkling in a vale of tears. + O pleasant days of Hope--for ever flown! + Could I recall one!--But that thought is vain, + Availeth not Persuasion's sweetest tone + To lure the fleet-winged travellers back again: + Anon, they haste to everlasting night, + Nor can a giant's arm arrest them in their flight. + +Subsequently Coleridge rewrote the final couplet. + +The same letter to Southey informs us that the sonnet to Mrs. Siddons +was not Lamb's earliest poem, although it stands first in his poetical +works; for Coleridge remarks: "Have you seen his [Lamb's] divine sonnet, +'O! I could laugh to hear the winter wind'?" (see page 5). + +Lamb printed the sonnet to Mrs. Siddons twice--in 1796 and 1797. + + +Page 4. _Was it some sweet device of Faery._ + +This sonnet passed through various vicissitudes. Lamb had sent it to +Coleridge for his _Poems on Various Subjects_ in 1796, and Coleridge +proceeded to re-model it more in accordance with his own views. The +following version, representing his modifications, was the one that +found its way into print as Lamb's:-- + + Was it some sweet device of faery land + That mock'd my steps with many a lonely glade, + And fancied wand'rings with a fair-hair'd maid? + Have these things been? Or did the wizard wand + Of Merlin wave, impregning vacant air, + And kindle up the vision of a smile + In those blue eyes, that seem'd to speak the while + Such tender things, as might enforce Despair + To drop the murth'ring knife, and let go by + His fell resolve? Ah me! the lonely glade + Still courts the footsteps of the fair-hair'd maid, + Among whose locks the west-winds love to sigh; + But I forlorn do wander, reckless where, + And mid my wand'rings find no ANNA there! + C.L. + + +Lamb naturally protested when the result came under his eyes. "I love my +own feelings: they are dear to memory," he says in a letter in 1796, +"though they now and then wake a sigh or a tear. 'Thinking on divers +things foredone,' I charge you, Coleridge, spare my ewe lambs." Later, +when Coleridge's second edition was in preparation, Lamb wrote again +(January 10, 1797): "I need not repeat my wishes to have my little +sonnets printed _verbatim_ my last way. In particular, I fear lest you +should prefer printing my first sonnet [this one] as you have done more +than once, 'Did the wand of Merlin wave?' It looks so like _Mr_. Merlin, +the ingenious successor of the immortal Merlin, now living in good +health and spirits, and flourishing in magical reputation in Oxford +Street." The phrase "more than once" in the foregoing passage needs +explanation. It refers to the little pamphlet of sonnets, entitled +_Sonnets from Various Authors_, which Coleridge issued privately in +1796, and of which only one copy is now known to exist--that preserved +in the Dyce and Forster collection at South Kensington. The little +pamphlet contains twenty-eight sonnets in all, of which three are by +Bowles, four by Southey, four by Charles Lloyd, four by Coleridge, four +by Lamb, and others by various writers: all of which were chosen for +their suitability to be bound up with the sonnets of Bowles. Lamb's +sonnets were: "We were two pretty babes" (see page 9), "Was it some +sweet device" (printed with Coleridge's alterations), "When last I +roved" (see page 8), and "O! I could laugh" (see page 5). + +The present sonnet belongs to the series of four love sonnets which is +completed by the one that follows, "Methinks, how dainty sweet it were," +and those on page 8 beginning, "When last I roved" and "A timid grace." +Anna is believed to have been Ann Simmons, who lived at Blenheims, a +group of cottages near Blakesware, the house where Mrs. Field, Lamb's +grandmother, was housekeeper. Mrs. Field died in 1792, after which time +Lamb's long visits to that part of the country probably ceased. He was +then seventeen. Nothing is known of Lamb's attachment beyond these +sonnets, the fact that when he lost his reason for a short time in +1795-1796 he attributed the cause to some person unmentioned who is +conjectured to have been Anna, and the occasional references in the Ella +essays to "Alice W----" and to his old passion for her (see "Dream +Children" in particular, in Vol. II). The death of Mrs. Lamb in +September, 1796, and the duty of caring for and nursing his sister Mary, +which then devolved upon Charles, put an end to any dreams of private +happiness that he may have been indulging; and his little romance was +over. How deep his passion was we are not likely ever to know; but Lamb +thenceforward made very light of it, except in the pensive recollections +in the essays twenty-five years later. In November, 1796, when sending +Coleridge poems for his second edition, he says: "Do not entitle any of +my _things_ Love Sonnets, as I told you to call 'em; 'twill only make me +look little in my own eyes; for it is a passion of which I retain +nothing.... Thank God, the folly has left me for ever. Not even a review +of my love verses renews one wayward wish in me...." Again, in November, +1796, in another letter to Coleridge, about his poems in the 1797 +edition, Lamb says: "Oh, my friend! I think sometimes, could I recall +the days that are past, which among them should I choose? not those +'merrier days,' not the 'pleasant days of hope,' not 'those wanderings +with a fair-hair'd maid,' which I have so often and so feelingly +regretted, but the days, Coleridge, of a _mother's_ fondness for her +_school-boy_." Lamb printed this sonnet three times--in 1796, 1797 and +1818. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 5. _Methinks how dainty sweet it were, reclin'd._ + +When this sonnet was printed by Coleridge in 1796 the sestet +was made to run thus:-- + + But ah! sweet scenes of fancied bliss, adieu! + On rose-leaf beds amid your faery bowers + I all too long have lost the dreamy hours! + Beseems it now the sterner Muse to woo, + If haply she her golden meed impart, + To realise the vision of the heart. + +Lamb remonstrated: "I had rather have seen what I wrote myself, though +they bear no comparison with your exquisite lines-- + +"On rose-leaf'd beds, amid your faery bowers, etc. + +I love my sonnets because they are the reflected images of my Own +feelings at different times." This sonnet was printed by Lamb three +times--in 1796, 1797 and 1798. + + +Page 5. _O! I could laugh to hear the midnight wind,_ + +This sonnet, written probably at Margate, was entitled, in 1796, +"Written at Midnight, by the Seaside, after a Voyage." The last +lines then ran:-- + + And almost wish'd it were no crime to die! + How Reason reel'd! What gloomy transports rose! + Till the rude dashings rock'd them to repose. + +The couplet was Coleridge's, and Lamb protested (June 10, 1796), +describing them as good lines, but adding that they "must spoil +the whole with me who know it is only a fiction of yours and that +the rude dashings did in fact not rock me to repose." + +When reprinted in 1797, the final couplet was omitted, asterisks +standing instead. The present sonnet was probably the earliest of Lamb's +printed poems. In the Elia essay "The Old Margate Hoy," Lamb states that +the first time he saw the sea was on a visit to Margate as a boy, by +water--probably the voyage that suggested this sonnet. Lamb printed the +sonnet three times--in 1796, 1797 and 1818. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 6. LLOYD'S _POEMS ON THE DEATH OF PRISCILLA FARMER_, 1796. + +Charles Lloyd (1775-1839), the son of Charles Lloyd, of Birmingham (a +cultured and philanthropical Quaker banker), joined Coleridge at Bristol +late in 1796 as his private pupil, and moved with the family to Nether +Stowey. Priscilla Farmer was Lloyd's maternal grandmother, to whom he +was much attached, and on her death he composed the sonnets that form +this costly quarto, published for Lloyd by Coleridge's friend, Joseph +Cottle, of Bristol, in the winter of 1796. + + +Page 6. _The Grandame._ + +Lamb sent these lines in their first state to Coleridge in June, 1796, +at, which time they were, I conjecture, part of a long blank-verse poem +which he was then meditating, and of which "Childhood," "Fancy Employed +on Divine Subjects," and "The Sabbath Bells" (see pages 9 and 10) were +probably other portions. The poem was never finished. On June 13, 1796, +he writes to Coleridge:-- + +"Of the blank verses I spoke of, the following lines are the only +tolerably complete ones I have writ out of not more than one hundred and +fifty. That I get on slowly you may fairly impute to want of practice in +composition, when I declare to you that (the few verses which you have +seen excepted) I have not writ fifty lines since I left school. It may +not be amiss to remark that my grandmother (on whom the verses are +written) lived housekeeper in a family the fifty or sixty last years of +her life--that she was a woman of exemplary piety and goodness--and for +many years before her death was terribly afflicted with a cancer in her +breast, which she bore with true Christian patience. You may think that +I have not kept enough apart the ideas of her heavenly and her earthly +master; but recollect I have designedly given into her own way of +feeling; and if she had a failing 'twas that she respected her master's +family too much, not reverenced her Maker too little. The lines begin +imperfectly, as I may probably connect 'em if I finish at all: and if I +do, Biggs shall print 'em (in a more economical way than you yours), +for, Sonnets and all, they won't make a thousand lines as I propose +completing 'em, and the substance must be wire-drawn." + +When Charles Lloyd joined Coleridge later in the year, and was preparing +his _Poems in Memory of Priscilla Farmer_, Coleridge obtained Lamb's +permission for "The Grandame" to be included with them. The lines were +introduced by Lloyd in these words: "The following beautiful fragment +was written by CHARLES LAMB, of the India-House.--Its subject being the +same with that of my Poems, I was solicitous to have it printed with +them: and I am indebted to a Friend of the Author's for the permission." + +The poem differed then very slightly from its present form. When the +book was sent to Lamb he remarked (in December, 1796) on "the odd +coincidence of two young men, in one age, carolling their +grandmothers.... I cannot but smile to see my Granny so gayly deck'd +forth [the book was expensively produced by Lloyd], tho', I think, +whoever altered 'thy' praises to 'her' praises--'thy' honoured memory to +'her' honoured memory [lines 27 and 28], did wrong--they best exprest my +feelings. There is a pensive state of recollection, in which the mind is +disposed to apostrophise the departed objects of its attachment; and, +breaking loose from grammatical precision, changes from the 1st to the +3rd, and from the 3rd to the 1st person, just as the random fancy or +feeling directs." + +Mrs. Mary Field, _nee_ Bruton, Lamb's maternal grandmother, was +housekeeper at Blakesware house, near Widford, the seat of the Plumer +family for very many years, during the latter part of her life being +left in sole charge, for William Plumer had moved to his other seat, +Gilston, a few miles distant (see "Blakesmoor in H---- shire," and +notes, Vol. II). Lamb and his brother and sister visited their +grandmother at Blakesware as though in her own house. Mrs. Field died of +cancer in the breast, July 31, 1792, aged seventy-nine, and was buried +in Widford churchyard. + +Approached from the east the churchyard seems to be anything but on the +hilltop, for one descends to it; but it stands on a ridge, and seen from +the north, or, as at the old Blakesware house, from the west, it appears +to crown an eminence. The present spire, though slender and tapering, is +not that which Lamb used to see. Mrs. Field's plain stone, whose +legibility was not long since threatened by overhanging branches, has +now been saved from danger and may still be read. It merely records the +name "Mary Feild" (a mistake of the stone-cutter) and the bare dates. + +This poem was printed by Lamb three times--in 1796 (in Lloyd's book), in +1797 (with Coleridge) and in 1818. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 8. COLERIDGE'S _POEMS_, 1797. + +Coleridge's _Poems on Various Subjects_, 1796, went into a second +edition in 1797 under the title, _Poems by S.T. Coleridge, Second +Edition, to which are now added Poems by Charles Lamb and Charles +Lloyd_. Coleridge invented a motto from Groscollius for the title-page, +bearing upon this poetical partnership: "Duplex nobis vinculum, et +amicitiae et similium junctarumque Camoenarum; quod utinam neque mors +solvat, neque temporis longinquitas!" "Double is the bond which binds +us--friendship, and a kindred taste in poetry. Would that neither death +nor lapse of time could dissolve it!" + +Lamb's contributions were thus referred to by Coleridge in the Preface: +"There were inserted in my former Edition, a few Sonnets of my Friend +and old School-fellow, CHARLES LAMB. He has now communicated to me a +complete Collection of all his Poems; quae qui non prorsus amet, illum +omnes et Virtutes et Veneres odore." (Which things, whoever is not +unreservedly in love with, is detested by all the Virtues and the +Graces.) Lamb's poems came last in the book, an arrangement insisted +upon in a letter from him to Coleridge in November, 1796:--"Do you +publish with Lloyd, or without him? In either case my little portion may +come last; and after the fashion of orders to a country correspondent, I +will give directions how I should like to have 'em done. The title-page +to stand thus:-- + + + POEMS + + BY + + CHARLES LAMB, OF THE INDIA HOUSE + + +Under this leaf the following motto, which, for want of room, I put over +leaf, I desire you to insert, whether you like it or no. May not a +gentleman choose what arms, mottoes, or armorial bearings the Herald +will give him leave, without consulting his republican friend, who might +advise none? May not a publican put up the sign of the _Saracen's Head_, +even though his undiscerning neighbour should prefer, as more genteel, +the _Cat and Gridiron_? + + "[MOTTO] + + "This Beauty, in the blossom of my Youth, + When my first fire knew no adulterate incense, + Nor I no way to flatter but my fondness, + In the best language my true tongue could tell me, + And all the broken sighs my sick heart lend me, + I sued and served. Long did I love this Lady. + + "Massinger." + + "THE DEDICATION + _THE FEW FOLLOWING POEMS_, + CREATURES OF THE FANCY AND THE FEELING + IN LIFE'S MORE _VACANT_ HOURS, + PRODUCED, FOR THE MOST PART, BY + LOVE IN IDLENESS; + ARE, + WITH ALL A BROTHER'S FONDNESS, + INSCRIBED TO + MARY ANN LAMB, + THE AUTHOR'S BEST FRIEND AND SISTER" + +The dedication was printed as Lamb wished, in the form I have followed +above, and the book appeared. + + +Page 8. _When last I roved these winding wood-walks green,_ + +This was sent to Coleridge on June 1, 1796, in a letter containing also +the sonnets, "The Lord of Life," page 16; "A timid grace," page 8; and +"We were two pretty babes," page 9. It was written, said Lamb, "on +revisiting a spot, where the scene was laid of my 1st sonnet"--"Was it +some sweet device," page 4. Lamb printed this sonnet twice--in 1797 and +1818. Page 8. _A timid grace sits trembling in her eye._ + +This, the last of the four love sonnets (see note on page 310), seems to +be a survival of a discarded effort, for Lamb tells Coleridge, in the +letter referred to in the preceding note, that it "retains a few lines +from a sonnet of mine, which you once remarked had no 'body of thought' +in it." Lamb printed this sonnet twice--in 1797 and 1818. + + +Page 9. _If from my lips some angry accents fell,_ + +Lamb sent this sonnet, which is addressed to his sister, to Coleridge in +May, 1796. "The Sonnet I send you has small merit as poetry, but you +will be curious to read it when I tell you it was written in my +prison-house [an asylum] in one of my lucid Intervals." It is dated 1795 +in Coleridge's _Poems_. Lamb printed the sonnet twice--in 1797 and 1818. + + +Page 9. _We were two pretty babes, the youngest she._ + +First printed in the _Monthly Magazine_, July, 1796. "The next and last +[wrote Lamb in the letter to Coleridge referred to in the notes on page +310] I value most of all. 'Twas composed close upon the heels of the +last ['A timid grace,' page 8], in that very wood I had in mind when I +wrote 'Methinks how dainty sweet' [page 5]." It is dated 1795 in +Coleridge's _Poems_. In the same letter Lamb adds:--"Since writing it, I +have found in a poem by Hamilton of Bangour [William Hamilton, +1704-1754, the Scotch poet, of Bangour, Linlithgowshire] these 2 lines +to happiness:-- + + "Nun sober and devout, where art thou fled, + To hide in shades thy meek contented head. + +Lines eminently beautiful, but I do not remember having re'd 'em +previously, for the credit of my 10th and 11th lines. Parnell [Thomas +Parnell, 1679-1718] has 2 lines (which probably suggested the _above_) +to Contentment + + "Whither ah whither art Thou fled, + To hide thy meek contented head. + +"Cowley's exquisite Elegy on the death of his friend Harvey suggested +the phrase of 'we two' + + "Was there a tree [about] that did not know + The love betwixt us two?--" + +When Coleridge printed the sonnet in the pamphlet described on page 310, +he appended to the eleventh line the following note:-- + +Innocence, which, while we possess it, is playful as a babe, becomes +AWFUL when it has departed from us. This is the sentiment of the line +--a fine sentiment and nobly expressed. + +Lamb printed this sonnet twice--in 1797 and 1818. + + +Page 9. _Childhood._ + +See note to "The Grandame," page 312. The "turf-clad slope" in line 4 +was probably at Blakesware. It is difficult to re-create the scene, for +the new house stands a quarter of a mile west of the old one, the site +of which is hidden by grass and trees. Where once were gardens is now +meadow land. + +Lamb printed this poem twice--in 1797 and 1818. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 10. _The Sabbath Bells_. + +Lamb printed this poem twice--in 1797 and 1818. Church bells seem always +to have had charms for him (see the reference in _John Woodvil_, page +197, and in Susan Yates' story in _Mrs. Leicester's School_ in Vol. +III.). See note to "The Grandame." + + +Page 10. _Fancy Employed on Divine Subjects._ + +In the letter of December 5, 1796, quoted below, Lamb remarks concerning +this poem: "I beg you to alter the words 'pain and want,' to 'pain and +grief' (line 10), this last being a more familiar and ear-satisfying +combination. Do it, I beg of you." But the alteration either was not +made, or was cancelled later. The reference in lines 6, 7 and 8 is to +Revelation xxii. 1, 2. See note to "The Grandame." Lamb printed this +poem twice--in 1797 and 1818. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 11. _The Tomb of Douglas._ + +The play on which this poem was founded was the tragedy of "Douglas" by +John Home (1722-1808), produced in 1756. Young Norval, or Douglas, the +hero, after killing the false Glenalvon, is slain by his stepfather, +Lord Randolph, unknowing who he is. On hearing of Norval's death his +mother, Lady Randolph, throws herself from a precipice. In the letter to +Coleridge of December 5, 1796, quoted above, Lamb also copied out "The +Tomb of Douglas," prefixing these remarks:--"I would also wish to retain +the following if only to perpetuate the memory of so exquisite a +pleasure as I have often received at the performance of the tragedy of +Douglas, when Mrs. Siddons has been the Lady Randolph.... To understand +the following, if you are not acquainted with the play, you should know +that on the death of Douglas his mother threw herself down a rock; and +that at that time Scotland was busy in repelling the Danes." + +Coleridge told Southey that Lamb during his derangement at the end of +1795 and beginning of 1796 believed himself at one time to be Young +Norval. + +Lamb printed this poem, which differs curiously in character from all +his other poetical works, only once--in 1797. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 12. _To Charles Lloyd._ + +Lamb copied these lines in a letter to Coleridge on January 18, 1797, +remarking:--"You have learned by this time, with surprise, no doubt, +that Lloyd is with me in town. The emotions I felt on his coming so +unlooked for are not ill expressed in what follows, and what if you do +not object to them as too personal, and to the world obscure, or +otherwise wanting in worth I should wish to make a part of our little +volume." + +It must be remembered, in reading the poem, that Lamb was still in the +shadow of the tragedy in which he lost his mother, and, for a while, his +sister, and which had ruined his home. For other lines to Charles Lloyd +see page 21. This poem was printed by Lamb twice--in 1797 and 1818. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 13. _A Vision of Repentance_. + +Writing to Coleridge on June 13, 1797, Lamb says of this Spenserian +exercise:--"You speak slightingly. Surely the longer stanzas were pretty +tolerable; at least there was one good line in it [line 5]: + +"Thick-shaded trees, with dark green leaf rich clad. + +To adopt your own expression, I call this a 'rich' line, a fine full +line. And some others I thought even beautiful." Lamb printed the poem +twice--in 1797 and 1818. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 16. POEMS WRITTEN IN THE YEARS 1795-1798, AND NOT REPRINTED BY LAMB. + + +Page 16. _Sonnet: The Lord of Life shakes off his drowsihed_. + +The _Monthly Magazine_, December, 1797. Signed Charles Lamb. + +Lamb sent the first draft of this sonnet to Coleridge in 1796, saying +that it was composed "during a walk down into Hertfordshire early in +last Summer." "The last line," he adds, "is a copy of Bowles's 'to the +green hamlet in the peaceful plain.' Your ears are not so very +fastidious--many people would not like words so prosaic and familiar in +a sonnet as Islington and Hertfordshire." We must take Lamb's word for +it; but the late W.J. Craig found for the last line a nearer parallel +than Bowles'. In William Vallans' "Tale of the Two Swannes" (1590), +which is quoted in Leland's Itinerary, Hearne's edition, is the phrase: +"The fruitful fields of pleasant Hertfordshire." Lamb quotes his own +line in the _Elia_ essay "My Relations." + +This sonnet is perhaps the only occasion on which Lamb, even in play, +wrote anything against his beloved city. + +It may be noted here that this was Lamb's last contribution to the +_Monthly Magazine_, which had printed in the preceding number, November, +1797, Coleridge's satirical sonnets, signed Nehemiah Higginbottom, in +which Lamb and Lloyd were ridiculed, and which had perhaps some bearing +on the coolness that for a while was to subsist between Coleridge and +Lamb (see _Charles Lamb and the Lloyds_, 1898, pages 44-47). + + +Page 16. _To the Poet Cowper_. + +The _Monthly Magazine_, December, 1796. Signed C. Lamb. + +Lamb wrote these lines certainly as early as July, 1796, for he sends +them to Coleridge on the 6th of that month, adding:-- + +"I fear you will not accord entirely with my sentiments of Cowper, as +_exprest_ above, (perhaps scarcely just), but the poor Gentleman has +just recovered from his Lunacies, and that begets pity, and pity love, +and love admiration, and then it goes hard with People but they lie!" + +Lamb admired Cowper greatly in those days--particularly his "Crazy Kate" +("Task," Book I., 534-556). "I have been reading 'The Task' with fresh +delight," he says on December 5, 1796. "I am glad you love Cowper. I +could forgive a man for not enjoying Milton, but I would not call that +man my friend, who should be offended with the 'divine chit-chat of +Cowper.'" And again a little later, "I do so love him." + + +Page 17. _Lines addressed, from London, to Sara and S.T.C. at Bristol, +in the Summer of 1796._ + +_The Monthly Magazine,_ January, 1797. Signed Charles Lamb. + +Lamb sent the lines in their original state to Coleridge in the letter +of July 5, 1796, immediately before the words "_Let us prose,_" at the +head of that document as it is now preserved. + +"Another minstrel" was Coleridge. Chatterton was the mysterious youth of +line 16. Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770) was baptised at St. Mary +Redcliffe, Bristol; he was the nephew of the sexton; he brooded for many +hours a day in the church; he copied his antique writing from the +parchment in its muniment room; one of his later dreams was to be able +to build a new spire; and a cenotaph to his memory was erected by public +subscription in 1840 near the north-east angle of the churchyard. +Chatterton went to London on April 24, 1770, aged seventeen and a half, +and died there by his own hand on August 25 of the same year. + +The poem originated in an invitation to Lamb from the Coleridges at +Bristol, which he hoped to be able to accept; but to his request for the +necessary holiday from the India House came refusal. Lamb went to Nether +Stowey, however, in the following summer and met Wordsworth there. + +Lamb at one time wished these lines to be included among his poems in +the second edition of Coleridge's _Poems_, 1797. Writing on January 18, +1797, Lamb says: "I shall be sorry if that volume comes out, as it +necessarily must do, unless you print those very school boyish verses I +sent you on not getting leave to come down to Bristol last summer." At +the end of the letter he adds: "Yet I should feel ashamed that to you I +wrote nothing better. But they are too personal, almost trifling and +obscure withal." + + + * * * * * + + +Page 18. _Sonnet to a Friend._ + +The _Monthly Magazine,_ October, 1797. Signed Charles Lamb. + +Lamb sent this sonnet to Coleridge on January 2, 1797, remarking: "If +the fraternal sentiment conveyed in the following lines will atone for +the total want of any thing like merit or genius in it, I desire you +will print it next after my other Sonnet to my Sister." The other sonnet +was, "If from my lips some peevish accents fall," printed with +Coleridge's _Poems_ in 1797 (see page 9), concerning which book Lamb was +writing in the above letter. Coleridge apparently decided against the +present sonnet, for it was not printed in that book. + +Writing to Coleridge again a week later concerning the present poem, +Lamb said:-- + +"I am aware of the unpoetical caste of the 6 last lines of my last +sonnet, and think myself unwarranted in smuggling so tame a thing into +the book; only the sentiments of those 6 lines are thoroughly congenial +to me in my state of mind, and I wish to accumulate perpetuating tokens +of my affection to poor Mary." + +It has to be borne in mind that only three months had elapsed since the +death of Mrs. Lamb, and Mary was still in confinement. + + +Page 18. _To a Young Lady_. Signed C.L. + +_Monthly Magazine_, March, 1797, afterwards copied into the _Poetical +Register_ for 1803, signed C.L. in both cases. We know these to be +Lamb's from a letter to Coleridge of December 5, 1796. The identity of +the young lady is not now known. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 19. _Living without God in the World._ + +The _Annual Anthology,_ Vol. I., 1799. + +Vol. I. of the _Annual Anthology_, edited by Southey for Joseph Cottle, +was issued in September, 1799; and that was, I believe, this poem's +first appearance as a whole. Early in 1799, however, Charles Lloyd had +issued a pamphlet entitled _Lines suggested by the Fast appointed on +Wednesday, February 27, 1799_ (Birmingham, 1799), in which, in a note, +he quotes a passage from Lamb's poem, beginning, "some braver spirits" +(line 23), and ending, "prey on carcasses" (line 36), with the prefatory +remark: "I am happy in the opportunity afforded me of introducing the +following striking extract from some lines, intended as a satire on the +Godwinian jargon." + +Writing to Southey concerning this poem, Lamb says:-"I can have no +objection to you printing 'Mystery of God' [afterwards called 'Living +without God in the World'] with my name, and all due acknowledgments for +the honour and favour of the communication: indeed, 'tis a poem that can +dishonour no name. Now, that is in the true strain of modern modesto +vanitas." + + + * * * * * + + +Page 21. _BLANK VERSE_, BY CHARLES LLOYD AND CHARLES LAMB, 1798. + +Charles Lloyd left Coleridge early in 1797, and was in the winter +1797-1798 living in London, sharing lodgings with James White (Lamb's +friend and the author of _Original Letters, etc., of Sir John Falstaff_, +1796). It was then that the joint production of this volume was entered +upon. Of the seven poems contributed by Lamb only "The Old Familiar +Faces" (shorn of one stanza) and the lines "Composed at Midnight" were +reprinted by him: on account, it may be assumed, of his wish not to +revive in his sister, who would naturally read all that he published, +any painful recollections. Not that she refused in after years to speak +of her mother, but Lamb was, I think, sensitive for her and for himself +and the family too. As a matter of fact the circumstances of Mrs. Lamb's +death were known only to a very few of the Lambs' friends until after +Charles' death. It must be remembered that when _Blank Verse_ was +originally published, in 1798, Mary Lamb was still living apart, nor was +it known that she, would ever be herself again. + +It was this little volume which gave Gillray an opportunity for +introducing Lamb and Lloyd into his cartoon "The New Morality," +published in the first number of _The Anti-Jacobin Review and Magazine_ +(which succeeded Canning's _Anti-Jacobin_), August 1, 1798. Canning's +lines, "The New Morality," had been published in _The Anti-Jacobin_ on +July 9, 1798, containing the couplets:-- + + And ye five other wandering Bards that move + In sweet accord of harmony and love, + C----dge and S--th--y, L----d, and L----be and Co., + Tune all your mystic harps to praise Lepaux! + +In the picture Gillray introduced "Coleridge" as a donkey offering a +volume of "Dactylics," and Southey as another donkey, flourishing a +volume of "Saphics." Behind them, seated side by side, poring over a +manuscript entitled "Blank Verse, by Toad and Frog," are a toad and frog +which the Key states to be Lloyd and Lamb. It was in reference to this +picture that Godwin, on first meeting Lamb, asked him, "Pray, Mr. Lamb, +are you toad or frog?" + + +Page 21. _To Charles Lloyd._ + +_The Monthly Magazine_, October, 1797. Signed. + +Lamb sent these lines to Coleridge in September, 1797, remarking: "The +following I wrote when I had returned from Charles Lloyd, leaving him +behind at Burton, with Southey. To understand some of it you must +remember that at that time he was very much perplexed in mind." Lloyd +throughout his life was given to religious speculations which now and +then disturbed his mind to an alarming extent, affecting him not unlike +the gloomy forebodings and fears that beset Cowper. On this particular +occasion he was in difficulty also as to his engagement with Sophia +Pemberton, with whom he was meditating elopement and a Scotch marriage. + + +Page 21. _Written on the Day of my Aunt's Funeral._ + +"This afternoon," Lamb wrote to Coleridge on February 13, 1797, "I +attend the funeral of my poor old aunt, who died on Thursday. I own I am +thankful that the good creature has ended all her days of suffering and +infirmity. She was to me the 'cherisher of infancy.' ..." Lamb's Aunt +Hetty was his father's sister. Her real name was Sarah Lamb. All that we +know of her is found in this poem, in the _Letters_, in the passages in +"Christ's Hospital Five and Thirty Years Ago," and "My Relations;" in +the story of "The Witch Aunt," in _Mrs. Leicester's School_, and in a +reference in one of Mary Lamb's letters to Sarah Stoddart, where, +writing of her aunt and her mother,--"the best creatures in the +world,"--she speaks of Miss Lamb as being "as unlike a gentlewoman as +you can possibly imagine a good old woman to be;" contrasting her with +Mrs. Lamb, "a perfect gentlewoman." The description in "The Witch Aunt" +bears out Mary Lamb's letter. + +After the tragedy of September, 1796, Aunt Hetty was taken into the +house of a rich relative. This lady, however, seems to have been of too +selfish and jealous a disposition (see Lamb's letter to Coleridge, +December 9, 1796) to exert any real effort to make her guest comfortable +or happy. Hence Aunt Hetty returned to her nephew. + +"My poor old aunt [Lamb wrote to Coleridge on January 5, 1797], whom you +have seen, the kindest, goodest creature to me when I was at school; who +used to toddle there to bring me fag [food], when I, school-boy like, +only despised her for it, and used to be ashamed to see her come and sit +herself down on the old coal-hole steps as you went into the old +grammar-school, opend her apron, and bring out her bason with some nice +thing she had caused to be saved for me--the good old creature is now +lying on her death bed.... She says, poor thing, she is glad to come +home to die with me. I was always her favourite." + +Line 24. _One parent yet is left_. John Lamb, who is described as he was +in his prime, as Lovel, in the _Elia_ essay on _"The Old Benchers of the +Inner Temple,"_ died in 1799. + +Line 27. _A semblance most forlorn of what he was_. Lamb uses this line +as a quotation, slightly altered, in his account of Lovel. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 22. _Written a Year after the Events_. + +Lamb sent this poem to Coleridge in September, 1797, entitling it +"Written a Twelvemonth after the Events," and adding, "Friday next, +Coleridge, is the day on which my Mother died." Mrs. Lamb's death, at +the hands of her daughter in a moment of frenzy, occurred on September +22, 1796. Lamb added that he wrote the poem at the office with "unusual +celerity." "I expect you to like it better than anything of mine; Lloyd +does, and I do myself." The version sent to Coleridge differs only in +minor and unimportant points from that in _Blank Verse_. + +The second paragraph of the poem is very similar to a passage which Lamb +had written in a letter to Coleridge on November 14, 1796:-- + +"Oh, my friend! I think sometimes, could I recall the days that are +past, which among them should I choose? not those 'merrier days,' not +the 'pleasant days of hope,' not 'those wanderings with a fair-hair'd +maid,' which I have so often and so feelingly regretted, but the days, +Coleridge, of a _mother's_ fondness for her _school-boy_. What would I +give to call her back to earth for _one_ day!--on my knees to ask her +pardon for all those little asperities of temper which, from time to +time, have given her gentle spirit pain!--and the day, my friend, I +trust, will come. There will be 'time enough' for kind offices of love, +if 'Heaven's eternal year' be ours. Here-after, her meek spirit shall +not reproach me." + +In the last paragraph of the poem is a hint of "The Old Familiar Faces," +that was to follow it in the course of a few months. + +Lines 52, 53. _And one, above the rest_. Probably Coleridge is meant. + + +Page 24. _Written soon after the Preceding Poem_. + +The poem is addressed to Lamb's mother. Lamb seems to have sent a copy +to Southey, although the letter containing it has not been perserved, +for we find Southey passing it on to his friend C.W.W. Wynn on November +29, 1797, with a commendation: "I know that our tastes differ much in +poetry, and yet I think you must like these lines by Charles Lamb." + +The following passage in Rosamund Gray, which Lamb was writing at this +time, is curiously like these poems in tone. It occurs in one of the +letters from Elinor Clare to her friend--letters in which Lamb seems to +describe sometimes his own feelings, and sometimes those of his sister, +on their great sorrow:-- + +"Maria! shall not the meeting of blessed spirits, think you, be +something like this?--I think, I could even now behold my mother without +dread--I would ask pardon of her for all my past omissions of duty, for +all the little asperities in my temper, which have so often grieved her +gentle spirit when living. Maria! I think she would not turn away from +me. + +"Oftentimes a feeling, more vivid than memory, brings her before me--I +see her sit in her old elbow chair--her arms folded upon her lap--a tear +upon her cheek, that seems to upbraid her unkind daughter for some +inattention--I wipe it away and kiss her honored lips. + +"Maria! when I have been fancying all this, Allan will come in, with his +poor eyes red with weeping, and taking me by the hand, destroy the +vision in a moment. + +"I am prating to you, my sweet cousin, but it is the prattle of the +heart, which Maria loves. Besides, whom have I to talk to of these +things but you--you have been my counsellor in times past, my companion, +and sweet familiar friend. Bear with me a little--I mourn the +'cherishers of my infancy.'" + + + * * * * * + + +Page 25. _Written on Christmas Day, 1797_. + +Mary Lamb, to whom these lines were addressed, after seeming to be on +the road to perfect recovery, had suddenly had a relapse necessitating a +return to confinement from the lodging in which her brother had placed +her. + + +Page 25. _The Old Familiar Faces_. + +This, the best known of all Lamb's poems, was written in January, 1798, +following, it is suggested, upon a fit of resentment against Charles +Lloyd. Writing to Coleridge in that month Lamb tells of that little +difference, adding, "but he has forgiven me." Mr. J.A. Rutter, who, +through Canon Ainger, enunciated this theory, thinks that Lloyd may be +the "friend" of the fourth stanza, and Coleridge the "friend" of the +sixth. The old--but untenable--supposition was that it was Coleridge +whom Lamb had left abruptly. On the other hand it might possibly have +been James White, especially as he was of a resolutely high-spirited +disposition. + +In its 1798 form the poem began with this stanza:-- + + Where are they gone, the old familiar faces? + I had a mother, but she died, and left me, + Died prematurely in a day of horrors-- + All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. + +And the last stanza began with the word "For," and italicised the words + +_And some are taken from me_. + +I am inclined to think from this italicisation that it was Mary Lamb's +new seizure that was the real impulse of the poem. + +The poem was dated January, 1798. Lamb printed it twice--in 1798 and +1818. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 26. _Composed at Midnight_. + +On the appearance of Lamb's _Works_, 1818, Leigh Hunt printed in _The +Examiner_ (February 7 and 8, 1819) the passage beginning with line 32, +entitling it "A HINT to the GREATER CRIMINALS who are so fond of +declaiming against the crimes of the poor and uneducated, and in favour +of the torments of prisons and prison-ships in this world, and worse in +the next. Such a one, says the poet, + + 'on his couch + Lolling, &c.'" + + + * * * * * + + +Page 28. POEMS AT THE END OF JOHN WOODVIL, 1802. + +The volume containing _John Woodvil_, 1802, which is placed in the +present edition among Lamb's plays, on page 149, included also the +"Fragments of Burton" (see Vol. I.) and two lyrics. + + +Page 28. _Helen_. + +Lamb sent this poem to Coleridge on August 26, 1800, remarking:--"How do +you like this little epigram? It is not my writing, nor had I any finger +in it. If you concur with me in thinking it very elegant and very +original, I shall be tempted to name the author to you. I will just hint +that it is almost or quite a first attempt." + +The author was, of course, Mary Lamb. In his _Elia_ essay "Blakesmoor in +H----shire" in the _London Magazine_, September, 1824, Lamb quoted the +poem, stating that "Bridget took the hint" of her "pretty whimsical +lines" from a portrait of one of the Plumers' ancestors. The portrait +was the cool pastoral beauty with a lamb, and it was partly to make fun +of her brother's passion for the picture that Mary wrote the lines. + +The poem was reprinted in the _Works_, 1818. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 29. _Ballad from the German_. + +This poem was written for Coleridge's translation of "The Piccolimini," +the first part of Schiller's "Wallenstein," in 1800--Coleridge supplying +a prose paraphrase (for Lamb knew no German) for the purpose. The +original is Thekla's song in Act II., Scene 6:-- + + Der Eichwald brauset, die Wolken ziehn, + Das Maegdlein wandelt an Ufers Gruen, + Es bricht sich die Welle mit Macht, mit Macht, + Und sie singt hinaus in die finstre Nacht, + Das Auge von Weinen getruebet. + Das Herz ist gestorben, die Welt ist leer, + Und welter giebt sie dem Wunsche nichts mehr. + Du Heilige, rufe dein Kind zurueck, + Ich habe genossen das irdische Glueck, + Ich habe gelebt und geliebet. + +Coleridge's own translation of Thekla's song, which was printed alone in +later editions of the play, ran thus:-- + + The cloud doth gather, the greenwood roar, + The damsel paces along the shore; + The billows they tumble with might, with might; + And she flings out her voice to the darksome night; + Her bosom is swelling with sorrow; + The world it is empty, the heart will die, + There's nothing to wish for beneath the sky: + Thou Holy One, call thy child away! + I've lived and loved, and that was to-day-- + Make ready my grave-clothes to-morrow. + +Barry Cornwall, in his memoir of Lamb, says: "Lamb used to boast that he +supplied one line to his friend in the fourth scene [Act IV., Scene i] +of that tragedy, where the description of the Pagan deities occurs. In +speaking of Saturn, he is figured as 'an old man melancholy.' 'That was +my line,' Lamb would say, exultingly." The line did not reach print in +this form. + +Lamb printed his translation twice--in 1802 and 1818. + + +Page 29. _Hypochondriacus_. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 30. _A Ballad Noting the Difference of Rich and Poor_. + +These two poems formed, in the _John Woodvil_ volume, 1802, portions of +the "Fragments of Burton," which will be found in Vol. I. Lamb +afterwards took out these poems and printed them separately in the +Works, 1818, in the form here given. Originally "Hypochondriacus" formed +Extract III. of the "Fragments," under the title "A Conceipt of +Diabolical Possession." The body of the verses differed very slightly +from the present state; but at the end the prayer ran: "_Jesu Mariae! +libera nos ab his tentationibus, oral, implorat, R.B. Peccator_"--R.B. +standing for Robert Burton, the anatomist of melancholy, the professed +author of the poem. + +"The Old and Young Courtier" may be found in the _Percy Reliques_. Lamb +copied it into one of his Commonplace Books. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 32. THE _WORKS_ OF CHARLES LAMB, 1818. + +This book, in two volumes, was published by C. & J. Ollier in 1818: the +first volume containing the dedication to Coleridge that is here printed +on page 1, all of Lamb's poetry that he then wished to preserve, "John +Woodvil," "The Witch," the "Fragments of Burton," "Rosamund Gray" and +"Recollections of Christ's Hospital;" the second volume, dedicated to +Martin Charles Burney in the sonnet on page 45, containing criticisms, +essays and "Mr. H." + +The scheme of the present volume makes it impossible to keep together +the poetical portion of Lamb's _Works_. In order, however, to present +clearly to the reader Lamb's mature selection, in 1818, of the poetry by +which he wished to be known, I have indicated the position in his +_Works_ of those poems that have already been printed on earlier pages. + + +Page 32. _Hester_. + +Lamb sent this poem to Manning in March, 1803--"I send you some verses I +have made on the death of a young Quaker you may have heard me speak of +as being in love with for some years while I lived at Pentonville, +though I had never spoken to her in my life. She died about a month +since." + +Hester Savory was the daughter of Joseph Savory, a goldsmith in the +Strand. She was born in 1777 and was thus by two years Lamb's junior. +She married, in July, 1802, Charles Stoke Dudley, a merchant, and she +died in February of the following year, and was buried at Bunhill +Fields. Lamb was living in Pentonville from the end of 1796 until 1799. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 33. _Dialogue between a Mother and Child._ By Mary Lamb. + +Charles Lamb, writing to Dorothy Wordsworth on June 2, 1804, says: "I +send you two little copies of verses by Mary L--b." Then follow this +"Dialogue" and the "Lady Blanch" verses on page 41. Lamb adds at the +end: "I wish they may please you: we in these parts are not a little +proud of them." + + + * * * * * + + +Page 34. _A Farewell to Tobacco._ + +First printed in _The Reflector_, No. IV., 1811. + +Lamb had begun to think poetically of tobacco as early as 1803. Writing +to Coleridge in April 13 of that year, he says:--"What do you think of +smoking? I want your sober, _average, noon opinion_ of it. I generally +am eating my dinner about the time I should determine it. Morning is a +girl, and can't smoke--she's no evidence one way or the other; and Night +is so [? evidently] _bought over_, that he can't be a very upright +judge. May be the truth is, that _one_ pipe is wholesome; _two_ pipes +toothsome; _three_ pipes noisome; _four_ pipes fulsome; _five_ pipes +quarrelsome; and that's the _sum_ on't. But that is deciding rather upon +rhyme than reason." + +Writing to William and Dorothy Wordsworth on September 28, 1805, Lamb +remarked regarding his literary plans:--"Sometimes I think of a +farce--but hitherto all schemes have gone off,--an idle brag or two of +an evening vaporing out of a pipe, and going off in the morning--but now +I have bid farewell to my 'Sweet Enemy' Tobacco, as you will see in my +next page, I perhaps shall set soberly to work. Hang work!" + +On the next page Lamb copied the "Farewell to Tobacco," adding:--"I wish +you may think this a handsome farewell to my 'Friendly Traitress.' +Tobacco has been my evening comfort and my morning curse for these five +years: and you know how difficult it is from refraining to pick one's +lips even when it has become a habit. This Poem is the only one which I +have finished since so long as when I wrote 'Hester Savory' [in March, +1803].... The 'Tobacco,' being a little in the way of Withers (whom +Southey so much likes), perhaps you will somehow convey it to him with +my kind remembrances." + +Mr. Bertram Dobell has a MS. copy of the poem, in Lamb's hand, inscribed +thus: "To his _quondam_ Brethren of the Pipe, Capt. B[urney], and J[ohn] +R[ickman], Esq., the Author dedicates this his last Farewell to +Tobacco." At the end is a rude drawing of a pipe broken--"My Emblem." + +It is perhaps hardly needful to say that Lamb's farewell was not final. +He did not give up smoking for many years. When asked (Talfourd's +version of the story says by Dr. Parr) how he was able to emit such +volumes of smoke, he replied, "I toiled after it, sir, as some men toil +after virtue;" and Macready records having heard Lamb express the wish +to draw his last breath through a pipe and exhale it in a pun. Talfourd +says that in late life Lamb ceased to smoke except very occasionally. +But the late Mrs. Coe, who knew Lamb at Widford when she was a child, +told me that she remembered Lamb's black pipe and his devotion to it, +about 1830. + +In his character sketch of the late Elia (see Vol. II.), written in +1822, Lamb describes the effect of tobacco upon himself. "He took it, he +would say, as a solvent of speech. Marry--as the friendly vapour +ascended, how his prattle would curl up sometimes with it! the +ligaments, which tongue-tied him, were loosened, and the stammerer +proceeded a statist!" + + + * * * * * + + +Page 38. _To T.L.H_. + +First printed in _The Examiner_, January 1, 1815. + +The lines are to Thornton Leigh Hunt, Leigh Hunt's little boy, who was +born in 1810, and, during his father's imprisonment for a libel on the +Regent from February, 1813, to February, 1815, was much in the Surrey +gaol. Lamb, who was among Hunt's constant visitors, probably first saw +him there. Lamb mentions him again in his _Elia_ essay "Witches and +other Night Fears." See also note to the "Letter to Southey," Vol. I. +Thornton Leigh Hunt became a journalist, and held an important post on +the _Daily Telegraph_. He died in 1873. + +When printed in Leigh Hunt's _Examiner_, signed C.L., the poem had +these prefatory words by the editor:-- + + The following piece perhaps we had some personal reasons for not + admitting, but we found more for the contrary; and could not resist + the pleasure of contemplating together the author and the object of his + address,--to one of whom the Editor is owing for some of the lightest + hours of his captivity, and to the other for a main part of its continual + solace. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 41. _Lines Suggested by a Picture of Two Females by Lionardo da +Vinci_. By Mary Lamb. + +This was the "Lady Blanch" poem which Lamb sent to Dorothy Wordsworth in +the letter of June 2, 1804 (see page 325). There it was entitled +"Suggested by a Print of 2 Females, after Lionardo da Vinci, called +Prudence and Beauty, which hangs up in our room." The usual title is +"Modesty and Vanity." + + +Page 41. _Lines on the Same Picture being Removed to make Place for a +Portrait of a Lady by Titian_. By Mary Lamb. + +Writing to Dorothy Wordsworth on June 14, 1805, Lamb says: "You had her +[Mary's] Lines about the 'Lady Blanch.' You have not had some which she +wrote upon a copy of a girl from Titian, which I had hung up where that +print of Blanch and the Abbess (as she beautifully interpreted two +female figures from L. da Vinci) had hung, in our room. 'Tis light and +pretty." + + + * * * * * + + +Page 42. _Lines on the Celebrated Picture by Lionardo da Vinci, called +The Virgin of the Rocks_. + +This was the picture, one version of which hangs in the National +Gallery, that was known to Lamb's friends as his "Beauty," and which led +to the Scotchman's mistake in the _Elia_ essay "Imperfect Sympathies." + + +Page 42. _On the Same_. By Mary Lamb. + +In the letter to Dorothy Wordsworth of June 14, 1805, quoted just above, +Lamb says: "I cannot resist transcribing three or four Lines which poor +Mary [she was at this time away from home in one of her enforced +absences] made upon a Picture (a Holy Family) which we saw at an Auction +only one week before she left home.... They are sweet Lines, and upon a +sweet Picture." + +Mary Lamb wrote little verse besides the _Poetry for Children_ (see +Vol. III. of this edition). To the pieces that are printed in the +present volume I would add the lines suggested by the death of Captain +John Wordsworth, the poet's brother, in the foundering of the +_Abergavenny_ in February, 1805, when Coleridge was in Malta, which were +sent by Mary Lamb to Dorothy Wordsworth, May 7, 1805:-- + + Why is he wandering on the sea? + Coleridge should now with Wordsworth be. + By slow degrees he'd steal away + Their woe, and gently bring a ray + (So happily he'd time relief) + Of comfort from their very grief. + He'd tell them that their brother dead, + When years have passed o'er their head, + Will be remember'd with such holy, + True, and perfect melancholy, + That ever this lost brother John + Will be their hearts' companion. + His voice they'll always hear, his face they'll always see; + There's nought in life so sweet as such a memory. + + + * * * * * + + +SONNETS + + +Page 43. _To Miss Kelly_. + +Frances Maria Kelly (1790-1882)--or Fanny Kelly, as she was usually +called--was Lamb's favourite actress of his middle and later life and a +personal friend of himself and his sister: so close that Lamb proposed +marriage to her. See Lamb's criticisms of Miss Kelly's acting in Vol. +I., and notes. Another sonnet addressed by Lamb to Miss Kelly will be +found on page 59 of the present volume. + + +Page 43. _On the Sight of Swans in Kensington Garden_. This is, I think, +Lamb's only poem the inspiration of which was drawn from nature. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 44. _The Family Name_. + +John Lamb, Charles's father, came from Lincoln. A recollection of his +boyhood there is given in the _Elia_ essay "Poor Relations." The +"stream" seems completely to have ended with Charles Lamb and his sister +Mary: at least, research has yielded no descendants. + +Crabb Robinson visited Goethe in the summer of 1829. The _Diary_ has +this entry: "I inquired whether he knew the name of Lamb. 'Oh, yes! Did +he not write a pretty sonnet on his own name?' Charles Lamb, though he +always affected contempt for Goethe, yet was manifestly pleased that his +name was known to him." + +In the little memoir of Lamb prefixed by M. Amedee Pichot to a French +edition of the _Tales from Shakespeare_ in 1842 the following +translation of this sonnet is given:-- + + MON NOM DE FAMILLE + + Dis-moi, d'ou nous viens-tu, nom pacifique et doux, + Nom transmis sans reproche?... A qui te devons-nous, + Nom qui meurs avec moi? mon glason de poete + A l'aieul de mon pere obscurement s'arrete. + --Peut-etre nous viens-tu d'un timide pasteur, + Doux comme ses agneaux, raille pour sa douceur. + Mais peut-etre qu'aussi, moins commune origine, + Nous viens-tu d'un heros, d'un pieux paladin, + Qui croyant honorer ainsi l'Agneau divin, + Te prit en revenant des champs de Palestine. + Mais qu'importe apres tout ... qu'il soit illustre ou non, + Je ne ferai jamais une tache a ce nom. + + +Page 44. _To John Lamb, Esq._ + +John Lamb, Charles's brother, was born in 1763 and was thus by twelve +years his senior. At the time this poem appeared, in 1818, he was +accountant of the South-Sea House. He died on October 26, 1821 (see the +_Elia_ essays "My Relations" and "Dream Children"). + + + * * * * * + + +Page 45. _To Martin Charles Burney, Esq._ + +Lamb prefixed this sonnet to Vol. II. of his _Works_, 1818. In Vol. I. +he had placed the dedication to Coleridge which we have already seen. +Martin Charles Burney was the son of Rear-Admiral James Burney, Lamb's +old friend, and nephew of Madame d'Arblay. He was a barrister by +profession; dabbled a little in authorship; was very quaint in some of +his ways and given to curiously intense and sudden enthusiasms; and was +devoted to Mary Lamb and her brother. When these two were at work on +their _Tales from Shakespear_ Martin Burney would sit with them and +attempt to write for children too. Lamb's letter of May 24, 1830, to +Sarah Hazlitt has some amusing stories of his friend, at whom (like +George Dyer) he could laugh as well as love. Lamb speaks of him on one +occasion as on the top round of his ladder of friendship. Writing to +Sarah Hazlitt, Lamb says:--"Martin Burney is as good, and as odd as +ever. We had a dispute about the word 'heir,' which I contended was +pronounced like 'air'; he said that might be in common parlance; or that +we might so use it, speaking of the 'Heir at Law,' a comedy; but that in +the law courts it was necessary to give it a full aspiration, and to say +_hayer_; he thought it might even vitiate a cause, if a counsel +pronounced it otherwise. In conclusion, he 'would consult Serjeant +Wilde,' who gave it against him. Sometimes he falleth into the water; +sometimes into the fire. He came down here, and insisted on reading +Virgil's 'Eneid' all through with me (which he did), because a Counsel +must know Latin. Another time he read out all the Gospel of St. John, +because Biblical quotations are very emphatic in a Court of Justice. A +third time, he would carve a fowl, which he did very ill-favouredly, +because 'we did not know how indispensable it was for a barrister to do +all those sort of things well? Those little things were of more +consequence than we supposed.' So he goes on, harassing about the way to +prosperity, and losing it. With a long head, but somewhat a wrong +one----harum-scarum. Why does not his guardian angel look to him? He +deserves one: may be, he has tired him out." + +Martin Burney, of whom another glimpse is caught in the _Elia_ essay +"Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading," died in 1860. At Mary Lamb's +funeral he was inconsolable. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 46. CHARLES LAMB'S _ALBUM VERSES_, 1830. + +The publication of this volume, in 1830, was due more to Lamb's kindness +of heart than to any desire to come before the world again as a poet. +But Edward Moxon, Lamb's young friend, was just starting his publishing +business, with Samuel Rogers as a financial patron; and Lamb, who had +long been his chief literary adviser, could not well refuse the request +to help him with a new book. _Album Verses_ became thus the first of the +many notable books of poetry which Moxon was to issue between 1830 and +1858, the year of his death. Among them Tennyson's _Poems_, 1833 and +1842; _The Princess_, 1847; _In Memoriam_, 1850; _Maud_, 1855; and +Browning's _Sordello_, 1840, and _Bells and Pomegranates_, 1843-1846. + +The dedication of _Album Verses_ tells the story of its being:-- + +"DEDICATION + +"TO THE PUBLISHER + +"DEAR MOXON, + +"I do not know to whom a Dedication of these Trifles is more properly +due than to yourself. You suggested the printing of them. You were +desirous of exhibiting a specimen of the _manner_ in which Publications, +entrusted to your future care, would appear. With more propriety, +perhaps, the 'Christmas,' or some other of your own simple, unpretending +Compositions, might have served this purpose. But I forget--you have bid +a long adieu to the Muses. I had on my hands sundry Copies of Verses +written for _Albums_-- + + "Those Books kept by modern young Ladies for show, + Of which their plain grandmothers nothing did know-- + +"or otherwise floating about in Periodicals; which you have chosen in +this manner to embody. I feel little interest in their publication. They +are simply--_Advertisement Verses_. + +"It is not for me, nor you, to allude in public to the kindness of our +honoured Friend, under whose auspices you are become a Bookseller. May +that fine-minded Veteran in Verse enjoy life long enough to see his +patronage justified! I venture to predict that your habits of industry, +and your cheerful spirit, will carry you through the world. + +"I am, Dear Moxon, + +"Your Friend and sincere Well-wisher, CHARLES LAMB. + +"ENFIELD, _1st June, 1830_." + +The reference to "Christmas" is to Moxon's poem of that name, published +in 1829, and dedicated to Lamb.--The couplet concerning Albums is from +one of Lamb's own pieces (see page 104).--The Veteran in Verse was +Samuel Rogers, who, then sixty-seven, lived yet another twenty-five +years. Moxon published the superb editions of his _Italy_ and his +_Poems_ illustrated by Turner and Stothard. + +Lamb's motives in issuing _Album Verses_ were cruelly misunderstood by +the _Literary Gazette_ (edited by William Jerdan). In the number for +July 10, 1830, was printed a contemptuous review beginning with this +passage:-- + + If any thing could prevent our laughing at the present collection of + absurdities, it would be a lamentable conviction of the blinding and + engrossing nature of vanity. We could forgive the folly of the original + composition, but cannot but marvel at the egotism which has preserved, + and the conceit which has published. + +Lamb himself probably was not much disturbed by Jerdan's venom, but +Southey took it much to heart, and a few weeks later sent to _The Times_ +(of August 6, 1830) the following lines in praise of his friend:-- + + TO CHARLES LAMB + + On the Reviewal of his _Album Verses_ in the _Literary Gazette_. + + Charles Lamb, to those who know thee justly dear, + For rarest genius, and for sterling worth, + Unchanging friendship, warmth of heart sincere, + And wit that never gave an ill thought birth, + Nor ever in its sport infix'd a sting; + To us who have admired and loved thee long, + It is a proud as well as pleasant thing + To hear thy good report, now borne along + Upon the honest breath of public praise: + We know that with the elder sons of song, + In honouring whom thou hast delighted still, + Thy name shall keep its course to after days. + The empty pertness, and the vulgar wrong, + The flippant folly, the malicious will, + Which have assailed thee, now, or heretofore, + Find, soon or late, their proper meed of shame; + The more thy triumph, and our pride the more, + When witling critics to the world proclaim, + In lead, their own dolt incapacity. + Matter it is of mirthful memory + To think, when thou wert early in the field, + How doughtily small Jeffrey ran at thee + A-tilt, and broke a bulrush on thy shield. + And now, a veteran in the lists of fame, + I ween, old Friend! thou art not worse bested + When with a maudlin eye and drunken aim, + Dulness hath thrown a _jerdan_ at thy head. + + SOUTHEY. + +This was, I think, Southey's first public utterance concerning Lamb +since Lamb's famous open letter to him of October, 1823 (see Vol. I.). + +Lamb wrote to Bernard Barton in the same month: "How noble ... in R.S. +to come forward for an old friend who had treated him so unworthily," +For the critics, Lamb said in the same letter, he did not care the "five +hundred thousandth part of a half-farthing;" and we can believe him. On +page 123 will be found, however, an epigram on the _Literary Gazette_. + + + * * * * * + + +ALBUM VERSES + + +Page 46. _In the Album of a Clergyman's Lady._ + +This lady was probably Mrs. Williams, of Fornham, in Suffolk, in whose +house Lamb's adopted daughter, Emma Isola, lived as a governess in +1829-1830. The epitaph on page 65 and the acrostic on page 107 were +written for the same lady. + + +Page 46. _In the Autograph Book of Mrs. Sergeant W----._ + +Mrs. Sergeant Wilde, _nee_ Wileman, was the first wife of Thomas Wilde, +afterwards Lord Truro (1782-1855), for whose election at Newark in 1831 +Lamb is said to have written facetious verses (see my large edition). +The Wildes were Lamb's neighbours at Enfield. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 47. _In the Album of Lucy Barton._ + +These lines were sent by Lamb to Lucy Barton's father, Bernard Barton, +the Quaker poet, in the letter of September 30, 1824. Lucy Barton, who +afterwards became the wife of Edward FitzGerald, the translator of Omar +Khayyam, lived until November 27, 1898. She retained her faculties +almost to the end, and in 1892 kindly wrote out for me her memory of a +visit paid with her father to the Lambs at Colebrook Row about 1825--a +little reminiscence first printed in _Bernard Barton and His Friends,_ +1893. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 48. _In the Album of Miss----._ + +This poem was first printed in _Blackwood's Magazine_, May, 1829, +entitled "For a Young Lady's Album." The identity of the young lady is +not now discoverable: probably a school friend of Emma Isola's. + + +Page 48. _In the Album of a very young Lady._ + +Josepha was a daughter of Mrs. Williams, of Fornham. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 49. _In the Album of a French Teacher._ + +First printed in _Blackwood's Magazine,_ June, 1829, entitled "For the +Album of: Miss----, French Teacher at Mrs. Gisborn's School, Enfield." +Page 49. _In the Album of Miss Daubeny._ + +Miss Daubeny was a schoolfellow of Emma Isola's, at Dulwich. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 50. _In the Album of Mrs. Jane Towers._ + +Charles Clarke--in line 7--was Charles Cowden Clarke (1787-1877), a +friend of the Lambs not only for his own sake, but for that of his wife, +Mary Victoria Novello, whom he married in 1828 and who died as recently +as 1898. Their _Recollections of Writers,_ 1878, have many interesting +reminiscences of Charles and Mary Lamb. Writing to Cowden Clarke on +February 25, 1828, Lamb says:--"I had a pleasant letter from your +sister, greatly over acknowledging my poor sonnet.... Alas for +sonnetting,'tis as the nerves are; all the summer I was dawdling among +green lanes, and verses came as thick as fancies. I am sunk winterly +below prose and zero." + +Mrs. Towers lived at Standerwick, in Somersetshire, and was fairly well +known in her day as a writer of books for children, _The Children's +Fireside,_ etc. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 50. _In my own Album._ + +This poem was first printed in _The Bijou,_ 1828, edited by William +Fraser, under the title "Verses for an Album." + + + * * * * * + + +MISCELLANEOUS + + +Page 51. _Angel Help._ + +This poem was first printed in the _New Monthly Magazine,_ 1827, with +trifling differences, and the addition, at the end, of this couplet:-- + + Virtuous Poor Ones, sleep, sleep on, + And, waking, find your labours done. + +I am afraid that the "Nonsense Verses" on page 123 represent an attempt +to make fun of this beautiful poem. + +Aders' house in Euston Square was hung with engravings principally of +the German school (see the poem on page 94 addressed to him). + + + * * * * * + + +Page 52. _The Christening._ + +These lines were first printed in _Blackwood's Magazine,_ May, 1829. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 53. _On an Infant Dying as soon as Born._ + +This poem was first printed in _The Gem,_ 1829. _The Gem_ was then +edited by Thomas Hood, whose child--his firstborn--it was thatinspired +the poem. Lamb sent the verses to Hood in May, 1827. + +This is, I think, in many ways Lamb's most remarkable poem. + +Hood's own poem on the same event, printed in _Memorials of Thomas +Hood_, by his daughter, 1860, has some of the grace and tenderness of +the Greek Anthology:-- + + Little eyes that scarce did see, + Little lips that never smiled; + Alas! my little dear dead child, + Death is thy father, and not me, + I but embraced thee, soon as he! + + + * * * * * + + +Page 55. _To Bernard Barton._ + +These lines were sent to Barton in 1827, together with the picture. On +June 11, Lamb wrote again:-- + +"DEAR B.B., + +"One word more of the picture verses, and that for good and all; pray, +with a neat pen alter one line-- + + "His learning seems to lay small stress on-- + +"to + + "His learning lays no mighty stress on, + +"to avoid the unseemly recurrence (ungrammatical also) of 'seems' in the +next line, besides the nonsense of 'but' there, as it now stands. And I +request you, as a personal favor to me, to erase the last line of all, +which I should never have written from myself. The fact is, it was a +silly joke of Hood's, who gave me the frame, (you judg'd rightly it was +not its own,) with the remark that you would like it because it was +b-----d b-----d [the last line in question was 'And broad brimmed, as +the owner's calling'] and I lugg'd it in: but I shall be quite hurt if +it stands, because tho' you and yours have too good sense to object to +it, I would not have a sentence of mine seen that to any foolish ear +might sound unrespectful to thee. Let it end at 'appalling.'" + +Line 1. _Woodbridge_. Barton lived at Woodbridge, in Suffolk, where he +was a clerk in the old Quaker bank of Dykes & Alexander. + +Line 15. _Ann Knight_. Ann Knight was a Quaker lady, also resident at +Woodbridge, who kept a small school there, and who had visited the Lambs +in London and greatly charmed them. + +Line 16. _Classic Mitford_. The Rev. John Mitford (1781-1859) was rector +of Benhall, in Suffolk, near Woodbridge, and a friend of Barton's, +through whom Lamb's acquaintance with him was carried on. Mitford edited +many poets, among them Vincent Bourne. He was editor of the _Gentleman's +Magazine_ from 1834 to 1850. + +Footnote. _Carrington Bowles_. Carington Bowles, 69 St. Paul's +Churchyard, was the publisher of this print, which was the work of the +elder Morland, and was engraved by Philip Dawe, father of Lamb's George +Dawe (see the essay "Recollections of a late Royal Academician," Vol. +I.). + +Lines 26, 27, 28. _Obstinate ... Banyan_. It was not Obstinate, but +Christian, who put his fingers in his ears (see the first pages of _The +Pilgrim's Progress_). Lamb had the same slip of memory in his paper "On +the Custom of Hissing at the Theatre" (Vol. I.). + + + * * * * * + + +Page 56. _The Young Catechist_. Lamb sent this poem to Barton in a +letter in 1827, wherein he tells the story of its inception:--"An artist +who painted me lately, had painted a Blackamoor praying, and not filling +his canvas, stuff'd in his little girl aside of Blacky, gaping at him +unmeaningly; and then didn't know what to call it. Now for a picture to +be promoted to the Exhibition (Suffolk Street) as Historical, a subject +is requisite. What does me. I but christen it the 'Young Catechist,' and +furbishd it with Dialogue following, which dubb'd it an Historical +Painting. Nothing to a friend at need.... When I'd done it the Artist +(who had clapt in Miss merely as a fill-space) swore I exprest his full +meaning, and the damsel bridled up into a Missionary's vanity. I like +verses to explain Pictures: seldom Pictures to illustrate Poems." + +The artist was Henry Meyer (1782?-1847), one of the foundation members +of the Society of British Artists in Suffolk Street, to the exhibition +of which in 1826 he sent his portrait of Lamb, now in the India Office. +This picture was in a shop in the Charing Cross Road in 1910. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 57. _She is Going_. + +These lines were written for I know not what occasion, but the artist +Henry Meyer engraved a picture of G.J.L. Noble in 1837 and Lamb's lines +were placed below. + + +Page 57. _To a Young Friend_. + +The young friend was Emma Isola, who lived with the Lambs for some years +as their adopted daughter. Emma Isola was the daughter of Charles Isola, +Esquire Bedell of the University of Cambridge, who died in 1823, leaving +her unprovided for. His father, and Emma Isola's grandfather, was +Agostino Isola, who settled at Cambridge and taught Italian there. +Wordsworth was among his pupils. He edited a collection of _Pieces +selected from the Italian Poets_, 1778; also editions of _Gerusalemme +Liberata_ and _Orlando Furioso_, and a book of _Italian Dialogues_. Emma +Isola is first mentioned by Lamb in an unpublished letter written to her +aunt, Miss Humphreys, in January, 1821, arranging for the little girl's +return to Trumpington Street, Cambridge, from London, where she had been +spending her holidays with the Lambs. The Lambs had met her at Cambridge +in the summer of 1820. The exact date of her adoption by the Lambs +cannot be ascertained now. Emma Isola married Edward Moxon in 1833, and +lived until 1891. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 58. _To the Same_. + +Writing to Procter in January, 1829, Lamb calls Miss Isola "a silent +brown girl," and in his letter of November, 1833, to Mr. and Mrs. Moxon, +he says: "I hope you [Moxon] and Emma will have many a quarrel and many +a make-up (and she is beautiful in reconciliation!) ..." See the poem +"To a Friend on His Marriage," page 80, for a further description of +Emma Isola's character. + + + * * * * * + + +SONNETS + + +Page 58. _Harmony in Unlikeness_. + +The two lovely damsels were Emma Isola and her friend Maria. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 59. _Written at Cambridge_. + +This sonnet was first printed in _The Examiner_, August 29 and 30, 1819, +and was dated August 15. Lamb, we now know, from a letter recently +discovered, was in Cambridge in August, 1819, just after being refused +by Miss Kelly. Hazlitt in his essay "On the Conversation of Authors" in +the _London Magazine_ for September, 1820, referred to Lamb's visit to +him some years before, and his want of ease among rural surroundings, +adding: "But when we cross the country to Oxford, then he spoke a +little. He and the old collegers were hail-fellow-well-met: and in the +quadrangle he 'walked gowned.'" + + +Page 59. _To a Celebrated Female Performer in the "Blind Boy."_ + +First printed in the _Morning Chronicle_, 1819. "The Blind Boy," +"attributed," says Genest, "to Hewetson," was produced in 1807. It was +revived from time to time. Miss Kelly used to play Edmond, the title +_role_. + + +Page 59. _Work_. + +First printed in _The Examiner_, June 20 and 21, 1819, under the title +"Sonnet." + +Many years earlier we see the germ of this sonnet in Lamb's mind, as +indeed we see the germ of so many ideas that were not fully expressed +till later, for he always kept his thoughts at call. Writing to +Wordsworth in September, 1805, he says:--"Hang work! I wish that all the +year were holyday. I am sure that Indolence indefeasible Indolence is +the true state of man, and business the invention of the Old Teazer who +persuaded Adam's Master to give him an apron and set him a-houghing. Pen +and Ink and Clerks, and desks, were the refinements of this old torturer +a thousand years after...." + +Lamb probably was as fond of this sonnet as of anything he wrote in what +might be called his second poetical period. He copied it into his first +letter to Bernard Barton, in September, 1822, and he drew attention to +it in his _Elia_ essay "The Superannuated Man." + + + * * * * * + + +Page 60. _Leisure_. + +First printed in the _London Magazine_ for April, 1821, probably, I +think, as a protest against the objection taken by some persons to the +opinions expressed by Lamb in his essay on "New Year's Eve" in that +magazine for January (see Vol. II., and notes). Lamb had therein said, +speaking of death:--"I am not content to pass away 'like a weaver's +shuttle.' Those metaphors solace me not, nor sweeten the unpalatable +draught of mortality. I care not to be carried with the tide, that +smoothly bears human life to eternity; and reluct at the inevitable +course of destiny. I am in love with this green earth; the face of town +and country; the unspeakable rural solitudes, and the sweet security of +streets. I would set up my tabernacle here. I am content to stand still +at the age to which I am arrived; I, and my friends. To be no younger, +no richer, no handsomer. I do not want to be weaned by age; or drop, +like mellow fruit, as they say, into the grave." + +Such sentiments probably called forth some private as well as public +protests; and it was, as I imagine, in a whimsical wish to emphasise the +sincerity of his regard for life that Lamb reiterated that devotion in +the emphatic words of "Leisure" in the April number. This sonnet was a +special favourite with Edward FitzGerald. + +It is sad to think that Lamb, when his leisure came, had too much of it. +Writing to Barton on July 25, 1829, during one of his sister's +illnesses, he says: "I bragg'd formerly that I could not have too much +time. I have a surfeit.... I am a sanguinary murderer of time, that +would kill him inchmeal just now." + + +Page 60. _To Samuel Rogers, Esq_. + +Daniel Rogers, the poet's elder brother, died in 1829. In acknowledging +Lamb's sonnet, Samuel Rogers wrote the following letter, which Lamb +described to Barton (July 3, 1829) as the prettiest he ever read. + + Many, many thanks. The verses are beautiful. I need not say with + what feelings they were read. Pray accept the grateful + acknowledgements + of us all, and believe me when I say that nothing could have been + a greater cordial to us in our affliction than such a testimony from such + a quarter. He was--for none knew him so well--we were born within a + year or two of each other--a man of a very high mind, and with less + disguise than perhaps any that ever lived. Whatever he was, _that_ we + saw. He stood before his fellow beings (if I may be forgiven for saying + so) almost as before his Maker: and God grant that we may all bear + as severe an examination. He was an admirable scholar. His Dante + and his Homer were as familiar to him as his Alphabets: and he had + the tenderest heart. When a flock of turkies was stolen from his farm, + the indignation of the poor far and wide was great and loud. To me he + is the greatest loss, for we were nearly of an age; and there is now no + human being alive in whose eyes I have always been young. + + Yours most gratefully, + + SAMUEL ROGERS. + +Another sonnet to Rogers will be found on p. 100. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 61. _The Gipsy's Malison_. + +First printed in _Blackwood's Magazine_, January, 1829. Lamb had sent it +to _The Gem_, but, as he told Procter in a letter on January 22, 1829: +"The editors declined it, on the plea that it would _shock all mothers;_ +so they published the 'Widow' [Hood's parody of Lamb] instead. I am born +out of time. I have no conecture about what the present world calls +delicacy. I thought _Rosamund Gray_ was a pretty modest thing. Hessey +assures me that the world would not bear it. I have lived to grow into +an indecent character. When my sonnet was rejected, I exclaimed, +'Hang[27] the age, I will write for Antiquity!'" + +In another letter to Procter, Lamb tells the sonnet's history:-- + +"_January_ 29, 1829. + +"When Miss Ouldcroft (who is now Mrs. Beddam [Badams], and Bed-dam'd to +her!) was at Enfield, which she was in summer-time, and owed her health +to its suns and genial influences, she visited (with young lady-like +impertinence) a poor man's cottage that had a pretty baby (O the +yearnling!), gave it fine caps and sweetmeats. On a day, broke into the +parlour our two maids uproarious. 'O ma'am, who do you think Miss +Ouldcroft (they pronounce it Holcroft) has been working a cap for?' 'A +child," answered Mary, in true Shandean female simplicity.' 'Tis the +man's child as was taken up for sheep-stealing.' Miss Ouldcroft was +staggered, and would have cut the connection; but by main force I made +her go and take her leave of her protegee. I thought, if she went no +more, the Abactor or the Abactor's wife (_vide_ Ainsworth) would suppose +she had heard something; and I have delicacy for a sheep-stealer. The +overseers actually overhauled a mutton-pie at the baker's (his first, +last, and only hope of mutton pie), which he never came to eat, and +thence inferred his guilt. _Per occasionem cujus_, I framed the sonnet; +observe its elaborate construction. I was four days about it. [Here came +the sonnet.] Barry, study that sonnet. It is curiously and perversely +elaborate. 'Tis a choking subject, and therefore the reader is directed +to the structure of it. See you? and was this a fourteener to be +rejected by a trumpery annual? forsooth,'twould shock all mothers; and +may all mothers, who would so be shocked, be damned! as if mothers were +such sort of logicians as to infer the future hanging of _their_ child +from the theoretical hangibility (or capacity of being hanged, if the +judge pleases) of every infant born with a neck on. Oh B.C.! my whole +heart is faint, and my whole head is sick (how is it?) at this damned +canting unmasculine age!" + + +[Footnote 27: Talfourd. Canon Ainger gives "Damn"] + + + * * * * * + + +COMMENDATORY VERSES + + +Page 61. _To the Author of Poems, published under the name of Barry +Cornwall_. + +Printed in the _London Magazine_, September, 1820. + +Barry Cornwall was the pen-name of Bryan Waller Procter, 1787-1874, +whose impulse to write poetry came largely from Lamb himself. In his +_Dramatic Scenes_, 1819, was the beginning of a blank-verse treatment or +adaptation of Lamb's "Rosamund Gray." Procter addressed to Lamb some +excellent lines "Over a Flask of Sherris," which were printed in the +_London Magazine_, 1825, and again in _English Songs_, 1832. His +_Martian Colonna; an Italian Tale_, was published in 1820 and his +_Sicilian Story_ later in the same year. The "Dream" was printed in +_Dramatic Scenes_. Procter in his old age wrote a charming memoir of +Lamb. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 62. _To R.S. Knowles, Esq_. + +First printed in the _London Magazine_, September, 1820. By a curious +oversight the error in Knowles's initials was repeated in the _Album +Verses_, 1830, Knowles's first name being, of course, James. James +Sheridan Knowles (1784-1862) had been a doctor, a schoolmaster, an +actor, and a travelling elocutionist, before he took seriously to +writing for the stage. His first really successful play was "Virginius," +written for Edmund Kean, transferred to Macready, and produced in 1820. +His greatest triumph was "The Hunchback," 1832. Lamb, who met Knowles +through William Hazlitt, of Wem, the essayist's father, wrote both the +prologue and epilogue for Knowles's play "The Wife," 1833 (see pages +146-7). + + + * * * * * + + +Page 63. _Quatrains to the Editor of the "Every-Day Book_." + +First printed in the _London Magazine_, May, 1825, and copied by Hone +into the _Every-Day Book_ for July 9 of the same year. William Hone (see +Vol. I. notes), 1780-1842, was a bookseller, pamphleteer and antiquary, +who, before he took to editing his _Every-Day Book_ in 1825, had passed +through a stormy career on account of his critical outspokenness and +want of ordinary political caution; and Lamb did by no means a +fashionable thing when he commended Hone thus publicly. The _Every-Day +Book_, begun in 1825, was, when published in 1826, dedicated by Hone to +Charles Lamb and his sister. "Your daring to publish me your 'friend,' +with your 'proper name' annexed," Hone wrote, "I shall never forget." + + +Page 63. Acrostics. + +In his more leisurely years, at Islington and Enfield, Lamb wrote a +great number of acrostics--many more probably than have been +preserved--of which these, printed in _Album Verses_, are all that he +cared to see in print. Probably he found his chief impulse in Emma +Isola's schoolfellows and friends, who must have been very eager to +obtain in their albums a contribution from so distinguished a gentleman +as Elia, and who passed on their requests through his adopted daughter. +I have not been able to trace the identity of several of them. The lady +who desired her epitaph was Mrs. Williams in whose house Emma Isola was +governess. While there Emma was seriously ill, and Lamb travelled down +to Fornham, in Suffolk, in 1830, to bring her home. On returning he +wrote Mrs. Williams several letters, in one of which, dated Good Friday, +he said:--"I beg you to have inserted in your county paper something +like this advertisement; 'To the nobility, gentry, and others, about +Bury,--C. Lamb respectfully informs his friends and the public in +general, that he is leaving off business in the acrostic line, as he is +going into an entirely new line. Rebuses and Charades done as usual, and +upon the old terms. Also, Epitaphs to suit the memory of any person +deceased.'" + +Mrs. Williams probably then suggested that Lamb should write her +epitaph, for in his next letter he says:--"I have ventured upon some +lines, which combine my old acrostic talent (which you first found out) +with my new profession of epitaphmonger. As you did not please to say, +when you would die, I have left a blank space for the date. May kind +heaven be a long time in filling it up." + +On page 48 will be found some lines to one of Mrs. Williams' daughters. +The acrostic on page 65 is to another. These would both be Emma Isola's +pupils. + + + * * * * * + + +TRANSLATIONS + + +Page 66. _Translations from Vincent Bourne_. + +Vincent Bourne (1695-1747), the English Latin poet, entered Westminster +School on the foundation in 1710, and, on leaving Cambridge, returned to +Westminster as a master. He was so indolent a teacher and disciplinarian +that Cowper, one of his pupils, says: "He seemed determined, as he was +the best, so to be the last, Latin poet of the Westminster line." +Bourne's _Poemata_ appeared in 1734. It is mainly owing to Cowper's +translations (particularly "The Jackdaw") that he is known, except to +Latinists. Lamb first read Bourne in 1815. Writing to Wordsworth in +April of that year he says:--"Since I saw you I have had a treat in the +reading way which comes not every day. The Latin Poems of V. Bourne +which were quite new to me. What a heart that man had, all laid out upon +town and scenes, a proper counterpoise to _some people's_ rural +extravaganzas. Why I mention him is that your Power of Music reminded me +of his poem of the ballad singer in the Seven Dials. Do you remember his +epigram on the old woman who taught Newton the A B C, which after all he +says he hesitates not to call Newton's _Principia_? I was lately +fatiguing myself with going through a volume of fine words by L'd +Thurlow, excellent words, and if the heart could live by words alone, it +could desire no better regale, but what an aching vacuum of matter--I +don't stick at the madness of it, for that is only a consequence of +shutting his eyes and thinking he is in the age of the old Elisabeth +poets--from thence I turned to V. Bourne--what a sweet unpretending +pretty-mannered _matter-ful_ creature, sucking from every flower, making +a flower of every thing--his diction all Latin, and his thoughts all +English. Bless him, Latin wasn't good enough for him--why wasn't he +content with the language which Gay and Prior wrote in." + +On the publication of _Album Verses_, wherein these nine poems from +Vincent Bourne were printed, Lamb reviewed the book in Moxon's +_Englishman's Magazine_ for September, 1831, under the title "The Latin +Poems of Vincent Bourne" (see Vol. I.). There he quoted "The Ballad +Singers," and the "Epitaph on an Infant Sleeping"--remarking of +Bourne:--"He is 'so Latin,' and yet 'so English' all the while. In +diction worthy of the Augustan age, he presents us with no images that +are not familiar to his countrymen. His topics are even closelier drawn; +they are not so properly English, as _Londonish_. From the streets, and +from the alleys, of his beloved metropolis, he culled his objects, which +he has invested with an Hogarthian richness of colouring. No town +picture by that artist can go beyond his BALLAD-SINGERS; Gay's TRIVIA +alone, in verse, comes up to the life and humour of it." + + + * * * * * + + +Page 72. _Pindaric Ode to the Tread Mill_. + +First printed in _The New Times_, October 24, 1825. The version there +given differed considerably from that preserved by Lamb. It had no +divisions. At the end of what is now the first strophe qame these +lines:-- + + Now, by Saint Hilary, + (A Saint I love to swear by, + Though I should forfeit thereby + Five ill-spared shillings to your well-warm'd seat, + Worshipful Justices of Worship-street; + Or pay my crown + At great Sir Richard's still more awful mandate down:) + They raise my gorge-- + Those Ministers of Ann, or the First George, + (Which was it? + For history is silent, and my closet-- + Reading affords no clue; + I have the story, Pope, alone from you;) + In such a place, &c. + +Lamb offered the Ode to his friend Walter Wilson, for his work on Defoe, +to which Lamb contributed prose criticisms (see Vol. I.), but Wilson did +not use it. The letter making this offer, together with the poem, +differing very slightly in one or two places, is preserved in the +Bodleian. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 75. _Going or Gone_. + +First printed in Hone's _Table Book_, 1827, signed Elia, under the title +"Gone or Going." It was there longer, after stanza 6 coming the +following:-- + + Had he mended in right time, + He need not in night time, + (That black hour, and fright-time,) + Till sexton interr'd him, + Have groan'd in his coffin, + While demons stood scoffing-- + You'd ha' thought him a-coughing-- + My own father[28] heard him! + + Could gain so importune, + With occasion opportune, + That for a poor Fortune, + That should have been ours[29], + In soul he should venture + To pierce the dim center, + Where will-forgers enter Amid the dark Powers?-- + +And in the _Table Book_ the last stanza ended thus:-- + + And flaunting Miss Waller-- + _That_ soon must befal her, + Which makes folks seem taller[30],-- + Though proud, once, as Juno! + + +[Footnote 28: Who sat up with him.] + +[Footnote 29: I have this fact from Parental tradition only.] + +[Footnote 30: Death lengthens people to the eye.] + + +To annotate this curious tale of old friendships, dating back, as I +suppose, in some cases to Lamb's earliest memories, both of London and +Hertfordshire, is a task that is probably beyond completion. The day is +too distant. But a search in the Widford register and churchyard reveals +a little information and oral tradition a little more. + +Stanza 2. _Rich Kitty Wheatley_. The Rev. Joseph Whately, vicar of +Widford in the latter half of the eighteenth century, married Jane +Plumer, sister of William Plumer, of Blakesware, the employer of Mrs. +Field, Lamb's grandmother. Archbishop Whately was their son. Kitty +Wheatley may have been a relative. + +Stanza 2. _Polly Perkin_. On June 1, 1770, according to the Widford +register, Samuel Perkins married Mary Lanham. This may have been Polly. + +Stanza 3. _Carter ... Lily_. The late Mrs. Tween, a daughter of Randal +Norris, Lamb's friend, and a resident in Widford, told Canon Ainger that +Carter and Lily were servants at Blakesware. Lily had noticeably red +cheeks. Lamb would have seen them often when he stayed there as a boy. +In Cussan's _Hertfordshire_ is an entertaining account of William +Plumer's widow's adhesion to the old custom of taking the air. She rode +out always--from Gilston, only a few miles from Widford and +Blakesware--in the family chariot, with outriders and postilion (a +successor to Lily), and so vast was the equipage that "turn outs" had to +be cut in the hedges (visible to this day), like sidings on a +single-line railway, to permit others to pass. The Widford register +gives John Lilley, died October 18, 1812, aged 85, and Johanna Lilley, +died January 1, 1823, aged 90. It also gives Benjamin Carter's marriage, +in 1781, but not his death. + +Stanza 4. _Clemitson's widow_. Mrs. Tween told Canon Ainger that +Clemitson was the farmer of Blakesware farm. I do not find the name in +the Widford register. An Elizabeth Clemenson is there. + +Stanza 4. _Good Master Clapton_. There are several Claptons in Widford +churchyard. Thirty years from 1827, the date of the poem, takes us to +1797: the Clapton whose death occurred nearest that time is John Game +Clapton, May 5, 1802. + +Stanza 5. _Tom Dockwra_. I cannot find definite information either +concerning this Dockwra or the William Dockwray, of Ware, of whom Lamb +wrote in his "Table Talk" in _The Athenaeum_, 1834 (see Vol. I.). There +was, however, a Joseph Docwray, of Ware, a Quaker maltster; and the late +Mrs. Coe, _nee_ Hunt, the daughter of the tenant of the water-mill at +Widford in Lamb's day, where Lamb often spent a night, told me that a +poor family named Docwray lived in the neighbourhood. + +Stanza 6. _Worral ... Dorrell_. I find neither Worral nor Dorrell in the +Widford archives, but Morrils and Morrells in plenty, and one Horrel. +Lamb alludes to old Dorrell again in the _Elia_ essay "New Year's Eve," +where he is accused of swindling the family out of money. Particulars of +his fraud have perished with him, but I have no doubt it is the same +William Dorrell who witnessed John Lamb's will in 1761. In the _Table +Book_ this stanza ended thus:-- + + With cuckoldy Worral, + And wicked old Dorrel, + 'Gainst whom I've a quarrel-- + His end might affright us. + +Stanzas 8 and 9. _Fanny Hutton ... Betsy Chambers ... Miss Wither ... +Miss Waller_. Fanny Hutton, Betsy Chambers, Miss Wither and Miss Waller +elude one altogether. Lamb's schoolmistress, Mrs. Reynolds, was a Miss +Chambers. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 78. NEW POEMS IN LAMB'S _POETICAL WORKS_, 1836. + +In 1836 Moxon issued a new edition of Lamb's poems, consisting of those +in the _Works_, 1818, and those in _Album Verses_--with a few +exceptions and several additions--under the embracive title _The +Poetical Works of Charles Lamb_. Whether Moxon himself made up this +volume, or whether Mary Lamb or Talfourd assisted, I do not know. The +dedication to Coleridge stood at the beginning, and that to Moxon half +way through. + + +Page 78. _In the Album of Edith S----_. + +First printed in _The Athenaeum_, March 9, 1833, under the title +"Christian Names of Women." Edith S---- was Edith May Southey, the +poet's daughter, who married the Rev. John Wood Warter. + + +Page 78. _To Dora W----_. + +Dora, _i.e._, Dorothy Wordsworth, the poet's daughter, who married +Edward Quillinan, and thus became stepmother of Rotha Q---- of the next +sonnet. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 79. _In the Album of Rotha Q----_. + +Rotha Quillinan, younger daughter of Edward Quillinan (1791-1851), +Wordsworth's friend and, afterwards, son-in-law. His first wife, a +daughter of Sir Samuel Egerton Brydges, was burned to death in 1822 +under the most distressing circumstances. Rotha Quillinan, who was +Wordsworth's god-daughter, was so called from the Rotha which flows +through Rydal, close to Quillinan's house. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 80. _To T. Stothard, Esq_. + +First printed in _The Athenaeum_, December 21, 1833. In a letter to +Rogers in December, 1833, Lamb alludes to his sonnet to the poet (see +page 100), adding that for fear it might not altogether please Stothard +he has "ventured at an antagonist copy of verses, in _The Athenaeum_, to +_him_, in which he is as every thing, and you [Rogers] as nothing." +Thomas Stothard (1755-1834) was at that time seventy-eight. He had long +been the friend of Rogers, having helped in the decoration of his house +in 1803 and illustrated the _Pleasures of Memory_ as far back as 1793. +Lamb's sonnet refers particularly to the edition of Rogers' _Poems_ that +is dated 1834, which Stothard and Turner embellished. Stothard +illustrated very many of the standard novels for Harrison's _Novelists' +Magazine_ towards the end of the eighteenth century, among these being +Richardson's, Fielding's, Smollett's and Sterne's. In Robert Paltock's +_Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins_, 1751, a flying people are +described, among whom the males were "Glums" and the females +"Gawries."--Titian lived to be ninety-nine. + + +Page 80. _To a Friend on His Marriage_. + +First printed in _The Athenaeum_, December 7, 1833. The friend was +Edward Moxon, whose marriage to Emma Isola, Lamb's adopted daughter, was +solemnised on July 30, 1833. Lamb mentions more than once the absence of +any dowry with Miss Isola. His own wedding present to them was the +portrait of Milton which his brother, John Lamb, had left to him. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 81. _The Self-Enchanted_. + +First printed in _The Athenaeum_, January 7, 1832. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 82. _To Louisa M---, whom I used to call "Monkey."_ + +First printed in Hone's _Year Book_ for December 30, 1831, under the +title "The Change." (See the verses "The Ape," on page 89, and note, the +forerunner of the present poem, addressed also to Louisa Martin.) + + +Page 82. _Cheap Gifts: a Sonnet_. + +First printed in _The Athenaeum_, February 15, 1834. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 83. _Free Thoughts on Several Eminent Composers_. Lamb was very +fond of these lines, which he sent to more than one of his friends. The +text varies in some of the copies, but I have not thought it necessary +to indicate the differences. Its inspiration was attributed by him both +to William Ayrton (1777-1858), the musical critic, and to Vincent +Novello (1781-1861), the organist, composer and close friend of Lamb. In +a letter to Sarah Hazlitt in 1830 Lamb copies the poem, +remarking--"Having read Hawkins and Burney recently, I was enabled to +talk [to Ayrton] of Names, and show more knowledge than he had suspected +I possessed; and in the end he begg'd me to shape my thoughts upon +paper, which I did after he was gone, and sent him." + +So Lamb wrote to Mrs. Hazlitt. But to Ayrton, when he sent the verses, +he said:--"[Novello] desiring me to give him my real opinion respecting +the distinct grades of excellence in all the eminent Composers of the +Italian, German and English schools, I have done it, rather to oblige +him than from any overweening opinion I have of my own judgment in that +science." + +Both these statements are manifestations of what Lamb called his +"matter-of-lie" disposition. To Mrs. Hazlitt he thought that Ayrton's +name would be more important; to Ayrton, Novello's. + +The verses, whatever their origin, were written by Lamb in Novello's +Album, with this postscript, signed by Mary Lamb, added:-- + + The reason why my brother's so severe, + Vincentio, is--my brother has no _ear_; + And Caradori, his mellifluous throat + Might stretch in vain to make him learn a note. + Of common tunes he knows not anything, + Nor "Rule Britannia" from "God save the King." + He rail at Handel! He the gamut quiz! + I'd lay my life he knows not what it is. + His spite at music is a pretty whim-- + He loves not it, because it loves not him. + + M. LAMB. + + + * * * * * + + +UNCOLLECTED PIECES + + +Page 85. _Dramatic Fragment_. + +_London Magazine_, January, 1822. An excerpt from Lamb's play, "Pride's +Cure" (_John Woodvil_). See note below. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 86. _Dick Strype_. + +Writing to John Rickman in January, 1802, Lamb says, "My editor [Dan +Stuart of the _Morning Post_] uniformly rejects all that I do, +considerable in length. I shall only do paragraphs with now and then a +slight poem, such as Dick Strype, if you read it, which was but a long +epigram." The verses, which appeared on January 6, 1802, may be compared +with the story of Ephraim Wagstaff, on page 432 of Vol. I., written +twenty-five years later. It has been pointed out that _Points of +Misery_, 1823, by Charles Molloy Westmacott (Bernard Blackmantle of the +_English Spy_), contains the poem with slight alterations. But +Westmacott reaped where he could, and his book is confessedly not wholly +original. Lamb seems to me to admit authorship by implication fairly +completely. Westmacott was only thirteen when it was first printed. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 88. _Two Epitaphs on a young Lady, etc_. + +_Morning Post_, February 7, 1804. Signed C.L. Lamb sends the poem both +to Wordsworth and Manning in 1803. He says to Manning:--"Did I send you +an epitaph I scribbled upon a poor girl who died at nineteen?--a good +girl, and a pretty girl, and a clever girl, but strangely neglected by +all her friends and kin.... Brief, and pretty, and tender, is it not? I +send you this, being the only piece of poetry I have _done_ since the +Muses all went with T.M. [Thomas Manning] to Paris." + +The young lady was Mary Druitt of Wimborne who died of consumption in +1801. The verses are not on her tombstone. A letter from Lamb to his +friend Rickman (see Canon Ainger's edition), shows that it was for +Rickman that the lines were written. Lamb did not know Mary Druitt. +Writing to Rickman in February, 1802, Lamb sends the second +epitaph:--"Your own prose, or nakedly the letter which you sent me, +which was in some sort an epitaph, would do better on her gravestone +than the cold lines of a stranger." + + + * * * * * + + +Page 89. _The Ape_. + +Printed in the _London Magazine_, October, 1820, where it was preceded +by these words:-- + +"To THE EDITOR + +"Mr. Editor,--The riddling lines which I send you, were written upon a +young lady, who, from her diverting sportiveness in childhood, was named +by her friends The Ape. When the verses were written, L.M. had outgrown +the title--but not the memory of it--being in her teens, and +consequently past child-tricks. They are an endeavour to express that +perplexity, which one feels at any alteration, even supposed for the +better, in a beloved object; with a little oblique grudging at Time, who +cannot bestow new graces without taking away some portion of the older +ones, which we can ill miss. + +"*****." + +L.M. was Louisa Martin, who is now and then referred to in Lamb's letter +as Monkey, and to whom he addressed the lines on page 82, which come as +a sequel to the present ones. In a letter to Wordsworth, many years +later, dated February 22, 1834, Lamb asks a favour for this lady:--"The +oldest and best friends I have left are in trouble. A branch of them +(and they of the best stock of God's creatures, I believe) is +establishing a school at Carlisle; Her name is Louisa Martin ... her +qualities ... are the most amiable, most upright. For thirty years she +has been tried by me, and on her behaviour I would stake my soul." + + + * * * * * + + +Page 90. _In Tabulam Eximii...._ + +These Latin verses were printed in _The Champion_, May 6 and 7, 1820, +signed Carlagnulus, accompanied by this notice: "We insert, with great +pleasure, the following beautiful Latin Verses on HAYDON'S fine Picture, +and shall be obliged to any of our correspondents for a spirited +translation for our next." The following week brought one +translation--Lamb's own--signed C.L. Both were reprinted in _The +Poetical Recreations of "The Champion"_ in 1822, and again in Tom +Taylor's _Life of Haydon_, 1853. + +Benjamin Robert Haydon (1786-1846) was for six years at work upon this +picture--"Christ's Entry into Jerusalem"--which was exhibited at the +Egyptian Hall in 1820. The story goes that Mrs. Siddons established the +picture's reputation in society. While the private-view company were +assembled in doubt the great actress entered and walked across the room. +"It is completely successful," she was heard to say to Sir George +Beaumont; and then, to Haydon, "The paleness of your Christ gives it a +supernatural look." A stream of 30,000 persons followed this verdict. +The picture is now in Philadelphia. + +Line 4. _Palma_. There were two Palmas, both painters of the Venetian +school. Giacomo Palma the Elder, who is referred to here, was born about +1480. Both painted many scenes in the life of Christ. + +Lines 7 and 8. _Flaccus' sentence_. + + Valeat res ludicra si me + Palma negata macrum, donata reducit opimum. + Horace, _Epist., II_., I, 180-181. + +(Farewell to performances, if the palm, denied, sends one home lean, +but, granted, flourishing.) + +Lamb has not quite represented the poet's meaning, which is a profession +of independence in regard to popular applause. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 91. _Sonnet to Miss Burney...._ + +First printed in the _Morning Chronicle_, July 13, 1820. The Burney +family began to be famous with Dr. Charles Burney (1726-1814), the +musician, the author of the _History of Music_, and the friend of Dr. +Johnson and Sir Joshua Reynolds. Among his children were the Rev. +Charles Burney (1757-1817), the classical scholar and owner of the +Burney Library, now in the British Museum; Rear-Admiral James Burney +(1750-1821), who sailed with Cook, wrote the _Chronological History of +the Discoveries in the South Sea or Pacific Ocean_, and became a friend +of Lamb; Frances Burney, afterwards Madame d'Arblay (1752-1840), the +novelist, author of _Evelina, Camilla_ and _Cecilia_; and Sarah Harriet +Burney (1770?-1844), a daughter of Dr. Burney's second wife, also a +novelist, and the author, among other stories, of _Geraldine +Fauconberg_. "Country Neighbours; or, The Secret," the tale that +inspired Lamb's sonnet, formed Vols. II. and III. of Sarah Burney's +_Tales of Fancy_. Blanch is the heroine. + +The good old man in Madame d'Arblay's _Camilla_ is Sir Hugh Tyrold, who +adopted the heroine. + + +Page 91. _To my Friend The Indicator_. + +Printed in _The Indicator_, September 27, 1820, signed ****, preceded by +these words by Leigh Hunt, the editor:-- + +Every pleasure we could experience in a friend's approbation, we have +felt in receiving the following verses. They are from a writer, who of +all other men, knows how to extricate a common thing from commonness, +and to give it an underlook of pleasant consciousness and wisdom. +...The receipt of these verses has set us upon thinking of the +good-natured countenance, which men of genius, in all ages, have for the +most part shewn to contemporary writers. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 92. _On seeing Mrs. K---- B----_. + +The late Mr. Dykes Campbell thought it very likely that these charming +verses were Lamb's. I think they may be, although it is odd that he +should not have reprinted anything so pretty. Mr. Thomas Hutchinson's +belief that they are Lamb's, added to that of their discoverer, leads me +to include them confidently here. Here and there it seems impossible +that the poem could come from any other hand: line 11 for example, and +the idea in lines 13 to 16, and the statement in lines 27 and 28. None +the less it must be borne in mind that one does but conjecture. The +lines are in _The Tickler Magazine_ for 1821. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 93. _To Emma, Learning Latin, and Desponding_. + +First printed in _Blackwood's Magazine_, June, 1829. + +Mary Lamb had other pupils in her time, among them Miss Kelly, the +actress, Mary Victoria Novello (afterwards Mrs. Cowden Clarke), and +William Hazlitt, the essayist's son. Emma was, of course, Emma Isola. +Sara Coleridge's translation of Martin Dobrizhoffer's _Historia de +Abiponibus_ under the title _Account of the Abipones_ was published in +1822, when she was only twenty. + +"To think [Lamb wrote to Barton, on February 17, 1823, of Sara +Coleridge] that she should have had to toil thro' five octavos of that +cursed (I forget I write to a Quaker) Abbey pony History, and then to +abridge them to 3, and all for L113. At her years, to be doing stupid +Jesuits' Latin into English, when she should be reading or writing +Romances." Sara Coleridge's romance-writing came later, in 1837, when +her fairy tale, _Phantasmion_, appeared. + +In its original form this sonnet in its fifth line ran thus:-- + + (In new tasks hardest still the first appears). + +Derwent Coleridge read the sonnet in 1853 in Mrs. Moxon's album, and +copying it out, sent it to his wife, saying that he wished Sissy (his +daughter Christabel) to get it by heart. He added this note: "Charles +Lamb having discovered that this Sonnet consisted but of thirteen lines, +Miss Lamb inserted the 5th, which interrupts the flow and repeats a +rhime." Derwent Coleridge goes on to suggest two alternative lines:-- + + And hope may surely chase desponding fears + +or + + Let hope encouraged chase desponding fears. + +Lamb, however, had already amended the fifth line (as in _Blackwood's +Magazine_) to-- + + To young beginnings natural are these fears. + + +Page 93. _Lines addressed to Lieut. R.W.H. Hardy, R.N._ + +First printed in _The Athenaeum_, January 10, 1846, contributed by an +anonymous correspondent (probably Thomas Westwood the Younger) who sent +also "The First Leaf of Spring" (page 105). _Travels in the Interior of +Mexico in_ 1825 ... 1828, by Robert William Hale Hardy, was published in +1829. Lamb made an exception in favour of Hardy's book. Writing to Dilke +for something to read from _The Athenaum_ office, in 1833, he +particularly desired that "no natural history or useful learning, such +as Pyramids, Catacombs, Giraffes, or Adventures in Southern Africa" +might be sent. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 94. _Lines for a Monument_.... + +First printed in _The Athenaeum_, November 5, 1831, and again in _The +Tatler_, Hunt's paper, December 31, 1831. In August, 1830, four sons and +two daughters of John and Ann Rigg, of York, were drowned in the Ouse. +Several literary persons were asked for inscriptions for the monument, +erected at York in 1831, and that by James Montgomery, of Sheffield, was +chosen. Lamb sent his verses to Vincent Novello, through whom he seems +to have been approached in the matter, on November 8, 1830, adding: +"Will these lines do? I despair of better. Poor Mary is in a deplorable +state here at Enfield." + + +Page 94. _To C. Aders, Esq_. + +First printed in Hone's _Year Book_ (March 19), 1831 (see note to "Angel +Help," above). + + + * * * * * + + +Page 95. _Hercules Pacificatus_. + +First printed in the _Englishman's Magazine_, August, 1831. Suidas is +supposed to have lived in the tenth or eleventh century, and to have +compiled a _Lexicon_--a blend of biographical dictionary. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 98. _The Parting Speech of the Celestial Messenger to the Poet_. + +First printed in _The Athenaeum_, February 25, 1832. + +Palingenius was an Italian poet of the sixteenth century, whose real +name was Pietro Angelo Mazolli, but who wrote in Latin under the name +of Marcellus Palingenius Stollatus. His _Zodiacus Vitae_, a +philosophical poem, was published in 1536. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 99. _Existence, considered in itself, no Blessing_. First printed +in _The Athenaeum_, July 7, 1832. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 100. _To Samuel Rogers, Esq., on the New Edition of his "Pleasures +of Memory."_ + +First printed in _The Times_, December 13, 1833. Signed C. Lamb. This is +the sonnet mentioned in the letter which is quoted on page 344, in the +note to the sonnet to Stothard. The new edition of _Pleasures of Memory_ +was published by Moxon in 1833, dated 1834. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 101. _To Clara N---- _. + +First printed in _The Athenaeum_, July 26, 1834. Clara N---- was, of +course, Clara Anastasia Novello, daughter of Lamb's friend, Vincent +Novello (1781-1861), the organist, and herself a fine soprano singer +(see also the poem "The Sisters," on the same page). Miss Novello, who +was born on June 10, 1818, became the Countess Gigliucci, and survived +until March 12, 1908. _Clara Novella's Reminiscences_, compiled by her +daughter, the Contessa Valeria Gigliucci, with a memoir by Arthur Duke +Coleridge, were published in 1910. In them is this charming passage:-- + + How I loved dear Charles Lamb! I once hid--to avoid the ignominy + of going to bed--in the upright (cabinet) pianoforte, which in its + lowest part had a sort of tiny cupboard. In this I fell asleep, awakening + only when the party was supping. My appearance from beneath the + pianoforte was hailed with surprise by all, and with anger from my + mother; but Charles Lamb not only took me under his protection, but + obtained that henceforth I should never again be sent to bed _when he + came_, but--glory and delight!--always sit up to supper. Later, in + Frith Street days, my Father made me sing to him one day; but [Lamb] + stopped me, saying, "Clara, don't make that d--d noise!" for which, + I think, I loved him as much as for all the rest. Some verses he sent + me were addressed to "St. Clara." + +In spite of Lamb's declaration about himself and want of musical sense, +both Crabb Robinson and Barron Field tell us that he was capable of +humming tunes. + + +Page 101. _The Sisters_. + +These verses, printed in Mr. W.C. Hazlitt's _Lamb and Hazlitt_, 1900, +were addressed:-- + + "_For_ SAINT CECILIA, + At Sign'r Vincenzo Novello's + Music Repository, + No. 67 Frith Street. + Soho." + +They were signed C. Lamb. One might imagine Emma, the nut-brown maid, to +be Emma Isola, as that was a phrase Lamb was fond of applying to +her--assuming the title "The Sisters" to be a pleasantry; but the late +Miss Mary Sabilia Novello assured me that the sisters were herself, +Emma Aloysia Novello and Clara Anastasia Novello (see above). + + + * * * * * + + +Page 102. _Love will Come_. + +"Love will Come" was included by Lamb in a letter to Miss Fryer, a +school-fellow of Emma Isola. Lamb writes:--"By desire of Emma I have +attempted new words to the old nonsense of Tartar Drum; but _with_ the +nonsense the sound and spirit of the tune are unaccountably gone, and +_we_ have agreed to discard the new version altogether. As _you_ may be +more fastidious in singing mere silliness, and a string of well-sounding +images without sense or coherence--Drums of Tartars, who use _none_, and +Tulip trees ten foot high, not to mention Spirits in Sunbeams, +&c.,--than _we_ are, so you are at liberty to sacrifice an enspiriting +movement to a little sense, tho' I like LITTLE SENSE less than his +vagarying younger sister NO SENSE--so I send them.--The 4th line of 1st +stanza is from an old Ballad." + +The old ballad is, I imagine, "Waly, Waly," of which Lamb was very fond. + + +Page 102. _To Margaret W----_. + +This poem, believed to be the last that Lamb wrote, was printed in _The +Athenaeum_ for March 14, 1835. I have not been able to ascertain who +Margaret W---- was. + + + * * * * * + + +ALBUM VERSES AND ACROSTICS + + +Page 104. _What is an Album?_ + +These lines were probably written for Emma Isola's Album, which must not +be confounded with her Extract Book. The Album was the volume for which +Lamb, in his letters, occasionally solicited contributions. It was sold +some years ago to Mr. Quaritch, and is now, I believe, in a private +collection, although in a mutilated state, several of the poems having +been cut out. These particular lines of Lamb's were probably written by +him also in other albums, for John Mathew Gutch, his old school-fellow, +discovered them on the fly-leaf of a copy of _John Woodvil_, and sent +them to _Notes and Queries_, Oct. 11, 1856. In that version the +twenty-first line ran:-- + + There you have, Madelina, an album complete. + +Lamb quoted from the lines in his review of his _Album Verses_, under +the title "The Latin Poems of Vincent Bourne," in the _Englishman's +Magazine_ (see Vol. I.). Two versions of the lines are copied by Lamb +into one of his Commonplace Books. + +Line 6. _Sweet L.E.L.'s_. L.E.L. was, of course, Letitia Elizabeth +Landon, afterwards Mrs. Maclean (1802-1838), famous as an Album-and +Annual-poetess. Lamb, if an entry in P.G. Patmore's diary is correct, +did not admire her, or indeed any female author. He said, "If she +belonged to me I would lock her up and feed her on bread and water till +she left off writing poetry." + + + * * * * * + + +Page 105. _The First Leaf of Spring_. + +Printed in _The Athenaeum_, January 10, 1846, contributed probably by +Thomas Westwood. In a note prefacing the three poems which he was +sending, this correspondent stated that "The First Leaf of Spring" had +been printed before, but very obscurely. I have not discovered where. + + +Page 105. _To Mrs. F---- on Her Return from Gibraltar_. + +This would probably be Mrs. Jane Field, _nee_ Carncroft, the wife of +Lamb's friend, Barron Field, who inspired the _Elia_ essay on "Distant +Correspondents." Field held the Chief Justiceship of Gibraltar for some +years. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 106. _To M. L---- F----_. + +M.L. Field, the second daughter of Henry Field, and Barron Field's +sister. This lady, who lived to a great age, gave Canon Ainger the copy +of the prologue to "Richard II." written by Lamb for an amateur +performance at her home. + + +Page 106. _To Esther Field_. + +Another of Barron Field's sisters. + +The text of these three poems has been corrected by the Thomas +Hutchinson's Oxford edition. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 107. _To Mrs. Williams_. + +See note above. In writing to Mrs. Williams on April 2, 1830, to tell of +Emma Isola's safe journey after her illness, Lamb says:--"How I employed +myself between Epping and Enfield the poor verses in the front of my +paper may inform you, which you may please to christen an Acrostic in a +Cross Road." + +Mrs. Williams replied with the following acrostic upon Lamb's name, +which Mr. Cecil Turner, a descendant, has sent me and which I give +according to his copy:-- + + TO CHARLES LAMB + + _Answer to Acrostics on the Names of Two Friends._ + + Charmed with the lines thy hand has sent, + Honour I feel thy compliment, + Amongst thy products that have won the ear + Ranged in thy verse two friends most dear. + Lay not thy winning pen away, + Each line thou writest we bid thee stay. + Still ask to charm us with another lay. + + Long-linked, long-lived by public fame, + A friend to misery whate'er its claim, + Marvel I must if e'er we find + Bestowed by Heaven a kindlier mind. + +The two friends were Cecilia Catherine Lawton (see page 64) and Edward +Hogg (see page 109). In reply Lamb says (Good Friday, 1830):--"I do +assure you that your verses gratified me very much, and my sister is +quite _proud_ of them. For the first time in my life I congratulated +myself upon the shortness and meanness of my name. Had it been +Schwartzenberg or Esterhazy it would have put you to some puzzle." + +Later in the same letter, referring to the present acrostic, he said +speaking of Harriet Isola, Emma's sister, she "blames my last verses as +being more written on _Mr._ Williams than on yourself; but how should I +have parted whom a Superior Power has brought together?" + + +Page 107. _To the Book_. + +Written for the Album of Sophia Elizabeth Frend, afterwards the wife of +Augustus De Morgan, the mathematician (1806-1871), and mother of the +novelist Mr. William De Morgan. Her father was William Frend +(1757-1841), the reformer and a friend of Crabb Robinson and George +Dyer. The lines were printed in Mrs. De Morgan's _Three Score Years and +Ten_, as are also those that follow--"To S.F." + + + * * * * * + + +Page 108. _To R Q._ + +From the Album of Rotha Quillinan. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 109. _To S.L.... To M.L._ + +I have not been able to identify the Lockes. The J.F. of the last line +might be Jane Field. Copies of these poems are preserved at South +Kensington. + + +Page 109. _An Acrostic against Acrostics_. + +Edward Hogg was a friend of Mr. Williams (see above). These verses were +first printed in _The Lambs_ by Mr. W.C. Hazlitt. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 110. _On being Asked to Write in Miss Westwood's Album._ + +Frances Westwood was the daughter of the Westwoods, with whom the Lambs +were domiciled at Enfield Chase in 1829-1832. See letters to Gillman and +Wordsworth (November 30, 1829, and January 22, 1830) for description of +the Westwoods. The only son, Thomas Westwood, who died in 1888, and was +an authority on the literature of angling, contributed to _Notes and +Queries_ some very interesting reminiscences of the Lambs in those days. +This poem and that which follows it were sent to _Notes and Queries_ by +Thomas Westwood (June 4, 1870). + +It is concerning these lines that Lamb writes to Barton, in 1827:-- +"Adieu to Albums--for a great while--I said when I came here, and had +not been fixed two days, but my Landlord's daughter (not at the +Pot-house) requested me to write in her female friend's, and in her own. +If I go to ---- thou art there also, O all pervading Album! All over the +Leeward Islands, in Newfoundland, and the Back Settlements, I understand +there is no other reading. They haunt me. I die of Albo-phobia!" + + +Page 111. _Un Solitaire._ + +E.I., who made the drawing in question, would be Emma Isola. The verses +were copied by Lamb into his Album, which is now in the possession of +Mrs. Alfred Morrison. + + +Page 111. _To S[arah] T[homas]_. + +From Lamb's Album. I have not been able to trace this lady. + + +Page 111. _To Mrs. Sarah Robinson._ + +From the copy preserved among Henry Crabb Robinson's papers at Dr. +Williams' Library. Sarah Robinson was the niece of H.C.R., who was the +pilgrim in Rome. The stranger to thy land was Emma Isola, Fornham, in +Suffolk, where she was living, being near to Bury St. Edmunds, the home +of the Robinsons. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 112. _To Sarah._ + +From the Album of Sarah Apsey. Lamb seems to have known very many +Sarahs. + + +Page 112. _To Joseph Vale Asbury._ + +From Lamb's Album. Jacob (not Joseph, as Lamb supposed) Vale Asbury was +the Lambs' doctor at Enfield. There are extant two amusing letters from +Lamb to Asbury. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 113. _To D.A._ + +From Lamb's Album. Dorothy Asbury, the wife of the doctor. + + +Page 113. _To Louisa Morgan._ + +From Lamb's Album. Louisa Morgan was probably the daughter of +Coleridge's friend, John Morgan, of Calne, in Wiltshire, with whom the +Lambs stayed in 1817--the same Morgan--"Morgan demigorgon"--who ate +walnuts better than any man Lamb knew, and munched cos-lettuce like a +rabbit (see letters to Coleridge in August, 1814). Southey and Lamb each +allowed John Morgan L10 a year in his old age and adversity, beginning +with 1819. + + +Page 113. _To Sarah James of Beguildy._ + +Sarah James was Mary Lamb's nurse, and the sister of the Mrs. Parsons +with whom she lived during the last years of her life. Miss James was +the daughter of the rector of Beguildy, in Shropshire. The verses are +reprinted from _My Lifetime_ by the late John Hollingshead, who was the +great-nephew of Miss James and Mrs. Parsons. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 114. _To Emma Button._ + +Included in a letter from Lamb to John Aitken, editor of _The Cabinet_, +July 5, 1825. + + +Page 114. _Written upon the cover of a blotting book. The Mirror,_ May +7, 1836. + +Identified by Mr. Walter Jerrold. First collected by Mr. Thomas +Hutchinson. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 115. POLITICAL AND OTHER EPIGRAMS. + +Lamb was not a politician, but he had strong--almost +passionate--prejudices against certain statesmen and higher persons, +which impelled him now and then to sarcastic verse. The earliest +examples in this vein that can be identified are two quatrains from the +_Morning Post_ in January, 1802, printed on page 115, and the epigram +on Sir James Mackintosh in _The Albion_, printed on the same page, to +which Lamb refers in the _Elia_ essay on "Newspapers Thirty-five Years +Ago" (see Vol. II.). Until a file of _The Albion_ turns up we shall +never know how active Lamb's pen was at that time. The next belong to +the year 1812--in _The Examiner_ (see page 116)--and we then leap +another seven years or so until 1819-1820, Lamb's busiest period as a +caustic critic of affairs--in _The Examiner_, possibly the _Morning +Chronicle_, and principally in _The Champion_. After 1820, however, he +returned to this vein very seldom, and then with less bitterness and +depth of feeling. "The Royal Wonders," in _The Times_ for August 10, +1830 (see page 122), and "Lines Suggested by a Sight of Waltham Cross," +in the _Englishman's Magazine_, September, 1831 (written, however, some +years earlier), on page 121, being his latest efforts that we know of. +Of course there must be many other similar productions to which we have +no clue--the old _Morning Post_ days doubtless saw many an epigram that +cannot now be definitely claimed for Lamb--but those that are preserved +here sufficiently show how feelingly Lamb could hate and how trenchantly +he could chastise. Others that seem to me likely to be Lamb's I could +have included; but it is well to dispense as much as possible with the +problematic. For example, I suspect Lamb of the authorship of several of +the epigrams quoted in _The Examiner_ in 1819 and 1820 from the _Morning +Chronicle_. He used to send verses to the _Morning Chronicle_ at that +time, and Leigh Hunt, the editor of _The Examiner_, would naturally be +pleased to give anything of his friend's an additional publicity. + +The majority of the epigrams printed in this section might have remained +unidentified were it not that in 1822 John Thelwall, who owned and +edited _The Champion_ in 1818-1820, issued a little volume entitled _The +Poetical Recreations of "The Champion,"_ wherein Lamb's contributions +were signed R. et R. This signature being appended to certain poems of +which we know Lamb to have been the author--as "The Three Graves," which +he sent also to the _London Magazine_ (in 1825), and which he was in the +habit of reading or reciting to his friends--enables us to ascertain the +authorship of the others. A note placed by Thelwall above the index of +the book states, "it is much to be regretted that, by mere oversight, or +rather mistake, several of the printed epigrams of R. et R. have been +omitted;" but a search through the files of _The Champion_ has failed to +bring to light any others with Lamb's adopted signature. + +The origin of the signature R. et R. is unknown. Mr. Percy Fitzgerald +suggests that it might stand for Romulus and Remus, but offers no +supporting theory. He might have added that so unfamiliar a countenance +is in these epigrams shown by their author, that the suggestion of a +wolf rather than a Lamb might have been intended. Lamb's principal +political epigrams were drawn from him by his intense contempt for the +character of George IV., then Prince of Wales. His treatment of Caroline +of Brunswick, as we see, moved Lamb to utterances of almost sulphurous +indignation not only for the prince himself, but for all who were on his +side, particularly Canning. Lamb, we must suppose, was wholly on the +side of the queen, thus differing from Coleridge, who when asked how his +sympathies were placed would admit only to being anti-Prince. + +John Thelwall (1764-1834)--Citizen Thelwall--was one of the most popular +and uncompromising of the Radicals of the seventeen-nineties. He +belonged to the Society of the Friends of the People and other Jacobin +confederacies. In May, 1794, he was even sent to the Tower (with Home +Tooke and Thomas Hardy) for sedition; moved to Newgate in October; and +tried and acquitted in December. Lamb first met him, I fancy, in 1797, +when Thelwall was intimate with Coleridge. After 1798 Thelwall's +political activities were changed for those of a lecturer on more +pacific subjects, and later he opened an institution in London where he +taught elocution and corrected the effects of malformation of the organs +of speech. He bought _The Champion_ in 1818, and held it for two or +three years, but it did not succeed. Thelwall died in 1834. Among his +friends were Coleridge, Haydon, Hazlitt, Southey, Crabb Robinson and +Lamb, all of whom, although they laughed at his excesses and excitements +as a reformer, saw in him an invincible honesty and sincerity. + +Before leaving this subject I should like to quote the following +lines from _The Champion_ of November 4 and 5, 1820:-- + + A LADY'S SAPPHIC + + Now the calm evening hastily approaches, + Not a sound stirring thro' the gentle woodlands, + Save that soft Zephyr with his downy pinions + Scatters fresh fragrance. + + Now the pale sun-beams in the west declining + Gild the dew rising as the twilight deepens, + Beauty and splendour decorate the landscape; + Night is approaching. + + By the cool stream's side pensively and sadly + Sit I, while birds sing on the branches sweetly, + And my sad thoughts all with their carols soothing, + Lull to oblivion. + M.L. + +A correspondence on English sapphics was carried on in _The Champion_ +for some weeks at this time, various efforts being printed. On November +4 appeared the "Lady's Sapphic," just quoted, signed M.S. On the +following day--for _The Champion_, like _The Examiner_, had a Saturday +and Sunday edition--this signature was changed to M.L., and was thus +given when the verses were reprinted in _The Poetical Recreations_ of +_"The Champion"_ in 1822. There is no evidence that Mary Lamb wrote it; +but she played with verse, and presumably read _The Champion_, since her +brother was writing for it, and the poem might easily be hers. +Personally I like to think it is, and that Lamb, on seeing the mistake +in the initials in the Saturday edition, hurried down to the office to +have it put right in that of Sunday. The same number of _The Champion_ +(November 4 and 5, 1820) contains another poem in the same measure +signed C., which not improbably was Lamb's contribution to the pastime. +It runs as follows:-- + + DANAE EXPOSED WITH HER INFANT + + _An English Sapphic_ + + Dim were the stars, and clouded was the azure, Silence in darkness + brooded on the ocean, Save when the wave upon the pebbled sea-beach + Faintly resounded. + + Then, O forsaken daughter of Acrisius! Seiz'd in the hour of woe and + tribulation, Thou, with the guiltless victim of thy love, didst Rock on + the surges. + + Sad o'er the silent bosom of the billow, Borne on the breeze and + modulated sweetly, Plaintive as music, rose the mother's tones of + Comfortless anguish. + + "Sad is thy birth, and stormy is thy cradle, Offspring of sorrow! + nursling of the ocean! Waves rise around to pillow thee, and night winds + Lull thee to slumber!" + + +Page 115. _To Sir James Mackintosh._ + +In a letter to Manning in August, 1801, Lamb quotes this epigram as +having been printed in _The Albion_ and caused that paper's death the +previous week. In his _Elia_ essay on "Newspapers," written thirty years +later, he stated that the epigram was written at the time of +Mackintosh's departure for India to reap the fruits of his apostasy; but +here Lamb's memory deceived him, for Mackintosh was not appointed +Recorder of Bombay until 1803 and did not sail until 1804, whereas there +is reason to believe the date of Lamb's letter to Manning of August, +1801, to be accurate. The epigram must then have referred to a rumour of +some earlier appointment, for Mackintosh had been hoping for something +for several years. + +Sir James Mackintosh (1765-1832), the lawyer and philosopher, had in +1791 issued his _Vindicia Galliae_, a reply to Burke's _Reflections on +the French Revolution_. Later, however, he became one of Burke's friends +and an opponent of the Revolution, and in 1798 he issued his +Introductory Discourse to his lectures on "The Law of Nature and +Nations," in which the doctrines of his _Vindiciae Gallicae_ were +repudiated. Hence his "apostasy." Mackintosh applied unsuccessfully for +a judgeship in Trinidad, and for the post of Advocate-General in Bengal, +and Lord Wellesley had invited him to become the head of a college in +Calcutta. Rumour may have credited him with any of these posts and thus +have suggested Lamb's epigram. In 1803 he was appointed Recorder of +Bombay. Lamb's dislike of Mackintosh may have been due in some measure +to Coleridge, between whom and Mackintosh a mild feud subsisted. It had +been Mackintosh, however, brother-in-law of Daniel Stuart of the +_Morning Post_, who introduced Coleridge to that paper. (See notes to +Vol. II., where further particulars of _The Albion_, edited by Lamb's +friend, John Fenwick, will be found.) + +Lamb may or may not have invented the sarcasm in this epigram; but it +was not new. In Mrs. Montagu's letters, some years before, we find +something of the kind concerning Charles James Fox: "His rapid journeys +to England, on the news of the king's illness, have brought on him a +violent complaint in the bowels, which will, it is imagined, prove +mortal. However, if it should, it will vindicate his character from the +general report that he has no bowels, as has been most strenuously +asserted by his creditors." + + +Page 115. _Twelfth Night Characters_.... + +_Morning Post_, January 8, 1802. + +These epigrams were identified by the late Mr. Dykes Campbell from a +letter of Lamb's to John Rickman, dated Jan. 14, 1802, printed in +Ainger's edition. + +A---- is, of course, Henry Addington (1757-1844), afterwards Viscount +Sidmouth. After being Speaker for eleven years, he became suddenly Prime +Minister in 1801, at the wish of George III., who was rendered uneasy by +Pitt's project for Catholic relief. + +C---- and F---- were George Canning (1770-1827) and John Hookham Frere +(1769-1846) of _The Anti-Jacobin_, against whom Lamb had a grudge on +account of the _Anti-Jacobin's_ treatment of himself and Lloyd (see note +to _Blank Verse_, page 320). Lamb returned to the attack on Canning +again and again, as the epigrams that follow will show. + +The epigram on Count Rumford was not included. We know that it was sent, +from the Rickman letter. The same missive tells us that that on Dr. +Solomon was also written in 1802, but it was not printed till _The +Champion_ took it on July 15 and 16, 1820. Solomon was alive in 1802 and +was therefore a present Empiric. He was a notorious quack doctor, author +of the _Guide to Health_ and the purveyor of a nostrum called Balm of +Gilead. One of Southey's letters (October 14, 1801) contains a +diverting account of this Empiric. I copy one of Solomon's +advertisements from a provincial paper:-- + + DR. SOLOMON'S + CORDIAL BALM OF GILEAD + + To the young it will afford lasting health, strength and spirits, in + place of lassitude and debility; and to the aged and infirm it will + assuredly furnish great relief and comfort by gently and safely + invigorating the system; it will not give immortality; but if it be + in the power of medicine to gild the autumn of declining years, and + calmly and serenely protract the close of life beyond its narrow + span, this restorative is capable of effecting that grand + desideratum. + +The price was 10s. 6d. a bottle. + +Lamb's epigrams were only a few among many printed in the _Morning Post_ +for January 7 and 8, 1802. Whether he wrote also the following I do not +know, but these are not inconceivably from his hand:-- + + LORD NELSON + + Off with BRIAREUS, and his HUNDRED HANDS, + OUR NELSON, with _one arm_, unconquer'd stands! + + + MR. P[IT]T + + By crooked arts, and actions sinister, + I came at first to be a Minister; + And now I am no longer Minister, + I still retain my actions sinister. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 116. _Two Epigrams_. _The Examiner_, March 22, 1812. + +These epigrams have no signature, but the second of them was reprinted +in _The Poetical Recreations of "The Champion"_ (1822) with Lamb's +signature, R. et R., appended, and a note saying that it was written in +the last reign, together with an announcement that it had not appeared +in _The Champion_, but was inserted in that collection at the author's +request. By Princeps and the heir-apparent is meant, of course, the +Prince of Wales, afterwards George IV., who had just entered upon office +as Regent. The epigrams refer to his transfer of confidence, if so it +may be called, from the Whig party to the Marquis Wellesley, Perceval +and the Tory party. The circumstance that the Prince of Wales was also +Duke of Cornwall is referred to in the first epigram. The second of the +epigrams is copied into one of Lamb's Commonplace Books with the title +"On the Prince breaking with his Party." + + +Page 116. _The Triumph of the Whale_. + +_The Examiner_, March 15, 1812. Reprinted in _The Poetical Recreations +of "The Champion,"_ signed R. et R., with a note stating that it had not +appeared in _The Champion_, but was collected with the other pieces by +the author's request. + +The subject of the verses was, of course, the first gentleman in Europe. +_The Examiner_ was never over-nice in its treatment of the prince, and +it was in the same year, 1812, that Leigh Hunt, the editor, and his +brother, the printer, of the paper were prosecuted for the article +styling him a "libertine" and the "companion of gamblers and demireps" +(which appeared the week following Lamb's poem), and were condemned to +imprisonment for it. Lamb's lines came very little short of expressing +equally objectionable criticisms; but verse is often privileged. +Thelwall--and Lamb--showed some courage in reprinting the lines in 1822, +when the prince had become king. Talfourd relates that Lamb was in the +habit of checking harsh comments on the prince by others with the +smiling remark, "_I_ love my Regent." + +In Galignani's 1828 edition of Byron this piece was attributed to his +lordship. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 118. _St. Crispin to Mr. Gifford._ + +_The Examiner_, October 3 and 4, 1819. Reprinted in _The Poetical +Recreations of "The Champion,"_ 1822. + +William Gifford (1756-1826), editor of the _Quarterly Review_, had been +apprenticed to a cobbler. Lamb had an old score against him on account +of his editorial treatment of Lamb's review of Wordsworth's _Excursion_, +in 1814, and other matters (see note to "Letter to Southey," Vol. I.). +Writing to the Olliers, on the publication of his _Works_, June 18, +1818, Lamb says, in reference to this sonnet: "I meditate an attack upon +that Cobler Gifford, which shall appear immediately after any favourable +mention which S. [Southey] may make in the Quarterly. It can't in decent +_gratitude_ appear _before_." When the sonnet was printed in the +_Examiner_ it purported to have reference to the _Quarterly's_ treatment +of Shelley's _Revolt of Islam_, which treatment Leigh Hunt was then +exposing in a series of articles. + + +Page 118. _The Godlike._ + +_The Champion_, March 18 and 19, 1820. Reprinted in _The Poetical +Recreations of "The Champion,"_ 1822. + +Another contribution to the character of George IV., who had just +succeeded to the throne, and was at that moment engaged upon the task of +divorcing his wife, Caroline of Brunswick. The eighth line must be read +probably with a medical eye. The concluding three lines refer to George +III.'s insanity. As a political satirist Lamb disdained half measures. + + +Page 119. _The Three Graves._ + +_The Champion_, May 13 and 14, 1820. Signed Dante. Reprinted in _The +Poetical Recreations of "The Champion,"_ 1822, signed Dante and R. et R. +Reprinted in the _London Magazine_, May, 1825, unsigned, with the names +in the last line printed only with initials and dashes, and the +sub-title, "Written during the time, now happily almost forgotten, of +the spy system." + +Lamb probably found a certain mischievous pleasure in giving these lines +the title of one of Coleridge's early poems. + +The spy system was a protective movement undertaken by Lord Sidmouth +(1757-1844) as Home Secretary in 1817--after the Luddite riots, the +general disaffection in the country, Thistlewood's Spa Fields uprising +and the break-down of the prosecution. Curious reading on the subject is +to be found in the memoirs of Richmond the Spy, and Peter Mackenzie's +remarks on that book and its author, in _Tait's Magazine_. The spy +system culminated with the failure of the Cato Street Conspiracy in +1820, which cost Thistlewood his life. That plot to murder ministers was +revealed by George Edwards, one of the spies named by Lamb in the last +line of this poem. Castles and Oliver were other government spies +mentioned by Richmond. + +Line 2. _Bedloe, Oates_ ... William Bedloe (1650-1680) and Titus Oates +(1649-1705) were associated as lying informers of the proceedings of the +imaginary Popish Plot against Charles II. + + +Page 119. _Sonnet to Mathew Wood, Esq_. + +_The Champion_, May 13 and 14, 1820. Reprinted in _The Poetical +Recreations of "The Champion,"_ 1822. + +Matthew Wood, afterwards Sir Matthew (1768-1843), was twice Lord Mayor +of London, 1815-1817, and M.P. for the city. He was one of the principal +friends and advisers of Caroline of Brunswick, George IV.'s repudiated +wife. Hence his particular merit in Lamb's eyes. Later he administered +the affairs of the Duke of Kent, whose trustee he was, and his baronetcy +was the first bestowed by Queen Victoria. The sonnet contains another of +Lamb's attacks on Canning. This statesman's mother, after the death of +George Canning, her first husband, in 1771, took to the stage, where she +remained for thirty years. Canning was at school at Eton. The course on +which Wood was adjured to hold was the defence of Queen Caroline; but +Canning's opposition to her cause was not so absolute as Lamb seemed to +think. The ministry, of which Canning was a member, had prepared a bill +by which the queen was to receive L50,000 annually so long as she +remained abroad. The king insisted on divorce or nothing, and it was his +own repugnance to this measure that caused Canning to tender his +resignation. The king refused it, and Canning went abroad and did not +return until it was abandoned. + +Line 11. _Pickpocket Peer_. This would be Henry Dundas, Viscount +Melville (1742-1811), Pitt's lieutenant, who was impeached for +embezzling money as First Lord of the Admiralty. He was acquitted, but +that was a circumstance that would hardly concern Lamb when in this +mood. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 120. _On a Projected Journey_. + +_The Champion_, July 15 and 16, 1820. Reprinted in _The Poetical +Recreations of "The Champion,"_ 1822. George IV.'s visit to Hanover did +not, however, occur till October, 1821. This is entitled in Ayrton's MS. +book (see below) "Upon the King's embarcation at Ramsgate for Hanover, +1821." + + +Page 120. _Song for the C----n_. + +_The Champion_, July 15 and 16, 1820. Reprinted in _The Poetical +Recreations of "The Champion,"_ 1822. + +A song for the Coronation, which was fixed for 1821. Queen Caroline +returned to England in June, 1820, staying with Alderman Wood (see page +361) in order to be on the spot against that event. Meanwhile the +divorce proceedings began, but were eventually withdrawn. Caroline made +a forcible effort to be present at the Coronation, on July 29, 1821, but +was repulsed at the Abbey door. She was taken ill the next day and died +on August 7. "Roy's Wife of Aldivalloch" is the Scotch song by Anne +Grant. + + +Page 120. _The Unbeloved_. + +_The Champion_, September 23 and 24, 1820. Reprinted in _The Poetical +Recreations of "The Champion,"_ 1822. In _The Champion_ the last line +was preceded by + + Place-and-heiress-hunting elf, + +the reference to heiress-hunting touching upon Canning's marriage to +Miss Joan Scott, a sister of the Duchess of Portland, who brought him +L100,000. + +Line 4. _C----gh_. Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh and second +Marquis of Londonderry (1769-1822), Foreign Secretary from 1812 until +his death. He committed suicide in a state of unsound mind. + +Line 6. _The Doctor_. This was the nickname commonly given to Henry +Addington, Viscount Sidmouth. + +Line 8. _Their chatty, childish Chancellor_. John Scott, afterwards Earl +of Eldon (1751-1838), the Lord Chancellor. + +Line 9. _In Liverpool some virtues strike_. Robert Banks Jenkinson, Earl +of Liverpool (1770-1828), Prime Minister at the time, and therefore +principal scapegoat for the Divorce Bill. + +Line 10. _And little Van's beneath dislike_. Nicholas Vansittart, +afterwards Baron Bexley (1766-1851), Chancellor of the Exchequer. + +Line 12. _H----t_. Thomas Taylour, first Marquis of Headfort +(1757-1829), the principal figure in a crim. con. case in 1804 when he +was sued by a clergyman named Massey and had to pay L10,000 damages. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 121. _On the Arrival in England of Lord Byron's Remains_. + +From a MS. book of William Ayrton's. In _The New Times_, October 24, +1825, the verses followed the "Ode to the Treadmill." The epigram, which +was unsigned, then ran thus:-- + + THE POETICAL CASK + + With change of climate manners alter not: + Transport a drunkard--he'll return a sot. + So lordly Juan, d----d to endless fame, + Went out a _pickle_--and comes back the same. + +Lord Byron's body had been brought home from Greece, for burial at +Hucknall Torkard, in 1824, and the cause of the epigram was a paragraph +in _The New Times_ of October 19, 1825, stating that the tub in which +Byron's remains came home was exhibited by the captain of the _Rodney_ +for 2s. 6d. a head; afterwards sold to a cooper in Whitechapel; resold +to a museum; and finally sold again to a cooper in Middle New Street, +who was at that time using it as an advertisement. + +The third line recalls Pope's line-- + + See Cromwell damn'd to everlasting fame. + +_Essay on Man_, IV., 284. + + +Page 121. _Lines Suggested by a Sight of Waltham Cross._ + +First printed in the _Englishman's Magazine_, September, 1831. Lamb sent +the epigram to Barton in a letter in November, 1827. The body of +Caroline of Brunswick, the rejected wife of George IV., was conveyed +through London only by force--involving a fatal affray between the +people and the Life Guards at Hyde Park corner--on its way to burial at +Brunswick. + + +Page 122. _For the "Table Book."_ + +This epigram accompanies a note to William Hone. It was marked "For the +_Table Book_," but does not seem to have been printed there. + + +Page 122. _The Royal Wonders._ + +_The Times_, August 10, 1830. Signed Charles Lamb. The epigram refers to +the Paris insurrection of July 26, 1830, which cost Charles X. his +throne; and, at home, to William IV.'s extreme fraternal friendliness to +his subjects. + + +Page 122. _Brevis Esse Laboro._ "One Dip." + + + * * * * * + + +Page 123. _Suum Cuique._ + +These epigrams were written for the sons of James Augustus Hessey, the +publisher, two Merchant Taylor boys. In _The Taylorian_ for March, 1884, +the magazine of the Merchant Taylors' School, the late Archdeacon +Hessey, one of the boys in question, told the story of their authorship. +It was a custom many years ago for Election Day at Merchant Taylors' +School to be marked by the recitation of original epigrams in Greek, +Latin and English, which, although the boys themselves were usually the +authors, might also be the work of other hands. Archdeacon Hessey and +his brother, as the following passage explains, resorted to Charles Lamb +for assistance:-- + +The subjects for 1830 were _Suum Cuique_ and _Brevis esse latoro_. +After some three or four exercise nights I confess that I was literally +"at my wits' end." But a brilliant idea struck me. I had frequently, boy +as I was, seen Charles Lamb (Elia) at my father's house, and once, in +1825 or 1826, I had been taken to have tea with him and his sister, Mary +Lamb, at their little house, Colebrook Cottage, a whitish-brown +tenement, standing by itself, close to the New River, at Islington. He +was very kind, as he always was to young people, and very quaint. I told +him that I had devoured his "Roast Pig;" he congratulated me on +possessing a thorough schoolboy's appetite. And he was pleased when I +mentioned my having seen the boys at Christ's Hospital at their public +suppers, which then took place on the Sunday evenings in Lent. "Could +this good-natured and humorous old gentleman be prevailed upon to give +me an Epigram?" "I don't know," said my father, to whom I put the +question, "but I will ask him at any rate, and send him the mottoes." In +a day or two there arrived from Enfield, to which Lamb had removed some +time in 1827, not one, but two epigrams, one on each subject. That on +_Suum Cuique_ was in Latin, and was suggested by the grim satisfaction +which had recently been expressed by the public at the capture and +execution of some notorious highwayman. That on _Brevis esse laboro_ was +in English, and might have represented an adventure which had befallen +Lamb himself, for he stammered frequently, though he was not so grievous +a _Balbulus_ as his friend George Darley, whom I had also often seen. I +need scarcely say that the two Epigrams were highly appreciated, and +that my brother and myself, for I gave my brother one of them, were +objects of envy to our schoolfellows. + +The death of George IV., however, prevented their being recited on the +occasion for which they were written. + +"_Suum Cuique_," which was signed F. Hessey, was thus translated by its +presumptive author:-- + + A thief, on dreary Bagshot's heath well known, + Was fond of making others' goods his own; + _Meum_ was never thought of, nor was _Tuum_, + But everything with him was counted _Suum_. + At length each gets his own, and no one grieves; + The rope his neck, Jack Ketch his clothes receives: + His body to dissecting knife has gone; + Himself to Orcus: well--each gets his own. + +The English epigram, which was signed J.A. Hessey, was a rhyming version +of a story which Lamb was fond of telling. Three, at least, of his +friends relate the story in their recollections of him: Mrs. Mathews in +her life of her husband; Leigh Hunt in _The Companion_; and De Quincey +in _Fraser's Magazine_. The incident possibly occurred to Lamb when as a +boy--or little more--he stayed at Margate about 1790. Lamb must have +written Merchant Taylors' epigrams before, for in 1803, in a letter to +Godwin about writing to order, he speaks of having undertaken, three or +four times, a schoolboy copy of verses for Merchant Taylors' boys at a +guinea a copy, and refers to the trouble and vexation the work was to +him. + +Writing to Southey on May 10, 1830, Lamb said, at the end:--"Perhaps +an epigram (not a very happy-gram) I did for a school-boy yesterday may +amuse. I pray Jove he may not get a flogging for any false quantity; but +'tis, with one exception, the only Latin verses I have made for forty +years, and I did it 'to order.' + + "CUIQUE SUUM + + "Adsciscit sibi divitias et opes alienas + Fur, rapiens, spolians quod mihi, quod-que tibi, + Proprium erat, temnens haec verba, meum-que tuum-que + Omne suum est: tandem Cui-que Suum tribuit. + Dat resti collum; restes, vah! carnifici dat; + Sese Diabolo, sic bene; Cuique Suum." + + +Page 123. _On "The Literary Gazette"_. + +_The Examiner_, August 22, 1830. This epigram, consisting only of the +first four lines, slightly altered, and headed "Rejected Epigrams, +6"-evidently torn from a paper containing a number of verses (the figure +7 is just visible underneath it)--is in the British Museum among the +letters left by Vincent Novello. It is inscribed, "In handwriting of Mr. +Charles Lamb." The same collection contains a copy, in Mrs. Cowden +Clarke's handwriting, of the sonnet to Mrs. Jane Towers (see page 50). +_The Literary Gazette_ was William Jerdan's paper, a poor thing, which +Lamb had reason to dislike for the attack it made upon him when _Album +Verses_ was published (see note on page 331). + +_The Examiner_ began the attack on August 14, 1830. All the epigrams are +signed T.A. This means that if Lamb wrote the above, he wrote all; which +is not, I think, likely. I do not reproduce them, the humour of punning +upon the name of the editor of the _Literary Gazette_ being a little +outmoded. + +T.A. may, of course, have been Lamb's pseudonymous signature. If so, he +may have chosen it as a joke upon his friend Thomas Allsop. But since +one of the epigrams is addressed to himself I doubt if Lamb was the +author. + + +Page 123. _On the Fast-Day_. + +John Payne Collier, in his privately printed reminiscences, _An Old +Man's Diary_, quotes this epigram as being by Charles Lamb. It may have +been written for the Fast-Day on October 19, 1803, for that on May 25, +1804, or for a later one. Lamb tells Hazlitt in February, 1806, that he +meditates a stroll on the Fast-Day. + + +Page 123. _Nonsense Verses_. + +Mr. W. Carew Hazlitt, in _Mary and Charles Lamb_, 1874, says: "I found +these lines--a parody on the popular, or nursery, ditty, 'Lady-bird, +lady-bird, fly away home'--officiating as a wrapper to some of Mr. +Hazlitt's hair. There is no signature; but the handwriting is +unmistakably Lamb's; nor are the lines themselves the worst of his +playful effusions." The piece suggests that Lamb, in a wild mood, was +turning his own "Angel Help" (see page 51) into ridicule--possibly to +satisfy some one who dared him to do it, or vowed that such a feat could +not be accomplished. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 124. _On Wawd._ + +Wawd was a fellow-clerk. We have this _jeu d'esprit_ through Mr. Joseph +H. Twichell, an American who had it from a fellow-clerk of Lamb's named +Ogilvie. (See _Scribner's Magazine_, March, 1876.) + + +Page 124. _Six Epitaphs._ + +Writing to Southey on March 20, 1799, Lamb says:--"I the other day +threw off an extempore epitaph on Ensign Peacock of the 3rd Regt. of the +Royal East India Volunteers, who like other boys in this scarlet tainted +age was ambitious of playing at soldiers, but dying in the first flash +of his valour was at the particular instance of his relations buried +with military honours! like any veteran scarr'd or chopt from Blenheim +or Ramilies. (He was buried in sash and gorget.) Sed hae sunt +lamentabilis nugae--But'tis as good as some epitaphs you and I have read +together in Christ-Church-yard." + +The last five Epigrams were sent to the _New York Tribune_, Feb. 22, +1879, by the late J.H. Siddons. They were found on scraps of paper in +Lamb's desk in the India House. Wagstaff and Sturms were fellow-clerks. +Dr. Drake was the medical officer of the establishment. Captain Dey was +a putative son of George IV. The lines upon him were given to Siddons by +Kenney's son. + + +Page 126. _Time and Eternity_ and _From the Latin_. + +In _The Mirror_ for June 1, 1833, are the two poems, collected under the +general heading "The Gatherer," indexed "Lamb, C., lines by." Mr. Thomas +Hutchinson first printed the second poem; but I do not feel too happy +about it. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 127. SATAN IN SEARCH OF A WIFE, 1831. + +This ballad was published by Moxon, anonymously, in 1831, although the +authorship was no secret In its volume form it was illustrated by George +Cruikshank. Lamb probably did not value his ballad very highly. Writing +to Moxon in 1833 he says, "I wish you would omit 'by the Author of Elia' +now, in advertising that damn'd 'Devil's Wedding.'" + +There is a reference to the poem, in Lamb's letter to Moxon of +October 24, 1831, which needs explanation. Moxon's _Englishman's +Magazine_, after running under his control for three months, +was suddenly abandoned. Lamb, who seems to have been paid in +advance for his work, wrote to Moxon on the subject, approving him +for getting the weight off his mind and adding:--"I have one on +mine. The cash in hand which as ***** less truly says, +burns in my pocket. I feel queer at returning it (who does not?). +You feel awkward at re-taking it (who ought not?) is there no +middle way of adjusting this fine embarrassment. I think I +have hit upon a medium to skin the sore place over, if not quite +to heal it. You hinted that there might be something under L10 +by and by accruing to me _Devil's Money_. You are sanguine--say +L7 10s.--that I entirely renounce and abjure all future interest +in, I insist upon it, and 'by Him I will not name' I won't touch a +penny of it. That will split your loss one half--and leave me +conscientious possessor of what I hold. Less than your assent to +this, no proposal will I accept of." + +A few months later, writing again to Moxon, he says:--"I am heartily +sorry my Devil does not answer. We must try it a little longer; and, +after all, I think I must insist on taking a portion of its loss upon +myself. It is too much that you should lose by two adventures." + +According to some reminiscences of Lamb by Mr. J. Fuller Russell, +printed in _Notes and Queries_, April 1, 1882, Lamb suppressed "Satan in +Search of a Wife," for the reason that the Vicar of Enfield, Dr. +Cresswell, also had married a tailor's daughter, and might be hurt by +the ballad. The correspondence quoted above does not, I think, bear out +Mr. Russell's statement. If the book were still being advertised in +1833, we can hardly believe that any consideration for the Vicar of +Enfield would cause its suppression. This gentleman had been at Enfield +for several years, and Lamb would have either suppressed the book +immediately or not at all; but possibly his wish to disassociate the +name of Elia from the work was inspired by the coincidence. + +The ballad does not call for much annotation. The legend +mentioned in the dedication tells how Cecilia, by her music, drew +an angel from heaven, who brought her roses of Paradise. The +ballad of King Cophetua and the beggar maid may be read in the +_Percy Reliques_. Hecate is a triple deity, known as Luna in heaven, +Diana on earth, and Proserpine in hell. In the reference to Milton +I think Lamb must have been thinking of the lines, _Paradise Lost_, +I., 27-28:-- + + Say first, for Heav'n hides nothing from thy view, + Nor the deep tract of Hell.... + +or, _Paradise Lost_, V., 542:-- + + And so from Heav'n to deepest Hell. + +Alecto (Part I., Stanza II.) was one of the Furies.--Old Parr (Stanza +IV.) lived to be 152; he died in 1635.--Semiramis (Stanza XVII.) was +Queen of Assyria, under whom Babylon became the most wonderful city in +the world; Helen was Helen of Troy, the cause of the war between the +Greeks and Trojans; Medea was the cruel lover of Jason, who recovered +the Golden Fleece.--Clytemnestra (Stanza XVIII.) was the wife and +murderer of Agamemnon; Joan of Naples was Giovanna, the wife of Andrea +of Hungary, who was accused of assassinating him. Landor wrote a play, +"Giovanna of Naples," to "restore her fame" and "requite her wrongs;" +Cleopatra was the Queen of Egypt, and lover of Mark Antony; Jocasta +married her son Oedipus unknowing who he was.--A tailor's "goose" +(Stanza XXII.) is his smoothing-iron, and his "hell" (Stanza XXIII.) the +place where he throws his shreds and debris.--Lamb's own "Vision of +Horns" (see Vol. I.) serves as a commentary on Stanza XXVII.; and in his +essay "On the Melancholy of Tailors" (Vol. I.) are further remarks on +the connection between tailors and cabbage in Stanza I. of Part II.--The +two Miss Crockfords of Stanza XVIII. would be the daughters of William +Crockford, of Crockford's Club, who, after succeeding to his father's +business of fishmonger, opened the gaming-house which bore his name and +amassed a fortune of upwards of a million.--Semele (Stanza XXI.), whose +lightest wish Jupiter had sworn to grant, was treacherously induced to +express the desire that Jupiter would visit her with the divine pomp in +which he approached his lawful wife Juno. He did so, and she was +consumed by his lightning and thunderbolts.--The bard of Stanza XXV. is, +of course, Virgil. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 138. Prologues and Epilogues. + +Writing to Sarah Stoddart concerning Godwin's "Faulkener" Mary Lamb +remarked: "Prologues and Epilogues will be his [Charles's] death." + + +Page 138. _Epilogue to "Antonio."_ + +Had Lamb not sent this epilogue to Manning in the letter of December 13, +1800, we should have no copy of it; for Godwin, by Lamb's advice, did +not print it with the play. Writing to Godwin two days before, Lamb +remarked:-"I have been plotting how to abridge the Epilogue. But I +cannot see that any lines can be spared, retaining the connection, +except these two, which are better out: + + "Why should I instance, &c., + The sick man's purpose, &c., + +and then the following line must run thus, + + "The truth by an example best is shown." + +See lines 16, 17 and 18. + +Godwin's "Antonio," produced at Drury Lane on December 13, 1800, was a +failure. Many years afterwards Lamb told the story of the unlucky first +night (see "The Old Actors" in Appendix to Vol. II. of this edition). +Godwin, its author, was, of course, William Godwin, the philosopher +(1756-1836). Later Lamb wrote the prologue to another of his plays (see +page 140 and note). + +Lines 35 and 36. _Suett ... Bannister_. Richard Suett (1755-1805) and +Jack Bannister (1760-1836), two famous comedians of that day. Line 62. +"_Pizarro_." Sheridan's patriotic melodrama, produced May 24, 1799, at +Drury Lane. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 140. _Prologue to "Faulkener."_ + +William Godwin's tragedy "Faulkener" was produced at Drury Lane, +December 16, 1807, with some success. Lamb's letters to Godwin of +September 9 and 17, 1801, suggest that he had a share in the framing of +the plot. Later the play was taken in hand by Thomas Holcroft and made +more dramatic. + +According to Godwin's preface, 1807, the story was taken from the 1745 +edition of Defoe's _Roxana_, which contains the episode of Susannah +imagining herself to be Roxana's daughter and throwing herself in her +mother's way. Godwin transformed the daughter into a son. Lamb, however, +seems to have believed this episode to be in the first edition, 1724, +and afterwards to have been removed at the entreaty of Southerne, +Defoe's friend (see Lamb's letters to Walter Wilson, Defoe's biographer, +of December 16, 1822, and February 24, 1823). But it is in reality the +first edition which lacks the episode, and Mr. G.A. Aitken, Defoe's +latest editor, doubts Southerne's interference altogether and considers +Susannah's curiosity an alien interpolation. For Lamb's other remarks on +Defoe see also the "Ode to the Tread Mill," page 72 of this volume, and +"Estimate of Defoe's Secondary Novels" (Vol. I.). Writing to Walter +Wilson on November 15, 1829, on the receipt of his memoirs of Defoe, +Lamb exclaims: "De Foe was always my darling." + + +Page 140. _Epilogue to "Time's a Tell-Tale."_ + +A play by Henry Siddons (1774-1815), Mrs. Siddons' eldest son. It was +produced in 1807 at Drury Lane, with Lamb's prologue, which was, +however, received so badly that on the second night another was +substituted for it. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 142. _Prologue to "Remorse."_ + +Coleridge's tragedy "Remorse," a recasting of his "Osorio" (written at +Sheridan's instigation in 1797), was produced with success on January +23, 1813; and was printed, with the prologue, in the same year. Lamb's +prologue, "spoken by Mr. Carr," was (according to Mr. Dykes Campbell) a +recasting of some verses composed for the prize offered by the Drury +Lane Committee in the previous year, 1812, in response to their +advertisement for a suitable poem to be read at the reopening of the new +building after the fire of 1809. It was, of course, this competition +which brought forth the _Rejected Addresses_ (1812) of the brothers +James and Horace Smith. + +The prologue as printed is very different from that which was spoken at +the theatre by Mr. Carr. A writer in the _Theatrical Inquisitor_ for +February, 1813, in his contemptuous criticism, refers to several +passages that are no longer extant. I quote from an account of the +matter by the late Mr. Dykes Campbell in the _Illustrated London News_, +October 22, 1892:-- + +I am afraid the true text of Lamb's "Rejected Address," even as +modified for use as a prologue, has not come down to us. This is how the +severe and suspicious _Inquisitor_ describes it and its twin brother the +epilogue-- + +The Prologue and Epilogue were among the most stupid productions of the +modern muse; the former was, in all probability, a Rejected Address, for +it contained many eulogiums on the beauty and magnificence of the "dome" +of Drury; talked of the waves being not quite dry, and expressed the +happiness of the bard at being the first whose muse had soared within +its limits. More stupid than the doggerel of Twiss, and more affected +than the pretty verses of Miles Peter Andrews, the Epilogue proclaimed +its author and the writer of the Prologue to be par nobile fratrum, in +rival dulness both pre-eminent. + +The reader of Lamb's prologue will find little of all this in it, but +there is no reason for doubting the critic's account of what he heard at +the theatre. It is not at all unlikely that it was this paragraph which +suggested to Lamb the advisability of still further revising the +"Rejected Address." In the prologue there is a good deal about the size +of the theatre, as compared with "the Lyceum's petty sphere," and of how +pleased Shakspere would have been had he been able to hear-- + + When that dread curse of Lear's + Had burst tremendous on a thousand ears: + +rather an anti-climax, by the way, for it means an audience of but five +hundred, which would have been a beggarly account for the new Drury. +There is nothing either about its "dome," or about the scenery, except +commonplaces so flat that one doubts if it be quite fair to quote them-- + + The very use, since so essential grown, + Of painted scenes, was to his [Shakspere's] stage unknown. + +This is not an improvement on the "waves not yet quite dry," a Lamb-like +touch which could not have been invented by the critic, and may go far +to convince us of his veracity. + +Above all, there is no trace of that splendidly audacious suggestion +that Coleridge was the first "whose muse had soared" within the new +dome--unless we find a blind one in the closing lines, supposing them to +have been converted by the simple process of inversion. Instead of +Coleridge being the first whose muse had soared in the new Drury, Drury +was the first place in which his dramatic muse had soared. + +Lamb was not among the writers parodied by the "sneering brothers" (as +he called them later), but Coleridge was. Lamb's turn came in 1825, when +P.G. Patmore, afterwards his friend and the father of Coventry Patmore, +wrote _Rejected Articles_, in which was a very poor imitation of Elia. + +Line 9. _Betterton or Booth._ Thomas Betterton, born probably in 1635, +acted for the last time in 1710, the year in which he died. Barton Booth +(1681-1733) left the stage in 1728. Betterton was much at the Little +Theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields; also at Sir John Vanbrugh's theatre in +the Haymarket. + +Line 11. _Quin_. James Quin (1693-1766) of Drury Lane and Covent +Garden, Garrick's great rival, famous as Falstaff. His last appearance +was in 1753. + +Line 12. _Garrick._ Garrick's Drury Lane, in which Lamb saw his first +play, was that built by Sir Christopher Wren in 1674. It lasted, with +certain alterations, including a new face by the brothers Adam, nearly +120 years. The seating capacity of this theatre was modest. In 1794 a +new Drury Lane Theatre, the third, was opened--too large for comfortable +seeing or hearing. This was burned down in 1809; and the new one, the +fourth, and that in which "Remorse" was produced, was opened in 1812. +This is the building (with certain additions) that still stands. + +Lines 13-16. _Garrick in the shades._ Many years later Lamb used the +same idea in connection with Elliston (see "To the Shade of Elliston," +Vol. II.). + +Line 20. _Ben and Fletcher._ Ben Jonson (1573?-1637) and John Fletcher +(1579-1625), Beaumont's collaborator. Ben Jonson's "Every Man in His +Humour" was produced at the Globe in 1598, Shakspeare being in the +caste; but in the main he wrote for Henslowe, who was connected with the +Rose and the Swan, on Bankside, and with the theatre in Newington Butts, +and who built, with Alleyn, in 1600, the Fortune in Golden Lane, +Cripplegate Without. Beaumont and Fletcher's plays went for the most +part to Burbage, who owned the Globe at Southwark and the Blackfriars' +Theatre. Shakspeare also wrote for Burbage. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 143. _Epilogue to "Debtor and Creditor."_ + +"Debtor and Creditor" was a farce by James Kenney (1780-1849), Lamb's +friend, with whom he stayed at Versailles in 1822. The play was produced +April 20, 1814. Gosling's experiences as a dramatic author seem to have +been curiously like Lamb's own. See note to "Mr. H." on page 392. + +Line 12. _They never bring the Spanish._ Spanish, old slang for money. + +Line 40. _Polito's._ Polito at one time kept the menagerie in Exeter +Change. + +Line 42. _Larry Whack._ Larry Whack is referred to in the play. Says +Sampson, on one occasion: "Who be I? Come, that be capital! Why, ben't I +Sampson Miller? Didn't I bang the Darby Corps at York Races ... and +durst Sir Harry Slang bring me up to town to fight Larry Whack, the +Irish ruffian?..." + + + * * * * * + + +Page 145. _Epilogue to an Amateur Performance of "Richard II."_ + +This epilogue, says Canon Ainger, who first printed it, was written for +a performance given by the family of Barren Field in 1824. The family of +Henry Field, Barron's father, would perhaps be more accurate; for Barron +Field was childless. The verses, which I print by permission of Miss +Kendall, Miss Field's residuary legatee, were given to Canon Ainger by +the late Miss M.L. Field, of Hastings. In his interesting note he adds +of this lady (to whom Lamb addressed the verses on page 106), "she told +me that she (then a girl of 19) sat by the side of Lamb during the +performance. She remembered well, she said, that in course of the play a +looking glass was broken, and that Lamb turned to her and whispered +'Sixpence!' She added that before the play began, while the guests were +assembling, the butler announced 'Mr. Negus!'--upon which Lamb +exclaimed, 'Hand him round!'" + +Lamb refers in the opening lines to Edmund Kean and John Philip Kemble. + +In this connection it may be interesting to state that Lamb told Patmore +that he considered John of Gaunt, time-honoured Lancaster, the grandest +name in the world. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 146. _Prologue to "The Wife."_ + +The original form of the prologue to James Sheridan Knowles' comedy, not +hitherto collected in any edition of Lamb's writings, is preserved in +the Forster collection in the South Kensington Museum. It was sent to +Moxon, for Knowles, in April, 1833, and differs considerably. See the +large edition of this work. It is curious that the prologue was not +attributed to Lamb when the play was printed. Knowles wrote in the +preface: "To my early, my trusty and honoured friend, Charles Lamb, I +owe my thanks for a delightful Epilogue, composed almost as soon as it +was requested. To an equally dear friend, I am equally indebted for my +Prologue." + + + * * * * * + + +Page 147. _Epilogue to "The Wife."_ + +This epilogue was spoken by Miss Ellen Tree. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 149. JOHN WOODVIL. + +First published in 1802 in a slender volume entitled _John Woodvil: a +Tragedy. By C. Lamb. To which are added Fragments of Burton, the author +of the Anatomy of Melancholy._ The full contents of the book were:-- + +John Woodvil; Ballad, From the German (see page 29); Helen (see page +28); Curious Fragments, I., II., III., IV.; The Argument; The +Consequence (see Vol. I., page 29, and note; also pages 30 and 35 of the +present volume and notes). + +_John Woodvil_ was reprinted by Lamb in the _Works_, 1818, the text of +which is followed here. + +If Mr. Fuller Russell was right in his statement in _Notes and Queries_, +April 1, 1882, that Lamb told him he "had lost L25 by his best effort, +_John Woodvil_," we must suppose that the book was published wholly or +partially at his own cost. + +The history of the poem which follows is, with an omission and addition +here and there, that compiled by the late Mr. Dykes Campbell and +contributed by him to _The Athenaeum_, October 31 and November 14, 1891. +Mr. Campbell had the opportunity of collating the edition of 1802 with a +manuscript copy made by Lamb and his sister for Manning. With that +patient thoroughness and discrimination which made his work as an +editor so valuable, Mr. Campbell minutely examined this copy and put the +results on record; and they are now for the first time, by permission of +Mrs. Dykes Campbell and the Editor of _The Athenaum_, incorporated in an +edition of Lamb's writings. The copy itself, I may add, when it came +into the market, was secured by an American collector. Mr. Campbell's +words follow, my own interpolations being within square brackets. + +Lamb's first allusion to the future _John Woodvil_ occurs in a letter to +Southey (October 29, 1798), at a time when the two young men were +exchanging a good many copies of verses for mutual criticism. "Not +having anything of my own," writes Lamb, "to send you in return (though, +to tell the truth, I am at work upon something which if I were to cut +away and garble, perhaps I might send you an extract or two that might +not displease you: but I will not do that; and whether it will come to +anything I know not, for I am as slow as a Fleming painter, when I +compose anything) I will crave leave to put down a few lines of old +Christopher Marlowe's." Lamb must soon have got rid of his objections to +cutting away and garbling, for before a month had elapsed he had sent +Southey two extracts, first the "Dying Lover" [see "Dramatic Fragment," +page 85], and next (November 28) "The Witch" [see page 199], both of +which passages were excluded from the printed play. [The letter, which +is wrongly dated April 20, 1799, in some editions, concludes (of "The +Witch"): "This is the extract I bragged of as superior to that I sent +you from Marlowe: perhaps you will smile."] + +Charles Lloyd shared with Southey the pains and pleasures of criticising +Lamb's verses, for Lamb asks the latter if he agrees with Lloyd in +disliking something in "The Witch." + +[Thus: "Lloyd objects to 'shutting up the womb of his purse' in my curse +(which, for a Christian witch in a Christian country, is not too mild, I +hope). Do you object? I think there is a strangeness in the idea, as +well as 'shaking the poor little snakes from his door,' which suits the +speaker. Witches illustrate, as fine ladies do, from their own familiar +objects, and snakes and the shutting up of wombs are in their way. I +don't know that this last charge has been before brought against 'em nor +either the sour milk or the mandrake babe; but I affirm these be things +a witch would do if she could."] + +Lamb proposes also to adopt an emendation of Southey's in the "Dying +Lover"--"though I do not feel the objection against 'Silent Prayer,'" +and in the event he did very sensibly stick to his own opinion, for in +the _London Magazine_ the line runs, as first written:-- + + He put a silent prayer up for the bride. + +One wonders what harm Southey can have seen in it. At this time Southey +was collecting verses for the first volume of his _Annual Anthology_ +(provisionally called the _Kalendar_), and inviting contributions from +Lamb. In writing before November 28, 1798, "This ['The Witch'] and the +'Dying Lover' I gave you are the only extracts I can give without +mutilation," Lamb may have meant that Southey was at liberty to print +them in the _Anthology_. A year later, October 31, 1799, when the second +volume was in preparation, Lamb wrote:--"I shall have nothing to +communicate, I fear, to the _Anthology_. You shall have some fragments +of my play if you desire them; but I think I would rather print it +whole." + +As a matter of fact, Lamb contributed nothing to the collection except +the lines "Living without God in the World," printed in the first volume +[see page 19. To _Recreations in Agriculture, Natural History,_ etc., +1801, edited by Dr. James Anderson, a friend of George Dyer, Lamb, +however, sent "Description of a Forest Life," "The General Lover" (What +is it you love?) and the "Dying Lover," called "Fragment in Dialogue." +There are slight differences in the text, the chief alteration being in +line 3 of the "Description of a Forest Life":-- + + Bursting the lubbar bonds of sleep that bound him.] + +Reverting to the letter of November 28, one learns Lamb's intentions as +to the play:--"My Tragedy will be a medley (as I intend it to be a +medley) of laughter and tears, prose and verse, and in some places +rhyme, songs, wit, pathos, humour, and, if possible, sublimity; at least +it is not a fault in my intention if it does not comprehend most of +these discordant atoms. Heaven send they dance not the 'Dance of +Death'!" + +The composition went on slowly and in a very casual way, for on January +21, 1799, he writes again to Southey:--"I have only one slight passage +to send you, scarce worth the sending, which I want to edge in somewhere +into my play, which, by the way, hath not received the addition often +lines, besides, since I saw you." The "slight passage" is one which, it +will be seen, was "edged in" near the end of the second act, but taken +out again--that beginning:-- + + I saw him [John Woodvil] in the day of Worcester fight, + Whither he came at twice seven years, + Under the discipline of the Lord Falkland + (His uncle by the mother's side), etc. + +Lamb naively asks Southey, "But did Falkland die before the Worcester +fight? In that case I must make bold to unclify some other nobleman." I +suppose Southey must have answered that Falkland had been killed at +Newbury eight years before Worcester fight, for when the passage had +been edged into the play, _Naseby_ and _Ashley_ were substituted for +"Worcester" and "Falkland" respectively. This was as bad a shot as the +first, for Sir Anthony Cooper, whether at Naseby or no, did not become +Lord Ashley until sixteen years after that fight[31]. Had the passage +escaped the pruning knife, Lamb's historical research would no doubt +have provided a proper battle and a proper uncle for his hero. Again +Lloyd appears as a critic, and this time he is obeyed, probably because +his objection to "portrayed in his face" was backed by Southey. "I like +the line," says Lamb, but he altered it to + + Of Valour's beauty in his youthful face + +in the Manning MS. Four months later, on May 20, Lamb sends Southey the +charming passage about forest-life on page 173, and defends his blank +verse against Southey's censure of the pauses at the end of the lines; +he does it on the model of Shakespeare, he says, in his "endeavour after +a colloquial ease and spirit." Talfourd printed the passage in full, but +some later editors have cut down the twenty-four lines to the six +opening ones, to the loss of a point in the letter. Lamb says he "loves +to anticipate charges of unoriginality," adding--"the first line is +almost Shakespeare's:-- + + "To have my love to bed and to arise. + "'Midsummer-Night's Dream.' + +I think there is a sweetness in the versification not unlike some rhymes +in that exquisite play, and the last line but three is yours." This line +describes how the deer, as they came tripping by, + + Then stop and gaze, then turn, they know not why. + +Lamb thus gives the line and his reference:-- + + ----An eye + That met the gaze, or turn'd it knew not why. + "Rosamund's Epistle." + +But, of course, he misquotes both line and title--though Southey would +feel flattered in finding that his friend's memory had done so well. As +the editors have not annotated the passage, I will say here that Lamb +should have quoted + + The modest eye + That met the glance, or turn'd, it knew not why. + "Rosamund to Henry." + +The poem is one of those in the now scarce volume which Southey and +Lovel published jointly at Bath in 1795, _Poems: containing "The +Retrospect."_ [It was this forest passage which, as Hazlitt tells us in +his _Spirit of the Age_, so puzzled Godwin. After looking in vain +through the old dramatists for it, he applied to Lamb himself.] + + +[Footnote 31: Sir Jacob Astley(?), but he too was ennobled _after_ +Naseby.] + + +By the end of October the play had evidently been completed (though not +yet named), for on the 31st Southey was asked, "Have you seen it, or +shall I lend you a copy? I want your opinion of it." None is recorded +here, but more than two years later, when Southey was in London, he gave +it to Danvers (_Letters of R.S._, II., 184): "Lamb and his sister see us +often: he is printing his play, which will please you by the exquisite +beauty of its poetry, and provoke you by the exquisite silliness of its +story." + +The play must have been baptised as "Pride's Cure" soon after +Hallowe'en, for at Christmas it was submitted under that title to +Kemble, and about the same time (December 28, 1799) we find Lamb +defending the title (with the vehemence and subtlety of a doubter, as I +read) against the adverse criticism of Manning and Mrs. Charles Lloyd. +Lamb had lately been on a visit to these friends at Cambridge, and had +doubtless taken a copy of his play with him and received their +objections there and then--for his defence does not seem to have been +provoked by a letter. [In a letter to Charles Lloyd that has come to +light since Mr. Dykes Campbell wrote, belonging to middle December, +1799, Lamb asks for his play to be returned to him, suggesting that Mrs. +Lloyd shall despatch it. It was probably in the letter that accompanied +the parcel that the criticism of the title was found. Lamb thus defended +it:--"By-the-bye, I think you and Sophia both incorrect with regard to +the _title_ of the _play_. Allowing your objection (which is not +necessary, as pride may be, and is in real life often, cured by +misfortunes not directly originating from its own acts, as Jeremy Taylor +will tell you a naughty desire is sometimes sent to cure it; I know you +read these _practical divines_)--but allowing your objection, does not +the betraying of his father's secret directly spring from pride?--from +the pride of wine, and a full heart, and a proud over-stepping of the +ordinary rules of morality, and contempt of the prejudices of mankind, +which are not to bind superior souls--'as _trust_ in _the matter of +secrets_ all _ties_ of _blood_, etc., etc., keeping of _promises_, the +feeble mind's religion, binding our _morning knowledge_ to the +performance of what _last night's ignorance spake_'--does he not prate, +that '_Great Spirits_' must do more than die for their friend? Does not +the pride of wine incite him to display some evidence of friendship, +which its own irregularity shall make great? This I know, that I meant +his punishment not alone to be a cure for his daily and habitual +_pride_, but the direct consequence and appropriate punishment of a +particular act of pride. + +"If you do not understand it so, it is my fault in not explaining my +meaning."] + +Manning seems to have begged for a copy--or reconsideration, +perhaps--for Lamb, on February 13, 1800, promised him a copy "of my play +and the _Falstaff Letters_ in a day or two." There is no trace of the +former having been sent, but the latter certainly was, for on March 1 he +presses Manning for his opinion of it--hopes he is "prepared to call it +a bundle of the sharpest, queerest, profoundest humours," etc., as he +was accustomed to hope when that book was in question. The next mention +of the play occurs in an undated letter to Coleridge [accompanying a MS. +copy of the play for the Wordsworths], dated by Talfourd and other +editors "end of 1800," which must have been written in March or April, +1800 [since Coleridge was then staying with Wordsworth, engaged in +completing the translation of _Wallenstein,_ the last of the MS. being +sent to the printer in April]. Talfourd's mistake in dating it perhaps +led him to suppose that the copy sent through Coleridge to Wordsworth +was a printed copy, and that Lamb had printed _John Woodvil_ a year +before he published it. If any other proof were needed that Talfourd +guessed wrongly, it is supplied by this sentence in the letter to +Manning of February 15, 1801:--"I lately received from Wordsworth a copy +of the second volume [of the _Lyrical Ballads_] accompanied by an +acknowledgment of having received from me _many months since_ a copy of +a certain Tragedy, with excuses for not having made any acknowledgment +sooner." + +Lamb's reply to Wordsworth (January 30, 1801) is so very dry--"Thank you +for Liking my Play!!"--that we may suppose that Wordsworth's expression +of "liking" was not very enthusiastic. + +Things become clearer when we reach November 3, 1800, on which day Lamb +thus addressed Manning (I quote verbatim from the original letter):--"At +last I have written to Kemble to know the event of my play, which was +presented last Christmas. As I suspected, came an answer back that the +copy was lost ... with a courteous (reasonable!) request of another copy +(if I had one by me), and a promise of a definite answer in a week. I +could not resist so facile and moderate demand: so scribbled out +another, omitting sundry things, such as the witch story, about half the +forest scene (which is too leisurely for _story_), and transposing that +damn'd soliloquy about England getting drunk, which like its reciter +stupidly stood alone nothing prevenient, or antevenient, and cleared +away a good deal besides ... I sent it last night, and am in weekly +expectation of the Tolling Bell and death warrant." + +It will be observed that that second copy sent to Kemble must have +differed essentially from the one sent to Manning, for the latter +includes the witch story, and retains in its original place the +soliloquy about England getting drunk. + +To this copy sent to Manning we now come in chronological order, but the +exact date of its despatch must remain uncertain. Clearly it was +subsequent, but probably not long subsequent, to Kemble's rejection of +the play, which took place soon after All Souls' Day, for Kemble must +have made up his mind within half an hour of taking up the manuscript. I +venture to assume that the argosy which bore all the treasures recounted +in the following bill of lading sailed about Christmas, 1800. It is sad +to think that the bill of lading itself and the MS. of "Pride's Cure" +are the only salvage. + +"I send you all of Coleridge's letters to me which I have preserved; +some of them are upon the subject of my play. I also send you Kemble's +two letters, and the prompter's courteous epistle, with a curious +critique on 'Pride's Cure' by a young Physician from EDINBORO', who +modestly suggests quite another kind of plot. These are monuments of my +disappointments which I like to preserve ...You will carefully keep all +(except the Scotch Doctor's, _which burn_) _in statu quo_ till I come to +claim mine own." + +On the reverse of the half-sheet is written: "For Mister Manning | +Teacher of the Mathematics | and the Black Arts, | There is another +letter in the inside cover of the book opposite the blank leaf that +_was_." + +[This is the other letter, written inside the board cover of the copy of +the play, in Charles Lamb's hand:-- + +"Mind this goes for a letter. (Acknowledge it directly, if only in ten +words.) + +"DEAR MANNING: + +"(I shall want to hear this comes safe.) + +"I have scratched out a good deal, as you will see. Generally, what I +have rejected was either _false_ in _feeling_, or a violation of +character, mostly of the first sort. I will here just instance in the +concluding few lines of the dying Lover's story, which completely +contradicted his character of _violent_ and _unreproachful_. I hesitated +a good while what copy to send you, and at last resolved to send the +_worst_, because you are familiar with it and can make it out; a +stranger would find so much difficulty in doing it, that it would give +him more pain than pleasure. This is compounded precisely of the two +persons' hands you requested it should be. + +"Yours sincerely, + +"C. LAMB." + +The two persons were undoubtedly Charles Lamb and his sister.] + +Before proceeding to the MS. itself, it will be desirable to refer to +Lamb's letter to Manning of February 15, 1802, in which he defends +himself against Manning's animadversions on the changes found in the +printed _John Woodvil_. This letter is addressed to "Mr. Thomas Manning, +Maison Magnan, No. 342 Boulevard Italien, Paris." ....The italics are in +the original:--"_Apropos_, I think you wrong about _my_ play. All the +omissions are _right_. And the supplementary scene, in which Sandford +_narrates_ the manner in which his master is affected, is the best in +the book. It stands where a hodge-podge of German puerilities used to +stand. I insist upon it that you like that scene." ... + +There is one thing more to add. Its excuse is the best in the world--it +is quite new. In that precious letter of February 15, 1801, is a passage +[printed in Canon Ainger's _edition de luxe_] which shows that Lamb +(probably) tried George Colman the younger with "Pride's Cure." The +potentate of the Haymarket was probably less sublimely courteous in his +rejection than Kemble. + +"Now to my own affairs. I have not taken that thing to Colman, but I +have proceeded one step in the business. I have inquired his address and +am promised it in a few days." + +[The Manning copy of _John Woodvil_ is thus described by Mr. Dykes +Campbell]:--It is composed of foolscap sheets stitched into a limp +wrapper of marbled paper. The writing is chiefly Mary Lamb's; her +brother's portion seems to have been done at various times, for the ink +varies in shade, and the handwriting in style. + +On the inside of the first cover, as before noted, is written the letter +quoted above. Then comes a page with:-- + + Begun August, 1798, finished May, 1799. + This comes in beginng 2d act. + (Letter) + of Marg. to John + +[this being Margaret's "Letter" (page 160 of the present volume).] + +On the reverse, Mary has written out the "Characters in 'Pride's Cure,' +a Tragedy." In this list Lovel and Gray are described as "two Court +spies." + +On the next page the play opens, but on the top margin is written:-- + + "Turn a leaf back for _my_ Letter to Manning. + + "C. LAMB." + +The point of the underlining of "my" is to distinguish Lamb's letter +from Margaret's, which chance to face one another in the MS. + +Then comes:-- + + Pride's Cure. + A Tragedy. + Act the First. Scene the First. + A Servants' apartment in Wodvil [_sic_] Hall. + Servants drinking. + A Song by Daniel. + "When the King enjoys his own again." + _Peter_. A delicate song upon my verity. + Where didst learn it, fellow? + +And so on for some leaves without material difference from print. + +After the speech [page 155] "_All_. Truly a sad consideration" comes +this continuation of the dialogue:-- + +_Daniel_. You know what he said to you one day in confidence. + +_Peter_. I have reason to remember the words--"'Tis a pity (said he) a +traitor should go unpunished." + +_Francis_. Did he say so much? _Peter_. As true as I sit here. I told +Daniel of it the same day. Did I not, Daniel? + +_Daniel_. Well, I do not know but it may be merrier times with us +servants if Sir Walter never comes back. + +_Francis_. But then again, who of us can think of betraying him? + +_Peter_. His son, John Woodvil, is the prince of good masters. + +_Daniel_. Here is his health, and the King's. (_They all drink_.) Well, +I cannot see why one of us should not deserve the reward as well as +another man. + +_Martin_. Indeed there is something in that. + +_Sandford enters suddenly_. + +_Sandford_. You well-fed and unprofitable grooms. + +And so on as printed, until we come to Margaret's reply to Sandford's +speech ending [page 156]:-- + +Since my ["our"] old master quitted all his rights here. + +_Margaret_. Alas! I am sure I find it so. + Ah! Mr. Sandford, + This is no dwelling now for me, + As in Sir Walter's days it was. + I can remember when this house hath been + A sanctuary to a poor orphan girl + From evil tongues and injuries of the world. + Now every day + I must endure fresh insult from the scorn + Of Woodvil's friends, the uncivil jests + And free discourses of the dissolute men + That haunt this mansion, making me their mirth. + +Further on in the same dialogue comes the following, after the line in +Margaret's speech [page 158, line 18], + + His love, which ["that"] long has been upon the wane. + + And therefore 'tis men seeing this + Have ta'en their cue and think it now their time + To slur me with their coward disrespects, + Unworthy usages, who, while John lov'd + And while one breath'd + That thought not much to take the orphan's part, + And durst as soon + Hold dalliance with the chafed lion's paw, + Or play with fire, or utter blasphemy, + As think a disrespectful thought of Margaret. + +_Sandford_. I am too mean a man, + Being but a servant in the family, + To be the avenger of a Lady's wrongs, + And such a Lady! but I verily think + That I should cleave the rudesby to the earth + With my good oaken staff, and think no harm, + That offer'd you an insult, I being by. + I warrant you, young Master would forgive, + And thank me for the deed, + Tho' he I struck were one of his dearest friends. + +_Margaret_. O Mr. Sandford, you must think it, + I know, as sad undecency in me + To trouble thus your friendly hearing + With my complaints. + But I have now no female friend + In all this house, adviser none, or friend + To council with, and when I view your face, + I call to mind old times, + And how these things were different once + When your old friend and master rul'd this house. + Nay, never weep; why, man, I trust that yet + Sir Walter shall return one day + And thank you for these tears, + And loving services to his poor orphan. + For me, I am determined what to do. + +And so on as printed down to Margaret's line [page 158, line 3 from +foot]:-- + + And cowardice grows enamour'd of rare accidents. + +The three lines which follow in print [pages 158-9] are not in the MS. +Margaret continues thus:-- + + But we must part now. + I see one coming, that will also observe us. + Before night comes we will contrive to meet, + And then I will tell you further. Till when, farewell. +_Sandford_. My prayers go with you, Lady, and your counsels, + And heaven so prosper them, as I wish you well. + [_They part several ways_.] + +Here follows:-- + +Scene the Second. A Library in Woodvil Hall; John Woodvil alone. + +_John Woodvil (alone)_. Now universal England getteth drunk. + +And so on as printed in Act II. [on page 165]. After the last printed +line, + + A fishing, hawking, hunting country gentleman, + +the MS. has these five lines, but Lamb drew his pen through them:-- + + Great spirits ask great play-room; I would be + The Phaeton, should put the world to a hazard, + E'er I'd forego the horses of the sun, + And giddy lustre of my travels' glory + For tedious common paces. [_Exit_.] + +Next comes:-- + +Scene the Third. An apartment in Woodvil Hall; Margaret. Sandford. + +_Margaret_. I pray you spare me, Mr. Sandford. + +And so on as printed as the continuation of the former scene [page 159] +to the end of that and of the first act. But in the middle of Sandford's +speech comes in the "Witch" story, thus introduced:-- + +[_Sandford_.] I know a suit + Of lovely Lincoln-green, that much shall grace you + In the wear, being glossy, fresh and worn but seld, + Young Stephen Woodvil's they were, Sir Walter's eldest son, + Who died long since in early youth. +_Margaret_. I have somewhere heard his story. I remember + Sir Walter Rowland would rebuke me, being a girl, + When I have asked the manner of his death. + But I forget it. +_Sandford_. One summer night, Sir Francis, as it chanc'd, + Was pacing to and fro in the avenue + That westward fronts our house,-- +_Margaret_. Methinks I should learn something of his story + Whose garments I am to wear. +_Sandford_. Among those aged oaks, etc. + +And so the witch story goes on, not quite as printed as a separate poem +in the _Works_ of 1818 [see page 199], but not differing very +materially.... + +Then comes "Act the Second. John Woodvil alone. Reading a letter (which +stands at the beginning of the book)." The letter is longer in MS. than +in print [see page 160], the words in italics having been withdrawn from +the middle of the second sentence:-- + +"The course I have taken ... seemed to [me] best _both for the warding +off of calumny from myself (which should bring dishonor upon the memory +of Sir Rowland my father, if a daughter of his could be thought to +prefer doubtful ease before virtuous sufferance, softness before +reputation), and_ for the once-for-all releasing of yourself...." + +No notable alteration occurs until we come to the second scene, which in +the MS. (owing to the transposition of Woodvil's soliloquy) followed +immediately on Lovel's reply to Woodvil's speech-- + + No, you shall go with me into the gallery-- + +printed on page 164. + +Scene the Second. Sherwood Forest. Sir Walter Woodvil, Simon, drest as +Frenchmen. + +Sir Walter's opening speech is long in print [page 166]--in MS. it is +but this:-- + +_Sir Walter_. How fares my boy, Simon, my youngest born, + My hope, my pride, young Woodvil, speak to me; + Thinkest thy brother plays thy father false? + My life upon his faith and noble heart; + Son John could never play thy father false. + +There is no further material change to note until we come to the point +in the conversation between Sir Walter, Simon and Margaret [page 172], +where Simon calls John "a scurvy brother," to whom Margaret responds:-- + +_Margaret_. I speak no slander, Simon, of your brother, + He is still the first of men. + +_Simon_. I would fain learn that, if you please. + +_Margaret_. Had'st rather hear his praises in the mass + Or parcel'd out in each particular? + +_Simon_. So please you, in the detail: general praise + We'll leave to his Epitaph-maker. + +_Margaret_. I will begin then-- + His face is Fancy's tablet, where the witch + Paints, in her fine caprice, ever new forms, + Making it apt all workings of the soul, + All passions and their changes to display; + His eye, attention's magnet, draws all hearts. + +_Simon_. Is this all about your son, Sir? + +_Margaret_. Pray let me proceed. His tongue.... + +_Simon_. Well skill'd in lying, no doubt-- + +_Sir Walter_. Ungracious boy! will you not hear her out? + +_Margaret_. His tongue well skill'd in sweetness to discuss-- + (False tongue that seem'd for love-vows only fram'd)-- + +_Simon_. Did I not say so? + +_Margaret_. All knowledge and all topics of converse, + Ev'n all the infinite stuff of men's debate + From matter of fact, to the heights of metaphysick, + How could she think that noble mind + So furnish'd, so innate in all perfections, + The manners and the worth + That go to the making up of a complete Gentleman, + Could from his proper nature so decline + And from that starry height of place he mov'd in + To link his fortune to a lowly Lady + Who nothing with her brought but her plain heart, + And truth of love that never swerv'd from Woodvil. + +_Simon_. Wilt please you hear some vices of this brother, + This all-accomplish'd John? + +_Margaret_. There is no need--I grant him all you say and more, + Vain, ambitious, large of purpose, + Fantastic, fiery, swift and confident, + A wayward child of vanity and spleen, + A hair-brain'd mad-cap, dreamer of gold dreams, + A daily feaster on high self-conceit, + With many glorious faults beside, + Weak minds mistake for virtues. + +_Simon_. Add to these, + That having gain'd a virtuous maiden's love, + One fairly priz'd at twenty times his worth, + He let her wander houseless from his door + To seek new friends and find elsewhere a home. + +_Sir Walter_. Fie upon't-- + All men are false, I think, etc. + +And here we arrive at the "Dying Lover," which was printed anonymously in the +_London Magazine_ for January, 1822. But before passing from the long +passage transcribed above I am bound to say that Lamb drew his pen +through it all, marking some bits "bad" and others "very bad." I venture +to think that in this he did himself some injustice. + +To Sir Walter's sweeping indictment Margaret replies as follows. I keep +to the text of the MS., noting some trifling changes made for the +_London Magazine_ [see page 85]:-- + +_Margaret_. All are not false. I knew a youth who died + For grief, because his Love proved so, + And married to[32] another. + I saw him on the wedding day, + For he was present in the church that day, + And in his best apparel too[33], + As one that came to grace the ceremony. + I mark'd him when the ring was given, + His countenance never changed; + And when the priest pronounced the marriage blessing, + He put a silent prayer up for the bride, + [For they stood near who saw his lips move.][34] + He came invited to the marriage-feast + With the bride's friends, + And was the merriest of them all that day; + But they, who knew him best, call'd it feign'd mirth; + And others said, + He wore a smile like death's[35] upon his face. + His presence dash'd all the beholders' mirth, + And he went away in tears. + +_Simon_. What followed then? + +_Margaret_. Oh! then + He did not as neglected suitors use + Affect a life of solitude in shades, + But lived, + In free discourse and sweet society, + Among his friends who knew his gentle nature best. + Yet ever when he smiled, + There was a mystery legible in his face, + That whoso saw him said he was a man + Not long for this world.---- + And true it was, for even then + The silent love was feeding at his heart + Of which he died: + Nor ever spake word of reproach, + Only he wish'd in death that his remains[36] + Might find a poor grave in some spot, not far + From his mistress' family vault, "being the place + Where one day Anna should herself be laid." + + (So far in the _Magazine_.) + + +[Footnote 32: "With" (_London Magazine_).] + +[Footnote 33: "In festive bravery deck'd" (_London Magazine_).] + +[Footnote 34: This line erased in MS. and nothing substituted. In the +_London Magazine_ this took its place:--"For so his moving lip +interpreted."] + +[Footnote 35: "Death" (_London Magazine_).] + +[Footnote 36: Lamb drew his pen through the four concluding lines, and +wrote in the margin "_very_ bad."] + + +_Simon_. A melancholy catastrophe. For my part I shall never die for +love, being as I am, too general-contemplative for the narrow passion. I +am in some sort a general lover. + +_Margaret_. In the name of the Boy-god who plays at blind man's buff +with the Muses, and cares not whom he catches; what is it you love? + +And so on until the end of Simon's famous description of the delights of +forest life [page 173]. To this + +_Margaret_ (_smiling_). And afterwards them paint in simile. + +(_To Sir Walter._) I had some foolish questions to put concerning your +son, Sir.--Was John so early valiant as hath been reported? I have heard +some legends of him. + +_Sir Walter_. You shall not call them so. Report, in most things +superfluous, in many things altogether an inventress, hath been but too +modest in the delivery of John's true stories. + +_Margaret_. Proceed, Sir. + +_Sir Walter_. I saw him on the day of Naseby Fight-- + To which he came at twice seven years, + Under the discipline of the Lord Ashley, + His uncle by the mother's side, + Who gave his early principles a bent + Quite from the politics of his father's house. + +_Margaret_. I have heard so much. + +_Sir Walter_. There did I see this valiant Lamb of Mars, + This sprig of honour, this unbearded John, + This veteran in green years, this sprout, this Woodvil, + With dreadless ease, guiding a fire-hot steed + Which seem'd to scorn the manage of a boy, + Prick forth with such an ease into the field + To mingle rivalship and deeds of wrath + Even with the sinewy masters of the art[37]! + The rough fanatic and blood-practis'd soldiery + Seeing such hope and virtue in the boy, + Disclosed their ranks to let him pass unhurt, + Checking their swords' uncivil injuries + As both to mar that curious workmanship + Of valour's beauty in his youthful face. + +_Simon_. Mistress Margaret will have need of some refreshment, etc. + +Lamb has drawn his pen through this passage, and marked it "bad or +dubious." + + +[Footnote 37: Some lines intervene here in the letter to Southey of +January 21, 1799, which are not in the MS.] + + At the beginning of the fourth act John Woodvil's soliloquy is broken +in upon by Sandford. He has just told himself [page 186] that + + Some, the most resolved fools of all, + Have told their dearest secrets in their cups, + +when + +_Enter Sandford in haste._ + +_Sandford_. O Sir, you have not told them anything? + +_John_. Told whom, Sandford? + +_Sandford_. Mr. Lovel or Mr. Gray, anything concerning your father? + +_John_. Are they not my friends, Sandford? + +_Sandford_. Your friends! Lord help you, they your friends! They were no +better than two Court spies set on to get the secret out of you. I have +just discovered in time all their practices. + +_John_. But I have told one of them. + +_Sandford_. God forbid, God forbid! + +_John_. How do you know them to be what you said they were? + +_Sandford_. Good God! + +_John_. Tell me, Sandford, my good Sandford, your master begs it of you. + +_Sandford_. I cannot speak to you. [_Goes out, John following him._] + +Scene the Second. The forest. + +This forest scene has been greatly altered. When Gray has said [page +188], "'Tis a brave youth," etc., there follows:-- + +_Sir Walter_. Why should I live any longer? There is my sword +(_surrendering_). Son John, 'tis thou hast brought this disgrace upon us +all. + +_Simon_. Father, why do you cover your face with your hands? Why do you +draw your breath so hard? See, villains, his heart is burst! O villains, +he cannot speak! One of you run for some water; quick, ye musty rogues: +will ye have your throats cut? [_They both slink off._] How is it with +you, father? Look up, Sir Walter, the villains are gone. + +"He hears" [page 188], down to "_Bears in the body_" [page 188], of the +print is not in the MS., which goes on thus:-- + +_Sir Walter_. Barely a minute's breath is left me now, + Which must be spent in charity by me, + And, Simon, as you prize my dying words, + I charge you with your brother live in peace + And be my messenger, + To bear my message to the unhappy boy, + For certain his intent was short of my death. + +_Simon_. I hope as much, father. + +_Sir Walter_. Tell him I send it with my parting prayer, + And you must fall upon his neck and weep, + And teach him pray, and love your brother John, + For you two now are left in the wide world + The sole survivors of the Woodvil name. + Bless you, my sons-- [_Dies._] + +_Simon._ My father's soul is fled. + And now, my trusty servant, my sword, + One labour yet, my sword, then sleep for ever. + Drink up the poor dregs left of Woodvil's name + And fill the measure of our house's crimes. + How nature sickens, + To view her customary bands so snapt + When Love's sweet fires go out in blood of kin, + And natural regards have left the earth. + +Scene changes to another part of the forest. + +_Margaret (alone)._ + They are gone to bear the body to the town, + It was an error merely and no crime. + +And so to the end of her long speech as printed [page 189]. + +At this point in the MS. comes in "the hodge-podge of German +puerilities" (see the letter to Manning, February 15, 1802), the +sacrifice of which so discontented Manning, who evidently considered the +"supplementary scene" (closing the fourth act, [pages 189 to 191]), as +Lamb called it, a poor substitute. + +Scene changes to Woodvil Hall. + +_John reading a letter by scraps--A Servant attending._ + +"An event beyond the possible reach of foresight. 'Tis thought the +deep disgrace of supposed treachery in you o'ercame him. His heart +brake. You will acquit yourself of worse crimes than indiscretion. +My remorse must end with life. + +"Your quondam companion and penitent for the wrong he has done ye. + +"GRAY. + +"_Postscript._--The old man being unhappily removed, the young man's +advancement henceforth will find no impediment." + +_John._ Impediment indeed there now is none: + For all has happened that my soul presag'd. + What hinders, but I enter in forthwith + And take possession of my crowned state? + For thy advancement, Woodvil, is no less; + To be a King, a King. + I hear the shoutings of the under-world, + I hear the unlawful accents of their mirth, + The fiends do shout and clap their hands for joy, + That Woodvil is proclaim'd the Prince of Hell. + They place a burning crown upon my head, + I hear it hissing now, [_Puts his hand to his forehead._] + And feel the snakes about my mortal brain. + [_Sinks in a swoon, is caught in the arms of a servant._] + +Scene. A Courtyard before Woodvil Hall. + +Sandford. Margaret (as just arrived from a journey). + +_Margaret._ Can I see him to-night? + +_Sandford._ I think ye had better stay till the morning: + he will be more calm. + +_Margaret._ You say he gets no sleep? + +_Sandford._ He hath not slept since Sir Walter died. I have sat up with +him these two nights. Francis takes my place to-night--O! Mistress +Margaret, are not the witch's words come true--"All that we feared and +worse"? Go in and change your garments, you have travelled hard and want +rest. + +_Margaret._ I will go to bed. You will promise I shall see him in the +morning. + +_Sandford._ You will sleep in your old chamber? + +_Margaret._ The Tapestry room: yes. Pray get me a light. A good night to +us all. + +_Sandford._ Amen, say I. [_They go in._] + +Scene. The Servants' Hall. + +Daniel, Peter and Robert. + +_Daniel._ Are we all of one mind, fellows? He that lov'd his old master, +speak. Shall we quit his son's service for a better? Is it aye, or no? + +_Peter._ For my part, I am afraid to go to bed to-night. + +_Robert._ For certain, young Master's indiscretion was that which broke +his heart. + +_Peter._ Who sits up with him to-night? + +_Robert._ Francis. + +_Peter._ Lord! what a conscience he must have, that he cannot sleep +alone. + +_Robert._ They say he is troubled with the Night-mare. + +_Daniel._ Here he comes, let us go away as fast as we can. + +_Enter John Woodvil and Francis._ [_They run out._] + +_John._ I lay me down to get a little sleep, + And just when I began to close my eyes, + My eyes heavy to sleep, it comes. + +_Francis._ What comes? + +_John._ I can remember when a child the maids[38] + Would place me on their lap, as they undrest me, + As silly women use, and tell me stories + Of Witches--Make me read "Glanvil on Witchcraft," + And in conclusion show me in the Bible, + The old Family-Bible with the pictures in it, + The 'graving of the Witch raising up Samuel, + Which so possest my fancy, being a child, + That nightly in my dreams an old Hag came + And sat upon my pillow. + I am relapsing into infancy,-- + And shortly I shall dote--for would you think it? + The Hag has come again. Spite of my manhood, + The Witch is strong upon me every night. + [_Walks to and fro, then as if recollecting something._] + What said'st thou, Francis, as I stood in the passage? + Something of a Father: + The word is ringing in my ears now-- + +[Footnote 38: +Twice afterwards Lamb returned to this episode--in "The Witch +Aunt" in story _Mrs. Leicester's School_ (see Vol. III.), and in "Witches +and other Night Fears," in _Elia_ (see Vol. II. 9).] + +_Francis_. I remember, one of the servants, Sir, would pass a few +days with his father at Leicester. The poor old man lies on his deathbed, +and has exprest a desire to see his son before he dies. But none +cared to break the matter to you. + +_John_. Send the man here. [_Francis goes out_.] + My very servants shun my company. + I held my purse to a beggar yesterday + Who lay and bask'd his sores in the hot sun, + And the gaunt pauper did refuse my alms. + +_Francis returns with Robert_. + +_John_. Come hither, Robert. What is the poor man ailing? + +_Robert_. Please your honour, I fear he has partly perish'd for want of +physic. His means are small, and he kept his illness a secret to me not +to put me to expenses. + +_John_. Good son, he weeps for his father. + Go take the swiftest horse in my stables, + Take Lightfoot or Eclipse--no, Eclipse is lame, + Take Lightfoot then, or Princess[39], + Ride hard all night to Leicester. + And give him money, money, Francis-- + The old man must have medicines, cordials, + And broth to keep him warm, and careful nurses. + He must not die for lack of tendance, Robert. + +[Footnote 39: Lamb puts his pen through these two lines, and writes across +them "miserable bad."] + +_Robert_. God bless your honour for your kindness to my poor father. + +_John_. Pray, now make haste. You may chance to come in time. + +[_Robert goes out_.] + +_John_. Go get some firewood, Francis, + And get my supper ready. [_Francis goes out_.] + The night is bitter cold. + They in their graves feel nothing of the cold, + Or if they do, how dull a cold-- + All clayey, clayey. Ah God! who waits below? + Come up, come quick. I saw a fearful sight. + +_Francis returns in haste with wood_. + +_John_. There are such things as spirits, deny it who may. + Is it you, Francis? Heap the wood on thick, + We two shall sup together, sup all night, + Carouse, drink drunk, and tell the merriest tales-- + Tell for a wager, who tells merriest-- + But I am very weak. O tears, tears, tears, + I feel your just rebuke. [_Goes out_.] + +Scene changes to a bed-room. John sitting alone: a lamp burning by him. + +"Infinite torments for finite offences." I will never believe it. How +divines can reconcile this monstrous tenet with the spirit of their +Theology! They have palpably failed in the proof, for to put the +question thus:--If he being infinite--have a care, Woodvil, the latitude +of doubting suits not with the humility of thy condition. What good men +have believed, may be true, and what they profess to find set down +clearly in their scriptures, must have probability in its defence[40]. +Touching that other question the Casuists with one consent have +pronounced the sober man accountable for the deeds by him in a state of +drunkenness committed, because tho' the action indeed be such as he, +sober, would never have committed, yet the drunkenness being an act of +the will, by a moral fiction, the issues are accounted voluntary also. I +lose my sleep in attending to these intricacies of the schoolmen. I lay +till daybreak the other morning endeavouring to draw a line of +distinction between sin of direct malice and sin of malice indirect, or +imputable only by the sequence. My brain is overwrought by these +labours, and my faculties will shortly decline into impotence. [_Throws +himself on a bed_.] + +End of the Fourth Act. + + +[Footnote 40: Lamb had crossed out this passage from "Infinite +torments," and written at "touching" "begin here."] + + +In the fifth act of the printed play [page 192] we have simply "Margaret +enters." In the MS. Sandford prepares his master for her advent, and +announces her thus:-- + +_Sandford_. Wilt please you to see company to-day, Sir? + +_John_. Who thinks me worth the visiting? + +_Sandford_. One that traveled hard last night to see you, +She waits to know your pleasure. + +_John_. A lady too! pray send her to me-- +Some curiosity, I suppose. + +[_Sandford goes out and returns with Margaret_.] + +_Margaret_. Woodvil![41] + + +[Footnote 41: "Woodvil!" and some illegible words struck out, and nothing +substituted.] + + +_John_. Comes Margaret here, etc. + +When, a page further on [page 194], John has declared to Margaret that + + This earth holds not alive so poor a thing as I am-- + I was not always thus, + +the MS. went on (but the passage is struck out as "bad"):-- + + You must bear with me, Margaret, as a child, + For I am weak as tender Infancy + And cannot bear rebuke-- + Would'st think it, Love! + They hoot and spit upon me as I pass + In the public streets: one shows me to his neighbour, + Who shakes his head and turns away with horror-- + I was not always thus-- + +_Margaret_. Thou noble nature, etc. + +The next scene--the last [page l95]--is much cut about. The long speech +of Margaret beginning, + + To give you in your stead a better self, + +and John's reply [both printed at pages 196-7], are struck out, and +"Nimis" written by Lamb's pen in large characters in the margin; +but after that all goes on in harmony with the print, to the end:-- + + It seem'd the guilt of blood was passing from me + Even in the act and agony of tears + And all my sins forgiven. +At this point in the MS. Simon arrives:-- + + [_A noise is heard as of one without, clamorous to come in_.] + +_Margaret_. 'Tis your brother Simon, John. + +_Enter Simon, with his sword in a menacing posture, John staggers +towards him and falls at his feet, Margaret standing over him._ + +_Simon_. Is this the man I came so far to see-- + The perfect Cavalier, the finish'd courtier + Whom Ladies lov'd, the gallant curled Woodvil, + Whom brave men fear'd, the valiant, fighting Woodvil, + The haughty high-ambitioned Parricide-- + The same that sold his father's secret in his cups, + And held it but an after-dinner's trick?-- + So humble and in tears, a crestfallen penitent, + And crawling at a younger brother's feet! + The sinews of my [_stiff_] revenge grow slack. + My brother, speak to me, my brother John. + (_Aside_) Now this is better than the beastly deed + Which I did meditate. + +_John (rising and resuming his old dignity)_. You come to take my life, + I know it well. + You come to fight with me--[_Laying his hand upon his sword_.] + This arm was busy on the day of Naseby: + 'Tis paralytic now, and knows no use of weapons. + The luck is yours, Sir. [_Surrenders his sword_.] + +_Simon_. My errand is of peace: + A dying father's blessing and lost prayers + For his misguided son. + Sir Walter sends it with his parting breath. + He bade me with my brother live in peace, + He bade me fall upon his neck and weep, + (As I now do) and love my brother John; + For we are only left in the wide world + The poor survivors of the Woodvil name. [_They embrace_.] + +_Simon_. And Margaret here shall witness our atonement-- + (For Margaret still hath followed all your fortunes). + And she shall dry thy tears and teach thee pray. + So we'll together seek some foreign land, + Where our sad story, John, shall never reach. + +_End of "Pride's Cure" and Charles Lamb's Dramatic Works!!_ + + +After all this [Mr. Campbell adds finally] is the reader prepared to +think Manning altogether wrong and Lamb altogether right as to what was +done in the process of transforming Pride's Cure into _John Woodvil_? + +The version of 1818 here printed differs practically only in +minor matters of typography and punctuation from that of 1802. +There are, however, a few alterations which should be noted. On +page 176, in John's first speech, "fermentations" was, in 1802, +"stimuli." On page 178, in the speech of the Third Gentleman, +there is a change. In 1802 he said "(_dashing his glass down_) +Pshaw, damn these acorn cups, they would not drench a fairy. +Who shall pledge," &c. And at the end of Act III, one line is +omitted. In 1802 John was made to say, after disarming Lovel +(page 186):-- + + Still have the will without the power to execute, + As unfear'd Eunuchs meditate a rape. + +This simile, which one reviewer fell upon with some violence, was +not reprinted. + +Mr. Thomas Hutchinson, writing in The Athenceum, December 28, 1901, +remarks: "The truth is that in Lamb's imitations of the elder writers +'anachronistic improprieties' (as Thomas Warton would say) are +exceedingly rare. In _John Woodvil_ it would not, I think, be easy to +discover more than two: _caprice_, which, in the sense of 'a capricious +disposition,' seems to belong to the eighteenth century, and _anecdotes_ +(i.e., 'secret Court history'), which, in its English form at least, +probably does not occur much before 1686." + +This note is already too long, or I should like to say something of the +reception of _John Woodvil_, which was not cordial. The _Annual Review_ +was particularly severe, and the _Edinburgh_ caustic. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 109. "THE WITCH." + +In the _Works_, 1818, this dramatic sketch followed _John Woodvil_. + +Lamb sent "The Witch" to Robert Lloyd in November, 1798 (see _Charles +Lamb and the Lloyds_, page 91), in a version differing widely from that +of the _Works_ here given. The speakers are Sir Walter Woodvil's steward +and Margaret. The principal variation is this, after the curse:-- + +_Margaret_. A terrible curse! + +_Old Steward_. O Lady! such bad things are said of that old woman, + You would be loth to hear them! + Namely, that the milk she gave was sour, + And the babe, who suck'd her, shrivell'd like a mandrake, + And things besides, with a bigger horror in them, + Almost, I think, unlawful to be told! + +In the penultimate line "The mystery of God" was "Creation's beauteous +workmanship." + + + * * * * * + + +Page 202. "MR. H----." + +Lamb composed this farce in the winter 1805-1806. Writing to Hazlitt on +February 19, 1806, he says: "Have taken a room at 3s. a week to be in +between 5 and 8 at night, to avoid my _nocturnal_ alias _knock-eternal_ +visitors. The first-fruits of my retirement has been a farce which goes +to manager tomorrow." Mary Lamb, writing to Sarah Stoddart at about the +same time, says: "Charles is gone [to the lodging] to finish the farce, +and I am to hear it read this night. I am so uneasy between my hopes and +fears of how I shall like it, that I do not know what I am doing." The +next day or so, February 21, she says that she liked the farce "very +much, and cannot help having great hopes of its success"--stating that +she has carried it to Mr. Wroughton at Drury Lane. + +The reply came on June n, 1806, saying that the farce was accepted, +subject to a few alterations, and would be produced in due course (see +Lamb's letter to Wordsworth, written in "wantonness of triumph," of June +26). Mary Lamb, writing to Sarah Stoddart, probably in October, 1806, +says that + + Charles took an emendated copy of his farce to Mr. Wroughton, the + Manager, yesterday. Mr. Wroughton was very friendly to him, and + expressed high approbation of the farce; but there are two, he tells + him, to come out before it.... We are pretty well, and in fresh + hopes about this farce. + +Lamb tells Manning about it, on December 5, adding after an outline of +the plot:--"That's the idea--how flat it is here--but how whimsical in +the farce!" Later he says: "I shall get L200 from the theatre if 'Mr. +H----' has a good run, and, I hope, L100 for the copyright. Nothing if +it fails; and there never was a more ticklish thing. The whole depends +on the manner in which the name is brought out, which I value myself on, +as a _chef-d'oeuvre_." And a little later still: "N.B. If my little +thing don't succeed, I shall easily survive." + +"Mr. H----" was produced on December 10, 1806. The play-bill for the +night ran thus:-- + + Theatre Royal, Drury-Lane + This present Wednesday, December 10, 1806 + Their Majesties Servants will act the Operatic Drama of + The Travellers; + Or, Music's Fascination + [&c. &c.] + After which will be produced (Never Acted) a new Farce, in Two acts, + called, + Mr. H---- + The Characters by + Mr. Elliston + Mr. Wewitzer, Mr. Hartley, Mr. Penley, Mr. Purser + Mr. Carles, Mr. Cooke, Mr. Fisher, Mr. Placide, Mr. Webb + Miss Mellon, Mrs. Sparks + Miss Tidswell, Mrs. Harlowe + Mrs. Scott, Mrs. Maddocks, Miss Sanders + The Prologue to be spoken by Mr. Elliston + [&c., &c.] + +According to Mrs. Baron-Wilson's _Memoirs of (Miss Mellon) +Harriet, Duchess of St. Albans_, Lamb was allowed to cast "Mr. +H----" himself. Miss Mellon played the heroine. + +The Lambs sat near the orchestra with Hazlitt and Crabb Robinson, and +the house was well salted with friendly clerks from the East India House +and the South-Sea House. The prologue went capitally; and all was well +with the play until the name of Hogsflesh was pronounced. Then +disapproval set in in a storm of hisses, in which, Crabb Robinson tells +us, Lamb joined heartily, standing on his seat to do so. + +In a report of the first night of "Mr. H----" in _Monthly Literary +Recreations_ for December, 1806, we read that on the secret of the name +being made public "all interest vanished, the audience were disgusted, +and the farce went on to its very conclusion almost unheard, amidst the +contending clamours of 'Silence,' 'Hear! hear!' and 'Off! off! off!'" + +Writing to Wordsworth on the next day Lamb told the story:--"Mr. H---- +came out last night and failed. I had many fears; the subject was not +substantial enough. John Bull must have solider fare than a _Letter_. We +are pretty stout about it, have had plenty of condoling friends, but +after all, we had rather it should have succeeded. You will see the +Prologue in most of the Morning Papers. It was received with such shouts +as I never witness'd to a Prologue. It was attempted to be encored. How +hard! a thing I did merely as a task, because it was wanted--and set no +great store by; and Mr. H.!! The quantity of friends we had in the house +my brother and I being in Public Offices &c. was astonishing--but they +yielded at length to a few hisses--"a hundred hisses--damn the word, I +write it like kisses--how different--a hundred hisses outweigh 1000 +claps. The former come more directly from the Heart. Well, 'tis +withdrawn and there is an end. Better Luck to us." + +Writing to Sarah Stoddart, Lamb put the case thus:--"Mary is a little +cut at the ill success of 'Mr. H.,' which came out last night, and +_failed_. I know you'll be sorry, but never mind. We are determined not +to be cast down. I am going to leave off tobacco, and then we must +thrive. A smoking man must write smoky farces." Thereafter Lamb's +attitude to "Mr. H----" was always one of humorous resignation. + +Lamb should have chosen a better, by which I mean a worse, +name than Hogsflesh. As a matter of fact a great number of +persons had become quite accustomed to the asperities of Hogsflesh, +not only from the famous cricketer of that name, one of the pioneers +of the game, but also from the innkeeper at Worthing. Indeed an +old rhyme current at the end of the eighteenth century anticipated +some of Lamb's humour, for the two principal landlords of Worthing, +which was just then beginning to be a fashionable resort, were +named Hogsflesh and Bacon, leading to the quatrain:-- + + Brighton is a pretty street, + Worthing is much taken; + If you can't get any other meat + There's Hogsflesh and Bacon. + +The Drury Lane authorities do not seem to have considered the failure as +absolute as did Lamb, for on the next day--December 11--the bills +announced:-- + + *** The New Farce of Mr. H----, performed for the first time last + night, was received by an overflowing audience with universal applause, + and will be repeated for the second time to-morrow. + +But the next evening's bill--December 12, 1806--stated that "The New +Farce of Mr. H---- is withdrawn at the request of the author." + +"Mr. H----" did not then disappear altogether from the stage. A +correspondent of _Notes and Queries_, May 26, 1855, remembered seeing it +at Philadelphia when he was a boy. The last scene, he says, particularly +amused the audience. And in William B. Wood's _Personal Recollections of +the Stage_, 1855, it is recorded of the Philadelphia Theatre, of which +he was manager, that in 1812, "Charles Lamb's excellent farce of 'Mr. +H----' met with extraordinary success, and was played an unusual number +of nights." Lamb, however, did not profit thereby. + +The little play was published in Philadelphia in 1813 under the title +_Mr. H----, or Beware a Bad Name. A farce in two acts, as performed at +the Philadelphia Theatre_--Lamb's name not figuring in any way in +connection with it. + +In England "Mr. H----" was not revived until 1885, when, as a curiosity, +it was played by the Dramatic Students' Society. The performance was +held at the Gaiety on October 27, 1885, the prologue being spoken by a +gentleman made up to resemble Lamb. At the Cheadle Town Hall on October +19 and 20, 1910, "Mr. H----" was given again, with the difference that +the secret of the name was disclosed from the start. + +In _Notes and Queries_, August 3, 1889, the following amusing play-bill +was printed, contributed by Mr. Bertram Dobell:-- + + Theatre Royal, English Opera House, Strand. + Particularly Private. + This present FRIDAY, April 26, 1822, + Will be presented a FARCE called + Mr. H.... + (_N.B. This piece was damned at Drury Lane Theatre._) + [Caste follows.] + Previous to which a PROLOGUE will be spoken by Mrs. EDWIN. +After the Farce (for the first Time in this country, and now performing + with immense success in Paris) + A French _Petite Comedie_, called + Le Comedien D'Etampes. + (N.B. _This piece was never acted in London, and may very probably + be damned HERE_.) + [Caste follows.] + Immediately after which + A LOVER'S CONFESSION, in the shape of a SONG, + by M. EMILE + (From the Theatre de la Poste St. Martin, at Paris.) + To conclude with a _Pathetic Drama_, in + One Act, called + The Sorrows of Werther. + (N.B. This Piece was damned at Covent Garden Theatre.) + [Caste follows.] + Brothers and Sisters of Charlotte, by six Cherubims + got for the occasion. + Orchestra. + Leader of the Band, Mr. Knight, Conductor, Mr. E. Knight. + Piano Forte, Mr. Knight, Jun. Harpsichord, Master Knight (that was). + Clavecin, by the Father of the Knights, to come. + Vivat Rex! No Money returned (because none will be taken). + _On account of the above surprising Novelty, not an_ ORDER _can + possibly be admitted:_-- +_But it is requested, that if such a thing finds its way into the front + of the house_, IT WILL BE KEPT. + Doors open at Half past Six, begin at Half past Seven precisely. + The Entrance for all parts of the House at the Private Box Door in + Exeter Street. + Lowndes, Printer, Marquis Court, Drury Lane, London. + +Mr. Dobell wonders if Lamb had any knowledge of this performance, and he +suggests that possibly he had a hand in the bill. Certainly the +interpolations concerning damnation are in his manner. + +I add a few notes:-- + +Page 208. _The man with the great nose_. See Slawkenbergius's tale in +_Tristram Shandy_, Vol. IV. + +Page 212. _The feeling Hurley_. Harley was the hero of Henry Mackenzie's +novel, _The Man of Feeling_. + +Page 217. _Jeremiah Pry_. John Poole may have taken a hint here for his +farce "Paul Pry," produced in September, 1825. Lamb and he knew each +other slightly. Lamb analysed the prying nature again in _The New Times_ +early in 1825, in two papers on "Tom Pry" and "Tom Pry's Wife" which +will be found in Vol. I. of this edition. + +Page 220. _Old Q----_. William Douglas, fourth Duke of Queensberry +(1724-1810), the most notorious libertine of his later days. + +Page 224. _John, my valet_. This is a very similar incident to that +described in the _Elia_ essay on the "Old Benchers," where Lovel (John +Lamb) warns Samuel Salt, when dressing him, not to allude, at the party +to which he is going, to the unfortunate Miss Blandy. + +Page 228, line 1. _Mother Damnable_. There was at Kentish Town a +notorious old shrew who bore this nickname in the 17th century. + + + * * * * * + + +Page 238. "THE PAWNBROKER'S DAUGHTER." + +Printed in _Blackwood_, January, 1830, and not reprinted by Lamb. + +This little play was never acted. Lamb refers to it in a letter to +Bernard Barton--in July, 1829--as "an old rejected farce"; and Canon +Ainger mentions a note of Lamb's to Charles Mathews, in October, 1828, +offering the farce for production at the Adelphi. The theme is one that +seems always to have interested Lamb (see his essay on the +"Inconveniences of Being Hanged," Vol. I.). + + +Page 243, line 3. "_An Argument against the Use of Animal Food._" Joseph +Ritson, 1752-1803, the antiquarian, was converted to vegetarianism by +Mandeville's _Fable of the Bees_. The work from which Cutlet quotes was +published in 1802. Pope's motto is from the _Essay on Man_, I., lines +81-84. + + +Page 243, last line. _Mr. Molyneux ... in training to fight Cribb_. +Cutlet's rump steak did not avail in either of the great struggles +between Tom Cribb and Tom Molineaux. At their first meeting, on December +18, 1810, Molineaux went under at the thirty-third round; and in the +return match, on September 28, 1811, Molineaux's jaw was broken at the +ninth and he gave in at the eleventh, to the great disappointment of the +20,000 spectators. Mr. Molineaux was a negro. + + + + + +END OF VOL. IV. + + + + + +INDEX + + +A + +Acrostics: + +"In the Album of a very Young Lady" + "To Caroline Maria Applebee" + "To Cecilia Catherine Lawton" + "To a Lady who Desired me to Write Her Epitaph" + "To Her youngest Daughter" + "To Mrs. F----, on Her Return from Gibraltar" + "To Esther Field" + "To Mrs. Williams" + "To S.F." + "To R.Q." + "To S.L." + "To M.L." + "An Acrostic against Acrostics" + "Un Solitaire" + "To S.T." + "To Mrs. Sarah Robinson" + "To Sarah" + "Acrostic" (Joseph Vale Asbury) + "To D.A." + "To Sarah James of Beguildy" + "To Emma Button" + +Addington, Henry, Lamb's epigram on + +Aders, Charles, Lamb's poem to + +_Albion, The,_ and Lamb + +"ALBUM VERSES" + "In the Album of a Clergyman's Lady" + "In the Autograph Book of Mrs. Sergeant W----" + "In the Album of Lucy Barton" + "In the Album of Miss ----" + "In the Album of a very Young Lady" + "In the Album of a French Teacher" + "In the Album of Miss Daubeny" + "In the Album of Mrs. Jane Towers" + "In My Own Album" + "In the Album of Edith S----" + "To Dora W----" + "In the Album of Rotha Q----" + "In the Album of Catherine Orkney" + "What is an Album" + "The First Leaf of Spring" + "To M.L.F." + "To the Book" + "On Being Asked to Write in Miss Westwood's Album" + "In Miss Westwood's Album" + "The Sisters" (See also under the heading of ACROSTICS.) + +"Angel Help" + +Ann Simmons (Lamb's "Anna") + +_Annual Anthology_, Lamb's contribution to + +_Anti-Jacobin, The,_ and Lamb + +"ANTONIO" by Godwin + +"Ape, The" + +_Athenaeum, The_, Lamb's contributions to + + +B + +"Ballad Noting the Difference of Rich and Poor" + "from the German" + "Singers, The" + +"Barton, Bernard, To" + Lucy, Lamb's verses to + +Beaumont, Francis, quoted + +_Bijou, The_, Lamb's contribution to + +_Blackwood's Magazine_, the Lambs' contributions to + +Blakesware and Widford + +"BLANK VERSE," by Lloyd and Lamb + +Bourne, Vincent + Lamb's translations + +Burney, Martin, Lamb's sonnet to + Sarah, Lamb's poem to + +Burton, Lamb's imitation of + +Byron, Lord, Lamb's epigram on + + +C + +Campbell, J. Dykes, on JOHN WOODVIL + +Canning, George, Lamb's epigrams on + +Caroline of Brunswick, Lamb's championship of + +Carter, Ben, of Blakesware + +"Catechist, The Young" + +_Champion, The_, Lamb's contributions to + +"Change, The" + +Chatterton, Thomas + +"Cheap Gifts" + +"Childhood" + +"Christening, The" + +Clarkes, the Cowden + +Coleridge, S.T., Lamb's dedication to + his "POEMS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS" + his "POEMS" + and Sara, Lamb's lines to + his "REMORSE" + his alteration of Lamb's sonnets + on Lamb's sonnet "We were two pretty babes" + in Gillray's cartoon + and "The Old Familiar Faces" + his translation of "Thekla's Song" + Sara, her Latinity + +"Composed at Midnight" + +"Confidant, The," by Crabbe, adapted by Lamb + +"Cook, To David" + +Cornwall, Barry. See PROCTER, B.W. + +Cowley, Abraham, quoted + +"Cowper, To the Poet" + +Crabbe, George, Lamb's adaptation of + + +D + +Da Vinci, Leonardo, poems upon + +Day, Matthew, Lamb's epigram on + +Dedication of Lamb's "WORKS" to Coleridge + of Lamb's "POEMS," 1797, to his sister + +Dedication of Lamb's "ALBUM VERSES" to Moxon + +Defoe, Daniel + +"Dialogue between a Mother and Child" + +"Dick Strype" + +"Divine Subjects, Fancy Employed on" + +Dix, Margaret, Lamb's epitaph on + +Dockwra, Tom, of Widford + +Dorrell, William, the swindler + +"Douglas, The Tomb of" + +Drake, Onesimus, of the East India House + +"Dramatic Fragment" + +Druitt, Mary, Lamb's epitaph upon + +"Dying Lover" + + +E + +East India House epigrams + +_Englishman's Magazine_, Lamb's contributions to + +Epigrams possibly by Lamb + +Epilogue to Godwin's "ANTONIO" + to Siddons' "TIME'S A TELL-TALE" + to Kenney's "DEBTOR AND CREDITOR" + to an amateur performance of "RICHARD II" + to Knowles' "THE WIFE" + +"Epitaph on a Dog" + "on a Young Lady" + +_Examiner_, The, Lamb's contributions to + +"Existence, Considered in Itself, no Blessing" + + +F + +"Faces, The Old Familiar" + +"Family Name, The" + +"Fancy Employed on Divine Subjects" + +"Farewell to Tobacco, A" + +"FARMER, PRISCILLA, POEMS ON THE DEATH OF" + +Fast Day, Lamb's epigram on + +"FAULKENER," by Godwin + +"Female Orators, The" + +Fenwick, John, editor of _The Albion_ + +Field, family, the poems to + Mrs., Lamb's grandmother + +"Free Thoughts on Several Eminent Composers" + +Frend, Sophia, Lamb's poems to, + +Frere, John Hookham, Lamb's epigram on + +"Friend, To a" + +"From the Latin" + +Fryer, Miss, Lamb's poem for + + +G + +George IV., Lamb's epigrams on + +Gifford, William, Lamb's sonnet upon + +Gillray, James, his cartoons + +"Gipsy's Malison, The" + +Godwin, William, his "ANTONI" + his "FAULKENER" + +Goethe on Lamb's "Family Name" + +"Going or Gone" + +"Grandame, The" + +GRAY, ROSAMUND, quoted + + +H + +Hamilton of Bangor quoted + +Hardy, Lieutenant, Lamb's poem to + +"Harmony in Unlikeness" + +Haydon, B.R., Lamb's verses to + +Hazlitt, William, on Lamb in the country + +"Helen" + +"Hercules Pacificatus" + +Hessey, Archdeacon, his memories of Lamb + +"Hester" + +Hogsflesh, a well-known name + +Hone, William, Lamb's poem to + his publications, Lamb's contributions to + +Hood, Thomas, his child's death + +"House-keeper, The" + +Hunt, Leigh, Lamb's poem to + on "Composed at Midnight" + and Lamb's poem, "To T.L.H." + Thornton, Lamb's poem to + +Hutchinson, Mr. Thomas, on JOHN WOODVIL + +"Hypochondriacus" + + +I + +"In Tabulam Eximii...." + +_Indicator, The_, Lamb's contributions to + +Isola, Agostino + Emma, Lamb's poems to + + +J + +Jerdan, William, Lamb's epigram on + +JOHN WOODVIL + volume, 1802, poems in + + +K + +Kelly, Frances Maria (Fanny), and Lamb + +"Kelly, To Miss" + +Kenney, James, his "DEBTOR AND CREDITOR" + +Knight, Ann. + +Knowles, James Sheridan. + his comedy "THE WIFE" + + +L + +"Lady's Sapphic, A" + +Lamb, Charles, dedicates his "WORKS" to Coleridge + at the Salutation Inn + his Earliest Poem, "Mille viae mortis" + his contributions to Coleridge's "POEMS" + his praise of Mrs. Siddons + his partnership with Coleridge + his love poems + verses on his grandmother + his contributions to Coleridge's "POEMS," 1797 + his poems to his sister + his verses to Charles Lloyd + his verses to Cowper + his Bristol holiday refused + his contributions to "BLANK VERSE," 1798 + his lines on his aunt + his lines on his father + his grief for his mother's death + his "Old Familiar Faces" + Mary Lamb laughs at him in "Helen" + his translation from the German + his imitations of Burton + his "WORKS" + his lines on Hester Savory + his "Farewell to Tobacco" + his lines to Thornton Leigh Hunt + his sonnets to Miss Kelly + his sonnet on his name + his sonnet to his brother + his sonnet to Martin Burney + his "ALBUM VERSES" + his poem on Hood's child + his verses to Bernard Barton + his verses on Emma Isola + his sonnets on "Work" and "Leisure" + his sonnets to Samuel Rogers + his sonnet on the sheep stealer + his sonnet to Barry Cornwall + his lines to Sheridan Knowles + his quatrains to Hone + his skill in acrostics + his translations from Bourne + his "Ode to the Treadmill" + his poem on old Widford friends + his "POETICAL WORKS," 1836 + his sonnet to Stothard + his lines to Moxon on his marriage + his poems on Louisa Martin + his "Free Thoughts on Composers" + his epitaph on Mary Druitt + his verses to Haydon + his sonnet to Sarah Burney + his sonnet to Leigh Hunt + his lines to Charles Aders + his translations from Palingenius + his lines to Clara Novello + ALBUM VERSES AND ACROSTICS + his political and other epigrams + and Sir James Mackintosh + his attacks on Canning + his contempt for George IV. + his attack on Gifford + on the spy system + his defence of Caroline of Brunswick + epigram on Lord Byron + writes for Merchant Taylors' boys + burlesque of "Angel Help" + his "Satan in Search of a Wife" + as a writer of prologues and epilogues + as a playwright + +Lamb, Charles, and Coleridge's pamphlet of sonnets + his dedication of his verses to Mary Lamb + and _The Anti-Jacobin_ + and Coleridge's "Wallenstein" + and Dr. Parr + his dedication to Moxon + attacked by _Literary Gazette_ + defended by Southey in _The Times_ + frames a picture with Hood + and Henry Meyer + and the thought of death + his letter from Samuel Rogers + on "The Gipsy's Malison" + Mary Lamb's poem on him + his farewell to albums + Archdeacon Hessey's memories of him + his epigrams on India House clerks + his generosity to Moxon + his history of JOHN WOODVIL + on the title of "Pride's Cure" + sends JOHN WOODVIL to Manning + on the plot of "MR. H." + hisses his own play + Elizabeth, Lamb's mother + John, Lamb's father + Lamb's brother, sonnet to + Mary, poems by + Lamb's poems + dedication to + on the death of John Wordsworth + her Latin pupils + Sarah (Hetty), Lamb's aunt + +Landon, L.E., Lamb + +Latin epigram by Lamb + verses to Haydon + +"Leisure" + +Lilley, John, of Blakesware + +"Lines Addressed ... to Sara and S.T.C." + "Suggested by a Picture of Two Females" + "on the Same Picture being Removed to Make Place for the + Portrait of a Lady by Titian" + "on Da Vinci's 'Virgin of the Rocks'" (two poems) + "Addressed to Lieutenant Hardy" + "for a Monument" + +_Literary Gazette_, Lamb's epigram on + and "ALBUM VERSES" + +"Living without God in the World" + +Lloyd, Charles, "POEMS ON THE DEATH OF PRISCILLA FARMER" + Lamb's poems to + his "BLANK VERSE" + his "Lines on the Fast" + and Sophia Pemberton + and JOHN WOODVIL + +_London Magazine_, Lamb's contributions to + +"Love will Come" + + +M + +Mackintosh, Sir James, Lamb's verses to + +Manning, Thomas, and JOHN WOODVIL + +Martin, Louisa, Lamb's poems on + +Massinger, Philip, quoted + +Merchant Taylors' School, epigrams by Lamb + +Meyer, Henry + +"Mille Viae Mortis" + +Mitford, John + +Molineaux the pugilist + +_Monthly Magazine, The_, Lamb's contributions to + +_Morning Chronicle_, Lamb's contributions to + _Post_, Lamb's contributions to + +Moxon, Edward, Lamb's poem to + his career + Lamb's dedication to + +"MR. H----" + in America + +Music, Lamb and + + +N + +Nelson, epigram on + +_New Monthly Magazine_, Lamb's contribution to + + _Times_, Lamb's contribution to + +Newton's _Principia_ + +"Nonsense Verses" + +Novello, Clara, Lamb's poems to + the three sisters + + +O + +"Old Familiar Faces, The" + +"On a Deaf and Dumb Artist" + +"On a Sepulchral Statue of an Infant Sleeping" + +"On an Infant Dying as soon as Born" + +"On seeing Mrs. K---- B----, aged upwards of eighty, nurse an Infant" + +"On the Sight of Swans in Kensington Garden" + +Orkney, Catherine, Lamb's poem to + + +P + +Palingenius, Lamb's translations of + +Parr, Dr., and Lamb + +"Parting Speech of the Celestial Messenger" + +"Pawnbroker's Daughter, The" + +Pemberton, Sophia, and Charles Lloyd + +Pichot, Amedee, his translation of "The Family Name" + +"Pindaric Ode to the Tread Mill" + +Pitt, William, epigram on + +Plumer, Mrs., of Gilston + +"POEMS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS," Lamb's contributions to + +_Poetical Recreations of "The Champion"_ + +"POETICAL WORKS OF CHARLES LAMB" + +"Pride's Cure," first name for JOHN WOODVIL + +Procter, B.W. (Barry Cornwall) + +Prologue to Godwin's "FAULKENER" + Coleridge's "REMORSE" + Knowles' "THE WIFE" + + +Q + +"Quatrains to the Editor of the _Every-Day Book_" + +Quillinan, Rotha, Lamb's poems to. + + +R + +_Reflector, The_, Lamb's contribution to + +"Repentance, A Vision of" + +"RICHARD II.," Lamb's epilogue for + +Rigg family, the, tragedy of + +"Rival Bells, The" + +Rogers, Daniel, Lamb's sonnet on + Samuel, on his brother's death + "To Samuel" (two poems) + +ROSAMUND GRAY quoted + +Rutter, Mr. J.A., and "The Old Familiar Faces" + + +S + +"Sabbath Bells, The" + +"St. Crispin to Mr. Gifford" + +"Salome" + +Salutation Inn + +"SATAN IN SEARCH OF A WIFE" + +Schiller translated by Lamb + +"Self-Enchanted, The" + +"She is Going" + +Siddons, Mrs., Lamb's sonnet to + Henry, his "TIME'S A TELL-TALE" + +Simmons, Ann (Lamb's "Anna") + +Smoking, Lamb on + +Solomon, Dr., of the Balm of Gilead + +Sonnet: "As when a child" + "Was it some sweet device" + "Methinks how dainty sweet" + "O! I could laugh" + "When last I roved" + "A timid grace" + "If from my lips" + "We were two pretty" + "The Lord of Life" + "To a Friend" + "To Miss Kelly" + "On the Sight of Swans in Kensington Garden" + "The Family Name" + "To John Lamb, Esq." + "To Martin Charles Burney, Esq." + "Harmony in Unlikeness" + "Written at Cambridge" + "To a Celebrated Female Performer in the 'Blind Boy'" + "Work" + "Leisure" + "To Samuel Rogers, Esq." + "The Gipsy's Malison" + "To the Author of Poems Published under the Name of Barry Cornwall," + "In the Album of Edith S----" + "To Dora W----" + "In the Album of Rotha Q----" + "To T. Stothard, Esq." + "O lift with reverent hand" + "To Miss Burney" + "To Samuel Rogers, Esq., on the New Edition of his _Pleasures of Memory_" + "To Louisa Morgan" + "St. Crispin to Mr. Gifford" + "To Mathew Wood, Esq." + "O gentle look," by Coleridge and Lamb + +Southey, Edith, Lamb's poem to + Robert, in Gillray's cartoon + his defence of Lamb + and JOHN WOODVIL + +Spy system, Lamb's verses on + +Stothard, Thomas, Lamb's poem to + +Sturms, Captain, of the East India House + +Suidas, Lamb's adaptation of + + +T + +"Thekla's Song," by Schiller + +Thelwall, John, and _The Champion_ + +"Three Graves, The" + +"Time and Eternity" + +_Times, The_, Lamb's contributions to + +"To a Young Friend" (two poems) + +"To a Young Lady" + +"To Bernard Barton" + +"To C. Aders, Esq." + +"To Charles Lloyd" + (second poem) + +"To Clara N----" + +"To David Cook" + +"To Emma Learning Latin" + +"To John Lamb, Esq." + +"To Margaret W----" + +"To Martin Charles Burney, Esq." + +"To Miss Burney" + +"To My Friend _The Indicator_" + +"To R.S. Knowles, Esq." + +"To Samuel Rogers, Esq." (two poems). + +"To Sir James Mackintosh" + +"To T.L.H." + +"To the Author of Poems Published under the Name of Barry Cornwall" + +"To the Poet Cowper" + +"To T. Stotbard, Esq." + +"To a Friend on his Marriage" + +"To Louisa M----" + +"Tobacco, A Farewell to" + +"Tomb of Douglas, The" + +Towers, Mrs. Jane, Lamb's verses to. + +Treadmill, the, Lamb's ode to. + +"Triumph of the Whale, The" + +Tween, Mrs., on Lamb. + +"Twelfth Night Characters" + + +V + +"Vision of Repentance, A" + + +W + +Wagstaff, Timothy, of the East India House + +"Wallenstein," ballad from + +Wawd (or Wodd) of the East India House + +Westwood, Frances, the Lambs' poems to + +"Whale, The Triumph of the" + +"What is an Album?" + +Wheatley, Kitty + +Widford and Blakesware + +"Wife's Trial, The" + +Wilde, Sergeant, Mrs., Lamb's verses to + +William IV., Lamb's epigram on + +Williams, Mrs., of Fornham, and family + +"Witch, The" + +Wood, Matthew, Lamb's sonnet to + +WOODVIL, JOHN, poems in + +Wordsworth, Dora, Lamb's poem to + John, lines on his death + +"Work" + +"WORKS," 1818, dedication of + poems in + +"Written a Year after the Events" + +"Written at Cambridge" + +"Written on Christmas Day" + +"Written on the Day of my Aunt's Funeral" + +"Written soon after the Preceding Poem" + +"Written upon the Cover of a Blotting Book" + + +Y + +"Young Catechist, The" + +"Young Friend, To a" (two poems) + +"Young Lady, To a" + + + + +INDEX OF FIRST LINES + +A Heart which felt unkindness, yet complained not, 88. +A passing glance was all I caught of thee, 79. +A sight like this might find apology, 92. +A stranger, and alone, I past those scenes, 21. +A thief, on dreary Bagshot's heath well known, 364. +A timid grace sits trembling in her eye, 8. +A tuneful challenge rings from either side, 66. +A weeping Londoner I am, 247. +Adsciscit sibi divitias et opes alienas, 123. +Alas! how am I chang'd! Where be the tears, 22. +All are not false. I knew a youth who died, 85. +All unadvised, and in an evil hour, 118. +Alone, obscure, without a friend, 12. +An Album is a Banquet: from the store, 78. +An Album is a Garden, not for show, 46. +An Ape is but a trivial beast, 89. +An author who has given you all delight, 140. +And hath thy blameless life become, 70. +Array'd--a half-angelic sight, 52. +As swallows shrink before the wintry blast, 126. +As when a child on some long winter's night, 4. +At Eton School brought up with dull boys, 115. + +Beautiful Infant, thou dost keep, 66. +Beneath this slab lies Matthew Day, 126. +Blank tho' I be, within you'll find, 114. +Bound for the port of matrimonial bliss, 140. +Bright spirits have arisen to grace the Burney name, 91. +But now time warns (my mission at an end), 98. +By crooked arts, and actions sinister, 359. +By Enfield lanes, and Winchmore's verdant hill, 58. +By myself walking, 29. + +Canadia! boast no more the toils, 79. +Caroline glides smooth in verse, 63. +Charles Lamb, to those who know thee justly dear, 331. +Charmed with the lines thy hand has sent, 352. +Choral service, solemn chanting, 64. +_Ci git_ the remains of Margaret Dix, 125. +Close by the ever-burning brimstone beds, 119. +Consummate Artist, whose undying name, 80. +Cowper, I thank my God, that thou art heal'd, 16. +Crown me a cheerful goblet, while I pray, 57. + +Dim were the stars, and clouded was the azure, 357. +Divided praise, Lady, to you we owe, 113. +Droop not, dear Emma, dry those falling tears, 93. + +Emma, eldest of your name, 114. +Envy not the wretched Poet, 109. +Esther, holy name and sweet, 106. +External gifts of fortune, or of face, 58. + +False world, 143. +Fine merry franions, 75. +For much good-natured verse received from thee, 69. +For their elder Sister's hair, 57. +Forgive me, Burney, if to thee these late, 45. +Fresh clad from heaven in robes of white, 50. +Friend of my earliest years and childish days, 18. +Friendliest of men, Aders, I never come, 94. +From broken visions of perturbed rest, 26. + +Go little Poem, and present, 107. +Grace Joanna here doth lie, 65. +Great Newton's self, to whom the world's in debt, 71. +Guard thy feelings pretty Vestal, 102. + +Habits are stubborn things, 86. +Had he mended in right time, 341. +Had I a power, Lady, to my will, 46. +Hard is the heart that does not melt with ruth, 18. +He lies a Volunteer so fine, 124. +Here lies the body of Timothy Wagstaff, 125. +Here lieth the body of Captain Sturms, 125. +High-born Helen, round your dwelling, 28. +His namesake, born of Jewish breeder, 116. +Hold on thy course uncheck'd, heroic Wood! 119. +How blest is he who in his age, exempt, 113. +How many wasting, many wasted years, 106. + +I am a widow'd thing, now thou art gone, 25. +I deal in aliments fictitious, 116. +I had a sense in dreams of a beauty rare, 81. +I have had playmates, I have had companions, 25, 323. +I like you, and your book, ingenuous Hone! 63. +I put my night-cap on my head, 115. +I saw a famous fountain, in my dream, 13. +I saw where in the shroud did lurk, 53. +I was not train'd in Academic bowers, 59. +If from my lips some angry accents fell, 9. +If we have sinn'd in paring down a name, 202. +Implored for verse, I send you what I can, 49. +In a costly palace Youth goes clad in gold, 30. +In Christian world Mary the garland wears, 78. +In days of yore, ere early Greece, 95. +In merry England I computed once, 123. +In my poor mind it is most sweet to muse, 9. +In one great man we view with odds, 118. +Inspire thy spirit, Spirit of De Foe, 72. +Io! Paean! Io! sing, 116. + +Jane, you are welcome from the barren Rock, 105. +John, you were figuring in the gay career, 44. +Joy to unknown Josepha who, I hear, 48. +Judgements are about us thoroughly, 112. + +Ladies, ye've seen how Guzman's consort died, 138. +Lady Unknown, who crav'st from me Unknown, 50. +Laura, too partial to her friends' enditing, 122. +Lazy-bones, lazy-bones, wake up, and peep! 123. +Least Daughter, but not least beloved, of Grace, 65. +Let hate, or grosser heats, their foulness mask, 61. +Little Book, surnamed of _white_, 47. +Little Casket! Storehouse rare, 107. +Louisa, serious grown and mild, 82. + +Manners, they say, by climate alter not, 121. +Margaret, in happy hour, 102. +Maternal lady with the virgin grace, 42. +May the Babylonish curse, 34. +Methinks how dainty sweet it were, reclin'd, 5, 311. +Model of thy parent dear, 38. +Much speech obscures the sense; the soul of wit, 122. +Must I write with pen unwilling, 109. +My feeble Muse, that fain her best wou'd, 110. +Mystery of God! thou brave and beauteous world, 19. + +Nigh London's famous Bridge, a Gate more famed, 72. +Not a woman, child, or man in, 120. +Now, by Saint Hilary, 341. +Now the calm evening hastily approaches, 356. + +O gentle look, that didst my look beguile, 308. +O! I could laugh to hear the midnight wind, 5, 311. +O Lady, lay your costly robes aside, 33. +O lift with reverent hand that tarnish'd flower, 82. +Of all that act, the hardest task is theirs, 145. +Of these sad truths consideration had, 99. +Off with Briareus, and his hundred hands, 359. +On Emma's honest brow we read display'd, 101. +On the green hill top, 6. +Once on a charger there was laid, 39. +One summer night Sir Francis, as it chanced, 199. + +Poor Iras' faithful wolf-dog here I lie, 67. +Princeps his rent from tinneries draws, 116. + +Queen-bird that sittest on thy shining nest, 43. +Quid vult iste equitans? et quid oclit ista virorum, 90. + +Rare artist! who with half thy tools, or none, 59. +Rogers, of all the men that I have known, 60. +Roi's wife of Brunswick Oels! 120. +Rotha, how in numbers light, 108. + +Sarah, blest wife of "Terah's faithful Son," 111. +Sarah,--your other name I know not, 112. +Shall I praise a face unseen, 109. +Sleep hath treasures worth retracing, 113. +Small beauty to your Book my lines can lend, 110. +Solemn Legends we are told, 108. +Solitary man, around thee, 111. +Some cry up Haydn, some Mozart, 83. +Some poets by poetic law, 49. +Soul-breathing verse, thy gentlest guise put on, 111. +Such goodness in your face doth shine, 48. +Suck, baby, suck, mother's love grows by giving, 61. + +Tears are for lighter griefs. Man weeps the doom, 94. +The cheerful sabbath bells, wherever heard, 10. +The cloud doth gather, the greenwood roar, 324. +The clouds are blackening, the storms threatening, 29. +The Devil was sick and queasy of late, 128. +The frugal snail, with fore-cast of repose, 71. +The Gods have made me most unmusical, 101. +The Lady Blanch, regardless of all her lovers' fears, 41. +The Lord of Life shakes off his drowsihed, 16. +The reason why my brother's so severe, 345. +The truant Fancy was a wanderer ever, 10. +There are, I am told, who sharply criticise, 142. +They talk of time, and of time's galling yoke, 60. +This rare tablet doth include, 51. +Thou fragile, filmy, gossamery thing, 105. +Thou should'st have longer liv'd, and to the grave, 24. +Thou too art dead,...! very kind, 21. +Though thou'rt like Judas, an apostate black, 115. +Time-mouldering crosses, gemm'd with imagery, 121. +'Tis a Book kept by modern Young Ladies for show, 104. +'Tis pleasant, lolling in our elbow chair, 93. +To gratify his people's wish, 120. +To name a Day for general prayer and fast, 123. +To the memory, of Dr. Onesimus Drake, 125. +Twelve years ago I knew thee, Knowles, and then, 62. +Two miracles at once! Compell'd by fate, 122. + +Under this cold marble stone, 88. +Untoward fate no luckless wight invades, 146. + +Was it so hard a thing? I did but ask, 17. +Was it some sweet device of Faery, 4, 309. +We were two pretty babes, the youngest she, 9. +What makes a happy wedlock? What has fate, 80. +What reason first imposed thee, gentle name, 44. +What rider's that? and who those myriads bringing, 90. +What time in bands of slumber all were laid, 3. +What Wawd knows, God knows, 124. +When first our Bard his simple will express'd, 147. +When her son, her Douglas died, 11. +When last I roved these winding woodwalks green, 8. +When last you left your Woodbridge pretty, 55. +When maidens such as Hester die, 32. +When thy gay book hath paid its proud devoirs, 100. +Where seven fair Streets to one tall Column draw, 67. +Where the soul drinks of misery's power, 126. +While this tawny Ethiop prayeth, 56. +While young John runs to greet, 42. +Who art thou, fair one, who usurp'st the place, 41. +Who first invented work, and bound the free, 59. +Why is he wandering on the sea? 328. +With change of climate manners alter not, 363. + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV +by Charles and Mary Lamb + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHARLES AND MARY LAMB IV *** + +***** This file should be named 11576.txt or 11576.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/1/5/7/11576/ + +Produced by Keren Vergon, Virginia Paque and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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